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In commemoration of Mega Manís 27th Anniversary and beyond!
Zynk Oxhyde previously released ROLL-CHAN! Roll-chan is a player sprite hack which replaces Mega Man with his sister Roll. Today Zynk releases three new player sprite hacks:
Continue the super robot girlís adventure in saving the world against the evil Dr. Wily, the mad scientist who made his own army of Robot Masters for his world domination.
Along her journey, Roll has been given new powers by her father-figure/creator, Dr. Light. However, the battle against Dr. Wily has been heightened, with that in mind, Dr. Light has created support units to aid Roll. Items were changed to make them more familiarized to her, and most importantly a pet robot sidekick has been added! Like Mega Man, Rush, the faithful pet robot pooch is also replaced with the Light familyís pet robot cat, Tango the playful spin-balling cat in the Gameboy days, now making its action-filled debut in the battlegrounds!
Fight, Roll! For everlasting peace!
The DCEmu Homebrew and Gaming Network
Welcome to the DCEmu Homebrew and Gaming Network. This Network of sites is owned and ran by fans of all games consoles, we post news on all the consoles we cover about hardware aspects, gaming and Homebrew. Homebrew and Emulation are software thats made using free and legal tools to play on games consoles. This Network is the only worldwide network of sites where coders can upload and post comments they deserve for all their hardwork. We have a Network that currently supports PSVita, WiiU, Nintendo Wii, Xbox360, PS3, PS2,PS1, Snes, N64, Gameboy, Nes, Xbox, Gamecube, Nintendo DS, PSP, GBA, Dreamcast, Sega Saturn,3DS, DSi, Switch, PS4, Pandora, xboxone, GP2X, iPhone, Windows Phone, iPad, Android and also Mobile Phone Emulation. When new consoles appear we will expand to cover those consoles. We also cover Theme Park News and news and reviews of Beer, cider, lager, wines and spirits.
news of their own releases and get the credit and
Please help DCEmu become stronger by posting on the forums every day and make our community larger.
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This week, we learned that former FBI Director James Comey will probably be a witness in any proceeding brought by his close friend Special Counsel Robert Mueller. Rod Rosenstein, a former Mueller staffer, appointed Mueller because Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who handed the oversight of this matter to his Deputy Rosenstein, had recused himself and that recusal was based on a misreading of the law by career Department of Justice attorneys. Sessions’s recusal, moreover, was engendered by illegal leaks. And the investigation by Mueller is being fanned by more of them.
At the center of the narrative is James Comey, who, in a girlish recital, testified about a brief conversation he had with the President in which he was told General Flynn was a “good guy” and that the President hoped the FBI investigation would “let this go.”
Comey has a long history of prosecuting questionable obstruction cases. Among other overreaches, it was Comey, who with almost certain knowledge (as I have explained previously) that there was no leak of a covert CIA agent by Dick Cheney or any of his staff, sicced former colleague, Southern District of New York (SDNY) prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald on Lewis Libby and got a conviction on a dubious process crime.
He also confessed to having leaked through a third-party friend, Columbia University Law Professor Daniel C. Richman, his version of the discussion with the President.
His explanation was self-serving and inconsistent. Linda Shelley writes:
Comey wanted to prevent the appointment of a special counsel for Hillary Clinton, who was the subject of an FBI investigation, but he wanted to “prompt” the appointment of a special counsel for President Trump, who was not the subject of an FBI investigation. He understood that the appointment of a special counsel “would send the message, ‘Uh-huh, there’s something here’” and that it would be “many months later or a year later” before the special counsel would announce that, in fact, “there was no case there.” Any questions? Here’s one: Is President Trump alleged to have done anything illegal or is this investigation just war, by any means necessary, against someone who has put a lot of swamp creatures out of power and out of work? Comey testified that while he was FBI director, Trump was not under investigation by the FBI -- not in a criminal investigation, and not in a counter-intelligence investigation, which, in Comey’s words, “tend to be centered on individuals the FBI suspects to be witting or unwitting agents” or “covertly acting as an agent” of a hostile foreign nation, or “targeted for recruitment.” In the FBI’s judgment, Trump was none of those. Comey revealed to Congress in March that the bureau was investigating “possible coordination between Russia and the Trump campaign,” yet he flatly refused to tell the public, until his testimony on Thursday, that Trump wasn’t under investigation. Comey testified that after he was fired, he orchestrated a selective leak in order to prompt a lengthy special counsel investigation of the president, knowing full well that the FBI had found no reason to place the president under investigation. That is genuinely deplorable.
Sessions' Recusal Was Based on an Erroneous Reading of the Law
Sessions was misled by the Department of Justice lawyers upon whom he relied into recusing himself from any matter involving “Russian” interference with the election.
Sessions had no conflict warranting his recusal.
Andrew McCarthy, also a former attorney with the SDNY U.S. Attorneys Office explains:
Sessions says that he recused himself, on the advice of career ethics experts at the Justice Department, because he thought this was required by the federal regulation controlling “Disqualification arising from personal or political relationship” (28 CFR Sec. 45.2). But judging from the public testimony that former FBI director James Comey has given about the investigation into Russia’s election-meddling, the regulation did not mandate recusal. Section 45.2 states that an official is disqualified from “a criminal investigation or prosecution” if he has a personal or political relationship with a “subject of the investigation or prosecution,” or with a person or organization whose interests would be affected by the outcome “of the investigation or prosecution.” … The probe of Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential campaign is not a criminal investigation or prosecution. Moreover, when the reg[ulation] speaks of the “subject of the investigation or prosecution,” it is using “subject” as a criminal-law term of art. A “subject” is a person or entity whose actions are being examined by a grand jury with an eye toward a possible indictment. There are no “subjects” in that sense in a counterintelligence investigation because the objective is not to build a criminal case and there is no grand jury.
“Russian Collusion”: Not a Crime in any Event
In the first place, the "Russian collusion" accusation is utterly pretextual, concocted by the media and the Democrats, and it began when President Obama ordered the intelligence chiefs to compose a report on Russian Interference. The Obama administration then spread the flimsy report, hastily put together across the intelligence community, through a supine if not complicit media.
According to the pertinent federal regulation, a special counsel should only be appointed when the Justice Department’s leadership “determines that criminal investigation of a person or matter is warranted,” and that “investigation or prosecution of that person or matter” by the Justice Department “would present a conflict of interest or other extraordinary circumstances.” (Emphasis added.) So, what is the crime based on which Trump’s deputy attorney general, Rod Rosenstein, authorized the appointment of a special counsel? There isn’t one. When Rosenstein named Mueller special counsel on May 17, he cited as grounds for the appointment Comey’s testimony at a March 20 House hearing. Here is the pertinent testimony: the FBI, as part of our counterintelligence mission, is investigating the Russian government’s efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election and that includes investigating the nature of any links between individuals associated with the Trump campaign and the Russian government and whether there was any coordination between the campaign and Russia’s efforts. As with any counterintelligence investigation, this will also include an assessment of whether any crimes were committed. Again, a counterintelligence investigation is not a criminal investigation. And the regulations do not authorize the appointment of a special counsel to perform “an assessment of whether any crimes were committed.” There is supposed to be evidence showing the need for a criminal investigation before a special counsel is appointed. Prior to this March 20 testimony, Comey had assured Trump that he was not under investigation. These assurances continued after this testimony, even though the testimony happened more than a month after the February 14 meeting in which Trump had lobbied Comey on Flynn’s behalf -- you know, the “Obstruction!” Moreover, in closed session in connection with his testimony, Comey told members of Congress that Trump was not under investigation—a detail omitted from the director’s public testimony. Thus, what Comey informed Congress about was a counterintelligence investigation, which had generated no evidence of Kremlin coordination with the Trump campaign, and no suspicion of wrongdoing by Trump. Based on that, Rosenstein appointed a special counsel.
McCarthy elaborates on why a counterintelligence investigation (not a legal basis for a special counsel appointment) is not a criminal investigation:
This is a huge problem with defining Mueller’s jurisdiction in terms of the counterintelligence investigation, as deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein did, in violation of the governing regulation. A counterintelligence investigation is not a criminal investigation. The latter focuses on specified factual transactions in which there is reasonable suspicion that a specified crime has been committed. A counterintelligence investigation, in stark contrast, is an information-gathering exercise. There are no limiting parameters to an information-gathering exercise -- intelligence agents always want to know more. Unlike criminal investigations, in which investigators need to prove exactly what happened under rules that limit the kinds of evidence that may be considered, intelligence is all about probabilities. It is a predictive discipline in which all manner of information is gathered since you never know what morsel of triple-hearsay (that would never be admissible in a criminal trial) may help you figure something out down the road. The counsel called for him to “determine that a criminal investigation of a person or matter is warranted.” He did not do that. As a rationale for appointing a special counsel, he cited the investigation then-FBI director James Comey had described in his March 20 congressional testimony. Comey said the investigation was a counterintelligence probe -- not a criminal investigation. He described it as a counterintelligence investigation focused on Russia’s interference in the 2016 election, including any ties between Trump associates and Putin’s regime, as well as any “coordination” between the Trump campaign and Russia’s interference efforts. None of what Comey described -- other than the hacking that has been attributed to the Russian efforts -- is necessarily, or even probably, criminal. Having ties to Russians is not a crime, and “coordination” with Russians is not a crime unless it rises to the level of a criminal conspiracy to violate a federal criminal statute. In sum, Rosenstein has failed to describe, in a “specific factual statement,” the basis for the criminal investigation that purportedly triggered the need to appoint a special counsel -- as the regulations require him to do. That description is supposed to state the parameters of the special counsel’s jurisdiction so that we don’t end up with a fishing expedition.
There are some who argue that Mueller is, in fact, going after the illegal leaking and “unmasking” that formed the basis of the “Russian collusion” story, notably Sundance at Conservative Treehouse. But given Mueller’s prior history with respect to the raid on Congressman William Jefferson’s office, in which he -- like Comey -- showed insufficient respect for constitutional prosecutorial limits, I have my doubts.
The Unending Leaks About the Investigation from Anonymous Sources
From Bloomberg:
Leakers are essentially liars. They want the benefit of being trusted with confidences without suffering the cost of keeping what they know to themselves. They sit in meetings and review documents and implicitly promise to keep the secrets, but their actual plan is to decide for themselves which juicy nugget to share with others. In philosophical terms, the leaker always does a moral wrong to the person who entrusted him with the secret. But like most moral wrongs, the leak can be excused if the cause is sufficiently vital. Consider the corporate whistle-blower who brings to the authorities details of horrific misfeasance by his employer. I argued last time that one might plausibly excuse, for example, the leaks by former FBI Director James Comey, who explained his conduct as an effort to force the appointment of a special counsel to look into links between Russia and the Trump campaign. 1 Perhaps others in the rash of leakers in recent months had the same motive. You can decide for yourself whether the motive is sufficient to justify the underlying lie. In any case, now that special counsel Robert Mueller III has begun his investigation, that rationale no longer exists. The individual who leaks what’s going on inside the investigation has no excuse. To share the special counsel’s secrets with a reporter is self-indulgence. To go to work the next day is to intensify the underlying wrong. One might object that the public has the right to know what the prosecutor is doing, but this seems to me mistaken, at least in the short run. The reason to have an investigation is to take the time to work out what’s happened. Leaks from within make the job of finding the truth that much harder. In other contexts, prosecutors have rightly been sanctioned by judges for leaking to the press details of their investigations. Here, the identity of the leaker makes little difference. Once we know that the special counsel’s office -- or perhaps the Federal Bureau of Investigation -- lacks the capacity to keep its secrets, the cost to the witness of cooperating goes up. Now anyone the prosecutors want to interview must weigh the possibility that what he or she says will wind up on the front page of tomorrow’s paper. 2 It is for just this reason that I argued before that editors are wrong when they insist that their reporters explain to readers why the leaker insists on anonymity. Those explanations (which usually amount to “because he was not authorized to comment publicly”) are essentially meaningless. What would be enormously helpful to the news-consuming public would be if reporters would disclose instead the leaker’s motivation.
If these leaks are investigated and come from Mueller’s shop, the leakers should be prosecuted. But they could come from many sources -- congressmen and senators on the relevant committees, their many staffers (most of whom supported Hillary) their colleagues in the Department of Justice, the FBI and Intelligence Agencies -- in other words, the Deep State. They may think they are only harming the President, but to my eye they are harming their ally, Mueller as well.
Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein warned this week about relying on stories attributed to “anonymous officials”. But I am certain given the partisan interests of the press and the leakers, they will continue.
In the meantime, Comey, who leaked at least one or more of his self-serving memos -- memos he surely wrote in anticipation of buttressing his testimony in any criminal trial as “recollection recorded,” an exception to the hearsay rule -- turned them over to the FBI. That agency has refused a FOIA request to hand them over on the grounds that releasing them could “reasonably interfere with enforcement proceedings” because they are part of “a pending or prospective law enforcement proceeding”.
President’s Trump’s “one great advantage in all of this is that he has done nothing wrong, notes Spengler. Let’s hope that advantage outweighs all the dishonest maneuvering by the Deep State.
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Practices
Bar Admissions
Daniel Muino is an intellectual property litigator with more than a decade of experience litigating patent, copyright, trademark, and trade secret matters in federal courts around the country and at the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC). Mr. Muino is an editor of the firm’s MoFo@ITC web blog, which covers developments in ITC law and practice.
Mr. Muino’s IP litigation experience includes a number of jury trials and arbitration hearings. In 2010, following a three-week trial, a jury rendered a verdict for client Novell affirming its ownership of copyrights to the UNIX computer operating system. In 2012, Mr. Muino managed the trial team on behalf of Oracle in its IP lawsuit against Google over the Android operating system. In 2014, Mr. Muino helped secure a mistrial for defendant Palo Alto Networks in a two-week jury trial over alleged infringement of firewall patents. In 2015, Mr. Muino was second-chair at a seven-day patent jury trial that resulted in a verdict in favor of client Microscan. Other trials and hearings involved medical devices and software products.
At the ITC, Mr. Muino has represented complainants and respondents in complex, large-scale Section 337 cases.
On a pro bono basis, Mr. Muino has authored amicus briefs to the U.S. Supreme Court and state supreme courts concerning matters of constitutional rights. Mr. Muino previously served as a law clerk at the Institute for Justice, a public interest law firm dedicated to the defense of constitutional rights. Mr. Muino is recommended by Legal 500 US 2017 for patent litigation at the ITC.
Mr. Muino received his law degree from the University of Chicago in 2000, where he was awarded the Thomas R. Mulroy Prize for Excellence in Appellate Advocacy. He was also on the Hinton Moot Court Board. He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts, cum laude, from Harvard University in 1995.
Waymo v. Uber
(Northern District of California). Representing Uber in a high-profile action brought by Waymo for alleged trade secret misappropriation pertaining to LiDAR sensors for autonomous vehicles.
(Southern District of New York). Won a jury verdict of infringement, validity, and reasonable royalty damages for plaintiff Microscan in a patent case related to high-end barcode scanners.
Juniper Networks v. Palo Alto Networks
(District of Delaware). Defended Palo Alto Networks against patent infringement allegations relating to firewall and intrusion prevention technology. Following a two-week jury trial, secured a mistrial based on a hung jury.
Certain Sintered Rare Earth Magnets and Products Containing Same
(International Trade Commission, 337-TA-855). Represented complainants Hitachi Metals and its U.S. affiliate in an ITC investigation involving high-strength magnets made of neodymium and other rare earth elements. Obtained favorable settlements for clients with more than two dozen respondents.
Augme Technologies LLC v. Yahoo!, Inc.
(Northern District of California). Won summary judgment of non-infringement for Yahoo! on two patents asserted by Augme covering Internet display advertising technology. Augme stipulated to infringement of one of Yahoo!’s patents. The case was affirmed on appeal.
Oracle America v. Google
(Northern District of California). Represented Oracle America in an action for copyright and patent infringement based on Google's inclusion of Java platform technology in the Android software platform and operating system, culminating in a month-long jury trial.
SCO Group v. Novell
(District of Utah). Won a defense jury verdict for Novell following a three-week trial in which the jury determined that Novell owned the copyrights to the UNIX computer operating system. Successfully defended the judgment on appeal.
Confidential Life Sciences Arbitration
Obtained a complete victory for our client in high-stakes arbitration. Our client, a multinational corporation in the medical field, was accused of infringing a number of its competitor’s patents, with potential damages well into the nine-figure range. Following fact and expert discovery and a two-week evidentiary hearing, our client prevailed on either non-infringement or invalidity on every patent—an unusually complete victory for one side in the arbitration context.
American Airlines v. Yahoo! Inc.
(Northern District of Texas). Represented Yahoo! in a trademark infringement case related to keyword bidding in search engine advertising.
Resonate v. Alteon
(Northern District of California). Won summary judgment of non-infringement for Alteon on a patent related to website load balancing methods, and successfully defended the judgment on appeal.
Waymo v. Uber
(Northern District of California). Representing Uber in a high-profile action brought by Waymo for alleged trade secret misappropriation pertaining to LiDAR sensors for autonomous vehicles.
(Southern District of New York). Won a jury verdict of infringement, validity, and reasonable royalty damages for plaintiff Microscan in a patent case related to high-end barcode scanners.
Juniper Networks v. Palo Alto Networks
(District of Delaware). Defended Palo Alto Networks against patent infringement allegations relating to firewall and intrusion prevention technology. Following a two-week jury trial, secured a mistrial based on a hung jury.
Certain Sintered Rare Earth Magnets and Products Containing Same
(International Trade Commission, 337-TA-855). Represented complainants Hitachi Metals and its U.S. affiliate in an ITC investigation involving high-strength magnets made of neodymium and other rare earth elements. Obtained favorable settlements for clients with more than two dozen respondents.
Augme Technologies LLC v. Yahoo!, Inc.
(Northern District of California). Won summary judgment of non-infringement for Yahoo! on two patents asserted by Augme covering Internet display advertising technology. Augme stipulated to infringement of one of Yahoo!’s patents. The case was affirmed on appeal.
Oracle America v. Google
(Northern District of California). Represented Oracle America in an action for copyright and patent infringement based on Google's inclusion of Java platform technology in the Android software platform and operating system, culminating in a month-long jury trial.
SCO Group v. Novell
(District of Utah). Won a defense jury verdict for Novell following a three-week trial in which the jury determined that Novell owned the copyrights to the UNIX computer operating system. Successfully defended the judgment on appeal.
Confidential Life Sciences Arbitration
Obtained a complete victory for our client in high-stakes arbitration. Our client, a multinational corporation in the medical field, was accused of infringing a number of its competitor’s patents, with potential damages well into the nine-figure range. Following fact and expert discovery and a two-week evidentiary hearing, our client prevailed on either non-infringement or invalidity on every patent—an unusually complete victory for one side in the arbitration context.
American Airlines v. Yahoo! Inc.
(Northern District of Texas). Represented Yahoo! in a trademark infringement case related to keyword bidding in search engine advertising.
Resonate v. Alteon
(Northern District of California). Won summary judgment of non-infringement for Alteon on a patent related to website load balancing methods, and successfully defended the judgment on appeal.
Email Disclaimer
Unsolicited e-mails and information sent to Morrison & Foerster will not be considered confidential, may be disclosed to others pursuant to our Privacy Policy, may not receive a response, and do not create an attorney-client relationship with Morrison & Foerster. If you are not already a client of Morrison & Foerster, do not include any confidential information in this message. Also, please note that our attorneys do not seek to practice law in any jurisdiction in which they are not properly authorized to do so.
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[The right to prevention and the challenges of reducing vulnerability to HIV in Brazil].
The study evaluates the Brazilian response to the targets established by UNGASS for the prevention of HIV/AIDS. The analysis was based on national research, documents and information from the National Program STD/AIDS and on state-level action plans and targets. Brazil relies on various prevention policies to attain the UNGASS targets proposed for 2005. These include: addressing discrimination issues, promotion of HIV testing, distribution of condoms, needle exchange programs, discussion of sexuality in schools, prevention initiatives for sex workers and homosexuals and prevention in the workplace. These have resulted in increases in testing and condom use. Various challenges are discussed, including: overcoming discontinuity in action plans (particularly with more vulnerable groups), training prevention teams, increasing monitoring of quantity and quality of preventative actions and overcoming regional, racial and gender inequalities. It is concluded that the right to prevention is not a public priority, nor is it on the social movement agendas. This contrasts with the right to better HIV treatment. In order to increase the efficacy of these programs, it is suggested that they be understood and incorporated based on the promotion and guarantee of human rights, thereby advancing the ethical/political debate at local and national levels.
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PubMed Abstracts
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Kai-Fu Lee
Kai-Fu Lee (; born December 3, 1961) is a Taiwanese-born American computer scientist, businessman, and writer. He is currently based in Beijing, China.
Lee developed the world's first speaker-independent, continuous speech recognition system as his Ph.D. thesis at Carnegie Mellon. He later worked as an executive, first at Apple, then SGI, Microsoft, and Google.
He became the focus of a 2005 legal dispute between Google and Microsoft, his former employer, due to a one-year non-compete agreement that he signed with Microsoft in 2000 when he became its corporate vice president of interactive services.
One of the most prominent figures in the Chinese internet sector, he was the founding director of Microsoft Research Asia, serving from 1998 to 2000; and president of Google China, serving from July 2005 through September 4, 2009. He created a website, () dedicated to helping young Chinese people achieve in their studies and careers, and his "10 Letters to Chinese College Students" have spread widely on the web. He is one of the most followed micro-bloggers in China, in particular on Sina Weibo, where he has over 50 million followers.
In his 2018 book AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order, Lee describes how China is rapidly moving forward to become the global leader in AI, and may well surpass the United States, because of China's demographics and its amassing of huge data sets. In a 28 September 2018 interview on the PBS Amanpour program, he stated that artificial intelligence, with all its capabilities, will never be capable of creativity or empathy.
Background
Lee was born in Taipei, Taiwan. He is the son of Li Tianmin, a legislator and historian from Sichuan, China. Lee has detailed his personal life and career history in his autobiography in both Chinese and English, Making a World of Difference, published in October 2011.
Career
Education
In 1973, Lee emigrated to the United States and attended high school in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. He graduated summa cum laude from Columbia University, earning a B.S. degree in computer science in 1983. He went on to earn a Ph.D. in computer science from Carnegie Mellon University in 1988.
Academic research
At Carnegie Mellon, Lee worked on topics in machine learning and pattern recognition. In 1986, he and Sanjoy Mahajan developed Bill, a Bayesian learning-based system for playing the board game Othello that won the US national tournament of computer players in 1989. In 1988, he completed his doctoral dissertation on Sphinx, the first large-vocabulary, speaker-independent, continuous speech recognition system.
Lee has written two books on speech recognition and more than 60 papers in computer science. His doctoral dissertation was published in 1988 as a Kluwer monograph, Automatic Speech Recognition: The Development of the Sphinx Recognition System (). Together with Alex Waibel, another Carnegie Mellon researcher, Lee edited Readings in Speech Recognition (1990, ).
Apple, Silicon Graphics, and Microsoft
After two years as a faculty member at Carnegie Mellon, Lee joined Apple Computer in 1990 as a principal research scientist. While at Apple (1990–1996), he headed R&D groups responsible for Apple Bandai Pippin, PlainTalk, Casper (speech interface), GalaTea (text to speech system) for Mac Computers.
Lee moved to Silicon Graphics in 1996 and spent a year as the Vice President of its Web Products division, and another year as president of its multimedia software division, Cosmo Software.
In 1998, Lee moved to Microsoft and went to Beijing, China where he played a key role in establishing the Microsoft Research (MSR) division there. MSR China later became known as Microsoft Research Asia, regarded as one of the best computer science research labs in the world. Lee returned to the United States in 2000 and was promoted to corporate vice president of interactive services division at Microsoft from 2000 to 2005.
Move from Microsoft to Google
In July 2005, Lee left Microsoft to take a position at Google. The search company agreed to compensation worth in excess of $10 million, including a $2.5 million cash 'signing bonus' and another $1.5 million cash payment after one year, a package referred to internally at Google as 'unprecedented'.
On July 19, 2005, Microsoft sued Google and Lee in a Washington state court over Google's hiring of its former Vice President of Interactive Services, claiming that Lee was violating his non-compete agreement by working for Google within one year of leaving the Redmond-based software corporation. Microsoft argued that Lee would inevitably disclose proprietary information to Google if he was allowed to work there.
On July 28, 2005, Washington state Superior Court Judge Steven González granted Microsoft a temporary restraining order, which prohibited Lee from working on Google projects that compete with Microsoft pending a trial scheduled for January 9, 2006. On September 13, following a hearing, Judge González issued a ruling permitting Lee to work for Google, but barring him from starting work on some technical projects until the case went to trial in January 2006. Lee was still allowed to recruit employees for Google in China and to talk to government officials about licensing, but was prohibited from working on technologies such as search or speech recognition. Lee was also prohibited from setting budgets, salaries, and research directions for Google in China until the case was to go to trial in January 2006.
Before the case could go to trial, on December 22, 2005 Google and Microsoft announced that they had reached a settlement whose terms are confidential, ending a five-month dispute between the two companies.
At Google China, Lee helped establish the company in the market and oversaw its growth in the country. He was responsible for launching the Google.cn regional website, and strengthened the company's teams of engineers and scientists in the country.
On September 4, 2009, Lee announced his resignation from Google. He said "With a very strong leadership team in place, it seemed a very good moment for me to move to the next chapter in my career." Alan Eustace, senior Google vice-president for engineering, credited him with "helping dramatically to improve the quality and range of services that we offer in China, and ensuring that we continue to innovate on the Web for the benefit of users and advertisers". Several months after Lee's departure, Google announced that it would stop censorship and move its mainland China servers to Hong Kong.
Sinovation Ventures
On September 7, 2009 he announced details of a $115m venture capital (early-stage incubation and seed money business model) fund called "Innovation Works" (later changed to "Sinovation Ventures") that aims to create five successful Chinese start-ups a year in internet and mobile internet businesses or in vast hosting services known as cloud computing. The Innovation Works fund has attracted several investors, including Steve Chen, co-founder of YouTube; Foxconn, the electronics contract manufacturer; Legend Holdings, the parent of PC maker Lenovo; and WI Harper Group.
In September 2010, Lee described two Google Android projects for Chinese users: Tapas, a smart-phone operating system tailored for Chinese users and Wandoujia (SnapPea), a desktop phone manager for Android.
In December 2012, Innovation Works announced that it had closed a second US$275 million fund.
In September 2016, the company announced its corporate name change from Innovation Works to "Sinovation Ventures," closing US$674 million (4.5 billion Chinese yuan) capital injection. Total fund size of Sinovation Ventures exceed US$1 billion. In April 2018, Sinovation Ventures announced its US dollar Fund IV of $500 million. To date, Sinovation Ventures' total asset under management with its dual currency reaches US$2 billion and has invested over 300 portfolios primarily in China.
Previous jobs
Vice President, Google; President, Google Greater China, July 2005 - September 4, 2009
Corporate Vice President, Natural Interactive Services Division (NISD), Microsoft Corp. 2000 - July 2005
Founder & Managing Director, Microsoft Research Asia, China, 1998–2000
President, Cosmo Software, Multimedia software business unit of Silicon Graphics Inc. (SGI), 1999-2000
Vice President & General Manager, Web Products, Silicon Graphics Inc. (SGI), 1998-1999
Vice President, Interactive Media Group, Apple Computer, 1997-1998
Director, Interactive Media, Advanced Technology Group, Apple Computer, 1994-1997
Manager, Speech & Language Technologies Group, Apple Computer, 1991-1994
Principal Speech Scientist, Apple Computer, 1990 - 1991
Assistant Professor, Carnegie Mellon University, July 1990
Research Computer Scientist, Carnegie Mellon University, 1988–1990
Education
Ph.D. in Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University, 1988
B.S. in Computer Science, Columbia University, 1983
Recognition
Chairman World Economic Forum’s Global AI Council
Asia House Asian Business Leader 2018
Fellow, IEEE (inducted 2002)
Member, Committee of 100
Time 100, 2013
Honorary Doctorate Degree, Carnegie Mellon University
Honorary Doctorate Degree, City University of Hong Kong
Publications
Be Your Personal Best (《做最好的自己》，published in Sept. 2005 by People's Publishing House).
Making A World of Difference - Kai-Fu Lee Biography (《世界因你而不同》，published in Sept. 2009 by China CITIC Press).
Seeing Life Through Death (《向死而生》，published in Jul. 2015 by China CITIC Press).
A Walk Into The Future (《与未来同行》，published in Oct. 2006 by People's Publishing House).
To Student With Love (《一往情深》，published in Oct. 2007 by People's Publishing House).
Weibo Changing Everything (《微博改变一切》，published in Feb. 2011 by Beijing Xiron Books Co., Ltd).
Artificial Intelligence (《人工智能》，published in May 2017 by Beijing Xiron Books Co., Ltd).
Controversies
Lee was barred from Weibo for three days after he used Weibo to complain about China's Internet controls. A February 16, 2013, post summarized a Wall Street Journal article about how slow speeds and instability deter overseas businesses from locating critical functions in China. In January 2013, he also posted support for staff of a Guangzhou-based newspaper during a standoff with government censors.
Personal life
Lee posted on Weibo on 5 September 2013 that he had been diagnosed with lymphoma.
Interviews
BBC Interview Of The Week: Kai-Fu Lee (2018)
The TED Interviews - Kai-Fu Lee on the future of AI (2019)
Artificial Intelligence (AI) Podcast - Kai-Fu Lee: AI Superpowers - China and Silicon Valley (2019)
References
External links
Profile at Sinovation Ventures
Making a World of Difference, Kai-Fu Lee's official autobiography (English)
Category:1961 births
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Category:Taiwanese emigrants to the United States
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Q:
Getting data out of NSData with Swift
I am finding Swift and NSData to be an unholy matrimony of frustration. I find I feel like all the supposed new found Swift safety goes out the window every time I deal with this thing. The amount of crashes (with unhelpful traces) don't help.
So, I've learned, that I can avoid the scary UnsafeMutablePointer stuff by doing things like the following:
var bytes = [UInt8](count: 15, repeatedValue: 0)
anNSData.getBytes(&bytes, length=15)
I also discovered, that I can extract directly into singular values:
var u32:UInt32 = 0
anNSData.getBytes(&u32, length=4)
This leads to two intermediate questions:
1) Is there something I can use that is more reliable than hardcoded constants there. If this were C, I'd just use sizeof. But I think I read that maybe I should be using strideof instead sizeof? And that wouldn't work on [UInt8]'s, would it?
2) The docs (for Swift) says that this parameter is supposed to be _ buffer: UnsafeMutablePointer<Void>. So how does this work? Am I just getting lucky? Why would I want to do that instead of the more native/managed [Uint8] construct?? I wondered if UnsafeMutablePointer was a protocol, but it's a struct.
Emboldened with reading the values directly (rather than as an Array), I thought maybe I could try another kind of struct. I have a 6 byte struct that looks like:
struct TreeDescription : Hashable {
var id:UInt32 = 0x00000000
var channel:UInt8 = 0x00
var rssi:UInt8 = 0x00
var hashValue:Int {
return Int(self.id)
}
}
Which actually works (after thinking it didn't, but eventually doing a clean which made some crashes go away)!
var tree = TreeDescription()
anNSData.getBytes(&newTree, length: 6)
But this leads me to worries about structure packing details? Why does this work? What should I be worrying about doing this?
This all feels very C-ish to me. I thought Swift took the C out of ObjectiveC.
A:
You may want to check out RawData which is really new and this guy just experimented a bit with this idea, so don't think that it's tested well or anything, some function aren't even implemented yet. It's basically a Swift-y wrapper around (you guessed it) raw data, a series of bytes.
Using this extension, you can initialise it with an NSData instance:
extension RawData {
convenience init(data: NSData) {
self.init(UnsafeMutableBufferPointer(start: UnsafeMutablePointer(data.bytes), count: data.length))
}
}
You'de be calling it like this:
let data = "Hello, data!".dataUsingEncoding(NSASCIIStringEncoding)!
let rawData = RawData(data: data)
EDIT: To answer your questions:
The thing is that data can be large, very large. You generally don't want to copy large stuff, as space is valuable. The difference between an array of [UInt8] values and an NSData instance is that the array gets copied every time, you give it to a function -> new copy, you do an assignment -> new copy. That's not very desirable with large data.
1) If you want the most native, safe way, without any 3rd party libraries as the one mentioned, you can do this:
let data = UnsafeMutableBufferPointer(start: UnsafeMutablePointer(data.bytes), count: data.length)
(I know it doesn't sound very safe, but believe me it is). You can use this almost like an ordinary array:
let data = "Hello, data!".dataUsingEncoding(NSASCIIStringEncoding)!
let bytes = UnsafeMutableBufferPointer(start: UnsafeMutablePointer<UInt8>(data.bytes), count: data.length)
for byte in bytes {}
bytes.indexOf(0)
bytes.maxElement()
and it doesn't copy the data as you pass it along.
2) UnsafeMutablePointer<Void> is indeed very C-like, in this context it represents the starting value (also called base) in a sequence of pointers. The Void type comes from C as well, it means that the pointer doesn't know what kind of value it's storing. You can cast all kinds of pointers to the type you're expecting like this: UnsafeMutablePointer<Int>(yourVoidPointer) (This shouldn't crash). As mentioned before, you can use UnsafeMutableBufferPointer to use it as a collection of your type. UnsafeMutableBufferPointer is just a wrapper around your base pointer and the length (this explains the initialiser I used).
Your method of decoding the data directly into your struct does indeed work, the properties of a struct are in the right order, even after compile time, and the size of a struct is exactly the sum of it's stored properties. For simple data like yours that's totally fine. There is an alternative: To use the NSCoding protocol. Advantage: safer. Disadvantage: You have to subclass NSObject. I think you should be sticking to the way you do it now. One thing I would change though is to put the decoding of your struct inside the struct itself and use sizeof. Have it like this:
struct TreeDescription {
var id:UInt32 = 0x00000000
var channel:UInt8 = 0x00
var rssi:UInt8 = 0x00
init(data: NSData) {
data.getBytes(&self, length: sizeof(TreeDescription))
}
}
Another EDIT: You can always get the underlying data from an Unsafe(Mutable)Pointer<T> with the method memory whose return type is T. If you need to you can always shift pointers (to get the next value e.g.) by just adding/subtracting Ints to it.
EDIT answering your comment: You use the & to pass an inout variable, which can then be modified within the function. Because an inout variable is basically the same as passing the pointer, the Swift devs decided to make it possible to pass &value for an argument that is expecting an UnsafeMutablePointer. Demonstration:
func inoutArray(inout array: [Int]) {}
func pointerArray(array: UnsafeMutablePointer<Int>) {}
var array = [1, 2, 3]
inoutArray(&array)
pointerArray(&array)
This also works for structs (and maybe some other things)
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2015 CSC Cyclone RX-3 Editor Score: 83.25% Engine 17.5/20 Suspension/Handling 13.0/15 Transmission/Clutch 7.5/10 Brakes 7.0/10 Instruments/Controls 3.5/5 Ergonomics/Comfort 9.5/10 Appearance/Quality 8.5/10 Desirability 7.75/10 Value 9.0/10 Overall Score 83.25/100
In 1959 we laughed at the small-displacement step-throughs Honda brought to America. It didn’t take Soichiro long, though, to establish Honda as the world leader in motorcycle production. Again we laughed when, in 1992, the Korea-based Kia introduced the Sephia to U.S. consumers, then in 1998 merged with Hyundai. Last year the Hyundai Kia Automotive Group was the 5th-largest auto manufacturer in the world. The moto world has been scoffing at motorcycles from China, Taiwan and other Pacific Rim Asian countries for years now. Maybe it’s time we stopped.
The reason behind the arrest is the soon-to-be-available 2015 CSC Motorcycles Cyclone RX-3, a motorcycle with a quality of construction, fit and finish to rival bikes from Japan. And let’s face it, many of the bikes produced by the major Japanese OEMs (who we regard with such esteem) are constructed in factories outside of Japan. Sure, it’s a motorcycle constructed to Honda’s specifications, but it’s still a Honda built in Thailand. Or a Kawasaki. Or a Ducati.
CSC Motorcycles is probably best known for its line of modern Mustangs – the 250cc versions of which are powered by a Zongshen Single. Like Honda, Zongshen is a motor company – producing in the neighborhood of 4,000 engines per day – and one of China’s largest motorcycle manufacturers. The company is also active in a diversity of business ventures in addition to motorcycle production, and boasts of its alliances with companies such as BMW, Harley-Davidson and Piaggio.
Zongshen is the name you’ll see on the fuel tank badge when your CSC Cyclone RX-3 arrives because CSC is not rebranding this bike, instead choosing to promote the Zongshen brand stateside. CSC is responsible not only for selling the bikes but also spare parts, accessories and warranty issues. In an attempt to maintain affordable pricing and streamline after-the-sale service, CSC is approaching the tasks in a very non-traditional format.
Cyclone RX-3 sales are consumer direct from CSC Motorcycles with either partly assembled or fully assembled bikes (optional) shipped directly to the purchaser’s address. Included in the purchase is a complete service manual enabling the home mechanic to perform all necessary maintenance as well as warranty repairs. CSC says it’s working to make available online tutorials for oil changes, valve adjustments, chain adjustments, changing the fork oil, suspension adjustments, etc. For those desiring professional mechanical services, CSC says it will contract with local independent businesses to perform maintenance or warranty work.
As the only one of its kind, the Cyclone RX-3 owns the 250cc adventure-touring category. Comparably sized competitors include cruisers, sportbikes, nakeds, standards and retros from Honda, Kawasaki, Royal Enfield, Suzuki and Yamaha, as well as some lesser known OEMs. But when it comes to a motorcycle resembling a BMW R1200GS or Triumph Explorer in size 250cc, the Cyclone’s the only game in town.
2014 Lightweight Naked Shootout + Video
Dimensionally, the RX-3 is a Goldilocks – not too big and not too small. Its 31.3-inch seat height is shorter than full-size A-T bikes but minimally taller than the 250/300cc bikes from the OEMs mentioned above. Looking at the photos, it doesn’t appear that my five-foot eleven-inch, 185-pound frame is disproportionate to the bike. At 386 pounds (claimed curb weight), the Cyclone isn’t the lightest 250 to be found, but it’s sub-400 heft is much easier to manage in off-road circumstances than traditional full-size A-T bikes.
Zongshen claims 25 crank horsepower at 9000 rpm and 17 lb-ft. at 7000 rpm from the fuel-injected, liquid-cooled, SOHC, 4-valve Single, which is in line with the power ratings from many of the 250s from other OEMs. Launching the RX-3 from a stop requires spinning up the revs and finessing the clutch lever. It’d be an easier process if the friction zone was a little wider and not positioned at the very end of the clutch lever’s throw. Throttle response is without issue.
Once underway, the engine exhibits decent mid-range and top-end power. Freeway speeds of 65 mph and above are attainable, but the further you crest 70 mph, the more buzz enters the handlebars. Considering the counter-balanced engine is spinning 7700 rpm at an indicated 80 mph with only 1300 more revolutions to go until redline, there’s not much to complain about in the vibration department. The RX-3’s speedometer seems to be highly optimistic, as the speedo of a Kawi KLR650 ridden alongside registered just 72 mph while the Cyclone indicated 80 mph.
The Cyclone’s pavement prowess seems up to the task considering the speeds its capable of attaining. The front is suspended by a 37mm inverted fork and the rear by a preload and rebound adjustable monoshock. There were no glaring suspension issues, although the firm setting are perhaps a little stiff for road riding, but you have to consider the demand for the suspension units to also perform off-road. Which they will until pushed too hard, such as bottoming out when landing from only a mild jump (front/rear travel 5.4 and 5.6 inches, respectively).
More crucial to the Cyclone’s performance is its 15-inch rear wheel, which negates any real selection of available tires. In stock trim the Cyclone comes outfitted with semi-knobby CST tires that balance the street/dirt performance ratio with a decidedly street bias. CSC claims it will be offering a range of three tires including the tires we tested along with a set of street-only tires as well as a set of street-legal knobbies. The tire manufacturer for these optional tires was undetermined at time of publication. CSC will also be offering a 17-inch conversion kit (rim and laced hub) for $258.95. CSC is also developing a selection of accessories for the Cyclone.
The Cyclone comes outfitted with a single twin-piston caliper, front and rear, gripping a 262mm front disc and 258mm rear disc. Stopping power from the front set-up is dull. A different brake pad could improve stopping performance, but as tested, it was weaker than what it should be. The rear brake was overly touchy, locking up with little provocation, but this could be the result of a rear brake pedal positioned too high in relation to the footpeg.
The six-speed transmission was easy to row, the only real complaint being its elusive neutral position. The Cyclone’s 55.1-inch wheelbase is close to other bikes of equal displacement, while its 4.2 gallon fuel capacity a little larger than other competing models.
+ Highs Only 250cc A-T bike around
Sized right
Unintimidating – Sighs 15-inch rear wheel
Ownership requires some level of mechanical ability
Unestablished U.S. presence
If prospective buyers are confident in their mechanical abilities, can get past not having the traditional dealer network, and trust Zongshen to produce motorcycles commensurate to that of what we’ve come to expect from the Japanese, we urge further investigation into purchasing a CSC Cyclone RX-3. In our opinion, you could do a helluva lot worse.
The RX-3 is the only 250cc adventure-touring bike on the market. So, unless you’re going to build your own A-T bike – keep in mind CSC offers a two-year unlimited mileage warranty – give the Cyclone your attention. You can stay abreast of future developments at the CSC blog site.
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Q:
Density of prime divisors of $a^n + b$
Suppose $a > 1, b \neq 0$ be two rational numbers. Is it known in general that the set of prime divisors of (the numerator of) $a^n + b$ has a positive relative density?
A:
This is only known conditional on the generalized Riemann hypothesis. A prime $p$ dividing the numerator of $a^{n} + b$ is more or less equivalent to the statement that the subgroup of $\mathbb{F}_{p}^{\times}$ generated by $a$ contains $-b$.
This problem is addressed in the 2000 Journal of Number Theory paper by Moree and Stevenhagen (titled A two-variable Artin conjecture) where it is proved (in a similar manner to Hooley's conditional proof of the Artin conjecture) that the set of primes has a positive density. The paper contains explicit formulas for that density.
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Porn trolling lawyer jailed for 14 years Published duration 17 June 2019
image copyright Getty Images image caption The scheme involved uploading pornographic films and then prosecuting anyone who shared them
An American lawyer who ran an x-rated online fraud scheme has been jailed for 14 years.
Paul Hansmeier shared copies of pornographic films online and then sued people who downloaded them, for copyright infringement.
Victims were told to pay a $3000 (£2,383) "settlement fee" to avoid further legal action.
The scheme is believed to have raised about $3m for Hansmeier and his accomplice over a three-year period.
Cash returned
"It is almost incalculable how much your abuse of trust has harmed the administration of justice," the judge said at the hearing where Hansmeier was sentenced.
"The major harm here is what happens when a lawyer acts as a wrecking ball," she added.
While many firms have been employed by film and music makers to prosecute copyright pirates, Hansmeier - via a shell company called Prenda Law he set up to run the scam - owned the rights to the porn movies for which it sought fees.
In addition, Prenda uploaded the films itself to pirate sites and sharing networks, to ensure they were widely stolen.
Later, it made its own pornographic films and also uploaded these, so they would be pirated.
The scheme was unmasked because some victims refused to settle, and decided to fight the copyright claim in court.
This led to an investigation into Prenda Law, which saw both Hansmeier and accomplice John Steele charged with fraud in 2016.
Steele pleaded guilty in early 2017 to seven charges including mail and wire fraud. He also agreed to help prosecutors investigating the case. He has not yet been sentenced.
Hansmeier initially fought the federal case but accepted a plea deal in August last year. Under that deal he pleaded guilty to charges of wire fraud and money laundering.
The judge has also ordered Hansmeier to repay $1.5m to 704 victims of the scam.
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Poison Princess: Arcana Chronicles, Book 1
She could save the world - or destroy it. Sixteen-year-old Evangeline 'Evie' Greene leads a charmed life, until she begins experiencing horrifying hallucinations. When an apocalyptic event decimates her Louisiana hometown, Evie realizes her hallucinations were actually visions of the future - and they're still happening. Fighting for her life and desperate for answers, she must turn to her wrong-side-of-the-bayou classmate: Jack Deveaux. But she can't do either alone.
Night Pleasures: A Dark-Hunter Novel
In Night Pleasures, Kyrian of Thrace - an immortal who protects humans from vampires - wakes up one morning handcuffed to the one thing that can scare him: a conservative woman in a button-down shirt. But Amanda Devereaux turns out to be his perfect partner for hunting down a deadly foe, and for helping him to regain his soul and learn that love doesn't have to bite.
Moonshadow: Moonshadow, Book 1
Recovering from a shooting, LAPD witch consultant Sophie Ross leaves her job and travels to the UK to search for answers about her childhood. When she encounters a Daoine Sidhe knight of the Dark Court, she becomes entangled in an ancient hatred between two arcane forces.
Feral Sins: Phoenix Pack, Book 1
Taryn Warner is a wolf shifter with extraordinary healing skills - and serious problems. First, her father is determined that she mate for life with a wolf shifter named Roscoe Weston, whom the feisty Taryn can’t stand. To make matters worse, she’s also been kidnapped by Trey Coleman, a dangerous alpha male from another pack. And as much as she wants to resist Trey, Taryn is incredibly, maddeningly attracted to him.
Abducted: Alien Mate Index, Book 1
Being dragged through a mirror, naked and screaming, onto an extraterrestrial ship was bad. Finding out I had been sold to a huge alien male who looks like the devil was worse. But learning he wanted to trade me to an intergalactic petting zoo was the worst of all! Now I'm whizzing through the galaxy with a robot butler, a trio of nib-nibs (they're like tiny green monkeys), and one huge, muscular, and very grumpy alien.
Dark Lover: The Black Dagger Brotherhood, Book 1
The vampire Darius fears for the life of his half-breed daughter, who is unaware of her unusual destiny. To oversee her transformation, Darius seeks help from Wrath, a dangerous loner and the world's only purebred vampire.
A Touch of Midnight: Midnight Breed Series, Book 0.5
Savannah Dupree is a freshman studying at Boston University on a full scholarship. But Savannah possesses something even more remarkable than a quick mind and an insatiable curiosity for learning. With a simple touch, she can see an object's past-a skill that puts her life in danger when her studies bring her into contact with a centuries-old English sword and the terrible secret hidden within the blade's history.
Drantos
For most, a plane crash means the end of life. For Dusti Dawson, it's just the beginning...Dusti and her sister Batina survived the crash, thanks to a couple of brothers who are equal parts menacing and muscled. She'd be grateful...if they hadn't turned out to be delusional kidnappers, who believe Dusti's grandfather is some monstrous halfbreed creature bent on murder. Turns out Vampires, Lycans, and Gargoyles do exist - and they've been crossbreeding to form two hybrid races.
Blood Kiss: Black Dagger Legacy, Book 1
The legacy of the Black Dagger Brotherhood continues in a spin-off series. Paradise, blooded daughter of the king's first advisor, is ready to break free from the restrictive life of an aristocratic female. Her strategy? Join the Black Dagger Brotherhood's training center program and learn to fight for herself, think for herself...be herself. It's a good plan until everything goes wrong.
Spiral of Need: Mercury Pack, Book 1
Ally Marshall isn't just a wolf shifter - she's a Seer. But a girl doesn't exactly need special powers to know that Derren Hudson despises her entire kind. Disdain practically rolls off the Beta of the Mercury Pack... disdain mixed with a healthy dose of desire. And no matter how much the ruggedly handsome male appeals to her, this is one call of the wild she's determined to ignore.
Angels' Blood: Guild Hunter, Book 1
Vampire hunter Elena Deveraux knows she is the best - but she does not know if even she is good enough for this job. Hired by the dangerously beautiful archangel Raphael, a being so lethal that no mortal wants his attention, Elena knows failure is not an option---even if the task is impossible. Because this time, it's not a wayward vamp she has to track. It's an archangel gone bad.
Awaken Me Darkly
Mia Snow is an alien huntress for the New Chicago Police Department. Heading up her team of Alien Investigation and Removal agents, Mia's unmatched at battling the enemy among us. Now, a series of killings have Mia and her partner Dallas tracking alien suspects - but a sudden blast of violence leaves Dallas fighting for his life. The chance to save Dallas appears in the form of a tall, erotic stranger. An alien. A murder suspect. Kyrin en Arr holds the power to heal the injured agent but not without a price. That price is surrendering to Kyrin's forbidden seduction....
Publisher's Summary
The second installment in Kresley Cole’s best-selling steamy Immortals After Dark series is now available on audio for the first time!
Centuries ago, Sebastian Wroth was turned into a vampire - a nightmare in his mind - against his will. Burdened with hatred and alone for ages, he sees little reason to live - until an exquisite, fey creature comes to kill him, inadvertently saving him instead.
When Kaderin the Cold Hearted lost her two beloved sisters to a vampire attack long ago, a benevolent force deadened her sorrow - accidentally extinguishing all of her emotions. Yet whenever she encounters Sebastian, her feelings - particularly lust - emerge multiplied. For the first time, she’s unable to complete a kill.
The prize of the month-long contest is powerful enough to change history, and Kaderin will do anything to win it for her sisters. Wanting only to win her, forever, Sebastian competes as well, taking every opportunity - as they travel to ancient tombs and through catacombs, seeking relics around the world - to use her new feelings to seduce her. But when forced to choose between the vampire she’s falling for and reuniting her family, how can Kaderin live without either?
I???m so glad I got a chance to re-visit one of my favorite books in the series, and the one that clinched my fondness for IAD.Have I mentioned how much I love a perfectly timed romance? Yes, I love, love that, because that means we get sexual tension.. And I luuuuve sexual tension, and with the scorching hot chemistry between Sebastian and Kaderin we get plenty of it.Kaderin the Cold Hearted Valkyrie, finds herself in a vast dilemma; unable to feel any emotions for the past thousand years, now has to contend with her attraction to the very vampire she???s intending to kill, plus the fact that she can???t forget that a dead leach like Sebastian Roth was responsible for the horrible death of her two sisters.On the other hand, Sebastian is tired of being something that he never chose to be, and when Kaderin comes to his castle to deliver the death blow, he welcomes it with open arms, but in that moment, he discovers that Kaderin is his bride and his fate....And that changes everything.And so... The adventure begins with mind blowing action, and suspense that won't let you pause for a minute. Kaderin and Sebastian enter the world competition for supernatural creatures, a brilliant setting for all the action and suspense. They both enter for very different reasons but equally important to them.For Kaderin, the final prize is a key that can give her the possibility to go back to the past and save her sisters.For Sebastian is the chance to help her fated bride achieved the victory, and in the process win her heart.As the competition heats up, so does their romance; and we get one hell of a hot, steamy and perfectly developed romance.I know a lot fans of the genre have already enjoyed this series, but if you are one of the few that has not, don???t miss out on the opportunity to discover why Kresley Cole is so highly regarded. This is the book where Ms. Cole???s talent begins to shine, with perfectly balanced heroes, heroines that don???t take crap from nobody, and are some of the strongest, funniest and entertaining little biaches in the paranormal realm.
Narration:Once again Robert Pefkoff takes the novel to a higher level. I love the way he reads these books, I know that his female voices could be better, actually, I wish they would have two different narrators, and frankly, I always have a hard time with male narrators and their female voices, but the way Robert brings the story to life with the perfect pace, ambiance and the right amount of drama, in my opinion, makes up for the not so perfect but tolerable female voices.I???m more likely to forgive and overlook a flawed female voice from a male narrator, than bad male voice from a female narrator, and no, I???m not being sexist, it???s just the nature of the genre, these guys are often described as having the best male attributes (in every sense of the word) and their voices are a big part of the fantasy. It???s as simple as that.
I read and listen to all kinds of books but Kresley Cole and Robert Petkoff make a winning team. This was a joy to listen to it was action packed, funny, well written as well as well read. The mood of the series is wonderfully captured in this audio version. The characters, setting and the ambiance are world class. I recommend any and everthing by this author. It is a very good romance and a great story.
I've read all Kresley Cole's books, at least twice, and Sebastian is my favorite vampire. I am so happy with the choice of narrator for her books. Robert Petkoff's portrayal of the vampires with their Estonian accents was perfect, as was the Scottish brogue of the werewolves, and he even caught the sassiness of the Valkeries. Not overdone. Thank you for putting these books on audio, and for using such a talented narrator.
Kresley Cole's Immortals After Dark series are great reads, and Robert Petkoff adds a whole other, wonderful dimension! This book is equally action packed as it is romantic, and Petkoff practically brings it to life. I was amazed at all the different accents and voices he used in this book, including the hero's Estonian accent, which I'd never even heard before. You can tell a lot of effort is put into making this audiobook great, which I very much appreciate. Fans of Kresley Cole's should not miss out on these audiobooks! I sincerely hope Petkoff narrates the entire IAD series. This is one of my very first audiobooks, but it certainly won't be the last!
This narration was so delicious that I was 67% into the book when I realized that if I'd been reading it, I'd probably wouldn't have finished it. The plot was exciting and the main characters were not terrible but the dialogue was sometimes corny and the romance was not at all the kind I enjoy (man chasing woman while they bicker constantly.)
Before I stumbled upon the audio, I had serious reservations about continuing the series. Like the previous book, we have in this one a man with an instinctive compulsion to be with a woman but this is not reciprocated. He has NO CHOICE and if he's not with her, he suffers tremendously. She, however, can leave him whenever she wants without suffering. Maybe some women fantasize about having a man completely in their power but I'm not one of them. I want a man who chooses to be with me, not a slave without any choice in the matter.
To be fair to Kaderin, if a stranger shows up one day to tell me I was his fated bride, I would run in the other direction too. I don't object that she had misgivings about the situation (who wouldn't?) but that he had not alternative but to pursue her or be deeply unhappy forever (and in the case of an immortal, this is a terrible thing indeed.)
You would think that with so many issues against the plot, I wouldn't have enjoyed it but I was so enthralled by Mr. Petkoff's yummy narration that I had a ball with it. His performance of the characters - specially the men - was perfect and his accents were so freaking good that I had heart palpitations the first time I heard a (male) Scottish character. Mr. Petkoff didn't demure from performing the love scenes as they were written - there was moaning, groaning, gasping, panting, you name it. His interpretation was so well done that most of the time I was fanning myself as I was listening.
So you can bet the farm that I'll continue this series as long as Mr. Petkoff is the narrator. I wonder how bad the books will have to get before I stop listening!
I Love a great supernatural tale, a Love story, PNR, a Cool Mystery and Most Sci-Fi....if there are vampires, weres or witches in it, that's a plus! Basically I am a 40+ y/o young at heart woman rediscovering the wonderful world of books and am now addicted! Lol I LOVE AUDIBLE!!!!!
Where does No Rest for the Wicked: Immortals After Dark, Book 3 rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?
This was a fabulous story...a really great PNR...sexy too!!
What did you like best about this story?
Kaderin the Cold Hearted, and how Sebastian melted her cold little heart...I loved it when he told her she was tiny...LOL He kept insulting her by accident, then redeeming himself...it was a rocky romance there for a bit!!
Which character – as performed by Robert Petkoff – was your favorite?
Kaderin and her merry band of Valkyries!!!!
Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?
Absolutely!
Any additional comments?
OMG I FLOVED THIS BOOK! I am stealing the word Flove from my book friend Lydia...lol but it sums it up!!! This was a great story.so well told narrated to perfection and left me wanting more more more!! Kaderin and Sebastian were so cute together, he would tick her off and accidentally insult her, then make little deals with her, but I truly think in the end she got the best part of the bargain....she got the love of a good and honorable man, who will always put her happiness before his own, that's true love for sure, and after all what more can an old as dirt Valkyrie ask for?! Sebastian melted her heart and she showed him he was worth loving too!! Dreamy little HEA!!! :)
After listening to the first book in this series I was eager to listen to the next; however, in all honesty book 2 threw me for a bit of a loop. The emotional and sometimes physical battles that ensued as the two lead characters stumbled through their blossoming romance bordered on exhausting at moments. Cadaren, the main female character was such a tough nut to crack. I wanted to know how things would ultimately unfold and culminate in her relationship with Sebastian, but, I was impatient to get there. I quickly tired of her dismissing and being semi-cruel to Sebastian, as I was totally endeared to Sebastian's character. Despite all this, it was still a good book. As are Kresley Cole's books, this was hot and sexy for sure, which was well depicted by Robert Petkoff who seriously deserves an award for all the passion he's delivering! Although I have somewhat conflicting feelings about this one, I'm not deterred from the series or the author, and I'd recommend it to others looking for an interesting twist on romance of the paranormal kind.
This book has to be my favourite of the series. I absolutely loved Sebastian and Kaderin's story. The narrator is fantastic. So much better than in the first books. I've always loved his story telling voice and male character voices, but hated how he narrated the women's voices. In this book they were all exemplary. Can't wait to hear more of the series.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful
Amazon Customer
Newton Abbot, United Kingdom
3/31/14
Overall
Performance
Story
"No Rest for the Wicked"
What did you like best about this story?
The development of the relationship between Bowen and Meriketa. The growth from dislike to love and then abandonment is very well written.
What does Robert Petkoff bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you had only read the book?
The narrator does an excellent job. The difference between male and female voices works very well. He maintains the accents and has enough emotional range to enhance the story.
Any additional comments?
I did read book 2 in this series and this is book 3, sadly the first hour of this book is a rehash of the end of the story in book 2, I very nearly gave it up as a bad job but after the first part the rest of the book is very good and a good listen.
0 of 2 people found this review helpful
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Monday, August 13, 2012
It was not the wild affair that many predicted, with drivers guarding their points for the upcoming Chase. Still, road course racing at Watkins Glen is a different kind of treat for fans before the reality of the Chase comes along.
Nicole Briscoe started the day by hosting the pre-race show. Marty Smith rehashed the AJ Allmendinger news. Brad, Rusty and Ray covered the topics in the sport but did not bring up the Pocono lightning tragedy or Dodge pulling out of the sport in a timely fashion. ESPN's priorities often do not match the real world concerns of many.
Allen Bestwick called the action, but was slaved to the pictures chosen by the production team. Dale Jarrett and Andy Petree added what they could, with Petree again right on the money with his comments. The pit road reporters were on target, but the strategy stories faded toward the end.
The coverage was typical follow the leader, with most incidents shown on replay. Several key moments were missed live despite the fact they happened just outside of the live camera range. That was frustrating to watch. It might have looked good in HD, but perhaps the content should be the most important factor in selecting the images to pass along to the fans.
There were lots of other sporting events in progress, so it should be interesting to see just how many sports viewers decided to tune into this race. On the final laps, the TV coverage never mentioned oil on the track but continued to debate fuel strategy or perhaps a low tire on the Kyle Busch car.
In the end, it was widely known that the drivers had been complaining about a track-wide oil down for several laps. TV viewers were never informed. Allen Bestwick did the best he could on the final lap, but it was clear no one told him of the oil situation. After winner Marco Ambrose crossed the finish line, the ESPN director cut to his in-car camera and none of the other finishers were shown.
I'm going to take some time off and see if I can continue to be a NASCAR fan after the frustration of today's TV coverage. Happy to have your opinion of the ESPN coverage. Thanks for stopping by.
A popular nickname for the prescription drug Adderall is "college crack." Students use it as a pick-me-up that aids in staying focused for a long period of time. That makes some sense, since the drug was originally created to help control Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD.)
Adderall comes in both capsule and pill form, as shown above. It's easy to get illegally and has become one of the most widely-abused forms of prescription medication on college campuses. Away from studying, Adderall is also a hit in bars. Used for its mood-heightening and energy-adding effects, it makes users feel euphoric and takes away reality for a while. Hardcore users crush the pills and snort them like cocaine.
On Tuesday ESPN's Marty Smith posted an interview with suspended NASCAR driver AJ Allmendinger. For the first time, Allmendinger disclosed his belief that his positive drug test was triggered by Adderall. On the Wednesday before the Kentucky race, Allmendinger says he ingested one pill given to him in the early evening by an unnamed friend while out on the town.
He later stated in other interviews that he had never done drugs and did not even know what an amphetamine was when told of his violation. He said only by retracing his steps that week did he discover that the friend had given him a prescription Adderall pill that matched the the type of drug Aegis Labs advised him had caused the violation. The friend was never identified.
So, the scenario put to the media is that while feeling tired, Allmendinger took one Adderall pill early on Wednesday evening thinking it was an energy supplement. Allmendinger felt nothing strange after taking it and on Friday afternoon he was given and subsequently failed a standard NASCAR random urine test. That story is tough to swallow.
The curious thing is that something else has emerged from his recent media interviews that perhaps paints a better picture of the situation. Despite having nothing to do with taking a random pill in a bar, Allmendinger has been speaking about his mental and emotional health.
In a Wednesday interview with reporter Bob Dillner shown on SPEED's RaceHub show, Allmendinger again referenced his struggle to deal with the world around him. "Things felt like they were spinning out of control," he told Dillner. "I've struggled for six years and haven't been happy."
Allmendinger told Lee Spencer at FOX Sports that his life was a disaster. "I’ve been through hell, I’ve created my own hell and I’m going through it," he said. "I’m still trying to figure out life in general."
In his interview with Smith, Allmendinger again said he had let things in his life get out of control. "It (NASCAR) has made me lose who I am," he said. "It is the most grueling thing I have ever had in my life."
These comments don't come from a person who took a random pill in a bar. They come from someone who is in big trouble. They come from someone who is screaming for help. They come from someone who is still at risk. They come from someone who may secretly be having very bad thoughts about life.
Aegis Lab is happy. The tests were right, the results were verified. NASCAR is happy. The violator is in the program, checks-in every week and is clean. Team Penske is happy. The problem is gone and the sponsor remained. In other words, the show goes on.
It seems that lost in the shuffle is Allmendinger. Outside of being a driver, he is a human being just as vulnerable as any of us to the mental health challenges life can present. Let us hope that as part of his current recovery program NASCAR is mandating professional counseling.
If is often said that wake-up calls sometime seem to come along at the right time. Maybe the mysterious friend of a friend will ultimately serve a much higher purpose for Allmendinger than just passing along some "college crack" in a Kentucky bar. Only time will tell.
We invite your opinion on this topic. Comments may be moderated prior to posting.
The rumblings of change within the FOX Sports Media Group are growing louder. The switch of FUEL TV from outdoor and extreme sports to mixed martial arts and boxing is essentially done. The deadline is now approaching for a decision by NASCAR to allow the FOX Broadcast Network to continue to carry Sprint Cup Series races after 2014 and maybe even add some additional dates to the mix.
All of this brings us back to SPEED, which is owned by FOX. Race Hub on Monday through Thursday is the only NASCAR content even on the fringe of weekday primetime. After airing for a while at 7PM ET, the network moved the series to 6PM and promised an 11PM Eastern/8PM Pacific replay. Months ago, that replay was cancelled.
That means that this season, NASCAR fans who want news content from SPEED have to either watch at 6PM, watch a replay at 7AM the next morning or record the show. Years ago, NASCAR's other major TV partner, ESPN, moved the network's NASCAR Now program to 3PM on weekdays with no regularly scheduled repeat. NASCAR said nothing.
The column that follows was originally published on June 20 subsequent to a news story on the topic from the Sports Business Daily folks in Charlotte, NC. Since that time former FOX Sports Chairman David Hill, who made the original TV deal, has left that division which he founded. Hill is working on new programming for the Nat Geo Channel and other FOX properties.
Here is a second look at the column on SPEED and the network's role in NASCAR:
A recent story in Sports Business Daily reported that FOX Sports was involved in negotiations with NASCAR about a new TV contract. The current one expires at the end of 2014. A tweet from a FOX announcer then suggested the new deal may include even more Sprint Cup Series races than the current agreement. That started the ball rolling on a discussion about another key NASCAR TV partner.
SPEED is the cable TV network that facilitates the vast majority of the NASCAR TV programming throughout the season. The network is a staple at the track on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. The coverage includes practice, qualifying and NASCAR news shows. SPEED is owned and operated by the FOX Sports Media Group.
The secret to the shows from the tracks is that these programs are not actually produced by SPEED, but are handled by NASCAR's own in-house TV team. That division used to be called the NASCAR Media Group but was recently downsized and renamed NASCAR Productions. Neither FOX or SPEED have an ownership stake in NASCAR Productions.
Over the past six years, we have repeatedly wondered what was going on at SPEED. Various management teams made decisions that virtually eliminated all traces of NASCAR programming on Monday through Thursday in primetime. "Automotive lifestyle" programming was the order of the day. No other network has aired and then cancelled more of these low-brow reality-style shows than SPEED.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, other broadcast networks have quietly gone about the business of building or buying a cable TV network for sports. CBS and NBC now have national cable sports networks that allow them to partner on programming just like ABC and ESPN. The odd man out at the table is FOX.
Click here for the story from the Sports Business Journal about the Fox Sports 1 cable network. Never heard of it? You may be hearing that name once the current NASCAR TV contract expires. In theory, it would replace SPEED on the cable dial and shutter the motorsports-themed network.
Rebranding SPEED and turning it into a national cable sports network run from Los Angeles would put FOX on an even keel with NBC, CBS and ABC. Any TV contract done for the FOX broadcast network could now facilitate what is called "shoulder programming" on cable. For instance, the Preakness might be shown on NBC but all the preliminary races and coverage of the entire day would be on NBC Sports Network on cable.
The sad part of this arrangement would be the end of SPEED as we know it. The network was originally launched as SpeedVision and featured programming split between cars, boats, airplanes and motorcycles. The subsequent purchase by FOX and move to Charlotte, NC was to turn the network into a dedicated NASCAR channel. Those plans never came to fruition even after the move.
It seems ironic that the network that hosted more "shoulder programming" for NASCAR over the past decade may be done. That raises the issue of just what kind of an extension FOX is trying to negotiate for Sprint Cup Series races. The door is open for all kinds of speculation.
Keeping all that weekend NASCAR programming on the new mainstream Fox Sports 1 network would seemingly be impossible. The season runs for ten months and SPEED airs hundreds of hours of programming from the Sprint Cup Series tracks.
It would also seem that other motorsports series from Grand-Am to ARCA would be impacted. The list of programming currently on SPEED also includes Formula One, AMA Supercross and the Barrett-Jackson Auto Auctions.
One peek at the current SPEED on-air schedule should convince skeptics that the network has effectively shuttered the development of new series. From five year-old Pimp My Ride shows to endless Dumbest Stuff on Wheels re-airs, it is clear that something is going on and it is not good.
It is important to note that FOX has two additional cable networks, FUEL and FX, that could be used to distribute additional motorsports programming. FUEL is already undergoing a transition with UFC shows airing while FX has been used in the past for NASCAR programming.
While it may seem that 2014 is far away, in fact the negotiations for the new contract are far behind schedule. Since the incumbents get first shot, it is interesting to note that very little information exists about the future of TNT and ESPN in the sport. Turner just returned all the digital rights to NASCAR and effective January 1 will no longer operate the NASCAR.com website.
ESPN is loaded with college and NFL football content after September and has been struggling to give NASCAR a fair shake down the stretch. The final ten Sprint Cup Series Chase races are the prize to that network and that may be the only real item that is pursued.
Currently no comment from the FOX folks on the NASCAR or SPEED issue. Whatever happens, it is becoming clear that there will be substantive changes in the look of NASCAR TV after 2014 and maybe much sooner than that for the network we now know as SPEED.
For those asking about the changes in progress to shows like Trackside and Wind Tunnel, this topic is for you. While SPEED's primetime line-up is still dominated by non-motorsports scripted reality shows like Hard Parts: The Bronx, the opportunity certainly exists to help the sport grow by inserting some regularly scheduled NASCAR programming down the stretch.
There was a time when SPEED jumped on the bandwagon and surrounded the build-up to the Chase and the run down the stretch to Homestead. This year, no additional regularly scheduled programs or series have been added. Apparently, NASCAR racing reality still does not top the scripted reality that SPEED has force-fed motorsports fans for years.
We invite your opinion on this topic. Comments may be moderated prior to posting.
While we normally use television and media as the theme of these columns, this week things are different. The vast majority of feedback after this weekend was not only about ESPN, but NASCAR in general.
From the starting line issues with the Nationwide Series through the single-car dominance of the Sprint Cup Series race, this was a weekend that started a passionate fan conversation about the sport that is still in progress.
On Saturday, a bizarre dance played-out for those watching on television. In a event moved from nearby Lucas Oil Raceway, the Nationwide Series played to a virtually empty house at the big track. Instead of the racing stories, ESPN flew in Katie Couric to conduct a featured pre-race interview with driver/celebrity Danica Patrick.
ESPN and NASCAR combined to present Patrick once again as the Great White Hope, focusing squarely on her role as a woman in NASCAR. All of this happened on national television despite the reality surrounding both Patrick and the race.
In the real world, Patrick had been out-qualified in the event by 18 year-old Johanna Long, a female Florida resident with a long history of racing success. But in the very strange world of ESPN and NASCAR, Long simply did not exist.
Despite six months of racing this season, Couric's questions to Patrick were themed around her struggles as a woman in NASCAR rather than her Nationwide Series results. The supposed theme for the interview was the statement that Patrick had almost won the Indy 500. This set the tone for the comparison between the IndyCar tradition of the speedway and this NASCAR racing weekend.
The entire pre-race show was run as if there was a standing room only audience. The TV theme was that the Nationwide Series was making history, that all the actions on the track were historic. No references were made to the wildly successful history of the Nationwide Series racing at Lucas Oil Raceway or that the Brickyard was empty even after one year of promotion for this inaugural race.
The start reflected the pre-race show in that questions immediately arose about why the pole sitter did not cross the starting line first. No NASCAR officials made themselves available for comment and the race continued. The reality of what actually happened was never officially addressed.
Patrick's subsequent accident continued the tone as the TV announcers were reluctant to call out the experienced driver for actions her crew chief later called "stupid driving." Patrick's television interview was an exercise in marketing, which seemed to fit the tone.
Ultimately, the day would be dominated by the penalty given to Elliott Sadler on a late restart. Once again, no NASCAR official appeared on-camera as the TV team floundered for an explanation of a ruling that made little sense. Things got worse once the race was over.
ESPN left the air without an explanation of the penalty or even an interview with Sadler. Nothing was said on ESPNEWS and TV viewers were left in the dark. It was amazing to see ESPN sign-off after the hype and promotion of the event. This was not the kind of history that NASCAR wanted to create.
On Sunday the familiar pattern of past Brickyard races continued. After an outstanding TV pre-race show, the action on the track again was limited to restarts and pit road. Adding to this frustration was ESPN continuing to use in-car cameras and tight shots during those restarts. The only actual passing for position was lost on TV as the ESPN director tried to "make TV" instead of just showing the race.
Time and time again veteran announcer Allen Bestwick's call of exciting racing and key passes did not match the action seen on the screen. In no other professional sport would this type of television production be tolerated. TV follows the puck in hockey and the ball in other sports as a golden rule. In NASCAR, the choice of what pictures to show is subjective.
The Sprint Cup Series has been racing since February. Despite the hype, the Brickyard 400 is just race twenty of thirty-six. The key for fans is that the countdown to the Chase is in full swing. In the relatively new Sprint Cup Series points system, every single place is important. Ultimately, it's all about the finish.
In ESPN's reality, it's all about the event. From top to bottom, the Brickyard 400 was presented like ABC handles the Indy 500. This was never more evident than the during the finish of the race. The winner's car crossed the line, the camera zoomed to the checkered flag and in the minds of ESPN, the race was over.
Meanwhile on the track names like Earnhardt, Gordon, Hamlin and Stewart were still racing. Despite Bestwick's best efforts to break the production team from the script, most NASCAR fans who had been watching their favorite driver for three hours never saw his last lap or the run to the checkers.
With time remaining on the TV clock, an extended post-race show then talked to those very same drivers about their race and finish. Many of the issues discussed by the drivers had never made it into the ESPN broadcast. It was a fitting end to a very strange weekend.
So how is your NASCAR pulse? Is it still beating strongly, fading slowly or pounding with anger for what the sport has become? This is a good time to check-in on where you stand with the sport in general as we go down the stretch. We appreciate you taking the time to add your comments.
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As a child,
you tend to take your position in life for granted, as written
into the natural order of things. You were born, say, into a white
middle-class family, you are comfortably off, in good health and
not in any particular distress. You have rights and privileges,
and these are generally respected. You aren't hungry or imprisoned
or enslaved. You go on nice holidays. At an early age, you
probably assume everyone lives like this. It seems natural that
you enjoy the kind of life providence has granted you. You don't
think about it.
Then you
start to notice that others are less fortunate (and some others
more fortunate). You see people around you who are poorer than
you, possibly homeless, or who have something serious mentally or
physically wrong with them. You start hearing about people in
foreign countries who are starving to death, or being blown up in
wars, or suffering from terrible diseases. Some of them are
children like you! These facts jar on you; and they force you to
make comparisons with your own life. Soon you are struck with a
certain terrifying thought: that it is really just luck
that you are not in their shoes. You happen to have been born into
a certain class, in a certain part of the world, with certain
social arrangements, at a certain period in history. But there is
nothing necessary about this — it is just the luck of the draw.
Things could have been different in ways that don't bear thinking
about. You ask yourself what your life would have been like if you
had drawn the short straw and lived in less felicitous
circumstances. You imagine yourself born into a land of famine, or
arriving on the scene before medicine made any progress with
plagues, or before modern plumbing. You thus entertain a kind of
philosophical thought: that it is just contingent that
things are as they are, and that you could have been very much
worse off. You are just lucky. Equivalently, you see that it is
just bad luck for the others that their lives are as hard as they
are. There is no divine necessity or inner logic about any of
this. It is basically a moral accident. There but for fortune . .
.
And with this
thought social conscience begins. Since there is no deep necessity
about the ordering of well-being among people, we should try to
rectify (avoidable) inequalities and misfortunes. The
arbitrariness should be removed from the distribution of
well-being. We should discover the sources of misery and
deprivation and try, where possible, to erase them. We should
certainly not voluntarily contribute to the disadvantaged position
of others. We should not exploit the power that is ours by sheer
cosmic luck. Thus, morality is founded in a sense of the
contingency of the world, and it is powered by the ability to
envisage alternatives. Imagination is central to its operations.
The morally complacent person is the person who cannot conceive
how things could have been different; he or she fails to
appreciate the role of luck - itself a concept that relies on
imagining alternatives. There is no point in seeking change if
this is the way things have to be. Morality is thus based
on modality: that is, on a mastery of the concepts of necessity
and possibility. To be able to think morally is to be able to
think modally. Specifically, it depends upon seeing other
possibilities - not taking the actual as the necessary.
I think, to
come to the present point, that human adults persistently
underestimate the role of biological luck in assuring our dominion
over the rest of nature. We are still like children who take the
contingent facts to be necessary, and thus fail to understand the
moral significance of what actually goes on. People really do
believe, in their bones, that there is a divine necessity
underwriting our power over other species, so they fail to
question this exercise of power. Indeed, this assumption is
explicitly written into many religions. In every possible world we
are at the top of the biological tree. As children, we naively
took our family position to be the locus of cosmic necessity; now
we assume that our species position is cosmically guaranteed. We
assume, that is, that our relation to other species is basically
the way things had to be, so that there is no point in
questioning the ethics of that relation. Hence social conscience
stops at the boundary of the human species, give or take a bit of
supererogation here and there. We don't take seriously the idea
that it is just luck that our species is number one in the
biological power hierarchy. So our conscience about our conduct in
the biological world isn't pricked by the reflection that we
might have been lower down in the scale of species domination.
We therefore need to bring our species morals into line with the
real facts of biological possibility.
To be
specific, we fail to appreciate that we could have been in the
kind of position with respect to another species that apes now
occupy with respect to us; so we protect ourselves from the moral
issues that arise about our actual relation to apes. Or rather, we
acknowledge the contingency of our biological position in odd and
localised ways - as if our unconscious recognises it only too well
but we repress it in the interests of evading its moral
consequences. For our instinctive species-ism wavers when we
consider ourselves on the receiving end of another species'
domination. We allow ourselves to enter into this contingency in
certain special sealed-off imaginative contexts - not in the world
of hard moral and political reality. Significantly, these contexts
typically involve horror and fear and loss of control. For the
most part, nowadays, they take place in the cinema. I am thinking,
of course, of science fiction and horror films. Here alternatives
to our biological supremacy are imaginatively explored. Let me
mention three types of fiction in which we humans assume a
position of species subjugation - or contrive to escape such a
position against considerable odds.
First, of
course, there are the invading aliens from outer space, who come
to destroy or parasitise or enslave the human species - the
body-snatchers, stomach-busters and mind-controllers. Here the
thought is that only space protects our species from the
depredations of more powerful beings, so that space travel is a
potential route to species demotion. Sheer distance is the saving
contingency here. It is just luck that those aliens don't live on
the moon, or else we would be their playthings even now.
Then there
are the vampire stories, in which the theme of using the human
species for food is paramount. A colony of vampires lives off the
human inhabitants of a certain area, drinking their blood, killing
other humans who get in their way. The humans are just a herd for
the vampires. Usually the vampires are depicted as extraordinarily
evil, gloating over the soon-to-be-punctured necks of their
beautiful young victims, but sometimes they are portrayed more
sympathetically, as just doing what nature designed them to do -
slaves to their own biology, as it were. In any case, they are
perceived as a terrifying threat to humans, and there is generally
a good deal of luck involved in fending them off. It was a close
thing that the entire human species wasn't condemned to be
vampire-feed for all eternity. And it is lucky that we, the
viewers, weren't born in Transylvania.
A third
category of human demotion introduces machines, our machines. I
suppose Frankenstein's monster comes into this category, since it
was constructed by a human, albeit from organic parts; but a more
recent example of the genre is the Terminator movies, in
which the international computer network controlling nuclear
weapons achieves self-consciousness one day and, fearful for its
own survival at human hands, begins to wage war on its human
creators, with very nasty consequences. This computer constructs
its own formidable robots ('terminators') whose mission is simply
to kill as many humans as possible, and they will not stop. This,
then, is a case in which our artifacts rise up and exert
domination over us, bringing untold havoc and misery to our
species. And here the contingency is merely the level of
technological advancement of our machines. If we are not careful,
the message goes, our technology will come back to oppress us; so
we had better not rely on luck to prevent this happening in the
future. In fact, if time travel is possible, we should be thinking
about it now, since the future may contain the very terminating
machines made possible by extensions of our present technology.
So, at least, the movies suggest.
Well, this is
all good entertaining fun, but the point I want to make is that
these nightmare fantasies represent, in sublimated form, our
repressed sense of the contingency of our biological supremacy as
a species. They are saying,' You could be in the position
that other species are actually in — that you put them in.'
And, of course, we are supposed to sympathise with ourselves in
these possible fantasy worlds: we applaud the freedom fighters who
seek to liberate us from the selfish domination of other kinds of
being. We certainly don't think that might is right in these
battles between the species. We have to fight them precisely
because they are morally blind to what they are doing to us, or
just outright callous. What I am suggesting now is that we take
seriously the notion that we might have been, or could be, in such
a position, and ask ourselves what moral principles we would want
to see observed if indeed we were the weaker species. That is, we
need a species morality informed by the idea of biological luck.
Equivalently, we need to ask ourselves what rights need to be
granted to species who happen to be thus subservient to us
— apes in the present case. How does it look from their point of
view? If humans had never evolved, then there would have been no
scientific experimentation using apes as subjects, no confinement
of apes in zoos and elsewhere, no systematic killing of apes for
sport. Apes would undoubtedly have been better off without us.
They are cosmically unlucky in the way we would be if any
of the above nightmares become reality. And just as we would fight
to have the evil effects of such bad luck reversed in our case -
using sound moral argument as our justification - so we should
recognise that the bad luck of apes in having humans to contend
with should not be allowed to continue unchecked. In short, we
should stop oppressing them. We should accord them the rights
their intrinsic nature demands, not just acquiesce in the abuses
of power consequent upon our chance biological supremacy. We
might have been the ones in the cages or on the vivisection
tables: and it is a cast-iron certainty we would not have liked it
one bit. Morality, in short, should not be dictated by luck.
Let me end
with an idea for a screenplay. We are a couple of million years
into the future, and time has not been kind to the human species.
Human intelligence reached a plateau in the twenty-first century,
when the physiological constraints of giving birth stopped infant
heads getting any bigger. Unluckily, too, the diseases of the
modern world -physical and psychological — were not vanquished,
leaving humans a generally sickly and neurotic lot. The pollution,
the overeating, the crime, the stress have made humans a weak and
enervated species. However, the apes have enjoyed a steady march
forward. Their frontal lobes have been expanding all the time,
they are fit and robust, and they have long since thrown off their
human shackles. They have all the trappings of civilisation. Now,
in fact, the status quo has been reversed: humans are now
vulnerable to their whims. Some of the more unscrupulous of the
gorillas — the ones with the flashy houses and private jets — have
gone into business selling human specimens for a variety of
purposes, no questions asked. Some go for medical experiments
designed to benefit apes, others to slaughterhouses, the lucky few
become pets, yet others are sold for interspecies prostitution. So
far this is all illegal, done on the black market, and is
officially frowned upon by the apes' government. But it is easy to
arrange, given the vulnerable state of so many humans. The big
problem, for the ape entrepreneurs, is getting the trade in humans
accepted and legalised, so that they don't have to operate on the
wrong side of the law. There is this annoying ape lobby, you see,
that disapproves of subjugating humans in these ways, and, of
course, the humans are less than thrilled about it themselves. The
shady businessapes are working on the corruption of some high
officials to get them to pass a law allowing what is now only done
illegally. The propaganda, thankfully, is a breeze, given what all
apes know about their treatment at the hands of humans for so many
centuries — it is there in the history books. Serves them right,
does it not? It looks like they are going to succeed in
institutionalising their exploitation of humans, unless that brave
coalition of good apes and desperate humans can prevent them . . .
OK, my point
is this. Suppose this story became reality: wouldn't it be better
to be able to say to the apes, who are generally a kind and decent
species, that we stopped exploiting them voluntarily in the last
decade of the twentieth century? We saw the error of our ways, so
why should they repeat our earlier mistakes? We were not simply
forced, by their biological ascendancy and our decline, to grant
them rights in the middle of the 1000th century, say, after a
bloody war; we just did it from moral principle well before we
could be made to. We could thus appeal to their moral sense by
citing our own earlier moral example. We would have an answer to
the more cynical apes who insisted it was just our 'bad luck' that
they have now assumed the more powerful position. I, at least,
would like to think that, if my screenplay comes to pass one day,
our human offspring will have some moral case to make
against their own ruthless exploitation at the hands and jaws of
other species. If we can do it, why can't they?
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Jameis Winston Accuser Says She Identified Him in Class After Rape
Jameis Winston may have been cleared of the sexual assault allegations brought against him by a female FSU student, but his accuser is standing firm by her story according to TMZ. The accuser says at the time that the incident occurred in December 2012 she knew he was an FSU football player but had no idea what his name was.
Last month one of her close friends, Monique Kessler, gave her testimony under oath to authorities about how everything unfolded.
“[The accuser] went to one of her classes and she made direct eye contact with [Jameis], and he looked in shock, and so did she.”
“She said she just knew right then it was him – and listened for them to call roll in class. [She] listened to him say [his name].
According to Kessler, when the accuser recognized who he was and found out his name, she then reported it to the authorities at TPD. The charges against Winston were dismissed for lack of evidence, but the family of the accuser will be having a press conference this morning.
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Q:
Empty rows for MySQL Query but using a WHERE
I have a table names lcMovimientos and what I need is a query where I get as a result the sum of the quantity of cantidadMovimientos but I want each row to be by the day of the week and only to sum the days of the current week, so after researching I found the best way to do this was creating a new table with the days of the week, so I now have a table called diasSemana
SELECT * FROM diasSemana
+-----------+
| diaSemana |
+-----------+
| 0 |
| 1 |
| 2 |
| 3 |
| 4 |
| 5 |
| 6 |
+-----------+
and a table called lcMovimientos
mysql> DESCRIBE lcMovimientos;
+-----------------------+---------------+------+-----+---------+----------------+
| Field | Type | Null | Key | Default | Extra |
+-----------------------+---------------+------+-----+---------+----------------+
| idMovimiento | int(11) | NO | PRI | NULL | auto_increment |
| idUsuario | int(11) | YES | | NULL | |
| tipoMovimiento | tinyint(4) | YES | | NULL | |
| cantidadMovimiento | decimal(20,2) | YES | | NULL | |
| idCategoria | int(11) | YES | | NULL | |
| fechaMovimiento | date | YES | | NULL | |
| idCuenta | int(11) | YES | | NULL | |
| descripcionMovimiento | varchar(255) | YES | | NULL | |
| etiquetasMovimiento | varchar(255) | YES | | NULL | |
+-----------------------+---------------+------+-----+---------+----------------+
I can make a query where I do get the sum of the cantidadMovimiento but when I add the where clause so I only get results from the current week, I no longer get the rows by day fo the week, so here is my query:
mysql> SELECT SUM( cantidadMovimiento ) , diaSemana, fechaMovimiento -> FROM diasSemana
-> LEFT JOIN lcMovimientos ON diaSemana = WEEKDAY( fechaMovimiento )
-> GROUP BY diaSemana;
+---------------------------+-----------+-----------------+
| SUM( cantidadMovimiento ) | diaSemana | fechaMovimiento |
+---------------------------+-----------+-----------------+
| 280.00 | 0 | 2012-02-20 |
| 800.00 | 1 | 2012-02-21 |
| 7000.00 | 2 | 2012-02-29 |
| NULL | 3 | NULL |
| NULL | 4 | NULL |
| -3300.78 | 5 | 2012-02-18 |
| 600.00 | 6 | 2012-02-26 |
+---------------------------+-----------+-----------------+
and when I use the WHERE clause:
mysql> SELECT SUM( cantidadMovimiento ) , diaSemana, fechaMovimiento
-> FROM diasSemana
-> LEFT JOIN lcMovimientos ON diaSemana = WEEKDAY( fechaMovimiento )
-> WHERE WEEK( fechaMovimiento, 1 ) = WEEK( CURRENT_DATE, 1 )
-> GROUP BY diaSemana;
+---------------------------+-----------+-----------------+
| SUM( cantidadMovimiento ) | diaSemana | fechaMovimiento |
+---------------------------+-----------+-----------------+
| 265.00 | 0 | 2012-02-20 |
| 800.00 | 1 | 2012-02-21 |
| 600.00 | 6 | 2012-02-26 |
+---------------------------+-----------+-----------------+
So my question is how can i make a query where I will get the results by the day of the week using the where to only get dates of the current week??? thank you so much in advance!
A:
try this
SELECT
COALESCE(SUM( cantidadMovimiento ),0) AS cantidadMovimiento,
diaSemana,
DATE_ADD(DATE(NOW()), INTERVAL diaSemana-WEEKDAY(NOW()) DAY) AS weekday
FROM diasSemana
LEFT JOIN lcMovimientos
ON diaSemana = WEEKDAY( fechaMovimiento )
AND WEEK(fechaMovimiento) = WEEK(NOW()) AND YEAR(fechaMovimiento) = YEAR(NOW())
GROUP BY diaSemana;
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tomekkorbak/pile-curse-small
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StackExchange
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Digoxin reduces cardiac sympathetic activity in severe congestive heart failure.
This study evaluated the effect of digoxin on cardiac sympathetic activity in patients with congestive heart failure. Digoxin favorably alters autonomic tone in heart failure. Whether it reduces cardiac sympathetic drive in the setting of heart failure is unknown. Digoxin (0.25 mg intravenously) was administered to 12 patients with severe heart failure and elevated left ventricular end-diastolic pressure (> 14 mm Hg, Group A), 5 patients with less severe heart failure who had normal left ventricular end-diastolic pressure (> 14 mm Hg, Group B) and 6 patients with normal ventricular function. Seven additional patients with heart failure were studied as a time control group. Cardiac and total body norepinephrine spillover, systemic arterial pressure, left ventricular filling pressure and peak positive first derivative of left ventricular pressure were all assessed before and 30 min after administration of digoxin. In Group A there were no changes in hemodynamic variables or total body norepinephrine spillover after digoxin administration; however, there was a significant reduction in cardiac norepinephrine spillover (263 +/- 70 to 218 +/- 62 pmol/min, mean +/- SEM, p < 0.001). In contrast, in Group B, digoxin caused a significant increase in cardiac norepinephrine spillover that was not associated with any hemodynamic changes or a change in total body spillover. There were no hemodynamic changes or a change in total body spillover. There were no hemodynamic or spillover changes in the time control or normal ventricular function group. Digoxin, in the absence of detectable inotropic or hemodynamic effects, caused a reduction in cardiac norepinephrine spillover in patients with heart failure who had elevated filling pressures. This finding suggests a potentially beneficial primary autonomic action of digoxin in patients with severe heart failure.
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tomekkorbak/pile-curse-small
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PubMed Abstracts
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Why the fuck Would you confess to murder on reddit?
164 shares
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tomekkorbak/pile-curse-small
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OpenWebText2
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Because reading a final line could be a little bit like trying for Egyptian hieroglyphics 'specially, if you've never read the quoted novel before, you will find that some paragraphs are a little on the lengthy side. It's meant to give you a whiff on events leading up to the final scene. So you won't be kept too deep in the dark. And don't think because these are collected from horror stories, there would be an excessive gilding ofmatter. There is a hiatus from all the madness, you see.
It was a trifle easier coming by grabbing first lines for my articlewhich I posted on this blog in 2012 than it was finding equally absorbing and memorable last lines albeit, from horror literature for this post.
David took the blue pass. "Of course. First John, chapter four, verse eight. 'God is love.' "
She looked at him for a long time. "Is he, David? Is he love?"
"Oh, yes," David said. He folded the pass along its crease. "I guess he's sort of . . . everything."
Cynthia waved. Mary waved back and gave her a thumbs-up. Steve pulled out and Mary followed him, the Acura's wheels rolling reluctantly through the first ridge of sand and then picking up speed.
David put his head back against the seat, closed his eyes, and began to pray. "Do you understand the reference, David ?"David took the blue pass. "Of course. First John, chapter four, verse eight. 'God is love.' "She looked at him for a long time. "Is he, David? Is he love?""Oh, yes," David said. He folded the pass along its crease. "I guess he's sort of . . . everything."Cynthia waved. Mary waved back and gave her a thumbs-up. Steve pulled out and Mary followed him, the Acura's wheels rolling reluctantly through the first ridge of sand and then picking up speed.David put his head back against the seat, closed his eyes, and began to pray.
He went for the stairs, took them three at a time, and reached for the door handle. The door swung away from him. "Sorry it took so long," Smeltzer said. "Had to use the john." "No problem." Jake turned away, not even trying for a glimpse of the wife, and trotted down the stairs. From behind him came her voice. "This really is the pits." "Better safe than sorry," Smeltzer said. "Of course."
3. Girl of My Dreams by Richard Matheson (from The Unexplained)
It was the arm of a dead woman that he clutched. With a gagging sound, he jerked his hand away. He gaped at her, unable to speak or think. Then, as he backed away, his eyes were drawn to the calendar on the wall and a phrase crept leadenly across his mind: one of these days. Quite suddenly, he began to laugh and cry. And before he fled, he stood at the window for an hour and twenty minutes, staring out, wondering who the man was, where he was right now and just what he was doing.
Pray it never takes a slaughter or a rape for you to see this light in those around you. God forbid it that it should demand such a price. Let me pay the price for you instead.
5. Strangers by Dean Koontz
Soon, when Dom had passed the gift to her, as she would ask him to, she'd be able to heal with her touch. More important, with only her touch, she would be able to pass unto others the power to heal themselves. The human life-span would increase dramatically overnight-three hundred, four hundred, even five hundred years. Except for accidents, the specter of death would be banished to a distant horizon. No more would the Annas and Jacobs be wrenched away from the children who loved them. No more would husbands have to sit in mourning at the deathbeds of young wives. No more, Baruch ha-Shem, no more.
6. Hannibal by Thomas Harris
We'll withdraw now, while they are dancing on the terrace-the wise Barney has already left town and we must follow his example. For either of them to discover us would be fatal. We can only learn so much and live.
7. Mr. X by Peter Straub
But since you have put a question to me, I can ask one in return. Are you sure-really sure-you know who told you this story?
It would not be long before dawn, and at the first sign of the sun they'd have to go to sleep. But until the light came-until the real insisted upon their imaginations-they stood watching the darkness, waiting, half in hope and half in fear, for that other sea to rise from dreams and claim them from the shore.
9. Shadows by John Saul
From the first time since she'd brought him home from the Academy, Brenda MacCallum knew that her son was going to be alright.
10. The Host by Stephenie Meyer
"It's a strange world," I murmured, more to myself than to the other native soul. "The strangest," he agreed.
11. Dr. Death by Jonathan Kellerman
"So no way you'll stop." She played with her hair. "Who knows what I'll do?"
12. Bloodline by Jill Jones
Jonathan rolled over on the bed and tugged her into his arms. "It doesn't matter," he said, grinning and running his hands through her hair. "I have all I want in my arms right now."
13. The Reapers by John Connolly
After a time, he nodded, both to himself and at the man who he knew was following his progress: Louis, the killer, the burning man. Louis, the last of the Reapers.
14. Shadow Prey by John Sandford
The thing called Stephanie Bekker heard the words "Jesus Christ," and then it was gone forever, leaving a single bloody handprint six inches below the Princess phone.
15. Covenant with the Vampire by Jeanne Kalogridis
The overwhelmingness of it (the perfume on the other character's body) offended my predatory senses, but the spicy fragrance could not hide for me, the scent of one undead; a non-odour, born of absences-the absence of warmth, of the strong animal smell of the living.
16. Others by James Herbert
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OpenWebText2
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Restructuring the gene ontology to emphasise regulative pathways and to improve gene similarity queries.
The Gene Ontology (GO) has been developed to provide a structured vocabulary for genes description. Conversely, gene functional similarity measures would benefit from a structure tailored to emphasise genes involved in the same biological context. Therefore, such measures often find it difficult to fully exploit the information in the GO. This paper reorganises the GO to emphasise regulative information thus providing a better structure for functional analysis. A gene functional similarity measure exploiting the new structure is proposed. Empirical evidence shows that the new structure correctly captures regulative processes and that it can be used to support the proposed measure.
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tomekkorbak/pile-curse-small
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PubMed Abstracts
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Q:
How to write/execute commands in an external console with Python
I'm new to Python and could not find a solution for the following propblem:
I want to write python script, which let's say opens the cmd and executes several commands in a for loop. Starting the cmd (e.g. subprocess.run())and predefining the command happens with Python (v.3.6).
import subprocess
_path = "C:\\..."
_exe = "...\\cmd.exe"
subprocess.run(_path + _exe)
for i in range (1,100,1)
...
But how can I then write the command from Python into cmd? And in consequence? How can i get a signal, whether my cmd command is executed so i can start a new command (like in a for loop)
Thanks for the help and with best regards,
Andreas Buyer
A:
You probably wanna use Popen.communicate(input=None, timeout=None) and set the shell arg to true. Then you wanna wait on the process output stream for the response to your command. Note: Popen.communicate requires the input to be byte-encoded. The output of Popen.communicate is also byte encoded, so you need to do a str.decode() on it to extract the encoded strings.
All of this is fully documented in the Python API. I would suggest you read the manual.
Or, you could use a library like this one which wraps all of this stuff for you.
import subprocess
proc = subprocess.Popen('ls', stdout=subprocess.PIPE, stdin=subprocess.PIPE)
try:
outs, errs = proc.communicate(timeout=15) # use input= param if you need to
proc.wait()
except TimeoutExpired:
proc.kill()
outs, errs = proc.communicate()
print ('%s, %s' % (outs, errs))
Output and comparison to actual 'ls' output:
$ python popen_ex.py
b'__pycache__\npopen_ex.py\n', None
$ ls
__pycache__ popen_ex.py
Any additional commands you need to send to popen can be sent in proc.communicate.
If you REALLY want to communicate to an interactive shell, Popen.communicate() allows for a ONE TIME write to stdin and read from stdout/stderr. After one call to Popen.communicate(), the input/output/error streams are closed by subprocess. IF YOU WANT A FULLY INTERACTIVE SHELL, you MUST either write one yourself, or use a library, like the one I linked.
import subprocess
proc = subprocess.Popen('sh', stdout=subprocess.PIPE, stdin=subprocess.PIPE, stderr=subprocess.PIPE)
try:
outs, errs = proc.communicate(input='ls'.encode('ascii'), timeout=15)
proc.wait()
print ('%s, %s' % (outs, errs))
proc = subprocess.Popen('sh', stdout=subprocess.PIPE, stdin=subprocess.PIPE, stderr=subprocess.PIPE)
outs, errs = proc.communicate(input='ps'.encode('ascii'), timeout=15)
proc.wait()
print ('%s, %s' % (outs, errs))
except TimeoutError:
proc.kill()
outs, errs = proc.communicate()
Output and comparison to actual 'ls', 'ps'
$ python popen_ex.py
b'__pycache__\npopen_ex.py\n', b''
b' PID TTY TIME CMD\n 879 ttys000 0:00.18 -bash\n 7063 ttys000 0:00.06 python popen_ex.py\n 7066 ttys000 0:00.00 sh\n 911 ttys001 0:00.06 -bash\n 938 ttys002 0:00.16 -bash\n 6728 ttys002 0:00.11 python\n 972 ttys004 0:00.06 -bash\n 1019 ttys005 0:00.06 -bash\n 1021 ttys006 0:00.06 -bash\n 1023 ttys007 0:00.06 -bash\n', b''
$ ls
__pycache__ popen_ex.py
$ ps
PID TTY TIME CMD
879 ttys000 0:00.19 -bash
911 ttys001 0:00.06 -bash
938 ttys002 0:00.16 -bash
6728 ttys002 0:00.11 python
972 ttys004 0:00.06 -bash
1019 ttys005 0:00.06 -bash
1021 ttys006 0:00.06 -bash
1023 ttys007 0:00.06 -bash
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tomekkorbak/pile-curse-small
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StackExchange
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Natural Beauty: Lemonade Braids, Are You Here For It?
Let’s talk about Lemonade braids. A beautiful cornrow style that was inspired by singer Beyonce. The look is very sexy and versatile. I love this style it can be worn up in a ponytail or hanging long and free. This is a style that many women are rocking this summer. It is low maintenance and also a protective style. Wit more and more women going natural, this is a wonderful go to style. It truly gives off a regal look. Let;s continue to embrace our roots.
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tomekkorbak/pile-curse-small
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Pile-CC
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Beak trimming of turkeys. 2. Effects of arc beak trimming on weight gain, feed intake, feed wastage, and feed conversion.
An experiment was conducted to study the effects of arc beak trimming on feed consumption, weight gain, and feed wastage in males and females from two large-bodied strains and one medium-bodied strain of turkeys. Birds were placed in wire-floored battery cages from 3 to 8 wk of age and feed intake, weight gains, and feed spilled into dropping pans were recorded for each of the 5 wk of each trial. Feed conversion was calculated as feed consumed divided by weight gained. Sex by beak trimming interactions were not found. Beak trimming reduced feed wastage of the two large-bodied strains, but did not affected feed wastage of the medium-bodied strain, which did not consume as much feed as the large-bodied strains. The results of this study support the hypothesis that beak trimming reduces feed wastage of large-bodied turkeys.
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tomekkorbak/pile-curse-small
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PubMed Abstracts
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Download Unternehmen Zahnarztpraxis: Springers Großer Wirtschafts
Download Unternehmen Zahnarztpraxis: Springers Großer Wirtschafts
by Christina4.5
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tomekkorbak/pile-curse-small
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Pile-CC
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Q:
can anyone explain how to use Reentrant Lock in java over Synchronized with some best examples
When I run the example class at http://javarevisited.blogspot.in/2013/03/reentrantlock-example-in-java-synchronized-difference-vs-lock.html, I'm seeing the same behavior as with synchronized.
A:
Here are three ways, methods, of a thread accessing a lock and one for letting go of the lock. You might want to try implementing these using the synchronized keyword. The extended capabilities and advantages of using ReentrantLock will become apparent.
public class DoorLockUsingLock {
private int counter= 0;
private Thread owner= null;
private Lock l = new ReentrantLock();
private Condition notLocked= l.newCondition();
public void lockItDown() throws InterruptedException {
l.lockInterruptibly();
try {
while ((counter> 0) && (owner!= Thread.currentThread())) {
notLocked.await();
}
counter++;
owner = Thread.currentThread();
} finally {
l.unlock();
}
}
public void lockItDownUninterruptibly() {
l.lock();
try {
while ((counter > 0) && (owner != Thread.currentThread())) {
notLocked.awaitUninterruptibly();
}
counter++;
owner= Thread.currentThread();
} finally {
l.unlock();
}
}
public boolean tryLockItDown(long timeout, TimeUnit unit) throws InterruptedException {
long time = unit.toNanos(timeout);
long end = System.nanoTime() + time;
boolean success = l.tryLock(timeout, unit);
if (!success) {
return false;
}
try {
time = end- System.nanoTime();
while ((counter> 0) && (owner != Thread.currentThread()) && (time > 0)) {
notLocked.await(time, TimeUnit.NANOSECONDS);
time = end - System.nanoTime();
}
if (time > 0) {
counter++;
owner = Thread.currentThread();
return true;
}
return false;
} finally {
l.unlock();
}
}
public void unlockIt() throws IllegalMonitorStateException {
l.lock();
try {
if (counter== 0) {
throw new IllegalMonitorStateException();
}
if (owner!= Thread.currentThread()) {
throw new IllegalMonitorStateException();
}
counter--;
if (counter == 0) {
owner = null;
notLocked.signal();
}
} finally {
l.unlock();
}
}
}
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tomekkorbak/pile-curse-small
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StackExchange
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Editor's note: During the next five weeks, we will reveal the top 50 coaches in college basketball, as decided by our ESPN Forecast panel. Today we unveil No. 10: Connecticut's Kevin Ollie. On Tuesday, we release No. 9.
Former Connecticut coach Jim Calhoun once said that his former player turned Huskies head coach Kevin Ollie uses more motivational phrases "than almost any other guy I’ve ever been around in my life."
Ollie has attached those sayings all over the UConn locker room at their on-campus court in Gampel Pavilion. But the Huskies probably don't need any reminders; Ollie is quick to recite new phrases from his virtual unlimited mental Rolodex.
"I just listen to a lot of inspirational people, you hear things that strike a chord with you," Ollie told ESPN.com in November, when asked about his many quotables.
Some are original thoughts, others are phrases he's come across and posted, but the Yogi Berra of college basketball always gets his point across. Here's the top-10 list of Ollie-isms:
Kevin Ollie's crafty inspirational sayings have helped vault UConn to the top of the college basketball world. AP Photo/David J. Phillip
10. UConn basketball, 10 toes in.
When Ollie took over the program armed with only a seven-month contract and an NCAA postseason ban, his first step was to make sure his players were all-in.
"We were banned from the NCAA tournament, but we weren't banned from loving each other, we weren't banned from making each other better," said Ollie, who added: "They really didn't have a choice in the matter. I was going to play the guys who were playing hard. We were just trying to teach these kids a life lesson. A lot of people give up in the face of adversity."
9. Greatness is never on discount. Success is never on sale.
Ollie repeatedly tells his players that they aren't going to take any shortcuts. They will take the stairs instead of the escalators and enjoy the process of building a foundation. A bigger success results only when the small details are taken care of.
"When you're building a wall, you don’t set out to say, 'I'm building this beautiful wall,'" Ollie said. "You put one brick down as perfectly as you can do it."
8. "I want my guys to coach me."
Ollie loves the fact that some of his players call him "K.O." and not "coach." He wants the kind of relationship that once they leave the program, he'll be the one getting that first call about announcements on engagements, buying a first home and other life milestones.
"I'm not the coach and the dictator and what I say goes; I don't coach out of fear," Ollie said. "If you coach out of fear you're just going to get [a little bit] out of guys, but if you coach and you have a loving relationship, those guys will run through the wall for you."
7. Be careful what you're feeding.
When Ollie took over for Calhoun, he admittedly had some doubts about succeeding the Hall of Famer and the architecture of the program. But that's not where his focus rested.
"The most important thing in life: You don’t concentrate, you don’t meditate on your doubts," Ollie said. "You meditate on the different things that are good and going to inspire you to be great. That’s what I did. What are you doing, you feeding that fear or you feeding the good side?"
6. Greatness begins when selfishness ends.
Selfishness was a problem on Calhoun's final team in 2011-12. Despite having big talent, the Huskies were a big disappointment, failing to win a game in the NCAA tournament. Ollie sought to root out selfishness from the start.
"I learned a lot from [Calhoun] those two years [as an assistant coach]," Ollie said. "You can have a small fire, but you can’t let it turn into an inferno."
5. Be phenomenal or be forgotten.
It's Ollie's way of saying: Make an impact -- however big or small -- on those around you. It has nothing to do with scoring a lot of points or winning a lot of titles.
"If you're going to measure me as a coach, don't measure me with X's and O's and wins and losses; measure me with how my guys leave the program and how much better people they are," he said. "If I can do that I've done a great job."
4. "Faith it 'til you make it."
Ollie pointed to his 13-year professional career that involved endless 10-day contracts and 11 different teams. He was used to having the odds against him, but said, "That's kind of how I like it," and he never stopped believing.
"Some people say, 'Fake it to make it.' I say, 'Faith it to make it,'" Ollie said. "I'm going to have to faith it. Sometimes I don't understand it, I don't know the outcome, but I believe in the dark. And I tell these guys they're going to have to have blind trust."
3. The three E’s.
In one of his life lessons not just meant for basketball, Ollie said you have to have "effort, energy, enthusiasm."
"If you’ve got that in life, you’re going to be good," he said. "I might fail, but I'm all right. I'm going to fail until I succeed. I'm never going to stop."
2. "Take care of your 24."
Ollie said everyone has the same opportunity to make his day successful.
"You have 24 hours to do something magical each and every day," Ollie said. "I don’t care if you're black, blue, green, rich or poor -- you've got 24 hours. What you do with your 24 hours is going to dictate how successful you are in life."
1. "I’m not chasing national championships, national championships are going to chase us."
Reread Ollie's quote 100 times and it still might not make sense to you. But considering that he's 1-for-1 in NCAA tournament appearances and national championships makes it hit home a bit. Maybe Ollie knows what he's talking about after all.
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OpenWebText2
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324 B.R. 503 (2005)
In re ASIA GLOBAL CROSSING, LTD., et al., Debtors.
No. 02 B 15749(SMB).
United States Bankruptcy Court, S.D. New York.
May 25, 2005.
*504 Golenbock, Eiseman, Assor, Bell & Peskoe LLP, New York, NY (Jonathan L. Flaxer, David J. Eiseman, Adam C. Silverstein, Rebecca S. Natow, of Counsel), for Trustee.
Kronish, Lieb, Weiner & Hellman LLP, New York, NY (Lawrence C. Gottlieb, John A. Morris, Jeffrey L. Cohen, of Counsel) for Pacific Crossing, Ltd., et al.
OPINION EXPUNGING AVOIDANCE CLAIMS CONTAINED IN POST-BAR DATE AMENDED PROOF OF CLAIM
STUART M. BERNSTEIN, Chief Bankruptcy Judge.
After the bar date in this case expired, Pacific Crossing, Ltd. and several affiliated entities (collectively "PCL") filed an amended proof of claim. The latter identified several fraudulent transfer and preference claims arising under chapter 5 of the Bankruptcy Code. The trustee has *505 moved to expunge these claims as time-barred. The motion is granted for the reasons explained below.
BACKGROUND
A. The Timely Proof of Claim
This dispute concerns three affiliated, bankrupt telecommunications companies, Global Crossing, Ltd. ("Global Crossing"), PCL and Asia Global Crossing, Ltd. ("Asia Global").[1] The facts, which are not in material dispute, come from the last claim filed by PCL before the bar date (the "Claim").[2]
PCL was formed in 1998 to finance, construct and operate a submarine fiber optic cable, known as "PC-1," running between the west coast of the United States and Japan. (Claim, at ¶ 4.) The PCL network was to be part of a larger network connected with other Global Crossing networks around the world. (Id.)
PCL did not have any full time employees. It was entirely dependent on Asia Global and Global Crossing for its operations, sales, administration and management. (Id., at ¶ 6.) PCL's officers and directors were also employees, officers and directors of Asia Global, Global Crossing or other Global Crossing affiliates. (Id., at ¶ 7.) As a result, every aspect of PCL's business was controlled by individuals who owed their primary allegiance to Asia Global, Global Crossing or other Global Crossing affiliates. (Id., at ¶ 8.)
PCL contends that Asia Global or Global Crossing, or both, either misallocated the revenue or retained payments belonging to PCL in connection with the sale of "capacity" on PC-1, (id., at ¶¶ 9-14), the operation, administration and maintenance of the cable network, (id., at ¶¶ 15-16), and Asia Network Offer contracts. (Id., at ¶¶ 17-18.) They also forced PCL to bear unjustifiable expenses. According to PCL, it was charged a 5% "buy-sell" fee on certain agreements involving the use of PC-1, and was also charged a management fee despite an agreement that no management fee would be charged. (Id., at ¶ 20.) In addition, Asia Global or Global Crossing, or both, arranged to have PCL pay an exorbitant fee of $42.5 million per year to a Global Crossing affiliate for the actual operation and maintenance of the PC-1 cable. (Id., at ¶¶ 21.) It is likely that they also misallocated general administration and overhead expenses to PCL, (id., at ¶ 22), and diverted PCL's customers, (id., at ¶ 23), and Asia Global failed to pay for the use of the PCL circuits that it provisioned. (Id., at ¶¶ 24-26.)
A portion of the Claim concerns PCL's cable landing station located in Shima, Japan and owned by PCL. (See id., at ¶ 27.) On or about May 2, 2002, Asia Global, acting with its affiliates, officers, directors and employees, "purportedly transferred a 54% interest" to EAC Japan, Ltd., a 100% subsidiary of Asia Global, (id., at ¶ 28), without the authority or consent of PCL. (Id., at ¶ 30.) Asia Global and EAC subsequently encumbered the Shima station with two mortgages, again without the knowledge or consent of PCL. (Id., at ¶¶ 31-34.) Finally, Asia Global failed to *506 pay for the use of the Shima station. (Id., at ¶ 35.)
According to PCL, paragraph 36 of the Claim alluded to certain transfers of PCL's property. It stated:
Between July 19, 2001 through July 19, 2002 (when the Claimants filed their chapter 11 bankruptcy petition in the United States Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware), the Debtor diverted revenues and monies due to [PCL]. Such revenue diversion, included, among other things, the diversion of [PCL's] revenues for the ostensible purpose of repaying `loans' allegedly extended by Debtor and the Debtor's affiliates to [PCL], and retention of [PCL's] revenues as `offsets' to alleged amounts due as management fees for management services allegedly provided by the Debtor.
The Claim sought $677,000,000.00. It did not ascribe a value to any of the claims or categories of claims that it set forth.
B. Subsequent Proceedings
After the bar date in Asia Global's chapter 7 case had expired, PCL moved to clarify or extend the time to amend the Claim. (See Motion of Pacific Crossing Ltd. and Affiliated Entities for an Order (I) Clarifying Effect of Their Proof of Claim or, in the Alternative, (II) Extending the Time to Amend Their Proof of Claim and/or (III) Granting Relief from the Automatic Stay, dated July 2, 2004 (ECF Doc. # 409).)[3] PCL sought the opportunity to detail certain preference and fraudulent transfer claims (the "Avoidance Claims"). Because PCL was itself a debtor, the Avoidance Claims needed to satisfy two separate statutes or periods of limitation. First, they had to be asserted in the Asia Global case prior to the chapter 7 bar date. Second, they had to be asserted in the PCL bankruptcy within two years of the filing date of that case. See 11 U.S.C. § 546(a).[4]
By early July 2004, the Asia Global bar date had already run, and the two year statute of limitations in the PCL case was about to expire. PCL's motion sought, in the alternative, (1) a "clarification" that the Claim met the requirement for commencing an avoidance action, (2) to amend the Claim to detail the voidable transfers or (3) relief from the stay to allow PCL to commence an adversary proceeding in its own case to recover voidable transfers from Asia Global.
The principal question raised by PCL's motion was whether the Avoidance Claims were encompassed within the timely Claim such that a post-bar date amendment that provided more detail would relate back and be timely. If PCL had missed the bar date in the Asia Global case, it did not matter that it could still file a timely adversary proceeding in its own case. PCL's motion did not, however, identify the Avoidance Claims, and it was impossible to decide the "relation back" question on the state of the record. Accordingly, the Court authorized PCL to file the adversary proceeding in its own case and particularize the Avoidance Claims, and amend the Claim in this case to set forth the same detail. The foregoing was without prejudice to the trustee's position that the Avoidance Claims did not relate back for bar date purposes.
*507 C. The Complaint and the Amended Proof of Claim
PCL subsequently filed an adversary complaint, (the "Complaint") (Claim Objection, Ex. F), and an amended proof of claim, dated July 30, 2004 (the "Amended Claim"). (Id., Ex. G.) According to the Amended Claim, PCL made the following six transfers in the aggregate sum of $17,195,499.11 to Asia Global within the year preceding the PCL bankruptcy:
Nature of Payment Date Amount
Reimbursement of Expenses 07/31/2001 114.00
Management Services and 07/31/2001 4,821,958.73
Expenses
Loan Repayment 08/29/2001 10,575,109.22
Management Services and 05/31/2002 1,458,333.00
Expenses
Management Services and 06/28/2002 297,667.00
Expenses
Expenses 07/12/2002 42,317.16
17,195,499.11
(Amended Claim, Ex. A.)
The Amended Claim prompted the pending motion. In substance, the trustee contends that the Avoidance Claims are time-barred because they are new allegations, and do not relate back to the timely Claim. They should, therefore, be expunged. In response, PCL argues that the allegations, which the trustee calls new, simply add detail to the allegations in the Claim, (Objection of [PCL] to Motion of Chapter 7 Trustee to Expunge Amended Claim, dated Mar. 10, 2005 ("PCL's Response"), at ¶¶ 16-18, 24)(ECF Doc. # 577), and the amendment will not cause prejudice to the trustee. (Id., at ¶¶ 31-35.)
DISCUSSION
The decision to allow the amendment of a claim is committed to the discretion of the bankruptcy judge. Associated Container Transp. (Australia) Ltd. v. Black & Geddes, Inc. (In re Black & Geddes, Inc.), 58 B.R. 547, 553 (S.D.N.Y.1983); In re Enron Corp., 298 B.R. 513, 520 (Bankr.S.D.N.Y.2003). The claimant may amend a timely claim after the bar date to correct defects of form, provide more detailed allegations of fact relating to the timely claim, or plead a new theory of recovery under the facts set forth in the timely claim. Integrated Resources, Inc. v. Ameritrust Co. N.A. (In re Integrated Resources, Inc.), 157 B.R. 66, 70 (S.D.N.Y.1993); Enron Corp., 298 B.R. at 520; In re McLean Indus., Inc., 121 B.R. 704, 708 (Bankr.S.D.N.Y.1990); In re W.T. Grant Co., 53 B.R. 417, 420 (Bankr.S.D.N.Y.1985); see In re G.L. Miller & Co., 45 F.2d 115, 116 (2d Cir.1930). The claimant may not, however, through the guise of an amendment, circumvent the bar date by asserting a new claim. Enron Corp., 298 B.R. at 520; In re Drexel Burnham Lambert Group, Inc., 151 B.R. 684, 694 (Bankr.S.D.N.Y.1993); see G.L. Miller & Co., 45 F.2d at 116. Accordingly, the bankruptcy court must examine the proposed post-bar date amendment closely to ensure that it amends a timely claim and does not assert a new claim. Integrated Resources, Inc., 157 B.R. at 70; Enron Corp., 298 B.R. at 520; Maxwell Macmillan Realization Liquidating Trust & MCC GAO, Inc. v. Aboff (In re MacMillan), 186 B.R. 35, 49 (Bankr.S.D.N.Y.1995); W.T. Grant Co., 53 B.R. at 422.
Courts have generally applied a two part test in making this determination. The bankruptcy court should "look first to whether there was a timely assertion of a similar claim or demand evidencing an intention to hold the estate liable." Black & Geddes, Inc., 58 B.R. at 553; accord Integrated Resources, Inc., 157 B.R. at 70; Enron Corp., 298 B.R. at 520. If the claimant prevails on the first prong, the bankruptcy court must also determine whether it would be equitable to allow the amendment. Id. at 521; see Black & Geddes, Inc., 58 B.R. at 553. The equitable considerations include "(1) undue prejudice to the opposing party; (2) bad faith or dilatory behavior on the part of the claimant; (3) whether other creditors would receive *508 a windfall were the amendment not allowed; (4) whether other claimants might be harmed or prejudiced; (5) the justification for the inability to file the amended claim at the time the original claim was filed." McLean Indus., Inc., 121 B.R. at 708 (citations omitted); accord Integrated Resources, 157 B.R. at 70; Enron Corp., 298 B.R. at 521.
The first prong of the test permitting an amendment of a claim is basically the same as the test under Fed.R.Civ.P. 15(c) regarding the "relation back" of a later pleading to an earlier one.[5]E.g., Integrated Resources, Inc., 157 B.R. at 70; McLean Indus., Inc., 121 B.R. at 710; Enron Corp., 298 B.R. at 521. The court must decide whether there is a sufficient commonality of facts between the allegations relating to the two causes of action to preclude the claim of unfair surprise. Benfield v. Mocatta Metals Corp., 26 F.3d 19, 23 (2d Cir.1994). The court should also consider whether the defendant had notice of the claim now being asserted, and whether the plaintiff will rely on the same type of evidence to prove both claims. See id.; see generally 3 JAMES WM. MOORE, MOORE'S FEDERAL PRACTICE § 15.19[2], at 15-83 to 15-84 (3d ed.2004).
Here, the Avoidance Claims do not relate back to the Claim. They arose out of a different set of facts, and the Claim did not provide notice that they would be asserted. The Claim identified numerous instances in which Asia Global or Global Crossing, or both, prevented PCL from receiving what it was entitled to get. Except for the transfer of the Shima landing station, the gravamen of the Claim was that the officers and directors of Asia Global (and Global Crossing) used their positions as officers and directors of PCL to divert revenues, misallocate expenses, and withhold payments.
The Claim did not allege or imply that any of the revenues or expenses were diverted from funds in the possession of PCL. Furthermore, the Claim did not allege the type of facts, such as the financial condition of PCL at the time of transfers, that are key to an avoidance claim. Lastly, the Claim included a general damage claim of $677 million, but did not itemize the damages or attribute a specified amount of damages to a particular allegation of wrongdoing.
In contrast, the Avoidance Claims focus on six clearly identified instances in which PCL transferred property from its bank accounts to Asia Global. While a preference or fraudulent transfer may be a type of diversion, the Avoidance Claims refer to the diversion of money in PCL's possession while the Claim referred to a diversion of money that prevented PCL from ever gaining possession. Furthermore, the Avoidance Claims attribute a specific amount of damages to each transfer. Although these damages are less than the $677 million sought in both the Claim and the Amended Claim, it does not follow, as PCL seems to imply, that the Avoidance Claim damages were a part of the general and much larger damage claim. (See PCL's Response, at ¶ 24.)
Perhaps for this reason, PCL steers the discussion to ¶ 36, arguing that it referred to transfers of PCL's property within one year of PCL's bankruptcy. The text of *509 ¶ 36, however, did not even refer to "transfers." Instead, it alleged that Asia Global diverted revenues and monies for, among other things, the repayment of loans, and retained revenues as offsets for amounts allegedly due on account of management fees and expenses.[6] The clear import of ¶ 36, like the rest of the Claim, was that Asia Global prevented PCL from receiving monies to which it was entitled.
In fact, the only reference to "transfers" appeared in the caption or title above ¶ 36.[7] The caption states:
The Debtor Transferred Property of Claimants Within One Year of the Filing of the Claimants' Bankruptcy Petition.
It is not surprising, therefore, but nonetheless curious, that PCL points primarily to the caption rather than the text of ¶ 36 in support of the argument that the Claim provided notice of avoidance claims. (PCL's Response, at ¶ 18)(comparing the language in the caption preceding ¶ 36 to the language in 11 U.S.C. § 547(b)(4).) But even the relatively obscure caption refers only to transfers of the PCL's property made by Asia Global, not transfers made by PCL to Asia Global.
Two other factors support the conclusion that the amendment would unfairly surprise Asia Global. First, the trustee filed an objection to the Claim on or about December 22, 2003. (See Claim Objection, Ex. B.) The twenty-four page objection contested the allegations of misallocation and diversion but showed no awareness that the Claim included preference or fraudulent transfer claims. Furthermore, the extent of the trustee's comments to ¶ 36 were limited to the following:
86. The PC Companies assert that AGC diverted revenues due to the PC Companies within one year of the PC Companies Petition Date by repaying loans that AGC and its affiliates extended to the PC Companies and by retaining revenues as `offsets' to amounts due as management fees.
87 The PC Companies allege no facts in support of these assertions, and the Trustee is not aware of any such diversion of revenues through the repayment of loans, or the retention of revenues as an offset to amounts due to AGC as management fees.
These comments indicate that the trustee interpreted ¶ 36 literally, as an allegation that Asia Global repaid loans and management fees that PCL allegedly owed by retaining monies that it should have paid PCL, and not by causing PCL to transfer monies in PCL's possession. The trustee's interpretation was reasonable, given the substance of the allegations in the Claim and the failure to aver the facts required to prove a preference or fraudulent transfer claim.
Second, PCL must necessarily rely on different evidence to prove its breach of fiduciary duty claims and the Avoidance Claims. As noted, the former refer to transactions in which Asia Global prevented PCL from collecting money to which PCL was entitled. The latter concern transfers made by PCL from money in its possession. Beyond that, the preference claims require proof that the transfers were made on account of antecedent debts, not bogus debts, see 11 U.S.C. § 547(b)(1), that PCL was insolvent at the time of the transfer, 11 U.S.C. §§ 547(b)(3), and that *510 the transfers enabled Asia Global to receive more than it would receive if the transfers were never made, and instead, Asia Global received a distribution on its claim in a PCL chapter 7 bankruptcy. 11 U.S.C. § 547(b)(5). The constructive fraudulent transfer claims require proof that PCL did not receive reasonably equivalent value, and that at the time of the transfers, PCL was insolvent, left with unreasonably small capital or could not pay its debts as they matured. See 11 U.S.C. § 548(a).[8]
In conclusion, the Avoidance Claims are new and arise out of different transactions. The Claim did not provide notice of the Avoidance Claims, and the Avoidance Claims would require different proof from the common law breaches of fiduciary duty relating to the diversion and withholding of revenues and payments and the misallocation of expenses. Finally, the amendment would subject Asia Global to unfair surprise. The Avoidance Claims do not relate back to the filing of the Claim, and accordingly, I need not reach the equitable considerations under the second part of the test discussed earlier.
Settle order on notice.
NOTES
[1] Global Crossing and fifty-four of its subsidiaries filed chapter 11 petitions in this Court on January 28, 2002. PCL, an indirect, majority-owned subsidiary of Asia Global, together with four related entities, filed chapter 11 petitions in the Delaware bankruptcy court on July 19, 2002. Asia Global, an indirect subsidiary of Global Crossing, filed its chapter 11 petition in this Court on November 17, 2002. On June 10, 2003, the Asia Global chapter 11 case was converted to a chapter 7 proceeding, and Robert L. Geltzer is the chapter 7 trustee.
[2] A copy of the Claim is attached as Exhibit A to the Trustee's Motion to Expunge Pacific Crossing Ltd.'s Amended Proof of Claim, dated Feb. 18, 2005 ("Claim Objection") (ECF Doc. # 568.).
[3] A copy of the motion is attached to the Claim Objection as Ex. C.
[4] Section 546(a) states, in relevant part:
An action or proceeding under section 544, 545, 547, 548, or 553 of this title may not be commenced after the earlier of
(1) the later of
(A) 2 years after the entry of the order for relief. . . .
[5] Rule 15(c) states in pertinent part as follows:
An amendment of a pleading relates back to the date of the original pleading when
(1) relation back is permitted by the law that provides the statute of limitations applicable to the action, or (2) the claim or defense asserted in the amended pleading arose out of the conduct, transaction, or occurrence set forth or attempted to be set forth in the original pleading. . . .
[6] The Amended Claim does not allege that the offsets are avoidable under 11 U.S.C. § 553.
[7] The Claim also referred to "transfers" of PCL's property, without elaboration, in its recitation of the wrongs in ¶ 3. PCL's submissions do not attribute any significance to this reference.
[8] The Complaint also alleges claims under Delaware's fraudulent transfer law. Delaware has adopted the Uniform Fraudulent Transfer Act, which is based on the fraudulent transfer provisions of the Bankruptcy Code. Hence, the requirements are essentially the same.
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tomekkorbak/pile-curse-small
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FreeLaw
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iPhone App Sherpa: A Pal For Your Bills
When evaluating a new iPhone (Stock Quote: AAPL) application one of the toughest questions to weigh is whether you’ll actually use it. Or will it just become another download hidden in the back pages?
Bill Pal is one of the apps you’ll actually use. Actually, it’s a lifesaver. Ponder this scenario: “Is the electric bill due on the first of the month? Or is it the 9th? Wait, no, that’s when the cable bill is due. Oh no, I think my student loan payments are late!”
Does it sound familiar? Even if you are the most savvy automatic online bill payer or the most hardcore old-fashioned “mail-em-when-you-get-em” type, there is still a good chance you’ll forget about that one little bill that’s due tomorrow. Bill Pal helps you avoid these situations by keeping track of balances and their due dates.
Just plug in your account information, and then view your payment history and schedule in a handy little calendar setup. There are quite a few applications on the market with this purpose, but what separates Bill Pal from the rest is its extremely simple user interface.
This app has all the bases covered including health care, automotive, insurance, cable, rent, etc. You can even note when you’ve paid bills in full or just part of them. Bill Pal also comes with some handy filters that allow you to sort through data to find past, present or future bills.
Security is a major concern when dealing with billing information, but Bill Pal seems pretty legit. The program is password protected and plenty of users have good things to say on the iPhone app store.
However, one complaint I came across in user forums for this app was the lack of “push” or syncing ability to backup information on your home computer or to sync with a spouse’s bill payments.
Bill Pal is currently having a sale claiming the application’s 99-cent price tag takes into account an 83% discount. After struggling to remember some simple grade-school math, I found it hard to believe this download was previously selling for $5.82. Seems a little high for an intro price on an undiscovered application.
However this new 99-cent price seems about right. No details are available on how long this 83% discount sale will go on, so I’d recommend scooping this baby up pronto.
Summary
Application: Bill Pal for iPhone/ iPod Touch
Cost: $0.99 (After an ongoing 83% discount sale)
Use: Allows users to keep track of and pay bills in a simple, elegant calendar style.
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tomekkorbak/pile-curse-small
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Pile-CC
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AN ANCHOR BOOK
PUBLISHED BY DOUBLEDAY a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc. 1540 Broadway, New York, New York 10036
ANCHOR BOOKS, DOUBLEDAY, and the portrayal of an anchor are trademarks of Doubleday, a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc.
**Pure Slaughter Value** was originally published in hardcover by Doubleday in 1997. The Anchor Books edition is published by arrangement with Doubleday.
eBook design adapted from printed book design by Debbie Glasserman
These stories are works of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. Some of the stories in this collection have appeared, in slightly different form, in the following publications: "The Other Family" and "The Target Audience" in _The New Yorker_ and "Bad Stars" in _Might_.
The Library of Congress has cataloged the Doubleday hardcover edition of this work as follows:
Bingham, Robert.
Pure slaughter value.
p. cm.
PS3552.I496P8 1997
813′.54—dc21 96-39858
CIP
ISBN 978-0-385-48867-9
eBook ISBN 9781101971260
Copyright © 1992, 1995, 1996, 1997 by Robert Bingham
All Rights Reserved
First Anchor Books Trade Paperback Edition: June 1998
v4.1
a
> **For Lucy**
# **Contents**
_Cover_
_Title Page_
_Copyright_
_Dedication_
I'm Talking About Another House
This Is How a Woman Gets Hit
The Target Audience
Bad Stars
The Other Family
Plus One
Doubles
The Fixers
How Much for Ho Chi Minh?
Preexisting Condition
Marriage Is Murder
Reggae Nights
Pure Slaughter Value
_Acknowledgments_
# **I'm Talking About Another House**
Max Drake and his fiancée walked out of the terminal doors and stood in a cab line. They were on their way to a wedding in the midst of the worst heat wave in Chicago's history. It was early August and all over the city people were being found dead in their beds. The local paper was a body count. As for Amanda, there didn't look to be a high probability of her becoming a statistic. She was a tall, big-boned creature with excellent circulation. She wore summer linens and stood in front of Max baring the shoulder of her bra strap. They were booked in at the Ritz.
Soft Amanda was sweating red wine. Max, who had mixed various medicines the previous night, was dying. He clung to the guardrail and kicked his bag as if it were a dog. This was not a wedding he knew a thing about. He had never met the bride. He had never met the groom. They were her people, her friends. As for their own nuptials? They hadn't set a date. But for _this_ wedding Max had a plan. The plan involved a great kaleidoscope of social mayhem. The plan was to stay drunk for three days.
A lot of his friends were doing it. They were dying or getting married. A few were doing neither, but the margin was narrowing. Max did not want to die, but he viewed marriage as a kind of death. He was twenty-nine, Amanda thirty.
Amanda was "well off" in the cash department. She was a reporter for a respectably impoverished weekly. Her salary covered half their rent. Her dad took care of the rest. She had never paid an American Express bill in her life. That being said, she had been warned that membership had privileges that should perhaps not be leaned on in quite such an expensive fashion. Her Greek mother had given birth to a voluptuous raven-haired American girl with skin that suggested olive oil. She satisfied him deeply in bed. Max knew he would be a fool not to marry her.
They rode down the highway leading to the city in silence. Amanda had never been to Chicago. Max, who had some relatives living in the suburbs, had visited half a dozen times. He found the emerging skyline haunted with other women, with other times. It was a city they could never share equally.
The driver began to chat about the death toll. They were fortunate, he said. The worst was probably over. There was an interesting study under way in the paper. Blacks were getting hit the hardest. Ethnic groups with better lines of communication were suffering less. Elderly people needed someone to call besides a city ambulance. They needed family. They needed friends they could count on. Those with a network, those who could take preemptive action, were by and large being spared, those without were getting baked alive.
"What a nightmare," said Amanda.
"I'm glad your air-conditioner works," said Max.
Max had been ready for a ghost town. He had expected empty, steaming streets and a bunker mentality, but now at four o'clock in the afternoon the people of Chicago were out and about. Michigan Avenue was almost crowded. It was Friday. The wedding was to take place the next day in the cooler climes of southern Wisconsin.
"I'm telling you," said the driver. "You guys lucked out. Looks like you missed the worst of it."
"We'll see about that," said Amanda.
Two messages waited for her at the front desk. She was bridesmaid in the wedding, and reading the slips of paper in the elevator, she began to curse a Chicago company that charged outrageous sums for wedding apparel alterations.
"They take you hostage, these people," she said. "I hate this."
Max found women in the throws of neurotic wedding logistics reprimandably luscious. He gave his fiancée a kiss. It was heartily returned. He pressed his fiancée up against the elevator wall and stuck his tongue deep into her mouth. Then he shoved his hand up her linen blouse. The elevator dinged at their floor.
They mixed cocktails and made love. She was noisy and bountiful. Then she went into the bathroom to organize her cosmetics and toiletries. Max sipped his drink. Why, he thought, why would anyone want to throw this away? He made himself another drink and surveyed the movie list. Now she was in the shower. He considered going for the telephone but backed off. He read five pages of a biography of Attaturk. Then he switched to a novel. Then he turned on the television.
"I've got to go out and do these wedding errands with Larissa," she said over her blow dryer. "It's a hemline altering thing, a strategy session."
"Fine," said Max, who was not a fan of Larissa's. "When are you going to be back?"
"I don't know, maybe an hour, maybe more. Are you going to be OK here by yourself?"
"I'll be fine."
"You're sweet to come to this, you know."
"Oh," said Max, raising his drink. "I wouldn't miss it for the world."
"I'll see you soon," she said, kissing him goodbye.
"I might give Carl Mecklan a call," said Max.
"Just let me know if you make any plans," she said and was out the door.
He went for the breast pocket of his blazer, got out the envelope, and dialed the number. On the other end he got her mother. He did not identify himself.
"I'm going out," said the mom. "If you have a message for her, leave it on the machine. She calls in for them."
Earlier that summer Max had held two short international telephone conversations with the mom. He'd taken her pro forma politeness as thinly veiled hostility toward his intentions and background. Now he felt certain she had recognized his voice, and he felt peevish and vaguely criminal for not having announced himself. As for the mom, he knew only of her complicated marital résumé and that she taught anthropology at Northwestern University. According to her only daughter, Mom had "seen the '68 convention coming" and had wisely sat it out at home. If he were to leave a message now, she might dial the number just to see where he was staying. Though the mom did not seem the type to loiter about waiting for her daughter's messages, Max did not pick up the phone. He waited. The mom filled him with paranoia. Above all, he did not want her to know he was staying at the Ritz. He paced. He drank. He was becoming drunk now. He flossed his teeth with his fiancée's wax. Ten minutes later he left his message and returned to the bed.
For a while he became engrossed in a movie he had seen twice before. When the phone rang, he wasn't sure how long he'd been asleep.
"Hi," she said.
"What time is it?"
"I don't know."
"Where are you?"
"I'm on the street," she said.
"Really," he said, reaching for his drink. "What street might that be?"
"Are you drunk?" she asked. "Because if you're drunk, I don't know if I want..."
"No, I was asleep. I want to see you."
"Fine," she said. "Where should we meet?"
"I don't know, someplace I can see from my window."
"What can you see from your window that catches your eye?"
"Gucci," said Max. "I can see Gucci from my window."
"What an expensive window you must have."
"It's a fine window."
"Gucci in twenty minutes," she said.
He sat at the foot of the bed Amanda was paying for, planted his feet firmly on the carpet, and ground his right palm into his left eye. Then he placed his fingers gently over his face, breathed out, and wept. He threw on his blazer, snatched two twenty-dollar bills from the desk, and bolted from the room.
In the lobby Amanda was fiddling with a baby blue dress wrapped in dry-cleaning plastic. Max, who had completely ignored the elevator ride, now felt as if he were falling. He took immediate evasive action and found himself in a small hotel kiosk that sold candy and cigarettes, scarves, postcards, and so forth. He took his time buying two packs of his lover's favorite brand of cigarettes and some Tic-Tacs and walked out of that hotel a compromised man.
He had time yet, and so he walked down Michigan Avenue until he ran into the hotel his great-uncle had built. Max crunched a Tic-Tac and walked into the lobby of the Drake Hotel. His grandfather had never gotten along with his only brother, the mastermind behind the Drake. Max's branch of the family had trouble with the Chicago branch. They rarely visited anymore. For Max, the Drake was a source of sentimental bitterness. In the bar he'd once had a disgusting fight about money with his father. Never mind, the hotel had been sold to a chain and none of the proceeds had spread laterally to his father, not that his father would have given Max a cent if it had. The bar was almost cold and quite dark. Red candles wrapped in a web of white plastic sat on each drink-laden table. Max sat down at a bar stool and watched the clock. He'd have one drink, one drink, in memory of his great-uncle and arrive at Gucci on time. If she were late, that would be fine. He'd use it against her.
She wasn't late. From the sidewalk he could see her inside the store putting all the other shoppers to shame. Max paused at the curb, breathed out, and counted to ten backward. She was too beautiful to be counted on. Her beauty scared him. It was the fucking gold standard. She was the most exquisitely charismatic lunatic Max had ever met. She was twenty-three. She rioted all over his blood. In early June Max had flown to Chicago to see a college friend play Ted Bundy in a play about serial killers. He had collided with this girl at the cast party. She lived in a loft with six other people. The sheets had been bloody. Max did not know if she represented his salvation or his death.
She let him kiss her on the cheek.
"You know, I've been thinking," she said. "I'm glad you never bought those pink shoes even in jest, because if you had, you might be a real asshole right now."
"Oh my God," said Max. "The chorus from the powder room."
"I've taken out a new policy," she said.
"Yeah, what is it? A derivative pegged to the floating premiums on my health insurance policy?"
He loved to confuse her. Though they'd discussed the topic, she still had no idea what a derivative was.
"You're so shattered," she said, falling into his arms.
A salesman coughed.
"What's the new policy?"
"Brutal honesty."
"Did you finish _Heart of the Matter_?" he asked.
"Oh my God, it was so sad," she said. "Reading that book in this heat. It was so sad."
"May I help you two with anything?" asked the salesman.
"Yes," she said. "Mr. Drake here would like to try on a pair of your pink suede or patent-leather shoes. He's been hot for them ever since June."
"Nine and a half, please," said Max.
"Vultures," she said. "So many vultures. Can you believe how many vultures were in that book."
"A lot. He outdid himself with the vultures."
"I've got to go to dance class in half an hour."
"Fuck," said Max. "Let's get out of here."
He followed her off Michigan Avenue and down various streets that hinted of inebriated familiarity. They ended up at a restaurant beneath a raised highway. The manager kissed her, and they were shown to a smoking table in the back. Max ordered a vodka tonic. She had a Perrier.
"You look terrible. I'm serious, Max. You better watch yourself."
"I've got to go to the bathroom," he said.
She was right. The summer which had opened with such ebullience, with such riotous glamour and ecstatic promise, had now faded into a bitter zone of romantic exhaustion. He splashed water on his face and took a piss. The feeling was that of great vitamin deficiency.
She was talking to the manager when he came back to the table. They were introduced. He was a square man in a box suit who appeared to have graduated from a bouncer university in the sky.
"So you're the guy she flew off with," said the manager, clearly disappointed.
"Yeah," said Max. "I guess I am."
"What brings you back to Chicago?"
"A wedding."
"A wedding, huh?" said the manager.
"Yeah," said Max.
"Well," said the manager. "You two take care."
"Sorry about that," she said. "He goes way back with my dad."
Then she flipped her hair back and adjusted her posture upward in preparation for dance class. With his elbows on the table, her beauty arched over his hung head in a disciplined, scolding superiority that frightened him.
"So," she said. "Who's getting married?"
"I don't know."
"I thought it might be you," she said. "I thought you two were going to tie that ribbon around some tree in Lake Forest. Then I thought, God, in this heat?"
"I don't know who is getting married to whom, OK," said Max. "Somebody said there's a Persian involved."
All that summer he had been the soul of disclosure. They'd spent a week in Rome together. The volatility had been tremendous. He had told her everything. They'd be sitting in a sunny park, she'd ask him a simple question, and he'd rattle on in an overblown attempt to captivate her with his humor and wealth of experience. The idea had been to make her kneel before the force of his personality. June had found him at the top of his game. Now with her sober and dancing in time to the routine of her city, he felt cowed and defeated by her charisma. It was time to play defense.
He asked her about a Chicago literary magazine. She spoke of the sorry state of the theater scene. When she stood up to go, he felt certain he would never see her again. He panicked. He tried to stand up but the room began to disintegrate, and he was seized by an impulse to do something brash, foolish, and not in the long-term interest of romance.
"I'm meeting Sally later tonight at the Drake," she said, peeling his hands off the back of her neck. "I've got to go. I suggest you get some rest."
"What time?" he asked.
"What?"
She was nearly out the door now.
"What time are you meeting Sally at the Drake?"
"I don't know. Ten...I think."
He watched her cross the street. A car came screeching to a halt in front of her. The driver was livid. He'd come within inches. The guy was about to get out of his car when the manager rushed outside and stared him down. Then she and the manager conversed on the sidewalk. Max wished she had been hit and finished his drink.
"You know what?" said the manager, suddenly looming over the table. "I've known that girl since she was this tall, and what I've got to say to you is this: You fuck her over and there's going to be the city of Chicago to answer to. The drinks were on the house. Get out."
The people were strong here, and as he aimlessly walked the streets shell-shocked and dazed, he sensed her kinship with the city. The mom, the restaurant manager, there was a suggestion of a network of blood conspiring against him.
He walked in square circles around downtown Chicago for nearly an hour.
—
"Well, look what the cat dragged in," said Larissa, coming out of the bathroom.
Larissa was a thin blonde who displayed what she liked to call "claw-back" resilience in the drama of middle-management magazine shuffles. Max found her sexy and contemptible. She thought him an emotional dilettante for not marrying her friend. Larissa and Amanda were veterans of the wedding scene. Last year they had traveled to Argentina together in order to see their college roommate "lassoed" by a wealthy rancher twice her age. They'd gone on the wagon for a month after that one.
Max counted the champagne bottles. Amanda was staring out the window, and he walked up to her and kissed the back of her neck.
"Have you made dinner plans?" she asked.
"No," said Max, relieved to have Larissa in the room. "What have you guys been up to?"
"We've been getting altered," said Amanda to the window.
"Carl Mecklan says hi," said Max, warming up to weave his story. "I met him at the Drake, and then we went around the city in his dysfunctional convertible, fighting about the usual things, playing music. You know, but I tell you that guy has talent. He's fucking going places. _Drag City_ is thinking of going into publishing, and they just made him an offer..."
"Who is Carl Mecklan?" asked Larissa.
"He's a friend of mine who once played Ted Bundy and is now in the music industry. He doesn't fit your measurements."
"Max," said Amanda. "Carl Mecklan doesn't live in Chicago anymore. Last week he moved everything he owns to Pasadena. He's calling it a total love asset transplant."
"Maybe he drove back to visit his mother," offered Larissa.
Max poured himself a glass of champagne and almost vomited. Carbonation was not what he needed right now, and besides being caught in a lie, he sensed there was something else the girls weren't letting on to. Amanda moved from the window and sat down on the bed, fighting back tears with a tumbler of champagne.
"Do you ever want to build a house, Max?" she asked. " _Could_ you ever build a house? If you had to, if the Nazis were coming, could you make a home?"
"I'm sorry, sweetie," he said.
She began to weep. Now it was Max who was at the window.
"Did you have fun at Gucci?" asked Larissa. "You know, I've got to say at first I was sort of torn. My feet were killing me, so I went into Gucci and sat down on a couch. Then I almost left because I saw you, but I didn't know if I wanted to compromise this morally handicapped tableau unfolding in the downtown outlet. But then I said to myself, 'You know what? It's just a pig dancing with a whore. Why should I presume he will even notice me?' So I got these really expensive new shoes. Do you like them, Max? Check them out. They're pink patent-leather loafers."
"They're nice," said Max.
Amanda was on the telephone.
"Yes, a residence in Pasadena, for a Carl Mecklan?" She spelled the last name out loud for everyone to hear. Then she left an unpublishable message on Carl's machine.
"Vagrancy," said Larissa. "Men are under the illusion its next to godliness."
"Thing about Carl," said Amanda, whose tears had now given over to the emotion of the corkscrew. "He always keeps his E-mail coming, no matter who he's sleeping with, no matter what town he's in again for the first time. Did you know that, Max? Carl and I actually exchanged E-mail messages at work yesterday. I never knew he was so chatty."
"He sounds cute," said Larissa.
He could have put a halt to this. The scenario flashed through his mind. That girl in Gucci? She was an old high school girlfriend. They were like brother and sister now, for Christ's sake, how dare Larissa...But he couldn't force the outrage required to sustain a lie. He couldn't summon false rage because rage was the only emotion that was keeping him awake through this maudlin self-pity he hated himself for.
And as for this sewing circle before him, he saw its poorly hidden social ambition creep like a vine up a cancerous spine. These maidens-in-waiting of ceremony studying the wedding pages as a horse handicapper hits the tip sheets, they'd get what their expectations had coming to them. A house. Max had never owned a house. He did not know what it meant.
# **This Is How a Woman Gets Hit**
They cheated on each other. Now that was just the sad fact, but there was a difference in how it was done. While his flings lacked focus, she was singularly loyal to her affair. They'd been living together for three years and had grown skillful at dishing out abuse in a way that was quite memorable to both of them. On the morning this story breaks the telephone rang. She had a hang-up about the phone, and the hang-up was that she always had to pick it up before he did. From the bed he listened with his eyes closed. He knew her voices. It took about two years to learn them all. This was a what, where, and when conversation if he had ever heard one. Her lover was calling.
"Where are you having coffee?" he asked, sitting up in bed.
She was bent over at the waist with her head wrapped in a towel. When she stood up, her complexion was as red as the heart on the queen of all suits.
"Black it out, boy," she said. "Last night, black the thing right out so it'll never come back to you again."
Her southern accent, so often in remission, rose from the swamp of her youth to frighten him. She wore a pink nightgown and her dead grandmother's silk slippers.
"That must be the nice part about a real blackout," she continued. "The next day I can usually remember the salient points, but you...for you the humiliation is blank tape, isn't that about what it is?"
"Where are you having coffee?" he asked. "I need some coffee."
"You need a blood transfusion."
In the bathroom Ian Easley rummaged through her makeup bag for a Valium. Nothing. He dumped the contents onto the floor. A thin bottle of eyeliner shattered dully. He popped one of her birth control pills and got into the shower. Then he poked at his ribs. Some people, when they drank, got fat. He was getting skinny. He toweled himself off and shouted in the mirror, "If you loved me...If you loved me just the teeniest weeniest little bit, you'd tell me where you hid the Valium, Lidia."
She was dressed as if for an artist's funeral. Black tights, a mid-thigh flowery print skirt, black tank top, and shades on top of her head forming a headband.
"I wish Gida would stop making me have coffee with her in the West Village," she said. "It's like, 'I'm sorry, Gida, but why should I meet you at the corner of West Twelfth and Fourth Street? How in the world is that a corner?' "
By all accounts Gida was a terribly screwed-up girl. Her pets died awful deaths. People stole from her. From the ice-box her roommates pilfered food she labeled under her name. Recently someone had ripped off her calling card number and dialed numbers all over Nigeria. Her health insurance policy didn't cover abortions because of a "preexisting condition." Increasingly, Ian felt Gida did not exist, but perhaps he was being paranoid.
"What's wrong with Gida now?" he asked.
"You don't want to know."
"Come on, Lidia, I'm sure you can come up with something eccentric enough to appear plausible."
He had never voiced his suspicion of Gida's fictional qualities, and now a serene glee stretched itself inside him as he watched Lidia retreat into the kitchen. Had it not been her lover on the phone earlier? Was that not the voice she used with him? From there deduction followed. Gida was a front, a fraud, a lie. A triumphant shudder of justification squirreled through his bloodstream, jolting his hangover. He took Lidia's keys off the bedside table and slid them underneath the couch. Then he began to dress. He put on his father's button-down shirt. He strapped on his grandfather's watch. Both men were dead, and in putting on their possessions, he felt quite certain that he would soon be joining them. He put on his jeans but couldn't find a belt.
"Where are my keys?" she said. "I have to go."
He began to tear apart the closet searching for a belt. Then he tried rethinking last night's disrobing process. Coiled beneath the covers at the foot of the bed he found his pants and yanked the belt loose. Then he stood facing her. The buckle banged on the floor.
"How about we go get a cup of coffee, Lidia."
"I wasn't a tenth as drunk as you were last night so I remember where I put my keys," she said. "I put my keys on the bedside table here. It's a habit of mine you should monkey off of some day."
"Let's go get some coffee, Lidia."
"No, let's play Mr. Logical Deduction. The game works like this. If my keys aren't on the table where I left them, and I know I didn't move them this morning, then Mr. Logic says this, he says, 'Who else in the apartment could be an agent of displacement?' "
"Maybe it was the ghost of Gida's cat," he said.
She glared at him in silence.
"I don't know where your keys are," he said. "But I have mine. Isn't that unusual? I've got my keys and you've lost yours."
"Shit," she said, looking at her watch. Then she began to scurry around the apartment.
She had a low center of gravity and wonderful breasts. As for her face? It was beautiful, but he'd exhausted her features. Still, it was not a fallen face despite the gray half-moons beneath her eyes. She liked to stab things in her bun of hair—snapped knitting needles, wooden letter openers. Today she had a yellow number-two pencil in her hair which meant she meant business. Ian watched the dirty pink eraser move around the apartment. When he had his sneakers on, he found her keys for her.
"They were right _here_ ," he said, pointing down accusingly. "Right here under the couch pillow."
"You know what? You're turning me into a bitch, do you know that? I have no choice with you. It's survival of the bitchiest. Do you want a Valium? You're right. You do need a Valium."
"Thank you," he said.
She opened a sugar bowl hidden behind the cereal boxes.
"Blue or yellow?"
"Blue, please."
"There aren't many blues left."
"Blue, please."
"Here."
He swallowed it dry.
"Ian, why don't you go back to bed. Look, when I'm gone, you can go down and rent a porno movie and order out Indian. Isn't that what you like to do on a hangover?"
She had a point there. Why fight? Soon the Valium would begin to work on his rattled nerves, and then while he was waiting for his Chicken Vindaloo, he could dip down to the video store and rent something fairly hard-core to accompany _The Guns of Navarone_. He could get rid of it, switch tapes, and by the time his food had arrived, he'd be sunk in her bed soothed by the opening Technicolor credits of his favorite war movie. But that cushy scenario spelled defeat. He would take her drugs but not her recommendation, not today. Today it was the lie he was after, that was all he wanted from her, admission and confirmation of her deceit.
He followed her down the stairs and out onto the street. Her back, her nice ass, they hated him, but he had his keys and wasn't going to be drugged into submission. It was late September, but summer still loitered in the city. A hot wind blew westward from the river. She was a conniving cheat, and with the wind came a crusading zeal of inquisition. His blood was riding a great tide of righteousness the Valium couldn't hope to compete with.
Lidia stood on the street corner with her hand raised for a cab, certain that she had never disliked this young man more than at this very moment. With his pathetic mop of wet hair and unwelcome paranoia, he was nothing but a naked appetite digging its way deeper and deeper into her disfavor. For a moment she reached for the three men in her life. Ian was the disaster of her present. Her old boyfriend, the one on the phone earlier, he was the nostalgia of her past. Her current lover, the one sadly _not_ on the phone, well, that one was easy. He was the thrill of the future. And what was so wrong with that? Was she supposed to cancel her past and discount her future in the face of this present?
"You know he's my friend too," Ian shouted into the wind. "I mean, I was friends with the guy before you two ever started fucking behind my back."
If only her lover _had_ called, but he hadn't. Instead the coffee date was with her old boyfriend, visiting from another state. He was due to be married soon. In fact, Lidia had introduced him to his current fiancée. Marriage, it was an event, considering her life, that seemed sadly out of range. Still, her date with this old flame, it was harmless enough, depressively touching, nothing more. She wished she had told Ian the truth about whom she was meeting, but instead she'd lied out of reflex. And whose fault was it, if out of a habit that was just as much his doing as hers, she'd twitched away from his annoying little queries.
"Ian, I'm going alone, so please," she said. "Please go home. For me, now, just this once. Go home."
"But I've always wanted to meet Gida. If you two have some extra special feminine business to take care of, you know, menstrual cycles and boyfriend bitching, I can just shake her hand, have one shot of espresso, and leave."
"Please."
There were no cabs in sight and for a moment she was stung with a hatred for her neighborhood, its shabby poverty, its drugs, its lack of daytime taxis. She decided to walk to another avenue. He followed. It was incredible. He was either drunk and oblivious to her or so smothering with his rancorous attention that his company was unbearable. She turned to face him, to tell him off, but in turning, a cab's vacant light caught her eye and she leaped out into the street. A bicycle messenger swerved to miss her, skidded, and collapsed on the sidewalk. The cab stopped. The street froze.
"I wouldn't get in that cab if I were you," said Ian. "Not until you say, 'There's no Gida.' Say it and then you can go, say it. Say, 'There is no Gida.' "
As she reached to open the door, Ian spun her shoulder around. Now her back was pressed against the closed cab door. How many times had she flailed her fists at him in the physical feminine luxury of all-out abandon, scratching at his face and crying, and how many times had _he_ hit the last wall of self-restraint, his fist raised and then checked by an unspoken code of behavior? He reached for it now, the last shade of pride, but found only a color and that color was red. So this is how a woman gets hit. It was effortless. With both fists he caught her beneath the armpits and tossed her in the air. Lidia's head whiplashed against the roof of the cab. She collapsed onto the curb.
The bike messenger, his whistle still stuck in his mouth, threw a roundhouse swing that caught Ian in the ear, but he did not fall. He ran down the block. He took a left. He took a right. He found himself in a deeply Hispanic neighborhood and dipped into a bodega. There was beer, butane, and cut-rate cigarettes. A police car passed in the street but it was not for him. As if filtered through a seashell, the sounds of the maddening city roared through his ear. He paced. While pretending to shop, he pictured the basement of her building. It was nice and moist down there, filled with an industrial heat. On the janitor's utility sink he saw himself with a belt around his neck, but the image only sprung in him the beginnings of an erection. He bought a forty-ounce bottle of malt liquor beer.
Ian wandered the neighborhood. It would be cool, he decided, if someone tried to fuck with him, and he scanned the street for a young drug dealer to humiliate. He was ready for a fight. A dealer with peach fuzz riding a bicycle, it would be nice to break the kid's nose and steal his drugs. Ian walked down the middle of the sidewalk. People got out of his way. He walked and walked until he found himself in front of the video store. On a nearby tenement doorstep he rested. His beer was nearly empty, and he dug in his pocket and pulled out a badly mangled pack of cigarettes and a lighter he did not recognize. There was one cigarette left over from last night. He took this as a sign but what the sign meant he did not know. The cigarette was crooked, losing tobacco, thoroughly like himself, slightly moist. He lit it, took a long drag, and made a plan. There was vodka in the freezer, and now he knew where she kept the Valium. Already he was thrilled. All the ingredients for a recovery were there. He decided to make a party of it.
# **The Target Audience**
La Guardia in the hot center of a New York City summer is something I'm secretly terrified of, and outside the terminal two helicopters crossed over the airport hotels. They went _cut, cut, cut, cut, cut_. I missed the four-thirty Delta shuttle by two minutes. Trump, Delta, the corporate obituary of the once reliable Eastern shuttle, the bankruptcies and timetable changeovers: all of it mangled my mind, and as I sat down in the Marine Terminal there was only one word for it: obscene.
The law is a service industry that never stops, and in this weather I've got to watch myself so that something terrible doesn't happen to me. I was wearing a light-blue suit with shoulder padding I despised, a white shirt, and a tasteful tie. I'm a pretty competent lawyer when I can concentrate, but it's no trade secret that I prefer doing my legal work in New York. "Let the client change in Pittsburgh" is my motto. Handhold them right into the conference room, where our climate control is superb.
The vaulted stone dome of the Marine Terminal marginally calmed me, but at the same time that malicious bastard I can be flowered in my heart. I wasn't going to give Trump the business at five. My meeting wasn't until the next day, so all this mental harassment the shuttle had provided was in fact immaterial.
I chased a Xanax down with a beer at the concession stand. It didn't take long, and it rarely does with me; my fleeting anxiety slid into a warm, municipal beneficence. The lemonish indoor light filtered down on the handful of waiting passengers, and the air was redolent of pending margin calls and the promise of a corporate restructuring. I'm in debt, too. My father picked up my college tuition, but in law school I was on my own. Bankruptcy law has its pathos, and when it passed my way during my first-year rotation at the firm, I came close to practicing it permanently.
Anyway, two and a half years out, and I'm still in the hole, and I'm not speaking of the wife and kid, because I have neither. I do own stock in a small-cap maternity-clothing line called Mothers Work, Inc., which has performed quite well over the years. Real estate is what hurt me. I took a mortgage out on a condominium near the West Side Highway at the wrong time, and then there are the maintenance payments, which make you wonder why you ever bought in the first place. Still, I live pretty well in the Caravelle. For instance, the building, with the help of the board—I became a member when they needed a notary—has organized its own shuttle-van service, which runs the long avenue blocks, eastward, to the 1 and 9 subway line. I'm a regular. The papers are folded on the plush seats, and another regular rider is a woman with Bear, Stearns whom I've developed a masturbatory attraction for. She's nice and plump, and, when I'm going through a dry spell, I have her down on her hands and knees in my mind. The problem is, we have one rule on the van—no talking. It's been two years now, and Miss Bear, Stearns and I haven't even made eye contact.
I read an article on closed-end mutual-fund performances in _Money_ magazine and made a call to the secretary I share with two other associates. There were no messages. I read over a prospectus, but after a while I began to daydream and people-watch. The black company cars and yellow cabs pulled into that comfy little cul-de-sac near the swinging terminal door, offering up the five-thirty Delta-shuttle passengers—dazed yet earnest, purposefully relaxed, real pros. I sat there taking in the uneven stream of the white-collar world, the women in linens, the men a picture of distracted formality. And you never know when a seismic coincidence may hit your number: I thought there was something familiar in the way she shook her hair as she got out of the cab. Familiar, yes, the handbag—and, well, if it wasn't Vivian Tate, the girl I shot in the leg at boarding school.
What a makeover. The colorized copper hair, that amazing nose, the eyes that even from a distance seemed to have visibly narrowed since her youth. The killer body. (I could just picture that sculpted butt, forged, no doubt, in endless repetitions of that hind-leg kicking motion in aerobics class.) A few weeks back I had heard she was at Silverman, Bahr, and now it was as if that tidbit, offered one morning by a colleague well versed in the problems of my high school career—after I'd gone for years without hearing anything about Vivian—had jump-started the event unfolding before my eyes.
Historically, Silverman has never been a client of ours, but recently Bangs, Barlowe & Crumb dropped the ball on an important matter for them, and as a result, I'd heard, they'd been bringing some of their securities work to us. The news disturbed me, because the thought of representing Vivian in an initial public offering was frankly too much for me. As she began her migration across the rotunda—it was a perfect tracking shot from where I sat—I considered the statute of limitations on a crime that had been carried out at the height of my adolescence. I shot her in the leg with a pellet gun during my sixth-form year, and though I only meant to sting her, it happened that a piece of reinforcement metal had to be surgically clamped to her tibia. This shooting was not a matter I delved into when I passed the Bar, and there were never any official charges leveled against me.
Now she was only a few yards from my chair, and her sharpened profile had that latent air of feminine hostility, the look of a businesswoman on the rag and on the move. But there was something more there than the usual fendoffishness. She was on a mission, and she wasn't going to Boston, either. She was on a dirty errand to Washington and, come to think of it, so was I.
I was helping a group of offshoots from the Corcoran Gallery set up a 501 (C)(3) nonprofit corporation. The Corcoran is something of a social client for the firm. In fact, I don't know why they use us at all, since there are plenty of Washington offices to choose from, but apparently it has something to do with J. Carter Brown, the Democratic Party, and a future seat on the Brookings Institution for a senior partner readying himself to be sent out to pasture. What do our practically pro-bono billing hours for the Corcoran have to do with the Brookings? I have no idea. That's all up there in partner land. The point is I'm beginning a new life, trying to get it together and not be such a criminal in the minds of others. In fact, the notion of me as an attorney is confusing to many of my old high school friends. In one department—the achievement-in-the-real-world department—I am a barometer of reform, and I like to see how it confuses my friends from the old days. They're not sure if it's the world that's changed or me.
I tailed Vivian into the ticket-sales area. She was wearing a pewter-colored skirt with a gold lining peeking out at the hem, which shimmied up and down her mid-thigh as she moved, a white blouse under a tailored black jacket, and pearls, gold earrings, and one of those bracelets as thick as a cobra with a rat in its stomach. When she stopped short at an automated ticketing machine, I joined her, and I'm embarrassed to say the chorus from a Hall and Oates song—"Whoa, here she comes" (it's called "Maneater")—raced through my mind as the two of us stood there operating our machines in nearly simultaneous computer palpitations, her gold American Express card inserted parallel to my green, our fingertips walking the walk, she a step ahead with the Delta Airlines screen shedding its electric-blue light on our faces. A late payment on my American Express bill came to mind, and for a moment I was stabbed by a sense of financial impotence; I was on the cliff's edge staring down at credit-card defeat. But the joyous clicking sound of credit approval followed, and the ticket spouted into my hand.
Vivian was at least six steps in front of me, headed for the security check. Apparently, I had no effect whatsoever on her peripheral vision, or perhaps her peripheral vision was not highly advanced, but more likely than not she had become a good blanket judge of character, and had sensed beside her just another burned-out attorney carrying that telltale briefcase around like a ball and chain. Women of her caliber have so much to keep at bay—and I'm thirty-one now and much fatter than I was in boarding school. My cheeks have ballooned out from booze, and my maid complains about excavating my shower drain because of the continual hair loss.
But I had forgotten what a sexy, clubby affair the shuttle is. I was always amused by the chic nonchalance of the men and women one-hipping their ticket-line stance, the mild players in the mutual-fund world, the lawyers like me, all of us half-expecting a celebrity-CEO spotting. We were ignoring one another as usual and migrating uphill toward the free newspapers and magazines—for we are, after all, the target audience. Approaching the security check, Vivian heaved that bale of hair over her shoulder in a kind of progress-achieved gesture that I appreciated. She had the trademark insolence—the bitchy, assumed equestrian grace—mixed in with the flashy hustle of Wall Street liquidity. But I didn't care. She was a corporate jewel, my victim, and as I tracked her every move a compounded sense of disoriented wonder filled my life.
—
Why had I shot Vivian Tate? The haughtiness we all put on back then? Well, the world has rubbed it off our faces by now, I hope. But Vivian was one of the shining turncoats—that select group of control addicts who accepted positions on the Discipline committee to cash in on faculty insinuations that they would receive high recommendations for college. Members of this select group were known as "narcs," and would actually sit _with_ the faculty, in the same _row_ of desks, and vote you out of a high school career. Vivian was also a chapel-attendance bean counter, who paced the side aisles of the church, checking form lists like a reverent meter maid. Add that to her hand in the expulsion of two close friends of mine during our fifth-form year, and basically you could say the acrimony between us, by the spring of our final semester, had ratcheted itself up into a glorious boarding-school red zone. The problem was she was arguably the best-looking girl in the school.
I was two men behind her when she set off the metal detector. Vivian whisked off her clip-on earrings and her bracelet, backed up, and walked through again. The metal detector sounded, and, lightly stomping her foot, for this was not progress achieved, my victim said, "I have this tiny piece of metal in my leg. It's so maddening, because it's just enough to set these things off."
There was a pregnant silence: the impatience of the pack. A man behind me coughed and blew his nose, and I could hear newspapers being ruffled to jump pages in the background.
"Isn't there someone with one of those thingies, those..."
But a security guard with a handheld metal detector was already on the scene, and I fingered my penis in my pocket, standing the thing upright as I watched her lift her arms, hostage-like, for this shakedown—a form of suffering I could, in a sense, be held responsible for because of my actions so many years ago.
I can still feel the serrated plastic handle of that pump gun as I stuck it out the window of my second-story dormitory room. My friend Charley and a crazy exchange student from Venezuela and some others, the usual black-lung crowd, were loading up the six-shooter bong that rotated little hit-bowls—one, two, three, four, five, round and round we went in rapid THC fire, cranking "Love You Live" and hurling insults at one another. We were about to graduate, and I guess in the zeal of my loathing for the Harvard-bound Vivian Tate I pumped that gun up a few too many times. The sun magnified through the scope blessed the school's emerald lawns as I scanned them for a target, and when she came around a corner into my sights, it was a hateful marriage... _Puhhf_. She crumpled to the ground outside the fives court without a word.
Assault with a deadly weapon, assault with intent to injure. The headmaster was given two weeks to expel the perpetrator or the local police department would have no alternative but to conduct its own investigation. It was a witch-hunt of the first order, and since many of the younger faculty members were in fact dressed-up agents of the peace generation, it touched off a lot of soul-searching that was so sickening I just don't want to get into it now.
I didn't last long (and neither did Charley, who was later thrown out for lying in my behalf). One afternoon, I called my dad in tears. We loaded up the station wagon in the middle of the night, and I left that school forever. I did a post-grad year at an all-boys school in New Jersey that I'm still trying to forget, and now here I am, sitting next to my victim on the five-thirty Delta shuttle. We're drinking.
"I was just telling my ex about you on the phone the other night," she said. "He's still a caller, you know what I mean? I said to him, 'Carl, for Christ's sake, I thought you would understand what a restraining order entails.' "
In the half-pasteurized air of the boarding lounge, where the mouth of the plane came into view, I had tapped her shoulder. Outside, sheets of jet fuel reflected the comings and goings of the hybrid airport vehicles.
"Christ, it's you," she said. "Alex."
"Uh-huh."
I was watching the baggage riding up the loading ramp, and as she turned to face me, her familiar features triggered a fearful lust in my chest.
Now, snug near the back of the plane, she stole drinks. The first one was complimentary. Then she pilfered from the cart. That sent me; so wonderfully juvenile, the way she pulled those tiny airplane bottles from her oversized handbag on the way back from the bathroom.
"May I see it?" I said.
"Yes, you may," she replied, wearily hitching up her skirt as if she were displaying a tattoo.
"You actually left something in me, which is more than I can say for most men."
Outside the plane, the early evening sun was an orange disk above a bank of white clouds. Vivian's Bloody Mary was nice and sloppy. She didn't stir it, just let a pond of vodka float on blood, and when she hiked up her skirt for me, my view of her scar—a bumpy stretch of what looked like melted plastic—was partially cropped by the gold of her skirt lining.
"I was wondering about your statute of limitations in terms of any potential damages you might care to seek," I said.
"Uhhm," she said, nodding and leaving a stain of red on the brow of her lip. "I suppose I should sue you."
"May I touch it?"
"You may," she said.
Sitting there on the shuttle, getting tanked with my victim: now that's what I call burying the hatchet.
"So," I said, trying to muster a kind of casual ski-lift bonhomie. "What is Silverman, Bahr doing in Washington?"
"I could tell you, but I'd have to kill you," she sang back at me.
"Spare me, Vivian," I said. "What, are you shaking down Greenspan's boys for interest-rate information?"
The plane began its descent, and the conversation came to a loaded pause, with the two of us sitting there unbuckled, the empty middle seat suggesting a future, she with her pretty suede flats half kicked off, and a halo of bosses and stray clients she'd secretly slept with hanging above us in a stratosphere of money and intrigue. Her handbag was open on the seat between us, and I glimpsed the spine of Edith Wharton's collected ghost stories wedged between manila folders and God knows what else.
—
"So what do you think of me now?" I asked.
We were waiting in the cab line at National Airport, which refused to move, squinting at each other through an awful Washington heat.
"I think the men at your firm are not half bad-looking, and they do their job. What I mean is, they're good at what they do, and I appreciate that. I assume, therefore, that you are good at what you do, and frankly I'm surprised, because you used to be so—I don't know...so greasy. But give a guy a few years, and you never know. The outcome is sometimes impossible to predict, sometimes inevitable. Are you listening to me?"
"Yes, Vivian."
"There's that, and the fact that you have a problem with women, and a problem with guns. You have a problem with women and guns and now, hello, all of a sudden you're a corporate lawyer."
Finally the cabs were coming.
"But that rat still runs your heart," she went on. "What do you think of me?"
"I have a policy," I said. We got into a black Alexandria cab.
"That must be new for you," she said, slamming the door. "I don't remember any policy."
"Here's the policy. I'm a lawyer, but I don't mix with narcs."
"That's too bad, you might learn something." Then, to the driver, she said, "1919 Connecticut. The Hilton." She turned back to me. "I don't associate with emotional delinquents in suits. How did you ever pass the—what do they call it? The moral-fitness section of the bar exam?"
"The review by the Committee on Character and Fitness? My friends lied for me."
Her meeting wasn't until the next morning. My meeting wasn't until the next morning. Our Alexandria cab took the long way, and together we gazed silently at the mostly vacant Virginia real estate that reflected a blue summer light.
"See this place—it's like Houston," she said. "Something like a thirty-five-percent occupancy rate. They went bananas a few years ago, then the crash, and now—what do you know? The lawyers get called in, and they're restructuring, refinancing, the works."
The air-conditioning in the cab was broken, and its beige plastic seats made my groin sweat. We turned on the driver. Why didn't he have a meter, and what the fuck was wrong with this city anyway, that you couldn't find a cab with a meter? We commiserated, showing our colors about the superiority of our city's taxis: even if they don't know where they are going, we told each other, at least they have meters. Vivian said it was all a District scam, and she told our driver where he could take his count. As we crossed Key Bridge and hit M Street traffic, our thighs touched. Then a little storm cloud of preoccupation passed over Vivian's face, and, watching her squint out the window, I suddenly felt the distracting presence of her deal in the making: "I could tell you, but I'd have to kill you." I stared out the window on my side and thought that if I was going to sleep with her I would have to get to the bottom of her Washington mess.
"Now you're supposed to reach up like you're yawning and put your arm across the back of the seat behind me," she said.
"I need a drink," I shot back.
She forced the driver off the road at a place called Dixie Liquors, and when she was out of the cab I went for the manila folders inside her bag. One was marked "SEC," and inside it was a deposition request with a yellow highlighted section that read, "This request should not be construed as an adverse reflection upon any person, entity or security or as an indication by the Commission that any violation of the law has necessarily occurred."
Second folder was a bust—just some IPO material; but the third, marked by a tiny yellow Post-it, was what I was after. It contained a handwritten letter on unmarked stationery, which read, "Vivian, here is a list of target companies for T.Z. They are: Tektar, Gamtrex, Colvan. As per our discussion Tuesday, avoid any overt quid pro quo for this takeover information. Instead impress upon T.Z. the fact that Silverman's contributions to candidates over this election cycle have no bearing on our municipal-bond dept. and _do not_ merit the kind of negative _Journal_ story we know he's working on. I don't have to remind you that publicity of this nature would—"
She was coming out of the liquor store. Luckily, a vicious sundown was in her eyes, and I was able to tuck the folders back into her bag. I was tying my shoes when she got into the cab.
—
A brass-handled, marbleized, nominally Southern hotel bar is an efficient place in which to drink vodka, and on our second double Vivian said, "You know, I'm sorry about your friends. Throwing them out, I mean. What were their names again?"
"You should be. They both ended up getting really well-rounded educations. Fritz did his thesis on the history of the boomerang."
"Well, that's not my fault, is it?"
"As far as I'm concerned, you have blood on your hands, Vivian, and it will come back round to you."
We both laughed.
"I'm sorry," she said. "It was a control thing. I got over it a few years ago. I think it had something to do with...something to do with food, but I'm over it now."
"Well," I said, raising my glass. "Welcome to the meal."
Men in tuxedos began filtering into the bar. They were slender; many wore rimless glasses; some had dates. Apparently they were all attendees of the White House Correspondents' Association annual dinner. I took a long drink and gazed at the cheap candlelit cherrywood heartiness bathing their faces, and it came to me: What better place to offer up names of targeted takeover companies in exchange for the squelching of one of those wicked _Wall Street Journal_ hatchet jobs than here, at ground zero, in Washington? Well, what did they expect, with the salary the average reporter makes? This T.Z. was probably lucky to make forty grand before taxes, and then there was the world of high finance he had to move through. Still, it was pretty sickening, and for a moment I leaned back in my chair and considered blowing her off. After all, wasn't she the same bitch she'd been in high school, merely moving through the center of a different injustice?
"I've got fifteen minutes before I'm supposed to meet someone here," Vivian was saying. "Do you mind if we take a walk? You know, this is the hotel Reagan was shot outside of."
On our way out, she paid a porter ten dollars to lead us to the side utility exit that the Great Communicator had used on that fateful day. We stood at the foot of the building in the heat. It was getting dark. But as I moved to kiss her, Vivian turned her head and displayed her neck tendons, made a sniffing face, and, right before contact, crumpled to the sidewalk. The contents of her black bag spilled out on the pavement, and this time the sight of it all filled me with a drunken paternal love. As I leaned over to scoop up the cosmetics and paperwork, decorously holding my tie into my suit (a sure sign of drunkenness for me), Vivian reached for her leg in feigned pain.
"I'm shot. I've been shot," she cried.
"There's something here from the Securities and Exchange Commission," I said. "I suggest you start getting into compliance, Vivian. You can start by standing up."
"Oh, for God's sake, please don't read that," she said.
Down the street, a man with a red turban walked out of a basement souvlaki restaurant and stared at us.
"Get up, Vivian, for Christ's sake. You'd be nowhere without Reagan."
Then, from a police-car window, a cop said, "Lady, are you staying at the hotel? Because if you are, if you're registered at the hotel, I strongly recommend you return to your room."
I flashed my key and seized Vivian by the armpits. "He shot me, you know," said Vivian to the cop. "The bastard shot me, and now we're going to be pressing some charges, aren't we, Alex? We're going to be pressing some charges."
"I see you two outside again in this shape, I'm slapping you both with a D.C. And that doesn't stand for the District of Columbia. Understand?"
The muffled sounds of great applause came from the adjoining room as we walked back into the bar. The President was in mid-address, and some tuxedoed attendees and, probably, opposition-party malcontents were having an openly defiant mid-dinner drink. They seemed quite dignified for journalists, but, then again, maybe they were congressmen or Hill staffers. Two out of five had the salt-and-pepper hair, and were no doubt drinking good bourbon—the Jason Robards thing—and three younger ones with wineglasses were laughing nervously, trying to please.
"I'm looking for the guy with the compromised face, but everyone seems to have this Three-Mile-Island grin," I said to Vivian. "Maybe he's in the other room with the President."
"Look," she said. "I'm going to have to ask you to skedaddle when he comes. Not that you look like a lawyer. I'm not saying that—that you look like a lawyer. Oh, my God, here he is, keep walking."
From behind a creased blue curtain mysteriously joined to the main dining room came T.Z. On his lapel was an oversized lamination, which he whisked off and gingerly placed in his pocket. His youthful, educated face and horn-rimmed glasses could not hide what I took to be the lurking financial disorder written in his features. I peeled away from Vivian's side and said to him in passing, "Missing the President's speech?"
"Excuse me?" I heard him say, and then came the double take and the tap on the shoulder. "No, no...excuse me, uh, how do you know Vivian?" His little worm face was right up against mine, seething with professional paranoia.
"I'm her broker," I said and marched into the lobby.
In the bathroom, I washed my face and drank some water, washed my face again, and pissed. Then I sat in the stall. It was a filthy world out there, and I went out to the souvlaki restaurant for a slice of pizza.
—
The doors to the main dining room were flung open, and I caught a frontal glimpse of the President beyond the metal detectors and drooping velvet ropes. He was perched at a raised table—flanked last-supper style by celebrity journalists, his glinting fork plunged into an invisible dessert. People were standing up now in the twilight of the dinner, schmoozing from table to table, some with their pigeon ears cocked sideways to their partners' feeding lips. Vivian was alone in the barroom, which I now saw was in fact the same room, separated by curtains and a rolling partition wall.
"I'm a whore," she said as I sat down.
"Really? I'm taking a survey."
The bar was disconcertingly bright, and though the red webbed candle holder in front of us shed very little light, we hunkered down to it as if we were in deep darkness.
"Are you in PR?" I asked.
"Damage control. Is that part of the survey?"
"Maybe."
"Alex, I thought we were operating on a need-to-know basis here."
"OK, fine, fine. But I didn't need to know you were a whore."
"This is the last time. I'm going to tell Bob I don't need this anymore, and I'm going to tell him tomorrow. He can just—"
"You're getting me off my survey question," I said. "And deviating from our need to know."
A gutter laugh from my victim.
"Does your date cover arbitrage?" I asked. "Does he write about the next company targeted for takeover?"
"He's doing a campaign-finance story on our bond department. We give a heap of money to elected road builders, I don't know. He's broke, but not as broke as I thought—not desperate broke."
"OK, OK. I'm taking a survey?"
"Shoot."
I was drowning in the pooled depths of a great flirtation. The vodka, the light, the pull of the declining ceremony next door, the partisan aura of the tuxedoed malcontents—for a moment the atmosphere swept away any objections I had to Vivian's task, and I was staring into the thing itself, the black hole of business in America.
"Here's the survey. They talk about 'tabling' summer associates at the firm. It's a sexual rite of passage that's beyond me. My feeling is, Go get a hotel room, for God's sake, you know? But there's one good one this year, and she's about to leave. What I'm asking you, Vivian, is would you lose all respect for me if I used undue leverage and tabled a summer associate?"
"You've never been tabled?" she shot back at me. "There was this one guy once. A big deal, very complicated." She waved her hand. "We tabled."
She _had_ changed. Her crooked smile, her filthy errand—it had all turned a corner for her and become an essential hunger. The good-girl shame she had been suckled on had dissipated, and as we stood up I knew we had a deal. Together we went to look for a secret table at the Hilton, and it wasn't long before we found one.
# **Bad Stars**
Listen to this. Mr. Killgore was hit by a trolley car while he was crossing a street in Budapest. He was a lawyer who forgot to look both ways, and the lead car humming along in electrical near silence nailed him. Nothing was broken but his head. He did not die, but he caught the whole thing in the head and once he got back to the States the doctors...Well, they said he probably never knew what hit him. Now this whole event wouldn't concern me except I have never been a very faithful boyfriend to the man's daughter, Cynthia. We've been going out forever, don't even ask me how long, but for your own information it's somewhere between three and five years depending on how you count the breakups.
After her father's accident, she wanted to do it. How is it said? Go the distance. She wanted to get married. Bam. That simple. She said she caught a _glimmer_. I said, what? A glimmer of what? She said she didn't know, and as they say at the law firm where she works, I didn't pursue the matter. Brush with death, the fleetingness of it all, I guess it can speed up the mating process.
Before the accident, Killgore had a habit of hurling supper plates at his wife, Dumpling, and he enjoyed dressing down his daughters' dinner table guests.
"So what I'm hearing is you are one step forwarding, two step backing into a nothing career, is that what you are trying to communicate?"
Each morning Killgore was dressed by a Sikh attendant named Amir. In his gray flannels, white button-down shirt, and a homey navy blue cardigan sweater, he exuded the informal air of an impending weekend office visit, but actually he was an idiot who tended to stray like a dog.
The dawn of his legal dream had been blotted out by a millisecond of a miscalculation, and he was left to reenact an office pantomime of paper shuffling. Though he could not tie his own shoes, he still gave off a hint of his former legal earnestness, still managing the impression that someone was leaning on him for extremely expensive legal advice.
Killgore was a man of habit and the accident had the funny effect of reinforcing some rituals while discarding others. For instance, though he could not identify himself, he never left the apartment without sweeping his keys and spare change off his dresser. In the kitchen he'd stare at the _Times_ sometimes upside down, sometimes right side up, sometimes upside down, like flipping a coin.
One day Killgore strayed into the Mount Sinai medical supply cabinet.
"Excuse me, sir, I'm not sure how you got in here, but that is the hospital's Haldol you're handling."
Mount Sinai had been a particularly embarrassing episode, and soon afterward, Dumpling had no choice but to hire Amir to see that it not happen again. Amir slept on the cot in the television room, and for relief I liked to smoke cigarettes and talk politics with him.
"Benazir Bhutto, she have the sex like the animal, and CIA they make movie. You know, porno?"
Amir added a lot, in a quiet kind of way, to the Killgores' apartment, which was squeezed for space by a no-man's-land of a living room. With its gilt-edged mirrors and straight back velvet chairs, the room was roped off in each family members' mind as if a murder had been committed there. To Dumpling the living room had once represented good fortune and the comminglence of tastes. The furniture, rugs, and prints were part Killgore's family and part hers, and when they had first set the room up in the early 1960s, it had seemed such a wonderful marriage, the way his father's bloody red (what Killgore had rakishly called "bordello" chairs) matched her mother's chaise, and so on. Now Dumpling stayed out for sentimental reasons, and Cynthia refused to enlighten it with the passing of her own social torch. So the dead room had a shrinking effect the apartment could not afford, and it left the family to slink around the box kitchen brushing up against one another in kinetic discomfort.
On this particular Sunday, it was Easter, I prepared myself to take Mr. Killgore out to the park. Cynthia sat bespectacled in her bed, immersed in weekend pro-bono work beneath a crinkled duvet cover. My little bird, the way she made nests for herself everywhere with her clutter of diet sodas and pillows, the clip-on reading lamps and pens, her loose thick black hair, and after work complaints that scraped at the litigious world. I loved her in that soft, vague way familiarity breeds. But after years, habit, once a friend, turned to foe, and a certain dread accumulated in the expectant labor of our bed. PTO. That stands for please turn over. It was the only way we had sex. There was that, and the demonstrative cruelty of our restaurant pattern that cursed our merry-go-round routine. But there in her bed nurturing the slanting Sunday light that seemed to draw up quiet shafts of dust from the carpet, she was mine. I was about to say, "I love you," when she cut in, "At least Dad got hit before he could find out what a shit you really are."
I pulled on my best Davis Cup sweater and wondered inside its woolly white world if I should put an end to it all. Just ask her to marry me and be done with it. We were like that, always on the verge of splitting up or making things final. As I've said, I have never been a very faithful boyfriend, but Sundays have always held a sexy redemptive quality for me. Naturally it depends on the day, but there are times when trading on forever can really turn me on. I mean the thought of those words—to have and to hold—the forever part. It's sort of thrilling.
Dumpling met me in the elevator foyer with the roseate glow of her after-church special, a mug of steaming decaf clutched in both hands. She looked at her husband and me with a stare of blind benefaction. This was a big step for Dumpling, letting me out on my first walk with Killgore. It was almost a religious rite of passage influenced, no doubt, by a post-coital discharge of a St. James communion. Watching us now in this touching scene of responsibility taken, she was letting me know I could be counted on. Oh Dumpling, I thought, Dumpling. The accident had sped up her marital expectations so that she probably imagined the tether of our trust rambling through the city's life as do those wonderful dog leashes that roll out from their handle like a tape measure.
But she was trading on margin with this account, or was she? To tell you the truth, with me, it can depend on the day. A friend of mine once blacked out his proposal to his wife. They woke up the next morning after a party, and he was still in his clothes, and she said, Oh, honey, I can't wait, and he said, For what? I talked to him about it. He said he wouldn't have proposed if he hadn't been so fucked up, but he said it's not a regret issue yet. So what if the announcement in the _Times_ ran like an obituary. They're happily married now and not even thirty.
"There's a men's room down by the Boat Pond if he has to take a number one," said Dumpling.
"Is that right," I said.
I held the "door open" button to receive her last instructions. She was a fidgety woman, and since her husband's accident, a maelstrom of worries had incubated a layer of protective peach fuzz that carpeted her jowls not unlike the outgrowth from an anorexic condition. As for me, I have such blond hair it's otherwordly. A cherub-faced criminal is what I look like, but all in all I'm pretty happy. I've been around so many rich people all of my life, I suppose I've grown to look like one myself.
I pressed "L" and as the elevator began to fall, I goosed Killgore's ass. A worry crease had aged its way across the man's forehead, running like an indented rivulet on a topographical map, and the descent of his black-rimmed glasses down his nose was only halted by the veined bulb at the tip. Since the accident, I noticed, Killgore had developed a nasty nose hair problem.
The lobby at 1165 was a mausoleum to outrageous maintenance payments. Usually it was a well-run building, but lately there'd been a doorman strike. Killgore and I walked out into the street unattended.
Easter Sunday had emptied out the Upper East Side to a stagnant grid, and overhead twister-tail clouds shot through the higher elevations while down on the street nothing moved at all. Even the usual placard-carrying doormen on strike could not be found following one another's tails like sleepwalkers in a circle. This Easter scabs watched over the buildings, money on their minds, sitting on their lonely lobby stools and gazing out on the day expressionless as hired mercenaries. Empty cabs flung themselves down Fifth Avenue, their lights lit with vacancies.
"I dreamed there was something rotting in my room," I said to Killgore. "I don't know what your daughter was dreaming beside me, but in _my_ dream I'm running around trying to find the source of the smell."
"Bad stars," said Killgore.
Oh, the way I scratched at that family, ate their food, stole their booze, lifted their twenty-dollar bills, scratch, scratch, scratch.
The way I lived was twice a month I sent out invitations with a partner friend of mine. We invited brokers on Wall Street and the derivative and hedge fund maniacs you can count on to drink, and we'd rotate the party to one of the five bars we had an arrangement with. It was like shooting fish in a barrel, my partner said. That takes guts, shooting fish in a barrel. I lived off door money, and a percentage of the bar. Weeknights I ate spinach and the lamb chops Dumpling broiled for her family. Cynthia was always up in arms about how her mother was "displacing" her food anxiety onto Killgore, stuffing him up with fat and protein for a heart attack. You know how women are, always querulously accusing one another of fattening or starving someone to death.
But Killgore and I, together out on the sunny street, we were above all that noise. I had gone to grade school in this neighborhood, and with my arm looped with Killgore's in a future-son-in-law slipknot, I was carried off by an extremely sentimental after-school feeling. It was of Mr. McClung's fifth-grade class leaning against the afternoon wind that barreled up Ninety-eighth Street. The breezy reach of that memory, with the screams and kung-fu kicking that chopped the air in such sunny alacrity, makes me want to cry now that this block will never change and that class has gone. We were fresh and jouncy then, marching ourselves in disorderly columns toward a future, less happy life, up the sidewalk in navy blue blazers, ties flying, and ready to kill.
Now with my attention span diminished, my mind dulled and addled by the premature indulgences of a foreshortened New York City childhood, I walked the street with the idiot father of a girlfriend I was tired of. It was a bad star. But I couldn't leave this family. Even the doormen at 1165 knew my name and registered their complicity with my intentions. Gracious and reptilian, they ushered me up to that apartment where the faint expectation of matrimony, quickened by the fervor of Killgore's accident, hung like the sweet and sour exhaust air shot from the delivery doors of Chinese restaurants.
Killgore and I walked arm in arm, and was there not a hint, a tinge of romance engendered between us as is so often the case with dependents and their walkers? Though I did not own the gum-soled shoes of a professional caretaker, there was the hatred each one of us holds buried in his heart, and the patchwork of gray hexagonal tiles that bordered the park, those well-trodden marks of continuum and fatigue, they lay before me like a carpet of dust. The empty city seemed witness to the day of my decision, and the incantation of Killgore's two uttered words passed through me like a psalm. Bad stars. Bad stars. They could not be helped. His only spoken words, they moved through my shiftless body cutting my blood with their poison.
Up ahead stood a lone hot dog vendor against the blue day, and I stopped to buy a Sabrett. I took a bite, and do you know what was inside? A string. I considered cramming it down Killgore's collar, but checked myself and walked on.
We entered the park at Seventy-second Street and found ourselves at the foot of a Pilgrim father. It was a perfectly still day, and patched through the budded branches of dogwoods were the sails of the Boat Pond. Killgore cranked his head up to the sky and placed his hands on a buckled shoe of the Pilgrim father. Then he wet his pants. The gray of his flannels moved to black, and a stream of yellow sprang out onto his loafers. Amir fed him multivitamins, and Killgore's urine was brilliant as the sun. He stooped and took a penny out of his loafer. Cynthia had put those in, the pennies, and though I could not see the head of Lincoln or his monument, in my mind's eye I saw the Great Emancipator pissed on, and yet the President sat there implacably indented in the coinage, still as the statue. "If he has to take a number one..." came back Dumpling's voice.
"It's old bladderless strikes again," I said. "What do you want me to do, get you a cup?"
All the old men with their tall ships were sailing the flat seas of the Boat Pond below. This slope was a popular winter sleighing spot, and seizing Killgore by the hand, I lurched forward and then hesitated. Once as a banana-seated bicycle child I had been taken in by an Evel Knievel frenzy. Joyriding my bike down this very hill, crazed in the green of my _Jets_ jersey, I was ready for Snake River Canyon, but when I hit the lip of the pond, it sprung me so little of the air I demanded, it has forever let me down. Still, standing on top of the hill, it was a wonderful vision I had of Killgore and me flying down the grassy slope, whiplashing back and forth, back and forth, in the descending momentum of pleasure in death. Bad stars. Bad stars. The groaning man's incantations fluttered between the park benches, but could he stop at the pond's edge? Of course not. I flung the man facedown into the water. Turbulent little waves moved out from the epicenter of the fall, and the men with their tall ships complained their models might be broken, and the children hanging from the bronzed _Alice in Wonderland_ figures glinting in the penny April sun were plucked up by their nannies, and the man selling Italian Ices next to the frozen duck shouted out blindly, "Ices. Ices here," and still the wind did not fill a single sail, and Killgore the sad-ass, his head struck against a rock two feet under, Killgore facing upward to his grave, dribbled his last lung bubbles upward before he got what was coming—a belly full of Boat Pond water.
But we are none of us the great murderers of our mind, just simple fools stumbling toward what is expected of us. We took a turn around the pond, and was that a smile of gratitude, of tranquil pleasure that lit Killgore's face? It must have been the day. It was a beautiful day. I would marry Cynthia after all. In the evenly spaced, reedy emerald green of the flower stalk rows, there appeared a plan. A thrilling feeling for Cynthia kicked alive in my heart. It was more than my Sunday retreat to the sanctum of her comfort. No, it was more than that. Her father was infirmed, and if I got married, perhaps we would be able to take this walk together again. Perhaps we would make these rounds for the rest of our lives. If the weather held to this pastel, if the sky gripped to its blue, it seemed a pattern to be repeated, that might never die. This walk around the pond with Killgore, it pleased me in my blood. The man needed taking care of, and there were worse jobs, weren't there? Amir could go, and I would move into the television room. The thought of a life lived on top of Dumpling in that home, it was a bad star beneath which I deserved to live. I would take care of Killgore and have children with his daughter. We would make more Killgores! The day itself said that. The blue sky overhead was a baby's heaven. I'd spill my seed on the race and get married, that's what I'd do. It was what was expected of me, and that, after all, was the only thing I had left.
# **The Other Family**
When I worked on a newspaper in Charlotte a few years after college, I was assigned the crazy beat. Mostly I took stories from stringers and wrote obits, but they also gave me the crazies, so they could have fun at the expense of a newcomer. One day a man came to the entrance outraged, demanding to talk to a reporter. He was a crazy, and I was told to go down and hear him out. Smelling sweetly of liquor, he had his story ready. It turned out that his wife had taken up with a police officer, and the officer had then stolen money from him. The crazy insisted there were ramifications concerning the police force, the court system, all of it. The whole town was involved. It was going to be a big story for me, the crazy said. My career as a young journalist was going to take off. When he asked me what I was going to do about his problem and I said I'd look into it, the crazy instinctively knew there was little chance that anyone would ever hear his story. So, to cut his losses, he hit me up for a dollar, which I gave him.
The reason I bring this up is that I was standing on the hot pavement and the glare was coming at me and the cars were passing, and I suddenly realized that this crazy must be some kind of relation to my dead cousin Drew. There they both were, forcing me to listen, making their half sense, tying _me_ into their irreversible problems, asking it all of me, and the whole time preaching the way only the addicted can. If the crazy and my cousin Drew hadn't met in a previous life, they had passed each other in this one and were due to hook up in the next.
Drew died in Far Hills, New Jersey, a week after a check I had sent him cleared—and it wasn't just for a dollar, either. "A little sweetener for my head" is what he called it on the phone. When an uncle of mine died and left me some money, Drew said I had "won the lottery," and he saw no reason I shouldn't share the wealth. He used his frequent requests for cash to catch up "family to family," so to speak, since his mother and mine didn't have much to say to each other anymore. Their frigid sisterly rivalry had never really thawed, and this created something of a moratorium on inter-family communications. Drew wanted to change all that. He wanted to be the ambassador, to promote good will and keep the money coming.
It happened that my cousin's final foray into family diplomacy and his subsequent death coincided with my post-graduation period of sitting around the house. I hadn't done much of anything since school, and there was a lot of family talk about an upcoming "life choice." But at that stage I felt that if I were to make a "life choice" it would certainly set off a dismal chain of events. So I did nothing. When we heard about Drew, I was making a salami and cheese sandwich at our kitchen counter in Boston. My mother was eating a bowl of soup. She picked up the phone and began taking notes on a yellow Post-it pad. She said, "Uh-huh," and "Oh my Lord," and "I can't tell you how sorry." Then she hung up and told me Drew was dead, and that the funeral was the next day, in Far Hills.
First, there was the question of airfare. At the ticket counter my sister Barbara and I waited while our mother bitched about the price of tickets to Newark. It was outrageous, but the agent said we were lucky to get seats at all. The airline set aside two seats in case of family emergency, she said, but no discounted fares were available at the last minute. There was no getting around it, and why should there have been? Who could have planned a two-week or even ten-day advance notice that Drew would die? But my snack was good—a turkey sandwich with a package of mayonnaise that I smoothed out on the bun like toothpaste. During the flight, I took a look at my frequent-flier mileage. It turned out that this trip pushed me into the free-round-trip-ticket zone—and I hadn't even paid for it, my mother had. Drew's death earned me credit to fly anywhere in the United States except Alaska and Hawaii, so, if you think about it in terms of services rendered, the airline has done better for me than Drew ever did. Drew, as I said, always hit me up for money. What did I get back? Nothing. When I was thirteen he gave me one of his old sweaters, but it smelled so strongly of pot that my mother sat me down for a talk about zombies.
"You don't want to turn into a zombie, do you, Tom?"
My mother said that Drew was a fun guy but he never "gave anything back." By that she didn't mean my money but things in general. She was right. Drew's contributions to community and country were negligible. The only institutions he supported were the rehabilitation center and the country club. Even in his last days, Drew was manic about golf. An overriding theme in Drew's life? Wood. With our grandmother, Nan, he lived on Woodmere Drive. He golfed at the Inglewood Country Club, attended the Woodberry Academy, and later was in and out of the Farwood Rehabilitation Center. The first time I ever got high? With Drew, in the woods.
They found Drew in bed. Like a car out of gas, he had rolled to a halt in Nan's downstairs recreation room. Hers was the last house in a migration from this apartment to that one, from one ex-girlfriend's basement to another one's attic. When there was no place left for him to go, Drew ended up back at his mother's, where, as you can imagine, tempers flared, and she refused to have him. So he washed up at Nan's. I remember her living room with its green-leaf ashtrays and floral prints—a real color wheel. And how strange it must have been to stumble in there at night or hung over the next morning; Drew's bong (the Purple Dragon) would bubble in the rec room, and then he would move upstairs to the love seat—roses and azaleas—and watch television. A tropical world, and Nan's pocketbook still a good hit for a fifty.
It was a closed coffin, and after the service we got into our rented Dodge Shadow and joined the procession to Aunt Simi's house. The cars moved in single file past the bulky trees and the substantial, almost manorial houses. It was a clear Saturday morning in Far Hills, a good day to work in the yard. I saw a man sitting on top of a lawnmower. He looked up and caught my eye. What did he see? I cannot tell. There was nothing particularly mournful about our cars. I was up in the front seat with my mother, and my cousin Jean was in the jump seat of the station wagon ahead of us. She had her back turned to her family, and this gave us a good view of each other. On one stretch of road the speed limit said twenty-five, but we were going over forty. The whole thing felt more like a car pool than a funeral procession.
I rolled down the window and let the autumn air in. The man on his mower, the big, knotty trees, the houses, the air—everything came around and revived us. I, for one, had not died yet, and I felt good and healthy driving down a safe street on a beautiful day in the shelter of suburban Far Hills.
"Do you really think he OD'd?" asked my sister.
"Yes, I think he did, Barb," I said.
"Quiet, you two," said my mother, as if silencing two children in the back of a car. And then, "Well, there's the Rutherfords' house."
—
One Thanksgiving weekend in Far Hills I went golfing with Drew. It was Friday, one of those unnaturally warm days in November when you walk outside and immediately feel cheated. Side by side, Drew and I cruised effortlessly up and down the course in the golf cart. Drew wore jeans and a tan windbreaker. He chain-smoked and bitched and rambled, shutting his mouth only for his ceremonious nick-and-waggle drive preparation. Also he was picky and superstitious about the color of his tees. Blue ones were for shots over water, red were for power, yellow for accuracy. When he looped the ball well onto the fairway, he said, "Sweet," or, "For my head." If he sliced it into the woods, he followed with "Fuck your mother!"
It was a good round, and afterward we parked the cart and walked past the clubhouse. There was Mr. McFadden, Drew's trustee, sitting by the window. He and Drew were involved in an ongoing feud over money. There was a second chunk of a family trust which Drew claimed should be coming to him, but the terms were tricky, and McFadden wasn't having any of it. He knew Drew was a sieve. When Mr. McFadden saw us through the window, he suddenly straightened up and gave a salute. We stood for a moment, dumbfounded at the sight of our own reflection obstructing our view of Mr. McFadden. Then do you know what Drew did? He clicked his heels together and gave the guy a "Heil Hitler."
"By the way," he said to me, the spikes of his shoes tramping the pro-shop patio. "I fucked his daughter last week. I fucked her hard, man. She was loving it."
At the water cooler inside the pro shop Drew filled a cone-shaped cup, drank it, and crumpled the thing into the garbage.
"Family planning," he said. "They've got to be kidding me—none of it until I'm married or thirty-two. That's six years, pushing a decade."
"What happened to that other trust you had?" I asked.
"Blew it, what do you think?"
Drew said he wanted to show me the club whole hog, so we were ushered into the Oak Room. There was this blown-up Remington print that covered almost an entire wall. It was a Western scene. A horse was being ridden by a man with a handlebar mustache. This man, in a double-breasted Union uniform, had on cream-colored gloves that folded back over his wrists like shirt cuffs. His mouth was wide open in a manly and warriorlike scream. With his long-barreled pistol pointed in the air and his highlighted red cheek, the Yankee looked a little drunk, or perhaps it was just the intoxication of battle. It was hard to tell. The horse was wild-eyed. A charge of some kind was clearly on. Beneath the print a ladies' luncheon was taking place, and one of the women didn't have shoes on. She was in her Peds.
Drew sat down and started talking about the terms of this trust he needed to get his hands on. First off, he wasn't the marrying type, and, second, he had been watching these shows on A&E, a three-part series on the environment.
"The ozone's blowing a huge hole that isn't getting any smaller, and in eight years all that ice flow...Well, you know what's going to happen with that," he said. "This whole country's going to turn into wetland."
Drew couldn't wait for that: the golf course, Woodmere Drive, all of it—all of Far Hills submerged into swamp, and sooner rather than later if he didn't get his money.
I watched Mr. McFadden get up and walk between the tables over to where we were. He sat himself down right next to Drew.
"Gentlemen," he said.
"Mr. McFadden, how goes it?" said Drew.
"Fine, Drew, just fine."
Mr. McFadden reached his hand out toward me, holding his tie in close to his chest so as not to let it touch the place settings.
"Hi, I'm Bob McFadden. I don't believe we've met."
"Oh, I'm sorry," said Drew. "This is my cousin Tom."
"I see," Mr. McFadden said. "Does Cousin Tom have a last name?"
"Yes, Nichols," said Drew.
"Well, it's nice to meet you, Tom Nichols," said Mr. McFadden.
"Nice to meet you," I said.
"I take it you boys had a good round of golf?"
"Excellent," said Drew. "How was yours?"
"I was at the office, Drew. It's Friday. I've been working."
"That's too bad," I said. "It's an awfully nice day."
"You're right," said McFadden. "But I enjoy it in here." He paused. "You know, Tom, as I get on down the road in this life, it's a little like going back to being a kid again," he said. "It's all about retreating to the simple pleasures."
Drew and I sat there waiting for him to continue thinking out loud, but he didn't. He just gazed off into this thought about returning to childhood.
"Drew, tell me something," he said, standing up. "How long is it that you will be living this way?"
"Excuse me?" said Drew.
But Mr. McFadden was already walking out of the Oak Room.
For lunch I had a hamburger and some cottage cheese, a Coke. Drew devoured a sundae with an extra order of melted chocolate. Then, with a miniature Inglewood C.C. pencil, he signed for the whole thing on his mother's account.
I stole that pencil, and after Drew died I taped it to a piece of string attached to a pad I used for telephone messages. It was a marker of our last lunch. But after a few months the pencil disappeared, and it wasn't until a year later that I found it again. I was down in New York, staying at a friend's house. We were getting ready to go to a party, and I borrowed his jacket. Smoothing down the outside pocket, I thought I felt a cigarette, but when I reached in to get it, it turned out to be that little green pencil.
"Hey," I said to my friend. "Where did you get this pencil?"
He said, "How should I know?"
—
It was a little before noon when we arrived at Aunt Simi's house for lunch. Everyone pulled into the driveway, and we all got out of our cars simultaneously. In their dark suits, my uncle Clarence and cousin Howard crunched the gravel looking like the Secret Service. In the living room, Aunt Simi headed for the liquor cabinet, which wasn't so much a cabinet as a closet. The double doors opened, and there were bottles of Beefeater, Canadian Club, Dewar's, you name it. Behind the bottles was a mirror. Even the ice bucket reflected things. Aunt Simi took down a glass. It was narrow at the bottom and wide at the top, but, unlike an airport glass, it held more than it appeared to, and engraved on it was a pheasant in flight. The ice cubes were the size of big dice, and they colored over nicely with Scotch. Aunt Simi poured her drink until there was a little brown pond at the top. It was her wake, after all—her son.
"Would anyone like a drink?" she said.
There was a general silence that resonated with protest.
I chimed in. "Yes, thank you," I said. "I'll have a drink."
"Good," said Aunt Simi, with her back turned. "What will you have, Tom?"
"Please, let me," I said, rising out of a deep couch.
"Don't be ridiculous. I'll mix you something," she said.
Beside her, I whispered, "Please don't worry about it," and reached for the gin in the back.
"Tom," said my mother.
"Mother," I said, catching an oblong reflection of the room in the ice bucket. It was sad, really. There we all were, my immediate clan putting in some time with the other family. It was ceremonies only, a wedding or a funeral, that got these two sides together. And at Christmas came the wrapped Neiman-Marcus reminder that there were indeed these other people, heard from but rarely seen, moving around somewhere in a different state.
A gin with some tonic and lime was what I made myself.
"Anyone?" I said.
"I'll have a bourbon with ice," said Jean.
I hadn't seen Jean since she was twelve. Now she was nineteen and a pleasant four years my junior. I made her a whiskey-and-ice, some soda. Then, with my creased gray flannels hiked up, my belt secure around me, I walked through the middle of the room feeling watched and embarrassed. I handed Jean her drink and sat down on the end of the chaise longue where she was stretched out. I took a sip of mine and shuddered. Then I took another.
In this other family there was Clarence, Aunt Simi's second husband. His seniority in years had made him appear dignified when they were first married, but senility had arrived, and their union, once a humbling respite from both of their first marriages, now seemed shameful and disgusting. Clarence had suffered a minor stroke. He sat by the fire in a flannel suit, and there was something about his collar and the way the knot of his tie was off to one side that made it look as if someone had dressed him. The left side of his face dropped slightly. He was no blood uncle to me. There was my grandmother Nan, who was crying and patting her raw nose with a handkerchief. She and Barbara were very close, and my sister kept one arm around her shoulder and the other on her bandaged knee. The week before, Nan had taken her first fall. My cousin Howard sat in a straight-backed wooden chair. His boyhood mean streak had matured into an appetite for success in his career. Howard was a real go-getter in the software industry in Utah. Originally he had gone out West to explore a business opportunity, but along the way he underwent a spiritual conversion. He's a Mormon now. Holding up the caboose was Jean, who maintained a defiant generational split from the rest of her family. Drew, my favorite on this side, was not in the room.
"Well, he's visiting a better pasture," said Aunt Simi.
"A better pasture," said Howard. He was a bulky man in his thirties, with a receding hairline, and he had on square, buckled shoes that made him look like a sea captain. Everyone stared at him.
"Christ's sake. It's like a Hare Krishna," Clarence said.
"Simmer down, Clarence," said Aunt Simi.
I leaned back on the chaise longue and felt Jean's high heels against my hips. I pictured her tight cable-knit sweater and her breasts behind me. Then—incredible, really—the first tinges of an erection.
"Oh, Christ," Jean complained. "This is so pathetic."
"Jeanie," said Aunt Simi.
"Don't Jeanie me, Mom."
"That will be enough out of you," Clarence put in.
"I'm going home," said Nan, but nobody moved to help her up.
Jean went over to the bar, flaunting her familiarity with it. With a fresh bourbon, she turned to face her mother's beaming disapproval.
"Drew would have wanted it this way," she said.
Talk about conversation-stoppers. Jean slid in close to me, her ankles nestling softly against my hips now, looking for comfort. Three days had elapsed between her brother's death and the service, and Jean's mourning, once clearly tearful and heartfelt, had turned to pitched exasperation with her family. She shimmied down the chaise, and in my ear said softly, "If I can't get blotto at my own brother's wake, I don't know what."
I turned my head. "Got that straight."
"Not so bad for a first cousin," she said.
"Not bad yourself. What are you up to these days?"
"The usual," she said. "Want to get high?"
"Later."
"You name it," she said. "Later."
—
Later, Jean and I sat next to each other at lunch. We began playing footsie.
Since there wasn't much to talk about over soup, Clarence opened up with politics. "I just don't understand why you Democrats don't want to see the deployment of S.D.I.," he said.
This family—minus Jean, who couldn't care less—was what my grandmother on the other side of the family used to call unreconstructed Republicans.
"Well, Clarence," said my mother. "I think what a lot of people on both sides of the aisle are trying to say is that it may not be terribly smart to put such an awful lot of money into something that may not work at all."
"Lord knows that's sheer political demagoguery," said Howard. "And I don't think I'm exaggerating in saying that liberal politicians are on the fast track to becoming the Number One security threat to this country, not to mention a drag on good, solid economic growth."
I pressed down on Jean's toe.
"This of all times may not be the right time to talk politics over lunch," said Aunt Simi.
"Yeah, Howard," said Jean. "Why don't you skip it."
An awful partisan silence crept over the table.
The main course was Welsh rabbit with pieces of crustless toast cut in triangles. I mopped it up, drank my wine, and kept my head as low as possible.
Aunt Simi said, "You know, Tom, we hardly ever see you at all, and Drew always spoke of you in such a kind and really loving way. What is going on in your life these days?"
It was too much for me. I didn't hate Aunt Simi for it; it was just too much. "I'm not trying to be rude, really I'm not," I said. "It's just I've been having to go to the bathroom for a while now, if you'll excuse me..." and I got up. It was true, too. I had to piss like a racehorse.
"What _is_ going on in your life these days, Tom?" I asked myself out loud in the bathroom.
After lunch, Jean and I walked out behind the house. We were looped. The meal had turned lugubrious at the end, when Aunt Simi decided to make a toast. She had tried to be a good mother, she had done all she could. She was going to level with her family. Drew had his problems, there was no getting out from under that, but now he was in better pastures—and she stuttered and stumbled, weaving along in this vein until she was through.
The outside was like a cold glass of water, and we crossed the back lawn, Jean lurching ahead in her skirt and heels, carrying a bottle of Jack Daniel's. At one point her heels sank into the wet grass, and she fell down.
"These goddam shoes," she said. "They're just killing me, Tom."
We walked each other to the woods, and when we got there she handed me the bottle. I took it and opened my throat up to the warm give-and-take. Then she took out a joint and lit it. I gave her the bourbon and she took a slug. We looked at each other.
"I hate my mother," she said.
"Come on, she's not so bad," I said.
"Go to hell. You don't know what the hell you're talking about," Jean said.
I sat down on a hard floor of pine needles. Then my back was on the ground and I was looking up at the tops of the trees. Some of the leaves had turned, but most of them were still hanging on.
"You're my first cousin," Jean said.
"Yeah, my mother's sister's kid, that's what that makes you," I said.
"Yeah?" she said, and, hiking her skirt up, she swiveled over onto my thighs with the joint in her mouth. She sucked the thing down and then ashed it on me like a cigarette.
"You know, the last days," she said, exhaling. "The last days with Drew were all needles."
"I don't know if I want to hear it, Jean," I said.
"You probably wouldn't."
"What does that mean?"
"Your side wouldn't want to have anything to do with it, schlepping down here for a day visit. You guys didn't know Drew for shit."
"Let's not get into it," I said.
"You're a relative—like, I mean, relatively good-looking is all. But what I'm saying is you—you, Tom—you could be just another boy."
Jean's two eyes were a little out of sync. "I mean, the whole thing, you guys coming here, it isn't that far from a social call," she said.
She planted her hands on either side of my face and laughed. "I'm stoned."
She leaned over me and her hair dropped into my eyes, making me squint. We kissed. After a few moments the feeling was over, and something else got in its way. She climbed off me.
"I kissed a married man once," she said.
"Yeah?" I said. "What was it like?"
"Nothing much," she said. "He had a mustache."
"A mustache?" I said.
"Yeah, he had a mustache."
"Listen, I'm going to get back to the house," I said.
"That's probably what you should do," she said. "I'm going for a walk in the woods now."
"Good. I'll see you, Jean."
"See you, Tom. I'm going to take a little walk. Say goodbye to your mom and sister for me."
"Sure," I said, but I was already turning away. It was getting dark, and from the edge of the woods I could see clearly into the house. Aunt Simi was moving around the kitchen, sticking her finger into the food platters on the counter. Upstairs, a bathroom light flicked on. It was Howard. He stood in front of the medicine-cabinet mirror with his hands in imaginary holsters. Then he drew and shot at himself. It was happening already. The house was falling back into something familiar and easy; everyone was settling down and proceeding as expected. In the hallway, my mother shrugged her coat on, and I could see my sister carrying my jacket through the dining room. We would be leaving soon. No one could see me, but goodbyes were already being said. I paused before crossing the lawn. What was I waiting for?
# **Plus One**
For The Maggot
Then came the problem of the summer and the sense that we were about to become party to something disgusting. Roger and I were lounging by the pool looking like a couple of Hollywood schmucks with our fancy hangovers. She walked right through our garden and stood before us. It hurt. Her beauty had an air of corruption that screamed of youth and careless sex. She made our girlfriends look like saggy control addicts. She had these legs. Oh fuck, let's cancel the legs for right now, but there was another plus inside a T-shirt. Then there was the simple black skirt and her expensive-looking shades. I could see the bald head of Mr. Clean peering over the rim of her baby blue bucket. In her other hand she held a mop. Her T-shirt was a faded one and in black letters it read _The Replacements_ , and below that was the word " _Stink."_ I hadn't really listened to the Replacements since college. They had been a fine band, noted for their high level of intoxication, but recently I'd been worried about the legacy of alcohol abuse they'd inspired in friends of mine who still drank too much.
"You a fan?" asked Roger, pointing to her shirt. "I mean I'm surprised someone your age knows anything about the Replacements. Aren't the Stinson brothers old enough to be your father?"
"Why don't you talk about your father with someone else," she said. "Is this the house?"
"This is the house," I said. "Interview over. You got the job."
"Thanks," she said. "But I have to see the place first."
With my tan and comfy executive poolside lounge chair setup, she made me feel old and compromised. For you see, I am of the age that is composed of lazy summer weekends, of creeping out of my Sabbath bed after having mildly assuaged my hangover by slaughtering my girlfriend in bed. I do a few laps in the pool and for a Sunday communion wafer I take ten milligrams of Valium. Then I towel off and take up my position on the lawn where I'm ashamed to say I read _Barron's_ with my Sunday _Times_. Sickening, and in a bathrobe too. Anyway, Roger and I were sitting silently in our chairs absorbing the fact that the maid had a sexiness that our girlfriends might have had five years ago if they had each been different women than they are now. It was a depressing fact at which to arrive. Now I'm not saying Roger and I thought the maid a better person or would even stack up as a superior long-term lover to the women with whom we were currently attached. She was simply hotter and sluttier, short term. She had a tummy that slightly canted her T-shirt out in our reclining direction. Around that smooth ankle was a copper bracelet of the high-end Brazilian tourist trinket variety, probably picked up while tripping on vine juice with Indians. Then there was a chunky silver ring on one of her thumbs. I've never really understood rings on inappropriate fingers. They've always slightly upset me, but this thumb ring bore with it such a great distance from the positioning of a wedding band that I couldn't help but feel intrigued.
But of course we had time against us. Our girlfriends were probably gossiping about who out of the house share was _really_ invited to next weekend's barbecue at another house guarded by hedges and the handicapped. Recently they'd been sniffing around one another, the girls, trying to decide if theirs was going to be a relationship that might have a life outside the orbit of their boyfriends.
But the maid, oh the maid, it was like Roger and I couldn't even talk about it. Her white skin held no time for the beach. She walked plainly, slowly, with a perfect lack of any ass-shaking self-conscious style into our rented house. Roger and I were both recovering from the third of five weddings we were expected to attend that summer. Two more to go. The maid, in hindsight, had been sorely missed beneath those tents. She looked to be an attendee of a small, extremely expensive liberal arts college that breed the kind of women I used to enjoy conversing with about music and art before they took me home.
Roger and I looked at one another in stunned silence. Simultaneously we reached for the pack of Camels sitting between us.
"Look, I think I need this cigarette more than you do," whispered Roger.
"Really; why is that?"
"Because I like her more than you do, but you'll probably fuck her first."
"Give me a fag, Roger, and stop being such a romantic."
"She probably thinks we're off-duty narcs," said Roger.
"Speak for yourself."
Roger and I watched our girlfriends' mouths move as they interviewed the maid.
"Aren't you supposed to want to fuck the maid when you're forty?" I asked.
"Not when she's twenty-one."
"I bet she's more like twenty-three," I said.
"What the fuck would you know. Maybe she's nineteen?"
"Nineteen-year-olds are still baby-sitters, Roger. Aren't they? This girl buys booze...legally."
We both pretended to return to our respective sections of the paper, violently shaking our stories to the jump page in disgust. Then Carla, Roger's girlfriend, came outside with the dog.
"Honey," she said. "What Jitney do you want to take? I think we should get going soon before the traffic gets too bad."
Roger solemnly folded his paper and placed it on the yard.
"You know, I was thinking, sweetheart," he said. "I mean, fuck the traffic, let's go tomorrow morning, early."
I looked in the house. The maid was standing over the kitchen sink pondering our filthy dishes.
"But the weather's so gross," said Carla.
"I heard it was supposed to clear up," replied Roger.
"Where'd you hear that?" I asked.
"Umm...the radio," said Roger. "I heard it on the radio. That's right, it was on the radio when I went into town to get coffee."
"What do you think of our new maid?" I asked Carla.
"She seems sort of a nightmare. I mean, talk about attitude, but what are you going to do? I don't have time to interview maids right now. She says she can come late Sunday afternoon to do the dishes and clean, but she has some other job Sunday night, at some bar. So she's going to come back Monday afternoon to do the laundry. Apparently, we're practically neighbors. Eighty bucks a week, though, don't you think that's a little steep?"
"Hey," I said. "You got to pay to play."
"Exactly," said Roger.
It was shameless. Roger and Carla had just bought an apartment together. Then there was the dog. I got up from my lounge chair, walked into the house, and took up a silent position next to our maid. There was a liquor cabinet next to the sink and I fixed myself a drink. I rarely do this kind of thing on Sunday, but I wanted to see her up close and in action. She smelled of nothing. I poured myself a weak gin and tonic and walked over to the stereo to see if there was something I could put on that might impress her. I came up with a record of a band due to play live in New York the following week. The tickets had been sold out forever. The song I chose was a gem. For a moment she paused at the sink, smiled gently to herself, and went back to work. I was at once pleased and angered. I deeply wanted to talk about rock and roll with this young woman, and I wanted her to look up at me. It didn't have to be a big wide-eyed "I can't believe you put on that song" stare or anything, just a glance, an acknowledgment that I wasn't part of her problem; but I guess the force was against me that afternoon, for she did not look up. She stood there with her yellow rubber gloves sinking in and out of our little hole of weekend shame.
Roger and his girlfriend walked in, and picking up on the song I had chosen, Carla said, "Honey, are you going to get us plus one to the show, because if not, I'm going to go out with Laura Thursday night. In fact, I think I'm going to go out with Laura Thursday night no matter what."
"Good, then I won't have to scalp," I said. "That show sold out in two hours."
"I heard it was more like twenty minutes," chimed in the maid.
"I got it covered," said Roger. "Two phone calls."
The maid erupted into sarcastic laughter, a bad joke of her own creation, then turning to Carla, she said, "Uhh, excuse me, what's your name again?"
"Carla," said Carla.
"Well, Carla, this house is a little short on cleaning supplies. What do you want me to do?"
"Save your receipts," said Carla.
"I don't have the capital right now to create a receipt for your accountant."
"Here's a fifty," said Roger.
My girlfriend came up to me and asked if I wanted to take a bike ride. I said that would be fine. I like to watch my girlfriend on a bicycle. She has no idea what she's doing and she looks wonderful doing it. It was a nice ride and she wore a pretty dress that was perfect for the occasion and didn't get caught in the gears, and when we got to the beach, we went swimming and splashed like the lovers we are in the waves and biked home and made love again, and went back down to the lawn to read our novels. Now it's not like this house is glass, but there are a lot of windows and through one of them we could hear Roger and Carla fighting again, but it was not only their fight that was making it difficult for me to read (I'd heard the narrative before), it was the idea of the maid circulating in the upper reaches of the house that plunged my interest.
Upstairs, she was vacuuming our room. Perhaps I was being paranoid, but standing there in the doorway, I thought I sensed a touch of overzealous resentment in her vacuuming strokes. She had a Walkman on and I imagined she was playing some punkish number that was made to inspire hatred in the listener's boss. She'd seen our stuff, sniffed out our scene: a bunch of young adults who thought they were making it but not the way _she_ was going to make it. We spilled a lot of sand. We left booze around. There was expensive luggage, and airplane tickets on counters. Looking at the maid work the wood floor of my rented bedroom, I realized she'd have no compunctions about stealing. But the weird thing was I didn't have a problem with it. My girlfriend was using the bathroom so I just stood in the doorway and watched the maid work, hoping I'd catch her stealing something so we'd have a secret to share. But of course she'd seen me in her periphery, and suddenly she came up to me with the vacuum on, her Walkman headset dangling from her neck.
"How long have you two been going out?" she asked.
"What year did you reach puberty?"
"Eighty-seven, Christmas night."
I fled the room.
—
At the office on Monday my secretary patched a call through from Carla. I'd been doodling on the arithmetic of the maid's age. It was a warped geometric pattern, perhaps a reflection on my indecision as to count back or forward from twelve or thirteen.
"Did you leave money for the gardener?" she asked.
The gardener wasn't exactly a gardener. The gardener was a team of Hispanic lawn-care people who came and mowed the lawn and clipped things. It was an expense I hadn't counted on when I went in on the house share.
"Yes, Carla," I said. "As you pointed out, it was my week for lawn care. I took care of it. Forty dollars, in the bowl."
"Really?"
"Of course. What happened?"
"The guy called me at work. Can you believe that? He said the bowl was empty."
"Didn't Sam say he was going to come out on Monday to write?" I asked.
"I already called him," replied Carla. "He's feigning ignorance, but I bet it was the maid. I don't know. I found her sort of passive-aggressive, didn't you?"
"Oh, Jesus Christ, Carla," I replied.
"I'm worried about my earrings," she said. "I left my favorite earrings on the bedside table. I bet she'll be wearing them in whatever fashion hole she likes to crawl into during the week."
"Carla," I said. "The lawn-care people annoy you at work and now I'm hearing about earrings at work. Why don't we both go back to work?"
"Ohh," said Carla. "Well, I'm sorry to take up your precious time. I just thought you'd like to know you're getting ripped off."
I adore Sam, but he has this nasty habit of getting up to go to the bathroom in the late innings of a restaurant party and never returning to pay for his veal. Sam had opted for half payment on his slice of the share. He rarely came out on weekends. He'd usually go against the traffic on Sunday nights and sleep in the master bedroom all week. Clearly he was fucking the maid. Sam is a writer and you know how those guys are—always slinking and sidling over back garden gates with that off-timing charisma. Suddenly I was furious. Sam hated Carla's guts, but probably didn't know that it was my money he and the maid were drinking up. There had been some backstabbing lawn-care financing confusion in this house share, couples scraping for a moral high ground on the subject of the divisor when it came to food and lawn-care expense. Some, like me, had opted for no lawn care at all. But lawn care was not what was bothering me now. It was the image of Sam and the maid splitting the forty dollars I'd left in the bowl and going out for drinks together.
"I don't know what to tell you, Carla," I said. "There's nothing we can do but see if a pattern develops."
"You're sure you put your money in?"
"Positive."
"Well, goddam it!" she said and hung up.
—
On Thursday night Roger and I arrived to see the sold out concert in a black company sedan. Getting out of that car, I got to say, I picked up a bit of hostility emanating from the youth loitering outside. It wasn't as if we were two scabs crossing a picket line, it was more like a little splash of urban disdain was spat our way. Roger, God bless him, is the greatest snob of rock snobs and as a rule prefers to go to shows where his weight and influence as a journalist can get him on some list. Sometimes I follow.
"Clueless jam kids," snarled Roger. "Looking for a leader."
There was a small line for the rock elite waiting at a side box-office window. The women were better dressed here. Someone touched me on the shoulder. I turned around. It was the maid.
"Hey," I said.
It was difficult to know what to do. A kiss was certainly not in order but then again neither was a handshake. We stood there on the street not touching. Roger was at the window.
"Wouldn't you know. Of all people, you guys would get in free," she said.
"Whoever said rock was fair," I said.
"Not me."
"From the looks of it, you must be on the list too," I said.
"I deserve to be."
"Is that right."
"Yeah, I'm plus one. I went out with Mark Sandburn for nearly a year."
"Yeah, what happened? He set fire to your cat?"
I stood there in the street stunned. Mark Sandburn was something of a minor hero of mine. She was wearing a silver top that was all about refracting light and foregrounding breasts, and her pants had a wonderful relationship to her hips. Then there were her jewelry and earrings. She was her own fucking light show.
"That idiot Blumstein," said Roger, turning to me. "I told him get me a plus one but..."
"But they only comped you," said the maid. "I didn't know this was going to be an industry show."
"You," said Roger. "What are _you_ doing here?"
"She's here to play a golden oldie with Mark Sandburn," I said.
"You know you guys shouldn't be so mean," said the maid. "Mark made sure I'm plus one, but my girlfriend decided to have dinner with some guy who just threw himself into the East River."
Roger and I stood aside as she did her thing at the window.
"Here," she said, presenting me with a ticket. "Chalk it up to a miracle."
We walked into the show together, like a date. Someone with a clipboard and a headset gave us each a fluorescent wrist band and a rectangular patch to place on our person. So there we were, the maid and I standing around with all the little badges of honor that allow one to drink at the bar where others can't drink, and march through those wide-bodied bouncers, those sentinels of the stuffed velvet ropes, so as to reach the little secret places others are blocked from and go backstage and be almost as cool as the cool stars. The fucking hierarchies of rock, it was medieval.
"I won't charge you for the ticket," she said. "But you have to buy me drinks all night because I expect to be treated like a queen when I'm at a show, especially this one. Like you can start by lighting my cigarette. What's your name anyway? Mind if I call you 'Rocko'? This show has been sold out for weeks, so I get to call you Rocko, OK. So, Rocko, why don't you get me a Sea Breeze? Don't fuck it up. You got a house in the fucking Hamptons with chicks who probably leave their IQ in Prada bags by the pool, and if I say I want a drink, I expect you to hop to it. Are you listening?"
I was glad to see the maid transformed, but I did not get her a drink. She already had one. I watched various people, mostly male, engage the maid in conversations that came to me as splintered shards of tonal disdain. This was all going on above one of the opening bands I'd never heard of. Then Roger came up and suggested we light this guy Tim Nye's red hair on fire. I dug out my Zippo.
"Let's scrotch that Alterna-Trump. I mean, fuck, let's hunt him down."
But before I could leave, the maid said, "Rocko, get busy on that Sea Breeze."
I returned with the drinks after being purposely ignored by the VIP bartender because I didn't arrive at his preconceived notion of what was an important rock groupie or critic. There was a change onstage, and then a band I'd heard of vaguely was playing music I couldn't understand. We were on a balcony behind the ropes and the band served as evil cocktail mixer music that shortened people's sentences to insults.
Roger was going on about the finances of a Tim Nye record label deal.
"Yeah, I heard the Maggot securitized the loan with some option on his grandmother's future death. Can you believe that? I was thinking the other day, someone should create a derivative based on the Maggot's..."
"So how long has your girlfriend been on the pill?" the maid cut in.
"I don't know."
"I mean, did she get it going with the pill when you two started fucking?"
"My girlfriend has a history of promiscuity I happen to cherish."
"Really," said the maid, shaking her hair out of a bun.
"Really."
"Who was she fucking before she got around to you?"
The band was launching into something loud, each young man believing his guitar to be the ax of his uncompromising chopping capabilities.
Finally the band the house had come to see, know, and love arrived and the maid and I together went downstairs and rammed ourselves up front, for we both sensed in one another the aficionado, and after that, it doesn't matter anymore. All the structural problems of money, age, and achievement collapsed like pickup pixie sticks spilled onto the floor of childhood and we were cast off spinning, listening to the music we loved betwixt an elliptical rubber band of sexual tension, and the occasional touching of arms. Between sets I got her more drinks. I even fooled her into thinking I wasn't another symbol of the capitalistic patriarchy that I actually am, which was fun. But of course she wouldn't go home with me. Clearly, she said, I was perverted and washed up. She had a boyfriend six years my junior that "gave her what she needed."
But we did play a straight set after the show. She gave me that at least, the maid, a summer walk in the city. And we didn't go to a coffee shop either. We had a drink at a pleasant bar and talked about music, jobs, and literature, and she even asked the cocktail waitress for a pen. I'd convinced her I wasn't part of her problem and for me that was enough. Then we left and walked the right angles of our city, commenting on the weather, until we arrived at a wall. She let herself be turned round so gracefully, expectantly, and up against that wall with the nearly vacant summer city a lonely witness, we parted with bits of blissful lip service.
# **Doubles**
She had a crisp forehand and a late seventies two-handed backhand reminiscent of Tracy Austin. The court was clay, and skidding into his opening shots, Alex tried not to seize up, but the prospect of being joined by tennis-ball-batting children was too much for him. His first balls flew long. She, on the other hand, was a most professional recreator from the first shot.
"Bet you didn't know I had a child," she said.
"What?" he replied, punching a forehand cross-court into the net.
"A child," she said. "From my first marriage."
"When did you have it?"
"You don't want to know, and frankly I reserve the right not to tell you."
"I'm sorry I can't hear you in this wind. Did it hurt?"
"What?"
"Having a child. Did it hurt?"
"It is a pain you'll never know."
As they hit, his initial peril dropped off into the first feeling of skidded clay court timing.
"Here come the kids," she said.
Earlier that day Alex's mother had received the news that a close friend of her dead husband had expired himself. Alex, who was on vacation, did not want to go to a funeral, and so on a clear blue morning in August he found himself driving his mother to the airport. The funeral was in Boston. Outside the airport his mother kept up the pleading, humiliating herself as usual. It was incredible the persistence of that woman. All the way in the car she'd said things like..."After everything Mr. Rittenhouse did for your father..." and..."How much was your starting salary at that job he got you..." and..."You're actually repaying a freshly dead man by going off to play tennis!"
"I'm sorry, Mother," said Alex.
"If I could make you, I'd make you," she said. "But I can't. I can't make you do _any_ thing anymore."
It was a light travel day in the middle of the week. Idle cab drivers loitered against the terminal wall.
"Why won't you come?"
Alex helped his mother with her bags, gave her a kiss, got back in the car, and closed the door. From the curb she shot him that forlorn look of abandonment, the look of age. It was cruel being a son. He felt its cruelty, its defiant selfishness. His mother had always played to his emotionally lazy side and because theirs was a family of two, this was not the first time there had been a kind of lover's quarrel over travel plans. He started the engine and waved her into a reverse, receding loneliness. There she was, a widow performing a widow's duty, crestfallen and grieving not for Mr. Rittenhouse, but for the cold monotony of lonely old age his death reaffirmed.
On the road to town he became sickened by the age of his tennis date. She was much younger than his mother, but they _did_ know one another. They were friends, or as good acquaintances as any two women on opposite ends of middle age could be. They had in common an interest in the Democratic Party and got together a half-dozen times a year to have their checking accounts raided in return for that proud feeling of having had a hand in the process.
Alex did not call his approaching tennis date Anne, and he did not call her Mrs. Phillips. He called her nothing at all. What _was_ clear was that Anne Phillips had married an enormously wealthy man many years her senior, and, yes, it was rumored to be an unhappy arrangement.
Money, age, and marriage, they were a perplexing mystery of timing he felt fated to fuck up. Probably he would get married too late to some self-serving young sex kitten, or else too early to a menopausal heiress, or not get married at all, or...Well, screw it. It did not matter. Today was day five of his vacation from the currency trading desk, and released from the prospect of a Boston funeral, he had nothing to complain about. Nothing to complain about at all.
He called the spread in age of the various women he was attracted to "range." An example of range? The weeping University of Vermont hitchhiker he'd had in the car the other night. How sad was that? She'd spewed a tale of drunken boyfriend betrayal and all of it set at a bar she called The Box. She'd literally cried on his shoulder. He'd considered doing something degrading to her back at the house, but he hadn't had enough energy to take advantage of her grief. Then there were women his own age like Vivian Tate. Now Vivian was right smack in the middle of his range, but after their disastrous vacation together in the Bahamas, she'd opted for a "significant cooling-off period." A cold E-mailist was that Vivian, and she hadn't approved of him switching from the law to currency trading one bit. That left Anne Phillips, who was certainly pushing the older reaches of range, but she wasn't the only preservation junkie at the club. There was a bevy of them, and during the week they were _so_ underutilized, what with their husbands working on the mainland and their kids off at some expensively supervised sailing activity.
He passed Cumberland Farms and hit the traffic leading into town. There was no escaping the summer sprawl, day-trippers shopping in T-shirt stores, muscular college kids with fluorescent colored sunblock on their noses flip-flopping about the streets or driving cars that were a confetti of alma mater bumper stickers. He was relieved when he finally pulled into the yacht club's parking lot. Why was it he felt as if he were having an affair already? Perhaps it was the way she had suggested doubles to blunt the discrepancy in their age?
"Doubles would be fun, don't you think?" she had insisted. "Don't you think."
In the corridors between courts, the green fence covers fluttered and clanked in the wind. She was hiding from the sun beneath an umbrella strapping on a tennis elbow brace. She had flat, brittle blond hair and a face of neutral beauty that held a latent sense of cold cream and moisturizing lotion application. Epidermal aging, it was a battle, and the enemy had been held at bay long enough for her to linger in a vacuum of indeterminate age. She wasn't at all tan, but looking into the milky spangles of her blue irises, it seemed to Alex as if he had arrived at the gateway to leisure.
"Now," she said, looking at him quizzically. "Are we going to be a good boy?"
—
It was his line from her party the previous night. He had been seated on her left, but instead of making lively political banter, he had fallen silent before his moody self-perception as a drone, a working stiff, a conservative young man too old for the college crowd, but distinctly separate too from the Democratic Party intelligentsia that gathered each summer at the Phillipses' table. It was just about enough to make him change party affiliation, this altruism, this talk of the country as a focus group of voting habits spreading westward from these bluefish dinners. He felt tired, charmless, and in the midst of a tax revolt. "Terrible job I have, and two days out of every five I work for the government." Were those not Mr. Rittenhouse's last words to him last summer? But no one at the table seemed to care. Breezy with wealth, they expected of him a pointed economic perspective on their foreign policy debates and political horse races. But he had nothing to offer. He had not recently returned from a war-torn Asian country as had the incredibly drunk, jet-lagged journalist across the table. He was not a liberal syndicated columnist nor a political media consultant running five ad campaigns at once, nor was he the second wife of a political fund-raiser angling hard for the ambassadorship to Mauritius. He was not a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, or a Middlebury lacrosse jock. He felt he had little in common with the corporate antagonism coming from the environmental consultant across the way. He was a thirty-two-year-old currency trader on vacation with his mother, and he was miserable.
"So," she had said over dessert. "What do you want to be in your life?"
He hated it when grown-ups opened with the big question, but his discomfort was so intertwined with these plentifully stretched adult breasts cresting and falling in his downward glance that he answered, "A good boy."
—
The kids arrived in defiance of the all whites rule of the club. Day-Glo stripes and garish patterns splashed across their midsections. The boy bounced the strings of his oversized racket on his downy head. They were a barely pubescent couple, strangely hatched with the boy shooting sideways glances of suspicion and apathy. At least the girl seemed eager to play. Her name was Melissa, and she sang back her mother's greeting in a tennis dress cleaved with innumerable white pleats.
"Melissa, this is Mr. Spring. He's a...well, what exactly are you, Mr. Spring?"
"I'm a childless trader living in New York."
"He's a lonely young man who's here to see if Mummy got her money's worth at camp. Now, how should we do this, Alex? I'm not sure if I should entrust you with my daughter, but I suppose I have no choice."
"Trade what?" asked Fritz.
"Money," said Alex.
That shut everyone up, and it segued nicely into a down the line doubles warm-up. The kids could hit. They had met at tennis camp. She was fourteen and a _half_ , she insisted. He was fifteen. But as the first balls flew, Alex found himself thrown off-kilter by the brazen coupleness of these two. What did they do with one another off the court? He didn't want to think about it. A tennis camp romance was one thing, but the notion of the two of them carrying on an unsupervised fumbling of one another's budding little bodies in that overdecorated house on Totem Point...He tried to put it out of his mind, but Fritz had already spotted his weak backhand. Terrifying. They had probably taught him that at camp, identify the opponent's weakness early. But what was worse was Alex couldn't help hitting mistaken cross-court shots that landed right at Mother's feet. One even ricocheted onto the neighboring court.
Tennis anxiety among strangers. It was an especially acute pain, and for a moment he wished he were buckled in beside his mother on the plane. Filial obligation required no coordination, only rote gestures, and was there not refuge to be taken in funereal platitudes? But instead of comforting his mother, instead of honoring the memory of his dead father's friend, he was facing the tepid seduction of a woman suffering from tennis elbow in full view of children.
"Up or down," said Anne Phillips, spinning her racket on the court.
"Down," said Melissa.
It was down, and he did not feel like serving. The thought of serving to Fritz with those ridiculous sneakers sparkling reflector lights at every step, it was too much for him. But Melissa tossed him the brand-new balls anyway.
"I'll need a few practice," he said.
And it was a disaster. Two balls hopelessly long, another in the net, and everyone standing there on a miswired court twirling their rackets at him in disdain. The toss raised his eyes directly into the sun, blinding him. He began seeing spots and various streaks of annoying color. His whole life seemed a stupendous failure. His job was a zero-sum-end game of yen put warrants and international interest rate graphs, and it wasn't as if he helped _make_ anything either. Sickening. His claustrophobic apartment in that awful high-rise near the West Side Highway with its heavy maintenance payments, his happy hour financial friendships with married commuters, sad blind dates, and credit card debt, they all stacked up against him as he thundered two more worthless practice serves long.
At the service line he hung his head and bounced the ball as if waiting for his own beheading. He wished not for death but to be absent from his life. He would have to breathe. He turned to face the back fence and methodically hopped stray balls into his pockets.
"These are good," he croaked.
By the grace of God his first serve was in, and incredibly he and Melissa won the point. He served the game out, and though they lost, at least it was over. In the shade of the court change the game improved. His first net rush evolved into an overhead winner, a satisfying burying of the ball at Fritz's feet. An ongoing cross-court exchange with Mother followed. Back and forth they went in a showcasing of consistency for the kids. When Fritz began sneaking sideways at net, showing his overeager poaching intention, Alex raided his alley with a down-the-line winner. The statement made, he settled into a mindless calm that is the tonic of tennis.
Alex's civility toward his partner shortly turned into something of a crush. She was a competitor despite the enormous wealth of her stepfather. Her pigtails banged soundlessly on her shoulder blades, and during her serve Alex twisted at net so as not to miss the way she hitched her second service ball out from underneath that mysterious underwear arrangement. At court changes, Melissa looked up at him yearningly, her pupils constricted to acute pencil dots in the summer light. He found himself chanting to her, "Right here," and "Always be closing," and "Here's where we stick it to Mom." They lost 6–3 but won the next set handily. Afterward it was decided that they would return to Totem Point for refreshments.
—
The New York financial papers had deemed Mr. Phillips a corporate "visionary," and true to form he had named his summer home Albion. A blend of domestic and imported seashells made up the driveway. The pink ones were from Bermuda, the white ones came from right here on the island. Alex wondered if Mr. Phillips would be home. For all he knew the man was tucked away upstairs or in some other vastly expensive apartment in New York. The man had his own plane, and if you owned a company he had his eye on, he'd eat it for lunch.
She led him into the kitchen.
"Well," she said, perched on a stool. "That was fun, wasn't it?"
"It was," he said. "I can't believe how good those two are."
"Isn't it wonderful," she said. "They can really hit the ball now."
A servant came in and began cleaning out the microwave.
"If you had your choice," she said, "would you call me Anne or Mrs. Phillips?"
Embarrassing, but that was how it was with the wealthy. They had no shame. Totally unselfconsciously, they delivered these extravagances at the feet of their guests.
"I avoid that dilemma by calling you nothing at all."
From a cabinet she pulled out a bottle of gin and stirred their drinks. The servant dropped an enormous block of foie gras and crackers before them. She smelled of so many things. She smelled of lime and gin, of liver and sweat, and money. Alex had to resist an urge to grab her waist. It was the secretly seething malcontent brewing somewhere beneath her well-kept frame that he wanted to touch, and in the air was a hint of an affair but not the blood. She would make him do it, and if he did, it would be an angry thing. He would lay her down. He would make her pay for overstepping the line of age, and it wouldn't be all _his_ transgession either. It would be mostly hers. He allowed himself a sadistic fantasy involving the lifting of a tennis dress in an upstairs guest room. The maid disappeared from the kitchen. That left Melissa and Fritz in the neighboring room on the other side of the swinging doors. Were they a deterrent to a great kitchen pressing, or did the lonely drone of the television set signal the onslaught of slumber party groping, an example to be followed?
"Do you like this part of the island?" she asked.
This was the mosquito-infested bay side with no surf. He had never liked it out here. The beaches were thin, and getting thinner. The people who bought and built out here were stupid. Suddenly, he realized he was getting drunk off his first drink.
"A few more hurricanes and there won't be any beach left here," he said.
"That's what they say," she sighed.
"Then another storm comes and your Totem Point goes."
"Ghastly, what Mother Nature can do. She is just _so_ cruel to homeowners."
"Isn't she, though, but won't it be weird when your back lawn starts collapsing and Melissa has no house to inherit?"
"Ah, that's where you're wrong. You see, my husband can turn back the tides of nature."
"How's that?"
"He plans to build the retaining wall of all retaining walls. It may not be pretty but we'll survive. I didn't know you had a mean streak, Alex. Why are you trying to ruin my afternoon? Besides, by the time the wall crumbles you, and if you ever have any children, all of you will be dead."
"And so will you," said Alex.
"That's right, so drink up. Shall we make a toast?"
"To the lust of the goat," he said.
"To the glory of God."
She made him another drink. This was getting festive and scary. It was early yet to start drinking. His rule was he didn't mix his first until the sun was at least a thumb's width away from the sea, but here it was hazing over at four-thirty and he was holding another glass of gin. His knees were weak and his bowels loose with exercise and alcohol. Across the counter her face colored to an almost youthful hue of a college co-ed, a temporary condition, he was sure. She walked around the counter and stared out the window at the bay. Was this a signal for him to creep up on her from behind? Ice from his gin and tonic crashed against his teeth. That was it. Two drinks was appropriate, a civilized event with an interesting older woman. A third would be...He was not sure what a third would mean. But she was back beside him now at the counter, her body angling toward him, her hair flipped to one side.
His mother would be leaving Mr. Rittenhouse's funeral. He pictured her abandoned in Boston, standing on a hill of shimmering asphalt with a view of church steeples stabbing the sky.
He walked to the sink and rinsed out his glass. Overhead a toilet flushed. The beast, the homeowner, the great trader of companies and wives was home after all, or perhaps it was only the maid?
"I need to go to the bathroom," he said.
"You go through those swinging doors into the hallway and take a left," she said.
On the couch Fritz and Melissa were a jumble of sneakers and limbs so wrapped up in their mutual mugging that they took no notice as he passed.
"Stop that," he said.
But he had made a wrong turn. Instead of the hallway he found himself in a giant living room filled with distressed furniture and exposed rafter beams. Various corridors led off into uncharted areas of the house. A criminal, drunken sneakiness came over him. He hated this house, and it suddenly occurred to him that he was not above stealing from it. Perhaps he'd come back during the winter and plunder the place, but for right now what he would give for a back patio door and a hidden piss in the bushes. Instead he plunged down a windowless hallway hung with African hunting shields. He stopped, turned, listened for the sea, but there was no surf on this side of the island, and taking his anger out on himself, he opened the nearest door.
From behind his desk Mr. Phillips took off his glasses.
"Well," he said.
He was bald. The man had never had much hair to begin with, but now he had taken it all off.
"Hi," said Alex. The study smelled of stale cigar smoke, shaved wood, and bourbon. On the wall behind the skin of Mr. Phillips' head was another skin, that of a gazelle next to a model ship within a magnum wine bottle.
"I've been carving," said Mr. Phillips.
"I'm sorry to interrupt. I'm trying to find my mother."
"Oh, but instead you got my wife."
"No, you see I got a little lost. I'm trying to find the front door so I can pick up my mother. She's at the airport."
"Did you have a good game of tennis? I thought I heard something about tennis."
"It was great. Those kids can really hit."
"Good," said Mr. Phillips. "That's what we send them to camp for. Don't you want to know what I'm carving?"
"Whatever it is I'm sure it's relaxing. I mean for a busy man like..."
"I'm carving a wooden bust of my soon to be ex-wife, and I've been drinking. I've been carving and drinking."
"Are you doing something degrading to her image?"
His laugh filled the study.
"Well, yes, as a matter of fact I am. Do you want to see it?"
"No thank you."
"Alex, do you like your job? I mean, do you feel that currency trading has any financial integrity whatsoever?"
"Not particularly, sir. I mean, sometimes it's a useful tool for hedging risk, but the more I look at it, the more I wish I hadn't left the law. It's mostly speculative stuff. You know, one man's loss is another man's gain kind of a thing."
"You're right," he said, and now he had swung around from behind his desk and was approaching.
"After Labor Day I want you to give my office a call. You understand. My office, you call it. We're going through a little shake-up right now, and I'll find you something worthwhile."
"Thank you," said Alex. "That's really very kind of..."
"Don't mention a thing."
"Mr. Phillips?"
"Yes, Alex?"
"Is there a bathroom nearby I could use?"
—
She was hugging herself at the window. The afternoon haze had burned off into the clean, sharp light of early sundown. The wind had picked up, and the water in the near distance held the texture of crinkled tin foil stretching to a smoother sheen out to the horizon.
"Your drink's on the counter," she said.
"Are you trying to get me drunk?"
"No, I'm looking for something to drink to besides divorce."
"How about tennis camp," said Alex. "Let's drink to that."
"To tennis camp," she said, turning to face him.
"To getting your money's worth," he said.
"I did, didn't I," she said. "Or I guess _he_ did at any rate. Not that the man could care one way or another."
For a moment her future flashed before him. She was emerging from her psychoanalyst's office on the Upper East Side of Manhattan readying herself for a late ladies' lunch and another round of legal proceedings with her lawyer. A fall divorce in New York, well, there was nothing dramatic in it really. Alex saw her in dark sunglasses walking the wealthy circuits of the city fortified with a giddy sense of temporary freedom. Perhaps she would buy a convertible.
"I think your husband just offered me a job."
"So here comes the monkey see monkey do financial routine."
"Are you testing your range?" he asked.
"How do you mean?"
"I mean, how old are you?" he asked her.
"Old enough to be your mother's youngest sister."
So that was it. She had been using him to gauge just how much youth she might still absorb. But their moment had passed, and as if to illustrate the point, she threw a black cardigan sweater over her shoulders.
"This was really sweet of you, but I've got to go," he said.
"Where do you have to go, Alex?"
His mother's return flight was still an hour away, but the best lie is always closest to the truth, and he gave it to her.
"Oh," she said. "Well, give her my best, will you?"
The driveway was a miasma of pink and orange in the setting sun, and the cool early evening wind coming in off the bay made him shudder and feel naked and cold in his whites. But his mother's Jeep greeted him like a friend, and getting inside he breathed out and stared down at the sand on the floorboards. When he looked up, he found a lone woman receding from his view. She was leaning against the doorway squinting at him through the sun. But the pull, the whine of reverse had already cast her in its undertow, and it was only an empty headrest his arm wrapped itself around as he steered clear of the cars in the driveway.
# **The Fixers**
There was once an ad man, a journalist, and a junkie, and they all lived and breathed like fleas in the coat of New York City. One day the ad man walked out of his office and onto a midtown avenue. It said, here. Here in the city of use where the flags of the hotels and clubs fluttered their sheets above his head, here he had a choice. Today he had a choice, voices to listen to, to weigh, and pausing on the street he felt an offering in the air. It was a clear electric blue day in April. His lover, she mingled in that thrilling corner of his heart that still wanted to destroy himself, to make himself an early grave. His lover and her drugs, there was that, or home to his wife. His choice. He did not hate his wife. He loved her in the way one might love and fear a teacher. One day they had married to end a fight. Now they were husband and wife. Lover or wife? How many times has the question been poised on a set of wet lips for the first time in creation? But he was a free man, wasn't he? And in the scheme of things Charlie Way was a lucky man. He was young and working on the Gillette campaign. It was the Best a Man Can Get. Good work, lucrative work, but like a lot of people in the twilight of their twenties, Charlie felt his was the success of an impostor. The Best a Man Can Get. He saw the steely grays, the minted teal freshness and aquamarines of the new line, so painfully focused grouped for maximum brand approval. Sure, he had stolen some color combinations from the new warm weather NHL expansion teams, but so what. That old mantra, the Best a Man Can Get, he was giving it a face-lift, a new meaning that had met with such overwhelming approval it seemed only natural to celebrate. Drugs or wife? The competing pressure systems on this clear banner day of advertorial triumph muddled his mind. The street did not help. It was a medley of after-work sneakers on beefcake pantyhose and sirens. His day had been too busy for lunch, and now the beckoning cherry light of the overhead Sbarro pizza lamps shone down on the toppings like a Christmas offering. Sbarro pizza. It said, here, come in here, and though he knew it was going down, Charlie Way could not see the sun setting anywhere at all.
In his trench coat like the others, with his thinning blond hair like the others, and briefcase that held the work of the impostor, he stood on the street thinking of Eve like no other. He still wanted to alter his life, see what would happen to it if he tried to throw it away, and on the perimeter of Times Square he waited for a sign. Fuck it, he'd go home. It was Thursday. He'd wait until Friday. He was making the right move. He'd go home and walk the dog. He knew the other way, Eve's way, was the wrong way, but that's what he liked about it, and how was one to reconcile that? He disappeared into the subway.
—
On the same day as Charlie was making his choice, a journalist was waiting for a story. He worked in his apartment alone, and his mind was thrilled by trends and the current goings-on of urban men and women. He made a living as a freelancer, that is to say, he hustled. He scooped up music, fashion, suicides, current events that, if one thought about it, represented something in society, and he put the loose ends together so that his readers could understand them generally, so that they might be made sense of as a trend. Eric Fogleman, he was a well-respected young generalizer, and it didn't hurt that he had an agent with a tongue like a wet whip. He did not need to look up the word "zeitgeist" in the dictionary anymore. It was the royal "we" of trend reporting where he had made his mark. For instance, he had broken the "cocooning" story.
"We are staying home and ordering out more and more these days," Eric had written.
He was tall and chiseled-looking, and though God had not granted him the kind of looks he seemed to claim he deserved, he had little trouble getting laid. All day long one could see just how finely toothed the comb was that had passed through his hair. He groomed himself as a man who looked like he knew what was going on right now, at this very moment in time, and he cultivated this look so as to capitalize on story pitches that would lead to work, money, and fame. Once he had even been interviewed on _Sonya Live_. Currently he was working on a story about heroin use among a young educated class of people in New York, and he felt the story meant something about an entire generation in despair.
Though Charlie and the journalist had never met, they happened to live in the same building, and they shared an interest in a woman.
—
That woman, she was a little bitch, and waking, she found there was something wrong with her soul. It was nothing new for Eve. The room seemed gassed by a sad late afternoon sun. She sat up in bed feeling the mis-invitation of the city greet her with its own personal melancholy. The reap-what-you-sow principle, it was getting a little belated in her life not to have recognized its ruling principle. She was filled with a petulant whining that was irresistible to men like Charlie. She whined a lot. Not on the surface because it was too pretty, but somewhere more deeply epidermal, one wanted to slap her, right across her porcelain junkie face with its pinpointed eyes. She never left Manhattan. If she left Manhattan, her world would very nearly be over.
But what is it that has already been said about dishonesty in a woman—that it can almost always be forgiven? Charlie could always forgive Eve. Her smooth, finely shaved calves, the bathing oils, the brush strokes of conditioner that glistened in soft black hair. Before she went out to score there was her nightly tub and six or seven glasses of sweet dessert wine, or the whiskey sours she sweetened with five seconds of sugar poured from a stolen restaurant dispenser, the cotton between her toes, the red polish and the waxes, the sighs of resignation and boredom, frustration, and the half Englishisms she had the pretension to pout out even to herself in the tub. Life was so hard, and junk so easy. Or was it the other way around? She did not know. She wished she could tear her addiction out with the same zeal of self-loathing she used to wax her bikini line. But she was born into the wrong time because she could have made someone a shiningly devious wife and lived out a relatively harmless alcoholic life in a well-curbed suburb, but she couldn't.
As she stepped out onto the street the stable of men in her life percolated in her mind. Tonight Charlie was a prominent one because he had not called. The weather, cusped between spring and summer, reminded her of his fair hair in her lap, and as she walked her neighborhood street, she wished he had called. But he hadn't, not for a while, and since she was one of those women who had one of those relationships with the telephone, his not calling was naturally of interest to her. Eve was wearing a woolen fire-engine-red cocktail suit that had belonged to her grandmother. Its mink collar caressed the back of her neck. Someone had left a bottle of cassis in her apartment so she had a nice little drunk on. She felt wonderful and in the periphery of her mind the conglomerated attention of men hovered like servants, or were they angels fanning her self-esteem? She felt extremely pretty on the front end of her drunk. In fact, as she stood waiting for a cab, she saw herself as the wealthy wife of a Phoenician maritime trader with a husband of means out at sea. Tonight she knew where she was going, and she understood the price of what it would be, and she did not need to be reassured of why she was going because she did not ask it, and how many people can say that at the outset of a New York evening?
She hailed a cab. There was barely any wind, but what there was brushed against her face with the textured embrace of a flower petal. Was it the encroachment of summer heat or the residual exhaust of an extinguished rush hour? It was difficult to tell. Opening the taxi door, she looked overhead at the intermittent coral pink clouds that spat out along a diluted blue sky. It was a weak sky, thought Eve, meek and ready to be taken over by the night.
At Rivington Street she stepped out into Spanish drug dealerdom. With the sun racing up the street at her, she looked like a stop sign in her red dress but who cared? She felt alive, and as for her friends? They had slipped away from the matter at hand, from what they needed. Their lives were not about a moment anymore. That is what she told herself standing on the street alone, that was the difference, the moment, she still had hers and they did not. There was a bodega on the corner and walking inside to buy cigarettes, Eve thought to herself what were these places? The store sold to the drug trade, and she felt the oppressive specificity of needs it served, the idle chrome meat slicer, the butane refill canisters, the cut-rate cigarettes, Joy and bleach and other miscellaneous needle-cleaning detergents. Even the empty Laundromat across the street with its motionless little holes stood at an attentive standstill, operable only for the washing of money.
"Baby, baby," said Big Bob, coming around a corner. "I've been waiting for you."
"Hi," said Eve.
"And going to get higher."
The dealer's eyes stood hatched at attention.
"There's this guy I want you to meet," said Big Bob.
"I don't fix. This guy sounds like he fixes. He's got this nice contaminated syringe and a rusty pecker that doesn't..."
"Oh man, Eve," said Big Bob. "It's like how many times do I have to bump up against your paranoia."
"What would you do without paranoia, Bob?" asked Eve. "Think about the coffee costs it cuts."
"I know, this place is a hard nut," he said. "I couldn't believe it. I got here in my brother's van this winter..."
It was Big Bob's van story. She had friends who were worse, who repeated themselves more often. Everyone did it, and some stories one could listen to a thousand times over, but the burden of Big Bob's winter van tale was that it illustrated the transitive power of debt. Big Bob owed his brother and Eve owed Big Bob. The transitive principle. It was pitiful. This life was pitiful, and inside her dead grandmother's suit pocket she balled up her little hand in rage.
"Fine, let's go see him," she said.
"...so cold I thought my balls were going to fall off, and my brother's van was in the city's hands..."
"Bob."
"Cool, you don't fix, right, that's OK. He can work with that, I guess. He's just a guy I need you to meet."
They walked over to Houston, crossed it, and moved onto Avenue B. The beginning of that street with all its hitching street barter and kinetic confrontations and greetings sickened her. It was a sentimental world these men inhabited with their spiking drug-fed emotions and dramatic bullshit. They walked on, Big Bob nearly a paternal figure now, his sweat-tinged bulk pulling her along. On the corner of Eighth Street a man on a raised scaffolding was giving a Catholic church a new coat of yellow paint. Big Bob crossed himself.
"I didn't know we were that way, Bob," said Eve. "I thought you would have saved that for your basic mother-worshiping Spanish coke dealer, you know, bags on Saturday, church on Sunday?"
"Who the fuck do you think you are? Joan of Arc. Miss Beacon of the Eternal Light," said Big Bob, pulling up short. "You're down to me, baby. But it's like I can't get that through your pretty little head, and it's _really_ pissing me off. You're down to me five bags and a favor, you know what I'm saying? That's just a fact. The fact. Five bags and a favor. I don't even have to _be_ here right now. I could leave, then you'd come running looking for a party a little later on, but what would happen if I say to Julio, 'Julio, there's that bitch who's fucking you because she's fucking me?' You know what I'm saying? And then it's pop-goes-the-weasel for miss spoiled junkie bitch. You're in a carpet, and they've pawned your cute suit. Some other fashion bitch comes along and buys your dress. She pulls it off the rack, and you're in a carpet. She says, 'Wow, this is a fantastic deal, these places are great...' "
"What kind of carpet?" asked Eve.
—
Have you ever followed anyone? From the dog run, Charlie saw Eve against the day, pressed in red before the yellow of the church, coming down the street in her sickness. Though she did not see him, he did, yes, he saw her, very much he did. He saw her, and his mind was wasted on her in a dream.
And from his view out the window, Eric Fogleman saw Eve too. He smiled and poured himself a drink.
The dog squatted next to Charlie and began to take a quivering shit.
"Oh, Ralph," said Charlie.
One night Charlie and Eve had walked together into a handful of snowballing evenings with people shuffling around some misconceived party with stamps on their eyes. Then came the loping home to his wife and the accusations and crying, the begging, the promises and degradation. But they did it again, for the last time, and a week after that, they got together when his wife was out of the country. When was it, Charlie wondered, that fun had slipped over into obliteration? When was it that this cycle had begun? Walking around New York rubbing himself out, pulling himself back together, rubbing himself out, pulling himself back together, crawling to work.
When Eve and Big Bob turned into his apartment building, Charlie tailed them inside. He did not feign surprise at seeing her and she did not register it. The elevator rose within a preordained coincidence. He gave Eve a kiss. Was that a look of submerged pleading, of desperation and yearning that flared her neck tendrils out at him, or was it her persuasive aquiline nose that shook him, that bored into his heart, dissecting his desires?
"Where are you going?" asked Charlie.
"I don't know," said Eve.
"I know you," said Big Bob. "You used to come around."
The dog, out front on the situation as usual, sniffed at Eve's crotch and then mounted her dress on raised forelegs.
"I was thinking of you today," said Charlie, removing the pet from Eve's skirt. "I was going to call you."
"But you thought enough is enough."
"Not really. I wanted to celebrate."
"Then why didn't you."
"I thought I'd call you tomorrow," he said.
"I think something weird is going to happen to me in your building, Charlie."
"Shut up, Eve," said Big Bob. "I don't move weirdness, it's not a commodity I value."
"I'm broke," said Eve. "And I don't know how to fix it."
There was no time left now. The elevator had arrived at his floor. His wife was home. He felt her there in the apartment, waiting.
"I'm pressing 'Door Open,' " announced Big Bob. "Do you want me to keep pressing 'Door Open'? Because I'm feeling...I'm getting ready to press 'Door Closed,' you know what I'm saying?"
Charlie paced the hallway, leaving the dog panting at the door. He did not want to go into his own home. The thought of Eve perched above his head in such mysterious circumstances poisoned any possibility for a pleasurable evening with his wife. He looked at the animal drooling on the rug and kicked it.
—
"I hope this guy doesn't deal coke," said Eve. She had the uncanny ability of pushing one thing aside and picking up the other with a persuasive feminine bitterness that was difficult not to admire.
"Does he? Does he do that, Bob, does he move cocaine?"
"No," said Big Bob as the elevator door opened. "He moves information."
The door had been left open, and walking inside, Eve was confronted by an angelfish swimming the vivid blue waters of a computer screen.
"Come in," said a man sitting in the middle of a white couch. On top of a glass table and fanned out like a tightly cropped hand of playing cards were the covers of various fashionable magazines. Big Bob walked into the kitchen and helped himself to a beer.
The apartment was a large white box with high tin ceilings. Marooned in the middle of this emptiness was a bed. The curtains were white. There were off-white pine floors that smelled of a recent scrubbing. It was not unlike an art gallery without any work on the walls, and in the gaping space Eve experienced an intense wave of urban agoraphobia. Outside and softened by the rising stories of the building, came the distant snarls of a dog fight.
"You've got a nice place here," she said.
"Thank you," said the man. "I work hard."
"You do?"
"Yes, I do. In fact I'm rarely here."
"Really, where are you?"
"Working."
"That's nice," said Eve.
His eyes were hazel with disorderly spangles of white, as if a constellation of stars had exploded in the irises. Everything else, his apartment, his body, his close-fitting clothes had their place, and his black stereo which ran halfway up one white wall looked incredibly expensive.
"You must work really hard," said Eve.
"She doesn't fix," said Big Bob from the kitchen.
The man stood up. He had creased white chinos and a black turtleneck partially opened by a rounded zipper-pull. He walked over to his stereo and pressed a button. A door slid open and flattened inside the disc well was a bag of heroin.
"This whole CD phenomenon is such a conspiracy," he said, taking the bag out. "You know, over the years my record collection has grown into something of a library, and then they come out with the CD. You can't get anything on vinyl anymore. But my point is that when they first came out with the CD marketing promotions, they said you could throw the things around like Frisbees and nothing would happen. Total bullshit. The things scratch more easily than records, and if you ask me, the needle carries just as good a sound if your turntable's up to par."
"That's fucked up," said Big Bob. "You should do a piece on that."
"I was thinking about it," said the man, reaching for the stubble of a missing beard. "I was thinking about it."
A silence of solemn resignation for the music industry's culpability filled the room.
"I've only got a taste for you, Eve, just a taste," he said, shaking the powder onto the glass table.
The stars were coming out just above the balconied tree-tops of the park. A curtain blew into the room. Eve felt strangely in touch with the sounds below—the diminishing squelch of the basketball court, the back and forth continuum of a handball socking against a backboard wall, the intermittent cries of greetings and departures, and the peaks and valleys of the loaded car stereos building and fading into nothing. A damp air sat in with the fattening of that night charged with an unreadable meaning to her.
She snorted the heroin laid out for her on the table.
"Look," she said, coming up. "What the fuck is going on here?"
"That's entirely up to you," said the man.
"I'd love to hang around to watch things play out for themselves," said Big Bob from the kitchen. "But money never sleeps, you know what I'm saying, Eric?"
Without taking his eyes off Eve, Eric rocked back on the couch and reached into his pocket. He pulled out a silver money clip and peeled off three fifty-dollar bills.
"Thank you, Bob," he said.
"Wait a minute, Bob," said Eve. "I'm coming with you."
She tried to get up, but it took Big Bob two fingers to do what he needed to do.
"Sorry, Eve," he said. "Not unless you can come up with what you're down to me. That's just how it's been laid out."
"What?" said Eve.
"I'm a journalist," said Eric. "Don't worry about it."
"Yeah," said Big Bob. "And he never fucks his sources, right, Eric?"
"Right," said Eric.
"No names," said Big Bob.
"No names," said Eric.
They both laughed.
"You know, Bob," said Eric, "I thought we arranged for a spiker. As it stands now, the thing has less resonance, visually at least, without a needle."
Eve sat inside a warm womb of hatred. She felt cradled in an organically conceived outrage as soft as the touch of love, and with the same pull that is not unlike love, she wanted more of what was in Eric's bag.
"What do I have to do?" Big Bob put it to Eric. "Wrap your story up for you with a bow? I mean, I delivered. She's perfect. She's just what we were talking about, what you needed. So I'm sorry, you know, it's like she doesn't come with works included."
"Our deal was a fixer," said Eric. "That's all I'm saying. Next time, find one."
"Fine," said Big Bob and he was gone.
Eric stood up and cracked his neck.
"Do you mind if I make myself a drink?" he said.
"Do you have a cigarette? I lost my cigarettes," said Eve.
"I don't smoke."
"So what happens now?" she said. "We get to go to an ashtray switching restaurant where you have a lot of suck. Then you get to try and fuck me."
"The only reason we're pursuing this story at the magazine," said Eric, "is that in this age of irony, a return to dope makes such sense. Do you understand what I'm saying?"
He began to pace, to move through the empty room, warming up his pitch.
"It's representative of a kind of...a kind of...I don't know...a decadent nihilism. You are. You don't know it, Eve, but you are. You're representative..."
"Of what?" asked Eve.
"Oh, for God's sake," said Eric. "I tell you what I'm going to do. I don't smoke but I'm going down to the deli for your cigarettes. The beer's in the fridge. I'm only doing this because I'm a straight shooter, so if you want, you can walk, and if you want, you can stay. We can have a talk. We can go out to dinner and talk. Do you have a problem with that, talking? Is that really such a big deal?"
"Talk about what?" asked Eve.
"You," said Eric. "And what, if anything, you represent."
She straightened her skirt and tried to look representative.
For the longest time she stabbed at his stereo trying to get something to play, anything, but she couldn't figure it out. She pressed, she pointed, she stabbed at the black enameled buttons in a rising panic until suddenly a song came over the radio: "Hey...why don't you play...another somebody done somebody wrong song..."
Eve melted down, folding into its melody, holding the song against her breast and crying so that it might not go away.
—
Charlie Way's wife read Eric Fogleman's article in bed. It was a funny coincidence because in the story they had changed Eve's name to Liz, which was her name, Elizabeth Shankle, but sometimes people still called her Liz, which annoyed her no end. Up front the writer had made a big deal about changing Eve's name in order to hide her identity, and in the photograph Eve's hair hung down partially obscuring her face. In the photograph, Eve's teeth pulled on a piece of surgical tubing. She was captured bent over and jamming a needle home.
"Your friend, your little drug fuck?" she said, throwing the magazine at him and then sliding underneath the comforter. "I guess she finally stamped her foot hard enough that someone listened."
She was a small, beautiful bundle of a woman, and beneath the comforter she was crying and sinking into that almost reassuring constant of total-boyfriend-undertow. But he was not her boyfriend anymore. He was her husband. With the light from the bedside reading lamp cutting through the stitches of the comforter she could not believe he was actually her husband. She promised herself she would leave him. She swore an oath to avenge the spirit of her broken oaths to leave him, to make him leave. She made a very cold deal with herself.
"We never did anything with needles," said Charlie.
"That's comforting, honey," she muffled through the blanket. "Let me tell you, that really makes me feel like frying you an egg in the morning."
Charlie sat erect, jolted by the currents of infidelity laying a deadly grid upon the system of their bed. He knew a lawyer who knew a lawyer who'd get the divorce over quietly, quickly, and with as little mess as possible. Rationality in the face of panic, it was a male virtue, but there was no escaping the article on his lap. It was a public offering to the negligence of his desire, which as he thought about it, was the creeping endgame of his life. The photograph had an industrial strength tint of green and bore its black negative cropping, which, in the business, was considered raw. The prose spoke of "negative social synergies forged out of the meaning-lessness of a headlong consumer society." According to Eric Fogleman, a new lost generation, a subculture of well-off kids, had cropped up. In another time, the story went, these young adults would have become leaders of their generation, but for various reasons they had opted out of a society they could no longer "negotiate." That was the word he used, and the writer made it clear that he had been there, had ventured to the edge of that world only to come back to report on it. Flanked by an Absolut ad and his own firm's L'Oréal spread, the Eve of Charlie's life and the Eve of those pages seemed forged in some basic discrepancy that tagged itself to the basement of his heart and blew an evil wind through the shutters of his mind.
"I'm sorry," he said to his wife.
"That's just never going to be enough anymore," she said, turning off the lights.
—
That winter Charlie walked through a falling snow to Eve's funeral. It was held in the freshly painted Roman Catholic church. Her parents had refused to identify the body because, they said, it ceased long ago to be the body of their child. On the stairs of the church he turned and gazed out at the stripped trees bowing to the winter wind. Then he faced the doors of the church. They said, here you are, here, come in here and welcome, welcome to the world, and though he scanned the magazines and papers afterward, there was no follow-up story, there was no obituary, there was no news at all.
# **How Much for Ho Chi Minh?**
Shall we begin with the weather? Let's. The weather in this country made Richard want to streak, just take it all off, but he couldn't. He was in a government car. These ministry officials made Richard want to scream, but he could not scream. Face, apparently it was important not to lose it. The overarching authority of this city made Richard want to hide. But he could not hide. He had a job to do. The futility of his assignment made Richard want to cry. But he could not cry. He was in Hanoi, and he had to keep it together.
"So, Hung," said Sarah to their translator. "What happens in Hanoi on a Saturday night?"
They were an entourage of five packed into a black Soviet sedan. In the car was Richard and his girlfriend Sarah, a driver, Hung, and an anonymous Ministry of Information official who wouldn't give Richard his card. Hung cranked his neck in measurement of Sarah's question. What to do on a Saturday night? It was a dangerously open-ended proposition that dangled in the car for quite some time. The prudence and wariness of these people, it made Richard want to drink.
"My wife and I," replied Hung, "we take a walk by the lake."
"Really," said Sarah. "You paint such a romantic landscape. He never does that with me. You know what he does with me? He drags me to a decadent American rock and roll concert and then he comes home too drunk to...well, you know, Hung."
Hung was a thin, capable young man assigned to Richard in the spirit of generational compatibility. The color of his skin approached that of flypaper, and the five languages he spoke fluently made Richard feel slothful, blustery, and undisciplined.
"Do you like American music?" asked Sarah.
Hung turned his head away from the American couple and spoke to the driver in Vietnamese. He did not answer.
"It was a simple yes or no question, Hung, but I'm sorry if I offended you."
"No, you have not offended me," said Hung.
"Good," said Sarah.
Sarah asked Hung to ask the driver if it were OK to put in a cassette tape. The request was granted.
"Do you carry many of these recordings with you?" asked Hung.
"Yes," said Richard. "Vietnam is a wonderful country, but I'm afraid I don't have much of an ear for her music. It has no bass. I wonder why that is?"
"And they are of the modern American variety, your cassettes?"
"Well, sometimes Scoop can get rather sentimental," said Sarah. "Scoop, that's right, Hung, it translates roughly to 'he who digs his own grave.' Sometimes I come home and catch him playing 'California Dreaming.' "
" 'California Dreaming,' this is not a modern song?" asked Hung.
"It is commonly referred to as a golden oldie," said Richard. "I like to play them sometimes."
The cassette tape thundered into its opening number. Hung winced. Juvenile American exhibitionism, Hanoi was asking for it.
"Hung," said Richard. "I've got an idea. Why don't the two of us start a gossip column. A gossip column is what this town needs, more star power, less paperwork."
"Scoop here already misses Liz Smith," said Sarah.
"I read in the newspaper there is a beauty contest tonight," said Hung, not one to stray dangerously far from the spirit of any conversation.
"Really," said Sarah. "Scoop thinks Vietnamese women are as pure as raindrops on a water lily."
"Well, they _are_ ," said Richard. "Hung, isn't it true that the emperors in Hué had their tea made from raindrops gathered by maidens of the Imperial court who floated around in ponds full of water lilies?"
"This is indeed how one of our legends is told, yes," said Hung.
"Delicate, but disgusting," said Sarah. "I'm glad to see Vietnam has moved beyond such exploitative feudalism."
"My country is changing, forever there is change," said Hung above the music. "Now we follow a path of openness in trade and business, but step by step."
"Step by step," said Sarah.
"Step by step," said Richard.
Step by step, it was the government line, a chorus to a never-ending song. The driver glared at them in the rearview mirror. Mr. Ministry of Information pulled out a small notepad.
—
Hanoi scared him. Like most Americans who broke the law, who jaywalked and experimented with drugs, who trespassed and did battle with the Department of Motor Vehicles, Richard saw himself as an essentially law-abiding citizen. But here, over his head in Hanoi, he felt as if his every fuck-up, past and present, stood before an omnipresent People's Committee. Luckily it was dusk, and with his first working day behind him along with several shots of joint-venture vodka, he walked the streets temporarily at ease. It was six o'clock on a Saturday in August of 1992. Shades of secondhand grays lent the wide boulevard a state-sponsored air of respectability while the smaller side streets teemed with the arrhythmic banging of crouched metallurgists. A man with no legs sat before a scale, and Richard grossly overpaid the invalid to weigh himself. In kilos, the whole thing was a mystery he did not care about.
Beside him a group of men were playing badminton. Was that the desk clerk at his Government Guest House? Or maybe it was that other guy, the assistant to the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, the one who had forgotten to ask for his lighter back. Or maybe it was that...it was no use...Richard watched the shuttlecock arch back and forth, and imagining the feathered bird was a hypnotist's pen, he lapsed into a half sleep as the men in flip-flops danced shirtless in the summer street. Back and forth, back and forth, it was a light game played by thin men in a heavy air. Motorbikes and cyclos carrying live passengers and the dead eclectic wears of Asian commerce weaved to miss the game. But now the players had spotted their exotic spectator and someone tapped him on the shoulder. It _was_ the desk clerk.
"You play?" asked the man.
All the Guest House employees right down to the maids had been trained by the East German Stasi, and it was no state secret that the rooms were bugged. Still, this was no time for paranoia. The street was marked with a rose-colored chalk that reminded Richard of his sister's hopscotch scrawlings in Central Park. There was a kind of UN style bonhomie in the air. A teenager put a Chinese racket in his hand. In exchange Richard took a Walkman from his pocket and showed the boy how to use it. Then he shook hands with his team. The breakfast waiter from the Government Guest House had teamed up with the front desk clerk, the one who had had the last word on his slightly torn one-hundred-dollar bill. He was a Guest House heavy, graying pleasantly, the very picture of Zen, definitely a spy. That made two Guest House employees. Richard did not recognize the others.
He found himself wobbling near the net where he could take advantage of his one asset, height. But it was no good. He was neither patient nor steadfast. He was a weak American man, a slave to his appetites, unable to disguise a thing. Badminton with all its essential subtleties played to the elements of the Vietnamese character he lacked. Partially processed vodka burned his stomach. The shuttlecock began coming in double. The teenager squatted on the curb thoroughly overwhelmed by the power of the Walkman. Richard worried he might be spreading an infectious disease.
Between points he began to have disturbing surveillance fantasies. From his room, what might they have heard and passed along to higher channels? Well, besides Richard's list of questions which Sarah had demanded he read out loud and the little whimper of his single Hanoi ejaculation, there had been a fight. She had wanted to come along to the interviews that morning. He did not want her to come. Sarah was not a journalist. She was an artist. She installed installations and made "objects" in New York. He did not want to see her in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He did not want to see her in any ministry whatsoever. Her retort had been, fuck you, I've come all this way with you and I'm not missing out. She had a camera, and though Richard was on assignment for a magazine that ran no photographs, she assumed she had the right. They'd had it out while Hung waited downstairs in the car.
"It's just not _done_ over here, OK," he had said. "You don't show up in these places with your girlfriend. I mean, it's fine if we're talking to Fat Hat in Saigon, and he's giving you a free plane ticket to Moscow and his 'trip for two on a oneway ride' routine, but Le Van Bang is a different story. This is Hanoi. I'm supposed to be a professional."
"And I'm the photographer, what's the big deal?"
"There's nothing to photograph. There will be teacups in a conference room with men in it."
Plenty of tea was right, so much tea that he began to sweat. Little raindrops fell from his armpits and by the third interview his white button-down shirt was a translucent embarrassment. The Deputy Minister of Information asked him if he had a fever. By then he was glad to see his girlfriend crouched with her camera in her least racy Kenneth Cole shoes documenting his futility. She even took a picture of him, notepad in hand, and what a wet T-shirt contest that was going to be. Looking down at himself, Richard could make out the lines of his nipples. But was Sarah not a comfort? Was she not a sunflower brightening these austere ministerial rooms with their hedged answers and razor-backed chairs?
Le Van Bang's office had lace doilies on the low-lying conference table and a rotating fan that circulated the hot air most efficiently. There was something secretive and serene about the office with its ocher-colored walls and chipped ceiling. Large French windows gave out onto a circular driveway, and on an opposing wall was a photograph of Uncle Ho poring over a map with General Giap. While Hung translated his questions, it evolved that Le Van Bang, the biggest fish of them all, was avoiding Richard's line of questioning and gazing at Sarah. The wise old geezer was charmed by her, bored with Richard. There then followed an artful one-eighty-degree rotation in the line of questioning so it was _she_ who was being interviewed.
Pennsylvania was a large state, yes. No, not all of it was considered the East Coast, though she herself was from the eastern part of the state. She had grown up on a farm but her father was not a farmer, no. They used to grow corn and wheat but not any more. Landed gentry? Well, that was a bit of an antiquated term, but her father did collect a nominal fee for the use of his land. How many dollars per square kilometer? You know, that was a very good question. It was an issue that was never openly discussed. A repressed family? Oh, that means...Well, what should I say that means, Scoop? She looked his way for assistance and received none. No matter, now she called New York her home. Yes, the city was certainly an exciting cultural center but there was a great crime problem. Some of the Vietnamese in New York were indeed in criminal gangs. Yes, in Ho Chi Minh City there did appear to be a strong demand for pirated American music. As for that report about the rock and roll singer who advocated suicide in some of his songs, yes, that report was correct, but the minister must understand the singer in question was not necessarily representative of all Western music. Was he a symptom of a sickness? Well, yes, that was a fair enough statement. Potholes? She could understand the confusion. No, they were not made from explosive devices. They were disturbances in the road, small and sometimes quite large holes. But sometimes it did certainly seem as if a small bomb had gone off. How many centimeters wide on average? She could not accurately estimate, perhaps twelve. They were created from extremes in temperature and municipal malfeasance. Yes, New York needed fixing. It was nothing like Hanoi.
—
A cry came up from the badminton game. Richard had spiked one at the feet of the Guest House waiter. Preoccupation was improving his game. He'd found his niche at net after all. Now it was time for a blustery exit. Summoning the role of American imperialist poaching at net, he launched himself into the air and in an overzealous repeat of his last shot, missed the bird and snapped the net.
—
The next morning the telephone rang.
"OK, but why don't you order us some coffee," said Sarah. "We'll be down in a while."
Then she hung up the phone, rolled over, and sighed at the ceiling.
"That was Hung. He's in the lobby."
Richard groaned.
"Hung like a dog," he said. "It's Sunday. Why can't someone either help me out or leave me alone?"
"Get dressed," said Sarah.
"But we don't have anything scheduled for today."
"Get dressed."
They had planned a quiet guidebook-driven day to themselves centered around French food and a visit to Ho Chi Minh's mausoleum. The next round of interviews was scheduled for Monday, so what Hung was doing sitting at the breakfast table with his spindly legs tightly crossed was something of an annoying mystery.
"Good morning, Hung," said Richard.
"Good morning."
Hung ashed his cigarette and then took his head in both hands and cracked his neck. The waiters coalesced on the far side of the room in an incentiveless air of hostility. Tipping was not discouraged, it was prohibited. Sarah lit a cigarette and blew smoke Hung's way.
"Isn't Hung looking sort of dashing this morning," she said. "What's with the shirt?"
"And the jeans," said Richard. "Where'd you get those styling jeans?"
The waiter from the badminton game came by to take their order.
"Yesterday in the street? Good game," said Richard. "I like very much..."
The waiter pretended not to recognize him.
"He's probably pissed you snapped his net," said Sarah.
She turned to Hung.
"So, to what do we owe this Sunday morning visitation?"
Over their second coffee, the situation crystallized.
"What is the expression? Ah yes," said Hung. "Pocket change. The driver needs pocket change. The subsidies for gasoline were reduced last month, but the rise in price has, naturally, not yet been reflected in our ministry's paperwork."
It was not like Hung to criticize his ministry and Richard was at once disturbed and fascinated with this mild metamorphosis. Through the window he gazed out at the driver in the black sedan. Usually the man's face appeared cut from a coin. Now, on his day off, his eyes flickered like a lizard's tongue.
"The driver also says his niece was married last night," said Hung. "But I do not believe this for a fact."
"Fine," said Richard. "How much for a visit to the Ho Chi Minh mausoleum?"
"And after, a walk by the lake," said Sarah. "How much for a walk by the lake?"
A British woman they'd had dinner with the night before came into the restaurant and sat down at the table. She was doing advance work for a flooding conference sponsored by the UN. Sarah called her the "tea bag." Richard had made a drunken pass at her in the bar of the Metropole Hotel the previous evening. She had rejected him in a charming fashion.
"What is that disgusting expression you Americans created?" said the tea bag. "Oh yes, date rape. Last night I was date-raped by the UN's High Commissioner for Refugees."
Hung bowed his head. Then he reached for the tea bag's pack of cigarettes and took one. In that gesture Richard caught an essential transformation in Hung. The barrage of incessant Western free-market disclosure heavily laden with sexual nuance was like a pill slowly taking effect. This talk of nightclubs and date rape, the music, the jousting, it was all so indicative of the shape of things to come, Hung's forehead nearly touched the table. Richard continued to press.
"In dollars or dong, Hung? Let's begin there. The Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum followed by a walk by the lake. I'll pick up the picnic for you and the driver. But first we must come to a calculated currency agreement. U.S. dollars or Vietnamese dong?"
"Wait a minute, I want to meet the wife," said Sarah. "How much for the wife?"
"Stop," said Hung. "Stop, both of you. You must not talk of my wife."
"Hung doesn't get my humor," said Sarah. "He never has."
There was a long silence. The entire Government Guest House seemed poised on the brink of a great compromise.
"Dollars," said Hung. "But first you must go upstairs and collect your music cassettes. We must visit a friend of mine."
—
The friend called himself Zip. His apartment was a depot for the playing, recording, and copying of music, plus a bed. It was strange because from the street Zip's apartment was like so many others Richard had seen in Vietnam. There was the cheap concrete, the steel gate falling vertically to the ground, the Honda "Dream" motorbike parked inside. Zip's living room was his bedroom, and it appeared as if his kitchen doubled as a toilet. There was a guitar dubiously announcing itself as a Gibson, a floor of black cords, speaker wire, duct-tape, and a wall of stereos. In the back of the apartment there was one small window and through it Richard could see children splashing water in an alley. This alley, partially eclipsed by hanging laundry, did not give onto the main street. It was a back door alley that secretly meandered from house to house.
Zip smoked Marlboros, a good beginning. Since he'd been in Vietnam, Richard had given away nearly two cartons. Now he was sick of it. Standing in this recording shop, he felt it was a good time to take, not give. But perhaps his host had already sensed this. Fine, he'd take a Marlboro. This Zip was thin with a clammy handshake and black eyes.
"So what can I do for you?" asked Richard.
Zip was interested in a record that had come out in 1991. It was not only a fabulous record, but it had the distinction of having replaced a commercially disfigured pop star from the top of the charts. Richard had the tape in his possession along with a few others. Zip wanted them all.
"So _this_ is what you do on your days off, Hung," said Sarah. "You broker music deals. I never would have guessed."
Hung was not amused. He kept his back pressed to the latched front door.
"You know," said Richard, "there's a law against this. It's called copyright infringement. I don't mind fucking over David Geffen, but you sell five thousand of these on the street and it's all in your pocket, not in the band's."
"Your tapes," inquired Zip. "Are they good recordings?"
"Well, they're not the digitally mastered mother of all frequencies, but yeah, they're pretty good. Some of the levels may be somewhat high, but..."
"Let me see one."
"Let you see one for what?"
"I just want to listen to it, okay. Then we can talk. You need a drink."
"Where'd you learn your English?" asked Sarah.
"My mother."
Zip barked something in Vietnamese, and Hung marched over to a small refrigerator. Richard was disappointed in Hung's edgy servility. Translator was playing butler now.
"Why, thank you, Hung," said Sarah. "Do you by chance have a lemon? I can smell the formaldehyde already."
Zip put on a pair of headphones with oversized black leather earmuffs. Then he squatted on his haunches for a listen. There was no hiding it; from the first inaudible chords, Richard could see the bliss move across Zip's face.
"So, Hung," said Sarah. "What kind of a percentage does he pay you?"
Hung said nothing. Even the great Vietnamese propensity for subterfuge and disguise could not hide the competing pressure systems that ripped through his conscience. A youth spent diligently climbing the Communist Party ladder. The textbooks and lectures on the evils of capitalist imperialism, and then to arrive at the beginning of real adulthood only to be greeted by this, Zip and the great Vietnamese money grab. The training, the rote learning, the discipline, it was all crumbling before the hidden god of profit.
"Hung, quick 'Teen Spirit' is a great song," said Sarah. "But it doesn't last forever. What kind of a percentage is he paying you?"
"No percentage."
"Well, what is your deal with this guy?" asked Richard.
"He is my wife's...not brother...what is it? He is my wife's cousin. He gives me five dollars for every piece of music he accepts."
"Oh, Hung," said Sarah, reclining on Zip's bed. "That's so pathetic. You've got to go for points on the net."
"Points on the gross," said Richard. "A friend of mine told me only suckers go for points on the net."
"Points? I do not understand," said Hung.
"It's called a cut, Hung," said Richard. "This guy is taking you."
"Taking me where?"
"To the cleaners," said Sarah.
"I do not understand."
Zip took off the headphones and surveyed the room.
"I do not need to tell you that this music is forbidden."
"What's forbidden?" asked Richard. "The music or you making money off copying it?"
"Your recording, why is it so sloppy?"
"Because I taped it before the illuminations of an American stereo for an audience of two, my girlfriend and myself."
"And you do not have the CD."
"I don't travel with CDs, Zip."
Zip put the headphones back on and changed tapes. Richard was torn, and so he walked over to his girlfriend. There on Zip's saggy bed, with a Saigon beer in her hand, oh, how luscious a market-savvy sight was that? They huddled in conference.
"So what do you think?" asked Richard.
"I think Zip's sort of a worm, but the music is great. The other thing is, I've always hated free concerts. Remember that time we saw what's his face in that stupid park, and you said, 'Nothing comes for free.' That show was awful."
"So what should I do?"
"Well, first off, I think he's bullshitting about the recordings. After all, it wasn't _you_ who taped them, it was me. So it goes without saying, I get half."
"No you didn't. I thought I taped them."
"Action item two," she continued. "We're not doing this deal unless Hung gets points."
"Hung gets points," agreed Richard.
"Points or we walk."
They began making out furiously on Zip's bed.
"You know, Scoop," she said. "Sometimes...sometimes you're the man."
—
Hung never did get his points. Zip was too vicious a negotiator. Preying on their weakness for music, Zip said they didn't understand. It would be difficult to get some of these recordings even in Thailand. The state was opening up the country to the oil companies, yes, but they were still very gun-shy when it came to music. Zip said it wasn't a question of profit, it was a question of defying the state in the interests of rock. It was the "music has no borders" thing, that sentiment. Sure they bargained, but Zip's line was Hung didn't deserve a percentage, gross or net. Hung wasn't the one taking the risk on the sales end in a police state, nor was he bearing the cost of production. So they settled on adjusting Hung's finder's fee significantly upward.
As for Richard and Sarah, well, they walked out of that apartment and into that awful heat with a mind to visit Ho Chi Minh's grave with Zip's fifty-dollar bill between them, he holding one end of it, she tugging the other. Behind them walked Hung, his wrists held behind his back, his head bowed in compromise, or was it prayer? It was a quiet street in the hottest hour. A man lying in a perfectly still hammock waved, as the driver inched the car alongside them smiling a silver tooth.
"Happy?" asked Richard. "Are we happy now? Everyone is going to get married, rich, and have a thousand wives."
Hung got into the front seat of the car and for a moment the driver and translator peered out at the American couple standing there on the sparkling pavement looking down at President Grant. As for love? Well, it had risen again. It was present and accounted for, twinkling amid the dissemination of rock and roll, dancing to the soft pitch of an invisible gold sound.
# **Preexisting Condition**
He was on his way to meet a troubled young lady he had fallen abruptly in love with in the hospital. It was the evening of April Fools', and outside the air was a thrill of broken promises. He found himself at the foot of a residential street. A dog straining against its chain barked as he passed in the rain. Shut up, he thought, shut the fuck up, you fuck. Shut it. He pushed his plastic patient bracelet up his forearm, stretching it into a tourniquet. Shortly he found he could no longer feel his hand.
At a highway overpass cars rushed below him in a calamity of motion he found unsettling to the sedentary shuffling and moody self-examinations that had been life in rehab. It was drizzling, and he considered turning back but instead stuck his head inside his sweater and T-shirt to light a cigarette. It was a move from his pot-smoking days. When he came up, he saw letters moving laterally in ticker-tape fashion. They were blurry little stars from the convention center, and they were moving behind a forest of leafless trees off to one side of the highway. He climbed down from the overpass and stood in the emergency lane shivering. He would have to cross the highway to reach the wood that led to the convention center. Perhaps it was the loneliest moment of his life. He had no friends here. He had no car. What he had was an as-the-crow-flies feeling of trespassing and his wallet. For a moment he closed his eyes and considered walking out onto the highway, but when he pictured this stupidity, he became so disgusted with himself he almost did it anyway. He checked his laces. Then he stood waiting for a gap in traffic.
—
One night in the smoking room he introduced himself. She had raven black hair and beguilingly smooth skin. Her eyes were spaced so widely apart, he worried about her brain. With their seatbacks facing one another, they blew smoke out their noses and played the name game. It was almost time for beddy-bye so they made it quick. She'd met his ex-girlfriend Lidia a handful of times in New York. They had friends in common but had never become friends themselves. No, she had never met Lidia's friend Gida. She had gone to boarding school with a cousin of his whose intelligence and verve he had always been drawn to. A close girlhood friend of hers was in turn a pal of a woman he had once briefly dated before Lidia. Dating was putting it politely. The affair had ended poorly for everyone concerned. She had been a groupie for a vaguely famous rock band he thought overrated. The name game segued into drugs. Their habits followed a similar road map. It was surprising they hadn't met. She'd lived on the East Coast all her life but for the last three years. Currently she was renting a house a few miles from the hospital. This was her third rehab. She loved cocaine.
Suddenly, impulsively, and with the brazen confidence of someone with very little to lose, he kissed her.
"Now what do we do?" she asked. "Fuck each other out of detox."
"I'm out of detox," he said.
"Good, you'll be able to take your time then."
It was a disciplined piece of clockwork lovemaking. Every other night they slept together. His room one night, no sex, her room the next, no sex, his room, and so forth. From eleven-thirty to eleven-fifty they hoisted one another's hospital gowns and fucked. By midnight they were asleep in their respective beds. Sex was banned in rehab, as was any "exclusive relationship." To keep the noise to a minimum, he put a pillow over her face at the appropriate moment. There was no birth control whatsoever. He pulled out. Afterward she douched. During the day they nodded at one another knowingly in the halls. It was a kind of love he'd never felt before. It wasn't particularly strong as it was accurate, and in its accuracy, there lay an honesty he was drawn to.
One night he walked into her room and was horrified to find that she smelled of gin.
"I can't believe you're drunk," he said.
"Yes," she considered. "I suppose I am."
He pushed her onto the bed, grabbed both her wrists, and smacked her.
"What the fuck do you think this is?" he hissed. "Boarding school? I can't believe you're drunk. This is a hospital filled with drunks. Fuck-ups, get it. We're all fuck-ups trying to figure out how it is we got so fucked up. You can't fool a fuck-up at his own game, Jean."
He slapped her again, twice, across each cheek. She took it with a blank self-abnegation that infuriated him. He raised his hand again.
"Get off me," she said.
"Fine."
He paced about her room.
"I'm going to tell Sarah," he said. Sarah was her group counselor.
"Sarah is one of the reasons I went out," she said. "Besides, narcs are not invited into my boudoir. Get out."
"No, I don't think so," he said. "I don't think I am going to do that right now. What are you going to do, scream?"
"Give me a cigarette," she demanded.
He opened her window and lit a cigarette for himself. It was a clear breezy night. Clouds slipped past a quarter moon, and at the far end of a nearly empty parking lot there sat a BFI Dumpster.
"Give me a cigarette."
"I only have one left," he said. "You think I'm going to give you my last cigarette?"
"Please, Ian," she whined. "Please. I really need a cigarette."
"Bum one at a bar."
She began to cry.
"I'm not going to do any more coke," she said. "The whole coke thing is over. I swear. I swear to God, but I'd rather be drunk than sit in this place again."
"Jean, booze is a gateway drug to coke, don't you get it?"
"Recycle that borrowed jargon on someone else," she said. "You're a portrait of a rehab robot."
" _You_ will be dead soon. Your portrait is frozen. It's entitled 'lush.' "
Lighting his last cigarette he watched as she got out of bed and began to stuff clothes into a gym bag.
"In a week or so," he continued, "you'll be back to playing the coke whore. It will be your very last role, and I'm sure you'll be most convincing."
His face stung from her smack, and then there was a tussle to see who would first get to his rolling cigarette ember.
"The last shall be first, and the first shall be last," she said, sticking the filter in the middle of her mouth.
"Oh my God," he said. "A chapel talk from the coke whore."
He watched her greasy black hair flash in the moonlight as she packed.
"Where are you going to go?" he asked.
"There's a convention center about ten blocks from here. A bunch of insurance adjusters are in town. They're just dying for my company."
"Jean, look," he said. "Don't go. Just don't. Look, you can smoke my last cigarette. In fact, we can sit and smoke some more. I've got another pack in my room. Just for you. Just come back and we can smoke."
But she was already out the door.
—
It was a sick wood. Above him a plastic bag snared on a branch blew in the wind. Below the moist ground was an archaeology of alcohol, swollen with half-submerged bottles, stray sneakers, and beer cans. It was as if a caravan of death metal fans had encamped for some secret ritual of debauchery, and he half expected to find a body hanging from a tree. In the distance, rain drummed off the roofs of vehicles parked near the convention center. He went over his plan. Save Jean. Live with her, love her, keep her straight. In his arms he felt certain that he could extract her from her current degrading position. He ran for the parking lot but lost traction and fell.
"OK," he said. "Count to ten."
A Postal Service cover band was playing the cocktail lounge sporting matching red blazers and eagle patches. The television was turned to a silent hockey game. Out-of-town businessmen, still stuck to name tags, milled about the room. She was at the far end of the bar peering beneath a leather cup, playing liar's dice. She looked good. Her cheeks had color, and she had on a short black dress and a silver choker. He peered over her shoulder.
"Three fives," she said to a man whose beeper went off.
"Sorry, babe," said the man, standing up. He wore a full-length black leather coat with a fur collar. "You're lying, and I've got to go call Mommy."
"Whatever," said Jean. "But I hope it's what's his name. You know, Mr. Kilo-Cutter. If it is, tell him I know where _his_ mother lives."
Ian Easley took a seat on the man's bar stool. It was hot from hours of sitting and drinking.
"Oh, Ian," she said. "Don't. Don't sit there. Am I really that contagious?"
"I thought I'd come by and check up on you," he said. "You know, see how you were doing?"
"I'm doing fine. People are really nice here."
"Good," he said. "I'm glad you're doing fine."
He gestured to the bartender.
"Don't, Ian," she said, taking his wrist. "Why do it? Why flush a month down the toilet?"
"I'm sorry, but there were two things I never envisioned. One was you, and the other was no you in a hospital with lots of Canadians in it."
The drink arrived and he raised his glass.
"To the Beast," he said.
With a whiff of her hand she knocked his drink onto the floor.
Ian pulled a credit card from his wallet, and finding his old barroom baritone ordered another drink.
"Elliot," she said to the bartender. "Elliot, don't serve this man."
Elliot, a healthy-looking blond of Scandinavian stock, bent underneath the bar and came up with a bronze medallion reserved for graduates of the program. It was the color of a penny and the size of a silver dollar. Engraved on the back Ian recognized the serenity prayer, "God, grant me the serenity..."
"I collect them," said Elliot.
"That's a pretty morbid thing to do," said Jean.
"You know what's even more morbid?"
"What's that?"
"You guys," said Elliot. "You guys don't even have one, so I can't serve you a free drink for a medallion, as is my custom. But if the man wants a drink, Jean, he wants a drink, you know what I'm saying? I can't say to the man, 'Hey, I'm sorry, drinking is bad for your liver.' "
"Drinking is bad for your liver," came a voice at Ian's back.
It was the man in the black leather coat. He had such shrewdly criminal features, Ian immediately felt inferior to him. He looked like a drug dealer in a Western.
"We've got to ride," he said to Jean.
"Already? I was just starting to feel cozy, James."
"Look, if you want to bring your friend along that's fine. We could use the company."
"How about a drink?" said Ian.
"No time," said James.
—
James was driving a silver Crown Victoria with various antennas and chrome side view mirrors that lent the whole enterprise the authority of undercover law enforcement.
"So," said James once they'd eased out onto the highway. "What do you do for a living?"
"I work for a theater," said Ian.
"That doesn't sound very lucrative, Mr. Easley."
"No, it isn't. In fact we've taken to stealing cars to finance some of our productions. Now I'm checking up on Jean here."
"You don't look like much of a car thief," said James.
"You'd be surprised what some people will resort to in order to put on _Lear_ again. I guess it's a 'Reason not the need' kind of a thing."
In fact Ian's theater company did not steal cars, but around this man he felt the need to cultivate the criminal.
"What do you do?" asked Ian.
"I help manage risk."
"Fine with me," said Ian.
"You know anything about this city?"
"I know what state it's in."
"Yeah, well, that's a start," said James.
"I've been to the Phillips 66 across from the hospital," said Ian. "For cigarettes. Once I leave, I hope to never come back."
"You will," said James.
"Why do you say that?"
"Because your mother took one look at you and bought a whole shitload of insurance. If I was the Travelers, you know, the big red umbrellas. If I were they, I'd take a hit out on you."
"Jesus, James," said Ian. "You must think I have a drinking problem."
"Drinking problems are my specialty," said James. "Do you know what percentage of drunks nationwide touch down in this town for treatment?"
"I would suspect a lot, James."
"A surprising number is right, but what's even more interesting is the number of people like Jean here who take up semipermanent residence. What I do is check up on all the rehab dolls who thought they had gotten clean but are still residing in this state and are out drinking again. Jean here is my assistant."
"Yeah," said Jean from the backseat. "We're a team."
"I'm making a list. Then I report back to my employers and they cancel policies, get it?"
Ian turned to Jean. She was sniffing coke from a spoon chained to a vial. What a peccant little bitch she was. At first he had admired her choker. Now he took it as the sign of the devil.
"You don't have to watch," she said.
"I won't."
Their affair meant nothing to her now. It had been a replacement chemical, another endorphin, a temporary tenant subletting a room in her rented body. Now the anchor tenant had arrived. She had no need for him.
"Where are we going?" he asked.
"We're looking for a house in St. Paul," said James. "It's called the Home for Chronic Inebriates. Mr. Kilo-Cutter claims they're having a party tonight."
The highway ran straight for miles, coming at them black and flat.
"Are you covered?" asked James.
"How do you mean?"
"I mean," said James, "insurance-wise."
"Well, James, on that score, you're right. My mother did take one look at me. The insurance thing is in her hands. But I'm not covered beneath the red umbrella. I've got the blue shield to protect me."
"Good," said James. "I don't work for that particular outfit, so your secret is safe with me."
"I wouldn't take you for an insurance man, James."
"Well, that's because I freelance. I make sure that high-risk cases, you know, major-league liabilities, end for my employers. That's my job."
"How do you mean end? Do you put a hit out on them?"
"Have you ever heard of a preexisting condition?" asked James.
"Yeah, I have one. It's called alcoholism."
"Voilà," said James. "We're getting somewhere. I search out those with a preexisting condition that...let's see, how should I put this...a preexisting condition that has a nasty habit of flaring up again."
"So you're an insurance company bounty hunter slash private dick, wow," said Ian. "I'm really glad to make your acquaintance."
"Not to mention," said Jean, "a rugged individualist. James _works_ for his living."
"Look," said James. "I save corporate America a pretty penny, and mind you, I'm compensated well for my job."
They turned off at an exit, and the lighted windows of St. Paul began rolling by in silence.
"I know everyone with a preexisting condition in a fifty-mile radius," said Jean. "Minus some of the senior citizens, that is."
"Do you know how much it costs a company," said James, "a company like the Travelers to put one of you guys through a six-week program?"
"Jesus," said Ian. "Aren't we repeating ourselves a little? Can we talk about something else? How about architecture? How about music?"
Ian spun the radio dial all the way left. Jazz filled the car. It was the sound of men playing bridge with their instruments.
"Could you believe that Postal Service band?" said Jean.
"Those guys should play the hospitals," said Ian. "It would be a better venue for them."
"The post office is turning into a shooting gallery," said Jean. "They're killing each other. COD style."
"How much farther is it?" asked James.
"It should be coming up here on the right."
"Are we going to a cocktail party?" asked Ian. "Because if we are, if we're going to a cocktail party, I think I'll stay in the car."
"Here it is," said Jean. "Open up your stockings, everybody. The Chronic Inebriates are pulling out the plugs."
They came to a four-story clapboard house on a residential street a few miles from downtown St. Paul. There were cars parked on both sides of a winding suburban road, and on the lawn outside this house two men with motorcycle helmets were breaking beer bottles over one another head.
"Oh God," said Ian. "Please save me from this shit."
On each floor people could be seen dancing and drinking, cavorting and bending over mirrors.
"The thing about the Home for Chronic Inebriates," said Jean, lifting a pair of binoculars, "is you can only live or party here if you've been through the program...Ouch, this is a good one. I see what's his face, the rail welder for Amtrak."
"What's he drive?" asked James.
"That black Lincoln over there. He's checked in at least five times."
"He wasn't on my floor," said Ian.
"Shut up," said James, taking down the Lincoln's plate number.
"Yep," said Jean, eyeing the cars. "It's the medallion squad, and a medallion party wouldn't be a medallion party without Bancroft. He checked out of St. Mary's less than a week ago."
"Yeah?" said James. "What's he driving?"
"His mother's Jetta."
"The green one."
"Yeah, the green one."
"Good," said James. "That guy's a liability."
"Major league," said Jean. "Complete lights-out drunk. I heard he once blacked out his wedding proposal."
"Who else?"
"Lapsly," said Jean.
"I thought he'd been clean for years?"
"He's the blond guy on the third floor with the stupid shirt," said Jean. "I can't see what he's drinking."
James got out his own set of binoculars.
"Whiskey."
"Poor Lapsly," said Jean.
"What does he drive?"
"I don't know."
"I thought you were running the car part of this operation."
"Sorry, James, Lapsly's an old friend of mine. Can't we cut him off the list?"
"Leniency," said James, "is not in the contract."
"Come on, James."
"Yeah, James," said Ian. "Have a heart."
"Friends," said James, "tonight we're taking down names and numbers. Now let's get to it."
—
For James it wasn't a bad night of work. After the initial reconnaissance, he sent Jean into the party for deeper "field-work." She came back with a gold mine. It turned out the Chronic Inebriates paid dues in order to assure collective maximization of their booze-buying potential. Jean managed to steal the clipboard. Out of the two dozen dues-paying members, James explained there was a high probability that at least ten were covered by his various employers.
"So," said James. "Where to now?"
Earlier in the evening Ian had touched that corner of himself that needed a drink, but now there was nothing he wanted more than to be back in his hospital bed. He could feel Jean in the backseat chewing on her jaw, putting out her snarled coke vibrations. He sat back in his seat and sighed. This was slavery. He was in the middle of a night of slavery people mistook for a good time. A good time, it was sad to see how people chased it, beating up their minds, mangling their hearts, chasing their tales around and around until they were left at the bottom of some filthy drain of their own creation. He'd come to save Jean, but a poor swimmer should never try to save the drowning.
"To the hospital," said Ian.
"Yes, James," said Jean. "To the hospital."
Perhaps, thought Ian, I am cured.
# **Marriage Is Murder**
For Eoghan and Libby
If it sounds like this honeymoon ski vacation was not my idea, bingo. I told her, "Shelly, look, Vermont is freezing in February. Why do you think I moved to California?" Never mind, before we left she rented _The Shining_ again and is gunning for something "inbred and weird" happening to us. Tortured New England psychos, Shelly goes for that, but when we finally got to our rented condo in our rented vehicle and unpacked our rented skis and made standard, army issue love on our spongy, rented bed, well, even Shelly had to admit the probability of a supernatural occurrence seemed long.
So I'm spending the day loitering around town shopping while Shelly skis. Rich filth, that's me. Or at least what the man behind the cash register sees. What does he see? An expensive example of moral decay, of shit, and you know what? He's probably right. I've been living in Los Angeles for so long, the only things I do with much expertise are drive, fuck, shop, and rewrite murder mystery scripts. I'm referred to as a "comer" in the industry if you can fucking believe that. As for skiing, they _make_ more snow in California than falls to earth here. In fact, I refuse to ski on these slopes. They're nothing but black rocks on ice with a twister of tree root. The sky reminds me of a lovesick homosexual on a North Sea ferry about to take a dive.
The trinket shop I'm in has a feeling of simulated local production not unlike a Hollywood set. They would like you to believe they actually make things here, quilts and the rest of it, but they don't. Not anymore. There's a tinkling doorbell that make me want to urinate, just whip it out and piss on the postcards of deep powder skiing and row after row of maple syrup. Those tin cans of maple syrup, oooh, they get me with that hateful illustration of a New England harvester bent before a pail that is in turn attached to a...a...is that what a maple tree really looks like? Since I'm the only person in the store, the owner and I have built up an unspoken animosity I'm savoring.
I finally remember why I'm here. I need a lighter. Turns out they're next to the camping pocketknives. I unfold the main blade and test its sharpness on my thumbnail. It's the kind of knife I hate. I scrape the lettering off a red "Killington" lighter and by the time I get to the counter, the thing reads, "Kill." I have plenty of cash in my pocket, but I plop down an American Express Platinum card.
"Charge it," I say.
"I've already called the police," says the man.
"Excuse me?"
"Vandalizing my merchandise is against the law."
"I'm buying your merchandise."
"We don't accept American Express."
I reach into my Willie Bogner ski suit purchased at great expense exclusively for this trip and take out a fat wad of cash.
"Fine, here's three hundred dollars."
"I don't want your money."
"Four hundred dollars."
"People like you should stay off the slopes."
So something supernatural is going to happen after all. Here come the Killington police.
Ten minutes later I'm on the street with a free lighter and pocketknife shooting the shit with these extremely chatty police officers. They have a grudge against the store owner, who they say is consistently late with his rent and wastes their time on calls like this one. They cradle my California driver's license, twisting it in the fading light so that it shimmers and shakes in high-tech lamination. They speak with awe of the efficiency of the LAPD computers. Do I need a ride somewhere? Yes, as a matter of fact I do.
—
The Lederhosen is an après-ski bar. It is crowded and hot. As in a monster movie, people lumber about in unbuckled ski boots, frozen grins plastered to their New England mugs. Shelly, I'm proud to announce, is easily the best-looking woman in the bar. She's going with the Edie Sedgwick–Jackie O–Holly Golightly look. It's all in the hair band. She's wearing tortoiseshell shades, navy stretch pants, and an Alpine sweater, all part of her mythic East Coast iconography conceived from reading too much Truman Capote and watching rented videocassettes in Topanga Canyon. She's got a steaming mug in her hand, no doubt a hot toddy, and she's talking to a short man with a blown-out blood vessel for a nose and a face the color of a raw steak.
"Do you know what this gentleman said to me?" says Shelly as I smooch her on the cheek.
"What's that?"
"Listen to this. When I said, 'Single,' in the lift line, this guy who's buying us drinks, he comes right up to me, shakes my mitten, and says, 'Hi, my name's something-or-other, something-or-other.' Then he looks me right in the eye and goes, 'You want to hump?' He works for Wang Computers. He's been following me."
"Really," I say. "How's Wang doing?"
"We're relocating."
"I should think so, Lowell is a hole."
"Lowell _is_ a hole, you wouldn't even know."
"No, I know. I've been there."
"Really?"
"Yes, I wonder why you haven't been laid off."
"Wise guy," says Mr. Wang. "Did you know that, Shell, you married a wise guy. How much did that snowsuit cost you there, wise guy?"
"After taxes probably what you pull down in a quarter. They tax the shit out of you in Massachusetts."
"This they do. What are you drinking there, wise guy, I'm buying."
"Whatever you're drinking."
"Seven and Seven."
I hate Scotch, but now I'm glad to have one in my hand. It's inspiring me to humiliate this man. Mr. Wang is extremely short, even in ski boots. He's practically a midget but confidently bundled in his bulky frame. He doesn't look stupid, just dangerously convinced of his right to be an asshole.
"Your wife wouldn't let me take her into the woods so on the lift I warmed my fingers up in her pie. You want to smell it?"
"Men know nothing about stretch pants," says Shelly. "These things are so tight you couldn't fit a nail file..."
"You want to smell it? Come here, wise guy. Smell it."
"Fuck you."
"OK, boys, it's time to go," says Shelly, standing up between us. Shelly takes my arm and we begin to walk. Events have unfolded so quickly, my anger hasn't had time to catch up with this hasty exit.
"See you tomorrow, Shell," says Mr. Wang. "Same lift line, OK?"
I feel for the camping knife in my breast pocket.
"I'll tell you what, buddy. I see you within a hundred meters of my wife and I'm going to stick you, man. I'm going to cut you up like a pig."
"A metric type, are we? He doesn't look like much of a skier, Shell. If I were you, I'd reconsider. It's never too early to trade up."
Outside the Lederhosen Mr. Wang is framed in the window. He's looking directly at me sniffing his finger and smiling.
—
The next day we ski in silence. There's just enough ice to hide the rocks, and every time the chair lift grinds to a halt and we're left hanging in the wind, I imagine it is Mr. Wang who has delayed us from below.
"Let's kill him," I say.
"I could be down with that," says Shelly.
"I'm serious."
"Fine, let's do him."
"I love you, sweetie," I say. "I love your guts."
I am reminded of Shelly's criminal youth spent in Topanga Canyon, her forced entry and burglary of Don Henley's house, her obsession with Sadie, the Manson chick who stabbed Sharon Tate. We have a joke about Sadie. According to _Helter Skelter_ , a book we both admire, Sadie announced to the room as she was sticking Sharon, she stated that it took "a lot of love" to gore a movie star.
"He's a pig," says Shelly.
"Yeah, and it's going to take a lot of love," I say.
"A pig. No one could possibly miss him, not even at Wang."
We both laugh nervously. Neither of us have killed anyone, but we've gotten to the point in our lives where we'd like to see some people dead. Plus since I'm a script fixer for the television and film industry I've rewritten three hundred and seventy-eight murders as of last count on my computer. Then there's this honeymoon. Nothing seems to separate it from a really bad vacation. The snow is terrible, the people insular and rude, the food fattening.
That night we retreat in lovey-dovey seclusion to our condo. Once we get the gas fireplace torching the logs, we can't find the wine opener so the corks are pushed in. I roll a joint with the skin of a Cuban cigar. We play backgammon and strategies. The pitch goes something like this. OK, rich Hollywood couple flies out to the East Coast to get away from the glitter. They meet an extremely unsympathetic character who insults their pride and honor. After dinner, I bend Shelly over and raid every orifice. I can't even count her orgasms. Bang, more wine, and back to the backgammon table. Shelly has the ability, when animated, to do five things at once. She's drinking wine, playing backgammon, smoking pot, listening to music, and drawing a hateful charcoal portrait of our mark. It's entitled "Sticking Mr. Wang." She's just finished Gide's _Adventures of Lafcadio_ , the book about a motiveless murder, and this is making her paranoid. Since witnesses overheard my threats at the Lederhosen, my motive has been established. I counter. Yes, some skiers may have heard my threat, but Mr. Wang was alone, and come to think of it, could there not be a better place to get rid of someone than the anonymity of a ski slope? It's so cold half the skiers are wearing masks. The Killington brochure boasts thousands upon thousands of tourists a year. We've never used a credit card in the Lederhosen. No one knows our last name except the condo and ski rental people. The fact is this is an extremely artificial community in a constant state of flux.
"That's true," says Shelly. "They'll probably pin it on a snowboarder. We could make it look like a robbery."
"Let's get him in the woods," I say.
"It's supposed to snow tomorrow."
We turn on the Weather Channel.
"Look," says Shelly, flipping through the _TV Guide_. "We just missed _Murder, She Wrote_."
Oh my God, what hilarity. We're both rolling around on our wall-to-wall carpet getting off on how thrilling it would be to sodomize Angela Lansbury and then slit her throat.
"I want you to cut him, honey," says Shelly, banging my head on the rug so I see stars. "Stick it in, move it up and twist. Make him die from the inside, you know what I'm saying? Don't go after his throat, that could get messy. Make him die from the inside."
"I'm going to have to be high as hell," I say, kissing her. "Stoned."
"Don't worry," says Shelly. "I'll get you high."
That night Shelly doesn't use her diaphragm for the first time in years. This is our honeymoon after all, and we're gunning for an infant.
—
So I'm in the woods playing with my pocketknife. All these other tools are a distraction. The scissors, nail file, can opener, toothpick, each drains away the efficacy of the blade itself. Perhaps I should use the saw. The saw looks good. I've been smoking grass for breakfast and lunch. Some people say the drug mellows you out, but I've never seen it that way. It's always made me conspiratorial and dangerous and today is no different. I'm wearing red-tinted goggles for energy and a suede ski mask. Also I'm glad that my burgundy Bogner suit has a slippery satin-like quality that won't absorb blood easily. Shelly and I have synchronized our Tiffany watches to California time. It's been threatening to snow all day but so far it hasn't. I have no idea what kind of trees are in these woods. Perhaps they are pines.
Earlier this morning we sat and drank coffee, smoked dope, and got real about this killing. The view from our condo offered a parking lot and the main lift-ticket line in the distance. We spent all morning with my Nikon binoculars taking turns searching for Mr. Wang.
"Did you see what kind of lift ticket he bought?" I ask.
"I don't know, but he said he was leaving tomorrow."
"That could have been a line. You know, establish a short timetable so as to hurry things up."
Shelly spots him getting out of a Subaru.
"Go," she says. "I'll see you in the woods, and remember, honey, wait until he's fucking me."
"Marriage is murder," I say, giving her a kiss goodbye.
"Murder if you fuck it up," she says.
So here I am, and I'll tell you it was a joyless morning of solo skiing. Everywhere I looked I saw crosses, white crosses on red. They're not even hot skiers, the ski patrol, just competent, bland guys. Luckily the conditions are so bad, people are hurting themselves. The ski patrol is busy either planting orange flags near rocky patches or carrying invisible victims downhill in toboggans.
Here comes Mr. Wang a few minutes early. I keep my head down. Shelly has given explicit instructions. She's put on her special "trapdoor" long underwear. She'll make sure he's on top. Myself, I've never been one for performing in the great outdoors, and in this weather, my concern has been Mr. Wang's ability to get it up. It was not a worry Shelly shared with me during our planning.
"Just take care of the knife, honey."
Two past eleven, LA time. Here comes my baby. She's sliding gracefully between the trees, really beaming. Mr. Wang stands to greet her, and they slide into each other's arms. Now Shelly leads him deeper into the woods to my left. She shakes her hair out of her ski hat and goes to work. I'm not supposed to watch. I've been instructed to "keep Tiffany time" and look out for courageous tree skiers. If one comes, the show is off. I do what I'm told. I allow two and a half minutes for foreplay, another minute and a half for clothing complications, another miscellaneous minute, only then am I to move. Time's up. I raise my head. Mr. Wang has a flask out. They're drinking! Oh my God, what's going to happen to my timetable? I move laterally in order to achieve a straight downhill position. This proves difficult and extremely annoying. My ski boots break the crust, and I keep sinking down to my knees. Each step is a nightmare. In fact, by the time I'm in position, I'm gasping for air, sweating through my long underwear and experiencing a disturbing deflation of motivation. Shelly on the other hand has begun to act out her end with such convincing aplomb, I'm beginning to wonder. There goes the "trapdoor." Mr. Wang drops his ski pants. He's got a fat ass in red long johns. Now he's on top of my wife. As I expected, however, no grinding. It's been too much, Shelly too aggressive, the woods awkward, the temperature nonconducive. Shelly responds to Mr. Wang's limpness by propping him up on his knees. Mr. Wang's navy parka blocks my view. No matter, if a tree falls in the woods, it still happened. I don't need to see shit to know exactly what Mr. Wang is feeling. Shelly's suction is tremendous, her technique exemplary. But there is something about Mr. Wang's inability to get it up that has lent him a place in my heart. Of course, Shelly is too much for him. Male fallibility, it strikes a chord and links us all in a great chain of misconduct.
Still, I've never seen Shelly work it like this. Three and a half straight minutes is a long time to suck a man's dick. Finally she grabs his neck and whispers in his ear. There goes the "trapdoor" again. Finally his ass begins to pump, but I don't want to kill this guy. I don't, but to break from our preplanned synchronization would be a betrayal Shelly would certainly make me pay dearly for. After all, she's done her part, performed her function. Now it's my time. I begin my downhill march, cursing myself for not renting cross-country skis.
Shelly has always lived beyond me. As for our offspring, I've often speculated upon their genetic code. They will fly or they will fall. My camping knife is raised, and I'm looking my wife in the eye. I decide to let him fuck her, to let him finish it, let him come, and so for a moment in time one could never measure, I watch. Then in a great underhanded swoop, I stick the knife up his ass and leave it there.
—
Back in sunny LA. We joke about "going about our daily routine as if nothing has happened," but Shelly being Shelly remains silently disappointed in me. She's looked into the statute of limitations on an out-of-state aggravated assault charge. I counter that she knows nothing about New Englanders. They are congenitally guilty people. Shelly says she's waiting for the "knock on the door." Paranoid bullshit, I tell her. Mr. Wang will suffer a humiliating visit to the doctor's office and perhaps a permanent case of hemorrhoidal flare. That's it. The punishment has fit the crime. He will _not_ come after us. Shelly disagrees, but in her tempestuous bitchiness, which lasts well into her second trimester, I sense a hidden motive.
As for me, I'm plagued by my own paranoid vision. As we packed to leave the condo that night, I noticed Shelly's diaphragm lying upended on the toilet. It sat there so still, so definitively _un_ inserted that I held it up on three fingers, a chalice to our folly.
My assistant Jane thinks I'm self-destructing. I've recently been promoted to a new office on the lot, and they've given me a budget for redecorating. Jane thinks I should go for the faux-Quaker-sparse look, a few spindly chairs and a laptop, the Zen thing. But it's like fuck Hollywood. I refuse not only to move from my old office but to redecorate the new one, a sure sign of insanity, Jane assures me. Sure she's talked to her shrink about it, and she isn't afraid to tell me exactly what they've discussed. After all, she rises as I rise, falls as I fall.
I dream of Mr. Wang. He is a smaller version of his already small self screaming the names of hateful Massachusetts towns: Chelmsford, Tewksbury, Dedham, Natick, Billerica. I am forced to drive him to all of them. But he does not actually want to visit them. Instead he is content to see their exit signs on the highway and move on.
I fear my wife. We fight. Our sex declines. As the baby grows and grows, I am seized with a premature ejaculation problem I haven't suffered since college. Shelly is left hanging. Imagine leaving Shelly hanging, bad news for any marriage, but Shelly is especially cruel about it. She speaks of buying a vibrator. Plus, the pregnancy is making her crazy. She insists on planning, planning, planning. She buys me a "baby beeper" to which only she knows the number. It's a boy. It's normal. It's my job to shop for his crib, toys, etc. The color is blue. Because the trades have announced my upward mobility in the industry, various Los Angeles sluts want to fuck me. I buy them drinks and take to degrading them in West Hollywood motel rooms. Sad part is this cheap sex is haunted because as I rise for the money shot, I am visited by an evil essence—that of a red baby, a demon, a monster. Matter of fact, this amazing girl half my age wants it really badly in the ass, when my beeper sounds. What to do? I keep fucking her, but afterward not only is there the usual comedown, but I realize I have a long and tedious drive to witness the immaculate delivery of Mr. Wang's baby.
# **Reggae Nights**
He was pissing next to his golf cart with an exquisitely fine rum drink in one hand. Before him lay the beach. Alex was trying to settle in to his vacation but so far he'd just been drinking. Two and a half weeks of vacation was all he got at his new job and what with the market plunging on the day of his departure and then missing the connection from Miami due to Vivian's sunglass shopping, after all that, he'd taken to calculating percentage of vacation wasted in transit. It was double the yield on a fucking thirty-year treasury note, for Christ's sake.
Alex zipped himself up and watched as birds dove for prey into the Gulf Stream. It was two days after Christmas, and the tropical storm that had curled up from South America was well out to sea, making for a forest fire of a sundown. It reminded Alex of his former law firm. They'd had great sunsets from the twenty-third floor on Maiden Lane, just gorgeous, even if they were framed evening after evening within the modest window of a middling associate's office. Alex used to practice law, and though it was a grind, at least he had the comfort of being on an extremely expensive clock. There was no money to be lost, really. It was quite a contrast from his new nail-biting job glued to a Reuters trading screen in a windowless midtown hedge fund office. Now after nineteen straight months of currency speculation, he was finally on vacation, and what was he doing? Worrying about the weak yen while walking on a wonderfully beautiful beach. This was the first time Alex had been alone, really alone, i.e. not on the treadmill alone, but solo, utterly by himself, in months.
The beach was the color of chalk with a sprinkling of pink coral, and the storm had kicked up some aquamarine Bahamian surf that excited him. Alex took off his pants and shirt, and in a telltale sign of drunkenness, folded them neatly on the beach. Then he dove in. It was as warm as the baths his mother used to draw for him, warm and frothy and quite shallow. On the crest of a wave he stuck out his chest and cut sideways with the break all the while picturing Vivian on the beach watching him. As he waded out to catch another wave, there came a sailboat sideslipping across the surf. It ran aground a few yards from the beach. Someone had pulled up the centerboard, and a loose halyard line clanked noisily against the mast. Alex swam out to have a look at its stern. The boat was called _Troubadour II_.
He rode another wave and then walked down the beach in his boxers with his drink. It was called a Yellow Bird, and they were fucking delicious. He hoisted himself up on the gunnel and peered in. Blood mixed with seawater sloshed about in a baby blue cockpit, and wrapped in a spinnaker sheet was a black man. He'd been shot through the stomach and was gasping for breath and bleeding through his nose and mouth.
"Fuck," said Alex.
The dying man locked his eyes on Alex and then slowly raised his hand toward a hopeless expanse of ocean. He was trying to say something, but the effort was clearly going to kill him.
"Shhh," said Alex. "Shhh. I'm going to give you CPR. Don't die, OK? It's going to be fine. Just don't fucking die."
But the man was going...going and by the time Alex had climbed aboard, he was gone.
Alex's first impulse was to run for help. Certainly he needed assistance, but of what kind he was not sure. He pictured the island's harbor master, a huge beefy man with nautical patches on his shoulders walking up and down the docks with a whistle in his mouth. He didn't need that. As Alex moved to close the dead man's eyes, he stubbed his toe on the centerboard and fell against the body. The boat was tilted so that every step was a miasmic agony of strange gravity. The main cabin door was flung open, and Alex peered in. A tepid light filtered through the low Plexiglas ceiling, and besides being cramped and hot, the place stank of brine and sweat, of salt water cut with blood and urine. A baseball cap sat on top one of three bales of marijuana. Alex put on the hat and was surprised to find it fit perfectly. The idea behind the hat was it was supposed to help him think clearly; instead the hat served to disengage himself further from his actions, and in his mind's eye he rose to watch his meager little body stumble about the boat.
"What we have here," said Alex suddenly, needing to hear his own voice, "is a great drug miscommunication."
He gazed out at the ocean. A motorboat, possibly a Boston Whaler, partially eclipsed the sundown, and its outboard motor whined terribly in the distance. It was headed straight for the _Troubadour II_. Alex embraced a bale of marijuana in the shape of the world's largest Tootsie Roll. Overestimating the bale's weight, he hit his head on the ceiling. The bale was wrapped in a twine that scratched his forearms, and for a moment he paused in the tilted cockpit, cradling the pot as if it were a child. He had never touched marijuana in a quantity larger than the zip-locked bag variety and that had been years ago in college. It wasn't as if he coveted the bale; instead he desired participation in a drama. Clearly the man had gotten dead over drugs, and for some inexplicable reason Alex wanted a sliver of the action, a souvenir of the slaughter. A crafty feeling of marauding stealth came over him as the sound of what was now clearly a Boston Whaler grew in strength. The Whaler was evil. The Whaler was death and its approach threw him into a panic of impending persecution. Cautiously he eased himself from the stern of the _Troubadour II_ and headed for shore. Still in his boxers, he loaded the bale into the golf cart and took off down the road.
—
Beneath blue bottles stuck in the fish netting and across from grinning photographs of big-game fishermen holding up fodder for the local taxidermist sat Tom Berman and Vivian Tate. They were discussing high school reunions over rum drinks and conch fritters. Vivian was an extremely pretty, precocious investment banker in a stage of intoxication when the will to narrate has begun to outweigh the capacity to listen. She was not a shallow woman, it was just that the shimmering monetary surface of things had come to envelop her inner life. She hadn't read a novel since business school, and increasingly a set of rather mercenary financial considerations informed her love life. Tom Berman was a college friend of Alex's. He'd met Vivian a few times at parties, but they'd never talked much. Tom worked as an enforcement attorney for the Securities and Exchange Commission. As a rule, Vivian didn't like government regulators, and as a rule Tom thought investment bankers scum. But this investment banker was such gorgeous scum that his feeling for her was one of perfectly intertwined spite and attraction. They knew better than to talk business with each other.
"Prize for the greatest tenth reunion alteration goes to John Goldstein," said Tom. "The guy was the upper-school drug dealer. So I walked up to him to see how he was doing, and it's like this wall of Yiddish I'd forgotten was flung in my face. He's currently attending the Rabbinical Studies program at Johns Hopkins. Everyone else was almost exactly the same. I thought they'd been embalmed or something."
Vivian sipped her drink. She was not impressed. It wasn't as if she would never marry a Jew, but with men she often made pros and cons columns, and though religion was never weighted very heavily in the scheme of her romantic asset allocation program, an outspoken Jew was not in the pro column.
"That's funny, because our brightest religious star had fallen from her cross," replied Vivian. "I mean, she was a true believer, Amy Colt. I'd imagined she'd be working with street kids in São Paulo or something. Wrong. She turned into a local TV personality in Delaware."
"What does she cover?"
"I don't know. The races...Hey, look who finally washed up. We were going to order without you," said Vivian. "I was thinking of going with the conch burger followed by the conch chowder, but you were so late, we already ate the conch fritters."
"Nice hat," said Tom. "Where'd you get it?"
"Off a bale of dope," said Alex, gripping the back of a chair. "What are you guys drinking? Whatever it is, I want a triple. Hey, excuse me, hey, could I get a drink, please."
"We're doing their 151 punch," said Vivian. "You could fry a conch fritter on top of it if anyone had a match. Do you have a cigarette, Alex? I'm having a low-grade nic fit."
"Excuse me, could I get a drink, please," shouted Alex.
But he might as well have been masturbating. The sound of frying foods cackled in the background, and the waitress was talking to the cook who was in turn watching a stock car race on ESPN. A Bahamian child with an Orlando Magic tank top was the only being moving. He raced around the restaurant playing tag with himself. The feeling was that of total island complacency. The restaurant might as well have been the waitress' living room rather than her place of business, and since Vivian and Tom were her only customers, there was an added incentive not to move. He would have to force contact. He walked up to the woman and asked her for a rum punch. She eyed him with sleepy suspicion, stabbed out a cigarette, and waddled over to the bar.
"A 151 punch, please," said Alex.
"What is your rush, young man? We are all sinners in the eyes of the Lord."
Ah, a preacher's daughter or perhaps the wife of a preacher. Alex, not desiring to embark upon an epistemological discussion, backtracked.
"I'm sorry to hurry you, ma'am, but it's been a pretty harrowing evening so far."
She gave him his drink, and he sat down next to Vivian. Since their fateful business trip to Washington, they'd slept together a dozen times, work schedule permitting. They did, they really did try to "fit one another in," but they were mutually suspicious lovers. Vivian was searching hard for a husband, and it was certainly not going to be Alex. She might have considered him if he had stuck to the law, but since consistency and "earning power" were character traits she admired in a potential mate, Alex was off the list. But if Alex were off the list, why then was she on this vacation? Since she was twenty-eight years old, this was certainly not the time to dally in short-term lust operations. She wanted to make a rich team with her husband and live a life of compounded wealth with multiple domiciles in and out of the continental United States. But instead, she was on this rather rundown, miserable little island with a man who showed no great aptitude for high finance and who on top of it all had shot her in the leg. The fact was they had rarely gone anywhere together as a couple except the Harvard Club, where Vivian had to pay the room bill for their lunch-hour sex.
"So what's this noise about dope?" asked Tom.
"Now, why would I want to inform the federal government about a crime in motion?" said Alex.
"Hey, man, why do you think I didn't want to go to South Beach," replied Tom. "You know what was at the top of my vacation action item list?"
"What?" asked Vivian, who'd made an action item list herself.
"Jurisdiction," said Tom. "Non-U.S."
Suddenly Alex was finding it difficult to indulge in vacation badinage. His rum drink seared his stomach lining, and in his mind's eye he returned to the dying man wrapped in the bloody spinnaker sheet pointing out to sea, pointing like the "Touch of God" out to sea. The last half hour of Alex's life had not, it turned out, been a sequence in a high-budget adventure dream starring himself truly. Plus, he'd left his pants, shoes, and wallet on the beach for the guys in the Whaler to find. Suddenly, he felt he was going to be sick and rushed outside to vomit. Through the prism of his tears, he looked sideways to see Tom and Vivian laughing in the street. They were backlit by a low-wattage Bahamian street lamp. The Yellow Birds so smooth in going down were coming up in great torrents of acid that scalded his esophagus. Suddenly, he was visited by a great sexual ambivalence toward Vivian. Bent over, he saw only her golden shoes. They appeared aggressively fashionable in the context of this island, hopelessly urbane. No doubt they were Italian and expensive. They were perpendicular to one another in a third-position ballet turnout she usually reserved for cocktail parties. He hated them, but he wanted to touch them too. He wanted to buy every single pair of those shoes sold on the island of Manhattan and present them to Vivian at her funeral.
"You OK there, bud?" asked Tom, patting his friend on the back.
"No," said Alex. "I left my clothes and wallet on the beach. I had to go back to the Sea Breeze and change. They're going to come after us."
"I see," said Tom. "So what you're saying is you have a streaking problem."
"Look, Tom," said Alex. "Can we pay for our drinks at this place and keep moving. Our best bet for this evening is a hit-and-run kind of operation. Could you go in there and pay the lady?"
—
It was a wonderfully breezy evening, and they drove around the island on the golf cart hitting potholes and spilling rum drinks on one another. Between his friend and lover in the singing electricity of the cart, Alex felt safe and vaguely heroic telling his tale. Clouds slipping beneath the moon were briefly illuminated, and then gone. Vivian was in a state of rapture. This was better than all the New York wedding gossip lined up in a row, and she kept up a running inquiry that made no bones about the levity she found in the calamity.
"And it's pretty sick too, you taking the baseball cap," she said. "I might be able to take this a little more seriously if you hadn't taken the cap."
But she refused to take the cap off her head. It was white with a red letter "B" for Bahamas.
"Maybe we should dye your hair," said Vivian. "I brought some henna a nymphomaniac friend of mine brought back from Turkey. I think we should dye your hair."
"Maybe I should _shave_ my head," said Alex.
"Maybe you should tell me where you hid the drugs," said Tom.
"Why, so the Feds can confiscate it?"
"He's got a good point there," said Vivian. "What we need here is plausible deniability for you, Tom."
"Fuck you two," said Tom. "Fuck you both. I'm serious. I don't need this shit on vacation."
Tom was driving, and if the truth be known he was torn. He had badly needed a break from monitoring trades, Chinese food, and incessant paperwork. Unlike Alex, Tom was relieved to be cut free from work, and it wasn't as if he had a hard-on for the DEA either. Drugs had never been his department. His specialty was analyzing trades in targeted takeover companies in the weeks prior to a merger announcement. The risk arbitrage people feared him. He had nothing to do with drugs because he had a history with them, latent though it was. Now, set free on a foreign island with several drinks in him, Tom Berman, a sworn member of the Securities and Exchange Commission, wanted to get high.
"Seriously, Alex, where'd you hide it?"
"Take a left," said Alex.
Off Queens Way Road and in the tepid headlights of the golf cart they arrived at a church. It was a modern structure with reinforced concrete beams and huge, darkly tinted windows. In back was a graveyard. As the trio entered, Alex prayed for cloud cover. He felt naked and watched in the moonlight, certain that it was only a matter of time before the men in the Whaler tracked him down and cut his face to shreds.
"You are a morbid man," whispered Vivian in Alex's ear. "A morbid man. I don't know why I have anything to do with you."
"All I know," said Tom, "is that I'm not in the office."
"Is that a good thing or a bad thing?" asked Vivian.
"I have yet to find that out."
The earth beneath them was spongy from the rains. These were shallow graves, and to Alex, the field felt alive with an awful subterranean activity.
"This is like that scene in _The Good, the Bad and the Ugly_ ," said Vivian. "You know, three gunslingers in a graveyard looking for gold."
"Would you shut up," said Alex.
Tom lit the flashlight he'd taken from the back of the golf cart. There it was, two graves over, plump and tasty, ready for the taking.
"Maybe it's an Oreo," said Tom. "I hope to fucking God it's an Oreo."
"What the hell is an Oreo?" asked Alex.
Vivian knelt before the bale, but Tom, taking over drug command central, pushed her over onto the ground.
"Take it back," she said. "This is more like _Charlie's Angels_ takes over the set of _Live and Let Die_. I'm waiting for Mr. Big."
Someone had once given Vivian a line of coke at the Speed Club, and she hadn't done drugs ever since. She wasn't interested in them. She liked her wine and her vodka tonics. Why boys sought out drugs had always mystified her. Alex watched as his friend's forearm disappeared into the middle of the bale. It came out holding a zip-locked bag of cocaine.
"Bingo," said Tom. "We got an Oreo. The sweet spot's in the middle. These days it behooves no one to move grass alone. It's simply not cost effective."
Tom opened up the bag and pulled out a handful. Then he stuck his nose in the pile.
"Jesus," said Vivian. "We'd better get out of here."
"A virtually uncut Oreo at that," said Tom, passing his hand beneath Alex's waiting nose.
"Boys," said Vivian, standing up. "Boys, I don't mind being an accessory to a crime. What I don't appreciate is folly."
"Shut up," said Tom. "I'm on vacation."
"You're doing coke in a graveyard."
Suddenly the moon broke through the clouds, casting the trio in its quicksilver.
"She's right," said Alex. "Let's disappear."
—
Back at the Sea Breeze a man named William Hunter, better known on the island as Devil, had Vivian's toothbrush stuck up his ass, head first. He and his crew, high as hell, had just about finished robbing the bungalow. Now they were leaving their signature calling card. Devil's brother James was known as Lucif. He was taking a photograph of his brother's ass with Alex's Nikon. Both men were standing on adjoining beds laughing. The Sea Breeze was the farthest bungalow from the main office and was easily accessible from the beach. Not bad, thought Devil of his surroundings. This was a fine fuck house if he did say so himself, a fine fuck house.
"Don't let me see your face, Devil," said Lucif. "That's good, that's good. Now, shake that pink handle, shake it, shake it hard."
Lucif put the camera on high speed drive and rattled off the rest of the roll. Then the brothers stepped off the beds and returned to their drinks and a smoldering joint left in the living room ashtray. "Cones" is what they called their joints. Devil was the master roller. He was a Haitian whose flotilla bound for Miami had broken up in the Bahamas three years ago. The third man was a local short-order cook named Leslie Hibert. Besides his fondness for zip guns, Leslie had a wife who was a maid. The wife wasn't so much a thief as a provider of information to thieves. The two brothers thought their partner something of an amateur, and while out on jobs they liked to smoke their cones and degrade him. Still they needed Leslie. His wife had a passkey to over half the resort rooms on the island.
Naturally the trio enjoyed reggae music, and instead of simply robbing the Sea Breeze and leaving as was their custom, tonight they played a little chicken with the gods of crime. It was a Friday night and each man settled into his perch in the living room as Devil turned on the stereo. He'd put on "The Harder They Come," something of a corny golden oldie, he had to admit, but still a breakthrough record nonetheless. Devil had once been a bassist in a band called Loose Caboose. They'd played the island circuit for two and a half years before splitting up over money and internal differences concerning Rastafarian iconography. Currently he was in a band that was into more of an island rapping scene. He was thieving in order to get up enough cash for a trip to Nassau, where he planned to buy two turntables and a bass amplifier. He badly wanted to scratch and sample like the guys on Yo-MTV. Devil was keeping up with the times. He saw himself as something of a reformed reggae burnout turned gangster.
Secretly Devil was impressed with the music selection. Besides the obvious tourist's stuff like Marley, there was some serious old school by Sun Ra, the Maytals, Desmond Dekker, and even the Slickers. In short Devil and his crew had never robbed a tourist shack with better taste in reggae. It was time to light up. Besides, it was early yet and Leslie's wife had said from the looks of things, these tourists would probably be out dancing to the steel drum band at Mr. Beckford's. From where Devil sat, they had at least another hour to kick it in.
"Devil, you going to pass me that cone," said Lucif, "or am I going to have to climb up from this couch and kick your ass?"
Devil paid little heed to his brother's request. He sat there implacably stoned on the couch palming his bald head. He was enjoying "Johnny Too Bad" immensely.
A flashlight cut the darkness and zeroed in on Devil's eyes. Leslie ran across the living room, broke through a sliding screen door, and was gone. The brothers Lucifer sat still as a stone.
"Look, man," came a voice. "My only request is that nobody gets hurt, OK. We have your drugs. Let me repeat. We have your drugs. They're intact and we're going to hand them over to you in an orderly fucking fashion."
There was a long silence. "Johnny Too Bad" was coming to a close. "Walking down the road with a pistol in your waist, Johnny you're too bad..." Devil slowly rose to his feet. Wired tourists suffering from some kind of delusions. He'd seen it happen before but none of them had ever offered him drugs. Devil was still sorting through the geometry of the situation when Lucif switched on the lights.
Now if this wasn't a sight. Standing not five yards from him was this fine white girl in one of those fine looking-for-the-good-wood white girl getups holding what looked to be a key of coke like it was road kill. Some other clown was hugging a bale.
"How I know you didn't cut the shit up?" asked Devil.
"Because we don't have a knife," said Vivian.
Devil walked out onto the patio. Alex dropped the bale on the lawn and put his arm around Vivian.
"This your lady?" asked Devil.
Alex said nothing. He was trying to remember how to deliver a "spear-hand poke" to the throat, but he was wired, terrified, and utterly unprepared for combat. Vivian stepped forward and handed the zip-locked bag to Devil.
"You're missing about six lines, OK?" she announced.
Tom turned off his flashlight. He was standing near the bushes out of range of the patio lights. There was no way he was going to let these guys see his face.
"You can put about a half a gram down to carrying charges and everyone walks," said Tom from the darkness.
"Who the fuck are you?"
"Someone you're never going to see again."
Devil, who rarely cut the nail on his left pinkie for moments just like this, opened the bag and did a noseful.
"If you'd cut it, we'd kill you," said Lucif, brandishing one of the Sea Breeze's steak knives. Devil was glad to see his brother had gotten into the spirit of the proceedings.
"I see you found our stereo," said Alex.
Vivian flinched. She knew not what this boy was talking about.
"I tell you what," said Devil. "You let me take in a little of the white lady with your woman here and I'm gone."
"Fuck you," said Alex.
"Alex," said Vivian. "Alex, come on. Shut _up_ , will you? I'll do a line with you, mister."
And so Devil had his way on the very bed where his brother had snapped the toothbrush photos, and it was good, man, it was good. He held her hands over her head and went for every hole. Then he and his brother cut out for the beach.
They walked down a narrow path shaded on both sides by the resort's landscaping artist, Devil with the coke, Lucif with the grass. When they came to the dune below the clubhouse, Devil looked out onto the ocean. The wind had died and the moon cut the sea into lines of sequins, and within these shimmering flashes of water he recognized the Bailey brothers' Whaler. Devil yanked his brother down to the sand.
"Bailey brothers," he hissed. "Looks like they coming to steal back what they lost and we found."
"I'll see you back home," said Lucif.
"Johnny, you're too bad," said Devil.
They split up. Devil hid himself in a waist-high honeysuckle bush off the path. He'd never seen the Bailey brothers in action. They were the most feared drug dealers on the island, and in deference to their reputation, he lay as flat as he possibly could with the coke hidden in his crotch.
He imagined them coming, a scalding stream of vengeful menace moving uphill in their anger. But soon Devil did not have to imagine because he could hear their murmurs, the steely click of switchblades locking into position, and the hurried footsteps padding up the garden path, making for the Sea Breeze, a riptide soon to carry the dead out to sea.
# **Pure Slaughter Value**
We are an acute triangle of three, my family, and since death has thinned our ranks, we tend to attach ourselves to other people. For a good many years it was the McPhersons. I was in love with the whole family. You want to see good American looks pollinated and passed along? Witness Mrs. McPherson standing barefoot on her crabgrass lawn party circa 1975. She's got her daughter by her side. I'd rather not talk about the daughter. Mr. McPherson is fondling my mother. An affair at these close quarters is out of the question, so Mr. McPherson gets what he can at greetings and departures. The gravel driveway churns with new arrivals. A party is under way, but the band does not strike up. No band here, just the golden sounds of banter, cocktails, and flirtation. Soon Mother is not the only one dwarfed by Mr. McPherson's shadow rising to meet his guests. There are other couples to chortle over and squeeze. The medicine is being mixed. Bloody Marys and wine on Marimekko porch furniture. The sixties are a soft touch here. Thus the confusion in dress code. The ties are fat, the espadrilles healed, the riotous political and military upheavals of the year tempered by a new Christ-like asceticism of sandals and open linen shirts worn by emaciated men who have just taken up long-distance running.
I am not at the party, but I can hear it. I'm with Sam McPherson lining up a cardinal perched on my mother's birdfeeder.
"Peg it," says Sam.
My Daisy rests on the windowsill. The trick is to kill as many songbirds as possible. The window is not far from the glass sliding doors. It's about a twenty-foot diagonal from the birdfeeder. So far I've taken out two blue jays and something else, relatively big targets. Now I'm after more difficult game. This shooting gallery is not like the photographs I've seen of my dead father grinning and crouched before animals he has killed in Africa, but there is a similarity. We're both in it for the pure slaughter value. Sam's dead birds lie on the wooden porch twitching.
I pull the trigger. Suddenly all the birds vanish from the feeder. Nothing falls.
"Shit!" I say. "Fuck. Your mother sucks cocks in hell. Fuck."
I am eleven, a good swearing age. Sam is sixteen and heavily into obscenity too. He's taught me all my combinations.
"You worthless little piece of shit," he says, seizing the gun from my hands. A car comes up the driveway toward the party. Sam dings a BB off the side door. There's nothing he hates more than his parents' parties.
"I'm going to count to five," he says.
I was so fast back then it makes me want to cry. Off the porch, across the lawn, over Mrs. Warnicky's fence, into a slalom course of evasive tree moves inspired by various war movies, down to the bay, through the reeds, and back up to the party, where I take refuge behind my mother.
"What's the matter, Louis?"
I compose myself.
"Nothing," I say. "Nothing, just hacking around. You know."
"Sam's putting the fear of God into him again," says my mother's boyfriend, inspecting a welt on my arm. "I bet he's popping you with that Daisy, isn't he? Where is that thing? I want to take it out of that vandal's hands."
"Frank," I say, "you got any of those M-80s on you?"
"Later, Louis," he says. "It depends on this party."
Frank used to be in the Army, and he still has a green metal box of explosive goodies he likes to take out on special occasions. Now he works in the book business. Frank's M-80s have waterproof fuses. They blow up underwater and scare the shit out of the swans cruising Mecox Bay. Then there are the nuns. The M-80s are for the nuns too. The McPhersons' front lawn gives onto a view of a convent across the bay. Sometimes we can see the nuns walking on the convent lawn, their white wings barely visible on their heads.
The party is in full swing now, and the parents are making me into an ice hockey legend. It is the hour of expansiveness, of compliments, of sexual jousting. They are so inspired. The sun is just beginning to set and there is talk of the Greater New York City Ice Hockey League.
"He has to get up at six in the morning, to go out to that rink you pass on the way to La Guardia, just amazing," says my mother.
"How does he get there?" says Mrs. McPherson.
"I've got a grad student, but I'm a little worried he stays up all night before he drives Louis out."
"He probably does, but maybe that's better," says Mrs. McPherson. "Why so early?"
"You think the city can afford to rent out Madison Square Garden to the Pee-Wees?" says my mother.
"Mother," I say.
"It's sick," says my mother. "No city money whatsoever for this league..."
"Mother."
"What, honey?"
"I can tie my skates fine now."
When I was nine, I didn't have anyone around to tie my skates; so this man with a son on our team used to tie them for me. He'd fling the dregs of his coffee on the rubber floor, flip one of my skates into his fleshy paws, and sigh. These were not the first pair of skates he'd tied early that morning. A hockey dad, it was a pain in the ass, and he let me know just how tiresome it was by pulling hard and clamping his index finger down on the crossed laces, moving up my skate in a grunting muscular rhythm. Then I'd step out onto the ice, tears in my eyes, unable to feel my feet. Now it's no problem.
"That's great, Louis," says my mother. "Next season we're going to get you to those games on time even if I have to drive you myself."
"Nelly, please," says Mrs. McPherson to my mother. "At six in the morning on a Saturday? I don't think so."
"OK, OK," says my mother. "But I'm going to start going to more night games."
"Well, that's an improvement."
Sam McPherson walks into the equation. He's at an age of total parental loathing. He's nearly six feet tall, my best friend. He's gangly, bitter, and blond.
"How about we go upstairs, Louis?"
"Upstairs for what?" asks Sam's mother.
"None of your business, Mom."
Frank arrives smoking a cigar and carrying the olive green army box. This is a good sign. I've seen the look before. Time for a little gleeful adult destruction. The cigar amber is designed for the touching off of an M-80 fuse.
"Frank, no," cries my mother.
"Yes, Frank," I scream. " _Yes!_ "
"All I can say," says Mrs. McPherson. "All I can say is I hope the nuns are sunbathing topless in Acapulco."
"Nelly, I want you to listen to the property owner here," says Frank. "I get the sense I'm getting clearance from the property owner, resistance from the renter."
The McPhersons own two houses. They live all summer in the big airy one, and they rent a smaller version to us on the far side of their back lawn. It's a happy arrangement.
—
"Now," says Frank.
I've got a sparkling M-80 in my hand and for a moment it's as if I'm staring at my hero, wowed by the burn-down.
"Now," says Frank. "Louis, now!"
I throw the M-80 into the bay. A thin geyser of water erupts, a fabulous discharge. The party cheers. I've tossed it so the M-80 hasn't had time to sink far enough to just rumble in the depths of the bay.
"That's enough, Frank," shouts Mrs. McPherson. "It was fun while it lasted, but the property owner is weighing in now. That's enough."
Frank closes his box, and we walk back up the lawn. He pats me on the back.
"Don't scare me like that, kid."
"What, Frank?"
"You know goddamned well what I'm talking about. A burning fuse is a burning fuse. It's not a romance. You got that?"
"Got it," I say.
But what do I know of romance? Ice hockey, Estes Rockets, bicycles, bodysurfing, BB guns, kick-the-can, baseball, canoeing, smear the queer, sailing, Monopoly, rock fights, these are my developed passions, my "skill set" as they say in the consulting business. But that being said, there is a movement afoot. My best friend is sixteen. He's already been thrown out of boarding school for taking an ax to a piano. Now he's waiting for me at the edge of the party, and he doesn't want to play kick-the-can.
We go upstairs via different routes at different times, not unlike lovers leaving a party in secrecy, at intervals. Upstairs is where we get it done with the pillows.
In thinking about the coming pillow fight, the requirement is to decouple the word "pillow" from the words "sleep," and "softness," from sky, from dreams, from cloud.
The McPhersons' pillowcases are strong pouches of weathered cotton. Sam takes a long time packing his pillow. As he packs an iceball, so he decorates his weapon now, pressing down, down, holding the pillow as if he were pressing someone beneath a lake, really getting into it. The upstairs of the McPherson summer residence is not an attic but it has the low-ceilinged, panic-inspiring quality of an attic.
"So are you going to give me some time here, motherfuck?" I say.
"No time," says Sam, looking at his nonexistent wrist-watch.
The sun runs through the window into my eye. Sam is coming in black and tall. His silhouette is that of a sinewy young athlete about to give up sports forever. He's taking the ball and chain approach right off. Usually he doesn't pack his pillow so tightly until I've scored at least a few blows.
"Just wait a fucking second," I say.
My sister comes to the doorway. She has a beer in her hand. She is fourteen. Never before have I seen my sister with an alcoholic beverage. She is tall, thin, beautiful, awkward. She's wearing jeans and a blue Indian print shirt bulging on her molehill breasts. She leans back to drink her beer, and for a moment I can see her belly button. My sister is in love with Sam, as I am in love with Sam's sister, Sarah. My sister and I are both terrified and thrilled by our love, but we have been unable to do anything but suffer longing. We feel the McPhersons are special, their house clearly haunted. My sister proved this to me one night when she invited me to a séance in Mrs. McPherson's bathroom. The only light was a candle. We sat cross-legged on the tiles mesmerized by the flame. The séances seal our superstition and secret pacts through the pouring of liquid wax.
"Give me your hand," she said, holding the candle ready. "If you hear an Elton John song within a minute, there is a ghost in the house."
"But Sam told me he was going to play 'Funeral for a Friend,' " I said.
I've caught her again, but I don't mind. She was so pretty, then, sitting on the tiles cooking the odds of love and superstition.
"Shhh, shhh," she said, her long brown hair curtaining her face. I reached for her hand and poured the wax. The pain meant nothing to her.
"Shhh, shhh," she said. "I love him."
"I love her."
"I know you do," she said. "But you're not old enough."
"Old enough for what?"
"You'll see."
—
My sister has seen these beatings before, and though I like to make a sport of getting on the other line when she's conversing with her male callers and yelling into the phone that she's flat, and though I generally love to monkey-wrench my sister's love life so that she reaches these great crescendos of homicidal rage, through all this, she does have sympathy when it comes to my uneven relationship with Sam.
"Oh shit," she says. "Not this again."
"Your mother sucks cocks in hell," says Sam. Now he has an audience, a witness to his beating. Sam likes that. But I like it too. My sister has always brought out the warrior in me. I pick my pillow and stuff it down. Let the games begin.
So I'm doing this little Ali routine—float like a butterfly sting like a bee—on the bed. The plan is to save the rope-a-dope for later rounds. I bounce on the springs. Then I'm on the floor and push the bed into the middle of the room. Now I've got something to run around. He clocks me on the head. I get him in the chest.
"Oh my God," says Sam. "I'm injured. I'm dying."
"The Rumble in the Jungle, jack," I scream. "The Thrilla in Manila motherfuck! You can't fucking touch me."
"Go, Louis," shouts my sister. "Get him."
"Your mother sucks cocks in hell."
Everyone's combinations are flowing tonight, but suddenly there is a variable, a third pillow. My sister has joined in. Everyone ends up on the bed. Now I'm rolling off; now Sam and my sister are laughing. What is this? These weaklings have left themselves open. I flagellate both of them, but they're laughing and loving the pain. The room is juiced with kicked-up dust in the sun, and the panic of the attic has receded from fight to frolic. No more rope-a-dope. I'm back to dancing, to flying, to inflicting damage on my sister and Sam wrestling on the bed.
"What the fuck is this, what the fuck is this?" I shout. "Spin the bottle? What the fuck is this?"
Sam gets up from the bed, stuffs his pillow back down, and levels me. Then he says, "Louis, Louis, I want you to hyperventilate."
"What's that?"
"I want you to breathe and breathe. I want you to never stop breathing. Start sucking wind, now! In out, in out. Breathe. Like this."
I do what I'm told.
"More, keep breathing in and out, more, more breath."
I'm getting dizzy, and Sam has me by the throat. It tingles and then comes the rising feeling of anesthesia. I'm out. I have a split-second dream. I'm on a horse riding with Sam's sister, Sarah. I wake up. Sam and my sister are making out in the bed. The beer sits on the windowsill, and I walk over and pick it up. It is still cold.
Sarah is standing in the doorway, witnessing the first beer of my life. This room does not impress her. She's wearing her riding boots, and a saddle is slung over her shoulder. What's going on? Could I have caught a glimpse of Sarah before Sam passed me out? I love her. I love her diseased horse Fred stabled in a potato farm barn. Riding with her is the only thing she'll let me do, and she's only let me do it twice. When it's just me and Sarah and Fred, that's when I'm the happiest. It's even better than a rock fight with Sam. When I'm on Fred and have my arms wrapped around Sarah's waist, when we're running through the country and down the dune and out onto the beach, that's when I'm not sure if my tears come from the wind or from somewhere else.
"Let's go riding."
# **Acknowledgments**
> I would like to thank the following people for their support: Vanessa Chase and her mother Victory, Jay Mandel, Bruce Tracy, J. R. Walsh, Eoghan Mahony, Libby May, Laurie Adams, D. C. Berman and Civil Jar Music (BMI), Deborah Garrison, Todd Jesdale, Amanda Gersh, William Morton, and The Kid.
## Contents
1. Cover
2. Title Page
3. Copyright
4. Dedication
5. Contents
6. I'm Talking About Another House
7. This Is How a Woman Gets Hit
8. The Target Audience
9. Bad Stars
10. The Other Family
11. Plus One
12. Doubles
13. The Fixers
14. How Much for Ho Chi Minh?
15. Preexisting Condition
16. Marriage Is Murder
17. Reggae Nights
18. Pure Slaughter Value
19. Acknowledgments
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1. Cover
2. Cover
3. Title Page
4. Table of Contents
5. Start
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Books3
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Baba Hasan-e Jonubi
Baba Hasan-e Jonubi (, also Romanized as Bābā Ḩasan-e Jonūbī and Bābā Ḩasan-e Janūbī; also known as Bābā Ḩasanī, Bahasani, and Bah Ḩasanī) is a village in Liravi-ye Shomali Rural District, in the Central District of Deylam County, Bushehr Province, Iran. At the 2006 census, its population was 65, in 16 families.
References
Category:Populated places in Deylam County
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Wikipedia (en)
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Odostomia rinella
Odostomia rinella is a species of sea snail, a marine gastropod mollusk in the family Pyramidellidae, the pyrams and their allies.
Description
The cream-colored shell has an elongate-ovate shape. Its length measures 2.3 mm. The whorls of the protoconch number at least two. They form a smooth, depressed helicoid spire, which is obliquely three-fifths immersed in the first of the succeeding turns. The five whorls of the teleoconch are moderately rounded, strongly contracted at the sutures, and somewhat shouldered at the summits. They are marked by strong, tuberculated axial ribs and four spiral cords almost as strong as the ribs between the sutures which renders their junction with the ribs tuberculate. Of the ribs which are slightly protractive, 17 appear upon the first to third and 19 upon the penultimate whorl. The sutures are strongly channeled. The periphery of the body whorl is marked by a sulcus which is crossed by the continuation of the axial ribs. The base of the shell is moderately long, and well rounded. It is marked by six slender spiral threads, the axial sculpture being reduced to mere lines of growth. The aperture is oval. The posterior angle is obtuse. The outer lip is thin. The columella is oblique, almost straight, decidedly revolute. It is marked with a strong fold at its insertion.
Distribution
The type specimen was found in the Bay of Panama.
References
External links
To USNM Invertebrate Zoology Mollusca Collection
To USNM Invertebrate Zoology Mollusca Collection
To World Register of Marine Species
Category:Pyramidellidae
Category:Gastropods described in 1909
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Wikipedia (en)
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Aircraft secondary power in flight is generally provided by a main engine (prime mover engine), for example by extracting bleed air from the main engine compressors and by extracting shaft power from the main engine shaft for driving generators and hydraulic pumps. The bleed air is typically used for cabin pressurization and or de-icing. The shaft power is typically used for electrical generation and hydraulics. Secondary power extraction from the main engine, particularly when obtained in conditions of reduced thermal efficiency for example during at part load, can represent a significant portion of fuel burn.
Traditional gas turbine engine auxiliary power units (i.e. including an engine core with a combustor) typically have a thermal efficiency which is much lower than that of the main engine at high power, and are optimized to generate secondary power while on ground. Accordingly secondary power generated with such gas turbine engine auxiliary power units during flight would increase fuel burn, thus requiring the secondary power during flight to be generated by the main engine.
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USPTO Backgrounds
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Oscar Re-Do: 2008
Should have won: No complaints here
Not even nominated: The Dark Knight
I have absolutely no problem with Slumdog Millionaire. It was my favorite movie of 2008 at the time, and is still the most vibrant of these five nominees, which features David Fincher, Ron Howard and Gus Van Sant at their most prestige-y, and one of the worst movies ever to be nominated for Best Picture. So no, I don’t understand the complaints about the “false uplift” or “poverty porn” of this genuinely moving film.
But of course I have a problem with the Academy not nominating The Dark Knight. Even as the shine of Christopher Nolan’s Chicago crime epic – with occasional appearances by Batman – has dimmed over the years, there’s still never been a good reason as to why the second-biggest movie ever (at the time) wasn’t nominated, especially when the line-up includes The Reader, which no one saw (at the time), and no one ever talks about or thinks about. The backlash was so bad, the Academy expanded their Best Picture field the next year. But still wasn’t until this year that a comic book movie was actually nominated. As critic Guy Lodge put it, at the very least it would have shut up a lot of annoying online people who lament that they never take comic book movies seriously.
Since all five directing nominees matched here, the only thing I have to add is that Danny Boyle needs to share this award with Loveleen Tandan, the woman who co-directed much of the film, yet he didn’t think in his acceptance speech. It was a black mark on an otherwise exceptional night for the film, which won eight of its 10 Oscar nominations.
I’ll save my thoughts on The Reader for later, but suffice it to say, Stephen Daldry doesn’t belong here. I’d once again find a spot for Tarsem, who used his clout and busy commercial directing schedule to his advantage, calling in his cast and crew to gorgeous locations across the globe to be able to bring his twisted fairy tale to life.
Should have won: Mickey Rourke
Not even nominated: Clint Eastwood, Gran Torino
It’s been 10 years, and nothing’s changed. Sean Penn is totally fine as LGBTQ rights icon Harvey Milk, but he’s got nothing on the pain and realism of Mickey Rourke in The Wrestler. Within the film and as a performance, he truly left it all out there.
I don’t think I’d necessarily take off any of these five performers, since they’re all doing solid work, in most cases the best parts of their respective films. But Clint Eastwood always knocks out the “older actor grappling with his legacy” roles, even if he’s done it at least three times since Unforgiven, including Million Dollar Baby (2004), where he was nominated, and here and The Mule (2018), where he wasn’t.
Should have won: Anne Hathaway
Not even nominated: Michelle Williams, Wendy and Lucy
I’m still baffled at the Academy success of The Reader. This is a poorly executed tearjerker/tragic romance/courtroom drama that requires us to empathize with an illiterate Nazi statutory rapist, played by Winslet in what is clearly a supporting role. She’s by far the best part of the movie, and she was well overdue at this point, but this is a case where she won for the wrong movie. I’d have happily given it to her in an actual tragic romance: Revolutionary Road, but the Academy went with the one of the worst movies it’s ever nominated.
So if Winslet wasn’t getting it for the right movie, they should have turned to a slightly younger actress. Anne Hathaway might have won a few years later for Les Misérables, but she still has yet to top her performance as Kym, a still-broken woman trying to act put together for her sister’s wedding. Rachel Getting Married is an uncomfortable movie for anyone who’s experienced a family member struggling with addiction, but its realism will mean it’s remembered far longer than The Reader.
Speaking of which, Michelle Williams isn’t exactly underrated at this point. She’s been nominated for four Oscars now, but somehow hasn’t won. I already sung her praises a few years ago, but she at least deserved a nomination as the anchor of Wendy and Lucy, Kelly Reichardt’s absolutely heartbreaking adaptation. With her dog Lucy as her only companion, Wendy slowly fades from society, slipping in and out of sanity.
Should have won: No complaints here
Not even nominated: Russell Brand, Forgetting Sarah Marshall
This was locked even before Ledger’s tragic death in January 2009. He had already become one of the greatest working actors, but his performance in The Dark Knight is the stuff of legend. It’s all the more remarkable, because Ledger reportedly was hoping to get fired, but Nolan kept encouraging him to go weirder and darker, and it will be the first role people will associate with him. There’s no telling how many other great performances he would have gotten to give in the future, but this stands as the best anyone has ever done in a comic book movie.
So it’s a fun What If? to wonder who could have won other than Ledger. All would have been worthy alternates, but perhaps even more than Downey, the best comedic performance of the year wasn’t his co-star Tom Cruise (although that was a fun detour he should do more often). It was Russell Brand, long before he got insufferable. As the tactless rock star Aldous Snow, it’s a bit of comic genius, casually dropping details about his affair to the cuckolded Peter (Jason Segel) and ignoring the obsessive fandom of a waiter (Jonah Hill). I still love his reading of “It’s a metaphor for a crap movie.”
Should have won: Viola Davis
Not even nominated: Jennifer Ehle, Pride and Glory
Beatrice Straight, eat your heart out. Viola Davis gave the best one-scene performance of all time. This should have been the first of many Oscars for one of our greatest living actresses. Unfortunately, she lost to Penélope Cruz in a lesser Woody Allen effort. Cruz could have won for Volver (her best work) were she not going up against Helen Mirren in The Queen. So I don’t know if this was a make-up award or autopilot for Supporting Actress in a Woody Allen movie. Either way, they ignored the best work in the field.
BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAYFrozen River Happy-Go-Lucky In Bruges Milk WALL-E
Should have won: In Bruges
Not even nominated: Burn After Reading
Speaking of Colin Farrell, In Bruges remains his best work, and arguably the best post-Tarantino crime film. As an assassin hiding out in Belgium with his sidekick (Brendan Gleeson) after a botched hit job, it’s a pitch-perfect black comedy.
The only black comedy that was better? Burn After Reading. I’m still baffled the Coens’ didn’t even get this nomination after winning the year before for No Country for Old Men. Their farce about a bunch of idiots running around D.C. trying to find a disc they think contains valuable intelligence has actually gotten more relevant as the situation in our nation’s capital has gotten even more absurd. “Jesus, what a clusterfuck!” indeed.
Should have won: No complaints here
Not even nominated: Revolutionary Road
Nothing much to say here, other than once again Revolutionary Road should have been here instead of The Reader. Even if the film is more an acting showcase than a writing showcase, it gets the coded language of the suburbs and the trap of capitalism.
BEST ANIMATED FEATUREBoltKung Fu PandaWALL·E
Should have won: No complaints here
Not even nominated: Waltz with Bashir
This starts what I’ve dubbed Pixar’s “weepy trilogy.” All three films won this Oscar and made me bawl like a baby. Bolt and Kung Fu Panda are fine, but neither hold a candle to Waltz with Bashir, Ari Folman’s devastating documentary about the 1982 Lebanon War.
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Pile-CC
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RECOMMENDED FOR FULL-TEXT PUBLICATION
Pursuant to Sixth Circuit Rule 206
File Name: 07a0493p.06
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE SIXTH CIRCUIT
_________________
X
Plaintiff-Appellant, -
JAMA M. VINCENT,
-
-
-
No. 06-4138
v.
,
>
BREWER COMPANY, -
Defendant-Appellee. -
N
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Southern District of Ohio at Cincinnati.
No. 04-00511—Thomas M. Rose, District Judge.
Argued: September 10, 2007
Decided and Filed: December 19, 2007
Before: GUY, ROGERS, and McKEAGUE, Circuit Judges.
_________________
COUNSEL
ARGUED: Stephen E. Imm, KATZ, GREENBERGER & NORTON, Cincinnati, Ohio, for
Appellant. Edward S. Dorsey, SANTEN & HUGHES, Cincinnati, Ohio, for Appellee. ON BRIEF:
Stephen E. Imm, KATZ, GREENBERGER & NORTON, Cincinnati, Ohio, for Appellant. Edward
S. Dorsey, SANTEN & HUGHES, Cincinnati, Ohio, for Appellee.
_________________
OPINION
_________________
ROGERS, Circuit Judge. Plaintiff Jama M. Vincent brought suit under Title VII of the Civil
Rights Act of 1964, alleging that her employer discharged her on account of her gender. The district
court held that Vincent could not establish a prima facie case of gender discrimination because she
could not show that she was as qualified for her position as her male replacement. Consequently,
the district court granted summary judgment in favor of her former employer, the Brewer Company.
To establish a prima facie case of gender discrimination, however, a plaintiff who can prove that she
was replaced by a member of the opposite sex need not show that she possesses qualifications
similar to those of her replacement. Because Vincent has established that she was replaced by a man
and has created genuine issues of material fact with respect to the other elements of a prima facie
case, we reverse.
1
No. 06-4138 Vincent v. Brewer Company Page 2
I.
Vincent, a woman, was employed by Brewer in its Utility Division at various points between
April 2002 and July 2003. During this period, Vincent was laid off and rehired two to three times
before being permanently laid off on July 25, 2003.
Brewer’s Utility Division lays natural gas pipes and performs related services for the Cinergy
utility company.1 There are four tiers of employees within the Utility Division: laborers, crew
leaders, foremen, and division supervisors. Crew leaders supervise the work of laborers, and, in this
capacity, are responsible for hooking up live gas lines. Consequently, all crew leaders working with
live gas must be certified. Cinergy issues such live gas certification to Brewer employees after their
successful completion of a Cinergy-offered course. Two of the crew leaders, Jay Fetters and Kevin
Parker, have greater responsibility and also serve as foremen. Fetters and Kevin Parker report
directly to Ken Parker, a supervisor. A few months prior to Vincent’s final layoff, Brewer hired
Salvadore “Sal” Dilillo to serve as a supervisor alongside Ken Parker.
In October 2002, Ken Parker authorized Vincent to take the Cinergy certification course and
promoted her to the position of temporary2 crew leader upon her completion of the course. With
Vincent’s promotion came a pay raise and increased responsibility. Though no other women were
crew leaders at the time of Vincent’s promotion and Vincent was the only woman that Ken Parker
had ever selected to obtain live gas certification, other women have been crew leaders at Brewer.
Over the course of her employment with Brewer, Vincent was reprimanded for misconduct
on several occasions. First, in October 2002, Vincent left a company truck containing equipment
on a roadside after the vehicle ran out of gas due to her failure to fuel it earlier in the day.
According to Ken Parker, Vincent left the keys to the truck in its ignition and did not lock its doors.
Vincent alleges that she attempted to call her superiors to apprise them of the situation before
leaving the truck, but that none of those individuals answered her calls. Brewer first became aware
of the incident after Kevin Parker happened to drive by the abandoned vehicle. Vincent’s boyfriend,
also a Brewer employee, had been driving behind the truck and was able to reach Ken Parker
approximately an hour after the truck ran out of gas. As a result of this incident, another employee
was temporarily assigned to lead Vincent’s crew.
Second, Vincent was demoted from crew leader to laborer in January 2003 after gas leaks
occurred on two consecutive days at sites that she was supervising. According to Fetters, who was
present when one leak occurred, at least one of the leaks was caused by a laborer working under
Vincent and was not her fault. Nonetheless, Cinergy revoked Vincent’s gas certification, and
Brewer consequently demoted her, as Vincent was unable to meet the requirement that a crew leader
be certified by Cinergy. In February 2003, Ken Parker authorized Vincent to retake the Cinergy
certification course. Though Vincent successfully completed the course and regained her
certification, she was never promoted back to crew leader.
Finally, Vincent was disciplined for insubordination in June 2003 after refusing to clean a
company truck. In response to Fetters’ request that she do so, Vincent stated that she “didn’t put the
f[***]ing s[***] in the truck” and that “the little motherf[*****] that put it in it can clean it out
himself.” Vincent’s refusal forced Brewer to pay another laborer extra salary to perform the task.
Because of Vincent’s behavior, Brewer determined that her prior demotion from temporary crew
leader should be made permanent.
1
Cinergy has since merged with the Duke Energy utility company.
2
Though Brewer contends that the promotion was only temporary, Vincent alleges that, when advising her of
the promotion, Brewer never described it as temporary.
No. 06-4138 Vincent v. Brewer Company Page 3
In contrast with these instances of misconduct, there is evidence suggesting that Vincent was
a capable laborer and crew leader. According to Fetters, Vincent typically performed “good work”
for him, and her performance, at times, could be characterized as “excellent.” Similarly, Everett
Grooms, a former Brewer crew leader, testified that Vincent was a “good worker,” and was “skilled
and competent.” More than one of Vincent’s former coworkers stated that Vincent’s crews were
known to be more productive than those of most of her male counterparts.
Vincent was laid off at the decision of Ken Parker on July 25, 2003. The day before this,
July 24, 2003, Brewer hired Mike Freels, a male laborer. Freels was assigned to the same
blacktopping crew that Vincent was working on at the time that she was laid off. Freels was not
certified in live gas and did not have any live gas experience, but he did hold certifications in
plumbing and pipe fitting and have experience in concrete work. Vincent, in contrast, is not certified
in plumbing.
The parties disagree as to whether any other employees were laid off at this time. Brewer
claims that six employees, three men and three women, were laid off during the two weeks
surrounding Vincent’s layoff. Vincent, on the other hand, asserts that she was the only permanent
employee laid off during this period. According to Vincent, the employees to which Brewer refers
either asked to be laid off, were only temporary workers, or were terminated after her discharge and
not at the decision of Ken Parker. On October 25, 2003, the Utility Division employed twelve more
persons than it employed at the time of Vincent’s final layoff.
Vincent did not return to work for Brewer after her July 2003 layoff. Vincent never
contacted Brewer about the possibility of being called back to work. Brewer similarly did not
contact her about being reinstated even though Grooms asked Ken Parker to call Vincent back to
work on Grooms’s crew. The parties contest the nature of Brewer’s procedure for rehiring laid-off
workers. Brewer asserts that its regular practice was to call an employee back only if the employee
contacted it and expressed an interest in being recalled. Vincent, however, claims that it was
Brewer’s policy to contact a laid-off employee if it wanted her to come back to work, and that the
employee was not expected to take any action. In their testimony, Vincent, two former Brewer
employees, and one current Brewer employee, all of whom had been laid off at some point during
their employment, contend that Brewer always initiated contact and that they never had to contact
Brewer in order to be recalled.
During the time of Vincent’s employment, all of her superiors and nearly all of her co-
workers in the Utility Division were men. According to Vincent and several former Brewer
employees, key members of Brewer’s management team exhibited bias against female employees
and frequently made degrading remarks about women. On one occasion, for example, Ken Parker
allegedly told a female employee that “the problem with you is you’re a f***ing woman.” Another
time, Kevin Parker purportedly stated that Dilillo disliked women even more than Ken Parker, and
that Dilillo wanted to remove all of the Utility Division’s female employees because they made it
look bad.
Vincent brought suit against Brewer in the district court below, asserting three claims: a Title
VII claim of discriminatory discharge, a Title VII claim of discriminatory demotion, and a claim of
retaliatory discharge in violation of the public policy of Ohio. Brewer subsequently filed a motion
for summary judgment on all claims.
In June 2006, the district court granted summary judgment in favor of Brewer on both Title
VII claims and dismissed without prejudice Vincent’s state law claim. The district court held that
summary judgment was proper on Vincent’s Title VII discriminatory discharge claim because
Vincent had not established a prima facie case of gender discrimination. Relying on a sentence in
this court’s decision in Suggs v. ServiceMaster Education Food Management, 72 F.3d 1228 (6th Cir.
No. 06-4138 Vincent v. Brewer Company Page 4
1996), the district court concluded that Vincent could not satisfy the fourth and final element of a
prima facie case, which the court held to require that a plaintiff show “replace[ment] with a similarly
qualified person.” Because Vincent’s alleged replacement, Freels, carried a plumbing certification
and Vincent did not, the district court concluded that Vincent was not replaced by a party with
similar qualifications. The district court also granted summary judgment for Brewer on Vincent’s
Title VII discriminatory demotion claim. The court concluded that Vincent’s January 2003
demotion resulted from the action of Cinergy, not Brewer, as it was the loss of Vincent’s live gas
certification which necessitated her demotion. Finally, the district court dismissed without prejudice
Vincent’s remaining state law claim. Because the court granted summary judgment on Vincent’s
two federal claims, it declined to exercise supplemental jurisdiction over her state claim.
On appeal, Vincent challenges the district court’s grant of summary judgment on her claim
of discriminatory discharge.
II.
Brewer was not entitled to summary judgment on Vincent’s Title VII discriminatory
discharge claim because a reasonable jury could conclude, based upon the evidence, that Vincent’s
layoff was the product of gender discrimination. Title VII prohibits an employer from
“discriminat[ing] against any individual with respect to his compensation, terms, conditions, or
privileges of employment, because of such individual’s race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.”
42 U.S.C. § 2000e-2(a)(1). Where, as here, a case is at the summary judgment stage and a plaintiff
seeks to prove discrimination via indirect, rather than direct, evidence, the plaintiff must submit
evidence from which a reasonable jury could conclude both that she has established a prima facie
case of discrimination and that the defendant’s legitimate, nondiscriminatory reason for its action,
if any, is pretext for unlawful discrimination. McDonnell Douglas Corp. v. Green, 411 U.S. 792,
802-05 (1973); Cline v. Catholic Diocese of Toledo, 206 F.3d 651, 658 (6th Cir. 2000). Because
Vincent has created genuine issues of material fact with respect to both of these inquiries, summary
judgment was not warranted.
A. Prima Facie Case
Vincent has presented evidence sufficient to make out a prima facie case of gender
discrimination and thereby withstand summary judgment on this ground. To establish a prima facie
case of gender discrimination, Vincent must show that: “(1) she is a member of a protected group;
(2) she was subjected to an adverse employment decision; (3) she was qualified for the position; and
(4) she was replaced by a person outside the protected class, or similarly situated non-protected
employees were treated more favorably.” Peltier v. United States, 388 F.3d 984, 987 (6th Cir.
2004).
Vincent has created a factual dispute with respect to all four elements of a prima facie case.
First, as a woman, Vincent is a member of a protected class. Valentine-Johnson v. Roche, 386 F.3d
800, 814 (6th Cir. 2004).
Second, Vincent has created a genuine issue of material fact as to whether Brewer’s decision
to lay her off and never recall her constituted an adverse employment action. An employer’s
decision to discharge an employee is a classic example of an adverse employment action. See
Kleiber v. Honda of Am. Mfg., Inc., 485 F.3d 862, 868 n.2 (6th Cir. 2007). Although Brewer
contends that Vincent chose not to return to work, and that there was thus no adverse employment
action, the record contains sufficient contrary evidence to create a genuine issue of material fact.
It is true that Vincent never contacted Brewer about the possibility of returning to work after her
layoff, and that another worker, Freels, was recalled from a layoff after he repeatedly inquired about
returning to work. Vincent, however, has presented evidence suggesting that laid-off Brewer
employees were not expected to contact Brewer in order to be recalled. In their testimony, Vincent
No. 06-4138 Vincent v. Brewer Company Page 5
and several former Brewer employees stated that Brewer would always contact a laid-off employee
if it desired the employee to return to work, and that the employee did not need to take any action.
Such testimony creates a factual dispute, which is all that is necessary at this stage of the litigation.
Moreover, even if Vincent had chosen not to return, there is no question that Brewer made the initial
decision to lay her off, and that itself is adequate to satisfy the requirement of an adverse
employment decision.
Third, there are also disputed factual issues with respect to whether Vincent was qualified
for her position. To establish this element, a plaintiff must show that her performance met her
employer’s legitimate expectations at the time of her discharge. McClain v. Nw. Cmty. Corr. Ctr.
Judicial Corr. Bd., 440 F.3d 320, 334 (6th Cir. 2006). There is considerable evidence suggesting
that Vincent was a capable laborer and crew leader. According to Vincent’s former coworkers, the
crews that she supervised were more productive than most. One of Vincent’s former superiors has
similarly stated that she was “skilled and competent” and a “good worker.” Consistent with these
evaluations, another former superior specifically requested that Vincent be called back to work on
his crew after her final layoff. While Vincent’s performance may have been substandard on certain
occasions, such as when she left a company truck on a roadside unsupervised or refused to clean a
company vehicle after being directed to do so by a superior, she has offered enough evidence with
respect to her qualifications to create a genuine issue of material fact.
Finally, Vincent has established the fourth element of a prima facie case because the
employee who replaced her, Freels, is a man. Given that Brewer hired Freels the day before it laid
Vincent off and assigned Freels to work on the same crew as Vincent, a reasonable jury could
conclude that Freels was hired to serve as her replacement.
Vincent need not, as Brewer now contends, also show that Freels was similarly qualified.
Such a requirement would inappropriately increase the showing that a plaintiff must make in order
to establish a prima facie case. This court has repeatedly stated that the fourth element requires a
plaintiff to show only that she “was replaced by a person outside the protected class.” See, e.g.,
Michael v. Caterpillar Fin. Servs. Corp., 496 F.3d 584, 593 (6th Cir. 2007); Knox v. Neaton Auto
Prod. Mfg., Inc., 375 F.3d 451, 457 (6th Cir. 2004); Peltier, 388 F.3d at 987; Hoskins v. Oakland
County Sheriff’s Dep’t, 227 F.3d 719, 731 (6th Cir. 2000); Mitchell v. Toledo Hosp., 964 F.2d 577,
582 (6th Cir. 1992). Nowhere does this oft repeated standard suggest that a plaintiff and her
replacement must be similarly qualified.
In applying this standard to Title VII claims, this court has consistently held that a showing
that a plaintiff’s replacement was not a member of the plaintiff’s protected class was sufficient to
satisfy the fourth element. For instance, in Talley v. Bravo Pitino Restaurant, Ltd., 61 F.3d 1241,
1248 (6th Cir. 1995), a case involving racial discrimination, this court held that the plaintiff
established the fourth element of his prima facie case by “showing that his position was filled by a
white person.” Because the plaintiff made such a showing, this court held that he was not required
to establish that he was similarly situated to his former coworkers who were not terminated. Id. at
1247-48. Similarly, in Tuttle v. Metropolitan Government of Nashville, 474 F.3d 307, 317 (6th Cir.
2007), an age discrimination case, this court held that a plaintiff “could satisfy the fourth element
of her age discrimination claim . . . by providing evidence that she was replaced by a younger
worker.” See also Abeita v. TransAmerica Mailings, Inc., 159 F.3d 246, 253 (6th Cir. 1998)
(holding that a plaintiff failed to establish the fourth element because she did not provide evidence
to support her claim that her former employer initially intended to replace her with a man).
Of course, when a plaintiff seeks to satisfy the fourth element by showing that she was
treated differently from a worker outside of her protected class, rather than by showing that she was
replaced by a non-class member, the standard makes explicit that the plaintiff must show situational
similarity with respect to the more favorably treated employee. In Talley, 61 F.3d at 1247, for
No. 06-4138 Vincent v. Brewer Company Page 6
example, we explained that the fourth element can be established by “showing either that the
plaintiff was replaced by a person outside of the protected class or that similarly situated non-
protected employees were treated more favorably than the plaintiff” (emphasis in original).
The district court relied upon Suggs to hold that, where a plaintiff attempts to create an
inference of discrimination based upon her replacement by a male worker, the plaintiff must show
“replace[ment] with a similarly qualified person” in order to satisfy the fourth element. Because
Vincent’s male replacement is certified in plumbing and she is not, the district court concluded that
Vincent could not establish the fourth element, and, consequently, a prima facie case.
Suggs, however, cannot be read to require similar situation in a replacement case. It is true
that in Suggs we stated that “[t]o prevail on her individual disparate treatment claim of
discriminatory discharge” a plaintiff must establish that:
she belongs to a protected class; she was qualified for her position; she was
discharged by the defendant; and after she was discharged, she was replaced with a
similarly qualified person or her employer sought a similarly qualified replacement
. . . who was not a member of her protected class; and her treatment differed from
that accorded to otherwise similarly-situated individuals outside her protected group.
72 F.3d at 1232. This quoted language does not clearly refer to the prima facie case, and even if it
did so, the language was not necessary to the actual holdings in Suggs. Suggs came before this court
after a full trial was held, and this court “proceed[ed] directly to the ultimate question of whether
the plaintiff carried her burden of proof of discriminatory discharge,” and did “not revisit the
McDonnell Douglas analysis of whether the plaintiff established a prima facie case of
discrimination.” Id. at 1232. Even if the quoted language could be read as a description of the
elements of the prima facie case, it was in any event dictum.
Brewer points to no cases in which this court has actually held that the fourth element
requires replacement with a similarly situated person. In the unpublished opinion Moore v. In re
Member Data Services, No. 96-5855, 1997 WL 778405, at *1 (6th Cir. Dec. 9, 1997), this court
quoted the relevant passage from Suggs, but that, too, was dictum with respect to the fourth element.
Because this court determined that the plaintiff there had not established the third element of a prima
facie case, qualification for his position, we did not address the fourth element.
Importing a “similarly situated” requirement into the “replacement with a person outside the
protected class” method of establishing a prima facie case is therefore not warranted, and indeed
inconsistent with the relevant Supreme Court and Sixth Circuit precedents.
B. Pretext
Vincent has also created a genuine issue of material fact with respect to whether the
legitimate, nondiscriminatory reasons articulated by Brewer for terminating her employment were
a pretext for gender discrimination. See McDonnell Douglas, 411 U.S. at 804. Brewer has offered
several permissible rationales for its decision to lay Vincent off. First, Brewer notes that six other
employees, three men and three women, were laid off around the same time that Vincent was
discharged, which suggests that Vincent may have been let go because of a lack of work within the
company rather than because she was a woman. Brewer also contends that Vincent was laid off for
violating company rules. As discussed, Vincent had been reprimanded prior to being terminated for
leaving a company truck containing equipment unaccompanied and for insubordination after cursing
at a superior and refusing to complete an assignment. Further, Brewer claims that it did not recall
Vincent because she neglected to show any interest in being reinstated.
No. 06-4138 Vincent v. Brewer Company Page 7
Based upon the evidence that Vincent has presented, however, a reasonable jury could
conclude that Brewer’s stated reasons for terminating Vincent were a pretext for unlawful
discrimination. A plaintiff can establish pretext by demonstrating that the defendant’s articulated
legitimate, nondiscriminatory reason either: (1) lacks a basis in fact, (2) did not actually motivate
her discharge, or (3) was insufficient to motivate her discharge. Tuttle, 474 F.3d at 319.
Vincent has offered several pieces of evidence which are collectively sufficient to suggest
pretext. Foremost, based upon derogatory statements purportedly made by Brewer’s management
team, a jury could reasonably conclude that Vincent’s termination was motivated by her gender
rather than by her work performance or by Brewer’s decreasing need for laborers. Vincent and other
former Brewer employees testified that members of Brewer’s management team frequently made
degrading comments regarding the capabilities of female employees, and expressed a desire to rid
the Utility Division of their presence. Among the remarks alleged to have been made by Brewer
management are the following:
(1) Ken Parker stated that he believed that women do not belong at Brewer and that
he would not hire them.
(2) Kevin Parker told a crew leader, Ronald Ayres, that he did not permit his female
laborers to do any work aside from directing traffic and that Ken Parker would fire
Ayres if he discovered Ayres allowing female laborers to perform any other task.
(3) Ken Parker told a female employee, Tina Updike, that the only jobs available to
women at Brewer were those involving traffic direction.
(4) Kevin Parker told Vincent and another female employee, Tammy Ayres, that Ken
Parker instructed him to only permit female laborers to direct traffic.
(5) Kevin Parker told Tammy Ayres that she could not be in charge of a project
because women are “not leaders” at Brewer.
(6) Ken Parker told Tammy Ayres that “the problem with you is you’re a f***ing
woman.”
(7) Kevin Parker stated that Dilillo disliked women even more than Ken Parker, and
that Dilillo wanted to remove all of the Utility Division’s female employees because
they made it look bad.
(8) Fetters frequently referred to Tammy Ayres using nicknames such as
“sweetheart” and “cupcake,” and often asked female employees graphic sexual
questions.
(9) Ken Parker told Updike that if she wanted to earn a man’s pay then she would
have to work like a man or she would be replaced by a man.
This court has held that discriminatory remarks may serve as evidence of pretext because they
indicate the presence of animus toward a protected group. Id. at 320; Ercegovich v. Goodyear Tire
& Rubber Co., 154 F.3d 344, 354-57 (6th Cir. 1998).
The statements offered here are particularly probative. First, these comments were made by
high-level officials who either had managerial authority over personnel decisions or otherwise
played a meaningful role in such decisions. Ercegovich, 154 F.3d at 354-55. All of these alleged
remarks can be attributed to either foremen or supervisors, and the majority of these comments were
purportedly made by Ken Parker, who made the ultimate decision to lay Vincent off. Moreover, the
No. 06-4138 Vincent v. Brewer Company Page 8
remarks made by Brewer management were neither isolated nor ambiguous, and thus are not “too
abstract, in addition to being irrelevant and prejudicial, to support a finding of . . . discrimination.”
Phelps v. Yale Sec., Inc., 986 F.2d 1020, 1025 (6th Cir. 1993); see also Ercegovich, 154 F.3d at 356
(“we do not view each discriminatory remark in isolation, but are mindful that the remarks buttress
one another as well as any other pretextual evidence”). Not only were such alleged comments
numerous, but a few, such as Ken Parker’s remark that women “didn’t belong” at Brewer and
Dilillo’s statement that he wished to rid the Utility Department of women, specifically convey a
desire to terminate female employees.
Brewer contends that Vincent’s experience as an employee refutes her claim of bias, and that
these alleged comments should therefore be given little weight. Specifically, Brewer points out that
Ken Parker himself approved Vincent’s request to obtain live gas certification and chose to promote
her to the position of crew leader. While such favorable treatment may weaken Vincent’s claim, the
question before this court is not whether Brewer’s proffered legitimate, nondiscriminatory reason
was in fact pretextual, but merely whether a factual dispute exists with respect to this question.
Because the remarks offered by Vincent sufficiently suggest that Brewer terminated her employment
because of her gender, a genuine issue of material fact exists.
The record also contains evidence suggesting that perhaps neither a lack of work nor
Vincent’s failure to express an interest in returning to work actually led Brewer to lay her off and
subsequently not recall her. Approximately three months after Vincent was discharged, the Utility
Division had increased from the 75 laborers employed when Vincent was laid off to 87 laborers.
This increase in employment undercuts Brewer’s argument that Vincent was let go because of its
decreased need for laborers. Brewer’s records do indicate that it laid off six other employees at
approximately the same time that it terminated Vincent. According to the record, however, those
individuals either were not permanent employees, were not terminated by Ken Parker, or themselves
asked to be laid off. Thus, even if there was a shortage of work, that alone does not adequately
explain why Vincent was the only permanent employee that Ken Parker dismissed and why she was
not recalled once business picked back up. Furthermore, Vincent has proffered the testimony of
several individuals that, as discussed, is inconsistent with Brewer’s assertion that she was not
recalled because she failed to express an interest in being reinstated.
Finally, a reasonable jury could conclude that Vincent was not laid off for violating company
rules in light of the above pretextual evidence and additional evidence that she was a capable
worker. As discussed with respect to Vincent’s prima facie case, several of her former coworkers
and superiors rated her performance as above average. Moreover, the lack of temporal proximity
between Brewer’s decision to lay Vincent off and her alleged instances of misconduct casts further
doubt on this rationale. Vincent left a company vehicle unaccompanied in October 2002, lost her
gas certification in January 2003, and was reprimanded for insubordination sometime in June 2003.
Vincent was not laid off until July 25, 2003, however, which was at least five to six weeks after the
last occurrence of her misbehavior.
III.
For the foregoing reasons, the summary judgment is VACATED and the matter is
REMANDED to the district court for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion.
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tomekkorbak/pile-curse-small
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FreeLaw
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From Thales, who is often considered the first Western philosopher, to the Stoics and Skeptics, ancient Greek philosophy opened the doors to a particular way of thinking that provided the roots for the Western intellectual tradition. Here, there is often an explicit preference for the life of reason and rational thought. We find proto-scientific explanations of the natural world in the Milesian thinkers, and we hear Democritus posit atoms—indivisible and invisible units—as the basic stuff of all matter. With Socrates comes a sustained inquiry into ethical matters—an orientation towards human living and the best life for human beings. With Plato comes one of the most creative and flexible ways of doing philosophy, which some have since attempted to imitate by writing philosophical dialogues covering topics still of interest today in ethics, political thought, metaphysics, and epistemology. Plato’s student, Aristotle, was one of the most prolific of ancient authors. He wrote treatises on each of these topics, as well as on the investigation of the natural world, including the composition of animals. The Hellenists—Epicurus, the Cynics, the Stoics, and the Skeptics—developed schools or movements devoted to distinct philosophical lifestyles, each with reason at its foundation.
With this preference for reason came a critique of traditional ways of living, believing, and thinking, which sometimes caused political trouble for the philosophers themselves. Xenophanes directly challenged the traditional anthropomorphic depiction of the gods, and Socrates was put to death for allegedly inventing new gods and not believing in the gods mandated by the city of Athens. After the fall of Alexander the Great, and because of Aristotle’s ties with Alexander and his court, Aristotle escaped the same fate as Socrates by fleeing Athens. Epicurus, like Xenophanes, claimed that the mass of people is impious, since the people conceive of the gods as little more than superhumans, even though human characteristics cannot appropriately be ascribed to the gods. In short, not only did ancient Greek philosophy pave the way for the Western intellectual tradition, including modern science, but it also shook cultural foundations in its own time.
1. Presocratic Thought
An analysis of Presocratic thought presents some difficulties. First, the texts we are left with are primarily fragmentary, and sometimes, as in the case of Anaxagoras, we have no more than a sentence’s worth of verbatim words. Even these purportedly verbatim words often come to us in quotation from other sources, so it is difficult, if not impossible, to attribute with certainty a definite position to any one thinker. Moreover, “Presocratic” has been criticized as a misnomer since some of the Presocratic thinkers were contemporary with Socrates and because the name might imply philosophical primacy to Socrates. The term “Presocratic philosophy” is also difficult since we have no record of Presocratic thinkers ever using the word “philosophy.” Therefore, we must approach cautiously any study of presocratic thought.
Presocratic thought marks a decisive turn away from mythological accounts towards rational explanations of the cosmos. Indeed, some Presocratics openly criticize and ridicule traditional Greek mythology, while others simply explain the world and its causes in material terms. This is not to say that the Presocratics abandoned belief in gods or things sacred, but there is a definite turn away from attributing causes of material events to gods, and at times a refiguring of theology altogether. The foundation of Presocratic thought is the preference and esteem given to rational thought over mythologizing. This movement towards rationality and argumentation would pave the way for the course of Western thought.
a. The Milesians
Thales (c.624-c.545 B.C.E.), traditionally considered to be the “first philosopher,” proposed a first principle (arche) of the cosmos: water. Aristotle offers some conjectures as to why Thales might have believed this (Graham 29). First, all things seem to derive nourishment from moisture. Next, heat seems to come from or carry with it some sort of moisture. Finally, the seeds of all things have a moist nature, and water is the source of growth for many moist and living things. Some assert that Thales held water to be a component of all things, but there is no evidence in the testimony for this interpretation. It is much more likely, rather, that Thales held water to be a primal source for all things—perhaps the sine qua non of the world.
Like Thales, Anaximander (c.610-c.545 B.C.E.) also posited a source for the cosmos, which he called the boundless (apeiron). That he did not, like Thales, choose a typical element (earth, air, water, or fire) shows that his thinking had moved beyond sources of being that are more readily available to the senses. He might have thought that, since the other elements seem more or less to change into one another, there must be some source beyond all these—a kind of background upon or source from which all these changes happen. Indeed, this everlasting principle gave rise to the cosmos by generating hot and cold, each of which “separated off” from the boundless. How it is that this separation took place is unclear, but we might presume that it happened via the natural force of the boundless. The universe, though, is a continual play of elements separating and combining. In poetic fashion, Anaximander says that the boundless is the source of beings, and that into which they perish, “according to what must be: for they give recompense and pay restitution to each other for their injustice according to the ordering of time” (F1).
If our dates are approximately correct, Anaximenes (c.546-c.528/5 B.C.E.) could have had no direct philosophical contact with Anaximander. However, the conceptual link between them is undeniable. Like Anaximander, Anaximenes thought that there was something boundless that underlies all other things. Unlike Anaximander, Anaximenes made this boundless thing something definite—air. For Anaximander, hot and cold separated off from the boundless, and these generated other natural phenomena (Graham 79). For Anaximenes, air itself becomes other natural phenomena through condensation and rarefaction. Rarefied air becomes fire. When it is condensed, it becomes water, and when it is condensed further, it becomes earth and other earthy things, like stones (Graham 79). This then gives rise to all other life forms. Furthermore, air itself is divine. Both Cicero and Aetius report that, for Anaximenes, air is God (Graham 87). Air, then, changes into the basic elements, and from these we get all other natural phenomena.
b. Xenophanes of Colophon
Xenophanes (c.570-c.478 B.C.E.) directly and explicitly challenged Homeric and Hesiodic mythology. “It is good,” says Hesiod, “to hold the gods in high esteem,” rather than portraying them in “raging battles, which are worthless” (F2). More explicitly, “Homer and Hesiod have attributed to the gods all things that are blameworthy and disgraceful for human beings: stealing, committing adultery, deceiving each other” (F17). At the root of this poor depiction of the gods is the human tendency towards anthropomorphizing the gods. “But mortals think gods are begotten, and have the clothing, voice and body of mortals” (F19), despite the fact that God is unlike mortals in body and thought. Indeed, Xenophanes famously proclaims that if other animals (cattle, lions, and so forth) were able to draw the gods, they would depict the gods with bodies like their own (F20). Beyond this, all things come to be from earth (F27), not the gods, although it is unclear whence came the earth. The reasoning seems to be that God transcends all of our efforts to make him like us. If everyone paints different pictures of divinity, and many people do, then it is unlikely that God fits into any of those frames. So, holding “the gods in high esteem” at least entails something negative, that is, that we take care not to portray them as super humans.
c. Pythagoras and Pythagoreanism
Ancient thought was left with such a strong presence and legacy of Pythagorean influence, and yet little is known with certainty about Pythagoras of Samos (c.570-c.490 B.C.E.). Many know Pythagoras for his eponymous theorem—the square of the hypotenuse of a right triangle is equal to the sum of the squares of the adjacent sides. Whether Pythagoras himself invented the theorem, or whether he or someone else brought it back from Egypt, is unknown. He developed a following that continued long past his death, on down to Philolaus of Croton (c.470-c.399 B.C.E.), a Pythagorean from whom we may gain some insight into Pythagoreanism. Whether or not the Pythagoreans followed a particular doctrine is up for debate, but it is clear that, with Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans, a new way of thinking was born in ancient philosophy that had a significant impact on Platonic thought.
The Pythagoreans believed in the transmigration of souls. The soul, for Pythagoras, finds its immortality by cycling through all living beings in a 3,000-year cycle, until it returns to a human being (Graham 915). Indeed, Xenophanes tells the story of Pythagoras walking by a puppy who was being beaten. Pythagoras cried out that the beating should cease, because he recognized the soul of a friend in the puppy’s howl (Graham 919). What exactly the Pythagorean psychology entails for a Pythagorean lifestyle is unclear, but we pause to consider some of the typical characteristics reported of and by Pythagoreans.
Plato and Aristotle tended to associate the holiness and wisdom of number—and along with this, harmony and music—with the Pythagoreans (Graham 499). Perhaps more basic than number, at least for Philolaus, are the concepts of the limited and unlimited. Nothing in the cosmos can be without limit (F1), including knowledge (F4). Imagine if nothing were limited, but matter were just an enormous heap or morass. Next, suppose that you are somehow able to gain a perspective of this morass (to do so, there must be some limit that gives you that perspective!). Presumably, nothing at all could be known, at least not with any degree of precision, the most careful observation notwithstanding. Additionally, all known things have number, which functions as a limit of things insofar as each thing is a unity, or composed of a plurality of parts.
d. Heraclitus
Heraclitus of Ephesus (c.540-c.480 B.C.E.) stands out in ancient Greek philosophy not only with respect to his ideas, but also with respect to how those ideas were expressed. His aphoristic style is rife with wordplay and conceptual ambiguities. Heraclitus saw reality as composed of contraries—a reality whose continual process of change is precisely what keeps it at rest.
Fire plays a significant role in his picture of the cosmos. No God or man created the cosmos, but it always was, is, and will be fire. At times it seems as though fire, for Heraclitus, is a primary element from which all things come and to which they return. At others, his comments on fire could easily be seen metaphorically. What is fire? It is at once “need and satiety.” This back and forth, or better yet, this tension and distension is characteristic of life and reality—a reality that cannot function without contraries, such as war and peace. “A road up and down is one and the same” (F38). Whether one travels up the road or down it, the road is the same road. “On those stepping into rivers staying the same other and other waters flow” (F39). In his Cratylus, Plato quotes Heraclitus, via the mouthpiece of Cratylus, as saying that “you could not step twice into the same river,” comparing this to the way everything in life is in constant flux (Graham 158). This, according to Aristotle, supposedly drove Cratylus to the extreme of never saying anything for fear that the words would attempt to freeze a reality that is always fluid, and so, Cratylus merely pointed (Graham 183). So, the cosmos and all things that make it up are what they are through the tension and distention of time and becoming. The river is what it is by being what it is not. Fire, or the ever-burning cosmos, is at war with itself, and yet at peace—it is constantly wanting fuel to keep burning, and yet it burns and is satisfied.
e. Parmenides and Zeno
If it is true that for Heraclitus life thrives and even finds stillness in its continuous movement and change, then for Parmenides of Elea (c.515-c.450 B.C.E.) life is at a standstill. Parmenides was a pivotal figure in Presocratic thought, and one of the most influential of the Presocratics in determining the course of Western philosophy. According to McKirahan, Parmenides is the inventor of metaphysics (157)—the inquiry into the nature of being or reality. While the tenets of his thought have their home in poetry, they are expressed with the force of logic. The Parmenidean logic of being thus sparked a long lineage of inquiry into the nature of being and thinking.
Parmenides recorded his thought in the form of a poem. In it, there are two paths that mortals can take—the path of truth and the path of error. The first path is the path of being or what-is. The right way of thinking is to think of what-is, and the wrong way is to think both what-is and what-is-not. The latter is wrong, simply because non-being is not. In other words, there is no non-being, so properly speaking, it cannot be thought—there is nothing there to think. We can think only what is and, presumably, since thinking is a type of being, “thinking and being are the same” (F3). It is only our long entrenched habits of sensation that mislead us into thinking down the wrong path of non-being. The world, and its appearance of change, thrusts itself upon our senses, and we erroneously believe that what we see, hear, touch, taste, and smell is the truth. But, if non-being is not, then change is impossible, for when anything changes, it moves from non-being to being. For example, for a being to grow tall, it must have at some point not been tall. Since non-being is not and cannot therefore be thought, we are deluded into believing that this sort of change actually happens. Similarly, what-is is one. If there were a plurality, there would be non-being, that is, this would not be that. Parmenides thus argues that we must trust in reason alone.
In the Parmenidean tradition, we have Zeno (c.490-c.430 B.C.E.). As Daniel Graham says, while “Parmenides argues for monism, Zeno argues against pluralism” (Graham 245). Zeno seems to have composed a text wherein he claims to show the absurdity in accepting that there is a plurality of beings, and he also shows that motion is impossible. Zeno shows that if we attempt to count a plurality, we end up with an absurdity. If there were a plurality, then it would be neither more nor less than the number that it would have to be. Thus, there would be a finite number of things. On the other hand, if there were a plurality, then the number would be infinite because there is always something else between existing things, and something else between those, and something else between those, ad infinitum. Thus, if there were a plurality of things, then that plurality would be both infinite and finite in number, which is absurd (F4).
The most enduring paradoxes are those concerned with motion. It is impossible for a body in motion to traverse, say, a distance of twenty feet. In order to do so, the body must first arrive at the halfway point, or ten feet. But in order to arrive there, the body in motion must travel five feet. But in order to arrive there, the body must travel two and a half feet, ad infinitum. Since, then, space is infinitely divisible, but we have only a finite time to traverse it, it cannot be done. Presumably, one could not even begin a journey at all. The “Achilles Paradox” similarly attacks motion saying that swift-footed Achilles will never be able to catch up with the slowest runner, assuming the runner started at some point ahead of Achilles. Achilles must first reach the place where the slow runner began. This means that the slow runner will already be a bit beyond where he began. Once Achilles progresses to the next place, the slow runner is already beyond that point, too. Thus, motion seems absurd.
f. Anaxagoras
Anaxagoras of Clazomenae (c.500-c.428 B.C.E.) had what was, up until that time, the most unique perspective on the nature of matter and the causes of its generation and corruption. Closely predating Plato (Anaxagoras died around the time that Plato was born), Anaxagoras left his impression upon Plato and Aristotle, although they were both ultimately dissatisfied with his cosmology (Graham 309-313). He seems to have been almost exclusively concerned with cosmology and the true nature of all that is around us.
Before the cosmos was as it is now, it was nothing but a great mixture—everything was in everything. The mixture was so thoroughgoing that no part of it was recognizable due to the smallness of each thing, and not even colors were perceptible. He considered matter to be infinitely divisible. That is, because it is impossible for being not to be, there is never a smallest part, but there is always a smaller part. If the parts of the great mixture were not infinitely divisible, then we would be left with a smallest part. Since the smallest part could not become smaller, any attempt at dividing it again would presumably obliterate it.
The most important player in this continuous play of being is mind (nous). Although mind can be in some things, nothing else can be in it—mind is unmixed. We recall that, for Anaxagoras, everything is mixed with everything. There is some portion of everything in anything that we identify. Thus, if anything at all were mixed with mind, then everything would be mixed with mind. This mixture would obstruct mind’s ability to rule all else. Mind is in control, and it is responsible for the great mixture of being. Everlasting mind—the most pure of all things—is responsible for ordering the world.
Anaxagoras left his mark on the thought of both Plato and Aristotle, whose critiques of Anaxagoras are similar. In Plato’s Phaedo, Socrates recounts in brief his intellectual history, citing his excitement over his discovery of Anaxagoras’ thought. He was most excited about mind as an ultimate cause of all. Yet, Socrates complains, Anaxagoras made very little use of mind to explain what was best for each of the heavenly bodies in their motions, or the good of anything else. That is, Socrates seems to have wanted some explanation as to why it is good for all things to be as they are (Graham 309-311). Aristotle, too, complains that Anaxagoras makes only minimal use of his principle of mind. It becomes, as it were, a deus ex machina, that is, whenever Anaxagoras was unable to give any other explanation for the cause of a given event, he fell back upon mind (Graham 311-313). It is possible, as always, that both Plato and Aristotle resort here to a straw man of sorts in order to advance their own positions. Indeed, we have seen that Mind set the great mixture into motion, and then ordered the cosmos as we know it. This is no insignificant feat.
g. Democritus and Atomism
Ancient atomism began a legacy in philosophical and scientific thought, and this legacy was revived and significantly evolved in modern philosophy. In contemporary times, the atom is not the smallest particle. Etymologically, however, atomos is that which is uncut or indivisible. The ancient atomists, Leucippus and Democritus (c.5 th cn B.C.E.), were concerned with the smallest particles in nature that make up reality—particles that are both indivisible and invisible. They were to some degree responding to Parmenides and Zeno by indicating atoms as indivisible sources of motion.
Atoms—the most compact and the only indivisible bodies in nature—are infinite in number, and they constantly move through an infinite void. In fact, motion would be impossible, says Democritus, without the void. If there were no void, the atoms would have nothing through which to move. Atoms take on a variety, perhaps an infinite variety, of shapes. Some are round, others are hooked, and yet others are jagged. They often collide with one another, and often bounce off of one another. Sometimes, though, the shapes of the colliding atoms are amenable to one another, and they come together to form the matter that we identify as the sensible world (F5). This combination, too, would be impossible without the void. Atoms need a background (emptiness) out of which they are able to combine (Graham 531). Atoms then stay together until some larger environmental force breaks them apart, at which point they resume their constant motion (F5). Why certain atoms come together to form a world seems up to chance, and yet many worlds have been, are, and will be formed by atomic collision and coalescence (Graham 551). Once a world is formed, however, all things happen by necessity—the causal laws of nature dictate the course of the natural world (Graham 551-553).
h. The Sophists
Much of what is transmitted to us about the Sophists comes from Plato. In fact, two of Plato’s dialogues are named after Sophists, Protagoras and Gorgias, and one is called simply, The Sophist. Beyond this, typical themes of sophistic thought often make their way into Plato’s work, not the least of which are the similarities between Socrates and the Sophists (an issue explicitly addressed in the Apology and elsewhere). Thus, the Sophists had no small influence on fifth century Greece and Greek thought.
Broadly, the Sophists were a group of itinerant teachers who charged fees to teach on a variety of subjects, with rhetoric as the preeminent subject in their curriculum. A common characteristic among many, but perhaps not all, Sophists seems to have been an emphasis upon arguing for each of the opposing sides of a case. Thus, these argumentative and rhetorical skills could be useful in law courts and political contexts. However, these sorts of skills also tended to earn many Sophists their reputation as moral and epistemological relativists, which for some was tantamount to intellectual fraud.
One of the earliest and most famous Sophists was Protagoras (c. 490-c. 420 BC). Only a handful of fragments of his thought exist, and the bulk of the remaining information about him found in Plato’s dialogues should be read cautiously. He is most famous for the apparently relativistic statement that human beings are “the measure of all things, of things that are that they are, of things that are not that they are not” (F1b). Plato, at least for the purposes of the Protagoras, reads individual relativism out of this statement. For example, if the pool of water feels cold to Henry, then it is in fact cold for Henry, while it might appear warm, and therefore be warm for Jennifer. This example portrays perceptual relativism, but the same could go for ethics as well, that is, if X seems good to Henry, then X is good for him, but it might be bad in Jennifer’s judgment. The problem with this view, however, is that if all things are relative to the observer/judge, then the idea that all things are relative is itself relative to the person who asserts it. The idea of communication is then rendered incoherent since each person has his or her own private meaning.
On the other hand, Protagoras’ statement could be interpreted as species-relative. That is, the question of whether and how things are, and whether and how things are not, is a question that has meaning (ostensibly) only for human beings. Thus, all knowledge is relative to us as human beings, and therefore limited by our being and our capabilities. This reading seems to square with the other of Protagoras’ most famous statements: “Concerning the gods, I cannot ascertain whether they exist or whether they do not, or what form they have; for there are many obstacles to knowing, including the obscurity of the question and the brevity of human life” (F3). It is implied here that knowledge is possible, but that it is difficult to attain, and that it is impossible to attain when the question is whether or not the gods exist. We can also see here that human finitude is a limit not only upon human life but also upon knowledge. Thus, if there is knowledge, it is for human beings, but it is obscure and fragile.
Along with Protagoras was Gorgias (c.485-c.380 B.C.E.), another sophist whose namesake became the title of a Platonic dialogue. Perhaps flashier than Protagoras when it came to rhetoric and speech making, Gorgias is known for his sophisticated and poetic style. He is known also for extemporaneous speeches, taking audience suggestions for possible topics upon which he would speak at length. His most well-known work is On Nature, Or On What-Is-Not wherein he, contrary to Eleatic philosophy, sets out to show that neither being nor non-being is, and that even if there were anything, it could be neither known nor spoken. It is unclear whether this work was in jest or in earnest. If it was in jest, then it was likely an exercise in argumentation as much as it was a gibe at the Eleatics. If it was in earnest, then Gorgias could be seen as an advocate for extreme skepticism, relativism, or perhaps even nihilism (Graham 725).
2. Socrates
Socrates (469-399 B.C.E.) wrote nothing, so what stories and information we have about him come to us primarily from Xenophon (430-354 B.C.E.) and Plato. Both Xenophon and Plato knew Socrates, and wrote dialogues in which Socrates usually figures as the main character, but their versions of certain historical events in Socrates’ life are sometimes incompatible. We cannot be sure if or when Xenophon or Plato is reporting about Socrates with historical accuracy. In some cases, we can be sure that they are intentionally not doing so, but merely using Socrates as a mouthpiece to advance philosophical dialogue (Döring 25). Xenophon, in his Memorobilia, wrote some biographical information about Socrates, but we cannot know how much is fabricated or embellished. When we refer to Socrates, we are typically referring to the Socrates of one of these sources and, more often than not, Plato’s version.
Socrates was the son of a sculptor, Sophroniscus, and grew up an Athenian citizen. He was reported to be gifted with words and was sometimes accused of what Plato later accused Sophists, that is, using rhetorical devices to “make the weaker argument the stronger.” Indeed, Xenophon reports that the Thirty Tyrants forbade Socrates to speak publicly except on matters of practical business because his clever use of words seemed to lead young people astray (Book I, II.33-37). Similarly, Aristophanes presents Socrates as an impoverished sophist whose head was in the clouds to the detriment of his daily, practical life. Moreover, his similarities with the sophists are even highlighted in Plato’s work. Indeed, Socrates’ courtroom speech in Plato’s Apology includes a defense against accusations of sophistry (18c).
While Xenophon and Plato both recognize this rhetorical Socrates, they both present him as a virtuous man who used his skills in argumentation for truth, or at least to help remove himself and his interlocutors from error. The so-called Socratic method, or elenchos, refers to the way in which Socrates often carried out his philosophical practice, a method to which he seems to refer in Plato’s Apology (Benson 180-181). Socrates aimed to expose errors or inconsistencies in his interlocutors’ positions. He did so by asking them questions, often demanding yes-or-no answers, and then reduced their positions to absurdity. He was, in short, aiming for his interlocutor to admit his own ignorance, especially where the interlocutor thought that he knew what he did not in fact know. Thus, many Platonic dialogues end in aporia, an impasse in thought—a place of perplexity about the topic originally under discussion (Brickhouse and Smith 3-4). This is presumably the place from which a thoughtful person can then make a fresh start on the way to seeking truth.
Socrates practiced philosophy openly, did not charge fees for doing so and allowed anyone who wanted to engage with him to do so. Xenophon says:
Socrates lived ever in the open; for early in the morning he went to the public promenades and training-grounds; in the forenoon he was seen in the market; and the rest of the day he passed just where most people were to be met: he was generally talking, and anyone might listen. (Memorabilia, Book I, i.10)
The “talking” that Socrates did was presumably philosophical in nature, and this talk was focused primarily on morality. Indeed, as John Cooper claims in his introduction to Plato: Complete Works, Socrates “denied that he had discovered some new wisdom, indeed that he possessed any wisdom at all,” contrary to his predecessors, such as Anaxagoras and Parmenides. Often his discussions had to do with topics of virtue—justice, courage, temperance, and wisdom (Memorabilia, Book I, i.16). This sort of open practice made Socrates well known but also unpopular, which eventually led to his execution.
Socrates’ elenchos, as he recognizes in Plato’s Apology (from apologia, “defense”), made him unpopular. Lycon (about whom little is known), Anytus (an influential politician in Athens), and Meletus, a poet, accused Socrates of not worshipping the gods mandated by Athens (impiety) and of corrupting the youth through his persuasive power of speech. In his Meno, Plato hints that Anytus was already personally angry with Socrates. Anytus has just warned Socrates to “be careful” in the way he speaks about famous people (94e). Socrates then tells Meno, “I think, Meno, that Anytus is angry, and I am not at all surprised. He thinks…that I am slandering those men, and then he believes himself to be one of them” (95a). This is not surprising, if indeed Socrates practiced philosophy in the way that both Xenophon and Plato report that he did by exposing the ignorance of his interlocutors.
Socrates claims to have ventured down the path of philosophy because of a proclamation from the Oracle at Delphi. Socrates’ enthusiastic follower, Chaerephon, reportedly visited the Oracle at Delphi to ask the god whether anyone among the Athenians was wiser than Socrates. The god replied that no one was wiser than Socrates. Socrates, who claims never to have been wise, wondered what this meant. So, in order to understand better the god’s claim, Socrates questioned Athenians from all social strata about their wisdom. In Plato’s Apology, Socrates claims that most people he questioned claimed to know what they did not in fact know (21-22). As a result of showing so many people their own ignorance, or at least trying to, Socrates became unpopular (23a). This unpopularity is eventually what killed him. To add to his unpopularity, Socrates claimed that the Oracle was right, but only in the respect that he had “human wisdom,” that is, the wisdom to recognize what one does not know, and to know that such wisdom is relatively worthless (23b).
Xenophon, too, wrote his own account of Socrates’ defense. Xenophon attributes the accusation of impiety to Socrates’ daimon, or personal god much like a voice of conscience, who forbade Socrates from doing anything that would not be truly beneficial for him. Both Xenophon (4-7) and Plato (40b) claim that it was this daimon who prevented Socrates from making such a defense as would exonerate him. That is, the daimon did not dissuade Socrates from his sentence of death. In Xenophon’s account, The Oracle claimed that no one was “more free than [Socrates], or more just, or more prudent” (Apology 14). Xenophon’s version might differ from Plato’s since Xenophon, a military leader, wanted to emphasize characteristics Socrates exuded that might also make for good characteristics in a statesman (O’Connor 66). At any rate, Xenophon has Socrates recognize his own unpopularity. Also, like Plato, Xenophon recognizes that Socrates held knowledge of oneself and the recognition of one’s own ignorance in high esteem (Memorabilia, Book III, ix. 6-7).
Socrates practiced philosophy, in an effort to know himself, daily and even in the face of his own death. In Plato’s Crito, in which Crito comes to Socrates’ prison cell to persuade Socrates to escape, Socrates wants to know whether escaping would be just, and imminent death does not deter him from seeking an answer to that question. He and Crito first establish that doing wrong willingly is always bad, and this includes returning wrong for wrong (49b-c). Then, personifying Athenian law, Socrates establishes that escaping prison would be wrong. While he acknowledges that he was wrongly found to be guilty of impiety and corrupting the youth, the legal process itself ran according to law, and to escape would be to “wrong” the laws in which he was raised and to which, by virtue of being a life-long Athenian, he agreed to assent.
Plato’s Phaedo presents us with the story of Socrates’ last day on earth. In it, he famously claims that philosophy is practice for dying and death (64a). Indeed, he spends his final hours with his friends discussing a very relevant and pressing philosophical issue, that is the immortality of the soul. Socrates is presented to us as a man who, even in his final hours, wanted nothing more than to pursue wisdom. In Plato’s Euthyphro, Socrates aims to dissuade Euthyphro from indicting his own father for murder. Euthyphro, a priest, claims that what he is doing—prosecuting a wrongdoer—is pious. Socrates then uses his elenchos to show that Euthyphro does not actually know what piety is. Once he is thoroughly confused and frustrated, Euthyphro says, ““it is a considerable task to acquire any precise knowledge of these things [that is, piety]” (14b). Nevertheless, Euthyphro offers yet another definition of “piety.” Socrates’ response is the key to understanding the dialogue: “You could tell me in far fewer words, if you were willing, the sum of what I asked…You were on the verge of doing so, but you turned away. If you had given that answer, I should now have acquired from you sufficient knowledge of the nature of piety” (14c1-c4). It is, in other words, the very act of philosophizing—the recognizing of one’s own ignorance and the search for wisdom—that is piety. Socrates, we are told, continued this practice even in the final hours of his life.
3. Plato
Plato (427-347 B.C.E.) was the son of Athenian aristocrats. He grew up in a time of upheaval in Athens, especially at the conclusion of the Peloponnesian war, when Athens was conquered by Sparta. Debra Nails says, “Plato would have been 12 when Athens lost her empire with the revolt of the subject allies; 13 when democracy fell briefly to the oligarchy of Four Hundred…; [and]14 when democracy was restored” (2). We cannot be sure when he met Socrates. Although ancient sources report that he became Socrates’ follower at age 18, he might have met Socrates much earlier through the relationship between Socrates and Plato’s uncle, Charmides, in 431 B.C.E. (Taylor 3). He might have known Socrates, too, through his “musical” education, which would have consisted of anything under the purview of the muses, that is, everything from dancing to reading, writing, and arithmetic (Nails 2). He also seems to have spent time with Cratylus, the Heraclitean, which probably had an impact primarily on his metaphysics and epistemology.
Plato had aspirations for the political life, but several untoward events pushed him away from the life of political leadership, not the least of which was Socrates’ trial and conviction. While the authenticity of Plato’s Seventh Letter is debated among scholars, it might give us some insight into Plato’s biography:
At last I came to the conclusion that all existing states are badly governed and the condition of their laws practically incurable, without some miraculous remedy and the assistance of fortune; and I was forced to say, in praise of true philosophy , that from her height alone was it possible to discern what the nature of justice is, either in the state or in the individual, and that the ills of the human race would never end until either those who are sincerely and truly lovers of wisdom [that is, philosophers] come into political power, or the rulers of our cities, by the grace of God, learn true philosophy. (Letter VII)
Plato saw any political regime without the aid of philosophy or fortune as fundamentally corrupt. This attitude, however, did not turn Plato entirely from politics. He visited Sicily three times, where two of these trips were failed attempts at trying to turn the tyrant Dionysius II to the life of philosophy. He thus returned to Athens and focused his efforts on the philosophical education he had begun at his Academy (Nails 5).
a. Background of Plato’s Work
Since Plato wrote dialogues, there is a fundamental difficulty with any effort to identify just what Plato himself thought. Plato never appears in the dialogues as an interlocutor. If he was voicing any of his own thoughts, he did it through the mouthpiece of particular characters in the dialogues, each of which has a particular historical context. Thus, any pronouncement about Plato’s “theory” of this or that must be tentative at best. As John Cooper says,
Although everything any speaker says is Plato’s creation, he also stands before it all as the reader does: he puts before us, the readers, and before himself as well, ideas, arguments, theories, claims, etc. for all of us to examine carefully, reflect on, follow out the implications of—in sum, to use as a springboard for our own further philosophical thought. (Cooper xxii)
Thus, while we can indubitably highlight recurring themes and theoretical insights throughout Plato’s work, we must be wary of committing Plato in any wholesale fashion to a particular view.
b. Metaphysics
Perhaps the most famous of Plato’s metaphysical concepts is his notion of the so-called “forms” or “ideas.” The Greek words that we translate as “form” or “idea” are eidos and idea. Both of these words are rooted in verbs of seeing. Thus, the eidos of something is its look, shape, or form. But, as many philosophers do, Plato manipulates this word and has it refer to immaterial entities. Why is it that one can recognize that a maple is a tree, an oak is a tree, and a Japanese fir is a tree? What is it that unites all of our concepts of various trees under a unitary category of Tree? It is the form of “tree” that allows us to understand anything about each and every tree, but Plato does not stop there.
The forms can be interpreted not only as purely theoretical entities, but also as immaterial entities that give being to material entities. Each tree, for example, is what it is insofar as it participates in the form of Tree. Each human being, for example, is different from the next, but each human being is human to the extent that he/she participates in the form of Human Being. This material-immaterial emphasis seems directed ultimately towards Plato’s epistemology. That is, if anything can be known, it is the forms. Since things in the world are changing and temporal, we cannot know them; therefore, forms are unchanging and eternal beings that give being to all changing and temporal beings in the world, if knowledge is to be certain and clear. In other words, we cannot know something that is different from one moment to the next. The forms are therefore pure ideas that unify and stabilize the multiplicity of changing beings in the material world.
The forms are the ultimate reality, and this is shown to us in the Allegory of the Cave. In discussing the importance of education for a city, Socrates produces the Allegory of the Cave in Plato’s Republic (514a-518b). We are to imagine a cave wherein lifelong prisoners dwell. These prisoners do not know that they are prisoners since they have been held captive their entire lives. They are shackled such that they are incapable of turning their heads. Behind them is a fire, and small puppets or trinkets of various things—horses, stones, people, and so forth—are being moved in front of the fire. Shadows of these trinkets are cast onto a wall in front of the prisoners. The prisoners take this world of shadows to be reality since it is the only thing they ever see.
If, however, we suppose that one prisoner is unshackled and is forced to make his way out of the cave, we can see the process of education. At first, the prisoner sees the fire, which casts the shadows he formerly took to be reality. He is then led out of the cave. After his eyes painfully adjust to the sunlight, he first sees only the shadows of things, and then the things themselves. After this, he realizes that it is the sun by which he sees the things, and which gives life to the things he sees. The sun is here analogous to the form of the Good, which is what gives life to all beings and enables us most truly to know all beings.
The concept of the forms is criticized in Plato’s Parmenides. This dialogue shows us a young Socrates, whose understanding of the forms is being challenged by Parmenides. Parmenides first challenges the young Socrates about the scope of the forms. It seems absurd, thinks Parmenides, to suppose stones, hair, or bits of dirt of their own form (130c-d). He then presents the famous “third man” argument. The forms are supposed to be unitary. The multiplicity of large material things, for example, participate in the one form of Largeness, which itself does not participate in anything else. Parmenides argues against this unity: “So another form of largeness will make its appearance, which has emerged alongside largeness itself and the things that partake of it, and in turn another over all these, by which all of them will be large. Each of your forms will no longer be one, but unlimited in multitude” (132a-b). In other words, is the form of Largeness itself large? If so, it would need to participate in another form of Largeness, which would itself need to participate in another form, and so forth.
In short, we can see that Plato is tentative about what is now considered his most important theory. Indeed, in his Seventh Letter, Plato says that talking about the forms at all is a difficult matter. “These things…because of the weakness of language, are just as much concerned with making clear the particular property of each object as the being of it. On this account no sensible man will venture to express his deepest thoughts in words, especially in a form which is unchangeable, as is true of written outlines” (343). The forms are beyond words or, at best, words can only approximately reveal the truth of the forms. Yet, Plato seems to take it on faith that, if there is knowledge to be had, there must be these unchanging, eternal beings.
c. Epistemology
We can say that, for Plato, if there is to be knowledge, it must be of eternal, unchanging things. The world is constantly in flux. It is therefore strange to say that one has knowledge of it, when one can also claim to have knowledge of, say, arithmetic or geometry, which are stable, unchanging things, according to Plato. That is, it seems absurd that one’s ideas about changing things are on a par with one’s ideas about unchanging things. Moreover, like Cratylus, we might wonder whether our ideas about the changing world are ever accurate at all. Our ideas, after all, tend to be much like a photograph of a world, but unlike the photograph, the world continues to change. Thus, Plato reserves the forms as those things about which we can have true knowledge.
How we get knowledge is difficult. The problem of acquiring knowledge gave rise to “Meno’s Paradox” in Plato’s Meno. In their search for the nature of virtue, Meno asks Socrates, “How will you look for [virtue], Socrates, when you do not know at all what it is? How will you aim to search for something you do not know at all? If you should meet with it, how will you know that this is the thing that you did not know?” (Meno, 80d-e). If one wants to know X, this implies that he/she does not know X now. If so, then it seems that one cannot even begin to ask about X. In other words, it seems that one must already know X in order to ask about it in the first place, but if one already knows X, then there is nothing to ask. Even if one could ask, one would not know when he/she has the answer since one did not know what he/she was looking for in the first place.
Socrates answers this “debaters argument” with the theory of recollection, claiming that he has heard others talk about this “divine matter” (81a). The theory of recollection rests upon the assumption that the human soul is immortal. The soul’s immortality entails, says Socrates, that the soul has seen and known all things since it has always been. Somehow, the soul “forgets” these things upon its incarnation, and the task of knowledge is to recollect them (81b-e). This, of course, is a poor argument, but Plato knows this, given his preface that it is a “divine matter,” and Socrates’ insistence that we must believe it (not know it or be certain of it) rather than the paradox Meno mentions. Thus, Socrates famously goes on to show recollection in action through a series of questions posed to Meno’s slave. Through a series of leading questions, Meno’s slave provides the answer to a geometrical problem that he did not previously know—or more precisely, he recollects knowledge that he had previously forgotten. We might imagine that this is akin to the “light bulb” moment when something we did not previously understand suddenly becomes clear. At any rate, Socrates shows Meno how the human mind mysteriously, when led in the proper fashion, can arrive at knowledge on its own. This is recollection.
Again, the forms are the most knowable beings and, so, presumably are those beings that we recollect in knowledge. Plato offers another image of knowing in his Republic. True understanding (noesis) is of the forms. Below this, there is thought (dianoia), through which we think about things like mathematics and geometry. Below this is belief (pistis), where we can reason about things that we sense in our world. The lowest rung of the ladder is imagination (eikasia), where our mind is occupied with mere shadows of the physical world (509d-511e). The image of the Divided Line is parallel to the process of the prisoner emerging from the cave in the Allegory of the Cave, and to the Sun/Good analogy. In any case, real knowledge is knowledge of the forms, and is that for which the true philosopher strives, and the philosopher does this by living the life of the best part of the soul—reason.
d. Psychology
Plato is famous for his theory of the tripartite soul (psyche), the most thorough formulation of which is in the Republic. The soul is at least logically, if not also ontologically, divided into three parts: reason (logos), spirit (thumos), and appetite or desire (epithumia). Reason is responsible for rational thought and will be in control of the most ordered soul. Spirit is responsible for spirited emotions, like anger. Appetites are responsible not only for natural appetites such as hunger, thirst, and sex, but also for the desire of excess in each of these and other appetites. Why are the three separate, according to Plato? The argument for the distinction between three parts of the soul rests upon the Principle of Contradiction.
Socrates says, “It is obvious that the same thing will not be willing to do or undergo opposites in the same part of itself, in relation to the same thing, at the same time. So, if we ever find this happening in the soul, we’ll know that we aren’t dealing with one thing but many” (Republic, 436b6-c1). Thus, for example, the appetitive part of the soul is responsible for someone’s thirst. Just because, however, that person might desire a drink, it does not mean that she will drink at that time. In fact, it is conceivable that, for whatever reason, she will restrain herself from drinking at that time. Since the Principle of Contradiction entails that the same part of the soul cannot, at the same time and in the same respect, desire and not desire to drink, it must be some other part of the soul that helps reign in the desire (439b). The rational part of the soul is responsible for keeping desires in check or, as in the case just mentioned, denying the fulfillment of desires when it is appropriate to do so.
Why is the spirited part different from the appetitive part? To answer this question, Socrates relays a story he once heard about a man named Leontius. Leontius “was going up from the Piraeus along the outside of the North Wall when he saw some corpses lying at the executioner’s feet. He had an appetite to look at them bat at the same time he was disgusted and turned away” (Republic, 439e6-440a3). Despite his disgust (issuing from the spirited part of the soul) with his desire, Leontius reluctantly looked at the corpses. Socrates also cites examples when someone has done something, on account of appetite, for which he later reproaches himself. The reproach is rooted in an alliance between reason and spirit. Reason knows that indulging in the appetite is bad, and spirit, on reason’s behalf, becomes angry (440a6-440b4). Reason, with the help of spirit, will rule in the best souls. Appetite, and perhaps to some degree spirit, will rule in a disordered soul. The life of philosophy is a cultivation of reason and its rule.
The soul is also immortal, and one the more famous arguments for the immortality of the soul comes from the Phaedo. This argument rests upon a theory of the relationship of opposites. Hot and cold, for example, are opposites, and there are processes of becoming between the two. Hot comes to be what it is from cold. Cold must also come to be what it is from the hot, otherwise all things would move only in one direction, so to speak, and everything would therefore be hot. Life and death are also opposites. Living things come to be dead and death comes from life. But, since the processes between opposites cannot be a one-way affair, life must also come from death (Phaedo 71c-e2). Presumably Plato means by “death” here the realm of non-earthly existence. The souls must always exist in order to be immortal. We can see here the influence of Pythagorean thought upon Plato since this also leaves room for the transmigration of souls. The disordered souls in which desire rules will return from death to life embodied as animals such as donkeys while unjust and ambitious souls will return as hawks (81e-82a3). The philosopher’s soul is closest to divinity and a life with the gods.
e. Ethics and Politics
It is relatively easy to see, then, where Plato’s psychology intersects with his ethics. The best life is the life of philosophy, that is the life of loving and pursuing wisdom—a life spent engaging logos. The philosophical life is also the most excellent life since it is the touchstone of true virtue. Without wisdom, there is only a shadow or imitation of virtue, and such lives are still dominated by passion, desire, and emotions. On the other hand,
The soul of the philosopher achieves a calm from such emotions; it follows reason and ever stays with it contemplating the true, the divine, which is not the object of opinion. Nurtured by this, it believes that one should live in this manner as long as one is alive and, after death, arrive at what is akin and of the same kind, and escape from human evils. (Phaedo 84a-b)
It is the philosopher, too, who must rule the ideal city, as we saw in Plato’s seventh letter. Just as the philosopher’s soul is ruled by reason, the ideal city must be ruled by philosophers.
The Republic begins with the question of what true justice is. Socrates proposes that he and his interlocutors, Glaucon and Adeimantus, might see justice more clearly in the individual if they take a look at justice writ large in a city, assuming that an individual is in some way analogous to a city (368c-369a). So, Socrates and his interlocutors theoretically create an ideal city, which has three social strata: guardians, auxiliaries, and craftspeople/farmers. The guardians will rule, the auxiliaries will defend the city, and the craftspeople and farmers will produce goods and food for the city. The guardians, as we learn in Book VI, will also be philosophers since only the wisest should rule.
This tripartite city mirrors the tripartite soul. When the guardians/philosophers rule properly, and when the other two classes do their proper work—and do not do or attempt to do work that is not properly their own—the city will be just, much as a soul is just when reason rules (433a-b). How is it that auxiliaries and craftspeople can be kept in their own proper position and be prevented from an ambitious quest for upward movement? Maintaining social order depends not only upon wise ruling, but also upon the Noble Lie. The Noble Lie is a myth that the gods mixed in various metals with the members of the various social strata. The guardians were mixed with gold, the auxiliaries with silver, and the farmers and craftspeople with iron and bronze (415a-c). Since the gods intended for each person to belong to the social class that he/she currently does, it would be an offense to the gods for a member of a social class to attempt to become a member of a different social class.
The most salient concern here is that Plato’s ideal city quickly begins to sound like a fascist state. He even seems to recognize this at times. For example, the guardians must not only go through a rigorous training and education regimen, but they must also live a strictly communal life with one another, having no private property. Adeimantus objects to this saying that the guardians will be unhappy. Socrates’ reply is that they mean to secure happiness for the whole city, not for each individual (419a-420b). Individuality seems lost in Plato’s city.
In anticipation that such a city is doomed to failure, Plato has it dissolve, but he merely cites discord among the rulers (545d) and natural processes of becoming as the reasons for its devolution. Socrates says, “It is hard for a city composed in this way to change, but everything that comes into being must decay. Not even a constitution such as this will last forever. It, too, must face dissolution” (546a1-4). We may notice here that Plato cites human fragility and finitude as sources of the ideal city’s devolution, not the city’s possible fascistic tendencies. Yet, it is possible that the lust for power is the cause of strife and discord among the leaders. In other words, perhaps not even the best sort of education and training can keep even the wisest of human rulers free from desire.
It is difficult to overlook the sometimes moralistic and fascistic tendencies in Plato’s ethical and political thought. Yet, just as he challenges his own metaphysical ideas, he also at times loosens up on his ethical and political ideals. In Phaedo, for example, Plato has Phaedo recount the story of Socrates’ final day. Phaedo says that he and other friends of Socrates arrived at the prison early, and when they were granted access to Socrates, Xanthippe, Socrates’ wife was already there with their infant son (60a), which means that Xanthippe had been there all night. Socrates, to his own pleasure, rubs his legs after the shackles have been removed (60b), which implies that even philosophers enjoy bodily pleasures. Again, Phaedo says that Socrates had a way of easing the distress of those around him—in this case, the distress of Socrates’ imminent death. Phaedo recounts how Socrates eased his pain on that particular day:
I happened to be sitting on his right by the couch on a low stool, so that he was sitting well above me. He stroked my head and pressed the hair on the back of my neck, for he was in the habit of playing with my hair at times. (89a9-b3)
Plato, with these dramatic details, is reminding us that even the philosopher is embodied and, at least to some extent, enjoys that embodiment, even though reason is to rule above all else.
4. Aristotle
Aristotle (384-322 B.C.E.) was born Stagirus, which was a Thracian coastal city. He was the son of Nichomacus, the Macedonian court physician, which allowed for a lifelong connection with the court of Macedonia. When he was 17, Aristotle was sent to Athens to study at Plato’s Academy, which he did for 20 years. After serving as tutor for the young Alexander (later Alexander the Great), Aristotle returned to Athens and started his own school, the Lyceum. Aristotle walked as he lectured, and his followers therefore later became known as the peripatetics, those who walked around as they learned. When Alexander died in 323, and the pro-Macedonian government fell in Athens, a strong anti-Macedonian reaction occurred, and Aristotle was accused of impiety. He fled Athens to Chalcis, where he died a year later.
Unlike Plato, Aristotle wrote treatises, and he was a prolific writer indeed. He wrote several treatises on ethics, he wrote on politics, he first codified the rules of logic, he investigated nature and even the parts of animals, and his Metaphysics is in a significant way a theology. His thought, and particularly his physics, reigned supreme in the Western world for centuries after his death.
a. Terminology
Aristotle used, and sometimes invented, technical vocabulary in nearly all facets of his philosophy. It is important to have an understanding of this vocabulary in order to understand his thought in general. Like Plato, Aristotle talked about forms, but not in the same way as his master. For Aristotle, forms without matter do not exist. I can contemplate the form of human being (that is, what it means to be human), but this would be impossible if actual (embodied) human beings were non-existent. A particular human being, what Aristotle might call “a this,” is hylomorphic, or matter (hyle) joined with form (morphe). Similarly, we cannot sense or make sense of unformed matter. There is no matter in itself. Matter is the potential to take shape through form. Thus, Aristotle is often characterized as the philosopher of earth, while Plato’s gaze is towards the heavens, as it appears in Raphael’s famous School of Athens painting.
Form is thus both the physical shape, but also the idea by which we best know particular beings. Form is the actuality of matter, which is pure potentiality. “Actuality” and “potentiality” are two important terms for Aristotle. A thing is in potentiality when it is not yet what it can inherently or naturally become. An acorn is potentially an oak tree, but insofar as it is an acorn, it is not yet actually an oak tree. When it is an oak tree, it will have reached its actuality—its continuing activity of being a tree. The form of oak tree, in this case, en-forms the wood, and gives it shape—makes it actuality a tree, and not just a heap of matter.
When a being is in actuality, it has fulfilled its end, its telos. All beings by nature are telic beings. The end or telos of an acorn is to become an oak tree. The acorn’s potentiality is an inner striving towards its fulfillment as an oak tree. If it reaches this fulfillment it is in actuality, or entelecheia, which is a word that Aristotle coined, and is etymologically related to telos. It is the activity of being-its-own-end that is actuality. This is also the ergon, or function or work, of the oak tree. The best sort of oak tree—the healthiest, for example—best fulfills its work or function. It does this in its activity, its energeia, of being. This activity or energeia is the en-working or being-at-work of the being.
One more important set of technical terms is Aristotle’s four causes: material, formal, efficient (moving), and final cause. To know a thing thoroughly is to know its cause (aitia), or what is responsible for making a being who or what it is. For instance, we might think of the causes of a house. The material cause is the bricks, mortar, wood, and any other material that goes to make up the house. Yet, these materials could not come together as a house without the formal cause that gives shape to it. The formal cause is the idea of the house in the architect’s soul. The efficient cause would be the builders of the house. The final cause that for which the house exists in the first place, namely shelter, comfort, warmth, and so forth. We will see that the concept of causes, especially final cause, is very important for Aristotle, especially in his argument for the unmoved mover in the Physics.
b. Psychology
Aristotle’s On The Soul (Peri Psyche, often translated in the Latin, De Anima) gives us insight into Aristotle’s conception of the composition of the soul. The soul is the actuality of a body. Alternatively, since matter is in potentiality, and form is actuality, the soul as form is the actuality of the body (412a20-23). Form and matter are never found separately from one another, although we can make a logical distinction between them. For Aristotle, all living things are en-souled beings. Soul is the animating principle (arche) of any living being (a self-nourishing, growing and decaying being). Thus, even plants are en-souled (413a26). Without soul, a body would not be alive, and a plant, for instance, would be a plant in name only.
There are three types of soul: nutritive, sensitive, and intellectual. Some beings have only one of these, or some mixture of them. If, however, a soul has the capacity for sensation, as animals do, then they also have a nutritive faculty (414b1-2). Likewise, for beings who have minds, they must also have the sensitive and nutritive faculties of soul. A plant has only the nutritive faculty of soul, which is responsible for nourishment and reproduction. Animals have sense perception in varying degrees, and must also have the nutritive faculty, which allows them to survive. Human beings have intellect or mind (nous) in addition to the other faculties of the soul.
The soul is the source and cause of the body in three ways: the source of motion, the telos, and the being or essence of the body (415b9-11). The soul is that from which and ultimately for which the body does what it does, and this includes sensation. Sensation is the ability to receive the form of an object without receiving its matter, much as the wax receives the form of the signet ring without receiving the metal out of which the ring is made. There are three types of sensible things: particular sensibles, or those qualities that can be sensed by one sense only; common sensibles, which can be sensed by some combination of various senses; and incidental sensibles, as when I see my friend Tom, whose father is Joe, I say that I see “the son of Joe,” but I see Joe’s son only incidentally.
Mind (nous), as it was for Anaxagoras, is unmixed (429a19). Just as senses receive, via the sense organ, the form of things, but not the matter, mind receives the intelligible forms of things, without receiving the things themselves. More precisely, mind, which is nothing before it thinks and is therefore itself when active, is isomorphic with what it thinks (429a24). To know something is most properly to know its form, and mind in some way becomes the form of what it thinks. Just how this happens is unclear. Since the form is what is known, the mind “receives” or becomes that form when it best understands it. So, mind is not a thing, but is only the activity of thinking, and is particularly whatever it thinks at any given time.
c. Ethics
The most famous and thorough of Aristotle’s ethical works is his Nicomachean Ethics. This work is an inquiry into the best life for human beings to live. The life of human flourishing or happiness (eudaimonia) is the best life. It is important to note that what we translate as “happiness” is quite different for Aristotle than it is for us. We often consider happiness to be a mood or an emotion, but Aristotle considers it to be an activity—a way of living one’s life. Thus, it is possible for one to have an overall happy life, even if that life has its moments of sadness and pain.
Happiness is the practice of virtue or excellence (arete), and so it is important to know the two types of virtue: character virtue, the discussion of which makes up the bulk of the Ethics, and intellectual virtue. Character excellence comes about through habit—one habituates oneself to character excellence by knowingly practicing virtues. To be clear, it is possible to perform an excellent action accidentally or without knowledge, but doing so would not make for an excellent person, just as accidentally writing in a grammatically correct way does not make for a grammarian (1105a18-26). One must be aware that one is practicing the life of virtue.
Aristotle arrives at the idea that “the activity of the soul in accordance with virtue” is the best life for human beings through the “human function” argument. If, says Aristotle, human beings have a function or work (ergon) to perform, then we can know that performing that function well will result in the best sort of life (1097b23-30). The work or function of an eye is to see and to see well. Just as each part of the body has a function, says Aristotle, so too must the human being as a whole have a function (1097b30). This is an argument by analogy. The function of the human being is logos or reason, and the more thoroughly one lives the life of reason, the happier one’s life will be (1098a3).
So, the happiest life is a practice of virtue, and this is practiced under the guidance of reason. Examples of character virtues would be courage, temperance, liberality, and magnanimity. One must habitually practice these virtues in order to be courageous, temperate, and so forth. For example, the courageous person knows when to be courageous, and acts on that knowledge whenever it is appropriate to do so (1115a16-34). Each activity of any particular character virtue has a related excessive or deficient action (1105a24-33). The excess related to courage, for example, is rashness, and the deficiency is cowardice. Since excellence is rare, most people will tend more towards an excess or deficiency than towards the excellent action. Aristotle’s advice here is to aim for the opposite of one’s typical tendency, and that eventually this will lead one closer to the excellence (1109a29-1109b6). For example, if one tends towards the excess of self-indulgence, it might be best to aim for insensibility, which will eventually lead the agent closer to temperance.
Friendship is also a necessary part of the happy life. There are three types of friendship, none of which is exclusive of the other: a friendship of excellence, a friendship of pleasure, and a friendship of utility (1155b18). A friendship of excellence is based upon virtue, and each friend enjoys and contemplates the excellence of his/her friend. Since the friend is like another self (1166a31), contemplating a friend’s virtue will help us in the practice of virtue for ourselves (1177b10). A mark of good friendship is that friends “live together,” that is that friends spend a substantial amount of time together, since a substantial time apart will likely weaken the bond of friendship (1157b5-11)). Also, since the excellent person has been habituated to a life of excellence, his/her character is generally firm and lasting. Likewise, the friendship of excellence is the least changeable and most lasting form of friendship (1156b18).
The friendships of pleasure and use are the most changeable forms of friendship since the things we find pleasurable or useful tend to change over a lifetime (1156a19-20). For example, if a friendship forms out of a mutual love for beer, but the interest of one of the friends later turns towards wine, the friendship would likely dissolve. Again, if a friend is merely one of utility, then that friendship will likely dissolve when it is no longer useful.
Since the best life is a life of virtue or excellence, and since we are closer to excellence the more thoroughly we fulfill our function, the best life is the life of theoria or contemplation (1177a14-18). This is the most divine life, since one comes closest to the pure activity of thought (1177b30). It is the most self-sufficient life since one can think even when one is alone. What does one contemplate or theorize about? One contemplates one’s knowledge of unchanging things (1177a23-27). Some have criticized Aristotle saying that this sort of life seem uninteresting, since we seem to enjoy the pursuit of knowledge more than just having knowledge. For Aristotle, however, the contemplation of unchanging things is an activity full of wonder. Seeking knowledge might be good, but it is done for the sake of a greater end, namely having knowledge and contemplating what one knows. For example, Aristotle considered the cosmos to be eternal and unchanging. So, one might have knowledge of astronomy, but it is the contemplation of what this knowledge is about that is most wonderful. The Greek word theoria is rooted in a verb for seeing, hence our word “theatre.” So, in contemplation or theorizing, one comes face to face with what one knows.
d. Politics
The end for any individual human being is happiness, but human beings are naturally political animals, and thus belong in the polis, or city-state. Indeed, the inquiry into the good life (ethics) belongs in the province of politics. Since a nation or polis determines what ought to be studied, any practical science, which deals with everyday, practical human affairs, falls under the purview of politics (1094a26-1094b11). The last chapter of Nicomachean Ethics is dedicated to politics. Aristotle emphasizes that the goal of learning about the good life is not knowledge, but to become good (1095a5), and he reiterates this in the final chapter (1179b3-4). Since the practice of virtue is the goal for the individual, then ultimately we must turn our eyes to the arena in which this practice plays out—the polis.
A good individual makes for a good citizen, and a good polis helps to engender good individuals: “Legislators make the citizens good by forming habits in them, and this is the wish of every legislator; and those who do not effect it miss their mark, and it is in this that a good constitution differs from a bad one” (1103b3-6). Laws must be instituted in such a way as to make its citizens good, but the lawmakers must themselves be good in order to do this. Human beings are so naturally political that the relationship between the state and the individual is to some degree reciprocal, but without the state, the individual cannot be good. In the Politics, Aristotle says that a man who is so self-sufficient as to live away from a polis is like a beast or a god (1253a29). That is, such a being is not a human being at all. Again, a man who is separated from law and justice is the “worst of all” (1253a32).
In Book III.7 of the Politics, Aristotle categorizes six different political constitutions, naming three as good and three as bad. The three good constitutions are monarchy (rule by one), aristocracy (rule by the best, aristos), and polity (rule by the many). These are good because each has the common good as its goal. The worst constitutions, which parallel the best, are tyranny, oligarchy, and democracy, with democracy being the best of the three evils. These constitutions are bad because they have private interests in mind rather than the common good or the best interest of everyone. The tyrant has only his own good in mind; the oligarchs, who happen to be rich, have their own interest in mind; and the people (demos), who happen not to be rich, have only their own interest in mind.
Yet, Aristotle grants that there is a difference between an ideal and a practically plausible constitution, which depends upon how people actually are (1288b36-37). The perfect state will be a monarchy or aristocracy since these will be ruled by the truly excellent. Since, however, such a situation is unlikely when we face the reality of our current world, we must look at the next best, and the next best after that, and so on. Aristotle seems to favor democracy, and after that oligarchy, but he spends the bulk of his time explaining that each of these constitutions actually takes many shapes. For example, there are farmer-based democracies, democracies based upon birth status, democracies wherein all free men can participate in government, and so forth (1292b22-1293a12).
The most unfortunate aspect of Aristotle’s politics is his treatment of slavery and women, and we might wonder how it affects his overall inquiry into politics:
The male is by nature superior, and the female inferior; and the one rules, and the other is ruled; this principle, of necessity, extends to all mankind. Where then there is such a difference as that between soul and body, or between men and animals (as in the case of those whose business is to use their body, and who can do nothing better), the lower sort are by nature slaves, and it is better for them as for all inferiors that they should be under the rule of a master. For he who can be, and therefore is, another’s, and he who participates in reason enough to apprehend, but not to have, is a slave by nature. Whereas the lower animals cannot even apprehend reason; they obey their passions. (Politics 1254b13-23)
For Aristotle, women are naturally inferior to men, and there are those who are natural slaves. In both cases, it is a deficiency in reason that is the culprit. Women have reason but “lack authority” (1260a14), and slaves have reason enough to take orders and have some understanding of their world, but cannot use reason as the best human being does. It is difficult, if not impossible, to interpret Aristotle charitably here. For slaves, one might suggest that Aristotle has in mind people who can do only menial tasks, and nothing more. Yet, there is a great danger even here. We cannot always trust the judgment of the master who says that this or that person is capable only of menial tasks, nor can we always know another person well enough to say what the scope of his or her capabilities for thought might be. So even a charitable interpretation of his views of slavery and women is elusive.
e. Physics
Aristotle’s physics, which stood as the most influential study of physics until Newtonian physics, could be seen largely as a study of motion. Motion is defined in the Physics as the “actuality of the potentiality in the very way in which [the thing in motion] is in potentiality” (201b5). Motion is not merely a change of place. It can also include processes of change in quality and quantity (201a4-9). For example, the growth of a plant from rhizome to flower (quantity) is a process of motion, even though the flower does not have any obvious lateral change of place. The change of a light skin-tone to bronze via sun tanning is a qualitative motion. In any case, the thing in motion is not yet what it is becoming, but it is becoming, and is thus actually a potentiality qua potentiality. The light skin is not yet sun tanned, but is becoming sun tanned. This process of becoming is actual, that is that the body is potentially tanned, and is actually in the process of this potentiality. So, motion is the actuality of the potentiality of a being, in the very way that it is a potentiality.
In Book 8.1 of the Physics, Aristotle argues that the cosmos and its heavenly bodies are in perpetual motion and always has been. There could not have been a time with no motion, whatever is moved is moved by itself or by another. Rest is simply a privation of motion. Thus, if there were a time without motion, then whatever existed—which had the power to cause motion in other beings—would have been at rest. If so, then it at some point had to have been in motion since rest is the privation of motion (251a8-25). Motion, then, is eternal. What moves the cosmos? This must be the unmoved mover, or God, but God does not move the cosmos as an efficient cause, but as a final cause. That is, since all natural beings are telic, they must move toward perfection. What is the perfection of the cosmos? It must be eternal, perfectly circular motion. It moves towards divinity. Thus, the unmoved mover causes the cosmos to move toward its own perfection.
f. Metaphysics
Aristotle’s Metaphysics, legendarily known as such because it was literally categorized after (meta) his Physics, was known to him as “first philosophy”—first in status, but last in the order in which we should study his corpus. It is also arguably his most difficult work, which is due to its subject matter. This work explores the question of what being as being is, and seeks knowledge of first causes (aitiai) and principles (archai). First causes and principles are indemonstrable, but all demonstrations proceed from them. They are something like the foundation of a building. The foundation rests upon nothing else, but everything else rests upon it. We can dig to the foundation, but (let’s pretend there’s no further earth under it) we can go no further. Likewise, we can reason our way up (or down) to the first principles and causes, but our reasoning and ability to know ends there. Thus, we are dealing with an inherently difficult and murky subject, but once knowledge of this subject is gained, there is wisdom (Metaphysics 982a5). So, if philosophy is a constant pursuit of wisdom for Plato, Aristotle believed that the attainment of wisdom is possible.
Aristotle says that there are many ways in which something is said to be (Meta.1003b5), and this refers to the categories of being. We can talk about the substance or being (ousia) of a thing (what that thing essentially is), quality (the shirt is red), quantity (there are many people here), action (he is walking), passion (he is laughing), relation (A is to B as B is to C), place (she is in the room), time (it is noon), and so on. We notice in each of these categories that being is at play. Thus, being considered qua being cannot be restricted to any one of the categories but cuts across all of them.
So what is being or substance? The form of a thing makes it intelligible, rather than its matter, since things with relatively the same form can have different matter (metal baseball bats and wooden baseball bats are both baseball bats). Here, we are really getting at the essence of something. Aristotle’s phrase for essence is “to ti en einai,” which could be translated as “what it is (was) to be” this or that thing. Since nothing is what it is outside of matter—there is no form by itself, just as there is no pure matter by itself—the essence of anything, its very being, is its being as a whole. No particular being is identical with its quality, quantity, position in space, or any other incidental features. It is the singular being as a whole, the “this” to which we can apply no further name, that shows us the being in its being.
The Metaphysics then arrives at a similar end as does the Physics, with the first mover. But, in the Metaphysics, we are not primarily concerned with the motion of physical beings but with the being of all beings. This being, God, is pure actuality, with no mixture of any potentiality at all. In short, it is pure being, and is always being itself in completion. Thinking is the purest of activities, according to Aristotle. God is always thinking. In fact, God cannot do otherwise than think. The object of God’s thought is thinking itself. God is literally thought thinking thought (1072b20). We recall from Aristotle’s psychology that mind becomes what it thinks, and Aristotle reiterates this in the Metaphyiscs (1072b20-22). Since God is thinking, and thinking is identical with its object, which is thought, God is the eternal activity of thinking.
5. Hellenistic Thought
The Hellenistic period in philosophy is generally considered to have commenced with Alexander’s death in 323, and ended approximately with the Battle of Actium in 31 BC. Although the Academy and the Lyceum could be considered in a thorough investigation into Hellenistic philosophy, scholars usually focus upon the Epicureans, Cynics, Stoics, and Skeptics.
Hellenistic philosophy is traditionally divided into three fields of study: physics, logic, and ethics. Physics involved a study of nature while logic was broadly enough construed to include not only the rules of what we today consider to be logic but also epistemology and even linguistics.
a. Epicureanism
Epicurus (341-271 B.C.E.) and his school are often mistakenly considered to be purely hedonistic, such that nowadays an “epicure” designates one who delights in fine foods and drinks. Etymologically, it is accurate to call Epicurus and his followers “hedonists,” where we refer merely to pleasure, without restricting that pleasure to bodily pleasures. Epicurus’ school, the Garden (an actual Garden near Athens), was primarily friendly in nature, and non-hierarchical (Dorandi 57). Although Epicurus was a prolific author, we have only three of his letters preserved in Diogenes Laertius’ Lives. Otherwise, we depend in large part upon the Epicurean Lucretius and his work On the Nature of Things, especially in order to understand Epicurean physics, which was essentially materialistic. The goal of all true understanding for Epicurus, which must involve an understanding of physics, was tranquility.
i. Physics
Epicurus and his followers were thoroughgoing materialists. Everything except the void, even the human soul, is composed of material bodies. Epicureans were atomists and accordingly thought that there is nothing but atoms and void. Atoms “vary indefinitely in their shapes; for so many varieties of things as we see could never have arisen out of a recurrence of a definite number of the same shapes” (DL X.42). Moreover, these atoms are always in motion, and will remain in motion in the void until something can offer enough resistance to stop an atom in motion.
Epicurus’ view of atomic motion provides an important point of departure from Democritean atomism. For Democritus, atoms move according to the laws of necessity, but for Epicurus, atoms sometimes swerve, or venture away from their typical course, and this is due to chance. Chance allows room for free will (Lucretius 2.251-262). Epicureans seem to take for granted that there is freedom of the will, and then apply that assumption to their physics. That is, there seems to be free will, so Epicureans then posit a physical explanation for it.
ii. Ethics
Much of what we know about Epicurean ethics comes from Epicurus’ Letter to Menoeceus, which is preserved in Diogenes Laertius’ Lives. The goal of the good life is tranquility (ataraxia). One achieves tranquility by seeking pleasure (hedone), but not just any pleasure will suffice. The primary sort of pleasure is the simplicity of being free from pain and fear, but even here, we should not seek to be free from every sort of pain. We should pursue some painful things if we know that doing so will render greater pleasure in the end (DL X.129-130). So, Epicurus’ hedonism shapes up to be a nuanced hedonism. Indeed, he recommends a plain life, saying that the most enjoyment of luxury comes to those who need luxury least (DL X.130). Once we habituate ourselves to eating plain foods, for example, we gradually eliminate the pain of missing fancy foods, and we can enjoy the simplicity of bread and water (DL X.130-131). Epicurus explicitly denies that sensual pleasures constitute the best life and argues that the life of reason—which includes the removal of erroneous beliefs that cause us pain—will bring us peace and tranquility (DL X.132).
The sorts of beliefs that produce pain and anxiety for us are primarily two: a mistaken conception of the gods, and a misconception of death. Most people, according to Epicurus, have mistaken conceptions about the gods, and are therefore impious (DL X.124). Similar to Xenophanes, Epicurus would encourage us not to anthropomorphize the gods and to think only what is fitting for the most blessed and eternal beings. We are not thinking clearly when we think that the gods get angry with us or care at all about our personal affairs. It is not befitting of an eternal and blessed being to become angry over or involved in the affairs of mortals. Yet, perhaps Epicurus is anthropomorphizing here. The argument seems to rely upon his argument that tranquility is our greatest pleasure and upon the assumption that the gods must experience that pleasure. On the other hand, one could read Epicurus as a sort of proto-negative theologian who merely suggests that it is unreasonable to believe that gods, the best of beings, feel pain at all. One might wonder whether anthropomorphizing is avoidable at all.
We should not fear death because death is “nothing to us, for good and evil imply sentience, and death is the privation of all sentience” (DL X.124). The key here is the first premise that good and evil apply only to sentient beings. We recall that, for Epicurus, we are thoroughly material beings. Both mind and soul are part of the human body, and the human body is nothing if not sentient. Therefore, when the body dies, so too does the mind and soul, and so too does sentience. This means that death is literally nothing to us. The terror that we feel about death now will vanish once we die. Thus, it is better to be free from the fear of death now. When we rid ourselves of the fear of death, and the hope of immortality that accompanies that fear, we can enjoy the preciousness of our mortality (DL X.124-125).
b. The Cynics
The Cynics , unlike the Epicureans, were not properly a philosophical school. While there are identifiable characteristics of cynical thought, they had no central doctrine or tenets. It was a disparate movement, with varying interpretations on what constituted a Cynic. This interpretative freedom accords well with one of the characteristics that typified ancient Cynicism—a radical freedom from societal and cultural standards. The Cynics favored instead a life lived according to nature.
“Cynic,” from the Greek kunikos, meant “dog-like.” We cannot be sure whether the Dogs thought of themselves as doglike, or whether they were termed as such by non-Cynics, or both. The first of the Dogs, Antisthenes (c.445-366 B.C.E.), was supposedly close with Socrates, and was present at his death, according to Plato’s Phaedo. Yet, it was Diogenes of Sinope (c.404-323 B.C.E.), often called simply, “Diogenes the Cynic,” who was and is the most famous of the Dogs. Most information we have comes from Diogenes Laertius’ Lives, which was written centuries after Diogenes the Cynic’s life, and is therefore historically problematic. It nevertheless provides us with an imaginative description of Diogenes the Cynic’s life, which was apparently unusual and outstanding.
Diogenes the Cynic was purportedly exiled from Sinope for defacing the city’s coins, and this later became his metaphorical modus operandi for philosophy—“driving out the counterfeit coin of conventional wisdom to make room for the authentic Cynic life” (Branham and Goulet-Cazé 8). The cynic life referenced here consisted of a life lived in accordance with nature, a rebellion against and freedom from dominant Greek culture that lives contrary to nature, and happiness through askesis, or asceticism (Branham and Goulet-Cazé 9). Thus, Diogenes wore but a thin, rough cloak all year round, accustomed himself to withstand both heat and cold, ate but a meager diet, and most sensationally, openly mocked everyday Greek life.
He was reportedly at a dinner party where the attendants were throwing bones at him as though he were a dog. So, Diogenes “urinated upon them as a dog would” (DL VI.46). He reportedly masturbated in public, and when reprimanded for it, he replied that he “wished it were as easy to relieve hunger by rubbing an empty stomach” (DL VI.46). Again, “He lit a lamp in broad daylight and said, as he went about, ‘I am looking for a human being’” (DL VI.41), implying that none of the Greeks could appropriately be called “human.” These shenanigans were intended to wake up the Athenians to the life of simplicity and philosophy. One needs very little to be happy. In fact, one should severely limit one’s desires, and live as most animals do, without anxiety, and securing only what one needs to continue living. This all seems a response to the cold fact that much of human life and circumstance is out of our control. So, Diogenes claimed that philosophy was a practice that prepared him for any kind of luck (DL VI.63).
The Cynics seem to have taken certain aspects of Socrates’ life and thought and pushed it to the extreme. One might wonder what drives the ascetic practice for any sort of luck. Is it that we see that moving from one superficial pleasure to the next is ultimately unfulfilling? Or, is the practice itself driven by a sort of fear, an emotion that the Cynic means to quell? That is, one might read the asceticism of the Cynic as a futile attempt to deny the truth of human fragility; for example, at any moment the things I enjoy can vanish, so I should avoid enjoying those things. On the other hand, perhaps the asceticism of the Cynic is an affirmation of this fragility. By living the ascetic life of poverty, the Cynic is constantly recognizing and affirming his/her finitude and fragility by choosing never to ignore it.
c. The Stoics
Stoicism evolved from Cynicism, but was more doctrinally focused and organized. While the Cynics largely ignored typical fields of study, the Stoics embraced physics, logic, and ethics, making strides especially in logic. Zeno of Citium (c.334-262 B.C.E.) was the founder of the stoic school, which was named after the Stoa Poikile, a “painted portico” where the Stoics regularly met. This was the beginning of a long and powerful tradition, which lasted into the imperial era. Indeed, one of the most famous of stoic ethicists was the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius (121-180 C.E.). Epictetus (55-135 C.E.) is another famous Stoic ethicist who also carried on the tradition of Stoicism beyond the Hellenistic period. Although the Stoics made some strides in logic after Aristotle, this article’s focus is on Stoic physics, epistemology, and ethics.
i. Physics
As Pierre Hadot has shown, the Stoics studied physics in order better to understand their own lives, and to live better lives: “Stoic physics was indispensible for ethics because it showed people that there are some things which are not in their power but depend on causes external to them—causes which are linked in a necessary, rational manner” (Hadot 128). Like the Cynics, the Stoics strove to live in accordance with nature, and so a rigorous study of nature allowed them to do so all the more effectively.
The Stoics were materialists, though not thoroughgoing materialists as the Epicureans were. Also, chance can play no role in the Stoics’ ordered and thoroughly rational and causally determined universe. Since we are part of this universe, our lives, too, are causally determined, and everything in the universe is teleologically oriented towards its rational fulfillment. Diogenes Laertius reports that the Stoics saw matter as passive and logos (god) as active, and that god runs through all of the matter as its organizing principle (DL VII.134). This divinity is most apparent in us via our ability to reason. At any rate, the universe is, as the name implies, a unity, and it is divine.
ii. Epistemology
The knowledge we have of the world comes to us directly through our senses and impresses itself upon the blank slate of our minds. The naked information that comes to us via the senses allows us to know objects, but our judgments of those objects can lead us into error. As Hadot says about these so-called objective presentations, “They do not depend on our will; rather, our inner discourse enunciates and describes their content, and we either give or withhold our consent from this enunciation” (Hadot 131). There might be a problem lurking here regarding the standard of truth, which, for the Stoics, is simply the correspondence of one’s idea of the object with the object itself. If it is true that the correspondence of our descriptions of the object with the actual object can bring us knowledge, how can we ever be sure that our descriptions really match the object? After all, if it is not the bare sense impression that brings knowledge, but my correct description of the object, it seems that there is no standard by which I can ever be sure that my description is correct.
iii. Ethics
Stoic ethics urges us to be rid of our desires and aversions, especially where these desires and aversions are not in accord with nature. For instance, death is natural. To be averse to death will bring misery. Stoic ethics can perhaps be best summed up in the first paragraph of Epictetus’ Handbook:
Some things are up to us and some are not up to us. Our opinions, and our impulses, desires, aversions—in short, whatever is our own doing. Our bodies are not up to us, nor are our possessions, our reputations, or our public offices, or, that is, whatever is not our own doing. The things that are up to us are by nature free, unhindered, and unimpeded; the things that are not up to us are weak, enslaved, hindered, not our own…If you think that only what is yours is yours, and that what is not your own is…not your own, then no one will ever coerce you, no one will hinder you, you will blame no one, you will have no enemies, and no one will harm you, because you will not be harmed at all.
This passage might be shocking to us today when, especially in the United States, many of the things that Epictetus tells us to avoid are what we are told to pursue. We therefore might wonder why our bodies, possessions, reputations, wealth, or jobs are not in our control. For Epictetus, it is simple. Possessions come and go—they can be destroyed, lost, stolen, and so forth. Reputations are determined by others, and it is reasonable to believe that even the best people will be hated by some, and even the worst people will be loved by some. Try as we might, we might never gain wealth, and even if we do, it can be lost, destroyed, or stolen. Again, public office, like reputation, is up to others to determine. So, the adage that “you can be anything you want in life” is not only false under stoic ethics, but dangerously misleading since it will almost inevitably lead to misery.
Just because, however, I live as Epictetus recommends, how can I be sure that I will never be harmed? Even if I fully grant that someone who, for instance, pushes me down a flight of stairs has committed his own wrong, and that his wrong actions are not in my control, will I not still feel pain? Physical pain, for a Stoic, is not harm. The only real harm is when one harms oneself by doing evil, just as the only real good is living excellently and in accordance with reason. In this example, I would harm myself with the judgment that what happened to me was bad. One might object here, as one might object to Cynicism, that stoic ethics ultimately demands a repression of what is most human about us. Indeed, Epictetus says, “If you kiss your child or wife, say that you are kissing a human being; for when it dies you will not be upset” (Handbook 12). For the Stoic, being moved by others brings us away from tranquility. However, kissing a “human being” is not the same as kissing this human being, this individual who would be deeply hurt by knowing that I treat them merely as a human being, and who I relate to only through a sense of duty, rather than a real sense of love. Stoic ethics risks removing our humanity from us in favor of its own notion of divinity.
d. Skeptics
The two strands of Skepticism in the Hellenistic era were Academic Skepticism and Pyrrhonian Skepticism. Somewhat like the Cynics, each major Skeptic had his own take on Skepticism, and so it is difficult to lump them all under a tidy label. Also like the Cynics, however, there are certain characteristics that can be highlighted, despite differences between particular thinkers. Skepsis means “inquiry,” but the Skeptics did not seek solid or absolute answers as the goal of their inquiry. Rather, the goal of their skepsis was tranquility and freedom from judgments, opinions, or absolute claims to knowledge. Skepticism, broadly speaking, constituted a challenge to the possibility and nature of knowledge.
i. Academic Skepticism
The sixth scholarch (leader) of Plato’s Academy was Arcesilaus (318-243 B.C.E.), who initiated a substantial tradition of Skepticism in the Academy that lasted into the first century B.C.E. Arcesilaus found the inspiration for his skepticism in the figure of Socrates. Arcesilaus would argue both for and against any given position, ultimately showing that neither side of the argument can be trusted. He directed his skepticism primarily toward the Stoics and the empirical basis of their claims to knowledge. We recall that, for the Stoics, a grasping of sense impressions in the proper way is the true foundation for knowledge. Arcesilaus’ argument against stoic empiricism is not clear (the argument is recounted in Cicero’s Academia 2.40-42), but it seems ultimately to reach the conclusion suggested above, namely that we can never be sure that the way we have perceived (judged) an object via the senses is true or false. The argument runs roughly as follows. For any given presentation of an object to the senses, we can imagine that something else could be presented to the senses in just the same way, such that the perceiver cannot distinguish between the two objects being presented, which Arcesilaus thought the Stoics would grant. The perceiver can present these objects to him/herself, via the senses, in a true or false way, which the Stoics would also grant. It is possible, then, that the perceiver thinks one presentation is true and the other is false, but he has no way of distinguishing between either. Arcesilaus’ conclusion is that we should always suspend our judgment.
Carneades (213-129 B.C.E.), the tenth scholarch of Plato’s Academy, seems to have cleverly answered a typical objection raised against Skepticism. It is inconsistent, goes the objection, to insist that it is impossible for anything to be known (“grasped”), since that statement, “nothing can be known” is itself a claim to knowledge. Carneades recognized that even the claim “nothing can be known” should be called into doubt. Again, like Arcesilaus, Carneades relied upon the typical skeptic tactic of presenting arguments both for and against the same thing and claiming that we cannot therefore claim that either side is correct.
ii. Pyrrhonian Skepticism
We know almost nothing for sure about Pyrrho of Elis (360-270 B.C.E.). He wrote nothing, which is perhaps a sign of his extreme skepticism, that is if we cannot know anything, or cannot be sure whether knowledge is possible, then nothing can definitively be said, especially in writing. Perhaps what most differentiates Pyrrhonian Skepticism from Academic Skepticism is the profound indifference that Pyrrhonian Skepticism is meant to generate. Diogenes Laertius relays the story that, when his master Anaxarchus had fallen into a swamp, Pyrrho simply passed him by, and was later praised by Anaxarchus for his supreme indifference (DL IX.63). Pyrrhonian Skepticism refutes all dogmas and opinions and vehemently clings to indeterminacy, even the idea that “nothing c
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Impartial sister of mercy with honest two-lips gets drilled with his jerking iron.
Horny lady helps her new fuck buddy plow her friend.
Stepsister gets fucked by her new brother.
Traci is so horny she helps her black boyfriend take down his pants so she can get to his big hard cock. Next you'll see this beautiful blonde sucking his dick until he gives her a facial. He also bends her over and fucks her bubble butt while you get a c.
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Q:
How can I ensure only a single instance of a Form will be opened?
On button click, I open a new form (lets say Form2), but I don't want that Form2 to open more than 1time. And I don't want to use .ShowDialog(), because it wont allow me to go to the Previous Form. How can I do that ?
A:
You can use Application.OpenForms property to check if form already opened:
if (!Application.OpenForms.OfType<Form2>().Any())
{
Form2 form2 = new Form2();
form2.Show();
}
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---
abstract: 'We determine for which complex numbers on the unit circle the Levine-Tristram signature and the nullity give rise to link concordance invariants.'
address:
- 'Département de Mathématiques, Université du Québec à Montréal, Canada'
- 'Département de Mathématiques, Université du Québec à Montréal, Canada'
author:
- Matthias Nagel
- Mark Powell
bibliography:
- 'research.bib'
title: 'Concordance invariance of Levine-Tristram signatures of links'
---
subjclassname@1991=subjclassname@2000=
Introduction
============
Let $L \subset S^3$ be an $m$-component oriented link in the 3-sphere. Each connected, oriented Seifert surface $F$ for $L$ has a bilinear Seifert form defined by $$\begin{aligned}
V \colon H_1(F;\Z) \times H_1(F;\Z) &\to \Z\\
(p[x],q[y]) &\mapsto pq\operatorname{lk}(x^-, y),\end{aligned}$$ where $p,q \in \Z$, $x,y$ are simple closed curves on $F$ with associated homology classes $[x],[y]$, and $x^-$ is a push-off of $x$ in the negative normal direction of $F$. Given a unit modulus complex number $z \in S^1 \sm \{1\}$, choose a basis for $H_1(F;\Z)$ and define the hermitian matrix $$B(z) := (1-z)V + (1-{\overline{z}})V^{T}.$$ The *Levine-Tristram signature* $\sigma_L(z)$ of $L$ at $z$ is defined to be the signature of $B(z)$, namely the number of positive eigenvalues minus the number of negative eigenvalues. The *nullity* $\eta_L(z)$ of $L$ at $z$ is the dimension of the null space of $B(z)$. Both quantities can be shown to be invariants of the $S$-equivalence class of the Seifert matrix, and are therefore link invariants [@Levine:1969-2; @Tristram:1969-1].
We say that two oriented $m$-component links $L$ and $J$ are *concordant* if there is a flat embedding into $S^3 \times I$ of a disjoint union of $m$ annuli $A \subset S^3 \times I$, such that the oriented boundary of $A$ satisfies $$\partial A = -L \sqcup J \subset -S^3 \sqcup S^3 = \partial (S^3 \times I).$$ An $m$-component link $L$ is *slice* if it is concordant to the $m$-component unlink.
The purpose of this paper is to answer the following question: *for which values of $z$ are $\sigma_L(z)$ and $\eta_L(z)$ link concordance invariants?* We work in the topological category, in order to obtain the strongest possible results. In order to state our main theorem, we need one more definition.
\[definition:knotnullstelle\] A complex number $z \in S^1 \sm \{1\}$ is a *Knotennullstelle* if there exists a Laurent polynomial $p(t) \in \Z[t,t^{-1}]$ with $p(1)=\pm 1$ and $p(z)=0$.
Note that a complex number $z \in S^1 \sm \{1\}$ is a Knotennullstelle if and only if there exists a knot $K$ whose Alexander polynomial $\Delta_K$ has the property that $\Delta_K(z) = 0$. This follows from the fact that all Laurent polynomials $q \in \Z[t,t^{-1}]$ with $q(1) = \pm 1$ and $q(t) = q(t^{-1})$ can be realised as Alexander polynomials of knots [@Burde-Zieschang:1985-1 Theorem 8.13]. Here is our main theorem.
\[theorem:main-theorem\] The link invariants $\sigma_L(z)$ and $\eta_L(z)$ are concordance invariants if and only if $z \in S^1 \sm \{1\}$ does not arise as a Knotennullstelle.
### Discussion of previously known results {#discussion-of-previously-known-results .unnumbered}
The first point to note is that, due to J. C. Cha and C. Livingston [@Cha-Livingston:2002-1], when $z$ is a Knotennullstelle neither $\sigma_L(z)$ nor $\eta_L(z)$ are link concordance invariants.
\[theorem:cha-livingston\] For any Knotennullstelle $z \in S^1 \sm\{1\}$, there exists a slice knot $K$ with $\sigma_K(z) \neq 0$ and $\eta_K(z) \neq 0$.
Given a polynomial $p(t)$ with $p(1)=\pm 1$ and $p(z)=0$, Cha and Livingston construct a matrix $V$ with $V-V^{T}$ nonsingular, with $\det(tV-V^{T})$ equal to $p(t)p(t^{-1})$, such that the upper left half-size block contains only zeroes, and such that $\sigma(B(z)) \neq 0$. Such a matrix can easily be realised as the Seifert matrix of a slice knot.
Some positive results on concordance invariance are also known. For $z$ a prime power root of unity, $\sigma_L(z)$ and $\eta_L(z)$ are concordance invariants; see [@Murasugi:1965-1], [@Tristram:1969-1] and [@Kauffman:1978]. D. Cimasoni and V. Florens [@Cimasoni-Florens-2008] dealt with multivariable signature and nullity concordance invariants, but again only at prime power roots of unity.
For the signature and nullity at algebraic numbers away from prime power roots of unity, we could not find any statements or results in the literature pertaining to our question. Levine [@Levine:2007-1] studied the question in terms of $\rho$-invariants, but only discussed concordance invariance away from the roots of the Alexander polynomial.
By changing the rules slightly, one can obtain a concordance invariant for all $z$. The usual method is to define a function that is the average of the two one-sided limits of the Levine-Tristram signature function. Let $z= e^{i\theta} \in S^1$, and consider: $${\overline{\sigma}}_L(z) := {\mbox{\footnotesize$\displaystyle\frac{1}{2}$}}\Big(\lim_{\omega \to \theta_+} \sigma(B(e^{i\omega})) + \lim_{\omega \to \theta_-} \sigma(B(e^{i\omega}))\Big).$$ Since prime power roots of unity are dense in $S^1$, this averaged signature function yields a concordance invariant at every $z \in S^1$. The earliest explicit observation of this that we could find was by Gordon in the survey article [@Gordon:1978-1]. One can also consider the averaged nullity function, to which similar remarks apply: $${\overline{\eta}}_L(z) := {\mbox{\footnotesize$\displaystyle\frac{1}{2}$}}\Big(\lim_{\omega \to \theta_+} \eta(B(e^{i\omega})) + \lim_{\omega \to \theta_-} \eta(B(e^{i\omega}))\Big).$$ In particular this is also a link concordance invariant.
Note that the function $\sigma_L\colon S^1 \sm \{1\} \to \Z$ is continuous away from roots of the Alexander polynomial $\det(tV-V^T)$ of $L$. More generally one can consider the torsion Alexander polynomial $\Delta_L^{\operatorname{Tor}}$ of $L$, which by definition is the greatest common divisor of the $(n-r) \times (n-r)$ minors of $tV-V^T$, where $n$ is the size of $V$ and $r$ is the minimal nonnegative integer for which the set of minors contains a nonzero polynomial. The function $\sigma_L$ is continuous away from the roots of the torsion Alexander polynomial $\Delta_L^{\operatorname{Tor}}$, by [@Gilmer-Livingston-2015 Theorem 2.1] (their $A_L$ is our $\Delta_L^{\operatorname{Tor}}$).
Thus if $z$ is not a root of the torsion Alexander polynomial of *any* link, the signature cannot jump at that value, and the signature function $\sigma_L(z)$ equals the averaged signature function ${\overline{\sigma}}_L(z)$ there. Since the averaged function is known to be a concordance invariant, the non-averaged function is also an invariant when $z$ is not the root of any link’s Alexander polynomial. The excitement happens when $z$ is the root of the Alexander polynomial of some link, but is not the root of an Alexander polynomial of any knot. The averaged and non-averaged signature functions can differ at such $z$, but nevertheless *both* are concordance invariants. In Section \[section:application\] we will give an example which illustrates this difference, and gives an instance where the non-averaged function is more powerful. Similar examples were given in [@Gilmer-Livingston-2015], but only with jumps occurring at prime power roots of unity.
Finally we remark that our proof of Theorem \[theorem:main-theorem\] covers the previously known cases of prime power roots of unity and transcendental numbers, as well as the new cases.
### Organisation of the paper {#organisation-of-the-paper .unnumbered}
The rest of the paper is organised as follows. In Section \[section:application\], we give an example of two links that are not concordant, where we use the signature and nullity functions at a root of their Alexander polynomials, which is not a prime power root of unity, to detect this fact. Section \[section:concordance-invariance-nullity\] proves that the nullity is a concordance invariant, and the corresponding fact for signatures is proven in Sections \[section:identification-signatures\] and \[section:conc-invariance-signature\].
### Acknowledgements {#acknowledgements .unnumbered}
We thank Enrico Toffoli for pointing out a mistake in Lemma \[lemma:identification\] in a previous version. We thank Stefan Friedl, Pat Gilmer, Chuck Livingston and Andrew Ranicki for helpful discussions. In particular [@Gilmer-Livingston-2015] inspired the question that led to this paper. We also thank the referee for helpful feedback. M. Powell is supported by an NSERC Discovery grant. M. Nagel is supported by a CIRGET Postdoctoral Fellowship.
An application {#section:application}
==============
In the introduction, for a link $L$ we defined the signature function $\sigma_L(z)$ and the nullity function $\eta_L(z)$, for each $z \in S^1\sm\{1\}$. From the characterisation in Theorem \[theorem:main-theorem\], one easily finds new values $z$ for which it was not previously known that $\sigma(z)$ and $\eta(z)$ are concordance invariants. In Proposition \[prop:PropertiesOfTheLinks\], by exhibiting the obligatory explicit example, we show that these values give obstructions to concordance that are independent from previously known obstructions coming from the signature and nullity functions. We finish the section by constructing, in Proposition \[prop:UniversalExample\], a family of such examples for any algebraic number on $S^1$.
Before the construction, we collect some facts on the set of roots of Alexander polynomials of links. We say that a complex number $z \in S^1 \sm \{1\}$ is a *Linknullstelle* if $z$ is a root of a non-vanishing single variable Alexander polynomial of some link. We have the following inclusions: $$\ba{rclcl} \left\{\mbox{Knotennullstellen}\right\}
&\subset&
\left\{\mbox{Linknullstellen}\right\}
&\subset &
S^1 \sm \{1\} \\
& &\hspace{3em}\cup & & \\
&& \left\{\ba{c}\mbox{prime power}\\\mbox{roots of $1$}\ea\right\} &&
\ea$$ We will see that these inclusions are strict. The two subsets of the set of Linknullstellen are disjoint, since no prime power root of unity can be a root of a polynomial that augments to $\pm 1$, because the corresponding cyclotomic polynomial augments to the prime. Moreover, the union of the Knotennullstellen and the prime power roots of unity is not exhaustive.
\[lem:Nullstellen\]
1. \[item:nullstellen-lemma-one\] The set of Linknullstellen coincides with the set of algebraic numbers in $S^1 {{\smallsetminus}}\{1\}$.
2. \[item:nullstellen-lemma-two\] The number $z_0 = \frac{3+4i}{5} \in S^1$ is an algebraic number, which is neither a Knotennullstelle nor a root of unity.
Let $z \in S^1 \sm \{1\}$ be an algebraic number, so that $p(z)=0$ for some $p \in \Z[t]$. Let $$q(t):=(t-1)^3 p(t) p(t^{-1}) \in \Z[t,t^{-1}].$$ We claim that there is a link $L$ with single variable Alexander polynomial $\Delta_L(t) = q(t)$. Choose a $2$-variable polynomial $P(x,y) \in \Z[x^{\pm 1},y^{\pm 1}]$ with $P(t,t)=p(t)$. Let $$Q(x,y) := (x-1)(y-1)P(x,y)P(x^{-1},y^{-1}).$$ A corollary [@Hillman:2012-1-second-ed Corollary 8.4.1] to Bailey’s theorem [@Bailey-1977] states that any polynomial $Q(x,y)$ in $\Z[x^{\pm 1},y^{\pm 1}]$, with $Q = {\overline{Q}}$ up to multiplication by $\pm x^k y^{\ell}$, and such that $(x-1)(y-1)$ divides $Q$, is the Alexander polynomial of some $2$-component link of linking number zero. Thus there exists a $2$-component link $L$ with $2$-variable Alexander polynomial $Q(x,y)$.
The single variable Alexander polynomial $\Delta_L(t)$ is obtained from the $2$-variable Alexander polynomial of a $2$-component link $Q(x,y)$ as $(t-1)Q(t,t)$ [@Burde-Zieschang:1985-1 Remark 9.18]. But $$(t-1)Q(t,t) = (t-1)^3P(t,t)P(t^{-1},t^{-1}) = (t-1)^3 p(t) p(t^{-1}) = q(t).$$ This completes the proof of the claim and therefore of (\[item:nullstellen-lemma-one\]): the set of Linknullstellen is the set of algebraic numbers lying on $S^1 \sm \{1\}$.
For (\[item:nullstellen-lemma-two\]), first observe that the complex number $z_0 := \frac{3+4i}{5}$ has unit modulus and that $z_0$ is a zero of the polynomial $$p(t) := 5 t^2 -6 t + 5,$$ and therefore is an algebraic number. Note that no cyclotomic polynomial divides the polynomial $p(t)$. This can be checked for the first six by hand, and the rest have degree larger than $2$. From Abel’s irreducibility theorem, we learn that $z_0$ is not a zero of a cyclotomic polynomial and thus is not a root of unity. Since $p(1)=4$ and $p(t)$ is irreducible over $\Z[t]$, $z_0$ is not the root of any polynomial that augments to $\pm 1$. As a result, $z_0$ is not a Knotennullstelle.
Next we describe links $L$ and $L'$ whose signature and nullity functions are equal everywhere on $S^1\sm \{1\}$ apart from at $z_0$, which will be a root of the Alexander polynomials of $L$ and $L'$. We find these links by realising suitable Seifert forms.
\[example:SingleJump\] Consider the following Seifert matrix: $$V := \begin{pmatrix}
0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 1 & 0 & 0 & 0 \\
0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 5 & -4 & 4 \\
0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 1 & 0 \\
0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 1 \\
1 & -1 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 \\
0 & 5 & -1 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 \\
0 & -4 & 1 & -1 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 \\
0 & 4 & 0 & 1 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 1
\end{pmatrix}.$$ This matrix represents the Seifert form of the $3$-component link $L$ given by the boundary of the Seifert surface shown in Figure \[Fig:Realisation\].
at (0,0) [![Realisation of the Seifert form $V$.[]{data-label="Fig:Realisation"}](knot.pdf "fig:"){width="95.00000%"}]{}; at (0.3,1)[$e_1$]{}; at (1.75,1)[$e_2$]{}; at (2.25,1)[$e_5$]{}; at (0.25\*21,1)[$e_3$]{}; at (0.25\*23,1)[$e_6$]{}; at (0.25\*33,1)[$e_4$]{}; at (0.25\*35,1)[$e_7$]{}; at (0.25\*44,1)[$e_8$]{}; at (0.25\*17-0.05,3.05)[$-5$]{}; at (0.25\*27+0.70,5.6)[$4$]{}; at (0.25\*41+0.15,7.8)[$-4$]{};
As usual, a box with $n \in \Z$ inside denotes $n$ full right-handed twists between two bands, made without introducing any twists into the individual bands. To see what we mean, observe that there are three instances in the figure of one full left-handed twist, otherwise known as $-1$ full right-handed twists. The left-most twist is between the bands labelled $e_1$ and $e_5$. To obtain the Seifert matrix, note that the beginning of each of the eight bands is labelled $e_i$, for $i=1,\dots,8$. Orient the bands clockwise and compute using $V_{ij} = \operatorname{lk}(e_i^-, e_j)$, where the picture is understood to show the positive side of the Seifert surface.
Produce a link $L'$ from $L$ by removing the single twist in the right-most band, labelled $e_8$ in Figure \[Fig:Realisation\]. This gives rise to a Seifert matrix $V'$ for $L'$ which is the same as $V$, except that the bottom right entry is a $0$ instead of a $1$.
Consider the sesquilinear form $B$ over $\Q[t^{\pm 1}]$ determined by the matrix $$(1-t) V + (1-t^{-1}) V^{T}.$$ The form $B$ splits into a direct sum of sesquilinear forms. For a Laurent polynomial $p(t) \in \Q[t^{\pm 1}]$, abbreviate the form given by the $2\times 2$ matrix $$\begin{pmatrix}0 & p(t)\\ p(t^{-1}) & 0\end{pmatrix}.$$ by $\left[ p(t) \right]$. A calculation shows that $B$ is congruent to the form $$[t-1] \oplus [t-1] \oplus [t-1] \oplus
\begin{pmatrix}
0 & q(t)\\
q(t^{-1}) & -t^{-1} + 2 -t
\end{pmatrix},$$ where the polynomial $q(t)$ is $$q(t)=t^{-1} \cdot (t -1 )^{3} \cdot (5t^2 - 6t + 5).$$
On the other hand the corresponding sesquilinear form $B'$ over $\Q[t^{\pm 1}]$ for $L'$ is equivalent to $$[t-1] \oplus [t-1] \oplus [t-1] \oplus [q(t)].$$
\[prop:PropertiesOfTheLinks\] Let $z_0$ denote the algebraic number $\frac{3+4i}{5}$. The links $L$ and $L'$ constructed in Example \[example:SingleJump\] have the following properties.
1. If $z$ is a root of unity, then $\sigma_{L}(z) = \sigma_{L'}(z)$ and $\eta_L(z) = \eta_{L'}(z)$.
2. The averaged signature and nullity functions agree, i.e.$${\overline{\sigma}}_L (z) = {\overline{\sigma}}_{L'} (z) \text{ and } {\overline{\eta}}_L (z) = {\overline{\eta}}_{L'} (z)$$ for all $z \in S^1\sm\{1\}$.
3. The signatures and nullities of $L$ and $L'$ at $z_0$ differ: $$\sigma_{L}(z_0) \neq \sigma_{L'}(z_0) \text{ and } \eta_{L}(z_0) \neq \eta_{L'}(z_0),$$ and so $L$ is not concordant to $L'$.
Note that for any $z \in \C {{\smallsetminus}}\{0,1\}$ with $q(z) \neq 0$, the form $B(z)$ over $\C$ is nonsingular and metabolic. The same holds for $B'(z)$. This implies that the signatures $\operatorname{sign} B(z)$ and $\operatorname{sign} B'(z)$ vanish. The nullities $\eta_L(z),\eta_{L'}(z)$ are also both zero. Since the roots of $q(z)$ are exactly $z_0$ and ${\overline{z_0}}$, which are not roots of unity by Lemma \[lem:Nullstellen\], we obtain the first statement of the proposition. We also see that the averaged signature function on $S^1 \sm\{1\}$ and the averaged nullity function are identically zero, so we obtain the second statement.
From Lemma \[lem:Nullstellen\], we know that $z_0 := \frac{3+4i}{5}$ is not a Knotennullstelle, and $$\operatorname{sign} B(z_0) = \operatorname{sign}
\begin{pmatrix}
0 & 0\\
0 & \frac{4}{5}
\end{pmatrix} = 1.$$ Thus $\sigma_L(z_0)=1 = \eta_L(z_0)$. On the other hand, for $L'$ the matrix $B'(z_0)$ is a $2\times 2$ zero matrix, so we have that $\sigma_{L'}(z_0)=0$ and $\eta_{L'}(z_0)=2$. Both signatures and the nullities at $z_0$ differ, so $L$ and $L'$ are not concordant by Theorem \[theorem:main-theorem\].
One can also see that $L$ and $L'$ are not concordant using linking numbers.
A more systematic study of the construction of the example above leads to the following proposition.
\[prop:UniversalExample\] Let $q(t)\in \Z[t]$ be a polynomial. Then there exists a natural number $k > 0$ and a link $L$ with Alexander polynomial $\Delta_L(t) \overset{.}{=} q(t^{-1}) q(t) (t-1)^k$ up to units in $\Z[t,t^{-1}]$ such that
1. the form $B(z)$ of $L$ is metabolic and nonsingular for all $z \in S^1\sm \{1\}$ which are not roots of $q(t)$, so $\sigma_L(z)=0$.
2. if $z_0\neq 1$ is a root of $q(t)$ of unit modulus, then $\sigma_L(z_0) \neq 0$.
The proof of this proposition is based on ideas from [@Cha-Livingston:2002-1].
Consider the size $n+1$ square matrix $P$ with entries in $\Z[y]$ given by $$P(y):=
\begin{pmatrix}
1 & y & 0 && & ya_1\\
0 & 1 & y && & ya_2\\
\vdots && \ddots & \ddots & &\vdots\\
&&& 1 & y & ya_{n-1}\\
0 &&& 0 & 1 & ya_n\\
y & 0 & \ldots &0 & 0 & 0
\end{pmatrix},$$ with $a_i$ integers. Over $\Z[y^{\pm 1}]$, the matrix $P$ can be transformed via invertible row operations and column operations to the matrix $$A(y) = \begin{pmatrix}
1 & 0 & 0 && & p(y)\\
0 & 1 & 0 && & 0\\
\vdots && \ddots & \ddots & & \vdots\\
&&& 1 & 0 & 0\\
0 &&& 0 & 1 & 0\\
y & 0 & \ldots &0 & 0 & 0
\end{pmatrix}$$ with $p(y) = b_1(y)$ where $b_k(y) \in \Z[y]$ is defined by the recursion $b_{k-1}(y) := y\cdot (a_k - b_k(y))$ and $b_n(y) := y \cdot a_n$. Notice that, up to units, we can arrange $p(y)$ to be any polynomial in $\Z[y^{\pm 1}]$ by choosing $n$ sufficiently large and then suitable entries $a_k\in \Z$. That is, multiply by $y^{\ell}$ so that the lowest order term is the linear term, and take $(-1)^i a_i$ to be the coefficient of $y^{i-1}$ in $p(y)$, for $i=2,\dots,n+1$.
Pick the entries $a_k$ so that if we evaluate $p(y)$ at $(t-1)$ we get the equality $p(t-1) = q(t) (t-1)^k$ for a suitable integer $k$. Now consider the block matrix $$V := \begin{pmatrix}
0 & V^u\\
V^b & Q(1)
\end{pmatrix}$$ with $$V^u = \begin{pmatrix}
0 & 1 & 0 && & a_1\\
0 & 0 & 1 && & a_2\\
\vdots && \ddots & \ddots & &\vdots\\
&&& 0 & 1 & a_{n-1}\\
0 &&& 0 & 0 & a_n\\
1 & 0 & \dots &0 & 0 & 0
\end{pmatrix} \quad V^b = \begin{pmatrix}
-1 & 0 & 0 && & 1\\
1 & -1 & 0 && & 0\\
0 & 1 & \ddots & \ddots & &\vdots\\
\vdots && \ddots & -1 & 0 & 0\\
0 &&& 1 & -1 & 0\\
a_1 & a_2 & \dots & a_{n-1} & a_{n} & 0
\end{pmatrix}$$ and $$Q(y) = \begin{pmatrix} 0 & \ldots & 0 & 0\\
\vdots & \ddots & \vdots & \vdots\\
0 & \dots & 0 & 0\\
0 & \dots & 0 & y
\end{pmatrix}.$$ The matrix $V$ is the Seifert matrix of a link as $V-V^{T}$ is the intersection form of a genus $n$ oriented surface with three boundary components. Let $L$ be such a link, necessarily a $3$-component link. We remark in passing that the matrix $V$ from Example \[example:SingleJump\] is not a special case of the matrix $V$ defined in the current proof, although it is close to being so.
Recall that $B(z) = (1-z) V + (1-{\overline{z}}) V^{T}= ({\overline{z}}-1) \cdot \left( zV - V^{T}\right)$. The matrix $V$ was constructed in such a way that $$B(z) = \begin{pmatrix} 0& ({\overline{z}}-1) \cdot P(z-1)\\ (z-1) \cdot P^{T}({\overline{z}}-1) & Q(-{\overline{z}} - z+2) \end{pmatrix}.$$
Using the transformations associated to the above row and column operations, we see that $B(z)$ is congruent to $$B(z) \sim \begin{pmatrix} 0& ({\overline{z}}-1) \cdot A(z-1)\\ (z-1) \cdot A^{T}({\overline{z}}-1) & Q(-{\overline{z}} - z+2) \end{pmatrix}.$$ Note that the matrix $Q$ is unchanged by this congruency, because in the corresponding sequence of row and column operations, it never happens that the last row or column is added to another row or column.
We complete the proof of the proposition by showing that indeed the link $L$ has the required properties. If $z\in S^1 \sm \{1\}$ is not a zero of $q(t)$, then also $p(z) \neq 0$. Consequently, the form $B(z)$ is nonsingular and metabolic. On the other hand, if $z \in S^1 \sm \{1\}$ is a root of $q(t)$, then also $p(z) = 0$. In this case the Levine-Tristram form $B(z)$ is a sum $$B(z) = M \oplus \begin{pmatrix} 0 & 0\\0 & -{\overline{z}} - z+2 \end{pmatrix}$$ with $M$ nonsingular and metabolic. Thus $\sigma_L(z) = 1$.
Replace $Q(1)$ with $Q(0)$ in the construction of the matrix $V$ in the proof of Proposition \[prop:UniversalExample\], to obtain a matrix $V'$. Using the same construction as in Example \[example:SingleJump\], the matrices $V$ and $V'$ give rise to links $L$ and $L'$ respectively, such that $$\eta_L(z) = \eta_{L'}(z) \text{ and } \sigma_L(z) = \sigma_{L'}(z)$$ for every $z \in S^1$ that is not a root of $q(t)$. Analogously to Example \[example:SingleJump\], $L$ and $L'$ are not concordant, but again this can also be seen using linking numbers. This leads to the following question. Does there exist a pair of links $L$ and $L'$, with the same pairwise linking numbers, whose signature and nullity functions can only tell the concordance classes of the links apart at an isolated algebraic numbers $z, \bar z \in S^1$ that are roots of the Alexander polynomial $\Delta_L = \Delta_{L'}$.
Twisted homology and integral homology isomorphisms {#section:twisted-homology-key-lemma}
===================================================
Now we begin working towards the proof of Theorem \[theorem:main-theorem\]. Fix $z \in S^1 \sm\{1\}$ to be a unit complex number that is not the root of any polynomial $p(t) \in \Z[t]$ with $p(1)=\pm 1$ i.e. $z$ is not a Knotennullstelle. We denote the classifying space for the integers $\Z$ by $B\Z$, which has the homotopy type of the circle $S^1$. Given a CW complex $X$, a map $X \to B\Z$ induces a homomorphism $\pi_1(X) \to \Z$. This determines a representation $$\a \colon \Z[\pi_1(X)] \to \Z[\Z] \xrightarrow{\operatorname{ev}_z} \C$$ of the group ring of the fundamental group of $X$, with respect to which we can consider the twisted homology $$H_i(X;\C^\a) := H_i\left(\C \otimes_{\Z[\pi_1(X)]} C_*(\wt{X}) \right).$$
Let $\Sigma \subset \Z[\Z]$ be the multiplicative subset of polynomials that map to $\pm 1$ under the augmentation ${\varepsilon}\colon \Z[\Z] \to \Z$, that is $\Sigma = \{p(t) \in \Z[\Z] \, |\, |p(1)|=1 \}$. By inverting this subset we obtain the localisation $\Sigma^{-1}\Z[\Z]$ of the Laurent polynomial ring. This has the following properties.
(i) The canonical map $\Z[\Z] \to \Sigma^{-1}\Z[\Z]$ is an inclusion, since $\Z[\Z]$ is an integral domain.
(ii) \[item:property-cohn-local-two\] For any $\Z[\Z]$-module morphism $f \colon M \to N$ of finitely generated free $\Z[\Z]$-modules such that the augmentation $${\varepsilon}(f) = \operatorname{Id}\otimes f \colon \Z \otimes_{\Z[\Z]} M \to \Z \otimes_{\Z[\Z]} N$$ is an isomorphism, we have that $$\operatorname{Id}\otimes f \colon \Sigma^{-1}\Z[\Z] \otimes_{\Z[\Z]} M \to \Sigma^{-1}\Z[\Z] \otimes_{\Z[\Z]} N$$ is also an isomorphism.
The second property can be reduced to the following. Assume $A$ is a matrix over $\Z[\Z]$ such that ${\varepsilon}(A)$ is invertible. Consequently, we have $\det( {\varepsilon}(A)) = \pm 1$ and as ${\varepsilon}( \det(A) ) = \det( {\varepsilon}(A))$, we deduce that $\det(A) \in \Sigma$. Therefore, the determinant $\det(A)$ is invertible in the localisation $\Sigma^{-1}\Z[\Z]$ and so is the matrix $A$ over $\Sigma^{-1}\Z[\Z]$.
As the unit modulus complex number $z$ that we have fixed is not a Knotennullstelle, the representation $\a$ defined above factors through the localisation, i.e. evaluation at $z$ determines a ring homomorphism $\Sigma^{-1}\Z[\Z] \xrightarrow{\Sigma^{-1}\operatorname{ev}_z} \C$ such that the ring homomorphisms $\Z[\Z] \xrightarrow{\operatorname{ev}_z} \C$ and $$\Z[\Z] \to \Sigma^{-1}\Z[\Z] \xrightarrow{\Sigma^{-1}\operatorname{ev}_z} \C$$ coincide.
\[lemma:Z-hom-iso-implies-twisted-iso\] Let $f \colon X \to Y$ be a map of finite CW complexes over $S^1$, that is there are maps $g \colon X \to S^1$ and $h \colon Y \to S^1$ such that $h \circ f = g$, and suppose that $$f_* \colon H_i(X;\Z) \toiso H_i(Y;\Z)$$ is an isomorphism for all $i$. Then $$f_* \colon H_i(X;\C^\a) \toiso H_i(Y;\C^\a)$$ is also an isomorphism for all $i$.
The lemma follows [@Cochran-Orr-Teichner:1999-1 Proposition 2.10]. The difference is that we use the well-known refinement that one does not need to invert all nonzero elements. We give the proof for the convenience of the reader. This is adapted from the proof given in [@Friedl-Powell:2010-1].
The algebraic mapping cone $D_*:= \mathscr{C}(f_* \colon C_*(X;\Z) \to C_*(Y;\Z))$ has vanishing homology, and comprises finitely generated free $\Z$-modules. Therefore it is chain contractible. We claim that the chain contraction can be lifted to a chain contraction for $\mathscr{C}(f_* \colon C_*(X;\Sigma^{-1}\Z[\Z]) \to C_*(Y;\Sigma^{-1}\Z[\Z]))$, the mapping cone over the localisation $\Sigma^{-1}\Z[\Z]$.
To see this, let $s \colon D_* \to D_{*+1}$ be a chain contraction, that is we have that $\partial s_i + s_{i-1}\partial = \operatorname{Id}_{D_i}$ for each $i$. Define $\wt{D}_*:= \mathscr{C}(f_* \colon C_*(X;\Z[\Z]) \to C_*(Y;\Z[\Z]))$ and consider ${\varepsilon}\colon \wt{D}_* \to D_* = \Z \otimes_{\Z[\Z]} \wt{D}_*$, induced by the augmentation map. Denote $E_* := \mathscr{C}(f_* \colon C_*(X;\Sigma^{-1}\Z[\Z]) \to C_*(Y;\Sigma^{-1}\Z[\Z]))$ and note that there is an inclusion $\wt{D}_i \to E_i = \Sigma^{-1}\Z[\Z] \otimes_{\Z[\Z]} \wt{D}_i$, induced by the localisation. Lift $s$ to a map $\wt{s} \colon \wt{D}_{*} \to \wt{D}_{*+1}$, as in the next diagram $$\xymatrix @C+1cm {\wt{D}_* \ar@{-->}[r]^{\wt{s}} \ar[d]^{{\varepsilon}} & \wt{D}_{*+1} \ar[d]^{{\varepsilon}} \\ D_* \ar[r]^{s} & D_{*+1}.
}$$ The lifts exist since all modules are free and ${\varepsilon}$ is surjective. But then we have that $$f:= d\wt{s} + \wt{s}d \colon \wt{D}_* \to \wt{D}_{*}$$ is a morphism of free $\Z[\Z]$-modules whose augmentation ${\varepsilon}(f)$ is an isomorphism. Thus by property (\[item:property-cohn-local-two\]) of $\Sigma^{-1}\Z[\Z]$, $f$ is also an isomorphism over $\Sigma^{-1}\Z[\Z]$, and so $\wt{s}$ determines a chain contraction for $E_*$. We therefore have that $E_* = C_*(Y,X;\Sigma^{-1}\Z[\Z]) \simeq 0$ as claimed.
Next, tensor $E_*$ with $\C$ over the representation $\a$, to get that $$\C^\a \otimes_{\Sigma^{-1}\Z[\Z]} C_*(Y,X;\Sigma^{-1}\Z[\Z]) = C_*(Y,X;\C^\a) \simeq 0.$$ Thus $H_i(Y,X;\C^\a)=0$ for all $i$ and so $f_* \colon H_i(X;\C^\a) \toiso H_i(Y;\C^\a)$ is an isomorphism for all $i$ as desired.
Concordance invariance of the nullity {#section:concordance-invariance-nullity}
=====================================
In this section we show concordance invariance of the nullity function away from the set of Knotennullstellen.
A cobordism $(W^{n+1};M^n,N^n)$ between $n$-manifolds $M$ and $N$ is said to be a *$\Z$-homology cobordism* if the inclusion induced maps $H_i(M;\Z) \to H_i(W;\Z)$ and $H_i(N;\Z) \to H_i(W;\Z)$ are isomorphisms for all $i \in \Z$.
\[theorem:nullity-invariance\] Suppose that oriented $m$-component links $L$ and $J$ are concordant and that $z \in S^1 \sm \{1\}$ is not a Knotennullstelle. Then $\eta_L(z) = \eta_J(z)$.
As in the statement suppose that $z \in S^1 \sm \{1\}$ is not a Knotennullstelle. Denote the exterior of the link $L$ by $X_L := S^3 \sm \nu L$. As above, let $V$ be a matrix representing the Seifert form of $L$ with respect to a Seifert surface $F$ and a basis for $H_1(F;\Z)$.
We assert that the matrix $zV-V^{T}$ presents the homology $H_1(X_L;\C^\a)$. This can be seen as follows. Consider the infinite cyclic cover ${\overline{X}}_L$ corresponding to the kernel of the homomorphism $\pi_1(X_L) \to \Z$, defined as the composition of the abelianisation $\pi_1(X_L) \to H_1(X_L;\Z) \cong \Z^m$, followed by the map $(x_1,\dots,x_m) \mapsto \sum_{i=1}^m x_i$ i.e. each oriented meridian is sent to $1 \in \Z$. A decomposition of ${\overline{X}}_L$ and the associated Mayer-Vietoris sequence [@Lickorish:1997-1 Theorem 6.5] give rise the following presentation $$\C[t^{\pm 1}] \otimes_\C H_1(F;\C) \xrightarrow{ tV - V^{T}}
\C[t^{\pm 1}] \otimes_\C H_1(F;\C)^\vee \rightarrow H_1( {\overline{X}}_L ;\C) \rightarrow 0,$$ where $H_1(F;\C)^\vee$ is the dual module $\operatorname{Hom}_{\C}(H_1(F;\C),\C)$. Apply the right-exact functor $\C^\alpha \otimes_{\C[t^{\pm 1}]}$ to this sequence, to obtain the sequence $$\C^{\a} \otimes_\C H_1(F;\C) \xrightarrow{ zV - V^{T}}
\C^{\a} \otimes_\C H_1(F;\C)^\vee \rightarrow \C^\alpha \otimes_{\C[t^{\pm 1}]} H_1({\overline{X}}_L ;\C)
\rightarrow 0.$$ As $H_0({\overline{X}}_L; \C) \cong \C$, we have that $\operatorname{Tor}_1^{\C[t^{\pm 1}]}(H_0({\overline{X}}_L;\C),\C^{\a})=0$ by the projective resolution $$0 \to \C[t^{\pm 1}] \overset{\cdot (1-t)}{\to} \C[t^{\pm 1}]\to \C \to 0$$ and $z \neq 1$. Since $\C[t^{\pm 1}]$ is a principal ideal domain, we can apply the universal coefficient theorem for homology to deduce that $\C^\alpha \otimes_{\C[t^{\pm 1}]} H_1({\overline{X}}_L ;\C) = H_1(X_L; \C^\alpha)$. This completes the proof of the assertion that $zV-V^{T}$ presents the homology $H_1(X_L;\C^\a)$.
Next observe that $({\overline{z}} - 1)(zV-V^{T}) = (1-z)V + (1-{\overline{z}})V^{T}$ presents the same module as $zV-V^{T}$, since ${\overline{z}}-1$ is nonzero. The dimension of $H_1(X_L;\C^\a)$ therefore coincides with the nullity $\eta_L(z)$, which is by definition the nullity of the matrix $(1-z)V + (1-{\overline{z}})V^{{T}}$.
Now, let $A \subset S^3 \times I$ be a union of annuli giving a concordance between $L$ and $J$, and let $W := S^3 \times I \sm \nu A$. Then $W$ is a $\Z$-homology bordism between $X_L$ and $X_J$; this is a straightforward computation with Mayer-Vietoris sequences or with Alexander duality; see for example [@Friedl-Powell-2014 Lemma 2.4]. Thus by two applications of Lemma \[lemma:Z-hom-iso-implies-twisted-iso\], with $Y= W$ and $X=X_L$ and $X=X_J$ respectively, we see that $H_1(X_L;\C^\a) \cong H_1(W;\C^\a)\cong H_1(X_J;\C^\a)$, and so the nullities of $L$ and $J$ agree. We need that $z$ is not a Knotennullstelle in order to apply Lemma \[lemma:Z-hom-iso-implies-twisted-iso\].
Identification of the signature with the signature of a 4-manifold {#section:identification-signatures}
==================================================================
In the proof of Theorem \[theorem:nullity-invariance\], a key step was to reexpress the nullity $\eta(z)$ of the form $B(z)$ as a topological invariant of a $3$-manifold, and then to use the bordism constructed from a concordance to relate the invariants. An analogous approach is used here to obtain the corresponding statement for the signature. Everything in this section is independent of whether $z$ is a Knotennullstelle.
Recall that we fixed an oriented $m$-component link $L \subset S^3$, and that we picked a connected Seifert surface $F$ for $L$. Denote the link complement by $X_L := S^3 \sm \nu L$. First note that the fundamental class $[F] \in H_2(F,\partial F;\Z)$ of the Seifert surface $F$ is independent of the choice of $F$. This follows from the fact that its Poincaré dual is characterised as the unique cohomology class $\xi \in H^1(X_L;\Z)$ mapping each meridian $\mu$ to $\xi(\mu) = 1$.
The boundary of $F \subset S^3 \sm \nu L$ is a collection of embedded curves in the boundary tori that we refer to as the *attaching curves*. The attaching curves together with the meridians determine a framing of each boundary torus of $X_L$. Also, this framing depends solely on $[F]$, since the connecting homomorphism of the pair $(X_L, \partial X_L)$ maps $\partial [F] = [\partial F]$.
With respect to this framing, we can consider the Dehn filling of slope zero, resulting in the closed $3$-manifold $M_L$. By definition, to obtain $M_L$ attach a disc to each of the attaching curves, and then afterwards fill each of the resulting boundary spheres with a $3$-ball.
The framing of the boundary tori of $X_L$ constructed above is called the *Seifert framing*. The *Seifert surgery* on $L$ is the $3$-manifold $M_L$ constructed above.
For links there is no reason for this framing to agree with the zero-framing of each individual component.
Collapsing the complement of a tubular neighbourhood of the Seifert surface $F$ gives rise to map $S^3 {{\smallsetminus}}\nu L \to S^1=B\Z$, which extends to a map from the Seifert surgery $\phi \colon M_L \to B\Z$. To see this in more detail, parametrise a regular neighbourhood of $F$ as $F
\times [-1,1]$, with $F$ as $F \times \{0\}$. The intersection of this parametrised neighbourhood with each component of $\partial F$ determines a parametrised subset $S^1 \times [-1,1] \subset S^1 \times S^1 \subseteq \partial F$. Extend this to a subset $D^2 \times [-1,1] \subset D^2 \times
S^1$ for each of the Dehn filling solid tori $D^2 \times S^1$ in $M_L$. Now define $$\ba{rcl}
\phi \colon M_L &\to & S^1 = B\Z \\
x &\mapsto & \begin{cases}
e^{\pi i t} & x= (f,t) \in \big( F \cup \bigsqcup^m D^2 \big) \times [-1,1]
\\ -1 & \text{ otherwise.}
\end{cases}
\ea$$
The map $\phi$ classifies the image of the fundamental class of the capped-off Seifert surface in $M_L$, in the sense that $[\phi]$ maps to $[F \cup \bigsqcup^m D^2]$ under $[M_L,S^1] \toiso H^1(M_L;\Z) \toiso H_2(M_L;\Z)$. Recall that the homology class $[F \cup \bigsqcup^m D^2] \in H_2(M_L; \Z)$ only depends on the isotopy class of $L$ and so also the homotopy class of $\phi$ does not depend on the Seifert surface $F$. The manifold $M_L$ together with the map $\phi$ defines an element $[(M_L, \phi)] \in \Omega_3(B\Z)$, where $\Omega_k(X)$ denotes the bordism group of oriented, topological $k$-dimensional manifolds with a map to $X$. Recall that cobordism is a generalised homology theory fulfilling the suspension axiom, see e.g. [@tomDieck08 Chapter 21] and [@99May Section 14.4]. As a consequence, we obtain $$\wt{\Omega}_3(B\Z) = \wt{\Omega}_3(S^1) = \wt{\Omega}_3(\Sigma S^0) \cong \wt{\Omega}_2(S^0) = \Omega_2(\operatorname{pt}) =0.$$ Thus $\Omega_3(B\Z) \cong \Omega_3(\operatorname{pt}) = 0$ [@Rohlin53].
The group $\Omega_3(B\Z) \cong \Omega_3 \oplus \Omega_2 = 0 \oplus 0 = 0$ is trivial, and we can make use of this fact to define a signature defect invariant, as follows.
For any oriented $3$-manifold $M$ with a map $\phi \colon M \to B\Z$, we will define an integer for each complex number $z \in S^1$. Since $\Omega_3(B\Z) =0$, there exists a $4$-manifold $W$ with boundary $M$ and a map $\Phi \colon W \to B\Z$ extending the map $M \to B\Z$ on the boundary. Similarly to before, an element $z \in S^1$ determines a representation $$\a \colon \Z[\pi_1(W)] \xrightarrow{\Phi} \Z[\Z] \xrightarrow{t \mapsto z} \C.$$ Consider the twisted homology $H_i(W;\C^\a)$, and consider the intersection form $\lambda_{\a}(W)$ on the quotient $H_2(W;\C^\a)/\operatorname{im}H_2(M;\C^\a)$. Define the promised integer $$\sigma(M,\phi,z) := \sigma(\lambda_{\a}(W)) - \sigma(W),$$ where $\sigma(W)$ is the ordinary signature of the intersection form on $W$.
The proof of the following proposition is known for the coefficient system $\Q(t)$, e.g. [@Powell-2016-signatures-4-genus]. For the convenience of the reader, we sketch the key steps for an adaptation to $\C^\alpha$.
(i) The intersection form $\lambda_{\a}(W)$ is nonsingular.
(ii) The signature defect $\sigma(M,\phi,z)$ is independent of the choice of $4$-manifold $W$.
The long exact sequence of the pair $(W, \partial W)=(W,M)$ gives rise to the following commutative diagram $$\xymatrix{
\ldots \ar[r] & H_2(\partial W; \C^\alpha) \ar[r] & H_2(W; \C^\alpha) \ar[r] \ar[rdd]
& H_2(W, \partial W; \C^\alpha) \ar[d]^{{\operatorname{PD}}_W^{-1}} \ar[r] & \ldots \\
&&& H^2(W;\C^\alpha) \arrow[d]^{\kappa} & \\
&&& \left( H_2(W;\C^\alpha) \right)^\vee, &
}$$ where for a $\C$-module $P$ we denote its dual module by $P^\vee := \operatorname{Hom}_\C(P,\C)$. Since Poincaré-Lefschetz duality ${\operatorname{PD}}_W$ and the Kronecker pairing $\kappa$ are isomorphisms, we obtain an injective map $H_2(W;\C^\a)/ \operatorname{im}H_2(M;\C^\a) \to H_2(W;\C^\a)^\vee$. This map descends to $$\lambda_\a \colon H_2(W;\C^\a)/ \operatorname{im}H_2(M;\C^\a)
\to \left( H_2(W;\C^\a) / \operatorname{im}H_2(\partial W;\C^\a)\right)^\vee,$$ so that the diagram below commutes: $$\xymatrix{
H_2(W;\C^\a)/ \operatorname{im}H_2(M;\C^\a) \ar[rd]_{\lambda_\a} \ar @{^{(}->}[r] & H_2(W;\C^\a)^\vee \\
& \left(H_2(W;\C^\a)/ \operatorname{im}H_2(\partial W;\C^\a) \right)^\vee. \ar[u] }.$$ Consequently, the form $\lambda_\a$ is nondegenerate, and so it is nonsingular since it is a form over the field $\C$.
We proceed with the second statement of the proposition, namely independence of $\sigma(M, \phi, z)$ on the choice of $W$. Suppose that we are given two $4$-manifolds $W^+, W^-$, both with boundary $\partial W^\pm = M$, and a map $\Phi^\pm \colon W^\pm \to B\Z$ extending $\phi \colon M \to B\Z$. Temporarily, define the signature defects arising from the two choices to be $$\sigma(W^{\pm},\Phi^{\pm},z) := \sigma(\lambda_{\a}(W^{\pm})) - \sigma(W^{\pm}).$$ We will show that $\sigma(W^+,\Phi^+,z) = \sigma(W^-,\Phi^-,z)$, and thus that $\sigma(M,\phi,z)$ is a well-defined integer, so our original notation was justified.
Glue $W^+$ and $\overline{W^-}$ together along $M$, to obtain a closed manifold $U$, together with a map $\Phi \colon U \to B\Z$. By Novikov additivity, we learn that $$\sigma_z(U, \Phi) := \sigma(\lambda_\a(U)) - \sigma(U)
= \sigma(W^+, \Phi^+, z) - \sigma(W^-, \Phi^-, z).$$ This defect $\sigma_z(U, \Phi)$ can be promoted to a bordism invariant $\sigma_z \colon \Omega_4(B\Z) \to \Z$, see e.g. [@Powell-2016-signatures-4-genus Proof of Lemma 3.2] and replace $\Q(t)$ coefficients with $\C^\a$ coefficients.
The map $\sigma_z \colon \Omega_4(B\Z) \to \Z$ is the zero map.
Let $U$ be a closed $4$-manifold together with a map $\Phi \colon U \rightarrow S^1$, representing an element of $\Omega_4(B\Z)$. By the axioms of generalised homology theories, we have $$\wt{\Omega}_4(S^1) = \wt{\Omega}_4(\Sigma S^0) \cong \wt{\Omega}_3(S^0) = \Omega_3(\operatorname{pt}) =0.$$ Thus an inclusion $\operatorname{pt}\to S^1$ induced an isomorphism $\Omega_4(\operatorname{pt}) \xrightarrow{\cong} \Omega_4(S^1)$. So $(U,\Phi)$ is bordant over $S^1$ to a $4$-manifold $U'$ with a null-homotopic map $\Phi'$ to $S^1$. In this case the local coefficient system $\C^\a$ is just the trivial representation $\C$. Consequently, we have $\lambda_\a(U') = \lambda(U')$, so $\sigma_z(U', \Phi') =0$. By bordism invariance, $\sigma_z(U,\Phi)=0$, which completes the proof of the claim.
Now the independence of $\sigma(M, \Phi, z)$ on the choice of $W$ follows from $$0 = \sigma_z(U, \Phi) = \sigma(W^+, \Phi^+, z) - \sigma(W^-, \Phi^-, z).$$
Now that we have constructed an invariant, we need to relate it to the Levine-Tristram signatures. Recall that $L$ is an oriented link, that $M_L$ is the Seifert surgery, and that we constructed a canonical map $\phi \colon M_L \to S^1$, well-defined up to homotopy.
Let $\operatorname{Lk}_L$ be the linking matrix of the link $L$ in the Seifert framing, that is the entry $(\operatorname{Lk}_L)_{ij}$ is the linking number $\operatorname{lk}(L_i, L_j)$ between the components $L_i$ and $L_j$ if $i \neq j$, and the Seifert framing of $L_i$ if $i=j$. The sum $\sum_{i} [\ell_i]$ in $H_1(X_L;\Z)$ of the Seifert framed longitudes vanishes. Note that $$[\ell_i] = \sum_{j} \operatorname{lk}(L_i,L_j) [\mu_j] \in H_1(X_L;\Z) \cong \Z\langle\mu_i \mid i=1,\dots,n \rangle,$$ where $\mu_i$ is a meridian of the $i$–th component of $L$. We then have $$0 = \sum_{i} [\ell_i] = \sum_i\sum_{j} \operatorname{lk}(L_i,L_j) [\mu_j] = \sum_j\sum_{i} \operatorname{lk}(L_i,L_j) [\mu_j],$$ from which it follows that $\sum_{i} \operatorname{lk}(L_i,L_j)=0$ for every $j=1,\dots,n$. That is, the sum of the entries in each row and in each column of the matrix $\operatorname{Lk}_L$ is zero. We will use this observation in the proof below.
\[lemma:identification\] Suppose that $z \in S^1 \sm\{1\}$ and let $\phi \colon M_L \to S^1$ be the map defined at the beginning of this section. Then we have $$\sigma(M_L,\phi,z) = \sigma_L(z) -\sigma( \operatorname{Lk}_L ).$$
Construct a $4$-manifold with boundary $M_L$ as follows. Let $F$ be a connected Seifert surface for $L$. Push the Seifert surface into $D^4$ and consider its complement $V_F := D^4 \sm \nu F$. Note that if we cap $F$ off with $m$ 2-discs, we obtain a closed surface. Let $H$ be a 3-dimensional handlebody whose boundary is this surface. Note that $\partial V_F = X_L \cup F \times S^1$. Then define $$W_F := V_F \cup_{F \times S^1} H \times S^1.$$ Note that $\partial W_F = M_L$. By [@Ko:1989-1 pp. 538-9] and [@Cochran-Orr-Teichner:2002-1 Lemma 5.4], we have that $\lambda_z(W_F) = (1-z)V + (1-{\overline{z}})V^{T}$.
Now we show that $\sigma(W_F) = \sigma(\operatorname{Lk}_L)$. For this we use Wall’s additivity formula [@Wall69] for the signature. We follow the notation of [@Conway17 Section 2.3], and ask the reader to consult ibidem. Consider $W_F$ as the result of the gluing $$W_F = V_F \cup_{F\times S^1} H\times S^1.$$ Write $\Sigma := \partial F \times S^1$, and observe that $H_1(\partial F \times S^1; \Q) = \Q\langle \mu_1, \ell_1,\dots, \mu_n,\ell_n \rangle$ is generated by a collection of meridians $\mu_i$ and Seifert–framed longitudes $\ell_i$ of the $i$–th component, where $i=1,\dots,m$. For this we consider $\partial F \times S^1$ as the boundary of the closure of $\nu L \subset S^3$. After gluing along $M := F \times S^1$, the remaining boundary is the union of $N_+ := X_L$ and $N_- := \sqcup_i D^2_i \times S^1$ along $\partial N_+ = \partial N_- = \sqcup_i S^1_i \times S^1$, where the discs $D^2_i$ are the complement of $F$ in $\partial H$. Figure \[fig:Walladditivity\] sketches the set-up so far.
![Set-up for Wall additivity.[]{data-label="fig:Walladditivity"}](walladditivity.pdf){width="10cm"}
Now, we compute the kernels $$V_X := \ker \big( H_1(\partial F \times S^1; \Q) \to H_1(X; \Q) \big)$$ of the inclusions for $X = M, N_+, N_-$: $$\begin{aligned}
V_{N_-} &= \langle \ell_i \mid 1\leq i \leq n \rangle,\\
V_{N_+} &= \langle \ell_i - \sum_j \operatorname{lk}(L_j, L_i) \mu_j \mid 1\leq i \leq n\rangle,\\
V_{M} &= \langle \ell_1 + \cdots + \ell_n, \mu_i - \mu_j \mid 1\leq i< j \leq n \rangle.\end{aligned}$$ Our convention for computing the Maslov index is to express elements $\alpha_i \in V_{X_L} = V_{N_+}$ as a sum $x_i + y_i$ with $x_i \in V_{N_-}$ and $y_i \in V_{M}$, and then consider the pairing $\Psi(\alpha_i, \alpha_j) := x_i \cdot y_j$, where the $\cdot$ is the skew-symmetric intersection product on the surface $\Sigma$, with $\mu_i \cdot \ell_j = \delta_{ij}$; c.f [@RanickiMaslov]. The Maslov index is then the signature of the pairing $\Psi$. So let us relate this pairing to the linking matrix. Note that a suitable decomposition of a basis $\ell_i - \sum_j \operatorname{lk}(L_j, L_i) \mu_j$ for $V_{N_+}$ is as $x_i+y_i$ with $x_i:= \ell_i$ and $y_i= - \sum_j \operatorname{lk}(L_j, L_i) \mu_j$. Here $y_i \in V_M$ because the sum of coefficients $\sum_j \operatorname{lk}(L_j, L_i) =0\in \Z$, by the observation made just before the statement of the lemma, from which it follows that $y_i$ can be expressed as a linear combination of homology classes of the form $\mu_i -\mu_j$. We then take $\alpha_i = \ell_i + y_i \in V_{N_-} + V_{M}$, and $\alpha_j = x_j - \sum_k \operatorname{lk}(L_k, L_j) \mu_k \in V_{N_-} + V_M$, and compute: $$\Psi(\alpha_i, \alpha_j) = -\ell_i \cdot \sum_k \operatorname{lk}(L_k, L_j) \mu_k = \operatorname{lk}(L_i, L_j).$$ The Maslov correction term is therefore $\sigma(\Psi) = \sigma (\operatorname{Lk}_L)$. Together with $\sigma (V_F) = 0$, this implies that $\sigma (W_F) = \sigma (\operatorname{Lk}_L)$.
Therefore, we obtain the following equality $$\sigma(\lambda_z(W_F))-\sigma(W_F) = \sigma((1-z)V + (1-{\overline{z}})V^{T}) - \sigma (\operatorname{Lk}_L) = \sigma(B(z)) -\sigma (\operatorname{Lk}_L) .$$
Concordance invariance of the signature {#section:conc-invariance-signature}
=======================================
We start with a straightforward lemma, then we prove the final part of the main theorem. Recall that the complement $X_L$ and the Seifert surgery $M_L$ are both equipped with a homotopy class of a map to $S^1$, or equivalently with a cohomology class. For the link complement $X_L$, this class $\xi_L \in H^1(X_L;\Z)$ is characterised by the property that it sends each oriented meridian to $1$.
\[lemma:concordance-implies-hom-cob-of-zero-surgeries\] Let $L$ and $J$ be concordant links. Their Seifert surgeries $M_L$ and $M_J$ are homology bordant over $S^1$.
Denote the maps to $S^1$ by $\phi_{L} \colon M_{L} \to S^1$ and $\phi_J \colon M_L \to S^1$, and denote the corresponding cohomology classes by $\xi_{L} \in H^1(M_{L};\Z)$ and $\xi_{J} \in H^1(M_{J};\Z)$. Define $X_L := S^3 \sm \nu L$ and $X_J := S^3 \sm \nu J$. Let $A \subset S^3 \times I$ be an embedding of a disjoint union of annuli giving a concordance between $L$ and $J$.
Fix a tubular neighbourhood $\nu A = A \times D^2$ of the annulus $A$ with a trivialisation. Denote $W_A:= S^3 \times I \sm \nu A$, whose boundary consists of the union of $X_L$, $X_J$, and a piece identified with the total space of the unit sphere bundle $A \times S^1$ of $\nu A$. As usual, we refer to a representative $\{\operatorname{pt}\}\times S^1$ for the $S^1$ factor in $A \times S^1$ as a *meridian* of $A$. Note that the inclusions $X_L \subset W_A$ and $X_J \subset W_A$ map the meridians in the link complements to the meridians in $W_A$.
There exists a cohomology class $\xi_A \in H^1(W_A;\Z)$ mapping each meridian $\mu_A$ of $A$ to $1$.
This can be seen by the Mayer-Vietoris sequence $$H^1(\nu A; \Z) \oplus H^1(W_A;\Z) \to H^1(\partial \nu A;\Z) \to H^2(S^3 \times I;\Z)=0,$$ in which the map $H^1(\nu A;\Z) \cong \Z^m \to H^1(\partial \nu A;\Z) \cong (\Z \oplus \Z)^m$ is given by $1 \mapsto (1,0)$ on each of the $m$ summands. That is, the homology classes of the meridians of $\partial \nu A \cong A \times S^1$ do not lie in the image of this surjective map, so they must lie in the image of $H^1(W_A;\Z)$. This completes the proof of the claim.
It follows that $\xi_A$ is pulled back to the unique classes $\xi_L$ and $\xi_J$ that map the meridians in the link complements to $1$. Using the natural isomorphism between the functors $[-, S^1]$ and $H^1(-;\Z)$, find a map $\phi_W \colon W_A \to S^1$ that restricts to the prescribed map $\phi_L \sqcup \phi_J \colon X_{L} \sqcup X_J \to S^1$ on the boundary.
Up to isotopy, there is a unique product structure on an annulus $A = S^1 \times I$. Having fixed such a structure, we consider the manifold $$Y := W_A \cup_{A \times S^1} \bigsqcup^m (D^2 \times S^1 \times I).$$ The gluing is done in such a way as to restrict on $\bigsqcup^m S^1 \times S^1 \times \{i\}$, for $i=0,1$, to the gluing of the Seifert surgery on $X_L$ and $X_J$. By construction, this gives a bordism between $M_L$ and $M_J$.
Note that the map $\phi_W$ and the projection $A\times S^1 \to S^1$ glue together to give a map $\phi_Y \colon Y \to S^1$. Equipped with this map, $(Y,\phi_Y)$ is an $S^1$-bordism between $(M_L, \phi_L)$ and $(M_J, \phi_J)$.
Finally, we assert that $Y$ is a homology bordism. To see this, first observe, as in the proof of Theorem \[theorem:nullity-invariance\], that $W_A$ is a homology bordism from $X_L$ to $X_J$. Flagrantly, $A \times S^1$ is a homology bordism from $S^1 \times S^1$ to itself, and $\bigsqcup^m (D^2 \times S^1 \times I)$ is a homology bordism from $\bigsqcup^m D^2 \times S^1$ to itself. Gluing two homology bordisms together along a homology bordism, with the same maps on homology induced by the gluings for $M_L$, $M_J$ and $Y$, it follows easily from the Mayer-Vietoris sequence and the five lemma that $Y$ is a homology bordism.
\[theorem:signature-invariance\] Suppose that oriented $m$-component links $L$ and $J$ are concordant and that $z \in S^1 \sm \{1\}$ is not a Knotennullstelle. Then $\sigma_L(z) = \sigma_J(z)$.
As in the statement of the theorem, suppose that $z \in S^1 \sm \{1\}$ is not a Knotennullstelle. Let $W_{LJ}$ be a homology bordism between the Seifert surgeries $M_L$ and $M_J$, whose existence is guaranteed by Lemma \[lemma:concordance-implies-hom-cob-of-zero-surgeries\]. Let $W_J$ be a 4-manifold that gives a null-bordism of $M_J$ over $B\Z$, and define $W_L := W_{LJ} \cup_{M_J} W_J$.
The signature of the intersection form on $H_2(W_L;\C^a)/H_2(M_L;\C^\a)$, together with the ordinary signature over $\Z$, determines the signature $\sigma_L(z)$ by Section \[section:identification-signatures\]. Similarly, the signature of the intersection form on the quotient $H_2(W_J;\C^\a)/H_2(M_J;\C^\a)$ and the ordinary signature of $W_J$ determine the signature $\sigma_J(z)$. By Lemma \[lemma:Z-hom-iso-implies-twisted-iso\], we have homology isomorphisms $$H_2(M_L;\C^\a) \toiso H_2(W_{LJ};\C^\a) \text{ and } H_2(M_J;\C^\a) \toiso H_2(W_{LJ};\C^\a).$$ It follows that every class in $H_2(W_L;\C^\a)$ has a representative in $W_J$, that $$H_2(W_L;\C^a)/H_2(M_L;\C^\a) \cong H_2(W_J;\C^a)/H_2(M_J;\C^\a),$$ and that this isomorphism induces an isometry of the intersection forms. Thus the twisted signatures of both intersection forms are equal. We needed that $z$ is not a Knotennullstelle in order to apply Lemma \[lemma:Z-hom-iso-implies-twisted-iso\] in the preceding argument. The same argument over $\Z$ implies that the ordinary signatures also coincide, that is $\sigma(W_L) = \sigma(W_J)$. Therefore $\sigma(M_L,\phi_L,z) = \sigma(M_J,\phi_J,z)$. Note that the linking number is a concordance invariant and therefore the linking matrices agree $\operatorname{Lk}_L = \operatorname{Lk}_{J}$. Therefore $\sigma(M_L,\phi_L,z) + \sigma(\operatorname{Lk}_L) = \sigma(M_J,\phi_J,z) + \sigma(\operatorname{Lk}_J)$, and so $\sigma_L(z) = \sigma_J(z)$ by Lemma \[lemma:identification\]. Thus the Levine-Tristram signature at $z$ is a concordance invariant, as desired.
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tomekkorbak/pile-curse-small
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ArXiv
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News and general opinion, often privacy, security or computer related, but could be about anything really, including religion, politics, the environment, business or audio books. "Never ascribe to malice, that which can be explained by incompetence." -- Napoleon Bonaparte
Monday, June 04, 2007
The Great Defrag Shootout XIII: DiskTrix UltimateDefrag 1.52
UltimateDefragis probably the closest program yet reviewed to being the "ultimate" defrag software, particularly if you're a power user. It gets a "Thumbs Up" rating in spite of its flaws.The first good thing about UD is the manual. It's a well-written PDF file that explains a lot about hard drives, how they work, and how defragmentation can improve the performace and responsiveness of the drive.Another good thing is that it's easy to install, and fairly intuitive to use. When you do the trail download you supply your email address, and over the next week or so you get 5 short tutorial emails explaining how to get started and use UD to it full potential.It doesn't do any "on-the-fly" defragmenting, but you can schedule it to run when the PC isn't busy (almost the same as a screen saver option), or at pre-defined times. It also has a boot-time option to defrag system files, and it respects the information in the "layout.ini" file.The speed of a hard drive varies from the "outside" to the "inside" of the drive, and UD has numerous options and techniques to capitalise on this fact. You can "archive" files or file types by relocating them to slower areas of the disk, and prioritise other files or folders by moving them to the faster areas of the disk.So with a bit of tweaking you can improve the layout of the hard drive and make performance gains in the process. Of course you could also make bad choices and slow things down, and so there are numerous automatic and recommended settings that assist. What I don't understand is why a lot of the recommended options aren't already checked, or even marked with an asterisk or something.Another good idea is to move the directories close to the Master File Table (MFT) because they are often used together anyway. I haven't seen any other programs do this.The on-screen display of the hard drive as a circular disk is unique, but not always entirely helpful. You can change the granularity of the display by adjusting the "zoom" settings. You can also set limits on the maximum % resources used, although it doesn't always honour them. There is a colour for files being moved, but it only shows where they are being moved from, not the new location, so if you are watching the way UD works, you are often still in the dark as to what is going on. Usually the current file name is displayed at the bottom of the screen, but not always, yet the program seems to be busy anyway.For the first few days I allowed UD to operate on its "AUTO" setting, to get a feel for how the program would improve my drive without much user intervention. The results were OK. If that's all you need then UltimateDefrag Lite (US$11.97) will save you some money, but in my opinion it's too crippled, because it offers no boot-time defrag, something that is still important over the long term.The optimisation strategy relies on the "last accessed date" of files. This is theoretically fine, except that compressing a file changes its last accessed date, and I found that the entire "media" directory and subdirectories from OfficeXP, consisting mostly of clipart that don't use, was moved to the faster area of the disk. I guess I could use filetouch.exe or something to change this, but it was a bit disappointing. I guess Microsoft broke its own rules.You can override these settings by specifying files or file types to treat as high performance or archive types. I found the interface at this point somewhat clunky. Certain common extension types are left out, such as mp3 (although mp1, mp2 and mp4 are listed), and you can't jump to a particular extension such as exe or rar easily. I found it quicket to click on "Custom" and type in the file type, and then scroll to the bottom of the list to find my custom entry. Since this is such an important part of the optimisation process, I would have expected these options to be pre-filled with common extensions to be treated as high performance (exe, sys, dll) and archive (zip, cab, rar) by default. It would also be nice to be able to copy settings from drive C: to D:.Unfortunately I will not be using UD because it failed my "torture test" and my "large files" test. It chokes on big files. The moment I created my two large SQL data files on drive C:, the analyse time went from a few seconds to 14 minutes. When I decompressed these files to their full size and then requested a defrag, it failed, or at least didn't do anything to defrag the file. I should point out that WDD failed to defrag them either, and contig.exe complained about not enough free disk space. But a US$39.95 program should be able to defrag any file that isn't locked, IMHO.I re-compressed the file and used contig to defragment it again. Then I left my laptop running on the "Consolidate" option overnight. After 12 hours it hadn't finished and the drive looked in a bit of a mess.On my D: drive I have a 4GB file used by TrueCrypt, and when I asked for this file to be placed on the outside of the drive. After an hour or so it had moved the file, but the free disk space was disorganised. I changed a few settings in the file preferences, and a more thorough "consolidate" pass eventually sorted it out.It seems to be a weakness that the MFT can land up anywhere on the drive and UD simply has to work around it somehow. I realise it could be difficult if not impossible to move the MFT, but this has to be considered when allocating free space and moving files around. I could find no mention that this is being done, and the drive diagrams appear to confirm this.My overall impression is that this program is sluggish and vulnerable to giving up when large file are involved. If your files are all smaller than a few GB in size then I think this program will be a serious contender. Despite the good ideas and mostly good implementation, I can't rely on it for my needs. It's a pity, because this is a good product.Next, I'm taking a break, and will return next week with another review.Update: Both UltimateDefrag and UltimateDefrag Lite require an opening in the Windows firewall, which has to be closed manually once the programs are uninstalled.Update 2: Version 1.72 is now freeware, following the release of UltimateDefrag 2008
11 comments:
Anonymous
said...
It should be noted that DiskTrix UltimateDefrag 1.52 had a serious bug that locks up and "freezes" at a certain point, leaving things at a mess. That would have given a definitive bias in any review. You should try UltimateDefrag 1.54, updated and has solved those bugs.
I did not encounter the "freeze bug" in the original reviewing process, and the newer version 1.54 still takes a long time to analyse the drive, so I don't see how the review could be skewed. The version history file makes no mention of a version 1.54 so I'm not sure what else was fixed.
Disktrix is the best of all I tried- half of the reviewed here. Sometimes it's hard to make it do something specific, but almost always there is a solution- your large files probably have extension or folder you can prioritize up or down. I have files ranging up to 9 GB and it does work at about 5% free space- try to make PD or O&O do that. The endless customization works on a whole another level- you can plan for future fragmentation and make future defrag based on recency and fast archival so fast...the only grief I have with it is the boot defrag- simply don't work for me. Other than that this is absolutely the most flexible defrager.
Hi! I have a little question about this software. My platform system is windows vista, I'm having a problem whit the boot defrag option it doesn't start in the next reboot. does anybody have the same problem ? how can you fix this ? thanks!
I love it - I've bought the 2008 for my main XP games machine (many large 1GB+ files on it) which has speeded up the startup of many of my newer games (Crysis, MassEffect, GRID etc) and the Windows startup itself, and I use the freebie version on the 4 other PC's in the house. It's also even more addictive to watch than other defraggers! And I don't get shedloads of spam from them like some (Diskkeeper), just 6 highly informative PDF guides. I would agree that it can stumble sometimes though, so I have JKDefrag as a 2nd option (butt ugly program!)
It creates a pretty map but does not actually put the files where they should go. I set mine to put "C:\Program Files\" up front, but the files--even frequently used ones--are all over, with some in the front and some landing in the archive. The tech support has also been non-responsive.
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tomekkorbak/pile-curse-small
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Pile-CC
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Vitamin B Complex and Blood Pressure
The B Complex vitamins play an important part in maintaining optimum health in the human body. There are a number different subtypes of Vitamin B and today I am going to see which of the 8 have a role in helping to control blood pressure.
It seems that the B group vitamins are aptly named ‘Complex‘ because, unlike merely dealing with a single vitamin, we have 8 different subtypes to sort out here. Some have a direct role in helping to regulate blood pressure, whilst others come at it indirectly by supporting healthy cholesterol and good metabolism. And, to add more spice to the pot, a combination of some of the B vitamins works even more effectively than taking them on their own.
So let’s take a look at unraveling this “complex” situation.
The B Complex roll call
As mentioned there are 8 subclasses of Vitamin B, so here’s a quick overview of them all and how they help the body function properly.
chart courtesy Wikipedia
Vitamin B Complex Benefits
THIAMIN (B1) – Essential for normal function of muscles, nervous system and energy release from carbs.
NIACIN (B3) – Helps control blood pressure due to improved circulation and cholesterol regulation, stimulates energy production from foods, maintains normal digestive processes and supports mental function. Deficiency of B3 can lead to certain skin diseases such as Pellagra
PANTOTHENIC ACID (B5) – Maintains healthy digestive tract by supporting other vitamin processes, and plays a role in the breakdown of fats and carbs to provide energy. Helps normal function of the adrenal glands which promotes healthy metabolism.
PYRIDOXINE (B6) – Supports proper functioning of many enzymes, balancing of blood sugar levels and production of red blood cells. Also promotes breakdown of proteins and production of anti-bodies. Helps protect cardiovascular system.
BIOTIN (B7) – Beneficial for the metabolism of carbs and fats. Assists with use of glucose in the body and aids in maintenance of healthy hair and skin.
COBALAMIN (B12) – Is active in the metabolism of every cell in the body. It plays a key role in the normal functioning of the brain, the nervous system, and in the formation of blood.
So it soon becomes clear how important the B Complex vitamins are in the optimal functioning of the human body.
Does Niacin affect blood pressure?
When considering the roles of each Vitamin B above, Niacin or Vitamin B3 stands out most obviously as the one which should directly be able to lower BP. The effects of Niacin are as a vaso-dilator, or blood vessel opener which then allows the blood to flow more freely around the body, consequently putting less pressure on the arteries and other blood vessels and lowering blood pressure.
It also promotes the production of good cholesterol (HDL) whilst lowering the bad cholesterol (LDL) which is associated with a reduced risk of the development of cardiovascular disease.
So it may be the one to start with if you are deciding to try supplementation … but there are a couple of cautions to be aware of:
Niacin tends to cause a rather unpleasant flushing effect, especially of the face and neck which eventually goes away but can be quite uncomfortable, as the areas affected feel warm and skin turns pink. It is not harmful but taking it on an empty stomach will intensity the flushing effect, so this is definitely best avoided.
My advice is to start with a low dose (100mg) and gradually increase according to tolerance. Or you can purchase flush-free Niacin to avoid the unpleasant flushing altogether.
If planning on using Niacin in conjunction with other prescription medications professional advice from your physician should always be sought first. For instance, taking Niacin with cholesterol lowering drugs (statins) can have adverse effects on the to liver.
An interesting study I came across flagged the use of Vitamin B2, or RIBOFLAVIN as a means of lowering blood pressure in 10% of the population who are struggling with hypertension. However, this “one in ten” statistic which the study cites are those people who have a specific genetic cause of the high blood pressure – the so-called MTHFR 677TT genotype.
In America about 25% of people who are Hispanic and 10-15% of people who are Caucasian have been found to have 2 of this genotype which stops the body from manufacturing the enzyme needed to break down homocysteine. This puts them at an increased rate of certain health issues, including high blood pressure, heart disease and diabetes.
So this is significant since the findings of the research demonstrated that, as the leader of the study Dr Helen Mc Nulty stated:
Anyone who has thus developed hypertension where it can be related to having this genotype will find this study very encouraging and worth further investigation.
Mixing them up!
In the YouTube video below we have the example of how taking three B vitamins together can lead to a reduction of blood pressure. The B vitamins involved are B6 – pyridoxine, B9 – folate and B12 – Cobalamin. Of interest here is the fact that the protocol which the narrator has devised depends very much upon the correct combination of the vitamins, as you will see.
A point of caution to the message in this video is that taking some combinations of B vitamins to lower BP may not deliver the desired results if they lead to an imbalance overall in the levels of the B Vitamins in the body.
Further investigation led me to some important information about older people who may be suffering from low blood pressure. In this case they were able to elevate their BP to safer levels by taking Vitamin B12 supplementation.
So, here we have an example where a significant increase in B12 could very well end up raising blood pressure too much in some individuals. And the presenter in the video appears to have run across a similar situation when he combined B9 and B12, but was missing the B6.
The implementation of B complex vitamins supplementation to help lower blood pressures is indeed trickier than I had first anticipated. It appears that some of the B vitamin complex can have a positive effect on blood pressure, but care has to be taken in how your combine them and to ensure that no individual vitamin B deficiency results from the combination of the others.
One of the best ways to avoid a vitamin B deficiency is to eat a healthy, unprocessed diet – preferably organic – which includes milk, yeast, liver, whole-grain cereals, nuts, eggs, yogurt, fruits, meats and plenty of leafy vegetables.
And, since the B vitamins are water soluble and need to be replenished daily, I don’t see any harm in taking a good quality B Complex vitamin daily as well.
That in itself should help manage the BP readings. But if not, well then I might just be tempted to try and boost the specific B vitamins I mentioned earlier in the article, just knowing that some experimentation could be required to gain the desired results.
2 Comments
Trudy NordMay 7, 2018 at 1:27 am
Wanted to leave a comment in reference to niacin. I have a sensitivity to taking niacin by itself. A 50 mg dose caused me to stop breathing resulting in my father-in-law having to perform CPR on me. The only way I can take this is in a lower dose, niacinamide @ 20 mg., combined in a multiple and not as a stand alone form. 100 mg seems like a really high dose, but I am no doctor. Just saying from personal experience. It was scary to say the least. Niacin can be dangerous to some people if not taken properly.
From the literature I looked at a typical daily dosage for Niacin ranges from 250mg (starter dose) up to as much as 500mg daily. Having felt the unpleasant effects of Niacin flushing myself is why my recommendation of 100mg was lower. This pales in comparison to your very scary experience, of course. You do raise a really good point, Trudy – namely that for some of us these dosage amounts can be just too strong. This may be due to a sensitivity or an intolerance towards the substance, medical condition, interaction with other medications/supplements or some other factor. Regardless it is a very important consideration to be aware of, and so your comment on this matter is much appreciated.
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tomekkorbak/pile-curse-small
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Pile-CC
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Episode 18: Plummer Park
In the City of Angels the completely unscrupulous live among the rich and famous celebrities. It has been said that in Los Angeles, you can get away with murder if you have enough money and... More
In the City of Angels the completely unscrupulous live among the rich and famous celebrities. It has been said that in Los Angeles, you can get away with murder if you have enough money and the right legal team. Dick Wolf guides us through the glitz, glamor, and gulit of L.A. from Hollywood to Beverly Hills with Los Angeles Robbery homicide division.
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When cops are called to the home of Nick (guest star Michael Enright) and Amy Libergal (guest star Amy Benedict), they are surprised to discover two Russian men armed with guns and Nick dead in his... More
When cops are called to the home of Nick (guest star Michael Enright) and Amy Libergal (guest star Amy Benedict), they are surprised to discover two Russian men armed with guns and Nick dead in his bathtub. While Winters and Jaruszalski work to trace the men back to a ringleader, the case takes an unsuspecting turn when a second crime comes into play. Meanwhile, DDA's Dekker (Terrence Howard) and Stanton (Megan Boone) must move quickly in order to get their key witnesses to testify before they are extradited back to Russia.
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This is one of the episodes before Skeet Ulrich left the show hence the lack of continuity from the lastepisode . Here are some photos of the upcoming episode of LAW & ORDER: LOS ANGELES “Van Nuys” More »
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There are two kind of battles in politics: the noisy ones and the stealthy ones. The high-decibel clashes grab all the attention because they generate visible mayhem and buckets of gore. So eyes have been on the Conservatives over the summer weeks as the Brexit battlefield has resounded to the clang of Tories swinging war hammers at other Tories.
All the while, another struggle, one conducted in the shadows, has been taking place at the apex of the Labour party. This battle has been much less cacophonous, and thus not noticed, but it is of great potential significance. This battle has been about the position Labour should strike and it matters because it has big implications for the fate of the Brexit legislation when parliament returns next month. Key members of the shadow cabinet have been wrestling with the argument over August and it came to a head in the past few days. In your Observer today, we bring you the first news of the outcome.
Labour’s posture since the referendum might be generously characterised as constructive ambiguity and less kindly described as consciously incoherent. Having a foot in both camps served Labour well when Britain went to the polls in June. The recent analysis by the British Election Study came to the conclusion that it helped the party to maximise its support among convinced leavers and furious remainers. Yet an increasing number of Labour voices have been arguing that fudge is not a sustainable strategy for a party that aspires to be taken seriously as the next government.
Today, in our pages, Keir Starmer, the party’s principal spokesman on Brexit, brings a new clarity to Labour’s position and, in doing so, finally defines a clear dividing line with the Tories. He announces that Labour, previously evasive on this issue, will seek to keep Britain within both the single market and a customs union during any transitional period which follows its departure from the EU.
What has prompted this shift by Labour and why now? One reason is the calendar. When MPs return to Westminster in September, the first business on parliament’s plate will be withdrawal. They will debate the gargantuan slab of legislation paving the way for Britain’s departure. Given the trouble and strife in the Cabinet, the principal party of opposition ought to have many opportunities to serve both its own cause and the national interest by giving the government hell. Labour’s ability to expose the many holes and contradictions in the government’s position was going to be terribly handicapped if the party’s own posture lacked credibility. In discussions with other members of the shadow cabinet, Mr Starmer has been heard to argue that Labour would look ludicrous if its representatives could not give a straight answer to the question whether or not Britain ought to remain within the single market during the transition.
The new Labour position that he has crafted comes with advantages and risks. It will be broadly popular with trades unions and business organisations, which largely favour keeping Britain within the single market. Members of both stand to suffer from a cliff-edge Brexit which sees Britain crash out of the world’s most prosperous free trade area without a viable agreement about the future relationship. Putting the Labour frontbench behind keeping Britain in the single market beyond 2019 has the effect of widening and strengthening the arguments for a softer Brexit. Labour is also offering some succour to those who think that Britain would be sensible not to torch all its bridges to Europe and close down all its options during the transition – including the ultimate option for the country to change its mind if it doesn’t like the look of where it is going to end up.
A sniff of power has wafted into Labour nostrils, and that scent has influenced the mood at the top of the party
The shift will be welcomed by the substantial wedge of the parliamentary Labour party who have been agitating for the leadership to take a more robust position against the government. It will not be popular with the tiny minority of MPs who favour a stark Brexit. Then there is the larger number of Labour MPs who, while regretting the referendum result, think it has to be honoured and doing that means ending freedom of movement. There will be those who will be uncomfortable and there will be others who will be cross with a policy which means supporting the continuation of freedom of movement for at least two years after Britain has left the EU. Mr Starmer may face some turbulence from MPs still fearful of doing anything that can be painted as trying to defy the referendum result. Hardcore Brexiters will have a go at Labour. So may some of the more ardent remainers who want Labour to oppose Brexit altogether.
The party’s new position remains vague about the final destination that it wants for Britain. About that, Mr Starmer argues for staying “flexible”. He can be mocked for this. But not by Tory ministers. Not when their negotiations with the EU have yet to agree the basics of withdrawal and no one is expecting much progress when those talks resume in Brussels this week. Not when members of the Cabinet can’t give an agreed description of what they want the future relationship with the EU to look like. The “position papers” recently published by the government ooze so many uncertainties that they ought to be called “options papers”.
This change in position could not have happened without the agreement of Jeremy Corbyn, and that could not be taken for granted at the start of the debate between senior members of the shadow cabinet. Earlier this year, the Labour leader walked through the same Aye lobby as Theresa May for the vote to trigger Article 50 and he whipped Labour MPs to join him there. It is less than two months since he fired three frontbenchers when they supported an amendment to the Queen’s Speech calling for Britain to stay within the customs union and the single market.
The Labour leader, a career-long Eurosceptic, has not agreed to recalibrate the party’s position on Brexit because he has fundamentally changed his mind about the EU. But Mr Corbyn is more of a politician than his detractors or his admirers often acknowledge. On some things, at least, he can do pragmatism and triangulation as well as any of the other grubby compromisers in the rough old trade. His inner circle and his allies in the shadow cabinet include both Eurosceptics and Europhiles. He has surely noticed – everyone else certainly has – the dislocation between his views about the EU and those of the crowd who adored him at Glastonbury. The younger voters who helped him to upset election expectations in June are overwhelmingly opposed to Brexit, as are many of his most passionate devotees within the party. A poll for Labour List, conducted before the announcement of this shift, found a substantial majority of party members thought Labour had not adopted a Brexit policy that was sufficiently different to that of the Tories.
A sniff of power has wafted into Labour nostrils since June, and that mind-concentrating scent has influenced the mood at the top of the party. The shadow cabinet has had to think about what they would face if this minority Conservative government were to collapse and an early election propelled Labour into power to take charge of the Brexit negotiations. In the probably more likely scenario that the election comes later, Labour would obviously hope to reap a dividend at the ballot box if the Tories have delivered a bad Brexit deal or a disastrous no deal.
In the event that Britain’s departure from the EU goes horribly wrong, Labour wants to be able to heap all the blame, every last ounce of it, in the laps of the Conservatives. That will be harder to do if Labour has been seen as an accomplice of Tory Brexit. It has been the cry of both the Lib Dems and SNP that Labour has been conspiring to facilitate a Tory drive towards an economically ruinous hard Brexit. They have attacked Mr Corbyn as a “red Tory” when it comes to Europe. That has stung a little. It has also increased the pressure from Labour MPs for their party to bring some stronger opposition to bear on the government.
This brings us to the most important question about Labour’s shift. Can it force a change on the government? It is possible. Labour’s position on the transition has the potential to be a rallying point for parliamentary opposition to a hard Brexit. The Lib Dems and the Nationalists back continuing membership of the single market. So the key will be persuading sufficient Conservative MPs to join hands with the opposition parties against the government. Lines of communication are already open between opposition MPs and around 20 Tory backbenchers who might be willing to support amendments to the Brexit legislation.
By my rough and ready calculation, there are sufficient Tory MPs who agree with the Labour position on the transition to conceive of it assembling a majority in parliament. Mobilising them will partly depend on how artful Labour can be about waging this struggle in the Commons. Success will also be contingent on the struggle within the breasts of these Conservative MPs between their party loyalties and their consciences. That will be the next battle to watch out for.
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Originally Posted By ARCollector157:
Can we do a group buy? Seriously that's the price of to registered m16 lowers. I would drop a few grand on something like that but for 23,000.00, I just don't see the market other than government or security firms that have ass loads of government funding to piss in the trash can, OH duh nothing to see here move along.
If you have no interest in this item, why are you posting? It's cool enough that tnvc is making items like this available to us, even if they are cost prohibitive. I know of a group of guys around here that pool their money on stuff like this and take turns using it. One day I will have enough cash to buy thermal, and hope tnvc is still selling items, but by then I may be able to buy a nice used model (10years from now )
Daniel If you have no interest in this item, why are you posting? It's cool enough that tnvc is making items like this available to us, even if they are cost prohibitive. I know of a group of guys around here that pool their money on stuff like this and take turns using it. One day I will have enough cash to buy thermal, and hope tnvc is still selling items, but by then I may be able to buy a nice used model (10years from nowDaniel
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Dedicated to the faithful slaves who loyal to a sacred trust toiled for the support of the army with matchless devotion and sterling fidelity guarded our defenceless homes, women and children during the struggle for the principles of our Confederate States of America.
Full details of the monument are here. The comments at the link say that the thirteen-foot marble monument “is a tribute to the faithfulness of the Southern negro to the women and children of the South during the war… (and) probably the only one of its kind in the South.”
The folks who built this monument may well have been heartfelt in their motivations. But looking at it from my own vantage point, I find the thing disturbing and perverse.
I am going to describe the memorial with a metaphor that some might find objectionable… don’t say I didn’t warn you. To me, this memorial is akin to a rapist thanking a rape victim for being quiet during the act, thereby not alerting others to what was happening.
In both cases, thanks are being given for an action that benefits the victimizer, but does nothing to help the victim.
I can see why these folks would feel gratitude toward the slaves that are honored by this monument. In 1860, there were over three and a half million slaves in the South. But by the end of the Civil War, some estimates say that over 500,000 slaves fled their masters to go to contraband camps, head North, or otherwise seek freedom. Many males slaves joined the Union army or served the army in support roles. Meanwhile, many of the slaves who didn’t flee aided and abetted the Union effort by serving as spies, guides, or providing other support.
So, any slave who stayed with and supported their masters and masters’ families was undoubtedly seen as a blessing.
The thing is, this memorial is all about what the slaves did for their masters. I think it’s fair to ask, what did the slaves receive in return? Did they receive their freedom? Did they receive land or property, or reimbursement at a fair wage for their labors? Did they receive any political rights? The answer to these questions appears to be no.
Ultimately, I find this memorial to be self-serving and hollow.
I’m sure that the monument’s builders believed they were doing a good thing. But thanking a slave for being a good slave… that doesn’t resonate with me at all. If I was a slave, my reaction would be “thanks massa… thanks for nothing.”
Now, here’s a memorial I’d like to see. It features a huge statue, with a group of white men on one side, and a group of slaves on the other. The white men include Jefferson Davis (President of the Confederacy), Alexander Stephens, (Vice-President of the Confederacy) or John C. Calhoun (a leading proponent of slavery and secession prior to the Civil War). Their mouths are open, their faces etched with a mournful apology. On the other side, the slaves have a blank but measuring stare, as if they are trying to make sense of words that they never expected to hear.
On the base of the monument, there are two words: “We’re Sorry.”
Are there any such monuments in the South, or anywhere in this country? There should be.
Most people know of slavery, but we don’t know about slavery. Specifically, we don’t know how dehumanizing it was to be a slave.
We might understand what it’s like to be denied freedom or dignity at an intellectual level. But for many of us, we don’t have a grasp on how horrible the institution was, in the day to day life of an enslaved person. Most of us don’t “get” what it was about inhuman bondage that made it so inhuman.
But while the subject is esoteric, the details of how this played out in plantation life are chilling and disturbing.
Cover of Birthing a Slave: Motherhood and Medicine in the Antebellum South by Marie Jenkins Schwartz.
The first chapter of the book, titled “Procreation,” has a gripping account of the stakes involved in the reproductive ability of slave women. I’ve provided some excerpts from that chapter below. Upon reading this, you will understand how lacking in humanity and dignity this peculiar institution was:
…an important aspect of slavery… has been all too often ignored: slaveholders expected to appropriate and exploit the reproductive lives of enslaved women. Control of one’s body was not a fundamental right of slaves. Emboldened by law and custom to do with human chattels as they wished, (slave) owners felt entitled to intervene in even the most intimate of matters. Women’s childbearing capacity became a commodity that could be traded on the open market.
During the antebellum era the expectation increased among members of the owning class that enslaved women would contribute to the economic success of the plantation not only through productive labor but also through procreation. The idea was at once both powerful and seductive and shaped the way women experienced enslavement, the way owners thought about the future of slavery, and the way doctors practiced medicine.
As of 1808, when Congress ended the nation’s participation in the international slave trade… the only practical way of increasing the number of slave laborers was through new births. If enslaved mothers did not bear sufficient numbers of children to take the place of aged and dying workers, the South could not continue as a slave society.
***
Women entering their childbearing years-especially those who had proven their fertility through the birth of a baby-sold easily and for a high price. Former slave Boston Blackwell, who witnessed the sale of two women in Memphis, Tennessee, reported that a girl of fifteen who had no children sold for $800, but a breeding woman sold for $1,500.
Human reproduction was so important to the continuation of slavery that members of the South’s ruling class willed their heirs the unborn children of slaves as well as living people. Anna Matilda King of Georgia assured her daughter that she would inherit not only the slave Christiann but also “her child and future children.” This wish to benefit future generations of slaveholding families pressed owners to look for ways of ensuring that enslaved mothers bore plenty of children. “If it was not for my children I would not care what became of the negroes,” Elizabeth Scott Neblett wrote her absent husband during the Civil War… Neblett maintained that she would gladly do without slaves to save the bother of managing them, but for her children’s sake she could not let them go.Continue reading →
• The American people were fiercely independent. They wanted to do things for themselves. They didn’t want the British government, which was an ocean away, telling them how to live their lives.
• A combination of harsh taxes and the lack of an American voice in the British Parliament gave rise to the famous phrase “taxation without representation.”
• Americans started stockpiling guns and ammunition in violation of British laws. Their defense of such a stockpile led to the shots fired at Lexington and Concord and the beginning of the Revolutionary War.
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On June 22, 1772, nearly a century before the slaves were freed in America, a British judge, with a single decision, brought about the conditions that would end slavery in England. His decision would have monumental consequences in the American colonies, leading up to the American Revolution, the Civil War, and beyond. Because of that ruling, history would forever be changed. This book is about that decision and the role of slavery in the founding of the United States.
– from Slave Nation: How Slavery United The Colonies And Sparked The American Revolution, by Alfred and Ruth Blumrosen
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“You can’t handle the truth.”– from the 1992 movie A Few Good Men
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Truth hurts. And this might be one of the more hurtful truths an American can learn: a major reason for the Revolutionary War was the protection of slavery.
That’s not something they teach in the schools. But our history lessons might look different in the future, if more people read the book Slave Nation: How Slavery United The Colonies And Sparked The American Revolution, by Alfred and Ruth Blumrosen. (The book cover is to the left.)
The Blumrosens, former lawyers for the Civil Rights Division of the US Department of Justice, have a background in equal employment law. Over the course of their careers, they developed an interest in the historical causes of America’s racial inequities. The result is this book, which applies a lawyer’s insight into what they show to be a disturbing aspect of American history.
The main point of their book is that the American colonists-particularly Southern colonists-were afraid that the British government would abolish slavery. And that this fear was a major reason for the colonists’ desire to break away from Great Britain.
Here’s the problem with the way the Revolutionary War is taught: much of the story about the War centers on the northern colonies, particularly Massachusetts, where pivotal events such as the Boston Tea Party and the Boston Massacre took place, and where the term “no taxation without representation” originated. And there’s no doubt that Massachusetts was a flashpoint in the coming war of independence.
But there were 13 original colonies, and the southern colonies had a unique interest of their own to worry about: protecting their “right” to keep slaves.
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Idiopathic granulomatous mastitis: Long-discussed but yet-to-be-known.
Idiopathic granulomatous mastitis (IGM) is a chronic benign inflammatory disease of the breast with unknown etiology. It is an important diagnostic and therapeutic challenge, as most patients were initially misdiagnosed by their primary care physicians, leading to diagnostic confusion and heightened anxiety. Although several triggers have been proposed for development of IGM, the etiologic association of neither of them has been documented. Three main hypotheses about the possible causes of IGM have been suggested, including autoimmune response, infectious disease, and hormonal disruption. Here, we discuss a hypothetical perspective of IGM to explain the possible role of autoinflammation in the pathogenesis of the disease. We also reviewed the previously published literature on pathogenesis of IGM.
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Events
What do you need to know or do if you are already dating or intend to date a high end girl in London? What to expect and how to cope when you are dating a high end girl in London.
London is a place that has variety of people from different cultures and countries. There you find a fine mixture of girls from different parts of the world. Try going to different bars at different times of the week and see how many different girls you get to meet in a week. Where to go shouldn’t be a problem since there are many awesome places to visit in London. And hanging out in new places helps you get out of your comfort zone and puts you a bit more out there for a chance to meet and hook up with that special girl.
How would you know if she is a high end girl?
High end girls are beautiful, posh, intelligent and sophisticated and they are everywhere in London; they are usually found to be in the borough’s of Chelsea and Knightsbridge. They look gorgeous, wear expensive designer clothes, drive new and expensive models of cars, live in expensive neighborhoods, go on vacation to the most exotic locations and are generally seen as girls with class. They have mastered the art of packaging and presenting themselves in a way as to attract only rich men however here is where you must be aware that some high end girls support themselves by being very expensive escorts, specially in Knightsbridge.
To most men, dating a high end girl is a challenge and a matter of prestige. The problem is being able to cope with her demands and high expectations; she will certainly drain your wallet and bank account(recognize the types of girls) or if she has to support you then you can say goodbye to your manhood. High end girls need money to fund and maintain their lifestyles. So, if you are broke, you have no business wanting to date a high end London girl. But, you can still try these few guidelines.
Be honest, transparent and prepared for rejection
This may sound crazy, but it’s true. Most girls value a man’s honesty. She may be a high end girl but she is human and has a heart. Telling her lies is like building a sand castle on the beach that will collapse sooner than later. You don’t need to pretend to be who you are not.
Of course you hope for the best but you need to be prepared for the worse case scenario. If she does not find you attractive you should move on. But if you scale through the first date and she gets comfortable around you, and then you can take it to the next level. But if she does not, well, at least you were prepared for her rejection.
Put your best foot forward
This doesn’t mean that you should start something you cannot finish. If you start by impressing her with gifts, meals in expensive restaurants or taking her to exotic places, you should be prepared to continue that way. Be yourself basically. Once you two start dating, you just need to make her understand how much you care for her and try your best to provide for her needs.
High end girls can be quite demanding and expensive to maintain but you can do those little things that are important but do cost so much money. Make her laugh, cook meals at home rather than go out to expensive restaurants, stay indoors just to talk to her, spend quality time with her. Find out what she likes and encourage her to follow her dreams.
Look presentable
You may not be able to afford expensive clothes, cars or a mansion but embarrassing her with a wacky sense of dressing won’t get you far. You may get to meet her friends and family sometime and even if you are not rich, you can still dress to impress. Bring on the swag and the charm.
Make her fall in love with you
Show her affection in public. A woman that loves you will not place demands on you that are beyond your capability. Who knows, she may decide to tone down her lifestyle for your sake. However, do not try to change her. It is a choice she has to make for herself.
The exclusive and posh district of Mayfair is known for hosting discreet expensive adult entertainment; does anything go or are there carefully guarded secrets?
Highlighting the parts of Mayfair’s gentlemen’s clubs that are not often talked about.
Mayfair fondly referred to as the Venice of the north due to the fact that it is built on the most expensive pieces of land in Londonand surrounded by properties owned by diplomats from around the world. In the district of Mayfair are various exciting and surprising discreet gentlemen’s clubs, such as the Gaslight Club. From the normal night clubs, to Stringfellow’s strip clubs to the high end Casino’s where millions are made and lost, Mayfair’s entertainment district is a place where anything is obtainable. High class escort agencies offer model like escorts posing provocatively on discreet websites at eye wateringly high prices. For your average men and women girls beckoning on passers-by from their windows maybe something exciting found in cities like Amsterdam however Mayfair’s district is famous all over the world for providing entertainment that comes with a huge price tag and of course it’s all extremely discreet.
Impossibly Beautiful & Very Expensive Mayfair Escorts
There are a variety escort agencies, gentlemen’s clubs and nightclub in Mayfair that offer this service. If you are a visitor and you need a companion, a call girl, an independent escort, models or escort services. Their job is to follow you home or to your hotel room and fulfil your adult fantasies. These services do not however, come cheap. So, you need to be prepared for the fees you will have to pay to enjoy the services. Some strip clubs do not let their girl out of the premises, so, customers just have to make arrangement with them for this service. And the charges are based on what you want and who you want.
Live Strip shows
Some Mayfair’s strip clubs are famous for their live erotic night shows. This offer is for those who do not wish to take a girl home but still desire to have that thrill. You will have to load your wallet in order pay the entrance fee as well as to watch these live shows with strippers performing little tricks on stage to couples making out on stage. Most of the clubs offer shows that make you feel like you are in the theatre with less audience interaction.
Swingers clubs
These are for those who came with their partners and intend to explore new experiences. Swinger clubs in Mayfair charge entrance fees based on whether it is a couple, a single man or woman or people with similar interests who wish to engage themselves in some fun adult activities. If you need some extra fun and would like to go through a new night sensual experience, the swingers clubs are perfect for that and they are also some of the best kept secrets in Mayfair.
There is no doubt that Mayfair is known for its colourful nightlife and several strip clubs. It is a hot tourist destination for those who want to experience something new or a favourite pastime. It is also a place where your secret fantasies can come true. Remember to be careful and alert no matter the temptation to let the sensual feast dull the senses.
A word of warning about Taxi scam
As a visitor to your less known London night clubs, you should anticipate the “taxi scam”. The owners or managers of nightclubs make deals with cab drivers to bring customers to their door step. They do this even if their club is not the best one around and it is important to note that clubs, just as all other forms of entertainment, have differing qualities. These clubs offer various night entertainments to their numerous visitors from around the globe. But if you have the address of a particular street, road or club you intend to go to, you may want to avoid any arguments or confrontations with cab drivers and just tell them where you wish for them to take you.
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The police in Delhi and the neighbouring township of Noida are investigating at least four complaints filed by journalists who say they have received death threats on the social messaging platform WhatsApp over the past two weeks. One journalist even received a phone call threatening him after he first got three threats via WhatsApp.
Delhi Police spokesperson Madhur Verma said that the police had lodged three complaints and registered a First Information Report in connection with one of them. Superintendent of Police (Noida City) Arun Kumar Singh said that one complaint was being investigated by the force’s cyber cell. The police are yet to identify any people in connection with these threats.
The threat messages are virtually identical, referring to journalist Gauri Lankesh, who was murdered in Bengaluru by unidentified assailants on September 5, and warning that journalists critical of the Modi government, the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh “will not be spared” and will “be removed”.
Several journalists working in the Delhi-National Capital Region area have revealed that they have received these messages, but have not followed up with the police.
Multiple threats
On September 16, a journalist with The Quint started receiving several rape and death threats on various social media platforms after the website uploaded a video in which she described the lyrics of a rap song Bol Na Aunty Aau Kya as sexist and abusive.
Among the many messages the journalist received, one was unrelated to the song in question. The message, composed in Hindi, was sent to her via WhatsApp. It read:
“Why was Gauri Lankesh killed? Gauri Lankesh was a journalist. She was killed in Bangalore by some Hindutva group. The question that arises is why would any Hindutva element kill a Hindu person. Because Gauri used to write against the Modi government. Gauri used to write against RSS and BJP. Gauri was a traitor. She was anti-nationalist and anti-Hindu. Now, if anyone in this country dares to write anything against Modi ji, RSS or BJP, that person will not be spared. The existence of such persons shall be removed along with the Muslims.”
The matter was reported to the Noida police, and The Quint later removed the video.
On September 21, Debobrat Ghose, working as a chief reporter with Firstpost, received the message referring to Gauri Lankesh three times from two different numbers. He went to the police after a phone call followed in which an unknown person threatened him.
Sohini Guharoy, a journalist with The Quint, said that at least two other colleagues received the threat message between September 17 and September 20. “The message is unrelated to the stories the journalists have pursued in recent time,” said Roy. She added that both the journalists had nothing to do with The Quint’s video criticising the lyrics of Bol Na Aunty Aau Kya either.
‘Number not reachable’
Some journalists who have received the threats are baffled. They say they cannot recall any reports they have worked on recently that would lead to people wanting to threaten them.
Some of them received the message from multiple numbers. A few tried to call these numbers back but got “switched off” or “out of reach” messages.
Abhay Kumar, who works with Asian News International, received one such message on September 17. The number was unreachable when he tried calling back. He did not officially complain to the police but raised the matter informally in a WhatsApp group comprising journalists and members of the Delhi Police.
A Delhi-based journalist with a news organisation received the threat message from three different phone numbers – two on September 20 evening and one the next morning. “I am quite vocal on social media but it seems unlikely that I have been targeted for any news story,” he said. “I cannot say that it is scary as contact details of journalists are easily accessible through various sources.”
The Western Uttar Pradesh correspondent for The Hindu, Mohammad Ali, received a threat from a phone number that had also been used to send a threat to the above-mentioned journalist. “I have received threats before for which I even had to move home once, in Meerut,” said Ali. “But those threats were quite specific to news stories that I had pursued. The recent one, however, is quite non-specific and random in nature.”
A senior political reporter with a news organisation was also sent the message from three different numbers on September 19. “I do not think any conclusion can be drawn on such threats at this stage,” he said. “It is possible that it is being done to malign a party or a political personality.”
The Delhi Police spokesperson said: “Anyone who receives such threats can lodge a complaint through our newly launched online forum.”
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In her review of two new books*, Laura Kipnis discusses the distinction between guilt and shame. (“The Deep, Dark, Ugly Thing,” by Laura Kipnis, Harper’s, May 2015, pg. 93) Guilt is an internal standard of personal values. Shame results from a violation of group standards. In the past, getting a divorce was shameful and until recently so was being a homosexual. In the west today, neither status is a reason to hide in the closet. The greatest shaming charge in modern times is of being a racist. (Ibid, pg. 93)
Shame as a public reckoning is a specialty of the media, though it has become a tool of the internet, as well. The difference between the two — media or the internet user — is that the former have to be accountable for the facts made public. If those facts are wrong — as they were in the case of The Rolling Stones magazine’s exposé about a gang rape at a fraternity house at the University of Virginia — the reporter and the organization which printed the story are liable for the misinformation. Unfortunately, Individuals who use the internet to shame others can hide behind false identities.
In one of the books under review, So You’ve Been Publically Shamed* by Jon Ronson, the author speculates that many attackers have been publically shamed, themselves. Someone exposed for animal abuse, for example, is likely to spread that shame to other abusers. (Ibid pg. 92). Jennifer Jacquet, author of “Is Shame Necessary?*, takes a different view. She supports shaming as non-violent resistance available to those who feel their values are under attack. (Ibid pg. 92)
Of course, not everyone can be shamed. After the 2009 financial crisis, few bankers came forward with a mea culpa. Instead, they took their hefty salaries and stock options as if the money were a vote of confidence.
There a good reasons to consider the role of shaming in society, however. The most important is whether or not we want any individual with a computer to sit in judgment on others? As James Q. Whitman, a professor at the Yale law School has warned, “shaming transfers the power to punish from the state to the public where it risks becoming ‘fickle and uncontrolled.’” (Ibid 92-93.)
We’ve seen the consequences of trial by media and the frenzy of judgment it can produce. The power of the internet can make that rush to judgment worse, and as members of a civil society, we should be aware of that consequence. The Greek philosopher Seneca once said,” Shame may restrain what law does not prohibit.” That may be so. But it is a dangerous tool in the 21st century. Lives can be destroyed with an electronic whisper that leaves the victim with no place to hide for the rest of his or her life.
It seems like the internet is functioning as the greatest equalizer humanity has ever seen. It will have both pitfalls and blessings. We humans will learn from them over time. I hope that the internet will enable humanity to develop a shared and compassionate set of values. But, hate-filled demagoguery remains a strong, countervailing force. Cautionary words like yours are a helpful contribution.
Caroline published a serialized novelette, Marie Eau-Claire, on the website, The Colored Lens. She also published the story Gustav Pavel, a parable about ordinary lives, choice and alternate potential, on the website Fixional.co.
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Thursday, July 10, 2008
DRAFTAGREEMENT BETWEEN THE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA AND THE INTERNATIONAL ATOMIC ENERGY AGENCY FOR THE APPLICATION OF SAFEGUARDS TO CIVILIAN NUCLEAR FACILITIES
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• India will place its civilian nuclear facilities under Agency safeguards so as to facilitate full civil nuclear cooperation between India and Member States of the Agency and to provide assurance against withdrawal of safeguarded nuclear material from civilian use at any time;
An essential basis of India's concurrence to accept Agency safeguards under an India-specific safeguards agreement (hereinafter referred to as "this Agreement") is the conclusion of international cooperation arrangements creating the necessary conditions for India to obtain access to the international fuel market, including reliable, uninterrupted and continuous access to fuel supplies from companies in several nations, as well as support for an Indian effort to develop a strategic reserve of nuclear fuel to guard against any disruption of supply over the lifetime of India's reactors; and
India may take corrective measures to ensure uninterrupted operation of its civilian nuclear reactors in the event of disruption of foreign fuel supplies;
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X. FINAL CLAUSES
107. India and the Agency shall, at the request of either of them, consult about amending this Agreement.
108. This Agreement shall enter into force on the date on which the Agency receives from India written notification that India's statutory and/or constitutional requirements for entry into force have been met.
109. This Agreement shall remain in force until, in accordance with its provisions, safeguards have been terminated on all items subject to this Agreement, or until terminated by mutual agreement of the parties to this Agreement.
II.
CNDP Condemns Intransigence of Indian Prime Minister on the Deplorable Indo-US Nuclear Deal
The Coalition for Nuclear Disarmament and Peace (CNDP)
- a national coalition of organisations and individuals for nuclear disarmament - notes with great concern the Indian Prime Minister's obstinate insistence on going ahead with clinching of the India-specific agreement with the IAEA. This will be a vital intermediate step towards operationalising the Indo-US nuclear deal in the teeth of strong opposition within India. The Prime Minister wants to go ahead, trampling upon democratic norms and values, regardless
of all rational considerations, let alone ethical ones.
The CNDP reiterates its consistent and firm opposition to the deal on the following grounds as pointed out repeatedly in the past. The deal severely undermines the prospects of global nuclear disarmament by (selectively and arbitrarily) "legitimising" India's nuclear status and, in the process, the possession of nuclear weapons by the existing nuclear weapon states
both "recognised" and "unrecognised" - and also the aspirations of other actual and potential aspirants.The deal will promote the cause of nuclear militarism and nuclear-weapon build-up in India against the interests of peace and the people in the region. It will further intensify the arms race between India and Pakistan
both nuclear and conventional. Pakistan, in fact, made a strong plea for a similar deal. And the brusque refusal by the US,
instead of dissuading it, would only further inflame its passions and thereby turn the nuclear mess in South Asia all the more dangerous. This deal is also an utterly reprehensible move to bring India closer into the US orbit as a regional ally to facilitate the execution of its global imperial ambitions. Furthermore, the consequent shift in focus in favour of highly expensive nuclear power, if the deal comes into operation, will significantly distort India's energy options at the cost of efforts to develop environmentally benign and renewable sources of energy.
The CNDP, on this occasion, calls upon the Indian people to rise in protest against the intransigence of the Prime Minister and voice their strongest opposition to the undemocratic move to impose the deplorable deal on the country.
The 'Deal' as and when, and if at all, comes through will grievously undermine the current global regime of nuclear nonproliferation, as it is meant to make a unique exception in case India, in gross violation of the underlying principles of the NPT, and thereby also the prospects of global nuclear disarmament. The fact that Pakistan has been brusquely refused a similar deal by the US in spite of persistent clamouring and Iran is being demonstratively coerced to desist from developing its own nuclear fuel cycle technology, integral to nuclear power production allowed and encouraged under the Article IV of the NPT, further brings out graphically the abominable discriminatory nature of the 'Deal'. Moreover, the lesson that one would tend to learn is that if one can weather the initial storms of international censures after breaking the nonproliferation taboo, things would normalise in a while. One may even get rewarded in the process. This is sure to trigger off stepped up vertical and horizontal proliferations. Moreover, by enabling India to import fuel, natural or enriched uranium, from abroad, the 'Deal' would make it possible for India to use the indigenously produced uranium exclusively for Bombmaking. This possible escalation in its fissile material production capacity is, in all likelihood, push Pakistan further to nuclearise even at a great cost, and thereby aggravate tensions and accelerate arms race in the region with spinechilling consequences.
It'd also further cement the growing (unequal) strategic ties between the US and India and thereby would add momentum to the US project for unfettered global dominance and Indian craze to emerge as a global power basking in the reflected glory of the global headman. It'd just not only undermine India's position as a founding and leading member of the NAM, it'd also pose a very serious challenge to the NAM and its objectives in terms of radically raised level of US domination on the global scene. India's rather meek submission to highly deplorable and dangerous threats issued and postures adopted by the Bush regime in relation to Iran and its nuclear programme instead of trying to find a just and fair solution in terms of having a Weapons of Mass Destruction free MiddleEast including Israel is a clear and extremely worrisome pointer. India's keenness to join the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI) initiated by the US to interdict any vessel in international waters suspected of carrying (unauthorised!) nuclear materials, in gross violation of all international laws and also the Ballistic Missile Defence (BMD) programme of the US are another two highly disturbing indicators. India's growing closeness with Israel, the frontline state of the US in the Middle East, would also pick up further pace in the process.
This 'Deal' would obviously distort India's energy options by diverting scarce resources to developments of resource guzzling, intrinsically hazardous and potentially catastrophic, nuclear power at the cost of ecologically benign renewable sources of energy. This would, furthermore, provide a strong boost to the nuclear industry worldwide, particularly the potential suppliers from the US. And that's precisely why the business lobby in the US is working overtime to get
the 'Deal' clinched. The recent visit by the Russian President Vladimir Putin to India as the guest of honour at the Republic Day event and his public commitment to supply additional nuclear reactors to India and work for the safe passage of the 'Deal' through the NSG underscores the convergence of interests of the nuclear power lobbies worldwide as regards the 'Deal' and the new market that it is promising to open up.
Unquote
[Excerpted from the Resolution adopted at the International Seminar on this issue held by the CNDP in Mumbai in March 2007 in collaboration with the Afro-Asian Peoples' Solidarity Organisation (AAPSO), headquartered in Cairo, and Vikas Adhyayn Kendra (VAK), Mumbai with the active and moral support of many others.]
India's civil nuclear agreement with the United States may have cleared a key hurdle in New Delhi this week, but it appears unlikely to win final approval in the U.S. Congress this year, raising the possibility that India could begin nuclear trade with other countries even without the Bush administration's signature deal, according to administration officials and congressional aides.
Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has struggled to keep his coalition government intact over the controversial deal to give New Delhi access to U.S. nuclear technology for the first time since it conducted a nuclear test in 1974. This week, he secured an agreement with the Samajwadi Party to back the deal, giving him enough support to retain his majority even as the Communists bolted over fears that the pact would infringe on India's sovereignty.
But the legislation passed in 2006 -- the so-called Hyde Act -- that gave preliminary approval to the U.S.-India agreement, requires that Congress be in 30 days of continuous session to consider it. Congressional aides said that clock can begin to tick only once India clears two more hurdles -- completing an agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency, and securing approval from the 45 nations that form the Nuclear Suppliers Group, which governs trade in reactors and uranium. Because of the long August recess, less than 40 days are left in the session before Congress adjourns on Sept. 26.
"At this point, both [the IAEA and NSG actions] have to take place in the next couple of weeks" for the deal to be considered by Congress, said Lynne Weil, spokeswoman for the House Foreign Affairs Committee. But the IAEA Board of Governors is not expected to take up the matter until August, whereas the NSG may take several months to reach a consensus.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has repeatedly insisted there will be no lame-duck session after the Nov. 4 elections. There would be little incentive for the Democratic majority to hold a lame-duck session if, as expected, the Democrats significantly gain seats.
President Bush's agreement with India, considered a key part of his foreign policy legacy, is designed to solidify Washington's relationship with a fast-emerging economic power. Bush and Singh agreed to the pact in July 2005, but it has faced repeated delays and opposition in both countries.
Now, with the near impossibility of congressional passage by year-end, officials and experts have begun to focus on the possibility that other countries -- such as France and Russia -- would rush in to make nuclear sales to India while U.S. companies still face legal restrictions.
"India doesn't need the U.S. deal at all" once the NSG grants approval, said Sharon Squassoni, senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "It was a fatal flaw in the logic of the U.S. Congress."
A State Department official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was discussing congressional strategy, agreed. "I don't believe there is anything to prevent them from doing that, if we don't ratify it," he said, noting the irony of the United States not profiting from a deal it set in motion.
But he suggested the administration would use that awkward situation to pressure Congress not to thwart potential business opportunities for American companies. "It is the hidden force of this agreement," the official said. "It is U.S. business that sees an opportunity."
Ever since the deal was struck, the administration has performed a balancing act between adhering to the letter of U.S. nonproliferation law and assuaging Indian concerns that it was not being treated like a true nuclear power. This year, when the administration answered nearly 50 questions posed by Congress about a separate implementing agreement negotiated with India, it took the unusual step of insisting the answers remain secret for fear of torpedoing the agreement.
India, which is running short of uranium needed to fuel its reactors, is especially eager to win "clean" agreements with the IAEA and the NSG that would not result in fuel cutoffs if it decides to resume testing nuclear weapons.
Sen. John McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, is a strong supporter of the agreement, but Sen. Barack Obama, his Democratic rival, is more skeptical. During the congressional debate on the Hyde Act, Obama inserted language in the bill limiting the amount of nuclear fuel supplied to India from the United States to deter nuclear testing.
Quote
A very interesting aspect, which has, rather surprisingly, not attracted the attention of the media as yet, is that in the event of the 'Deal' passing through the NSG barrier but floundering at the US Congress, for whatever reasons, the other 44 members of the NSG would be able to have nuclear commerce with
India as per its amended rules, but the US will not.
It is precisely this scenario the Russian, French, Canadian players must at times be just fantasising about.
Unquote]
Government nod contradicts Pranab's assurance that the process will begin only after trust vote
Restriction on circulating text only for IAEA
New Delhi: Contrary to External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee's assurance that the process of finalising India's safeguards agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency would begin only after the United Progressive Alliance won a vote of confidence in Parliament, the government has given the go-ahead for the draft text to be forwarded to the Agency's Board of Governors.
In a statement issued on Wednesday evening, the IAEA Secretariat said that "at the request of the government of India," the draft safeguards agreement had been circulated to the 35-nation Board "for its consideration."
It added that the Chairman of the Board "is consulting with Board members to agree on a date for a meeting when the Agreement would be considered" and that the text of the draft was not public.
The Board is scheduled to meet on July 28 to discuss an unrelated matter, but an attempt could be made to make the India draft an agenda item for that meeting.
At a press conference on Tuesday, Mr. Mukherjee was asked when the government intended to send the agreement to the IAEA Board. He replied this would be done only after the government demonstrated it had majority support in the Lok Sabha.
IAEA sources in Vienna told The Hindu that although safeguards agreements normally circulated for 45 days before being taken up by the Board for approval, the Chairman — currently Chilean Ambassador Milenko E. Skoknic — was consulting with member- states to see if this process could be accelerated. "Because both the U.S. and India are pushing, this can be speeded up. But at the same time, there is concern that the agreement not be rammed down the throat of states which have reservations," the sources said.
The IAEA sources also refuted Mr. Mukherjee's claim that Agency rules prevented India from sharing its draft safeguards agreement with anybody it wants.
The Secretariat is obliged to follow a certain procedure for circulating documents such as a safeguards agreement to the Board of Governors, the sources said, but these procedures do not apply to the member state which is party to that agreement.
Asked pointedly whether Mr. Mukherjee was correct in saying India could not circulate the safeguards text to "third parties without going through laid down procedures of the IAEA," a senior IAEA official said, "I don't think this is something we could restrict India from doing."
"As far as the Secretariat is concerned, we are not in the position of making safeguards agreements available for public distribution. We only put them up to the Board members. What each member does with them is up to it," the official said, adding, "I don't think India is bound by this procedure."
In their statement announcing withdrawal of support to the United Progressive Alliance, the Left parties had cited the refusal of the government to share the safeguards text with them as a major breach of understanding.
Replying to them on Tuesday, Mr. Mukherjee had referred to the safeguards text as a "privileged document held in confidence between GOI and the IAEA Secretariat." If the Left leaders wanted the full text, they "would have to join the government in order to access [it]," he said. In a press conference the same day, he described the safeguards agreement as a "confidential document" and claimed the IAEA's rules stipulated that "until the text was shown to the Board it can't be shown to others."
The IAEA official said the rule cited by the Minister was correct. But it applied only to the IAEA Secretariat.
The IAEA Statute contains no reference to tying a member state to a set procedure for the circulation of documents. The only reference to confidentiality of information is in Article VII, which deals with the obligations of the IAEA staff. In all other documents such as safeguards agreements and Additional Protocols, the obligation to maintain confidentiality applies to the IAEA and not to the signatory state.
VI.
http://www.hindu.com/2008/07/10/stories/2008071055611100.htm
Hindu July 10, 2008
Left queries on safeguards thrust spotlight on 'corrective measures'
Siddharth Varadarajan
The government feels vagueness keeps international critics at bay.
Following the formal withdrawal of Left support to the United Progressive Alliance, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and its three partners have issued a statement challenging the government's decision to keep the text of the safeguards agreement negotiated with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) a "secret."
Fearing a disconnect between the government's assurances and the actual text, the Left said it had five pointed concerns about the agreement that the UPA had not addressed. These were: (1) In case the U.S. or other countries in the NSG renege on fuel supply assurances for imported reactors, will we have the ability to withdraw these reactors from IAEA safeguards? (2) If U.S./NSG countries renege on fuel supply assurances, can we withdraw our indigenous civilian reactors from IAEA safeguards? (3) If we have to bring nuclear fuel from the non-safeguarded part of our nuclear programme for these reactors in case of fuel supply assurances not being fulfilled, will we have the ability to take (the spent fuel) back again? (4) What are the corrective steps that India can take if fuel supplies are interrupted by the U.S./NSG countries? (5) What are the conditions that India will have to fulfil if the corrective steps are to be put into operation?
Though the Left has raised five separate queries, they all revolve around the one big imponderable that has animated both the United States government and the nuclear deal's non-proliferation critics internationally ever since India came up with its separation plan on March 2, 2006: Just what exactly is meant by the phrase "corrective measures"? These are the measures India says it may take "to ensure uninterrupted operation of its civilian nuclear reactors in the event of disruption of foreign fuel supplies." The phrase, which appears in paragaraph 15(c) of the Separation Plan, was a condition the Indian negotiators tagged on to the list of fuel supply assurances they said India needed in order to accept the American demand to "place its civilian nuclear facilities under India-specific safeguards in perpetuity and negotiate an appropriate safeguards agreement to this end with the IAEA."
Both during the hard-fought talks on March 1 and 2, 2006, and subsequently, in the negotiations the two sides held on the 123 agreement, the Indian team constantly parried all American attempts to spell out or define just what was meant by "corrective measures." Egged on by the American non-proliferation lobby, U.S. officials wanted to know, for example, whether corrective measures would include the withdrawal of a civilian facility from safeguards. Indian officials stonewalled, pointing out that since the eventuality of corrective measures could only arise if the continuous operation of India's civilian
nuclear reactors was interrupted, it was essential that fuel arrangements be as foolproof and watertight as possible.
When, during the 123 negotiations, the Indian team found the U.S. side backsliding on the commitments contained in paragraph 15 of the Separation Plan, a major fight ensued. The result was that the entire paragraph was incorporated into the 123 agreement by 'cut and paste.'
Though declining to provide details, sources familiar with the draft safeguards agreement said the compromise package contained in paragraph 15 of the Separation Plan had been "fully protected" in the text India has negotiated with the IAEA secretariat and that the country had a range of rights it could invoke should the need arise.
The truth of this assertion can only be established once the safeguards agreement is made public but even then, it is unlikely that the text will shed any fresh light on the Left's specific questions. Nor is the UPA likely to be more forthcoming than it has been so far.
For the government, the dilemma is a difficult one. The vagueness of language has helped India keep the nuclear deal's critics abroad guessing, thereby blunting one of their main allegations that the nuclear agreement represents a "proliferation risk." Critics overseas are arguing that "corrective measures" means India reserves the right to withdraw safeguarded facilities from international inspection at some point in the future and may indeed do so once it has imported enough nuclear fuel to make up its domestic shortfall.
But in the politically charged domestic arena, where the government finds itself accused of compromising the national interest, the same opaqueness of phraseology is now inviting further suspicion. Were the Prime Minister to fend off his domestic critics by providing the assurances they seek, chances are the level of international opposition to the nuclear agreement would increase dramatically. Silence, however, is not an option either, especially since the government has not been entirely convincing in its arguments with the Left and other critics on other aspects of the nuclear deal such as the impact it might
have and has already had on the conduct of the country's foreign and defence policy.
By citing the precedent of Tarapur, which was left in the lurch after the Americans cut off fuel, the CPI(M) and its allies have pointed to a potential vulnerability that the Department of Atomic Energy and government insist they have sought to protect the country from. Imported reactors without the fuel to run them would be little more than (radioactive) white elephants. But whichever way one defines "corrective measures," it is hard to see how these would lead to the flow of fuel for a safeguarded reactor whose supplies have been cut off.
Fuel supplies may be withheld if India were to test another nuclear weapon, especially if the present international moratorium on testing continues to hold or actually gets converted into all the major nuclear weapon states signing and ratifying the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. Under such a situation, the only insurance India can hope to rely on would be the strategic stockpile of fuel that it would presumably have built up prior to any resumption of testing.
Of course, fuel can be cut off for other reasons too. Again, a general stockpile would provide some comfort, though the inventory carrying cost and safety implications of holding nuclear fuel reserves would need to be taken into account. At the same time, the best guarantee for the uninterrupted running of safeguarded reactors would be the emergence of an international political environment in which India, as an important power, could have full confidence. This, in turn, would mean pursuing a foreign policy that privileges polycentrism rather than unipolarity, a point the government's critics accuse it of forgetting.
'Corrective' measures, in the final analysis, are less important than 'pre-emptive' ones. Somewhere in the debate over text, the wider context of politics should not be lost sight of.
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This article was originally published by the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP) in July 2016.
The Assad family reign has been marked by the ubiquitous intrusion of the Alawite-dominated security apparatus on the micro-level. The demise of the regime’s vast network of repression in many regions has resulted in local patterns of governance, restoring or generating old and new elites. With the jihadist ascendency, many of the emerging structures have been smothered by religious ideology. Yet, under the surface, local power has been shaped by area-specific relationships and embedded cultures. Support from Western actors has increasingly focused on local actors who are seen as being opposed to the Islamic State or al-Qaeda. Without a fundamental change in the nature of the regime, however, prospects for harnessing such local dynamics for the larger objective of stabilization will remain limited.
Until the 2011 uprising, the security apparatus had prevented the emergence of local actors, except for those linked to the regime. The security agents, overwhelmingly belonging to the minority Alawite sect, lived off – and enriched themselves through – extortion and protection rackets while providing a certain order. In areas under regime control, this system still holds. But where regime troops pulled out, it unraveled, and many local populations reclaimed ownership of their communities. These rebel areas are largely populated by Sunni Muslims and comprise parts of northern, central, and southern Syria outside the control of the regime as well as the so-called Islamic State.
To deal with the vacuum of governance created by the retreat of the regime, activists set up local councils and coordinated with the nascent Free Syrian Army (FSA). Starting in 2012, the jihadist ascendency and the influx of foreign fighters undermined the civic roots of the revolt and challenged the local structures of self-governance. But the jihadists could not monopolize control over the rebel areas. Despite their firepower and use of violence, jihadists’ influence differs from one area to the other and depends on the clout of new or resurgent local elites, local religious and societal traditions, and the balance of power between the different rebel groups. Social imbalances relating to class and wealth and the legacy of social engineering employed by the Baath regime over decades likewise play a role. Ideologically, the local populations responded differently to the jihadist creed, and often remained committed to the moderate core values that have been the hallmark of Islam as practiced in Syria for centuries.
Al-Qaeda vs. the Southern Clans
An example of local structures curbing extremism played out in the southern Hauran Plain, the original birthplace of the revolt and the biggest remaining stronghold of the Arab and Western-backed FSA. Across Syria, the quiet spread of Salafist beliefs brought back by Syrian expatriates returning from Saudi Arabia as well as veterans of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq had prepared the ground for jihadism. Salafism in the south, however, remained tempered by Damascus-based clerics adhering to a rational tradition of Islam, who wielded influence over the area through trade links extending all the way to the Arab peninsula. A small branch of the Masalmeh clan, some of whom had fought in Iraq and Afghanistan, formed a group that eventually linked up with the Nusra Front, and then with the self-declared Islamic State, and fought FSA units in Deraa. Yet, their influence remained limited, not least because their attempts to impose strict social codes (for instance, beating men who were caught smoking) did not go down well with a population that has traditionally combined devoutness with a degree of personal freedom.
Hauran’s social organization into large clans also stood in the way of the jihadists. For instance, in 2014 a Nusra Front cell in Deraa, comprised mainly of members of the Hariri clan, pressured local clerics to declare an FSA unit as being comprised of kuffar (unbelievers) for receiving Western backing. The Nusra Front members encountered resistance from their own relatives in the Hariri clan, as the unit in question was led by an officer from the Nusairat clan, raising the specter of a blood feud between two major Haurani clans.
Social Decline Amplifies Jihadist Appeal
With the demise of formal governance, the clan as a social entity underwent a resurgence after the revolt. Clan structures and coherence, however, have been affected by the deteriorating living standards and the alienation of a new generation of poor youth wrought by the civil war – factors that have played into the hands of the Islamic State with its abundant cash reserves. Similar to the rest of rebel Syria, many youngsters were 12 to 14 years old when the revolt started and have been without education for more than five years. In private, local FSA commanders backed by the United States complain that their proposals to subsidize vulnerable youth with as little as $50 per month – so that they would stay home rather than join the Islamic State for the money – were turned down by Washington.
More than the Nusra Front, the Islamic State appears to have a micro understanding of the workings of local powers. For instance, the group won allies by helping to restore local elites who had been sidelined by the coercive realignments of society and the economy deployed by Hafez al-Assad to broaden the social base of his regime. In 2012, a rebel group called the Yarmouk Martyrs Brigade was formed in the Yarmouk River Valley near the border with Jordan and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. The group’s leader – a descendant of a local notable family by the name of Abu Ali al-Baridi – had links with senior jihadists, veterans of the Afghanistan war with access to cash through apparent links with al-Qaeda. The founders also included the Jaounis, a large family of Palestinian origin. Freed from the control of the Assad regime, the Baridis and Jaounis reestablished themselves as the de facto rulers of the Yarmouk Valley. When initial Jordanian funding dried up in 2015, Baridi apparently allied himself with the Islamic State. As a result, fighting started between the Yarmouk Martyrs and the Nusra Front, as well as Jordanian-backed FSA brigades. In November 2015, Baridi, his deputy Abu Abdallah al-Jaouni, and others in the top leadership tier of the group were killed in a suicide attack in the village of Jamleh, possibly with the help of a local clan at odds with the Baridis. That did not spell the end of the Yarmouk Martyrs, though: the combination of the difficult terrain and the standing of the Jaouni and the Baridi clans has proved hard to defeat.
Although the FSA has held its ground in the south, power centers built around it have in some cases compounded imbalances resulting from deteriorating economic conditions, providing inroads for the Islamic State. The FSA brigades in Hauran, most of whom are linked to the US-led Military Operations Centre in Jordan, are underpinned by membership from prominent local clans. In contrast, one group, called Jaish al-Jihad, originated in a camp in Deraa for refugees from the Golan Heights and their descendants. Lacking both clan pedigree and resources, Jaish al-Jihad received little local or outside support, making it receptive to the Islamic State, with which it eventually struck an alliance. Conversely, Jaish al-Jihad’s lack of clan backing also made it easier for the FSA to take on this group, as opposed to the Yarmouk Martyrs.
Local Pragmatism
In other areas of Syria, local communities lacking any external support often tended to deal with the jihadists pragmatically. In southern parts of Idlib province, local elites needed the Nusra Front’s firepower to ward off regime attacks. But they hedged their bets by striking alliances with other Islamist – though less radical – groups.
Idlib province, which borders Turkey, fell completely under rebel control in 2015 after an offensive mostly carried out by an on-and-off alliance between the Nusra Front and its Salafist rival, Ahrar al-Sham. In the town of Kfar Nubul – a community on the fringes of Idlib, where civic activists with an egalitarian orientation were particular well organized – the local FSA brigade maintained a presence by simultaneously cooperating with the Nusra Front and playing on the rivalry between the Nusra Front and Ahrar al-Sham. Interestingly, many supporters of the Nusra Front in the town are former Baath functionaries who were excluded from the civic organizations established after the revolt, and joined the Islamists to preserve their positions and protect themselves. To avoid confrontation, locals have tended to observe Nusra Front edicts to close down shops during prayer time, but many support Ahrar al-Sham. Unlike in other towns, where Nusra was able to monopolize the supply of bread, Ahrar al-Sham and the FSA brigades also run their own bakeries in Kfar Nubul, denying the Front the power that comes with control over this crucial staple. But the balance in Kfar Nubul – and the capacity of the local council to maneuver between the jihadi groups – has been tenuous. Council members have been kidnapped for allegedly supporting rival groups, prompting civic activists to call for all armed groups to leave the town. The Nusra Front responded by closing down an independent radio station in Kfar Nubul in June 2016. Shortly after, the founder of the station was injured in an assassination attempt in Aleppo, while a prominent citizen journalist in his company was killed in the attack. Still, all-out warfare has been avoided in Kfar Nubul, as most members of the armed factions hail from Kfar Nubul itself and have showed a degree of local sensibility, aided by a historical lack of class and clan differences in the town.
In turf battles with other rebels in Idlib, the Nusra Front also appears to have been aware of the local element. When the group attacked installations belonging to the local FSA unit in the town of Maarat al-Numaan in 2015 and encountered local protests, only Nusra Front troops recruited from outside the town were used. Apparently, the Nusra Front preferred to not test the loyalty of members recruited from Maarat al-Numaan by having them shoot at their fellow townsfolk. Pragmatism has also been a dominant feature in the al-Rouj region, which is a collection of agricultural villages in the southwest of Idlib province. Here, the Nusra Front has been seen as a bulwark against regime forces concentrated in the neighboring governorate of Latakia. But its welcome has been tempered by weariness of foreign and non-local Syrian fighters, such as Beduin who were driven out of their home area around Deir al-Zor by the Islamic State. Seen as overzealous and contemptuous toward the locals, these Beduin units have caused significant resentment.
Jihadists Compensate for Scarce Resources
Yet, the fate of homegrown groups that took on the Nusra Front on their own have served as cautionary tales for others in the region. One was the Idlib Martyrs Brigade, formed in 2012 by members of the Sayyed Issa family, which had been persecuted by the regime in the 1980s for supporting the Muslim Brotherhood. In 2013, the Idlib Martyrs were defeated by the Nusra Front in battles in the western Idlib countryside. The Nusra Front hounded the remaining members of the group for months after the confrontation, killing them or forcing some to join their fighting units, where they were used as cannon fodder on the front lines. Other local rebel groups such as the so-called Free Men of the Middle Mountain Brigade attempted to ward off encroachment by the Nusra Front by joining its main rival, Ahrar al-Sham. Such alliances were, however, often merely tactical and did not reflect commitment to the group’s Salafist creed, but rather the lack of – and urgent need for – external support to hold their ground against the jihadis. Ultimately, the need for resources – initially to fight the regime, and later competing groups – remains the key factor that determines how rebel groups deal with the jihadis. This is obvious in the trajectory of the Homs-based rebel group, which staged one of the landmark attacks on Assad’s forces during the initial phase of the revolt’s militarization. In November 2011, rebels from the Khalidiya neighborhood killed six pilots and other military personnel in an ambush set up to take hostages, who would then be exchanged for men from Khalidiya who had been arrested by the regime during the initially peaceful protests in Homs. The operation went awry when the soldiers on the bus detected the ambush, and all were killed in the firefight that ensued. The rebel squad operated under an FSA banner, but the men who attacked the bus were financed by a Syrian expatriate from Khalidiya who lived in Saudi Arabia. When this funding dried up, the group, which was led by the former imam of a Khalidiya mosque known as Abu Yazan, shifted allegiance to the Nusra Front; when the latter’s position in the Homs region deteriorated, they switched allegiance to the Islamic State. All along, their objectives remained local, first and foremost. While focused on taking revenge against the regime for the violence it had dealt the neighborhood, Abu Yazan remained highly pragmatic. Any ally who would help fight the Assad regime was welcome.
Resilience of a Civic Model
In other cases, local religious traditions constitute another element in understanding the dynamics of the conflict. On the grassroots level, political and religious awareness sometimes have provided the means to address local tensions, deal with jihadists, and cope with the regime’s siege warfare. Most of the hinterland of Damascus – a patchwork of recently built-up areas and farmland known as the Ghouta – is overwhelmingly Sunni. Salafi thought has been spreading in such areas since the American-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. Yet, the town of Daraya in the southwestern Ghouta stood out for its particular tradition of civic awareness underpinned by religious commitment. Founded by the Islamic scholar Jawdat Saeed, the Daraya school had developed an Islamic theory of civic and peaceful resistance against oppressive rulers. Unlike Sunni clerics backed by the regime, who bestowed religious legitimacy on Hafez al-Assad while steering the populace away from politics, Saeed called for political engagement. His body of work is also positioned against the approach of the late Sayyid Qutb, an Egyptian Islamist ideologue whose theories had a formative influence on the founders of al-Qaeda.
Already a decade before the revolt, youth from Daraya had embarked on campaigns to clean the streets and improve conditions in their neglected suburb. To the regime, such civic activities were a challenge to its monopoly over all forms of social organization. Dozens were arrested, tortured, or forced to flee the country. When the revolt broke out, these pre-existing local structures and experiences generated large demonstrations and a council staffed by educated members who worked along specialized lines. Daraya became a civic model for many Syrians opposed to Assad, and accordingly was dealt a particularly brutal crackdown early on. Three Daraya youth injured by regime gunfire at a pro-democracy demonstration were shot dead in their beds at a government hospital. Ghiyath Matar, a 25-year-old follower of Saeed, distributed flowers and water to Assad’s soldiers, but was arrested, tortured, and killed by Airforce Intelligence in September 2011. Western ambassadors, who were still in Damascus at the time, went collectively to Daraya to pay their condolences, but the gesture did nothing to mitigate the crackdown. Attracted by the Daraya model, Issam Zaghloul, a Damascene lawyer, went to the suburb and embarked on setting up an independent court. Secret police abducted Zaghloul from his office in Damascus, and he is presumed to have died in Assad’s security dungeons. In one of several regime offensives, the mostly Alawite Republican Guards overran Daraya in 2012 and summarily executed hundreds of young men. The killings spurred large- scale armed resistance in Daraya that drove out Assad’s forces from most of the suburb, which fell under regime siege later in the same year. The rebels, many of whom were local protesters who took up arms after the crackdown, remained in close coordination with the local council and refrained from interfering in it. Daraya also relied on the support of expatriates from the town as well as educated youth who had fled the crackdown but resumed their activism in Turkey and the West. Under international pressure, in June 2016 the regime allowed the first food delivery into Daraya since 2012, where several thousand civilians – of an original population of 80,000 – still live under siege. Today, Daraya is highly vulnerable to fall to a renewed regime offensive after extensive aerial bombardment weakened the rebels’ defense parameters.
Tales of Two Cities
By contrast, in the eastern part of the Ghouta, a harsher and power-hungry school of Islam produced an undemocratic model of rebel governance that exacerbated local differences and became prone to corruption. The region was also an early casualty of the regime’s strategy to undermine the civic and peaceful orientation of the revolt by injecting radical elements. In June 2011, the authorities released Zahran Alloush from prison – a Salafist cleric and a native of Douma, one of the largest suburbs in Eastern Ghouta – along with other jihadists who had fought in Iraq. With Saudi financial backing, Alloush set up what by 2013 became the “Army of Islam” (Jaish al-Islam), which evolved into one of the largest rebel groups – numbering an estimated 15,000 fighters – as well as being one of the most well-equipped and funded. A key figure in securing support from Riyadh has been Alloush’s father, Abdullah, a preacher in exile with close links to the Wahhabi clerical establishment, which underpins the Saudi monarchy. Initially, Jaish al-Islam captured large arms depots from the regime and had supply routes opened to Jordan and Turkey, before Assad’s troops and Iranian-backed Shi’ite militia imposed a tight siege on the Eastern Ghouta. In 2014, Jaish al-Islam expelled the Islamic State from Eastern Ghouta, where it had made inroads in 2013 by relying on recruits drawn largely from Golan Heights refugees in the nearby district of Hajar al-Aswad.
Realizing the strength of Jaish al-Islam, the Nusra Front and other groups operating in Eastern Ghouta kept their heads low as Alloush consolidated power. But resentment rose against Alloush as he imprisoned members of other armed factions. Jaish al-Islam also stands accused of abducting four prominent secular activists who had taken refuge in Douma and disappeared in August 2014. The “Douma Four” include human rights lawyer Razan Zaitouneh, who, after the revolt, helped found grass- roots organizations known as local coordination committees, and Samira Khalil, a former political prisoner and wife of Yassin al-Khalil Haj-Saleh, a veteran leftist who is now in Istanbul.
Localized war economies that formed during the civil war also helped foster new networks and rivalries. Resentment grew over favoritism within Jaish al-Islam, but in particular about the group having exploited the siege imposed by the regime as a business opportunity. Situated at the edge of Eastern Ghouta, Douma became a hub for tunnels dug under a main highway that would supply the rebel districts of Qaboun and Barzeh, closer to Damascus. The tunnel trade disproportionally benefited Alloush’s protégés and merchants from Douma.
Unlike their peers in Damascus, most merchants in Douma had not hesitated to back the revolt. Many viewed themselves as discriminated against and marginalized by the regime’s alliance with the business class of the capital. Still, the Douma elite became seen as growing rich at the expense of the rest of Eastern Ghouta. Other rebels benefited from the tunnel trade, too. But Alloush, who was killed in an air strike in December 2015, became an embodiment of a revolt gone wrong. Jaish al-Islam undermined local governance by interfering in local councils and refused to submit to the authority of the Unified Judiciary Council – a tribunal including representatives of the various brigades in Eastern Ghouta that was supposed to arbitrate in disputes between rebel groups and as an independent court drawing on a mix of religious and civic law. But Jaish al-Islam refused to hand over hundreds of prisoners in its custody to the tribunal, many of whom had been captured in turf warfare and have not been heard from since. Families of the prisoners joined a growing civic protest movement in Ghouta against Jaish al-Islam, but to no avail. Male relatives of the prisoners often ended up joining the Nusra Front, motivated more by resentment against Jaish al-Islam than by jihadist leanings. Tension burst into open warfare in May 2016, with hundreds of fighters from Jaish al-Islam and rival rebel factions – including the Nusra Front – reportedly killed. The Assad regime and Hezbollah took advantage of the infighting and captured several towns and large tracts of agricultural land in the Eastern Ghouta virtually unopposed, reducing rebel territory in Eastern Ghouta approximately by a quarter.
At the same time, the limited ceasefire deal agreed upon by Russia and the United States in February 2016 reduced the threat of aerial bombings by the regime, encouraging civilians in Eastern Ghouta to take to the streets again and protest against the rebels across the board for endangering Eastern Ghouta. Jaish al-Islam’s conduct has also undermined its cohesiveness: members of a brigade stationed in the nearby Damascus district of Qaboun stayed away from the fighting in Eastern Ghouta, considering it a selfish and unnecessary turf war between Douma and the other towns.
Conclusions and Recommendations
The attitudes and interests of old and new local elites have played a main role in containing or expanding the jihadist reach. They have also provided governance where the Syrian state, which had been captured by the extended Assad clan, had been forced to withdraw. Any attempts to solve the Syrian conflict with diplomatic means and reconstruct Syria as a coherent political unit will have to rely on their cooperation. This may require difficult choices: by far not all of the groups and brigades that wield power on the ground and/or enjoy legitimacy among local populations may appear palatable to Western actors. At the same time, the high variety in local patterns of interaction indicate that behind the smoke screen of Islamist ideology, many groups may be receptive to incentives that lead to different approaches. For instance, a formation such as Ahrar al-Sham could be key. The group has often acted as a balancing force in rebel areas, and has been torn between hardliners and more pragmatic figures. Including the latter elements in a pacification process could be part of a larger process that separates those Islamists who are ready to respect a (admittedly low) minimum of democratic and humanitarian ground rules from the jihadi hard core that will have to be contained and rolled back by military force.
At the same time, such pragmatism finds its limits when it comes to a continuation of Assad’s rule and Alawite domination. Local alliances have shifted in sometimes unpredictable ways and several times over, but few, if any, rebels have ever sought or accepted support from regime troops and militias against their rivals. Thus, the current strategy pursued by Western nations and some Arab countries, such as Jordan and the United Arab Emirates, to restrict support to actors who make fighting the Islamic State and al-Qaeda a priority, while “leaving Assad for later,” is likely to backfire. Where FSA units appear to comply with these pressures, their local legitimacy suffers and jihadis gain support. For instance, in the south many activists already refer to the southern brigades of the FSA as Sahawat, an allusion to the Iraqi militias of that name which helped the American occupation forces to defeat al-Qaeda in Sunni-majority areas after 2006, but achieved few political gains for the Sunnis. In northern Syria, the United States has backed the Kurdish PYD (Democratic Union Party) – the Syrian branch of the PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party) – even as the group advanced beyond the areas traditionally settled by Kurds and into Arab territory. The PYD advance raises concern across local rebel communities that the Sunni rebel areas – with Western collusion – are being squeezed between the regime on the coast, the Islamic State to the east, the Kurdish militia in the north, and a Jordanian and Western-backed mercenary force in the south, with the objective of imposing a solution that amounts to little more than a facelift for the Assad regime.
International Diplomacy
On the diplomatic side, more and more members of the mainstream Syrian opposition see the negotiations in Geneva as an attempt to impose just such a formula, with changes being restricted to the formal makeup of the political institutions and a token increase of Sunnis and other communities in positions of nominal power.
Yet, the key for substantial change and for harnessing the civic and democratic potentials in Syrian society – including the local elites in the rebel areas – lies in a radical overhaul of the security sector, where the real power resides. Reform of the security sector is slotted as a topic in the Geneva peace talks and appears to be a priority for Germany, which is a member of the International Syria Support Group (ISSG). Russia, on the other hand, appears more than happy to endorse the security sector as is. But the enormous size, reach, and sectarian composition of the numerous security branches should be slashed. Only by turning them into fully accountable bodies operating under civilian law and politically neutral (or bi-partisan) oversight would a fundamental shift in the structure of the Syrian system be possible. It could also take the sting out of an increasingly sectarian discourse that blames Alawites as a sect – rather than the small circle of Alawites who hold the reins of power – for the crackdown on the revolt and the subsequent destruction that befell rebel areas.
The time for such an approach may be running out, however. Local elites are less and less able to integrate and control the youth in rebel areas, more and more of whom have become impoverished and uprooted and who are deprived of education. They form a ready recruiting ground for the Islamic State and other radical groups, which will undermine efforts to bring local communities into any framework that may be established through the Geneva process. On the other end of the spectrum, thousands of peaceful and educated Syrians have been languishing in Assad’s jails and underground dungeons since the crackdown on the revolt and the subsequent waves of arrests and abductions. Many have already died or disappeared, but their fates have been largely treated by the ISSG as a footnote. Aside from the humanitarian imperative, their presence could be crucial for the stabilization of the local level, especially if a settlement is reached that opens the way for them to reestablish themselves in their hometowns. The same holds true for the thousands of civic activists who fled the country and would need effective security guarantees to be able to return and contribute toward the restoration of state structures that would serve the Syrian people, rather than the survival in power of a small, corrupt, and excessively violent and sectarian elite.
About the Author
Khaled Yacoub Oweis is a fellow in the project “Local, regional and international dynamics in the Syria conflict” realized by the Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (SWP) and funded by the German Foreign Office.
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A thriller in the era of Wall Street rage
Thrillers defined mainstream Hollywood movies from the mid-’80s to the late ’90s. While they weren’t the kinds of movies that broke new A-listers on the regular, they certainly ensured that people like Michael Douglas, Richard Gere, Julia Roberts and Demi Moore remained huge. Thrillers were a cost-efficient way of bringing safe genre films to the masses — until they suddenly weren’t.
Watching Money Monster, I realized that people working as critics in the ’90s probably approached movies like Red Corner, Final Analysis or Sleeping With the Enemy with the same kind of weary pessimism that I have watching superhero movies these days. Their onslaught felt like product — and the fact that they’re rarely revisited as classics (or even camp classics) these days certainly suggest that. So why is Money Monster, a movie that could very well have popped on screens in 1996 with much of the same core cast, feel like such a breath of fresh air?
O’Connell and Jodie Foster
Lee Gates (George Clooney) is the clownish host of a financial talk show on the fictional FNN network. He dances around with old-man hip hop gusto and gives dubious financial advice, cynically making grand statements about which stocks to buy and which to dump. Gates is an insider himself, and rich enough not to give a shit about who he’s giving advice to.
On the eve of his director Patti (Julia Roberts) decamping to another station, Gates is supposed to interview the CEO (Dominic West) of a big financial company that just went belly-up, costing investors nearly $900-million dollars. The CEO is nowhere to be found as they’re about to go to air, but Kyle Budwell (Jack O’Connell) is; he’s one of the myriad “little people” who take Gates’s tips as gospel, and he’s out his entire life savings. Armed with a gun and a bomb vest, Kyle wants answers — live and on-air.
Take out the topical Wall Street stuff and O’Connell (you could swap him out for Edward Norton, for example) and Money Monster is straight out of 1996, seriocomic thriller fluff that purports to be about big things but is mostly about itself. There’s more than a little Inside Man, too, in the way director Jodie Foster (who starred, surprise surprise, in Inside Man) weaves the various parties working the hostage situation into a decently cohesive whole. Wall Street corruption is a pretty popular theme these days and Money Monster offers a fairly simplistic explanation of a fairly simple situation; unlike something like The Big Short, however, it’s slightly more honest about its explicative hand-holding. Both movies feature people yelling about financial investments, but only one of them has that character strapped with a bomb vest.
Clooney and Julia Roberts
Money Monster is never totally nerve-wracking, partially because it also has a solid sense of humour that somewhat undermines the stakes. Clooney particularly excels at instilling this fairly obvious character (blowhard with a soft interior, if you dig far enough) with a mixture of buffoonery and gravitas that he usually reserves for the Coen brothers. While it isn’t exactly satire, the film fully embraces the idea that it will have to go to absurd lengths to make its points and that the situations in which the characters find themselves may be undeniably silly. I’m all for preposterousness in genre films, acknowledged or not. While Money Monster sometimes dips into the doofy (one producer’s narratively necessary absence is explained through his application of erection cream for “testing purposes”), the fact that it veers at least twice into something resembling slapstick is pretty impressive.
I suppose if Money Monster had come out in 1996, it would’ve been significantly more serious and somber in tone. It would’ve kept the goofy cameraman (Lenny Venito) whose catchphrase is “balls” but more people would’ve been shot and the speechifying more intense. While not outwardly silly enough to be deemed a comedy, it’s more brazenly designed to entertain more than the other political films Clooney usually hitches his wagon to. It holds no particular secrets and shouldn’t really trigger any insane realizations in audiences. It’s certainly bizarre to fork over $13.50 to be told that the great injustice of the world is that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, but there are certainly worse ways to get obvious information. ■
Money Monster opens in theatres on Friday, May 13. Watch the trailer here:
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---
abstract: 'I explain an open conjecture by Braverman/Milatovic/Shubin (BMS) on the positivity of square integrable solutions $f$ of $(-\Delta+1)f\geq 0$ on a geodescially complete Riemannian manifold, and its connection to essential self-adjointness problems of covariant Schrödinger operators. The latter conjecture has remained open for more than 14 years now.'
author:
- Batu Güneysu
title: The BMS conjecture
---
Let $M$ be a smooth connected Riemannian manifold, equipped with its usual Riemannian volume measure ${d}\mu$. We denote the scalar Laplace-Beltrami operator with[^1] $-\Delta={d}^{\dagger}{d}$, and its Friedrichs realization in ${L}^2(M)$ with $H\geq 0$, where we understand all our spaces of functions to be complex-valued, unless otherwise stated. Let $E\to M$ be a smooth complex metric vector bundle with a smooth metric covariant derivative $\nabla$ thereon. Spaces of sections having a certain global or regularty $*$ will be denoted with $\Gamma_*$. For any Borel section $f$ of $E\to M$, the section $\mathrm{sign}(f)\in\Gamma_{L^{\infty}}(M,E)$ is defined by $$\mathrm{sign}(f)(x):=\begin{cases}&{\frac}{f(x)}{|f(x)|}, \>\text{ if } \>f(x)\ne 0\\
&0, \>\text{ else.}\end{cases}$$ The central result behind anything that follows is the following geometric variant of a classical distributional inequality by Kato [@kato2] (covariant Kato inequality): *For all $f\in\Gamma_{{L}^1_{{\mathrm{loc}}}}(M,E)$ with $\nabla^{\dagger}\nabla f\in\Gamma_{{L}^1_{{\mathrm{loc}}}}(M,E)$ weakly, one has the weak inequality* $$\begin{aligned}
\label{fkqq}
-\Delta |f|\leq \Re\left( \nabla^{\dagger}\nabla f,\mathrm{sign}(f)\right).\end{aligned}$$ A proof of the latter inequality can be found in [@braver]. It is in fact a local result which therefore holds without any further assumptions on $M$. Let us now pick a potential $$\begin{aligned}
\label{poteea}
0\leq V\in\Gamma_{{L}^2_{{\mathrm{loc}}}}(M,\mathrm{End}(E))\end{aligned}$$ and assume we want to prove that the symmetric nonnegative operator $(\nabla^{\dagger}\nabla+V)|_{\Gamma_{{C^{\infty}}_{{ c }}}(M,E)}$ in $\Gamma_{{L}^2}(M,E)$ is essentially self-adjoint. By an abstract functional analytic fact and some simple distribution theory, the latter essential self-adjoint is equivalent to the following implication: $$\begin{aligned}
\label{vor}
&f\in\Gamma_{{L}^2}(M,E),\>(\nabla^{\dagger}\nabla+V+1)f=0\>\text{ weakly }\\{\nonumber}&\Rightarrow \> f=0.\end{aligned}$$ So let $f$ be given with (\[vor\]). In order to prove $f=0$, following Kato’s original approach for $M={\mathbb{R}}^m$, it is tempting to use the covariant Kato inequality, which in combination with $V\geq 0$ immediately implies $$(-\Delta +1)(-|f|)\geq 0 \quad\text{weakly}.$$
This motivates the $\mathscr{C}=L^2_{{\mathbb{R}}}(M)$ case of following definition, which is taken from [@g54]:
\[kl\] Let[^2] $\mathscr{C}\subset L^1_{\mathrm{loc},{\mathbb{R}}}(M)$ be an arbitrary subset. Then the Riemannian manifold $M$ is called $\mathscr{C}$-*positivity preserving* (PP), if the following implication of weak inequalities holds true for every $\phi\in\mathscr{C}$, $$\begin{aligned}
\label{ppp}
(-\Delta+1)\phi \geq 0 \Rightarrow \phi\geq 0.\end{aligned}$$
Assume now $M$ is $L^2_{{\mathbb{R}}}(M)$-positivity preserving. Then in the above situation we can conclude $-|f|\geq 0$, thus $f=0$, and we have shown:
If $M$ is $L^2_{{\mathbb{R}}}(M)$-positivity preserving, then for every potential $V$ with (\[poteea\]), the operator $(\nabla^{\dagger}\nabla+V)|_{\Gamma_{{C^{\infty}}_{{ c }}}(M,E)}$ in $\Gamma_{{L}^2}(M,E)$ is essentially self-adjoint.
On the other hand, either using refined integration by parts techniques [@braver] or using wave equation techniques [@gerw], one can prove:
If $M$ is geodesically complete, then for every potential every potential $V$ with (\[poteea\]), the operator $(\nabla^{\dagger}\nabla+V)|_{\Gamma_{{C^{\infty}}_{{ c }}}(M,E)}$ in $\Gamma_{{L}^2}(M,E)$ is essentially self-adjoint.
This lead M. Braverman, O. Milatovic and M. Shubin to the following conjecture from 2002, which I formulate for convenience in the language of Definition \[kl\][^3]:
If $M$ is geodesically complete, then $M$ is $L^2_{{\mathbb{R}}}(M)$-PP.
I invite the interested reader to attack this problem, which is still open in this generality!
It is instructive in this context to explain Kato’s simple and elegant proof of the fact that the Euclidean $M={\mathbb{R}}^m$ is $L^2_{{\mathbb{R}}}({\mathbb{R}}^m)$-PP: In this case, $\Delta+1$ induces an isomorphism (of topological linear spaces) $$\Delta+1: \mathscr{S}({\mathbb{R}}^m)\rq{}\xrightarrow{\sim} \mathscr{S}({\mathbb{R}}^m)\rq{}$$ on the space of Schwartz distributions, whose inverse is positivity preserving. Thus, if a real-valued $\phi\in{L}^2({\mathbb{R}}^m)\subset \mathscr{S}({\mathbb{R}}^m)\rq{}$ satisfies (\[ppp\]), then we can immeadiately conclude $\phi\geq 0$.
On a general Riemannian manifold there seems to be no appropriate substitute for the space of Schwartz distributions, and so one needs a new idea. The best result known so far on general Riemannian manifolds on the full ${L}^q$-scale is the following one from [@guenb] (which slightly generalizes [@g54]), that requires an additional lower bound on the Ricci curvature:
\[cuttta\] If $M$ is geodesically complete with a Ricci curvature bounded from below by a constant, then $M$ is $L^q_{{\mathbb{R}}}(M)$-PP for all $q\in [1,\infty]$.
The reader may find the following final remarks helpful:
1\. The proof of Theorem \[cuttta\] is based on the construction of a sequence of *Laplacian cut-off functions* (cf. [@g54] for a precise definition), which leads to the assumption on the Ricci curvature. Once one has such a sequence, at least the $q=2$ case follows easily using that $(H+1)^{-1}$ is positivity preserving on ${L}^2(M)$ in combination with simple integration by parts arguments. The $q\neq 2$ case requires an additional argument to prove the boundedness of ${d}(H+1)^{-1}$ from ${L}^q(M)$ to $\Omega^1_{{L}^q}(M)$, which again leads to the curvature assumption. If $M$ is the Euclidean ${\mathbb{R}}^m$, such a sequence of Laplacian cut-off functions is readily obtained using the distance function and scaling.\
2. The $q=2$ case from Theorem \[cuttta\] can be generalized to allow a Ricci curvature having an appropriate *variable* lower bound, as then one can still prove the existence of a sequence of Laplacian cut-off functions (cf. [@alberto]).\
3. It really makes sense to consider the positivity preservation property on a full ${L}^q$-scale: For example, it is easy to check [@g54] that every $({C^{\infty}}\cap{L}^{\infty}_{{\mathbb{R}}})$-PP Riemannian manifold is stochastically complete, meaning that $$\int_M \mathrm{e}^{-t H}(x,y) {d}\mu(y)=1\quad\text{ for all $t>0$, $x\in M$,}$$ or in other words, that Brownian motions on $M$ cannot explode in a finite time. So for example, Theorem \[cuttta\] provides an independent proof of S.T. Yaus classical result which states that geodesically complete Riemannian manifolds with a Ricci curvature bounded from below by a constant are stochastically complete. This was my original motivation for the general form of Definition \[kl\], that is, the definition should be flexible enough to deal with problems such as stochastic completeness and essential self-adjointness simultaniously.
[**Acknowledgements:**]{} I would like to thank W. Arendt for his interest in my point of view on the BMS conjecture, and Alberto Setti for a very helpful correspondence on cut-off functions. The author research been financially supported by the DFG 647: Raum-Zeit-Materie.
[99]{}
Bianchi, D. & Setti, A.: *Laplacian cut-offs, porous and fast diffusion on manifolds and other applications.* arXiv:1607.06008.
Braverman, M. & Milatovich, O. & Shubin, M.: *Essential selfadjointness of Schrödinger-type operators on manifolds.* Russian Math. Surveys 57 (2002), no. 4, 641–692
Güneysu, B.: *Sequences of Laplacian Cut-Off Functions.* J. Geom. Anal. 26 (2016), no. 1, 171–184
Güneysu, B. & Post, O.: *Path integrals and the essential self-adjointness of differential operators on noncompact manifolds.* Math. Z. 275 (2013), no. 1-2, 331–348.
Güneysu, B.: *Covariant Schrödinger semigroups on noncompact Riemannian manifolds*. To appear as a textbook in Birkhäuser, 2017.
Kato, T.: [*Schrödinger operators with singular potentials.*]{} Israel J. Math. 13 (1972).
[^1]: A $\dagger$ always stands for the formal adjoint of a differential operator acting between sections of metric vector bundles over $M$; it depends on the fixed Riemannian metric on $M$ and the underlying metrics on the bundles (which are trivial in the scalar case).
[^2]: $L^1_{\mathrm{loc},{\mathbb{R}}}$ stands for the space of *real-valued* locally integrable functions, and likewise for $L^2_{{\mathbb{R}}}(M)$.
[^3]: Note that the BMS-conjecture is much older than Definition \[kl\], which was in fact modelled on the conjecture.
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Q:
Is there a policy for reviewing new tags or proposing existing or better alternatives?
Is there a policy for reviewing newly added tags or proposing existing or better alternatives?
It is to find out if there is a policy of choosing other tags if there is a more popular tag related to the question, so better to relate the newly asked question to closely related questions.
A:
Seeing as you've created the tag, it might actually be useful for you to add some details to it's description to aid the community:
git-refspec
Also, for your reference, the help center provides the following information about tag creation and usage:
What happens when a new tag is created?
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However, note that:
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on a question, are not allowed.
Please create new tags responsibly!
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StackExchange
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857 F.2d 1014
48 Fair Empl.Prac.Cas. 1, 48 Empl. Prac. Dec.P 38,394,57 USLW 2237
Ali BOURESLAN, Plaintiff-Appellant,v.ARAMCO, Arabian American Oil Company and Aramco ServiceCompany, Defendants-Appellees.
No. 87-2206.
United States Court of Appeals,Fifth Circuit.
Oct. 17, 1988.
James Field Tyson, Perry Archer, Houston, Tex., for plaintiff-appellant.
Charles A. Shanor, Karen MacRae Smith, E.E.O.C., Washington, D.C., for amicus-E.E.O.C.
Edward E. Potter, McGuiness & Williams, Washington, D.C., for amicus E.E.A.C.
John D. Roady, Linda Ottinger Headley, Hutcheson & Grundy, Houston, Tex., for Aramco.
Lawrence Z. Lorber, John E. Parauda, Breed, Abbott & Morgan, Washington, D.C., for amicus-ASPA.
Cecil J. Olmstead, Steptoe & Johnson, Washington, D.C., for amicus-Rule of Law Committee.
Appeal from the United States District Court For the Southern District of Texas.
Before KING* and DAVIS, Circuit Judges, and PARKER,** District Judge.
W. EUGENE DAVIS, Circuit Judge:
1
Plaintiff, a naturalized citizen of the United States, brought an employment discrimination suit--predicated upon Title VII and state law causes of action--against his employer, a United States corporation whose principal place of business is in Saudi Arabia. In his suit, plaintiff charged that while he was working in Saudi Arabia, his employer discriminated against him on the basis of his race, religion, and national origin. The employer contested plaintiff's claims of discrimination and, in addition, moved the district court to dismiss the entire action. The employer argued that the reach of Title VII does not extend to United States citizens employed abroad by United States employers and, therefore, that the district court lacked subject matter jurisdiction over plaintiff's claim. The district court agreed, granted the employer's motion, and dismissed plaintiff's suit. On appeal, plaintiff--joined by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission as amicus curiae--urges us to conclude, that Congress intended Title VII to apply extraterritorially to protect United States citizens employed by United States employers. We find, however, that the rules of statutory construction which control our review of Title VII do not permit the conclusion plaintiff urges--we cannot say that Congress, through either the language of Title VII or its legislative history, clearly expressed its intent that Title VII be applied extraterritorially. Therefore, we conclude that Title VII does not offer plaintiff an available remedy for his claimed discrimination and affirm the district court.
I.
2
This appeal presents a single issue: Does Title VII regulate the employment practices of businesses which, although incorporated in the United States, employ citizens of the United States in foreign countries? The question reaches us as a result of the employment relationship between Ali Boureslan, Arabian American Oil Company (Aramco), and Aramco Services Company (ASC). In 1979, Boureslan--a naturalized United States citizen who was born in Lebanon--went to work as an engineer for ASC in Houston, Texas. ASC is a Delaware corporation with its principal place of business in Houston; ASC is a subsidiary of Aramco, licensed to do business in Texas, with its principal place of business in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. In November 1980, Boureslan requested a transfer to Aramco. Because Aramco explores, produces, and refines oil and gas exclusively within the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Boureslan's transfer from ASC to Aramco also meant a transfer from the United States to Saudi Arabia.
3
Shortly after beginning work in Saudi Arabia, Boureslan began having altercations with his supervisor. According to Boureslan, the altercations were the result of a "campaign of harassment" which the supervisor initiated--a campaign which took the form of racial, religious, and ethnic slurs and which culminated in Boureslan's termination on June 16, 1984.
4
After he was fired, Boureslan first filed charges against Aramco with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) in the United States and, later, instituted this suit against both Aramco and ASC in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas. In each case, the focus of Boureslan's attack was the discriminatory treatment which he allegedly received while in Saudi Arabia from his Aramco supervisor. In his lawsuit, Boureslan sought relief under both Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. Secs. 2000e et seq., and state law. In response to the lawsuit, both Aramco and ASC filed answers denying liability and separately filed motions to dismiss for lack of subject matter jurisdiction. ASC stressed two reasons why Boureslan's claims against ASC should be dismissed. First, ASC argued that, at most, only Aramco could be liable to Boureslan since, according to ASC, Boureslan's transfer from ASC to Aramco terminated the employment relationship between ASC and Boureslan. Second, ASC argued that Boureslan failed properly to exhaust his administrative remedies under Title VII with respect to ASC because Boureslan named only Aramco in the one grievance he filed with the EEOC.
5
While ASC's grounds for dismissal challenged only the propriety of its own inclusion in Boureslan's lawsuit, Aramco's motion to dismiss raised a more sweeping challenge--a challenge which, if true, required a dismissal of the lawsuit against both Aramco and ASC. Aramco argued that the protections of Title VII do not extend extraterritorially and, consequently, that Title VII offers no protection to Boureslan for acts of discrimination which occurred in Saudia Arabia. Boureslan contested this interpretation, and argued that the clear and express terms of Title VII demonstrate Congress' intent to protect United States citizens from employment discrimination by American employers regardless of where the discrimination occurs. In an opinion dated January 27, 1987, the district court considered carefully the question of Title VII's geographic reach. After examining Title VII's language and legislative history, Supreme Court cases on extraterritorial application of federal statutes, and other existing case law on the scope of Title VII, the district court concluded that Title VII does not afford extraterritorial protection. Boureslan v. Aramco, 653 F.Supp. 629, 631 (S.D.Tex.1987). Consequently, the court dismissed Boureslan's Title VII action against Aramco and ASC for lack of subject matter jurisdiction; it also dismissed Boureslan's state law claims for lack of pendent jurisdiction, and entered final judgment in favor of both defendants. On appeal, Boureslan asks us to find that Congress intended Title VII to be applied extraterritorially.
II.
6
A special set of rules of statutory interpretation are in place to assist us in determining whether Congress intended to give a statute application outside this country. We first examine those rules.
7
In Foley Bros., Inc. v. Filardo, 336 U.S. 281, 69 S.Ct. 575, 93 L.Ed. 680 (1949), the Supreme Court considered whether a federal statute prohibiting workdays of longer than eight hours without overtime pay applied to a contract between the United States and a private contractor for work performed in a foreign country. Id. at 282, 69 S.Ct. at 576. As the Court saw it:
8
The canon on construction which teaches that legislation of Congress, unless a contrary intent appears, is meant to apply only within the territorial jurisdiction of the United States, is a valid approach whereby unexpressed congressional intent may be ascertained. It is based on the assumption that Congress is primarily concerned with domestic conditions. We find nothing in the Act itself, as amended, nor in the legislative history, which would lead to the belief that Congress entertained any intention other than the normal one in this case.
9
Id. at 285, 69 S.Ct. at 577 (citation omitted).
10
See also McCulloch v. Sociedad Nacional de Marineros de Honduras, 372 U.S. 10, 21-22, 83 S.Ct. 671, 677-78, 9 L.Ed.2d 547 (1963).
11
This court has consistently applied the presumption against extraterritoriality. In United States v. Mitchell, 553 F.2d 996 (5th Cir.1977), we refused to read extraterritorial application into the Marine Mammal Protection Act. In ruling against extraterritorial application, we noted that "the government [failed] to [show] any clear expression of congressional intent [to overcome the presumption against extraterritorial application]." In De Yoreo v. Bell Helicopter Textron, Inc., 785 F.2d 1282, 1283 (5th Cir.1986), we rejected the argument that the Age Discrimination In Employment Act (ADEA) be given extraterritorial application.
12
Other circuits have followed the Supreme Court in denying extraterritorial application without a clear congressional expression of intent to the contrary. For example, in Pfeiffer v. Wm. Wrigley, Jr. Co., 755 F.2d 554 (7th Cir.1985), the Seventh Circuit considered the extraterritorial application of the ADEA. After finding that the statute did not speak directly to the issue of extraterritorial application, the court applied the presumption against extraterritorial application, noting that "[t]he fear of outright collisions between domestic and foreign law--collisions both hard on the people caught in the cross-fire and a potential source of friction between the United States and foreign countries--lies behind the presumption against the extraterritorial application of federal statutes." Id. at 557. Likewise in Cleary v. United States Lines, Inc., 728 F.2d 607 (3d Cir.1984), the Third Circuit rejected the application of the ADEA extraterritorially without "affirmative evidence of congressional intent." See also Air Line Stewards and Stewardesses Ass'n Int'l v. Trans World Airlines, Inc., 273 F.2d 69, 70 (2d Cir.1959), cert. denied, 362 U.S. 988, 80 S.Ct. 1075, 4 L.Ed.2d 1021 (1960) (denying extraterritorial application of the Railway Labor Act (RLA)); Air Line Stewards and Stewardesses Ass'n Int'l v. Northwest Airlines, Inc., 267 F.2d 170, 178 (8th Cir.), cert. denied, 361 U.S. 901, 80 S.Ct. 208, 4 L.Ed.2d 156 (1959) (denying extraterritorial application of RLA); Air Line Dispatchers Ass'n v. National Mediation Bd., 189 F.2d 685, 690-91 (D.C.Cir.), cert. denied, 342 U.S. 849, 72 S.Ct. 77, 96 L.Ed. 641 (1951) (denying extraterritorial application of RLA); see generally Restatement (Second) of the Foreign Relations Law of the United States Sec. 38 (1965).
13
Against this backdrop, we examine the language and legislative history of Title VII to determine whether Congress intended the act to have extraterritorial application.
III.
A.
14
Boureslan's discrimination case is based upon Sec. 703(a)(1) of Title VII which provides:
15
It shall be an unlawful employment practice for an employer to fail or refuse to hire or to discharge any individual, or otherwise discriminate against any individual with respect to his compensation, terms, conditions, or privileges of employment, because of such individual's race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.
16
42 U.S.C. Sec. 2000e-2(a)(1).
17
Extraterritorial application is not directly addressed in Title VII. Section 2000e(b) defines "employer" under the Act as including any "person employed in an industry affecting commerce." The term "commerce" is in turn defined as "trade, traffic, commerce, transportation, transmission, or communication among the several States; or between a State and any place outside thereof." 42 U.S.C. Sec. 2000e(g).
18
Boureslan, however, relies on Sec. 2000e-1 commonly referred to as the alien exemption provision, which provides that "[t]his title shall not apply to an employer with respect to employment of aliens outside of any state."1 Boureslan argues that a "negative inference" should be drawn from this language that Congress intended Title VII to cover United States citizens working abroad for United States employers. Boureslan argues that the alien exemption provision has no purpose if Title VII is not applied to protect citizens extraterritorially because in the absence of this provision neither citizens nor aliens would be protected while working outside the country. Boureslan notes that one district court has accepted this argument. Bryant v. International School Servs., 502 F.Supp. 472 (D.N.J.1980), rev'd on other grounds, 675 F.2d 562 (3d Cir.1982).
19
But the alien exemption provision does have a purpose even if we accept the district court's conclusion that Title VII does not protect citizens abroad. First, no one disputes that the provision excludes coverage to aliens employed outside the states. Second, in Espinoza v. Farah Mfg. Co., 414 U.S. 86, 95, 94 S.Ct. 334, 340, 38 L.Ed.2d 287 (1973), the Supreme Court attached another meaning to the provision's domestic scope. The Court concluded that the alien exemption provision reflects a congressional intent to provide Title VII coverage to aliens employed within the United States.
20
Thus, we do not face a choice between attaching appellant's negative inference to the alien exemption provision or stripping the provision of all purpose. If we decline to give the alien exemption provision the interpretation appellant seeks, the provision still is a meaningful and useful part of the Act. Appellant has not persuaded us that the provision's language merits an interpretation that overcomes the presumption against extraterritorial application of the Act.
21
Boureslan argues next that the legislative history of Title VII, when coupled with the statutory language, evidences a clear congressional intent to apply the Act extraterritorially. It is to the legislative history, therefore, that we must now turn.
B.
22
Before considering the particular portions of the legislative history pointed to by Boureslan, it is important that we define the role allocated to legislative history in statutory interpretation. Legislative history is relegated to a secondary source behind the language of the statute in determining congressional intent; even in its secondary role legislative history must be used "cautiously." United States v. Smith, 795 F.2d 841 (9th Cir.1986). Courts are not free to substitute legislative history for the language of the Act and legislative history is not an adequate substitute for congressional action. Piper v. Chris-Craft Indus., Inc., 430 U.S. 1, 97 S.Ct. 926, 5 L.Ed.2d 124 (1977); United States v. Devall, 704 F.2d 1513 (11th Cir.1983); Aronsen v. Crown Zellerbach, 662 F.2d 584 (9th Cir.1981), cert. denied, 459 U.S. 1200, 103 S.Ct. 1183, 75 L.Ed.2d 431 (1983). The Supreme Court has repeatedly stated that " '[a]bsent a clearly expressed legislative intention to the contrary, [statutory] language must ordinarily be regarded as conclusive.' " Escondido Mut. Water Co. v. La Jolla Indians, 466 U.S. 765, 772, 104 S.Ct. 2105, 2110, 80 L.Ed.2d 753 (1984) (quoting North Dakota v. United States, 460 U.S. 300, 312, 103 S.Ct. 1095, 1102, 75 L.Ed.2d 77 (1983); Consumer Prod. Safety Comm'n v. GTE Sylvania, Inc., 447 U.S. 102, 100 S.Ct. 2051, 64 L.Ed.2d 766 (1980).
23
The EEOC in its amicus curiae brief points to three statements in the legislative history that, it argues, supports its interpretation of the Act. First, the EEOC notes that in the House report that accompanied the Act to the Senate floor, the passage of Title VII was declared necessary:
24
[t]o remove obstructions to the free flow of interstate and foreign commerce and to insure the complete and full enjoyment by all persons of the rights, privileges, and immunities secured and protected by the Constitution.
25
House Report on Civil Rights Act of 1964, H.R.Rep. No. 914, 88th Cong., 1st Sess. (1963), reported in 1964 U.S.Code Cong. & Admin.News 2391, 2402. Second, EEOC stresses a comment by Representative William McCulloch, ranking minority member of the House Judiciary Committee, in which McCulloch stated that "[a] key purpose of the bill, then, is to secure to all Americans the equal protection of the laws of the United States and of the several states." Id., reprinted in 1964 U.S.Cong. Code & Admin.News at 2488. EEOC also points out that the minority report states that "[t]he rights of citizenship mean little if an individual is unable to gain the economic wherewithall to enjoy or properly use them." Id. at 2516. The EEOC argues that these general policy statements reflect a strong intent by Congress to combat employment discrimination on all fronts without any geographic limits. Thus, the EEOC asserts that the omission of any mention of extraterritorial application supports, rather than detracts, from their position.2
26
These references to Title VII's legislative history fall far short of the clear expression of congressional intent required to overcome the presumption against extraterritorial application. The statements, carefully taken from a voluminous legislative history, are no more specific than the statutory language itself. To rely on such general policy statements would effectively adopt a presumption in favor of extraterritorial application. This is particularly true when the legislative history contains numerous statements that arguably favor geographic limits for Title VII.
27
For example, the Act's language and legislative history make repeated references to the "United States," "states," and procedures relating to state proceedings without parallel references to foreign countries. 42 U.S.C. 2000e(i) defines "state" to include the states and other areas under United States jurisdiction, with no reference to foreign countries. References in the legislative history highlight concerns about employment discrimination problems in the states, Senator Hubert Humphrey, 110 Cong.Rec. 6550 (1964); the effect of Title VII on southern states versus other states, Senator Richard Russell, 110 Cong.Rec. 14301 (1964); and deferral to state employment laws, Congressman Emanuel Celler, 110 Cong.Rec. 1521 (1964).
28
Moreover, Congress deleted reference to "foreign commerce" and "foreign nations" from earlier House versions of Title VII.3 While these references and deletions are not conclusive legislative support, they are certainly as persuasive as policy statements in the legislative history offered by the EEOC.
29
EEOC also points to a reference to the alien exemption provision contained in a house report rendered in connection with H.R. 405, a concurrent attempt to fashion equal employment legislation during the 88th Congress' first session in 1963. This report was placed in the record in the hearings for H.R. 7152, which ultimately became the Civil Rights Act of 1963. The report stated,
30
In section 4 of the Act, limited exception is provided for employers with respect to employment of aliens outside of any state, and also, to any religious corporations, associations, or societies. The intent of the first exemption is to remove conflicts of law which might otherwise exist between the United States and a foreign nation in the employment of aliens outside the United States by an American enterprise.
31
Civil Rights: Hearings on H.R. 7152, as amended by Subcommittee No. 5 before the House Committee on the Judiciary, 88th Cong., 1st Sess. 2303 (1963). EEOC urges us to interpret this language to reflect an intent that, but for the alien exemption provision, Title VII protects all persons employed overseas by American employers.
32
However, this brief reference sheds little additional light on the issue. Whether it points to the provision's bare language or to this snippet of legislative history, EEOC still must argue a negative inference. That is, EEOC argues that Congress spoke by not speaking. This silence will not reverse the presumption that this legislation applies only to employees employed in the United States.4
33
Finally, Boureslan and the EEOC advance a number of policy arguments in favor of the extraterritorial application of Title VII. These arguments go to the inequity of denying Americans employed abroad protections to which they are entitled in the United States. Although these arguments have obvious appeal, we cannot ignore strong countervailing policy arguments against the application of Title VII abroad. The religious and social customs practiced in many countries are wholly at odds with those of this country. Requiring American employers to comply with Title VII in such a country could well leave American corporations the difficult choice of either refusing to employ United States citizens in the country or discontinuing business. Given the serious, potentially devisive policy considerations for and against application of the Act outside the country, the paucity of reference to such an application either in the Act itself or the debates in Congress is a compelling argument that Congress did not turn its attention to this possibility. It is not for this court to decide this policy issue for the legislative branch.
34
While the judicial function in construing legislation is not a mechanical process from which judgment is excluded, it is nevertheless very different from the legislative function. Construction is not legislation and must avoid "that retrospective expansion of meaning which properly deserves the stigma of judicial legislation." To blur the distinctive functions of the legislative and the judicial processes is not conductive to responsible legislation.
35
Addison v. Holly Hill Fruit Prods. Co., 322 U.S. 607, 618, 64 S.Ct. 1215, 1221, 88 L.Ed. 1488 (1944) (citation omitted).
IV.
36
The presumption against extraterritorial application establishes a high hurdle for appellant's arguments to overcome. Neither the statute's bare language nor the sparce indirect language on the subject in the legislative history persuade us that he has cleared this hurdle.
37
AFFIRMED.
KING, Circuit Judge, dissenting:
38
Today, in the first circuit court opinion to consider expressly the extraterritorial application of Title VII,1 the majority holds that Title VII affords no protection from employment discrimination to U.S. citizens who are employed abroad by U.S. corporations. Because an examination of the language and legislative history of Title VII reveals that Congress did not intend the protections of Title VII to be so restricted, and because the extraterritorial application of Title VII to U.S. nationals would not violate principles of international law, I must respectfully dissent from the majority's holding.
39
I. The Presumption Against Extraterritoriality
40
It is undisputed that Congress had the power to extend Title VII's protections extraterritorially. See Steele v. Bulova Watch Co., 344 U.S. 280, 282-83, 73 S.Ct. 252, 253-54, 97 L.Ed. 319 (1952); Foley Bros. v. Filardo, 336 U.S. 281, 284, 69 S.Ct. 575, 577, 93 L.Ed. 680 (1949); United States v. Mitchell, 553 F.2d 996, 1001 (5th Cir.1977). Nationality is an accepted basis for the exercise of jurisdiction. Thus, a state may prescribe law relating to the conduct of its nationals, even when that conduct occurs outside of the state's territory. See Steele, 344 U.S. at 285-86, 73 S.Ct. at 255-56; Blackmer v. United States, 284 U.S. 421, 436-37, 52 S.Ct. 252, 254-55, 76 L.Ed. 375 (1932); Mitchell, 553 F.2d at 1001; Laker Airways v. Sabena, Belgian World Airlines, 731 F.2d 909, 922 (D.C.Cir.1984); Restatement (Third) of the Foreign Relations Law of the United States Sec. 402 (1987) [hereinafter Restatement]. The only question in this case is whether Congress exercised that power.
41
The majority correctly notes that because jurisdiction to prescribe is ordinarily exercised on the basis of territory rather than nationality,2 there is a presumption that Congress intends legislation to apply only within the territorial jurisdiction of the United States, unless a contrary intent appears. Steele, 344 U.S. at 285, 73 S.Ct. at 255; Foley Bros., 336 U.S. at 285, 69 S.Ct. at 577-78; Blackmer, 284 U.S. at 437, 52 S.Ct. at 254-55; Mitchell, 553 F.2d at 1002. The majority goes astray, however, in its determination of what constitutes an expression of "contrary intent" sufficient to overcome the presumption.
42
As will be demonstrated more fully below, this is not a case in which the claim of extraterritorial jurisdiction is based solely on the broad jurisdictional language of the statute. Rather, the conclusion that Title VII was intended to apply to U.S. citizens employed abroad by U.S. corporations is compelled by canons of statutory construction and is further supported by legislative history. In rejecting these traditional methods of statutory interpretation as inadequate, the majority implies that nothing short of an explicit statement by Congress will overcome the presumption.
43
The classic formulation of the presumption, however, does not impose such a stringent standard: "The canon of construction which teaches that legislation of Congress, unless a contrary intent appears, is meant to apply only within the territorial jurisdiction of the United States ... is a valid approach whereby unexpressed congressional intent may be ascertained." Foley Bros., 336 U.S. at 285, 69 S.Ct. at 577 (emphasis added) (citation omitted); Natural Resources Defense Council v. Nuclear Regulatory Comm'n, 647 F.2d 1345, 1357 n. 54 (D.C.Cir.1981). The most established method of ascertaining unexpressed congressional intent is to apply principles of statutory construction, and to refer to the legislative history of the act. See N. Singer, 2A Sutherland Statutory Construction Secs. 45.12, 48.06 (1984). Nothing in this formulation indicates that a "contrary intent" sufficient to overcome the presumption against extraterritoriality may not be determined according to these ordinary methods.
44
Even if we add the adjective "clear" to our formulation of the presumption, Mitchell, 553 F.2d at 1002,3 "clear" does not mean "express," and there is no reason why a "clear" intent to apply a statute extraterritorially may not be determined with reference to the rules of statutory construction, informed by legislative history. At most, requiring a "clear" expression of congressional intent may mean that the broad jurisdictional language of a statute is not sufficient in itself to support the exercise of extraterritorial jurisdiction. See Mitchell, 553 F.2d at 1003-04. It should be noted, however, that the Supreme Court has found such language sufficient to overcome the presumption.4
45
The extremely strong showing of congressional intent which the majority requires is clearly not compelled by the presumption itself. Rather, it appears that the majority has distorted the presumption in an effort to transform it into something it is not: a mechanism for evaluating potential conflicts of jurisdiction.5 The majority concludes in effect that the policy implications of applying Title VII extraterritorially are so serious that we must require a more explicit statement by Congress that it intended Title VII to apply so broadly.
46
The majority's conclusion might be appropriate if Congress was, as the majority claims, silent on this subject. But Congress was not silent on the subject. Rather, we have evidence that Congress did consider the implications of applying Title VII extraterritorially: Congress included in the statute a provision explicitly exempting aliens employed abroad by U.S. corporations in order to avoid conflicts of law. It follows logically that Congress believed that application of Title VII to U.S. citizens employed abroad by U.S. corporations would not present similar barriers to the exercise of extraterritorial jurisdiction.6 In concluding that the statute should not apply to U.S. citizens employed abroad, the majority has therefore done precisely what it cautions against: It has substituted its own policy judgment for that of Congress.
47
The majority's intuition is correct that the implications of applying a statute extraterritorially may be such that the type of evidence presented in this case would not be sufficient to support the exercise of extraterritorial jurisdiction. For example, a greater showing of congressional intent would be required to support an exercise of extraterritorial jurisdiction that would violate international law. A statute may not be construed to violate international law unless Congress has, by an affirmative expression of its intent, required that construction. McCulloch v. Sociedad Nacional de Marineros de Honduras, 372 U.S. 10, 21-22, 83 S.Ct. 671, 677-78, 9 L.Ed.2d 547 (1963); Weinberger v. Rossi, 456 U.S. 25, 32, 102 S.Ct. 1510, 1515-16, 71 L.Ed.2d 715 (1982); see also Restatement Sec. 114.7
48
This principle is a facet of the separate presumption that Congress does not intend to violate international law. See Restatement Sec. 115 comment a ("It is generally assumed that Congress does not intend to repudiate an international obligation of the United States by nullifying a rule of international law or an international agreement as domestic law.").
49
The showing of congressional intent required to overcome the presumption that Congress does not intend to violate international law is much greater than that required to overcome the presumption against extraterritoriality. While the two presumptions are in some respects parallel, they should not be conflated because not every exercise of extraterritorial jurisdiction violates international law. A separate, more stringent standard is properly reserved for cases in which the exercise of jurisdiction, extraterritorial or otherwise, would violate international law.
50
By requiring a more explicit showing of congressional intent to apply Title VII extraterritorially--without discussing whether extraterritorial application of Title VII would violate international law--the majority has implicitly conflated the two standards and has therefore defeated congressional intent without sufficient justification.
51
While I agree with the majority that we must consider the foreign policy implications of construing a statute to apply extraterritorially, I do not believe that its approach to these issues is satisfactory. We should not defeat congressional intent to exercise extraterritorial jurisdiction without engaging in a more principled analysis of the implications of applying the statute extraterritorially.8
52
In order to evaluate the complex issues raised in this case, we need a finer set of analytic tools than those employed in the majority opinion. I therefore propose an alternative framework that will, I believe, provide a more satisfactory treatment of the issues in this case.
53
The starting point for our analysis in this case should be section 403 of the Restatement which provides that as a matter of international law "a state may not exercise jurisdiction to prescribe law with respect to a person or activity having connections with another state when the exercise of such jurisdiction is unreasonable." Sec. 403(1). The factors enumerated in the Restatement provide a framework within which we can evaluate in a principled fashion the implications of applying Title VII extraterritorially.9 See American Rice, Inc. v. Arkansas Rice Growers Cooperative Ass'n, 701 F.2d 408 (5th Cir.1983) (applying elements similar to reasonableness test to determine whether exercise of extraterritorial jurisdiction under Lanham Act was appropriate).
54
Moreover, because section 403 is a principle of international law, a statute may not be construed to violate the principle absent an explicit, affirmative expression of congressional intent compelling that construction. See McCulloch, 372 U.S. at 21-22, 83 S.Ct. at 677-78; Rossi, 456 U.S. at 32, 102 S.Ct. at 1515-16; Restatement Sec. 403 comment g. Thus, a statute will not be applied extraterritorially where it would be unreasonable to do so, unless Congress has affirmatively required that it be so applied. If extraterritorial application of Title VII would be unreasonable, the majority's conclusion would be correct--because Congress has not affirmatively required that the statute be applied extraterritorially.
55
If, however, extraterritorial application of the statute would not be unreasonable, and therefore would not violate international law, the threshold level of congressional intent required to overcome the presumption against extraterritoriality will be sufficient to support the exercise of extraterritorial jurisdiction. As explained above, no express statement of Congress is required to overcome the presumption. See Foley Bros., 336 U.S. at 285, 69 S.Ct. at 577-78. Rather, we may employ traditional methods of statutory interpretation to determine whether the language and legislative history of Title VII evidence a clear intent that the statute be applied extraterritorially.
56
This analysis will insure that we accord proper respect both to the sovereignty of other nations and to Congress' intent.
57
II. The "Jurisdictional Rule of Reason."
58
The showing of congressional intent necessary to support an exercise of extraterritorial jurisdiction depends in the first instance on whether that exercise of jurisdiction will violate international law. Before examining the language and legislative history of Title VII, I will therefore consider whether extraterritorial application of Title VII would violate the principle of international law set forth in section 403 of the Restatement: "[A] state may not exercise jurisdiction to prescribe law with respect to a person or activity having connections with another state when the exercise of such jurisdiction is unreasonable."10 Restatement Sec. 403(1). Although the majority does not address this issue in its opinion, ARAMCO and Amicus Curiae assert that extraterritorial application of Title VII would violate the "reasonableness" principle. ARAMCO's arguments are addressed in the discussion below.
59
It should be noted at the outset of this discussion that section 403 is couched in general terms; it does not purport to eliminate all conflicts in the exercise of jurisdiction. See Restatement Sec. 403 comment d ("Exercise of jurisdiction by more than one state may be reasonable--for example, when one state exercises jurisdiction on the basis of territory and the other on the basis of nationality."). Therefore, the possibility that a conflict with foreign law may arise in some case does not render Congress' initial exercise of extraterritorial jurisdiction unreasonable. "Because Congress ... can neither anticipate nor resolve all conflicts with foreign prescriptive jurisdiction," it necessarily relies on the Judiciary to minimize conflicts of jurisdiction by exercising a jurisdictional rule of reason in individual cases. Laker Airways, 731 F.2d at 952 n. 169 (citing Extraterritoriality and Conflicts of Jurisdiction, U.S. Department of State Current Policy Bulletin No. 481 at 4 (15 April 1983)). Our inquiry here is therefore whether it would in general be reasonable to apply Title VII extraterritorially, not whether it would in all cases be reasonable.
Section 403(2) provides:
60
Whether exercise of jurisdiction over a person or activity is unreasonable is determined by evaluating all relevant factors, including, where appropriate:
61
(a) the link of the activity to the territory of the regulating state, i.e., the extent to which the activity takes place within the territory, or has substantial, direct, and foreseeable effect upon or in the territory;
62
(b) the connections, such as nationality, residence, or economic activity, between the regulating state and the person principally responsible for the activity to be regulated, or between that state and those whom the regulation is designed to protect;
63
(c) the character of the activity to be regulated, the importance of regulation to the regulating state, the extent to which other states regulate such activities, and the degree to which the desirability of such regulation is generally accepted;(d) the existence of justified expectations that might be protected or hurt by the regulation;
64
(e) the importance of the regulation to the international political, legal, or economic system;
65
(f) the extent to which the regulation is consistent with the traditions of the international system;
66
(g) the extent to which another state may have an interest in regulating the activity; and
67
(h) the likelihood of conflict with regulation by another state.
68
The arguments that extraterritorial application of Title VII would be unreasonable fall into two categories encompassing the factors listed above: First, since discrimination against U.S. citizens that occurs abroad has no domestic effects, U.S. interests are not sufficient to justify the exercise of extraterritorial jurisdiction. Second, because labor relations are a peculiarly domestic matter, it would be an affront to the sovereignty of other nations to apply Title VII extraterritorially.
69
The first contention mischaracterizes the purpose of Title VII and trivializes the special nature of civil rights laws. The "effects" factor included in the Restatement is well-suited for economic regulation, but not for individual rights of the sort guaranteed by Title VII. It is true that the purposes of Title VII were framed in part in economic terms,11 but the 1964 Civil Rights Act, of which Title VII is a part, was also an effort to fulfill the long-postponed promise of equal rights embodied in the fourteenth amendment:12 It was intended not only to remedy domestic economic ills, but to protect individuals from "the injustices and humiliations" of discrimination. H.R.Rep. No. 914, 88th Cong., 1st Sess. 2018 (1963).
70
In calling for passage of the civil rights legislation that became the Civil Rights Act of 1964, President Kennedy stated: "In this year of the emancipation centennial, justice requires us to insure the blessings of liberty for all Americans and their posterity--not merely for reasons of economic efficiency, world diplomacy, and domestic tranquility--but, above all, because it is right." Special Message to Congress by the President June 19, 1963 in 109 Cong.Rec. 1055, 1063 (emphasis added).
71
Because they create individual rights, civil rights laws, unlike economic regulations, fall within the category of "protection of persons." See 2 Restatement introductory note to part VII at 150-51.13 The personal injuries caused by employment discrimination cannot readily be characterized in terms of their "effects" on the forum state. Civil rights are in this respect similar to constitutional guarantees of individual rights which control the exercise of governmental authority over U.S. citizens outside the territory of the United States--without reference to the domestic "effects" of violating the Constitution. Id. Sec. 721 reporters' note 2. While regulation of the conduct of private employers under Title VII is obviously different from the regulation of state actors under the Constitution,14 my point here is simply that the rights protected by Title VII are, like constitutional rights, personal. See id. comment b. It may therefore be inappropriate15 to evaluate the violation of civil rights in terms of "effects" on the regulating state, even though the extraterritorial application of civil rights laws may be limited by other considerations not applicable to constitutional rights.
72
If we were to apply the "effects" standard, however, Congress and the courts have long recognized that apart from the personal injuries of discrimination, the cumulative effects of discrimination are pervasive.16
73
Depriving U.S. citizens of a remedy for discrimination experienced while employed abroad by U.S. companies will almost certainly have some effect in the United States. Title VII provides employees with an avenue to vindicate themselves in the event of an unjust firing, a poor reference, or sudden resignation that is in reality the result of discrimination. Today's decision means that one U.S. citizen assigned to the Saudi office of a U.S. corporation, and another U.S. citizen working for the same company in Texas could experience identical acts of discrimination, but only the latter will have a remedy. This situation creates a dilemma for minorities and women: foreign assignments will be less attractive, while refusal of such an assignment could limit an individual's opportunity for advancement. As the EEOC notes, assignment to a foreign office is frequently a required step on the corporate ladder. Extraterritorial application of Title VII may therefore be necessary to ensure that members of protected groups have equal opportunities with respect to foreign assignments that would affect their employment opportunities in the United States. Extraterritorial application of Title VII would also protect the "justified expectations" of U.S. citizens that they will not lose all protection from discrimination by their employers simply because they have been assigned to a foreign office. Restatement Sec. 403(2)(d).
74
The territorial connections to the regulating state are in any event buttressed by the fact that both "the person principally responsible for the activity to be regulated" and "those whom the regulation is designed to protect" are in this case U.S. nationals--U.S. corporations17 and their employees who are U.S. citizens. Restatement Sec. 403(2)(b).
75
It is also incorrect to characterize Title VII's purposes as purely domestic. The legislative history of Title VII reveals that one purpose of the statute was to improve the image of the United States in the international community at a time when this nation's failure to address discrimination--particularly racial discrimination--had become a source of international criticism and domestic embarassment. H.R.Rep. No. 1370, 87th Cong., 2d Sess. 2156 (1962) (report on Equal Employment Opportunity Act--a forerunner of H.R. 405 which was incorporated into Title VII of H.R. 7152; H.R. 7152 became the Civil Rights Act of 1964) ("continued employment discrimination in the United States casts doubt upon our sincerity in furthering the cause of individual liberty and human dignity"); See also Special Message to Congress by the President supra at 1055 (legislative inaction on civil rights would result in "weakening the respect with which the rest of the world regards us"). In light of these concerns, the majority's holding today is particularly ironic: U.S. corporations will be allowed to discriminate against U.S. citizens in their foreign offices where their actions will be more immediately visible to other states.
76
Finally, the international community has adopted a number of conventions calling for an end to discrimination--against many of the groups protected by Title VII.18 The international consensus condemning discrimination extends to discrimination in employment. Note, Equal Employment Opportunity for Americans Abroad, 62 N.Y.U. L.Rev. 1288, 1298 & nn. 66-69 (1987) (international treaties and agreements as well as the proposed Draft Code of Conduct on Transnational Corporations prohibit discrimination in hiring, pay, and promotions). Since Title VII expands on anti-discrimination principles that have been the subject of international concern, there can be no doubt that the desirability of the regulation is generally accepted, and that the regulation is important to the international community and consistent with the traditions of the international system. Restatement Sec. 403(2)(c), (e) & (f).
77
The United States' interest in enforcing the civil rights of its citizens against violations by U.S. corporations is therefore not only sufficiently strong to support the exercise of extraterritorial jurisdiction, but also is consistent with the interests of the international community in eradicating discrimination. Congressional intent to apply Title VII extraterritorially should therefore be defeated only if such application would be an affront to the sovereignty of other nations.
78
ARAMCO and Amicus Curiae argue that labor laws are of particularly local concern, and that most states apply their own labor laws on a territorial basis. They therefore conclude that extraterritorial application of Title VII would offend other nations and produce inevitable conflicts of law--a contention echoed in the majority opinion.
79
As noted above, section 403 does not purport to eliminate concurrent jurisdiction. There is no principle of international law which "separates jurisdiction to prescribe into neatly adjoining compartments of national jurisdiction." Laker Airways, 731 F.2d at 952.
80
ARAMCO essentially urges that the untidiness of concurrent jurisdiction may be avoided by applying the reasonableness inquiry to preclude the extraterritorial application of a statute wherever it is possible that another state would exercise jurisdiction over the same activity. This reading, however, also fails to produce a perfectly coherent jurisdictional scheme. Because the reasonableness constraint applies to both the territorial and nationality bases of jurisdiction, the extreme deference to other nations urged by ARAMCO could create a jurisdictional vacuum. We do not know, for example, to what extent a foreign state would enforce its own laws to regulate the employment relationship between a U.S. corporation and employees who are U.S. citizens, or whether it would make its administrative and judicial procedures available to a U.S. employee seeking to bring a grievance against a U.S. employer. A foreign state, applying the principles of section 403, could well conclude that exercise of its territorial jurisdiction would be unreasonable in such a case. Indeed, the cases relied upon by the majority include those in which the courts of the United States have declined to apply the protections of U.S. law in precisely that situation. See, e.g., Benz v. Compania Naviera Hidalgo, 353 U.S. 138, 77 S.Ct. 699, 1 L.Ed.2d 709 (1957) (declining to apply the Labor Management Relations Act to wage dispute between foreign employer and foreign crew although within the territorial jurisdiction of the United States).
81
International discord does not arise from the existence of concurrent jurisdiction alone as much as it arises from an attempt to regulate the conduct of foreign nationals.19
82
Cases involving extraterritorial application of the Lanham Act divide along precisely this line. Although other nations have concurrent jurisdiction to regulate the use of trademarks in their territory, the United States may, in the absence of an actual conflict of law, apply the Act to the conduct of U.S. nationals abroad. Steele, 344 U.S. 280, 73 S.Ct. 252; American Rice, Inc. v. Arkansas Rice Growers Cooperative Ass'n, 701 F.2d 408 (5th Cir.1983); Ramirez & Feraud Chili Co. v. Las Palmas Food Co., 146 F.Supp. 594 (S.D.Cal.1956), aff'd, 245 F.2d 874 (9th Cir.1957), cert. denied, 355 U.S. 927, 78 S.Ct. 384, 2 L.Ed.2d 357 (1958). The Act does not, however, apply extraterritorially to foreign nationals. Vanity Fair Mills v. T. Eaton Co., 234 F.2d 633 (2d Cir.), cert. denied, 352 U.S. 871, 77 S.Ct. 96, 1 L.Ed.2d 76 (1956).
83
The cases involving extraterritorial application of labor laws similarly demonstrate that an attempt to regulate the conduct of foreign nationals presents the most serious affront to the sovereignty of other nations. In Foley Bros., the Supreme Court refused to construe the Eight Hour Law to apply extraterritorially to a U.S. national employed by an American contractor in Iran. 336 U.S. 281, 69 S.Ct. 575 (1949). However, the Court emphasized that the Act did not distinguish "between laborers who are aliens and those who are citizens of the United States." Id. at 286, 69 S.Ct. at 578. The Court reasoned that if the law was applied extraterritorially to U.S. citizens, it "would be logically inescapable" that the law would apply to aliens employed abroad as well. Id. The Court was thus most troubled by the possibility that the law would by logical extension require an intrusion into the realm of "labor conditions which are the primary concern of a foreign country"--the labor conditions of its own citizens. Id.
84
The Court discounted an opinion of the Attorney General construing the Act to apply extraterritorially on the same grounds:
85
The opinion ... proves too much. Although Attorney General Moody denied that incongruous results would flow from his interpretation, it would be anomalous, as we have said, for an act of Congress to regulate the hours of a citizen of Iran at work on a government project there.... Since the statute contains no distinction between laborers based on citizenship, Attorney General Stone's reasoning that aliens are not covered points to the conclusion that the statute does not apply to contracts which are to be performed in foreign countries.
86
Id., 336 U.S. at 289, 69 S.Ct. at 579. The Court thus concludes that absent a distinction between aliens and U.S. citizens employed abroad, the Act must apply to both aliens and citizens employed abroad, or to neither. Therefore, because it would infringe upon the sovereignty of other nations to apply the Law to foreign nationals employed abroad, the Act could not be construed to apply to citizens employed abroad.
87
Similarly, the Supreme Court in both Benz v. Compania Naviera Hidalgo, 353 U.S. 138, 147, 77 S.Ct. 699, 704, 1 L.Ed.2d 709 (1956) (LMRA) and McCulloch, 372 U.S. at 21, 83 S.Ct. at 677-78 (NLRA), refused to "run interference in ... a delicate field of international relations" by construing U.S. labor laws to apply to foreign seamen employed on vessels registered under a foreign flag. While these cases involved principles unique to the law of the sea, the nationality of the parties was clearly a source of concern for the Court.20
88
The alien exemption provision of Title VII, which provides the strongest evidence of congressional intent to apply Title VII extraterritorially, eliminates the very factor which has barred the extraterritorial application of U.S. labor laws.21 Because this provision insures that the statute will not intrude on the area of labor relations which is the "primary concern" of foreign nations, extraterritorial application of Title VII is unlikely to offend the sovereignty of other states. See id. Furthermore, there is no attempt in this case to impose the requirements of Title VII on foreign corporations employing U.S. citizens abroad--another area likely to be of "primary concern" to foreign states. I would conclude that "the rights of other nations or their nationals are not infringed" by extraterritorial application of Title VII, and therefore "the United States is not debarred by any rule of international law from governing the conduct of its own citizens ... in foreign countries." Steele, 344 U.S. at 285-86, 73 S.Ct. at 255-56. This is not to say that extraterritorial application of Title VII would always be appropriate: it may not be, particularly in the case of an actual conflict of law. The possibility of such conflict is not, however, sufficiently great to render extraterritorial application of Title VII unreasonable.
89
In fact, Title VII contains provisions that allow conflicts with foreign law to be minimized. For example, this court has allowed an employer to use the bona fide occupational qualification (BFOQ) exception, 42 U.S.C. Sec. 2000e-2(e), to assert the requirements of foreign law as a defense to a Title VII claim. Kern v. Dynaelectron, 577 F.Supp. 1196 (N.D.Tex.1983), aff'd mem., 746 F.2d 810 (5th Cir.1984) (affirmed on basis of reasons stated by the district court). In Kern, the district court held that in extraordinary circumstances, a prohibited classification could itself be a BFOQ. Id. at 1201. The plaintiff had alleged discrimination on the basis of religion because Dynaelectron, a U.S. corporation which operated a helicopter pilot service in Saudi Arabia, employed only Moslem pilots to conduct flights from Jeddah to the holy city of Mecca. The employer asserted as his defense a Saudi law prohibiting non-Moslems from entering the holy area of Mecca. The penalty for violation of the law was severe--death by beheading. Id. at 1200. The court concluded that under the circumstances, religion was a BFOQ for the job of piloting flights from Jeddah to Mecca. Id. at 1201.
90
Although the availability of the BFOQ defense in cases of less extreme conflicts with foreign law has not been tested, Kern indicates that the defense could provide a basis for reconciling legitimate conflicts.22
91
The argument that extraterritorial application of Title VII is unreasonable because it would offend the sovereignty of other nations is not persuasive. The fact that another nation may exercise jurisdiction over employment relations on the basis of territory does not render the exercise of U.S. jurisdiction on the basis of nationality unreasonable. The likelihood that concurrent jurisdiction would produce international discord is minimized by the fact that the United States seeks to regulate only the conduct of its own nationals and by the fact that Title VII may be reconciled with foreign law in the event of a conflict.
92
The fact that one could hypothesize particular situations in which the extraterritorial application of Title VII to U.S. citizens employed by U.S. corporations would conflict with foreign law does not compel a holding that Title VII may never extend its protections beyond U.S. borders. This construction of section 403 would place an untenable restriction on U.S. sovereignty. We would be required to defeat congressional intent to apply a statute extraterritorially unless Congress was able to anticipate and resolve every potential conflict of jurisdiction, or unless Congress met the McCulloch standard by expressing an affirmative intent to apply a statute extraterritorially whether reasonable or not. This would make extraterritorial jurisdiction an all or nothing proposition, eliminating a middle ground on which Congress could exercise extraterritorial jurisdiction in a more limited fashion. This result is neither compelled by the Restatement nor desirable.
93
For the purposes of this case, the Restatement requires only that we conclude that extraterritorial application of Title VII would in general be reasonable. Because Congress cannot anticipate every conflict of law, it must necessarily rely on the courts to make a more individualized determination of the propriety of exercising extraterritorial jurisdiction in a particular case. The constraints of section 403 apply to exercises of prescriptive jurisdiction not only by Congress, but by all government entities.23 The courts will therefore be guided in individual cases by the same principles of reasonableness that apply to our evaluation of Congress' initial exercise of extraterritorial jurisdiction.
94
Thus, while I would hold that extraterritorial application of Title VII would in general be reasonable, I would also recognize that it may be appropriate in some circumstances for a U.S. court to decline to apply Title VII extraterritorially. In the instant case, the factors that might influence a more individualized decision whether to apply Title VII extraterritorially have not been fully briefed and are therefore not considered here.
95
III. The Language and Legislative History of Title VII
96
Since extraterritorial application of Title VII would not be unreasonable and therefore does not violate principles of international law, we do not need to search for an affirmative expression of congressional intent to apply Title VII extraterritorially. Rather, we may employ the traditional methods of statutory interpretation to determine whether the presumption against extraterritoriality is overcome by the "contrary intent" of Congress. See Foley Bros., 336 U.S. at 285, 69 S.Ct. at 577-78; Natural Resources Defense Council v. Nuclear Regulatory Comm'n, 647 F.2d 1345, 1357 n. 54 (D.C.Cir.1981).
97
In asserting that Congress intended Title VII to apply extraterritorially,24 Boureslan and Amicus EEOC rely primarily on the "alien exemption provision," 42 U.S.C. Sec. 2000e-1, which provides in relevant part: "This subchapter shall not apply to an employer with respect to the employment of aliens outside any State." The stated purpose of this provision was "to remove conflicts of law which might otherwise exist between the United States and a foreign nation in the employment of aliens outside the United States by an American enterprise."25 Civil Rights: Hearings on H.R. 7152 Before the House Committee on the Judiciary, 88th Cong., 1st Sess. 2303 (1963) (testimony of James Roosevelt, Member of Congress from the State of California) (explaining provisions of H.R. 405 which was incorporated into Title VII of H.R. 7152).26
98
Since Title VII expressly exempts from coverage aliens employed abroad by U.S. corporations, the logical negative inference is that Title VII was intended to cover U.S. citizens employed abroad. Indeed, the alien exemption provision would be meaningless if Title VII did not apply extraterritorially: there is no need to exempt aliens employed abroad from coverage if no one is covered abroad. Construction of a statute to render a provision meaningless violates the established rule of statutory construction which obliges a court "to give effect, if possible, to every word Congress used." Reiter v. Sonotone Corp., 442 U.S. 330, 339, 99 S.Ct. 2326, 2331, 60 L.Ed.2d 931 (1979); accord United States v. Reeves, 752 F.2d 995, 998 (5th Cir.1985) ("A statute should be read to avoid rendering its language redundant if reasonably possible."); Goff v. Taylor, 706 F.2d 574, 587 n. 34 (5th Cir.1983) ("It is well established that a statute should be construed so that each of its provisions is is given full effect; interpretations which render parts of a statute inoperative or superfluous are to be avoided."); Quarles v. St. Clair, 711 F.2d 691, 701 n. 32 (5th Cir.1983) (same); Duke v. University of Texas at El Paso, 663 F.2d 522, 526 (5th Cir.1981) (same); Beisler v. Commissioner, 814 F.2d 1304, 1307 (9th Cir.1987) ("We should avoid an interpretation of the statute that renders any part of it superfluous and does not give effect to all of the words used by Congress.").
99
The majority maintains that it has not deprived the alien exemption provision of all meaning because another negative inference may be drawn from the provision:27 that aliens are covered by the statute when employed within the United States. The majority relies for this proposition on Espinoza v. Farah Mfg. Co., 414 U.S. 86, 95, 94 S.Ct. 334, 339-40, 38 L.Ed.2d 287 (1973), in which the Supreme Court held that Title VII applied to aliens employed in the United States but did not prohibit an employer from discriminating on the basis of citizenship or alienage. That is, Title VII protected aliens from discrimination on the basis of race, religion, color, sex, or national origin, but did not make alienage itself a prohibited classification.
100
The majority's reliance on Espinoza is misplaced. The Supreme Court does not rely solely on the negative inference it draws from the alien exemption provision, nor does it discuss the legislative history of the provision which supports the interpretation advanced by Boureslan and the EEOC. It would therefore be erroneous to conclude that the Supreme Court's passing reference in Espinoza to the alien exemption provision was intended to attach only one negative inference to the proviso.
101
A negative inference drawn from the alien exemption provision was not necessary to bring aliens within the scope of Title VII's domestic protections. As the Supreme Court notes in Espinoza, the use of the term "individual" in defining "employee" is sufficient to bring aliens within the statute's coverage. Id. Any construction of the term "individual"--as distinct from "citizen"--to exclude aliens would be inconsistent with principles of equal protection.28 While the precise level of scrutiny applied to classifications based on alienage has varied,29 it is well established that aliens are "persons" within the meaning of the fifth and fourteenth amendments, and are entitled to the equal protection of the laws of the United States. Yick Wo v. Hopkins, 118 U.S. 356, 6 S.Ct. 1064, 30 L.Ed. 220 (1886); Truax v. Raich, 239 U.S. 33, 36 S.Ct. 7, 60 L.Ed. 131 (1915). Therefore, Congress could not have excluded aliens residing in the United States30 from the coverage of Title VII without drawing an explicit distinction between aliens and citizens, and providing justification for the distinction sufficient to satisfy equal protection analysis under the due process clause. While it may be appropriate for the Supreme Court to cite the alien exemption provision in support of the obvious conclusion that aliens are covered by Title VII when employed in the United States, the majority's contention that this is the sole meaning to be attached to the provision is nonsensical. Given that aliens are "employees" within the meaning of Title VII in precisely the same sense that citizens are employees, it would be absolutely unnecessary to state that Title VII does not apply to aliens employed abroad unless the statute did apply to U.S. citizens employed abroad. Again, the majority's analysis renders the alien exemption clause completely superfluous, in violation of the canons of statutory construction. See cases cited supra.
102
Congress' intent to apply Title VII extraterritorially is even more apparent if the alien exemption clause is read in light of the contemporary case law regarding the extraterritorial application of U.S. labor laws and the application of U.S. labor laws to foreign nationals. The Supreme Court appeared at the time to regard the application of U.S. law to foreign nationals as a primary source of conflict with other nations. See cases discussed supra in section II.
103
Congress' statement that the alien exemption provision was intended to avoid conflicts of law is perfectly logical in the context of this case law: Congress could reasonably have concluded that exempting aliens employed abroad would eliminate any obstacles to protecting U.S. citizens employed abroad by U.S. corporations.
104
Taken together, the language and legislative history of Title VII evidence a clear intent of Congress to apply Title VII to U.S. citizens employed abroad by U.S. corporations. This showing is sufficient to overcome the presumption against extraterritoriality. See Mitchell, 553 F.2d at 1002.
IV. Conclusion
105
Although the issue presented in this case--whether Title VII applies to U.S. citizens employed abroad by U.S. corporations--appears simple on its face, its resolution turns on a complex interaction between international law and principles of statutory construction.
106
The majority errs in attempting to resolve the complex issues raised in this case through a single instrument of analysis: the presumption against extraterritoriality. In the process, the majority distorts the presumption and, in the name of judicial deference to the legislative branch, defeats congressional intent to apply Title VII extraterritorially--without reaching the issue that would justify its conclusion: whether extraterritorial application of Title VII would violate international law.
107
In order to more carefully evaluate whether the evidence of congressional intent presented in this case is sufficient to support an exercise of extraterritorial jurisdiction, I have employed a two-step inquiry.
108
The first inquiry is whether extraterritorial application of Title VII would violate section 403 of the Restatement which provides that as a matter of international law, a state may not exercise its jurisdiction to prescribe laws affecting persons or activities connected with another state when it is unreasonable to do so.
109
Applying the factors listed in the Restatement, it is clear that extraterritorial application of Title VII would not in general be unreasonable. First, the interest of the United States in applying its civil rights laws to its own nationals is sufficiently strong to support the exercise of extraterritorial jurisdiction and is consistent with the interest of the international community in eliminating discrimination. Second, extraterritorial application of Title VII would not offend the sovereignty of other nations because the statute does not attempt to regulate the conduct of foreign nationals. ARAMCO's contention that the United States should defer to the jurisdiction of other states to prescribe employment laws within their own territory would, in the absence of any actual conflict of law, place an untenable restriction on the sovereignty of the United States. The potential for conflict is minimized by the fact that Title VII may be construed to reconcile the competing demands of U.S. and foreign law when a conflict does occur.
110
Since extraterritorial application of Title VII would not violate the principles embodied in section 403, we do not need to search for an affirmative statement of congressional intent. The presumption against extraterritoriality may be overcome if the language and legislative history of Title VII express a clear (if not affirmative) intent to apply the statute extraterritorially. Applying the canons of statutory construction to the plain language of the statute and referring to the legislative history to determine Congress' intent, only one conclusion is possible: Congress intended that Title VII's protections would extend to U.S. citizens employed abroad by U.S. corporations.
111
While the exercise of extraterritorial jurisdiction necessarily raises sensitive issues of international law, U.S. employers should not be allowed to escape liability for discrimination by cloaking themselves in a conveniently acquired concern for the integrity of the sovereignty of foreign states. In holding that Title VII affords no protection from employment discrimination to U.S. citizens employed abroad by U.S. corporations, the majority defeats Congress' intent to the contrary. Because I believe that we could give effect to Congress' intent without intruding upon the sovereignty of other nations, I must respectfully dissent.
*
Formerly Judge Randall
**
District Judge of the Eastern District of Texas, sitting by designation
1
Eight years after the enactment of Title VII, Congress added the following language to extend protection of the Act to federal employees, and included the alien exemption language:
All personnel actions affecting employees or applicants for employment (except with regard to aliens employed outside the limits of the United States ) in military departments ..., in executive agencies ..., in the United States Postal Service and the Postal Rate Commission, in those units of the government of the District of Columbia having positions in the competitive service, and in those units of the legislative and judicial branches of the Federal Government having positions in the competitive service, and in the Library of Congress shall be made free from any discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. (emphasis added).
42 U.S.C. Sec. 2000e-16(a).
2
In Espinoza, 414 U.S. at 94, 94 S.Ct. at 339, the Court noted that the EEOC's interpretation of Title VII is generally entitled to deference. However, such interpretations are not controlling on the courts. Because this is a jurisdictional issue with little or no statutory language or legislative history, and one in which the EEOC has developed no particular expertise, we give the EEOC's interpretation less deference than usual. This is particularly appropriate given the traditional presumption against extraterritoriality. See General Electric Co. v. Gilbert, 429 U.S. 125, 141-42, 97 S.Ct. 401, 410-11, 50 L.Ed.2d 343 (1976); Skidmore v. Swift & Co., 323 U.S. 134, 140, 65 S.Ct. 161, 164, 89 L.Ed. 124 (1944)
3
These deletions are reflected in an annotated copy of the House bill that Senator Dirksen inserted into the Congressional Record on June 5, 1964, in anticipation of debate on the Senate's substitute bill. Senator Everett Dirksen, 110 Cong.Rec. 12811-817 (1964)
4
The colloborative nature of the way in which H.R. 405 found its way into H.R. 7152 further dilutes the report's impact. The General Subcommittee on Labor voted on June 20, 1963, to report H.R. 405 to the full Committee on Education and Labor. On July 31, 1963, Subcommittee No. 5 of the House Committee on the Judiciary placed this report in the record of hearings on H.R. 7152, the administration's civil rights bill. Subcommittee No. 5 substituted H.R. 405 for the equal employment title originally proposed in H.R. 7152, and reported H.R. 7152 favorably to the full judiciary committee. The full committee retained the alien exemption provision when it reported the title on Nov. 20, 1963. Ultimately, Congress enacted H.R. 7152 as the Civil Rights Act of 1963. In short, EEOC looks for a clear expression of intention in a negative inference arising from one paragraph of a report rendered by members of a House subcommittee that did not participate in voting the bill out of the Judiciary Committee and sending it to the full House
1
Every district court that has considered the question has held that Title VII does apply extraterritorially. Bryant v. International Schools Services, Inc., 502 F.Supp. 472 (D.N.J.1980), rev'd on other grounds, 675 F.2d 562, 577 n. 23 (3d Cir.1982) (declining to reach question of Title VII's extraterritorial application); Seville v. Martin Marietta Corp., 638 F.Supp. 590 (D.Md.1986) (adopting Bryant's reasoning); Love v. Pullman, 13 Fair Empl.Prac.Cas. (BNA) 423, 426 n. 4 (D.Colo.1976), aff'd on other grounds, 569 F.2d 1074 (10th Cir.1978); see also Kern v. Dynaelectron, 577 F.Supp. 1196 (N.D.Tex.1983) (applying Title VII extraterritorially without expressly considering threshold jurisdictional issue), aff'd mem., 746 F.2d 810 (5th Cir.1984)
2
Territory and nationality are the two universally recognized bases for a state's exercise of jurisdiction to prescribe law. Restatement Sec. 402 comment a (also noting that these links may not be sufficient in all cases). Territoriality, however, "is considered the normal, and nationality an exceptional, basis for the exercise of jurisdiction." Id. comment b
3
Though Mitchell cites Steele and Foley Bros. as support for its formulation of the presumption, neither case requires that Congress' expression of "contrary intent" be "clear." 553 F.2d at 1002 (citing Steele, 344 U.S. at 285, 73 S.Ct. at 255, Foley Bros., 336 U.S. at 285, 69 S.Ct. 577-78). For the purposes of this case, however, I recognize that we are bound by Mitchell's interpretation of these cases
4
In Foley Bros., the Supreme Court held that such language was not sufficient to support extraterritorial jurisdiction. 336 U.S. at 287, 69 S.Ct. at 578-79. However, in Steele, decided three years later, the Court found that the broad jurisdictional language of the Lanham Act was sufficient to support the exercise of extraterritorial jurisdiction over U.S. nationals abroad. 344 U.S. at 286-87, 73 S.Ct. at 255-56
In Mitchell, this court rejected the government's argument that use of the term "moratorium" in the Marine Mammal Protection Act, without reference to the geographic scope of the provision, indicated an intent by Congress to extend the moratorium against the taking of marine mammals world wide. 553 F.2d at 1003. Citing Foley Bros., the court reasoned that such "all inclusive language" was not sufficient, by itself, to support extraterritorial jurisdiction. Id. at 1003-04.
5
Quoting from Pfeiffer v. Wm. Wrigley, Jr. Co., 755 F.2d 554 (7th Cir.1985), the majority maintains that the presumption arises from "[t]he fear of outright collisions between domestic and foreign law--collisions both hard on those caught in the cross-fire, and a potential source of friction between the United States and foreign countries."
It is true that by requiring a threshold showing of congressional intent, the presumption will in practice prevent unnecessary conflicts of law. Once that threshold showing has been established, however, we must turn to other mechanisms for resolving the conflicts of law that inevitably arise from the exercise of extraterritorial jurisdiction.
6
This argument is advanced in more detail below
7
Although the majority cites McCulloch in its discussion of the presumption against extraterritoriality, McCulloch did not turn on the issue of extraterritorial jurisdiction. Indeed, the presumption against extraterritoriality is not even mentioned in the opinion. Rather, the Supreme Court in McCulloch found that application of the National Labor Relations Act to protect foreign seamen, employed on vessels registered under a foreign flag, would violate State Department policy, a Treaty with the Honduran government, and the established principle of international law that the internal affairs of a vessel are to be regulated according to "the law of the flag state." Id., 372 U.S. at 20-21 & n. 12, 83 S.Ct. 677 n. 12. The Court held that absent "[t]he affirmative intention of Congress clearly expressed," the NLRA could not be construed to apply to foreign seamen employed aboard vessels registered under a foreign flag because such a construction would violate the law of nations. Id. at 21-22, 83 S.Ct. at 677-78
The standard set forth in McCulloch is thus not an elaboration upon the presumption against extraterritoriality, but an application of the long-standing principle that "an act of Congress ought never to be construed to violate the law of nations if any other possible construction remains." Id., quoting The Charming Betsy, 2 Cranch 64, 118, 2 L.Ed. 208 (1804)); accord Restatement section 114; see also Rossi, 456 U.S. at 32, 102 S.Ct. at 1515-16 (citing McCulloch for this proposition, and construing statute to avoid repudiation of several international agreements, absent affirmative expression of Congress requiring that construction).
McCulloch, therefore, stands for the proposition for which it is cited in the text: a statute may not be construed to violate international law unless Congress has, by an affirmative expression of its intent, required that construction. 372 U.S. at 21-22, 83 S.Ct. at 677-78; Rossi, 456 U.S. at 32, 102 S.Ct. at 1515-16.
8
In suggesting that we evaluate these concerns, I do not propose that we overstep our judicial role by intruding on the realm of international affairs which is properly the province of the legislative and executive branches. I propose simply that if the evidence of congressional intent to apply Title VII extraterritorially is sufficient to overcome the (properly applied) presumption against extraterritoriality, we should give effect to that intent unless we are precluded by principles of international law from doing so. This undertaking is entirely consistent with our judicial role. See Restatement Sec. 111(1)-(2) (International law is the law of the United States and within the judicial power of the United States.)
9
The Supreme Court's language in Steele suggests such a two-pronged inquiry: "the United States is not debarred by any rule of international law from governing the conduct of its own citizens upon the high seas or even in foreign countries when the rights of other nations or their nationals are not infringed." 344 U.S. at 286, 73 S.Ct. at 255-56. Thus, if the rights of other nations or their nationals are not infringed, an act of Congress may be given the full geographic scope that Congress intended. The reasonableness inquiry is a means by which we can determine whether foreign rights or interests would be infringed such that extraterritorial application of a statute would be inappropriate
10
Most courts have applied the "reasonableness" principle to consider whether it would be appropriate to moderate their own enforcement of a statute that has already been held to apply extraterritorially. See, e.g., American Rice, Inc. v. Arkansas Rice Growers Cooperative Association, 701 F.2d 408 (5th Cir.1983) (Lanham Act); Laker Airways v. Sabena, Belgian World Airlines, 731 F.2d 909 (D.C.Cir.1984) (Sherman Act). This was the approach endorsed by section 40 of the Second Restatement, the precursor of section 403
The Third Restatement, however, asserts that section 403 is intended to be more than a principle of comity: "reasonableness is understood here ... as an essential element in determining whether, as a matter of law, the state may exercise jurisdiction to prescribe." Restatement sec. 403 reporters' note 10.
No court has applied the reasonableness test as part of the threshold inquiry to determine whether a statute may, as a general matter, be applied extraterritorially. The Restatement, however, notes that the reasonableness test may serve the same purpose as the traditional tests for deciding whether a statute may be applied extraterritorially. Id. reporters' note 2.
11
The language regarding the economic effects of discrimination provides a basis for Congress' exercise of power under the Commerce Clause. See Heart of Atlanta Motel v. United States, 379 U.S. 241, 85 S.Ct. 348, 13 L.Ed.2d 258 (1964); Katzenbach v. McClung, 379 U.S. 294, 85 S.Ct. 377, 13 L.Ed.2d 290 (1964) (upholding Title II of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 as exercise of Congress' power under the Commerce Clause)
12
This purpose is evident from the introductory language to the section which states that Title VII is necessary "[t]o remove obstructions to the free flow of commerce among the States and with foreign nations" and "[t]o insure the complete and full enjoyment by all persons of the rights, privileges, and immunities secured and protected by the Constitution." H.R.Rep. No. 914, 88th Cong., 1st Sess. 2009 (1963) (emphasis added)
The fact that it was upheld as an exercise of Congress' power under the Commerce Clause, does not eclipse the fact that one purpose of the Civil Rights Act was to insure the protection of rights under the fourteenth amendment. See Heart of Atlanta Motel, 379 U.S. at 250, 85 S.Ct. at 354 (declining to decide whether Congress' power under the Enforcement Clause of the fourteenth amendment would be sufficient by itself to support enactment of Title II of the Act (public accommodations)); cf. id. at 284, 85 S.Ct. at 371-72, (Douglas, J., concurring) (While "economic aspects of the problems of discrimination are heavily accented[,] ... the objectives of the Fourteenth Amendment were by no means ignored.").
13
Indeed, in the same section, the Restatement notes without criticism that "[s]ome United States civil rights legislation protects United States nationals outside the United States." Restatement Sec. 721 reporters' note 13 (citing Bryant, 502 F.Supp. 472 (D.N.J.1980) (applying Title VII extraterritorially))
14
Actions by the State, even outside the territory of the United States, must be constrained by the Constitution because the "United States is entirely a creature of the Constitution." Reid v. Covert, 354 U.S. 1, 5-6, 77 S.Ct. 1222, 1224-25, 1 L.Ed.2d 1148 (1956) (plurality opinion of Black, J.)
15
The Restatement provides that each of the enumerated factors should be evaluated "where appropriate." Restatement Sec. 403(2)
16
The same "effects" on commerce which allow Congress to regulate the conduct of private employers under Title VII, supra note 11, may be sufficient to establish "effects" in the regulating state within the meaning of section 403. Cf. Timberlane Lumber Co. v. Bank of America, 549 F.2d 597, 612 (9th Cir.1976) (noting that Congress' power to regulate foreign commerce is not subject to same restrictions as power to regulate interstate commerce, and effects test for extraterritorial jurisdiction must therefore be informed by "notions of comity and fairness")
Because section 403 requires us to consider other factors in exercising extraterritorial jurisdiction, there is no reason to discard the analysis, already accepted by the courts, that the cumulative economic effects of discrimination are sufficient to justify regulation. See L. Tribe, American Constitutional Law 310 (1988) (discussing "cumulative effect" principle as constitutional justification for civil rights legislation).
17
"Regulating the activities of businesses incorporated within a state is one of the oldest and most established examples of prescriptive jurisdiction." Laker Airways, 731 F.2d at 926
18
See, e.g., International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, 660 U.N.T.S. 195, U.N. Doc. A/6014 (1965); Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, G.A. Res. 34/180, U.N. Doc. A/34/46 (1979)
Many of these agreements have been signed by the United States, but have not been ratified by the Senate. Most of the protections that the United States would owe to its citizens under these agreements are already provided by the Constitution and federal and state law. See 2 Restatement introductory note to Part VII at 150.
19
In Timberlane, the Ninth Circuit suggested that extraterritorial application of the Sherman Act could be moderated to reduce international tensions by affording greater consideration to the nationality of the parties. The court noted that "applying American laws to American citizens raises fewer problems than application to foreigners." 549 F.2d at 612
20
Neither McCulloch nor Benz is cited in the Restatement's discussion of the presumption against extraterritoriality. Benz, however, is cited in the section on Law of the Sea. Sec. 512 reporters' note 5 (jurisdiction over foreign vessels in port)
21
The majority cites several other examples of cases in which courts have refused to apply U.S. labor laws extraterritorially. These cases are readily distinguishable: First, the majority cites several cases holding that the Railway Labor Act does not apply extraterritorially. The RLA, however, incorporates a provision of the Interstate Commerce Act which explicitly restricts its application to carriers engaged in transportation within the United States. See Air Line Stewards and Stewardesses Ass'n v. Trans World Airlines, 273 F.2d 69, 71 (2d Cir.1959); Airline Dispatchers Ass'n v. Nat'l Mediation Board, 189 F.2d 685, 690 (D.C.Cir.), cert. denied, 342 U.S. 849, 72 S.Ct. 77, 96 L.Ed. 641 (1951)
Second, the majority cites cases holding that the Age Discrimination in Employment Act does not apply extraterritorially. The ADEA, however, has been explicitly distinguished from Title VII because it does not contain a provision exempting aliens employed abroad. Pfeiffer v. Wm. Wrigley, Jr. Co., 755 F.2d 554, 559 (7th Cir.1985).
22
I do not mean to suggest that courts should not continue to be sparing in their application of the BFOQ defense. In particular, courts should be wary of vague assertions of inconsistent legal requirements or cultural differences "which might afford [an employer] a pretext that [the granting of] relief would impugn foreign law." Steele, 344 U.S. at 280, 73 S.Ct. at 252 (no conflict where Mexican registration of trademark had been cancelled); see also Fernandez v. Wynn Oil Co., 653 F.2d 1273 (9th Cir.1981) (alleged chauvinism of South American businessmen should not provide basis for holding that being male was BFOQ); Note, Equal Employment Opportunity for Americans Abroad, 62 N.Y.U. L.Rev. 1288, 1301-11 (1987) (criticizing use of BFOQ defense as grounds to defeat extraterritorial application of Title VII and as vehicle for avoiding conflicts of law)
23
Prescriptive jurisdiction is defined as jurisdiction of a state "to make its law applicable to the activities, relations, or status of persons, or the interests of persons in things, whether by legislation, by executive act or order, by administrative rule or regulation, or by determination of a court." Restatement Sec. 401(a). The traditional equation of jurisdiction to prescribe with legislative jurisdiction was discarded in recognition of the increasingly complex relationship between the roles of different branches of government. Id. introductory note to Part IV at 230
24
It is not disputed that Title VII's definition of "employer" is sufficiently expansive to support application of Title VII beyond the territory of the United States. "Employer" is defined as any "person engaged in an industry affecting commerce" who has a specified number of employees who work a specified number of days. 42 U.S.C. Sec. 2000e(b)
25
The majority dismisses this piece of legislative history, arguing that we must not "substitute legislative history for the language of the Act." The language of the statute is not, however, inconsistent with the legislative history. Both the plain language of the statute, interpreted according to the established canons of statutory construction, and the legislative history compel a single conclusion: that Congress intended Title VII to apply extraterritorially
It is instead the majority's conclusion that Title VII does not apply extraterritorially that requires us to ignore the canons of statutory construction and the clear evidence of legislative history.
26
Contrary to the majority's assertion, the collaborative nature of Title VII's legislative history requires that these hearings be given special weight. H.R. 405 originated in the Committee on Education and Labor, but was incorporated by the Judiciary Committee into H.R. 7152. Title VII is thus a hybrid of bills originating in two committees. Although the Judiciary Committee subsequently amended H.R. 7152, the coverage provisions of Title VII, including the alien exemption provision, were not changed. Representative Roosevelt's explanation of the provisions of H.R. 405, based on the conclusions of the Committee on Education and Labor, is thus equivalent to a committee report for purposes of determining the objectives of the provisions that were incorporated wholesale from H.R. 405. Such discussions of statutory meaning are accepted as the most "persuasive indicia of congressional intent." Mills v. United States, 713 F.2d 1249, 1252 (7th Cir.1983), cert. denied, 464 U.S. 1069, 104 S.Ct. 974, 79 L.Ed.2d 212 (1984); see also Johnson v. Department of Treasury, 700 F.2d 971, 974 (5th Cir.1983)
27
The majority's assertion that the provision still has meaning because it means what it says--that aliens employed abroad are not covered--is purely semantic. As stated above, the alien exemption provision is completely superfluous if the statute does not cover any individual employed abroad. There is no difference between interpreting a statute to render a provision superfluous and interpreting a statute to deprive a provision of meaning: Semantic distinctions aside, both violate the canons of statutory construction. See cases cited supra
28
Principles of equal protection are, of course, incorporated into the due process clause of the fifth amendment and therefore are applicable to acts of the federal government. Bolling v. Sharpe, 347 U.S. 497, 74 S.Ct. 693, 98 L.Ed. 884 (1954)
29
See L. Tribe, American Constitutional Law 1544-53 (1988)
30
Equal protection principles "are universal in their application, to all persons within the territorial jurisdiction" of the United States. Yick Wo, 118 U.S. at 369, 6 S.Ct. at 1070-71; see also note 28 supra
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tomekkorbak/pile-curse-small
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FreeLaw
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Playboy’s Rainy Day Jordan Brightens Our Day with a ‘Quickie’ [INTERVIEW]
The women that appear in the pages of Playboy seem like incredibly intimidating creatures to men. Even the coolest of characters usually stutters more than Foghorn Leghorn being tasered when talking with one of the Playmates.
Rainy Day Jordan, Playboy’s Miss December, is warm and welcoming from the moment she steps into a room. A native of Abliene, Texas, Rainy Day has dreamed of appearing in Playboy since she first snuck a peek at the famed gentleman’s magazine.
Rainy Day sat down with us to talk about the road that led her to becoming ‘Miss December’ and her aspirations to taking the Playmate of the Year title.
GS: The first thing that jumped out at us was your name. Is that your actual name or a nickname?
RD: No that is my real name. There are several people in my family who have weather names, so it’s kind of a family thing. My mom’s name is Windy. My aunt’s name is Dusty. My great aunt is Sandy and we also have a Stormy.
GS: Is there also a Hail-y or a Sleety?
RD: (laughs) We actually do have a Haley.
Twitpic / RainyDay53
GS: So congratulations on being picked as Miss December. What’s the process like? How did you get picked for this?
RD: I was picked out of a casting call in Dallas for the Super Bowl. I just went for the casting call, and a couple of months later, I got a phone call back and did some special editions for Playboy and did some shots with Ric Moore. Then I went to Miami and did a test shoot, and after that, they approved my pictures to come to LA and do a shoot with Steve Wayda. He’s a wonderful photographer. Then Hef approved me for the centerfold and gave me Miss December.
GS: It sounds like this was something that you’ve always wanted and that you were pretty open about posing for Playboy. Was it something you were nervous about doing?
RD: Yes, I was always very confident and secure in doing this. Everyone was so professional and I had a great experience with everyone I worked with, so there was no reason to be nervous.
GS: What about your family? Do they know?
RD: My whole family is just so happy for me. They supported me 100% the whole way, so that’s been really great.
Playboy.com
GS: Have you been modeling long or was this the first time?
RD: This was my first modeling job. This was my first go-around. Since a very early age, when I was probably 11, my Dad had some of those famous issues, and I saw them, and I really wanted to be one of those girls. I just thought they were beautiful and I thought the magazine was great, so I grew up wanting it real bad and dreamt about being a playmate. I knew I was going to do it. It’s just always been a goal of mine and a dream, and I’m so happy that it’s happened for me.
GS: You could’ve probably posed for any men’s magazine. Why were you focused on Playboy itself?
RD: I never had a huge desire to be a model and just do runway or random campaigns. I always set my goals for Playboy because I took an interest in Hef and his story, his success and how long the magazine has been around. The women who have been in the magazine were just huge names: Cindy Crawford, Marilyn Monroe, Pam Anderson; just great women who were part of this company and I couldn’t have picked a better brand or company to pose for.
GS: How did you react?
RD: Playboy called me and I just started bawling. I called my Mom and Dad and I was just crying. My Mom started crying and my Dad poured himself a drink. It was just very exciting.
GS: How has this changed things for you and where do you hope to go from this?
RD: Playmate of the Year would be wonderful. I would love to just stay with the company as long as I’m able, and when that’s all said and done, I will continue my nursing degree and work as a nurse. Ultimately, I would love to work behind the camera for Playboy.
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tomekkorbak/pile-curse-small
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Pile-CC
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1. Introduction {#s0005}
===============
With the emergence of suitable large scale production systems for the biomanufacturing of double stranded RNA (dsRNA) for RNAi applications, the development of high throughput methods that facilitate the rapid characterisation of dsRNA is required. Mass spectrometry based methods offer a powerful approach to characterise RNA. RNase mass mapping methods have been developed and used for the identification and quantification of RNA and RNA post transcriptional modifications \[[@bb0005], [@bb0010], [@bb0015], [@bb0020], [@bb0025], [@bb0030], [@bb0035], [@bb0040], [@bb0045], [@bb0050]\]. Typical workflows involve the purification of the RNA \[[@bb0055], [@bb0060], [@bb0065], [@bb0070]\], prior to RNase digestion into smaller oligoribonucleotides that are more amenable for chromatographic separation and intact mass measurements \[[@bb0075], [@bb0080], [@bb0085], [@bb0090]\]. Additional sequence information from the oligoribonucleotides can be obtained using tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS) \[[@bb0095],[@bb0100]\]. However, the analysis of nucleic acids in particular RNA, *via* mass spectrometry has proved more difficult compared to the routine applications of proteomics to study biological systems. This is due to the difficulty in purifying and enriching biological RNA, the formation of RNA-metal ion adducts and problems associated with sequencing RNAs due to poor fragmentation in tandem mass spectrometry experiments. Furthermore, there is traditionally a trade-off between chromatographic performance and mobile phase conditions necessary to obtain high sensitivity during electrospray mass spectrometry analysis.
Recent approaches have further developed the use of RNase mass mapping for the characterisation of dsRNA \[[@bb0105]\]. RNase digestion of the dsRNA was performed, using both RNase A and a novel method utilising RNase T1 for RNase mass mapping approaches to further characterise the dsRNA using liquid chromatography interfaced with mass spectrometry. However detailed analysis of RNA using mass spectrometry is time consuming, requires significant technical expertise and expensive instrumentation. In addition, limited software exists for the automated analysis of typical mass spectrometry data from RNase mass mapping approaches.
In the production of biopharmaceutical proteins peptide mapping with reversed-phase (RP) chromatography has been used for the analyses of recombinant protein biopharmaceuticals delivering comprehensive characterisation of products \[[@bb0110], [@bb0115], [@bb0120], [@bb0125], [@bb0130]\]. In addition, these methods are also employed for subsequent lot-to-lot identity testing ('fingerprinting') in support of GMP production. When interfaced with mass spectrometry, the method enables the identification of proteins and their variants, characterisation of post-translational modifications (PTMs), and confirmation of protein sequences. More recently, Ultra High Performance Liquid Chromatography (UHPLC) has been employed, demonstrating superior resolution, higher sensitivity, and much shorter analysis times compared to traditional HPLC approaches. Peptide mapping approaches have been utilised to assess the stability of biopharmaceuticals in conjunction with the detection of amino acid oxidation and deamidation \[[@bb0135]\]. Furthermore, these approaches provide information regarding quality control, analysis of batch-to-batch consistency and the stability of biopharmaceuticals \[[@bb0120],[@bb0140],[@bb0145]\].
In this study we have developed a method for the rapid characterisation of single stranded and double stranded RNA using high resolution RNase mapping in conjunction with ion-pair reverse-phase chromatography utilising superficially porous particles. This mapping approach can be applied to RNA in a similar way that peptide mapping is used in the production of proteins. Principal components analysis was employed to analyse the repeatability of replicate analysis, detect minor differences between different RNA and analyse batch-to-batch variability in the production of ssRNA and dsRNA.
2. Materials and methods {#s0010}
========================
2.1. Chemicals and reagents {#s0015}
---------------------------
Genes were synthesised by GeneArt® Gene Synthesis (Invitrogen Life Technologies). Ampicillin sodium salt, tetracycline hydrochloride, isopropyl β‑[d]{.smallcaps}‑1‑thiogalactopyranoside (IPTG) ≥99%, sodium dodecyl sulphate (SDS) sodium chloride (NaCl), dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) were from Sigma Aldrich.
2.2. Expression and purification of dsRNA using *E. coli* HT115 (DE3) {#s0020}
---------------------------------------------------------------------
The *E. coli* strain, HT115 (DE3) \[[@bb0150]\] was obtained from Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, NY, USA. Plasmid pDome11 contained an in-house designed 481 bp sequence flanked on both sides with T7 promoters was transformed into *E. coli* HT115 (DE3) cells. The pDome11 transformed cells were grown in culture and induced with IPTG to express dsRNAs as previously described \[[@bb0105]\].
RNA purification was performed using the RNASwift method as previously described \[[@bb0155]\] with minor modifications. In brief, a pellet of 10^9^ *E. coli* cells was re-suspended in 200 μL of pre-warmed lysis buffer (50% DMSO, 0.1% SDS, 0.5 M NaCl, 70 °C) and incubated at 70 °C for 3 min followed by 3 minute incubation at 37 °C. 200 μL warm solution (4% SDS, 0.5 M NaCl, 70 °C) was added followed by addition of 100 μL 5 M NaCl. This was centrifuged at 20,238*g* for 4 min and supernatant transferred to a new Eppendorf tube. 100 μL 60% isopropanol was added and purified using solid phase extraction (SPE) as essentially described \[[@bb0155]\]. It is important to ensure the same extraction and purification procedure is used for reproducible IP-RP-HPLC chromatograms following RNase digestion.
RNA concentrations were determined using a NanoDrop™ 2000c spectrophotometer (ThermoFisher Scientific) by absorbance at 260 nm normalized to a 1.0 cm (10.0 mm) path and A~260/280~ and A~260/230~ ratios obtained \[[@bb0160]\]. Additional analysis of the RNA was performed using ion-pair reverse phase chromatography.
2.3. Ion-Pair Reverse Phase High Performance Liquid Chromatography (IP-RP-HPLC) {#s0025}
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Samples were analysed by IP-RP-HPLC on a passivated Agilent 1100 series HPLC using a Proswift RP-1S Monolith column (50 mm × 4.6 mm I.D. ThermoFisher). Chromatograms were generated using UV detection at a wavelength of 260 nm. The chromatographic analysis was performed using the following conditions: Buffer A 0.1 M triethylammonium acetate (TEAA) pH 7.0 (Fluka, UK); Buffer B 0.1 M TEAA, pH 7.0 containing 25% acetonitrile (ThermoFisher). RNA was analysed using the following gradient. Gradient starting at 22% buffer B to 27% in 2 min, followed by a linear extension to 62% buffer B over 15 min, then extended to 73% buffer B over 2.5 min at a flow rate of 1.0 mL/min at 50 °C.
2.4. *In vitro* transcription (IVT) of dsRNA and ssRNA {#s0030}
------------------------------------------------------
For dsRNA synthesis *via in vitro* transcription, DNA template was amplified using PCR from the plasmid pCOIV that contains a 686 bp sequence flanked on both sides with T7 promoter sequences and optimised synthetic T7 terminator sequences. In addition, a 561 bp DNA template flanked on both sides by T7 promoters was generated by PCR from within the 686 bp sequence of the pCOIV plasmid. For *in vitro* synthesis of ssRNA, a DNA template was amplified using PCR from the plasmid pCsm40 that contains 521 bp sequence with a T7 promoter. To create a complementary ssRNA, a 521 bp DNA template identical to the first template was used with a T7 promoter on the opposite strand. The following conditions were used: 0.02 U/μL Q5 High-Fidelity DNA Polymerase, 200 μM dNTPs, 0.5 μM each of forward and reverse primer and 10 ng DNA template in a final volume of 50 μL. The following PCR parameters were used: the initial denaturation was 1 cycle of 30s at 98 °C, 30 cycles of 30 s at 98 °C, 30 s at 68 °C, and 30 s at 72 °C and a final extension at 72 °C for 2 mins. dsRNA and ssRNA were then generated using *in vitro* transcription in conjunction with HiScribe™ T7 High Yield RNA Synthesis Kit (New England Biolabs): 10 mM NTPs, 1× reaction buffer, 1 μg DNA template and 2 μL HiScribe™ T7 polymerase in 20 μL RNase-free water. Compositions of the dsRNA and ssRNAs are shown in the Supplementary Table 1.
2.5. RNase LC-UV mapping {#s0035}
------------------------
Following purification, 2.5 μg of dsRNA in RNase-free water was incubated with 100 ng RNase A at 37 °C for 30 min in a volume of 10 μL. For RNase T1 mapping, 2.5 μg of purified dsRNA in 50% DMSO was incubated at 90 °C for 30 s and allowed to cool to room temp. 2000 U RNase T1 was added and reaction mix incubated for 15 min at 37 °C in a volume of 10 μL. Subsequently, 2.5 μg of digested dsRNA was analysed using IP-RP-HPLC-UV using an Accucore C18 column (2.6 μm superficially porous silica particles 80 Å pore size 150 mm × 2.1 mm ID). LC buffer A: 80 mM 1,1,1,3,3,3‑Hexafluoro‑2‑propanol (HFIP, Sigma-Aldrich) with 20 mM TEAA (Sigma-Aldrich), LC buffer B: LC buffer A with 50% acetonitrile (v/v) (ThermoFisher). Starting with 6% buffer B, an isocratic step was performed for 2 mins followed by a linear extension to 20% B in 23 min, then extension to 30% B over 3 min. Extend to 50% B for 1 min and subsequently to 6% B in 0.5 min and hold at 6% B for 3 min at a flow rate of 300 μL min^−1^, using UV detection at a wavelength of 260 nm. All RNase mapping IP-RP-HPLC analyses were performed on a U3000 RSLC system (Thermo Scientific). Data analysis was performed in Chromeleon Software v7.2 (Thermo Scientific). Average Relative Standard Deviation (%RSD) were calculated for both retention time and peak area using Chromeleon using the individual RSD for selected peaks (\>5 mAU) in the chromatogram.
2.6. Principal components analysis {#s0040}
----------------------------------
The Principal Components Analysis was carried out using SIMCA-P 14.0 Software (Sartorius Stedim Data Analytics). The data were exported from Chromeleon 7.0 (ThermoFisher) as Excel files. The data were reduced by binning into 10 datapoints width bins using the prospectr package in the R-language for statistical computing. This left at least 19 points across the narrowest chromatographic peak but reduced the size of the dataset to a more manageable size \[[@bb0165]\].
3. Results and discussion {#s0045}
=========================
3.1. High resolution RNA fingerprinting using IP-RP-HPLC {#s0050}
--------------------------------------------------------
A 521 nt ssRNA was generated using *in vitro* transcription and subsequently purified to remove proteins and contaminants from *in vitro* transcription reagents. IP-RP-HPLC analysis in conjunction with a monolithic polystyrene‑divinylbenzene column was used to demonstrate the purity of the ssRNA samples used in this study (see Supplementary Fig. 1A). Subsequently the purified ssRNA was digested with RNase A prior to IP-RP-HPLC analysis in conjunction with IP-RP-HPLC using superficially porous silica particles to generate a high resolution fingerprint of the RNA. We have previously demonstrated the application of superficially porous silica particles for the analysis of nucleic acids \[[@bb0170]\]. The purified ssRNA was digested with RNase A prior to IP-RP-HPLC analysis (see [Fig. 1](#f0005){ref-type="fig"}A). IP-RP-HPLC analysis was performed using 20 mM TEAA, 80 mM HFIP and oligoribonucleotides eluted using an acetonitrile gradient. The results demonstrate the reproducibility of the IP-RP-HPLC method, an overlay of 3 replicate injections of the same sample is shown in [Fig. 1](#f0005){ref-type="fig"}B. Average RSD for retention time and peak area for the peaks shown in the chromatogram were determined as 0.07% and 4.8% respectively. These results demonstrate the ability to rapidly generate a reproducible chromatographic profile of the digested ssRNA using high resolution IP-RP-HPLC.Fig. 1RNase mapping of ssRNA in conjunction with IP-RP-HPLC. A) IP-RP-HPLC chromatogram of 521 nt ssRNA 1 digested with RNase A. Replicate injections of the same sample made on the same day are shown. B) Overlay of the replicate chromatograms from the RNase A digest of the 521 nt ssRNA 1.Fig. 1
To further validate the method, the analysis was applied to dsRNA. dsRNA provides a more complex sample, as typically twice as many oligoribonucleotides are generated compared to ssRNA following RNase digestion. This therefore presents a more challenging sample for IP-RP-HPLC analysis. A 686 bp dsRNA was synthesised using *in vitro* transcription and purified prior to analysis by IP-RP-HPLC to confirm the purity of the dsRNA used in this study (see Supplementary Fig. 1C). The purified dsRNA was subsequently digested with RNase A, which cleaves each strand of dsRNA 3′- to C or U bases, and analysed using IP-RP-HPLC analysis (see [Fig. 2](#f0010){ref-type="fig"}A/B). The results show the more complex mixture of oligoribonucleotides generated from the 686 bp dsRNA in contrast to the 521 nt ssRNA (see [Fig. 1](#f0005){ref-type="fig"}A). These results show that in addition to providing a rapid fingerprint of the ssRNA, such approaches can also provide a reproducible fingerprint of more complex dsRNA. Average RSD for retention time and peak area for the peaks shown in the chromatogram were determined as 0.1% and 13.6% respectively. dsRNA not only generates a more complex mixture of oligoribonucleotides upon RNase A digestion, but presents further challenges for RNase mapping approaches as most RNase are single strand-specific nucleases and therefore not active against dsRNA. We have recently demonstrated that RNase T1 can be used in RNase mass mapping of dsRNA in conjunction with the chemical denaturant DMSO \[[@bb0105]\]. A short thermal denaturation step in the presence of 50% DMSO denatures the dsRNA and prevents subsequent re-annealing. Addition of RNase T1 selectively cleaves the ssRNA on the 3′-side of G residues. Therefore, to further characterise and fingerprint the dsRNA, RNase T1 mapping was also performed in conjunction with high resolution IP-RP-HPLC (see [Fig. 2](#f0010){ref-type="fig"}C/D). Average RSD for retention time and peak area for the peaks shown in the chromatogram were determined as 0.09% and 8.5% respectively.Fig. 2High resolution RNase mapping of dsRNA in conjunction with IP-RP-HPLC A) IP-RP-HPLC chromatogram of 686 bp dsRNA digested with RNase A. Replicate injections of the same sample made on the same day are shown. B) Overlay of the replicate chromatograms from one RNase A digest of the 686 bp dsRNA. C) IP-RP-HPLC chromatogram of 686 bp dsRNA digested with RNase T1. Replicate injections of the same sample made on the same day shown. D) Overlay of the replicate chromatograms from one RNase T1 digest of the 686 bp dsRNA.Fig. 2
3.2. Rapid detection of different RNA fragments using high resolution RNase fingerprinting {#s0055}
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To further demonstrate the ability of the high resolution fingerprinting method to rapidly detect differences between RNA samples, experiments were performed using ssRNAs of the same size but different sequence. The 521 nt ssRNA (1) sequence and its complementary sequence ssRNA (2) were *in vitro* transcribed, purified (see Supplementary Fig. 1A/B) and digested using RNase A prior to IP-RP-HPLC. The resulting chromatograms are shown in [Fig. 3](#f0015){ref-type="fig"}A. The results show clear differences in the chromatogram in terms of both retention times and intensity of the oligoribonucleotides generated, enabling us to rapidly distinguish two different ssRNAs (of the same length) based on the chromatogram or fingerprint obtained.Fig. 3Comparative analysis of different RNA sequences using RNase mapping. A) Overlay of IP-RP-HPLC chromatograms of complementary ssRNA sequences (ssRNA1 and ssRNA2) digested with RNase A. B) Overlay of IP-RP chromatograms of the dsRNA 561 bp and 686 bp digested with RNase T1. Asterisks mark the peaks identified by visual analysis that are different between the chromatograms.Fig. 3
To further investigate the method to rapidly identify different RNAs, we chose to analyse two dsRNAs, a 561 bp and 686 bp dsRNA which share 561 bp of identical sequence. Only 125 bp (18%) of the 686 bp dsRNA is unique in this example. Therefore, only limited numbers of different oligoribonucleotide fragments will be generated either *via* RNase A or RNase T1, making discrimination between these two different RNAs challenging. The 686 and 561 bp dsRNA were *in vitro* transcribed, purified (see Supplementary Fig. 1C/D) and digested using RNase T1 prior to IP-RP-HPLC (see [Fig. 3](#f0015){ref-type="fig"}B). The results show as expected many of the oligoribonucleotides generated from each dsRNA are identical, which results in peaks with the same retention time and/or intensity. However, the results also show that a number of peaks could be identified based on differences in either retention time or intensity in the chromatogram (see [Fig. 3](#f0015){ref-type="fig"}B marked as asterisks), in contrast to analysis of injection replicates of the same dsRNA (see [Fig. 2](#f0010){ref-type="fig"}).
3.3. Analysis of lot-to-lot variation in the biomanufacturing of dsRNA using RNase mapping {#s0060}
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The ability to produce large quantities of dsRNA in either bacterial systems, by *in vitro* transcription, in cell-free systems or *in planta* for RNA interference applications has generated significant demand for the development and application of high throughput analytical tools for analysis of dsRNA. In particular, the development of a method that rapidly characterises dsRNA and assesses potential lot-to-lot variation in the biomanufacturing of dsRNA. The ability to rapidly assess the biomanufactured dsRNA in a high throughput manner without the requirement for specialist mass spectrometers and complex data analysis will provide significant advantages in a biomanufacturing environment. Therefore, in an approach to develop a rapid method for the analysis of biomanufactured dsRNA, 4 separate batches of *E. coli* engineered to express dsRNA were grown and the dsRNA extracted and purified (see Supplementary Fig. 2). The IP-RP-HPLC analysis of the RNase A/T1 digests of the dsRNA is shown in [Fig. 4](#f0020){ref-type="fig"}A/B and show that reproducible chromatograms were observed for the dsRNA produced across the 4 different batches in this case. These results demonstrate that in these examples limited lot-to-lot variation of the biomanufactured dsRNA was observed.Fig. 4Analysis of batch variability of biomanufactured dsRNA using RNase mapping. IP-RP chromatogram of dsRNA extracted and purified from 4 different batches of *E. coli* cells engineered to express dsRNA. dsRNA digested with A) RNase A or B) RNase T1.Fig. 4
3.4. Analysis of RNA fingerprinting chromatograms using principal components analysis {#s0065}
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Further comparative analysis of the RNAse mapping data was performed using principal components analysis (PCA) to detect patterns of similarities/differences between the resulting chromatograms in an objective manner. PCA is a method of projecting high dimensional data down to simple two dimensional plots that describe the similarity of observations based upon their pattern of variables. The components are projected in order of variance explained so that the first components explain the most prominent features of the data and successive components less important features until eventually all that is left is random variation. Within the SIMCA software the point at which no more useful information is to be extracted is determined by 7 fold validation which is a re-prediction technique. One seventh of the data is left out and re-predicted by the model and the difference between the actual data and the predicted data is expressed as a Q^2^ value which is the cross validated equivalent of R^2^. The point at which this value of predictivity drops is deemed the optimum number of components. This PCA approach has previously been applied to analyse complex chromatographic data \[[@bb0175], [@bb0180], [@bb0185], [@bb0190], [@bb0195]\].
In this analysis, the data were transformed using Standard Normal Variate (SNV) transform which removes any overall amplitude variation caused by sample dilution or injection variation. The data were also subjected to mean centering and Pareto scaling. The reason for applying Pareto scaling was to up-weight medium peaks without increasing baseline noise as would be the case if unit variance scaling were used. Both transformations were applied within the SIMCA software. The software extracted five principal components by cross validation explaining 89% of the variance but the first two components were sufficient to describe the overall similarity of the chromatograms. The higher order components mainly described minor or artifact features in the chromatograms. The two component Scores plot explains 52% of the variance in the data. Each chromatogram is represented as a point in the plot. The closer together the points the more similar are the chromatograms. Dissimilarity is shown by the distance between the points. For clarity the PCA has been performed on the whole dataset but the result split into three plots which only show the relevant comparisons, namely injection replicates, batch replicates and different size/sequences of RNA (see [Fig. 5](#f0025){ref-type="fig"}).Fig. 5Principal component analysis. A) PCA analysis shows the tight clustering of injection replicates shown in [Fig. 1](#f0005){ref-type="fig"}A (1--3 shown in green), [Fig. 2](#f0010){ref-type="fig"}A (4--6 shown in blue) and [Fig. 2](#f0010){ref-type="fig"}C (7--8 shown in red). B) PCA analysis shows the similarity of the four batches of 481 bp biomanufactured dsRNA digested with either RNase A (16--18 shown in purple) or RNase T1 (20--23 shown in orange). C) PCA analysis shows the difference between the chromatograms of the 521 nt complimentary ssRNAs (10--11 shown in pink) and RNase T1 digest of the 561 bp/686 bp dsRNA that share 72% sequence homology (14--15 shown in blue). Each chromatogram is represented as a point in the plot. The closer together the points the more similar are the chromatograms. Dissimilarity is shown by the distance between the points. (For interpretation of the references to colour in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the web version of this article.)Fig. 5
Principal component analysis of the injection replicates of the ssRNA and dsRNA RNase digests is shown in [Fig. 5](#f0025){ref-type="fig"}A. The results show the very tight clustering of injection replicates of the RNase A digest of the 521 nt ssRNA (1--3 shown in green), 686 bp dsRNA (4--6 shown in blue) and the RNase T1 digest of the 686 bp dsRNA (7--9 shown in red). In addition, the PCA analysis also shows the similarity of the four batches of biomanufactured 481 bp dsRNA generated from *E. coli* HT115 cells digested using either RNase A (16--18 shown in purple) or RNase T1 digestion (20--23 shown in orange) (see [Fig. 5](#f0025){ref-type="fig"}B).
[Fig. 5](#f0025){ref-type="fig"}C shows the PCA analysis of the respective chromatograms generated from the RNase digest a 521 nt ssRNA and its complementary sequence ([Fig. 3](#f0015){ref-type="fig"}A) and two dsRNAs, a 561 bp and 686 bp dsRNA which share 561 bp of identical sequence ([Fig. 3](#f0015){ref-type="fig"}B). The PCA analysis demonstrates the difference between the two ssRNA of the same size but different sequence. In addition, the PCA analysis also highlights the difference in the chromatograms obtained from two dsRNA sequences of different size which share 72% sequence homology (see [Fig. 5](#f0025){ref-type="fig"}C).
4. Conclusions {#s0070}
==============
In this study we have performed high resolution RNase mapping in conjunction with ion-pair reverse phase chromatography utilising superficially porous particles for the rapid fingerprinting of single stranded and double stranded RNA. The ability to generate a fingerprint based on the IP-RP chromatogram was used to rapidly detect different RNA sequences of the same size, based on differences in the resulting chromatograms. To facilitate the ability to identify small changes in the chromatographic data which cause significant variance among the samples, PCA analysis was performed. Using this approach we were able to distinguish two dsRNA fragments of different size which share 72% sequence identity. Due to the overlapping peaks in these chromatograms, small single nucleotide differences may sometimes be detected. However, it is more likely larger changes in the dsRNA are required before a material could be identified as an incorrect sequence. We used the high resolution RNase fingerprinting method to rapidly analyse dsRNA biomanufactured in *E. coli* across a number of different batches. Moreover the PCA analysis revealed tight clustering of the injection replicates, demonstrating the reproducibility of the chromatography. A cluster of PCA points from a large group of in-specification samples could be used to define the limits of acceptable process variation with any future samples giving analyses outside of this cluster being defined as outside what was expected for that product. The results demonstrate the potential ability to rapidly analyse large numbers of dsRNA, lot-to-lot variability in the production of dsRNA, and detect variations in dsRNA generated for batch release. All without the requirement for interfacing with mass spectrometry and the associated technical expertise required for such analysis.
Appendix A. Supplementary data {#s0075}
==============================
Supplementary materialImage 1
The authors would like to thank Syngenta UK Ltd, Jealott\'s Hill International Research Centre, Bracknell, Berkshire, RG42 6EY, UK for funding. MJD acknowledges further support from Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council UK (BBSRC) (BB/M012166/1).
Supplementary data to this article can be found online at <https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jchromb.2018.11.027>.
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Rope tied blonde Moretta brutally gangbanged
Description: Petite blonde Moretta is tied to bed when multiple men remove her skirt, top and panties. Soon helpless girl Moretta finds herself tied up and getting fucked in every hole possible in gangbang action where she's a fuck toy.
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SEOUL (Reuters) - Food and fuel prices in North Korea have remained largely stable under leader Kim Jong Un, despite tightening international sanctions to punish the North for its nuclear and ballistic missile tests, rare data from inside the isolated country shows.
People visit the Pothonggang Department Store in central Pyongyang October 11, 2015. REUTERS/Damir Sagolj/File Photo
The relative stability of both prices and the currency - in contrast to the volatility seen under his father Kim Jong Il - is partly attributable to the younger Kim’s hands-off approach to an increasingly market-based economy and also, experts say, suggests some policy learning in Pyongyang.
Once reliant on a Soviet-style centrally-planned economy, North Korea is now home to a thriving system of semi-legal but policed markets known as “jangmadang”, where individuals and wholesalers can buy and sell privately-produced or imported goods.
“Since Kim Jong Un came to power, there has been no control or crackdown on the jangmadang,” said Kang Mi-jin, a North Korean defector who works at the Seoul-based Daily NK website and regularly speaks to market sources in the North.
“Kim Jong Un is doing a lot of bad things, but keeping the markets open has had a positive effect on the people. He has no other option. He can’t feed the people, and he can’t completely shut the markets down.”
The data, compiled by Reuters based on information from the Daily NK, an organization staffed by defectors, showed the price of rice, corn, pork, petrol and diesel remained relatively stable over the last year, demonstrating resilience to domestic and outside events.
While that might alleviate some concerns of critics who argue sanctions aimed at starving Pyongyang of funds for its atomic weapons program might hurt ordinary people, it may also help strengthen Kim’s grip on power.
Information about what is really going on inside North Korea is difficult to verify, but analysts say reports of past discontent or unrest have usually been tied to economic disputes such as earlier disastrous crackdowns on private markets.
North Korea came under the latest round of United Nations Security Council sanctions in March, following its fourth nuclear test and the launch of a long-range rocket. Further short and medium-range missile launches have raised tensions.
STABLE STAPLES
The Daily NK obtains prices from its contacts in the capital Pyongyang and the northern cities of Sinuiju and Hyesan, which both border China.
A calculated average of these prices shows the market cost of goods has not markedly increased as more North Koreans are allowed to buy and sell in the unofficial economy. The number of stalls in the jangmadang has grown by hundreds, defectors said.
North Korea’s centrally-planned rationing system never recovered from a devastating famine in the 1990s. From April to June this year the state handed out just 360 grammes of rations per person per day, the lowest amount for five years, according to a recent World Food Programme (WFP) report.
The market, however, has been able to make up the shortfall.
Rice, an important staple in North Korea, cost on average 5,240 won per kg over the last year, or around 63 cents at unofficial market rates, according to the data.
Corn, a cheaper and often more-readily available staple sold for an average of 2,022 won, or just 24 cents per kg.
Pork prices were most volatile, dropping off sharply in the hot summer months.
“They can’t freeze pork. North Korea lacks refrigeration facilities. Pork meat turns bad quickly so merchants can’t raise prices,” Kang, the defector, said.
The only notable spike over the last year was a sudden rise in the price of petrol and diesel in early March, just before the latest U.N. sanctions were imposed.
A fear of shortages under sanctions pushed the average market price of petrol up by 45.1 percent in the space of a few days, according to the data. Diesel increased by 17.4 percent in the same period. Prices returned to normal after fears about sanctions calmed.
CURRENCY MYSTERY
The Korean People’s Won, the official currency, is valued by the state at around 100 won to the dollar. Its real worth, however, is around 8,300 won to the dollar, a value largely determined by the markets.
That unofficial exchange rate has remained stable for the last few years, in contrast to its extreme volatility under Kim Jong Il following a botched currency reform in 2009.
“The effective stabilization of the won which occurred over the last two years is a bit of a mystery to everyone,” said Stephan Haggard, an expert on the North Korean economy at the University of California, San Diego.
“It almost certainly involves some monetary policy learning after the currency conversion debacle”.
Under Kim Jong Un, North Korea has started to produce more domestically-made consumer items, from toothpaste to perfume, which could also have helped stabilize local prices.
Some showcase shops in Pyongyang now sell almost exclusively locally-made products, and price goods according to the market value of the won.
“North Korean knock-offs of Chinese products are more popular and cheaper than the original,” said Seo Jae-pyoung, a defector who left North Korea in 2001 but regularly speaks to sources inside the country.
For now, ordinary North Koreans are coping comparatively well despite their country’s deepening isolation.
“Despite the sanctions this year, ordinary people are doing fine,” said Seo. “But the effects may slowly start to hit from next year.”
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Palliative care.
Palliative care may not seem the highest of priorities; it is sometimes thought of as a 'luxury' to be paid for privately while the NHS picks up the 'public' cost of acute medicine. But anyone who has witnessed or experienced the work of palliative care teams would be dissuaded from these views.
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PubMed Abstracts
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NEW DELHI (AFP) – Social stigma is harming attempts to combat cervical cancer in India where more women die annually of the disease than anywhere else in the world, a new report said Friday.
The also indicated that India, China, Brazil, Bangladesh and Nigeria account for over 50 percent of the annual 275,000 cervical cancer deaths
More than a quarter of cervical cancer deaths worldwide occur in India, representing 72,825 a year according to the report by the US-based Cervical Cancer Free Coalition, although African nations have higher mortality rates.
Cervical cancer is the second largest killer of women in low- and middle-income countries and is a taboo subject in many conservative societies as it is linked to sexual transmission, said the report.
“It is critical to educate the public on the importance of screening and to break down cultural barriers about discussing sexual issues,” said Usha Rani Poli, a doctor at the MNJ Institute of Oncology in the Indian city of Hyderabad.
She urged dismantling of the cultural barriers that impede frank discussions over sex in the largely patriarchal and male-dominated Indian society.
India, China, Brazil, Bangladesh and Nigeria account for over 50 percent of the annual 275,000 cervical cancer deaths, said the report, which compiled data from multiple sources including the World Health Organization.
Zambia has the highest mortality rate globally at 38.6 deaths per 100,000 women with India registering less than half that rate at 15.2 deaths.
By contrast, Australia, which has a strong cervical cancer vaccine immunisation programme, has the lowest death rate at 1.4, said the report to be formally launched Sunday to coincide with International Mothers’ Day.
“Lack of awareness and deep-seated stigma associated with the disease pose significant barriers” to treatment access in many countries with high death rates, the report said.
The US group, based in Chapel Hill, North Carolina and funded by drug firms and other donors, chose 50 countries to provide a global snapshot reflecting geographic, economic and population variations.
“Unless women’s groups and civil society join together to lead movements that break through stigma, patriarchy and other societal barriers, we will continue to see large numbers of deaths,” the report said.
Doctors believe the disease can be prevented through better awareness.
“There are encouraging opportunities for prevention with breakthroughs in cervical cancer screening in low-resource settings,” said gynaecologic oncologist Poli.
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Genes and enzymes of ectoine biosynthesis in halotolerant methanotrophs.
Ectoine (1,4,5,6-tetrahydro-2-methyl-4-pyrimidine carboxylic acid) is a widely distributed compatible solute accumulated by halophilic and halotolerant microorganisms to prevent osmotic stress in highly saline environments. Ectoine as a highly water keeping compound stabilizing biomolecules and whole cells can be used in scientific work, cosmetics, and medicine. Detailed understanding of the organization/regulation of the ectoine biosynthetic pathway in various producers is an active area of research. Here we review current knowledge on some genetic and enzymatic aspects of ectoine biosynthesis in halophilic and halotolerant methanotrophs. By using PCR methodology, the genes coding for the specific enzymes of ectoine biosynthesis, diaminobutyric acid (DABA) aminotransferase (EctB), DABA acetyltransferase (EctA), and ectoine synthase (EctC), were identified in several methanotrophic species. Organization of these genes in either ectABC or ectABC-ask operons, the latter additionally encoding aspartate kinase isozyme (Ask), correlated well with methanotroph halotolerance and intracellular ectoine level. A new gene, ectR1 encoding the MarR-like transcriptional regulatory protein EctR1, negatively controlling transcription of ectoine biosynthetic genes was found upstream of ectABC-ask operon in Methylomicrobium alcaliphilum 20Z. The ectR-like genes were also found in halotolerant methanol utilizers Methylophaga alcalica and Methylophaga thalassica as well as in several genomes of nonmethylotrophic species. The His(6)-tagged DABA acetyltransferases from Mm. alcaliphilum, M. alcalica, and M. thalassica were purified and the enzyme properties were found to correlate with the ecophysiologies of these bacteria. All these discoveries should be very helpful for better understanding the biosynthetic mechanism of this important natural compound, and for the targeted metabolic engineering of its producers.
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PubMed Abstracts
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https://www.rockislandauction.com/detail/74/1505/legrw36-mortar-destructive-device
http://www.patreon.com/ForgottenWeapons
Cool Forgotten Weapons merch! http://shop.bbtv.com/collections/forgotten-weapons
The 5cm 5CM Leichte Granatwerfer 36 was the standard German light infantry mortar going into World War Two. It was designed by Rheinmetall-Borsig in the mid 1930s and adopted in 1936. It fired a 0.9kg / 2 pound mortar bomb with a range of up to 550 meters. In theory, it occupied the same role as the French Mle 1937 50mm light mortar - except it was far heavier than was practical, and substantially more complex to use. The LeGrW 36 weighed in at a hefty 31 pounds (14kg) - nearly four times as much as its French counterpart.
It was a striker fired design, with a trigger lever and thus did not fire immediately upon a round being loaded. It used adjustments in angle to determine range, with a constant projectile velocity (as opposed to venting a varying amount of propellent gas to adjust range). By the middle of the war, it was being pulled out of front-line use, as its weight and relative complexity made it impractical for its intended role.
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Odontesthes bonariensis
Odontesthes bonariensis is a species of Neotropical silverside, an euryhaline fish native to fresh, brackish and salt water in south-central and southeastern South America, but also introduced elsewhere. It is often known by the common name Argentinian silverside or pejerrey (the latter is of Spanish origin), but it is not the only species of silverside in Argentina and pejerrey is also used for many other silversides. It is a commercially important species and the target of major fisheries.
O. bonariensis resembles the other species in the genus Odontesthes, but it is larger, generally reaching up to in total length, and exceptionally as much as long and in weight (reports of even larger are unconfirmed and questionable).
Range, habitat and status
Odontesthes bonariensis is native to subtropical and temperate South America east of the Andes where it ranges from around the Río Negro basin in Argentina, north throughout most of the northern half of that country, to the Río de la Plata Basin in south Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay. In coastal Atlantic parts of South America it ranges at least from the southernmost Buenos Aires Province in Argentina to Rio Grande do Sul State (Lagoa dos Patos) in Brazil. It has been introduced to many places outside its native range, including Argentina (in parts of the country where not native), Bolivia, Brazil (in parts of the country where not native), Chile, Peru, Morocco (where probably not established), Italy (only Lake Nemi), Israel (failed to become established) and Japan.
O. bonariensis is highly adaptable and can live in a wide range of habitats. This includes both stagnant and flowing waters, such as rivers, streams, channels, lakes, reservoirs, estuaries and coastal lagoons. In much of its range it is particularly common in Pampas lakes that generally are less than deep. The species is able to live in fresh, brackish and salt water (salinity up to 3.5%), but not in hypersaline conditions. The water temperature can range at least from ; in short periods they can even survive in waters where the surface has frozen. Temperatures of are lethal to most individuals, and when above they often perish due to increases of the parasitic Lernaea copepods (also a primary reason for failed introduction attempts of O. bonariensis in some countries), the bacteria Aeromonas hydrophila and algal blooms.
Overall the species is widespread and common, but global warming can increase the temperature and salinity in some placed inhabited by O. bonariensis, representing a threat to these local populations.
Behavior
Breeding
The growth rate of O. bonariensis is quite fast: They are typically around long when one year old, when two, when three, when four and when five years. They first reach maturity when 1–2 years old. Males are mature from a length of about and females from about . Most females spawn in March and April, but a smaller number also spawn from August to November (occasionally December) when the water temperatures typically is between . Even short periods where the water is more than during the spawning season can prevent the adults from breeding. Some females that spawn in August–September may spawn a second time in the same season in October–December. In theory, a female has the potential to spawn at least five times during her life. In each spawning a female can typically lay more than 10,000 eggs, but the full range reported in the species is from 1,170 to 30,300 eggs, with large and old females producing more than smaller and younger. The eggs are laid in shallow water in clusters attached to submerged macrophytes. The eggs hatch into fish larvae after around 13–14 days. The growth of the larvae is negligible at temperatures of or less, and they die at . As known from some other Neotropical silversides, the temperature determines the sex in O. bonariensis. When the larvae and juveniles grow up in water that is or colder, all become females. At higher temperatures the percentage of males gradually increases, and at or warmer most become males. The larvae are unable to survive salinities of 3% (they thrive from 2% to pure fresh water), but they can already live at this relatively high range once they reach the juvenile stage.
Hybridization with other species in the genus Odontesthes has occurred both in captivity and the wild.
Feeding
In the first part of their life O. bonariensis mostly feed on zooplankton. When reaching around long they start to mainly feed on insects; both aquatic insect larvae and land insects that fall into the water. From an age of around 4 years they become more piscivorous, even cannibalising young of their own species. Other food items recorded in lower quantities are shrimp, snails and plants (algae and seeds). In captivity they will eat commercially available dry pellets developed for feeding trout.
Fishing and as an invasive species
This species is considered an excellent food fish, and it is of major economic importance in both its native range and where introduced. Many thousand tonnes are caught each year. It is also considered a good game fish. It is sometimes kept in aquaculture due to its ability to live in a wide range of environments, the ease of breeding it in captivity and its fast growth. In Lake Titicaca where introduced they are typically caught when around long and in weight, but those caught in its native Argentina typically are around long and weigh . However, some populations, notably the one in Lake Titicaca, contain levels of metals from pollution that exceed the internationally recommended safety thresholds for human consumption.
Although it has significantly aided the local economy in many places where introduced, it has become invasive in some places, causing serious problems to the native species. It is one of the causes of the major declines in Orestias pupfish and Trichomycterus catfish in Bolivia, Peru (notably Lake Titicaca where O. cuvieri has become extinct and relatives declined) and Chile. Another vulnerable habitat where it has been introduced is the Iguazu River at the Argentina–Brazil border. Odontesthes hatcheri replaces O. bonariensis in the southern half of Argentina (roughly equalling Patagonia), but the latter has been translocated to certain southern regions where the two hybridize. This offspring is viable and some native populations of O. hatcheri have become "diluted".
References
bonariensis
Category:Fish of Argentina
Category:Fish of Brazil
Category:Fish of Paraguay
Category:Fish of Uruguay
Category:Fish described in 1835
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MANCHESTER, ENGLAND - DECEMBER 15: Steven Fletcher of Sunderland battles with Rio Ferdinand of Manchester United during the Barclays Premier League match between Manchester United and Sunderland at ... more 
MANCHESTER, ENGLAND - DECEMBER 15: Steven Fletcher of Sunderland battles with Rio Ferdinand of Manchester United during the Barclays Premier League match between Manchester United and Sunderland at Old Trafford on December 15, 2012 in Manchester, England. (Photo by Julian Finney/Getty Images) less 
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Laci Peterson case: Prosecutor points to circumstantial evidence
Editor's Note: As part of CNN.com's new Crime section, we are archiving some of the most interesting content from CourtTVNews.com. This story was first published in 2004.
(Court TV) -- Scott Peterson's long-awaited capital murder trial got under way Tuesday with a prosecutor meticulously listing lies, caddishness and suspicious behavior he said implicated the fertilizer salesman in the death of his pregnant wife.
In an opening statement that stretched nearly four hours -- twice the expected length -- Deputy District Attorney Rick Distasto never gave jurors the bang of a smoking gun. Instead, he offered a steady drum beat of small bits of circumstantial evidence. From the Russian poetry Peterson read his mistress to the fishing gear in his alibi to the dessert featured on a particular episode of Martha Stewart Living, it added up to Peterson's guilt, the prosecutor suggested.
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"Ladies and gentlemen, this is a common sense case," he told the panel of six women and six men at the conclusion of his opening statement. "At the end of this case, I'm going to ask you to find the defendant guilty of the murder of Laci Peterson as well as the murder of his son, Conner."
Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty for the Christmas 2002 slaying of the 27-year-old mother to be. Peterson, her husband of five years, says he was fishing 90 miles away in San Francisco Bay when his wife vanished in Modesto and his lawyers have said she was likely abducted while walking the couple's dog. Her remains and those of her unborn son washed up on the bay shore four months later.
Outlining the case, which is to unfold over the next six months, Distaso focused on the credibility of Peterson's angling alibi and his alleged motive: a budding, but passionate affair with a masseuse named Amber Frey. Much of what Distaso told jurors was already known, but new evidence did emerge.
With regards to Peterson's alibi for Dec. 24, the day he reported his wife missing, Distaso said:
A scientist specializing in tides studied the location of the remains and concluded they separated just off Brooks Island, the same area of the bay where Peterson said he fished.
In the month after his wife vanished but long before her remains washed ashore, Peterson repeatedly visited a bay overlook with a vantage point of Brooks Island.
A phone tap captured Peterson giving a "low whistle" of apparent relief when he learned through a voice mail that an object detected by sonar on the bay floor was an anchor and not his wife's body.
A tarp Peterson apparently used during his fishing trip was found drenched in gasoline in his shed. Another was covered with fertilizer. Both substances destroy DNA and other human biological material and prevent tracking dogs from picking up a person's scent.
Expert bay fishermen will testify that there was "zero chance" Peterson could have caught sturgeon and striper with the rod and tackle he took to the San Francisco Bay. He did not have proper equipment, the right boat or a strong enough anchor, Distaso said.
Peterson bypassed a dozen closer fishing spots to go to the bay.
Peterson said he stopped fishing because it began to rain, but the harbor master at the Berkeley Marina said there was no precipitation that day.
Laci Peterson's mother and stepfather had a lengthy discussion of fishing with the couple on Dec. 15, but Peterson never mentioned that he had just purchased a boat a few days earlier.
A few hours after his wife went missing, Peterson told her uncle, Harvey Kemple, he spent the day golfing, not fishing.
The prosecutor also pointed to signs that Laci Peterson never left the home alive Dec. 24, saying:
A cooking segment on meringues that Peterson claimed his wife was watching when he left her Christmas Eve morning actually aired Dec. 23, the day prosecutors contend he killed her.
The diamond necklace, sapphire ring, band and watch Laci Peterson wore whenever she left the house were found in the couple's bedroom.
Distaso spent much of his opening discussing Frey, an object of intense media coverage. Flashing a photo of the blond woman on a giant screen before jurors, he identified her and then added, "You probably have seen her before."
Frey, who is the most hotly anticipated witness of the trial, did not know Peterson was married when she began a relationship with him the month before the murder. Distaso played a five-minute clip of a phone conversation between the two for jurors. Frey recorded the calls after agreeing to cooperate with authorities, and many of them are to be played during the trial.
The call played in court Tuesday was especially significant, Distaso said, because it occurred Dec. 31, 2002, the day of a community candlelight vigil for Laci Peterson's safe return. Peterson, he noted, was talking with Frey up to 10 minutes before the vigil was to start and arrived late.
As jurors listened, Peterson was heard telling Frey that he was calling from a business trip in Europe.
"Our relationship will grow," he told her. "I have confidence in that.
Other evidence Distaso disclosed about the mistress included:
Peterson was introduced to Frey after begging a colleague who believed him to be unmarried to set him up with a "smart" woman who was "serious" about a relationship.
The couple spent the night together at a hotel in Fresno on Nov. 20, their first date.
Peterson blew off a Christmas party he was to attend with his wife to go to Frey's holiday formal. Distaso showed a photo of a very pregnant Laci Peterson in a red suit sitting alone in a corner at the party and then juxtaposed that image with photos of Peterson and Frey mugging in front of a Christmas tree.
When a detective confronted Peterson with a photocopy of a picture of him with Frey, he gazed at the picture and said, "Is that supposed to be me?"
Peterson told his sister-in-law, Amy Rocha, the picture was phony, "morphed" together by "people on the Internet."
Two weeks after his wife disappeared, Peterson read Frey the poem "Hops" by Boris Pasternak which includes the lines "we take cover from the worst of the storm, with a greatcoat round our shoulders and my hands around your waist." When she asked what it meant, Peterson said he was thinking of it in a sexual way.
Police found an album of photos from Scott and Laci Peterson's wedding in a garbage can in his storage unit.
Peterson told Frey that he didn't want any children and was considering getting a vasectomy. While his wife was seven months pregnant, he told Frey that her daughter "will be enough for me."
During the month after his wife's disappearance, Peterson approached separately two friends who are realtors and asked for help selling his home. He told one he wanted to keep the sale quiet and wanted to move the home immediately, even selling it furnished.
Peterson, dressed in a khaki suit and robin's egg blue tie, seemed to follow the prosecutor's presentation closely, peering up at the large display screen each time a new map or diagram or photo appeared.
But he looked away when Distaso showed a series of photos of Peterson with Frey at a Christmas formal. As the pictures of him smiling in a Santa hat, talking on a cellphone and squeezing Frey as she beamed in a sparkly red dress, he swiveled away from the screen and looked across the room.
Frey confronted Peterson about his missing wife Jan. 6, but he continued pledging his dedication to her until Feb. 19 when she broke off all contact with him.
Peterson also turned away when the prosecutor showed jurors autopsy photos of Laci Peterson and her son. The graphic images showed the severely decomposed remains as they were found along the shore. Laci Peterson's mother, Sharon Rocha, bowed her head and stared into her lap in the front row. Her partner, Ron Grantski, and Laci Peterson's siblings and friends did the same.
Across the aisle, Scott Peterson's parents and siblings also bowed their heads. His sister-in-law, Janey, rose and left the court.
As each new image flashed, there was a muted gasp from the packed public section of the court, but the family members kept their heads down and did not display any emotion. One juror, a middle-aged woman with long blond hair, covered her mouth and quickly looked away.
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Receive the latest national-international updates in your inbox
A cockroach that is able to survive harsh winter cold and has never been seen before in the U.S. was spotted in a New York City park. Rob Schmitt has the story . (Published Monday, Dec 9, 2013)
Updated at 8:29 PM EDT on Monday, Dec 9, 2013
A cockroach that is able to survive harsh winter cold and has never been seen before in the U.S. was spotted in a New York City park.
Rutgers University insect biologists Jessica Ware and Dominic Evangelista said the species Periplaneta japonica is well documented in Asia but was never confirmed in the United States -- until now.
The newcomer was first spotted in New York in 2012, by an exterminator working on the High Line.
The scientists suspect the little critter was likely a stowaway in the soil of ornamental plants used to adorn the park. "Many nurseries in the United States have some native plants and some imported plants," Ware said. "It's not a far stretch to picture that that is the source."
Periplaneta japonica has special powers not seen in the local roach population; it can survive outdoors in the freezing cold.
Unbelievable Animal Stories
"There has been some confirmation that it does very well in cold climates, so it is very conceivable that it could live outdoors during winter in New York," Ware said. "I could imagine japonica being outside and walking around, though I don't know how well it would do in dirty New York snow."
The scientists, whose findings were published in the Journal of Economic Entomology, say that it is too soon to predict the effect but that there is probably little cause for concern.
"Because this species is very similar to cockroach species that already exist in the urban environment," Evangelista said, "they likely will compete with each other for space and for food."
That competition, Ware said, will likely keep the population low, "because more time and energy spent competing means less time and energy to devote to reproduction."
Michael Scharf, a professor of urban entomology at Purdue University, said the discovery is something to monitor.
"To be truly invasive, a species has to move in and take over and out-compete a native species," he said. "There's no evidence of that, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't be concerned about it."
The likelihood that the new species will mate with the locals to create a hybrid super-roach is slim.
"The male and female genitalia fit together like a lock and key, and that differs by species," Evangelista says. "So we assume that one won't fit the other."
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By
I make no secret about the fact that I’m a gamer geek who loves to play World of Warcraft. It’s an outlet for many things, including a place to go when coping with my depression, anxiety, or the mental and physical symptoms of a CFS flareup. But it’s also great for my creativity as a writer; my favorite fiction genre is fantasy, and that’s what World of Warcraft is. There’s an aspect of gameplay in World of Warcraft that has very little to do with the game’s mechanics and everything to do with the world-building the creators have done. Roleplaying is completely optional, but there are entire servers (called “realms”) that specialize in roleplay, and players on these servers can really get into their characters.
I’d like you to meet my main character, Carisse Dawnfire.
Carisse (kuh-REESE) is a Blood Elf mage. Back before the Catacylsm, and back before the Third War, she was Magistrix Carisse Dawnstar of Silvermoon City. But after the attack on the Sunwell that robbed her of her father and her sister, Carisse didn’t have the heart for politics anymore, and she took to traveling for a few years. Though she had a knack for it, the mercenary life was not for her. But that was how she met Elynxdria k’Shinar, known to friends as “Lynx,” and the two had remained friends even after leaving the merc company.
The decision to wander the newly discovered continent of Pandaria was an easy one for Carisse. Garrosh Hellscream was spilling the blood of his people like water, as if dead fighters were of no more consequence than insects squashed under foot. Maybe that was the military way of thinking, but he had burned through enlisted soldiers long ago and was now forcibly conscripting any member of the Horde he could get his hands on. Lor’themar Theron saw Garrosh for what he was, and setting up his own campaign in Pandaria while under the guise of working with the bloodthristy Warchief was a brilliant stroke. Carisse had been able to help Lor’themar’s cause while exploring on her own and learning all she could about this “new world.” These Pandaren were fascinating, with such a rich history. She was learning all she could, now, and thought she might be able to make her new home here.
Maybe. Mage gifted as she was, she could easily keep apartments in many cities in different parts of the world, choosing where to spend her time differently on a daily basis. But had she been moving around too much? Silvermoon had been her home for over a century. Could she really stay away? Her estranged mother was still there, true, but so were the graves of her father and her sister.
This was not the time to decide. This was the time for discovery.
World of Warcraft and its universe belong to Blizzard Entertainment. They are very supportive of fan-created works, and as a fan, I am grateful for the opportunity to immerse myself in their world. Carisse (me) and Lynx (Tom) play on the US-Emerald Dream server. Our guild is called Sapere Aude. If you are interested in starting a new World of Warcraft account, please leave a comment on this post, and I will send you a Recruit-a-Friend code for the free starter version of WoW.
Christina Gleason ( 974 Posts That’s me: Christina Gleason. I’m a professional copywriter, editor, and blogger. My company is called Phenomenal Content. (Hire me!) I'm a multiply disabled autistic woman doing my best in this world built for abled people. I’m a geek for grammar, fantasy, and select types of gaming, including Twitch Sings and Plants vs Zombies 2. I hate vegetables. I have an intense phone phobia, so I’ll happily conduct business over email or IM instead.
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About Xiph
A little bit about us, what we do, and why you should care
A market-speak summary of the Xiph.Org Foundation might read something like: "Xiph.Org is a collection of open source, multimedia-related projects. The most aggressive effort works to put the foundation standards of Internet audio and video into the public domain, where all Internet standards belong." ...and that last bit is where the passion comes in.
Xiph.Org is about open source and the ideals for which free software stands. Open source is not a fad any more than the Internet is. It is a necessary force driving innovation and the Internet forward while protecting the interests of individuals, artists, developers and consumers.
We're about bringing open source and open source ideals to multimedia...and media on the Internet needs us.
"Why do I need open source? I'm not a hacker."
Closed source software is not evil, nor is it necessarily inferior in quality to open source. What is certain, however, is that closed source and closed protocols do not serve the public interest; they exist by definition to serve the bottom line of a corporation. The foundations of the Internet today are built of a long, hardy history of open development, free exchange of ideas and unprecedented levels of intellectual cooperation. These foundations continue to weather the storm caused by the corporate world's rush to cash in.
It is not a coincidence that Microsoft was blind to the phenomenon of the Internet for so long. The burgeoning Internet was against their very way of thinking; a Microsoft Internet (tm) would have been profit-directed, designed by the same people who considered 'on-demand TV' the great innovation of the future. Microsoft Internet, if profitable, would have been followed by the release of IBM's marginally compatible OS/Internet, Borland's TurboInternet, ad absurdum. The Net, as designed by warring corporate entities, would be a battleground of incompatible and expensive 'standards' had it actually survived at all.
The Internet exists today and continues to move forward despite, not because of, corporate self-interest; critical mass passed the point of no return long before Microsoft and Netscape tried to salt the earth of their rivals. The great advances in computer engineering and science came from research labs and universities, freely shared with the rest of the world. You would not be reading this at your PC, workstation or iMac today if Microsoft held a patent on TCP/IP.
The point is not that companies that try to make money on the new popularity of the net are in some way inherently immoral or greedy. Rather, the point is that companies must not be allowed to use the infrastructure we all depend upon as a weapon against their rivals to the detriment of all others. The Internet is a common resource and as with other cooperatively shared resources, the "Tragedy of the Commons" looms large. Competitive behavior dictates that eventually a company will act on their own interests to the detriment of all others unless a mechanism exists to prevent it.
Commodity standards and software must be free because open source is that controlling mechanism. We're the only mechanism we've got.
"Why does multimedia specifically need open source?"
Example: An 'open' standard closes
In September of 1998, the world of Internet media took an unexpected (but long dreaded) turn when Fraunhofer IIS sent a "letter of infringement" to several small commercial and open source MPEG audio layer 3 development projects.
In the letter, [Fraunhofer claims] that due to patents they hold related to MP3, they are entitled to royalties for any commercial players, all encoders (whether sold or given away), and also works of art sold in MP3 format. The letter of infringement had an immediate effect on the free encoder programs with many being removed from their official web site. Affected encoders include Plugger, CDEX, soloH, 8Hz, Blade, Canna, and others. [...] Fraunhofer is demanding a royalty payment beginning at $25 per encoder. Additionally, a 1% or .01 per file royalty is also put forth as being required. —mp3.com article by Michael Robertson
The projects affected had based their work on code long freely available in the ISO MPEG audio standard. The debate about whether or not Fraunhofer was within their rights or not is beside the point; this is an illustration of the amount of control commercial entities will attempt to exert over commodity standards; this meddling is detrimental to open efforts and deadly to business (except for members of the MPEG consortium that is). Keep in mind that MPEG is considered among the most open multimedia standards (at least until the 800-lb. gorilla members of MPEG manage to sue the smaller encoder efforts out of existence); there are few or no cutting-edge open standards for streamed audio or video on the Internet today. Closed competition has just made matters worse; now there are several dominant and entirely incompatible closed 'standards'.
Our purpose is to open the field up a bit. Unfortunately we're not fighting on this front alone. Music and media on the net today also face corporate domination of the content itself ...
Music isn't an art, it's an industry.
Internet media issues don't apply solely to source code or information format. Controlling the music itself is a burning issue for the music industry.
—and industry is the key word here. Music is no longer an expression of the soul or the work of an artist; it's a 'product' that is manufactured, packaged, catalogued, distributed, managed, regulated, and above all sold. Music is just another vehicle for maximizing profits. The RIAA, mainly a front for the recording industry that supports the status quo, trumpets loudly that the Internet is the greatest threat to artists that the world has ever known... at the same time that the RIAA is making a desperate grab to control this new distribution infrastructure. The great irony is that the Internet might indeed be an artist's worst nightmare-- if the RIAA succeeds:
...corporate mergers are squeezing hundreds of musicians out of the business without even giving them the rights to their recordings, and executives of major record labels are meeting behind closed doors to develop a way to police and control the distribution of music on the Internet.
[...]
Putting control of the Internet in the hands of the corporations means that a utopian musical vision may be dying. ...the chances of a dystopian world are increasing, one in which record companies have even greater control over music distribution --the New York Times, Monday, May 17, 1999, article by Neil Strauss
One major push in the RIAA effort to control the music distribution infrastructure of the Internet is to legislate mandatory 'digital watermarks' for playback. Players that do not look for these 'watermarks' or play the music anyway will be illegal. Make an educated guess as to who will control the watermarks.
the record industry has a plan to force hardware and software companies to exclusively adopt its Secure Digital Music Initiative as the standard for delivering music online. ...SDMI backers want manufacturers to build a time-bomb trigger into their products that, when activated at a later date, would prevent users from downloading or playing non-SDMI-compliant music. The hardware would initially support MP3 and other compressed file formats, but a signal from the RIAA would activate the blocking trigger. --Wired News article by Christopher Jones
a history lesson
The current position and function of the music industry is an invented one. Approximately one lifetime ago, recordings were not technologically possible. With the advent of recorded sound, enterprising businessmen (Thomas Edison, a worthy predecessor of Bill Gates, and Columbia Music, just as tough and nasty) found that prepackaged recordings could be turned out in endless, identical quantity for very little cost and sold.
This wasn't an entirely new idea; an example of a preceding 'packaged performance' technology is the player piano roll. It is interesting to note, however, that these rolls were held by the courts to be uncopyrightable; the music itself was protected, but the 'performance' was not. The music industry originally lobbied the courts and Congress to keep these formats copyright-free so that it would not owe artists any royalties; in 1908, the Supreme Court ruled that phonograph records and player piano rolls did not fall under copyright.
It is important to note that selling recordings was a tenable business plan only because the average person could not produce a recording. If the phonograph record were cheaply reproducible in that day, the prepackaged music industry would never have existed as it would have been impossible from the very beginning to prevent people from making copies which were, at the time, entirely legal.
Congress changed the copyright law in 1909 to explicitly grant composers royalties on recordings sold. At the time, the music industry protested the decision bitterly; eventually it settled for requiring artists to sign over copyright on all work as a standard element of a recording contract.
The copyright protects the record label, not the artist.
(an article on the subject from CNET)
Fast forward to the 1970s
The undoing of the distribution profit juggernaut began with the compact cassette tape, a development greeted by as much wailing and gnashing of teeth within the walls of Music Inc. as MP3 is causing today. Although the copy wasn't as good as the original, it was cheap and easy to make. Copying commercial music was once only the domain of organized crime; now any individual could make a copy trivially. The industry tried to outlaw the compact cassette, then settled for taxing it and legislating against copying.
Digital audio tape (DAT) caused the next uproar; a perfect copy was now possible. The music industry players, forerunners to the RIAA, sought to destroy this technology and mostly succeeded; DAT never caught on at any sizable level. It is interesting to note that "small-time" artists depend heavily on DAT for production and recording; this is practically the only music segment that ever bought into DAT. Clearly the RIAA didn't have their interests at heart.
Computers, the Internet and especially MP3 have now made the copy easier, cheaper and more convenient than the prepackaged content on sale.
That the copy costs nothing concerns intellectual property, a real worry for artists. That the distribution costs nothing is what really motivates the anti-MP3/anti-Internet effort. Copyright, once bitterly contested by the music industry, is now clung to as a weapon to preserve the distribution chain.
Copyright law has always been more about protecting the interests of publishers than those of creators. The Internet in general, and MP3 in particular, have drastically reduced the costs (financial, convenience, material, distribution) of creators getting their material out to their audience, and have *almost* made it trivial for audience members to *directly* pay creators for access to their work. The middlemen have become irrelevant. The smart ones are devising new business models --- O'Reilly isn't going away because they are perceived as genuinely adding value and lots of their customers would buy their books even if they're available for download. I just paid $20 for Neal Stephenson's new book; he probably got about $3 of my money, if that. The other $17 went to the distribution chain, of which *maybe* $1 goes to people who actually contributed to the book --- editors who actually edited, proofreaders, etc. Eventually, a favorite author will release a new novel and I will pay $5, of which the majority will go to the author and all but a few pennies to other real contributors, for access to it with rights to print one copy. The middlemen are merely fighting a rearguard action against the tide of history; a delaying action that may alter *when* I will buy a book that way, but not the ultimate reality. —Carl Alexander <[email protected]>
The music industry finds itself in a position where the basic assumption behind its original business model (the recording is too expensive for a person to reproduce him or herself and the distribution can be tightly controlled for maximal profit) is no longer true. The music industry feels extremely threatened. It should. This is a major evolutionary pressure.
Evolutionary? Of course; commercial music is faced with extinction only as long as it refuses to adapt, as long as it refuses to loosen its grip on the endless easy profits it believes it is entitled to. The industry is not acting to protect artists or the artists' interests (bards, musicians and storytellers thrived long before there was an industry to 'protect' them), it is not acting to prevent musicians from being 'driven out of business' (it impoverishes artists itself); it is acting to preserve the status quo and its own profit-inflated bulk. It's quite possible for the music industry to refashion itself, but rather than evolving and thriving in a new niche, the Dinosaurs, staggering under their own smothering weight, are trying to legislate the Mammals out of existence.
The double-whammy
From one side, we see groups (Fraunhofer, IBM, Thomson, Progressive Networks, Microsoft et al.) trying to control music technological infrastructure (MPEG, TwinVQ, etc) to be used as weaponry against their competitors. On the other front, we have the music industry trying to squeeze all the cash they can out of the content to maintain their enormous, recently obsolete bulk. In case they don't succeed in eliminating electronic music formats, they too are making a major bid to control the infrastructure.
There are multi-trillion dollar interests represented in the above clash. Businesses that only have a few million dollars are entirely outclassed.
As an individual, I expect I'm no longer on the map.
Or am I? Ogg and other projects of Xiph.Org are my way of doing something about the imbalance; a good programmer can still change the world. Big players may want to utterly dominate the Net, but they don't yet. If the rest of us are lucky, Xiph.Org, the Open Source community and Ogg will help make that impossible.
—Monty ([email protected])
May 14, 1999
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Malta-based cryptocurrency exchange OKEx has added support for a new feature that allows users of stablecoin Dai (DAI) to earn interest by staking their holdings.
In a blog post on Dec. 17, OKEx confirmed users can now stake their Dai via its in-house mining pool, Pool. In return, they will earn 4% interest via the so-called Dai savings rate (DSR), along with an added incentive from OKEx itself.
OKEx lures Dai investors
The move makes the exchange the first major trading platform to integrate DSR, and the feature will go live on Dec. 23.
“On December 23, users of the OKEx platform will be able to directly deposit Dai and stake it in the DSR to earn the savings rate plus an additional reward that is exclusive to OKEx—all without leaving the OKEx platform,” the blog post stated.
Maker, the entity behind Dai, launched the DSR scheme last month. Since then, holders have locked up around $16 million worth of DAI, corresponding to dividends of around $640,000.
Tether trades billions more per day
Nonetheless, in terms of overall volumes, Dai, along with all the other stablecoins on the market, pales in comparison to stalwart Tether (USDT).
According to data from analytics firm Messari, USDT trailing daily volume dwarfs its competitors — as of Dec. 3, the most recent date for which data is available, Tether’s figure was over $19 billion. By contrast, the second-largest stablecoin by volume, TrueUSD (TUSD), managed just $118.5 million. Dai’s figure for the same date was $1.65 million, or 200% less than Tether.
Eyeing its future potential, OKEx nonetheless remained upbeat. “With the OKEx integration, adoption of the Dai Savings Rate can accelerate in Asia, introducing millions more people to Dai,” the blog post continued.
As Cointelegraph reported, cryptocurrency payment gateway BitPay added support for three U.S. dollar stablecoins earlier this month, but conspicuously left out Tether.
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Andrew D. Luster
Not to be confused with Andrew Luster
Andrew D. Luster is the Persis, Cyrus and Marlow B. Harrison Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, and the Chief of the Division of Rheumatology, Allergy and Immunology at Massachusetts General Hospital. He is Director of its Research Center for Immunology and Inflammatory Diseases, and a member of the Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center's Cancer Immunology program.
His laboratory is interested in defining the roles of chemokines and lipid chemoattractant molecules in autoimmune, allergic, and infectious diseases.
Education
Luster received his B.S. degree in 1981 summa cum laude from Duke University and was awarded the prize for the most distinguished graduating biology major. He then entered an NIH-funded Medical Scientist Training Program, receiving his Ph.D. from Rockefeller University in 1987 and his M.D. from Cornell University Medical College in 1988. He received the New York State Annual Medical School Research Award for his Ph.D. studies under the mentorship of Jeffrey Ravetch and Zanvil Cohn. Luster pursued his residency in medicine and fellowship in infectious diseases at Massachusetts General Hospital, followed by a post-doctoral fellowship in Philip Leder's laboratory in the Department of Genetics at Harvard Medical School.
Career
In 1994, Luster established his laboratory at MGH, and in 2000, he was appointed Chief of the Division of Rheumatology, Allergy and Immunology, and the Director of the Research Center for Immunology and Inflammatory Diseases. He is the Persis, Cyrus and Marlow B. Harrison Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and the E. Alexandria and Michael N. Altman Chair in Immunology at Massachusetts General Hospital.
Over the past three decades, Luster has been intimately associated with the birth, growth and development of the chemokine field. He has been a pioneer in this field and has made multiple seminal contributions to understanding the roles of this important family of immunoregulatory chemotactic cytokines in health and diseases since his initial discovery of CXCL10 (IP-10). His laboratory has helped define how chemokines function in immune cell trafficking necessary to generate innate and adaptive immune responses in host responses to infectious pathogens and cancer, as well as in the pathogenesis of immune and inflammatory diseases, including autoimmune allergen diseases, such as arthritis and asthma.
Awards and honors
Luster has received numerous awards and honors, including a Damon Runyon-Walter Winchell Postdoctoral fellowship, a Cancer Research Institute Investigator Award, a Culpeper Medical Scientist Award, an NIH MERIT Award, and the 2011 Lee C. Howely Sr. Prize for Arthritis Research from the Arthritis Foundation. He has been elected to the American Society for Clinical Investigation and the American Association of Physicians.
Publications
According to Google Scholar, Luster's most cited paper, the review "Chemokines-chemotactic cytokines that mediate inflammation" has been cited 3729 times as of March 2016. His most cited research papers, "MCP-1 and IL-8 trigger firm adhesion of monocytes to vascular endothelium under flow conditions" and "Gamma-interferon transcriptionally regulates an early response gene containing homology to platelet proteins" have been cited 1100 and 796 times, respectively. Luster's H index is 109: 110 papers of his have been cited 109 times or more.
References
External links
http://www.massgeneral.org/research/researchlab.aspx?id=1341
https://web.archive.org/web/20120112070029/http://www.hms.harvard.edu/dms/immunology/fac/Luster.php
Category:Year of birth missing (living people)
Category:Living people
Category:Harvard Medical School faculty
Category:Duke University alumni
Category:Place of birth missing (living people)
Category:Rockefeller University alumni
Category:Weill Cornell Medical College alumni
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Wikipedia (en)
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Q:
How to find the minimum difference between dates in two different columns with some condition
I have two columns in two different tables of date like below
A: response table:
key response_date
1 2013/01/01
1 2015/12/01
2 2016/02/01
3 2016/08/01
3 2016/09/01
B: Call table
key attempt call_date
1 1 2014/11/20
1 2 2015/09/01
2 3 2016/01/01
2 4 2016/03/01
2 5 2016/10/15
3 6 2016/03/01
3 7 2016/07/01
There would be only one response for every single call when the key in call table is matched to key in response table. I want to find the time to the response. The response happens after a call and it should be the most recent response after that call. For example for key 1, there are two calls on 2014/11/20 and 2015/09/01 and also two different response on 2013/01/01 and 2015/12/01. The 2015/12/01 is response date of call on 2015/09/01 not call on 2014/11/20 because it is closer to call on 2015/09/01. Then there is no response to call on 2013/01/01 and time_diff=0.
For key 2, there is no response for call attemps 4 and 5.
For key 3 attempt 6, we could see two response with key=3 but they are closer call attempt 7. So there is no repsonse to attemp 6 and time_diff=0 and time_diff for attempt 7 is days between (2016/07/01,2016/08/01) which is the most recent response after attempt 7.
key attempt time_diff
1 1 0
1 2 days between(2015/09/01,2015/12/01)
2 3 days between(2016/01/01,2016/02/01)
2 4 0
2 5 0
3 6 0
3 7 days between(2016/07/01,2016/08/01)
any response or hint in sql or R would be appreciated.
A:
Hope below R solution helps!
library(dplyr)
response_table$response_date <- as.Date(response_table$response_date)
call_table$call_date <- as.Date(call_table$call_date)
call_table %>%
left_join(response_table, by = "key") %>%
mutate(date_diff = as.numeric(response_date - call_date)) %>%
filter(date_diff > 0) %>%
group_by(key) %>%
filter(which.min(date_diff) == row_number()) %>%
ungroup %>%
mutate(time_diff = paste0('days between(',call_date,',',response_date,')')) %>%
right_join(call_table, by = c("key", "attempt")) %>%
select(key, attempt, time_diff) %>%
replace_na(list(time_diff='0'))
Output is:
key attempt time_diff
1 1 1 0
2 1 2 days between(2015-09-01,2015-12-01)
3 2 3 days between(2016-01-01,2016-02-01)
4 2 4 0
5 2 5 0
6 3 6 0
7 3 7 days between(2016-07-01,2016-08-01)
Sample data:
response_table <- structure(list(key = c(1L, 1L, 2L, 3L, 3L), response_date = c("2013/01/01",
"2015/12/01", "2016/02/01", "2016/08/01", "2016/09/01")), .Names = c("key",
"response_date"), class = "data.frame", row.names = c(NA, -5L
))
call_table <- structure(list(key = c(1L, 1L, 2L, 2L, 2L, 3L, 3L), attempt = 1:7,
call_date = c("2014/11/20", "2015/09/01", "2016/01/01", "2016/03/01",
"2016/10/15", "2016/03/01", "2016/07/01")), .Names = c("key",
"attempt", "call_date"), class = "data.frame", row.names = c(NA,
-7L))
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StackExchange
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Full disclosure: This post contains affiliate links. ?
Today I'm very happy to share an interview I did with New York Times best selling author, Tim Ferriss.
(This video is captioned in English on Youtube, and you can also read the full transcript below).
He got his fame initially for writing the 4 hour workweek, followed it up with the 4 hour body, and has just released the third in the series, the 4 hour chef.
The first book was about working smart, and he inspired a lot of people to go location independent and start their own businesses after reading it (although I had been travelling for several years already myself when I first read his book), his second book was about living healthily, and to complete his healthy-wealthy-wise series, his final book is about how to learn.
The “chef” in the title, as well as being an allusion to the Spanish jefe (boss), is because he wanted to share his story of starting to learn a completely new skill from scratch, using cooking as an example, but keeping the book about learning in general. He mentions language learning specifically many times in the book.
He is one of the most famous bloggers online, a genius marketer, a constant guinea-pig to his own mental and physical experiments, and he has learned several languages very quickly, several of which you can hear him speak on this page, and he even used his Japanese to become one of the few foreigners to learn Yabusame (horseback archery).
I decided it would be a great time for us to finally sit down and talk language learning, and as he said himself in the interview that us two chatting like this has been a long time coming, since people have been comparing our approaches a lot over the years. Of course, I was interested in seeing what we share in common, and finding out more about his language learning philosophy. The result is a very interesting 42 minute chat!
You can also check out the video trailer and read a sample of his book on fourhourchef.com, and can buy the book on Amazon US or UK, or on Amazon's Kindle store to read it instantly. At one point, chain bookstores such as Barnes & Noble actually banned his book, because they didn't like the idea of Amazon self-publishing authors, which I think is very strange because this restrictive move makes people like me tell you even more enthusiastically to go to Amazon instead.
I hope you enjoy the interview! Make sure to share your thoughts below! After watching/reading this interview, make sure to check out Interview #2 with Tim 😉
Transcript of the entire interview:
Benny: Hey everybody today I have got a very interesting interview for you. I am talking to Tim Ferriss who is very well known initially for writing the 4-Hour work week but he has since expanded on that, he has written about the 4-Hour body and now the 4-hour chef and I like the way he talks about this trio of books it’s Benjamin Franklin’s healthy, wealthy, wise, isn’t that it?
Tim: That’s right you got it.
Benny: Ok so most people talk to you relevant to these kind of “life hacking” things, business ideas and so on but today I want to focus almost entirely on language learning because what you have done in other areas is very impressive but just looking at your background it’s very relevant to languages because you did your degree in East Asian studies and your thesis was in Neuro science and unorthodox acquisition of Japanese by native English speakers, if I got that right?
Tim: Right.
Benny: And just before you graduated you were the curriculum designer at Berlitz International?
Tim: I worked on Japanese and English curriculum re-design.
Benny: I actually work for Berlitz myself too but just as an English teacher and from then you…well before all this you as a teenager you had done a year abroad in Japan and you kind of changed your language learning process over time and I think if I have got this you reached a certain stage that I want to ask you about, in Japanese in one year, Mandarin Chinese in six months, German in three months and Spanish in eight weeks, so we will get into the meat of that very shortly but the first thing that I am really curious is how did you get interested in Japanese in the first place because you as a teenager you went to Japan so obviously something kicked that off in advance before you went over there?
Tim: It was really simple. In my particular case I concluded I was bad at languages after my Spanish experience in the few years prior to that because like everyone, well I shouldn’t say everyone but most people who go through the normal formal schooling approach couldn’t string more than a few sentences together, certainly couldn’t have a conversation and I ended up switching to Japanese when I switched schools and I had the opportunity to study other languages and my thought was well I am going to be bad at languages no matter which one I choose I might as well, number one study something related to a culture that I am fascinated by, so Ninjas and all that stuff, Samurai and what have you and secondly my friends were in and one or two of my new friends at that school were in the Japanese class, so I jumped into Japanese. And actually what people don’t realise is it was sold or described in the course handbook as conversational Japanese and so as soon as they started introducing (Japanese terms) you know the two sylaberries I was like whoa what is this, what is this nonsense so I had like two big meetings with my resin advisor and the Japanese teacher because I was considering very seriously quitting Japanese on two different occasions because of the writing which is hysterical looking back because I was so phobic, I was like if I have trouble with Spanish I don’t want to do something that is already harder than Spanish plus all this crazy character stuff, but that is how the Japanese class came to be and Mr Shimonu who is the teacher was great he was actually very different from my previous Spanish teacher so for instance anytime he could see our faces falling or we were having trouble with Japanese he would say “ok time out” and his English was still very Japanese English he would go “right time out” and then he would say “squirrel” in English to make us laugh because that is probably the hardest word possible for a Japanese person to say, so we would go “ok watch” and he would go “squirr..” and everyone would crack up and the mood would improve and then we would continue with the lesson and I think he understood really well that it’s not just having the right method on paper you need to deal with the psychological emotional aspect of it.
Benny: Absolutely.
Tim: There is always going to be frustrations as you know. So that is how the class came to be and then at some point I actually ended up doing quite well it and I think partially because the class was very frequently after sports and I have some thoughts on how physical activity pairs with language learning really well but I did progress in it really quickly and at one point he said we had this sister programme at Saiki University or Saiki High School in this case in Tokyo would you like to be an exchange student and that just came out of that field for me and I talked to my parents and off I went for my first major overseas trip.
Benny: Excellent and one thing I didn’t know before or I would have missed it in your previous books, is you said that you had actually spent six months at first in Japan where you didn’t feel that you had made that much progress and you were still very frustrated, so what happened to change this because the same thing happened to me I actually…and I don’t have the same kind of background, I wasn’t you know I didn’t have such a good language education at first and I have got a degree in electronic engineering but after graduation I moved to Spain and I lived in Spain for six months without actually learning Spanish to any kind of degree so I know you said something similar to this, so what happened?
Tim: I think there are two things so I don’t have a lot of data to support this but I do think the six month point there was something like related to neuroplasticity about that six month point, there was something really unusual about it but secondly I gave up on trying to mimic what I done in school because it wasn’t working. When I went to Saiki I remember the first day of classes so I had been measured for my school uniform I looked like a WestPoint cadet and went into the English department office because I was basically their pet for the year and this guy came up to me and he goes you know and he gives me this paper and I couldn’t…I was like sorry I can’t read this what does it say and he is like ok, ok traditional Japanese [Japanese] physics ok and read through the whole list and I was just puzzled by this and it turned out that what I had been told before I went because I was very nervous he said don’t worry you will have plenty of Japanese classes and lost in translation was that they were all regular high school Japanese classes, so I went to book stores and I bought what I thought appeared to be Japanese text books like my Spanish text books had been and it just didn’t work at the end of the day, whether I was bored by the material or the books themselves were a problem in the progression, either way it didn’t work and around the six month point is when I really embraced judo text books and comic books and I found that the judo text books because I was interested in the subject matter gave me the grammar because the grammar transfers of course between subject matter and I actually think electrical engineering would be really good training for languages but at least as good as an East Asian studies degree but we can come out with the comic so I have a little show and tell, the comic books turned into a real outlet for me because it’s all dialogue it’s almost all dialogue and not only is it almost all dialogue but it doesn’t try to be, it does not attempt to be formal there is some formality but it’s mostly very informal so for a high school kid that was perfect. So here is one example this is “one piece” I have… the covers are the same so once I did that in Japanese this is one piece in German and one piece in Spanish and it’s a very popular series as you can get it in every language but the main difference was focussing on native materials that were not intended to teach language in the first place if that makes sense?
Benny: Yeah.
Tim: So that was a big breakthrough point and I think that much like physical adaptation for sports there is a neuroplasticity aspect that does take time and there are ways to compress it but in my case with Japanese is was between that six and eight month point where there was a real inflexion point and that’s pretty much how it turned out.
Benny: Yeah and for me it was mostly a mentality shift because I think those six months weren’t necessarily helping me when I was learning Spanish but something I am sure you have written about this, one of the major issues in languages is in a traditional education people look at a native speaker and that is kind of the goal and the presumption is let’s say for example that mastering a language a hundred per cent to sound like a native, let’s say it takes 15 years I mean I don’t know how long it takes, let’s say it takes that and then they kind of think logically it has to take 15 years so to get fifty per cent of that you would need seven and a half years?
Tim: Right that’s a great point.
Benny: So what is wrong with this logic?
Tim: Well I mean it’s a….
Benny: I know it’s not logical that’s what’s wrong with it.
Tim: You’re preaching to the choir! Because languages are very front loaded but if you do an 80/20 analysis and you know this of course looking at the frequency of word occurrence then I mean if you just learn the word THE in English you cover a lot of ground, now you are not going to speak to anyone you are just using THE and drive you and them crazy but as you add words there is a dramatic point of diminishing returns, many points of diminishing returns so if you wanted to get…the explanation that I sometimes give to people is if you wanted to fool a native speaker into thinking that you are close to native or perhaps grew up there, let’s say 30 days out of a 30 day calendar month that might take 10 years, it might like you said I don’t know maybe but to get to the point where you can do it 29 days out of 30 I think you could do that in a year or less without too much trouble if you really apply yourself. But it’s getting those final grains of salt, those final words that really requires that huge investment or so it would seem but yeah that is a good point I think the mathematical… when you run the mental arithmetic and distribute it across 15 years, oh well if I wanted to be even 50% is good which in most people’s minds is pretty crappy still, it will take seven and half years I am not even going to try like that is the way it’s…yeah that’s a good point I have never put it that way.
Benny: Yeah because like what I found is when I am trying to learn a language something similar to the Parato principle you talk about a lot is I am much more focussed on the short term and what can I do in the short term and I think this is very very different to traditional methods that kind of see anything less than mastery of a language as a waste of time and useless and I mean realistically yeah it would be great if everyone thought I was I native 100% of the time but I mean why do I really need that, what I am looking for is I want to have good conversations with people, I don’t want there to be any misunderstandings and I have actually reached the stage where I can pass for a native speaker in particular situations for you know up to two minutes and there is a lot of restrictions there like I have to be in a situation that I am comfortable in and so on and so I can’t say you know you are going to confuse me for a native all the time but these are all realistic things if you look at what you want to work on and you know people can come up with silly things like you have to be able to debate Kantian philosophy and I am like you know I don’t do that in English, yet you have to like my standards for fluency are based on what I can do in English and when people start saying you know you have got to be able to talk politics, I am like I find politics boring you know if you talk to me in English about politics I am not going to be able to do that. So like in my understanding when I say I try to be “fluent” in a language I aiming to be socially equivalent to how I am in English so I can follow many people speaking amongst one and other, I can talk to them without slowing the conversation down, you know it’s as good as speaking to a native even though you know I am not a native because I am making a few mistakes and for me that’s fluency and then a little bit higher than that would be doing these things in professional contexts, so I have actually sat the Spanish DELE the C2 Diploma which is the professional level but I still think below that it’s still very very powerful and for me it counts as fluency, it’s what I aiming for what I think is realistic in three months is this social fluency. So one of the big questions people were asking me when I told them I was going to talk to you, is how do you define fluent because in a laymen’s context it’s very easy to throw these words around like you know I learned how to speak Spanish in so many weeks, I mean what does that even mean you know?
Tim: So I like your social equivalency explanation applied by that but the example that I use, like when in almost every language when you run through a typical training programme for busy business people…
Benny: Yeah.
Tim: Alright let’s learn to read the financial times, if I grab the financial times on an airplane I can’t read the damn thing in English and I never going to talk about it certainly but that is a whole separate gripe session, so for fluency for me personally my marker has been can I have say a 10 or 15 minute conversation without slowing down the conversation where I can express any idea I want to express and if I don’t understand something immediately clarify it, so it’s really having like a 10 minute pleasant conversation where the other person would come away saying like yes, now it’s an ambiguous term but in their language to another native speaker he fluent in Spanish or he is fluent in fill-in-the-blank.
Benny: Right.
Tim: In some cases I am aiming for something like when I was in German I was at the Hochfachschule which is actually a pretty good school and I was aiming for that Mittelstufe and at first and then moving beyond that and then when I was in Argentina I like having concrete objective goals I think it’s helpful, not everyone needs it but I like to where with Spanish I was aiming for, I guess it was like Nivel Avanzado in the University of Buenos Aires but just a side not real fast because talk about mental shift I think part of the reason that people fail in languages is the same reason that they fail at many things like dieting, think of dieting like ok this is a permanent change forever how do I feel and it’s overwhelming. And so with dieting it’s a two week trial, just a two week trial if you don’t like it you can stop, and with languages I think for instance I never tackle any language thinking this is going to be a lifelong project ever, I don’t ever tackle a language thinking this is going to be a one year project, ever when I tackle a language if I go to let’s say Turkey and I study Turkish I don’t expect to ever use Turkish again after that trip but because even having 20 phrases makes that trip ten times more enjoyable and I learn ten times more I will put in the time and that is how…you know Japanese another reason Japanese came out is I had an exchange student at my house with my family and so we all learned five to ten sentences of Japanese and we got along really well.
Benny: That’s actually exactly the same reason I got into Spanish because we hosted Spanish students in my home town in Ireland.
Tim: Right and for instance when I was in Galway, this is hysterical so when I was in Galway, I am not sure I wrote about this I studied Irish and people think Japanese is hard I would say Irish just due to the lack of materials and also if you want to practice with anyone because it was funny because very Irish person I would meet they would go what are you doing here and I would be like I am doing a hurling and they would be like that’s weird and then I would say Irish and they would go what the hell are you studying Irish for and you would have to go to like Spiddal down in the Gaeltacht and oh man…
Benny: Yeah, yeah well you would actually be surprised I did read your mention this on the blog that you would consider Irish more difficult, I think in terms of materials to come across yes you are going to find a lot less but I know a lot of people who have actually learned it at a distance and I don’t think it’s necessarily, I mean comparing it to other European languages it’s not that intimidating and especially because we are less used to foreigners learning it, you give them way more flexibility in making mistakes and you don’t necessarily have to go to Spiddal, I mean there are quite large Gaeltacht communities especially in the North West it’s a different dialect to the one in Galway but no don’t give up hope on Irish just yet.
Tim: I know I haven’t given up on Irish but I would say…I went there partially to study Irish and I ended up learning hurling instead which I fell in love with.
Benny: Right.
Tim: So I view learning as just an adventure and I read a quote once, sorry it’s in the book I can’t remember who said it but he said ‘you know writing a novel is a lot like driving with the headlights on” you can’t see your destination but you can get there that way. And I think learning is a lot like that, but I would also say that Irish whether…I think not all languages are equally hard or equally easy for all people so it can be a very personal thing right so one of the pet peeves that I have maybe is when something is Romanised but the phonetics of that language do not resemble English I get antsy and Irish is definitely that way, like…
Benny: Ok well another time I have got to sit down and talk to you about this it’s not as bad as you think.
Tim: No, no I am not saying it’s bad I am saying like it’s a very personal thing like for me it’s like Chinese whatever after Japanese sure I will learn Chinese where as most people are like oh my god it’s the devil’s language and I am like it’s not that bad. Whereas just to point out how like hysterical that is that I went oh Chinese 5000 characters I can do that and then like oh my god like spelling “Go raibh maith agat” (thank you) like oh forget you know.
Benny: I see where you are coming from because we do very uniquely among languages I have come across we have a lot of letters to describe very few sounds but you know it can be very intimidating but believe it or not I among Celtic languages Irish is one of the easiest because of that, I mean Welsh is much more phonetic from what I have heard and this introduces a whole lot of new problems. So you know…
Tim: I believe it.
Benny: Yeah I read that you got into Irish I thought that was fantastic.
Benny: Ok so just going back from what I read in the 4-Hour chef and of course your blog post about language learning I think the core aspect of how you tackle a language is two things, firstly you would focus on the top words like the top 100 words or the top 1000 words based on frequency that they appear in a conversation or in print or something and you have a particular set of sentences that you deconstruct grammatically to help you get an overall look at the language and you generally would apply this to any language, it helps you a lot. What would you say… how does conversation come into your learning technique?
Tim: Yeah there is a bunch of different ways I actually have some more show and tell but I forget one so hold on I will be right back.
Tim: All right so conversation is…everything I do is with the target outcome of speaking fluently it’s not that I don’t value reading and writing and I can read and write, well certainly could much better back in the day but I can still read and write quite well in Japanese and Chinese and I studied Korean for a year or two and I don’t mention that much but I can still read most Korean, that is a really fun one to get people over their fear of reading because you can learn how to read Korean in about two hours. But I focus on I guess I have a particular way I approach what the German’s call Tandem so just two person sessions and I would love to hear your thoughts on this because I know you do a lot of it, but the common way that this is approached, so finding a language partner is I will teach you English and you teach my Portuguese and it never works, in my experience if it’s that broad it never works because native English speakers suck at teaching English just like people who are the best in the world at programming suck at teaching programming it’s second nature and also it’s true with someone who speaks your target language so there needs to be a framework of some type and the way that I as an English speaker, a native English speaker I am very unfairly given an advantage that almost everyone studies English, not everyone but almost everyone so I will go to English schools and find students who are at an intermediate or advanced level assuming that I am trying to learn their language at a basic level, ideally intermediate and we will come in and we will swap back and forth we might have a 20 minute session, a 20 minute session and the first thing that we do is we will…and I have a bunch of notes I took on this but one of the approaches is to always review materials beforehand and then come in with specific questions. The second approach which I borrowed from Chinese 101 at Princeton is having a…and this is one of the first things I do I don’t think have I talked about this much but I will get a bio, a self introduction of say one page in length down on paper so my little brother is this years old, he lives here, my parents do this, my blah blah, I grew up here and it is amazing how much mileage you get out of that one page because guess what that is the first three minutes of every single conversation you are going to have.
Benny: Absolutely.
Tim: But the point is I will have them help me if need be to translate that or refine it and then I will read that aloud and have them circle any phoneme or any pronunciation problems that I have then work on those sounds and this is what we had to do every week in Chinese 101 at Princeton which at the time I think was the best Chinese 101 programme in the entire country it was extremely effective. We would have to go into a language lab and read out loud several different conversations and then the professors would take time separately identify where we would have trouble and we would spend an entire private session going through those sounds. So the tandem very often will start off light for me which means helping someone identify specific issues in English and when I say identify specific English issues it’s not going to be…and I have a set of questions I will give you a couple of examples it wouldn’t be “hey Tim what’s the difference between anything and something” no that is not a good question because I will make up an answer, I don’t know the answer and I am not going to give the right answer, a better answer is which is more common this or this, which would you say this or this, what are some examples of how you would use this or this then I can give an answer that doesn’t have any speculation in it and then very often we would go back and forth but there are a few phrases I learned right off the bat so I can get to biking without training rules as early as possible so what is the difference between, that is one of the first things I learned and you know Was ist die Unterschied zwischen blah blah and then how do you pronounce this is another one right, or how does one say in another language Wie sagt man blah blah blah auf Deutsch blah blah or whatever and can you write it down, some of the basics. But in the tandems usually it’s questions bases on material you have reviewed already and then once we get a little more comfortable one of the things I like to do is practice constructions and then have to translate it yourself, so for instance what I would say is usually start…if they want to practice let’s say the subjunctive, so they will have to practice if I had a million dollars I would buy a Ferrari, ok fine so I will give them a few pairs like ok million dollars Ferrari, go! And then they will say it in English and I will correct them if need be and then I will have to try and translate that into Spanish and then we will do the next one, ok if I had a brother I would travel more, then I will have to translate it. So formatting a tandem there is definitely I think a craft to formatting tandem so it’s the most productive. The other thing that I do while I am taking the tandem and also when I am reviewing materials, this is an old one I don’t think anyone has seen this. So these are home made colour coded flash cards, I am a flash card guy some people aren’t, I am and these are broken down I haven’t looked at these in ages but these are for German and they are broken down by daily, weekly and monthly review so I know what I have hit consistently and I know what I haven’t hit consistently and I have time reviews but I will write down typically, let’s see here typically not single words I will write down phrases like at the beginning, I guarantee this probably came up at the beginning of a tandem where it Bitte bedienen Sie sich please help yourself, all right and I just find that you are bang for the buck in terms of acquiring vocabulary and also grammar is so much faster and so much more useful when you are memorising these phrases as opposed to just memorising examples that you would never use.
Benny: Right no because you are learning the new vocabulary but you are also learning sentences in context and I am also a huge fan of flash cards and I see just the system you have got there is spaced repetition because you take a card and you would put it in the position that you know is when you are just before you are likely to forget and like I just use the app for this, Anki which you might have come across?
Tim: Anki is good, super memo is not bad either.
Benny: Yeah that’s right.
Tim: I think Anki might actually use one of the later algorithms from super memo.
Benny: Yeah, yeah it’s based on that and I think memrise also has a kind of a spaced repetition system built into it?
Tim: Yeah memorised does as well Ed Cook was in the 4-Hour…
Benny: Yeah that’s right.
Tim: A really good guy and I actually know his co-founder too because he was initially in my class at one point at Prinston the high tech entrepreneurship and then duolingo which I am an investor in which also has some mechanisms for spaced repetitions which are pretty cool.
Benny: You know I actually interviewed Luis a few weeks back…
Tim: Oh you did?
Benny: Yeah, yeah in Spanish so you can see that on my channel if you like….
Tim: He is a smart guy, Luis is no joke he is a smart dude.
Benny: Oh yeah very smart had a great time asking him how he got into the whole thing and something else I wanted to ask you like in the 4-Hour chef you broke down a Kanji character explaining the kind of memory technique you used to learn it which I think is very similar to James Heisig’s strategy in remember the Kanji?
Tim: It is I mean and he is certainly not the first person who to have done it but he did a fantastic job of putting it into a few books that give you a very high ROI on your time because left to your own devices I mean does take more time to create your own images and there has been some pretty interesting…
Benny: Do you do that kind of stuff for like just learning Spanish or European languages where you see a word do you have some kind of mental association or is just about you see it so many times on the flash card that it kind of burns into your memory?
Tim: It depends on…the way that I like to think of mnenomics and these memory devices is like wrapping a package before you ship it so if it’s fragile you wrap it more, if it is not fragile at all you don’t have to put in all this extra padding and packaging. So if something comes to me very easily I am not going to create a mnemonic device just to create a pneumonic device I don’t do it by default I do it sort of just in time and not just in case, if that makes sense
Benny: Yeah.
Tim: But I do use mnemonic a lot and one of the benefits of tackling multiple languages even if you are only doing multiple languages for two to four weeks at a time and I have done a lot of languages that way I mean Vietnamese, Thai you know I have tackled a lot of languages that I never have any intention of using again, just during trip is that they allow you to…you have more pegs to work with, so I want to show you two more things, just the two tricks, I don’t know if they are tricks but two things I found are useful. So the first is linking languages together can be very helpful it can be confusing at times but for instance this book here this is relevant to you right now, not that you would use it but this is Espanhol Facil para falar right so this is a book for Brazil and Portuguese speakers who want to speak Spanish and guess what if I speak Spanish I can use this to learn Brazilian Portuguese and it’s a bit of misnomer but I call this reverse learning and what I mean by that is perhaps a more easier example is this, so this is for Mainland China, in simplified characters, and this is sort of 900 common phrases in English. The reason I like to use books intended for native speakers for learning English is because then you know your target language is accurate, it’s astonishing how many text books written for English speakers trying to learn Spanish or whatever have mistakes everywhere, it’s amazing so this is particularly valuable if let’s say you are going to Taiwan and you are going to be spending time in Taiwan, guess what, Chinese is not exactly the same as Mainland so you are better off getting a book written for Taiwanese people who are learning English.
Benny: I am actually doing something similar here I am learning my Egyptian Arabic through French.
Tim: Oh nice yeah Assimil has some great stuff.
Benny: Yeah that is why I picked it because I have used Assimil in the past, in this case it’s not a hundred per cent useful because I am not actually learning modern standard Arabic I am learning Egyptian so you know it’s not that great but just in general for presenting examples and so on, I am really appreciating it, so definitely you know branching and using one language to help you learn another or doing what you are doing the reverse because I agree I found so much material and you can really feel that all they have really done is ask some translators to get these phrases for them and there is no context, like the translator doesn’t know what has come before or what has come after and I could see even as a beginner learner I can see mistakes in the target language and you know this leads for me dismissing a lot of stuff as irrelevant and you and I are both not exactly huge fans of that yellow box you can buy in airports and one of the reasons is because for me at least is because it’s all about translating the same content rather than giving it to you in a context specific for that language used by native speakers and I don’t like this translation aspect and this is why like the core of me learning my language is speaking with a native speaker, I mean I do have materials I go through but like my top 1000 words are generally based on conversations I have had and notes I make on those conversations because I found some top 1000 lists tend to be based on newspapers and the written word which is a lot less relevant to me as a beginning tourist and introducing myself and so on.
Tim: Yeah there is a lot of cross over but it isn’t all cross over but then of course there are the phrases that you hear all the time that are never going to pop up on these lists, like Valeu! like whatever in Brazil you are just not going to have those in a frequency list but I also tend to and I know I only have a few minutes left but I tend to separate my sort of out of country training and in country training and I know that there is a lot of really interesting workarounds but I will usually use the high frequency list prior to arriving in a country where I know I am going to focus in a really dedicated fashion on the language, so it’s more of an insurance policy, or a head start but yeah I think that people should look at this as language learning it’s almost, it’s a toolkit so there are two questions, number one is what are you building, number two what tools are you going to use to get there and you have to have a clear picture of both and I really find that the one or two week trial is a fun way to get people into it, it’s like ok look you have a trip coming up you are going to be in Barcelona or you are going to be in Madrid or whatever for a week I mean how can we get you to a point where you make everybody smile and people just treat you a hundred times better and you have more fun.
Benny: People need to embrace you know the lower end of language learning a little bit more because it’s got so much potential I mean you can get your foot in the door to start to get more things and I always feel disappointed when people only look at replicating a native you know. So I just have two final things I wanted to say before we run out of time, firstly just going to the 4-Hour chef now when I was reading about your motivation for writing it and I was kind of you know if you are going to write a book about learning I thought maybe it would be entirely about language learning, but I like your motivation for focussing on cooking a little bit more because if you were to write about language learning it’s something that you have been doing for years and you wouldn’t really have this fresh perspective anymore, but the whole point is in the book you are literally starting from scratch and you are applying your general how to learn techniques to cooking and I think people should appreciate that sometimes what you need is not actually a language learning book but you need to know how to learn, so you discuss a lot of things and you do discuss language learning but I think even when you are talking about something completely different in the book it’s the kind of philosophies people need to embrace if they are going to learn a foreign language. So I do think it is relevant to language learning and I would be very happy to tell people to check that out and I can’t wait to go through the rest of it myself, you know the real version that I can hold in my hands, so yeah the final question I wanted to ask you then is so with all of this you know you have learned a language in a couple of weeks and you have learned a language to a much higher level of fluency, what is the most valuable experience you have had from all this, what is the craziest and the most fun thing that speaking a non-English language which has opened up to you?
Tim: Oh man there is…
Benny: I know its a million things.
Tim: I’ll say this – with just English my life would be and this is obviously very subjective but I mean 20% of the richness that I have had, I mean it’s incredible the impact that languages that have had and when I say that I don’t necessarily mean the ones I am necessarily fluent in, at all! I mean knowing ten words of Indonesian and basically getting adopted by an Indonesian family is not in Indonesia or learning just enough Arabic to communicate with a baker across the street from me in Berlin when I was there, just enough to order a little bit of food and say thank you I mean the impact that had on my daily relationship with this guy, well I will just give an unusual example and I want to underscore you said which is in the 4-Hour chef, chef is used in the sense of like jefe, sort of being a director in your life as opposed to a spectator and the recipe of the book is meta-learning, so it’s looking at how, there is sections on language learning, sections on sports and sections on everything and cooking is kind of used like Zen in the art of motorcycle maintenance but one of the oddest maybe examples I have was tackling Japanese horseback archery in Neco Japan and it would have been impossible without Japanese, absolutely completely impossible and the reason that example, there is so many I could bring up but one of the reasons I like that example is that again personal opinion but I think that Japanese are called xenophobic all the time, very unfairly because they are extremely self-conscious of their English because they lost the phone in lottery, like when god was given out sounds they just got kind of screwed they don’t have many so that is why they sound so funny when they speak other languages. And because they do this kind of thing when someone tries to speak to them in English doesn’t make them xenophobic and if you look at what has happened to me speaking Japanese it’s not just for white people either, look at like Khatzumoto on Twitter they are so open and so generous and I think people in general make the effort so learning Japanese horseback archery in Neco that was maybe the first, maybe the first foreigner or maybe the second every to train with the [Japanese name] family with these jackets, since 1147 I think I was the first if not the first then maybe the second like 50 years to train with them and it’s something I will always remember, it’s something I always remember and something I will tell my kids about and tell my grand kids about and you know it all came initially from comic books and judo text books and I think that is a stand out example.
Benny: So I have really loved talking to you and I am definitely looking forward to reading the rest of your book and I hope other people will check it out and I think I am able to give away 10 copies if I am right, people I am going to say that…what I want to hear in the comments either here or on YouTube or on the blog post is what the most valuable (language learning) experience other people have had and I am going to take my 10 favourite ones and send them a copy of your book and then if they don’t see that by Monday they should got out and get one themselves.
Tim: Yeah and if people want sample chapters, table of contents… the video trailer is pretty fun it’s the most viewed non-fiction book trailer of all time now, just go to 4-Hour chef and you can get pretty good taste for what’s in there as well, so yeah thanks for having me man this has been a long time coming and I appreciate you taking the time.
Benny: No thank you for taking the time and I am sure I will run into you somewhere around the world.
Tim: Absolutely Go raibh maith agat!
Benny: Alright. Maith thú, maith thú! Great job, all right cheers.
**If you missed it, check out interview #2 with Tim
And finally... One of the best ways to learn a new language is with podcasts. Read more about how to use podcasts to learn a language.
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tomekkorbak/pile-curse-small
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OpenWebText2
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All images: Alex Cranz/Gizmodo
The hardware in Google’s latest phone, developed in house and using parts from flagging former flagship HTC, doesn’t look from the outside like a revolution. It is a 5-inch phone (or 5.5-inch for $100 more) with an 821 Snapdragon processor, a 1440 x 2560 display, up to 128GB of storage, and a fingerprint reader on the back. If you are confusing it with nearly every other Android smartphone released this year that’s okay. They’re all basically the same.
What separates the two Pixel phones from all the other guys is the software. It’s very cool stuff. It might look like a phone made by HTC or Samsung—or even Huawei—and it might have a lot of the same guts. The Pixel’s got some of the smartest software available in a phone today.
Both Pixels use USB-C.
Google Assistant, the company’s AI-powered question and answer helper bot, is particularly impressive. There’s no fussing or fidgeting. If you’ve searched for a local mall (like Ghirardelli Square, where today’s announcement event was held) then Assistant will instantly list out all the shops nearby, and even rank them if you’ve searched or shopped at them before. Shout “OK Google” and ask for “that big monument near Houston” and it will know, immediately, that you’re talking about the terrifyingly huge Sam Houston stature on I-45.
Google Assistant doesn’t bug you with repeated requests like Siri does, and so the software’s ability to understand context in questions is at once a minor improvement, and a tremendous sea change. If you’re regularly using Siri or Google Now (the precursor to Google Assistant), then you will be pleased. Even if you don’t spend all your time furiously shouting out every request at your phone, Google Assistant is neat.
Of particular interest is how deeply Google is integrating this tool. It does look somewhat familiar to Google Now, but it’s much more useful. The idea that Google is baking AI deep into the central operation of a phone tells you a lot about where Google thinks phones and services are going. It’s all about AI—which is something I heard again and again throughout demos today. The highlight of the event wasn’t the phone or the VR or the tiny Google Home. It was behind-the-scenes computing that powers these devices. With Pixel, Google is trying to making computer science cool. Google wants us to believe that one day we’ll have Assistant everywhere we go, and at a glance at least, the Pixel makes this seem like something I actually want.
Beyond the Assistant, the Pixel camera is intelligently designed as well. The phones camera takes rich, nicely saturated photos, even in the garbage light of the venue where the demo occurred. In fact, it seemed to handle the bad light better than the $1,500-worth of camera and glass I’d taken with me to the event.
The photo app instantly fixes the white balance in a room with REALLY bad lighting.
Google’s built-in camera app is as barebones as the one on an iPhone, but barebones is totally fine when the photos look good after a snap. I didn’t get to play around with the camera as much as I would have liked, but it’s definitely fast, and the images look nice and clean. If it’s as good as Google promises, it might be enough to convert a lot of iPhone lovers, who tend to drift towards iPhones because of their very easy-to-use and very nice cameras as well as the very easy-to-use and very nice operating system. It seems that Google’s caught up on a camera that just works.
The only outstandingly silly feature of the Pixel thus far is the fingerprint scanner which doubles as a scroll wheel. It feels half-finished. On the phones I tried, it allowed me to swipe down to open the notifications menu but not swipe up to open the app drawer. And I couldn’t swipe to scroll through the app menu or up and down when reading webpages.
And of course there is the one dealbreaker I couldn’t account for in a quick hands-on testing and that’s that the phone isn’t waterproof. That sucks!
It’s a minor complaint after only a little time with the device. We’ll have a full review of the Pixel up as soon as we get to play with one for more than an hour. Until then there’s only the promises Google made today. The hardware might have put all our butts in the seats, but the software was the real star of the show.
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tomekkorbak/pile-curse-small
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OpenWebText2
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Q:
Angular: controller's methods are not working in directive's template
Here is a directive that is loading new Template from file:
.directive('candidatesFilter', function(){
return {
resctict: 'E',
replace: true,
templateUrl: 'views/directives/filters/AAAA.html'
}
})
Next HTML-element calls this directive from the other HTML-Template (e.g. xxx.html):
<candidates-filter></candidates-filter>
There is next controller for this parent Template (xxx.html):
app.controller('candidatesController', function($scope, $location ){
$scope.addPeson = function() {
$location.url('/candidate/0');
};
});
Method addPerson() is not accessible inside the Directive's template AAAA.html, because
data-ng-click="addPerson()"
is not working there. How to change the Directive to make addPerson() method available inside the directive's template?
TEMPORARY Solution
I fixed this issue by next solution
.directive('candidatesFilter', function(){
return {
resctict: 'E',
replace: true,
templateUrl: 'views/directives/filters/AAAA.html',
controller: function(){
$('button.add').on('click',function(){
location.hash = '#/candidate/0';
});
}
}
})
A:
If I understand the problem correctly:
You can pass a function into the directive for it to use
<candidates-filter></candidates-filter>
becomes
<candidates-filter add-candidate="addPerson()"></candidates-filter>
and the directive definition changed as follows:
.directive('candidatesFilter', function() {
return {
resctict: 'E',
replace: true,
scope: {
addCandidate: '&addCandidate'
}
templateUrl: 'views/directives/filters/AAAA.html'
link: function(scope, element, attrs) {
scope.someFunctionInDirective = function() {
scope.addCandidate();
}
};
}
})
Alternatively you can call it with the ng-click like normal from the button
Hope this helps clarify it?
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tomekkorbak/pile-curse-small
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StackExchange
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[Prevalence of anal incontinence in adults].
Inquiries were conducted to determine the prevalence of anal incontinence in a) the general population over 45 by a gallup poll studying 1,100 persons (A); b) 3,914 patients seen by their general practitioner or their gastroenterologist during the same week (B); c) 500 patients consulting for urinary stress incontinence (C1); d) 1,136 neurological patients suffering from micturation disorders (C2); and e) 10,157 elderly persons living in retirement homes or in hospital (D). In the general community (A), the prevalence of anal incontinence, including gas and stool incontinence, was 11 percent, the prevalence of fecal incontinence, 6 percent, the prevalence of daily or weekly fecal incontinence, 2 percent; prevalences were respectively 15.5 percent, 7.9 percent, and 3.2 percent in group B, and 27 percent, 9 percent and 3.8 percent in group C1. The prevalence of fecal incontinence was 18 percent in group C2 and 33 percent in group D. Prevalence did not depend on age in group A and C1, but was twofold higher in group C1 than in group A. The prevalence increased with age in groups B and D.
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tomekkorbak/pile-curse-small
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PubMed Abstracts
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Posts Tagged ‘sperm donation’
Introduction
Recently, Alan Zarembo of the L.A. Times released a story alleging that California Conceptions was combining donated eggs with donated sperm and called them “donated embryos.” If there were leftover cryopreserved embryos, ownership of the embryos apparently went to California Cryobank (CC). If true, this is an egregious assault on reproductive ethics.
Defining embryo donation
About one-third of all patients undergoing in vitro fertilization (IVF) will have excess embryos to cryopreserve. About one-half of these will not be used for reproduction by the patients who created them. (Bangsboll et al., 2004; Lyerly et al., 2010) Embryo donation occurs when patients with unused cryopreserved embryos make the amazing decision to pay it forward and donate their embryos to patients in need. In true embryo donation, the patients own the embryos and make disposition decisions regarding their embryos. It is estimated that 2-10% of all cryopreserved embryos are donated to patients in need.
Why is creating “McEmbryos” so wrong?
Allegedly, California Conceptions would use donor sperm and donor eggs to create embryos. At times, all the resulting embryos would be transferred simultaneously to numerous couples, each receiving approximately two embryos at a time. This would commonly be called a “split donor/donor cycle.” It is, however, an absolute misrepresentation to call them donated embryos. At least in this split donor/donor cycle scenario, where all the embryos were transferred, there would be no cryopreserved embryos left whose ownership was uncertain.
What if not all the embryos were transferred and some were cryopreserved? As I understand, CC transferred no more than two embryos at a time to numerous patients, with the remainder cryopreserved. The residual cryopreserved embryos became the property of CC.
According to the article, egg and sperm donor profiles are sent to prospective recipients. As soon as CC received a “buy-in” from a few patients, the “donor embryos” were created from the donor eggs and sperm. Who made the decision to combine these two donors? What happens to the left over cryopreserved embryos? The article stated that dozens of embryos would be created through the combination of a pair of donors with the embryos then frozen while CC looked for patients who wanted them. And yet, the clinic claimed to have only ten sets of cryopreserved “donated embryos” in their tanks at any given time.
While they stated they didn’t want to create a bank, it would appear that this is precisely what was being done.
I feel there is a potential conflict of interest on the part of any IVF facility regarding the disposition decision of any cryopreserved embryos that they own. Patients normally have options such as using them to build their family, donation to science, donation to a laboratory for quality assurance testing and personnel training, keeping them cryopreserved forever, and finally, donating them to patients in need (embryo donation).
With the methods described in the article, a number of logistical and ethical questions arise:
Were the sperm and egg donors fully aware of what was to be done with the resulting embryos?
How did the IVF practice decide which sperm and egg donors should be combined? Was this decision made through market research? If so, who made these decisions?
Is anyone tracking where all these donor-donor conceived offspring end up?
Who ultimately owns the cryopreserved embryos? In the article, the physician interviewed said the clinic owned them when they were frozen
Who makes the disposition decisions regarding these embryos? Will the IVF facility that owns the embryos be likely to make disposition decisions that do not benefit their bottom line? Who has the best interests of the cryopreserved embryos at heart when the embryos are owned by the IVF facility? Is it possible that CC is the entity that is really “donating” their remaining cryopreserved embryos
What happens to the cryopreserved embryos if the practice closes or is sold?
Perhaps most important, although it may not be a problem presently but for the future, what happens to the cryopreserved embryos that are never chosen?
While certainly not meaning to demean the cryopreserved embryos, I can’t help but think of these dono/donor cryopreserved embryos as fast food embryos or “McEmbryos.” I can just see the patients coming in, looking above the cash register to the menu above and ordering a “Number 3,” which has a burger (i.e., bright, blonde-haired, blue-eyed egg donor) and fries (i.e., handsome, athletic and tall sperm donor) and ends up getting the order supersized to boot (i.e., requesting twins). I should write clearly that this is not the current method CC uses to to match recipients to remaining cryopreserved embryos but the slippery slope exists and other practices may eventually emulate this process
What did EDI try to do over the past year to remedy the problem?
We suspected what might be happening at CC well over a year ago but didn’t have proof. We approached the American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM) who examined the information and eventually sent it on to the Society for Assisted Reproductive Technologies (SART). SART did an investigation agreeing with our preliminary assessment. Unfortunately, CC was not a member of SART so they had little influence with CC.
There was some discussion of placing CC on the Center for Disease and Control’s (CDC) radar, asking that they potentially audit CC. I am not aware if this was ever done.
There was some discussion of revising the Ethic’s Committee Opinion on embryo donation detailing the inappropriateness of creating “McEmbryos,” but in the recent revision sent out to all ASRM members to review this past August contained no such language. I contacted ASRM and volunteered to help write the couple of paragraphs that would address the issue but I was never contacted. My current understanding is that the ASRM Ethics Committee will be taking up this issue in the beginning of 2013 and I am hopeful they will make a stand against creating “McEmbryos.”
Is it really ASRM or SART’s fault?
ASRM and SART are membership organizations. Anyone can join ASRM whereas SART is only open to IVF practices. These entities are not designed to truly police their members. Certainly, they can bar them from membership, but let’s face it, this is really not much of a punishment. Most patients are not really aware if a practice is a member of either organization, so expulsion does more to protect ASRM and SART from criticism than it does to protect the patients.
In reality, I am not suggesting that ASRM or SART begin sanctioning their members. These organizations are made up of bright individuals wanting what is best for members and patients alike. I don’t believe ASRM or SART could ever expose themselves to legal liability and try to be anything more than what they were originally designed to be.
I feel criticism towards ASRM and/or SART is potentially misplaced. While I do feel these organizations can certainly take a stand against the creation of “McEmbryos,” they can only provide educational materials and information to members and patients. never entering the realm of fining, condemning practices or policing practices. That is simply not their job.
I am not being insensitive to the needs of the patients
California Conceptions is providing amazingly healthy embryos to patients in need. How could anyone not be touched the story twin girls born to a single 41 year-old woman? There is no question that the donor/donor split cycle can be far more cost effective than many other options. The ends to this process are what we all strive for – a healthy family.
Call me old-fashioned but I still feel there are instances where the ends cannot justify the means. Are we are loosing all respect for the embryos and treating them utterly as a commodity? The slippery slope is becoming quite steep. Are we ready for expanding banks of unclaimed embryos across the country owned by practices or physicians and not the patients? I’m sorry but the means being used here are fraught with uncertainty and may result in a list of unintended consequences.
What are the potential repercussions of the L.A. Times story?
At least this election year is over. I had grave concerns that the story would break early in the election cycle and would become a political football, resulting in a series of consequences around the country. I still believe we are at risk in the following ways:
• Poorly designed and reactive legislation may yet be created on state or national level
• This story may motivate the “Personhood” advocates by encouraging them to win personhood for embryos thereby protect them from becoming “McEmbryos”
• There will be “guilt by association,” leaving other legitimate embryo donation facilities open to criticism and ridicule
• All of this will reflect poorly on basic IVF facilities that are frequently viewed as unregulated, even though we are accountable to more regulatory agencies than any other area of medicine
There may be significant backlash regarding this story and we should all be prepared to answer questions that may arise from the media, our peers and our patients.
How can embryo donation programs hold but not own the donated embryos?
At Embryo Donation International (EDI), the embryo donors are still able to request that their donated embryos be returned if needed. For example, if the children of an embryo donor were tragically killed in a motor vehicle accident, it seems absolutely appropriate that the cryopreserved donated embryos should be sent back to the donors. To discourage this from being done without good reason, transportation costs for returning the embryos, which is estimated to be $300, are the responsibility of the original donors.
Once the embryos are transferred into the recipients, however, they now “own” them. In this way, EDI never truly owns the donated embryos. We are the conservator and protect the embryos while never making any disposition decisions regarding their fate. We never own the donated embryos and we encourage all embryo donation facilities adopt this model of conservatorship.
What can be done to correct the current problem?
From my perspective, we have a few options:
Various membership organizations such as ARSM, Pacific Coast Fertility Society (PCFS), SART and RESOLVE could release position statements condemning the creation of “donated embryos” without a destination. This could help guide public opinion.
Perhaps the embryo donation programs would be willing to sign a contract stating that they will not participate in the creation of embryos without a destination. Programs willing to sign and honor the contract would be adhering to the highest of ethical standards.
Through the court of public opinion and if the L.A. Times article is accurate, patients may no longer want to participate in what they feel in an unethical practice.
Legislative action on the part of California may be necessary but this will take time and a great deal of expertise. We run the risk, however, of having well-meaning legislative actions spilling over and harming the process of embryo donation or IVF itself.
CC itself may need to modify its business model by allowing patients to own the cryopreserved embryos.
Something really needs to be done. I don’t feel that this unethical practice should continue. A corporation, business or physician practice should never own embryos, no matter how brief. These embryos are also not truly donated unless you feel CC is able to donate the excess cryopreserved embryos. The question is if we should play an active or a passive roll in determining what takes place. I personally prefer the active roll so you can count EDI in on doing our best to guide the process.
Sour grapes? Nope, just sour taste!
CC is a potential competitor of EDI. I have made this clear to each and every person I have spoken to regarding this current dilemma. When we were contemplating the expansion of our ten-year embryo donation program into EDI, we also looked at the option of a money-back guarantee such as is offered by CC. Understanding the delivery rates for recipients of truly donated embryos ranges from 27-45%, the likelihood of returning the majority of the payments back to recipients made it unlikely we could even keep our doors open. Most “shared risk” options also charge a premium on top of the normal fees. Recalling that embryo recipients are emotionally and financially drained, the idea of tacking on a large additional fee seemed unfair to the recipients and quite impractical to the process. Embryo donation works for recipients, in part, because it is more cost-effective than many other options.
So you see, it is not “sour grapes” that is guiding my writing; it is just a sour taste. If the article was accurate, I feel strongly that creating “McEmbryos” is an affront to IVF and embryo donation programs, misleading to embryo recipients and totally unfair to the cryopreserved embryos that are currently waiting to be chosen.
If you agree, please co-sign this blog….
We are going to do something a bit different with this blog. We are strongly encouraging not just the routine comments that follow our blog but we are also asking that practices, patients and interested parties who agree that creating “McEmbryos” is ethically inappropriate sign below. By endorsing the statement below, we will hopefully begin to separate ourselves from such entities that practice the “McEmbryo” method of “embryo donation,” moving forward with a resolution that will work best for all.
By signing below, I do hereby agree that creating banks of cryopreserved embryos is ethically unjustifiable and support sound solutions that will adhere to the highest of ethical standards supporting patients and cryopreserved embryos in the best possible way.
“In the order of nature we cannot render benefits to those from whom we receive them, or only seldom. But the benefit we receive must be rendered again, line for line, deed for deed, cent for cent, to somebody.’ – Ralph Waldo Emerson, Compensation
On May 13, 2010, I made a decision. It wasn’t your normal everyday decision on things like what shoes to wear, where to have lunch, or which shade of lipstick to buy. It even surpassed those important decisions we encounter in life such as what house to buy, the most lucrative financial investments and selecting the best care for elderly parents. It was a decision much more substantial, incredibly emotional and most importantly, everlasting. It was regarding the fate of our embryos. Yes; five embryos, frozen, suspended in time – a significant and extraordinary reminder of a successful IVF cycle producing twin girls just two years prior. Considering that my family was now complete, the desire to have more children had abated. But the process was far from over and I knew this going in. There are five potential lives to consider currently residing in a sub-zero environment. So the question remained… what did one do with extra embryos when one’s need or desire to expand your family has subsided?
In my quest to determine the future of my five frozen embryos, I discovered several options to choose from. These ranged from permanent storage – or in some cases “abandonment,” destruction, donation to stem-cell research, donation to the IVF clinic lab, or donation to an infertile couple or person in need. Continued voluntary storage brought unnecessary substantial fees, not to mention the inevitable procrastination of decision making. Abandonment wasn’t an option for obvious reasons as I felt a responsibility towards these embryos. The only things I have ever abandoned in my life were the occasional art project or my first premature marriage in my early twenties. The concept of destruction simply didn’t make logical sense. Why go through all the expense and trouble of creating embryos that one day would be destroyed because there was no better option considered? Stem-cell research or IVF clinic donation seemed like fair choices since I wouldn’t have my twins without past research in IVF. Even so, there had to be a better option available that would help promote the preservation of life and help out infertile couples desperately wanting a baby.
I remember the years of anguish I experienced being infertile. Everywhere I went I saw pregnant women or newborn babies. It became an obsession, perceived as something so intangible for me yet came so easily for others. There would be no remedy but a child. Why not help another couple expand their family? Why not help end the anguish? Why not “Pay it Forward” to the infertile community in such desperate need? The simplest answers to these questions became the best option.
So the decision came with three stages. Firstly, there was the genetic hurdle to consider. There is something about setting your genetic code, or more specifically, your potential genetic offspring, free into the world that can be somewhat unsettling. Where will these embryos end up, will they survive and what kind of life will they have? Will they know their history? Will they have questions? Will they look like me? But in the greater scheme of things, do these questions really matter?
The value and definition of family transcends any DNA makeup.
In the pursuit of the family unit, we tend to look beyond the genetic code and focus on the family element. The concept of having a family does not automatically equate to comparable genetic material as can be seen with any family with an adopted child. It’s about being part of a team, functioning as a whole and sharing your love and commitment to live and experience life together.
Secondly, there is an element of giving back; Paying it Forward to the infertile world. Donating the embryos was my way of paying back what I was so very fortunate to finally have – a family. Prominent memories of being unfulfilled without children are still fresh in my mind. I honestly believe that donating my idle embryos to someone in need helps to promote the probability of life.
And finally, chance. The chance to help someone build a family, the chance of potential life for the embryo, the chance for you to give the greatest gift in life, the chance to take a chance! So for any of you out there who find yourselves with important decisions to make about your embryos in storage, think back a bit to your own infertile days. That memory will help guide you to do the right thing for someone with the same needs and desires as you have. Take a chance and do something good for humanity.
Donating the embryos was my way of paying back what I was so very fortunate to finally have – a family.
In the end I trusted Embryo Donation International (EDI) and Dr. Sweet with my precious embryos. I knew that with their high ethical standards and sheer devotion to the embryo they would give my embryos a chance at life, and hopefully help to build another family, just like they helped to build mine. And on every Mother’s Day ever since the donation I hope and wonder that by liberating my embryos they were able to help create another family somewhere out there and that they are as happy as I am.
This is Part 2 of the Disclosure From the Perspective of the Embryo Recipient series. If you missed Part 1 and want to catch up, please scroll below or click here. In the week prior, we also covered the same disclosure issue but from the perspective of the embryo donor, scroll further down or click Part 1 and Part 2. More is yet to come in the two weeks ahead as we continue to evaluate this topic that is important to so many.
When is the Best Time to Disclose Embryo Donation to the Child?
If parents decide to disclose, it is seemingly better to do so earlier rather than later. Disclosing to a young child allows the child time to absorb the information. If disclosure occurs in adolescence or later, the young adult may feel mistrust, alienation, identity confusion, frustration and even hostility towards his or her family (Ethics Committee, 2004 & Mahlstedt PP, et al. 2010). About 46% of the donor sperm offspring who were told at the age of 18 or older stated they were confused about the disclosure. According to the research published, it seemed as though it was best to tell the child before the age of 10 because waiting doubled the number of children who were unsettled with the information.
How Often Do Offspring Inadvertently Discover Their Origins?
The most common reason for embryo recipients to disclose was a fear that the child would accidently discover the facts at a later date (MacCallum F, et al. 2007). When recipients are considering embryo donation, they commonly toss the idea around with friends and family. I urge caution here. The more people who know of their decision to be embryo recipients the greater the likelihood that offspring may discover their origins.
Even if the recipient parents keep the information to themselves, the children may still find out. One study of adult offspring of sperm donation found that about one-third of the individuals learned of their donor origins after an argument, from another person or they figured it out themselves (Mahlstedt PP, et al. 2010). In a recent study, about 10% (47/458) of the sperm donor offspring who were searching for their donors and half-siblings found out by accident (Beeson DR, et al. 2011). They either were apparently told by siblings, family or friends; discovered paperwork or unusual medical issues, overheard parents talking or learned as a consequence of divorce. Though sperm, egg and embryo donation procedures differ in many respects, when examining these two studies it is clear that there is a reasonable risk that the offspring will discover their origins even in the best of circumstances.
Are Embryo Donor Offspring Harmed by Non-Disclosure?
Interestingly, children do not seem to be harmed if disclosure does not occur. Also, if disclosure occurs early, neither the children nor the family seem to be harmed (MacCallum F, et al. 2007 & 2008).
Should Disclosure be Mandated?
Many hope that egg and sperm donation programs can move from strategies focused on compensation to a more altruistic perspective (Scheib JE, et al. 2008). Embryo donation is quite different since financial incentives, if they exist at all, are minimal and altruistic reasons for donating are currently the primary emphasis.
Unfortunately there is a much greater preference to discard or abandon embryos than to donate them. Placing any impediments to embryo donation, such as mandating disclosure, may not only reduce the number of embryos donated but will almost certainly result in a greater number of embryos discarded or abandoned. I cannot imagine that advocates for mandated disclosure would want the loss of embryos and potential families to be the unintended outcome.
There also has also been a push to create a national registry for egg and sperm donation (Ravitsky V, et al. 2010). Embryo donation might also be included in this process. Amongst many issues involved in such a registry, the following concerns exist:
Who would pay for the registry?
What information would be kept?
Who has have access to the information?
As a field, we must be concerned about the safety of medical information of such as a private nature and which previously was privy to only a few people. It is frightening to learn how unsecured online medical information has become. These are real privacy concerns about millions of health records left unprotected, as reported by the government.
If a national registry actually is established, who will pay for it? Who will have access to it? Can you imagine the terrible impact it might have if someone hacked into the database and either released the personal medical information or tried to blackmail parents so that disclosure wouldn’t occur?
Until better safeguards can be designed, I will have significant concerns that private medical information will not be safe in a national registry.
Summary Comments
The decision to disclose the use of donated embryos to create a family is an extraordinarily difficult one for embryo recipients. As will be discussed in a future blog, discussions with mental health professionals are not adequate to help recipients make this decision.
I feel that if the recipient starts to tell friends and family that donated embryos were used, the need for disclosure grows significantly. It is very destructive for children conceived through third party assistance to find out their origins during adolescence and beyond.
One of the common reasons given for not disclosing is fear that the non-genetic parent will be rejected. Actually, there is no data to support or deny this concern. Embryo recipient parents seem to make great parents and the children are well adjusted regardless of disclosure decisions. That stated, it is pivotal that unintended disclosure not take place as this can cause irreparable harm to the family as a whole.
While counseling with a mental health professional is encouraged, their tendency to immediately equate embryo donation with adoption shows bias in suggesting uniform disclosure. Patients want support and guidance as they work through the difficult decisions but do not want to be told what to do.
The discussion of infertility is less of a taboo but there are still areas of society as well as some religions that will reject the child and the family created through donor eggs, sperm and embryos, causing potential harm to all. It is not for me to say that disclosure is right or wrong. It is my place to help educate the donors and recipients so that they can make the best decision for themselves and their embryo donor children.
The Last Survey In The Series:
To make this discussion as interesting and as current as possible, I will ask that the reader participate in the following survey. The survey below is to be taken assuming you were the offspring of embryo donation. I will summarize the results of this survey in the next blog while reviewing the information we know about the disclosure issues from the perspective of the embryo donor offspring.
Please ask your family, friends and anyone else interested to join in the survey and add comments to the blog as we wade together through the complex issue of disclosure of the embryo donation process to others, especially the child.
Mahlstedt PP, LaBounty K, Kennedy WT. The views of adult offspring of sperm donation: essential feedback for the development of ethical guidelines within the practice of assisted reproductive technology in the United States. Fertil Steril. 2010 May 1;93(7):2236-46.
As discussed in a previous blog, the embryo donor really sets the stage regarding disclosure. They either can choose Anonymous procedures, perhaps with the option of Open-Identity at some later date, or an Open Embryo Donation process. Let’s assume that an Open Embryo Donation process will legally stipulate the issue of disclosure. If Anonymous, however, it will be up to the embryo recipient to decide if they are going to tell friends, relatives or the child themselves.
What Exactly Are Recipients Disclosing?
The American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM) believes there are two stages of disclosure to the offspring. The first involves the decision to tell the child and the second involves how much information to disclose (Ethics Committee, 2004). In disclosure to the child, the parents have the option to provide identifying or non-identifying information, when available. Recipients tend to try to disclose less rather than more, if they decide to disclose at all (MacCallum F. 2009).
Are Some Recipients More Likely to Disclose?
The makeup of the embryo recipient parent or parents will help dictate the probability of disclosure. Recipients who are single or are part of same sex couples will be more likely to disclose since the circumstances of their children’s conception will ultimately become a topic of conversation. However, heterosexual couples are the least likely to disclose.
From the embryo recipient’s perspective, they have the right to privacy and the right to choose whether to disclose. Disclosure will result in the broadcasting of the recipient’s infertility issues, which they may have kept quite private (Klock SC. 1997). Embryo recipient parents and their children may be potentially be damaged by other people’s negative reactions, social stigma and the resulting isolation (Shehab D, et al. 2008). Let’s face it: there indeed might be a lack of societal approval of offspring who originated from donor material. Many people are judgmental regarding embryo donation, especially in cultures and religions that emphasize genetic inheritance.
While some couples undergoing egg/sperm donor conception immediately agreed with the disclosure concern, at least half of the partners were not in agreement (Shehab D, et al. 2008). In disclosing heterosexual couples, women were more in favor of disclosure with men more often deferring to their wives to make the decision. In non-disclosing couples, men usually preferred nondisclosure and women tended to defer to their husbands. Conflicting advice from family and friends seemed to make the decision more difficult.
While most embryo donation recipient couples agree on the disclosure or nondisclosure decision, it is interesting to note that fathers (56%, 9/16) were more likely to not want to disclose than mothers.(43%, 9/21). It was hypothesized that fathers may not have recalled as much about the embryo donors, were not as skilled as the mothers in communicating with the child or were simply more protective than the mothers (MacCallum F. 2009).
What Do We Know About the Frequency of Disclosure In Egg, Sperm and Embryo Donation?
How often disclosure occurs in the world of embryo donation is uncertain, but there is a growing body of data suggesting that only a minority of the children are told. In an English study of 17 embryo donation families with donor offspring who were five to nine years old, only 18% of the recipient parents had told their children, 24% planned on telling 12% were undecided and 47% stated they would not tell (MacCallum F. et al. 2008). The reality is that many of those who planned on telling or were undecided may decide against disclosure as the child ages and enters the more difficult years of adolescence. This appears to be different than other donor procedures where 46% of donor sperm insemination parents and 56% of egg donation parents (averaging to about 50%) planned to disclose (Golombok S, et al. 2004).
Since both parents lack a genetic link to the child in embryo donation, they may be even more private about embryo donation than other types of third-party conception families. While adoptive parents almost universally disclose (100% in this Golomok’s study),. embryo recipients carry and deliver the child, so it is far easier for non-disclosure to take place.
Would Consultation With a Mental Health Professional be Helpful?
Mental health professionals, who often rely on adoption literature and experience, almost unanimously encourage disclosure whereas physicians are commonly more neutral. Parents who have used donor material feel the decision to disclose is private and highly personal and should be left to the discretion of the individual families rather than regulated in any way (Shehab D, et al. 2008). Many patients resent direct suggestions that they disclose and far prefer a discussion that examines their own needs and perspectives (Klock SC, 1997). In reality, it is really not appropriate to give a uniform recommendation that does not account for the personal, ethical and religious views of the embryo recipients.
I believe that unbiased psychological counseling early during the embryo donation process may be reasonable but that additional counseling closer to the time that disclosure might take place, will probably be more appreciated. Perhaps even more important, embryo recipients want to hear from other recipients, people who have worked through the issues or are struggling with the disclosure issues themselves (Klock SC, 1997). At EDI, we have plans to create a forum where patients will be able to seek highly desired anonymous peer support.
We will continue this discussion, on disclosure issues from the perspective of the embryo recipient, tomorrow and also launch our final survey. The reference list will also be posted with this second half tomorrow. Stay tuned!
Brief Introduction
This is the third of a five-part series examining the complex decision-making surrounding the disclosure of the genetic origins of embryo donor offspring to family, friends and the offspring themselves.
Associated Blog Segments
The first segment of this series introduced the disclosure topic. We next conducted a survey with questions asked from the perspective of an embryo donor. Incorporating the results of the survey, the second blog segment, Part I and Part II, examined the disclosure issues from the perspective of the embryo donor. A second survey was released asking the readers to imagine they were embryo recipients. The results of that survey are discussed below.
Survey Results: “Imagine You Were an Embryo Recipient”
1. If I were an embryo recipient, I would prefer an (choose only one):
Anonymous Embryo Donation 44% (15/34)
Approved Embryo Donation 24% ( 8/34)
Open Embryo Donation 32% (11/34)
Comments:
Not quite half of the respondents wanted to receive donated embryos in a totally anonymous fashion, twice as many as the first survey where respondents imagined they were embryo donors. In total, about 2/3rds of the respondents preferred an anonymous donation process. When receiving embryos, anonymity seems to be a priority.
2. If I received donated embryos, I would tell the following:
Relationship
Yes
No
N/A
(not alive or no current relationship)
My parents
73% (24/34)
21% (7/34)
6% (2/34)
My in-laws
62% (21/34)
29% (10/34)
9% (3/34)
My siblings
71% (24/34)
21% (7/34)
9% (3/34)
My children
70% (23/34)
30% (10/34)
0% (0/34)
My friends
59% (20/34)
38% (13/34)
3% (1/34)
Average:
66% (112/170)
28% (47/170)
6% (9/170)
Comments:
More than twice as many respondents would tell family and friends about receiving donated embryos than would not tell. As you will see in the upcoming blog, the percentage wanting disclosure here is significantly higher than is seen with actual embryo donors.
3. As an embryo recipient, would you want to tell any of your embryo donation offspring that they came from donated embryos?
Yes 59% (20/34)
No 18% ( 6/34)
Not certain 23% ( 8/34)
Comments:
More than half of the respondents stated they would tell their children that they came from donated embryos. Those that were uncertain may move towards nondisclosure if disclosure is not done early.
4. As an embryo recipient, if I chose an Anonymous or Approved Embryo Donation (both are still anonymous), I would prefer to:
Remain Anonymous: 41% (14/34)
Be initially Anonymous with the possibility of Open-Identity at Any Age: 56% (19/34)
Be initially Anonymous with the possibility of Open-Identity at 18+ Years of Age: 3% ( 1/34)
Comments:
If the respondent chose an anonymous procedure, slightly less than half stated they would stay anonymous. If Open-Identity was preferred, nearly all wanted to have the ability to contact the donors when the child was younger than 18. Interestingly, this same pattern was seen in an earlier survey where the majority desired open-identity before age 18 but answering from the perspective of the embryo donor. Once again, this is very different than what is currently done with adoption.
5. As an embryo recipient, if I chose the Open Embryo Donation process I would prefer:
Open Embryo Donation with Open-Identity at any age: 44% (15/34)
Open Embryo Donation with Open-Identity at 18+ years of age: 56% (19/34)
Comments:
In the Open-Identity part of the contracted process, slightly more of the respondents wanted the option to contact the donor when the child was at least 18 years of age. Because the percentages were so close, however, it is possible that the respondents were rather split in this decision.
Thank you for your input. Tomorrow we will release the next installment of this series – Disclosure Issues From the Perspective of the Embryo Recipient. This will be released in two separate sections. With the completion of this segment, we will also launch our final survey and hope you will again give us feedback.
What Will The Relationship Be Like Between The Embryo Donors and the Offspring?
Depending on when disclosure might occur in an Open Embryo Donation or in an Anonymous with Open-Identity option, it is important to picture the offspring somehow entering the donor’s life five to 10 years following the donation or even decades later. Will the contact always be welcome? After meeting for the first time, what will come next: affection, friendship, politeness, family or even love?
Reunions can be threatening to both the embryo donor offspring and the recipients. The parents who raised the child may feel threatened by the relationship between donors and offspring. While reunions of biologic parents and adoptees can be very rewarding, it is uncertain how the situation will fair in the world of embryo donation in either the short or long-term (Grotevant HD, et al, 2008).
The reality is that we don’t have a great deal of information regarding the complex interactions between the donor-offspring and their genetic parents or the donor offspring and their biologic brothers and sisters. We don’t know how the interactions will affect the existing donor offspring –parent/recipient relationship. We need to be careful not to push patients in one direction, only to find out that harm may have been done. When there is no clear data, I feel we must be cautious in what we recommend.
Should Embryo Donors Tell Friends and Family of Their Decision to Donate Their Embryos?
In the recent poll, the majority of respondents were willing to tell friends and family of their decision to donate. In some societies and religions, this decision will be met with concern and even condemnation. The decision to disclose the donation decision needs to be made with care as family and interpersonal relationships may be harmed.
Would Consultation With a Mental Health Professional be Helpful?
The recommendations regarding psychological counseling are confusing. In 2004, the American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM) stated (Ethics Committee for ASRM, 2004):
All prospective recipients and donors should receive counseling with a qualified mental health professional about the psychological implications of donation and disclosure for the recipients, donors, and children.
However, in an article published two years later, ASRM recommended (Practice Committee for ASRM SART, 2006):
Psychological consultation with a qualified mental health professional should be offered to all couples participating in the donor-embryo process.
Psychological assessment by a qualified mental health professional is recommended to ascertain suitability of potential donors.
Recipients of donor embryos and their partners should receive counseling about the potential psychosocial implications.
It would appear that ASRM both mandates and suggests that counseling be performed, so take your pick. We always encourage all embryo donors to seek assistance from a qualified mental health professional. We are careful, however, to not make this mandatory. We have concerns that if we make donating embryos too difficult and time consuming for the donors, they will be more likely to discard or abandon their embryos.
Summary Comments:
When embryo donors decide to donate their embryos, they must also guide the process concerning eventual disclosure. Open procedures are more likely to include disclosure and eventual contact between the donors and the offspring. Open-Identity procedures may also result in eventual contact, perhaps decades after the donation process was performed and can have uncertain short and long-term consequences. If disclosure occurs, the offspring will probably be fine. According to research, if they are not told, they will doubtfully suffer consequences as long as disclosure didn’t occur by accident. These issues will be covered in detail in an upcoming blog.
Disclosure decisions are controlled by the donor and accepted by the recipient. While more donor egg and sperm offspring feel it is their right to know their genetic origins, the reality is that embryo donation has particular circumstances that make secrecy possible. To say secrecy is always wrong is no different than stating emphatically that it is always right.
Donors and recipients must agree on disclosure decisions together for the good of everyone involved, including the unborn child.
To make this discussion as interesting and current as possible, I’d ask that you participate in our next survey. Please take the survey imagining you are an embryo recipient. I will summarize the survey results in the next blog while reviewing the information we know about the disclosure issues from the perspective of the embryo recipient.
Please ask your family, friends and anyone else interested to join in the survey and add comments to the blog as we wade together through the complex issue of disclosure of the embryo donation process to others, especially to the child.
Next:
Please be sure to watch for our next blog: “Embryo Donation Disclosure Issues From the Perspective of the Embryo Recipient.”
References:
Ethics Committee of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine. Informing offspring of their conception by gamete donation. Fertil Steril. 2004 Sep;82 Suppl 1-S212-6.
This is the second of a five-part series by Dr. Craig R. Sweet examining the complex decision-making surrounding the disclosure of the genetic origins of embryo donor offspring to family, friends and the children themselves.
If embryo donors are kind and generous enough to donate their unused frozen embryos to patients in need, their next important decision revolves around whether they want to donate anonymously or if they would like to create some type of relationship with the recipients and their potential offspring. At EDI we want to give donors the widest range of choices, so we offer Anonymous, Approved and Open Embryo Donation procedures.
We do not have accurate national statistics about which embryo donation procedure is chosen most often. Some matching organizations only deal with open procedures while many reproductive facilities only offer anonymous arrangements. Embryo donors, therefore, often have to search for the facility that will cater to their needs.
Is Adoption the Best Model To Follow?
I have written about why I believe the term “embryo adoption” should not be used in the context of embryo donation and the American for Reproductive Medicine has a similar perspective. Regardless of our beliefs, some donors feel a responsibility to the embryos that includes making certain the embryos are donated to a loving and safe home. These donors feel the process is similar to adoption.
Over the years, there has been a trend in traditional adoption towards providing adopted offspring with information about their genetic parents after they turn 18 years of age. This trend towards disclosure is being used to encourage more open procedures in embryo donation. But there is a major difference between the two forms of family building: embryo donation offspring do not have to be told of their origins. Because the recipient carries and delivers the child, it is completely possible to keep the “non-genetic” relationship a secret from family, friends and the child. The donor offspring-recipient relationship begins differently than adoption from legal, emotional, social and practical perspectives.
Embryo donors and the genetic parents of a newborn are able to stipulate what kind of recipient will be given their embryos and newborn. While they will state they are doing what is best for the child, some may argue they are doing what is best for themselves. In the case of child neglect/abuse/abandonment, the courts and case workers will decide what they feel is best for the living child. In this situation, the needs of the child take priority over the perceived needs of the genetic parents. Embryo donation always focuses on the needs of the parents while adoption may focus on the needs of the child.
Are Embryo Recipient Families and Offspring Happy?
Embryo donors may worry about the kind of home in which the potential children of their donated embryos will be raised. Results from recent research can help mitigate these concerns since it appears that embryo donation families are more child-centered than adoptive and other IVF families (MacCallum F, et al. 2007 & 2008). This may be due in part to the recipients’ older age and maturity compared to their younger IVF and adoptive parents. Given their strenuous attempts to conceive, the embryo recipients seem to be extraordinarily appreciative of their gift, making their homes more child-centered and the children seem to be well attended.
Unlike adoption, it is doubtful that the offspring of embryo donation will have the “history of rejection” to resolve like adopted children might have after being separated from their birth parents (Widdows H, et al. 2002). Although studies are lacking, this hurtle doesn’t seem to exist for children created from embryo donation. Indeed, though the donors felt their own family building was complete, they also felt strongly about giving their unused embryos a chance at life as well as wanting to “pay it forward” to deserving recipients. Families created through embryo donation are a product of a loving gift and not formed from rejection.
It would, therefore, appear that the offspring created through embryo donation do not have to have a relationship with the embryo donors to be well adjusted. While it may be desired and perhaps even preferred by offspring, it remains the embryo donor’s choice at this early stage of the game.
What Options Are Readily Available?
I believe that in most Open Embryo Donations, the child will be told of their origins. In fact, contracts may stipulate that the donors have the right to contact the child at a later date or may provide a mechanism for the child to be able to contact the donor at a certain age. An Open Embryo Donation process more closely mirrors an adoption process.
For Anonymous Embryo Donation, EDI is considering Open-Identity, an intermediate option allowing embryo donor offspring access to medical and other types of information after they reach a specified age. A number of steps are needed for open-identity to work:
Embryo donors must agree to an anonymous process with the option of open-identity at a later date.
The embryo recipients are notmandated to disclose, so only those offspring who are told may seek contact with the donors.
If the embryo donor offspring desire contact, they will notify the clinic that performed the embryo donation procedure to access identifying information.
It is essential that the embryo donors maintain contact with the embryo donation facility so that up-to-date identifying information is available.
I find it curious that most open-identity procedures, such as in adoption, identifying information is only provided at or beyond the age of 18. I can’t help but wonder if the child would be better served by having contact earlier, especially if it is truly desired by all parties. If the donors and recipients agree, why not initiate contact earlier, such as in the formative years? The respondents to our first poll seem to agree with the vast majority favoring an open-identity disclosure before the age of 18.
We will continue this discussion, on disclosure issues from the perspective of the embryo donor tomorrow and also launch the second of our three surveys. The reference list will also be posted with this second half tomorrow. Stay tuned!
The first segment of this series introduced the disclosure topic and linked to our first of three surveys. There were a total of 17 respondents with the results examined below.
Survey Results: “Imagine You Are an Embryo Donor”
1. If you were an embryo donor, which would you prefer (choose only one)?
I would prefer an Anonymous Embryo Donation process. 18% (3/17)
I would prefer an Approved Embryo Donation process. 41% (7/17)
I would prefer an Open Embryo Donation process. 41% (7/17)
Comments:
Anonymous and Approved Embryo Donation procedures together were only slightly preferred over Open Embryo Donation. It would appear those answering the question wanted to know more about the recipients than a simple anonymous process would provide.
2. If I donated my embryos, I would tell the following:
Relationship
Yes
No
N/A
(not alive or no current relationship)
My parents
71% (12/17)
29% (5/17)
0% (0/17)
My in-laws
47% (8/17)
41% (7/17)
12% (2/17)
My siblings
59% (10/17)
24% (4/17)
17% (3/17)
My children
65% (11/17)
29% (5/17)
6% (1/17)
My friends
65% (11/17)
35% (6/17)
0% (0/17)
Average:
61% (52/85)
32% (27/85)
7% (6/85)
Comments:
Twice as many respondents would tell family and friends about donating their embryos than would not tell. Embryo donors have previously stated telling friends and family might result in harsh judgments from those who didn’t fully understand their motivations for donation. This concern for judgment may have been reflected by the fact that in-laws were the least frequently told group in the poll above.
3. Would you want to have the embryo donation offspring told that they came from donated embryos?
Yes 47% (8/17)
No 18% (3/17)
Not certain 35% (6/17)
Comments:
About half of the donors would want the offspring told they were from donated embryos. The other half was uncertain or definitely would not disclose. The uncertain group may gravitate towards nondisclosure over time unless committed to disclosure process early.
4. If I choose an Anonymous or Approved Embryo Donation process (both are still anonymous), I would prefer (choose only one):
To remaining Anonymous: 12% (2/17)
Be initially Anonymous with the possibility of Open-Identity at Any Age: 59% (10/17)
Be initially Anonymous with the possibility of Open-Identity at 18+ Years of Age: 29% (5/17)
Comments:
About 88% wanted an Open-Identity process. The respondents also wanted offspring to have the ability to contact donors when the children were younger than 18 by two-to-one over those wanting Open-Identity at 18 years of age or older. This is very different than what is currently done with adoption.
5. If I choose the Open Embryo Donation process, I would prefer:
Open Embryo Donation with Open-Identity at Any Age: 71% (12/17)
Open Embryo Donation with Open-Identity at 18+ Years of Age: 29% ( 5/17)
Comments:
Consistent with question four, the respondents wanted Open-Identity younger than 18 years of age, which is very different from what is done in the adoption world.
Thank you for your input. Tomorrow we will release the next installment of this series – Disclosure Issues From the Perspective of the Embryo Donor. We’ll also launch our next survey this week as well and hope you will give us your feedback.
Introduction
Embryo donors and recipients are faced with a number of complex decisions. Embryo donors first have to make the difficult decision about the fate of their cryopreserved embryos. If they are kind and generous enough to choose embryo donation, at EDI they must next decide what type of donation process they prefer:
Anonymous Embryo Donation: Best for the donors who desire closure following donation.
Approved Embryo Donation: Good for donors who want to learn about the recipients through a mental health professional’s report that excludes any identifying information.
Open Embryo Donation: This option is best for the embryo donor who wants to form a relationship with the recipients. This process includes legal contracts, mental health professional interviews, physical exams and laboratory evaluations.
Embryo recipients must also choose the type of donation process they prefer. They must pay additional fees as the complexity of the donation process increases. Though the recipients may not realize this at the time, choosing between anonymous and open procedures begins to form the decisions about disclosing the children’s origins to the offspring themselves. The decision whether or not to tell the embryo donor offspring of their genetic origins is a complicated and important issue.
The goal of this five-part series is to explore the complex issues surrounding the decision to disclose the genetic origins of embryo donor offspring to family, friends and the children themselves. This multifaceted decision requires our trying to understand the perspectives of the various participants in the embryo donation process, namely the embryo donors, the embryo recipients and the offspring themselves.
For example, if you were an embryo donor, would you want to have a relationship with a child who was being raised by another family? If so, at what age would you want them to contact you? If you were an embryo recipient, would you tell friends, existing children, extended family and the children themselves that their genetic origins were from embryo donors? If so, at what age would you tell the children? Would you want them to have a relationship with the embryo donors? And finally, if you were the product of embryo donation, would you want to know who your genetic parents are? When would you want to be told? Would you seek a relationship with the donors and their children, your genetic brothers and sisters?
This is a sensitive topic and, quite plainly, it needs to be discussed carefully, sensitively and openly.
How We Will Start
To make this discussion as interesting and as current as possible, I am asking the reader to complete three brief surveys. The first survey will ask questions pertinent to the perspectives of embryo donors, the second will focus on embryo recipients and the final one will probe how children borne through this unique reproductive option might feel. Each survey will be available for completion for about 10 days.
You will find the survey on this link on Survey Monkey. It only takes a few minutes to complete. We consider your input invaluable to help us understand this complex topic.
Blog: Introduction To Disclosure Issues (This one)
Survey: “Imagine You Are An Embryo Donor”
Blog: Results of “Imagine You Are An Embryo Donor” survey and discussion about “Disclosure Issues From the Perspective of the Embryo Donor”
Survey: “Imagine You Are an Embryo Recipient”
Blog: Results of “Imagine You Are an Embryo Recipient” survey and discussion about “Disclosure Issues From the Perspective of the Embryo recipient”
Survey: “Imagine You Are an Embryo Donor Offspring”
Blog: Results from the “Imagine You Are an Embryo Donor Offspring” survey and discussion about “Disclosure Issues From the Perspective of the Embryo Donor Offspring”
Blog: “Summary Comments On The Embryo Donation Disclosure Issues”
Please ask your family, friends and other interested parties to complete the survey and add their comments to the blogs. If you wish to be notified of future blogs, either please subscribe to our blog RSS or like the EDI Facebook page.
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Political corruption in Chicago is so very real. No news there.
But in the last three weeks, our town has enjoyed a front-row seat to watch how it really works.
So this is how it’s done! This is what is said!
And this is what is never said, just understood.
EDITORIAL
First, in criminal charges recently brought against Ald. Ed Burke, we saw how an alderman might directly shake down a local business. Basically, you make your target’s life miserable — withholding construction permits and the like — until they get the hint.
Then this week, in a federal court affidavit obtained exclusively by the Sun-Times, we saw how Chicago politicians sometimes work in tandem to put on the squeeze. Public corruption, we were reminded, can be a rewarding team sport.
Here’s how the team approach played out this time:
A developer in 2014 wanted to build a hotel in Chinatown, but he needed a zoning change. So he asked Ald. Danny Solis (25th) for a letter of support.
Solis hemmed and hawed through the summer. Then he invited the developer and an associate of the developer to a meeting with Illinois House Speaker Mike Madigan, who runs a law firm that does property tax work.
At some point in the meeting, according to the affidavit, Madigan said his law firm would like to do tax work for the developer. Solis chimed in to say there was “no better firm” to do such work.
Three days later, the developer’s associate called Solis to tell him the developer had agreed to hire Madigan’s law firm.
And here’s the punchline, which you’ve already guessed: Five days later, Solis wrote a letter of support for the hotel.
Did Solis and Madigan break any laws? Time will tell. So far, Madigan and Solis face no criminal charges.
But there is no way that developer, sitting in that meeting with Solis and Madigan, did not feel the squeeze.
What might be legal still can stink.
RELATED STORIES:
Public corruption in Chicago is all about what’s left unsaid. It’s hard to indict a negative.
Solis invites the developer to meet with Madigan. A reasonable assumption is that Solis’ support for the hotel hinges on the developer making Madigan happy.
It goes unsaid.
Madigan asks the developer to hire his law firm. A reasonable assumption is that developer had better say “yes.”
It goes unsaid.
Solis — in a separate sad scandal reported exclusively by the Sun-Times this week — pressed a local political consultant to supply him with Viagra pills and free sex at a massage parlor. The consultant, Roberto Caldero, who at the time was representing a street cleaning company that needed help from the City Council — came through for Solis.
A reasonable suspicion is that Caldero was providing a “quid” — Viagra and free sex — for a “quo” — Solis’ help in gaining a favorable vote in the City Council.
That, too, could go unsaid.
What might be most disturbing in this picture of public corruption, captured in secret FBI recordings, is the possibility that it is far more pervasive than we previously understood.
There is a feeling of business-as-usual in the exchanges between Burke, Solis, Madigan, lobbyists, city contractors and others, even when the business smells. And there is one recorded conversation in particular that suggests the corruption of “pay-to-play” is widespread.
In this recording, Solis is asking Victor Reyes, an attorney and political powerbroker, for a campaign donation. Reyes questions why he should do so when Solis never steers him any business. Several other aldermen, Reyes says, have all steered clients to him.
What do we make of all this?
In the last few weeks, we’ve had a front-row seat to how public corruption goes down in Chicago.
What an expensive ticket.
Send letters to: [email protected].
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I. INTRODUCTION {#acm20241-sec-0001}
===============
The TomoTherapy system[^(1)^](#c1){ref-type="ref"} uses megavoltage computed tomography (MVCT) images for positioning.[^(2)^](#c2){ref-type="ref"} These images can also be used for dose calculations, adaptive planning, and StatRT (direct) planning.[^(3)^](#c3){ref-type="ref"} An image value to density table (IVDT) converts the image Hounsfield Units (HU) into mass densities.[^4^](#c4){ref-type="ref"}, [^5^](#c5){ref-type="ref"}, [^6^](#c6){ref-type="ref"} These densities are then used for dose calculations. However, there is an important variation in time for the HU values and thus the IVDT.[^7^](#c7){ref-type="ref"}, [^8^](#c8){ref-type="ref"}, [^9^](#c9){ref-type="ref"} If the recalculated densities are incorrect, a dosimetric uncertainty is induced. The dose differences seen for the recalculations are thus not only related to patient changes. Up to 3% dose differences were observed due to dose rate instabilities[^(7)^](#c7){ref-type="ref"} and important changes were observed after a target change.[^(9)^](#c9){ref-type="ref"} Incorrect decisions (both false positives and negatives) regarding replanning a patient can be associated to this uncertainty on the IVDT and resulting dose calculations.
The IVDT curve can be entered manually into the TomoTherapy system by measuring HUs of inserts with different densities inside the cheese tissue characterization phantom. The curve is then created point‐by‐point, with linear interpolation between consecutive points.
Statistically, this is not the most optimal method, especially when the uncertainty on every point is different (heteroscedasticity). The system calculates densities from the HUs, but the uncertainties are linked to the HUs. Basically, this comes down to the famous 'calibration problem' in which the problem is first inversed: a model is created to calculate HUs from densities using weighted least squares (WLS) linear regression (inverse prediction using uncertainty per data point). This model is then inversed to obtain a practical model.[^(10)^](#c10){ref-type="ref"}
We investigate two possible protocols to improve calculations on MVCT images: 1Preparation (once for both):a)Measure HU values *in phantom* and calculate the b and c parameter of the response curve $HU = b*\rho^{c}‐1020$ for the machine. Keep the c parameter (exponent) of this full IVDT calibration.b)Measure HU values *on table* with a scan after the phantom scan. Calculate HU difference of inserts 1.56 and 1.823 *on table -- in phantom*.c)Measure the dose rate dependence of the IVDT table by changing the PfN values2.Daily protocol:(a)After the daily airscan, the two high‐density inserts are also scanned on the table (or small support).(b)Fit the b parameter of the model to the adjusted HU values *(on table -- in phantom)* of the inserts ($\text{HU} = b\rho^{c}‐1020$).(c)If the dose rate changes during the day, apply the dose rate transformation2.Patient specific:(a)When scanning patients, put the two inserts next to the patient (or further in the gantry).(b)Recalculate the *in phantom* value. Fit the b parameter of the model to the adjusted HU values *(on table -- in phantom)* of the inserts ($\text{HU} = b\rho^{c}‐1020$). The correct density curve is then obtained as $\rho =^{c}\sqrt{\frac{HU + 1020}{b}}$
For this investigation, several measurements were performed to quantify the uncertainties and to generate a model for the density‐HU curve and dose rate transformation.
Normal linear regression can be performed, in order to obtain c and/or b, on the function $\ln(HU + 1020) = c*\ln(\rho) + \ln(b)$.
II. MATERIALS AND METHODS {#acm20241-sec-0002}
=========================
Measurements were performed on a $\text{Hi} \cdot \text{Art}$ TomoTherapy machine (Accuray, Sunnyvale, California), running version 4.0.3 with a Siemens MVCT detector style 2 (J04 setting) (Siemens Medical Solutions, Malvern, PA). The Tomotherapy Cheese tissue characterization phantom (Gammex RMI, Middelton, WI) was used with inserts with mass densities between 0.29 and $1.823\, g/\text{cm}^{3}$. Distilled water was used as reference instead of the 1.017 solid water density rod. As we had two sets of inserts available, we made a mix with certain inserts doubled (20 total).
Some of the inserts were listed with a slightly different density, others came with the same listed density. The inserts were also used in a setup on the table, without surrounding phantom.
Attenuation coefficients in MVCT imaging are mainly dictated by the same interactions as the radiation beam: the presence of heavier atoms (Ca) in density rods exhibits almost no influence, contrary to the behavior for kVCT scans[^(11)^](#c11){ref-type="ref"} (photo electric interactions). The rods with densities between 0.9 and 1.1 were used as we saw (1) no large variances; (2) these variances are less important in our proposed response curve (which is a drawback for linear interpolation); and (3) these values showed no significant deviations from the behavior of the other inserts or water. For kVCT scans, there are more important differences due to the composition of the inserts; therefore, TomoTherapy recommends not to use rods with HU between $\pm \, 100$ HUs for kVCT.
Normal slice thickness was used (multiple linear regression using dummy variables indicated no statistical difference between slice thicknesses).
Statistical analysis was performed in "The R project".[^(12)^](#c12){ref-type="ref"} Image analysis was performed with OsiriX (The OsiriX Foundation, Geneva, Switzerland) and Amide. Fixed cylindrical geometries $( \pm \, 5\,\text{cm}^{3})$ within the inserts, omitting the borders, were used to obtain the average HU values.
The following measurements and analysis were performed: Creation of the response curveDetermination of the heteroscedasticity of the data (variable variance per insert)Fit of model to the HU‐ρ relation: WLS fittingStability:Short term: consecutive scans (20 scans times 3)Daily term: morning‐evening and before‐after airscan (evening)Long term: several months + interventionsTransformation of inserts *on table* to *in phantom*Dose rate dependence of the IVDT curveVerification of the proposed protocols:Base verification kV‐MV dose calculationsApplication of proposed protocols on head‐and‐neck phantom, and patient cases (6 H&N and 6 pelvic region cases):Morning protocol: scan of 2 inserts on the tablePatient specific protocol: using 2 inserts next (or above) the patient
A. Creation of the response curve {#acm20241-sec-0003}
=================================
A.1 Heteroscedasticity of measured HU values {#acm20241-sec-0004}
--------------------------------------------
The heteroscedasticity is the variable variance of the insert\'s HU values, depending on density. It was evaluated from one of the 20 successive MVCT sets. A bootstrap method was applied for the estimation of the weight factors for every insert: for every density/insert, the 20‐point dataset was resampled into a new dataset. We then used this set to estimate the variance on the variance. These variances are not normally distributed. Therefore, a bias‐corrected, accelerated 95% confidence interval was applied.[^13^](#c13){ref-type="ref"}, [^14^](#c14){ref-type="ref"}
A.2 General Model {#acm20241-sec-0005}
-----------------
The snapshot model was created using one set of 20 successive measurements (for the runs test, see Material and Methods Section B.1). A weighted least squares fit was applied to the HU‐ρ relationship, using the heteroscedasticity from previous paragraph --- points with a high uncertainty get lower weight for fitting purposes. We tested several models: polynomial and power functions.
A verification of the slice thickness was performed, using multiple linear regression (MLR) with dummy variables. MLR with dummy variables tests if a categorical variable (like slice thickness or before‐after airscan) plays a role in the IVDT curve. The MLR method using dummy variables adds an additional variable for each thickness (example of coding: Coarse: 0 0, Normal: 0 1, Fine 1 0). This variable is taken as a regression variable. If the coefficient of this variable is statistically significant (95% level), the $H_{0}$ hypothesis of equality is rejected, and the slice thickness is evaluated as resulting in a different density--HU curve.
B. IVDT stability {#acm20241-sec-0006}
-----------------
The IVDT changes were first investigated on short term, daily and long term. Afterwards, several real patient cases were recalculated using the different IVDT curves and compared (same MVCT with different IVDT curves) in order to assess the induced dosimetric uncertainties in reality (daily, long term, technical intervention: see patient evaluation). The most extreme cases were taken.
### B.1 Short term: Wald‐Wolfowitz runs test {#acm20241-sec-0007}
The importance of this test was to validate that on short term, there were no drifts or autocorrelations. A runs test evaluates if the deviation from the mean of each series of measurements of an insert corresponds to a random distribution around the mean of every insert. A run corresponds to a series of HU values above (or below) the mean of the insert. A series of 20 successive MVCT scans, immediately following each other, was performed. For every insert, the deviation from the mean is calculated and a runs test is applied. This test was performed three times on different days.
The sample test statistic is: $$Z = \frac{X - E(X)}{\sqrt{\sigma{(X)}^{2}}}$$
The expected number of runs (E(X)) and its variance (σ^2^(X)) is calculated, using the number of positive (P) and negative runs (N): $$E(X) = \frac{2PN}{P + N} + 1$$ $$\sigma^{2}(X) = \frac{2PN(2PN - (P + N)}{{(P + N)}^{2}(P + N - 1)}$$
### B.2 Daily variation, before/after airscan: MLR with dummy variables {#acm20241-sec-0008}
Two series of three measurements were performed, during the morning and during the evening after eight hours of treatments. This was performed twice, on different days. Two series of ten measurements were performed during the evening, one before a new airscan, one after a new airscan. The analysis was performed using MLR with dummy variables (see Material and Methods Section A.2).
### B.3 Long‐term stability and stability after interventions {#acm20241-sec-0009}
The IVDT curve can change significantly, leading to dose differences of several percentages.[^7^](#c7){ref-type="ref"}, [^9^](#c9){ref-type="ref"} IVDT curves were measured during several months. During this period, some major magnetron instabilities were present. A new magnetron was installed leading to better beam stability. A new target was also installed. Robustness of the proposed general model was investigated.
C. on table ‐ inside phantom: transformation {#acm20241-sec-0010}
--------------------------------------------
Measurements were performed with the inserts in the phantom and on the table. MLR with dummy variables was used to assess significant differences. Differences of measured HU from *on table* with *inside phantom* were investigated.
D. dose rate dependence of the IVDT curve {#acm20241-sec-0011}
-----------------------------------------
By adjusting the PfN values of the imaging beam, the dose rate can be varied. The IVDT was measured with different dose rates, ranging from 12 MU/min up to 21 MU/min.
E. Verification of the proposed protocols {#acm20241-sec-0012}
-----------------------------------------
First of all, a baseline test was performed to check the difference between kVCT and MVCT dose calculation on head‐and‐neck phantom. A plan was made on a kVCT image and recalculated on an MVCT image using the MVCT IVDT model. The head‐and‐neck phantom[^(15)^](#c15){ref-type="ref"} incorporates heterogeneities (bone, air). The treatment plan of 2 Gy, using pitch 0.287 and field width 2.5 cm, consists of a cylindrical target volume in the base of the skull. All dose verifications were performed by comparing the 50% volume DVH (ICRU prescription point). The tissue characterization phantom was always scanned immediately before the MVCT scan of a phantom in order to represent the "real" IVDT for comparison with the protocols. Both protocols were tested by using the measurements from before the target change as baseline (determination of c parameter of the response curve). We then applied the proposed transformations and fitting to four new tests in time.
Verification of the first proposed protocol (daily morning scan of two inserts on the table) was done by (a) scanning the two inserts in the morning, (b) applying the proposed transformations and creating the response curve, and (c) recalculating the dose on an MVCT scan of the phantom later that day using the created response curve. This was then compared with a dose calculation using the results of the real IVDT scanned just before the phantom scan. The second protocol was verified the same way, but replacing step (a) by an MVCT scan with the two inserts next to the phantom.
A patient study was performed by comparing the 50% volume DVH of the target volumes. Long‐term performance was evaluated by comparison of dose calculated when using the most extreme IVDT\'s found throughout the lifetime of two targets. The maximum dose differences are represented of six head‐and‐neck and six pelvic region cases, and one melanoma and one anal canal patient. No breast or lung patients were examined during this study.
III. RESULTS & DISCUSSION {#acm20241-sec-0013}
=========================
A. response curve {#acm20241-sec-0014}
-----------------
### A.1 Heteroscedasticity of measured HU values {#acm20241-sec-0015}
The obtained heteroscedasticity is depicted in Fig. [1](#acm20241-fig-0001){ref-type="fig"}. In the following parts, this real variance of every insert is used for statistical fitting purposes: weighted least squares fitting (WLS). WLS fitting uses the uncertainty per data point for fitting purposes (e.g., points with high uncertainty get a lower weight for fitting).
{#acm20241-fig-0001}
### A.2 General model {#acm20241-sec-0016}
The function $\text{HU} = b\rho^{c}‐1020$ (adjusted $R^{2} = 0.9995$, $p‐\text{values} < 0.001$) was chosen as it has the most appropriate behavior for (a) low and high densities, (b) values close to vacuum/air, and (c) density $1\, g/\text{cm}^{3}$. Uncertainty in the exponent c is the least significant in that region (see Results & Discussion Section B.3). To obtain a correct value for air, the intercept point was taken at $‐1020$ (resulting in $0.001\, g/\text{cm}^{3}$ density for air) instead of $‐1024$ (Note: this could differ between machines, depending on machine calibration.) The values between $‐1024$ HU and $‐1000$ HU can then be forced to $0\, g/\text{cm}^{3}$. The plots are depicted in Fig. [2](#acm20241-fig-0002){ref-type="fig"}.
{#acm20241-fig-0002}
Using this model, the influence of slice thickness was investigated by applying MLR with dummy variables. We see in Table [1](#acm20241-tbl-0001){ref-type="table-wrap"} that $H_{0}$ is maintained for the slice thickness. We noticed a small deviation for the Coarse slices compared with both Fine and Normal, but not enough to reject $H_{0}$. We used normal slice thickness for all following measurements.
######
Results of comparisons: for various slick thicknesses, before and after airscan, and inserts in phantom and on table. MLR regression with dummy variables.
*Slice Thickness* *BAS‐AAS* *IP‐Table*
--------- ------------------- ----------- ------------ ----------- -----------
p‐value 0.913 0.262 0.308 $< 0.001$ $< 0.001$
$\text{Before}\,\text{airscan} = \text{BAS}$; $\text{after}\,\text{airscan} = \text{AAS}$; in $\text{phantom}\,=\text{IP}$, on table = Table.
B. Stability {#acm20241-sec-0017}
------------
### B.1 Short term: Wald‐Wolfowitz runs test {#acm20241-sec-0018}
The resulting p‐value is below 0.05 for only two of the 20 inserts (0.02), which indicates random behavior on the short term of 20 successive scans. An example of the results for the insert with density $0.98\, g/\text{cm}^{3}$ is depicted in Fig. [3](#acm20241-fig-0003){ref-type="fig"}. The other two series on different days (morning and evening) result in a similar behavior. Standard deviations over the whole line are around 2 HU. No extreme values were observed (max deviation 5 HU, normal distribution). This test was performed before and after the magnetron change (instabilities before the change). There were no extreme values or a different behavior observed for our installation. We conclude random behavior on short term with $\sigma = \pm 2\,\text{HU}$ (see Fig. [1](#acm20241-fig-0001){ref-type="fig"}).
{#acm20241-fig-0003}
### B.2 Daily variation, before/after airscan: MLR with dummy variables {#acm20241-sec-0019}
The MLR with dummy variables technique was applied for the values in the morning vs. the evening and the same evening before vs. after airscan. A statistically significant difference was observed in the model (see Table [1](#acm20241-tbl-0001){ref-type="table-wrap"}). However, this shift during the day was only very small (5 HU). A new airscan could compensate most of this very small shift.
This daily shift resulted in only a small change for the dose calculations: 0.2% dose difference for 50% volume of the PTV for several patient cases. For the tested days, no dose rate differences were observed between morning and evening. For dose rates during the day, we refer to Material and Methods Section D.
### B.3 Long‐term stability and stability after interventions {#acm20241-sec-0020}
The IVDT curve was measured and fitted before and after several technical interventions (see Table [2](#acm20241-tbl-0002){ref-type="table-wrap"}). Both parameters change in time. However, the exponent c ($\text{HU} = b\rho^{c}‐1020$) is (1) of small influence (randomly), (2) of minor influence in the density region of interest, and (3) neither more fluctuating on short term. c can thus be taken as a constant with only minor consequences in bias. Furthermore, around density 1, variations (and thus uncertainties) in c are almost insignificant. When using the mean value of the exponent ($c = 0.835$ in our case), the maximum bias of all different measurements for density $1.823\, g/\text{cm}^{3}$ was 7 HU (relative 0.05%). The b parameter results in biases of more than 55 HU (relative 3% over the whole range) and is thus the most important parameter. We also see a significant shift in the parameter b before and after the target change. The change of magnetron resulted in a change in parameter b, but as mentioned before, not in a lower variance or peaks for the HU values in the MVCT images.
######
Long‐term parameters of the model. The technical interventions are indicated on the second line (values below the intervention are values obtained after that intervention). b~p~ is the result of the b parameter using the proposed protocols with exponent c as constant from calibration point. The performance of the two protocols (bottom two lines) was tested alongside full measurements of the IVDT curve (b and c). This is also graphically represented in Fig. [2](#acm20241-fig-0002){ref-type="fig"}.
*Day* *1* *20* *28* *36* *51* *54* *55* *74* *75* *90* *103*
---------- ------------- -------- -------- -------- -------- -------- -------- -------- -------- -------- --------
Tech Mag Target
b 1077.6 1059.9 1066.9 1086.1 1064.1 1064.5 1025.7 1037.4 1029.5 1032 1050.3
c 0.840 0.837 0.835 0.839 0.834 0.831 0.843 0.835 0.843 0.840 0.841
$b_{p1}$ Daily prot. cal 1031.9 1035.3 1054.3
$b_{p2}$ Pat Prot. cal 1033.7 1034.9 1035.0 1062
This leads to the fit of a single parameter b in order to obtain the IVDT curve. A QC procedure (for example, biannual) could be applied to check the constance of the "c" parameter.
C. Inside phantom ‐ on table: transformation {#acm20241-sec-0021}
--------------------------------------------
Measurements were performed with the inserts in the phantom and on the table (six sets of measurements in time). There is a significant difference in model for the different setup (see Table [1](#acm20241-tbl-0001){ref-type="table-wrap"} and Fig. [2](#acm20241-fig-0002){ref-type="fig"}). We investigated the transformation of measured HU from *on table* to *inside phantom*. The difference in HU between *on table* and *inside phantom* is close to an individual constant for each one of the highest density inserts. However, the HU difference between *on table* and *in phantom* is not constant over the whole density/insert range: each insert has a different factor Table‐InPhantom (most likely due to scattering contributions) and shows higher variability for the lowest density inserts. We decided to use the $1.56\, g/\text{cm}^{3}$ and $1.823\, g/\text{cm}^{3}$ insert with δHU(in‐table) of respectively 69 ($\pm \, 5$) HU and 53 ($\pm \, 8$) HU (for our installation) as these show the lowest δHU values. One could use a calibrated phantom with regular density, but this phantom should have a larger size than the inserts as the variability for the lower/medium density inserts *on table* is a lot higher than the high‐density inserts.
If the inserts are next to the patient, an additional bias can be introduced due to the presence of the patient next to the inserts. We evaluated this by comparing the values of the inserts next to the head phantom with the values of the inserts on the table. We did not incorporate this bias of up to 10 HU in the model as this can vary from patient to patient. If the inserts are above the patient (nothing next to the inserts), this bias is removed.
D. Dose rate variation of the IVDT curve {#acm20241-sec-0022}
----------------------------------------
The results of the measurements are depicted in Figs. [4](#acm20241-fig-0004){ref-type="fig"} and 5. We see that the proposed model follows perfectly the dose rate: the slope parameter b is a linear function of the dose rate (Fig. [5](#acm20241-fig-0005){ref-type="fig"}). If the dose rate varies during the day, the IVDT curve can be adjusted using these results.
{#acm20241-fig-0005}
{ref-type="fig"}.](ACM2-13-241-g004){#acm20241-fig-0004}
E. Verification of the protocol {#acm20241-sec-0023}
-------------------------------
The baseline test (dose calculation on kVCT vs. MVCT) using the response function on the head‐and‐neck phantom resulted in a 0.2% dose difference (see Fig. [6](#acm20241-fig-0006){ref-type="fig"}).
{#acm20241-fig-0006}
If we now combine the transformation Table‐InPhantom with the fitting results from last paragraph, we can obtain the full IVDT curve by fitting the b parameter to the transformed value of the two highest density inserts on the treatment table. The HU value of an insert next to the patient depends, however, on the size of patient. Indirectly, the resulting HU value can then differ by 10 HU for head‐and‐neck cases. The difference will be larger for pelvis cases, but due to the limited FOV, this was not evaluated. This results in dose differences of 0.3%.
We verified the daily protocol (p1) of scanning two inserts on the table in the morning by using the model and transformation from just before the target change (day 51). We applied this protocol at days 75, 90, and 103 and evaluated the protocol with full IVDT measurements of these days (Table [2](#acm20241-tbl-0002){ref-type="table-wrap"} (p1)). We also verified the patient specific protocol (p2) on days 74, 75, 90, and 103 the same way, but with two inserts next to the head‐and‐neck phantom (phantom, in order to avoid patient specific geometrical variations). Finally we recalculated the dose on the phantom using the reconstructed IVDT. We noticed a drop of dose differences to below 0.4% dose.
The final summary of the resulting dose differences due to the IVDT instability is represented in Table [3](#acm20241-tbl-0003){ref-type="table-wrap"}. These were evaluated for several patient cases, by applying the correct and most extreme IVDTs and calculating the dose for the 50% PTV DVH. When applying the protocols the dose deviations are significantly reduced from 3% to 0.4%.
######
Maximum observed dose deviations for the 50% DVH of 6 pelvic and 6 H&N cases.
*Pelvis* *H&N*
---------------------------------- ----------- -----------
kVCT ‐ MVCT (phantom) 0.2%
Short Term (successive scans) $< 0.1\%$ $< 0.1\%$
Morning/evening (no DR change) 0.2% 0.2%
Long Term (no tech intervention) 1.6% 0.7%
New Target 1.5% 0.7%
Whole Period 3.2% 1.4%
Application Model 0.4% 0.3%
IV. CONCLUSIONS {#acm20241-sec-0024}
===============
We propose (1) a method to use a response function instead of HU values, and (2) two protocols to ameliorate dose calculations on tomotherapy MVCT images --- a daily (recommended) and a patient specific protocol to lower the dose differences from 3% to 0.4%. This can result in less type I or II errors when deciding to replan a patient. No erratic behavior was observed on short term or within a day, only a slow drift during the day. The daily and long‐term changes were most important. The reason of the nonlinearity could be due to scatter contribution, but requires further investigation.
The daily protocol proposes a morning airscan‐like procedure with only two inserts on the table for correction of the base function. Dose rate variations during the day are corrected for with the dose rate‐IVDT relation. The patient specific protocol proposes the addition of two inserts on the table next to the patient (or further on the table). By measuring the HU values of these inserts and applying the proposed transformations and fit, we can reconstruct the IVDT curve of that moment. The whole phantom could be used also, but reducing the measurement to two inserts simplifies the procedure in the morning, at only a slight uncertainty increase.
We proposed the use of two inserts with highest densities. In theory, only a single insert is required to create the IVDT of that moment. However, the highest density inserts are more optimal: (a) they show lower variability *on table*, and (b) their values are higher, thus result in lower uncertainty on the curve. Any other (calibrated) density insert could also be used, but when used *on table*, it should be of larger size than the current inserts.
The morning procedure is the most practical, but results in variations throughout the day (0.4% dose for head and neck). The patient‐specific procedure is a snapshot of that moment, but it introduces a possible patient‐specific bias if the inserts are next to the patient (0.3% dose). Also, this patient‐specific procedure is not always feasible due to the limited field of view (pelvis cases). The inserts can only be placed above the patient in the gantry for head‐and‐neck patients and this will take longer scan time.
In conclusion, we propose to implement the response function along with the simplified morning procedure with two inserts on the table (or large calibrated single medium density phantom). Dose variations throughout the day can be corrected for using the proposed dose rate model. In the current version of TomoTherapy, several "b" value curves could be created. The "b" value can be recalculated for each patient, and thereafter the IVDT curve of that moment can be picked from the list of corresponding "b" values in the TPS.
|
tomekkorbak/pile-curse-small
|
PubMed Central
|
Background
==========
Polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) is characterized by hyperandrogenism (biochemical hyperandrogenemia and/or clinical manifestations of hyperandrogenemia), chronic oligo- or anovulation and polycystic ovaries on ultrasonography \[[@B1],[@B2]\]. Obesity, usually of the central type, is included in the cardinal characteristics of the syndrome, as it is present in varying degrees (30-70%) and is directly linked to increased peripheral insulin resistance (IR)\[[@B3]-[@B5]\].
Insulin resistance, via the resulting hyperinsulinemia, significantly contributes to the endocrine and metabolic disturbances observed in PCOS \[[@B6],[@B7]\]. Insulin has been shown to stimulate theca cell androgen synthesis and suppress sex hormone-binding globulin (SHBG) in the liver, further increasing the free portion of circulating androgens \[[@B8],[@B9]\]. In addition, adiposity contributes to the conversion of Δ~4~-androstendione (Δ~4~-A) to the most potent androgen, testosterone (T), because adipocytes have been shown to express significant amounts of the enzyme 17β-hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase-ketosteroid reductase \[[@B10],[@B11]\].
Lipocalin-2 belongs to the superfamily of lipocalins and was first isolated in human neutrophils. Lipocalin-2 is a 25 kDa glucoprotein that consists of 178 aminoacid residues and is covalently linked to metalloproteinases \[[@B12],[@B13]\]. The gene that encodes its synthesis is located on chromosome 9 (9q34.11) and was characterized in 1997 \[[@B14]\]. Lipocalin-2 mRNA has been isolated in the bone marrow, as well as in tissues exposed to microorganisms (respiratory and alimentary tract, genitourinary system). In addition, lipocalin-2 is expressed in several types of cells, including adipocytes, endothelial cells, macrophages, vascular smooth muscle cells, hepatocytes, endometrial cells and splenic cells \[[@B15]-[@B22]\].
Most investigators reported increased serum lipocalin-2 levels in obese patients \[[@B23],[@B24]\]. In addition, males have higher serum lipocalin-2 levels and this gender difference is present in both normal weight and obese subjects \[[@B23]\]. Moreover, lipocalin levels are elevated in patients with cardiovascular diseases and might represent an independent cardiovascular risk factor \[[@B24]\].
Since a considerable proportion of patients with PCOS has obesity (particularly abdominal), IR, glucose intolerance, type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) and low-grade inflammation, i.e. disorders where lipocalin-2 secretion is affected, the present study was designed to assess a) serum lipocalin-2 levels in normal weight and overweight/obese patients with PCOS, and, b) the association between serum lipocalin-2 levels and anthropometric, metabolic, hormonal and ultrasonographic features of PCOS.
Methods
=======
Patients
--------
We studied 200 women with PCOS \[age 24.5 ± 5.3 years, body mass index (BMI) 27.0 ± 6.4 kg/m^2^\](Group I). We also studied 50 healthy women (age 32.6 ± 4.7 years, mean BMI 25.1 ± 4.0 kg/m^2^) with normal ovulating cycles (28 ± 2 days, blood progesterone levels \>10 ng/ml in two consecutive cycles), no signs of hyperandrogenism and normal sonographic appearance of the ovaries (control group, Group II)(Table [1](#T1){ref-type="table"}). All women with PCOS were outpatients at the Gynecological Endocrinology Infirmary of the Second Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece, who had presented with at least one of the following signs: oligomenorrhea, fertility problems, hirsutism, acne or male-pattern alopecia. Women of the control group were healthy volunteers.
######
Anthropometric, hormonal, metabolic and ultrasonographic characteristics of all patients with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) and all controls.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Group I\ Group II\ p\
(patients with PCOS)\ (controls)\ (adjusted for age and BMI)
(n = 200) (n = 50)
---------------------------------- ----------------------- ------------------ ----------------------------
Age (years) 24.5 ± 5.3 32.6 ± 4.7 NA
BMI (kg/m^2^) 27.0 ± 6.4 25.1 ± 4.0 NA
Waist (cm) 83.5 ± 14.9 80.8 ± 10.1 NS
FSH (mIU/ml) 6.4 ± 1.9 7.9 ± 2.8 0.007
LH (mIU/ml) 7.6 ± 5.0 5.9 ± 2.8 NS
Prolactin (ng/ml) 14.3 ± 6.9 12.2 ± 4.3 NS
Testosterone (ng/dl) 75.1 ± 30.1 32.9 ± 14.4 \< 0.001
Δ~4~-A (ng/ml) 2.9 ± 1.0 1.7 ± 0.5 \< 0.001
DHEA-S (ng/ml) 3106.0 ± 1300.8 1944.6 ± 811.8 \< 0.001
FAI 7.64 ± 6.1 1.98 ± 1.16 0.002
17α-OHP (ng/ml) 1.1 ± 0.5 0.7 ± 0.3 0.010
SHBG (nmol/l) 47.1 ± 28.1 69.2 ± 33.7 NS
Glucose (mg/dl) 98.5 ± 21.5 97.0 ± 9.8 NS
Insulin (μIU/ml) 12.4 ± 9.1 9.2 ± 6.8 NS
Glucose/insulin 11.52 ± 6.7 14.86 ± 9.03 NS
HOMA-IR 3.22 ± 3.90 2.24 ± 1.71 NS
QUICKI 0.34 ± 0.03 0.35 ± 0.03 NS
Area under the OGTT curve 15143.9 ± 3134.1 14565.6 ± 3352.5 NS
Mean ovarian volume (cm^3^) 9.8 ± 4.9 5.3 ± 1.8 \< 0.001
Mean number of ovarian follicles 10.8 ± 4.7 6.2 ± 1.9 \< 0.001
Lipocalin (ng/ml) 65.4 ± 34.3 60.3 ± 26.0 NS
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
NA, not applicable; NS, not significant; BMI, body mass index; FSH, follicle stimulating hormone; LH, luteinizing hormone; Δ~4~-A, Δ~4~-androstenedione; DHEA-S, dehydroepiandrosterone sulfate; FAI, free androgen index; 17α-OHP, 17α-hydroxyprogesterone; SHBG, sex hormone-binding globulin; OGTT, oral glucose tolerance test; HOMA-IR, homeostasis model assessment of insulin resistance; QUICKI, quantitative insulin sensitivity check index
Diagnosis of PCOS was based on the revised criteria of Rotterdam (see study protocol)\[[@B1],[@B2]\]. None of the women studied had galactorrhea or any endocrine or systemic disease that could possibly affect reproductive physiology. No woman reported use during the last semester of any medication that could interfere with the normal function of the hypothalamic-pituitary-gonadal axis. When basic 17α-hydroxyprogesterone (17α-OHP) levels were \>1.5 ng/ml, the Synacthen test (0.25 mg/1 ml; Novartis Pharma S.A., Rueil-Malmaison, France) was performed to rule out congenital adrenal hyperplasia. Other causes of hyperandrogenemia, including prolactinoma, Cushing\'s syndrome and androgen secreting tumors were also excluded. Informed consent was obtained from all women, and the study was approved by the institutional review board. The study met the requirements of the 1975 Helsinki guidelines.
Study protocol
--------------
In all women, body weight, height and waist circumference (W) were measured. Body weight was measured with analog scales and in light clothing; height was measured barefoot with a stadiometer. The BMI was calculated by dividing weight (in kg) by height squared (in m) to assess obesity. The W was obtained as the smallest circumference at the level of the umbilicus.
Baseline blood samples were collected between days 3 and 7 of the menstrual cycle in the control group and between 3 to 7 days after a spontaneous bleeding episode in patients with PCOS, after an overnight fast. The circulating levels of follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH), luteinizing hormone (LH), prolactin (PRL), T, Δ~4~-A, dehydroepiandrosterone sulfate (DHEA-S), 17α-OHP, SHBG, glucose, insulin, thyroid stimulating hormone (TSH) and free thyroxin (FT4) were measured. Immediately after the baseline blood sampling an oral glucose tolerance test (OGTT) was performed; 75 g of glucose were administered orally and serum glucose levels were determined after 30, 60, 90 and 120 min. At the same day transvaginal ultrasonography was performed and the volume of each ovary was determined, as well as the number of follicles in each ovary.
Patients with PCOS were divided according to BMI in Subgroups Iα \[BMI \<25 kg/m^2^; n = 100, age 23.4 ± 4.5 years, BMI 22.1 ± 1.8 kg/m^2^\] and Iβ (BMI \>27 kg/m^2^; n = 100, age 25.7 ± 5.8 years, BMI 31.9 ± 5.6 kg/m^2^). Controls were also divided according to BMI in subgroups IIα \[BMI \<25 kg/m^2^; n = 25, age 31.3 ± 4.5 years, BMI 21.9 ± 1.6 kg/m^2^\] and IIβ (BMI \>27 kg/m^2^; n = 25, age 33.9 ± 4.6 years, BMI 28.3 ± 3.0 kg/m^2^).
Methods
=======
Plasma glucose, insulin, FSH, LH, PRL, androgens, 17α-OHP, TSH and FT4 concentrations were measured as previously described \[[@B25]\]. Serum lipocalin-2 levels were determined with an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (human lipocalin-2/NGAL Elisa, BioVendor Laboratorni medicina a.s., Modrice, Czech Republic). Lower levels of detection was 0.02 ng/ml, the intra-assay coefficients of variation for low and high levels were 8.38 and 7.03%, respectively, and the inter-assay coefficients of variation for low and high lipocalin-2 levels were 9.73 and 9.77%, respectively. Free androgen index (FAI) was determined as follows: FAI = T (nmol/l) × 100/SHBG (nmol/l) \[[@B26]\]. The homeostasis model assessment of IR (HOMA-IR) index was calculated as follows: HOMA-IR = fasting insulin (mIU/l) × glucose (mg/dl)/405 \[[@B27]\]. The quantitative insulin sensitivity check index (QUICKI) was calculated according to the following formula: QUICKI = 1/\[log Insulin (mIU/l) + log Glucose (mg/dl))\]\[[@B28]\].
Transvaginal ultrasonography
----------------------------
Transvaginal ultrasonography was performed by an experienced operator in all women. Ovarian volume was calculated as follows: Ovarian volume = (π/6) × ovarian length × ovarian height × ovarian width. Polycystic ovaries were diagnosed when ≥ 12 follicles with a diameter of 2-9 mm were present in one or both ovaries, or when the ovarian volume was \> 10 cm^3^.
Statistical analysis
--------------------
Data analysis was performed with the statistical package SPSS (version 17.0; SPSS Inc., 233 South Wacker Drive, 11th Floor, Chicago, IL). All tested parameters followed normal distribution as assessed with the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test and are reported as mean ± SD. Because women with PCOS were younger and had greater BMI than controls (p \<0.001 and p = 0.009, respectively), comparisons between patients and controls were performed with analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) adjusting for age and BMI. Because normal weight women with PCOS were younger than obese/overweight women with PCOS (p = 0.002), comparisons between these groups were performed with ANCOVA adjusting for age. Because normal weight controls were younger than obese/overweight controls (p = 0.046), comparisons between these groups were performed with ANCOVA adjusting for age. Changes between baseline and end-of-treatment were assessed with the paired samples t-test. Independent correlations between lipocalin-2 levels and other parameters were assessed with stepwise linear regression analysis including parameters that were significantly correlated with lipocalin-2 levels in univariate analysis. In all cases, a *p*value \< 0.05 was considered significant.
Results
=======
The anthropometric, hormonal, metabolic and ultrasonographic features of women with PCOS and controls are shown in Table [1](#T1){ref-type="table"}. Women with PCOS had lower plasma FSH levels and higher plasma T, Δ~4~-A, DHEA-S, FAI and 17α-OHP levels than controls. In addition, women with PCOS had greater mean ovarian volume and a higher mean number of ovarian follicles than controls. There were no differences in plasma glucose or insulin levels, glucose/insulin ratio, the area under the OGTT curve and the indices HOMA-IR and QUICKI between women with PCOS and controls. Serum lipocalin-2 levels were slightly higher in women with PCOS compared with controls (65.4 ± 34.3 vs. 60.3 ± 26.0 ng/ml, respectively) but this difference did not reach statistical significance.
The anthropometric, hormonal, metabolic and ultrasonographic features of normal weight and overweight/obese women with PCOS are shown in Table [2](#T2){ref-type="table"}. Overweight/obese women with PCOS had greater BMI and W than normal weight women with PCOS. Plasma SHBG levels were lower and the FAI was higher in the former. Moreover, plasma insulin levels, the area under the OGTT curve and the HOMA-IR index were higher, whereas the glucose/insulin ratio and the QUICKI were lower in overweight/obese women with PCOS than in normal weight women with PCOS. Serum lipocalin-2 levels were also higher in overweight/obese women with PCOS (76.2 ± 37.3 vs. 54.5 ± 27.2 ng/ml in normal weight women with PCOS; p \< 0.001).
######
Anthropometric, hormonal, metabolic and ultrasonographic characteristics of normal weight and overweight/obese patients with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS).
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Group Iα\ Group Iβ\ p\
(normal weight patients with PCOS)\ (overweight/obese patients with PCOS)\ (adjusted for age)
(n = 100) (n = 100)
---------------------------------- ------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------- --------------------
Age (years) 23.4 ± 4.5 25.7 ± 5.8 NA
BMI (kg/m^2^) 22.1 ± 1.8 31.9 ± 5.6 \< 0.001
Waist (cm) 72.8 ± 5.3 94.2 ± 13.6 \< 0.001
FSH (mIU/ml) 6.8 ± 1.9 6.0 ± 1.7 0.001
LH (mIU/ml) 8.5 ± 5.5 6.7 ± 4.4 0.025
Prolactin (ng/ml) 14.7 ± 6.6 13.9 ± 7.3 NS
Testosterone (ng/dl) 74.7 ± 27.3 75.4 ± 32.7 NS
Δ~4~-A (ng/ml) 2.9 ± 1.1 2.9 ± 0.9 NS
DHEA-S (ng/ml) 3148.6 ± 1218.2 3063.1 ± 1384.1 NS
FAI 5.80 ± 4.19 9.51 ± 7.19 \< 0.001
17α-OHP (ng/ml) 1.1 ± 0.5 1.1 ± 0.5 NS
SHBG (nmol/l) 59.0 ± 30.5 35.2 ± 19.4 \< 0.001
Glucose (mg/dl) 94.9 ± 10.0 102.1 ± 28.3 NS
Insulin (μIU/ml) 8.6 ± 5.0 16.1 ± 10.6 \< 0.001
Glucose/insulin 13.68 ± 6.02 9.36 ± 6.61 \< 0.001
HOMA-IR 2.04 ± 1.34 4.38 ± 5.08 \< 0.001
QUICKI 0.35 ± 0.03 0.32 ± 0.03 \< 0.001
Area under the OGTT curve 14496.9 ± 2725.9 15797.4 ± 3388.2 0.006
Mean ovarian volume (cm^3^) 7.7 ± 3.7 11.9 ± 5.0 \< 0.001
Mean number of ovarian follicles 10.9 ± 5.2 10.8 ± 4.1 NS
Lipocalin (ng/ml) 54.5 ± 27.2 76.2 ± 37.3 \< 0.001
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Abbreviations are defined in Table 1.
The anthropometric, hormonal, metabolic and ultrasonographic features of normal weight and overweight/obese controls are shown in Table [3](#T3){ref-type="table"}. Overweight/obese controls had greater BMI and W than normal weight controls. Serum lipocalin-2 levels were also higher in overweight/obese controls (70.1 ± 24.9 vs. 50.5 ± 23.7 ng/ml in normal weight controls; p = 0.004). In contrast, there were no differences in hormone levels between the two groups except plasma LH levels that were higher in normal weight controls (p = 0.011). In addition, there were no differences in plasma glucose and insulin levels, the glucose/insulin ratio, the area under the OGTT curve and the indices HOMA-IR and QUICKI between normal weight controls and overweight/obese controls.
######
Anthropometric, hormonal, metabolic and ultrasonographic characteristics of normal weight and overweight/obese controls.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Group IIα\ Group IIβ\ p\
(normal weight controls)\ (overweight/obese controls)\ (adjusted for age)
(n = 25) (n = 25)
---------------------------------- --------------------------- ------------------------------ --------------------
Age (years) 31.3 ± 4.5 33.9 ± 4.6 NA
BMI (kg/m^2^) 21.9 ± 1.6 28.3 ± 3.0 \< 0.001
Waist (cm) 73.7 ± 5.6 87.9 ± 8.5 \< 0.001
FSH (mIU/ml) 8.1 ± 2.5 7.8 ± 3.2 NS
LH (mIU/ml) 7.1 ± 3.3 4.8 ± 1.5 0.011
Prolactin (ng/ml) 12.1 ± 3.8 12.4 ± 4.7 NS
Testosterone (ng/dl) 36.4 ± 14.5 29.4 ± 13.8 NS
Δ~4~-A (ng/ml) 1.8 ± 0.4 1.7 ± 0.6 NS
DHEA-S (ng/ml) 2138.9 ± 788.6 1750.4 ± 803.1 NS
FAI 1.89 ± 0.99 2.07 ± 1.31 NS
17α-OHP (ng/ml) 0.7 ± 0.3 0.7 ± 0.3 NS
SHBG (nmol/l) 76.4 ± 30.8 61.9 ± 35.5 NS
Glucose (mg/dl) 95.1 ± 7.8 98.9 ± 11.2 NS
Insulin (μIU/ml) 8.2 ± 7.0 10.3 ± 6.6 NS
Glucose/insulin 15.48 ± 7.27 14.23 ± 10.62 NS
HOMA-IR 1.96 ± 1.76 2.53 ± 1.63 NS
QUICKI 0.36 ± 0.03 0.35 ± 0.04 NS
Area under the OGTT curve 13009.8 ± 1680.8 16121.4 ± 3883.3 0.002
Mean ovarian volume (cm^3^) 5.3 ± 1.9 5.3 ± 1.8 NS
Mean number of ovarian follicles 6.0 ± 1.9 6.4 ± 1.9 NS
Lipocalin (ng/ml) 50.5 ± 23.7 70.1 ± 24.9 0.004
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Abbreviations are defined in Table 1.
In the total sample of patients (n = 250), serum lipocalin-2 levels were negatively correlated with the QUICKI (r = -0.221, p \< 0.001), the glucose/insulin ratio (r = -0.183, p = 0.004) and plasma SHBG levels (r = -0.131, p = 0.039) and positively correlated with the waist/hip ratio (r = 0.317, p \< 0.001), W (r = 0.313, p \< 0.001), BMI (r = 0.304, p \< 0.001), HOMA-IR (r = 0.221, p \< 0.001) and plasma insulin (r = 0.200, p = 0.002) and glucose levels (r = 0.191, p = 0.002). In stepwise linear regression analysis, serum lipocalin-2 levels were independently correlated with BMI (p \< 0.001; Figure [1](#F1){ref-type="fig"}).
{#F1}
In women with PCOS (n = 200), serum lipocalin-2 levels were negatively correlated with the QUICKI (r = -0.265, p \< 0.001), the glucose/insulin ratio (r = -0.245, p \< 0.001) and plasma SHBG levels (r = -0.152, p = 0.031) and positively correlated with the waist/hip ratio (r = 0.348, p \< 0.001), W (r = 0.343, p \< 0.001), BMI (r = 0.314, p \< 0.001), HOMA-IR (r = 0.265, p \< 0.001) and plasma insulin (r = 0.254, p \< 0.001) and glucose levels (r = 0.162, p = 0.002). In stepwise linear regression analysis, serum lipocalin-2 levels were independently correlated with the W (p \< 0.001; Figure [2](#F2){ref-type="fig"}).
{#F2}
Discussion
==========
Lipocalins are bioactive peptides that belong to adipokines. The lipocalin superfamily includes more than 20 small extracellular peptides that exert multiple functions mostly after binding to other molecules \[[@B29]\]. They were named lipocalins by Pervaiz and Brew from the Greek words \"lipos\" (i.e. fat) and \"kalyx\" (i.e. cup), because of their cup-like molecule \[[@B30],[@B31]\]. Lipocalin-2 has a similar tertiary structure with other lipocalins and its pivotal characteristic is the presence of a hydrophobic calyx that binds to small lipophilic molecules. The main binding part of lipocalin-2 is its small iron-binding molecules \[[@B29]\]. Accordingly, lipocalin-2 both binds and transfers iron, an essential component for the growth of almost all bacteria. Therefore, lipocalin-2 exerts bacteriostatic actions and appears to play an important role in innate immunity and immune response to bacterial infections \[[@B32]-[@B35]\].
In the present study, serum lipocalin-2 levels were marginally higher in women with PCOS compared with controls (65.4 ± 34.3 vs. 60.3 ± 26.0 ng/ml, respectively) but this difference did not reach significance (Table [1](#T1){ref-type="table"}). Plasma glucose or insulin levels, the glucose/insulin ratio, the area under the OGTT curve and the indices HOMA-IR and QUICKI also did not differ between women with PCOS and controls. The lack of difference in insulin resistance between patients with PCOS and controls might be partly due to the inclusion of patients with the ovulatory phenotype of PCOS, which is known to have a milder form of the metabolic disturbances \[[@B36]\]; among the 200 patients with PCOS, 50 (25%) had this phenotype. In addition, we used relatively insensitive markers of insulin resistance (i.e. the HOMA-IR and QUICKI indices) instead of the gold standard euglycemic hyperinsulinemic clamp and this might have also precluded the detection of a difference in insulin resistance between patients with PCOS and controls \[[@B37],[@B38]\]. The slightly higher serum lipocalin-2 levels in women with PCOS (Group I) compared with controls (Group II) might be due to the greater BMI in the former (Table [1](#T1){ref-type="table"}), since serum lipocalin-2 levels are elevated in obese patients \[[@B23],[@B24]\]. However, the present study suggests that PCOS does not affect serum lipocalin-2 levels.
Overweight/obese women with PCOS (subgroup Iβ) had higher serum lipocalin-2 levels than normal weight women with PCOS (subgroup Iα)(p \< 0.001; Table [2](#T2){ref-type="table"}). Similarly, overweight/obese controls (subgroup IIβ) had higher serum lipocalin-2 levels than normal weight controls (subgroup IIα)(p = 0.004; Table [3](#T3){ref-type="table"}). In the total study population (n = 250), in stepwise linear regression analysis, serum lipocalin-2 levels were independently correlated with BMI (p \< 0.001; Figure [1](#F1){ref-type="fig"}). Moreover, in women with PCOS (n = 200), in stepwise linear regression analysis, serum lipocalin-2 levels were independently correlated with W (p \< 0.001; Figure [2](#F2){ref-type="fig"}). A significant increase in serum lipocalin-2 levels has been previously reported in obese patients \[[@B23],[@B24]\]. In addition, the elevated serum lipocalin-2 levels in obese patients correlate with anthropometric, hormonal and metabolic parameters \[[@B23]\]. Moreover, the strong correlation between serum lipocalin-2 levels and both the HOMA-IR index and plasma glucose levels, which is not affected after adjusting for the BMI, suggests that lipocalin-2 might represent an independent risk factor for development of IR and hyperglycemia.
There are only two studies that assessed serum lipocalin-2 levels in patients with PCOS \[[@B39],[@B40]\]. However, these two studies yielded conflicting results. In the first study, serum lipocalin-2 levels were determined in 40 patients with PCOS and 40 controls, aged 25.4 ± 4.5 and 27.4 ± 4.4 years, respectively, and with BMI of 25.3 ± 3.8 and 23.4 ± 2.4 kg/m^2^, respectively \[[@B39]\]. The matrix metalloproteinase-9 (MMP-9)/neutrophil gelatinase-associated lipocalin (NGAL) complex was also measured. Serum lipocalin-2 and MMP-9/NGAL complex levels were lower in patients with PCOS than in controls (p \< 0.001 for both comparisons)\[[@B39]\]. The investigators suggested that NGAL and MMP-9/NGAL complex levels should be further evaluated in patients with PCOS, because the decreased levels of these atherogenic molecules might protect patients with PCOS against cardiovascular disease (CVD). In the second study, serum lipocalin-2 levels were measured in 30 patients with PCOS and 30 controls \[[@B40]\]. Receiver operating characteristic curves were plotted to determine the serum levels of lipocalin-2 that indicate the presence of IR. This study showed that lipocalin-2 levels are elevated in patients with PCOS compared with controls (p \< 0.001) and that lipocalin-2 may prove to be a useful marker of IR in patients with PCOS \[[@B40]\]. In the present study we evaluated a substantially larger number of patients with PCOS (n = 200) and we did not observe significant differences in serum lipocalin-2 levels between patients with PCOS and controls (Table [1](#T1){ref-type="table"}). However, overweight/obese patients with PCOS and overweight/obese controls had significantly higher lipocalin-2 levels than normal weight patients with PCOS and normal weight controls, respectively (p \< 0.001 and p = 0.004, respectively; Table [2](#T2){ref-type="table"} and [3](#T3){ref-type="table"}).
It has been reported that serum lipocalin-2 levels are elevated in patients with CVD and might represent an independent cardiovascular risk factor \[[@B24]\]. It has also been reported that gelatinase B (also known as MMP-9), an endopeptidase capable of degrading the molecular components of the extracellular matrix, is associated with increased risk for abdominal aortic aneurysm, atherosclerosis and plaque rupture \[[@B41],[@B42]\]. Therefore, MMP-9 is considered to be an important mediator of vascular remodeling and plaque instability \[[@B43]\]. Physical disruption of the atherosclerotic plaque triggers thrombus formation, which might lead to myocardial infarction (MI). MMP-9 action is enhanced by NGAL, also known as lipocalin-2 \[[@B44]\]. The formation of the MMP-9/lipocalin-2 complex is crucial for atherotic plaque erosion and thrombus formation \[[@B19],[@B45],[@B46]\]. Hemdahl et al have shown increased expression of lipocalin-2 and co-localization with MMP-9 in atherosclerotic plaques and MI lesions \[[@B47]\].
Conclusions
===========
Our findings suggest that PCOS is not associated with significant changes in serum lipocalin-2 levels. On the other hand, obese patients have elevated serum lipocalin-2 levels, regardless of the presence of PCOS. The increased serum lipocalin-2 levels in overweight and obese patients with PCOS potentially represent a useful marker of IR.
Competing interests
===================
The authors declare that they have no competing interests.
Authors\' contributions
=======================
DP conceived of the study, and participated in its design and coordination and drafted the manuscript. KT performed the statistical analysis and helped to draft the manuscript. All authors helped to draft the manuscript, and read and approved the final manuscript.
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tomekkorbak/pile-curse-small
|
PubMed Central
|
**Specifications Table**Subject area*Select one of the following subject areas:*•*Agricultural and Biological Sciences*•*Earth and Planetary Sciences*•*Engineering*•*Environmental Science*More specific subject area*Arsenic bioremediation by algae in water*Method nameTaguchi Experimental design for arsenic metabolic biokenetics.Name and reference of original method--Resource availability--
Method details {#se0155}
==============
Experimental design {#sec0005}
-------------------
The Taguchi method, used to optimize the experimental design, is the same being applied during our previous study \[[@bib0005]\]. Briefly, four common environmental factors including *As^V^*, N, P and pH were considered each at three levels ([Table 1](#tbl0005){ref-type="table"}) \[[@bib0010]\]. The detailed experimental conditions were obtained using a L9 (3^4^) orthogonal array ([Table 2](#tbl0010){ref-type="table"}). Furthermore, we used bigger analysis values of signal-to-noise (S/N) ratio to assess optimal conditions for *As* metabolic biokinetics in *M. aeruginosa*. Additionally, the principal contribution factors for various *As* metabolic biokinetic parameters were evaluated using ANOVA in *M. aeruginosa*. The software of Minitab 17 was used to perform the statistical analysis of the following data obtained.Table 1Environmental factors of orthogonal test.Table 1factorA\
NO~3~^−^-N/(mg/L)B\
PO~4~^3−^-P/(mg/L)C\
pHD\
*As^V^*/(μM)level 120.0260.1level 240.2081.0level 3101.001010.0Table 2Experimental L~9~ (3^4^) orthogonal array.Table 2TreatmentParametersNO~3~^−^-N/(mg/L)PO~4~^3−^-P/(mg/L)pH*As^V^*/μME120.0260.1E220.281.0E321.01010E440.02810E540.2100.1E641.061.0E7100.02101.0E8100.2610E9101.080.1
*M. aeruginosa* culture growth {#sec0010}
------------------------------
Stock cultures *of M. aeruginosa* (FACHB-905) were maintained in sterilized BG-11 media on shakers at 90 rpm (25 °C) under a 8:16 h dark-light cycle with a light intensity of 40 μmol photons m^−2^ s^−1^. We prepared the nine BG-11 media under the Taguchi designed experimental conditions ([Table 2](#tbl0010){ref-type="table"}). As N, *As^V^* and P source, stock solutions of 1000 mg L^−1^ NO~3~^−^-N from NaNO~3~ as well as 1000 mg L^−1^ *As^V^* from Na~3~AsO~4~·12H~2~O (Fluka, p.a.), and 100 mg L^−1^ PO~4~^3−^-P from KH~2~PO~4~ were prepared. Additionally, respective pH values were adjusted in the media using 1 M NaOH or 1 M H~2~SO~4~ at the start of each experiment.
Arsenic metabolic biokinetics {#sec0015}
-----------------------------
### Uptake experiment and kinetics model {#sec0020}
Firstly, *M. aeruginosa* cells were separated into nine equal parts after starving cultures. Then they were aseptically transferred to nine different sterilized BG-11 media with an initial cell density of 10^6^ cells mL^−1^ applying the Taguchi designed experimental conditions ([Table 2](#tbl0010){ref-type="table"}). The batch treatments were cultured in an illuminated incubator which was permanently shaking for 96 h. After 3, 24, 48, 72 and 96 h, approximately 20 mL of the algal solutions were sampled from the exposure flasks to determine total *As* concentrations in the cells. After washing the cells twice with sterile Milli-Q water, the 96 h extracellular adsorbed *As* was then washed off for 10 min using ice-cold phosphate buffer of 1 mM K~2~HPO~4~, 0.5 mM Ca(NO~3~)~2~ and 5 mM MES. The gained washing buffer was then retained at 4 °C after filtering it through a 0.45 μm syringe filter to determine the extracellular *As* content \[[@bib0015]\]. After further 10 min of centrifugation at 4500 × *g*, the settled algal pellets were freeze-dried for further *As* analysis.
The optical density of algal cells was measured at 682 nm wavelength after 0.5, 3, 24, 48, 72 and 96 h of exposure. The growth kinetics were investigated with the exponential model \[[@bib0020]\] shown in Eq. [(1)](#eq0005){ref-type="disp-formula"}:$$Ln(X_{t}) = N + \mu_{\text{max}} \times t$$Where $\, X_{t}$ is the optical density (cell mL^−1^) at time *t* (d); *t* is the cultivation time; *N* is a constant; $\,\mu_{\text{max}}\,$ is the maximum specific growth rate (d^−1^).
A nonlinear one-compartment model considering a simultaneous *As* uptake and release was used to describe the measured intracellular concentration of *As* in algal cells for each treatment over time according to the following first-order kinetics:$$\left. \left\lbrack As \right._{int} \right\rbrack = {k_{\mu}/k_{e}} \times \left\lbrack {As}_{med} \right\rbrack \times \left( {1 - e^{k_{e}t}} \right)$$Herein, ${As}_{int}$ (μg g^−1^ dry weight) is the intracellular concentration of *As* in algal cells; ${As}_{med}$ (μg L^−1^) is the *As* concentration in medium assumed to be a constant, and *t* (h) is the time of *As* exposure; *k~u~* (L g^−1^ h^−1^) and *k~e~* (h^−1^) are the *As* uptake and release rate constants for the algae, respectively \[[@bib0025]\].
Due to the dynamic equilibrium of *As* uptake and release by the algae, the proposed model was only applied if *k~e~* \> 0. The modeling was performed with the program Graphpad Prism 7.0 (Graphpad Software). The bioconcentration factor of *As* was calculated as BCF (L g^−1^) = *k~u~*/*k~e~* \[[@bib0030]\].
### Release experiment and kinetics model {#sec0025}
To determine the *As* release rates from dead cells, 50 mL algal solution of each treatment were taken after 96 h incubation and rinsed with ultrapure water and the aforementioned phosphate buffer. To produce dead cells of *M. aeruginosa*, the samples were heated for 10 min at 50 °C using a waterbath \[[@bib0025],[@bib0035],[@bib0040]\]. Afterwards the treated algae were resuspended in 20 mL sterilized BG-11 media (same with their initial culture conditions) for 8 h, respectively. At 0.25, 0.5, 0.75, 1, 2, 4, 6, and 8 h, 5-mL aliquots were taken from the solutions to determine the algal total *As* concentrations.
The release rate constant for each treatment were evaluated using a simple first-order kinetic (Eq. [(3)](#eq0015){ref-type="disp-formula"}) \[[@bib0030]\].$$Ke = \, - 1/t \times \, LnC_{t\,}/C_{0\,}$$Herein, *C~0~* and *C~t~* represent the intracellular *As* concentration (ng g^−1^) at the start and time *t* (h) of release, respectively; *K~e~* is the release rate constant (h^−1^).
The arsenic partition coefficient (L g^−1^) *K~d~*, between the algae and the aqueous phase were calculated using the formula *K~d~* = *Ct*/*Cw* (where *Cw* is the measured concentration of *As* in BG-11 medium; μg L^−1^) after 8 h elimination.
Total arsenic analysis {#sec0030}
----------------------
Total arsenic analysis (*TAs*) of algal cells and the media was determined according to our previously reported method \[[@bib0025]\]. Briefly, the freeze dried algae were treated by microwave assisted digestion to measure the total *As* amount \[[@bib0045]\]. We measured the *TAs* concentrations using ICP-MS (Agilent 7500cx, U.S.A) \[[@bib0025]\]. The signal stability was checked by the simultaneously measured masses of ^72^Ge, and ^103^Rh.
Additional information {#sec0035}
======================
Microalgae are considered as an environmentally-friendly and cost-effective bioremediator for *As*-polluted waters. In the last decade, the bioremediation of metals including *As* as well as their accumulation and uptake dynamics in microalgae have been extensively investigated. In particular, some abiotic factors such as nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P) and pH can impact the *As* metabolism dynamics within the algal cells. Thereby the factors were investigated either separately or in combination under well controlled conditions in laboratory. However, information regarding combined effects on algal arsenate metabolism biokinetics induced by the aforementioned abiotic environmental factors is quite limited.
This eventually warranted to further investigation, improving a practical application of algae for *As* bioremediation. Furthermore, little is known about indirect implications as for instance induced by a secondary *As* release into waters after algal death. This may potentially pose different ecological risks (e.g. via settlement and subsequent biomagnification by benthic organisms) for the aquatic environment compared to a primary *As* contamination. To learn about the combined influence of the environmental factors: N, P, pH and the initial *As*^V^ level (being applied at ambient levels) on the *As*^V^ uptake and release kinetics of *M. aeruginosa*, we investigated the *As* bioaccumulation and efflux dynamics involving algal growth and extracellular and intracellular *As* accumulation as well as *As* release in dead algae. Herein, experimental design of Taguchi method concerned only with the principal effects of selected factors was used in our experiments. The percentage contribution effect of each environmental factor on the investigated metabolic biokinetic (*As* bioaccumulation and release) was thus statistically calculated using an analysis of variance (ANOVA) based on Taguchi method. Our new findings offer valuable insights in how to efficiently utilize algae as bioremediation tool to reduce *As* in contaminated water for practical environment.
This study was jointly supported by the National Nature Science Foundation of China (Project Nos. 41401552, 41271484 and 41773100) and the Nature Science Foundation of Fujian Province (2016J01691 and 2017Y0081), the New century talent support plan of Minnan Normal University (MX14002).
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tomekkorbak/pile-curse-small
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PubMed Central
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By performing heat treatment on surface layer defects (COPs) of a silicon wafer in a non-oxidizing atmosphere, the surface layer COPs are eliminated. In the case of high-temperature heat treatment, a SiC jig is often used, and an environment in which a silicon single crystal wafer (hereinafter referred to simply as a silicon wafer) subjected to heat treatment is taken out of something contains oxygen and a carbonation product, which become a source of carbon contamination of the silicon wafer. The silicon wafer contaminated by carbon forms a defect in a device process and causes a leakage current or the like. Moreover, contaminated carbon becomes a carbon donor and becomes a cause of the generation of a Vth (threshold voltage) shift of a device and a device operating failure.
Thus, forming an oxide layer on a silicon wafer as the measures against carbon contamination of the silicon wafer is proposed in Patent Literature 1. However, although. this method is expected to have an effect to some extent as the measures against carbon contamination, the amount of carbon coming out from the SiC jig due to high-temperature oxidation is large and the above measures are not measures to suppress carbon generation itself from the source of carbon contamination, and therefore it is difficult to suppress reliably carbon contamination only with the above measures. Moreover, since a thick oxide film is formed on the front surface of the heat-treated wafer, removal of the oxide film and a polishing process are required. Furthermore, since the oxide film is formed at a high temperature, oxygen is implanted into a wafer surface layer and the defect size of a defect which has not been eliminated in a surface layer portion is increased due to a supply of oxygen, which becomes a cause of degradation of electrical characteristics.
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People v Campbell (2015 NY Slip Op 06967)
People v Campbell
2015 NY Slip Op 06967
Decided on September 29, 2015
Appellate Division, First Department
Published by New York State Law Reporting Bureau pursuant to Judiciary Law § 431.
This opinion is uncorrected and subject to revision before publication in the Official Reports.
Decided on September 29, 2015
Friedman, J.P., Andrias, Saxe, Gische, Kapnick, JJ.
15713 2308/08
[*1] The People of the State of New York, Respondent,
vRoss Campbell, Defendant-Appellant.
Robert S. Dean, Center for Appellate Litigation, New York (Andrew J. Dalack of counsel), and Leavitt & Kerson, Forest Hills (Paul E. Kerson of counsel), for appellant.
Robert T. Johnson, District Attorney, Bronx (Rebecca L. Johannesen of counsel), for respondent.
Judgment, Supreme Court, Bronx County (Wayne Ozzi, J.), rendered November 23, 2010, convicting defendant, after a jury trial, of sex trafficking, promoting prostitution in the second degree, rape in the first degree, criminal sexual act in the first degree, and kidnapping in the second degree, and sentencing him to an aggregate term of 25 years and a $2500 fine, unanimously modified, on the law, to reduce the crime victim assistance fee from $25 to $20, and otherwise affirmed.
The verdict was based on legally sufficient evidence and was not against the weight of the evidence (see People v Danielson, 9 NY3d 342, 348-349 [2007]). There is no basis for disturbing the jury's credibility determinations. The evidence supported all of the elements of each crime at issue, including the requisite forcible compulsion.
Defendant did not preserve his Confrontation Clause and related arguments concerning events that occurred during lineups, and we decline to review them in the interest of justice. As an alternative holding, we find that although a reference to an identification by a nontestifying victim should have been excluded, the error was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt (see People v Eastman, 85 NY2d 265, 276-278 [1995]) in light of the overwhelming evidence of guilt and the fact that identity was not a fundamental issue in the case.
Defendant's ineffective assistance of counsel claims are generally unreviewable on direct appeal because they involve matters of strategy not reflected in, or fully explained by, the record (see People v Rivera, 71 NY2d 705, 709 [1988]; People v Love, 57 NY2d 998 [1982]). Accordingly, since defendant has not made a CPL 440.10 motion, the merits of the ineffectiveness claims may not be addressed on appeal. In the alternative, to the extent the existing record permits review, we find that defendant received effective assistance under the state and federal standards (see People v Benevento, 91 NY2d 708, 713-714 [1998]; Strickland v Washington, 466 US 668 [1984]). Defendant has not shown that any of counsel's alleged deficiencies fell below an objective standard of reasonableness, or that, viewed individually or collectively, they deprived defendant of a fair trial or affected the outcome of the case.
We perceive no basis for reducing the sentence. The record does not support defendant's contention that the court believed it was obligated to impose a fine. We reduce the crime victim [*2]assistance fee in conformance with the statute in effect when the crimes were committed.
The arguments contained in the supplemental brief filed by additional counsel are unpreserved, and we decline to review them in the interest of justice. As an alternative holding, we find them to be without merit.
THIS CONSTITUTES THE DECISION AND ORDER
OF THE SUPREME COURT, APPELLATE DIVISION, FIRST DEPARTMENT.
ENTERED: SEPTEMBER 29, 2015
CLERK
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Asavo-Zubovo
Asavo-Zubovo () is a rural locality (a selo) in Sterlitamaksky District, Bashkortostan, Russia. The population was 137 as of 2010. There is 1 street.
References
Category:Rural localities in Bashkortostan
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Tuesday, August 4, 2009
Northeast Socialist Conference, Oct 23-25
SAVE THE DATE
Northeast Socialist Conference
October 23-25
New York City
Columbia University
Every year hundreds of activists and socialists gather at the Northeast Socialist Conference to debate and discuss the struggles before us as well as an analysis of the urgent problems we face and a vision for a different future. With the free-market consensus in tatters and an open debate beginning about how best to organize our society, these discussions are more vital than ever. Plan now to join us the weekend of October 23-25.
Discussions will include reports and strategizing from today’s front-line battles. There will also be workshops on the history of radical labor and socialist movements; alternatives to capitalism; US imperialism and solidarity movements around the world.
With nearly 50 workshops to choose from, these are just some of the topics that will be featured:
*The New Movement for LGBT Equality*The Revolt in Iran*The Politics of Food*Roots of the Economic Crisis*Guantanamo at Home*Gaza: Eyewitness to Destruction*Poor People’s Movements*The Fight for Single-Payer Healthcare*The Future Socialist Society*Social Unionism and the Future of the Labor Movement*Hubert Harrison and Black Radicalism*The Myth of a Post-Racial America*Occupation Rebranded: US Imperialism in the Obama Era*Reform and Revolution*The Radical History of the American Working-Class*What a Sustainable Society Could Look Like*Racism, Sentencing and the Prison System*The Assault on Abortion Rights*Radical Pedagogy vs Charter Schools and Testing: The Fight for Public Education*The Russian Revolution*Sports and Politics*Lenin: Myth and Reality*Student Struggle and the Fight for Socialism*The Communist Women’s Movement in the Comintern Era*and dozens more
Confirmed speakers include:Anthony Arnove, Michele Bollinger, Sam Farber, Brian Jones, Fred Magdoff, Scott McLemee, Paul LeBlanc, Jeffrey Perry, John Riddell, Jennifer Roesch, Jeremy Scahill, Helen Scott, Ashley Smith, Members of the Viva Palestina Convoy to Gaza, Dave Zirin
Speakers list in formation
Website, flyer, brochures and registration details as well as a full list of topics and speakers will be available shortly.
For more information, contact [email protected] or 646-452-8662
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Socialism 2017
Socialism 2017 is a four-day conference bringing together hundreds of socialists and radical activists from around the country to take part in discussions about Marxism, working-class history, and the debates and strategies for organizing today.
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What is most puzzling, however, was why, once it became clear that Shuai was indeed trying to end her own life and that the death of Angel was not her intent, prosecutors refused to drop the charges.
CrowAfterRoe.com
The following is an excerpt from chapter five of Crow After Roe: How “Separate But Equal” Is the New Standard in Women’s Health and How We Can Change That (Ig Publishing) by Rewire‘s Robin Marty and Jessica Mason Pieklo.
Bei Bei Shuai never believed she would find herself on her knees, sobbing and begging her lover not to leave her. A recent Chinese immigrant to this country, Shuai was eight months pregnant when her boyfriend, Zhiliang Guan, informed her that he wasn’t actually planning to get a divorce and marry her as he had promised, but was instead returning to his wife. Shuai was heartbroken and believed there was nothing left for her. On December 23, 2010, she left a suicide note saying that she would “take this baby with me to Hades” and ingested rat poison, intending to end her own life.
Luckily, friends discovered Shuai and convinced her to go to a hospital, where doctors worked quickly to save her life. While Shuai was physically unharmed, sadly, the same could not be said for her baby. The infant girl Shuai would call Angel was monitored in utero for over a week, but on December 31, doctors became concerned for her condition and performed a Caesarean section. Angel came into the world on New Year’s Eve at thirty-three weeks gestation. Two days later, she was discovered to have a massive bleed in her brain and was removed from life support.
If Shuai had been brokenhearted after her lover left her, it was nothing compared to how she felt after the death of her child. After Angel was removed from life support, Shuai cradled the baby in her arms for the five hours the tiny infant held on, offering in prayer to give up her own life if her daughter could be spared and demanding that the baby not be taken from her.
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When Angel died on January 3, 2011, Shuai was immediately transferred to the mental health wing of the hospital, grief stricken and under heavy sedation. She remained there until March, undergoing treatment. Upon her release, she was charged with murder and thrown in jail.
When Angel died, the coroner indicated the cause of death as the rat poison taken by Shuai, despite the fact that cerebral bleeding is a common condition in babies born before thirty-four weeks gestation. In addition, Child Protection Services had immediately been alerted when Shuai entered the hospital. Based on these actions, the Indianapolis police arrived at the hospital shortly after Angel’s death to conduct interviews to determine whether they would charge Shuai with murder or feticide. In 2009, in response to a robbery that caused a pregnant woman to lose the twins she was carrying, the Indiana house had voted unanimously to strengthen the state’s “feticide” law to include any action that causes an unborn child to die, excluding abortion. The law was meant to add additional punishment to crimes that involved pregnant women, with a sentence of up to twenty years in prison if a pregnancy ended as the result of an illegal act. No one had considered that the law could also be used on a pregnant woman herself, especially not one who had committed her own “crime” as a result of mental illness.
At first, the police believed that Shuai had taken the poison in an attempt not to kill herself but to terminate her pregnancy. Initial news reports made no mention of suicide or of her sudden breakup with Guan. The police didn’t even seem sure about a motive behind the act. “It is a very unfortunate situation, very rare circumstances that someone would take rat poison in an attempt to either harm themselves or their unborn baby,” said Kendale Adams, public information officer for the Indianapolis Police Department, when discussing the case on the local ABC affiliate a few hours after the investigation had begun. “The fact that there was no licensed physician supervising in a particular case means that the act of abortion is a criminal offense,” former Marion County judge Gary Miller told ABC.
What is most puzzling, however, was why, once it became clear that Shuai was indeed trying to end her own life and that the death of Angel was not her intent, prosecutors refused to drop the charges. In fact, the longer the investigation went on, and the more people and groups who came to Shuai’s defense, the more the state seemed to dig in its heels. Prosecutors claimed they’d thought long and hard about the circumstances before deciding to charge the mourning mother. “This is a very unique case,” David Rimstidt, Marion County chief trial deputy, told WRTV Indianapolis. “Every charging decision is very difficult and goes through a process where we consider all the facts, all the circumstances, and under this situation, we believe we’ve charged the two charges we can prove.”
In April, Shuai’s lawyer, Linda Pence, asked a judge to set bond, a request that was denied. The judge said that no one in the state who had been charged with murder had ever been offered bond, and Shuai’s case shouldn’t be any different. Pence appealed the ruling in June, but bail was again denied. The judge also denied a motion to dismiss the case, despite a friend-of-the-court brief filed by more than eighty pregnancy, women’s and civil rights groups—including the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists—in support of Shuai.”This was a depressed, seriously depressed woman who acted out of an irrational despair and tried to kill herself and, unfortunately, the fetus was harmed,” Dr. David Orentlicher, a law professor at the Indiana University School of Law and an adjunct professor of medicine at Indiana University School of Medicine, told the local ABC news affiliate. “She had no intent to harm her fetus. That was not the reason she did this.”
The basic argument of the prosecution was that the murder and feticide charges were appropriate because the same laws were being applied to Shuai as a pregnant woman that would be applied to anyone else who had caused the death of a fetus past viability. Shuai’s attorneys and supporters, on the other hand, countered with the claim that the law was being applied to her differently as a pregnant woman, as her actions couldn’t be separated from the events that may or may not have caused the death of her baby. Was Shuai in fact being held to a different standard by virtue of being pregnant? After all, if she had not been pregnant, the state would not have charged her with attempted murder for trying to kill herself, as suicide is not a crime in Indiana. If the fetus had died in utero, as opposed to surviving birth, Shuai at the very least would not have been looking at a murder charge and probably would have been granted bail while she awaited trial for feticide. Even if she had sought an abortion so late in her pregnancy, while those performing the procedure would have been charged with a crime, Shuai herself wouldn’t have been. But prosecutors were using the suicide as the “crime” on which they were pinning the feticide charge. However, it was because she had done everything in her power to save both herself and Angel that Shuai was facing so much time in prison. Emma Ketteringham, the director of legal advocacy for the National Advocates for Pregnant Women, said that Shuai had been a model patient and mother: “[Shuai] consented to everything the hospital suggested. She agreed to have a C-section and to let the hospital do whatever tests they wanted to do.”
In refusing to dismiss the charges against Shuai, the state of Indiana was in essence saying that unborn children had rights and that those rights outweighed those of the mother. “Prosecuting women based on the outcomes of their pregnancies violates their constitutional rights and is cruel and unusual punishment. And yet, this is what is happening,” wrote author Soraya Chemaly, who followed the Shuai case closely. “In this environment, and with no confidence that their rights will be respected and protected, pregnant women will continue to be jailed, in ever increasing numbers, in unexpected ways that violate their rights. Fear of imprisonment will result in women compromising their health and the health of their fetuses by avoiding pre-natal care, treatment for addiction and medical help if they fear they are miscarrying. They will have more abortions to avoid penalization.”
This is why Shuai had no choice but to fight the charges. Constitutional guarantees of due process ensure that no one “may be required at peril of life, liberty or property to speculate as to the meaning of penal statutes. All are entitled to be informed as to what the State commands or forbids.” Yet Shuai was denied notice of what the law forbade, as she couldn’t have known that attempting suicide would subject her to criminal liability; not even the Indiana legislature had contemplated such an outcome when writing and passing the state’s “feticide” law. As her attorneys noted, there was not one single case in Indiana in which a woman had been charged with murder or feticide based solely on allegations that she did or did not do something during pregnancy. Nor had the homicide laws of the state ever been applied to the substantial number of pregnant women who experienced a stillbirth or miscarriage each year, or to other pregnant women in Indiana who had attempted suicide.
Shuai’s lawyer, Linda Pence, has accused Marion County prosecutor Terry Curry of attempting to enforce his own version of the feticide law in order to criminalize the failure to protect a fetus while pregnant. Looking specifically at Shuai’s situation, it seems clear that prosecutors were seeking out a “test case” for such a charge. Alerting Child Protective Services when Shuai arrived at the hospital, despite the fact that no child had been born yet, was in itself unusual. That police arrived soon after Angel’s death and began interviewing hospital staff is another clue. Curry has been accused of building his case solely on an inaccurate, unscientific and discredited autopsy report by a pathologist employed by a private entity named Biblical Dogs. According to a briefing filed by Shuai’s attorneys, the pathologist who performed the autopsy offered only a simple inferential analysis of the cause of the baby’s hemorrhage based upon nothing more than temporal events and non-medical hearsay statements. In other words, merely because Ms. Shuai ingested poison, that must have caused and thus was the cause of the death of her child. Significantly, the pathologist was not aware that Ms. Shuai had received indomethacin prior to caesarean surgery which has direct side effects upon the fetus alone, including hemorrhaging, and never reviewed Ms. Shuai’s medical records, thus precluding her from identifying other issues that could have caused fetal demise, such as a lack of oxygen to the brain. The prosecutor’s chief witness did not rule out, nor did she even consider other possible causes of death, never performed research or scientific studies relating to newborn brain bleeds, the effects of blood thinners on persons, pregnant women, or fetuses, nor did she review the medical research in these fields.
Ultimately, Shuai’s case leaves pregnant women exposed to the subjective, scientifically unsound opinions of law enforcement and the state. It raises severe equal protection concerns as well, since prosecutors have effectively made suicide a crime that applies only to pregnant women. Furthermore, a state engages in gender discrimination when it places additional restrictions on women from which men are exempt, which is unconstitutional under both state and federal law. Shuai did not become pregnant by herself, and, in fact, the father of her child, who promised to care for her and their baby and instead abandoned them, was the catalyst of her emotional breakdown. Yet he was not prosecuted despite the fact that “a person who intentionally causes another human being, by force, duress, or deception, to commit suicide commits causing suicide,” a Class B felony in the state of Indiana. The inescapable conclusion of the Shuai case was that in Indiana, a pregnant woman now had a fundamentally different relationship to the criminal justice system than did the father of the child.
The right to procreational privacy includes the right to carry a pregnancy to term. Indeed, this is the fundamental truth to women’s liberty interests: the ability to be free from state-determined procreation. What the state of Indiana was saying with the Shuai prosecution was that women with histories of mental health issues, addictions and other health conditions that might prevent them from being able to ensure a healthy birth outcome, as well as women who could not afford comprehensive prenatal care, drug treatment and mental health services, could now face prison time if they experienced a miscarriage, stillbirth, or neo-natal death. And what happens to those women the state determines are a risk for endangering future pregnancies? In the past, the United States has forcibly sterilized entire generations and categories of women. How can we be sure this country will not go to a similarly dark place again?
After an enormous outpouring of support, as well as pressure on the state, Bei Bei Shuai was finally released on $50,000 bail on May 22, 2012, 435 days after she had been arrested. She moved in with friends and wore an ankle monitor, awaiting her trial date. In July the prosecution suddenly offered Shuai a deal—plead guilty to feticide, and they wouldn’t try her for murder. The offer was tempting. With a feticide plea, though Shuai could conceivably serve twenty years in prison, the sentence could be as little as six years, and, if she was highly cooperative, she could receive a suspended sentence. If she didn’t take the plea and she was found guilty of murder, she could potentially spend most of the rest of her life in prison. Was the prosecution offering a nearly irresistible plea deal in the hopes that despite everything, they could still get a feticide precedent on the books? Had the murder charge always been just a threat to get Shuai, a grief-stricken immigrant still new to the country, to agree to a lesser charge? Whatever the prosecution’s motives, Shuai refused the deal. According to her attorney, Shuai is ready to fight not only to prove her own innocence but to ensure that no other woman in her circumstances is ever punished for the death of her baby if something happens during her pregnancy. She may never be able to bring her Angel back, but Bei Bei Shuai can still fight for her reputation and try to free herself from the stigma of guilt.
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Transformers Universe 2.0: Sunstreaker by Hasbro
Ah, it’s Thursday again and time to sit around the campfire and talk about little plastic robots that turn into other little plastic things. As promised last week I’ve gone to my Transformers laden shelves and snatched down the other half of the Lambor Brothers… Sunstreaker! I mentioned last time that the Universe 2.0 Sideswipe-Sunstreaker duo was the first time I can remember Hasbro deliberately engineering a mold to serve different transformations for different characters. It’s a practice that they’ve had a lot of success with since, one of my favorites being the Tracks and Wheeljack shared mold that still blows my mind. I’ve got no in-package shot, so let’s go right to the alt mode!!
And there he is in all his canary yellow Lamborghini goodness! As a kid, I loved Sunstreaker. He had a totally unique robot mode and there was just something so cool about him that my other Autobots always wanted him to go on missions with him. I think I also might have considered him to be Bumblebee’s older brother just because they were both yellow and that’s how such things work in robot biology when you’re 10 years old. Where was I?
Oh yeah, this bitchin Lamborghini mode! Sunstreaker’s sculpt is identical to his brother Sideswipe, so we’re only dealing with a recolor here. Also, like Sideswipe, ‘Streaker gets by with very little paintwork and mostly colored plastic. Anyone who’s read my Transformers features before probably knows that the yellow plastic Hasbro uses is often hit or miss with me. In this case, however, it’s a total hit. This is no shitty cheap looking swirly yellow plastic. It’s vibrant and looks amazing. Just compare this guy to the recent IDW Generations Bumblebee or better yet TF: Prime Deluxe Bumblebee and you’ll see what I mean. Once again, I dig that there aren’t a lot of seams running all over the car. Apart from the doors you just have one seam running down the back and bisecting the rear. You still have those great clear plastic headlights, the windows retain the same black paint used for Sideswipe, but unlike his brother, Sunstreaker proudly displays his Autobot emblem in auto mode, right on the top of the roof. Right on, Sunstreaker! Be proud of your Autobot heritage!
Sunstreaker also sports a personalized license plate, in this case it reads“WE R 84.” It’s cool, but I think an abbreviation of Sunstreaker would have matched Sideswipe better. Honestly, the only real complaint I have with the coloring here is that the intakes on the engine piece are left bare grey plastic and don’t look as sharp as the painted ones on Sideswipe. Even so, these two cars look great together!
Transforming Sunstreaker is virtutally identical to Sideswipe. The main difference is that you’ll be reversing the torso and arms. In my Sideswipe feature, I probably commented on how much I love the engineering here, but let me say it again anyway. Everything packs in to the auto mode so beautifully and converting the figure in either direction is engaging and fun. The result is the same design as Sideswipe from the waist down, but a new look for the torso and obviously a brand new head sculpt.
Once again, Hasbro did a beautiful job with the updated portrait, but that was par for the course on the Classics and Universe 2.0 lines. These along with Generations have had some of my favorite head sculpts of all time. The face is beautifully sculpted and neatly painted and Sunstreaker features rather distinctive “ears” similar to the ones on the original G1 toy. I also like the way they spring out during his head reveal.
The deco here is basically Sideswipe with a pallet shift. You get the yellow in place of red and grey plastic in place of white, with much of the black staying the same. Sunstreaker features the same translucent blue plastic inlays on his thighs, which look great, but I can’t help but think it would have been neat to see those cast in yellow instead. As with his engine intakes, the only gripe I have here is that Sideswipe’s pistol is left in bare grey plastic, which isn’t as attractive as his brother’s snazzy black and white weapon. Considering how vain he is about his appearance, I would expect Sunstreaker to have more bling on his gun.
Sunstreaker is an amazing figure all on his own, but both he and Sideswipe are all the more impressive when displayed as a pair. Yes, there’s a lot more similarities between the two this time around than could be found in their G1 toys, but I still can’t help but admire what Hasbro was able to achieve here with what is essentially the same mold. This pair definitely rank in among my favorite of all the Classics/Universe 2.0 figures. To me they achieve everything that this line set out to accomplish.
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Revista Estudios, (34), 2017. ISSN 1659-3316 La Revista Estudios es editada por la Universidad de Costa Rica y se distribuye bajo una Licencia Creative Commons Atribución-NoComercial-CompartirIgual 3.0 Costa Rica. Para más información envíe un mensaje a [email protected]. 1 Dossier "Filosofía Judía: Problemas y Tendencias" Prolegómenos para una Arquitectónica Fenomenológica del tiempo en Emmanuel Levinas1 Esteban J. Beltrán Ulate Universidad Continental de las Ciencias y las Artes [email protected] Recibido: 12 de abril de 2017 Aceptado: 10 de mayo de 2017 Resumen Se brindan una serie de consideraciones prologales para justificar el establecimiento de una arquitectónica fenomenológica del tiempo en Emmanuel Levinas. El problema del tiempo se encuentra disperso en la obra levinasiana, en constante dialogo y confrontación con autores de la época, tanto de tradición fenomenológica como de tradición filosófica judía. El artículo recorre de manera proemial las diferentes etapas del pensamiento levinasiano y reconoce las periferias con las cuales el autor dialoga y confuta su propuesta, denominada como "Deformalización del tiempo". Se concluye quebrando una lanza por la necesidad de una investigación que constituya una arquitectónica como propuesta ante la irresuelta tarea del tiempo por parte del autor. Palabras Clave: Tiempo; Infinición; Deformalización del tiempo; Fenomenología del tiempo; Filosofía del tiempo. Prolegomena for a Phenomenological Architectural of the time in Emmanuel Levinas 1 El presente trabajo representa el principal tema de investigación del autor y se perfila como tema de investigaciones de estudios de posgrado. Revista Estudios, (34), 2017. ISSN 1659-3316 La Revista Estudios es editada por la Universidad de Costa Rica y se distribuye bajo una Licencia Creative Commons Atribución-NoComercial-CompartirIgual 3.0 Costa Rica. Para más información envíe un mensaje a [email protected]. 2 Abstract The problem of time is dispersed in the Levinasian work, in constant dialogue and confrontation with authors of the time, both of phenomenological tradition and of Jewish philosophical tradition. The article proceeds through the different stages of Levinasian thought and recognizes the peripheries with which the author dialogues and confuses his proposal, denominated as "Deformalization of time". It concludes by breaking a spear by the need for an investigation that constitutes an architectural as a proposal before the unresolved task of time on the part of the author. Keywords: Time; Infinity; Deformalization of Time; Phenomenology of time; Philosophy of Time. "Éternité, o éternité majestueuse / Ma vie est courte" (Levinas, Éros, Littérature et Philosophie, p. 323) Introducción al problema del tiempo El tiempo como problema filosófico despierta el debate del siglo XX.2 Por lo que, es necesario reconocer, al menos de manera sucinta, el itinerario reflexivo sobre la noción de tiempo que se ha desarrollado a lo largo de la tradición filosófica occidental, con el objetivo de examinar los diferentes lentes de análisis con el que ha sido abordado el problema del tiempo. La reflexión filosófica a propósito del tiempo cuenta con tradición en la historia del pensamiento, desde la Grecia antigua se encuentran trazas al respecto. Heráclito esboza un planteamiento de tiempo presente como continuo flujo de opuestos; en las antípodas del planteamiento del autor de Éfeso, Parménides de Elea asume 2 Cfr. Dolev y Roubach (2016) Revista Estudios, (34), 2017. ISSN 1659-3316 La Revista Estudios es editada por la Universidad de Costa Rica y se distribuye bajo una Licencia Creative Commons Atribución-NoComercial-CompartirIgual 3.0 Costa Rica. Para más información envíe un mensaje a [email protected]. 3 las nociones de pasado y futuro como parte de lo que es (presente), esto permite librarse de la dialéctica de los opuestos esgrimida por Heráclito.3 Aristóteles de Estagira también ahonda la categoría del tiempo, en Física IV 11, 218b29 – 219a1, y asume un concepción de tiempo y su relación con el movimiento, "εἰ δὴ τὸ μὴ οἴεσθαι εἶναι χρόνον τότε συμβαίνει ἡμῖν, ὅταν μὴ ὁρίσωμεν μηδεμίαν μεταβολήν, ἀλλ' ἐν ἑνὶ καὶ ἀδιαιρέτῳ φαίνηται ἡ ψυχὴ μένειν, ὅταν δ' αἰσθώμεθα καὶ ὁρίσωμεν, τότε φαμὲν γεγονέναι χρόνον, φανερὸν ὅτι οὐκ ἔστιν ἄνευ κινήσεως καὶ μεταβολῆς χρόνος.".4 Aristóteles indica que el tiempo no puede ser separado del cambio, ya que todo cambio implica una distinción de elementos, asumir el tiempo sin cambio implicaría un absurdo, pues no habría posibilidad de distinguir entre un elemento del cambio y otro, el tiempo se halla íntimamente ligado al cambio y la alteración.5 Frente a éste postulado que niega la aseidad del tiempo, en el mundo romano se perfila en Lucrecio (99 a.C.-55 a.C.) una posición inversa, que asume como punto de partida el espacio, a lo que el tiempo se encuentra en dependencia, ya que éste es condición del movimiento. Según el filósofo romano, autor de "De Rerum Natura", "Space can exist without matter in that there can be, an are, empty spaces between matter, but also in the stronger sense that space could existe ven in the absence of all matter",6 esta aseveración asume que el espacio puede existir sin necesidad de materia. 3 Cfr. Ronald C. Hoy, en Heraclitus and Parmenides, incluido en: A companion to the Philosophy of Time, ed. Dyke and Bardon 4 "Y puesto que cuanto no distinguimos ningún cambio, y el alma permanece en un único momento indiferenciado, no pensamos que haya transcurrido tiempo, y puesto que cuando percibimos y distinguimos decimos que el tiempo ha transcurrido, es evidente entonces que no hay tiempo sin movimiento ni cambio. Luego es evidente que el tiempo no es un movimiento, pero no hay tiempo sin movimiento", trad. Martin Heidegger (2008). El Concepto de Tiempo, p. 26 5 Cfr. Aristóteles, Física (218b21 219a1) 6 Cfr. Futch, M. (2008) Leibniz's Metaphisics on time and space. USA, Springer, p. 10 Revista Estudios, (34), 2017. ISSN 1659-3316 La Revista Estudios es editada por la Universidad de Costa Rica y se distribuye bajo una Licencia Creative Commons Atribución-NoComercial-CompartirIgual 3.0 Costa Rica. Para más información envíe un mensaje a [email protected]. 4 El tiempo recibirá en el marco de la tradición filosófica cristiana un nuevo tratamiento, a la luz de la concepción teológica, como evidencia las reflexiones de Agustín de Hipona en la obra intitulada Confesiones (lib. XI, cap. 27) donde el tiempo es comprendido desde la divinidad, "In te, anime meus, tempora metior; noli mihi obstrepere: quod est; noli tibi obstrepere turbis affectionum tuarum. In te, inquam, tempora metior; affectionem quam res praetereuntes in te faciunt, et cum illae praeterierint manet, ipsam metior praesentem non eas quae praeterierunt ut fieret, ipsam metior, cum tempora metior",7 el planteamiento agustiniano se desprende de las tesis del filósofo de Estagira, y plantea como el tiempo no aplica a lo Eterno, por tanto, el mismo depende de la conciencia particular creada, misma que es sujeto de cambio. El mundo medieval asume la problematización de la categoría de tiempo con una fuerte presunción teológica, Avicena sigue la línea planteada por Aristóteles, y adopta una visión de tiempo en estrecha relación con el movimiento (imkân), por su parte Maimonedes (2008) apela a la concepción de la finitud temporal del Universo, en orden a responder a lo expuesto en la Torá. Sobre el mismo tema, Tomás de Aquino, adhiere a tesis que no es posible brindar una explicación que lo temporal o eterno de la existencia del mundo descansa fuera de toda ciencia demostrativa.8 En la modernidad, la categoría tiempo es colocada en escrupuloso análisis mediante nuevos paradigmas filosóficos, como el empirismo y el racionalismo, lo que permite una serie de disputas intelectuales, entre la que destaca la tensión Newton-Leibniz, mientras Sir Isaac Newton asume "For time and space are, as it 7 "En ti, alma mía, mido los tiempos. No quieras perturbarme, que es así; ni quieras perturbarte a ti con las turbas de tus afecciones. En ti -repitomido los tiempos. La afección que en ti producen las cosas que pasan – y que, aún cuando hayan pasado, permanecees lo que yo mido presente, no las cosas que pasaron para producirla: ésta es la que mido cuando mido los tiempos." , trad. Martin Heidegger (2008). El Concepto de Tiempo, p. 27 8 Jon Mcginnis en Creation and Eternity in Medieval Philosophy incluido en A companion to the Philosophy of Time, ed. Dyke and Bardon Revista Estudios, (34), 2017. ISSN 1659-3316 La Revista Estudios es editada por la Universidad de Costa Rica y se distribuye bajo una Licencia Creative Commons Atribución-NoComercial-CompartirIgual 3.0 Costa Rica. Para más información envíe un mensaje a [email protected]. 5 were, the places of themselves and of all things. All things are placed in time with reference to their order of succession and in space with reference to their orden of position",9 Leibniz, en las antípodas de éste planteamiento refuta el carácter ontológico del espacio y del tiempo, estipulando éstos como simples relaciones de existencia, y esboza en la segunda parte del Espécimen Dinámico "el espacio, el tiempo y el movimiento tienen algo emanado del Ente de razón, y no son verdaderos y reales por sí"10 y conforme a ésta idea respecto al vacío indica "de aquí se sique que el vacío no se da en el espacio y el tiempo".11 Tal como describe González (1996), Emmanuel Kant enarbola una crítica a la Leibniz y Newton en cuanto a su comprensión del tiempo, concibe que la concepción newtoniana del tiempo independiente de las cosas, como fluir continuo y real es commentum absurdissimum, y respecto a la concepción leibniziana de realidad abstraída del curso de los estados internos resulta viciosa en tanto su carácter de curso o sucesión dejando de lado la noción de simultaneidad. Immanuel Kant asume la caracterización del tiempo y el espacio como condiciones de posibilidad de los juicios sintéticos a priori, sintéticos en tanto que ampliativos y a priori en tanto que necesarios.12 Kant en el parágrafo §14 de Dissertation 1770 caracteriza el tiempo con las siguientes propiedades: 1) Idea Temporis non oritur, sed supponitur a sensibus, 2) Idea Temporis est singularis, non generalis, 3) Idea itaque Temporis es intuitus [...], est inutitus non sensualis sed purus, 4) Tempus est quantum continuum [...], 5) Tempus non est obiectivum aliquid et reale, nec cubstantia, ne accidens, nec relatio, sed subiectiva conditio per naturam mentis 9 Cfr. Futch, M. (2008) Leibniz's... p. 6 citando a Newton, Isaac. Newton: Texts, Backgrounds, Commentaries. Ed. by I. Bernard Cohen and Richard, S. Westfall. New York: W. W. Norton, 1996, p. 233 10 Cfr. Espécimen dinámico para admirar las fuerzas de la naturaleza acerca de las fuerzas de los cuerpos y para descubrir sus acciones recíprocas y restituirlas a sus causas, (1695), en Leibniz, G. (2009) Obras filosóficas y científicas, Volumen 8 Escritos Científicos. Edita Sociedad Española Leibniz. Granada, Comares, p. 432 11 Espécimen dinámico para admirar las fuerzas... p. 433 12 González Revista Estudios, (34), 2017. ISSN 1659-3316 La Revista Estudios es editada por la Universidad de Costa Rica y se distribuye bajo una Licencia Creative Commons Atribución-NoComercial-CompartirIgual 3.0 Costa Rica. Para más información envíe un mensaje a [email protected]. 6 humanae necessaria, quaelibet sensibilia certa lege sibi coordinandi, et intuitus purus. 6) Tempus [...] est conceptus verissimus, et, per omnia possibilia sensuum obiecta, in infinitum patens, intuitivae repraesentationis conditio. 7) Tempus itaque est principium formale Mundi sinsibilis absolute primum.13 De lo anterior se desprende la concepción kantina del tiempo, no como concepto empírico, sino más bien, como intuición pura de la conciencia. La teoría kantiana, según expresa Dastur, es altamente reconocida por Heidegger, en el marco de sus investigaciones sobre la temporalidad y el tiempo, en tanto su capacidad para avanzar en el oscuro dominio del problema cronológico sin llegar a percibir el principal sentido de su intento, dejando así irresuelto el problema.14 En G. W. Hegel, el estudio acerca del tiempo se perfila en dos caminos que se conjuntan, el primer lugar como pura forma vacía del devenir y en segundo lugar como pura variación negativa,15 posibilidad entera del espíritu, en la Enciclopedia de las Ciencias Filosóficas "El concepto de eternidad, sin embargo, no debe ser negativamente aprehendido tal como la abstracción del tiempo, a saber, como si la eternidad existiera de alguna manera fuera del tiempo; de este modo la eternidad se convertiría en futuro, o sea en un momento del tiempo",16 lo que evidencia que para el sajón el tiempo se resuelve en el tiempo mismo. Finalizando con el itinerario reflexivo de la noción de tiempo, se menciona a un autor que es para Edmund Husserl fuente de análisis; Franz Brentano, quién desarrolla la tesis de las asociaciones originarias, tal como lo describe Husserl en Lecciones de Fenomenología de la Conciencia Interna del Tiempo (2002), como camino para comprender las sucesiones, a partir de una crítica a las percepciones de la sucesión y del cambio, posicionando la idea de las representaciones 13 Kant, 1891, S 14 Dastur, 2000. 15 Haya, 2006. 16 G.W. F. Hegel, Enciclopedia de las ciencias filosóficas en compendio, Alianza Editorial, Madrid, 1997, 317. Revista Estudios, (34), 2017. ISSN 1659-3316 La Revista Estudios es editada por la Universidad de Costa Rica y se distribuye bajo una Licencia Creative Commons Atribución-NoComercial-CompartirIgual 3.0 Costa Rica. Para más información envíe un mensaje a [email protected]. 7 concatenadas (§ 4). Es a partir de esta concatenación, denominada asociación originaria, que se da la intuición del tiempo para el autor. Algunas caracterizaciones sobre el problema del tiempo Allende la mirada histórico-sincrónica del problema del tiempo en la filosofía occidental, se descubren una serie de caracterizaciones de la discusión que provee un análisis sistémico de la situación; Michael J. Futch, por su parte concibe que el problema se observa desde polos antagónicos, dado que el tiempo se asume desde un enfoque substantivista o reduccionista.17 Siguiendo a Christophe Bouton18 quien expone una descripción más detallada del problema manifiesta que el problema ha sido abordado desde cinco enfoques y llega a proponer un sexto: (i) el cuantitativo que determina el tiempo como medida del movimiento, (ii) el subjetivo como forma del sentido interno examinado por la conciencia, (iii) el naturalista que entre sus variantes descubre el tiempo de la naturaleza independiente de la conciencia, (iv) el ontológico como horizonte de cualquier comprensión del ser, (v) el aporético que parte de la impotencia de la filosofía para resolver el problema del tiempo, y en último lugar, (vi) el práctico que parte de la idea de acción como experiencia del mundo que deviene en libertad. Una última lectura del análisis del problema del tiempo es la expuesta por Yulev Dolev y Michael Roubach que presentan un estudio acerca de la problemática desde una contrastación entre la tradición continental por la íntima conexión entre las nociones de tiempo, conciencia y subjetividad y la tradición analítica en lo referente a sus acercamientos a la categoría de tiempo físico. Este análisis se suma a los anteriores como línea basal que sirve de fundamento para el escrutinio y análisis de la arquitectónica fenomenológica del tiempo en Levinas. 17 Cfr. Futch, M. (2008) 18 Cfr. Bouton (2014) Revista Estudios, (34), 2017. ISSN 1659-3316 La Revista Estudios es editada por la Universidad de Costa Rica y se distribuye bajo una Licencia Creative Commons Atribución-NoComercial-CompartirIgual 3.0 Costa Rica. Para más información envíe un mensaje a [email protected]. 8 Proemio a la concepción de tiempo en Levinas El análisis del tiempo asumido por Emmanuel Levinas rebate la visión totalizadora de la época moderna, según él mismo plantea; es evidente en este contexto las influencias que absorbe el autor de la tradición filosófica judía iniciada con Franz Rosenzweig.19 La investigación levinasiana asume despunta la noción infinición (l'infinnition), como estudio del ser infinito, el mismo se perfila como entidad sin límites que escapa de la totalización, de la determinación o de posibles indiscernibles. En orden a establecer un establecimiento de la arquitectónica fenomenológica del tiempo de Emmanuel Levinas, resulta necesario un recorrido de su obra. Indagando en diversas categorías que permitan establecer una relación de las partes con las partes de estas con el todo, por lo que la revisión de las fuentes no será solamente histórico-sincrónica, sino que establece criterios de análisis que permiten estudiar categorías que cruzan diferentes etapas del pensamiento del autor. Como marco referencial respecto a las etapas del pensamiento de Emmanuel Levinas respecto a su afrontamiento al problema del tiempo, resultan oportunos los acercamientos de Ángel Garrido-Maturano y de Yael Lin, ambos por conductos distintos adhieren a una similar conclusión. Garrido-Maturano,20 postula que, en Levinas, cada fase tiene como eje obras fundamentales: Le Temps et l'Autre (1947), Totalité et Infini (1961), Autrément qu'etre ou au-delà de l'essence (1974). Por otra parte, Yael Lin, asume que en Levinas se descubren las perspectivas del tiempo de la siguiente manera: primera fase en el marco de sus textos tempranos Existence and Existents (1947) y Time and Other (1948), segunda fase por medio 19 Específicamente a partir de la obra La estrella de la Redención. 20 Garrido-Maturano, 2010 Revista Estudios, (34), 2017. ISSN 1659-3316 La Revista Estudios es editada por la Universidad de Costa Rica y se distribuye bajo una Licencia Creative Commons Atribución-NoComercial-CompartirIgual 3.0 Costa Rica. Para más información envíe un mensaje a [email protected]. 9 de Totalité et Infini (1961), y la tercera fase a través de la obra Autrément qu'etre ou au-delà de l'essence (1974). Acudiendo a la distinción presentada por Garrido (2010), en la primera etapa, identificada con la obra Le Temps et l'Autre (1947), se describe el tiempo en tres modalidades, la primera como "Il y a", la segunda como "hipóstasis", llámese tiempo sincrónico como contenido de conciencia, visión subjetiva, y la tercera etapa, concebida por el autor como "tiempo auténtico". En la segunda etapa, con Totalité et Infini (1961), se desvela la visión de tiempo como discontinuo, cruzado por lo Infinito, en este momento hace su aparición la noción de fecundidad, que permite profundizar el carácter del tiempo e plantear la posibilidad de infinicionarlo.21 La tercera etapa, de madurez, con la obra Autrément qu'etre ou au-delà de l'essence (1974), el autor retoma la caracterización emitida Le Temps et l'Autre (1947) penetrando con mayor rigurosidad el carácter del tiempo desde las categorías de temporalidad: extático-sincrónica y diacrónica. El que respecta al acercamiento de Yael Lin, presenta que las perspectivas del tiempo en Levinas apuntan al instante, al futuro fecundo, y al pasado inmemorial, respectivamente.22 Erik Severson considera que la filosofía del tiempo en Levinas presenta un rol fundamental en el estudio de su pensamiento, sin embargo reconoce que el abordaje del mismo ha sido poco desarrollado, citando a Tina Chanter indica "Despite the fact that Levinas's notion of time is central to his philosophy, it is singulary neglected y even self-proclaimed Levinasians",23 por otro despliega como la comprensión del tiempo en Levinas encuentra como fuentes de influencia el 21 Por infinición se comprende la ruptura del concepto finito y objetivable, por un modo más allá del ser, desde el cual solo es posible mencionarlo como otredad, como infinito. 22 Lin, 2013 23 Severson, 2013, p. 1 citando a Chanter, Tina (2001). Time, Death and the Feminine: Levinas with Heidegger. Standford University Press, Standford Revista Estudios, (34), 2017. ISSN 1659-3316 La Revista Estudios es editada por la Universidad de Costa Rica y se distribuye bajo una Licencia Creative Commons Atribución-NoComercial-CompartirIgual 3.0 Costa Rica. Para más información envíe un mensaje a [email protected]. 10 pensamiento de Henri Bergson, Franz Rosenzweig, Edmund Husserl y Martin Heidegger.24 Investigar la concepción de tiempo de Emmanuel Levinas resulta necesario para la penetración en su planteamiento de alteridad, por lo que de manera inevitablemente se tiene que recurrir a esgrimir relaciones con otras categorías de su pensamiento: la trascendencia, lo infinito, la ética, la hospitalidad, entre otras más. La propuesta levianasiana frente a Bergson, Husserl y Heidegger no es la de ser un continuador, ni mucho menos un propagador de sus planteamientos, más bien, inspirado por el "nuevo pensamiento" instaurado por Franz Rosenzweig, demasiado presente para ser citado, acomete una confutación a dichas fuentes. La fenomenología del tiempo de Emmanuel Levinas está inscrita dentro de una tarea que refuta la mirada totalizante de la filosofía occidental. La visión fenomenológica levinasiana, encuentra ecos ineludibles en la obra de Bergson, Husserl y Heidegger, y especialmente en materia de la problemática del tiempo, es imprescindible atender a las cercanías y distancias de Levinas con sus interlocutores. Es por ente, que toda investigación debe asumir como prefacio al análisis de la arquitectónica fenomenológica del tiempo levinasiana el estudio del planteamiento de los autores precitados, con el objeto de comprender la línea basal sobre la cual enarbola su propuesta disruptiva. Bouton asume que el problema del tiempo en Bergson radica más en cuanto a su relación con la libertad que en cuanto a su naturaleza, "freedom has to reestablish contact with true time; in other words, that freedom is time or that time is in itself freedom",25 frente a la novedad bergsoniana Levinas despunta la noción de responsabilidad, que traspasa la libertad ególatra. 24 Levinas, 1998 25 Bouton, 2014, 195 Revista Estudios, (34), 2017. ISSN 1659-3316 La Revista Estudios es editada por la Universidad de Costa Rica y se distribuye bajo una Licencia Creative Commons Atribución-NoComercial-CompartirIgual 3.0 Costa Rica. Para más información envíe un mensaje a [email protected]. 11 Respecto a Husserl, Levinas enfrenta a la visión que concibe el tiempo como perenne fluir de la propia conciencia, en cuanto a la dinámica retenciónpresentación-protención desarrollada por Husserl en Lecciones de Fenomenología de la Conciencia Interna del Tiempo, Levinas contrasta la noción de tiempo inmemorial y tiempo diacrónico, dicha denominación refiere a una comprensión del tiempo que atraviesa la concepción lineal que se aloja como contenido reflexivo de la conciencia, es la alteridad misma que visita, como dación. La mirada heideggeriana de tiempo en su carácter extático, es contrastada por Levinas a partir de la concepción de radical alteridad. Heidegger asume que el tiempo plantea un rol decisivo en la distinción de los tipos de ser, para el sajón "History of the concept of time, that is, the history of the discovery of time, is the history of the question of the being of entities";26 Levinas frente al criterio heideggeriano que asume el tiempo como finitud del ser, postula la noción de diacronía, se opone a la concepción del presente como reincidencia del recuerdo sobre el instante presente que enfrenta al ser humano con su muerte; la propuesta radical levinasiana apunta al carácter fecundo del tiempo discontinuo, como epifanía incesante que se asoma en la historia personal. Así como se ha de entablar distinciones entre autores de la tradición griega, la mirada debe posicionarse en aquellos que hacen filosofía desde Jerusalén (por utilizar una metáfora, sustentada en la idea levinasiana de filosofía desde Grecia y Jerusalem), por tanto, atender al nuevo pensamiento de Rosenzweig será fundamental, en el desarrollo de una investigación sobre Levinas. La influencia por parte del nuevo pensamiento establecido en la obra de Rosenzweig resulta fundamental para comprender el carácter levinasiano en cuanto al abordaje del tiempo. Rosenzweig en Der Stern der Erlösung (1921), expone la noción de "El día de Dios", ahí presenta una lectura tridimensional del tiempo, refutando su carácter absoluto, ante lo que, establece una relación entre 26 Heidegger, 1992, 141 Revista Estudios, (34), 2017. ISSN 1659-3316 La Revista Estudios es editada por la Universidad de Costa Rica y se distribuye bajo una Licencia Creative Commons Atribución-NoComercial-CompartirIgual 3.0 Costa Rica. Para más información envíe un mensaje a [email protected]. 12 redención e historia del mundo, donde la eternidad comprende en su estructura pasado, presente y futuro. La novedad en la interpretación radica en la eternización del "nosotros", como indica Giacomo Petrarca, "En este "nosotros" el individuo percibe su propio "yo". Dentro de ella, la comunidad se suspende, realmente único aquí, porque más allá de su separación, totalmente abierto a la humanidad entera, imagen de la eternidad".27 Una comprensión de la teoría del tiempo en Rosenzweig es fundamental a la hora de establecer un análisis sobre la obra levinasiana, tanto para reconocer las resonancias del nuevo pensamiento, así como para distinguir las distancias de Levinas. Cartabón referencial del estado de la cuestión respecto al tiempo en Levinas El tiempo es una categoría desarrollada ampliamente desde diferentes enfoques filosóficos, desde la época antigua, sin embargo, con mayor presencia durante el siglo XX, la propuesta de abordaje esgrimida por Emmanuel Levinas resulta sugerente por ser contestataria a las concepciones de la filosofía moderna. El autor explaya el abordaje de la noción de tiempo en su obra y a pesar de no asumirla como el eje central de su propuesta filosófica, resulta necesaria para la comprensión de sus aportes éticos y fenomenológicos. Son múltiples los textos de análisis, para blandir una línea basal que permita distinguir elementos de análisis, obras fundamentales serán: Totalité et infini, essai sur l'extériorité (1971), donde se expone la infinición como ruptura que el rostro acomete sobre la totalidad y condiciona el tiempo del "hay" (il y a), "Le temps où se produit l'être à l'infini va au-delà du possible." (TA, p. 314), a su vez se considera Autrement Quʹêtre ou Au-delà de L'essence (1978) donde se demarca el planteamiento de temporalización como la separación de lo idéntico respecto a sí mismo, y teniendo como referente los postulados husserlianos de tiempo y 27 Petrarca, 2015, p.20 Revista Estudios, (34), 2017. ISSN 1659-3316 La Revista Estudios es editada por la Universidad de Costa Rica y se distribuye bajo una Licencia Creative Commons Atribución-NoComercial-CompartirIgual 3.0 Costa Rica. Para más información envíe un mensaje a [email protected]. 13 conciencia como conjugación (aunado a la impresión sensible) de la temporalidad y presenta un tiempo inmemoriable, un tiempo incapaz de reunirse en el presente, en lo Dicho (Dit), un tiempo diacrónico, un tiempo. Aunado a Dieu, la Mort et le Temps (1993) donde el autor asume un planteo de tiempo más allá que ser para la muerte, una visión de tiempo auténtico que se libera de la angustia y la soledad del Sein Zum Tode heideggeriano, "Le temps, plutôt quue courant des contenus de la conscience est la versión du Même vers l'Autre... Comme l'immémorial à la place de l'origine, c'est l'infini qui est la téléologie du temps" (DMT, p. 128), y en Les temps et l'autre (1997) donde presenta la noción de "tiempo auténtico", en la cual expone como la Traza (visage), hace la ruptura de la anarquía del ser, "Les constitue non point la forme déchue de l'être, mais son événement même" (TA, p. 158). Las obras anteriores permiten al investigador distinguir una serie de elementos desde los cuales desarrollar un análisis profundo de la concepción de tiempo levinasiana y contrastarlos con pesquisas precedentes, lo que sirve de preámbulo para el presente análisis. Los estudios a propósito de la concepción de tiempo del filósofo judío no resultan cuantiosos, empero se vislumbran una serie de enfoques que permiten el acceso al tema en cuestión. A partir de la una revisión exhaustiva de pesquisas antecedentes a la presente investigación, se descubren cuatro líneas en el abordaje de la noción de tiempo, en primer instancia desde una crítica a la mirada totalizante de la modernidad, en constante confrontación con interlocutores como Bergson, Husserl y Heidegger, el segundo abordaje se ve enmarcado en una lectura de la propuesta intersubjetiva, como tercer eje se presenta la influencia de la tradición judía y su influencia en la concepción del tiempo, y en un último escenario se presenta el tiempo en estrecha relación con la concepción ética del autor. Revista Estudios, (34), 2017. ISSN 1659-3316 La Revista Estudios es editada por la Universidad de Costa Rica y se distribuye bajo una Licencia Creative Commons Atribución-NoComercial-CompartirIgual 3.0 Costa Rica. Para más información envíe un mensaje a [email protected]. 14 A partir de la crítica a la visión de tiempo esgrimida por la modernidad, Ángel Garrido-Maturano expone en un artículo llamado "Sincronía, diacronía y tiempo mesiánico. Génesis y evolución de la noción de tiempo en fenomenología de Emmanuel Levinas (2002) una serie de tesis a propósito de la temporalización mesiánica del tiempo diacrónico, a partir de una descripción y categorización del pensum levinasiano. Garrido reconoce la evolución del autor judío en la exposición de la noción de tiempo, y su avance respecto a las consideraciones fenomenológicas de autores precedentes como Husserl, el autor argentino elabora un texto posterior donde ahonda en estas temáticas y las supera, en la obra "Los Tiempos del Tiempo. Ensayo sobre el sentido filosófico, cosmológico y religioso del tiempo" (2010) distingue tres etapas en el pensamiento de Levinas y analiza las nociones de Sincronía, Diacronía y Mesianismo, dentro de sus planteos conclusivos asume que en el cenit del tiempo se desvela la contemporalización del tiempo. De igual manera, en esta tendencia contestataria a propósito de la modernidad, Freddy Parra en el artículo El tiempo, el otro y la muerte a través de Emmanuel Levinas. (2009), centra su atención en la crítica levinasiana a las posturas filosóficas precedentes, critica la visión ontológica del tiempo asumida por autores como Husserl y Heidegger, el autor adhiere a un carácter desformalizador del tiempo. Otros autores que desarrollan su pesquisa en dicha sintonía son Jean Gregory y Popa Delia, que en un artículo titulado "Le temps avec les autres" (2010), evidencian la metamorfosis de la categoría alteridad desde Husserl, Heidegger y finiquitando en Levinas, presentan un análisis respecto a la visión levinasiana de intersubjetividad frente a la pluralidad de visiones a propósito de la duración, dicha propuesta desemboca en la relación entre tiempo y el carácter inteligible del Infinito (infini), "la dimensión intersubjective du temps permet de penser ce qui dans le temps perdure par-delà les oublis et ce qui revient Revista Estudios, (34), 2017. ISSN 1659-3316 La Revista Estudios es editada por la Universidad de Costa Rica y se distribuye bajo una Licencia Creative Commons Atribución-NoComercial-CompartirIgual 3.0 Costa Rica. Para más información envíe un mensaje a [email protected]. 15 incessamment dans le présent, par-delà ce qu'il peut comprendre et restituer à partir de son intelligibilité." (p. 53). Resulta, altamente llamativo e innovador el abordaje que acomete David Grandy en su artículo "A Scientific Reading of Levinas' Response to Heidegger: The Redemptive Edge of Time (2012), en su propuesta presenta la confutación de Levinas a las tesis de tiempo de Heidegger desde categorías de revelación y redención, y asume un análisis comparativo entre el planteamiento de tiempo levinasiano y la segunda Ley de la Termodinámica. Grady, de manera innovadora, procura establecer paralelismos entre la nueva física y las tesis levinasianas del tiempo, "This is a broad similarity and it does not address the question of how the Big Bang might offer itself to the universe-not just as a one-time event but on an ongoing basis redolent of Levinasian otherness." (p. 83). En la misma línea de rebatimiento a las posturas de la modernidad, se presenta la obra de Erick Severson "Levinas's Philosophie of Time: Gift, Responsibility, Diachrony, Hope" (2013), quién asume en su estudio una lectura partiendo de la evolución de la noción levinasiana de Tiempo, reconociendo las cercanías del autor judío con los planteamientos de Edmund Husserl y Henri Bergson, así como su alejamiento de las tesis de sus interlocutores, en miras de la construcción de un planteamiento original, desembocando en las tesis expuestas en Totalité et infini, essai sur l'extériorité (1971) y la metamorfosis que supone las re-consideraciones expuestas en Autrement Quʹêtre ou Au-delà de L'essence (1978), donde se desprende la deformalización del tiempo. La óptica centrada en la concepción intersubjetiva de Levinas, el Dr. Yael Lin publica la obra "The intersubjetivity of Time: Levinas and Infinite Responsibility" (2013), en este estudio el autor se concentra en exhibir los planteamientos de Levinas en las antípodas de las posturas de Bergson y Heidegger, según Lin, la propuesta levinasiana desplaza el carácter egológico de estos autores modernos y acude a una visión de tiempo constituido desde la intersubjetividad. En la misma Revista Estudios, (34), 2017. ISSN 1659-3316 La Revista Estudios es editada por la Universidad de Costa Rica y se distribuye bajo una Licencia Creative Commons Atribución-NoComercial-CompartirIgual 3.0 Costa Rica. Para más información envíe un mensaje a [email protected]. 16 estructura de análisis desde un enfoque intersubjetivo, Joan-Carles Mèlich en un artículo denominado "El tiempo y el deseo. Nota sobre una ética fenomenológica a partir de Levinas" (1998) asume una comprensión del tiempo desde la relación, teniendo al Otro como referente, la pesquisa evidencia la crítica a la tradición fenomenológica de Husserl y Heidegger. Lejos del tiempo "lineal... histórico y burgués" (p.184), el autor decanta por presentar el tiempo como modo más allá del ser. Desde un tercer enfoque, se asume el análisis desde la influencia teológica, se hallan investigaciones que asumen el ligamen del planteamiento de tiempo levinasiano en orden a la tradición judaica, sobre esta línea se reconoce el trabajo de Alfred Tauber en su artículo "Outside the subject: Levinas's Jewish Perspective on Time" (1998), quién expone las características judaicas presentes en el abordaje de Emmanuel Levinas sobre el tiempo, el autor precisa las relaciones autor lituano con otros pensadores, Tauber pone en evidencia la incorporación del hecho judío en el pensamiento occidental de Levinas "The theme espoused here is that Levinas incorporates his Jewish understanding of time (i.e., divine time) as the essence of his secular project" (p. 439). En este mismo ámbito de reflexión, se entrelaza la pesquisa de Joanna Hodge quién presenta en su artículo "Ethics and Time: Lévinas between Kant and Husserl" (2002) diferencias en cuanto a aspectos éticos presentes en diversas perspectivas del tiempo. Hodge considera la contraposición entre la óptica grecopagana invocada por Nietzsche y Heidegger frente a la postura judía, presente en el Bereshit, del cual deriva la caracterización de tiempo inmemorial levinasiano, Hodge esboza una problematización a partir del enlace entre tiempo religioso y secular planteado por el autor judío, "Levinas, with fatal consequence, restores the link between secular and holy history, and for this reason his contribution to a rethinking of ethics is to be treated with the utmost caution." (p. 131). Revista Estudios, (34), 2017. ISSN 1659-3316 La Revista Estudios es editada por la Universidad de Costa Rica y se distribuye bajo una Licencia Creative Commons Atribución-NoComercial-CompartirIgual 3.0 Costa Rica. Para más información envíe un mensaje a [email protected]. 17 Desde la orientación de tiempo en relación con la ética se reconoce el abordaje de Sandra Rosenthal "A time for Being Ethical: Levinas and Pragmatism" (2003), quien posiciona el tiempo desde el aspecto ético e intersubjetivo "The relationship with the other is not merely in time but rather, in Levinas' words, the relationship with the other is time" (p. 195). Al final de la pesquisa, Rosenthal establece un paralelismo entre el ser ético desde el pragmatismo y el pensamiento de Levinas, "Pragmatism and Levinas alike, then, demand a rethinking of the traditional concepts of freedom, self, and the moral." (p. 200). En esta óptica Domingo Fernández en su artículo "Tiempo, política y hospitalidad" (2009), expone una lectura relacional de las categorías: tiempo, política y hospitalidad, desde la óptica de Levinas y Derrida. El acercamiento a la noción de tiempo desde la óptica levinasiana que establece el autor parte de la crítica al eclipse que deviene de la subjetividad, y se concentra en presentar desde la hospitalidad y la donación una nueva concepción de tiempo que desgarre el carácter totalizante y ególatra del tiempo sincrónico, su planteamiento es ético "separemos del espacio de la dominación tiempos que puedan ser donados, que puedan ser ofrecidos como recurso de amistad y hospitalidad." (p. 200). Una vez expuesto de manera sintética los abordajes acometidos a propósito del pensamiento levinasiano en relación su concepción de tiempo en estudios precedentes, resulta necesario recalcar que dichas pesquisas se han enfocado en el tema de manera diversa, si bien las relaciones entre los cuatro ejes planteados se encuentran altamente vinculadas, la distinción permite el reconocimiento de las dimensiones del estudio, la visión contestataria de la modernidad, el enfoque desde la intersubjetividad, las raíces judaicas y la arista ética de su concepción de tiempo. Estos cuatro enfoques vienen a ser los pilares del estado de la cuestión para la presente investigación, a propósito de la teoría fenomenológica del tiempo del filósofo lituano. Es tarea de una rigurosa investigación lograr una simbiosis a Revista Estudios, (34), 2017. ISSN 1659-3316 La Revista Estudios es editada por la Universidad de Costa Rica y se distribuye bajo una Licencia Creative Commons Atribución-NoComercial-CompartirIgual 3.0 Costa Rica. Para más información envíe un mensaje a [email protected]. 18 partir de los enfoques expuestos en el estado de la cuestión, tenor de acometer un estudio riguroso que desarrolle un análisis global de la arquitectónica fenomenológica del tiempo de Emmanuel Levinas. Apuntes para una metodología en la investigación del tiempo en Levinas La concepción levinasiana de alteridad se se ve progresivamente acompañada por su radicalización en la visión de tiempo, al punto de anunciar la destrucción de la primacía del tiempo del reloj,28 como expresa Richard Cohen en su introducción en la traducción al inglés de TA "Each of Levinas's Works presents a distinct analysis of time, and each analysis is progressively more radical than the prior analysis, as the analysis of alterity is progressively radicalized", dado lo anterior, es que la presente investigación reconoce la importancia de acometer un estudio de la concepción levinasiana de tiempo desde un escrutinio de la mirada deformadora de la postura sincrónica-cronológica del tiempo. La obra de Emmanuel Levinas lejos de ser monumental en extensión resulta ser colosal en contenido, el desarrollo de sus ideas se encuentra mediado por rasgos discursivos que tornan difícil su lectura. Un ejemplo de ello se descubre en su primera obra fundamental Totalité e Infini, se desvela esta característica expositiva; Mensch29 y Large,30 dos eruditos comentadores de la obra en lengua inglesa han expuesto con detalle las dificultades en el abordaje de la obra. La muerte de Levinas deja el camino abierto para continuar la tarea, nuevas generaciones de fenomenólogos que han incorporado el problema del tiempo en sus investigaciones, tal es el caso de Jean-Luc Marion y Claude Romano, por mencionar algunos. Es tarea de la investigación reconstruir la estructura fenomenológica del tiempo elaborada y dispersa por Emmanuel Levinas y propiciar una no-sistematización, una arquitectónica, capaz de iluminar las 28 Ethics and Infiny: Conversations with Philippe Nemo 29 Mensch, 2015 30 Large, 2015 Revista Estudios, (34), 2017. ISSN 1659-3316 La Revista Estudios es editada por la Universidad de Costa Rica y se distribuye bajo una Licencia Creative Commons Atribución-NoComercial-CompartirIgual 3.0 Costa Rica. Para más información envíe un mensaje a [email protected]. 19 discusiones de una filosofía que no abandone la idea de evidencia, justificación y razones,31 una filosofía que en su afán por lograr una descripción de las estructuras de la experiencia no ceda al lenguaje homogéneo su capacidad por referirse a las cosas mismas. La tarea de establecer la arquitectónica de la fenomenología del tiempo en Emmanuel Levinas demanda un riguroso trabajo, ya que la noción del tiempo se encuentra desperdigada a lo largo de su trabajo, incluso desde sus textos tempranos,32 y es incluso en su última etapa de trabajo que el autor mismo reconoce que es el tema que más le intriga y del cual ha de continuar enfocando sus esfuerzos. La obra de Emmanuel Levinas se encuentra mediada por un estilo propio en la para la exposición de sus ideas, el autor carece de un sistema cerrado al estilo de pensadores modernos, sin embargo es posible reconocer una arquitectónica organizada, siguiendo la descripción de la noción de arquitectónica de Pablo Posada Varela se comprende como "una arquitectónica de aperturas infinitas, o, mejor dicho, de aperturas indefinidas sobre lo infinito, y donde la finitud fenomenologizante estriba, precisamente, en no poder fijar esa indefinición del acceso".33 Levinas a lo largo de su obra asume el análisis del tiempo, como vivencia y como irrupción de la vivencia, la tarea arquitectónica, no definida así por él, es la ocupación del presente estudio. Esta arquitectónica no gravita en un diseño que apunta a brindar una serie de postulados veritativos sobre el fenómeno del tiempo, más bien, enfrenta un campo de la experiencia humana y lo eleva, no es una representación o copia de la realidad, su condición es la de elevar y develar las distinciones fenomenológicas, posibilitando que se manifieste por sí, "La arquitectónica es como un modo de 31 Romano, 2015 32 Una referencia que no debe pasar desapercibida es la de las fuentes de consulta los textos del periodo de cautividad, recientemente publicados (CP, ELP, PL). 33 Posada, 2014, 398 Revista Estudios, (34), 2017. ISSN 1659-3316 La Revista Estudios es editada por la Universidad de Costa Rica y se distribuye bajo una Licencia Creative Commons Atribución-NoComercial-CompartirIgual 3.0 Costa Rica. Para más información envíe un mensaje a [email protected]. 20 articular el puro movimiento (reductivo) de suspensión del mundo como suelo de ser de las cosas de tal modo que empiecen a ser fenómenos, y que no se sostengan sino a partir de sus mutuas concrescencias".34 Levinas suspende el mundo de la vida, enfrenta el problema del tiempo, y a partir de la tarea reductiva profundiza en nodos de sentido sobre el tiempo, estos nodos son pilares y conectores de la arquitectónica del autor. El análisis de la arquitectónica fenomenológica del tiempo demanda un escrutinio de distintas partes que componen el todo arquitectónico, dicha perspectiva mereológica posibilita el análisis de la relación de las partes con las partes y con el todo, como el mismo Posada manifiesta "La teoría de los todos y las partes habrá de tomarse como una suerte de especificación de la arquitectónica... una modalidad... del quehacer fenomenologizante"35. Cada elemento del pensamiento levinasiano se encuentra entrelazado con los demás contenidos en la obra, no hay elementos aislados; cada uno de los problemas, son retomados constantemente, y replanteados desde diversos ángulos: la ética, la fenomenología del eros, lo femenino, el decir, entre otros. Cada categoría del pensamiento levinasiano ilumina otras regiones, la noción de rostro se presenta desde la lectura de la ética primera, así como también es posible a la luz de una reflexión estética, o específicamente en el tratamiento de la filosofía del arte, otra manera se atender la noción de rostro se puede desvelar en el tratamiento político. El estudio de la noción de tiempo evoca diversas franjas del pensamiento, no hay fronteras en la obra levinasiana, el tiempo pareciera ser una noción que atraviesa cada urbanización de la arquitectónica. Emmanuel Levinas, no desarrolla tratados filosóficos encerrados en un tópico determinado, su obra no se encuentra demostrada bajo estrictos principios geométricos, su itinerario es abierto. 34 Posada, 2013, 210 35 Posada, 2013, 207 Revista Estudios, (34), 2017. ISSN 1659-3316 La Revista Estudios es editada por la Universidad de Costa Rica y se distribuye bajo una Licencia Creative Commons Atribución-NoComercial-CompartirIgual 3.0 Costa Rica. Para más información envíe un mensaje a [email protected]. 21 La descripción arquitectónica se encuentra configurada por una perspectiva mereológica, que permite establecer relaciones entre las diversas partes de la estructura, desde una reflexividad (relación de cada parte consigo misma), transitividad (relación de cada parte con el todo) y asimetría (la imposibilidad de que cada parte sea parte de otra parte), que permita un set de ordenación parcial36 que formalice la noción de tiempo, que se ha abordado desde una disposición fenomenológica. El problema que afronta la investigación sobre el tiempo en Levinas, ha de reconocer una serie de moradas, distingo tres de ellas: (1) desde una lectura global, la tensión entre el tiempo físico y el tiempo psicológico; (2) desde una lectura de los estudios fenomenológicos, el escrutinio y análisis del objeto de análisis en relación al método y la consecuente relación con la discusión del fenómeno en el contexto levinasiano; (3) desde una lectura de los estudios levinasianos, el establecimiento o reorganización de la teoría fenomenológica del tiempo según Levinas, con miras a una protensión de la obra. A nivel metódico la investigación enfrenta el problema de crear su propia escalera de escrutinio y análisis, siguiendo la caracterización de Claudio Romano, la pesquisa fenomenológica no debe ser endeble en cuanto a su argumentación, la exposición de las razones estará mediada por una propuesta mereológica que demanda un melindroso desarrollo en orden a denotar la arquitectónica en mención. Toda investigación sobre el tiempo en la discusión filosófica actual demanda una estructura de abordaje innovadora, así como una constatación de las principales tesis esgrimidas por investigadores contemporáneos, el análisis de la arquitectónica fenomenológica levinasiana lejos proponer ser un edificio teórico 36 Denominado como POSET, en lengua inglesa, mismo que supone un ordenamiento secuencial parcial de un concepto Revista Estudios, (34), 2017. ISSN 1659-3316 La Revista Estudios es editada por la Universidad de Costa Rica y se distribuye bajo una Licencia Creative Commons Atribución-NoComercial-CompartirIgual 3.0 Costa Rica. Para más información envíe un mensaje a [email protected]. 22 inerte, apunta a esgrimir líneas conceptuales que se engarcen con las más actuales investigaciones sobre el tiempo. Consideraciones conclusivas El tiempo resulta ser un problema cuya dificultad, radica en la complejidad de su conceptualización, ya que a lo largo de la historia del pensamiento han sido múltiples e incluso disimiles los acercamientos teórico-metodológicos hacia el fenómeno. La discusión sobre el tiempo ha dejado de ser, desde hace mucho tiempo atrás posesión de la filosofía y se ha asumido dentro de las categorías de análisis de las ciencias exactas. A las puertas del siglo XX, el debate sobre el tiempo entre Bergson y Einstein37 manifiesta la divergencia entre caminos que asumirá la discusión sobre el tiempo, bifurcación caracterizada desde la filosofía continental y filosofía analítica. El tiempo se encuentra en el contenido discursivo tanto de la filosofía como de la ciencia. En la ciencia es asumido mediante propios métodos, desde la tradición continental la filosofía adhiere a la concepción fenomenológica instaurada por Husserl. La noción tiempo en el proyecto fenomenológico se enfrenta a un problema, que ha sido caracterizado por Gérard Granel citado por Francoise Dustur como, dicha contrariedad radica en la cosa misma que se manifiesta, la fenomenología del tiempo es "phenomenology without phenomenon" (2000, p. 28), tal apreciación evoca una aporía, pareciera que la fenomenología del tiempo resulta ser una fenomenología de lo inaparente. Es oportuno reconstruir el camino por el que transitado la noción de tiempo en la fenomenología previo a Levinas, de este modo afrontar nuevamente la dificultad del tiempo como lo inaparente, tal como ha sido caracterizado por Gérard Granel citado por Francoise Dustur como, dicha contrariedad radica en el cosa misma que 37 Canales, J. en Einstein's Bergson Problem: Communication, Consensus and Good Science, presente en Dolev y Roubach (2016). Revista Estudios, (34), 2017. ISSN 1659-3316 La Revista Estudios es editada por la Universidad de Costa Rica y se distribuye bajo una Licencia Creative Commons Atribución-NoComercial-CompartirIgual 3.0 Costa Rica. Para más información envíe un mensaje a [email protected]. 23 se manifiesta, la fenomenología del tiempo es "phenomenology without phenomenon" (2000, p. 28), tal apreciación evoca una aporía, pareciera que la fenomenología del tiempo resulta ser una fenomenología de lo inaparente. El objetivo de la investigación radica en descubrir una problemática que asume un giro en el siglo XX en el marco del desarrollo de la corriente fenomenológica y a partir de la descripción y análisis de la arquitectónica fenomenológica del tiempo de Emmanuel Levinas explorar nuevas posibilidades, así como escrutar en nuevas problemáticas. Una investigación que acometa la reconstrucción de la obra levianasiana en lo que al tiempo refiere es urgente, y así, desde su arquitectónica afrontar la problemática del tiempo en nuestros tiempos. Bibliografía Aristóteles, Física, 218b21 219a1. Bouton, Christophe (2014). Time and Freedom. Northwestern University Press, Illinois. Dastur, Francoise (2000). Telling Time, sketch of a Phenomenological Chronology. The Athlone Press, London. Dolev, Yulev; Roubach, Michael (2016), Cosmological and Psychological Time. Springer, New York. Dyke, Heather; Bardon, Adrián (2013). A companion to the Philosophy of Time. Wiley-Blackwell, USA. Futch, M. (2008) Leibniz's Metaphisics on time and space. USA, Springer. Garrido, Ángel (2002). Sincronía, diacronía y tiempo mesiánico. Génesis y evolución de la noción de tiempo en fenomenología de Emmanuel Levinas. Enfoques, Vol. XIV, núm 1, pp. 57-71, Argentina. Grandy, David (2012). A Scientific Reading of Levinas' Response to Heidegger: The Redemptive Edge of Time. KronoScope 12:1, 73-89, USA. Revista Estudios, (34), 2017. ISSN 1659-3316 La Revista Estudios es editada por la Universidad de Costa Rica y se distribuye bajo una Licencia Creative Commons Atribución-NoComercial-CompartirIgual 3.0 Costa Rica. Para más información envíe un mensaje a [email protected]. 24 Gregory, Jean; Delia, Popa (2010). Le temps avec les autres. Meta: Research in Hermeneutics, Phenomenology, and Practical Philosophy, Vol. 2010, 2(1), 33-56, Belgique. Fernandez, Domingo (2009). Tiempo, política y hospitalidad. Una reflexión desde Derrida y Lévina. Isegoría, [S.l.], n. 40, pp. 191-202. González, Agustín (1996). Los tres espacios (tiempos) de Kant. Revista de Filosofía Thémata, 16, 85-109, Sevilla. Haya, Fernando (2007). Los sentidos del tiempo en Hegel. Studia Poliana, N9, 67102, Navarra. Hegel, Gottfried (1966). Fenomenología del Espíritu. Trad. Wenceslao Roces. Fondo de Cultura Económica, Mexico. Hodge, Joanna (2002). Ethics and Time: Lévinas between Kant and Husserl. Diacritics, Vol. 32, N 3⁄4, Ethics, 107-134, USA. Heidegger (2008). El Concepto de Tiempo. Herder, Barcelona. Kant, Emmanuel (1891). Kant's Inaugural Dissertation of 1770. Trad. William J. Eckoff, Cornel University Library, New York. Large, William (2015). Levinas's Totality and Infinity. Bloomsbury, New York. Leibniz, G. (2009) Obras filosóficas y científicas, Volumen 8 Escritos Científicos. Edita Sociedad Española Leibniz. Granada, Comares Levinas, Emmanuel (1978). Autrement Quʹêtre ou Au-delà de L'essence. Martinus Nijhoff, Francia.1978. Levinas, Emmanuel (1971). Totalité et infini, essai sur l'extériorité. Martinus Nijhoff, Francia. 1971. Levinas, Emmanuel (1997). Les temps et l'autre, Cas a Jiné. Dauphin, República Checa. 1997. Levinas, Emmanuel (2001). Existence & Existents. Duquesne University Press, Pennsylvania. Lévinas, Emmanuel (1987). Time and Other: And additional essays. Translated by Richard A. Cohen. Duquesne University Press, Pennsylvania. Revista Estudios, (34), 2017. ISSN 1659-3316 La Revista Estudios es editada por la Universidad de Costa Rica y se distribuye bajo una Licencia Creative Commons Atribución-NoComercial-CompartirIgual 3.0 Costa Rica. Para más información envíe un mensaje a [email protected]. 25 Levinas, Emmanuel (1993). Dieu, la Mort et le Temps. Grasset Fasquelle, Francia. Levinas, Emmanuel (2009). Carnets de Captivité et autres inédits. Grasset Fasquelle, Francia. Levinas, Emmanuel (2009). Parole et Silence. Grasset Fasquelle, Francia. 2009. Levinas, Emmanuel (2009). Eros, Littérature et Philosophie. Grasset Fasquelle, Francia Lin, Yael (2013). The Intersubjectivity of Time, Levinas and Infinite Responsibility. Duquesne University Press, Pennsylvania. Maimonedes, Moses (2008). Guía de perplejos. Trotta, España. Mèlich, Joan-Carles (1998). El tiempo y el deseo. Nota sobre una ética fenomenológica a partir de Levinas. Enronrar, 28, pp.183-192, España. Mensch, James (2015). Levinas's Exitental Analitic, A commentary on Totality and Infinity. Northwestern University Press: Illinois. Parra, Fredy (2009). El tiempo, el otro y la muerte a través de Emmanuel Levinas. Teología y Vida, Vol. L, 564-598, Chile. Posada, Pablo (2013). Apuntes para una arquitectónica fenomenológica (en clave mereológica). Revista Eikasia, España Posada, Pablo (2014). Algunos aspectos de la fenomenología de Marc Richir. Revista Filosófica de Coimbra, N. 46, Coímbra. Romano, Claude (2015). At the Reason of Heart. Northwestern University Press, Illinois. Rosenthal, Sandra (2003). "A time for Being Ethical: Levinas and Pragmatism" Journal of Speculative Philosophy 17 (3), pp.192-203. Severson, Erik (2013). Levinas's philosophy of time. Gift, responsibility, diachrony, hope. Duquesne University Press, Pennsylvania. Tauber, Alfred (1998). Outside the subject: Levinas's Jewish Perspective on Time. Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal, Vol. 20, N. 2-Vol. 21, N. 1, pp. 439-459, USA.
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Comparing the relationships of women who were on the pill when they met their partner with those who weren't, researchers found that pill users were less sexually satisfied, but happier overall with their relationships than women not taking birth control when they first met their mate.
"These results are in line with what we and other groups have seen in the lab," study researcher Lisa DeBruine, of the University of Aberdeen, told LiveScience in an e-mail. "Although they're less sexually satisfied, they are MORE satisfied with nonsexual aspects of their relationship, including a partner’s financial provision and support."
Polling the pill
The study, performed by lead author Craig Roberts, of the University of Stirling in the U.K., polled about 2,000 women from all over the world, including the U.S., U.K. and the Czech Republic. The average age of the women was around 37, and to make sure the levels of relationship commitment were comparable, they were asked about their relationships with the fathers of their first children.
The women filled out surveys about their relationships and sex lives. Oddly, these couples who met while the woman was on hormonal birth control were also more emotionally satisfied and were more likely to stay together, on average about two years longer. If those couples did separate, the break-up was more likely to be initiated by the woman.
While the nonsexual parts of their relationship were satisfying, these women showed increasing sexual dissatisfaction during their relationships, while there was no change in nonusers. This increasing sexual dissatisfaction could lead to a tipping point between emotional and financial satisfaction and a desire to be sexually satisfied, the researchers suggest.
Pill use and attraction
Though the biology behind this phenomenon is unknown, DeBruine believes it's most likely related to the hormones found in the pill used to control fertility. "The biological mechanisms are almost certainly linked to hormones," she said. "Hormones influence our bodies and behavior in many ways, so we're still researching exactly how hormones affect mating behavior."
These hormones influence what characteristics women are attracted to in a mate. Studies have shown that a main component of attraction is a desire to find a genetically dissimilar partner, specifically in genes called the major histocompatibility complex (or MHC) that are involved in the body’s immune system. Having a large selection in these genes improves the immune system and can make for healthier offspring in the long run.
When women are on the pill, however, they are in an "eternally pregnant state," meaning they aren’t ovulating and may be wired to instead to seek out genetically similar men — essentially, the genetic equivalent of a relative — because evolutionarily, family would help raise the baby. This desire for genetically similar men was found in a study published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. That same 2008 study found that women not taking hormonal birth control prefer genetically dissimilar men and those with higher testosterone levels and more masculine features.
And supporting the lower sexual satisfaction in birth-control couples, previous research has indicated that females with genetically similar partners express lower sexual satisfaction and have a higher interest in having sex with someone who isn't their partner; essentially, they think about cheating.
Though the new study didn't test genetic similarity, they found that women who had been on a progesterone birth-control pill when their relationship started expressed sexual dissatisfaction and desire to cheat.
Complex relationships
Jonathan Schaffir, a doctor at Ohio State University Medical Center who has studied the link between hormonal contraception and sexual desire but who wasn't involved in this study, suggested that trying to tease out the effect of hormonal birth control on something as complex as mate choice can be misleading.
"It's not likely that a small change in a single biological parameter will make a big difference," noting that the differences the study found, while statistically significant, were small. He said a forward-looking study, or an investigation of possible biological effects of the hormone treatment would have been more convincing. [The History and Future of Birth Control]
"This type of retrospective study cannot fully explain all of the complex processes that shape relationships," DeBruine told LiveScience. "Our findings do suggest that these processes play out slightly differently in women who were and were not using the pill when they met their partner."
Schaffir worries about how women might interpret these findings. "Sometimes people give good forms of birth control a bad name by suggesting that they might have [these kinds of] effects," Schaffir told LiveScience. "I don't want women to have the impression that they shouldn’t use reliable birth control because of dubious psychosocial effects."
The study was published today (Oct. 11) in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.
Personal comment: Students at St Lucy’s have always been counseled to use effective methods of non-hormonal of contraception where possible as we feel young women should be able to experience the full range of their femininity available only though the ebb and flow of their natural hormonal cycles. Hormonal contraceptives are only used to treat heavy or painful periods, acne or other conditions where appropriate.
HPV-Related Throat Cancers Increasing, Study Finds
The percentage of throat cancers caused by the human papillomavirus has increased significantly in the U.S. since the 1980s, according to a study in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, the New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/04/health/research/04hpv.html?_r=2&ref=health reports. HPV type 16, which also causes many cases of cervical cancer, is sexually transmitted, including during oral sex.
For the study -- which was funded by the National Cancer Institute, Ohio State University and the Oral Cancer Foundation -- researchers tested tumor samples from 271 patients diagnosed with throat cancers between 1984 and 2004. About 16% of samples from the 1980s found strains of HPV, compared with nearly 72% of cases found after 2000. Overall, throat cancers caused by HPV increased from 0.8 cases per 100,000 people in 1988 to 2.6 per 100,000 people in 2004, the study found.
According to the Times, there are fewer than 10,000 cases of throat cancer annually, and most people with HPV do not develop cancer. HPV-related throat cancers are more treatable than those not caused by the virus. People with throat cancers caused by HPV have a median survival of 131 months, compared with 20 months for people whose cancers are not related to the virus (Grady, New York Times, 10/3).
An HPV vaccine is approved to protect against cervical cancer in girls and women and to protect against genital warts and anal cancer in both sexes. Maura Gillison, a head-and-neck cancer specialist at Ohio State University and senior author of the study, said protection against oral HPV has not been studied in either gender. A spokesperson for Merck, which makes the HPV vaccine, said the company does not plan to conduct an oral cancer study.
She said that oral cancer always has been a bigger threat to men than women and that women's incidence is steady while men's is rising. Women account for about 25% of oral cancers, which could suggest that gender differences in sexual behavior play a role or that the virus stays in men's bodies longer (Neergaard, AP/Washington Post, 10/4).
Personal comment: All of the casino’s escort trainees (both male and female) and St Lucy’s students are required to have had the full series of Gardasil injections and for the women routine pelvic exams including pap tests are scheduled in addition to full STI panels for the sexually active St Lucy’s students. This well-woman care has virtually eliminated most health risks associated with their assertiveness training.
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Two truths draw nearer each other. One moves from inside, one moves from outside
And where they meet we have a chance to see ourselves.
— Tomas Transtromer
SAGE
He remembers breaking through.
The bodies were flying around him, helmets and shoulder pads crunching with each play, the white jerseys with big purple numbers edged with gold converging on him again and again in practice. At first he’d been picked on, targeted during plays to test his toughness. He wasn’t as big as the other boys, but he didn’t care.
He just loved the game and wanted to play.
He earned a spot at wide receiver because he was speedy, and also played safety on the defense, covering receivers and tackling ball carriers who had dozens of pounds on him.
At a certain point the game takes over and you’re part of a team. Sage remembers that after a period of trial, the team just accepted him. At halftime, players would get together to prepare to hit the field again. “We’d all get our adrenaline going. We’d smack helmets and head-butt each other. Nobody hit me any less than anybody else.” He was heading out with his teammates to do the thing he loved to do, being who he was, and taking the hits and delivering some that came with his job.
The noise of helmet clacking against helmet is loud and unforgettable. It is the sound of everybody striking the same note. It’s the sound of a team.
Within that sound, almost invisible, was the breakthrough.
It happened not by him standing out, but by becoming a seamless part of the world between the lines. “When you’re under the helmet and you’re in shoulder pads, everybody’s the same,” Fisher says.
And that was when he was a girl.
Sarah Fisher was the first female to play a full year for the Waynesboro High School football team.
But for Sarah, the breakthrough was not because she was a girl playing a boy’s sport.
It was because she felt like she was where she belonged. A boy playing a boy’s sport.
“It was just always a feeling. The questions didn’t cross my mind until later on, but I just felt like a guy, like one of the boys.”
The childhood of Sarah Fisher was spent doing boy things: driving a four wheeler at her aunt’s home; playing sports. “I always felt more in tune with boys. That’s who I’d hang out with.”
She didn’t feel awkward expressing herself that way. In fact, confusion set in more when she tried to adhere to how girls were supposed to express themselves. “I tried to wear girls’ clothes, and it was really awkward.”
The young Sarah actually felt more ‘transgender’ doing that than at any other point.
Nearly eight years to the day after a story was published by The News Leader about Sarah Fisher’s ground-breaking football journey, 25-year-old Sage Emerson Fisher sits comfortably outside at a Waynesboro coffeeshop.
In a dark blue sleeveless T-shirt, muscular tattooed arms bared and a dark baseball cap worn backwards on his head, Sage’s appearance is not purposefully masculine or feminine, but definitely not androgynous.
Sage looks like a person who is now comfortably himself.
For much of his childhood as a girl, the person named Sarah was behaving like a boy, enjoying more masculine sports like football and wrestling. She was already engaged in what therapists call gender expression, healthy in her case because it matched her inner comforts and interests with what she did in front of other people.
Though the youngster's behavior was not “appropriate” for a girl, Sarah was simply considered a tomboy.
“I don’t really feel out of place around anyone,” Sage explains, leaning back in his chair. “But I felt more in tune with the boys I would hang out with.” He begins to list the details.
“I didn’t like doing my nails, I didn’t like boy bands. I didn’t like girl colors or playhouses, or any of those things. I’d much rather go catch snakes, and fish, or play in the dirt, or ride four-wheelers.
“I tried to wear girl clothes, and it was really awkward. You can tell the awkwardness, looking at pictures of me. I never felt comfortable in my skin in women’s clothing, or wearing makeup.
“It felt like I was trying to be somebody that I wasn’t.”
Sarah’s father appreciated his daughter’s strong sense of will and interest in things he liked, so he didn’t try to force any changes in her behavior, according to Sage. But inside, Sarah was much more than a tomboy. Though the name would not come for years, Sarah was already Sage, a boy. Interested in traditional boy things, including girls.
He cites a telling example. “We went to my Aunt Betty’s house, I was probably 10 or 11, I was old enough to know the difference [between girls and boys and how they traditionally behaved]. I would hang out by myself and go around on the four wheeler, and I would stop and pretend I was picking up girls for dates.”
“When the girls started wanting to get to know the guys, I wanted to get to know the girls. I knew very early that I didn’t care for men in a romantic way.”
Again, there was an available — if less mainstream — identity type for others to perceive her. She likes girls? — she must be a lesbian. And since she was boyish and enjoyed masculine activities, she must be a butch lesbian.
“I was never bullied for it,” Sage says. “It was already known. When I started dating a girl, it was like, ‘Well, that’s just Sarah.’
“And sort of the same thing when I came out as transgender. I posted my name change form on social media, and from there on out it was me being me.”
But that didn’t happen right away.
CHYNA
When she was in the hospital on life support in 2016, one thing kept Mama Lynn Bolling connected to the waking world. Her daughter Chyna.
“The only voice I could hear was hers.”
That’s the voice speaking now. Chyna’s voice. “I was born in Waynesboro. My mom was an evangelist, my daddy was a deacon. I worked in church, very Christian. Pentecostal, actually,” she laughs. It’s a deep, rich laugh, and in it you can hear the sweeping transformation of the entire person she once was into who she is now: a deep male voice smoothed out by a decade of hormonal therapy.
Chyna's not dressed up or made up. She looks like any other mid-20s young woman on a Monday in Starbucks: a bit tired, her hair up, comfortable enough in a tank top and hoop earrings and a very large cup of iced coffee.
She made her decision to become what she calls her “authentic self” at age 15.
“I put on a pair of girl jeans and just never looked back,” she says, clapping her hands and smiling. “In eighth grade I was one person, and ninth grade I was somebody totally different.”
How did she handle using restrooms in school 10 years ago?
“I used the women’s restroom. I haven’t used the men’s rest room since I was 15.”
But things were not that easy. They never are.
She takes care of her mother, who lives with her and has a multitude of health problems.
She’s been looking for work. She is waiting to hear about a managerial position after an interview she feels good about, but she’s been down that path before. Successful interviews, but no phone call, no email, no job offers.
Some of that she attributes to being a bi-racial transgender woman.
And like her decision to confirm her identity as a female, it started early.
“Straight out of high school I went to cosmetology school.” Teachers called her “he” because her state ID was still male and her doctor hadn’t written a letter to DMV yet to get her ID card changed, she says, though she was well into living her life as a female. “My clients would say ‘she.’ They’d say, ‘She did a fabulous job.’”
Despite the fact that she dressed and behaved as a female, the school wanted her to wear the male uniform — “but I didn’t. That was the last thing I would have expected from the beauty industry.”
Like Sage, Chyna’s earliest self-expressions were not consistent with cultural expectations for her gender.
“If you are really trans, you have that ‘this is who I am,’” she says. “When I was little, when we played house I was the mom. My room was leopard and pink and smelled like perfume. My mom said, ‘Better than smelling like dirty feet!’ Ha! In school in the locker rooms I wouldn’t dress out (for gym).”
A dozen years into living as a female, Chyna looks like a woman. Is she past getting strange looks?
“No. When I’m like this and not made up, and during the day, it’s more easier to tell,” she says. “In the evenings if I’m going out or dressed up to go someplace I never get looks.”
Chyna still feels the lack of acceptance, and says it’s more pointed in a place like the Shenandoah Valley than in more urban areas.
She’s felt judgment from all sides, even from other minority groups. She says trans-people and LGBT people in general are not very welcomed by the African-American community.
“I’m too dark to hang out with white people and too light to hang out with black people. But in my experience all my Caucasian friends are more open-minded,” she says.
“I would think they would be so different because of slavery and the oppression that we were under,” she says about African-American culture.
“But I was raised in church, and God knew who I was gonna be before I was born.”
On the other hand, here in Waynesboro, it’s also a lot safer than in big cities, she says. She rattles off statistics about black transgender women being targets of violence in urban areas. In some cities the life expectancy of black transgender women is only 31 years.
Having traveled and lived in larger cities like Chicago, she’s made many transgender friends, and not all of them are still around. The list of those robbed, raped and killed only gets longer.
Chyna Black says without a hint of exaggeration, “Every day I wake up to Facebook and it’s “Rest in peace, so-and-so.”
More: Families of transpersons
Understandingthese gender terms is easy.
DEFINES
The nametag at work reads "Dustin." And the nametag's owner has a calming, deep, masculine voice.
But those two things — name and voice — have been sources of anxiety and gender dysphoria for the former Staunton resident who may be dressed in male business casual clothes at work and then at a social event later with the same friends wearing maybe a dress and jewelry, with painted nails.
And being called by a teenager's nickname that is neither male or female.
Meet Defines Fineout.
“‘Defines’ is a shortened version of my full name, Dustin Fineout. It’s a nickname my friends gave me back in high school.” Defines says the nickname is “gender nonbinary, whereas ‘Dustin’ is pretty clearly a male name.”
And Defines has never felt comfortable with a gender identity as a male.
Gender dysphoria started early.
“When I was six years old I had this gemstone ring that I really loved. I remember wearing it to school and getting picked on for it. Your understanding of gender happens very young — by 2 or 3 years old you really start to have those fundamental concepts established. I always liked what at the time people called girly things.”
Defines is 31 years old. “So I was assigned male at birth, you know I grew up raised as a boy. My family is very open and supportive and accepting.”
Growing up he didn’t have the language to think about these things he felt, or put any definition behind it.
“I would say my gender identity probably didn’t change a lot, I just didn’t have the words. I became more comfortable with my own identity as I got older,” and in his early 20s finally understood how he felt about himself.
Still, Defines didn’t encounter ideas of what it meant to be transgender until his mid-20s. For the past five or six years he has identified as a nonbinary transperson.
Nonbinary? “Nonbinary pretty simply is not male or female identity,” Defines says. “Some people use ‘gender-fluid.’”
Defines still goes by “Dustin” at work, and dresses business casual. He’s perceived as a male by others in business who do not know him, and he’s learned to be OK with that.
It's important to him that people who know him understand: he doesn't feel like a male and also never wanted to transition to a female gender identity.
Likewise, he does not define who he is attracted to sexually by their gender, either. So he defines his orientation as pan-sexual.
You would think that a well-adjusted person with this level of patience with others would not experience gender dysphoria. But there is still discomfort.
It's his own deep voice that makes him uneasy.
"Most people probably perceive me entirely as male. That’s just natural. I’ve sort of gotten more comfortable with that fact and just come to terms with it, but there are days when people call me sir, and I prefer that they didn’t.”
“Most days it really doesn’t affect me too much. There’s nothing I can do about my voice, it will always be deep. It’s so deep that trying to talk any differently just sounds so unnatural.”
As for the name change, being called by a traditionally masculine name started to feel discordant. So Dustin reached back for the relatively neutral “Defines.”
“For so many of my friends, that’s just what they knew me as, so that’s not a change for them.” But for Defines it makes a big difference.
At the same time Defines is aware that a transition for an individual is also a transition for those around him or her.
“I even stumble and say the wrong thing sometimes, and these things are changing so rapidly,” he says, referring to the language wrapped around gender-diversity, both clinically and in public.
"But even like my parents know and accept that I’m trans, but of course they raised me, have called me Dustin their entire life. It’s just natural for someone you’ve known for 30 years.”
Defines understands the difficulty. “It’s just because most pronouns are male or female specific. Some people are creating new pronouns or using the singular ‘they.’ For me the easiest way to say it is transperson.”
No matter what term is used, Defines knows that an evolving, supportive culture — no matter how this hopeful trend continues in Virginia — is what matters.
“I’ve had the benefit of a great community," he says, "so I’ve had it much easier than some other people do.”
More: Trans options for therapy, hormones, surgery are individual choices
Gender identity. Gender expression. Sexual orientation. Gender dysphoria.What do these phrases mean? Therapists have developed terms to discuss the experiences of people like Sage and Chyna. While the language can get confusing, these terms can help differentiate the internal and external pressures that we all feel.
More: Discovering Emma
More: Mom and daughter come out together as trans
More: Bullied trans teen found help and made video about her experience
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More military men than women are sexually abused in the ranks each year, a Pentagon survey shows, highlighting the underreporting of male-on-male assaults.
When the Defense Department released the results of its anonymous sexual abuse survey this month and concluded that 26,000 service members were victims in fiscal 2012, which ended Sept. 30, an automatic assumption was that most were women. But roughly 14,000 of the victims were male and 12,000 female, according to a scientific survey sample produced by the Pentagon.
The statistics show that, as Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel begins a campaign to stamp out “unwanted sexual contact,” there are two sets of victims that must be addressed.
“It appears that the DOD has serious problems with male-on-male sexual assaults that men are not reporting and the Pentagon doesn’t want to talk about,” Elaine Donnelly, who heads the Center for Military Readiness. She noted that only 2 percent of assailants are women.
Pentagon spokeswoman Cynthia Smith said the Sexual Assault Response and Prevention Office is tackling the entire problem.
The assault office “recognizes the challenges male survivors face and has reached out to organizations supporting male survivors for assistance and information to help inform our way ahead,” Ms. Smith said. “A focus of our prevention efforts over the next several months is specifically geared toward male survivors and will include why male survivors report at much lower rates than female survivors, and determining the unique support and assistance male survivors need.”
She said the department has included information on male victims on the “DOD Safe Helpline,” which connects them to trained professionals.
“Together, everyone in this department at every level of command will continue to work together every day to establish an environment of dignity and respect, where sexual assault is not tolerated, condoned or ignored, where there is clear accountability placed on all leaders at every level,” Ms. Smith said.
The Pentagon’s 1,400-page annual report came with two basic sets of data: official reports of sex crimes and a scientific survey sample of the 1.4 million active force from which the department extrapolated the number of abuses, regardless of whether they were officially reported.
Data showed 2,949 reports of abuse against a service member last year compared with 1,275 in 2004. The vast majority of victims (88 percent) were female — a statistic that tells the Pentagon that male victims (12 percent) do not come forward at the same rate.
Subjects of investigations are almost always men (90 percent), compared with women (2 percent) — a statistic indicating that male victims are assaulted by other men.
The survey determined that 26,000 service members were victims of sexual assault last year, based on the 6.1 percent of female and 1.2 percent of male respondents who claimed to have suffered such abuse. With an active-duty force of 200,000 women and 1.2 million men, that amounts to roughly 12,000 female victims and 14,000 male victims.
“The [Sexual Assault Response and Prevention Office] continues to focus its attention on women who experience abuse but don’t report it, overlooking the far greater numbers of men who, according to the survey, are experiencing abuse but not reporting it,” said Mrs. Donnelly, who heads the Center for Military Readiness.
“If the Pentagon considers the survey results a credible reflection of hidden reality, they must also concede that there are more men than women who are being sexually assaulted,” she said.
Mrs. Donnelly fought President Obama’s decision to lift the ban on open gays in the ranks, which took effect in September 2011. She also opposes plans to open direct ground combat jobs to women, saying it will import the sexual abuse problem into the combat ranks.
The annual report shows that of assaults on women, 67 percent happened on base, 19 percent in a war zone and 20 percent on a ship or a field exercise.
For male-on-male assaults, 73 percent happened on base and 26 percent in a combat zone.
The Pentagon’s definition of unwanted sexual contact ranges from rape to “abusive sexual contact” and “involves intentional sexual contact that was against a person’s will or occurred when the person did not or could not consent. The term describes completed and attempted oral, anal and vaginal penetration with any body part or object, and the unwanted touching of genitalia and other sexually related areas of the body.”
In light of the annual report that shows an increase in unwanted sexual contact, Mr. Hagel and his senior officers and enlisted personnel met with Mr. Obama last week to discuss what the defense secretary called “this huge problem.”
“The president was very constructive,” Mr. Hagel told reporters Friday. “He was very clear. There wasn’t anybody in that room who wasn’t disappointed and embarrassed and didn’t recognize that we’ve in many ways failed. But we all have committed to turn this around, and we’re going to fix the problem. As the president said in his comments after that meeting, there’s no silver bullet. This is going to take all of us.”
Aaron Belkin, who heads The Palm Center, which studies gays and lesbians in the military, said “very few” male-on-male perpetrators are gay, saying such incidents are “somewhat similar to prison rape.”
“It is important to try as hard as possible to eliminate sexual assaults from the military, but I don’t think that procedural reforms will do much to lower the incidence rate unless military culture changes dramatically,” said Mr. Belkin, whose 2012 book “Bring Me Men,” included a case study on male-on-male rape in the military.
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Here's something a little different: yellow birds. I've enjoyed my birdcage paintings, but I wanted to do one with more striking colors. The red background and black cage creates a nice contrast. The yellow birds seemed like an obvious choice.
My apologies for such a long span between posts. I'm still wrestling with a large painting of flowers I'm doing for a co-worker. I hope to finish it soon. I need to.
Also, I've been doing other paintings for friends and family for the holidays. So, if you're related to me, there's a good chance you're getting a painting of some sort.
Much as I enjoy updating and writing on this blog, I realized a while ago that my blog name is waaaaaaaay too long to just write it out on the back of a business card. And one of the questions I got most at the arboretum art show was "Do you have a website?"
Now I do.
It's not much to look at. In fact, there's little on there that isn't on this blog. One big difference, though, is the photos of the paintings were taken by a professional photographer, so the quality is far better than what is on the blog.
I plan to continue to update my blog. Here's the address for the website if you want to check it out:
Art in the Arboretum came and went, and I have to say it far exceeded my expectations. Easily worth getting up at 5:30 to be there by 8:00 (in 40-degree weather) to set up my booth, which was sandwiched between a trio of potters and another painter.
Shortly after the event got rolling, I was approached by a group of judges who were each holding clipboards.
"Greensboro Beautiful," the first judge began, "is proud to award you first prize for Best in Show at this year's Art in the Arboretum!"
I couldn't believe it. My first show and I took first prize.
I had a steady flow of people through my booth and received visits from friends and really sweet people from my mother-in-law's office. It was especially nice to see my sister and her husband, who traveled nearly and hour and a half to see the show.
I sold nine works of art. It was unbelievable.
Next up is the Moses Cone Cancer Center event. I'm excited about this one, too.
I've had this idea for a painting rolling around in my head for some time. I finally took some time to do it. I like the way it turned out, but I plan on refining it and maybe making the birdcage a different color than the off white I used. I think I'll call this 'Birdcage on Green.'
The colors are actually much more vibrant than what shows up in this photo. I have terrible lighting where I paint.
If it dries in time, I'll have this painting to show at the Art in the Arboretum on Oct. 2.
As I mentioned in an earlier post, I need to get busy with painting for an upcoming art show. I was picked by a group of judges associated with the local beautification committee to take part in an arts and crafts show. "Art in the Arboretum" is an annual event where local artists can show off their talents and work to each other and the public (art can also be bought at the event). The show is attended by hundreds of people throughout the Triad. And if I remember correctly, there is a bit of judging that takes place during the event, with cash prizes awarded to the top three artists. I truly am honored to have been picked to participate in this show. It takes place on Oct. 2, from 12-5 pm. Tell your friends and come on out.
On the more stressful side of things, I really have to get to work coming up with paintings. At the moment, I only have about 10 - 12 completed paintings to show for. That's where these pears come in: I was able to do this painting in a day. It's a small painting -- 8"X8" -- and I like it. I might do another with only one pear.
I am also working on another bird painting, but with a bit of a twist. I hope to have two or three of those in time for the show. In all, I'd like to have as many as 20 pieces of art to show at the Art in the Arboretum.
This is a painting I did to be raffled off at The Business Journal's Fast 50 event on Sept. 22. It's called "Smooth Sailling." I like this one fine, although I am not convinced this is the best 'boat' painting I can do. Also, this is likely the last painting I'm doing for a Business Journal event. I've really appreciated the exposure, but I need to devote more time to doing work for an up coming art show.
I do like the water and sky relationship. As much as I might not like the actual boats, I really like the calmness of the painting, overall.
I'm very nearly finished with a triptych for the new cancer center at Wesley Long Hospital. Several months ago, I was asked by a woman who serves on the board of directors for Moses Cone Health if I would submit a prototype of a bird painting to be exhibited at the new cancer center. She liked my original bird paintings (enough to buy one herself), but wanted the prototype to reflect nature, family, community; to help heal and "to make you smile." She also wanted more birds in the painting.
So, I submitted an idea to her and, a couple of months later, I received a call telling me the painting idea was a hit. However, they wanted me to make it a triptych. And it needed to be done in a month.
Well, here it is: 25 birds of varying sizes and shapes on the three panels. The piece is six feet wide, which easily makes it the largest project I've done.
I now have to send a photo of the painting to the woman with Moses Cone Health. The photo will be printed in a catalogue to be distributed to people who will be attending a gala event and fundraiser for the cancer center. The tryptic will be priced and (hopefully) sold. The cancer center will then pay me for the painting and keep the work of art at the center.
I don't know if I'm invited, which is fine either way. I like the idea of a lot of people seeing my work. I do hope to see where it winds up being displayed. I've been told it will probably go into the break room for doctors and nurses.
I was asked by a co-worker to do a painting for her. I'm cool with birds and doing a pretty good job with apples. But she wanted something that reminded her and her husband of their honeymoon to Saint Lucas. Something with boats and the ocean.
This is what I came up with. To date, this has been the most challenging painting I've done. I knew immediately how I wanted to do it, but the colors and the mountain gave me fits. Also, I wrestled with where to draw the line at how complicated I wanted to make the painting. I tried adding reflections of the boats and was really unhappy with how those turned out, so I repainted the water for a third time.
In the end, I'm really happy that I kept it more simple, giving very little detail to the boats, mountain and sky.
Kimberly and I spent part of our long Fourth of July weekend returning to a project we'd kicked around a bit a month or so ago. We still had this stack of old Reader's Digest covers that we'd planned to use for bird-related art. So we spent a few hours cutting stencils and painting birds. I must say, having Kimberly's input proved valuable. Many of her suggestions improved the look of the book covers and will also make future book-bird artwork easier.
We made 13 of them. Seeing them spread across our dinner table made for a delightful scene. They all looked so nice. Then we asked ourselves, "Wouldn't these look even better framed?" We set out to find some frames that would have a look appropriate for these pieces of art. It needed to be rustic, whimsical, natural, shabby chic and inexpensive.
We found nothing in a store that matched these prerequisites. So we made the frames. We had a bunch of perfectly aged wood leftover from a fence we had in the backyard. I did the miter cuts and we pieced them together to create frames that were just right for the book birds.
Sorry for the long delay between posts. Been busy working on a boat painting.
In preparation for The Business Journal's Healthiest Employers awards ceremony, I decided to do another apples painting that could be sold at the event. The original was to be raffled. I found recreating the original to be quite difficult and somewhat aggravating. I painted over and repainted the apples several times before I reached a point with which I was satisfied. However, the time it took to reach that point prevented me from having the painting finished in time for the awards ceremony.
I look at the second apples painting and think about how hard this painting was to finish. I think it's just easy to paint things the first time, mostly because I'm surprised I'm able to do it at all. Once I've done a painting -- whether it's apples, birds or windmills -- I have something to measure it against, thereby setting a bar for my painting ability. I struggled a bit to come to terms with the fact that the differences between one painting to another is what makes them original works of art.
The original painting, which I call "Five Green Apples," was won by a woman in Greensboro. She said, "The apples were a very appropriate theme since I work in crop protection." Unfortunately, no one took a photo of her and her winnings.
I was on a late wedding anniversary trip to Baltimore.
On another note, I think I have properly made a change to the set up of this blog that will enable anyone to comment. So anyone out there who wants to comment, please do. Especially those folks in Germany and Canada. Let me know what you think.
The next Business Journal event is giving me a break from the birds. Our marketing director asked me to do another painting to be raffled for the "Healthiest Employers" event in late June. The theme is apples.
I'm doing this painting upstairs (not in the basement) and I'm finding things dry quickly -- almost too quickly. I've already had issues with not being able to blend colors. I have, though, enjoyed being able to use highlights and shadows to give details and add dimension to the apples.
Lots of changes to report. First, I have a new easel. Kimberly found a great looking tall easel (pictures to come later) at an antique store. Now I can do big paintings without having to turn them on their sides.
Second, I'm moving out of the basement....mostly. My new easel won't fit in my cave-like dwelling, so I'll be working in the dining room, with lots more light. Don't know if I'll change the name of my blog.
Third, I have an Etsy site where I have art for sale. If you go over a little to the right and down, you'll see a few of my favorite links. One of them will take you right to my Etsy store.
As if to signal my move to a sunnier spot, I did this painting of two bluebirds sharing some berries. I wrestle a lot with the color yellow. It's hard to get a color that's not too bright, but not too gold. I think I like what I managed.
I actually started this painting months ago. I didn't like the original background color, which was a really harsh yellow, so I tried a sort of fig, or brown, color. That did little to please me, so I set aside this painting to try again later.
Someone recently mentioned to me about an artist who works with stain glass. One of his pieces is of birds on a wire. I was then reminded of my incomplete painting of birds on a wire. When I set the painting on the easel it seemed obvious to me: paint the background blue.
The Business Journal today held its annual Women in Business Awards ceremony. One of my bird paintings, which I have titled, "Red Bird on Green," was raffled. The winner was Heather from a biotech firm in Winston-Salem. Since she might not want her name and employer on the Internet, I'm leaving it at that.
The reviews of the painting were overwhelmingly positive and I was both relieved and thrilled. In fact, I was asked by a couple of women in attendance to do a painting for each of them. I believe that's called being commissioned.
Even though the paint was still wet on one of my paintings, I took three of them to Adelaide's Corner Cottage on Spring Garden Street in Greensboro. Adelaide, the owner, said she would hang them together on a wall in the garden section of her store.
A number of customers who were in the store were enthusiastically complimentary when I brought in the paintings.
They are for sale, so go buy one.....or all of them. Thank you to Adelaide for letting me put the paintings in her shop. It's a great place to shop for antiques, oddities, shabby chic accessories and paintings of birds.
Adelaide's is at 1938 Spring Garden St. in Greensboro. Her store is open Tuesday through Saturday.
Kimberly raided the free books section at Edward McKay's Used Books and came home with a box full of old Readers Digests. She really liked the designs on the hardback covers and thought they could be used for something, though she didn't know what.
Well, why not paint on them. I did these using a stencil and acrylic paints. The birds are the design that was already on the cover.
Just a bit of news for anyone who might care: Where I work -- The Business Journal -- is having a major event that awards the area's top women in business. It's called, "Women in Business Awards." The marketing for this year's award presentation involves a design with birds. I was asked if I would contribute a painting to be raffled.
I'm jumping at the opportunity. In fact, in hopes of making a really big impression, I'm contributing one of my bird paintings, like the one in the About the Bird post below. More than 300 people will see my paintings. Maybe someone will like them enough to commission me to do more.
This will take place in late April.
On another front, thanks to the marketing efforts of my wife, the owner of a shabby-chic accessories/antiques store wants to sell my paintings. "Birds are in demand," she says. "Please bring them to my store!"
Here is my basement studio, complete with hazards. I fear that one day I'll trip over something and fall into one of my paintings. I've already banged my head on a nail and spent the next hour bleeding and trying to not fall asleep.
Nearly 20 years ago, I drove across the country to San Diego and back. I spent a fair amount of time in the deserts of Arizona and New Mexico, mostly by choice. The desert has its fair share of life-threatening issues, but nothing can compete with the level of beauty it possesses.
There is nothing in the way -- the sky starts on one side of the road and ends on the other. The sheer vastness and openness of the place gave me comfort.
It's a feeling I try to recreate with my paintings of windmills and barns. This is the first of at least three I plan to paint. I was very pleased with the drama and emotion of this painting -- a certain warmth to the end of a long day, and a nagging apprehension about a change in the weather on the horizon.
One of the best things about creating artwork on a computer is the ability to easily change colors, arrangements and size without having to redraw, repaint or risk ruining the original. With my simple bird design I was able to easily change the background color and create a blueprint for a series of paintings. As much as I enjoy the original version of the bird painting (with green background), I enjoy the series of three even more.
Nearly seven years ago, I started a painting of a fishing port. As it does with so many enjoyable things, life stepped in and stood between me and the canvas. Life also yanked my paintbrush from my hand and ate it. It then sucked dry every oil paint tube I had. Eventually, life would also sell my tall easel at a yard sale. But I kept the unfinished painting and stored it away in the attic.
Years later, my desire to paint was rekindled. I believed I had earned life's respect and was now in a better position to negotiate my time. And so, with a $300 A.C. Moore giftcard in hand, I would replenish my oil painting supplies. I was intent on finishing my fishing port painting.
Life shrugged and basically agreed to let me keep my supplies, but refused to relinquish my time. My unfinished fishing port painting rested in the attic, while $300 worth of art supplies sat in a tackle box in the basement.
Two more years would pass before I would announce to my wife, "I want to paint."
"You should," she said, "right after you list stuff on Craigslist."
I did just that. My wife also said I should set up my easel in the dining room. However, I knew what would happen: My easel would sit unused. I would grow frustrated with seeing the paints, canvas, brushes and easel and not being able to use them. It would get in the way and, eventually, it would all be moved: First, into the corner, then into the closet; then to the basement.
I decided to save myself some frustration and clear out a space in our dark, cold, dirty and damp basement.
I have finished my fishing port painting: It's a beautiful scene of simple paradise. Not quite like my basement.
|
tomekkorbak/pile-curse-small
|
Pile-CC
|
Introduction {#s1}
============
The detection of discomfort in others can engender a variety of behavioral responses. For instance, distressed conspecifics can prompt vigilance towards a threat, such as an approaching predator, that is not perceived directly [@pone.0004387-Mateo1], [@pone.0004387-Baack1]. Another example includes the role of infant vocalizations in provoking parental care toward their immediate needs [@pone.0004387-Ehret1], [@pone.0004387-DAmato1]. Moreover, social interactions with a distressed conspecific can activate brain regions that are responsive to a direct experience with threatening stimuli [@pone.0004387-Knapska1].
Detection of distress is also a necessary aspect for social learning. In nature, social learning can confer a substantial benefit, allowing an individual to identify cues that are predictive of a salient situation without directly experiencing the potential threats [@pone.0004387-Choleris1]--[@pone.0004387-Olsson1]. However, social learning often entails the transfer of additional information between individuals, typically related to the performance of operant tasks. Such tasks can include techniques to obtain food [@pone.0004387-Zentall1]--[@pone.0004387-Carlier1] or manoeuvres to avoid predators [@pone.0004387-Kavaliers1], [@pone.0004387-Kavaliers2]. Thus, social learning can require a variety of functions, including an ability to perceive distress in others, recognizing when environmental cues co-occur with social distress, and executing a behavioural sequence that minimizes exposure to the indirectly perceived threat (see Ref. [@pone.0004387-Galef2] for a review). Importantly, distinct biological factors may contribute to each of these abilities. In the present study, we focused specifically on the process by which a mouse acquires fear in relation to a stimulus that is predictive of distress in others, irrespective of its subsequent ability to avoid a threatening situation.
Several definitions of socio-emotional processing, exemplified by the detection and emotional response to discomfort in others, are strikingly similar to perspectives on empathy. Lipps\' classical conception of *einfühlung* or 'feeling into' [@pone.0004387-Lipps1] was translated to 'empathy,' a term that has since been expanded and refined [@pone.0004387-Preston1]. Contemporary definitions of empathy continue to maintain a primary role for affective reactivity to others; the generation of an affective state more appropriate to the situation of another compared to one\'s own [@pone.0004387-Hoffman1]. In this regard, a recent study demonstrated that mice respond differentially to the level of distress experienced by a nearby conspecific, a finding that was interpreted as a basic form of empathy [@pone.0004387-Langford1]. However, more developed forms of empathy may be required for social learning. For instance, the experience of conspecific discomfort might influence how a mouse subsequently responds to the environmental cues that predict this distress. Furthermore, although association studies in humans have suggested a genetic contribution to empathic processing [@pone.0004387-Farrow1], it remains unknown whether genetic factors directly influence receptivity to discomfort in others.
We addressed these possibilities in the present study by using a modified cue-conditioned fear paradigm that has been used extensively to elucidate fear circuitry within the mammalian brain [@pone.0004387-LeDoux1], [@pone.0004387-Fanselow1]. A standard fear conditioning procedure entails presenting an animal with a neutral stimulus, such as a tone (conditioned stimulus, CS), that is forward paired with exposure to an aversive stimulus, such as an electrical shock (unconditioned stimulus, UCS). Upon repeated administration of the paired CS-UCS, a fear response is acquired, which is expressed as freezing in response to presentation of the CS-only. This freezing response is indicative of fear [@pone.0004387-LeDoux1] and may be adaptive within natural contexts [@pone.0004387-Marks1]--[@pone.0004387-Kuzyk1].
Studies of social learning typically employ the terms '*demonstrator*' and '*observer*' to denote an individual the actively participates in a task versus an individual that learns through social observation, respectively. However, consistent with the empathy literature, we decided to use the terms '*object*' and '*subject*', which bare similarity to the demonstrator--observer nomenclature, but do not imply that individuals perform an operant task. We adopted a protocol that included a series of observation ('pre-exposure') sessions in which subjects experienced object mice that were repeatedly exposed to a tone forward paired with a shock ([**Figs. 1a--b**](#pone-0004387-g001){ref-type="fig"}). Using this approach, we asked whether the experience of objects undergoing a CS-UCS contingency could subsequently modify subject responses to presentation of the CS-only and to the CS-UCS. Freezing does not require the acquisition of an ability to perform a specific operant task, thereby allowing for more direct comparisons to the large body of data regarding fear learning [@pone.0004387-LeDoux1], [@pone.0004387-Fanselow1]. Furthermore, we compared mice from the BALB and B6 strains because they express substantial differences in adolescent social motivation [@pone.0004387-Panksepp2], [@pone.0004387-Panksepp3], which may be associated with the ability to process social information [@pone.0004387-Eisenberg1].
{#pone-0004387-g001}
Results {#s2}
=======
BALB mice acquire freezing responses to a CS-UCS contingency more rapidly than B6 mice {#s2a}
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
To assess how exposure to social distress subsequently influences freezing behavior, it was first necessary to evaluate the freezing responses of BALB and B6 mice to direct presentation of the CS (see [**Fig. 1f**](#pone-0004387-g001){ref-type="fig"}) and the paired CS-UCS (see [**Fig. 1c**](#pone-0004387-g001){ref-type="fig"}). When test mice were placed individually in a fear-conditioning arena and they were presented with the CS-only (the CS was 30-s tone) for 10 consecutive trials, their freezing responses were minimal and strain-independent ([**Fig. 2a**](#pone-0004387-g002){ref-type="fig"}; effect of genotype, F[@pone.0004387-Mateo1], [@pone.0004387-Farrow1] = 1.60, P = 0.22), indicating that presentation of the CS was not salient without conditioning. When test mice were assessed during the first 28 s of a CS that was forward paired with a UCS (the UCS was a 2-s shock) for 10 consecutive trials, test mice from both strains expressed longer freezing responses across successive conditioning trials ([**Fig. 2b**](#pone-0004387-g002){ref-type="fig"}). However, with repeated trials a strain difference emerged, as BALB mice froze for longer periods of time than B6 mice on trials 5--10 (genotype×trial interaction, F[@pone.0004387-Zentall1], [@pone.0004387-Farrow1] = 3.53, P = 0.009).
{ref-type="fig"} for the inter-rate reliability) and are presented as the mean±s.e.m.](pone.0004387.g002){#pone-0004387-g002}
Pre-exposure of BALB and B6 mice to distressed conspecifics has a differential influence on subsequent freezing behavior to both the CS-only and the paired CS-UCS {#s2b}
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
We next compared the freezing responses of BALB and B6 subject mice after they had experienced unfamiliar objects receive repeated forward-pairings of the CS with the UCS. Prior to testing, two subjects were placed individually into observation compartments facing the fear-conditioning arena (i.e., the demonstration compartment) that contained objects ([**Figs. 1a--b**](#pone-0004387-g001){ref-type="fig"}). After habituation to the demonstration compartment (see [**Materials & Methods**](#s4){ref-type="sec"}), objects received 20 trials (10 trials/session, 1 session/day) of the paired CS-UCS contingency ([**Fig. 1c**](#pone-0004387-g001){ref-type="fig"}). During these 'pre-exposure' trials, subjects could hear the CS, but did not directly experience the UCS. Approximately 15 min after the second pre-exposure session, freezing responses of subjects were evaluated in the fear-conditioning arena. In this testing phase of the experiment, the freezing behavior of subjects was measured in response to 5 consecutive CS-only presentations followed by 5 consecutive presentations of the CS forward paired with the UCS. Thus, freezing during test trials 1-6 occurred in response to presentation of the tone-only, whereas freezing on test trials 7-10 occurred in the context of direct presentation of the tone-shock contingency. Although the sex of the subject mice was included in all analyses of freezing behavior, no significant effects were found and this independent variable is therefore not considered further.
B6 subjects expressed longer freezing responses than BALB subjects after exposure to objects receiving the CS-UCS contingency ([**Fig. 3a**](#pone-0004387-g003){ref-type="fig"}; effect of subject genotype, F\[1,124\] = 53.8, P\<0.0001). CS-only trials (trials 1-6) elicited freezing by B6 subjects for 13.5±1.28% of the time (mean±s.e.m.) compared to 3.0±0.67% of the time for BALB subjects (orthogonal contrast, P\<0.001). B6 subjects therefore expressed enhanced freezing in response to the CS even though they had not directly experienced the CS-UCS association themselves. These B6 subjects also exhibited enhanced fear learning (trials 7-10) relative to BALB subjects (orthogonal contrast, P\<0.001). After 4 direct experiences with the CS-UCS (trial 10 in [**Fig. 3a**](#pone-0004387-g003){ref-type="fig"}), the freezing responses of B6 subjects (93.7±1.66%) were longer than those of experience-matched BALB subjects (73.0±4.06%) and of object-inexperienced B6 mice (42.7±5.89%; trial 5 in [**Fig. 2b**](#pone-0004387-g002){ref-type="fig"}).
{#pone-0004387-g003}
To further characterize the enhanced freezing responses of B6 subjects, we pre-exposed subject mice of both strains to objects that received different combinations of the CS and UCS ([**Figs. 1d--f**](#pone-0004387-g001){ref-type="fig"}; subject genotype×object condition interaction, F\[3,124\] = 6.24, P = 0.0006). In an initial control experiment, object mice were exposed to the CS and UCS, but the conditioning stimuli were not paired ([**Fig. 1d**](#pone-0004387-g001){ref-type="fig"}). Even after pre-exposure to objects experiencing this [un]{.ul}paired CS-UCS, B6 subjects expressed longer freezing responses than BALB subjects ([**Fig. 3b**](#pone-0004387-g003){ref-type="fig"}) during several of the CS-only (orthogonal contrast, P = 0.03) and paired CS-UCS (orthogonal contrast, P\<0.001) test trials. In a second control experiment, we compared the freezing responses of subjects after they experienced object mice receive the UCS-only ([**Fig. 1e**](#pone-0004387-g001){ref-type="fig"}). B6 subjects again expressed longer freezing relative to BALB subjects ([**Fig. 3c**](#pone-0004387-g003){ref-type="fig"}) in response to presentation of the CS-only (orthogonal contrast, P = 0.003) and the paired CS-UCS (orthogonal contrast, P\<0.001). Consistent with a non-associative influence of UCS presentation on fear responses [@pone.0004387-hman1], [@pone.0004387-Smith1], these findings indicate that B6 freezing is amplified by the experience of object distress regardless of its precise relationship to the CS. Importantly, however, B6 freezing responses after pre-exposure to objects receiving the paired CS-UCS contingency were more robust than after they experienced the other pre-exposure conditions (subject genotype×object condition×trial type interaction, F\[9,118\] = 2.59, P = 0.009; orthogonal contrast for the paired CS-UCS object condition vs. all other object conditions, P\<0.0001). Furthermore, after pre-exposure to object mice receiving the CS-only ([**Fig. 1e**](#pone-0004387-g001){ref-type="fig"}), subjects from both strains did not express a freezing response to the CS (orthogonal contrast, P = 0.43) and their responses to the paired CS-UCS were also similar ([**Fig. 3d**](#pone-0004387-g003){ref-type="fig"}; orthogonal contrast, P = 0.48).
To determine whether subject mice from either strain responded to objects as they received the UCS, we monitored subjects in another experiment *during* presentation of the UCS to object mice. When objects received the UCS, subjects from both strains oriented towards the demonstration compartment ([**Fig. 4a**](#pone-0004387-g004){ref-type="fig"}). However, neither BALB nor B6 subject mice expressed freezing responses immediately after objects received the UCS ([**Fig. 4b**](#pone-0004387-g004){ref-type="fig"}; effect of genotype, F[@pone.0004387-Zentall1], [@pone.0004387-Carlier1] = 1.12 P = 0.42). Although we did not quantify this response, it is also worth noting that during many trials of the pre-exposure sessions both BALB and B6 subject mice exhibited a brief eye-closure response that was coincident with object distress.
{#pone-0004387-g004}
Pairing of object 'distress' vocalizations with the CS during pre-exposure sessions enhances B6 freezing to subsequent presentation of the CS {#s2c}
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Although visual and somatosensory information could not be transmitted between the objects and subjects during the pre-exposure sessions (see [**Materials & Methods**](#s4){ref-type="sec"}), object distress could have been communicated through auditory or olfactory cues. In fact, object mice consistently emitted audible vocalizations in response to the UCS ([**Table 1**](#pone-0004387-t001){ref-type="table"}). To assess the role of these 'distress' vocalizations, we pre-exposed BALB and B6 subjects to recordings of vocalizations of objects receiving the UCS ([**Fig. 5**](#pone-0004387-g005){ref-type="fig"}) forward paired with the CS (10 trials/session, 1 session/day). Twenty trials of this contingency was sufficient to reproduce the strain difference in subject freezing, particularly on test trials involving the CS-only ([**Fig. 6**](#pone-0004387-g006){ref-type="fig"}; genotype×conditioning context interaction, F\[2,56\] = 2.11, P = 0.05).
{#pone-0004387-g005}
{#pone-0004387-g006}
10.1371/journal.pone.0004387.t001
###### Descriptive statistics for object distress vocalizations.
{#pone-0004387-t001-1}
-------------------- -----------------
Vocalizations/UCS 7.7±0.56 calls
Duration 221.0±170.43 ms
Dominant frequency 19.5±17.55 kHz
Bandwidth 57.0±14.57 kHz
-------------------- -----------------
Vocalizations were recorded from 20 different pre-exposure sessions and sonograms were generated for each respective UCS presentation (10/session). Data are presented as the mean±std. dev.
Heart rate is responsive to both self-distress and social distress and to cues that predict these states {#s2d}
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Physiological parameters, such as heart rate (HR) and skin conductance, provide an additional perspective into the sensitivity of individuals to their own distress and the distress of others [@pone.0004387-hman1], [@pone.0004387-Levenson1]. We employed radiotelemetry (see [**Materials & Methods**](#s4){ref-type="sec"}) to monitor the HR of mice either as they experienced the CS-UCS contingency directly or while objects underwent conditioning with the CS-UCS during pre-exposure sessions. The baseline HR of test/subject mice during different phases of these experiments are presented in [**Table 2**](#pone-0004387-t002){ref-type="table"} (maximum percent-changes in HR from baseline ranged from +6.4% to −15.0%). During habituation to the conditioning compartment, a single direct experience of the UCS resulted in elevated output from the heart in both BALB and B6 mice (maximum HR increase±s.e.m.; +40±8 and +23±9 bpm for BALB & B6 mice, respectively), which peaked ≈120 s after the UCS was applied ([**Fig. 7**](#pone-0004387-g007){ref-type="fig"}). Repeated presentation of the CS-UCS contingency directly to BALB test mice engendered progressive HR deceleration ([**Fig. 8a**](#pone-0004387-g008){ref-type="fig"}, maximum HR decrease±s.e.m.; −78±13 bpm), whereas B6 test mice experienced an initial HR increase, which peaked prior to the second conditioning trial (+32±15 bpm), followed by a HR deceleration that reached a maximum during the sixth conditioning trial (−78±15 bpm). The HR of B6 mice returned to its preconditioning level by the final conditioning trial ([**Fig. 8a**](#pone-0004387-g008){ref-type="fig"}). During testing, which entailed 5 successive CS-only trials, HR deceleration in both BALB and B6 test mice (−78±29 and −40±9 bpm for BALB & B6 mice, respectively) reached a maximum during the second test trial before returning to baseline levels by the final test trial ([**Fig. 8b**](#pone-0004387-g008){ref-type="fig"}). B6 freezing was longer than BALB freezing on all of the CS-only test trials ([**Fig. 8c**](#pone-0004387-g008){ref-type="fig"}), indicating that B6 mice had stronger fear responses than BALB mice upon 'recall' of the CS-UCS association.
{ref-type="fig"} and [9](#pone-0004387-g009){ref-type="fig"} were treated in the same way during the habituation period, and were therefore pooled for graphical presentation and analysis (N = 24 mice/genotype; age = 7--13 wks). Each data point represents a 10-s bin. HR is presented as a change (Δ) from the baseline HR of each mouse (see [Table 2](#pone-0004387-t002){ref-type="table"}). All data presented as the mean±s.e.m.](pone.0004387.g007){#pone-0004387-g007}
{ref-type="table"}). (c) Conditioned freezing responses of mice during presentation of the CS-only (N = 9 subjects/genotype; age = 12--13 wks). Asterisks represent significant (P\<0.05) HR differences between BALB and B6 mice. Numeric symbols represent significant (P\<0.05) differences in freezing between BALB and B6 mice. Behavioral data were scored in duplicate by 2 independent raters and all data are presented as the mean±s.e.m. Inter-rater reliability, r~p~ = 0.90, d.f. = 74.](pone.0004387.g008){#pone-0004387-g008}
10.1371/journal.pone.0004387.t002
###### Baseline heart rates of test/subject mice during different phases of the conditioning protocol.
{#pone-0004387-t002-2}
BALB/cJ C57BL/6J
------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------ ------------
Habituation ([Fig. 7](#pone-0004387-g007){ref-type="fig"}; test/subject mice) 686±11 bpm 754±8 bpm
Conditioning ([Fig. 8](#pone-0004387-g008){ref-type="fig"}; test mice) 700±13 bpm 745±16 bpm
Testing ([Fig. 8](#pone-0004387-g008){ref-type="fig"}; test mice) 705±24 bpm 776±15 bpm
Conditioning ([Fig. 9](#pone-0004387-g009){ref-type="fig"}; subject mice) 671±14 bpm 761±5 bpm
Testing ([Fig. 9](#pone-0004387-g009){ref-type="fig"}; subject mice) 674±22 bpm 760±16 bpm
Baseline heart rates of test/subject mice were calculated from a 90-s period that occurred immediately before the beginning of each habituation, conditioning/pre-exposure and testing period. Each of these periods began 20 min after a mouse was placed in the conditioning apparatus. There were no within-strain differences in baseline heart rate across different phases of the conditioning protocol. A previously described strain difference in baseline heart rate [@pone.0004387-Depino1] was found during all phases of the experiments (P\<0.01). Data are presented as the mean±s.e.m.
In another set of experiments, we monitored the HR of BALB and B6 subject mice as they experienced objects being exposed to the CS-UCS. During the early portion of these pre-exposure sessions, the HR of BALB and B6 subjects accelerated ([**Fig. 9a**](#pone-0004387-g009){ref-type="fig"}; +35±8 bpm and +12±4 bpm for BALB & B6 subjects, respectively). However, the HR of BALB subjects returned to baseline levels by the final conditioning trial, whereas the HR of B6 subjects decelerated (−48±10 bpm) below its starting level. During the CS-only trials of the testing session, the HR of BALB and B6 subjects gradually diverged ([**Fig. 9b**](#pone-0004387-g009){ref-type="fig"}), and a strain-dependent difference was evident by the fifth CS-only trial. Importantly, the strain-dependent difference in freezing to presentation of the CS was reproduced on all test trials ([**Fig. 9c**](#pone-0004387-g009){ref-type="fig"}). It is also noteworthy that, irrespective of the conditioning context (i.e., direct conditioning of test mice or pre-exposure of subject mice to objects receiving conditioning), HR deceleration during conditioning was always associated with pronounced freezing responses during the subsequent CS-only test trials.
{ref-type="table"}). (c) Conditioned freezing responses of subjects during presentation of the CS-only (N = 15 subjects/genotype; age = 7--9 wks). Asterisks represent significant (P\<0.05) HR differences between BALB and B6 subjects. Numeric symbols represent significant (P\<0.05) differences in freezing between BALB and B6 subjects. Behavioral data were scored in duplicate by 2 independent raters and all data are presented as the mean±s.e.m.. Inter-rater reliability, r~p~ = 0.94, d.f. = 143.](pone.0004387.g009){#pone-0004387-g009}
Social investigation and social reward differ between BALB and B6 mice {#s2e}
----------------------------------------------------------------------
The finding that B6 freezing was sensitive to conspecific distress, but BALB freezing was not, is remarkable because mice from these strains also differ in adolescent social motivation [@pone.0004387-Panksepp2], [@pone.0004387-Panksepp3]. Using a social investigation (SI) paradigm, we found that the magnitude of SI by early-adolescent B6 mice was greater than that of age-matched BALB mice towards a novel F1 conspecific (similar to the object mice used during the pre-exposure sessions of the earlier experiments), although this strain difference was not maintained through late adolescence ([**Fig. 10a**](#pone-0004387-g010){ref-type="fig"}; genotype×age interaction, F\[2,48\] = 6.50, P = 0.01). Furthermore, B6 mice expressed a socially conditioned place preference (SCPP) throughout early and late adolescence ([**Fig. 10b**](#pone-0004387-g010){ref-type="fig"}). By contrast, BALB mice were indifferent to social opportunities at both stages of adolescent development (effect of genotype, F\[1,48\] = 8.77, P = 0.005; genotype×age interaction, F\[2,48\] = 0.01, P = 0.91).
{ref-type="sec"}). The asterisks represent significant (P\<0.05), planned orthogonal contrasts between BALB and B6 mice. All data are presented as the mean±s.e.m.](pone.0004387.g010){#pone-0004387-g010}
Social isolation suppresses the influence of object distress on B6 freezing {#s2f}
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Our findings suggest that B6 mice might be more sensitive to manipulations of their social environment than BALB mice. To test this idea, we conducted an experiment in which subjects were isolated 24 h prior to being exposed to objects (to increase social motivation during the pre-exposure sessions; see Ref. [@pone.0004387-Panksepp4]). The freezing responses of B6 subjects during testing were sensitive to social isolation, particularly during CS-UCS test trials, whereas BALB freezing did not change as a function of social isolation ([**Fig. 11**](#pone-0004387-g011){ref-type="fig"}; subject genotype×housing condition interaction, F\[1,96\] = 7.60, P = 0.007). Thus, the enhanced B6 freezing response following pre-exposure to distressed conspecifics was sensitive to the social housing conditions that preceded testing.
{ref-type="fig"}, the data were pooled for graphical presentation and statistical analysis. Social isolation did not alter the freezing responses of BALB subjects, but it depressed fear acquisition to presentation of the paired CS-UCS in B6 subjects (N = 20 subjects/genotype; age = 7--8 wks). Socially housed B6 subjects expressed longer freezing responses than all other groups on trials 7-10 (P = 0.006). Asterisks represent significant differences between socially housed B6 subjects and all other groups as assessed by a Bonferroni step-down procedure on a trial-by-trial basis (*∝* = 0.013 for trials 7-10). All data were scored in duplicate by 2 independent raters and are presented as the mean±s.e.m. Inter-rater reliability (not including pooled data from [Fig. 3a](#pone-0004387-g003){ref-type="fig"}), r~p~ = 0.94, d.f. = 547.](pone.0004387.g011){#pone-0004387-g011}
Discussion {#s3}
==========
During the present studies, a learning process was engaged as subject mice experienced conspecifics in distress. Following pre-exposure to objects that underwent CS-UCS conditioning, B6 mice expressed freezing responses to the CS-only (test trials 1-6), whereas B6 mice that were pre-exposed to non-distressed objects did not respond appreciably to presentation of the CS. Thus, B6 subjects acquired a classical conditioning (Pavlovian) association, which engendered a freezing response that was dependent upon the previous experience of distress in nearby conspecifics. This social learning process was not evident in BALB mice; they did not freeze in response to the CS-only after pre-exposure to distressed objects. CS-induced freezing after Pavlovian conditioning is thought to reflect a state of fear [@pone.0004387-LeDoux1], [@pone.0004387-Fanselow1]. The augmented freezing response of B6 subject mice on test trials 1-6 therefore represents the social transfer of fear from objects to subject.
Following pre-exposure to distressed object mice, B6 subjects also expressed enhanced acquisition of conditioned fear (relative to other groups) during the test trials in which they were directly exposed to the paired CS-UCS contingency (test trials 7-10). This enhanced B6 freezing response during CS-UCS conditioning may reflect a persistence of the effect that was evident on test trials 1-6. Alternatively, enhanced B6 freezing during the CS-only and CS-UCS test trials may be due to an independent influence. For example, while the longer freezing responses of B6 mice on trials 1-6 is mediated by the passive transfer of fear from objects to subject, enhanced B6 freezing on trials 7-10, by contrast, could reflect the combined influence of this effect and individual learning, or it could be attributable to a distinct process, such as social facilitation of individual learning. Importantly, we also do not yet know whether the enhanced B6 freezing response occurs specifically to presentation of the CS, or whether it also depends on concurrent recognition of it\'s own spatial position relative to the appropriate (contextual) environment.
The enhanced B6 freezing response (relative to BALB mice) was not directly related to a difference in the ability to learn associations or to orient to distressed objects. These observations indicate that there may be strain-dependent differences in the emotional responses of mice to social distress. In this regard, a basic form of empathy (i.e., emotional contagion) was recently identified in mice [@pone.0004387-Langford1]. In these experiments, subject writhing behavior in response to pain was modulated by the degree of concurrent writhing generated by nearby objects [@pone.0004387-Langford1], analogous perhaps to infectious crying among babies [@pone.0004387-deWaal1]. While our results are similar to the demonstration of emotional contagion in mice, they also bare important differences. First, the subject mice in the present experiments expressed minimal freezing behavior immediately after the induction of object distress. Moreover, freezing responses of the subject mice tested here were measured when objects (and their associated distress cues) were not present in the testing arena. Thus, the augmented freezing behavior of B6 subjects in the present experiments is not directly attributable to a difference in emotional contagion. Lipps (1903) characterized empathy as a process by which "the perception of an emotional gesture in another \[*object*\] directly activates the same emotion in the perceiver \[*subject*\], without any intervening labelling, associative or cognitive perspective-taking processes" (passage quoted from ref. [@pone.0004387-Preston1], pp. 2; bracketed italics added by us). Using this definition, empathy may be widespread among mammalian species [@pone.0004387-deWaal1]. In this regard, the enhanced responses of B6 mice to CS presentation, without any previous experience of self-distress in relation to the CS, may result from an association between the CS and the embodiment of others\' distress.
The capacity to learn associations between emotions in others and the cues that predict these states may be a developmental substrate for the emergence of more sophisticated forms of empathy [@pone.0004387-Eisenberg1]. The ability to rapidly learn an associative relationship through the experience of others\' distress has been demonstrated by studies in which mice learn to avoid predatory flies [@pone.0004387-Kavaliers1], [@pone.0004387-Kavaliers2], [@pone.0004387-Kavaliers3]--[@pone.0004387-Kavaliers5]. In these studies, mice displayed conditioned hypoalgesia and active burying responses upon exposure to non-biting (altered) flies if they had previously observed a demonstrator self-burying 24 hours earlier to avoid biting flies. This burying response is particularly interesting because it was not evident in naïve mice that were exposed to altered flies [@pone.0004387-Kavaliers1] nor did observer mice bury themselves when demonstrators were concurrently exposed to biting flies [@pone.0004387-Kavaliers2]. Thus, while the increased pain tolerance of observer mice in this paradigm was dependent on the experience of demonstrators being bitten (presumably mediated through several senses), their learned active avoidance (burying) response was additionally contingent upon visual detection of a demonstrator actively burying itself in bedding to escape the biting flies [@pone.0004387-Kavaliers1], [@pone.0004387-Kavaliers2]. Our findings demonstrate that mice can acquire salient, emotional information from conspecifics even when they cannot observe the object\'s behavioral response to the UCS. Importantly, empathy does not require performance of a specific behavioral response. Thus, while B6 subjects expressed enhanced freezing responses following pre-exposure to object distress, we cannot rule out the possibility that BALB mice may also express empathy. Empathy in BALB mice may be manifest through behavioral responses other than CS-induced freezing, may be manifest only at a physiological level, or may occur under different conditions, such as experiencing distress in objects that are more familiar (e.g., see Refs. [@pone.0004387-Langford1], [@pone.0004387-Kavaliers5]).
The human empathy literature consistently reports positive correlations between measures of empathic responsiveness and personality-trait indices of sociability [@pone.0004387-Eisenberg1]. It is thus interesting that B6 mice exhibit high levels of sociability, social motivation and social reward relative to BALB mice. Previous studies have demonstrated that adolescent B6 mice express pronounced levels of social investigation [@pone.0004387-Panksepp2], prefer areas where conspecifics are located [@pone.0004387-Moy1], [@pone.0004387-Sankoorikal1] and return to environments where social experiences have occurred [@pone.0004387-Panksepp3]. By contrast, BALB mice have been found to be much less responsive, or even averse [@pone.0004387-Sankoorikal1] to similar social opportunities. Although general measures of sociability have been associated with empathy in humans, an interesting possibility arising from these studies is that individuals who are more likely to derive reward from a social interaction may also be more prone to embody the emotional responses of others.
The HR changes that occurred in BALB and B6 subjects during the pre-exposure sessions to distressed objects are also consistent with features of human empathy. During the pre-exposure sessions, both BALB and B6 subjects initially oriented towards objects receiving the UCS and exhibited an initial increase in HR, but they did not freeze. The HR of B6 subjects then decelerated during repeated experiences of object distress. This finding is similar to patterns that have been described in children who self-report empathic feelings in relation to the experience of distress in others [@pone.0004387-ZahnWaxler1]. Importantly, although there was a general association between test/subject mouse HR deceleration during self/object conditioning and subsequent freezing to the CS-only (B6 subjects, and BALB and B6 test mice froze, while BALB subjects did not), the magnitude and timing of the HR deceleration was not precisely related to the duration of the subsequent freezing response. Additional studies are required to determine the sympathetic versus parasympathetic contribution to HR deceleration during the experience of self-distress and others\' distress, and whether this HR deceleration is a necessary feature of fear learning.
Overall, our paradigm bears face and construct validity with contemporary views of empathy [@pone.0004387-Lipps1]--[@pone.0004387-Hoffman1], [@pone.0004387-Farrow1], [@pone.0004387-ZahnWaxler2]. Animal models that deconstruct empathy into a collection of endophenotypes can facilitate discovery of its underlying biological substrates. Moreover, employing such an approach in mouse genetics could be highly relevant to identifying susceptibility factors for psychosocial disorders, such as autism.
Materials and Methods {#s4}
=====================
Ethics statement {#s4a}
----------------
All animal care and experimental protocols were conducted in accordance with the regulations of the institutional care and use committee at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the NIH *Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals* (ISBN 0-309-05377-3). Personnel from our own laboratory carried out all aspects of the mouse husbandry under strict guidelines to insure careful and consistent handling of the mice.
Mouse husbandry and housing {#s4b}
---------------------------
Mice from the BALB/cJ (BALB) and C57BL/6J (B6) strains were purchased from Jackson Laboratories (Bar Harbor, ME) and bred within our colony at the University of Wisconsin (Madison, WI) under tightly controlled temperature (21±1°C), humidity (50--60%) and lighting (14∶10 h light/dark, dark period from 1130--2130) conditions. New mice were routinely introduced to the breeding colony and brother-sister matings were not conducted. Mice were maintained under specific-pathogen free conditions and housed in standard polypropylene cages (290×180×130 mm) that contained 1/8″ grain-size corncob bedding (The Andersons) and nesting material (Ancare Corp.) with *ad libitum* access to food (Teklad Rodent Diet, Harlan) and water. Pregnant females were isolated 10--15 days post-coitus and pups were weaned on postnatal day (PD) 20--21 (day of birth = PD 0). Subjects were weaned into mixed-sex social groups containing 4 age-matched cage mates, with 1 mouse/sex from each strain. Subject mice were housed in these mixed-strain social groups to give them experience with mice of another genotype and to reduce the influences of BALB- and/or B6-specific group structure on individual behavior. Objects were derived from reciprocal F1 crosses between BALB and B6 mice and were housed in mixed-sex social groups of 3--5 individuals/cage.
Fear-conditioning apparatus {#s4c}
---------------------------
The fear-conditioning arena, which was fabricated from ABS plastic and Plexiglas^®^, contained a 'demonstration' compartment (130×165×150 mm) and two adjacent 'observation' compartments (65×82.5×75 mm per observation compartment). The floor and one wall of the demonstration compartment were lined with a shock grid composed of stainless steel dowels (3.2 mm diameter) spaced 9.6 mm on center. A wall, consisting of two sets of horizontal steel dowels extending vertically 75 mm from the floor, separated the observation and demonstration compartments. This wall allowed subjects to smell and hear objects, but eliminated direct contact with the objects or the UCS (see [**Figs. 1a--b**](#pone-0004387-g001){ref-type="fig"}). Scrambled current was provided to the dowels lining the demonstration compartment, but not to those lining the observation compartments. Within the observation compartments, floors were lined with inactive stainless steel dowels and a plastic wall separated each observation compartment. The CS was a 30-s tone (1 kHz, 85 dB) delivered through Dell^®^ computer speakers. The UCS was a scrambled, 2-s electrical shock (0.5 mA) delivered by a Coulbourn^®^ Precision Animal Shocker (Model H13--15).
Fear-conditioning procedures {#s4d}
----------------------------
All behavioral experiments were conducted under dim red illumination (30--40 lx) during the dark phase of the light-dark cycle (1300--2100). Cages containing the subjects and objects were transported from the mouse colony ≈5 m across a dimly lit intervening room to a procedure room \>30 min prior to the beginning of all phases of the conditioning protocol (see below). For most experiments, subject mice lived together for 2--4 weeks prior to conditioning. Individual subjects were habituated to the fear-conditioning arena for a 5-min period of free-exploration followed by presentation of a single 2-s UCS (see Ref. [@pone.0004387-Preston1]) prior to being returned singly into a clean cage. After completion of the habituation sessions for 2 subject mice, 2 age-matched objects were randomly selected from a cage and placed together in the demonstration compartment. We decided to use 2 objects instead of one to enhance the influence of social distress. Then, the 2 subjects, which included same-sex individuals from different strains, were placed separately into the observation compartments. Home cages that contained the remaining subjects and objects were removed from the procedure room while their cage mates were pre-exposed to object mice receiving conditioning.
Object mice received 10 consecutive 120-s trials under one of several conditioning schedules (see [**Figs. 1c--f**](#pone-0004387-g001){ref-type="fig"}), while subjects remained in adjacent observation compartments, but did not receive the UCS. Following the first pre-exposure session, subjects and objects were re-grouped within their respective home cage. The next day subjects received another pre-exposure session as objects underwent another series of 10 conditioning trials. Following the second pre-exposure session, each subject was placed singly into a clean cage and one cage was transported to a holding room adjacent to the procedure room. Subjects were tested ≈15 min after the second pre-exposure session in a randomized order. Testing entailed placing an individual subject in the fear conditioning arena and exposing it to five 120-s, CS-only trials (trials 1-5) followed by five 120-s trials with the CS-UCS presented in a paired fashion (trials 6-10). All testing sessions were videotaped with a 3CCD digital video camera (GL2, Canon Inc., Japan). Recordings were transferred via a firewire cable directly to a Dell™ Pentium® IV desktop computer and stored for subsequent analysis.
The small size of the observation compartments that were used in these experiments made it difficult to accurately measure the freezing behavior of subject mice. Thus, for the experiments presented in [**Figure 4**](#pone-0004387-g004){ref-type="fig"}, freezing responses of subjects to object distress were evaluated within an enlarged observation compartment fitted to the size of the demonstration compartment (130×165×150 mm). Subjects were habituated to this observation compartment for 10 min (without objects present) on the day prior to testing. On the day of testing, two F1 objects were placed in the demonstration compartment and 1 subject was placed in the observation compartment. Object mice received a 2-s shock every 120 s.
For experiments that involved social isolation (see [**Fig. 11**](#pone-0004387-g011){ref-type="fig"}), subjects were placed individually into a clean home cage 24 h prior to habituation to the demonstration compartment. Socially housed controls were placed as a group into a clean home cage 24 h before their habituation session. The mice used in this experiment were previously evaluated for SI and SCPP (see [**Fig. 10**](#pone-0004387-g010){ref-type="fig"} and below), and these individuals were the only mice that were assessed behaviorally more than once. The conditioning apparatus was always cleaned thoroughly with 70% ethanol before introducing new subjects/objects to the conditioning apparatus.
Vocalization recording {#s4e}
----------------------
Mouse vocalizations were recorded during 20 different pre-exposure sessions. An ultrasound microphone (UltraSoundGate model CM16, Avisoft Bioacoustics) was inserted through a 30-mm diameter opening (75 mm above the shock grid on center) in the Plexiglas® wall of the demonstration compartment enclosure. Vocalizations were collected with an UltraSoundGate 116 acquisition system and the Avisoft-Recorder v.2.97 (Avisoft Bioacoustics), and stored as wav files for subsequent analysis. Sonograms were generated for each conditioning session and evaluated (SASLab Pro v.4.39, Avisoft Bioacoustics) for the following vocalization parameters: total number (audible and ultrasonic), duration, mean dominant frequency, and bandwidth.
Vocalization-playback experiments {#s4f}
---------------------------------
Recordings of object vocalizations during UCS presentation were reproduced for subjects through an ultrasound-capable speaker (UltraSoundGate ScanSpeak, Avisoft Bioacoustics) situated in the demonstration compartment. To obtain recordings of vocalizations without enclosure-induced distortions, 2 F1 mice (1/sex) were tethered to an open shock grid and exposed to the UCS (see [**Fig. 5**](#pone-0004387-g005){ref-type="fig"}). Fifteen representative recordings were sampled from this pair of mice. During the pre-exposure sessions, subjects were exposed to 10 consecutive CS-vocalization forward-pairings per session (randomly selected vocalizations were paired with the CS without substitution during each pre-exposure session). Vocalizations were played back at 85--92 dB. Thus, subjects were exposed to the distress vocalizations of object mice, but were not exposed to objects directly. Following the second pre-exposure session, subjects were assessed in a manner consistent with the previously described testing protocol. The freezing responses of subject mice from this experimental group were compared to responses of groups of additional subjects that either were exposed to objects receiving no conditioning or paired CS-UCS presentation during conditioning.
Heart rate monitoring {#s4g}
---------------------
A radiotelemetric transponder (G2-HR E-Mitter®) was surgically implanted into the peritoneum under isoflurane anesthesia according to manufacturer\'s instructions (Respironics Inc.). Positive and negative leads ran subcutaneously rostral from the transponder, and were affixed to the pectoral/chest muscles with stainless steel sutures (34-gauge). Surgical wounds were closed with polydioxanone sutures (5-0; PDS II, Ethicon Inc.) and cyanoacrylate (Krazy® Glue). Mice were treated postoperatively with a topical 4% (w/w) lidocaine cream (Ferndale Laboratories Inc.) and 0.25% (w/v) bupivicaine HCl (0.1 ml s.c.) for pain management. Mice were allowed to recover for 7--14 days following the surgery. At the beginning of the experiments, the weight of each mouse was either equal to or greater than their respective preoperative weight.
### Habituation of test/subject mice {#s4g1}
Individual mice were placed within the demonstration compartment, above a telemetry receiver, and left undisturbed for 20 min. A single 2-s UCS was then delivered to the subject mouse and HR was monitored for 5 min post-UCS.
### Conditioning/pre-exposure sessions {#s4g2}
For the experiment presented in [**Figure 8**](#pone-0004387-g008){ref-type="fig"}, individual test mice were placed in the 'demonstration' compartment, acclimated for 20 min and then conditioned directly with the paired CS-UCS. For the experiment presented in [**Figure 9**](#pone-0004387-g009){ref-type="fig"}, an individual subject was placed within a randomly selected observation compartment and acclimated for 20 min on the telemetry receiver while 2 novel, age-matched objects (one F1 mouse/sex) were present within the demonstration compartment. Object mice were then exposed to 10 consecutive CS-UCS forward-pairings separated by 90-s intervals. Unlike other experiments where 2 subjects were concurrently pre-exposed to object distress, HR was measured from a single subject per pre-exposure session because the telemetry receiver was only capable of monitoring the signals from one transponder at a time.
### Testing {#s4g3}
A single test/subject mouse was placed in the demonstration compartment and left undisturbed for 20 min on the telemetry receiver. Each mouse was then exposed to 5 consecutive presentations of the CS-only spaced by 90-s intervals.
Signals from the transponders were sampled from mice at 10-s intervals throughout all phases of the conditioning protocol. Per the manufacturer\'s recommendation, raw signals were subjected to the boxcar (buffer size = 120) and exponential (exp. = 4) filters prior to data analysis (VitalView v.4.1, Respironics Inc.) Following completion of the 20-min period that preceded each phase of the experiments, baseline HR for each subject was derived from the first 90 s of HR data. Data in [**Figures 7**](#pone-0004387-g007){ref-type="fig"} **--** [](#pone-0004387-g008){ref-type="fig"} [**9**](#pone-0004387-g009){ref-type="fig"} are presented as deviations from this baseline measurement.
Behavioral measurements of conditioned fear {#s4h}
-------------------------------------------
Freezing behavior was operationally defined as the complete absence of movement, other than normal respiratory activity. The duration of freezing behavior was recorded over the period of testing when the CS was administered. Two independent observers made the behavioral measurements using computer-assisted software (ButtonBox v.5.1, Behavioral Research Solutions). Inter-rater reliabilities were ≥0.90, with no significant variation between different experiments (the inter-rater reliability of each experiment is presented in the legend of its respective figure). Mean values from the duplicate measurements were used for all data analysis and graphical presentations. Percent-freezing measurements were generated by dividing the raw freezing data either by 30 s (for trials 1-5) or 28 s (for trials 6-10), respectively. Note that freezing on trial 6 was in response to presentation of the CS-only because the UCS was not applied until the final 2 s of the trial.
Social conditioned place preference procedure {#s4i}
---------------------------------------------
Juvenile mice (PD 20/21) were weaned into a mixed-sex, mixed-strain social group of 4 mice (1 mouse/sex/strain) and housed together for 24 h on corncob bedding with nesting material. On the next day, groups of mice were re-housed as a social group in a novel, home cage environment that contained either aspen shavings (Nepco, Northeastern Products Corp.), two threaded schedule 40 1″ PVC couplers and nesting material [or]{.ul} paper bedding (Cellu-Dri™ Soft™, Shepherd Specialty Papers), two unthreaded schedule 40 1″ PVC couplers and nesting material. Mice were first housed as social groups in one of the environments for 24 h and then each mouse was socially isolated in the alternative environment for the next 24 h. Mice were alternated between social- and isolate-housing for a total of 8 days. On the final 2 days of conditioning, mice were habituated individually for 20 min to a 3-compartment testing arena (300×150×150 mm/compartment) that was fabricated from black ABS plastic prior to being placed in the new conditioning environment. No conditioning cues were present during the habituation sessions and mice could freely explore all 3 compartments of the arena by passing through small openings (50×50 mm) in the walls that separated each compartment. Habituations and testing took place during the dark phase of the circadian cycle (1600--2000) under dim red illumination (30--40 lx) and cages were transported to the procedure room \>30 min prior to habituation and testing sessions. Mice were always tested after 24 h of social isolation. For testing, individual mice were placed in the central compartment of the conditioning arena, which contained no conditioning cues. Each peripheral compartment of the arena contained one of the 2 conditioning environments (i.e., bedding and PVC tubes). The arena was covered with a transparent sheet of Plexiglas® and mice (early adolescence; postnatal \[PD\] 29--30) were videotaped for 30 min as they moved throughout the arena. Late-adolescent mice (tested on PD 48--53) remained together as a social group until conditioning, and then the husbandry schedule and conditioning procedure used for early-adolescent mice was followed. Socially conditioned place preference (SCPP) scores were calculated by subtracting the time each mouse spent in the isolation-paired environment from the time spent in the socially paired environment. The pairing of the aspen and paper environments with social and isolate housing was pseudo-randomized and counter-balanced across and within the 2 age groups. Following SCPP testing, mice were re-grouped with their former cage mates into a clean cage that contained corncob bedding and nesting material.
Social investigation tests {#s4j}
--------------------------
Twenty-four to 48 h after SCPP testing, test mice were placed alone in cages with fresh corncob bedding and remained in social isolation for 24 h prior to testing. Cages were transported to the procedure room \>30 min prior to testing and testing took place during the dark phase of the circadian cycle (1600--2000) under dim red illumination. Cage tops were removed and replaced with a transparent piece of Plexiglas® 5--10 min before testing began. Test mice were presented with a novel, age-matched F1 mouse of the opposite sex and social interactions were videotaped for 5 min. Measurements of SI entailed the total duration that the test mouse directed pro-social behaviors at the stimulus mouse, as described in more detail elsewhere (see Ref. [@pone.0004387-Panksepp2]). Early-adolescent mice were tested on PD 31--32 and late-adolescent mice were tested on PD 52--57. Sexual behaviors were not observed during interactions between early-adolescent mice, but they were observed among late-adolescent mice. Sexual behavior was not included in the composite measure of SI.
Mice tested in the SCPP and SI experiments were also used in the fear conditioning experiments that compared freezing responses of isolate- and socially housed mice (see [**Fig. 11**](#pone-0004387-g011){ref-type="fig"}). Mice tested for SCPP and SI during early adolescence remained in social housing until the beginning of the fear conditioning experiments, while mice that were tested during late adolescence were socially housed after SI testing for 1--5 days before the beginning of the fear conditioning experiments. Mice that were tested for SCPP and SI during early and late adolescence were pseudo-randomized and counterbalanced relative to their social housing condition during the fear conditioning experiments.
Statistics {#s4k}
----------
Three-, 4- and 5-factor ANOVAs where used to assess behavioral responses, with the genotype of the subjects (BALB or B6), the sex of the subjects (male or female), the conditioning schedule of the objects (paired CS-UCS, unpaired CS-UCS, UCS only or CS only), test trial (CS only or paired CS-UCS) or housing context (social or isolate) as between-group factors, and trial number as a repeated measure. Various combinations of these factors were used depending on the particular experiment. Post-hoc comparisons were carried out either with planned orthogonal comparisons or univariate F-tests that were controlled for type I error with Bonferroni corrections.
We are grateful to Drs. Carolyn Zahn-Waxler and Melissa C. Weddle for critiquing and discussing previous versions of this manuscript. We also extend special thanks to John Newton (Madison, WI) for his expertise in fabricating the fear conditioning apparatus and Bruce Kennedy for his technical assistance.
**Competing Interests:**The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
**Funding:**This work was supported by NIH grants R03HD046716, R01DA022543 and P30HD03352. J.B.P. was additionally supported by NIH training grants to the Neuroscience Training Program (T32GM07507) and the Health Emotions Training Program (T32MH018931), both at UW-Madison. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
[^1]: Conceived and designed the experiments: QC JBP GPL. Performed the experiments: QC JBP. Analyzed the data: QC JBP GPL. Wrote the paper: QC JBP GPL.
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tomekkorbak/pile-curse-small
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PubMed Central
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Charlize Theron Joins The Road
Nuclear explosions suck already, but then cannibals? Oy vey. And now, Charlize Theron? Yup, it’s true. Theron has officially joined the cast of the horror/sci-fi movie “The Road”, which will star Viggo Mortensen. The movie is a big screen adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s bestselling novel of the same name.
Story centers on a man who embarks on a nightmarish road trip after a nuclear explosion in an attempt to transport his son to safety while fending off cannibals. Aussie helmer John Hillcoat (“The Proposition”) is directing from a screenplay by Joe Penhall.
Theron will be playing Mortensen’s wife, who will be seen mostly in flashbacks. Wait, no cannibalistic Charlize Theron? What a gyp.
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tomekkorbak/pile-curse-small
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Pile-CC
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The New York Times published this chilling account of the execution of 38 Dakota men convicted of "murder and other outrages" against settlers during the U.S.-Dakota War of 1862.
THE INDIAN EXECUTIONS
An Interesting Account, from our Special Correspondent.
MANKATO, BLUE EARTH COUNTY, Minn., Friday, Dec. 26, 1862.
The Rev. Stephen Riggs
To-day has been an eventful one for this hitherto quiet little town; and a scene has been here enacted the like of which, those of us who witnessed it, desire to see again nevermore. I allude to the execution of thirty-eight of the condemned Indians, ordered by President LINCOLN to be executed for participation in the late massacres in this State.
Soon after noon on the 22d instant, Col. MILLER, of the Seventh Regiment Minnesota Volunteers, together with his Staff, some clergymen, and a few citizens of this place, visited the condemned in their cells, and informed them of their fate. Rev. Mr. RIGGS (well known to the Indians in his missionary capacity) interpreted Col. MILLER's remarks, and told the miserable men that their Great Father at Washington had ratified the action of the Military Court, and sentenced them to be hung on the following Friday, Dec. 26. They were informed that spiritual advisers, both Protestant and Catholic, were present, and would do all in their power to minister to their comfort during the few days of life still remaining for them. The letter of the President, ordering their execution, was then read in English by Adjt. ARNOLD, and repeated in the Sioux or Dacotah language by Rev. Mr. RIGGS. These communications were received with a grunt of approval, and most of the party to whom they were addressed manifested little or no interest in the matter; the half breeds gave some indications of emotion, but so slight as scarcely to be noticed. With few exceptions the whole party continued their smoking, or rubbed their killikinick between their palms, as a preparatory exercise to inserting it into their little red clay pipes. It is presumed by many that the condemned had been previously informed of the fate awaiting them, and this may, in a measure, account for their unconcern at the official announcement.
INTERVIEWS BETWEEN THE CONDEMNED AND THEIR RELATIVES.
Wednesday, the 24th, was set apart for the last meeting between the condemned and those of their relatives who were confined in the adjoining and main prison. These belonged to the original 304, found guilty, upon trial by the Military Court, and were of the number from which the President had selected thirty-nine to be executed. These latter had been selected out, and kept in separate and more secure quarters from the time when the order came for their execution. I was not present at this interview, but am informed that it was very affecting. Each Indian sent some parting word or blessing to his friends or family, and bequeathed to each some little memento, as his pipe, a little tobacco, or a lock of hair; generally much feeling was exhibited in these leave-takings, although one or two seemed perfectly hardened and indifferent. On Christmas Day another scene was enacted, similar to the one just related. The cooks and others employed to provide for the prisoners during their confinement, came to say their last "good-by" to them. Here again parting words were said, and blankets and trinkets were once more sent to relatives, overlooked in the hurry and excitement of the day before. In the evening the sacrament of baptism was solemnized by Rev. Father RAVOUX, and the other priests in change. Many of the Indians availed themselves of the opportunity to receive this Christian rite.
INTERVIEW WITH THE CONDEMNED.
On Friday morning we were permitted to visit the condemned. They were lying around the floor chained together in pairs, and as some suspicions had been aroused in the minds of the keepers, by reason of certain singular movements on Thursday night, each pair had been firmly chained to the floor. Consequently there was no moving about, their locomotion being entirely obstructed. It was a sad, a sickening sight, to see that group of miserable dirty savages, chained to the floor, and awaiting with apparent unconcern the terrible fate toward which they were then so rapidly approaching. As the hour appointed for the execution drew near, the clergymen in attendance addressed the prisoners in feeling and eloquent terms. They bade them nerve themselves for the terrible ordeal through which in a few brief hours they were to pass, and looking to the Great Spirit for aid to make a firm resolve to be brave and die nobly, like men.
In the midst of the remark of Father RAVOUX, old PTAN-DOO-TAH broke out in a most lamentable and unearthly wail; one by one took up the lay, and ere long the walls resounded with the mournful "death-song." The song seemed to quiet and soothe them, and, resuming their pipes, they all sat in sullen silence awhile, until Rev. Mr. WILLIAMSON began his address, upon which came another outburst of passionate feeling, vented in a style it has not been my lot to hear before, and to which it is impossible to do justice on paper. Soon after the addresses were concluded, the irons were removed from the limbs of the prisoners, and their arms tied behind them -- previous to which they expressed a wish (which we all gratified) to shake hands with the clergy and reporters present. The white caps were then placed upon their heads and pulled down over their faces, after which they were rolled up again so as to leave the face exposed, and now the culprits stand nervously awaiting the moment of their removal to the scaffold.
THE SCAFFOLD.
The instrument upon which the extreme sentence of the law was to be performed, was constructed in a very simple yet most ingenious manner. It was erected upon the main street, directly opposite the jail, and between it and the river. The shape of this structure was a perfect square, and not, as has been stated, a diamond. The cause of this latter error being made was because the sides of the structure was not parallel with the front line of the jail; but being built on an oblique across the roadway presented a point or angle to both the river and jail. The base of the gallows consisted of a square formed by four rough logs, one foot each in diameter, and twenty feet long. From each corner of this square rose a heavy round pole, running up to a height of twenty feet, while from the centre came another but heavier timber, rising to about the same height. At an elevation of six feet from the ground was a platform, so constructed as to slide easily up and down the corner pillars, and with a large opening in the centre around the middle mast or post. From each corner of this platform a rope or cable was fastened to a movable iron ring that slid up and down middle mast by means of a rope fastened to one of its sides. This rope was taken to the top of the mast, run through a pulley, and returned to a point between the ground and the second frame or platform, and made fast. The mechanism of the whole thing consisted in raking the platform by means of the pulley, and then making the rope fast, when by a blow from an ax by a man standing in the centre of the square, the platform falls; the large opening in its centre protects the executioner from being crushed by the fall. About eight feet above the platform, when in its raised position, was another frame similar to the ground square, morticed into the corner pillars. Into these timbers were cut notches, ten on each side of the frame, at equal distances, and a short piece of rope was passed around the beam of each notch, and tied securely. Depending from this again was the fatal noose. And now having described the scaffold as it appeared when ready for its victims, we pass to.
THE EXECUTION.
Te-he-do-ne-cha (One Who Forbids His House) was among the Dakota condemned to hang. (Image courtesy mnhs.org) At the appointed time for the execution, there were more people congregated at Mankato than ever were there before at one time. Every convenient place from which to view the tragic scene, was soon appropriated. The street was full, the house tops were literally crowded, and every available place was occupied. There were from three to five thousand persons present. The reports of a probable attempt by a mob to take possession of the remaining prisoners and inflict summary punishment upon them, induced the authorities to provide a large military force for protection. Accordingly the Sixth Minnesota, Col. AVERILL, the Seventh, Col. MILLER, and Ninth, Col. WILKIN, in all about 1,500 men, were detailed for special duty at the execution. Maj. BUELL, with a company of cavalry, did efficient service in keeping the crowd back from too close proximity to the awful scene. The infantry formed three sides of a hollow square, starting from each side of the jail, and inclosing the scaffold, the front of the jail thus forming the fourth side of the square. From the door at the extreme northern entrance to the place where the culprits were confined -- to the steps at the foot of the gallows, two companies were drawn up, one on either side, forming a gradual path through which the prisoners must pass to the scaffold. Precisely at the time announced -- 10 A.M. -- a company, without arms, entered the prisoners' quarters, to escort them to their doom. Instead of any shrinking or resistance, all were ready, and even seemed eager to meet their fate. Rudely they jostled against each other, as they rushed from the doorway, ran the gauntlet of the troops, and clambered up the steps to the treacherous drop. As they came up and reached the platform, they filed right and left, and each one took his position as though they had rehearsed the programme. Standing round the platform, they formed a square, and each one was directly under the fatal noose. Their caps were now drawn over their eyes, and the halter placed about their necks. Several of them feeling uncomfortable, made severe efforts to loosen the rope, and some, after the most dreadful contortions, partially succeeded. The signal to cut the rope was three taps of the drum. All things being ready, the first tap was given, when the poor wretches made such frantic efforts to grasp each other's hands, that it was agony to behold them. Each one shouted out his name, that his comrades might know he was there. The second tap resounded on the air. The vast multitude were breathless with the awful surroundings of this solemn occasion. Again the doleful tap breaks on the stillness of the scene. Click! goes the sharp ax, and the descending platform leaves the bodies of thirty-eight human beings dangling in the air. The greater part died instantly; some few struggled violently, and one of the ropes broke, and sent its burden with a heavy, dull crash, to the platform beneath. A new rope was procured, and the body again swung up to its place. It was an awful sight to behold. Thirty-eight human beings suspended in the air, on the bank of the beautiful Minnesota; above, the smiling, clear, blue sky; beneath and around, the silent thousands, hushed to a deathly silence by the chilling scene before them, while the bayonets bristling in the sunlight added to the importance of the occasion. At the appointed time for the execution, there were more people congregated at Mankato than ever were there before at one time. Every convenient place from which to view the tragic scene, was soon appropriated. The street was full, the house tops were literally crowded, and every available place was occupied. There were from three to five thousand persons present. The reports of a probable attempt by a mob to take possession of the remaining prisoners and inflict summary punishment upon them, induced the authorities to provide a large military force for protection. Accordingly the Sixth Minnesota, Col. AVERILL, the Seventh, Col. MILLER, and Ninth, Col. WILKIN, in all about 1,500 men, were detailed for special duty at the execution. Maj. BUELL, with a company of cavalry, did efficient service in keeping the crowd back from too close proximity to the awful scene. The infantry formed three sides of a hollow square, starting from each side of the jail, and inclosing the scaffold, the front of the jail thus forming the fourth side of the square. From the door at the extreme northern entrance to the place where the culprits were confined -- to the steps at the foot of the gallows, two companies were drawn up, one on either side, forming a gradual path through which the prisoners must pass to the scaffold. Precisely at the time announced -- 10 A.M. -- a company, without arms, entered the prisoners' quarters, to escort them to their doom. Instead of any shrinking or resistance, all were ready, and even seemed eager to meet their fate. Rudely they jostled against each other, as they rushed from the doorway, ran the gauntlet of the troops, and clambered up the steps to the treacherous drop. As they came up and reached the platform, they filed right and left, and each one took his position as though they had rehearsed the programme. Standing round the platform, they formed a square, and each one was directly under the fatal noose. Their caps were now drawn over their eyes, and the halter placed about their necks. Several of them feeling uncomfortable, made severe efforts to loosen the rope, and some, after the most dreadful contortions, partially succeeded. The signal to cut the rope was three taps of the drum. All things being ready, the first tap was given, when the poor wretches made such frantic efforts to grasp each other's hands, that it was agony to behold them. Each one shouted out his name, that his comrades might know he was there. The second tap resounded on the air. The vast multitude were breathless with the awful surroundings of this solemn occasion. Again the doleful tap breaks on the stillness of the scene. Click! goes the sharp ax, and the descending platform leaves the bodies of thirty-eight human beings dangling in the air. The greater part died instantly; some few struggled violently, and one of the ropes broke, and sent its burden with a heavy, dull crash, to the platform beneath. A new rope was procured, and the body again swung up to its place. It was an awful sight to behold. Thirty-eight human beings suspended in the air, on the bank of the beautiful Minnesota; above, the smiling, clear, blue sky; beneath and around, the silent thousands, hushed to a deathly silence by the chilling scene before them, while the bayonets bristling in the sunlight added to the importance of the occasion.
AFTER THE SHOCK.
At first every one seemed stupified by the sight before them, but only a moment elapsed before a low murmur ran through the crowd, and culminated in a few cheers, in which many participated whose cheeks were blanched, and eyes strained with terror; but it was the cheer of victory with them, for the murderers of their fathers, and mothers and children had received their merited punishment. One little Hungarian boy, by the gallows, had lost his father and mother at the hands of the savages, and he shouted aloud "Hurrah, hurrah!" for he saw the murderer among the prisoners, and rejoiced in his fate.
I neglected to say that nearly all these Indians were painted up in war style, and were hung in their blankets. The half-breeds wore citizens' dress. As they marched from the prison to the scaffold all joined in wailing and singing, and hopped along on one foot. Those professing to be Christianized sang:
"I'm on the iron road to the spirit land," while the "bucks" sang a war song.
THE BURIAL.
The physicians having announced life extinct, the bodies were roughly cut down, and all buried in one large hole in a sand-bar in the river.
REPRIEVE.
The order of the President condemned thirty-nine Indians to suffer the death penalty. Just previous to the execution, however, Gen. SIBLEY reprieved, or rather respited the sentence of TA-TAY-ME-MA, for the following reasons: He was very old, and was convicted on the evidence of two German boys, one of whom said the Indian shot his mother, and the other that he killed a German at Beaver Creek while he was on his knees in the act of prayer. It has since been proven to the General's satisfaction that the man who committed these acts has not been captured, but is now with LITTLE CROW at Devil's Lake.
NAMES OF THE EXECUTED INDIANS.
Ta-ta-ka-gay (Wind Maker) was implicated in the death of Amos W. Huggins, a teacher at La Qui Parle. (Image courtesy mnhs.org) 1. 1. Ta-he-do-ne-cha , (One who forbids his house.)
2. Plan-doo-ta, (Red Otter.)
3. Wy-a-tah-ta-wa, (His People.)
4. Hin-hau-shoon-ko-yag-ma-ne, (One who walks clothed in an Owl's Tail.)
5. Ma-za-bom-doo, (Iron Blower.)
6. Wak-pa-doo-ta, (Red Leaf.)
7. Wa-he-hua, _____.
8. Sua-ma-ne, (Tinkling Walker.)
9. Ta-tay-me-ma, (Round Wind) -- respited.
10. Rda-in-yan-ka, (Rattling Runner.)
11. Doo-wau-sa, (The Singer.)
12. Ha-pau, (Second child of a son.)
13. Shoon-ka-ska, (White Dog.)
14. Toon-kau-e-cha-tag-ma-ne, (One who walks by his Grandfather.)
15. E-tay-doo-tay, (Red Face.)
16. Am-da-cha, (Broken to Pieces.)
17. Hay-pe-pau, (Third child of a son.)
18. Mah-pe-o-ke-na-jui, (Who stands on the Clouds.)
19. Harry Milord, (Half Breed.)
20. Chas-kay-dau, (First born of a son.)
21. Baptiste Campbell, _____.
22. Ta-ta-ka-gay, (Wind Maker.)
23. Hay-pin-kpa, (The Tips of the Horn.)
24. Hypolite Auge, (Half-breed.)
25. Ka-pay-shue, (One who does not Flee.)
26. Wa-kau-tau-ka, (Great Spirit.)
27. Toon-kau-ko-yag-e-na-jui, (One who stands clothed with his Grandfather.)
28. Wa-ka-ta-e-na-jui, (One who stands on the earth.)
29. Pa-za-koo-tay-ma-ne, (One who walks prepared to shoot.)
30. Ta-tay-hde-dau, (Wind comes home.)
31. Wa-she-choon, (Frenchman.)
32. A-c-cha-ga, (To grow upon.)
33. Ho-tan-in-koo, (Voice that appears coming.)
34. Khay-tan-hoon-ka, (The Parent Hawk.)
35. Chau-ka-hda, (Near the Wood.)
36 Hda-hin-hday, (To make a rattling voice.)
37. O-ya-tay-a-kee, (The Coming People.)
38. Ma-hoo-way-ma, (He comes for me.)
39. Wa-kin-yan-wa, (Little Thunder.)
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Divesting Of Kruger’s Cash (Updated)
Freshman Sen. David Carlucci, one of 17 Senate Democrats who received campaign contributions from Sen. Carl Kruger during the 2010 election cycle, is getting rid of that money after learning of the federal corruption charges lodged against his colleague earlier today.
“It is unfortunate that these types of allegations have clouded the legislature, tainting the hard working men and women who work diligently and honorably to serve their constituents,” Carlucci said in a statement.
“I ran on a platform of ethics reform and these unsavory allegations are just another example of why ethics reform in Albany needs to be addressed immediately. The people of New York deserve better. In light of these allegations, I will be donating the $5,000 given to me during my campaign from Senator Kruger to a charitable organization in my district.”
All told, Kruger, a prodigious fundraiser who had close to $1.9 million in his campaign committee, “Friends of Carl,” as of Jan. 15, doled out $49,000 to fellow senators this cycle, according to campaign finance records on file at the state Board of Elections. He also gave $450,000 to the DSCC.
Sen. Gustavo Rivera, who received $2,500 from Kruger, was the first lawmaker to announce he would divest himself of the scandal-scarred Brooklyn lawmaker’s contributions. Now, apparently, all four of the Independent Democratic Conference members – Carlucci, Diane Savino, Jeff Klein, and Dave Valesky – are following suit.
UPDATE: DSCC spokesman Josh Cherwin says:
“We will not be returning these funds, which were contributed during a previous election cycle and already spent.”
“This is yet another sad day for New York residents who rightfully expect integrity and accountability from their elected officials.”
“During the last election cycle, Senator Kruger’s campaign committee contributed a combined total of $8,000 to Independent Democratic Conference members. We decided to donate that amount to charitable organizations in our communities. We believe this to be the best use for this money.”
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Tolerability of statins is not linked to CYP450 polymorphisms, but reduced CYP2D6 metabolism improves cholesteraemic response to simvastatin and fluvastatin.
Statin therapy, although generally well tolerated, leads not infrequently to significant subjective and at times objective adverse effects (AEs), mainly of a muscular nature. The genetic background of these AEs is not clear and possibly side effects and lipid lowering efficacy may be linked. Aim of the study was a detailed evaluation of CYP450 and apolipoprotein E gene polymorphisms in two large series of age-sex matched patients with and without muscular side effects to statins. In a Clinical Institution specialised in lipid-lipoprotein disorders, 50 statin treated patients were selected, with subjective or objective statin-associated myopathy, evaluated using standardized forms. These were sex and age matched with 50 statin-treated patients from the same Clinic, without any subjective or objective complaints. DNA samples for the evaluation of CYP450 genetic polymorphisms and apo E genotypes were collected in order to assess correlations with both genetic polymorphisms and AEs, as well as with therapeutic efficacy. None of the assessed CYP450 polymorphisms appeared to be related to an increased incidence of AEs. The CYP2D6 *1/*4 and *4/4* poor metabolizer (PM) status was associated to a higher efficacy of statins metabolized by this system and, in addition, the apo E2 genotype was, in this series, linked to increased HDL-C levels after therapy. Patients with statin associated myopathy are not characterized by significantly different genotypes for the CYP450s responsible for statin metabolism. On the other hand, CYP2D6 PM status is associated to an increased efficacy of statins metabolized by this system.
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PubMed Abstracts
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Preloaded, the indie team behind The End and zOMT have teamed up with the Science Museum to create a series of games aimed at school-goers, to ask questions about the role of science in our future. Called Futurecade, it’s a collection of four arcade games, each loosely themed to a direction in which technology is taking us. And one of them is properly great. Think about that a moment – an educational game aimed at teenagers that’s good.
You’ve got Bacto-Lab, using E.coli to splice together various proteins, Robo-Lobster in which, well, robot lobsters diffuse bombs, Cloud Control where you make the clouds all shiny to reflect light, and Space Junker, in which you are tasked with clearing junk from the paths of satellites.
Of these, I implore you to give Bacto-Lab a go. It’s a really splendid spin on a number of arcade beginnings, in which you must successfully swoop around a screen of careering blocks of DNA, collecting the correct ones in a specific order. With a splendidly rapid difficulty curve, the cunning twist here is moving – done by holding the left mouse down and dragging the cursor – causes DNA to be drawn magnetically toward you. If you can collect all the shapes in a sequence in order without letting go of the mouse button you get a bonus. But of course this means you’ll be pursued by all the blocks you don’t want to gather. Trying to balance aiming for a bonus, with the need to successfully complete chains to add to your remaining time, makes it tactically interesting, and incredibly moreish. (Yes, I’ve decided it’s okay to say “moreish” again.)
Robo-lobster had less appeal for me. You’re surviving for as long as you can as an increasingly dense volley of bombs comes your way, with your lobsters being taken out as you fail to keep up. This has the effect of making the game less fun to play the longer you last, since it’s clearly never going to be possible to remove seven bombs with two lobsters, so you end up futilely picking off what you can to little sense of success, until eventually your harbour is destroyed. Respawning lobsters would have made all the difference here.
Cloud Control takes its cues from the likes of Flight Control, but here you’re controlling boats, instructing them to circle moving clouds (the whole thing about boats being on the sea, clouds in the sky, never seems to get covered), while avoiding the larger ships that sail through. It’s a pretty tricky challenge, although oddly here the respawning nature of your boats ends up making it feel a peculiar exercise. Peculiarly enough, I think this game would have benefited from not having your units respawn, as being down to one vessel wouldn’t take away the fun of playing, and would give you a shorter, sharper high score chase.
Finally, Space Junker takes the familiar arcade thrust mechanic, and makes it all the trickier by working in reverse. Grabbing junk in the path of satellites is pretty tricky, and succeeding is very rewarding. It’s a tough game, and definitely the second best of the bunch.
On finishing a game, each will then offer some questions to ponder upon. So those robo-lobsters are designed to get us thinking about the role robots may play in our future. We’re asked, “Should we design our robots to fight for us and give them weapons? Will this keep us safe, or is it more likely to start wars? Will robots improve our live, and challenge us to discover what it is that makes us human? What tasks would you be happy for robots to do?”
This is, I would suggest, part of a wider movement in the scientific community to better communicate with the public, and seek communication in a “bottom up” rather than “top down” manner, such that the public feels aware of the process – in no small part as a reaction to the needless and destructive loss of genetic modification as an option for science, thanks to terrible communication and an uneducated press. I know all this because my wife’s doing an MSc in science communication, and I listen. Of course, the Science Museum has always been about this, and it’s great to see them not only exploring the possibilities of using gaming to communicate, but also going to a top group like Preloaded to make sure it’s done properly.
And Bacto-Lab is definitely this done properly. It’s not intended to compete with Geometry Wars – it’s a short, awesome little arcade game that keeps making me have another go.
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160 F.3d 1275
98 CJ C.A.R. 6156
Dr. Wayne ROBINSON, Curtis Battles, Wendell Miller, BarbaraOrza, and Martin Feldman, Plaintiffs-Appellants,v.CITY OF EDMOND, a municipal corporation, Bob Rudkin, in hisofficial capacity as Mayor of the City of Edmond, CharlesLamb, Gary Moore, Steve Knox, and Barry Rice, in theirofficial capacities as members of the City Council of theCity of Edmond, Defendants-Appellees.
No. 96-6399.
United States Court of Appeals,Tenth Circuit.
Nov. 6, 1998.
Micheal C. Salem, Salem Law Offices, Norman, Oklahoma (Joel L. Carson, Carson & Mueller, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, with him on the briefs), for appellants.
Laura Haag McConnell, Hartzog Conger & Cason, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma (Stephen T. Murdock, City Attorney for City of Edmond, Ryan S, Wilson, Hartzog Conger & Cason, and V. Burns Hargis, McAfee & Taft, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, with her on brief), for appellees.
Before SEYMOUR, Chief Judge, EBEL and BRISCOE, Circuit Judges.
EBEL, Circuit Judge.
1
This appeal arises from a significantly reduced award of attorneys fees in a hard-fought First Amendment case. In this case, by reducing the plaintiffs' fee request almost in half, the district court seriously undermined the important principles at stake in the Civil Rights Attorney's Fees Awards Act, codified at 42 U.S.C. § 1988 (1994). Because the reasons offered by the district court in support of its reduction of the fee request are clearly erroneous, we find that the court has abused its discretion, and we remand for further consideration.
Background
2
This case has wended its way through the courts for more than five years, with multiple disputes over attorneys fees. Because of the complexity of the fees issue here, we must reiterate much of the procedural history of the case even though the facts of the substantive dispute are fully recounted in our 1995 decision. See Robinson v. City of Edmond, 68 F.3d 1226, 1228 (10th Cir.1995), cert. denied, 517 U.S. 1201, 116 S.Ct. 1702, 134 L.Ed.2d 801 (1996).
3
This litigation began in 1993 when certain residents and business people of Edmond, Oklahoma, sued the city and its officials over the city's use of a Latin cross in the city's official seal. Edmond had adopted the seal in 1965 following a competition sponsored by the city and a local newspaper. After almost a generation of use of the Latin cross on city vehicles, city flags, city road signs and city letterheads, the plaintiffs here challenged the city's official seal on the grounds that it infringed their free exercise of religion by endorsing and compelling adherence to the Christian faith and it unconstitutionally established a religion, both in violation of the First and Fourteenth Amendments. The plaintiffs also alleged violations of the religious liberty and non-sectarian clauses of the Oklahoma Constitution, Art. I, § 2 and Art. II, § 5. Bringing suit under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, the plaintiffs sought "nominal actual damages" of at least $25 against each defendant, and declaratory and injunctive relief.
4
On various motions for summary judgment from the defendants, the district court dismissed the plaintiffs' Free Exercise Clause and related state-constitution claims, as well as the plaintiffs' claims for damages against the city officials in their individual capacities. See Robinson, 68 F.3d at 1228. However, the court scheduled a bench trial for the plaintiffs' Establishment Clause claim against the city and its officials. Following a two-day trial, the court ruled in favor of the defendants, finding that the use of the Latin cross did not violate the Establishment Clause under the test set forth in Lemon v. Kurtzman, 403 U.S. 602, 91 S.Ct. 2105, 29 L.Ed.2d 745 (1971). See Robinson, 68 F.3d at 1228.
5
After the district court's judgment, the defendants sought reimbursement from the plaintiffs for the time spent by the city's three private attorneys--$117,083 in attorneys' fees--as well as other costs, under 42 U.S.C. § 1988(b).1 The district court awarded only a small portion of this request, finding that the plaintiffs' Establishment Clause claim and the related Oklahoma Constitution claim were "not frivolous," but that the Free Exercise Clause claim was "without foundation" because the plaintiffs had conceded in their depositions that they were free to exercise their religion. On the basis of these findings, the district court awarded the defendants $2,361 in attorneys' fees incurred in defending against the Free Exercise claim.2
6
The plaintiffs first appealed the district court's substantive decision on the Establishment Clause claim, and they subsequently filed a second appeal of the attorneys' fees order. The plaintiffs did not appeal the district court's summary judgment on the Free Exercise claim or the dismissal of claims against city leaders in their individual capacities. Both appeals were consolidated in a single decision, in which we reversed the trial court. See Robinson, 68 F.3d at 1228. We concluded that under Lemon v. Kurtzman and its progeny, the city's use of the Latin cross conveyed a message that a particular religious belief was preferred. See id. at 1232-33. As a result, we found that the city's official seal violated the Establishment Clause. See id. In light of this conclusion, we held that the plaintiffs were prevailing parties under 42 U.S.C. § 1988(b), and we remanded the district court's award of attorneys' fees for "a redetermination." See id. at 1233.
7
The defendants petitioned for a writ of certiorari, which was denied over a dissent by Chief Justice Rehnquist, joined by Justices Scalia and Thomas. See City of Edmond v. Robinson, 517 U.S. 1201, 116 S.Ct. 1702, 134 L.Ed.2d 801 (1996). In his dissent, the Chief Justice said there was an important circuit split over the question of whether religious symbols in a municipal seal violated the Establishment Clause. See id. (Rehnquist, C.J., dissenting). Furthermore, the Chief Justice argued that this case presented an important question of standing in the context of an Establishment Clause claim, which the Tenth Circuit's opinion had not addressed. See id. at 1202-03, 116 S.Ct. 1702 (Rehnquist, C.J., dissenting).
8
On remand, the district court awarded the plaintiffs nominal damages of $1 against each defendant, and the court entered a permanent injunction barring the use of the Latin cross in the city's official seal. The plaintiffs also submitted an application for their attorney's fees under 42 U.S.C. § 1988(b). The plaintiffs requested $186,008.75 in attorney's fees and $3,150.80 in litigation expenses.3 In support of this request, the plaintiffs attached billing records showing that Michael C. Salem, the plaintiffs' lead attorney, had discounted his hours by 7.7 percent, leading to a total request for 1,048.4 hours at an hourly rate of $175 per hour.4 The plaintiffs also requested reimbursement for nearly 33.85 hours of time spent by a law clerk in Salem's office, at $75 per hour.
9
The defendants generally objected to this fee request as unreasonable, but they specifically articulated objections to only $43,732.50 of the fee request, leaving $142,276.25 in requested attorney's fees not separately contested. In response to the defendants' contention that the plaintiffs' attorney had engaged in "block-billing," the plaintiffs submitted the individual time slips for Salem, recounting the specific tasks he worked on each day and how much time he allotted to each task.
10
The district court rendered a total award under § 1988(b) of $105,720.89, which was well below the amount the defendants had left uncontested.5 The court said it had no doubt that Salem actually had worked all of the hours he claimed, and the court did not dispute his hourly rate of $175, although the court reduced the hourly rate of Salem's legal assistant, Vincent J. Liesenfeld. The court also found that the plaintiffs' various claims were "interrelated, ... nonfrivolous, and asserted in good faith," and that the degree of success achieved by the plaintiffs "was great." Nevertheless, the court said the plaintiffs' claim for 1,048.4 hours was unreasonable in light of the court's conclusion that this "was a fairly simple, straightforward lawsuit." The court added that it felt the amount of hours expended was excessive because of the plaintiffs' "only partial success." Furthermore, responding to the plaintiffs' argument that their fee request was reasonable in comparison to the amount of hours that had been claimed by the defendants in the defendants' earlier aborted fee request, the court held that the alleged hours expended by the defendant were also unreasonable if they were as large as asserted, and thus, defendants' hours would not provide support for plaintiffs' request. Finally, without any reference to the supplemental filing from the plaintiffs that provided evidence of the detailed billing records for Salem, the court contended that Salem's use of "block-billing" had rendered it impossible for the court "to precisely identify the hours which were excessive and duplicative." As a result of these findings, the district court applied an across-the-board cut of 45 percent in the hours claimed by the plaintiffs' attorney, reducing his compensation from 1,048.4 hours to 576.62 hours, and it reduced the hourly fee for the plaintiffs' law clerk from $75/hour to $50/hour.
11
The plaintiffs now appeal that portion of the fee award reducing the amount of hours claimed by the plaintiffs' lawyer.6 We reverse and remand.
12
I. Attorney's Fees under 42 U.S.C. § 1988(b)
13
The Civil Rights Attorney's Fees Awards Act allows a prevailing party in a civil rights case, including suits brought under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, to seek reimbursement for his attorney's fees, to the extent the fees are reasonable. See 42 U.S.C.A. § 1988(b) (West Supp.1998.).7 Although the power to award such fees is discretionary, that discretion is narrow once a civil rights plaintiff demonstrates that he is a "prevailing party." See Phelps v. Hamilton, 120 F.3d 1126, 1129 (10th Cir.1997). The implication of our cases is that when a plaintiff prevails in a civil rights suit, the plaintiff ordinarily should not have his vindication of these rights eviscerated by an obligation to pay his attorney's reasonable fees.
14
In light of the discretionary nature of the district court's decision, we review an attorney's fee award under 42 U.S.C. § 1988(b) for an abuse of discretion. See Phelps, 120 F.3d at 1129. This standard of review applies to both the court's decision to award fees in the first place and the court's determination of the amount of fees to be awarded. See Joseph A. ex rel. Wolfe v. New Mexico Dep't of Human Servs., 28 F.3d 1056, 1058-59 (10th Cir.1994). Under this standard, we may reverse a district court's underlying factual findings only if they are clearly erroneous, but we review the court's statutory interpretation or other legal conclusions de novo. See Jane L. v. Bangerter, 61 F.3d 1505, 1509 (10th Cir.1995). Finally, contrary to the defendants' assertion in this appeal, the determination of what constitutes a "reasonable" fee amount is not a factual finding insulated by the clear-error standard, but rather, the reasonableness determination is a mixed fact-law application which is itself subject to the general abuse-of-discretion standard. See id. at 1510 (holding that the abuse-of-discretion standard applies to a district court's determination of an attorney's "reasonable hours" and "reasonable hourly rate"); Smith v. Freeman, 921 F.2d 1120, 1122 (10th Cir.1990); Lucero v. City of Trinidad, 815 F.2d 1384, 1386 (10th Cir.1987); Mares v. Credit Bureau of Raton, 801 F.2d 1197, 1201 (10th Cir.1986); Ramos v. Lamm, 713 F.2d 546, 556 (10th Cir.1983).
15
In any fee request under § 1988(b), a claimant must prove two elements: (1) that the claimant was the "prevailing party" in the proceeding; and (2) that the claimant's fee request is "reasonable." See Hensley v. Eckerhart, 461 U.S. 424, 433, 103 S.Ct. 1933, 76 L.Ed.2d 40 (1983); Phelps, 120 F.3d at 1129. In this case, there is no question that the plaintiffs were the prevailing party--we held as much in our earlier reversal of the district court's first decision. See Robinson, 68 F.3d at 1233. Thus, the only question in this case is whether the plaintiffs established that their fee request was "reasonable."
16
To determine the reasonableness of a fee request, a court must begin by calculating the so-called "lodestar amount" of a fee, and a claimant is entitled to the presumption that this lodestar amount reflects a "reasonable" fee. See Pennsylvania v. Delaware Valley Citizens' Council for Clean Air, 478 U.S. 546, 563-65, 106 S.Ct. 3088, 92 L.Ed.2d 439 (1986); Cooper v. Utah, 894 F.2d 1169, 1171 (10th Cir.1990). The lodestar calculation is the product of the number of attorney hours "reasonably expended" and a "reasonable hourly rate." See Hensley, 461 U.S. at 433, 103 S.Ct. 1933; Phelps, 120 F.3d at 1131. "Once an applicant for a fee has carried the burden of showing that the claimed rate and number of hours are reasonable, the resulting product is presumed to be a reasonable fee as contemplated by Section 1988." Cooper, 894 F.2d at 1171.
17
In this appeal, the only issue in contention is the reasonableness of the hours expended by the plaintiffs' attorney. This subsidiary reasonableness inquiry is controlled by the overriding consideration of whether the attorney's hours were "necessary" under the circumstances. "The prevailing party must make a 'good-faith effort to exclude from a fee request hours that are excessive, redundant, or otherwise unnecessary.' " Jane L., 61 F.3d at 1510 (quoting Hensley, 461 U.S. at 434, 103 S.Ct. 1933). A district court should approach this reasonableness inquiry "much as a senior partner in a private law firm would review the reports of subordinate attorneys when billing clients...." Ramos v. Lamm, 713 F.2d 546, 555 (10th Cir.1983). However, "[t]he record ought to assure us that the district court did not 'eyeball' the fee request and cut it down by an arbitrary percentage...." People Who Care v. Rockford Bd. of Educ., Sch. Dist. No. 205, 90 F.3d 1307, 1314 (7th Cir.1996) (quotations omitted).
18
The Ramos court suggested that among the factors to be considered were (1) whether the tasks being billed "would normally be billed to a paying client," (2) the number of hours spent on each task, (3) "the complexity of the case," (4) "the number of reasonable strategies pursued," (5) "the responses necessitated by the maneuvering of the other side," and (6) "potential duplication of services" by multiple lawyers. Id. at 554. As part of this reasonableness determination, a district court may discount requested attorney hours if the attorney fails to keep "meticulous, contemporaneous time records" that reveal "all hours for which compensation is requested and how those hours were allotted to specific tasks." Id. at 553.
19
In this analysis, we ask what hours a reasonable attorney would have incurred and billed in the marketplace under similar circumstances. "In other words the object is to simulate the market where a direct market determination is infeasible." Steinlauf v. Continental Illinois Corp., 962 F.2d 566, 572 (7th Cir.1992). As Congress noted when it enacted the fee-shifting provision in section 1988(b), the purpose behind this measure was not to give private lawyers an unwarranted windfall, but rather to ensure compensation "adequate to attract competent counsel." See S.Rep. No. 94-1011, at 6 (1976), reprinted in 1976 U.S.C.C.A.N. 5908, 5913, quoted in Homeward Bound, Inc. v. Hissom Mem'l Ctr., 963 F.2d 1352, 1355 (10th Cir.1992). It goes without saying that if a court's compensation is not adequate to match what the market will bear for a lawyer's services, then competent lawyers will go elsewhere to offer their services. Such a result would do irreparable damage to our system of private enforcement of federal civil rights.
20
A. Simplicity of the case.
21
In the instant case, the district court offered several justifications for its reduction of the plaintiffs' fee request, but at oral argument on appeal the defendants were willing to stand behind only one of those rationales: that this case was "simple." At the heart of the district court's downward adjustment lies the court's contention that "[t]his was a fairly simple, straightforward lawsuit." The court concluded that nothing about the nature or history of the case "could reasonably justify the number of hours expended by Plaintiffs' counsel" because the case "was virtually a single-issue one."
22
The court's characterization of this case as "fairly simple" seems to derive in large part from the fact that the plaintiffs' suit arose out of a single, easily observed and quickly understood fact--the city was displaying a religious symbol in its official seal. This single fact, however, generated reams of legal analysis in a case that highlighted an important circuit split and tempted three Supreme Court justices to grant certiorari to hear it. See City of Edmond v. Robinson, 517 U.S. 1201, 1201, 116 S.Ct. 1702, 134 L.Ed.2d 801 (1996) (Rehnquist, C.J., dissenting from denial of certiorari). During the pre-trial phase of this case, there were three separate motions for summary judgment as well as a motion to dismiss, each with response briefing. There were amici briefs from two separate interest groups, the Christian Legal Society of Oklahoma and Citizens for Keeping the Cross. There were discovery battles that led to motions to compel production, to strike experts, and to limit testimony, with response briefing on each. There were depositions of all parties, including a two-day deposition of the lead plaintiff. And, the trial itself took two full days. After the initial trial, the plaintiffs had to defend against three separate applications for attorneys fees filed by the defendants, as well as an application to tax costs. On appeal, this case focused on a difficult circuit split between the Fifth and Seventh Circuits on the question of religious symbols in municipal seals. See Harris v. City of Zion, 927 F.2d 1401 (7th Cir.1991); Murray v. City of Austin, 947 F.2d 147 (5th Cir.1991). Furthermore, there were competing precedents on the issue within the Tenth Circuit itself. Compare Foremaster v. City of St. George, 882 F.2d 1485, 1491 (10th Cir.1989) (holding that it was an open factual question, which couldn't be resolved on summary judgment, as to whether the illustration of the St. George LDS temple in the city's seal had the primary effect of endorsing the LDS Church) with Friedman v. Board of County Comm'rs, 781 F.2d 777, 778, 781-82 (10th Cir.1985) (holding that the official seal of Bernalillo County, with a Latin cross and the Spanish motto "CON ESTA VENCEMOS," violated the Establishment Clause). As noted above, the split between the circuits became part of the basis for a dissent from the Supreme Court's denial of certiorari in this case. See Robinson, 517 U.S. at 1201, 1202-03, 116 S.Ct. 1702 (1996) (Rehnquist, C.J., dissenting).
23
This procedural history unequivocally demonstrates that this case was far from "simple." It was a case in which thoughtful jurists strongly disagreed. Besides the central legal issues under the Establishment Clause--an area notorious for its difficult case law--the case also involved a host of ancillary issues: individual liability of municipal officials, qualified or absolute immunity for municipal legislators, standing under Article III for plaintiffs to raise Establishment Clause claims, scope of Free Exercise rights in the context of facially non-coercive municipal conduct, attorney-client confidentiality for engagement letters, and use of experts to gauge public perceptions of religious symbols.
24
In this context, the district court's findings--that the case was "fairly simple" and that it would have been unreasonable for plaintiffs sole counsel to have spent anything more than eleven weeks of his time on this case (at 50 hours a week) from start to finish--are clearly erroneous. Because these findings undergird the whole of the district court's decision to reduce the plaintiffs' fee request, the error on these findings requires us to reverse and remand the lower court's judgment. We next address briefly the court's other rationales for its downward adjustment.
25
B. Partial success.
26
Although the district court noted that the plaintiffs had prevailed in their principal goal of removing the Latin cross from the city's official seal, the court nevertheless found that the plaintiffs had "achieved only partial success." The court appears to have concluded that it should exclude all of the plaintiffs' attorney hours associated with three unsuccessful claims: the Free Exercise Clause claim, the claim for individual-capacity liability against the city officials, and the claim for actual damages beyond merely nominal damages. This conclusion, however, is legally indefensible in light of the fact that all of the unsuccessful claims were intertwined with the successful claims through a common core of facts or related legal theories.
27
There is no doubt that a district court may reduce a lodestar calculation on the grounds that a prevailing party has achieved only partial success. See Hensley, 461 U.S. at 436-37, 103 S.Ct. 1933; Jane L., 61 F.3d at 1510. However, as the Court noted in Hensley, many civil rights suits involve multiple claims based on "a common core of facts or ... related legal theories." Hensley, 461 U.S. at 435, 103 S.Ct. 1933. In such cases, it is inappropriate for a district court to evaluate the individual claims as though they were discrete and severable. Litigants should be given the breathing room to raise alternative legal grounds without fear that merely raising an alternative theory will threaten the attorney's subsequent compensation. Instead, a court should focus on the "significance of the overall relief" that the prevailing party has won: "The result is what matters." Id.
28
We have applied the teaching of Hensley to reverse a district court's reduction of attorney's fees for a plaintiff who prevailed on a part of her Equal Pay Act claim but failed on her Title VII claims--the facts supporting the plaintiff's unsuccessful claims were part of "one bundle of proof" with the successful one, and thus the plaintiff's attorney was "entitled to be fully compensated." See Tidwell v. Fort Howard Corp., 989 F.2d 406, 412-13 (10th Cir.1993). Similarly, in another case we found that various legal theories offered by plaintiffs in a challenge against a Utah waiting period for abortions were all interrelated, and as a result, success on the basis of one theory would require attorney compensation for all the related theories. See Jane L., 61 F.3d at 1512. Finally, in one of our most recent attorney's fees cases, we rejected a Title VII defendant's appeal calling for a reduction in a fee award granted to the plaintiff because we found that the plaintiff's unsuccessful state-law contract and emotional distress claims were all "intimately related" to her successful Title VII hostile work environment claim. See Smith v. Norwest Fin. Acceptance, Inc., 129 F.3d 1408, 1418-19 (10th Cir.1997).
29
These cases demonstrate that when a plaintiff achieves the principal goal of her lawsuit, lack of success on some of her interrelated claims may not be used as a basis for reducing the plaintiff's fee award. When a plaintiff achieves most or all of what she aimed for in a civil rights lawsuit, her lawyer should receive "a fully compensatory fee." Hensley, 461 U.S. at 435, 103 S.Ct. 1933. As the Court said in Hensley, "the most critical factor is the degree of success obtained." Id. at 436, 103 S.Ct. 1933.
30
In the instant case, it was clear from the very start of litigation that the plaintiffs' principal goal was the removal of the religious emblem from the city's seal. The plaintiffs suggested as much in their complaint when their only request for money damages sought an amount of "not less than $25.00 ... for nominal actual damages." Although it is not entirely clear whether this demand should be read as requesting actual damages or nominal damages or both, it is clear that monetary relief was not a principal aim of the suit. As a result, when the plaintiffs won a permanent injunction requiring the removal of the Latin cross from Edmond's official seal, as well as nominal damages of $1 against each defendant, they won virtually everything that they sought.
31
Furthermore, those claims that were unsuccessful for the plaintiffs were all "related" because they involved a common core of facts as well as closely linked legal theories. All of the claims in this case arose out of the single fact of the city's use of a religious emblem in its official seal, and both the state-constitutional claims and the First Amendment claims tracked the same body of law.
32
There is no doubt that, as the Court said in Hensley, a fee request may be reduced when some of a plaintiff's interrelated claims are unsuccessful. See Hensley, 461 U.S. at 436-37, 103 S.Ct. 1933. But, Hensley made it abundantly clear that failure on some interrelated claims is not nearly as important a factor as the "overall relief" obtained by the plaintiff. See id. at 435, 103 S.Ct. 1933. As we said in Jane L., when a plaintiff relies on interrelated claims in support of a single outcome, failure on some of those claims does not preclude a full recovery when the plaintiff achieves the outcome that she sought. See Jane L., 61 F.3d at 1512. Hensley establishes that what matters is the result, and in the instant case, the "result" for the plaintiffs was complete vindication. In this context, it was legally incorrect for the district court to reduce the plaintiffs' fee request on the basis of the plaintiffs' "only partial success" for their interrelated claims.
33
C. Comparison with opponent's attorney hours.
34
The district court was similarly unpersuaded by the plaintiffs' attempt to justify their hours expended by comparing that figure to the number of hours expended by the defendants' lawyers. The court stated that if the defendants actually had expended anywhere near the number of hours of attorney time as suggested by the plaintiffs,8 then the amount of the defendants' hours was simply "more unreasonable" and it could not be used to "transmute the amount of time spent by Plaintiffs' counsel into something reasonable."
35
The Tenth Circuit has long accepted the proposition that one of the factors useful in evaluating the reasonableness of the number of attorney hours in a fee request is "the responses necessitated by the maneuvering of the other side." Ramos, 713 F.2d at 554. The Supreme Court has also recognized that part of an attorney's calculus of the amount of time reasonably necessary for a case is the vigor which the opponents bring to the dispute. See City of Riverside v. Rivera, 477 U.S. 561, 580 n. 11, 106 S.Ct. 2686, 91 L.Ed.2d 466 (1986) (plurality opinion) (" 'The government cannot litigate tenaciously and then be heard to complain about the time necessarily spent by the plaintiff in response.' ") (quoting Copeland v. Marshall, 641 F.2d 880, 904 (D.C.Cir.1980)); see also 2 Mary Francis Derfner & Arthur D. Wolf, Court Awarded Attorney Fees, p 16.02[b] (1997) (discussing cases that have held "the vehemence or tenacity of the opposition will justify an increase in the amount of time an attorney must necessarily--and therefore reasonably--spend in countering the opposition and winning the suit").
36
The evidence of the hours expended by defense counsel is not, of course, an immutable yardstick of reasonableness, and it may be disregarded or discounted as a comparative factor if found to be unreasonable in its own right. However, here the effort expended by the defendants suggests at least that they viewed the case as sufficiently complex and serious to warrant the expenditure of large amounts of attorney time, and it highlights the tooth-and-nail litigating approach the city used in this case. In light of this tenacious effort by the city and its lawyers, the amount of attorney time expended by the plaintiffs begins to look more reasonable, not less.
37
D. Use of "block-billing."
38
In its decision, the district court quite appropriately expressed concern about the use of "block billing" practices.9 The use of billing practices that camouflage the work a lawyer does naturally and quite correctly raise suspicions about whether all the work claimed was actually accomplished or whether it was necessary. This concern is particularly important in a situation where a party is seeking to have his opponent pay for his own lawyer's work. As we noted in Jane L., a district court does not abuse its discretion in reducing a plaintiff's fee request when the request is based on time records that are "rather sloppy and imprecise." Jane L., 61 F.3d at 1510. We have always required lawyers to keep "meticulous time records that 'reveal ... all hours for which compensation is requested and how those hours were allotted to specific tasks.' " Id. (quoting Ramos, 713 F.2d at 553).
39
In this case, however, the record before us demonstrates that the district court clearly erred when it found that the plaintiffs' lawyer had engaged in "block billing." In their initial application for attorney's fees, the plaintiffs submitted billing statements from their lawyer that itemized what tasks he performed in the case on each day, with a total amount of time billed for each day. The summaries of the tasks are quite specific, and they go beyond the kind of imprecision we criticized in Jane L. It is true, however, that these billing statements do not allocate the precise amounts of time spent on each particular task during each individual day. However, in their response to the defendants' objection to the fee request, the plaintiffs supplemented these billing statements with copies of the actual contemporaneous time slips that were the basis of the billing statements. These time slips do include the specific amounts of time allocated to each individual task.
40
On the basis of these records, it is clear that the plaintiffs' lawyer did not engage in "block billing." If the district court is concerned about identifying certain tasks that it felt were redundant or unnecessary, it had information sufficient to calculate how much time was spent on those tasks. Thus, the court's contention that it was "not possible" to identify which hours were "excessive or duplicative"10 is not supported by the record. On the other hand, the district court might properly be concerned about the difficulty of performing a meaningful analysis given the mass of records submitted to it. On remand, the district court may quite properly impose on the claimant the burden of organizing or summarizing the billing records in such a manner as to facilitate judicial review of the reasonableness of the claim for attorneys' fees.11
41
E. Defendants' failure to challenge portion of requested fee.
42
The court's award dropped the fee request from the $186,008.75 presented by the plaintiffs, and the $140,316.25 left uncontested by the defendants, to $105,720.89. The end result was a fee award that was nearly 25 percent below the unrebutted amount of the plaintiffs' fee request (and 43 percent below the original plaintiffs' request).
43
Of course, there is no question that a district court may rely on its general experience as well as its closer familiarity with a case to evaluate the parties' arguments on a fees issue. See Bee v. Greaves, 910 F.2d 686, 689 (10th Cir.1990). In this respect, a district court may well decide to go below the amount of a fee request put in controversy by the parties--in this sense, the court's discretion is not absolutely constrained by the amount of a fee request put in controversy by the parties. But cf. Cunningham v. City of McKeesport, 753 F.2d 262, 267 (3d Cir.1985) (holding that under the Third Circuit's approach, a district court has no reason to disregard uncontested affidavits filed by the fee applicant when the defendant chose not to put those amounts in controversy), vacated 478 U.S. 1015, 106 S.Ct. 3324, 92 L.Ed.2d 731 (1986), reinstated after remand, 807 F.2d 49 (3d Cir.1986). However, the fact that the district court here chose to depart significantly from the unchallenged portion of the plaintiffs' fee request, and did so only by applying a blanket reduction ratio, is a factor to consider in deciding whether the district court abused its discretion in the magnitude of the cuts ordered.
II. Hearing on fees request
44
As an independent challenge to the district court's decision, the plaintiffs contend that the court abused its discretion by failing to hold an evidentiary hearing on the attorneys fees issue and then relying on a rationale--i.e. the "fairly simple" nature of the case--that was not articulated in the defendants' briefs. This claim has no merit because the plaintiffs have been unable to point to any indication in the record that they requested a hearing. Ordinarily, a district court does not abuse its discretion in deciding not to hold an evidentiary hearing when no such request is ever made. Furthermore, many courts have long accepted the proposition that there is no need for an evidentiary hearing in a attorney's fees case when a record has been fully developed through briefs, affidavits, and depositions. See Derfner & Wolf, supra, p 18.06[a] (collecting cases).
45
In this case, the plaintiffs have failed to show that any new information they would have presented at the hearing would have been critical to the district court's consideration.12 A district court does not abuse its discretion when it fails to hold a hearing at which the parties will simply reiterate arguments they already have made in their briefs.
46
The case relied upon by the plaintiffs for their argument on this point is inapposite. See Michael A. Cramer, MAI, SRPA, Inc. v. United States, 47 F.3d 379, 380-81 (10th Cir.1995). The Cramer case involved a decision by a district court to deny a fee request just three days after the defendant had filed its opposition to the request and before the plaintiff had a chance to respond to the defendant's arguments. Id. In that posture, we held that the district court's failure to supplement the record was an abuse of discretion. See id. at 384. We do not have a similar problem in this case because the record the parties created was quite adequate to resolve the fees issue.
Conclusion
47
We REVERSE and REMAND. On remand, the district court should redetermine a reasonable attorney's fee under 42 U.S.C. § 1988(b) consistent with this opinion.
48
BRISCOE, Circuit Judge, concurring and dissenting:
49
Subject to certain caveats, I concur with the majority that the district court erred in (1) finding plaintiffs' attorney engaged in improper "block billing,"and (2) reducing plaintiffs' attorney fees based on their "partial success." I also agree that the district court properly declined to conduct an evidentiary hearing on plaintiffs' attorney fee application. In all other respects, however, I must dissent.
I. Legal Standards
50
My initial concern with the majority's opinion is the standard of review it invokes in reviewing the district court's award of attorney fees. The majority correctly observes a district court's determination of reasonable attorney fees is reviewed under an abuse of discretion standard and its subsidiary factual findings will be reversed only if clearly erroneous. See Mares v. Credit Bureau of Raton, 801 F.2d 1197, 1201 (10th Cir.1986). The majority then suggests, however, that "the determination of what constitutes a 'reasonable' fee amount is not a factual finding insulated by the clear-error standard, but rather, the reasonableness determination is a mixed fact-law application which is itself subject to the general abuse-of-discretion standard." Majority Op. at 1280-81. This new standard has no precedential authority and is contrary to the law of this circuit.
51
Although statutory interpretations and legal conclusions underlying an attorney fee award are subject to de novo review, Phelps v. Hamilton, 120 F.3d 1126, 1129 (10th Cir.1997), the assessment of the reasonableness of an attorney fee request entails no such legal analysis. To the contrary, the reasonableness inquiry is ordinarily a pure question of fact reviewed for clear error.1 United States v. Hardage, 985 F.2d 1427, 1436-37 (10th Cir.1993); American Ins. Co. v. El Paso Pipe & Supply Co., 978 F.2d 1185, 1194 (10th Cir.1992).2 A district court's reasonableness determination, therefore, is "reversible only if it is without factual support in the record, or if the appellate court, after reviewing all the evidence, is left with the definite and firm conviction that a mistake has been made." Hardage, 985 F.2d at 1436-37 (citation omitted). Although judges are not unanimous in their concepts of reasonableness, the need for uniformity in attorney fee awards is not so great as to justify "microscopic appellate scrutiny." Estate of Borst v. O'Brien, 979 F.2d 511, 514 (7th Cir.1992); see also Trimper v. City of Norfolk, 58 F.3d 68, 74-75 (4th Cir.1995) (appellate court's role in achieving uniformity is limited in attorney fee context by need to accord substantial deference to district court's factual findings of reasonableness).
52
The majority articulated the proper legal standard for calculating a reasonable attorney fee in a statutory fee-shifting context. "[W]e ask what hours a reasonable attorney would have incurred and billed in the marketplace under similar circumstances." Majority Op. at 1280. Unfortunately, the majority then injected a degree of confusion into the mix by theorizing the objective in calculating the fee "is to simulate the market where a direct market determination is infeasible." Id. at 1280-81 (quoting Steinlauf v. Continental Ill. Corp., 962 F.2d 566, 572 (7th Cir.1992)). In Steinlauf, a common fund case in which scores of attorneys sought reimbursement for fees generated in the pursuit of a securities class action taken on contingency, the court reasoned that district courts should "determine what the lawyer would receive if he were selling his services in the market rather than being paid by court order." 962 F.2d at 568. This framework cannot be employed in a civil rights statutory fee-shifting context. Such a theory would invite attorneys who normally command fees far in excess of the standard market rate for civil rights representation to bill at an inordinately high rate. More importantly, it would deprive district courts of broad discretion to make reductions for excessive billings.3
53
The following hypothetical underscores the problem. Large Firm typically represents major corporate clients in an array of transactional and litigation matters, including civil rights defense. Large Firm bills its clients at $250/hour. Although Large Firm often utilizes "scorched earth" approach in litigation, clients willingly pay all bills because of the firm's high success rate. For a variety of reasons, Large Firm decides to take individual plaintiff's civil rights case. Large Firm prevails and seeks, on behalf of its client, $250,000 in attorney fees, reflecting 1,000 hours of work at $250/hour. Despite the fact that hundreds of local civil rights attorneys could have performed similar work for half the price in half the hours, Large Firm arguably would be entitled to its full request under the Seventh Circuit's approach inasmuch as the firm's attorneys are able to command such fees in the open market. See Steinlauf, 962 F.2d at 569. That, however, is not the law in this circuit. As we explained in Beard v. Teska, 31 F.3d 942, 956 (10th Cir.1994):
54
[J]ust as lawyers are not fungible, so too legal services are not fungible. It will be recalled that the legal standard for fee awards is a prevailing market value test. And for that purpose the relevant market value is not the price that the particular lawyer chosen may be paid by willing purchasers of his or her services, but rather the price that is customarily paid in the community for services like those involved in the case at hand.
55
Only a moment's thought is need[ed] to see why that is so in the context of fee awards against an adversary. There are of course different markets for different areas of lawyer's work. Lawyers who handle home closings do not bill or receive payment at the same hourly rate as lawyers who handle major corporate mergers and acquisitions-even though each may be handling a "purchase." If the home buyer chooses to retain a merger specialist because the buyer wants to take advantage of the latter's demonstrated negotiating skills, the buyer of course is free to do so and to pay the higher tariff. But if and when it comes down to fee shifting-to imposing on the other side an obligation to pay the lawyer's fee for a legally sufficient reason-the higher cost of the merger specialist cannot properly be thrust on someone who did not, after all, make the uneconomic choice of counsel.
56
Fee-shifting statutes entitle prevailing litigants to a "reasonable"4 attorney fee, sufficiently "adequate to attract competent counsel." Homeward Bound, Inc. v. Hissom Mem'l Ctr., 963 F.2d 1352, 1355 (10th Cir.1992) (emphasis added). Such statutes do not permit an award of fees charged by "the best attorneys that money can buy" if those rates exceed the prevailing market rate for similar services.
57
The majority's reasoning might ring truer if this case involved a contract-based attorney fee award. Such awards are designed to make prevailing parties whole and the district court's role in scrutinizing the fee application is far more confined than in the statutory fee-shifting context. See United States ex rel. C.J.C., Inc. v. Western States Mechanical Contractors, Inc., 834 F.2d 1533, 1547-48 (10th Cir.1987). The Supreme Court has pointed out the striking contrast by holding fee-shifting statutes:
58
were not designed as a form of economic relief to improve the financial lot of attorneys, nor were they intended to replicate exactly the fee an attorney could earn through a private fee arrangement with his client. Instead, the aim of such statutes was to enable private parties to obtain legal help in seeking redress for injuries resulting from the actual or threatened violation of specific federal laws.
59
Pennsylvania v. Delaware Valley Citizens' Council for Clean Air, 478 U.S. 546, 565, 106 S.Ct. 3088, 92 L.Ed.2d 439 (1986).
II. Specific Components of Award
Partial Success
60
The district court's opinion is ambiguous with respect to the role plaintiffs' degree of success played in the ultimate attorney fee award. At one point, the district court notes plaintiffs achieved only partial success because they failed to show a violation of their rights under the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment and recovered only nominal damages. Appellants' Br., Ex. A. at 3. Yet later, the court describes plaintiffs' success as "great." Id. at 4. In reducing plaintiffs' attorney's requested hours, the court then states its reductions reflect time "not reasonably necessary and thus ... not reasonably expended on [the] litigation." Id. at 6.
61
If, as the majority interprets the preceding statements, the district court decreased plaintiffs' reimbursable hours based on their failure to prevail on the Free Exercise claim and recover more than nominal damages, the court abused its discretion. This case was not about money. Plaintiffs had one primary goal in bringing suit: forcing the City of Edmond to remove the Latin cross from its official seal. Plaintiffs were fully successful in that endeavor. The fact that plaintiffs achieved this result pursuant to their Establishment Clause claim rather than their alternative Free Exercise claim is irrelevant for fee purposes. A "fee award should not be reduced simply because the plaintiff failed to prevail on every contention raised in the lawsuit." Hensley v. Eckerhart, 461 U.S. 424, 435, 103 S.Ct. 1933, 76 L.Ed.2d 40 (1983).
62
If, on the other hand, the district court reduced plaintiffs' attorney fees solely as a result of their excessive request, there was no abuse of discretion. This ambiguity highlights why it is so essential that district courts articulate specific reasons for fee awards to give us an adequate basis for review. See Ramos v. Lamm, 713 F.2d 546, 552 (10th Cir.1983). On remand, the district court should make clear the specific reasons for its reductions in plaintiffs' attorney fee application.
Simplicity of case
63
In articulating its rationale for rejecting the attorney fee award here, the majority focuses primarily on its disagreement with the district court's characterization of this case as a "fairly simple, straightforward lawsuit." Although the constitutional issues raised in this action may rest outside the expertise of many practitioners, it is not "clear error" to classify the case as "fairly simple."
64
The discovery disputes the majority considers pivotal to the difficulty of the case involve three motions by defendants: a motion to compel one piece of correspondence, a motion to strike experts based on plaintiffs' failure to adhere to the court's scheduling order, and a motion in limine to exclude all testimony relating to settlement and compromise negotiations. These pleadings represented standard pretrial maneuvering. Indeed, the fact that the parties filed only three non-dispositive pretrial motions is, if anything, evidence of the simplicity of the case. Further, the litigants' decision to depose every named party in preparation for the two-day trial hardly suggests the lawsuit was atypical or particularly complex.
65
The majority also attaches considerable significance to the "reams of legal analysis" generated in the case. Some perspective, however, is necessary. First, it appears defendants filed a motion to dismiss all individual capacity claims based on qualified immunity (which was granted) and each side filed a single summary judgment motion on the merits.5 Plaintiffs' motion contained only fifteen pages of argument. Second, although two special interest groups-the Christian Legal Society of Oklahoma and Citizens for Keeping the Cross-opted to file amicus briefs, their presence does not speak to the difficulty of the case; it indicates only that they sought to influence the court's opinion. Third, the "difficult" ancillary issues the majority identifies either were not raised by the litigants (e.g., Article III standing for Establishment Clause claims), had no merit (e.g., plaintiffs' objections to defendants' qualified immunity defenses), or played, at best, a de minimis role in the case (e.g., attorney-client privilege).6
66
Finally, the fact that "thoughtful jurists strongly disagreed" over the proper outcome of the litigation does not, ipso facto, mean the case was complex. The district court observed the "case was virtually a single-issue one, as to whether the average observer, when viewing the seal in question, would perceive it as conveying or attempting to convey primarily a message of endorsing Christianity, or that Christianity is favored or preferred." Appellants' Br., Ex. A at 5 n. 2. This observation is not clearly erroneous. Just as reasonable minds may differ on the outcome of a horse race, so too may appellate courts diverge on their beliefs as to the message conveyed by a religious symbol. Chief Justice Rehnquist's dissent from the Supreme Court's denial of defendants' certiorari petition reflected his desire to create national uniformity on this issue. See City of Edmond v. Robinson, 517 U.S. 1201, 116 S.Ct. 1702, 134 L.Ed.2d 801 (1996). His dissent is not a testament to the complexity of the case.7
67
Even assuming, arguendo, this case was complex, the district court did not err in classifying plaintiffs' fee application as unreasonable. Defendants liken plaintiffs' litigation strategy to "using an atom bomb to kill a fly." Appellees' Br. at 9. I agree. Plaintiffs' attorney appears to have exercised no billing judgment in his fee application. See Ramos, 713 F.2d at 553 (court must distinguish "raw" time from "billable" time because "it does not follow that the amount of time actually expended is the amount of time reasonably expended"). Moreover, the pleadings included in the record on appeal are replete with prolix and repetitious arguments as well as innumerable extraneous materials. In the attorney fee context, there is a fundamental difference between advocacy and overkill. Plaintiffs clearly crossed that line.
68
Comparison of billings and defendants' failure to challenge portions of plaintiffs' fee application
69
The majority criticizes the district court for failing to take into account the billings of defendants' attorneys in calculating plaintiffs' fee award. We have held that "[i]n determining what is a reasonable time in which to perform a given task or to prosecute the litigation as a whole, the court should consider that what is reasonable in a particular case can depend upon factors such as ... the responses necessitated by the maneuvering of the other side." Ramos, 713 F.2d at 554. The majority acknowledges "the hours expended by defense counsel is not ... an immutable yardstick of reasonableness" and "may be disregarded or discounted as a comparative factor if found to be unreasonable." Majority Op. at 1284-85. In the next sentence, however, the majority implies "the tooth-and-nail litigating approach [defendants] used in this case" necessitates a comparison to defendants' attorneys' work. (Id.).
70
The majority has substituted its own discretion for that of the district court. The district court specifically remarked in its attorney fee order that "Defendants' reliance on the historical significance of the cross and other features of the seal in defense of Plaintiffs' Establishment Clause claim did complicate and protract the litigation." Appellants' Br., Ex. A at 5. There is nothing in the record to suggest the district court neglected to compensate plaintiffs' attorney for time spent opposing such matters. But the mere fact that one party's attorney bills for an unreasonable number of hours does not a fortiori mean his adversary's attorney can expect to be reimbursed for doing the same. As we recently pointed out in Case v. Unified Sch. Dist. No. 233, 157 F.3d 1243, 1998 WL 714055, at * 6 (10th Cir. Oct.13, 1998), "[t]o hold otherwise would allow two law firms which, although adversaries in the proceeding, were in agreement in their use of unreasonable billing practices, to force the district court to award compensation it found unreasonable."
71
Handcuffing a court from reducing a fee award below a level to which the non-prevailing party has specifically raised objections invites the same type of collusion and excesses. As long as the district court provides an adequate explanation for its calculations, see Mares, 801 F.2d at 1202-03 (describing level of detail required), a comparison between the court's award and the non-prevailing party's billings is irrelevant.
III.
72
The only basis for remanding this case to the district court is to secure a clarification of the degree of reductions made for plaintiffs' limited success and improper block billing.8 I fear the scrutiny imposed by the majority in this appeal will foster the exact type of distasteful attorney fee disputes against which both the Supreme Court and the Tenth Circuit have counseled. See Hensley, 461 U.S. at 437, 103 S.Ct. 1933; Mares, 801 F.2d at 1203. The broad discretion of district courts in fashioning attorney fee awards must be respected lest we turn every attorney fee motion into a "second major litigation." Hensley, 461 U.S. at 437, 103 S.Ct. 1933. Because I do not believe the majority opinion is faithful to this principle, I respectfully dissent.
1
The defendants sought reimbursement for 951.15 hours of work by the three attorneys and a paralegal at Hartzog Conger Cason & Hargis, at varying rates of $190/hour, $130/hour, and $115/hour
2
The court awarded reimbursement for 20.1 hours by two attorneys over one month, work that dealt solely with preparation of the summary judgment motion on the Free Exercise claim
3
The plaintiffs also requested the taxing of $6,766.66 as costs. After the defendants objected to most of these costs, the clerk of the district court taxed $4,843.99 against the defendants. Neither party has appealed this decision, and thus, the amount of taxable costs is not before us
4
In all, plaintiffs' attorney discounted 33.5 hours from his time for the fee request, 15.5 hours from his time for legal research, 14.5 hours from his time for drafting, 12.9 hours from his time reviewing files and other documents, and 10.8 hours from his time for travel and meeting with clients
5
The court itemized its award by including 576.62 hours of attorney time, at $175/hour ($100,908.50), 33.85 hours of law clerk time at $50/hour ($1,692.50), and $2,760.86 for non-taxable litigation expenses. The total for this itemization is actually $105,361.86. It is unclear what accounts for the additional $359.03 in the court's award. However, none of the parties has raised this apparent mathematical error
6
The plaintiffs have not contested the reduction in hourly rate for their law clerk or the reduction in non-taxable litigation expenses. Therefore, those items of the fee award are not before us
7
The relevant text of this statute is as follows,
In any action or proceeding to enforce a provision of sections 1981, 1981a, 1982, 1983 [etc.] ... of this title ..., the court, in its discretion, may allow the prevailing party, other than the United States, a reasonable attorney's fee as part of the costs.
42 U.S.C. § 1988(b).
8
In their application for a fee award, the plaintiffs pointed out that in the defendants' original fee request following the bench trial, the defendants claimed that their three private attorneys worked 951 hours. The plaintiffs then cited newspaper accounts of the city's litigation since the bench trial and estimated that the city's private attorneys have worked an additional 700 hours. The plaintiffs contended that the fact the defendants' attorneys had spent at least 500 hours more than their attorney supported their argument that Salem's time was reasonable
9
The term "block billing" refers to "the time-keeping method by which each lawyer and legal assistant enters the total daily time spent working on a case, rather than itemizing the time expended on specific tasks." Harolds Stores, Inc. v. Dillard Dep't Stores, Inc., 82 F.3d 1533, 1554 n. 15 (10th Cir.), cert. denied, --- U.S. ----, 117 S.Ct. 297, 136 L.Ed.2d 216 (1996)
10
We do not understand the district court's reference to "duplicative" time because there were no other lawyers for whom the plaintiffs submitted a fee request. The term "duplicative" in the context of attorney's fees requests usually refers to situations where more than the necessary number of lawyers are present for a hearing or proceeding or when multiple lawyers do the same task. See Ramos, 713 F.2d at 554 ("The more lawyers representing a side of the litigation, the greater the likelihood will be for duplication of services."). In a case where only one lawyer is billing for his time, it is highly improbable that there will be any "duplication" of services, in this sense of double billing. Instead, the only kind of "duplication" that might occur would be when the lawyer repeats the same task unnecessarily. Our own review of the time sheets submitted by the plaintiffs for their lawyer has failed to reveal any such repetition of unnecessary tasks
Furthermore, because all the claims here are interrelated and the plaintiffs secured all the relief they requested, it is not necessary that the court be able to break down the hours between the various claims. That, of course, will not always be the case and prudent counsel would therefore be well advised to keep records reflecting the time that is uniquely allocated to a particular claim if that claim is distinct and severable from others being asserted.
11
District courts do not necessarily have to "wade through [a litigant's] voluminous time records to rescue the compensable time from the sea of non-compensable time." In re Central Ice Cream Co., 836 F.2d 1068, 1074 (7th Cir.1987). Unfortunately, prevailing attorneys occasionally support the reasonableness of their fee application by dumping a pile of timesheets on their adversary and the court for analysis. In such a scenario, the district court is free to "require the submitting party to organize the time material in a meaningful way with a comprehensive summary so that the material is understandable and easily reviewable." FMC Corp. v. Varonos, 892 F.2d 1308, 1316 (7th Cir.1990). If the applicant does not properly respond to the court's directive, a denial of fees may be appropriate. Id. at 1317
12
The only additional evidence the plaintiffs say they would have presented are copies of the briefs they filed in their appeal and the petition for certiorari. Beyond this evidence, they suggest only that a hearing would have provided them an opportunity to explain "the overall reasonableness" of their request
1
The standard by which a district court calculates an attorney fee award, of course, is an issue of law reviewed de novo. See Beard v. Teska, 31 F.3d 942, 955-57 (10th Cir.1994) (holding district court's decision to fashion hourly rate in amount significantly higher than undisputed prevailing local market rate was a legal matter subject to de novo review; relevant issue was the proper legal standard "prevailing market rate" versus "normal billing rate"--not the mere reasonableness of the award). Similarly, the district court's purely discretionary decisions-e.g., adjusting the loadstar, denying fees altogether for conscience-shockingly excessive requests, and awarding fees above local market prevailing rates to non-local counsel determined to be necessary for the case-are reviewed solely for an abuse of discretion
Regrettably, we often have taken an analytical shortcut in describing the standard of review for attorney fee awards. In such cases, we have lumped together all components of our review into a general abuse of discretion standard. The cases cited by the majority highlight this deficiency. Nevertheless, assuming the proper legal standards have been applied, the appropriate manner for examining a district court's reasonableness inquiry is to treat the court's findings as factual issues and examine them for clear error. See United States v. Hardage, 985 F.2d 1427, 1436-37 (10th Cir.1993); accord Migis v. Pearle Vision, Inc., 135 F.3d 1041, 1047 (5th Cir.1998); Dague v. City of Burlington, 976 F.2d 801, 803 (2d Cir.1991); Leffler v. Meer, 936 F.2d 981, 984-85 (7th Cir.1991); Black Grievance Comm. v. Philadelphia Elec. Co., 802 F.2d 648, 652 (3d Cir.1986), vacated on other grounds, 483 U.S. 1015, 107 S.Ct. 3255, 97 L.Ed.2d 754 (1987).
2
Although Hardage and El Paso Pipe involved attorney fee awards based on state law, the standard of appellate review applied to awards made pursuant to federal fee-shifting statutes is the same
3
The dilemma is illuminated further by the Seventh Circuit's apparent rejection of an abuse of discretion standard of review in favor of a stricter and more amorphous "deferential standard." Steinlauf, 962 F.2d at 568
4
The term "reasonable" in the calculation of statutory attorney fees is problematic. As one district judge recently noted in the hourly rate context, the phrase
seems to imply that, by definition, any other rate actually charged to a client is somehow unreasonable or unfair. That, of course, is not the case. The factors that go into the setting of rates by attorneys are likely to differ based on numerous considerations, and private parties are certainly entitled to strike whatever bargain on rates that proves mutually agreeable. Perhaps a different term, such as "prevailing" hourly rate or "market norm" should be employed.
Medlock v. Ortho Biotech, Inc., 1997 WL 51216, at * 2 n. 3 (D.Kan.1997). I agree and use the word "reasonable" only within its customary meaning as a term of art and not as a criticism of an attorney's billing practices.
5
Plaintiffs submitted one summary judgment motion on March 15, 1994, and a second motion on March 29, 1994. They include only the March 29 motion in their appendix, leading me to believe the latter superseded the former
6
The majority states one particularly difficult issue raised in the case was the propriety of the "use of experts to gauge public perceptions of religious symbols." Majority Op. at 1282. Nowhere does the record reflect any litigant advanced this matter. I can only assume the majority predicates this statement on defendants' motion to strike plaintiffs' experts, a motion not included in the record on appeal. The docket sheet suggests, however, that defendants filed that motion based on plaintiffs' failure to follow the court's scheduling order
7
Nor is the fact that we remanded the case to the district court on the merits dispositive. Procedural machinations seldom provide a window into the simplicity or difficulty of a lawsuit
8
The majority has given the district court virtually no guidance on how to handle the case on remand. Short of awarding plaintiffs their full fee request, it is not clear what the district court is to do. I would suggest the district court provide a detailed and specific explanation of any aspect of plaintiffs' attorney fee application it finds unreasonable and calculate an award based on those findings
|
tomekkorbak/pile-curse-small
|
FreeLaw
|
1. Introduction {#sec1}
===============
Lipocalin-2 (LCN2), also known as neutrophil gelatinase-associated lipocalin (NGAL), is a secreted glycoprotein that was first studied in human neutrophils \[[@bib1],[@bib2]\]. LCN2\'s role in innate immunity against gram-negative bacteria has been thoroughly investigated and is well known for its binding and sequestering of bacterial siderophores (bacterial iron scavenging molecules), thereby restricting iron from the bacteria and implementing nutritional immunity \[[@bib3],[@bib4]\]. Over the years, several investigators have shown that other cells such as adipocytes \[[@bib5],[@bib6]\], hepatocytes \[[@bib7],[@bib8]\], renal tubular cells \[[@bib9],[@bib10]\], and, more recently, bone osteoblasts \[[@bib11]\] can also secrete LCN2 in various disease states, expanding the functional roles of LCN2. In the context of metabolism, LCN2 has been implicated in several cardio-metabolic disease states including obesity, inflammation and insulin resistance \[[@bib5],[@bib6],[@bib11], [@bib12], [@bib13], [@bib14], [@bib15], [@bib16], [@bib17]\], alcoholic and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease \[[@bib18],[@bib19]\], cardiac hypertrophy, heart failure, and atherosclerosis \[[@bib20], [@bib21], [@bib22]\]. However, most of these animal studies have used only males from a single genetic background (C57BL/6J) with limited studies investigating their female counterparts. Added to that, whole body knockout (rather than tissue-specific knockout) animal models were mostly used, making it difficult to interpret the specific source for these associations. Similarly, only serum LCN2 levels were used to examine associations in human studies \[[@bib13],[@bib14],[@bib23],[@bib24]\].
Our specific focus in this study was to investigate the role of LCN2 in diet-induced animal models of obesity and to examine the potential involvement of gene-by-sex interactions. To this end, we used the Hybrid Mouse Diversity Panel (HMDP) that consists of both sexes from \>100 classical inbred and recombinant inbred mouse strains. These animals were fed a diet containing high fat and high sucrose (HF/HS) for eight-weeks to study obesity \[[@bib25]\], insulin resistance \[[@bib26],[@bib27]\], gut microbial composition \[[@bib28],[@bib29]\], and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease \[[@bib30], [@bib31], [@bib32], [@bib33]\]. We observed striking sex-specific, gonadal hormone-mediated regulation of adipose *Lcn2* expression. Our results are consistent with previous studies showing that LCN2 has a role in estradiol production and estrogen signaling \[[@bib34]\] and that the estrogen receptor ERα indeed binds to the adipose *Lcn2* promoter and represses *Lcn2* expression \[[@bib35]\]. Using *in vivo* animal models, we demonstrate that adipose-secreted, and not liver-secreted, LCN2 is causal in developing diet-induced metabolic complications, but only in females. Mechanistically, we show that high levels of adipose LCN2 induce mitochondrial dysfunction and increased inflammation- and fibrosis-related gene signatures in adipose tissue only in females. Explaining the sex difference, transcriptomics data revealed that LCN2 acts through the female-specific negative regulation of its receptor, megalin (LRP2), and its repressor, estrogen receptor (ER)α.
2. Methods {#sec2}
==========
2.1. Ethics statement {#sec2.1}
---------------------
All animal studies were performed in strict accordance with the recommendations in the Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals of the National Institutes of Health. All of the animals were handled according to approved institutional animal care and use committee (IACUC) protocols (\#92-169) of the University of California at Los Angeles and were housed in an IACUC-approved vivarium with daily monitoring by vivarium personnel.
2.2. Animals {#sec2.2}
------------
The HMDP study design was previously described in detail \[[@bib25],[@bib26]\]. Briefly, the animals were fed ad libitum a chow diet (Ralston Purina Company) until 8 weeks of age and then placed ad libitum on a high fat/high sucrose (HF/HS) diet (Research Diets-D12266B, New Brunswick, NJ) with 16.8% kcal protein, 51.4% kcal carbohydrate, 31.8% kcal fat for an additional 8 weeks (total 16 weeks of age). The gonadectomy study design was previously described in detail \[[@bib26]\]. Briefly, at 6 weeks of age, female and male C57BL/6J mice were either gonadectomized or sham-operated under isoflurane anesthesia and placed on a HF/HS diet around 8 weeks of age. All mice including the *Lcn2*-null mice (B6.129P2- *Lcn2*^tm1Aade^/AkiJ) on C57BL/6J background and C57BL/6J wildtype (WT) mice were purchased from The Jackson Laboratory and bred at University of California, Los Angeles. Mice were maintained on a 14 h light/10 h dark cycle (light is on between 6 a.m. and 8 p.m.). On the day of the experiment, the mice from both studies were sacrificed after 4-hour fasting.
2.3. RNA isolation {#sec2.3}
------------------
Flash-frozen gonadal adipose samples upon sacrifice were weighed and homogenized in QIAzol (Qiagen, Germantown, MD), and following chloroform phase separation, RNA was isolated according to the manufacturer\'s protocol using miRNeasy columns (Qiagen, Germantown, MD).
2.4. HMDP adipose gene expression analysis {#sec2.4}
------------------------------------------
Global gene expression was analyzed for the isolated RNA using Affymetrix HT_MG430A arrays and microarray data was filtered as previously described \[[@bib36]\]. Then, ComBat method from the SVA Bioconductor package \[[@bib37]\] was used to remove known batch effects on the gene expression data.
2.5. Library preparation and sequencing {#sec2.5}
---------------------------------------
Libraries were prepared from extracted gonadal fat RNA (Agilent 2200 Tapestation eRIN \>8.2) using KAPA Stranded mRNA-Seq Kit (cat \#KK8421, KAPA Biosystems, Wilmington, MA), per the manufacturers' instructions. The pooled libraries were sequenced with an Illumina HiSeq4000 instrument, SE50bp reads (Illumina, San Diego, CA). Reads were aligned to the mouse genome mm10 using STAR \[[@bib38]\] or HISAT2 \[[@bib39]\] aligner and quantified using the Bioconductor R packages as described in the RNA-Seq workflow \[[@bib40]\]. *P* values were adjusted using the Benjamini-Hochberg procedure of multiple hypothesis testing \[[@bib41]\].
2.6. Transcript-phenotype correlations {#sec2.6}
--------------------------------------
For every pairwise combination between phenotypes and gonadal *Lcn2* expression, in each sex, we calculated biweight midcorrelation (a robust, and not sensitive to outliers, alternative to Pearson correlation) using bicorAndPvalue function of the WGCNA package \[[@bib42]\].
2.7. Tissue deconvolution analyses {#sec2.7}
----------------------------------
Cell type composition of adipose tissue was analyzed using gene expression data by deconvolution with SaVanT (<http://newpathways.mcdb.ucla.edu/savant-dev>) using cell type signatures from the Human Primary Cell Atlas. Cell-type signature score refers to the average of gene expression values of top 50 genes for the respective signature-sample combination. The greater the signature score, the higher the proportion of the respective cell population within the sample.
2.8. Adeno-associated virus generation {#sec2.8}
--------------------------------------
For overexpression studies, recombinant adeno-associated virus serotype 8 (AAV8) expressing LCN2 or GFP was generated as described previously \[[@bib43],[@bib44]\]. Briefly, mouse *Lcn2* cDNA or GFP was cloned into an AAV expression plasmid under an adiponectin promoter (AAV8-hAdp) with a liver-specific miRNA target sequence (miR122T) for adipose-specific expression \[[@bib44]\] or a thyroxine binding globulin (AAV8-Tbg) promoter for liver-specific expression. To generate deficiency models, we knockdown *Lrp2* using the AAV8-hAdp-miR122T vector expressing shRNA sequences. Efficacious shRNAs were identified and experimentally verified *in vitro*, as follows. The top 10 shRNA sequences predicted \[[@bib45]\] for each candidate gene were cloned into an optimized miRNA scaffold (shRNAmir) \[[@bib46]\] driven by the ubiquitous H1 promoter and cotransfected with luciferase-target gene fusion constructs into HEK293 cells. Knockdown efficiency were evaluated using luciferase reporter assays, and the most effective shRNAmir was subcloned into the AV8-hAdp-miR122T vector. Viral packaging, propagation, and purification were carried out at the University of Pennsylvania Gene Therapy program vector core.
2.9. LCN2 overexpression and LRP2 knockdown studies {#sec2.9}
---------------------------------------------------
Eight-week old female and male *Lcn2*-null mice or female WT mice were injected intravenously with either adipose-specific or liver-specific AAV containing LCN2 or GFP constructs for overexpression or adipose-specific AAV containing shRNA against *ffLuc* or *Lrp2* for knockdown studies (10^12^ titer in 200 μL saline). A day after the injection, the animals were placed on HF/HS diet for an additional 8- or 16-weeks. Body composition (fat and lean mass) was determined using NMR (Brüker Biospin Corp, Billerica, MA). On the day of the sacrifice, the animals were fasted for 4 h, followed by their sacrifice and tissue extraction. Retro-orbital blood was collected to isolate plasma for analyzing glucose, insulin and lipids; liver tissues were collected for lipid content analyses; four white adipose depots (gonadal, subcutaneous, mesenteric and retroperitoneal) and brown adipose were collected for weight measurements. The HOMA-IR was calculated using the equation $\left\lbrack {\left( {Glucose\ X\ Insulin} \right)/16903} \right\rbrack$. Liver lipids were extracted as described previously \[[@bib47]\]. Briefly, lipids extracted from about 60 mg of liver were dissolved in 1.8% (wt/vol) Triton X-100, and colorimetric assays from Sigma (St. Louis, MO) (triglyceride, total cholesterol and unesterified cholesterol) and Wako (Richmond, VA) (phospholipids) were performed according to the manufacturer\'s instructions.
2.10. *Ex vivo* 3T3-L1 antisense oligonucleotide (ASO) treatment {#sec2.10}
----------------------------------------------------------------
Mouse 3T3-L1 cells were cultured in preadipocyte medium (Zenbio Inc.). Cells were reverse transfected with Lipofectamine RNAiMAX (Invitrogen) and a control or lipin-1 antisense oligonucleotide (Ionis Pharmaceutical Inc.) \[[@bib48]\]. After 2 days, cells were harvested in Trizol reagent to isolate total RNA.
2.11. *Ex vivo* iWAT and poWAT LCN2 treatment {#sec2.11}
---------------------------------------------
The inguinal (iWAT) or periovarian (poWAT) white preadipocytes were isolated from the stromal vascular fraction of inguinal or periovarian white adipose from 8 weeks old female *Lcn2-*null mice, respectively. The pre-iWAT or pre-poWAT cells were maintained in Dulbecco\'s Modified Eagle Medium: Nutrient Mixture F-12 (DMEM/F12) supplemented with 1% glutamax, 10% fetal calf serum and 100 U/ml of both penicillin and streptomycin (basal media). Two days after plating (day 0), when the cells reached nearly 100% confluency, the cells were treated with an induction media containing basal media supplemented with 4 μg/mL insulin, 0.5 mM IBMX, 1 μM dexamethasone, and 1 μM rosiglitazone. After 48 h, the cells were treated with a maintenance media containing the basal media supplemented with 4 μg/mL insulin, and 1 μM rosiglitazone, with a media change every 2 days until day 10. For qPCR, differentiated iWAT cells were treated with 1 μg/ml recombinant LCN2 (Sino Biological Inc.) for 24 h after which RNA was collected. For bioenergetics, 5 × 10^4^ differentiated poWAT cells were plated in XF-24 seahorse plate treated with 1 μg/ml recombinant LCN2 (Sino Biological Inc.) for 24 h after which oxygen consumption rates were measured.
2.12. Quantitative polymerase chain reaction {#sec2.12}
--------------------------------------------
Total RNA was isolated from frozen mouse gonadal adipose tissues or iWAT cells using QIAzol (Qiagen, Germantown, MD) following manufacturer\'s RNA isolation protocol. First-strand complementary DNA (cDNA) was made from 2 μg total RNA of each mouse according to the manufacturer\'s protocol using High-Capacity cDNA Reverse Transcription Kit (Applied Biosystems, Waltham, MA). Relative quantitative gene expression levels were measured by quantitative PCR using Kapa SYBR Fast qPCR kit (Kapa Biosystems, Inc., Wilmington, MA) on a LightCycler 480 II (Roche) and analyzed using the Roche LightCycler1.5.0 Software. The geometric mean of B2M and TBP was used to normalize all qPCR targets \[[@bib49]\]. Relative normalized expression was measured using the equation 2^−ΔΔCt^. All qPCR primer sequences were listed below.GeneSequence 5′ to 3′*B2m*Forward: TACGTAACACAGTTCCACCCGCCTC\
Reverse: GCAGGTTCAAATGAATCTTCAGAGCATC*Tbp*Forward: CAAACCCAGAATTGTTCTCCTT\
Reverse: ATGTGGTCTTCCTGAATCCCT*Ccl2*Forward: TTAAAAACCTGGATCGGAACCAA\
Reverse: GCATTAGCTTCAGATTTACGGGT*Lcn2*Forward: ACGGACTACAACCAGTTCGC\
Reverse: AATGCATTGGTCGGTGGGG*Lrp2*Forward: AAAATGGAAACGGGGTGACTT\
Reverse: GGCTGCATACATTGGGTTTTCA*Esr1*Forward: GCCAGAATGGCCGAGAGAG\
Reverse: CCCCATAATGGTAGCCAGAGG*Polg1*Forward: TAGCTGGCTGGTCCAAGAGT\
Reverse: CGACGTGGAGGTCTGCTT
2.13. Immunoblot analyses {#sec2.13}
-------------------------
Animal tissues and cultured cells were homogenized using RIPA buffer containing protease and phosphatase inhibitors. Samples were then separated by SDS-PAGE, transferred to PVDF membranes and probed using the following antibodies: LCN2 (R&D Systems, AF1857), LRP2 (abcam, ab76969), ERα (abcam, ab32063), β-ACTIN (Cell Signaling, 4967L), GAPDH (Invitrogen, PA1-987) and Vinculin (Sigma, V9131).
2.14. Glucose- and insulin-tolerance tests {#sec2.14}
------------------------------------------
For glucose- and insulin-tolerance tests, mice were fasted for 6 h, unless reported otherwise, and then challenged with an intraperitoneal injection of glucose (1 g/kg) and insulin (1 U/kg), respectively. Blood glucose levels were monitored using the AlphaTRAK blood glucose monitoring system (Zoetis, Parsippany, NJ) at times indicated.
2.15. Metabolic cages {#sec2.15}
---------------------
Indirect calorimetry was performed using a Columbus Instruments Comprehensive Lab Animal Monitoring System (CLAMS, Columbus Instruments). Animals were placed individually in chambers for 3 consecutive days at ambient temperature (26.5 °C) with 12 h light/dark cycles. Animals had free access to food and water. Respiratory measurements were made in 20 min intervals after initial 7--9 h acclimation period. Energy expenditure was calculated from VO~2~ and RER using the Lusk equation, EE in Kcal/hr = (3.815 + 1.232 X RER) X VO2 in ml/min. Food intake was measured in metabolic chambers. Body composition (fat and lean mass) was determined using EchoMRI Body Composition Analyzer.
2.16. Mitochondrial DNA content {#sec2.16}
-------------------------------
Mitochondrial DNA content was measured as described previously \[[@bib50], [@bib51], [@bib52]\]. Briefly, total (mitochondrial and nuclear) DNA from gonadal adipose tissue was isolated by phenol/chloroform/isoamyl alcohol extraction. Both mitochondrial and nuclear DNA were amplified by quantitative PCR with 25 ng of total DNA using primers in the D-loop region (AATCTACCATCCTCCGTGAAACC; TCAGTTTAGCTACCCCCAAGTTTAA) and Tert gene (CTAGCTCATGTGTCAAGACCCTCTT; GCCAGCACGTTTCTCTCGTT), respectively. Mitochondrial DNA content, normalized to nuclear DNA, was calculated using the equation $2\ X\ 2^{- \Delta Ct}$ (ΔCt = D-loop Ct --Tert Ct) and then reported as relative units of corresponding GFP groups.
2.17. Bioenergetics of isolated mitochondria {#sec2.17}
--------------------------------------------
Isolated mitochondrial respiration from adipose tissue \[[@bib53]\] were measured as described previously. Briefly, mitochondria were obtained by dual centrifugation and resuspended in respiration buffer \[[@bib53]\] and kept on ice. Mitochondrial respiration from different complexes was obtained with an XF24 Seahorse bioanalyzer (Agilent). For electron flow assays, basal OCR was measured in presence of 10 mM pyruvate (Complex I substrate), 2 mM malate and 4 mM FCCP, and after sequential addition of 2 mM rotenone (Complex I inhibitor), 10 mM succinate (Complex II substrate), 4 mM antimycin A (Complex III inhibitor) and 1 mM TMPD containing 10 mM ascorbate (Complex IV substrate). Complex III respiration corresponds to the antimycin A-sensitive respiration.
2.18. Mitochondrial immunoblot procedures and analyses of function {#sec2.18}
------------------------------------------------------------------
Adipose mitochondria (10--20 μg) prepared for mitochondria bioenergetics as described above were re-suspended in NuPAGE LDS Sample Buffer with protease inhibitor cocktail and incubated at 45 °C for 10 min. Samples were then loaded into 4%--12% Bis-Tris precast gels (Thermo Fisher Scientific NP0321) and electrophoresed in xCell SureLock (Novex) in constant voltage at 60 V for 15 min (to clear stacking) and 150 V for 45 min. Proteins were transferred to methanol-activated PVDF membrane in xCell SureLock in 30 V constant voltage for 1 hr at 4 °C. Blots were blocked with 5% non-fat dry milk in PBST (1 mL/L Tween-20/PBS) and incubated with primary antibodies to Complex I (NDUFB8, Thermo Fisher Scientific \#459210), Complex II (SDHB, Abcam \#175225), Complex III (UQCRC1, Thermo Fisher Scientific \#459140), Complex IV (COX4, Thermo Fisher Scientific \#459600), ATP Synthase (ATP5A1, Thermo Fisher Scientific \#43-9800) and TOM20 (Santa Cruz, \#11415) diluted in 1% BSA/PBST overnight at 4 °C. The next day, blots were washed in PBST, probed with HRP-linked secondary antibodies diluted in blocking solution for 1 hr at room temperature, and rinsed again in PBST. Detection was achieved by ECL-Plus reagent and imaging was performed with Typhoon 9410 Molecular Imager (Amersham). Image contrast was uniformly reduced to enhance visibility. Band densitometry was quantified using ImageJ Gel Plugin (NIH).
2.19. Cellular bioenergetics {#sec2.19}
----------------------------
5 × 10^4^ differentiated poWAT cells seeded in a XF24 plate treated with recombinant LCN2 for 24 h were analyzed in a XF24 analyzer (Agilent) as described \[[@bib54]\]. Briefly, oxygen consumption rates (OCR) were measured before and after the sequential injections of 0.75 mM oligomycin, 2 mM FCCP, and 0.75 mM of rotenone/myxothiazol. Mixing, waiting, and measurement times were 3, 2, and 3 min, respectively. Measures were normalized by total protein.
2.20. Data availability {#sec2.20}
-----------------------
RNA sequencing raw data can be accessed at the Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) under accession GSE121098.
2.21. Statistical analysis {#sec2.21}
--------------------------
Statistical analyses were performed using Prism v7.0a (GraphPad Software, Inc., La Jolla, CA, USA). Errors bars plotted on graphs are presented as the mean ± SEM unless reported otherwise. The critical significance value (α) was set at 0.05, and if the P values were less than α, we reported that, by rejecting the null hypothesis, the observed differences were statistically significant.
3. Results {#sec3}
==========
3.1. Genetics- and sex-specific regulation of adipose and liver *Lcn2* expression and its association with metabolic traits {#sec3.1}
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To investigate the effects of genetics and sex on gene expression in a tissue-specific manner, we investigated the expression profiles from adipose and liver tissues of ∼100 age- and sex-matched mouse strains (HMDP) fed a HF/HS diet. As seen in [Figure 1](#fig1){ref-type="fig"}A, among several well-known sexually dimorphic autosomal genes in adipose such as *Sult1e1* \[[@bib55]\] and *Ucp1* \[[@bib56], [@bib57], [@bib58]\], *Lcn2* stood out as one of the most strongly and significantly downregulated genes in female adipose (∼7-fold F \< M, P = 1.9E-30; [Figure 1](#fig1){ref-type="fig"}A,C). In striking contrast, *Lcn2* expression was significantly upregulated in female livers (∼2-fold F \> M, P = 1.1E-09; [Figure 1](#fig1){ref-type="fig"}B,E). Individual matched-strain expression profiles shown in [Supplementary Figure S1](#appsec1){ref-type="sec"} revealed both genetic and sex-specific control. Also, as shown in [Supplementary Figure S2](#appsec1){ref-type="sec"}, plasma LCN2 levels increased in C57BL/6J females when fed a HF/HS diet suggesting a pathophysiological relevance to our study. To further characterize the role of sex hormones, follow-up RNASeq studies involving gonadectomized C57BL/6J mice ([Figure 1](#fig1){ref-type="fig"}D,F) revealed that ovariectomy in females lead to the loss of estrogen-dependent adipose *Lcn2* repression \[[@bib35]\] while gonadectomy in males lead to the upregulation of liver *Lcn2* repression. In contrast, no significant differences were observed between sham-treated and gonadectomized males in adipose expression albeit with large variance between individual males ([Figure 1](#fig1){ref-type="fig"}D), and between sham-treated and gonadectomized females in liver expression ([Figure 1](#fig1){ref-type="fig"}F).Figure 1***Lcn2* expression in liver and adipose is highly sexually dimorphic and exhibits sex-specific associations with metabolic traits in the HMDP population**, Volcano plots showing sex differences in gene expression profiles from **A,** adipose and **B,** liver tissues isolated from age- and sex-matched mouse strains (HMDP). The red and blue dots represent X and Y chromosomal genes, respectively. Average *Lcn2* expression in female (red) and male (blue) **C,** adipose and **E,** liver tissues from each strain in the HF/HS fed HMDP cohort (n = 98 sex-matched strains with 2--4 mice per sex/strain). **D,** Adipose and **F,** liver *Lcn2* expression in intact and gonadectomized C57BL/6J mice of both sexes (n = 4 per group). Red for females and blue for males. Circos connectogram plot showing biweight midcorrelation between **G,** adipose or **H,** liver *Lcn2* expression and metabolic traits in female and male HMDP cohort (n = 102 female and 111 male strains). Each connecting line signify a significant (1% FDR cutoff) bicorrelation between *Lcn2* expression and the respective trait. Red line indicates positive correlation and the color intensity signify the magnitude of correlation. Data are presented as **A and B,** log~2~ fold change (F/M); **C and E,** median and interquartile range; **D and F,** mean ± SEM and **G and H,** midweight bicorrelation. *P* values (and Q values for RNA sequencing data) were calculated by **A and B,** DESeq function of Bioconductor R-package for RNA sequencing; **C and E,** Unpaired Student\'s t test; **D and F,** 2-factor ANOVA corrected by post-hoc "Holm-Sidak\'s" multiple comparisons test; **G and H,** BicorAndPvalue function of the WGCNA R-package. \**P* \< 0.05; \*\**P* \< 0.01. See also [Figures S1--S2](#appsec1){ref-type="sec"} and [Table S1](#appsec1){ref-type="sec"}.Figure 1
Next, we interrogated the HMDP populations to test for any strong sex-specific association(s) between adipose or liver *Lcn2* expression and clinically significant metabolic traits. [Figure 1](#fig1){ref-type="fig"}G shows that female, but not male, adipose *Lcn2* expression was strongly and positively (1% FDR cutoff) associated with metabolic traits such as obesity, tissue weights, dyslipidemia, insulin resistance and steatosis. Surprisingly, we observed only a few weak associations between female liver *Lcn2* expression and metabolic traits, while stronger but few associations were observed in males ([Figure 1](#fig1){ref-type="fig"}H). Individual bicorrelation coefficients and *P* values for each association are listed in [Supplementary Table S1](#appsec1){ref-type="sec"}. Taken together, these results support the concept that adipose *Lcn2* contributes to dysregulation of metabolic traits in females and liver *Lcn2* may contribute to dysregulation of male traits, specifically insulin resistance.
3.2. Genetic control of *Lcn2* expression: identification of *Lpin1* as a potential *trans*-regulator gene {#sec3.2}
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*Lcn2* expression varies substantially among the HMDP strains in adipose as well as liver and in both sexes ([Supplementary Figure S1](#appsec1){ref-type="sec"}). This is due in large part to genetics and heritability of *Lcn2* transcript levels is high except in male adipose (female adipose = 0.647 ± 0.059; male adipose = 0.075 ± 0.048: female liver = 0.358 ± 0.089: male liver = 0.281 ± 0.076), Given this, we next searched for genetic loci that significantly control *Lcn2* expression in a tissue-by-sex specific manner.
Association mapping of *Lcn2* expression revealed a female adipose-specific *trans*-acting expression quantitative trait locus (eQTL) on chromosome 12 and a female-specific *trans*-acting eQTL on chromosome 15 ([Supplementary Figure 3a](#appsec1){ref-type="sec"}). High-resolution regional plots of these two loci revealed *Lpin1* and *Ntsr2* in chr12 and *6030458C11Rik* in chr15 as potential candidate genes regulating *Lcn2* expression ([Supplementary Figure 3b](#appsec1){ref-type="sec"}). These candidate genes were identified based on three criteria: i) they had strong *cis-*eQTL in their respective tissues, ii) their respective peak *cis*-SNPs are in strong linkage disequilibrium (LD) with *Lcn2 trans*-SNPs, and iii) their expression is strongly correlated with *Lcn2* expression. To determine if these genes are independently regulating female adipose *Lcn2* expression, association mapping was repeated, but this time we conditioned on *Lpin1* or *Ntsr2* or *6030458C11Rik* expression. Conditioning on *Lpin1* expression suppressed both loci, while the other two genes either suppressed only one locus and/or introduced new loci ([Supplementary Figure 3c](#appsec1){ref-type="sec"}). Further, the correlation structure between these genes and *Lcn2* expression revealed *Lpin1* as a strong negative regulator of female adipose *Lcn2* expression ([Supplementary Figure 3d](#appsec1){ref-type="sec"}). *Lpin1* gene encodes the protein lipin-1, a Mg^2+^-dependent phosphatidate phosphatase type-1 (PAP1) enzyme, which catalyzes the conversion of phosphatidate to diacylglycerol, precursor for triacylglycerol and other glycerolipids \[[@bib59]\]. Mice with natural mutations in the *Lpin1* gene exhibit fatty liver dystrophy characterized by loss of body fat, fatty liver and insulin resistance \[[@bib60]\]. Two alternatively-spliced isoforms of lipin-1 have been identified that play a distinct role in either adipose differentiation or lipogenesis, respectively \[[@bib61]\]. Further, lipin-1 physically interacts with peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor γ2 (PPARγ2) and enhances its activity by recruiting other coactivators \[[@bib62]\]. More specifically to this paper, lipin-1 interacts with nuclear factor of activated T cells c4 (NFATc4) repressing its activity and inhibiting adipokine secretions \[[@bib63]\]. As a proof of concept, we used antisense oligonucleotide (ASO)-mediated silencing of *Lpin1* \[[@bib48]\] in 3T3-L1 preadipocytes and observed a significant increase in *Lcn2* expression levels ([Supplementary Figure 3e](#appsec1){ref-type="sec"}). Our results suggest that lipin-1 controls *Lcn2* expression although further investigations are warranted to understand the underlying mechanism.
3.3. Adipose LCN2 alters obesity, plasma lipids, insulin resistance, and hepatic steatosis in females {#sec3.3}
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To functionally validate the causal role of adipose LCN2 in metabolic traits, we expressed either LCN2 or green fluorescent protein (GFP) in adipose tissues of 8-week old *Lcn2*-null mice of both sexes and fed them a HF/HS diet for 8 additional weeks. Adipose-specific LCN2 expression ([Supplementary Figure 4](#appsec1){ref-type="sec"}) was achieved by using adeno-associated viral serotype-8 (AAV8) vectors harboring both adiponectin promoter/enhancer elements and miR122 target sequences (AAV8-hAdp-GFP-miR122T or AAV-hAdp-LCN2-miR122T). AAV8 vectors have specific tropism for liver, heart and adipose, and to some extent in CNS, muscle, pancreas, lung, testis, and kidney \[[@bib44],[@bib64]\]. The adiponectin promoter/enhancer elements restrict the expression to adipose and liver and not heart, muscle, lung, kidney, and pancreas \[[@bib44]\]. To ensure the adipose tissue specificity of LCN2 expression and exclude liver expression, the microRNA122 target sequence at the 3' end results in selective degradation if LCN2 driven by the adiponectin promoter is expressed in the liver \[[@bib44]\] ([Supplementary Figure 5](#appsec1){ref-type="sec"}). We observed a significant increase in total body weight of adipose LCN2 overexpressing females ([Figure 2](#fig2){ref-type="fig"}A) likely due to increased fat mass ([Figure 2](#fig2){ref-type="fig"}C), while lean mass remained unaltered ([Figure 2](#fig2){ref-type="fig"}B). Consequently, the body fat percentage increases ([Figure 2](#fig2){ref-type="fig"}D). LCN2 overexpression in adipose tissue also led to a significant increase in tissue weights of liver and white adipose depots compared with the control groups ([Figure 2](#fig2){ref-type="fig"}E). However, the BAT of both sexes was not affected by adipose LCN2 overexpression ([Figure 2](#fig2){ref-type="fig"}F). All these sex-specific differences were observed despite similar upregulation of plasma LCN2 in both sexes ([Figure 2](#fig2){ref-type="fig"}E,F).Figure 2**Females overexpressing adipose LCN2 exhibit obesity and other metabolic complications.** Eight-week old females and males of *Lcn2*-null mice were injected with AAV vectors carrying either GFP or LCN2 cDNA under the control of adiponectin promoter and fed with HF/HS diet for eight additional weeks. Body weight composition such as **A,** total mass **B,** lean mass **C,** fat mass, and **D,** body fat percentage were monitored every two weeks. Comparisons of kidney-normalized tissue weights and plasma levels of LCN2 between GFP and LCN2 groups in **E,** females and **F,** males, respectively. Comparisons of plasma levels of glucose, insulin, and HOMA-IR from **G,** female and **H,** male animals, respectively. Similarly, comparisons of plasma levels of triglycerides (TG), total cholesterol (TC), unesterified cholesterol (UC) and HDL as well as hepatic TG, TC, UC and phospholipid (PL) levels from **I,** female and **J,** male animals, respectively. Data are presented as mean ± SEM (n = 8--9 animals). *P* values were calculated by **A -- D,** Repeated-measures 2-factor ANOVA corrected by post-hoc "Holm-Sidak\'s" multiple comparisons test; **E -- J,** Unpaired Student\'s t test for tissue weights, plasma and liver analytes. \**P* \< 0.05; \*\**P* \< 0.01; \*\*\**P* \< 0.001. See also [Figures S4--S7](#appsec1){ref-type="sec"}.Figure 2
Previous studies using male *Lcn2*-null mice reported conflicting results, ranging from LCN2 playing a minor role \[[@bib16]\] to protective \[[@bib15]\] to potentiating \[[@bib17]\] high fat diet-induced insulin resistance. More recently, bone-derived LCN2 was shown to regulate glucose homeostasis in males \[[@bib11]\]. Our adipose-specific LCN2 overexpression studies revealed increased insulin resistance in females as indicated by higher fasting plasma glucose, insulin and HOMA-IR values ([Figure 2](#fig2){ref-type="fig"}G). Accordingly, glucose tolerance tests revealed that adipose LCN2 overexpression in females led to increased glucose intolerance ([Supplemental Figure S6a](#appsec1){ref-type="sec"}). Supporting the concept that glucose intolerance was associated with worsened insulin resistance, insulin levels measured after 30 min of glucose administration were higher ([Supplemental Figure S6b](#appsec1){ref-type="sec"}). In contrast to females, overexpression of adipose LCN2 in males improved glucose metabolism without affecting the body weight ([Figure 2](#fig2){ref-type="fig"}H and [Supplemental Figure S6c and S6d](#appsec1){ref-type="sec"}). We also noted a significant increase in plasma levels of total cholesterol (TC), unesterified cholesterol (UC) and HDL cholesterol levels in females but not in males ([Figure 2](#fig2){ref-type="fig"}I,J). Moreover, liver lipid measurements showed hepatic triglyceride (TG) accumulation, a measure of steatosis, to be significantly increased in females ([Figure 2](#fig2){ref-type="fig"}I) but not in males ([Figure 2](#fig2){ref-type="fig"}J).
These dramatic effects of AAV-mediated overexpression of LCN2 in female adipose, namely obesity and metabolic complications, are not observed under normal conditions due to repression of *Lcn2* expression through ERα-estradiol signaling. Our AAV strategy circumvents this ERα-mediated repression. Thus, when we compared female littermates of *Lcn2*-null and heterozygous mice that were fed a HF/HS diet for 8-weeks we did not observe any body weight differences ([Supplementary Figure S7](#appsec1){ref-type="sec"}).
3.4. Liver LCN2 is a reactive protein in response to diet-induced obesity {#sec3.4}
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To examine the effects of liver-derived LCN2, we expressed LCN2 or GFP in liver tissues of *Lcn2*-null mice using AAV8 vectors under a thyroxine binding globulin (Tbg) promoter (AAV8-Tbg-GFP or AAV8-Tbg-LCN2). Surprisingly, we did not observe any significant metabolic changes in either sex, despite substantial levels of LCN2 overexpression in both liver and circulation ([Supplemental Figures S5, S8 and S9](#appsec1){ref-type="sec"}). Although liver-specific overexpression of LCN2 resulted in a greater increase in circulating LCN2 levels than did adipose overexpression ([Figure 2](#fig2){ref-type="fig"}E,F; [Supplemental Figure. S8e and S8f](#appsec1){ref-type="sec"}), only adipose-derived LCN2 caused metabolic complications in females.
One important question relates to the difference between the liver- and adipose-derived LCN2. Song et al., demonstrated that LCN2 is post-translationally modified by polyamination that aids in its rapid clearance from circulation \[[@bib65]\]. However, adipose-derived LCN2 from high fat diet-fed mice is predominantly in the non-polyaminated form, while the liver-derived LCN2 is not, and the non-polyaminated form plays a causal role in cardiometabolic traits \[[@bib65],[@bib66]\]. They also demonstrate that incubating recombinant LCN2 with adipose tissues (≥16hr incubation) from LCN2KO mice resulted in removal of polyamination \[[@bib65]\]. Further, the same group demonstrated that adipose-derived LCN2 can also mediate both acute and chronic renal injuries and that this is independent of kidney-derived LCN2 \[[@bib67]\]. In contrast, cell-type-resolved liver proteomics revealed that LCN2 is predominantly secreted by Kupffer cells (hepatic macrophages) and not the hepatocytes, implying that increased LCN2 expression in the liver signifies an inflammatory environment in response to obesity \[[@bib68]\]. This may explain why our liver LCN2 overexpression in hepatocytes did not cause any metabolic changes in these mice. Altogether, these results indicate a sex-specific autocrine/paracrine (local) role for adipose LCN2 and a lack of impact of circulating LCN2 produced in liver.
3.5. Long term adipose LCN2-mediated metabolic complications {#sec3.5}
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To exclude any bias associated in generating *Lcn2*-null mice and to explore long-term effects of adipose LCN2 overexpression, we fed female C57BL/6J wildtype (WT) mice overexpressing either GFP or LCN2 in adipose tissues with HF/HS diet for a total of 16-weeks. The animals were not subjected to any intervention for the first 8-weeks and then underwent several metabolic tests including glucose tolerance test (GTT), insulin tolerance test (ITT) and indirect calorimetry as outlined in [Figure 3](#fig3){ref-type="fig"}A. We extended the time period to 16-weeks in order to allow, for each test, a 2-weeks interval to give sufficient time for the mice to recuperate. Similar to our prior experiments in *Lcn2*-null mice, adipose LCN2 overexpression significantly increased fat mass and total mass in the WT animals after 8-weeks of HF/HS diet ([Figure 3](#fig3){ref-type="fig"}B). Interestingly, lean mass was also increased in these animals ([Figure 3](#fig3){ref-type="fig"}B). To check if the enhanced lean mass in WT animals was due to differences in the extent of AAV-mediated *Lcn2* expression between WT and KO mice, we quantified *Lcn2* expression in multiple adipose depots isolated from both animals. However, the extent of LCN2 overexpression was different in a depot-specific manner between WT and KO mice ([Supplemental Figure S4](#appsec1){ref-type="sec"}). The gWAT of WT mice had lower while the sqWAT and BAT had higher expression levels compared to KO mice. The sqWAT of WT mice had very high expression levels that the AAV couldn\'t increase it anymore. Based on this, we could not come to any conclusions as to why there was an enhanced lean mass in WT mice. A recent study has reported that bone-derived LCN2 can control appetite in males \[[@bib11]\]. Therefore, we measured food consumption between the two groups over two weeks (weeks 4--6 of diet) but observed no significant changes between the groups ([Figure 3](#fig3){ref-type="fig"}C). Consistent with our LCN2 rescue studies in *Lcn2*-null mice, LCN2 overexpressing WT females were glucose intolerant ([Figure 3](#fig3){ref-type="fig"}D) and insulin resistant ([Figure 3](#fig3){ref-type="fig"}E).Figure 3**Effects of long term adipose LCN2 overexpression. A,** Study plan for long-term adipose LCN2 overexpression in female C57BL/6J wildtype (WT). **B,** Fat mass, lean mass, and total mass before and after 8-weeks of HF/HS diet challenge. **C,** Cumulative food consumption between GFP and LCN2 groups. **D,** Glucose-tolerance test and **E,** Insulin-tolerance test and their respective AUC of adipose-specific GFP or LCN2 overexpressing females after 8- and 10- weeks of diet challenge. Data are presented as mean ± SEM (n = 5 animals per group). *P* values were calculated by **B,** 3-factor ANOVA corrected by post-hoc "Holm-Sidak\'s" multiple comparisons test; **D and E,** Repeated measures 2-factor ANOVA corrected by post-hoc "Holm-Sidak\'s" multiple comparisons test; **D and E,** Unpaired Student\'s t test for AUC. \**P* \< 0.05; \*\**P* \< 0.01; \*\*\**P* \< 0.001.Figure 3
3.6. Adipose LCN2 reduces energy expenditure and promotes systemic insulin resistance through white adipose tissue mitochondrial dysfunction {#sec3.6}
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To understand the effects of adipose LCN2 overexpression on energy homeostasis, animals were individually housed in metabolic chambers for three days (acclimation) after which metabolic measurements were made for two days ([Figure 3](#fig3){ref-type="fig"}A). Although the food consumption was similar between the two groups ([Supplemental Figure S10a](#appsec1){ref-type="sec"}), oxygen consumption rate (VO~2~), carbon dioxide production rate (VCO~2~) and energy expenditure (EE), normalized to whole body weight, were reduced in LCN2 overexpressing animals compared to controls ([Figure 4](#fig4){ref-type="fig"}A--C). Detailed traces are shown in [Supplemental Figure S10b--e](#appsec1){ref-type="sec"}. When we normalized these measurements (VO~2~, VCO~2~, and EE) to the corresponding lean body mass, we observed a reduction as well, but it was not statistically significant ([Supplemental Figure S11a--f](#appsec1){ref-type="sec"}). In this regard, when we plotted unnormalized EE vs. lean body mass, we observed a large reduction in the slope value of the regression of EE capacity vs. lean mass in LCN2 animals ([Supplemental Figure S11g](#appsec1){ref-type="sec"}). Altogether, these results support the concept that defects in EE induced by LCN2 overexpression contribute to fat accumulation in adipose tissue. Remarkably, LCN2 overexpressing mice showed lower RER values ([Figure 4](#fig4){ref-type="fig"}D), a symptom of systemic insulin resistance associated with reduced ability to utilize glucose as an oxidative substrate in fed state. Thus, the metabolic cage results support the conclusion that adipose LCN2 overexpression promotes insulin resistance in females.Figure 4**Adipose LCN2 reduced energy expenditure, mitochondrial respiration, mitochondrial DNA content, mitochondrial complex activity, and protein levels.** After 14-weeks of HF/HS diet challenge, animals were individually housed in metabolic cages to measure **A,** oxygen consumption rate (VO~2~), **B,** carbon dioxide production rate (VCO~2~), **C,** energy expenditure (EE) and **D,** respiratory exchange rate (RER) between GFP and LCN2 overexpressing females. To examine mitochondrial dysfunction **E,** relative mitochondrial DNA content in gonadal adipose of females and males overexpressing GFP or LCN2 were measured. Electron flow assays of isolated gonadal adipose mitochondria from **F,** WT and **G,***Lcn2*-null females overexpressing GFP or LCN2 after 16-weeks of HF/HS diet challenge. **H,** Representative western blot probed with antibodies of OXPHOS complex subunits I--V (CI--CV) and TOM20 as a loading control, and corresponding quantifications from **I,** WT and **J,***Lcn2*-null females overexpressing GFP or LCN2. Comparisons between control and recombinant LCN2-treated groups of *ex vivo* differentiated periovarian adipocytes in **K,** oxygen consumption rate (OCR) profile, **L,** ATP-linked (datapoint 6 subtracted from 3), **M,** proton leak (datapoint 14 subtracted from 6), **N,** maximal respiratory capacity (datapoint 14 subtracted from 7), **O,** reserve capacity (datapoint 3 subtracted from 7), and **P,** non-mitochondrial (datapoint 14) associated respiration levels. Data are presented as mean ± SEM (n = 4--5 animals per group for **A -- D**; n = 8--9 animals per group for **E**; n = 3--6 mitochondria per group for **F -- J**; n = 6 per group for **K -- P**). *P* values were calculated by **A -- D,** Repeated measures 2-factor ANOVA corrected by post-hoc "Holm-Sidak\'s" multiple comparisons test; **E -- G,** 2-factor ANOVA corrected by post-hoc "Holm-Sidak\'s" multiple comparisons test; **I and J,** Multiple Student\'s t tests corrected by "Benjamini, Krieger, Yekutieli" FDR approach for multiple comparisons test; **K,** Repeated measures 2-factor ANOVA; **L -- P,** Unpaired Student\'s t test. \**P* \< 0.05; \*\**P* \< 0.01; \*\*\**P* \< 0.001. See also [Figures S10--S12](#appsec1){ref-type="sec"}.Figure 4
As mitochondrial function is key to adipose tissue dysfunction, promoting systemic lipotoxicity, insulin resistance, and reduced EE, first we measured mitochondrial DNA content in our 8-week HF/HS diet fed cohort of *Lcn2*-null mice overexpressing adipose LCN2 and observed a marked reduction in females but not males ([Figure 4](#fig4){ref-type="fig"}E). To test the functional relevance of this decline in mitochondrial DNA levels, we performed bioenergetic analyses on isolated mitochondria from gonadal adipose tissues of two independent 16-week HF/HS diet fed cohorts of WT ([Figure 4](#fig4){ref-type="fig"}F) and *Lcn2*-null mice overexpressing adipose LCN2 ([Figure 4](#fig4){ref-type="fig"}G). We observed that the activity of all electron transport chain complexes was reduced in mitochondria isolated from the LCN2 overexpressing animals in both of these independent cohorts ([Figures 4](#fig4){ref-type="fig"}F,G). Finally, western blot analysis revealed that LCN2 overexpressing animals have significantly lower levels of complex I, II, and IV proteins compared to their respective controls in both of these cohorts ([Figure 4](#fig4){ref-type="fig"}H--J).
To directly determine if LCN2 might be causal in mediating mitochondrial dysfunction in adipose, we performed bioenergetic analyses on *ex vivo* differentiated periovarian adipocytes, isolated from female *Lcn2*-null mice, treated with recombinant LCN2 protein. We observed a significantly reduced respiration profile in LCN2-treated cells ([Figure 4](#fig4){ref-type="fig"}K), confirming our observations that LCN2 is causal in mediating mitochondrial dysfunction as seen *in vivo* in [Figure 4](#fig4){ref-type="fig"}E--J. We also observed a reduced respiration profile in *ex vivo* differentiated inguinal adipocytes (iWAT), isolated from female WT mice, treated with recombinant LCN2 protein ([Supplementary Figure S12a](#appsec1){ref-type="sec"}). Similarly, a reduced respiration profile was observed in *ex vivo* differentiated WT iWAT compared to KO iWAT without any exogenous recombinant LCN2 treatment ([Supplementary Figure S12b](#appsec1){ref-type="sec"}). Furthermore, individual measurements revealed that ATP-linked respiration, maximal respiratory capacity, reserve capacity, and non-mitochondrial respiration decreased while proton leak increased in response to recombinant LCN2 treatment ([Figure 4](#fig4){ref-type="fig"}L--P). Taken together, we conclude that LCN2 associated metabolic complications are mediated, at least in part, through mitochondrial dysfunction in adipose tissue.
3.7. Increased adipose LCN2 promotes a gene expression signature of inflammation and fibrosis in adipose tissue from females but not males {#sec3.7}
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To further explore the mechanistic role of adipose LCN2 in metabolic traits, we performed whole-genome transcriptomics on gonadal fat tissues of female *Lcn2*-null mice overexpressing either GFP or LCN2 in their adipose tissues and fed a HF/HS diet for 8-weeks. We found 777 differentially expressed transcripts (5% FDR cutoff) between the two treatments ([Figure 5](#fig5){ref-type="fig"}A and [Supplemental Table S2](#appsec1){ref-type="sec"}). Enrichment analysis, DAVID \[[@bib69]\], ToppGene \[[@bib70]\], revealed downregulation of pathways associated with ribosome assembly, N-linked glycosylation and GABA-A receptor activity and upregulation of gene pathways associated with collagen metabolism, proteinaceous extracellular matrix and cell cycle/mitosis ([Figure 5](#fig5){ref-type="fig"}B). The relationships between LCN2 expression and transcript levels of other genes in adipose that we observed in the HMDP study were largely consistent with the results of the tissue-specific expression studies. Thus, of the 280/414 upregulated transcripts observed in the HMDP studies, 73.5% (206 transcripts) changed in the same direction in LCN2 overexpressing females (positively correlated in HMDP and upregulated in LCN2 overexpressing females). On the other hand, among the 162/252 downregulated transcripts observed in the HMDP studies, 74.7% (121 transcripts) went in the same direction ([Figure 5](#fig5){ref-type="fig"}B).Figure 5**Adipose LCN2 overexpression increases inflammation and fibrosis gene signatures in females. A,** Global genome-wide transcriptomics revealed 777 differentially expressed transcripts (5% FDR cutoff) between GFP and LCN2 overexpressing adipose tissues extracted from *Lcn2*-null females fed a HF/HS diet for 8-weeks. **B,** Pathway/process enrichment analyses of upregulated and downregulated transcripts and Comparisons between differentially expressed transcripts and HMDP transcript associations. Log~2~ fold change expression values of **C,** fibrosis-associated transcripts such as *Hif1a*, *Col6a1*, *Col6a2*, and *Col6a3*; and **D,** inflammation-associated transcripts such as *Ccl2*, *S100a8*, and *Saa3* between GFP and LCN2 overexpressing female adipose and their respective bicorrelations with adipose *Lcn2* expression in female (red) and male (blue) HMDP cohorts (n = 98 sex-matched strains). **E,** Adipose deconvolution with a specific focus on inflammatory cell populations. **F,** Log~2~ fold change expression values of M1 or M2 macrophage-associated gene transcripts between the two groups and **G,** their respective bicorrelations with adipose *Lcn2* expression in female and male HMDP cohorts. Relative normalized expression values of *Ccl2* in **H,** female gonadal WAT **I,** female subcutaneous WAT and **J,** male gonadal WAT overexpressing GFP and LCN2, **K--M,***ex vivo* pre- or differentiated primary inguinal adipocytes isolated from *Lcn2*-null or C57BL/6J wildtype mice treated with recombinant LCN2 overexpressing GFP and LCN2. Data are presented as mean ± SEM (n = 4 mouse/group for global RNA sequencing; n = 4 mouse/group for qPCR; n = 6 female mouse/iWAT divided into two groups for *ex vivo* treatment). *P* values (and *Q* values for RNA sequencing data) were calculated by DESeq function of Bioconductor R-package for RNA sequencing; BicorAndPvalue function of the WGCNA R-package for HMDP transcript associations; Unpaired Student\'s t test for qPCR. \**P* or *Q* \< 0.05; \*\**P* or *Q* \< 0.01; \*\*\**P* or *Q* \< 0.001. See also [Figure S13](#appsec1){ref-type="sec"} and [Table S2](#appsec1){ref-type="sec"}.Figure 5
We observed that overexpression of LCN2 in female adipose was associated with markers of both fibrosis and inflammation. These included the adipose fibrosis markers, hypoxia-inducible factor 1 alpha (HIF1A) \[[@bib71],[@bib72]\] and collagen VI subunit (COL6A3) \[[@bib73],[@bib74]\] and the adipose inflammation markers, monocyte chemoattractant protein-1 (MCP1/CCL2) \[[@bib75]\], S100A8 \[[@bib76]\] and SAA3 \[[@bib77]\] ([Figure 5](#fig5){ref-type="fig"}A,C,D). Similar associations between LCN2 and the fibrosis/inflammation genes were observed across the HMDP strains in females but not males ([Figure 5](#fig5){ref-type="fig"}C,D).
Beyond these representative marker genes, we investigated whether there were any global differences in inflammatory cell composition between the two groups. To this end, we performed deconvolution analyses using an existing deconvolution algorithm (SaVanT, <http://newpathways.mcdb.ucla.edu/savant-dev>). As shown in [Figure 5](#fig5){ref-type="fig"}E, when focused on inflammatory cells, both macrophage and neutrophil populations were significantly higher in LCN2 groups. Differences in other cell populations were shown in [Fig. S13a](#appsec1){ref-type="sec"}. To further investigate what subtypes of macrophages (M1 vs. M2) were enriched in these LCN2 groups, we used macrophage gene signatures identified previously using our diverse HMDP populations \[[@bib78]\]. We observed M1 gene signatures were selectively upregulated in our LCN2 groups ([Figure 5](#fig5){ref-type="fig"}F). Moreover, our HMDP populations also revealed that female strains had significantly higher M1 gene signatures correlated with *Lcn2* expression compared to their male counterparts ([Figure 5](#fig5){ref-type="fig"}G). Follow-up quantitative PCR measurements on gonadal and subcutaneous adipose tissues extracted from GFP or LCN2 overexpressing mice confirmed these observations ([Figure 5](#fig5){ref-type="fig"}H--J).
To directly determine if LCN2 was causal in mediating these transcriptional changes, we treated *ex vivo* pre- or mature/differentiated inguinal adipocytes isolated from female *Lcn2*-null or WT mice with recombinant LCN2 protein and observed increased *Ccl2* expression, confirming our observations ([Figure 5](#fig5){ref-type="fig"}K--M). However, no other inflammatory marker genes were significantly different in gWAT isolated from LCN2 overexpressing mice ([Supplementary Figure S13b](#appsec1){ref-type="sec"}). Indeed, a similar increase only in CCL2 was observed when estradiol/ERα inhibition of LCN2 was removed \[[@bib35]\]. Taken together, our data support the concept that adipose-derived LCN2 mediated inflammation and fibrosis contributes to the metabolic complications accompanying diet-induced obesity.
3.8. Adipose LCN2 negatively regulate its receptor LRP2 and repressor ERα in a female-specific manner {#sec3.8}
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We further explored our transcriptomics data to identify molecular mediators of LCN2 action. We first examined the expression data for LCN2 receptors since LCN2 is a secreted protein. So far, two receptors have been characterized to bind LCN2 and mediate its uptake *via* receptor-mediated endocytosis: SLC22A17 \[[@bib79]\] and LDL receptor-related protein 2 (LRP2) or megalin \[[@bib80]\]. Of these, we found that *Lrp2* was downregulated in LCN2 overexpressing females ([Figure 6](#fig6){ref-type="fig"}A). Next, we investigated a female-specific repressor of LCN2, estrogen receptor alpha (ERα). To our surprise, we observed a reduction in *Esr1* expression in LCN2 overexpressing females ([Figure 6](#fig6){ref-type="fig"}A). Consistent with this, when we inspected the HMDP for transcript associations, we observed that adipose *Lcn2* showed sex-specific correlations to both these transcripts between sexes: *Lrp2* showed a negative correlation in females and a positive correlation in males, while *Esr1* showed a negative correlation in females and no correlation in males ([Figure 6](#fig6){ref-type="fig"}B). Follow-up quantitative PCR measurements on female and male gonadal adipose tissues extracted from GFP or LCN2 overexpressing mice confirmed these observations ([Figure 6](#fig6){ref-type="fig"}C,D). Similar observations were seen in female subcutaneous and brown adipose tissues as well ([Figure 6](#fig6){ref-type="fig"}E,F). Moreover, we also observed reduced ERα and LRP2 protein levels with LCN2 overexpression *via* western blot analyses ([Supplementary Figure S14a](#appsec1){ref-type="sec"}). Also, primary mature adipocytes isolated from both sexes of WT mice revealed that female adipocytes had higher basal *Lrp2* expression levels than males ([Supplementary Figure S14b](#appsec1){ref-type="sec"}). Further experiments on primary adipocytes isolated from *Lcn2*-null mice treated with recombinant LCN2 protein to determine the causality of LCN2 in mediating the downregulation of *Lrp2* and *Esr1* confirmed our observations ([Figure 6](#fig6){ref-type="fig"}G,H). Similarly, we observed that primary adipocytes from WT females had reduced levels of both *Lcn2* and *Esr1* expression levels as compared to KO mice ([Supplementary Figure S14c](#appsec1){ref-type="sec"}). Furthermore, when we treated primary, pre- or mature adipocytes isolated from WT mice with recombinant LCN2 protein, besides reduction in both LRP2 and ERα expression, we observed an increase in endogenous *Lcn2* expression ([Figure 6](#fig6){ref-type="fig"}I,J). This was indeed a surprise to us, because it has been previously demonstrated that ERα inhibits adipose LCN2 expression \[[@bib35]\]. This feedback inhibition of ERα by rLCN2 and a subsequent increase in *Lcn2* expression is a novel observation.Figure 6**Adipose LCN2 downregulates expression of both LRP2 and ERα.** Log~2~ fold change expression values of **A,***Lcn2*, *Lrp2*, and *Esr1* between GFP and LCN2 overexpressing female adipose and **B,** their respective bicorrelations with adipose *Lcn2* expression in female and male HMDP cohorts (n = 98 sex-matched strains). Relative normalized expression values of *Lcn2*, *Lrp2*, and *Esr1* in **C,** female gonadal WAT **D,** male gonadal WAT **E,** female subcutaneous WAT and **F,** female BAT overexpressing GFP and LCN2, **G -- J,***ex vivo* pre- or differentiated primary inguinal or periovarian adipocytes isolated from female *Lcn2*-null or C57BL/6J wildtype mice treated with recombinant LCN2. Circos connectogram plot showing biweight midcorrelation between adipose **K,***Lrp2* or **L,***Esr1* expression and metabolic traits in female and male HMDP cohort (n = 102 female and 111 male strains). Each connecting line signify a significant (1% FDR cutoff) bicorrelation between *Lrp2* or *Esr1* expression and the respective trait. Blue line indicates negative correlation and the color intensity signify the magnitude of correlation. Data are presented as mean ± SEM (n = 4 mouse/group for global RNA sequencing; n = 4 mouse/group for qPCR; n = 6 female mouse/iWAT divided into two groups for *ex vivo* treatment). *P* values (and *Q* values for RNA sequencing data) were calculated by DESeq function of Bioconductor R-package for RNA sequencing; BicorAndPvalue function of the WGCNA R-package for HMDP transcript associations; Unpaired Student\'s t test for qPCR. \**P* or *Q* \< 0.05; \*\**P* or *Q* \< 0.01; \*\*\**P* or *Q* \< 0.001. See also [Figures S1,S14--15](#appsec1){ref-type="sec"} and [Table S1](#appsec1){ref-type="sec"}.Figure 6
When we interrogated the HMDP populations to check for association(s) between adipose *Lrp2* expression and metabolic traits, we observed that in females but not in males, adipose *Lrp2* expression was strongly and negatively (1% FDR cutoff) associated with obesity, tissue weights, dyslipidemia, and insulin resistance ([Figure 6](#fig6){ref-type="fig"}K). In contrast, we observed that adipose *Esr1* expression was strongly and negatively (1% FDR cutoff) associated with metabolic traits in both sexes ([Figure 6](#fig6){ref-type="fig"}L). These two gene--trait associations were in the opposite direction of what we observed for adipose *Lcn2* in [Figure 1](#fig1){ref-type="fig"}G. Individual bicorrelation coefficients and *P* values for each association are listed in [Supplemental Table S1](#appsec1){ref-type="sec"}. Taken together, our data suggest that the female-specific adipose LCN2 action is mediated, at least in part, through negative regulation of its receptor, LRP2, and its repressor, ERα.
3.9. Adipose LRP2 inhibition alters obesity and insulin resistance in females {#sec3.9}
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
As a proof of concept, we used our AAV system to knockdown *Lrp2* expression in adipose tissues of C57BL/6J WT mice followed by feeding a HF/HS diet. We observed a minor increase in fat mass on sh*Lrp2* mice ([Figure 7](#fig7){ref-type="fig"}A) with no change in food intake between the two groups ([Figure 7](#fig7){ref-type="fig"}B). We also observed increased glucose intolerance and insulin resistance in shLrp2 mice as seen through GTT, ITT, fasting insulin, and HOMA-IR levels ([Figure 7](#fig7){ref-type="fig"}C--F). End-point organ weights demonstrated that only WAT depots were increased, and no changes were seen in BAT and liver weights ([Figure 7](#fig7){ref-type="fig"}G). We also observed a trend toward an increase in the activity of adipose mitochondrial complex I ([Figure 7](#fig7){ref-type="fig"}H). Taken together, these results demonstrate that female-specific adipose LCN2 functions are partly mediated through adipose *Lrp2* expression.Figure 7**Females with adipose LRP2 knockdown exhibit obesity and other metabolic disturbances. A,** Fat mass and lean mass before and after 8-weeks of HF/HS diet challenge along with *Lrp2* expression between the two groups. **B,** Cumulative food consumption between control and shLrp2 groups. **C,** Glucose-tolerance test and **D,** Insulin-tolerance test and their respective AUC of adipose-specific control or shLrp2 females after 8- and 10- weeks of diet challenge. Comparisons of **E,** plasma levels of insulin **F,** HOMA-IR and **G,** tissue weights and **H,** Electron flow assays of isolated gonadal adipose mitochondria between the two groups after HF/HS diet challenge. Data are presented as mean ± SEM (n = 6 animals per group for **A -- G**; n = 3--4 mitochondria per group for **H**). *P* values were calculated by **A,** 3-factor ANOVA corrected by post-hoc "Holm-Sidak\'s" multiple comparisons test; **A,** Unpaired Student\'s t test for gene expression**; C and D,** Repeated measures 2-factor ANOVA corrected by post-hoc "Holm-Sidak\'s" multiple comparisons test; **C -- F,** Unpaired Student\'s t test for AUC and insulin panel; **G and H,** 2-factor ANOVA corrected by post-hoc "Holm-Sidak\'s" multiple comparisons test. \**P* \< 0.05; \*\**P* \< 0.01; \*\*\**P* \< 0.001.Figure 7
4. Discussion {#sec4}
=============
We have identified a novel sex-specific role for adipose-secreted LCN2 in regulating diet-induced metabolic complications such as obesity, dyslipidemia, insulin resistance and fatty liver. Thus, in adipose, LCN2 exerts sex-specific control of mitochondrial content and activity and promotes tissue remodeling and inflammation, acting in an autocrine/paracrine manner, and this in turn mediates the sex dimorphic metabolic complications. In contrast, the expression of LCN2 in liver showed no significant effects on metabolic functions despite the fact that circulating LCN2 levels increased. Unlike previous studies utilizing a single mouse strain (male *Lcn2*-null or WT C57BL/6J) to implicate LCN2 in metabolic dysfunction, our study used an extensively phenotyped mouse cohort of ∼100 classical inbred and recombinant inbred strains of both sexes to identify sex-specific associations. To validate the resulting hypotheses, we used a tissue-specific LCN2 overexpression system *via* AAV-mediated gene transfer. To exclude LCN2 from any source other than our intended tissue, we used a *Lcn2*-null background for our tissue-specific overexpression. As several other studies have produced conflicting results possibly due to the differences in generating *Lcn2*-null mice, we repeated our overexpression studies in a C57BL/6J WT background to exclude any such bias.
It is noteworthy that the results of our experimental LCN2 overexpression studies are entirely consistent with the natural variation in LCN2 expression observed in the HMDP population, such as metabolic effects and gene expression differences. Thus, they do not appear to be due to artifactual effects of overexpression. Our genetic analyses in the HMDP also support the possibility that *Lcn2* expression is regulated in trans by *Lipin1* variation, although further studies are required to confirm this. Nevertheless, our analyses also have some technical limitations. For instance, overexpression of adipose LCN2 in males improved glucose metabolism without affecting body weight but we were not able to predict this through HMDP correlations. We suspect that this may be a statistical issue. The HMDP is a panel of ∼100 inbred strains of mice. Correlation analyses using such a population often involve correction by multiple testing. In order to observe a significant correlation between two traits, the effect size must be large enough that it passes the multiple correction tests. On other hand, our study also lacks any thermogenesis-related traits such as BAT transcriptomics, BAT mitochondria, or rectal temperature following cold exposure to detect any male-specific thermogenesis-related correlations as observed by others \[[@bib81]\]. Because our primary focus was to understand LCN2-mediated female-specific metabolic complications, we did limited follow-up on other metabolic traits possibly altered in the male overexpressing LCN2.
Although LCN2 has been implicated in metabolic dysfunction, most previous studies examined only one sex, and, in the majority of these studies, whole-body knockout mice and/or circulating LCN2 levels were utilized. For instance, previous studies have reported neutrophil-secreted LCN2 as a key player in regulating alcoholic (female *Lcn2*-null mice with adoptive transfer of WT neutrophils) and non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (male *Lcn2*-null mice with chronic infusion of recombinant LCN2) *via* neutrophil infiltration \[[@bib18],[@bib19]\]. Another study utilizing bone-specific knockout mouse models demonstrated that bone-secreted LCN2 controls appetite in male mice \[[@bib11]\]. More relevant to this paper, a very recent study utilizing adipose-specific LCN2 overexpression in aged male mice (10-months and 18-months old) observed protection against age-related metabolic traits such as glucose intolerance and hepatic steatosis partly through improving adaptive thermogenesis \[[@bib82]\]. Here, we demonstrate that 8-week LCN2 overexpressing *Lcn2*-null males also had improved glucose tolerance but no changes otherwise. In complete contrast, we report that adipose-secreted LCN2 regulates obesity in female mice, in both *Lcn2*-null and WT strains, through effects on adipose inflammation, remodeling and mitochondrial dysfunction without changing food consumption. Most of the human associations were made using circulating LCN2 levels due to the inherent difficulty in acquiring other clinical tissues and our studies emphasize the importance of the sex and tissue source of LCN2.
Mitochondrial dysfunction in WAT is associated with obesity and whole body insulin resistance in both animal and human studies \[[@bib83], [@bib84], [@bib85], [@bib86], [@bib87], [@bib88]\]. In this study, we demonstrate that adipose-derived LCN2 affects mitochondria in female adipose tissues. Notably, LCN2 overexpression lowers the mitochondrial DNA content, electron transport complexes, and the functional capacity per mitochondrion in female adipose tissues. Indeed, LCN2 has been associated with mitochondrial dysfunction in both liver \[[@bib89],[@bib90]\] and cardiomyocytes \[[@bib91], [@bib92], [@bib93]\]. Given that estrogens, through ERα, control mitochondrial biogenesis and function \[[@bib94]\], and our data demonstrating that LCN2 downregulates ERα, we propose that LCN2-mediated mitochondrial dysfunction could be a result of ERα inhibition. Indeed, Ribas et al., have demonstrated that *Polg1* expression is under the control of ERα in skeletal muscle using ERα antagonist ICI 182,780 (fulvestrant) or an ERα DNA binding mutation (ERα DBDΔ) \[[@bib95]\]. More specific to this paper, ERα KO in 3T3-L1 and adipose tissues of mice downregulate *Polg1* (mtDNA polymerase) expression and controls mitochondrial biogenesis (unpublished data, manuscript under review). Furthermore, we observed *Polg1* downregulation concurrently with *Esr1* downregulation in female adipose tissue overexpressing LCN2 or primary adipocytes treated with rLCN2 or primary adipocytes from WT mice. This illustrates a mechanistic role for LCN2 in mediating mitochondrial dysfunction through the ERα-POLG1 axis ([Supplementary Figure S15](#appsec1){ref-type="sec"}).
Both inflammation and fibrosis of adipose are widely recognized as causal in the development of metabolic dysfunctions such as insulin resistance \[[@bib71], [@bib72], [@bib73], [@bib74], [@bib75],[@bib96]\]. While investigating the mechanistic basis for LCN2 contribution to sex-specific diet-induced obesity, we found that LCN2 induces both pro-inflammatory- and fibrosis-related transcripts including *Ccl2*, *Hif1a*, and *Col6a3* expression in female adipose tissues. Using our mouse population, we also show that these transcripts are not associated with adipose LCN2 expression in male adipose tissues. Further analyses establish that *Lrp2*, a cell-surface LCN2 receptor, is negatively regulated in females. LRP2 or megalin is a 600 kDa member of low-density lipoprotein receptor family and is an endocytic receptor that binds LCN2 with high affinity \[[@bib80]\]. Besides LCN2, megalin transports numerous ligands including vitamin A, B12, and D, along with their transport proteins, leptin, angiotensin II, insulin, and albumin \[[@bib97]\]. Notably, LRP2 also binds and endocytoses sex hormone binding globulin that mediates uptake of both androgens and estrogens \[[@bib98]\]. Though megalin is primarily expressed in epithelial cells, megalin expression has been observed in 3T3-L1 adipocytes, human primary adipocytes, and mouse gWAT in response to vitamin D \[[@bib99],[@bib100]\] and in 3T3-L1 adipocytes in response to angiotensin II \[[@bib101]\]. Our studies also revealed striking negative associations between metabolic traits and adipose LRP2 expression ([Figure 6](#fig6){ref-type="fig"}K). Our LRP2 inhibition studies in female adipose tissues validated some of these associations and support the conclusion that LCN2 action is mediated in part through negative regulation of LRP2. Further investigations are required to identify how LCN2 regulates *Lrp2* transcription in a sex-specific manner.
One of our most interesting and unexpected findings was that LCN2 can downregulate ERα in female adipose, both *in vitro* and *in vivo*. Given that adipose *Lcn2* expression is directly inhibited by ERα binding \[[@bib35]\] and is positively associated with metabolic traits only in females ([Figure 1](#fig1){ref-type="fig"}G), it is likely that the observed female-specific negative regulation of ERα by LCN2 is part of an intricate feedback mechanism. Adipose-specific ERα KO increases obesity in mice of both sexes \[[@bib35]\]. Indeed, our HMDP populations revealed striking negative associations between metabolic traits and ERα expression in both sexes. Intriguingly, only female ERα expression was inhibited by LCN2 in our studies, partly explaining the pathological role of LCN2 in females. Future studies are warranted to delineate how LCN2 inhibits *Esr1* transcription in female adipose tissues.
In summary, our studies make it clear that LCN2 exhibits diverse and at times antagonistic context-, tissue- and sex-dependent roles. Any pharmacological targeting of LCN2 as a treatment for metabolic dysfunction will have to account for these. Importantly, our study exemplifies the need to include both sexes while studying complex traits to optimize genetic contributions and therapeutic intervention.
Funding information {#sec5}
===================
This work was supported by NIH-PO1HL028481 (A.J.L.), AHA fellowship 18POST33990256 (K.C.K.), NIH-P30DK063491 (M.L.), the Foundation Leducq 12CVD04 (L.V. and K.R.), NIH-K99HL138193 (M.M.S.), and NIH-T32HL69766 (B.K.F.). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Author contributions {#sec6}
====================
K.C.K., and A.J.L. conceived the study. K.C.K., S.S., M.S., Y.M., R.A.P., J.M.L., R.F., L.V., M.M.S., B.K.F., D.J., S.N., D.A., C.P., L.S., M.P., K.R., M.L., and A.J.L. performed experiments or analyzed the data. K.C.K., and A.J.L. drafted the manuscript, and all authors read or revised the manuscript.
Acknowledgements {#sec7}
================
We thank Sarada Charugundla for plasma and liver metabolite analyses, Zhiqiang Zhou and Hannah Qi and for assistance in animal experiments, and Nam Che for AAV construction.
Conflict of interest {#sec8}
====================
The authors declare no conflict of interests.
Appendix A. Supplementary data {#appsec1}
==============================
The following are the Supplementary data to this article:Multimedia component 1Multimedia component 1Multimedia component 2Multimedia component 2Multimedia component 3Multimedia component 3
Supplementary data to this article can be found online at <https://doi.org/10.1016/j.molmet.2019.09.009>.
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tomekkorbak/pile-curse-small
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PubMed Central
|
Stabilization of the fractured scaphoid under arthroscopic control.
All surgical procedures for the scaphoid are technically demanding. Nonunion, however, is associated with predictable adverse consequences, and union is predicated on effective fracture immobilization. The arthroscopically assisted approach to scaphoid fractures provides the combined advantages of internal fracture fixation and minimally invasive surgical technique (Fig. 5). Patients are receptive to the approach, and the new fixation device has proven to be extremely effective in the first 5 years of clinical usage.
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tomekkorbak/pile-curse-small
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PubMed Abstracts
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This coverage and the 2012 Skyd College Tour are brought to you by Spin Ultimate.
It’s March and the majors are finally here! As teams begin to make their trip West (or North for the SW) to the Stanford Invite, there is a ton to get excited for besides some solid college ultimate! First off, check out the previews of each pool along with my predictions of how everything will end up after the Saturday sun sets on Stevinson, CA:
Shout out to Bryan Jones as well as NexGen’s Mario O’Brien and Cody Johnston for contributing to the following content!
Previews:
Pool A: Pittsburgh, Minnesota, Stanford & Texas
Pool B: Oregon, Florida, North Carolina & Cal Poly-SLO
Pool C: Wisconsin, Colorado, California-Santa Barbara & Harvard
Pool D: Carleton College, California, Whitman & California-San Diego
Live Streamed Ultimate w/ Commentary!
Make sure you check out NexGen’s coverage all weekend long, featuring commentary from the NexGen crew as well as Mr. No Look Scoober himself, Bryan Jones. Below is NexGen’s coverage plan for this weekend (all times PST):
Saturday
10:00 AM – Carleton College vs. Whitman
2:00 PM – Oregon vs. Florida
4:00 PM – Pittsburgh vs. Minnesota
Sunday
9:45 AM – Quarter-Finals (TBD)
11:30 AM – Semi-Finals (TBD)
3:00 PM – Finals (TBD)
Be sure to follow me @Skyd_ZackSmith and Bryan Jones @No_Look_Scoober on Twitter for scores of the other rounds in progress and check out our Saturday night recap show!
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tomekkorbak/pile-curse-small
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OpenWebText2
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The exact vs. approximate distinction in numerical cognition may not be exact, but only approximate: How different processes work together in multi-digit addition.
Two types of calculation processes have been distinguished in the literature: approximate processes are supposed to rely heavily on the non-verbal quantity system, whereas exact processes are assumed to crucially involve the verbal system. These two calculation processes were commonly distinguished by manipulation of two factors in addition problems: the identity of the target and the distance of the distractor. However, in all previous studies, these two factors were not manipulated independently. In this fMRI study, we could disentangle the two factors by using a different (two-digit) number stimulus set. Both behavioral and neurofunctional data suggest that the cognitive processes involved could be best explained by the (independent) factors target and distractor distance. Based on these data we suggest that the exact/approximate distinction does not seem to be as generally valid as previously assumed. We conclude that this study may be a starting point for a closer examination of the experimental, procedural and strategic conditions of when the exact/approximate distinction is valid and when it is not.
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tomekkorbak/pile-curse-small
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PubMed Abstracts
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