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Jefferson's Demons: Portrait of a Restless Mind
Free Press, 2003 - 265 ページ
"I have often wondered for what good end the sensations of Grief could be intended."
-- Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson suffered during his life from periodic bouts of dejection and despair, shadowed intervals during which he was full of "gloomy forebodings" about what lay ahead.
Not long before he composed the Declaration of Independence, the young Jefferson lay for six weeks in idleness and ill health at Monticello, paralyzed by a mysterious "malady." Similar lapses were to recur during anxious periods in his life, often accompanied by violent headaches. In "Jefferson's Demons," Michael Knox Beran illuminates an optimistic man's darker side -- Jefferson as we have rarely seen him before.
The worst of these moments came after his wife died in 1782. But two years later, after being dispatched to Europe, Jefferson recovered nerve and spirit in the salons of Paris, where he fell in love with a beautiful young artist, Maria Cosway. When their affair ended, Jefferson's health again broke down. He set out for the palms and temples of southern Europe, and though he did not know where the therapeutic journey would take him or where it would end, his encounter with the old civilizations of the Mediterranean was transformative. The Greeks and Romans taught him that a man could make productive use of his demons.
Jefferson's immersion in the mystic truths of the Old World gave him insights into mysteries of life and art that Enlightenment philosophy had failed to supply. Beran skillfully shows how Jefferson drew on the esoteric lore he encountered to transform anxiety into action. On his return to America, Jefferson entered the most productive period of his life: Hecreated a new political party, was elected president, and doubled the size of the country. His private labors were no less momentous...among them, the artistry of Monticello and the University of Virginia.
"Jefferson's Demons" is an elegantly composed account of the strangeness and originality of one Founder's genius. Michael Knox Beran uncovers the maps Jefferson used to find his way out of dejection and to forge a new democratic culture for America. Here is a Jefferson who, with all his failings, remains one of his country's greatest teachers and prophets.
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Jefferson's Demonsユーザー レビュー - flip72 - Borders
one of the best books I have ever read. A very informative, fact filled, yet enjoyable read. will keep this one forever and read it several more times during the course of my life. レビュー全文を読む
JEFFERSON'S DEMONS: Portrait of a Restless Mindユーザー レビュー - Kirkus
An examination of Jefferson's career with attention to his psychological states, his debates with his inner voices, and his struggles with Federalist adversaries.Lawyer/writer Beran (The Last ... レビュー全文を読む | {
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By popular demand, Billy Ocean, will be making a return to indigO2
Billy Ocean is a phenomenon. As the biggest black recording star Britain has ever produced, shifting over 30 million albums, the award winning R&B and pop singer has enjoyed a stunning career filled with dozens of hugely popular hits and albums, both at home and in the USA.
Billy will be bringing his infectious blend of Caribbean soul, funk, pop and R&B to indigO2 at The O2 on June 9th 2010.
Born in Trinidad, the young Billy Ocean moved to the UK with his parents aged 8 and during his teens was a regular fixture on the London club circuit. He released his debut album in 1976, the self-titled Billy Ocean, with its first single Love Really Hurts Without You rocketing straight to #2 in the UK charts.
Ocean’s rise to popularity continued throughout the ’80s, with his hit tune Caribbean Queen ranking at #1 on the American Hot 100, R&B and dance charts simultaneously. The song also earned Ocean a Grammy Award for Best Male R&B Vocal Performance and reached #6 in the UK. Perhaps his most memorable hit came with the release of When The Going Gets Tough, The Tough Gets Going, which was used as the theme to the 1985 Hollywood blockbuster The Jewel Of The Nile, starring Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner – this feel-good anthem went straight to #1 in the UK and #2 in the US, cementing Ocean’s reputation as a major star. Billy’s list of hits is incredible; Suddenly, There’ll Be Sad Songs, Red Light Spells Danger, as well as Love Really Hurts Without You, Get Outta My Dreams, Love Zone and Loverboy.
Billy Ocean’s uplifting and heartfelt vocal style has earned his the respect and admiration of both his audiences and peers across the world. His songs have been covered by the likes of LaToya Jackson, Randy Crawford, The Nolans and Boyzone and he continues to tour his hits to this day. His appearance at the IndigO2 marks a hugely anticipated return to London for one of the country’s best loved artists in any genre. Definitely not to be missed!
To buy tickets visit www.ticketmaster.co.uk/08444 775 775 Prices: £16.75, £27.50, £32.75, £43.50. | {
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One of the most remarkable films I’ve seen the last couple of years must be Handsworth Songs by Black Audio Film Collective (directed by John Akomfrah), which takes as a starting point the “riots” that haunted the Birmingham district of Handsworth and South London in 1985, as a way to open up secret histories of racial suppression and post-colonial tension in post-Industrial England. We have shown this film – the debut film of Black Audio Film Collective, released in 1986 – in our Somewhere in Time programme in 2009, but I recently saw it again on the occasion of the BAFC exhibition at STUK (Leuven), and it still struck me as a particularly affective and invigorating piece of work, brimming with urgency and audacity. It’s one of those rare works in which the dynamics between political charge – outspoken but never dictated – and aesthetical choice – a panoply of various text, image and sound sources and textures – still hold up to this day. From a certain perspective, one could consider it as one of the film essays that in its own way served as a reaction to what Jacques Rancière, in his article ‘Il est arrivé quelque chose au réel’ (published in Cahiers du Cinéma in 2000), has described as the crisis of the “réel de la fiction”. He especially targeted the “fiction mineure”, characterised by a combination of political stereotypes and dramatic clichés in a sterile formula that we can no longer stumach. Against the “réel de la fiction” (real of fiction), Rancière has put the “fictions politique du réel” (political fictions of the real).
“It is not us who no longer tolerate politics. It is politics which no longer tolerates the remnants of the ‘réel de la fiction’. Perhaps because some filmmakers have in the meantime invented a new mode of fictioning appropriate for denouncing the socio-fictional compromise that links the ‘fiction mineure’ to modes of presentation of a depoliticised politics. The socio-fictional compromise is the complicity between the pseudo-evidence of the separation between document and fiction, and the perpetual exchange of the forms of belief they give rise to. Against the ‘réel de la fiction’ that support this compromise, the ‘fictions politique du réel’ have succeeded in exploiting the paradoxical advantage that is proper to the documentary genre: where the real is taken as an acquired given, there is no need to attest it fictionally, no need to produce the sentiment. Where it is supposedly given, one can invest in rendering it problematic, one can invent its problem.”
In the light of Rancière’s musings on the changing relations between cinema and politics, reality and fiction, past and present, History and memory, Handsworth Songs seems like an interesting case to reflect on these changes, which in themselves are related to the overhanging expectations towards cinema – and “political” cinema in particular. By way of initial illustration, I looked up and copied below some of the earliest reactions on the film, i.c. the critical review that Salman Rushdie wrote for the Guardian in January 1987, and the subsequent letters written by cultural theorist Stuart Hall (whose work has undoubtedly inspired the language of Handsworth Songs) and activist Darcus Howe. These letters were then themselves quoted in several important culture-critical essays from the end of the 1980’s, mostly dealing with the politics of racial representation, two of which can be found below: Stuart Hall’s influential ‘new ethnicities’ and Isaac Julien & Kobena Mercer’s ‘De Margin and De Centre’. Good reading!
Salman Rushdie, ‘songs doesn’t know the score’
The Guardian, January 1987
In The Heart of a Woman, volume four of her famous autobiography, Maya Angelou describes a meeting of the Harlem Writer’s Guild, at which she read some of her work and had it torn to pieces by the group.
It taught her a tough lesson: ‘If I wanted to write, I had to be willing to develop a kind of concentration found mostly in people awaiting execution. I had to learn technique and surrender my ignorance.’
It just isn’t enough to be black and blue, or even black and angry. The message is plain enough in Angelou’s self-portrait, in Louise Meriwether’s marvellous Daddy Was a Numbers Runner, in Toni Morrison and Paule Marshall; if you want to tell the untold stories, of you want to give voice to the voiceless, you’ve got to find a language. Which goes for film as well as prose, for documentary as well as autobiography. Use the wrong language, and you’re dumb and blind.
Down at the Metro cinema, in Soho, there’s a new documentary starting a three-week run. Handsworth Songs, made by Black Audio Film collective. The ‘buzz’ about the picture is good. New Socialist likes it, City Limits likes it, people are calling it multi-layered ‘original’ imaginative, its makers talk of speaking in metaphors, its director John Akomfrah is getting mentioned around town as a talent to watch.
Unfortunately, it’s no good, and the trouble does seem to be one of language.
Let me put it this way. If you see ‘Handsworth’, what do you see? Most Britons would see fire, riots, looted shops, young Rastas and helmeted cops by night. A big story; front page. Maybe a West Side Story: Officer Krupke, armed to the teeth versus the kids with the social disease.
There’s a line that Handsworth Songs wants us to learn. ‘There are no stories in the riots.’ It repeats, ‘only the ghosts of other stories’. The trouble is, we aren’t told the other stories. What we get is what we know from TV. Blacks as trouble; blacks as victims; Here is a Rasta dodging the boat; here are the old news-clips of the folks in the fifties getting off the boat, singing calypsos about ‘darling London’.
Little did they know, eh? But we don’t hear about their lives, or the lives of their British-born children. We don’t hear Handsworth’s songs.
Why not? The film’s handout provide a clue. ‘The film attempts to excavate hidden ruptures/agonies of “Race”’. It ‘looks at the riots as a political field coloured by the trajectories of industrial decline and structural crisis.’ Oh dear. The sad thing is that while the film-makers are trying to excavate ruptures and work out how trajectories can colour fields, they let us hear so little of the much richer language of their subjects.
When Home Secretary Hurd visits Handsworth looking bemused, just after the riots, a black voice is heard to say: ‘The higher monkey climb the more he will expose.’ If only more of this sort of wit and freshness could have found its way into the film. But the makers are too busy ‘repositioning the convergence of “Race” and “Criminality”’, describing a living world in the dead language of race industry professionals. I don’t know Handsworth very well, but I do know it’s bursting with tales worth telling. Take a look at John Bishton and Derek Reardon’s 1984 photo-and-text essay, Home Front. There are Vietnamese boat people in Handsworth where Father Peter Diem, a refugee himself, runs a pastoral centre to which they come for comfort.
There’s an Asian businessman in Handsworth who made his pile by employing his fellow-Asians in sweat-shops to make, of all things, the Harrington jackets beloved of the skinheads who were also, as it happened fond of bashing the odd Paki.
Here are two old British soldiers. One, namely Shri Dalip Singh, sits stiffly in his army tunic, sporting his Africa Star with pride; the other a certain Jagat Singh, is a broken old gent who has been arrested for drunkenness on these streets over 300 times. Some nights they catch hum trying to direct the traffic.
It’s a religious place, Handsworth. What was once a methodist chapel is now one of the many Sikh gurdwaras. Here is the Good News Asian Church, and there you see Rasta groundations, a mosque, Pentecostal halls, and Hindujain and Buddhist places of worship. Many of Handsworth’s songs are hymns of praise. But there’s reggae, too, there are Toasters at blue dances, there are Punjabi ghazals and Two Tone bands.
These days, the kids in handsworth like to dance the Wobble. And some of it deizens deam of distant ‘liberations’, nurturing, for example, the dark fantasy of Kahlistan.
It’s important, I believe, to tell such stories, to say, this is England: Allahu Akbar from the minaret of Birmingham mosque, the Ethiopian World Federation which helps Handsworth Rastas ‘return’ to the land of Ras Tafari. There are English scenes now, English songs.
You won’t find them, or anything like them, in Handsworth Songs, though for some reason you will see plenty of footage about troubles in Tottenham and Brixton, which is just the sort of blurring you know the Harlem writers would have jumped on, no matter how right-on it looked.
It isn’t easy for black voices to be heard, It isn’t easy to get it said that the state attacks us, that the police are militarised. It isn’t easy to fight back against media stereotypes. As a result, whenever somebody says what we all know, even if they say it clumsily and in jargon, there’s a strong desire to cheer, just because they managed to het something said, they managed to get through.
I don’t think that’s much help myself. That kind of celebration makes us lazy.
Next time, let’s start telling those ghost-stories. If we know why the caged bird sings, let’s listen to her song.
Stuart Hall, ‘song of handsworth praise’
The Guardian, January 1987
Sir, I must take issue with the way Salman Rushdie attacked Black Audio Film Collective and its film Handsworth Songs, from his well-deserved but secure position in the literary firmament.
Of course, the film isn’t perfect. Of course, a mere recital of the known contours of racism and oppression in the same, old, stale language does no one any good. Of course, black artists, deserve something more from us than mere celebration for having managed to say anything at all.
What I don’t understand is how anyone watching the film could have missed the struggle which it represents, precisely, to find a new language. The most obvious thing to me about the film is its break with the tired style of the riot-documentary.
For example, the way documentary footage has been retimed, tinted, overprinted so as to formalise and distance it; the narrative interruptions; the highly original and unpredictable sound-track; the ‘giving voice’ to new subjects; the inter-cutting with the ‘ghosts of other stories.’
These new ways of telling bring Handsworth Songs into the line with Passion of Remembrance and, in a different way, My Beautiful Laundrette, in that distinctive wave of new work by third generation black artists, part of whose originality is precisely that they tell the black experience as an English experience.
For what reason, apart from making us look in new ways, does Salman Rushdie want these ‘new languages’? He seems to assume that his songs are not only different but better, presumably because they don’t deal with all that dreary stuff about riots and the police etc. He prefers colourful stories about experience, closer to ‘the richer language of their subjects.’
I fully agree that there is no one ‘black experience’, and we need to confront its real diversity without forcing it into simplistic moulds. But subjects and experience don’t appear out of thin air. The counterposing of ‘experience’ to ‘politics’ is a false and dangerous dichotomy.
Black Audio may have been guilty of mixing its metaphors when it spoke of ‘a political field coloured by trajectories of industrial decline and structural crisis’. But it seems to be struggling harder for a language in which to represent Handsworth as I know it than Salman’s lofty, disdainful, and too-complacent ‘Oh dear’.
Darcus Howe, ‘the language of black culture’
The Guardian, January 1987
Sir, I want to take issue with Stuart Hall’s attack on Salman Rushdie’s critical piece on the Black Audio collective’s film, Handsworth Songs.
I write neither from Rushdie’s ‘well-deserved but secure position in the literary firmament’ nor from, dare I say it, Stuart Hall’s equally well-deserved but secure position in the academic firmament.
I have been an activist in the black movement for over 20 years, organising and developing political, cultural and artistic thrusts which have emerged from within our black communities and continue to do so today.
For some time now my activist colleagues and I have been moaning in print about the absence of critical tradition in the field of black arts and culture. We recognise that such an absence is a point of greater weakness. Without it we are left with nothing but cheer-leaders on the one hand and a string of abuses on the other.
Enter Salman Rushdie with a well-written and thoughtful piece of criticism which serves the dual function of a critique of the film itself, while at the same time laying the foundations of a critical tradition. It is most welcome.
Hall’s main objection is that Rushdie misses the fact of the struggle for a new language which the film represents. Rushdie does nothing of the sort. He simply says that the attempt to shape a new language does not work, and I agree with him. In the best critical tradition he goes to suggest what he thinks would work. And I am certain that the filmmakers will take that on board. If they don’t we are in a sorry state indeed.
Finally I could find not a trace of loftiness, disdain nor complacency in Rushdie’s critique. His is a useful and timely intervention, a far cry from the patronising ‘ten out of ten for struggling’ approach.
Stuart Hall, ‘new ethnicities’
Written in 1988. Reprinted from ICA Documents 7: Black Film, British Cinema, edited by Kobena Mercer.
I have centred my remarks on an attempt to identify and characterize a significant shift that has been going on (and is still going on) in black cultural politics. This shift is not definitive, in the sense that there are two clearly discernible phases—one in the past which is now over and the new one which is beginning—which we can neatly counterpose to one another. Rather, they are two phases of the same movement, which constantly overlap and interweave. Both are framed by the same historical conjucture and both are rooted in the politics of anti-racism and the post-war black experience in Britain. Nevertheless I think we can identify two different ‘moments’ and that the difference between them is significant.
It is difficult to characterize these precisely, but I would say that the first moment was grounded in a particular political and cultural analysis. Politically, this is the moment when the term ‘black’ was coined as a way of referencing the common experience of racism and marginalization in Britain and came to provide the organizing category of a new politics of resistance, among groups and communities with, in fact, very different histories, traditions and ethnic identities. In this moment, politically speaking. ‘The black experience’, as a singular and unifying framework based on the building up of identity across ethnic and cultural difference between the different communities, became ‘hegemonic’ over other ethnic/ racial identities—though the latter did not, of course, disappear. Culturally, this analysis formulated itself in terms of a critique of the way blacks were positioned as the unspoken and invisible ‘other’ of predominantly white aesthetic and cultural discourses.
This analysis was predicated on the marginalization of the black experience in British culture; not fortuitously occurring at the margins, but placed, positioned at the margins, as the consequence of a set of quite specific political and cultural practices which regulated, governed and ‘normalized’ the representational and discursive spaces of English society. These formed the conditions of existence of a cultural politics designed to challenge, resist and, where possible, to transform the dominant regimes of representation—first in music and style, later in literary, visual and cinematic forms. In these spaces blacks have typically been the objects, but rarely the subjects, of the practices of representation. The struggle to come into representation was predicated on a critique of the degree of fetishization, objectification and negative figuration which are so much a feature of the representation of the black subject. There was a concern not simply with the absence or marginality of the black experience but with its simplification and its stereotypical character.
The cultural politics and strategies which developed around this critique had many facets, but its two principal objects were: first the question of access to the rights to representation by black artists and black cultural workers themselves. Second, the contestation of the marginality, the stereotypical quality and the fetishized nature of images of blacks, by the counter-position of a ‘positive’ black imagery. These strategies were principally addressed to changing what I would call the ‘relations of representation’.
I have a distinct sense that in the recent period we are entering a new phase. But we need to be absolutely clear what we mean by a ‘new’ phase because, as soon as you talk of a new phase, people instantly imagine that what is entailed is the substitution of one kind of politics for another. I am quite distinctly not talking about a shift in those terms. Politics does not necessarily proceed by way of a set of oppositions and reversals of this kind, though some groups and individuals are anxious to ‘stage’ the question in this way. The original critique of the predominant relations of race and representation and the politics which developed around it have not and cannot possibly disappear while the conditions which gave rise to it— cultural racism in its Dewesbury form—not only persists but positively flourishes under Thatcherism.1 There is no sense in which a new phase in black cultural politics could replace the earlier one. Nevertheless it is true that as the struggle moves forward and assumes new forms, it does to some degree displace, reorganize and reposition the different cultural strategies in relation to one another. If this can be conceived in terms of the ‘burden of representation’, I would put the point in this form: that black artists and cultural workers now have to struggle, not on one, but on two fronts. The problem is, how to characterize this shift—if indeed, we agree that such a shift has taken or is taking place—and if the language of binary oppositions and substitutions will no longer suffice. The characterization that I would offer is tentative, proposed in the context of this essay mainly to try and clarify some of the issues involved, rather than to pre-empt them.
The shift is best thought of in terms of a change from a struggle over the relations of representation to a politics of representation itself. It would be useful to separate out such a ‘politics of representation’ into its different elements. We all now use the word representation, but, as we know, it is an extremely slippery customer. It can be used, on the one hand, simply as another way of talking about how one images a reality that exists ‘outside’ the means by which things are represented: a conception grounded in a mimetic theory of representation. On the other hand the term can also stand for a very radical displacement of that unproblematic notion of the concept of representation. My own view is that events, relations, structures do have conditions of existence and real effects, outside the sphere of the discursive; but that it is only within the discursive, and subject to its specific conditions, limits and modalities, do they have or can they be constructed within meaning. Thus, while not wanting to expand the territorial claims of the discursive infinitely, how things are represented and the ‘machineries’ and regimes of representation in a culture do play a constitutive, and not merely a reflexive, after-the-event, role. This gives questions of culture and ideology, and the scenarios of representation— subjectivity, identity, politics—a formative, not merely an expressive, place in the constitution of social and political life. I think it is the move towards this second sense of representation which is taking place and which is transforming the politics of representation in black culture.
This is a complex issue. First, it is the effect of a theoretical encounter between black cultural politics and the discourses of a Eurocentric, largely white, critical cultural theory which in recent years, has focused so much analysis of the politics of representation. This is always an extremely difficult, if not dangerous, encounter. (I think particularly of black people encountering the discourses of post-structuralism, postmodernism, psychoanalysis and feminism.) Second, it marks what I can only call ‘the end of innocence’, or the end of the innocent notion of the essential black subject. Here again, the end of the essential black subject is something which people are increasingly debating, but they may not have fully reckoned with its political consequences. What is at issue here is the recognition of the extraordinary diversity of subjective positions, social experiences and cultural identities which compose the category ‘black’; that is, the recognition that ‘black’ is essentially a politically and culturally constructed category, which cannot be grounded in a set of fixed transcultural or transcendental racial categories and which therefore has no guarantees in nature. What this brings into play is the recognition of the immense diversity and differentiation of the historical and cultural experience of black subjects. This inevitably entails a weakening or fading of the notion that ‘race’ or some composite notion of race around the term black will either guarantee the effectivity of any cultural practice or determine in any final sense its aesthetic value.
We should put this as plainly as possible. Films are not necessarily good because black people make them. They are not necessarily ‘right-on’ by virtue of the fact that they deal with the black experience. Once you enter the politics of the end of the essential black subject you are plunged headlong into the maelstrom of a continuously contingent, unguaranteed, political argument and debate: a critical politics, a politics of criticism. You can no longer conduct black politics through the strategy of a simple set of reversals, putting in the place of the bad old essential white subject, the new essentially good black subject. Now, that formulation may seem to threaten the collapse of an entire political world. Alternatively, it may be greeted with extraordinary relief at the passing away of what at one time seemed to be a necessary fiction. Namely, either that all black people are good or indeed that all black people are the same. After all, it is one of the predicates of racism that ‘you can’t tell the difference because they all look the same’. This does not make it any easier to conceive of how a politics can be constructed which works with and through difference, which is able to build those forms of solidarity and identification which make common struggle and resistance possible but without suppressing the real heterogeneity of interests and identities, and which can effectively draw the political boundary lines without which political contestation is impossible, without fixing those boundaries for eternity. It entails the movement in black politics, from what Gramsci called the ‘war of manoeuvre’ to the ‘war of position’—the struggle around positionalities. But the difficulty of conceptualizing such a politics (and the temptation to slip into a sort of endlessly sliding discursive liberal-pluralism) does not absolve us of the task of developing such a politics.
The end of the essential black subject also entails a recognition that the central issues of race always appear historically in articulation, in a formation, with other categories and divisions and are constantly crossed and recrossed by the categories of class, of gender and ethnicity. (I make a distinction here between race and ethnicity to which I shall return.) To me, films like Territories, Passion of Remembrance, My Beautiful Laundrette and Sammy and Rosie Get Laid, for example, make it perfectly clear that this shift has been engaged; and that the question of the black subject cannot be represented without reference to the dimensions of class, gender, sexuality and ethnicity.
DIFFERENCE AND CONTESTATION
A further consequence of this politics of representation is the slow recognition of the deep ambivalence of identification and desire. We think about identification usually as a simple process, structured around fixed ‘selves’ which we either are or are not. The play of identity and difference which constructs racism is powered not only by the positioning of blacks as the inferior species but also, and at the same time, by an inexpressible envy and desire; and this is something the recognition of which fundamentally displaces many of our hitherto stable political categories, since it implies a process of identification and otherness which is more complex than we had hitherto imagined.
Racism, of course, operates by constructing impassable symbolic boundaries between racially constituted categories, and its typically binary system of representation constantly marks and attempts to fix and naturalize the difference between belongingness and otherness. Along this frontier there arises what Gayatri Spivak calls the ‘epistemic violence’ of the discourses of the Other—of imperialism, the colonized, Orientalism, the exotic, the primitive, the anthropological and the folk-lore.2
Consequently the discourse of anti-racism had often been founded on a strategy of reversal and inversion, turning the ‘Manichean aesthetic’ of colonial discourse upside-down. However, as Fanon constantly reminded us, the epistemic violence is both outside and inside, and operates by a process of splitting on both sides of the division—in here as well as out here. That is why it is a question, not only of ‘black-skin’ but of ‘Black- Skin, White Masks’—the internalization of the self-as-other. Just as masculinity always constructs feminity as double—simultaneously Madonna and Whore—so racism contructs the black subject: noble savage and violent avenger. And in the doubling, fear and desire double for one another and play across the structures of otherness, complicating its politics.
Recently I have read several articles about the photographic text of Robert Mapplethorpe—especially his inscription of the nude, black male— all written by black critics or cultural practitioners.3 These essays properly begin by identifying in Mapplethorpe’s work the tropes of fetishization, the fragmentation of the black image and its objectification, as the forms of their appropriation within the white, gay gaze. But, as I read, I know that something else is going on as well in both the production and the reading of those texts. The continuous circling around Mapplethorpe’s work is not exhausted by being able to place him as the white fetishistic, gay photographer; and this is because it is also marked by the surreptitious return of desire—that deep ambivalence of identification which makes the categories in which we have previously thought and argued about black cultural politics and the black cultural text extremely problematic. This brings to the surface the unwelcome fact that a great deal of black politics, constructed, addressed and developed directly in relation to questions of race and ethnicity, has been predicated on the assumption that the categories of gender and sexuality would stay the same and remain fixed and secured. What the new politics of representation does is to put that into question, crossing the questions of racism irrevocably with questions of sexuality. That is what is so disturbing, finally, to many of our settled political habits about Passion of Remembrance. This double fracturing entails a different kind of politics because, as we know, black radical politics has frequently been stabilized around particular conceptions of black masculinity, which are only now being put into question by black women and black gay men. At certain points, black politics has also been underpinned by a deep absence or more typically an evasive silence with reference to class.
Another element inscribed in the new politics of representation has to do with the question of ethnicity. I am familiar with all the dangers of ‘ethnicity’ as a concept and have written myself about the fact that ethnicity, in the form of a culturally constructed sense of Englishness and a particularly closed, exclusive and regressive form of English national identity, is one of the core characteristics of British racism today.4 I am also well aware that the politics of anti-racism has often constructed itself in terms of a contestation of ‘multi-ethnicity’ or ‘multi-culturalism’. On the other hand, as the politics of representation around the black subject shifts, I think we will begin to see a renewed contestation over the meaning of the term ‘ethnicity’ itself.
If the black subject and black experience are not stabilized by Nature or by some other essential guarantee, then it must be the case that they are constructed historically, culturally, politically—and the concept which refers to this is ‘ethnicity’. The term ethnicity acknowledges the place of history, language and culture in the construction of subjectivity and identity, as well as the fact that all discourse is placed, positioned, situated, and all knowledge is contextual. Representation is possible only because enunciation is always produced within codes which have a history, a position within the discursive formations of a particular space and time. The displacement of the ‘centred’ discourses of the West entails putting in question its universalist character and its transcendental claims to speak for everyone, while being itself everywhere and nowhere. The fact that this grounding of ethnicity in difference was deployed, in the discourse of racism, as a means of disavowing the realities of racism and repression does not mean that we can permit the term to be permanently colonized. That appropriation will have to be contested, the term dis-articulated from its position in the discourse of ‘multi-culturalism’ and transcoded, just as we previously had to recuperate the term ‘black’ from its place in a system of negative equivalences. The new politics of representation therefore also sets in motion an ideological contestation around the term, ‘ethnicity’. But in order to pursue that movement further, we will have to re-theorize the concept of difference.
It seems to me that, in the various practices and discourses of black cultural production, we are beginning to see constructions of just such a new conception of ethnicity: a new cultural politics which engages rather than supresses difference and which depends, in part, on the cultural construction of new ethnic identities. Difference, like representation, is also a slippery, and therefore, contested concept. There is the ‘difference’ which makes a radical and unbridgable separation: and there is a ‘difference’ which is positional, conditional and conjunctural, closer to Derrida’s notion of différance, though if we are concerned to maintain a politics it cannot be defined exclusively in terms of an infinite sliding of the signifier. We still have a great deal of work to do to decouple ethnicity, as it functions in the dominant discourse, from its equivalence with nationalism, imperialism, racism and the state, which are the points of attachment around which a distinctive British or, more accurately, English ethnicity have been constructed. Nevertheless, I think such a project is not only possible but necessary. Indeed, this decoupling of ethnicity from the violence of the state is implicit in some of the new forms of cultural practice that are going on in films like Passion and Handsworth Songs. We are beginning to think about how to represent a non-coercive and a more diverse conception of ethnicity, to set against the embattled, hegemonic conception of ‘Englishness’ which, under Thatcherism, stabilizes so much of the dominant political and cultural discourses, and which, because it is hegemonic, does not represent itself as an ethnicity at all.
This marks a real shift in the point of contestation, since it is no longer only between anti-racism and multi-culturalism but inside the notion of ethnicity itself. What is involved is the splitting of the notion of ethnicity between, on the one hand the dominant notion which connects it to nation and ‘race’ and on the other hand what I think is the beginning of a positive conception of the ethnicity of the margins, of the periphery. That is to say, a recognition that we all speak from a particular place, out of a particular history, out of a particular experience, a particular culture, without being contained by that position as ‘ethnic artists’ or film-makers. We are all, in that sense, ethnically located and our ethnic identities are crucial to our subjective sense of who we are. But this is also a recognition that this a not an ethnicity which is doomed to survive, as Englishness was, only by marginalizing, dispossessing, displacing and forgetting other ethnicities. This precisely is the politics of ethnicity predicated on difference and diversity.
The final point which I think is entailed in this new politics of representation has to do with an awareness of the black experience as a diaspora experience, and the consequences which this carries for the process of unsettling, recombination, hybridization and ‘cut-and-mix’—in short, the process of cultural diaspora-ization (to coin an ugly term) which it implies. In the case of the young black British films and film-makers under discussion, the diaspora experience is certainly profoundly fed and nourished by, for example, the emergence of Third World cinema; by the African experience; the connection with Afro-Caribbean experience; and the deep inheritance of complex systems of representation and aesthetic traditions from Asian and African culture. But, in spite of these rich cultural ‘roots’, the new cultural politics is operating on new and quite distinct ground—specifically, contestation over what it means to be ‘British’. The relation of this cultural politics to the past; to its different ‘roots’ is profound, but complex. It cannot be simple or unmediated. It is (as a film like Dreaming Rivers reminds us) complexly mediated and transformed by memory, fantasy and desire. Or, as even an explicitly political film like Handsworth Songs clearly suggests, the relation is inter-textual—mediated, through a variety of other ‘texts’. There can, therefore, be no simple ‘return’ or ‘recovery’ of the ancestral past which is not re-experienced through the categories of the present: no base for creative enunciation in a simple reproduction of traditional forms which are not transformed by the technologies and the identities of the present. This is something that was signalled as early as a film like Blacks Britannica and as recently as Paul Gilroy’s important book, There Ain’t No Black in the Union Jack.5 Fifteen years ago we didn’t care, or at least I didn’t care, whether there was any black in the Union Jack. Now not only do we care, we must.
This last point suggests that we are also approaching what I would call the end of a certain critical innocence in black cultural politics. And here, it might be appropriate to refer, glancingly, to the debate between Salman Rushdie and myself in the Guardian some months ago. The debate was not about whether Handsworth Songs or The Passion of Remembrance were great films or not, because, in the light of what I have said, once you enter this particular problematic, the question of what good films are, which parts of them are good and why, is open to the politics of criticism. Once you abandon essential categories, there is no place to go apart from the politics of criticism and to enter the politics of criticism in black culture is to grow up, to leave the age of critical innocence.
It was not Salman Rushdie’s particular judgement that I was contesting, so much as the mode in which he addressed them. He seemed to me to be addressing the films as if from the stable, well-established critical criteria of a Guardian reviewer. I was trying perhaps unsuccessfully, to say that I thought this an inadequate basis for a political criticism and one which overlooked precisely the signs of innovation, and the constraints, under which these film-makers were operating. It is difficult to define what an alternative mode of address would be. I certainly didn’t want Salman Rushdie to say he thought the films were good because they were black. But I also didn’t want him to say that he thought they weren’t good because ‘we creative artists all know what good films are’, since I no longer believe we can resolve the questions of aesthetic value by the use of these transcendental, canonical cultural categories. I think there is another position, one which locates itself inside a continuous struggle and politics around black representation, but which then is able to open up a continuous critical discourse about themes, about the forms of representation, the subjects of representation, above all, the regimes of representation. I thought it was important, at that point, to intervene to try and get that mode of critical address right, in relation to the new black filmmaking. It is extremely tricky, as I know, because as it happens, in intervening, I got the mode of address wrong too! I failed to communicate the fact that, in relation to his Guardian article I thought Salman was hopelessly wrong about Handsworth Songs, which does not in any way diminish my judgement about the stature of Midnight’s Children. I regret that I couldn’t get it right, exactly, because the politics of criticism has to be able to get both things right.
Such a politics of criticism has to be able to say (just to give one example) why My Beautiful Laundrette is one of the most riveting and important films produced by a black writer in recent years and precisely for the reason that made it so controversial: its refusal to represent the black experience in Britain as monolithic, self-contained, sexually stabilized and always ‘right-on’—in a word, always and only ‘positive’, or what Hanif Kureishi has called, ‘cheering fictions’: the writer as public relations officer, as hired liar. If there is to be a serious attempt to understand Britain today, with its mix of races and colours, its hysteria and despair, then, writing about it has to be complex. It can’t apologize or idealize. It can’t sentimentalize and it can’t represent only one group as having a monopoly on virtue.6 Laundrette is important particularly in terms of its control, of knowing what it is doing, as the text crosses those frontiers between gender, race, ethnicity, sexuality and class. Sammy and Rosie is also a bold and adventurous film, though in some ways less coherent, not so sure of where it is going, overdriven by an almost uncontrollable, cool anger. One needs to be able to offer that as a critical judgement and to argue it through, to have one’s mind changed, without undermining one’s essential commitment to the project of the politics of black representation.
1 The Yorkshire town of Dewesbury became the focus of national attention when white parents withdrew their children from a local school with predominantly Asian pupils, on the grounds that ‘English’ culture was no longer taught on the curriculum. The contestation of multicultural education from the right also underpinned the controversies around Bradford headmaster Ray Honeyford. See, Paul Gordon, ‘The New Right, race and education’; Race and Class XXIX(3), Winter 1987.
2 Gayatri C.Spivak, In Other Worlds: Essays in Cultural Politics, Methuen, 1987.
3 Kobena Mercer ‘Imaging the black man’s sex’ in Patricia Holland et al. (eds), Photography/Politics: Two, Comedia/Methuen, 1987 and various articles in Ten.8 22, 1986, an issue on ‘Black experiences’ edited by David A.Bailey.
4 Stuart Hall, ‘Racism and reaction’, in Five Views on Multi-Racial Britain, Commission for Racial Equality, 1978.
5 Paul Gilroy, There Ain’t No Black in the Union Jack: The Cultural Politics of Race and Nation, Hutchinson, 1988.
6 Hanif Kureishi, ‘Dirty washing’, Time Out, 14–20 November 1985.
Isaac Julien and Kobena Mercer, ‘De Margin and De Centre’
First appeared as the ‘Introduction’ to Screen 29(4), 1988, 2–10. The issue was entitled ‘The Last “Special Issue” on Race?’.
Film culture in the 1980s has been marked by volatile reconfigurations in the relations of ‘race’ and representation. Questions of cultural difference, identity and otherness—in a word, ethnicity—have been thrown into the foreground of contestation and debate by numerous shifts and developments. Within the British context, these trends have underpinned controversies around recent independent films like Handsworth Songs, My Beautiful Laundrette and The Passion of Remembrance—films which have elicited critical acclaim and angry polemic in roughly equal measure. The fragmented state of the nation depicted from a black British point of view in the films themselves contradicts (literally, speaks against) the remythification of the colonial past in mainstream movies such as Ghandi or A Passage to India; yet, the wave of popular films set in imperial India or Africa also acknowledge, in their own way, Britain’s postcolonial condition in so far as they speak to contemporary concerns. The competing versions of narrative, memory and history in this conjuncture might be read symptomatically as a state of affairs that speaks of—articulates— conflicting identities within the ‘imagined community’ of the nation.
In the international context, certain moments and trends suggest further shifts, adjustments, in the articulation of ethnicity as ideology. The ratings success-story of The Cosby Show—‘number one’ in South Africa as well as the United States—has fulfilled the innocent demand for ‘positive images’ with a (neo-conservative) vengeance. And the very idea of a Hollywood director like Steven Spielberg adapting the Alice Walker novel The Color Purple (in the context of the unprecedented publication of black women writers) still seems extraordinary, however commercially astute. In addition, the widening circulation of Third World films among western audiences, or the televisual ‘presence’ of Third World spaces like Ethiopia via events such as Live Aid in 1985, implies something of a shift within the boundaries that differentiated the First and Third Worlds.
One issue at stake, we suggest, is the potential break-up or deconstruction of structures that determine what is regarded as culturally central and what is regarded as culturally marginal. Ethnicity has emerged as a key issue as various ‘marginal’ practices (black British film, for instance) are becoming de-marginalized at a time when ‘centred’ discourses of cultural authority and legitimation (such as notions of a trans-historical artistic ‘canon’) are becoming increasingly de-centred and destabilized, called into question from within. This scenario, described by Craig Owens as a crisis, ‘specifically of the authority vested in western European culture and its institutions’,1 has of course already been widely discussed in terms of the characteristic aesthetic and political problems of postmodernism. However, it is ironic that while some of the loudest voices offering commentary have announced nothing less than the ‘end of representation’ or the ‘end of history’, the political possibility of the end of ethnocentrism has not been seized upon as a suitably exciting topic for description or inquiry.2 We would argue, on the contrary, that critical theories are just beginning to recognize and reckon with the kinds of complexity inherent in the culturally constructed nature of ethnic identities, and the implications this has for the analysis of representational practices.
We chose to call this the ‘last special issue’ as a rejoinder to critical discourses in which the subject of race and ethnicity is still placed on the margins conceptually, despite the acknowledgement of such issues indicated by the proliferation of ‘special issues’ on race in film, media and literary journals.3 The problem, paradoxically, is that as an editorial strategy and as a mode of address, the logic of the ‘special issue’ tends to reinforce, rather than ameliorate, the perceived otherness and marginality of the subject itself. There is nothing intrinsically different or ‘special’ about ethnicity in film culture, merely that it makes fresh demands on existing theories, methods and problematics. Rather than attempt to compensate the ‘structured absences’ of previous paradigms, it would be useful to identify the relations of power/knowledge that determine which cultural issues are intellectually prioritized in the first place. The initial stage in any deconstructive project must be to examine and undermine the force of the binary relation that produces the marginal as a consequence of the authority invested in the centre.
At a concrete level the politics of marginalization is an underlying issue in the overview of black film-making in Europe sketched by Maureen Blackwood and June Givanni. The negotiation of access to resources in training, production and distribution emerges as a common factor facing practitioners in a migrant or ‘minority’ situation. While highlighting the different conditions stemming from the colonial past, the comparative dimension also draws attention to the specificity of British conditions in the present, where black film-making has flourished in the state-subsidized ‘independent’ sector. Data compiled by June Givanni elsewhere4 indicates some of the characteristics that constitute black British film as a ‘minor’ cinema: the prevalence of material of short duration, shot on video, and in the documentary genre, indicates a pattern of underfunding, or rather, taking the variety of work into consideration, a considerable cultural achievement that has been won against the odds of meagre resourcing. Moreover, shifts in the institutional framework of public funding in the United Kingdom were brought about in the 1980s as a result of a wider social and political struggle to secure black rights to representation. It was said at the time of the 1981 ‘riots’ that this was the only way in which those excluded from positions of power and influence could make themselves heard: in any case, the events were read and widely understood as expressing protest at the structural marginalization of the black presence in British public institutions.
The consequent demand for black representation thus informed shifts in multicultural and ‘equal opportunity’ policy among institutions such as Channel Four, the British Film Institute and local authorities such as the Greater London Council. More generally, this took place in the context of a re-articulation of the category ‘black’ as a political term of identification among diverse minority communities of Asian, African and Caribbean origin, rather than as a biological or ‘racial’ category. Together, these aspects of the cultural politics of ‘black representation’ informed the intense debates on aesthetic and cinematic strategies within the black British independent sector. Far from homogenizing these differences, the concept has been the site of contestation, highlighted in numerous events and conferences, such as ‘Third Cinema’ at the Edinburgh International Film Festival in 1986 and more recently, the conference on ‘Black Film/ British Cinema’ at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London.5 It has become apparent that what is at stake in the debates on ‘black representation’ is not primarily a dispute over realist or modernist principles, but a broader problematic in cultural politics shaped, as Paul
Gilroy suggests, by the tension between representation as a practice of depiction and representation as a practice of delegation.6 Representational democracy, like the classic realist text, is premissed on an implicitly mimetic theory of representation as correspondence with the ‘real’: notionally, the political character of the state is assumed to ‘correspond’ to the aspiration of the masses in society. However, not unlike the civil disruptions, aspects of the new wave in black British film-making have interrupted these relations of representation: in cinematic terms the challenge to documentary realism that features so prominently in more recent work, such as Territories, is predicated on a relational conception of representation as a practice of selection, combination and articulation. At a textual level, such shifts have contested the hegemony of documentary realism underlying the formal codification of what Jim Pines calls the master discourse of the ‘race-relations narrative’.7 This also entails awareness of extra-textual factors, such as funding, as important determinants on black film-making and its modes of enunciation, such as ‘the moral imperative which usually characterizes black films, which empowers them to speak with a sense of urgency’, as John Akomfrah of Black Audio Film Collective has put it.8
What is at issue in this problematic is the question of power, as Judith Williamson argues in her review of The Passion of Remembrance, ‘The more power any group has to create and wield representations, the less it is required to be representative’.9 Where access and opportunities are rationed, so that black films tend to get made only one-at-a-time, each film text is burdened with an inordinate pressure to be ‘representative’ and to act, like a delegate does, as a statement that ‘speaks’ for the black communities as a whole. Martina Attille, producer of the film, suggests that the ‘sense of urgency to say it all’ stems less from the artistic choices made by black film-makers and more from the material constraints in which ‘sometimes we only get the one chance to make ourselves heard’.10 Contemporary shifts have brought these problems into view, for as
Williamson adds, in relation to the invisible demand to be ‘representative’ implicit in the rationing and rationalization of public funding, ‘what is courageous in Sankofa’s project is that they have chosen to speak from, but not for, black experience(s) in Britain.’
Marginality circumscribes the enunciative modalities of black film as cinematic discourse and imposes a double bind on black subjects who speak in the public sphere: if only one voice is given the ‘right to speak’, that voice will be heard, by the majority culture, as ‘speaking for’ the many who are excluded or marginalized from access to the means of representation. This of course underlines the problem of tokenism: the very idea that a single film could ‘speak for’ an entire community of interests reinforces the perceived secondariness of that community. The double bind of expedient inclusion as a term for the legitimation of more general forms of exclusionary practice is also the source of a range of representational problems encountered not just by black subjects, but by other groups marginalized into minority status. In the gay documentary Word is Out (Mariposa Film Group, 1978) the nature of this problematic is pointed out in a performative mode by a black woman who carefully describes the predicament she is placed in as a result of the editing strategy of the text:
What I was trying to say when I asked you if I would be the only black lesbian in the film is: do you know we come in all shapes and colours and directions to our lives? Are you capturing that on the film? As a black lesbian-feminist involved in the movement, so often people try to put me in the position of speaking for all black lesbians. I happen to be a black lesbian among many, and I woudn’t want to be seen as this is how all black lesbians are.11
Within such a regime of representation, the restricted economy of ethnic enunciation is a political problem for at least two important reasons. First, individual subjectivity is denied because the black subject is positioned as a mouthpiece, a ventriloquist for an entire social category which is seen to be ‘typified’ by its representative. Acknowledgement of the diversity of black experiences and subject-positions is thereby foreclosed. Thus, secondly, where minority subjects are framed and contained by the monologic terms of ‘majority discourse’, the fixity of boundary relations between centre and margin, universal and particular, returns the speaking subject to the ideologically appointed place of the stereotype—that ‘all black people are the same’.
Stuart Hall’s account of the shifts taking place in contemporary black British cultural production offers a means of making sense of the ‘politics of representation’ at issue here. His argument that current shifts demand the recognition of the ‘end of the innocent notion of the essential black subject’ enables us to analyse and unpack the burden of racial representation. The recognition that ‘black’ is a politically and culturally constructed category, and that our metaphorical fictions of ‘white’ and ‘black’ are not fixed by Nature but by historical formations of hegemony, brings into play ‘the recognition of the immense diversity and differentiation of the historical and cultural experiences of black subjects’. This has major consequences for the critical evaluation of different aesthetic and discursive strategies that articulate race at the level of language and representation.
Films are not necessarily good because black people make them. They are not necessarily right-on by virtue of the fact that they deal with the black experience. Once you enter the politics of the end of the essential black subject you are plunged headlong into the maelstrom of a continuously contingent, unguaranteed, political argument and debate: a critical politics, a politics of criticism. You can no longer conduct black politics through the strategy of a simple set of reversals, putting in place of the bad old essential white subject, the new essentially good black subject.12
The deconstruction of binary relations thus entails the relativization and rearticulation of ‘ethnicity’. This is an importantly enabling argument as it brings a range of critical issues into an explanatory structure, however tentative.
At one level, it contextualizes Salman Rushdie’s point, expressed in his polemic against Handsworth Songs,13 that ‘celebration makes us lazy’. Because black films have been so few and far between, up till now, there has been a tendency to ‘celebrate’ the fact that they ever got made at all; but this has inhibited the formulation of criticism and self-criticism and perpetuated the moral masochism of ‘correctness’ so pervasive in oppositional ‘left’ cultural politics (especially in Britain). Judith Williamson takes up this point and argues that the moralism of being ideologically ‘right-on’ has been conflated with aesthetic judgement and thus the formal properties of the recent ‘experimental’ films have been subsumed into their ‘blackness’ (that is, the racial identity of the authors) giving the films an ‘aura of untouchability’ that further pre-empts critical analysis. The problem which arises, is that such responses threaten to frame the films as merely replacing the avant-garde (as the ‘latest thing’) rather than as displacing the orthodoxies that have led the Euro-American vanguard (specially its formalist variant) into its current stasis. At another level, Perminder Dhillon-Kashyap argues that the debates on black British film have in turn made Asian experiences and interventions ‘secondary’, thus risking the replication of essentialist versions of race precisely when the rearticulation of subaltern ethnicities as ‘black’ seeks to undermine ‘ethnic absolutism’ (anchoring the culturalist terms of the ‘new racism’ that fixes hybridized experiences in terms of alien cultures’).14 Coco Fusco’s assessment of two major conferences in the United States examines the way in which two kinds of essentialist tendency, manifest in the contradictory reception of black British film, mutually forestall the politics of criticism. The impetus to ‘celebrate’ black cinema, on the one hand, invokes a unitary notion of blackness that precludes elucidation of ‘internal’ differences and diversity. The desire to ‘correct’ the omissions of the past within the western avant-garde, on the other hand, has led to a one-sided fixation with ethnicity as something that ‘belongs’ to the Other alone, thus white ethnicity is not under question and retains its ‘centred’ position; more to the point, the white subject remains the central reference point in the power ploys of multicultural policy. The burden of representation thus falls on the Other, because as Fusco argues, ‘to ignore white ethnicity is to redouble its hegemony by naturalising it.’
While such discursive events acknowledge contemporary shifts, their logic evades the implications of Hall’s insight that the point of contestation is no longer between multiculturalism and anti-racism, but inside the concept of ethnicity itself. Within dominant discourses, ‘ethnicity’ is structured into a negative equivalence with essentialist versions of ‘race’ and ‘nation’ which particularize its referent, as the pejorative connotation of ‘ethnic minority’ implies (who, after all, constitutes the ‘ethnic majority’?). On the other hand, just as it was necessary to re-appropriate the category ‘black’, Hall argues that ‘ethnicity’ is a strategically necessary concept because it
acknowledges the place of history, language and culture in the construction of subjectivity and identity, as well as the fact that all discourse is placed, positioned, situated, and all knowledge is contextual. Representation is possible only because enunciation is always produced within codes that have a history, a position within the discursive formations of a particular space and time.15
In this sense, ‘we are all ethnically located’, but the cultural specificity of white ethnicity has been rendered ‘invisible’ by the epistemic violence that has, historically, disavowed difference in western discourses. The rearticulation of ethnicity as an epistemological category thus involves, the displacement of the centred discourses of the West (and) entails putting into question its universalist character and its transcendental claims to speak for everyone, while being itself everywhere and nowhere.
Richard Dyer’s article, ‘White’, inaugurates a paradigmatic shift by precisely registering the re-orientation of ‘ethnicity’ that Hall’s argument calls for. Dyer shows how elusive white ethnicity is as a representational construct (and the difficulties this presents for constituting it as a theoretical object of analysis) and notes that, ‘Black is, in the realm of categories, always marked as a colour…is always particularising; whereas white is not anything really, not an identity, not a particularising quality, because it is everything.’ In other words, whiteness has secured universal consent to its hegemony as the ‘norm’ by masking its coercive force with the invisibility that marks off the Other (the pathologized, the disempowered, the dehumanized) as all too visible—‘coloured’.16 Significantly, in relation to the films that Dyer discusses, whiteness only tends to become visible when its hegemony is under contestation.
The complex range of problems now coming into view in film studies around the site of ethnicity, partly as a result of developments elsewhere in literary and social theory,17 enables a more adequate understanding of contemporary forms of contestation. The ‘differences’ between various black independent film practices have, to some extent, been overplayed, as the key underlying objective across each of the strategies, is to displace the binary relation of the burden of representation, most clearly pinpointed by Horace Ove:
Here in England there is a danger, if you are black, that all you are allowed to make is films about black people and their problems. White film-makers on the other hand, have a right to make films about whatever they like.18
Theoretically, the displacement of binarisms has been most important in the analysis of stereotyping—the marginalization of ethnicity has been held in place by the logical impasse of the ‘positive/negative’ image polarity. Screen has contributed to the productive displacement of this stasis in a number of ways: from Steve Neale’s analysis of the impossibility of the ‘perfect image’ sought by idealist and realist arguments, to Homi Bhabha’s influential reading of colonial discourse, which emphasizes the psychic ambivalence, the fear and fascination, that informs the ‘Manichean delirium’ of classical regimes of racial representation.19 However, the range of textual readings here suggests that we need to go much further towards a reflexive examination of the mutual inscription of self and other in the analysis of ethnic boundary-ness. This involves questioning the way that, during its ‘centred’ role in the discursive formation of film theory during the 1970s, Screen participated in a phase of British left culture that inadvertently marginalized race and ethnicity as a consequence of the centrifugal tendency of its ‘high theory’.
During this period, one was more likely to encounter the analysis of racial stereotyping in sociology than cultural theory, where class and gender took precedence in debates on ideology and subjectivity.20 Furthermore, without imputing maleficent intentions (because such relations are beyond the control of individual intentionality), it can be said that even within Screen’s important acknowledgement of ethnic differences in previous ‘special issues’,21 the explanatory concept of ‘Otherness’ distances and particularizes ethnicity as something that happens far away, either in the United States or in the Third World.22 Space prohibits an adequate exploration of the intellectual milieu that Screen helped to form, but recent comments on the institutionalization of film studies have argued that ‘Screen theory’, so-called, came to function as a kind of corporate ‘name of the father’, a ‘theoretical super-ego’ or even a ‘phallic mother’—a centred point of reference that, like a doctrine or orthodoxy, featured a number of ‘disciplinary’ characteristics.23 Jane Gaines recalls that, in the translation of ‘Screen theory’ into the North American academic environment in the 1970s, leftist enthusiasm for theoretical ‘correctness’ was heard to speak in an unmistakably English accent.
This background is important because what emerges in the current situation is not a ‘new’ problematic, but a critical return to issues unwittingly ‘repressed’ in some of the ‘old’ problematics and debates. It would be useful, therefore, to tentatively draw out some of the directions in which the field is being remapped and in which the lacunae of previous paradigms are excavated.
First, the analysis of ethnic binarisms at the level of narrative codes returns to the question of how dominant ideologies naturalize their domination, underlying previous debates on the classic realist text. Clyde Taylor’s inter-textual examination of racialized repetition across two ‘epic’ Hollywood films suggests that the ethnic iconography that drives the reproduction of racist ideology is not simply indicative of capitalist commodification or a bourgeois world view. Star Wars, argues Taylor, repeats the ‘blood and purity’ mythology of The Birth of a Nation, not as a defiant assertion of WASP ‘superiority’ but as an embattled recoding of the master text in response to the encroaching presence of the Third World. The racial discourse sub-textualized by binary oppositions acknowledges the crises of (US) hegemony. The ‘liberal’ inflections in the
films discussed by Richard Dyer also acknowledge the destabilization of prevailing race relations, albeit within a different set of generic and narrative conventions. Common to both readings is a concern to ‘typify’ textual structures that position racial and ethnic signifiers in the fixed relation of a binary opposition, whether it be one of antagonism, accommodation or subordination.
There is, in addition, a historical emphasis that relativizes the kinds of claims once extrapolated from the formal structures of the ‘CRT’, as it was known. Aspects of Bhabha’s theorization of the stereotype in colonial discourse replicate this trans-historical or de-historicized emphasis.24 The move towards a more context-oriented view, on the other hand, indicates that although dominant discourses are characterized by closure, they are not themselves closed but constantly negotiated and restructured by the conjuncture of discourses in which they are produced. The way in which ethnic ‘types’ are made afresh in contemporary movies like An Officer and a Gentleman and Angel Heart—or more generally in current advertising— demands such a conjunctural approach. The theory of the stereotype cannot be abandonded as it also needs to be able to explain how and why certain ethnic stereotypes are at times recirculated, in the British context, in the work of black film and television authors.25
Secondly, there is a note of caution about reproducing binarisms at the level of theory. Cameron Bailey’s reading of the accretion of ‘ethnic’ signifiers around the construction of (white) femininity as a source of pleasure and danger in Something Wild demonstrates that, rather than the familiar ‘race, class, gender’ mantra, analysis needs to take account of the intersections of differences, in particular of the representation of sexuality as a recurring site upon which categories of race and gender intersect. Feminist theories of the fetishistic logic inherent in the sexualization of gender-difference have provided an invaluable inventory for the reading of the eroticized othering of the black (male and female) subject. Yet, as Jane Gaines argues, the gender binarism implicit in the heterosexist presumption so often unwittingly reproduced in feminist film theory (or FFT; the acronym already indicates an orthodoxy) remains ‘colour blind’ to the racial hierarchies that structure mastery over the ‘look’. The scenario of voyeurism, sadism and objectification played out across Diana Ross’s star image in Mahogany enacts a patriarchal discourse of masculine ‘desire’, but also demands a historical understanding of the pre-textual and the contextual discourses of race that placed the black woman in the ‘paradox of non-being’—a reference to the period in Afro-American history when the black female did not signify ‘woman’ on account of the racial ideology that made the black subject less than human.
The historical violation of black bodies in social formations structured by slavery gives rise to a discourse (encoded in both the rationalization of and resistance to such pre-modern forms of power as lynching) which has indeed the countervailing force to rival the problematic of castration rhetorically placed at the centre of psychoanalytic theory by the Oedipal grand narrative. Just as lesbian critiques of FFT have questioned the explanatory capacity of Freudian and Lacanian theory to account for the inscription of female pleasure and desire26—demonstrating the contradictory subject positions occupied by different spectators—the
reorientation of the spectatorship problematic in the articles by Gaines and Manthia Diawara identifies the ethnocentrism of psychoanalytic discourse as a barrier to further inquiry. Both question the universalist claims anchored in the Oedipus story and imply that uncritical adherence to psychoanalytic theory (however enabling as a method) risks the disavowal of its Euro-centric ‘authority’; Freud closes his essay on fetishism by commenting that the acknowledgement and disavowal of difference ‘might be seen in the Chinese custom of mutilating the female foot and then revering it like a fetish after it has been mutilated’27—surely this culturebound aesthetic judgement is the starting-point for a more circumspect appropriation of psychoanalytic theory.
Diawara identifies the mythic ‘castration’ and ‘visual punishment’ of the black male as a term of the ‘narrative pleasures’ offered by Hollywood spectacle (and also as a narratological term of closure, analogous to the ‘punishment’ of feminine transgression in film noir). By raising the issue of spectatorial resistance, Diawara opens up an interesting question about the place of the black spectator in the ideological machinery of interpellation. How is the black subject sutured into a place that includes it only as a term of negation? What does the black spectator identify with when his/her mirror image is structurally absent or present only as Other? In the past, it was assumed that all social subjects acceded to the narcissistic pleasure of the ‘mirror phase’ in their misrecognition of themselves as the subject of enunciation, returned thus as normalized and passified ‘subjects’ of ideological subjection (this was the basis of Barthes’ distinction between ‘pleasure’ and ‘bliss’28). But what if certain social categories of spectator do not have access, as it were, to the initial moment of recognition? The question of how black subjects psychically manage to make identifications with white images is thus signposted as an important area for further inquiry.29 Perhaps one reason why, for example, The Cosby Show is so popular among black audiences is that it affords the pleasure of a basic or primary narcissism even though it interpellates the minority subject, in particular, into ideological normalization.30 A contemporary black star, like Eddie Murphy—popular with both white and black audiences— offers another source of ‘bad pleasure’, partly on account of the pastiche of the stereotype that he performs in his star-image as the street-credible, but ideologically unthreatening, macho loudmouth.
This is also where class comes back into the calculation of difference. An appreciation of differentiated regimes of racial representation necessitates acknowledgement of different audiences or, taken together, recognition of the different forms of ideological articulation characteristic of First and Second Cinemas, as described by the concept of Third Cinema.31 The inscription of ethnic indeterminacy does not take place ‘inside’ the text, as if it were hermetically sealed, but in-between the relations of author, text and reader specific to the construction of different discursive formations. Blackness is not always a sign of racial codification (as the term film noir admits): its representational aura in auteurist and avant-garde traditions conventionally serves to mark off the status of the author (as white subject of enunciation) in relation to the discourse authorized in the text (as black subject of the statement). Ethnic alterity is a consistent trope of modernist differentiation in various Euro-American canons: the play of black signs
that inscribe the authorial voice self-referentially in Jonathan Demme’s Something Wild can be seen as drawing on elements of the romanticist image-reservoir, where blackness is valorized as emblematic of outsiderness and oppositionality, that might be read off Jean Genet’s Chant d’amour (1953), Jean-Luc Godard’s One Plus One/Sympathy for the Devil (1969) or Laura Mulvey and Peter Wollen’s Riddles of the Sphinx (1976). This arbitrary list (indexing disparate debates on independent film-making32) is made merely to point out another set of questions; namely, how to differentiate diverse appropriations of the same stock of signs and meanings built up around different discursive formations of ‘race’ and ethnicity? This question bears upon the broader underlying issue of the multi-accentual nature of the signs characteristic of the flashpoints of ideological contestation and cultural struggle.33 It also alludes to the paradox identified in Richard Dyer’s reading of Paul Robeson as a cinematic icon that meant different things to radically differentiated readers:
Black and white discourses on blackness seem to be valuing the same things—spontaneity, emotion, naturalness—yet giving them a different implication. Black discourses see them as contributions to the development of society, white as enviable qualities that only blacks have.34
The issue of ‘envy’ confirms that white identifications are as problematic (conceptually) as the ability of black readers—or readers of subaltern status —to appropriate alternative ‘sub-textual’ readings from the racial discourse of dominant cultural texts. King Kong—to cite one of the most centred mythologies of modern popular cinema—has been read as the tragic story of a heroic beast and/or the fate of a black man punished for the transgressive coupling with the white woman that he/the monster desires. These questions appear to be ‘new’, hence very difficult, yet we have returned, by a rather circuitous route, to the hotly contested terrain of the debates on class and culture, hegemony and subjectivity that were territorialized with such passion in the mid-1970s.35 We must conclude that this cannot possibly be the last word on ‘race’ as these complicated issues are only now coming into view as a result of the critical dialogue that has engaged with the blind-spots and insights of earlier conversations. And further, that such dialogism is a necessary discursive condition for understanding contestation in film culture and other formations of cultural practice and cultural politics.
1 Craig Owens, ‘The discourse of others: feminists and post-modernism’ in Hal Foster (ed.), Postmodern Culture, London: Pluto, 1985, 57.
2 The assertion of the ‘end’ of everything is exemplified in Jean Baudrillard, Simulations, New York: Semiotext(e), 1984 and Victor Burgin, The End of Art Theory, London: Macmillan, 1986. More considered reflections on postmodernism, which focus on the problems of its ethnocentrism, are offered by Stuart Hall, ‘On postmodernism and articulation: an interview edited by Lawrence Grossberg’, in Communications Inquiry 10(2), 1986 (University of Iowa) and Andreas Huyssens, ‘Mapping the post-modern’, in After the Great Divide, London: Macmillan, 1987.
3 For instance, ‘Black experiences’, Ten-8 22, 1986; ‘Race, writing and difference’, Critical Inquiry 12(3), 1985 and 13(1), 1986; The inappropriate Other’, Discourse 8, 1986; ‘Colonialism’, Oxford Literary Review 9, 1987 and The nature and context of minority discourse’, I and II Cultural Critique, Spring and Fall, 1987.
4 Black and Asian Film List, compiled by June Givanni and edited by Nicky North, London, British Film Institute Education, 1988. A transatlantic comparison is offered by James A.Snead, ‘Black independent film: Britain and America’, in Kobena Mercer (ed.), Black Film/British Cinema, ICA Document 7/British Film Institute Production Special, 1988.
5 Symposia organized by the Greater London Council in 1985 are documented in Third Eye: Struggles for Black and Third World Cinema, Race Equality Unit, London, GLC 1986; the Edinburgh conference is documented in Jim Pines and Paul Willemen (eds), Third Cinema: Theories and Practices, London, BFI (forthcoming); and the ICA conference is documented in Kobena Mercer (ed.), op.cit.
6 ’Nothing but sweat inside my hand: diaspora aesthetics and Black arts in Britain’, in Kobena Mercer (ed.), op.cit. See also Pierre Bourdieu, ‘Delegation and political fetishism’, Thesis Eleven 10/11, 1984–5 (Sydney), 56–70.
7 See Jim Pines, ‘The cultural context of Black British cinema’, in Mbye Cham and Claire Andrade-Watkins (eds), BlackFrames: Critical Perspectives on Black Independent Cinema, Celebration of Black Cinema, Inc/MIT Press 1988 and Kobena Mercer, ‘Diaspora culture and the dialogic imagination: the aesthetics of black independent film in Britain’, ibid.
8 In Paul Gilroy and Jim Pines, ‘Handsworth songs: audiences/aesthetics/ independence, an interview with Black Audio Film Collective’, Framework 35, 1988, 11.
9 New Statesman, 5 December 1986.
10 In ‘The Passion of Remembrance: background and interview with Sankofa’, Framework 32/33, 1986, 101.
11 In Nancy Adair and Casey Adair (eds), Word is Out: Stories of Some of Our Lives, New York: New Glide/Delta, 1978, 203.
12 Stuart Hall, ‘New ethnicities’. Also in Kobena Mercer (ed.), Black Film/British Cinema, op.cit. See also Stuart Hall, ‘Minimal selves’, in Lisa Appignanesi (ed.), Identity, ICA Document 6, 1988, 44–6.
13 ‘Songs doesn’t know the score’, Guardian, 12 January 1987, reprinted in Kobena Mercer (ed.), Black Film/British Cinema, op.cit.
14 Discursive formations of British racism are discussed in Paul Gilroy, There Ain’t No Black in the Union Jack, London: Hutchinson, 1987. Gilroy proposes the concept of syncretism to examine cultural resistance in the ‘hybridized’ context of black Britain.
15 Stuart Hall, ‘New ethnicities’, in Kobena Mercer (ed.), Black Film/British Cinema, op.cit.
16 The term ‘people of color’ operates in the United States as a political term analogous to ‘black’ in the British context. In both instances, such terms have engendered intense semantic ambiguity and ideological anxiety as the racial mythology of ‘colour’ is put under erasure, cancelled out but still legible, in a deconstructive logic that depends on the same system of metaphorical equivalences and differences. Semantic indeterminacy as a condition of political contestation is discussed in Chantal Mouffe and Ernesto Laclau, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy, London: Verso, 1985.
17 See Stuart Hall, ‘Race, articulation and societies structured in dominance’, in Sociological Theories: Race and Colonialism, Paris: UNESCO, 1980; Edward Said, Orientalism, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978, and The World, the Text and the Critic, London: Faber, 1984; Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, In Other Worlds, London: Methuen 1987; Cornel West, ‘The dilemma of a Black intellectual’, Cultural Critique 1(1), 1986; ‘Race and social theory’, in M. Davis, M.Marrable, F.Pfiel and M.Sprinker (eds), The Year Left 2, London: Verso, 1987 and ‘Marxist theory and the specificity of Afro- American oppression’, in Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg (eds), Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, London: Macmillan, 1988.
18 Interview with Sylvia Paskin, Monthly Film Bulletin 54(647), December 1987.
19 Steve Neale, ‘The same old story: stereotypes and difference’, Screen Education, Autumn–Winter 1979–80, nos 32 and 33, 33–7 and Homi K.Bhabha, The Other question: the stereotype and colonial discourse’, Screen, November– December 1983, 24(6), 18–36.
20 In both Weberian and marxist variants, see Charles Husband, White Media and Black Britain, London: Arrow, 1975 and Stuart Hall et al., Policing the Crisis, London: Macmillan, 1978. Cultural struggles over media racism are documented in Phil Cohen and Carl Gardner (eds), It Ain’t Half Racist, Mum,
London: Comedia/Campaign Against Racism in the Media, 1982. CARM’s BBC ‘Open Door’ programme is discussed in Stuart Hall, ‘The whites of their eyes: racist ideologies and the media’, in Bridges and Brunt (eds), Silver Linings, London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1981.
21 ‘Racism, colonialism and the cinema’, Screen, March–April 1983, 24(2), and ‘Other cinemas, Other criticisms’, Screen, May–August 1985, 26(3–4). 22 Black British perspectives have rarely featured in Screen, but see Hazel Carby, ‘Multiculture’, Screen Education, Spring 1980, 34, 62–70; Paul Gilroy, ‘C4—Bridgehead or Bantustan?’, Screen, July–October 1983, 24(4– 5), 130–6; Robert Crusz, ‘Black cinemas, film theory and dependent knowledge’, Screen, May– August 1985, 26(3–4), 152–6.
23 The description of a ‘theoretical super ego’ in film studies is made by Paul Willemen in ‘An avant-garde for the 80s’, Framework 24, 1982 and in ‘The Third Cinema question: notes and reflections’, Framework 34, 1987. The characterization of orthodoxies in terms of the demands of a ‘phallic mother’ is made by Lesley Stern in her tribute, ‘Remembering Claire Johnston’, in Film News, 19(4), May 1988 (Sydney), reprinted in Framework 35, 1988. An interesting case of another translation this time in the postcolonial periphery, is provided by Felicity Collins, ‘The Australian Journal of Screen Theory’, in Framework 24, 1982.
24 Methods employed by Homi Bhabha and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak are the subject of a critique by Benita Parry, ‘Problems in current theories of colonial discourse’, Oxford Literary Review 9, 1987.
25 An issue raised in Jim Pines’ reading of sociological stereotypes in Horace Ove’s Pressure (1975), discussed in ‘Blacks in films: the British angle’, Multiracial Education 9(2), 1981. Some of the paradoxical consequences of documentary realism in black independent film are also discussed in Kobena Mercer, ‘Recoding narratives of race and nation’, in Black Film/British Cinema, op.cit.
26 See Jackie Stacey, ‘Desperately seeking difference’, Screen, Winter 1987, 28 (1), 48–61; reprinted in a slightly different version in Lorraine Gamman and Margaret Marshment (eds), The Female Gaze, London: Women’s Press, 1988.
27 Sigmund Freud, ‘Fetishism’, in On Sexuality, Harmondsworth: Pelican Freud Library 7, 1977, 357.
28 Roland Barthes, The Pleasure of the Text, New York: Hill & Wang, 1975.
29 This again is by no means a ‘new’ topic. The starting-point for James Baldwin’s autobiographical reflections on cinema is his adolescent identification with Bette Davis’ star image; see The Devil Finds Work, London: Michael Joseph, 1976, 4–7.
30 The Cosby Show is the subject of two conflicting readings—as a ‘breakthrough’ and as a ‘sell out’: see Mel Cummings, ‘Black family interactions on television’, presented at the International Television Studies Conference, London, 1986 and Pat Skinner, ‘Moving way up: television’s “new look” at Blacks’, presented at the International Television Studies Conference, London, 1988. Both ITSC conferences sponsored by the British Film Institute and the Institute of Education, University of London.
31 The concept of ‘Third Cinema’ was originally proposed by Fernando Solanas and Octavio Gettino; see their ‘Towards a Third Cinema’, in Bill Nichols (ed.), Movies and Methods, London and Berkeley: University of California,
1976. It has subsequently been expanded, with particular reference to African cinema, by Teshome Gabriel, Third Cinema in the Third World: The Aesthetics of Liberation, Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1982.
32 Jean Genet’s film is the subject of intense debate in the Cultural Identities seminar on ‘Sexual identities: questions of difference’, in Undercut 17, 1988. Maxine, the black woman in Riddles of the Sphinx, is identified as a signifier of ‘dark continent’ mythology in Judith Williamson’s critique of the film, ‘Two or three things we know about ourselves’, in Consuming Passions, London: Calder & Boyars, 1986, 134. Frankie Dymon Jr was involved in Godard’s One Plus One and subsequently directed his own film, Death May Be Your Santa Claus (1969), described as a ‘pop fantasy’ by Jim Pines, in ‘The cultural context of Black British cinema’, op.cit.
33 Identified as indicative of class struggle, in V.N.Volosinov, Marxism and the Philosophy of Language, New York: Seminar Press, 1983. From another point of view, similar concepts are explored in Homi K.Bhabha’s reinterpretation of Fanon’s Wretched of the Earth (Penguin, 1970) in his essay, ‘The commitment to theory’, in New Formations 5, 1988, 20–2.
34 Richard Dyer, ‘Paul Robeson: crossing over’, in Heavenly Bodies: Film Stars and Society, London: BFI/Macmillan, 1987, 79.
35 See Rosalind Coward, ‘Class, “culture” and the social formation’, Screen, Spring 1977, 18(1) 75–105 and the response, from Iain Chambers et al., ‘Marxism and culture’, Screen, Winter 1977–8, 18(4), 109–19. On authorship, enunciation and textual analysis, see Paul Willemen, ‘Notes on subjectivity: on reading Edward Branigan’s “Subjectivity under siege”’, Screen, Spring 1978, 19(1), 41–69. And on critiques of ‘Screen theory’ from the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, see David Morley, ‘Texts, readers, subjects’ and Stuart Hall, ‘Recent developments in theories of language and ideology: a critical note’, both in Stuart Hall et al. (eds), Culture, Media, Language, London: Hutchinson, 1980. | {
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Sjusjøen Alpin AS, Norway
Family-friendly ski resort with a focus on good experiences for both young and old. We offer ski school and have a full-fledged ski rental in our shop.
- Operational from december 2020
- Main season from november to april
- Open winter
- Solution is in English and Norwegian | {
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Ed Potten has published widely on book and library history, with a particular focus on the fifteenth century. He was formerly Keeper of Printed Books at the John Rylands Library and Head of Rare Books, Joint Head of Special Collections and Associate Director, Special Collections and External Relations at Cambridge University Library. Current research projects include York Minster’s incunabula collections, the library of the medic and alchemist William Butler (1535-1618), and the interaction between printers of single-leaf wood- and metalcuts, blockbooks, and incunabula, 1440-1470. He is a member of the Council of The Bibliographical Society, and is Chair of its Libraries at Risk sub-committee.
Anthony Hobson, Italian Renaissance book bindings: Their makers and owners (Edited by Ed Potten), 2021 – forthcoming
Emprynted in thys manere (Edited by Ed Potten and Emily Dourish), Cambridge: 2014
‘A series of uncertainties: Dating the Buxheim Saint Christopher’, in Provenances and Producers: Copy-Specific Features of Incunabula (edited by John Goldfinch, SatokoTokunaga and Takako Kato, (Brill, forthcoming in 2021)
‘‘Knowledge, like a diamond polished, more illustriously shines’: The library of Mary Booth of Dunham Massey (1704-1772), The Library, (forthcoming, 2021)
‘A mendicant pharmacopeia: Robert Edward Hart’s copy of the 1485 Gart der Gesundheit’, in ‘Association, provenance and the book’, Poetica, volumes 89 and 90 (edited by Ed Potten and Toshiyuki Takamiya) – Autumn 2018
‘Shelf indulgence: The fashion for literary artifice’, in The Literary Review, April 2018, pp. 30-31.
‘”The library whereof the librarian is deceit’: Decoration and double meaning at Mount Stewart House’ in National Trust Historic Houses & Collections (London: National Trust, published in association with Apollo Magazine, 2017)
‘The rest of the iceberg: Reassessing private book ownership in the nineteenth century’ in Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society volume 15(3) - volume for 2014, published 2015
‘Beyond bibliophilia: Contextualizing private libraries in the nineteenth century’, in Library & Information History, Vol. 31 No. 2, May 2015, 73–94
'The indulgence is larger than any I ever saw': A Netherlandish Crucifixion of c. 1480, in Emprynted in thys manere (Edited by Ed Potten and Emily Dourish) Cambridge: 2014
‘Toms, William Henry (c.1701-1765)’ Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2014.
White Knights Library: Catalogue of that distinguished and celebrated library which will be sold by auction, CUP reprint of the original 1819 auction catalogue, with a new introduction by Ed Potten (2014).
Ed Potten and Toshiyuki Takamiya (eds.) Poetica – Association and Provenance: A Volume of Essays in Memory of Eric Stanley, volumes 89 and 90, Autumn 2018
Ed Potten and Satoko Tokunaga (eds.) Incunabula on the Move: The production, Circulation and Collection of Early Printed Books, special issue of Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society volume 15(1) - volume for 2012, published 2014, which included ‘The current state and future direction of incunable studies’ pp. 1-7 (Potten & Tokunaga)
Recent conference papers
‘‘Knowledge, like a diamond polished, more illustriously shines’: The library of Mary Booth of Dunham Massey (1704-1772)’, The Institute of English Studies History of Libraries Seminar, 4 February, 2020.
‘Dispersal and development: The building blocks of the Dorchester Library’, Seventeenth-Century Libraries: Problems & Perspectives, UCL, 6-8 June, 2019. [With Katie Birkwood]
‘William Young Ottley and the birth of watermark studies in Britain’ , Paper-stuff: Materiality, Technology and Invention, Cambridge University, 10-11 September 2018. [with Orietta da Rold]
‘A great number of usefull books’: Towards a union catalogue of seventeenth-century private libraries, Society of Renaissance Studies conference, Sheffield University, 5 July, 2018.
‘The history of the library in the North of England and the circulation of knowledge, 1650-1730’, Reconstructing Libraries, Queen Mary University, 20 April, 2018. | {
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The following is a summary of my most recent class in pursuit of my Master’s in Theology at Colorado Christian University.
Written by Steven Barto, B.S. Psy.
IT’S ONE THING TO pick up a book and read about theology. And that’s okay. It’s how I got interested in taking the subject on as a graduate student. It all starts with contemplation. We “think” about what it means to be alive, to have purpose. We wonder how we might make a difference in society. We question the “logic” of believing in God. Armed with such a burning desire to know, I enrolled in a master’s program in theology and started out on what so far has proved to be an amazing, breathtaking journey.
In week four of my theology class we considered the proper relationship between theological study, sanctification, contemplation, prayer, and action. Further, we discussed the type of character most conducive to theological insight, and how the systematic study of theology should impact one’s character. Generic “theological” study does not necessarily require any degree of sanctification. Many people choose to study theology or philosophy without any sense of what is meant by redemption or sanctification. These concepts are, however, imperative in Christian theology.
What is the proper relationship between theological study, sanctification, contemplation, prayer, and action?
I was amazed how little I understood about sanctification over the years. I thought it “just happened” when I “got saved.” Considering the decades of sinful behavior and active addiction I went through after accepting Christ (at age 13), I was far from sanctified. Of course, it does start with salvation. When we become redeemed, we are expected to “repent” of our old life. Then sanctification can begin. According to R.E.O. White, sanctification means “to make holy.” It’s not uncommon for a new Christian to think this means he or she is made holy (shazam!) all at once. White further explains that to be sanctified is to be “set apart” from common or secular use.
First Corinthians 1:2 says we are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints. R.E.O. White writes that sanctification is not merely justification’s endgame; rather, it is justifying faith at work. The new believer is declared to be acquitted and clothed in the righteousness of Christ. Through sanctification, God begins to accomplish His will in us. This is often called becoming spiritually mature. We are not saved by good works, but there is little hope of sanctification without submitting to the will of God.
Thomas Aquinas says in the Summa Theologiae that four of the gifts of the Spirit of the Lord are wisdom, understanding, knowledge, and counsel, and that these gifts have a direct impact on the intellect. Isaiah 11:2 says. “And the Spirit of the LORD shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the LORD” (RSV). David Jeremiah explains that the coming king “will be endowed with the Spirit of the Lord, who provides the wisdom, ability, and allegiance to God that are necessary to accomplish a challenging task.” Proverbs 2:6 says, “For the LORD gives wisdom; from his mouth come knowledge and understanding.” James reminds us that if we lack wisdom in any circumstance, we are to ask God and He will give it (James 1:5). Thomas Aquinas said any discourse of reason always begins from an understanding. It is critical, therefore, that we never attempt theology while lacking understanding. Although the work of the Spirit is already completed relative to the compiling of Scripture, His work regarding “illumination” is ongoing.
Prayer is the means by which we gain access to God. Just as we speak to the Father, and call upon Jesus, we must request from the Holy Spirit the guidance, understanding, knowledge, illumination, and discernment needed to effectively and accurately undertake systematic theology. It is equally important to pray for guidance regarding God’s call on our lives. When I decided to change my major from the master’s in counseling program to the master’s in theology, I spent weeks in prayer. I consulted with my pastor, several lay ministry friends, family members, my CCU student advisor, two professors, and several elders at my church. I cannot fathom undertaking a systematic study of Christian theology without prayer.
What type of character is most conducive to theological insight, and how should it change as the result of undertaking theological study?
In any theological undertaking, one would expect there to be a change of character. I think of Nabeel Qureshi (1983-2017), author, speaker, lecturer, and apologist, who converted to Christianity from Islam after spending nearly two years conducting an exegetical study of the Holy Bible. His character, if you will, was that of a loving, dedicated, well-behaved young man who had been raised in a religious home. In fact, no one in his immediate or extended family were extremists or jihadists. He loved the Qur’an, Allah, and his messenger Muhammad. This “character” coupled with a sharp intellect likely contributed to his willingness to examine the theology of Islam, and, ultimately, compare it to Christianity.
Tradition injects a lot into character, and, when that character matures, one becomes curious about tradition, religion, politics, culture, the meaning of life, and so on. Qureshi said one of the greatest hardships he faced was having to inform his parents he had become a Christian. He was, after all, part of a “community of believers” that were bonded together by solid theological principles and deep-seated tradition. He believed in Islam. He revered Muhammad. Regardless, once he met Jesus Christ, he could no longer reject Him than he could make himself stop breathing. This is precisely the type of character it requires to begin a theological study.
Insight comes from honest, rigorous, open-minded, and thorough study. We’ve been told that theology is in its simplest form “the study of God.” For me, the desire to know God stems from my burning desire to know why my earthly father seemed to hate me so much and, more frighteningly, whether my Heavenly Father was as mean-spirited, vindictive, nasty, judging, and punishing. (Incidentally, I eventually learned that my dad did not hate me, and he did the best he could to keep me from running off the rails and into the gutter.)
If God were to be “the same as” my dad, I would have no time for Him. Regardless, somewhere deep inside, I wanted to know several things. First, exactly who or what was this Christian God I’d heard of at church? Second, was He authoritative—leading from a position of authority and strength, love and longsuffering—or authoritarian—ruling over everyone with a heavenly despotic fist, ready to accuse and condemn? Third, was it true, as my father said many times, that I was worthless, or was there hope that my life had some greater meaning?
As to what type of character should result from theological study, Trevor Hart said, “Faith is not a natural progression from knowledge or experiences available to all, but results from a special dispensation which sets us in the perspective from which the truth may be seen, and demands a response” [italics mine]. In other words, deciding to systematically study Christian theology is both a soulful drive or ambition and a rigorous discipline. I have gone through numerous personal changes as an undergraduate student of psychology at Colorado Christian University. I believe those changes set the stage for my choosing to take on a master’s level study of theology. There is a progression at play. Had I not first chosen to return to college, I would not have discovered CCU; had I not enrolled at CCU, I would not be the Christian I am today; and, had I not grown more mature in Christ as an undergraduate, I would not have undergone the requisite changes conducive to undertaking a master’s degree in theology.
This is the fourth week of my first theology class, and already I feel tectonic shifts within me. My personality has brightened, and my mind has cleared. I am ravenous for information about theology, Christology, eschatology, and apologetics. I see people as God sees them, and I’ve begun to feel a heartache for those who will never see the truth about the life, love, ministry, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. I have started to keep my promises more consistently than I used to, and I exercise greater control over my tongue (which was no easy task!). I even noticed a major change in the amount of television I watch. All of that notwithstanding, I find myself asking God every morning to put a task before me; to lead me where He needs me to go; to break my heart for what breaks His.
R.E.O. White. “Sanctification.” Evangelical Dictionary of Theology. (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2017), 770
Thomas Aquinas. Summa Theologiae, I.II, q. 68, a1
David Jeremiah. The Jeremiah Study Bible. (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, Inc., 2013), 893-94.
Trevor Hart. Faith Thinking. (Eugene:Wipf & Stock Publishers, 1995), 75. | {
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About this Artist
GAIL SAMUEL currently serves as President of the Hollywood Bowl and Chief Operating Officer of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Association. In this post, Samuel oversees operational oversight for all the organization’s venues (Walt Disney Concert Hall, the Hollywood Bowl, The Ford); strategic leadership for both the Hollywood Bowl and The Ford; programming of jazz, world music, orchestral pops and pop/rock presentations; and, management of the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra, human resources, strategy and special projects.
Samuel’s tenure at the Los Angeles Philharmonic began 25 years ago when she joined the Orchestra Operations department of the organization. Over the course of her career she has held a variety of critical positions, most recently as Executive Director. Previous positions include Chief Operating Officer, which included management of the Hollywood Bowl and the Philharmonic orchestra and concert production; and Vice President and General Manager, Philharmonic and Production, managing the orchestra as well as all concert production, touring, and media activities. Early in her career, Samuel held positions with the Minnesota Orchestra, Yale University, Tanglewood Music Festival and the Young Musicians Foundation.
Gail Samuel studied violin and earned undergraduate degrees in music and psychology and an MBA from the University of Southern California. She serves on the Board of Councilors for the USC Thornton School of Music and on the Board of Directors of A Noise Within Theatre. | {
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Labour leaders tackle faith issues in Norwich
By Keith Morris
2010: Matters of religious faith were on the agenda when the Labour leadership contest rolled into Norwich
on Sunday morning (September 5) courtesy of a 90-minute Sky News
televised debate with all five candidates, broadcast live from the Open Youth Venue
in the city centre.
In front of an audience of Labour party members, young people and members of the public, Ed Balls, Ed Miliband, David Miliband, Andy Burnham and Diane Abbott addressed a wide range of issues in a debate hosted by Sky News political editor Adam Boulter.
As well as addressing issues such as immigration, housing, education and the future direction of the party, all candidates backed freedom of religious expression while answering a question about the banning of the Muslim burkha veil.
Diane Abbott and Ed Miliband both said no to banning religious symbols, saying it is a matter of religious freedom and civil liberties.
Ed Balls said: “Being British is about being tolerant and respecting each other and whether people are Roman Catholic or Muslim or Jewish, they have different traditions, they have different ways of doing things, the same in the Church of England as well and we are a country that respects difference so absolutely not."
David Miliband went further, saying: “It’s not good enough to say anyone can just do as they like, we’ve got to become a more united country and whether it is through schooling, through employment, through the community, we have got to bring people together across the lines of race and religion. Of course we should be saying if you want to wear a burkha or a cross or a turban or a yarmulke, that is your right but we have got to strengthen the forces of integration in our society.
Former health secretary, and now shadow health secretary, Andy Burnham, said: “Of course people should be free to wear the burkha but people should also be free to wear a cross at work if that is their choice and I was appalled when it was said somebody shouldn’t wear a cross at work, that shouldn’t happen either." | {
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Overlord: A Mighty Host looks back seventy years on the greatest military operation in history when 150,000 Allied troops landed on the beaches of northern France. This awesome military event is examined from the point of view of those who survived that extraordinary conflict.
Alternate formats: Digital Video - $3.99
On June 6, 1944, the greatest military operation in the history of the world succeeded in landing more than 150,000 Allied troops on the beaches of northern France. Before the battle of Normandy was won in late August, these troops endured some of the most costly fighting of World War II.
Overlord: A Mighty Host looks back sixty years on this awesome military event from the point of view of soldiers, sailors, and paratroopers who were involved in the invasion and examines the lives of men who survived that extraordinary conflict. Fullscreen.
Vision Video is the premier producer of Christian videos. One of their newest DVD titles is particularly impressive and very highly recommended for the non-specialist general viewer. Overlord:A Mighty Host is a 58 minute, full color documentary focused on the events of June 6, 1944 during the greatest military operation in the history of recorded human warfare. This was the landing of more than 150,000 Allied troops on the beaches of northern France against the fierce opposition of the German military. Before the battle of Normandy was over in late August, these allied troops would have experienced heavy casualties as the Germans were experiencing the beginning of the end of their wars of conquest. The story is presented from the viewpoint of the soldiers, sailors and paratroopers who were involved in the invasion and the lives of these men who survived that extraordinarily lethal conflict undertaking against a foe that would be infamous for their determined and premeditated mass slaughter of Jews, Christians, Gays, Gypsies, and political opponents. This outstanding documentary is flawlessly produced, informed and informative, thoughtful and thought-provoking, and an important addition to personal and community library DVD collections.
As America finds itself in the midst of an increasingly unpopular war, it’s difficult for many to remember a war that the United States actually won. Vietnam and Korea were stalemates, the Persian Gulf War was an international affair, and the incursions into Panama, Grenada, Somalia, and Haiti hardly constituted our finest hours. But few could dispute the importance of "Operation Overlord," a.k.a D-Day, the largest military campaign in history, launched off the coast of France on June 6, 1944 by Supreme Commander Dwight D. Eisenhower. If D-Day had been a single battle, it would have been considered a defeat due to the huge numbers of military personnel killed in proportion to the relatively small amount of enemy territory captured. But as Overlord: A Mighty Host makes clear, the tired and battered soldiers who fought for every bloody inch of the Normandy beaches were united in their determination to usher in the end of Hitler’s evil reign (then approaching five years). Speaking today, the American veterans interviewed here – elderly, gray-haired, slightly bent gentlemen who still get tears in their eyes – unashamedly admit that the hand of God protected them in those faraway lands, and their deeply emotional stories are nicely complemented with interwoven footage of the D-Day landing in this powerful tribute. Highly recommend.
OVERLORD: A Mighty Host is a DVD that features interviews with veterans who all served during WWII and were participants in D-Day, June 6, 1944. Many of the veterans volunteer at the D-day museum, which focuses only on those things that document the events of D-Day. Most of the veterans interviewed were very young men on D-Day when they arrived at the coast of France. The number of troops was the largest force with 150,000 landing that day. The veterans remembrances of the events give the famous day during World War II a personal side. My son, who is a World War II history buff, loved this view and highly recommended it to others interested in WWII history. For the rest of us, it's a view into history via the memories of older gentlemen who served their country as they were asked, and carry the scars of war with them into old age. Reviewed By: Kate O'Mara
t has been almost sixty-three years since the British, American and Canadian armies stormed the beaches of Normandy, but the D-Day invasion and the weeks that followed continue to fascinate us. The events have provided fodder for countless books, movies, and video games. As time passes, fewer and fewer of the veterans of that day survive to give their first-hand testimonies. I am grateful that many people are now speaking to these men and recording their memories before they are lost to history.
Overlord: A Mighty Host is an hour-long documentary that was first shown on television and has recently become available on DVD. It provides reflections from veterans of D-Day with an emphasis on their religious beliefs. Because it is produced by the North American Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention, one might think that this would focus on Christian testimonies. Unfortunately, it focuses on testimonies from all faiths (Protestant, Catholic, Greek Orthodox and Jewish) and much of the talk about God is generic, treating Him as “the man upstairs” who honors the terror-stricken faith of those who have rarely acknowledged Him before or since.
Despite treating God as a somewhat generic deity, the documentary is still well-done and very moving as it traces the actions of a small group of heroes. It always stirs the emotions to hear these men, now old and fragile, who were once so young and healthy and who were willing to trade their lives for those of others. Whether from the mouths of Christians or non-, testimonies about the past are worth recording and worth listening to.
The DVD includes quite a long list of extra scenes that did not make the final cut. Some of these, interestingly enough, contain information that speaks of God in a less-generic way. It is a shame that some of these were left out of the film.
Overlord: A Mighty Host is a deeply moving film, but still somewhat disappointing because of the generic God these men speak about. http://www.challies.com/music-movies/dvd-review-overlord-a-mighty-host
This DVD does an excellent job depicting D-day from the perspective of the men who were involved. | {
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Tags SEIU 1021
Tag: SEIU 1021
The story of how the Richmond Progressive Alliance took power – as of November 2016 with 5 of 7 seats on a weak-mayor city council – is eloquently and lucidly described by veteran trade unionist and labor journalist Steve Early. Early moved to Richmond late in life, but has now produced a compelling work that describes the halting process of holding Chevron and the real estate lobby accountable for its frequent misdeeds by building a dynamic multiracial coalition that eschews traditional party politics.
It has been another victory for rent control, just cause eviction protections, and the voters and renters of Richmond. The California Apartment Association retaliated with a lawsuit against the City of Richmond after the voters and renters approved Measure L last November in a landslide victory. In a ruling filed on Feb. 14, Judge Judith S. Craddick of Contra Costa County wrote, “The California Apartment Association’s motion for a preliminary injunction is denied.”
On Tuesday, Feb. 23, the Fair and Affordable Richmond Coalition, a group uniting renters, homeowners, organizations, local elected officials, local community activists and labor, filed a proposed ballot measure to protect Richmond’s tenants against unjust evictions and unfair rent increases. The Richmond City Clerk has 15 days to write a title and summary for the initiative. The coalition will have until June to gather 4,198 signatures to place the measure on the November ballot.
Trade unionists joined a rally and press conference on Dec. 24, 2015, on the steps of City Hall for Mario Woods, a young African American worker who was executed by San Francisco police on Dec. 2, 2015, in Bayview Hunters Point. Black San Franciscans are being driven out of San Francisco through gentrification and displacement and a decades-long job lockout, and some unionists are calling for labor action to stop these economic and police assaults.
Over 200 community members, activists, union members, transportation experts, family and friends flocked to Oakland’s New Parish for non-profit leader Lateefah Simon’s kick-off fundraiser for her 2016 campaign to join the BART Board of Directors. Despite running as a first-time candidate, Simon has already built a broad coalition that includes some of the Bay Area’s top elected officials and civic leaders. True to her reputation as a tireless community advocate, Simon spoke passionately about her personal connection to BART and her commitment to transit justice for working people.
Eighteen-year-old high school senior and Oakland resident Alan Blueford was shot to death by police on May 6 under curious circumstances. The coroner’s report, showing Blueford never shot at the officer, was finally released after the July 19 press conference Alan's parents were forced to organize. | {
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Name: Edward Asare
Date of birth: 10th July, 1993
Profession: Digital Marketer
Education: MBA Marketing, BA Economics with Information Studies
Place of birth: Dawatrim Asesewa
Edward Asare has within the span of a few years risen to become synonymous with digital marketing and blogging. He has been consistent and determined in the pursuit of his goals, given his origin story. Born on 10th July 1993 in Dawatrim – Asesewa, a small village in Upper Manya Krobo District, Eastern Region, he considers Odumasi Krobo as his hometown. Born to Rev. Eric N. Asare And Madam Mary Asare, he has four siblings namely Gloria Asare, Benedict Asare, Richmond Asare and Shine Asare.
He is a product of Accra Academy, one of the highly rated secondary schools in Ghana where he studied Business. From there, her proceeded to the University of Ghana to pursue a BA in Economics and Information Studies. Currently, he is pursuing an MBA in Marketing also from the University of Ghana.
Currently, Edward works with UBA Ghana as a Digital Marketer. He has worked with a long list of outfits including Educational Communities Worldwide as a Board Member & Marketing Committee Chair, Yen.com.gh Media as a Social Media Manager,
Red Pear as a Social Media Manager, Glofert also as a Social Media Manager, Ankobra Beach Resort as a Digital Marketing Consultant and Peduase Valley Resort, as a Social Media Manager.
He has been nominated for and won a number awards for his good works including Digital Marketing Professional of the year 2021 (National Communications Award), Youth Blogger of the year 2021 ( Nominated), Top 50 Bloggers in Ghana 2021 (Avance Media), Digital Media Influencer of the Year 2020 (Youth Excellence Awards) among others.
As his way of giving back to society and helping other young people actualise their professional goals through responsible social media use, he has been on panels at Women Empowerment Summit, Bloggers Summit, Ashesi D. Lab among others. | {
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- MPS and UPS plus SEN2
Complex Needs Teacher job summary
We are looking for an experienced and energetic Teacher with the knowledge, skills and understanding of a range of teaching, learning, assessment and behaviour management strategies to make a positive impact on the progress of children and young people with complex needs.
The successful candidate will be working within our Woodlands Hub department, which caters for our children and young people aged 7-19 with complex needs. Learners within the Woodlands Hub have a wide variety of abilities and talents. They also have complex learning needs, including all or some of the following: physical, sensory and medical needs. Some of the learners may have profound ASD which impacts upon their learning and progress.
IPlease see the job specification and job description for further information, using these as guidance for your application. Ensure that you complete a full employment and education history in the relevant fields. Please note that incomplete applications will not be accepted, nor CVs in lieu of an application form.
Kennel Lane School is a modern, vibrant and inclusive special school catering for the needs of learners who have a wide range of learning difficulties, aged from 2-19. We offer an exciting learning community where every individual is valued and nurtured.
Our stimulating learning environment showcases our learners’ love of learning. Our innovative teaching and learning approach ensures the best outcomes for our learners through a wide and varied curriculum.
We are strongly committed to providing high quality professional development for all our staff. We strongly support and facilitate collaborative work across the school and in partnership with other schools.
The wellbeing of our staff is an important priority therefore we provide opportunities to ensure that we value their hard work and dedication.
Employee Assistance programme offering a range of services some of which include:
In the moment support and counselling for work and home-life issues
Financial and Legal
Specialist information e.g. childcare
24 hours a day access
Bracknell Forest employees have access to a range of benefits some of which include:
Family and financial benefits
Leisure and entertainment benefits
Please visit our website to learn more about Kennel Lane School: http://www.kennellaneschool.com
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Platform: Playstation 3
Developer: Giant Sparrow
Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment
It’s part of the reason why I took an almost instant liking to the aesthetic of Giant Sparrow’s charming art house title The Unfinished Swan. The game’s stark, simple art design reminded me a lot of A Picture For Harold’s Room and the central conceit of a child learning a morality tale by losing himself in a world of his illustrations is certainly a familiar one.
In The Unfinished Swan, we follow the journey of Munroe, a newly orphaned boy who must choose one of his late mother’s pieces of artwork to take with him to his new home. Munroe decides on an unfinished illustration of a swan and this eponymous creature leads him through the fairytale story of an obsessive King who becomes continuously frustrated with the subjects in his kingdom when they fail to maintain his obsessive standards of tidiness and order.
The game takes roughly two hours to complete and is a patchwork of different art styles and game mechanics. The most widely seen mechanic where Monroe throws black paint against a white canvas to uncover the world is actually jettisoned before the end of the first chapter. This is with good reason. It is a gorgeous visual effect and the designers are able to create some sumptuous visual effects by incorporating ponds and wildlife in this chapter. However, it is certainly not an elegant way to explore an environment and Giant Sparrow are wise to restrict its use before it outstays its welcome. This is a game where the style is as important as the substance.
The other play mechanics in the game include a chapter where you must water fast-growing vines to traverse an abandoned city and a chapter that is set in the dark and requires Munroe to dodge spiders by finding new sources of light. Probably my favourite chapter of the four was the blue print themed level where Munroe gains the ability to create shapes to help navigate his environment. Its the concept with the most scope for creativity compared to the other chapters which are pretty linear in execution.
The game doesn’t really have an sense of cohesion in tying these concepts together. In fact, even within the game’s relatively small scope there are concepts that are introduced that don’t seem to go anywhere. We see a giant sea monster that doesn’t really end up amounting to anything and at one stage it appears that we are going to have a world made to look like the pencil sketch art style from the Take On Me music video but that gets ditched pretty quickly too.
Upon reflection, I didn’t mind any of this so much. I think for the purpose of creating an interactive picture book, it suits the pacing of The Unfinished Swan to have simple puzzles and not dwell too long in any one area. The fact that it lurches about from one idea to another isn’t so bad either. We are seeing the visual representation of a young boy’s hyperactive imagination after all.
The Unfinished Swan is a game that can rightfully sit alongside Sony’s other well regarded art house titles such as Flower and Journey. It doesn’t quite have the narrative cohesion that I would have liked but it has incredible flair in its art style and the presentation quality, bolstered by some voiceover work from Terry Gilliam, absolutely nails the storybook concept. It’s one of the most creative, inventive and enjoyable games yet on the Playstation Network. | {
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Tuesday, January 31, 2012
You've probably seen news reports (like the WaPo's) on a new Congressional Budget Office study comparing federal and private sector pay and benefits. It will add analytic fuel to the election year fire over federal pay cuts and such, because it reinforces an existing narrative that feds get paid way too bloody much.
However, the report itself actually doesn't say quite that. Read it here, or just take a look at the chart above (Figure 4 of the report), which shows how federal and private sector wages compare for employees with different levels of education.
Differences in wages between federal employees and similar private-sector employees in the 2005-2010 period varied widely depending on the employees' level of education.
· Federal civilian workers with no more than a high school education earned about 21 percent more, on average, than similar workers in the private sector.
· Workers whose highest level of education was a bachelor's degree earned roughly the same hourly wages, on average, in both the federal government and the private sector.
· Federal workers with a professional degree or doctorate earned about 23 percent less, on average, than their private-sector counterparts.
Overall, the federal government paid 2 percent more in total wages than it would have if average wages had been comparable with those in the private sector, after accounting for certain observable characteristics of workers.The comparison on non-wage benefits worked out the same way. Feds with high school education did much better than their private sector peers, those with bachelor degrees did about the same, and those with graduate and professional degrees did much worse.
Federal employment is heavily weighted toward professional or technical jobs, more so than in the private sector. The CBO report says that 51 percent of the federal workforce has at least a bachelors degree compared to 31 percent of the private sector, and 21 percent of feds have graduate degrees compared to 9 percent of the private sector.
As best I can tell from the report, the disproportionately small number (compared to the private sector) of federal jobs that require only a high school education are so very lucrative that they offset the lower-than-private sector wages paid to federal professional and technical employees.
That's interesting information, and potentially something that could counter the usual political lines of attack on federal pay. But forget about it! That would never happen in an election year, if ever.
The headlines about the CBO report ought to say "Federal Jobs Pay Really Big Bucks to HS Graduates, Others Get Not So Much." But instead, I think they will be more like "Worthless Feds Paid Far More Than Hardworking Taxpayers!"
Foreign Policy's Passport blog has a piece on Hillary Clinton's dark Alinskyite past, with a link to the once-suppressed honors thesis on Saul Alinsky that she did at Wellesley College in 1969.
There is no dark secret in the thesis itself, however, since it amounts to little more than an extended book report. I thought it was a crushing bore when I read it a few years ago.
But Hillary does have a dark secret from those days. Check out the outfit she wore at a press interview around the time of her valedictory address at Wellesley:
Those pants may have been too radical even for 1969.
There is no dark secret in the thesis itself, however, since it amounts to little more than an extended book report. I thought it was a crushing bore when I read it a few years ago.
But Hillary does have a dark secret from those days. Check out the outfit she wore at a press interview around the time of her valedictory address at Wellesley:
Those pants may have been too radical even for 1969.
Monday, January 30, 2012
I just saw this great video on the New York Times' The Lede blog. It looks like Vladimir Putin has some vocal opposition to his plans for re-investiture as Russia's Prime Minister on March 4th.
A video of a musical group, apparently featuring former Russian paratroopers, performing a song with lyrics sharply critical of Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin, quickly became an Internet sensation after it was posted to YouTube on Thursday. By Friday evening, the band had performed the song on a private television channel, TV Dozhd (Russian for TV Rain).
The video had been viewed over 120,000 times by Friday night. Posted under the title “Putin and Paratroopers,” the song portrays Mr. Putin as nothing more than a corrupt bureaucrat who has “destroyed the armed forces” along the way. It pits the prime minister — who claimed in December that he thought the white ribbon, the symbol for the protest movement, was a condom — against the common man.
You’re no different from me.
A man and not God.
I’m no different from you.
A man, not some hick.
We won’t let you keep lying, we won’t let you keep stealing
We’re liberated troops who defended the motherland
Ribbons of freedom are positive for all, but for you…
[they're] nothing – just condoms.
I love the gusty guttural sound of the Russian language! It sounds fantastic when shouted, I think.
The banners in the background of the video are displaying versions of the post-Soviet era Russian Army Airborne Troops badge.
"Россия" = Russia. "ВДВ" stands for "Воздушно-десантные войска" = Air-Landing Forces.
Their unit motto is "Nobody But Us," which is also the title of the song.
Sunday, January 29, 2012
British publications frequently offer some of the sharpest and most plain-spoken commentary on American politics.
Take, for example, this piece by Christopher Booker, a Sunday Telegraph columnist, on his reaction to President Obama's State of the Union address - How I woke up to the untruths of Barack Obama:
When I happened to wake up in the middle of the night last Wednesday and caught the BBC World Service’s live relay of President Obama’s State of the Union address to Congress, two passages had me rubbing my eyes in disbelief.
The first came when, to applause, the President spoke about the banking crash which coincided with his barnstorming 2008 election campaign. “The house of cards collapsed,” he recalled. “We learned that mortgages had been sold to people who couldn’t afford or understand them.” He excoriated the banks which had “made huge bets and bonuses with other people’s money”, while “regulators looked the other way and didn’t have the authority to stop the bad behaviour”. This, said Obama, “was wrong. It was irresponsible. And it plunged our economy into a crisis that put millions out of work.”
I recalled a piece I wrote in this column on January 29, 2009, just after Obama took office. It was headlined: “This is the sub-prime house that Barack Obama built”. As a rising young Chicago politician in 1995, no one campaigned more actively than Mr Obama for an amendment to the US Community Reinvestment Act, legally requiring banks to lend huge sums to millions of poor, mainly black Americans, guaranteed by the two giant mortgage associations, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
It was this Act, above all, which let the US housing bubble blow up, far beyond the point where it was obvious that hundreds of thousands of homeowners would be likely to default. Yet, in 2005, no one more actively opposed moves to halt these reckless guarantees than Senator Obama, who received more donations from Fannie Mae than any other US politician (although Senator Hillary Clinton ran him close).
I have two bones to pick with the above paragraph. First, not to take anything away from Obama, but it is Congressman Barney Frank who deserves the title of Fannie Mae's most active defender on Capital Hill in 2005. Watch the video of Frank, then the ranking Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee, assuring the House that "you're not going to see the collapse that people see when they talk about a [mortgage] bubble."
Second, Booker understates exactly how much money Obama received from those government-sponsored mortgage associations. According to OpenSecrets.org, Obama was the second-biggest recipient of all Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac campaign contributions for the years 1989 to 2008. That's especially impressive when you recall that Obama was not sworn in as a U.S. Senator until 2005, and was elected to the Illinois State Senate only in 1998. The only office-holder who received even more boodle from the mortgage bankers was Christopher Dodd, who had been a U.S. Senator since 1974, and who, as Chairman of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs, could give Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac the best return on their influence investment. FYI, Senator Hillary Clinton was the 12th biggest recipient, which is not far behind.
A few months after Obama entered the White House, I suggested here that the slogan on which he was elected – “Yes we can” – seemed to have changed to “No we can’t”. It was already obvious that, having won election as an ideal Hollywood version of what “the first black President” should look and sound like, he was in reality no more than a vacuum. His speech last week was as weaselly as any politician’s performance could be, not least in its references to the sub-prime scandal.
I sense a little typical English reserve there, don't you? Hey, don't sugarcoat it for your American readers, Mr. Booker, tell us what you really think.
Saturday, January 28, 2012
The administration did another Friday night document dump yesterday, this time delivering to Congress a series of Justice Department e-mails concerning the murder of U.S. Border Patrol Officer Brian Terry and the ATF's Project Fast and Furious, which permitted the illegal purchase and "controlled [sic] delivery" to Mexican crime cartels of the rifle used to murder Terry.
All the back-and-forth messages between AFT Field Offices, DOJ headquarters, then-US Attorney Dennis Burke, and the DOJ Attache in Mexico City, will provide more grist for the investigatory mill of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. Who knew what, and when did he know it?
See the dumped documents here. The big enchilada is a discussion of “controlled deliveries” of straw-purchased weapons to Mexican crime cartels. Most of that occurs in several heavily redacted messages from the DOJ Attache in Mexico City reporting on the U.S. Government's belated (on February 4, 2011) disclosure to Mexican officials of Fast and Furious. Oh, yeah, that must have been a cordial meeting.
NPR was the administration's favored news media recipient of a late-night leak of the disclosed material. Here's their report:
For the first time, the Justice Department has made public a series of sensitive messages that passed to the highest levels of the agency within hours of an ambush that killed a U.S. border patrol agent along the Southwest border in December 2010, igniting a national scandal over a gun trafficking investigation gone wrong.
Justice officials sent the documents to Congress late Friday evening, only a few days before Attorney General Eric Holder is set to testify before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
The email messages show the former top federal prosecutor in Arizona, Dennis Burke, notifying an aide to Holder via email on Dec. 15, 2010 that agent Brian Terry had been wounded and died. "Tragic," responds the aide, Monty Wilkinson. "I've alerted the AG, the acting Deputy Attorney General..."
Only a few minutes later, Wilkinson emailed again, saying, "Please provide any additional details as they become available to you."
Burke then delivered another piece of bad news: "The guns found in the desert near the murder [sic] ... officer connect back to the investigation we were going to talk about — they were AK-47s purchased at a Phoenix gun store."
That investigation, dubbed Fast and Furious, was supposed to follow U.S. weapons into the hands of kingpins in the violent Sinaloa Mexico drug cartel, building a big case against the gangs. Instead, it cost Burke his job, got the director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms reassigned, and has prompted multiple federal probes by Congress and the department's own inspector general.
The Justice Department also sent a letter to lawmakers Friday night outlining several changes they had made within their own ranks and at the ATF: from requiring additional oversight in cases that involve wiretaps and confidential informants to extra procedures at the ATF for putting weapons purchases under surveillance to a realignment at the U.S. Attorney's office in Phoenix and the ATF itself.
The new documents are certain to stoke the fires among congressional Republicans, who have questioned what the attorney general knew about the botched investigation and asked why the chief of the Justice Department's criminal division, Lanny Breuer, didn't do more when he found out about other questionable tactics used by ATF in gun trafficking probes in the Bush administration.
In a meeting with Mexican government officials in February 2011, for instance, Breuer "suggested allowing straw purchasers cross into Mexico so [police] can arrest and [prosecutors] can convict. Such coordinated activities between the US and Mexico may send a strong message to arms traffickers."
A Justice official, speaking on background, said Breuer's proposal involved coordination between the governments and didn't contemplate agents losing track of guns, as happened in the Fast and Furious debacle.
A few days after the meeting between Breuer and Mexican authorities, the department's attache to Mexico raised this issue, according to an email: "there is an inherent risk in allowing weapons to pass from the U.S. to Mexico. The possibility of the [government of Mexico] not seizing the weapons, and the weapons being used to commit a crime in Mexico."
The attorney general, in testimony to the House and Senate last year, said he feared the Justice Department could be living with the consequences of more than 1,000 guns connected to Fast and Furious that remain unaccounted for years to come.
Wednesday, January 25, 2012
I made a hasty remark in my previous post, to the effect that only blue collar men and rich old geezers are stick-shift drivers anymore. Within a couple hours I heard from several women who also prefer driving manuals, so the stick-shifting driver demographic may be broader than I'd assumed.
But I wondered: what percentage of cars in the United States have manual transmissions, regardless of the driver's gender, age, or income, and where could I find an authoritative source for that information? And immediately I realized: by asking the federal government, of course, since they know everything and put it all on the internet.
Sure enough, the EPA's data on light-duty vehicle trends (see the executive summary excel tables) reports that in 2010 only 7 percent of our cars had stick-shifts, compared to 13 percent in 1998 and 29 percent in 1987. So, our stick-shift cars are slowing becoming a niche market for driving enthusiasts.
Not so in Europe. I've seen news media reports that as many as 85% of European cars are sold with manual transmissions. That accords with my own observations while traveling abroad, however, I haven't found an official source on the subject. For some strange reason, European governments don't seem to be so loquacious as ours.
Next I wondered: what American car brand sells the highest percentage of its cars with manual transmissions? (And I'm not including paddle shift transmissions or 'manualmatics' here; it has to have three foot peddles to count.) Is it Porsche, or BMW? Maybe Audi, or Volkswagen? Mazda?
It's none of those. I learned that Mini Cooper sells more of its cars with stick-shifts than any other maker in the U.S., as much as 50 percent. Mini has a whole ad campaign directed at that market segment. See this informational video on becoming a manual, for example.
I might wave to the next Mini driver I see while on my way to work tomorrow morning. We stick-shifters are a rare breed, and getting rarer.
I took this quiz ("inspired by American Enterprise Institute scholar Charles Murray's new book, "Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010," which explores the unprecedented, class-based cultural gap in America. How culturally isolated are you?") and scored a 13-to-16 out of a possible 20.
Those results mean that I don't even have a bubble. However, I'll admit I could not name the NASCAR guy. Maybe you can.
I would guess that most of my immediate co-workers are pretty bubble-free, as well. Of my less immediate State Department co-workers, and especially among the more rarefied types of FSO, I suspect the class-based cultural gap bubbles get much, much, thicker.
In my experience, a good quick indicator of class-based cultural position is whether or not a person can drive a stick-shift. (This test is not applicable in Europe, where manual transmissions are common, but it works just fine among Americans.) Pretty much the only stick-shift drivers left in America are blue collar men and rich old geezers. Cultural book-ends, as it were. The Mustang GT drivers, and the Porsche Club of America types.
By the way, most BMW drivers are excluded since the large majority of beemers on the road in America - or bimmers, to use their enthusiasts' preferred term for the BMW car versus the motorcycle - are automatics.
That automotive range pretty much defines my personal class-based cultural odyssey, as well. Having been born a Mustang guy, I am now shopping for an entry-level Porsche hobby car with which to entertain myself in my senior years.
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
So, Jay Leno told a joke about Mitt Romney, and now we have half of India in a sulk, and the State Department spokeswoman defending Leno's Constitutional right to perform satire? Lighten up, people.
State Department Defends Leno After Joke Offends Sikhs:
Though most comedians hope that their material stands on its own, some additional support from their country now and then doesn’t hurt either: The State Department stood up for Jay Leno after the “Tonight Show” host offended some Indian Sikhs with a joke that implied that a holy shrine in India was a home owned by Mitt Romney.
Previously, Vayalar Ravi, India’s Minister of Overseas Indian Affairs, said he planned to speak with the State Department about a comedic bit that he called “quite unfortunate and quite objectionable.” The segment, during Mr. Leno’s monologue on Thursday night, showed the homes of various Republican presidential hopefuls, but when Mr. Romney’s summer house on Lake Winnipesaukee was mentioned the screen showed the Golden Temple in Amritsar, which is holy to Sikhs as well as to members of other Indian faiths.
Victoria Nuland, a spokeswoman for the State Department, told BBC News that though United States and Indian officials had not communicated about the issue, the United States Constitution protected Mr. Leno’s freedom of speech. Ms. Nuland said she hoped that Mr. Leno would “be appreciative if we make the point that his comments are constitutionally protected in the United States under free speech, and frankly, they appeared to be satirical in nature.” She added that “Sikh Americans have contributed greatly to the United States” and noted that President Obama celebrated the birthday of Guru Nanak, the founder of Sikhism, at the White House.
Neither Mr. Leno nor representatives for “The Tonight Show” have commented on the matter.
Monday, January 23, 2012
The New Yorker magazine has a look back at the Obama campaign of 2008, and notes the personal nature of his attack on his rival candidate, Hillary Clinton.
Another hard-edged decision helped make him the Democratic Presidential nominee. In early October, 2007, David Axelrod and Obama’s other political consultants wrote the candidate a memo explaining how he could repair his floundering campaign against Hillary Clinton. They advised him to attack her personally, presenting a difficult choice for Obama. He had spent years building a reputation as a reformer who deplored the nasty side of politics, and now, he was told, he had to put that aside. Obama’s strategists wrote that all campaign communications, even the slogan — “Change We Can Believe In” — had to emphasize distinctions with Clinton on character rather than on policy. The slogan “was intended to frame the argument along the character fault line, and this is where we can and must win this fight,” the memo said. “Clinton can’t be trusted or believed when it comes to change,” because “she’s driven by political calculation not conviction, regularly backing away and shifting positions. . . . She embodies trench warfare vs. Republicans, and is consumed with beating them rather than unifying the country and building consensus to get things done. She prides herself on working the system, not changing it.” The “current goal,” the memo continued, was to define Obama as “the only authentic ‘remedy’ to what ails Washington and stands in the way of progress.”
Obama’s message promised voters, in what his aides called “the inspiration,” that “Barack Obama will end the divisive trench warfare that treats politics as a game and will lead Americans to come together to restore our common purpose.” Clinton was too polarizing to get anything done: “It may not be her fault, but Americans have deeply divided feelings about Hillary Clinton, threatening a Democratic victory in 2008 and insuring another four years of the bitter political battles that have plagued Washington for the last two decades and stymied progress.”Neera Tanden was the policy director for Clinton’s campaign. When Clinton lost the Democratic race, Tanden became the director of domestic policy for Obama’s general-election campaign, and then a senior official working on health care in his Administration. She is now the president of the liberal Center for American Progress, perhaps the most important institution in Democratic politics. “It was a character attack,” Tanden said recently, speaking about the Obama campaign against Clinton. “I went over to Obama, I’m a big supporter of the President, but their campaign was entirely a character attack on Hillary as a liar and untrustworthy. It wasn’t an ‘issue contrast,’ it was entirely personal.” And, of course, it worked.
It is an annual ritual in Washington to publish the list of tax delinquencies by federal employees. The WaPo ran it today, and it turns out that federal employees owe $1.03 billion in unpaid taxes:
Congressional staffers owed about $10.6 million in unpaid taxes in 2010, a slight increase from the previous year and a growing slice of the roughly $1 billion owed by federal and postal workers nationwide.
The figures come as Republican efforts to pass legislation allowing federal agencies to fire tax delinquent federal employees have slowed and as the White House continues to crack down on improper payments made by agencies to delinquent government contractors and federal beneficiaries.
About 98,000 federal, postal and congressional employees owed $1.03 billion in unpaid taxes at the end of fiscal 2010, according to records provided by the Internal Revenue Service. The total number of delinquent employees dipped slightly from 2009, but the amount owed jumped by $32 million.The WaPo provided a beakdown by agency, which shows that Treasury employees have the lowest rate of delinquency at under one percent (as you might expect, since they must make a special effort to avoid tax embarrassments), and the biggest scofflaws among cabinet agencies were Housing and Urban Development and the Department of Education, at 3.88 and 3.99 percent delinquent employees respectively.
Department of State employees were reasonably law-abiding, with just under three percent of them - 394 employees to be precise - owing a total of $3,958,293.
H/T to Reason magazine for this tidbit: Uncle Sam tells Americans how to get out of debt:
After saddling the country with as much new debt as the rest of the world combined in one year flat, one would think that Uncle Sam wouldn’t have the cojones to dish out debt advice to others. But one would be wrong. In an unwitting self-parody worthy of Froma Harrop on The Daily Show, the Federal Trade Commission has created a step-by-step web guide for Americans “Knee-Deep in Debt.”
The first step, says the agency, which represents a government that went over 800 days without passing a budget, is: create a budget! Get a “realistic assessment of how much money you take in and how much money you spend,” it lectures those in financial doo-doo, seemingly oblivious of the fact that its own bosses have promised $60 trillion to a $100 trillion more in entitlements than the country has money to pay for.
It continues: [L]ist your "fixed" expenses — those that are the same each month — like mortgage payments or rent, car payments, and insurance premiums. Next, list the expenses that vary — like entertainment, recreation, and clothing. Writing down all your expenses, even those that seem insignificant, is a helpful way to track your spending patterns, identify necessary expenses, and prioritize the rest.
Prioritize! Who knew that the word even existed in the federal lexicon? But “irony” obviously does not because the FTC, with a straight face, goes on to offer advice for those who are not “disciplined enough to create a workable budget and stick to it.” And by this it doesn’t mean our elected representatives.
And its advice is not that over-extended Americans call their credit card company and demand that it raise their credit limit every time they max out their card, as Uncle Sam has done 75 times since 1962. It suggests that they consider —wait for this!—“debt settlement.” And if no one is willing to settle, then the option of last resort is bankruptcy, although it warns its repercussions can be “long-lasting and far reaching.” No kidding!
No word on whether the White House of Capitol Hill have glanced at the guide. Or maybe they are waiting for the agency to create one for those “Neck-Deep In Debt But Too Stupid to Know And Too Obtuse to Care.”
Saturday, January 21, 2012
Doesn't he just seem to be saying: "Allons enfants de la Patrie, this way to the gift shop"?
H/T to GWB for pointing out to me this fascinating historical / commercial proposal from France.
A former French minister and history buff named Yves Jégo is proposing to build a Napoleonland theme park as a showcase for Napoleon's greatest victories and to compete with Disneyland Paris.
The park would go on the site of the Battle of Montereau, about 70 miles - oops, I mean, 112 kilometers - south of Paris. Montreau, BTW, was a great victory for the French but a relatively small action by the bloody standards of the Napoleonic Age, since fewer than 9,000 were killed there on all sides.
The theme park will reportedly have a museum, a hotel, shops, restaurants, battle reenactments, and Napoleon-themed attractions. If it is to compete with Disneyland Paris, you know they'll also have to have fun stuff for the kids, like rides. And if the developers have any sense at all, they'll put up signs in front of the roller coasters and log flumes saying You Must Be This Short → To Ride, because a little easygoing self-deprecating humor would help to release the tension caused by, well, the whole Napoleon Complex thing.
Meanwhile, the kids' parents could kick back with a couple Whiff of Grapeshot Wine Coolers. I see great commercial possibilities here.
But, I get creeped out by this part:
Other curious potential attractions include a ski run through a battlefield "surrounded by the frozen bodies of soldiers and horses" and a recreation of Louis XVI being guillotined during the revolution – the precursor to Napoleon’s rise to power.
"It's going to be fun for the family,” [Yves Jégo] told the Times.Napoleon's retreat from Moscow must be the inspiration for that "curious" - not to say macabre - ski run. I'm sure it will be much more fun for the tourists than it was for Napoleon's Grande Armée. They were half a million troops strong when they invaded Russia in August of 1812, but only 27,000 of them came back out the following December.
Something about this whole idea is just wrong. Napoleonic warfare isn't suitable for a theme park treatment. The developers ought to repackage the whole deal into a battlefield preservation project, which would also have potential for economic development, but without the cringe-inducing factor of frozen corpses and such.
Yves Jégo should look at how the U.S. government promotes heritage tourism as an example of how he could combine economic development with French history.
Thursday, January 19, 2012
Here's a tip - avoid calling it "Visa Express" this time.
Visa Pilot Program:
Today the President announced that the Departments of State and Homeland Security are working together to improve and speed up the visa process for certain categories of travelers.
Since 9/11, the United States has developed an intensive, multi-layered visa screening process, including multiple biographic and biometric checks, all supported by a sophisticated global information technology network. We perform these checks on every visa applicant, without exception.
Under a new initiative, in select circumstances, qualified foreign visitors who were interviewed and thoroughly screened in conjunction with a prior visa application may be able to renew their visas without undergoing another interview. Eliminating interviews for these applicants will save them time and money and encourage them to choose the United States again as their tourism destination. It will also free our resources to interview more first-time applicants.
The pilot program will streamline visa processing for certain low-risk applicants, such as individuals renewing expired visas, or some categories of younger or older first-time applicants. We expect that this will benefit tens of thousands of applicants in Brazil and China; saving them time and money, and encouraging them to choose to visit the United States again. However, given that national security remains this Administration’s highest priority, individuals identified as higher-risk will remain subject to interviews – in addition to the full screening and review all visa applicants receive.
For example, this will make it much easier for many Chinese tourists to renew their visas – a group that spends more than $6,000 per person, per trip, according to the Department of Commerce. Over the course of the year, this policy could open as many as 100,000 interview appointments for Chinese travelers applying for visas for the first time. That increase in tourism could support as many as 1,500 travel and tourism-related jobs.
Consular officers will continue to use their authority to interview any visa applicant as required for national security.
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
To the moon, that is, where unregulated commercial activity might eradicate the remains of our first lunar landings.
[F]or archaeologists and historians worried that the next generation of people visiting the moon might carelessly obliterate the site of one of humanity’s greatest accomplishments, [the designations by New Mexico and California of historic artifacts left behind on the moon by the Apollo program] were important first steps toward raising awareness of the need to protect off-world artifacts.
“I think it’s humanity’s heritage,” said Beth L. O’Leary, a professor of anthropology at New Mexico State University. “It’s just an incredible realm that archaeologists haven’t begun to look at until now.”
-- snip --
NASA held a workshop a year ago about the preservation issue. Then [Robert Kelso, manager of lunar commercial services at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston] led a team that cataloged what was left on the moon after the six Apollo landings, and it recommended how to balance historic preservation with the likely desire in the future to investigate how well the materials have lasted.
The recommendations, issued in the fall, place greater protections on items from the first moon mission, Apollo 11, and the last one, Apollo 17. For Apollo 11, the recommendations ask that any visitor, robotic or human, stay at least 75 meters from the lander.
“In that case, it would protect every footprint from Neil and Buzz and all the flight hardware,” Mr. Kelso said.
I'd never thought about lunar preservation before, but it makes sense. We already have 936 World Heritage Sites here on Earth, and I would rank the Apollo 11 landing site in the Sea of Tranquility a good deal higher in heritage value than many of those.
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
Hillary is the one on the left. On the right is US Ambassador to Liberia Linda Thomas-Greenfield.
United States Dedicates New Embassy Compound in Monrovia, Liberia:
In an important symbol of America’s commitment to an enduring friendship with the people of Liberia, as well as the importance of our bilateral relationship with the Liberian Government, the United States dedicated its new embassy in Monrovia today. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, in connection with her visit to attend the inauguration of Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, presided at an in-house dedication ceremony yesterday [see her remarks here]. U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of Liberia, Linda Thomas-Greenfield attended the public ceremony today, joined by President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf; Minister of Foreign Affairs, Toga Gayewea McIntosh; Pro Tempore of the Liberian Senate, Senator Gbezongar Milton Findley; and Managing Director for the Bureau of Overseas Buildings Operations’ (OBO) Office of Construction, Facility, and Security Management, Rodney Evans.
Occupying a 12-acre site in Mamba Point, the multi-building complex creates a secure, sustainable, and pleasant workplace for approximately 400 employees. The Embassy’s permanent art collection features artworks by 51 celebrated American and Monrovian artists, curated by OBO’s Office of Art in Embassies. These artworks focus around the themes of tradition and renewal through lively images of agriculture, education, music, African American history and culture, and a love of homeland.
The new embassy incorporates numerous sustainable features, most notably, a rainwater collection system with a 264,000 gallon tank to handle the majority of potable and irrigation water needs, a photovoltaic system located on the parking canopy structure, high-efficiency mechanical chillers, and a building automation system. The facility is registered with the Green Building Certification Institute and is entering the formal review process with enough credits to earn a LEED Gold rating. B.L. Harbert International of Birmingham, Alabama constructed the project, which was designed by Page Southerland Page of Arlington, Virginia. The $164 million project generated jobs in both the United States and the Republic of Liberia.
Since the 1999 enactment of the Secure Embassy Construction and Counterterrorism Act, the Department has moved more than 26,000 people into safer facilities. OBO has completed 88 diplomatic facilities and has an additional 41 projects in design or construction.
Sunday, January 15, 2012
The Mercedes-Benz unit of Daimler AG rolled out a new advertising campaign with a revolution theme this week at the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. One of the cutesy advertising gimmicks was to use the image of Che Guevara - see the Mercedes emblem on Che's beret? - to appeal to Mercedes' customer base.
Why would they do that? Because, as everyone knows, upscale geezers love vicarious association with Latin American communists.
The ad was yanked after predictable complaints from Cuban-Americans, including U.S. Sen. Robert Melendez (D-N.J.) and Florida State Sen. Mario Diaz-Balart.
But I am left wondering, what did Guevara drive during his post-revo years in Havana? Surely not a Mercedes (way too bourgeois). Did he stick with his political convictions and drive a Russian ZiL limo, as would befit a commie bureaucrat? Or maybe he went proletarian, and dug out that old Norton motorcycle from his 1952 road trip.
After some Googling, I found out that Che was a Chevy man. Specifically, a mint green 1959 Chevy Bel Air, a swooping road monster with tail fins that looked like it was about two models years ahead of the original Batmobile. [NOTE: I stand corrected on the brand of Che's car. According to a commenter who has actually seen it, Che drove an Oldsmobile. I should have realized that myself since, now that I blow up the photo of the car, I can see the Oldsmobile name in the grille. Back in the day, an Olds was a classier and more bourgeois ride than a Chevy.]
This is it, currently on display at Havana's Depósito del Automóvil:
See a slideshow of the Depósito's exhibits here. If I ever get a TDY to Havana, I'm going to check that place out.
Saturday, January 14, 2012
It's been two years since the devastating earthquake in Haiti. At least one quarter million people were killed outright, another million were made homeless, and one of the largest humanitarian crises in modern history ensued.
After two years of massive relief efforts on the part of the U.S., the UN, and others, reconstruction is moving at a snail's pace. Only half of the earthquake rubble has been removed, half a million people are still living under tarps and tents, and less than half of the promised relief funds have actually been disbursed (which probably says something about
The cherry on top of this towering heap of tragedy is that thousands of Haitians have died of a cholera outbreak. Incredible as it may seem, especially if you are familiar with Haiti, cholera is A BRAND NEW DISEASE there. It was perhaps the only form of misery that Haitians had not already experienced. And it appears that the disease was inadvertently brought to the Island of Hispaneola by the UN itself.
ABC News: UN Soliders Brought Deadly Superbug to Americas:
Compelling new scientific evidence suggests United Nations peacekeepers have carried a virulent strain of cholera -- a super bug -- into the Western Hemisphere for the first time.
The vicious form of cholera has already killed 7,000 people in Haiti, where it surfaced in a remote village in October 2010. Leading researchers from Harvard Medical School and elsewhere told ABC News that, despite UN denials, there is now a mountain of evidence suggesting the strain originated in Nepal, and was carried to Haiti by Nepalese soldiers who came to Haiti to serve as UN peacekeepers after the earthquake that ravaged the country on Jan. 12, 2010 -- two years ago today. Haiti had never seen a case of cholera until the arrival of the peacekeepers, who allegedly failed to maintain sanitary conditions at their base.
"What scares me is that the strain from South Asia has been recognized as more virulent, more capable of causing severe disease, and more transmissible," said John Mekalanos, who chairs the Department of Microbiology and Immunobiology at Harvard Medical School. "These strains are nasty. So far there has been no secondary outbreak. But Haiti now represents a foothold for a particularly dangerous variety of this deadly disease."
More than 500,000 Haitians have been infected, and Mekalanos said a handful of victims who contracted cholera in Haiti have now turned up in Venezuela, the Dominican Republic, and in Boston, Miami and New York, but only in isolated cases.
How cholera landed in Haiti has been a politically charged topic for more than a year now, with the United Nations repeatedly refusing to acknowledge any role in the outbreak despite mounting evidence that international peacekeepers were the most likely culprits. The UN has already faced hostility from Haitians who believe peacekeeping troops have abused local residents without consequence. They now face legal action from relatives of victims who have petitioned the UN for restitution. And the cholera charge could further hamper the UN's ability to work effectively there, two years after the country was hobbled by the earthquake.
-- snip --
"The scientific debate on the origin of cholera in Haiti existed, but it has been resolved by the accumulation of evidence that unfortunately leave no doubt about the implication of the Nepalese contingent of the UN peacekeeping mission in Haiti," said French epidemiologist Renaud Piarroux, whose research on the outbreak was published by a U.S. Centers for Disease Control journal.
-- snip --
Louise C. Ivers, an infectious disease specialist and professor of global health and social medicine at Harvard Medical School ... witnessed firsthand the destruction it caused as hundreds of villagers started dying from an unfamiliar malady.
"It was overwhelming," she said. "There were no reported cases in Haiti before 2010, ever. Really people had no idea what was happening. To hear the fear and the suspicions and the lack of understanding about how this was happening is very, very sad. The outbreak put a huge stress on what was already a very fragile health system. I'm afraid it will be a problem for the foreseeable future."
She said what has made Haiti so vulnerable was a lack of latrines and clean potable water. She said there have been small outbreaks in the Dominican Republic, but nothing on the scale of what hit Haiti because conditions are more modern and sanitary.
-- snip --
Mekalanos said ... "Cholera is a disease of the impoverished ... When the standards of living are already at the lowest levels, cholera is a killer of historic proportions. If it spreads to other parts of the world, in those kinds of settings, I fear there will be a very high rate of death."
Relief and development organizations ought to take something like a Hippocratic Oath to do no harm.
Friday, January 13, 2012
U.S. Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska believes that the Iraqi government, and not the U.S. taxpayer, should pay the cost for securing our diplomatic mission in Iraq. And he thinks he knows of a legal loophole that makes the Iraqi government responsible for that cost.
He wrote a letter to the Secretaries of State and Defense today urging them to look into that angle:
Dear Mr. Secretary and Madam Secretary:
As you know, the United States concluded its military mission in Iraq in 2011. With that end, the U.S. Department of State now assumes responsibility for the civilian mission, which I understand will be heavily reliant on private contractors for security. I support ensuring the success of our efforts in Iraq, but am concerned about continuing to provide assistance to Iraq’s government, with the total cost being borne by the United States.
As a nation, our government continues to look for ways to reduce spending and find efficiencies within the U.S. Department of Defense. Therefore, I believe it is completely reasonable and in line with our agreements with other nations for the Government of Iraq to pay for the security of our remaining State Department personnel. During a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing in November 2011, General Martin E. Dempsey, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, spoke about the costs of retaining an American presence in Iraq. He noted that “in any nation in which [the United States is] present diplomatically, the first responsibility for security is the host nation.” Thus, if Iraq is unable to provide security for U.S. personnel, then the Iraqi government should pay for the cost of doing so – rather than our nation’s taxpayers. Therefore, I encourage your departments to enter into an agreement with the Iraqi government to underwrite the costs associated with our continued diplomatic presence there.
-- snip --
While I understand there are many challenges facing the Government of Iraq, it is important for the United States to make it clear that we expect the new government to be responsible for shouldering the cost of security in their nation. I would, therefore, greatly appreciate learning from the Administration what agreements are being made with the Government of Iraq for further missions and how the cost of those missions will be covered. Thank you both for your consideration in this matter. I look forward to your response.
Sincerely, E. Benjamin Nelson, United States Senator
The Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations doesn't say anything about the obligation of a host government to hire guards and protection contractors for diplomatic missions, does it?
Yeah, I didn't think so.
The website whitehousedosssier ("dedicated to preserving freedom by holding the White House to account") has a nice feature where you can check Obama's daily schedule. This week was a busy one for fundraisers; Obama did two on Monday, three on Wednesday, and one more today.
Those bucks add up. The WaPo reported yesterday that Obama raised $42 million for his re-election campaign and another $24 million for the Democratic National Committee over the final three months of 2011.
Wednesday, January 11, 2012
As the security situation in Syria worsens, the State Department today issued a new travel warning:
This Travel Warning replaces the Travel Warning dated December 21, 2011, and is being updated to reflect that on January 11, 2012, the Department of State has ordered a further reduction in staffing of the U.S. Embassy in Syria. Due to security concerns in Syria, in October 2011, the embassy was designated an unaccompanied post with restricted staffing. The Department has decided to further reduce the number of employees present in Damascus, and has ordered a number of employees to depart Syria as soon as possible. U.S. citizens should avoid all travel to Syria. The U.S. Department of State urges U.S. citizens currently in Syria to depart immediately while commercial transportation is available. The number of airlines serving Syria has decreased significantly since the summer months, and many of the remaining airlines have reduced their number of flights. U.S. citizens who must remain in Syria should limit nonessential travel within the country. Due to further reductions in U.S. Embassy staff and as a result of the deteriorating security situation, the Consular Section will no longer have hours during which it is open to the public. Effective immediately, all consular services are by prearranged appointment only. Our ability to assist U.S. citizens in an emergency is extremely limited and may be further constrained by the fluid security situation.Read the whole thing here.
Monday, January 2, 2012
The WaPo has one of those end-of-the-year-wrap-up stories today about the drug wars raging in that nation to our south, the one with which we share a 1,951 mile-long border - in Mexico, 12,000 killed in drug violence:
The daily newspaper Reforma, one of the most respected independent outlets, reported 12,359 drug-related killings in 2011, which it said was a 6.3 percent increase over the previous year. As a comparison, there were 2,275 drug murders in 2007.
-- snip --
Other media reported similar numbers. Daily Milenio recorded 12,284 drug-related deaths in 2011. The La Jornada newspaper counted 11,890 deaths in 2011, which it said was an 11 percent decrease from the previous year.
The Mexican government has not reported the official figures yet (they say they will next month), which might be a clue that the figures are too embarrassing for them to report in a national election year.
But the figures are out there, all the same. The Justice in Mexico Project, sponsored by the Trans-Border Institute of the University of San Diego, has tons of excellent data sets and analysis of the drug wars here.
The bottom line is the situation got just a little bit worse last year. About six percent more people were killed than in 2010, with a slightly higher incidence of women and innocent victims. Beheading became a little more popular as a signature method of execution. The weapons and tactics got somewhat more military - is that an AT4 anti-tank rocket next to the hand grenades in the photo above?
The geographic distribution of violence within Mexico changed a bit, probably reflecting a trend toward more cartel-on-cartel battling. The result was that some parts of the borderlands got calmer while previously quiet interior places such as Veracruz and Guadalajara got much more dangerous. The WaPo put a positive spin on that change:
One of the few bright spots is that the murder rate appears to be down in border manufacturing hub of Ciudad Juarez, dubbed Murder City, by about a third. Baja California and Tijuana also saw decreases in homicides.
The murder rate is down by a third in Juarez? Sounds good, but that might be because more Mexicans are fleeing the violence. The University of Texas El Paso's student reporting project on the Mexodus indicates that over a quarter million people have either been internally displaced to safer regions in Mexico or have crossed the border. Anyone in Juarez with two pesos to rub together has most likely sought a safe haven elsewhere.
What's the right word for a tragedy that got just a little more tragic? | {
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LONDON (RNS) Malala Yousufzai, the schoolgirl and women’s rights activist from Pakistan who was shot in the head by the Taliban and subsequently flown to the United Kingdom for treatment, has been discharged from Birmingham’s Queen Elizabeth Hospital, the hospital said Friday (Jan. 4).
Yousufzai was discharged on Thursday, but will be re-admitted in late January or early February for reconstructive surgery to her skull, the hospital said.
“Malala is a strong young woman and has worked hard with the people caring for her to make excellent progress in her recovery,” said Dave Rosser, medical director of the Queen Elizabeth Hospital. “Following discussions with Malala and her medical team, we decided that she would benefit from being at home with her parents and two brothers.”
Yousufzai, now 15, was shot and wounded on her way home from school last October. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the shooting, saying she was promoting “Western thinking.”
Earlier this week, Yousufzai’s father was given a diplomatic post in the U.K.; Ziauddin Yousufzai has been appointed Pakistan’s education attache in Birmingham, the Associated Press reported.
Malala Yousufzai was shortlisted for Time magazine’s “Person of the Year” in 2012.
(Kim Hjelmgaard writes for USA Today.) | {
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Secrets in the Walls
Channel 5, 20 January 2012, 15:15
A complainant alerted Ofcom to the pre-watershed broadcast of the film The Secrets in the Walls because of concerns that it contained supernatural and horror themes and images unsuitable for a child audience.
Ofcom noted that this was a made-for-television film about a mother who moves into a new home with her two daughters where, it is later revealed, a young teenage bride had been murdered. Her malevolent spirit now seeks to free itself by possessing the older daughter. The film featured the following scenes:
- the unexpected appearance of the spirit in front of the daughters and at the window of the house, and their reactions of fear and distress;
- supernatural activities such as unexplained music from a jewellery box, slamming doors and flickering lights;
- the older daughter was trapped in the wardrobe screaming and scratching as the light in the wardrobe flickered on and off (it was later revealed that she lost two fingernails from her frantic scratching to get out);
- an attempted exorcism to banish the spirit from the house; and
- the possession of the older daughter by the spirit.
Ofcom considered Rule 1.3 of the Code:
- Children must … be protected by appropriate scheduling from material that is unsuitable for them.
Channel 5 said that in total 18 edits were made to the film with the aim of reducing the overall horror/thriller tone of the film and this was the version that was broadcast. However, having reviewed this broadcast version, Channel 5 stated:
we are of the view that further significant edits would have been required to make the programme suitable for a 3.15pm timeslot, or, the programme should have been scheduled at a time when children were not likely to be watching. Re-scheduling this version of the programme would have been the preferable solution as further edits…seem likely to compromise the editorial narrative of the programme, distort its meaning and/or confuse viewers.
Ofcom Decision: Breach of Rule 1.3
This film contained themes, sequences and images of menace, threat and suspense as well as specific examples of supernatural activity, exorcism and possession which are typically found in horror films aimed at adult viewers. In one particular example, the mother was asleep in darkness when a shrill scream came from her older daughter’s bedroom, piercing the silence. The mother and younger daughter ran to the bedroom and loud scratching and screams for help and I can’t breathe could be heard. The light in the cupboard flickered on and off as the mother pulled open the doors to release her daughter, whose hands were injured from scratching at the closed doors to escape. These scenes were accompanied throughout by menacing sound effects and music. Further scenes featured the spirit appearing to the daughters unexpectedly in the mirror and at windows; and an attempt to exorcise the spirit that resulted in the woman conducting the exorcism being knocked down violently.
In Ofcom’s view these themes, sequences and images were unsuitable for child viewers and hence in breach of Rule 1.3 | {
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bad tattoos to get on your butt
Instead of telling our young people to plan ahead, we should tell them to plan...– Dan in Real Life (via katieedgar)
between friends: between BEST friends: i laughed out loud at the second gif lmao
Reblog if you purposely try to embarrass your...
Walking like this : Dancing like this: Laughing like this: Being creepy like this: When we’re in class and they’re doing a presentation, I’m in the front like, Making sexy faces like,
The Best of Hipster Edits
i love these XD aii-luv: gabrielesque: xxkenziex: butterflyflutters: milkcrumbs: DYING. OMG LOLOLOLOLOLOL REBLOG BAHARHAHAHAHASDJAEJSAJDJSALKKJSDALSAD
That awkward moment when a boy comes visiting your...
milk<3 thedailywhat: Anthropomorphized Milk Containers of the Day: Friends of the Earth commissioned Catsnake to create a short video promoting the environmental organization network’s anti-rubbish stance. The London-based film production company came back with a love story. [feingut.]
When I was born, I was given the choice: a big...
scratchme: pagsikap: fuck-yeah-tumblrs-best-posts: Submitted by theugliestdumpling: I don’t remember what I chose. AHAHAHAHAHAHA =))
Pokemon Tower Defense
thejefftrent: I am also looking forward to this game! Their blog! [The Flash object might not load, play it off their site here!]
Stalker stop stalking.
Cheat like a total boss. | {
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|24 Jul 2008 To respond to this email CLICK HERE|
Editorial: German Sailors - A Month as Hostages
The German sailors kidnapped a month ago and held for ransom in the mountains of Somalia have been contacted by a German magazine through an unusual intermediary, and our lead news item this week is a round-up of the conflicting reports from all sources on the political intrigue that surrounds the case. It's a horrifying and heartbreaking account, and the stuff of nightmares for all long range cruisers. Sail-World will keep fires burning on the story in the hope that these cruising sailors will not be forgotten.
In lighter news, Sail-World writer Lisa Mylchreest had a flight of fancy when reading a press release about the English coastguard saving a French yacht. The result, particularly the response from the real-life Coastguard after the Chief Officer read the story, is hilarious. Vive les English – they always have had a fine sense of comedy, and are very good at laughing at themselves.
Good news from the fishing industry, which is moving towards using sails to keep their fuel costs down, and Russ George, President of Planktos Science has some bad news about our oceans, but some good news about possible solutions.
Lovely tales from Australians Ley and Neil Langford on Crystal Blues, cruising in Borneo; and a real lesson in 'How to Sail your Dream but Keep your Career' from an accountant in the UK.
On a practical note, if you have kids who spend time on your boat, consider a 'Nettlenet' which, apart from keeping away the things that go 'sting' in the water, may be a good way to keep the kids in check while swimming.
Then there's the online tutorial for DSC VHF radios – do you know someone who needs it?
...and so many more sailing stories, from the bizarre to the useful to the intriguing.
Read on, enjoy, and...
Nancy Knudsen, Cruising Editor
|Somali Soldiers Search for Kidnapped Sailors |
Sail-World Cruising News Roundup,
Conflicting reports are still coming in about the fate of the German sailing family who have now been in the hands of Somali pirates for a month. Here is a round-up of the latest news: Der Spiegel magazine has been in touch by mobile telephone with the two German cruising sailors who were kidnapped on 23rd June from their yacht when they were trying to reach Thailand from the Red Sea.... [more]
|Oceans Death? Answer Should be Blowing in the Wind |
Russ George is the founder and current President of Planktos Science, a privately held San Francisco-based eco-restoration and ocean eco-technology company, whose mission is the restoration of damaged habitats. Here he offers a lucid and alarming account of the real problem for the survival of the world's oceans as we know them, and, literally blowing in the wind, an approach to a solution:... [more]
|UK Coastguard Intercepts French Radio Broadcast |
A quiet moment in the Solent Coastguard radio room. 'Hey quick listen to this!' 'What? What? I'm drinking my tea - I'm on a break!' 'It's on the emergency channel, but they are speaking French!' 'French? In British waters?'... [more]
|Caribbean and Cocaine - Inseparable Twins |
Daily Herald/Sail-World Cruising,
Some are disovered because of their ineptness, some because of the superiority of the Drug Squads. Over the last few weeks, the US Coast Guard has netted over $200M worth of cocaine from three separate boardings of vessels in the Caribbean. However, it's the drug traffickers who can't navigate their way, coming to grief on reefs when the weather is clear and calm, that make the craziest stories.... [more]
|Rewriting History: The Phoenician Expedition |
In H.G. Wells' The Time Machine, history is altered by a scientist who seeks his own epic adventure, traveling through time. Similarly, a group of present-day adventurers are seeking to rewrite history through their own amazing journey. The Phoenicia Expedition will circumnavigate Africa in an attempt to prove that the Phoenicians were the first people to conquer such a feat.... [more]
|Crystal Blues - Tales from Borneo |
Neil and Ley,
Crystal Blues is anchored on the Tulai River, near Bintangor in Sarawak, and onboard cruising couple Ley and Neil tell stories of their life with the local people. Seven weeks have passed since our arrival on the Tulai River. The first few weeks were frantic, including a wedding here at longhouse Rumah Lidam plus the Gawai Dayak celebrations.... [more]
|Radio Techniques - Free Online Tutorial |
How are your radio techniques? Are you sure that you are handling your VHF radio like a professional? How long ago did you do your radio course, and have the procedures changed?... [more]
|Rainwater Runoff Okay after Boater Lobby |
At last it's official. Recreational boats in the USA are permitted to allow rainwater to run off their boats into the sea, thanks to much seaweed-root support from leisure sailors. This and several other amazingly generous concessions are obliquely described and celebrated in the press statement:... [more]
|Advance to the Past: Fishermen Start to use Sails |
Jaspar Copping, Telegraph/Sail-World,
Commercial fishermen in the UK are reverting to wind power in response to soaring fuel prices, as skippers rig their boats with auxiliary sails to cut the amount of diesel they use. The move comes as a new generation of vessels is being developed that will rely almost exclusively on sails.... [more]
|How to Sail your Dream but Keep Your Career |
Southern Daily Echo/Sail-World Cruising,
Almost every day there's another cruising yacht setting off for the sail of a lifetime - some cruisers, mostly couples, just stay in their own ocean, some circumnavigate their own country, and a few circle the world. Many give up promising careers or save for years for the 'big one'. However, not all cruising yachties have had to give up their careers, as this story demonstrates:... [more]
|Dinghy Man from Unmanned Yacht rescued |
Shirlaw News/Sail-World Cruising,
Just a few days ago, Sail-World Cruising published a story about two sailors who left their boat on autopilot at the mouth of the Lymington River in the UK, remained below and didn't answer their VHF radio, causing an expensive rescue alert. Today's story demonstrates why Rescue Authorities cannot take the chance when it comes to yachts that appear to be unmanned.... [more]
|Brest 2008 - a melting pot of maritime heritage |
Kate Jennings – Expression,
The departure of boats is always laced with nostalgia but when it consists of nearly 2,000 craft, each with their own maritime heritage, culture and tradition, amidst an atmosphere resounding with sirens and horns in thanks to the whole of Brest for its warm welcome, the emotion as they cast off for new horizons is tangible.... [more]
|Cabinet defers implementation of BVI harbor fees |
Nancy Birnbaum -Cruising Compass,
BREAKING NEWS: Cabinet indefinitely defers implementation of British Virgin Island (BVI) harbor fees In a letter this week to the Cruising Compass and BWS Magazine, Steve Black, Director of the Caribbean 1500 Rally stated that Cabinet has decided to indefinitely defer the implementations of harbor fees for vessels entering or remaining in Territorial waters or those using a BVI Ports Authority fa... [more]
|A Nettlenet Pool- also Keep the Kids Corralled? |
Could this be useful for you? While it won't keep away sharks, these easy to use boat pools can be used to keep away stinging sea nettles or jellyfish, and also keep your young swimmers corralled, so they can't float away from the boat.... [more]
|Is is a Sub?Is is a Warship?No,it's 'A' Superyacht |
Some lucky spectators in the German city of Kiel on the Baltic Sea have seen rather strange vessel cutting waves in the harbour. You'd be forgiven for thinking it was a freshly launched destroyer painted white just to intensify its stealth qualities, or a type of submarine. But the ship is, in fact, a new toy of reclusive Russian billionaire, 36-year-old Andrey Melnichenko, simply known as “A”.... [more]
|Finding a Cure for the 'Coral Crisis' |
ARC Centre of Excellence Coral Reef Studies,
The management of Australia's Great Barrier Reef Marine Park has been hailed as a groundbreaking international model for better managing the oceans, in a leading United States scientific publication... [more]
|Marine Electronics Singapore sales-service centre |
Oceantalk, a leading Asia Pacific marine electronics distributor has opened a one stop marine electronics sales and service center in Singapore. Conveniently located in Sim Lim Square on Rochor Canal Road in central Singapore the new centre not only has full servicing capability but also a wide range of stock and brands.... [more]
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Customised news feeds
Marine Industry companies, Clubs and Associations have asked can they received their own customised version of our Sail-World news feed. The answer is yes, customised in content, news category, for example dinghies, small keelboats or just monohull racing, or Region of the world and appearance.
CLICK HEREto view examples and get free news tickers for your site
Change the frequency of newsletters, from once a week to a monthly newsletter. Change from html (graphics & pictures) newsletters to text only newsletter, (best for slow connections, mobile phones and PDA's etc. Change from Sail-World Australia Newsletters to Sail-World Cruisng Newsletters etc. | {
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Walk into a bike shop today, and it's easy to get lost in the choices.
There are road bikes and hybrid bikes, mountain bikes and comfort bikes. Beach cruisers and commuting bikes. "City path" bikes and touring bikes. Even the most basic bike, the standard beach cruiser, may be operating under a new alias: a lifestyle bike.
Confused? No wonder.
Bike-shop owners face this problem regularly. People wander in and don't have a clue what type of bike to buy. The answer depends on what kind of biking you want to do--long-distance rides, trail riding, road riding--or just spins around the neighborhood.
"I get asked about bikes all the time," says George Cheney, president of the Florida Freewheelers, Florida's oldest cycling club. "My advice is borrow a bike and see what you think. Or ask a lot of questions. But don't go out and buy a real expensive bike until you know that you enjoy the sport and know what you want to do. Don't go out and buy a $5,000 bike. You can have an awfully good time on a $500 bike."
The first steps inside a bike shop can be intimidating, especially for the derailleur-challenged. But the bike industry, which once catered strictly to Lance Armstrong wannabes and the mountain-bike crowd, is today aiming at people who want to love bicycling as they did as children.
So don't be surprised to walk into a nearby bike shop and see, in addition to the rows of black-and-red road bikes, an array of one-speed bikes in mint or yellow or baby blue with swooping handlebars and even tassels that hang from the hand-grips.
"Riding this type of bike is like riding in a '67 Chevy convertible," says Deena Breed, co-owner of Orange Cycle in Orlando. "You just look cool...It's an image, but it puts a smile on your face. It makes you feel good."
Finding the Bike for You
Not sure what type of bike fits you best? First, visit a bike shop and talk to the employees. Then, don't be afraid to take a test ride around the block.
Not interested in spending $400 on a bike? You can scope the classifieds for a used bike or head to a discount store such as Target or Wal-Mart. But biking experts warn that you get what you pay for: A cheaper bike will have cheaper components that could break down after a couple of years of use. And the bikes are often heavier, which might not matter if you're going for a spin around the block, but may be a big deal if you're trying to ride 10 miles or more at a clip.
Road bike: If you've been taking spinning classes at your local gym, but now want to hit the road, many bike shops will suggest a road bike. Likewise, people who have been runners, but are switching to cycling because of bad knees, would be good candidates for a road bike.
"They're athletic, they're already in shape, so we know they're going to go gung-ho," says Breed. And if you don't like the drop-handlebars on a road bike, Breed says, consider a new style: the upright road bike.
Price range: $700 to $10,000
Mountain bikes: There are no mountains in Florida, but that hasn't stopped the mountain bike from becoming a hot seller. The reason? In the 1990s, it became the bike of choice for people who wanted a bike that was more durable than a road bike and could handle riding on different types of surfaces, including sand and dirt paths and brick streets.
If you're looking for the basics, remember this: Mountain bikes (also known as all-terrain bikes) aren't for riding fast, they're for riding furious--meaning that you can jump curbs or go off-road or bounce around on them, and they'll hold up well. But you'll be left in the dust by your friends riding road bikes if you're out on a 20-mile trip.
Price range: $200 to $3,000
Hybrid bike: In recent years, the debate among occasional riders has been whether to buy a comfort bike or a hybrid bike. Both bike styles allow riders to sit up straight, rather than leaning forward, road-bike style. But hybrids have been more popular than comfort bikes, says David Sanborn, owner of David's World Cycle.
The reason? While comfort bikes have a wide tire and a smaller wheel, hybrids have a skinnier tire (like a road bike) and a bigger wheel, so the bike will go faster without as much effort. "Hybrids are lighter than comfort bikes, and everybody likes to go a little farther a little faster," says Sanborn.
Price range: $300 to $2,000
Lifestyle bike: The newest family in the bicycle kingdom is the lifestyle category of bikes. Lifestyle bikes encompass several different types of bikes, but they all share one thing: attitude.
The old beach cruiser, for instance, has gone retro, with bright colors and swooping handlebars. "These are bikes for a certain lifestyle," says Sanborn. "It's an image. It's for rolling over to the Starbucks and getting a coffee."
Also included in the lifestyle category are comfort bikes, which have as many as 21 gears but come equipped with a wide seat and a wide tire like that found on a mountain bike.
Some high-end lifestyle bikes are also sporting a new feature: a three-speed gearing system that shifts automatically. Also in the technology department, one American bike company, Electra, has developed bikes with "flat-footed technology" that allows riders to put their feet flat on the ground at a stoplight -- without getting off the seat.
"This is great for people who've had knee operations," says Breed. "At intersections they don't want to stand up on their tiptoes. They want their feet securely on the ground."
Yet it's the splashy colors and the comfortable, squishy ride that are drawing customers. "We have young kids that come in and want to look crazy on these wild-colored bikes, and then we have people who are grandparents who come in, and they want that bike because it's like the one they had when they were kids," says Sanborn.
Price range: $199 to $700 | {
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|Scientific Name:||Spermophilus undulatus|
|Species Authority:||(Pallas, 1778)|
Arctomys altaicus Eversmann, 1841
Citellus eversmanni (Brandt, 1841)
Citellus eversmanni Obolensky, 1927 subspecies transbaikalicus
|Red List Category & Criteria:||Least Concern ver 3.1|
|Assessor/s:||Shar, S. & Lkhagvasuren, D.|
|Reviewer/s:||Amori, G. (Small Nonvolant Mammal Red List Authority) & Tsytsulina, K. (Global Mammal Assessment Team)|
This species has a large population size and a wide distribution. No decline in population size has been detected, and there are no known widespread major threats.
|Range Description:||Distributed in mountain forest-steppes and steppes from Southern Siberia and Altai (Russia) to Manchuria. Two isolated population in north, in Yakutia (S. u. jacuensis) and east of the range, between Amur and Burei Rivers in Russia and N Heilongjiang in China (S. u. menzbieri). In China distributed in Altai and Sayan mountains; Xinjiang, Altai mountains; Xinjiang, Tian Shan mountains. In Mongolia found in Mongol Altai, Hangai, Hövsgöl and Hentii mountain ranges, as far south as Aj Bogd Massif in Trans Altai Govi Desert. Recently recorded in the northern portions of Ikh Nartiin Chuluu Nature Reserve in Eastern Govi.|
Native:China (Heilongjiang, Xinjiang); Kazakhstan; Mongolia; Russian Federation
|Range Map:||Click here to open the map viewer and explore range.|
It is common and sometimes abundant species. Population size very much differs depending on the habitat. For example, in Transbaikalia in steppe river valleys population density is up to 250 burrows per ha (Badmaev, 1996). In Tuva it is about 100 burrows per ha (Ol'kova, 1962). In other habitats density is much lower, in wormwood and cereal steppe it is about 5 animals per ha, and in subalpine zone it is 1-2 animals per ha (Shilova and Savinetskaya, Biodiversity Conservation Centre web-site
|Habitat and Ecology:||Inhabits semi-desert and mountain steppe habitats along the edge of forests. In China found in thinly wooded savannas and grassy steppes bordering the Gobi desert. In addition to grasslands, they occupy bushy terrain among oaks and white or black beech groves, alpine meadows, and wet areas along river valleys. Lives in colonies with a labyrinth of burrows. Burrows are characteristically 8-13 cm in diameter and surrounded by a large mound of soil (up to 2 m in diameter and 40 cm high) Diurnally active; although most active at dawn and dusk. Diet consists of green vegetation and seeds, but also insects. Before hibernating makes a store of vegetation to utilize following arousal. Hibernates from October until late March/mid April. Reproduce once per year in spring; litters of 3-9 young are produced following a 30 day gestation. Start mating on second year.|
|Major Threat(s):||Hunting for international trade in skins once occurred at high levels, between 1958 and 1960 it was estimated that as many as 418,400-551,000 individuals were killed annually (Stubbe, 1965). This activity is now believed to have ceased and no other threats are known to be impacting upon this species at present.|
|Conservation Actions:||Occurs in some protected areas (approximately 11% of the species’ range in Mongolia).|
Badmaev B. B. 1996. Ecology of Long-Tailed Ground Squirrel Citellus (Spermophilus) undulatus Pall. 1778, in Western Transbaikalia. Moscow State University.
Ol'kova, N. V. 1962. Ecological features in long-tailed ground squirrel in connection to its epidemiological and economic value. Irkutsk.
Smith, A. and Xie, Y. 2008. The Mammals of China. Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey.
Stubbe, M. 1965. Jagd, Jagdgesetz und Wild in der Mongolischen Volksrepublik. Beiträge zur Jagd- und Wildforschung 4: 163-178.
Wilson, D. E. and Reeder, D. M. 1993. Mammal Species of the World. A Taxonomic and Geographic Reference. Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, DC, USA.
|Citation:||Shar, S. & Lkhagvasuren, D. 2008. Spermophilus undulatus. In: IUCN 2012. IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. Version 2012.2. <www.iucnredlist.org>. Downloaded on 19 May 2013.|
|Feedback:||If you see any errors or have any questions or suggestions on what is shown on this page, please fill in the feedback form so that we can correct or extend the information provided| | {
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Free Markets, Free People
Drudge sent out an alert highlighting this story buried deep in a NY Times piece about a “more sociable Obama”. It talks about the fund raising effort for the Obama campaign in this quarter:
Mr. Obama had planned a West Coast swing during the summer, campaign officials said, but it was scrapped because of the talks to raise the federal debt ceiling. Several other fund-raising trips were also canceled in the 60 days that the president was hunkered down in Washington.
That has left the campaign behind where it wanted to be in fund-raising. The campaign manager, Jim Messina, told Democratic Party officials recently that the campaign expected to raise $55 million in the third quarter, compared with $86 million in the previous quarter.
The excuse offered, of course, is that Obama was in DC doing his job and thus couldn’t be fund raising. But wasn’t his strength the last time the $5 and $10 dollar online effort? What’s up with that?
They were once among President Obama’s most loyal supporters and a potent symbol of his political brand: voters of moderate means who dug deep for the candidate and his message of hope and change, sending him $10 or $25 or $50 every few weeks or months.
But in recent months, the frustration and disillusionment that have dragged down Mr. Obama’s approval ratings have crept into the ranks of his vaunted small-donor army, underscoring the challenges he faces as he seeks to rekindle grass-roots enthusiasm for his re-election bid.
In interviews with dozens of low-dollar contributors in the past two weeks, some said they were unhappy with what they viewed as Mr. Obama’s overly conciliatory approach to Congressional Republicans. Others cited what they saw as a lack of passion in the president, or said the sour economy had drained both their enthusiasm and their pocketbooks.
For still others, high hopes that Mr. Obama would deliver a new kind of politics in his first term have been dashed by the emergence of something that, to them, more resembles politics as usual.
Don’t you just hate it when the little people look behind the curtain?
This helps explain the vitriol Obama has been dumping out on the campaign trail. He needs to get people motivated to send him their money, and if he can get the hating thing going – hate Republicans, hate the rich, hate EVERYONE – maybe they’ll part with some cash.
The old class warfare gambit. Wow … how original.
In recent weeks we’ve seen stories about how blacks were less enthusiastic about him, Hollywood was giving him the cold shoulder and his numbers across the board were in free fall. The drop in fundraising is the unsurprising “other shoe” in that sort of a scenario.
Today’s economic statistical releases:
ICSC Goldman reports retail sales slowed for the 2nd consecutive week, down 0.2% for the week, with the year-on-year rate down to 2.7%. Meanwhile, Redbook reports slightly below trend retail sales growth of 4.2%.
The S&P Case-Shiller Home Price Index held steady for the last week, with no change in prices from last month, on a seasonally-adjusted basis. Year-over-year, however, the price index is down -4.1%.
The State Street Investor Confidence Index, despite a rough couple of weeks, shows a boost in confidence to 89.9 from August’s revised 88.1.
The Richmond Fed Manufacturing Index shows the third consecutive drop to -6 from last month’s -10, as manufacturing in the Richmond Fed’s district continues to contract.
The Consumer Confidence Index rose to 45.4 from 44.5 last month. Despite this, consumers report deteriorating current conditions, which bodes ill for the September employment report. On the other hand, the 6-month outlook rose, while inflation expectations fell, bringing the overall index higher.
Information about Operation Fast and Furious – the US government run gun running operation that turned over thousands of weapons to Mexican drug cartels – is coming fast and furious now. The newest revelation:
Not only did U.S. officials approve, allow and assist in the sale of more than 2,000 guns to the Sinaloa cartel — the federal government used taxpayer money to buy semi-automatic weapons, sold them to criminals and then watched as the guns disappeared.
This disclosure, revealed in documents obtained by Fox News, could undermine the Department of Justice’s previous defense that Operation Fast and Furious was a "botched" operation where agents simply "lost track" of weapons as they were transferred from one illegal buyer to another. Instead, it heightens the culpability of the federal government as Mexico, according to sources, has opened two criminal investigations into the operation that flooded their country with illegal weapons.
Yes, it’s not just about allowing drug cartel members to buy guns from US dealers and move them into Mexico, apparently the ATF also bought guns and resold them to the drug cartels with the same result. Or said another way, they used your money to actively participate in this bone-headed plan and sure enough, got the expected results. But then they lost track of the weapons – on purpose.
Apparently there was a little office politics involved in the stupidity:
In June 2010, however, the ATF dramatically upped the ante, making the U.S. government the actual "seller" of guns.
According to documents obtained by Fox News, Agent John Dodson was ordered to buy six semi-automatic Draco pistols — two of those were purchased at the Lone Wolf gun store in Peoria, Ariz. An unusual sale, Dodson was sent to the store with a letter of approval from David Voth, an ATF group supervisor.
Dodson then sold the weapons to known illegal buyers, while fellow agents watched from their cars nearby.
This was not a "buy-bust" or a sting operation, where police sell to a buyer and then arrest them immediately afterward. In this case, agents were "ordered" to let the sale go through and follow the weapons to a stash house.
According to sources directly involved in the case, Dodson felt strongly that the weapons should not be abandoned and the stash house should remain under 24-hour surveillance. However, Voth disagreed and ordered the surveillance team to return to the office. Dodson refused, and for six days in the desert heat kept the house under watch, defying direct orders from Voth.
A week later, a second vehicle showed up to transfer the weapons. Dodson called for an interdiction team to move in, make the arrest and seize the weapons. Voth refused and the guns disappeared with no surveillance.
According to a story posted Sunday on a website dedicated to covering Fast and Furious, Voth gave Dodson the assignment to "dirty him up," since Dodson had become the most vocal critic of the operation.
"I think Dodson demanded the letter from Voth to cover both himself and the FFL (Federal Firearm Licensee). He didn’t want to be hung out to dry by Voth," a source told the website "Sipsey Street Irregulars."
Your government at work, carefully looking out for your best interests.
What would we do without the experts — teachers told to avoid white paper because it may cause racism
No, honestly. That’s according to a story in the UK’s Telegraph. Additionally, witches should be dressed in pink, fairies should be in darker pastels and when a teacher is asked their favorite color, they should answer “black” or “brown”.
All of this from experts who are “early years consultants”. The premise of course is changing all these colors changes the perception of everything among a bunch of kids who haven’t yet digested that the kid next to them is a different color:
Instead, teachers should censor the toy box and replace the pointy black hat with a pink one, while dressing fairies, generally resplendent in pale pastels, in darker shades.
Another staple of the classroom – white paper – has also been questioned by Anne O’Connor, an early years consultant who advises local authorities on equality and diversity.
Children should be provided with paper other than white to drawn on and paints and crayons should come in "the full range of flesh tones", reflecting the diversity of the human race, according to the former teacher.
Finally, staff should be prepared to be economical with the truth when asked by pupils what their favourite colour is and, in the interests of good race relations, answer "black" or "brown".
Yes friends, white paper is racist because it doesn’t reflect the diversity of color out there, or something.
And yes, witches, soften them up with pink pointy hats I guess. Otherwise you’re likely to get … witchism? Can’t wait to see if this takes hold by Halloween.
If not, I suppose I ought to lecture the parents about the fact that they’re engaged in turning their little witches into racists. Yeah, that’s the ticket.
Oh and before you start thinking “those stupid Brits”, pause and reflect:
The advice is based on an “anti-bias” approach to education which developed in the United States as part of multiculturalism.
It challenges prejudices such as racism, sexism and ageism through the whole curriculum and teaches children about tolerance and respect and to critically analyse what they are taught and think.
Right. And what they’re taught to think is things like affirmative action is the cat’s meow. I have to laugh when I see claims such as this – they’re not taught to “critically analyze” what they’re taught, they’re taught what to think and regurgitate on command. They’re propagandized and introduced to group think.
"This is an incredibly complex subject that can easily become simplified and inaccurately portrayed," she said.
"There is a tendency in education to say ‘here are normal people and here are different people and we have to be kind to those different people’, whether it’s race, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, age or faith.
"People who are feeling defensive can say ‘well there’s nothing wrong with white paper’, but in reality there could be if you don’t see yourself reflected in the things around you. “As an early years teacher, the minute you start thinking, ‘well actually, if I give everyone green paper, what happens’, you have a teaching potential.
“People might criticise this as political correctness gone mad. But it is because of political correctness we have moved on enormously. If you think that we now take it for granted that our buildings and public highways are adapted so people in wheelchairs and with pushchairs can move around. Years ago if you were in a wheelchair, then tough luck. We have completely moved and we wouldn’t have done that without the equality movement.”
Actually it isn’t an “incredibly complex subject, but “experts” don’t get paid consulting fees unless they at least try to make it one. And I at least appreciate the fact that it is acknowledged as political correctness.
Take a look at that load of pap above and then consider this:
Margaret Morrissey, a spokeswoman for the Parents Outloud campaigning group disagrees. She said: “I’m sure these early years experts know their field but they seem to be obsessed about colour and determined to make everyone else obsessed about it too.
“Not allowing toy witches to wear black seems to me nonsense and in the same vein as those people who have a problem with ‘Bar Bar Black Sheep’ or ‘The Three Little Pigs’.
Children just see a sheep in a field, whether it be black, grey, white or beige. I have worked with children for 41 years and I don’t believe I have ever met a two year old who was in any way racist or prejudice.”
However, recent research by Professor Lord Winston provides evidence that children as young as four can hold racist views. In an experiment carried out for the BBC’s Child of our Time series, children were presented with a series of images of faces of men, women, boys or girls. Only one of the faces in each sequence was white.
Children were asked to pick out the face of the person they wanted as their friend and the person they thought would be most likely to get in to trouble.
Almost all white children in the survey associated positive qualities exclusively with photographs of white children or adults. More than half of the black children made the same associations.
In contrast, people with darker faces were viewed as troublemakers.
Of course we have no idea of the experiences the children in question have had or what they’re home life teaches them. We just conclude that they associate dark with bad for no other reason than they’re inherently prejudiced. And apparently they assume they can change that by changing the color of their paper and claiming, whether true or not, that favorite colors are “black” and “brown”.
It is, again, the state via the school system, attempting to dictate a certain type of behavior or belief. This is the same sort of model that is used with the environment – where children are taught (or propagandized if you prefer) that much of what supports their standard of living is bad and harmful to the environment.
By the way, critical analysis requires what? That both sides of an argument be presented factually and objectively, right? Clearly in the case above and the environmental example (at least based on what I’ve seen), that’s not the case. And calling it that is simply the usual redefinition of a word or concept that is so prevalent (and insidious) these days .
So put up your white paper, you racists. Don’t you know that your insistence on using it is just racism? Readability – phaa. Your clients will welcome your new orange stationary, I promise. | {
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xxxbunker is the biggest porn tube on the web with the largest selection of free full length porn videos and new videos added daily. porn, xxx, pussy, sex and more! | {
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Rescue & The Romans
BBC DVD / 2|entertain
Arriving on the planet Dido in the late 25th Century, the time travellers come
upon a crashed spaceship from Earth. Its two occupants - a paralysed man named
Bennett and a young girl, Vicki - are living in fear of a creature called
Koquillion, a native whose people have apparently killed the other members of
the human expedition.
However, the Doctor quickly deduces that Koquillion is in fact Bennett in
disguise; it was he who killed the others in order to conceal an earlier murder
he had committed on the ship.
Commentary with actor William Russell, director Christopher Barry and designer
Mounting The Rescue - cast and crew look back on the making of the story. With
actors William Russell, Maureen O'Brien and Ray Barrett, director Christopher
Barry, designer Raymon Cusick and 1960's viewer Ian McLachlan.
Coming Soon Trailer
The four time travellers are enjoying a rare holiday, staying at a villa not far
from Rome in the year 64 AD. The Doctor soon becomes restless and sets off to
visit the city, taking Vicki with him. In their absence, Ian and Barbara are
kidnapped by slave traders.
Having been mistaken for the famous lyre player Maximus Pettulian and asked to
perform at the Emperor Nero's Court, the Doctor has to devise ever more
elaborate schemes to avoid revealing that he cannot actually play the
Ian meanwhile becomes a galley slave, while Barbara is sold to Nero's slave
buyer Tavius at an auction in Rome. Ian and a fellow slave named Delos escape
from the galley when it is wrecked in a storm and make their way to Rome to try
to find and rescue Barbara.
- Commentary with actors William Russell, Nick Evans and Barry Jackson, and
director Christopher Barry.
- What Has ‘The Romans’ Ever Done For Us? – actors, crew and historians look at
both the reality and fantasy behind the story of ‘The Romans’. With actors
William Russell, Kay Patrick, Barry Jackson, Anthony Andrews and Christopher
Biggins, director Christopher Barry, designer Raymond Cusick, historian Dr. Mark
Bradley, writer James Moran, Doctor Who Magazine editor Tom Spilsbury and 1960’s
viewer Ian McLachlan. Narrated by John Bowe.
- Roma Parva - director Christopher Barry demonstrates the use of a model of the
studio set in the planning of camera positions and moves during recording.
- Dennis Spooner, Wanna Write a Television Series? – a look at writer Dennis
Spooner’s work on Doctor Who. With actors William Russell and Peter Purves,
script editor Donald Tosh, writers Brian Clemens and Rob Shearman, and Spooner’s
friend Jane Clemens. Narrated by Anna Hope.
- Blue Peter – The Blue Peter team hold a Roman banquet in the studio.
- Girls! Girls! Girls! The 1960’s – an affectionate look back at the sixties
Who-Girls. With actors Carole Ann Ford, William Russell, Peter Purves, Anneke
Wills, Deborah Watling, Frazer Hines, Jean Marsh and Honor Blackman, script
editor Donald Tosh and director Christopher Barry. Narrated by Dona Croll.
- Photo Gallery
- Coming Soon Trailer
- PDF Material
- Programme Subtitles | {
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French Drawings in the Age of Greuze
September 10-December 1, 2002
August 15, 2002
LOS ANGELES—French Drawings in the Age of Greuze, on view concurrently with Greuze the Draftsman from September 10 through December 1, 2002, presents a survey of 18th-century French drawings from the Getty Museum’s collection. The drawings of Jean-Baptiste Greuze (French, 1725–1805) were prized for their technical perfection, variety of media and subjects, and sensitive observation of the world. Those qualities can be said to characterize French draftsmanship as a whole during the 18th century, considered the golden age of drawing in France. It was a period when French draftsmen reached new heights of technical accomplishment, some even achieving fame on the basis of their drawings alone, and when the market for works on paper became wider than ever before.
French Drawings in the Age of Greuze features 33 works by some of the century’s greatest artists, such as François Boucher (1703–70) and Jean-Honoré Fragonard (1732–1806), as well as by a number of the comparatively unfamiliar 18th-century French artists who concentrated on drawing rather than painting. It explores the entire century that opened with Jean-Antoine Watteau’s Rococo fêtes galantes (literally “elegant parties”) and closed with the dramatic neoclassical subjects of Jacques-Louis David.
“The 18th century in France was a period of phenomenal artistic change and social upheaval. This exhibition charts this splendid era in the history of drawing,” explains Lee Hendrix, curator of drawings at the Getty Museum. “From touching sensitivity to monumental pathos, these drawings engage with their range of technique and emotional subtlety.”
The exhibition begins with Watteau’s Seated Woman with a Fan (about 1717), a study for one of his famous fêtes galantes, which depict gatherings of exquisitely dressed figures in idyllic landscapes. This drawing of a coy young woman seems effortlessly crafted in trois crayons (literally, “three chalks”—red, black, and white), a technique that is closely associated with Watteau.
Another highlight of the exhibition is a drawing by Gabriel de Saint-Aubin, whose elaborate depiction of the Salon of 1753 is displayed in reproduction in Greuze the Draftsman. Saint-Aubin was a fixture in the Parisian art scene, faithfully attending exhibitions and making small drawings of the paintings and sculptures on view. In Sheet of Studies (1773), he sketched a woman reading, a boy drawing, and a sculpture The Birth of Venus by Simon-Georges-Joseph Pfaff. Although Saint-Aubin used the sheet for several different studies, he brilliantly unified them, creating an implicit relationship between the statue and the reading woman by placing them on the diagonal axis, from upper left to lower right, implying a transformation from the mythological figure to the contemporary one. Saint-Aubin also acknowledged the artist’s role as the mediator between imagination and reality by placing the draftsman between the figures at lower left.
Fragonard’s Oh! If Only He Were as Faithful to Me! (about 1770–75), depicts a young woman abandoned by her lover. This heartbreaking subject is unusual in the work of an artist more famous for his playful bedroom scenarios. Fragonard had been trained as a painter of serious historical themes, and he cleverly adapted these lessons to the sad young woman’s pose, which recalls that of a repentant saint. The artist’s vocabulary of long, undulating lines, in both the pencil underdrawing and the application of wash, emphasizes the soft forms of the bed, the dog, and the figure.
# # #
About the Getty:
The J. Paul Getty Trust is an international cultural and philanthropic institution devoted to the visual arts that features the Getty Conservation Institute, the Getty Foundation, the J. Paul Getty Museum, and the Getty Research Institute. The J. Paul Getty Trust and Getty programs serve a varied audience from two locations: the Getty Center in Los Angeles and the Getty Villa in Malibu.
Sign up for e-Getty at www.getty.edu/subscribe/ to receive free monthly highlights of events at the Getty Center and the Getty Villa via e-mail, or visit our event calendar for a complete calendar of public programs.
The J. Paul Getty Museum collects in seven distinct areas, including Greek and Roman antiquities, European paintings, drawings, manuscripts, sculpture, and decorative arts, and European and American photographs. The Museum's mission is to make the collection meaningful and attractive to a broad audience by presenting and interpreting the works of art through educational programs, special exhibitions, publications, conservation, and research. | {
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Some have been waiting in the wings, biding their time. Others have been thrust into battle ahead of their time.
Last fall, five quarterbacks led local teams to state or regional championship games. All but Tyler Young of Epping-Newmarket graduated, meaning there are a lot of new signal-callers piloting area teams with the same high hopes.
First stop is in Exeter, where the reigning Division I champions are lining up behind senior Ethan Joyce, who started at defensive back on that title team. He gets plugged into a talented offensive backfield that includes 1,000-yard rusher Tyler Grant and speedy wingback Colby Swane, among others.
"He's a real solid athlete," said Exeter coach Bill Ball, whose team hosts Division II Dover in a non-conference game, "a run-pass threat. We're going to see what (defenses) give us. If it calls for his number, great; if not, that's the way it is."
In Portsmouth, senior Travis MacDonald was set to take over after backing up Billy Hartmann during last year's Division III championship season. But he broke his clavicle during a scrimmage against Marshwood last week — actually staying in the game and running four more plays before leaving — opening the door for junior Donovan Phanor.
The athletic, 5-foot-8 Phanor had been pushing MacDonald when both were healthy, coaches said, and figured to be on the field as a wide receiver if he didn't win the job. Now, he's the guy running the spread offense, at least for the next few weeks.
"He's very athletic," said offensive coordinator John Iafolla. "Even if the play gets blown up, he can make something from nothing."
Another junior, 6-foot-1 Nate McFarland, will back up Phanor in tonight's non-conference opener against Division I Londonderry. According to his coaches, he's had possibly the best preseason out of any of the quarterbacks.
"The one who's improved the most is McFarland," said Portsmouth coach Bill Murphy.
"I've said it all along: All three of those guys could run our offense," said Iafolla. "All are very capable."
On Dover Point, reigning Division V champion St. Thomas hands the reins to junior Joe Karsonovich as it begins life in Division IV. The athletic Karsonovich likely won't put up the passing numbers of predecessor Scott Munroe (1,744 yards, 21 TDs, 3 INTs), but he will be asked to manage the game and get the ball into the hands of playmakers like speedy tailback Ryan Monette.
In Maine, Marshwood and new coach Alex Rotsko are turning to junior Cameron Roll in the new Wing-T offense. Roll was a running back last year for the Hawks.
"He's a very athletic kid who runs the ball very well," said Rotsko. "We had very little experience at quarterback and we wanted to get somebody in there who's a threat to run the ball."
At Traip Academy, junior Chris Czachor gets the nod after serving as Matt Clifford's understudy last year. A hard-nosed player who's used to delivering hits as the starting safety, his growth is expected to be a two-year process.
"He's getting there," said Traip coach Ron Ross. "We ask our quarterback to do a lot. Clifford got to the point where he could run the offense himself. I'd send in the wrong play and he'd fix it on his own. That's where I'd like to get Chris at, as a senior, hopefully."
Running to glory
Not to be overlooked are a trio of returning 1,000-yard rushers, who led their teams deep into November as juniors and are back for their senior years.
Cory Aldecoa formed one half of a bruising running attack with his cousin, fullback Tyler Nay, gaining 1,627 yards. With Nay beginning his college career at Maine Maritime Academy, Aldecoa will share carries with a beefed-up Devon Draker.
"Last year he had a big year and this year he has a really good chance again," said Traip senior lineman Danny Eddy. "We'd like to have him run behind us all year and do what he did last year."
Grant is coming off a 1,216-yard season for reigning Division I champion Exeter, while Monette collected 1,438 yards and scored 25 touchdowns as St. Thomas ran the table in Division V.
"I definitely want to have the same success as last year, 11-0," said Monette. "It's a big goal to achieve but I hope we come close to that."
Getting their kicks
Teams from Winnacunnet and Portsmouth both head into their openers with female place-kickers.
All-State soccer star Carly Gould is handling the PAT and field-goal duties for the Warriors after assistant coach Ryan Francoeur, one of her teachers, brought the idea up last year, half in jest. A future Division I college player, she will not be asked to kick off or make tackles.
Sophomore Isabelle Pafford is the only kicker listed on the Portsmouth roster. Last year, the Clippers handled the kicking by committee, with senior Charlie Duprey booting a pair of field goals in the Division III championship win over Bedford.
Not to overlooked from a place-kicking standpoint are a pair of talented males — Logan Laurent of Exeter and Hayden Middleton of St. Thomas — who both earned All-State honors a year ago and are regarded as two of the best in New Hampshire. | {
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A few lawmakers are asking the same question. State aid in all its forms has made public universities a bargain for Illinois students, but it is less clear that public higher ed is a bargain for its taxpayers as well. Today, subsidies to colleges and universities are regarded as a perk of citizenship, but the founders of the Illinois higher ed system saw them as investments whose payoff was better citizens and more capable earners. Such spending still has such results, sometimes. More often, making a degree affordable to everyone has meant spending on students who have no interest in or aptitude for college work and who make bad choices with other people’s money – fit training for careers in the General Assembly perhaps, but not for the real world.
Then there are the Illinois graduates who leave the state, thus using their educations to benefit taxpayers in other places. This educational balance of payments seems to be slightly in Illinois’ favor, at least as measured by the relative numbers of degreed adults who migrate into (thanks, Chicago) and out of the state. One has to wonder, however, whether the numbers on net migration tell the whole story about value. I would guess that Illinois exports its best young minds to places like California or Massachusetts and gets the not-quite-best of other states in return.
Educated elites everywhere are footloose as never before. In Hungary, students receiving state-sponsored university places have been told they must remain in Hungary after graduation; the longer they studied at state expense, the longer they have to stay, up to 10 years. The national government also announced recently that it would continue to fund study of in-demand subjects like engineering but drastically reduce support for other subjects such as economics and law whose graduates glut the market and are thus a drag on its social benefits system.
To achieve the same end, Americans tend to rely on free-market incentives such as free or reduced tuition to stay-at-home students in some fields. A state commission in Florida recently proposed charging lowering tuition to students pursuing degrees most needed for Florida’s job market. This policy would seem to make sense, but then a lot about Florida life only seems to make sense. The real beneficiaries of job-focused higher ed are companies that thus have their training done at taxpayer expense. George Mason University economics prof Alex Tabarrok insists that it would be better to target educational subsidies in ways that benefit taxpayers, not employers. Public subsidies should target fields in which education has the greatest “positive spillovers,” that is, fields whose practitioners return more of value to the state than the taxes they pay.
Exactly. The Illinois system was justified, backers argued, because classics-based traditional college learning was irrelevant to the needs of a growing state – or rather of a growing nation. The U of I was founded through federal land grant legislation that called for training in agriculture and the “mechanic arts.” (The U of I’s original name, remember, was Illinois Industrial University.)
Today’s Illinois is a populated urban state whose needs, while just as pressing, have dramatically changed in nature. Building a stronger economy needs technical training, but building a better state needs more and better social workers, teachers, criminologists, issues advocates, musicians, linguists, public administrators, public interest attorneys, urban planners, public health specialists, even, yes, journalists. Illinois is among the many that offer loan forgiveness to students preparing for a few such careers who stay in the state to practice their trades upon graduation; all too typically, the programs are under- or unfunded.
If the General Assembly ever stops arguing about how Illinois can afford the education it is already paying for and begins to ask how it might pay for the education it needs, it might start from this premise: What industry needs, industry ought to pay for, through private training academies and institutes. Public universities meanwhile should become public in focus as well as funding.
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Bridgeview Grill went out of business, but right now it’s a fun place to visit. Along the water as it flows past the university, the building is home to a thriving colony of barn swallows. Walk the docks that pass under Neyland Drive along the mouth of Second Creek, and these handsome birds will zip past you, showing off the band of white spots atop their forked tails.
The birds have built numerous nests on the lips of the steel girders beneath the University of Tennessee rowing facility. Unlike mockingbirds, barn swallows do not attack you for coming near their nests; they see you as a slow-moving obstacle and go about their business of gobbling insects from the air above the river and downtown to feed to their babies.
Nests are in varying stages. Some are new construction, others built atop and beside old nests. I saw several with five nestlings, eyes closed but feathers growing, the brood getting too big for the mud cup. In other nests, babies are too small to see except when they raise their heads to be fed. Some pairs looked to be starting a second brood.
In one nest were three young birds, eyes open, looking like they could make the great leap into flight any minute. There is no second chance for these swallows. Jumping before their wing feathers are grown means they are carp food. That this nest had only three occupants hints at a dark truth. The weakest one or two nestlings probably got pushed into the water by nestmates as the brood outgrew its nest. Baby birds found on the ground often get there by similar means, and they can be hard to rescue because they were weak and neglected to begin with. Life is sacred and profane.
Whizzing birds swooping in and out, twittering babies greeting parents and chattering adults drive such thoughts from mind as you stand amid this swallow colony.
It is not the only one downtown. Henley Bridge hosts a colony of cliff swallows. From the bridge you can see the birds diving in and out below you, but the nests can only be seen from below with binoculars. Like barn swallows, cliff swallows build nests from mouthfuls of mud, but their nest structure is more elaborate. The entrance is a tube protruding from a globe of mud built into a corner beneath the bridge. Cliff swallows do not have forked tails, but like barn swallows, they have rich blue, rust, and white markings. These two swallow colonies consume a lot of flying insects.
Below-deck repairs on the Henley Bridge should be done in fall and winter when the birds are in South America.
The presence of these colonies is a good sign for a river recovering from decades of pollution. Downtown, the river is actually a lake, flow rate determined more by the pool level of Fort Loudoun Dam than by the rivers that merge two bends upstream. At the peak of winter draw-down, the river almost shrinks to its natural, more rocky channel, but it never quite gets there.
The lake that looks like a river is also a hybrid of native and invasive plants and animals. Beautiful sycamores mingle with ratty banks of privet. There is a pretty berry thicket on the riprap along Volunteer Landing, but I think it is an invasive wineberry.
The city plans to establish a wetland along the South Waterfront, but what sort of wetland should occur on that unnatural shoreline is hard to say. It may be impossible to recreate a river wetland without natural flood cycles, and bottomland wetlands are typically much larger. Ospreys—lake birds—are nesting on the rail trellis. An eastern phoebe, a river bird, flits around the docks. Whatever they build, aquatic life will come, and while there is still room for improvement, all that life in the middle of the city is proof that efforts by Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation, TVA, and industry to restore our waters is paying off. | {
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MORE RELEASES FROM KENNY NEAL
"Neal's deft electric and lap-steel solo guitar work would be enough to set him apart as a blues player." Blues Access More
ABOUT KENNY NEAL
When I picture Louisiana swamps, oil rigs, Mardi Gras, alligators, Cajuns, voodoo and filet gumbo, soulful musical traditions come to mind. It's these that have shaped Kenny Neal, and molded him into the talent that he is today.
Neal, a native of Baton Rouge, began playing music at a very young age. The oldest of ten children, he learned the basics from his father, singer and blues harmonica player, Raful Neal.
Family friends also contributed to Kenny's early education. Friends like Lazy Lester, Buddy Guy and Slim Harpo. In fact, it was Harpo who gave the crying three-year-old a harmonica to pacify him.
Kenny stopped crying that day, and eventually learned to play the harmonica. Along the way, he also mastered the bass, trumpet, piano and guitar. At 13, he joined his father's band and began paying his musical dues. Four years later, he was recruited and toured extensively as Buddy Guy's bass player.
In 1983, Toronto's "Hip & Happening" music scene beckoned, and Neal made a "run for the border." He formed the Neal Brothers Blues Band and later fronted the Downchild Blues Band, Canada's leading blues outfit. To this day, he still has a staunch Canadian fan base.
The notorious Neal was lured back to the States with a record deal. Packed with catchy R&B and blues tunes, his first and only album on King Snake Records, Bio on the Bayou, was released in 1987. The project immediately caught the ears of Bruce Iglauer, which led to a five album run on the Alligator label.
Kenny, always looking for ways to appeal to a wider audience, took a respite from the cramped stages of smoky roadhouses and headed for the lights of Broadway. In 1991, he starred as the lead in the much-acclaimed musical, Mule Bone. His performances garnered a prestigious Theater World Award for "The Most Outstanding New Talent On and Off Broadway."
His list of musical references reads like a Who's Who of Blues and R& B. B.B. King, Bonnie Raitt, Muddy Waters, Aaron Neville, Buddy Guy and John Lee Hooker have all worked on projects with him at one time or another, and have nothing but respect for his talent and abilities.
1998 saw the release of Blues Fallin & Down Like Rain, his Telarc debut, and Kenny began to gain the stature critics had long predicted for him. In 1999, he fronted the exceptional Homesick for the Road with fellow guitarists/vocalists Tab Benoit and Debbie Davies. His third Telarc release, What You Got, is due out in April 2000.
Kenny Neal is once again reinventing himself. Determined to win the hearts of the video generation, look for his style to become more Pop/AC, his image more GQ, and his music smoother and even more polished. | {
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March 21 2014 02:06PM
In the final 12 games of the season or so, the Flames and Preds are battling it out for who can be more mediocre. The Predators' playoff hopes are completely extinguished while the Flames are still just those loveable little scamps who don't know when to quit or when to just stop throwing themselves in front of pucks with the devil-may-care attitude that only comes with nothing to live for. That may be an exaggeration but I am not convinced Lance Bouma is entirely sane. Just sayin.
Tonight, there will be two noteworthy additions to the respective rosters. Calgary is debuting Kenny Agostino, acquired in the trade that sent Jarome to Pittsburgh where he won a Stanley Cup and carried Crosby on his back into a rainbow sunset. The Preds also have a new addition tonight as they recalled Calle Jarnkrok yesterday after
granting the freedom to trading David Legwand to Detroit.
For that reason at least it will certainly be worth watching at least part of this one! RIght! C'mon guys! Lineups and preview after the jump
THE FIGHTIN' FLAMES
Let's remember Berra as he would have wanted, winning in a shootout.
There are quite a few switches in today's lineup with one new face and another familiar face returning to active duty. This roster looks surprisingly like one you would expect out of an actual NHL team. Here it is thanks to our buds at Daily Faceoff:
Glencross - Stajan - Hudler
Agostino - Monahan - Colborne
Cammalleri - Backlund - Byron
Bouma - Galiardi - McGrattan
Russell - Butler
As you may have heard, the Flames are debuting one of the pieces of the Jarome Iginla trade tonight in Yale's Kenny Agostino. It is nice to see that they are going to give him some competent linemates in his first game with the big club, as that has not always been standard practice for the Flames in the past. I think I am like a lot of people when I fully admit that I have no idea what to expect from Agostino tonight. I saw him at Flames development camp this summer and thought he was pretty good but hell, in that camp Josh Jooris and Linden Penner were dominating the competition so I am not sure it's an indicator of much.
Agostino's numbers at Yale are pretty impressive, as he was essentially a point-per-game player in his final three seasons with the Bulldogs. Agostino was also a part of Yale's NCAA Championship winning team last season. What is perhaps Agostino's most impressive statistic from college is his shot production. When Agostino was signed, Darren Hayes tweeted out a striking stat of Agostino's:
The stat that leaps off the page for me when you look at Agostino's 2013-14 season is his shots on goal -- a ridiculous 163 in 33 games.— Darren Haynes (@DarrenHaynes_CP) March 17, 2014
Hopefully Agostino can continue to generate offense in the show, though it is pretty much impossible that he will continue at the clip he was at in college. Also, maybe his energy will rub off on Monahan and he can finally get that elusive number 20 on the season tonight.
The Flames are also welcoming back Jiri Hudler to the lineup tonight and he will be playing one a line with the newly returned Matthew "Franchise" Stajan and the still reasonably rusty Curtis Glencross. Hudler has had a nice season for the Flames and prior to his injury was the most reliable Flames forward in terms of point production. Despite missing the last seven games with an ankle injury, Hudler is still the team leader in points with 44 and assists with 30.
Kent mentioned on twitter a few days ago that Tyler Wotherspoon might not be doing so well possesion wise during his brief stint with the club. I checked out his numbers and, yikes...they are not so great. His CF%rel is a cool -27.5 in his first seven games with the Flames. I know, I know, small sample size and all that, and I am sure that being paired with Smid isn't going to do wonders for his possession numbers, but hopefully he can improve his numbers over the final stretch of games as it looks as though Dennis Wideman is done for the season. With the injury to Wideman, it is entirely likely that Wotherspoon will be up for the rest of the year.
Ortio gets his ninth start of the season in net and has been pretty decent for the Flames so far with a 4-4 record and a .906 SV%. If nothing else, that is a vast improvement over Joey MacDonald's SV% in eight games as well, as Joey Mac boasts a .885. However, I know that I am not exactly setting the highest bar for Ortio in this comparison.
EMPEROR TROTZ'S MEN
Here is the Pres lineup thanks to our dearest confidants, Daily Faceoff.com:
Hornqvist - Fisher - Spaling
Bourque - Jarnkrok - Smith
Nystrom - Cullen - Wilson
Clune - "Frank" Sissons - Eaves
Josi - Weber
Jones - Ekholm
Del Zotto - Ellis
The Predators are ice cold. They have lost three-straight games, seven of their last ten, and are now within the sight of the bottom of the Western Conference. The Flames by comparison are 6-4 in their last ten and now only five points back of Nashville, which can be a good or bad thing depending on how you look at it.
Since Pekka Rinne's return, he might have some rust to shake off. Rinne has allowed nine goals in his last two starts. Yikes. Carter Hutton played decently during Rinne's injury, going 15-11-4 with a .904 Sv% which is not horrible but certainly not horrendous. Rinne gets the start tonight for the Preds so hopefully (or not depending on your postion vis-a-vis tanking) he is still playing like Alex Auld and not the Pekka Rinne of last season.
Every time that one looks at the back end for the Predators they think, wow, this team should be better. That is a damn good group of D men and they look to be only getting better. With young studs like Jones, Ekholm, and Josi only just starting to come into their own, Nashville is pretty much set for life on defence.
Their forward group is a little more sketchy. Now without David Legwand, the Predators have Calle Jarnkrok making his NHL debut tonight after being acquired from the Red Wings at the deadline. There is a fair bit of buzz surrounding the 22 year old Swedish centre who has amassed 36 points in 57 AHL games. At the deadline, many were surprised that Nashville was able to leverage a prospect of Jarnkrok's calibre from the notoriously prospect stingy wings, especially given the bargain-bin prices league wide on deadline day.
PLAYOFF LOTTERY IMPLICATIONS
The cushion that used to exist between the fifth and sixth spots in the draft lottery is shrinking very fast, though that has been because of Flames victories so it's not all bad news. The Preds are falling like a rock and could easily be caught by the Flames in the next two weeks if they don't start to win a few games.
Elsewhere tonight, there are no other games that have any impact on the Flames current spot in the standings outside of Carolina, and that might be a stretch for the Flames.
WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN, BASIL?
It seems as though tonight, as with many nights this season, is a can't miss for Flames fans. Well, aside from the fact that it's a Flames/Predators game which I know doesn't rate highly on the list of ways to occupy one's evening for a lot of fans. No matter what the outcome, Flames fans will get a peak at Kenny Agostino tonight and he'll be playing on a line with some interesting pieces so there's that to look forward to. If the Flames continue their stretch of good play and beat the Preds? Great. Suck it Rich Clune. If not, well, that's not the worst thing either. Ahh, to be a Flames fan..
Also, the last Flames Preds game was pretty awesome. The Flames won 5-4 in a shootout even though this happened:
Puck drops at 7pm MT on SNET West. | {
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This project has been one that has interested me from the very start. I find when I do projects I kind of lose interest or momentum with the project, however this project was different. The project set out to investigate the realm of analogue and digital processes within photography using the one piece of technology that it at the tips of most of our fingers…our mobile phones, specifically iPhones. There is a new world of technology within modern day mobile phones. iPhones are known as a ‘smart phone’ and their ability to use Apps (Applications), which enable you to use your phone on a much wider scale. For example, for this project I was looking into iPhone Apps for photography. There in one App in particular that I love, Instagram. This is an App that allows you alter the appearance of the photographs that you take on your phone and also have the ability to share these photographs on Instagram and other social networking sites. The alterations on the App resemble those that are analogue, for example, Polaroid of Kodachrome. The thing that fascinates me with these sorts of Apps is although the digital era is in its prime, it is always in some way seeking to resemble the old analogue aesthetics. The ability to take, alter and share images is at its easiest. The concept of this project isn’t necessarily what the subject of the piece is about, but rather the idea, methods and concept behind it.
Within this project I think certain elements have gone well and have scope to further into an extended or different project. I have been able to experiment with modern, digital technologies compared to my preferred analogue approaches and exploring new ground. I have always been against web sharing of my photographs and it has always been a minor phobia of mine, in fears that my work would get stolen or copied. This project has encouraged me to go against my fears and display and share my work digitally. It is a much more convenient approach and in some ways a cheaper way to produce your work.
I have learnt to apply digitally analogue aesthetics to photographs, without the necessary problem of making the images look too fake and false. The project has allowed me to understand that although I really don’t like digital editing programmes like Photoshop, in fears that the images will then look to fake and horrible, I really like the digital editing in Apps such as Instagram. The phrase, ‘a genuine fake’ comes to mind because although I hate photoshopped images I like the convincing editing aesthetics in Instagram, which seem like they could be more real in terms of analogue appearances than other editing programmes/Apps. It is a very weird phenomena that I am still trying to understand myself.
I think that the artefacts thats I have produced are good and reflect well in terms of how our modern world is now, with a much more varied way in how you can present and display our images. The thing I love is that although the digital seeks to have the ease of not printing, we still seek to have our images printed like analogue images. Although these are in ways of magnets, books, iPhone cases etc., our need in wanting the material object in our hands is still wanted.
There are also some weak points to my project that needs to be worked and be developed upon if I choose to continue with this project further. I am slightly disappointed with the amount of time I have spent on my minor project. It has suffered as a result of my dissertation and felt that more could be done to improve or develop the piece. With more time I feel I could experiment more with the subject matter of my pieces and create better mimics of the analogue uses and approaches that could be reflected in the digital. I have tried to produce images that I thought mimicked the traditional methods and subjects of the analogue, however, with that further research and experimentation that issue could be better resolved.
In terms of presentation I wanted to have mini installations for the pieces to show the analogue mimesis in the modern environment that we now all live in. I would have presented the magnets on a fridge door, presented the book amongst other magazines and books on a coffee table and actually have my iPhone case that I produced on my own phone. I am really disappointed that the iPhone case did not get delivered in time due to the company ‘misplacing’ my order and as a result delaying the production and delivery of my product. The only fortunate thing with the phone case is that you are able to view the product online, however, this really isn’t ideal and what I wanted for my project.
I have also found it hard in some instances that trying to prepare and order things for my project over the Christmas period is a nightmare, as places close and do not commence work until the new year. This has proved to go against me in my project and as a result has suffered, weakening my final outcome and feeling rather disappointed with the finished article. I have worked really hard with this project but I feel that doesn’t really come across.
To conclude elements that could be built on next time:
- Explore more with how analogue was used and what was being photographed and then apply that to the digital.
- Research further into the Apps.
- Built a better foundation on the subject matter.
- Prepare my time better to try to avoid accidental misplacements etc.
- Create a better presentation of my final piece (getting and using props that I ideally want).
Although I am not 100% happy with the final piece I think there is so much more scope for development, which I would really like to pursue in the near feature. I’m hoping to relate this project with my Major Project.
For my final presentation of my project I had the idea of creating mini installations that introduced my project pieces in the modern environment. For example, with my magnets I’d like to present them on a fridge door showing my image snap shots. Possibly display my digital Polaroids with the false frame, alongside my genuine Polaroids to compare the difference. Spread my book out with books/magazines of the present day and lay them on a coffee table as in you were in a casual environment at home etc. I would place my iPhone case on my phone to show the analogue inspired images on the digital technology that produced the images and also demonstrates the digital printing techniques.
However, I think I am currently unable to retain a fridge door that I could display for this project in such a short amount of time, as a result I am having to use a magnetic white board, which will need some imagination to create the illusion of a fridge door surface.
Another issue is that my iPhone cover has not yet arrived due to delivery issues, so I think I will have to show my cover online on the website I ordered it from. This is really not what I want or is ideal, however, I have little option. As a result I feel that my project is a little bit of a let down.
Below however, are the images I have chosen to place inside my magnetic Polaroid frames that will be displayed alongside some of my (failed) Polaroids. I chose these five images because I thought they were the ones that worked best in term of their subject matter and how they would relate back to the traditional use of the analogue.
As an additional element, I am thinking I will take in my FujiFilm Instant camera to photograph the the digital images, mimicking the analogue, in the modern environment with their modern printing approach, coming full circle in creating an analogue image of the products. So the project in essence will fold in on itself.
Below are some of my more recent Instagram images that I have produced:
Once upon a time there was a man called Ken, he owned the most beautiful Polaroid camera. He shot his Polaroids of his life and had many fun times snapping away gaining the snap-shot memories of his life. However, times soon moved on and Ken packed away his Polaroid camera into the depths of his cupboard and moved onto his next new photographic toy. The camera got left there for years and years and years, until one day, a young girl called Becky became interested in Polaroid. Ken announced that somewhere in the depths of his cupboard he owned a Polaroid camera. He searched the cupboard high and low and dusted off a black Polaroid camera bag. Sat inside was Ken’s Polaroid camera. He said ” Oh young Rebecca you can have it, I don’t use it anymore!”. The young girl Becky thought all her Christmas’ came at once, she now owned a Polaroid camera. She purchased some film (which wasn’t cheap) and was ever so excited to try her new toy. She shot her 8 not so cheap Polaroids and was disappointed with her results. The images didn’t come out how she imagined and wondered whether she used the camera right, the film somehow fogged or whether she is actually a dense blonde that likes to think she knows what she is doing. Since this day she has been too scared to buy some more film in fear that she will waste another large sum of money. So lets hope she lives happily ever after and plucks up the courage to purchase more film and produce some Polaroids that she is proud of!
Photograph of the young girl’s Polaroid camera:
Below are the young Becky’s failed Polaroids:
Before her Polaroid camera:
7/8 years before having the Polaroid Land camera, Becky was given a FujiFilm Instax Mini 10 camera by her mummy and daddy, which works in a similar way to a Polaroid whereby the film ejects from the camera after exposure. What was special with this particular instant camera was that the film is the size of a credit card. It’s mini and extremely easy to use.
Having had the mini Fuji beforehand, Becky purchased a more modern version of the Polaroid Camera herself. This was the FujiFilm Instax Wide 210 Camera. She loves this camera even though it doesn’t follow Polaroid characteristics in terms of the film size and final image, but you are more likely to have a better exposed image, which kinda takes the Polaroid aesthetics away but is still has its own aesthetic and appeal.
Becky’s FujiFilm Instax Wide 210 camera images:
The FujiFilm Instax Wide 210 camera is more like the digital Polaroids I produce on my iPhone because of the heightened guarantee that you’ll produce an image that is clear. The only obvious difference is the varying sizes of the digital Polaroid and the unconventional wide size of the Fuji Instax 210 film.
The differences among the Polaroid and FujiFilm can be seen when purchasing the film. Polaroid withdrew the Polaroid instant film, however, was redeveloped by The Impossible Project and they retail the film from £16/17 (excluding the £7.95 delivery charge!) for 8 single exposures. The FujiFilm on the other hand, retail their film from about £15/16 (in some cases including delivery) for 20 single exposures. The economical differences between these two types of film alone can be seen.
When introducing the digital Polaroids however, the economical differences can also be seen further. Digital is an age whereby printing digital images can cost next to nothing compared to the analogue technology. You don’t necessarily need to print the images but instantly share them in social networks and photo forums/blogs. The cost can instantly disappear. Even choosing to print from home computers now costa very little in comparison.
Although the digital is cheap and are more likely to get a clearly exposed image, it for me takes the analogue magic away. I like to be able to take the photograph with the original camera and watch the image develop before you. There is nothing like it. No digital App will ever effect me the same way analogue does. There is a certain sense of achievement when you do mange to achieve that one photograph that is amazing!! So for me…analogue all the way!!
Another thing to think about when doing a project like mine is how am I going to materialise my project? There are many ways using Instagram as a foundation in creating secondary artefacts. On the Instagram website there is a list stating what companies/secondary sites support Instagram in creating or viewing your photographs in various forms. The list can be seen below:
I have investigated some of the listed sites and have found them to be quite useful. Firstly, there are sites that simply support Instagram images being viewed online in a larger scale. One particular web view site I like is ‘Insta-Great!’. It simply allows you to look at your own images, people who you are following and popular images on a larger scale.
1. You sign in using your Instagram log-in details and you are taken to the ‘Popular Photos’ page.
2. From there you can navigate to your own Instagram photos by clicking on the middle icon at the top left of the screen (looks like two rectangles). Here you can view your images on a larger scale in a form of a scroll bar.
3. By clicking on the heart symbol at the top left of the page, you are able to view all the images you have ‘liked’. Whether that includes your own or other people’s, they appear in the form of a scroll bar. Another feature is that you are able to see how many people have ‘liked’ your image, the day it was taken, what filter was used to create the image and the location it was taken (if that feature is turned on on your particular settings). This can be done by simply placing the cursor over the image.
4. You are also able to view images from the people whom you follow. You can do this by searching for them or clicking on their name if they have liked your image or commented on it.
Another good thing about Instagram is that it is supported by popular book publishing company ‘Blurb‘. There is a particular App on the Blurb website that allows you to log into your Instagram account and then Blurb automatically arranges the images into a book. You are able to adjust the layout, order of the images and add further images too. It is so simple to do.
I have made one myself using my Instagram images, it is so simple to use:
1. This is the Instagram book opening page (you are also able to use Facebook to create books too) where you are able to look up how much your book will cost, depending the the amount of pages, whether it’ll be a hard or soft cover, the paper quality etc. From here just click on the ‘Make an Instagram Book’ button.
2. This screen the asks you to log into your Instagram account…
3. …redirecting you to this screen where you are able to give your book a title and name the author.
4. Blurb then automatically starts uploading your Instagram images, ready to be put into your book. | {
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- Gloria Whelan -
It seems Gloria Whelan has always had an affinity for children. After graduating from the University of Michigan, she worked in varying positions for the welfare of children as a social worker in Minneapolis and as a supervisor of group services and day care programs in the Detroit area. Her experiences are diverse, spending time also teaching literature and writing. This diversity follows through in her writing. She has exhibited an ability to write varying genre, children's literature, young adult literature, contemporary fiction, historical fiction, in addition to, short stories and poems for adults.
Born in Detroit, Michigan and moving into the woods of northern Michigan definitely plays a role in Ms. Whelan's writing. Wilderness settings are a major part of her young adult novels. It's the mystery of nature and the characters it affects that most attracts this author, prodding her to write on. Dreaming of doing things that weren't always possible Gloria gives this advice to young people, "If there's something that you really want to do and can't, write a story about it." Writing about doing it gives you a chance to realize your dream.
When Gloria is not inspiring children, it seems that they are inspiring her. This is evident in her own two children. When they were young, the Whelans read to their children each night. This may have been the inspiration for Gloria's daughter in becoming a librarian. Her son, realizing his mother's need, purchased a computer for her for Mother's Day several years ago. This has been a life saver in her writing.
A Clearing in the Forest, Putnam, 1978.
A Time to Keep Silent, William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, Grand Rapids, MI 1993. (First published in 1979)
Next Spring an Oriole, illustrated by Pamela Johnson, Random House, 1987.
Playing with Shadows (short-story collection ; for adults), University of Illinois Press, 1988.
Silver, illustrated by Stephen Marchesi, Random House, 1988.
A Week of Raccoons, illustrated by Lynn Munsinger, Knopf, 1988.
The Secret Keeper, Knopf, 1990.
Hannah, illustrated by Leslie Bowman, Knopf, 1991.
Bringing the Farmhouse Home, illustrated by Jada Rowland, Simon & Schuster, 1992.
Goodbye, Vietnam, Knopf, 1992.
Night of the Full Moon (sequel to Next Spring an Oriole), illustrated by Leslie Bowman, Knopf, 1993.
That Wild Berries Should Grow: The Diary of a Summer, Eerdmans, 1994.
Once on This Island, HarperCollins, 1995.
The Indian School, HarperCollins, 1996.
The Presidentís Mother (adult novel), Servant Publications, 1996.
The Shadow of the Wolf, Random House, 1997.
Forgive The River, Forgive The Sky
Farewell To The Island (sequel to Once On This Island)
Also, contributor of short stories to anthologies, including O. Henry Prize Stories. Contributor of adult fiction to periodicals, including Michigan Quarterly, Virginia Quarterly, Story Quarterly, Missouri Review, Gettysburg Review, Detroit Monthly, and Ontario Review. Contributor of poetry to periodicals, including Ontario Review and Country Life.
The goal of her writing:
"To write the very best, most honest book I can."
Juvenile Book Merit Award (older), Friends of American Writers, 1979, for A Clearing in the Forest;
Juvenile Fiction Award, Society of Midland Authors, 1994;
Best Books of the Year Citation, Bank Street College of Education;
Creative Artist Award, Michigan Council for the Arts;
Master List finalist, Florida Sunshine State Young Readers Award;
Citations for Texas Lone Star Reading Lost and International Reading Association (IRA) Children's Choices List;
Quotes from Reviews:
Once On This Island
"Well-rounded fiction that incorporates a little romance, adventure, drama, and history of an American period that is not as commonly used for background." - Rita Soltan, School Library Journal
" Whelan's smooth writing, vivid characters, and strong sense of place make this a good choice for libraries and treasure for one in the Great Lakes area." - Susan Dove Lempke, Booklist
Night of the Full Moon
"Conveys the Native American point of view concerning land ownership. Teachers looking for novels on frontier life will find this useful as well." - Kay Weisman, Booklist
"The book describes well the hardships many of America's newest refugees have endured." -by Diane S. Marton, School Library Journal reviewer
"A rare simplicity and sharp focus" by Roger Sutton, Bulletin for the Center for Children for Children's Books reviewer
"Whelan's characters are distinctive, and her story is riveting, haunting, and memorable." - Booklist
"A moving story, wonderfully told and profoundly true." - Ellen Moore, Amnesty International USA
A Time To Keep Silent
Claire Rosser, writing in Kliatt, characterized the book as "strong and life-affirming" and noted that "there is suspense amidst the story of emotional healing."
Summary of Books:
In Once on This Island, set in 1812, it wasn't enough that 12 year old Mary's mother had died shortly after her birth. Now the island, her homeland that she so loved, was being threatened by the British and her Papa would be forced to go away. Life on Mackinaw Island had seemed so peaceful until that time that it was captured by the British. Mary's Papa, an immigrant from Ireland would not stand to have the British take land from him again as they had in Ireland. Refusing to take the British oath, he was shipped off the island to help fight the war against the British in Detroit. His three children would be entrusted to maintain the farm. They would be safe on the British-occupied island. Papa would only be away a few months at the most. Along with the help of her older siblings, Mary O'Shea maintains the family farm for three years. During this time Jacques, her brother, dreams of fighting the British and is forced to leave the island. He later becomes a fur trader. Angelique, Mary's oldest sister, begins to have eyes for one of the British soldiers, to the Mary's dismay. Mary's childhood friend, Gavin (White Hawk), who was adopted by a white family, finds his clan. Mary is saddened by his need to be with his people, because her feelings for him are beginning to run deeper. Times are difficult. The winters on the island are especially tough. Supplies are short and sometimes the British soldiers use force to get the needed supplies. It is Mary's courage and strong-will that get her through this time. When the war is over, life may return to normal, but it will never be the same.
Night of the Full Moon is a dramatic sequel to Next Spring an Oriole which is a historical novel set in 1837 and describes Libby's experience of moving from Virginia to Michigan. This is a portrait of two young girls; one is white, one Native American. The setting of this story is Saginaw, Michigan and the villages nearby. Libby, the main character has a friend, Fawn, who is a Potawatomi Indian. Libby wishes she could be one of the Indians hearing the story of the Potawatomi's life from Fawn. On the night of the full moon, Libby sneaks away from home to attend a native ceremony, breaking a promise to her father. Government soldiers ride into camp to round up the Potawatomis and force them from their land. Libby is also imposed to go with them, mistaken for one of the tribe. She is driven to the place far away from home. Strong friendship and trust are built between Libby and Fawn, Libby's family and Fawn's tribe. This story will enhance students' understanding of the tragedy that many Indian tribes have suffered throughout the American history and the cultural values of Native American heritage.
Goodbye, Vietnam is the story of thirteen-year-old Mai, whose family is forced to leave its village, because her grandmother was accused of practicing folk medicine, looked upon as a form of witchcraft by the Vietnamese government. The family endures a dangerous and harsh voyage on a small, crowded boat hoping to seek freedom in Hong Kong. When they arrive there, the situation is not as good as they expected. There are many Vietnamese refugees, like them, in a shelter, all of whom have been dreaming of a better life. Many have been living in these crowded shelters for some time and know in the end they may be forced to return to Vietnam. Mai's family is one of the lucky few, who have family in another country, the United States. With relatives to sponsor them, Mai and her family will soon be on their way to a better life. This touching story gives readers a deep insight of one of the crucial issues of our multicultural society.
In A Time To Keep Silent, Clair Lothrop is a thirteen year old minister's daughter who has recently lost her mother to illness. In a misguided attempt to deal with her grief and her father's inattentiveness, Clair stops speaking. Her father, who runs a prosperous, large church, then decides to move to the remote wilderness of Michigan, where he hopes to start a mission church. Clair is forced to give up her comfortable suburban existence. She is determined now more than ever to keep silent, in an effort to prove to her father that moving away from the city will not cure her. Clair discovers that living in the country, with all its spiders, bugs, and lack of conveniences, brings adventure as well. She shares these adventures with her new friend Dorrie, a poverty-stricken, abused and neglected girl who has also recently lost her mother. Through this new and powerful friendship, Clair discovers fortitude and heroism, and questions the wisdom of keeping silent.
Once On This Island
Several characters in this novel experience inner journeys. For instance, Jacques struggles with his duty to keep the farm safe or fight against the British; Gavin loves the white family that adopted him, yet he needs to know more of his Ottawa tribal ways; Angelique slowly falls in love with the enemy; Mary, a child, must struggle to maintain the farm which holds so much pride for this family. Ask students to choose a character and write a seven day journal from that character's point of view, depicting that character's struggle, the decisions to be made and why those choices were important.
Throughout this novel we get a sense of the beauty of Mackinaw Island. While many of us have visited this treasured spot, we do not know what it may have looked like in 1812. In pairs, using magazines, ask students to compile a collage reflecting the beauty of the island as depicted in this book.
Mary is a descendent of Irish and French immigrant parents. Gavin, who was from the Ottawa tribe was adopted by a white family and does not know his parents. Have students design family tree beginning with themselves and going back four generations to discover their own heritage.
The Night of the Full Moon provides students with a chance to develop an understanding and appreciation of the Native American people and their culture. Have students discuss in brainstorming, asking questions such as, "What does the Potawatomis tribe value in their culture?" "How different is the Native American culture from your own?", " How about the similarities?" "What do you like in their traditions or cultural values?"
The Night of the Full Moon depicts the beautiful friendship beyond the cultural barrier and strong family bond. Have students think what friend/family means to them, comparing the relationship of the characters in the story and write the response journal regarding this topic, or create their own story about their friends and family.
Goodbye, Vietnam ends with Mai's family leaving for the United States, seeking a new life. Have students create the continuing story, a new ending. The teacher may ask,"What do you think would happen to Mai and her family in the United States?" This activity will enhance student creativity and imagination.
Many people living in our society today were involved in some way during the Vietnam War. Ask students to interview family members, parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles to discover what they remember about that time. As a class, develop a list of interview questions.
A Time to Keep Silent, among other issues, focuses on a culture clash between Clair, who grew up in the comfortable suburbs, and her new wilderness home. Students can create a poster advocating either living in the city or living in the country. This will help stimulate a discussion regarding the differing cultures of country and city life.
In order to give the text a visual representation and stimulate hands-on learning, students can draw a map of the wilderness where Clair lives, including the stone house, Dorrie's home and hideout, the pond, the berry bowl, and the church.
Whelan's writings share the grandness of the nature and the life of the people coexisting with the beauty and harshness of nature on a dynamic scale. Time and again her works portray female protagonists who experience growth through an inner journey. Indeed, her texts provide cross-cultural experiences for both her characters and her readers.
Whelan, Gloria. A Time To Keep Silent ( 1993). William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, Grand Rapids, MI. (first published in 1979)
Goodbye, Vietnam (1992). Random House, NY.
Night of the Full Moon (1993). Knopf, NY.
Once On This Island (1995). HarperCollins, NY.
Booklist. Vol 92, n. 3, October 1, 1995. P. 321. American Library Association, Chicago, IL.
Contemporary Authors Vol 101, p. 553. Gale Research Co., Detroit, MI
Michigan Authors (3rd ed) p. 382. Hillsdale Educational Publishers, Hillsdale, MI
School Library Journal Vol. 41, n. 11, Nov. 1995. p. 107-108. R. R. Bowker Co., NY.
Something About the Author Vol 85, p. 201-204. Gale Research Co., Detroit, MI
Page compiled in part by: Shelli Anderson, Akemi Katayama, and Erin Sullivan
Go back to the AUTHORS PAGE.
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This web page was last updated on:
21 June 2007
All content on this and all other related pages is Copyright ©
The Alliance for the Study and Teaching of Adolescent Literature at Rhode Island College. | {
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Used to be you could buy records in department stores, shopping malls and even in the occasional drug store or truck stop. That was around the same time record stores were somewhat plentiful, with the good ones operating as much as social epicenters for music communities as retail outlets.
Today, music shopping is usually done at one’s home or office by point-and-click. And that’s just for folks that choose to purchase and download music legally.
So, as we have in recent years when presenting our annual holiday music gift guide, we encourage you to explore the joy to shopping for music at an actual record store and purchasing gifts you can actually see, hold and wrap.
If you’re hopelessly devoted to digital, we understand. But we implore you to purchase the music honestly and legally. We can’t have recordings themselves going the way of the record stores.
And now, the big question: what music is worth plucking down your hard-earned cash for in the first place? For that, you have come to the right place. Here are 18 critic’s pick selections from fields of pop, rock, jazz, country, hip hop and more varying from $7 to just under $30. On, then, with the sounds of the season.
+ Brian Eno: Lux – Producer, instrumentalist and sonic stylist Eno retreats from recent pop experiments back to his atmospheric ambient sounds of the ‘70s and ‘80s. In other words, Lux is 75-plus minutes of peace and quiet.
+ Andrew Bird: Hands of Glory – A wonderful, stylistically far reaching dessert of a record with songs that touch on Ryan Adams-style Americana, old timey country and pop deconstructions full of stark, atmospheric color.
+ Led Zeppelin: Celebration Day – At last, the December 2007 reunion concert by one of rock’s most storied acts surfaces as a dynamic double CD/single DVD package. Even as a pack of pop elders, the Zep crew still sounds commanding.
+ Various artists: 10-in-20 – Subtitled A Lexington Recording Project, this is the culmination of nearly two years worth of local studio sessions. The results make for one of the best sounding and most gloriously diverse local music samplers ever.
+ Donald Fagen: Sunken Condos – The man from Steely Dan returns with a new solo recording full of enough sleek jazz/pop sophistication and sardonic storylines to make it indistinguishable from music made during his band’s glory years.
+ Neil Young and Crazy Horse: Psychedelic Pill – No surprises here, other than the fact that in an on-again, off-again alliance that has spanned well over 40 years, Neil Young and Crazy Horse still fashion lo-fi, post-grunge jams that fascinate.
+ Punch Brothers: Ahoy! – Call this one a stocking stuffer. The youthful and wildly industrious string music brigade offers twists on traditional tunes, assorted covers and more on a spry five-song EP that retails for about $7.
+ Tift Merritt: Traveling Alone – One of Americana music’s great songwriters, Traveling Alone is a statement that defines, alternately, confidence, defiance and vulnerability. Similarly, its music runs from lean acoustics to buoyant, rockish grooves.
+ The Rolling Stones: Grrrr! – The die-hard fans get two new tunes that are actually pretty decent. But at heart, Grrr! is just another greatest hits package to commemorate the Stones’ 50th anniversary. Still, it’s pretty hard to argue with the material.
+ Public Enemy: The Evil Empire of Everything – A companion disc of sorts to last summer’s Most of My Heroes Still Don’t Appear on No Stamp, Evil Empire solidifies the return of rap music’s most socially conscious forefathers.
+ Jamey Johnson: Living for a Song – A disciple of the country outlaw movement reveals a staunchly traditional streak on this sterling tribute to songsmith Hank Cochran. Emmylou Harris, Alison Krauss, Merle Haggard and others serve as guests.
+ Branford Marsalis Quartet: Four MFs Playin’ Tunes – Jazz titan Marsalis reconvenes his longrunning quartet with new drummer Justin Faulkner and a set of predominantly original tunes both playful and rambunctious.
+ Preservation Hall Jazz Band: St. Peter and 57th St. – Speaking of 50th anniversaries, New Orleans’ Preservation Hall Jazz Band celebrated theirs at Carnegie Hall. St. Peter brings it home with help from Trombone Shorty, Jim James and others.
+ Manu Katche: Manu Katche – French drummer Katche has been the engine drummer for, among others, Peter Gabriel. But his recordings are studies in cool. This self-titled fourth CD for the ECM label reflects lustrous grooves of old school soul and subtle jazz.
+ Marillion: Sounds That Can’t Be Made – The ongoing evolution of Marillion from a prog unit into a band with a massive orchestral pop sound of its own drives Sounds. The opening suite Gaza, though, is proving to be unintentionally timely.
+ Frank Zappa: Make a Jazz Noise Here – Nearly the entire Zappa catalog – some 60-plus albums – were reissued in recent months. Jazz Noise was picked here for its retrospective/revisionist slant. But, really, any Zappa CD makes a killer gift.
+ John Cale: Shifty Adventures in Nookie Wood – Ever the pop pioneer, this founding member of the Velvet Underground explores a thoroughly modern musical view on Nookie Wood with sounds that run from ambient to abstract.
+ Peter Gabriel: So – That the 26th anniversary of the career redefining So offers a new, remastered look at Gabriel’s most popular songs isn’t new. But packaging it with two discs of unreleased concert music from a 1987 stadium show in Athens sure is. | {
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Of course, Korea has a long history of its own music—traditional folk music in various forms. But Kpop, as we know it today, got its start as a result of the Korean War. Rock, Pop, and folk music from the West spread in the new 'South' Korea through the alliance of military servicemen. Koreans took the influence of this music and integrated it into their own. Many musical trends over the decades in the West were reflected in South Korea in their own way.
The 90s brought similar reflections of boy/girl-band pop along with hip-hop and techno. Singing and dancing in formation with elaborate choreography got it's start at the time. This is what I call the '1st Generation'. The Big Three companies were established and beginning to structure their training systems. Economically, a financial crisis in Asia affected South Korea in the late 90s. The first iconic idol groups surged in popularity for the escapism and fantasy they provided from the daily drudgery of school and work. They were a symbol of youth, wealth, and fame, which was a powerful motivator to the kids watching their TV sets at home. Many of those young fans would grow up to become the '2nd Generation' of idols.
The 2nd Generation made a huge leap in quality. They were selected for better looks, better voices, trained with better choreography, and many of the trainees worked for long years raising those standards for themselves. Costumes got flashier. Hair got bigger. The groups that debuted during this era gained rapid popularity and huge fanclubs built themselves into the culture in a big way. This is when companies were able to see the true potential of Kpop as a 'thing'—as a real power in South Korea. In early 2008, a big push could be seen. Branding of groups became paramount and the music industry was treated to a makeover in sound and style. The '3rd Generation' was born as the shiny, sleek, colorful, surreal, iconic explosion of groups and music videos we see today. Stylistically, there is a plateau currently. The 'look' of Kpop has become consistent in it's production value at the highest level. Trends shift in a more subtle way, usually pertaining to popularity of a certain sound (ie. jazz/brass/dubstep) or fashion concepts (ie. street-wear/overtly sexy/hyper cute).
On the current generation:
One could suggest that we are now in a 4th Generation. Characteristics might include the sheer massive volume of yearly debuts and global recognition beyond the fans that already exist. Many Kpop tours now include venues outside of Asia, including special festivals, concerts, and presence at pop-culture conventions. Whether Kpop will dramatically evolve again in the near future or fade into obscurity remains to be seen! | {
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Two unlikely GOP presidential maybes – short-sighted vulgarian Donald Trump and out-of-sight Jon Huntsman – have campaign machinery ready and willing to promote their candidacies.
From Friday’s Wall Street Journal:
U.S. Ambassador to China Jon Huntsman Jr. will land in Washington on Friday with a presidential campaign-in-waiting, including staff and volunteers in New Hampshire, South Carolina and Florida, a polling firm and a fundraising operation built on a billionaire father’s network.
The only question: Does the campaign have a candidate?
Former Utah governor Huntsman has said nothing about a presidential run, but why get technical about it.
The other side of the two-headed coin is Donald Trump (R-Trump This).
From The New Republic:
Who’s behind The Donald’s run for president?
Over the past few weeks, many people have dismissed Donald Trump’s possible presidential campaign as a joke. But don’t tell that to the people volunteering behind the scenes—an eclectic crew of young enthusiasts, old Reagan hands, and one especially slimy and notorious political operative.
That last would be Roger Stone, “the veteran Republican operative who is only too happy to be described as a ‘hit man.'”
No wonder Trump is a hit, man. | {
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You may know Ali MacGraw from her saccharine flick, Love Story, ("Love is never having to say you're sorry"? Love is always having to say you're sorry, suckers!) But you should really get to know her: Check out this interview in which she speaks frankly about aging, Hollywood and being a "star." On why she loved making her theater debut last year, despite getting panned by the critics:
It was just jaw-droppingly scary but I worked through it. It was an ensemble piece of wonderful actors and I learned so much. I loved it in a way that I don't love the movies because I never felt that it was about 'Well, what do you look like? Let's get her a turtleneck because her neck is too crepe-y.'
On why she, like Gwyneth and Madonna, she wishes she lived abroad:
So often I wish I could work in Europe because in Europe there's more reverence for people over 35. And we get to look like women over 35 really look. Which I think is important because there's a whole generation coming up who better understand that they don't have to completely surgically alter themselves by 32 to even show up to work. [In Europe] they have people like Vanessa Redgrave and all these great older brilliant beautiful actors working. It's very rare in America that a major studio really goes that way.On being a "celebrity":
I've had to pay my rent in many different ways and my overnight 'celebrity' based on a couple of movies was unexpected, unprepared for, and I'm so grateful that before I was in my late 20s I had to work for 15 years doing so many things in the arts and in fashion. I'm a great waitress, and I'm a very good maid. I just love knowing I'm not above anything it will take to keep the roof from leaking.On her detox-tastic ways:
I live a very healthy lifestyle that would probably bore the daylights out of people. I do yoga every day. I meditate. I walk my dog for 40 minutes even if it means getting up at 5:30 in the morning because I want the stillness. I do all the things we were told as kids: I don't smoke or do drugs, I don't drink. It's not to be prissy; it's just that it's healthier for me.On why young Hollywood needs to pull it together and needs to be protected:
We're watching now all these kids who get shot out of a gun at 16 looking cuter than anybody and then two years later they have great bodies and they're sex objects. They're babies and they've never had grounding. Nowadays I think the paparazzi are so frightening and the assumption is that this job includes access to your private life, too. It's a tough time.Dear Ali: Please open up your Sante Fe home to Lohan, Britney and Winehouse — STAT!
Ali MacGraw, Defining Beauty [CBS News] | {
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Supreme Court upholds sex offender registration laws
From Bill Mears
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The Supreme Court has given states the green light to continue posting the names and pictures of convicted sex offenders on the Internet. And justices rejected attempts by a sex offender to prove he is no longer dangerous.
At issue was whether such laws amount to a second punishment for those already convicted for their crimes, and whether the laws violate an offender's due process rights. The court upheld the right of state legislatures to impose registries on sex offenders.
Every state has a so-called "Megan's law," named after Megan Kanka, a 7-year-old New Jersey girl kidnapped, raped, and murdered by a twice-convicted sex offender who lived across the street.
These laws require convicted sex offenders and certain other types of felons released from prison to register with local authorities. Such information is typically available to the public through print and Internet sources.
In the first case from Alaska, the question was whether a state law violated the constitutional guarantee against ex post facto, or punishment after the fact.
One "John Doe" was convicted of abusing his young daughter, the other man abused a 14-year-old girl. Both men were released in 1990, before the state passed its sex offender registration law. They argue they had served their sentences and wanted to put their crimes behind them.
The court decided the state legislature intended the law to be regulatory, not punitive in nature.
Writing for a 6-3 majority, Justice Anthony Kennedy said: "Our system does not treat dissemination of truthful information in furtherance of legitimate governmental objection as punishment." And Kennedy noted, "The purpose and the principal effect of notification are to inform the public for its own safety, not to humiliate the offender."
But in her dissent, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg disagreed. "However plain it may be that a former sex offender currently poses no threat of recidivism, he will remain subject to long-term monitoring and inescapable humiliation," she said.
The other case involves whether Connecticut's sex offender registration law violates due process because offenders are not allowed hearings to see if they are currently a danger to society.
In this case, the "John Doe" claims the Connecticut registry does not differentiate between the seriousness of each offender's crimes, and doesn't allow for a hearing regarding his "current dangerousness" before information about him and his crimes are made public.
Chief Justice William Rehnquist wrote for a unanimous court that even if the John Doe "could prove he is not likely to be currently dangerous, Connecticut has decided that the registry information of all offenders -- currently dangerous or not -- must be publicly disclosed."
Supporters of these registration laws say citizens deserve to know if convicted sex offenders are living in their neighborhoods, and argue registration laws are not unfair, since their convictions are already a matter of public record.
Opponents of the law call it a "government-imposed stigma" preventing those convicted deserve to move on with their lives after serving their time. They say such laws represent an overly intrusive invasion of privacy, since other criminal records are not subject to such readily available public scrutiny.
The cases are Smith v. Doe, 01-729 and Connecticut Dept. of Public Safety v. Doe, 01-1231. | {
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Generic Name: brompheniramine maleate and pseudoephedrine hydrochloride
Dosage Form: oral solution
Disclaimer: This drug has not been found by FDA to be safe and effective, and this labeling has not been approved by FDA. For further information about unapproved drugs, click here.
LoHist PD Description
LoHist PD Pediatric Drops is a cherry flavored, clear liquid antihistamine/decongestant.
Each dropperful (1 mL) for oral administration contains:
Brompheniramine Maleate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 mg
Pseudoephedrine HCl . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12.5 mg
Inactive Ingredients: Cherry flavor, citric acid, glycerin, sodium benzoate, propylene glycol, purified water, sodium saccharin, and sorbitol.
Brompheniramine Maleate is an antihistamine with the chemical name 2-Pyridinepropanamine, γ-(4-bromophenyl)-N,N-dimethyl-, (±)-, (Z) -2-butenedioate (1:1). Its structure is as follows:
C16H19BrN2 • C4H4O4 M.W. 435.31
Pseudoephedrine Hydrochloride is a nasal decongestant with the chemical name:
benzenemethanol, α-[1-(methylamino)ethyl]-, [S-(R*,R*)]-, hydrochloride. Its structure is as follows:
C10H15NO • HCl M.W. 201.69
LoHist PD - Clinical Pharmacology
Brompheniramine maleate is a histamine antagonist, specifically an H1-receptor-blocking agent belonging to the alkylamine class of antihistamines. Antihistamines appear to compete with histamine for receptor sites on effector cells. Brompheniramine also has anticholinergic (drying) and sedative effects. Among the antihistaminic effects, it antagonizes the allergic response (vasodilatation, increased vascular permeability, increased mucus secretion) of nasal tissue. Brompheniramine is well absorbed from the gastrointestinal tract, with peak plasma concentration after single, oral doses of 4 mg reached in 5 hours; urinary excretion is the major route of elimination, mostly as products of biodegradation; the liver is assumed to be the main site of metabolic transformation.
Pseudoephedrine hydrochloride is an orally effective nasal decongestant that acts on alpha-adrenergic receptors in the mucosa of the respiratory tract producing vasoconstriction. Pseudoephedrine shrinks swollen nasal mucous membranes, reduces tissue hyperemia, edema, and nasal congestion and increases nasal airway patency. Eustachian ostia may be opened. Pseudoephedrine produces little if any rebound congestion.
Indications and Usage for LoHist PD
LoHist PD is indicated for the temporary relief of nasal congestion and pressure, runny nose, sneezing, itching of the nose or throat, and itchy watery eyes, due to hay fever, or other upper respiratory allergies (allergic rhinitis).
LoHist PD is contraindicated in patients with hypersensitivity or idiosyncrasy to any of its ingredients, patients taking monoamine oxidase (MAO) inhibitors or for two weeks after stopping the MAOI drug (see PRECAUTIONS, Drug Interactions section), patients with narrow-angle glaucoma, urinary retention, peptic ulcer, severe hypertension, severe coronary artery disease, patients with breathing problems such as emphysema or chronic bronchitis, or nursing mothers. Antihistamines should not be used to treat lower respiratory tract conditions including asthma.
Do not exceed recommended dosage. If nervousness, dizziness, or sleeplessness occur, discontinue use and consult a physician. If symptoms do not improve within 7 days or are accompanied by fever, consult a physician.
Sympathomimetic amines should be used judiciously and sparingly in patients with hypertension, diabetes mellitus, ischemic heart disease, increased intraocular pressure, hyperthyroidism or prostatic hypertrophy. Sympathomimetics may produce central nervous system stimulation with convulsions or cardiovascular collapse with accompanying hypotension.
Antihistamines may impair mental and physical abilities required for the performance of potentially hazardous tasks, such as driving a vehicle or operating machinery, and may impair mental alertness in children. In the young child, they may produce excitation.
Because of its antihistamine component, LoHist PD should be used with caution in patients with a history of bronchial asthma, narrow angle glaucoma, gastrointestinal obstruction, or urinary bladder neck obstruction. Because of its sympathomimetic component, this syrup should be used with caution in patients with diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, or thyroid disease.
Information for Patients
Antihistamines may cause drowsiness and ambulatory patients who operate machinery or motor vehicles should be cautioned accordingly.
MAO inhibitors and beta adrenergic blockers increase the effect of sympathomimetics. Sympathomimetics may reduce the antihypertensive effects of methyldopa, mecamylamine, reserpine and veratrum alkaloids. Concomitant use of antihistamines with alcohol, tricyclic antidepressants, barbiturates and other CNS depressants may have an additive effect.
Pregnancy Category C: Animal reproduction studies have not been conducted with LoHist PD. It is also not known whether LoHist PD can cause fetal harm when administered to a pregnant woman or can affect reproduction capacity. LoHist PD should be given to a pregnant woman only if clearly needed.
It is not known whether this drug is excreted in human milk. Because many drugs are excreted in human milk and because of the potential for serious adverse reactions in nursing infants from LoHist PD, a decision should be made to discontinue nursing or to discontinue the drug, taking into account the importance of the drug to the mother.
Hyperreactive individuals may display ephedrine-like reactions such as tachycardia, palpitations, headache, dizziness, or nausea. Patients sensitive to antihistamines may experience mild sedation. Sympathomimetic drugs have been associated with certain untoward reactions including fear, anxiety, tenseness, restlessness, tremor, weakness, pallor, respiratory difficulty, dysuria, insomnia, hallucinations, convulsions, CNS depression, arrhythmias, and cardiovascular collapse with hypotension.
Possible side effects of antihistamines are drowsiness, restlessness, dizziness, weakness, dry mouth, anorexia, nausea, headache, nervousness, blurring of vision, heartburn, dysuria and very rarely dermatitis. Patient idiosyncrasy to adrenergic agents may be manifested by insomnia, dizziness, weakness, tremor or arrhythmias.
No information is available as to specific results of an overdose of LoHist PD. The signs, symptoms and treatment described below are those of H1 antihistamines, and ephedrine overdose.
Symptoms: Should antihistamine effects predominate, central action constitutes the greatest danger. In the small child, symptoms include excitation, hallucination, ataxia, incoordination, tremors, flushed face and fever. Convulsions, fixed and dilated pupils, coma and death may occur in severe cases. In the adult, fever and flushing are uncommon; excitement leading to convulsion and postictal depression is often preceded by drowsiness and coma. Respiration is usually not seriously depressed; blood pressure is usually stable.
Should sympathomimetic symptoms predominate, central effects include restlessness, dizziness, tremor, hyperactive reflexes, talkativeness, irritability and insomnia. Cardiovascular and renal effects include difficulty in micturition, headache, flushing, palpitation, cardiac arrhythmia, hypertension with subsequent hypotension and circulatory collapse. Gastrointestinal effects include dry mouth, metallic taste, anorexia, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea and abdominal cramps.
Treatment: The stomach should be emptied promptly by emetics and/or gastric lavage. The installation of activated charcoal also should be considered. Cardiac function and serum electrolytes should be monitored and treatment initiated if indicated. If convulsions or marked CNS excitement occurs, diazepam may be used.
LoHist PD Dosage and Administration
|Children 6 to under 12 years of age||2 dropperfuls (2 mL) every 4-6 hours|
|Children 2 to under 6 years of age||1 dropperful (1 mL) every 4-6 hours|
|Children under 2||As directed by a physician|
How is LoHist PD Supplied
LoHist PD Pediatric Drops is supplied in bottles of 1 fl. oz. (30 mL), NDC 68047-011-30. Calibrated, shatter-proof dropper enclosed in each carton.
Storage and Handling
Store at 25°C (77°F); excursions permitted to 15°C-30°C (59°F-86°F). [See USP Controlled Room Temperature.]
LoHist PD contains safety seal under bottle cap. Pharmacist, dispense in original container.
KEEP THIS AND ALL MEDICATIONS OUT OF THE REACH OF CHILDREN. IN CASE OF ACCIDENTAL OVERDOSAGE, CONTACT A POISON CONTROL CENTER AND SEEK PROFESSIONAL ASSISTANCE IMMEDIATELY.
LARKEN LABORATORIES, INC.
Canton, MS 39046
PRINCIPAL DISPLAY PANEL
Figure 1: Product Label
Figure 2: Product Carton
brompheniramine maleate 1 mg/ pseudoephedrine hcl 12.5 mg/ 1ml solution/ drops
|Labeler - Larken Laboratories, Inc. (791043719)|
|Registrant - Larken Laboratories, Inc. (791043719)|
|Deltex Pharmaceuticals, Inc.||019851778||MANUFACTURE|
More about LoHist-PD (brompheniramine / pseudoephedrine)
- Other brands: Sildec | {
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Now that Adventure Time is up and running, I think it's time that I submit another character that is considered to play a major minor role when it comes to appearances. Today, I will start by showing you guys "how to draw Lumpy Space Princess", step by step. She is also called just L.S.P for short, and to be completely honest with you, I think she is going to be an ongoing character in the series. So far she has been seen in almost all the episodes. Her appearance is very, very simple. Lumpy Space Princess looks like a floating cloud, that is purple in color. She also has a set of arms, and hands, and she has a yellow star in the middle of what we would call a forehead. Despite her cloudy shaped body, L.S.P acts like a typical teenage girl. As with a lot of young princesses, she also has her moments when she goes on rampages and takes a teen fit. What some of you may not know is how all Lumpy Space People have fangs. No matter how you look at it, this purple beauty is a permanent and complimenting character on the series “Adventure Time with Finn and Jake. Just the fact that she is a floating cloud, makes wanting to "draw L.S.P", somewhat of a fun thing to do. I will be back in a bit with some more drawing lessons for you all to enjoy. In the mean time, have a go at this tutorial. | {
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If your heart was broken over last month's doomed plight of a wayward black bear that lumbered into Albany and was euthanized after 24 hours in a pine tree, perhaps you'll find some of comfort in this: The death of the Albany bear triggered an 11th-hour rescue of six others from an animal farm in this rural Washington County town.
On Tuesday, a half-dozen black bears — four siblings and their parents — began a 2,800-mile ride from the Ashville Game Farm to a sanctuary in San Diego. The rescue is a result of a collaboration between the state Department of Environmental Conservation and two animal rescue groups.
The ursine life-saving was set in motion after one of the organizations — founded by rock bands Styx and REO Speedwagon — called the DEC, pleading to spare the Albany bear. The humane response is the largest of its kind that veteran DEC officers on hand Tuesday said they have ever seen.
"This came out of just the one bear in Albany that died. That this rescue of six bears came from that is so beautiful," said Hannah Shaw, executive director of Rocking to the Rescue and daughter of Styx guitarist Tommy Shaw.
Hannah Shaw had called the DEC on May 27 when word of the young bear stuck in a tree on Rose Court generated a buzz in the media and drew crowds of onlookers to Albany. Shaw's group helps facilitate animal rescues, playing the role of matchmaker for wild animals in captivity in need of sanctuaries.
The DEC told Shaw that officials would let her know if there was anything she could do to help the Albany bear. But the next day, the agency euthanized the 175-pound male cub after it fell 70 feet from the tree. The unwitting local celebrity had to be killed because of the injuries it suffered in the city — it not only fell from the tree, but was also hit twice by cars and wounded with a DEC shotgun. It also had been tagged twice before for coming into neighborhoods and was deemed a danger to the public.
The DEC called Shaw to tell her the unfortunate news, but then asked for her help.
"They said, 'Can you help us with these other six black bears that need a home?'" Shaw recalled.
The Ashville Game Farm had long ago lost its license to hold the bears, and a court order said the ursines had to find a new home by June 5 or they would be removed and euthanized. The farm had legal run-ins in the past. Violations there ranged from a lemur pulling a child's hair to a tiger scratching a patron. The farm was stripped of its license to house its six bruins.
"We have been looking for a home for these bears for a while," said DEC Police Lt. Chris Ruckert.
Shaw reached out to Bobbi Brink, director of Lions, Tigers and Bears, an animal sanctuary in San Diego. Brink figured her facility could hold the bears for about a month. She scrambled to find another sanctuary that could care for the them for the rest of their lives. A black bear can live for 30 years in captivity and cost $10,000 per year to feed alone, Brink said. She found a sanctuary near Denver that could take the bears permanently.
Shaw secured a $52,000 grant from the ASCPA and another $10,000 from Rocking to the Rescue to transport the bears across the country and help build the family's new habitat. The sanctuaries provide an ersatz wilderness with about an acre per bear, telephone poles that mimic trees and a pond-like pool for bathing.
Jack Kittell, a veterinarian, checked out each of the bears Tuesday and said "They all look pretty good."
Later, surrounded by reporters, the bears were still groggy from tranquilizers administered for their physicals.
Ruckert, the DEC lieutenant of 23 years, said the Greenwich farm cared for the bears well but would not be able to do so for the decades to come.
That the DEC facilitated the rescue of the six bears contrasts with the widespread local perception of the agency after the Albany incident when it was painted as heartless and blasted by the public and a few officials for not saving the creature.
"These are very, very tough decisions we have to make," Ruckert said. Even if the Albany bear had not been badly hurt, state law required that it be placed immediately in a sanctuary or euthanized because it had twice intruded into communities, Ruckert said.
"We don't want to see any animals dying," said Joe Therrien, a DEC wildlife biologist. "We all went into the environmental field because we have a passion for what's out here."
The bear family will travel up to 900 miles a day in a trailer in cages. The father, Sebastian, and mother, Sasha, are both 7 years old. Dasha, Dora, Diego and Darwin are between 3 and 5.
Daily, they'll each down four gallons of water, two or three watermelons, about 10 peanut butter-and-jelly sandwiches and bags of apples.
On Tuesday, they were led into their cages by doughnuts stuck onto sticks. They were to spend the night parked outside a Saratoga Springs hotel and scheduled to leave for the first leg of their journey before dawn Wednesday.
[email protected] • 518-454-5414 • @BFitzgeraldTU | {
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This week, I have a bunch of interesting news, ranging from an intriguing new young adult and middle grade imprint and a free download of one of my favorite light-hearted romance novels.
Algonquin Young Readers, launching Fall 2013, is a new imprint of Algonquin Books dedicated to publishing works of the same literary merit and enduring qualities that are hallmarks of the Algonquin tradition.
Algonquin Books has released some interesting and well-performing fiction in the last few years (including the Water for Elephants), and this week they announced that they're launching an imprint focused on middle grade and young adult titles, Algonquin Young Readers. This is pretty intriguing, and it sounds like they're taking a literary approach to their acquisitions (they're posted on their Facebook page, linked above).
The one that piques my interest the most is Sara Farizan's If You Could Be Mine, which is about a lesbian teen in Iran, where being gay is punishable by death. (There's a preview up on Scribd.)
I'm excited to see where they go with this imprint, since I do think there's a market for more literary-minded books for young people.
In last week’s Fringe episode The Boy Must Live, viewers were introduced to September’s Notebook: The Bishop Paradox, a journal kept by the character Observer September. In the episode, Observer reveals to Walter Bishop that he’s been keeping a notebook full of all his observations. And then BAM, viewers are introduced to September’s Notebook.
According to a press release, Insight Editions teamed up with Warner Bros. and Fox to put out this work, integrating the book into the canon of the television program.
I really love the television show Fringe (though I'm catching up on the final season and am a bit... unsure... about it) for its creativity and innovative storytelling. I mean, how many times did they reset the entire story and it--amazingly--worked. I love the concept of a book that's part of a television show becoming an actual thing. So often we think of books and television as an either or proposition and I've maintained for ages that good storytelling is good storytelling, regardless of medium and news like this makes me feel like this opinion isn't so crazy.
Dear Bloggers, Verse Novelists, Writers and Friends.
I’m inviting you to participate in VerseDay 2013. I hope to make VerseDay a weekly event, every Thursday in 2013. Hosted by VerseNovels.com, VerseDay is a celebration of verse in all its forms, verse novels, poetry, hip hop, lyrics. Each week Versenovels.com will invite visitors to check out another blog wherein a post and/or giveaway will highlight verse.
Our friend Gabrielle is hosting a very cool year-long blogging event celebrating verse novels. You know we love verse novels, and will be hosting novel in verse week again this year (information on getting involved to come). So if you love verse novels, sign up to host verse day one week (or more!) this year.
- A favorite fun read of mine, Exclusively Yours by Shannon Stacey, is free through February 14, 2013. You can download it as an ePub ebook directly from the publisher or via Amazon for the Kindle edition. You'll never see an ATV the same way again. (Maggie's hilarious post about the Kowalskis pretty much epitomizes why this series is so enjoyable.)
- Lots of awesome news from Trish Doller, including that her much-anticipated sophomore novel, Where the Stars Still Shine, will be released sooner than originally planned--on September 24, 2013. Her debut, Something Like Normal, was one of my favorite books last year--and the only book I read twice--is currently on sale for Kindle for the very nice price of $1.99 (unfortunately, it's not price-matched for Nook or Kobo). If you haven't read SLN yet, you need to fix that right away.
- I adore the new cover to the book formerly known as Once Was Lost. Every single thing about it, actually. | {
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The top five picks in the June 24 NBA draft appear to be etched in stone.
Unless there's a sudden change of heart, Kentucky point guard John Wall should be the No. 1 pick of the Wizards.
Ohio State's Evan Turner, Georgia Tech's Derrick Favors, Syracuse's Wesley Johnson and Kentucky's DeMarcus Cousins are expected to round out the top five selections.
After that, things get a bit dicey.
While this may be a deep draft, it may not be full of immediate impact players.
One Western Conference general manager said the draft is "not deep on starters, but deep on rotation players."
Pacers director of scouting Ryan Carr agreed.
"I think there are a lot of guys that will be able to help teams," he told Indiana writers. "A lot of guys will get better, but it's going to depend on them putting in the work. You just have to find the right player that will help you with your pick."
Carr cautioned against judging any draft pick right away -- no matter where he is selected.
"You're drafting kids that could be just starting to find themselves," Carr said. "They have a lot of work ahead of them before they'll be a finished product. It's a process through all this. You work hard and evaluate, and you try to project where you think they will be."
Heat personnel man Chet Kammerer said the draft is loaded with good power forwards. But the center crop is a bit iffy.
"I would say this draft definitely doesn't have the point guard quality of last year," he said. "This year, I would say '4s' would be the strength of this draft, and maybe '3s.'
"Some of the centers, it was kind of disappointing when the measurements came out, of players we all thought were a little longer."
Other draft minutiae:
- Indications are the Cavaliers will attempt to purchase a first-round pick. They currently don't have a first- or second-round selection. It will likely take $3 million to do it. Second-rounders last year were selling for $2 million.
- The Cavs have many needs, beginning with a starting center. They also need a point guard, shooting guard and possibly a small forward if LeBron James leaves. If Shaquille O'Neal and Zydrunas Ilgauskas leave via free agency, they might be forced to play J.J. Hickson at center and bring Sasha Kaun over from Russia.
- Forward Gordon Hayward's play in leading Butler to the NCAA championship game has hurdled him almost instantly into the full glare of the NBA draft machine.
"It's kind of been surreal," the 6-foot-8 sophomore said.
After he's drafted, he will become the ninth active player from Indianapolis in the NBA.
"I really wasn't recruited in high school that much," Hayward said. "To go from almost giving up basketball, being a smaller kid, to playing at Butler, then to coming here, it's been kind of weird. But it has been exciting."
- Agent Mark Bartelstein said he "would not be surprised" if Hayward is selected in the top 10. Teams that have scheduled workouts for Hayward so far, with draft order: Sacramento (fifth), Golden State (sixth), Los Angeles Clippers (eighth), Utah (ninth), Indiana (10th), New Orleans (11th), Toronto (13th), Chicago (15th) and Milwaukee (17th).
- Look for Timberwolves GM David Kahn to be active trying to trade up from the fourth pick to the second pick for a chance to take Turner. Don't be surprised if either Al Jefferson or Kevin Love is traded by draft night.
- If the Wolves stay at No. 4 and don't move either up or down, they'll likely choose from between Johnson, Cousins or possibly Wake Forest small forward Al-Farouq Aminu.
- Andy Miller, the agent for Cavs guard Sebastian Telfair, said his client has opted into his deal for next season. He will earn $2.7 million.
- The Spurs will listen to offers for guard Tony Parker over the summer, but they are not "shopping" him. He is entering the final year of his contract worth $13.5 million.
The presumption that George Hill's development makes him expendable is not true, even though he's a good, young combo guard. He still can't run pick-and-roll smoothly, and that's only about 75 percent of the Spurs' offense. By the way, if anyone's interested in forward Richard Jefferson, pick up the phone.
- Hawks general manager Rick Sund said the team will do whatever it takes to re-sign guard Joe Johnson. But he's not the one writing the checks.
Hawks co-owner Michael Gearon said they don't want to sign anyone to a bad contract. He said their payroll has increased by $24 million since this current ownership group has taken over.
"What we haven't done is make a mistake with a bad contract," he said.
Even though Johnson will likely get a max contract, many observers think he's not a max player.
- Florida International coach Isiah Thomas said on a Miami radio show he has no problem if Heat president Pat Riley returns as coach.
"Here in Miami, with Dwyane Wade, you have one of the top two, three players in the game today, arguably 1A, 1B, 1C, when you talk about Wade, LeBron and Kobe," Thomas said. "Now you got a guy who's coached championships sitting up in the front office. Now if he decides that he wanted to come back down to the bench, I think there are few guys in this league who have that prerogative, and he's one of them."
- Spurs swingman Manu Ginobili's wife, Many (no, that is not a made-up name ... Manu and Many, Argentina's first couple) recently gave birth to twins named Dante and Nicola. One reason the Spurs committed $38.9 million over three seasons to the 33-year-old, injury-prone guard, is because his Argentine heritage is big with the San Antonio's Hispanic fan base.
"The only thing we've told him is, 'You have no clue how your life is going to change; and double so with twins,' " Spurs coach Gregg Popovich said.
- Poor A.J. Price. The former UConn guard fractured his patella in a charity game recently and will be out of action for four months. His contract is worth $762,000 next season, but it's not guaranteed.
Information for the NBA notebook was gathered by personal interviews and from other beat writers around the league. Finnan can be reached by e-mail at: | {
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During the month of March, de Young Artist Fellows Andy Diaz Hope and Laurel Roth exhibit their triptypch of tapestries, The Conflicts, which explores and illustrates the fundamental themes of conflict in literature. Their final piece, created during their yearlong fellowship at the museum, addresses the theme of "Human vs Him/Herself" by focusing on how human evolution has been driven by a combination of cooperation and competition in the face of conflict. Allegory of the Prisoner's Dilemma focuses on a massive Tower of Babel and other iconic examples of architecture that present a historical timeline from the dawn of mankind to the present day, and into the uncertain future.
The Conflicts lecture series
presented with Bergarde Galleries and Magnolia Editions
Piazzoni Murals Room
Saturday, March 16, 2 pm
Architecture Archi-torture Agri-tecture
Tuesday, March 26, 6:30 pm
From Digital to Woven Image: Making a Jacquard Tapestry
Saturday, March 30, 2 pm
The Stories We Live In: Architecture, Literature, and Ideology
Stefanie Sobelle received her PhD from Columbia University and her BA from Stanford University. She has taught at Gettysburg College, Sarah Lawrence College, Barnard College, Columbia, and Cooper Union. In addition to her teaching and scholarship, she has been a fiction editor at the Brooklyn Rail, and her book reviews have been published in Bookforum, the Financial Times, BOMB, Words Without Borders, and the Review of Contemporary Fiction, among other publications. Her research brings together literary and material history, focusing on the intersections of art, architecture, and literature in the late nineteenth-, twentieth-, and twenty-first-century culture. She is currently working on a book that employs concepts drawn from architectural thoery and practice to understand developments of the American novel throughout the twentieth century. | {
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(Damn, I don’t know if it’s 2013 or 2012 since I’ve called it 2012 for so long but it aired in 2013.)
(Looks amazing, doesn’t he? Too bad he’s just a tease because he’s not in the first episode! What’d ya expect, him to rock up on the first episode? No, we leave the good stuff for later!)
I will only be recapping the first couple of episodes to give people an idea of what I think of this show because I probably won’t have time to watch the entire series now, and I don’t want to be too invested with shows that aren’t English subbed because it drives me too crazy, especially if I’m crazy about it, I’m going to go mad because I can’t share it with more people.
My first impressions:
OMFG WOWWW A new Wuxia series, I’ve been waiting for this and so far, it has not disappointed me. It’s really awesome to watch and I’m already starting to be addicted to it.
When I saw the first 15 minutes, I was actually very confused
because I was being all “I’m gonna multitask and watch this while I do other stuff, watch me juggle! I’ve noticed a pattern with Jin Yong stories that there’s usually a long backstory in the beginning and this is no exception. However, I felt this was done quite well. Though, with all the new terms and sects and Chinese words I didn’t understand, I was a bit confused with who they were battling, so I went to rewatch the first 15 minutes again and it all started to make sense!
What I really love about the series is how much amazingly bright colors it has, it’s not often that you come across a Wuxia series with such bright colors and I’m a fan of colors. When I can see brightness and colors, I get all happy and chipper. So, I have to say, this show has an excellent use of purple, green and such colors. CGI looks AMAAAAZINGGG! I know people always seem to complain about CGI but I honestly love this, the fight scenes are amazing and I love how there’s these cool special effects to spice things up! That’s another thing I really enjoyed so far!
Actors – Oh man, so far they are brilliant, particularly Joe Cheng, who plays Dongfang Bubai. She’s extremely pretty and made it impossible for me to see Dongfang Bubai as a male. Oh dammit, must they always torture my senses? It’s like, damn she’s pretty but no, it’s a he. Wait, he’s handsome, but no, it’s clearly a she. Oh dear! I really love her elegance and she has that evil scheming look which is particularly fun to watch. I still treat him as a girl, even though this is not the case. With the actor – I swear some of them looks familiar, but I can’t think of where I may have seen them. Voice actors – Wow, absolutely amazing job with making this sound like a classic Wuxia Series. I love the voice dubbers, they just do such a fantastic job with bringing out the Wuxia feeling from this!
Young Ren Ying Ying is quite cute, she actually saw Dongfang do something to her father, but I think everyone else is too scared to challenge that. Now, I just wanna see Wallace Huo’s character!
Recap of the Storyline
So I had to do some digging up the Wikipedia for the proper names of the cults and sects. So this is just what I understood, it may not be 100% correct, because I often do misunderstand things in shows. So let me start off by saying, OMFG Jin Yong’s stories is always so interesting, especially the battles between sects. It makes you think who’s good or evil, then you realize, no – they’re not all perfect. I think the most interesting thing is, there’s this self-proclaimed orthodox sect called Five Mountains Sword Sects Alliance, who views the Sun Moon Holy Cult as evil, or the demonic cult. So, they’re set on battling each other.
Though, when you look at the people in the Five Mountain Sword Sect Alliance, some of them are seen as pretty cold and ruthless while others are very kind, yet at the same time, the Leader of the Sun Moon Holy Cult seems to have good points about him. So the “evil” everyone proclaims as demonic, are they really evil or just seen that way? As the orthodox sect, are they completely good?
So the first episode starts with a great battle between the orthodox sects and the so called demonic cult, resulting in lots of death! Five Mountain Sword Sect Alliance were like – We gotta get our asses up the Black Woods Cliff to have all those bastards’ live, but damn – the cliff is way too difficult to get up there. The chief of the Mount Song Sect, Zuo Lengshan seems to be one of those close-minded people who can’t seem to distinguishing real good from evil because he’s set on calling the cult demonic, which one of the female disciples seem to be very against. However, her Senior kept telling her to just bear with it.
Then, there’s this
beautiful lady young lad by the name of Dongfang Bubai – he looks like a girl/played by a girl but is really a castrated guy. Anyway, he goes to this mountain and a super powerful looking guy called Ren Woxing is inside learning some kickass martial art. His wife then comes to send some food, and Dongfang Bubai is plotting something up his sleeve. He fakes the fact that their daughter was captured by the Mountain sect, who can’t even find their way up the cliff.
Seriously, all those people who said Yuan Shan Shan didn’t look attractive or pretty enough for this role needs to get their eyes checked, she looked stunning and beautiful here.
Woxing’s wife, which I completely forgot her name, goes down to search for them, she runs straight into the Mountain sect and they have a battle, but alas, she wasn’t strong enough to beat them and got caught. Though, I gotta say – I always love that big clash of energy when they begin battle. It’s so exciting, that I just want it to last for a long time. When I heard the wife sing, I almost thought it was the ending credits. I was like… WTF? It’s over already? HAHA! But, as she was singing, the same girl who was opposed to the Mount Song Sect chief earlier released her and set her free. (Wait, she’s not a bird, what am I even saying?!)
The wife goes back but gets killed by Dongfang Bubai. ARGH Geez, the poor lady! She can’t have a moment of break, can she? At first, I thought she was the main character, but I was like… No way, she’s got a kid, she can’t be! I forgot that often, the same actress plays the daughter and the mother, which is a pretty cool idea! Anyway, Dongfang Bubai’s scheming some pretty evil things there, I wonder what his goals are with the secret killing, then blaming it on the Mountain Sect. Wow, I was surprised to see Woxing come out in such a rage upon finding that his wife is dead. He reminds me a bit of Huang Yaoshi that he looks to be cold but he really has emotions. Anyway, the wife’s dead and now, Woxing is out to seek revenge with the Mountain Sect.
They meet down there and have this huge battle – Woxing vs Zuo Lengshan but both their martial arts were so powerful that they were pretty evenly matched. Now this was cool, because we saw some cool kickass looking attack. Woxing was practicing this badass looking technique called Star Sucking Great Skill, which sucks out the internal energy of someone. However, Zuo wasn’t exactly easy to be toyed with as he’s pretty powerful himself. The two realize that they’d just get really badly injured if they kept going, so stopped and Woxing said he’ll be back in a month to take revenge.
Dongfang Bubai gets the daughter back but she’s injured too, Woxing tries to heal her with internal energy but at this crucial moment, Dongfang hit him on a spot and drove him into madness. Not kidding, he just went insane and started this killing spree. I KNOW WHY!! Dongfang Bubai wanted the position to be the cult leader, what’s why he planned this, at least that’s what I think! Now, he’s like crowned as the new leader with a whole new outfit. OOHHHH I see things are going to be spicy!
(Dangfang Bubai as the new Leader of the Sun Moon Holy Cult)
Final Thoughts about the Episode
Damn, I really wanted to see Wallace Huo in the first episode, but it makes sense he wouldn’t appear yet. I have to say, I simply love the special affects, even some of the poster makes me feel that this is like a adaptation of the Swordsman Online Game, which is amazing. Wuxia mixed with fantasy elements is like the greatest thing ever. I can’t wait to see where this is heading!
AHHHH and I’m typing this as I’m watching the beginning of episode 2, this is seriously getting good, I absolutely adore the actress who plays Dongfan Bubai, and her voice actress. She just makes such an interesting character, by the way she speaks, especially when she declares Ren Ying Ying as Shenggu (some kind of title) for the cult, and she would be treated like the sect leader. I don’t know why, I just love that “evil” sort of look on her face!
(Seriously, how could anyone see
her him as a guy?!)
Last thing, the part at the end when Dongfang Bubai was made the new Leader totally had a Naruto feeling because of the kickass “oooh” music they used! (Even the cult members look like ninjas!)
Episode 2 Recap and Thoughts
I find it really funny that in almost every show I watch, the first episode always confused me but episode 2 is like, so easy to understand in comparison!
Now I get why Dongfang Bubai (by the way, his name means Invincible East just in case anyone is interested) made Ying Ying as Shenggu, she gave him the Sunflower Manual, a treasure of the Sun Moon Holy Cult, which only the Leader can have.
There was a flashback scene of Woxing explaining to Yingying about the Sunflower Manual, the supreme martial arts that it contains, which means lots of people are probably going to want to seize it! Dammit, they need a copier so they can all photocopy the pages. Surely it’s what’s inside it that people want, not the external book, right? But then again – if everyone has a copy, they’d all be Jianghu martial art experts, and they’d need another manual to top that. Oh man, little Ying Ying is cute! I love how innocent she is, Sunflower Manual – is that a book about planting sunflowers? I would’ve thought so too if I was her!
I really enjoyed seeing some interaction scenes between Yingying and her father, from the way they talk, I can see he was a very caring father, and treated her extremely well! And wow, as he was explaining, you could just see that beautiful colors of orange, gold, yellow that makes everything so amazing! I always emphasize on how much I love colors and this show does it so well!
Oh man, Dongfang Bubai has dived 100% in his Sunflower Manual training and he’s gotten all these girls to dance with him and he finally decided to dress as a girl himself. Now, I can finally call him, her, right? ARGH this still confuses the heck out of me. No, she’s still a him, her. It, shim… I’m gonna have debates with myself until the end of time. Her red dress looks really pretty and even the poor man who went in there to see her was confused about how he really felt about Dongfang.
Oh yes, yes! YES! We finally get to see some of the main characters now! AHHH I AM SO EXCITED! Oh God, I have to say – I’m LOVING THE ATMOSPHERE! It’s so light hearted and happy, the students of course, are driving the teacher into madness by playing tricks on him. This is reminding me of the school moments in Seven of the Sky! I am SO HAPPY they decided to implement some humor in this because this is what makes me truly enjoy a Wuxia series.
ROFL, the students poked this random branch up the teacher’s nose. This is classic!
I’m already loving Linghu Chong’s character, he seems so carefree! Since I never watched this before, I always thought he was a very serious character from the pictures I saw. This shows how awesome Wallace Huo is with humorous characters too. I love it when they play the light hearted songs in the background! Something that’s intriguing me. How come there’s only one female student? This is just like Seven of the Sky where Xiaoqi looked to be the only female out of the whole class of males. This is sooooo giving me those familiar feelings, which is really exciting.
The moment when the teacher wakes up to find his class has went crazy was absolutely hilarious. He’s like: Zzzzzzzzz (suddenly wakes up) WTF? HOW DAREZ U!!??? WANT ME TO WHACK YOU WITH THE WHIP?!! IMMA GONNA TEACH YOU A LESSON!! (Rushes forward, students trip him and he falls) THIS IS NEVER GONNA END BETWEEN YOU AND ME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Now I’m a bit confused. Was there a big time skip? I kind of wish they wrote on the screen “20 Years Later” or something like that.
I’m sure there was a time skip. A master was looking at the empty box which the Sunflower Manual used to be in, and apparently it was stolen by the Sun Moon Holy Cult. There were a few techniques/moves which he must pass down to all generations of the Mount Hua Sect which he imparted to a young dude. Oh and I just did a wiki and found out that Mount Hua Sect is the Linghu Chong’s sect. (One day, I’m gonna get the hang of the spelling of his name, I swear!) – Wow, all this was a flashback. The amount of flashbacks and time skips reminds me totally of Qin’s Moon Season 3 beginning! Looks like 10 years has passed since Dongfang Bubai had stolen the place.
OH I GET IT NOW! The lady which came in telling him the Old Teacher wanted to quit was that same one who appeared in the first episode, that released Ren Ying Ying’s mother, her Senior was that young lad we saw just now that was imparted the Sunflower Manual skill. At least, I think this is the case. THIS IS ALL MAKING SENSE NOW! I love it when pieces come together and make sense.
As I would have guessed, the Teacher could not stand all those mischievous students and demanded to quit, and for pissing off more than five teachers – All the students got a beating. I feel for them because who would want this old dude to just make you recite and copy words all day? That would be so boring. Poor students are just beaten the crap out of them. Oh dear! They even asked to rest for a few days and not go to the mountains, which of course – the Master was like, “You better go down the mountain or else!! – Keep on beating them!” But, I saw them wink at each other!
OMFG THIS IS A GENIUS! GOD I LOVE THIS! Turns out this was all a trap. They were all wearing these pads that made them not feel the pain. No wonder their “Aiya” seems to be a bit fake before. I LOVE the funny ways they glance at each other, like they have everything planned. Now that they’re on the mountains and didn’t even get injured, they can spend the day just having fun.
The moment when the two guys were talking about Linghu Chong getting married to his Junior totally made me realize something! He ends up with Ren Ying Ying, which means –
OMFG I think I just made a Discovery on Romances!
OMG, you know – Watching this just suddenly made me realize something. It seems that the pairings are never when the girl and guy grew up together or in the same sect. They always meet in the show, and have never seen each other beforehand. Just think: Huang Rong and Guo Jing met that way, whereas he never felt any romance for Hua Zheng. Then, there’s Ruohan who met Jianping, and he didn’t have feelings for his Junior Sister who grew up with him in the same sect. Then, there was also Love of the Millennium, where Xu Xian loved Bai Suzhen instead of her Junior, though they did have a history so the situation is kind of different. Even in Xuan Yuan Sword, Jingchou never had any romance with the Junior in Ghost Valley, whereas her personality was even a bit similar to Yu’er, yet he was with Yu’er at the end. I could go on because I think there are plenty more examples.
Notice how the guy never seems to like the girl that’s his junior/senior disciple and always seems to treat her as a sister, while he always seems to fall in love with the girl he meets for the first time in the series. Meanwhile, the girl from the same sect/hometown seems to always like the guy! I’m almost certain in Swordsman 2013, Linghu Chong gets together with Ren Ying Ying at the end, though I don’t know if his Junior likes him that way, but again – he never got with the girl in the same sect! Wow, that’s a trend I never noticed until now, it’s fascinating discovering these things!
Anyway, so that discovery aside, let me get back to the story –
Inside a brothel, Dongfang Bubai is in there dancing (luring people?). Wow, he hasn’t aged a day since the last we saw him! Hahahaha this is the first time I’ve seen this: A male is played by a female, and dresses as a female, and the others mistaken him as a female. This is totally opposite from normal where the female is dressed as a male and everyone is mistaken. Oh dear, the two guys ditched their little junior to go into a brothel. That’s just like something they’d do!
Wow, Dongfang Bubai is luring men in, pretending to be Dongfang Bubai and then killing them. Harsh! I wonder why he’s doing that, for martial art practice? Well, he sure has fans who think he’s very pretty and won’t let him go, so they followed him outside, only to have Linghu Chong make fun of their sect, and they start this battle. Oh God, the best part was, they fought, Linghu Chong beat them, and then they threw a bomb, and suddenly a mysterious girl with a mask (she’s the little junior from before) comes and says that she’s Dongfang Bubai. I can only imagine what the real Dongfang Bubai, who was just standing there watching all this happening, is thinking. It’s like you go up to a person not knowing who they are and introduce yourself as their identity.
OMFG I LOVE Linghu Chong, at least in this version – He freaking rocks. A smart talker, hyped, funny – He reminds me of characters Hu Ge has played. AHHH I’ve been waiting for Wallace Huo to act as a character like this, especially that he also likes wine!
When the guys ripped off Little Junior’s mask, they were like, “Never imagined the great Dongfang Bubai is just a little girl – this is the best joke I’ve heard all day!” I nearly spat my food out with laughter, because Dongfang Bubai is in fact, like a little girl! (When I say little, I don’t mean a kid, but just a young girl!) Seems like Dongfang Bubai is intrigued by this Linghu Chong.
Wow, Dongfang Bubai goes back and is greeted by her maid (AHH ZIWEI from the New My Fair Princess) and she poisoned her. This is kind of ironic because just before, the guys were with Dongfang in the brothel discussing about poisoning him. But for some reason, I don’t think it’s gonna be that easy to kill him. As I suspected, he just got rid of the poison straight away. This part is interesting. So Yuniang is the girl’s name and she was in love with a man who only wanted to use her, then kill her – and when forced by Dongfang Bubai to kill him, she chose to kill herself instead. Before she died, she said some interesting things about love, and I can see Dongfang Bubai has a soft side in him, he wanted to know what love was. This is starting to remind me of the complexities of Jin Yong’s villains!
Great, the students brought all the stuff they’re suppose to buy down the mountains back, but they’ve offended this other sect! Crap! Oh and I can totally see my guess before was right. Little Junior seems to like Linghu Chong, so when he falls for the other girl, I can see a love triangle coming up! I really do like the Little Junior though, she’s quite adorable.
It was so sweet seeing the two of them practice martial arts together. They honestly look like they could be a pair, but from that trailer, why do I get the feeling Little Junior’s gonna die?!
Final Thoughts about This Episode:
OMFG I think I’m getting way too invested in this show, despite the fact that I didn’t want to before it was subbed in English, but I can’t help it! There are just so many good things about it, the characters in particular are so fun, lively and just interesting to watch, particularly Linghu Chong. He reminds me a lot of Xiao Yu-er from Legendary Siblings. Very playful! The show, especially this episode, was filled with humorous moments, relaxing and just fits my taste exactly! I can totally see a lot of the complexity of the characters and plots. Still loving all the colors, and I’m looking forward to seeing an older Ren Yingying. I’m slowly becoming very addicted to this!
Screenshots of the Episodes
Sects have been fighting each other since the beginning of time.
Would some kind person please tell me who she is? I want to know her name!
He looks so badass in this pose! “I RULEZ THE WORLD!!!!”
For once, she’s not a girl pretending to be a guy and nobody could tell, she’s actually a guy!
Woxing screams when he discovers that his wife is dead.
Don’t they look like kickass ninjas?
(Dongfang Bubai is now the leader of the Sun Moon Holy Cult!)
Wow, the black and white colors with the pink is simply beautiful, I love it so much!
Dongfang Bubai dressed as a girl!
AHH YES, about time we see Wallace Huo’s character.
Oh man, the schools back then always looked so beautiful! But, what are they going to do when it rains?
Three mischievous disciples plotting evil on how to get rid of their useless old teacher.
Three days to play!!!!
I see them hinting romance between Linghu Chong and Little Junior.
Dongfang Bubai is in a brothel and it looks so beautiful!
Little Junior isn’t happy because they just ditched her!
Meanwhile, the two guys are inside!
Dongfang Bubai acting as a girl, being chased by two men.
Fake Dongfang Bubai rocks up in front of the real one. Haha!
OMG, this girl was trying to poison him!
Little Junior still isn’t happy. You better make her laugh, Linghu Chong.
Love the way Linghu Chong looks as he’s talking to her!
Little Junior and Big Senior practicing martial arts. | {
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We’re not sure what sort of handicap Tom Volkmann maintains as a golfer, but his pitching game is pretty good.
Volkmann is the vice president of the ACE Golf Foundation, a nonprofit group that works to introduce young people to golf. On Thursday, Volkmann pitched the group’s plan for revamping Lincoln Park Golf Course to the media, interested spectators and the community at large.
The proposal calls for shrinking the Lincoln Park course from nine holes to six, constructing a double-decker driving range, perhaps an amphitheater and building a clubhouse designed to meet the strictest standards of the U.S. Green Building Council.
And — here’s the best part — Volkmann said the ACE Foundation won’t be asking city taxpayers to foot the bill for the multimillion-dollar project. He said the group will seek private funding from individuals, businesses and foundations.
We’re not about to proclaim that the proposal outlined last week by the ACE Foundation is exactly the right prescription for the ailing Lincoln Park Golf Course. If the City Council and city parks officials decide the plan is worth pursuing, they’ll need to seek extensive public input, including from those who use the course most frequently.
The ACE Foundation plans to start on that input with a pair of public meetings, one next Wednesday evening at the Museum of Western Colorado and one Jan. 8 at Mesa State College.
Lincoln Park Golf Course is something of an anomaly in today’s golf world — with only nine holes in a constricted setting and a too-small driving range. There’s little room for rearranging greens and virtually no separation between fairways.
Furthermore, despite having the cheapest greens fees in the valley, Lincoln Park has seen declining golf use of late. The city has had to subsidize its operation.
Those who like things just the way they are must realize that, based on current trends, some sort of change is almost certainly coming. And other proposals may not include a golf course at all.
Lincoln Park has been an important community asset since it served as Mesa County Fairgrounds in the early part of the last century. It makes sense to maintain a golf course at the park that is easily accessible to those who can’t afford expensive greens fees or membership in private clubs. But it is also reasonable to update that golf course and make it more functional for the 21st century.
We applaud the ACE Foundation for doing just that and we hope, if the project moves forward, the group follows through on its pledge to make the improvements without taxpayer assistance. | {
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Mon, April 6
Jinkook Lee, Wellbeing of the Elderly in East Asia
Knodel, John E., and Napaporn Chayovan. 2011. "Intergenerational Family Care for and by Older People in Thailand." PSC Research Report No. 11-732. March 2011.
Nationally representative surveys of the older population in Thailand clearly document the primary role of the family, especially adult children and spouses, in providing personal care to elderly members who are no longer able to function on their own. The role of the state, market and voluntary sectors, i.e. the other three points of the “care diamond” vary but are clearly subsidiary to the family although their relative contributions may shift in the future. It is also clear that older persons, in their role as grandparents, make significant contributions to the care of young children, especially in situations where the child’s parents have migrated and left the grandchild in their care. Demographic trends are underway that pose important challenges for the future of intergenerational family care. The future role of older persons in providing care to young dependent grandchildren is likely to be impacted by reduced fertility among persons of reproductive age and by the increased migration of working age adults although these are likely to operate in opposite directions. The much smaller family sizes of the persons entering older age in the future and the increased migration of their adult children to find employment have serious implications for filial elder care and are already leading to shifts in living arrangements including a substantial decline in coresidence of elderly parents with a child. In terms of intra-generational family care, i.e. by spouses, the demographic underpinnings are far less subject to change.
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Like all other individuals, young adults will be required by federal law to purchase health insurance with the specific benefits the federal government says they must have, regardless of whether they want to pay for them and regardless of whether those benefits are useful to them. For instance, young single males will be required to purchase a plan that has maternity benefits and well-baby coverage.
Benefits of Reform
Young adults up to age 26 (whether married or unmarried) are now able to enroll in their parents’ health plans. Currently, this option is limited to children who do not have access to an employer plan. However, beginning in 2014, children will be able to join or stay on their parents’ plan even if they have access to an employer plan of their own.
Costs of Reform
Most young people are healthier and have lower expected costs than older adults. For example, people in their 20s today typically face premiums that are only one-fifth or one-sixth as high as people in their 60s. The likelihood of ill health, and therefore the cost of health insurance, tends to rise with age, but fortunately so does income. People in their 50s and 60s typically pay higher premiums, but their higher incomes allow them to do so.
Regulations that take effect in 2014 will dramatically change things, however. Insurers will be required to accept all applicants at rates that are not adjusted for health status. Also, premiums can be adjusted for age, but the highest premium can exceed the lowest one by no more than a ratio of three to one. This means that young adults will face premiums that will be much higher than their expected cost so that older, less healthy adults can pay premiums that will be much lower than their expected costs.
The result: Young adults will have to pay a lot more for their coverage, perhaps even double or triple their current premium. For example, studies based on actual insurance claims data reach the following conclusions.
Exceptions for Young Adults
Adults under the age of thirty will have access to health plans that have fewer mandated benefits than the standard plans. These plans will be allowed to have higher deductibles and higher cost-sharing, but the out-of-pocket exposure will be no higher than HSA limits (currently $6,050 for an individual and $12,100 for a family). Presumably, these plans will have lower premiums. They will not qualify for premium subsidies in the exchange, however.
For more on the Affordable Care Act, please see my Independent Institute book, Priceless: Curing the Healthcare Crisis.
1. “The WellPoint Revelation,” Wall Street Journal, October 28, 2009; “Healthcare Reform Premium Impact in California—December 2009 Addendum,” Wellpoint, December 2009, http://www.wellpoint.com/prodcontrib/groups/wellpoint/@wp_news_research/documents/wlp_assets/pw_d014969.pdf.
2. Eric Johnson, “IRS announces new HSA limits for 2012,” BenefitsPro.com, May 23, 2011, http://www.benefitspro.com/2011/05/23/irs-announces-new-hsa-limits-for-2012. | {
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Senior year in high school. One day my best friend tells me about this girl he met who I “had to meet.” I was somewhat popular, at least with the large nerdy population of my school and I’d thought I’d met everyone, but apparently this girl Jill slipped past my radar. After he mentioned her I kept hearing about her though, this brash, blindingly intelligent poet, lesbian, activist. Frankly it was starting to get annoying. Who was this chick?
A month later I found myself cornered in my best friend’s kitchen. He presented us to each other, like some landmark meeting of the minds. I suppose we were both sort of big personalities so everyone wanted to know how we would react to each other.
We eye each other. We circled each other. We asked some pointed questions about books and music. We fell into banter. We sat down on the floor and started a long conversation. We sang some songs. We tested each other. Eight hours later we were best friends.
That’s how it went in high school. I had this close group of friends and we all dove headlong into this incestuous relationship somewhere between friendship and something more. Every moment was swooning over an intellectual crush or a sexual one or trying to figure out which was which. Everything was blurry lines and cuddle piles.
Months went by and Jill and I talked every day. We talked for hours. We talked about everything. So At some point I fell in love with her. In some ways it was the first time I fell in love, or at least the first time I fell in love with someone for more than physical or situational reasons. It was confusing and weird and awkward and wonderful.
Jill mostly dated girls, seemed to have a crush on my friend Lindsey, but very obviously had a crush on my best friend Martin. Lindsey had a crush on Martin as well, but Jacob had a crush on Lindsey. No one had a crush on me, or at least not that I knew of. This was the way high school was.
So That summer I decided to seduce Jill.
Jill and I, more than any of our friends, had the most in common when it came to music and literature. We were also both writers, where most of our friends were musicians or artists. We talked about stories we were working on, we obsessed over poetry, we locked ourselves in her room and listened to The Doors. We were angsty and horny and we though we were so very deep.
This was the first time in my life I became aware of the changes that came over me when I wanted someone. Later on I would realize that this was my form of seduction. I take someone apart, find their buttons, find out what they want, find out what they like and then I become that as much as I can. I figure out the puzzle of their desires and then I show it to them, tempt them with it until they ask me for it and think it was their idea. That’s how it works.
I’m not sure how that worked in my teenage mind. I suppose I thought since she liked women I would be more emotional, more vulnerable, chatty and catty and soft. I wasn’t very subtle,. I started listening to Melissa Ethridge and telling her how I had a gay Aunt and how I identified with her “so much.” It was silly and juvenile and she saw through most of it.
Still one night we laid in her bed and I massaged her back and traced little patterns on her arm with the soft pads of my fingers. I touched her so lightly that we could feel my fingerprints flutter across in the tender insides of her elbow. Her eyes closed and my touches grew bolder. I traced up her leg and across her belly and even circled the dark outline of her nipples through her shirt. I moved closer, not sure if she was asleep and kissed the side of her mouth.
The next day she gave me a letter. She asked me if I thought she was asleep. She asked me if I liked her circle-yes-or-no. She quoted songs. She showed interest.
I really wish I had a copy of the letter I sent as a reply. I don’t remember it all but it was long and it was as eloquent as I could muster and in the end I told her that I loved her and that I wanted her in my life in any capacity, but she needed to know. I told her that I wanted her and that I needed her and that she was amazing.
We met at Martin’s house and we stood on the porch shyly. She asked if I meant it all and I wrote to her. I did. She asked if I was going to kiss her and so I did.
And my heart exploded in fireworks.
We fell into the a strangest practice. You see, We were sexual people. We liked to kiss and we liked to touch, but we were also scared and awkward and dramatic. Plus there was the fact that neither of us was really sure she liked boys. So somehow we ended up going back to her room every day after school and I fooling around and I would always end up going down on her.
You see, Jill was pretty comfortable with her body. I on the other hand wasn’t comfortable with mine. She didn’t seem to mind this because she really wasn’t sure what to do with a penis. I liked making her feel good; in fact I loved that it. Plus she was multi-orgasmic.
So it came to be that for part of a school year and half of a summer I would go over her house every day and we would make out and then I would go down on her for an hour or two. I don’t mean this facetiously or even proverbially; it was literally between one and two hours.
Initially she showed me how she liked it. She told me where to lick and where not to lick and when to go slow and when to go fast. Once I knew the basics I improvised well and soon my world became the incense she burned and the light smell of her sex and the tuft of blond hair and her thighs closing around my head and her hands in my hair and the power rush I got from making her come over and over again. Sometimes it was twenty times in an afternoon.
We tried other things, sexually. She occasionally, awkwardly, reached into my pants and toyed with my penis. She didn’t seem into it and so I wasn’t very interested. We even tried PIV sex, but she was super tight and didn’t like penetration particularly and it ended up being painful for her and weird for me. Really I just wanted to eat pussy all the time. Honestly, I still do.
The physical part of our relationship was lovely, if a bit unorthodox. We had conversations about love, art, poetry, literature, philosophy for hours on end. We hung with our friends, life was good.
Until the walk.
We were walking one day, holding hands and some of her other friends were down the block. Her queer friends. She immediately dropped my hand. I didn’t really think about this at the time, but it stuck in my head for days after. There were other ways I was segregated from parts of her life. We both had a lot of friends in various cliques and so on. We were social butterflies and social chameleons. There were very clearly parts of her life in which I was not welcome.
I was living Chasing Amy.
The insecurities started there and grew and by the end of the summer we were broken up. From then on we were on and off friends and eventually when I started college as she finished up high school I was on my way to becoming an angry young man and deemed her an undesirable.
Still I think about her a lot and that Summer remains this strange defining moment in my life. It was when many of my curiosities about sex were addressed and the desired that were building inside of my teenage mind finally got acknowledged.
And ever since I’ve told people I was trained by a lesbian. | {
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Merchant, Emily, B. Gratton, and Myron Gutmann. 2012. "A Sudden Transition: Household Changes for Middle Aged U.S. Women in the Twentieth Century." Population Research and Policy Review, 31(5): 703-726.
In 1900, most white U.S. women who had children continued to live with at least one of those children until the end of their lives. Between 1900 and 1990, the percentage of U.S. white women aged 40-69 living with a child of their own fell from 63% to 27%, with three fourths of that change occurring between 1940 and 1960. Historical census data from the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series and longitudinal data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics allow an historical and contemporary examination of co-residence patterns among these women. Analysis reveals three eras: a system of co-residence in the early twentieth century, a sudden transition toward separate households at mid century, and the maintenance of that separate household system thereafter. The scholarly literature features cultural, demographic, and economic explanations for the long-term decline in co-residence, but has given little attention to the rapid mid-century shift. Analysis of IPUMS data confirms the long-term effects of declines in mortality and fertility, and concomitant declines in the age of mothers at last birth, but also points to a sharp drop in the age of children at marriage in the mid-twentieth century. These factors raised the potential for the formation of separate households, but this historical era was also a propitious one for separation: income gains for young workers were unprecedented, the labor force participation of married women rose, and immigration fell. Analysis of PSID data from 1968 to 2009 confirms the salience of children's socioeconomic circumstances-particularly their marriage and employment prospects but also the increasing availability of higher education-in maintaining the separate household system. While the data analyzed allow only inferences about cultural factors, the resiliency of the new household system, even in periods of economic decline, suggests that it is now likely buttressed by strong normative views.
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While John Isner and Paul-Henri Mathieu slugged it out for nearly six hours on Chatrier, neither player actually became physically ill or impaired during the match. Not like they did in the Richard Gasquet-Grigor Dimitrov contest out on Suzanne Lenglen Court.
In this battle of “Baby Feds”, BOTH players were suffering following an incredible 38-stroke rally nearly two hours into the match. Gasquet eventually won the point then threw up right after. While Dimitrov fell to the dirt in a full leg cramp.
“Yes, I vomited the banana I ate at 5 4,” admitted Gasquet who’ll play Tommy Haas Saturday. “The banana is still on Suzanne Lenglen Court. I was really feeling bad. But he was on the ground. He was even in a worse situation than I was.”
The point gave Gasquet the break and the game for 5-5. Credit to Dimitrov who was able to finish the match losing in four sets 57, 75, 62, 63.
“Yes, it was tough, because at 5 4, there was a very important point with many, many shots,” Gasquet added. “After that particular point, he was on the floor. I don’t know how many times we hit the ball in that rally, but it was extremely long. That was a good point for me, because it was two sets to Love for him. I was in a bad situation. So I saw that in the third set he was not playing as well. He had difficulties physically, and after that I was able to come back.”
But the point played between the two late in the second set might end up as the best of the tournament.
Also Check Out:
Here’s Novak Djokovic’s Incredible Matchpoint From His Win Over Stan Wawrinka [Video]
Here’s That Incredible 54-Shot Rally Novak Djokovic Won During US Open Final [Video]
Here’s Proof Roger Federer Can Still Hit Tweeners At Age 33 [Video]
Watch This Young Kid Hit An Amazing Lob To Win A Point On Roger Federer! [Video]
Grigor Dimitrov Looks Back At His Best Shots [Video] | {
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Ranger Challenge to compete against other senior military colleges
The Citadel’s Army ROTC Ranger Challenge teams will travel to Fort Knox, Ky., Nov 7 and 8 to compete in the first ever “Bold Leaders Challenge.”
The Palmetto Battalion Ranger Challenge teams will go up against Norwich University, Virginia Military Institute, Virginia Tech, Texas A&M University and North Georgia College and State University in the test of endurance, physical training, military skills and teamwork.
The Ranger Challenge team trains seven days a week while maintaining good standing in their academic requirements and cadet duties. Two teams of 11 cadets will compete. Day 1 of the competition will focus on marksmanship and team recon and practice. Day 2 the teams will compete in a timed series of 12 military tasks, including navigation, an obstacle course, boat movement, equipment inspections and a leader reaction course that uses problem solving skills and teamwork to complete.
“It’s a whole new ballgame this year,” said Cadet David Maggio. “This is a new competition with some new things and teams we have not competed against before.”
Maggio and teammate Cadet Marissa Fowler said they are confident their training and the experience of teammates who have competed before will help both the Black and Gold teams from The Citadel. “We feel good and we’re ready,” Fowler said.
Col. Richard Townes, commander of the Army ROTC unit said the team of extraordinary young men and women represent every class at The Citadel.
“They have truly committed themselves to win a competition against the very best cadets from each of the senior military colleges,” Townes said. “They are no doubt better for the efforts and will make extraordinary officers in our Army.”
Cadets on this year’s Ranger Challenge teams are cadets Guy Perez, Benjamin Hawkins, Rob Musso, Delta Nunez, Evan Minshew , Robert Fraser, Cody Trivellin, Marttin Periola , Daniel Cruz, John Sanford, Timothy Fischer, David Maggio, John Beck, Brian Papke, Paul Wood, Morgan Fowler, Richard Owen and Jesse Thurman.
The winning team will go on to compete against national and international teams at the annual Sandhurst Military Skills Competition at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in the spring. | {
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- Victim is cremated and remembered in a private service, his mother says
- The 13-month-old was shot dead in Brunswick, Georgia; 2 teen suspects are in custody
- 911 tapes reveal horror of neighbors who saw the aftermath of the shooting
- The mother's 18-year-old son was stabbed to death in New Jersey in 2008
The fatal shooting of a 13-month-old boy in his stroller marked the second time mother Sherry West lost a son to violence, she said Saturday.
Her 18-year-old son was stabbed to death in 2008 in New Jersey, she told CNN.
"This is the second child that people have taken from me in a tragic way," West said. "I'm so afraid to have any more babies now. I tried to raise really good kids in a wicked world."
The day after two teenage boys were arrested and charged in the fatal shooting of her baby, West said she was planning to leave Brunswick and return to New Jersey. The boy's father has also been emotionally distraught, West said.
Asked about the person who shot her son, Antonio, West stated: "I hate you and I don't forgive you.
"You killed an innocent human life," she said. "I hope you die for it."
A private memorial service was held Friday morning for young Antonio Santiago, who was cremated, according to West. She said the family is working with the Catholic relief organization Society of St. Vincent de Paul to help with unforeseen expenses.
West put Antonio in a stroller Thursday because it was good exercise for her heart, said West, who added she was disabled from a past car accident.
"I just took a walk with my baby," West said. "I can't believe that this would happen, and I left early in the morning. I thought you know that there would be less people on the road and I wouldn't be in anybody's way walking down that road.
"Apparently, either he targeted me or I was just unfortunate," she said of her encounter with the gunman.
West said the incident occurred at 9 a.m. Thursday as she was walking home from the post office.
She said she saw two boys, and one asked for money. When she told them she didn't have any, one of the boys shot her in the leg and then her son in the face.
Police Chief Tobe Green identified the older suspect as De'Marquise Elkins, 17, and said he will be treated as an adult in criminal proceedings. The 14-year-old was not identified because of his age.
Both have been charged with first-degree murder, police said, though no arraignment date has been set.
As of Saturday, authorities still had not found the murder weapon, police spokesman Todd Rhodes said.
But they were able to track down the two suspects aided by a description from West and others, as well as a check of school attendance records to determine who was not in class Thursday. Officers then searched for the two teens and took them into custody, police said.
911 calls reveal witnesses' horror
Earlier Saturday, police in the coastal city released to CNN three recordings of 911 calls about Thursday's shooting.
"A baby has been shot!" one woman said in a 911 call.
The exchange with the emergency operator was emotionally charged.
"Listen to me, ma'am! Is the baby breathing?" the operator replied.
"I don't know," the woman said.
The woman began to cry.
In the background is public wailing on the corner of London and Ellis Streets, in a stately cluster of Victorian-style houses with wrap-around porches.
"Listen to me!" the operator said to the weeping woman. "We have people en route. Did you hear shots in the area?"
Yes, she heard shots, she said.
"Be calm," the operator said. "How many shots did you hear?"
"I heard like three shots. And the baby has been shot in the head," the woman said.
The woman was so distraught that she passed her cell phone to a man walking his dog.
"No, the baby is not breathing," the man told the operator.
"The baby was shot in the head?" the operator continued.
"Yes, right between the eyes," the man said, who added he earlier heard a "small caliber clap."
As he spoke, police sirens arrived on the scene, and the man broke off the phone call. | {
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It is laid out as a realistic film, with a screenplay based on the stories of hundreds of women that are forced to choose between their children and their mate in order to sustain their families. This is the story of Cheba and Serafina who, by abandoning their children get sick with tirisia, a perpetual sadness.
The second film from Aarón Fernández is a Spain-Mexico-France co-production already screened as part of Films in Progress at the 60th edition of the Festival. On the desolate coast of Veracruz, young Sebastián, 17, has to run his uncle’s motel single-handed, renting rooms by the hour. That’s how he meets Miranda, a regular customer who goes there to wait for a lover who often arrives late, sparking a fleeting game of seduction between the two. | {
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Eugene McCarthy for President 1968 Campaign Brochure
‘Portrait of a Leader in His Own Words’
America's Greatest Need
"The need now is for a great reconciliation, a reconciliation of the young and the old, of race with race, of the academic community with society as a whole, of Congress with the Presidency, but principally of the thought and spirit and the best traditions of America with the pressing need for action."
March 26, 1968
New Rights for All Americans
"I have said that, having secured the constitutionally guaranteed, legal civil rights, we must now move to establish a whole new set of civil rights.
"First among these, is the right to a decent job becoming the dignity of a man, a job which returns an income with which he can support his family in dignity and decency.
"To secure this right I propose that the federal government determine a minimum income which it will assure for all Americans.
"The second of these new civil rights is the right to adequate health care, without regard to race.
"To secure this right, we must have a federally subsidized insurance program to assure that no citizen will be deprived of health care for lack of funds. Most states require automobile liability insurance. There is no reason why the same concept cannot apply to the vital area of health care.
"Third, every American must now be accorded the right not simply to equal education, but to the amount and kind of education which is necessary to develop his full potential.
To secure this right I propose a mass program to up-grade the education of our adults who are trapped in poverty. This can be accomplished
Through federally subsidized on-the-job training, through special vocational schools and through adult literacy courses.
"For younger Americans, projects such as the Headstart Program must be expanded. Vocational training should come, not in the form -- of public works, but in on-the-job training programs provided by the private sector. These projects should then be subsidized, either directly or through tax credits, by the federal government.
"The fourth new civil right I have spoken of is the right to a decent house, not a house in isolation, not a house in the ghetto, but a house in a neighborhood which is part of a community, which is part of the United States of America.
"To accomplish this I propose, just as the President's Commission proposed, a massive building program to bring within reach of low and moderate income families, six million housing units within the next five years. Much of this can be accomplished through the private sector, as it was with the Interstate Highway Program, but the federal government must assure the financing of its part of the program so that the construction industry, the building trades, and home finance companies can plan for the long effort."
April 11, 1968
The Role of the Presidency to Unite This Nation
"I am not seeking the Presidency because party leaders sought me and urged me to run. Nor could I say that I have any claim to the office by way of succession.
"I said in 1960 that power sometimes came to men who sought it and I said I was not sure that the record of history showed that those who sought to gain power necessarily exercised it best in a democratic society. And the seeking of me as a candidate came like the dew in the night. It was rather gentle, I must say, soft, but there were signs in the morning that something had happened during the night; so here we are.
"I think that anyone who offers himself or permits himself to be offered for the Presidency must meet three conditions of character and experience and understanding. He must, I think be able to read with reasonable judgment the needs and aspirations of the people of this nation. And I do hope that some twenty years in the House and in the Senate, my travels around this land and a limited amount of reading, have brought me to the point where I have some comprehension of what this country is all about, what it needs, what its people seek.
"I think a man who is presented for the Presidency must also know the limitations of power. He should understand that this country cannot be governed by coercion, that it needs a special kind of leadership, which itself recognizes that the potential for leadership exists in every man and every woman. He must be prepared to be a kind of channel for those desires and those aspirations, largely by way of setting people free.
"The office of the Presidency of the United States must never be a personal office. A President should not speak of 'my country' but always of 'our country,' not of 'my Cabinet' but of 'the Cabinet.'
"The role of the Presidency -- at all times, but particularly in 1968 -- must be one of uniting this nation, not by adding it up in some way, not by putting it together as a kind of jigsaw puzzle. To unify this nation means to inspire it, to encourage the development of common purposes and shared ideals, and to move toward establishing an order of justice in America."
March 23, 1968
The War in Vietnam
"Our stated objectives in Vietnam are in reality different from our practical ones. We proclaim that our ultimate purpose is support for self-determination, to let the people of South Vietnam work out their own future, free from foreign interference. In reality, we have interfered in South Vietnam and have continued in power in Saigon a government dependent upon the United States. This was the policy of John Foster Dulles in 1954. It is the policy of Dean Rusk today."
"Our objective -- in actions as well as in words should be a government in Saigon that reflects as nearly as possible what the people of Vietnam want.
"I do not believe that the National Liberation Front, the successor to the Viet Minh which defeated the French and which, in the eyes of the Vietnamese people, freed the country from the yok of Western imperialism, can be denied a role as a political force in the future of South Vietnam. The Front is the government in large parts of the country. It is just not feasible to try to 'roll back' a political structure that is deeply rooted in the thoughts and feelings of the people; nor is it necessary from the point of view of American interests
"While the United States should not insist on specific agreements, we should press the Saigon government to enter into negotiations with the NLF as a political force. The question of whether there should be a coalition government, or an interim government, or some other mechanism, can be settled among the Vietnamese themselves
"We must make it clear to the authorities in Saigon that our commitment is not open-ended, that they must begin to work out in the South the shape of their future.
"There is never a totally painless way to pull back from either unwise, ill-advised or outdated ideas or commitments. As with the French decision to permit self-determination in Algeria, following the honorable, though difficult course would reflect credit on this nation in the eyes of the world and in the eyes of our own citizens."
April 1, 1968
Biography of Eugene J. McCarthy
Senator Eugene J. McCarthy (Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party of Minnesota) was born in the small Minnesota farming community of Watkins in 1916. He graduated from St. John's University in Collegeville, Minnesota, in 1935, and received a Master of Arts degree from the University of Minnesota in 1938.
Senator McCarthy was a teacher in public high schools and private colleges for ten years. During, World War II, he served as a civilian technical assistant in military intelligence for the War Department. He was acting head of the sociology department at the College of St. Thomas in St. Paul at the time of his election to Congress in 1948.
McCarthy was elected to the United States Senate in 1958. During his first term he served on the Senate Committees on Finance, Agriculture and Forestry, and Public Works. In 1959 and 1960 he was chairman of the Senate Special Committee on Unemployment Problems.
In 1964, Senator McCarthy was re-elected to the Senate by the largest popular majority of any Democratic candidate in the history of Minnesota. He presently serves on the Senate Committees on Foreign Relations, Finance, Standards and Conduct. and on the Democratic Steering Committee.
Senator McCarthy is the author of four books: Frontiers in American Democracy (1960), Dictionary of American Politics (1962), A Liberal Answer to the Conservative Challenge (1964), and The Limits of Power (1967).
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The upcoming Once Upon a Time episode “Good Form” has already caused quite a wave as it has yet to air. Not only will we get to learn more about Captain Hook’s back-story, there’s also plenty of romance and passion blossoming in the Neverland jungle. As the sexy pirate might have found he’s been bested again by a certain Emma Swan, something which will undoubtedly delight many Captain Swan shippers.
“Good Form” is written by Christine Boylan & Daniel T. Thomsen.
With the pictures and early sneak peek of the first kiss between Emma (Jennifer Morrison) and Killian ‘Hook’ Jones (Colin O’Donoghue) already leaked, there’s however a lot more to look forward to, as there might be quite some bumpy seas ahead in what promises to be an emotional episode.
The following does include some speculation on our part to go with the spoilers, but we thought we’d share our theories.
A young Killian Jones & how he becomes a pirate
From what we’ve learned thus far, Killian was abandoned by his father on the morning they were going to board a ship. He later found out his father was a fugitive and disappeared in the night, leaving Killian to fend for himself. In “Good Form” however we get to meet Killian’s older brother Liam (Bernard Curry) who’s a captain in the naval army of a realm in Fairy Tale Land. He must have taken Killian under his wing when their father left, as we find the Jones brothers together aboard the same ship.
Captain Liam Jones and Officer Killian Jones have been tasked by the King, to find a plant with miraculous healing properties on a mysterious Island. From the promo it’s clear that sometime during their search, Pan (Robbie Kay) confronts the pair, which leaves little doubt that they find themselves in Neverland.
As we know David (Josh Dallas) suffers from a fatal injury due to the Dreamshade poison, if there’s indeed such a plant growing in Neverland it would save his life.
From the moment Hook found out Charming was poisoned by the Dreamshade, he’s been pleading with David to tell his family the truth about his injury, as they deserve to know what’s going on. Which leads to the speculation that Killian’s brother Liam might have suffered the same fate. They might have found the plant but as it was meant for the King, Killian might not have been able to save his brother’s life.
Now left without any family, the young talented naval officer might have felt betrayed by circumstances and rebelled against the King, chosing a life of piracy instead.
It’s been mentioned time and time again but the ‘flower’ symbol does play quite a large role in the Once Upon a Time mythology. It’s the emblem on Snow White and Charming’s flag, Emma has the flower tattooed on her wrist, Hook gave Bae a belt where we can find the flower emblem studded on it, and now there’s ‘a plant which could heal all injuries’. If you’ve seen the Disney animated film Tangled (2010), you know where this is could be heading…
A Captain Charming / Hook David Bromance
It can’t be denied their history is a bit patchy and they’ve not always been the best of ‘mates‘ , but Hook has truly been making an effort once they set foot in Neverland. He’s been trying to impress David as he’s Emma’s father, but they’ve bonded over the Dreamshade injury. Hook is the only one who David has been able to confide in, with the pirate doing everything he can to find a way to save his life.
The two of them leave ‘The Nevengers camp’, in search of a sextant that could help them decipher a map, that would lead them off Neverland. With Pan constantly telling everyone that no one is able to leave the island without his permission, this would be a victory for sure.
From the sneak peek we know that Hook does save David’s life, did they find the mysterious plant?
Emma Swan and Killian Jones in the Neverland jungle
Eddy Kitsis didn’t lie when he said that we’d find ourselves in a dark and sexy jungle, he simply left out the part that we’d get to see a hot and passionate make-out session between Emma and the sexy and adorable pirate, which would leave us grinning and slightly breathless.
As the couple’s first kiss, it’s one that can count as it represents their personalities. With Emma saying a genuinely meant thank you for saving her father’s life to the flirtatious reply from Killian looking more a little more appreciation, it soon develops into a challenge as they both tell the other that ‘Please ,You couldn’t handle it‘ – before Emma takes charge, grabs the lapels of his jacket and basically goes for it, kissing him with raw emotion and passion.
It’s what happens after the kiss that is very interesting, as Emma is shaken by what she feels and decides to walk away from the situation, while Killian is visibly emotionally broken. And then follows the punchline:
Emma: Don’t follow me, wait 5 minutes, go get some firewood or something
Killian: As you wish.
Which results in a smirk appearing on Emma’s face as she walks away. If you’ve seen the film The Princess Bride (1987) you’ll know that Killian actually tells Emma that he loves her.
Buttercup: Farm boy, fill these with water – please.
Westley: As you wish.
Grandpa: [voiceover] That day, she was amazed to discover that when he was saying “As you wish”, what he meant was, “I love you.” And even more amazing was the day she realized she truly loved him back.
It’s not a coincidence that we find parallels with The Princess Bride as Colin O’ Donoghue admitted on numerous occasions, that some elements of Hook are based on Westley – the Dread Pirate Roberts character.
What will Emma do with this information? As for Killian, the look on his face as she walks away tells you everything you need to know. After 300 years of hurt, pain and wanting nothing more than to have his vengeance on the Crocodile, he finally feels there’s a glimmer of hope for a better life – a future with Emma.
- Whatever the story is on how Killian Jones becomes a pirate, we fear he’ll suffer the loss of his brother Liam. Leaving him an orphan, and without a family.
- David having to say goodbye to his wife Snow and daughter Emma, maybe for the last time before the Dreamshade poison claims his life.
- Hook reliving some old painful memories, he’d rather forget as David is getting more affected by the poison.
- Emma and Killian share a kiss and let their walls down. Neither are actually able to ‘handle it‘.
Once Upon a Time “Good Form” airs on Sunday 27 October at 8/7C on ABC | {
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Zane Huett as Parker Scavo
Born on May 9, 1997 in Riverside, California, child actor Zane Huett decided he wanted to become an actor at the young age of three. He began his acting career on stage, and just before he turned four years old he was able to acquire representation. Since then, Huett has appeared in a number of commercials and films, one of which was the family comedy Daddy Day Care, where he acted opposite Eddie Murphy. Huett’s other film projects include Mysterious Skin, Just Another Day in the Neighborhood and P.O.V.: The Camera’s Eye.
Huett currently has a recurring role on the hit television series, Desperate Housewives. He gives life to the character Parker Scavo, one of Tom (portrayed by Doug Savant) and Lynette (portrayed by Felicity Huffman) Scavo’s four rowdy and mischievous children. His portrayal garnered him a 2005 Young Artists Award for Best Performance in a TV Series (Comedy or Drama)- Young Actor Age Ten or Younger.
In his spare time, Huett enjoys playing basketball and baseball, riding dirt bikes and listening to music. He has also expressed an interest in directing, and has plans of pursuing it in the future. He goes by the nickname, “The Zanerator.” | {
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Scott Fitzgerald: A Biography
F. Scott Fitzgerald: A Life in Letters
It’s a testament to the power of images over words that an aura of glamour continues to embellish the life of F. Scott Fitzgerald. The black and white photographs of that handsome and dandyish young couple, Scott and Zelda, seem if anything to grow more beguiling over the years, as time overlays a tender quaintness upon all of their dramatically posed renderings of the bold and the chic. When documented in print, however, at least in Jeffrey Meyers’s new Scott Fitzgerald, their lives are something else again. By and large, the intervals when they were together and the later, lengthy separations brought on by Zelda’s madness and institutionalization alike appear squandered and dreary—when they were not altogether nightmarish. Jointly and singly, they lived with alcoholism, paranoia, sexual dysfunction, attacks of scarring eczema, colitis, bankruptcy, jail, brawls, drug abuse, premature aging, malaria, repeated suicide attempts, near-fatal accidents, religious mania…
It’s no wonder if, seeking some respite from Meyers’s tally of woes, the reader chooses to linger yet again over the photographs. Scott’s military career, as Meyers reminds us, was a comical shambles—culminating in his nearly disastrous order, when directing a mortar company, to fire upon friendly troops—but there’s no gainsaying that he glows commandingly in his Brooks Brothers army uniform. Under the ravages of her illness, Zelda’s beauty may have vanished early, as Meyers recounts, but she still looks irresistible—a studied blend of the vulnerable and the audacious—as a young woman engulfed in an immense fur coat. The glamour they wished for themselves endures, as seems only just—so few of their wishes, even of the most moderate sort, being fulfilled in the end.
Meyers succeeds better at chronicling the slow, downspiraling trend of Scott’s life than at capturing, on the wing, those dartings of charm or brilliance which, as much in the prose as in the life, made him so charismatic. As biographers of much-profiled subjects are apparently compelled to do, Meyers offers an introduction explaining why the portrait he has compiled is more balanced and complete than any predecessor. In truth, although I can’t claim to have exhausted that ever-mushrooming micro-genre, Fitzgeraldiana, most of what he presents has an already-heard quality—a familiarity perhaps bred from my having previously encountered so many of these events and assessments in Fitzgerald’s fiction, which was often nakedly autobiographical. It’s one of the ironies of Fitzgerald’s posthumous fate that a writer who worked to make biographers extraneous would attract so many of them.
If Meyers advances little that is revelatory (a shortcoming tacitly acknowledged in the self-trumpeting with which he announces that he, unlike previous biographers, has successfully tracked down some remote ancestors of an Englishwoman with whom, two thirds of a century before, Fitzgerald had had a brief boozy affair), he does create, in a prose commendably free of both equivocation and jargon, an appealingly pitiful portrait. By the close of the volume, during Fitzgerald’s third, final, most pathetic stint in Hollywood, when—desperately broke—he was openly seeking to debase his talents and finding…
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Quarterback Tom Brady will make up to $57 million in mostly guaranteed money to lead the New England Patriots over the next five seasons. Boxer Floyd Mayweather earned $32 million for a single night’s work against Robert Guerrero earlier this month. Los Angeles Angels first baseman Albert Pujols will bring home a cool $16 million this year as part of an enormous 10-year contract that will pay him $240 million before it’s all said and done.
None of this, of course, is breaking news. We know these things because discussion of finances and money is part of the sports landscape in 2013—and has been for years. Generally widely reported, free-agent signings, the salary cap and individual players’ contracts have become part of the discourse for fans of almost every sport.
Except the UFC.
While the MMA promotion of record has generated more overall pay-per-view buys than boxing since hitting its stride in 2009, fighter salaries are kept under lock and key. It’s rumored that they don’t begin to approach mainstream sports money, but information is scarce. When facts do trickle out in the press, it’s sometimes shocking. Georges St-Pierre, the UFC’s welterweight champion, for example, told the Canadian press in 2011 he makes a relatively paltry $4-5 million per fight.
“People want to compare us to other sports, and in some sense that’s fair to do,” UFC owner Lorenzo Fertitta said. He sat down with two key members of his team, president Dana White and general counsel Lawrence Epstein, to discuss the inner workings of the UFC’s fighter contract with Bleacher Report.
“There are a number of things that are unique to our business…First and foremost, we absorb 100 percent of all production and marketing costs associated with the event. The NFL gets a license fee from Fox. Even boxing gets a licensing fee from HBO. Those media entities then roll in and operate the entire production. They do all of the marketing. So those expenses are not borne upon the actual league or entity. In our case, we televise the entire card. There’s over a thousand people who get pay checks when we do these events. It’s a massive, massive undertaking.
“In addition to that, we’re building a sport. We’ve had to open up offices in various countries around the world, work to get laws passed in states all over the U.S. and Canada. When you actually take into account those costs that we bear, and other leagues don’t, we actually compare very favorably on an apples-for-apples basis.”
Randy Couture, one of the sport’s true legends and a UFC Hall of Famer, was loathe to complain about a career that has made him a millionaire. He understands the efforts and expense it took to build this sport from the ground up. But he couldn’t help but wonder about the discrepancy between mainstream sports money and what he and other top UFC stars are paid.
“It’s hard for me to sit here and bitch and complain about the pay I got when I made more money competing in mixed martial arts than I ever made doing anything else,” Couture told Bleacher Report in an exclusive interview. “Does it irk me that Floyd Mayweather can fight one time and make $40 million? Well, that’s more than I made in my career. Yeah, that bothers me.”
White says things have changed dramatically since Couture was in his prime as a UFC champion.
“When Randy Couture says that’s more than he made in his entire career, Randy Couture’s career was in the dark ages,” White said. “He was on the first season of The Ultimate Fighter when that thing first started to take off. The money that’s in this sport now, compared to when Randy Couture was here, is night and day.”
How much UFC fighters are actually paid is a carefully guarded secret. Although some state athletic commissions are required by law to report a fighter’s base pay, most fighters are also paid a variety of bonuses that are not included in that mandatory reporting. Backroom, performance and even pay-per-view bonuses are routinely handed out—but until recently most reporters and fans didn’t know much about that process.
“We don’t give out numbers,” White told Bleacher Report. “We don’t say how much fighters get paid or what the company is making. It’s something that we don’t do and it drives people crazy.”
Enter Eddie Alvarez, a lightweight fighter who is one of the very best in his weight class outside the UFC. He’s looking to join the promotion and challenge Benson Henderson and the other top UFC stars, but is mired in a contract dispute with Bellator, a competing promotion on Spike TV.
The battle has been tough on him, emotionally and financially. Alvarez’s troubles, however, have proven to be a real boon for MMA journalists and historians. For years the UFC’s standard contract has been a mystery, a matter of speculation, but not available for the record. Thanks to Alvarez’s legal struggles, it has become a public document, an exhibit in Bellator’s case to re-sign the fighter to a “matching contract.”
More important, for our purposes, is this—Bleacher Report’s Jeremy Botter acquired a copy of Alvarez’s contract with the UFC’s parent company Zuffa, part of a collection of court documents now available to the public, journalists and legal minds all over the world. And some are not impressed.
“When you look at who gets the money, at the end of the day, it’s disproportionately Zuffa and disproportionately not the fighter,” Northwestern University labor law professor Zev Eigen told Bleacher Report, calling the UFC contract the worst he’s seen in the sports or entertainment fields. “None of these fighters are represented by a professional association or a union. There’s nothing that sets a minimum or basic standard below which the company can’t go. It makes sense—in any relationship like this you would expect the contract to favor the more powerful actor.
“That should be intuitive and it’s universal. If you’re contracting with Apple, you shouldn’t be surprised that Apple takes as many rights as possible. If you use iTunes in anyway they don’t like, hell, fire will rain down on you. That’s what you can expect anytime you’re contracting with an entity more powerful than you are. So too with the UFC.”
In boxing, those minimum standards are set by law, part of the Muhammad Ali Boxing Reform Act that is helping clean up a notoriously corrupt sport. In other individual sports, like tennis, players are protected by a professional association. But in mixed martial arts there are no protections at all. Fighters are left to their own devices to negotiate shark-filled waters.
“The UFC has coagulated all this genius at law. And they’ve done nothing but prosper from it,” Juanito Ibarra, former manager of UFC star Quinton “Rampage” Jackson among others, told Bleacher Report. “They’ve left managers and trainers, and most importantly, fighters out in the cold. They don’t have a voice.”
Ibarra is quick to point out that UFC isn’t the only company that preys on fighters, usually young guys he says have never had a dime to their name and are just happy to be on television and making a little bit of money.
“It’s with all the promoters,” Ibarra said. “The promoters, all they do is copy each other’s contracts. They hire a lawyer, and he tweaks it, but it’s all copy and paste.”
As a private company, the UFC doesn’t have to report its revenues, cash flow or profit margins to anyone. According to a recent profile in Fast Company, the promotion makes in the neighborhood of $600 million per year, though Fertitta says that number is overstated. The UFC is worth north of $2 billion, making it a more valuable property than even the legendary New York Yankees, Major League Baseball’s perpetual cash machine.
Yet despite this success, Fertitta told ESPN that in the seven years since the company started regularly turning a profit, they’ve paid out just $250 million total to the athletes, a far cry from the 47 percent of total revenue the NFL’s players split.
Instead, according to Ibarra, the UFC pays fighters just enough to quell discontent. The promotion often sends fighters high-ticket gifts in lieu of guaranteed money or significant revenue sharing.
“You buy a guy a car and it’s going to keep his mouth shut,” Ibarra said. “They try to run their lives. And they give them a diamond watch worth a hundred grand. Then they put them on a TV show and take their rights away.”
“We’ve created, literally, nearly 70 millionaires since we took this thing over,” he said. “And some of them multi, multimillionaires.”
Couture, who has battled the UFC under two different ownership groups, is one of those multimillionaires. But while he was hesitant to complain publicly about pay days that have made him rich, he said fighters may be getting a little less than is ideal.
“The biggest issue is between what the promoter’s making from all the pay-per-views and everything else versus how much all the fighters who fought in that single year made. That number maybe needs to shift a little bit,” Couture admitted.
“It’s such a fine line. The promoter feels like he’s entitled. He’s spent money, done a ton of things to market the sport and create a vehicle that’s good for the fighter. But at the same time, it’s the fighter who walks up in that cage. Does the training and puts it on the line and is sweating and bleeding. One doesn’t work without the other. So some kind of more equitable arrangement makes sense.”
After analyzing it for several days, Bleacher Report has come up with some interesting points you should know about the contract every fighter has to sign to gain entry to the UFC. Adding expertise and nuance to the discussion are Eigen and Ibarra, who went over the contract with us term by term to share their thoughts.
Fertitta, White and Epstein also lent their perspective.
“Ask any questions you want,” White told Bleacher Report. “We’ll sit and walk you through everything.”
Bleacher Report went on to do just that.
To read the full article and to go through the finer points of the UFC’s fighter contracts, point by point, with commentary from both the UFC’s representatives and those critical of the contract, continue reading by clicking here. | {
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The secret inner life of my egg led to reflections on the many curious but momentous links between the microscopic and the everyday world. One such became apparent in the 50s when the peregrine, the world's fastest flying organism, mysteriously plummeted in numbers. It was eventually proved that DDT, a chemical once heralded as an agricultural cure-all, was causing the bird to lay unnaturally thin eggs which were breaking in the normal processes of incubation. Breeding success collapsed, particularly in parts of Europe and America. The difference between survival and extinction may have rested on half a millimetre of calcium in the egg wall.
There were other reflections inside my egg. For instance, those shells with wonderfully unpredictable patterns are coloured as the egg travels along the oviduct inside the mother. Each egg is completely unique - and it's these unrepeated, chance colours which set the egg collector's pulse racing. Recently one of the most notorious fell from a tree while practising his dark art and died. It's odd to think that he lost his life for a few micrograms of haemoglobin and bile.
Meanwhile, I can tell that the former occupant of my egg is elsewhere, on that momentous stage of its young life in the treetops. I can hear its helium voice - a minuscule squeak like the sound of rubber moved between two fingers. In this northerly-lashed landscape it's almost all I have to remind me of spring. | {
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This is the third in a series of ten posts. One post for every year of the decade that was the 1990s. For an introduction into this series and why I felt like doing these blog posts, read this first.
John Secada – “Just Another Day”
This Cuban-American singer was fairly popular in the early 1990s. “Just Another Day” was top ten hit for John Secada, and I have fond memories of listening to “Just Another Day” in the evenings of Bahrain. Somehow, it seems to be best time to listen to this song.
Naughty by Nature – “Hip Hop Hooray“
From the album 19 Naughty III, this was another favourite of mine growing up in the ‘golden era’ of hip-hop (in my opinion). This song was everything I liked (or wanted) in hip-hop. Heavy beats, the bass, slick rhymes… it was all I needed to bob my head wearing a hoodie! 🙂
Kris Kross – “Jump”
For every bit of the real gangsta hip-hop there was, there were the mainstream silly acts too. Kid ‘N Play had the dude with the funny hair, and then there was Kriss Kross. Two young black kids – Mac Daddy and Daddy Mac – whose unqiue concept was wearing their clothes backwards! Funny as it all sounds, “Jump” was a massive hit when it came out and Kriss Kross’ only number 1 song. “Warm It Up,” their follow up single did alright, but “Jump” is still their most memorable song. I loved it then — and I still do!
Vanessa Williams – “Save The Best For Last”
I don’t remember when exactly this song came but I remember listening to this song on chilly days, be it in early months of the year or towards Christmas. The first number one for this former Miss America-turned-singer-turned-actress, “Save the Best for Last” is still one of the best ballads from the 1990s.
Arrested Development – “Mr. Wendal”
As a kid, I guess I always remembered this song as the one that began with the “Arrhh-ahhh-ahhhh” scream. I club Arrested Development and Tribe Called Quest in the same bucket because both groups made hip-hop with social conscious. Arrested Development’s sound was also quite different from the other hip-hop groups at the time.
House of Pain – “Jump Around”
Still regarded as one of the greatest hip-hop songs of all time! It’s the one song House of Pain will be always remembered for (also, they didn’t have many other hits). Among the few respected hip-hop groups not fronted by a black man, but instead, by an Irish-American named Everlast.
Wreckx-N-Effect feat. Teddy Riley – “Rump Shaker”
Produced by ‘new jack swing’ pioneer Teddy Riley (who is now contributing to K-pop), “Rump Shaker” is another hip-hop classic. And another one-hit wonder. Reasons for liking this song? Thumping bass, hard-ass beats and a catchy trumpet hook. Hip-hop was so simple back in the day 🙂 No over-producing, no auto-tune.
Funny, just read up on this song on Wiki and turns out, even a young Pharrell Williams helped out with the lyrics when working with Teddy Riley then.
Das EFX – “They Want EFX”
I remember my brother owning their album ‘Dead Serious’ on cassette. (Ahhhh, cassette tapes :)) One highly influential hip-hop group, Das EFX were especially renowned for their lyrical delivery and the ending words with “-iggidy”. Loved their rapping style and the album was pretty good too. “Mic Checka” was another good song off the same album.
Snow – “Informer”
Ahh, the “a-lickey boom boom down” song! 🙂 Or at least that’s how most people remembered it. One of the most unintentionally hilarious songs ever made. Even to this day many can’t figure out the lyrics. Snow was a white rapper and reggae performer from Canada (of all the places!) and “Informer” was his only no. 1 smash hit. If you actually read the lyrics, you will realize it is English that he’s speaking… but the song is still mostly gibberish 😀
Snow disappeared for much of the 1990s, but he got my attention again back in the early 2000s when he made a comeback in his native Canada with a new musical style. Check out “The Plumb Song” and “Everybody Wants to Be Like You” — they’re both really good, and vastly different from “Informer”!
Genesis – “I Can’t Dance”
As a kid, I didn’t know much about the history and legacy of Genesis (for that matter, Phil Collins too), but I fondly remember this song and especially its video. The simple ‘walking dance’ behind the white background… it’s just iconic Gensis now. As I grew older and learnt more about Genesis, it’s only then I realized this same album produced some of my favourite Genesis songs: “No Son of Mine,” “Jesus He Knows Me” (another brilliant Genesis video) and “Hold on My Heart“.
The Shamen – “Ebeneezer Goode”
Despite the growing influence of American hip-hop, radio airplay was still mostly British chart music. And this no. 1 song was one of my favourites! I still know the lyrics to the first verse by heart and love rapping along as I listen to it 🙂 Of course, when I was 10, I didn’t know what the song was even about. Only now did I learn “Eezer Goode, ‘Eezer Goode …” is basically saying “Es are good, Es are good”. (E = ecstasy)
Take That – “It Only Takes a Minute”
If there was one boy band that dominated the British charts in the early 1990s, it was Take That. The then 5-member group were at the early stages of their stardom and this was their first top 10 hit. The video was constantly played at night on Channel 55 (Bahrain’s local English channel) to fill up airtime before ending transmission. It’s still remains one of my favourite Take That songs, even though it’s actually a cover of a Tavares hit.
Jimmy Nail – “Ain’t No Doubt”
There were quite a few British actors and soap stars coming out with pop records in the 1990s, and this chap was one such example. I don’t know what show he was on or how famous he was back in England, but the reason I knew Jimmy Nail was because of this no. 1 hit (and his other hit “Crocodile Shoes“). This was British pop back in the day, a style of music lost in many of today’s British popstars attempting to sound American.
Tasmin Archer – “Sleeping Satellite”
A British one-hit wonder. Beautiful song though, went to no. 1 upon release and it was her first single too. Never heard much from Tasmin Archer after that.
Charles & Eddie – “Would I Lie To You”
The one hit wonders continued. This time a New York duo, who had a worldwide hit with this song. When you think about, a duo like Charles & Eddie would hardly ever get a record deal from a big label these days. Something I miss about music from decades past.
Cheb – “Khaled”
I end this post with one of the biggest hits of the 1990s… if you grew up in the Arab world in those days! 🙂 Cheb Khaled is an Algerian singer and, man, when this song came out – it was everywhere! It was so popular, and not just among Arabs. Indians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, Africans … everybody covered it in their own language (unofficially I’m sure). Khaled is a musical legend in the Arab world, one of the highest selling Arab musicians in history. His other great classics include “Aicha” and the phenomenal live performance of “Abdel Kader“.
Other songs that came out in 1992 that I only ended up liking as I grew older were:
Some of the biggest names in adult contemporary and rock. I guess it would take me a few more years to finally appreciate rock music 🙂
Previous posts in this series: | {
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Century-old Delta church gets face-lift
DELTA — Sometimes all it takes is moving around the furniture.
Father Tom Seibert had a St. Luke’s Episcopal Church parishioner rearrange the altar, pulpit, choir pews and communion rail in hopes of revitalizing the congregation and bringing in new people to the century-old church.
“St. Luke’s is in a period of renewal,” Seibert said. “We’re trying to renew a spirit of participation and open our doors to the community.”
The renovation recently was completed and the church is celebrating it with an open house at 5 p.m. Oct. 17 at the church, 145 Fifth St.
Seibert said they are personally inviting health care professionals to the open house.
“St. Luke was a physician,” Seibert said. “He really emphasized the healing power of Jesus Christ. I’m helping the congregation find their identity under our patron St. Luke by calling for prayer for those in need and especially for healing.”
Seibert was visiting with parishioner Ron Austin about the possibilities of renovating the 3,000-square-foot sanctuary a few months ago and asked how long it would take to complete the renovation.
“He said, ‘When do you want to do it?’
“The parish sent us to Colorado Springs to attend the Congregational Development Institute. It taught us how to present new ideas to the vestry.”
Austin, a retired sheriff’s deputy from San Diego, started working immediately.
He pulled up the carpet and found oak flooring. He moved the choir pews to underneath the stained-glass window.
The altar and communion rail were moved from underneath that same window out closer to the congregation pews.
“It was just not real conducive for baptisms, weddings,” Austin said. “Everything happened right here (in a small area in front of the pulpit).”
The communion rail was refurbished and a brochure rack was made out of leftover oak wood. The leftover material was recycled, Seibert said.
Austin installed a pivot on the pulpit so Seibert can face more of the congregation.
The speaker system was moved under the pulpit. It was on the back wall and not practical.
A flood light was installed outside the sanctuary and lights up the stained-glass window.
Finally, Lee Bowerman, who did several murals in Delta and Grand Junction, painted the wall around the stained-glass window light blue with white clouds.
“One of our parishioners gave us a history,” Seibert said. “When you come into the door, the aisle symbolizes our path to God. When I proposed this idea of a sky and clouds, we also have to look beyond to a destination. That’s how we came up with the idea of a heavenly makeover.”
It took Austin close to two months to completely finish the work and the church was still able to hold services every Sunday except one.
“The one time we went up to Mountain View Park and held the service there,” Seibert said.
St. Luke’s Church held its first service in 1893. The church was built in 1901.
The original church building ran east to west, but a fire damaged the building and it was rebuilt in 1953, facing south. All the windows were saved and reinstalled.
The church is involved in several community outreach programs, including the House of Promise, which helps young mothers find jobs. The church is in the process of participating with other churches in Delta in the Abraham Connection, a shelter for the homeless in Delta County. The church started a food pantry in case of emergency.
The Delta Correctional Facility’s men’s choir does a Christmas program at the church each year. | {
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I'm sure I missed a few, and these notes are even more terse than usual - you can't waste much time on TNs when there's such good food to be eaten - but here's a quick summary of the queue that backed up on the corner table where Thor and I were feverishly recording on our Palm Pilots. They're listed in the order tasted except for the reds, where I slightly shuffled the order to organize the list geographically.
Domaine Ostertag 1996 Heissenberg Riesling - perfumed, apples and mangoes.
Zind-Humbrecht 1993 Clos Windsbuhl Gewurztraminer - Intense grapefruit, full and rich. Probably white wine of the evening.
Pierre Gimonnet & Fils 1993 Brut - Appley and tart, creamy and rich.
Shooting Star 1999 Washington State Aligote - Apples and tart acid, a bit hot but nice structure.
Pavao n-v Vinho Verde - Fizzy and crisp, an earthy note.
Bründlmayer 1998 Ried Loiser Berg Kamptal Grüner Veltliner - Fresh green pea and mineral, delicious, gives the Z-H a run for its money.
Westport Rivers 1998 Southeastern New England Chardonnay - Appley and fresh, crisp, nice Chardonnay, a bit pricey for what it is at a reported $20.
Le Vigne di San Pietro 1997 Bianco di Custoza - delicate hazelnut and almond and fading white fruit. Showing its age.
Castello della Paneretta 1993 Chianti Classico - Earthy black cherry, complex and evolved, holding up well. Impressive wine.
Sottimano 1996 Fausoni Barbaresco Vigna del Salto - Smoky, floral, big and very tannic.
Avignonesi 1997 Vino Nobile di Montepulciano - Black fruit, tar and smoke, big fruit anz tannin, very nice.
Sant'Antimo 1997 Cassisano-Colombaio Rosso - light nose, full palate, fresh black fruit.
d'Angelo 1994 Aglianico del Vulture - aromatic red fruit.
Fontana Bianca 1996 Barbaresco - Ripe and tart black-cherry fruit.
Louis Jadot 1997 Savigny-Lès-Beaune La Dominode - Delicious, silken fruit.
Chateau Mont-Redon Chateauneuf-du-Pape - Deep and brooding black fruit, big structure.
Domaine de Pegau 1998 Chateauneuf-du-Pape - Big black fruit, restrained barnyard; tannic and full.
Domaine Paul Autard 1998 Chateauneuf-du-Pape - Dark, plummy, somewhat closed?
Jamet 1994 Cote-Rotie - Toast, ieather and grilled meat. Big and structured.
Chateau Meyney 1989 Saint Estephe - classic earthy Meyney. Still young.
Casa de Santar 1998 Dão Reserva - black fruit and leather, plummy and full.
Teófilo Reyes 1995 Ribera del Duero - plummy and full, still a "fruit bomb."
DeLoach 1990 Russian River Valley Zinfandel - fruity, berries, a big wine; holding up amazingly well after a decade, it still seems youthful.
Storrs Winery 1993 Santa Cruz Mountains Petite Sirah - Plummy, peppery; unusually complex for the variety. I like this wine.
Pahlmeyer 1997 Napa Valley Merlot - sweet black fruit and oak. Monolithic, woody finish. Thor declares it "vile." I'm not prepared to go that far, although "horrifying" works.
Weingut Willi Schaefer 1995er Graacher Domprobst (MSR) Riesling Auslese - Clear gold. Honey and mango. Very sweet.
Joh. Jos. Prum 1999 Wehlener Sonnenuhr Riesling Auslese - Crisp and fresh, apples and wildflowers. Not really a dessert wine but a very fine Mosel, young and showing promise.
Domaine des Petits Quarts 1996 Bonnezeaux Le Malabé - pale gold. Steely white fruit, sweet and tart.
Ernst Bretz 1998er Bechtoldsheimer Homberg Rheinhessen Riesling Eiswein - Unctuous, intensely sweet, seductive but flawed, with odd spoiled-fruit qualities and one-dimensional. Some discussion about whether it's corked, but I'm not convinced of that.
Chateau Rieussec 1990 Sauternes - Clear gold, honey and apricots. Sweet and rich. A classic.
Have you tasted these wines? | {
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Every 13 minutes, someone dies on America’s roadways. Fatalities include drivers, passengers, pedestrians, cyclists, and every other kind of road user. Car crashes hit young people especially hard, killing more people aged 5-34 than any other cause of death. More than 2.3 million people annually also suffer serious injuries from crashes.
Ten times more Americans die in car crashes each year than have died in combat in Iraq in the past decade. The economic impact of crash-related deaths and injuries is estimated at $70 billion a year, which is more than the total annual economic output of 15 U.S. states and territories.
These statistics are shocking. Every road user should be outraged that these tragedies continue to take place, especially when so many crashes occur because of risks that could be avoided, such as distraction, speeding, and impaired driving.
Through our Traffic Safety Culture program, the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety works to safety a priority that everyone in our society values and pursues. Rather than viewing safety as a goal that can be compromised for convenience, all road users will consider safety an inherent part of driving.
Our annual Traffic Safety Culture Index tracks how the public’s views and perceptions of traffic safety issues change over time. Although various issues shift in and out of the public’s attention from year to year, one thing remains the same: Most people understand the risks of distraction, drowsiness, impaired driving, and other risky behaviors – and they condemn others for being risky – but they refuse to apply what they know to their own behavior.
Overcoming this attitude and making safe behaviors everyone’s priority will save lives.
- Media Center | {
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Q5: Joel, on a tight 12-day shoot like you had on Phone Booth, where all the shots are worked out and lined up - did you ever feel that you wanted to shoot some other scene?
JS: No, I just wanted to shoot myself because [audience laughs] ... I'm really serious. The day we went to start Phone Booth, I got this terrible sick feeling. I mean, you always have a little bit of stage fright before you start a film which is natural, but this was that terrible, sinking film like if you hadn't studied for a test in school and you knew you were going to fail. I said to my assistant Jeremy [Garelick], outside of putting a needle in my arm for five years in the 60s, this is the most insane thing I've ever done in my life. What am I doing? This was December of 2000, Colin [Farrell] was totally unknown - he'd just done Tigerland, and I thought, I could ruin everybody's career with this. We can't do this, this is insane, how did I ever get us into this? And I bet if everyone was honest on the film they'd have said the same thing. We also had to stop shooting at 4pm because it was winter and we lost the light. So we only had from 7am to 4pm to shoot. So we rehearsed for two weeks and the cast was fantastic. That they threw their lot in with me was amazing. So we made the first day, and the second day, and we kind of became The Little Engine That Could then. With team spirit, you know that either you're fucked and you're losing and everybody goes downhill, or else you go, "Yes, Yes! We're gonna do it." Also, Christmas was coming and I think that finishing it before then was on everyone's mind. But I don't recommend it, at all. We got lucky, very lucky with Phone Booth. Luck had a lot to do with its success, and great actors.
PC: Cate, have you ever had to dig deep on a film set and thought you'd rather be a million miles away?
CB: Frequently. Yeah. Often it's not particularly enjoyable and having a good time on the set does not necessarily result in a good film. I did a film once where the producer said, "I want everyone to feel like they're at holiday camp" - the shoot was terrible. So you don't expect the process to be enjoyable. And when you take on the role of someone like Veronica, you know that it's not going to be a cakewalk.
JS: When you're doing a very tragic or serious material, I think we use humour between the takes to relieve the reality of what we're all living through. Especially with an all-Irish cast and crew and with everybody so familiar with this story and knows what's happening - and many people knew her - I think the more serious the nature of the film, we used humour to just give ourselves a little relief.
PC: It had a great look, this film; I thought it looked a million miles away from the last 10-15 years of diddly-dee films from Ireland, like things haven't moved on from The Quiet Man. These guys had a much more sinister look - was that kind of a scuffed and bad-taste attempt at glamour?
JS: And cheap. The thing is, I didn't want to glamorise these people. You know, most gangsters they think they're all that as soon as they have a few bucks in their pocket. The scene where Brian Meehan was strip-searched, he actually masturbated in front of them, that's how bold they were getting. And they were really getting away with murder and no one could touch them. At one point one of Gilligan's thugs was arrested with $200,000 in cash and Gilligan went in the next morning and said, "It's my money, I want it back," and they had to hand it to him because at the time in Ireland they didn't have the power to seize assets even if they were illegal.
PC: At the end, when the full impact of Veronica Guerin's life is taken out of the realm of the personal drama you've just told and then seen as a catalyst for all these changes in Irish law - weren't you tempted to let a little bit of that out earlier?
JS: No. I thought it should happen after the death because, if you're going to tell a tragedy, there has to be a point it. If you're going to tear an audience open with emotion, you have to then explain why.
PC: What I meant was, weren't you tempted to build up her significance at the start of the film, because it really does seem to hit you around the head at the end?
CB: Well, I think that the form of the film mirrors what actually happened because none of these laws changed until after she died.
JS: I think it's also nice for people to learn about it at the end.
CB: Also, we've got really short-term memories, and a lot of the changes that were implemented have now been eroded. The problems don't go away.
JS: Probably no country has spent as much money as my country on drug wars and I'm not sure who's winning except for the drug dealers.
Q6: Cate, you've said that you watched a lot of TV interviews to prepare for Veronica Guerin; how did you prepare for Elizabeth?
CB: Used my imagination, which in the end is your primary tool as an actor. I think that the benefit of playing someone like Queen Elizabeth is that so much has been written about her and there's so much speculation about her - was she a hermaphrodite? She's so mythologised and there are a lot of images of her. But in the end, you're given a script, and it was quite a melodramatic script. Shekhar [Kapur] would say himself, and he's a dear friend, that he had no interest whatsoever in the history of Elizabeth and her achievements and her milieu. He wanted to make a film about a young girl and her romance. He had two bookend images and he gave me a 1920s book with uncut pages on the sayings of Queen Elizabeth I and said, "You fill in the details". So I would read this every day - what she supposedly said on art, politics, music, whatever. So a script in film is often a very organic beast, and often when you get a really, well-written script it doesn't necessarily make a great film. I think it's constantly changing because once you've shot a scene, you say, "You know what, I think this scene is more important than we thought it was." Like we found in Veronica Guerin, she went and vomited after she found out that John Traynor had betrayed her; but we found in shooting it that that moment was much more powerful when it came after the beating. So you have to have a fluid attitude to a script and also to a character, because your greatest moment can end up on the cutting room floor, so you have to have a lot of greatest moments just to be on the safe side.
Q7: It's a quite a hard-hitting and dark film, but it's interesting that Cate's portrayal of Veronica Guerin is actually quite upbeat, she was almost girly and flirty. Was she actually like that?
JS: You know, she was a very seductive and manipulative person, as most great journalists are. She would get what she needed out of people and she was a very attractive woman and she had great legs, so she would use that...
CB: That's why I was cast. [Laughs]
JS: Exactly, although if Elizabeth I looked like you she wouldn't have been running the country; she would have been having a much better time, trust me. So, Veronica was very chameleon-like in the way she could play soccer with the boys, she could be part of a huge family and be a loving daughter and she had a very healthy marriage. But she could go to an MP dressed a certain way, she could go to the pubs and as John Traynor says in the film, "She fancies me." Everywhere we went, for instance, her editor at the paper, the first time we met him, he took me aside and said, "I think Veronica really fancied me," and I thought, "Well, she got you." I think she'd go to his office, cross her legs and say, "Angus, I want this and this," and get it. She understood, but then she would go talk to drug addicts and they would open up to her. She had a wonderful facility of being very accessible, the way any great photographer or journalist is when they invade someone's space and wants to get something from them. I think she probably justified that not as exploitation but in service of a good cause.
CB: Also, it's a country of great talkers and she was an extraordinary listener.
JS: But she was also mischievous and she had a real glint in her eye and it was fun for her to be Veronica Guerin. She became very famous in a country where women have only recently started to make a mark.
PC: You've said this about her being a great listener and you've said that when you're performing, you get as much from what's going on around you as what you're generating in yourself. How does that work when you've got technicians standing around scratching their arses?
CB: The more you do it, the more you learn to concentrate, as a child does, incredibly intensively and then you sort of have to relax. I remember the first film I did, the lead actor would in between scenes be reading a newspaper or sleeping and I'd think, "How can you do that?" But it's so exhausting, you can't be 'on' 12-14 hours a day. But in the end if you've done all your homework you just have to be brave enough to let it all go and play the scene, and if the scene's well-written, it will carry you. And your performance should be clear and brave enough that it will completely change when you get the other elements in - the lights, the costumes, the other actor. I'm a big believer that that's where the performance lies - somewhere in-between the two of you. And that's why theatre is so extraordinary - you should get to watch those performances hang between the two actors, that's why we want to go and watch people in real life, it's that production of energy.
Q8: Joel, how did you actually get to hear about Veronica Guerin's story? Did [screenwriter] Carol Doyle come to you?
JS: No. What happened was when Jerry Bruckheimer saw Tigerland he called me and said that he was very impressed with it, probably because we'd tried so hard to make it gritty and real, and maybe that spoke to him about something that he wanted... I mean this is unlike a film that Jerry has done before. So Jerry called me and asked if I knew who Veronica Guerin was and I said I didn't, so he sent me a 60 Minutes documentary and also a looseleaf binder this thick [hands about a foot apart] with all of her articles and a lot of the ones which had been written about her after her death. And I just thought it would make a great story. I liked her enormously when I saw the clips - I wish I'd known her. Everybody said that you could have a laugh with her, and she really didn't take herself that seriously. She would have hated to have a movie made about her, I know it.
PC: I thought you well captured the malevolence and lack of goodwill from her fellow journalists.
JS: It still exists now, and they'll begrudge her this. The tall poppy syndrome is alive and well everywhere.
Q9: Cate, you've played pretty iconic figures in Elizabeth and Galadriel; do you feel a sense of responsibility, or have you come under a lot of pressure, to accurately portray them?
CB: Tell me about it. I've been an objective outsider for both those experiences, being from the colonies, as Shekhar and I both are. As for Galadriel, thank Christ I hadn't read the books before I accepted it. I just wanted to work with Peter Jackson and he asked me to play an elf, and the frame of reference to play that I had no idea. So I read the books only as it was coming up to the release of the film, and then realised. And I'd probably have been a little offset because everyone was so excited, so I probably deliberately stayed naive about both things because if you think about that stuff too much, you can try too hard and play safe.
Q10: I really liked the scenes in the film where Veronica was with the family. In your research, Cate, how much time did you spend with the family and what sort of response did they give you?
CB: When Joel asked me to do it, people asked me if I'd like to meet the family and I thought, just because I'm making a film about someone it doesn't entitle me to enter these people's lives, irrespective of whether I had the opportunity to meet them or not. So my attitude was, I knew that Joel had a close relationship with Bernie Guerin, Veronica's mother. But I didn't necessarily expect that to happen or require it to happen. It's like any relationship, I want it to be an organic thing; I don't want to just turn up and go, "So, hold my hand sweetheart, tell me what I need." So Jimmy Guerin, her brother, was incredibly helpful, and not sentimental. And Bernie called me on the phone - but I met the majority of the family at the wrap party.
JS: Veronica's mother is quite an extraordinary woman in her own right. She's very attractive, very intelligent and very formidable. I got a call about two weeks before shooting. I would have never approached her for obvious reasons but she called and said that she would like to meet me. So she came to meet me at the hotel where I was staying at and we had a four-hour meeting, which I think was her interview of me, to see if I was up for this job. We then spoke all the time on the phone and she invited me to meet the family several times, over dinner and things like that. She brought me photographs and some research but she didn't really try to influence the film in any way, she didn't come to the set. I think that she was really happy that it was in our hands or I'd have heard about it otherwise because she's no shy sister. And for me, the hardest part about this job was showing her the film a couple of months ago because by then there was so much affection between us and I respected her so much that if she hadn't liked the film, I would have been really devastated, no matter what anyone else thought. But she was my date for the premiere, and Veronica's son and husband came, and I thought that was really incredible, and they were fantastic - it was really difficult but they handled it very well.
PC: It must have been an extraordinary experience for her son to see the portrayal on screen.
JS: It was overwhelming. I looked over at Cate at one point - we were standing there and there was a standing ovation for the whole family; and most of the people who worked on the movie were there, so we introduced them to the family. I've never been to a premiere like this, unlike anything in Hollywood for sure - totally devoid of any commercial sense. It seemed like a family film even though there were hundreds of people there.
Q11: Joel, you're more like a European art-house director now; would you consider doing something more overtly political? Something like the IRA?
JS: Yeah. I'm not versed on it so I'd have to do a lot of research. But I would imagine that because it's so complex that it would take a couple of years just to study everything and to get it right, and you couldn't please everybody anyway. And so much has been done about it already. I'd have to study it more to see if I have a way in. I don't even know if it should be done by an American. But thanks for the compliment, I appreciate it very much.
Q12: You talked about not turning Veronica Guerin into a saint. Did you have to take things out or put things in?
JS: Well, Cate helped a lot because she wasn't going to play her like a saint, and she played the mischief and the seductive quality and the fun of being her. But also, definitely in the subtext, you feel her insecurities and her fears. In order to be courageous you have to understand the fear and get past it. The person who runs into a burning building to save someone knows that fire can kill you but they go anyway. She was well aware that this was dangerous territory and one of the things that a lot of people who knew her said was that she would never acknowledge that she felt fear. So one way you do it is pretend that it doesn't bother you in the slightest and she was very good at that. So we tried to put in more intimate moments - many of them were Cate's idea, and maybe she'd like to talk about this, about the vulnerability and the humanising of the character.
CB: There's a lot of books that have been written about her - negative and positive. So you don't just read the positive ones, you read the negative ones as well because part of that may be true in some way, or to be frank as an actor, useful.
JS: It's interesting the kind of reactions people have though - when we put the movie together, the scene of the birthday party, where her son shows the skateboard and she goes, "That's great, who gave that to you?" and he says, "You and dad", you realise that the father bought it for him and she didn't know about it. And the studio said, "You have to cut that out, she's a terrible mother."
CB: And that's probably from some studio executive who probably doesn't even have children.
PC: I think that's about it and we've come to the end of the evening. I'd like to thank you for all your contributions.
JS: Thanks for being here for us. | {
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SOUTH BEND, Ind. (www.incnow.tv) - A Notre Dame linebacker's heartbreak that became a headline of the 2012 college football season has been uncovered a hoax.
Te'o inspired a nation, football fans and not, when he led his Fightin' Irish to a huge road victory at Michigan State days after losing his grandmother and girlfriend.
His grandmother, Annette Santiago, 72, died in the evening of Tues., Sept. 11. Six hours later, Lennay Kekua was reported dead of cancer.
Wednesday, the world learned the girlfriend never existed; her death never happened.
"Someone using the fictitious name Lennay Kekua apparently ingratiated herself with Manti," the University of Notre Dame said in a release. "And then conspired with others to lead him to believe she had tragically died of leukemia."
Deadspin broke the story Wednesday. Beyond the confusion of the story and the shock of the details, the role Te'o had in the hoax has been a major question.
"Manti was the victim of the hoax, and will carry that for a while," Jack Swarbrick, Notre Dame vice president & athletic director, said at a press conference Wednesday night. "This was a very elaborate, sophisticated hoax perpetrated for reasons we can't fully understand."
Swarbrick says Te'o learned of the hoax in a call at the ESPN Home Depot College Awards show on Dec. 6. from the woman who had pretended to be his girlfriend. The familiar voice with the familiar number saying she was in fact alive.
Te'o would keep that phone call a secret until Dec. 26, Swarbrick says; eventually notifying Irish coaching staff about the call. From there, the university launched an investigation, hiring a private security firm.
The investigation yielded a Cat Fish-like hoax, Swarbrick says, where people create fake dating profiles to scam unsuspecting potential mates.
"I developed an emotional relationship with a woman I met online," Te'o says in a statement released Wednesday night. We maintained what I thought to be an authentic relationship by communicating frequently online."
Swarbrick says Te'o planned to come out with the details of the hoax in the days to come; until Deadspin ran the story first.
Deadspin says it tracked down a young woman in Torrence, Calif., whose photos were used by a former high school classmate to perpetuate the hoax. Deadspin did not identify the woman, but did identify as the classmate as Ronaiah Tuiasosopo, a member of a famous Samoan family with long roots in college and professional football.
An identified friend of Tuiasosopo's says he is "80 percent sure" Te'o was in on the hoax.
Te'o also maintains he was a victim in this saga.
"To realize that I was the victim of what was apparently someone's sick joke and constant lies was, and is, painful and humiliating," Te'o's statement read. "I hope that people can understand how trying and confusing this whole experience has been."
"The single-most trusting human being I've ever met will never be able to trust in the same way again in his life," a choked-up Swarbrick said of Te'o. "That's an incredible tragedy."
Te'o won a slew of defensive awards at the end of the season, and looks to be a high pick in the upcoming NFL Draft.
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Boys & Girls Clubs of America and Maytag share a heritage of dependability dating back more than 100 years. Maytag builds high-performing and dependable products, and communities across America depend on Boys & Girls Clubs to help young people achieve great futures. This year Maytag brand and Boys & Girls Clubs of America (BGCA) will honor selected Boys & Girls Club professionals and volunteers for their dependable, positive impact on America’s youth with a Maytag Dependable Leader Award. Recipients will receive this distinction along with a $20,000 financial award to support the Club’s efforts to be a safe, dependable place that enable young people to achieve great futures. The grant will further extend the individual’s respective focus with the Clubs to continue and enhance their demonstrated commitment to helping youth achieve great futures.
During the past three years, Maytag and BGCA have recognized and promoted dependability - a quality that is at the core of what the Clubs do every day and is central to Maytag brand. The Dependable Leader Award program is an extension of the three-year partnership that Maytag brand has had with BGCA.
About Maytag BrandFor more than a century, Maytag brand appliances have been synonymous with dependability and durability. Through the commitment of Whirlpool Corporation, Maytag brand’s enduring tradition of quality production and performance continues to thrive. Exceptionally durable, commercial-grade components are found in many Maytag brand appliances – including Maytag® Maxima® front-load and Maytag® Bravos® top-load washers and dryers. Maytag brand is part of the Whirlpool Corporation, the world’s leading manufacturer and marketer of major home appliances, with annual sales of approximately $19 billion in 2011, 68,000 employees, and 66 manufacturing and technology research centers around the world. For more information on any Maytag brand appliance, visit www.maytag.com.
Maytag Dependable Leader In 2014 Maytag and Boys & Girls Clubs of America honored 12 Club professionals, volunteers and members for their dependable, positive impact on youth with the “Maytag Dependable Leader” Awards. See the partnership video below to learn more about the BGCA & Maytag partnership and the Maytag Dependable Leader Awards.
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The Official Site of Boys & Girls Clubs of America.
© Boys & Girls Clubs of America. All Rights Reserved.
BGCA is a 501(c)3 (nonprofit) organization and donations are tax deductible.
The URL GreatFutures.org is generously donated by | {
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ATLANTA -- Chan Gailey frowned and tried to restore order.
Georgia Tech's new coach watched in frustration during a recent scrimmage as two of his young players wrestled on the ground, grabbing each other's face masks. Other players quickly joined the scrum.
"Let them go, let them go," someone yelled, but several assistant coaches moved in to separate the group. The pushing and shoving stopped, and the players slowly moved back to their respective huddles.
"Pick up that helmet," one of the coaches shouted.
Welcome back to college, coach.
After spending the past eight years in the NFL - including two as head coach of the Dallas Cowboys - the Americus native was hired by Georgia Tech in December to replace George O'Leary.
He takes over a team which has played in five straight bowl games, the longest streak since the 1950s. The school also was embarrassed by revelations that O'Leary lied about his college playing career and graduate work, costing him a job at Notre Dame just five days after he left the Yellow Jackets.
It didn't get much better after Gailey was hired. His original choice for defensive coordinator, Rick Smith, was forced to resign after falsehoods were found on his school-released biography.
Things have finally settled down at Georgia Tech, with spring practice drawing to a close. The focus has returned to the field, where Gailey's trying to find a replacement for departed quarterback George Godsey.
But the focus also is on Gailey, 50, who's never been the head coach of a Division I program. He led Troy State to a Division II title in 1984, and he coached one season at I-AA Samford in 1993.
"The college game is a little different now," Gailey said. "I think the game has become more sophisticated, and everybody has learned to be better. I also think there are a lot more NCAA rules that you have to pay attention to."
He's noticed some other differences, too, mainly in the attitude of his players.
"These guys seem eager to be here," Gailey said. "There's a lot of enthusiasm and emotion in the game for them everyday. It seems like, in the pros, that tends to happen only on game day or toward the playoffs.
"It's enjoyable to go to practice here."
So far, Gailey's easygoing personality has carried over to practice. Fans line the hill beside Rose Bowl Field to watch the Yellow Jackets, and reporters are allowed to stroll down the sidelines with the players.
"It's a more relaxed team, kind of new experience for everybody," said quarterback Damarius Bilbo, one of the players involved in the fight during the scrimmage. "He helps us out a lot, because he's been to the next level."
Gailey led the Cowboys to the playoffs two straight years but lost a power struggle with owner Jerry Jones. He resurfaced in Miami, retooling the offense for new Dolphins coach Dave Wannstedt. The team reached the playoffs in both of Gailey's seasons.
He was a candidate a year ago for the job at Georgia that eventually went to Mark Richt, but Gailey said he wouldn't have been lured out of the NFL by just any school.
"There's not a lot of universities I would have considered," Gailey said. "It had to be one of a certain group. Certainly, the location of the school, and the league it played in was a factor, as well as level of play."
Just how long he stays at Georgia Tech is another question. Football coaches often bounce around from job to job, and in fact Gailey has spent more than four seasons with just one team.
But he said he has no aspirations to return to the NFL, and he hopes to stay with the Yellow Jackets for years.
"We all know this business and how it changes, but the plan right now is to coach at Georgia Tech for 10 to 15 years and then turn it over to a younger guy," he said.
© 2016. All Rights Reserved. | Contact Us | {
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MIAMI (CBS4) — They’re everywhere! On the fashion runways, in the stores, on the streets–women and their high heels!
There’s no doubt about it, women love to wear high heels. There’s just something about them. They make us feel sexy. But unfortunately, the more time we spend in our heels can lead to time spent in this orthopedic boot, and these aren’t too sexy!
“The number one cause of high heel problems is probably pain in the bottom of the foot,” Dr. Kevin Berkowitz told CBS4’s Lisa Petrillo.
Berkowitz, with Miami Beach Foot & Ankle Surgery, is now seeing women, mostly between 30 and 55, who’ve messed up the mechanics of their feet and ankles because they lived their lives in high heels.
“It’s not just the height, it’s the narrow nature of the heel now,” explained Dr. Berkowitz. “The higher you go the more stretch there is to the ball of the foot. If you put your foot in that position…in the ballet stance…you’re just going to have compression and pain.”
Berkowitz said it’s simple: As a woman squeezes her foot into an unrealistically narrow toe box, with astronomical heights, the soft tissues such as ligaments and tendons begin to stretch and tear, even rupture, and the mechanics of the ankle are altered. After time, hammertoes and bunions occur. Even knee and back pain can often be attributed to high heels.
“At the end of the day it was like this pressure pounding like throbbing pain,” said Maria Duenas, who has had to have foot surgery.
Duenas has been wearing high heels since she was a young teen because she said she wanted to be tall. The result? Bunion surgery two-and-a-half years ago.
Mabel Lezcano, 38, put her first pair of sky-high stilettos on at age 15.
“Really bad pain,” Lezcano told Petrillo. “Especially to walk and do regular things.”
“Did you have trouble buying new shoes because of the bunions,” asked Petrillo.
“Oh, definitely,” she responded.
Dr. Berkowitz operated on both women. He showed Petrillo Mabel’s x-ray before surgery. It showed her foot deformed due to bunions and hammer toes.
“This is where the fifth metatarcil starts to splay outward and then the shoe puts pressure on both sides in addition to putting pressure on the toe,” explained Berkowitz.
Then Berkowitz showed Petrillo Mabel’s X-ray after her bunion was removed and hammertoe corrected. Although Berkowitz told us bunions are mostly genetic, he said they are exacerbated by the choice of shoes like today’s super stilettos.
“My advice to women is don’t wear your fabulous shoes to Publix,” advised Berkowitz.
Another foot pain factor is the amount of time spent in high heels.
“If you’re sitting at a desk with your heel on and you’re working at a desk, that’s not terrible. But if you’re on your feet all day, running around doing things and then you’re going to a function after work and you’re in your heels eight to 12 hours a day over the course of time, your feet are going to suffer,” insisted Berkowitz.
He advises women to change things up. Wear a two-inch pump one day and four-inch heels at night, flats or walking shoes the next day.
When Petrillo pulled a few of her own shoes out of a bag for his assessment, “The five-inch thin stiletto or five-inch wedge?” she asked Berkowitz.
“The better shoe is this shoe. The wedge wins all the time,” he declared.
It took Mabel and Maria about six to 12 weeks of recovery before they were able to wear comfortable shoes, and about eight-months before they were back in heels again.
Petrillo asked Maria, “In the end was it worth it for you? Having the surgery? Wearing the heels? Going through the whole thing?”
“Oh yeah,” responded Maria with a grin. “Yeah!”
“You’re not saying to women don’t wear high heels,” Petrillo quizzed Berkowitz.
“No, I would never say that,” he told her. “That’s like telling a woman she doesn’t look good in that dress!”
A tip for parents: Dr. Berkowitz says he does not recommend girls under 16 wear high heels for long periods of time at all. This is because their bones are still developing and forcing the toes into an abnormal position during these growth years will lead to foot problems later on, and at a much younger age. | {
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Sort: Category . Published . Updated . Title . Words . Chapters . Reviews . Status .
by Maeven reviews
Sam Westlane is the new kid in the famous all boys Crestan High School for the rich and the spoiled ... There's only one problem. Sam is a girl.
Fiction: Romance - Rated: T - English - Romance/Humor - Chapters: 30 - Words: 114,525 - Reviews: 7239 - Favs: 6,221 - Follows: 930 - Updated: 1/5/2009 - Published: 9/5/2003 - Complete
Heart of the Desert
by oreos reviews
As war threatens the wealthy and exotic country of Sirabia, Aysa struggles with her own personal wars with a brother who wants her dead and 2 men who would claim her heart
Fiction: Romance - Rated: T - English - Romance/Adventure - Chapters: 1 - Words: 5,059 - Reviews: 81 - Favs: 24 - Follows: 8 - Updated: 7/19/2008 - Published: 4/10/2004
Days of Rain
by Horizon Passage reviews
A selfish king kidnaps a naive princess and forces her to marry his youngest son. Little did he know the pairing was fulfilling not only their destiny, but the destiny of the planet. Please read and review. Chapter 16 is up, and will be updated again soon
Fiction: Romance - Rated: T - English - Fantasy/Angst - Chapters: 16 - Words: 20,657 - Reviews: 112 - Favs: 24 - Follows: 24 - Updated: 6/29/2007 - Published: 11/27/2004
The Guardian Angel
by Little Miss Angel reviews
[COMPLETE] Eric is half naked when he walks into his room to find Aurora sitting on his bed. What's he supposed to say when she tells him that she's his guardian angel? He's destined for great things, but what happens when forbidden feelings develop?
Fiction: Romance - Rated: T - English - Fantasy/Romance - Chapters: 1 - Words: 2,114 - Reviews: 491 - Favs: 350 - Follows: 63 - Updated: 2/2/2007 - Published: 8/7/2006 - Complete
The Lost Princess
by kristy23 reviews
A desperate Queen has given birth to a girl. The maid has given birth to a boy. A secret exchange changes the lives of the children forever. What happens years later when that girl learns what happened? Will she demand her rights? Will anyone believe her?
Fiction: Historical - Rated: T - English - Romance/Drama - Chapters: 13 - Words: 36,008 - Reviews: 320 - Favs: 156 - Follows: 129 - Updated: 10/31/2006 - Published: 6/14/2006
by Vae Victus reviews
More than anything Willamina wanted to feel the sea beneath her legs and the only thing that was stopping her was her sex, so she took matters into her own hands. Now she has she has to deal with her Captain, a man whom terrifies her more than anything.
Fiction: Historical - Rated: M - English - Romance/Drama - Chapters: 1 - Words: 1,359 - Reviews: 4 - Favs: 3 - Follows: 4 - Published: 8/22/2006
Reason and Romance
by Myrika reviews
Adrian Blake is tired of looking for that perfect romance, but when she meets Alex Montgomery, she forgets all reason. And yet she can't forget he's her new stepbrother. //REMOVED//
Fiction: Romance - Rated: M - English - Romance - Chapters: 29 - Words: 4,293 - Reviews: 4342 - Favs: 1,551 - Follows: 134 - Updated: 8/15/2006 - Published: 12/15/2005 - Complete
AGAINST ALL ODDS
by Heidi Mackenzie reviews
Mid 1400s. Chá (pronounced Shay) is a mistreated servant girl. Jakob is the son of a king. Their lives have never crossed paths, but when they do, they fall hopelessly in love. FINISHED! Please R&R!
Fiction: Romance - Rated: M - English - Romance/Angst - Chapters: 31 - Words: 60,974 - Reviews: 490 - Favs: 188 - Follows: 13 - Updated: 11/11/2005 - Published: 7/19/2003
by Nocturnal silhouette reviews
The enchantress, a seductive goddess, an alluring night maiden. And the man who loves her. ONE SHOT
Fiction: Romance - Rated: M - English - Romance - Chapters: 1 - Words: 3,429 - Reviews: 10 - Favs: 64 - Follows: 8 - Published: 8/3/2005 - Complete
Omundor's Daughters – Forbidden
by KaiaLeigh reviews
Clip: The instant one of his hands were free he snatched a hand full of my hair from the top of my head. I looked at him as he just sat there in silence and peered down at me with his icy blue eyes like I was nothing more than.sum in profile
Fiction: Romance - Rated: T - English - Romance/Sci-Fi - Chapters: 18 - Words: 26,103 - Reviews: 137 - Favs: 42 - Follows: 4 - Updated: 7/10/2005 - Published: 5/22/2005 - Complete
by Scribe Mozell reviews
A modern woman unwittingly angers a Roman goddess and is thrown back in time and place. She must face the dangers and difficulties of life as a slave--complicated by a VERY interested master.
Fiction: Romance - Rated: M - English - Fantasy/Drama - Chapters: 23 - Words: 57,753 - Reviews: 306 - Favs: 405 - Follows: 65 - Updated: 6/9/2003 - Published: 4/25/2003
Once and Future Queen
by cOOkiMoNsteR626 reviews
1550 BC; a young princess is sent to marry the king of Knossos, Crete. It was the duty as a princess to wed and bear children. What she didn't expect was to fall completely in love with the king. Tho their fates were sealed, can love conquer all? COMPLETE
Fiction: Romance - Rated: T - English - Romance/Drama - Chapters: 16 - Words: 57,862 - Reviews: 447 - Favs: 332 - Follows: 31 - Updated: 6/9/2003 - Published: 5/26/2003 | {
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AAA ELECTRA 99 ART GALLERY AND PERFORMANCE SPACE The only gallery in the county people are scared to visit. Maybe it's the shellacked rats hanging on the wall. Art enough for you, pussy? 2821 White Star, Unit D, Anaheim, (714) 666-1805.
ADAMS, Johnna, and LEACH, Kristina Cal State Fullerton graduate Leach and DePaul University alum Adams are involved in the Orange County Playwrights Alliance and the OC Writer's Collective and are successful playwrights even if they haven't yet made enough money to buy a Sunday New York Times. Why? Because they're always being produced somewhere, anywhere. And, just as important, they always seem to be writing new plays. Leach's Grasmereis currently being produced up in Los Angeles, while Adams has had productions or workshops of her plays in recent months in locales as varied as Fullerton, New York, a prison and a nudist colony. ADVENTURE CITY This two-acre amusement park is actually amusing, as opposed to overwhelming and exploitative. It has a carousel in the middle, little roller coasters and whirly rides. The staff are real people, not cast members. The fun is real, too, with puppet shows, face painting, and an area where kids can dress up like firefighters and cops and ride around a track in cop cars and fire engines. And there's a miniature train that circles the whole place. It's just nice. 1238 S. Beach Blvd., Stanton, (714) 236-9300. AITKEN, WILEY Orange County's leading plaintiff's lawyer can sell a jury anything, which might explain how he continues to portray himself as a socially concerned Robert F. Kennedy-type liberal Democrat even though he hobnobs comfortably with some of the county's biggest Republican scum. ALEX'S BAR Nice digs, amazing shows, shitty publicity. Every band you ever wanted so desperately to see played there last night. Better luck next trend! 2913 E. Anaheim, Long Beach, (562) 434-8292. ALISO VIEJO The fact that the words "yuppie haven" spring to mind about this newly born city isn't totally off the mark. Scores of tract homes and apartment complexes (usually billing themselves as luxury apartments, not to be confused with rinky-dink ones) dot the hillsides. Clustered together to create make-believe communities, some of these developments seek to evoke the so-called good old days (Twelve Picket Lane), while others sell posh living (San Simeon, Tiburon). Located in the city's heart, the bustling Aliso Viejo Town Center is the main hangout for teens and middle-aged folks alike; it's basically the only hangout, home to such standard retail stores as Barnes & Noble and Pier 1. Should you venture here, be warned: parking has become a scarce commodity, and even when you find a space, it takes some clever maneuvering to squeeze your car between two monstrous SUVs. If the great outdoors is more your thing, AV (as the homies call it—word) has plenty of breezy, grassy rolling hills. It has also managed to retain some natural wildlife areas, with Aliso and Wood Canyons Regional Park located along one of its borders. Of course, there's a darker side to all this idyllic scenery. The 73 toll road (a.k.a. the San Joaquin Hills Transportation Corridor) might make this area more accessible and the drive to work more serene, but it also cuts off some major wildlife corridors. Then there's the highly questionable water quality of Aliso Creek, which feeds wastewater from a bunch of South County cities. Not to mention that if the El Toro International Airport ever gets built, Aliso Viejo lies directly under its proposed flight path. Living in utopia doesn't come without a price. Did you know . . . that old people claim Aliso Viejo is named after a tree located near Aliso Creek and that you can actually go down to the creek and see the tree? Did you know . . . that old people are always saying that kind of crap? Old people. ALLEGED GUNMEN, THE Are gonna do for Long Beach what the Clash did for white men in Hammersmith Palais, sten guns in Knightsbridge and bombs in Spain, except with more spray-paint. ALLEN, EDGAR DALE "EDDIE" According to a Republican federal judge, Eddie—who is married to local Republican bigshot Jo Ellen Allen—masqueraded as an Air Force colonel, a Harvard-educated lawyer, a financial adviser to President Ronald Reagan, a New York Yankee, a CIA spy, an Air Force One pilot for John F. Kennedy and a Vietnam War POW to persuade fellow Republicans to invest in his business scams. Last year, the judge ruled that Allen—who lives comfortably in Corona del Mar—was dishonest and defrauded numerous people out of their life savings. The victims have not been repaid. ALLEN, JO ELLEN Once called a "Stepford Wife as programmed by Pat Buchanan" and sporting the most shocking 'do this side of Madeline Kahn near the end of Young Frankenstein, Mrs. Eddie Allen works as a Southern California Edison vice president and, despite her husband's financial shenanigans, continues to lecture the public on ethics and morals during her appearances on KOCE's Real Orange. ALLEY, THE Although the merchandise appears to have been acquired after a tornado scooped up the contents of a Pier 1 and a Cost Plus World Market, the Alley actually looks like an organized indoor swap meet. If the remaining gifts on a friend's bridal registry are out of your price range, this is a great place to pick up an alternative present, as almost every kitchen gadget known to man is available here, along with various other stuff you probably won't find anywhere else. 1835 Newport Blvd., Ste. A101 (faces 19th Street), Costa Mesa, (949) 574-9884. ANAHEIM ANGELSMajor-league baseball franchise spent 41 long years becoming famous for the curse that ultimately thwarted its every attempt at success—only to lose even that distinction in 2002 when its roster of unknowns knocked the powerful New York Yankees out of the playoffs. That's right, the curse committed suicide! The Angels now join the likes of the Houston Astros, the Cleveland Cavaliers and the Swiss Army as teams without any identity whatsoever. ANGELO'S Where else are you gonna find gum-popping teen carhops on roller skates serving up chili dogs with a side of sass to the local chapter of Burly Bikers for Christ? Does anyone else find that arousing? 511 S. State College Blvd., Anaheim, (714) 533-1401. ANGELO'S AND VINCI'S RISTORANTE You come for the pasta, but you stay for the monster menagerie in the basement, the soaring Sistine-Chapel-via-Ed-Wood décor, and the decades of character so potent you'll taste it in the marinara sauce. Call it Pasta Postmodern Primavera. Centuries of pop culture battle it out on these walls, and all you have to do is sit back and enjoy the show. 550 N. Harbor Blvd., Fullerton, (714) 879-4022. "ANTI-MALL," THE"Edgy" nickname marketers came up with the Lab retail/dining/entertainment center south of the establishment's South Coast Plaza. Credit creator Shaheen Sadeghi with recycling the old canning factory and warehouse rather than bulldozing it; with creating a courtyard in which it's actually a joy to relax whilst enjoying a Gypsy Den double mocha; with encouraging entrepreneurial activity of the sort that recently brought in Dr. Freecloud's Mixxing Lab. We love the place—for its rusty-metal façade, hip used furniture and the tattooed pincushions who toil in the shops and eateries—we just can't afford to buy our clothes there. 2930 S. Bristol St., Costa Mesa. See also: Marshall's, Ross Dress for Less, Salvation Army.
APODACA, PAUL Chapman sociologist Apodaca infuriates simple minds with devastating logic and enlightens the enlightened even further. Seeing him in action, you're taken back to the time of Socrates—without the pederasty, of course. But what makes Apodaca incredible is his story. The man never got a B.A., yet UCLA accepted him into graduate school based on his longtime work as a curator and researcher of Native American art at the Bowers Museum. He didn't disappoint: in 18 months, the man received his M.A. in American Indian studies and his Ph.D. in folklore and mythology. Now that's smart.
See also: Pants, Smarty; Guys Who Will Never Be President of the United States ARGENTINE ROCK EN ESPAÑOL FANS Carajos: we understand that your country has suffered some of the worst political repression of the past 20 years. We feel horrible about the current economic problems that are forcing many of your countrymen to migrate to this county. And we admire the fact that despite all of these distractions, Argentina produces some of the best Latin alternative acts in the world and that many of them (Bersuit Vergarabat, Los Auténticos Decadentes, Enanitos Verdes) frequent OC. But none of this gives you an excuse for being the snottiest bunch of fans since Bruce Springsteen's legions, all dressed up in your cleanly pressed and recently disgraced national soccer jerseys and your clean-cut hair and clean-and-pressed pretty boy/girl looks. You're all so, you know, clean. See also: Teddy Boys; New Romantics; Emo Kids; Anyone Attending a Sheryl Crow Concert ARGYROS, GEORGE LEONOrange County's version of Jeb Clampett—only less sophisticated—began at the bottom of the economic ladder and moved his way up to the top by ripping off those who remained at the bottom. He snagged a plum ambassadorship from Dubya thanks to the mountains of cash he's given to the GOP over the years. ARTHUR'S COFFEE SHOP"Best Breakfast in Town," proclaims the sign out front, and they probably don't get too many arguments. While the food's good, the atmosphere is even better, like scenes from an unwritten Tom Waits song. Waitresses sport "OKIE SPOKEN HERE" T-shirts as they take orders from Korean War vets who have axle-grease stains on their well-worn Dickies. Blue-collar couples make camp at a corner table and complain about high taxes and the idiot politician of the moment. And everywhere you look, there's finely polished, simulated-wood-grain paneling plastering the walls, a hallmark of truck-stop chic. Arthur's serves real food for real people. 1281 E. La Habra Blvd., La Habra, (562) 691-7793. ARTISTS VILLAGESanta Ana arts corridor, where white people often fear to tread, has already had one casualty—the career and freedom of imprisoned Santa Ana City Councilman Ted Moreno, who solicited pay-to-play bribes to defeat the degenerate homosexuals who were taking over the city. ATLANTIS PLAYCENTER The Seussian sensibility—dragon slides, whale slides, giant clams, tethered sharks, seahorse swings—that is the best kids' park in Orange County, California, the United States, Upper Tajikistan . . . 9301 Westminster Ave., Garden Grove, (714) 892-6015.
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Anxious millennials seek stability, opportunities to work with employers to effect change
31 January 2017
A stressful 2016 tempers optimism, according to annual Deloitte global survey
- Millennials are concerned about a world that presents numerous threats and want multinational businesses to do more to alleviate society’s biggest challenges
- Respondents increasingly question their personal prospects
- Those who enjoy flexible working arrangements express higher levels of performance, loyalty, and trust
A turbulent 2016—punctuated by terror attacks in Europe, Brexit, and a contentious US presidential election—appears to have rattled millennials’ confidence, according to Deloitte’s sixth annual Millennial Survey. They indicate they’re less likely to leave the security of their jobs, more concerned about uncertainty arising from conflict, and not optimistic about the directions their countries are going. The findings were revealed through a survey of nearly 8,000 millennials from 30 countries.
Millennials in emerging markets generally expect to be both financially (71 percent) and emotionally (62 percent) better off than their parents. This is in stark contrast to mature markets, where only 36 percent of millennials predict they will be financially better off than their parents and 31 percent say they’ll be happier. The US is the only mature market where a majority of millennials expect to be better off than their parents. In only 11 of the 30 countries covered does a majority expect to be “happier” than their parents.
“This pessimism is a reflection of how millennials’ personal concerns have shifted,” explains Punit Renjen, Deloitte Global CEO. “Four years ago, climate change and resource scarcity were among millennials’ top concerns. This year, crime, corruption, war, and political tensions are weighing on the minds of young professionals, which impacts both their personal and professional outlooks.”
Millennials’ anxiety may be partially responsible for more young professionals wanting to remain in their jobs. Last year, the “loyalty gap” between those who saw themselves leaving their companies within two years and those who anticipated staying beyond five years was 17 percentage points. This year, the balance of millennials looking to “leave soon” is only seven points.
The desire for security is also apparent in the finding that, while millennials perceive across-the-board advantages of working as freelancers or consultants—from the opportunity to work in different industries, to learning new skills, to the ability to travel or work abroad—nearly two-thirds said they prefer full-time employment. Among 18 areas of personal concern measured, unemployment ranked third.
Making an impact through their employers
Millennials feel accountable for many issues in both the workplace and the wider world. However, it is primarily in and via the workplace that they feel most able to make an impact. Opportunities to be involved with “good causes” at the local level, many of which are enabled by employers, provide millennials with a greater sense of influence. This local, small-scale change has a ripple effect that cascades from the individual to the broader workplace to society at large.
More than half of millennials say they are provided with opportunities to contribute to charities/worthwhile causes in their workplaces. “The survey’s findings suggest those given such opportunities show a greater level of loyalty to their employers, which is consistent with the connection we saw last year between loyalty and a company’s sense of purpose,” explained Jim Moffatt, Deloitte Global Consulting CEO. “But, we are also seeing that purpose has benefits beyond retention. Those who have a chance to contribute are less pessimistic about their countries’ general social/political situations, and have a more positive opinion of business behaviour.”
In general, millennials say they intend to stay longer with employers that engage with social issues, such as education, unemployment, and health care, and those most optimistic about their countries’ progress are more likely to report their employers getting involved with wider social and economic issues.
Millennials’ attitudes on business overall continue to improve. For the third year in a row, more respondents believe businesses behave ethically and that their leaders are committed to improving society, and fewer feel businesses are purely profit-driven and prioritize their agendas with little regard for society.
While six in 10 people surveyed say multinational businesses have made a positive impact on the challenges millennials say are their greatest concerns, they believe large organisations can do much more.
“The events of last year were a wake-up call for business and government leaders,” said Renjen. “The business community can, and must, address millennials’ pessimism by doing more for society. We’re in the best position to address many of society’s most challenging problems and lead the way in creating an economy that works for everyone.”
Flexibility improves performance, retention
Overall, 84 percent of millennials report some degree of flexible working in their organisations, and 39 percent say their organisations offer highly flexible working environments. They believe flexible working arrangements support greater productivity and employee engagement while enhancing their personal well-being, health, and happiness.
Those in highly flexible organisations appear to be much more loyal to their employers and are two-and-a-half times more likely to believe that flexible working practices have a positive impact on financial performance than those in more restrictive organisations. Three-quarters of those offered flexible working opportunities say they trust colleagues to respect it, and 78 percent feel trusted by their line managers.
Additional findings from the survey include:
- Automation brings threats and opportunities. There is no doubt automation brings with it some trepidation—40 percent of those surveyed see it posing a threat to their jobs; 44 percent believe there will be less demand for their skills; a majority believe they will have to retrain; and 53 percent see the workplace becoming more impersonal and less human. Conversely, many respondents—especially those considered “super-connected” millennials—see automation as providing opportunities for value-added or creative activities, as well as the learning of new skills.
- Seeking directness and passion, not radicalism. Surveyed millennials, in general, do not support leaders who take controversial or divisive positions, or aim for radical transformation rather than gradual change. They are more comfortable with plain, straight-talking language from both business and political leaders.
- Scepticism of business-government collaboration. With respect to meeting society’s challenges, millennials are equally split between those that believe businesses and governments work well together (49 percent) and those that don’t (48 percent). Further, only 27 percent of respondents consider citizens/society to be the ultimate beneficiaries when businesses and governments work together.
- GenZ’s creativity and skills are welcomed. Millennials tend to have a broadly positive opinion of GenZ (those currently aged 18 or younger), believing the group to have strong information technology skills and the ability to think creatively. Six in 10 millennials believe GenZ will have a positive impact as their presence in the workplace expands; this belief is higher in emerging markets (70 percent) than in mature markets (52 percent).
About the Deloitte Millennial Survey
The research findings are based on a study conducted by Deloitte Global of nearly 8,000 millennials representing 30 countries around the globe during September 2016. Screening questions at the recruitment stage ensured that all respondents were millennials—were born after 1982, have obtained a college or university degree, are employed fulltime, and predominantly work in large (100+ employees), private-sector organisations.
Notes to editors
In this press release references to Deloitte are references to Deloitte LLP, which is among the country's leading professional services firms.
Deloitte LLP is the United Kingdom member firm of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited (“DTTL”), a UK private company limited by guarantee, whose member firms are legally separate and independent entities. Please see www.deloitte.co.uk/about for a detailed description of the legal structure of DTTL and its member firms.
The information contained in this press release is correct at the time of going to press.
Member of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited.
The findings are based on a study conducted by Deloitte Global of nearly 8,000 millennials representing 30 countries around the world.
The UK sample size is limited to 300 and key findings include:
- Millennials in the UK are more concerned with job security than last year. Over a quarter (27%) are likely to stay with their current employer for over five years, up 10% from last year. 71% of millennials in the UK would also prefer full time employment to freelance employment, compared with 65% globally.
- The current mood of uncertainty has increased the anxiety of millennials in the UK. 26% of global respondents expect to be financially better off than their parents in the future, compared to a net response of -1% in the UK and -8% in Western Europe. However, 13% of millennials in the UK expect to be happier than their parents, compared with 23% globally and -1% in Western Europe. This is in line with results in other mature markets.
- The top five issues of greatest concern for millennials in the UK are: terrorism (43%), war/conflicts between countries (24%), immigration/displaced populations (22%), crime/personal safety (20%) and income inequality/distribution of wealth (19%).
- 92% of millennials in the UK report some degree of flexible working in their organisations, compared to 84% globally.
- Nearly two-thirds (61%) of millennials in the UK feel enabled to contribute to charities/good causes at work, compared with just over half (54%) globally.
- 58% of millennials in the UK believe that automation/robotics/artificial intelligence will improve overall productivity (58%), economic growth (49%) and the time people have to spend on creative and value-added activities (46%). | {
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In an attempt to help companies, academia, government and parents fully understand the next generation, I try to find things that help awaken the awareness of just how differently Millennials and Generation Z were raised. Whether it's Millennials, Gamers, Digital Natives, Gen Y, Cloud Kids or whatever you may call them, anyone born AFTER 1977, is a child of the future.
Besides toys that interacted and talked back to them (think Teddy Ruxpin and Speak & Spell), the psyche of Digital Natives has been forged by TV, Movies and Video Games...all tied to toys, books and action figures. So, buckle up...
Here's my awesome list of Movies & TV Shows that had a direct impact on Millennial Thinking:
1) Hey Arnold!Animated TV Series
Arnold lives with his grandparents in a multi-racial boarding house. Along with a cast of friends— Helga, Gerald, Harold, Stinky, etc...Arnold is surrounded by motley assortment of neighbors and friends living at the lower end of socioeconomic scale. In other words, more of a real slice of American life.
Having aired over 100 episodes and a major motion picture in 2002, Hey Arnold! has been cited for it's depth and emotional storytelling.
This was a favorite in our household. Television shows like this exposed Millennials to a world of true racial diversity and acceptance. I highly recommend it.
2) Harry Potterby J.K. Rowling
some sort of secret powers waiting to be awakened, it was this gem by J.K. Rowling.
Ironically, no one believed in the book at first. It was believed at the time within the publishing industry that 10 year old boys did not read big books or children's books written by women, or that boys would not read a book about a boy wizard. So the original cover showed only a boy standing by a train.
When *Harry Potter and The Philosopher's Stone was released, it became the start of a billion dollar franchise. *(It was released in the United States as Harry Potter and The Sorcerer's Stone).
The story centers around Harry, a young impish boy who is raised by his Aunt & Uncle Dursley who spare not a single moment chastising Harry, treating him like a servant instead of their nephew, while loading lavish praises on their spoiled bully of a son Dudley.
The plot sits squarely on the mystery of Harry's parents James and Lily Potter, and their death at the hands of the evil wizard Lord Voldemort. Harry somehow survives but retains a lightening bolt shaped scar on the right side of his forehead.
As Harry reaches 11 years of age, his life changes dramatically when giant Hagrid bursts through the door delivering a birthday cake, and a letter explaining that Harry is a wizard and has now been accepted to the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft & Wizardry.
Along the the journey, Harry meets his trusted companions Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger, who remain his trusted companions throughout the book series and movies.
WHY is this on my list? Think about the plot; A little boy, being verbally abused by his family, lives with a secret power. He believes that somehow, someday, he will be vindicated. Suddenly all his suspicions are confirmed; He is part of a secret group of masters who teach him how to wield high technology (magic) in order to beat evil adults.
If there was one thing that helped Millennials believe in themselves, Harry Potter is it.
3) PokémonJapanese Animated TV Series and Card Game
Harry Potter was a dominating force to be found on Millennial bookshelves, then a close second was Pokémon.
It appears that Yu-Gi-Oh was for kids, while Pokémon was a bit more appealing to all age groups...and clearly, the leader of the two franchises. So I'll focus on Pokémon.
The franchise began as a pair of video games for the original Game Boy, and developed multi platform video games, trading card games, animated television shows and movies, comic books, and toys. According to Wikipedia, "Pokémon is the second-most successful and lucrative video game-based media franchise in the world, behind only Nintendo's Mario franchise."
In a fusion of martial arts & the science of bug collecting, Pokémon takes place in a fictional universe were Pokémon Trainers (humans) attempt to collect and capture as many Pokémon creatures as possible. Each creature has special powers and falls within categories that are to be used by the Trainer during gladiator styled battles within a Pokémon Arena.
Along with life lessons, Pokémon taught children strategy, tactics and the importance of friendship. And one more thing: don't judge someone based on stature.
4) Ender's Game
by Orson Scott Card
Not quite as popular as Harry Potter, Ender's Game was required reading in many American high schools.
Set in Earth's future, the novel and major motion picture presents an imperiled mankind after two conflicts with the "buggers"—an insect-like alien species. Earth's defensive forces are training and building more advanced star ships in anticipation of a third invasion.
In order to develop commanders capable of defeating the much larger alien forces, the International Fleet creates a crash training program for children. The theme throughout Ender's Game is that children have an advantage over their older commanders at Battle School; having faster reflexes when it comes to gaming interfaces and out-of-the-box thinking.
In other words: being older is a hindrance.
Protagonist Andrew "Ender" Wiggin is a trainee who excels at gaming simulations and military tactics. Despite his lilliputian stature, Ender isn't half bad in a fight either, utilizing strategy and Aikido as his secret weapon. Fighting skills he developed from an abusive brother.
Although it is a science fiction novel, Ender's Game is suggested reading for many military organizations including the U.S. Marine Corps as a prime example of out-of-the-box tactics and strategy.
Ender's Game WILL help you understand the blurry lines of right and wrong that Digital Natives see around them all the time.
Live Action Television Series
Barney is a purple dinosaur with a goofy voice. Makes no sense, but kids loved him and carried the plush toy around like Boomers carried a Teddy bear.
Each show was live action and centered around Barney and his dinosaur pals; Baby Bop, BJ and Riff who are joined by a small cast of children.
They share adventures, sing songs, dance and play games that make learning fun. The series focuses on caring, sharing and learning, and if you watch long enough, there is always a lesson to be learned about these above mentioned themes.
Acceptance and tolerance for those who are different were also a big theme throughout the show.
Major Motion Picture Franchise
all millennials have heard about the awesomeness that is Star Wars. So when George Lucas re-released it in 1997 complete with his own horrible attempts at digital animation, I dragged my nephew Sebastian to see them all.
In 1977, Star Wars kicked off the idea that one young person, trained in a mystical technology and a lot of intuition, can defeat an entire Empire....just listen inwardly.
If you haven't noticed, from 1977 on, out of the top blockbusters over the past 35 years, 7 have been science fiction or fantasy driven. And the same theme, over and over again.
But something bigger is happening with Star Wars: The Force Awakens. But guess what statement it makes?
The new younger Jedi Knight, needs less training, can train themselves, AND is connected to their intuition more so than previous generations.
Television Seriesplayed the misogynistic bachelor Barney Stinson on the hit comedy How I Met Your Mother, Neil Patrick Harris was known to American TV audiences from 1989-1993 as Doogie Howser MD.
Created by Steven Bochco and David Kelley, the series follows the daily trials and tribulations of a 16-year old Harvard Medical School prodigy and graduate Doogie Howser.
The series centered around the pressures of being a kid surgeon, along with Doogie's attempt to be a regular teenager.
His window-entering best friend Vinnie Delpino kept Doogie from getting too boring, dragging him away on some adventure.
The show always ended with Doogie narrating the lesson learned in his computer journal.
The series exposes just how much of this child prodigy pressure Millennials have in their psyche; to be successful at a young age.
On a side note: Doogie Howser, MD is the number one show in India, capturing a brand new audience through reruns.
So, to sum it all up, Millennials have been exposed to thousands of hours of the "Hero's Journey" Stories throughout childhood. Understand that, and you understand them.
Now THIS list is mostly American & British brands. Globally there are other factors.
Now, Toys and Pop Culture are not the only things that created the Millennial Psyche; there are Three More Influencers that transformed them into today's Wunderkinds...But that's in my books and talks, and for another blog post.
Want more research? Try these cartoons and movies:Transformers cartoon series, Transformers movies, Up In The Air, Office Space and The Intern.
Big thank you to my resident Millennial, and nephew, Sebastian.
Hope this has helped.
Global Management Consultant
Millennial Expert, Leadership Development & Workforce Performance Strategies
Author of the award-winning, bestseller Liquid Leadership: From Woodstock to Wikipedia, Brad is a former C-level executive of a publicly traded company that he cofounded that went from entrepreneurial start-up to IPO in three years; the first Dot Com Agency to go public on NASDAQ. His company K2 Design, experienced 425% hyper-growth, due in part to a unique management style that won his company the Arthur Andersen NY Enterprise Award for Best Practices in Fostering Innovation.
Today the world’s leading business publications seek out Brad’s insights on Millennials, and he has been featured in Forbes, The Huffington Post, New York Magazine, Inc., Advertising Age, The International Business Times, and The Hindu BusinessLine to name a few, along with television, radio and podcast appearances on CBSand other media outlets.
Brad's programs have transformed a new generation of business leaders, helping them maximize their corporate culture, expectations, productivity, and sales growth in The Information Age.
* 2011 Axiom Business Book silver medal winner in the leadership
* #1 Amazon Best-Selling Author
"I just had my mind blown..." - A.S., Vistage, New York
Liquid Leadership by Brad Szollose is available at all major bookstores and for Kindle, Nook, iPad and Sony ereaders. Internationally published in India and S. Korea. | {
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There are lots of ways of getting involved in the life of Ladycross. Children can take on jobs and roles of responsibility.
Travel smart champion
Everyone can be a travel smart champion by walking, scooting or cycling to school. This also helps you to keep fit, as well as reducing traffic jams and pollution. If you arrive by car, remind the driver to park away from school and walk the last part of your journey. Maybe you could also give a lift to someone else or even try travelling on the bus.
You must be sensible and know how to walk around school quietly. You need to ask others to walk and say “please walk around school,” if you see anyone running. You also need to know your way around school.
Can you remember to close doors, turn taps off and switch lights off to save energy? This could be the job for you!
You must be trained up to help other children play games at play times. You need to wear a uniform and keep the games equipment tidy.
Young ambassadors know all about the Olympic values, and show others how to follow them by leading by example. You also might need to visit other schools to talk about what we do at Ladycross.
Playground buddies are trained up to help other children at play time who may not have a friend to play with. You must keep your eye on the buddy bench to see if anyone is sitting on it, as you may need to go and find out what the problem is and help them.
Book shop assistants
Book shop assistants work every Wednesday morning in the corridor, helping to sell books. It is important that you know how to add up money and also give change. A customer might ask you if you know of a good book they might be able to buy.
School council members are voted on by their class. You must help to make Ladycross an even better school. It is important that you can think of new ideas and talk in front of others.
Ladycross has a school council, made up of 10 children, 2 from each class. They meet regularly and decide on important things that happen in school. The school council has held a raffle to raise money for our sponsored child in Africa, spent money on playground toys to make playtimes better, and have had push taps fitted to the sinks in a bid to stop water wastage. They devised and carried out a survey on what the children liked best about school, as well as things that were not so popular so that we could do something about them. The school council are currently designing and choosing how the new toilets will look when they are refurbished. They have voted on popular themes and will be choosing colours and items to decorate them with. | {
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The lady creating the wonderful shadow was trying to attract her young child and over a period of a few minutes, she made a few great shapes with her body. This was the first and the best.
Patience pays off. Visiting the same location over and over again pays off.
I'd seen this moment beginning to happen and waited for it.
I've been visiting this location for 15 years now.
It never fails to disappoint and I can always find pictures I haven't taken before.
HC 100mm f/2.2 lens
Google+: View post on Google+
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Coming into Sundance, myself and the class were armed with the knowledge of Lory Smith and Peter Biskind and our preparatory list of films, I was excited to dive into a historic gathering of artists and consumers. It was an exhausting journey of wait lists, bus trips, and the scavenge for free food as to save money for tickets. Sundance has been something that I have been looking forward to since I was in middle school and I can say that it did not disappoint.
Now my initial knowledge of Sundance was limited to “I know there are independent films there” and what the Official Sundance Selection logo looked like. I did not know the history of the festival. The conflicts within the festival coordinators were unknown to me. I also was not familiar with the big names of Hollywood that were important to the growth of the festival like Robert Redford and Roger Ebert. As I type this out, I wonder how those people in 1978 would think of the festival if they were brought to this year’s festival during the time they were setting up the first US Film Festival. Would they expect that Sundance be what it has become today? What would they say about companies like HP, Chase, YouTube, Acura, or Morningstar putting on lounges for festival-goers?
To think, for years, this festival did not make a profit until 1982 but now has become one of the biggest economic contributors to Park City. Films that had relative no-names to becoming a showcase for big stars to do films that the mainstream audiences would never expect them to do. This festival gives more creative freedom to not only the filmmakers but also to casts and crew. The films of Sundance are made from budgets ranging from hundreds of thousands of dollars to at most a little over a million but you can see big name actors like Ryan Reynolds, Kristen Stewart, or Aaron Paul in these movies, where some have starred in movies that had budgets way bigger than any Sundance film budget. Sundance, however, does prove that a big budget does not mean a better movie. I have seen films at Sundance that I would have rather seen than most movies that have shown in the nearby theater or that had trailers showing during commercials.
This film festival allows filmmakers to create films that they want to create in hopes to be picked up and distributed. Although getting the Precious or Little Miss Sunshine treatment would be wonderful for these filmmakers, getting distributed would be an amazing opportunity for them. If a film is not distributed to major theaters like Beasts of the Southern Wild, being bought and distributed to limited release and through other film distribution avenues would be also beneficial. There were many films at Sundance that I am hoping comes out on DVD or Netflix because either they were very good or I could not watch them due to scheduling issues or ticketing issues.
Ticketing has be an experience during Sundance. As someone who has been to conventions like San Diego Comic Con, getting tickets and wait list numbers for films that I want was not unfamiliar territory. However, the cold did not help the waiting (neither did the Southern California summer heat). The new e-waitlist system was implemented this festival and I have to admit it was a valiant effort. Previous years would have had patrons line up hours before a film for a wait list number. This new electronic system allowed patrons to sign-up for a number two hours before a film. Now, this had some of its downfalls. The system could not handle the mass amount of activity by the simultaneous pressing of the “Join the Waitlist” button. Many (especially myself) were stuck in a state of loading, missing out on getting a number. At one point, the entire system crashed. Now, this system did not constantly fail but it did fail for the bigger films. My proposal: use the old-fashioned method for films with a lot of buzz (for example: the Skeleton Twins), as the old-fashioned way for big films seems more fair than hoping that the system does not fail on you.
These problems with the new system seem to be from the first weekend, where all the industry people come in (and the second half of the festival is mainly film lovers, as it was described by one of the volunteers at the intro of a film showing I was in). This was made apparent by a lot of the venues on Main Street were gone by the time the first half of the festival was over. This shows the festival’s importance as a market for independent filmmakers as people who only go for the second half would not notice some sponsored venues missing. This dedication to the industry was apparent in the priority pass holders for those in the industry like distributors, press, and the people close to the cast and crew (leaving people with tickets and wait list numbers out in the cold, so to speak). But that is what Sundance is for the first half: a market festival.
It is interesting to see what categories are at Sundance. Beyond the expected documentary and dramatic categories, NEXT and Spotlight are interesting categories. NEXT is dedicated to films that are sort of different in terms of storytelling and these films were some of my favorites like A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night or Appropriate Behavior. Spotlight showcases films that have already premiered but the programmers felt like these should be shown at Sundance and I am glad this category exists because I would not have stumbled on to most of those films without this category.
Overall, Sundance was exactly how I expected it to be: hectic, fun, and exhausting. As I told my friends about my opportunity, they were telling me that I was lucky to be watching movies all day. I can say with full confidence that it is not as glamorous as it seems. This illusion of glamor can be traced back to the struggles the festival endured during its early years to be what it is today. A more modern struggle becomes “Can I see this film?” or “Do I have enough time to get from the Redstone to the Library?” or even “Will my wait list number be less than 30?” If someone thinks doing Sundance will be a walk in the park, then they are very much wrong. Although I say that, I would not have passed up this opportunity, even if I could.
One-hit wonders usually define decades of music like Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up,” Starship’s “We Built This City,” Hanson’s “mmmBop” or Fountains of Wayne’s “Stacy’s Mom.” With the growing use of YouTube, viral videos create more of these pop culture flashes in the pan with Psy and “Gangnam Style” or the group that made “What Does the Fox Say?” The film Frank is very reminiscent of this new source of musical fame through social media.
This film follows a man name Jon (played by Domnhall Gleeson), an amateur musician and aspiring songwriter that, through an odd series of events, joins an experimental band led by a strange man named Frank, who is never seen without wearing his big, fake head. As Jon and the band create a new album, Jon tries to catapult himself to fame by being the band’s social media coordinator. As the band progresses in making the album, Jon creates more buzz for the band. Soon, fame begins to hit Jon and then the band deals with being in the public eye for the first time.
The subject of this film is very relatable to the young generation that grew up with YouTube and Twitter, as they are heavily implemented in the film but are very appropriate. The social media integration was not overdone and fit the film perfectly, with Jon’s Twitter feed acting as a kind of narrator. If someone were to look up the cast for this film and see the name Michael Fassbender but do not see him in any stills of the film, then there is only one logical explanation: he is Frank. His performance as Frank was brilliant. He is such a strange character but does have that charisma that makes him a very likable person with a genius talent for music. Jon portrays that person that wants his fifteen minutes of fame and is very much like the current generation with his overexaggerated tweets and his secret recordings of the band’s behaviors. The film uses several locations from around the UK to Austin, Texas for SXSW (South by South West), and then to a suburban neighborhood. Given the cast and the various locations, as well as the very relatable subject matter of the film, this film can be considered in-between independent and mainstream (a 5 on a 1 to 10 scale). It is a very accessible film but the audience that will understand the references would be of the young adult persuasion. The myth of the fifteen minutes of fame is explored in the film (which is not obscure and exists in mainstream fiction too). It explores it in terms of the growth of social network and the nature of viral videos. This film shows the reality behind web fame and what those thousands of views and retweets really translate to in real life. This film also compares natural talent to fame achieved by a fluke. These ideas are fairly broad to those who are in the social media loop. People not totally into social media will be lost in the film. And that is who I recommend this film to: people who spend time on YouTube, Facebook, or Twitter and know about going viral. Being familiar with experimental music and the jokes surrounding it would be a plus to enjoy what this film has to offer but it is not necessary. To people like myself, I feel like this film will resonate and be an enjoyable ride, as I believe we all have been Jon at one point in our life, growing up with social media. | {
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October 2, 2015
Fifteen years ago today, I got an early morning phone call. It was Adam Shapiro, my boss at the Seeds of Peace Center in Jerusalem.
“Aseel was killed this morning.”
Aseel. Aseel Asleh, 17-years old, Palestinian citizen of Israel, star participant of Seeds of Peace. What happened? I almost didn’t ask, it felt like a stupid question. The Second Intifada had just erupted, the whole region was engulfed in violence, what did I think happened? But was he at a demonstration? Was he shot accidentally? What were the specifics? Aseel was dead? Impossible. How? Aseel?
Adam didn’t know the details yet. He didn’t yet know that Aseel had been standing on the outskirts of a demonstration outside his village of Arrabeh in the Galilee, when two police officers chased him for no discernible reason. Adam hadn’t yet learned that one of the officers hit our young friend in the back with a rifle butt, and that Aseel stumbled and fell face first in the olive grove. He couldn’t yet tell me that Aseel’s parents (who had gone to the demonstration to bring him home) saw all this, but then could see no more because the olive trees were blocking their view. They could, however, hear the shot. The doctor who later examined his body said the bullet wound suggested that Aseel had been shot point blank in the back of his neck.
But Adam didn’t know any of that yet. All he knew–all he could tell me–was that Aseel had been shot and killed.
I hung up the phone and sat on my couch. I didn’t know what to do. What do you do when you find out that a kid you love was killed? What’s the proper thing to do? I had just made coffee and it was sitting on the table in front of me. All I remember thinking: Do I still drink the coffee? What do I do?
I realize now that I was in deep shock that morning. Yet, the question of “What do I do?” has stayed with me the past 15 years. It took root as I watched Aseel’s family and friends deal with their grief and traumatic loss. It grew as I realized that the events of October 2000, in which 12 Palestinian citizens of Israel were killed, were a collective trauma that sent deep and reverberating shock waves through the entire community. It pushed me when it became evident that there would be no justice for Aseel, or for the other martyrs of October 2000.
Making sure that Aseel’s story is told, impacting and educating others: This is what I can do.
And I invite you to do it with me.
For the past six months, I have been further developing There Is A Field, a documentary-style play I wrote, based on years of interviews with Aseel’s family, emails that Aseel left behind, court transcripts, and other sources.
In March 2016, There Is A Field will tour to up to 15 U.S. colleges and universities, culminating in a short run in New York City. In each campus we visit, the play will be a tool of advocacy and activism. If we’re able to raise enough funds, we will expand the tour even further.
As we confront brutality, state violence, systemic injustice and oppression here in the U.S. and in many parts of the world, I know many of us continue to struggle with the question of “what do I do?”
I hope you will choose, as part of your response, to support There Is A Field, so that Aseel’s story can continue to impact, to educate, and to challenge. So that Aseel’s story can support efforts to build a world where inequality, racism, state murder and injustice have no place.
Please click here to learn more about There Is A Field, and how to support the play.
With love for my friend, and for every young person we have collectively lost,
Playwright/Producer, There is a Field | {
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Even after a surprising 10-win season in 2012, it’s clear the Minnesota Vikings need to overhaul their group of wide receivers during the coming offseason. They should be fairly aggressive in free agency and the draft to add some new faces, leaving most of this past season’s decidedly unimpressive group (Michael Jenkins, Jerome Simpson and Devin Aromashodu most notably) searching for another team.
Greg Jennings is slated to be a free agent and is not expected to be back with the Green Bay Packers next season. That has led to a lot of speculation about the Vikings having interest in signing him, but could the team be looking at another Packers’ wide receiver with an uncertain future?
A recent report suggests the Vikings have interest in Donald Driver, who has spent all 14 seasons of his NFL career with Green Bay but is himself scheduled to become an unrestricted free agent. He will also turn 38 this coming Saturday, and had just eight receptions for 77 yards and two touchdowns in 13 games for the Packers this past season as his role was greatly diminished. Driver has also hinted at retirement, and his motivation to play for a team other than the Packers is a big question at this point.
Adding Driver would certainly not be the only move the Vikings make to bolster their receiving corp, and he can likely be signed to a reasonable contract. If he is driven to prove he still has something left and can stay healthy, he could theoretically step into a prominent role in Minnesota’s passing game right off the bat. That said, Driver’s greatest contribution may be as a veteran mentor to what has a chance to be a very young group of wide receivers in 2013.
All things considered, I think the Vikings need to aim much higher than Driver as they look to add talent to their wide receiver group. He may have something to offer if he wants to play next season, and he has said at various times he wants to play until he is 40, but an old wide receiver with any questions at all regarding his desire to play belongs on a team other than the Vikings right now.
Brad Berreman is a contributing writer at Rant Sports. Follow him on Twitter @bradberreman24. | {
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It seems like the moment AJ Lee’s Chuck Taylors left the building the #GiveDivasAChance movement grinded to halt. However the latest Diva’s division crop is brimming with talent both on the main roster and down in NXT so shouldn’t they be given a chance to shine just like their male counterparts.
Here we look at how to restore the Diva’s division back to its former glory;
The Diva’s Championship
Let’s start with what these women put their bodies on the line for and here’s a hint its not a spot on an E! reality show. The Diva’s Championship needs to revert back to the Women’s Championship, how are people meant to respect a butterfly belt that’s pink. No doubt done as a marketing ploy for young girls but its tackiness takes away from the prestige of the title.
The Face of the Divas Division
Rumours have been flying about that Vince McMahon wants Lana to be the face of the Diva’s division, now Lana may be killer on the mic but she certainly isn’t killer in the ring, actually she hasn’t even wrestled a match yet so how is she expected to be at the forefront of the women’s wrestling division.
The obvious choice to be the number one diva is someone who has wrestling in their blood, someone that has basically been in a wrestling ring since the womb, that someone is Paige, she is the most over diva right now and boasts a mean repotire of moves (I mean this is the girl with three finishers).
On Air Time
29 seconds!!!! 29 seconds is all it took to send the wrestling universe into a frenzy when The Bella twins took on Paige and Emma and it lasted for yup you guessed it a grand total of 29 seconds.
29 seconds is probably the amount of time is takes Shawn Michaels to tune up for some sweet chin music, their is no way you can showcase your talent in 29 seconds.
Raw is a weekly three hour show, 20 minutes should be devoted to the divas, now Smackdown would be a good place to test the waters on how the fans would react to more screen time for the Divas.
The Bellas have recently had a face turn, why? Well that’s probably a question WWE creative can’t even answer….and right here is the main problem, the Divas aren’t given the any sort of character development leading fans to have no real attachment to them.
AJ Lee’s infamous pipebomb promo showcased that when Divas are organic to their true selves they can be lethal on the mic so let’s have more mic time for the Divas, I’m pretty sure John Cena could skip the whole US Championship open challenge for one week to free up some time on Raw.
Stephanie McMahon was hurled abuse by wrestling fans much more than her husband Triple H or father Vince McMahon during the #GiveDivasAChance possibly because of her gender and the fact she is a mother of three young girls. However as Chief Brand Officer her role is more about the marketing of WWE than the content.
However Stephanie is still a vital cog in the Diva division machine not as a business visionary but as a performer.
In Amy Dumas biography “Lita: A Less Travelled R.O.A.D.–The Reality of Amy Dumas” Amy talks about how dedicated Steph was to honing her craft before her first wrestling match against Lita, Stephanie helped put the women’s division back on the map in 2001 and I’m damn sure that Stephanie can do it again, her match against Brie Bella showed that not only might she be the best heel in Divas division but she has still got it in the ring.
The most obvious choice for her opponent would be NXT high flyer Charlottle, both are the daughters of wrestling royalty which could fuel a raw feud with lots of layers.
The women is NXT are kicking ass in Florida right now but Charlotte and Sasha are more than ready to inject some new blood into the main roster and with the likes of Zahra Schreiber and Jasmin Areebi still to debut, NXT’s Divas division would continue to prosper without feeling the loss of its top two wrestlers.
The Four Women Division
Nikki, Brie, Paige and Naomi….according to WWE this is the Divas division, they choose to neglect budding stars like Summer Rae who is the whole package thanks to her time in NXT, veteran Natalya who may be one of the best technical wrestlers to have ever graced the Divas division and Tamina Snuka who seems to have been subjected to the valet role once again.
Fleshing out other Divas, with feuds or even a title reign on some new blood would mean their were more key players on the board.
Eva Marie was the embodiment of everything that was wrong with the modern day Diva’s division, a breathtaking beauty that debuted on Raw without having any of the adequate training, why you ask because she was one of the faces of the reality show Total Divas.
Thankfully Eva who has always displayed her hunger to succeed in the WWE has stepped out of the limelight to train, train and train and with her passion who knows maybe the divas division will be set alight in a firey blaze.
However the most important aspect to rebranding the Diva’s rebranding is you!! Keep tweeting the Give Divas A Chance hashtag. Use your voice for these fearless women to get the recognition they deserve. | {
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The best pitcher in all of baseball will have to be on point at the hitter-friendly Coors Field this evening. Will Clayton Kershaw and the Dodgers get the job done as the MLB odds-on favorites?
Whenever Clayton Kershaw's pitching, you know the Dodgers are going to be favored, regardless of the circumstances. That's certainly the case for tonight, as Los Angeles is listed at -185 or so to grab the victory in Denver. If you're confident in the Dodgers, you can consider backing them on the run-line, which is available at roughly -105 on the MLB odds board.
We see a higher than normal total for tonight's game, which again is testament to how much influence venue can have. Coors Field is notorious for having a lot of fireworks when it comes to run production, but it's safe to say most of that production is going to come from the Dodgers side here.
Colorado Rockies (De La Rosa)
Things are getting ugly for the Rockies. After a hot start which saw them go 7-2 through their first nine games, the Rockies have since gone 4-14 over their past 18. They will take an eight-game losing streak into tonight's game after seeing yesterday's opener (a 2-1 Dodgers win) get called early because of inclement weather.
We're having a hard time projecting a better outcome tonight considering the vast pitching mismatch. Jorge De La Rosa will get the starting assignment, and he's been a mess through his first three starts, getting tagged for a 9.00 ERA and 2.00 WHIP. His strikeout numbers have been there, but he's yet to go past the fifth inning in any of his outings.
Funnily enough, however, De La Rosa did have far better numbers at home at Coors (10-2, 3.08 ERA) in 2014, so it'll be interesting to see if he can maintain that kind of form here in 2015. We're not all that confident.
Los Angeles Dodgers (Kershaw)
Whereas the Rockies have been on a significant downswing lately, the Dodgers have been playing well. They've won seven of their last nine and are 19-10 overall on the season.
Another win seems likely tonight with their stud ace on the mound. Kershaw's numbers so far this season (1-2, 3.72 ERA, 1.14 WHIP) don't scream out dominance, but those stats are muddied by a couple shaky starts - he's still allowed three or fewer earned runs in four consecutive starts ahead of tonight. The southpaw is sporting a 51:7 K:BB ratio through 38.2 IP in 2015.
Kershaw has already faced this Colorado lineup once this season, holding them to six hits and one earned run in six innings of work. He struck out 12 and walked only one. That start came at home, so now the reigning Cy Young will have to try and replicate that showing (or be even more dominant) out on the road.
We tend to roll with Kershaw whenever he's on the mound, as he's just that good.
Things are obviously a little bit more difficult whenever you're at Coors, but Kershaw is more than capable of showing up with another big-time outing in this spot. He's done so before at this ballpark, most recently in 2014 when he went 2-0 with a squeaky clean 0.69 ERA and 17:1 K:BB ratio in his two visits. Pretty good numbers, right?
As you can see, altitude doesn't matter much when you've got filthy, shutdown stuff, and Kershaw certainly has that. We also don't think the hot Dodgers offense will have much trouble getting after De La Rosa, who's been pretty darn terrible so far this season. With your MLB picks, don't be afraid to take a chance by picking Los Angeles to beat the struggling Rockies by two or more runs..
Free MLB Pick: Los Angeles Dodgers -1.5 (-105) at 5Dimes | {
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An RPG of Ice and Fire
Heir to Hargrave
Age: 16- Born in 280 AC
At first glance, the young heir to Hargrave takes strongly after his father. Stockily built, with flaming red hair and a brash, proud nature. Indeed, Gavan has spent most of his life trying to emulate Malcom, who, until the death of his mother he regarded as more of a heroic figure than a parent.
Gavan was born several months after Malcom left for Robert’s Rebellion to the Lady Maggie on a clear spring morning, and Hargrave was happy to have such a healthy young child as it’s heir. Gavan was mainly raised by his mother, without too much interference from Lord Durant himself, and he strove to be as like his father as he could. Gavan learned to fight and wrestle with great zeal, and was always getting into fights with other boys in town. Since his second brother, Keiran was never one for rough-housing, Gavan found a group of boys in town that he could play with. Mostly, they pretended to be Rams, and since he was Malcom’s son, Gavan always got to be Malcom in their games. He also decided who could be Northmen, and who had to play the role of King Arys and his forces. Most of the other boys found this arrangement logical, and if they objected, Gavan would send them home with a black eye. Gavan also took great pleasure in sword training with Forst.
Gavan’s other passion from an early age was hawking. His father and Forst took him out hawking for the first time when he was 9, and by age 10 he had absorbed almost everything there was to know about the sport. His teachers grumbled that if he would spend half as much time focused on his studies as he did watching birds kill small animals, that he’d be the Grand Maester by now. Finally, for his 12th name day, his mother gave him the most precious thing he had ever owned. A red-tailed hawk of his very own. Gavan wanted to name her “Lyanna,” after Lyanna Stark, but Maggie thought that would be disrespectful, so he choose “Lady Lyn” instead. Within a year, he and Lyn were inseparable, and he was, miraculously, able to train her to hunt for him almost perfectly, so much so that the more superstitious among the peasantry whispered that he was a sorcerer of some kind.
Of his siblings, Gavan always most favored his young sister, Elsye. He was always extremely protective of her, and she would shudder with disgust and delight as he told her the gruesome stories he had heard about war or the time that he beat a rival bloody. He took great pleasure in passing down whatever he knew to Aiden, but Keiran was so quiet and distant, that Gavan has never really understood him.
One day, only a few months after he finished training his hawk, Gavan planned to go out hawking by himself, when his father insisted that Keiran come along. Worried that Keiran had a mental problem because of how quiet and unassuming he was, Malcom thought that some fresh air would be good for the boy. Gavan resented his brother’s presence, though, and when Keiran couldn’t keep up, he was soon left behind. Gavan presumed that Keiran turned back to Hargrave, but that night, as a terrible snowstorm kicked up, Keiran was nowhere to be found. Gavan received the worst beating of his life from his father, but thankfully, Keiran was found, almost 2 days later, half dead. Keiran eventually recovered, but Gavan has never forgiven himself for nearly letting his brother die and secretly resolved to keep his siblings safe thereafter.
Gavan’s unshakable faith in his father began to deteriorate in his teenage years, and he saw that his father often refused to deal with matters in Hargrave himself, preferring to delegate to his inferiors. Gavan started to realize the weight of his responsibility as the future lord of Hargrave, and began to take his studies (a bit) more seriously. He still put aside quite a bit of time to practice combat and hawking, however, and now he was spending more and more time pursuing the girls, particularly Annie, the miller’s lovely blonde haired daughter.
When he was 15, his beloved mother, the Lady Maggie contracted pneumonia. His father Malcom dealt with the situation mainly by drinking and keeping busy, and even Gavan found it difficult to deal with her sickness and death. Only Elsye was able to stay with Lady Maggie until her death.
Gavan did manage to visit his mother the night before she died. Her last words to him are etched into his mind- “Take care of your brothers and sisters.”
Gavan has heeded her last words, and is currently resolved to become a responsible and strong leader of Hargrave. His primary concerns are the glory, honor, and above all- well being of his people, especially his younger siblings. He sees himself as their protector, from the world, and from Malcom’s wrath. He intends to be a strong, practical lord. His greatest wish is to be respected by his people and feared by his enemies.
(To be continued…)
Animal Handling 3 1B Ride 1B Train
Fighting 4 1B Long blades
Status 5 1B Breeding 1B Stewardship
Warfare 4 1B Command
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Ya know those three chapters I shared with you all on here? Only one of them, the prologue, is actually still in my book. The agent that requested sample chapters pointed out that it was taking way too long to get to the action and I completely agree. Therefore I am going through the entire thing with a fine tooth comb and taking out anything that isn't crucial to moving the story line along. Aren't you guys lucky that you were privy to the deleted scenes? An elite group, my blog!
The literary agent requested I resubmit after further editing, which shows she is still interested. To be honest 97,000 words for a young adult novel is a bit hefty anyway. My delete key and I will take care of that!
Tomorrow I am picking up my artwork, so stay tuned for a sneak preview of that!! Cannot wait to see what the brilliant Mrs. Strange has concocted! I will posted it here...just as soon as I figure out how to do that. Copying and pasting proved challenging so I can imagine what should be a simple task will result in a migraine.
Until tomorrow friends! | {
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The A Working Future programme in Uganda connects young people with access to financial services, teaches them work skills and links them to job opportunities. Over 12,000 youth have benefitted from the programme since 2012, increasing their income by an average of 621%.
The programme, run by Plan International in partnership with the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida) and Accenture Development Partnerships, transforms the lives of young people by using savings groups to teach the skills required to get good jobs.
This innovative programme shows the power of partnerships between the corporate and development sectors to address social issues while also generating commercial value.
Resty, 23 – pig farmer
Resty, 23, is a mother to 3 young children and was forced to marry before 18. "Before, I had to ask for my husband's support for everything," she says.
She joined A Working Future in 2014 and became the treasurer of her local savings group. After attending training sessions, she decided to start rearing pigs. Resty says: “We did a cost-benefit analysis where I learnt that running a piggery is a lucrative business."
She also runs a small shop in her home and is now able to pay her children's school fees using money she has earned herself. Resty is planning to expand her livestock business to include poultry and is currently constructing a chicken coop.
Nololo, 21 – chilli farmer
Nololo, 21, is chairperson of his local savings group. Before joining A Working Future in 2013 he had no source of income and was dependent on his parents for financial support.
After receiving training, Nololo became a sales agent for a consumer goods company. By saving his earnings and taking out a loan, he was able to open a shop.
He took out another loan and used the profits from his shop to produce chillies and hot peppers for a food exporting company.
"I took a loan of 200,000 Ugandan Shillings (€56),” he says. “Now I make 600,000 Ugandan Shillings (€168) per month. It has changed my life. Before I was depending on my parents, now I want to pay them back.
"My future plans include expanding the chilli farm and opening a wholesale shop within 2 years, where I can employ many more young people." | {
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There is much debate on the influence of music industries on the level of violence in the society. There is even more disputes on rap videos, not lyrics. Jennifer Copley, for instance, states that after watching rap videos (no matter violent or nonviolent) young subjects become more inclined to show materialistic views and “favor potentially acquiring possessions through crime, as well as holding more negative views on the likelihood of succeeding through academic pursuits.”¯ In other words, rap music promote a definite style of life, while it looks easy and cool to spit upon education, morality and other human values, and to acquire success and popularity through crime and abuse. In fact, when the content of hip hop songs is investigated, it is found that apart from a great amount of texts on drugs, violence and misogyny, there is a good deal of socially and politically conscious songs, but when disregard is activated, the latter are often ignored by mainstream critics. As Hess (47) points out, the seed of hip hop “grew into a huge tree with many branches and leaves. There is too much focus on one side of the tree (the violent) and not enough diversity to do justice to the whole concept of hip hop as manifestation of diversity. Music industries are to blame for this situation, because they do not seek originality.”¯ The wide-spread belief that the cause of social issues of teen violence has been directly rooted from music industries is exaggerated. However, studying the psychological effects of rap music, Jennifer Copley (3) found out that overall the very listening to rap music does not cause aggressive or deviant behavior.
Hip hop and marketing
A separate issue is such phenomenon as cooperation of hip hop and advertisement. Undisclosed product placement deals are argued to lead to the disputes on many products within hip hop music and culture. Hip hop singers use the names of brands in their songs, and are either paid for that or are in turn promoted by well-known companies. For example, in 2005 there was a deal between rappers and McDonalds. Russell Simmons organized promotion of Courvoisier brand among hip hop fans, and then the song “Pass the Courvoisier”¯ recorded by Busta Rhymes appeared. The list of products provoking associations with hip hop was filled by cats, clothes, sneakers, and even jewelry: Sean Combs, Lil Kim and Nas became the clients of Jacob Arabo. The disturbing thing is when it goes, for example, about alcohol advertisement. Hip hop culture dictates certain style of life, and alcohol becomes a natural part of it. What is more, in comparison with other genres rap and hip hop songs mention illicit drugs much more often. Marketing through hip hop has been thoroughly studied by Jim Gogek. In his article “Rap listeners prone to alcohol, drugs, violence”¯ he states that young people listening to hip hop are more likely to face problems with alcohol, drugs and violence, than those who listen to other genres. To verify the statement, there was a survey among above 1,000 community college students. They proved the consistent association between rap music and alcohol use. On the one hand, it is proved that both hip hop music and artists are used in commercial and advertisement for alcohol product, hence promoting alcohol abuse among young people. On the other hand, the authors have revealed that young people who tend to use alcohol or illicit drugs or to be aggressive may be drawn to particular music styles. So, there may be a reverse correlation between youth problems and music styles. The other question is ethics. The advertising legislation protects children from being used in the advertisement of products not meant for childhood. Unfortunately, it does not provide the same level of protection for adolescents who are sometimes even more vulnerable and easy to become the victims of marketing. The association of high-class and easy life becomes associated with the products seen on TV and everywhere in the streets, shops and so on, and the unconscious youth makes the conclusion that it is impossible to become respected by peers without drinking and smoking marijuana. These traits are everywhere, even in the cartoons, and they are often going nip and tuck with hip hop. But in reality that is not a good reason to lay a rush accusation. It is not difficult to imagine that if we get rid of hip hop culture, we won’t get rid of all the other negative phenomena of up-to-date society. | {
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by Sophie on 18th July 2016
Your house should be more than a building you live in. It should be somewhere that you are proud of and belongs to you. Your house should reflect who you are and be a place you want to go home to at the end of your working day. Your house should be your home, and exceed all your needs and expectations.
Whether you want a green themed kitchen or a little bit of extra space, your house should suit your lifestyle, and our all of our lives are unique, so our homes should be as well. A retired couple isn’t going to have the same living wants and needs as a family with two young children, or a homeowner with a dog, and your home should reflect this and be personal to you. One of the best ways to improve your home inline with how you want to live is to invest in a little extra room.
Conservatories and orangeries are a highly desirable feature that will enhance any home, and purchasing a conservatory or orangery is one of the biggest investments a homeowner can make. Purchasing the right extension will not only create extra space and light, it will increase the value of your home.
For families with little ones, space can be a luxury. Between sprawling toys and unfinished games, you will quickly find that your home becomes a live-in assault course. If you’ve had to divert your journey and jump over piles of toys, or hold back the tears as you remove the fifth lego brick from the bottom of your foot that week, having more space in your house is probably something you fantasise about as you drift off to sleep every evening.
A great way to make that fantasy reality could be by creating a little extra space through the form of an orangery. Orangeries give your house extra space and light through their stunning glass ceilings, but provide more privacy than a conservatory due to their brick pillars. This modern take on the traditional style conservatory means that your orangery doesn’t feel too detached from your home and can hold its own as a room with a purpose. Their feature of bi-folding doors gives this room a beautiful contemporary vibe, and is perfect as a living room or kitchen extension. You could introduce a dedicated play-zone or attempt to create an adults only recluse, with a play-doh free carpet – you can dream, right?
Conservatories and orangeries do much more than create that extra space indoors. They enable you to get closer with nature. If you fancy having an outdoor brunch, or watching the outside world pass you by on a Sunday afternoon, then a garden room is an ideal home improvement option. It is a perfect way to enable pets to roam around, whilst you lounge and enjoy your garden, whatever the weather.
During the summer and winter months you might find that a conservatory turns into a sauna or freezer – there is no inbetween. Whereas a Garden room is a space that can be enjoyed all year round, whatever the weather. Whether it is snowing or sunny, you’ll be able to appreciate the outdoors without the desire to sit in a bucket of ice or wrap yourself up in a duvet.
Whilst Garden rooms have similarities to the traditional conservatory, the offer a contemporary edge, such as bi-folding doors that flood space with light. The Garden room also uses a solid tiled roof, so you won’t have to worry about the marks that nature often leaves on a glass conservatory roof. These stunning rooms offer more than a taste of the great outdoors..
If you’ve already got a conservatory or want something that allows you to be outdoors with a little protection, then Veranda Glass extensions are the perfect way to enhance your outdoor experience. This cross over between the conservatory and extension allows you to sit in the garden but still be covered from bugs and the rain. If you host a lot of garden parties or barbeques then a veranda means that you will no longer be another casualty to the unreliable British weather. With the choice of line-slider or bi-folding doors, you can create the perfect veranda that will suit all of your outdoor wants and needs, so you can keep those barbeque tongs out.
No matter what your family life entails, a conservatory, orangery or veranda extension can benefit all kinds of lifestyles. It is simply a question of finding the right style for you. If you are thinking of creating this special space within your own home, visit our Birmingham showroom today to see our quality products and speak to our specialists. | {
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NBA 2K17 was just released few days ago. Gamers were very happy and excited about the game. However, there may be more fans who have not purchased the game that’s why NBA2KWorld is doing this NBA 2K17 Review. Fans of the game should be able to decide whether the game is improved after reading this nba 2k17 review. Before anything else, this review would be based on my Playstation 4. NBA2KWorld hereby stated that the game is reviewed based on the Paul George Standard Edition.
Let’s start with the Arena.
The Arena received one major upgrade, that is the arena crowd. NBA 2K Added new recordings of the arena crowd. 2k made this amazingly to remove monotony from the game. Golden State Warriors being the most noisy crowd. The floors and the court have been more detailed as compared to nba 2k16. Pack with different lightings and ambience, NBA 2K17 Arena are more Realistic.
There is also an upgrade to the NBA 2K17 game commentary. Chris Webber and Doris Burke are included in the game as commentators.
Moving out from the appearance review.
The game would be also reviewed based from the following:
4. Game Modes
So let’s Start
In the game, NBA Players seemed to be more protective with the ball this year. They can easily drive to the basket without forcing a turnover. Flicking the right analog stick let’s you protect the ball from the defender. Meanwhile, there are also changes with regards to the crossover as NBA 2K17 decided to add Allen Iverson’s crossover move to the series. It will take to master dribbling moves but once you practice, you will easily get to the basket from time to time.
Players are deadlier. JJ Reddick, Damian Lillard to name a few. The all new shot meter is somewhat questionable for me because there is more need on timing. Pressing the shot button immediately will be a pain for your game. You should practice timing to beat your friends. If you are player is very tired, your shooting percentage and accuracy decreases.
It has been very good for this year’s NBA 2K17. The AI are more intelligent in stealing the ball. It has the same control for the nba 2k17, Pressing the L2 Button allows you to lockdown opposing player.
As the previous series, locking down defender would defend on your defensive attribute. Players should be aware of this.
There are different game modes in NBA 2K17. MyCareer, MyLeague, MyGM, MyPark and NBA 2K17 Locker codes feature
Read More: What is NBA 2K17 Locker Codes?
MyCareer is far one of the best game modes to see. It is fully packed with cinematic story mode with upgrades. Michael B. Jordan has been added to the game as your duo and will be also known as Young Justice. In the game, you will be able to switch and direct control to both player. This is what I like in the game.
In MyLeague, you can customize your game and the number of games per season. It works the same as the previous series. There is nothing much to talk about this as the development for this mode is stagnant.
Next is MyGM, this game is pretty much the same. You will be the General Manager for your team handling the work of trading picks and the likes. I would like to emphasized the use of MyGM mode. This is one of the best mode to try in your first 3 days of playing the game.
Last Game mode to check is the MyPark. I heard that the servers were already upgraded. It means that you will be able to play less latency with 2K servers.
The game mode is fully packed with new animations in the park and you’ll be able to achieve better if you have crew in the park.
All in all, I say that NBA 2K17 should be a must game to purchase this year. You can experience lots of fun by playing the game. All the thrills on and off the court will be available. The Latest Face Scan Feature is more accurate than the previous game. If you want to look at yourself as a player in the game, you should take this game before the year end. | {
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This past winter my Dad came to visit. As we drove around Halifax, he pointed to the Nova Scotia Archives and asked if he’d have to visit me at work there one day. I don’t remember exactly what I said, but I do recall laughing at how absurd and far off that seemed. But this past summer I received an email about a possible internship at the archives. After a phone interview and multiple emails, I was packing my car to head back to Halifax and suddenly my Dad’s simple question from months before wasn’t as silly as it had once seemed.
Located at the corner of University and Robie, the Nova Scotia Archives has been a fixture in my life at Dalhousie. I was initially introduced to the archives in a first year seminar course called Raiders of the Lost Archives. As part of the course the class took a tour of the archives and we were required to work with archival materials in our final papers. It was at this point that I fell in love with using archival materials. As I had spent time on the research floor for class, I went into the internship with a general understanding of how the public side of the archives worked. This internship let me expand my knowledge to include other parts of the archives, and specifically gave me a greater appreciation for the library collection.
I began work in July as the Archival Library Services Intern under a Young Canada Works grant. The project, which had begun several months earlier, was to create a unified electronic listing of all materials in the Nova Scotia Archives Special Library. This particular library began in the 1930s to support the Nova Scotia Archives' archival holdings and has continued to grow annually since that time. My project was the foundation for the next phase of library rationalization set to start in the fall. So achieving the goal of a complete listing of the approximately 50,000-item library by the end of my project was very important. While most of my time was spent on the library project, I was also trained to work at the research floor’s retrieval desk. In this position I developed practical skills and a greater appreciation for all of the work done to assist researchers. Between over-the-phone and in-person interactions, I was astounded by how helpful and knowledgeable everyone is. These aspects extended to the work I was doing because everyone at the archives was willing to take the time to answer any questions. This helped me to better understand the archives as a whole and to see what archivists do on a daily basis.
Although it seemed like a distant possibility this past winter, my internship allowed me to see what it would be like to work at the Nova Scotia Archives. It was a fantastic experience that let me extend my classroom studies into the real world and develop valuable skills. Most importantly, I was given the opportunity to really think about the possibilities for my future. | {
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PUB Bar in Porto (Matosinhos)
PUB Bar in Oporto (Matosinhos)
Black Coffee is one of the most prestigious coffee-bars in Porto, located near the sea, next to Matosinhos beach, by the famous Anemone Roundabout.
Known as a young and modern bar, with a selection of great music playing all day and night, very well attended and highly appraised. During the last years, Black Coffee has always worked to keep the status earned.
We maintained our evolution, and during the last year we suffered some major changes, aiming to get closer to our clients desires.
A meeting spot for friends, a passage place for tourists, a reference space for the Matosinhos and Porto inhabitants, this is Black Coffee, a space known by many, and mandatory for many others.
Besides being a meeting spot for friends, prior to a night out on a disco, Black Coffee, being open every day including weekends, until 2h00, allows a night out fully enjoyed in our Bar. We are fitted to provide snack-bar service with sweets, crepes and waffles and ice creams, as well as snacks such as francesinhas and hamburgers.
This is our suggestion for a perfect night out with Black Coffee:
… to the sound of carefully selected music, start your night with a typical Porto dinner, a spicy and tasty francesinha accompanied by a refreshing drink... for desert request a crepe or waffle... following this, warm yourself with a coffee and a digestive drink,,, our alcoholic and non-alcoholic cocktails will be the perfect follow through, so that the night proceeds the best possible way … also, if need to step out of your daily routine, ask for a shisha to smoke and share with your friends because on our outdoor terrace or indoor heated terrace smoking is allowed … as the night comes to an end, and if you get hungry again, we have lots of snacks to satisfy your hunger…
VISIT BLACK COFFEE in Matosinhos, your chosen bar. Check some of the bar photos here. | {
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A man who narrates Christian CDs has been arrested on suspicion of using the Internet to arrange sex with a teenage girl.
Juan Alberto Ovalle, 42, thought he was corresponding with a girl under the age of 15, but instead it was undercover officers with the Jefferson County district attorney’s office, according to court documents.
Ovalle works for a Spanish-speaking arm of the Colorado Springs Christian group Focus on the Family and narrates Biblical text for CDs, according to Internet websites that sell the products.
“We’re shocked,” said Gary Schneeberger, a spokesman with Focus.
Schneeberger said the group “is beginning its own process of looking into the allegations” and that it “will work with authorities” if asked.
Ovalle serves the Trans World Radio ministry and also the Spanish broadcasting department of Focus on the Family, according to one of the sites.
“He founded Spanish Christian Audio in 2001 to help Christian organizations with their audio needs,” the site said.
Ovalle was arrested Friday when he drove to Lakewood to meet the young girl, who was actually an undercover officer, to have sex, the DA’s office said in a media release.
On Thursday and Friday, Ovalle made “sexually graphic statements in a chat room to a person he believed to be an underage teen,” according to the DA.
Ovalle asked the teen specific sexual questions and told her about sex acts he would perform with her, according to an arrest affidavit.
According to the affidavit, during one exchange, Ovalle asked: “Would you like to meet?”
The undercover officer told Ovalle that her “mom” was working and she was home alone.
Ovalle responded by saying he was “horny” and that he’d come to the home.
Investigators gave Ovalle a phone number and address over the Internet. He called the phone number, and a female investigator talked to him, portraying the role of the teenage girl.
Ovalle showed up in Lakewood at about 2 p.m. Friday driving a green BMW, which investigators recognized from his own description, the affidavit said.
Investigators pulled in behind the BMW, turned on lights and sirens, and Ovalle initially didn’t stop, but he eventually pulled over and was arrested, the affidavit said.
He is suspected of criminal attempted sexual assault on a child and Internet luring of a child, both felonies.
He appeared in court in Golden today, the DA’s office said, and he is set to be formally charged April 9.
Kieran Nicholson: 303-954-1822 or [email protected] | {
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Play Houston's Panther Trails for wildflowers and closing holes
HOUSTON, Texas - If you're planning a trip here to play the Panther Trails golf course, now is the time.
Not that Panther Trails at the Woodland Resort, just north of Houston, is a bad place to be during the fall or winter: Houston gets the same balmy weather Galveston on the Gulf Coast does during those seasons.
But, to see Panther Trails in full bloom, you should see it when the wildflowers bloom. The course got an extensive makeover in 2002, and more than 3,000 pounds of wildflower seeds and native grasses were planted to jazz up tee boxes and other areas, and to serve as natural buffers.
The course itself is not a bad resort course to play any season. It was originally designed by Robert Van Hagge and opened in 1975. Roy Case was called in to re-design it two years ago and the result is basically a completely different scheme.
They moved 135,00 cubic yards of dirt and 25,000 tons of sand. They replaced the mutated Bermuda with ultra dwarf Bermuda, installed USGA built greens, spiffed up the drainage and irrigation system and added new cart paths and wood bridges. Lakes were moved and bunkers renovated. This aging babe stayed under the knife a while.
The result is a very pleasant resort course, not too demanding, that winds through a fairly quiet, fairly ritzy neighborhood that is one of the better known areas in this part of south Texas.
"He made some significant changes," said Panther head pro Bill Craig. "Not a hole out here stayed the same, except for No. 6."
Not surprisingly, the redesign changed the personality of the course.
"I think it's now more of a target course than it used to be," Craig said. "It plays at a decent length, but you can't take driver out and bomb away on every hole. It gets kind of narrow."
Oh, go ahead and try, you know you will. Like on No. 8, a 322-yard, dogleg right par-4. You know you're going to try to cut the dogleg and hit the green, but if you miss, there's big trouble, as in most risk-reward situations. Actually, if you can hit a power fade here and clear the bunker, you'll have a short wedge home.
Or No. 14, a 529-yard par-5 that most guys will take a crack at in two. Same with No. 9, another long par-5 with a nearly 90 degree dogleg at the right.
"Just about everybody can get there in two," Craig said. "If you can hit it 200 yards in the air, you can reach it."
But, for the most part, you'll be pulling out smaller ammo.
"You have to manage your game here," said Jim McMichael, a low-handicapper who has played the course often. "You really have to play this course, otherwise you can get in trouble."
Panther Trails is more interesting and demanding than its sister course, The Oaks.
Panther Trails has greens with more movement and multiple tiers - and a two-tiered fairway to boot - and more elevation, though it's essentially a flat course.
Both courses wind through a residential community, but at least the houses aren't of the cookie-cutter variety; some are architecturally interesting, and most are set fairly far back from the course. The only real intrusion comes when a handful of holes get too close to a busy highway.
The most challenging section of Panther Trails is its four closing holes - a long par-5, two deceiving par-4s (including the 18th with its island green) and a pesky little par-3 over water on No. 17.
The course is a decent deal for the rates: $63-$73 weekdays and $73-$83 weekends.
Stay and play
The Woodlands Resort and Conference Center is located north of Houston, where you can still see coyotes leaping across the interstate. The resort makes a big deal of being environmentally sensitive, as do most modern resorts, but this one has miles of biking and hiking trails throughout the woods to back it up. Hard to believe there's that much green space left in the Houston sprawl, but there it is.
The resort caters to the corporate crowd, with more than 60,000 square feet of conference space, business centers and the like, such as high-speed Internet access and handy modem connections at your room desk.
It has a fitness center and extensive spa services, where the ladies can get brow arches, eyebrow or eyelash tints and glycolic peels, along with the usual massages, saunas, steam baths, etc., for both men and women.
There's action for the young buckaroos, too: a "forest oasis waterscape" with water slides and underwater murals.
The Woodlands has four restaurants and a lounge: The main dining room features an "exhibition kitchen," exotic breads with special dipping sauces and fresh-baked pastry.
Spartilo offers Mediterranean and the Glass Menagerie has American food and sits on the shores of Lake Harrison. The Cool Water Café is more casual, and the Watermark Bar and Lounge is where you go to drink.
April 19, 2005 | {
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BUFFALO, N.Y. — Auston Matthews’ record-setting rookie season has the Toronto Maple Leafs on the verge of returning to the playoffs.
Matthews recorded his 67th point of the season with his 39th goal to set the franchise rookie scoring record and the Maple Leafs beat the Buffalo Sabres 4-2 on Monday night to move closer to clinching their second post-season berth in 12 years.
His goal also marked the most by an American-born rookie.
The NHL’s top rookie scorer downplayed his achievement after Toronto closed out a three-game road trip with its fourth straight win.
“I play with some pretty great players, so a lot of credit to them,” Matthews said. “But I think the most important part is that, as a team, we have been getting better each game, each segment, so we are in a good spot right now and just need to continue to play well.”
Maple Leafs coach Mike Babcock said team success matters more to Matthews than breaking records.
“He’s a mature young man who wants to be great and you are measured in championships in this league,” Babcock said.
Nazem Kadri had a goal and an assist, James van Rimedsyk and Leo Komarov also scored, and Frederick Andersen made 18 saves for the Maple Leafs.
The victory vaulted Toronto one point ahead of Boston and Ottawa for second-place in the Atlantic Division.
“All the good teams that are usually in it are doing their job and winning games and now it’s up to us to do our job and win games,” Maple Leafs defenceman Morgan Rielly said. “We’re just focused on winning every game between now and the end of the season.”
Jack Eichel and Ryan O’Reilly scored for Buffalo. Robin Lehner was pulled after giving up three goals on five shots in the first five minutes, and Anders Nillson stopped 32 of the 33 shots he faced.
The Sabres have lost three in a row and are 6-12-2 in their past 20 games. The late-season collapse will extend Buffalo’s playoff drought to six consecutive seasons.
Playing in Buffalo for the second time in nine days, the Maple Leafs evened a 5-2 loss in their previous visit. A large contingent of Toronto fans filled the KeyBank Center with chants of “Go Leafs, go!”
“They were hungrier,” Eichel said. “They wanted it more than us.”
Matthews scored his milestone goal in the same arena in which the Maple Leafs selected the 19-year-old centre from Scottsdale, Arizona, with the No. 1 pick in June.
Receiving a pass from rookie linemate William Nylander in the left circle, Matthews buried a slap shot to extend his point streak to nine games and give Toronto a 2-0 lead 5:01 into the first period.
Nylander’s assist gave him 60 points on the season. The Maple Leafs are the second NHL team to have three rookies with 60 or more points, joining the 1980-81 Quebec Nordiques.
Matthrews’ goal was one of three the Maple Leafs scored in a span of 43 seconds to take a 3-0 lead before the Sabres put a shot on net.
Komarov got the first goal at 4:26. Buffalo’s Jake McCabe tried to clear the puck from behind the net but Kadri intercepted the errant pass and set up Komarov for a tap-in from the left slot.
Matthews’ goal came 35 seconds later and Toronto added to its tally just 8 seconds after that when Tyler Bozak won a faceoff in the Buffalo zone and van Rimesdyk scored his 26th on a wrist shot from the high slot.
“We basically handed them two of the goals, for sure,” Sabres coach Dan Bylsma said. “That’s no way to start a hockey game.”
O’Reilly made it 3-1 when he scored his 20th on a short-handed breakaway 1:51 into the second period. Eichel scored his 24th on a breakaway in the final minute of the game, notching his first point in three games.
Kadri’s power play goal at 5:50 of the third was his 31st of the season.
NOTES: Matthews scored in his 78th game to surpass Neal Broten, who scored 38 goals in 73 games for the Minnesota North Stars in 1981-82. … Peter Ihnacak had 66 points for the Maple Leafs as a rookie in 1982-83. … Buffalo’s Alexander Nylander, the younger brother of Toronto’s William Nylander, made his NHL debut after being called up from AHL Rochester on Monday. The Sabres selected the 19-year-old winger with the No. 8 pick in last year’s draft. … The Maple Leafs’ three goals in 43 seconds was four seconds shy of the team record set on Jan. 20, 1940, in a 5-1 win over the New York Americans.
Maple Leafs: Close regular season with four-game homestand starting Tuesday night against Washington.
Sabres: Host Montreal on Wednesday night.
Jonah Bronstein, The Associated Press | {
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“Counter/Top” packs down-home humor and Red State/Blue State conflicts into just more than an hour of melodramatic fun.
MadLab Theatre’s lively play, which opened Friday at its Downtown space, rarely transcends the sit-com formula and small-town stereotypes of the short play by Kirin McCrory.
Still, director Meg Mateer helps the six-member cast knit the quirky characterizations and punchy dialogue into a convincing semblance of flawed humanity.
In the brisk one-act, two generations and classes collide: Izzie (Cat McAlpine) and Khent (Chad Anderson), a married pair of upscale college professors who drop by for lunch at a folksy diner on their way from Virginia to Florida; and Liza (Kayla Theis) and Gunner (Dustin Schwab), a volatile young couple of troublemakers.
Theis shines in the most intriguing role. Her Liza, seemingly a teenage airhead at the start of the play, proves to be a shrewd judge of character with a barbed wit.
In probing the professors to uncover hypocrisies, Theis sparks laughs and, later, rueful thoughts about how people hide uncomfortable truths.
Anderson nimbly navigates his two-faced role to reveal a darker side to Khent’s personality and history.
Dustin Schwab delightfully fulfills, then transcends, stereotypes as Gunner, Liza’s impulsive boyfriend. Beneath Gunner’s stupidity, Schwab finds a daffy sweetness.
Catherine Cryan (as Miss Betty, the sharp-tongued diner proprietor) and Ben Tucker (as Brooks, a stolid, largely incoherent diner regular) also generate a few laughs. But, as the Thursday preview reinforced, such underwritten characters are as predictable as reruns of old sitcoms.
The diner set, very detailed by MadLab standards, grounds the story in greasy-spoon realism.
“Counter/Top” is suggested for mature audiences because of frequent profanity. Only a little is needed, though, to underline the differences in education and culture between diner regulars and visitors. | {
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Premier Gordon Campbell issued the following statement today in recognition of Vimy Ridge Day, April 9th:
"On Vimy Ridge, in April 1917, four Canadian divisions drew together to fight as one army for the first time. They advanced for the assault on Vimy Ridge, a key position that had been held by German forces for three years.
The three-day battle for Vimy Ridge involved more than 100,000 soldiers and officers who struggled through mud and biting snow over collapsed trenches, to seize armaments and ground, until the battle was won.
The greatest Allied victory so far in the Great War had been won by Canadians, who suffered more than 10,000 casualties in those three days.
Today, the battlefield is the site of the memorial where 100 hectares of peace and tranquillity have been deeded to Canada in perpetuity. The 11,285 names inscribed on the base of the Vimy Monument silently count Canadians missing and presumed dead in France. More than 7,000 Canadians are buried in 30 war cemeteries within 16 kilometres of Vimy.
Almost a hundred years after the call to arms, our appreciation to that great generation remains steadfast. We are grateful that in the magnificent country Canada has become, young men and women still willingly volunteer to serve our country in dangerous areas of the world. We keep today's Canadian Forces and their dedication and bravery, in our thoughts.
April 9 is Vimy Ridge Day. I urge British Columbians to sign the Book of Reflection at the legislature to remember our great accomplishment as a country at Vimy Ridge and those brave young Canadians who answered Canada's call to arms.
For those who are unable to visit the Legislature, I encourage them to sign online at:www.vac-acc.gc.ca/remembers/sub.cfm?source=feature/crfww/crfww_msgbrd" | {
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With a Web-wide protest on Wednesday that includes a 24-hour shutdown of the English-language Wikipedia, the legislative battle over two Internet piracy bills has reached an extraordinary moment — a political coming of age for a relatively young and disorganized industry that has largely steered clear of lobbying and other political games in Washington.
The bills, the Stop Online Piracy Act in the House and the Protect IP Act in the Senate, are backed by major media companies and are mostly intended to curtail the illegal downloading and streaming of TV shows and movies online. But the tech industry fears that, among other things, they will give media companies too much power to shut down sites that they say are abusing copyrights.
The legislation has jolted technology leaders, venture capitalists and entrepreneurs, who are not accustomed to having their free-wheeling online world come under attack.
One response is Wednesday’s protest, which will direct anyone visiting Google and many other Web sites to pages detailing the tech industry’s opposition to the bills. Wikipedia, run by a nonprofit organization, is going further than most sites by actually taking material offline — no doubt causing panic among countless students who have a paper due. | {
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Millersville University students attend a candlelight vigil last year for slain student Karlie Hall, 18, in Millersville, Pa. Five states, including Pennsylvania, are considering bills to encourage or require middle and high schools to teach lessons aimed at preventing teen dating violence.
At a school in poverty-stricken East Oakland, California, Emilio Ortega asks the teenage boys he counsels how it would feel to see their mother, or sister, abused by a husband or boyfriend.
He knows they see people they admire on TV, in rap songs, and sometimes even at home channel their anger into aggression. Some of the boys, he said, have come to think that hitting or verbally abusing a romantic partner is normal — even funny.
“They don’t understand that it’s not funny, that it’s not real life,” said Ortega, who runs supportive programs at the K-10th grade Madison Park Business & Art Academy.
In middle and high schools across the country, counselors and teachers like Ortega are quickly becoming the front line of defense for state officials looking to prevent teen dating violence, and the cycle of violence that follows.
Research shows that teenagers who experience violence — either as victims or as abusers — are more likely to be involved in it later in their lives, which leads to more people in hospitals, behind bars and receiving welfare. States hope that investing in education programs now will help prevent those negative, and expensive, outcomes down the road.
About one in 10 high school students who dated in 2013 reported being physically or sexually abused by a partner during the past year, according to the most recent survey of high school students by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The percentages have fluctuated over time, but the 2013 figure is the highest ever recorded.
In recent years, sexual abuse incidents on high school and college campuses and heated debates over sexual consent policies have heightened public awareness of the issue. In addition, the Obama administration has emphasized that under Title IX, all schools — from elementary schools to colleges — that receive public funding are obligated to take steps to prevent sexual violence. Last week, the president called teen dating violence “a serious violation that can affect a young person’s safety, development, and sense of comfort” and called for support for programs that help young people develop healthy relationships.
This year, lawmakers in at least five states — Massachusetts, New York, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania and South Carolina — are considering bills that would encourage or require schools to discuss dating violence prevention with students in middle school or high school. Georgia approved the first such law in 2003, and since then 21 states have followed suit.
Education dollars are tight in most states. But Laila Leigh, managing attorney with Break the Cycle, a national nonprofit focused on the issue, said spending money on classes designed to prevent dating violence is much less expensive than paying for its aftermath.
Domestic violence costs the nation more than $8.3 billion every year, including medical care, mental health services and lost productivity, according to a 2004 study, the most recent available. In comparison, schools can find free class materials online, pay a couple of hundred dollars for curricula, or pay a few thousand dollars for training sessions for teachers.
But research on the effectiveness of prevention programs is spotty, and some state lawmakers are wary of placing another burden on schools.
South Carolina state Sen. Thomas Alexander, a Republican, introduced a bill last year to make February “Teen Dating Violence Awareness Month.” But Alexander said he hasn’t decided whether to support a bill that would require dating violence education in schools.
“I agree with the concept,” he said. “But we are putting so much on our schools.”
Dr. Phyllis Niolon, a CDC behavioral scientist, said the devastating impact — and the prevalence — of violence among romantically involved teens should concern every state.
Teenagers who are abused in romantic relationships are more likely to become heavy smokers or drinkers, be depressed or have suicidal thoughts, and to experience domestic violence as adults, according to a 2013 study. In a survey of adults who had experienced stalking or dating violence as adults, the CDC found that about one in four women and about one in seven men first experienced such violence between 11 and 17 years of age.
When Ortega teaches about dating violence, he tries to knock down gender stereotypes, telling students that men don’t have to be aggressive. And he makes them understand that the abusive behavior they often see dramatized on television could land them in jail.
The Madison Park Business & Art Academy is one of 10 Oakland-area schools involved in “Dating Matters,” a CDC program that teaches students how to detect a troubled relationship — their own or somebody else’s — as well as how to prevent violence, and how to help somebody who has been abused. Students are taught to recognize behavior that is demeaning, controlling, overly jealous, isolating or possessive, such as repeatedly pressuring someone to have sex or checking cellphones, emails or social media accounts without permission.
Ortega and other educators are trained to recognize and understand potentially dangerous teenage relationships. They learn how to listen to and respond to troubled teens, and how to connect the students with help.
The CDC also has helped local health departments to create policies for education programs and has created student-run communications campaigns in which students set up Instagram accounts with messages about healthy relationships and organize events, such as a themed skating event.
It’s very unlikely children are having these conversations at home, Leigh said, so “there is space for educators to step in and offer the prevention education.”
Rhode Island Leads the Way
In states such as Pennsylvania and Rhode Island, the grieving parents of teenage girls killed by ex-boyfriends pushed lawmakers to take action.
Many states have modeled their policies on the Lindsay Ann Burke Act in Rhode Island, which passed in 2007 and was the first to require the education in middle and high schools.
Lindsay was killed by her ex-boyfriend in 2005 after repeatedly trying to end their relationship. Her mother Ann, a middle school health teacher at the time, helped the state craft its law. If it had been in place in 2005, she believes it could have saved her daughter’s life.
Rhode Island schools use the “Safe Dates” curriculum, which was created by the Hazelden Foundation using CDC funding and has been proven to help reduce abuse. In the 10-session course, students dramatize dating scenarios and create posters and T-shirts designed to raise awareness. Rhode Island schools also send educational materials home to parents.
“Is it going to change every single kid? Of course not,” Burke said. “But I think, overall, we are making progress.”
But in other states, opposition to dating violence hasn’t translated into similar legislation.
In South Carolina, Alexander is reluctant to impose yet another curriculum requirement on teachers. To earn his support, he said, teen dating violence prevention lessons would have to be integrated into what’s already being taught.
In California, Democratic state Sen. Connie M. Leyva proposed a measure requiring dating violence education in schools. It was eventually altered to encourage such programs, but failed to become law. While focused on teens, the bill would have had far-reaching benefits, she said.
“My hope would be [the bill] would cut down on violence against women — it would cut down on violence on people, in general.” | {
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Let your young fan celebrate his fandom with this Ohio Bobcats Midsize long sleeve T-shirt. It features Ohio Bobcats graphics. This stylish tee will let him represent the Ohio Bobcats everywhere he goes!
Bobcats Customers also liked:
Ohio_Bobcats_Youth_Midsize_Long_Sleeve_T-Shirt_-_Greenhttp://images.fanatics.com/lfhttp://dmimages.ff.p10/chains/1824154.txtfalseWe are unable to customize this item with the text you have entered. Please try a different entry again.Your current entry cannot be processed due to guidelines for past and present player names. Please create a new entry. | {
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+27 (0)12 663 2564
+27 (0)82 821 5419
As a young child we dug out clay next to the riverbed and made little play sculptures. Life happened in between and not so many years ago I went for a ceramic class and got totally hooked.
As a horticulturist I am inspired by nature. My claywork is now my happy place and a good extension of the creativity of designing gardens.
I love to experiment with different techniques, colors and chemicals and make sculptures and functional ware using a electrical kiln or a home built raku kiln.. | {
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“Why Do You Need Two Wreaths?”
Copyright 2013 by Lori-Ann Willey
Copyright 2013 by Lori-Ann Willey
I usually have a “Veteran Story” to relay after spending half or nearly all day at a Veteran’s hospital with Paul. Today was no different, though I thought we were going to leave without a story that touched my heart in one way or another. Today was Paul’s annual physical, and that means once a year, a full day of waiting in one waiting room after another is not only the general rule, but expected. Today was a “light” day with only eight appointments scheduled.
After Paul’s last appointment with Judi, the RN of the SCI (Spinal Cord Injury) clinic, we gave hugs and once again thanked her for always being there for us, and not just us, but for the love and attention she gives all her disabled Veteran patients and families. Judi is an “Unsung Hero” of the SCI clinic, and a remarkable woman to say the least. A woman who dedicates herself to her patients come Hell or high water. Once, she had an opportunity to take an amazing job elsewhere, but she did not take the job, because as she told us, ‘I love all these guys. I know them better than anyone does! I couldn’t leave.’
As we exited the elevator on the ground level, I found myself disappointed that I had not yet heard a Veteran’s story. Of all the waiting rooms we sat in, not one Veteran opened up. I do not know if it was because it was early in the morning, or just a somber day of reflection. I will never know, but I do know that I felt that I was the one missing out.
The exit was just up ahead, when we came to an intersection in the hallway. Our hallway was to merge into a larger hallway. We stopped and waited for a few people to stroll on by, and as the last man walked past, I chuckled out to him, “Watch out. He might take you out!” I was referring to Paul and his wheelchair, but speaking to the man walking. He turned and chuckled as he murmured something I could not hear or understand.
We turned the corner and continued down the hallway behind the man, when he stopped and spoke. He was going to let us go past him. We smiled and the second he spoke, we stopped to listen to his words. He spoke with a smile. He was an older stout man I’d guess to be in his lower 70’s, and like some people when they strike up a conversation, he kind of started mid thought so it took me a couple of sentences to piece together his topic. This is what he told us:
He once stood in an area where someone was handing out holiday wreaths. He did not indicate whether they were free, sold, or given after a donation for a cause. As he stood, he saw a man in a wheelchair. He noticed that people were stepping in front of him as if he did not exist, yet the Veteran never said a word and never pushed his way through, instead, he sat and patiently waited for his opportunity to approach the wreath giver. A young Marine in uniform worked his way to the front of the line and asked for two wreaths. The wreath giver asked, “Why do you need two wreaths?” The Marine looked up at him, held his pointer finger up in front of him, and said, “Watch. You’ll see.” To this, the Marine turned around, walked a few steps back toward the man in the wheelchair, and handed him a wreath.
The older storyteller was now leaning his back against the wall beside us. He shook his head as he told us the story, and said, “Some people just don’t understand what it is like. They look at you and then they look beyond. I always let them go first. They have earned that rite.”
Part of me understood the meaning of his story, while another part of me could not help but ponder another thought. The man spoke in the past tense, and given this man’s age, I wondered if this story took place back in the 1960’s when there was a lot of protests about the Vietnam War, where the Veteran’s who served to protect us were not welcomed back on American soil by many simply because they did not support the war. Maybe that was the key point the gentle man did not speak of, but did he have to? Respect is respect, and courtesy is courtesy.
Remember to thank a Veteran. | {
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The 17th Wimmera Biodiversity Seminar was held on Thursday the 4th of September in Pomonal. This year’s theme was “Fired Up” – looking at all things to do with fire and biodiversity in our landscape. Quite a few of local FOGG members were able to attend and it was a really excellent day. Unfortunately we do not have space to do justice to all the speakers had to offer.
Speakers this year included:
Bill Gammage – adjunct professor at the Australian National University (ANU) and author of The Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aborigines made Australia. The book describes how Aboriginal Australians were actively using fire to cultivate the Australian landscape prior to European settlement. Bill expanded on his further research and learning, discussing the importance of the totem bond between people and animals, the fact that there were so many different words for “fire” – a different word for each stage of a fire and recovery, and different words for different kinds of fires. He described the burning practices as “planned, precise, local, universal, predictable and frequent.” Fire was an ally, “a scalpel rather than a sword.” “You see the fire in your mind before you light it – where it will go, where and when it will end”.
It was a hard act to follow but Dave Roberts our Grampians Ranger in Charge came next. He spoke of the challenge of balancing the risk to communities and the protection of landscapes, noting that we live in an environment much changed from that of 1778, with memories of Black Saturday and the impacts of climate change. He described the experiments with winter small patch burning in the Wannon area.
Darcy Prior of DEPI introduced us to the Phoenix Fire behaviour computer simulation model which is being developed to assist in predicting where and when a fire will spread.
Next Alan York who leads the Fire and Biodiversity Research Program within the Department of Forest and Ecosystem Science at the University of Melbourne. His research group investigates the interactions between fire, landscape pattern and biodiversity. Alan talked about the research into fire in the buloke forests which support the endangered red-tailed black cockatoos. In order to evaluate the balance between targeting the needs of this iconic bird and the needs of the rest of the plants and animals in the area his team focused on the insects there, in particular the ants, which are so important to the plants (their nests in the soil, their diet of leaves and seeds, their role in fertilisation). They collected 23,000 individual ants from 68 species! Their conclusion was that the needs of plants, insects, small mammals, and birds vary quite widely, but that the focus on this particular bird is not adversely affecting the rest of the environment in this location, but it could well in others. In the forest studied the best balance would appear to be 45% between 11 and 34 years between fires, 18% younger than this, 22% old to very old.
Natasha Schedvin of DEPI next spoke on research by La Trobe and Deakin Universities into fire in the Mallee, looking at the 5% target; the last four years of burning has burnt as much as in the previous 20 yrs. The Mallee was selected because of its biodiversity values and the readily flammable nature of the vegetation leading to typically high intensity fires – thereby presenting considerable risk to species if inappropriate fire regimes are applied. Similarly to the Buloke study they found that different elements (birds, insects, plants) have different fire regime requirements. They also looked at rainfall records to compare wet and dry years, Translating research into action plans for management is difficult but they think that looking at growth stages of plants is probably the best general method of deciding on burns.
Kristin Campbell of Deakin University spoke on her research into small mammal recovery post-fire in a time of climatic extremes. Her study surveyed 36 sites in the park over the last seven years. So three large fire events and one massive rain event. The trapping figures (13 species caught) showed just what a boom and bust cycle small mammals have. There were dramatic shifts in species composition and numbers over the years. Time since fire, prior productivity and rainfall are such important factors. This is why it is so essential to have longitudinal studies. She highlighted the importance of refuge areas especially sheltered damp places for recovery, which is important in a time of climate change.
Samantha Barron of Federation University spoke on her research into Sallow wattle. (I hadn’t realised before that it is a worldwide threat to ecosystems). She looked at sallow wattle in differing densities: from none to low, medium, heavy, collecting soil, looking at seedling emergence, collecting and sorting seeds in the soil. Sallow wattle follows creek lines mainly, it produces a huge seedbank, changes the ecosystem creating a positive feedback for itself, thus perpetuating the invasion process. The greater the infestation, the greater the impact on other vegetation. It was hard to assess what effect it has on the seedbank in the soil of other species. There’s a definite need for more research.
After all those speakers it was time to go out and look at the Park with Dave Handscombe. He showed us where the fire was particularly hot, where the back burns had been during the fire fighting, and where a recent planned burn had not stopped the fire, but had provided a less damaged patch. We also looked at an area of long unburnt forest which is where the newly discovered squirrel gliders were found. Plus he took us to an area covered in young sallow wattle seedlings.
After dinner, local Neil Marriott enthused us to support the proposed Wildlife Art, Museum and Gallery in Halls Gap. The final talk was by Kevin Parkyn – a Senior Meteorologist with the Bureau of Meteorology. Kevin assists emergency management agencies in predicting the behaviour of bushfires and planned burns. Again a fascinating topic and some amazing photos of fires causing wind changes.
So congratulations to the group organising this excellent day. FOGG Members from further afield should think about coming to next year’s seminar, which will be held somewhere different in the Wimmera. | {
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Taking music and making it his own
Nat Anderson, a senior graduating with a degree in music and business, looks to make music his career
Combining music-integrated studies and business administration, Nat Anderson found his passion in the University of Arizona College of Fine Arts.
Although Anderson was born in Glendale, Arizona, he lived almost all of his life in Texas. He decided to make the move back to Arizona after being offered a scholarship and direct admission to Eller College of Management.
RELATED: Looking back on Arts & Life
Originally, Anderson was a pre-business major. He later decided to switch to a major he had more passion for: music studies.
“I couldn’t picture myself going the route of getting a business degree in college and then working for one particular company,” Anderson said.
Anderson’s love for music and creativity inspired him to switch his major and follow his dreams. He plays guitar and piano and uses digital software to bring his music to life.
“Doing music is almost meditation for me,” Anderson said.
His favorite genre of music is hip-hop, and in the future, he wants to improve his singing and performance skills, as well as record music.
His goal is to save enough money to invest in recording equipment and have his own recording studio to produce music.
At UA, Anderson was part of a project for an environmental science journalism class where he created music for a documentary.
John Mello, a student in the same class, said Anderson was “very helpful and willing to work with everyone in a professional way.”
Anderson also works as a paper delivery driver for Fast Copy and was briefly involved in Young Life, a youth organization in Tucson aiming to “introduce adolescents to Jesus Christ and helping them grow in their faith,” according to its website.
Anderson gained an internship at a recording studio under Wiley Ross, director of the Rec Studio at the UA, in order to get “some experience in a real studio.”
He loves music first and foremost, almost to a fault he said, but doesn’t think it’s steered him wrong. He tells others to “pursue what you love, not because it sounds nice to say, but because you’ll find a way to make everything else work out.”
Follow Daily Wildcat on Twitter | {
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Although not endemic from where I am, Fallow Deer have become well established since their liberation 150 years ago. Fallow Deer are a beautiful looking animal that provide us with a nice nature balance in the bush, a great sport and excellent cuisine.
My own hunting block has traditionally supported red deer and pigs, but now that fallow deer have moved up the valley and made themselves at home is OK with me. Their numbers however are relatively low where they will hopefully remain in order to maintain an acceptable balance of fauna and flora in our forest.
The young deer are sometimes very inquisitive and ... | {
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X-Factor #4 Page 10 Original Art 1986 By Joe Rubinstein and Keith Pollard
X-Factor #4 Page 10 Original Art (Marvel, 1986)
By Joe Rubinstein and Keith Pollard
Original Art (Marvel,1986). The X-Factor decided to
teach young Martin Davis a lesson in this page by
Pollard(layouts) and Rubinstein (finished art, inks).
The image area measures 10" x 15" and the art is in
Very Good condition, with some tanning of the word
balloon paste-ups. Ink on Bristol.
*There is a 3% surcharge for credit card payments
VIEW OUR RETURN POLICY
This product hasn't received any reviews yet. Be the first to review this product! | {
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