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The Scottish SUNDAY HERALD, spoon-fed the facts, gets it wrong!
Excuse us? WHO scooped the agenda for the....
If you're going to rely on the mainstream media for accurate information on the Bilderbergers, here's a good example of why you shouldn't!
In the May 30th, 1999, Scottish SUNDAY HERALD report on the 1999 Bilderberg Conference, we find this "breathless", and surprising, assertion:
"Every year the international media competes to be the first to reveal the location and agenda of the conference, which brings together politicians - up-and-coming as well as established - business leaders, financiers, royalty and intellectuals."
Funny, if you're long-time Bilderberg watchers, as we are, you'd know that the last thing that the "international media" want to compete on is even mentioning the existence of the Bilderbergers, never mind being "the first to reveal the location and agenda of the conference."!
After that promising beginning, however, we find this completely inaccurate gem:
"The winner of the Bilderberg scoop this year was a Portuguese newspaper, The News, which boasts that it is the country's largest-circulation English language newspaper. It has published the location and the detailed agenda of the conference - although it admits with laudable candour that it was actually given this information by a publication called Spotlight, based in Washington, which believes Bilderberg is sinister and dangerous."
And what was this "detailed agenda" that the SUNDAY HERALD claims that the PORTUGAL NEWS received from the SPOTLIGHT?
"The News claimed, rather breathlessly, that the conference would open with "a review of the progress being made in the formation of an Asian bloc under the leadership of Japan. Free trade, a single currency and a political union similar to the European Union is planned for the region."
Then delegates would turn to "the installation of an American Union, similar to the EU, with a quick review of the scheduled splintering of Canada."
Next, continued The News, would be Kosovo: "They will discuss the formation of a greater Albanian state following 'trusteeship' of an 'independent' Kosovo, the dismemberment of Yugoslavia (by the return of its northern province, which has 350,000 ethnic Hungarians, to Hungary) as part of a general re-drawing of borders in the region (calculated to continue regional instability and conflict), and the reconstruction worth billions of dollars of the destroyed regional infrastructure at western taxpayers' expense."
Another item, the paper said, would be the "ultimate replacement of Nato with a Western European Union army, probably sooner than later due to the bad press Nato has endured over this current campaign."
It continued: "Efforts will be made to speed up the transformation of the Western European Union into a credible European military force initially relying on American back-up. This will complete American military disengagement from Western Europe and leave US forces available for wider global policing, if necessary with WEU backup in return."
The News also claimed that delegates would debate a grand scheme of "global taxation" to finance the UN, though it is vague about the details of this extraordinary idea."
Wonderful! A superb example of utter and careless misattribution and inaccuracy! Here's what the PORTUGAL NEWSactually said in breaking this 1999 Bilderberger Conference major scoop on its Website [at http://www.the-news.net]:
Bilderberg - international interest gathers momentum over "revelations" in The News
Sintra "summit" agenda leaked
"The tentative agenda for the Bilderberg meeting scheduled for June 3 to June 6 at the Penha Longa resort in Sintra has been revealed to The News by an internationally respected and long-serving Canadian researcher on the activities of this group. Amongst matters on the agenda are: Global governance, including a review on the progress in the formation of an Asian bloc under the leadership of Japan; The Kosovo war, including the formation of an "independent" Kosovo; The ultimate replacement of NATO with a Western European Army and the appointment of a Y2K (Year 2000) Czar (Mikhail Gorbachev could be a front runner for this post) to oversee global passage through the Y2K Emergency which they feel will be much worse than expected."
Seems pretty clear - no mention of THE SPOTLIGHT there, as far as we can see, and the direct statement that this agenda was leaked to the PORTUGAL NEWS by "an internationally respected and long-serving Canadian researcher" might have served as a clue to any perceptive reporter that it hadn't originated in "Washington, D.C." - not, as far as we know, yet, a Canadian city. [These comments are, by the way, not intended in any way to be a reflection on THE SPOTLIGHT, whose longstanding and independent tracking of the Bilderberg Group we both admire and appreciate].
"The News is today publishing, for the first time anywhere in the world, reliable indications of the agenda items for this year's meeting. The items on the agenda should however be treated as "tentative" and "flexible", and confirmation from the group itself is not possible due to its secretive nature.
John K. Whitley, an internationally respected researcher into the Bilderberg movement, has sent us what is reliably believed to be the Sintra agenda. The items are as credible as they can be at this late stage and, bearing in mind the secrecy of this group, it could have been already altered somewhat since the last contact was made with a Bilderberger insider. The entire agenda will be printed in the Toronto-based New World Order Intelligence Update later this week at www.survivalistskills.com/bild98.htm
Given that we gave the reporter who wrote this story for the SUNDAY HERALD a considerable amount of our scarce and valuable time, went through our correspondence with the PORTUGAL NEWS word-for-word with him, and supplied him with relevant and detailed backgound information on the issues under discussion at this meeting, we were amazed - to put it mildly - to see all of this source material baldly attributed to another publication!
Annoyed as we were by that, however, it was his general treatment of the items up for discussion - all of which are vital to us as free citizens, but none more so than the proposal for a global electronic-commerce and direct individual tax soon to be levied to support the U.N.'s new "global governance" role - which really galled us:
"The News also claimed that delegates would debate a grand scheme of "global taxation" to finance the UN, though it is vague about the details of this extraordinary idea."
Well, this was our response to that "extraordinary" statement in a sharp e-mail this morning to the Editor of the SUNDAY HERALD
"I also briefed [your reporter] on the background to the
Bilderberg plan for coming global taxation to
directly support the UN [not the least of which
was our own first revelation of it in our 1996
BILDERBERG REPORT and a detailed note
on the first steps in preparation for it at the
end of our 1998 BILDERBERG CONFERENCE
Summary Web page]. Yet this - probably one
of the most important agenda items at this year's
Conference - he treats somewhat dismissively
as an "extraordinary" and unsubstantiated idea. That
kind of lazy sloppiness I still find extraordinary in
any reporter, but regrettably more and more common.
For good measure, I also referred him to OUR
GLOBAL NEIGHBOURHOOD, the elite's own
draft of this, and other international taxation, ideas."
We don't normally do this, but for the sake of the record, here are the e-mails exchanged between ourselves
and the PORTUGAL NEWS. They establish exactly which publicationactually scooped
the world's media on the detailed agenda for this year's 1999 Bilderberg Conference - the New World Order Intelligence Update, although
we generously permitted it to be published in advance in the PORTUGAL NEWS in recognition of their courage and to embarrass the Bilderbergers as they secretly meet to discuss their now not-so-secret agenda; and because they
provide additional details which the PORTUGAL NEWS, for reasons of space, left out of its report
and which will no doubt intrigue serious Bilderberg-watchers:
----------
> From: Paul Luckman
> To: jwhitley@inforamp.net
> Subject: Bilderberg Portugal
> Date: Monday, May 24, 1999 5:02 AM
>
> Dear John
> You may have come across our newspaper, www.the-news.net we have been
> covering (as much as we can) the upcoming Bilderberg conference in Sintra.
> We are running out of information, so if you have anything you feel able to
> share, please drop me an e-mail. I may give you a call this afternoon, until
> all this came up I had never heard of the Bilderbergs. Now I want to know
> more.
> God Bless
> Paul
> Editor@the-news.net
>
----------
> From: John K. Whitley
> To: paul.luckman@ip.pt
> Subject: Re: Bilderberg Portugal
> Date: Monday, May 24, 1999 11:31 AM
>
> Hi, Paul:
>
> Thanks for your note. We do have some reliable
> indications of the agenda items for this year's
> meeting, but I would point out that these are
> always treated as "tentative" and "flexible"
> until a few days before the meeting itself
> actually occurs. Then they're finalized, generally
> around a core group of issues decided some
> time in advance.
>
> I'm doing you a considerable and exceptional
> favour in sharing these with you in advance, in
> large part because of the courage you've displayed
> in your own local efforts to expose this secretive
> cabal, so please credit them to the
> NEW WORLD ORDER INTELLIGENCE UPDATE.
> Because you are a weekly, and we are a monthly,
> publication, I'm permitting you to "scoop" us in doing this!
>
> REPORTED 1999 AGENDA ITEMS:
>
> * Global Governance, including a review of progress
> in the formation of an Asian bloc under the leadership
> of Japan, with a common trade and monetary framework
> along the lines of the European Union; and a review of
> progress in extending free trade, monetary union and then
> political union throughout the Western Hemispere to
> form an American Union [a key followup meeting to
> further this has already been scheduled for Quebec
> City next year]. A quick review of the coming breakup
> of Canada, postponed by the Bilderbergers in 1997
> and re-set for the year 2000, will form part of this
> latter discussion [the details of this were finalized at
> last year's meeting: interested Canadians will quickly
> detect from the 1998 attendees list which three people
> were invited specifically because of this topic] as will
> the commencement of press agitation for Continental
> Union between the remnants of Canada and the US
> [to be followed by full hemispheric union in the years
> immediately thereafter]. Conrad Black, a key Bilderberger,
> now has a huge press presence in Canada, and recently
> launched a new national newspaper there.
>
> * The Kosovo war, including the formation of a Greater
> Albanian state following "trusteeship" of an "independent"
> Kosovo, the dismemberment of Yugoslavia [by the return
> of its northern province, which has 350,000 ethnic Hungarians,
> to Hungary] as part of a general re-drawing of borders in
> the region [calculated to continue regional instability and
> conflict], and the reconstruction [worth billions of dollars] of
> the destroyed regional infrastructure at Western taxpayers'
> expense.
>
> * The ultimate replacement of NATO with a Western European
> Army, probably sooner than later due to the bad press NATO
> has endured over this current campaign. Efforts will be urged
> to speed up the transformation of the W.E.U. into a credible
> European military force, initially relying on American backup.
> This will complete American military disengagement from
> Western Europe and leave US forces available for wider
> global policing, if necessary with W.E.U. backup in return [We
> first reported on this Bilderberg plan in our 1996 Bilderberg
> Report].The key point here is that the Bilderbergers win
> no matter what happens to NATO - if it survives a little
> longer, they can use it as an emergency global police force;
> if it loses credibility over the Kosovo affair, then they just
> accelerate its replacement in Europe with the W.E.U., which
> they had planned on doing anyway.
>
> * the global impact of, and opportunities offered by, Y2K [which
> is going to be far, far worse than many people have yet
> realized]; the possible appointment of a "Y2K Czar" to
> oversee global passage through the "Y2K Emergency" [one
> name repeatedly coming up as the most likely candidate
> here is Mikhail Gorbachev, whose international standing would
> win him ready acceptance]
>
> Those are the key topics, Paul, so far: there are some oil items
> and financial [IMF; US economy and stock market; gold market
> manipulation] topics to be reviewed, too, but I've highlighted the
> ones which most interested us.
>
> Hope this helps you.
>
> Best wishes,
>
> John W.
>
>
----------
> From: John K. Whitley
> To: paul.luckman@ip.pt
> Subject: More on Bilderberg Portugal
> Date: Monday, May 24, 1999 2:36 PM
>
> Paul:
>
> Hope these extracts from our Web site, which I mentioned in
> passing in our phone conversation, help you as backgrounders....
>
> WINDSWEPT HOUSE: A Vatican Novel - Malachi Martin [646 pages, US$24.95,
> Canadian$32.95]
> U.S. News & World Report, June 10, 1996, carried the following astonishing
> interview with Malachi Martin:
>
> Plotting World Order in Rome.
> Vatican expert Malachi Martin tries to scope out papal succession.
>
> "Windswept House: A Vatican Novel"
>
> Conversation with Jeffery L. Sheler & Malachi Martin.
>
> Your novel depicts an international plot by Vatican insiders and
> internationalists to install a new Pope and establish a "New World Order."
> How fictional is this story line?
>
> Not very. There is an unspoken alliance today between powers inside the
> Vatican and leaders of major international humanist organizations who would
> change the Roman Catholic Church from a sacred institution to one whose
> primary function is to act as a stabilizing social force in the world. They
> see the church as the only global structure able to do this. The one
> obstacle is John Paul II. He is seen as a defender of medieval traditions.
> They want a Pope who shares their more liberal, globalist view.
>
> Who are these powers?
>
> Cardinals of the church, the men who will elect the next Pope. I describe
> them as conciliarists. The Church today is divided. Monolithic faith is
> gone. The new rival factions: traditionalists who prefer the church as it
> was before the reforms of the Second Vatican Council and conciliarists who
> want to liberalize church doctrine on everything from divorce and
> contraception to abortion and homosexuality. The numbers are about even,
> but conciliarists hold the positions of power. They think John Paul II is
> too conservative; traditionalists don't think he is conservative enough.
>
> What about the non-church part of the alliance? Who are they?
>
> Academia, foundations, nongovernmental organizations, even some
> governmental agencies. They have vast resources devoted to population
> control, education and economic and social stabilization. If they can get
> the Roman Catholic Church to side with them in the social and cultural
> field in a world that is dysfunctional, they'll have another element of
> stability.
>
> This sounds rather conspiratorial.
>
> It's not a conspiracy, but it's deliberate. Conciliarists and non-church
> globalists think the same way. Neither likes the Pope's policies. They are
> preparing for the selection of the next Pope.
>
> Why write this as fiction? Why not name names?
>
> Some of the cardinals involved are well respected and loved.
> Understandably, many people would react emotionally in defense of the
> cardinals and would miss the larger point. I plan to write a monograph in
> the fall that names some names.
>
>
> And from our June 20th, 1997, Jim Quinn interview....
> [http://www.survivalistskills.com/quinn.htm]
>
> <...>
> Whitley: Yes, we've always had good sources. I wouldn't like to be too
> specific because they're people who very cautiously we've developed links
> with, and who kind of work at a secondary level but who are directly
> involved with people who are at the Bilderberger meeting. They are becoming
> increasingly concerned themselves with where this stuff is going. So, yes,
> we do find out what's going on. Basically what happened at that meeting was
> they picked up a theme that was also discussed at Davos and [that] they're
> really pushing - and this was discussed at the Trilateral meeting in Tokyo,
> too - they're pushing for three regional governments and for the military
> anchoring of those...
>
> Quinn: The military anchoring of three regional governments?
>
> Whitley: Yes. The whole idea is that you divide the world up into three
> governmental zones, and each one will have an enforcement army; and then
> you merge those government zones into one, and you merge those three armies
> into one. In essence, you get a three-fold world state. And this has been
> the long-term plan of the Trilateral Commission, which is how it got its
> name. They're going along three lines, trilateral, to one World State. And,
> of course, you've got the Asian Union, the European Union, and coming into
> existence now, first announced at Davos, privately, is the American Union.
> Now we did publicly announce this one week after Davos finished, from our
> own sources. We went on the Internet and in our own Newsletter and we said
> that it was agreed that there would be a fast-tracking of NAFTA, the North
> American Free Trade Agreement, plus SAFTA, the South American Free Trade
> Agreement, for a full union by the year 2003, even if just the structure
> was in place. And that Newt Gringrich would be backing this and that Bill
> Clinton will be announcing it. A month and a half after Davos, Clinton
> announced this. So either this was a plan - part of a global plan - or we
> got very lucky. [laughs] But we seem to get very lucky most of the time, so
> obviously there is a plan there.
>
> <....>
>
> A couple of other things, Jim. Energy. They're really discussing that, if
> there's a Middle east conflict apart from that [the coming Bosnian war],
> which is not unlikely given the situation in the Middle East right now.
> Then oil prices will go through the roof! And, of course, the Bilderbergers
> are intimately interested in that because numbers of their members,
> including Rockefeller and Queen Beatrix, have massive investments in oil
> companies and in oil operations. That will also impoverish us.
>
> And, of course, NATO. They were looking at NATO because the more that
> expands, the more they can overwhelm American resistance at home to foreign
> adventures of any kind and foreign influence. American troops are being
> used as surrogates in foreign countries. And, of course, the more it
> expands, the more opportunity they've got to use it as a "police force",
> even outside of Europe.
>
> The last thing I would say, just adding to that, of course, we've already
> mentioned an increased UN role. That is the one thing that they are really
> pushing for hard.
>
> And, Jim, just as a treat for you and your listeners, I just found the AP
> press release that we were talking about earlier. I'll just read part of it
> very quickly. This is about the Davos meeting.
>
> "The world's elite meet in Geneva to wheel, deal and have fun," is the
> headline. Alexander G. Higgins of the Associated Press, the 29th of
> January, 1997.
>
> Quinn: "To wheel, deal and have fun"? [laughs]
>
> Whitley: Yeah, "Geneva, Switzerland. Many of the world's power-brokers and
> power-seekers will wind their way up a narrow, avalanche-prone Alpine
> valley in the remote eastern resort of Davos, Switzerland, this week for
> six days of deal-making, deep thinking, and fun. Headliners at this year's
> economic forum [which is the follow-up to the Bilderberg meeting] which
> will open tomorrow include Bill Gates, U.S. House Speaker Newt Gringrich,
> top Russians and, as usual, key players from the Middle East. The group of
> Illuminati, including top scientists and experts...will have their pick of
> a bewildering array of meetings, discussions and dinners, many of them held
> simultaneously." You know, as I do, that the Illuminati is the group that's
> been behind this for a couple of centuries at least, now. Now it's the push
> for world government.
>
> Quinn: Now, you see, heretofore we've been told that the Illuminati were a
> figment of conspiracists' imaginations.
>
> Whitley: Well, here is an AP press release, dated the 29th of January, by
> Alexander G. Higgins, [laughs], which actually tells you that this is the
> group that's meeting.
>
> <...>
>
----------
> From: Paul Luckman
> To: John K. Whitley
> Subject: RE: More on Bilderberg Portugal
> Date: Tuesday, May 25, 1999 4:49 AM
>
> Dear John
> Very many thanks for all the info, both on the phone and via e-mail. Right
> now my head is still reeling following our conversation yesterday...Let's keep in touch.
> God Bless
> Paul
>
----------
> From: John K. Whitley
> To: paul.luckman@ip.pt
> Subject: Bilderberger update...
> Date: Wednesday, May 26, 1999 1:14 PM
>
>
> Paul:
>
> I hope this reaches you in time to include in your
> forthcoming Bilderberger agenda account!
>
> We now have two key additional topics confirmed
> to us for this meeting.
>
> 1. Preparation for a "mid-East peace settlement"
> [ie - the declaration of a Palestinian State and the
> final disposition of Jerusalem - quote: "The results
> for Israel will not be good."] This explains the heavy
> emphasis on Israeli and international Jewish
> representation, plus the attendance of key
> representatives of Arab regimes which are
> implacably opposed to Israel - quote: "The deal
> on Jerusalem has already been done, and the
> Golan issue is being ironed out right now."
>
> 2. Global taxation in support of the UN, as the
> emerging "global governance" centre, to begin
> with a world-wide tax on e-commerce [this is
> why the CEO's of so many key computer
> companies, plus Bill Gates, are in attendance]
> and to be followed by an individual direct tax
> collected on the UN's behalf by national
> governments [we first drew attention to the
> first steps in implementing this plan at the
> end of our 1998 BILDERBERG UPDATE,
> at http://www.inforamp.net/~hjwhitley/bild98.htm]
>
> We have also been cautioned to keep a close eye on
> Yehoshua Yaacov Ben-Avraham, innocuously listed
> as "Yehoshua, A.B,. Israeli Writer" and originator
> of the mysterious "Ben-Avraham Plan".
>
> You'll recollect that some weeks ago Ariel Sharon
> said words to the effect of "Now, Kosovo - next, Israel"
> and got soundly rebuked for it. Now we see the
> significance of that comment, particularly as NATO
> now has free reign to intervene outside Europe in
> 'defense of human rights'! Any Israeli resistance
> to an imposed Palestinian settlement would
> inevitably lead to...another Bilderberger-created
> and -controlled conflict!.
>
> Now perhaps the full significance of Bilderberger
> Bill Clinton's and Bilderberger Tony Blair's active
> assistance in getting Barak elected is also, in
> consequence, becoming obvious.
>
> All the Bilderberg players will be in place for the next
> Act in their script...!
>
> You're welcome to utilize this information, if credited
> to the NEW WORLD ORDER INTELLIGENCE UPDATE,
> and if you severely embarrass this cabal
> of secretive globalists by revealing it just as they
> are meeting!
>
> With best wishes,
>
> John
>
----------
> From: Paul Luckman
> To: John K. Whitley
> Subject: RE: Bilderberger update...
> Date: Thursday, May 27, 1999 5:51 AM
>
> Dear John
> And the cry rang across the office 'hold the front page'. Its actually a
> very small office, and such display of unbridled excitement was totally
> uncalled for, but we enjoyed it!.
> It's in!
> God Bless
> Paul
>
----------
> From: John K. Whitley
> To: paul.luckman@ip.pt
> Subject: BBC Bilderberg story...
> Date: Monday, May 31, 1999 4:10 PM
>
> Paul... you've probably already seen the Tanjug
> [Yugoslav news agency] report on the Bilderberg
> plans for the Kosovo war, recently carried by
> the BBC's web site.
>
> Once again, they quote our Web site at
>
> http://www.survivalistskills.com/bild98.htm
>
> virtually word-for-word, and then attribute the whole
> thing to "independent U.S. journalists." What is
> it with this - why does everyone seem insistent
> on attributing our exclusives to [U.S. journalists]?
> Is this some new Bilderberg ploy to tie up our
> time just prior to their meeting...:)?
>
> Anyway, if you quote it [and it's too juicy a
> followup to overlook] please do add a note (sigh)
> attributing it to its correct source.
>
> Canadians don't appreciate being termed "U.S.
> journalists", or "U.S." anything else!
>
> Many thanks,
>
> John
>
----------
> From: Paul Luckman
> To: John K. Whitley
> Subject: RE: BBC Bilderberg story...
> Date: Tuesday, June 01, 1999 4:54 AM
>
> It's a conspiracy!!! (Sorry, but you really have to wonder)
> How much credence do you give to the BBC story?
> Kind regards
> Paul
>
----------
> From: John K. Whitley
> To: paul.luckman@ip.pt
> Subject: Re: BBC Bilderberg story...
> Date: Tuesday, June 01, 1999 8:59 AM
>
> Hi, Paul:
>
> Sure gets you wondering what *is* a
> conspiracy and what isn't, doesn't it :) ?
>
> I give 100% credence to the BBC account
> of what Tanjug itself reported. It mirrors exactly
> what we have on our 1998 Bilderberg Summary
> Web site and in our earlier 1996 BILDERBERG
> REPORT [and numerous copies of that were
> ordered by - among other people - Serbs living
> in Canada and the UK. I've no doubt that they
> were widely copied - in fact, one of the Serb
> expatriate leaders in the UK was roundly
> criticized for publicly stating making the
> same assertions there thereafter].
>
> We've had numerous direct e-mails from Yugoslavia
> over the past few weeks, querying us on the
> statements in that Web page. We've also
> kept in close touch with Bob Djurdjevic in
> the US, whose daily Truth In Media summary
> of media and press coverage of events in
> this war is widely read in Yugoslavia and
> by Serbs, others, and media around the
> world, and Bob [an experienced and
> widely-published analyst] has run some
> of our material and openly and independently
> agrees that this is a NWO-inspired assault.
>
> So the channels into Yugoslavia have been
> wide open for these insights for some time.
>
> If you check the BBC report of Tanjug's
> press release for the 29th May, in particular,
> you'll see that Tanjug reports virtually in
> detail from our Web page. Hard to believe
> when they first read it there no doubt, but
> reported as hard news now that it's happening.
>
> If you want independent confirmation of the
> existence of the article and its contents,
> e-mail Tanjug directly, or check with the
> Webmaster of http://www.beograd.com [who,
> no doubt, also has the right contacts to have
> this independently confirmed for you].
>
> With best wishes,
>
> John
>
----------
> From: John K. Whitley
> To: paul.luckman@ip.pt
> Subject: 1999 Bilderberg agenda begins to be confirmed...
> Date: Thursday, June 03, 1999 10:04 AM
>
>
> Paul:
>
> Here's virtually immediate confirmation of the New World
> Order Intelligence Update scoop on the Bilderberg plan to
> carve up Yugoslavia, which is now receiving its final approval
> at the current Bilderberg Conference in Sintra, Portugal. This
> story was first given to, and published in, the PORTUGAL NEWS,
> by the New World Order Intelligence Update *a week* ago - that is,
> five days *before* this Hungarian announcement - was featured
>
> The accuracy of our Bilderberg warnings has been proven right,
> again and again, in detail over the years, and, sadly, this will
> prove no exception.
>
> [You may quote this preliminary note to you by way of
> introduction to the item below, if you wish: at least readers
> will then see the clear connection between this future event and
> current Bilderberg scheming when it does in fact occur]
>
>
> 1750 GMT, 990602 - Hungarian far-right
> leader Istvan Csurka called on June 2 for
> Belgrade to return an ethnically Hungarian
> northern area of its territory to Hungary,
> simultaneously with accepting a peace plan
> for Kosovo. Csurka, who leads the Party of
> Hungarian Life and Justice, said part of the
> northern Serbian province of Voivodina --
> which is a home for 300,000 ethnic
> Hungarians and used to belong to Hungary
> before WWI -- should be given back to
> Hungary. Csurka referred to the area
> stretching 36 miles into Yugoslavia, from the
> Hungarian border to a line drawn by the
> Yugoslav towns Sombor, Vrbas, Srborban,
> Novi Becej and Kikinda.
>
> With best wishes,
>
> John
>
> ----------
> From: John K. Whitley
> To: paul.luckman@ip.pt
> Subject: ..And here's the first hint on another Bilderberg item!
> Date: Thursday, June 03, 1999 10:56 AM
>
> Paul:
>
> Intriguingly, US NEWS AND WORLD REPORT, a magazine
> well-connected with the the elite through David Gergen, is
> now running *this* story, presumably as the first of many.
> Note the last line.
>
> Remember the proposal for a tax on "Internet transactions"
> to support the UN? Well, right as they are meeting, this item
> appears in an influential US news magazine to prepare the way,
> presumably, for the acceptance of part of just such a taxing
> agenda! Now its "Internet postage"; next it's internet commerce...
>
> Best wishes,
>
> John
>
> AT THE OFFICE , AND AT HOME, E-MAIL COULD COST YOU
>
> At least the coffee and pens are still free
>
> BY KIM CLARK
>
> When Jeremy Gross first learned about E-mail, he thought it was "the
> greatest productivity improvement ever." But now the managing director of
> technology for Countrywide Home Loans is not so sure. Of the 300 E-mails he
> gets a day, about 200 are bad jokes, spam, or irrelevant memos copied to
> him. "The guy who invented that damn 'cc' [carbon copy] should be lined up
> against a wall and shot," Gross jokes.
>
> In all seriousness, however, Gross is proposing a solution that many E-mail
> fans consider only slightly less drastic. He has joined a growing number of
> employers and Internet service providers who want to charge heavy E-mail
> users more. If they succeed in these first steps toward a kind of
> "E-stamp," the days of free E-mail may be numbered.
>
> The E-stamp, known in the industry as a "chargeback" because providers
> charge the cost of a message back to its sender, is hardly revolutionary.
> People are used to paying extra for each telegram, letter, or long-distance
> telephone call. In the early days of E-mail, many service providers charged
> 25 or 50 cents for each message. It also makes good economic sense. It
> allows Internet service providers and corporate E-mail departments to
> collect higher revenues as their costs rise.
>
> Worse than Hitler? But chargeback provokes passionate opposition because it
> violates the Internet ethic of unfettered use. Kevin O'Connor, an executive
> director of Detroit-based Superior Consultant Inc., says he understands the
> economic reasoning, but will "rebel" against usage charges because
> unlimited E-mail makes him and everyone he knows more productive and
> happier. Chargeback would not only be like "dialing back the oxygen" but
> also smacks a "little of Machiavelli and a lot of Big Brother." Some E-mail
> addicts are far less rational. Robert Metcalfe, a founder of 3Com and
> currently a vice president of International Data Group, has received two
> death threats after speeches promoting chargeback. "One young student said
> I was worse than Hitler," he says.
>
> The companies installing the chargeback systems say they can't afford to do
> otherwise. The problem is that the flat-rate pricing schemes launched to
> encourage E-mail usage worked too well. At Countrywide, the nation's
> biggest independent mortgage company, E-mail traffic has skyrocketed from
> 1,000 messages a week five years ago to 1 million now.
>
> E-mail overload isn't just annoying, it's expensive. Each spam costs
> recipients about 3 cents in wasted worker time and computer memory, says
> Bright Light Technologies, which makes antispam programs. E-mail can be
> even more expensive for those who provide the backbone servers and Internet
> connections–employers or companies such as America Online. In support
> equipment and services, it costs providers about 9 cents to process each
> message, according to the Electronic Messaging Association, which opposes
> these pricing schemes.
>
> Little wonder then that about 75 major employers and Internet service
> providers, such as Bank of America, Unisys, and MasterCard, have bought and
> installed computer programs that allow them to track–and charge–by
> individual E-mail. Most are approaching chargeback gingerly. None has
> adopted a strict pay-as-you-send policy, says Randy Britton, spokesman for
> the biggest chargeback-software company, Tally Systems Corp. Some ISPs are
> also phasing in usage charges. EDS, the Plano, Texas-based information
> services company, for example, is charging its E-mail clients for usage
> over a generous ceiling.
>
> But the economic logic, so far, anyway, hasn't been sufficient to overcome
> popular distaste. Countrywide's Gross has already experimented with, and
> abandoned, a system that charged users for storing lots of messages in
> their computers' electronic memory. The reason: Even he found it to be a
> hassle. So now he's looking for some easy way to fairly recoup his
> department's costs without discouraging useful communication. These days,
> he's considering a three-tiered system in which each department will be
> charged differently for heavy, average, or light E-mail users. This, too,
> seems logical, but he thinks it will be a tough sales job. "We don't want
> to shove it down people's throats," he says.
>
> Unfortunately, just like banks did with those annoying cash-machine
> charges, that's probably what will happen.
>
> ----------
>
> From: John K. Whitley
> To: paul.luckman@ip.pt
> Subject: ...And *another* Bilderberg Agenda confirmation!
> Date: Thursday, June 03, 1999 11:18 AM
>
> Paul:
>
> ....And, lastly, *another* 1999 Bilderberg current agenda
> item, this time from THE TIMES of London, and
> being pushed by Bilderberg Tony Blair, just as
> the Bilderberg Conference commences.
>
> Remember that we warned that they would
> accelerate the replacement of NATO in Europe
> with a European army, via the W.E.U.....?
>
> John
>
> EU SHIFT TOWARD COMMON DEFENCE
>
> BY CHARLES BREMNER IN COLOGNE
>
> GALVANISED by the conflict in Kosovo, Tony Blair and other European leaders
> today lay the foundations for a common defence policy that will enable the
> European Union to mount military operations in countries near its borders.
>
> The defence accord, described by the Government as historic, falls well
> short of creating a combat-ready "European army".
>
> The pact to be settled at the Cologne EU summit envisages European troops
> being used to intervene in crises to keep the peace and offer humanitarian
> aid under the aegis of Nato, but without American involvement.
>
> An EU capacity to field forces separately from the American-led alliance is
> seen as vital to equipping the Union with the diplomatic and security
> muscle that it has long lacked.
>
> Reinforcing the push for diplomatic clout to match the EU's economic might,
> the leaders are expected to appoint Javier Solana, the Nato
> Secretary-General, to the new post of EU head of foreign and security
> policy....
>
And the moral of this story? If you want accurate,
serious reporting on these kinds of issues, go directly to the alternative media, to courageous papers like the PORTUGAL NEWS, and to the Internet!
But if you want "breathless" reporting, you also now know where to go!
STOP PRESS! 7 June, 1999...
SUNDAY HERALD REPORTER RESIGNS OVER EDITORIAL ALTERATIONS TO HIS
1999 BILDERBERG CONFERENCE STORY!
In an amazing confirmation of our critique of the SUNDAY HERALD article on the 1999 Bilderberg Conference, we have just received from Nic Outterside, the reporter to whom that article was attributed, a copy of the edition of the SUNDAY HERALD in which it appeared together with the following note, dated 31st May, 1999. We're publishing this to vindicate Nic, and as a commentary on the ways of the mainline media...
"John : The conspiracy continues - see page 7 [of the enclosed newspaper]. I lost my job over this. The re-write - under my byline - by a senior editor ridicules my original story which I will try to send to you by Email - Nic Outterside"
[We understand from information received after this page was originally posted that Nic, a two-time recipient of the Scottish Journalist of the Year award, wasn't fired by his newspaper but resigned as a matter of principle over this issue]
We haven't as yet received Nic's original Bilderberg story, and have no way at this point of contacting him, but Nic, if you read this, send it to us and we'll publish it for you!
From the SurvivalistSkills.Com site at
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In the intervening period, things have got even worse! Media concentration and
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"En Route To Global Occupation" - Gary Kah
"One World" - Tal Brooke
"Our Global Neighborhood: The Report of the Commission on Global Governance" - Commission on Global Governance[see the article on Maurice Strong, who was a key figure on this elite Commission which blueprinted the UN's future role as a global super-government. This book is essential reading!]
"What Went Wrong?: The Clash Between Islam and Modernity in the Middle East" - Bernard Lewis
"The Crisis of Islam: Holy War and Unholy Terror" - Bernard Lewis
"Of Paradise and Power: America and Europe in the New World Order" - Robert Kagan
"The Lexus and the Olive Tree: Understanding Globalization" - Thomas L. Friedman
"Jihad vs. McWorld: How Globalism and Tribalism Are Reshaping the World" - Benjamin R. Barber
"Out of Control: Global Turmoil on the Eve of the Twenty-First Century" - Zbigniew K. Brzezinski
"The Geostrategic Triad: Living with China, Europe, and Russia" - Zbigniew K. Brzezinski and John J. Hamre
"The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives" - Zbigniew K. Brzezinski
"The Perestroika Deception : Memoranda to the Central Intelligence Agency" - Anatoliy Golitsyn, edited by Christopher Story
"New Lies for Old" - Anatoliy Golitsyn
"Fortress America: The American Military and the Consequences of Peace" - William Greider
"Trick or Treason: The October Surprise Mystery" - Robert Parry
"Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press And 'Project Truth'" - Robert Parry
"The Conspirators: Secrets of an Iran-Contra Insider" - Al Martin
"Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire" - Chalmers Johnson
"Firewall: The Iran-Contra Conspiracy and Cover-Up" - Lawrence E. Walsh
"Out of Control: The Story of the Reagan Administration's Secret War in Nicaragua, the Illegal Arms Pipeline, and the Contra Drug Connection" - Leslie Cockburn
"Bushwhacked: Inside Stories of True Conspiracy" - Uri Dowbenko
"Betrayal : How the Clinton Administration Undermined American Security" - Bill Gertz
"Year of the Rat: How Bill Clinton Compromised U.S. Security for Chinese Cash" - Edward Timperlake, et al
"The Clinton Chronicles Book" - edited by Patrick Matrisciana
"The Secret Life of Bill Clinton: The Unreported Stories" - Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
"Hell to Pay: The Unfolding Story of Hillary Rodham Clinton" - Barbara Olsen
"The Case Against Hillary Clinton" - Peggy Noonan
"High Crimes and Misdemeanors: The Case Against Bill Clinton" - Ann Coulter
"The Clinton Record: Everything Bill and Hillary Want You to Forget" - Kevin H. Watson
"Uncovering Clinton: A Reporter's Story" - Michael Isikoff
"The Strange Death Of Vince Foster" - Christopher Ruddy
"Unlimited Access: An FBI Agent Inside the Clinton White House" - Gary Aldrich and Michael Reagan
"No One Left To Lie To: The Values of the Worst Family" - Christopher Hitchens
"Partners in Power : The Clintons and Their America" - Roger Morris
"Waco: Beyond the Mena Connection" - Ethel Halstead
"Okbomb!: Conspiracy and Cover-Up" - Jim Keith
"Into the Buzzsaw: Leading Journalists Expose the Myth of a Free Press" - Kristina Borjesson
"Manufacturing Consent - Noam Chomsky and the Media - DVD" [this title is also available in VHS video format]
"Mind Control: America's Secret War - VHS"
"The United Nations And The New World Order - Christian Action Network [VHS]"
"The Skulls [VHS]" - also available in DVD; highly accurate fictionalized account of Yale's secretive 'Skull and Bones Society' for the sons of the super-elite. We recommend it - an excellent and eye-opening movie!.
"The Skulls II - VHS" - the follow-up to the excellent 'The Skulls' movie, above.
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The secretive and powerful global groups behind the 'New World Order'
by Kris Millegan
'Fleshing Out Skull And Bones: Investigations into America's Most Powerful Secret Society'
by Kris Millegan
To order this title, or for more information on it, please click the button below.
This chronicle of espionage, drug smuggling, and elitism in Yale University's Skull & Bones society offers rare glimpses into this secret world with previously unpublished documents, photographs, and articles that delve into issues such as racism, financial ties to the Nazi party, and illegal corporate dealings. Contributors include Antony Sutton, author of America's Secret Establishment; Dr. Ralph Bunch, professor emeritus of political science at Portland State University; Webster Griffin Tarpley and Anton Chaitkin, authors and historians; and Howard Altman, editor of the Philadelphia City Paper. A complete list of known members, including George Bush and George W. Bush, and reprints of rare magazine articles on the Order of Skull and Bones are included.
Fleshing Out Skull & Bones features 42 chapters from a dozen+authors, plus many historical articles, providing a wide array of viewpoints into this very secret organization whose members increasingly affect world events.
Chapter titles include:
The September 11th Attack, the War on Terror and the Order of Skull & Bones • Memoir • Antithesis: Financing The Nazis by Antony Sutton
Geronimo’s Bones by Howard Altman
A Role Model For His Daughters by Charlotte Iserbyt
Secrecy and Our Constitution: Whom do they serve? by Dr. Ralph Bunch
Prescott Bush, $1,500,000 and Auschwitz by Toby Rogers
The Secret Treaty of Fort Hunt by Carl Oglesby
The War of ‘82 by Daniel Hopsicker
Reflections on the Yale Succession by Steve Sewall
The Order of Skull & Bones and Illegal Finance: A Study of the Analytical Framework of Conspiracy Theory by Jedediah McClure
The House of Bush: Born in a Bank • The Hitler Project • Skull and Bones: The Racist Nightmare at Yale by Webster Griffin Tarpley and Anton Chaitkin
Everything you ever wanted to ask, but were afraid to know • Blackmarket Bones • Prescott Bush, the Union Banking Corporation and The Story • The Tomb • Man, Magic and Yale • The Skeleton Crew • RTA Incorporated • A Shell Game • What Hath Women Wrought? by Kris Millegan
Prescott Bush, the Union Banking Corporation and The Story
by Kris Millegan
Based on Chapter 17 of Fleshing Out Skull & Bones“There’s three things to remember: claim everything, explain nothing, deny everything,” recalled Prescott Bush as to how politics was explained to him by Clare Booth Luce, congresswoman and wife of fellow Bonesman and magazine magnate, Henry Luce. The remarks were recorded in a 1966 interview with Prescott for an oral history project about the Eisenhower Administration by Columbia University.
The Bush political family seems to have taken those words to heart, one example being the story of Prescott’s involvement with the Union Banking Corporation and the financing of Hitler and fascism. Why there has been such a deliberate and hard cover-up of this affair is in no doubt due to its sensitive nature.
The who, what and where of this business is already covered in several of the other articles in this book. Here we will examine the story as it appears today.
The specific allegations about the Union Banking Corporation first surfaced in Antony Sutton’s 1975 book, 'Wall Street And the Rise of Hitler'. Sutton at that time did not know about the Order of Skull & Bones. After becoming aware of the Order in 1983 he expanded his writings on the subject in How the Order Creates War and Revolution in 1984, which was later published, with Antony’s three other booklets on The Order of Skull & Bones, together as 'America's Secret Establishment: An Introduction to the Order of Skull and Bones' in 1986. The charges were articulated again in 1988 in Sutton’s 'The Two Faces of George Bush'.
The mainstream press and establishment historians ignored Sutton’s books and the accusations.
In 1992, Webster Tarpley and Anton Chaitkin authored 'George Bush the Unauthorized Biography' (some chapters are presented in this book), which took the investigations further. They found in U.S. government archives the vesting order seizing the Union Banking Corporation and documented other Harriman/Bush controlled interests that were doing business with the Nazis. Their book was published by Executive Intelligence Review, a Lyndon Laurouche organization, and again the reports were ignored.
John Loftus, a former attorney for the Office of Special Operations prosecuting Nazi war criminals in the US Justice Department also added information about the situation in his 1994 book, 'The Secret War Against the Jews'
A Dutch producer Danićl de Witt, from Dutch National Television interviewed Sutton, Chaitkin, Tarpley and others in 1996, for a documentary on Skull & Bones that included confirmation from Dutch officials concerning the Union Banking Corporation and its activities in financing Hitler through a Dutch bank, the Bank voor Handel en Scheepvart (Bank for Trade and Shipping). From the documentary: “Original documents of the Amsterdam based International Institute of Social History (Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis) clearly show the connection between the BHS, the August Thyssen Bank from Fritz Thyssen and Harriman’s Union Banking Corporation.”
The show as produced never aired. The show was listed in printed schedules and there was a preview in a TV guide but the program was pulled just before being a televised in 1998. Finally in January 2001, a re-edited thirty minute segment of the original eighty minute film was aired plus ten minutes of new footage of interviews of the movie, 'The Skulls', writer and director.
With the advent and growth of the Internet and its ability to by-pass the mainstream media editorial bottleneck there was a growing awareness of the Nazi-Bush financial connections. Newspaper reporter Michael Kranish finally made the accusations public through a mainstream press article in the Boston Globe that became the story about the charges. A front-page article headlined Triumphs, Troubles Shape Generations, ran on April 23, 2001. The story was told in first three paragraphs.
The story:
Prescott Bush was surely aghast at a sensational article the New York Herald Tribune splashed on its front page in July 1942.
“Hitler’s Angel Has 3 Million in US Bank,” read the headline above a story reporting that Adolf Hitler’s financier had stowed the fortune in Union Banking Corp., possibly to be held for “Nazi bigwigs.” Bush knew all about the New York bank: He was one of its seven directors. If the Nazi tie became known, it would be a potential “embarrassment,” Bush and his partners at Brown Brothers Harriman worried, explaining to government regulators that their position was merely an unpaid courtesy for a client. The situation grew more serious when the government seized Union’s assets under the Trading with the Enemy Act, the sort of action that could have ruined Bush’s political dreams.
As it turned out, his involvement wasn’t pursued by the press or political opponents during his Senate campaigns a decade later. But the episode may well have been one of the catalysts for a dramatic change in his life. Just as the Union Banking story broke, Bush volunteered to be chairman of United Service Organizations, putting himself on the national stage for the first time. He traveled the country raising millions of dollars to help boost the morale of US troops during World War II, enhancing his stature in a way that helped him get elected US senator. A son and grandson would become presidents.
The next fifty plus paragraphs extolled Prescott’s liberal virtues, proclaimed him to be “akin to the Kennedys” and mentions Prescott’s membership in the Yale singing group the Whiffenpoofs, but failed to inform about his membership in the Order of Skull & Bones.
Alexandra Robbins, a member of Yale’s second oldest senior secret society Scroll & Key, used the story in 2002 to deflect the charges in her faux exposÄ of the Order of Skull & Bones, 'Secrets of the Tomb':
Nor was it Skull and Bones that specifically instructed members to aid Adolf Hitler, though Hitler’s financier stowed $3 million in the Union Banking Corporation, a bank that counted among its seven directors Prescott Bush.
That’s it. That is Ms. Robbins complete comment on the subject of the Union Banking Corporation, financing of Hitler and the Order of Skull & Bones. No mention about the American Ship and Commerce Company, Consolidated Silesian Steel Corporation, Hamburg-Amerika Lines, Harriman Fifteen Corporation, Harriman International Company, Holland-American Trading Company, Steamless Steel Corporation or the Silesian-American Corporation, companies of which Brown Brothers Harriman were involved and all of which were enmeshed with Hitler’s rise to power. No mention that under the Trading with the Enemy Act many of these companies were seized and were placed at the US Office of Alien Property Custodian. No mention that the Union Banking Corporation was established in August 1924 with George Herbert Walker serving as president and working out of the offices of W. A. Harriman and Company. No mention that in 1932, four out of the eight bank directors were members of the Order of Skull & Bones. No mention that, in the fall of 1942 when Union Banking Corporation was taken over by the government, that a total of three out of seven directors were members of the Order and that a fourth director was an employee of Brown Brothers Harriman effectively giving Brown Brothers Harriman voting control. No mention that while there were many other non-Bones personnel in partnership at Brown Brothers Harriman, none of them were directors of Union Banking, only Bones partners were on the Union Banking Corporation board. The only exception being not another partner but a Brown Brothers Harriman employee. No mention that two of the other directors have been identified as Nazis. There was no mention of published accounts such as “[a] 1934 congressional investigation alleged that Walker’s Hamburg-Amerika Line subsidized a wide-range of pro-Nazi propaganda efforts both in Germany and the United States;” or that in June of 1936 “[i]nstead of divesting of the Nazi money, [Prescott] Bush hired a lawyer to hide his assets. The lawyer he hired was Allen Dulles.” Was it because Ms. Robbins didn’t do her homework or was she just advancing the story?
The story next gets extended and massaged in Mickey Herskowitz’s craftily written just released 2003 biography of Prescott Bush, 'Duty, Honor, Country':
In everyone’s life there is a summer of ‘42; Prescott Bush spent his on Wall Street, where nostalgia and romance are not the hot commodities they were in the motion picture that made the phrase symbolic.
A headline that landed on the front page of the New York Herald Tribune in July of that year read: “Hitler’s Angel Has 3 Million in U.S. Bank.” The reference was to the Union Banking Corporation. Prescott may have been upset or alarmed by the disclosure he was one of its seven directors. A person of less established ethics would have been panicked.
The story claimed that the bank held $3 million in deposits for a German businessman, described as a “financier” for Adolf Hitler. There was speculation that the account may have been intended for the later use of “Nazi bigwigs.”
Buried in the databases that dealt with the Bush family political tradition, the article was rediscovered and reported in the Boston Globe, in April 2001, by Michael Kranish. He concluded in the article that the connection had represented a potential “embarrassment” for Prescott. No one actually knew what purpose the fortune had been meant to serve, or who controlled it. Possibly, the money had been socked away as a hedge against Germany’s defeat.
Bush and his partners at Brown Brothers Harriman informed the government regulators that the account, opened in the late 1930s, was “an unpaid courtesy for a client. The situation,” wrote Kranish, “grew more serious when the government seized Union’s assets under the Trading with the Enemy Act, the sort of action that could have ruined Bush’s political dreams.” The phrase was an ominous one.
The client was believed to be a friend of Charles Lindbergh, according to Roland Harriman. Prescott Bush acted quickly and openly on behalf of the firm, served well by a reputation that had never been compromised. He made available all records and all documents. Viewed six decades later in the era of serial corporate scandals and shattered careers, he received what can be viewed as the ultimate clean bill.
A decade later when he ran for the Senate, his involvement in the bank went untouched by the press or his political opponents.
Earlier that year he had accepted the chairmanship of the USO (United Service Organizations.) He traveled the country over the next two years raising millions for the National War Fund and, as the Boston Globe noted, “putting himself on the national stage for the first time ... (and) boosting the morale of U.S. troops.” Out of adversity good things came.
Again the other companies are conveniently ignored and new facts appear out of thin air and a theme is laid down. Mr. Herskowitz doesn’t cite any known sources for this new information. He cites the Kranish article but does not cite the Herald-Tribune or any other contemporaneous accounts; he says he had access to 46-hours of taped interviews and scrapbooks from the Bush family and mentions archives at the University of Connecticut. So we do not know where he gathered this particular new information. We do know that it is incorrect and misleading.
Let us examine the story:
First off the Herald-Tribune article didn’t appear in July of 1942 it was actually printed in July of 1941. The article itself proved to be quite the challenge to find. I talked with several different researchers and none had been able to find it, although spending hours looking at microfilm. Since, there was never a complete date given, just July, 1942, researchers were having to look at the whole month of July and when it wasn’t found there, began looking in June and August.
In a July 2003, call to Mr. Kranish at the Globe I was told that “several other people” had called him telling him that they were “unable to find it.” That there wasn’t a complete date reference on the Herald-Tribune article because the article he had found it in an “archive of archives” was cut out and there was not a full date just a month and year. He said he was sure it was July 1942. I asked Mike, if it was a special edition and if I could find out where this archive was? He said, “The Herald-Tribune doesn’t exist anymore and it is hard to find, you are just going to have to take my word for it. The story definitely appeared.” He then excused himself as being busy, that he had written the story over two years ago and he needed to go.
Well, we have found proof that the article did indeed appear in July of 1941. First we found on Alex Jones’ infowars.com website an article from the July 31, 1941, Zanesville Signal in Ohio. The Thyssen/Union Banking news story was in an INS (International News Service) wire report, which says that it was “disclosed today in a news story in the New York Journal American. We then found, at ancestry.com, an AP wire report in the Sheboygan Press, a Wisconsin newspaper of August 1, 1941 which stated: “The Herald-Tribune said Thursday [July, 31, 1941], that Fritz Thyssen, German industrialist credited with helping finance Adolf Hitler’s rise to power, ‘has $3,000,000 in American cash salted away in the bank vaults of downtown New York.’” Armed with the correct date, we were then able to find both the New York Herald-Tribune and New York Journal American stories. The articles are presented in full later in this chapter.
So, big deal, what difference does a year make? Well, let’s see in July of 1941 when the article was really printed, there was no declared war, and the story allows the rehabilitation of Prescott’s honor by allowing him to “enhance his stature” before the revealing newspaper article, instead of after. The truth of the matter, that Prescott was possibly running for cover in February 1942, by serving as the national chairman of USO, is not broached and the scandal is covered-up.
What “embarrassment” Prescott may have felt isn’t known. The incident isn’t discussed in his oral history interviews nor were there any contemporaneous news articles except for the one flurry in July/August 1941 and the articles that mention his name do so without any personal comments. Neither establishment historians nor the mainstream media have dealt with the episode in any depth. Sutton’s works and others have been quietly ignored for years, it is only the power of the Internet that has brought forth the story.
In the History Of The Class Of 1917 Yale College, Volume V Twenty-Fifth Record printed in 1942, Prescott proudly proclaims his directorship of the Union Banking Corporation, listing it third behind CBS and The Dresser Manufacturing Company and ahead of six other substantial companies. He had been on the bank’s board since 1934, his father-in-law was a founder and had been the bank’s president. It really wasn’t a bank per sÄ, but acted has a holding company for Thyssen, the German Steel Trust and its related components in their dealings with American industrial and financial markets. It allowed the Thyssen interests to raise money, sell and buy goods in America and then use Union Banking Corporation as their reciprocal bank to transfer monies back and forth.
And the theme of poor ol’ diligent, nave Prescott and partners being flummoxed by Charles Lindbergh into such a position of “embarrassment” is unfounded blame-shifting. The statements by Mr. Herskowitz of “[n]o one actually knew for what purpose the fortune had been meant to serve, or who controlled it” and ”that the account [was] opened in late 1930’s” are incorrect and disingenuous at best. The bank had working relations with the Thyssen interests since the 1920’s and Prescott would have had access to information concerning business. Prescott had been a director of the bank since the early 1930s and he was “running the business” at Brown Brothers Harriman at the time of the scandal. In Prescott’s own words, from the Columbia University oral history: “ the partners, like myself and Knight Wooley, who became certainly after Lovett went to Washington in 1940 from then on, we were really running the business, the day to day business, all the administrative decisions and the executive decisions. We were the ones that did it.”
The Union Banking Corporation was capitalized at $400,000 (most of the stock held by Roland Harriman) and acted as a repository for Thyssen’s funds earned in the United States. Tarpley and Chaitkin have written that government investigators reported “the Union Banking Corporation has since its inception [1924] handled funds chiefly supplied to it through the Dutch bank for Thyssen interests for American investment.” Averell Harriman had been in Berlin in 1922 establishing a “Berlin Branch of W. A. Harriman & Co. under George Walker’s presidency” at which time he “became acquainted with Fritz Thyssen.”
In the 1941 articles it was reported that Union Baking Corporation’s three million in funds had been frozen in May of 1940 and that the three million dollars, came from “organizations [that] did a thriving business rolling-up dollars.” There were four and a half billion dollars in “foreign assets frozen by the US Government since Adolf Hitler’s armies began overrunning Europe” in US banks. Dutch, Belgian, Norwegian and French assets were frozen in 1940 after the Nazis occupied those countries. German assets were frozen June 14, 1941.
President Roosevelt ordered Axis funds in the United States frozen. In view of the unlimited national emergency declared by the President, The Executive Order is designed, among other things, to prevent the use of the financial facilities of the United States in ways harmful to national defense and other American interests, to prevent the liquidation in the United States of assets looted by duress or conquest, and to curb subversive activities in the United States. Bulletin, p. 718. See also Vol. 6, Federal Register, p. 2897 (http://www.ibiblio.org/pha/timeline/4106int.htm)
So had an intrepid reporter, tracking down leads about frozen assets uncovered the story? Or was it some sort of controlled leakage? Over a third of the article consists of the letters to and from the Superintendent of Banks of the State of New York which give some “patriotic” cover for the Brown Brothers Harriman partners. The article also sets out doctored facts, some in the bold subheads, such as “Enlisted Harriman in 1925, that is even contradicted in the newsstory. The theme of the Herald-Tribune article is a “chance” meeting, that it may be or not be that bad or duped Thyssen’s fault, that no compensation was received and how above-board and approved the whole affair is from the governments view. The use of controlled scandal to deflect and cover-up deeper scandal has been used many times in US political life and it sometimes even gets a reporter off an editor’s back. The story runs and is forgotten.
No matter what the reason, the reportage was quietly stifled. With Luce’s Time-Life combine, Harriman’s position at Newsweek and other Bones influenced media such as CBS, the New York Times and others, the scandal was effectively killed as an item of news.
There was no coverage of the Herald-Tribune article’s information on the Thyssen/Union Banking Corporation connection in the national news weeklies, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal or even the New York Daily Worker. The afternoon daily, Hearst-owned Journal-American’s article was basically a condensed re-hash of the earlier Herald Tribune articles.
The next known mention of the Union Banking Corporation in the news was the cryptic one sentence in the December 16, 1944 New York Times financial pages saying that:
The Union Banking Corporation, 39 Broadway, New York, has received authority to change its principal place of business to 120 Broadway.
The real story continued to be suppressed. No reportage that the corporation was taken over by the US Government under the Trading with the Enemy Act in the fall of 1942, nor that the address to where Union Banking Corporation was moved was the Office of the Alien Property Custodian.
Maybe that power to suppress, to fabricate, to deny everything and to explain nothing was why Prescott was so blasÄ and felt no need to hide from his peers his directorship in a company that had already been reported by the New York press to be holding $3 million dollars in Nazi funds, prior to him putting the “bite” on classmates as the National Chairman in Charge of the 1942 Fund Drive for the USO.
The next mention of Thyssen in the news were reviews in newspapers, and in magazines, such as Time, Newsweek and Nation, for the book, I Paid for Hitler, by Fritz Thyssen. In Bonesman Henry Luce’s Time magazine October 13, 1941 it was reported that a co-writer, Emery Reeves a journalist, who in April of 1940 met with Thyssen in Paris and persuaded Thyssen to go to Monte Carlo with Reeves, “a collaborator and a secretary.” Where Thyssen would “dictate three solid hours every day, then revised and approved the copy.”
In late May 1940. Reeves went “to Paris to check some names and dates.” As the Germans were also on their way to Paris. Reeves left France for Britain on a British destroyer. “He never saw or heard from Thyssen again. After more than a year, it seemed obvious that Thyssen was a captive; for if he were free, he would have communicated with his family in South America. Alive or dead, he was Reeves decided, beyond the power of the book to hurt or help. So Reeves decided to publish.”
The book has Thyssen pounding his head and muttering “‘Ein Dummkopf war ich!’ (What a dumbhead I was’)” and reports about Thyssen’s financial assistance to Hitler prior to the Beer Hall Putsch of 1923. The Thyssen role in financing Hitler is covered extensively in other chapters, so we will not recount that history here. A new revelation in the book was the novel conspiracy theory that Adolph Hitler was the illegitimate son of Baron Rothschild. 'I Paid For Hitler' was published in New York, by Farrar & Rinehart. Chairman of the Board of Farrar & Rinehart was John Chipman Farrar a member of the 1918 cell of the Order of Skull & Bones. The class that had been tapped by Prescott’s Bones cell. The 1918 Bones cell included US Congressman Malcolm Baldridge, CIA personnel Director F. Trubee Davison, mega-businessman Artemus Gates and the then, in 1941, Asst. Secretary of War and Brown Brothers Harriman partner Robert A Lovett. They had all been part of the famous Palm Beach, Florida, Yale WW I flying unit.
John C Farrar during WW II was a member of the Psychological Warfare Branch in the Office of War Information and was an editor for some of the OWI propaganda publications.
After the war, Thyssen “denied authorship” of 'I Paid For Hitler'.. Was there more to the book than met the eye? Was 'I Paid For Hitler' created to confuse and possibly rehabilitate certain individuals and diffuse and confuse situations in the war-charged American atmosphere of the early 1940s? Similar to Bonesman Luce’s Life magazine reversing the Zapruder film frame of the JFK murder so as to accommodate the physicsof the official story of that action.
>You have got to be willing to do a lot of things furtively and secretly, to bring about a situation that will accomplish what you want to have accomplished. Prescott Bush, speaking about the intelligence services in his oral history, done by Columbia University.
Prescott definitely understood this and it seems as though he and Brown Brothers Harriman were trying to keep the scandal in the dark before some newshound broke the soon to be squashed news because in the July 31, 1941, New York Herald-Tribune it says that seven months before, in January of 1941, Brown Brothers Harriman partner and Bonesman, Knight Wooley had written to the NY State Banking Board Superintendent that “[s]hould the United States enter the war, they [the Union Banking Corporation American directors] felt they might be under some embarrassment, .”
Kept in the dark it was and Prescott won a special election in 1952, after the death of a sitting Senator, to serve as a US Senator from Connecticut. General Dwight Eisenhower, whom Prescott in November of 1951, had urged to run for the Republican party nomination for President of the US was also elected. Prescott golfed with President Eisenhower often, and spent a half-hour alone with him on Ike’s last day as President.
Senator Bush served on the Banking Committee, many times as a contact person for World Bank and Federal Reserve officials, who sometimes looked for more casual places to do business than the Senate committee rooms. In his second term protecting his state’s interests Prescott also served as a member of the Armed Service Committee. For years Connecticut had received more per capita of the defense dollar than any other state earning itself the sobriquet, the “Arsenal of Democracy.” That the Military-Industrial Complex began in Connecticut in the 1800s is relevant but another tale.
Prescott was a member of two private clubs in Washington, the Alibi Club and the Alfalfa Club. Every presidential election season, the Alfalfa Club nominates one of its members in jest to run for President of the United States. In January 1959 Senator Bush was the nominee for Alfalfa Party. His acceptance speech was recorded and a transcript was included, by the Senator’s request, in his oral history given to Columbia University. In this speech Prescott says:
I recall here the immortal words of Granville Rice, when he wrote:
The rules of life apply the same
To any sport you choose
It matters not how you play the game,
So long as you never lose.
Prescott Bush retired from the Senate in 1962, returning to his work at Brown Brothers Harriman. He passed away in October of 1972. Antony Sutton didn’t write his book about the Order of Skull & Bones and the Union Banking Corporation’s involvement with financing Hitler until 1984. The story and Prescott’s defense didn’t appear till April 2001, just before his Bonesman grandson’s selection to serve as the President of the United States.
Prescott never heard the story. Do we wonder what he would have said?
A Note from Danićl de Wit, Dutch Television Producer;
Amongst other things, what we had to cut was the information on the Bilderberg society and the CIA-drugs segment. What was left was as good as dead and was broadcast at the ultimate impossible hour of 5 PM on a Friday afternoon as every possible viewer is in traffic going home. There never was a rerun. The reason we had to, well, kill our ‘child,’ was because the new head of the documentary department at that time could not stand behind our findings. Even though they were based on facts and told by experts. There was also a cultural difference. The new head was just recently promoted to this documentary department from a news section that made very factual clips of maximum five minutes: ‘There is a fire and two people died.’ Whilst our documentary was about ‘who lit the fire and why?’ We had made a documentary which is a view on reality based on facts of one hour and twenty minutes and with a subject that is beyond the frame of mind of many people consuming the news that they are fed. This combination of events was the end of our documentary as such.
Making the program was quite an experience, not the least because of all the spooks we had to deal with for the CIA-drugs segment. When we first started in 1995 there was no Internet, just some old stencils of a hard to find book of a man known by only a few and the few who knew him, thought Antony Sutton was dead or lived on a high mountain. To communicate there was the fax and the telephone. In 1996 the Internet came (for us at least) but information on Skull & Bones was still hard to find. Try to explain that to anyone typing in “Skull and Bones” in Google today and getting swamped in information.
The subject of Bones and all these kinds of institutions and people was a real eye opener. As a matter of fact, it changed my life and made me see the world completely different. So much different that many times things are one hundred percent different than they seem. Not just ten of sixty percent, but really one hundred percent, turned upside down. On the one hand the subject of Skull & Bones became less ‘dark,’ because we found out the society is not some sort of spooky world government, on the other hand it became darker, because these Bones-like institutions and their members show a brute force and an enormous concentrated power that is overwhelming and could make anyone very cynical very easily. That also must be a reason people like to stay away from these realities.
Since corresponding and meeting with Antony Sutton he is my greatest example. He was just a player in the game that has to be played, but he played his role very well. He made a difference. I was then and still am ‘in the research business’, as Antony called it, digging deeper as ever, but it is extremely difficult to find resources to make new documentaries on the subjects I specialize in. Very frustrating, because the market is there. It’s just not easy convincing the people who have the funds about this fact. In the meantime I began DaanSpeak.com, a web page that is an outlet for the information I collect and explain in my articles. It’s a hobby, but a serious one. My main work is being a researcher for television programs. Through my website two program makers contacted me for their Dutch series that looks in a serious way at the phenomenon of conspiracies. The series will show that it is a very normal and obvious phenomenon. The program will air (although you never know) in Holland in January 2004.
Danićl de Wit
August 2003
The front page of the New York Herald-Tribune, July, 31, 1941
.
The Thyssen/Union Banking article was continued on page 22 in the financial news section, with three almost full columns plus another full column ancillary story on Thyssen. The articles are reproduced in full in the following pages.
Michael Kranish, the Boston Globe reporter, when we contacted in August 2003 to tell him that the articles were actually published in 1941 said, “Well, I wrote that so long ago, I can’t remember now why ? if it is ‘41 ? why it says ‘42. It is a mystery to me. I do not know what the situation is. But it definitely was there, that is all I can say. The copy that I have, you know, someone put the date in it ? maybe that was wrong. I certainly would have tried carefully to put the right date.” Mike then wanted to know my purpose for looking in to this. I tell him I am a researcher and writer looking into Prescott Bush and Union Banking.
His then last words on the subject were, “I have looked very thoroughly and I did not find the evidence that the conspiracy theorist allege, so ? if the date is different I just don’t know why that is.”
The text of the New York Herald-Tribune story, July 31, 1941:
Thyssen Has $3,000.000 Cash in New York Vaults
Union Banking Corp. May Hide Nest Egg for High Nazis He Once Backed
By M. J Racusin
In the tides of economic warfare now surging over the world, the New York Herald Tribune, has discovered that Fritz Thyssen, the German industrialist who was Adolf Hitler’s original patron on a prodigal scale a decade has $3,000,000 in American cash, salted away in the bank vaults of downtown New York.
In the American colony of Thyssen enterprises perhaps the most interesting is, the Union Banking Corporation, 39 Broadway, nominal guardian of the $3,000,000 cache, all in United States currency a sort of nest egg for Herr Thyssen or perhaps for some of his highplaced Nazi friends when the present troublous days are over.
Among other Thyssen interests in New York are half a dozen corporations engaged in the shipping, export and import trades, centering chiefly about coal and steel industries and operating under the wing of the Union Banking Corporation. These organizations did a thriving business in rolling up dollars for Herr Thyssen in years past, but have been brought virtually to a standstill during the last year by the war.
One of the most fascinating aspects of this story is the mystery surrounding the Thyssen fortune. At the moment, of course, no can get at this Thyssen nest egg, because it is part of the $4,500,000,000 foreign assets frozen by the United States government since Adolf Hitler’s armies began overrunning Europe.
Government circles assert that the assets of the Union Banking Corporation and its subsidiaries were frozen because capital and control came from Netherlands institution called the, Bank voor Handel en Scheepvaart (Bank for Trade, and Shipping) in Rotterdam one of the Thyssen string of banking houses on the Continent. It was subject to the freezing order, however, as a Dutch corporation and not as a Germanowned property.
As the Custodian of all Dutch property outside the Netherlands, the Netherlands government in exile represents that it, too, would seem to have some rights in the, matter. Nevertheless all of Fritz Thyssen’s properties were confiscated by the Nazi regime back in 1939, and thus it might appear that the assets here are legally a part of the German government’s assets in the United States.
Rotterdam Bank Bombed
The Thyssen bank in Rotterdam which nominally owned the New York corporation was bombed out of existence by the invading Nazis in May, 1940. No one in New York professes to know what has happened to the officers of the Rotterdam institution. Not a word of instruction or advice has come from abroad.
Perhaps it wasn’t Herr Thyssen’s money at all, some persons suggest. Maybe he sent it here for safekeeping for some of the Nazi bigwigs perhaps for Goering, for Goebbels, for Himmler, or even Hitler himself.
No matter how the story comes out, the United States government has the situation in hand. Every penny of known Thyssen assets is frozen, under the strictest control.
There are many Americans in responsible positions who do not think that the rift between Herr Thyssen and the Nazis was genuine at all, preferring to believe that Thyssen was in reality a sort of economic advance agent of the Hitler forces, a financial surveyor and softenerup posing as a refugee.
Reliable private information is that Thyssen has been wandering about Switzerland, France and other European countries before and after the Nazi armies arriving without much hindrance, from the Hitler government. Thyssen is now in Germany not under confinement, free to move about but closely watched perhaps a willing prisoner, perhaps a hostage for his wealth throughout the world.
Herr Thyssen’s adventure in the American business world dates back to August, 1924, when without flourishes or ruffles the Union Banking Corporation was incorporated with a capital stock of $400,000, the money coming from the Bank voor Handel en Scheepvaart, of Rotterdam. It was licensed under the New York State banking laws as an investment corporation.
In addition to known lieutenants of the Thyssen interests in Europe, there appeared and continue to appear on the board of directors of this corporation the names of several partners of the private banking house of Brown Brothers Harriman & Co., 59 Wall Street.
Enlisted Harriman In 1925
This circumstance dates back to a chance meeting in Europe in 1925 between Fritz Thyssen and W. Averell Harriman, a partner of the Brown Brothers, Harriman firm and now minister plenipotentiary to England as expediter of leaselend aid to the British. Herr Thyssen said to Mr. Harriman that he was opening a bank in the United States to take care of his financial and industrial interests here and, asked Mr. Harriman to serve on the board. Mr. Harriman agreed to have several other members of his firm, go on the directorate.
This took place, of course, at a time when the present world tangle could hardly have been foreseen and when such courtesies were part of the normal routine of international banking relations.
When a new world war began the Brown Brothers Harriman partners sensed possible embarrassment through association with a corporation stemming from German interests and considered withdrawal from the Union Banking Corporation’s board. In a consultation with William R. White, State Superintendent of Banks, on the subject Mr. White requested them to remain on the board to assure efficient administration of the corporation’s affairs by trustworthy and responsible persons during the emergency. They agreed to comply with Mr. White’s request.
Brown Brothers Harriman & Co. have never had any financial interest in the Union Banking Corporation or any of its subsidiaries, and have never profited in any way from its activities. The association of some of its partners with the Thyssen corporation, it points, out, was entirely a matter of courtesy.
Relationship Explained
The circumstances of relationship were frankly set forth in a letter addressed by Knight Woolley, a partner of the, Brown Brothers Harriman firm, to Mr. White on Jan. 14 of this year. This letter follows:
“January 14, 1941.
“William R. White, Esq.,
“Superintendent of Banks, State Of New York,
80 Centre Street,
“New York, N, Y.
“’Dear Mr. White:
“As you are aware, my partners, E. R. Harriman, Ray Morris, Prescott S. Bush and our manager, H. D. Pennington, are directors of the Union Banking Corporation, a state institution under your supervision. This corporation is located, at 39 Broadway, and it is in effect a New York office, or agency, of the Bank voor Handel en Scheepvaart, in Rotterdam. Because of possible uncertainty as to whether the Bank voor Handel en Scheepvaart might be held to be a Dutch institution, or whether it is, in fact, a German institution under a Dutch name, my partners have been giving serious consideration to withdrawing from the board. Should the United States enter the war, they feel they might be under some embarrassment because of their connection with the bank, even though we have no financial interest in the Union Banking Corporation, nor do we participate in its earnings. They act as directors merely as a matter of business courtesy.
“In order that you may understand clearly the reasons for our doubts, I should like to give you the background of our connection with the Union Banking Corporation. Our partner W.A. Harriman was in Europe in 1925, and at that time he became acquainted with Mr. Fritz Thyssen, the German industrialist. To the best of my knowledge, Mr. Thyssen formed the Bank voor Handel en Scheepvaart and presumably controlled that institution. - At one of his meetings with Mr. Harriman, he told him he was forming a bank in New York to look after his interests in the United States and he asked Mr. Harriman to serve on the board. Mr. Harriman agreed that certain of his associates would serve in this capacity, and as a result various members of the Harriman organizations and now of Brown Brothers Harriman & Co., have been on the board ever since.
“The Union Banking Corporation does no commercial business, and its only depositor is the Bank voor Handel en Scheepvaart. Its activities are limited to occasional payments and a few purchases and sales of securities. All shares of the Union Banking Corporation are registered in the name of E. R. Harriman, who is chairman of the board, except the qualifying shares held by directors. As the company is Dutchowned, its banking accounts were frozen under the Presidential Proclamation of May 10, 1940.
“The Union Banking Corporation maintains accounts with the Chase National Bank, the National City Bank, the Guaranty Trust Company, and ourselves. At present its account with us is the only one which is active, and the drawings are limited to the Payment of salaries and usual office expenses. To further control its operations, we have arranged that either Ray Morris or H. D. Pennington must sign checks jointly with the president of the company, Mr. C. Lievense, or with the, assistant treasurer, Mr. W Kauffmann, and that one of our gentleman from our organization must be present when access is desired to the company’s safe deposit box at the Chase Bank. -
“You have perhaps read in the newspapers recently that, Fritz Thyssen is no longer in Germany, and it has been reported that he has had differences with the Nazi regime. We have no knowledge as to whether he still retains an interest in the Bank voor Handel en Scheepvaart, nor are we able to obtain any information with respect to the stock ownership in the bank.
“In view, of these uncertainties, together with the censorship affecting communications to and from Rotterdam, I realize that the Union Banking Corporation might be placed in an embarrassing position if all the directors were to resign at this time. I feel sure however that you will understand the position of my Associates, and I would greatly appreciate, a frank expression from you as to the action which you feel that they should take should you believe that the interests of the Banking Department would be best served by their continuing as directors until the situation abroad has been somewhat clarified, I know that they will be glad to be guided by, your judgment and I shall greatly appreciate your reaction to this situation and your opinion as to what action, if any, should be taken by my associates.
“Reference is made to your letter of January 14 and to conversations which you and certain of your partners have since had with me relative to the status of the Union Banking Corporation.
“During recent months this department has been obliged to give unusual attention to certain of the banking organizations in this country which have been affected by the freezing orders. This, however has not been true in the case of the Union Banking Corporation because of the confidence which the department has in the directors of this institution
“While the department would, not feel free to object if your partners, Mr. Harriman, Mr. Bush, and your firm’s manager, Mr. Pennington, should desire to resign as directors of the corporation, nevertheless the department would be gratified if these gentlemen could find it possible to remain on the board during this period of uncertainty.
“I appreciate your thoughtfulness in bringing this matter to my attention and the willingness of yourself and your associates to consideration to the department’s point of view in the matter.
“Sincerely yours,
“WILLIAM R. WHITE.”
Personnel and Assets<
The personnel and financial setup of the Union Banking Corporation is provided in the following report of the institution, issued on Jan 1, 1941:
UNION BANKING CORPORATION. NEW YORK, 39 BROADWAY, ORGANIZED 1924
Cornelis Lievense, President
Walter Kauffmann, Treasurer
Directors Cornelis Lievense, E. Roland Harriman, R. D. Pennington, P. S. Bush, J. Kouwenhoven, Ray Morris, J. G. Groeninger
RESOURCES
Cash on hand and due from
banks (domestic) $2,817,763.95
Bond and Stock investments 232,880.25
Other loans, notes and bills (including other acceptances) 53,000.00
Accrued Income 947.66
Total resources $3,104,591.86
LIABILITIES
Deposits: Demand $115,880,14
Due to banks (domestic and foreign) 2,262,040,20
Other Liabilities 822.64
Capital stock .400,000
Surplus and undivided profits 302,339.70
Reserves 23,503,18
Total liabilities 3,104,591.86
Lievense a United States Citizen
The dominating personality in the administration of the Thyssen domain in the United States is the shy and little known Cornelis Lievense, a colorful little Hollander who arrived in this country by way of Montreal in May, 1926, two years after the Union Banking Corporation was set up Mr. Lievense is a naturalized American citizen having received his final citizen papers on Jan. 29, 1932, at Mineola, L.I.
Besides the Union Bank Corporation, Mr. Lievense is president of the Holland American Corporation, the Domestic Fuel Corporation, and the Seamless Steel Equipment Corporation.
All of these occupy offices with the Union Bank Corporation at 39 Broadway. Others in the group at that address are the Kemari Trading Corporation, the Riberena Fuel and Chartering Corporation, Kauffmann & Co. and Religious Publications Inc.
Mr. Lievense admitted that the assets of the Domestic Fuel Corporation, the Holland American Trading Corporation and the Seamless Steel Equipment Corporation had all been frozen along with those of the Union Banking Corporation by the Treasury Department. He said the business of the whole group, aside, from the bank, hardly approached $1,000,000 annually.
Blacklisted by Canada
He admitted also that the Domestic Fuel Corporation, which had been bringing cargoes of, coal from the Thyssen mining interests in Europe to Canada and other Western Hemisphere points, had been blacklisted by the Canadian Trade Commission in the fall of 1940.
Mr. Lievense would reveal little of the operations of the corporations beyond saying that they are now under the strict supervision of the Treasury Department and that there was “very little activity.”
He insisted, however, that Religious Publications, Inc., although occupying offices with the Union Banking Corporation and the others, was not a Thyssen venture but was purely his personal affair.
“This is a philanthropic venture of mine,” he explained with disarming sincerity, “undertaken to bring out the religious works of Dr. K Schilder, a Dutchman who has recently been released from a German concentration camp. This is in no sense a profit-making venture and must not be associated with these other business organizations.”
Three of Dr. Schilder’s books have been, brought out by the William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, of Grand Rapids, Mich., and were translated from the Dutch by Henry Zylstra. They bear the titles, “Christ In His Suffering, “Christ on Trial” and “Christ Crucified.”
On Other, Thyssen, Boards
Mr. Lievense speaks in soft, low tones and merely smiled broadly when questioned about his association with Herr Thyssen. His name appears as a director of the Thyssen Holland American Investment Corporation, at Rotterdam. He is a member of the board of the August Thyssen Bank, Aktiengesellschaft, at Berlin, and, he is also a director of the Handelscompagnie Ruilvkeer, a Thyssen bartering company at Amsterdam.
Two of Mr. Lievense’s associates, on the board of the Union Banking Corporation,, J. G. Groeninger and N. J. Kouwenhoven, are among Herr Thyssen’s chief managerial assistants in the conduct of many of his European Projects. Kouwenhoven is an old school friend of Mr. Lievense and is managing director of the Bank voor Handel en Scheepvaart. He is also managing director of the Holland American Investment Corporation and is on the board of the Thyssenowned Vlaardingen Harborworks.
Groeninger is managing director of the Thyssenowned Halcyon Line, with headquarters at Rotterdam. It was this corporation which refused to transfer its headquarters and assets outside Holland when the Netherlands government warned all industrialists to take their properties to Dutch colonies at the time of the Nazi Invasion. Just before the arrival of the German forces at Rotterdam, the British and Dutch navies seized eleven of the thirteen ships of the line and incorporated them in the British shipping pool. It is understood that three of these ships have since been destroyed. Only two ships of the line fell into the Nazis, hands.
Only One Has Visited U. S.
Both Groeninger and Kouwenhoven are directors of the local Holland American Trading Corporation. Groeninger is also on the board of the Bank voor Handel en Scheepvaart and is a director of the Vulcan Rhine Shipping Co., another unit in Thyssen’s industrial kingdom. Kouwenhoven visited the United States about four or five years ago, Mr. Lievense said, but Groeninger appears never to have been here.
“I have told the government, Authorities everything I know and that is all I can say,” Mr. Lievense said in a tolerant manner. “As, a matter of fact, I cannot say now who owns this money and this bank and these corporations. I cannot tell you if Mr. Thyssen owns it or not. You know, of course, that the building the Bank voor Handel en Scheepvaart has been bombed out of existence. Where is it now? Who owns it? Who knows?”
Pacing the floor of his office on the twentyfifth floor of 39 Broadway, he said, “All I know is that I am here and that the United States government is exercising strict supervision of all activities of the bank and these corporation. I cannot tell you whom I am working. You may be sure there is really little to do. All these corporations in their best years have done less than $1,000,000 annually.”
Mr. Lievense added that his business had slowed down to such a degree that he had to let out two or three of his office force and had reduced his three-room office to two rooms.
Has Time to Play the Organ
“In fact” he said, “ I have been, spending too much time indulging in my favorite pastime playing the organ at my home. I also play the organ for the Whiteman Memorial Baptist Church at Oyster Bay, What else is there to do?”
Mr. Lievense and his wife, Maria Jacobs, have lived In a rambling twostory semiColonial home in Cedar Swamp Road, in the High Hills Farm section of Glen Head L. I., for the last eight or ten, years.
He passes much time visiting the tulip beds in the vicinity of his home. He is a member of the Netherlands Club, and was born In Maasslius, Holland, July 28,1890.
Below is a sidebar article from the Herald Tribune, July 31, 1941, page 22.
Thyssen’s Role In World Affairs Still a Mystery
Original Hitler Backer May Be Refugee or Nazi Agent if He’s Alive and at Large
Fritz Thyssen, once ruler of the German steel trust and most important backer of Adolf Hitler In the early days of the Brown Shirt revolution in Germany, is the international mystery man of today. It is anybody’s guess whether he is a genuine refugee from the Nazi terror or a Hitler agent wrapped in a fugitive’s cloak. The world at large does not know where he is or even whether he is alive. And it has, apparently, no way of finding out.
On March 17 it was reported in Vichy. France, that he had been arrested on the Riviera in December, returned to Germany and lodged behind the barbed wire of Dachau concentration camp. Four days later German authorities announced that he was not in France or in Dachau but in South America. Earlier this month informed sources in Germany said he had been released from custody and was in a German sanatorium enjoying “limited freedom of movement.”
Contradictory reports of Herr Thyssen’s status are not new in the history of the man who, more than any other, financed Hitler’s rise to power. Since 1934 vague rumors of breaks between Thyssen and Hitler have circulated from time to time. They came to a head on Nov. 11, 1939, when it was announced that he had left Germany for Switzerland “for an indefinite stay.” The next day he arrived in Lucerne and for several months kept correspondents regarding his hints that he quit his country after protesting against the NaziSoviet pact and urging Hitler through Hermann Wilhelm Goering, not to go to war.
Property Confiscated
A week after his arrival in Switzerland it was announced in Berlin with fanfare that the Reich had confiscated his fortune and property estimated to be worth at least $88,000,000. It was done on the basis of a law aimed at persons inimical to the people and the state. On Feb. 12, 1940, a decree was published in the official German gazette stripping him and his wife of their citizenship. They were then living In luxury in a Locarno hotel.
From then until his disappearance from the Riviera his movements were of a nature to arouse suspicion, or at least puzzlement. He was in Belgium in March, 1940, and within a few weeks Hitler’s armies forced the surrender of that country. From Belgium he moved to France, where he remained unmolested long after the French bowed before Hitler’s legions.
Thyssen’s residence at the Hotel Crillon in Paris while the German armies gathered in front of the, Maginot Line puzzled the Parisians. It seemed strange to them that a man who was a declared enemy of France and the prime mover of Hitler’s coup should be ensconced in the French capital at that particular time, able to get the ear not only of French industrialists but also of French politicians.
The same puzzlement arose after the French surrender when Thyssen supposedly an enemy of the Reich was allowed to sun himself for months on the sands of Cannes, although the German authorities could have had him for the asking.
Mentioned as Roehm Associate
All this maneuvering was an echo of in earlier incident in his career. In 1934 after Hitler had assumed the Chancellorship with the staunch help of Thyssen, Berlin began to buzz with rumors of a split among the Nazis. It was also said that Thyssen was seen frequently in the company of Captain Ernst Roehm, one of the leaders of the supposed plot against the Fuehrer.
In the blood bath of July 30, 1934, when Hitler purged his party by killing Roehm and others, there was no mention of Thyssen’s having a part in the conspiracy. Yet, when he sailed in August for South America, it was reported that he was fleeing. Despite his intimacy with Roehm however, Thyssen apparently suffered none of Hitler’s suspicion. After studying the steel business of South America, he returned in the spring to Germany and took up where he had left off.
In the various accounts of the stringpulling responsible for Hitler’s rise in Germany, there in no suggestion that Thyssen shelled out his marks to the Nazi party for any reasons but selfish ones. He was firm believer In capitalism so far as capitalism was represented by the palatial Thyssen chateau, the roaring Thyssen steel furnaces in the Ruhr and Rhine valleys and the 120,000 workers who owed their daily bread to the Thyssen pay rolls. Hitler’s main appeal to him was as a defender of Capitalism against tile Bolshevik bogey.
The Thyssen holdings were hard hit in the German inflation and the subsequent struggle of German industry against the restrictions imposed under the Versailles Treaty. Thyssen hated the French, distrusted the German Republic and dreaded socialism. He began to look around for an antidote to the three-headed monster of his imagination. In 1927 he found it in the person an Austrian former house painter.
Started Pushing In ‘30
Thyssen kept an eye on Hitler and, when the depression in 1930 rocked the Thyssen industrial empire, decided that it was time to push the Nazi leader. He introduced him to prominent industrialists, promised them that Hitler’s National Socialism was only window dressing and helped to pry money for the cause from their pockets. In 1930 he and a business associate distributed 1,000,000 marks to the party and two years later, before the fateful presidential election leading to Hitler’s Chancellorship, Thyssen donated 3,000,000 more.
His reward was to be made economic dictator of western Germany and a member of the Reich’s Grand Economic Council and Prussian State Council. He also had a seat in the Reichstagg.
If the version that would picture him tossed over by Hitler is correct, he mistook his man when he patronizingly gathered the Fuehrer under his wing, His idea was to guide Hitler in the paths of safety for the Thyssen fortune. Like other German industrialists with same thought, however, it would appear that his supported puppet turned out to be a Frankenstein monster.
An amazing book ay a secretive, powerful, wealthy and - it would certainly appear - thoroughly amoral establishment dynistic cabal! And, by the way, one of their members is currently running the country and his November 2004 presidential challenger is a Bonesman, too!
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"En Route To Global Occupation" - Gary Kah
"One World" - Tal Brooke
"Our Global Neighborhood: The Report of the Commission on Global Governance" - Commission on Global Governance[see the article on Maurice Strong, who was a key figure on this elite Commission which blueprinted the UN's future role as a global super-government. This book is essential reading!]
"What Went Wrong?: The Clash Between Islam and Modernity in the Middle East" - Bernard Lewis
"The Crisis of Islam: Holy War and Unholy Terror" - Bernard Lewis
"The Islamic Nation: Status And Future of Muslims in the New World Order" - Ali Nawaz Memon
"Of Paradise and Power: America and Europe in the New World Order" - Robert Kagan
"The Lexus and the Olive Tree: Understanding Globalization" - Thomas L. Friedman
"Jihad vs. McWorld: How Globalism and Tribalism Are Reshaping the World" - Benjamin R. Barber
"Out of Control: Global Turmoil on the Eve of the Twenty-First Century" - Zbigniew K. Brzezinski
"The Geostrategic Triad: Living with China, Europe, and Russia" - Zbigniew K. Brzezinski and John J. Hamre
"The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives" - Zbigniew K. Brzezinski
"The Perestroika Deception : Memoranda to the Central Intelligence Agency" - Anatoliy Golitsyn, edited by Christopher Story
"New Lies for Old" - Anatoliy Golitsyn
"Fortress America: The American Military and the Consequences of Peace" - William Greider
"Trick or Treason: The October Surprise Mystery" - Robert Parry
"Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press And 'Project Truth'" - Robert Parry
"The Conspirators: Secrets of an Iran-Contra Insider" - Al Martin
"Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire" - Chalmers Johnson
"Firewall: The Iran-Contra Conspiracy and Cover-Up" - Lawrence E. Walsh
"Out of Control: The Story of the Reagan Administration's Secret War in Nicaragua, the Illegal Arms Pipeline, and the Contra Drug Connection" - Leslie Cockburn
"Bushwhacked: Inside Stories of True Conspiracy" - Uri Dowbenko
"Betrayal : How the Clinton Administration Undermined American Security" - Bill Gertz
"Year of the Rat: How Bill Clinton Compromised U.S. Security for Chinese Cash" - Edward Timperlake, et al
"The Clinton Chronicles Book" - edited by Patrick Matrisciana
"The Secret Life of Bill Clinton: The Unreported Stories" - Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
"Hell to Pay: The Unfolding Story of Hillary Rodham Clinton" - Barbara Olsen
"The Case Against Hillary Clinton" - Peggy Noonan
"High Crimes and Misdemeanors: The Case Against Bill Clinton" - Ann Coulter
"The Clinton Record: Everything Bill and Hillary Want You to Forget" - Kevin H. Watson
"Uncovering Clinton: A Reporter's Story" - Michael Isikoff
"The Strange Death Of Vince Foster" - Christopher Ruddy
"Unlimited Access: An FBI Agent Inside the Clinton White House" - Gary Aldrich and Michael Reagan
"No One Left To Lie To: The Values of the Worst Family" - Christopher Hitchens
"Partners in Power : The Clintons and Their America" - Roger Morris
"Waco: Beyond the Mena Connection" - Ethel Halstead
"Okbomb!: Conspiracy and Cover-Up" - Jim Keith
"Into the Buzzsaw: Leading Journalists Expose the Myth of a Free Press" - Kristina Borjesson
"Manufacturing Consent - Noam Chomsky and the Media - DVD" [this title is also available in VHS video format]
"Mind Control: America's Secret War - VHS"
"The United Nations And The New World Order - Christian Action Network [VHS]"
"The Skulls [VHS]" - also available in DVD; highly accurate fictionalized account of Yale's secretive 'Skull and Bones Society' for the sons of the super-elite. We recommend it - an excellent and eye-opening movie!.
"The Skulls II - VHS" - the follow-up to the excellent 'The Skulls' movie, above.
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packs, plus other stored food for variety and as a safety margin. We don't expect the continuing and serious disruptions likely to be caused by the various current global acrises and growing terrorist threats to be
brief or easily fixed, so we are now realistically planning for two years, including prior food stockpiles and food grown and
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Adobe After Effects tutorials and training onlineEasy to follow Adobe After Effects 5 tutorials and training
courses on cd or via the online university, master this application in days, fast
learning and cost effective. Find out why some many people find our Adobe After
Effects 5 tutorials so easy to use.
Click on any movie link in the first 3 chapters, to watch a free demo
To allow faster streaming over the web the sound and video quality has been reduced, this ensures faster download
The quality of the movies on the CDs is much better.
Please ensure that you have downloaded and installed the Apple QuickTime Plugin if needed, this is required to play the tutorial movies. If you are experiencing any problems please contact tech support . All our CD Tutorials and Online Moives are produced by expert authors and trainers, we try to design the content to represents problems that you would encounter in a real work environment. As a customer we value your comments and depend on your feed back to improve our products
Adobe After Effects is a computer design application that has become the
standard for compositing, special effects, and animation on to film and
other digital media , even among video and moton graphics professionals.
In this tutorial, Jayse Hansen guides you through the use of Adobe After
Effects 5/5.5, taking you from the basics of creating a standard vidoe
clip, organizing, and how to work with different compositions, to working
with type and images, audio, effects, fading in and out, and also goes
into details on the subject of transitions. Other lessons involve working
with 3D layers, lighting, and cameras and showing all the different techniques
that can be used to great effect, importing from Adobe PhotoShop and Adobe
Illustrator, and 3D enhancements and also shown, unlocking the full power
of this application. He includes assignments to help you apply all the
above and more. And for even more assistance, web resources so that you
can find out even more about Adobe After Effects.
The links below are free Adobe After Effects
tutorials. To watch the entire contents of this training course please
purchase the CD or subscribe to the Online University
Introduction Welcome What
is After Effects? Should
I Learn After Effects or Something Else? Why
You Should Learn After Effects The
Best Way to Learn After Effects Assumptions
I've Made About You How
This Course Works Get
Your After Effects Notebook What
You'll Learn What's
New in AE 5.0 Lets
Get on with It!
Basics Basic
Level What You'll Learn in the Basic Level Example
of What You'll Learn Get
Ready to Conquer Quick
Overview of Creating a Clip in AE
Details Project
Window & Importing in Detail Organizing:
Saving / Deleting / Renaming
Extra Tips: Essential De-Interlacing Interlacing and Fields
Example Bad (Upper)
How to Fix
Example Properly De-Interlaced (Lower)
Compositions New Comp Settings
Common Comp Sizes and Frame Rates to Memorize
The Comp Window
Time Line
How it All Works Together Review
Effects The Coolest Part of AE
Applying Hue / Saturation and Fast Blur
Changing the Values
Deleting or Hiding Effects and RAM Preview
Assignment 1
Adding Effects to Solid Layer Text and Glows
Quality Switches
Adding the Glow
Adding Effects to Adjustment Layers
Assignment 2
Animation Basics Learning to Keyframe Scale and Position
Opacity
Easy Ease
Fade Out
Adjusting Keyframes Proportionately
Reversing Keyframes and Copy / Paste
Animation Keyboard Shortcuts
Using Exponential Scale
Animating Opacity
Animating the Anchor Point and Setting Work Area Moving Layers
Animating a Blur Effect
Using Motion Blur
Lets Preview!
Rendered End Result
Assignment 3
RAM Previews and Time Controls RAM Preview
Shift RAM Preview
Preview Keyboard Shortcuts
Ctrl (CMD) RAM Preview Saves the Preview
Region of Interest Tool
Dynamic Resolution
Audio Preview Preferences
Setting the Work Area B and N keys
Frame By Frame Shortcuts
Overview Shortcuts
Rendering Basics RAM Preview
Changing Render Settings
Saving Render Settings
Output Module
Saving
Render Twirl-downs
Timeline and Layers Customizing the Timeline
Area View
Adding Comp Markers
Layer Management
Reordering Layers
Using Numbers
Layer Markers
Nesting Compositions Grouping Layers
Centering and Aligning Layers
Copying and Pasting Attributes
AV Features
Solid Layers
Switches Shy Layers
Continuous Rasterization
Quality Settings
Effects Switch
Frame Blending
Motion Blur
Adjustment Layer Switch
3D Layer Switch
Editing Layers Editing Layers
Sequencing Layers
Straight Cuts
Sequencing and Dissolves
True Cross-dissolve
Trimming Clips and Slip Edits
Ripple Edit Inserts
Handy IBON keyboard Shortcut
Trimming on the Timeline Slip Edits
Playing a Clip Backwards
Time Remapping
Work Area Extras How Footage Affects the Initial Work Area
B & N Keys / IBON / Shift Snap
Trimming Comp to the Work Area
Fades and Transitions Cross Fade
True Cross Fade
Fade to Black
Text Basic Text
Animating Size and Tracking
Adding Glow
Gotcha... Don't Animate the Scale
Using Title Safe Guides
Adding the ëKickbackí
Adding Horizontal Blur
Using Path Text for Normal Text
Advance Options in Path Text
Animating Individual Characters
Final Touches
Normal Path Text
Number Generator
Typography Basic Typography Intro / Serif Vs. Sans-Serif Fonts
Categories: Handwritten / Brush Scripts
Categories: Techno Type Fonts
Where to Find Fonts
General Design Guidelines
Further Resources: Books
Further Resources: Websites
Importing From Photoshop Examining a Layered PS File
Importing Into AE as Composition
Modifying Layers
Importing with Alpha Channels
Creating an Alpha in Photoshop
Working with Pre-Multiplied Alpha Channels
Creating a Straight Alpha the Best Kind!
Multi-colored Straight Alpha Channels
Working with B&W Scans
Play Around with These
How to View the Alpha Channel in AE
Saving Out to a Layered PS Document
Illustrator Difference Between a Raster Item and a Vector Item
The Vector Language
Working in Illustrator / Problems when Importing
Using Crops to Define Your Final Output in AE
Viewing Alpha Channel of Illustrator Files
Applying Effects - Continuously Rasterize Solution
Masks Creating Simple Masks
Adding Feather
Modifying Masks
Editing Mask Points
Selecting Multiple Points
Deselecting Points
Adjusting Bezier Curves
Mask Interaction Multiple Masks
Drawing Masks with the Pen Tool
Learning to Trace with the Pen Tool
Freeform Drawing with the Pen Tool
Importing From Illustrator
Adding Effects
Animating the Masks
Track Mattes Introduction to Track Mattes
Applying a Moving Luma Matte to a Movie
Pre-Composing to Add Effects
How the Mattes Were Created
Replacing Mattes
Improving the Bad Design
Alpha Track Mattes
Transfer Modes Introduction to Transfer Modes
Dropping Out White
Dropping Out Black
Inverting Line Art
Review
Another Example of Dropping Out White
Adding Effects
Creating the Look of Heaven / Film / 'Instant Sex' Photoshop
le
Some Alternatives
Using it in After Effects
Color Boost Defeating JPG Artifacting
Color to Black and White Fade
Difference Trick
Compositing Stock Effects Over Footage with Screen and Add Modes
Compositing Smoke Using the Screen Mode
Audio Introduction to Audio Formats / Sample Rates and Bit Rates
Importing Audio
Previewing Audio
Previewing Shortcuts
Viewing the Waveform
The Audio Palette
Spotting Audio Setting Layer Markers
Adding a 'Scriptí layer
Working with Markers in Pre-comps
Audio Effects
Stereo Mixer Effect
Looping a Music Track
Audio Fade is Not as Straight Forward as You'd Think
3D Layers Introduction to 3D in After Effects
Turning on 3D layers: Views XYZ Handles
Rotating Along XYZ.
Customizing Keyboard Keys for Views
Difference Between Orientation and Rotation
Arranging in Space
Animating a Surreal Sky Photoshop Steps
Working with 3D Layers
Adding an ëAtmosphereí
Final Render of Red Clouds
3D Lighting Using Lights to Add Drama
Working in Draft 3D Mode
Using Views to Set the Scene
Adding a New Light Light Types
Positioning the New Light
Options: Intensity
Options: Color / Cone Angle and Cone Feather
Options: Shadow Controls
Example: True 3D Shadow Fall-off
Transform Properties: Point of Interest
A Note About AE 5.5
Negative Lighting
Parenting Lights
3D Cameras Introduction to 3D Cameras
Creating a Fly-through effect
Adding a Camera
Using the Orbit: Pan and Track / Dolly Tools
Animating the Camera Setting Custom Resolution
Modifying the Motion Path
Using Roving Keyframes
Orient Layers Towards Camera
Using Multiple Cameras
Adding Depth of Field
Comparisons with and without Depth of Field
A Note About Multiple Views in After Effects 5.5
Expressions Get Excited! Expressions Are Cool
Four Basics You Must Learn
Setting Up an Illustrator Cyber-Screen
First Option Using Parenting
Better Option - Using the Pick Whip Tool to Match Properties
Basics of Java Syntax
Using Math to Alter Expressions
Linking Dissimilar Properties - Rotation to Opacity
Converting Value Ranges 100 to 360
Linking Lights and Cameras to Layers with Expressions
Orientating a Camera the Wrong Way
Orientating a Camera the Right Way with Expressions
Rendered Example
Offsetting Time Values
Efficiently Working with Null Objects
New Features of After Effects 5.5 Awesome New Features
Resetting Preferences - Tip of the Day
Automated Proxy Creation Awesome!
Details Behind Proxy Creation - Creating a Motion Proxy
New Effects The New Effects Palette
Four Color Gradient
Grid
Roughen Edges
Cell Pattern
Advanced Lightning
New Transfer Modes Linear / Classic /Vivid / Pin Additions and New Keyboard Shortcut
3D Enhancements Introduction to Multiple Views
Colored Shadows Simple Example
Colored Shadows Example Two
Colored Shadows Example with Video
Rendered Example
Setup Explained - Using Expressions / Changing Lighting Settings
Creating a Reflection Effect
Rendered Example
Final Word About Colored Shadows
Adjustment Lights
How Adjustment Lights Differ From Adjustment Layers
SWF Import Importing Files From Flash or Livemotion
Demo Tips Introduction
The Most Important Thing to Focus on
Selecting Work to Include
Tips for Motion Graphics Designers
Tips for Visual Effects Artists / Compositors
Delivery Options VHS / DVD
Targeting Your Market
Tips for the Perfectionists
End Notes What Now?
Appendix Further Resources Keep Moving Forward!
Some Favorite Learning Websites
Some Favorite Useful Websites
Some Favorite After Effects Books
All our titles play on PC or Mac, the application does not
need to be installed on the system for our program to be used. Our products are
being used in distance learning applications by large companies, Banks, Schools,
Colleges and Universites. To get the best out of our product you may wish to down
load the movie / video player, Apple QuickTime is also required. Online Tutorials
and training courses
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Digital Photography tutorials online training coursesComprehensive Digital Photography tutorials and training courses
on video, CD or via the online university, learn how to take, print and store
digital photos in days. All our tutorials offer fast learning and are very cost
effective.
Click on any movie link in the first 3 chapters, to watch
a free demo
To allow faster streaming over the web the sound and video
quality has been reduced, this ensures faster download
The quality of the movies on the CDs is much better.
Please ensure that you have downloaded and installed the Apple QuickTime Plugin if needed, this is required to play the tutorial movies. If you are experiencing any problems please contact tech support . All our CD Tutorials and Online Moives are produced by expert authors and trainers, we try to design the content to represents problems that you would encounter in a real work environment. As a customer we value your comments and depend on your feed back to improve our products
Digital Photography is quickly
becoming the new way to capture print and save images , without the worry
and cost of film. This digital photography tutorial will help you learn
the basics . Pierre Pretorius begins by introducing you to the proper
tools you will need to become involved with digital imaging. He covers
topics such as resolution, storage,print and also includes detailed information
on which camrea you should purchase, be it a compact or a SLR , this Training
CD helps you find a better understanding of digital output, including
enhancing your work using PhotoShop
for Photographers. He will give you the basic information needed to
print your digital photographs. You can start learning the basic fundamentals
of becoming a better digital photographer today!
This training course is designed for fast learning and covers all the
fundamental points of the application, all cds work on a mac or pc and
no application is needed. The links below are free Digital Photography tutorials. The entire
contents may be purchased either on CD or watched via the Online University.
Introduction
Introduction
Background on Digital Imaging
The Digital Darkroom
Choosing a Digital Camera
Photo Sensors
Lens Types
Understanding Exposure
Understanding Image Quality
The Lens
Understanding Resolution
How Much Resolution Do You Need ?
Dynamic Range
The Digits Behind Digital Images
The Binary System
Understanding Storage
File Formats and Compression
Understanding Digital Output Introduction
Auto Levels adjustment: Photoshop
Contrast adjustment: Photoshop
Levels adjustment: Photoshop
Curves adjustment: Photoshop
Color Balance adjustment: Photoshop
Sharpness adjustment & Advanced sharpening
Cloning: Photoshop
Color Management
Creating Black and White Images
Creating Toned Monochrome Images
Making Good Prints and Electronic Images Types of Printers
Choosing a Printer
Printing Principles
Printing Tutorial
Interpolation
Introduction to Internet Publishing
Preparing Images for Electronic Transfer
The Essence of Imaging The Basic Visual Qualities of Photography
Thinking Creatively
Understanding your camera's technical features Understanding Exposure / Shutter speed / Lens aperture / Coverage
and Light metering
The Main Themes Portrait Photography
Landscape Photography
Action Photography
Nature Photography
Practical Discussion Portrait Discussion Pt. 1
Portrait Discussion Pt. 2
Landscape Discussion Pt. 1
Landscape Discussion Pt. 2
Landscape Discussion Pt. 3
Action Discussion Pt. 1
Nature Discussion Pt. 1
Nature Discussion Pt. 2
Abstract Discussion
Accessories Accessories
All our titles play on PC or Mac, the application does not
need to be installed on the system for our program to be used. Our products are
being used in distance learning applications by large companies, Banks, Schools,
Colleges and Universites. To get the best out of our product you may wish to down
load the movie / video player, Apple QuickTime is also required. Online Tutorials
and training courses
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Ivory Project : Advertising Soap in America 1838-1998
search
This selection of 1,600 advertisements and
related ephemera, 1838-1998, features a representative sample
of print advertising for Ivory soap, one of the nation's longest-lived,
branded consumer products. Complementing the Ivory materials are
examples of advertising, advertising cards, soap wrappers, coupons,
pamphlets, and similar ephemera produced for other soap brands
and related products. Like the Ivory ads, these marketing materials
– for brands such as Kirkman’s, Fairbank’s Gold
Dust, Breck, and Pears’ – frequently use images of
housecleaning, bathing, women, and children.
This document defines the Resource Directory Description Language (RDDL). A
Resource Directory provides a text description of some class of resources and
of individual resources related to that class.
It also contains a directory of links to these related resources.
An example of a class of resources is that defined by an
XML Namespace.
Examples of such related resources include schemas,
stylesheets, and executable code.
A Resource Directory Description is designed to be suitable for service as the body of a
resource returned by dereferencing a URI serving as an XML Namespace name.
The Resource Directory Description Language is an extension of XHTML Basic
1.0 with an added element named resource.
This element serves as an XLink to the referenced resource, and contains
a human-readable description of the resource and machine readable links which describe
the purpose of the link and the nature of the resource being linked to.
The nature of the resource being linked to is indicated by the xlink:role attribute and the purpose of the link is indicated by the xlink:arcrole attribute.
This document defines the syntax and semantics of the Resource Directory Description Language 1.0,
and also serves as a Resource Directory Description for the namespace http://www.rddl.org/.
This specification is subject to change without notice however each version is associated with a version specific URI.
Version specific RDDL namespace URIs are named as: "http://www.rddl.org/" + YYYYMMDD.
Background
The Resource Directory Description Language was initially proposed and
specified after discussion on the
XML-DEV mailing list.
Descriptions of the origins and historical context of RDDL may be found at
the XML
Cover Pages,
<?xmlhack?>, and
xml.com.
Many people have contributed to RDDL.
This document has no official standing and has not been considered nor
approved by any organization.
Nature and Purpose
The Nature of a Related Resource
Related resources have a nature, a machine-readable label provided by
the value of the xlink:role attribute.
For example, the nature of an XML Schema designed for use with a namespace
would be given as xlink:role="http://www.w3.org/2000/10/XMLSchema".
In cases where there is only one resource with a particular nature,
the purpose of the linked resource may be inferred from this nature.
For example, if there is only one related resource for a particular
namespace whose nature indicates that it is a schema,
processing software might infer that its purpose is to validate
elements in that namespace.
The Purpose of a Related Resource
Related resources may have a purpose, a machine-readable label
provided by
the value of the xlink:arcrole attribute.
The purpose is designed to convey the intended usage of the related resource.
For example, two related resources might have natures that indicate they
are both schemas, but the purposes might indicate that one is designed to
validate
the "strict" version of the language, the other the "forgiving" form.
Attributes of RDDL document
Base URI
The base URI of a RDDL document may be specified according to the W3C XML Base recommendation.
The xml:base attribute may be specified on the root html element or on a rddl:resource element.
Language
The language of a RDDL document may be specified by the xml:lang attribute on the html element or on a rddl:resource element.
An html tag in an XHTML document may specify both lang and xml:lang attributes,
but the lang attribute is not used by RDDL processors.
The rddl:resource Element
The resource element is in a namespace whose name
is http://www.rddl.org/.
In this discussion, we assume the use of the namespace prefix
rddl, and refer to this element as rddl:resource.
The rddl:resource element represents a simple xlink, using the
attributes defined in the XLink namespace.
The rddl:resource must occur in the content of the HTML body element.
In the RDDL DTD, the XHTML %Flow.mix entity has been
redefined to contain rddl:resource so it roughly may be placed anywhere a p element may be placed.
The rddl:resource element itself uses the %Flow.mix content model, and should have human-readable content
which describes the associated resource.
Here is a DTD fragment declaring the rddl:resource element,
edited for clarity.
The value of this attribute must be a URI reference. A URI reference may contain a URI part and a fragment identifier.
Per XLink, when present the URI part must be an absolute URI.
It provides a machine-readable identifier for the nature of the related resource.
Software may dispatch on this value.
When the related resource is an XML language for which a namespace name has
been defined, and for which the namespace name adequately distinguishes the nature of the resource,
the namespace name should be used as its nature.
When the related resource is not an XML document but is adequately distinguished by a MIME type, the value of the
xlink:role attribute may reflect this MIME type with values formed by the concatenation of the prefix
http://www.isi.edu/in-notes/iana/assignments/media-types/ with a MIME type e.g.
http://www.isi.edu/in-notes/iana/assignments/media-types/text/css.
It is anticipated that many related-resource natures will be well known.
A list of well-known natures may be found in the RDDL directory
http://www.rddl.org/natures.html.
If no nature is provided for a related resource, the default value is
http://www.rddl.org/#resource.
xlink:arcrole
The value of this attribute must be a URI reference. A URI reference may contain a URI part and a fragment identifier.
Per XLink, when present the URI part must be an absolute URI. It provides a machine-readable identifier for the purpose of the link to the related resource.
Software may dispatch on this value.
It is anticipated that the purposes of many related resources will be well known.
A list of well-known purposes may be found in the RDDL directory
http://www.rddl.org/purposes.html.
xlink:href
This XLink locator
attribute's
value is a URI reference to the target related resource.
xlink:title
A human readable short descriptive title.
This should be specified but not be seen as a replacement for descriptive content.
xlink:type
The xlink:type is always "simple" in this version of the specification.
xlink:show and xlink:actuate
Not used. The only legal value is "none".
xml:lang
The xml:lang attribute value may be provided to specify the
human language of the resource and descriptive text.
Where possible, human-readable descriptions should be provided in multiple languages.
Human readable descriptions in multiple languages can be provided using child div elements each labelled accordingly.
xml:base
The xml:base attribute may be applied to the resource element.
id
The id attribute value may be used to give the resource description a name.
Related Resources for RDDL
Well-Known Related-Resource Natures
A list of well-known related-resource natures, with descriptions.
Well-Known Related-Resource Purposes
A list of well-known related-resource purposes, with descriptions.
CSS Stylesheet
A CSS stylesheet used to provide the "look-and-feel"
of this document, suitable in general for RDDL documents.
RDDL Schemata
DTD
A DTD rddl-xhtml.dtd for RDDL, defined as an extension of XHTML Basic 1.0
using Modularization for XHTML
An example of how it might be used in the case where an XML Schema for the namespace is desired:
RDDLURL rurl = new RDDLURL(
"http://www.rddl.org/",
"http://www.w3.org/2000/10/XMLSchema",
"http://www.rddl.org/purposes.html#schema-validation",
); // a namespace URI, the root namespace
InputStream is = rurl.getInputStream(); // and you get the XSD
...
XSLT Stylesheet
An example of an XSLT stylesheet for RDDL, which accepts the params role and arcrole. The transform inserts the document
referenced by xlink:href in the output. This code is shown as an example
and is not normative.
RDDL Table View
An example of an XSLT stylesheet which extracts RDDL resource elements into an HTML table. This code is shown as an example
and is not normative.
RDDL to RDF converter
This is an XSLT transform which converts a RDDL document into RDF.
This code is shown as an example and is not normative.
RDDL to RSS 1.0 converter
This is an XSLT transform which converts a RDDL document into RSS.
This code is shown as an example and is not normative.
C# API
Jason Diamond's C# API for the RDDL on the Microsoft .NET platform.
A ZIP file. This is referenced as an example and is not normative.
IE5 Behavior
An IE5 Behavior that uses the xlink:href as a link. If you are using IE5 then you are viewing this behavior.
The release notes for FreeBSD are customized for
different platforms, as some of the changes made to
FreeBSD apply only to specific processor
architectures.
Release notes for FreeBSD 4.10-RELEASE are available
for the following platforms:
[FTW asked retired U.S. Army
Special Forces Master Sergeant Stan Goff to re-examine what we can expect on the battlefield when the United States begins its invasion. The former instructor of military science at West Point describes a scenario that is vastly
different from what was expected last September before
the Bush administration encountered effective economic
and political opposition. Now denied the luxuries
of a multi-front invasion from Turkey and Saudi Arabia the U.S. war strategy has changed. The bottom line is that a great many more innocent
civilians are going to be killed. And the first and
possibly crippling breakdown of U.S. plans will happen in Kurdestan. – MCR]
March 17, 2003, 1500 hrs PST (FTW) -- The full-scale, unilateral US invasion of Iraq appears – to many – to be imminent as this is written.
In just hours President Bush is expected to give Saddam
Hussein a 72-hour ultimatum to leave the country or
else the bombs start falling. I have a reservation
or two left about that, based partly on hope, but partly
on the even riskier assumption that this administration
realizes that it has miscalculated and that the consequences
of invasion may now outweigh the risks – from their
standpoint – of no invasion.
The
Bush regime seems to have a clear understanding of
what desperate straits
they were in well before 9-11. The empire is in decline,
and this means Americans will have to reconcile themselves
to a new world in which their profligate lifestyle
becomes a thing of the past. Americans do not understand
that this is an irremediable situation. That is why
we are witnessing the beginning of what is possibly
the most dangerous period in human history.
If the
administration decides miraculously in the next few
days not to invade,
the most unthinkable risks will recede significantly. But
this Junta has repeatedly displayed a reckless adventurist
streak that alarms even their own political allies,
and it appears that the hotter heads will prevail.
The actual tactical
situation, never terribly auspicious because of the
Kurdish wild card that receives far too little attention
(and which I will address later), has deteriorated
for the US. The
denial of a ground front from both Saudi Arabia and Turkey has completely reshuffled the tactical deck, and caused
many a sleepless night for harried commanders from
Task Force Headquarters all the way down to lonely
infantry platoon leaders.
The
ground attack will now go through Kuwait, a single
front across which an
unbelievable series of heavy, expensive, high-maintenance
convoys will pass, many on long journeys to 18 provincial
capitals, 19 military bases, 8 major oil fields,
over 1,000 miles of pipeline, key terrain along minority
Shia and Kurdish regions, as well as Baghdad. But
attacking forces are not the only mechanized ground
forces.
The huge logistical
trains that must consolidate objectives, set up long-term
lines of communication, and deliver daily support,
will also be held up until airheads are seized within Iraq to
augment ground transportation with airlifts of people
and equipment. This shifts a higher emphasis
onto airhead seizures (and therefore Ranger units),
and forces the security of the airheads themselves
before they can become fully functional.
Baghdad
may require a siege, which has already been planned,
but now that
siege doesn’t begin without a much lengthier invasion
timeline that depends much more heavily on airborne
and airmobile forces that can be dropped onto key facilities
to hold them until mechanized reinforcement can arrive. At
this writing, the 101st Airborne (which
is actually a helicopter division) has not even completed
its deployment into the region. Sections of the 82nd Airborne
(a genuine paratroop division) are still occupying Afghanistan.
The
increased dependence on airlift is further complicated
by weather. While
extreme summer heat doesn’t reach Iraq until
May, the pre-summer sand storms have already begun. US commanders
have pooh-poohed the effect of these storms, but they
are simply putting on a brave face for the
public. Sand can be a terrible enemy. It clogs engine
intakes, just as it clogs eyes and noses, gathers in
the folds of skin, falls in food, works its way into
every conceivable piece of equipment, and takes a miserable
toll on materiel, machinery and troops. When air operations
become more critical to overall mission accomplishment,
and when light forces (like airmobile and airborne
divisions) are operating independent of heavier mechanized
logistics, weather like sand storms matters...a lot.
The
order of battle is widely available on the web, and
there's no reason
to recount it here. The reason is, even with all these
debilities and setbacks, the results of the invasion
are certain. Iraq will
be militarily defeated and occupied. There will
be no sustained Iraqi guerrilla resistance. There
will be no Stalingrad in Baghdad. We
should not buy into the US bluster about their invincibility, but neither should we buy into Iraqi
bluster.
Last September retired
Marine General Paul Van Riper was selected to play
the Opposing Forces (OPFOR) Commander named Saddam
Hussein for a 3-week-long, computer simulated invasion
of Iraq,
called Operation Millennium Challenge.
He defeated the entire
multi-billion-dollar US electronic warfare intelligence
apparatus by sending messages via motorcycle-mounted
couriers to organize the preemptive destruction of
sixteen US ships,
using pleasure vessels. At that point, the
exercise controllers repeatedly intervened and told
him what to do; move these defenders off the beach. Stop
giving out commands from mosque loudspeakers. Turn
on your radar so our planes can see you. Because every
time Van Riper was left to his own devices, he was
defeating the US.
While all this is surely amusing, does it really mean
the Iraqis will defeat the US during
an invasion?
Certainly not. It will, however, make it far
more expensive, slow, difficult, and deadly for Iraqis.
The Iraqi military won't prevail because they can't. They are weak, under-resourced,
poorly led, and demoralized. What the delays mean is that the US will
depend on sustaining the initiative and momentum through brutal, incessant
bombing designed to destroy every soldier, every
installation, every vehicle, every field kitchen in the Iraqi military.
War
will inflict terrifying casualties on the Iraqi military. There
will be collateral damage to civilians, even with attempts
to attenuate
that damage, and in case we fail to remember, soldiers
are like everyone else. They have families and loved
ones.
What is uncertain is
the aftermath.
This is the variable
that is never factored into the thinking of our native
political lumpen-bourgeoisie; their deeds plant the
seeds of future and furious resistance.
If half
million Iraqi soldiers die, and 100,000 civilians are
killed in collateral
damage, we have to remember that there are at least
(for the sake of argument) five people who intensely
love each of the dead. And if we think of the grief
of millions after this slaughter, and of the conversion
of that grief into rage, and combine that with the
organization of the internecine struggles based on
historical ethnic fault lines (that the Ba'ath Party
has repressed), we begin to appreciate the explosive
complexity of post-invasion Iraq.
This invasion will also
ignite the fires of Arab and Muslim humiliation and
anger throughout the region.
Most importantly, in
my view, there are the Kurds.
Anyone
who has followed the news has heard about "Saddam's" gassing
of the Kurds. That's how it is portrayed. Nonetheless,
few people have bothered to find out what the truth
is,
or even to investigate this claim.
Stephen Pelletiere was the Central Intelligence Agency's
senior political analyst on Iraq during
the Iran-Iraq war. He was also a professor
at the Army War College from 1988 to 2000. In both roles, he had access to classified material
from Washington related
to the Persian Gulf. In
1991, he headed an Army investigation into Iraqi military
capability. That classified report went into
great detail on Halabja.
Halabja
is the Kurdish town where hundreds of people were apparently
poisoned in a chemical weapons attack
in March 1988. Few Americans even knew that much. They
only have the article of religious faith, "Saddam gassed
his own people."
In
fact, according to Pelletiere – an ex-CIA analyst,
and hardly a raging leftist like yours truly – the
gassing occurred in the midst of a battle between Iraqi
and Iranian armed forces.
Pelletiere
further notes that a "need to know" document that circulated
around the US Defense Intelligence Agency indicated
that US intelligence
doesn't believe it was Iraqi chemical
munitions that killed and aimed the Kurdish residents
of Halabja. It was Iranian. The condition of the bodies
indicated cyanide-based poisoning. The Iraqis were
using mustard gas in that battle. The Iranians used
cyanide.
The lack of public critical
scrutiny of this and virtually all current events is
also evident on the issue of the Kurds themselves.
That
issue will come out into the open, with the vast area
that is Kurdistan, with its insurgent armed bodies, overlaying Iraq, Iran, Turkey, and even parts of Syria, which will realign the politics and military of the
entire region in yet unpredictable ways.
As part of the effort
to generate an Iraqi opposition, the US has
permitted Northern Iraqi Kurdistan to exercise a strong
element of national political autonomy since
the 1991 war. This is a double-edged sword for the US in
its current war preparations, particularly given this
administration’s predisposition for pissing all
over its closest allies. Iraq's
Northern border is with Turkey,
who has for years favored the interests of its own
Turkmens in Southern Turkish Kurdistan at the expense
of the Kurds, who have waged a guerrilla war for self-determination
against the Turks since the 1970s.
The Partiya Karkeren Kurdistan or
PKK) (Kurdish Worker's Party), Turkish Kurds fighting
for an independent Kurdish state in southeast Turkey,
was singled out on the US international terrorist organization
list several years ago, in deference to fellow NATO
member, Turkey. PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan is so popular
with the Kurds that Turkey was forced to commute his death sentence,
subsequent to his capture, to life imprisonment, for
fear that his execution would spark an uprising.
Other non-leftist Kurdish independence
organizations developed and alternatively allied with
and split with the PKK and each other. Turkey now claims that PKK bases are being constructed
in Iran, with Iranian complicity, from which to
launch strikes against Southern Turkey.
Groups other than the PKK, more acceptable to the US, predominantly the Kurdistan
Democratic Party (KDP) and the Kurdistan Patriotic
Union (PUK) have been administering Northern Iraqi
Kurdistan as an autonomous zone under the protective
umbrella
of the US no-fly zone.The Turkish government fears the influence
of this section of Kurdistan in the wake of a US military action that topples Saddam Hussein’s
Ba'ath government, because Kurds have declared their
intention of declaring an independent Kurdish state
there. The Turks find this absolutely unacceptable,
and have declared forthrightly they will invade to
prevent this happening. They have also threatened to
attack Kurds in Iran, but this is a far less credible threat.
Kurdish nationalists have long experience
with betrayals and alliances of convenience, and know
American perfidy very well. They have declared at the
outset that in the event of an invasion, they will
defend themselves from Turkish incursions. They are
not willing to lose the autonomy they have gained over
the last eleven years in Northern Iraq. This not only
puts them at odds with US ally Turkey, it potentially
puts them at odds with
the US itself, even with US wishes that they participate
in indigenous actions against Iraqi forces. The US does not want that region destabilized
in the post-invasion period, because Kirkuk in the
East of Iraqi Kurdistan is a huge oil producing zone.
The very first complication of post-invasion Iraq will likely be the demand that US commanders
disarm the Kurds.
Northern Iraq could easily become contested
terrain involving partisan warfare between Turks, Kurds
of
three factions, the Iranians, and the US, with the Syrians in a position to play
the silent interloper. This would amount to the devolution
of Northern Iraq, a key strategic region, into another Afghanistan or Somalia. It is already straining relationships
between Turkey and the United States, NATO allies, even as the NATO alliance
itself comes under severe strain, with a Euro-American
trade war as a backdrop.
And the Kurds
have the motivation, tenacity, and fighting spirit
to do those kinds of things that
General Van Riper did to defeat the Rumsfeld "Robo-Military" in
Operation Millennium Challenge.
We begin to see how
the Bush Junta is the equivalent of a mad bee keeper,
that no longer leaves the hive stable and merely
smokes it into a stupor to harvest the honey. It now
proposes to simply start swatting all the bees and
taking the honey by brute force.
We cannot
see the war as an extricable, external phenomenon.
We have to see
it as it is embedded in the larger complexities of
the whole period. When the cruise missiles fly at 400
per day, that is 400 times
$1.3 million in self-destructing technology. 30 days
of this is $15.6 billion in Cruise missiles alone.
This is great news for Raytheon and Lockheed-Martin,
but it is bad news for public schools. At the antiwar
demonstration in Washington DC,
March 15th,
I met many more teachers, now wearing buttons that
said "money for education
not war." This is a reflection of the deepening consciousness
of the American people, but one that has not yet grasped
the depth of the crisis that drives the war. Nor does
it measure how every missile’s impact increases the
rage of the Southwestern Asian masses and the justifiable
anxieties of Africa and East Asia.
The
real bet that Bush & Co.
make on this war is that it can secure oil at $15 a
barrel, rescue dollar hegemony, gain the ability to
wage its economic war on China and Europe, and inaugurate a fresh upwave of real
profit. That will not happen.
When
the invasion goes, we will certainly see plenty of
images of cheering "liberated" Iraqis.
This is common after any successful military incursion,
a combination of real relief in some cases, as we saw
in the first stage of the 1994 Haiti invasion, but also of self-defense and opportunism.
The
costs incurred by the war, combined with the insane
Bush tax cuts for
the rich, will deepen the Bush regime’s economic conundrums.
The coming social crisis in the US will
emerge against a backdrop of elevated public expectations. The hyperbole employed by this administration
to justify this war, against rapidly strengthening
resistance and a corresponding loss of credibility
outside the indoctrinated and gullible United States,
led them to warn the public about perpetual "war on
terror," but with the sugar coating that there would
be no domestic economic sacrifice. The mountain of
personal and institutional debt in the US, the threat of deflation, the trade deficit, the overcapacity,
the rising unemployment and insecurity, all these factors
will be worsened by the Bush doctrines. And Bush, like
his father before him, will go down. Along with him,
Tony Blair and Jose Maria Aznar will go down in political
flames, and it will be a long time indeed before anyone
can align themselves with the US as an ally. As in the last elections for the Republic
of Korea, candidates will find that
election victory depends on now independent one can
prove oneself of the United States.
We have had our course
charted now, and the military option is all the US ruling class really has to maintain its dominance.
After Iraq,
there will certainly be increased asymmetric warfare, "terrorism," if
you will, directed at Americans, American institutions,
American targets. And when the rest of the world recognizes
how thinly spread the US military is, thinly spread
physically, but also economically because it is not
a sustainable institution in its current incarnation,
rebellions will occur. They have already started. Then
the response of the weakening US will be to lash out,
often with totally unforeseeable consequences, just
as the consequences
of this impending invasion are unforeseeable.
Our military might is
no longer a sign of strength, and the US military is not invincible. Its use as both
first and last resort is a sign of profound systemic
weakness. That its employment could destabilize the
world, and cause us to stumble into a Third World War
is a real possibility.
We in the antiwar movement
have struggled to protect the Iraqi people. We may
fail in that. But as resistance fighters in WWII or
national liberation fighters in the post-colonial era,
we must differentiate setbacks from defeat, when we
suffer those setbacks we can not be demoralized and
demobilized. We will keep our eyes on the fact that
the system itself is failing and this adventure is
a symptom of that failure, and continue to work for
the political destruction of our current regime as
a tactical necessity. The perfect storm is coming.
It's in the genetic code of the system right now and
inevitable. And while we don't know how it will look,
we have to keep our eyes on the prize - emancipation
from the whole system, and let that be our lodestar. Never
quit. Never. We are in the stream of history, and we
have been given
a grave and momentous responsibility. Every day we
delayed them was a victory.
There is a long struggle
ahead, and it will become more terrible. But just as
those before us fought slavery, apartheid, fascism,
and colonialism, we will take up our historical task
with confidence and determination, and assert our humanity
against these gangsters.
CHARLESTON,
W.Va. - A year before it was sued, a DuPont lawyer warned the chemical
giant that it could be found liable in a class-action lawsuit alleging
a chemical contaminated drinking water, according to company documents
unsealed by the West Virginia Supreme Court.
The
court voted 5-0 Thursday to unseal the internal documents, which include
a November 2000 memo written by in-house DuPont lawyer John R. Bowman
that recommended "getting out in front and acting responsibly (to)
undercut and reduce the potential for punitives." The ruling upholds
a decision by the trial court judge.
Residents
of southeast Ohio and West Virginia claim the plant along the Ohio River
contaminated water supplies with a chemical called sperfluorooctanoate,
also known as C8. They filed a class-action lawsuit in 2001 against DuPont
on behalf of up to 50,000 people who live nearby.
DuPont
argued that the documents are privileged and should not been unsealed.
The company claimed the documents were inadvertently released to lawyers
for area residents.
Bowman's
memo warned that the company would "spend millions to defend these
lawsuits and have the additional threat of punitive damages hanging over
our head."
DuPont
lawyer Tom Flaherty said the company was disappointed by the ruling.
"The
documents in question offered individual opinions that do not represent
the opinions of DuPont," Flaherty said in a statement.
"DuPont
is confident that the trial will provide an opportunity to rebut the claims
and allegations made in this case with the facts and science," he
said. "DuPont believes that once a jury hears those facts, they will
conclude that C8 at trace levels found in the community does not harm
the members of the community or the environment."
Neighbors
of DuPont's Washington Works plant south of Parkersburg allege in the
lawsuit that the company polluted their water with unsafe levels of C8.
The chemical also has been found in water samples in Little Hocking, Ohio.
DuPont
has used C8 at the plant for more than 50 years in the production of Teflon.
The
lawsuit alleges the company has known for decades that C8 was harmful
to humans but concealed that knowledge from the public.
Last
week, the company announced that it plans to conduct a $1 million study
of plant employees who work with C8 to determine whether the substance
causes any adverse health effects.
Bowman's
memo said he and another DuPont lawyer, Bernard J. Reilly, "have
been unsuccessful in even engaging (company officials) in any meaningful
discussion of the subject."
"Our
story is not a good one," Bowman wrote. "We continued to increase
our emissions into the river in spite of internal commitments to reduce
or eliminate the release of this chemical into the community and the environment
because of our concern about the bio-persistence of this chemical."
"My
gut tells me the bio-persistence issue will kill us because of an overwhelming
public attitude that anything bio-persistent is harmful."
Another
document unsealed Thursday, known as the "Win for DuPont" memo,
said the company's goals were to "not create (the) impression that
DuPont did harm to the environment" and to "keep (the) issue
out of press as much as possible." It also said DuPont needed background
research on U.S. District Judge Joseph R. Goodwin, hearing a related case
involving a company dump at the time.
for more information on the C8 lawsuit against DuPont, see Ohio
Citizen Action
Technical note: In response to my inquiry,
The Memory Hole received these documents from the Administration Office
of the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals.
Notes of a Native American Chronicle of a Collaboration By Sol Stein
James Baldwin, 1976.
JOSEPH A. MAYNARD
Notes of a Native Son, James Baldwin’s best-known book, was published in 1955 by Beacon Press. Baldwin’s editor then was Sol Stein, whom he’d known since high school. This essay is an excerpt from Stein’s Introduction to Native Sons by Baldwin and Stein, which will be published by One World, an imprint of Random House, next month. The book includes correspondence between Stein and Baldwin that produced Notes of a Native Son.
I am remembering five thousand people crowded into the Cathedral of St. John the Divine for James Baldwin’s funeral, and I imagine my lifelong friend Jimmy and me watching that event, an elbow poking the other’s rib for attention, as in the old days when our lives intersected.
I knew James Baldwin first in our early teenage years, when I was 13 and he was 15. It all began in the tower of DeWitt Clinton High School in the North Bronx at a time when students anywhere in the five boroughs of New York City didn’t need to be bused anywhere but could elect to go to a high school of their choice. Baldwin, known then and since as Jimmy, went the distance by subway, bus, and foot from Harlem, in Manhattan, to DeWitt Clinton, at the far northern edge of New York City, an exceptional school, where his last formal education took place. In this day of failed busing, it is hard to imagine that in 1939 a poor boy could travel many miles to a different borough to seize an education he could not get locally.
When DeWitt Clinton first opened the doors at its present site in May of 1929, it claimed to be the largest secondary school for boys in the world. The three-story building and its athletic field and stadium occupied about 26 acres, and had a single-session capacity of over five thousand students. A recently remodeled room just off its library displays a picture gallery of onetime Clinton students that includes such luminaries as Paddy Chayefsky, Countee Cullen, Burt Lancaster, Ralph Lauren, Jan Peerce, Richard Rodgers, A.M. Rosenthal, Daniel Schorr, Neil Simon, and Lionel Trilling. Clinton was a garden in which black and white teenagers could become fast friends, an environment that a few years later made possible Notes of aNative Son, which in 1999 was selected by a distinguished panel as one of “the 100 best nonfiction books of the century.”
Our home away from home was in what we called the Magpie Tower, the place where DeWitt Clinton’s award-winning literary magazine, the Magpie, was edited by students as young as 13 and 14. Our core group, besides Baldwin and me, included Richard Avedon and Emile Capouya, working under the tutelage of a faculty member, Wilmer Stone. Avedon was then a poet and shy. When we were called upon to sell the issue of January 1941, Avedon and I would stand in front of each classroom in succession, Avedon silent, his hands clasped in front of him, while I recited a poem of his from memory. America was not yet at war, but London was burning. Avedon’s poem that lingers still in my memory is about the loss of a childhood friend in the bombing of London. What we all wrote is today mostly embarrassing, but the learning process was remarkable. On Friday afternoons, after classes officially let out, the Magpie gang would assemble in the tower of the school building to hear our faculty adviser, Wilmer Stone, read our stories aloud to us in the most boring monotone imaginable. Painful, yes, but also instructive, for we learned then what all writers must eventually learn, that the reader has to be moved by the words alone, without help from the histrionic talents of their author.
Stone’s private critiques of our work could be withering. Avedon told me a couple of years ago that on one occasion Stone asked him what kind of reading matter his parents had lying around the house. Avedon mentioned some magazines like Good Housekeeping and McCall’s. Stone told him, “That’s what is wrong with your writing.” At that moment, Avedon said, he decided to give up writing and turned, brilliantly, to photography.
More than 40 years later, in the Preface to the 1984 edition of Notes of a Native Son, Baldwin begins, “It was Sol Stein, high school buddy, editor, novelist, playwright, who first suggested this book. My reaction was not enthusiastic: as I remember, I told him that I was too young to publish my memoirs. I had never thought of these essays as a possible book.... Sol’s suggestion had the startling and unkind effect of causing me to realize that time had passed. It was as though he had dashed cold water in my face. Sol persisted, however....”
I don’t remember Baldwin’s resistance to doing the book. I do remember the editorial process, helped by recently finding my line-by-line editorial notes and Baldwin’s responses. Writers can be wary of editors they don’t know well. By the time Baldwin and I had to deal with Notes of a Native Son, the overlay of a friendship of a dozen years made the process easier.
A friendship that endures might reasonably be defined as a house in which disagreements are confined to an attic that can be opened for memoirs but never for continuation of a former argument. Baldwin and I came to our friendship with differences. He was black and I was white, he loved men and I loved women, he assumed his ancestors came to America in chains and I assumed my parents, who slipped over the border separately and illegally, came here because they had nowhere else to go. Despite the differences—we lived many miles apart—because of our friendship, our families took a liking to each other. There are surviving photographs of Jimmy bouncing two of my pajama-clad children on his knee. I loved and admired Baldwin’s mother, Berdis, and believed it was reciprocal, even at our last warm meeting after Jimmy’s death. Berdis visited with my family when Jimmy was abroad. I was welcome in Berdis’s apartment on 131st Street in Harlem, but not by the policeman who stopped me outside and wanted to know what my white face was doing in that neighborhood.
Berdis had a secret that, to my knowledge and Jimmy’s say-so, was never divulged: the identity of Jimmy’s father. The now-legendary stepfather Jimmy wrote about was the preacher who married Berdis, presumably legitimized her son, and gave her eight more children. My mother, Zelda Zam, enjoyed Jimmy’s brightness, his dancing hands. Like Berdis Baldwin, she had her secret. According to family legend, in the old country, hiding in the cellar during a pogrom, through a crack in the door she saw her first fiancé killed by one of Petlyura’s Cossacks. In America she had another secret I discovered as a child during the Great Depression. In the old country, my mother at a young age was the head of secondary evening schools in Kiev, the largest city in the Ukraine. To make a living in America, she sold Compton’s Encyclopedia door to door, and one day, when the Depression bottomed, I opened the heavy sample case she took to work every day and found the knee pads she wore when cleaning other people’s floors. Baldwin’s mother may also have done the same.
Jimmy Baldwin and I, both Depression Era kids, responded differently to food. At my mother’s table, Jimmy would eat like a bird, one small piece at a time, taking two hours over a simple meal, while I devoured all of it in the first few minutes. One might suppose that Jimmy was stretching out the pleasure of food, while I was gulping it down before it vanished. One of my few memories of Depression eating was the time my mother and father planted the single orange my father had brought home on the table and said, “You eat. We’ll watch.”
Though both of my parents came from Russia, I had trouble identifying with my mother’s motherland, just as Jimmy later had trouble identifying with Africa. For better, not for worse, we were here, native Americans, charged up, yearning to make it as Americans while trying to shake up America to make it a more congenial nest for the likes of us. Before each of us was a lover of specific people, we were lovers of language, which, if delivered well, can have even more power than print. Franklin Roosevelt read Sam Rosenman’s words with a mesmerizing authority that helped lift the sagging spirits of Americans in a bad time. Churchill’s rhetoric, drafted by himself, defied Hitler and defeat. Martin Luther King, in his preacher’s delivery, announced his dream. Much has been made of Baldwin’s having been a teenage preacher, an influence that is evident in his incantatory prose and his ability to address readers as if they were his congregation. Not enough has been made of his early mastery of the writer’s main task, putting to paper what other people only think. He becomes, de facto, a whistle blower, a snitch, a fink, a rat, a teacher.
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Since today has been designated Annual Do-Nothing Day, at least in my
household, I thought I'd make a trip around the blogs and send back a
report for your reading pleasure.
Alex Frantz has a lot more
to talk about than banana
slugs. He has a very
sensible response to Nick Denton's suggestion (which I think is just
plain stupid) that we treat Muslim communities in the West the way they
treat others ("dhimmis"):
For the US, there is no need to import strange new
ideas to deal with our Islamic minority. These immigrants, like the
rest of us, can practice the religion they prefer in the manner they
choose. They are under no obligation, any more than other Americans,
to endorse or approve of our laws. They are under obligation to obey
them, and forced marriages, female genital mutilation, incitement to
violence, physical assaults on those who 'dishonor' families, etc, should
be thoroughly punished under existing laws. For those who find that
intolerable, then Denton's suggestion applies: they can move to countries
whose laws are more to their liking.
There's a tongue-in-cheek movement to push Matthew
Yglesias as the Lefty
Instapundit. But Matt, here's a hint: You will never make it with
that current template. Small white-on-black text guarantees you lose
a huge amount of audience share due to we don't want to go fucking
blind reading your site. (Hey. I just got back from Lair's
weblog; that's why the swear slipped in.) There are precious few sites
that have designs that are harsh on my eyes that I will still read, and
none of them are read regularly. If I'm not reading, I'm not linking,
and neither are many other webloggers with the same sentiment. Save our
eyes—please.
You know, while I was looking around, I found this
guy, and in one
of his posts, he was discussing the Stanley Fish thing that I was
studiously ignoring because, well, discussions of post-modernism make
me want to pick up my aluminum baseball bat and push it through either
the wall, or the closest post-modernist, whichever one I can get first.
But I liked this post. And the comments are even better:
You can sum up most of Derrida's major work with the
sentence, "If I say something, you might not understand what I
mean." Other deconstructionists jumped off from there to say, "If
I say something, you can't understand what I mean." That's where
it gets idiotic.
I have always loathed the concept of deconstructionism, which insists
that the very author of a book does not know what the book meant. Um—to
paraphrase a certain
Dead European Male Writer: A word means exactly what I want it to
mean, no more, no less. Idiotic is the perfect word for deconstructionists.
Glad to know you, Will Wilkinson. (And there are many posts where he does
not discuss philosophy, so click on the link and look around, you philosophy
weenies.)
There's a new blog that exists simply as a directory
of left-leaning weblogs. Brian Linse is doing a great job of helping
the New Left find a voice, simply by cataloguing liberal blogs. Thanks,
Brian. But move me up in the list: I've been around since April of 2001
and I have the archives to prove it. permalink
A note of warning
Win Fitzpatrick points out
this chilling
story in the Times of London on Saddam Hussein's plans to give Palestinian
terrorists biological weapons for use on Israeli and American targets
Is there anyone out there that still thinks Hussein's regime shouldn't
be dismantled? Do you doubt that the man who sent SCUD missiles into Israel
during the Gulf War won't hesitate to send anthrax and anything else in
his weapons supply toward them, and toward our troops?
I'm giving W. the benefit of the doubt, still, but if I don't see any
action this fall, I'm going to start agreeing with the crowd that insists
Iraq is off the table and the oil ticks* are calling the shots.
And as a sideline to the above, the Times also details the latest Iraqi
trickery regarding UN inspections: Trying
to rewrite UN resolutions and get the inspections the way Hussein
wants them. Amazingly, the UN is siding with the US on this.
Thanks to Joe
Katzman, I can give you these
words from Marla Bennet, who died in the Hebrew University bombing
this week. The article is called "Jerusalem: There’s Nowhere
Else I’d Rather Be."
It’s also been difficult. Just a month after I
arrived the current “Intifada” began. My time here has been
dramatically affected by both the security situation and by the events
happening around me. I am extremely cautious about where I go and when;
I avoid crowded areas and alter my routine when I feel at all threatened.
But I also feel energized by the opportunity to support Israel during
a difficult period. This is undoubtedly an important historic moment
for both Israel and for the Jewish people—I have the privilege
of reporting to my friends and family in the U.S. about the realities
of living in Israel at this time and I also have the honor of being
an American choosing to remain in Israel, and assist, however minimally,
in Israel’s triumph.
I remain in Israel this year as part of the Pardes
Educators Program, a joint program between Pardes and the Hebrew University.
At the Hebrew University I am completing a Master’s Degree in Jewish
Education while I continue to study classical Jewish texts at Pardes.
I receive a stipend each month from The AVI CHAI Foundation, which is
funding the program, and after I complete the degree in June 2003, I
have made a commitment to teach in a Jewish school in North America
for three years.
As I look ahead to the next year and a half that I
will spend in Israel, I feel excited, worried, but more than anything
else, lucky. I am excited that I can spend another year and a half in
a place that truly feels like home, a home in which I am surrounded
by an amazing community of bright and interesting friends who constantly
help me to question and define myself. I am worried for Israel—a
historic moment this is, but also difficult and unpredictable. I feel
lucky because the excitement always wins out over the worry. The exhilaration
of Torah and Talmud study, close friendships and a lively community
far outweigh the fears. Stimulation abounds in Jerusalem—and I
need only go to the supermarket to be struck once again by how lucky
I am to live here. There is no other place in the world where I would
rather be right now.
After reading this, I've decided to double my pledge to Magen
David Adom that I'd made to Laurence
Simon during the Blogathon. If my readers can keep doing that, so
can I.
In Indonesia, some 200,000 deaths resulted from
jihad violence in East Timor. Christians have been pursued, and massacred,
and their churches burned down by jihadists in the Moluccas and other
Indonesian islands. The death toll in these violent attacks is over
10,000, while an additional 8,000 Christians have been forcibly converted
to Islam, including many who were circumcised. Atrocities are also being
committed by jihadists in both the Philippines, and some northern Nigerian
states. Hundreds of innocent people died when jihad struck at the Jewish
Community Center of Buenos Aires in Argentina, and the U.S. embassies
in Kenya and Tanzania. In Egypt, jihadists have massacred Copts in their
churches and villages, and murdered European tourists. Christians in
Pakistan and in Iran live in terror of accusations of blasphemy, which,
if "proven," can yield a death sentence. And a cataclysmic
act of jihad terror resulted in the slaughter of nearly 3,000 innocent
civilians of multiple faiths and nationalities in New York, on September
11, 2001. None of these victims were guilty of any crime. They were
murdered and mutilated out of hate.
It is this hate that Israel is fighting. The Durban
World Conference Against Racism — where the culture of hate was
rehabilitated, not condemned — ended only three days before the
jihad terror attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. When
proposals were made condemning Zionism, this conference was encouraging
jihad, the culture of the war against infidels, while ignoring the principles
of freedom and human rights. This was negationist racism. The word "Zion,"
which designates the land of Israel and its capital Jerusalem, exists
in texts dating back almost three millennia. It was the Emperor Hadrian
who first called the country Palestine in 135. In this Palestine, Arabic
was not the common language, the Bible and not the Koran was taught,
and the population was mainly Jewish. Palestine was colonized five centuries
later by the Arab armies of the Islamic jihad. Many Jews were massacred
at that time, others deported to Arabia as slaves, the whole population
expropriated and reduced to the condition of dhimmis, as were all indigenous
Jews and Christians in the south Mediterranean countries conquered by
jihad, including those in many European countries.
Should these countries conquered by Islam — Portugal,
Spain, Sardinia, Sicily, Crete, and the southern regions of France and
Italy, for example — still be considered Arab Muslim lands? Turkish
jihad conquests imposed the sharia as far north as Hungary and southern
Poland, and, on all of central Europe within the Ottoman Empire, including
regions of Greece, former Yugoslavia, Romania, and Bulgaria, until the
end of the 19th century. Are those countries also to be identified as
Muslim lands, in which non-Muslim inhabitants must return to the condition
of dhimmis, whose testimony concerning Muslims is rejected by Islamic
courts? Will they again be required to don discriminatory garments such
as the Taliban demanded of the Hindus, or be subject to the continuing
prohibition on building and renovating their churches, like the Copts
in Egypt?
Break time's over. And here's her website,
if you'd like to read more. permalink
I lied again. Teresa
Nielsen Hayden made me laugh too hard to ignore her contribution to
the Super Dating Game. (I think this topic will end when I run out of
names for it.) She doesn't like my reasons for giving Wolverine four stars.
Not enough. There's got to be another reason
why he's had more girlfriends than anyone besides Iron Man. Ever consider
what that healing factor means to his recovery time? On the other hand,
it could just be that he knows how to dance.
To answer your question, Teresa: As for why I like Wolvie, I'm sorry.
There really isn't much more than that bad boy thing. I mean, okay, he's
got a hairy chest and I think hairy chests are sexy. All right, so he's
short, dark, and stocky, and my childhood sweetheart, who may have had
some influence on the way I feel about men, was short, dark, and
stocky. (He did not have claws or smoke cigars.) I may also be
overly prejudiced by Hugh Jackman's portrayal of him. (Oh, let's face
it, if there's a woman comics fan who didn't swoon for Jackman's Wolverine
out there, it's because she's a lesbian.)
But overall, Teresa, I don't have a whole lot to go on. I really didn't
think I'd be spending as much time on this topic as I have been, and I'm
risking boring my readers with one too many posts about Sex and the Superhero,
but hey—you asked. (And folks, check out the rest of her post for
a series of hilarious comments, not to mention the theory that all superheroes
are Jewish.)
Update: Apparently, I missed this
over on Silflay Hraka: Another one of the boys gets in on the fun. No,
not that way. (Drawn. I don't get it, Kehaar.) permalink
Superstud or Superdud, the email
version
Ben F. is the latest of several readers who asked me if I was aware of
the infamous Larry Niven essay, "Man
of Steel, Woman of Kleenex." Yes, I've known about it for as
long as it's been around, and I like it even less with time. While a journey
into whimsy is a lot of fun from time to time—witness the reaction
to my rating the Superheroes, which created a new record for one-day visits
(over 3,000, my God, do we all need a new hobby or what?)—it's really
an exercise in futility to try to apply real laws of physics to comic
book characters. Besides, the best example I ever heard regarding comic
books vs. reality was that only breaking the laws of physics can explain
how those costumes can possibly stay on female superheroes. Especially
in battle.
Avram, don't you be assuming
I never read it because I didn't mention it. In point of fact, I edited
out a reference to the essay because it didn't fit the rhythm of either
the paragraph or the piece. So there.
Karin at the Silk Velvet Asylum is not a mainstream snob. She's
got the (mostly) Indie
superheroes dating ratings. You go, girl!
Greg Harris is giving us the
other side of the ratings: He's rating the female superheroes. I'll
give him a link, even if he is dissing one of my all-time faves, Ms. Kitty
Pryde. (Dude, she's 16 now, and that's legal in some states.)
Garrett Moritz isn't rating the studleys, but he does have interesting
commentary on the Green
Goblin and the Dark
Knight. Garrett: You do have too much time on your hands. Sigh.
Shakespeare in the Park. You lucky dog. Next week I'm going to see the
Dogwood Dell version of Into the Woods. Wish I could see it on Broadway.
Jim Treacher wants me to
know that A) he wasn't calling
me a homewrecker; B) Did I tackle Bouncing Boy on the ratings?; and
C) Did I know that (Elongated Man) Ralphy Dibney's nose would vibrate
when he smelled a mystery? As a matter of fact, yes, I did know that,
but I was trying to stay at a slightly higher level, but then, Dolly's
ratings helped bring me down to R instead of PG, so here I go again.
Bouncing Boy—I did consider him or one of the other Legionnaires,
but they're really not much more than boytoys for me, Jim. Maybe at a
later date. Of course, the Legion has been around for so long they should
all be working on great-granchildren by now, but that's comic book time
for you. Wish I lived in comic book time.
Reader Andy F. asks me why I didn't mention the superhero who can "part
his hair with his tongue." I do believe he's thinking of supervillain
the Toad, and if so, the Toad in the X-Men movie is a much, much more
palatable version of the loser in the comic book. And that is loser with
a capital LOSER. That's why, Andy. He's unrateable. But thanks for the
email. (Hm. Sequel: Rating the villians... nah.)
I do believe that will be the last word on dating/rating comic book superheroes
for a while.
Update: I lied. One more thing: The blogger formerly known as
Sgt. Stryker, Paul Palubicki, is rating
the girls of comics. Go for it, Paul. permalink
A quick look in
Back from Busch Gardens and still exhausted; 12 hours outdoors in 95-degree
heat and Virginia humidity take a while to get over. And yes, I did ride
Apollo's Chariot. Twice. No goose incident, though.
You folks filled my mailbox with many interesting letters, some were
even about something other than the sex lives of superheroes. I'll get
to them all soon; the synagogue I may be joining has invited me to a Jewish
version of a luau tonight (I get to pull my Hawaiian shirt out of mothballs
and wear it), which of course means no roast pig.
I see that Bill Herbert and Jeff Goldstein have been pretty active during
my brief break; Bill takes
down a Jewish(!) defender of Hamas, after Jeff
got through with him. I see I have some catch-up reading to do.
Avedon is the "A"
I mentioned below; I hadn't received the email OK before publishing the
post. So now you know. permalink
Yeah, it's a bit incongruous after what happened below, but life goes
on.
Yesterday's Superstud
finder brought in a bunch of email. From my pal Dolly:
Beast: Any man that can move like that has to be fun. Also,
you know any conversation you have with him will be intelligent so he
gets Three stars....might be four if he could find a bottle
of Nair.
Nightcrawler: Now you see him... now you don't. What the hell
kind of date is that?! Tho teleporting would save you on gas money.
Has too much of a conscience to get into too much trouble. Two stars.
(Note from Meryl: Dolly, did you forget about his prehensile tail? It's
like having an extra hand. I'd make it Three stars.)
Iceman: You'd be numb before you even got started! Not worth
the trouble....or the frostbite in strange places. No stars.
Okay, maybe I'll give him One star if he can bring me a cold
drink.
Magneto: Sir Ian McKellan is gay...at least he could help you
accessorize. The comic book version of Magneto no doubt is too self-involved
and concerned with destroying you because you're human... best to stay
away from this one... unless you're looking for the keys you lost last
week and just haven't been able to find since. (Note from Meryl:
I don't care if McKellan is gay, the man is hot, hot, hot! Four stars.
And Four stars for the comic version of Magneto, as well. Handsome,
Jewish, powerful—so he wants to rule the world; everybody needs
a hobby.)
Green Goblin: Two men for the price of one!! But that's if you're
willing to deal with one of them being a total nut! One star.
If you can stand that maniacal laugh then you earn Three stars
for yourself.
Hobgoblin: Hellbent on avenging his father (see above). Too
preoccupied with his father, you'll probably get no attention unless
you hop about in a green leotard. No stars for throwing anything
at me that has explosive potential.
Shocker: His weapons speak for themselves. The vibro-shock units,
once only built into a sheath that Schultz wore over his hands but currently
built into his entire uniform, use high-pressure air blasts to cause
powerful vibrations. I think that says it ALL!!! Four stars.
Starhawk wants to know why
I left out the Silver Surfer. Here's why:
Silver Surfer: Ex-herald of Galactus, you never know when the
old boss is going to show up and try to eat your world. And not in a good
way, like Jimmy Eat World. Plus, that silver unitard doesn't ever come
off. It's part of him. And he's—well—sexless. I've always considered
the Surfer frankly genderless, much like a Ken doll. And if you do ever
try to get something going with him, what is with that archaic
lingo? Talk about boring you to death. Pass. No stars.
Laurence Simon complains
that I'm a snob for ignoring Dark Horse studleys such as The Tick, The
Mask, and Concrete. I would add that I also left out Predator and Alien
because, what am I, chopped liver? Of course I would be after a date with
either of the latter. But yeah, I'm a mainstream snob. So sue me.
A certain blogger whom I shall call only "A" pointed out to
me that Aquaman is much hotter and more interesting these days, and that
a bathtub would go a long way toward solving that one-hour-out-of-water
problem. Ya know, "A" is right. Give Aquaman another star, for
a total of: Three stars.
Glenn Reynolds reports that Jim Treacher reminds us Ralph Dibney is happily
married. I knew that. I was ignoring it. But the happily-married Prof
is lusting
after Supergirl in his blog. See, he gets it. All in good (but not
so clean) fun.
And I'm off to Busch
Gardens in the morning. Talk among yourselves while I decide whether
or not to conquer my fear of heights on Apollo's
Chariot, the roller coaster where Fabio got smacked in the face with
a goose. I rode it two years ago, but I dunno... I can barely look down
from a second story these days. permalink
Just once, I'd like to be able to let a humor piece stand by itself,
without surrounding it with blood. Just once. permalink
Superstud or Superdud? Rating
the men of comic books
Instapundit, you know not what you wrought when you wrote this:
AQUAMAN says he's a superhero who gets no respect.
Me, I think that post is probably taken by The Elongated
Man -- though at least he gets plenty of dates.
Now, this may put me down in the Internet history books as both a comic
book geek and a total freak, but hey, I can't stop my mind from goin'
where it wants to go. Just because most comic fans are guys doesn't mean
that we girls can't make lists like this, too.
So, uh, I was thinking: What kind of dates would the various superheroes
be? Since there are so many of them, we'll have to cherry-pick—forgive
the expression—rather than choose them all. I'm doing this mostly
from memory, as my Marvel and DC Universe comics are lost somewhere in
one of my unfiled comic boxes, so the marvel of Google research and my
steel-trap memory will have to suffice.
The DC Contingent
Aquaman: Can only stay out of water an hour at a time. No chance
at a long-term relationship. Plus, he always smells like fish. Two
stars.
Batman: Mm-mm. Love those bad boys. Just make sure the
kid's not around. Sans Robin: Four stars. With Robin: Two stars.
(And no, that doesn't mean with Robin. The kid's a minor, f'r
cryin' out loud!)
Green Lantern (classic, Hal Jordan): Boooo-rrrring. Boooo-rrrring.
I don't care what you can do with that ring, Hal, you have no imagination.
That's why they killed you off. One star.
Green Arrow: Let's see. Used to be rich and boring. Went broke.
Then became a sexist, bleeding-heart liberal (what was up with that? Sexists
are supposed to be conservatives!). Got more interesting. Got badder.
The beard is sexy, but that name? Oliver Queen?!?!? Howsabout we just
call you "Spike"? Good for a tumultuous, LTR, lots of fights,
lots of making up. Definitely one of the Hero Hotties. Four stars.
The Flash: Are you kidding? I want a man with a slow
hand. One star.
Superman: The world's biggest, most powerful Boy Scout. This is
a tough one. Problem is, you're guaranteed never to have a complete date
with the guy. Just as you're starting to get hot'n'heavy, along comes
a "Help! Superman!" from some nitwit who couldn't stay out of
the bad side of Metropolis, and he zooms off, leaving you achin' for more.
And by the time he's finished with his next forty-seven save-the-world
errands, you have fallen asleep, alone, again. Nah. Pass. Two stars.
Nightwing: Ex-Robin, out of Batman's shadow. Always has a bit
of an inferiority complex, but he's a man now, no longer a boy, and hasn't
worn short pants in years. Been in more than one LTR, he knows his way
around the block. Good potential. Three stars.
The Elongated Man: I'm sure I don't really need to expand upon
this subject. I don't even mind that his first name is Ralph. Four
stars.
Captain Marvel: You'd have to be twelve to want to date this guy,
because he's, uh, like twelve himself. Pass. No Shazam, no stars.
Bat Lash: Yeah, I know he's obscure, but there was always something
about the guy that drew me to him. Three stars.
Sgt. Rock: Mean, green, fightin' machine. Sorry, for guys like
him and girls like me, it's one-night stands only. Three stars.
Swamp Thing: That's a joke, right? I'm not a vegetarian. No
stars.
The Marvel Group
Spider-Man: Cute, not nearly as young now as he was portrayed
in the recent movie, but a bit too angst-ridden for me. And the wisecracks—they'd
wear on you after a while. Good for a short fling. I'm curious to see
exactly how amazing he can be. Three stars.
Wolverine: Another bad boy. Yeah, we have that attraction to the
bad boys. So what? And short? So'm I. I do have to wonder, though—would
there be a snikt during the heat of passion? Could be extremely
hazardous to your health. Or at least to the health of your bed. Best
not use a waterbed. Still: It's Wolvie. Four stars.
Mr. Fantastic: Yeah, why do you think they call him that?
Four stars.
The Human Torch (FF, not original): Hotheaded, childish, prone
to bursting into flame without warning—hey, I like 'em bad, not sulky
and stupid. Pass. No stars.
The Thing: Hm. Nice Jewish boy, skin condition, rock-hard to the
touch, but all over. Impossible. It'd be like dating your wall. Pass.
No stars.
Cyclops: What a stuck-up weenie. Sure, he's cute, but damn, can't
you ever break a rule, just once in your life, Scott? Plus, definitely
no deep, soulful looks into each other's eyes with this one. Well, not
if you want to survive the relationship. Pass. No stars.
Professor X: Can you read my mind? Yeah, then you know you're
creeping me out. Pass. No stars.
Sabretooth: Oh, yeah, right, I'm suicidal. I said I like them
bad, not sociopathic. Pass. No stars.
Daredevil: A blind lawyer with really great acrobatic skills and
extra-sensory perception. Hm. Potential. Brings new meaning to the phrase
"read my lips." Three stars.
Captain America: I love what he stands for, but—he makes
Supes look almost exotic. (Can you imagine the two of them having a brew
in a bar? Yeah, me neither.) Not my type. One star.
Nick Fury: I could even put up with that damned cigar, at least
for a little while. Nick is just, well, hot. War hero, secret agent, the
eye-patch—what's not to like? Brief, tempestuous relationships, on
and off for a few years, then forever the one you wonder "What if?"
about. In between more brief, tempestuous relationships. Three stars.
Doctor Strange: Oh, just cut it out with the mumbo-jumbo and the
cape and the spell stuff. So not into it. Bet he watches John Edward.
Pass. No stars.
The Hulk: (Yeah, I know, it's the one you've all been waiting
for.) Well, there are some major problems with the Hulk. Dr. Bruce Banner,
well, sure. He's smart, has a great job, saves the world on a regular
basis, and is a good, faithful husband. But he has this slight problem:
When he can't control his temper, he turns into a rampaging monster. And
often, he stays that rampaging monster for months, maybe years at a time.
And, well, take a look at the Hulk. Now take a look at Betty Banner. See
the difference in size. Makes me think that when the Hulk is the Hulk,
there ain't a whole lotta shakin' goin' on. Could be hazardous to your
health, particularly that "being squashed" factor. The problem
with someone as strong as the Hulk is that he doesn't know his own strength,
in spite of the comic writers' best hopes. And I like my body in one piece,
thank you. So, sadly, I'm going to have to give the Hulk: Two stars.
But three for Bruce.
Well. Either I'm as nuts as the bulk of the fanboys out there—the
ones I sometimes make fun of—or my funny bone just got a little exercise.
I have a bad feeling I'm going to cringe every time I look back on this
post. permalink
(Note to new visitors: Scroll up the page, there's more. Then
go check out my main page, where the Hulk pops
in from time to time.)
A suicide bomber blew
himself up in Jerusalem today, but thankfully killed no one else,
and wounded only five, "moderately." Here's the graph I thought
might be of most interest to my readers:
All of the wounded were taken to Shaare Zedek Medical
Center in Jerusalem.
Feeling like your donations are timely? They are. Keep those checks coming.
That new trauma equipment will save lives. permalink
The new tally
So due to the readers who emailed me that they upped their donations,
the new tally is $3,195 for Shaare Zedek. I'm still off from the Blogathon
tally by $51, so the actual tally may be $3,144. Either way, it's a figure
to be proud of. So take a bow, and don't forget to send
in those checks. permalink
Have I mentioned Teddyflipped
lately?
In fact, I have not. She runs a website
that promotes Israeli products. And no, she doesn't get a cut. It's all
to support Israel.
I'm apparently the site of the day for The
People's Republic of Seabrook. Now, one might think that this is a
clever marketing ploy by Jack—pick some bloggers you like, make 'em
site of the day, and get them to link to you—but I prefer to think
that he's a better man than that, and means it most sincerely. (You could
insert one of those ASCII grins here and be none the worse for it.) A
quick read of his website shows me that Laurence
Simon isn't the only nutcase in Texas.
I'm puzzled, though, as to why I'm not getting any Tripod ads while I'm
there. The link he sent me was this
one: I didn't join the cloaking service and just deleted that part of
the URL to find his site. Maybe it rubbed off. Or did Tripod finally get
rid of those annoying pop-ups? permalink
Nobody has better readers. Nobody.
Three of you have emailed me to tell me you increased the amount of your
original pledges to Shaare Zedek. Two have doubled (Nick
Danger was one, thank you!), and one (Mike at Left
of Center) has more than tripled his pledge. Paul L. contributed the
highest amount to date: $200! You folks are amazingly wonderful. The new
tally will come out tomorrow; I have to bug my brothers first. At this
rate, we may make it to $4,000. permalink
Ahead of the pack
Howard Feinberg's latest
article on Tech Central Station discussing the manipulation of Palestinian
casualty figures by the Pals and the media is also being discussed, over
at Ipse
Dixit. Susanna Cornett thought I'd be interested in both, and she's
right—except that I covered the original
story weeks ago. But check them out anyway, folks, there's tons more information
than was available in the original Village Voice article.
Howard, Bubelah, not only
did I scoop you on this one, but I scooped
you on Ben Grimm coming out as a Jew. (And James
Wolf scooped us both.) You need to read my blog more. It's the only
way you're going to keep up, what with being so busy planning
that wedding and all.
By the way, I bought that issue of the Fantastic Four. It was one of
the best I've ever read. It's trying to lure me back into collecting comics.
Sigh. And Karl Kesel's name is misspelled in the Forward article. Kesel
is an excellent writer and was instrumental in bringing back the Hawk
and Dove, a series I loved as a child.
All that being said, though—Hulk Meryl's favorite! Hulk smash! (The
Hulk can kick the Thing's ass, and has done so at least three times that
I know of, once nearly killing him. Oops.)
Combustible
Boy is adding to my nuclear fears. He's talking about the WaPo web
chat that followed its Sunday piece on redesigning missile silos. (I think
they'd make great places for parties, myself.) Thanks, C.B., just what
I wanted: More nuclear nightmares.
It's kitty
cheesecake. Blame the fixation on Dawn Olsen Laurence Simon.
Slut. (You figure out which one the epithet was meant for.)
Left
of Center has dirty pictures on his blog. Of men. Okay, it's really
a classic of Sisyphus, and I am exposing my ignorance to all by saying
I don't know who painted it, but it's nice to see a bit of beefcake for
a change. Even if it is classic beefcake. Plus, his little girl took
her first steps today. Proud papa! Congratulations!
There is No Cat is having
a birthday, and has a hilarious post on people who share his birthday.
At least, I'm assuming it's his birthday. Have a happy, Ralph! permalink
All right, folks, now that the stunned people over at Shaare Zedek have
called me back ("Who? She did what? How much? What's a blogathon?
What's a blog?), I can pass along the official information regarding your
checks: Send them to any
of the regional offices and the money will get to Shaare Zedek.
Shaare Zedek representative Judy Calder, who will be sending me more
interesting facts, pointed out to me that Shaare Zedek, one of four Jerusalem
hospitals, has received 41% of the victims of recent terrorist
bombings. That $3000 we raised for the trauma room is even more timely
and extremely meaningful. She also tells me that the organization is discussing
initiating an American website, and that the hospital is about to celebrate
its 100th birthday.
If it makes you feel more comfortable, send your checks here (and don't
forget to write yourish.com in the memo
field):
AMERICAN COMMITTEE-SHAARE ZEDEK
49 WEST 45TH STREET-SUITE 1100
NEW YORK NEW YORK 10036
By the way, if you didn't get to pledge during the blogathon, you can
still send in a check. Send me an email and I will be more than happy
to thank you in a future post. permalink
In the year 2014...
N.Z. Bear has an excellent "what-if" piece up about blogging
in 2014—after the U.S. made some pretty big mistakes in the War
on Terror.
I read it bottom-to-top, but you can read it either way and appreciate
it just as much. That boy can write.
And speaking of the future
Laurence Simon gets in on the action-to-be with his post on the
real reason why The New York Times keeps leaking Iraqi war plans:
It's to lure future travelers back here to help.
Anyone else writing about tomorrow today? Drop me a line, I've got the
theme. permalink
Anti-Semites update
Remember last
week when I had that headline, "Anti-Semites of the World: Die"?
Well, I'm thinking it again.
Israel announced Monday that it would close its embassy
in Belarus, less than a week after the country's Jewish community accused
the government of failing to tackle anti-Semitism.
Israeli Foreign Ministry official David Peleg, on a
visit to Minsk, denied the closure was political, saying it was connected
to budget cuts in the ministry.
The Union of Jewish Public Organizations and Communities
said last week that vandals had desecrated about 60 Jewish graves this
month at two cemeteries in the capital, the latest in a string of similar
actions in several cities.
[...] The Jewish union accused Belarusian authorities
of turning a blind eye to what it said was an increase in anti-Semitic
acts.
President Alexander Lukashenko responded by insisting
there was no anti-Semitism in Belarus. He called the cemetery vandalism
"hooliganism" and added that visitors to the country, not
Belarusians, could be responsible for it.
Wishing you a fatal heart attack, Lukashenko. Or apoplexy, I don't care.
I am so sick of lying politicians who won't face up to the haters
in their backyards for fear of losing the neo-nazi vote. But wait, there's
more:
Belarus was home to a substantial Jewish minority before
the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. Of the 6 million Jews who died in Europe
during World War II, 800,000 were killed by Nazis in Belarus.
Soviet discrimination prompted many Jews to hide their
background, and many fled to Israel or the West following the 1991 Soviet
collapse. About 27,000 Jews remain. Some 120,000 Belarusian emigrants
live in Israel.
Lukashenko has suppressed dissent and media freedom
in this ex-Soviet republic, making him a pariah in the West.
Imagine that. A fascist insisting there is no anti-Semitism in his nation.
Where have we seen that before? Oh, that's right. Everywhere. permalink
U.S. security firms to Israeli
Philharmonic: The terrorists have won
Can you believe this? The Israeli Philharmonic can't
find a U.S. security firm willing to safeguard their 100-member orchestra,
forcing them to cancel their U.S. tour.
The Israeli Philharmonic Orchestra has canceled a US
concert tour, saying it has been unable to find an American security
firm willing to guard its 100 musicians, a newspaper reported Monday.
The orchestra was scheduled to perform next month in
Los Angeles, San Francisco and Chicago, but called off the US leg of
its international tour when it couldn't organize a security company
to protect its musicians.
"Our American agent called to tell me that he
was unable to find a company that would agree to guard the concert and
the audience," Avi Shoshani, chief executive of the orchestra,
told the Israeli newspaper Yediot Ahronot. "All of the security
companies provided him with the same answer: 'We are unwilling to take
the risk, because we are fearful of terrorist attacks.' "
I understand the concept of rent-a-cops, but are you telling me there
isn't a single private security firm in the country that hires actual
police officers?
I think if the police agencies of New York City can keep safe the myriad
foreign diplomats, world leaders, and sundry celebrities, then at least
one American security agency could safeguard the Israeli Philharmonic.
Unless there's something to the story that they're not telling us.
Ze'ev Dorman, chairman of the orchestra, said, "We
have never before experienced a cancellation of this kind.
Usually cancellations are the result of funding problems,
as in they could not sell enough tickets."
"But in this case, security is the official reason
they gave us," he told Israel Radio.
Shoshani said the orchestra performed in the United
States in January without any problems.
The orchestra intends to play at other upcoming concerts
scheduled in Australia and Taiwan.
So Australia and Taiwan aren't worried about protecting the musicians
from terrorist attacks, but our weenie rent-a-cop firms are. Nice to see
that post-9/11 spirit is still working. Glad to know that life goes on
as usual. Oh, unless you're Israeli, that is. permalink
Back to normal
Or what passes for normal.
I have a call out to the Shaare Zedek folks in Manhattan to see if you
need to do anything special, but really, all you have to do is send a
check out to whichever of these addresses you'd like to use. The money
will get to the same place. (I'm thinking this time they'll actually answer
my email, since I told them I'd raised $3,000 for the hospital.) Write
yourish.com in the memo form on the checks
to embarrass them a little more.
Is anyone else out there as tired as I am, even after a good night's
sleep? I'm betting some 200 people who were involved in the Blogathon.
Well, I'm off to do about a zillion things today. Here's the Blogathon
page if you couldn't get here this weekend. (I'm still afraid to read
it with a clear head.)permalink
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Asia Times Online - The trusted news source for information on Japan
Japan
Accused deserter a touchstone for
US-Japan ties By Kosuke Takahashi
TOKYO - Accused US Army deserter Charles Robert
Jenkins is becoming a touchstone for the strength and
pragmatism of close Japan-US strategic and political
relations. The handling of the sensitive case is also a
measure of how humanitarianism versus hardball politics
plays in the two democratic countries, especially in a
US election year.
Jenkins, reportedly suffering
from peritonitis after abdominal surgery in North Korea,
is expected to return from Jakarta to Tokyo on Sunday
for emergency medical treatment and will be swiftly
hospitalized. The case isn't resolved; Japan and the
United States have an extradition treaty and Jenkins,
accused of deserting from South Korea to North Korea in
1965, could still face a US court martial.
The
case was not decided as of Friday, but remarks by US
Ambassador Howard Baker to journalists on Thursday gave
an indication of US flexibility and a possible deal in
the making. Baker said the US would ask for custody -
but when was not decided.
On Friday Japanese
Chief Cabinet Secretary Hiroyuki Hosoda said the US
ambassador has indicated a possible plea bargain on
unspecified charges against Jenkins. "The ambassador
might have expressed his personal idea, but we have to
consider it from various aspects, as it is impossible to
forecast beforehand military justice proceedings,"
Hosoda said. Baker conveyed his suggestion in a meeting
with senior officials of the ruling Liberal Democratic
Party and its coalition partner the New Komeito party,
he said.
On Thursday Baker said the US
government was sympathetic to Jenkins' health problems -
reported by the Kyodo News Agency to be peritonitis -
and Washington was not insisting he be treated at a
hospital at a US military base if he came to Japan. "If
and when he comes to Japan we will ask for custody -
exactly when remains to be seen," Baker said. "It's
certainly possible he could come to Japan, that the
United States would insist on its rights, but that
actual custody would not be sought or consummated under
some circumstances," he was quoted as saying by Japanese
and Western media.
Observers said there appeared
tentative signs of a deal whereby Jenkins would not be
handed over for trial, and several scenarios have been
proposed. The US, however, has been annoyed that
Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi has been
pushing for Jenkins to come to Tokyo, and pushed for the
accused deserter's earlier family reunion in Indonesia -
this at a time when US President George W Bush is facing
a tough election battle and the United States is
emphasizing discipline and morale among its troops in
Iraq.
Jenkins accused of deserting his DMZ
post in '65 Jenkins, 65, a native of North
Carolina, stands accused of abandoning his US Army unit
on the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) between North and South
Korea in 1965 and defecting to the North. He has since
lived there and has appeared in propaganda films. While
in North Korea, he married a Japanese woman who had been
kidnapped by Pyongyang agents. In October 2002, one
month after Koizumi's first visit to North Korea, she
returned to Tokyo with other Japanese abductees, but
Jenkins remained behind in North Korea with their two
daughters, fearing extradition from Japan. They were
recently reunited in Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia,
which does not have an extradition treaty with the US.
Koizumi pushed hard for the reunion and he is now
pushing hard for medical treatment for Jenkins.
In Jakarta, Jenkins has not commented on the
situation and the Japanese government has kept the media
away from him and his wife, Hitomi Soga, 45, and their
two North Korean-born daughters, Mika, 21, and Belinda,
18, living in a luxury hotel in Jakarta. They were
dramatically reunited on July 9. At that time it did not
appear that his medical condition was life-threatening;
that assessment has changed and treatment in Tokyo now
appears urgent.
Hosoda has denied news reports
that the two sides had agreed that the US would not seek
Jenkins' handover while he is hospitalized, but it
appears the two sides will be negotiating while Jenkins
is undergoing medical treatment.
The Japanese
government appears to have made a snap decision to bring
the seriously ailing Jenkins to Tokyo from Jakarta on
Sunday. It lacks a clear exit strategy, apparently
counting on US cooperation in the short term at least.
Koizumi seems to believe that humanitarianism, combined
with his solid relationship with President Bush - and
Japan's crucial support for US policy in Iraq and its
defense posture in Asia - might trump US desertion
charges against Jenkins, and a court martial.
"It is possible that he has to get medical
treatment without a final accord with the United
States," Hosoda said on Thursday. "It is an emergency
escape or a life-saving measure." Hosoda stressed that
Jenkins' physical condition is very serious and the
government has to provide treatment and surgery as
swiftly as possible in Japan. He did elaborate on
Jenkins' condition.
Jenkins' wife Hitomi Soga
and her mother were kidnapped by North Korean agents
from Japan in 1978, and the mother is still missing,
along with other unaccounted-for Japanese who may have
been kidnapped. Japanese citizens who had been kidnapped
decades ago, including Soga, were allowed to return to
Japan after Koizumi's first Pyongyang summit; they
refused to go back to North Korea, and their families,
including Jenkins, remained in that country. A second
Koizumi summit last month reunited all but Jenkins and
his daughters.
Supporters say Jenkins was
captured Jenkins is still wanted by the US
government on charges of desertion, though an indictment
has not been leveled. His supporters say he was captured
by Pyongyang's soldiers in 1965 near the DMZ and did not
desert, as alleged.
Soga appears to have
persuaded Jenkins to return to Japan to live quietly,
although Japanese officials initially had expressed
concern that he might say he wanted to return to North
Korea after the reunion - which would be a huge
embarrassment for Japan and Koizumi. The family had been
expected to remain in Jakarta indefinitely, but the
situation took a sudden, dramatic turn on Wednesday when
Japan announced that Japanese and Indonesian doctors had
found Jenkins suffering from adverse post-operative
effects of abdominal surgery carried out in North Korea
in April, as well as problems with some internal organs.
The surgical incisions in his stomach are seriously
infected and need daily treatment, Japanese officials
said.
It was Koizumi who decided he should
return, telling reporters on Wednesday: "It would be
better to give medical treatment in Japan, while we are
trying to allow the family to live together as soon as
possible." Japanese officials say their objective is for
the family to be able to live in Japan.
The
Jenkins saga, however, may yet get more complicated.
Jenkins is also a hostage to the US need to
strengthen its troop discipline and morale in Iraq,
still a scene of violence, danger and low troops morale,
especially after the scandal of US abuse of Iraqi
prisoners. The United States cannot let soldiers accused
of misbehavior off the hook in Iraq, and so an accused
deserter from the 1960s also cannot be let off the hook.
US officials and Secretary of State Colin Powell
repeatedly have said there is no change in the US
intention to prosecute Jenkins, although they did not
oppose the family reunion in Indonesia on humanitarian
grounds. Still, the Americans were not happy at what
amounted to celebrity status for an accused deserter who
participated in anti-US North Korean propaganda,
willingly or not.
Japanese officials have
concluded there are no provisions in the Japan-US
extradition treaty or the Japan-US Status of Forces
Agreement for special treatment for accused persons with
health problems. They also conclude, however, that
Washington won't force Japan to hand over a person
immediately who is in poor health.
Japanese TV
station TBS presented on Thursday night three possible
scenarios for handling the case, based on interviews
with US officials in Washington:
The US allows Jenkins to be hospitalized in Tokyo
for quite a while, possibly until the US presidential
election in November, without bringing any indictments
against him and just waiting for a presidential pardon,
post-election.
The US allows Jenkins to be hospitalized only for a
short time, then brings indictments against him. But
Jenkins then plea-bargains, confessing everything he saw
and experienced in North Korea. Then charges are dropped
and Jenkins remains in Japan with his family.
The US allows Jenkins to be hospitalized only for a
short time, then indicts him in accordance with military
law. In this scenario, he would be tried in the US, just
as an ordinary war deserter.
As statements on
Thursday and Friday indicated, the second option might
be favored, but no decision has been made. Presumably,
however, the excellent state of US-Japan ties and the
stationing of Japanese troops in Iraq on a humanitarian
mission are important factors in Washington's Jenkins
calculus.
Critics say Koizumi has gone too
far Critics say Koizumi is too focused on
Jenkins and appears to have fallen in love with his own
political legacy and place in history, looking toward
the rest of his term ending in September 2006. This is
demonstrated, they say, by what they call his rush to
normalize diplomatic relations with North Korean leader
Kim Jong-il, without demanding credible information on
the other missing Japanese abductees. The critics - both
the political opposition and the families of missing
persons - also say Koizumi is not demanding the
dismantlement of North Korea's nuclear weapons and
programs.
Koizumi may well believe he can do
pretty much what he likes, believing in and counting on
his solid relationship with Bush. Koizumi and many
others think Bush is somehow indebted to him for Japan's
Self-Defense Force (SDF) participation in a
multinational force in Iraq, and staying the course
despite the abduction of Japanese citizens in Iraq; they
were later released. Koizumi first told Bush during a
bilateral summit in the US state of Georgia on June 8
about his plans to have the SDF take part in the
multinational force in Iraq - even before telling the
Japanese people. His statement in the US caused
considerable indignation and offense at home, where the
nation is divided over any military or humanitarian
participation in Iraq. Koizumi's attitude and approach
has already buffeted his political standing at home,
especially in last Sunday's Upper House election, when
his ruling Liberal Democratic Party failed to achieve
its modest goal, but not by much; it's still in power.
Moreover, Koizumi seems to believe he can
largely exercise his own discretion in coping
bilaterally with North Korean issues, especially
normalization, given the ongoing process of the
six-party talks on defusing the Pyongyang nuclear
crisis. And the talks represent a kind of common
political safety valve for all of the six countries:
North and South Korea, China, Japan, Russia and the
United States.
But Koizumi's relative
go-it-alone diplomatic approach on normalization could
definitely irritate Bush, who has said he "loathes" Kim
Jong-il. Japanese experts say Washington was already
annoyed by Koizumi's recent rapid approach to North
Korean, including his second one-day summit last month.
The US also might not want Japan to take initiatives in
Northeast Asia, where China has already emerged as a
regional power broker and where America's influence is
believed to be rapidly declining, especially in South
Korea.
For the US, one of the most difficult
issues in the Jenkins case is that Washington might look
like the bad guy - certainly in Japan and other
countries and quite possibly in the US itself - if it
insists on prosecuting him and not allowing him and his
family to live in peace in Japan. The US also will soon
have to figure out whether leniency toward Jenkins, a
rare scenario, would set an unfavorable precedent for
the nation and its military forces.
Initially,
North Korea appeared to design and time the release of
the abductees' families and the focus on Jenkins to
drive a wedge between the US and Japan in the common
effort to defuse North Korea's nuclear-weapons program.
In any case, the US and Japan now have to draw
up a coherent strategy to determine the future of
Jenkins, as well as the anti-nuclear arms talks.
Kosuke Takahashi is a former staff
writer at the Asahi Shimbun and is currently a freelance
correspondent based in Tokyo. He can be contacted atkosuke_everonward@ybb.ne.jp.
(Copyright 2004 Asia Times Online Ltd. All
rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com for
information on our sales and syndication policies.)
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In Desperate Move, Kerry Adopts Puppy
In
Desperate Move, Kerry Adopts Puppy July
7, 2004
I guess with John
Kerry's choice of John Edwards as his running mate, he really does want to
stand up for all Americans, from those worth only $60 million to those worth
in excess of $800 million.
In one of the many
stratagems Democrats have developed to avoid telling people what they believe,
all Edwards wants to talk about is his cracker-barrel humble origins story.
We're supposed to swoon over his "life story," as the flacks say,
which apparently consists of the amazing fact that ... his father was a millworker!
That's right up there
with "Clinton's stepdad was a drunk" and "Ted Kennedy's dad
was a womanizing bootlegger" on my inspirational life-stories meter.
In fact, I'm immediately renouncing my university degrees and going to work
for the post office just to give my future children a shot at having a "life
story," should they decide to run for president someday.
What is so amazing
about Edwards' father being a millworker? That's at least an honorable occupation
-- as opposed to being a trial lawyer. True, Edwards made more money than
his father did. I assume strippers make more money than their alcoholic fathers
who abandoned them did, too. This isn't a story of progress; it's a story
of devolution.
Despite the overwrought
claims of Edwards' dazzling legal skills, winning jury verdicts in personal
injury cases has nothing to do with legal talent and everything to do with
getting the right cases -- unless "talent" is taken to mean "having
absolutely no shame." Edwards specialized in babies with cerebral palsy
whom he claimed would have been spared the affliction if only the doctors
had immediately performed Caesarean sections.
As a result of such
lawsuits, there are now more than four times as many Caesarean sections as
there were in 1970. But curiously, there has been no change in the rate of
babies born with cerebral palsy. As The New York Times reported: "Studies
indicate that in most cases, the disorder is caused by fetal brain injury
long before labor begins." All those Caesareans have, however, increased
the mother's risk of death, hemorrhage, infection, pulmonary embolism and
Mendelson's syndrome.
In addition, the
"little guys" Edwards claims to represent are having a lot more
trouble finding doctors to deliver their babies these days as obstetricians
leave the practice rather than pay malpractice insurance in excess of $100,000
a year.
In one of Edwards'
silver-tongued arguments to the jury on behalf of a girl born with cerebral
palsy, he claimed he was channeling the unborn baby girl, Jennifer Campbell,
who was speaking to the jurors through him:
"She said at
3, 'I'm fine.' She said at 4, 'I'm having a little trouble, but I'm doing
OK.' Five, she said, 'I'm having problems.' At 5:30, she said, 'I need out.'"
She's
saying, "My lawyer needs a new Jaguar ... "
"She speaks
to you through me and I have to tell you right now -- I didn't plan to talk
about this -- right now I feel her. I feel her presence. She's inside me,
and she's talking to you."
Well,
tell her to pipe down, would you? I'm trying to hear the evidence in a malpractice
lawsuit.
To paraphrase Oscar
Wilde on the death of Little Nell, one must have a heart of stone to read
this without laughing. What is this guy, a tent-show preacher? An off-the-strip
Las Vegas lounge psychic couldn't get away with this routine.
Is Edwards able to
channel any children right before an abortionist's fork is plunged into their
tiny skulls? Why can't he hear those babies saying, "Let me live! Stop
spraying this saline solution all over me!" Edwards must experience interference
in channeling the voices of babies about to be aborted. Their liberal mothers'
hands seem to muffle those voices.
And may we ask what
the pre-born Jennifer Campbell thinks about war with Iraq? North Korea? Marginal
tax rates? If Miss Cleo here is going to be a heartbeat away from the presidency,
I think the voters are entitled to know that.
While making himself
fabulously rich by taking a one-third cut of his multimillion-dollar verdicts
coaxed out of juries with junk science and maudlin performances, Edwards has
the audacity to claim, "I was more than just their lawyer; I cared about
them. Their cause was my cause."
If he cared so deeply,
how about keeping just 10 percent of the multimillion-dollar jury awards,
rather than a third? In fact, as long as these Democrats are so eager to raise
the taxes of "the rich," how about a 90 percent tax on contingency
fees?
For someone who didn't
care about the money, it's interesting that Edwards avoided cases in which
the baby died during delivery. Evidently, jury awards average only about $500,000
when the babies die, and there is no disabled child to parade before the jury.
Edwards was one of
the leading opponents of a bill in the North Carolina Legislature that would
have established a fund for all babies born with cerebral palsy. So instead
of all disabled babies in North Carolina being compensated equitably, only
a few will win the jury lottery -- one-third of which will go to trial lawyers
like Edwards, who insists he doesn't care about the money.
Despite the now-disproved
junk science theory about C-sections preventing cerebral palsy that Edwards
peddled in the channeling case, the jury awarded Edwards' client a record-breaking
$6.5 million. This is the essence of the modern Democratic Party, polished
to perfection by Bill Clinton: They are willing to insult the intelligence
of 49 percent of the people if they think they can fool 51 percent of the
people.
So while Michael
Moore, Al Franken, George Soros, Crazy Al Gore and the rest of the characters
from the climactic devil-worshipping scene in "Rosemary's Baby"
provide the muscle for the Kerry campaign, Kerry picks a pretty-boy milquetoast
as his running mate, narrowly edging out a puppy for the spot. Just don't
ask the Democrats what they believe. Edwards' father was a millworker, and
that's all you need to know.
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Asia Times - Asia's most trusted news source for the Middle East
Middle East
SPEAKING FREELY Saudi Arabia: A nation in
turmoil By Swati Parashar
Speaking Freely is an Asia Times Online
feature that allows guest writers to have their say.
Please click hereif you
are interested in contributing.
Introduction Much has been said and
written about Saudi Arabia's role in the "war on
terror". The ruling family of the House of Saud has been
an unabashed US ally in the campaign to hunt out
terrorists. However, even a large-scale massive
crackdown on terrorists in the kingdom has not been able
to thwart attacks on foreigners, mostly Westerners. The
recent hostage crisis in the oil city of al-Khobar,
which left 22 civilians dead, including foreigners, and
the brazen attacks on British journalists and American
defense contractors highlight a need to understand the
nature of terrorism in Saudi Arabia and the complexities
that confront the state.
Beyond al-Qaeda
Recent events in Saudi Arabia, including
the beheading of Paul Johnson, an employee of a US
defense contractor, point toward an al-Qaeda
organization that is moving away from suicide bombings
toward sporadic guerrilla attacks on chosen targets and
kidnappings and which is desperate to establish its
credentials through media publicity. But most
important, it has lost some of its top leaders to
encounters with the Saudi forces.
Even the tightly policed state has not been able
to prevent terrorist operations against Westerners. However,
it is very important to realize that terrorism in
Saudi Arabia is not just under the aegis of al-Qaeda. Even
though 15 out of the 19 al-Qaeda hijackers of
September 11, 2001, notoriety were Saudis, there is insufficient
evidence of a centralized command of al-Qaeda operating in
the Persian Gulf kingdom. An Internet statement of
slain al-Qaeda leader, Abdul Aziz al-Muqrin, claimed that
al-Qaeda relied on "independent cells that
function without organizational cohesion". Most analysts believe that
al-Qaeda is a loosely knit organization of several
three-to-four-member cells that operate independently.
There
have been reports of some indigenous groups being
involved in acts of terror in Saudi Arabia, as was the
case of the June 25, 1996, truck bombing at the King
Abdul Aziz air base at Khobar Towers, which killed 19 US
servicemen. The Iranian-supported Shi'ite group, the
Saudi Hezbollah, has also been accused of terrorism in
the country. There have also been reports of individuals
who have carried out acts of terrorism claiming
inspiration from Osama bin Laden's teachings, but who
are not affiliated with al-Qaeda.
The Muqrin
factor However, the recent cases of the al-Khobar
attack and the beheading of Johnson that were claimed by
the "al-Qaeda of the Arabian Peninsula", focus the
debate on al-Qaeda's presence in the kingdom. The man
behind these acts of terror was "Abu Hajir" Abdul Aziz
al-Muqrin. This ruthless tactician died in a shootout
with Saudi security forces hours after he and three
colleagues had disposed of the decapitated body of the
unfortunate Johnson.
Muqrin transformed
al-Qaeda's war against the Saudi state into a
pan-Islamic jihad against Westerners and other
"infidels". He often expressed his solidarity with
Muslims in Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan and Chechnya,
and was even recruiting mujahideen for Iraq. For him,
the struggle of Muslims in these countries was as much
an issue for jihad as the growing "apostasy" of the
ruling Saudi elite.
Muqrin was a
dropout from the Saudi educational system who took the usual
path to terrorism through the Afghan jihad, where he
met his mentor, bin Laden, and trained under
him. He participated in several conflicts
in Afghanistan, Algeria, Bosnia, and the Horn of Africa in
Somalia and Ethiopia, and was sentenced to four years in
prison in Saudi Arabia in the late 1990s. He was
released after two years because of his effortless recitation of the Koran,
which he learned by heart while in jail.
He took over as leader of al-Qaeda
operations this March when the previous chief, a Yemeni national,
Khalid Ali Haj, and an accomplice were killed in a raid
by security forces after an aggressive anti-terror campaign.
Haj himself had succeeded Yussef al-Ayri, who was also
shot dead in June 2003, a month after the deadly
suicide bombings in Riyadh that May, which claimed more than 20
lives and in which 10 Americans died.
The author of "Al-Qaeda's Targeting Guidance", which
was released as a chapter in the seventh issue of
al-Qaeda's training publication, Camp al-Battar Magazine, released this
March 29, Muqrin identified categories of urban,
religious, economic and human targets on which future
attacks would be conducted. True to this document, the
al-Khobar attack was on an economic target, whereas
Johnson was the perfect human target, an American
"infidel" working for a defense contractor.
Muqrin had a flair for
media publicity and often released statements and pictures
on the Internet and appeared on videotapes. His media
propaganda was most evident in the Johnson case when he
posted grisly images of Johnson's severed head and
decapitated body on websites that have been used by al-Qaeda in
the past. In fact, he first appeared in
al-Qaeda's "Badr al-Riyadh" video released on February 8 as an
al-Qaeda field commander who had perhaps masterminded
the al-Muhaya housing compound bombing in Riyadh last November.
Media propaganda, as in the Johnson case, enhances the
impact of terror, and Muqrin understood this well.
Muqrin was a wanted man, but there were doubts about
his whereabouts. Some people believed he was not based
in Saudi Arabia and directed operations from a distant country,
but reliable reports claimed that he probably residing
in the al-Suweidi district of Saudi Arabia, which
has a long tradition of nurturing terrorists. The
British Broadcasting Corp journalist and a cameraman who were shot
at in al-Suweidi recently were working on a documentary
on Ibrahim al-Rayyes, one of the 26 most
wanted terrorists in the kingdom, who was killed in
a shootout last December. Figures reveal that 15 out of
the 26 most wanted terrorists, the list of which
was released by the Saudi Interior Ministry in December,
are from this notorious al-Suweidi area.
Muqrin was gunned down with three other al-Qaeda militants
on their escape route after dumping Johnson's body.
Police received information about the car license number,
which helped them chase the militants. It is significant
to note here the involvement of the al-Qaeda chief in
the basic planning and dumping of a body, which
suggests that the leadership is part of the execution of
the entire plan until its completion. Some analysts
have pointed out that this could imply that al-Qaeda
is running out of recruits, but the number of
militants detained and killed in the crackdown by the
security forces and the increasing frequency of attacks
suggest otherwise. The al-Khobar militants were young
men between 15 and 25 years of age, which suggests that for
the unemployed youth in Saudi Arabia, militancy is both
an economic as well as a political option to vent their
frustration at the "authoritarian, corrupt and apostate"
regime that is indifferent to their plight.
Muqrin's death was denied in a communique
by al-Qaeda posted on an Islamist website that
the organization uses regularly. The statement said the
news of Muqrin's death was intended "to undermine the
morale of the mujahideen of the Arabian Peninsula". This
message was perhaps an indication of the desperation of
the organization, completely taken aback by the
unexpected killing of its chief mastermind in Saudi
Arabia and a master strategist and planner just two
months after the previous chief was killed.
The
government, though, confirmed the death of Muqrin and
security experts declared Saleh Mohammad al-Aofi as the
successor of Muqrin. Some Islamist websites used by
al-Qaeda later issued a statement saying that Muqrin had
died "after having prepared sincere men from among the
combatants to succeed him and carry on the jihad,
equipped by God with everything needed to bring harm to
America and its agents among the tyrants". The
confirmation about Aofi's succession is still being
awaited from the information sources of al-Qaeda.
Challenges before the state Muqrin,
who had written in "Al-Qaeda's Targeting Guidance" that
the "targets inside the cities are considered a sort of
military diplomacy. Normally, this kind of diplomacy is
written with blood and decorated with body parts and the
smell of guns," has been laid to rest, but his death has
brought into focus several important questions related
to the nature of the Saudi state and its so-called "war
on terror".
The Saudi state, an
Islamic theocracy, faces antipathy not only from its
citizens but also from other Islamic countries in the
region because of its proximity to the United States and the
corrupt and authoritarian rule that seems to have benefited
the ruling few. The regime is a logical target of
attack from international Islamic terrorist groups who
consider the House of Saud unfit to continue as the custodian
of the Islamic holy places. In fact, before becoming a
global Islamic movement, al-Qaeda started its campaign
in Saudi Arabia against the government, calling for the
overthrow of the monarchy, the first step toward the
establishment of a caliphate to unite the Muslims. Their
repeated use of the term "al-Qaeda of the Arabian
Peninsula" seems a deliberate attempt to avoid the usage
of "Saudi Arabia", a name derived from the House of
Saud.
There are increasing reports about
possible linkages between the Saudi security forces and
militants. Pro-militant websites have reported that some
elements in the Saudi security forces helped in the
kidnapping of Johnson by providing the militants with
police uniforms, cars and a fake checkpoint at which
Johnson's car was intercepted by the kidnappers. This
claim was denied by the government.
The new
al-Qaeda chief in Saudi Arabia, Saleh Mohammad al-Aofi,
has worked as a prison guard and may have some
connections in the security establishment. Even the
al-Khobar terrorists were in army uniforms. In a heavily
policed state where there is a sustained crackdown on
terrorists, the probabilities of some police and army
personnel cooperating with the militants does not seem
misplaced, especially in the light of the increasingly
brazen terrorist attacks and ideological support for
al-Qaeda by some Saudis, including those in the royal
family who are against any kind of alignment with the
West. The security forces have succeeded in gunning down
three al-Qaeda chiefs, but the death in each case has
only resulted in a more ruthless and dangerous commander
taking over. Muqrin's successor, Aofi, is also
experienced and has a substantial following.
The
recent amnesty offer by King Fahd to militants who
surrender themselves in the next month is perhaps a
desperate attempt by the regime to establish its
credentials as a sincere ally in the "war on terror", at
the same time trying to make peace with the dissatisfied
elements who may have taken to militancy.
Nevertheless, the amnesty has had some
success. This week, a Saudi-born Islamic militant,
Khaled al-Harbi, who was seen in a videotape with bin Laden
several years ago, turned himself in to the Saudi
Embassy in Tehran and was flown back to Saudi Arabia.
Certainly, Muqrin's death is a loss to al-Qaeda,
but it is not a "victory" for the Saudi government,
which still faces a daunting task. Terrorism and
fundamentalism in the Saudi state are not imported
phenomena. Many Osamas have emerged out of the Saudi
political and religious system, which has a distinct
schizophrenic character. The Saudi state is a glaring
example of the religious and the political spaces
merging together, based on the principles of
fundamentalist Wahhabi ideology. Juxtaposed with this
Islamic theocratic nature of the state is the Saudi
elite's alignment with the Western world and especially
close ties with the US.
The struggle between
tauhid (monotheism) and taqarub
(rapprochement between Muslims and non-Muslims) is
reflected in the two factions that have emerged in the
royalty. Prince Abdullah, the de facto ruler, with his
pro-Western taqarub approach, faces challenges
from Prince Nayef, the interior minister, who is said to
be a favorite with the tauhid, advocating clergy
who are also sympathetic to the al-Qaeda ideology.
Conclusion The problem in Saudi Arabia
is not just the growing menace of terrorism but a
systemic collapse that is in urgent need of reform. The
power struggle in the ruling elite, coupled with the
fact that the regime has failed to address issues
affecting the common people, such as corruption and growing
unemployment, has distanced the ruling class from the
masses. The much-needed political and economic reforms
in favor of the common people hardly seem in the offing
as the regime continues to derive its legitimacy from
Western powers, and control vast oil wealth, which is
said to be adding to the riches of the 20,000-member
royal family.
This complex interplay of internal
and external factors has provided fodder for jihadi
terrorism based on the fundamentalist interpretation of
Islam advocated by the likes of al-Qaeda.
Swati Parashar is a post-graduate
student in international relations from the Jawaharlal
Nehru University, New Delhi, and currently a researcher
at the Observer Research Foundation (ORF), associated
with the International Terrorism Watch Project. She is
based in New Delhi and can be contacted by e-mail:swatiparashar@orfonline.org
Speaking
Freely is an Asia Times Online feature that allows guest
writers to have their say. Please click hereif you
are interested in contributing.
+++URL: http://www.poundart.com/art/randcomix/about.html
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PoundArt -- about Random Computer Comics
About Random Computer-Generated
Comics
by John Pound
"RAN DUM COMICS"
22" x 33" digital color print, 2002
newspaper color "Sunday Comics" page layout
On this page, the balloon text, artwork, and
colors were all chosen randomly. A few of the titles were random.
I chose the page's title and programmed this specific page layout.
The idea of doing a random "Sunday Comics" page goes
back to my earliest vision of random comics.
"THE DAILY GRUNT"
22" x 33" digital color print, 2003
newspaper daily comics pages layout
"SELF PORTRAIT"
51" x 88" laser print, 2003
wall installation, on 6 sheets by 8 sheets of paper
The large face is a non-random drawing I converted
to pixels in Photoshop. My program used each pixel's gray value
to make a smaller random face -- there are 3888 faces. Some are
better likenesses than others. I haven't found any that are alike
yet.
"RAN DUM LOOP"
(screen shot), 1999
This program runs on a computer in the gallery.
It writes and draws random comics and cartoon art onscreen endlessly.
The colors, compositions, poses, words and sentences change constantly.
Because it uses random combinations of many basic parts, you
will probably never see the same drawing twice. It is rather
hypnotic.
"The Theory Of RAN DUM MUTATION"
48" x 17" digital color print, 2003
The print has many cartoon characters in rows,
fading into the distance. Each character mutates from the previous
one.
The comic pages and cartoon images shown here
were created entirely by writing computer programs that use randomness.
The programs randomly combine words, colors,
shapes, figures, objects and scenes into comic images and pages.
The programs also make random text stories,
random cartoon drawings, and random comic books. Some of the
program's comic strips have been printed in newspapers.
Several of the pieces shown here have appeared
in art galleries and art competitions as large format art prints.
While using the visual language of comics, the
main focus in these works is on relationships, conceptual issues,
and graphic design more than on jokes, characters, or linear
storytelling.
The programs I write are not commercially
available. They are personal tools I use to create experimental
comics, cartoon graphics, and other generative art.
Why random comics?
As a cartoonist I wondered what kind of comics
a computer program could make. What if you used a program not
as passive tool, like an airbrush, but as an active partner in
making creative decisions?
I had seen programs that made random sentences
by combining basic words, and I had seen programs that drew random
figures and scenes. But what if you combined them? Would you
get nonsense Sunday comics pages?
To make random comics, what are the minimum
elements needed for comics? Perhaps a few simple panels with
nonsense word balloons? I found it is simple to make a computer
program that spews out random text, or that draws random scribbles,
but it more challenging to work randomly with figures, stories
and page layouts.
Something about the idea of randomness seemed
important to this project. Perhaps it was the idea of flirting
with total nonsense, or anarchy, in an artform known for its
clarity and unambiguity. Perhaps it was the element of surprise
or discovery. Perhaps it was the sense of collaborating with
something beyond my conscious mind, something that occasionally
comes from doing automatic drawings and writings, with the "third
mind", as described by William Burroughs and Brion Gysin.
Using randomness challenges both the artist
and the viewer to think abstractly, to see the patterns behind
events and images. What systems of writing and drawing and thinking
lend themselves to random choices? The program's random choices
create unexpected combinations. Is it meaningful, or is it nonsense?
Or is it both?
Randomness in these works approximates the
unseen forces that shape our lives. We may see meaning in events
independently of the actual causes. We try to make sense of life,
and hope to have some control over events. Is there free will
or destiny? How much of our lives are under our conscious control?
Programming with randomness also allows me
to generate a large number of detailed variations quickly.
How random?
Early on, I thought making random digital
comics would be a sort of "free lunch", a way to get
a lot of surreal comics written and drawn with very little effort.
You can have the program spew out a large number of comic pages,
and you can cover the walls with the results. But reader boredom
may quickly set in. To hold the viewer's interest is the real
test.
Random elements seem to work best set against
non-random elements. Complete randomness looks chaotic. While
momentarily fun to create, like a loud noise, it does not reward
viewing for any great length of time.
I've found I have to do extensive editing
and revision on each page's program until what it creates with
randomness has clarity, mystery, humor, and feeling. (Of course
this is true for making my non-random paintings as well.)
The program can create random page layouts.
However, the examples shown here use page layouts specified by
the artist.
Other examples of randomness
Racter (1980's) random text conversation
software
John Cage's non-intentional music and art
prints
Harold Cohen's AARON drawing program
Scott McCloud's "5-card Nancy"
game
Dial-a-face wheel
"Mad Libs" fill-in-the-blank sentences.
"Choose your own adventure" books
and videogames
William Burroughs' cut-up collage novels
(Naked Lunch, etc.)
Wind-chimes
Slot-machines, casino games
The stock market
Brian Eno's ambient music and environments,
using tape loops of differing lengths. (Also see Eno's "Oblique
Strategies" cards)
The program is written in the PostScript
programming language. I chose PostScript because, in addition
to being a full-featured programming language, it was designed
for creating text and graphic art files that can be used on any
computer platform. PostScript is widely used in commercial printing
and publishing. PostScript's vector artwork may be easily scaled
to any size.
1992: First test strips (unpublished). Basic
grid layout with title box above. Panels have simple figures
with nonsense sentences in the balloon or caption.
July, 1993: First published random strip in
an entertainment tabloid newspaper Edge City, reproduced
from a black and white laser print.
1994-1995: Strips published in Anthem Monthly
(example below). Some people enjoyed the random digital comics.
There were also puzzled reactions from other readers expecting
standard stories and punchlines. Brief description appears in
The Comics Journal #171.
1996: Program revised to allow scripting,
complex page layouts, and multiple pages. Can create both random
and non-random pages.
1998: Script is written using program to create
a booklet (unpublished) showing program's non-random page layout
and drawing features. Booklet is used as a reference for further
programming, and is later revised.
1999: Color added for LOOP, an endless on-screen
display.
2001: Begin using program and scripts to compile
more booklets (unpublished) of random digital comics sketches,
fragments, and works in progress, to use as reference in making
more complete pieces.
2002-2004: Begin series of full-color poster-size
pages and art prints, shown in art competions and gallery shows.
First one is called "RAN DUM COMICS". Acrobat Distiller
is used to make non-random printable PDF file version of random
page.
Using the Program
This PostScript digital comics program works
as a simple vector drawing or page layout program. It does not
have an interactive graphic user interface. I have to write text
files to make the program draw, or for it to compose random text.
As I write and revise the script text file, I decide which elements
of text and art on the page should be made by random choices,
and which ones should be non-random.
I use a text-editing program to write the
PostScript text files. I use Ghostscript (freeware) to preview
the results onscreen.
I make one or two changes at a time, save
the file, and preview the results again. I do this many times
in making a page. It takes a lot of revision, and some debugging,
until the page or story works well, both visually and conceptually.
It's not the most intuitive way to make art on a computer. But
by now I am comfortable with the process, and it is quite satisfying
working with software tools that I've made myself. And I like
being able to re-use program elements from previous projects.
In making art by programming, I deal with
a lot of small details. I get ideas for program parts and words
and images that don't relate to the main piece I am making, so
I write them down for later. On each project I have to ask myself:
What was the "seed" idea? What's the overall picture?
What's the overall feeling?
When a page or group of pages is complete,
I use Acrobat Distiller to convert the PostScript files to non-random
PDF files for printing. (Ghostscript can also do this.) You can
also open and view a PostScript file in Adobe Illustrator. If
you edit it in Illustrator and save it, it will no longer be
random.
Program Organization
The main program is organized internally into
many procedures, grouped into these main areas:
Document -- handles multiple pages
Page Layout -- sets paper size, page bleed
size, page trim size, page art size, goes to art origin on page
Panel Groups -- divides a panel space into
subpanels: 2 rows, 2 columns, or a grid of panels, with a specified
space between panels
Panel -- do border, caption, branch for various
kinds of panel contents, or for sub-panels
Lettering and Text -- sets caption text,
text in word balloons, titles, sound effects
Random Text and Word-Forming -- word lists,
changing words (single nouns to plural, etc.)
Math and Random Numbers -- return random
numbers in a range, or an item from a list, or modify a number
Shapes -- draw simple or compound paths,
open or closed
Painting Shapes -- add colors and outlines
to a shape's path
Colors -- grayscale or CMYK, define and blend
colors, groups of colors, random colors
Objects -- groups of shapes
Figures -- groups of shapes, faces, feelings
Scenes -- do layers of art, from small in
back to large in front
In addition to using the main program, which
stays relatively unchanged, I write a script file for each new
project. The script file contains some more definitions and usually
some new procedures. I define specific things like the title,
page size, page layouts, any new shapes or new characters, colors,
words, and story structures. At the end of the script, a command
tells the program to use all the preceding information to draw
the pages requested.
Below is an older description of how
the program works.
Early random comic (laser print), 1993:
How It Works
The Program: I developed the program in the PostScript
language, which can create high-quality text and graphics on almost
any computer (I was using an Amiga at the time).
It is more challenging and less intuitive to use than Adobe
Illustrator, Photoshop, or desktop publishing programs, as it
does not have a GUI (graphic user interface). Working directly
in the PostScript language requires using text-only files to make
a visual image. (My wife Karen said, "Programming comics
is like carving a pencil each time you want to draw something".)
You have to be both a cartoonist and a programmer. But one advantage
is that it is possible to create complex random graphics with
the interaction of relatively few simple re-useable parts, somewhat
like a Lego kit.
1. Random Story: One part of the program acts like a
writer, creating a script for the comic strip. It choses characters
and scenes for each panel, from those available, and it builds
grammatically correct sentences for titles, captions and word
balloons. Sometimes the sentences in panels are completely random,
and other times, words and ideas from one panel link into the
next. The script also decides the character's feelings and overall
pose in each panel, and how far away the view would be.
Each month I changed the program to write a different kind
of story or sequence of panels. Usually, the first and last panels
were handled a little differently from the ones in between.
2. Random Art: Another part of the program uses the
script as the basis for drawing the strip. It divides the page
into panels, and then draws each panel's art, and letters the
captions and word balloons. Simple rules for composition, perspective,
and anatomy combine with random choices for other things, such
as a character's size and position, and background art details.
The characters and scenes can be drawn at any size desired.
3. Printed Output: The pages were then drawn by a PostScript
laser printer. The final comic strips emerged from the printer
as black and white camera-ready art, serving the same purpose
as a cartoonist's pen-and-ink original art. Because of the many
random decisions made by the program, each printout was different
from the next. I enjoyed the element of surprise and discovery
this contibuted to making comics. Each month, from the various
pages created, I selected the most successful strips to be published.
PsInfo is a command-line tool that gathers key information about the local or remote Windows NT/2000 system, including the type of installation, kernel build, registered organization and owner, number of processors and their type, amount of physical memory, the install date of the system, and if its a trial version, the expiration date.
Installation
Just copy PsInfo onto your executable path, and type "psinfo".
PsInfo works on NT 4.0 and higher.
Usage
By default PsInfo shows information for the local system. Specify a remote computer name to obtain information from the remote system. Since PsInfo relies on remote Registry access to obtain its data, the remote system must be running the Remote Registry service and the account from which you run PsInfo must have access to the HKLM\System portion of the remote Registry.
In order to aid in automated Service Pack updates, PsInfo returns as a value the Service Pack number of system (e.g. 0 for no service pack, 1 for SP 1, etc).
Perform the command on the remote computer or computers specified. If you omit the computer name the command runs on the local system, and if you specify a wildcard (\\*), the command runs on all computers in the current domain.
@file
Run the command on each computer listed in the text file specified.
-u
Specifies optional user name for login to remote computer.
-p
Specifies optional password for user name. If you omit this you will be prompted to enter a hidden password.
-h
Show list of installed hotfixes.
-s
Show list of installed applications.
-d
Show disk volume information.
-c
Print in CSV format.
-t
The default delimiter for the -c option is a comma, but can be overriden with the specified character.
filter
Psinfo will only show data for the field matching the filter. e.g. "psinfo service" lists only the service pack field.
Example Output
c:> psinfo \\development -h -d
PsInfo v1.6 - local and remote system information viewer
Copyright (C) 2001-2004 Mark Russinovich
Sysinternals - www.sysinternals.com
System information for \\DEVELOPMENT:
Uptime: 28 days, 0 hours, 15 minutes, 12 seconds
Kernel version: Microsoft Windows XP, Multiprocessor Free
Product type Professional
Product version: 5.1
Service pack: 0
Kernel build number: 2600
Registered organization: Sysinternals
Registered owner: Mark Russinovich
Install date: 1/2/2002, 5:29:21 PM
Activation status: Activated
IE version: 6.0000
System root: C:\WINDOWS
Processors: 2
Processor speed: 1.0 GHz
Processor type: Intel Pentium III
Physical memory: 1024 MB
Volume Type Format Label Size Free Free
A: Removable 0%
C: Fixed NTFS WINXP 7.8 GB 1.3 GB 16%
D: Fixed NTFS DEV 10.7 GB 809.7 MB 7%
E: Fixed NTFS SRC 4.5 GB 1.8 GB 41%
F: Fixed NTFS MSDN 2.4 GB 587.5 MB 24%
G: Fixed NTFS GAMES 8.0 GB 1.0 GB 13%
H: CD-ROM CDFS JEDIOUTCAST 633.6 MB 0%
I: CD-ROM 0%
Q: Remote 0%
T: Fixed NTFS Test 502.0 MB 496.7 MB 99%
OS Hot Fix Installed
Q147222 1/2/2002
Q309521 1/4/2002
Q311889 1/4/2002
Q313484 1/4/2002
Q314147 3/6/2002
Q314862 3/13/2002
Q315000 1/8/2002
Q315403 3/13/2002
Q317277 3/20/2002
How it Works
PsInfo uses the Remote Registry API to read system information from a system's Registry, and WMI to determine whether Windows XP installations have been activated.
PsTools
PsInfo is part of a growing kit of Sysinternals command-line tools that aid in the adminstration of local and remote
Windows NT/2K systems named PsTools.
+++URL: http://www.law.uc.edu/CCL/34Act/sec20.html
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Section 20 -- Liabilities of Controlling Persons and Persons Who Aid and Abet Violations
Securities Lawyer's Deskbook published
by The
University
of Cincinnati College of Law
Section 20 -- Liabilities of Controlling Persons and Persons Who Aid and Abet Violations
Joint and several liability; good faith defense
Every person who, directly or indirectly, controls any person liable under
any provision of this title or of any rule or regulation thereunder shall
also be liable jointly and severally with and to the same extent as such controlled
person to any person to whom such controlled person is liable, unless the
controlling person acted in good faith and did not directly or indirectly
induce the act or acts constituting the violation or cause of action.
Unlawful activity through or by means of any other person
It shall be unlawful for any person, directly or indirectly, to do any act
or thing which it would be unlawful for such person to do under the provisions
of this title or any rule or regulation thereunder through or by means of
any other person.
Hindering, delaying, or obstructing the making or filing
of any document, report, or information
It shall be unlawful for any director or officer of, or any owner of any securities
issued by, any issuer required to file any document, report, or information
under this title or any rule or regulation thereunder without just cause
to hinder, delay, or obstruct the making or filing of any such document, report,
or information.
Liability for trading in securities while in possession
of material nonpublic information
Wherever communicating, or purchasing or selling a security while in possession
of, material nonpublic information would violate, or result in liability to
any purchaser or seller of the security under any provisions of this title,
or any rule or regulation thereunder, such conduct in connection with a purchase
or sale of a put, call, straddle, option, privilege or security-based swap
agreement (as defined in section 206B of the Gramm-Leach- Bliley Act) with
respect to such security or with respect to a group or index of securities
including such security, shall also violate and result in comparable liability
to any purchaser or seller of that security under such provision, rule, or
regulation.
Prosecution of persons who aid and abet violations
For purposes of any action brought by the Commission under paragraph (1) or
(3) of section 21(d), any person that knowingly
provides substantial assistance to another person in violation of a provision
of this title, or of any rule or regulation issued under this title, shall
be deemed to be in violation of such provision to the same extent as the person
to whom such assistance is provided.
Limitation
The authority of the Commission under this section with respect to security-
based swap agreements (as defined in section 206B of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley
Act) shall be subject to the restrictions and limitations of section
3A(b).
Notice to Users: The Deskbook is made available
with the understanding that the University of Cincinnati College
of Law is not engaged in rendering legal, accounting or other professional
services. If legal advice or other expert assistance is required,
the services of a competent professional person should be sought. See Terms and Conditions of Use.
+++URL: http://www.retrocrush.com/archive2004/annoying2003/index.html
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retroCRUSH: The World's Finest Website and UK Tabloid Muse
THE 100 MOST
ANNOYING
THINGS OF 2003
Well here we are with another annual
look at the most annoying things of the previous year. There
was certainly some stiff competition this year, but we made it
through (albeit a bit late). So without further adieu...here's
the list!
100
KANGAROO JACK
not since Yahoo Serious has such a hideous creature from
Australia cursed the screen. It's great to see that
we've gone past the "Rapping Old People" cliché to the
"Rapping Kangaroo" one.
99
BOBBY BROWN and WHITNEY HOUSTON
These
crack heads make Sid and Nancy look like Donny and Marie.
Whitney hasn't had a hit since the 80s. Suddenly that
sequel to The Bodyguard with Kevin Costner actually seems like
a GOOD career move
98
FROM JUSTIN TO KELLY
Why this "film"
didn't go direct to video was mind-boggling. You could
have got Haim and Feldman to star in "From Cory to Cory" and
made more money than this crap-fest.
97
THE DAVINCI CODE
If you
read secret hidden writings in Leonardo's artwork backwards, it
says, "Shit, dude, my paintings were meant to be looked at,
not analyzed for prophecy like I'm so two-bit Nostradamus!"
Rumor has it Thomas "Painter of Light" Kincade has secret
messages in his work, too, that say "You paid $5,000 for
a lousy print of my crappy hacked out hotel artwork!"
96
AVRIL LAVIGNE
Give up the "hardcore"
act, already. I don't know what's worse, the fact that
she's too stupid to spell April Levine correctly, or that I
used this lame joke 2 years in a row.
95
EMERIL LAGASSE
This obnoxious bayou
hack is a disgrace to Cajuns everywhere. I wish a Voodoo
Priest would make a Justin Wilson zombie that eats Emeril's
brains live on the air. BAM!
94
GREAT WHITE
How bad is that to know you spent your final moments on earth
burning to death while listening to a drunken version of "Once Bitten, Twice Shy?"
That's only slightly better than surviving through a Clay
Aiken performance.
93
LISA MARIE PRESLEY
She triied to release a
sultry rock album, but didn't remain in sexual fantasies
for very long, once you thought about the fact that she used
to have sex with Michael Jackson!
92
BAD BOYS 2 I don't know what's more
pathetic, that this film even came out, or that I saw sold-out
displays for the DVD when it was released. Look for
Martin Lawrence to release RUNTELDATAGAIN and Wil Smith to be
featured in THE WILDER WILDER WEST at this rate.
91
ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER I'll admit, as a Californian and
Sacramento resident, it's pretty damn cool to have Arnold as
our Governor, and he's done a good job so far, but damn if his
excessive use of catch phrases isn't annoying as hell.
How bad is it when he's actually resorted to mentioning "Red
Sonja" in his speeches?
90
DVD REGION ENCODING What kind of
backward world do we live in where Americans can't buy a DVD
from England, but Robbie Williams records are still legal to
purchase?
89
JERMAINE JACKSON His pathetic defense
of his brother to get free publicity on The Larry King show
and others was sickening, considering he's been bashing
Michael's success in the past. I guess it's hard to make
a music comeback, when you were never there in the first
place.
88
THE OAKLAND RAIDERS from Superbowl to
Supersuck in just 1 year. It's bad enough that they have
the stupidest, most Neanderthal fans in all of sports, but
there were weeks where John Madden and Al Michaels could have
racked up more yards than this pathetic outfit.
87
DUMB AND DUMBERER certainly the most
unnecessary release of the year. How could you make a
sequel to Dumb and Dumber without the two stars? That's
like going to see Creedence Clearwater Revisited at the county
fair.
86
I REMEMBER THE 80S on VH1 Yeah, I do,
too. But somehow I don't remember them being an annoying
rapid fire bunch of anecdotes from shitty celebs that had
nothing to do with the subject matter they're talking about!
I'm so glad we get to see the lead singer from Sugar Ray
grunt, "Rubik's Cubes were cool" repeatedly. When are
folks on TV going to realize that nostalgia based
entertainment is for morons? Oh, wait...
85
ANNE RICE surprised fans by releasing,
get this, another vampire book! You know she was pissed
when goths decided they'd rather play outside and get some sun
than read her latest vampiric pap-smear.
84
NEW $20 BILLS only in America would we spend
$80 Million to promote a new currency that will prevent $5
million in counterfeiting. If they really cared, they'd
make 20s with anti-bacterial coating so you'd have more
confidence using them in strip-clubs.
83
JEWEL sells out her loyal fan base by becoming
a plastic pop diva. At this rate, She'll be making out with Liz Phair
at the Grammy's in no time. Hmm...that also
might take her off this list. Do what you must, Jewel!
82
CRANK YANKERS The only thing worse than a show
about annoying unfunny crank calls is one with puppets in it.
Puppets never make anything better, 'cept maybe midget porn.
81
DVD CASES
The 18 layers of security tape on
new DVDs not only keep people from stealing them, but ever
watching them once you get 'em home!
80
FRASIER This show's been on for 4 years too
long! They should have made the last season with Frasier
in jail. Maybe then his cell mate could tell him what to
do with tossed salad and scrambled eggs.
79
MARTIN SHORT His Jimminy Glick show is like
some even unfunnier Mike Myers. I was trying to remember
when he used to be funny, but don't think he ever was.
78
US PRESS ON THE WAR The shameless promotion
of the Iraq skirmishes was more like coverage of the NBA playoffs
than serious coverage. Nice how we can be so upset that
Iraqis showed off our dead and tortured soldiers on TV, while
we practically give the bloated corpses of Saddam's sons their
own reality show.
77
NASCAR You know the
terrorists could scare a lot of people, and start increasing
the overall IQ of America by attacking NASCAR events.
That way, everyone wins (except that SKOAL revenue would
decrease dramatically).
76
ANNA NICOLE SMITH If I wanted to watch an
overweight lady fart, burp, and ramble incoherently, I'd go
back to my secret peephole I drilled in the Lane Bryant
dressing rooms.
75
CELINE DION Who's the brainiac at Chrysler that thought
showing this skeletal Canadian harpy behind the wheel of their
vehicles would improve sales? Unless they run a
promotion where you can beat her 80 times with a barbed wire
covered 2x4 with each purchase, it's just not gonna work.
74
MONA LISA SMILE I can just see the pitch
meeting for this piece of crap, "Let's take THE DEAD POETS
SOCIETY, put a bunch of women in it, and make it really really
really suck."
73
JAY-Z He's wildly successfu, puts some
funky beats together, and largely stays out of trouble.
OK...I'm just jealous cause he stole Beyonce Knowles from me.
I'll get you Jay-Z!
72
MICHAEL EISNER This guy is
driving the once great Disney into the ground with his
boneheaded decisions. Even Roy Disney took shots at him
on his way out. How the hell do you make a movie like
Pirates of the Caribbean, and not even have the common sense
to make action figures to go with it?
71
WYNONA JUDD Apparently unhappy
with Anna Nicole Smith getting all the overweight drunken
maniac press, Ms. Judd created a new form of birth control
when she posed for
THIS MUGSHOT after a drunk driving arrest.
70
WEST COAST CHOPPERS For some
reason, guys who can barely change their car's wiper blades,
fancy themselves as wanna be motorcycle craftsmen. Neo
Nazis across the world rejoice as the T-shirt logo looks like
an abandoned White Power symbol.
69
I'M LOVIN' IT McDonald's most
pathetic attempt to maintain their urban demographic since the McAfro Meal. Just because those deep fried bags of
grease called McNuggets have "all white meat" in them
now, doesn't
make them stop being deep fried bags of grease.
68
MY BIG FAT GREEK LIFE Hey, you
kind of liked the movie, now suffer through a crappy cliché'
filled half hour of cultural waste. In just one year,
Nia Zardalos has made America hate Greeks in just a third of
the time it took Yahkov Smirnov hate his countrymen.
67
COURTNEY LOVE Why she's allowed
to walk the earth and raise children while good men like
Johnny Cash disappear is proof that the Lord does indeed work
in mysterious ways.
66
SIMON COWELL Listening to this
guy make judgments on music talent is akin to having Ben
Affleck and Matt Damon tell prospective filmmakers how to make
a good movie.
65
SCIONS This new vehicle from
the folks at Toyota can be customized over a hundred different
ways, except for one that doesn't make it look like a stupid
giant shoebox on wheels.
64
BARRY BONDS The debate as to
whether he is a greater player than Babe Ruth is ridiculous.
The fact that the only performance enhancing substances The
Babe ever took before a game was whiskey and pie ends that
argument, pronto.
63
FOX NEWS Sued Al Franken for
making fun of them in his book's title "Lies and the Lying
Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right.",
claiming they own the term "Fair and Balanced."
Next up, their lawsuit against the corpse of Redd Foxx for
trademark infringement.
62
PETE TOWNSHEND Got
busted for looking at kiddie porn, but used the "just doing
research" defense and got off with barely a slap on the wrist.
At this rate, Scott Petersen will be free on the "I was just
doing research on how quick my wife would sink" defense.
61
LIMP BIZKIT Fred Durst tried to
show he's still relevant by hacking out a shit cover of The
Who's "Behind Blue Eyes". His last album was so bad,
people didn't even want to download it for free.
60
SEX IN THE CITY What was once a
funny show has devolved into a whiny bitch fest without a
single redeeming or interesting character. And to think
I only felt sorry for Matthew Broderick just for making that
Inspector Gadget movie.
59
"REMEMBERING LACI" People
die every day in this country, but she's somehow been turned
in to the Princess Diana of America. It's OK to grieve,
but when someone's death produces
THIS TRIBUTE SONG, we've gone too far. This has to
be the creepiest song I've ever heard, and the "We love you"
at the end sounds as if he just finished masturbating.
58
THE OLSEN TWINS With all the
talk about whether or not they'll be in MAXIM or PLAYBOY after
they turn 18, these human chipmunk hybrids will be lucky to be
on the cover of Field and Stream by that time.
57
TV SHOW START AND STOP TIMES
come on guys, enough with the starting a show 3 minutes early
and making it stop 5 minutes late! If I miss the last
part of Little House On The Prairie again because my TIVO shut
off, I'm gonna flip out!
56
SADDAM HUSSEIN Forget
the atrocious crimes against humanity, just watching his
disgusting mouth get swabbed on the TV news was enough to give
me nightmares for life.
55
FLU VACCINATIONS "If you
get just one vaccine this year, make it the flu virus!"
The media fueled hysteria to get the shot or die was
disgusting as "shortages" drove the prices up across the
country. Yeah, heaven forbid you get sick for a few days
and miss work.
54
THE HAUNTED MANSION Though
Pirates of the Caribbean worked to a degree, this trend of
turning Disney rides in to movies has to stop before we see
"Monorail: The Movie."
53
IPODS
These MP3 players from Apple have created a cult of snobbery
among the owners that borders on the nonsensical. I've
seen folks get in to heated debates as to who has the better
player. It's not like they're a riced out Honda Civic,
or something that really gets the chicks.
52
PETER ARNETT
His scolding of US involvement in IRAQ with Saddam's tongue
plated firmly up his ass was journalism at its most shameful.
Pete's now reporting for GRIT magazine.
51
JUSTIN TIMBERLAKE
It's bad enough to see culture deprived white kids acting like
black rappers, but how creatively bankrupt do you need to be
to start acting like Michael Jackson? I suppose if
that's what it takes to get Britney Spears and Cameron Diaz in
bed, then more power to you.
50
DODGE RAM COMMERCIALS
These ads were easily the most annoying of the year. It
sounds like some guy taking a crap grunting out "HIT IT" with
that lame guitar riff droning in the background. By the
way, "Hemi" is Latin for "peckerhead"!
49
FRANCE HATRED
These guys gave us The Statue of Liberty, and we thank them by
renaming their French Fries? As far as I'm concerned,
any country that gave us Brigitte Bardot, Emanuelle Beart, and
Catherine Deneuve gets a free ride for life, even if they also
gave us Gerard Depardieu.
48
JESSICA SIMPSON
Who would have thought it possible to find a blonde that was
more stupid that Anna Nicole Smith?
47
POLYPHONIC RING TONES
If I'm at the grocery store and hear a cell phone ring with
"Hey Ya" one more time, I'm gonna flip out and scream.
The only thing worse than these loud obnoxious cell phone
tunes, are the assholes that walk around screaming in to their
earpieces as if they're the only people in the room. And
while I'm at it, is it really THAT important to bring your
cell phone to the video store and read off every fucking movie
on their shelf to your husband? Just pull the trigger
and bring home your 5 day rental of "Daddy Day Care", Sally!
46
INSANE CLOWN POSSE
Quite possibly the most retarded and creatively bankrupt music
act ever created. And don't get me started on their
fans, called Juggalos, who are so devoid of intelligence, they
make Oakland Raider fans look like a Steven Hawking Clone
Army!
45
THE HULK
It was really neat to see a movie with SHREK
HULK jumping around and beating up tanks. Could they
have tried a bit harder and got a villain a bit more menacing
than...Nick Nolte? What's wrong, was Brian Dennehey busy?
44
ROSIE O'DONNELL
Court testimony in her battle with the thankfully canceled
Rosie magazine revealed she told an associate that people who
lie get cancer. Meanwhile, Rosie tried to rebuild her
tarnished image by announcing plans for a "Family Oriented
All-Lesbian Cruise". Yippeee! 5 days on the high
seas watching old "Kate and Allie" reruns!
43
MISSY ELLIOT
Good lord, she's STILL name dropping Aaliyah on awards
shows. Hats off to the lady for dropping nearly 300
pounds within a year just from "working out". Now if she
could only sue that orthodontist that gave her donkey teeth
implants, she'd be ready to rock.
42
PARIS HILTON
Watching this black eyed green skin zombie eat pickles on that
famous videotape was about as erotic as that Richard
Simmons/Jm. J Bullock sex tape I bought last year (for
research purposes).
41
EXCESSIVE FACIAL PIERCINGS
A can take a nose ring or tongue ring on the right person, but
what's up with these people who have so much jewelry on their
face that they look like they fell into a damn tackle box?
Couple this with the excessive tattooing and it's clear that
we're going to have the ugliest crop of old people in 40 years
that the world has ever seen.
40
THE DEATH OF JOHN RITTER
Apparently God needs to clean the filter on his fax machine,
cause I clearly requested that he do something about Joyce
DeWitt.
39
DAVID BLAINE
Since when is sitting in a box for a month magic, anyway?
I think it's time for a Pay Per View featuring Penn and Teller
vs. Blaine with chainsaws.
38
GRAY DAVIS
Perhaps the most annoying politician in recent history.
Oblivious to the sinking ship state his governorship was
facing in California, he seemed to have no idea that Arnold
could beat him. And way to impress the largely immigrant
population of our state by making fun of Arnold's accent and
saying, "If you can't pronounce 'California', you shouldn't be
allowed to be Governor." That's only slightly better
than his original "I hate Mexicans" campaign slogan.
37
THE MTV VIDEO MUSIC AWARDS
Somehow Johnny Cash, nominated for 13 different awards for his
wonderful video "Hurt" loses all to...JUSTIN TIMBERLAKE?
All on the even before he dies. Way to honor a legend
there, MTV! Of course, the last time they actually
played a video, I was still having fantasies about a 3 way
with Martha Quinn and Nina Blackwood, so who the hell are they
to honor the industry, anyway?
36
KELIS
Her "Milkshake" song easily gets the worst song of the year
honors. The video, which is like some sort of ghetto
bukkake video set in a greasy spoon diner was nice to look at
with the sound turned off, at least. She's set grammar
back 2 years with her pronoun challenged lyrics, however.
35
THE DAILY STAR UK tabloid runs a story on The World's
Worst Sex Scenes, just a month after we ran it. Oh yeah,
and they used 3 of the exact quotes I wrote. Oh yeah,
and they forgot to NOT include our joke inclusion of
Deliverance. Oh yeah...and the news editor Keiran
Saunders told me you can't copyright anything on the internet.
But I'm not bitter...
34
JIMMY FALLON
With all the movies based on SNL characters, Jimmy's bound to
get one soon called "Adventures of The Guy Who Can't Go A
Whole Skit Without Laughing Like a Dumbass and Screwing It
Up!"
33
BENNIFER
Seeing this couple everywhere from their shitty movie, to the
nonstop tabloid coverage of the off and on again relationship
was the media equivalent of watching paint dry.
32
HOWARD DEAN
Something tells me if Dean were to get elected, it'd be just
like having that mean principal from The Breakfast Club as our
President. You know you suck when Al Sharpton makes you
look bad in a debate.
31
AOL
It's official, there's now more AOL CDs on this earth than
there are stars in the sky.
30
THE MATRIX SEQUELS Well, the good thing about parts 2 and
3 coming out together was that it didn't prolong the agony.
Watching Keanu and Otis in bed was difficult for most to see,
as the lookalike duo made it hard to tell who's ass to get
excited about.
29
RETROCRUSH POPUP ADS I'll put this here just to save you
the trouble!
28
CHICAGO CUBS FANS
The blame poor Steve Batman for screwing up their team's
chances of going to The World Series, but conveniently ignore
the fact that their team choked worse than Mama Cass.
27
MICHAEL MOORE
Tried to use his Oscar victory to deliver an anti-Bush rant,
and ended up coming across like a total idiot. Look for
his next documentary about how hard it is to find size 58
underwear next year to stir up even more controversy.
26
EMAIL SPAM
Short of deleting every message in my inbox, I can't think of
any way I can completely eliminate spam completely. I
remember the days when getting too much stuff from Publisher's
Clearing House was considered to be annoying. Ed
McMahon...why has thou forsaken me?
25
THE CAT IN THE HAT
MOVIE Dr. Seuss's widow started whoring out his estate
before the great author's body was even cold. This Mike
Myers fiasco was one of the year's worst movies. Look
for "One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish: The Movie" to be
released at this rate (Though rumors that Michael Jackson has
bought the rights to "Hop on Pop" are completely unfounded).
24
DAVID GEST
Something's just not right about this guy. No, I'm not
talking about the fact that he's such a puss he claims Liza
Minelli beat him up, but his crazy rubbery complexion makes
you think that at any moment, he's going to rip off a mask and
show all that he's really from The Forbidden Zone.
23
TRADING SPACES
All the bad decorating we make fun of here on retroCRUSH comes
to full swing on this show. I just don't get the appeal
of this show where pretentious interior decorators staple
thrift store crap to walls and pass it off as cutting edge.
And how pathetic are you to know enough about this show to buy
The Trading Spaces Trivia Book?
22
TIGERS
After eating Roy Horn's head, and attacking that guy in New
York who kept one in his apartment, clearly these animals are
plotting against all mankind. It's only a matter of time
before Tony The Tiger goes ape shit and chews Snap, Crackle,
and Pop to bits.
21
DENNIS MILLER
What the hell happened to good ol' Dennis Miller? One of
the smartest, coolest comedians of them all has turned in to
the official fluffer for the Republican party. Even the
seven people that will watch his new show on CNBC think he's a
sellout.
20
PROFESSIONAL BOXING
How bad is it when Wrestlemania has more integrity than a
boxing Pay Per View. With new allegations of fight
fixing surfacing even as we publish this, it's a sad day for
the once great sport, indeed. No wonder George Foreman
has put all of his energy into grills.
19
ARIANA HUFFINGTON
Who told this cackling Greek banshee that anyone cared what
she had to say? The California Governor's race was a
circus enough without this clown wasting everyone's time in
the debates. She has single-handedly set independent
candidates back 100 years.
18
JOE MILLIONAIRE
Easily the dumbest guy to ever appear on television (and that
even counts folks on the WB network). And thumbs down
for Fox for yanking the entire country, by promising his "big
decision", and just filling the entire episode with flashbacks
and delaying it for a week.
17
PETE ROSE
I think the cork in Sammy Sosa's bat deserves to be in The
Baseball Hall of Fame before Pete does. His timing to
finally come clean, with a $25 book that debuted on the top of
the bestseller list was conspicuous at best. Oh yeah,
and his haircut sucks.
16
OSAMA BIN LADEN
Whoever's directing this guy's videos has to go. That
whole talking in a cave or on a rocky mountainside
schtick is so 2001.
15
ASHTON KUTCHER
Who wouldn't pay $50 just to watch Bruce Willis beat the shit
out of this guy?
14
METROSEXUALITY
It's kind of like being gay, only without the sex part.
Sounds like my friend Randy's stint in high school! Look
for BUTCHUALITY for women that want to get in touch with the
flannel lesbian side to be the craze of 2004, and NECROALITY,
for goth kids that want the fashion of necrophilia without the
trouble of actually fucking dead people.
13
GERALDO RIVERA
He draws a map in the sand, on live TV, showing where the
troops he's staying with are. Let me repeat that
again...HE DRAWS A MAP, IN THE SAND,
ON LIVE TV, SHOWING WHERE THE TROOPS HE'S STAYING WITH ARE!!!
Looks like it's another trip to Al Capone's Vault for Gerry!
12
GOOD CHARLOTTE
Neither good, or Charlotte. Annoying to look at,
annoying to listen to, this shit-laced hybrid of The Cure,
Quiet Riot, and Air Supply make being a goth even more
ridiculous than it already is. Hats off to Chris Rock
for dissing them after their performance on the MTV Video
Music Awards with, "Good Charlotte? Nah...more like
Mediocre Green Day!"
11
MICHAEL SAVAGE
Watching him unravel on his live TV show by calling a crank
caller a "sodomite" and telling him to "get AIDS and die!" was
one of the high points of the year for me. He went on to
blame the liberal media for his ouster.
10
CLAY AIKEN
It's as if science took Art Garfunkel and made him even
more sanitary. Please, Clay, for the love of God, eat a
cookie!
9
CHRISTINA AGUILERA
She is beautiful, no matter what you say! Y'know,
somewhere under that 90 pound spackling of Revlon products
that time forgot, that may be true, but I can't see it.
It's sad that of all the young pop divas, she actually has the
best voice, yet she's the worst offender for using sex above
substance.
8
BRITNEY SPEARS
Who would have thought the "Hit Me Baby One More Time" era of
her music would be considered good, in comparison? She's
alienated her younger fans by becoming too slutty, and she
sucks too much for adults to like her, making 13 year old boys
the only ones even interested in her. Thank god for the
mute button on the remote control.
7
MADONNA
After failed movies, fake British accents, lame GAP
commercials with Missy Elliot, and crappy children's books,
Madonna had to resort to the time tested Lesbian Britney Kiss
to get attention. Watch Madonna make out with the corpse
of Aaliyah at this year's awards to keep the shock value
going.
6
SPINNING HUBCAPS
Just when you thought stickers of Calvin peeing on Ford logos
was the stupidest thing you could put on a car...along come
these idiotic pleas for attention. See...when you stop
your car, these hubcaps keep spinning! It makes people
next to you say, "Holy shit...he's stopped, but his wheels
keep spinning...what gives?" Actually, they only say
that once, each additional time they see it, they say,
"Hey...that guy has no dick!"
5
KOBE BRYANT
From his lame confessional press conference, to the sleazy
antics of his lawyers, Kobe Bryant has become one of the most
despicable sports figures in the world. Nutella and
McDonald's dropped him as a spokesperson, but of course, the
NBA has done little else but look the other way. Oh
yeah, GO KINGS!
4
DR. PHIL
He wrote a book on how to lose weight? HE WROTE A BOOK
ON HOW TO LOSE WEIGHT! HE WROTE A BOOK ON HOW TO LOSE
WEIGHT! I'm looking forward to his hair care products
that are coming out later this year.
3
THE RIAA
Perhaps no group in history damaged their appeal to the masses
than the Record Industry Association of America. After
suing old ladies and dead men to stem the tide of illegal song
trading, they failed to realize the root cause of the problem.
People don't want to pay $18 for crappy CDs with one good song
on them!
2
RUSH LIMBAUGH
I'll forgive the guy for his pill problems, hell who doesn't
have their maid buy illegal pain killers for them? But
his comments on ESPN about Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb
deserved far more of a backlash than they got. Funny how
a guy who thinks the liberal media controls everything gets
such a nice break from them and doesn't lose his talk show.
1
MICHAEL JACKSON
His annoyingness achieved heights one would never dream of.
From dangling his baby off a balcony, to scaring reporters
with his weird new whisker look, to claiming Sony was using
racism to discriminate against him, to his final crash and
burn with new child molestation charges, he's worn out his
welcome on the planet. How bad is it when you have to
get Uri Geller to speak up for you in the press? Hell,
if a guy who can bend spoons with his mind thinks he's
innocent, maybe he is!
By the way...despite appearances I
liked an awful lot about 2003 as well. I loved the new Harry
Potter book, Return of the King, Nelly Furtado's new album, and
Survivor: Panama quite a bit.
(c) 2004, Robert Berry and retroCRUSH.com.
This copyright supercedes any future reprinting by UK Tabloids
that rip this article off and reprint it after this date.
retroRANDY's Journal o' Fun
Hey! You can plug your web site or product on retroCRUSH for super cheap! CLICK HERE for details!
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I don't know where Angie
Schultz has been hiding, or how long her blog has been around (which
of course I could learn with a click on the archives link, but hey, it's
nearly 3 a.m. and I'm exhausted), but she is effing excellent. There are
so many good posts I'm not even going to quote one. Go read them. I barely
even mind that she's using reverse type (although of course I'll start
to bitch about that at a later date).
She's funny as all get out. She has an anecdote
about the word moiety. Seriously. (But it's a really funny one.)
Spread the word on this one folks, she's a winner. permalink
The Bear facts on building a
nuclear bomb
NZ Bear explains
how much uranium Iraq would need for a nuclear weapon, and whether or
not the 33 lbs. (about 15 kilograms) recovered by the Turks (thank you,
Turkey!) would be enough for Saddam to make an American (or Israeli) city
glow.
His conclusion: Yeah.
Thanks, Bear. I'll sleep better tonight. No, not really. I'm wondering:
Where is he going to aim it? Israel or the U.S.? Damn, we'd better take
care of this. Faster, please. permalink
What should the West do about this problem? Well, we
could start by acknowledging it. Fact: Almost all Denmark's rape victims
are ethnic Danish girls or women. Fact: An ethnic Danish girl is far
more likely to be raped by a Muslim than an ethnic Dane. Fact: Immigration
means that more Danish women get raped. You can argue about the way
to change these stubborn facts -- curtail immigration vs increase outreach,
cut welfare vs educate immigrant parents -- as the People's Party and
the Muslim Youth League are doing. These are tenable positions in the
debate. But, when you insist someone's a "hatemonger" even
for mentioning these awkward demographic trends, you're just trying
to shut down the debate:
"56% of immigrant m..."
Hatemonger!
"47% of serious cr..."
HATEMONGER!!
"68% of reported..."
H-A-T-E-M-O-N-G-E-R!!!
So I'm grateful to Mr. Tam. He specifically disputed
one fact and he called me a hatemonger. That seems fair enough. Dispute
two specific facts and you can take me to the Human Rights Commission.
Dispute three specific facts and we'll play your karaoke recording on
the National Post Web site:
"Hatemonger, hatemonger,
Mong me some hate..."
But just plain old unsupported cries of "hatemonger"?
Save it for your next Concordia riot.
(And if anyone has his email address, someone send him along my proposal,
will you?) permalink
The left hates it when conservatives equate affirmative
action with discrimination in the bad old days. But consider Maryland
gubernatorial candidate Kathleen Kennedy Townsend’s ringing defense
of, apparently, both in last night’s debate: “Well, let me
tell you, slavery was based on race. Lynching was based on race. Discrimination
is based on race. Jim Crow was based on race. And affirmative action
should be based on race.”
Ah, no. I see it as a ringing endorsement of why affirmative action should
be race-based (frankly, it can be no other way). The left hates it when
the right deliberately misconstrues what was said and turns it into an
insult, when it wasn't. Townsend was in no way defending the racism of
old, but that doesn't stop Roger Clegg from accusing her of it.
All wars are preemptive. Wars cost lives and money,
and can only be justified to preempt the presumably worse damage of
not going to war. One of the lessons of the 20th century is that a little
more preemption would have saved a good deal of cure. How much better
off might we be had the Allies stamped out the Russian Bolsheviks in
1918 instead of sending in an inadequate force with instructions to
twiddle their thumbs? Or if we had listened to Patton and marched on
Moscow in 1945? Wouldn't it have been nice to wipe out Al-Qaeda before
9/11?
Another New Yorker, hey? Hm. I'm getting more and more willing to organize
and/or attend a NJ-area blogger get-together. I'm going to be back in
NJ for Thanksgiving, from Wednesday to Saturday (have to come back home
Saturday to teach the kids on Sunday). I'll think about it. The only thing
I know for sure is that I should be hooking up with former fiancé
Bruce Hill (War Now! is gone, but his brother and others at Silent
Running take up the torch) around that time, as he'll be in the States
for a visit. Hm. Bill,
you don't think he's looking to win me back, do you? This could get interesting.
Speaking of Bill, he's got a link
to a pretty funny invention. I'd have to say it's a really kick-ass invention,
in fact. (I did have to say it. I told Bill I would.)
Steven Leed has
a response to Tom Waits' letter praising John Densmore's refusal to "sell
out" the Doors to corporate advertising. (You remember—I wrote
about it yesterday.) Another New Jerseyan, but he's not proud of it. Notice
that I am linking to him anyway. And will likely link to him again in
the future. Perhaps I can give him lessons on being proud of having been
born in New Jersey. Reason number one: It's one of the original 13 colonies.
New Jersey helped make the United States what it is today. It doesn't
matter if your ancestors were in Europe at the time, you live there
now, and get to bask in the reflected glory. Reason number two: It isn't
Delaware.
More later.
Update: Steve says he's not a native New Jerseyan. Oooohhhhh.
That explains it. Hey, Susanna!
Sounds to me like you and he have a few things in common. Y'all should
get together. Judging by something he said about his neighborhood, I have
a hunch you don't live too far apart.
I feel like I need to balance out all the New York-New Jersey links with
a link from another region. So I went over to Damian Penny's and cycled
between pride
and outrage,
as I always do. Damian, I know it's not your fault, but you can't know
how many times I've wanted to throw things through the monitor because
of what I read on your site. I think I'll stop now and go have brunch.
permalink
Laurence
Simon has (I think) offered me the Vice Presidential spot on his all-blogger
ticket for 2004. I think he's wise to choose me. His primary qualification
for VP is that he needs to have one that people won't want to have as
President, so he won't get shot. Well, Lair, I think you're right. Yes,
we're looking at an all-Jew ticket, but hey, nobody said it was going
to be easy to begin with. And here's why no one will shoot you: This country
will not stomach a female President. They don't want one, not now,
anyway. Oh, they talk a good talk—Libby Dole, Condi Rice, Diane Feinstein,
even the [shudder] prospect of President Hillary. Well, add my Jewishness
to the mix, and then my Northeastern liberal roots, and you've got a three-strike
Vice Presidential candidate. They'd rather shoot me than you, and that's
what a President needs the most in a Vice President. Well, that and the
ability to stop you from leaping on your opponents with a claw hammer
in each hand.
So if that was an offer, I accept. (It pays better than web development,
anyhow.)
On to the discussion of the Spike file: I used to write my essays in
Word and cut-and-paste, but then I got the DW upgrade and the better editor.
I find the differences in our writing styles fascinating. The spiked items
that I throw away are generally items that I realized were too narrow
in scope to begin with (do my readers really care about another
blogwar with someone who's pissing me off?) or just plain too dumb to
ever be able to work properly (yeah, your readers really give a shit what
your favorite breakfast is). Actually, one of my readers once challenged
me to make a post that made navel
lint seem interesting, and I did, so maybe I'll get back to that breakfast
thing someday. But the blogwars—been there, done that, bored now.
The difference in anger levels of our posts seems apparent to me, though
perhaps on some of my posts, not apparent to others. There are times (see
below) when I post from that level, and there are times when my anger
sits and simmers and comes to a slow boil. That's when I write my best
essays. In my opinion, if you can submerge your anger and turn it into
a more
subtle vitriol, it can be a far more memorable piece than a screaming
fit. Which is not to say I think Lair's style is wrong. It's just different.
But then, when Lair says "Yeah, I've been tempted to regret some
of the things I post. Shucky darn, I'm all out of shits to give,"
it pretty much delineates our main difference. There are some issues on
which I agree with him—for instance, anti-Semites can go fuck off,
I am done with pretending I care what they think, or whether they live
or die—but for the most part, I still have a bunch of shits to give.
Which will come in handy when I'm trying to muster up the votes in Congress
that Lair needs to pass his programs. Good cop, bad cop. That will be
us. Nobody needs to know how very much alike we really are. permalink
The New York Times needs to be
on the Campus Watch list
There's an article
in today's New York Times about the new Daniel Pipes-sponsored site, Campus
Watch. The article brings up shades of McCarthy (because of course,
when you try to point out the ills of the speech of the left it is always
censorship and McCarthyism, but if it's the ills of the right, it's free
speech, and this, mind you, is coming from a self-proclaimed liberal).
It cites various professors who, as a protest move, are boldly asking
Pipes to include them in his list of professors to be watched. Oh. How
original. How daring. How bold. Yeah, whatever.
But after quoting various academics, the Times concludes with this paragraph:
The universities on the Campus Watch site include Harvard,
Columbia, Stanford, New York University and Berkeley, and others less
prominent, where Middle Eastern tensions have erupted, including Concordia
College in Montreal, where a recent fracas forced the cancellation
of a speech by former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel.
Emphasis, as always, is mine. Let's quote from an
eyewitness account about that little "fracas," shall we?
The scene as we exited was disgusting. Benches were
overturned, papers and garbage streaked across the hallways, and broken
windows. We were shoved outside directly into a HUGE Palestinian riot,
where some of our people were apparently attacked. The cops did nothing.
We stood on one side of the barrier, while they stood on the other,
and we faced off. On our side, we sang and danced and celebrated being
free and Jewish. On their side, they threw bottles at people's heads,
screamed hatred, and tried to break the barriers down to hurt us. They
started tossing pennies and coins at us - one of the oldest ways to
taunt Jews by saying we're all 'money-grubbing'. While we sang Hatikvah
arm in arm, they spat at us. Finally we decided to disperse and leave
them to their hatred.
Pro-Palestinian demonstrators, some of them holding
Palestinian flags and wearing keffiyeh, locked arms to block an entrance
to the university, roughing up some people trying to attend the speech.
Montreal Rabbi Howard Joseph and his wife, Norma, a
Concordia religion professor, were kicked and punched.
"The women aimed their punches at my breasts,"
Prof. Joseph said.
[...] Meanwhile, hundreds of protesters managed to
penetrate the building through a side entrance and occupied the front
vestibule -- only a few metres from the auditorium where 500 mostly
Jewish spectators had gathered to hear the speech.
Demonstrators outside smashed a large plate-glass window
in the vestibule and began hurling objects at police inside, prompting
officers to fire back with pepper spray.
The acrid gas began to fill the vestibule. As chaos
began to take hold, police pushed back the protesters inside. In response,
several hurled wooden furniture and metal chairs at the officers from
an upper mezzanine.
Yeah. That was some little fracas.
Those damned Jews, getting in the way of the Palestinians fists and feet.
Way to go, Times. Way to keep those home biases burning. Way to make sure
I never buy another issue of your newspaper. permalink
Come on Densmore, light my fire
Via Instapundit: John Densmore
wrote an article
on why he'll never "sell out," that is, why you'll never hear
a Doors song touting cars or sneakers or anything else on commercials.
And near the end of the article, he wrote this:
Actually, it was John and Yoko who inspired me to start
a 10 percent tithe, way back in the early '80s. In the Playboy interview,
John mentioned that they were doing the old tradition, and it stuck
in my mind. If everybody gave 10 percent, this world might recapture
a bit of balance. According to my calculations, as one gets up into
the multi category, you up the ante. Last year I nervously committed
to 15 percent, and that old feeling rose again: the greed gene. When
you get to multi-multi, you should give away half every year. Excuse
me, Mr. Gates, but the concept of billionaire is obscene. I know you
give a lot away, and it's easy for me to mouth off, but I do know something
about it. During the Oliver Stone film on our band, the record royalties
tripled, and as I wrote those 10 percent checks, my hand was shaking.
Why? It only meant that I was making much more for myself. It was the
hand of greed. I am reminded of the sound of greed, trying to talk me
into not vetoing a Doors song for a cigarette ad in Japan.
But somewhere else in the article, he wrote this:
Why did Jim have to say we were "erotic politicians"?
If I had been the drummer for the Grassroots, it probably wouldn't have
cut me to the core when I heard John Lennon's "Revolution"
selling tennis shoes...and Nikes, to boot! That song was the soundtrack
to part of my youth, when the streets were filled with passionate citizens
expressing their First Amendment right to free speech. Hey...the streets
are filled again! Or were, before 9/11. And they're protesting what
I'm trying to wax on and on about here. Corporate greed! Maybe I should
stick to music. I guess that's why I hit the streets with Bonnie Raitt
during the 1996 Democratic National Convention. We serenaded the troops.
Bob Hope did it during World War II, only our troops are those dressed
in baggy Bermuda shorts, sporting dreadlocks. Some have the shaved Army
look, but they're always ready to fight against the Orwellian nightmare.
A woman activist friend of mine said that with the networking of the
Net, what's bubbling under this brave new world will make the '60s unrest
look like peanuts. I don't want "Anarchy, Now," a worn-out
hippie phrase, but I would like to see a middle class again in this
country.
I wasn't aware that America had been reduced to two classes. Huh. So,
if there's no middle class, why are the politicians fighting over the
nonexistent middle class taxes, or the nonexistent middle class vote?
And where does he think the anti-globo protesters come from, the slums
of Ethiopia? Oh, what do I know, I'm just a hopeless proletariat who doesn't
care if rock artists sell their songs to greedy corporations. (Yes, I'll
take three of those Jags, please, because Sting's song is really cool.
Nice to see you think so highly of the prole's intellectual capabilities,
John.)
Hey, we Jews know what your woman activist friend is talking about. We've
seen them in action
in Washington
and San Francisco. We'll probably
see them again this weekend. I don't think it was what you meant, John,
but typically, the anti-Semitism of the left gets ignored while you're
all pursuing the higher matters. Like ageing rock artists selling their
songs to corporations for use in commercials.
And regarding those higher matters: A self-proclaimed multimillionaire
writes an article on how cool and steadfast he is for not selling out.
I, a member of the (nonexistent) middle class, who has lived on an income
in the five figures her entire life, salute you. I don't see how
you've resisted lo, these many years. It must be so hard, especially
when those annoying corporations keep sending you letters offering
you gazillions of dollars for one little song. Everyone knows the difference
between a multi-millionaire and a multi-multi-millionaire is only another
group of seven figures. So cheers for John Densmore, sitting in his mansion,
and resisting the pull of the multiple millions being dangled in front
of him.
Rock on, dude. And thank you for reminding me that I hate the Doors.
All that posing must have gotten to me in my youth.
Lord spare us from celebrities who think they have a mission in life.
I'll take the crassness of Ozzy, thank you very much. At least he's not
a poseur. permalink
One of those nights: Spike it.
Or maybe one of those days. Everything I've written this evening has
been put in the spike file. The promised post on the international Zionist
conspiracy is sitting and ageing for a bit; I'm not quite sure it's done
yet. I may need to run it past a few of my friends for some feedback.
(And for those of you who have discovered that I put drafts out there
for feedback and what the name of the file is, rest assured that I will
no longer be using that file name. Sneaky little buggers, aren't you?
Shame my web stats rat you out.)
I've been asked to write more Cattales.
I'm trying, I'm trying. I actually want to write a Dogtales, but I need
to get a picture of Heidi with the three dogs trailing after her as she
tries to move around the house doing simple things like putting in a load
of laundry. It's absolutely hilarious to watch the parade of paws trailing
behind her.
I am deliberately staying away from the latest outrages from the Middle
East and from campuses across North America, because my blood pressure
can't take it right now.
There are a few emails I need to catch up on, and a few websites to link.
But I waited until late to write this, and I'm too tired to even check
my mailbox. Although there is the letter I received during the
Buffy Blogburst from the guy who decided that was the day to tell me how
wrong I am on the Middle East situation. Yeah, that was relevant to what
I was doing that day. Way to get me to listen to an argument—read
less than a week's worth of posts and then tell me how wrong I am. That's
second only to telling me that I'm a crummy writer or a stupid thinker,
and by the way, would I link to this post that proves it?
So how many other bloggers out there have a spike file? Mine is called
"temp" and it currently has more than two dozen posts that have
yet to see the light of day. (No, it is not online. It is on my hard drive.)
If you don't have one, then you need to create one. Here's a free tip
toward good blogging: You need to learn how to tell when an essay is working
or not working, and if it's not working, put it aside and come back to
it later. Or get someone else to give you feedback on it. (Not me, unless
you and I already have a relationship like that.) Or dump it for good.
It's one of the secrets to my success. I write, I edit, I re-edit. I put
a piece aside, and come back to it a day or a week or three months later.
If it works, it gets posted. If it doesn't, it stays hidden or, sometimes,
I recognize a useless idea and throw it away completely. The spike file
is where my most emotional rants wind up, and often stay. Free tip number
two: Don't post something that you wrote in extreme anger. Give yourself
time to breathe and re-read it. You publish fewer apologies and retractions
that way. (I have yet to get caught reacting to a news article that turned
out to be false, or based on false information, because I won't jump on
the bandwagon of outrage until I'm sure an event is true. I hate corrections.
Part of that perfectionist, obsessive-compulsive thing.)
So the post about being in the blogroll ghetto will have to wait, as
will the ones on faith, and moral exhaustion, my favorite breakfast, and
why I don't hate journalists. But maybe they'll come out into the light
someday when I can't think of a thing to write. Or when they demand my
attention again. permalink
The US government’s decision to have all Saudi,
Pakistani and Yemeni male visitors to the US aged 16-45 fingerprinted
at ports of entry from Oct. 1, caught many Saudis by surprise, and is
a rather shortsighted and idiotarian reaction to finding ways
of stopping terrorists from entering the US.
Charles, they're definitely reading your website. Take a bow. You're
casting quite a long shadow. permalink
Gary's got the touch this week
A quick visit to Gary Farber's
place brought me too many links to pass along. But of course, I will.
What bugs me in a more personal way are all the members
of the science fiction community who morally compromise with these creeps
via Scientology's outreach propaganda arm, Bridge Publications, and
sell their souls for some money and trinkets from Bridge in exchange
for promoting "Writers of the Future," or teaching in the
program (praise of L. Ron Hubbard required), or in the case of "Writers
of the Future" hopefuls, in exchange for a (they hope) career boost.
I don't see it as even a harmless joke, and I'm greatly saddened when
I see people I respect colloborating with these evil people (by which
I mean the people who run Scientology; most followers are just innocent
dupes, of course).
I like Gary's
take on John Dean's (he's not dead?) call for the repeal
of the 17th Amendment. (What, the peons are too stupid to choose our
own representatives now?) Okay. So a former member of the Nixon Administration
(the ones responsible for Watergate and attempting to subvert the United
States Constitution) thinks we should take the power to elect senators
out of the people's hands and into the hands of the legislature. Hey,
I'm sold, how about you?
And how effing stupid is Dean? Can you imagine how easy the opposition
is going to have it? The text of one simple commercial, read by a man
with a deep, baritone voice: The politicians and special-interest
groups who want to repeal the 17th Amendment don't think the people should
have the right to vote for their own senators. They think only politicians
should choose other politicians. If you don't want your right to vote
taken away for good, vote no on repealing the 17th Amendment.
(And I didn't even have to think to make that up.)
Of course, the killer
quote I found over at Gary's was a news report on Dick Armey stating
why American Jews are divided between liberals and conservatives. His
reasoning? Only
conservatives think. Wow. This unthinking liberal has just decided
that she probably won't break her umpteen-year tradition of not voting
for conservatives—or Republicans. I mean, it's all so complicated.
How can I possibly begin to muster the thought processes that will cause
me to push down the levers on Row B instead of Row A? Perhaps I should
just keep listening to Julie Brown's "Cause
I'm a blond" and not think about it some more.
Gary, as for the Arab News columnist
writing in favor of Saddam
Hussein's overthrow, I find it completely unremarkable. The Arab News
is an organ of the Saudi government. It prints what they want us to hear.
The Saudis have decided to stop pissing into the wind and join the anti-Saddam
corps. Ergo, their English-language state newspaper prints such articles.
Yawn. permalink
Medical Volunteers Study Tour 20-27 October
2002
Organizers: The Jewish Agency for Israel and The IDF Medical Corps
Goal: In the wave of the ongoing terrorist attacks
against Israeli civilians and soldiers, and of the growing tension in
the Middle-East, numerous medical professionals in North America and
In Europe have expressed their will to volunteer and help the State
of Israel and the IDF medical corps if such a need occurs. In answer
to this, and among other actions, The Jewish Agency for Israel, together
with the IDF Medical Corps have organized a study tour for medical professionals
in Israel. This tour will allow medical personnel to visit Israel, thereby
expressing solidarity with the country and the people, while learning
about the Israeli medical system and the medical services of the Israeli
armed forces. There will be a special focus on how the Israeli medical
system, both civilian and military, deals with the current security
situation, and with situation of national emergency. The trip will foster
networking amongst Israeli and Diaspora medical professionals, and will
encourage the sharing of knowledge and resources in the field.
Program Dates: The trip will take place on October
20-27
- The program is open for all licensed doctors and
their spouses, including APF members.
- The program is also open for medical students who have completed at
least 4 years in medical school
- The program includes overnights in Jerusalem, at a 3 star hotel, and
shabbat in a 4 star hotel in Tel Aviv. The hotel stay in on the HB (Half
Board) basis.
- The cost to participants is $350 plus airfare
- Participants are requested to pay for the program upon arrival in
Israel, in cash or travelers cheques
- Participants must come with their own health insurance, to cover the
entire stay in Israel
If you wish to register please write to Taliya@jazo.org.il
and to: Eitan Peer in N.Y- eitanp@jazo.org.il
It doesn't say you have to be Jewish. Anyone who fulfills the above requirements
and wants to experience life in Israel for a week, as well as advance
your medical knowledge (here's praying there will be no terrorist attacks
while you're there), email the above address. permalink
It seems Buffy is hugely popular; the blogburst received an enormous
amount of referrals (half of them from Instapundit, what with the hang-time
of being the lead article for some four hours including lunchtime yesterday).
But we knew that Buffy is popular. And the season premiere rocked. My
jaw simply dropped at the last scene, plus, Joss Whedon scared the hell
out of me throughout most of the show. I haven't been that creeped out
since "Hush."
I have a busy day scheduled and may not get to much blogging until later.
(Ooh! West Wing premiere tonight. Much later.) But I have a post
that details the international Zionist conspiracies that rule the world.
Well, except that if you don't hear from me later, or the post doesn't
go up, or, well, if my computer suddenly crashes and I lose all the data
in the hard drive or if my ISP goes down today, you'll know why. I probably
shouldn't have mentioned it at all until I posted the information; now
they're going to be after me. Hey. I didn't get my migraine yesterday
until after I had my morning orange juice. Perhaps I should have
it tested.
Okay, would someone please tell me who is the clown who put me on the
Nigerian scam spam mailing list? They just keep coming and coming. Today's
crop: One by (I'm not making this up) " harrison nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn
abed." Yes, there really are all those "n's" in his name,
and I'm sad to inform you that his email address is harri2002@ilovejesus.net.
(Take it away, spambots!) If Jesus loves me, why is he allowing harrison
nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn abed to spam me? It's a very confusing message.
Shapiro
Morris has changed his name. Now it's Dr. Thomas Menakala who sent
me a letter about Girl who operates computer getting my name and trying
to give me my share of the $152,000,000.00 USD. See? Even the Nigerian
spam artists are anti-Semites. Or maybe they're just plain ignorant. Listen,
Harisson nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn (how do you pronounce that, anyway? N?
or nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn? Perhaps only nnn?) uh, abed. If you change
Shapiro Morris to Dr. Shapiro Morris, you'll definitely
get more suckers sending you their bank account numbers. People trust
Jewish doctors with their lives.
I've actually been deleting the rest of my Nigerian spam. Call me crazy.
(And yeah, I read all about the secretary who cost her job $2 million
USD. She's not stupid. She didn't lose her money, did she? Okay,
so she's going to jail for a few years. It still wasn't her money.) A
reader forwarded me another $152,000,000.000 USD letter signed by a Mr,
Walter Orah , (the commas are his, not mine). Obviously the Girl who operates
computer has learned her Microsoft Word mail merge, but not very well.
Perhaps we should make a game of trying to guess the next official-sounding
name to come down the pike. Do you think they have the balls enough to
use Kofi Annan's name? I'd send him my bank account.
Hm. I do believe I have rambled long enough. Enjoy the day, and try not
to send your bank account numbers to strangers in email. Send them to
me instead. permalink
Although the Instalanche is
getting the word out, there are people who rely on updates from Weblogs.com,
and I'm pretty sure that Dave's program won't accept a changed post as
an update. So here's the filler: More Buffy blogs below, a few more to
come. Plus, I got the chance to read them all (say goodbye, migraine iris)
and excerpt a few things. Still a few more to come, including a cartoon
from Amptoons, so stay tuned (ooh, that was as much fun to read as it
is to say). permalink
This bodes ill
I get migraines, occasionally. They generally include an iris across
my vision, which makes it nearly impossible to do anything at all while
I have the migraine.
One started ten minutes ago. I have all but one or two of the Buffy Blogburst
URLs, so I'm heading back to bed for a while and will pick up on it later.
Meantime, if you folks want to email any interested parties, feel free
to do so. This is the first Blogburst that isn't concerned with violence,
bigotry, death, destruction, and—oh, wait. Yes it is. Fictional,
but yeah. My bad. permalink
The Buffy Blogburst Index, updated
The following is the index of a blogburst, a simultaneous, cross-linked
posting of many blogs on a single theme. This blogburst concerns Buffy
the Vampire Slayer and its spinoff series, Angel.
Here's what we have as of 10:45 p.m. Any more, or can I go to bed now?
Peter
David has a quick'n'dirty review of tonight's episode. (Yeah, the
cameos of the last two minutes were absolutely jaw-dropping, but yes,
it was great to see them all. And any comics fan that did not get
the "Miss Harkness" joke needs to go back and read some 70s-era
Fantastic Four.)
Like everyone else, I've tried to guess what Joss
would do next, after some twist or intense point of climax. (Joss as
creator and auteur and embodiment of the show's sentience; that's how
I think of it, that's how a lot of us talk about it, and though it's
not fair to all the other people who make the show, it's the easiest
way to discuss it.) But as the series has developed, I've learned to
trust him. He won't do what I would have done, or what I think he should,
or what I want him to, but even when he drops the ball I'm gratified
by the playing fields he's chosen and the teams he's assembled and the
plays he's run. And I like to let him lead me through the game, divulging
information and springing shocks and twists on me at his chosen pace,
so that I'm as shocked and amazed as I can possibly be while I'm watching,
and so that I can come to realizations when he wants me to.
"In your world, the lines are clearer," I
conclude. "You disagree; you debate, you argue at times. But only
for a few minutes. And then the path is clear; difficult, I know; horribly
so at times. But you know what must be done, and nobody argues that
the demon who just murdered half the town should be allowed to walk
free because he grew up in a poor, oppressed dimension."
Amptoon's piece
is up, complete with multiple caricatures of Willow (I should send
him a photo for a caricature).
In some ways, Buffy cast members are ideal for this.
I know their faces well, which is necessary for me to judge if a likeness
has that feeling of "oh, her!" But I haven't seen many cartoons
of Buffy characters. This is important, because most political cartoonists,
when they draw (say) George Bush, aren't really drawing Bush - they're
drawing a sort of unspoken cartoonist's consensus of what cartoons of
Bush look like. And we recognize Bush, not because the cartoons have
any particular resemblance to Bush, but because they look like other
cartoons of Bush we've seen.
Not here—you have to go to his site for the graphics.
Silent
Running: Tom Paine sees a parallel in Willow's descent into darkness
and the Arab-Israeli situation:
Which is why I've been seeing Willow's growing seduction
by dark magic, and her swiftly growing power as a rather Jewish thing.
In a sense, this last year has been my own Dark Season, as I suspect
it has for many of us. Willows' grief-fuelled rage at Tara's killer,
his friends, her friends who try to stop her and, indeed, The Entire
Universe to some extent matches my own mood.
Charles
Kuffner finds the common threads between Buffy and the Sopranos.
The Chosen One? One in a million? Father issues? Woke
up one morning to find that the world wasn't what you thought it was?
Hints of violence? Catchy hook and irresistable bass line? Are we sure
these are two different shows?
This is the year the Scoobies grew up. Teen angst,
one of the show’s hallmarks from the beginning, gave way to the
more difficult, more lasting problems that adults face. Despite the
solid continuity of previous seasons, problems were often resolved within
the hour, if not over the course of a short episode arc. Always lingering
in the background was the “Big Bad,” the major problem that
we knew our heroes would confront by the season’s end. No matter
how dire the situation seemed, we never had any real doubt that our
heroes would pull through.
Stacy
Sekimori's got a treat: Her favorite Buffy tunes in mp3 format, available
for download. Fire up those mp3 players!
The real genius of Buffy is how it dresses up everyday
terror with vampire fangs. The fear of loneliness. The mental rabbit-in-the-headlights
feeling you get when contemplating death. Not having a goal in life.
And instead of having cookie-cutter characters the way you normally
do in horror, you have fleshed out, identifiable characters undergoing
their terror.
The characters on this show have had to learn hard
lessons...about love, loss, trust, and power. Every action in the Buffyverse
has an equal and opposite reaction. Although some people might think
a giant demon snake is an inappropriate response to sneaking out to
a frat party, I wish it had happened to me (ok, not really, but if I
had a teenage daughter I'd at least make her watch that episode a few
times). All you have to do is recall the series of events surrounding
Buffy and Angel to see this dynamic at work.
Buffy's storylines share a core set of values and themes
that a simple, type-of-scene count will miss entirely. These are great
for starting discussions on. They include the power of love, taking
responsibility for others and yourself, being a leader, realizing your
not the center of the universe, finding time for friends and family
admist work demands (naw-I'm not kidding-really!), being a misfit yet
still belonging, forgiveness, redemption, life, death, and exploring
the natures of good and evil.
Barbara Hudock is addicted to Buffy. And she blames her husband
for it.
In life and on screen, men carry addiction to their
female lovers. Wine, cocaine, gambling. My husband’s habit left
me addicted to…Buffy. Despite my 35+ years, my preadolescent heart
pounded at the star-crossed lovers, the magical demons, the triumph
of good over evil. It all felt so good, and it was good for both of
us.
Kathy shares
her pre-Buffy schedule with us. (I obsess over the VCR, too. I check and
re-check and re-re-check to make sure it's going to tape the right channel
at the right time.)
Stephen Green chimes
in. Why am I not surprised at the subject matter he chose? (By the
way, I'd just start watching. It'll be a year and a half before the rest
of the episodes are available on DVD, though you could probably find someone
[kaff-kaff] who has seasons four through six complete on tape).
Alex
Frantz has several hours to go in his time zone, but I'm running out
of time for dinner here. (Lucky for him, I read fast.)
But the Buffyverse is never without a moral center,
and there is one guide to the perplexed in LA, which was explicitly
stated by Angel in Season 2, where Angel's night of sex with Darla led,
not to losing his soul as Darla had expected, but to his understanding
that:
if nothing we do matters... then all that matters
is what we do. 'Cause that's all there is. What we do....If there
isn't any bigger meaning, then the smallest act of kindness is the
greatest thing in the world.
Dodgeblog
has a late entry: He's a convert now. "Pap, lame American crap"
my eye. I could have told you how wrong you were. Next time, just ask.
And this guy Ryan
jumped into the Blogburst, so what the heck. There's room:
I wanted to BE Xander. I wanted to date Willow. (Sorry
y'all, gimmee Alyson over Sarah any day). I wanted to be able to write
one-liners as effortlessly as these writers did. Everything about it
just seemed way too good to be true.
Mine's below. No, I'm not going to link it, ferchrissakes, it's three
lines down! permalink
Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Yeah,
it is for everyone
The show is entering its seventh season this year. Its successful spinoff
series, Angel, begins a fourth season. Buffy is more than a cult hit.
Cult hits last a couple of years, maybe three, then they get canceled,
in spite of excellent reviews and a stalwart fan base. Cult hits live
on in rerun history. Buffy is heading for season seven, and shows no sign
of losing its fan base. The big question for next season is whether or
not Sarah Michelle Gellar will sign on for Season Eight.
So what is it about the show? How is it that the story of a former cheerleader
who was chosen to be the Slayer, the one who fights demons and vampires,
has managed to appeal to enough fans to survive happily in syndication
while so many other teen-oriented shows failed to make it past their sixth
week?
It could be the excellence and realism (allowing for the demons, of course)
of the writing. The plots don't end in neat little happily-ever-after
scenarios. Buffy's mother dies of a brain tumor, her first love becomes
a murderous sociopath, she spends her nights slaying demons and saving
the world, and her days working at a fast-food joint. Her kid sister isn't
really her sister, well, she is now, but she used to be a ball of energy.
Her best friend is a witch who just went power-mad and tried to destroy
the world. Her other best friend was about to marry a former demon whose
job it was to curse men who hurt women. Of course he left her at the altar.
Oh, and that death thing? Buffy came back—from heaven—because
Willow (the witch) cast a spell that jerked her out of Paradise, right
into her coffin—six feet under the earth.
It could be the characters. They change and grow. We met them as sophomores
in high school and watched them grow through their various stages. Willow
went from super-nerd to confident witch, oh, and she came out of the closet
while she was at it. Xander went from being an insecure, wisecracking
teenager living in his parents' basement, to foreman in a construction
company, living in an outstanding retro-furnished apartment that I wouldn't
mind having. Buffy? She's grown in power and wisdom, taking on the mother
role for kid sister Dawn, and realizing that yes, there are more fun things
she would rather be doing, but Slaying is what she was born for—and
likely what she will die from.
It could be the plots. It helps to know some background, but there are
more than enough stand-alone episodes per season. Two of my particular
favorites are the Halloween episodes. In "Halloween,"
the characters are turned into the characters of the costumes they were
wearing. So the town is filled with child-sized ghosts, goblins, and demons
as Buffy becomes an 18th-century woman whose superpower is to faint when
something stressful happens. Xander's Army fatigues and toy gun become
the real thing, and the games that ensue are wonderul. That particular
episode is matched two years later by "Fear,
Itself," where the characters get stuck inside a frat house that
becomes inhabited by a fear demon that pretty much wrecks the Halloween
party. The episode seesaws between humor and horror (a large bunny suit,
a chainsaw-bearing Giles, and corpses that rise up and talk, for instance),
with the end as a literal foot-stomper of a gag. That and "Hush"
are the two episodes I choose to show people who have never seen the series
before as examples of what they're missing. (In "Hush," Joss
Whedon's skill as a writer and director are showcased. There is no dialogue
at all for 29 minutes of the episode, and the gang has to fight the creepiest
villains ever without being able to talk.)
It could be the humor. Besides wiseass lines in all the episodes, there
are some that are purely funny. Beer
Bad is one of the the best, complete with obnoxious pseudo-intellectual
underclassmen who discuss Thomas Aquinas and put down the proletariat
bartender (Xander). In Band
Candy, all the adults in Sunnydale act like teenagers due to enchanted
chocolate bars, and Buffy has to put up with seeing her mother fall for
Giles' teenaged personality. (And in a later
episode, after Buffy gets the ability to hear thoughts, she tells
Giles, "Sure, we can work out after school. You know, if you're not
too busy having sex with my mother!" as he walks straight into a
tree. (Never underestimate the value of a well-done sight gag.)
But overall, it is Buffy's universal reach that keeps the show a hit.
Teenagers watch it because it's about teenagers. Adults watch it because
the themes it covers are universal: Lost love, loneliness, being different,
the end of innocence, loving the wrong kind of men, fear of losing control,
the death of a parent, mob mentality, taking responsibility for your actions,
feeling out of place, betrayal—the list goes on. The monsters that
Buffy deals with are most often the physical representations of the real-life
monsters we've all met at one time or another. The actors are fond of
telling interviewers that if Joss Whedon had had a good experience in
high school, Buffy wouldn't exist. Sorry your high school years sucked,
Joss. But your fans are glad they did. permalink
Please allow me to repeat myself:
Anti-Semites of the world, just die
Ribbity Frog has an excellent
response to the most effing clueless moronic piece I have ever read
in any newspaper outside of the Arab world. Nice job, Independent, employing
effing morons like this.
Worst of all is the stupidity of publicly humiliating
the Palestinian President, Yasser Arafat. Any reasonable observer will
have his or her criticisms of Mr Arafat's duplicitous and weak leadership
(even if those in positions of responsibility, apart from President
Bush, will keep those opinions to themselves).
Why will they keep those opinions to themselves?
Why do European leaders remain silent when they KNOW that Arafat has
been encouraging terror, embezzling EU money, torturing his own citizens
and has shown no inclination towards reaching a peaceful settlement
with Israel. They have not remained equally silent in their criticisms
of Sharon.
But the bulldozing of everything in his Ramallah compound
except for his office can achieve nothing positive. Mr Sharon knows
that it would be even more foolish to kill Mr Arafat, so he hopes to
force him into exile instead. This amounts to an admission of Israeli
failure.
Why is this an admission of failure? Perhaps it is
a clear sign that Israel has weighed up the options available and
chosen what they regard to be the best in the circumstances. It would
be the easiest thing to kill Arafat, but the intelligence services
advise against it. permalink
More surfing
Bigwig catches
up with Laurence Simon in the tastelessness
marathon. (Don't worry, folks, this one won't be over for years and years
and years, and maybe years.)
Speaking of Lair, he's running
for President in '04. I wanted to be Attorney General, but he's—get
this—using this Tony Woodlief
guy. Hey. How is he any more qualified to be the top law enforcement agent
in the country than I? Which of us has been arrested more times, huh?
Huh? Inquiring minds want to know. However, I'll take Secretary of Education.
I happen to have an in with the Education Testing Service. Together, we
can mold the minds of America. Beware.
And now I'm tired of surfing, so go do it yourself, please. Come back
later for the Buffy BlogBurst. permalink
More sexism
There's a conversation going on at Blogroots
about sexism in blogging. I would say "Only on the Internet can you
find a line like 'If you honestly believe that I'm interested in turning
your scrotum into a dadaist crucifixion piece, then you've truly misconstrued
the boundaries of civilized society and a post intended as obvious satire,'
" but I think I heard someone say that once in the pub at Montclair
State College (after much wine and beer was ingested).
I think, folks, that the best things to come out of Dawn's accusations
of sexism
in the blogosphere are twofold: One, we are talking about it. Discussion
is a good thing. And two, women bloggers are getting more exposure. I've
seen many, many posts on the order of, "Wow, I didn't know about
those women bloggers until you linked to them. Thanks."
By the way, I missed Richard
Bennett's rip, so here's the link now. Ah, Richard, that's what I
love about you. You always take the moral high ground in any discussion.
And damn, nobody can misinterpret quotes like you (mine was about interest,
not knowledgeability) or pile on misleading data.
Meryl's shooting from the hip. Men and women aren't
equally knowledgeable about current events, politics, and foreign affairs.
The Pew Center found a sizable knowledge gap between men and women in
the ability to identify world leaders
Your table was cherry-picked from an article and points out only one
small aspect of the news-seeking public. For instance, there's this lead
paragraph describing the information displayed in the table you quote:
Although most Americans pay relatively little attention
to international news, they exhibit a fair degree of knowledge when
it comes to foreign leaders and issues. More than four-in-ten were able
to identify Yasser Arafat as the leader of the Palestinians (48%) and
comparable numbers knew that the euro is the new European currency (44%),
and that the state of Israel was established in 1948 (41%). In fact,
more Americans answered those three questions correctly than identified
Donald Rumsfeld as the secretary of defense. Just 29% were able to name
Rumsfeld.
Of course, if you look at the section above, you find that knowledge
of international affairs increases with both age and education, and that
interest in the subject among female college graduates has nearly tripled
in the last two years. (That's from "Section III: International
News Modest Interest Beyond an Elite Audience".)
I find most interesting the statistic that only 21% of Americans overall
are interested in international news, which rather flays your contention
that men are political whizzes and women are into watching Oprah. The
overall gender breakdown for that is 26% of men and 16% of women show
an interest in international affairs (and don't forget to take into account
that plus-minus 3% factor. The difference could be as low as four percentage
points.)
So Richard, perhaps your statement above should be emended to read "In
spite of the fact that four out of five Americans are uninterested in
world affairs, a slightly larger percentage of men are more knowledgeable
than women about certain international facts."
But then, that would be losing the hyperbole, and that's what makes your
Omphalos so interesting, Richard. Misleading, but interesting. (By the
way, thanks so much for the sources. Hugs and kisses.) permalink
The anniversary brought the day back in all its horror.
Watching the towers fall at work, feeling so helpless, thinking of your
friends and colleagues in that building (Jackie, Rob, Mark, Jonathan,
Anahid, Caroline, Marshall, Jan, Alan and Gifford). Walking home that
crazy beautiful day and saying to yourself, "How can I be walking
home when...." No one knew that "only" 3,000 people had
been killed. As we all remember, the death toll was feared to reach
into the tens of thousands.
You know, if that title isn't an Asian country yet, give it time. It
will be. (I think that as long as I'm channeling my Inner Bitch, I may
as well channel my inner wiseass. Er, okay. I always channel my
inner wiseass.)
Bruce Hill's War Now! has been shut down. That would be why I'm not linking
to it. Taking its place is Silent
Running, a double-fisted (quadruple-fisted?) group blog run by Murray
Hill, Bruce's brother (not the old New York area phone exchange). Bruce's
voice will be missed. Mostly. But we have Tom Paine and Wind Rider and
Murray to take his place.
Susanna
Cornett is slapping around some stupid young thing who manages to
make the vast majority of loony-leftists look intelligent. Yeah, that's
a little harsher than I usually get, but check out this idiotic quote:
Is a death not a death? Rather than obfuscating the
nature of war with rhetoric that dilineates "terrorists" or
"soldiers," let facts be facts. Israel is a violent, hateful
nation that is also the United States' dependent. Must we assume Palestines
will submit to their ridiculous demands just because they cannot afford
to fight "fairly"?
I'd link to her blog but, well, I don't want to. You'll have to read
Susanna's post to get there. (Wow, that first sentence is like, so profound,
you know? "Is a death not a death?" Kewl. We should get that,
like, tattooed.)
Lynn B., who is my blogdaughter
(and yet, I am younger than she—how can I be her blogmom? The mind
reels, and she's gonna be so mad I divulged this fact...) Where was I?
Oh, yes. If I'm following this post
correctly, Lynn got Electronic Intifada all pissed off because she threw
a pebble down the mountain of lies about the Jenin non-massacre that caused
an avalanche and ultimately wound up as a story in Ha'aretz (albeit no
credit for Lynn, boo!). Upshot: EI is unhappy. Now there's a surprise.
See if you can follow the maze to the same conclusion I reached, and rest
assured, if I'm wrong, Lynn will correct me. (She can be such a nag, that
daughter of mine.) Update:Toldja I'd have to do this. Lynn
got the story from Ha'aretz, not the other way 'round. Of course, anyway
way you look at it, Electronic Intifada is pissed off, and that's a plus
in my book.
Ronnie Schreiber needs
our help. He wants to go to Israel to participate in a bike ride for
chairty. He's going to bike from Jerusalem to Eilat to raise money for
Alyn Hospital, a hospital that treats
patients regardless of origin. (Funny how so many Israeli hospitals are
like that, isn't it? In that "violent, hateful nation" that
twit above decries. Moron.) Anyway. Please click on the link
to Ronnie's page for more information. We raised a lot of money for Sha'are
Zedek Hospital, and there are even more people reading this page now,
so surely we can help him raise a couple grand. (By the way, if you've
forgotten to mail in your pledge to Sha'are Zedek, don't feel guilty.
Send it now. And remember, I can't tell it's late. Just pretend it was
sent out weeks ago.)
I wanted to give Bill Allison
top spot on a Monday morning, but all those other things got in my way.
I'll give him top spot another time. He has a terrific blog that makes
me wonder exactly how he finds time to blog, what with working, raising
a family, and doing all that reading, but it's obvious: Bill's a Renaissance
Man.
I cannot write anything on this issue that will not come out as five
hundred words of swears. Rick Heller, however, has written a succinct,
cogent response to this pathetic
excuse for a column in the Boston Globe. (And if you scroll down,
you'll see Rick's having terrorist nightmares. Haven't had those yet,
Rick, but I don't count them out.)
I think that's it for the linkage for the moment. It's Monday, folks,
don't forget to check out what you missed over the weekend by reading
last week's archives.
Tell a friend. Tell two friends. Wow, I'm plugging myself. I haven't
done that on my own weblog before. (Yes, I have. That's what the left
menu and the bottom paragraph are for.) Look at that, I'm even
criticizing myself. I'd better be careful before all the voices in my
head come out and I start sounding like Bigwig.
permalink
Thanks, Joe.
Just when I needed something for my Inner Bitch to take apart today, you
sent me the link to this site, Jews for Allah. And at the risk of insulting,
well, lots of people, I have to point out that you've missed a source
for, well, hilarity. (But then, you and I have different
ways of looking at things.) The logic behind this dude's suppositions
is almost enough to make me respect the logic of Ann Coulter. Almost.
Let's examine, for example, the insistence that Solomon referred
to Muhammed in the Songs of Solomon:
Muhammad's name appeared in Haggai 2:7 under the hebrew
word mahmad which means praised one (Muhammad is Arabic for praised
one). We won't mention the fact that Muhammad lived centuries after
Solomon. Oops, did I mention it? And like, we probably shouldn't also
mention the similarities between Arabic and Hebrew which, like, include
words that sound the same and mean the same thing. But hey, continue.
It almost undoubtedly is referring to the Arabic Prophet
Muhammad. Ya think? Of course, he could be referring to Morrie Fishman,
who lived next door to my mother in Newark during the 30s and 40s. Morrie,
Mohammed—similar enough for my purposes.
The 5th chapter of Songs of Solomon is discussing someone.
Wow, that's deep. I'm betting he's going to get around to saying
that someone is Muhammed. Jews will say it is discussing Solomon,
(pay attention, please, I just said it was about Morrie Steinman,
and I am a Jew.) while Christians will say it is discussing
Jesus (that's a shocker). Considering this is the Songs of Solomon,
it would seem logical that it is discussing Solomon. And again: Ya
think? The verses describing this mystery man (singing.. "Mystery
date... are you ready for your mystery date?") have the narators
(look! typo!) speech conjuagted (look! another one!) in
the feminine (meaning it is a woman who is describing this man) so it
is possible that it is one of Solomon's wives discussing her Husband
(Solomon). Ahem. The wives. How is it you reach this conclusion from
a culture that, in certain Islamic nations don't even teach women how
to read? Just wondering. However, if a Christian tries to assert
that Jesus is being discussed, then they are insinuating that this is
discussing a future prophet (a man who was not yet alive at that point),
a prophesy Oh, that's what a prophesy is. Something that's
going to happen in the future. Not retrofitting what was written
in the past..... If the 5th chapter of Songs of Solomon is looking
into the future, then there is no doubt it is discussing Muhammad.
Toldja he was going to say it was discussing Mohammed. That leap of
logic was so fast it hurt my neck to watch it fly by. If chapter=future
then not-Jesus, Mohammed. Altogether, everyone: HUH?
The next verse is a howler. I didn't write the last sentence. The author
did.
Throughout the chapter, someone is being discussed.
Whomever it is, verse 15 says his "countenance (face) is as Lebanon",
so this is an Arabic gentleman (or Arab looking), a Semitic man none
the less. Blahblahblah, more description, amazingly fitting Mohammed,
blahblahblah. This also can be atributed to Muhammad who although
having a rosy, golden color, had white armpitts Don't shoot until
you see the whites of his armpitts! (Sahih Bukhari, Volume 2, Book
17, Number 141 says you could see the whites of his armpitt when he
raised his hand). WHAT'S THE POINT?!?!
Glad you asked.
Discussing skin color, and hair color is fruitless,
And yet, you just spent nearly 200 words discussing skin and hair
color and if I was basing it solely on that, it could be describing
ANY Semitic man. Say it with me, folks: Ya think? However, this
person's name is given. In reading the English translation of Songs
5:16 it finishes the description by saying "He is altogether lovely".
The words "altogether lovely" was translated from mahmad.
We'll take a closer look at this four character word, and prove this
is talking about Muhammad... Nah, we're about done with this.
[...] In conclusion, if Songs of Solomon chapter 5
is discussing a man to come after that time, it is without a doubt Muhammad,
as it even mentions his name. Because, like, it's almost like the
Bible Code!
Yeah! You can predict the future with it! Muhammad, mahamad, what's
the difference? Any Christian who believes Jesus is the Messiah,
and believes that books were sent down by God after the TaNaKh (Jewish
Bible), then surely they should take into account what they just read
here, Yes, you should take it into account and please, stop laughing.
and consider the Qur'an before making a decision. That's fair.
Let's consider it. Say, wait a minute. I thought this was Jews
for Allah. Why are you trying to convert Christians? Wow. Even
in the Jews for Allah site, we don't get no respect.
There's lots more. But that was the first page I clicked on, and now
I'm too worn out to look anywhere else. Although he wraps himself into
a pretzel to attempt to prove that Mohammed
did not slaughter Jews by the hundreds, and you'll never guess whose
fault it is that story gets so much play: That's right. The J-E-W-S. And
"Was
Moses or Mohammed Kinder to Jews?" is a hoot. Way to try to attract
Jews, dude—call Moses an anti-Semite. Yeah, that'll work.
And if you're not Jewish or Christian, but you've been persuaded to convert
by the sparkling wit and intellect of these arguments, it's all right—all
are welcome in their "rainbow
of Nations." (Wow, can they possibly make those page names any
longer?)
Me, I think I'll stick with Judaism. I'm thinking that if the word mahmad
came up in our Bible at all, it meant exactly what it's supposed to mean:
mahmad. (Oh, like I paid attention to what this guy was saying? Yeah,
right. Dictionary, please.) permalink
+++URL: http://www.gulf-news.com/Articles/opinion.asp?ArticleID=60434
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Gulfnews: Gulf News says: Time to get off the fence
Last updated:
12:02 (GMT+04:00) Thursday, December 15, 2005
Gulfnews: Gulf News says: Time to get off the fence
Yasser Arafat may be upbeat about the Palestinian dialogue with the United States but the hopelessness his people face renders this confidence hollow. The Palestinian president is merely reflecting past reactions. Any talks with the "honest broker" in Washington have always been seen as the elusive light at the end of the tunnel of despair for the Palestinians.
Bringing a sense of reality to the early optimism in Palestinian ranks is the voice of the Pope. The pontiff has questioned the very violence that is supposed to usher in security for the people on both sides of the Middle East divide. He has lamented the constant state of siege that the Palestinians have been forced to live under in recent times. He has called on the international community to accelerate the peace process by taking a more determined role in the conflict.
It is about time such words of wisdom are taken for what they represent. A true will to resolve a conflict that is as genocidal as it is suicidal. The gradual takeover of Arab lands by the Israelis is not going to bring about any security for the aggressors. Such action can only ensure bloodletting for decades ahead. This cycle has been proved in the past and has been well understood by the international community.
The Palestinians themselves are making sincere efforts at reforming their state and preparing for a cleaner and more efficient form of self-administration. They should be assisted in this endeavour by the international community and not thwarted by the current level of apathy that witnesses their plight. Israel must be shown that its policies against the Palestinians are wrong and cannot have international approval. A small step by the world community can make the right difference in the occupied lands.
JUNE 8, 2004 1600 PDT (FTW) - Why did DCI George Tenet suddenly resign on June 3rd, only to be followed a day later by James Pavitt, the CIA's Deputy Director of Operations (DDO)?
The real reasons, contrary to the saturation spin being put out by major news outlets, have nothing to do with Tenet's role as taking the fall for alleged 9/11 and Iraqi intelligence "failures" before the upcoming presidential election.
Both resignations, perhaps soon to be followed by resignations from Colin Powell and his deputy Richard Armitage, are about the imminent and extremely messy demise of George W. Bush and his Neocon administration in a coup d'etat being executed by the Central Intelligence Agency. The coup, in the planning for at least two years, has apparently become an urgent priority as a number of deepening crises threaten a global meltdown.
Based upon recent developments, it appears that long-standing plans and preparations leading to indictments and impeachment of Bush, Cheney and even some senior cabinet members have been accelerated, possibly with the intent of removing or replacing the entire Bush regime prior to the Republican National Convention this August.
There were two things we didn't get right. One was the timing. We predicted the developments taking place now as likely to happen after the November election, not before. Secondly, we did not foresee the sudden resignations of Tenet and Pavitt. Understanding the resignations is the key to understanding a deteriorating world scene and that America is on the precipice of a presidential and constitutional crisis that will ultimately dwarf the removal of Richard Nixon in 1974.
So why did Tenet and Pavitt resign? We'll explain why and we will provide many clues along the way as we make our case.
HIGH CRIMES AND REALLY STUPID MOVES
Shortly after the "surprise" Tenet-Pavitt resignations, current and former senior members of the U.S. intelligence community and the Justice Department told journalist Wayne Madsen, a former Naval intelligence officer, that they were directly connected to the criminal investigation of a 2003 White House leak that openly exposed Valerie Plame as an undercover CIA officer. What received less attention was that the leak also destroyed a long-term CIA proprietary intelligence gathering operation which, as we will see, was of immense importance to US strategic interests at a critical moment.
The leak was a vindictive retaliation for statements, reports and actions taken by Plame's husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, which had deeply embarrassed the Bush administration and exposed it to possible charges for impeachable offenses, including lying to the American people about an alleged (and totally unfounded) nuclear threat posed by Iraq's Saddam Hussein. Conservative columnist Robert Novak, the beneficiary of the leak, immediately published it on July 14, 2003 and Valerie Plame's career (at least the covert part) instantly ended. The actual damage caused by that leak has never been fully appreciated.
Wilson deeply embarrassed almost every senior member of the Bush junta by proving to the world that they were consciously lying about one of their most important justifications for invading Iraq: namely, their claim to have had certain knowledge, based on "good and reliable" intelligence, that Hussein was on the brink of deploying a nuclear weapon, possibly inside the United States. It was eventually disclosed that the "intelligence" possessed by the administration was a set of poorly forged documents on letterhead from the government of Niger, which described attempts by Iraq to purchase yellowcake uranium for a nuclear weapons program.
It has since been established by Scott Ritter and others that Iraq's nuclear weapons program had been dead in the water and non-functioning since the first Iraq war.
Wilson was secretly dispatched in February 2002, on instructions from Dick Cheney to the CIA, to go to Niger and look for anything that might support the material in the documents. They had already been dismissed as forgeries by the International Atomic Energy Agency, the CIA, and apparently everyone else who had seen them. The CIA cautioned the administration, more than once, against using them. Shortly thereafter, Wilson returned and gave his report stating clearly that the allegations were pure bunk and unsupportable.
In spite of this, unaware of the booby traps laid all around them, the entire power core of the Bush administration jumped on the Niger documents as on a battle horse and charged off into in a massive public relations blitz. Bush, Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld, Powell, Wolfowitz and others - to varying degrees - insisted, testified, and swore that they knew, and had reliable, credible and verified intelligence that Saddam was about to deploy an actual nuclear device built from the Niger yellowcake.
It was full court media press and they successfully scared the pants off of most Americans who believed that Saddam was going to nuke them any second.
George Bush made the charge and actually cited the documents in his 2003 State-of-the-Union address, even after he had been cautioned by George Tenet not to rely on them. In a major speech at the United Nations, Colin Powell charged that Iraq was on the verge of deploying a nuke and had been trying to acquire uranium. Dick Cheney charged in several speeches that Saddam was capable of nuclear terror. And shortly before the invasion, when asked in a television interview whether there was sufficient proof and advance warning of the Iraqi nuclear threat, a smug and confident Condoleezza Rice quipped, "If we wait for a smoking gun, that smoking gun may be a mushroom cloud over an American city." Rice was lying through her teeth.
By July of 2003, as the Iraqi invasion was proving to be a protracted and ill-conceived debacle, executed in spite of massive resistance from within military, political, diplomatic and economic cadres, there was growing disgust within many government circles about the way the Bush administration was running things. The mention of Wilson's report came in July though his name was not disclosed. It suggested corroborative evidence of criminal, rather than stupid, behavior by the administration. The San Francisco Chronicle reported:
A senior CIA official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the intelligence agency informed the White House on March 9, 2002 - 10 months before Bush's nationally televised speech - that an agency source who had traveled to Niger could not confirm European intelligence reports that Iraq was attempting to buy uranium from the West African country.
Note the reference to an Agency source.
It was inevitable that Wilson would move from no comment, to statements given on condition of anonymity, and finally into the public spotlight. That he did, in a July 6th New York Times Editorial titled "What I Didn't Find in Africa." Soon he was giving interviews everywhere.
On July 14th Novak published the column outing Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame. As a result, any criminal investigation of the Plame leak will also go into the Niger documents and any crimes committed which are materially related to Plame's exposure.
Instead of retreating, Wilson advanced. In Septmeber he went public, writing editorials and granting interviews which thoroughly exposed the Bush administration's criminal use of the documents, Cheney's lies about the mission, and all the other lies used to deceive the American people into war.
At the moment he went on the record, Wilson became another legally admissible, corroborative evidentiary source; a witness available for subpoena and deposition, ready to give testimony to the high crimes and misdemeanors he has witnessed.
First Clue: James Pavitt was Valerie Plame's boss. So was George Tenet.
HOW THE TRAP WAS SET
Conflicting news reports suggest that perhaps several sets of the documents were delivered simultaneously to several recipients. I could find only one news story (out of almost 60 I have reviewed) which indicated just when the Niger papers were first put into play. One of the most fundamental questions in journalism, "when?" was omitted from every major press organization's coverage except for a single story from the Associated Press on July 13th.
… [T]he forged Niger government documents, showing attempts by Iraq to purchase yellowcake, were delivered by unknown sources to a journalist working for Italy's Corriere della Sera which then gave them to the Italian intelligence service. She then reportedly gave them to Italian intelligence agents who gave them to the US embassy. Seymour Hersh of the New Yorker also offered this version indicating that the documents had surfaced in Italy in the fall of 2001.
The fall of 2001. That means that the documents were created no more than three and a half months after September 11th.
The earliest press report mentioning the documents was a March 7, 2003 story in The Financial Times. On that day, Mohammed El Baradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency reported to the UN Security Council that the documents were forgeries. The story contained a revealing paragraph.
"The allegation about the uranium purchase first surfaced in a UK government dossier published on September 24 last year about Iraq's alleged weapons programmes, though it did not name Niger. Niger was first named when the US State Department elaborated on the allegations on December 19 [2002]…
Canada's Globe and Mail reported on March 8, 2003:
…[T]he forgeries were sold to an Italian intelligence agent by a con man some time ago and passed on to French authorities, but the scam was uncovered by the IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency] only recently, according to United Nations sources familiar with the investigation. The documents were turned over to the IAEA several weeks ago.
"In fact, the IAEA says, there is no credible evidence that Iraq tried to import uranium ore from the Central African country in violation of UN resolutions.
"Based on thorough analysis, the IAEA has concluded, with the concurrence of outside experts, that these documents, which formed the basis for the reports of these uranium transactions between Iraq and Niger, are, in fact, not authentic," Mr. El Baradei told the UN Security Council Friday….
The Chicago Tribune reported on March 13, 2003, "Forged documents that the United States used to build its case against Iraq were likely written by someone in Niger's embassy in Rome who hoped to make quick money, a source close to the United Nations investigation said.
The Washington Post gave yet a different story, also on March 8, 2003:
…Knowledgeable sources familiar with the forgery investigation described the faked evidence as a series of letters between Iraqi agents and officials in the central African nation of Niger. The documents had been given to the U.N. inspectors by Britain and reviewed extensively by U.S. intelligence. The forgers had made relatively crude errors that eventually gave them away - including names and titles that did not match up with the individuals who held office at the time the letters were purportedly written, the officials said…"
…The CIA, which had also obtained the documents, had questions about "whether they were accurate," said one intelligence official, and it decided not to include them in its file on Iraq's program to procure weapons of mass destruction.
In a follow-up story on March 13th the Post reported:
It's something we're just beginning to look at," a senior law enforcement official said yesterday. Officials are trying to determine whether the documents were forged to try to influence U.S. policy, or whether they may have been created as part of a disinformation campaign directed by a foreign intelligence service...
…The phony documents - a series of letters between Iraqi and Niger officials showing Iraq's interest in equipment that could be used to make nuclear weapons - came to British and U.S. intelligence officials from a third country. The identity of the third country could not be learned yesterday.
What if it wasn't a foreign intelligence service? I had been suspicious that a Watergate-like coup was forming immediately after reading the first few stories about the documents. I was convinced when the AP reported on March 14, 2003 (just days before the Iraqi invasion) that the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee had called for an FBI investigation of the documents' origins. The Boston Globe reported two days later that the Senator was specifically seeking to determine whether administration officials had forged the documents themselves to marshal support for the invasion.
The request was not nearly as significant to me as who it had come from - Jay Rockefeller of the Standard Oil Rockefellers. An oil dynasty was calling for an investigation of a bunch of oil men. Somebody was screwing up big time.
Seymour Hersh dropped a major bombshell that went virtually unnoticed, 54 paragraphs deep into an October 27, 2003 story for the New Yorker titled "The Stovepipe."
Who produced the fake Niger papers? There is nothing approaching a consensus on this question within the intelligence community. There has been published speculation about the intelligence services of several different countries. One theory, favored by some journalists in Rome, is that [the Italian intelligence service] Sismi produced the false documents and passed them to Panorama for publication.
"Another explanation was provided by a former senior C.I.A. officer. He had begun talking to me about the Niger papers in March, when I first wrote about the forgery, and said, 'Somebody deliberately let something false get in there.' He became more forthcoming in subsequent months, eventually saying that a small group of disgruntled retired C.I.A. clandestine operators had banded together in the late summer of last year and drafted the fraudulent documents themselves. [emphasis added]
Hersh's revelation provided corroboration for something I and others, like the renowned political historian Peter Dale Scott, had been suspecting for a long time. The CIA was fighting back. This was a well orchestrated, long-term covert operation - exactly what the CIA does all over the world.
POINT OF NO RETURN
Willing disclosure of the identity of a covert operative is a serious felony under Federal law, punishable by fine and/or imprisonment. The Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982 makes it a crime for anyone with access to classified information to intentionally disclose information identifying a covert operative. The penalties get worse for doing it to a deep cover Direcorate of Operations (DO) case officer (as opposed to an undercover DEA Agent).
After John Ashcroft was forced to recuse himself from the case, Patrick Fitzgerald, the U.S. Attorney in Chicago, was transferred to Washington and appointed special prosecutor in the Plame case.
Robert Novak, rightly standing by the journalistic code of ethics, has steadfastly refused to identify his White House source. We would do the same thing in his shoes. The investigation is nearing a climax with pending issuance of criminal indictments. Press reports citing sources close to the investigation have directly and indirectly pointed fingers at Dick Cheney and his Chief of Staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, as suspects.
Second clue: The criminal investigation of the Plame leak was investigated after a September 2003 formal request from the CIA, approved by George Tenet.
Not only was Plame's cover blown, so was that of her cover company, Brewster, Jennings & Associates. With the public exposure of Plame, intelligence agencies all over the world started searching data bases for any references to her (TIME Magazine). Damage control was immediate, as the CIA asserted that her mission had been connected to weapons of mass destruction.
However, it was not long before stories from the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal tied Brewster, Jennings & Associates to energy, oil and the Saudi-owned Arabian American Oil Company, or ARAMCO. Brewster Jennings had been a founder of Mobil Oil company, one of Aramco's principal founders.
According to additional sources interviewed by Wayne Madsen, Brewster Jennings was, in fact, a well-established CIA proprietary company, linked for many years to ARAMCO. The demise of Brewster Jennings was also guaranteed the moment Plame was outed.
It takes years for Non-Official Covers or NOCs, as they are known, to become really effective. Over time, they become gradually more trusted; they work their way into deeper information access from more sensitive sources. NOCs are generally regarded in the community as among the best and most valuable of all CIA operations officers and the agency goes to great lengths to protect them in what are frequently very risky missions.
By definition, Valerie Plame was an NOC. Yet unlike all other NOCs who fear exposure and torture or death from hostile governments and individual targets who have been judged threats to the United States, she got done in by her own President, whom we also judge to be a domestic enemy of the United States.
Moreover, as we will see below, Valerie Plame may have been one of the most important NOCs the CIA had in the current climate. Let's look at just how valuable she was.
ARAMCO
According to an April 29, 2002 report in Britain's Guardian, ARAMCO constitutes 12% of the world's total oil production; a figure which has certainly increased as other countries have progressed deeper into irreversible decline.
ARAMCO is the largest oil group in the world, a state-owned Saudi company in partnership with four major US oil companies. Another one of Aramco’s partners is Chevron-Texaco which gave up one of its board members, Condoleezza Rice, when she became the National Security Advisor to George Bush. All of ARAMCO’s key decisions are made by the Saudi royal family while US oil expertise, personnel and technology keeps the cash coming in and the oil going out. ARAMCO operates, manages, and maintains virtually all Saudi oil fields – 25% of all the oil on the planet.
It gets better.
According to a New York Times report on March 8th of this year, ARAMCO is planning to make a 25% investment in a new and badly needed refinery to produce gasoline. The remaining 75% ownership of the refinery will go to the only nation that is quickly becoming America's major world competitor for ever-diminishing supplies of oil: China.
Almost the entire Bush administration has an interest in ARAMCO.
The Boston Globe reported that in 2001 ARAMCO had signed a $140 million multi-year contract with Halliburton, then chaired by Dick Cheney, to develop a new oil field. Halliburton does a lot of business in Saudi Arabia. Current estimates of Halliburton contracts or joint ventures in the country run into the tens of billions of dollars.
So do the fortunes of some shady figures from the Bush family's past.
As recently as 1991 ARAMCO had Khalid bin Mahfouz sitting on its Supreme Council or board of directors. Mahfouz, Saudi Arabia's former treasurer and the nation's largest banker, has been reported in several places to be Osama bin Laden's brother in law. However, he has denied this and brought intense legal pressure to bear demanding retractions of these allegations. He has major partnership investments with the multi-billion dollar Binladin Group of companies and he is a former director of BCCI, the infamous criminal drug-money laundering bank which performed a number of very useful services for the CIA before its 1991 collapse under criminal investigation by a whole lot of countries.
As Saudi Arabia's largest banker he handles the accounts of the royal family and - no doubt - ARAMCO, while at the same time he is a named defendant in a $1 trillion lawsuit filed by 9/11 victim families against the Saudi government and prominent Saudi officials who, the suit alleges, were complicit in the 9/11 attacks.
Both BCCI and Mahfouz have historical connections to the Bush family dating back to the 1980s. Another bank (one of many) connected to Mahfouz - the InterMaritime Bank - bailed out a cash-starved Harken Energy in 1987 with $25 million. After the rejuvenated Harken got a no-bid oil lease in 1991, CEO George W. Bush promptly sold his shares in a pump-and-dump scheme and made a whole lot of money.
Knowing all of this, there's really no good reason why the CIA should be too upset, is there? It was only a long-term proprietary and deep-cover NOC - well established and consistently producing "take" from ARAMCO (and who knows what else in Saudi Arabia). It was destroyed with a motive of personal vengeance (there may have been other motives) by someone inside the White House.
From the CIA's point of view, at a time when Saudi Arabia is one of the three or four countries of highest interest to the US, the Plame operation was irreplaceable.
Third clue: Tenet's resignation, which occurred at night, was the first "evening resignation" of a Cabinet-level official since October 1973 when Attorney General Elliott Richardson and his deputy, William Ruckelshaus, resigned in protest of Richard Nixon's firing of Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox. Many regard this as the watershed moment when the Nixon administration was doomed.
SAUDI ARABIA
Given that energy is becoming the most important issue on the planet today, if you were the CIA, you might be a little pissed off at the Plame leak. But there may be justification to do more than be angry. Anger happens all the time in Washington. This is something else.
One of the most important intelligence prizes today - especially after recent stories in major outlets like the New York Times reporting that Saudi oil production has peaked and gone into irreversible decline - would be to know of a certainty whether those reports are correct. The Saudis are denying it vehemently but they are being strongly refuted by an increasing amount of hard data. The truth remains unproven. But the mere possibility has set the world's financial markets on edge. Saudi Oil Minister Ali Naimi came to Washington on April 27th to put out the fires. It was imperative that he calm everybody's nerves as the markets were screaming, "Say it ain't so!"
Naimi said emphatically that there was nothing to worry about concerning either Saudi reserves or ARAMCO's ability to increase production. There was plenty of oil and no need for concern.
FTW covered and reported on that event. Writer and energy expert Julian Darley noted that there were some very important ears in the room, listening very closely. He also noted that Naimi's "scientific" data and promises of large future discoveries did not sit well many who are well versed in oil production and delivery.
If anybody has the real data on Saudi fields it is either ARAMCO or the highest levels of the Saudi royal family.
The answer to the Saudi peak question will determine whether Saudi Arabia really can increase production quickly, as promised. If they can't, then the US economy is going to suffer bitterly, and it is certain that the Saudi monarchy will collapse into chaos. Then the nearby US military will occupy the oilfields and the U.S. will ultimately Balkanize the country by carving off the oil fields - which occupy only a small area near the East coast. That U.S. enclave would then provide sanctuary to the leading members of the royal family who will have agreed to keep their trillions invested in Wall Street so the US economy doesn't collapse.
So far the Saudis haven't had to prove that they could increase production due to convenient terror attacks at oil fields, and more "debates" within OPEC.
Fourth clue: Bush and Cheney have both hired or consulted private criminal defense attorneys in anticipation of possible indictments of them and/or their top assistants in the Plame investigation. On June 3, just hours before Tenet suddenly resigned, President Bush consulted with and may have retained a criminal defense attorney to represent him in the Plame case.
According to various press reports Bush has either retained or consulted with powerhouse attorney Jim Sharp, who represented Iran-contra figure retired Air Force Major General Richard Secord; Enron's Ken Lay; and Watergate co-conspirator Jeb Stuart Magruder. All three were facing criminal rather than civil charges. Either way, a clear signal has been sent that Bush expects to be either called to testify (which was a precursor in Watergate to a criminal indictment of Richard Nixon) or be named as a defendant. Either way, the President's men are falling faster than their counterparts fell in Watergate, and the initial targets are much higher up the food chain.
Cheney's attorney is Terrence O'Donnell, a partner of the Williams and Connolly law firm. O'Donnell worked for then White House chief of staff Cheney in the Ford administration and as General Counsel for the Pentagon when Cheney was Defense Secretary under the first President Bush. He has been representing the Vice President in criminal and civil cases involving Cheney's chairmanship of Halliburton. These include a Justice Department investigation of Halliburton for alleged payment of bribes to Nigerian political leaders and a stockholders' fraud law suit against Halliburton. O'Donnell also represented former CIA director John Deutch when he was accused of violating national security by taking his CIA computer home and surfing the Internet while it contained hundreds of highly-classified intelligence documents.
SPRINGING THE TRAP
Now, seemingly all of a sudden, Bush and Cheney are in the crosshairs. Cheney has been questioned by Fitzgerald within the last week.
The CIA Director's job by definition, whether others like it or not, is to be able to go to his President and advise him of the real scientific data on foreign resources (especially oil); to warn him of pending instability in a country closely linked to the US economy; and to tell him what to plan for and what to promise politically in his foreign policy. In light of her position in the CIA's relationship with Saudi Aramco, the outing of Valerie Plame made much of this impossible. In short, the Bush leak threatened National Security.
Former White House Counsel and Watergate figure John Dean, writing for the prestigious legal website findlaw.com on June 4th made some very ominous observations that appear to have gone unnoticed by most.
This action by Bush is a rather stunning and extraordinary development. The President of the United States is potentially hiring a private criminal defense lawyer. Unsurprisingly, the White House is doing all it can to bury the story, providing precious little detail or context for the President's action…
…But from what I have learned from those who have been quizzed by the Fitzgerald investigators it seems unlikely that they are interviewing the President merely as a matter of completeness, or in order to be able to defend their actions in front of the public. Asking a President to testify - or even be interviewed - remains a serious, sensitive and rare occasion. It is not done lightly. Doing so raises separation of powers concerns that continue to worry many…
…If so - and if the person revealed the leaker's identity to the President, or if the President decided he preferred not to know the leaker's identity. - Then this fact could conflict with Bush's remarkably broad public statements on the issue. He has said that he did not know of "anybody in [his] administration who leaked classified information." He has also said that he wanted "to know the truth" about this leak.
If Bush is called before the grand jury, it is likely because Fitzgerald believes that he knows much more about this leak than he has stated publicly.
Perhaps Bush may have knowledge not only of the leaker, but also of efforts to make this issue go away - if indeed there have been any. It is remarkably easy to obstruct justice, and this matter has been under various phases of an investigation by the Justice Department since it was referred by the CIA last summer…
…On this subject, I spoke with an experienced former federal prosecutor who works in Washington, specializing in white collar criminal defense (but who does not know Sharp). That attorney told me that he is baffled by Bush's move - unless Bush has knowledge of the leak. "It would not seem that the President needs to consult personal counsel, thereby preserving the attorney-client privilege, if he has no knowledge about the leak," he told me.
What advice might Bush get from a private defense counsel? The lawyer I consulted opined that, "If he does have knowledge about the leak and does not plan to disclose it, the only good legal advice would be to take the Fifth, rather than lie. The political fallout is a separate issue."
I raised the issue of whether the President might be able to invoke executive privilege as to this information. But the attorney I consulted - who is well versed in this area of law - opined that "Neither 'outing' Plame, nor covering for the perpetrators would seem to fall within the scope of any executive privilege that I am aware of."
That may not stop Bush from trying to invoke executive privilege, however - or at least from talking to his attorney about the option. As I have discussed in one of my prior columns, Vice President Dick Cheney has tried to avoid invoking it in implausible circumstances - in the case that is now before the U.S .Supreme Court. Rather he claims he is beyond the need for the privilege, and simply cannot be sued. [Emphasis added]
Suffice it to say that whatever the meaning of Bush's decision to talk with private counsel about the Valerie Plame leak, the matter has taken a more ominous turn with Bush's action. It has only become more portentous because now Dick Cheney has also hired a lawyer for himself, suggesting both men may have known more than they let on. Clearly, the investigation is heading toward a culmination of some sort. And it should be interesting.
Last and final clue: Under Executive Privilege, a principle intended to protect the constitutional separation of powers, officials in the Executive Branch cannot give testimony in a legal case against a sitting President. The Bush administration has invoked or threatened to invoke the privilege several times. Dick did it over the secret records of his energy task force and George Bush tried to use it to prevent Condoleezza Rice from testifying before the "Independent" Commission investigating September 11th.
Former officials of the Executive Branch are, however, free to testify if they are no longer holding a government office when subpoenaed or when the charges are brought.
[To learn more about Executive Privilege visit www.findlaw.com]
The Bush administration has proved itself to be an insular group of inept, dishonest and dangerous CEO's of the corporation known as America. They have become very bad for business and the Board of Directors is now taking action. Make no mistake, the CIA works for "The Board" - Wall Street and big money. The long-term (very corrupt and unethical) agenda of the Board, in the face of multiple worsening global crises, was intended to proceed far beyond the initially destructive war in Iraq, toward an effective reconstruction and a strategic response to Peak Oil. But the neocons have stalled at the ugly stage: killing hundreds of thousands of people; destroying Iraq's industrial and cultural infrastructure as their own bombs and other people's RPGs blow everything up; getting caught running torture camps; and making the whole world intensely dislike America.
These jerks are doing real damage to their masters' interests.
But (not surprisingly) Tenet and the CIA were and remain much better at covert operations and planning ahead than the Bush administration ever was. Tenet and Pavitt actually prepared and left a clear, irrefutable and incriminating paper trail which not only proves that they had shunned and refused to endorse the documents, the CIA also did not support the nuke charges and warned Bush not to use them.
Where are those documents now? They're part of the Justice Department Plame investigation - and they're also in the hands of the Congressman who will most likely introduce and manage the articles of impeachment, if that becomes necessary: Henry Waxman (D), of California. If you would like to see how tightly the legal trap has been prepared, and how carefully the evidence has been laid out, I suggest taking a look around Waxman's web site at: http://www.house.gov/waxman/.
THE SWARM
There are a multitude of signs that the Bush administration is being "swarmed" in what is becoming a feeding frenzy as opposition is surfacing from many places inside the government, including the military. The signs are not hard to find.
The June 3rd issue of Capitol Hill Blue, the newspaper published for members of Congress, bore the headline "Bush Knew About Leak of CIA Operative's Name". That article virtually guaranteed that the Plame investigation had enough to pursue Bush criminally. The story's lead sentence described a criminal, prosecutable offense: "Witnesses told a federal grand jury President George W. Bush knew about, and took no action to stop, the release of a covert CIA operative's name to a journalist in an attempt to discredit her husband, a critic of administration policy in Iraq."
President George W. Bush's increasingly erratic behavior and wide mood swings has the halls of the West Wing buzzing lately as aides privately express growing concern over their leader's state of mind.
In meetings with top aides and administration officials, the President goes from quoting the Bible in one breath to obscene tantrums against the media, Democrats and others that he classifies as "enemies of the state."
Worried White House aides paint a portrait of a man on the edge, increasingly wary of those who disagree with him and paranoid of a public that no longer trusts his policies in Iraq or at home.
"It reminds me of the Nixon days," says a longtime GOP political consultant with contacts in the White House. "Everybody is an enemy; everybody is out to get him. That's the mood over there."
Journalist Wayne Madsen, a Washington veteran with excellent access to many sources has indicated for this story that the Neocons have few remaining friends anywhere. All of this is consistent with a CIA-led coup.
Ahmed Chalabi
Madsen reported that the Plame probe comes amid another high-level probe of Pentagon officials for leaking classified National Security Agency cryptologic information to Iran via Iraqi National Congress head Ahmed Chalabi. FBI agents have polygraphed and interviewed a number of civilian political appointees in the Pentagon in relation to the intelligence leak, said to have severely disrupted the National Security Agency's ability to listen in on encrypted Iranian diplomatic and intelligence communications.
Chalabi's leak has once again forced Iran to change equipment, resulting in impaired U.S. intelligence gathering of Iran's sensitive communications. The probe into the Chalabi leak is centering on Pentagon officials who have been close to Chalabi, including Office of Net Assessment official Harold Rhode, Director of Policy and Plans officials Douglas Feith and William Luti, Undersecretary for Intelligence Stephen Cambone, and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz. In addition, some former Pentagon advisers are also targeted in the probe.
Many press reports throughout 2003 indicated that Chalabi, distrusted and virtually discarded by the CIA, had been resurrected and inserted into the Iraqi political mix on the orders of Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and the other Neocons listed above.
Abu Ghraib and Torture
A former CIA official told Madsen that between the Plame leak and the Abu Ghraib torture affair, the Bush administration is facing something that will be "worse than Watergate."
PLANNING FOR SUCCESSION
If both Bush and Cheney are removed or resign, what happens? Madsen reported that lobbyists and political consultants in Washington are dusting off their copies of the Constitution and checking the line of presidential succession.
One lobbyist said he will soon pay a call on Alaska Republican Senator Ted Stevens, who, as President pro tem of the Senate, is second in line to House Speaker Dennis Hastert to become President in the event Bush and Cheney both go.
It is one of the greatest ironies of the Plame affair that the Bush administration, spawned and nurtured by oil, might have committed suicide by vindictively, cruelly and unthinkingly exacting personal retribution on an intelligence officer who had committed no offense, and who was, quite possibly, providing the administration with critical oil-related intelligence which the President needed to manage our shaky economy and affairs of state for a while longer to squeak through to re-election. In our opinion, nothing better epitomizes the true nature of the Neocons.
That being said, they have to go. FTW wishes that it was as certain that what will come after them will be better.
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The Protocols Come to America
The Protocols Come to America
At the turn of the century, the Russian Czar’s secret
police forged a document, The Protocols
of the Elders of Zion, which purported to outline a plan for Jewish
world domination. The Russians claimed that the radical Jewish intelligentsia
gathered in 1897 at the First
Zionist Congress in Basle, Switzerland wrote the Protocols. The
document “showed” how a Jewish cabal was fomenting terror,
causing famine and promoting war. Publication of the Protocols sparked
anti-Jewish pogroms in Kiev and Kishineff.
While the Protocols were whispered about in anti-Semitic circles in the
United States, they did not reach American shores in English translation
until 1917. A Russian monarchist émigré, Boris Brazil, translated the
Protocols into English and passed a copy to the State Department, hoping
to persuade the United States government to withhold recognition of the
Soviet regime. He was convinced that the Bolsheviks were in the pay of
American Jewish bankers of German background -- Jacob Schiff and Felix
Warburg in particular – who had financed the Czar's overthrow to advance
German interests in World War I.
An American Army Intelligence officer in Brooklyn, Harris Ayres
Houghton, MD, obtained Brasol’s translation of the Protocols and became
convinced of their authenticity. An ardent anti-Semite and
anticommunist, Houghton had the authority to act on his fantasies.
According to historian Robert Singerman, writing in the journal of the
American Jewish Historical Society,* Houghton “ordered one of his
subordinates ‘to investigate any Jew as long as he was prominent’” for
signs of subversion. In 1918, Houghton passed a copy of the Protocols to
Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes, chair of a government committee
investigating a scandal in American wartime aircraft manufacture.
Houghton was certain that “Jewish International Bankers” had caused the
manufacturing problems, but Justice Hughes scoffed at the idea and
denied the authenticity of the Protocols.
At first, the American Jewish community made no formal response to the
typescript versions of the Protocols in circulation. They believed it
best not to give them publicity. In 1920, however, a version was
published in England and both Brasol and Houghton planned to bring out
annotated versions in the United States. Brasol found a respectable
company named Small, Maynard to publish his version. Putnam and Son
publishers agreed to publish Houghton’s.
When the American Jewish Committee learned of Putnam’s plans, its
president, Louis Marshall, contacted General George H. Putnam directly
to discuss the publication project. Putnam defended it on the grounds of
free speech, but Marshall countered that free speech is only protected
if its is not libelous. Since there was ample proof that the Protocols
were forgeries written to stir up violence against Jews, it would be
irresponsible for Putnam to publish it without clearly labeling it a
fraud. Putnam agreed, and withdrew from the project.
Undaunted, Houghton found a financial sponsor, purchased the plates from
Putnam’s, and published the work privately under the pseudonym of Peter
Beckwith. The book sold poorly, however.
When Small, Maynard published Brasol’s edition, bookstores refused to
carry it. Sales were robust by mail order, but Brasol’s hopes of
reaching masses of Americans to convince them that communism was an
outgrowth of Zionism were dashed, at least temporarily. Resilient in his
efforts, Brasol sent a copy of the Protocols to automobile manufacturer
Henry Ford, who was convinced that they were authentic. For the next two
years, Ford gave the Protocols wide circulation in his newspaper, the
Dearborn Independent.
Nothing did more to poison the atmosphere against American Jewry in the
years between 1920 and 1922 than Ford’s publication of the Protocols.
Apparently at Ford’s urging, the editor of the Dearborn Independent,
William Cameron, reworked the Protocols into a series of articles, “The
International Jew.” Cameron described the Protocols as “the most
comprehensive program for world subjugation that has ever come to public
knowledge.” Cameron believed the Protocols probably did not originate
with the Basle Congress, but “may have come to them as part of their
ancient Jewish inheritance.” The Zionists probably reported to a modern
Sanhedrin presided over by a direct descendant of King David. Cameron
believed that, at that point, the United States was “very largely in the
hands of, or under the influence of, Jewish interests.” Liberalism, jazz
and the decline in Christian virtue were all signs, for Cameron, that
the Jewish conspiracy was on its way to success. According to the
blueprint, Jews would cause more wars, famines and revolutions -- of
which the Bolshevik was only the first -- as a means to world
domination.
The “International Jew” series stopped running in 1922, but it was
widely quoted. It was not until 1927, after a libel suit and Jewish
boycott of Ford products that Henry Ford recanted. In a letter to Louis
Marshall, Ford claimed not to have paid any “personal attention” to the
series. Ford professed to being “deeply mortified” to learn that the
Protocols were forgeries and that his newspaper had offended Jewish
sensibilities.
Nazi Germany adopted the Protocols as a pretext for its war to
exterminate European Jewry. The Protocols still circulate in print and
on the Internet, inspiring radical fringe groups in their deranged
beliefs in Jewish conspiracies. Sadly, each generation must relearn that
the Protocols are one of the grossest and most damaging libels in
history.
Remember the days when a 200 watt power supply was more than enough power? Not anymore as we know, unless you are still using an antiquated system. Faster processors use and need more power. Then considering all the extra toys we all love like a CDRW, DVD Rom, two hard drives, many assorted cooling fans and many with lights, a cold cathode, powerful video card....well you get my point. When migrating from a 300@450 or even something like a p600 to the newer AMD or Pentium 4 setups we find that more power is needed. Initially I tried to get by with a 250w power supply, only to have it eventually blow up. Then on to a cheapy 300w and it did well for the most part. But once I added more toys and kept getting a faster cpu I found that I needed a larger and better power supply. Lockups, blue sceeens and system instability gets old. Sound familar to you? Hence the need for powerful power supplies like this Enermax EG465P-VE.
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The month of July 2004 has two full moons,
which means one of them is a Blue Moon. But will it really be blue?
Believe it or not, scientists say blue-colored moons are real.
July 7, 2004: When you hear someone say "Once
in a Blue Moon…" you know what they mean: Rare. Seldom.
Maybe even absurd. After all, when was the last time you saw the moon
turn blue?
On
July 31st, you should look, because there's going to be a Blue Moon.
According to modern folklore, a Blue Moon is the second full moon
in a calendar month. Usually months have only one full moon, but occasionally
a second one sneaks in. Full moons are separated by 29 days, while
most months are 30 or 31 days long; so it is possible to fit two full
moons in a single month. This happens every two and a half years,
on average.
Right:
One way to make a blue moon: use a blue filter. That's what Kostian
Iftica did on July 2nd when he photographed this full moon rising
over Brighton, Mass.
July has already had one full moon on July 2nd. The next, on July
31st, is by definition a Blue Moon.
But will it really be blue? Probably not. The date of a full
moon, all by itself, doesn't affect the moon's color. The moon on July
31st will be pearly-gray, as usual. Unless....
There was a time, not long ago, when people saw blue moons almost
every night. Full moons, half moons, crescent moons--they were all
blue, except some nights when they were green.
The time was 1883, the year an Indonesian volcano named Krakatoa
exploded. Scientists liken the blast to a 100-megaton nuclear bomb.
Fully 600 km away, people heard the noise as loud as a cannon shot.
Plumes of ash rose to the very top of Earth's atmosphere. And the
moon turned blue.
Krakatoa's ash is the reason. Some of the ash-clouds were filled
with particles about 1 micron (one millionth of a meter) wide--the
right size to strongly scatter red light, while allowing other colors
to pass. White moonbeams shining through the clouds emerged blue,
and sometimes green.
Blue
moons persisted for years after the eruption. People also saw lavender
suns and, for the first time, noctilucent clouds. The ash caused "such
vivid red sunsets that fire engines were called out in New York, Poughkeepsie,
and New Haven to quench the apparent conflagration," according
to volcanologist Scott Rowland at the University of Hawaii.
Above:
Still smoldering after all these years: a recent picture of Krakatoa.
Credit: Robert W. Decker of Volcano World. [More]
Other less potent volcanos have turned the moon blue, too. People
saw blue moons in 1983, for instance, after the eruption of the El
Chichon volcano in Mexico. And there are reports of blue moons caused
by Mt. St. Helens in 1980 and Mount Pinatubo in 1991.
The key to a blue moon is having in the air lots of particles slightly
wider than the wavelength of red light (0.7 micron)--and no other
sizes present. This is rare, but volcanoes sometimes spit out such
clouds, as do forest fires:
"On September 23, 1950, several muskeg fires that had been quietly
smoldering for several years in Alberta suddenly blew up into major--and
very smoky--fires," writes physics professor Sue Ann Bowling
of the University of Alaska. "Winds carried the smoke eastward
and southward with unusual speed, and the conditions of the fire produced
large quantities of oily droplets of just the right size (about 1
micron in diameter) to scatter red and yellow light. Wherever the
smoke cleared enough so that the sun was visible, it was lavender
or blue. Ontario and much of the east coast of the U.S. were affected
by the following day, but the smoke kept going. Two days later, observers
in England reported an indigo sun in smoke-dimmed skies, followed
by an equally blue moon that evening."
Right:
Smoke from forest fires can cause blue moons, too. Photo credit: John
McColgan of the Bureau of Land Management, Alaska Fire Service.
In the western U.S., there will be wildfires burning on July 31st.
If any of those fires produce ash or oily-smoke containing lots of
1-micron particles, the Blue Moon there could be blue.
More likely, it'll be red. Ash and dust clouds thrown into the atmosphere
by fires and storms usually contain a mixture of particles with a
wide range of sizes. Most are smaller than 1 micron, and they tend
to scatter blue light. This kind of cloud makes the Moon turn red;
indeed, red Blue Moons are far more common than blue
Blue Moons.
Absurd? Yes, but that's what a Blue Moon is all about. Step outside
at sunset on July 31st, look east, and see for yourself.
Editor's
note: The definition of a Blue Moon used in this story, "the
second full moon in a calendar month," is a curious bit of modern
folklore. How it emerged is a long story involving old almanacs, a
mistake in Sky & Telescope magazine, and the board game Trivial
Pursuit. Want to know more? Folklorist Philip Hiscock recounts part
of the story; Sky & Telescope explains the
rest.
The Science and Technology Directorate
at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center sponsors the Science@NASA web
sites. The mission of Science@NASA is to help the public understand how
exciting NASA research is and to help NASA scientists fulfill their
outreach responsibilities.
The
Largest Noise in History
(WhyFiles) On Aug. 26 and 27, 1883, an astonishing volcanic
explosion rocked Southeast Asia. Fully 600 kilometers away,
the noise sounded like cannon fire.
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Microsoft to Hackers: Drop That Code!
Microsoft Corp. is warning the online community to keep its hands off purloined Windows source code.
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The company on Tuesday confirmed it had sent legal warnings to some persons who it said had downloaded the stolen code from the Internet.
Source code from Windows NT 4.0 and Windows 2000 was posted on the Internet on Thursday, and Microsoft Corp. said at the time that it had initiated internal and external investigations.
Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft declined to specify the contents or the distribution of its warning message. But according to a report filed on Steven Bink's and Ryan Hoffman's Amsterdam-based Bink.nu site, Microsoft warned at least one recipient that he was in violation of copyright laws.
"The unauthorized copying and distribution of Microsoft's protected source code is a violation of both civil and criminal copyright and trade secret laws," Bink.nu quotes the notice as reading. "If you have downloaded and are making the source code available for downloading by others, you are violating Microsoft's rights, and could be subject to severe civil and criminal penalties."
The letter then demands that persons in possession of the source code stop sharing the code, destroy copies and inform Microsoft of the origin of the copy.
Bink said the recipient of the letter had downloaded the leaked code through a peer-to-peer network that had automatically shared his copy. Microsoft traced him through that channel, he said. Microsoft sent the letter to his Internet Service Provider, which then forwarded the e-mail message.
The legal message continues: "Microsoft takes these issues very seriously, and will pursue legal action against individuals who take part in the proliferation of it source code. We look forward to your prompt cooperation. Should you need to contact me, I can be reached at the address above"
Microsoft spokesman Tom Pilla confirmed that the company had sent out the cease-and-desist notices since the Windows code began appearing on Thursday, but he declined to provide any further details.
"We are obviously taking all appropriate legal actions to protect our intellectual property," he said.
Besides the illegal receipt of copyrighted materials, persons downloading the source code—especially developers—could face other problems,, legal experts said. Individuals examining the Windows code could face charges of trade-secret violations and infringement of software patents.
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These pages were first presented at the French Institute in London in October, 1996, as the third of the St. Jerome lectures, a series devoted to the topic of translation.
The word "Oulipo" is the acronym of the Ouvroir de littérature potentielle, or Workshop for potential literature, a group founded in 1960 by Raymond Queneau and François Le Lionnais. The group was created to explore what becomes possible when writing is subjected to arbitrary and restrictive procedures, preferably definable in mathematical terms. Since many have found this undertaking preposterous, it seemed useful to turn to translation and its attendant problems in making the interest of Oulipian methods clearer to skeptical writers and readers, as well as in examining the Case of the Persevering Maltese.
A Problem in Translation
Some of you may know the name of Ernest Botherby (born in Perth, Australia, 1869; died in Adelaide, 1944), the scholar who founded the Australian school of ethno-linguistics, and also the explorer who identified the variety of Apegetes known as botherbyi, popular in England during the years before the Great War when private greenhouses were still common. Botherby attained professional notoriety in the late '20s, after publishing several papers on a north New Guinean language called Pagolak. The peoples of New Guinea were a favorite subject with Botherby. He had begun studying them years before when, at the age of twenty-four, he undertook a solitary voyage into the interior of the island, vast areas of which remained uncharted at the time. A collation of reports by Nicholas von Mikhucho Maclay, the Reverend Macfarlane, and Otto Finsch had convinced young Botherby that tribes still existed in the New Guinean highlands that had shunned contact with their neighbors, not to mention the modern world, and preserved a truly primitive culture.
Starting from Tagota at the mouth of the Fly, Botherby traversed the river by steam launch to a point over five hundred miles inland, whence he proceeded in more modest craft almost to its headwaters. After establishing a base camp, he traveled across the plains into the mountain forests, finally arriving at the unexplored region he was looking for, a complex of valleys lying--to use the toponymy of the time--between the Kaiserin Augusta, the Victor Emmanuel Mountains, and the continuation of the Musgrave Range.
In one of these valleys Botherby discovered, as he had hoped, his first archaic tribe. He designates it as that of the Ohos. This community, numbering no more than a few hundred, lived a peaceable existence in conditions of extreme simplicity. They were hunter-gatherers equipped with rudimentary tools. They procured fire from conflagrations occurring in forests nearby but were incapable of making it otherwise. They also used speech, but a speech reduced to its minimum. The Oho language consisted of only three words and one expression, the invariable statement, "Red makes wrong." Having patiently won over the tribal chiefs, Botherby was able to verify this fact during the many weeks he spent with them. Other needs and wishes were communicated by sounds and signs; actual words were never used except for this unique assertion that "Red makes wrong."
In time Botherby signified to his hosts a curiosity as to whether other communities existed in the region. The Ohos pointed north and east. When Botherby pointed west, he met with fierce disapproval. So it was naturally west that he next went, prudently distancing himself from the Oho settlement before taking that direction. His hunch was rewarded two days later when, in another valley, he came upon his second tribe, which he called the Uhas. The Uhas lived in a manner much like the Ohos, although they knew how to cultivate several edible roots and had domesticated the native pig; like the Ohos, they had a rudimentary language used invariably to make a single statement. The Uhas' statement was, "Here not there." They used it as exclusively as the Ohos used "Red makes wrong."
Botherby eventually made his way back to the valley of the Ohos. There he was overcome by an understandable (if professionally incorrect) eagerness to share his second discovery, to wit, that near them lived a people of the same stock, leading a similar life, and possessed of the same basic gift of speech. As he was expounding this information with gestures that his audience readily understood, Botherby reached the point where he plainly needed to transmit the gist of the Uhas' one statement. He hesitated. How do you render "Here not there" in a tongue that can only express "Red makes wrong"?
Botherby did not hesitate long. He saw, as you of course see, that he had no choice. There was only one solution. He grasped at once what all translators eventually learn: a language says what it can say, and that's that.
Yes, but we're different
The range of the Oho and Uha languages is tiny; the range of modern languages, for instance, French and English, is vast. There is virtually nothing that can be said in English that cannot be said in French, and vice versa. Information, like phone numbers and race results, can easily be swapped between the two languages. Then again, some statements that seem informative do not really pass.
A Frenchman says, "Je suis français;" an American says, "I'm American." "I'm French" and "Je suis américain" strike us as accurate translations. But are they? A Frenchman who asserts that he is French invokes willy-nilly a communal past of social, cultural, even conceptual evolution, one that transcends the mere legality of citizenship. But the fact of citizenship is what is paramount to most Americans, who probably feel, rightly or wrongly, that history is theirs to invent. The two national identities are radically different, and claims to them cannot be usefully translated in a way that will bridge this gap.
I suggest that this gap extends into the remotest corners of the two languages. Elle s'est levée de bonne heure means "She arose early," but in expectation of different breakfasts and waking from dreams in another guise. This does not mean that it's wrong to translate plain statements in a plain way, only that it is worth remembering that such translations tell us what writers say and not who they are. In this respect, French and English--or Germans and Portuguese--would seem to be as separate as Ohos and Uhas.
There are also times when plain statements of fact do translate each other rather well--even the statements Je suis français and I'm American. To make what I mean clear, let me add to them one or two supplementary words. The Frenchman says, "Je suis français, Monsieur!" The American says, "I'm American, and you better believe it!" You see at once that the meaning of both statements is the same: an assertion not of nationality but of committed membership in a community--"my community." So even essentials can sometimes break through the linguistic separation.
What makes this interesting is that the substantial identity of these statements does not lie in what they say--the information they contain is obviously not identical (French/American). So in this instance, at any rate, what has been successfully translated lies not in the nominal sense of the words but in other factors of language, whatever they may be. And whatever they may be, these factors are precisely the material of Oulipian experiment.
So can the Oulipo help translators in their delicate task?
Translation and the Oulipo (1)
The Oulipo certainly can't help in an obvious way. Unless he wanted to sabotage his employer, an editor would be mad to employ an Oulipian as a translator.
A few samples will show why. As our source text, let's take a famous line from Racine's Phčdre:
C'est Vénus tout entičre ŕ sa proie attachée.
The literal sense--please be charitable--is, "Here is Venus unreservedly fastened to her prey."
First translation: I saw Alice jump highest--I, on silly crutches. Explanation: a rule of measure has been applied to the original. Each of its words is replaced by another word having the same number of letters.
Second translation: "Don't tell anyone what we've learned until you're out in the street. Then shout it out, and when that one-horse carriage passes by, create a general pandemonium." Explanation: the sound of the original has been imitated as closely as possible--C'est Vénus tout entiére ŕ sa proie attachée / Save our news, toot, and share as uproar at a shay--and the results expanded into a narrative fragment. (Let me give you an example of a sound translation from English to French, Marcel Benabou's transformation of "A thing of beauty is a joy forever": Ah, singe débotté, / Hisse un jouet fort et vert--"O unshod monkey, raise a stout green toy!")
In these two examples the sense of the original has been quite forsaken. Even when they preserve the sense, however, Oulipian renderings hardly resemble normal ones.
Third translation: At this place and time exists the goddess of love identified with the Greek Aphrodite, without reservation taking firm hold of her creature hunted and caught. Explanation: each word has been replaced by its dictionary definition.
Last translation: Look at Cupid's mom just throttling that god's chump. Explanation: all words containing the letter e have been excluded.
The preserved sense hardly makes these two translations faithful ones. And yet all four examples can be considered translations. What has been translated, however, is not the text's nominal sense but other of its components; and we may call these components "forms," taking "form" simply to mean a material element of written language that can be isolated and manipulated. So the first pair of examples are direct translations of forms: in the passage from one language to another, forms rather than sense are what is preserved (number of letters, sound). The second pair are replacements of forms--not only the words but a form of the original has been replaced, in one instance a lexical context, in the other the choice of vowels.
These strange dislocations of the original may seem cavalier, but they are useful in drawing attention precisely to elements of language that normally pass us by, concerned as we naturally are with making sense of what we read. Nominal sense becomes implicitly no more than a part of overall meaning. Jacques Roubaud has recently provided a nice insight into its relativity in a discussion of the nature of poetry. He posits the axiom, "Poetry does not respect the principle of non-contradiction," and goes on to propose two poems for comparison (since Roubaud says they are poems, let's agree):
1st poem: This is a poem.
2nd poem: This is not a poem.
There is, he asserts, no poetic contradiction between the two poems. I would add that according to ordinary criteria, the second poem is not a translation of the first; whereas by Oulipian criteria, they are perfect translations of one another - just as "Je suis français, Monsieur!" and "I'm American, and you better believe it" can be considered equivalents even though saying different things.
This view of translation is a first clue to why the Oulipo has something to teach anyone interested in how writing and reading work.
The Truthful Liar
The American novelist Robert Coover writes fiction that can be mildly described as outlandish. It is full of banal situations rapidly transformed into comic nightmares. No one would call him a realist. Yet at a literary conference several years ago, when he was asked why he wrote, he answered, "To tell the truth."
His answer startled me; not that Robert Coover isn't an honest man, but this was not what his work first brought to mind. I quickly saw that he had been right to place himself in the age-old tradition of poetic truth-telling. In that case, we may then ask, why does he invent tales so unlike what we see around us? Why can't he simply say what is true?
He could simply say it; what he cannot do is simply write it. We can tell the truth when we speak; it may not happen often, but you know it when it happens. But when you write down what you say, whether it's "I love you" or "Pass the salt," the words in themselves are no longer either true or untrue. No one is there to be responsible for them.
Even in its ordinary, utilitarian uses, the written word cannot guarantee what it says. Can we agree that instruction manuals sometimes fail to help? Although once you've figured out your gadget, they become clear enough. Have the cooks among you tried out cookbook dishes that clearly had to be mastered before you could understand the recipe? The authors of manuals and cookbooks tell us honestly what they do, but because they aren't there to show us, it doesn't work.
Consider the press. (If you watch your news, notice that the person on television speaks a written text.) What do we want from a news report? Hard information--what we call facts. And what are facts? What, for instance, is the central fact about a tennis match that you learn in a newspaper? The final score. Does that mean the score is the match? After three hours of play, Sampras and Agassi are tied two sets apiece and 4-all in the last set: where is the final score? Nowhere to be seen. The score only comes into existence when the match passes out of existence.
Facts are the score, not the game. Facts are lies. Not because they are false, but because facts belong to the past--to what was, never to what is. We love them, because once reality is safely lodged in the past, it becomes reassuring, reasonable, and easy to manage. Or at least easier: we read, "50 Palestinians and 12 Israelis killed in renewed fighting," barely gulp, and turn the page. Naturally. That is the way written language naturally works. Our language is made up of devices called sentences and paragraphs that automatically produce reasonable conclusions, which is another word for facts.
There is no escaping this. It is not a Bad Thing. However, a reality we can call the truth must be looked for elsewhere.
Fragment of a neosocratic dialogue.
Scene: outside the wall of Athens
You have been silent for a long time, Socrates.
I have been observing these little statues, Echecrates. This shady spot must be dedicated to Proteus.
I thought that you might be falling asleep. The breeze is so soft, the brook makes so lulling a sound, and then the air is filled with such a sweet scent of wild thyme.
It is abundant enough and makes a pleasant couch; but I am not sleepy, Echecrates.
All the same, you seem little inclined to speak.
Perhaps.
So you prefer silence, Socrates?
Let me listen to you, Echecrates. Will you agree to consider a question, one that you, better than anyone, can surely answer?
What is your question?
Echecrates, tell me: what is the truth?
Socrates, I expect you wish for silence after all, and that you hope to keep me quiet with your proposal. I shall not let you off so easily but answer your question forthwith. The truth is the perception of Ideas, which are the sole causes of all things and the sole objects of knowledge.
Your answer, Echecrates, is apt; for certainly the knowledge of truth requires the perception of Ideas. And yet the truth is not that.
In that case, Socrates, let me modify my answer, for I see that the truth lies of course not in perceiving but in what is perceived: the truth, then, is the divine array of absolute forms by which the One is manifest in the Many, and the Many subsumed in the One.
What you say is by no means false, since no opinion of the truth can deny its unity or exclude its multiplicity. And yet, Echecrates, the truth is not that.
If only I could guess what you expect of me! Socrates, you have turned me into a confused child standing before a stern and patient father, hoping to please and dreading to disappoint him. Let me try once more to satisfy you. The truth is what is apparent only to the dead, whose immortal souls are freed from the hindrance of the bodily senses and are at last capable of knowing the pure and the good.
Let us hope, Echecrates, that we two are carried to that realm of virtuous souls, where we shall converse with Orpheus and Homer and know ourselves at last. But I feel that my question wearies you, and that the time has come to put it aside. Only in conclusion, let me repeat what I said before: the truth is not that.
But is there an answer to your question, Socrates?
Yes, and I have given it to you.
Socrates, I do not understand.
I have given you the answer three times. The truth is: not that. Is not this so, Echecrates? However you define it, whatever words you assign to it, you can and must always say afterwards, the truth is, Not that.
Keep moving
If Neosocrates is right, saying that the truth is "not that" implies: whatever you think you know, don't stop there. How can this apply to what has already been said?
Earlier I reached the conclusion, facts are lies. What if I round that out: facts are lies--and that's a fact. Look at what happens now. Fact's are lies, and that's a fact: if the statement "facts are lies" is a fact, then the statement is a lie; and if it's a lie, then facts aren't lies. But in that case the fact that facts are lies is a lie, and so saying that facts are lies is not a lie, and so facts are in fact lies, and the statement "facts aren't lies" is a lie--and that's a fact. And so on and so on.
This modest circular paradox has its interest. First of all, when we read or hear it, something occurs beyond what's being said. Second, what was previously a conclusion becomes a continuum, a succession of events rather than a single event. What is the main difference between a conclusion and a continuum? What distinguishes the final score of a tennis match from the moment when Agassi and Sampras are tied 4-all in the fifth set? Uncertainty and movement; in a word, change, a quality that is wholly wanting in the realm of facts. Change can have no place among facts, which constitute the realm of fatality, of what's over and done with. The realm where change exists is that of possibility.
"Not that" suggests that truth is a continuum of uncertain possibility. It only exists in the next now. In writing, that means the now of reading. Since the first reader is the writer herself, a truth-telling writer has to create the possibility of not yet knowing what the truth is, of not yet knowing what he or she is going to say. Non-writing artists seem seem to grasp this easily. Francis Bacon described his painting as "accident engendering accident." Ornette Coleman said he never knew what he was going to play next until he heard the note coming out of his saxophone. One writer, at least, made the point neatly: when the Red Queen tells Alice to hurry up and say what she thinks, Alice replies, "How can I say what I think till I see what I say?"
If we think of writers as translators, what they must translate is not something already known but what is unknown and unpredictable. The writer is an Oho who has just heard what the Uhas say. Poor Botherby couldn't begin to cope: he wanted to report a fact when what he needed was a cultural revolution. Fortunately, we have the necessary means, not always revolutionary. Language creates a continuum of its own, precisely in those components that concern not the plain sense of words but what we noticed in the circular paradox, the movement that their sequence engenders.
Translation and the Oulipo (2)
If truth is a changing continuum and not a series of discrete events and ideas, it's unlikely that we can catch up with it in any reasonable way. Reasonable and honest accounts will always resemble superior instruction manuals, useful, even fascinating, never the thing itself. Or perhaps we should say a thing itself. On the page, truth begins when something real happens.
Imaginative writers officially disclaim reasonableness and honesty. That's what imaginative (or creative) signifies: they're lying. Poets and novelists are outright liars. They promise to provide no useful information unless they feel like it. Three advantages accrue immediately. First, you are released from all responsibility to the dead world of facts. Second, your readers are ready to believe you, since by admitting you lie, you've told the truth at least once. Third and best, you can discover the unforeseen truth by making it up. You are condemned to possibility: you can say anything you like.
So much freedom can be unnerving. If you can say anything, where do you start? You have already started. No one sits down to write in the abstract, but to write something. Some writerly object of desire has appeared, and you are setting off in pursuit of it. The object may be an anedcdote, an idea, a vision, an effect, a climate, an emotion, a clever plot, a formal pattern--it doesn't matter, it is what you're after.
What happens next? The process of translation as it is commonly practiced provides a helpful analogy. I am speaking from my own experience, but I do not think it exceptional.
Simplistically described, translation means converting a text in a source language into its replica in a target language. Both translators and readers know what happens when this process is incomplete: the translator becomes so transfixed by the source text that when he shifts to his native tongue he drags along not only what should be kept of the original but much more--foreign phrasing, word order, even words. The results hang uncomfortably somewhere between the two languages, and a brutal effort is needed to move them the rest of the way.
I learned how to avoid this pitfall. When I translate, I begin by studying the original text until I understand it thoroughly. Then, knowing that I can say anything I understand, no matter how awkwardly, I say what I have now understood and write down my words. I imagine myself talking to a friend across the table to make sure the words I use are ones I naturally speak. It makes no difference if what I write is shambling or coarse or much too long. What I need is not elegance but natural, late-twentieth-century American vernacular. Translating the opening sentence of Proust--Longtemps je me suis couché de bonne heure--I might write down: When I was a kid, it took me years to get my parents to let me even stay up till nine. (This is actually mid-twentieth century vernacular; but that's where I'm from, and it's what I might say.)
There is still work to do. But I have gained an enormous advantage. Instead of being stuck in the source language, I am standing firmly on home ground. My material is as familiar as anything in language can be; and instead of having to move away from the foreign text, I can now move towards it as I improve my clumsy rendering, sure that at every step, with the source text as my goal, I shall be working in native English. All I have to do is edit my own writing until I eventually reach a finished version.
Think of the writer's object of desire--vision, situation, whatever--as his source text. Like the translator, he learns everything he can about it. He then abandons it while he chooses a home ground. Home ground for him will be a mode of writing. He probably knows already if he should write a poem, a novel, or a play. But if it is a novel, what kind of novel should it be--detective, picaresque, romantic, science fiction, or perhaps a war novel? And if a war novel, which war, seen from which side, on what scale (epic, intimate, both)? At some moment, never forgetting his object of desire, which may be the scene of a thundershower breaking on a six-year-old girl and boy, he will have assembled the congenial conventions and materials that will give him a multitude of things to do as he works towards realizing that initial glimpse of a summer day, a storm, and two children.
An example can make this clearer. Throughout his life, Robert Louis Stevenson was fascinated by the dual personality. His greatest exploration of the theme was The Master of Ballantrae, but he tried other ways of approaching it. In one instance he chose as his home ground the 19th-century penny dreadful with its array of melodramatic and grotesque trappings. Stevenson saw that to discover the mystery of his object of desire--the dual personality--in its starkest terms, these trappings provided what he needed. They proved so suitable that we scarcely notice them when we read Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, a work successful enough to have attained the status of a modern legend.
It would be interesting to investigate works whose home grounds are not so readily discernable; it would also be laborious, and it is now time to think about the Oulipo.
Back home at the Oulipo
Since the mid-19th century, writers have chosen their home grounds more and more outside the main traditions of fiction and poetry. Firbank used the brittle comedy of manners to register his tragic views; Kafka turned to the parable, Hofmannsthal and Calvino on occasion to fairy tales, Henry Miller to pornography. Other writers invented their own home grounds - Mallarmé in poetry, for instance, Joyce and Raymond Roussel in fiction--and it is for their successors and their readers that the Oulipo has a particular relevance.
A parenthetical point: the Oulipo is not a literary school. It is not even concerned with the production of literary works. It is first and last a laboratory where, through experiment and erudition, possibilities of writing under arbitrary and severe restrictions are investigated. The use of these possibilities is the business of individual writers, Oulipian or not.
All the same, several members of the Oulipo have exploited Oulipian procedures in their work. I suggest that these procedures have provided them with home grounds. How is this possible? How can methods based on deprivation become the comforting terrain on which a writer sets out in pursuit of an object of desire? Why would anybody not a masochist want to determine a sequence of episodes according to the tortuous path of a knight across the entire chessboard? Or use the graphic formulations of a structural semiologist to plot a novel? Or limit one's vocabulary in a story to the threadbare words contained in a small group of proverbs? Or, if a poet, why write using only the letters of the name of the person the poem addresses? or conversely exclude those letters successively in the sequence of verses? or create a poetic corpus using the ape language of the Tarzan books? Nevertheless, these are some of the things Perec, Calvino, Jacques Jouet, and I chose to do, with acceptable results.
Why did we do them? I used to wonder myself. When I first learned that Perec had written a novel without using the letter e, I was horrified. It sounded less like coming home than committing oneself to a concentration camp.
When we were children, what we loved most was playing. After a fidgety family meal or excruciating hours in class, going out to play made life worth living. Sometimes we went out and played any old way; but the most fun I had was playing real games. I have no idea what games you enjoyed, but my own favorites were Capture the Flag and Prisoner's Base--hard games with tough rules. When I played them, I was aware of nothing else in the world, except that the sun was getting low on the horizon and my happiness would soon be over. In Manhattan last autumn, I stopped to watch a school soccer game in which an eight-year-old girl was playing fullback. She was alertness personified, never taking her eye off the ball, skipping from side to side in anticipation of the shot that might come her way. She had definitely not engaged in a trivial activity.
The Oulipo supplies writers with hard games to play. They are adult games insofar as children cannot play most of them; otherwise they bring us back to a familiar home ground of our childhood. Like Capture the Flag, the games have demanding rules that we must never forget (well, hardly ever), and these rules are moreover active ones: satisfying them keeps us too busy to worry about being reasonable. Of course our object of desire, like the flag to be captured, remains present to us. Thanks to the impossible rules, we find ourselves doing and saying things we would never have imagined otherwise, things that often turn out to be exactly what we need to reach our goal.
Two examples. Georges Perec's novel without the letter e, intermittently dramatic, mysterious, and funny, describes a world filled at every turn with multiple disappearances. Some undefined and crucial element in it is both missing from it and threatening it--something as central as the letter e to the French language, as primordial as one's mother tongue. The tone is anything but solemn, and yet by accepting his curious rule and exploring its semantic consequences, Perec succeeded in creating a vivid replica of his own plight--the orphaned state that had previously left him paralyzed as a writer.
I had a similar experience with my novel Cigarettes. My "object of desire" was telling the story of a passionate friendship between two middle-aged women. That was all I knew. I had concocted an elaborate formal scheme in which abstract situations were permutated according to a set pattern. This outline suggested nothing in particular, and for a time it remained utterly empty and bewildering. It then began filling up with situations and characters that seem to come from nowhere; most of them belonged to the world I had grown up in. I had never been able to face writing about it before, even though I'd wanted to make it my subject from the moment I turned to fiction. It now reinvented itself in an unexpected and fitting guise that I could never have discovered otherwise.
For Perec and me, writing under constraint proved to be not a limitation but a liberation. Our unreasonable home grounds were what had at last enabled us to come home.
The Case of the Persevering Maltese
Earlier I quoted Francis Bacon describing his painting as "accident engendering accident." Imposing fixed patterns as it does, the Oulipian approach sounds as though it discouraged such self-generating activity, but this is not so: in practice it guarantees that the unforeseen will happen and keep happening. It keeps us out of control. Control usually means submitting reasonably to the truly tyrannical patterns that language imposes on us whether we like them or not. Language by its nature makes us focus on its conclusions, not its presence. Oulipian dislocations of this "natural" language counter its de facto authority or, at the least, provide an alternative to it. Don't forget that language cares as little about our individual needs as the tides and the winds; ill-equipped, we can affect it no better than King Canute.
Those of you who have visited Venice may know the paintings of Vittore Carpaccio in the Scuola di San Giorgio degli Schiavoni. The schiavoni were slavs, and the cycle of paintings concerns a patron saint of Dalmatia, St. Jerome. Surprisingly, St. Jerome is absent from the most beautiful of these pictures, "The Vision of St. Augustine;" but there is a good reason for this. St. Augustine sits at his desk, where he has just finished reading a letter from St. Jerome asking his advice on a theological matter. St. Augustine has scarcely taken up his quill to reply when light floods his study and a miraculous voice reveals to him that St. Jerome is dead.
It might be entertaining to speculate on the relevance of the scene to what I've been discussing--pointing out, perhaps, the futility of the reasoned answer St. Augustine is preparing in the face of the unforeseen and overwhelming truth. But let's not. We have a still more entertaining object to contemplate.
In the middle of the floor to the left of the saint's desk, a little Maltese dog sits bolt upright. He is bathed with celestial light, to which he pays no attention as he stares at his master in an attitude of absolute expectation, as alert in his immobility as was my little fullback in her agile skipping. He is as unconcerned by the momentous event now occurring as he is by literary theory. His attitude might be translated as the human question, What next? Like children and Oulipians, he probably wants to play, but he can't be sure of that or anything else. He has to wait to find out. What next? What next, and what after that? The answer will be something like the one given by Marcel Duchamp when asked what he considered the highest goal of a successful life. He replied, "It. Whatever has no name."
Lans-en-Vercors - Paris, October 23, 1996
Harry Mathews has published many books of fiction, non-fiction, and poetry; his most recent novel is The Journalist (Godine). A member of the Oulipo since 1972, he is currently co-editing Oulipo Compendium, an archival work to be published by Atlas Press in the spring of 1997.
Amaya is intended to be a comprehensive client
environment for testing and evaluating new proposals for Web standards and
formats. A large part of the intended features of Amaya are
implemented in this release, but some of them are not complete yet.
The Amaya binary distribution is available for PC Linux, Windows (NT, XP,
2000, 98) and Mac OSX (with Fink). Users having other architectures are
expected to compile the Amaya source code.
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There are about three Amaya releases by year. Between each major release,
we may generate patch releases or snapshots which fix
important bugs.
Each time a new release is available, an email is sent to the www-amaya
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platforms.
By default Amaya works with
an English dialogue. Other languages are supported:
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dialogues
French, German, Spanish, and Russian for the in-line documentation
Users can change the dialogue language through the configuration menu
Edit > Preferences > General (fr for
French, de for German, es for Spanish,
pt for Portuguese, it for Italian, and
fi for Finnish).
Installing dictionaries
Amaya includes a spell-checker. By default French and
English dictionaries are included in the distribution. If your distribution
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Amaya/dicopar/*.dic), you must download and
install it. These dictionaries are not complete, so the spell-checker could
report spelling errors just because the dictionary doesn't include these
words.
This is the list of dictionary tar files currently available. :
Dutch dictionary Dutch.tgz (1228,989 bytes) gzipped
tar file (last update: 14 December 1999).
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Medical marijuana activists planted marijuana outside California Highway Patrol offices in Oakland Tuesday to protest a recent incident in which officers recently raided a cannabis garden that organizers say was legal. Don Duncan, the director of the Berkeley Patients Group Inc., said, "We're here today to call on the CHP to stop arresting people and bringing in the federal Drug Enforcement Administration on medical marijuana cases." Speaking at a rally attended by about 30 activists, Angel McClary Raich, a medical marijuana advocate whose lawsuit against the federal government on the issue will be heard by the U.S. Supreme Court, said, "I'm very, very outraged that the CHP called in the DEA and didn't do any investigation before calling them in." Duncan and Raich are referring to a June 30 incident in which the CHP says that a routine traffic stop in Oakland that led them to a nearby warehouse where nearly 4,000 marijuana plants were discovered. Four people were arrested on federal drug charges and face minimum prison sentences of 10 years along with $4 million in fines. Dale Gieringer of California NORML said, "The CHP is out of control" and alleged that the agency didn't follow proper procedures. But CHP spokesman Sgt. Wayne Ziese said by phone that the officers followed procedures by the book. Ziese said that after the traffic stop was made, CHP officers first consulted with Oakland police, but Oakland police then told them to bring in the DEA. Ziese said CHP investigators believed that the marijuana at the warehouse wasn't for medicinal use but instead was part of a criminal enterprise. Ziese said CHP officials likely will remove the marijuana plants that were planted by activists Tuesday.
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Party Lines - The Center for Public Integrity
Dems outraised GOP in the states, but have little to show for it
By Derek Willis
WASHINGTON, March 25, 2004 — State parties raised nearly $823 million in the 2001-2002 election cycle, bolstered by millions from labor unions, corporations, wealthy individuals and the national parties, according to a new study by the Center for Public Integrity. About 53 percent of the total went to Democrats and 47 percent went to Republicans.
The parties also reported spending more than $790 million during the same time period.
While Democrats out-raised the GOP at the state level, it was no contest at the national level, where Republicans were about even with Democrats in now-banned "soft money" contributions, but held a tremendous 2-1 advantage in hard money contributions.
The Center collected disclosure records from 229 state party and caucus committees over the past year, making it possible to calculate the combined total of state and national party contributions in an election cycle—more than $1.6 billion, a staggering amount, especially given that 2002 was an off-year, non-presidential election.
Federal law regulates the source and amount of contributions that the national parties—the Democratic National Committee, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the Republican National Committee, the National Republican Senatorial Committee and the National Republican Congressional Committee—can receive. Such regulated money is known as federal or "hard" money. In the 2001-2002 election cycle, national parties could also receive unlimited donations, called "soft money," but the 2002 passage of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act ended that practice.
Non-federal money, which in some cases can be considered soft money, is mostly regulated by the states. Rules on the sources and limits can vary widely at the state level, as can disclosure. In fact, in a 2002 nationwide ranking, the Center found that nearly half the states failed to keep the public fully informed of state party campaign activity.
The $823 million raised is $102 million more than was raised in 1999-2000, based on data from a previous Center study. While state parties received more money from the national parties in 1999-2000, they raised about $118 million more for their own state accounts overall in 2001-2002. The presidential election in 2000 could account for the larger role of the national parties in that election, while high-profile and costly statewide elections in 2002 helped boost the totals in Florida, California, New Hampshire and other states.
More money, fewer wins
The Democrats' funding edge at the state level did not always translate to victories at the polls, as Republicans captured significant statewide elections in 2002.
In Georgia, Democratic party and caucus committees spent $5 million more than Republican committees, but nevertheless lost big: Among those Democrats toppled were the incumbent governor, a U.S. senator and the powerful speaker of the state House. In Missouri, Democratic committees raised $2.5 million more than GOP committees, yet lost a close U.S. Senate race and control of the state House for the first time in 48 years. Democratic parties did have some notable electoral achievements in states like Arizona, Illinois, New Mexico and Pennsylvania, where Democratic governors were elected.
The loss in Georgia typified the Democrats' woes, especially because they had such a significant fundraising edge—Georgia's Democratic Party raised $15.3 million during 2001 and 2002, $3 million more than the state GOP. A key difference, observers said, was that Georgia Republicans produced a massive ground operation in the final days before the election, turning out voters to elect Sonny Perdue as governor and Saxby Chambliss to the U.S. Senate. In consultation with the national party and political advisors to President George W. Bush, the Georgia GOP spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on get-out-the-vote efforts that paid off on Nov. 5, 2002.
The "72-hour project," in Georgia and other states, which has since become a model for GOP voter turnout operations, is an illustration of the integral role that state parties play in elections for local, state and national office. It also serves as a lesson for the importance of voter turnout in the 2004 presidential campaign.
"Republicans tended to rely on the bells and whistles instead of relying on the people," said John Hancock, a former executive director of the Missouri GOP and currently a consultant to the party. "The 72-hour task force is just a snazzy name for getting people back involved."
How the money flows
Finding contributions hardly seemed to be a problem for state parties, especially when the national parties were eager to send millions their way. State party and caucus committees received at least $303 million from the six national party committees based in Washington, D.C. Of that, $217 million came in the form of "soft money" raised outside the limits of the federal campaign laws. The total is higher than what state filings reflect: inconsistencies in reporting at the state level occasionally meant that certain national party transfers did not appear in state records. Democrats in Tennessee and Michigan, among other states, set up separate committees that received soft money from the national parties and then passed it along to the state party committees, obscuring the identity of the original donors.
Under BCRA, national parties no longer can raise or spend soft money, cutting off a valuable supply of money for the state parties in the future. For example, state parties reported receiving at least $68 million from the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, of which $48 million was soft money. National parties may still send "hard money" raised under federal limits to the states. In addition, state parties can raise money under state rules that would not otherwise be permitted under federal rules.
In practice, state parties often used the soft money transfers from the national parties to help pay for broadcast advertisements for competitive races. Having state parties buy the advertising time rather than the national parties often meant that fewer hard dollars needed to be used for the expenditure. For example, the Tennessee Republican Party aired a television spot attacking U.S. Senate candidate Bob Clement's record on taxes, saying the ad was produced "in conjunction with the National Senatorial Committee" (sic). Federal records show that the NRSC sent the state party $284,000 on Oct. 23, 2002, the day the new ad was unveiled. The state party's filing show that it paid National Media Inc., a consulting firm, $284,000 for "Campaign Exp-TV" two days later.
The Center obtained records from all 50 states detailing contributions and expenditures by state political party and legislative caucus committees. Some reports were available in electronic format, while others only came on paper and had to be entered into a database. To this the Center added records from the federal accounts of the 100 Democratic and Republican state party committees, available from the Federal Election Commission. Researchers then identified and categorized top donors, recipients and spending categories.
Among the states, only Arkansas and North Dakota did not require disclosure of state party expenditures during 2001-2002, and both have since changed their laws to require disclosure of such information. Expenditure information from the federal accounts of party committees in Arkansas and North Dakota was available from the FEC and is included in the study. All states require disclosure of contributions to state political parties, but not all require the same information from donors. Some also permit state parties to maintain separate administrative accounts that need not always be disclosed (see methodology for more information).
The study found a familiar pattern among the top donors to state party and caucus committees: many of the same labor unions, corporations, associations and wealthy individuals that inhabit the top ranks of national donors do double-duty in the states. But the Center also found donors who appear to restrict their giving to the state level.
To come up with the top donors, the Center included both their federal and non-federal contributions.
Top contributors
Labor unions dominated the list of top non-party donors to state parties, providing at least $41 million, mostly to Democratic committees. AFSCME, the union representing state and local government workers, poured $5 million into state party and caucus committees, ahead of the Service Employees International Union ($4.9 million) and the National Education Association ($4.6 million). Those three unions, along with the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, accounted for 43 percent of all labor union contributions.
Nearly all of the top 20 organizational contributors—consisting of unions, trial lawyers and abortion-rights groups—gave most of their money to Democratic committees. AT&T Corp., which ranked twelfth, gave about 61 percent of its $1.6 million to Republican committees (other party committees and candidates were among the largest overall donors to state parties, but the Center's analysis treats them separately from union, corporate and individual contributors).
Union contributions were especially significant in the Democrats' success in Illinois, where former U.S. Rep. Rod Blagojevich became the first Democratic governor in 30 years: 33 different unions contributed to Democratic committees in Illinois, led by SEIU's $163,000 and another $147,000 from the electrical workers. In California, where then-Gov. Gray Davis won a second term in 2002, the SEIU poured nearly $879,000 into Democratic party and caucus committees, second only to $1.2 million in contributions by the NEA and its state affiliates.
While GOP committees had no single donors to match the most generous labor unions, they could count a number of wealthy individuals and their businesses. Houston home builder Bob Perry split his $1,155,000 among Republican committees in Texas, Louisiana and Arkansas.
Perry was one of two individuals to contribute more than $1 million to state parties in 2001-2002; the other was James E. Pederson, a real estate developer and chairman of the Arizona Democratic Party, to which he donated nearly $3.7 million. That figure dwarfs the $417,400 that he has given to federal candidates and parties since 1997, according to FEC records. Neither Pederson nor party executive director Paul Hegarty responded to a telephone message seeking comment.
In addition to Perry and Pederson, at least 123 other individuals contributed $100,000 or more to state party and caucus committees. They included Sen. Jon Corzine, D-N.J., who gave $421,200; California construction executive and owner of the San Diego Chargers football team Alexander G. Spanos ($355,000) and author Stephen King ($150,000).
Some donors worked both sides of the aisle, spreading money to both parties. Brewer Anheuser-Busch contributed to 23 different Democratic state committees and another 23 Republican committees, often each party in the same state. SBC Communications Inc., one of the Baby Bells, split its $928,000 almost equally between GOP and Democratic recipients.
Business interests figured heavily among the leading contributors, according to the Center's analysis. Financial, insurance and real estate donors combined to give nearly $59 million to state parties and caucus committees, with real estate interests alone accounting for $22 million of that figure. Lawyers and lobbyists contributed $39.7 million.
Lawyers accounted for nearly $20 million in contributions to Democratic committees in Florida, New Jersey and in Texas, where 96.6 percent of all Lone Star state lawyer donations went to Democratic committees. Houston and other Texas cities are home to some of the Democratic Party's most generous trial lawyers, and the issue of "tort reform"—placing limits on jury awards to plaintiffs—has loomed large in the state. Only Alabama had a higher percentage of lawyer money going to Democrats—99.5 percent—than Texas. Among the top states for contributions from the legal community, only Illinois and Ohio saw a roughly even split between donations to Republican and Democratic party committees from lawyers.
Pharmaceutical manufacturers, a key Republican ally at the national level, also were generous to state party committees. GOP committees in 40 states received some money from drug makers, their PACs and employees, with the most going to New Jersey, Florida, Tennessee and New York. Georgia, New York and New Jersey were the only three states in which Democratic committees received more than $35,000 from the pharmaceutical industry.
While the top industry givers spread their money across many states, other industries devoted most of their attention to a few key locations. The gambling industry, which consists of casinos, racetracks and other betting venues, concentrated most of its $5.5 million in contributions within three states: Florida, California and Nevada. Party committees in those three states received more than $1 million each. In Florida, the largest donors were horse and dog racetrack operations such as Gulfstream Park and the Palm Beach Kennel Club, along with the Miccosukee and Seminole Indian tribes, which operate casinos. Indian tribes dominated the list of California gambling-related donors and casinos led the pack in Nevada.
Parties in five other states—Missouri, Illinois, New Jersey, Arizona and New Mexico—received at least $100,000 from gambling-related interests, including racetrack owners and companies that make equipment or provide services for gambling operations.
A helping hand
Some state parties reached out to party organizations outside their states to find resources to help candidates, especially federal candidates. Democrats in South Dakota needed every dollar they could find in 2002 to help U.S. Sen. Tim Johnson defend his seat against a challenge from then-Rep. John Thune. Five state Democratic Party committees sent valuable "hard dollars" to South Dakota's Democratic Party during the 2001-2002 cycle, and four of those states got non-federal money from South Dakota, often more than they gave.
"We were concerned that we would run short on hard money, so we were actively seeking it out," said Bret Healy, a political consultant who served as executive director of the state Democratic Party in 2002.
Healy found willing partners in California, Florida, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, New York and Virginia where state party committees combined to send a total of $1,101,800 in hard money to South Dakota between June 2001 and August 2002. In return, those committees received a total of $1,178,750 in soft money from South Dakota.
The generosity of other state parties was such that Healy was able to dole out hard money to other states as the election approached. Party committees in Massachusetts, Montana and Louisiana got a total of $204,667 from South Dakota between Sept. 25 and Oct. 31, 2002.
In a telephone interview, Healy said that the transfers between state parties were a common practice dating to the mid-1990s. "The premium for hard money had been there for several cycles. We moved money amongst state parties in the 2000 cycle, so it's not a great big new thing."
The transactions are a state-level twist on a practice that was common on the national level when party committees were still allowed to raise soft money. National parties seeking hard money would transfer soft money to state party committees, which could be spent with fewer restrictions on electioneering, who would then send a smaller amount back in hard money. The difference would be the state party's gain on the transaction. Take Florida, for example. In 2001-2002, the National Republican Senatorial Committee sent nearly $5.6 million in soft money to Florida's Republican Party—despite the lack of a Senate race in Florida in 2002. In turn, Florida's GOP sent $5,475,000 in hard money to the NRSC during the same period—money that could be used with far fewer restrictions. (See National GOP Exchanges Soft Money for Hard in Florida.)
Florida's Republican Party also was able to send money to state party committees in California, Georgia, Michigan, New Jersey, Ohio, South Carolina and South Dakota making it one of the more prolific state party sources.
Democratic state parties benefited from the run-up to the 2004 presidential election, as presidential candidates doled out more than $1.2 million from their campaigns or political action committees. The Iowa Democratic Party received the most money, garnering $269,000 from committees affiliated with Sens. John Edwards, N.C.; John Kerry, Mass.; Joe Lieberman, Conn.; Rep. Richard A. Gephardt, Mo.; and former Gov. Howard Dean of Vermont. Kerry donated the most, a total of $421,703 in cash and equipment, while Dean, who dropped out of the race after winning only the Vermont primary, gave the least, $19,000.
Across borders
In some smaller states, party fundraisers went well beyond state lines to find contributors. The national fundraising networks that have been built by political professionals over the past 25 years have paid off for state parties, especially for states that may not have a lot of homegrown wealth. Outside money became a major factor in small states that hosted major races in 2002, including New Hampshire, South Dakota and Arkansas.
Both major party committees in New Hampshire raised at least 95 percent of their contributions from outside the state, records show. The Democratic State Committee brought in $11.4 million from beyond New Hampshire, while the state GOP's total of outside money was $8.6 million. In fact, all of the state party committees that raised more than 90 percent of their funds from outside state lines are located in less-populated states: in addition to New Hampshire and South Dakota, Rhode Island, Mississippi and Arkansas saw one or more party committee get at least nine of every 10 dollars from beyond its borders. Much of the outside money came in the form of national party donations.
Georgia's Senate Democratic Campaign Committee, a legislative caucus organization, had the highest percentage of outside money among committees that raised at least $100,000: 98.5 percent. The committee received exactly three contributions from donors within Georgia, totaling $47,368, while it took in nearly $3.1 million from Florida, New York, Texas and Washington, D.C.
Considering only individual donors, the percentage of out of state money drops sharply for many committees. Still, people residing outside New Hampshire accounted for 63 percent of all individual contributions to that state's Democratic Party during 2001 and 2002, and Idaho's Democratic Party got 76 percent of its total individual donations from people listing addresses outside Idaho in the same period.
New Hampshire's state party and caucus committees raised more than $21 million during the two years—more than party operations in Illinois and Virginia—due to the presence of a competitive U.S. Senate race in the state. The out-of-state money that a prominent election or candidate can bring into a small state can transform a race, said Vermont Republican Party Chairman Jim Barnett.
"In a tiny state like this, it doesn't take much to change the course of an election," Barnett said, citing reports that the presidential candidacy of former Gov. Howard Dean had helped to attract out of state donors to the Vermont Democratic Party.
States with competitive or high-profile races in 2002 raised the most money through their party and caucus committees, led by Florida, where the two state parties pulled in a combined $89.4 million during 2001 and 2002. New Jersey, which had a 2001 gubernatorial election, and California, which saw an expensive governor's race in 2002, ranked second and third, respectively. Next came three states with major U.S. Senate races in 2002: Minnesota, Missouri and Texas, followed by New York and Ohio.
Spending patterns
Spending by party committees followed a similar pattern: Florida, California, Minnesota, New Jersey and Georgia were the top five states for party and caucus spending, with Florida's $89 million far out-distancing the rest.
In order to analyze how state party and caucus committees spent more than $790 million in 2001-2002, the Center assigned each expenditure a code to identify its specific purpose. The records also were placed into broader spending categories, such as "Media," "Candidate Support," and "Administrative." Although many records did not include a specific purpose, some patterns did emerge. In its analysis, the Center excluded money transferred between accounts of the same committee and also excluded loan and mortgage payments.
As the central nervous system for federal, state and local politicians and activists, state party committees spent millions to maintain an infrastructure that includes employees, offices and equipment. But the largest expenses for state party and caucus committees, the Center found, were for voter communication and outreach, especially advertisements and mailings.
More than a third of the money spent went toward broadcast advertisements and direct mail, two major vehicles to spread the word about candidates and attract donors. Television and radio advertisements and production costs totaled at least $179 million, or 23 percent of the total spent. Party and caucus committees spent more than $123 million, or 16 percent, on direct mail, including postage costs for mailings and other related services.
Not surprisingly, the top recipients of state party and caucus committee spending were media consultants that purchase advertising time. The Democratic firm Greer Margolis Mitchell Burns was paid just under $46 million by state parties in 2001-2002, more than any other recipient. National Media Inc., a GOP firm that also works for congressional and national candidates and committees, collected $42 million during the same period, and the next leading recipient, the U.S. Postal Service, was nearly $17 million behind. Nine of the top ten non-party recipients were media, direct mail or fundraising consultants.
Other expenses paled in comparison to advertising and mailing costs. No other sub-category accounted for more than 6 percent of the total spent. Although most state legislatures were redistricting during 2001 and 2002, and some of the battles were hard fought, including in Texas, Colorado and Georgia, the amount of money specifically labeled as redistricting-related by committees was just $1.6 million.
State party and caucus committees passed $47 million in actual contributions to state and federal candidates, with $8.9 million more in in-kind services provided (parties in a number of states pay for office space, salaries or other expenses incurred by candidates and their campaigns).
State committees with federal accounts reported transferring nearly $158 million to their own federal accounts, but records filed with the FEC suggest that figure is less than what the federal accounts reported receiving.
State committees also sent $23.6 million to the national parties, of which $19 million were "hard dollars" raised under federal limits. For example, the Michigan Democratic Party sent nearly $1.6 million in hard money to the national parties, and 30 other state party committees shipped at least $100,000 to the national parties. In return, national party committees sent millions of dollars, mostly in soft money now banned under federal law, to state committees.
State campaigns
In some instances, state parties become de facto campaign committees for gubernatorial and other statewide candidates. In Florida, incumbent Gov. Jeb Bush, the brother of the president, was seeking a second term in 2002 behind a unified Republican Party. Democrats, meanwhile, had a primary fight between former U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno and Tampa attorney Bill McBride, with McBride eventually winning the nomination.
Under Florida law, statewide candidates can receive public matching funds if they agree to spending limits. McBride accepted the public money, and even though Bush did not, both state parties came to the assistance of the candidates. The Florida Democratic Party spent nearly $2 million paying the salaries of McBride campaign staffers, while the Florida Republican Party spent $2.9 million on salaries, consultants, polling and other services for the Bush campaign.
Other state parties act through surrogate political committees, sending hundreds of thousands of dollars to them in advance of an election, making it difficult to connect the dots on exact party spending practices. In Arizona, both the state Democratic and Republican parties funded state PACs with names like Our Children's Future and Arizona First. The former received $1.26 million from the state Democratic Party, while the latter got $1.43 million from the state GOP.
Sporting events played a role in the operation of state parties, records show. At least $690,248 was spent on golf-related activities, mostly fundraising events. Both Florida state parties used baseball games between the New York Yankees and the Florida Marlins as venues for fundraisers, spending $5,805.66 on tickets to those games. Republican parties in Ohio and Nebraska purchased tickets to Ohio State and Nebraska college football games, respectively.
The top spending caucus committee was New York's Senate Republican Campaign Committee, which spent $8.8 million. Ohio's House Republican Campaign Committee ranked second with $7.1 million, while the Republican Senate Campaign Committee ranked sixth with $5 million. The Ohio GOP added to its majorities in both houses of the state legislature in 2002 and Republicans won all five statewide races. Pennsylvania and New Jersey also saw active caucus committees.
Many states permit political parties and caucus committees to give hundreds of thousands of dollars to state candidates, and 13 state committees gave at least $1 million directly to the campaigns of office-seekers at the state level. The Democratic state party in California topped the list with $2.9 million in candidate contributions, followed by the Alabama Democratic Party, which shelled out $2.3 million. Most state party and caucus committees spent less than 50 percent of their money on direct candidate contributions, a reflection of the costs of fundraising, purchasing advertising and administrative expenses that parties face. Republican parties in Iowa and Illinois, for example, each spent less than 5 percent of their total in direct candidate contributions.
The future
But the ability of parties to pay for expensive television ads, polls and other items has been curtailed by the 2002 federal campaign finance laws, current and former party officials say, injecting a degree of uncertainty into the process. The Center is in the process of studying state party finances during 2003, the first full year that the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act was in effect, for its impact on state parties and caucus committees. That report will be released later this year.
Proponents of BCRA say it was crafted to permit state parties to continue to play an important role in politics while ensuring that their impact on federal elections is financed by contributions raised under federal limits. For example, the law permits state and local party committees to raise contributions of up to $10,000 from individuals for special "Levin accounts," named for their primary congressional sponsor, Michigan Democratic Sen. Carl Levin. These Levin funds could be used to defray the cost of get-out-the-vote efforts that would benefit federal candidates, but could not be used for advertising. Some state parties have already begun raising this type of money.
This much is certain: without the national party soft money that has fed state parties for nearly a decade, state committees will have to rely on their own networks of donors and perhaps on each other. Nothing in the new federal law prevents state parties from exchanging money, even hard money for soft money, or from accepting donations from groups that cannot give directly to federal candidates but meet state guidelines.
Hancock, the former Missouri Republican Party executive director who stepped down in early 2003, predicted that groups that were not bound by state disclosure requirements would make up for the spending that state parties would have done with national party soft money.
"I think we'll look back fondly at 2002 and think, look what we could do," he said. "Remember those days?"
This project is funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts, the Ford Foundation and the Joyce Foundation.
The global diamond trade is continuing to fund vicious civil wars in
countries such as Ivory Coast and Liberia, according to Amnesty
International and Global Witness
KAT has a free late-night weekend trolley running from UT to the Old City. So forget that "driving" crap and click the above graphic for schedule & route map.
Every
Seven Days
Weekly performers 'round town.
Thursday
BIKE
NIGHT & BLUES JAM w/ JENNA & THE JONESES At:
Coyote Joe's, 9pm. $2.
IRISH
MUSIC SESSION At: Patrick Sullivan's, 7:30pm. Free.
SINGER/SONGWRITER
NIGHT At: New City Cafe, 8:30pm.
Other Calendar Sections: Dance Clubs, Theater and Dance, Gallery/Art Exhibits, Open Call, Open Book, Kids, Classes and Workshops, Events, Meetings, Religious
One click to fix avi file which can not be played or dragged. Avi Fix Joiner can fix avi file which are not completely downloaded from http, ftp, rtsp, mms and so on. After being fixed, these avi files can be played fluently and dragged at your will. Avi Fix Joiner also can fix the avi files that can't be dragged while they are playing. After being fixed, these files can be dragged at your will. Avi Fix Joiner has another function that it can try to fix partly damaged and corrupted avi file. The fixed avi file can skip the damaged data block, and continue to play. When players such as Mediaplayer and realplayer hint that the avi files can't be played or it has been damaged,you can try to use the Avi Fix Joiner to fix the files. The fixed avi files by Avi Fix Joiner can be opened by multimedia edit software such as VirtualDub to be further processed. The rate of success in the fix has reached 80% to 90%. Note: Before fixing file, please backup them first. Our company shall not be responsible for the damaged file in the course of fix.
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Some pastors oppose amendment
World should be ‘more inclusive,’ clergymen say.
By JOSH FLORY
of the Tribune’s staff
Published Thursday, July 15, 2004
Four Mid-Missouri clergymen and a retired minister gathered outside the Boone County Courthouse yesterday to signal their opposition to a state constitutional amendment that would limit marriage to a man and a woman.
Ed Pfueller photo
Carol Snivley, left, of the Constitution Defense League conducts a news conference yesterday at the Boone County Courthouse with clergymen including, from left, the Revs. Fred Brandenburg, John Baker and Jack Barden in opposition to a constitutional amendment that would define marriage as being between a man and a woman.
The news conference was sponsored by the Constitution Defense League, which opposes the amendment that Missouri voters will decide on Aug. 3. The speakers represented a variety of faiths, although CDL organizer Carol Snively said each was speaking on his own and not on behalf of his church. The speakers opposed the amendment that would reinforce a state statute that prohibits gay marriage. Amendment proponents have said it’s necessary because a judge could declare the state law unconstitutional.
The Rev. John Baker of First Baptist Church said that the amendment should be a "nonissue" because of the state law and that it "would write real discrimination into our state constitution."
"The public needs to know that there are strong, faith-filled Christian persons of many denominations who are against this amendment and who do stand for liberty and justice for all," Baker said.
The Rev. Jack Barden of First Presbyterian Church in Fulton said it seemed like only the Christian voices supporting the amendment were being heard in the public debate.
"I want people to know that there are Christians who don’t believe in codifying hatred and fear into our constitution," Barden said. "There are Christians who believe that God wants a more inclusive world and includes all those, especially those who have been marginalized and oppressed by our society and by our own faith communities."
Asked about Bible passages that condemn homosexuality, the ministers indicated that those verses have been misinterpreted.
Baker, whose wife is legislative candidate Judy Baker, said "a very careful reading can bring new understanding other than the traditional, narrow views that are often applied to" the passages "with quick, hasty readings."
The Rev. Fred Brandenburg of Columbia United Church of Christ said the Bible has been used to justify slavery and war.
"So you can use it to justify many things, but that doesn’t make it right," he said.
Amendment proponents are looking to local churches and their congregations as key allies. The Coalition to Protect Marriage in Missouri has produced brochures that can be downloaded from the Internet and inserted into church bulletins, and Missouri’s Catholic bishops have urged parishioners to support the amendment.
Ed Phillips, adult ministry pastor at Columbia’s Evangelical Free Church, said that rather than take an official position on the amendment, his church has taught that homosexuality is wrong according to the Bible.
Phillips said there has been a movement to reinterpret the Bible’s condemnation of homosexuality in an effort to legitimize something that "is obviously wrong in Scripture."
Phillips construed the position of that movement: " ‘We would rather say, Well, this other possible interpretation’ - that probably only has the 10 percent chance of being the actual thoughts of the writer - ‘we like that interpretation better, so we’ll go with that.’ "
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Letter Writing Guide
Letter Writing Guide
The Career Center
The Florida State University
Objective
You will be able to write appropriate letters pertaining to
your job campaign.
Activities
The following activities will enable you to meet the
objective.
1.Develop an organizational system.
2.Study letter-writing suggestions.
3.Choose a format and review sample letters.
4.Write a letter which matches your goals.
5.Ask someone you trust to proofread and critique your letter -
The Career Center can help.
I.Develop An
Organizational System
Before you begin
sending any letters, it is important that you devise some way of keeping track
of when and what you have sent.For
instance, if you send a letter to Ms. X asking for an interview and offer to
call her during the week of June 6th, you need to have that date on record so
you can be sure to meet that commitment.Also, if you are sending out 40 letters to various employers, it can be
critical to know what you have said in a particular letter to be able to follow
it up with accuracy.Listed below are
two formats for organizing your letter campaign.
A. Create a chart
with columns for the prospective employer’s name, the person contacted, the
date sent, any commitments you made in the letter and follow-up.Make another chart showing the response you
received from each letter with column headings, such as prospective employer’s name,
person who replied, date of reply, and action taken.Keep these charts up to date and hold on to letters you receive.
B. Make copies of all
the letters that you send out and file them in a folder.Keep another file folder for the letters you
receive which call for further action to be taken on your part anda separate file folder for your rejection
letters.This method can be especially
helpful because you have reference to all your letters for use when composing
other letters.Also, you can look back
over the letters you have sent and see which ones were the most effective in
generating interviews.
II.General
Suggestions For Letters
Do
·follow rules of
layout and format of a standard business letter
·slant letter
toward what you can offer employers, not what you think they should be offering
you
·address,
whenever possible, to an individual, along with his/her correct title
·spell,
punctuate, and paragraph correctly
·write in your
own words and in conversational language
·hand-sign,
rather than type your signature
·print your
letters on good quality paper
·be brief,
concise and to the point
·close with a
direct request for some sort of action (i.e., interview appointment)
·take advantage
of any link to the employer that can put your foot in the door or give you an
edge over the competition (for example, mentioning the name of someone you know
in the organization)
Don’t
·use stiff
language or phrasing
·be gimmicky in
an attempt to be original or clever
·load with
constant use of the word “I”
·be lofty in
tone or indicate you will do the employer a great service by “considering” a
position
·be excessively
emphatic about your reliability, capacity for hard work or intelligence.This kind of self-appraisal is usually best
understated.The appearance and tone of
your letter and resume can say more about you than you can gracefully say about
yourself.
III. Choice Of Cover Letter Format
Although there are a
variety of styles, formats and content elements, there are two basic formats
which may aid you in writing your individualized letter of application.
Shotgun Letter
Used to broadcast
your availability to many employers in your field without composing a separate
letter for each one.Although it is not
usually used to pursue a specific job lead, it is wise to personalize it.
Examples:“I am writing to present you with my
qualifications for a position as a Guidance Counselor at....” or “I am very
aware of the changing role of the nurse in today’s (hospital, clinic,
etc.).”By inserting the appropriate
word or phrase, you can tailor each correspondence with much less effort than
individually composed letters.
Rifle Approach
Used to investigate a
specific job lead.You may be answering
an ad or following up on a suggestion offered by the Career Center, a relative,
friend, etc.Since the nature of the
opening is known to you, you would construct your letter to show how your
abilities can be applied to meet the employer’s needs.You also can make reference to specific
information you discovered through conversations or by doing research about the
organization.
Examples:“My academic background, together with my
work experience, has prepared me to function especially well as a Marketing
Specialist for IBM.”Or “I am impressed
by your continual growth through grant funded activities.”
See the sample cover
letter outline later in this Guide.
IV. Other Types of Letters
Inquiry Letter
After preparing a
list of organizations which complement the position you are seeking, as well as
your interest and training, a letter of inquiry in which you approach the
employer requesting employment information is the next step.It is important to research the organization
as much as possible to lend credibility and insight to your contact letter.
Format Suggestions
·Determine and
state your exact interest in the employer and explain why they, in turn, should
be interested in you.The more you know
about the organization, the easier it will be for you to tailor your letter to
their needs and interests.
·Emphasize your
positive assets and skills.Be as
specific as possible about the type of position you are seeking and tie this to
your knowledge of the organization and its business.
·Identify a
specific person within the organization to whom to send your letter.As a general rule, in larger organizations,
send the letter to the Personnel or Human Resources Department - the Manager of
Employment, Recruitment or Personnel.Also,
directing your letter to the key executive or manager in
·the department
to which you are applying is advisable. If the contact person's name is not
available, address your letter: "Dear Madam or Sir" or "Dear
Selection Committee Chair."
·State when you
would be available to meet for an interview and include a phone number and/or
e-mail where you can most easily be reached.
Response Letter To Help Wanted
·Thoroughly read
and reread an advertisement to aid you in determining what the potential employer
is looking for.Try to speak to the
“needs” of the organization evidenced through the ad - some reading between the
lines may be necessary so that you can tailor your response.
·Answer the ad
as soon as possible after it appears.However, make sure that you allow yourself enough time to prepare
adequately.
·Be as
innovative as possible to aid your letter in standing out amidst the wave of
response letters the organization is sure to receive.
·Follow the
advertisement’s instructions carefully regarding where the response should be
directed and what to include (i.e., resume, statement of geographic preference,
etc.).Answer all questions, with the
exception of responding to a request for salary requirements.In this case, it is advisable to avoid a
direct answer and simply indicate that it is open or negotiable.
·Be brief!Letters should be individualized, concise
and factual.
·Always consider
the reaction of the employer by putting yourself in his/her place.Try to determine what accomplishments and
skills would be most attractive to a particular employer.
·Be
straightforward, professional and businesslike - remember you are selling
yourself.As with the resume, stick to
the facts.
·Remember that
the primary purpose of the letter is to get you in the door for the interview -
make sure the letter has impact.
Interview Appreciation Letter
Interviews should
always be followed up with a thank-you letter expressing appreciation for the
interviewer’s time.Not only is this an
accepted courtesy, your letter can also serve to refresh your session in the
mind of the interviewer.When an
on-site visit to the employer is involved, the appreciation letter may
accompany your expense account for the visit.
Format Suggestions
·Express
appreciation for the interviewer’s consideration and arrangement of meeting.
·State the date
of the interview and name of the employer.
·Reiterate your
interest in the employer by mentioning new points or assets you may have failed
or forgotten to address in the original interview.
·Ask any
questions you may have which were not answered in the original interview.
·Express your
anticipation to receive word regarding their decision.
Letter Of Acknowledgement
Once you have
received an offer from an employer or institution, it is important to respond
as soon as possible.While an immediate
“yes” or “no” is not essential, acknowledgement of the offer is expected.
Format Suggestions
·Acknowledge
receipt of the offer.
·Express your
appreciation for the offer.
·Notify the
employer of the date by which you expect to make your decision.
Letter of Acceptance
Once you have decided
to accept the offer, the employer should be notified immediately.It is not necessary to wait until the
expiration date of the offer before contacting the recruiter and hiring officer
of the organization selected.Employers
will appreciate your promptness as it will allow them to assess the status of
their personnel selection process.
Format Suggestions
·Acknowledge the
letter, verbal offer or telephone call of dated offer.
·Be as specific
as possible, mentioning starting salary and supervisor’s name.Be sure to list and detail all items
(benefits, performance reviews, moving expenses, etc.) agreed to in the offer.
·State when you
will be able to report to work.Acknowledge if initiation is contingent on any events, such as award of
a degree, passing of physical examination, certification, etc.
·Express
appreciation to contact person and anyone else who has been particularly
helpful.
·Ask if any
other information is required or if additional details should be attended to
prior to reporting.
Letter of Declination
As a matter of
courtesy, a letter of declination is due to those organizations whose offers
you are rejecting.Despite the negative
nature of the correspondence, it is vital that other employers know your
decisions.Such a letter often follows
a telephone call - making your decision a matter of record and avoiding any
confusion arising from verbal communication.
Format Suggestions
·Express
appreciation for the offer.
·Mention name of
potential supervisor.
·State the exact
position for which you were being considered.
·Decline
graciously.
·Briefly explain
reason for choice, sticking to the facts.
1st Paragraph • Tell
why you are writing; name the position, field, or general career area about
which you are asking.Tell how you
heard of the opening or organization.
2nd Paragraph •
Mention one or two of your qualifications you think would be of greatest
interest to the organization, slanting your remarks to their point of
view.Tell why you are particularly
interested in the employer, location, or type of work.If you have had related experience or
specialized training, be sure to point it out.Refer the reader to the enclosed application form, resume or the fact
that the XYZ Career Placement Office has or will send full credentials to
provide additional information concerning your background and interests.
3rd Paragraph • Close
by making a request for an opportunity to visit the employer.Indicate that you will follow up with a
phone call about the possibility of a meeting.If, instead of wanting an interview, your request is for further
information concerning openings, it would be polite to enclose a
self-addressed, stamped envelope.Make
sure your closing is not vague, but makes a specific action from the reader
likely. Thank the employer for his/her consideration of your application
materials.
Sincerely,
(Your Handwritten
Signature)
Type Your Name
VI.Additional
Resources
For further
assistance in the development of your letter(s), the following resources are
available.
1.Sections I, IV and V in The Career Center
Library contain books, chapters or partial units on letter preparation.Check Career Key for specific resources.
2.Attend one of the combination letter/resume
writing workshops held in The Career Center periodically during the semester. A
schedule of these workshops is available on the Career Center Web site:http://www.career.fsu.edu.
3.Review “Sample Letters” in notebooks on the
Ready Reference Desk shelves in The Career Center Library, Room A4101UC.
4.Read Planning Job Choices, particularly the
letter strategy and sample section.
5.Have your letter(s) critiqued by a Career
Advisor.
Revised 7/03 by
Joanne Linville, Jerald Jackson and Joan Ford
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Grand Ferry Park
Location: between Grand Street, West River Street, and the East
River
Grand Ferry Park is a wide thoroughfare extending to the waterfront in the
Williamsburg section of Brooklyn. It is named for the 19th century Grand
Street Ferry, which once carried farm goods and passengers across the East
River to Manhattan.
In 1802, Richard Woodhull, spurred by the idea of creating a residential
suburb of Manhattan, began a ferry service from today's Metropolitan
Avenue to Corlear's Hook across the East River. He purchased 13 acres
of land surrounding the ferry and named the area Williamsburgh around 1810,
after Colonel Jonathan Williams (1750-1815), the original surveyor of the
site.
In 1811 Woodhull went bankrupt, but the idea of Williamsburgh was viable;
Noah Waterbury built the neighborhood's first distillery in 1819, and
David Dunham (ca. 1790), called the "Father of Williamsburgh," began
operating a steam ferry in 1827. During the mid-1800s, wealthy professionals
frequented the private clubs, beer gardens, and resorts abounding in the
neighborhood, while companies like Pfizer Pharmaceutical and the Havermeyers & Elder
Sugar (now Domino Sugar) Refineries laid their roots in the area.
By 1852, Williamsburgh's population had grown to 31,000, and it was
chartered as a city. The City of Brooklyn annexed Williamsburgh three years
later and dropped the "h" from its name. The opening of the
Williamsburg Bridge in 1903 provided an easy route for the city's newest
Eastern European immigrants to leave the cramped Lower East Side of Manhattan,
and by 1917, Williamsburg was the most densely populated area of Brooklyn.
The Grand Street Ferry ceased operations in 1918, and the abandoned landing
became one of the few stretches of Williamsburg shoreline accessible to the
public. In 1974, the Parks Council, an advocacy group, created an unofficial
park in the space using recycled materials. It was known as the Grand Street
Park. Finding that there were insufficient funds to develop and maintain
the land, the Parks Council requested that the site be formally acquired
as parkland in November 1989. Once it was the property of Parks, an official
park could be constructed, and the agency would be responsible for its upkeep.
The Department of General Services transferred the 1.55 acres to Parks in
October 1997.
The new park, located between Grand Street, West River Street, and the East
River, now called Grand Ferry Park, opened officially on July 9, 1998. It
contains benches, a flagpole with yardarm, and a north compass rosette. Shore
pines (Pinus contorta), Thornless honey locusts (Gleditsia triacanthos var.
enermis), and White ash trees (Fraxinus americana) provide shade and greenery.
The architect, Marcha Johnson, incorporated historical elements into her
design. A red brick smokestack rising above a circular pattern of cobblestones
was part of a molasses plant that Pfizer Pharmaceuticals used in the early
20th century for work that led, eventually, to the large-scale production
of penicillin. The cobblestones were salvaged from the section of Grand Street
where the park was constructed.
At the water's edge, a border of boulders, known as rip-rap, protects
the shoreline from erosion and provides seating to enjoy a view of the water
and the downtown Manhattan skyline. On one side of the park's slope,
a streambed lined with rocks stretches from Grand Street to the water. When
storms flood the street, the runoff flows down the shallow trench and into
the river.
Three days ago, a German TV newsmagazine called Report Mainz broadcast an eight-minute segment reporting that the International Red Cross found at least 107 children in coaliton-administered detention centers in Iraq.
The report also quotes from a yet-unpublished June 2004 UNICEF report, which (as near as I can tell through my crappy German) confirms that children were routinely arrested and "interned" in a camp in Um-Qasr. UNICEF seems particularly vexed with the "internment" status, since that means indefinite detention.
Another storm seems about to begin. Possibly a large one.
Even if you have no German at all, hit the link and watch the video. (Click where it says "Beitrag ansehen" and you'll get a RealVideo stream. I'd include a direct link but the server seems to require you to link from the page.) There's some footage of the internment camps here that you're not likely to see on American TV. The link also includes a complete transcript, in German.
In addition to the Red Cross and UNICEF concerns, Report Mainz broadcast an original interview with U.S. Army Sgt. Samuel Provance, who was stationed for six months at Abu Ghraib and later quite famously blew the whistle about abuses there and the subsequent cover-up. In this interview, Provance confirms the presence of teenagers in Abu Ghraib, describing the torture-by-cold-and-exposure of a teenage boy in order to get his father to talk.
The General Secretary of Amnesty International in Germany, Barbara Lochbihler, is finally shown demanding a full accounting from the U.S. government, describing the information as "scandalous."
A few caveats: I haven't found where Provance mentioned young people at Abu Ghraib until now, and another witness in the report describes "hundreds" of pre-pubescents at Abu Ghraib, which tingles my smell detector. Then again, I wouldn't have believed in Stack-The-Iraqis at first, either.
There's also the point that a 15-year-old can damn sure fire a gun. But even so, since 70-90 percent of those at Abu Ghraib were innocent, if at least 107 kids were locked up, the best-case scenario is still that the U.S. has interned a boatload of innocent Iraqi kids. That's still bad.
The worst-case, meanwhile, if the German TV report is even close... is a lot worse.
Meanwhile, there's not a damn thing -- I mean, not a single word I can find -- about this yet in the U.S. media, but it's starting to pick up speed on the rest of our tiny planet, so far showing up in Der Spiegel (roughly Germany's equivalent to Time), an Australian ABC Radio report, and TV2 and NRK television in Norway, where the story might even lead to a change in Norway's participation in the U.S.-led coalition.
If you're an American news reporter led here by a reader, but you need a hook that doesn't place the incendiary charges in the lead (for whatever reason), OK, here's your story on a platter: Bush may even lose another ally over this. Hit the Norwegian links, and you'll find that the local Amnesty International has stated that "Norway can not continue its military collaboration with the US in light of the alleged torture of children." Norway actually listens to its activists; you'll find that the Prime Minister's office says it plans to address the situation with the U.S. "in a very severe and direct way."
If this ain't news, I don't know what the hell is.
I've Google-rigged an English version of the Der Spiegel article. This is a good place to get the gist of what the world is starting to read, even through the machine translation, which parses the headline as "US Soldiers Are To Have Abused Arrested Children."
This is gonna travel pretty fast. Let me look again... yup. New headlines have appeared just since I started writing this.
Factual conflation aside -- that's not what the original report stated -- it hurts like hell that it's no longer a perceptual leap to assume the worst. When I think of the outpouring of love for America post-9/11... it's just stunning how far we have fallen. This is really what the world sees now.
Still, we need to know. My thanks to reader Thomas for the tip that started me on this.
If you'd like to know more than a guy with bad German, worse Norwegian, and a laptop can find out in an hour, give the major newspapers and cable networks an email or a holler. I understand they have actual reporters and stuff.
The New Republic has learned that Pakistani security officials have been told they must produce HVTs [high value targets, e.g., Bin Laden] by the election.
-- snip --
... a White House aide told [director of Pakistani intelligence Lt. Gen. Ehsan] ul-Haq last spring that "it would be best if the arrest or killing of [any] HVT were announced on twenty-six, twenty-seven, or twenty-eight July"--the first three days of the Democratic National Convention in Boston.
Take a minute and be as appalled as humanly possible.
The article goes on to detail the carrot-and-stick measures used to crank up the pressure on Islamabad to deliver up Bin Laden in a timely fashion.
Which means they could have done this earlier.
This should be national news. Now.
We should rejoice at Osama's capture, whenever it happens. But if Bin Laden suddenly shows up as scheduled, this should be understood, in advance, as prima facie evidence George W. Bush has spent years -- years! -- not doing all in his power to bring the greatest mass murderer in our history to justice.
The Cricket World Cup is coming to the West Indies in 2007. In an effort to increase U.S. appreciation for the game, American cricketers have offered to host some of the matches in Florida.
The disturbing possibility that a high-profile Muslim player could be stranded at an American airport, trying to explain to bemused immigration officials that he had a vital cricket World Cup match to play in Florida, was a damaging scenario that the ICC and the West Indies World Cup organising committee dared not take.
The fall-out from 9/11 means the likes of St Kitts and Nevis, two tiny Caribbean islands with a joint population of 39,000, have outbid the United States, official population, according to the CIA factbook, 293 million.
I know this seems like trivia, especially compared to the Sudan post just below this (and please keep reading -- that's a really big deal), but it's a small measure of how isolated the U.S. is truly becoming, largely without our knowledge.
The ICC would dearly love to gain a foothold in the U.S., given what that could mean to the sport economically. Besides, cricket is a supremely international game in which national sides tour the planet frequently, often creating the sort of cultural exchange one hopes to see in the Olympics at its very best.
A recent series of matches between India and Pakistan was widely seen a key symbol of improving relations between the nuclear rivals. (Imagine a USSR hockey team's Glasnost-era tour of the U.S., and you get a bit of the flavor.) Despite a half-century of tension, terrorist incidents, and three actual shooting wars, Indian players touring Lahore were actually showered with flowers by Pakistanis eager for peace, a scene unimaginable to many not so long ago.
Pakistan's bowlers, batsmen, and silly mid-ons (yes, that's an actual position, a bit like a shortstop) aren't exactly terrorists -- but the world body of cricket is clearly convinced they're likely to be treated as such in America.
Our loss.
I wonder how long it will be before America learns that judging Islam by the actions of terrorists is like judging Christianity on the basis of Abu Ghraib.
I once watched New Zealand's cricket team host Pakistan in Auckland. The green-flag-waving Muslim contingent was treated as no big deal, friendly rivals, nothing more. In fact, during the lunch break, a white-robed long-bearded fellow in a large headdress took part in one of those catch-the-ball-win-a-prize things in the center of the field, and the crowd cheered him loudest of all. When his turn came, his headdress flew off, and he almost tripped on his robe, but he caught the ball and came up grinning. And in that moment, he wasn't some guy from halfway around the world. He was some guy who just got to be a little kid again, in front of 10,000 people.
It's a lovely memory, and something I wish we could see in this country someday.
Since early 2003, tens of thousands of Sudanese citizens of African descent who live in the Darfur region have been systematically killed, raped, and displaced as their villages have been destroyed. Through coordinated land and air attacks; the burning of homes and crops; the rounding up of livestock; the destruction of wells, granaries, and irrigation works; the uprooting of trees; and the theft of all possessions, the government of Sudan and the government-supported Arab militia, Janjaweed, have displaced more than 1 million people.
And let's all tell the news media wherever we are that this is just slightly more urgent than the latest daily tidbit about whether Scott Peterson killed Kobe Bryant or Mary Kate is secretly addicted to shoving Ashley up her nose.
(And I'm compelled to point out that until very recently, the only time any U.S. media has mentioned Sudan in the past year, it has been to hype or debunk various alleged Saddam/Al-Qaeda links. Not, say, the systematic killing of tens of thousands of actual Sudanese. I am ashamed to include myself in this category.)
Interesting theory making the rounds -- that Bush's approval numbers simply reflect the price of gas.
Click on the links -- these are sites worth visiting anyhow -- then have a look at the chart. It's pretty darn cool. At first glance, the curves seem amazingly similar.
At first glance.
But let's think for a second here. Obviously, nobody's suggesting that Bush's approval number has direct influence on the price of gas -- that somebody at Royal Dutch Shell is sitting at a desk somewhere hooked up to Zogby and shouting out numbers for the pumps. The implied suggestion is the logical converse -- that Bush's numbers move subsequent to the price of gas.
Then look again, more closely. You'll soon find five large, separate increases in the gas price (represented upside-down, for easier comparison to Bush's popularity number) completely unrelated to any immediate dip in Bush's job ratings, and two clear drops unrelated to any gain. The large moves that do correlate mostly do so in the wrong order -- the gas price changes after Bush's number moves. There are actually more of these moves than fluctations occuring in the only potentially meaningful order.
Truth is, you can correlate anything to just about anything. The classic example is ice cream sales and the murder rate, which often rise and fall together. Does ice cream make us into killers? Does killing make us want ice cream? Nope. (At least I hope not.) But it gets really hot in August. And cold in December. There's your causation.
For the chart in question, I'd suggest a rather obvious series of well-known political events as the likely external source of causation in both charts. But make up your own mind.
For my book a few years ago, I cooked up a similar, completely accurate yet utterly misleading chart seemingly correlating America's violent crime rate to album sales by the band Journey. (I swear. It's on page 182.)
(Incidentally, you'll notice that my website still calls the 1999 book "new." Then again, Dick Cheney still links Saddam to Al-Qaeda. So, um, yeah, updating takes a while...)
But it's a cool and clever graphic. Very well done.
In any league table of politicans' most embarrassing moments, it must rank pretty high.
And really, is there any better way to help stabilize a nation struggling with fanatic Muslim reactionaries than by performing a tune originally created to celebrate joyful gay sex?
I think not.
Y'know, it's the sheer enthusiasm behind the bat-brained idiocy that's so amusing.
Watch the video. Tell your friends.
And then remember this is the guy whose cartoons, empty vials, and plagiarized, misleading data led directly to an elective war, ten thousand civilian deaths, global distrust of the U.S., and a strengthed Al-Qaeda, all at a rising cost already surpassing $120 billion.
The guy in the hard hat. Trying to sing "YMCA." In front of a bunch of foreign minsters. In Indonesia.
Giggle. Cry.
And then at least be glad we'll (probably) still have elections in the fall.
I guess there's still some pride in that.
On this July 4, have a truly wonderful series of gratuitous explosions -- a form of celebration derived from the British, the escape from whose influence we are supposedly celebrating.
Geniuses, we are. Genius, right from the start.
UPDATE: A surprising number of readers have leapt to defend Colin Powell because he reportedly didn't want to lie and help start a war.
First, thanks for your input, honestly. But the defense widely offered is simply indefensible: hey, I didn't want to [bad act of your choice] -- my boss told me to, so I did. A similar line of argument was tried at Nuremburg, recall, without much success.
Powell is as responsible for his own actions as anyone else. And he had a wide array of options -- one of which was simply telling the full truth. (That such an act -- and its consequences -- might still seem unimaginable exonerates Powell much less than it convicts us all.)
At least with our drunk-driving deserter-in-chief, we can cut a little slack for the fascinating variety of his personal incompetence. But there's no doubt that Powell walked into that room and lied through his teeth to the entire world, which wasn't exactly new behavior. Yes, Powell defenders, yes -- he fully knew what he was doing, and he probably did it because he thought it was his job. Absolutely.
Hard to see how that makes things all better.
Matter of fact, awareness of one's wrongdoing is universally held to increase culpability, not decrease it. (Conscious intent can differentiate manslaughter from murder one, for example.) Thus, if you think about it for a few seconds, the arguments offered by many of Powell's defenders... condemn him further.
The article that you are trying to view is no longer available through this Web site. The content is copyrighted by the Associated Press, which requires NBC 4 to delete its stories two weeks after they are originally posted.
You don't need to look far for evidence that we Americans
don't place a very high value on intellect. Our heroes
are athletes, entertainers, and entrepreneurs, not
scholars. But our schools, with their high academic
standards, high-stakes tests, and performance bonuses
for improved achievement scores -- surely our schools
are bastions of intellectualism?
Not necessarily.
Your parents and community, even your teachers and
administrators, perhaps even you, might unwittingly
be holding back your schools from cultivating intellect
in your students and exposing them to the joys of
the life of the mind.
Why? Because as a nation, we just don't trust brainy
people. The stereotype of the muddle-headed professor
-- the one who can recite passages of Dante's Inferno
in the original Italian but doesn't realize his pants
are on backwards -- is alive and well. We'd rather
our children were sociable than scholarly. The results
of a 1995 Public Agenda survey clearly point out our
distrust of scholars and academics. Seven out of 10
Americans agreed that "people who are highly educated
often turn out to be book smart but lack the common
sense and understanding of regular folk." Seven out
of 10 respondents said they would be very or somewhat
concerned if their child earned excellent grades but
had only a few close friends and seldom participated
in social activities. In focus groups, a New Jersey
parent said, "If you focus on the brain, it becomes
too tedious." A Cincinnati woman avowed, "If everyone
were a genius, it would be a dull world."
Schools are places where we send our children to
get a practical education -- not to pursue knowledge
for knowledge's sake. Symptoms of pervasive anti-intellectualism
in our schools aren't difficult to find:
• A former school board member in Armonk, N.Y.,
pulled her son and daughter out of the public schools
and placed them in a private school. She'd become
increasingly frustrated trying to get more challenging
classes for her son. Some staff members resisted creating
a gifted program because the other students "would
feel bad about not being selected," she said.
• A Columbiana, Ala., school board member asked
administrators to investigate middle school English
teacher Pam Cooper, who was teaching Shakespeare and
Chaucer to eighth-graders. The board member worried
that students shouldn't be reading books they'd later
encounter in high school literature classes, books
that seemed to be beyond their ability level.
• School boards around the country are questioning
the merit of homework. The Piscataway, N.J., school
board, for example, recently limited the amount of
homework teachers could assign, discouraged weekend
and holiday assignments, and prohibited teachers from
grading work done at home. Parents complained that
homework was interfering with their children's extracurricular
activities.
"Schools have always been in a society where practical
is more important than intellectual," says education
historian and writer Diane Ravitch. "Schools could
be a counterbalance." Ravitch's latest book, Left
Back: A Century of Failed School Reforms, traces
what she considers the roots of anti-intellectualism
in our schools. Schools, she concludes, are anything
but a counterbalance to American's distaste for intellectual
pursuits.
But they could and should be. When we encourage
our children to reject the life of the mind, we leave
them vulnerable to exploitation and control. Without
the ability to think critically, to defend their ideas
and understand the ideas of others, they cannot fully
participate in our democracy. If we continue along
this path, says writer Earl Shorris, our nation will
suffer. "We will become a second-rate country," he
says. "We will have a less civil society."
An American tradition
"Intellect is resented as a form of power or privilege,"
wrote historian and professor Richard Hofstadter in
Anti-Intellectualism in American Life, a Pulitzer-Prize
winning book tracing the roots of anti-intellectualism
in U.S. politics, religion, and education. Published
in 1963, it is considered a watershed book on the
subject and rings as true today as it did 30 years
ago.
Animosity toward intellectuals is in our country's
DNA. From the beginning of our nation's history, according
to Hofstadter, our democratic and populist urges have
driven us to reject anything that smacks of elitism.
Practicality, common sense, and native intelligence
have been considered more noble qualities than anything
you could learn from a book. Ralph Waldo Emerson and
other Transcendentalist philosophers of the 19th century
thought schooling and rigorous book learning put unnatural
restraints on children. Emerson wrote in his journal:
"We are shut up in schools and college recitation
rooms for ten or fifteen years and come out at last
with a bellyful of words and do not know a thing."
Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn exemplified
American anti-intellectualism. The novel's hero avoids
being civilized -- going to school and learning to
read -- so he can preserve his innate goodness.
Intellect, according to Hofstadter, is different
from native intelligence, a quality we grudgingly
admire. Intellect is the critical, creative, and contemplative
side of the mind. Intelligence seeks to grasp, manipulate,
re-order, and adjust, while intellect examines, ponders,
wonders, theorizes, criticizes, and imagines.
School remains a place where intellect is mistrusted.
As Hofstadter put it, our country's educational system
is in the grips of people who "joyfully and militantly
proclaim their hostility to intellect and their eagerness
to identify with children who show the least intellectual
promise."
Anti-intellectualism is part of our history and
our culture, but it doesn't have to define our schools.
Many ideas exist on how to make school a place where
the life of the mind is valued as much as high test
scores or athletic prowess or social status. Some
of those ideas contradict each other, and some of
the people who espouse them have distinct political
agendas or leanings. But true intellect is nonpartisan.
The best way to make sure it can flower in your schools
is to start by taking a critical look at your curriculum,
your teachers, and your school culture.
What are you teaching?
The idea that children must be entertained and feel
good while they learn has been embraced by many well-meaning
educators. In many classrooms, as a result, students
are watching movies, working on multimedia presentations,
surfing the Internet, putting on plays, and dissecting
popular song lyrics. The idea is to motivate students,
but the emphasis on enjoyment as a facile substitute
for engagement creates a culture in which students
are not likely to challenge themselves or stretch
their abilities. After all, if students are not shown
the intrinsic rewards that come from working hard
to understand a concept, they won't do it on their
own. The probable result? A life spent shying away
from books, poetry, art, music, public policy discussions
-- anything that takes an effort to understand or
appreciate and has no immediate or obvious payoff.
Project-based learning always has the potential
to be based on fun rather than content, says former
teacher and administrator Elaine McEwan, who wrote
Angry Parents, Failing Schools: What's Wrong with
Public Schools and What You Can Do About It. She
uses the example of a class of academically struggling
elementary school students in Arizona that spent 37
hours -- more than a school week -- building a papier-mache
dinosaur. The local newspaper even ran a photo of
the students and their handiwork. "Those kids couldn't
read well, and they spent all that time messing with
chicken wire and wheat paste," says McEwan.
The trend toward teaching skills rather than content
has become especially popular with the advent of the
Internet. Because information is changing so quickly,
the argument goes, it makes more sense to teach students
how to find information than to impart it to them.
But if students are deprived of content and context,
their forays into the Internet might not go beyond
looking up the Backstreet Boys web site.
One of the most prominent proponents of imparting
knowledge to children along with the skills to probe
more deeply is E. D. Hirsch, the founder of the Core
Knowledge curriculum approach and author of Cultural
Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know. The
University of Virginia English professor once gave
a reading comprehension test to a community college
class in Richmond, Va. The students were tested on
a passage comparing Robert E. Lee to Ulysses S. Grant.
Hirsch was astounded to discover that most of the
students, living in an area rich with Civil War history,
had no idea who either man was. This experience gave
Hirsch the idea for compiling his dictionary of cultural
literacy -- a basic body of knowledge that educated
people should have at their command to be successful
in school and in life.
The idea of a core body of knowledge appeals to
educators such as McEwan, who worry that many teachers
value process over content. Project-based learning
is popular with parents, she says, because they want
their children to have fun.
The quality of content concerns Santa Monica, Calif.,
English teacher Carol Jago, who directs the California
Reading and Literature Project at the University of
California Los Angeles. Jago resists assigning popular
novels in her English classes, believing that students
at all grade levels should read the classics.
"In the interests of being more inclusive, we've
backed away from making demands on students," says
Jago. "We should expand and challenge them." Teachers
should help students enter into intelligent discourse
about what is enduring about a particular piece of
literature, she says, but it's hard for teachers to
provide the necessary connections for their students
and help them develop critical thinking skills. In
some classrooms, Jago says, the teachers have a pact
with their students: "I won't work too hard; you won't
work too hard."
Jago worries that the well-publicized trend toward
school boards limiting homework could have repercussions
in districts all over the country. If English teachers
can't assign homework, she asks, how will they teach
novels to their students? The fastest way to create
two classes of students is to do away with homework,
she says. The Advanced Placement kids will do the
reading anyway. The kids who need the extra help the
most will fall by the wayside.
Diane Ravitch points to the no-homework trend as
a symptom of anti-intellectualism in the schools.
"Homework is more time for students to read and write,"
she says. Cutting back on homework to give students
more time to socialize hardly encourages them to take
their schoolwork more seriously.
What are your teachers reading?
"All too often ... in the history of the United
States, the school teacher has been in no position
to serve as a model to the intellectual life," Hofstadter
wrote. "Too often he has not only no claims to an
intellectual life of his own, but not even an adequate
workmanlike competence in the skills he is supposed
to impart."
Harsh words, perhaps, but Hofstadter's idea makes
sense: If teachers -- on the front line of education
-- don't have an active intellectual life, they're
not likely to communicate a love of learning and critical
thinking to their students.
In his 1995 book, Out of Our Minds: Anti-Intellectualism
and Talent Development in American Schools, Craig
Howley cites several studies about the education and
habits of public school teachers. According to one
study, prospective teachers take fewer liberal arts
courses than their counterparts in other arts and
science majors -- and fewer upper-division courses
in any subject except pedagogy. It appears, Howley
writes, that prospective teachers do not often make
a special effort during their college years to pursue
advanced study in fields other than pedagogy.
Frequent reading of literature in academic fields
is the mark of the scholar, Howley says, so it's logical
to look at teachers' reading habits. Readers tend
to be more reflective and more critical than nonreaders,
argues Howley, who found that studies of teachers'
reading showed two patterns: One is that teachers
don't read very much -- on average, just 3.2 books
a year. (In fact, 11 percent of those surveyed said
they had not read a single book during the current
year.) The second pattern is that when teachers do
read, they prefer popular books rather than scholarly
or professional literature. Of those who were reading
about education, most were reading books intended
for the general public.
It's true that U.S. teachers have traditionally
been poorly paid and not well respected, which means
that the best and the brightest are often not attracted
to teaching. But until teachers can be role models
and exhibit their own love of learning and academics,
the children won't get it.
"Create a culture among the adults, a community
of adults who are learners, who are excited about
ideas in the other disciplines," says Deborah Meier,
educator and author of The Power of Their Ideas.
"The school must represent the culture it wants to
encourage. If we want kids to feel that an intellectual
life belongs to them, it must belong to the teacher,
too."
How do you treat your smart
kids?
"Far from conceiving the mediocre, reluctant, or
incapable student as an obstacle or special problem
in a school system devoted to educating the interested,
the capable, and the gifted," wrote Hofstadter, "American
education entered upon a crusade to exalt the academically
uninterested or ungifted child into a kind of cult-hero."
If schools were strongholds of intellect, then the
most academically able students would be the stars.
But take a look at any web site aimed at parents of
gifted children, and you'll see they say gifted students
have almost as much trouble in school as students
who don't do well. Children with advanced intellectual
ability often are not given the tools they need to
succeed. Ridiculed by classmates, resented by teachers,
unchallenged by the standard curriculum, they're often
ostracized, unhappy, or just plain bored.
Carolyn Kottmeyer, a Pennsylvania mother of two
gifted daughters, recounts how a resentful fifth-grade
math teacher taunted the older daughter, who received
individual instruction from another math teacher.
More than once, the regular math teacher walked past
the library where the girl was studying. Once she
stopped and asked her, "What's a Box-and-Whiskers
Plot?" When the girl didn't know, the teacher turned
to the class of students standing in the hallway and
said, "And you think you're such a genius in math."
Such stories are shockingly common. One parent on
Kottmeyer's web site says a teacher told her it was
good for her sixth-grade son to be bored because "it
prepares him for real life." These parents have tales
of teachers who say excessive reading will hurt their
child's eyesight; administrators who don't want to
allow a boy to skip a grade because others will be
getting their driver's licenses before him; principals
who don't want to advance students because other parents
will ask for the same privilege. Parents tell of teachers
and principals who recommend Ritalin for children
who are acting up in class because they are bored,
or who deny gifted kids entrance to advanced classes
because they say the students have behavior problems
brought on by boredom.
Smart kids question teachers and are often nonconformists.
They are taunted by their peers for being too smart
or knowing too much. Some children, in desperation
to fit in, hide their academic gifts. "Parents see
kids who are excited about going to school, then slowly
getting turned off," says Peter Rosenstein, executive
director of the National Association for Gifted Children,
in Washington, D.C. "Parents find out that nothing
the teacher taught that day was new to the child."
Lynne Bernstein, the New York school board member
who took her children out of the public school, says
her son had a teacher who told him to stop raising
his hand and let other children answer some questions.
"You get ridiculed, you stop talking," says Bernstein.
The academic reputation of the affluent Armonk school
district was the reason Bernstein and her family moved
to the community. Instead, she found that a culture
of noncompetition was preventing the teachers and
staff from pushing kids to do more. "My kids are bright
students, and they weren't being challenged," she
says.
After winning election to the school board three
years ago, Bernstein started a committee to look at
what the district was offering gifted students. There
was a great deal of resistance even to studying the
issue, she says -- let alone establishing a program
for more advanced students.
But small changes are coming to the district now,
including offering additional honors classes at the
high school level. Parents are growing nervous because
their children aren't being accepted into top colleges,
says Bernstein. These parents are pressuring the district
to change.
"Learning comes with hard work. It's a struggle,"
says Bernstein. "We aren't pushing these kids enough,
on the bottom, top, and middle."
When the smartest students aren't rewarded and sometimes
even feel punished for being academically gifted,
other students in a school are hardly likely to see
any rewards in doing well, either.
"Schools must create a culture where learning is
valued and people get excited about information,"
says former teacher McEwan. "You don't have to be
embarrassed to use big words. We have to make learning
cool."
But is it practical?
The purpose of public schools has never been to
create thinking, analyzing, intellectual citizens,
charges John Taylor Gatto, a 30-year New York City
public school teacher and New York State Teacher of
the Year in 1991. And that's why they're not doing
it now. Today's schools are products of 19th-century
industrialists, whose purpose was to prepare people
to be good employees -- docile, productive, and addicted
consumers. And if that's what the public wants, says
Gatto, using the Socratic method to teach children
to critique great works and question the way things
are is a hazard to society.
"Intellect requires a critical mind, not a retentive
mind," says Gatto. "Schools can't tolerate questioning."
Gatto is an outspoken critic of the public schools
and an advocate of home schooling. He argues that
our schools are modeled after factories where repetition
and conformity are stressed over thought and expression.
"The bell schedule is insane," says Gatto. "It's a
rat-training device to make nothing mean very much."
When you are interrupted over and over again, what
you are doing loses importance, he says. "It creates
apathy."
In fact, Gatto and others contend, most of what
we consider to be education is actually training.
The children at poorer schools receive vocational
training. The children in middle-class and affluent
schools receive training to become what Howley calls
"intelligent careerists." In this role, he says, they
are capable of responding efficiently and pragmatically
to work-related problems but unable, or at least disinclined,
to examine the broad social, economic, and political
context in which the problems are set.
The emphasis on training over education clearly
stems from Americans' love of practicality. It's easy
to convince parents that their children need certain
courses so they can get high-paying jobs when they
graduate. But when we believe that the only reason
to get an education is to make money, says Howley,
"we create a society that thinks about jobs and profit
making as universals."
Worse, he says, the idea that education is solely
a means to earn money has made us into narcissists
whose only goal in life is to make more money -- not
to be responsible to each other or our community.
A case for the humanities
Propose a rigorous course of study in the humanities
and liberal arts, and you'll hear protests: It's traditional.
It's elitist. It's full of dead white European males.
It's not inclusive. It's not relevant. It's not practical.
And besides, it's too hard for our students.
Perhaps the best way to rid schools of anti-intellectualism
is to reintroduce liberal arts: literature, history,
poetry, philosophy, art. Through these subjects, students
can learn mankind's best ideas, and they can begin
constructing their own life of the mind.
When New York writer Earl Shorris started research
for a book on the poor in the United States, he ended
up establishing a program that brings the humanities
to the inner-city poor. Students are chosen on the
basis of their income, their ability to read, and
their desire. Some are homeless, some never finished
high school, some are in prison, some struggle with
drug addiction, but they are taught by professors
from elite universities.
"You've been cheated," Shorris tells his students.
"Rich people learn the humanities; you didn't. The
humanities are a foundation for getting along in the
world, for thinking, for learning to reflect on the
world instead of just reacting to whatever force is
turned against you. ... Will the humanities make you
rich? Yes, absolutely. But not in terms of money.
In terms of life."
Shorris sees evidence that the humanities can improve
the quality of our lives. In his book, Riches for
the Poor, he recounts a conversation with one
of his students. The man called Shorris to tell him
about a problem with a colleague who was making him
so angry that he wanted to hit her. He restrained
himself, and saved his job, he said, by asking himself,
"What would Socrates do?"
After five years, with the support of private foundations
and government grants, Shorris' Clemente Course in
the Humanities is being taught at about two dozen
sites in the United States, Canada, and Mexico. And
he is working on a program that would bring the course
to public school teachers who would, in turn, pass
their knowledge on to their students.
Teaching the humanities is ultimately more practical
than training students to perform specific jobs, says
Shorris: "If you give human beings the best that human
beings have produced, they are changed."
Kathleen
Vail is an associate editor
of American School Board Journal.
+++URL: http://edcenter.med.cornell.edu/CUMC_PathNotes/Pediatrics/Pediatric.html
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PEDIATRIC PATHOLOGY
Department of Pathology
Cornell University Medical College
EPIDEMIOLOGY OF PEDIATRIC DISEASES
There are approximately 16,000 pediatric deaths per year in the U.S. The major causes
of childhood death are not homogeneous, but show variation according to age
subgroups.
The highest mortality rate is found in children less than one year old. The vast
majority
of these occur in the neonatal period (first 28 days), and most occur in the first seven
days. By one year of age, accidents are the major cause of death. Along with
homicides
and suicides, these traumatic deaths account for approximately 50% of childhood
deaths.
PERINATOLOGY AND PERINATAL PATHOLOGY
seen typically in infants less than 32-33 weeks gestation.
The more immature the infant is, the higher the risk.
by sonography it is shown to occur in up to 40-50% of infants less than 1500 g
rare in mature infants.
Pathology:
In the developing brain, immature neurons aggregate around the ventricles where they
proliferate and eventually migrate out to form the cerebral cortex.
This periventricular primitive zone is called the germinal matrix. During 24-32 weeks
gestation (the period of maximum risk of IVH in a preterm infant) much of the
germinal
matrix is localized bilaterally over the caudate nucleus where it lies just beneath the
ependymal lining of the lateral ventricles.
The vast majority of neonatal intracerebral hemorrhage begins in the germinal matrix.
It may remain localized or may rupture through the overlying ependymal cell layer into
the lateral ventricles (the red arrow points to the germinal matrix).
Depending on the extent of the bleeding, the hemorrhage may fill up and expand the
ventricular system, follow the course of the CSF to emerge in the subarachnoid space
overlying the brainstem and cerebellum, or may occasionally show expansion into the
parenchyma.
The exact cause of germinal matrix hemorrhage is unclear. Numerous factors have
been
cited:
The fragile structure of the germinal matrix and its vessels would appear to
predispose to hemorrhage.
There is poor autoregulation of cerebral blood flow in the preterm infant.
Sick premies on a respirators frequently experience elevated venous pressures,
surges
in arterial pressures, and episodic hypotension, all of which may subject an
unprotected
germinal matrix to injury.
Once there is hemorrhage, the high fibrinolytic activity that characterizes the
germinal matrix allows the hemorrhage to propagate.
Clinical:
IVH often occurs in the setting of HMD, usually between 6-36 hours of life. Infants
with
large IVH present with tense fontanelles, apnea, seizures, cyanosis, pallor, and
decreasing hematocrit. Large IVH's are a frequent cause of death. Small hemorrhages
limited to the germinal matrix or restricted to small accumulations in the ventricles
may be clinically silent and appreciated only by sonography.
A major complication in survivors is post hemorrhagic hydrocephalus or dilatation of
the
ventricles. This is due to fibrotic organization of the arachnoid space or plugging of
the
channels between the fourth ventricle and the subarachnoid space.
Necrotizing Enterocolitis
Necrotizing Enterocolitis (NEC) is a form of spontaneous ischemia of the bowel.
has a propensity to affect preterm infants of very low birth weight
Clinical:
The typical presentation is a preterm infant, particularly one who experienced
respiratory distress syndrome (or other causes of perinatal hypoxia), who develops
abdominal distension, absent bowel sounds, and bloody stools at several days of age.
There is multifocal necrosis of the bowel, marked by the segmental dusky,
hemorrhagic
appearance. The most common sites of involvement are the terminal ileum and colon,
but any location of the large or small intestine may be affected.
There is necrosis which in its earliest stages affects only the mucosa. In this image
the
necrotic mucosa has sloughed, and the submucosa is hemorrhagic.
When severe, the necrosis may progressively involve all layers of the bowel through to
the serosa (transmural). (This type of
involvement, which begins at the luminal aspect of the bowel, is typical of ischemic
injury.) The necrosis is accompanied by variable amounts of inflammation and
hemorrhage.
Pneumatosis intestinalis, which is present in many but not all cases, is represented by
submucosal or subserosal gas-filled cysts.
Pathogenesis:
The pathogenesis of NEC in most cases is felt to be due to an interaction of three
factors:
bowel ischemia
bacterial infection
mucosal damage due to other causes (e.g. hyperosmolar feedings)
It is felt that in most cases ischemia is primary, perhaps resulting from a decrease in
splanchnic circulation in the setting of acute perinatal asphyxia. Injury to the
integrity
of the mucosa allows access of pathogenic organisms into the bowel wall, where they
can cause further injury including the production of gas giving this entity its hallmark
x-ray finding, pneumatosis intestinalis.
Course:
Therapy in many cases is medical, i.e. cessation of feedings, intravenous fluids and
antibiotics. Short term complications include
perforation and peritonitis which will require surgical intervention.
If the damage to the bowel wall is not too severe, there can be complete regeneration.
However with more severe damage, mural fibrosis during the reparative phase may
lead
to marked narrowing of the lumen with the long term complication of strictures and
possible atresia. This will cause later-onset intestinal obstruction. If extensive
surgical resection is required for strictures, the short bowel syndrome
may
result with loss of absorptive capacity.
PERINATAL ASPHYXIA
the umbilical cord : e.g., knot or prolapse of the cord
the placenta : e.g., abruption
the mother's systemic circulation : e.g., pre-eclampsia
Obstetrical : e.g., difficult delivery
In addition, postmature infants are more susceptible to asphyxia. One starts to see
involution of the placenta after the normal term of gestation. To compensate for
decreased maternal blood flow the fetus uses up its fat and glycogen stores, leaving it
with no reserve of glucose to meet metabolic demands during hypoxia. In addition, the
larger size of a postterm infant will make it more susceptible to obstetrical
complications arising during delivery.
Pathology:
Multiple organ systems are affected by acute perinatal asphyxia, and pathologically
they
are characterized by two main features:
widespread marked congestion and hemorrhage
Ischemic necrosis of various organs in a shock-like distribution, if the insult is
severe enough.
Meconium Aspiration
Meconium aspiration syndrome is a frequent cause of respiratory distress in the term
and post-term infant and is felt to be a direct consequence of perinatal asphyxia.
Meconium is the term for the thick, viscous, dark green material which is present in
the
fetal intestines. It consists of both secretions of intestinal mucosal cells as well as
amniotic fluid debris that the infant swallows.
Anoxic-Ischemic Injury to the Brain
Gray Matter Lesions
Anoxic-ischemic injury to the brain is the most dreaded sequela of perinatal asphyxia.
Gray matter lesions are classically seen since neurons are exquisitely sensitive to
asphyxia. Both the cerebral cortex and deep gray matter (thalamus, basal ganglia, and
brain stem) may be involved. Involvement of the deep gray matter is seen more often
in
infants, particularly preterm infants, than in adults suffering from anoxia and/or
ischemia. This probably reflects the fact that in the infant the neurons in the deep
nuclei are more mature and more metabolically active than those in the cortex. This
makes them more susceptible to ischemia.
White Matter Lesions
Not infrequently, premature infants suffering a hypotensive episode will also develop
white matter infarcts called periventricular leukomalacia.
PERINATAL INFECTION
Infections are an important cause of morbidity and mortality in the fetal and neonatal
period, causing approximately 20% of perinatal disease.
Direct Contact
Infection can be acquired as the fetus descends through the birth canal during delivery.
This is what lends the rationale to doing cesarean sections in women with proven
active
Herpes simplex infections of the vagina.
Post-partum
These infections are acquired from the environment usually via the respiratory tract,
gastrointestinal tract or skin. In addition the umbilical cord stump and circumcision
site represent sources of access to pathogenic organisms; infections at these sites
are
skin pathogens, such as Staphylococcus aureus, or nosocomial organisms.
Pediatric AIDS
CONGENITAL ABNORMALITIES
Major congenital malformations occur in approximately 3% of livebirths, and account
for
up to 20% of neonatal deaths. The actual incidence of congenital malformations is
greatly underrepresented by the figure of 3% since many malformations terminate in
spontaneous abortions.
Pulmonary hypertension
Right ventricular overload with right sided heart failure
Paradoxical embolisms
Ventricular Septal Defect
This is the most common congenital heart defect after bicuspid aortic valves.
This is a perimembranous VSD as viewed from the left ventricle.
- found directly under the aortic valve in the left ventricle, and under the septal
leaflet
of the tricuspid valve in the right ventricle. The conducting system travels around the
rim of the perimembranous VSD in the right ventricle. Surgical repair is more
difficult since heart block must be avoided.
- The defect is completely surrounded by muscular septum
- There is less concern about the conducting system during surgical repair.
Course:
Spontaneous closure is common in infancy with an estimated 25-50% believed to
close
prior to age 4.
Small defects may be hemodynamically unimportant, just causing a murmur and
requiring prophylactic antibiotics before some procedures (e.g. dental procedures).
However large defects may lead to congestive failure in infancy and/or pulmonary
hypertension and its sequelae.
The ductus arteriosus is the fetal link between the pulmonary artery and aorta which
allows circulatory bypass of the lung in utero. In this image, the root of the aorta is
to
the patientÍs right of the probe and the root of the pulmonary artery is to the patientÍs
left. The descending aorta is extending vertically up to the top of the image. The
arrow
points to the short ductus arteriosus.
Physiological closure of the ductus arteriosis occurs in two ways:
Functional closure - occurs within 10-20 hours after birth, and this represents a
constriction of the wall of the ductus
Anatomic closure - occurs within a few weeks to a couple of months to become the
ligamentum arteriosum
A pathological problem is defined as no functional closure within a week or no
anatomic
closure within 3 months in a full term infant.
Clinical:
Pulmonary hypertension may result.
Treatment:
Surgical ligation of the ductus.
This is one of the first malformations of the heart to be treated surgically. The
operation is very effective.
Cyanotic Congenital Heart Defects
OTHER STRUCTURAL MALFORMATIONS
male:female = 4:1
1 in 5,000 live births
familial cases exist, with 4-6% of male siblings affected
may be associated with Down's Syndrome
Pathogenesis:
Pathogenesis appears to be failure during the 5th to 12th weeks of gestation of the
normal sequential migration from esophagus to anus of the primitive neuroblasts,
derived from the neural crest, down to the gut to form the myenteric and submucosal
plexus.
Interruption at any point will result in complete absence of ganglion cells distally.
Possible causes of disruption are infection , vascular compromise or genetic error.
The sequela of aganglionosis is a functional obstruction of the colon. The denervated
segment is unable to participate in peristalsis and will go into spasm. The proximal
innervated portion of colon becomes distended (megacolon) with intestinal contents
and
will hypertrophy in its efforts to overcome the obstruction.
Definitive diagnosis is by biopsy.
There are no ganglion cells in either the myenteric or submucosal plexuses.
Additionally
thicker preganglionic fibers often replace the usual thinner nerve twigs in these areas
(in this image, the submucosal plexus). [see control Image at a higher power 2476].
Many of these fibers are cholinergic and contain increased amounts of
acetylcholinesterase. When biopsies are evaluated for the presence of
acetylcholinesterase, not only does one see an increased amount of staining in the
fibers, but AchE-containing fibers are also present in regions where they are normally
not found, such as in the muscularis mucosae.
Clinical:
The most common presentation of Hirschsprung's disease is delayed passage of
meconium or frank obstruction in a neonate, although the disorder may not be
suspected
until an older infant presents with chronic constipation.
Therapy for Hirschsprung's disease is surgical resection of the denervated segment. A
complication of an untreated case is enterocolitis with focal necrosis in the proximal
megacolon.
Extrahepatic Biliary Atresia
Complete luminal obliteration or discontinuity of the hepatic or common bile ducts.
Epidemiology:
1 in 10,000 live births
Male=Female (in Caucasian population)
rarely familial : has been associated with trisomy 17, trisomy 18, polysplenia,
cardiovascular malformations.
Pathogenesis:
Thought to result from an exogenous insult occurring after initial normal development
since:
Rarely seen in stillbirths.
Inflammation and fibrosis are often seen in the excised duct remnant.
Acholic stools may follow an initial short period of bile passage.Viral infection is
the
most likely etiology, probably initiating an inflammatory, fibrosing process in late
gestation or early postnatal life. Reovirus 3 and less commonly, rubella and CMV, have
been proposed.
Pathology:
Gross:
May be segmental, but in the majority of cases the entire duct system is obliterated.
Changes of the liver reflect the duration of disease. By two months, ductal and
ductular
proliferation affects every portal area accompanied by variable degrees of fibrosis.
Clinical:
Direct (conjugated) hyperbilirubinemia with jaundice, at or shortly after birth.
Natural History:
Untreated extrahepatic biliary atresia leads to biliary cirrhosis.
Palliative surgery (the Kasai procedure, which anastomoses jejunum directly to the
porta hepatis) should be done within 3 months to avoid irreversible hepatic fibrosis.
Definitive
therapy is liver transplantation.
Autosomal Recessive Polycystic Kidney Disease
There are two forms of polycystic kidney disease:
Adult Polycystic Kidney Disease
Also known as Autosomal Dominant Polycystic Kidney disease, this form of genetic
polycystic kidney disease generally presents in adults and will not be further
discussed here.
Infantile Polycystic Kidney Disease
Also known as Autosomal Recessive Polycystic Kidney Disease, this form of genetic
polcystic kidney disease generally presents in infancy and childhood.
On cut section the kidneys appear spongelike and contain innumerable elongated
cysts
which extend in radial fashion out from the medulla to the cortical surface.
A virtually invariable associated finding is the presence of tortuous, dilated bile ducts
in the liver, which are accompanied by portal fibrosis, giving this finding the name
congenital hepatic fibrosis.
Clinical:
Autosomal recessive polycystic kidney disease (ARPKD) is fairly rare. Typically it
presents at birth with huge, bilateral abdominal masses. (See 1672 above)
ARPKD, which is associated with oliguria, also causes oligohydramnios in utero.
Oligohydramnios is a deficiency of amniotic fluid. Later in gestation, fetal urine is a
large component of amniotic fluid. Adequate amounts of amniotic fluid are required
for
proper lung growth for at least 2 reasons:
amniotic fluid protects the fetus' thorax from being compressed by the uterus,
which would physically restrict pulmonary growth,
it appears that a normal amount of amniotic fluid is required to maintain a proper
equilibrium with intrapulmonary secretions, which seem to be required for normal
pulmonary growth. So a secondary effect of ARPKD is symmetrically hypoplastic
lungs.
In fact the natural history of ARPKD is for death to occur within a few days
from respiratory insufficiency.
Less extensive renal disease is compatible with longer survival, but in these cases
progressive hepatic fibrosis may cause more serious clinical problems.
Therapy:
The only definitive therapy for the renal disease is transplantation, for it has been
shown that cysts will not develop in the transplanted kidney.
METABOLIC DISORDERS
Inborn error of amino acid metabolism
Autosomal recessive inheritance
Ancidence 1 in 15,000
Approximately 1% of the population carries the gene
Phenylalanine + O2
------------------->
Tyrosine +
H2O
Phenylalanine hydroxylase
Results from an almost total lack of the enzyme phenylalanine hydroxylase, which
converts phenylalanine to tyrosine
As a result of this metabolic block, phenylalanine and its metabolites accumulate
in
the blood and urine.
Clinical:
Virtually asymptomatic in the neonatal period with no recognizable morphologic
features
Severe neurologic damage and mental retardation may begin to develop within a
few
months
Direct or indirect toxic effects of phenylalanine or one of its metabolites
presumably
responsible for neurologic deterioration
Every newborn is screened for elevated levels of phenylalanine in the blood
Therapy:
If the diagnosis of PKU is confirmed, the infant is given a low phenylalanine diet,
which
will prevent serious neurologic injury if initiated within the first few weeks of life.
Cystic Fibrosis
Cystic fibrosis (CF) is a systemic disorder of exocrine glands involving both
mucus-secreting and eccrine sweat glands throughout the body. The defects in CF
involve electrolyte abnormalities and abnormally thick mucous that can cause
obstruction of excretory ducts with subsequent parenchymatous destruction of organs,
most commonly the lungs and pancreas.
Epidemiology:
U.S., whites : 1:2,000 live births, blacks : 1:17,000 live births
The most common fatal autosomal recessive disease affecting the Caucasian
population
Pathophysiology:
Pathophysiological lesion is a defect in c-AMP-regulated chloride transport across
apical membranes of affected epithelial cells.
Sweat glands:
The impairment of transport is failure of resorption of chloride through the duct
epithelial cells. The result is a pathologically elevated level of chloride in the sweat.
This serves as the basis for the pilocarpine sweat test in which a value of sweat
chloride above 60 meq/L (normal being 10 meq/L) along with symptoms consistent
with
CF is essentially diagnostic.
Respiratory airway and pancreatic duct cells:
In these systems there is a failure to transport chloride into the lumen of the airways
and ducts. This is coupled with increased sodium resorption, the combination of which
greatly decreases the water content in the lumens of these systems resulting in thick,
viscid secretions which are difficult to clear. In both organ systems the viscid
secretions lead to obstruction with parenchymal destruction. In the lungs the
obstruction also predisposes to infection; these patients in particular show a
propensity to become infected with mucoid strains of Pseudomonas.
Etiology:
Autosomal recessive inheritance
The CF gene has been localized to a single locus on the long arm of chromosome
7.
The gene product is a protein called CF transmembrane conductance regulator
(CFTR), which is a chloride channel that fails to be activated by cAMP.
Over 300 CF mutations that have been identified. The most common mutation,
found
in approximately 70% of cases, is a deletion of a 3 base pair which causes
elimination
of
phenylalanine in the protein product. This mutation is called delta F508 (so called
because it occurs at the 508th amino acid). Those homozygous for this mutation
will
have the most severe form of the disease.
Pathology:
This disease is characterized, pathologically, by thick, viscid secretions in mucous
glands, leading to proximal obstruction and parechymal destruction. Numerous organ
systems are affected in the body.
Clinical:
15% of infants with CF present with meconium ileus 4465, a condition in which
viscous meconium impacts in the terminal ileum causing obstruction with the risk of
perforation and peritonitis.
Typically CF is discovered between age 2 and 12 months when the child presents
with symptoms of malabsorption (malodorous steatorrhea and malnutrition) secondary
to pancreatic insufficiency.
If the infant or child survives long enough, chronic cough, obstructive pulmonary
disease and persistent pulmonary infections develop and are responsible for 80 to 90%
of deaths.
Therapy:
Attention to the nutritional status of the patient with supplements of pancreatic
enzymes and fat-soluble vitamins, as well as antibiotic control of pulmonary
infections
with physical therapy can prolong the survival of these patients if diagnosed early.
50%
of patients with CF now survive beyond age 25. An active line of current research is
gene therapy, whereby normal DNA is introduced into the repiratory epithelia by a
recombinant viral vector.
PEDIATRIC TUMORS
Lymphoma in children infrequently occurs before the age of 5 years old.
The peak incidence of Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma (NHL) is 7 to 11 years old,
Hodgkin's Disease most typically occurs after the age of 10.
However, like ALL:
The prognosis of childhood lymphoma is generally good.
70% 5-year survival for NHL
85% 5-year survival for Hodgkin's Disease.
LYMPHOMA IN CHILDHOOD
Incidence
Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma
Lymphoblastic
20%
Undifferentiated (Burkitt's)
25%
Large cell, diffuse
10%
55%
Hodgkin's Lymphoma
Lymphocyte predominant
5%
Nodular sclerosis
30%
Mixed cellularity
9%
Lymphocyte depleted
1%
45%
Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma:
The major types of childhood NHL tend to be "high grade" lymphomas. Follicular
patterns
are virtually never seen in children.
Pathology:
Clinical:
In contrast to NHL in adults, childhood NHL is more likely to:
Present in an extranodal site
Be rapidly proliferative
Present with wide spread hematogenous dissemination
It is often impossible to determine whether involvement of the marrow is primary or
secondary. Such disease is called lymphoma/leukemia and is treated as one entity.
Hodgkin's Lymphoma:
Like Hodgkin's disease in adults, Hodgkin's in children:
Has a predominance of the Nodular sclerosing type 683 and
687.
Tends to present with lymph node involvement, most commonly in the neck
Progresses slowly by contiguous spread
Unlike adults, children:
Present at an earlier stage of disease
Less commonly have constitutional symptoms.
Neuroblastoma
Neuroblastoma is a poorly differentiated tumor arising from primitive neural crest
cells
that normally give rise to the adrenal medulla and sympathetic ganglia.
Epidemiology:
7-10% of all childhood malignancies
one of the most common solid malignant tumors in children and the most common
congenital tumor
Typically seen within the adrenal medulla. The surface is generally lobulated and soft
with a reddish-gray appearance on cut surface. Areas of hemorrhage, necrosis and cyst
formation are typical with increasing size, and gross calcification is evident in
40-50%.
This tumor is typical of the small, round blue cell tumor with sheets of
undifferentiated
cells (with an indistinct neuropil background seen here). Some evidence of neural
differentiation,neurofibrillary stroma, and
3540 pseudorosette formation
(Homer-Wright pseudorosettes), is helpful in diagnosing these tumors as
neuroblastomas. Other diagnostic tools include demonstrating the presence of
neurosecretory granules on EM and the demonstration of neuron specific enolase and
other markers with immunoperoxidase stains.
Clinical:
The clinical manifestations depend upon the site of primary disease and the extent
of
spread.
2/3 arise within the abdomen, the majority of which arise within the adrenal
medulla.
1/5 arise within the posterior mediastinum along the sympathetic ganglia.
In a small but significant percentage, the primary site is never established.
Children with neuroblastoma may present with a mass or appear systemically ill or
present with signs of metastatic disease. Characteristically neuroblastoma
metastasizes early, showing a special predilection for:
bone
lymph nodes
liver
bone marrow
subcutaneous tissue.
Laboratory :Catecholamines and their metabolites are elevated in the urine in more
than 90% of patients.
Prognostic factors include:
age (younger age [particularly < 1.5 years] more favorable)
site
stage
the level of serum biochemical markers ferritin and neuron-specific enolase (elevated
levels correspond with poorer prognosis)
N-myc oncogene: Increased amplification of the n-myc oncogene is inversely
related
to
good prognosis
cytogenetics (aneuplod tumors have better prognosis)
histology (a grading system called the Shimada classification has been correlated
with
prognosis).
Course:
There are two possible courses taken by neuroblastomas:
Widespread dissemination (majority)
Spontaneous regression (3-7%) either by necrosis, or spontaneous or
therapy-induced
differentiation, possibly with complete maturation to a benign ganglioneuroma
This tumor usually presents as a solitary, round, intra-renal tumor with a sharply
defined pseudo-capsule. Color is characteristically pale tan or gray on cut section (in
contrast to the yellow color of renal adenocarcinoma). Unlike neuroblastoma, Wilms
tumor is typically not calcified and is bilateral in 5% of cases.
Micro:
The classic histologic description is that of a triphasic appearance, comprising:
This triphasic appearance is not essential for the diagnosis as there are monophasic
and
biphasic forms. The monophasic blastema may create problems in differential
diagnosis.
Unlike neuroblastoma, EM and immunoperoxidase studies are nonspecific and not
helpful
in the positive diagnosis of Wilm's tumor. The only histologic feature which is
associated with poor prognosis is anaplasia. This is defined as marked nuclear
enlargement and hyperchromatism with multipolar mitotic figures.
These children typically present with an asymptomatic abdominal mass that has been
identified by the patient's parent or doctor.
Course:
initially spreads locally through the renal capsule
shows a propensity to extend into the renal vein and inferior vena cava
metastasizes preferentially to regional lymph nodes and lung. Bone marrow
involvement is unusual.
Wilms tumor is another pediatric malignancy which has shown great advances in
therapy. The prognosis of patients with Wilms tumor is excellent for those with early
stages, and good even for those with more advanced stages, yielding an overall
survival
of 84%.
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On Line Medical Dictionaries and Journals
A tension-filled night at the final Tribal Council marked the shift in power from the tribe members still in play to the Jury, the seven people previously voted out who would determine the ultimate Survivor.
Given one final chance to express why each of them deserved to be the winner, Colby Donaldson and Tina Wesson expressed their views.
WASHINGTON — The International Executive Board of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), AFL-CIO, unanimously endorsed Democratic candidate John Kerry for President today. Senator Kerry formally accepted the endorsement today at AFSCME International headquarters, 1625 L Street, NW, in Washington, DC.
"Senator Kerry has a proven record of fighting for working families and a real plan to get this country back on track," said AFSCME President Gerald W. McEntee.
"We are proud to support a candidate who will stand up for America's workers, fight to keep good-paying jobs here in the United States and make sure every American has access to affordable healthcare," McEntee said. "With John Kerry, we can take back the White House from a President who works for the corporations and the very rich instead of working families."
McEntee added that AFSCME will run its "most aggressive member mobilization program ever."
The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME),
AFL-CIO, is one of the nation's largest and fastest growing public service employees union with 1.4 million members. AFSCME organizes for social and economic justice in the workplace and through political action and legislative advocacy.
This portion of the website is posted in full compliance with FEC regulations (11C.F.R. Sect.11 4.5(i)). It is paid for by the AFSCME PEOPLE Committee, with voluntary contributions from union members and their families, and is not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.
# # #
American Federation of State, County
and Municipal Employees, AFL-CIO
1625 L Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036-5687
Telephone (202) 429-1145
Fax (202) 429-1120
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Search Engine Watch: Tips About Internet Search Engines & Search Engine Submission. Search Engine Watch is the authoritative guide to searching at Internet search engines and search engine registration and ranking issues. Learn to submit URLs, use HTML meta tags and boost placement.
Using AddMe you can conveniently submit free to 20 or so top engines. You simply enter all your info (site title, description, keywords, etc) then you progress forward automatically submitting to each seach engine separately, which is nice because it allows you to choose which ones you want to submit to; however, it is a tad time consuming. Addme is still one of the best free search engine submission services available. I just wish they had more search engines!
Conveniently hit about 55 engines world wide, including the top 10; however, by my last count 27 came up as errors, either page not found, server not found, or method not allowed. So, you actually hit about 28 search engines. Still pretty convenient though.
FREE automated submission to potentially 250 search engines in real time. Submission isn't as automated as suggested here. On some engines manually hitting a submit button is required. Apparently 175 of these are submitted through inktomi. Instant submission confirmation.
You used to hit numerous major engines here, but these days you can only hit about 12 or so for free. To hit more than that they want you to become a member and it's fairly costly. What you do for free submissions is go to their meta tag analyzer, input your URL, and they pull up all the info directly from your site, ready to auto submit. You hit 12 or so top engines, and you get to select which ones you want to submit to. Hopefully they at least keep the meta-tag analyzer free because it's extremely useful and can help you build your tags.
After you're done with all the auto-submit places, there are still hundreds of indexes and engines you haven't hit. Self Promotion.com is there to fill in that gap. It's free for a month. However, if you'd like to keep your account open for a solid year they ask for a $10 donation, which ain't bad when you consider the power of this amazing resource. It's all manual, but this site provides a direct link to the add URL pages of an inestimable number of indexes and engines. This is a resource no one can do without.
This is an all automated deal. All you do is input your URL and your e-mail address and wham-bang--you've just submitted to 40 top engines, but alas, only 12 of them are crawlers; all the rest are metasearch engines, which aren't the best place to submit. Another drawback is that you don't get to select which engines you want to submit to, it's all a done deal in the blink of an eye. They also offer a deal to pay to have your site submitted to a massive list of engines.
You can use Usubmit to add your URL free to 25 top search engines in a snap. You are required to register first and you receive your password and username via the email address you provide. I used to use this service quite a bit and I used to be quite pleased, but times have changed. Eventually my password failed and I couldn't get back in; they wouldn't let me get another account because I already had one. A major drawback is that you can't select which engines to submit to.
Internet Business and Webmaster Resources - submit, submission services, webmaster tools, budget hosting, search engine submission and optimization, web site promotion, scripts, affiliate programs, budget hosting, etc.
Health Information for International Travel
The "Yellow Book"
The Yellow Book is published every two years by CDC as a reference
for those who advise international travelers of health risks. The Yellow Book
is written primarily for health care providers, although others might find it useful.
preventive measures to take to protect your health;
notices about changes in vaccine requirements;
drug availability notices;
disease outbreak and emerging infection information.
* Note: These sites are not CDC sites and will be
opened in a new browser window. CDC is not responsible for the content of Web pages found
at these links. Links to nonfederal organizations are provided solely
as a service to our users. These links do not indicate an endorsement
of these organizations by CDC or the federal government.
Travelers' Health Automated Information Line PHONE: 877-FYI-TRIP toll free (Information about ordering the Yellow Book and International Certificates of Vaccination and recorded messages on travel-related health topics)
Please visit http://das.sanger.ac.uk/registry/ to register you DAS server.
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Friday, 7 May 2004
03:40am
Y
es, if you were paying attention, you read that right. 3:40am. Why am I up so late? Well as you may know, my new apartment is a lot smaller than my old one. And my new bedroom is definitely a lot smaller than my old one. Probably only about 1/3rd the size, actually. So I decided that it would be a good idea to get a loft bed from ikea. So on the day I moved in, Zac and I went down there hoping to buy this one that I saw online. Unfortunately they didn't have it in stock that day. But I finally got it today, with the help of Jeff and his Jeep Cherokee, without which, I would not have been able to get the boxes home.
What a nightmare assembling this thing was!! The reason why I am still up right now is because I started assembling this thing around 8pm, and didn't finish until around 2am!! And then I had to spend another hour or so setting up my computers again (if you've ever seen it, my desk is an amazing haven of nerd-dom with 3 monitors hooked up to two computers, along with a little accessory cart with two printers and a scanner on it!). So yeah. After putting out so much physical effort for the last six hours, it's kind of hard for me to just settle down and go to bed. So I'm up making this somewhat overdue update.
So far though, I'm pretty happy with the new setup. I estimate that by putting the desk under the bed, I've freed up about 35 square feet of floor space. I've also actually got more desk space with this new setup too, since I can have my monitors hanging out further off the back. Also, by having my desk underneath the bed, the computers are no longer the first thing I see when I open my eyes in the morning. For those of you who don't know, I work at home. On these computers. Back at my old place, I noticed that I was generally happier after I rearranged my room from one setup where the first thing I saw in the morning was my computer... to one where they were out of view. They are now once again out of view. Yay. Maybe tomorrow I'll borrow Matt's camera and take a pic of the new setup.
Last week, Matt and I headed down the street to the new JBX restaurant. "JBX" is a little experiment being performed by Jack in the Box (their corporate headquarters are here in San Diego). They tore down two of their old restaurants (one in Hillcrest and one in PB), and replaced them with JBX's. The idea is to try to make a place that's a little hipper, a little cooler, and with a little bettter service, and with a little better food.
It definitely was pretty cool looking, and the food actually was better. I ordered the "Meat and Cheese Burger" which, on the menu, appeared to be the same as Jack in the Box's "Ultimate Cheeseburger" -- meat patty with cheddar and swiss cheese. What I found was that the quality of the beef was much better, as well as the quality of the cheeses. They also brought the food out to my table (in about the same way that Carl's Jr. has been doing it for years).
Overall, the layout of the restaurant is confusing and cumbersome, but the food is deifnitely better (and still about the same price!), with a slightly different menu, and it definitely does look cool... heck, they even have a fireplace that you can sit next to... inside, or outside the building!
Welp, I guess I should sign off and just try to go to bed and hope I don't wake up super sore in the morning... I've still got tons of work to do. Work work, and work around the house work. Hopefully soon I'll get the rest of my furniture situation sorted out too. Yay.
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GromBlog : My Mom never saw the irony in calling me a "Son-of-a-Bitch".
gromBlog
This site has now completely moved to it's proper webspace so if you are seeing this page then you need to repoint your browser to www.pri.me.uk.
If you use the RSS/XML feed for the site then that has also changed to http://www.pri.me.uk/rss/blogger_rss.xml.
If you have any difficulties with the new pages then please drop me an email and I'll fix the issues or help you to sort your issues out.
Do make sure that you come back - the new site is much better and we'll keep on improving - we've got a lot more things planned for this year, it's worth sticking around!
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GameDev.net -- Graphics
This is example source code of an alpha blending routine in assembly. According to it's author, the code can easily be inserted into VC++, in fact, that's what you're supposed to do.
Light Based Tessellation technology is used for adding enhanced lighting effects to three-dimensional objects. Current lighting algorithms operate only on each vertex of a polygon in order to create lighting effects. By tessellating (breaking up) a polygon, more vertices will be created with which the lighting algorithms can work, thus producing better lighting effects.
This follow-up to the original article gets into the actual method, explaining radiosity mapping, dynamic light source radiosity, and dynamic object to static object radiosity.
Examines the benefits of a micro-programmable graphics architecture and considers the graphics pipeline and where hardware and software techniques can be applied.
A procedural object is created by an algorithm that takes a set of parameters that define the object and produces the object representation from that set. This article explains how to write a plug-in to create procedural objects in 3D Studio MAX.
Presents a few tricks which can help make real-time blurring possible, and hopefully will provide enough material to inspire you to invent your own hybrid techniques.
The purpose here is to describe how to obtain a proper matrix given a
location and a target (or a vector), and an amount of roll. This document also emulates the specific nature of 3DS cameras, when it comes to the degenerate case.
This WWH describes sub-pixel accuracy. The purpose of a WWH is to expand one's knowledge on a topic they already understand, but need a reference, a refresher course, or to simply extend what they already know about the topic.
This article describes sub-texel accuracy. This document relies on the fact that you have already read WWH1
(sub-pixel accuracy) as they are interrelated, and especially since
you can't achieve sub-texel accuracy without first achieving
sub-pixel accuracy.
General Information about a way to implement perspective projection texture mapping. It may not be standard, but it shows the derivation of the formulae involved.
General Information about a way to implement texture mapping. This uses the formula derived in the first article and describes a way to put this into code.
This article focuses on procedural texture mapping. This style of texture mapping is used in raycasters and excels in simulating organic textures. Among this, there are a number of other advantages as discussed in the aritcle.
This article focuses on using programmable hardware for creating cartoon-like graphics from 3D models.
Key:= HTML article hosted here , = HTML article hosted elsewhere = link to another web site = Adobe Acrobat document = Zip files = Word or text document
Judicial recounts are mandatory in ridings where the winning margin is less than
0.1% of the total valid votes cast. For example, in a riding where 100,000 valid
votes were counted, a judicial recount will be held if the winning margin is
less than 100 votes; for more information, consult the Elections Canada
Judicial Recount Manual.
Recounts can also be requested by anyone who asserts that ballots were
improperly counted or rejected. After reviews of the initial tally sheets, the
only automatic judicial recount was held is in
Jeanne-Le-Ber Quebec where Liberal cabinet minister
Liza Frulla's
victory was confirmed.
Other judicial recounts were allowed after an application by
the 2nd place candidate:
Edmonton-Beaumont Alta - David Kilgour (Liberal) - 134
vote margin of victory
New Westminster-Coquitlam
BC - Paul Forseth (Conservative) - 114 vote margin of victory
NOTE: This recount
was later cancelled at the request of the applicant
Regina–Lumsden–Lake
Centre - Sask - Tom Lukiwski (Conservative) 122 margin of victory
NOTE: This recount was
later cancelled at the request of the
applicant
Western Arctic
NWT - Ethel Blondin-Andrew (Liberal) - 52 vote margin of victory
The one independent elected was Chuck Cadman in
Surrey North, BC. He
was the sitting Conservative MP, but lost the party nomination and then
decided to run as an independent.
Polls vs. Election Results
Election night on June 28th brought a very different result from the what the
polls had led everyone to believe. One explanation
lies in the way in which most polling companies rolled "leaners" in together
with truly "decided" voters. Many of those leaners obviously had second thoughts
in the last few days of the campaign and decided not to vote Conservative. An
indication that this could happen is seen in the last
Compas poll that
revealed that more respondents believed that a Liberal-led government (either
majority or minority) would be better for the country than a Conservative-led
government by a margin of 41% to 28%. It is interesting that the level of
support for a Conservative-led government was 5 percentage points lower than
those who said they were thinking of voting Conservative (33%).
Riding-by-Riding Results
Final Results of the 2004 Federal Elections Seats Won
and ( % of Seats - % of Votes )
Note: You may download this resource at no cost, for personal use or for use in a Christian ministry, as long as you are not publishing it for sale. All I ask is that you give credit where credit is due. For all other uses, please contact me at mark@markdroberts.com. Thank you.
Part 1: Introduction
Posted at 10:45 p.m. on Saturday, March 6, 2004
With The Passion of the Christ so much in our minds these days, I had planned to do some blogging on the question: Why was Jesus crucified? But as I pondered this question, I realized that my answer would only make sense in light of a prior answer to another question: What was Jesus' actual message? So I'll get to the reason for Jesus' crucifixion in a while. But first I need to lay a foundation for that reason by dealing with Jesus' message. This isn't quite so easy as it might at first seem. Yet the effort to grasp Jesus' actual message pays rich dividends, because it makes sense, not only of his life and ministry, but of his death and resurrection.
If you were to ask the average person what Jesus' preached - even the average Christian - you'd no doubt hear something about love: "Jesus taught about love. He said we should all love each other." This perception of Jesus' teaching isn't wrong, let me hasten to add. Jesus did talk quite a bit about love. In fact he said that loving God is the greatest commandment and loving our neighbors is the runner up (Mark 12:29-31). So, to be sure, love figured prominently in the message of Jesus.
But love was not the core of his proclamation. And, to be sure, his preaching about love didn't get Jesus crucified. Neither the Romans nor the Jewish authorities would have been particularly bothered by a Jewish prophet who ran around telling people to love God and people. Quite a few Jews would have been distressed over the thought of having to love their enemies, however. But the Romans - the obvious enemies -- wouldn't have crucified someone whose main crime was telling Jews to love them and turn the other cheek! The core of Jesus' message must have been more contentious, indeed, more scandalous, than a call to love.
It's common for people to reduce the message of Jesus to something all too simple and, I might add, all too similar to the biases of whoever is doing the reducing. You'll see this in many of the contemporary "scholarly" attempts to summarize the message of Jesus. The infamous Jesus Seminar, by the time it stones Jesus to death with its red, pink, gray, and black beads, ends up with a sage who speaks in esoteric riddles, hardly someone who would be put to death as a threat to Roman order in Judea.
Whatever Jesus preached, it got people excited. Even the demons were riled up. And Jesus' message angered most of the religious leaders he encountered. In the end, it got him killed on a Roman cross. So what exactly was this inspiring, challenging, goading, and apparently subversive message of Jesus all about?
I'll begin to answer this question in my next post.
Part 2: What Was the Core of Jesus' Preaching?
Posted at 10:00 p.m. on Sunday, March 7, 2004
In my last post I began a multi-part series seeking to answer the question: What was the message of Jesus? I mentioned that many people would answer this question by saying something about love, because we rightly associate Jesus' teaching with love. But, as it turns out, love is not the core of his message, though it is close. What Jesus actually proclaimed, first and foremost, was not that we should love, but something else.
We find a succinct summary of this "something else" in the first description of Jesus' ministry in the Gospel of Mark: "Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying, 'The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news'" (Mark 1:14-15). Here, in a nutshell, is the message of Jesus: the kingdom of God has come near.
The phrase "kingdom of God" appears 53 times in the New Testament gospels, almost always on the lips of Jesus. The synonymous phrase, "kingdom of heaven," appears 32 times in the Gospel of Matthew. Throughout the accounts of Jesus' ministry, he is always talking about the kingdom of God. Many of his parables explain something about this kingdom: it is like mustard seed, a treasure, a merchant looking for pearls, and a king who gave a banquet (Matt 13:44-47; 22:2). Jesus even defines his purpose in light of the kingdom: "I must proclaim the good news of the kingdom of God to the other cities also; for I was sent for this purpose" (Luke 4:43).
Given the centrality of the kingdom of God to the preaching, and, as we'll see, the actions of Jesus, it's strange that many Christians are relatively unfamiliar with what this phrase means. But if we want to understand the message of Jesus, not to mention his whole ministry, including his death and resurrection, then we must grapple with what he says about the kingdom of God. Gordon Fee, one of the wisest of New Testament scholars, once said in a lecture on Jesus: "You cannot know anything about Jesus, anything, if you miss the kingdom of God . . . . You are zero on Jesus if you don't understand this term. I'm sorry to say it that strongly, but this is the great failure of evangelical Christianity. We have had Jesus without the kingdom of God, and therefore have literally done Jesus in."*
If you've read this far, I'm assuming that you don't want to be zero on Jesus, and that you don't want to do him in, either. Neither do I. So we must work together to figure out what Jesus meant when he said "the kingdom of God has come near." For this was, indeed, the core of his message.
I plan to structure the rest of this blog series around basic questions having to do with the kingdom of God in the ministry of Jesus. These questions will include:
· What is the kingdom of God?
· How did Jesus proclaim the message of the kingdom?
· Where is the kingdom of God?
· When is the kingdom of God coming?
· What will life in the kingdom of God be like?
· Who will bring the kingdom of God?
· How is the kingdom of God coming?
Answering these questions could very well fill a big, fat book. But my intent is to offer relatively bite-sized answers. If you're looking for more depth, I highly recommend the writings of N. T. Wright. He has written, not one, but three big, fat books on Jesus - and they are outstanding. But, if you're not ready to take on over 2000 pages of in-depth scholarship, then I'd also highly recommend Wright's more accessible overview in his book, The Challenge of Jesus. If you read only one book on Jesus, this is it. (Well, okay, I guess I'd like you to read my book too!)
In my next post I'll take on the question: How did Jesus proclaim the message of the kingdom?
__________
Part 3: What is the Kingdom of God?
Part 3 of the series: "What Was the Message of Jesus?"
Posted at 10:35 p.m. on Wednesday, March 10, 2004
In my last post in the series, "What Was the Message of Jesus?", I explained that the core of Jesus' preaching was the good news of the kingdom of God. This is summarized succinctly in Mark 1:15, where Jesus proclaims, "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news." Of course this summary leads to an obvious follow-up question: What is the kingdom of God? What is it that, according to Jesus, has drawn near?
The kingdom of God has been equated with all sorts of things in the last two millennia. Some have claimed that it is heaven, and that Jesus was saying, in so many words, "Now you can go to heaven when you die." Others have understood "the kingdom of God" as referring to the Church. From their perspective, Jesus announced the beginning of the age of the Church. Still others have seen the kingdom of God as a world infused by divine justice. They have taken Jesus' announcement as a call to social action. In recent times, New Agers have reduced the kingdom of God to inner awareness of one's divinity. Like the ancient Gnostics, they understand the good news of the kingdom to mean "You are divine."
None of these renditions of the kingdom of God hits a historical home run, although the first three are in the ballpark, at least. But all of them fail to take seriously both what Jesus actually says about the kingdom of God, and what his fellow Jews, especially the Old Testament prophets, had been saying about the kingdom for centuries.
Before we analyze Jesus' use of the phrase "the kingdom of God," we need to pay close attention to his use of the word "kingdom." When we try to understand Jesus' message of the kingdom, we easily stumble over a language gap. In everyday English, "kingdom" means a place where a king reigns. The Kingdom of Jordan, for example, is the place where King Abdullah II rules. But when Jesus spoke of the kingdom of God, he did not think in terms of locality, but authority.
King Abdullah II, with Jordan in the background.
In the New Testament gospels, Jesus uses the Greek phrase he basileia tou theou, "the kingdom of God." The word basileia could sometimes refer to a locale over which a king ruled, but it's primary meaning in the first-century was "reign, rule, authority, sovereignty." (The same was true of the Aramaic term, malku, the word actually spoken by Jesus.) We see this meaning clearly in one of Jesus' parables. He speaks of a nobleman who "went to a distant country to have himself appointed king and then to return" (Luke 19:12, NIV; the NRSV reads "to get royal power for himself"). The Greek of this verse reads, literally, "he went to a distant country to receive a basileia for himself." He didn't go to get a new region over which to rule, but rather to get new and greater authority over the place he lived.
We see this same meaning in the Hebrew Scriptures. In Psalm 145, for example, we read:
All your works shall give thanks to you, O LORD,
and all your faithful shall bless you.
They shall speak of the glory of your kingdom
[malkuth in Hebrew; basileia in Greek],
and tell of your power (10-11).
Here God's kingdom is parallel, not to the place over which God reigns, but to his divine power. God's faithful praise his sovereignty here, not the place over which God is sovereign.
So when Jesus proclaims that the kingdom of God has come near, he doesn't mean that a place is approaching like the giant comet in the movie Deep Impact, but that God's own royal authority and power have come on the scene. "God's reign is at hand. God's power is being unleashed," Jesus says. "Turn your life around and put your trust in this good news."
Of course Jesus' announcement of God's reign didn't come in a vacuum. It was both consistent with and a fulfillment of a central theme in the Hebrew prophets. In my next post I'll examine how these prophets spoke of the kingdom of God, and how this prepared the way for the message and ministry of Jesus.
Part 4 : What is the Kingdom of God? (cont)
Posted at 10:00 p.m. on Thursday, March 11, 2004
In yesterday's post I began to clarify the core message of Jesus: "the kingdom of God has come near" (Mark 1:15). Our word "kingdom," it turns out, misses the precise sense of Jesus' own language. What he proclaimed was not the approach of a place where God rules (our typical sense of "kingdom"), but rather the dawning of God's kingly authority on earth. Thus when we read the phrase "kingdom of God" in the gospels, we need to think in terms of God's reign, rule, authority, or sovereignty. This, according to Jesus, is what has come near.
In his proclamation of the reign of God, Jesus echoes the language and hopes of the Hebrew prophets. I have known this for over 20 years, but it was strongly impressed upon me three years ago as I was writing my book, Jesus Revealed. In preparation for this project, I re-read the Hebrew prophets, beginning with Isaiah and ending with Malachi. Time and again I ran into the language of God's kingdom as the Lord promised that, someday, he would return to rule over his people.
Consider, for example, the following passage from Zephaniah, who prophesied in the latter half of the seventh century B.C.:
For more information on Jesus Revealed, click here.
Sing aloud, O daughter Zion;
shout, O Israel! . . .
The LORD has taken away the judgments against you,
he has turned away your enemies. The king of Israel, the LORD, is in your midst; . . .
a warrior who gives victory;
he will rejoice over you with gladness,
he will renew you in his love; . . .
I will deal with all your oppressors
at that time.
And I will save the lame
and gather the outcast,
and I will change their shame into praise
and renown in all the earth.
At that time I will bring you home,
at the time when I gather you;
for I will make you renowned and praised
among all the peoples of the earth,
when I restore your fortunes
before your eyes, says the LORD. (Zeph 3:14-20, emphasis added)
According to this prophecy, at the right time the LORD himself will be the "king of Israel." In this role he will give victory to his people, removing their oppressors, gathering their scattered exiles, and restoring their fortunes.
Consider one other passage from the Hebrew prophets, this one from Isaiah:
How beautiful upon the mountains
are the feet of the messenger who announces peace,
who brings good news,
who announces salvation,
who says to Zion, "Your God reigns."
Listen! Your sentinels lift up their voices,
together they sing for joy;
for in plain sight they see
the return of the LORD to Zion.
Break forth together into singing,
you ruins of Jerusalem;
for the LORD has comforted his people,
he has redeemed Jerusalem.
The LORD has bared his holy arm
before the eyes of all the nations;
and all the ends of the earth shall see
the salvation of our God. (Isaiah 52:7-10, emphasis added)
In this prophecy, God's reign includes peace, the return of the LORD to Jerusalem, joyful singing, comfort and redemption for Judah, and the impact of God's salvation upon the whole earth. The announcement of God's reign will be, indeed, "good news."
Now, with Zephaniah's and Isaiah's prophecies ringing in your ears, listen again to Mark's summary of Jesus' message: "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news" (Mark 1:15). The prophetic echoes are unmistakable. But there are differences too. Whereas the prophets looked ahead to an undetermined time in the future when God would return to rule over his people, Jesus says, "The time is now. The reign of God has now come near. So turn your life around and live in light of this truth."
Now that we've identified the core message of Jesus - the proclamation of the kingdom - and clarified the basic meaning of this proclamation, we should pursue a bit further the means by which Jesus delivered his message. Yes, upon occasion he stood up and said, simply, "The kingdom of God is at hand." But that was just the beginning. In my next post I will answer the question: How did Jesus proclaim the kingdom of God?
Part 5 : How Did Jesus Proclaim the Kingdom of God?
Posted at 11:30 p.m. on Friday, March 12, 2004
So far I've shown that the central message of Jesus was: "the kingdom of God has come near" (Mark 1:15). This kingdom was not a place where God reigns, but rather the reign of God itself -- God's rule, authority, and power. The reign of God, Jesus says, is at hand.
But how does Jesus proclaim the kingdom of God? What are his means and methods?
Basic Statements of Fact. As we've already seen, at times Jesus simply and bluntly proclaims the presence of the kingdom without exceptional art or artifice. You can't get much simpler than "the kingdom of God has come near" (Mark 1:15).
Explanations. Although the New Testament gospels never provide a thematic outline of Jesus' teaching - such as I'm providing in this blog series - at times Jesus does explain some features of the kingdom of God. In Mark 10:14-15, for example, he says:
"Let the little children come to me; do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs. Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it."
Although we might debate what exactly Jesus means here, his point - that one must receive the kingdom in a childlike manner - gives us a bit more information about the kingdom of God. Notice that the kingdom is not something we create by our own efforts, but rather something we receive. Christians sometimes speak of God's kingdom as something we produce by our own efforts. This misses the biblical point, which emphasizes the agency of God as that which inaugurates God's own reign.
Parables. Some of Jesus' explanations of the kingdom take the form of parables, which at times seem more like riddles than clarifications. For example, at one point Jesus says,
"With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable will we use for it? It is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth; yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs, and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade" (Mark 4:30-32).
Mustard plants in Southern California. Not the same variety as envisioned by Jesus.
This parable, an animated simile, tells us about the kingdom of God by supplying a vivid picture of its paradoxical size. It begins as a tiny seed, but ends up as a giant plant. Whereas many Jews in the time of Jesus expected the reign of God to appear in its full grandeur, Jesus reveals that it begins as the smallest of seeds. The full extent of God's kingdom will only be revealed later.
Notice, once again, how Jesus' parable of the mustard seed coheres with Old Testament prophecy. Through Ezekiel God once said,
I myself will take a sprig
from the lofty top of a cedar;
I will set it out.
I will break off a tender one
from the topmost of its young twigs;
I myself will plant it
on a high and lofty mountain.
On the mountain height of Israel
I will plant it,
in order that it may produce boughs and bear fruit,
and become a noble cedar.
Under it every kind of bird will live;
in the shade of its branches will nest
winged creatures of every kind. (Ezek 17:22-23)
Whereas Ezekiel spoke of a tiny cedar sprig that grew into a noble cedar in which birds would nest, Jesus used the mustard seed to make a similar point about God's kingdom. Though it begins humbly, in Jesus' own ministry, it will someday be gloriously large, a resting place for all creation.
To sum up what we've seen so far, Jesus announces the presence of God's reign through basic statements, explanations, and parables. Yet his words, as important as they may be, do not exhaust Jesus' means for proclaiming the kingdom. Alongside the words of Jesus we find his works, his actions that announced dramatically the coming of God's kingdom. To these actions I'll turn in my next post.
Part 6 : How Did Jesus Proclaim the Kingdom of God? (cont)
Posted at 10:10 p.m. on Saturday, March 13, 2004
In my last post I showed some of the ways Jesus used words to proclaim the kingdom of God. These included basic statements of fact, explanations, and parables. But Jesus "proclaimed" God's coming reign, not only in words, but also in works. These both illustrated the kingdom of God and demonstrated its presence. Without these works, Jesus' announcement of the kingdom would have fallen on deaf ears. People would have regarded him as a dreamer, perhaps as a deceiver or even a demoniac, but not as the divine envoy of the kingdom.
The works of Jesus that revealed the presence of the kingdom took various forms, including healings, exorcisms, nature miracles, and other symbolic gestures. Let me say a bit about each of these actions and their significance.
Healings. Throughout the gospels Jesus healed people of various diseases. His extraordinary popularity came, not simply from the authority of his preaching, but from his authority over human bodies. Yet healing was not an end in and of itself for those familiar with the Hebrew prophets. It was also a sign of the presence of God's reign on earth. In Isaiah 35, for example, God comes to save and redeem his people. In this context we find the following promise: "Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; then the lame shall leap like a deer, and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy" (Isa 35:5-6). The fact that these things were happening in the ministry of Jesus proved the presence of the kingdom. Jesus himself said this when he was asked by the disciples of John the Baptist whether he (Jesus) was the one through whom the kingdom was coming. Jesus said, "Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them" (Matt 11:4-5). In other words, "Because the healings promised in Isaiah are happening in my ministry, yes, I am the one through whom God's kingdom has come."
Exorcisms. One of the most peculiar aspects of the gospels for North American readers is Jesus' repeated expulsion of demons. Most of us simply aren't familiar or comfortable with such things, unlike so many contemporary believers in the Southern Hemisphere. But, whether we like it or not, exorcisms are central to the ministry of Jesus, and, according to Jesus himself, clear evidence of the presence of the kingdom. In Matthew 12, for example, some of the Pharisees accuse Jesus of casting out demons with demonic power. He answers them, first by citing the now classic line about a house divided against itself being certain to fall (Matt 12:25). Then he adds, "But if it is by the Spirit of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come to you" (Matt 12:28). Whatever we might think of Jesus' exorcisms, for him and his fellow first-century Jews they are a demonstration of the presence of God's reign.
Nature Miracles. According to the gospels, Jesus multiplies food, walks on water, and stills the storm. Once again, these mighty works are associated with God's kingdom. In Psalm 89, for example, the Lord says, "I have made a covenant with my chosen one, I have sworn to my servant David: 'I will establish your descendants forever, and build your throne for all generations'" (Ps 89:3-4). Then, only four verses later the Psalm continues, "O LORD God of hosts, who is as mighty as you, O LORD? Your faithfulness surrounds you. You rule the raging of the sea; when its waves rise, you still them" (Ps 89:8-9). So Jesus' power over nature suggests that God's promised kingdom has arrived and, indeed, that God himself is mysteriously present in the ministry of Jesus.
Rembrandt's "Christ in the Storm on the Sea of Galilee"
I recognize that for many people today the miracles of Jesus are harder to swallow than a camel. In some circles and among quite a few New Testament scholars the miracles of Jesus are not considered as historical events so much as symbolic legends. Yet if you take away the miraculous from the message of Jesus, you severely truncate his announcement of the kingdom and, at the same time, you are left with a Jesus whom most people would have ignored. Even many skeptical modern scholars, therefore, believe that Jesus must have been a "healer" of sorts, one who used psychosomatic cures and the power of suggestion to help people feel better. At this point I'm not prepared to mount a defense for the genuineness of the miracle stories in the gospels. But, whether you believe that the miracles happened or not, they are clearly essential to the picture of Jesus painted by the gospel writers. The mighty works of Jesus, more than showing his love for people, are part and parcel of his announcement of the reign of God. Take away these works and there's no reason to believe his words.
Other Symbolic Gestures. Although the mighty works of Jesus persuaded people to take seriously his announcement of the kingdom, he did other things that illustrated the kingdom's presence and character. For example, Jesus ate with social and religious outcasts (tax collectors and sinners) as a sign of the unexpected inclusiveness of God's reign. Similarly, he embraced children, not only because he loved them, but also to teach something essential about the kingdom. "Let the little children come to me; do not stop them," Jesus said, "for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs" (Mark 10:14). Like the Hebrew prophets, who often used symbolic gestures to communicate God's message, so did Jesus. Ultimately, some of his most powerful statements about the kingdom would come through symbolic actions: the cleansing of the temple, the Last Supper, and the crucifixion itself. I'll have much more to say about these actions later.
Part 7 : Where is the Kingdom of God?
Posted at 9:40 p.m. on Monday, March 15, 2004
So far in this series we've seen that Jesus proclaimed the kingdom of God using a variety of words and works. The essence of his message is summarized in Mark 1:15: "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news."
Growing up as a Christian, I always read this verse as saying: "The time for your personal salvation has arrived. Be sorry for your sins and believe in Jesus as your Savior so you will go to heaven after you die." After having spent much of my life studying Jesus, I no longer believe this is what Jesus meant in Mark 1:15, though I still believe in the truth of what I once attributed to Jesus. Part of my problem in the past, however, was that I wasn't clear on the location of the kingdom of God.
The language of Mark 1:15 certainly suggests that God's reign is coming on earth. This fits, as we have seen previously (Series Part 4), with the promise found repeatedly in the Hebrew prophets: someday God will come to reign on earth, establishing justice and peace for his people and, indeed, for all nations.
The earthly location of God's reign is also revealed in one of the core teachings of Christian faith, that which we call "The Lord's Prayer." In Matthew 6 Jesus taught his disciples to pray:
Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come.
Your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven . . . . (Matt 6:9-10).
The parallelism of this prayer interprets "your kingdom come" as "your will be done on earth as it is in heaven." In other words, we are to pray that God's reign will be experienced on earth as it is right now in God's own heavenly presence. When God's rule is completely established in this world, then all things will be ordered according to God's perfect design.
It's fascinating to discover how much this prayer of Jesus is similar to the prayers offered up by faithful Jews in the first century. Consider, for example, the following prayer that many scholars believe to have been offered daily in the time of Jesus:
"May God establish his kingdom in your lifetime and in your days and in the lifetime of all the house of Israel, even speedily and at a near time." (Kaddish prayer)
Sounds quite a bit like, "Thy kingdom come", doesn't it?
Then there's the eleventh blessing of the so-called Eighteen Benedictions that were spoken during weekly synagogue services:
"Restore our judges as at the first, and our counselors at the beginning; and reign Thou over us, Thou alone. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, who lovest judgment!" (Benediction 11 of the "Eighteen Benedictions")
By proclaiming that the kingdom of God was near, Jesus was saying that these prayers were being answered. God was beginning to rule on earth as he did in heaven -- in the ministry of Jesus himself.
Ruins of ancient synagogue in Capernaum, where Jesus preached. These ruins are later than the first-century, but built upon the same location of the original synagogue. Picture from http://www.bibleplaces.com/.
When I have taught before on the location of the kingdom of God, people sometimes remain unconvinced. "What about the kingdom of heaven ?" they wonder. "And didn't Jesus himself say his kingdom was not of this world? How do you explain these passages?" In my next post I'll address these questions.
Part 8 : Where is the Kingdom of God? (cont)
Posted at 9:20 p.m. on Wednesday, March 17, 2004
This post could be entitled "Where the Kingdom of God is Not." It deals with two common misunderstandings of the kingdom of God as proclaimed by Jesus. I'll address each of these by stating something that the kingdom is not, and then defending my statement with evidence from the gospels.
1. The kingdom of God is not what we call heaven.
In my last post I mentioned that, as a boy, I understood Jesus' proclamation of the kingdom to be an invitation to "get saved and go to heaven." If you had asked me "Where is the kingdom of God?" I would have answered "In heaven." This answer wouldn't have been completely wrong, because God does reign over heaven. But we miss Jesus' point if we think that his proclamation of the kingdom was telling us something about God's rule up in spiritual space or in the afterlife.
Part of our confusion comes from the fact that the Gospel of Matthew records Jesus as speaking about "the kingdom of heaven" rather than "the kingdom of God." Where Mark 1:15 reads "the kingdom of God has come near," Matthew 3:2 has "the kingdom of heaven has come near" (literally in Greek, "the reign of the heavens," he basileia ton ouranon, mirroring the Aramaic spoken by Jesus, malkuta' dishmaha'). Matthew's phraseology doesn't mean that the kingdom is literally up in the heavens. Rather, he is using a common circumlocution for God, much as my grandmother did when she said "Good heavens" rather than "Good God."
But even if we grant that the phrase "kingdom of heaven" refers to God's reign on earth, isn't this conclusion contradicted by Jesus himself when he tells Pilate, "My kingdom is not of this world" (John 18:36, NIV)? Doesn't Jesus mean "My kingdom is not here on earth, but up in heaven"? No, in fact this is not what Jesus means. Two pieces of evidence make this clear. First, the Greek of John 18:36 literally reads, "My reign is not from this world [ek tou kosmou toutou]." Second, the latter portion of John 18:36 explains, "But now my kingdom is from another place [ouk estin enteuthen]." Literally, this sentence reads, "Now my reign is not from here." Jesus is speaking, not of the location of his kingdom, but of the source of his authority. Unlike Pilate, he does not get his authority from an earthly source (Caesar), but from God. Now it's certainly true that Jesus was not seeking to use his divine authority to establish merely another political state on earth. Nevertheless, the kingdom he announces is, in a sense, heaven on earth, not heaven in heaven.
2. The kingdom is not merely in our hearts.
I cannot tell you how many times in the last twenty years I've heard people locate the kingdom of God in human hearts. Christians do it, and so do many New Agers. Their credo is "The kingdom of God is within you" (Luke 17:21). But they missed Jesus' own meaning by a mile.
Yes, to be sure, God's reign will touch human hearts. But it is not limited to some kind of internal, subjective experience. Yes, I know Jesus is quoted as saying that "the kingdom of God is within you," but this verse is usually wrenched way out of context. Let's return to the passage from which this line comes:
Once Jesus was asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God was coming, and he answered, "The kingdom of God is not coming with things that can be observed; nor will they say, 'Look, here it is!' or 'There it is!' For, in fact, the kingdom of God is entos hymon" (Luke 17:20-21).
I've left the original Greek untranslated for a moment so we can see the context of this phrase without prejudging its meaning. Jesus is speaking, not to his faithful disciples, but to a group of Pharisees. They expected the kingdom of God to come with great signs, most obviously the beginnings of a successful revolt against Rome. But Jesus says their expectations are misguided. In fact, the kingdom of God is entos hymon. Given what Jesus says about the hearts of the Pharisees elsewhere - that are "full of greed and self-indulgence" and "all kinds of filth" (Matt 23:25, 27) - it's unlikely that Jesus is telling the Pharisees to look within their hearts to find the kingdom. Rather, he is saying to them: The kingdom of God is right here, in your midst. The Greek phrase entos hymon can mean "among you," as it does in this instance. If the Pharisees want to find the kingdom, Jesus says, they should look, not into their own sinful hearts, but right in front of their eyes, at Jesus himself, at his words and works.
So, though God's reign embraces and transforms human hearts, it is not limited to some sort of interior experience. The kingdom of God impacts actions, thoughts, relationships, families, institutions, and governments. In the end, it will touch everything on earth, when God's will is done on earth "as it is in heaven." Yet this expansive kingdom has begun on earth in a most unexpected and unnoticed way - rather like a mustard seed -- in the ministry of Jesus.
If the kingdom of God is neither up in heaven nor limited to human hearts, but is something we ought to experience in all aspects of our earthly life, this points to another question: When is it coming? Did Jesus envision the kingdom of God as present reality? Or was it rather something that was coming in the future? In my next post I'll begin to deal with the question: When is the kingdom of God coming?
Part 9 : When is the Kingdom of God Coming?
Posted at 9:30 p.m. on Thursday, March 18, 2004
Jesus proclaimed that the reign of God was coming to earth, but when? Did Jesus preach the coming of the kingdom as a future reality? Or did he believe that the kingdom of God was truly present in his earthly ministry? In this post I want to lay out some of the basic evidence from the gospels. Then, in my next post, I'll try to make sense of this evidence.
The Future Kingdom
In many of his sayings, Jesus appears to state that the kingdom of God will come in the future. For example:
"Your kingdom come. Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven" (Matt 6:10).
This line from what we call "The Lord's Prayer" implies that God's kingdom isn't present in the moment, but is something that will come in the future. As we saw earlier in this series, this echoes first-century Jewish prayers for the coming of God's reign.
"I tell you, many will come from east and west and will eat with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven, while the heirs of the kingdom will be thrown into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth" (Matt 8:11-12).
Note that many "will come" to the great messianic banquet. They haven't yet arrived. Here Jesus draws on the prophetic hope of God's future kingdom as "a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines" that the Lord will prepare "for all peoples" (Isa 25:6).
"I tell you, I will never again drink of this fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father's kingdom" (Matt 26:29).
In this poignant line from the Last Supper, Jesus looks ahead to the time when he will share in the messianic banquet with his disciples. He draws from the eschatological language of the prophets in speaking of "that day" - the future day of the Lord (see Isa 25:9, for example).
One could point to many other places in the gospels where Jesus implies that the kingdom of God will come in the future. This type of futuristic eschatology ("eschatology" = "doctrine of the end times") is familiar to many Christians in our time of history. When I was a young believers, my friends and I were enchanted by The Late Great Planet Earth, by Hal Lindsey. This book, which has sold over 35,000,000 copies worldwide, showed that the kingdom of God was coming in the future, and that it was coming soon, and how world events made all of this quite certain. But when Jesus didn't hurry back to earth in the 70's, for a while the eschatological fever broke. Yet in 1996 Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins published Left Behind, the first volume in their fictionalized account of the end of human history and the beginning of God's eternal kingdom. Now, with over 55 million books sold, LaHaye and Jenkins are bringing out volume 12, the last book in the series. Why has this series drawn so many readers? When I asked a group of Left Behind fans about this, one woman informed me confidently: "Because these books tell us what's going to happen in the future." The others agreed. Future eschatology, with certainty, wow!
The Present Kingdom
If Jesus had only spoken of the reign of God in a future tense, our task would be simple. Unfortunately for those of us who like things neat and tidy, Jesus also spoke of the presence of the kingdom. Here are some examples:
"The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news" (Mark 1:15).
Though one could argue that "has come near" isn't exactly the same as "is here," the sense of Greek is that the "coming near" of the kingdom has already begun to happen.
"But if it is by the Spirit of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come to you" (Matt 12:28).
In response to those who accuse Jesus of casting out demons with satanic power, he points to the true source of his authority: the Spirit of God. The exorcisms of Jesus are not merely evidence of his compassion for demonized people, they are also evidence that the kingdom of God is already present.
"The kingdom of God is not coming with things that can be observed; nor will they say, 'Look, here it is!' or 'There it is!' For, in fact, the kingdom of God is among you" (Luke 17:20-21).
In a previous post I discussed this passage. Jesus is not saying to the Pharisees that the kingdom is in their hearts, but that it is in their midst. Where Jesus is doing the work of God, there is God's kingdom.
In certain quarters of Christendom the presence of the kingdom has been a popular theme. Whereas conservative Christians have tended to embrace the future kingdom, more liberal Christians have generally preferred the present kingdom. (There are exceptions on both sides of this rule, of course.) If God's reign is here, then so is God's justice and peace, at least in principle. The task of the believer is not to wait around for some dramatic act of God in the future, but to live out God's kingdom now by promoting divine justice in the world today.
Interim Conclusion
If you were to read through all four gospels, you'd find more evidence for the future and for the present kingdom. This presents us with a riddle. Which did Jesus proclaim? I'll attempt to solve this riddle in my next post.
Part 10: When is the Kingdom of God Coming? (cont)
Posted at 10:30 p.m. on Friday, March 19, 2004
I ended my last post with an apparent riddle. Throughout the gospels Jesus proclaims the kingdom of God, sometimes as coming in the future, and sometimes as a present reality. So which is it? How can we understand the apparently divergent themes in Jesus' preaching of the reign of God?
Throughout the last 150 years, many New Testament scholars have cut this Gordian knot by claiming that some of what is attributed to Jesus in the gospels is not authentic, but was added by the early church. Ironically, depending on the preference of the scholar, the supposedly inauthentic portion of Jesus' teaching can be either the future kingdom or the present kingdom. Scholarly methodology bends freely to the whims of the individual scholar. So, for example, Marcus Borg, a prominent member of the Jesus Seminar and prolific author on Jesus, has repeatedly argued that Jesus did not expect God's kingdom to come sometime in the future. Gospel passages that suggest this were inserted by the early church, Borg claims, under the influence of Jewish eschatology. Yet, contradicting Borg, a cadre of contemporary scholars insists that Jesus did in fact present himself as an eschatological prophet who proclaimed the coming of the kingdom. John P. Meier is a highly-acclaimed advocate of this view, though he hasn't received as much popular attention as Borg, partly because Meier's writings are more scholarly and less sensationalistic than Borg's.
How telling that the cover of Borg's book on Jesus (top) shows a distorted, unnatural Jesus, whereas Meier's book (bottom) pictures a Jesus who looks like an ordinary Jewish man.
If you wade through the tangled bog of New Testament scholarship, as I have, you'll find circular arguments almost everywhere among those who try to slice and dice the teachings of Jesus. The Jesus Seminar is perhaps the most brazen in this regard, assuming from the outset that Jesus was a non-apocalyptic Hellenistic sage and then excising from the gospels anything that doesn't fit this assumption. Other scholars are more subtle. But, in the end, efforts to reduce Jesus' preaching to either an exclusively future kingdom or an exclusively present kingdom are unconvincing. The riddle of kingdom of God is too deeply imbedded in the gospel accounts to be amputated by responsible scholarship.
Could it be that Jesus simply contradicted himself? Did he speak of the kingdom as present and future without realizing his confusion? I doubt it. Even bracketing Jesus' unique identity for a moment, I'd argue that brilliant, influential thinkers are rarely so obviously confused. Moreover, they are rarely easy to fathom. Have you ever tried to simply Plato, or Augustine, or Calvin, or Kant, or Wittgenstein? Good luck! Thus, simply working with historical probability, it's likely that Jesus proclaimed the kingdom of God as somehow both future and present, and that he knew what he was doing at the time.
In my previous post I cited examples of Jesus' speaking of the kingdom of God as either future or present. In a few instances, however, he indicated that the kingdom has both present and future dimensions. Take this parable for example:
"With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable will we use for it? It is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth; yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs, and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade" (Mark 4:30-32)
Jesus invites us to look at the mustard seed from two perspectives. In the present - and it is really present - it is small and insignificant. In the future, however, the mustard seed will be great and notable. Similarly, God's reign has truly come on earth in the ministry of Jesus. When blind eyes are opened, when deaf ears hear, when demons are cast out, when the hungry are fed, when sinners are forgiven, the kingdom of God is truly present on earth. Yet it's relatively small, and won't reach it's full, glorious extent until later.
Many New Testament scholars today realize that Jesus proclaimed the kingdom as both present and future. You can find a refreshingly concise statement of this perspective in the now classic little book by G. E. Ladd, The Gospel of the Kingdom. Scholars who hold together both dimensions of the reign of God sometimes speak of it as "already and not yet." The kingdom is already present in the ministry of Jesus, and it is not yet fully present. If you read through the gospels with this thought in mind, much begins to make sense. The sayings of Jesus and his actions demonstrate both the real presence and the future glory of the kingdom of God.
But the whole idea of "already and not yet" may seem odd and hard to fathom. If you're accustomed to thinking of the kingdom as either future or present but not both, this new way of looking at Jesus can seem counter-intuitive. What sense does it make, you might wonder, to speak of something as "already and not yet" present?
I have found that three analogies from contemporary life make this seemingly odd concept much easier to grasp. But, since this post is running on, I'll save these analogies for tomorrow, same bat time, same bat channel.
Part 11 : When is the Kingdom of God Coming? (cont)
Part 11 in the series, “What Was the Message of Jesus?”
Posted at 10:30 p.m. on Saturday, March 20, 2004
In recent posts I have shown that Jesus proclaimed the kingdom of God as something both present and future. Like the mustard seed, the kingdom is small in the moment, yet will be great in the future. The more we study Jesus’ ministry without chopping it into disconnected bits, the more we realize that he proclaimed the reign of God as something that was “already and not yet” present. It was already present in Jesus’ own ministry, but it was not yet fully present. Much more was still to come.
I have found that three analogies help people grasp the “already and not yet-ness” of the kingdom. You can probably think of others, but here are my three.
Engagement and Marriage
As a pastor I have the privilege of sharing with engaged couples as they prepare for marriage. When their wedding day arrives, most couples are well-prepared to commit their lives to each other. In the minutes before the ceremony begins, I visit with the bride and groom, praying with them for what lies ahead. If I were to ask them at that point, “Do you love your fiancé? Will you commit yourself completely to him or her?” they would answer “Yes. Yes.” Are they married at that point? No, not yet. Yet are they deeply committed to each other? Yes. Do they love each other profoundly? Yes. All that’s necessary for a marriage is present and ready to go. In many ways they’re already feeling as if they were married, and yet they aren’t married.
Pregnancy and Parenthood
There’s just about nothing more exciting for a woman who wants to be a mother than being pregnant. From the moment she first hears the good news of her pregnancy, she starts preparing emotionally to be a mother. After just a few weeks she gets to hear the baby’s heartbeat during a visit to the doctor. Not long afterward she begins to feel the baby kicking and moving. By the time a woman is nine months’ pregnant, she has thought about her baby for thousands of hours. She has taken new baby classes. She has prepared a place for the baby, and usually chosen a name. She loves her baby intensely. So then, is a woman in her last weeks of pregnancy a mother? In so many ways the answer is “yes.” But most people would say that, however real her motherhood may be, something is lacking. The act of giving birth makes it all complete. (Well, actually, it’s just one big step forward in a lifelong enterprise of being a mother.) Is a woman a mother when she’s nine months pregnant? She is already, and not yet.
Completion and Graduation
I enrolled as a freshman at Harvard College in September of 1975. Sixteen and a half years later, in May of 1992, I faced the last challenge of my Harvard career: the oral defense of my Ph.D. dissertation. On that fateful day in early May, I sat in a room with four brilliant scholars and defended my academic work. Then they sent me out in the hall to sweat while they decided my fate. After about twenty minutes my advisor beckoned me back into the room. “We have voted unanimously to approve your dissertation,” he said. “Congratulations, Dr. Roberts!”
In order to make things official, I had to submit four copies of my doctoral thesis to the appropriate office and, of course, pay all of my outstanding bills. I did these things soon after my oral defense was over. And that was that! Done!
But was I really done? Could I truly claim to be Dr. Roberts? Well, not quite. Graduation wasn’t until early June. I wouldn’t hold my Ph.D. in my hand until them. So, was I Dr. Roberts in late May of 1992? In some sense, yes, I already was. And, in some sense, no, I wasn’t yet.
Graduation at last!
The Kingdom of God: Already and Not Yet
When Jesus began his ministry in Galilee, the reign of God had truly begun its appearance on earth. God’s power was present in Jesus, which explains why blind eyes were opened and demons fled. But the kingdom hadn’t fully come, even though it was already present. And Jesus, though he was announcing and inaugurating the kingdom, hadn’t finished everything for his graduation as messiah. This work, as it turned out, wasn’t just proclaiming the kingdom and demonstrating its presence through works of power and love. For the kingdom of God to come fully, Jesus had to do something else, something so radical, paradoxical, and unexpected that nobody anticipated it.
In my next post in this series I’ll begin to explore Jesus’ surprising action as I answer the question: “How is the Kingdom of God Coming?”
Part 12: How is the Kingdom of God Coming?
Posted at 9:45 p.m. on Wednesday, March 24, 2004
So far in this series “What Was the Message of Jesus?” we’ve seen that the core of Jesus’ proclamation was “the kingdom of God has come near” (Mark 1:15). In my most recent posts in this series I focused on the question of when the kingdom of God is coming. In fact Jesus proclaimed the kingdom as something both present and future, as something “already and not yet” here on earth. Like a mustard seed, God’s reign begins as something small and insignificant, but in time it will become great and glorious.
How will the kingdom of God come, according to Jesus? Before addressing this question, I want to survey other Jewish options in Jesus’ day.
There were a variety of answers to the question of how God’s reign would come on earth. Some Jews believed that the kingdom would come through a rebellion against Rome. The Zealots and others with a revolutionary bent continually plotted ways to undermine and ultimately depose the Romans. Others rejected this approach, preferring instead to wait for God’s dramatic intervention. The Essenes at Qumran had grand visions of an apocalyptic war between the sons of light and the sons of darkness, in which God would finally vindicate his people and restore both his temple and his kingdom. They were disinclined to look for human agents who might bring the God’s kingdom, probably because their experience of Hasmonean (Maccabean/Jewish) rule of Judea had been such a negative one.
In many of the Jewish kingdom scenarios, God would act through a human being who would execute divine justice and restore divine rule over Israel. Only a few Jewish texts refer to this human as the Son of Man (literally in Hebrew/Aramaic, “the human being”). More commonly, however, the human agent of the kingdom was called “the anointed one” (in Hebrew, mashiach or “messiah”). There wasn’t one established set of expectations for the messiah, however. The Dead Sea Scrolls, for example, actually speak of multiple messiahs, including a priestly messiah and a royal messiah.
Cave 4 at Qumran near the Dead Sea. The source of many of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Picture from www.bibleplaces.com
Common to every Jewish scenario of the coming to the kingdom was the expulsion of the gentiles who ruled over Judea. In Jesus’ day, of course, the Romans were the hated overlords whom, it was hoped, would someday be vanquished by the Lord and his anointed leader. One Jewish writer, perhaps a Pharisee, wrote a collection of psalms, one of which bears passionate witness to Jewish hopes for the coming kingdom:
See, Lord, and raise up for them their king,
the son of David, to rule over your servant Israel
in the time known to you, O God.
Undergird him with the strength to destroy the unrighteous rulers,
to purge Jerusalem from gentiles . . .
He will gather a holy people
whom he will lead in righteousness . . . .
And he will be a righteous king over them, taught by God.
There will be no unrighteousness among them in his days,
for all shall be holy,
and their king shall be the Lord Messiah. (Psalms of Solomon 17)
Jesus proclaimed the reign of God to a people who fervently hoped and prayed for its coming. Yet he did not affirm common Jewish expectations for how the kingdom would come. He didn’t raise up an army to wage war against Rome. And he didn’t promise that God would fight this battle himself in some imminent Armageddon. In fact Jesus’ answer to the question “How will the kingdom come?” was quite novel, elusive, and frustrating.
Now that I’ve established the Jewish context for Jesus’ explanation of how the kingdom will come, I’ll focus on Jesus in my next post.
Part 13 : How is the Kingdom of God Coming? (cont)
Posted at 9:40 p.m. on Thursday, March 25, 2004
In my last post I outlined some of the ways Jews in the time of Jesus answered the question: How is the kingdom of God coming? Though there were a variety of answers to that question, most all Jews in the first century agreed that the coming of God’s kingdom would include the expulsion of Rome from Judea. The Zealots and others of revolutionary ilk were convinced that this would happen as human beings did the heavy lifting, with some help from the Lord. Others preferred to wait for God to lead the charge. (In the end, the Zealot-option prevailed as the Jews waged war against Rome in A.D. 66-70. The end of this effort, of course, was the utter destruction of the temple and the devastation of the Jewish people.)
Jesus perplexed many of the Jews in his day by his unwillingness to support a revolt against Rome. He healed the servant of a Roman centurion (Matt 8:5-13), praising this leader in the oppressor’s army as a paragon of faith (v. 10). He hung out with Jewish tax collectors who had collaborated with Rome in order to become rich (Luke 19:1-10). He even appeared to support paying taxes to Rome (Matt 22:15-22).
But, far more confusing than this was what Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount. God will bless those who are meek, merciful, peaceful, and persecuted, not those who use human strength to fight against Rome (Matt 5:3-10). Moreover, Jesus taught that one should “not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also; and if anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak as well; and if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile” (Matt 5:39-41). More troubling still, Jesus called his fellow Jewish to love their enemies and pray for those who persecute them (Matt 5:44). In context, there could be no question in the mind of Jesus’ audience to whom he was referring in all of this: the Romans. Don’t fight against the Romans, he said, but love and pray for them.
This is the kind of coin that Jesus used to make his point about giving to Caesar what is owed to Caesar, and to God what is owed to God. Curiously, the Latin around the head of Tiberius Caesar reads TI CAESAR DIVI AUG F AUGUSTUS, or Tiberius Caesar Divi Augusti Filius Augustus, in English, Augustus Tiberius Caesar the Son of the Divine Augustus.
Can you imagine how controversial this must have been? Here was Jesus, proclaiming the kingdom of God, doing miraculous works to prove that God’s reign had arrived, and yet opposing what most of his peers believed to be an essential element of the kingdom’s coming – the expulsion of Rome and the punishment of all who had oppressed Israel.
For us this can seem very theoretical, far removed from real human experience and emotion. But suppose Jesus appeared on the scene right now in Israel. Suppose he went around telling Israeli fathers whose children had been killed in suicide bombings that they should turn the other cheek and love their enemies, and that this was somehow the way to peace. When we put matters in these terms, it's easier to understand not only why so many people were confused by Jesus, but also why many were so angry at him.
Jesus seemed to be saying that the kingdom of God would come, not through human strength, but through weakness, not through military victories, but through apparent defeat, not through hatred, but through sacrificial love. How could this be possible?
I’ll continue to work on this question in my next post.
Part 14 : How is the Kingdom of God Coming? (cont)
Posted at 10:30 p.m. on Friday, March 25, 2004
Any consideration of how the kingdom of God is coming must grapple with one of the most striking and surprising passages in the New Testament. The first chapters of the Gospel of Mark chronicle Jesus’ healings, exorcisms, parables, and controversies. Through his words and works, his true identity is seen, but not seen; it is revealed, and yet secret.
In Mark 8 Jesus asks his disciples “Who do people say that I am?” (8:27). Some think that Jesus is John the Baptist reborn. Others think he is Elijah, the prophet whose return signals the coming of the kingdom. Others regard Jesus as “one of the prophets” – a label Jesus himself accepts (see Mark 6:4; Luke 4:24; 13:33). After warming up his disciples with a safe question about what others think, he becomes much more direct and personal: “But who do you say that I am?” (8:29). Peter, always the impetuous one, sticks his neck out with a bold answer: “You are the Messiah” (8:29). In the amplified version we’d read, “You are the one anointed by God to establish the kingdom. You’re the one who will lead the Jews in expelling the Romans from Judea.” Finally the secret is out. Jesus is the Messiah. Peter hit the bull’s eye, well, sort of.
But, no sooner does Peter finish than Jesus shocks him and his colleagues with unprecedented news: “Then he began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again” (8:31). Peter is so unsettled by this that he actually takes Jesus aside, no doubt to keep Jesus from being embarrassed, and begins to rebuke him. Though Mark doesn’t provide the transcript of this conversation, it isn’t hard to imagine how it might have gone: “Now, c’mon Master. The Son of Man will bring God’s judgment upon the wicked and inherit God’s glorious kingdom (Daniel 7). No suffering and dying here. And the Messiah will lead us to victory over the Romans. Don’t talk about this suffering and dying stuff. It makes no sense.”
Jesus’ responds by rebuking Peter, and in language that is rather blunt, to say the least: “Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things” (8:33). Yeow! This is not what you’d want Jesus saying to you, that’s for sure.
It’s easy for us to look down on Peter as hard-headed, given what we know of Jesus and his ultimate fate. But we must be fair here. What Jesus said about the Son of Man was utterly unexpected. It seemed completely backwards to Peter and the other disciples. The glorious one to be humiliated? God’s victor to be killed? The healer to undergo great suffering? The king of the Jews to be rejected by the Jewish leaders? Peter’s response to Jesus wasn’t foolish or narrow-minded. In fact, it’s the response that I’m quite sure I would have made, if I’d even had the courage to speak up at all.
Given how hard it is for us to grasp the radical and apparently ridiculous nature of what Jesus said about the suffering Son of Man, let me offer the following analogy. As you know, we’re already in the middle of a hot and heavy presidential election. For the next seven months we’ll hear two candidates flaunt their own distinctions while flogging the deficiencies of their opponent. That’s what candidates do ad nauseam, like it or not. But suppose that George W. Bush called together Karl Rove and his campaign staff. And suppose the President said something like this: “Friends, we’re going to run a very different kind of campaign this year. Instead of blasting away at my opponent, we’re going to praise him. We’re going to highlight everything good about him. Moreover, we’re going to admit all of my mistakes, without evasions or excuses. The best thing for the country will be doing everything we can to help John Kerry get elected.” Don’t you think at this point Karl Rove would take the President aside and rebuke him? Maybe suggest that he needs some serious rest, or perhaps electroshock therapy? This is akin to Peter's reaction to Jesus' incredible suggestion that his calling as Son of Man includes suffering and dying.
Jesus appears to accept Peter’s confession “You are the Messiah,” even as he refers to himself as “The Son of Man.” But then Jesus redefines the mission of the Messiah/Son of Man in a radically new way. He will bring the kingdom of God, to be sure, but only through suffering and dying. This is how the kingdom will come.
But this answer begs another question: How will the death of Jesus be a pathway for the coming of the kingdom of God?
I’ll pick this up in my next post. Stay tuned . . . .
Part 15 : How is the Kingdom of God Coming? (cont)
Posted at 10:30 p.m. on Monday, March 29, 2004
In my last post in this series I examined the passage in Mark 8 where Peter confessed Jesus as the Messiah (Mark 8:27-30). But, when Jesus starting talking about the Son of Man suffering and dying, Peter rebuked Jesus, who in turn rebuked Peter for thinking in human, not divine terms (8:31-33). Peter, like most of his Jewish compatriots, expected the kingdom of God to come in power. The Messiah would lead this victorious charge and share in God’s glory, not suffer and die along in the process.
Peter was not the only one of Jesus’ disciples to be confused over the nature of his messianic calling. Two chapters later in Mark, Jesus once again informed his closest followers that he, as Son of Man, was going to be assaulted and killed (10:33-34). Immediately after Jesus said this James and John approached him and asked “Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory” (10:37). Rather cheeky, don’t you think, not to mention obtuse. Jesus responded first by asking James and John if they were able to drink the cup that he drinks, and then by informing them that it is not his job to decide who gets to sit at his right or left hand (10:38-40). (The idea of the cup Jesus drinks deserves further attention, and will be the subject of my next post.) When the other disciples heard what James and John were plotting, they became angry. Jesus proceeded to rebuke the whole lot of them:
“You know that among the Gentiles those whom they recognize as their rulers lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. But it is not so among you; but whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever whishes to be first among you must be slave of all. For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as ransom for many.” (10:42-45)
The attitudes exhibited by James and John, and the rest of the disciples for that matter, are inconsistent with the way of Jesus, which leads to greatness but only through servanthood. The prime illustration of this paradox? Jesus’ own destiny as Son of Man. Here, for the first time, Jesus supplies a hint as to the reason for his imminent death. He is going to give up his life as a “ransom for many.”
Jesus wasn’t the first Jew in Second Temple Judaism to speak of giving up one’s life for the sake of others. A century and a half before, Mattathias, the father of Judas Maccabeus and his brothers, urged his sons to “show zeal for the law, and give your lives for the covenant of our ancestors (1 Maccabees 2:50). The Maccabean brothers were to fight to the death for the sake of their faith. Even closer to Jesus’ understanding of his sacrifice is a description of martyrdom found in 4 Maccabees: “[those who died] having become, as it were, a ransom [antipsychon] for the sin of our nation. And through the blood of those devout ones and their death as an atoning sacrifice, divine Providence preserved Israel that previously had been mistreated” (4 Macc 4:21-22). Here the willingness of Jewish people to suffer and die rather than compromise their faithfulness to God is seen as making up for the sin of the Jewish people, which in turn motivated God to preserve the nation.
These texts from the Maccabean literature and Jesus’ description of his own sacrifice in Mark 10 were inspired by two crucial chapters from the prophet Isaiah. These chapters begin with a hopeful vision of the coming of God’s kingdom:
How beautiful upon the mountains
are the feet of the messenger who announces peace,
who brings good news,
who announces salvation,
who says to Zion, “Your God reigns.” (Isa 52:7)
But then the passage takes an unexpected turn, picturing God’s servant as anything but attractive (52:14-53:2). Moreover,
He was despised and rejected by others
a man of suffering and acquainted with infirmity;
and as one from whom others hide their faces
he was despised, and we held him of no account. (53:3)
Yet this Suffering Servant endured such scorn for the sake of others:
Surely he has borne our infirmities
and carried our diseases; . . .
But he was wounded for our transgressions,
crushed for our iniquities;
upon him as the punishment that made us whole,
and by his bruises we are healed. . . .
Therefore I will allot him a portion with the great,
and he shall divide the spoil with the strong;
because he poured out himself to death,
and was numbered with the transgressors;
yet he bore the sin of many, . . . (53:4-5, 12)
Although this passage from Isaiah does not use the word “ransom” (lutron in Mark 10:45), it clearly conveys the idea of one who suffers for the sake of others, so that they might be made whole. Through his painful death, the Servant of God bears the sins of others. And somehow this is part and parcel of the coming of God’s kingdom announced at the beginning of Isaiah 52.
Of course what makes Jesus’ statement in Mark 10:45 so curious is that he doesn’t speak of the Servant of God giving his life as a ransom for many, but the Son of Man filling this role. There’s nothing in the Hebrew Scriptures to suggest that the Son of Man would bring the kingdom through some sort of sacrificial death. We don’t find this connection in the Maccabean literature or in other Jewish writings either. Jesus is weaving together disparate strands of Jewish tradition to create a unique tapestry of the coming kingdom. He, as Messiah and Son of Man, will bring the kingdom, but only by fulfilling the role of the Suffering Servant in Isaiah 52-53. For the first time in the gospels we see a part of Jesus’ rationale for suffering and dying. He will bear the sin of many in order to bring the healing and forgiveness of God’s kingdom.
In my next post I’ll examine in greater detail Jesus’ curious statement about drinking the cup (Mark 10:39). This, as it turns out, provides another window through which we can glimpse Jesus’ sense of his passionate destiny.
Part 16 : How is the Kingdom of God Coming? (cont)
Posted at 10:30 p.m. on Tuesday, March 30, 2004
In my last post I began to comment on the passage in Mark 10, where James and John ask Jesus: “Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory” (10:37). Of course the fact that Jesus has just spoken for the second time about his imminent death doesn’t seem to have made much of an impression of these two disciples. Jesus responds by saying, “You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?” (10:38) James and John eagerly reply, “We are able” (10:39), to which Jesus adds, “The cup that I drink you will drink; and with the baptism with which I am baptized, you will be baptized” (10:39).
What is Jesus talking about? Do you feel rather like James and John at this point, not really knowing what this talk of a “cup” is all about? It’s worth understanding this allusion, not only to get the point of this passage in Mark, but also to get insight into Jesus’ understanding of his approaching death.
In several passages of the Old Testament, the cup is a symbol of God’s wrath. (By using the word “wrath,” I’m not referring to God’s anger alone, but also just judgment upon sin.) In Psalm 75, for example, we read:
For in the hand of the LORD there is a cup
with foaming wine, well mixed;
he will pour a draught from it,
and all the wicked of the earth
shall drain it down to the dregs. (Psalm 75:8)
Or, take the following passage from Isaiah, which appears shortly before the description of the suffering servant in chapters 52-53.
Rouse yourself, rouse yourself!
Stand up, O Jerusalem,
you who have drunk at the hand of the LORD
the cup of his wrath,
who have drunk to the dregs
the bowl of staggering. . . . (Isa 51:17)
In a similar passage, the Lord speaks to the prophet Jeremiah:
Take from my hand this cup of the wine of wrath, and make all the nations to whom I send you drink it. They shall drink and stagger and go out of their minds because of the sword that I am sending among them. (Jer 25:15-16)
In each of these passages, the “cup” is a symbol of God’s wrath. Drinking the cup is equivalent to receiving God’s righteous judgment.
So when Jesus speaks to James and John of drinking from the cup, he is once again using the language of the prophets. He himself will drink from the cup of God’s wrath, though not because he deserves it. A few verses later, Jesus elaborates further by explaining his calling as Son of Man, namely, “to give his life a ransom for many” (10:45). In Jewish speculation, the Son of Man would come to execute God’s judgment upon the wicked gentiles. But Jesus redefines this mission. Now he will take God’s judgment upon himself. He will drink deeply of the cup of divine wrath, even dying so that others may live.
In Mark 10 we find, not only Jesus’ second prediction of his imminent death, but also the beginning of a rationale for this seemingly paradoxical fate. Jesus will be killed, not only because of opposition from Jewish and Roman leaders in Jerusalem, but also, on a deeper level, because he is going to drink the cup of divine wrath. He is going to bear the sin of Israel, indeed, as we learn later on, the sin of the world. This is his unique and unexpected calling as Messiah and Son of Man. When human sin has been righteously judged, when Jesus has borne the penalty in his own person, then and only then will God’s kingdom be able to come on earth.
The imagery of the cup suggests another crucial scene in Jesus’ ministry, of course, the Last Supper. In my next post I’ll begin to examine this episode, which reveals even more profoundly the reason for Jesus’ death and its connection to the coming of God’s kingdom.
Part 17 : How is the Kingdom of God Coming? (cont)
Posted at 10:00 p.m. on Wednesday, March 31, 2004
In my last post I discussed Jesus’ rather elliptical response to James and John when they ask to sit alongside him in his glory. “You do not know what you are asking,” he says. “Are you able to drink the cup that I drink?” (Mark 10:38). The cup, following Old Testament usage, stands for God’s wrathful judgment upon sin. Jesus will drink the cup, bearing this judgment by suffering and dying. This, he believes, is part and parcel of his messianic calling, and necessary if the kingdom of God is to come in its fullness.
Jesus’ reference to the cup reminds us of another crucial incident in his ministry, one that perhaps more than any other reveals his own understanding of his imminent death. This incident, of course, is what we call The Last Supper: Jesus’ final meal with his disciples before he is betrayed and crucified.
In the Gospel of Mark, this final meal occurs on the occasion of the Passover, the great Jewish feast that commemorates the Exodus, when God delivered the Jews from bondage in Egypt. Jesus eats this meal, not with his natural family as would be typical, but with his “kingdom family,” if you will, his closest disciples. Here is Mark’s description of the key moments of this feast:
While they were eating, he took a loaf of bread, and after blessing it he broke it, gave it to them, and said, “Take; this is my body.” Then he took a cup, and after giving thanks he gave it to them, and all of them drank from it. He said to them, “This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many. Truly I tell you, I will never again drink of the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God.” (Mark 14:22-25)
It’s all to easy for Christians to miss the potential scandal of Jesus’ action. He and his followers are remembering God’s salvation of Israel from Egypt, not to mention God’s faithfulness to his people throughout the ages. Jesus, as host, is directing the meal, when he makes a most unexpected pair of assertions. “This is my body” and “This is my blood of the covenant.” Until that moment in history, the Passover was preeminently about God, and secondarily about Israel. But now Jesus, an apparently faithful Jewish man leading a celebration of the Passover, says in so many words: “Really, this is all about me!” Astounding! Shocking!
If you have a hard time relating to the apparent offense of these statements, suppose that this Sunday when my church celebrates communion, instead of saying to the people, “This is the body of Christ, broken for you,” I were to say, “This is my body, the body of Mark Roberts. Here is God’s salvation, in me.” Blasphemy, you say!? Indeed! My future as pastor of Irvine Presbyterian Church would suddenly be in jeopardy, I can assure you.
Yet this is more or less like what Jesus was doing with the Passover. Either he was struck by a fit of megalomania, or he was somehow telling the startling truth of his life and mission. Even as Passover was all about God’s salvation of Israel, now that salvation was being embodied in Jesus himself.
Jesus refers to the cup of wine as “my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many” (Mark 14:24). This is an allusion to the story in Exodus 24, where the people of Israel endorse God’s covenant. Then Moses, having sacrificed many animals, “took the blood and dashed it on the people, and said, ‘See the blood of the covenant that the LORD has made with you in accordance with all these words’” (24:7-8). The new covenant will be ratified with blood, but in this case with the spilled blood of Jesus, who, like the lambs sacrificed in the first Passover, will give his life so that God’s people might be spared.
Jesus wasn’t the first one to connect the blood of the covenant with the coming of God’s kingdom. In fact the prophet Zechariah made this same connection in a passage we associate with Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem:
Rejoice greatly, O daughter Zion!
Shout aloud, O daughter Jerusalem!
Lo, your king comes to you;
triumphant and victorious is he,
humble and riding on a donkey,
on a colt, the foal of a donkey.
He will cut off the chariot from Ephraim
and the war horse from Jerusalem;
and the battle bow shall be cut off,
and he shall command peace to the nations;
his dominion shall be from sea to sea,
and from the River to the ends of the earth.
As for you also, because of the blood of my covenant with you,
I will set your prisoners free from the waterless pit. (Zech 9:9-11)
Because of God’s covenant with Israel, which was ratified with the blood of sacrificed animals, God’s king will rule over a global kingdom and God’s people will be redeemed from bondage. Jesus comes as the divinely-anointed king, not at first to lead Israel to victory, however, but to offer his own blood so that the new covenant and God’s universal kingdom might be inaugurated (see also Jeremiah 31).
Through the actions and words of the Last Supper, Jesus says:
Even as God once saved his people from slavery in Egypt, so God is now saving his people from slavery to sin through me.
Even as the blood of lambs once enabled death to “pass over” Israel, so my blood will lead to the forgiveness of sin.
Even as the first covenant was sealed with sacrificial blood, so the new covenant will be sealed through my blood, poured out for many.
I am choosing the way of death, Jesus says, so that the new life of the new covenant may come. My sacrifice will overcome the problem of sin, so that God’s kingdom may be established in all its fullness.
In the last line of The Last Supper in Mark’s gospel, Jesus himself points to the coming of the kingdom: “Truly I tell you, I will never again drink of the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God” (14:25). Though Jesus is about to die as a ransom for many, he has hope of a new day, when the kingdom will come and there will be a grand messianic banquet. Yet before this happens, Jesus must fulfill his unique calling by offering his body and blood for salvation.
Part 18 : How Does the Message of Jesus Lead to Crucifixion?
Posted at 9:45 p.m. on Thursday, April 1, 2004
In my last post I wrapped up an extended answer to the question: How is the kingdom of God coming? I showed that Jesus, contrary to the expectations of his disciples and, indeed, all other first-century Jews, believed that the kingdom of God would come as the Messiah drank the cup of God’s wrath, offering himself as a ransom for many (Mark 10:35-45). Jesus envisioned his role as Messiah – though he preferred the enigmatic title, Son of Man – as leading to his death in Jerusalem. During his last meal with his disciples, Jesus symbolized his death by recasting the imagery of the Passover meal to focus on himself and his sacrifice. Even as God once led the Israelites out of bondage in Egypt, so Jesus would lead God’s people out of bondage to sin and its consequences by taking the due penalty for sin upon himself.
But, you might wonder, why would this sense of his calling get Jesus crucified? Surely what Jesus thought about his future was odd and unexpected, and quite disconcerting to some Jewish leaders, but was it a reason to have him put to death? In our effort to understand how the message of Jesus led to his crucifixion, we seem to be missing a crucial piece of the puzzle. And, indeed, we are.
The missing piece is the other watershed event, in addition to The Last Supper, that happened in Jerusalem during the last week of Jesus’ life: the so-called cleansing of the Temple. It comes after Jesus’ grand entrance into the city, an entrance fit for a king – literally. No doubt many of those who welcomed Jesus with their hosannas expected him to go to the Temple, the center of Jewish life and faith, and announce the beginning of the end of Roman rule over Judea. But when Jesus entered the Temple, not only did he not do what was expected, but, once more, he did something utterly unexpected and, I might add, unappreciated. As Mark tells the story,
[Jesus] began to drive out those who were selling and those who were buying in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold doves; and he would not allow anyone to carry anything through the temple (11:15-16)
What rationale did Jesus offer for such shocking behavior? Marks adds,
He was teaching and saying, “Is it not written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations?’ But you have made it a den of robbers. (11:17)
The phrase, “den of robbers,” comes from the prophecy of Jeremiah (7:11), where God condemned the Israelites for being unfaithful to him, but believing that they could hide in the spiritual protection of the temple, just like thieves in their hideout. Jeremiah’s prophecy spelled doom for the temple, which God was about to destroy as a part of his judgment upon Israel (7:12-15). By using this passage, Jesus not only inferred that the temple authorities were dishonest thieves, but also that God was about to judge the temple and destroy it. Not exactly a way to win friends and influence people among the Jerusalem priesthood.
A scale model of the Jerusalem Temple, displayed at the Holyland Hotel in Jerusalem.
Jesus was not the only Jew in his day to criticize the Temple. Many of the common folk despised its heavy taxation and financial corruptness, while the Essenes from Qumran wrote it off completely as spiritually bankrupt. But Jesus action in the temple, combined with his citation of Jeremiah, was a frontal assault on the central institution of Judaism in his day. Moreover, he explicitly undermined the authority of the entrenched temple hierarchy. It’s no wonder that “the chief priests and the scribes,” when they heard what Jesus had done, “kept looking for a way to kill him” (Mark 11:18). A prophetic rabble rouser in Galilee could be ignored; one who defamed the temple itself needed to be dispatched quickly. The problem for the authorities, however, was the widespread popularity of Jesus. Now if they could only get the Romans to crucify Jesus . . . .
If you’ve been following my series on the message of Jesus, you can see that his action in the temple wasn’t merely a ploy to get himself killed. Rather, it was the logical conclusion to his proclamation of the kingdom of God – a kingdom in which forgiveness comes from Jesus directly, without the mediation of Temple, priest, or sacrifice. In the coming kingdom of God, in the new covenant inaugurated through Jesus’ own sacrifice, there is no need for a Temple in Jerusalem, or anyplace else for that matter. Instead, in the coming kingdom of God:
See, the home of God is among mortals.
He will dwell with them as their God;
they will be his peoples,
and God himself will be with them;
and he will wipe every tear from their eyes.
Death will be no more;
mourning and crying and pain will be no more,
for the first things have passed away. (Revelation 21:3-4)
In my next and final post in this series, I’ll tie up a few loose ends and suggest how the message of Jesus might be lived out among his people today.
Part 19 : Conclusions
Posted at 10:00 p.m. on Friday, April 2, 2004
Throughout this series on the message of Jesus I’ve attempted to answer the most common and central questions people have about his message. In this final post I want to review what we have learned by summarizing my answers succinctly.
What Was the Core of Jesus’ Message?
The core of Jesus’ message was the proclamation of the coming of the kingdom of God: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news” (Mark 1:14-15).
What is the Kingdom of God?
The English phrase “kingdom of God” translates a Greek phrase from the gospels that refers not so much to the place where God rules as to the presence and power of God’s actual rule. The kingdom or reign of God is here when God is exercising his authority on earth.
How Did Jesus Proclaim the Kingdom of God?
Jesus proclaimed the kingdom of God in words (basic statements of fact, explanations, parables) and in works (healings, exorcisms, nature miracles, other symbolic gestures). What Jesus said, he did. This not only illustrated the truth of his proclamation, but it also drew the people to him.
Where is the Kingdom of God?
Contrary to popular perceptions, the kingdom of God is not primarily in heaven or our hearts, but in all dimensions of reality. God’s reign impacts actions, thoughts, relationships, families, institutions, and governments.
When is the Kingdom of God Coming?
Jesus proclaimed the kingdom of God as something present in his ministry, and also as something that was still to come in glory. Thus the kingdom is not either present or future, but both present and future. It is the “already and not yet kingdom.” It’s is already here, and not yet fully here. Thus it is rather like an engaged couple, a pregnant mother, or a finished but not quite yet graduated doctoral student.
How is the Kingdom of God Coming?
According to Jesus, the reign of God will not come through a Jewish revolt against Rome. Though he agreed with his Jewish contemporaries who looked forward to the coming of an anointed deliverer, Jesus conceived of the work of the Messiah in radically unexpected terms. Rather than conquering the Romans through force, Jesus, as Messiah or Son of Man, would die on a Roman cross. Through this sacrificial action he would take God’s judgment upon himself, offering his life as a ransom for many. The new exodus, God’s new act of salvation, was taking place in Jesus, and would be culminated in his passion and resurrection.
How Does the Message of Jesus Lead to Crucifixion?
Throughout his ministry, Jesus consistently upset many of the religious and political leaders of the day. His proclamation of the kingdom through words and works made him a marked man, both because he contradicted many of the core values of his opponents, and because he undermined their popular impact. But when Jesus “cleansed” the Temple in Jerusalem, this was the last straw. He became a clear and present danger, not only to the Pharisees in Galilee, but to the priestly hierarchy in Jerusalem, and to the Temple, the core institution of Judaism, and to the fragile peace of Judea. Thus he threatened the social order so essential to Roman domination. The leaders in Jerusalem, both Jewish and Roman, sought to crucify Jesus, both to get him out of their way and to warn others not to follow in his footsteps.
Closing Thoughts: How Do We Follow Jesus?
If Jesus came to inaugurate the reign of God on earth, if he proclaimed this message in words and works, and if, in the end, this message led him to the cross, then how do we who believe in Jesus follow him today? Let me offer a few brief suggestions:
1. We should seek to live each moment in the reality of the kingdom of God. Jesus said, “The kingdom of God has come hear; repent and believe in the good news” (Mark 1:15). This call is still valid today. When we accept God’s rule over our lives, we adopt values and priorities that are radically different than those of the world. Thus we make a U-turn; we repent and live our lives in a brand new direction, pointing toward God’s kingdom.
2. We live in the world as salt and light. Like Jesus, both our words and our works should proclaim the reality of the kingdom. We talk about the good news of what God has done in Christ, inviting others to accept this gospel and live under God’s reign. And we live out this reign each day by loving our enemies, healing the sick, confronting evil, feeding the hungry, forgiving those who wrong us, and living as a active member of the community of Jesus.
3. We take up our cross and follow Jesus each day. We who live in the community of Jesus must seek, not to dominate others, but to serve them. We live, not for our own glory, but for God, to whom belongs the kingdom, and the glory, and the power.
4. We live in the present power and the future hope of the resurrection. Although I have not spoken of the resurrection in this series on the message of Jesus, were it not for the fact that Jesus was raised from the dead on Easter, none of what I’ve said would have any value whatsoever. The message of Jesus would have been long forgotten as wishful thinking by one more failed Jewish messianic pretender. The resurrection of Jesus persuaded his confused and bereaved disciples that he was who he said he was, and that his paradoxical “program” for the coming of the kingdom had in fact been the right one. We who put our trust in Jesus today have access to same power that raised Jesus from dead – the Holy Spirit who dwells in and among us (Ephesians 1:17-23). Moreover, we believe that Jesus’ resurrection prefigures our own, and that one day we will live with him in the fullness of the kingdom of God (1 Corinthians 15). This hope sustains us as we live today in the ambiguity of the “already and not yet” kingdom. Someday the kingdom of God will come in full power; the mustard seed will be fully grown, and the victory of God will be complete. In that day, God will wipe away every tear and his dwelling will be here among us (Revelation 21). Then we will join the heavenly chorus in singing,
The kingdom of this world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign forever and ever.
The United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is pleased to partner
with the Boy Scouts of America to increase the level of citizen preparedness
across the country. DHS has asked the Boy Scouts of America to build upon
the foundation of the Ready campaign and to help citizens across the country
prepare for emergencies of all kinds.
Emergency management, emergency preparedness, and disaster services are
common throughout the United States—we take care of each other. By
whatever name, these activities encompass mitigation, preparedness, response,
and recovery related to any kind of disaster, whether natural, technological,
or national security. Emergency preparedness means being prepared for
all kinds of emergencies, able to respond in time of crisis to save lives and
property, and to help a community—or even a nation—return to normal
life after a disaster occurs.
It is a challenge to be prepared for emergencies in our world of man-made
and natural phenomena. The Emergency Preparedness BSA program is planned to
inspire the desire and foster the skills to meet this challenge in our youth
and adult members so that they can participate effectively in this crucial
service to their families, communities, and nation.
The emergencies of today's world demand more than ever that our young people
and adults be trained as individuals and as units to meet emergency situations.
The importance of this training is not new to the Boy Scouts of America, as
Scouting has always taught youth to be prepared for all types of emergencies.
Since Scouting began in the United States, Scouts have responded to the needs
of their communities and nation in time of crisis.
From its beginning, the Scouting movement has taught youth to do their best,
to do their duty to God and country, to help others, and to prepare themselves
physically, mentally, and morally to meet these goals. The basic aims of
Scouting include teaching youth to take care of themselves, to be helpful to
others, and to develop courage, self-reliance, and the will to be ready to
serve in an emergency.
In addition to the millions of youth and adults who are active members of
the Boy Scouts of America, millions of former members were trained in Scouting
skills that prepare them for meeting emergencies. They are a built-in source
of help to meet the challenge of readiness for any emergency situation. As
Scouting units across the country begin planning an emphasis on emergency
preparedness, this foundation of former members can be a resource for
support—a trained group to help assure a response that will benefit the
homes and communities of our nation.
When an emergency occurs, it affects every youth and adult member of BSA
in the immediate area, creating the responsibility to respond first, as an
individual; second, as a member of a family; and third, as a member of a
Scouting unit serving the neighborhood and community. Because of these
multiple levels of responsibility, the Emergency Preparedness BSA plan
includes training for individual, family, and unit preparedness. Special
training in all three areas is a prerequisite for BSA members conducting
any type of emergency service in their communities.
Individual Preparedness
The primary emphasis of this initial step in the program
is to train members to be mentally and emotionally prepared
to act promptly and to develop in them the ability to take
care of themselves. Teaching young people to know and be
able to use practical survival skills when needed is an
important part of individual preparedness.
Family Preparedness
Since family groups will be involved in most emergency
situations, this part of the plan includes basic instructions
to help every Scouting family prepare for emergencies.
Families will work together to learn basic emergency skills
and how to react when faced with fires, floods, hurricanes,
tornadoes, explosions, warning signals, fallout protection,
terrorism attacks, and other emergency situations.
Community Preparedness
The program fosters the desire to help others and teaches
members how to serve their communities in age-appropriate
ways. By taking the age-appropriate First Aid for Children
course (Tiger Cubs) and Basic Aid Training (Wolf and Bear
Cub Scouts), these boys help ease the burden on the family
and community resources. Through all Scouting ranks and for
adult members, the responsibilities and skills for community
service increase with the members' maturity.
(Swans - July 19, 2004) Rainless winters of bitter cold, rivers and lakes shriveled to muddy
traces by ceaseless wind; once rich topsoil now a permanent atmospheric
haze; and still the wars go on, year after year, to load the oil ships
half a world away -- in Arabia and Venezuela -- to keep them coming
despite oil field attacks, the sabotage of pipelines crossing jungles
and deserts, and the pirate raids on the high seas. Our people are
shivering and thirsty, chasing the heat. Here, our Navy pushes back the
pathetic invasions and massive refugee streams from Caribbean islands
washed into featureless mud by relentless hurricanes, and our Army
pushes into northern Mexico to secure the rights of millions of our
citizens living there, so we say, but in truth to capture warmer,
well-watered territory into which so much of our nation has fled. Power,
people and land have all become disconnected from each other in this new
world of dry cold, and all pretense has evaporated as all empathy has
chilled; starving masses overrun once powerful nations, like tides of
Army Ants; and no one ever takes prisoners. Dramatic fantasy or
reasonable possibility?
The Next Enemy: Climate Change
The Earth's atmosphere has been warming at the rate of +0.03 °C/year
since 1975, a result of the rapid accumulation of heat-retaining carbon
dioxide gas (CO2), which is an exhaust product of our combustion-powered
industrial metabolism, feeding on fossil hydrocarbon fuel. This heating
rate is unprecedented in the last thousand years. Global warming from
the end of the 19th century to 1975 was +0.4 °C, by
2000 it was +1 °C; and if the present trend continues it will be +2 °C
by 2028, and +3 °C by 2062. (1)
Does this matter? Greater atmospheric heat means that evaporation is
faster, perhaps making certain regions dryer; but it also means a wetter
atmosphere, so probably more rainfall and more lush vegetation elsewhere.
If these effects evolve gradually over this new century, why worry?
The question was put to independent researchers Peter Schwartz and Doug
Randall by the US Department of Defense, always projecting into the
future to detect any potential enemy. This is a matter of good planning
and self-interest. The military services like to know what forces and
hazards they may be called upon to face, and they also like to have
compelling arguments to lobby Congress for more money. The
Schwartz-Randall report for the Pentagon caused a sensation upon its
public release, both because of the seriousness with which it accepted
and addressed climate change -- so at odds with the pro-corporate
dismissiveness by the Bush administration -- and because of the
bleakness and imminence of its projections. It shows what might
happen in a worst-case scenario. The report is well-written,
highly recommended, and easily available. The authors conclude that abrupt climate change may "challenge United States
national security in ways that should be considered immediately." (2)
The Schwartz-Randall report points to the abrupt onset of a
significantly colder, dryer climate in the Northern Hemisphere as the
most perilous possible consequence of global warming up to
about 2010. The cooling that might occur could be like the century-long
period 8,200 years ago with temperature 5 °F (2.8 °C) colder, or the 13
century-long period 12,700 years ago with temperature 27 °F (15 °C)
colder. The shift to colder climate could occur as rapidly as 5 °F (2.8
°C) of cooling per decade. So, the world could plunge into a new Ice Age
within a period of twenty years.
Thermohaline Cycle And Abrupt Climate Change
The mechanism deemed most likely to cause an abrupt shift to colder climate is a change in the circulation pattern
of ocean currents that convey heat and salt: the thermohaline cycle. (3)
In this thousand-year cycle, water from the surface in tropical areas
becomes more saline through evaporation. When it circulates to the poles
and becomes cold ("thermo"), the greater density still present from
higher salt ("haline") concentration causes the water to sink to great
depths. As with most large-scale geological processes, the thermohaline
cycle is not thoroughly understood. Wallace Broecker has been studying
the cycle for decades and, according to the December 1996 issue of Discover magazine, he has shown that the thermohaline
cycle has not always been in operation, and that it has a strong effect
on global climate. (4)
This cycle is a conveyor belt of heat from the equator to the poles,
sustaining our present climates. It is the heat of the Caribbean carried
north by the Gulf Stream along the eastern coast of North America and
across the North Atlantic from Newfoundland to Ireland that warms
Europe, so that London at 52° north latitude has a climate similar to,
perhaps Philadelphia at 40° north latitude, instead of Calgary in Canada
or Amchitka Island in the Bering Sea, also at 52°
north. Maps and graphical representations and descriptions of the
thermohaline cycle are available on Internet web pages. (5)
Cold fresh water is denser than warm fresh water (liquids). Warm water
can hold a higher concentration of dissolved salt than cold water. Both
cold and salinity increase the density of seawater, however a warm salty
sample might have the same density as a cold fresher sample. The densest
water in the oceans is in the North Atlantic, where salty tropical water
is cooled without loss of salinity (no precipitation). The sinking of
this cold dense mass drives the thermohaline cycle.
The sinking force of dense salty water pushes the fluid ahead of it
through the cold depths, from high latitudes toward the tropics, and
there, warmed to lower density, it rises into warm shallow currents
circling the globe along equatorial latitudes. If this cycle collapses,
tropical warmth will not flow north to the latitudes of Western Europe
and the United States, and the climatic cooling described by Schwartz
and Randall will quickly set in.
Global warming can trigger this abrupt climate change by melting the
polar ice caps so that cold water of low salinity flows toward the
equator, diluting the thermohaline cycle -- for example in the North
Atlantic south of Greenland -- and the now more buoyant and colder
stream remains on the surface rather than sinking. After the cycle
collapses, the polar regions will chill, re-icing and extending the area
under ice to lower latitudes. A larger proportion of the Earth's water
will be held in polar ice, and with the lower evaporation rate of a
colder climate, there will be less rain and an expansion of dry
conditions. Since this could all happen within a span of ten to twenty
years, the largely negative effects on world food production and
habitability would be impossible to accommodate without strife.
Schwartz and Randall point out that while this may be a low probability
event, its consequences are of such magnitude that planning a response
is a matter of immediate concern to national security. It is
important that the public become familiar with this issue, so we can
have an informed debate on just exactly what we want "national security"
to be. Schwartz and Randall show data on the salinity of the North
Atlantic since 1960; the trend is a steady freshening.
End Of Life: Oil And Boomer Babies
During the second and third decades of the 21st century, the United
States will face the unavoidable reality that the world has used up the
majority of its petroleum. At the same time, we will be accommodating
the retirement and end-of-life of our Baby Boom cohort, those born
between 1945 and 1955. The increasing scarcity and expense of oil will
force a change to alternative sources of energy, and methods of food
production, as well as changes to our style of living. The large
proportion of elderly people will strain the Social Security Trust Fund
and the healthcare system, if these are not scrupulously maintained in
the intervening years.
The expected demographic shift and natural resource loss should make for
enough of a social challenge, without compounding it further by the
additional surprise of abrupt climate change.
In an earlier article, I tried to show that US citizens have two choices
on accommodating the demographic shift and the end of easy oil: organize
the nation as either a "Green" eco-welfare, alternative energy,
UN-multi-lateralist state; or as a "Red" corporate-militarist, resource
imperialist, unilateralist power. These choices were presented as
driving the election-year politics of 2016, when the
economics of diminishing oil supplies would be evident to all. The
additional complication of abrupt climate change was not considered. (6)
Green Or Red?
An abrupt climate change to cold dry conditions in Europe and North
America would drive these nations toward a greater reliance on arms, and
into a fortress mentality, once confronted by waves of immigration,
eco-collapse refugees, and even invasions. The Green aspects of these
NATO states would be strained and possibly eliminated. If there is to be
any hope for Green/UN conduct by NATO states, and especially by the
United States, after a climate change, it is essential to
establish Green/UN attitudes and institutions as broadly and deeply as
possible before the climate change. The impending
end-of-life of oil and Boomer Babies is the next big challenge to the
Green movement in America. The first response to
climate change will be to fall back on national strengths and procedures
that are most engrained and trusted: "Old friends, like old swords,
still are trusted best." (7)
Can we make these swords the Green plowshares of eco-socialism and
multi-national cooperation, or must we regress to hot blood on cold
steel, the Red swords of military conquest and industrialized predation
in a devastated world?
At the Earth Summit of 1992 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, then US president
George H. W. Bush said "The American way of life is not negotiable." If
that is firm US policy then we are locked into becoming ever more
reliant on military force in our dealings with everybody in the world.
Given the rise of world population, the rapid depletion of remaining
world oil supplies, and the impact of global warming -- which could be
catastrophic if it triggers a mini Ice Age, our military campaigns to
wrest from the world the treasure we require to keep our "way of life"
up to the standards we are accustomed to will have to increase in
number, size, and brutality. We will take no prisoners. Our future in
one to two decades could be a much larger analog of the Israeli
occupation of Palestine; only for the US the entire world of Latin
America, the Middle East, Central and East Asia, and Africa would be our
Palestine, kept at bay within their own territories by our aerial
firepower, economic encirclement, and shock troops (called the S.S. in
the 1940s). The home front will be militarized: with a draft,
"gitmo-ized," and Patriot re-Acted.
Today, the entire world is our Titanic. The present "American way of
life" is a rabidly myopic obsession with controlling the arrangement of
deck chairs on this Titanic. We are on a collision course with Nature.
Since it takes a long time to turn a big ship to avoid a collision, we
have to start now.
Articles On Global Warming And Oil Depletion
In a short article, it is impossible to describe the many ways
population growth and changing demographics, the depletion of the
world's oil, and the many regional effects of global warming and
possible climate change all interact. Nor is it possible to list all the
consequences that might emerge. The Schwartz-Randall report is an
excellent place to start, but it does not consider consequences too
deeply because they are largely unknown; and it does not address the
issue of oil depletion. Similarly, authors describing the potential
consequences of the rapid depletion of world petroleum usually confine
their comments to economic and political considerations without thought
of climate change.
To approach a comprehensive understanding, it is necessary to read a
variety of articles, each focused on one parameter of the problem, oil
and global warming in particular, and then imagine for yourself the
likely schedule of challenges to be faced. In the sections below, called
"Global Warming And Climate Change," and "Oil Endgame," I list a number
of articles as suggested reading. Each of these authors shines a light
at one particular angle on this complicated subject, and each such
transect helps to build up a holistic image of the combined
socio-political and natural phenomena in the reader's mind. This is
analogous to an MRI scan, where the relative dimming of beams crossing a
body at many angles are reconstructed in a computer to present a 3D
image of the interior.
A Green National Energetics
What follows is my own first draft of a program to carry the United
States through a transition to a post-petroleum world. Such a plan is
essential, regardless of the degree of climate change we actually
experience, because oil depletion is a certainty. Any serious public
effort to devise a "national energetics" plan would naturally continue
as an effort to devise a Green response to climate change. The many
failings and gaps of my program will become evident to those who put any
thought to it. This is good, we need many people thinking of the many
ways we can help the transition to occur in a socially responsible way.
Walter Cronkite states the fundamental point very clearly: "Make Global
Warming An Issue."
What kind of program would transform our society to best confront the
compound challenge presented by an aging population, world oil
depletion, and possible abrupt climate change, simultaneously?
Consider the following ideas, to spark discussion.
1. Tax gasoline and volumetric capacity (cc., cu., in.) of internal
combustion engines.
2. Tax CO2 emissions. Sign the Kyoto Protocols -- as a start -- and move
to regulate industry further on CO2 emission, as well as other
pollutants and greenhouse gases.
3. Tax industries to fund the costs of removing and reversing the types
of pollution they emit (don't bother asking them to clean up, just have
them pay -- in advance -- for being messy).
4. Regulate prices of many energy commodities (so the taxes on polluter
slobs cannot be passed on).
5. Regulate and re-regulate the power industry and utilities. These are
public functions, and public interest supercedes investor greed.
Nationalization of this sector would be ideal (as with health care). My
life is more important than your money.
6. Provide public funding for new research into alternative power
schemes for public mass transportation in particular, and provide
incentives for privately financed research as well. Keep the results
of publicly funded research in the public domain -- a general
principle. One example of new thinking on transportation: expand
rail (electric) and intra-urban light rail (trolleys) as regional
networks, nationally. It is true that combustion at power plants fuels
such networks, but these plants can be sited appropriately, and designed
to capture and de-tox the effluents, so that pollution is dealt with at
the source, and the source is secure and well-controlled. Also, large
combustion-to-electricity plants (usually coal-fired) can be designed to
take advantage of economy-of-scale (efficiency). Yes, also research
Green personal transport (e.g., electric and fuel cell cars).
7. Ensure the wide use of solar photo-voltaic and solar water-heating
for residential and municipal facilities; probably amplified with
gas-heating for winter/dark conditions. Revise building codes and zoning
regulations to require some Green self-generation of energy, and
self-recycling of materials, for new structures. Push for energy
self-sufficient, self-recycling architecture.
8. Employ wind generation where practical; this is a localized resource.
9. Convert agriculture to non-chemical (and non-petroleum!) use; and
farm in smaller multi-crop units instead of massive single crop
agribusiness layouts (which are easy prey to pests and major freezes,
demand the use of pesticides, and who wants food monopolized?). The need
is to reduce the dependence of food production on petroleum, and to
enhance the natural robustness of the varieties grown.
10. Move away from such an emphasis on beef production. Too much grain
is used for fattening beef. Tax cholesterol.
11. Move away from agricultural subsidies, especially where they keep
supporting chemical farming. Too much grain is being produced for
wasteful purposes: beef fattening and tax-dollar wasting gasohol.
12. Clearly, major conservation of gasoline, petroleum, water, and
forests (for CO2 reprocessing) is essential.
13. Build mass transit to European and Japanese standards (speed,
comfort, safety, modernity, extensiveness, reliability).
14. Everything on this list means applying public resources (taxes) to
public benefit, instead of to wasteful corporate subsidies (as with
nuclear power), which are private profit without social benefit. A fair,
uniform-treatment, loophole-free tax structure would be most helpful for
national financing (e.g., repeal Proposition 13 in California).
15. Reduce the US military to a defensive force, eliminating many
high-petroleum use operations and pieces of equipment. This is combined
with reining in our military from many far-flung posts around the world
and ending the practice of ceaseless interventions.
16. Apply modern technology (e.g., plasma-torch pyrolysis) to recycle
the nation's garbage and to reprocess existing garbage and toxic dump
sites. Power is generated from this (buried hydrocarbons); with
sufficiently large plants, the garbage can be reprocessed to benign and
elemental forms, and net electricity generated: power from
garbage. Plants might be $1B investments each, so this must be a public
investment. "Private" investors are too small-minded to do it right, and
wait long enough to get paid off (maybe a decade or more, like the
Golden Gate Bridge).
17. Packaging should be regulated as a pre-pollutant and oil
consumption. This will ensure a significant improvement from retail
plastic waste production to enviro-packaging.
18. Cars and durable goods generally should be taxed/regulated for
end-of-use disassembly/recycling. The Norwegian "Think" electric car is
built this way now, it is 100% recycle-able as-built (what I have called
"self-recycling").
19. The entire "move" to alternative energy, as a complex of
technological projects, economic and tax policies, and shift in social
patterns must become a national priority integrating the political and
economic life of the country -- the move from oil to the society powered
by "new" sources. This cannot be done in a chaotic, of ad hoc "free
market" way. The Japanese MITI model is useful here. This is a PLANNED
ECONOMY. It would be based on domestic rather than imperialistic means.
A major part of this move would be the creating of new jobs, occupations
and careers for the American public; jobs including "technical" ones for
the majority of educational levels (at/below high school).
20. Finally, we need clean government to be able to coordinate a
national move from an oil-based economy. Ideally, we would convert our
government to a clean one first (no corporate money in politics; hell,
no corporations at all anymore), and then we could use it to convert the
country into the post-21st century society it is to become. Rather than
fight or thwart the rest of the world's energy drive, we have to control
and then transform our own.
21. Alternatively, we could drive off the cliff of myopic greed (the
status quo), crash into the end-of-oil, have the easily expected civil
wars, foreign wars, and social collapse, then wait for the survivors to
possibly create a clean government (unless they proceed with
the status quo, which by then will be of the war-lord/slavery variety).
This late 21st century government could try to rebuild a republic with
some degree of social equity and technological advancement. It seems
such a shame to have to go through the Armageddon/revolution/collapse
first, but probably inevitable if we remain wedded to our stupidity.
If we glide along with our present social inertia, history will record
our society as one of stupidity in the service of greed.
"Unable to change their patterns of thought in response to a change in
natural conditions, they perished."
2. Peter Schwartz and Doug Randall, "An Abrupt Climate Change Scenario
and Its Implications for United States National Security," a report
commissioned by the U.S. Defense Department, October 2003, (available as
pdf file), http://www.ems.org/climate/pentagon_climate_change.html(back)
Kelpie Wilson, "We're Closer to the Edge Than We Think,"
truthout, 27 February 2004,
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/022904G.shtml "The take home message on the Pentagon
report comes from Peter Drekmeier, co-founder of Environmentalists
Against War, who notes: 'It appears that the only weapon of mass
destruction to be found in Iraq is oil.'"
"Cheney Energy Task Force Documents Feature Map Of Iraqi Oilfields,
Commerce & State Department Reports to Task Force Detail Oilfield & Gas
Projects, Contracts & Exploration, Saudi Arabian & UAE Oil Facilities
Profiled As Well" press release 17 July 2003, http://www.judicialwatch.org/071703.b_PR.shtml
Manuel García, Jr. is a graduate aerospace engineer, working as a physicist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. He did underground nuclear testing between 1978 and 1992. He is concerned with employee rights and unionization at the nuclear weapons labs, and the larger issue of their social costs. Otherwise, he is an amateur poet who is fascinated by the physics of fluids, zen sensibility, and the impact of truth.
Do you wish to share your opinion? We invite your comments. E-mail the Editor. Please include your full name, address and phone number. If we publish your opinion we will only include your name, city, state, and country.
"There has been lot of good buzz around Wesley Chun's Core
Python Programming. It turns out that all the buzz is well earned.
I think this is the best book currently available for learning Python....
I would recommend Chun's book over Learning Python [Lutz,
Ascher (O'Reilly)], Programming Python [Lutz
(O'Reilly)], or The Quick Python Book [Harms,
McDonald (Manning)]" -- D. Mertz, IBM®
"I have been doing a lot of research [on] Python ... for the past
year and ... have seen a number of positive reviews of your book....
The sentiment expressed ...
confirms the opinion that your book is now ... considered the
standard introductory text."
-- R. Ozaki, Lockheed Martin
This website contains material to supplement the book and its CD-ROM.
However, there are many features found here that are NOT
available on the CD-ROM, such as:
Errata and Reader Feedback
Book Reviews plus a Sample Chapter to download
All source code (including patches)
Updated Python hotlist links
Information on Python training directly from the author!!
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Claim: Van Halen's standard performance contract contained a provision calling for them to be provided with a bowl of M&Ms, but with all the brown candies removed.
Example:[Harrington, 1981]
Van Halen tends to make the news portion of radio more often than it gets airplay. There was the M&M riot in New Mexico where the band did thousands of dollars of damage to a hall when they were served brown M&Ms — their contract said the brown ones had to be removed.
Origins: Rock
concerts have come a long ways since the days when the Beatles performed in boxing rings and hockey rinks, and made no greater demand of
promoters than they be provided with clean towels and a few bottles of soft drinks. As the audiences grew larger, promoters stood to make more and more money from staging concerts, which meant that not only could rock stars command higher prices for their performances, but they were able to demand other perks as well, such as luxurious accommodations, lavish backstage buffets, and chauffeured transportation. It was inevitable that some high-demand acts, all their financial and pampering whims satisfied, would exercise their power and start making frivolous demands of promoters, simply because they could.
By far the most notorious of these whimsical requests is the legend that Van Halen's standard concert contract called for them to be provided with a bowl of M&Ms backstage, but with provision that all the brown candies must be removed. The presence of even a single brown M&M in that bowl, rumor had it, was sufficient legal cause for Van Halen to peremptorily cancel a scheduled appearance without advance notice (and usually an excuse for them to go on a destructive rampage as well).
The legendary "no brown M&Ms" contract clause was indeed real, but the purported motivation for it was not. The M&Ms provision was included in Van Halen's contracts not as an act of caprice, but because it served a practical purpose: to provide an easy way of determining whether the technical specifications of the contract had been thoroughly read (and complied with). As Van Halen lead singer David Lee Roth explained in his autobiography:
. . . Van Halen was the first band to take huge productions into tertiary, third-level markets. We'd pull up with nine eighteen-wheeler trucks, full of gear, where the standard was three trucks, max. And there were many, many technical errors — whether it was the girders couldn't support the weight, or the flooring would sink in, or the doors weren't big enough to move the gear through.
The contract rider read like a version of the Chinese Yellow Pages because there was so much equipment, and so many human beings to make it function. So just as a little test, in the technical aspect of the rider, it would say "Article 148: There will be fifteen amperage voltage sockets at twenty-foot spaces, evenly, providing nineteen amperes . . ." This kind of thing. And article number 126, in the middle of nowhere, was: "There will be no brown M&M's in the backstage area, upon pain of forfeiture of the show, with full compensation."
So, when I would walk backstage, if I saw a brown M&M in that bowl . . . well, line-check the entire production. Guaranteed you're going to arrive at a technical error. They didn't read the contract. Guaranteed you'd run into a problem. Sometimes it would threaten to just destroy the whole show. Something like, literally, life-threatening.
Nonetheless, the media ran exaggerated and inaccurate accounts of Van Halen's using violations of the "no brown M&Ms" clause as justification for engaging in childish, destructive behavior (such as the newspaper article quoted at the top of this page). David Lee Roth's version of such events was decidedly different:
The folks in Pueblo, Colorado, at the university, took the contract rather kinda casual. They had one of these new rubberized bouncy basketball floorings in their arena. They hadn't read the contract, and weren't sure, really, about the weight of this production; this thing weighed like the business end of a 747.
I came backstage. I found some brown M&M's, I went into full Shakespearean "What is this before me?" . . . you know, with the skull in one hand . . . and promptly trashed the dressing room. Dumped the buffet, kicked a hole in the door, twelve thousand dollars' worth of fun.
The staging sank through their floor. They didn't bother to look at the weight requirements or anything, and this sank through their new flooring and did eighty thousand dollars' worth of damage to the arena floor. The whole thing had to be replaced. It came out in the press that I discovered brown M&M's and did eighty-five thousand dollars' worth of damage to the backstage area.
Well, who am I to get in the way of a good rumor?
Last updated: 19 January 2001
The URL for this page is http://www.snopes.com/music/artists/vanhalen.htm
There are a number of tutorials available for the intermediate game programmer, but there
are very few good tutorials for beginners who have never drawn a pixel on the screen. A
quick search on the net reveals hundreds of sites devoted to 3D, polygons, texture-
mapping and other advance topics, but the beginner has no where to get started. This
tutorial is for C programmers who want to get an introduction to game programming.
The course will be done in C using dos 16bit real mode. The video mode is 0x13 (320x200,
256 colours). This has been chosen for simplicity, and availability.
A Note on Compilers
All of the sample code is 16bit dos code. It will not compile if your compiler is
making a windows CONSOLE program. A win32 console program looks like a dos program, but
is a win32 application that cannot use the interrupts, or access video memory as required.
MS VC++ V1.52 is the last version of VC to support creating dos programs. Please check your
compiler's documentation to make sure it supports a 16bit real mode dos exe. DJGPP, a popular free
32bit compliler will not work with this code. Borland gives away Turbo C V2.0 at their web site
and will work fine with all the C samples.
c, including: pointers, structures, functions, basic data structures (e.g. linked list,
stack), and file i/o
Optional
ASM: x86 - there is a little bit of ASM code used to access hardware.
Why DOS?
DOS is dead, but it is a great environment for learning the underlying principals of game
programming. All the main principals that are used for any platform can be learned in an
easy to use, and popular operating system.
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1. This Act may be cited as the Broadcasting Act, 1991
PART I
GENERAL
Interpretation
[Definitions]
2. (1) In this Act,
["broadcasting" "radiodiffusion"]
"broadcasting" means any transmission of programs, whether or not encrypted,
by radio waves or other means of telecommunication for reception by the public by
means of broadcasting receiving apparatus, but does not include any such
transmission of programs that is made solely for performance or display in a
public place;
["broadcasting receiving apparatus" "récepteur de radiodiffusion"]
"broadcasting receiving apparatus" means a device, or combination of devices,
intended for or capable of being used for the reception of broadcasting;
["broadcasting undertaking" "entreprise de radiodiffusion"]
"broadcasting undertaking" includes a distribution undertaking, a programming
undertaking and a network;
["Commission" "Conseil"]
"Commission" means the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications
Commission established by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications
Commission Act;
["Corporation" "Société"]
"Corporation" means the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation continued by section
36;
["distribution undertaking" "entreprise de distribution"]
"distribution undertaking" means an undertaking for the reception of
broadcasting and the retransmission thereof by radio waves or other means of
telecommunication to more that one permanent or temporary residence or dwelling
unit or to another such undertaking;
["encrypted" "encodage"]
"encrypted" means treated electronically or otherwise for the purpose of
preventing intelligible reception;
["licence" "licence"]
"licence" means a licence to carry on a broadcasting undertaking issued by the
Commission under this Act;
["Minister" "ministre"]
"Minister" means such member of the Queen's Privy Council for Canada as is
designated by the Governor in Council as the Minister for the purposes of this
Act;
The Governor in Council designated the Minister of Canadian Heritage as the
Minister for the purposes of this Act, effective on July 12, 1996
["network" "réseau"]
"network" includes any operation where control over all or any part of the
programs or program schedules of one or more broadcasting undertakings is
delegated to another undertaking or person;
["program" "émission"]
"program" means sounds or visual images, or a combination of sounds and visual
images, that are intended to inform, enlighten or entertain, but does not include
visual images, whether or not combined with sounds, that consist predominantly of
alphanumeric text;
["programming undertaking" "entreprise de programmation"]
"programming undertaking" means an undertaking for the transmission of
programs, either directly by radio waves or other means of telecommunication or
indirectly through a distribution undertaking, for reception by the public by
means of broadcasting receiving apparatus;
["radio waves" "ondes radioélectriques"]
"radio waves" means electromagnetic waves of frequencies lower than 3 000 GHz
that are propagated in space without artificial guide;
["temporary network operation" "exploitation temporaire d'un réseau"]
"temporary network operation" means a network operation with respect to a
particular program or a series of programs that extends over a period not
exceeding sixty days.
[Meaning of "other means of telecommunication"]
(2) For the purposes of this Act, "other means of telecommunication" means any
wire, cable, radio, optical or other electromagnetic system, or any similar
technical system.
[Interpretation]
(3) This Act shall be construed and applied in a manner that is consistent
with the freedom of expression and journalistic, creative and programming
independence enjoyed by broadcasting undertakings.
Broadcasting Policy for Canada
[Declaration]
3. (1) It is hereby declared as the broadcasting policy for Canada that
(a) the Canadian broadcasting system shall be effectively owned and
controlled by Canadians;
(b) the Canadian broadcasting system, operating primarily in the English and
French languages and comprising public, private and community elements, makes
use of radio frequencies that are public property and provides, through its
programming, a public service essential to the maintenance and enhancement of
national identity and cultural sovereignty;
(c) English and French language broadcasting, while sharing common aspects,
operate under different conditions and may have different requirements;
(d) the Canadian broadcasting system should
(i) serve to safeguard, enrich and strengthen the cultural, political,
social and economic fabric of Canada,
(ii) encourage the development of Canadian expression by providing a wide
range of programming that reflects Canadian attitudes, opinions, ideas,
values and artistic creativity, by displaying Canadian talent in
entertainment programming and by offering information and analysis concerning
Canada and other countries from a Canadian point of view,
(iii) through its programming and the employment opportunities arising out
of its operations, serve the needs and interests, and reflect the
circumstances and aspirations, of Canadian men, women and children, including
equal rights, the linguistic duality and multicultural and multiracial nature
of Canadian society and the special place of aboriginal peoples within that
society, and
(iv) be readily adaptable to scientific and technological change;
(e) each element of the Canadian broadcasting system shall contribute in an
appropriate manner to the creation and presentation of Canadian programming;
(f) each broadcasting undertaking shall make maximum use, and in no case
less than predominant use, of Canadian creative and other resources in the
creation and presentation of programming, unless the nature of the service
provided by the undertaking, such as specialized content or format or the use
of languages other than French and English, renders that use impracticable, in
which case the undertaking shall make the greatest practicable use of those
resources;
(g) the programming originated by broadcasting undertakings should be of
high standard;
(h) all persons who are licensed to carry on broadcasting undertakings have
a responsibility for the programs they broadcast;
(i) the programming provided by the Canadian broadcasting system should
(i) be varied and comprehensive, providing a balance of information,
enlightenment and entertainment for men, women and children of all ages,
interests and tastes,
(ii) be drawn from local, regional, national and international sources,
(iii) include educational and community programs,
(iv) provide a reasonable opportunity for the public to be exposed to the
expression of differing views on matters of public concern, and
(v) include a significant contribution from the Canadian independent
production sector;
(j) educational programming, particularly where provided through the
facilities of an independent educational authority, is an integral part of the
Canadian broadcasting system;
(k) a range of broadcasting services in English and in French shall be
extended to all Canadians as resources become available;
(l) the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, as the national public
broadcaster, should provide radio and television services incorporating a wide
range of programming that informs, enlightens and entertains;
(m) the programming provided by the Corporation should
(i) be predominantly and distinctively Canadian,
(ii) reflect Canada and its regions to national and regional audiences,
while serving the special needs of those regions,
(iii) actively contribute to the flow and exchange of cultural expression,
(iv) be in English and in French, reflecting the different needs and
circumstances of each official language community, including the particular
needs and circumstances of English and French linguistic minorities,
(v) strive to be of equivalent quality in English and in French,
(vi) contribute to shared national consciousness and identity,
(vii) be made available throughout Canada by the most appropriate and
efficient means and as resources become available for the purpose, and
(viii) reflect the multicultural and multiracial nature of Canada;
(n) where any conflict arises between the objectives of the Corporation set
out in paragraphs (l) and (m) and the interests of any other broadcasting
undertaking of the Canadian broadcasting system, it shall be resolved in the
public interest, and where the public interest would be equally served by
resolving the conflict in favour of either, it shall be resolved in favour of
the objectives set out in paragraphs (l) and (m);
(o) programming that reflects the aboriginal cultures of Canada should be
provided within the Canadian broadcasting system as resources become available
for the purpose;
(p) programming accessible by disabled persons should be provided within the
Canadian broadcasting system as resources become available for the purpose; (q)
without limiting any obligation of a broadcasting undertaking to provide the
programming contemplated by paragraph (i), alternative television programming
services in English and in French should be provided where necessary to ensure
that the full range of programming contemplated by that paragraph is made
available through the Canadian broadcasting system;
(r) the programming provided by alternative television programming services
should
(i) be innovative and be complementary to the programming provided for
mass audiences,
(ii) cater to tastes and interests not adequately provided for by the
programming provided for mass audiences, and include programming devoted to
culture and the arts,
(iii) reflect Canada's regions and multicultural nature,
(iv) as far as possible, be acquired rather than produced by those
services, and
(v) be made available throughout Canada by the most cost-efficient means;
(s) private networks and programming undertakings should, to an extent
consistent with the financial and other resources available to them,
(i) contribute significantly to the creation and presentation of Canadian
programming, and
(ii) be responsive to the evolving demands of the public; and
(t) distribution undertakings
(i) should give priority to the carriage of Canadian programming services
and, in particular, to the carriage of local Canadian stations,
(ii) should provide efficient delivery of programming at affordable rates,
using the most effective technologies available at reasonable cost,
(iii) should, where programming services are supplied to them by
broadcasting undertakings pursuant to contractual arrangements, provide
reasonable terms for the carriage, packaging and retailing of those
programming services, and
(iv) may, where the Commission considers it appropriate, originate
programming, including local programming, on such terms as are conducive to
the achievement of the objectives of the broadcasting policy set out in this
subsection, and in particular provide access for underserved linguistic and
cultural minority communities.
[Further declaration]
(2) It is further declared that the Canadian broadcasting system constitutes a
single system and that the objectives of the broadcasting policy set out in
subsection (1) can best be achieved by providing for the regulation and
supervision of the Canadian broadcasting system by a single independent public
authority.
Application
[Binding on Her Majesty]
4. (1) This Act is binding on Her Majesty in right of Canada or a province.
[Application generally]
(2) This Act applies in respect of broadcasting undertakings carried on in
whole or in part within Canada or on board
(a) any ship, vessel or aircraft that is
(i) registered or licensed under an Act of Parliament, or
(ii) owned by, or under the direction or control of, Her Majesty in right
of Canada or a province;
(b) any spacecraft that is under the direction or control of
(i) Her Majesty in right of Canada or a province,
(ii) a citizen or resident of Canada, or
(iii) a corporation incorporated or resident in Canada; or
(c) any platform, rig, structure or formation that is affixed or attached to
land situated in those submarine areas adjacent to the coast of Canada and
extending throughout the natural prolongation of the land territory of Canada
to the outer edge of the continental margin or to a distance of two hundred
nautical miles from the baselines from which the breadth of the territorial sea
of Canada is measured, whichever is greater.
[For greater certainty]
(3) For greater certainty, this Act applies in respect of broadcasting
undertakings whether or not they are carried on for profit or as part of, or in
connection with, any other undertaking or activity.
[Idem]
(4) For greater certainty, this Act does not apply to any telecommunications
common carrier, as defined in the Telecommunications Act, when acting solely in
that capacity.
PART II
OBJECTS AND POWERS OF THE COMMISSION IN RELATION TO BROADCASTING
Objects
[Objects]
5. (1) Subject to this Act and the Radiocommunication Act and to any
directions to the Commission issued by the Governor in Council under this Act,
the Commission shall regulate and supervise all aspects of the Canadian
broadcasting system with a view to implementing the broadcasting policy set out
in subsection 3(1) and, in so doing, shall have regard to the regulatory policy
set out in subsection (2).
[Regulatory policy]
(2) The Canadian broadcasting system should be regulated and supervised in a
flexible manner that
(a) is readily adaptable to the different characteristics of English and
French language broadcasting and to the different conditions under which
broadcasting undertakings that provide English or French language programming
operate;
(b) takes into account regional needs and concerns;
(c) is readily adaptable to scientific and technological change;
(d) facilitates the provision of broadcasting to Canadians;
(e) facilitates the provision of Canadian programs to Canadians;
(f) does not inhibit the development of information technologies and their
application or the delivery of resultant services to Canadians; and
(g) is sensitive to the administrative burden that, as a consequence of such
regulation and supervision, may be imposed on persons carrying on broadcasting
undertakings.
[Conflict]
(3) The Commission shall give primary consideration to the objectives of the
broadcasting policy set out in subsection 3(1) if, in any particular matter
before the Commission, a conflict arises between those objectives and the
objectives of the regulatory policy set out in subsection (2).
(4) Where a broadcasting undertaking is subject to the Employment Equity Act,
the powers granted to the Commission under this Act do not extend to the
regulation or supervision of matters concerning employment equity in relation to
that broadcasting undertaking.
[Policy guidelines and statements]
6. The Commission may from time to time issue guidelines and statements with
respect to any matter within its jurisdiction under this Act, but no such
guidelines or statements issued by the Commission are binding on the Commission.
[Policy directions]
7. (1) Subject to subsection (2) and section 8, the Governor in Council may,
by order, issue to the Commission directions of general application on broad
policy matters with respect to
(a) any of the objectives of the broadcasting policy set out in subsection
3(1); or
(b) any of the objectives of the regulatory policy set out in subsection
5(2).
[Exception]
(2) No order may be made under subsection (1) in respect of the issuance of a
licence to a particular person or in respect of the amendment, renewal,
suspension or revocation of a particular licence.
[Directions binding]
(3) An order made under subsection (1) is binding on the Commission beginning
on the day on which the order comes into force and, subject to subsection (4),
shall, if it so provides, apply with respect to any matter pending before the
Commission on that day.
[Exception]
(4) No order made under subsection (1) may apply with respect to a licensing
matter pending before the Commission where the period for the filing of
interventions in the matter has expired unless that period expired more than one
year before the coming into force of the order.
[Publication and tabling]
(5) A copy of each order made under subsection (1) shall be laid before each
House of Parliament on any of the first fifteen days on which that House is
sitting after the making of the order.
[Consultation]
(6) The Minister shall consult with the Commission before the Governor in
Council makes an order under subsection (1).
[Procedure for issuance of policy directions]
8. (1) Where the Governor in Council proposes to make an order under section
7, the Minister shall cause the proposed order to be
(a) published by notice in the Canada Gazette, which notice shall invite
interested persons to make representations to the Minister with respect to the
proposed order; and
(b) laid before each House of Parliament.
[Referral to committee]
(2) Where a proposed order is laid before a House of Parliament pursuant to
subsection (1), it shall stand referred to such committee thereof as the House
considers appropriate to deal with the subject-matter of the order.
[Implementation of proposal]
(3) The Governor in Council may, after the expiration of forty sitting days of
Parliament after a proposed order is laid before both Houses of Parliament in
accordance with subsection (1), implement the proposal by making an order under
section 7, either in the form proposed or revised in such manner as the Governor
in Council deems advisable.
[Consultation]
(4) The Minister shall consult with the Commission before a proposed order is
published or is laid before a House of Parliament under subsection (1).
[Definition of "sitting day of Parliament"]
(5) In this section, "sitting day of Parliament" means a day on which either
House of Parliament sits.
General Powers
[Licences, etc.]
9. (1) Subject to this Part, the Commission may, in furtherance of its
objects,
(a) establish classes of licences;
(b) issue licences for such terms not exceeding seven years and subject to
such conditions related to the circumstances of the licensee
(i) as the Commission deems appropriate for the implementation of the
broadcasting policy set out in subsection 3(1), and
(ii) in the case of licences issued to the Corporation, as the Commission
deems consistent with the provision, through the Corporation, of the
programming contemplated by paragraphs 3(1)(l) and (m);
(c) amend any condition of a licence on application of the licensee or,
where five years have expired since the issuance or renewal of the licence, on
the Commission's own motion;
(d) issue renewals of licences for such terms not exceeding seven years and
subject to such conditions as comply with paragraph (b);
(e) suspend or revoke any licence;
(f) require any licensee to obtain the approval of the Commission before
entering into any contract with a telecommunications common carrier for the
distribution of programming directly to the public using the facilities of that
common carrier;
(g) require any licensee who is authorized to carry on a distribution
undertaking to give priority to the carriage of broadcasting; and
(h) require any licensee who is authorized to carry on a distribution
undertaking to carry, on such terms and conditions as the Commission deems
appropriate, programming services specified by the Commission.
[Restrictions reconditions]
(2) Notwithstanding subsections (1) and 28(3), no licence of a distribution
undertaking may be made subject to a condition that requires the licensee to
substitute replacement material for commercial messages carried in a broadcasting
signal received by that licensee.
[Exception]
(3) Subsection (2) does not apply in respect of a condition of a licence
renewed after October 4, 1987 where before that date the licensee was complying
with such a condition.
[Exemptions]
(4) The Commission shall, by order, on such terms and conditions as it deems
appropriate, exempt persons who carry on broadcasting undertakings of any class
specified in the order from any or all of the requirements of this Part or of a
regulation made under this Part where the Commission is satisfied that compliance
with those requirements will not contribute in a material manner to the
implementation of the broadcasting policy set out in subsection 3(1).
[Regulations generally]
10. (1) The Commission may, in furtherance of its objects, make regulations
(a) respecting the proportion of time that shall be devoted to the
broadcasting of Canadian programs;
(b) prescribing what constitutes a Canadian program for the purposes of this
Act;
(c) respecting standards of programs and the allocation of broadcasting time
for the purpose of giving effect to the broadcasting policy set out in
subsection 3(1);
(d) respecting the character of advertising and the amount of broadcasting
time that may be devoted to advertising;
(e) respecting the proportion of time that may be devoted to the
broadcasting of programs, including advertisements or announcements, of a
partisan political character and the assignment of that time on an equitable
basis to political parties and candidates;
(f) prescribing the conditions for the operation of programming undertakings
as part of a network and for the broadcasting of network programs, and
respecting the broadcasting times to be reserved for network programs by any
such undertakings;
(g) respecting the carriage of any foreign or other programming services by
distribution undertakings;
(h) for resolving, by way of mediation or otherwise, any disputes arising
between programming undertakings and distribution undertakings concerning the
carriage of programming originated by the programming undertakings;
(i) requiring licensees to submit to the Commission such information
regarding their programs and financial affairs or otherwise relating to the
conduct and management of their affairs as the regulations may specify; (j)
respecting the audit or examination of the records and books of account of
licensees by the Commission or persons acting on behalf of the Commission; and
(k) respecting such other matters as it deems necessary for the furtherance
of its objects.
[Application]
(2) A regulation made under this section may be made applicable to all persons
holding licences or to all persons holding licences of one or more classes.
[Publication of proposed regulation]
(3) A copy of each regulation that the Commission proposes to make under this
section shall be published in the Canada Gazette and a reasonable opportunity
shall be given to licensees and other interested persons to make representations
to the Commission with respect thereto.
[Regulations respecting licence fees]
11. (1) The Commission may make regulations
(a) with the approval of the Treasury Board, establishing schedules of fees
to be paid by licensees of any class;
(b) providing for the establishment of classes of licensees for the purposes
of paragraph (a);
(c) providing for the payment of any fees payable by a licensee, including
the time and manner of payment;
(d) respecting the interest payable by a licensee in respect of any overdue
fee; and
(e) respecting such other matters as it deems necessary for the purposes of
this section.
[Criteria]
(2) Regulations made under paragraph (1)(a) may provide for fees to be
calculated by reference to any criteria that the Commission deems appropriate,
including by reference to
(a) the revenues of the licensees;
(b) the performance of the licensees in relation to objectives established
by the Commission, including objectives for the broadcasting of Canadian
programs; and
(c) the market served by the licensees.
[Exceptions]
(3) No regulations made under subsection (1) shall apply to the Corporation or
to licensees carrying on programming undertaking on behalf of Her Majesty in
right of a province.
[Debt due to Her Majesty]
(4) Fees payable by a licensee under this section and any interest thereon
constitute a debt due to Her Majesty in right of Canada and may be recovered as
such in any court of competent jurisdiction.
[Publication of proposed regulations]
(5) A copy of each regulation that the Commission proposes to make under this
section shall be published in the Canada Gazette and a reasonable opportunity
shall be given to licensees and other interested persons to make representations
to the Commission with respect thereto.
[Inquiries]
12. (1) Where it appears to the Commission that
(a) any person has failed to do any act or thing that the person is required
to do pursuant to this Part or to any regulation, licence, decision or order
made or issued by the Commission under this Part, or has done or is doing any
act or thing in contravention of this Part or of any such regulation, licence,
decision or order, or
(b) the circumstances may require the Commission to make any decision or
order or to give any approval that it is authorized to make or give under this
Part or under any regulation or order made under this Part, the Commission may
inquire into, hear and determine the matter.
[Mandatory orders]
(2) The Commission may, by order, require any person to do, forthwith or
within or at any time and in any manner specified by the Commission, any act or
thing that the person is or may be required to do pursuant to this Part or to any
regulation, licence, decision or order made or issued by the Commission under
this Part and may, by order, forbid the doing or continuing of any act or thing
that is contrary to this Part or to any such regulation, licence, decision or
order.
[Referral to Commission]
(3) Where an inquiry under subsection (1) is heard by a panel established
under subsection 20(1) and the panel issues an order pursuant to subsection (2)
of this section, any person who is affected by the order may, within thirty days
after the making thereof, apply to the Commission to reconsider any decision or
finding made by the panel, and the Commission may rescind or vary any order or
decision made by the panel or may rehear any matter before deciding it.
[Enforcement of mandatory orders]
13. (1) Any order made under subsection 12(2) may be made an order of the
Federal Court or of any superior court of a province and is enforceable in the
same manner as an order of the court.
[Procedure]
(2) To make an order under subsection 12(2) an order of a court, the usual
practice and procedure of the court in such matters may be followed or, in lieu
thereof, the Commission may file with the registrar of the court a certified copy
of the order, and thereupon the order becomes an order of the court.
[Effect of variation or rescission]
(3) Where an order that has been made an order of a court is rescinded or
varied by a subsequent order of the Commission, the order of the court shall be
deemed to have been cancelled and the subsequent order may, in the same manner,
be made an order of the court.
[Research]
14. (1) The Commission may undertake, sponsor, promote or assist in research
relating to any matter within its jurisdiction under this Act and in so doing it
shall, wherever appropriate, utilize technical, economic and statistical
information and advice from the Corporation or departments or agencies of the
Government of Canada.
[Review of technical matters]
(2) The Commission shall review and consider any technical matter relating to
broadcasting referred to the Commission by the Minister and shall make
recommendations to the Minister with respect thereto.
[Hearings and reports]
15. (1) The Commission shall, on request of the Governor in Council, hold
hearings or make reports on any matter within the jurisdiction of the Commission
under this Act.
[Consultation]
(2) The Minister shall consult with the Commission with regard to any request
proposed to be made by the Governor in Council under subsection (1).
[Powers respecting hearings]
16. The Commission has, in respect of any hearing under this Part, with regard
to the attendance, swearing and examination of witnesses at the hearing, the
production and inspection of documents, the enforcement of its orders, the entry
and inspection of property and other matters necessary or proper in relation to
the hearing, all such powers, rights and privileges as are vested in a superior
court of record.
[Authority re questions of fact or law]
17. The Commission has authority to determine questions of fact or law in
relation to any matter within its jurisdiction under this Act.
Hearings and Procedure
[Where public hearing required]
18. (1) Except where otherwise provided, the Commission shall hold a public
hearing in connection with
(a) the issue of a licence, other than a licence to carry on a temporary
network operation;
(b) the suspension or revocation of a licence;
(c) the establishing of any performance objectives for the purposes of
paragraph 11(2)(b); and
(d) the making of an order under subsection 12(2).
[Idem]
(2) The Commission shall hold a public hearing in connection with the
amendment or renewal of a licence unless it is satisfied that such a hearing is
not required in the public interest.
[Where public hearing in Commission's discretion]
(3) The Commission may hold a public hearing, make a report, issue any
decision and give any approval in connection with any complaint or representation
made to the Commission or in connection with any other matter within its
jurisdiction under this Act if it is satisfied that it would be in the public
interest to do so.
[Place of hearing]
(4) A public hearing under this section may be held at such place in Canada as
the Chairperson of the Commission may designate.
[Notice of hearing]
19. The Commission shall cause notice of
(a) any application received by it for the issue, amendment or renewal of a
licence, other than a licence to carry on a temporary network operation,
(b) any decision made by it to issue, amend or renew a licence, and
(c) any public hearing to be held by it under section 18 to be published in
the Canada Gazette and in one or more newspapers of general circulation within
any area affected or likely to be affected by the application, decision or
matter to which the public hearing relates.
[Panels of Commission]
20. (1) The Chairperson of the Commission may establish panels, each
consisting of not fewer than three members of the Commission, at least two of
whom shall be full-time members, to deal with, hear and determine any matter on
behalf of the Commission.
[Powers]
(2) A panel that is established under subsection (1) has and may exercise all
the powers and may perform all the duties and functions of the Commission in
relation to any matter before the panel.
[Decision]
(3) A decision of a majority of the members of a panel established under
subsection (1) is a decision of the panel.
[Consultation]
(4) The members of a panel established under subsection (1) shall consult with
the Commission, and may consult with any officer of the Commission, for the
purpose of ensuring a consistency of interpretation of the broadcasting policy
set out in subsection 3(1), the regulatory policy set out in subsection 5(2) and
the regulations made by the Commission under sections 10 and 11.
[Rules]
21. The Commission may make rules
(a) respecting the procedure for making applications for licences, or for
the amendment, renewal, suspension or revocation thereof, and for making
representations and complaints to the Commission; and
(b) respecting the conduct of hearings and generally respecting the conduct
of the business of the Commission in relation to those hearings.
Licences
[Conditions governing issue, amendment and renewal]
22. (1) No licence shall be issued, amended or renewed under this Part
(a) if the issue, amendment or renewal of the licence is in contravention of
a direction to the Commission issued by the Governor in Council under
subsection 26(1); and
(b) subject to subsection (2), unless the Minister of Industry certifies to
the Commission that the applicant for the issue, amendment or renewal of the
licence
(i) has satisfied the requirements of the Radiocommunication Act and the
regulations made under that Act, and
(ii) has been or will be issued a broadcasting certificate with respect to
the radio apparatus that the applicant would be entitled to operate under the
licence.
[Exception]
(2) The requirement set out in paragraph (1)(b) does not apply in respect of
radio apparatus, or any class thereof, prescribed under paragraph 6(1)(m) of the
Radiocommunication Act.
[Suspension or revocation of broadcasting certificate]
(3) No licence is of any force or effect during any period when the
broadcasting certificate issued under the Radiocommunication Act with respect to
the radio apparatus that the holder of the licence is entitled to operate under
that Act is suspended or revoked.
[Issue, etc., contravening this section]
(4) Any licence issued, amended or renewed in contravention of this section is
of no force or effect.
[Consultation between Commission and Corporation]
23. (1) The Commission shall, at the request of the Corporation, consult with
the Corporation with regard to any conditions that the Commission proposes to
attach to any licence issued or to be issued to the Corporation.
[Reference to Minister]
(2) If, notwithstanding the consultation provided for in subsection (1), the
Commission attaches any condition to a licence referred to in subsection (1) that
the Corporation is satisfied would unreasonably impede the Corporation in
providing the programming contemplated by paragraphs 3(1)(l) and (m), the
Corporation may, within thirty days after the decision of the Commission, refer
the condition to the Minister for consideration.
[Ministerial directive]
(3) Subject to subsection (4), the Minister may, within ninety days after a
condition is referred to the Minister under subsection (2), issue to the
Commission a written directive with respect to the condition and the Commission
shall comply with any such directive issued by the Minister.
[Consultation]
(4) The Minister shall consult with the Commission and with the Corporation
before issuing a directive under subsection (3).
[Publication and tabling of directive]
(5) A directive issued by the Minister under subsection (3) shall be published
forthwith in the Canada Gazette and shall be laid before each House of Parliament
on any of the first fifteen days on which that House is sitting after the
directive is issued.
[Conditions governing suspension and revocation]
24. (1) No licence shall be suspended or revoked under this Part unless the
licensee applies for or consents to the suspension or revocation or, in any other
case, unless, after a public hearing in accordance with section 18, the
Commission is satisfied that
(a) the licensee has contravened or failed to comply with any condition of
the licence or with any order made under subsection 12(2) or any regulation
made under this Part; or
(b) the licence was, at any time within the two years immediately preceding
the date of publication in the Canada Gazette of the notice of the public
hearing, held by a person to whom the licence could not have been issued at
that time by virtue of a direction to the Commission issued by the Governor in
Council under this Act.
[Licences of Corporation]
(2) No licence issued to the Corporation that is referred to in the schedule
may be suspended or revoked under this Part except on application of or with the
consent of the Corporation.
[Publication of decision ]
(3) A copy of a decision of the Commission relating to the suspension or
revocation of a licence, together with written reasons for the decision, shall,
forthwith after the making of the decision, be forwarded by prepaid registered
mail to all persons who were heard at or made any oral representations in
connection with the hearing held under subsection (1), and a summary of the
decision and of the reasons for the decision shall, at the same time, be
published in the Canada Gazette and in one or more newspapers of general
circulation within any area affected or likely to be affected by the decision.
[Report of alleged contravention or non-compliance by Corporation]
25. (1) Where the Commission is satisfied, after a public hearing on the
matter, that the Corporation has contravened or failed to comply with any
condition of a licence referred to in the schedule, any order made under
subsection 12(2) or any regulation made under this Part, the Commission shall
forward to the Minister a report setting out the circumstances of the alleged
contravention or failure, the findings of the Commission and any observations or
recommendations of the Commission in connection therewith.
[Report to be tabled]
(2) The Minister shall cause a copy of the report referred to in subsection
(1) to be laid before each House of Parliament on any of the first fifteen days
on which that House is sitting after the report is received by the Minister.
General Powers of the Governor in Council
[Directions]
26. (1) The Governor in Council may, by order, issue directions to the
Commission
(a) respecting the maximum number of channels or frequencies for the use of
which licences may be issued within a geographical area designated in the
order;
(b) respecting the reservation of channels or frequencies for the use of the
Corporation or for any special purpose designated in the order;
(c) respecting the classes of applicants to whom licences may not be issued
or to whom amendments or renewals thereof may not be granted; and
(d) prescribing the circumstances in which the Commission may issue licences
to applicants that are agents of a province and are otherwise ineligible to
hold a licence, and the conditions on which those licences may be issued.
[Idem]
(2) Where the Governor in Council deems the broadcast of any program to be of
urgent importance to Canadians generally or to persons resident in any area of
Canada, the Governor in Council may, by order, direct the Commission to issue a
notice to licensees throughout Canada or throughout any area of Canada, of any
class specified in the order, requiring the licensees to broadcast the program in
accordance with the order, and licensees to whom any such notice is addressed
shall comply with the notice.
[Publication and tabling]
(3) An order made under subsection (1) or (2) shall be published forthwith in
the Canada Gazette and a copy thereof shall be laid before each House of
Parliament on any of the first fifteen days on which that House is sitting after
the making of the order.
[Consultation]
(4) The Minister shall consult with the Commission with regard to any order
proposed to be made by the Governor in Council under subsection (1).
[Directions re Free Trade Agreement]
27. (1) The Governor in Council may, either on the recommendation of the
Minister made at the request of the Commission or on the Governor in Council's
own motion, issue directions of general application respecting the manner in
which the Commission shall apply or interpret paragraph 3 of Article 2006 of the
Agreement.
[Effect of directions]
(2) A direction issued under subsection (1) is binding on the Commission from
the time it comes into force and, unless otherwise provided therein, applies in
respect of matters pending before the Commission at that time.
[Request of Commission]
(3) The Commission may, in order to request the issuance of a direction under
subsection (1), suspend the determination of any matter of which it is seized.
[Definition of "Agreement"]
(4) In this section, "Agreement" has the same meaning as in the Canada-United
States Free Trade Agreement Implementation Act.
[Setting aside or referring decisions back to Commission]
28. (1) Where the Commission makes a decision to issue, amend or renew a
licence, the Governor in Council may, within ninety days after the date of the
decision, on petition in writing of any person received within forty-five days
after that date or on the Governor in Council's own motion, by order, set aside
the decision or refer the decision back to the Commission for reconsideration and
hearing of the matter by the Commission, if the Governor in Council is satisfied
that the decision derogates from the attainment of the objectives of the
broadcasting policy set out in subsection 3(1).
[Order on reference back]
(2) An order made under subsection (1) that refers a decision back to the
Commission for reconsideration and hearing shall set out the details of any
matter that, in the opinion of the Governor in Council, may be material to the
reconsideration and hearing.
[Powers on reference back]
(3) Where a decision is referred back to the Commission under this section,
the Commission shall reconsider the matter and, after a hearing as provided for
by subsection (1), may
(a) rescind the decision or the issue, amendment or renewal of the licence;
(b) rescind the issue of the licence and issue a licence on the same or
different conditions to another person; or
(c) confirm, either with or without change, variation or alteration, the
decision or the issue, amendment or renewal of the licence.
[Setting aside after confirmation]
(4) Where, pursuant to paragraph (3)(c), the Commission confirms a decision or
the issue, amendment or renewal of a licence, the Governor in Council may, within
sixty days after the confirmation, on petition in writing of any person received
within thirty days after that date or on the Governor in Council's own motion, by
order, set aside the decision or the issue, amendment or renewal, if the Governor
in Council is satisfied as to any of the matters referred to in subsection (1).
[Reasons]
(5) An order made under subsection (4) to set aside a decision or the issue,
amendment or renewal of a licence shall set out the reasons of the Governor in
Council therefore.
[Filing of petitions]
29. (1) Every person who petitions the Governor in Council under subsection
28(1) or (4) shall at the same time send a copy of the petition to the
Commission.
[Notice]
(2) On receipt of a petition under subsection (1), the Commission shall
forward a copy of the petition by prepaid registered mail to all persons who were
heard at or made any oral representation in connection with the hearing held in
the matter to which the petition relates.
[Register]
(3) The Commission shall establish and maintain a public register in which
shall be kept a copy of each petition received by the Commission under subsection
28(1) or (4).
[Amendment of schedule]
30. The Governor in Council may, on the recommendation of the Minister made on
the request of the Commission and with the consent of the Corporation, amend the
schedule.
Decisions and Orders
[Decisions and orders final]
31. (1) Except as provided in this Part, every decision and order of the
Commission is final and conclusive.
[Appeal to Federal Court of Appeal]
(2) An appeal lies from a decision or order of the Commission to the Federal
Court of Appeal on a question of law or a question of jurisdiction if leave
therefore is obtained from that Court on application made within one month after
the making of the decision or order sought to be appealed from or within such
further time as that Court under special circumstances allows.
[Entry of appeal]
(3) No appeal lies after leave therefore has been obtained under subsection
(2) unless it is entered in the Federal Court of Appeal within sixty days after
the making of the order granting leave to appeal.
[Document deemed decision or order]
(4) Any document issued by the Commission in the form of a decision or order
shall, if it relates to the issue, amendment, renewal, revocation ,or suspension
of a licence, be deemed for the purposes of this section to be a decision or
order of the Commission.
Offences
[Broadcasting without or contrary to licence]
32. (1) Every person who, not being exempt from the requirement to hold a
licence, carries on a broadcasting undertaking without a licence therefore is
guilty of an offence punishable on summary conviction and is liable
(a) in the case of an individual, to a fine not exceeding twenty thousand
dollars for each day that the offence continues; or
(b) in the case of a corporation, to a fine not exceeding two hundred
thousand dollars for each day that the offence continues.
[Contravention of regulation or order]
(2) Every person who contravenes or fails to comply with any regulation or
order made under this Part is guilty of an offence punishable on summary
conviction and is liable
(a) in the case of an individual, to a fine not exceeding twenty-five
thousand dollars for a first offence and not exceeding fifty thousand dollars
for each subsequent offence; or
(b) in the case of a corporation, to a fine not exceeding two hundred and
fifty thousand dollars for a first offence and not exceeding five hundred
thousand dollars for each subsequent offence.
[Contravention of conditions of licence]
33. Every person who contravenes or fails to comply with any condition of a
licence issued to the person is guilty of an offence punishable on summary
conviction.
[Limitation]
34. Proceedings for an offence under subsection 32(2) or section 33, may be
instituted within, but not after, two years after the time when the
subject-matter of the proceedings arose.
PART III
CANADIAN BROADCASTING CORPORATION
Interpretation
[Definitions ]
35. (1) In this Part,
["auditor" "vérificateur"]
"auditor" means the auditor of the Corporation;
["Board" "conseil..."]
"Board" means the Board of Directors of the Corporation;
["Chairperson" "président du conseil"]
"Chairperson" means the Chairperson of the Board;
["director" "administrateur"]
"director" means a director of the Corporation;
["President" "président-directeur général"]
"President" means the President of the Corporation;
["wholly-owned subsidiary" "filiale ŕ cent pour cent"]
"wholly-owned subsidiary" has the same meaning as in Part X of the Financial
Administration Act.
[Interpretation]
(2) This Part shall be interpreted and applied so as to protect and enhance
the freedom of expression and the journalistic, creative and programming
independence enjoyed by the Corporation in the pursuit of its objects and in the
exercise of its powers.
Continuation of Corporation
[Corporation continued]
36. (1) The corporation known as the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation is
hereby continued and shall consist of those directors who from time to time
compose the Board.
[Board of Directors]
(2) There shall be a Board of Directors of the Corporation consisting of
twelve directors, including the Chairperson and the President, to be appointed by
the Governor in Council.
[Tenure]
(3) A director shall be appointed to hold office during good behaviour for a
term not exceeding five years and may be removed at any time by the Governor in
Council for cause.
[Reappointment]
(4) Subject to section 38, the Chairperson and the President are eligible for
reappointment on the expiration of any term of office but any other director who
has served two consecutive terms is not, during the twelve months following the
completion of the second term, eligible for appointment, except as Chairperson or
President.
[Continuation in office]
(5) Notwithstanding subsections (3) and (4), if a director is not appointed to
take office on the expiration of the term of office of an incumbent director, the
incumbent director continues in office until a successor is appointed.
[Oath of office]
37. Every director shall, before entering on the director's duties, take and
subscribe, before the Clerk of the Privy Council, an oath or solemn affirmation,
which shall be filed in the office of the Clerk, in the following form:
I, ...................., do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully,
truly and impartially, to the best of my judgment, skill and ability, execute and
perform the office of ..................... (Add, in the case where an oath is
taken, "So help me God".)
[Outside interests of Directors]
38. (1) A person is not eligible to be appointed or to continue as a director
if the person is not a Canadian citizen who is ordinarily resident in Canada or
if, directly or indirectly, as owner, shareholder, director, officer, partner or
otherwise, the person
(a) is engaged in the operation of a broadcasting undertaking;
(b) has any pecuniary or proprietary interest in a broadcasting undertaking;
or
(c) is principally engaged in the production or distribution of program
material that is primarily intended for use by a broadcasting undertaking.
[Disposing of interest]
(2) A director in whom any interest prohibited by subsection (1) vests by will
or succession for the director's own benefit shall, within three months
thereafter, absolutely dispose of that interest.
[Responsibility of directors]
39. Subject to this Part, the Board is responsible for the management of the
businesses, activities and other affairs of the Corporation.
[Accountability of Corporation to Parliament]
40. The Corporation is ultimately accountable, through the Minister, to
Parliament for the conduct of its affairs.
Chairperson
[Powers, duties and functions]
41. (1) The Chairperson shall preside at meetings of the Board and may
exercise such powers and shall perform such other duties and functions as are
assigned to the Chairperson by the by-laws of the Corporation.
[Part-time]
(2) The Chairperson shall perform the duties and functions of the office on a
part-time basis.
[Absence, incapacity or vacancy of office]
(3) If the Chairperson is absent or incapacitated or if the office of
Chairperson is vacant, the President shall act as Chairperson, and if both are
absent or incapacitated or if both those offices are vacant, the Board may
authorize a director to act as Chairperson, but no person so authorized by the
Board has authority to act as Chairperson for a period exceeding sixty days
without the approval of the Governor in Council.
President
[Powers, duties and functions]
42. (1) The President is the chief executive officer of the Corporation and
has supervision over and direction of the work and staff of the Corporation and
may exercise such powers and shall perform such other duties and functions as are
assigned to the President by the by-laws of the Corporation.
[Full-time]
(2) The President shall perform the duties and functions of the office on a
full-time basis.
[Absence, incapacity or vacancy of office]
(3) If the President is absent or incapacitated or if the office of President
is vacant, the Board may authorize an officer of the Corporation to act as
President, but no person so authorized by the Board has authority to act as
President for a period exceeding sixty days without the approval of the Governor
in Council.
Remuneration
[Chairperson's and President's remuneration]
43. (1) The Chairperson and the President shall be paid by the Corporation
remuneration at the rate fixed by the Governor in Council.
[Fees of other directors]
(2) Each director, other than the Chairperson and the President, shall be paid
by the Corporation such fees for attendance at meetings of the Board or any
committee of directors as are fixed by the by-laws of the Corporation.
[Expenses]
(3) Each director is entitled to be paid by the Corporation such travel and
living expenses incurred by the director in the performance of the duties of that
director as are fixed by the by-laws of the Corporation.
Staff
[Employment of staff]
44. (1) The Corporation may, on its own behalf, employ such officers and
employees as it considers necessary for the conduct of its business.
[Terms, etc., of employment ]
(2) The officers and employees employed by the Corporation under subsection
(1) shall, subject to any by-laws made under section 51, be employed on such
terms and conditions and at such rates of remuneration as the Board deems fit.
[Not servants of Her Majesty]
(3) The officers and employees employed by the Corporation under subsection
(1) are not officers or servants of Her Majesty.
Standing Committees
[English and French language broadcasting committees]
45. (1) The Board shall establish a standing committee of directors on English
language broadcasting and a standing committee of directors on French language
broadcasting, each consisting of the Chairperson, the President and such other
directors as the Board may appoint.
[Chairperson or President shall preside]
(2) The Chairperson, or in the absence of the Chairperson, the President,
shall preside at meetings of each standing committee established pursuant to
subsection (1).
[Absence of Chairperson and President]
(3) In respect of each standing committee established pursuant to subsection
(1), the Chairperson shall designate one of the directors to preside at meetings
thereof in the event of the absence of both the Chairperson and the President.
[Duties of committees]
(4) The standing committee on English language broadcasting shall perform such
duties in relation to English language broadcasting, and the standing committee
on French language broadcasting shall perform such duties in relation to French
language broadcasting, as are delegated to the committee by the by-laws of the
Corporation.
Objects and Powers
[Objects and powers]
46. (1) The Corporation is established for the purpose of providing the
programming contemplated by paragraphs 3(1)(l) and (m), in accordance with the
conditions of any licence or licences issued to it by the Commission and subject
to any applicable regulations of the Commission, and for that purpose the
Corporation may
(a) establish, equip, maintain and operate broadcasting undertakings;
(b) make operating agreements with licensees for the broadcasting of
programs;
(c) originate programs, secure programs from within or outside Canada by
purchase, exchange or otherwise and make arrangements necessary for their
transmission;
(d) make contracts with any person, within or outside Canada, in connection
with the production or presentation of programs originated or secured by the
Corporation;
(e) make contracts with any person, within or outside Canada, for
performances in connection with the programs of the Corporation;
(f) with the approval of the Governor in Council, make contracts with any
person for the provision by the Corporation of consulting or engineering
services outside Canada;
(g) with the approval of the Governor in Council, distribute or market
outside Canada programming services originated by the Corporation;
(h) with the approval of the Minister, act as agent for or on behalf of any
person in providing programming to any part of Canada not served by any other
licensee;
(i) collect news relating to current events in any part of the world and
establish and subscribe to news agencies;
(j) publish, distribute and preserve, whether for a consideration or
otherwise, such audio-visual material, papers, periodicals and other literary
matter as may seem conducive to the attainment of the objects of the
Corporation;
(k) produce, distribute and sell such consumer products as may seem
conducive to the attainment of the objects of the Corporation;
(l) acquire copyrights and trade-marks;
(m) acquire and use any patent, patent rights, licences or concessions that
the Board considers useful for the purposes of the Corporation;
(n) make arrangements or agreements with any organization for the use of any
rights, privileges or concessions that the Board considers useful for the
purposes of the Corporation;
(o) acquire broadcasting undertakings either by lease or by purchase;
(p) make arrangements or agreements with any organization for the provision
of broadcasting services;
(q) subject to the approval of the Governor in Council, acquire, ,hold and
dispose of shares of the capital stock of any company or corporation that is
authorized to carry on any business incidental or conducive to the attainment
of the objects of the Corporation; and
(r) do all such other things as the Board deems incidental or conducive to
the attainment of the objects of the Corporation.
[International service]
(2) The Corporation shall, within the conditions of any licence or licences
issued to it by the Commission and subject to any applicable regulations of the
Commission, provide an international service in accordance with such directions
as the Governor in Council may issue.
[Power to act as agent]
(3) The Corporation may, within the conditions of any licence or licences
issued to it by the Commission and subject to any applicable regulations of the
Commission, act as an agent of Her Majesty in right of Canada or a province in
respect of any broadcasting operations that it may be directed by the Governor in
Council to carry out.
[Extension of services]
(4) In planning extensions of broadcasting services, the Corporation shall
have regard to the principles and purposes of the Official Languages Act.
[Independence]
(5) The Corporation shall, in the pursuit of its objects and in the exercise
of its powers, enjoy freedom of expression and journalistic, creative and
programming independence.
[Debt obligations]
46.1 (1) The Corporation may, with the approval of the Minister of Finance,
borrow money by any means, including the issuance and sale of bonds, debenture,
notes and any other evidence of indebtness of the Corporation.
[Loans to the Corporation]
(2) At the request of the Corporation, the Minister of Finance may, out of the
Consolidated Revenue Fund, lend money to the Corporation on such terms and
conditions as that Minister may fix.
[Total indebtedness]
(3) The total indebtedness outstanding in respect of borrowings under
subsections (1) and (2) shall not exceed
(a) $25,000.000; or
(b) such greater amount as may be authorized for the purpose of this
subsection by Parliament under an appropriation Act.
Agent of Her Majesty
[Corporation an agent of Her Majesty]
47. (1) Except as provided in subsections 44(1) and 46(2), the Corporation is,
for all purposes of this Act, an agent of Her Majesty, and it may exercise its
powers under this Act only as an agent of Her Majesty.
[Contracts]
(2) The Corporation may, on behalf of Her Majesty, enter into contracts in the
name of Her Majesty or in the name of the Corporation.
[Property]
(3) Property acquired by the Corporation is the property of Her Majesty and
title thereto may be vested in the name of Her Majesty or in the name of the
Corporation.
[Proceedings]
(4) Actions, suits or other legal proceedings in respect of any right or
obligation acquired or incurred by the Corporation on behalf of Her Majesty,
whether in its name or in the name of Her Majesty, may be brought or taken by or
against the Corporation in the name of the Corporation in any court that would
have jurisdiction if the Corporation were not an agent of Her Majesty.
[Acquisition and disposition of property]
48. (1) Subject to subsection (2), the Corporation may purchase, lease or
otherwise acquire any real or personal property that the Corporation deems
necessary or convenient for carrying out its objects and may sell, lease or
otherwise dispose of all or any part of any property acquired by it.
[Restriction]
(2) The Corporation shall not, without the approval of the Governor in
Council, enter into
(a) any transaction for the acquisition of any real property or the
disposition of any real or personal property, other than program material or
rights therein, for a consideration in excess of four million dollars or such
greater amount as the Governor in Council may by order prescribe; or
(b) a lease or other agreement for the use or occupation of real property
involving an expenditure in excess of four million dollars or such greater
amount as the Governor in Council may by order prescribe.
[Retaining proceeds]
(3) Subject to subsection (4), the Corporation may retain and use all of the
proceeds of any transaction for the disposition of real or personal property.
[Idem]
(4) In the case of a transaction for the disposition of real or personal
property requiring the approval of the Governor in Council under subsection (2),
the Corporation may retain and use all or any part of the proceeds there from
unless otherwise directed by the Governor in Council.
[Expropriation]
49. (1) Where, in the opinion of the Corporation, the taking or acquisition of
any land or interest therein by the Corporation without the consent of the owner
is required for the purpose of carrying out its objects, the Corporation shall so
advise the appropriate Minister in relation to Part I of the Expropriation Act.
[Application of Expropriation Act]
(2) For the purposes of the Expropriation Act, any land or interest therein
that, in the opinion of the Minister referred to in subsection (1), is required
for the purpose of carrying out the objects of the Corporation shall be deemed to
be land or an interest therein that, in the opinion of the Minister, is required
for a public work or other public purpose and, in relation thereto, a reference
to the Crown in that Act shall be construed as a reference to the Corporation.
Head Office and Meetings
[Head office]
50. (1) The head office of the Corporation shall be in the National Capital
Region as described in the schedule to the National Capital Act or at such other
place in Canada as the Governor in Council may specify.
[Meetings]
(2) The Board shall meet at least six times in each year.
[Telephone conferences]
(3) A director may, subject to the by-laws of the Corporation, participate in
a meeting of the Board or a committee of directors by means of such telephone or
other communication facilities as permit all persons participating in the meeting
to hear each other, and a director who participates in such a meeting by those
means is deemed for the purposes of this Part to be present at the meeting.
By-laws
[By-laws]
51. (1) The Board may make by-laws
(a) respecting the calling of meetings of the Board;
(b) respecting the conduct of business at meetings of the Board, the
establishment of special and standing committees of directors, the delegation
of duties to special and standing committees of directors, including the
committees referred to in section 45, and the fixing of quorums for meetings
thereof;
(c) fixing the fees to be paid to directors, other than the Chairperson and
the President, for attendance at meetings of the Board or any committee of
directors, and the travel and living expenses to be paid to directors;
(d) respecting the duties and conduct of the directors, officers and
employees of the Corporation and the terms and conditions of employment and of
termination of employment of officers and employees of the Corporation,
including the payment of any gratuity to those officers and employees or any
one or more of them, whether by way of retirement allowance or otherwise;
(e) respecting the establishment, management and administration of a pension
fund for the directors, officers and employees of the Corporation and their
dependants, the contributions thereto to be made by the Corporation and the
investment of the pension fund moneys thereof; and
(f) generally for the conduct and management of the affairs of the
Corporation. Certain by-laws subject to Minister's approval
(2) No by-law made under paragraph (1)(c) or (e), and no by-law made under
paragraph (1)(d) that provides for the payment of any gratuity referred to in
that paragraph, has any effect unless it is approved by the Minister.
Financial Provisions
[Independence of the Corporation]
52. (1) Nothing in sections 53 to 70 shall be interpreted or applied so as to
limit the freedom of expression or the journalistic, creative or programming
independence enjoyed by the Corporation in the pursuit of its objects and in the
exercise of its powers.
[Idem]
(2) Without limiting the generality of subsection (1), and notwithstanding
sections 53 to 70 or any regulation made under any of those sections, the
Corporation is not required to
(a) submit to the Treasury Board or to the Minister or the Minister of
Finance any information the provision of which could reasonably be expected to
compromise or constrain the journalistic, creative or programming independence
of the Corporation; or
(b) include in any corporate plan or summary thereof submitted to the
Minister pursuant to section 54 or 55 any information the provision of which
could reasonably be expected to limit the ability of the Corporation to
exercise its journalistic, creative or programming independence.
52.1 Notwithstanding the Financial Administration Act, Part VII of that Act
does not apply to a debt incurred by the Corporation.
[Financial year]
53. The financial year of the Corporation is the period beginning on April 1
in one year and ending on March 31 in the next year, unless the Governor in
Council otherwise directs.
[Corporate plan]
54. (1) The Corporation shall annually submit a corporate plan to the
Minister.
[Scope of corporate plan]
(2) The corporate plan of the Corporation shall encompass all the businesses
and activities, including investments, of the Corporation and its wholly-owned
subsidiaries, if any.
[Contents of corporate plan]
(3) The corporate plan of the Corporation shall include
(a) a statement of
(i) the objects for which the Corporation is incorporated, as set out in
this Act,
(ii) the Corporation's objectives for the next five years and for each
year in that period and the strategy the Corporation intends to employ to
achieve them, and
(iii) the Corporation's expected performance for the year in which the
plan is submitted as compared to its objectives for that year, as set out in
the last corporate plan;
(b) the capital budget of the Corporation for the next following financial
year of the Corporation;
(c) an operating budget for the next following financial year of the
Corporation; and
(d) where the corporation intends to borrow money in the next financial
year, a general indication of the borrowing plans and strategies of the
Corporation for that year.
[Approval of Minister of Finance]
(3.1) Where the Corporation includes a general indication of its plans to
borrow money in its corporate plan, the Corporation shall submit that part of its
corporate plan to the Minister of Finance for that Minister's approval.
[Capital budgets]
(4) The Corporation shall submit the capital budget to the Minister in a
corporate plan pursuant to paragraph (3)(b) for the approval of the Treasury
Board.
[Notification of business activity]
(5) Where the Corporation or a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Corporation
proposes to carry out a substantial change to business activities in any period
in a manner that is not consistent with the last corporate plan of the
Corporation in respect of that period, the Corporation shall forthwith notify the
Minister in writing of the inconsistency in the manner of carrying on the
business activity.
[Scope of budgets]
(6) The budgets of the Corporation referred to in paragraphs (3)(b) and (c)
shall encompass all the businesses and activities, including investments, of the
Corporation and its wholly-owned subsidiaries, if any.
[Form of budgets]
(7) The budgets of the Corporation referred to in paragraphs (3)(b) and (c)
shall be prepared in a form that clearly sets out information according to the
major businesses or activities of the Corporation and its wholly-owned
subsidiaries, if any.
[Approval of multi-year items]
(8) The Treasury Board may approve any item in a capital budget submitted
pursuant to paragraph (3)(b) for any financial year or years following the
financial year for which the budget is submitted.
[Summary of plan]
55. (1) The Corporation shall submit to the Minister, in respect of each
financial year, a summary of the corporate plan submitted pursuant to section 54
that summarizes the information referred to in subsection 54(3), modified so as
to be based on the financial resources proposed to be allocated to the
Corporation as set out in the Estimates for that financial year that have been
tabled in the House of Commons.
[Scope of summary]
(2) A summary shall encompass all the businesses and activities, including
investments, of the Corporation and its wholly-owned subsidiaries, if any, and
shall set out the major business decisions taken with respect thereto.
[Form of summary]
(3) A summary shall be prepared in a form that clearly sets out information
according to the major businesses or activities of the Corporation and its
wholly-owned subsidiaries, if any.
[Tabling in Parliament]
(4) The Minister shall cause a copy of every summary received pursuant to this
section to be laid before each House of Parliament.
[Reference to committee]
(5) A summary laid before a House of Parliament pursuant to subsection (4)
stands permanently referred to such committee of that House or if both Houses of
Parliament as may be designated or established to review matters relating to the
business and activities of the Corporation.
[Regulations]
56. The Treasury Board may make regulations prescribing the form in which
corporate plans and summaries required pursuant to sections 54 and 55 shall be
prepared, the information to be included therein, the information to accompany
corporate plans and the time at, before or within which they are to be submitted
and summaries are to be laid before each House of Parliament.
[Bank accounts]
57. (1) The Corporation shall maintain in its own name one or more accounts
with
(a) any member of the Canadian Payments Association;
(b) any local Cooperative Credit Society that is a member of a Central
Cooperative Credit Society having membership in the Canadian Payments
Association; and
(c) subject to the approval of the Minister of Finance, any financial
institution outside Canada.
[Administration of Corporation funds]
(2) All money received by the Corporation through the conduct of its
operations or otherwise shall be deposited to the credit of the accounts
established pursuant to subsection (1) and shall be administered by the
Corporation exclusively in the exercise of its powers and the performance of its
duties and functions.
[Investments]
(3) The Corporation may invest any money administered by it in bonds or other
securities of, or guaranteed by, the Government of Canada.
[Proprietor's Equity Account]
(4) The Corporation shall, in its books of account, establish a Proprietor's
Equity Account and shall credit thereto the amount of all money paid to the
Corporation for capital purposes out of parliamentary appropriations.
[Receiver General account]
58. (1) The Corporation shall, if so directed by the Minister of Finance with
the concurrence of the Minister, and may, if the Minister of Finance and the
Minister approve, pay or cause to be paid all or any part of the money of the
Corporation or of a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Corporation to the Receiver
General to be paid into the Consolidated Revenue Fund and credited to a special
account in the accounts of Canada in the name of the Corporation or subsidiary,
and the Receiver General, subject to such terms and conditions as the Minister of
Finance may prescribe, may pay out, for the purposes of the Corporation or
subsidiary, or repay to the Corporation or subsidiary, all or any part of the
money credited to the special account.
[Interest]
(2) Interest may be paid in respect of money credited to a special account
pursuant to subsection (1), in accordance with and at rates fixed by the Minister
of Finance with the approval of the Governor in Council.
[Payment over surplus money]
59. Subject to any other Act of Parliament, where the Minister and the
Minister of Finance, with the approval of the Governor in Council, so direct, the
Corporation shall pay or cause to be paid to the Receiver General so much of the
money of the Corporation or of a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Corporation as
those Ministers consider to be in excess of the amount that is required for the
purposes of the Corporation or subsidiary, and any money so paid may be applied
toward the discharge of any obligation of the Corporation or subsidiary to the
Crown or may be applied as revenues of Canada.
[Books and systems]
60. (1) The Corporation shall cause
(a) books of account and records in relation thereto to be kept, and
(b) financial and management control and information systems and management
practices to be maintained, in respect of itself and each of its wholly-owned
subsidiaries, if any.
[Idem]
(2) The books of account, records, systems and practices referred to in
subsection (1) shall be kept and maintained in such manner as will provide
reasonable assurance that
(a) the assets of the Corporation and of each subsidiary are safeguarded and
controlled;
(b) the transactions of the Corporation and of each subsidiary are in
accordance with this Part and the by-laws of the Corporation or subsidiary and,
in the case of a subsidiary of the Corporation, its charter or any other
document by or in accordance with which it is established; and
(c) the financial, human and physical resources of the Corporation and of
each subsidiary are managed economically and efficiently and the operations of
the Corporation and of each subsidiary are carried out effectively.
[Internal audit]
(3) The Corporation shall cause internal audits to be conducted in respect of
itself and each of its wholly-owned subsidiaries, if any, to assess compliance
with subsections (1) and (2).
[Financial statements]
(4) The Corporation shall cause financial statements to be prepared annually
in respect of itself and its wholly-owned subsidiaries, if any, in accordance
with generally accepted accounting principles, as supplemented or augmented by
regulations made under subsection (6).
[Form of financial statements]
(5) The financial statements of the Corporation and of a wholly-owned
subsidiary shall be prepared in a form that clearly sets out information
according to the major businesses or activities of the Corporation or subsidiary.
[Regulations]
(6) The Treasury Board may, for the purposes of subsection (4), make
regulations respecting financial statements of the Corporation, but those
regulations shall only supplement or augment generally accepted accounting
principles.
[Reports to Minister]
(7) The Board shall make to the Minister such reports of the financial affairs
of the Corporation as the Minister requires.
[Auditor of the Corporation]
61. The Auditor General of Canada is the auditor of the Corporation.
[Annual auditor's report]
62. (1) The Corporation shall cause an annual auditor's report to be prepared
in respect of itself and its wholly-owned subsidiaries, if any, in accordance
with the regulations, on the accounts and financial statements of the Corporation
and of each subsidiary, and the report shall be made to the Board and to the
Minister.
[Contents]
(2) A report prepared pursuant to subsection (1) shall
(a) include separate statements indicating whether, in the auditor's
opinion,
(i) the financial statements are presented fairly in accordance with
generally accepted accounting principles applied on a basis consistent with
that of the preceding year,
(ii) any quantitative information in the Corporation's annual report in
respect of which the Board has requested the auditor's opinion is accurate in
all material respects and, if applicable, was prepared on a basis consistent
with that of the preceding year, and
(iii) the transactions of the Corporation and of each subsidiary that have
come to the auditor's notice in the course of the examination for the report
were in accordance with this Part and the by-laws of the Corporation or
subsidiary; and
(b) call attention to any other matter falling within the scope of the
examination for the report that, in the opinion of the auditor, should be
brought to the attention of Parliament.
[Regulations]
(3) The Treasury Board may make regulations prescribing the form and manner in
which the report referred to in subsection (1) is to be prepared.
[Other reports]
(4) The auditor shall prepare such other reports respecting the Corporation or
any wholly-owned subsidiary of the Corporation as the Governor in Council may
require.
[Examination]
(5) The auditor shall make such examination as the auditor considers necessary
to enable the auditor to prepare a report pursuant to subsection (1) or (3).
[Reliance on internal audit]
(6) The auditor shall, to the extent that the auditor considers practicable,
rely on any internal audit of the Corporation that is conducted pursuant to
subsection 60(3).
[Errors and omissions]
63. (1) A director or officer of the Corporation shall forthwith notify
the auditor and the audit committee of the Corporation established under
subsection 69(1) of any error or omission of which the director or officer
becomes aware in a financial statement on which the auditor has reported or in a
report prepared by the auditor pursuant to subsection 62(1).
[Idem]
(2) Where the auditor is notified or becomes aware of any error or omission in
a financial statement on which the auditor has reported or in a report prepared
by the auditor pursuant to subsection 62(1) and is of the opinion that the error
or omission is material, the auditor shall forthwith notify each director of the
error or omission.
[Correction]
(3) Where the auditor notifies the directors of an error or omission in a
financial statement or report pursuant to subsection (2), the Corporation shall
prepare a revised financial statement or the auditor shall issue a correction to
the report, as the case may be, and a copy thereof shall be given to the
Minister.
[Special examination]
64. (1) The Corporation shall cause a special examination to be carried out by
the auditor in respect of itself and its wholly-owned subsidiaries, if any, to
determine if the systems and practices referred to in paragraph 60(1)(b) were, in
the period under examination, maintained in a manner that provided reasonable
assurance that
(a) the assets of the Corporation and of each subsidiary were safeguarded
and controlled; and
(b) the financial, human and physical resources of the Corporation and of
each subsidiary were managed economically and efficiently, and the operations
of the Corporation and of each subsidiary were carried out effectively.
[Time for examination]
(2) A special examination shall be carried out at least once every five years
and at such additional times as the Governor in Council, the Minister or the
Board may require.
[Plan]
(3) Before the auditor begins a special examination, the auditor shall survey
the systems and practices of the Corporation to be examined and submit a plan for
the examination, including a statement of the criteria to be applied in the
examination, to the audit committee of the Corporation.
[Resolution of disagreements]
(4) Any disagreement between the auditor and the audit committee or the Board
over a plan referred to in subsection (3) may be resolved
(a) in the case of the Corporation, by the Minister; and
(b) in the case of a wholly-owned subsidiary, by the Corporation.
[Reliance on internal audit]
(5) The auditor shall, to the extent considered practicable, rely on any
internal audit of the Corporation conducted pursuant to subsection 60(3).
[Report]
(6) The auditor shall, on completion of the special examination, submit a
report on the findings of the auditor to the Board.
[Contents]
(7) The report referred to in subsection (6) shall include
(a) a statement whether in the auditor's opinion, with respect to the
criteria established pursuant to subsection (3), there is reasonable assurance
that there are no significant deficiencies in the systems and practices
examined; and
(b) a statement of the extent to which the auditor relied on internal
audits.
[Special report to Minister]
(8) Where the auditor is of the opinion that the report referred to in
subsection (6) contains information that should be brought to the attention of
the Minister, the auditor shall, after consultation with the Board, report that
information to the Minister and furnish the directors with a copy of the report.
[Idem]
(9) Where the auditor is of the opinion that the report referred to in
subsection (6) contains information that should be brought to the attention of
Parliament, the auditor shall, after consultation with the Minister and the
Board, prepare a report thereon for inclusion in the next annual report of the
Corporation and furnish the Board and the Minister with copies of the report.
[Right to information]
65. (1) On the demand of the auditor, the present or former directors,
officers, employees or agents of the Corporation shall furnish the auditor with
such
(a) information and explanations, and
(b) access to records, documents, books, accounts and vouchers of the
Corporation or any of its subsidiaries as the auditor considers necessary to
enable the auditor to prepare any report required by this Part and that the
directors, officers, employees or agents are reasonably able to furnish.
[Idem]
(2) On the demand of the auditor, the Board shall
(a) obtain from the present or former directors, officers, employees or
agents of any subsidiary of the Corporation such information and explanations
as the auditor considers necessary to enable the auditor to prepare any report
required by this Part and that the present or former directors, officers,
employees or agents are reasonably able to furnish; and
(b) furnish the information and explanations so obtained to the auditor.
[Restriction]
66. Nothing in this Part shall be construed as authorizing the auditor to
express any opinion on the merits of matters of policy, including the merits of
(a) the objects for which the Corporation is incorporated, or the
restrictions on the businesses or activities that it may carry on;
(b) the objectives of the Corporation; and
(c) any business or policy decision of the Corporation or of the Government
of Canada.
[Qualified privilege]
67. Any oral or written statement or report made under this Part by the
auditor has qualified privilege.
[Cost of audit and examinations]
68. The costs incurred by the auditor in preparing any report under subsection
62(1) or section 64 shall be disclosed in the next annual report of the Auditor
General of Canada and be paid out of the moneys appropriated for the office of
the Auditor General of Canada.
[Audit committee]
69. (1) The Corporation shall establish an audit committee composed of not
fewer than three directors.
[Duties]
(2) The audit committee shall
(a) review and advise the Board with respect to the financial statements
that are to be included in the annual report of the Corporation;
(b) oversee any internal audit of the Corporation that is conducted pursuant
to subsection 60(3);
(c) review and advise the Board with respect to the annual auditor's report
of the Corporation referred to in subsection 62(1);
(d) where the Corporation is undergoing a special examination, review and
advise the Board with respect to the plan and reports referred to in section
64; and
(e) perform such other functions as are assigned to it by the Board.
[Auditor's attendance]
(3) The auditor is entitled to receive notice of every meeting of the audit
committee and to attend and be heard at each meeting and, if so requested by a
member of the audit committee, the auditor shall attend any or every meeting of
the committee.
[Calling meeting]
(4) The auditor or a member of the audit committee may call a meeting of the
committee.
[Report on wholly-owned subsidiaries]
70. The Corporation shall forthwith notify the Minister and the President of
the Treasury Board of the name of any corporation that becomes or ceases to be a
wholly-owned subsidiary of the Corporation. Report to Parliament
[Annual report]
71. (1) The Corporation shall, as soon as possible after, but in any case
within three months after, the end of each financial year, submit an annual
report on the operations of the Corporation in that year concurrently to the
Minister and to the President of the Treasury Board, and the Minister shall cause
a copy of the report to be laid before each House of Parliament on any of the
first fifteen days on which that House is sitting after the Minister receives it.
[Reference to committee]
(2) An annual report laid before a House of Parliament pursuant to subsection
(1) stands permanently referred to such committee of that House or of both Houses
of Parliament as may be designated or established to review matters relating to
the business and activities of the Corporation.
[Form and contents]
(3) The annual report of the Corporation shall include
(a) the financial statements of the Corporation referred to in section 60,
(b) the annual auditor's report referred to in subsection 62(1),
(c) a statement on the extent to which the Corporation has met its
objectives for the financial year,
(d) quantitative information respecting the performance of the Corporation,
including its wholly-owned subsidiaries, if any, relative to the Corporation's
objectives, and
(e) such other information in respect of the financial affairs of the
Corporation as is required by this Part or by the Minister to be included
therein, and shall be prepared in a form that clearly sets out information
according to the major businesses or activities of the Corporation and its
wholly-owned subsidiaries, if any.
PART IV
RELATED AND CONSEQUENTIAL
AMENDMENTS, REPEAL, TRANSITIONAL
AND COMING INTO FORCE
Related and Consequential Amendments
72. to 88. [Amendments]
Repeal
89. [Repeal]
Transitional
[Definitions]
90. (1) In this section,
["Executive Committee" "bureau..."]
"Executive Committee" means the Executive Committee of the Commission, as it
existed on the day immediately before the coming into force of section 80;
["former Act" "loi abrogée"]
"former Act" means the Broadcasting Act, chapter B-9 of the Revised Statutes
of Canada, 1985.
[Pending proceedings]
(2) Any proceedings pending before the Commission or Executive Committee on
the day immediately before the coming into force of this subsection shall be
taken up and continued before the Commission under and in conformity with this
Act.
[Continuation of previous] orders, etc.]
(3) Every decision, order, rule and regulation issued, rendered or made under
the former Act by the Commission or Executive Committee that is in force on the
coming into force of this subsection and that is not inconsistent with this Act
or any other Act of Parliament shall be deemed to have been issued, rendered or
made by the Commission under this Act.
[Continuation of directions]
(4) Every direction issued to the Commission by the Governor in Council under
the former Act that is in force on the day immediately preceding the coming into
force of this subsection and that is not inconsistent with this Act or any other
Act of Parliament shall be deemed to have been issued by the Governor in Council
under this Act.
[Continuation of licences]
(5) Every broadcasting licence authorizing the carrying on of a broadcasting
undertaking issued under the former Act and in effect on the day immediately
preceding the coming into force of this subsection shall continue in effect for
the unexpired portion of its term as if it were a licence authorizing the
carrying on of a broadcasting undertaking, issued under this Act and may be
amended, renewed, suspended or revoked in the manner provided in this Act.
[Full-time members of Commission]
91. (1) Every person holding office as Chairperson, Vice-Chairperson or
full-time member of the Commission immediately before the coming into force of
section 76 shall continue in office and be deemed to have been appointed under
section 3 of the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission Act,
as amended by this Act, to hold office for the remainder of the term for which
the person had been appointed before the coming into force of section 76.
[Part-time members of Commission]
(2) The part-time members of the Commission holding office immediately before
the coming into force of section 76 shall cease to hold office on the coming into
force of that section.
[Directors of Corporation]
92. Every person holding office as a director of the Corporation immediately
before the coming into force of section 36 shall continue in office and be deemed
to have been appointed under that section to hold office for the remainder of the
term for which the person had been appointed before the coming into force of that
section. Coming into Force
[Coming into force]
*93. This Act or any provision thereof shall come into force on a day or days
to be fixed by order of the Governor in Council.
*[Note: Act in force June 4, 1991, see SI/91-86.]
SCHEDULE
(Sections 24, 25 and 30)
1. Any licence issued pursuant to C.R.T.C. Decision No. 87-140 of February 23,
1987.
2. Any licence issued pursuant to C.R.T.C. Decision No. 88-181 of March 30,
1988.
3. Any licence issued in connection with the operation of any radio or
television station owned and operated by the Corporation.
Opera 7.50 adds several new features and improves on the innovations of Opera 7.
Release Notes
On upgrade, all e-mail from previous Opera versions will be reindexed for faster searching and sorting. This means that e-mail indexed by Opera 7.50 will not be compatible with previous versions of Opera.
Opera 7.50 (Beta 1 and final release both) fixes a Telnet URI handler vulnerability as reported in iDEFENSE Security Advisory 05.12.04. Users of earlier Opera versions are adviced to upgrade.
Opera 7.50 introduces a new toolbar setup. Previous toolbar customizations will be overridden on upgrade and can no longer be used.
If you would like to see a (more detailed) listing of changes since Beta 1 only, there is a separate changelog.
Changelog
Changes since Opera 7.23:
At first glance
User interface redesigned
Chat client
RSS newsfeeds
Fast full-text indexing of e-mail messages
Support for spell check
Graphical smileys in chat and e-mail
New chat client
Uses the IRC (Internet Relay Chat) protocol.
New chat panel lists visited chat rooms and status of on-line contacts.
Textual smileys are automatically transformed to graphical ones.
Supports transferring files by the DCC (Direct Client-to-Client) protocol.
Opera Mail
Faster indexing and searching of e-mail messages
Learning spam filter and custom filters
Spam filter will be set to "learning" on upgrade regardless of previous setting.
New option to "Mark as spam".
Marking message as "Not spam" no longer adds sender to contacts.
Ctrl+X removes message from any filter
Spam filter will be set as learning when upgrading from 7.23 regardless of previous setting.
Unseen messages will now have the "Not visited" link color specified in Preferences > Page style > My link style.
Graphical smileys introduced.
"Organization" e-mail header is now indexed for searching.
Removed mailing lists from "Active contacts" access points.
Fixed problem with forwarding .txt attachments
Fixed problem entering Korean characters in search fields
Added support for subscription to RSS newsfeeds
"Newsfeeds" added as access point in the e-mail panel.
RSS 0.9x, 1.0 and 2.0 are supported.
Clicking RSS links automatically adds newsfeed to Opera Mail.
Auto-detection of RSS file (link rel="alternate") displayed in navigation bar.
Improved handling of contacts with multiple addresses.
Improved handling of invalid List-ID headers.
Improved threading of e-mail and newsgroup messages.
Improved handling of malformed MBOX files
Improved handling of invalid Content-Types in plain text messages
Unread message count shown in mail panel selector button.
Unseen e-mail messages have same color as unvisited links.
Open access points are remembered between sessions.
Multipart message improvements.
Added setting (Preferences > Programs and paths: "Enable e-mail and chat") to allow for disabling all e-mail, news and chat functionality
User interface
New default skin.
New "Tools" menu.
New "Customize toolbars" dialog for placing and customizing all toolbars.
Toolbar version has been updated; old toolbar customizations will no longer work.
The Hotlist has changed names to panels.
Panel items, such as e-mail filters, are now single-click.
'Links' and 'Info' panels and the zoom drop-down now work also for e-mail and chat.
Made advertisement preferences consistent with first time setup dialog; clicking on Google ads turns off the main bar, selecting "generic" turns it on.
Added "Show only when needed" option for page bar.
Added support for Aspell spell checker (requires separate install).
Removed hard-coded fallback text color (black) for labels.
Allowed for more user interface text strings to be translated.
New "Search" panel with multiple search fields
Enabled favicons in bookmarks and personal bar.
"New page" button added to page bar.
"Reuse existing page" now includes e-mail pages.
Newly downloaded skin will not be saved if user opts not to keep it.
Opera6.ini
Added setting to make lists with alternating background colors more accessible (disabled by default):
[User Prefs]
Color List Row Mode=1
Added setting for controlling support of the autocomplete="off" attribute in FORMs (disabled by default):
[User Prefs]
AutocompleteOff=0
Added setting for reverting panel's new single-click behaviour:
[HotListWindow]
Hotlist Single Click=0
Keyboard and Mouse
Improved and expanded support for drag and drop
New mouse gestures. Rewind: Shift+Gesture left, Fast Forward: Shift+Gesture right.
"Document Window" added to list of sections in the shortcut editors for keyboard and mouse.
Keyboard shortcut changes:
5 now rightly toggles between maximized and restored page.
i toggles between split and maximized view in e-mail pages.
Re-introduced Ctrl+F4 for toggling panels with the panel selector.
Ctrl+click on image opens "Save image" dialog.
Open new page: Ctrl+N in MDI, Ctrl+Shift+N in SDI.
Open new window: Ctrl+Alt+N in MDI, Ctrl+N in SDI.
Close page: Ctrl+W. Closing last page in SDI closes Opera.
Close (application) window: Ctrl+Shift+W in MDI, Ctrl+W in SDI.
Changed keyboard shortcut for "Duplicate page" from Ctrl+Shift+N to Ctrl+Shift+Alt+N.
Changed keyboard shortcut for "Close all" to Ctrl+Shift+N to Ctrl+Shift+Alt+W.
CSS 'overflow' content can be scrolled using keyboard or mousewheel
Display and standards
Overall stability improvements.
Overall CSS support improvements.
Added support for SCRIPTs in XML documents.
Improved JavaScript support.
Improved display of HTML entities in XML documents.
Added support for the XMP HTML tag.
Added support for inheritance of CSS background properties.
Improvements of bidirectional text support.
Added support for DOM_Runtime and DOMEnvironment.
Privacy and security
Individual cookies can now be edited in the server manager
Increased maximum number of cookies per server to 30
Within groups, the blogs are listed alphabetically.
The first row (Linkers, Thinkers, etc.) is the most subjective. Bloggers in boldface are typical of the category. Another way of distinguishing between Linkers & Thinkers would be frequency of posts; Linkers would be the most frequent updaters.
The second row, also topically organized, is less subjective (Military, Religious). Included are a few reasonable Liberal bloggers.
The third row, is demographically organized (Women, Minorities, etc.). It is non-PC.
Comments, challenges, omissions, etc. are invited. In particular, I would like to re-categorize blogs out of the general catch-all "Linker/Thinker" group. The list was based on TTLB's Ecosystem Traffic Rankings, down to blogs with 100/day.
If you'd like to be included, email me or Trackback to the post. The 100 hits/day is not a strict cut-off, but it will be easier to include small blogs that fit into the less numerous groups.
+++URL: http://www.liverpoolfc.tv/team/squad/owen/
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Happy Fun Pundit: Top 10 Things I Hate About Star Trek
Well, the war in Iraq is over, the reconstruction seems to be going about as well as can be expected, and the economy is starting to come back. In short, it's a slow news day. So this would be a good time to clear the palate before another world crisis divides our attention. On then, to:
Top 10 Things I Hate About Star Trek
10.
Noisy doors.
You can't walk three feet in a starship without some door whooshing or screeching at you. My office building has automatic sliding doors. They're dead silent. If those doors went "wheet!" every time a person walked through them, about once a month some guy in accounting would snap and go on a shooting rampage. Sorry Scotty, the IEEE has revoked your membership until you learn to master WD-40
9.
The Federation.
This organization creeps me out. A planet-wide government that runs everything, and that has abolished money. A veritable planetary DMV. Oh sure, it looks like a cool place when you're rocketing around in a Federation Starship, but I wonder how the guy driving a Federation dump truck feels about it?
And everyone has to wear those spandex uniforms. Here's an important fact: Most people, you don't want to see them in spandex. You'd pay good money to not have to see them. If money hadn't been abolished, that is. So you're screwed.
8.
Reversing the Polarity.
For cripes sake Giordi, stop reversing the polarity of everything! It might work once in a while, but usually it just screws things up. I have it on good authority that the technicians at Starbase 12 HATE that. Every time the Enterprise comes in for its 10,000 hour checkup, they've gotta go through the whole damned ship fixing stuff. "What happened to the toilet in Stateroom 3?" "Well, the plumbing backed up, and Giordi thought he could fix it by reversing the polarity."
Between Scotty's poor lubrication habits and Geordi's damned polarity reversing trick, it's a wonder the Enterprise doesn't just spontaneously explode whenever they put the juice to it.
7.
Seatbelts.
Yeah, I know this one is overdone, but you'd think that the first time an explosion caused the guy at the nav station to fly over the captain's head with a good 8 feet of clearance, someone would say, "You know, we might think of inventing some furutistic restraining device to prevent that from happening." So of course, they did make something like that for the second Enterprise (the first one blew up due to poor lubrication), but what was it? A hard plastic thing that's locked over your thighs. Oh, I'll bet THAT feels good in the corners. "Hey look! The leg-bars worked as advertised! There goes Kirk's torso!"
6.
No fuses.
Every time there's a power surge on the Enterprise the various stations and consoles explode in a shower of sparks and throw their seatbelt-less operators over Picard's head. If we could get Giordi to stop reversing the polarity for a minute, we could get him to go shopping at the nearest Starship parts store and pick up a few fuses. And while he's shopping, he could stop at an intergalactic IKEA and pick up a few chairs for the bridge personnel. If you're going to put me in front of a fuseless exploding console all day, the least you could do is let me sit down.
5.
Rule by committee.
Here's the difference between Star Trek and the best SF show on TV last year:
Star Trek:
Picard: "Arm photon torpedoes!" Riker: "Captain! Are you sure that's wise?" Troi: "Captain! I'm picking up conflicting feelings about this! And, it appears that you're a 'fraidy cat." Wesley: "Captain, I'm just an annoying punk, but I thought I should say something." Worf: "Captain, can I push the button? This is giving me a big Klingon warrior chubby." Giordi: "Captain, I think we should reverse the polarity on them first." Picard: "I'm so confused. I'm going to go to my stateroom and look
pensive."
Firefly:
Captain: "Let's shoot them." Crewman: "Are you sure that's wise?" Captain: "Do you know what the chain of command is? It's the chain I'll BEAT YOU WITH until you realize who's in command." Crewman: "Aye Aye, sir!"
4.
A Star Trek quiz:
Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and 'Ensign Gomez' beam down to a planet. Which one isn't coming back?
3.
Technobabble.
The other night, I couldn't get my car to start. I solved the problem by reversing the polarity of the car battery, and routing the power through my satellite dish. The resulting subspace plasma caused a rift in the space-time continuum, which created a quantum tunnelling effect that charged the protons in the engine core, thus starting my car. Child's play, really. As a happy side-effect, I also now get the Spice Channel for free.
2.
The Holodeck.
I mean, it's cool and all. But do you really believe that people would use it to re-create Sherlock Holmes mysteries and old-west saloons? Come on, we all know what the holodeck would be used for. And we also know what the worst job on the Enterprise would be: Having to squeegie the holodeck clean.
1.
The Prime Directive.
How stupid is this? Remember when Marvin the Martian was going to blow up the Earth, because it obstructed his view of Venus? And how Bugs Bunny stopped him by stealing the Illudium Q36 Space Modulator? Well, in the Star Trek universe, Bugs would be doing time. Probably in a room filled with Roseanne lookalikes wearing spandex uniforms, walking through doors going WHEET! all day. It would be hell. At least until the Kaboom. The Earth-shattering Kaboom.
Posted by Dan at May 10, 2003 11:52 PM
Comments
I think I haven't laughed this hard in WEEKS. And I used to be a Trekkie. (I lost my Trekkiedom when they made fun of Capitalists and abolished money--that was way too lefty for me...)
I really LIKED Firefly...why did they cancel this great show while they keep renewing crap like Friends and Will & Grace? Ratings be damned...Big Daddy wants his Firefly back!
I always thought the most unrealistic thing about Star Trek wasn't the technology, but the fact that nobody was gunning for the next promotion. No Office Politics in the Future? Gimme a Break!
I'm a Trekkie, this f-ing made me rupture my spleen laughing.
And another thing, I've been a Trek fan since the first show until Enterprise, but I will say without any hesitation that Firefly was the best SF that ever showed up on my TV. Why they killed it with scheduling poison and little advertising I will never know. It had the same kind of fan fanaticism that ST did. But it was too clever to survive. The suits didn't understand it.
And how come every time they came upon an "advanced" race, they were always dour and dead serious? I would think that a truely advanced race would be happy, jovial, great guys to be around, not a bunch of pompous, self-rightous snobs.
I agree completely about Firefly. I also think it was the best SF show I've seen on television. It was smart, funny, had good characters, AND it portrayed a future that is at least plausibly realistic.
The whole Federation thing always bugged me. There's no need for money any more? Does that mean there's no scarcity? Can I have the Feds whip up my own starship for me? Or are there limits? If there are limits, who decides who gets what?
The political structure of Star Trek was silly. The portrayal of the future is totally unrealistic and flies in the face of what we know about human nature.
And you'd never see Picard kick a handcuffed bad guy into an engine intake.
Yeah, the Feddies are a funny bunch. Who ever said that a primitive race should control the Federation and have so much power? The Klingons should have eiliminated the Federation back in the classic Star Trek...or even the Q continuum should have been able to abolish the Federation before Picard was ever born. Think about it.
Yeah- I did enjoy watching the Firefly captain kick that bad boy into the intake. I wonder what Geordie would have said about that. Do you think the reason all the doors were so WEEET'y was because of all that polarity reversing? Not to mention that would have made the Enterprise- and the Voyager- into intergalactic versions of a Rover P3, or maybe a Triumph TR4.
On the subject of promotions, it amused me that, by the time STTNG ended, virtually everybody on the ship held the rank of Commander. And, yet, everybody pretty much continued to perform their same jobs. (This was as bad as the geriatric TOS crew in the movies all having the rank of Captain. . .but still performing the jobs they had as Ensigns.)
I've never seen Firefly but will have to look for the reruns. I really liked Babylon 5, though. A much more realistic view of humanity's future, I'm afraid.
Another thing I hate about Star Trek is they way they always sucking up to one another:
Warf: Captain, Admiral Whoosits is hailing us.
Picard: Woosits! He's the finest Admiral in the fleet!
Everybody, and I mean everybody, is considered the finest in their field. Nobody ever says "Oh, him? I remember him, he was a panty sniffer back in the academy! What an asshole!"
I also agree that Firefly was the best thing I've seen on TV for a long time. Anybody know if they will release the show on DVD?
Yes, Joss Whedon has said that Firefly will be released in the summer in DVD format, in widescreen. AND, the three unseen episodes that were in the can before cancellation will also be on the DVD.
And, he's still trying to keep FF alive. There are rumors of a movie deal in the works.
I sure hope so. That show deserves another chance.
And another thing about the Holodeck is it was always malfunctioning. It's all fun and games until you're trapped in a Holodeck with Jack the Ripper and the safety's off. And if it's not the Holodeck, it's the transporter sending you to an alternate universe, or the engines screw up and send you back in time. The last time MY car broke down, it didn't send ME hurtling through the space-time continuum. Hell, it seemed like these guys were going back in time every other week. Heaven forbid someone did a Holodeck simulation of a transporter during a tachyon storm, the clocks would look like something out of a Dali painting.
About the holodeck: Giordi would either reverse the polarity so what ever was on there would get sucked into space. Or they would just use the transporters
and oh that would be a whole new series: Garbage men of the Federation.
I laughed until I hurt. I feel so stupid. What channel did Firefly premiere on and of course the suits understood it; It wasn't PC. Anyone who understands command knows it is by committee.
Dr Who reversed the polarity on NEUTRONS? Neutrons don't flow, and have no polarity! This is what you get when you let Brits do Sci-Fi. Oh, and Red Dwarf. You get that too.
1)Picard must have set a record for surrendering or considering surrendering the Enterprise. Of course, he's French, so must be in the genes.
2)I have always believed that the TOS Federation was sort of like the UN in Korea - lots of different nations under USA command fighting really bad guys. TNG was the UN in Bosnia - hapless, hopeless, and really clueless.
3)TNG never met a battle it couldn't duck out of - I really think for TNG they had "First, Do No Harm" engraved over the Star Fleet Academy gates.
Well, I love Star Trek, and this list is s riot - (we won't talk about trying to not to pee ourselves...) but as for the best scifi show on TV that was cancelled this year? .... It wasn't Firefly (although that was a good show). Doesn't anyone around here watch Farscape? Now THAT was a good show and it's too bad the bean counters at Scifi screwed the pooch by cancelling it early.
The reason they never showed the bathrooms on the Enterprise was that it would be too disorienting for viewers. You see, Geordi had reversed the polarity of the artificial gravity and mounted the 'fixtures' on the new floor, which was actually the ceiling.
Why? So the crew of the Enterprise could go where no one had gone before.
Thanks to Dave Mac for mentioning Farscape. I agree; it was the best SF show on tv. And it's not dead yet- Brian Henson and family just bought back all of the shows his dad owned (that the family foolishly sold to Vivendi a couple of years ago) and Farscape was on the list!! As soon as the transaction is approved by the board at EM-tv(about ten weeks), the Henson family will take over again. Yay!!
If you would like a chance to meet other Scapers and the Cast, go to www.bluelady.org and read about ScaperCon. This is not a professionally run Con but is run by the fans for the fans and is an enormous party. Farscaape Rocks!! Rock on!!
Out-STANDING! Somebody has finally given the most hackneyed, PC sci-fi show in history a proper bollicking.
Reminds me of Scott Adams in "The Dilbert Future", trying to explain why the holodeck would be the last invention the human race ever came up with. I bet the commonest use of phasers, transporters and McCoy's "anabolic protoplazer" would not be in the service of humanity, but by fraternities committing innovative pranks. Think of the things you could beam into the Dean's office. For example, things with their sphincters anabolically protoplazed shut.
You forgot one of Geordi's favourite solutions to engineering problems - "ejecting the warp core". Seems to me that if you are 500 light-years from home with nothing left but a box of AA Duracells and the Starfleet equivalent of a 2.5 horsepower outboard, ejecting the warp core would be the third-last thing you would consider, just above "abandoning ship" and "self-destruct".
By the way, the "self destruct" option? Never bought it. Can you imagine a modern (manned) warship or aircraft rigged to blow up on command? We spend enough time and money trying to figure out ways to keep them from exploding to build something in to do so on purpose. Why build in a circuit to do it for you? Especially with all those sparks flying around the bridge every time the Enterprise hits a rut in the space-time continuum. Of course, I can understand the rationale of having the computer do it. The only way to sink your own sub, for example, short of ramming something, is to purposefully detonate a torpedo or other weapon on board - and can you imagine what a crewman would say if the captain told him to drop a grenade in the inspection hatch in order to keep the Romulans from getting their hands on the ship? I can guess - it would be mostly one-syllable, anglosaxon words.
Finally, bravo on the "committee leadership" issue. Nothing stuck in my craw more than Picard getting second-guessed by tubbo Riker, or even (gasp!) Troi, the spandex psychologist. She would've been picking up more tha vague feelings of discontent from me, I'll tell ya. Picard should have posted the entire bridge crew to a Klingon cruiser for a few weeks' refresher training in "followership". I'd've paid good money to hear him tell Riker, "Look Will, shut yer gob or you'll be cleaning the heads with your toothbrush the next time Laforge reverses polarity".
I have to agree with all of these, especially the Firefly comments. And to the person who asked about Firefly coming to DVD, I read a lot of rumors recently that they(FOX) would be releasing all the aired and a couple of un-aired episodes on DVD in the near future. I hope so.
Good comments, all, but you're overlooking one obvious problem about the holodeck: scheduling.
Given 4 holdecks on an Enterprise-D, running 24/7/365, each crewmember is allocated less than one hour per week. Yet, Geordi, Data, Barclay (or whoever) always find a holdeck empty and available for their use.
More realistic: Geordi rushes to Holodeck 3 to recreate Leah Brahms again, only to find it already occupied, running a program called "Debbie does Deneba."
Well OF COURSE it's unrealistic! Some of the commenters are saying that as if it was a bad thing. If you really want realistic turn off the TV and live your life.
Anyway, great list. Hilarious. I've been a Star Trek fan since the very beginning. It's certainly possible to recognize the problems and laugh at stuff like this list and still think it's a great show.
1). The immaterial energy creature problem: 45% of all problems are caused by same.
1a). Said creature is never found by a standard sensor scan.
1aa). Now that I think of it, did a standard sensor scan ever pan out?
1b). Luckily, a modified tachyon burst would invariably take care of the problem.
Conclusion: LaForge should bite the bullet and install a Large Red Button on Picard's chair arm: when pushed, it would generate a modified tachyon burst at will. Picard could then assure himself of a dull tour of duty by pushing the LRB at the first sign of trouble, or, indeed, whenever bored.
Moe
PS: Oh, yeah, no pockets on the uniforms. That was a bright idea...
>>Hey look! The leg-bars worked as advertised! There goes Kirk's torso!"
TOO funny.
I read an interview with Troi one time, she was in a scene with Picard and said, "He's hiding something Captain." Patrick Steward yelled back
"Of course he's hiding something you stupid cow!"
She yelled back, "I don't write this crap. I just say it, don't yell at me you ass."
Considering how far-right some of the commentary is here, and how leftist, populist, and Humanist Gene Roddenberry and Star Trek's writers were, I'm surprised anyone here likes Star Trek at all.
So, to all you Ferengi here: Firefly was good. But Farscape was better. :)
The most unrealistic thing about ST is, there are no contractors. I work in the federal government, and nothing, absolutely nothing, gets built or done without contractors.
Yes, the 10 things I hate about Star Trek was very amusing. And, sadly, downright accurate.
But unfortunately, that's what happens when a sequel show (ST:TNG)that was supposed to be about some semi-utopian future is created in the era when Political Correctness was both embryonic and should be retroactively aborted. But, since time-travel is an impossiblity, a "retroactive abortion" would be moot.
I agree with the whole technobabble issue. I think that while the technobabble was good for the series (it gave it a sense that certain things did at least work on a starship), it may not necessarily have been a good thing for the TNG movies. The idea of a feature film on the big screen is to try and draw in the largest mainstream audience possible. The classic Trek movies got this right. Back then, the technobabble (herein referred to as TB) was non existent, except for the occasional mention of the warp or impulse engines, or phasers, or photon torpedoes. Very abstract. Very analog. Easy to understand. (hey, that almost sounds like an advertising slogan.)
The Next Generation movies on the other hand, while good for Trek fans, were chock full of TB goodness (sarcastic). Everything was rooted in precision. The common movie goer who may simply have been looking for a good escapist science fiction movie(and on the unlikely chance had never even heard of Star Trek) might find the NEXT GENERATION movies to be a bit overwhelming in the TB department.
To give a good example of the simple vs. complex nature of the classic films vs. TNG films, let us utilize a controlled setting here. A scene from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan as played out in the original version, and as it would be played out by TNG.
CLASSIC:
SPOCK: (scanning) Sporadic energy readings, portside-aft. Could be an impulse turn.
NEXT GEN:
DATA: (scanning) Sporadic energy readings in the tertiary EM band. Judging by the dissipation rate of plasma, I would say it was an impulse turn in the portside-aft arc.
I would think that the common movie goer would go for brand "A" in our Taster's Choice test here.
I don't know why I posted all this. Just putting in my two cents worth. For all it's worth, I have been, and always shall be a Star Trek fan, as long as I like the stories.
And, just for the record: I think the biggest problems with the first three Next Gen movies (despite the fact that First Contact was a great story) is that they ended up translating almost perfectly to the small screen, thus looking like overblown two hour episodes, instead of big screen epics. At least NEMESIS (my favorite of ALL the Trek films now) did accomplish this.
So I can't help but keep reading through all of these and it suddenly dawns on me that all of the series mentioned allowed people to walk around on new planets without the breathing apparatus or other life sustaining gear. Give me a break, just in our galaxy there is only one planet we have found that we can just "beam down and roam about" on... Of course, the obvious answer is that they were genetically manipulating the crew for the atmosphere that is present, but you think they would have mentioned that.
Also in the holodeck arena, I think they would have come up with a Virtual Reality sized one to allow usage in the state rooms; but that is just me...
Seatbelts: They don't need seatbelts, they need artificial gravity that doesn't go on the blink all the time. Remember, they're IN SPACE. If the artificial gravity keeps them to the deck, it shouldn't matter how that deck is spun around, unlike on earth.
Noisy doors: Not only are the doors noisy, but on the original show they're BRIGHT RED! In fact the whole show had WAY TOO MUCH RED, to show off NBC's living color.
The Federation: Planet-wide? More like UNIVERSE-wide! The ultimate liberal big-government wet dream. The US and Canada are federations. That means the constituent units (states and provinces) are not sovereign entities (can't wage war, mint money etc.) Imagine a universe where your whole PLANET has to answer to bureaucrats in another galaxy! Yech!
Ummm...it's fictional television. That's why they don't have money, Geordi can fix anything by reversing polarity, and no one hits the can: BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT MAKES GOOD TV. If it got ratings, they would cut scenes in the middle to pause for someone taking a leak. But it's not, so they don't.
Attention people of Trekdom: please do not analyze this show in any other context other than, "It's a fricken TV show."
The problem with technobabble isn't that it's techie, or complex, or even that it's gibberish.
The problem is that it is used as a big ole' crutch by lazy writers who have backed themselves into a scriptural corner.
It's nothing more than a space-ified version of Batman's utility belt. Just as all hope seems to be lost, and the dynamic duo is being lowered into the shark cage, it turns out that Batman has bat-shark repellent in his utility belt! Yay!
The thing is, on Batman it was a JOKE. It was intended to be high camp. On Star Trek, it was a way for sloppy writers to solve problems without having to think too hard. Blech.
I have met the God in the Machine, and he had very ugly sideburns.
Food made in a food processor probably has no fat content so the uniforms will always fit nicely, and it probably creates no waste products which is why we never see toilets. This theory explains why the Enterprise crew was so shocked when the Hillbilly's they were transporting started cooking food aboard, it wasn't the open fire they were freaked about.
The thing that always bugged me so much about Star Trek was that it was so freakin' easy to take over the Enterprise. Every other week, the bad guys were showing up and locking the crew out of their own computers (probably Windows ME). Then they'd lock all the doors while LaForge was busy trying to reverse polarity and, voila, the'd sail her off wherever they wanted to. You'd think they'd have invented better security after the eighth or tenth time!
Ooh, look, it's Mr. Cold-Water-of-Rationality Man. You know what? I'll analyze whatever the hell I want to in whatever context I want. For instance, what's with the lack of popular culture? Everyone is a big Shakespeare or Boring Traditional Ten-Thousand-Year-Old Vulcan-Wedding-Song fan. As if. Where is the crappy pop music and lousy for-the-masses theater? (Whether televized, holodeckized, or whatever.)
I loved Star Trek and the List was a real hoot to boot. One of the things that was bother some about Star Trek is that in spite of it's claims to respect individuality, they lived in a Police State. More or less what the Feds did was waste time flying around all day and night looking for some sort of trouble and finding it. I would think a Star Trek future would be rather boring. Day afer day wearing spandex all the time. they never have a jeans day day either. certainly nothing comfortable. yeah and it seems the Borg were sucessful in killing every inventor of the seat belt. The rest are morons since no one has figured out that the chairs really could use restraints. I intertial dampers are supposed to do that but always seem to fail when you need them. The comment on the fuses is funny too. they always seems to be frying something on that ship.
I have been a low-level trekkie for years (ie, like to watch the shows but don't dress up as one for sf cons) but this hits a lot of points dead-on. had me LOL.
That's one reason I like ST:enterprise better than any of the others. They don't pretend they can kick everyone's butt that hey meet and they are more realistic (so far) in not pulling magical fixes out of engineering. Archer is less of a dork than Picard or other captains. Even the opening theme and images are best.
Besides, Tupal is just hotter than anyone ever on any ST before, particularly in the decon chamber. ;-) (yes, even hotter'n 7-of-9, though close)
Too bad it'll be years before ST:Ent comes out on DVD. I have no interest in seeing the older ST's on DVD, but would buy ST:Ent today if it were available.
All serious problems can be solved or avoided with a trip into the Jefferies tubes. Seriously, if I had to get at whatever whachamagigit as often as they do, I'd put it right behind one of those wall panels - not in some god-forsaken place on deck 22.
In the future, buttons don't need to be labeled with helpful labels like "hail" or "fire torpedoes". The ensigns of the future will know what that button is for by it's number or placement on the board.
Isn't it kind of sad that the post getting the most comments isn't even remotely political? Oh well, gotta go, Star Trek is on.
Oh G_d don't get me started on ST: Enterprise! Capt. Archer is dull. I prefer a cultured captain like Picard but a Don Juan space cowboy like Kirk is at least interesting. And T'Pal is NOT a proper Vulcan. She has far less control of her emotions than Spock who was half-human.
Oh...I almost forgot what I really came back here for. Regarding #2. Yes I do believe that people would recreate Sherlock Holmes mysteries and Old West saloons as well as a lot of other fantasies. And don't forget, there was that episode where Riker created his Perfect Woman, a sultry thing named Minuet. Remember this dialog? (might not be word-for-word correct):
Riker:"How real are you?"
Minuet:"How real do you need me to be?
I think it's pretty clear what was going on there, don't you?
This is too funny. Remember the Star Trek parody that was on Dr. Demento? The USS Boobyprise. The toilets backed up into the warp drive and Scotty tried fixing it by sticking a wiener into the drive. It didn't fix the problem but Scotty was wondering if they had a "wee bit of mustard" on the bridge. Kirk looking for an alien to fall in love with before the end of the show. When the alarm went off it sounded...
#4: Actually, you could stop at "Kirk and Spock beam down to the planet." The Captain and First Officer both off the ship in a possibly hazardous zone? No, you send Ensign Gomez and Spaceman First Class Dribble. If they happen to make it back, and found something really important, then you can let Spock go investigate. With a squad of Marines to make sure he gets back. But you don't leave the ship in the hands of Scotty unless it's docked at Starfleet.
Whomever wrote this isn't as up to date on
things as he/she may think. Personally it sounds
to me that someone just likes to complain. It is
sad when someone also doesn't UNDERSTAND a genre;
nobody cleans the holodeck it cleans itself, the
panels erupt EVEN with circuit breakers as the
feedback of the powergrid is in gigawatt range
and will traverse any available conduit, obese
people are RARE in TREK as synthetic nematodes have been put into them. There are only 2 things I do agree with in this posting:
1. Yes, LaForge did invert polarities WAY too
many times. I look at the writers needing some
story ideas from current novelists.
2. Yes, "Firefly" is/was a good series. It died
way too soon for me, hell it was just starting to
really get going deep. Hopefully SCI-FI will pick
it up where the network fumbled the ball.
P.S. If the technobabble bothers you, a dictionary
would do you some good. Take a class in Latin.
Every time they encounter something unusual, the energy readings are "off the scale." Why don't the ever recalibrate the energy sensors sothat they're operating on a useful scale?
* In modern days, it doesn't take a gigawatt to power a console, as evidenced by the fact that they managed to power it to film things in real life and it didn't take a gigawatt. Only an idiot would consistently run gigawatts to consoles, over and over again, that have no use for that much power. And no, it won't traverse "any available circuit" or it would *always* blow out the instant it was turned on, it wouldn't wait for someone to stand in front of it while the ship was being shot at.
* Latin only helps you understand how incredibly crappy the technobabble is; it's just random latin things strung together and hung either on "tachyons" (physics has named them but they almost certainly don't exist) or something ending in "-ions" that also doesn't exist and follows no discernable rules. It's still crap.
I mention this because if the authors didn't think exactly the way people like you seem to, perhaps lists like this posting wouldn't need to be made. Which would be a pity in a wierd way, since they are pretty funny.
And let's not forget two of my favorites: "You know, that technology we discovered/invented last week would sure come in handy now, but it seems we've all forgotten about it, even Data." and "Gosh, the [technology] we had last week would have been sufficient to save the day but it seems that our technology's power dropped by 80% this week and now we can't save the world. Pity we can't wait until next week where the technology will suddenly be a thousand times more powerful... still not powerful enough to solve next week's problem but it sure would handily solve this week's..."
Love the list. If you've never seen the original Star Trek blooper reel, by the way, I envy you... because you get to experience it for the first time.
Seeing the generic engineer shoveling coal into the warp engines is simply hilarious.
I can sort of understand that in the future that automated production has eliminated most scarecity. But, how do you motivate people to do the worst jobs without financial incentive. It's one thing to be Chief O'Brien on the Flagship of the Fleet, Enterprise. The Captain depends on you and you have the Esprit De Corps of the Federation Fleet. But what if you're the maintinence tech on Dirtball IV. How did the Federation get you to take that job, supervising the sewer 'bots, when the pleasure planet Ryza beckons. Is it like the Soviet Union, with internal passports to tie everybody to their planet of origin? Another thing, what do people do all day? Practically everything is automated. There is no commerce, insurance, banking, telemarketing. If most people in the Federation have become members of the leisure class, where is the output of their collective brain effort?
What if you create unique art that you refuse to let the Feds make a bazillion copies of with replicator technology? Will they punish you if you trade your art for something else of value?
I guess my chief complaint about Next Gen is they took the humanity out of Human society.
STG:NG was at times as unintentionally hilarious as its predecessor. Who can forget Data punching a touchscreen and saying "manual override does not work, Captain". What ever happened to real switches? Maybe if Geordie had a valve or two to turn down in Engineering, he wouldn't be trying to reverse polarities or dump the warp core.
There's lots more, but something about applying violence to a deceased equine springs to mind...
Hey, at least they finaly came up with the leg restraints. During ST:TOS they didn't even think to get Scotty up on the bridge with some drywall screws and a DeWalt and bolt the freakin' chairs to the deck!
The holodeck was entirely necessary though. What else were you going to do when the writers, who had decided that the Federation had abolished money, quit when the didn't get the raises they were expecting? Gotta have something that the associate producers could used to concoct a story line!
Eric: the bloopers are even more fun when you had Roddenberry there explaining them. The guy shoveling coal into the engines was executive producer Gene L. Coon.
And Scott: someone, I forget who, but someone released the actual Technobabble Generator they used on one of the Trek series. It was a "one from column A, one from column B, one from column C" arrangement, and it worked like a charm. I'd bet you can still get the book it was in...
Jeremy: preach it brothah. Whyinheck would anyone use anything more than about 5 volts DC for a control circuit?
Lastly: Firefly is the best science-fiction series that ever aired on television, period, and the Fox television network needs to DIIIIIIEEEEEE DIE DIE DIE SCREAMING BLOODY DEATH DIE DIE.
"The whole Federation thing always bugged me. There's no need for money any more? Does that mean there's no scarcity? Can I have the Feds whip up my own starship for me? Or are there limits? If there are limits, who decides who gets what?"
I would bet that you could run a capitalist society without money, as long as you had good enough portable, wirelessly networked computers and the right software. Your automated bartering software would calculate the optimum series of deals to turn what you have into what you want. Everyone else's would too.
The problem with barter is that it's slow and cumbersome. Let the computers handle it, and things run a lot more smoothly. You might even end up better off than if you were using money, since natural and politically induced fluctuations in the supply of whatever you're using for money would be eliminated.
"I can sort of understand that in the future that automated production has eliminated most scarecity. But, how do you motivate people to do the worst jobs without financial incentive."
A massively automated society with magic replicators still has uses for trade. Such a society would basically trade three things: energy, services, and intellectual propery (a category that includes replicator blueprints or autofactory programs). Copyright law would take on an importance that we primitives couldn't even imagine.
For instance, what's with the lack of popular culture? Everyone is a big Shakespeare or Boring Traditional Ten-Thousand-Year-Old Vulcan-Wedding-Song fan. As if. Where is the crappy pop music and lousy for-the-masses theater? (Whether televized, holodeckized, or whatever.)
There's no pop culture in Star Trek because of two reasons:
1) Modern pop culture intellectual property costs MONEY to acquire the rights to use it. (The only reason Garibaldi loved Daffy Duck cartoons in Babylon 5 was that B5 was owned and distributed by Warner Brothers.)
2) When TV writers attempt to create the "pop culture of the future," you generally end up with really cheesy stuff like "Buck Rogers In The 25th Century" or "Battlestar Galactica."
Though I like the cheese of Buck Rogers, I certainly don't want it stinkin' up my Star Trek. :)
I didn't read every comment, so I hope this hasn't already been mentioned:
Regarding the Holodeck. . . it's "other uses" aside, how many times does that friggin' thing have to almost kill someone before people *stop* using it!?!
Glad to see some people standing up for the Time Lords. I should also point out that the 6th Doctor realized that, rather than reversing polarity, the secret was to "reverse the neutrality of the proton flow," which sounds pretty zen to me. So if you want the secret to traveling in time and space, there it is.
Regarding #4: Mad magazine pegged this way back. My dad had an old Mad Magazine from the 60's (I think) with a Star Blech parody article. Back then Mad's big schtick was to make everything a musical set to a semi-current song, and I still remember some of the lyrics to one of their songs (sung to the tune of "Aquarius")
"When your crew goes through the galaxy
To distant worlds, way past Mars
Be sure that your adventuring
Does no-ot kill off your stars
And you can do it with a crew that's dispensable, crew that's dispensable
Dispensable!
Minor actors that you bring on
Perish when you meet a Klingon!
One-time players not seen later
Vanish in a planet's crater!
Those of us who try to aid them
Fail because the script has made them
Dis-pens-i-ble! "
""I can sort of understand that in the future that automated production has eliminated most scarecity. But, how do you motivate people to do the worst jobs without financial incentive.""
"A massively automated society with magic replicators still has uses for trade. Such a society would basically trade three things: energy, services, and intellectual propery (a category that includes replicator blueprints or autofactory programs). Copyright law would take on an importance that we primitives couldn't even imagine."
Ken,
In a land of plenty, what could they trade you for your unique artistic contribution? Fame?
Additionally, what about the worst jobs? The ones that can get you killed? The ones with the worst hours or working conditions? Why would anybody take those jobs? Anti-social loners and masochists have been weeded out of the gene pool, so where're your potential employees to come from?
Productivity drives progress. No reward = No productivity = No progress.
Never mind the inadequate safety provisions in the holodeck and transporter: In the 24th century even the occult secret of the Otis elevator brake has been forgotten. The turbolifts threaten to plunge down the shaft at the slightest provocation.
(I'll give them some credit: The use of the holodeck for holo-wanking was actually implied several times, if mostly in subtext.)
Absolutely hilarious!!!!
But what I've always hated most aboout Star Trek (or at least since TNG) is that Starfleet Academy is the most exclusive school in the Galaxy, but half it's graduates are human. I mean Wesley Crusher, supposedly a super genius, couldn't get in because they only took one applicant from whatever part of the galaxy he was in, and someone else did better on the entrance tests. Apparently their quota for Earth is many, many times larger. Wouldn't a UN-style bureaucracy like the Federation have some form of affirmative action? And how the hell did Worf get in? I doubt his strength was taking tests. It's like the UN being controlled primarily by the US, without anyone minding.
Another thing that bugged me is when a new treaty would hand control of a planet over to some empire, like the Cardassians. These people has lived in peace and freedom with Federation protections and now all of a sudden their planet is being given to a fascist military dictatorship with a history of brutally occupying alien planets (i.e., Bajor), and the Federation has no problem with this. Of course, the UN wouldn't either.
Okay, a pretty funny list and all, but I feel I must point out one vital fact about point number 5 (rule by committee). In the Firefly example you cite, the lines you attribute to 'captain' are in actual fact said by Jayne, the mercenary. In that particular scene, the first officer and captain were unavoidably detained, and the rest of the group were trying to decide what to do. Shortly after Jayne delivers that line, he's sedated by the doctor, specifically so that they *can* decide on their course of action as a committee. In fact, (IMHO) the crew of the Serenity are generally a lot less strict about the chain of command than any crew of any of the Enterprises- would Scotty or Geordi ever refuse to obey orders because their Captain made some sarcastic comments about how they'd look in a fancy dress? I doubt it!
Firefly is, without a doubt, the best sci-fi series on TV since Babylon 5, at the very least, and the gross incompotence shown by Rupert Murdoch's minions at Fox in cancelling this show should be considered a crime against humanity.
The Federation - a union of myriad worlds, cultures and technologies. The wealth of a large protion of known space and the wherewithall to build starships to traverse same.
So how come every two-bit first contact the Enterprise stumbles upon comes as close to blowing up Enterprise as a M.O.A.B. does to bringing the Stone Age back to Iraq instead of being blown out of space with Federation superweapons?
Every alien aggressor seems to have either far superior technology or roughly equivilant, yet somehow more deadly, means of destruction. The Federation is looking more wimpy every day.
So I'm perusing the referrer logs, and I see that we've been linked by http://www.wilwheaton.net/.
Uh oh, thinks I. He's gonna be pissed about the "Captain, I'm just a punk" crack. But it turns out he actually thought the list was funny, and had some nice comments about it.
Wil Wheaton's a cool guy. From now on, he gets totally free access to Happy Fun Pundit!
What I kept waiting to see was Dr. Crusher "coming to" and realizing that any injured part of a body, short of the head itself, could be replaced instantly by a 'medical replicator.' Just beam on a new arm to replace that mangled or burned one--from stored replicator info and surgery table coordinates.
This would end all the bigger penis spam as well. "Say Doc, as long as I'm here..."
OMG-- I loved it!! I got every one of those does that make me a Trek geek??? ah who cares I love Star Trek!!!
BTW-- I reversed the polarity on my cell phone and the Aliens fom Area 51 would like to order a large cheese pizza, two 2 lieter cokes and 10 hot wings.
Y'all got low, low standards. Star Trek is like this enormous, swollen red balloon hanging in the air right in front of you just begging to be popped and the best the list can come up with is "they'd have used the holodeck for porn?". I can do funnier things with a hemmorhoid and a needle.
Another thing was the friggin' shields; they sucked. Two laser blasts and you were at the mercy of the borg. They would have been better off if they had covered the Enterprise in panty shields. Woulda saved money too.
Why did Giordi wear an automobile air filter on his head.
Also Sorry folks, while Firefly was good, Farscape was much better. I mean, who else can not only swap the character's personalities to the others' bodies, but also let them play with the newly acquired private bits? Come on, that is hilarious!!
The list was a hoot.
People, it's a freakin' TV show.
For those of you who analyzed, reanalyzed and over analyzed this-
Get. A. Life.
Your social retardation is showing.
one of the main things that has always bothered me about ST (any of them), is that if you can go warp 9, why the hell would you go warp 5? I'm no physicist, but once you're up to warp 9, can't you just shut off the engine and continue at warp 9 until the time comes when you have to slow down? Or does that whole "warp field" thing get in the way of inertia?
btw, the latter years of DS9 were the best ST stories ever, in my humble opinion.
"The Main Mistake made on Star Trek is they split an infinitive every damn time: To boldly go....!"
Contrary to what you may have heard in school... split infinitives are not necessarily wrong, and to avoid them often means introducing unnecessary awkwardness. Since about 1908 grammarians have been arguing that this is an out of date rule.
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Split_infinitive
Do a google search for split infinitive if you don't believe me.
I've been a Trekkie since the original show aired in Primetime and this list is GREAT! I was also a Farscape, Firefly and Babylon5 fan, as well. I think I may have a problem; there are no "sci-fi fans anonymous" in my town. Thanx for a great site.
LLAP
To all those guys and gals who make the comments like 'its only a TV Show, Get a Life', I say 'Get a life' right back at ya - we're just having fun !! Know what that is - or are you too anal ?
That is a very interesting observation. The short answer is probably to save on gas. However, what's really interesting is when they were doing warp 9 then went to a complete stop how come no one's guts plastered the view screen? We already know they don't wear seat belts. I mean, I myself have had some sudden stops, only once was I going over the speed of light and that was due to, um, cold medicine, but warp 9 to 0 that stop woulda been a mofo, if you know what I mean.
And how about the food replicator? I wonder if you could order chitlins or mountain oysters? Hmmm
I was always bothered because the rooms never had showers or toilets.
People keep making comments about the lack of Money on Star Trek. Hello what about Gold Pressed Latinum? I guess that was only used by races that couldn't make enough replicators.
Think about it though money would be pointless if we all had replicators. Just try to sell me something, i would tell you to piss off and replicate it once i got home.
You could also just replicate more money, it sort of confuses me why people didn't just replicate gold pressed latinum.
Another Wil Wheaton blog reader here. Say what you want about the guy's character on TNG but the man himself is hysterical. Therefore I trusted his opinion and came here...and promptly spit on my computer monitor from manaical cackling. Seriously there is Brisk all over the place now (missed the keyboard, thank a diety if you feel the need).
Firefly and Farscape (and many other cancelled shows that, admittedly, have their flaws) are the two best SF shows (or shows in general for that matter) that have ever graced my TV screen. Their creators, the evil Joss Whedon and David Kemper (both of whom i HATE in the best way possible), should seriously teach a class on how to write good TV. I mean even if Buffy is not your thing, you have to admit that 1) it is well written within its own context and 2) like most genre fiction, is a heck of a lot better than 90% of the rest of the frelling garbage on TV.
Oh no....I just used Scape slang in public...er sort of. Wait I did it again. I am a hopeless nerd who needs to get a life.
All these sci-fi shows take themselves too seriously for me. My favorite space TV show of all time was the short-lived QUARK (1978) with Richard Benjamin heading the intergalactic trash collection vessel. Who could not adore the "twins" Betty and her clone Betty? The way she (or she) would snap at plant-being Ficas "PLANT!"? Not for everyone, apparently.
One presumes that gold pressed latinum cannot be replicated, as Quark would have figured it out about six seconds after the Federation arriving on DS9 (Cardassian replicators are inferior creatures, as everyone knows).
The list was pretty funny. Especially the bit about fuses; I'd always wondered (even as a little kid) about the kind of people who'd arrange things so that every time a ship (with poor shielding and a crew exhibiting at best a variable willingness to actually shoot its enemies) got fired on, every console would explode.
Re: bathrooms? We've seen sinks and rooms with doors right next to said same (remember "Imaginary Friend"?).
And hear, hear re: everyone being captain and still having their same jobs. Almost as silly as Janeway's 7-year mission, in which no one got promoted at all. The only reason Naomi and Icheb got promoted in the alternate universe future place was that Chakotay and Janeway, obsessive-compulsive control freaks with a fixation on their own power over everyone else, were dead. It's not like she'd have to give them raises, after all (since there's no money in Starfleet, except when you want to buy fabric at Farpoint Station) At least we know that Scotty hung out on the Enterprise for decades because Kirk was cool and the Enterprise was the only ship doing anything interesting...
Analyzing this stuff is a blast. Especially considering the fact that most of America is content to analyze drivel like "Survivor: The Amazon" and "American Idol."
Last comment about all this. If the food replicator somehow got its polarity reversed, say by maintenance negligence by Giordi, and for a week all the crew had to eat for lunch and dinner was chili with beans, a side of boiled cabbage, a bran muffin for dessert, and hot black coffee and for breakfast there was only shredded wheat with prune juice, and hot black coffee. My guess is by day four without any restrooms on board, as pointed out by "the Nub", there'd be a crisis. The ship's gift shop probably couldn't handle the demand for toilet paper, adult diapers, and Glade Air Freshener. Yessir by day 7 you'd have a flying colostomy bag doing warp 9 for starbase 12 for the hoseout and the $500 detail.
Whenever the script writers were at a loss, they would screw around with time. You could count on at least 10 episodes a season where there were disruptions in the time-space continuum.
And why is that all aliens looked human except for funny foreheads?
1) Federation computers must be a hacker's paradise. Usual dilogue when someone tries to open a file they don't have access to:
Star Fleet Officer: Computer, open
Computer: Unable to comply
Officer: Computer, override authorization
2) When something malfunctions on the ship, Giordi's first response (before reversing polarity) is to run a Level 1 Diagnostic, which always shows everything is OK. Time to ditch the diagnostics, they never work.
You forgot one--"If you ever encounter an alien race, the vast majority (99%) will merely have a slightly bumpy nose or forehead--And dear GODS, they all wear spandex too!
Thus, the Great Fashion Atrocity of 3015...and clearly the only battle the Federation *lost*."
The top ten was pretty funny. Star Trek fan since I was kid in the 80s. I have to disagree that Firefly was the best SF show. If anyone mentions Farscape that was or is far the best SF show ever existed. To bad that it was raped and murdured by Scifi Channel. It still makes me mad to this day.
I always liked how the shields could only take 2 hits from an "inferior" vessel before they could barely hang on, but the Borq took hours to get through the modulated shields.
Also, what good were the transporters? They could beam 300,000 bodies a day from the ship to the surface of a planet, but could not ever lock on when needed to a person flying a shuttle craft less than 1 mile away...
While this is wonderful, in fairness to TNG, the special effects guys did stick a toilet into the core the Borg took out of the Enterprise in the first contact episode.
The one relating this also explained why there were so few space battles: they cost money to create. (Not that more would have been better, seeing as how badly scripted most in the show were.)
No wonder you don't like ST:TNG; you're all neo-cons. You can't see any motivation other than money or sex. God forbid someone give themselves to an organization for the thrill or challenge or prestige. If all your corporeal needs are met by replicators, what else is there for you to do? To prevent their society from degenerating into slothfulness, they instilled themselves and their children with a thirst for exploration and challenge, and strong work ethic.
Maybe there's a reason ST:TNG lasted for seven seasons and Firefly got killed after one: People don't want to see greedy, ignorant people in the future. They want to have hope that we'll grow beyond that.
Paco, thank you so much for coming here and educating us. Your wisdom and knowledge shine like the gold you must shit, unlike us moronic "neo-cons".
It must suck being you. You can't even enjoy a goofy discussion about Star Trek without being political. Go watch The West Wing or something and fuck off.
1. Technology and trade...
Dilithium miners. These guys are indispensible because all the matter/anti-matter engines are regulated thru the dilithium crystals.
2. Trade and commerce...
These dilithum miners are always looking for hot, drug-improved wives.
Alfred E. Neumann: This discussion was pretty much political from the outset- Right from the point where the author suggests that the thought of a world without poverty or bickering, infighting governments might in any way be construed as something other than progress. (That would be the third paragraph).
And Paco, it's actually pretty ironic that these guys all love firefly- Joss Whedon pretty much said right from the start that the Alliance represented America, sometimes being the good guys, like in WW2, other times, like Vietnam, not so much, and that Mal, being (metaphorically) Vietnamese, couldn't see that they were also sometimes good. Equally, the plan to set up a Soft Drink Company (Blue Sun) as the big bad couldn't possibly be interpreted as a metaphor for how capitalism screws up life for the working class, could it? And is it also not possible that the reason the show got mismanaged to death was related to the fact that show was on a network owned by a right wing warmonger, and that it portrayed America as a country who possibly doesn't always have the best interests of the rest of the world at heart, and capitalism as a system which isn't entirely perfect?
Oh, and as regards Farscape: It sucked, just admit it. It was never funny, their enemies were one dimensional at best, the characters were cliched. It lasted longer than the original series of star trek, and only got axed because the producers refused to take a budget cut. Get over it!
Second, ST:Enterprise is a dog. The writing is so bad it is embarrasing. I think they pick the scripts out of the trash behind the UPN studios. Or the stock file -oh, uptight Foreign/Alien Princess rescued by plucky American who "fall in love" (or skinny dip-same difference) before the third act. PUH-lease.
Third, the list is funny as all get out and I'm a WWdotNet referree.
Forth, it isn't Troi's fault that they wrote her part so badly. They still do. THe last movie was all Data (gee, maybe b/c he co-wrote it???) and almost zero Troi and Dr. C. Very poor form.
Fifth, there was one episode about the grunts and even then, they had to kill one off. See, if your job is all science, with no decision making, where is the drama in that? Oh, you are late with your space dust report!!! Ouch. Besides, they have too much staff as it is --don't the computers do/know everything by then?
I would like to second, third and fourth the comments on T'Pau's hotness; Dr. Crusher was definitely eye candy, but Troi in season 2 or 3 was smokin'! Was she really there as "Ship's Counselor?" "Physical Therapist" is more like it.
I always suspected that there were these 200' tall walls around Federation HQ in SanFran, manned 24/7 by Star Fleet Marines to keep the proles from breaking into their little utopia. All the talk about how great live on Earth was was pure propoganda, propogated by the elites; in reality, 99% of humanity toiled away in the spandex mines to provide uniforms for their betters.
You left out something from the original Star Trek: Captain Kirk; "Blow 'em all to hell." Crewman; "Are you sure that's wise, Captain?" Kirk; "Ok, let me beat the hell out of them first so I can look really manly and Spock can stand behind me quietly disabling all the baddies that try to sneak up on me."
Thank you , thank you, thank you, for injecting your own brand of poisonous invective into this fun thread! Gosh, I thought we'd be able to go 20 or 30 posts without someone funking up the place with your pseudo-intellectual name-calling
Oh, and as regards Communisim: It sucked, just admit it. It was never effective, their economics were one dimensional at best, the dictators were cliched. It lasted longer than the original Russian Empire, and only got axed because the Soviet Military refused to take a budget cut. Get over it!
Watched all ST even when I thought the money was wasted just because it was ST. Can hardly type from the tears streaming down my face! This is funny and dead-on.
For the record NEMESIS is WRATH OF KHAN -- why do so few see this? They only left out "The needs of the many..." line to completely rip-off the original.
There were two best SF shows on my tube this year, and they both began with F and they both were on Friday nights, and they both got canceled prematurely. Farscape and Firefly. I hope we meet again.....
This is so unbelievably stupid written by someone who obviously thinks he's funny. Some free advise buddy... don't give up your day job.
10. Boy, I'm bustin' a gut with the wd-40 crack. I'd better like it, cause you keep using again and again...
9. Here you just look like a fool. They didn't abolish money. It's called "credits" and not "dollars".
8. Reverse the polarity. That one is so good, you should mention it more. oh ... wait a minute.
7. Do they have seatbelts in the command center of navy vessels? Think about it. Again... another stupid idea.
6. Have you ever been in an industrial setting where sparks might fly? Obviously not... you're sitting at home on your computer writing lame blogs.
5. There's no doubt, TNG was freaking stupid. Why you felt it necessary to come up with something equally stupid is beyond me.
4. Boy... this is funny. Ummm.. Gomez, right?
3. We can only wish you would reverse the polarity on your car battery.
2. The holodeck has always been a dumb idea. They created it because the writers on TNG were so awful they couldn't stay within the framework they had set up for themselves.
1. Get your reference right.
---
Also, that split infinitive comment which has been made. We are talking about English, not French, or Spanish, or Italian. Although English has taken a lot from latin based languages, it is not itself a latin based language. To split an infinitive is not poor English. This kind of comment is just brought up by language weenies who should really just, "Get a life".
The apparent communist society of Star Trek never bothered me. I've often thought that communism would only work in the Star Trek universe, where you apparently have 1) unlimited energy and 2) the ability to turn energy into any kind of matter. In other words, you no longer have the conflict of unlimited wants and limited resources.
It's hard to draw conclusions about the overall society in Star Trek when all you see is the most prestigious starship, populated by the most knowledgable and driven staff. For all we know, there might be 12 billion shiftless, lazy bums on Earth.
It's interesting to think what would happen in a world where one didn't have to work. Would there be billions of bums, or would people want to work out of boredom? One guess is that there would be a whole lot more untalented artists, writers, and actors in such a world.
My biggest complaint about Star Trek is the large number of (humanoid) races which have all developed societies, at the same time, within about 4000 years of human development, and most about level with Earth's development. What are the odds? You never see primitive hunters and gatherers, or a race significantly superior to humans. At least the all aliens are humanoid part was explained in one episode.
Having seen original Trek through today's (tho DS9 bored me no end and could NOT stand to watch for any length of time), this is a hilarious list!
Of all the SF-type shows on TV, Farscape was undeniably the best thing going. (How can you beat TB lines like 'Stand still or I'll fill you with ... little yellow bolts of light!') Hope Rockne, David & the Hensen mob get a chance to finish the arc of their incredibly imperfect universe.
Great list! One thing that always bugged me about the TNG show was the way they'd have some character give a completely unbelievable speech at the end of the episode. A classic example was the episode were Tasha Yar dies; fortunately she had recorded a holograph so she could say goodbye to each of the characters in turn. Or the one where the guy was using the holodeck to construct a fantasy life, and he comes up to the bridge to deliver this sappy, "Gee, I'm sorry" speech.
One - the all time best SF on TV was the original Twilight Zone. All the others were a distant second place at best.
Second- Space Above and Beyond was not bad, heavily into character.
Third - the points about the fuses and seat belts should be engraved on SF producer's forheads.
Fourth- I'd like to find a source for reasonably priced sugar babies.
Fifth - In any SF show where someone activates something, and the heros can't deactivate it, cause the villian bypassed the safeties, or locked out the controls - go to that junction box on the wall of every system that has ever been built, and flip off the main power switch, or open it and cut the wires, or take a hammer and knock it off the wall.
No computer in the world can lock out cut power leads.
One - the all time best SF on TV was the original Twilight Zone. All the others were a distant second place at best.
Second- Space Above and Beyond was not bad, heavily into character.
Third - the points about the fuses and seat belts should be engraved on SF producer's forheads.
Fourth- I'd like to find a source for reasonably priced sugar babies.
Fifth - In any SF show where someone activates something, and the heros can't deactivate it, cause the villian bypassed the safeties, or locked out the controls - go to that junction box on the wall of every system that has ever been built, and flip off the main power switch, or open it and cut the wires, or take a hammer and knock it off the wall.
No computer in the world can lock out cut power leads.
This'll get me flamed, I'm sure (which is why I won't bother reading the comment thread after this), but you know...I never liked Star Trek all that much. I saw enough of it to get the references that the author made, and to laugh my ass off at them. The thread, though, completely illustrates *precisely* why I never got interested in the genre.
It is. A. TV. Show.
It is not a religion.
Also, and it's called a sense of humor. Sounds like some people should get one!
"Wisdom" - The Prime Directive was stupid, or at least way too rigid. Capt. Kirk knew this and broke it in nearly every episode and even the generally straight-laced Capt. Picard bent it a little when necessary. The Prime Directive was nothing but a combination Leftist propaganda/stupid plot device.
Regarding aliens with bumpy foreheads, my all time worst ST pet peeve is the Klingons in TNG vs. the Klingons in the original. What happened there? Did the entire race mutate in less than 100 years? Did they decide to do some genetic engineering because they wanted to look scarier? Or are we just supposed to ignore the difference?
Uh, Pious? I'm trying to find a point somewhere in your post.... nope, still looking...can't find anything which remotely resembles addressing any of the points I actually raised. I'm actually quite proud that I can be deemed 'pseudo-intellectual' on the basis of a mere 5 paragraphs of light discussion of various science fiction TV shows, and that you deem my 'poisonous invective' sufficiently original to be described as 'my own brand'.
Now, fair enough, I may have been a bit harsh as regards Farscape, but the fact is, I'm only able to make such comments because I actually watched the show on a regular basis. It just pisses me off that people are making out that Farscape was this awesome, groundbreaking show, when ultimately, the most amazing thing about it was it's ability to be so consistantly average. It shouldn't have been cancelled, but it wasn't exactly a major tragedy that it was, and I think a lot of the blame for this belongs to the farscape producers themselves.
Oh, and by the way, what's with your bizarre rant about Communism? When did I ever express any kind of liking for, or belief in the principles of Communism? When did I even mention Communism?
Also, could you please explain the comment about namecalling? The only person I called anything resembling a name was Rupert murdoch, when I called him a right wing warmonger. Now I'm pretty sure that, were Rupert Murdoch here right now he'd be the first to admit his politics are basically fairly right wing, and as for warmonger (noun, One who advocates or attempts to stir up war), I'd say that Fox news and the Sun and various other organisations he owns could be perfectly legitimately described as having advocated the war. But I'm sure he appreciates your spirited rush to his defence against...completely accurate and inoffensive descripitions of him.
I always thought the biggest annoyance was all of these alien women that Kirk somehow managed to seduce. You're telling me that they all had the same genitals that humans have? I didn't see Kirk didn't carry around an adapter kit.
Uh, Messeur Kahn? Your points about Farscape may be well taken, it's a matter of opinion after all, I guess it just aggravated me that you felt in necessary to dump over people who obviously enjoyed and miss the show. You feel otherwise, and that's fine.
What I find "ironic" is that you see Firefly as a metaphor for the US and Vietnam, when thematically and stylistically it is obvious a fable about the aftermath of the Civil War. Mal was on the losing side of a war between a powerful federal government and an independence movement of aligned planets. As a consequence, he sets out for the wilderness, much like many Confederate soldiers headed west in the 1870s. So, Mal’s discontent stems more from a yearning for “State’s Rights” vs. Federalism, and a sort of right-wing planetary nationalism at odds with the pan-human soviet of the Alliance.
Oh, and by the way, what's with your bizarre rant about Communism? When did I ever express any kind of liking for, or belief in the principles of Communism? When did I even mention Communism?
Actually, it was when you started talking about how Blue Sun is a metaphor for how capitalism screws up life for the working class. You know, when you mentioned “capitalism” as “screwing up the life” for the “working class?” Maybe I’m wrong, and you meant some other class-struggle-based anti-capitalistic movement. Silly of me to jump right to “Communism.” Sorry about that.
Also, could you please explain the comment about namecalling?…completely accurate and inoffensive descriptions of him.
I don’t give a rat’s patoot about Rupert Murdoch, but you can’t tell me that the term “warmonger” is inoffensive. If it was, then it wouldn’t be plastered in big red letters under President Bush’s picture on every lefty-quasi-socialist-anti-masculinist-post-feminist placard carried by every third anti-war protester. That’s what I mean by name-calling.
some ppl you know, don't like to be in the spot light, (although I'm definitly not 1 of them) the do exist besides wouldn't we have robots to do all the stuff we could get ppl to do? seems to me to be the smrt thing to do.
I lerned laten and I guat alaut owt off et.. all it does is make you see how stupid what they're saying really is. B5 weas the best si-fi show ever, (I didn't see the 5th year, we moved and don't have those channels ne more) I don't watch much tv now I like reading, but I still make time for ST. We had the greatest times sitting there making fun of farscape, they made it soooo easy to do it was almost (no, it was) pathetic.
Ok - the thing about never going to the washroom making for "good tv"... just once I'd like to see someone attack while a major crewmember was in the washroom...have to pull up his pants and rush to the bridge. Something "human", comedic without being over the top.
Sorry if its been said in one of the comments I didn't read, but the thing that always pissed me off about any Star Trek series (and, at least to my knowledge, almost any space-based sci-fi) was that space was planar. If you were moving along and encountered another ship, it was always in your plane or in a plane parallel to you. It never came at you from a perpendicular angle, never anything diagonal or the like. They were always right in front of you, facing you. Isn't space supposed to be 3-dimensional? *grin*
Hermetic:Why don't they ever recalibrate the energy sensors so that they're operating on a useful scale?
Reminds me of my all time fav tech explanation:
Nigel : "It's very special, because, as you can see--the numbers all go to 11. Right across the board. Eleven, 11. . . . And most amps go up to 10? Exactly. Does that mean it's louder? Is it any louder? Well, it's one louder, isn't it? It's not 10.
You see, most blokes are going to be playing at 10--you're on 10 on your guitar, where can you go from there? Where? I don't know. Nowhere! Exactly! What we do, if we need that extra push over the cliff, you know what we do? You put it up to 11. Eleven. Exactly. One louder."
Marty: "Why don't you just make 10 louder, and make 10 be the top number, and make that a little louder?"
Nigel: "These go to 11."
IMHO-B5 was much more entertaining than the Uber-PC ST-TNG...Straczynski rocks. Another excellent scifi series that the suits didn't get. I bought Farscape on DVD...it's even better watched as a whole piece. Firefly was too smart to survive network TV.
One would think the suits would realize from DVD sales that there is a huge audience for Scifi...even cheesy scifi is more entertaining than reality show dreck.
I've sometimes wondered why they didn't transport a large nuc to just outside the enemys shield.
(A starship in combat must be shooting thru it's own shield somehow - so why not find a way to use the transport thru a shield?)
I suppose it's not PC.
"Dr Who reversed the polarity on NEUTRONS? Neutrons don't flow, and have no polarity!"
You might want to try telling that to the good folks at the Los Alamos Neutron Scattering Center (LANSCE). Unless you don't consider a beam of neutrons to be flowing. Also, neutrons do have a magnetic moment and a spin. Therefore they can be polarized (just like the polarized proton collisions at RHIC) and some people have actually done this.
Most of the words used in Star Trek individually do have some meaning, some of the phrases even do. Typically, though, the details of the words are tedious and mundane to the viewer. So I can't really envision use of technical jargon in a show meant to be entertaining that is any better than star trek. Lots of people watch sci-fi shows with a smug arrogant attitude of "i am so smart, I know this isn't real". In the case of neutron polarization, this person turns out to be an idiot. In fact, in the case of many things in sci-fi, the doubter turns out to be wrong eventually.
But this isn't really the point (well it is part of the point of sci-fi to foster creativity and imagination with regards to technology). But another reason to watch sci-fi is to use extreme situations that wouldn't occur in real life to examine something about human nature. How do we respond to aliens? Even though we don't respond to aliens everyday, we do have to interact with people who are not like us and who have motives we don't understand. Looking at the extreme cases through the use of sci-fi is important.
In conclusion, I've heard enough complaints about how fake e.g. star trek is(though satire is great: i found this page hilarious). The possibilities of technology presented by star trek are sometimes realistic and sometimes not. The important thing, though, is the possibiliities for our existence(as Q points out in the last episode of TNG).
1. Coming out of warp and not getting splattered on the view screen: The "Star Trek Technical Manual," a wonderfully nerdy/geeky "book" explained why that doesn't happen about six different ways. IIRC, the whole idea of "warp" isn't "going really fast" but "we create this 'field' that warps space to a point where Newtonian physics don't apply." Therefore, thermodynamics can just quietly excuse themselves since...they don't apply. MY question is guidance. In "Q-Who?" Picard mentions that they've only mapped about 11% of the Milky Way; yet whenever Picard wagged a finger at the viewscreen and said "Engage," the helmsman would hit the go-button and they'd fly off in a straight line at a pretty high rate of speed, right? If only 11% of the galaxy was mapped, there was a pretty high chance that they'd fly right into something, right? An asteroid, a comet, some little moon that didn't appear on long-range sensors.
2. Holo-wanking. Approaching this from a 21st century standpoint is missing the point. If holodecks had been invented 200 years ago, do you still think people would be spending *all* their time wanking? Like that old rumor about getting a job at an ice cream shop; the owner tells you "eat as much as you want for free." The first three days you gorge yourself on Rocky Road Fudge Ripple goodness, and then for the rest of your life the idea of a sundae makes you gag. I think that after years, decades of having holotechnology everyone would have basically *already* had every possible sexual holofantasy fulfilled.
3. Reversing polarity - Yeah, the TNG writers (and VOY) did depend on the 'ol "particle of the week" solve for the problem. "Shoot a beam at it. That'll fix 'er."
4. Officers. O'Brian was a Chief Petty Officer. That's why they called him CHIEF O'Brian. And they did have lower ranks; Picard in many episodes referred to some poor swabbie as "Crewman Gomez." But they *do* seem a little top-heavy. Of course, the argument could be made that the over-automation of the technology removed the need for enlisted men/women, leaving only "officer-type" jobs. After all, they don't need cooks, or janitors, or truck drivers. Basically everything out there that moved needed a "pilot" and those are officers. (RAF and pre-WW II USMC "flying Sergeants" excluded.)
5. No primative Cultures - "Who Watches the Watchers?" The Enterprise rushes to help a detachment of Federation anthropologists who are studying a proto-Vulcan civilization; they uncover Picard, worship him as a god, and prepare to sacrifice Troi to appease him. Should have let them off her. Could have saved years of "I sense [obvious emotion] Captain." Just once I'da liked to see Picard turn to her after she spouts her "line" and say, "No shit, Sherlock."
I can't believe they left out "some kind of." You know, some kind of energy field, some kind of spatial instability, some kind of particle weapon. This phrase is used so much on every Star Trek episode, it should be some kind of drinking game.
Other than the no currency thing, my other long time peeve has been the universal translator. It's never made sense to me. I've had conversations about it where we've gone round and round, and all it did was make my brain hurt!
Something that always interested me was that whenever they found a new race of being, the beings were always humanoid. I think that it is pretty pompous for the creators of start Trek to think that all species would eventually evolve into humanoids.
Well, Pious, First thing I should point out is that the stuff about The Alliance=America, and that the Alliance, as America, being often morally ambiguous isn't my opinion. It's Joss Whedon's. I just couldn't find the exact quote anywhere, but I think I paraphrased him pretty accurately. The exact quote is:
"Sometimes the Alliance is America, this beautiful shining light of democracy. But sometimes the Alliance is America in Vietnam: we have a lot of petty politics, we are way out of our league and we have no right to control these people. And yet! Sometimes the Alliance is America in Nazi Germany. And Mal can't see that, because he was a Vietnamese."
I never actually stated that Firefly was in any way an allegory for Vietnam, I was just saying that the Alliance can be read as, and was probably intended as a metaphor for The United States, all the way through from the Civil War through to now. My point was that it was ironic for neo-cons to be so into a show which portrays America as morally ambiguous, if not actually bad.
Joss has also stated (again, I can't remember where the exact quote was from or what it was) that the Alliance are basically very definitely pro-big business. So I don't see where you're getting the 'pan human soviet of the Alliance' from, especially when there's at least one big business (Blue Sun) with a pretty big hand in how the government is run.
Also worth pointing out is that, as far as I'm aware, the actual politics of the Independents has never been stated, either in the show or in interviews. They could just as easily be anarcho-syndicalists who don't want to be taken over by the extremely pro-capitalist government of the Alliance. Which is not to say that i think they *are* anarchosyndicalists, just that they could be, for all the evidence there is. Fact is, all you can say about the Independants was that they didn't want to be part of the Alliance.
As for my comments about class in Firefly, here's Joss again: "I wanted to do a show about people who are not 'super,' just working-class people, the people history steps on."
So, given that Joss has stated explicitly that firefly is, at the very least, about the struggle of working class people, if not working class struggle per se, and that soft-drinks companies are frequently used as a metaphor for capitalism and America, I hardly see it as a giant leap of logic to suggest that Joss might be making a comment about the affects of capitalism on the working classes. Also, just becuase that's my interpretation of what Whedon intended (and it's hard to say where he was going with the Blue Sun plotline, given that all we really got was a little foreshadowning here and there) doesn't necessarily make me a communist.Or a Socialist. Or a Marxist. Or an Anarchist. Or a Maoist. Or an etc. For future reference, my political beliefs are actually a fusion of neosituationism, Ken Wilbur's Integralism, and Buckminster-Fuller's social theory. I'm okay with businesses, even big ones, I just think they need to learn to behave themselves.
And as for warmonger, I would accept that warmonger is generally used in a context of 'you're mongering war, and I disapprove of that' but the term itself is pretty neutral (see the dictionary definition I cited). Just because very few warmongers use the term as a badge of pride, doesn't make it an insult. And if he doesn't want to be called one, he shouldn't go around doing it.
There WERE noncoms in TNG, at least. I know Chief O'Brien was, at least initially (I didn't watch DS9), and there was at least one other Chief, some medical grunt, and Worf's adoptive father was a Chief.
My theory: Starfleet realized that the Chiefs are the ones actually running things on any ship, and that's why we hardly ever saw them. They were off getting things accomplished, usually in duty stations where they could beam someone into a wall and claim it was "ionizing defibrillator radiation".
The "Lower Decks" episode was about ensigns, who are officers, but on that part of the totem pole which is buried in the ground. No wonder they were boring.
Yeah right... no news today? Of course, for the f$@#$ng narrow minded the ONLY news in the world were the "Sci-Fi War 1" in Afganistan (where's BinLadden?)"Sci-Fi War 2" in Irak (where's Saddam?). Get a life man, the list is hilarious, but cannot be forgiven is the fact of the "no news" factor. 75,000 people homeless 'cause of flooding in Argentina, dead people in Chchnia, SARS in China, EDUCATION (lack of) in the USA...
THINK DIFFERENT. Just THINK!
Ok, I'm back, just keeping it grounded in the thread.
You've run rings around me logically. By quoting scripture (Joss himself) you've perforce stumped all my arguments.
Just by way of clarification, I wasn't actually intending to call you a communist, just trying to be cute. Your grasp on the definitions of your own politics are certainly firmer than my own. It's obvious that painting you with that kind of shit brush was unfair and indulging in the kind of name-calling I was accusing you of.
I wonder, however, how many neocons actually think that America is not morally ambiguous(or at least, has not been at points in the past). The SAME PEOPLE that were the good guys in WWII had to cut some pretty dishonorable deals and get involved with nasty stuff and make deals with unsaviory governments (enough euphanisms)in order to combat IntComm.
I do not include our support for the South Vietnamese among the unsaviory things, however. Their conquest by the North ushered in decades of poverty and misery for those people, and it's a crying shame. But, please, let's not open that up as a thread.
The people who comment, "It's just a TV show, so quit analyzing it" obviously don't have high expectations of their entertainment.
I recall reading an essay by Mark Twain taking apart the works of some popular novelist of his day (James Greenleaf Whittier, I think). One wonderful line was, "The author shall not commit gross stupidities against his readers." Well, a novel is entertainment, just like a TV show. A good number of people don't like their entertainment to insult their intelligence.
But of course, if your idea of a great TV night is Survivor or American Idol, perhaps you don't have that problem. For example: Some people need a life pretty bad i see -- joey (badboycutie@aol.com)
Some people need a course in punctuation and grammar, a real ISP, and a nick that would actually appeal to women who have graduated high school. (Come to think of it, maybe there's a reason Joey picked that handle...)
I was a Star Trekker from the first episode but got lost after DS9. Enterprise was rediculous! FIREFLY was definitely as good and creative series as the first Start Trek. Why the network took it on and then made it untenable is beyond me. I would LOVE to see it go to the movies.
I agree with Pious' remark. Does this mean that Gene Roddenberry was a sports announcer? Because the same bad habit haunts every sports event. "So-and-so is the greatest linebacker in the league." It's part of the script, no matter which teams are player or what week it is. Have you ever, ever heard a sports announcer say something like: "Well, Smith is a pretty mediocre second basemen, and the Astros would replace him in a heartbeat. They may fire their general manager, too, for trading away Alvarez to get Smith: Alvy is hitting .320 for the Mariners."
Star Trek is dead to me. I loved it when I was younger but now all that space-teck mumbo-jumbo just plays flat and boring. I just saw the new X-Men flick and kept thinking "it's that damned Pickard guy again," every time that Pickard guy was on-screen. It was better back when Kirk was running around the galaxy looking for some 'tang.
"Having to squeegee the Holodeck clean." We KNOW this. We all KNOW IT. And the crew is always just fricking walking IN on people's private sessions. What the heck is THAT about? Imagine if you were doing nasty kinky leather fetish-oriented nun-killing sex with a representation of the whole orgy-loving Bridge Crew and they walked in to fix the nonexistent fuse that Geordi reversed the polarity on? DUDE.
I'm thinkin' if Holodecks were real we'd ALL become fat spandex wearers who never, EVER left the damn Holodeck. And replicate me a triple-decker hot fudge sundae while you're at it, dammit.
Pious, I wasn't at all offended at your implication that I was a communist. I've enjoyed this little debate, and I hope you have too, and I certainly don't want to get into a debate about the rights and wrongs of the Vietnam war, not least because it happened a decade before I was born, and in a completely different country (I'm in Scotland).
Equally, you may well be right about the neo-cons and America's moral ambiguity. But from my position, (which is, amongst other things, on entirely the wrong side of the atlantic) it doesn't seem like such a good time for people to point out that America might be anything other than a paragon of virtue, foreign-policy wise.
Peace to you too ;)
Sheer M. Kahn
In 1968,my family and I were given a tour of the Star Trek set by William Shatner, whom my parents knew from Montreal. My trekkie brother ask him why no seat belts?
Shatner's answer: "then we wouldn't be thrown around."
When did ST ever say they abolished money? I don't remember that. I just assumed that they let computers handle most of the tracking of it instead of using cash, except for things like the black market where the Ferengi were always using gold-pressed latinum.
You have to admit, with replicators, most forms of cash would be pretty easy to just replicate, so it'd make more sense to have a credit/balance account stored in computers except where you deal with other cultures (not in your ATM network) or with illegal transactions that you don't want to show up in the computer.
As far as Firefly, I thought the Alliance was pretty close to the Alliance described in some of C.J. Cherryh's books. (http://www.cherryh.com/www/chrona1.htm)
"But unfortunately, that's what happens when a sequel show (ST:TNG)that was supposed to be about some semi-utopian future is created in the era when Political Correctness was both embryonic and should be retroactively aborted. But, since time-travel is an impossiblity, a "retroactive abortion" would be moot."
Loved your list. I'd like to add to the idea of the deux ex machina. Both TNG and the original series had supermen to deliver the crew from danger again and again: Spock and Data. How many time did the two of them win the day for the Enterprise?
My favorite TNG episode was when the crew started to de-evolve. [I was waiting for Data to turn into an abacus, but alas, the devolving thing didn't work on him.] In the end, there's a throwaway line that Data figured out to reverse the process, and get everyone back. Oh. Yeah. Good thing you had Data.
What was particularly funny about the Spock/Data theory was the episode where the Romulans lock Spock and Data together in a room. My friends and I were ROLF. Like those two weren't going to figure out how to escape and take over the planet ... don't federation enemies do intelligence before fighting the Enterprise, to wit: DON'T LOCK SPOCK AND DATA IN THE SAME ROOM. Get them off the planet and far away.
Yeah, I have some geek tendencies. Who wants to do something about it?
arr. just thought i'd add that i'm yet another wwdn reader--and that my favorite thing about the internet is how every human being who's connected to it is an accredited psychoanalyst: 'cause who on earth would be so presumptuous to tell people why they do the things they do, if they weren't qualified?
oh, and star trek blablabla. i'm a huge TNG fan. largely because of Wesley and Data and Geordi. screw logic.
The execs at Fox should be shot. Space: Above and Beyond was awesome. It was gritty and the chemistry between the characters was far better than 90% of the crap on television.
I always wondered why 90% of the critters they found were humanoid. Considering that on our little planet a very small percentage of the critters are humanoid, you would think a similar ratio would hold true universe-wide.
Ok ... the Enterprise could fly into the outer rim of an M class sun and stay there for hours, but it couldn't take a few blasts from an inferior laser?
I always wondered about shields that could take the pounding of multiple 500meg warheads per second but couldn't stand up to a gigajoule or so of energy.
Not to mention, they never saved the deus ex machina from the last episode or gave their on board security any decent training.
One thing I liked about B5 was that the security actually functioned sometimes.
On the other hand, if there is no scarcity and security guards take the job out of being bored, I guess you will get a pretty low quality.
As for the aliens appearance, they had two explanations, one that they were all seeded from the same genetic code and two, they had a budget limit for doing special effects.
Thanks, this was a great read, came here from Volokh Conspiracy.
Can someone tell me how to reverse the polarity on my computer so I can undo my seatbelt and fix the noisy doors since noone has any money to pay to have it done the right way??????
When they are speeding at warp 9.7 and the helm mentions, "approaching scheduled coordinates", the captain says,"Take us out of warp!", like they'll be able to stop on a dime and be like right in front of the planet! What if the new ensign gets out of warp like a millisecond too late, "opps sorry captain I overshot our coordinates by about 1/2 a light year, hee, hee, sorry. I graduated second to last at the academy, hee hee!
And remember the Picard maneuver. That was a damn good maneuver! There have been so many other battles and no one has used the Picard maneuver!
Oh, and seven of nine on voyager, DAMN! Beam me up Scotty. I'm sure there had to be a couple takes on the set because of the "little captains" saluting through some of the actor's spandex pants!
Polarity?! What are you all talking about? I'll bet dollars to donuts that LaForge RECONFIGURED THE FORWARD SENSOR ARRAY *way* more times than he reversed the polarity of stuff! ;-D
The Federation, many similarities of U.N. to it : a pack of interfering blowhard nobodies uttering sweetnothings and creating havoc and mayhem.
In tandem with France, they would like to abolish money no doubt and dole everything out as they see fit - but that requires salevery , after all whose going to produce something for nothing.Its worthwhile to note, in star-tek capitalists and traders are regarded as the swill of the univese.
Klingons are noble for while evil, the are heroic warriors which reminds me : on the few episodes one has seen , it is capricious the Klingons have been denied repeatedly what they have been in aposition to do, several times over, blow the crap out Enterprise and is fag crew.
Thank you for the original post. That was amazing. I have been having a lot of fun with Enterprise. It made me very happy to see that they had replaced counselor Troi with a dog.
I got here from Sgt. Stryker's site, (since we're all sharing), but I had to go check out Will's site after I saw it mentioned here.
We've watched Star Trek forever though I've been bothered by the whole....oh we've now evolved so that we know everything and there is no god.....attitude.
For your nerdish pleasure, little known lyrics to the original Star Trek theme:
Beyond the rim of the starlight
My love is wandering in starflight
I know he'll find in star clustered reaches
Love strange, love a star woman teaches
I know his journey ends never
His star trek will go on forever
But tell him while he wanders his starry sea
Remember me, Remember me
The story goes that Rodenberry wrote them to share in the royalties. I'm not sure that anyone every recorded it. But, they are really SO bad, (just try singing them to the theme yourself), that you have to love it.
Glenn Knight wrote:
>Have you ever, ever heard a sports announcer say something like: "Well, Smith is a pretty mediocre second basemen, and the Astros would replace him in a heartbeat. They may fire their general manager, too, for trading away Alvarez to get Smith: Alvy is hitting .320 for the Mariners."<
I'd pay good money to hear baseball announcers who weren't primarily concerned with maintaining their affectionate relationships with the management and players. I wince whenever I hear the words "team player" or "quick hands" or "comes through in the clutch" or "good with the pitchers" about a guy whose OBP is lower than his BA.
Gees,
Was that really William Shatner or was it Tim Allen pretending to be William Shatner? Who and What in the hell is "Fire Fly"? surely not another Marvel Super Mutant...
Someone suggested that everyone has nano-tech transponders in their bladders and rectums, so there's no need for heads on board. Great idea, except where does all that poo and wee end up? On one particularly unfortunate planet? Or at random locations throughout the time-space continuum. Might explain some of the restaurant meals I've had placed in front of me at times.
"I can sort of understand that in the future that automated production has eliminated most scarecity. But, how do you motivate people to do the worst jobs without financial incentive."
"A massively automated society with magic replicators still has uses for trade. Such a society would basically trade three things: energy, services, and intellectual propery (a category that includes replicator blueprints or autofactory programs). Copyright law would take on an importance that we primitives couldn't even imagine."
"Additionally, what about the worst jobs? The ones that can get you killed? The ones with the worst hours or working conditions? Why would anybody take those jobs? Anti-social loners and masochists have been weeded out of the gene pool, so where're your potential employees to come from?"
Everything is automated. Therefore, everyone was bored. It follows that everyone is in Star Fleet now.
Hello Kahn my old and dear friend, how nice to chat with you again.
In your last, you wrote:
But from my position, (which is, amongst other things, on entirely the wrong side of the Atlantic) it doesn't seem like such a good time for people to point out that America might be anything other than a paragon of virtue, foreign-policy wise.
I can certainly understand where you might have gotten this idea. It seems that a popular meme has crept into many media sources both in the US and in Europe and elsewhere, the idea that the “Suppression of Dissent” is rampant over here.
I’m just a regular guy from Florida (yes, 50/50 Florida) so I can only speak from my own experience. I’ve seen many people express their objections to the war in general and President Bush in particular, through their t-shirts, bumper stickers, at rallies, in newspaper articles, radio columns, and televised stories. These dissenters are certainly in a minority, but I’ve never seen them hustled into vans for a going over with rubber hoses or anything like that, and I’ve never heard them claim that they have.
What is happening, I think, is that for the first time regular people are listening to their views, and finding their rhetoric wanting, their logic faulty, their message tainted by invective. People see signs equating Bush and Hitler, and they know that there’s something wrong with the worldview of the person waving it, because despite what you may have heard about the lack of education in America, we know a murderous tyrant is different from an elected official that will be out of office in 6-8 years.
So, the message isn’t taking root, and people are actually confronting “dissenters” with arguments and opinions of their own. What most people might call the “free debate of ideas” dissenters characterize as “suppression of dissent.” Sure, there are people who get rough and violent in those confrontations, but those people are prosecuted by the law, not given a pass, which is after all what state-sponsored suppression of dissent would look like.
I mean, if a movement's message is to be judged solely by the actions of their basest parts, then Anti-Globo's are all arsonists that burn down McDonalds! ("You mean they aren't?" "Shut up, Neocon!" "Don't you suppress me!")
So, don’t worry about the neocons who express misgivings about America’s actions. But we appreciate your concern. ;D
Awesome! It had to be said, glad someone finally did. I'm a sci fi fan, so naturally I like Star Trek, but this shit always annoyed me. Nice to see someone finally pointed it out.
Remember that episode where Kirk and Spock land on the planet of nazis? They get captured and are put in jail with this ss storm trooper for a guard and then Spock farts and he and Kirk start giggling and, no wait ...ah ..hmmmm.... nevermind.
Why do the make-up people think that all you have to do to make someone look like an alien it stick a few knobbly bits on the nose or forehead (or both).
As funny and true as all that is, there is one thing to hate about Star Trek that hasn't been touched.
The Borg.
They were cool. They were scary. They HAD NO WEAKNESSES.
And then weaknesses and weird shit was introduced - having a Borg Queen controlling all Borg detracts from the original idea, especially with the way you only have to off her and all the Borg die/stop functioning.
I haven't seen much of Voyager but apparently it introduced the idea of a Queen in every Borg cube.
I've barely seen Enterprise, and apparently the Borg have shown up in that. Um, something like two hundred years before the recorded first contact with the Borg.
Bloody Borg. Now they're not scary, they're just annoying.
I think gold-pressed latinum was a valuable currency because it couldn't be replicated. Don't quote me on that, though, and certainly don't ask me to explain how it couldn't be replicated.
Call it like it was, technobabble, fantasy, mixed with some great messages about life and people.
Add a dash of sparks, lots of shapely women in SHORT skirts and tight cloths, a few aliens now and then, some discontent within the ranks...
Since my teenage years the holodeck and Minuet have been absolutely real ... at least in my mind (many times). Many of my earth dreams girls also visited the holodeck, they just did not know it...how that for reality.
and..just for clarification, the list was good, not great, and SCI-FI (including Star Trek) has brought as many innoventions that were foretold.
The endless question is are devices like the Microwave, PDA, cell Phone related to Sci-Fi, or is Sci-Fi a product of reality?
I am a lifelong Trek fan and this list is frickin' hilarious (almost as hilarious as some of the unbelievably overwrought comments of some people who take this stuff WAY too seriously).
I have one to add: Why was everyone always hanging around on the bridge? It's the command center of the ship, not a social club. Bones, you're the doctor. Shouldn't you be in sick bay instead of loitering on the bridge trading jabs with Spock?
Every time the writers would run out of ideas and couldn't think of any polarites for Geordi to reverse, they would always resort to time travel... it was getting to the point where they should have renamed the show Time Trek.
And for all the people who came in here to tout Farscape as the best SF show ever made... you obviously haven't seen Stargate-SG1.
"And we also know what the worst job on the Enterprise would be: Having to squeegie the holodeck clean."
And remember, all of that err, umm, "organic material" would be dumped into Biomass Recycling... Special Sauce for everybody!
I know, I know, the replicators use transporter technology to break down the organic source material into its component atoms and reassemble it as sauce bearnaise. It's the thought of the Squeegee Guy carrying 5-gallon buckets from the Holodeck to the Organic Material Recycling Input Port...
"Regarding the Holodeck. . . it's "other uses" aside, how many times does that friggin' thing have to almost kill someone before people *stop* using it!?!"
I would have ordered Engineering to hard-wire Big-Ass Switches outside the Holodeck doors that would absolutely shut off all power except for basic life support to the Holodeck in question. I might even have such switches installed inside as well, with the HD circuitry physically disabled so that a simulation run amok could not hide it or block access to it.
"I'd've paid good money to hear him[Picard] tell Riker, 'Look Will, shut yer gob or you'll be cleaning the heads with your toothbrush the next time Laforge reverses polarity'."
I too would like to have seen Picard be a hard-ass:
"Mr. Worf! Beat him with a fencepost until he reveals the coordinates/disarms the trap/releases my crewmen/reverses the polarity/fixes what he sabotaged."
Scroll down to "Vows every Starfleet captain should take":
http://enphilistor.users4.50megs.com/hero.htm
Oh yeah. Precisely. Ensign Gomez... just think, somewhere on the original Enterprise there must have been a HUGE room full of red shirts. "Here, try this one on for size, pal..." And did anyone ever calculate how many rolls of biffy paper you'd need for 400 crew for a five-year mission? Bet there's ANOTHER huge storage room down on deck 52 full of bog rolls.
Oh dear god i cant beilive ppl would just come here to insult a TV u ppl obivoiusly have no live AT ALL! i mean how sad are u! ROFLMAO i mean to come onto the internet just insult a tv is just SAD! so get a god dam life
Prime Directive too rigid? Good god, its interpretation changed almost as often as the Bush Administration's rationale for liberating Iraqi oil fields.
<<... I couldn't wait for Data to turn into a calculator ...>>
Or at least, start flailing his arms and shouting, DANGER! DANGER!
Another one I loved was in the "Lazarus" episode, about identical enemies, the one with this priceless bit of physics lore: if a particle meets its corresponding antiparticle, both universes will be destroyed.
No, that wasn't the bit I loved. Their guest wanders around the Enterprise unsupervised, sabotages something crucial, and is caught. Kirk solemnly tells McCoy, well, we will never leave him unguarded again... And then... immediately... Kirk and McCoy both just WALK AWAY. So their guest can wander around unsupervised, again, and sabotage something crucial, again.
Check out "The Ensigns of Command", Troi has more camel toe in that episode than anyone has ever had in the history of camel toe. If it were not for the spandex, there would be no Troi camel toe!
It just came to me that I seem to remember an episode of TOS where some crew on a planet were screwed because the transporter had malfed... but nobody thought to just hop into a shuttlecraft and go get them. Ooops.
Oh, and by the way.. the best SF TV show ever was Fireball XL5. No, really. Full power!
"Hmmm... a box that goes 'vzzzt!' Just what I always wanted!"
"Oh dear god i cant beilive ppl would just come here to insult a TV u ppl obivoiusly have no live AT ALL! i mean how sad are u! ROFLMAO i mean to come onto the internet just insult a tv is just SAD! so get a god dam life"
Not nearly as sad by far as someone who a) came here anyway and did the same thing as the people he is criticizing, and b) is apparantly illiterate.
These comments are funnier than the jokes, and they were pretty funny!
Loved the list! Star Trek TNG ended when I was in 10th grade and I wore a black armband and communicator to school. I loved that show. But it's not one that I can go back and re-watch over and over.
As for the "Best Sci-fi show ever"... wow. There are so many shows out there that all had such different strengths and weaknesses. I didn't realize that genre fans had to pick one ;) I like just about all Sci-Fi shows I see, provided they are not boring (the worst thing entertainment can be!). Lately it's been B5 (intricate storyline, space battles!), Futurama (hilarious!), Farscape (cinematic no-holds-barred production, great acting) and early Stargate SG1 (military action/adventure). Get each expert to give us the "Best episode of --x--" and I bet they're all quite evenly matched. What sucks is that apparently there's not enough of us around to warrant more than one show at a time. We've got to pick a corner because that's what the TV producers do. (and yeah, I'm still bitter at the SciFi channel :( ).
Love the list, it sort of reminds me of the old Star Trek Writer's Construction Kit for Windows. (Do a google search, you will find it).
I was an avid Trekkie until Babylon 5 came around, that show rewrote the rules of what it means to create a 'hard core' sci fi show. IMHO it lead the way for two other great shows, Farscape and Firefly.
I shall leave now, before the Trek vs The Rest of Sci Fi Wars start. Lord knows I was around when the ST vs B5 war was raging on.
Why, when they are traveling at ultra light speeds and pulling Mega-Gs with even the slightest course change does the artificial gravity always fluctuate just enough to toss them across the room, but not enough to turn them into paste when they hit the far wall?
... and how 'bout these perfectly compatible interfaces? Go and try downloading a database from a Unix machine to a Mac, then, imagine what it'd be like between computers from across the galaxy...
The list was funny, but the comments are hilarious. I hope most of you are kidding. Otherwise you're sadly missing the point: it's the future. They know things you don't. Think of all the findings and technology that no one would have believed in our recent past. People in the 16th century would have a really difficult time evaluating daily living in our current world. To think that electronics and office politics as you know them would be the same so far in the future is a bit silly.
Plus, the leftist humanistic themes in the Star Trek world are intended to represent progressive maturity in our race. Posts about who the hottest chick was, or how cool it is to see a captain abusing his power on another show completely illustrate the types of behavior humans would be evolving away from in this particular future. It suppose it depends too if you're looking at it as pure sci/fi or futurism.
"Plus, the leftist humanistic themes in the Star Trek world are intended to represent progressive maturity in our race."
If this is true, then Gene Roddenberry was the biggest idiot not only in Hollywood, but the entire Goddamned world. Leftism is not progress. It is regress into tribalism. People are going to evolve away from noticing hot chicks and behaving properly as part of a military unit?
Well, although I'd possibly agree that the 'supression of dissent' has perhaps been slightly overstated I think at the very least it qualifies as a 'Rather Stern Discouragement of Dissent'.
I mean, although there haven't been any cases of protesters being "hustled into vans for a going over with rubber hoses or anything like that" I'm still seeing a lot of stuff that I really don't like seeing in the Land of the Free. I mean I'm reading stories about The Secret Service interrogating schoolkids, ( http://www.kron.com/Global/story.asp?s=%20%201268949 ) about protesters getting shot *in the back* with rubber bullets, ( http://www.guardian.co.uk/antiwar/story/0,12809,932145,00.html ) the case of Brett Bursey ( http://www.usnews.com/usnews/issue/030512/opinion/12john.htm ) (which is actually a point being raised by a conservative). I'm hearing about Andrew Sullivan and Glenn Reynolds, of all people, being called Anti-American (or should that be UnAmerican) for suggesting that some people might consider the whole USS Abraham Lincoln thing to be a partisan use of the military. Then there's this story of a restaurant being raided under the patriot act ( http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=15770 ) . That's not even starting on the media - like the case when Bill O'reilly physically threated, cut the mike of, and started shouting 'SHUT UP!" at Jeramy Glick, an anti war activist and 9-11 family member, and the tale of how the 'spontaneous uproar' against the dixie chicks was actually orchestrated by the Republicans. ( http://www.utne.com/web_special/web_specials_2003-04/articles/10440-1.html ) . And that's not mentioning the whole general trend of seeing any criticism of American Foreign policy as 'Anti-American' or even 'supporting Saddam' (which is especially ridiculous, many on the left were criticising Saddam Hussain's brutal reigme way back when the British and U.S. were actually supporting him.)
I'm pretty sure there are more examples which I've forgotten, barely a day goes by without me reading of another example of American dissenters being mistreated (on www.thismodernworld.com especially, where all but one of the above links are shamelessly lifted from). And in many of these cases there are all manner of ifs and buts (the rubber-bulleted protesters, for example, were allegedly throwing stones at the (heavily armed and shielded) riot cops, but I still think shooting them in the back was something of an overreaction) but it all adds up to a bigger picture where people who criticise some elements of American government are automatically assumed by many to be traitors. Now I don't think this is equivalent to McCarthyism, but I certainly think it's a trend which could certainly lead in that direction.
Oh, and off topic, but how do you insert links and italicise here? Is it just like standard html?
We forgot about the fact that no one ever dies. Kirk dies goes to Nexus, comes back.
Spock dies and is reanimated in fast motion.
Scotty dies and spends 80 years in a transporter beam before returning.
Data explodes then his dumb twin starts singing same songs.
Picard dies, goes back in time fights nausicans then comes back, no change.
What I liked about the old show was when they beamed down to a "strange planet" and the only thing that distinguished that planet from another, was the blue or red or green party light shining up from behind the styrofoam mountain range.
Kevin Smith would have done well with a riff about being a jizz-mopper on the holodeck...;->
as for all the conservatives blathering :THINK OF SOMETHING NEW. 'oh wait! Can't do that, I'm Conservative!' 8-P
and Firefly Rocked. Await the DVD and the possible movie. Zoe is one of the finest badasses this side of Ms Bristow and Kaylee, well....i'll be in my bunk.
WAHHH!! I miss Firefly. Give me good old Captain Tightpants over Kirk,Picard,whomever any day. Everytime we get a show that actually makes you think the suits with their miniscual I.Q.s cancell it. It must be because it makes their brain hurt. That is, one brain multitude of suits. I too eagerly await the DVD.
I also miss Farscape,Bab5,Lone Gunmen,oh hell anything by J.Michael Strazinsky,etc.
I hope I'm the first to post about the Great SF Paradox:
What happens when a bunch of clueless red-shirt "Ensign Gomez" types (guaranteed lifespan - three minutes from beam-down) meets a platoon of Imperial Stormtroopers (who can't hit a barn from inside it)?
Firefly R.I.P
Probably the best SF (if not the best overall) series of last year. I felt incredibly cheated when Fox canned it for the laughable 'John Doe'. Still, at 2 million an episode I guess Fox didn't think they'd make their money back. Skinflints.
Let's hope Joss Whedon finds a channel that will take it on - it's not as if there's that much new SF being shown at the moment. Except 'Enterprise' of course - which must win the award for "Worst Theme Tune Ever".
The real travesty in the Firefly fiasco was the fact that FOX aired the episodes out of order. They felt that the pilot episode wasn't engaging enough and changed the order.
As is demonstrated by Joss' other shows, he plots out the seasons in advance. They're going somehwere. Screwing around with the timeline screws the story.
Stupid FOX execs. I'm just afraid that if since the DVDs are coming out that there won't be any more new episodes.
As for the capitalist/totalitarian thing, it does seem pretty farfetched to us now that the Federation would work without currency. But many SF writers have adopted that into their fiction, and sometimes it is very interesting. However, if ST was going to claim they had a Utopian communist state, they should have at some point developed their setting. Instead they casually mentioned in one or two episodes, "we have no currency." Bad writing.
But before you condemn liberal or fascist SF, take a look at the work of Mack Reynolds. The ideas he developed were stolen in much of today's SF, particularly ST.
Regarding the humanoid aliens: They explained this in an episode...a higher alien race had gone around and seeded all these planets with humanoids that evolved into the 'current day' aliens (and humans). As I remember, the Ferengi refused to accept this, though the Klingons, Vulcans and Humans thought it was cool.
Why oh why couldn't they solve the Borg problem with a quick beaming of a photon torpedo into the middle of the Borg cube. Heck, the Borgs allowed them to send everything else!
Have just sat and read this whole page, has taken me a good few minutes i can tell you!
To the author of original top 10:
some oldies but all goodies very funny and well written!!
in short i laughed till both ends wobbled
To all the people who take this stuff too seriously and i have to make special refernce to pious and kahn (who have made parts of this read absoulute petty bitching over indulgent not to mention completly out of place torcher), urm the point, oh yeah.. just chill out, the only reason you all speak so fluidly and aggressivly on the subject is because you read something somewhere and chose to believe it was gospel, you both need to listen to the other guys opinion if you are gonna do it here. You need to admit that the worlds future hasnt yet been written and bitching about the accuracy of sci-fi portrails of that future is futile and annoying - it is the job of the worlds media to give us different stories and angles, its the duty of the best writers to dream up future science and ideals and its the duty of the scifi enthusiast to sit back and ponder the possibilities. You cant just say your right cos joss says so and you cant say your right because your favourit sci fi is more successfull with the public than someone elses.
Who gives a toss where joss's influences and insiprations of story writing come from, you give too much power to him for eating his shit, just watch the stories and leave it, the worlds best writers and artists don't sit around explaining themselves joss discredits himself by trying to make people draw realism to his fantastical writing, the dude aint no politician and although he is entitled to his opinions he already has his public medium, he'd do well to log in here and realise how much influnence he has over some of you jokers political views. Fool should run for president the way you guys hang off him.
The Enterprise runs into a mysterious energy field of the type it has encountered several times before.
The Enterprise goes to check up on a remote colony of scientists, who are all perfectly all right.
The Enterprise comes across a garden of eden like planet called Paradise where everyone is happy all the time. However, everything is soon revelaed to be exactly as it seems.
The crew of the Enterprise discover a totally new lifeform which turns out to be a familliar old lifeform wearing a funny hat.
The crew of the Enterprise are struck by a mysterious alien plague, for which the cure is found in the well stocked sick bay.
An enigmatic being composed of pure energy attempts to interface with the Enterprise's computer, only to find that it has bought the wrong leads.
A power surge on the bridge is rapidly and correctly diagnosed as faulty capacitor by the Enterprise's well trained and highly competent engineering staff.
A power surge on the bridge fails to electrocute the user of a computer panel due to a sophisticated, 24th century surge protection device called a "fuse".
The Enterprise ferries an alien VIP from one place to another without serious incident.
The Enterprise is captured by a vastly superior alien lifeform which does not put them on trial.
The Enterprise separates as soon as there is any danger.
The Enterprise gets involved in an enigmatic, strange and dangerous situation, and there are no pesky aliens they can blame it on in the end.
The Enterprise is captured by a vastly inferior alien life form which they quickly pacify by offering it sweeties.
The enterprise is involved in some bizzare time warp phenomenon, which is in some way unconnected with the 20th century.
Somebody takes a shuttle out and it doesn't explode or crash.
A major Starfleet emergency breaks out near the Enterprise, but fortunately some other ships in the area are able to deal with it to everyone's satisfaction.
The shields of the Enterprise stay up during a battle.
The enterprise visits the Klingon Home World on a bright, sunny day.
An attempt at undermining the Klingon Federation Alliance is discovered without anyone noting that such an attempt, if sucessful, would represent a fundamental shift of power throughout the quadrant.
A major character spends an entire episode in the holodeck without a single malfunction trapping him / her there.
Picard hears the door chime and doesn't bother to say "come".
Picard walks up to the replicator and says "Coke on ice".
Councillor Troi states something other than the blindingly obvious.
Mood rings come back in style, jeapordising Councillor Troi's position.
Worf and Troi finally decide to get married, only to have Kate Pulaski show up and disrupt the wedding by shouting "Did he read you love poetry? Did he serve you poisonous tea? He's mine!".
When Worf tells the bridge officers that something is entering visual range, no - one say "on screen".
Worf actually gives another vessel more then two seconds to respond to a call from the Enterprise.
Worf kills Wesley in the holodeck by mistake.
Wesley Crusher gets beaten up by his classmates for being a "smarmy git", and consequently has a go at making some friends his own age for a change.
Wesley saves the ship, the federation and the universe as we know and everyong is grateful.
The warp engines start playing up a bit, but seem to sort themselves out again without intervention from the boy genius Wesley Crusher.
Wesley tries to upgrade the warp drives and they work better than ever.
Beverly Crusher manages to go through a whole episode without having a hot flush and getting breathless when Picard is in the room.
Guinan forgets herself and breaks into a stand - up comedy routine.
Data fallls in love with the replicator.
Kirk (or Riker) falls in love with a woman on a planet he visits and isn't tragically separated from her at the end of the episode.
The captain has to make a difficult decision about a less advenced people which is made a great deal easier by the Starfleet Prime Directive.
An unknown ensign beams down as part of an away team and lives to tell the tale.
Spock or Data are fired from their high ranking position for not being ablt to understand the most basic nuances about one of the three sentences that anyone says to him.
Kirk's hair remains consistent for more than one consecutive episode.
Kirk gets into a fistfight and doesn't rip his shirt.
Kirk doesn't end up kissing the troubled guest female before she doesn't sacrifice herself to him.
Scotty doesn't mention the laws of physics.
Scotty isn't the only crew member not affected by a new weapon / attack by an alien race, etc due to his darn green blood or bizzare Vulcan physiology and thus cannot save the day.
The episode ends without Bones and Kirk laughing at Spock's inability to understand the joke, and he doesn't raise his eyebrow.
The computer has a general protection fault.
of course all the aliens look human. they were people. really weird looking aliens are cool but make them at a weekly rate? Star Wars is only 2 hours and is years in the making.
Lynn S - Remember when Praxis, the Klingon energy mining moon blew up? I think the radiation affected the Klingons... Worf said "We did not speak about this matter with outsiders..." Troi or somebody had asked him that...
This post was pretty hilarious.
Dem Kantianer, der die Disjunktion von Preis und Würde seinem Meister glaubte, war dies noch ein Wünschbares. Das brachte ihn um die volle Einsicht, welcher der große Schriftsteller so nahe rückte: daß der Würde ihre Verfallsform immanent ist: durchschaubar, sobald Intellektuelle der Macht sich anbiedern, die sie nicht haben und der sie zu widerstehen hätten. Gleiches läßt sich auch von Star Trek sagen. Am besten lesen Sie dazu das Schlußkapitel der Negativen Dialektik, wo selbst gestandene Marxisten immer weinen müssen, und was ich da über Science Fiction geschrieben habe. Echt krasses Zeug, und total passend.
As for why not go Warp 9 all the time: The faster they went, the more quickly the dilithium crystals wore out. I guess that is one more thing the replicators could not duplicate. Also, in an episode of TNG, they discovered that traveling at high warp caused damage to the fabric of the space/time continuum, and a Star Fleet/Federation directive was put into place to avoid high warp except in emergencies.
I have to agree that reconfiguring the sensor array has to rank right up there with reversing polarity.
Best SciFi right now is definitely Stargate-SG1, but I miss Farscape, Firefly, B5, Space: Above and Beyond, and many others not acceptable to the unwashed masses. Enterprise is okay, but Archer is too much of a pansy to my liking. And this week, he goes to welcome an unknown alien on board and gets shot and kidnapped. He should have sent Ensign Gomez of course.
Love [most of] Trek and others. And snickered when Enterprise snuck in a Tribble among the doctor's menagerie. Other than T'Pol, I don't think it is all that good a show - but it's better than Fear Factor, even if those ladies wear less.
To the eedjuts who don't see why we should analyse: where did you go to school that the concept of constructive criticism never came up?
And the few times the transporter was used for medical purposes got it backwards. Set it to destroy all cellular structures not having human[oid] DNA? A way to a slow death, we have a number of symbionts. But I've never seen an episode take the other approach: "I managed to isolate some of the microbes, and here is the data that will specifically match their makeup. Set the transporter to transport this molecule only, and send it a few miles off."
I LOVED Galaxy Quest!, and YES I AM considered a "Trekker".
It's about TIME we look at the comical side of 'Trek', and others.
(My favorite character in G-Quest was the "un-named Crewman . . .What's his name again ?
. . .They shuttle down to the 'Hostile planet'
which looks a LOT like Arizona, and the 'Chief Engineer, in his INFINITE wisdom start to open the hatch. Our No-Name Crewman yells:
"WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!!
IT'S AN ALIEN WORLD!!
IS THERE AIR ?
YOU DON'T KNOW!!"
Our 'Chief opens hatch, sniffs the "Air",
says "Smells OK" !!!
LROTG!!!
I laughed for 10 minutes on that one!)
**********************************
MY Fav is Voyager, with DS9 a close second.
As Purely Entertainment, they Rock!
As a 'Guide to Future Civilization' . . .
Hmmmm!......
It's GOOD to see Media examples of "Possibilities".
I look at ALL Sci-Fi as 'Scenarios' of what the Future COULD be!(Although B5 was probably CLOSER to OUR "possible future")
AS stated here (and by 'Doc Brown' in Back To The Future);
"The Future hasn't been WRITTEN yet!
No ONE's has!"
It's up to US, guys and gals.
IMHO truly GREAT Sci-Fi offers:
1.) Great Story Plot
2.) Strong Character(s)
3.) Great FX!, Battles, ships, weapons, tools, cinematography, etc... and
4.) An (Interesting) view of the Future!
I followed B5 and now have a NEW FAV - LOTR!
In regards to Life, and the 'Future', I quote
Frodo and Gandalf in "The Fellowship of the Ring":
FRODO: "I wish the Ring had never come to me.
I wish NONE of this had happened"
GANDALF: "So do ALL who live to see such times.
But it is NOT for them to decide.
All you (WE) have to decide is,
What to DO with the Time that is
GIVEN to you."
> See, Ponder and Enjoy! <
PS; Don't forget to LIVE life to it's FULLEST!!!
- A message from SPECIES 8472 (In a Galaxy, Far, Far AWAY! > " WE WANT 7 0f 9 !!!!" )
Well, here's my two cents' worth (at least until the Federation abolishes money):
On the one hand, we have people with waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too much time on their hands finding fault with one of the best sci-fi shows ever. Tell me one instance in the last 30+ years where YOU (that's right, YOU) didn't tune in to some OTHER TV show and DID NOT FIND one single reference to Star Trek? Or, tell me a time that YOU surfed the internet and DID NOT FIND at least one Trek-MENTIONING website?
If you can do that, I'll call you a liar and sic my killer Tribble on you.
On the other hand, we have other people with waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too much time on their hands actually DEFENDING one of the greatest sci-fi shows ever. They immediately take offense if someone DARE poke fun at their 'religion' (And, come one, folks, some 'Trekkies' actually get too carried away with Star Trek) and immediately call upon The Great Bird Of The Galaxy to cross polarities and come through the noisy doors and defecate on the offenders.
If one Trekkie can tell me that Star Trek doesn't rule his or her life, I'll call you a liar.
I've got plenty of cheese to go with all the whine going around.
For the record, I am a Star Trek fan (not a Trekkie, not a Trekker, not an overly zealous idiot living in my parents' basement who's never kissed a real girl) with a Real Life (thank you, William Shatner). I see the extremes being represented here, thus confirming the fact that the Trekkies (those that whine about someone poking fun at a TV show that has become their life) do need to "Get a REAL life". William Shatner's guest appearance on Saturday Night Live with his "Get A Life" skit should be required viewing for those 'people'.
And, for those of you poking fun at Trek (did you really think I wouldn't say something about them?), just take a look at everything in society today, and then tell me Star Trek hasn't influenced your life somehow, I'll call you a liar.
The Original Star Trek (1966-1969) was the designer for most (if not all) the neat little gadgets you take for granted EVERY DAY, such as that nice computer you're using right now (Trek had it...desktop displays), that nifty little cell phone you yak on while you're driving across town to pick up your kids from soccer practice (Trek had it...their communicators), the blood scanners you diabetics are using to monitor your blood sugar and the pneumatic hypodermic syringes your doctor uses today (Trek had it...the medical devices Bones used).
In a nutshell:
Those of you worshipping the Great Bird Of The Galaxy...get a life.
Those of you trashing Trek...get a life.
I do believe I'm one of the few true Trek fans who can appreciate BOTH sides of this debate, and laugh my ass off at the sheer stupidity of BOTH parties involved...
Then go inside and put on my Star Trek shirt and get my toy phaser and zap Klingons...after I've e-mailed all my friends, had the doctor check my blood sugar, and called my kids at soccer practice on my cell phone.
To all the people who take this stuff too seriously
My pointy stick-on ears perked up when you said that- I nearly spilt tea down my special limited edition spandex starfleet dress uniform! It's just like the ones in Star Trek:Generations!
and i have to make special refernce to pious and kahn...
Why shucks! You think I'm special...Wait, is that special as in K or special as in Olympics????
(who have made parts of this read absoulute petty bitching over indulgent not to mention completly out of place torcher),
Dude, you could always have, y'know, just skimmed past those bits if you didn't find them interesting. It's not torcher if you inflict it on yourself: it's masochism. And our sub-conversation did flow quite naturally from what went beforehand...
urm the point, oh yeah.. just chill out,
you sure you haven't chilled out maybe a little much? you seem to be having a few problems with your short term memory. You might do well to pass that doob on roundabout now.
just chill out, the only reason you all speak so fluidly and aggressivly
Well, I for one, actually achieve that aggressive fluidity by reaching a zenlike state of deeply focusssed calm through an intensive yoga regime. Your concern for my blood-pressure is noted, and appreciated.
on the subject is because you read something somewhere
Yeah, I read a thing once. I enjoyed it so much I then went and read another thing, and another until I'd read a whole bunch of things, and before I knew it I was actually moderately well informed, and I found myself forming opinions and evaluating other people's opinions and the facts they presented. It's a hellish, slippery slope, my friend, and I pray you never make the same mistake.
and chose to believe it was gospel,
Um, excuse me! I exercise just as much skepticism about what I read as the next guy (which to be fair probably isn't anywhere near enough, and is biased heavily in favour of stuff which supports my own belief system-just like the next guy). I take nothing as gospel...except of course "DIANETICS" by L. Ron Hubbard, which is the complete and unadulterated truth about everything in the universe ever....
you both need to listen to the other guys opinion
very true,in that listening to each other is necessary for some kind of discussion, but I'm pretty sure we *were* listening to each other. I certainly have no complaint with Pious on that regard, and I think I've addressed the issues he raised.
if you are gonna do it here.
Hey, hold on a sec. He seems like a nice guy and all, but he isn't really my type, you know? But your well intentioned, (if unsubtle to point of pornographic) attempts at matchmaking are appreciated.
You need to admit that the worlds future hasnt yet been written
I'll take it you aren't a fan of Nostradamus then?
and bitching about the accuracy of sci-fi portrails of that future is futile and annoying...
Huh? 1: we weren't. and 2: that's essentially what the first post in the thread was, which you said you liked! 3: Bitching about the accuracy of sci-fi portrails of the future can often be both humourous (like here) and inspire other sci-fi writers to Try Harder- for example there's no sound in space in firefly.
...its the duty of the best writers to dream up future science and ideals
Amongst MANY other things, not least of which are coming up with decent plots, characters, and some kind of theme or idea behind it all would go down a treat too....
and its the duty of the scifi enthusiast to sit back and ponder the possibilities.
Again, Amongst MANY other things, such as plot, character and theme, as stated above.
You cant just say your right cos joss says so
Well, when we're discussing what Joss's intentions were, I think it's perfectly valid, actually.
and you cant say your right because your favourit sci fi is more successfull with the public than someone elses.
Indeed. I'll assume that wasn't directed at me or Pious though, because neither of us have done so. But I haven't noticed very many other people saying anything like that in this thread....
Who gives a toss where joss's influences and insiprations of story writing come from.
You've never tried listening to your favourite musician's favourite musicians? Or reading your favourite writer's favourite books? You should- it's a great way to come across a lot of interesting stuff. It's how I've gotten into a lot of my favourite books and TV shows and bands.
you give too much power to him for eating his shit,
Hey, what me and Joss get up to in the privacy of our own kinky lovenest is our business, and I'd appreciate it if you and Rick Santorum (not to mention his dog) keep out of it!
just watch the stories and leave it,
So you're saying that there's no value in discussion or interpretation of fiction? That fiction doesn't gain it's importance through it's attempt to analyse people's behaviour and ideas, that writers should merely content themselves to merely telling 'ripping yarns'? In that case, I'd like to reccomend a book to you. It's called 'Animal Farm', and the author doesn't try to get above his station by discussing politics or anything like that: he knows his place, and is content merely to tell a good old fashioned fairy tale about farmyard folk. Also (in a vain attempt to bring this thread on-something remotely resembling- topic) what about that episode of trek with the half-white and half black guy and the half black, half white guy? What's that all about, eh?
the worlds best writers and artists don't sit around explaining themselves
They'd better not do, otherwise the guys who write the Cliff notes (and other study guides) would go out of business, and then they'd be pissed.
joss discredits himself by trying to make people draw realism to his fantastical writing,
Huh? I have no idea what you actually mean by this. But EVERY writer has an obligation to maintain some degree of realism ie, a good degree of internal consistantancy within the context of the established game-rules of the (fictional) universe, and realistic characters with consistant motivations, behaviour and development. Equally, it's perfectly valid, and indeed A Good Thing for a writer to try and provoke some kind of emotional response from his audience through the use of metaphors for and parallels with real life (or at the least the author's interpretation thereof). I hope either of these points go some way towards addressing whatever it was you were trying to say.
the dude aint no politician
Show's how little you know! He's actually president of a small chain of islands in the south pacific, including JossTopia and Jossistan.
and although he is entitled to his opinions he already has his public medium,
So what you're now saying is that he has a right to express his views via the medium of television scifi and fantasy- even though a moment ago you were criticising us for discussing the views he may be presenting via that medium? Colour me confused!
...he'd do well to log in here and realise how much influnence he has over some of you jokers political views.
Yes, you're absolutely right in that regard. My entire political belief system is founded purely on the basis of Buffy The Vampire Slayer, and before I started watching that show I had no opinions whatsoever. For example, my mistrust of large government organisations is inspired purely by the portrail of the initiative, I only support gay rights because of Willow and Tara, and my cynicism regarding businesses and their greed is inspired purely by Anya. I am also rather concerned at the way mainstream politicians have avoided addressing the Vampire Issue.
Fool should run for president the way you guys hang off him.
Well, it could only be an improvement....
chill..
Okay, look I'm just going to apologise for this right now, save myself the hassle later on, because I have been a mite cruel, but hey, I thought it was funny!- and I do think you have been a little patronising at times, and that you're setting your standards as regard fiction, and the writing and interpretation thereof rather low... No (serious) offence intended...
The wardrobe budget on the original Star Trek must have been outrageous. Not only did Ensign Gomez lose a whole uniform when he was incinerated by Landru, but Captain Kirk was always getting his shirt ripped while engaged in mortal hand-to-hand combat with some foam rubber monster. Sometimes you could even see that black girdle he wore to make himself look less tubby.
At least The Next Generation didn't have a huge wardrobe problem. The captain barely ever ripped his uniform in mortal hand-to-hand combat, and the likes of Troi did their best to fit their size 15 asses into size 5 spandex tubes. Way to make the wardrobe budget stretch a bit further.
By the way, the janitors wore purple uniforms. I saw a ships janitor at a convention once.
Spot-on. This was great. I like Trek, and still watch Enterprise looking for good episodes (with that damned opening power rock crap song on mute), but the best sci fi on TV in the past 15 years IMO was Firefly, Bab5, and Farscape (yes, I prefer muppets farting explosives and knock-out tongues to WEET doors and Counselor Cleavage).
Skimmed the rancorous debate, and it was about as amusing as your average cheesy TOS Kirk Fight or 1-2 season TNG Troi Feel A Thon. Embrace the kitsch! And keep it in perspective, y'all. Just. A. Show.
The thing that's forever vext me about StarTrek is: WHO BUILT THE KLINGON'S SPACESHIPS? It certainly could not have been them. Klingon Geeks? Klingons with slide-rules? (remember, they have a past also). Really, Imagine two Klingon engineers (that was tricky. still with me?)At a white-board, discussing a technical problem. I can't do it without blood being spilt. I imagine that all their technocrap is built by the REAL rulers of Kling, a race of teeny Gnomelike critters who are just too cool to get involved with running around the universe and the Klingons are their unwitting cattle. I'd like to meet them in some future Star Trek.
And can you stretch credulity more with the introduction of point-to-point transporting?
No longer did you even need to stand under the transporter to have your atoms disintegrated, put into the form of energy, and beamed somewhere. The transporter can now shoot its mystery ray through the ship to where you are and transport you from there.
Insane. Although it only took about 10 years to get better palm pilots than the guys in TNG used.
I remember watching the first episodes of Star Trek as a little girl. I'm laughing my butt off here at the list and at all the rest of the comments. Here's the only thing I know, you can debate all the finer points about the shows, but all I remember is that even at 8 years old, I knew I wanted Kirk to come in and save me and give me the lip lock! Nothing like a good old shot of testosterone to make a show successful
Is it actually true that there's no money in Star Trek?... Seems to me they dealt in "credits," or was that only for trade with non-federation worlds? (i.e., the Trouble with Tribbles.) I always took it that people got so familiar with military-supply fixed prices, and e-commerce that they never squabbled with money. Just the computer removed 3 credits from Picard's account every time a computer confirmed it was his voice asking for Earl Gery tea. Of course, I don't know how they knew whether to charge the Cap'n presonal account.
Then again, maybe they just never have to deal with that s--t, after all, they also don't seem to have toilets on the Enterprise.
And what about Chekov's accent? No one else had such a thick accent. Okay, Scotty's brogue became much more pronounced when he drank too much Scotch, but still... What was this? Showing respect/empathy to the Soviets during the height of the Cold War?
I love ST. I stopped watching at Voyager becuse, give me a break, the Captain (or something) was an American Indian. All other religions and ethnicities on Earth have been abolish but Indians remain?! Too ridiculous. Furthermore, am I the only person to have seen "Space:Above and Beyond?" I liked that show alot. Perhaps I was the only person who saw it, because it was promptly cancelled.
A few of MY offerings on Star Trek IN-Consistancies:
1.) Timing.
Any time something "happens" to threaten the Federation, they always "manage" to have the time and resources to conquer it!
IE, in TNG when Enterprise'D hits the 'Quantum Fillament';
WHY did the Borg not attack then?
Klingons? Feregi? A Pulsing Quasi-Sqiud creature?
A Teddy-Bear type creature that traps you in a Black VOID of space?
PERFECT time to take over the Federation!
No main power, No Weapons, Spandex Troi in Command!
BTW - Ensign Ro Laren - (BABE!)
2.)The 'Fair Play for the Federation'/ Hands-Off policy approach by 'Alien vessels' toward Enterprise, Voyager, etc.
I recall Several times when Enterprise, Voyager, Defiant, etc. was vulnerable and COULD have been taken over by other ships, but wasn't!
First they try to blow them away, then Bam! Next scene they quietly fly off leaving the stricken Voyager, Enterprise, etc. to lick their wounds, regroup, run a 'Level 1,2,3,500 Diagnostic, un-freeze Scotty from Transporter Oblivion, Rescue Ambassador Spock, or analyze their meager Sensor scans to find a weakness in the Alien Ship's defenses, so they can "Meet again" and Pulverize them!
. . .
On the BRIGHT side:
The series(plural) have encouraged us to
1. Get along; 2. Work together toward a common goal; 3. Develop better technology
(BTW, how many find it odd that when the Original Series was on, and IF you were SEEN in public carrying something that LOOKED like a Star Trek "communicator" you'd be tormented with teasing . . .
NOW, almost ALL of (us) carry cellphones with the 'Flip' cover feature and PDA's (Palm Pilot) (P.A.D.D.'s) that look like the TNG devices!)
My, how times CHANGE!!
We're ALL Techno-geeks!- and COOL now!
Hey I was 'cool' when cool wasn't cool!??
********************************************
Star Trek's message has been to STRIVE toward a Brighter Future; to "make a difference"; to Eliminate Problems, (not sweep them under the Rug with a Government Program); To "better yourself", and ALL humanity, and other 'sentient species' as well; to fight for what is RIGHT, Just, Fair, etc.
Granted It's JUST T.V. folks.
It HAS to be Bought by networks and Paid For by Advertisers.
A TOTALLY committed message/program would have to be PRIVATELY-funded to eliminate the Politics of the TV/ Movie moguls, . . .
But Hey -
"That's ENTER-TAIN-Ment!"
(I LOVE the Mark Twain/Samuel Clemens' portrayal in TNG's 1880's San Fran > "Madame Guinan!"; also the Jack London guy was cool!)
-Species 8472- > Seeking: "Tertiary Adjunct of unimatix Zero-ONE" < A.K.A. 7 of NINE, Bay-Bee!!
It was _always_ ment to be understood that the holodeck was for ALL kinds of recreation. ;-)
There was a line in Voyager when Tom Paris said something to the effect that "Now that I'm married, my days of rescuing slave girls as Captain Proton are over!"
Well of course the doors go "wheet!".
Doesn't any of you remember the episode where Enterprise is being attacked by ultra high velocity sound bursts coming from a Britney Spears concert unfortunately taking place at some ill choosen location where the time space continuum layers have interextrasuperpolated into violent vortexes of quantumtachyons?
Giordi's semi-monologue goes as follows:
"Well I could try to reverse the polarity of the whateverthingthatcouldpossiblysaveusfromthisridiculousshit device, but that would only make the universe implode (whew! close one Giordi). Instead I think I will interchange the wiring of the slidingdoorsshouldsoundlikefuckall device with the vampiricholodeckbitchhavinganorgasm device. Noone will notice."
Picard approves: "Good thinking Giordi. The vampire bitch in holodeck is dead anyway"
"With all due respect captain. You're a retard"
"Thanks Giordi. You're the finest of your kind."
And that's how the doors got their sound.
if you had a holodeck..would you ever leave it? Think of star trek, and Q and the future as the matrix, and they being stuck in the system cuz space travel is impossible.
so realluy, all you have is a bunch ofplanets playing some mmorpg with eachother, that explains away every excuse you'll ever find..and if you dont believe it, question why Q could do as he wanted, and why in the new star trek, people are fighting some 'temporal' cold war..it's all there..
Ok-- First off-- "Driven ot Drink"--you are one funny and crazy person!!! You Rock I like the way you think....
--"Dudemac"-- Tasha and Data got it on because he was ah hemm "Equipped in mulitple techniques and the proper equipment--if ya get my drift" I am a Geek enough to Remember that Episode--
It's also the same episode where Wesley Has a power trip and rigged the Comunicator to put out false Announcments--- Bawhaahahaaa !! That was pricless ;)
OK, No one so far seems to have fallen upon my BIGGEST pet peeve. It's the freaking BORG. I mean, HOW MANY TIMES do we have to see these people destroyed to have them just COME BACK.
Picard killed them after he was Locutus. Then, we have Hugh, who gives them all individuality, but I guess it didn't take.
They were all over the place in Voyager. They show up in the First Contact movie (a convenient set-up for Enterprise), and Data kills the Queen, but she returns magically. Then JANEWAY kills them in the Voyage finale.
Well, I finally gave up on Enterprise when the Borg, whom Picard, Riker, Data et all were completely unaware when Q first sent them to the delta quadrant, showed up on the latest series. I mean, talk about a tool for lazy writers.
OK, I just reread this post and I am scared that I know all of this.
Hilarious, and oh so accurate! The part about reversing the polarity had me spitting all over my monitor with laughter. And the holodeck! What a dreadful invention--an excuse for lazy scriptwriters to send the crew back to Victorian England or wherever. Hated it!
But I'm delighted to see so many people here remember one of my favorites--Space: Above and Beyond. It was easily among the most underrated sci-fi shows ever. I loved it because it was only tangentially a sci-fi show. There was almost no technobabble, and hardly ever did a plot involve some scientific mumbo-jumbo. It was an attempt to do a drama about war. That it was in space was entirely secondary. Half the show's plots were inspired by events from previous wars. My favorite was the episode inspired by--of all things--the famous 1914 Christmas truce, when the combatants of WWI, without approval from high command, just stopped fighting on Christmas Day, crossed into each other's trenches, and celebrated the holiday. Next day, the killing resumed.
Now how do you write a story about that when the enemy are a bunch of aliens who certainly don't celebrate Christmas? Well, Space did just that, and in the process made one of the best dramas about faith, and hope, and Christmas that I've ever seen on TV. Absolutely astonishing stuff. So of course, they cancelled it. Bummer.
This post was the BEST!!! ROTFL! I think everyone has the "most heard thing" about the "reverse polarity"...what did we hear even MORE than that????
ROTATE SHIELD MODULATION!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
(and they still got the shit knocked out of them!! :)
I don't care though, I still LOVE Star Trek (Except for the waste of film "Enterprise". PLEASE GIVE US A BETTER STORY THAN THIS!!! WHO CARES WHAT HAS HAPPENED ALREADY! PICK IT UP IN THE FUTURE AFTER VOYAGER HAS RETURNED!!!!)
Oh...by the way, BABYLON 5 is **still** my all time favorite Sci-FI
Woah-287 comments, now 288. I bet your mailbox is crammed!
Nonetheless, this is probably one of the funniest things I've seen you put on your site. It's great to know I'm not the only one who wondered why they didn't have seatbelts in the original Star Trek.
I think the main problem that they had with Firefly was that the last episode aired was the pilot. Is it me, or was that backwards (I have not read all of the posta, just the 1st 100 or so and no one mentioned that). I understood a lot more about the story after I saw the pilot.
And I have been a trekkie since way back when (I think I actually watched the original episode of the series). Why didn't they just name guys " Ensign Expendable"?
Head Writer at ST-TNG: "Well, doesn't ANYONE have an idea for a science fiction story this week?"
Anon Writer: "Umm, no, but I have this GREAT idea for a Western..."
Therefore they would not be able to build a spaceship because they can't convert inches into cm, every fat woman would sue the clothing manufacturers and the computer would run windows 2498 NT XP SE. Even if they reached space (one third of the crew would have serious problems as smoking a cigarette outside the starship would be mandatory), they would not dare confronting the Clingons as long as Ossi's or Saddi's grandchildren are hiding in the desert.
kahn the point of my post was to try and encourage you to stop over analysing not to stop analysing, but you have still managed to continue your senselessly over analytical journey into my psyche
"and I found myself forming opinions and evaluating other people's opinions and the facts they presented. It's a hellish, slippery slope, my friend, and I pray you never make the same mistake."
your opening two or three bursts of abusive backchat and slating hardly came across as evaluating other peoples opinion kiddo, in fact quite the opposite, you'd do well to remember I came upon your "conversation" as an impartial viewer, and you came across as incredibly self-righteous and rude. If all your reading and exploration into life’s rich tapestry has resulted in your close minded and blinkered attitude problem then I am glad I never read beyond where’s Wally.
"Yeah, I read a thing once.BY JOSS WHEDON I enjoyed it so much I then went and read another thingBY JOSS WHEDON , and another until I'd read a whole bunch of thingsBY JOSS WHEDON , and before I knew it I was actually moderately well informedBY JOSS WHEDON
and anyone else that said anything i disregarded cos it wasnt indorsedBY JOSS WHEDON
I have to admit to not reading the rest of your post because it takes too long and the point of my post was to try and stop you from being so blinkered and the first couple of paras were more than enough to realise you live for this shit and blinkered is the only way you can get through the day. Leave Scotland, see some of the world, form your own opinions, the kind of life changing opinions that you cant read from someone else. you are exactly the kind of would be atheist that rejects religion because you wont be told what to do and you believe it to be below your intelligence and then follow your own reading like scripture. You reject even your own choosing to stay informed, how can you possible know if you are hearing two sides of an argument reading newspaper cuttings and published essays? LIVE IT BABY! dont read it."neocons" I mean where are you from? Advice one more time, turn off the telly stop reading asimov and think, today I am going to smell the air outside and try and find my own words to describe it, touch the grass and think of things and memories the smell reminds you of, you may like the fight with "neocons" whoever the fuck they are and you may love the knowledge you have acquired but try and be original.
Just as a plus if you are going to ignore me and leave the telly on watch "good will hunting" because there is a similar argument about reading and doing between williams and damon, which encapsulates the point quite beautifully, and when you can tell me what it smells like in the louvre I will listen to your point.
CAPTAINS LOG SUPLIMENTAL;-) You may want to try not having conversations at all but just post appendices of books you read once.
I can't believe no-one's mentioned the single biggest bit of nonsense in ST. They find a new planet, they scan it for life-forms, they pick the biggest concentration of life-forms, beam down, and they ALWAYS find the united government of the entire planet waiting for them there or, at most, a couple of hundred metres away. Would this work on Earth? The largest number of different political movements they ever find on AN ENTIRE PLANET is two: the ones in power and the rebels. But, usually, there aren't even any rebels. And all the political leaders of the entire planet live in one small area of one city. Or even just a small town. I want to see them beam down and discover that there are at least three hundred different governments that they're going to have to deal with before they can get any sort of consensus and that the negotiations are likely to take at least sixty years. I'd also like to see someone scan the planet and say, "Captain, I'm picking up more than two thousand major population centres. Which one do you want to beam down to?"
"Dr Who reversed the polarity on NEUTRONS? Neutrons don't flow, and have no polarity! This is what you get when you let Brits do Sci-Fi. Oh, and Red Dwarf. You get that too."
HA! Red Dwarf rocks! I mean - come on - Arnold J. Rimmer? Dave Lister? Kryton? And The Cat... ahhh - yes - Cat. Aside from the dodgy yank accents on Kryton and Cat, this show was a fine piece of work. At least, it was when I was 19. You'll be running it on PBS soon enough - if it hasn't already... And Dr. Who scared the crap out of me when I was six dammit - don't you know how scary the Daleks are?
Add me to the chorus of people who love this list.
I watched the original ST for comic value - the campy acting and the dodgy sets still drag me back to reruns on rainy Saturday afternoons.
I watched ST:NG for escapism - they got to travel the universe, hang out with their friends, hook up with other life forms, beat the baddies, faced interesting philosophical dilemmas and Jean Luc was always there to be the authoritative, direct yet compassionate father figure/chief hero/whatever. Worth waiting up for late on Tuesday nights.
I stopped watching ST when DS9 came along. Like the earlier ones, it reflected the values of the era it was written in. Unfortunately it was the couch potato era, so they just stopped going anywhere, everyone came to them instead. Too much talk and inter-species politicking, not enough action.
ROTFLMAO! That is some seriously funny $hizn!t! I grew up watching all of the Startrek shows and movies, I guess you just learn to ignore all the little silly details.
I read somewhere that they used all of those dead tribbles by making key chains and fuzzy dice out of 'em. Somebody, for God's sake, alert the media.
I could see myself getting a pantload of tribbles and then walking by some klingon to set 'em off! Yeeeeeessssssshhhh!!!! Hey, if my girlfriend can ride the washing machine on spin cycle I'm entitled to a little indescretion.
Worf was actually a dog and the ship's pet. Worf Worf!
Hmm... my only problem with Firefly was that lame metaphysical bullshit they brought into it... with that Barney Miller character I think. That bit gave me the twitchies. They should have done a show with James Randi as a guest for a good ole debunking. The only change with regard to mental powers that will occur in the future is that finally people will see the Uri Gellers of the world for what they are... frauds.
But seriously, folks.. I'm surprised that no-one has mentioned Odyssey 5. Am I the only person that thinks that show doesn't completely suck? Am I just swayed by the presence of Peter Weller? Or was it that episode where a synthetic deadpanned right to Peter's face about a certain Rock'n'Roll Physicist who once said: "No matter where you go.. there you are"? Any show that makes a reference to the great Buckaroo is alright in my book! If you haven't caught it yet, you might want to... it looks pretty interesting.
On the subject of ST tech, I highly recommend that book "The Physics of Star Trek" by Lawrence M. Krauss. While some of the stuff may be theoretically possible in the far future, the whole concept of transporters, and other technologies based on them, such as replicators and holodecks, have problems that are, as they say, non-trivial. But they're fun to pretend with, aren't they? Like they say, it's just a TV show.
And all being said, ALL the Star Treks are great.. each in their own way. This is going to go over like a lead balloon... but IMHO Enterprise is the best ST since TOS. I'll watch an Enterprise episode long before I'll watch TNG, DS9 or even Voyager. Scott Bakula may not buckle a lot of swashes, but you know what? He's believable. He's the most believable Captain an ST series has ever had. I'll be looking forward to seeing Enterprise grow and improve over the next few years.
Remember: If you truly love something, you should be able to poke some fun at it!
I feel like we're old friends now. How are things going with your new friend, beezwax? He sounds really cool, I hope you two are friends 4ever!
Jeeze, I step away for a couple of days, and you've gone and picked a fight with somebody else? I'm hurt, but not so hurt that I won't still write to you.
I have to say that your little fisking exercise rivaled the original 10-things post for drink-through-the-nose funnyness. Good show.
If you ever decide to "leave Scotland" or wherever, give me a call. I have a nice dark echo chamber where we can form new opinions, if you'd like. I'll even open the window so we can smell the outside smells.
One more thing: "An M.Kahn-ticle for Liebowitz" was a particularly tasty reference to one of my favorite books. Eat! Eat! Eat!
Oh, and in reference to your question, you can italisize by enclosing things in <I> ... </I>, but I don't know how to do links.
Hey, the Science Fiction Forum on CompuServe used to have a crew of regulars who would take TNG apart on a regular basis. Picture a song parody called "It's a Trek World After All" to which David Gerrold contributed a verse. (OK, OK, I started it.)
As for the "You can't go warp 9 again" business, this was my contribution:
(to the tune of "Please Mister Please" by Olivia Fig Newton)
In the engineering hull there sits a warp drive,
With its matter in and out and pro and con.
Till there came another bumpy-forehead lady
Said the universe would blow to hell and gone.
Then she vaporized herself so we'd believe her,
Blew a hole in space from here to Timbuktu.
And we only could escape by going surfing!
What's a poor beleagured Captain gonna do?
Please Geordi please,
Don't go warp nine-point-nine.
It was top speed, it was our speed, but it's over.
Listen to me,
'cause my job's on the line.
We ain't never gonna go warp nine again.
So I guess I'll get ahold of the Ferengi,
And tell them 'bout the speed they've gotta do,
Call Gul Dukat and have him pass the message,
'cause I know those web-neck guys will slow down too.
It reminds me of that ancient oil embargo,
When the earthlings couldn't go but fifty-five,
And I wish I knew the Klingon word for turtle,
'cause I'm captain of the slowest ship alive.
Please Geordi please,
Don't go warp nine-point-nine.
It was top speed, it was our speed, but it's over.
Listen to me,
'cause your butt's on the line.
We ain't never gonna go warp 9 again.
It amazes me that Starfleet officers were always able to dodge out of the way when shot at by enemy phasers. Apparently reflexes will be faster in the 24th century - or maybe they learned how to do it at the Academy.
1) Why, in a completely artificial, climate-controlled environment, does every single group wear either A) big bulky ceremonial robes, or B) 1960's Tommorowland leisure suits. How about shorts?
2) Why do the advanced computer-controlled, sensor-assisted weaponry miss 90% of the time?
3) Why does every alien have something wrong with their nose? (OK, I know this one, actually - minimum makeup to give the idea of alien. Bah!)
40 Why does every single race everywhere have the same morals as 20th century Hollywood writers? Can't those guys actually come up with anything innovative?
Wouldn't you just love those smarmy PC Enterprisers to come up against a bunch of libertarian traders (from the anarchist world of Spooner) who sneer at the Prime Directive?
It never ceases to amaze me the degrees of disrespect the younger generations have for the forward looking beliefs of Gene Roddenberry, Look....transportation technology exists, albeit in data form only at this stage. Phasers exist, anti-matter exists. We're getting there. One day, who knows, we'll be able to get along without John Howard & Peter Costello.........Gods, I can but hope.
Yes, I'm a trekker.....as opposed to a trekkie. We like it but realise there's a real world to contend with.....they love it and want to know when the Enterprise is next going to beam down an away team to take them away from all this.
Picard must have the mental constitution of steel. He gets assimilated by the Borg, tortured my the God-like Q, zapped by a satellite and lives like 50 years as another person, plus having to make difficult decisions that have led to several crewmember's deaths. If I had survived even a fraction of that, I'd be ready for the looney bin, and totally unfit for command.
How come so many holodeck simulations, time travels, "ressurected people," and references are always Earth, usually around the 20th century, Western culture? You never see anything where Picard is sent back in time to Japan in 800 AD, find a mummy from 1300, or a holodeck simulation of the bad section of Detroit in 2135.
I never got the "system without money" thing, either. I mean, how are goods traded? How do you deal with limited supply issues? It seems the only vague references to this suggest a primative barter-like system.
They speak awfully good 20th century English in the future. Compare it to English 400 years ago. You can barely understand it. There's been no change in slangs, idioms, similies, metaphors, or even formalities in 400 years? Prithee, me thinketh this doth not bode well with the commoners....
Yeah, of course you all liked Fire Fly. It was the typical mindless violence filled with the senseless and horrible slaughter of men. The usual idiot show in which the so-called good guy is still a murdering SOB, only slightly better than those he/she dispatches with glee and little sense of what it means to kill/maim someone. Just about all you are capable of wraping your brains around, apparently.
I just remembered a Star Trek episode of TNG where they have to get a cure for a disease from a planet that detains Tasha and forces her to fight or some such. Anyway, after getting the sought-after medicine that will cure the disease, the set course for the stricken planet--at Warp 3.
Why start with Star Trek? What about the serials? Does anyone remember Flash Gordon in chains shoveling radium into the atomic furnace? What about the god awful radio science fiction shows? I'll quote parody from 1941:
Professor: Turn on the death ray, Tex, and let 'em have it.
Tex: I can't, Professor. The atomic-integrator-exhalator-condensor coil is busted!
Professor: Zounds! Jumping gyroscopes! What'll we do now?
Millicent: The Jupter fleet is bearing down on us at six thousand miles per second!
Tex: Gosh! Looks like we're done for.
Millicent: Wait, Professor - I think I can fix it!
Professor: Only seconds are left.
Millicent: There!
-- Sound of switch --
Millicent: How's that?
Professor: Ah! Fixed!
Tex: Great, Millicent! You have saved civilization! This means peace in our time! Just wait till I spray 'em with this death ray.
Professor: Get set, Tex.
Tex: I await your order, Professor.
Professor: Ready! Aim! Fire!
-- Sound of death ray --
Some things just don't change. Then, as now, guys date the space princesses but they marry the spunky gals.
ok it is cute-- but i'd have more respect for it if a) you didn't put scotty and GEORDI in the same ship (since that only occured in relics) and b)you spelled GEORDI's name correctly
Hey - people analyze Star Trek (and Buffy and Firefly) because it is a fun game - taking something that isn't serious seriously.
As to why the Aliens all looked like humans - I think the answer is because real aliens are too expensive to hire for a TV show.
In terms of the economy of Star Trek. I don't think it was a particularly socialist society. Sure everyone gets replicator rations - but I think that is just a matter of transaction cost - the same way you don't pay for streetlights by the lument. It is pretty clear that if you want goods or services not made my replicator or for that matter if you want stuff that requires more energy that the basic replicator ration convers - you need money. You can probably have the same living standard as a middle class American inhabitant of the 21st century without working in the Star Trek universe. Then again you can probably get the same living standard as 14th century serf in 21st century America without working. But it is not the goal of most people in either case.
All this has been said before(except the bits about Firefly, Farscape and B5) way back in the 80's.Any NEW complaints?
Money doesn't exist and is the reason society("civilization" on Planet earth) is in trouble. Until and unless we get rid of money and competion(including tv show ratings) we as a species are doomed. Some people can't get it.....
First up: Dude, I'm a Dude. That said, I'm more than willing to dress up like princess Leia in a gold bikini for you and be 'your sweet princess'- I consider bizarre sexual deviancy to be second only to obsessive overanalysis of science fiction in terms of my favourite hobbies.
As far as abusive backchat goes, in your first post you implied that I was gullible, petty, overindulgent, and a fecophiliac, and I found the tone in which you did so somewhat patronising, not to say incoherant. I never actually insulted you, just took the piss out of what you said, and I actually apologised afterwards- but it seems you didn't actually read that far. And the 'sweet princess comment was either sexist and patronising (if you genuinely believed I was female) or utterly childish and possibly homophobic (if you thought I was male).
As for *over* analysing, compared to what goes on in say, any University English literature course, my analysis of the central metaphors in Firefly was actually pretty superficial. If I was *actually* going to overanalyse the show I could start babbling on about Freud's theories of Oedipal Conflict and how they're represented in Jayne Cobb, or how the show can be seen as an attempt to reconstruct notions of American Identity and heroic virtue in the light of our ever-changing post-modernist value system, and 21st century attitudes to race and gender. But instead, I'll leave that as an exercise for the reader...
Actually, given that Beeswax has probably stopped reading by this point, should I actually continue? I mean, is there really any point in continuing discussing this with someone who'll write 7 paragraphs replying to a post they've openly said they haven't even read all of? Still I should be glad he took my advice to skip it if he found it torcherous. Ah well, I'll keep at it, I've always had a bizarre love of futile gestures... I am an anti-war protestor, after all ;D
Anyway, I'm still trying to be relatively polite here, so I'll try and be brief. As for the 'By Joss Whedon' counterfisking, as I said beforehand, (although you probably didn't read that far) It's perfectly valid to quote a writer when discussing said writer's intentions!!!
you also say I'm blinkered. Well, lalalalalala! I CAN'T HEAR YOU!!!!
'...reading Asimov' : Actually, I'm more of a Phillip K man myself, I'm a complete and total Dickhead.
As for the get out and live comment, that might actually be a good idea- I haven't exactly spent my entire life reading and getting into hearty discussions online- in fact, you're the first person I've ever fisked (was it as good for you as it was for me, baby?)- but that's not to say that maybe my life could benefit from getting up to some kind of antics....or even a caper!
I actually quite liked Good Will Hunting- I'm quite a big Kevin Smith fan (he co-exec produced it). I'm not going anywhere with that comment, but I just thought I'd mention it...
Anyway, I doubt there's anything more absurd than getting ito an argument about trying to break up an argument which wasn't even an argument and even if it was, was over by the time you tried to break it up, so I don't see much point continuing this, so let's leave it at this. I don't bear you any malice or anything, and I really don't see any point getting into this any further. Peace to you too.
Pious:
Thanks for the info on italicization, and I'm glad you liked the fisking, even though I actually really hate the term fisking, I quite like Robert Fisk myself. I think we should try and reclaim the term-he should get a *nice* thing named after him, like a sexual activity. But that's completely irrelevant, and I'm somewhat tired now, so it'd be best if I just Fisk off.
A heh. I remember an illustrated list of annoying things about ST. One was, "Too many DNA-compatible forehead appliance aliens.
"This is your son?"
"Yes. He's part Klingon, part Ferenghi, part Bajorran, part Romulan, and part Cardassian."
*KLUNK* as 6 year old does a face plant when he loses his balance and his head pulls him over.
TOS Klingons were geneticly fused w/ Romulans, btw, which is why they looked so much alike. TNG Klingons were geneticly pure. Or so I was told by the members of the fan club, "Harbinger of Doom," all of whom had Klingon personas. Which is no more weird or lame than Vampire: The Masquerade Live Action Role Play.
Michael Seven quoth, "Money doesn't exist and is the reason society("civilization" on Planet earth) is in trouble. Until and unless we get rid of money and competion(including tv show ratings) we as a species are doomed."
aHEH. And resources are not scarce, and everybody else considers your well more important than their own. Suuuuuuuuuuuure they do.
Money is a shortcut. You're given money in a free market economy for doing good things for your fellow man--things he so much likes and appreciates that he PAYS you for them, even if he doesn't like YOU. The more valuable the things you do for your fellow man are, the more you get paid.
And things are worth--get this--whatever somebody is willing to give for them. And it could be different for everyone. No way is a Bentley worth $80k + to me. But it's worth that much to some others.
I didn't read every single post above, so this might have already been said...but doesn't Lwaxana Troi cause anyone here to run away screaming? If anything is more annoying about Star Trek than everything on your great list, SHE is. Being married to the creator of ST is just not a good enough excuse for those 5 or six wastes of episodes.
To establish my context, I watched TOS and TNG. DS9 bored me, and I never got into Voyager. Enterprise has been rather enjoyable – as long as you set your expectations appropriately. Well, I guess this could be said about each of the series…
They are what they are. No more, no less.
And while I’m on this rant – the people that criticize the shows for not always making perfect sense? It’s commerce, after all. The writers were merely trying to crank out thematic fodder to adequately fill a season. They did not always have the luxury of time to make sure each plot point fit well into both what went before as well as what was yet to come.
To those that want to make it into a sociopolitical battle between Liberal and Conservative, or whatever banner you happen to be carrying today? I’m sorry. I see it as entertainment. Even if it’s thought-provoking, I’m not going to turn any of this into a metaphorical debate on Vietnam, Iraq, or Corporate Globalization.
Re: references to Minuet: she was played by Carolyn McCormack – who can be found in Law & Order reruns as Dr. Olivet.
Favorite eps:
“The Inner Light,” where Picard lived an entire lifespan as an inhabitant of a dying world.
“The Perfect Mate,” where Picard (and every other male on the ship – but especially Picard) fell for Famke Janssen. Really – who could blame them?
“Amok Time,” where Spock counseled and cautioned Stonn to the effect that he may find that Having is not as good as Wanting.
“Star Trek: Insurrection” (the movie). I know, I know – what can I say? I liked the chemistry between Picard (Patrick Stewart) and Anij (Donna Murphy).
I have visited WWDN before, but I must have hit it at a low point – he was threatening to stop posting - and to be perfectly honest, at the time, he sounded EXACTLY like a whiny, immature Wesley. Who needs that s**t? Not I.
So I did not return – until today, when I found the link to the “Top 10” list. (thanks to Blissfully Bitter).
Thanks, Wil. I don’t know what this book thing is – but Good Luck all the same.
…and if you didn’t jump Ashley Judd when you had the chance, you’re a fool. :-)
Okay, almost done… please learn from the errant ways of previous posters:
Check your spelling.
Check your spelling.
Check your spelling.
Check your grammar.
Check your grammar.
Check your grammar.
You can write the most scathing, compelling, erudite post known to man – but if you make a glaring spel/gram error, your credibility is pretty much shot to hell.
I agree with Victoria on the best show on SF that was cancelled. It is definately Farscape, though i sadly missed parts of it so when i did come back to it, i was pretty confused about what exactly was going on. However i also love Stargate SG1. I loved the original movie and also the sequal and i was so excited when i first saw the series. Anyway, i thought the list was hilarous! I used to love watching STNG i grew up watching the original ST with my dad.
"That's why they don't have money, Geordi can fix anything by reversing polarity, and no one hits the can: BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT MAKES GOOD TV."
Uh, no. There's plenty of good TV where they do have money, you have to actually work to fix something rather than flip switches and say impressive-sounding words, and bathrooms exist. Even in SF.
Finally made it to the end of the comments. Time to put in my 2 pesos' worth.
Hmmm... yeah, the split infinitive thing. I was casually perusing my copy of "Guide to Writing Effective English" the other day: the split infinitive is to be avoided, but when it is used, the separation should be minimal.
My gripe about Trek and its acolytes has been the rabid ferocity that certain fans deify Roddenberry. I've always maintained that Roddenberry was simply a hack writer that came up with an idea for a television show at the right time in the right place.
The best episodes were written by professionals. Of course, the pros were subject to the network-tv mentality: Matheson and Ellison had their stuff butchered by staff writers.
What else? TOS definitely was the Good Ol' US of A in Space. Old Glory reared its tattered head, the Shat had to remember "E plebnista" (how could he remember it? -- he went to school in Westmount), American Injuns in "Paradise Syndrome", get your grups bonk-bonked on the head in "Miri", Chicago mobs? Soup kitchens? Abe Lincoln in space? "I'm from Iowa, I only work in outer space" --
Now, why are most races that we see in Trek humanoid? It's because Kirk boinked practically half the galaxy in less than five years.
Also, just a comment about the Fram oil filter that Geordi wore: wasn't it a girl's hair band?
Lastly: I got a life. It sucks. Temporal anomolies exist only as convoluted plot devices.
PS: I was kissed by Grace Lee Whitney in the 70's. She's still a babe.
Why does the Captain give commands and then someone on the bridge has to type it in? Doesn't the ship have voice recognition software? Why should anyone be typing at all?
Surely Data has some sort of interface to the computer, rather than typing and reading things on the screen? Can't he just download the information?
I must confess I am a Treck fan . . . wild about the stuff!
But I so recognize the humor in the unbelievable situations!
Question . . . why does all of those buttons on all of those panells make so much dern noise? I am sure we have quieter pannel buttons now!
Well anyway that is just great stuff. . .
you just wont believe the times I have slapped my forehead when Giordi says "Captain, I think we should reverse the polarity."
Not much was mentinoed with reguard the REAL reason for the Holodeck because in the earlier shows the captian was too busy getting it on with ever feamale alian (and why where all of these so beautiful and so aparently HUMAN?) that they came accross . . . but just a little note there where several eppisodes that insinuated what the Holodeck was used for. ;-)
What always bothered me about the post-TOS ST series is how the writers stripped "human" from humanity. An examination of literature from Homer to Shakespeare til now demonstrates a pretty consistent view of human nature. Even prayers found in the spring at Bath, England sound familiar ("please punish the one who stole my good glove from the cloakroom"). Many of the newer SF writers seem to strive to separate us from our past. I always found the first season of TNG the most galling. If I had been one of the poor bastards unfrozen into that future hell ("no money" "synthol") I would have jump right back into the freezer. Families aboard!!??? Where is the teen hangout and vandalism? The US is the wealthiest, most technologically advanced society ever, yet instead of studying the finer points of particle physics, our youth are found huffing butane from paper bags and striking matches to watch them burn.
"Futurama" is the only series that portrays a future I would want to live in.
I seldom watch network TV, but it sounds like I missed something special in "Firefly".
Point #2 is definitely true. Porn has co-evolved with the written word and has been at the forefront of every advance in communications technology. It is one of the major industries on the Net and in the American economy. Get bored with it? Right.
OMG! This is just too funny. I love the "typing the command into the console" remark, made me think of Sigourney Weaver's character in Galaxy Quest. "Captain, the computer says we have 5 minutes of air left!"
And the point about the writers placing human ethics on all alien races is right on. That's the way they've lived their lives for eons; what gives these Federation dolts the right to come in and force the human way of life upon them?
Of course, most forms of entertainment are practically non-existant in the Federation future; have you ever seen someone walking down the halls of a Federation starship with a Walkman on? Didn't think so!
This post was pretty funny, it took me a couple of hours to read through the whole thing, but one thing that I was disappointed in was the fact that Space: Above and Beyond didn't get enough recognition as a damn good series. Does no one remember that show? One of the best episodes of any series I have ever seen was Who watches the birds? (I think that's the episode's name) The lack of dialogue in that episode was one of it's best characteristics, and it made it an amazing story. It's a happy time when Scifi actually decides to add that on to their mid day line-up. Never got a chance to watch Firefly, and I got into Farscape during the third season, never cared for the first two. As far as for the political discourse between Pious and Khan, congratulations to you both, it's a sad time in this country when the majority of the population is so ignorant and callous that if you even try to share a different viewpoint than their own, they will ostracize you to no end. Perfect example.....two words; Freedom Fries. At the sake of lowering my intelligence for a split second, anyone that embraces that idea is an imbecil (alright, I was going to say retard, but I decided not to sacrifice my intelligence. Oops, guess I did.) Problem with the people in this country is that they figure that the world revolves around America, and any terrorist act is completely unheard of. Growing up in Spain with the ETA and Argentina with all of anti-semites and the remnants of the Peron government, what happened here is not a shock to me. I don't condone it, but, I think it should have been expected by the majority of the people. As I said, callous. Oh yeah, a link that sent me here that's an interesting read, http://www.therant.info/archives/000038.html
I had a thing for Beverly, she was HOT!
Remeber the episode with her and Troi working out? I was really hopeing that scene would go a different direction?
ST is lame mental masturbation, but I love masturbation so I watch it all the time.
Why, when they are traveling at ultra light speeds and pulling Mega-Gs with even the slightest course change does the artificial gravity always fluctuate just enough to toss them across the room, but not enough to turn them into paste when they hit the far wall?
That's actually an old Starfleet engineering tradition: they deliberately program the gravity generators to fluctuate whenever a battle or an ion storm or something provides an excuse. All the engineering lieutenants take turns at it, and they get graded on the quality of the havoc they wreak. The ultimate achievement is to send the Captain flying across the bridge (you'll notice that almost never happens). Other than that, scores vary according to: 1) rank of person thrown, 2) how much the engineering crew dislike said person, 3) distance flown, and 4) severity of resulting injury.
Of course, captains are always complaining to their chief engineers or to Fleet Engineering, asking, if they can't fix the gravity, can they at least install seatbelts? But the engineers always say, "No, there's no need for that, we've almost got it figured out." Games like this are what the engineers use to measure their job satisfaction, there being no money and all.
Now for my own pet peeve: what the hell was Riker still doing on the Enterprise? By the time TNG ended, he had been offered his own command, what, four times? Five? Hell, during the Locutus business, he was promoted to Captain and given command of the Enterprise. Then Picard comes back, and Riker just takes that fourth pip off his collar and goes back to being Jean-Luc's lapdog.
Riker was introduced as this hotshot officer, on the fast track to glory--the next Captain Kirk. But I guess I should have known he was really a wuss when I saw the way he goes through doors. Ever notice how he leads with his shoulder? I thought that was kinda cool, until I realized he was just afraid the door wasn't going to open. Of course, that was a valid concern, but you never saw Kirk flinch like that, did you?
"Dr Who reversed the polarity on NEUTRONS? [in 1950ish] Neutrons don't flow, and have no polarity! This is what you get when you let Brits do Sci-Fi. Oh, and Red Dwarf. You get that too."
And Hitchhikers.. Don't forget Hitchikers. Hitch and Dwarf..and the opening for any other sci-fi. Tomorrow People, Sapphire and Steel. For God's sake. Sometimes it feels like the UK was creating this stuff before the USA was invented.
If Star Trek was completely realistic, many of crew would have moved on to other ships. Riker would have been promoted to Captain for e.g. But the writers can't do that because part of the reason we watch the show is for the characters. So it's good the show wasn't too realistic. I just hated when they got preachy..."We're polluting the galaxy every time we go warp 5, but it's not too late for fix it"...can you shove that down my throat any farther
10. Noisy Doors
The door sounds are cool. I've been known to add the sounds to doors that are automatic but silent (including the "piped aboard" whistle), as well as make a Force gesture to open doors that are using proximity detectors. (One can get away with a great deal of bizarre behavior when accompanied by his children.)
What has always REALLY intrigued me about the doors is that they are not based on proximity, but on the intent of the person approaching the door. Watch carefully - you'll see episodes where someone walks up to a door, turns around to continue a conversation, then faces the door - the door only opens in the second instance.
9. The Federation.
Capitalism works because people are basically greedy. With some governmental oversight to prevent robbing the blind, it works very well. If you want to rip your customers off, someone is going to come along and not rip them off, and the non-ripoff-artist will soon be raking in the bucks. A society where people just work for the fun of it and always do their best? It's called Communism, and its a colossal failure because it presumes that mankind is basically good. (Whoa, that was a bit heavy and almost off-topic. I'll be better now, I promise.)
8. Reversing the Polarity
Word.
7. Seatbelts.
They do eventually use them in full-time combat ships. There's also an inertial dampening field that is supposed to handle such (I've read the tech manuals) - but it gets overloaded in less-than-logical ways. Actually, its the physics model that's off. Starships don't need seatbelts the same way battleships don't need 'em.
6. Fuses
Item #40 on my "Heroic Character List" (based on the Evil Overlord list): "My control panels will be designed so they cannot explode under any circumstances, nor otherwise threaten to kill or injure their operators." - http://www.wilcoxusa.net/forhire/heroOnly.asp
5. Rule by Committee
Court-martials are in order for just about everyone on the bridge crew(s), although part of this is Picard's own management style. He wants (some) reasonable input. Other captains aren't so accommodating. Kirk wouldn't have noticed - he'd still be stuttering out his orders while the crew did what was best to keep them from doom. Janeway's crew would have to directly disobey her orders to save the ship from her self-destructive tendencies.
4. A Star Trek Quiz
This is true of virtually every television program except _24_. But it is amusing. One of the Star Trek games even included the red-shirted, unnamed ensign for away missions, and Raven's Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force makes a nod to this by making the default multiplayer character name RedShirt.
3. Technobabble
Ironically, the scripts often just say, "[tech]" when they want technobabble from the actors. So you could go from _Star Trek_ to _Who's Line_ fairly readily, I expect.
2. The Holodeck
Well, we know what Quark's Holosuites on DS-9 are used for. ;)
1. The Prime Directive
I can't top that or add anything to it.
If I had one of those devices that healed up wounds quick like they had, I'd seal up some of my co-worker's mouths. And if I could transport people around like they do, and locate their heartbeat and life signs and DNA, I'd locate Osama Bin Laden, transport him into a bra, knickers, red mules and suspenders, and drop him down in the middle of times square on new year's eve. Now that's what I call science fiction.
also came from will wheaton's site. Have to say a very funny site. Read my way through the comments and I have to say some people need to get a life, khan in particular.
Nobody has mentioned this (that I saw) but I always thought that voyager was the worst in regards to the prime directive. Janeway was far more buy the book then any of the other captains and she was on the other side of the gosh darned galaxy.
I'm a star trek fan and I pulled up this link expecting it to tick me off or something, but it was funny as shit...I haven't laughed that hard in a while...okay, so not since I saw Bruce Almighty the other night.
yeah, but you rock. *gives the vulcan thumbs up*
Yeah, it's just a TV show, but Voyager was an exquisitly elegant TV show. Perhaps, Enterprise is currently bringing our expectations back to earth and will get better. Perhaps.
Really enjoyed the list -made the mistake of reading it while eating and choked a couple of times.
Enjoyed some of the other comments until some people started complaining about each other's comments.
As far as other SciFi shows Babylon 5 was great and more realistic militarily. Blake's 7 portrayed the darker side of Federations. But, Doctor Who is the best. At least he knew that morally one must inferfer sometimes.
I grew up on Star Trek TOS and watched all of them. They all had elements of good stuff and plenty of bad. The show could have been more realistic and been better...but its only for diversion.
In regards to the seatbelts: I laughed my ass off after reading msot of this and then watching the DVD of Star Trek Nemesis and at the very end Picard gets a new Captains chair with restraints that come out at the push of a button and he says, "Its about time."
Thanks for the laughs; this is my new favorite site.
I feel I must stick up for Lwaxana Troi. She WAS annoying - true - but she could get to Captain Picard in a way that no one else could and that was fun to watch.
Has anyone else wondered why the TNG Federation does not have cloaking devices on its starships? Wasn't it James T. Kirk who swiped it from the Romulans in the first place?
Now, however, the Klingons and the Romulans have it, but not the Feds. What's up with that?
Did Giordi reverse the polarity on it and KABLOOOIE?
By the way, I loved the
"Trials and Tribble-ations" episode of DS9; didn't know Klingons lived so long.
Great list, I loved the old trek. For those of you who haven't seen the new Enterprise, you might want to reconsider. The thing about Enterprise is... why does the ship look so much more high tech than the Enterprise, which is from a future century. Lol, just a little to into that, i await the "get a life" and "how dare you" comments. Star Trek was great, however, in the S/F universe, only one "series" could ever be king: STAR WARS. The original trilogy. I know
Another thing to add to this list - I got to watch Balance of Power (ST:TOS)again. I can't imagine the ST:TNG crowd ever handling that situation (cloaked Romulan ship across the neutral zone destroying Fed outposts; Tunaprize having to destroy it). I keep seeing Picard aimlessly pontificating about the Prime Directive and keeping the peace; Worf bellowing "They're Rommmmmulllaaaans. They are without honor." and the hapless Tunaprize C beaming out messages of peace and bleating about resolving their issues as the Romulans sneak home. ST:TNG - What a bunch of Pu**ies!
nobody watched DS9?!!! easily the best of any sci fi shows! they ended as crappily as most shows end, promoting, marrying and killing. oh so done! but it had some of the coolest characters ever: gul dukat, legit dumar, the whole obsidian order, the dominion, odo, quark, the grand negis, ...shoot, i'm not nerdy enough, names are escaping me. the effeminate kiss ass to the dominion who kept cloning himself. the leader of the klingons with the eye patch, almost all the cardasians that had a continuing presence. no show had cooler characters. ever!
You know what I don't like about the show? In the holodecks they have "saftey proticals". ?????? If it was a holodeck where everything was made of light and force fields why can they possibly hurt people. And also. If they can just turn off the "saftey proticals" why don't they create some sort of super army of holographic people?
A moment of silence please for William Marshall. He died June 11. A great, versatile actor, (and a fabulous Blacula) with one of the best voices in the business. But for our purposes, a guest star on the original, episode "The Ultimate Computer", as Dr. Richard Daystrom. He created the experimental computer M5 which was given control of Enterprise for a test of it's capabilities. Of course it starts killing people, and Cap'n Kirk has to save the day by convincing it to shut itself off.
Does anybody else out there embarrass themselves by identifying actors with "oh yeah, he/she was on ST once."?
i think they should go back to the old format they had with the original version. crew beams down to planet with a redshirt, who'll die, spock/mccoy/scottie get into trouble, kirk bails them out, fucks the brains out of some hot alien (who's only real alien qualities is the massive amount of vasaline on the camera lens), and saves the day. checkov or o'hora make brief cameos and make token minority comments that don't really progress the plot any, but make show seem more racially ecclectic.
Holy shit!! Even though I'm a Trekie (The Next Generation being my fave) I almost pissed my pants when I read this. This one's great!!! I don't remember the last time I laughed this hard. Oh, wait. Yeah I do. When the podium came apart in Wil Wheaton's hands at the Trek Expo in Tulsa. We still love u anyway, Wil!!!!!
I agree, the science should not have bowed to the producers in the space noises. The Federation agreed not to build a cloaking device in the treaty with the Romulans, and noisy doors are annoying and should be kicked.
Loved the list - I have one or two more to add where was the toilet on the Enterprise D ?
And as for the love of Shakespeare - thats an easy one - no copywright infringements - can you imagine if ST had to pay Shakespeare's decendants each time they used a quote ?
They love the classics in general thats also why they stear clear of modern popular music - no need to ask a star permission to use his music or pay royalties to anyone.
As regards number four - makes you wonder what would happen if Kirk/Spock and McCoy would make up the landing party
Hey dunb asses. MAybe if you sat and thought about stuf before you criticised it maybe you'd realize Star Trek makes a lot of sense when you think about it. The technology and everything. Maybe you all are just to stupid to comprehend it, but most of todays technological ideas came from Star Trek. Most of the Sci-Fi shows you so love were inspired by Star Trek. So back and stuff your stupid down your throat so yuo know how it feels. If you're that babyish maybe some one should vaporize you!
About the B-room on the Ent D, if you saw the special shown right b4 "All good things," I know I have it on tape, you would see there is only 1 john on the entire ship. A little joke by the Art designers. lol
SO La Forge only has to work one toilet. Oh, and don't forget, if he was not reversing the polarity, he was adjusting the harmonics of something. Or playing with the Plasma manafold injectors.
As for Voyager, I don't know if this was said before, but the Torpedo count. Tovock said they had about 40, and could not get more. By season 3 or so, the were up to 56 shot or so. While I did not count every one, or any really, I did notice that they kept going well into season 7. And these are only the torpedos shot durring the TV episodes, what about the novel stories?!? lol
I find this lots of fun to talk about, I just wish that other ppl would stop bitching about us Sci-Fi fans, and let us be. As for the Federation, I agree, and I don't think I could stand to read one more of Khans posts, I sware.
One of you... Spelled Worf wrong... How dare you?!?!?!?? :D *jk* Some of that stuff is hilarious. Like the doors. I wish the doors would die. *jk* I like the doors... Do NOT Dis the doors. I would be dishonorable.. :D
I am a die-hard Trekkie, damn! I busted a gut for ten minutes. You're right about Geordi and Scotty, and the seat belts. But as a die hard trekkie who know's everything about everything, I do know that the money system is used in credits, pretty much you only get paid for what you do. Its kinda like having a credit card or debit card without the card.
You mock our great advesaries who sit at the prowel of the most glorious Enterprise?! Foolish earthlings! Yes, we are enemies of the Federation but true glory of battle is won when one's opponent is strong! You must have respect for combat to be honorable! Now you have awakened our wrath and shall feel the swift justice of our mighty Saber Lasers (or something like a saber-laser...you know what I mean)!
OK,let Vincent & Paracelsus from the Beauty & the Beast TV series slug it out aboard the Enterprise-D in which Mr. Parry is reincarnated in that time as a Borg. Vincent wins against him by grabbing a phaser rifle & shooting him dead.
Posted by: Mathew Bailey on August 26, 2003 07:37 AM
Lot of people wrote about firefly...here's the news...
"Firefly" Glows Again
Thu Sep 4, 4:30 PM ET Add Entertainment - E! Online to My Yahoo!
By Lia Haberman
Fox's defunct series Firefly has scrapped itself off the network's windshield and will take flight again
• E! Online's Firefly factsheet
• News: Fox squashes Firefly
• News: Whedon bites off another new series
E! Online Photo
Creator Joss Whedon is taking his misunderstood sci-fi show to the big screen, teaming up with Universal to turn it into a feature film, according to the Hollywood Reporter.
Whedon had incredible success with the reverse move when he turned his 1992 feature film Buffy the Vampire Slayer (news - Y! TV) into a long-running TV series, first on the WB and then on UPN.
He'll be doing an about-face adaptation with Firefly, which also marks his directorial debut. Production is due to begin early next year.
Universal will distribute after buying the rights to Firefly from 20th Century Fox Television, where Whedon's production company, Mutant Enemy Inc., has a TV deal.
Firefly chronicled the adventures of a band of space pirates aboard the ship Serenity. Set 500 years in the future, the series was part sci-fi fantasy, part old-fashioned western and all dud on TV--it averaged a measly 4.7 million viewers and ranked 98th in the Nielsen ratings when it was pulled in December.
The feature version is expected to incorporate mythology from the show but will reportedly take on a more epic feel. Whedon also hopes to reunite the original cast for the feature, as well as add new characters.
The prolific scribe, whose screenplay credits include Titan A.E., Alien: Resurrection and Toy Story, will produce through his shingle along with studio-based producer Barry Mendell. Mutant Enemy prez Christopher Buchanan is executive producing.
"Ever since the show went off the air, our fan base has grown even more, Buchanan told the Hollywood Reporter. "We've had tremendous outpouring from the U.S. and Canada as well as the U.K., which just finished a run of Firefly over there. Every comic book and sci-fi convention has had a Firefly presence since the show first aired."
Fifteen episodes of the show were produced last season, including a two-hour pilot, though three episodes never aired on Fox. The entire season is expected to be featured on the series' DVD release, due in December. In fact, the show's cult following caused DVD presales on Amazon.com to sell out within 24 hours, said Buchanan.
Meanwhile, Whedon's also expected to take a more active role in his remaining television series, the WB's Angel. The show's fifth season, which features Angel & Co. working from the offices of sworn enemies Wolfram & Hart, kicks off October 1.
Man, thats a great list and the comments are even better. I'm a huge closet trekkie, but I have lately been moving to other shows and while I agree that Firefly and to a lesser extent Farscape are some damn good Sci-Fi no one that I saw mentioned my absolute favorite series, LEXX.
Posted by: Conan O'Brien on November 19, 2003 08:41 PM
Get a fu(klng life!
Lame man, lame.
Posted by: Denise&Nate on November 19, 2003 08:46 PM
I just had a thought about the red shirted security. When you think about it maybe it's a Roddenberry-Shatner inside joke.
When everyone discusses Star Trek they always get to the 'UN' type world government. However, the only North American country that truly supports the One world government idea is Canada. And who in Canada wears red outfits and provides security? The R.C.M.P!!!
Anyway, it's just a thought
Posted by: Johnny Bee on November 20, 2003 11:28 AM
William Shatner, YOU GET A LIFE!
Good job on the seatbelts, holodeck, reversing the polarity and the noisy doors.
yah, after reading this and practically pissing myself, and i do watch star trek. i have to say its all true. dude your a crack up. i dont know this ther show 'firefly' cause i live in australia(enough said). look forward to seeing it many ppl above agree its a good show.
Firefly DID rock.. that first episode where the captain gives one of the captives a speech.. something like "ITs better for all of us if you cooperate, we'll give the money back and you guys never bother us again".. the captive tells the captain to screw himself and that he plans to hunt the captain down for the rest of his life.. the captain calmly kicks the captive into a jet intake, instantly killing him, and turns to the next captive who spits out "RIGHT RIGHT.. Best thing for everyone.. never see us again.. got it!" heheh
PRICELESS.
Damn networks.. I LOVED firefly. I would watch it over startrek ANYDAY. really sucks that they killed it. Stupid FOX!!
Firefly rocked, but this list had me serching for my bathroom cuz my polarity evidently was reversed.
Posted by: Bitterroot on December 17, 2003 02:27 PM
What are you a broken record you keep saying gordi reverse the polarity on this and that. and isn't better to not have to pay for any thing you'll never have to work another day in your life.
the Captain and bridge crew leaving the ship to go on an away mission. Can you imagine the USS Nimitz steaming in the Persian Gulf off an unfriendly coast when a "situation" develops. The Captain calls CAG, the CIC OD, the Chief Engineer, the CMO and a squad of jarheads (plus that JAG guy) to hop a CH-46 and chopper in. I think not.
The original Enterprise had over 400 people onboard. The Enterprise of TNG had a compliment of over a thousand (maybe more...) from which they drew the hapless "Crewman #6" or "Ensigns Washington or Gomez" (notice it's almost always a minority in a redshirt... hmmmm) as away mission fodder. What the heck is everyone else doing? Holoporn? You'd think that Star Fleet Academy would have people trained for away missions and so the command crew could stay in orbit - preventing the Enterprise from being taken over.
Am I the only one who noticed how all the officers seem to also be experts in each others' disciplines? Geordi's not available, so we'll have Dr. Crusher fill in in engineering for a while. If your proctologist was on vacation, would you ask your mechanic to fill in for him?
This I am sure is just about the billionth comment originating from this post. Which tells me: This was an excellent post to have generated so many comments; The list was creative, thoughtful and funny as hell.
I don't own a TV but if in a hotel or at a friend's house and any of the Star Trek episodes are on (in any of their variations) when I have watched them I have always enjoyed them.
But what bothered me is: How did they get any work done surrounded by so many totally hot, camel toe-laden, buxom, and beautiful women around? The show always seemed that it was one step away from being a porno! I mean, if at any moment, the Captain or the crew said, "To hell with this, let's f*ck!" It would have been totally believable.
Posted by: MeTooThen on December 23, 2003 10:52 PM
extremely astute and funny. thanks! : )
Posted by: musicnsurf on December 31, 2003 10:48 PM
The only thing I hate about star trek is that they never have new introductions It's always, "Space..the final frontier. These are the voyages opf the starship Enterprise. It's continue emisson, to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations. To boldly go where noone has gone before." They never go, "Space...the final frontier, these are the voyages of the starship, you know and you know what our misson is, so let's get on with the show!"
Posted by: Wilson Dean
on January 9, 2004 08:44 PM
The biggest thing that bothered me really is why are some alien species genetically compatible for procreation?! Human + Romulan = Humulan what da hell. And these species are billions of years apart from thier so called genetic commonality yet they can still crossbreed with one another. And yet we still can't cross breed cats with dogs or Chimpanzee's and people (and they're the closest we have genetically). I find that even more unrealistic than the Prime Directive. It would be better if the Federation is ran by Right Winged ex Nazi patriots with Dark uniforms and lots and LOTS OF MEDALS. .. Long Live Fire Fly~
Well that stupid thing about the Damm polarity seems to be a...um....whats the word for it.....retarded.... If you every watch star trek and they talk about the engines or crap, they try to make things sound sci-fi by ether adding onic or posi or sub or moclecular or just make up words that sound funny.
I hated star trek because in it Earth was some sort of marxist utopian civilization. And the Earth is unified into a single government, Earth uniting into a single nation is the least believable thing I can think of, it will never ever happen.
Why do the consoles explode all the time? Why don't they install a damm circuit breaker or something? How come you never see anyone repairing the consoles ever. I mean during a big battle all the ship consoles on the enterprise explode, but you never ever see a console that has been blown open or taken any damage from exploding, it seems a consoles can explode an infinite number of times and still work perfectly.
Just a Rant
"set phasers to stun............No!.......I mean set phasers to..um......mutilate...........yeah, thats right set phasers to mutilate!.......................................What, spock.....why shouldn't we kill them......................................okay......................than set phasers to................................Torture..........................Can phasers bet set to torture........... what do you mean the phasers don't have a turture setting..............................................What do you mean starfleet doesn't condone that...................................................Well is there a disfigure or maul setting on phasers....................................What, there are only 2 phaser settings stun and vaperoize...............................Well that takes the fun outta things"
"Has anyone ever noticed that the only difference between all the aliens on startrek is the shape of the ridges they have on there heads or they have goofy looking noses or something stupid."
"Why is it that in Star Trek, Earth is portrayed as the Canada of the universe. Earth's military sucks, just like Canada. With the exception of the poorest and smallest alien races, all alien civilizations can easily beat earth in a war, just like any country with the excpetion of the smallest and poorest could beat canada in a war. Earth has an extremely low defense budget. in several episodes of star trek. Earth almost developes a superweapon than throws it out. Like remember that thing with the funky cloaking device that lets them pass through matter? Just like Canada cancelled the Avro Arrow which if it had been developed would have easily become to most technologicaly advanced fighter aircraft of its time."
HELLO!! Has it ever occured to you that some of us still like Star Trek. I like the way it is, it is way better then the turmoil and caos we live in today. I mean like in Nemesis Shinzon the clone was a perfect look alike. I only watch TNG. BUT FACE the facts there are people who love Trek, are okay wit it, don't like it, and hate it! The chain of command is a good idea, and the phasor. PLUS they don't always talk a bout polarity. I mean LaForge says stuff such as we should put the force field up on the warp core drive before the battles. HE IS CHIEF ENIGINEER! I have to admit it though my favorite female Character is Deanna Troi played by Marina Sirtis and male Weasley Crusher played by Wil Wheaton. Just please don't diss Star Trek because to many it is a wonderful show. I can understand everyone has there own opinion but please it can hurt ones feelings if you diss something they like. Please can you stop doing that? I SAY ALL HANDS BATTLE STATIONS. This is the battle of the Echo over the Voice.
Sorry I spelled alot of stuff wrong!
HELLO!! Has it ever occurred to you that some of us still like Star Trek. I like the way it is, it is way better then the turmoil and chaos we live in today. I mean like in Nemesis Shinzon the clone was a perfect look alike. I only watch TNG. BUT FACE the facts there are people who love Trek, are okay wit it, don't like it, and hate it! The chain of command is a good idea, and the phasor. PLUS they don't always talk a bout polarity. I mean LaForge says stuff such as we should put the force field up on the warp core drive before the battles. HE IS CHIEF ENIGINEER! I have to admit it though my favorite female Character is Deanna Troi played by Marina Sirtis and male Weasley Crusher played by Wil Wheaton. Just please don't diss Star Trek because to many it is a wonderful show. I can understand everyone has there own opinion but please it can hurt ones feelings if you diss something they like. Please can you stop doing that? I SAY ALL HANDS BATTLE STATIONS. This is the battle of the Echo over the Voice.
Your getting awful worked up over a show you dont like. By the way, why are you watching it if you dont like it. It wasn't funny and I am not a trekkie.
I must admit I enjoyed reading your thoughts about the Star Trek shows :o)
One must rememeber that Star Trek is a science fictions show geared for entertainment and I have been throughly entertained by all of the Trek shows and movies. I have been a Trekkie since childhood and I don't see a cure in sight. I got a feeling that you may be suffering from withdrawal pains... ;o)
science>> FICTION <<
for those of you are abit too passionate about the subject, ease up you P'taks,
those of you criticising the communist ideals,
You're a set of dirty ferengis
Oh yeah Firefly sucked ass.. It was buffy in space if you ask me, Look out for the New Battlestar gallactica, now that rules..
oh and you're all intergallactic space muppets
Live long and prosper
I got a bad wrap, ok? If Kirk would have just let me go and kick some ass, I wouldn't have gotten stuck on this godforsaken planet. Damn you Kirk!! DAMN YOU!!
Posted by: Ensign Gomez on March 28, 2004 10:29 AM
"explosion caused the guy at the nav station to fly over the captain's head with a good 8 feet of clearance"
If you've got 8 feet of clearance than obviously its not a pressing issue.
Farscape , you mean that Muppets in space show?
EEK . Talk about a bad show.
Firefly? Never heard of it . So i hav eno meaning on that show. Red dwarf slightly better than farscape. Andromeda seems promising . Though I keep running into porn trying to downloas it .lol Babylon 5 was good . Space above and beyond, Rosswell.weren't bad either . Oh i remember a show actually worse than Farscape . It was conceaved by Roddenberry . Even Maje Barret his wife had a tole in it . Can t remember the name though . Thats how bad it was . An oldie but a goodie V . Blakes 7 . Ooh ooh space 1999 . and of course Battlestar galactica with the very annoying robot dog Muffet . Come to think of it Buck Rogers!! Eeew . There s no accounting for taste .
Im not really ST fan but Enterprise 3rd season is starting to be really interesting . In my opinion.
Stardate 41799.7
A bad day. I had gone to the Holodeck to investigate reports that person or persons unknown had programmed in a Roman orgy populated by 53 sex-crazed Tasha Yars smothered in Golden Syrup. I actually found the damn thing programmed with a Barbara Cartland novel (I suspect Lt Worf may be responsible for this).
While I was in there, the bloody computer fucked up again and I spent the next seventeen hours being pursued by a chaste virginal blonde with moist quivering lips, and a sturdy broad-chested man with dark gypsy eyes and rough, masculine hands.
Eventually rescued by LaForge. He told me the Holodeck malfunction had been caused by electrical overload in Data's quarters. Have told Data that if he tries shagging the mains socket in his quarters one more time, I will personally see him demoted to latrine duty on the USS Obsolete!!
Stardate 41800.2
Bloody Q turned up again today. His latest "jolly wheeze" was to assume the form of a 20th Century alleged "comedian" named Bernard Manning and materialize in front of the Enterprise while we were bombing along at Warp 6! LaForge says it will take at least 37 days to get the dent out of the saucer section.
Stardate 41801.7
Visited Holodeck again. Somebody has programmed it with a Roman orgy populated by 53 sex-crazed Tasha Yars smothered in Golden Syrup!!! This is disgusting! Spent approximately six hours... er... clearing the mess up.
Toilets malfunctioned: it seems that only one loo is now operational... at least, that's what Riker said when I caught him sharing a cubicle with Wesley...
Stardate 41802.3
Caught Ensign Crusher coming out of the Holodeck covered in Golden Syrup and other suspicious stains. He insists that it was Riker who set up the Roman orgy program. Went to his quarters to sort this out, but he was occupied.
I must remind Riker that it is against Starfleet Regulations to have sheep in one's quarters... unless, of course, one is an Admiral.
Stardate 41803.3
Assembled whole crew and announced that I did not think it was at all funny to program the Holodeck with 53 sex-crazed facsimiles of the ship's security chief. Unfortunately most of the crew were unaware of this incident until I mentioned it and there was a stampede of all hands towards the Holodeck. None of them managed to get, though, because Lt Yar reached the Holodeck ahead of them and locked the door. Was witnessed leaving five hours later looking, "rather disheveled, but contented." Ah well, if we put up with the forms of dress adopted by certain members of the crew....
I wish to God I could have gone with him. Jammy sod!
Our big day - a tour of inspection by the 130 year-old Starfleet veteran, Admiral James T Kirk, who commanded the Enterprise cruiser 78 years ago.
It was an absolute bloody disaster.
Admiral Kirk beamed in with his rocket-propelled commode. For some peculiar reason, he wears a Tribble on his head. Spent entire visit desperately trying not to mention this and glaring at sniggering crew members.
Introduced the Admiral to some of my Bridge Crew. On meeting Counselor Troi he "accidentally" dropped his phaser down the front of her dress and insisted on retrieving it personally.
Five hours later, we began the tour.
Started in Engineering, where I introduced the Admiral to Lt Worf. Kirk flew into a hysterical rage, called Worf a '"Klingon Bastard" and raved about his son for the best part of an hour!
Well how was I supposed to know that his son got murdered by Klingons?!? Christ, it was 58 years ago - you'd think the stupid old git would've got over it by now!!
Stopped off in ten Forward. Admiral Kirk proceeded to eat the Kestari ambassador, who we were supposed to be transporting to Sentor V!! Riker suggests taking a lamb chop to Sentor V; after all, nobody can tell the difference. In fact, some people say you'd get better conversation out of a lamb chop.
Next stop - sickbay. I must say Beverley coped very well with the Admiral's phaser-down-the-blouse trick...
Showed Kirk round the Bridge. He wasn't impressed with Data - suggested we get "a sexy Vulcan instead," then demanded to know why female crew members weren't in mini-skirts and appeared to be doing non-menial jobs! I explained my belief in female equality.
Discussed the Prime Directive, which Kirk says was a lot simpler in his day. Apparently it used to read: "Shoot the slimy bastards before they shoot you!"
Noticing Wesley in his dress uniform, Kirk muttered: "In my day, men like that were gassed... unless they were in the command structure, of course."
Just as I thought nothing else could go wrong, Q materialized, dressed as Napoleon. He took one look at Kirk and said: "Hey, Picard, who's the ugly old fart with the Tribble on his head?" Admiral Kirk screamed the place down and jetted off the Bridge in a towering rage, saying this was the worst run, most ill-disciplined Starship he'd ever set wheels on and he would personally see me demoted to toilet attendant on the USS Obsolete.
Q buggered off before I could have a word with him - that entity has no conception of what is not acceptable behavior when we have guests.
Introduced the Admiral to Tasha. He "lost" his phaser again... Last I heard, he is still in Intensive Care at Starfleet Medical and hasn't regained consciousness yet.
You know the costume designers and makeup crew were having budget problems, when they can get away with sticking a decal or a sequin on an actor's forhead and passing him/her/it off as an "alien".
My theory is that the LOVE BOAT accidentally crossed into the Bermuda Triangle at the end of that series, and fell into a worm-hole, transported into the future and morphed into Star Trek TNG:
Capt Picard=Capt Stubing
Dr. McCoy= Dr. Adam Bricker
Cmdr Riker = Gopher
Ens Wesley Crusher = Vicky Stubing
Counselor Troi = Julie
Guinan = Isaac Washington
various klingons = guest stars and cameos by Ethel Merman, etc.
A Fascinating Read.... I was Convulsed With Laughter Until I Realized The Vulcan Nerve Pinch Works On Me too. Live Long and Hump Longer, You Little Klingons.....
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Universal Postal Union > About us >> Members
Any country member of the United Nations may become members of the UPU. Any country non-member of the United Nations may become member provided that its request is approved by at least two-thirds of the member countries of the UPU. With the membership of the Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste, the UPU has now 190 member countries.
UN member countries whose situation with regard to the UPU has not yet been settled
Standard ISO
3166 / Alpha-2
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FM
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Notes
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Law School Admission Council :: LSAC.org
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Title Here
LSAC
Volume Summary
Volumes
rounded to nearest hundred
1995-96
1996-97
1997-98
1998-99
Fall
2000
Fall
2001
Fall
2002
Fall
2003
Fall
2004
Fall
2005
ABA Applicants
Preliminary
End-of-Year **
70,700
66,100
66,700
67,200
72,000*
75,900
88,900
98,300
98,700
94,200
%
Change from prior year
-9.8%
-6.5%
0.8%
0.8%
-
5.4%
17.1%
10.6%
0.4%
-4.6%
Final
End-of-Year **
76,700
72,300
71,700
74,400
74,600*
77,200
90,900
99,500
100,600
95,800
%
Change from prior year
-9.0%
-5.7%
-0.8%
3.7%
-
3.6%
17.6%
9.5%
1.1%
-4.8%
Admitted Applicants
End-of-Year
51,600
50,400
50,300
51,300
50,300*
51,800
56,500
56,800
55,900
56,100
% Change from prior year
-1.1%
-2.4%
-0.2%
1.9%
-
2.9%
9.1%
0.6%
-1.6%
0.3%
LSAC
Matriculants
End-of-Year
42,100
41,600
41,500
42,200
41,200*
42,700
46,000
46,200
45,400
45,800
%
Change from prior year
-0.2%
-1.2%
-0.1%
1.5%
-
3.6%
7.7%
0.4%
-1.7%
0.9%
* Due to changes in data
collection methods, asterisked (*) data is not comparable to prior data
** Preliminary
end-of-year ABA applicants is the count available to LSAC as of August 8 of
each year. Final end-of-year ABA applicants is the count after all
processing for the application year is completed.
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Literary Magazines:
The NewPages Literary Magazine Reviews
Edited by Denise Hill
Posted January 22, 2006
Carousel
Volume 18
Fall/Winter 2005-6
Biannual
In bookstores, the quirky and curious
Carousel is filed under Literary or Visual Art. This
international journal offers poems, cartoons, drawings, cartoon-like
drawings, a few ads, mixed media, boobs, prose poems, a naked woman
embracing a polar bear, charcoal watercolors, macabre big-faced
drawings on graph paper, a list of phobias and more. The editors
feel that Carousel's philosophies are "more directly in line
with the expansive perspectives inherent in today’s global magazine
culture." Oh. It is also a hard to categorize art-book featuring
Canadian artists. The sole prose story, Renee Hartleib's "Cat and
Mouse," introduces us to Brenda who asserts her independence by
buying a house and moving away from her sheltering parents at the
tender age of thirty. One day she returns home from work to find a
drunken bum roosted on her porch, forcing her to confront him or
call Daddy, "'It’s like a real job,' he says. '9 to 5, you know?'"
Libby Hague's black and white charcoal water colors of animals are
endearing; the pieces of man, as a boogeyman and clown, are outright
creepy. The prose poem, "Still Life: Two Tourists at a Sidewalk
Café" by Louisa Howerow exposes the artist's mind by questioning one
frozen image. It could be about the woman who owns the café, or her
sick husband or her son waiting on the lost tourist couple, "The
story possibilities break off; everyone moves into action." Other
pieces in Carousel have a similar feel: Mark Laliberte's "Drowning Cartoon" is an arm outstretched in ripples of water; Keith
Jones's busy urban drawings suggest man's relationship with machines
and his exploitation of his environment; Barbara Pelman's poem, "We
Play Bridge," is a snapshot of a daughter observing her mother and
the inevitable aging as they play cards. Carousel indeed.
[Carousel, c/o UC 274, University of Guelph, Guelph, ON N1G 2W1
Canada. E-mail: carouselbook@yahoo.ca. Single issue$9.
www.carouselmagazine.ca] —R.T. Duffer
Conjunctions
Issue 45
2005
Biannual
There is something sinister about children (a
fact every Hollywood horror movie knows), with their made-up
languages, their hidden play spots and their games of Hangman. The
work in Conjunctions 45 makes good use of this, offering up a
thick portion of eeriness in their “Secret Lives of Children” issue.
Shelley Jackson starts the issue off with a dark and absurd vision
of a hangman game, whose title is a line sketch of a scaffold. There
are plenty of recognizable names here (Howard Norman, John Ashbery,
Robert Creeley) and plenty of unknowns. Robert Creeley’s six-page
poem “Caves” was my favorite piece, taking caves’ hiding spots as a
motif: “So much of my childhood seems / to have been spent in rooms-
/ at least in memory, the shades / pulled down to make it darker.”
Malinda Markham also offers up three excellent poems, “To Hunt in
This Landscape” especially. The most delightful surprise, however,
is a John Ashbery translation of a selection of Stéphane Mallarmé’s
musings on English nursery rhymes. Mallarmé taught these thoughts
alongside the nursery rhymes in his English classes, though his
responses read much more like prose-poems than explanations of
themes: “Everyone obeyed him, and when he said: ‘Quack! Quack!’ and
nothing more, the ship began to move. Do you see it now, that
beautiful ship? – Yes, Mother, in the land of fairy tales.”
[Conjunctions, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY 12504. E-mail:
conjunctions@bard.edu. Single issue $15.
www.conjunctions.com]
—Lincoln Michel
Epoch
Volume 54 Number 3
2005 Series
Triannual
Self-described as having a “shrewd eye for
talent,” the editors at Epoch, Cornell University’s literary
journal, have again published an exceptional issue. Largely filled
with short stories, this issue includes characters that are ordinary
and empathetic, complex and endearing—believable, if difficult to
understand. There’s something immensely satisfying when I finish a
story and feel as though the world created in just a few short pages
is utterly real, an element of life I may not have experienced but
find authentic in voice and tone. Each story here is crafted with
the utmost care, and the endings are resolved without force or
artifice. If I had to choose a standout story, I’d pick “The
Surprising Weight of the Body’s Organs” by Douglas Trevor, whose
understanding of suffering and the extraordinary lengths we will go
to mitigate our pain is acute and startling. The protagonist, a wife
and mother who has lost her only child to disease, now procures
donor organs but hides from her flatulent husband in airport bars as
she travels from surgery to surgery. When confronted with the weight
of her husband’s desire to reconcile, she recognizes the futility:
“There were these tremors of rage inside of here that consumed her.
It was out of her control. There were organs she needed to move
around the country and rage she felt at the awful puniness of her
ever-precious cargo. That was it. There was no room inside her for
anything else.” While fiction is the highlight of this issue, the
three poems included here are meritorious equals to the quality
writing throughout. Reading page after page of satisfying prose, I
felt envious of the writers and this venue. If I were to write a
short story, I’d feel fortunate to see it printed in these pages.
[Epoch, 251 Goldwin Smith Hall, Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y.
14853. Single issue $5.
www.arts.cornell.edu/english/epoch.html] —Jen Henderson
Lorraine
and James
Volume 1 Issue 1
2005
Triannual
The auspicious debut issue of Lorraine and
James compliments its diverse fiction with personal essays, some
poetry, one interview and a contributor’s page that offers a brief
explanation of the story’s inspiration and/or development. Mindful
of reader and writer, this curiosity for story demonstrates
Editor-in-Chief Jasai Madden’s intention to be a “conduit through
which a writer from anywhere will be able to connect to readers
everywhere.” There are folktales of love and satires on Hollywood,
religious parables and an ode to a dullard, poems as honest and
incisive as the personal essays that reveal more about people than
the single subject. In “Sweet Potatoes and Coconut” by Pamela
MacIsaac, a father must confront the upstairs neighbor’s idiot child
who dropped a rock on his head. His daughter returns to her mother
and the father must accept the life of a divorcee. Many of the
pieces in Lorraine and James share the tireless theme of broken
bonds. Debbie Ann Ice, in “Sculpting,” inverts that theme with her
poignantly convincing first-person telling of a wife and mother who
deals with her terminal non-Hotchkins lymphoma by preparing her
husband and two sons for her death without telling them of the
disease. There is a playfulness about Lorraine and James as
well, represented best by Rick Castaneda’s quirky string of
short-shorts, “Four Easy Pieces of Fiction.” The unrelated tales
include a thief who sells rich peoples’ keepsakes to lonely people,
a conjurer, a woman who chronically changes her personalized license
plate, and a love story about a couple inspired by commercials,
jingles, movies and songs, “The only trouble was the muzak, which
our brains began to associate with sex.” The evocative poem “The
Want Ads” reads like performance poetry, Britni Jackson’s voice
leaping from the page to your ear. From the slums of a Nigerian
motor park to the steps of a synagogue, “characters, neighborhoods
and instances too often out of range” are represented in Lorraine
and James. [Lorraine and James, 3727 W. Magnolia Blvd #406,
Burbank, CA 91505. E-mail: editor@lorraineandjames.com. Single issue
$12.
www.lorraineandjames.com] —R.T. Duffer
Me
Three
Issue 2
Fall 2005
Me Three delivers prose in all its
bountiful forms: fiction, personal essays, criticism, and even “unclassifiables.”
An outgrowth of Me Three online, the print journal presents
diverse writing by emerging authors and critics. It’s Me Three’s
love of the unexpected in writing that drives the editorial
aesthetic. Where else would you find a swipe at W. P. Kinsella’s
baseball writing, a subversive cartoon manifesto, and a story told
from the perspective of a baby bird? One of the highlights of the
issue is “Of Of,” Ken Chen’s erudite and witty dissection of the
word “of,” winner of the magazine’s 2005 Literary Criticism Contest.
Tracing the use of “of” in poetry from Milton to Jorie Graham, Chen
argues that “of” is the most overlooked word in literature and has
risen above “like” or “as” as the metaphoric preposition of choice.
Editor Sarah Stodola’s “The Sale of Overpriced Clothes” is a story
of working in retail that rings true to the letter. Also of
particular interest is the peculiar “Missed Connections You May Have
Missed” attributed to John Drinkwater, which includes sharp-tongued
observations like “I see you on the train every day. Sometimes when
you see me you turn away and look out the window so you can think
about what it would be like to be with me” or “You were reading the
New York Post, but you don’t seem to have grown up in a white trash
environment” or “You were in Wham! with George Michael. Not even you
mom knows your name.” Me Three delivers the weird gems of
fiction and criticism that you might have always been looking for
but didn’t know where to find. [E-mail: mail@methree.net. Single
issue $9.
www.methree.net/index.htm]
—Dan Brady
Nimrod
Volume 49 Number 1
Fall/Winter 2005
Biannual
Of the 49 contributors in this issue of
Nimrod, 36 are finalists and semifinalists of its 27th annual
award issue, which is based on Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Four are for
the Katherine Anne Porter Prize for Fiction; 32 for the Pablo Neruda
Prize for Poetry. Numbers may not be the best introduction for their
venerated prize issue, yet it suggests the bloom of the varied,
evocative and penetrating contents: this is a journal to be slowly
ingested and savored. Anything this rich with poetry would have
plenty of elegies and homages to nature, but finalist Katherine
Case’s “Autumn” conjures the redolence of death and fall on the
page: “The air is rainwet / and skunky, as if we’re breathing in /
the world of trees, inhaling their darkest insides, / where smoky,
obsidian hearts sleep in slow / rhythm and ancient filaments curl /
through woody darkness…” Place and time are transcended and shed,
especially in “La Historia” by winner Patricia Caspers. Themes of
love and parents, of sex and gods, abound throughout the journal,
with too many memorable pieces to name, works that replay and remain
long beyond the power of the eyes. All five fiction pieces are
enduring first-person tellings, the top prize winners told from the
opposite gender of the author: Thomas Gough’s winning story,
“Idleness, Justice, Kingship and Love” introduces Louise, who has
moved into her friend Simon’s vacated church two days before the ‘04
presidential election. “In fact, the end was past (she says,
referring to her recent split with her husband), but we’re creatures
of habit, and the habit of late winter is hope.” Jen Larsen’s
narrator, in “What It Is You Know,” attends his estranged wife’s
funeral under a pall of pity and disconnected memories that won’t
answer why she left him. That unsettled feeling morphs into outright
creepiness in “The Prince of Darkness,” where Janette Turner
Hospital expertly understates the event that destroyed a family,
letting the reader infer everything from the fallout. [Nimrod, The
University of Tulsa, Tulsa, OK 74104-3189. E-mail: nimrod@utulsa.edu.
Single issue $10.
www.utulsa.edu/nimrod]
—Rob Duffer
No:
a journal of the arts
Issue 4
2005
Biannual
No is more than a literary magazine; it
is a journal of the arts. That lofty subtitle is not just a
marketing ploy. No really does bring the literary magazine to
the level of art form. It is so well put together it succeeds as a
discreet collection of poems and as a unified whole. Beautifully
bound, this creative cornucopia is overflowing with the smartest,
edgiest, and most provocative poetry. This issue heavily features
Marjorie Welsh’s poetry and painting, including the book-length
“From Dedicated To,” which acts as a kind of book-within-a-journal
in this case. The journal also features new poems from the likes of
Mary Jo Bang, Charles Bernstein, Mei-Mei Berssenbrugge, Peter Gizzi,
Barbara Guest, Ann Lauterbach, Cole Swenson, and the late Robert
Creeley—quite a selection from various of the more
associative-based, language driven schools of the past half-century.
Also worth mentioning are Keith Waldrop’s translations of Charles
Baudelaire. He writes in “Beauty”: “Poets, before my high postures
that seem to lift from the proudest / monuments, will spend their
days in austere study // since, to fascinate such tractable lovers,
I’ve pure mirrors that make / everything more beautiful…” No
performs the same function as Beauty in Baudelaire’s poem: to
exponentially magnify and reflect the beauty that is the fascination
and subject of the poets it presents. [No: a journal of the arts, 39
West 29th Street, 11A, New York, NY 10001. E-mail: information@nojournal.com.
Single issue $12.
www.nojournal.com]
—Dan Brady
Opium
Number 1
2005-6
Annual
Opiummagazine.com has taken its
“literary humor for the deliriously captivated” into the print
world. No.1, with an Eggersly subtitle, “A Whopping Collection of
Fanatical Literary Brilliance,” retains the clever wit and sly
characterizations of its daddy on-line journal, including estimated
reading times. It could best be categorized by a random sampling of
the titles: It is What Fiction, I Gave an Apple to my Teacher,
Suicide Note, Modern Communication Techniques in Des Moines, New
Doritos Flavors with a Limited Future and, of course, You Are
Strange. Humor abounds in editor Todd Zuniga’s 250+page journal of
stories, drawings, poems and axiomatic page dividers, like the one
reminding you to call your mother. In “Fortune,” by David Barringer,
a husband and wife discover a ‘misfortune’ in their Chinese cookie,
supplant it with their own comic list, then get food poisoning and
the awareness that “the planets of our children have eclipsed our
love life.” “Insomnia for a Better Tomorrow” by Tao Lin begins with
the petty disagreements of a doomed couple, which is funny, until
Brian devolves into a hapless, feckless bundle of atoms held
together by the muck of depression. There are memoirs that read like
science-fiction, angry adolescent recollections that move at a
horror movie pace, like “The Four Angries” by David Fromm. “The
Night Salesman” by Nick Antosca is received by a drunken misfit who
would attack the 2 a.m. salesman if he weren’t so drunk. One of
Darby Hudson’s enjoyable drawings, “Tunnel,” explains: “confused man
attempts to fuck a tunnel before being hit by an oncoming train.”
Zuniga’s interview with novelist Amanda Filipacci demonstrates a
dedication and passion for storytelling that pulses throughout the
pages of Opium, where humble pathos underlies manic ethos,
and non-sequitors get tangled in string theory. [E-mail: todd@opiummagazine.com.
Single issue $10.
www.OpiumMagazine.com] —Rob Duffer
The
Paris Review
Volume 47 Number 174
Summer 2005
Quarterly
In its 1953 inaugural issue, William Styron,
best known for his novel Sophie’s Choice, wrote, “I think
The Paris Review should welcome these people into its pages: the
good writers and good poets, the non-drumbeaters and
non-axe-grinders. So long as they're good.” And they are good. This
issue finds Liao Yiwu a seeming star, as both interviewer and
subject, covering an alarming 35 pages, or about 18% of the issue’s
192 pages. Yiwu’s pieces range from encounters with a professional
mourner, an independent public toilet manager, and a human
trafficker, with China serving as each interviews’ backdrop. Yiwu’s
contender is Damon Galgut’s short story “The Follower,” at 44 pages
(24%)—“Look for what. For maps with more detail.” Whether The
Paris Review is playing favorites or just showcasing the talent
they’re exposed to—both rightly, I might add—is unclear. What is
clear, however, is the quality of writing between covers, the
alarming variety, and its authors’ attentiveness to those aspects of
ourselves which make us most human. Philip Gourevitch, author of
1999’s We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed With
Our Families: Stories from Rwanda, took over the role as editor
of The Paris Review, after one of the founders and premier
editor George Plimpton’s death in 2003, and Brigid Hughes’s brief
one-year editorial stint in 2004. Other notable features are an
interview with Salmun Rushdie, a photo essay describing 1994
cease-fire Belfast, a fistful of poems by Dan Chiasson, and a curio
wherein some of Elizabeth Bishop’s early and unpublished poems are
placed en face of her original notebook entries. It isn’t too
often that I pick up a relatively mainstream journal and am
instantly and repeatedly attracted to it. This is one of those
times. [The Paris Review, 62 White
Street, New York, NY 10013. E-mail: queries@theparisreview.org.
Single issue $12.
www.theparisreview.org.] —Erin
M. Bertram
POOL:
a journal of poetry
Volume 4
2005
Annual
“For genius, at least where poetry is
concerned, consists precisely in being faithful to freedom,” Dean
Young quotes from surrealist poet Yves Bonnefoy in the latest issue
of POOL. Although this quote comes from Amy Newlove
Schroeder’s interview with Young in the back pages of POOL,
it might as well be the magazine’s credo. From the Natasha Sajé’s
prose poem “B” to Jeff Chang’s “Things to Forget”—“Under the skin is
another layer. / We call this baby skin. // Under a baby’s skin, /
snowflakes.” – POOL is an experience of the freedom and
diversity of poetry. Published annually out of Los Angeles, editors
Patty Seyburn and Judith Taylor provide a cross-section of
contemporary American poetry. With poems that are surprising and at
the center of the zeitgeist, POOL reads like a snapshot of
the best of poetry’s goings-on. Cate Marvin’s ode to the power of
Nyquil is both funny and unsettling and Cathleen Calbert’s “Fox
Wife” is sexy and haunting: “Fox trickery? / You mean grapes / and
what appears / to be a pool of water? / The way the wind calls /
your wife’s name? / What of your gods? / You think they don’t /
litter the sky / with riddles?” Albert Goldbarth writes in his
“Stepper,” “Every day… / the dust of Asia Minor caking in one’s
hair. / All night, for 1700 miles of nights… the cold slopes / of
the Hindu Kush against one’s cheek, / until the flesh takes on the
feel of rock. Some / never returned as themselves. This / is
evidently what needs to be done / if you’re going to conquer the
world.” While POOL may not be climbing Hindu Kush, they seem
to be on the right path for conquering the world—the poetry world,
at least. [POOL, P.O. Box 49738, Los Angeles, CA 90049. webmaster@poolpoetry.com.
Single issue $10.
www.poolpoetry.com ]
—Dan Brady
Slipstream
Number 25
2005
Annual
“I can sometimes almost read the inscriptions
on brick walls, in doorways, between/ the wing blades of pigeons.”
So writes Yvonne C. Murphy, in her poem “Avenue of the Strongest.”
Slipstream No. 25, a journal, as always, consisting solely of
poetry, is rife with equal allusions to both the body and to the
written word, both in crude and refined forms. At first this seems a
strange set of motifs to underline a journal. But a second look
finds body and text not altogether removed, and, in fact, a
relatively popular contemporary discussion. See Jeanette Winterson’s
novel Written on the Body, see
post-modernism/post-structuralism, see Ani Difranco’s song “Both
Hands.” While I wasn’t entirely impressed by this issue, I can’t say
I was entirely unimpressed either. But so is the case when multiple
authors’ work colludes to form the sort of miniature anthology that
is a journal. Stephen A. Polermo’s poem “Conjoined” treats a
dominant, fetal twin who consumed his twin brother in utero, as a
hero, for foreseeing his brother’s malady and malformations before
birth and doing something about it to avoid his brother’s suffering.
This is, of course, an uncomfortable thought, but one that, at the
same time, offers a sort of harrowing benediction. Ran Webber’s
contemporary, disturbing, and reflective sketches adorn a few of
Slipstream’s pages, offering readers a reprieve from the weighty
subject matter of the issue’s poems, if not thematically, then in
terms of senses most used when experiencing said artwork.
Slipstream No. 25 takes risks, and while sometimes these risks
are a little much, I applaud the journal for succeeding on more than
one occasion. [Slipstream, P.O. Box 2071,
Dept. W-1, Niagara Falls, NY 14301. Single issue $7.
www.slipstreampress.org] —Erin
M. Bertram
Western
Humanities Review
Volume 59 Number 2
Fall 2005
Biannual
When a journal has the term “Review” in the
title, chances are what you’ll find inside tends more toward the
academic than the artistic, because they usually hail from a
university setting. While I can’t speak of Western Humanities
Review on the whole, since Fall 2005 is my introductory issue to
WHR, this edition braids academic and artistic sensibilities
nicely—especially in certain pieces, not so especially in others.
This is less than surprising for a journal, since, while they may
center around a general theme, journals, by loose definition, are
collections of various people’s work, garnering a relatively
eclectic mix, which they should. Western Humanities Review
fits this definition like a glove. There is a strong focus in this
issue on inter-genre literature. Essays about a novel-pairing, one
by Gertrude Stein with another by Christine Brooke-Rose; poems
inspired by and for Arnold Shoenberg, Fritz Lang, Anna Akhmatova,
and Hart Crane; a short story written in the air of, though not
exactly about, film noir. Each of these works points
tastefully toward their inspiration, without leaning too much on
that work of art, or that artist, for balance. And in the midst, a
poem by Nick Norwood entitled “Fellatio: An Ode,” reminiscent of
Charles Jensen’s poem “Upon Discovering The Actual Meaning Of
Penisbreath,” and not because both poems refer to the same
geographical region, but because they take risky material and
present it in such a way that allows the poem to be taken seriously
as itself. This issue of Western Humanities Review offers
readers just that—serious literature that doesn’t take itself too
seriously, or does so just enough to remain accessible.
[Western Humanities Review, University of
Utah English Department, 255 S. Central Campus Drive, Room 3500,
Salt Lake City, UT 84112-10494. E-mail: whr@mail.hum.utah.edu.
Single issue $12.
www.hum.utah.edu/whr/] —Erin
M. Bertram
Posted December 28, 2005
Barrow
Street
Summer 2005
Biannual
Don’t be deceived by the unassuming cover. Or
should I say: be deceived, be very deceived, on account of the
delicious merit of surprise. Such is the case with every issue of
Barrow Street, and I have to say, I like it that way. Inside the
summer issue are 72 poems, 6 poems-in-progress, and 3 reviews. Not
bad for 127 pages, even better for $8 an issue. Barrow Street
is perfect bound, the heft of a paperback novel, copious, a literary
variety show. It seems more discerning than other journals, but by
no means to a fault. While Barrow Street is known for
publishing established writers bearing lists of publications, most
of its contributors are past or present professors, making the
journalno more or less academic for it. A cursory curiosity,
though worth noting. Carl Phillips’s poem “Beautiful Dreamer” could
very well be a teaser for his next book, Riding Westward, due
out next spring. If not, it’s a nice dream, and a solid poem, more
conversational and frank than the contemplative, phrase-fraught
style to which most of his readers have grown accustomed. The
journal’s finale comprises a trio of reviews of three new poetry
collections, one of which, Richard Loranger’s take on Christopher
Arigo’s Lit Interim, urged me to search this book out via any
means possible. Whether it’s a poetic essay on tone, or a quest for
meaning among language and the body, there’s a good chance Barrow
Street’s got it. If not, the quest is worth the risk.
[Barrow Street, Inc., P.O. Box 1831, New
York, NY 10156. E-mail: info@barrowstreet.org. Single issue $8.
www.barrowstreet.org] —Erin
M. Bertram
Beloit
Fiction Journal
Volume 18
Spring 2005
Annual
In Keith R. Denny’s short, remarkable
dream-sequence of a story, “Ulrika,” the reader is swiftly trammeled
up in the twisty mind of a would-be fiction writer for whom “the
possibility of narrative is machine-gunned down in the street like a
mad dog.” Lucky for us, the narrator’s self-effacing assertion does
not hold true for “Ulrika” nor any of the other stories in the
wonderfully narrative-packed Beloit Fiction Journal. The
issue starts off strong with David Crouse’s “The Observable
Universe” in which an estranged brother and sister who share a
tragic childhood reunite amidst the surreal hubbub of a
science-fiction convention. The brother, who’s been mugged just a
few hours previous, comes complete with abraded forehead, black
eyes, and bruises up and down his arms, and refuses to go the
hospital – a concise and effective means by which Crouse acquaints
us with the character’s overall, long-denied damage. “He had been a
tourist in his father’s pain for a long time; he lacked the
imagination to really live there.” The very next story, “Everything
Will Ache the Same,” by David Harris Ebenbach, uncannily expands
upon some of Crouse’s themes, beginning: “My first fight since 8th
grade happens on the same night I get mugged on the corner of 48th
and Osage.” And it seems that muggings, both actual and
psychological, remain a subtle, probably unintentional motif
throughout this issue. An extremely fine story by Joseph Bathani,
“Thy Womb Jesus,” is a powerfully nuanced depiction of a small
family in the grip of the mother’s manic-depressive tendencies. The
final story here, the virtuosic “Love” by Aaron J. Altose, is a bit
of pure imaginative whimsy in which the narrator recounts his
helpless enamourment of a woman who does not have a mouth and
ingests food through a hole in her stomach. This issue’s 285 pages
of pure sweep-me-away fiction will firmly instate Beloit Fiction
Journal in your roster of favored literary magazines. [Beloit
Fiction Journal, Box 11, Beloit College, 700 College Street, Beloit,
WI 53511. E-mail: bfj@www.beloit.edu. Single issue $15.
www.beloit.edu/~english/bfjournal.htm] —Mark Cunningham
Buffalo
Carp
Volume 2
2004
Annual
Many of the works in Buffalo Carp, “a
hybrid, an amalgam” of two species native to the Quad City
Mississippi River area, also celebrate the natural world. Dennis
Saleh’s terse yet lyrical poem, “The Delta Songs of the Harper,”
evokes Ra, the Sun God from Egyptian mythology. The worshipper once
praising the day now laments the onset of night, of death, of the
divine: “For thy God is secret / is how his strength / is known.”
Cullen Bailey Burns also honors light in his prose poem, “American
Music”: “the sunlight is not lonesome, for it falls on everything
and we turn our faces to it.” The short story, sort of prose poem,
“Until the Crow Turns White Again” by Lynn Veach Sadler, is on one
level a story about a young woman’s first love and on another level
a love affair with art and a crow she names Corbaccio. Themes of art
and nature wouldn’t be complete without pain and death. Terry
Savoie’s brilliant poem “Hide-&-Seek” deals with a teacher’s
difficulty in convincing his immortal teen students of the imminence
of death. In the creative non-fiction piece, “Church Dust,” Robert
J. Konrardy recalls that moment in Ia Drang Valley, Vietnam, when he
“grabbed a huge clump of his black, shiny hair and jerked the body
from the mound” and jerked himself back into the church of his altar
boy youth, where the dust enveloped him like the dead enemy’s hair.
Dust rains down from the main character’s crop duster in Michael
Standaert’s birds-eye “Duster,” a short story that structurally
swaps the present and the past, enticing the reader to uncover the
source of Duke’s unabated guilt for his unresponsive wife. There are
other poems and stories by writers native to the river borders
between Illinois and Iowa that add to Buffalo Carp’s balance
of poignancy, humor and irony. [Buffalo Carp, Quad City Arts, 1715
Second Avenue, Rock Island, IL 61201. E-mail: buffalocarp@quadcityarts.com.
Single issue $10.
www.quadcityarts.com/literature.html] —Rob Duffer
Controlled
Burn
Volume 11
Winter 2005
I am occasionally awed and inspired to be
reminded of the number of excellent literary journals produced by
this country’s community colleges. Controlled Burn comes to
us out of Kirtland Community College of Roscommon Michigan, but in
design, content, and skillful editorial vision, this publication is
easily on a par with our nation’s more celebrated, ivy-league
journals. At 108 pages the winter issue is thin, yes, but in no
manner anemic. Five short stories, two black-and-white photographs,
and the rest is poetry. In fiction, I found that Sarah B. Wareck’s
“At the Drake” was more than enough to merit (and, really, make a
jaw-dropping bargain of) the journal’s $6 price tag. A single quote
wouldn’t adequately convey the manner in which Wareck’s story
reawakens one to the sympathetic possibilities of fiction,
practically renovating your sense of participation in the human
adventure. Adrienne Lewis’s “Prefect Past Pretense” is another
crow-bar to the brain. In its unclassifiable stylism and extremely
vulnerable narrative voice, the story moves and surprises, as if
single-handedly testifying to the power of less conventional
fictional constructs. “And even as I write these words, I want him
to see them: to turn a page in some magazine, recognize my name or
the title I shared with him as I waited for the piece to come and
fulfill its meaning.” Controlled Burn also offers poetry fans
plenty of cause for delight. “Walking to the Airport” from Jean C.
Howard’s Las Vegas Series, beds a deeply religious
sensibility within its irresistible imagery—a potent combo. “They
are walking / to the airport / in 107 degrees / where desert
reclaims / the footprint / and casinos care not / to go / And sun
sits like / a boil upon the hip / of the hill side. / Or like a
magnificent / garnet of teeth / of the wind.” Controlled Burn
inspires celebration on every level. [Controlled Burn, Kirtland
Community College, Roscommon, MI 48635. E-mail: crockerd@kirtland.edu.
Single issue $6.
www2.kirtland.edu/cburn/] —Mark Cunningham
CRATE
Volume 1 Number 1
Spring 2005
Southern California is a nexus of geography and
culture, a place where perspectives about the world get reflected
through the iridescent sheen of difference. In its inaugural issue,
CRATE, a journal produced by the University of California,
Riverside, has declared itself a place for these points of view to
coexist. The editor’s note says this: “Within these pages, you’ll
find many borders—genre-jumping, intimate moments—regarded,
accessed, transgressed and juxtaposed: sacred alongside profane,
contemplative mingling with bawdy; structure with demolition. In
CRATE, you will discover dialogue, not agreement.” It’s a
complex self-assessment, one I’m not sure this journal entirely
lives up to—yet. Certainly, there is an assortment of work
here—poems, interviews, critical analysis, letters to the editor,
short stories, artwork—and many of them do rub against the soft
borders of genre, becoming hybrids of form; however, it feels as
though, at times, quality was sacrificed in favor of variety. (Kudos
to Neil Aitken for the lovely cover design, which clearly captures
the editors’ intent—the various crate labels are a visual
counterpoint to the content.) Still, I did find the effort made here
worth consideration, especially E.J. Jones’s story “Brown Sugar &
Flour,” Juan Felipe Herrera’s poem “I Forget the Date,” and Craig
Svokin’s essay “If only L.A. had a Soul.” These pieces create
emotional depth unique to the characters and places they write
about, a definite strength in a journal devoted to the muddling of
borders. For the next issue, my suggestion is to label the table of
contents to clearly reflect genres (as the website does), and to
continue to select work with a discerning eye toward well-crafted
writing that doesn’t simply “def[y] conventional labels,” but that
also does what some thoughtful pieces here do: explore experience
rich with possibility. [CRATE, 1607 HMNSS, UC Riverside, Riverside,
CA 92521. E-mail: crate.journal@gmail.com. Single issue: $8.
www.crate.ucr.edu] —Jen Henderson
Fairy
Tale Review
The Blue Issue
2005
Annual
Charming and adventurous, this new annual
journal displays impressive wit and eclecticism. Right away you know
Fairy Tale Review will be a different sort of literary
magazine from its multiple visual references to Andrew Lang’s
Fairy Book Collection, (a series of books listed by color, the
Red Fairy Book, the Olive Fairy Book, etc.) While the
attractive matte cover with intricate cover art by Kiki Smith
(depicting a scene from Little Red Riding Hood) may indicate
that this belongs on a well-read child’s bookshelf, the content
inside, while whimsical and full of fairy-tale lore, is meant for
adults. Starting with Kim Addonizio’s salty, melancholy take on the
seven dwarves in the short story “Ever After,” to Aimee Bender’s
lyrical short prose piece “Appleless,” to a deconstruction of a
fairy tale couple described as the text of ER staff medical history
notes, everything is perfect reading for an active mind on cold
winter nights. It was hard to choose just one piece to quote from,
but here are a few lines from the end of Julie Choffel’s poem,
“Rapunzelus Goldilockskii”: “…She saw utopia once. It was so /
expensive. So vain. It made her chop off her hair and plant it. /
That’s where the men grew, in the lengthy / yellowy verdure. Small
from far away and big up close.” The content reaches beyond fairy
tales as well—Donna Tartt discusses the influences of Peter Pan
and Treasure Island, and Marina Warner weaves a dark
retelling of the Persephone myth. Kudos to the editor, Kate
Bernheimer, for not only collecting wonderful content but for paying
attention to production details—from the clear, attractive type to
beautiful reproductions of Kiki Smith’s art work, everything is
stunning. [Fairy Tale Review, English Department, University
of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, AL 35487. E-mail: editor@fairytalereview.com.
Single issue $10.
www.fairytalereview.com/] —Jeannine Hall Gailey
The
Fiddlehead
Number 224
Summer 2005
Quarterly
The Fiddlehead may very well be the
single best in-door for those with a mind to explore the finest of
Canadian creative writing. This “Summer Fiction” issue is a
wellspring particularly for anybody seeking the multifarious
pleasures that original and adventurous short stories can provide.
Published out of Fredericton, New Brunswick, The Fiddlehead,
as the brief editor’s note asserts, celebrates its 60th anniversary
this year, “which makes The Paris Review at fifty seem a
veritable pup.”This rollicking all-fiction edition gives
good reason for the journal’s impressive longevity, and inspires
hopes for its continuance. It all starts with the pistol-shot of
Bill Gaston’s “Freedom,” a picaresque about a big-dreaming cultural
innocent called Wa. Wa, who has recently arrived from Paris at the
side of his crime-addicted mother, speaks barely two licks of
English but wanders the streets of Des Moines, Iowa, wildly eager to
distinguish himself with the cultural wares of the U.S.A, which to
him means guns, bean bags, hot tubs, burgers, and of course TVs.
“The thing with America is, when you eat a lot of burgers, you begin
to need a lot of burgers.” “Seeing Red,” by Joanne Merriam, is an
equally engrossing story that in four short pages manages to present
and bring into collision the lives of four distinctive characters. I
find the artful prose of these lines by Merriam to be a good
representation of the top-notch writing so pervasive in The
Fiddlehead: “[…]his body suddenly lighter than it should be, his
head heavier, as though he’d stared up at the sky for too long, and
could no longer tell where his body began, or whether his feet were
touching the ground, or whether there was any longer any ground to
touch, as if the sky just went on and on with nothing under it, so
that he will always be falling as he is now, and almost he expects
to see stars blossom in her pupils, and then he blinks and comes
back to himself feeling stupid and small.” [The Fiddlehead, Campus
House, 11 Garland Court, UNB, PO Box 4400, Fredericton NB, Canada
E3B 5A3. E-mail: fiddlehd@unb.ca. Single issue $16.
www.lib.unb.ca/Texts/Fiddlehead] —Mark Cunningham
Four-Hundred
Words
“Autobiographies”
Issue 1
2005
Biannual
Four-Hundred Words is a CD sized lit
journal filled with 66 different 400-word autobiographies on the
theme of…life. Though the editor, Katherine Sharpe, claims the first
issue grew out of “that weird time right after college, the time of
looking around and wondering how the world works and how people
find, and understand, their place in it,” the array of contributors
ranges in age from a 72-year-old physicist to a 15-year-old
Taiwanese woman who expresses herself in exclamations, “She’s so
URGH!!” The portable train companion/coffee table/bathroom book has
lists, poems, abstract associations, psychiatrist-sounding
admissions, impressionable scenes, monumental firsts, chronologies,
memories of birth—I could go on. The myriad forms range from the
lyric and artsy to the plainspoken and truthful, “I’m forgetting
important things about adolescence.” How the different contributors
tell their autobiographies are as varied as their themes—unrequited
loves and loves that endured, geekdom to feminism, cybermarriages to
race, superstitions to social justice. Most of the essays
acknowledge the transitory nature of life, “I’m happy, but I’m still
looking for a point to all of this.” By reading through the varied
identities of individual lives, bylined with only a first name,
there becomes an awareness of the collective image that shapes a
culture, giving this journal a distinct vitality “existing at the
seams of sociology and literature.” The voyeuristic yet
introspective Four-Hundred Words encourages the reader to
consider their life, their community, to “[…] embrace it all, the
sadness and the miracles, my strange and wondrous life.” On the
success of this issue they will be printing twice-a-year and are
currently accepting essays for their next theme, “Compulsions.”
[Four-Hundred Words, 428 N. Cayuga St., #1s, Ithaca, NY 14850.
E-mail: Katherine@400words.com. Single issue $6.
www.400words.com] —Rob Duffer
The
Healing Muse
Volume 5 Number 1
Fall 2005
Annual
“Everyone wants medicine to give us
precise answers,” says Associate Professor of Anesthesia at Stanford
University School of Medicine Audrey Shafer, “but it often cannot.
You have to be comfortable with that, to accept that there is more
than one perspective on a case.” Audrey Shafer, MD, also Director of
the Arts, Humanities, and Medicine Program at the Sanford Center for
Biomedical Ethics is a creative writer and author. An interview with
Shafer appears in the Fall 2005 issue of The Healing Muse,
the annual literary journal supported by The Center for Bioethics
and Humanities at SUNY Upstate Medical University, which publishes
fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and visuals. This rich, diverse
journal includes the voice of the therapist who, in “Slip, Sliding
Away,” asks “Why does one person live whose blood gases approximate
those of someone buried for days, while another dies who looked like
he was on the road to recovery?” There is the voice of the family
member trying to express “what it means, really, to cross / the
shifting borders of health, / passport stamped ‘Adjacent Country.’”
There are voices of mothers waiting “a long time in the waiting
room” with their sick children, voices of children who can’t breath
because “The air is full of dust, before the rains come,” of nurses
who can save them with vaccines or a nebulizers, each one
represented in “Boy, Ball, and Black Water,” written by Susan Ward,
who has worked in a clinic in Managua, Nicaragua. At the end of the
poem is the black and white photograph, by Ward, of a boy stooping
down beside a body of water, holding onto a ball. [The Healing Muse,
Center for Bioethics and Humanities, Suny Upstate Medical
University, 725 Irving Avenue, Suite 406, Syracuse, NY 13210. E-mail:
hlgmuse@upstate.edu. Single
issue $10. www.thehealingmuse.org]
—donna everhart
Heat
City Literary Review
Volume 2
Spring 2005
Biannual
With its second issue, Heat City Literary
Review, which enjoyed an online debut last year, steps
gracefully into the world of print publications. The lovingly
designed production weighs in at a deceptively slim 90 pages, while
positively bristling with substance and punch. Somehow, eight full
short stories, six quick fictions, a memoir, a review, and a healthy
sampling of poetry manage to share the meager square-footage without
ever wanting for elbow-room—a testament to editorial brilliance. In
the short stories, I consistently found that rarest of reading
pleasures: my readerly appetite was at once gratified and sharpened
at the close of each piece; what better effect can fiction produce?
“Songs I Can’t Get Out of My Head” by Diane E. Dees, a first-person
account of a gay man in the first generation of AIDS victims, is
outright wicked in the emotion it evokes, sentence-by-sentence
dismantling the reader’s numbness to a pandemic that has become ‘old
news’. Corey Mesler’s “Adman,” through a satiric-yet-empathetic
sleight of hand, is also moving. And Jeff Gibbs’ quick fiction,
“Commercial, Take One” is a veritable image-driven hypnosis. “The
sky is gray like lead fumes and the shape of a hawk huddles against
it, hopping along the railing of a stairwell. Its wings are half
outspread and soggy and sharp…” Heat City Literary Review
practically explodes with admirable contemporary writing. “This
journal kicks ass!” is the way I put it to my wife, as I plunged
through the pages. Readers and writers take heed: this lively new
journal will not only propel you powerfully into the deeper universe
of creative writing, it will make you want to shout from the
mountaintop. [Heat City Literary Review, 62 Windsor Rd, rear,
Waban, MA 02468. E-mail: info@heatcityreview.com. Single issue
$8.95.
www.heatcityreview.com] —Mark Cunningham
Iconoclast
Number 90
2005
Bimonthly
Writing that challenges in a friendly manner
the assumptions made on a daily basis is what I have found in
Iconoclast. Mrs. Bennett, the main character in “Mrs. Lewist,
the Busman,” tiptoes “around the other side of the bed” her
daughter, now dead, is stretched out in, and thinks “why am I
tiptoeing?” She knocks on the door of her boys’ room, stopping to
ask herself, “Why am I knocking? Why don’t I just walk in?” The main
goal of this literary journal seems to be to question the status
quo, the surface of ideas usually taken for granted, the gray area
between idea and action, for instance, as exemplified in Marta
Palos’s “Notes on a Gentle Criminal”: “You mean,” says the main
character Angela, that “having rotten ideas is ok as long as you can
hide them? You think that makes you innocent? Not by a long shot.
Nobody’s innocent. You think you’re innocent?” Environment,
religion, politics, relationships, nothing is exempt, they are all
present in a black and white, single spaced, easy to read format,
through prose and poetry not in the least considered one-sided. What
I have found in Iconoclast, besides book reviews, fiction,
and non-fiction, is an emphasis on exploration. In “An
Iconoclast’s View of Religion,” Harold R. Larimer describes the
thinking process which led to his current beliefs. People listen too
much, his informative essay seems to say. “It wasn’t until World War
II and the Holocaust that I finally decided to do my own reading and
thinking.” Several book and magazine reviews are listed, one a
literary criticism/biography of H.G. Wells, who championed the idea
of a popular education. [Iconoclast, 1675 Amazon Road, Mohegan Lake,
NY 10547. Single issue $5.] —donna everhart
Karamu
Volume 24 Number 2
Spring 2005
Annual
If the word Karamu means a meeting place for
the local community, the journal Karamu, published by the
English Department at Eastern Illinois University in Charleston,
Illinois, must be the universal amphitheater, the point where
writers and readers engage. And if Karamu refers to the place
outside our homes, Karamu must refer to the place where the
written word ventures inside, a point of connection where prose and
poetry communicate with each other, like a warm circle wrapped
around a fire. It’s a place where ideas and worries are communicated
through an expression that could only arise out of close
observation. In Alex M. Frankel’s poem, “The Talking World,” “there
is a kind of Christmas in the lady’s benign inspecting of the
eggplant / as she chats with Judd who oversees the oil rigs.” And
then there’s the prose piece, “What Love Requires,” by J. Scott
Smith, with the widow Henry explaining to his neighbor why he is in
love so soon after his loss: “What does it matter?” he says. “It’s
peace I need, and Nora is–peaceful.” The style, always intelligent,
contains the jewel of transcendence, as in this stanza from “Calling
the Elk”: “This was of higher senses, this ability / to open the
mind / to where thoughts could fly silent / on the lip of the wind.”
Place, outside or inside, is what this journal celebrates. In the
index next to each name is listed the state or country each author
is from: California, Illinois, Kentucky, New York, Italy,
Pennsylvania just to name a few. [Karamu, English Department,
Eastern Illinois University, Charleston, IL 61920. E-mail: cfoxa@eiu.edu.
Single issue $8.
www.eiu.edu/~karamu/] —donna everhart
Like
Water Burning
Issue 1
2005
“published as often as possible”
Like Water Burning encourages and
attracts writers who listen to their own voices instead of listening
to those who attempt to limit creative expression. With pages of
fiction and non-fiction, the journal reaches out to readers who want
writing unafraid to walk in new directions. Take, for instance, “The
Sinking Ship Man,” one of the shorter stories, featuring a narrator
who can’t say “the T-word,” the name of the ship, the “sinking ship
that keeps on sinking” and never stops because the fans of the
unmentionable historical ship won’t allow it. The narrator is taking
care of the last living survivor who, in her opinion, is sinking
slowly along with the ship, although he’s having difficulty. From
flash fiction to essays, the writing is humorous, bold, fun,
unapologetic; the journal’s upbeat style is unique. One story is
even told in second person, a view point writers are usually
encouraged to shy away from—but Sarah Bartlett’s “Domesticity” is a
true success. What you’ll find in this journal is one hundred and
seventy-four pages of true reading material. Like Water Burning
Press is not only about good writing, “It is about promoting the
creative process and ensuring the unsure that the boundaries,
guidelines, and regulations, which may be weighing down the term
‘creative’ for some, do not actually exist...” And the perfect bound
journal’s last few pages provide a place to collect author
autographs. [Like Water Burning Press, 109 Mira Mar Avenue #301,
Long Beach, CA 90803. Single issue $10.
www.likewaterburning.com] —donna everhart
The
Literary Review
Volume 48 Number 4
Summer 2005
Quarterly
This issue of TRL kicks off with three
short pieces by Lydia Davis, one of the few current authors truly
pushing the boundaries of what fiction can be. Whether that means
pushing boundaries like throwing trash on the floor and calling it
an installation, or pushing boundaries like Ulysses, depends
on your point of view. Personally, I love it, and her “Three Letters
of Complaint” here are no exception. To give you an idea, here is
how the third begins: “Dear Frozen Pea Manufacturer, / We are
writing to you because we feel that the peas illustrated on your
package of frozen peas are a most unattractive color.” Other
highlights in this thick issue (284 pages) are three intriguing
prose-poems by Joyelle McSweeney, as well as a series of humorous and
absurdist prose-poems by Russell Edson. Edson’s pieces each end in
a way that feel simultaneously like a punch line and a parable. Also
featured here is Mark Hillringhouse’s “The New York School Poets: A
Photo Essay,” which provides us with pictures of poets, like Koch
and Merwin, as well comments by the author. A solid issue through
and through. [The Literary Review, 285 Madison Avenue, Madison, NJ
07940. E-mail: tlr@fdu.edu. Single issue $7.
www.theliteraryreview.org] —Lincoln Michel
The
Long Story
Number 23
2005
Annual
The Long Story is difficult to tuck
under the pillow to read later. Beginning with the black and white
cover drawing (the whole journal is black and white) of Dante
shielding his eyes, as if from strong light, and Beatrice raising
her arm, pointing toward heaven, an even stronger notion exists in
the pages to come that something unusual waits to be discovered in
them. The lines single spaced, the stories (the longest one is
The Last Entry of Józef Kamienski) 8,000-20,000 words in length,
there is ample space for the reader to enter a world composed of
characters with strengths and weaknesses, so realistic they demand
an empathetic response. The little girl with cystic fibrosis,
Miranda, who keeps her father, Nathan, in the present instead of the
place in time he tends to reside, in “gloomy pasts and futures,” or
the Polish philosopher Józef Kamienski, who “just turned forty,” and
who weighs the spiritual and religious meanings of such men as
Aquinas, Hume, and George Berckeley along with his own experience of
loss he suffers and a social and cultural one he and the nation
confront. And there’s Cole, who tries to show Martin, in “Security,”
that the issue, stealing, is not “black and white.” Perhaps the
protagonist keeps his faith, or undergoes a change in faith, as in
“Black Dust,” or maybe swings back and forth, wanting so so much to
believe in someone, as Chloe does in “Get Ready.” [The Long Story,
18 Eaton Street, Lawrence, MA 01843. E-mail: rpburnham@mac.com.
Single issue $7.
www.hompage.mac.com/rpburnham/longstory.html] —donna everhart
Northwest
Review
Volume 43 Number 3
September 2005
Triannual
“The world is an / aggressive place,” begins
Dana Roeser’s poem “Summer Meditation for Paul: Ajuga, Look Back”—an
apt theme for this issue of Northwest Review, a journal
published by the University of Oregon. The writing here is lovely
and disastrous, often exploring the darker side of human nature,
like pedophilia and the complexities of storytelling in Rebecca
Cook’s piece “Inside Herman Inside Irene”: “But she is afraid to
even know, to even research this problem, to punch pedophilia
into a Google search and look for information [...] because there
would probably be pictures of things she doesn’t want to see [...]
hidden in boxes hidden inside Herman’s mind which is really only
hidden away inside her own mind [...].” Other work illuminates the
delicate shifting of delight and pain in life, as in Judith
Skillman’s heartbreaking poem about disappointment in “The Family
Goat.” Still others, like Kevin Oderman’s contemplative essay
“Judith and Harold,” suggest that “[t]he real darkness breeds in
refusing to admit our own nature.” My one criticism is related to
the subtitle of this issue, “Essays and More Essays.” To be more
accurate, it should read, “Poems, a Few Essays, and Other Stuff”—the
“other stuff” being a quasi-fictional interview by Sara Prichard
which has this footnote: “This interview was manipulated extensively
for the sake of content and narrative [...] words have been put into
and taken out of his mouth [...].” However, she makes a point of
saying her work is “creative nonfiction.” (Um, if it’s nonfiction,
you don’t get to make it up.) Otherwise, the overall content is
compelling, a deft mix of observation and reflection, both about how
we live and how we make sense of living. [Northwest Review, 369 PLC
New Line, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR 97403. E-mail: jwitte@oregon.uoregon.edu.
Single issue $8.
http://darkwing.uoregon.edu /~nwreview/] —Jen Henderson
Rainbow
Curve
Issue 6
Spring 2005
Biannual
Produced in Las Vegas, Rainbow Curve
boasts a bit of the edgy glare and gasp-inducing quality of its city
of origin. The five short stories in the spring issue seem to share
a common penchant for unforgiving narrators engaged in disturbing
behavior of some kind or other, whether it’s the distorted
saintliness of an 911 dispatcher euthanizing his own mother in
Andrew S. Bodine’s masterfully written “Sirens of Mercy,” the
disgust of authority by a drug-dealing teenager in Larry Crist’s
jagged “Restitution,” or the day-to-day cold-bloodedness of a
hit-man gluing shut his victim’s jaw in Philip Gardner’s “Somebody
Wants Somebody Dead.” “Then I put the barrel of the gun under his
nose and press lightly, while with the other hand I press down on
his chin. He catches on quick. I apply the adhesive, top and bottom,
then push the barrel up under his chin with just enough pressure to
make sure the glue holds.” Best that this journal’s title not to be
taken at its colorful, friendly face value; it seems to signify a
more sinister, hallucinogenic arc. The power of the material in
Rainbow Curve lies in its almost entirely fearless and frightful
nature, something like contemporary literature’s equivalent of
Martin Scorsese’s “Taxi Driver.” A few lines from Robert L. Penick’s
poem “Something New” might be taken as an overall thematic statement
for this dark issue: “It’s very difficult / Loving someone / Who’s
not tragic / Or destructive / Or fatally flawed / The hours don’t
have / That emptiness / You can crawl inside (of)…” In its
flawlessly written narratives and poetry, Rainbow Curve packs
a brass-knuckled punch. [Rainbow Curve, P.O. Box 93206, Las Vegas,
NV 89193-3206. E-mail: rainbowcurve@sbcglobal.net. Single issue $8.
www.rainbowcurve.com] —Mark Cunningham
Spinning
Jenny
Number 8
2004
Annual
This issue of Spinning Jenny is thick
with poems that regularly make syntax irregular. Take, for example,
Christopher Salerno’s poem “Lame Duck Pope,” in which he writes: “O
rector of forms rigid by heart. / O this, and now edicts drain you.”
More surrealist pamphlet than syntactical oddity, Spinning Jenny
is perfect bound and dedicated entirely to poetry, the latter one of
its distinguishing features. A lack of contributor’s notes also
gives Black Dress Press’ journal a black sheep feel, among a flock
of literary journals. Fields and caterpillars recur, but not as
often as teeth. Teeth manifest themselves as a leitmotif, perhaps as
memento mori. Nature references aside, what I found most alluring in
these 86 pages is the quirky transitions between poems. Lauren
Ireland’s hypnotic poem “41 Paintings” stands out as a litany of
stark images juxtaposed neatly: “The cypress broke but the swans
still come. / The French sew in the dark. / A horse like a pig rears
in the sky. / The man is happy, generous. He is shot twice.” The
next poem is about restaurants and chewing. Spinning Jenny 8
features multiple poems by the same poet, a trend among journals,
though not so much a trend as to have grown tired. Like every
approach, this one comes with risks. The upside: getting a better
grasp on certain poets’ work. The downside: enjoying one poem by X
poet but not another. I applaud Spinning Jenny for its whimsy
and risk, for once again giving a variety of voices an arena in
which to make loud their voices. [Spinning
Jenny, c/o Black Dress Press, P.O. Box 1373, New York, NY 10276.
E-mail: info@spinning-jenny.com. Single issue $8.
www.blackdresspress.com]—Erin
M. Bertram
The
Wallace Stevens Journal
Volume 29 Number 1
Spring 2005
Biannual
I can now say that I am better acquainted with
the poems of Wallace Stevens. In this Special Conference Issue, Part
2, several essays investigate, through a select number of the
“mature” poet’s poems, where Stevens lived, not only physically but
also spiritually. The 8-10 page essays, single spaced, are listed
under these headings: The Place of Home in Stevens’ Poetry;
Continental Stevens; Stevensian Conflations: Physical, Colonial,
Analytical; Middle Stevens; Sublime and Common Places; Stevens and
Philosophy; and Late Stevens. Through poems such as “The Rock,”
“Metaphor as Degeneration,” “The Man on the Dump,” “In the Clear
Season of Grapes,” “A Discovery of Thought,” “The Man with the Blue
Guitar,” and others, scholars and students of the late poet gleam
their evidence while, simultaneously, they come to know better the
man as he lived, thought, and experienced life. Home, as Stevens saw
it, takes on a new meaning, especially in Jacqueline Vaught Brogan’s
“‘Inessential Houses’ in Stevens and Bishop.” Brogan relates a
comment on the division between house and home by author Toni
Morrison to Bishop’s and Steven’s similar divisions as expressed
through their poetic images and syntax, which can then be
interpreted on a political level. At the end of every essay is the
list of notes and/or works cited, near the end of the journal a
detailed bibliography. In addition to thoroughly researched essays,
an elegy to the Pulitzer Prize winning poet Donald Justice, whose
poetic style has been linked to Stevens, two reviews, one of which
is a book of Stevens’s poetry for “young people,” and a “Call for
Papers” are included inside a slick, attractive, perfect bound
journal, slightly over 200 pages. [The Wallace Stevens Journal,
Clarkson University, Box 5750 Potsdam, NY 13699. E-mail: serio@clarkson.edu
for back issue rate.
www.wallacestevens.com] —donna everhart
Watchword
Issue 8
2005
Biannual
“We are living in a time where there is a sly,
insidious war being waged on the imagination […] But what is lost
when the storyteller is forcibly removed from the story?” A preface
from the editor spells out Watchword 8’s credo. Narrative is
not dead, the issue claims, it runs three miles every morning before
working a day job. A credo whispered from behind a tree, so you,
reader, have to figure it out on your own, perhaps the most
effective method of engagement. Watchword knows this. A
curious approach to layout, poems bookend longer prose features,
like some double-stuffed literary wonder. While prose occupies a
substantial portion of the issue, most of the poems on either end
make up for page length in quality and craft. Amy Dickinson’s ‘The
Only Definitive Collection of Fragments in the Southwestern United
States’ is one example: “You’ve accumulated only three photographs /
of birthday parties, which require their own set of storage
instructions. / Contemporary color photographs must be kept quite
cool, / 40 degrees Fahrenheit, or less. You read the backside
captions / for clues. You care for the celebrants—.” Issue 8’s 96
pages showcase prose, poetry, and the occasional genre-bender, from
writers across the map, U.S. to Israel to the Czech Republic. Comic
cut-outs from the year 1915 adorn a handful of pages, giving the
perfect bound journal a sometimes hand-fashioned look. Watchword
8 is a journal incognito as a journal, a meta-journal of sorts,
complimenting the issue’s tenet like orange in Rothko’s famous blue
and yellow piece. [Watchword Press, P.O.
Box 5755, Berkeley, CA 94705. E-mail: liz@watchwordpress.org. Single
issue $10.
www.watchwordpress.org] —Erin
M. Bertram
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.: Seconds Of Madness :.
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Travel USA Travel - Car Rental Tips - USA Tourist
Car Rental Tips
No single car rental agency is best
Most major international car-rental agencies have offices in the USA. It is impossible to say that any one company is the best as you may have good experiences or bad experience with the same company in different cities. For your convenience, we attached a list of links to the major car rental agencies in the US. USATourist.com also provides an easy way to compare rental prices from all the car rental agencies. You can compare prices and reserve your car directly from this web page through our affiliate TravelNow.
Automatic transmissions are the norm
Rental cars in the USA normally come equipped with automatic transmissions, air conditioning and a radio-cassette player. If you request a standard transmission, the rental company will probably have none available when you arrive as they are extremely uncommon. If you are travelling with children under 2-years of age make sure you have a child's car restraint seat or request one from the rental agency. It is illegal to carry small children in a car without safety restraint seats in most states.
AmericaDrives.com prepares foreign visitors for driving in the United States. If you're visiting the US from abroad you may not be prepared for US driving conditions. Do you know what a YIELD sign looks like away from home? AmericaDrives.com offers a detailed driver safety and preparation course specifically designed for foreign visitors to the United States. If you visit the US and plan to drive, consider taking this inexpensive course to prepare you before getting behind-the-wheel. Go to AmericaDrives.com
International driver's license is not required
An international driver's license is not required in the US. You can usually rent a car and drive with a valid driver's license from your home country. An international license may be helpful in convincing the car rental agent that you really have a valid license when they cannot recognize or understand your license. Some rental agencies will not rent cars to anyone less than 25 years old. Other agencies will rent to young people but will charge a higher fee. Some agencies will not rent to anyone over 71 years old. Be sure to check on these restrictions if you are in these age categories.
Car rental prices are very competitive
Car rental prices are very competitive in most states and no single agency has the best prices every time. Prices change frequently and every agency offers many special promotions and competitive priced deals. If you spend some time shopping for the best price, you can often save money. Here are some tips on how to find the best prices and how to save money.
You can shop for bargain rental prices
Car rental prices are most competitive in major tourist destinations like California and Florida. You can find some real bargain prices if you shop for the best deal. Some travel agencies offer special package deals that include airfare plus car rental or hotels plus car rental. You can now compare those deals against the best rates offered by all of the US car rental agencies through TravelNow.
Car rental insurance is never a bargain
Car rental agencies always offer collision damage waiver insurance (CDW) and theft insurance at exorbitant prices that can significantly increase the price of a car rental. You should not risk driving without insurance, but you can usually get such insurance at a much lower price. Check your automobile insurance at home to see if it will cover driving in the US, or use a credit card that provides free insurance when you rent a car. The American Express Dollar Card and some bank charge cards provide such insurance for free when you use them to rent a car. Check with the credit card issuer to be sure it provides such coverage for USA rentals. The American Express Company and some other travel agents offer special travel insurance that provides CDW coverage at a much lower price than the rental agencies.
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eBay UK: Help : Topics : Policies and Guidelines : User Agreement
User Agreement
Welcome to the User Agreement for eBay.co.uk ("User Agreement").
The services available at http://www.ebay.co.uk are provided by eBay International A.G. ("eBay", "we", "us" or "our"), located at Helvetiastrasse 15/17, 3005 Bern, Switzerland.
This User Agreement describes the terms and conditions applicable to your use of our services available under the domain and sub-domains at http://www.ebay.co.uk (the "Site"). If you do not agree to be bound by this User Agreement, you may not use or access our services.
You must read, agree with and accept all of the terms and conditions contained in this User Agreement, which includes those terms and conditions expressly set out below and those incorporated by reference, before you may become a user of the Site. We strongly recommend that, as you read this User Agreement, you also access and read the information contained in the other pages and websites referred to in this document, as they contain further terms and conditions which apply to you as an eBay user. Please note: underlined words and phrases are click-through links to these pages and websites.
By agreeing to this User Agreement, you also agree that your use of other eBay web sites will be governed by the user agreement posted on those other web sites.
We may amend this User Agreement at any time by giving you notice ("Notice") by either e-mail in accordance with your Notification Preferences or by posting the amended User Agreement on the Site. Any amended User Agreement will govern new user registrations from the date that it is posted on the Site. Existing users will be bound by the amended User Agreement after the expiry of 30 days following the date of a Notice. No other amendment to this User Agreement will be effective. Please note that different notice provisions apply to our Fees and Credits Policy as set out in section 6 below.
This User Agreement is effective on 22 December 2003 for new registering users and is otherwise effective on 21 January 2004 for all users registered prior to 22 December 2003. Users registered prior to 22 December 2003 can view the previous user agreement at http://pages.ebay.co.uk/help/contact_us/_base/index.html.
Membership Eligibility.
Our services are not available to, and may not be used by, persons under the age of 18 years or to temporarily or indefinitely suspended eBay members. If you are under 18 years old, you can use this service only in conjunction with and under the supervision of a parent or guardian. If you do not qualify, please do not use our services. If you are registering as a business entity, you represent that you have the authority to bind that entity to this User Agreement.
User ID.
You must choose a User ID and password on completion of registration. You are responsible for all actions taken under that User ID and password and shall only use or utilise the Site using your own User ID and password. You must use every effort to keep your password safe and should not disclose it to any other person. You shall not transfer or sell your User ID to any other person. You shall also not permit, either directly or indirectly, any other person to utilise your User ID or password.
eBay is Only a Venue.
3.1 eBay is not an auctioneer. Although we are commonly referred to as an online auction web site it is important to realise that we are not a traditional auctioneer. Instead, the Site acts as a venue which allows registered users to offer, sell, and buy just about anything which is legal, at any time, from anywhere, in a variety of price formats. We do not review listings provided by users, we never possess the items offered through the Site and we are not involved in transactions between buyers and sellers. As a result, we have no control over the quality, safety or legality of the items listed, the truth or accuracy of the listings, the ability of sellers to sell items or the ability of buyers to pay for items. Do not assume that the offer, sale, purchase, export or import of any item is valid and legal simply because it is listed on the Site. We are not responsible for ensuring that buyers and sellers actually complete a transaction. You accept sole responsibility for the legality of your actions under laws applying to you.
3.2 Restricted Items. You must not offer, sell, bid for, or buy any items which we do not permit on the Site, as described in the list of Prohibited, Questionable and Potentially Infringing Items. We do not accept any obligation to protect you from unsafe items listed for sale on our Site. Please do not assume that items listed will be harmless to people or property.
3.3 Identity verification. We use many techniques to verify the accuracy of the information our users provide to us when they register on the Site. However, because user verification on the Internet is difficult, eBay cannot and does not confirm the purported identity of users or the validity of the information which users post to the Site. Our User ID feedback rating system will also help you to evaluate the user with whom you are dealing. We encourage you to communicate with potential trading partners using the tools available on the Site. You may also wish to consider using a third party escrow service that provides additional user verification. Please refer to our Sitemap for more information buying and selling tools and services.
3.4 Feedback. You must not take any actions that may undermine the integrity of the feedback system. We may limit the number of bids and listings you may place on the Site and your other activities on the Site based upon the level of your feedback. If you earn a net feedback rating of -4, your right to use our services will be suspended, and you will be unable to list or bid. Feedback ratings are not designed for any purpose other than for facilitating trading between eBay users, and you agree that you shall not market or export your eBay feedback rating in any venue other than an eBay website. We do not allow you to import feedback from other websites to eBay because such feedback does not reflect your reputation within the eBay community.
3.5 Liability. In the event that you have any right, claim or action against any other user arising from that user's use of the Site, you agree to pursue such right, claim or action independently of and without recourse to us, and you release eBay (and our parent, subsidiaries, affiliates, officers, directors, agents and employees) from all claims, liability, damages, losses, costs and expenses, including legal fees, known and unknown, arising from or in any way connected with such right, claim or action.
3.6 Information Control. We do not control the information provided by other users which is made available through the Site. You may find other user's information to be offensive, harmful, inaccurate, or deceptive. Please use caution, common sense, and practice safe trading when using the Site. Please note that there are also risks of dealing with underage persons or people acting under false pretences. By using this Site, you agree to accept such risks and agree that eBay is not responsible for the acts or omissions of users on the Site.
Bidding and Buying.
As a buyer, you have a legal obligation to complete a transaction with a seller:
if you purchase an item through one of our fixed price formats; or
if you are the highest bidder at the end of an auction-style listing (meeting the applicable minimum bid or reserve requirements and including any bid that becomes the highest after a valid bid retraction) and your bid is accepted by the seller, unless the item is listed in a category under our Non-Binding Bid Policy or the transaction is prohibited by law or by this User Agreement.
By bidding on an item you agree to be bound by the conditions of sale included in the item's description provided that those conditions of sale are not in breach of this User Agreement or otherwise unlawful. Bids are only retractable in exceptional circumstances, such as when the seller materially changes the item's description after a bid is placed, a clear typographical error is made, or you cannot authenticate the seller's identity. Please refer to our Bid Retraction Policy for further clarification. As buyer, you must ensure that you are legally able to bid for and buy any item that you bid for.
Listing and Selling.
5.1 Listing Description. If you are a seller, you must ensure that you are legally able to sell each item included in a listing on the Site, and that it is lawful to sell such item to UK residents or (if the buyer is resident overseas) that it is lawful to sell and export such item to a person resident in the buyer's jurisdiction. You must describe your item and all terms of sale on the listing page of the Site. Your listings may only include text descriptions, graphics, pictures and other content relevant to the sale of that item and you are responsible for ensuring that you have the right to use all content in your listings and we have the right to host it on our servers. All items must be listed in an appropriate category. All "Dutch Auction" or "multiple item listing" items must be identical.
5.2 No Cancellation. You acknowledge that we will commence supplying our services to you as soon as you have sent a "Sell Your Item" form to us, and you recognise that you will not have the right to cancel any listing under the Consumer Protection (Distance Selling) Regulations 2000 or any equivalent legislation in your jurisdiction.
5.3 Binding Bids. A seller who receives at least one bid at or above the stated minimum bid price (or in the case of reserve auctions, at or above the reserve price) must complete the transaction with the highest bidder on completion of the listing, unless: (a) the item is listed in a category under our Non-Binding Bid Policy; (b) the buyer fails to meet the conditions of the seller's listing (such as payment method); or (c) the seller cannot authenticate the buyer's identity.
5.4 Fraud Without limiting any other remedies, we may suspend or terminate your account if we suspect that you have engaged or are about to engage in, or have been in any way involved in or linked to, fraudulent activity in connection with the Site.
5.5 VeRO Programme. We are not responsible for verifying a seller's right to list and sell items. eBay's Verified Rights Owner ("VeRO") programme attempts to ensure that listed items or the content of listings do not infringe the copyright, trade mark or other intellectual property rights of third parties. By participating in our VeRO programme, third parties can notify us in the event that they believe their intellectual property rights to have been infringed, and we may remove such infringing items and/or suspend infringing sellers. Please note that selected personal information which you provide to us may be made available to VeRO programme participants as described in our Privacy Policy.
5.6 Manipulation. You must not manipulate the price of any item or interfere with other user's listing(s). Without limitation, you must not: (a) bid in a listing where you are the seller, or procure or encourage any person to do so on your behalf; (b) contact bidders in a listing where items are listed for sale in order to offer similar items to the bidders in that listing; or (c) make bids or make any payment using a false User ID.
Fees.
Joining eBay and bidding on items is free, although you will remain responsible for the costs of accessing our Site and communicating with our users. We charge fees for listing items for sale through our Site and when you list an item you have an opportunity to review and accept the fees that you will be charged. Our fees are described in our Fees and Credits Policy which forms part of this User Agreement. We may change this policy at any time, and any change will be effective after the expiry of 14 days following the date of posting on the announcements board on the Site (or such later date as we may notify). However, we may choose to temporarily change our Fees and Credits Policy and the fees for our services for promotional events (for example, free listing days) and such changes are effective when we announce the temporary promotional event on the Site. For the avoidance of doubt, such promotional events shall not apply to any listings on our Site at the time of the announcement. We may in our sole discretion change some or all of our services at any time. In the event we introduce a new service, the fees for that service are effective at the launch of the service.
Unless otherwise stated, all fees are payable in GB Pounds sterling. Whether you are a business or not, value added tax and other taxes may apply to your transaction. Sellers will be responsible for paying all fees associated with using our service and our Site and all applicable taxes. You agree that we may issue you with invoices in electronic format by email.
Your Information.
7.1 Definition "Your Information" is defined as any information you provide to us or other users in relation to the eBay service including the registration, bidding, listing or feedback process (including, without limitation, any description of items listed), your postings on the message boards and any other content that you post within the Site. You are solely responsible for Your Information, and we act as a mere conduit for your online distribution and publication of Your Information.
7.2 Restrictions
Your Information and your activities on our Site must not:
be false, inaccurate or misleading;
be offensive or menacing, abusive, defamatory, or in breach of copyright, confidence, privacy or any other rights;
infringe any third party's copyright, patent, trade mark, trade secret or other proprietary rights or rights of publicity or privacy;
be fraudulent or involve the sale of counterfeit or stolen items;
be in breach of any applicable laws or regulations (including, but not limited to, laws governing export control, consumer protection, unfair competition, anti-discrimination, false advertising);
be obscene, indecent or contain child pornography;
create liability for us or cause us to lose (in whole or in part) the services of our ISPs or other suppliers;
link directly or indirectly to or include descriptions of goods or services that: (aa) are prohibited under this User Agreement; (bb) are identical to other items you have up for sale but are priced lower than your item's reserve or minimum bid amount; (cc) are concurrently listed for sale on a website other than eBay's (this does not prevent linking to or advertising an eBay item from another website); or (dd) you do not have a right to link to or include;
contain any computer viruses, macro viruses, trojan horses, worms or anything else designed to interfere with, interrupt or disrupt the normal operating procedures of a computer or to surreptitiously intercept, access without authority or expropriate any system, data or personal information;
cause the Site to be interrupted, damaged, rendered less efficient or such that the effectiveness or functionality of the Site is in any way impaired.
You must not list any item on the Site (or complete any transaction initiated using the Site) that, by paying to us the listing fee or the final value fee, could cause us to violate any applicable law or our Prohibited, Questionable and Infringing Items Policy
7.3 Licence To enable eBay to use Your Information, you grant us a non-exclusive, world-wide, perpetual, irrevocable, royalty-free, sublicensable (through multiple tiers) licence to exercise the copyright, trade mark, publicity, and database rights you have in Your Information, in any media now known or not currently known. You also waive all moral rights you have in Your Information to the fullest extent permitted by law.
7.4 Access and Interference. The Site contains robot exclusion headers. Much of the information on the Site is updated on a real time basis and is proprietary or is licensed to eBay by our users or third parties. You agree that you will not use any robot, spider, scraper or other automated means to access the Site for any purpose without our express written permission. Additionally, you agree that you will not: (i) take any action that imposes, or may impose in our sole discretion an unreasonable or disproportionately large load on our infrastructure; (ii) copy, reproduce, modify, create derivative works from, distribute or publicly display any content (except for Your Information) from the Site without the prior expressed written permission of eBay and the appropriate third party, as applicable; (iii) interfere or attempt to interfere with the proper working of the Site or any activities conducted on the Site; or (iv) bypass our robot exclusion headers or other measures we may use to prevent or restrict access to the Site. We do not authorise you to extract or re-utilise substantial parts of our Site, or to make systematic and repeated extractions or re-utilisations of insubstantial parts of our Site.
7.5 Your Use of Other Users' Information. In order to facilitate interaction among all eBay community members, our service allows you limited access to other users' contact information. As a seller you have access to the User ID, email address and other contact information of the buyer or winning bidder(s), and as a buyer or winning bidder you have access to the User ID, email address and other contact information of the seller.
By accepting this User Agreement, you agree that, with respect to other users' personally identifiable information that you obtain through the Site or through an eBay-related communication or eBay-facilitated transaction, you may only use such information for: (a) eBay-related communications that are not unsolicited commercial messages and relate to your genuine participation in an eBay-facilitated transaction, (b) using services offered through eBay (e.g. escrow, insurance, postal and fraud complaints), and (c) any other purpose that such user expressly agrees to after adequate disclosure of the purpose(s). In addition, you shall only use such information in accordance with applicable laws and regulations, including without limitation data protection and privacy laws. In all cases, you must give users an opportunity to remove themselves from your database and a chance to review what information you have collected about them. In addition, under no circumstances, except as defined in this Section, can you disclose personally identifiable information about another user to any third party without our consent and the consent of such other user after adequate disclosure. Note that law enforcement personnel, VeRO programme participants, and other rights holders are given different rights with respect to information they access.
eBay and our users do not tolerate spam or unsolicited commercial communications. Therefore, without limiting the foregoing, you shall not add an eBay employee or an eBay user, even a user who has purchased an item from you, to your mail list (email or physical mail) without their express written consent after adequate disclosure. To report spam from other eBay users, please send an email to the Trust and Safety team via the web form.
7.6 Use of Email Tools. You may not use the Email This Auction to a Friend service, or other email forwarding services that we offer, to send spam or otherwise send content that would violate our User Agreement. We do not permanently store the email messages or the email addresses.
Breach.
Without limiting our other remedies, we may limit your activity on the Site, immediately issue a warning, suspend or terminate your user registration or any of your item listings and refuse to provide our services to you without notice to you: (a) if you breach this User Agreement or the documents incorporated by reference; (b) if, despite our reasonable endeavours, we are unable to verify or authenticate any information you provide to us; or (c) if we believe that your actions may cause us financial loss or legal liability.
Transfer of Data
We view protection of users' privacy as a very important community principle. Please note that Your Information will be stored and processed on our computers in the United States. The laws on holding personal data in the United States may be less stringent than the UK laws but eBay will hold and transmit Your Information in a safe, confidential and secure environment. If you object to your Information being transferred or used in this way please do not register.
No Warranty.
We (and our parent, subsidiaries, affiliates, officers, directors, agents and employees) do not guarantee continuous, uninterrupted or secure access to our services, and operation of the Site may be interfered with by numerous factors outside of our control. Our website and our services are provided "as is" and as and when available, and to the extent permissible by law we exclude all implied warranties, conditions or other terms, whether implied by statute or otherwise, including without limitation any terms as to skill and care or timeliness of performance. Some jurisdictions do not allow the disclaimer of implied warranties, so the foregoing disclaimer may not apply to you.
Limitation of Liability.
Nothing in this User Agreement shall limit or exclude our liability for fraudulent misrepresentation, or for death or personal injury resulting from our negligence or the negligence of our, agents or employees. Subject to the foregoing, we (including our parent, subsidiaries, affiliates, officers, directors, agents and employees) will not be liable for any economic losses (including, without limitation, loss of revenues, profits, contracts, business or anticipated savings), any loss of goodwill or reputation, or any special, indirect or consequential damages (however arising, including negligence) arising out of or in connection with this User Agreement. Some jurisdictions do not allow the exclusion of incidental or consequential damages, so the above exclusion may not apply to you.
We (including our parent, subsidiaries, affiliates, officers, directors, agents and employees) also have no liability of any sort (including liability for negligence) for the acts or omissions of other providers of telecommunications services or for faults in or failures of their networks and equipment.
Our liability to you or any third party, and the liability of our parent, subsidiaries, affiliates, officers, directors, agents and employees, in any circumstance is limited to the greater of (a) the total fees you have paid to us in relation to the listing or other service offered giving rise to liability, and (b) Ł100.
Indemnity.
You agree to indemnify and hold us and (as applicable) our parent, subsidiaries, affiliates, officers, directors, agents, and employees, harmless from any claim or demand, including reasonable legal fees, made by any third party due to or arising out of your breach of this User Agreement (including the documents incorporated by reference), or your violation of any law or the rights of a third party.
Notices.
Unless otherwise explicitly stated, notices to eBay must be sent by registered mail to eBay International AG, attention eBay UK Legal, Helvetiastrasse 15/17, 3005 Bern, Switzerland, and notices to you will be sent to the email address that you provide to eBay during the registration process (receipt is deemed 24 hours after an email is sent, unless we receive notice that the email address is invalid), or by registered mail.
Governing Law and Legal Compliance.
This User Agreement shall be governed by and construed in accordance with English law and subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the English courts.
Please note, that your country (and/or that of any user you deal with) may have laws which apply to your transactions with other users regardless of what you agree with us (now) or with that user (later).
The laws of your country may be different from English law, including laws governing what can be legally offered, sold, exported, bought or imported. There may be additional legal requirements, relating to (for example) the requirement to hold a licence to buy or sell certain items, or to register a transfer in a central registry. You shall comply with all applicable domestic and international laws, statutes, ordinances and regulations regarding your use of our service and your bidding on, listing, purchase and solicitation of offers to purchase and sale of items. There is no practical way for us to continually monitor the laws of every country, or each user transaction. Please do not assume that you are allowed to do what other users do, or that we are approving or validating any transaction, even if you have successfully made similar sales or purchases in the past.
Dispute Resolution.
Disputes between you and eBay regarding our services may be reported to eBay Customer Support. We encourage you to report all disputes between users to your local law enforcement body.
Third Party Rights.
A person who is not a party to this User Agreement has no right under the Contracts (Rights of Third Parties) Act 1999 to enforce any term of this User Agreement but this does not affect any right or remedy of a third party specified in this User Agreement or which exists or is available apart from that Act.
General.
If any provision of this User Agreement is held to be invalid or unenforceable, such provision shall be struck out and the remaining provisions shall be enforceable. You agree that this User Agreement and all incorporated agreements may be automatically assigned by eBay, in our sole discretion, to a third party in the event of a merger or acquisition or any other event. You and eBay are independent contractors, and no agency, partnership, joint venture, employee-employer or franchisor-franchisee relationship is intended or created by this User Agreement. Headings are for reference purposes only and in no way define, limit, construe or describe the scope or extent of such section. Our failure to act with respect to a breach by you or others does not waive our right to act with respect to subsequent or similar breaches. This User Agreement sets forth the entire understanding and agreement between us with respect to its subject matter. No oral explanation or oral information given by any party shall alter the interpretation of this User Agreement.
Sections 6 (Fees), 7 (Your Information), 11 (Limitation of Liability), 12 (Indemnity), 14 (Governing Law), 15 (Dispute Resolution) and 16 (Third Party Rights) shall survive any termination of this User Agreement.
ABANDONMENT British novelist Kate Atkinson penned this drama about two women--a Victorian governess and a contemporary historian--who converge across time in the same house. Under David Kropp's direction, a sturdy ensemble strives to give the generic characters and their equally generic attitudes some credibility. But the protagonists' wholly foreseeable destinies soon cease to engage us--a shame when the play runs nearly three hours. (MSB) Through 2/19: Thu-Sat 8 PM, Sun 3 PM, Actors Workshop Theatre, 1044 W. Bryn Mawr, 773-728-7529, $20-$25, industry nights Thu.
ACCOMPLICE In Rupert Holmes's comedy thriller two couples switch lovers, identities, and murder motives so often that we don't know till the last minute who's screwing whom (in every sense). The cast of Noble Fool Theatricals' production navigates the plot's hairpin turns with nary a bump, enhancing Holmes's wit with just enough ham. Director Matthew Reeder has fine-tuned the ensemble, and the payoff is big. (KW) Through 3/18: Wed-Fri 8 PM, Sat 4:30 and 8:30 PM, Sun 2 PM, Wed 2/22, 2 and 8 PM, Pheasant Run Resort & Spa, 4051 E. Main (Rte. 64), Saint Charles, 630-584-6342, $27-$37.
AFTER THE QUAKE Director-playwright Frank Galati's story-theater adaptation of stories by Haruki Murakami is inspired by the devastating 1995 earthquake in Kobe, Japan. Murakami's tales don't deal with epic calamities or their political implications; instead they focus on the quiet aches and nameless fears that put pressure on the tectonic plates of the heart. Galati offers an intelligent, respectful take on the source material; what's missing is a sense of urgency in the characters. When the characters' storytelling helps them gain insight into themselves, the play sings. But when their realizations are simply explained, a vaguely homiletic tone undermines the drama. Still, After the Quake can be charming and affecting. (KR) Through 2/19: Tue 7:30 PM, Wed 2 and 7:30 PM, Thu-Fri 7:30 PM, Sat 3 and 7:30 PM, Sun 3 PM, Steppenwolf Theatre Company, upstairs theater, 1650 N. Halsted, 312-335-1650, $20-$60.
THE AMERICAN GIRLS REVUE Gretchen Cryer and Nancy Ford's musical features characters from various historical periods as depicted in the American Girls Collection books. Cryer's book and lyrics deliver a host of positive messages to girls about patience, resilience, and responsibility. But halfway through, this 75-minute sales pitch gets a bit tiresome. The anthemlike songs may feel overly earnest to adults, though perhaps they're just the thing for a young girl to belt into her hairbrush at home. (JG) Open run: Thu-Fri 5:30 PM, Sat 12:30, 2, 4, and 5:30 PM, Sun 12:30, 2, and 4 PM, American Girl Place, 111 E. Chicago, 877-247-5223, $28.
AROUND THE COYOTE WINTER ARTS FESTIVAL This multidisciplinary Wicker Park event includes theatrical performances as shown below. 2/10-2/12: two programs of short plays are presented; see schedule. Happydog, 1542 N. Milwaukee (second floor), 773-342-6777, $10 per performance, $15 for nightly theater pass, $40 for all-festival pass.
THE AWESOME 80S PROM This interactive musical re-creates the experience of a Reagan-era high school prom. The partly improvised show, performed in a video dance club, allows the audience to vote for the prom king and queen. The show's character types from teen angst movies--jock, cheerleader, geek, exchange student, etc--are never fleshed out. And though familiar stories of high school conflict are flimsily reenacted, most of the show loses the battle with the venue's blaring music and bar chatter. But if dancing to Rick Springfield and Huey Lewis while drinking appeals to you, the show's failings won't matter--it's an excuse for a moonwalk down memory lane. (JG) Through 2/25: Fri-Sat 7:30 PM, RadioStar, 901 W. Weed, 312-664-7766, $39-$69 (includes postshow "video dance club"; various packages available).
THE BALTIMORE WALTZ In Paula Vogel's dark comedy, a woman copes with her brother's imminent death from AIDS by spinning a Third Man-inspired fantasy about a sister and brother roaming Europe in search of a cure for "Acquired Toilet Disease." It's performed by the Buffalo Theatre Ensemble. Previews Thu 2/9, 8 PM, $22. Opens Fri 2/10, 8 PM. Through 3/4: Fri-Sat 8 PM, Sun 2 PM, Thu 3/2, 8 PM, College of DuPage, Harold D. McAninch Arts Center, Theatre 2, Fawell and Park, Glen Ellyn, 630-942-4000, $25-$30, $35 Sat 2/25 (benefits "Season of Concern" in their fight against AIDS).
BAREFOOT IN THE PARK This is a sweet, solid rendition of Neil Simon's comedy about an attorney and his free-spirited bride adjusting to marriage in a tiny Greenwich Village walk-up. Committing 100 percent to every wacky moment, each actor brings a distinctive energy to the mix. (KW) Through 2/26: Wed 8 PM, Thu 2 and 8 PM, Fri 8:30 PM, Sat 5:30 and 9 PM, Sun 2:30 and 7 PM, Drury Lane Oakbrook, Roosevelt and Butterfield, Oakbrook Terrace, 630-530-0111, $22-$26.
BARENAKED LADS IN THE GREAT OUTDOORS This comedy revue features a cast of nude men cavorting through sketches by Andy Eninger and music by Jon Steinhagen, Michael Mahler, and Michael Miller. Previews 2/10-2/19: Fri 7 PM, Sat 9 PM, Sun 7 PM, $25-$30. Opens Tue 2/21, 8 PM. Through 5/28: Fri 7 PM, Sat 9 PM, Sun 7 PM, no show Fri 3/17, Bailiwick Repertory, Bailiwick Arts Center, 1229 W. Belmont, 773-883-1090, $32-$37.
BARK! This musical tribute to dogs receives its local premiere following its West Hollywood debut. It features a script by Brad Lemack and songs by David Troy Francis, Gavin Geoffrey Dillard, Robert Schrock, Jonathan Heath, Danny Lukic, and Mark Winkler. There are songs about chasing one's tail, singing to sirens, and whizzing on stuff, as six puppies in a pound sing perkily about their past lives as beloved pets, working dogs, and street tramps--and howl to be adopted. The performers are warm and adorable, and the inventive costumes capture the dogs' personalities. But even the most devoted fan of canines might find two hours too long, especially since the melancholy, power-ballad second half tries to turn dogs into, well, Cats. (JV) Through 4/2: Fri 8 PM, Sat 2 and 8 PM, Sun 2 PM, Chicago Center for the Performing Arts, studio theater, 777 N. Green, 312-733-6000, $45.
LA BELLA VITA First-time playwright Charles Berg depicts one very busy night in the very busy lives of the waitstaff at a very busy restaurant. A lot happens in the break room where the play is set--hooking up, breaking up, toking up, and so on. But recounting a string of incidents isn't quite the same as telling a story. The production has a nice swirling ambience, and Berg makes amusing observations on the ways people approach sex. But instead of establishing a satisfying arc, the play dissolves into a mist. (ZT) Through 2/12: Fri-Sat 8 PM, Sun 7 PM, EP Theater, 1820 S. Halsted, 312-850-4299, $10-$15.
THE BIG ROCK SHOW Scotty Iseri stars in this cabaret comedy, billed as "the world's smallest stadium rock concert," about a would-be music star's pursuit of fame, fortune, and a date. Iseri and his longtime roommate, known only as Tim the Roadie, get off some good lines, and Iseri's satirical songs can be funny. But the in-jokes and the performers' generally nasty tone toward people who aren't them, especially women, recall insecure middle schoolers fooling around in the basement, trying to convince themselves and their friends they're smarter than everyone else. (LM) Through 2/24: Fri 10:30 PM, Davenport's Piano Bar & Cabaret, 1383 N. Milwaukee, 773-278-1830, $10, 2 dr. min, 21+.
BLIND MOUTH SINGING Teatro Vista presents Jorge Ignacio Cortinas's new play, about a Caribbean family whose strict matriarch is confronted by her clan's secret desires. Through 3/5: Thu-Fri 8 PM, Sat 5 and 8:30 PM, Sun 4 PM, Sat 2/11, 8:30 PM only, no show Thu 2/9, Chopin Theatre, 1543 W. Division, 312-494-5767, $22.
BLUE MAN GROUP Three silent guys in cobalt blue makeup, accompanied by a small but very loud rock band, perform Rewired, a wordless, high-tech, highly visual work of participatory conceptual theater. Blue Man Group offers a visceral education in the tenuous division between art and trash. (NG) Open run: Wed-Thu 8 PM, Fri 7 and 10 PM, Sat 4, 7, and 10 PM, Sun 1, 4, and 7 PM, Briar Street Theatre, 3133 N. Halsted, 773-348-4000, $49-$59.
BOMBSHELL CATASTROPHE! Comedy by Mike McKeown and Peter Krinke, about a scientist whose new cosmetics line is made popular by a glamorous model. Opens Sat 2/11, 7:30 PM. Through 3/11: Sat 7:30 PM, Second City Training Center, Donny's Skybox Studio, Piper's Alley, 1608 N. Wells (fourth floor), 312-337-3992, $8-$10.
THE BOXCAR CHILDREN Children's play, based on novels by Gertrude Chandler Warner, about orphans who run away to live in an abandoned railway car. John Jenkins directs a student production. Through 3/11: Tue and Thu 10 AM, Sat 2 PM, no show Tue 2/28, the Theatre School, DePaul University, Merle Reskin Theatre, 60 E. Balbo, 312-922-1999, $8.
THE BOYS NEXT DOOR The Provision Theater Company performs Tom Griffin's play about four developmentally disabled men who live together in government-assisted housing. The "boys" are portrayed as human and funny, but Lou Contey's cheery direction only reveals how poorly structured the work is. Is it a screwball comedy? A political diatribe? A treatise on the dismal treatment of the disabled by the government and wider society? It's clearly not a story about these men from their own perspective. Instead it's about how their social worker sees them--as people who are stuck in time, who never move on, whose lives and crises are always the same. They deserve better. (JV) Through 3/5: Thu-Sat 7:30 PM, Sun 2:30 PM, Theatre Building Chicago, 1225 W. Belmont, 773-327-5252, $25, industry nights Thu.
BUS STOP William Inge's rustic comedy, about a cowboy and a chantoosie who find romance in a roadside diner during a blizzard, is directed by Rick Snyder. See Critic's Choice. Through 3/26: Tue-Fri 8 PM, Sat 5 and 8 PM, Sun 2:30 and 6 PM, no show Sat 2/25, Writers' Theatre, 325 Tudor Ct., Glencoe, 847-242-6000, $45-$57.
CANDIDE, A MUSICAL COMEDY Students perform Leonard Bernstein's operetta in its 1999 Royal National Theatre version--adapted from Voltaire's satiric novel by John Caird and Hugh Wheeler, with lyrics by Richard Wilbur, John Latouche, Stephen Sondheim, Lillian Hellman, Dorothy Parker, and Bernstein himself. 2/10-2/19: Wed-Sat 8 PM, Sun 2 PM, Northwestern University Theatre and Interpretation Center, Ethel M. Barber Theatre, 1949 Campus Dr. (enter at 30 Arts Circle Dr.), Evanston, 847-491-7282, $10-$25.
THE CEREMONY OF INNOCENCE Ethelred II, who ruled England from 978 to 1016, was called "the Unready" because he let the Danes overrun his country. Playwright Ronald Ribman offers a revisionist (and not quite historically accurate) view of the story, defending Ethelred as a studious younger brother unexpectedly thrust into leadership of a xenophobic nation reluctant to accept peace and progress if it meant monetary sacrifice. The Idle Muse Theatre Company's inaugural production has an undeniable classroom ambience, but a capable young cast under the direction of Evan Jackson delivers articulate, thought-provoking performances. --Mary Shen Barnidge Through 2/26: Fri-Sat 8 PM, Sun 3 PM, Evanston Arts Depot, 600 Main, Evanston, 847-804-8534, $15-$20, industry night Sat 2/11.
CHARLOTTE'S WEB Joseph Robinette's adaptation of E.B. White's beloved story, about an unlikely friendship between a sweet-tempered pig and a surprisingly literate spider, is competent, entertaining, and pitched squarely to children. The Emerald City Theatre Company stages the play simply and effectively, with a minimum of eye-catching costumes and stage effects and plenty of its trademark kid-pleasing tricks, especially loads of audience participation. The children ate it up, but as an adult who remembers the book fondly, I kept noticing how much of White's charm as a storyteller got lost in translation. (JHe) Through 3/25: schedule follows. Fri 2/10, 10:15 AM. Then 2/18-2/26: Sat-Sun 1 PM. Then Thu 3/2, 10:15 AM. Then 3/4-4/1: Sat 1 PM, Apollo Theater, 2540 N. Lincoln, 773-935-6100, $9-$12.
CHICAGO DRAMATISTS SATURDAY SERIES This near-weekly program features staged readings of works in progress. Open run: Sat 2 PM. Scheduled for 2/11: Water, by Alice Austen. For 2/18: First Rodeo, by Amanda Martinez. For 2/25: Kita y Fernanda, by Tanya Saracho A. For 3/4: Creole, by Margaret Lewis. For 3/11: "10-Minute Workshop." For 3/18: Before I Wake, by Marsha Estell. For 3/25: Retreat, by Lisa Rosenthal. Chicago Dramatists, 1105 W. Chicago, 312-633-0630, $5.
A CHILD'S HISTORY OF BOMBING This Neo-Futurist lecture-demonstration on American militaristic zeal is mistitled. Thankfully its droll ironies are decidedly unchildlike, and its many stylistically diverse segments form less a history than an idiosyncratic inquiry into select wartime atrocities. Writer-performers Greg Allen and Donovan Sherman struggle to find a coherent thread through their onslaught of props, and often their politics--particularly their racial politics--are too broad to be meaningful. But at times their tiny gestures artfully convey the enormity of mass destruction: they stage the U.S. bombing of Tokyo, which killed 100,000 civilians in a single day, by letting a delicate paper house burn in silence for 30 seconds. With judicious editing, the show might exhibit that kind of poetic intensity throughout. --Justin Hayford Through 3/11: Thu-Sat 8 PM, Neo-Futurarium, 5153 N. Ashland (second floor), 773-275-5255, $10-$15, "pay what you can" Thu.
THE CHOPIN PLAYOFFS Israel Horovitz's play concerns a Jewish boy in post-World War II Canada who competes with his neighbors in a piano contest--and for the heart of a non-Jewish girl. With its plodding pace and amateurish acting, Chicago Jewish Theatre's production is reminiscent of a beginning pianist plinking his way through "Chopsticks." The third installment in a trilogy that also includes Today, I Am a Fountain Pen and A Rosen by Any Other Name is ostensibly a comedy, but directors Elayne and Brian LeTraunik give us little cause to laugh. (JG) Through 2/19: Thu and Sat 8 PM, Sun 2 and 7 PM, Red Hen Productions, Kenneth LeTraunik Theatre, 5123 N. Clark, 773-728-0599, $20-25.
THE COAST OF CHICAGO Stuart Dybek's wistful, poignant stories of life in mid-20th-century Pilsen locate the miraculous in the everyday and the mysterious in the mundane. Laura Eason's adaptation, receiving its world premiere from the Walkabout Theater Company, captures that tone with quiet assurance. The dozen actors and director Gary Zabinski have a firm grasp of Dybek's world in both its profane and profound aspects. (KR) Through 2/19: Thu 6:30 PM, Fri-Sat 8 PM, Sun 3 PM, Lookingglass Theatre Company, Water Tower Water Works, 821 N. Michigan, 312-337-0665, $15-$40.
COME FLY WITH MESquare is the word for singer Michael Whelan's big-band revue of old favorites by Cole Porter, Rodgers and Hart, Jerome Kern, and others. Dorky costumes, cheesy lighting, and unsurprising "surprises" don't help. Whelan's stolid if technically expert singing homogenizes the music. Director Marc Robin's choreography is brusquely sexy, but overall this is a show that plays things safe, with predictably mediocre results. (LM) Through 2/26: Thu 7:30 PM, Fri 8 PM, Sat 5:30 and 8:30 PM, Sun 2 and 4:30 PM, Mercury Theater, 3745 N. Southport, 773-325-1700, $19.25-$42.50.
COMMEDIA BY FAVA Italian actor-director Antonio Fava performs a one-man commedia dell'arte show, presented by Studio Z in association with the Milan Committee of the Chicago Sister Cities International Program. Fri 2/10, 8 PM, Chicago Cultural Center, Claudia Cassidy Theater, 78 E. Washington, 312-744-9181, $12-$15. Then Sun 2/12, 2 PM, Theatre Building Chicago, 1225 W. Belmont, 773-327-5252, $12-$15.
CUBS WIN! There's a second Cubs curse in Michael Flores's new play, not just the famous one about the team turning away the Billy Goat's billy goat. Here the totem pole at Lake Shore Drive and Addison is the problem: instead of facing east it's facing west, straight at Wrigley Field. Flores's story about the beer vendors, secretary, and new ballplayer who change the Cubbies' luck could be adorable, but it's so badly done it's agonizing. The script wobbles and veers, the directing is lifeless, and it's painful to watch the mumbling and miming that pass for acting. There's simply no reason to see this strikeout--if you want to see the Cubs win, wait till spring. --Jennifer Vanasco Through 3/10: Thu-Fri 7:30 PM, Sonotheque, 1444 W. Chicago, 312-226-7600, $10 (includes admission to dance club).
DEAR WORLD Jean Giraudoux's The Madwoman of Chaillot, the delicately whimsical 1946 comedy that inspired this 1969 Broadway musical, champions colorful eccentrics against venal venture capitalists who want to exploit Paris's petroleum and uranium deposits. But the musicalization often feels blatantly polemical. Jerry Herman's peppy score only reminds us of the richer work he did in Mame and La Cage aux Folles, though the very French "I Don't Want to Know" definitely deserves continued life. And Bob Knuth's jerky, awkward staging fails to negotiate Dear World's tricky mood changes. Best are the three dotty madwomen, though even here the urge to clobber us with the characterizations overwhelms the subtleties. This show would be twice as persuasive if it were half as insistent. --Lawrence Bommer Through 3/5: Thu-Sat 8 PM, Sun 3 PM, Circle Theatre, 7300 W. Madison, Forest Park, 708-771-0700, $22-$24.
DEFENDING THE CAVEMAN This comic monologue about male-female relations, penned and originally performed by Rob Becker, preaches that the differences between men and women stem from prehistory: women are gatherers of information (that's why they're always talking to their girlfriends), men are hunters (they flip through channels because they're killing them as they go). There are funny moments, but Becker's exploration of stereotypes never gets deeper than, well, stereotypes. (JV) Open run: Fri-Sat 8 PM, Sun 3 PM, Tue 2/14, 7 PM, Sun 2/12, 7 PM only, no show Fri-Sat 2/10-2/11, Lakeshore Theater, 3175 N. Broadway, 773-521-2283, $39.50-$45.
DIDO, QUEEN OF CARTHAGE The Camenae Ensemble Theatre Company performs Christopher Marlowe's tragedy. Opens Thu 2/16, 7:30 PM. Through 3/18: Thu-Sat 7:30 PM, Sun 2/26 and 3/5, 2 PM, Indian Boundary Park, 2500 W. Lunt, 773-347-1080, $12-$15.
DISABILITY CULTURE SUNDAY Victory Gardens Access Project's series of performances "dedicated to the exploration, celebration, and expression of disability culture" begins with a two-part program: stand-up poetry by University of Wisconsin teacher Jim Ferris and Riva Lehrer's one-woman show Surgery, in Slices: A Guided Tour of 43 Operations. Sun 2/12, 7:30 PM, Victory Gardens Theater, first-floor main stage, 2257 N. Lincoln, 773-549-5788, ext. 157, or TTY 773-871-0682.
DISNEY PRESENTS PIXAR'S THE INCREDIBLES IN A MAGIC KINGDOM ADVENTURE Disney on Ice presents a skating extravaganza about a family of superheroes on a theme-park vacation. Through 2/12: Thu-Fri 10:30 AM and 7 PM, Sat 11:30 AM and 3:30 and 7 PM, Sun 11:30 AM and 3:30 and 7 PM, United Center, 1901 W. Madison, 312-455-4500 or 312-559-1212, $12-$70.
ETCETERA: A FESTIVAL OF SHORT EXPERIMENTAL PERFORMANCE Experimental Theatre Chicago presents a showcase of new work. The program varies nightly; see www.experimentaltheatrechicago.org for an updated schedule. 2/9-2/12: Thu-Sun 7:30 PM. Scheduled for Thu and Sat: See Me. Hear Me., by Jaclyn Biskup; Kantor! Kantor! (Solo!), by Jacob Juntunen; The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, adapted by Jaclyn Biskup from T.S. Eliot's poem; I Am You, by Sheila Regan; Unembodied, by Erica Mott; and Disarrangement/Dysphoria: Ditties, by Shannon Latimer. For Fri and Sun: See Me. Hear Me.; Sweet Little Vernor Is Eating Himself, by Taavo Smith; Untitled, by Salamander Word Ensemble; Chapter 15, Experimental Theatre Chicago's adaptation of a chapter from James Joyce's Ulysses; Shut Eye, by Diandra Jones; and Yellow Bicycle Handle • Bread Baby, by Susan Karsnick. Spareroom, 2416 W. North, 312-388-7660, $10.
THE ETYMOLOGY OF BIRD Zakiyyah Alexander's drama, winner of the Theodore Ward Prize for African-American Playwrights, is directed by Chuck Smith. Through 2/12: Thu 4 PM, Fri-Sat 7:30 PM, Sun 3 PM, Columbia College Chicago Theater Center, New Studio Theater, 72 E. 11th, 312-344-6126, $5.
EXTREMITIES William Mastrosimone's drama, about a woman who takes her would-be rapist prisoner, is performed by the Actors Revolution Theatre. Previews Thu 2/9, 8 PM, free. Opens Fri 2/10, 8:15 PM. Through 3/12: Thu-Sat 8:15 PM, Sun 2 PM, Live Bait Theater, 3914 N. Clark, 773-531-9079, $12-$20.
THE FAMILY TREE Story-theater kids' show based on Bitty Bear's Family Album, recommended for children aged three to six. Open run: Wed-Sat 10 AM, American Girl Place, 111 E. Chicago, 877-247-5223, $7.50-$15.
FELLOW TRAVELLERS Margaret Lewis's new drama concerns two art students--an avant-gardist and a traditionalist--whose friendship and careers are affected by the rise of Nazism in 1930s Berlin. Previews 2/11-2/12: Sat 8 PM, Sun 3 PM. Then 2/16-2/20: Thu-Sat 8 PM, Mon 8 PM. $10, industry shows. Opens Tue 2/21, 7:30 PM. Through 4/1: Thu-Sat 8 PM, Sun 3 PM, Stage Left Theatre, 3408 N. Sheffield, 773-883-8830, $18-$22, industry shows Thu 2/23 and 3/2.
FEMMETV Burlesque is at its bawdy best in the Lavender Cabaret's multimedia show, which intersperses amusing variety acts with provocative stripteases. The glitter, feathers, and garters of the women's costumes are accompanied by a sly wink, and risque parodies of television commercials, performed between the acts, send the message that sex is fun. (JV) Open run: Sat 10:30 PM, Lakeshore Theater, 3175 N. Broadway, 773-472-3492, $20-$25.
FENCES August Wilson's drama, about a black family in 1950s Pittsburgh, features some of the tightest, most insightful writing in Wilson's ten-work cycle on 20th-century African-American life. It's anyone's guess why Fences hasn't been professionally staged in Chicago since the Goodman Theatre hosted a 1986 pre-Broadway tryout starring James Earl Jones as the father, an embittered ex-baseball player. But this revival, beautifully directed by Ron OJ Parson, allows longtime local actor A.C. Smith to tear into the same role with gusto, rage, joy, and mesmerizing intensity. Smith is well matched by the rest of the ensemble, including the incandescent Jacqueline Williams, so for anyone who loves Wilson's work--or anyone who's wondered what all the fuss is about--this show is unmissable. (KR) Through 2/12: Thu 7:30 PM, Fri 8 PM, Sat 3 and 8 PM, Sun 2:30 and 7:30 PM. Then 2/16-2/19: Thu-Fri 8 PM, Sat 3 and 8 PM, Sun 2:30 PM. Court Theatre, 5535 S. Ellis, 773-753-4472, $35-$50.
500 MILES This production by Evanston's Fleetwood-Jourdain community theater dramatizes the 1968 "Mule Train," which traveled from Mississippi to Washington, D.C., to raise awareness of poverty in America. Through 2/25: Sat 3 PM, Noyes Cultural Arts Center, 927 Noyes, Evanston, 847-448-8260, ext. 109.
FLOSS! Corn Productions' comedy about an itinerant ethnic dance troupe features cunning lampoons of Riverdance, Footloose, and Stomp. It's hard to say whether Floss! aims to send up America's penchant for exoticizing indigenous groups, the fatigued state of our compassion for endangered subspecies, or simply showbiz. Just enjoy the arduous fun. (LB) Open run: Sat 8 PM, Cornservatory, 4210 N. Lincoln, 312-409-6435, $12.
FOREVER PLAID Stuart Ross and James Raitt's nostalgic musical incorporates a plethora of 50s and 60s pop tunes ("Three Coins in the Fountain," "Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing," etc) into its slim story of a long-dead male vocal group, the Four Plaids, who return as teen angels to give the ultimate comeback concert. Through 2/12: Fri-Sat 8 PM, Sun 2 PM, Beverly Arts Center, 2407 W. 111th St., 773-445-3838, $18-$20.
GIRL, 20 The Serendipity Theatre Company premieres Ellen Fairey's comedy about a female college student sent to therapy after she writes a sexually explicit essay for freshman comp--and the two male students who fall in love with the girl when they (improbably) observe the therapy sessions through a two-way mirror. This faintly desolate production--dimly lit and performed with an air of quiet desperation--suits the piece perfectly. (ZT) Through 2/18: Thu-Fri 8 PM, Sat 5 and 8 PM, Athenaeum Theatre, second-floor studio theater, 2936 N. Southport, 312-902-1500, $10-$15.
THE GLORY OF LIVING In Rebecca Gilman's unflinching 1996 play, based on the true story of the youngest U.S. woman sentenced to death, a 15-year-old girl marries an auto thief who convinces her to procure young girls for his pleasure, then murder them. She doesn't refuse--but she calls 911 so the dead girls won't stay lost. One of Gilman's early plays, The Glory of Living isn't as pedantic as later scripts. It isn't as focused or rich either, and this staging fails to probe whatever psychological depths and mysteries it might have. (JV) Through 2/18: Fri-Sat 8 PM, Sun 7 PM, Profiles Theatre, 4147 N. Broadway, 773-549-1815, $13-$22.
GODSHOW Tim O'Malley stars in his own play about his experiences with substance abuse, recovery, and redemption. Produced by Second City, Godshow is a profane, raucously funny revival meeting about the evils of drink. O'Malley's honesty and willingness to go balls to the wall for a laugh make this confessional evening touching as well. (KK) Through 2/26: Sun 8 PM, Black Orchid Theater, Piper's Alley, 1608 N. Wells, 312-337-3992, $12.
GOLDILOCKS AND THE THREE BEARS The Chicago Kids Company presents a musical for children. Through 6/2: Mon-Fri 10:30 AM, Sat (2/11, 3/4, 3/25, 4/15, 5/13, 5/27) 12:30 PM, Beverly Arts Center of Chicago, 2407 W. 111th St., 773-205-9600, $8.
GRACE The marriage of two evangelical Christians falls apart when they move across the country to get rich with a real estate scheme and the wife (a nuanced Chaon Cross) turns to her atheist next-door neighbor (a thoughtful, bitter Michael Shannon) for company. Though Craig Wright's play begins and ends with a gunshot and continually circles around issues of life and death, it gets bogged down by too many theatrical devices--time sometimes travels backward--and the plot implodes. Director Dexter Bullard keeps the story from getting confusing, but the play still has a contrived showiness. When Wright forgets the pyrotechnics and lets the characters try to articulate their beliefs to one another, however, it's both interesting and moving. --Jennifer Vanasco Through 2/26: Tue-Thu 7:30 PM, Fri 8 PM, Sat 3 and 8 PM, Sun 2:30 PM, Wed 2/15, 1 and 7:30 PM, Sat 2/18, 8 PM only, Sun 2/19, 2:30 and 7 PM, Northlight Theatre, North Shore Center for the Performing Arts, 9501 Skokie Blvd., Skokie, 847-673-6300, $36-$54.
GRACE AND GLORIE Tom Zeigler's gentle, humorous play concerns the unlikely bond that develops between an elderly, terminally ill Appalachian recluse and her type A, urban-transplant hospice worker. Esther McCormick gives the mischievous Grace an easy laugh, abundant common sense, and simple faith, exuding both lightness of spirit and the weightiness of Grace's impending death. McCormick's subtlety amplifies the artifice in Millicent Hurley Spencer's jagged, uneven turn as Glorie despite her likability, strong voice, and commanding presence. (KW) Through 3/5: Fri-Sat 8:30 PM, Sun 3:30 PM, Raven Theatre, 6157 N. Clark, 773-338-2177, $12-$15.
GUANTANAMO: HONOR BOUND TO DEFEND FREEDOM Interviews with the families of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay inspired this docudrama by Victoria Brittain and Gillian Slovo. Nick Bowling directs the Chicago premiere of the London and off-Broadway hit. Previews through 2/10: Thu-Fri 8 PM, $12, industry shows. Opens Sat 2/11, 8 PM. Through 3/26: Thu-Fri 8 PM, Sat 4 and 8 PM, Sun 2 PM, TimeLine Theatre Company, Wellington Avenue United Church of Christ, Baird Hall Theatre, 615 W. Wellington (courtyard entrance), 773-281-8463, $15-$25.
THE HOUSE OF BLUE LEAVES John Guare's thinking farce, set on the eve of the pope's 1965 visit to New York, concerns a thwarted songwriter, his good-hearted but crackbrained wife, and his celebrity-crazed good-time girlfriend. The trick is to make the play both achingly funny and painfully real--as Guare says, equally Strindberg and Feydeau. This Shattered Globe Theatre production succeeds, hilariously. Director Ann Filmer's five-star revival erupts in a kind of comic fever; the consummate cast never drops the energy or condescends to the neurotically needy characters. (LB) Through 3/5: Thu-Sat 8 PM, Sun 3 PM, Victory Gardens Theater, second-floor studio, 2257 N. Lincoln, 773-871-3000, $26-$35.
HURLYBURLY Of all the searing portraits of Hollywood, this dark comedy by David Rabe must be the nastiest, most brutish, and longest. Even in Michael Patrick Thornton's well-paced staging, it's more than three hours with two intermissions. Set in 1980-'81, it concerns a pair of jaded drug- and alcohol-abusing casting agents and the lowlifes who slither through their lives. The actors in this superb production underplay their roles, humanizing the characters and exploring their rich inner lives. (JHe) Through 2/18: Thu-Fri 7:30 PM, Sat 2 and 7:30 PM, Gift Theatre Company, 4802 N. Milwaukee, 773-283-7071, $15-$25.
I DREAM IN BLUES Chicago blues singer Katherine Davis, with cowriter-director Tom Arvetis, tells the story of her life in this hour-long family-oriented show--well, the part when she was growing up in Cabrini-Green in the early 60s. A self-described "short, fat colored girl with no neck," she surmounts her self-doubt to enter and win a talent contest. But much more powerful than the show's inspirational message is its live music, ranging from doo-wop to gospel to blues. Accompanied by a five-piece band, the whole ensemble sings, but the standouts are Davis and Lakesha Walker, who plays Davis as a child. Plentiful opportunities for singing and dancing along should carry the kids, and adults can time trip. --Laura Molzahn Through 2/25: Tue-Thu 10:30 AM, Sat 2 PM, Fri 2/17, 10:30 AM, Northwestern University Settlement House, Vittum Theater, 1012 N. Noble (third floor), 773-342-4141, $10-$15. Seating limited at weekday shows; call for reservations.
I HAVE BEFORE ME A REMARKABLE DOCUMENT GIVEN TO ME BY A YOUNG LADY FROM RWANDA A survivor of the 1994 Rwanda massacres seeks a poet's assistance in crafting a document--that's the premise of this drama by British playwright Sonja Linden. Andrea J. Dymond directs a Chicago premiere. Through 3/5: Tue-Fri 8 PM, Sat 5 and 8:30 PM, Sun 3 PM, Wed 2/15 and 2/22, 2 and 8 PM, no show Tue 2/14, Victory Gardens Theater, first-floor main stage, 2257 N. Lincoln, 773-871-3000, $30-$40.
I LOVE YOU, YOU'RE PERFECT, NOW CHANGE There isn't much new in this series of sitcom-slick sketches about dating and marriage, written by Joe DiPietro and Jimmy Roberts. But the actors, who play a variety of couples of different ages and classes, keep the show fresh, vibrant, and surprisingly pleasing. (JV) Through 3/26: Mon-Tue and Thu 7:30 PM, Fri 8 PM, Sat 5 and 8:30 PM, Sun 3 and 7 PM, Royal George Theatre Center, cabaret, 1641 N. Halsted, 312-988-9000, $38.50-$49.
IF TRANE WUZ HERE Dancer Savion Glover, poet reg e gaines, and musician Matana Roberts present an interdisciplinary, dance-based music-theater tribute to jazz great John Coltrane. See Critic's Choice. Opening performances Tue 2/14, 7 and 9 PM. Through 2/19: Wed-Sat 7 and 9 PM, Sun 3 and 6 PM, Theatre Building Chicago, 1225 W. Belmont, 773-327-5252, $25-$40.
IF YOU GIVE A MOUSE A COOKIE Stage version of Laura Joffe Numeroff's popular kids' book about a rambunctious rodent, presented by the Emerald City Theatre Company. Previews 2/11-2/12: Sat-Sun 10:30 AM and 1 PM. Opens Fri 2/17, 10:15 AM. Then through 4/2: schedule follows. Through 3/4: Sat-Sun 10:30 AM, Thu-Fri 10:15 AM, no show Fri 2/24 and Thu 3/2. Then 3/9-4/2: Sat 10:30 AM, Sun 10:30 AM and 1 PM, Thu-Fri 3/9-3/17, 10:15 AM. Apollo Theater, 2540 N. Lincoln, 773-935-6100, $9-$12. Also Sun 3/12, 2 PM, at the Evanston Public Library, community room, 1703 Orrington, Evanston, 847-866-0300. Free.
AN INCOMPLETE MAP OF EVERYTHING Link's Hall presents an interdisciplinary festival of language, performance, and sound whose program changes nightly. Through 2/26: a schedule of artists follows. 2/10-2/12: Fri 7:30 PM, Jeff Kowalkowski and friends, Ben Brown, and Meg Nafziger; Sat 7:30 PM, Bjorn Ross and Lou Mallozi; Sun 7:30 PM, Bjorn Ross and Fessenden. 2/17-2/19: Fri 7:30 PM, Jen Bervin, Petrova Giberson, and Trent Smith; Sat 7:30 PM, Jen Bervin, Lilli Carre, Erin Tikovitch, and Tony Rosati; Sun 7:30 PM, The 6 Ghosts of Fear, Ginger Krebs, and Erin Moore. 2/24-2/26: Fri 7:30 PM, Kenneth Goldsmith, Matthew Goulish, and Ken Fandell; Sat 7:30 PM, Kenneth Goldsmith, Matthew Goulish, and Lilli Carre; Sun 7:30 PM, Justin Cooper and Christopher Lavery. In addition to this schedule, each performance features an audience member reading one of a series of 12 short selections from (Proxy) Missives From Turkey, written for the occasion by Daniel Borzutzky. Link's Hall, 3435 N. Sheffield, 773-281-0824, $10.
JOE TURNER'S COME AND GONE August Wilson's drama, set in pre-World War I Pittsburgh, focuses on a black ex-convict on a quest to find his wife and child. It's offered in a student production under Jonathan Wilson's direction. Previews Thu 2/9, 7:30 PM, $3. Opens Fri 2/10, 7:30 PM. Through 2/19: Thu-Sat 7:30 PM, Sun 2 PM, Loyola University Chicago, Kathleen Mullady Memorial Theatre, Centennial Forum, 6525 N. Sheridan (enter at 1125 W. Loyola), 773-508-3847, $5-$15.
JOHNNY TREMAIN Stage version of the famed children's tale, about a young silversmith during the American Revolution. John Hildreth's adaptation of Esther Forbes's novel is directed by Katie McLean. Previews through 2/12: Fri 7:30 PM, Sat 8 PM, Sun 5:30 PM, $14. Opens Mon 2/13, 7:30 PM. Through 4/9: Fri 7:30 PM, Sat 4 and 8 PM, Sun 5:30 PM, Lifeline Theatre, 6912 N. Glenwood, 773-761-4477, $14-$26.
JOSEPH AND THE AMAZING TECHNICOLOR DREAMCOAT Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice's pop musical about the Hebrews' arrival in Egypt is performed as a benefit for the Night Ministry, an agency providing food and social services to homeless people in Uptown and Lakeview. Fri 2/10, 7 PM, Saint Gertrude's Church, 1420 W. Granville, 847-208-9527. Then Sat 2/11, 7 PM, Northminster Presbyterian Church, 2515 Central Park, Evanston, 847-208-9527. Then Sun 2/12, 3 PM, Immanuel Lutheran Church, 1500 W. Elmdale, 847-208-9527. Then Sun 2/12, 7 PM, Trinity Lutheran Church, 3637 Golf, Evanston, 847-208-9527. "Free will offerings" accepted.
JOSEPH AND THE AMAZING TECHNICOLOR DREAMCOAT The same, in an abridged version by American Eagle productions. Sun 2/12, 2 PM, Evanston Public Library, community room, 1703 Orrington, Evanston, 847-866-0300.
KAMA SUTRA: THE QUICKIE Cabaret preview of a forthcoming musical by Terry Abrahamson and Stephen Joseph, about a married couple whose sex life is revived by an 1,800-year-old swami. Through 2/25: Sat 10:30 PM, Davenport's Piano Bar & Cabaret, 1383 N. Milwaukee, 773-278-1830, $15, 2 dr. min, 21+.
KASIMU & THE COCONUT PALM Kids' musical by Runako Jahi and Anthony Llorens, about "the impatience of children who want to be grown before their time." Through 5/27: Sat 2 PM, ETA Creative Arts Foundation, ETA Square, 7558 S. South Chicago, 773-752-3955, $5.
KINGDOM New drama by David Toney, about three Aftrican-American brothers whose relationship--marked by "betrayal, murder, and the struggle for redemption"--echoes the story of Shakespeare's Richard III. Opens Thu 2/16, 8 PM. Through 4/9: Thu-Sat 8 PM, Sun 3 and 7 PM, ETA Creative Arts Foundation, ETA Square, 7558 S. South Chicago, 773-752-3955, $25, two for one Thu and 7 PM Sun (except opening and closing nights).
KISS OF THE SPIDER WOMAN Manuel Puig's novel about two men--a macho Marxist revolutionary and a gay window dresser--imprisoned together during Argentina's "dirty war" of the 1970s is the basis for this richly persuasive musical by John Kander, Fred Ebb, and Terrence McNally. Director Susan Finque's revival, headlined by Katherine Lynne Condit's riveting performance as the "Spider Woman" (a fantastical symbol of death and escape), keeps the story's emotions real. (LB) Through 2/18: Thu-Sat 7:30 PM, Sun 3:30 PM, Bailiwick Repertory, Bailiwick Arts Center, 1229 W. Belmont, 773-883-1090, $25-$30.
KNOWING Members of Lookingglass Theatre Company's Teen Touring Ensemble perform a company-created piece based on their experiences in the U.S. education system. 2/12-2/13: Sun 7 PM, Mon 6:30 PM, Lookingglass Theatre Company, Water Tower Water Works, 821 N. Michigan, 773-477-9257, ext. 104, $5-$10.
LADY MADELINE Edgar Allan Poe's macabre tale "The Fall of the House of Usher" inspired this new musical by Mickle Maher, Andre Pluess, and Ben Sussman. Jessica Thebus directs the production, an offering of the Steppenwolf for Young Adults program. Opens Sat 2/11, 11 AM. Through 2/25: Sat 11 AM, Sun 2/19, 11 AM, Steppenwolf Theatre Company, downstairs theater, 1650 N. Halsted, 312-335-1650, $12.
THE LARAMIE PROJECT That's Laramie, Wyoming, where the brutal 1998 slaying of gay college student Matthew Shepard drew international attention and heightened awareness of antigay hate crimes. A month after the murder, playwright Moises Kaufman and members of his Tectonic Theater Project journeyed to Laramie to interview residents of the town about the event and its aftermath. The resulting play examines the townspeople's varied responses to the crime as well as the interviewers' evolving perspective on life in a small town. It's performed by the Janus Theatre. Previews Thu-Fri 2/16-2/17, 8 PM, $10. Opens Sat 2/18, 8 PM. Through 3/19: Thu-Sat 8 PM, Sun 3 PM, Athenaeum Theatre, first-floor studio, 2936 N. Southport, 312-902-1500, $15.
THE LAST NIGHT OF BALLYHOO Alfred Uhry's play concerns an extended family of Atlanta Jews in 1939--two middle-aged women, their unmarried daughters, and the bachelor uncle with whom they all live--and the young men who enter their lives. It's offered in a student production. Previews through 2/9: Thu 7:30 PM, $10. Opens Fri 2/10, 7:30 PM. Through 2/19: Wed-Sat 7:30 PM, Sun 2 PM, The Theatre School, DePaul University, Merle Reskin Theatre, 60 E. Balbo, 312-922-1999, $6-$15.
LATE NITE CATECHISM A bona fide born-in-Chicago international hit, this long-running comedy by Vicki Quade and Maripat Donovan concerns a nun instructing her students--that's you--on the dos and don'ts of dogma. The show is at once nostalgic and satirical. (JHe) Open run: Fri-Sat 8 PM, Sun 3 PM, Royal George Theatre Center, Great Room, 1641 N. Halsted, 312-988-9000, $30.
LETTER PURLOINED Theater Oobleck's new comedy concerns a stained handkerchief (think Othello), a stolen letter (think Poe), and the slaughter of unnamed innocents (think Bosnian war criminal Radovan Karadzic). David Isaacson's smart, funny script is divided into 26 chronological segments, performed in a different, randomly determined order each night. The result is a tasty stew, studded with moments of hilarity. (LM) Through 3/4: Thu-Sat 8 PM, Live Bait Theater, 3914 N. Clark, 773-347-1041, $12, "more if you've got it, free if you're broke."
LETTERS/X, PART 3 Now in its third incarnation, this anti-Valentine's Day show of sketches, songs, puppetry, and interpretive dances offers actual "why did you leave?" and "you suck" letters and e-mails. The evening works best when GroundUp Theatre presents both sides of a breakup--a cheating airhead's apology is even funnier contrasted with her mate's cold disdain. Follow-ups are likewise hilarious, as in the extreme disconnect between one former couple three years after they hit the skids. Such juxtapositions also force the troupe to vary its characterizations: too many letters are performed as if by angst-ridden adolescents. There are funny moments, but all the whining and venting can get tiresome. --Jenn Goddu Through 2/25: Tue-Wed and Sat 8 PM, Hungry Brain, 2319 W. Belmont, 773-935-2118, 21+.
LIFE AND LIMB Keith Reddin's uncompromising 1984 black comedy offers a bleak look at damaged goods in the optimistic Eisenhower era, chronicling the bad breaks befalling a one-armed Korean war veteran afflicted with post-traumatic stress disorder and a confused, unfaithful wife. (The Iraq fiasco makes the play all too contemporary.) Though a tad too minimalist in its props and decor (and a tad toxic with its onstage smoking), the Pine Box Theatre Company's earnest staging wisely takes the play's cruelty seriously, conferring some dignity on the damned all-American couple. (LB) Through 2/12: Thu-Sat 8 PM, Sun 3 PM, Athenaeum Theatre, first-floor studio theater, 2936 N. Southport, 312-902-1500, $15.
LOVE'S LABOUR'S LOST Shakespeare's romantic comedy, about a king whose vow of celibacy is tested by a visiting princess, is presented in a staged reading by the Shakespeare Project of Chicago. Sat 2/11, 10 AM (with 9:45 AM "prologue"), Newberry Library, 60 W. Walton, 773-334-8771. Then Sat 2/11, 2 PM (with 1:45 PM "prologue"), Wilmette Public Library, 1242 Wilmette Ave., Wilmette, 773-334-8771. Then Sun 2/12, 2 PM (with 1:45 PM "prologue"), Highland Park Public Library, 494 Laurel, Highland Park, 773-334-8771.
LOVING REPEATING: A MUSICAL OF GERTRUDE STEIN Frank Galati and Stephen Flaherty, director and composer of Broadway's Ragtime, teamed up again for this chamber musical about influential avant-garde writer Gertrude Stein, whose texts provide the show's lyrics. This world premiere is a coproduction of the Museum of Contemporary Art and About Face Theatre. Previews 2/14-2/17: Tue-Fri 7:30 PM, $20-$25. Opens Sat 2/18, 7:30 PM. Through 3/12: Wed-Fri 7:30 PM, Sat 3 and 7:30 PM, Sun 3 PM, Wed 2/22, 7 PM, Museum of Contemporary Art, theater, 220 E. Chicago, 312-397-4010, $28-$40, $250-$500 Wed 2/22 (includes 6 PM cocktails and postshow dinner).
LULU The Silent Theatre Company remounts its 2005 production, inspired by Frank Wedekind's 1894 "Lulu" dramas (Earth Spirit and Pandora's Box) and G.W. Pabst's silent film version of the plays. The expressionistic show is an artful blend of stylized movement, projected intertitles, and a programmatic piano score. The editing between these elements is seamless, and the production values are flawless. What makes Lulu truly arresting is director Tonika Todorova and company's sly, deadpan mastery of the early silent era's acting, lighting, and editing conventions--along with their frank embrace of the sexually supercharged symbolism of Lulu's calamitous adventures. This remount makes the most of a larger space, trading finely etched immediacy for bigger, bolder, more kinetic stage pictures. (BN) Through 2/26: Fri-Sat 8 and 11 PM, Sun 7 PM, Theatre Building Chicago, 1225 W. Belmont, 773-327-5252, $20.
MAGIC MATINEE Grand-scale Hollywood illusions have their place, of course, but nothing compares to magic tricks performed right before our very eyes. Sean Masterson delivers legerdemain all the more impressive for being low-tech, manipulating commonplace objects and investing them with a sense of fresh possibility. (MSB) Through 3/4: Sat-Sun 11:30 AM, Music Box, 3733 N. Southport, 773-871-6607, $10-$13.
MAKEDA: QUEEN OF SHEBA Chicago Theatre Company's Youth Theatre Division presents this musical about the legendary queen. 2/10-3/26: Fri-Sat 7 PM, Sun 3 PM, Chicago Theatre Company, Parkway Community House, 500 E. 67th, 773-493-0901, $10-$15.
MENOPAUSE THE MUSICAL Jeanie Linders's musical about women entering midlife features dull, borderline offensive song parodies set to tunes supposedly beloved by baby boomers. Focusing on an aging soap actress, an executive, a 60s-style hippie, and a small-town tourist who meet at a lingerie sale, Menopause the Musical reduces women to symptoms: hot flashes, chocolate cravings, emotional outbursts. The changes menopause brings deserve a thoughtful, engaging, fresh response. This isn't it. (JV) Open run: Tue 8 PM, Wed 2 and 8 PM, Thu-Fri 8 PM, Sat 5 and 8 PM, Sun 3:30 PM, Apollo Theater, 2540 N. Lincoln, 773-935-6100, $46.50. The 8 PM performances 2/14-2/18 feature guest star Judy Tenuta.
MESHUGGAH-NUNS! THE ECUMENICAL NUNSENSE Dan Goggin's musical, a follow-up to his popular Nunsense, concerns a group of Catholic nuns who pitch in when an ecumenical cruise's planned production of Fiddler on the Roof is sidelined by seasickness. Through 3/12: Fri-Sat 8 PM, Sun 3 PM, Attic Playhouse, 410 Sheridan, Highwood, 847-433-2660, $18 in advance, $20 at the door.
THE MISANTHROPE Moliere's comedy, about a self-righteous moralist in love with a fickle woman, is given a bare-bones production by the S.O.T. Theater Company. In the title role--a character whose humorlessness and contrariness are so profound they're hilarious--Robin Trevino hovers at a distressingly literal level, and his ingenuous petulance sucks the humor right out of the piece. (BN) Through 2/12: Thu 7:30 PM, Fri-Sat 8 PM, Sun 2 PM, Breadline Theatre, 1802 W. Berenice, 773-472-1501, $10.
MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING Self-righteous, ruthless men treat women like trading cards in Shakespeare's comedy. Believing the passive, innocent heroine has betrayed her betrothed, these men band together to humiliate her, then (so they believe) inadvertently kill her. Directors like Canada's Marti Maraden who ignore the play's problematic sexual politics might at least offer a giddy comedy about true love's triumph over deception. But Maraden's staging is so blandly pleasant, her characters so featureless (except for the truly funny clown constables), that it's difficult to imagine why anyone would care about them even when trouble arises in act two. This is one production that lives up to its name. (JHa) Through 2/26: Wed-Thu 7:30 PM, Fri 8 PM, Sat 4 and 8:30 PM, Sun 3 PM, Tue 2/14, 7:30 PM, Wed 2/22, 1 and 7:30 PM, Chicago Shakespeare Theater, Navy Pier, 800 E. Grand, 312-595-5600, $48-$65.
NECESSARY TARGETS Eve Ensler's drama, about two American women serving as crisis counselors to female refugees in Bosnia, is performed by the Saint Sebastian Players. Opens Fri 2/10, 8 PM. Through 3/5: Fri-Sat 8 PM, Sun 2 PM, Saint Bonaventure Church, basement-level theater, 1625 W. Diversey (enter on Marshfield), 773-404-7922, $7-$15; donations also accepted for the transitional living program of Deborah's Place, a shelter for homeless women.
THE NIGHT HERON British playwright Jez Butterworth penned this dark comedy about two gardeners fighting a religious cult. Opens Thu 2/16, 8 PM. Through 3/25: Thu-Sat 8 PM, Steep Theatre, 3902 N. Sheridan, 312-458-0722, $15.
'NIGHT, MOTHER Verisimilitude proves a blessing and a curse in 20% Theatre Company's production of Marsha Norman's 1982 drama about a middle-aged woman who's decided to kill herself despite her mother's anguished protests. Kay Schmitt as the mother and Abigail Boucher (a bit young for the part) as her daughter opt for what could be called a cinematic style of naturalistic acting, well suited to a camera lens or cramped performance space--all subtle facial expressions and understated line readings. But this approach blunts the impact of the tragedy: though Sarah Ostman's staging is believable, it lacks a sense of urgency and awful inexorability. --Zac Thompson Through 2/25: Thu-Sat 8 PM, Sun 7 PM, Oracle Productions, 3809 N. Broadway, 773-415-0309, $15, industry night Sun.
NINA SIMONE: THE HIGH PRIESTESS SPEAKS The jazz singer and political activist's life and work are saluted in this musical tribute by writer-director Ebony Joy, which features Yahdina U-Deen in the title role. Previews 2/10-2/18: Fri-Sat 8 PM, Sun 3 PM, $30. Opens Sun 2/19, 3 PM. Open run: Fri-Sat 8 PM, Sun 3 PM, Black Ensemble Theater, Uptown Center Hull House, 4520 N. Beacon, 773-769-4451, $35.
A NUMBER British playwright Caryl Churchill's drama concerns a man who confronts his father after learning he may have genetically cloned brothers. Spare in language and rich in ideas, Churchill's 2002 one-act marks her continuing evolution from sprawling examinations of sexual and class politics (Top Girls, Cloud Nine) to less overtly political but absolutely chilling portraits of the tangled impulses underlying relationships. Human cloning is the engine driving the play's plot, but Churchill's double- and triple-edged script covers parental neglect, urban paranoia, and the entirely human but inevitably monstrous desire to erase the past. Director B.J. Jones's economical but revealing one-hour staging gives this intelligent, poetic chamber piece careful attention, respect, and love (KR) Through 2/26: Thu 7:30 PM, Fri-Sat 8 PM, Sun 2 PM, Mon 2/20, 7 PM, Next Theatre Company, Noyes Cultural Arts Center, 927 Noyes, Evanston, 847-475-1875, ext. 2, $12.50-$35.
NUNSENSATIONS: THE NUNSENSE VEGAS REVUE This sweet vaudevillian follow-up to Nunsense, writer-director Dan Goggin's popular musical about a convent of unconventional nuns, finds the Little Sisters of Hoboken performing in Las Vegas, complete with feathered fans, a chorus line, musical references to the Village People, and plenty of vaguely naughty rim-shot jokes. Nunsensations is fluff, and it's expensive, but it's also entertaining and family friendly. (JV) Through 3/5: Wed 1:30 and 7:30 PM, Thu 7:30 PM, Fri 8 PM, Sat 2:30 and 8 PM, Sun 2:30 and 7 PM, Drury Lane Theatre Water Tower Place, 175 E. Chestnut, 312-642-2000, $35-$48.
OLIVER! You'd think that Lionel Bart's musical version of Oliver Twist, Charles Dickens's tale of redemption, would be amiable holiday fare. But much of the first act of director David H. Bell's lackluster production drags: the musical numbers are sprightly, but the dialogue is flat. The show is almost worth seeing, though, for Greg Vinkler as a conflicted, fearful, wryly funny Fagin and Kate Fry as a vivacious Nancy with a will of steel. (JV) Through 2/12: Thu-Fri 8 PM, Sat 5 and 8:30 PM, Sun 1 and 5 PM, Marriott Theatre in Lincolnshire, Rte. 21 (Milwaukee Ave.), Lincolnshire, 847-634-0200, $42-$45.
PARADISE LOST Northwestern University's American Music Theatre Project presents a concert reading of Eric Whitacre and David Norona's "opera electronica," a work-in-progress about a fallen angel struggling to return to heaven. Sat-Sun 2/11-2/12, 7:30 PM, Northwestern University, Pick Staiger Concert Hall, 50 Arts Circle Dr., Evanston, 847-467-4000, $5.50-$12.
PERICLES Mary Zimmerman directs this Shakespearean romance (whose actual authorship remains a subject of debate), about a Greek prince wandering the Aegean in search of his wife and daughter. This poor man's Odyssey is afflicted with a preposterous plot full of implausible separations and reunions. Presented on a set inspired by a Shaker meeting house, the three-hour show is oddly lavish, reflecting the script's mishmash of styles and moods with a variety of costumes, solemn processions, and anachronistic props. Zimmerman's often lovely but empty staging forces what little feeling the play has. To be fair, few productions could calm the troubled waters of this insistently inconsistent tragicomedy. (LB) Through 2/19: Wed-Thu 7:30 PM, Fri 8 PM, Sat 2 and 8 PM, Sun 2 PM, Sat 2/18, 8 PM only, Goodman Theatre, 170 N. Dearborn, 312-443-3800, $20-$65.
THE PHANTOM TOLLBOOTH Norton Juster's novel about a boy's adventures in a magic world of words and numbers is adapted by Laura Schellhardt. The production is recommended for children in kindergarten through sixth grade. Through 2/18: Sat 10:30 AM, Northlight Theatre, North Shore Center for the Performing Arts, 9501 Skokie Blvd., Skokie, 847-673-6300, $12-$17.
A PORTRAIT OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS Actor Kevin McIlvaine plays slave-turned-abolitionist Douglass in this biographical portrait, which also features music by the Metropolitan Apostolic Community Church Choir of Chicago. 2/11-2/13: Sat-Mon 2 PM, Field Museum,, 1400 S. Lake Shore Dr., Stanley Field Hall, 312-922-9410, free with museum admission ($7-$12).
PRACTICAL ANATOMY Elizabeth Bagby's underdeveloped new musical, premiered by the Sansculottes Theater Company, is inspired by the case of 19th-century serial killers William Burke and William Hare, the fabled "body snatchers" who murdered people in order to provide corpses for medical study. Bagby takes nearly three hours to tell the saga, but her characters and plot are sketchy, and she never dramatizes the dehumanizing forces of poverty and xenophobia that supposedly lie behind the protagonists' misdeeds. Director Terry Selucky's hesitant cast, mostly nonsingers, struggles through Bagby's often affecting folk ballads while a four-piece band fights to stay in tune. (JHa) Through 2/12: Thu-Sat 7:30 PM, Sun 3 PM, Storefront Theater, Gallery 37 Center for the Arts, 66 E. Randolph, 312-742-8497, $10-$15.
PRETTY FIRE Inda Craig-Galvan stars in Broadway actress and playwright Charlayne Woodard's autobiographical solo show. Opens Fri 2/10, 8 PM. Through 2/26: Wed-Sat 8 PM, Sun 2:30 and 7:30 PM, Illinois Theatre Center, 371 Artists' Walk (Indian Wood Blvd. between Western Ave. and Orchard Dr.), Park Forest, 708-481-3510, $17-$20.
PRIVATE LIVES Noel Coward's romantic comedy, performed in a historic Tudor-style mansion by the First Folio Shakespeare Festival, concerns a once-married couple who meet again on their honeymoons to new spouses. Previews 2/15-2/17: Wed-Fri 8 PM, $15. Opens Sat 2/18, 8 PM. Through 3/19: Wed 8 PM, Fri-Sat 8 PM, Sun 3 PM, Peabody Estate at Mayslake, 1717 W. 31st St. (31st St. west of Rte. 83), Oak Brook, 630-986-8067, $25.
PUT THE NUNS IN CHARGE Vicki Quade's follow-up to her long-running Late Nite Catechism (see separate listing) finds an old-school nun leading a class in etiquette. Patricia Musker and Lynda Shadrake alternate in the lead role. With more time to ripen, deeper dives into obscure Catholic lore, and perhaps more direct commentary on the church, the production could match the appeal of its predecessor. As is, it's an entertaining excuse to sing "Kumbaya" and get spanked with a ruler. (KW) Open run: Sat 5 PM, Royal George Theatre Center, 1641 N. Halsted, 312-988-9000, $30.
QUADRILLE--A FESTIVAL OF MUSIC, DRAMA AND DANCE STARRING HORSES A historic Old Town riding hall hosts this equestrian dinner-theater production. Through 5/15: Sat 2 and 7:30 PM, Sun 2 PM, Noble Horse Theatre, 1410 N. Orleans, 866-468-3401 or 312-266-7878, $18-$48.
RIKKI-TIKKI-TAVI AND OTHER JUST SO STORIES This children's show is based on tales from Rudyard Kipling's Jungle Book and Just So Stories. Paul S. Holmquist's fast-paced staging whisks us off on a magic carpet ride as the actors scamper from one masked persona to the next, delivering each with dazzling precision. (MSB) Through 3/26: Sat 11 AM and 1 PM, Sun 1 PM, Lifeline Theatre, 6912 N. Glenwood, 773-761-4477, $9 in advance, "pay what you can" at door.
RUN FOR YOUR WIFE Mayhem ensues in Ray Cooney's well-crafted farce when a bigamous cabdriver gets into an accident, forcing him into an ever expanding web of lies to his wives, the police, and the press. The cast maintains the necessary breakneck pace and split-second timing. Some effortful British accents distract a bit, but the characterizations ring true, and the result is fast-paced fun. (KW) Through 3/5: Thu 7:30 PM, Fri 8 PM, Sat 7 PM, Sun 3 PM, Sun 2/12, 2 PM only, Metropolis Performing Arts Centre, 111 Campbell, Arlington Heights, 847-577-2121, $28-$37.
THE SEA HORSE Edward J. Moore's portrait of a waterfront romance between a tavern keeper and a sailor stars Kirsten Fitzgerald and Guy Van Swearingen under Dado's direction. The classroom-exercise quality of Moore's 1974 comedy grows more apparent with every passing decade, but the dream-team casting of veterans Fitzgerald and Van Swearingen as the bearish lovers makes for glorious physical action devoid of adolescent self-consciousness. (MSB) Through 3/5: Thu-Sat 8 PM, Sun 7 PM, Sun 2/19, 3 PM only, A Red Orchid Theatre, 1531 N. Wells, 312-943-8722, $14-$20.
SEASCAPE The Signal Ensemble Theatre presents Edward Albee's philosophical comedy about a middle-aged couple's seaside vacation, which is interrupted when a pair of highly evolved speaking lizards emerge from the water to explore life on land. Director Ronan Marra's playful revival does justice to the Pulitzer-winning play's mysteries. (LB) Through 2/18: Thu-Sat 8 PM, Sun 3 PM, Chopin Theatre, 1543 W. Division, 773-347-1350, $10-$15.
S-E-X-OH! Teatro Luna examines Latina sexuality in this program of "true life stories and a few strategic re-imaginings," performed "in English with a sprinkle of Spanish." The ensemble-created monologues and vignettes cover sexual encounters with men, falling in love with women, trying to get pregnant, having an abortion, and other equally charged subjects. The show's arc falters toward the end, and sometimes the actors seem isolated from one another. But as directed by Tanya Saracho and Coya Paz, who also perform, the sketches are funny, honest, often erotic, surprising, and definitely worth seeing. (JV) Through 2/19: Thu-Sat 8 PM, Sun 3 PM, Chicago Dramatists, 1105 W. Chicago, 773-878-5862, $10-$15; $20 Sat 2/11 (includes postshow reception).
SHORT SHAKESPEARE! MACBETH Director David H. Bell turns the Bard's shortest tragedy into a 75-minute fever dream of irrepressible ambition and inescapable doom. Pile-driving percussionist Ethan Deppe accompanies with what sounds like the wrath of God. Decked out in leather and tattoos, the 12 young, fit cast members fully flesh out the play's sound and fury, whether expressed in brooding ritual or explicit violence. (Don't bring children under ten.) As the killer spouses, Ben Viccellio and Cassandra Bissell make the guilt as convincing as the greed and pride. One complaint: an arrogant new ending contradicts Shakespeare's assertion that the cycle of violence ends with Macbeth. How many schoolkids will come away thinking Shakespeare was more cynical than they are? --Lawrence Bommer Through 4/22: Sat 11 AM, no show 3/4-3/18, Chicago Shakespeare Theater, Navy Pier, 800 E. Grand, 312-595-5600, $10-$15.
SLEEPING BEAUTY The Chicago Kids Company presents Jesus Perez and Paige Coffman's modernized musical version of the fairy tale. Through 3/14: Mon-Fri 10:30 AM, Sat 3/11, 12:30 PM, Saint Patrick Performing Arts Centre, Saint Patrick High School, 5900 W. Belmont, 773-205-9600, $8.
THE SNOW QUEEN Theatre-Hikes offers an ambulatory outdoor adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale. Sat 2/18, 1 PM, Northerly Island, 1400 S. Lynn White, 312-745-2910, free.
SOFTLY BLUE Shepsu Aakhu's mournful new play for the Ma'at Production Association of Afrikan Centered Theatre is interesting but not quite successful. Two recluses--a diabetic (a layered Leonard House Jr.) and a manic-depressive (a bristly Angela Walsh), both in their own apartments--are starved for human contact but afraid, and so post videos on an online dating site. They then correspond by phone and e-mail but never actually meet. Directed by Mignon McPherson Nance, this script about our isolated digital age is occasionally fascinating, especially the characters' monologues about their inner lives. But because neither grows we lose interest, and the play drags instead of deepens. --Jennifer Vanasco Through 3/12: Thu-Fri 8:30 PM, Sat 8 PM, Sun 3:30 PM, Victory Gardens Theater, first-floor studio, 2257 N. Lincoln, 773-871-3000, $22.
SOMEBODY FOREIGN Douglas Post's new drama, directed by Terry McCabe, concerns a pro-Palestinian Chicago human rights activist who becomes the target of an FBI investigation. Previews 2/10-2/12: Fri-Sat 8 PM, Sun 3 PM, $18. Opens Mon 2/13, 7 PM. Through 3/26: Fri-Sat 8 PM, Sun 3 PM, City Lit Theater Company, Edgewater Presbyterian Church, 1020 W. Bryn Mawr, 773-293-3682, $25.
THE SOPRANO'S LAST SUPPER This interactive dinner-theater spoof of The Sopranos invites viewers to wine and dine with a mob family. Sat 2/11, 7:30 PM, Angelo's, 247 N. York, Elmhurst, 630-833-2400, $49 (includes dinner). Then Sat 2/18, 7:30 PM. Mama Luigi's, 7500 S. Harlem, Bridgeview, 708-496-0900, $49-$59.50 (includes dinner).
STOP KISS The Brown Couch Theatre Company presents Diana Son's portrait of two nominally straight New York women--a radio traffic reporter and a schoolteacher--whose blossoming attraction results in them being beaten up by a homophobic stranger the night they first kiss. Son's 1998 play feels dated, not daring. The playwright pretends to address weighty issues like love and identity and bigotry, but the story's really about nothing but a tragic accident. As directed by Mark Pracht, the cast does fairly well. (JV) Through 2/11: Thu-Sat 8 PM, Viaduct Theater, 3111 N. Western, 312-409-2010, $13-$15.
A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE Tennessee Williams's domestic tragedy, about a woman on the edge and the man who pushes her over it, is directed by Michael Ryczek. Previews Fri-Sat 2/10-2/11, 8 PM, $10. Opens Sun 2/12, 3 PM, $27 (includes postshow dinner). Through 2/26: Fri-Sat 8 PM, Sun 3 PM, Tue 2/15, 1 PM, Village Players Theatre, 1010 Madison, Oak Park, 708-524-1892, $16-$20.
SUPERNATURAL CHICAGO Necromancer Neil Tobin leads an interactive performance inspired by local paranormal events. While aficionados of Chicago hauntings will find this show old dead hat, it could be a great experience for out-of-towners and uninitiated residents. (KW) Open run: Fri 8 PM, Excalibur, 632 N. Dearborn, 312-266-1944, $13-$25 (includes two drinks and admission to dance club).
SWEET TIME and HIDDEN IN THIS PICTURE Two one-acts, by University of Chicago student Jessica Wright and West Wing creator Aaron Sorkin respectively. 2/9-2/11: Thu-Sat 8 PM, University of Chicago, Reynolds Club, 5706 S. University, 773-702-3414, $5.
TARTUFFE The Remy Bumppo Theatre Company's staging of Moliere's comedy, about a religious hypocrite who hoodwinks a rich family, transplants the action to the home of a wealthy present-day Beltway player. British playwright Ranjit Bolt's contemporized 2002 adaptation is a sturdy, snappy, and savvy one. Though the material is often dangerously dark, director James Bohnen maintains the brisk pace and slippery lightness needed to prevent the play from decaying into a mordant rant. Nick Sandys steals the show with his reptilian, deep-southern-drawl portrayal of the title character, and the cast strikes a wonderful balance between the artifice of the rhyming couplets and convincing contemporary deliveries. (BN) Through 3/5: Wed-Sat 7:30 PM, Sun 2:30 PM, Victory Gardens Theater, second-floor main stage, 2257 N. Lincoln, 773-871-3000, $27.50-$38.50.
THAT'S WEIRD, GRANDMA Count on Barrel of Monkeys to be clever, funny, and energetic no matter what. For the past four years its actors have reimagined often bizarre, always hilarious stories they get from young Chicago Public Schools students--simple tales about birthday parties, sibling rivalries, and dance contests and more whimsical ones about adventures in space, on motorcycles, and with dolphins--each joyously presented as if it made perfect sense. (JG) Open run: Mon 8 PM, Sat 2/11-3/18, 2 PM, Neo-Futurarium, 5153 N. Ashland, 312-409-1954, $5-$10.
THINKING WITH YOUR HEAD . . . MEN EXPOSED Scott Woldman's new late-night, adult-oriented comedy focuses on a guy and his pals after a bachelor party. Through 4/1: Sat 10 PM, Metropolis Performing Arts Centre, 111 Campbell, Arlington Heights, 847-577-2121, $15.
THOROUGHLY MODERN MILLIE This stage version of the 1967 movie musical, about a would-be flapper's adventures in 1922 New York, features Jazz Age standards, tunes from the Sammy Cahn-James Van Heusen film score, and new songs by Jeanine Tesori and Dick Scanlan. Marc Robin directs and choreographs. Previews 2/15-2/19: Wed-Fri 8 PM, Sat 5 and 8:30 PM, Sun 1 and 5 PM. Then Wed 2/22, 1 PM. Opens Wed 2/22, 8 PM. Through 4/23: Wed 1 and 8 PM, Thu-Fri 8 PM, Sat 5 and 8:30 PM, Sun 1 and 5 PM, Marriott Theatre in Lincolnshire, Rte. 21 (Milwaukee Ave.), Lincolnshire, 847-634-0200, $42-$45.
TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD Harper Lee's classic 1960 novel about small-town racism, presented by Theatre for Young Audiences of Apple Tree Theatre. 2/14-2/23: schedule follows. 2/14-2/16: Tue 9:30 AM, Wed 11:30 AM, Thu 9:30 AM. Then 2/17-2/23: Fri 9:30 and 11:30 AM, Sat-Sun 11 AM, Tue 9:30 AM, Wed 11:30 AM, Thu 9:30 AM. Metropolis Performing Arts Centre, 111 Campbell, Arlington Heights, 847-577-2121, $9-$12.
TOMMY GUN'S GARAGE The restaurant-cabaret presents a Roaring 20s-themed musical comedy revue in a speakeasy setting, with dining and drinking integrated into the show. Open run: Thu 6 PM, Fri 7 PM, Sat 6 PM, Sun 5:30 PM, Tommy Gun's Garage, 2114 S. Wabash, 773-728-2828, $50-$60 (includes food and refreshments; alcoholic beverages extra).
TONY 'N' TINA'S WEDDING This freewheeling, audience-interactive re-creation of a contemporary Italian wedding allows audiences to attend the service and reception, eat authentic cheap Italian food, even dance (for a dollar) with the bride and groom. Woven into the evening are all the usual Catholic-wedding jokes, but they're presented with such finesse that even the most well-worn are funny. (JHe) Open run: Wed-Thu 7:30 PM, Fri 8 PM, Sat 5 and 8 PM, Sun 5 PM, Piper's Alley, 230 W. North, 312-664-8844, $56-$70 (includes food). Also Sun (2/12, 3/12, 4/9, 5/14, 6/18), 5 PM, Metropolis Performing Arts Centre, 111 Campbell, Arlington Heights, 847-577-2121. $65 (includes food).
TOO MUCH LIGHT MAKES THE BABY GO BLIND The Neo-Futurists perform 30 plays in 60 minutes in this "futurist evening in the grand Italian tradition." The fare changes weekly in this long-running production; between two and twelve new scripts are performed each week depending on the roll of a die. This is fine theater--funny, wise, nakedly honest, sometimes unsettling, and invariably entertaining. (JV) Open run: Fri-Sat 11:30 PM (doors open 11 PM), Sun 7 PM (doors open 6:30 PM), Neo-Futurarium, 5153 N. Ashland (second floor), 773-275-5255, $7 plus the roll of a die ($8-$13).
THE VAGINA MONOLOGUES Eve Ensler's collection of monologues about female experience, originally a solo vehicle for Ensler herself, is presented as part of V-Day 2006, a national campus antiviolence project. Wed-Thu 2/15-2/16, 7 PM, Roosevelt University, Ganz Hall, 430 S. Michigan (seventh floor), 312-341-2015 $7 (proceeds benefit Chicago Abused Women's Coalition and Young Women's Empowerment Project).
VALENTINE VICTORIOUS Here endeth "The Valentine Trilogy," which follows a single character through adventures in three pop genres. The first installment was a western, the second a samurai tale; this one is a superhero saga set in 1930s Chicago. (Think Road to Perdition meets Stupendous Man from Calvin and Hobbes.) Valentine Victorious is longer than it needs to be, and neither its pseudoscience nor its pseudoplot makes much pseudosense. But the House Theatre of Chicago's staging is full of generous fun, bright energy, good music, and great, cheap coups de theatre: a nuclear explosion, for instance, realized by means of green umbrellas. Writer-star Nathan Allen cavorts like a kid before his bedroom mirror. (TA) Through 3/11: Thu-Sat 8 PM, Sun 7 PM, Viaduct Theater, 3111 N. Western, 773-251-2195, $10-$19, industry nights Thu and Sun.
WAIT WAIT . . . DON'T TELL ME! "Modern and sometimes raucous twist on the old-time radio quiz show," presented by Chicago Public Radio and taped before a live audience. Host Peter Sagal and crew mine news stories for quiz questions, with different panelists from the worlds of literature and entertainment and audience members participating each week. Open run: Thu 7:30 PM, Chase auditorium, Chase Plaza, 10 S. Dearborn, 312-893-2956, $20.
THE WAY OF THE WISEGUY Joseph Pistone, better known as FBI mole "Donnie Brasco," teamed up with Bobby Moresco (who also directs) and Leo Rossi (who stars) to pen this one-man play based on Pistone's life. Previews through 2/12: Thu 7:30 PM, Fri 8 PM, Sat 5 and 9 PM, Sun 3 PM, $34-$44. Opens Tue 2/14, 7 PM. Open run: Wed-Thu 7:30 PM, Fri 8 PM, Sat 5 and 9 PM, Sun 3 PM, Chicago Center for the Performing Arts, 777 N. Green, 312-733-6000, $39-$55.
THE WELL-APPOINTED ROOM Richard Greenberg's new pair of one-acts--"Nostalgia" and "Prolepsis"--examines two New York couples who inhabit the same space at different times. Terry Kinney's staging chases out potentially interesting, even challenging subtleties in the script. But thanks to Robert Brill's scenic design, the well-appointed room is a masterpiece of period, place, and status. (TA) Through 3/12: Tue-Fri 7:30 PM, Sat-Sun 3 and 7:30 PM, Wed 2/22-3/8, 2 and 7:30 PM, no show Sun 2/26-3/12, Steppenwolf Theatre Company, downstairs theater, 1650 N. Halsted, 312-335-1650, $20-$60.
WICKED This smart, tuneful musical, inspired by L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and its 1939 movie version and based on Gregory Maguire's 1995 novel, offers a revisionist account of how green-skinned teen misfit Elphaba and her perky blond schoolmate Glinda are transformed into the witches of Oz. Songwriter Stephen Schwartz (Pippin) and librettist Winnie Holtzman (My So-Called Life) emphasize simple but resonant themes: self-esteem, peer pressure, sibling rivalry, the need to respect people's differences, and the importance of standing up against prejudice and injustice. (AW) Open run: Tue 7:30 PM, Wed 2 and 7:30 PM, Thu 7:30 PM, Fri 8 PM, Sat 2 and 8 PM, Sun 2 PM, Ford Center for the Performing Arts, Oriental Theatre, 24 W. Randolph, 312-902-1400, $25-$85. Lottery for $25 front-row tickets takes place two hours before each show at box office or at Borders, 150 N. State.
WORDSFEST DMG Freedom Productions presents an "urban arts festival" showcasing poetry, sketch comedy, dance, and music. Through 2/12: Thu-Fri 8 PM, Sat 8 and 10 PM, Sun 6 PM: schedule follows. Thu: performance poetry and comedy with Kevin Coval, Ugochi, kevINda, Straight & Nappy, Keaton & Lewis, Loose Association, Yaw, and William Kurk. Fri: Spoken word, rap, and comedy with Coval, Motep, Jeff Baraka, Still Black See, Malakh, Kurk, Yaw, Ugochi, and Khari Lemuel. Sat: both shows feature kevINda, Straight & Nappy, Soul Fools, Becoming Jerome, JB & Luggah, and Pimprov. Sun: "All female night" with Shoshannah, Dionna Griffin, Ugochi, Sonia Astacio, Iambic3, Celisa Gray, and Logan Vaughn. Theatre Building Chicago, 1225 W. Belmont, 773-327-5252, $15, festival pass $40. Workshop on creating and marketing spoken word Sun 2/12, 1-4 PM, $20-$25.
A YEAR WITH FROG AND TOAD The Chicago Children's Theatre debuts with Willie and Robert Reale's musical version of Arnold Lobel's books about a pair of adventurous amphibians. The gorgeous set and costumes are certainly impressive--and they better be given how much this ballyhooed new Equity company is charging for tickets. The show may be too long for children. And mostly it's too silly for adults, though Bradley Mott and Joseph Anthony Foronda in the title roles give the script some pleasing dignity. (JHe) Through 3/5: Fri 6:30 PM, Sat 10 AM and 7 PM, Sun 11 AM and 3:30 PM, Sat 2/11 and 2/18, 10 AM and 2:30 and 7 PM, Goodman Theatre, 170 N. Dearborn, 312-443-3800, $17-$38, two for one 3:30 PM Sun.
Performing arts listings are compiled from information available Monday. Performance schedules are subject to change on short notice; readers are advised to call ahead for confirmation. Commentary by Albert Williams (AW), Tony Adler (TA), Mary Shen Barnidge (MSB), Lawrence Bommer (LB), Jenn Goddu (JG), Nick Green (NG), Justin Hayford (JHa), Jack Helbig (JHe), Ryan Hubbard, Kelly Kleiman (KK), Laura Molzahn (LM), Brian Nemtusak (BN), Kerry Reid (KR), Zac Thompson (ZT), Jennifer Vanasco (JV), and Kim Wilson (KW). The League of Chicago Theatres operates Hot Tix booths that sell tickets at half price (plus a service charge), full-price tickets through Ticketmaster, CTA passes, and "Play Money" gift certificates redeemable at local theaters. Booths are located at the Chicago Tourism Center, 72 E. Randolph; the Chicago Water Works Visitor Center, 163 E. Pearson; and Tower Records at 2301 N. Clark and 214 S. Wabash. Also at the North Shore Center for the Performing Arts, 9501 Skokie Blvd., Skokie, and at Tower Records in Schaumburg and Bloomingdale. For available shows, booth hours, and other information, see www.hottix.org.
CRITICS' CHOICES
BUS STOP
Rick Snyder's production of William Inge's 1955 classic offers fresh, meaningful portraits of loneliness, compassion, and hope while flawlessly maintaining period authenticity. Some of the ideas in this play about people waiting out a snowstorm in a small-town diner may be outdated--who expects to marry a virgin anymore? But the ensemble finds a timeless vulnerability in the passions and self-doubts of these stranded souls: a boisterous cowboy (Cliff Chamberlain), wayward lounge singer (Suzanne Lang), pedophile professor (William Brown), childlike waitress (Linsey Page Morton), and simple townspeople. Jack Magaw's set enhances the intimacy tenfold, extending to the first row of seats, drawing us in with the smell of fresh coffee. The story may not be shocking or challenging, but under these circumstances it's eminently satisfying. Through 3/26: Tue-Fri 8 PM, Sat 5 and 8 PM, Sun 2:30 and 6 PM, Writers' Theatre, 325 Tudor Ct., Glencoe, 847-242-6000, $45-$57. --Kim Wilson
IF TRANE WUZ HERE
Tap phenom Savion Glover finds nothing odd about doing two sets a night with his fellow "band" members--spoken-word artist Reg E. Gaines and saxophonist Matana Roberts, a Chicago native--in a space that seats 150 people. "This is what we do," the laid-back Glover says over the phone. "I've performed in clubs for 20 people--and in stadiums." For audiences, however, the chance to see Glover, Roberts, and Gaines (who wrote the book for the Tony-winning Broadway musical Bring in 'da Noise, Bring in 'da Funk) in an intimate venue is something special. The concept here is to keep the spirit of John Coltrane, who died in 1967, alive by improvising on his standards: A Love Supreme, "My Favorite Things." But though Glover is a superb technician--his tap arpeggios recall Coltrane's "sheets of sound"--the show's point is not virtuosity but soul, not duplication but reimagining a legacy. Opening performances Tue 2/14, 7 and 9 PM. Through 2/19: Wed-Sat 7 and 9 PM, Sun 3 and 6 PM, Theatre Building Chicago, 1225 W. Belmont, 773-327-5252, $40. --Laura Molzahn
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MPEG-2 AAC Standard
Advanced Audio Coding, or AAC, is one of several audio coding systems specified in the MPEG-2 standard (ISO/IEC 13818-7). Dolby Laboratories first began administering the MPEG-2 AAC patent licensing program in 1998, and today Via Licensing offers a joint license for the MPEG-2 AAC patents of AT&T, Dolby, Fraunhofer IIS, and Sony.
MPEG-2 AAC is the audio format utilized in the Japanese Digital Broadcast system, known as ISDB (Integrated Services Digital Broadcasting). MPEG-2 AAC is also the basis of the audio coding technology used by XM Radio, one of two satellite radio services currently operating in the United States.
MPEG-2 AAC has been extended with additional features and capabilities in MPEG-4 AAC . However, companies creating products for the applications described above may not require these additional AAC tools, and for such applications, we offer the MPEG-2 AAC Patent License Agreement.
A copy of the MPEG-2 AAC standard can be purchased from the ISO online store (search for "13818-7").
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King Mole
The
Story of King Mole
King Mole died on Jan.14th, 2002. He was given a proper
king's funeral like the viking moles of old. It was my great
honor to be with King Mole at his last moments. It all
started when I came home from an early job of helping my wife
move into her new classroom. I noticed my cats playing with a
little gray fur ball. I took a closer look and realized that they
had been brutalizing a poor little mole. I picked him up and
brought him inside. At that point I made this post on the WWIIOL
forums.
posted Mon,
Jan 14 7:42am Hi,
when I came home this morning from helping my wife get her classroom
ready (her first day at work!) I noticed my cats batting a little grey
furball around.
When I got out of the truck there was a little grey
mole shivering in the grass. The cats weren't hungry and I guess they
were just having some fun with him. I scooped him up and brought him
inside. I thought he was ok and was gonna keep him as a mascot but his
back legs don't seem to be working quite right and then I noticed that
he has a big patch of skin missing from his chest. (really big)
What should I do?
As stated in the thread, I realized that the little
guy was hurt pretty bad. He wasn't walking quite right and had a
bit of skin missing. It turns out that the evil cats had dealt
him a mortal blow.
As to the question of "What should I do?", I got
several responses.
Shoot him.
Take him to the vet.
Blow him up.
Give him back to the cats.
Feed him to a snake.
Eat him.
Kill him.
Watch him, if he changes size or shape, call the doctor right away.
Make him into a WWIIOL mascot.
etc etc etc.
At some point BFD and Ironman suggested the following....
posted Mon,
Jan 14 8:41am Well
if he does pass into the great worm bed that is mole heaven I trust
youll give him a proper viking funeral to send him on his way to mole
valhalla.
Ack he beat me to it!
It was a grand idea, for such a wonderful brave mole. The problem
was that he wasn't quite dead yet!! However, before we had
to decide on a kingly way to put a mole out of his misery, the great
Mole King had expired..
posted Mon,
Jan 14 8:44am Hmmm...
I think BFD has the right Idea.
Mr.
Mole is looking pretty bad. He is leaving little spots of blood behind
him when he crawls and he sits funny when he stops :(
I think we
shall end his suffering and give him a proper viking funeral! We shall
adorn his shoebox with all his worldly belongings (errmm grass
clippings?) and gifts fit for a viking mole king! (any suggestions?)
Then we shall set his funeral pyre alight and afloat apon the seas of
the pond in my back yard!
It shall be grand beyond any moles dreams!
This mole! Mr. Mole! He shall go down in mole history as the greatest
of kings!
posted Mon,
Jan 14 8:48am If
you go the funeral route you gotta kill him first. Fire is my #1
wouldnt wanna go that way, death. Im sure its the same for moles
posted Mon,
Jan 14 8:48am How does one
kill a Kingly mole without defiling his body?
I can't just squish him or anything.
He
looks pretty much dead already and he doesn't move much when I poke him
but I want to be sure. It would be horrible for Mr. Mole to be roused
by the flames and go leaping into the sea!
posted Mon,
Jan 14 9:04am I'm afraid
Mr. Mole the Great has expired.
It
will be some time before his funeral pyre is arrainged and if he isn't
stiff by then I will know he is just sleeping or passed out.
In any case here is what I have so far.
His shoebox will be his boat.
I have a straight pin for his sword and a button for his shield. I will
fashon some mole armor as best I can with tinfoil.
I will adorn him with gold clippings from an old 386 processor.
Some paper clips
A few nuts and bolts.
Some smartys (candy)
A pair of dice (Mr. Mole was a gambler)
Some loose change.
He will rest on 10 sheets of soft toilet paper atop a pile of dry grass
and twigs.
Now I just have to find some worms some place....
So I decided on making a viking ship out of an old
shoe box. King Mole was given a crown made from an brass cap nut,
a straight pin for a sword, a button for a shield, and a suit of
tinfoil armor. The forum readers were getting impatient and I had to
remind them that making a mole helmet from tinfoil took some
time. I surrounded the fallen king with items from his great
treasury. Dice, pennies, buttons, rubber bands, nuts and bolts, and
Smarties.
Soon, I had
finished construction of the ship as well...
Praise him with great
praise!!!
Praise him with great
praise!!!
Praise him with great
praise!!!
King
mole was now ready for his passage to the next world. He was
slain in a mighty battle and now women around the world would weep at
his passing.
+++URL: http://www.tug.tubitak.gov.tr/venus_transit/naklen_yayin/naklen_yayin.html
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Yayýnýmýz 8 Haziran 2004, saat 14:34 itibariyle sona ermiţtir.
Bu sayfaya yapýlan bađlantýlar sonucu Akdeniz Üniversitesi'nin internet bađlantýsý
aţýrý yüklenmiţ ve birçok kiţi görüntülere ulaţamamýţtýr. Venüs geçiţi süresince
TÜBÝTAK Ulusal Gözlemevi'nde hava genel olarak iyi geçmiţ fakat geçiţin son zamanlarýna
dođru bulutlanma baţladýđýndan dolayý 3. ve 4. temas görüntüleri alýnamamýţtýr. Alýnan verilerden
ilk görüntüler yukarýda verilmiţtir. Ayrýntýlý görüntüler daha sonra yayýnlanacaktýr.
Ana Sayfa
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The N: Games & Quizzes: Avatar High: Play
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The Standard Model of Fundamental Particles and Interactions
<P>
The Particle Adventure uses frames and javascript.
Pleae set your browser preferences to support
frame pages, then reload.
<P>
<< <A HREF="../index.html">BACK</A>
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TCG - American Theatre
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What’s in a Name? By Philip G. Altbach
We need to draw the line somewhere before we’re teaching at AutoZone U.
Faculty, Own Thyself By Werner G. Heim
This fictional college got rid of its board of trustees, and the faculty became voting partners in the corporation
Measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions are a major issue for governments and industry around the world. All developed countries, and many developing ones, are actively putting into place policies and programmes to reduce emissions. The implementation of these policies and programmes has a direct impact on the energy industry and on investment decisions.
The WEC GHG Emissions Reduction Programme was launched in 2000 as an industry initiative led by the WEC to record, on an interactive electronic system, the projects in which the global energy industry is involved and the reductions in Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions they are expected to achieve. The Pilot stage of the Programme would last five years and its initial goal was to identify and register projects, which together would achieve 1Gt CO2e emissions reduction by the year 2005. The agreed timeframe was for projects becoming operational in the 1999 to 2005 period. The initial target was reached already in 2001, and the WEC Programme Committee increased the target to 2 Gt CO2e. The time frame was altered, so that projects becoming operational between 1999 and 2010 could be entered onto the database. The 2 Gt amounts to about 8% of world CO2 emissions in the year 2000 (32 Gt from all sources, 24 from energy) and is getting into the range of the Kyoto targets.
The Programme was designed by an industry Task Force, which spent a year compiling an inventory of projects. Most of the projects in the database are related to electricity generation using low or non-polluting sources. The projects database provides an opportunity for industries, financial institutions, and others seeking emissions offsets, to identify promising projects. The information in the registry can also be used for identifying potential projects for emissions trading, Joint Implementation (JI), Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) and any other bilateral or international agreements.
The system can record emissions reductions on a project basis, by country, and by the company that makes the reduction. There is no charge for companies and organisations to record their potential emissions reduction projects in the database. Project reporters must follow internationally accepted methodologies in calculating reductions. The system provides online Guidelines for recording projects. These Guidelines are fully compatible with other international conventions, including the IPCC guidelines.
Upon the completion of the five-year Pilot stage, the WEC Programme Committee decided to limit the scope of new projects to be entered in the database from 2005 to "Potential Projects" only. This will focus the database and enhance its utility as a source of information for those looking for projects which could qualify for Joint-Implementation and/or Clean Development Mechanism.
+++URL: http://www.meteocat.com/marcs/marcos_observacio/marcs_dades.htm
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Red Herring Blog
Notes From the Startup Front By Mitch Ratcliffe The Battle of Stalingrad. Yes, that’s what the sales cycle feels like when you’re in the midst… Read more May 05, 2005
End of the First-run Release Steven Soderbergh has pioneered a few new paths in his career. His Sex, Lies, and Videotape was launched not at… Read more May 02, 2005
The Next Big Thing By Mitch Ratcliffe At the risk of future embarrassment, I’m convinced that Sony’s PSP portable PlayStation is the harbinger of… Read more April 25, 2005
Technical difficulties By Alex Soojung-Kim Pang I'm stepping out of the authorial voice for a moment: there were a few technical difficulties… Read more June 17, 2005
The latest and greatest technologies usually fail to live up to their promise but examples of radical shifts abound in business. There also is a greater danger of refusing to take change seriously enough.
In the business of technology, value is created by recognizing that innovations represent both a threat and an opportunity. The task of the entrepreneur,...
The future
is an obsession. The future is an attraction. The future is an invention.
Or so the future seems through the prism of the world of business technology,
where predicting the next big thing is a central activity for everyone
from investors to technologists to evangelists.
How to think about the future is probably the most important variable
in, well, evaluating the prospects...
Mastitis means that the breast is inflamed, and there is swelling, redness, tenderness and pain.
There may be an infection, so it is wise to consult your health-care provider to determine whether
or not an antibiotic is necessary. A breast infection can become a breast abscess
that requires surgical draining, but this can almost always be prevented by treating mastitis
promptly.
Signs of mastitis include:
Part or all of the breast is intensely painful, hot, tender, red, and swollen. Some mothers
can pinpoint a definite area of inflammation, while at other times the entire breast is tender.
You feel tired, run down, achy, have chills or think you have the flu. A breastfeeding
mother who thinks she has the flu probably has mastitis. Mothers with mastitis will
sometimes experience these flu-like symptoms, even before they get a fever or notice breast
tenderness.
You have chills or feel feverish, or your temperature is 101F or higher. These
symptoms suggest that you have an infection.
You are feeling progressively worse, your breasts are growing more tender, and
your fever is becoming more pronounced. With simple engorgement, a plugged duct,
or mastitis without infection, you gradually feel better instead of worse.
Recent events have set you up for mastitis: cracked or bleeding nipples, stress or getting
run down, missed feedings or longer intervals between feedings.
PREVENTING MASTITIS
The best way to prevent mastitis is to avoid the situations that set you up for it.
Relieve engorgement promptly. Milk that doesn't flow gets thicker and clogs the ducts,
which is a set-up for mastitis.
Breastfeed frequently. Don't restrict the length of feedings.
If you feel your breasts getting full, encourage your baby to nurse. You don't have to wait for
baby to tell you he's hungry.
Avoid sleeping on your stomach or so far over on your side that your breasts are compressed
against the mattress.
Take care of yourself and get plenty of rest (both of mind and body).
REPEATED EPISODES OF MASTITIS
Problems with recurrent mastitis are usually the result of irregular breastfeeding patterns:
missing feedings, giving bottles in place of breastfeedings, or skipping pumping sessions when
separated from the baby. Recurrent mastitis may also mean that mother's immune system is
generally run down, because of fatigue and stress. Mastitis is a sign that you need to take a
closer look at your lifestyle and breastfeeding relationship and make some adjustments.
TREATING MASTITIS
Treating mastitis is much like treating engorgement only more urgent. Try these suggestions in
addition to those listed under engorgement.
Rest, rest, rest. Mastitis is an illness, so take a medical leave from all responsibilities other
than breastfeeding. Take your baby to bed with you and nurse. Rest relieves stress and
replenishes your immune system.
Alternate warm and cold compresses on your breasts. Cold compresses relieve pain;
warmth increases circulation, which mobilizes infection-fighters in the inflamed area. Lean
over a basin of warm water, stand in a warm shower, or soak in a warm bath. Warm water or
a warm, wet towel is more effective than the dry heat of a heating pad. For cold compresses,
use crushed ice in plastic bags or bags of frozen vegetables, covered with a thin dishtowel to
protect your skin.
Gently massage the area of tenderness. This increases circulation, helps to loosen any
plugged ducts in the area, and mobilizes local immune factors. Try doing this while soaking
the breast in a warm shower or bath.
Breastfeed frequently on the affected side. If it hurts to nurse the baby, start the feeding on
the breast that is not sore, and switch to the sore side after your milk lets down.
Breastfeeding is usually more comfortable when the milk is flowing. It's important to
empty the inflamed breast. As in other parts of the body, fluid that is trapped can get
infected. Your baby can empty your breast more efficiently than a breast pump. However, if
your baby is not nursing well, you may have to use a breast pump or
hand expression to get the milk out.
Vary the baby's position at the breast, so that all the ducts are emptied.
Take analgesics for fever and pain. Acetaminophen and/or ibuprofen are safe to take while
breastfeeding. Unrelieved pain not only decreases your ability to produce milk, but
suppresses your body's ability to fight infection.
Drink lots of fluids, as you would if you had the flu. Fever and inflammation increase your
need for fluids.
Boost your immune system with good nutrition.
Sleep without a bra. At other times, wear a looser fitting bra that does not put pressure on
the affected area. Or if possible, go without a bra.
Don't quit nursing at this point. Weaning increases the risk of a breast infection turning
into a breast abscess that requires surgical draining. Continuing to nurse
your baby is the best treatment for engorgement, mastitis and breast infections.
If baby refuses to nurse on the affected breast, it may be because inflammation of the milk
glands increases the sodium content of your milk, giving it a salty taste. Most babies either
don't notice or don't mind, and go right on nursing. Some may object to the change and fuss
or refuse to nurse from that side. Try starting the feeding on the unaffected side and finishing
on the salty side. As the inflammation subsides, your milk will soon return to its usual
taste.
DO YOU NEED ANTIBIOTIC TREATMENT?
You can experience the pain and inflammation of mastitis without necessarily having a bacterial
infection. Yet it is often difficult to tell whether mastitis has become a breast infection. Consult
your healthcare provider as soon as you suspect mastitis. In our medical practice, we operate on
the principle of better to treat mastitis earlier than later. Mothers who are given antibiotics too late
in the course of mastitis are more likely to wean their babies from the breast, to have a more
severe infection, and to have the infection recur.
The following guidelines can help you both determine whether or not you need an antibiotic.
You may not need an antibiotic in the following situations:
You do not have a history of frequent episodes of mastitis.
You don't feel that sick.
You have not gotten progressively sicker over the last few hours.
Your fever is not rising.
The breast pain and tenderness is not increasing.
You can easily correct whatever factors may have set you up for engorgement in the first
place.
Signs suggesting you do need antibiotic treatment:
A history of frequent mastitis
A fever that is rising.
You are feeling progressively sicker as the hours go by.
Your nipples are cracked, which allows bacteria to get into your breast tissue more easily.
Which antibiotics are best? The type of bacteria involved in mastitis is usually
staphylococcus, and the two safest and most effective classes of antibiotics against this organism
are cloxacillins and cephalosporins. Other frequently prescribed antibiotics are Augmentin or
erythromycin. All of these antibiotics are safe to take while breastfeeding. Even though you
will feel better after a few days of taking antibiotics, be sure to complete the full course of
antibiotics prescribed by your doctor (usually ten days); otherwise you run the risk of the mastitis
returning. If you don't feel better after two or three days on antibiotics, call your doctor. He or
she may wish to prescribe a different medication.
+++URL: http://www.evhead.com/2004/05/live-from-sbc-park.asp
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evhead: Live from SBC Park
About This Site
This is the personal site of Evan Williams. It has been up since 1996, in blog form since 1999.
My current job is CEO of Odeo, Inc., a startup based in
San Francisco, where I've lived since 1998. Previously, I was co-founder and CEO of Pyra Labs,
makers of Blogger, now part of Google, where I worked most of 2003-04. I'm originally
from the cornfields of Nebraska. You can find more about me on the web—but don't believe everything you read.
The views expressed here are my own and not necessarily my employer's, my cat's, or mine tomorrow.
Description: Provides The Ethics, the correspondances of Spinoza, and several excerpts from secondary sources about him, as well as links and other resources.
Author: Rudolf W. Meijer Description: Includes a biography, favorite quotes, and e-texts from Spinoza (in Latin, with some available through split-screen translated feature).
Description: "The Spinoza Net is dedicated to furthering research, knowledge and discussion about the works, reception and contributions of Baruch Spinoza." Includes e-texts, news and events, a research center, and much more!
Donations To Help EpistemeLinks: You can quickly and easily donate to support this site by using PayPal! Your donation will help defray the costs of maintaining and growing this resource. Any amount is accepted, with even $25, $50, or $100 being very helpful. You can pay by credit card with PayPal... it couldn't be simpler. I appreciate your consideration.
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+++URL: http://www.crummy.com/devel/if/gtv/
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Crummycom invites you to Guess the Verb!
Life's a gamble, and it's your turn to place a bet.
Mystery and magic await you at the Avagadro County Fair! Roaming free
of your parents for the first time, you've taken in the lights, the
sounds, and the corn dogs, when you find your attention and last
quarter drawn to a brightly lit carnival booth that invites you to
Guess the Verb!
Here you meet Lalrry, the natural language parser with a heart of
gold. He'll take your guess and spin the wheel. Guess correctly and
you'll take home a stuffed frog. Guess incorrectly and suddenly you'll
embark on adventures with much higher stakes - including your life!
These adventures will take you from the dark reaches of historic
Wyrmsworth Caverns to the dark depths of a far-flung galaxy, with many
stops in between. Along the way you'll encounter a number of strange
beings, including Dr. Sapient Prugrave, the evil warlock Do'papoc, and
Daniel Helfman. Explore, plunder and stay alive - all while avoiding
the most terrible of fates: being reunited with your parents.
So if you're looking for adventure and have a couple hours to kill,
we invite you to step right up, place your bet, and Guess the Verb!
Guess The Verb! placed 11th in the 6th Annual Interactive Fiction
Competition! My congratulations to all who entered, and my envy to
the ten who finished ahead of me. Next time, Gadget...
The Z-Machine game files require an interpreter such as Frotz.
The Guess the Verb! retail package includes the game disk (not
shown), the Bean-Wrangler 600 Operation Manual and User's Guide, a
souvenier patch from historic Wyrmsworth Caverns, a blob of white goo,
and a crouton.
This document (source) is part of Crummy, the webspace of Leonard Richardson (contact information). It was last modified on Monday, April 12 2004, 21:17:26 Nowhere Daylight Time and last built on Friday, February 10 2006, 11:00:51 Nowhere Standard Time.
+++URL: http://www.perkel.com/politics/issues/samesex.htm
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Same Sex Marriage - Should Homosexuals Marry?
Same Sex Marriage
Should Gays Marry?
Introduction
The issues of marriage are very complex, especially when dealing with issues of who should and should not be married, and what being married really means. In this article I am going to attempt to cover the issue of
marriage from a wide perspective and try to makes sense out of it. I think that a lot of confusion and polarization on the issue of gay, lesbian and same sex marriage has come from not looking at the big picture. In
this article on marriage and who should be married, I try to take into account all factors including the evolution of marriage, the history of marriage, legal issues, civil rights, human biology and reproduction,
children, religion, love, relationships, heterosexual and homosexual issues, what is normal and where normal matters. The idea is that when people look at the entire scope of issues surrounding marriage that a different
perspective is created. I contend that no matter what side of the issue you are on with regards to same sex marriage, that the arguments contained herein will give you something to think about. That even if you don't
agree with me, it will change your perspective on the subject and cause you to look at your own views in a different light.
My conclusions in this article represent my opinion and are not to be considered to be any kind of strong statement of position. This is an area where there is really no position I can take that I'm entirely comfortable
with and I will point out obvious flaws in my own arguments that undermine my position. I'm sure that there is something here to offend everyone on the planet, so if you're offended, so be it.
Biology, Sex, Reproduction, Evolution
Three billion years ago life on this planet began to reproduce by sexual reproduction. Males and females of species mated and combined their DNA to produce new individuals that combined traits from both parents. This
way of reproducing produced genetic diversity and created new traits in which the fittest survived to pass on their advantages to future generations.
Genetic superiority is just one of the factors in survival. An individual needed not only to be born, but also to survive to reproductive age and reproduce before dying. Various creatures evolved social strategies to
protect themselves and hunt for food and to defend against predators. These social groupings ranged form hives of bees to solitary individuals who survived on their own except to mate. Humans adopted a number of social
strategies in order to survive. The basic unit of survival historically has been that the parents have been the core providers of their offspring, and that these families have associated with other families into tribes
who looked out for each other. Modern governments are the evolutionary extensions of those early tribes.
With the exceptions of new technology, humans still reproduce from the mating of a male and a female. This is where we all come from. Our biological parents are not two men or two women, or three people for that matter.
We still recognize that our biological parents are usually the ones who raise the children and are primarily responsible for their upbringing. Thus there is a basis in reality to distinguish heterosexual families with
children as being directly part of the process of reproduction and the continuing the human species. The reproductive process and biological parents and families do create a logical distinction that is not an arbitrary
line. If this line could be compared to the lines that separate states on a map, this line would be like a river in that there is a natural separation.
Having said that, I'm not going to rely on that as my only reason and say that heterosexuality is good and homosexuality is bad. All I'm doing is saying that there are real distinctions that need to be recognized, and
that this distinction needs to be considered in any honest discussion about the reality of marriage. I contend that this is a significant difference and should not be ignored.
The History of Marriage
Marriage was born from primitive cultures that recognized that males and females mated and as a result produced children that needed to be cared for. The biological parents were considered to be the primary caregivers,
with other relatives and friends taking a secondary role, and the tribe or state being there on a third level. The families needed each other to survive. Women without males were often at a disadvantage and required
more resources from the tribe. It was in the interest of the tribe to require the fathers to take responsibility for the children they created and force couples to marry based on pregnancy. When the shotgun was
invented, the shotgun wedding soon followed. This was a way to preserve the family unit in cultures where surviving was a chore.
Thus marriage was a logical extension of human reproduction and that society organized around the family to survive and for society to survive. It created a recognition of the idea of couples committing for life and
raising children together and sharing the struggles of survival. In general, these social rules had more benefits to society and helped our cultures and species survive.
The definition of marriage has a long tradition of being between one man and one woman and this has been supported across virtually all cultures and has an accepted definition. This is not a concept that has had a
variety of meanings and is not undefined and ambiguous. Again, I don't hold this out as the "final argument" but as a factor to be considered in an overall discussion of the "big picture".
That was then, this is now.
On the other side of the argument is the fact that in the last 100 years, the human race has dramatically changed. No longer are we tribes of hunter-gatherers or agriculturally based communities. We are a society of
high technology. Before the telephone, a person could verbally communicate only with people within hearing distance. We didn't have telephones, radio, TV, airplanes, trains, cars, advanced medicine, genetic engineering,
the Internet, birth control, abortion, cloning, test tube babies, and other things that affect society in general. We live twice as long as people did 200 years ago. In many significant ways, we are not really the same
species of human as we were then. Yes, genetically we are almost identical compared to 200 years ago, but with our new technologies, and the resulting cultural changes, there are a lot of significant differences. And
those differences have made changes that directly affect marriage. Changes that have to be taken into consideration.
For example, "till death do us part" is a lot longer commitment than it used to be. Not many couples lived to be 45 years old. Now we're looking at 80 as a normal life span. Because of transportation and communication,
our society is much larger than it was in the past. We can associate with more people and are not limited to our own geographic area. Governments provide for the welfare of people so that their survival is not the same
as it used to be. We have birth control allowing women to mate with a variety of men without creating children. Our entire culture is so different and technology has changed things to such an extent that we are required
to rethink our option of what kind of relationships we can have and to retest our views of marriage as to what it is now, and what it means. Marriage is not the same as it used to be and it is both legitimate and
necessary, in lieu of the changes in mankind, to examine if marriage, which existed unchanged for thousands of years, means the same thing these days.
Marriage in modern times. What does it mean?
I look at marriage as having meaning in three separate contexts. What is a marriage to the State? What is a marriage to the Church? And finally, what is marriage between individuals? I think we are really talking about
three separate issues here and in our public discourse as to "What is Marriage?" it often ends up in an argument where these different contexts are mixed up. If we separate these issues and deal with them individually,
we can get a better perspective on the big picture and argue about it on the same level.
There is nothing that restricts individuals from committing to each other and deciding between themselves, and perhaps their friends, that they are a couple, and that they intend to share their lives together. This
includes people of the same sex as well as marriages between more than two people. Mormons do it all the time where they redefine marriage for themselves allowing men to marry multiple women. These personal commitments
are between individuals and are not recognized by the government. But this is America, and we have freedom to choose whom we live with and whom we commit to without the State interfering in our personal lives.
As to the Church, different churches have different beliefs as to what marriage means as well as what divorce means. My feeling is that a church does not have to change to meet the needs of individuals who have
different beliefs. If a relationship is important to you and you are morally comfortable with it, but the church isn't, change churches. The battle there is over belief systems that are arbitrary and have little or
nothing to do with reality. If you are a gay catholic, you are going to have conflict, and no laws are going to solve your problem. My opinion is that all religions are wrong and are more or less equal in that none of
them are right, except my religion of course. I am the founder of the Church of Reality. "If it's real, we believe in it." We take no position on marriage and view it
as
a personal commitment.
Government Marriage
Then finally there's the government or state marriage. This is the one that is recognized by the courts. In the mind of most people it constitutes an official marriage and therefore has a reality implied. The State
refuses to grant a government marriage to just anyone. You have to be a heterosexual couple, of two and only two people. You have to be of age that varies based on lines on a map. These same lines on a map determine
what marital rights you have and the law is applied based on your current location, not the state you were married in. Government marriage gives you rights to property, inheritance, and the power of attorney to act in
behalf of the spouse in certain circumstances. There are also tax laws and health care benefits associated with state marriages and being a couple in the eyes of society. This is where the controversy lies. Who should
be allowed to marry in the eyes of the State?
Before I get into that, I want to first talk about what a state marriage is and how it has changed over the years. In that past, societies and tribes recognized marriage as a lifelong commitment to be together between
to people of the opposite sex. Most religions still officially view it that way. The words "till death do us part" or "as long as we both shall live" is still part of the wedding ceremony. However, in the United States
and many other countries, laws have changed allowing for "no fault divorce".
What this means is that either party, without the need for justification, can break the marriage contract and get a divorce. If one party merely changes their mind, they can petition the State for a divorce and end the
lifelong commitment. And here in the United States, most of them do. Before 1970 this was not the case. In order to get a divorce there had to be grounds to break the lifelong contract. Some states required proof of
adultery to grant a divorce. In those days the state and society recognized a marriage as being a lifelong commitment, and the other rights associated with the marriage was based on the idea of a lifelong commitment.
But all that has changed. By allowing for no fault divorce the State has changed the definition of a marriage as far as the government and society is concerned. The provision of a lifelong commitment is no longer
something that is part of the law. For all practical purposes, the "traditional marriage" is a concept that is already dead as far as the government is concerned. The United States no longer recognizes the concept of
marriage as a life commitment in law. Therefore, I contend that there is no difference between homosexuals and heterosexuals in that no one can really get married in the traditional sense anymore. What we think of as
marriage no longer has an official place in society as far as support in the law. What we think of as marriage is gone. What we are fighting over is what's left of it.
In the eyes of the State and the Courts, marriage has nothing to do with a lifelong commitment, love, sex, or family beyond child support. Marriage as been reduced to a really bastardized and bizarre property contract
that also includes a package of rights forming an economic relationship between two people. If your marriage should fail and either party file for divorce, the State takes control of all your assets and divides
everything between two lawyers who slowly destroy your live over a period of years. The government has given the institution of marriage over to the lawyers so that they can profit off the misery of the public and break
up families for profit. The reality is that the State has become the enemy of families and the traditional marriage and has already effectively destroyed it. Lawyers control marriage, and families are only lawyer food
to the lawyers controlled courts.
In that context, I contend, that a marriage by the State is a bad deal for everyone and that what society thinks of as a marriage no longer exists. State marriages are a fraud by the government against the people and
are a bad deal for everyone. No one in his or her right mind, who understands what a state marriage really is, would ever do it. The reality of it is that although homosexuals think they are being discriminated against
by being denied a state marriage, in fact it is not something they would want if they really knew what it really was. As a heterosexual I think we should be equal in eliminating the concept of the state marriage
entirely or restore it to a system that recognizes the lifelong commitment aspect of it. If commitment isn't recognized by the State, then there really is no marriage and it's a fraud for the State to pretend that
marriage isn't already a dead concept in the eyes of the law.
Domestic Partnerships and other Legal Agreements
A domestic partnership is another level of commitment where people live together and are presumably have some sort of love/sexual bond or spiritual bond sharing aspects of family. I think it would be a good idea to
break down the legal rights package that comes with marriage and have people, including married people, contract with each other these marital rights specifically in contract form. Much of this could be done on the web
with or without lawyers. Thus the couples can decide what property to share communally, write a will setting out whom inherits what, naming people to be in charge in case of medical emergencies, who has hospital
visitation right, guardian of children, and other things that should not be presumed to be the rights of the spouse. You may love your domestic partner, but your old girlfriend is a doctor and you want her to make those
life and death medical decisions for you. This should be spelled out and not presumed.
In this modern world I think that the definition of marriage has changed and that the old definition, as modified by no fault divorce laws, should be replaced by a new system where the rights of marriages and domestic
partners are contracted for individually and specifically as part of the legal joining process. There would be the requirement for the terms of terminating the relationship as well as to who would get what in death or
divorce. That way the couple doesn't fall victim to a legal system that allows the courts to give everything you own to lawyers should the relationship fail. Thus, in order to get state recognition of the relationship,
the relationship should be defined and that the same set of rights to contract as domestic partners should be available to everyone.
What about Children
One of the differences between heterosexual marriages and homosexual marriages is that heterosexuals can produce new children that are born of the marriage. And, as we all know, marriage isn't required to produce
children. And, homosexuals do often adopt children and adopted children are the same, more or less, as biological children in the eyes of the State. Although it is more the norm for children to be born in the context of
marriage, marriage and being parents, in these days of high divorce, are two separate things. One can not divorce their children and the relationship as parent continues whether the marriage or domestic partnership
continues or not.
Thus I see the issue of parental responsibilities as being a separate issue. However, as to commitment in the eyes of the state and with regard to property and rights, a marriage with children should be looked at by the
courts differently than one without children. When people create children together, they are legally responsible to that child and to each other as partners in raising that child and should be held to a different legal
standard, with regard to mutual property and income, than families with no children, or grown children involved.
In any breakup of any relationship there will be aspects that have to be assumed or determined by the courts. I contend that the basis for assumed mutual property or responsibilities are different if children are born
of the relationship or children have been adopted. Thus the state should not treat relationships with children and without children living at home in the same manner.
In Conclusion
Having said all this, my personal belief is that the title of marriage, and the word marriage, refers to the union of one man and one woman and that the word properly belongs to the heterosexual community. I base this
on the biological fact of sexual reproduction and thousands of years of tradition and the biological family as the basis for my opinion. I also include non-reproducing heterosexuals as being "grandfathered" into this
group through tradition.
If we open up the definition of marriage to include same sex marriage then why limit it to two people? Why not three, four, or five people. Why not let people marry thier pets? After all, you cat is much more likely to
make a life long commitment to you than a human will and can be trusted to be more loyal and respectful of the relationship. Since I have explained a system of allowing the same rights, I feel that the trem marriage
belongs to the heterosexual community and is defined to recognize our biological roots.
In my definition I resist the state definition of no fault divorce and I contend that a person who wants out of a marriage through no fault should do so through annulment and forfeit some property rights based on breach
of contract. I think that if a person merely changes their mind then they never really committed for life and "for better or worse" and are not entitled to the property benefits that the other spouse gave as part of
that commitment. If one spouse doesn't uphold the commitment for life part, then they other spouse should be entitled to property compensation.
I also believe that the individual rights should be contracted for up front so both parties know specifically what they are agreeing to, and that these rights be available to domestic partnerships of all sexual
combinations. Thus a homosexual couple could decide to share all the rights of a heterosexual couple in marriage by contract, and that marriage would also requires rights be contracted so as to avoid assumptions and
misunderstandings.
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Welcome
to Aardvark
Archie's Guide to DIRTY JOKES, the site that knows a dirty joke when it
hears one!
For the best in Adult Jokes and really funny dirty jokes and humor, just click
on the links below to get reading some of the funniest dirty jokes, funny stories
and adult humor around.
UNESCO and the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS)
The World Summit on the Information Society was held in two phases. The first phase of WSIS took place in Geneva hosted by the Government of Switzerland from 10 to 12 December 2003. It addressed the broad range of themes concerning the Information Society and adopted a Declaration of Principles and Plan of Action.
The second phase took place in Tunis hosted by the Government of Tunisia, from 16 to 18 November 2005.
UNESCO with its unique mandate to promote the free exchange of ideas and knowledge has plated a key role in the WSIS preparation. UNESCO’s contribution incorporated the ethical, legal and sociocultural dimensions of the Information Society and helped to grasp the opportunities offered by the ICTs by placing the individual at its centre.
UNESCO encouraged the broadest possible participation by decision-makers, professional communities, representatives of civil society, bilateral and multilateral partners and the private sector in a debate on the conditions for the development of an information society for all.
"And it will be if listen(ing) you shall listen to my commandments"
This verse marks the beginning of the Torah's discussion of the concept of
accepting upon oneself to fulfill all of HaShem's mitzvos (commandments).
In the preceding weekly portion, the concept of accepting the Yoke of the
Heavenly Kingship is discussed. It would seem at first that a commitment to
fulfill all of the mitzvos is included in the acceptance of HaShem's
rulership. After all, if one accepts HaShem's dominion over oneself, it
automatically follows that one is obligated to fulfill HaShem's laws - the
mitzvos. Why, then, is the idea of accepting the mitzvos discussed as a
separate concept?
There is an important aspect to the concept of accepting the mitzvos that
is not included in the idea of accepting HaShem's dominion. This aspect is
the importance of fulfilling the mitzvos out of love for HaShem, and not
only because HaShem is the Ruler of the Universe. This significant aspect
of fulfilling the mitzvos out of love for Hashem is not necessarily
included in an acceptance of HaShem's dominion. Consequently, it is
appropriate to accept upon oneself the yoke of miktzvos out of love for
HaShem, independently of one's acceptance of the dominion of HaShem.
A number of the people who's blogs I read regularly have not set up their systems to provide a full text feed of each post. 40 words is not enough for me to accurately decide if I want to read something or not. More often than not the post gets deleted.
Please consider offering an alternative feed for those of us who want full text. That said, I don't offer 40 word excerpts on my feed so if you want one ask and I'll set it up.
Let me add my vote to this request as well. I find that it takes an absolutely compelling headline and a lead graf and available time for me to go check out a full post that isn't already in my aggregator. Do I risk missing something compelling? Possibly. But if you're primary goal is to get your content read, then a full feed is your best bet from my selfish perspective.
I know that there are those, like Liz Lawley, who still prefer to read blog posts in situ. I'm an informavore, however, and I don't find enough incremental information content in the typical blog site to warrant regular visits to the site over consuming the posts by way of a full feed. To me the default behavior of some blogging tools to offer abbreviated feeds is a holdover from such discredited notions as stickiness and aggregating eyeballs.
On the other side, choice is good. If there is any interest in seeing an abbreviated posts feed or titles only feed here, let me know in the comments and I'll add it.
Wiki - KM survey. Martin Cleaver and his fellow students from the Michael G. Degroote School of Business are running an interesting questionnaire on using TWiki for KM. BTW your inputs would be greatly appreciated by their class. KM surveys have become something of... [Knowledge-at-work]
Electronic Portfolio White Paper. Everybody is talking about e-portfolios these days, and this paper talks about them a lot, 68 PDF pages worth. With contributors from Blackboard, eCollege, EDUCAUSE and a bunch of universities, among others, this paper also carries some clout. The paper aims to provide "a comprehensive review of electronic portfolios, from a conceptual understanding of applications to identifying technical and interoperability requirements (and) to provide a conceptual overview exploring potential opportunities and challenges to electronic portfolio adopters and developers." This it does, with a series of use cases and a good conceptual overview. Several architectures are proposed, but in the end, only the 'peer-to-peer' model is worth considering, since the others are tied to enterprise systems. Comprehensive references and resources. If you are interested in ePortfolios, I can't think of a better place to start than with this discussion. By Gary Greenberg, ed., ePort Consortium, November 3, 2003 [Refer][Research][Reflect] [OLDaily]
The notion of portfolios is relevant and applicable well beyond the campus. I routinely ask to see samples of people's work when interviewing. We all produce portfolios of our work. The question is how well organized is your portfolio.
David Brett of Knexa, a friend of mine, just sent me this link, to consultants who look like they've put language to Drucker's notion that knowledge workers own the means of production in an increasingly knowledge-based economy (see his article titled Beyond the Information Revolution, a central article to the creation of the concept of wirearchy for me).
I have spoken and written about this sea-change in the nature of work in terms of the "Mass Customization of Work", which I think is the logical and very likely result of individuals' knowledge and working styles (necessarily) interweaving with the structure and flow of large integrated systems for the distribution and manipulation of information.
I'll have to check out in more detail the site of Volitional Partners, who say they are launching a revolution in the nature of work, wherein individual employees "own" their knowledge. It looks interesting, and also looks like they want to stake out some mindspace with their language and wordings.
There are many people, processes and applications purporting to do some or all of this, in terms of human capital, intellectual capital, social capital, relationship capital and so on. I think it's all part of a very big and very permanent shift, in which conversations and dialogue between human minds, imagination, voice and purpose play a central role.
Nothing is more human than the capability to engage in conversation and dialogue, point and argue, push back and pull forward ideas into newer, more interesting, more stimulating, more coherent shapes. This will be central to work, to culture and to democracy as we believe it should be, in the next few years to come.
My first reactions to the site of Volitional Partners are more cynical than Jon's. We have lots of perfectly serviceable language already. Anyone whose homepage is littered with neologisms, trademark symbols, and talk of "Proprietary Platforms" has dug themselves a hole that I am reluctant to explore.
It comes across as a hybrid cross between New Age Mysticism and MBA MarketingSpeak. I can only hope it's a sterile hybrid. If there is something real and useful there, wouldn't it come across without the noise?
Jon calls this another step along the way. I wonder in what direction?
In a recent post I argued that IT and Knowledge Management (KM) should merge into a combined TechKnowledgy department that would, in addition to the traditional responsibilities for managing the financial, HR and sales systems and technical hardware of the organization, take on these two important new responsibilities focused on the individual 'knowledge worker':
1. Social Software Applications:Development of new social software applications for front-line employees, including:
Expertise locators - to help people find other people inside and outside the organization they need to talk with to do their job more effectively.
Personal content management tools - simple, weblog-type tools that organize, access and selectively publish each individual's 'filing cabinet', as a replacement for failed centralized content management systems.
Personal collaboration tools - wireless, portable videoconferencing and networking tools that save travel costs and allow people to participate virtually in events where they cannot afford to participate in person.
Personal researching and reporting tools - technologies and templates that enable effective do-it-yourself business research and analysis and facilitate the preparation of professional reports and presentations.
2. Personal Productivity Improvement:Hands-on assistance to front-line employees -- helping them make effective use of technology and knowledge, including the above tools, one-on-one, in the context of their individual roles. Not training, not wait-for-the-phone-to-ring help desk service -- face to face, scheduled sessions where individuals can show what they do and what they know, and experts can show them how to do it better, faster, and take the intelligence of what else is needed back to HO so developers can improve effectiveness even more. I've written before about social software applications, and noted that Business 2.0 has named these applications the Best New Technology of 2003.
IT/KM professions inside the organization, to get executive buy-in and resources for it, and
external IT/KM consultants who want to sell this service to organizations that prefer to outsource it.
I hope you find it useful and I would welcome comments on it. I am looking to organize a virtual collaborative enterprise of IT/KM professionals interested in providing this service, so I may also post it on Ryze/LinkedIn.
What do you think -- could people make a living doing this?
More spot on insight from Dave Pollard. This ties in nicely with several lines of thought I've been exploring. Take a look at Is Knowledge Work Improvable? for example.
The key challenge here is that success depends more on leadership than on management.
I've been using MoinMoin as my personal information management platform for the last several weeks. This had several goals. First, I needed to get my growing collection of documents under control. Secondly, I really wanted to dive into wikis a lot deeper and this gives me a great chance to do just that.
So here is a brief update about what I have found so far.
I am amazed at how useful the auto linking and document templating is for PIM type functions. It is really a snap to put some rudimentary organization on the material and then let it develop from there.
I was initially worried that what I needed was more structured database style storage for contact information and such, but doing it freeform doesn't seem to have anty real disadvantages that I have found yet.
MoinMoin has a pretty cool regex based query tool that lets you collect links to other pages. I have made good use of this to create a very low maintenance set of navigation pages so my info is only one to two clicks away. Very Handy.
Wikis really help me write ... all the fuss about how it really is designed for writers not readers is apparently true, at least in my case. I find it easier to write in my wiki than in MS Word. Perhaps less clutter? More focus on the words?
I have also made use of editmoin which allows me to use vim to edit my documents which may contribute to the ease of writing somewhat. Here is an Infoworld article noting that writers tend to work in minimal writing tools. Maybe that is partly what I've experienced.
I have had to spend sometime on buffing up the css stylesheets. This is mainly because a lot of my formal documents need to get emailed out to customers and I have been converting them to PDF and sending them that way. This required some adjustment to the styles.
[Note to MoinMoin developers: It would be cool if the print preview used a different stylesheet... Then I could highlight uncreated WikiWords in the regular view but not the print view ...]
Finally, I am using JPluck to sync the content of my Wiki to my Palm Pilot. That way all the info I need is always at my fingertips. It took some adjustments to the spidering controls to get it to focus only on what I wanted, but it has worked out very well.
So far this has been extremely successful. More reports as events warrent ;-)
Here's a perfect example of why Ed's blog is in my subscription list. This is excellent perspective on similar experiments I've been trying to get some traction on.
When Cooperation Breaks Out, Civilizations Advance
As a mobile technology professional (ok an on the road every day of the working week consultant) cooperation with my peers is extremely difficult and yet when it happens the rewards are great. I believe that the impact that community or collaborative tools can have on mobile professionals is even greater than on people who have opportunities to interact face to face on a regular basis. This is kind of like an un-tapped market for collaboration ...
Really just wanted to point to Ed Taekema's relatively new blog, Road Warrior Collaboration (RSS Feed), about his experiences trying to do effective knowledge work as a road warrior. I spend way too much time on the road myself and I've found that most software tools don't really deal well with the problems of mobile professionals, no matter what the marketing claims of vendors may be. Ed's blog provides some helpful perspective.
For those of us that can't afford John Peterson's LISA solution then implement this! For your own name, for the name of your blog, for all the things you search for each day.
If you have some topic you follow--if you want your newsreader to keep "pumping" it right to your desk--just do one search for it at Feedster.com. Then, get the rss url of the search itself to transfer into your own newsreader. Awesome. Feedster search rss urls are indicated with these icons: -- Gives you the full post -- Gives you the summary and headlines You don't have to run that search ever again--because your aggregator will do it for you, automatically, and for free.
Mary Ellen Bates on tips for searching effectively. These are her tips, not mine. My comments, when I have them, are parenthetical.
I almost hate to share these, because these are the kind of tips that let people like me come across as an “angel of information mercy” to the people who ask me for help in finding things!
BTW, Mary Ellen is a great presenter. Funny, interesting, clear. She’s got a free “tip of the month” email update, which you can also read on her web site.
Always use more than one search engine. (You’ll often get very different results; useful to triangulate.) See a test at www.batesinfo.com
If you fancy yourself a knowledge worker, search skills had better be in your repetoire and you had better be looking to improve those skills routinely.
Knowledge searching. It may be a little passe, but the Johari window in its many re-incarnations, remains a useful reminder when looking at personal or organizational knowledge. Knowledge assets There are a number of variations depending on where you are coming from... [Knowledge-at-work]
Questions matter. "You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers. You can tell whether a man is wise by his questions." Naguib Mahfouz (Nobel Prize Winner) It seems far harder to ask a really good question than to supply... [Knowledge-at-work]
KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- It's been nearly 40 years since President John F. Kennedy's assassination, but questions and theories about the shooting that shocked the nation won't go away.
Retired FBI agent James Hosty says recently declassified documents reveal a lot of information about the case, with which he is intimately familiar. Before Kennedy was murdered, Hosty said he was assigned to investigate Lee Harvy Oswald.
In a book he penned, Hosty says Oswald visited the Russian Embassy in Mexico for clandestine reasons just before the assassination.
"They were trying to pull an inside coup and overthrow Castro, and Castro found out about it," Hosty said. "And that's when Oswald went to Mexico City, met with the KGB chief assassin for the Western Hemisphere, and met with the Cubans."
Hosty said he was already looking into Oswald before Kennedy's death, but was missing some details.
"We found out after the assassination that Oswald had offered to kill Kennedy to the Cubans," he said.
Hosty said that lack of information happened in part because investigative agencies were not sharing information.
"There was a breakdown on the part of the National Security Council, breakdown on a part of the FBI, breakdown on part of the CIA," he said.
Antonia reported that the pictures of the past are still not complete -- a sentiment which Hosty shared.
"We'll never know for sure because Oswald's dead," he said. "In fact, many of the people involved are deceased. It's been 40 years; it's kind of hard to put it all together."
Hosty was interviewed for a Nov. 20 ABC News special that will tie into the 40th anniversary of the Kennedy assassination. He is also slated to speak Thursday at 7 p.m. at Johnson County Community College in a free event.
Copyright 2003 by TheKansasCityChannel.com. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Rough translation, according to a guy I met on the street: "How long did it take the Twin Towers to fall? 8 seconds. How long will it take to save Williamsburg from the artists???" (He stumbled over the word "artists," so I suspect it's a not-so-polite term for hipsters.)
Update: An apparently more accurate translation, via Choire:
"How long did it take for the 'Twin Towers' to fall apart? 8 seconds... How long will it take for Williamsburg? God forbid!"
I walk by the Gretsch Building all the time as they convert it to condos. I see the Orthodox walking around shaking their heads... change is a good thing.
Hope we get more cool bars, and they fix up that damn Marcy subway stop!!!
Artists as terrorists? Are you sure this isn't some hipster plot to draw people to an art event? Didn't think the zionist goofballs were this creative.
Doesn't anyone think it's slightly wrong to compare the downing of the twin towers by terrorists to the hipster infiltration of Billyburg? Methinks the jews in da hood have gone slightly over the edge on this one.
Way to force a completely random parallel from 9/11 to the hipster invasion of Williamsburg.I am still shaking my head....That was absurd, weird, uhmmm gratuitously graphic.
Great posts everyone- really strong insights, and really pithy comments. This board is doing so well- I'm really psyched to be part or it.
So anyway, how long WILL it take to rid Williamsburg of the hippster contingent?
Posted by: Dolpherstuff at December 30, 2003 02:52 PM
Yeah, you know, using the WTC on the poster was retarded. The sentiment is right on, though--I think people of all races, creeds, nationalities, colors, sexes, and ages wish the hipsters would just fucking go away.
Williamsburg will be rid of the hipster contingent when they age and become the rich middle-aged art-dealer contingent -- sort of like what has happened to Soho.
My money is on the Upper East Side to be the next super-hip neighborhood. Well, that or Bushwick.
I like your photos, a sort of lame analogy for the digital age of weegee.
Anyway, eff that, screw williamsburg and screw hipsters, I could care less. You want rot, try Ohio. But, why would you want such a thing anyway? Are you documenting our demented souls, or our shuck and jive attitude toward death?
Lets have some real realism and leave all the kissy face to the schmucks. I got a digital camera. Don't you?
pogobean--
re: your ignorant comment about the "zionist goofballs" who posted this poster. the Satmar Hasidim, the Hasidim who live in Southside Williamsburg, are avowedly and publicly ANTI-Zionist. but you're right, they are Jewish.
pretty much anyone these days who speaks yiddish is going to be anti-zionist. anyone who is a zioninst would speak hebrew and not be such a fan of yiddish.
for the guy who thought yiddish was only spoken: not so long ago there were at least 3 daily yiddish newspapers in NYC...now i think there are just a couple weekly papers... there used to be a lot of yiddish lit. as well, i think I. B. Singer was prolly the most famous...
Yiddish also has a rich literary tradition. It's more of a creole than a dialect (sort of like English), and has a written form and has several of its own spoken dialects. It uses the Hebrew alphabet, but it's not Hebrew; that'd be (ok not really, but sort of) like calling Euskara Spanish.
considering the fact that the hasidim believe that world events happen based on whether they are living righteous lives or not, the infiltration of the artists and their immodest lifestyles on their holy community is an invasion of the spiritual walls they have built up for decades in their community- and when their community goes its only so long till the world falls into spiritual, and subsequently physical, disrepair. don't mean to sound overly apocalyptic but we are living in pretty chaotic times
oh and i was there two summers ago at a junkyard music fest down on broadway and wythe when all the hasidic kids were dancing on their porches across the street to the yeahyeahyeah's and the liars on their holy sabbath. so they're definitely being exposed to stuff that they never were before and according to their traditions this stuff is considered spiritually harmful
I sympathize with groups that want to live apart from the secular world -- but if you want to do that, you can't do it in the middle of Brooklyn and then get upset when other people try to have their own communities in Brooklyn. You want to be shielded from the world? Buy up some farmland in the middle of nowhere and do whatever you want. If you live in a city, you have to understand that you can't control who moves in next door.
My only comment is that when I first glanced at it, I thought it was from some Islamic terror group, but now I see it's the other side. ?? Wacky World of Love we live in, these are the same jerks who shove you out of the way w hen they walk in a hoard on the Williamsburg bridge. What goes around comes around I say.
PogoBean, you're a moron. Get the facts straight next time.
The Satmar community of Williamsburg is the most virulently ANTI-Zionist Orthodox Jewish community on the face of the earth. Their late "Rebbe" taught them that Zionism was nothing but an insidious heresy to true Judaism, and that when the Messiah comes, he will destroy all the buildings built by the Zionists.
Well, having been raised in Williamsburg since a few days after birth I can tell you that the Hasidic community doesn't coexist with you as much as they live over there while you live over here. But they live very segregated lives and its no surprise that some of them would look down on the rise of a new community to share Williamsburg with.
Growing up, I used to point out that the Hasidic community was on the "other side of the tracks" from the Latino community, that is on the other side of broadway.
And as rent prices went up and we had to move, sure as hell my friends and I was pissed, and blaming the hipsters.
Latinos were the invaders once. Change can be atough thing to take. But its inevitable.
I guess it all depends on whose ox is being gored. I have friends in both of these worlds. The Hasidim do wall themselves off from those whom they see as acting contrary to their tradition (guys in Mohawks, girls in miniskirts, etc.) However, I think the walls are on both sides. I've seen very little evidence that purported "liberals" are any more interested in understanding the Hasidim, than the Hasidim are in understanding the "artists." If you show them respect, ask them what their needs are, indicate that you will come halfway and that you will give them their space, you will find that (after overcoming fairly deeply-rooted mistrust) they will reciprocate. When you get behind the black-coated wall, you will find that they are pragmatists (study their relationship w/Gov. Pataki, for ex.) It will take some diplomacy, but if you want to do it, it's doable.
Anyone see the irony of a hasid bitching because the hipsters invade? If it weren't for us hipsters, who would rent those rediculously overpriced lofts and warehouses they own? Invaders? Pshaw.., more like bread and butter. Unlevened that is...
pretty much anyone these days who speaks yiddish is going to be anti-zionist. anyone who is a zioninst would speak hebrew and not be such a fan of yiddish."
Well that has certainly been the prevailing attitude since post-WWII. But I think now as Jews start to reclaim all their heritage, Yiddish will be more recognized as a literately and culturally important language. I'm starting to learn Yiddish to understand the jokes and stories I heard in my childhood. The hebrew alphabet used is a bit of a deterrent, but once you get that, the language is not hard to pick up, easier than german. And the history is very rich.
I am an ardent Zionist, peace-loving, and a big fan of Yiddish. Reclaim your heritage!
Believe it or not, Satmar Chassidim are a very diverse group. These signs probably represent the opinion of a handful of people. Folks in Williamsburg often get used to the random signs in Yiddish or English and don't really react to them so much. I know its tempting to just group them all together because, to you, they all look the same. But, in reality, that's like saying that since the NBA all looks the same, they must all be serial rapists and adulterers (except that the NBA is much smaller than the Satmar Chassidim). Lets try to be less blatantly biggoted.
The sign doesn't say anything about artists. I don't know who told you that but its a good idea to do a fact check before you make accusations. That way you don't have to run an idiot check later.
I can't understand the Satmars..Wouldn't they rather have as neighbours hipster artists who are basically civilised - if very 'modern' human beings - rather than lowlife Puerto Rican criminal thieves, killers and hooligans who used to terrorise them and their families?
yeah--that poster says NOTHING whatsoever about hipsters OR artists:
vi lang hot es gedoiert far di twin towers tsuzamentsufalen (How long did it take for the twin towers to fall together)? 8 sekondes (8 seconds).
vi lang darf es gedoiert far viliamsburg (How long should/must/will it take for williamsburg)? Khas v'kholiles (God forbid)!
dude--check your translations before you start riling up the legions of hipster-defense! yiddish has a lot of ambiguous meanings, but this poster has GORNISHT (nothing)! let hasidim AND artists unite over slick black hats :)
--peace
The drawings are inaccurate they show the top floors collapsing first. If you look at the video in slow-mo you see that the bottom floors were blown first. Intersting how the govts version of events has already become accepted history.
Posted by: noble savage at October 2, 2004 11:32 PM
"I don't see any word on the sign that says 'artist' it only says 'how long will it have taken until Williamsburg falls'." That last sentence has weird grammer I might not understand.
C'Mon, if you're going to show off, at least give them a translation. This all might also have to do with their various internal squabbles, not the "artisen."
And if you think the Hassids up there are rude now, in the 80s the Satmars had death threats out on the Lubuvitcher Rebbe, and the Katzenbergers (another smaller Willimsburg sect) used to do Shomrim patrols with Shotguns. Now, people get upset over a sign. God Bless.
Fuck all of the goddamned hipsters and the gentrification movement. Destroying NYC is not so fucking hip. While I am at it...fuck the Nets, Jets and Columbia University.
THE ARTISTS could very well mean the (possible) Mossad agents who were busted on 11/9 for being stangely up-beat. fbi had been warning people about spies from israel and that they had a cover as "israeli-art-school students". they were picked up by police but soon were spirited out of the country.
People are moving to Bushwick? white people? pretentious corn fed middle america rebeling againt mommie and daddy's $$$ youths moving into my beloved Buschwick? God forbid! What's next? Bedford-Stuyvesant? East New York? Stop the middle america invation of the inner city! Now before the Donald starts building up in Bushwick Junction!
I think its just the work of a demented graphic designer, who thought it was "cool" to compare it to the Twin Towers. NOT COOL! As a Jewish orthodox woman, I appreciate their concern for their children's spirtuality, but I do think that the ad is gruesome.
A) Satmar Hasidim are in a different world. Much like all races, don't judge all of us by them. Besides, this is only a handful of them. Judge people as individuals.
B) I don't like hipster hippies. They talk about peace and art and saving the world, but end up just smelling bad and smokinh pot. Painting a derelict toilet purple is NOT art. A few good years in the Marine Core ought to knock some sense into them.
C) I don't like Williamsburg much period. Take me to Gravesend, baby!
"Do as we say, not as we do."
The Hasids quite successfully took over my old neighborhood in Borough Park, even going so far as to offer to buy up, for cash, nearly every house that hit the market, lest some undesirables move into 'their' community.
And this is far from the only example of this type of behavior.
I am fluent in Yiddish and you have a mistaken translation. The translation is, "How long did it take for the Twin Towers to collapse? 8 seconds! How long will it take for Williamsburg, G-d forbid?"
From the poster, it is not clear what it is referring to. (Your Satmarer friend may have been referring to the spiritual collapse of Williamsburg because of the immorality of the artists, but it does not seem so obvious to me.)
Posted by: Scott Wilkins at January 15, 2005 02:21 PM
I read Yiddish and Choire's translation is correct. There is not one word about artists in this poster. All you anti-semites who posted nasty comments are showing your true colors.
To leave an incorrect translation under this poster is not right. The translation by choire is accurate. Who translated this in the first place? You translated an abbreviation of "God forbid" to mean "the artists".
Since I'm an aspiring artist moving soon into the area, I now know who to hassle! It seems like the only way to get people to lighten up, is to invent an anti-gravity machine.
By TechWeb.com
Dell on Wednesday launched a promotion that gives customers who send in their old Apple iPod a $100 rebate on the Round Rock, Texas-based computer giant's own digital music player.
The mail-in rebate applies to purchases of Dell's $199 15GB Digital Jukebox player, a model the company rolled out last fall. The player can hold approximately 7,000 tracks, said Dell. (The company also makes a 20GB model that can store about 9,000 songs.)
Apple's market-leading iPod player comes in several models, including a 15GB device that retails for $299.
In other digital music news, Apple announced that its iTunes online music service on Friday will pass the 95 million mark in song sales. To celebrate, Apple debuted its own promotion as it counts down to 100 million.
Each customer who downloads the 100,000th song between 95 and 100 million will get a free 20MB iPod, said Apple, and the lucky person who downloads the 100 millionth song will receive an Apple PowerBook laptop, a 4oGB iPod, and gift certificate for 10,000 iTunes.
Apple has sold more than 1.5 million tracks in the U.K., France, and Germany in the two weeks since it opened the iTunes service in those countries.
NetSupport Manager PC Remote Control
Perform remote support and management on multiple systems simultaneously over a LAN, WAN and the Internet with this PC remote control software. Provides speedy, secure remote PC access, dynamic inventory, automated scripting and more.
T1 Lines as Low as $240 for 1st 3 Months
Get a Covad T1 line for as low as $240 per month for the first 3 months. Free installation. Keep your business a step ahead. Check availability now.
Want to know your CIS security score?
The CIS has developed detailed IT security benchmarks which will help make your computer more secure. Click here to download the Belarc Advisor which will automatically show you how secure your system is compared to the CIS benchmark configurations.
Free IT Compliance Resources From ITCi
Stop wasting time and money on redundant compliance efforts. Download free compliance resources from ITCi's Unified Compliance Project - including IT Impact Matrices, White Papers, and Compliance Webcasts - and learn how to unify your efforts.
Try WebEx Web Conferencing Free
WebEx online meetings and web conferencing solutions: Meet colleagues online, host web events, train your staff, provide live support. Try it out free now.
+++URL: http://www.wnem.com/Global/story.asp?S=2027148
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WNEM-TV5 Missing Bay County Girl Found Asleep In Her Bed
(TV5-AP) Linwood--A two-year-old girl missing for several hours is safe in her home in Bay County's Fraser Township. Melina Roberts' mother reported her missing Sunday night.
State police, firefighters and relatives searched the home at least six times without finding the girl. Neighbors checked the house and surrounding corn fields, north of Linwood, for about two hours. Searchers even drained the family's swimming pool.
A last check of the house late Sunday night found the girl sleeping in her bed. Troopers say she may have been hiding in the house or outside somewhere, then wandered back and fell asleep.
Real
Estate Commission-Approved Contracts and Forms
Note:
You must have the free Acrobat Reader
software to view and print these Adobe Acrobat formatted
forms. If you already have Acrobat Reader, it must
be the 5.0 version, or better. Clicking on the link
above will allow you to upgrade to 6.0.
** If you receive error messages, please try
upgrading to 6.0**
Editor
Note: At their April 5, 2005 meeting the Real Estate
Commission voted to begin the transition to property
listing and buyer representation forms that incorporate
the "uniform duties" concept as printed
in forms: LC 50, BC 60, LC 53, LC 54, LC 57 AND
ETC 59.
At the time of the printing of this Manual, the
above-mentioned forms are available for use but
not mandatory until January 1, 2006, at which time
all of the "Listing Contracts" as printed
in the 2004 Manual will be repealed.
The
individual "Listing Contracts" as printed
in the 2004 Manual are acceptable for use until
January 1, 2006. For reference to those contracts,
please refer to the 2004 version of the Manual.
Editor
Note: At their October 4, 2005 meeting the Real
Estate Commission voted to adopt the following forms:
SPD19-10-05 SELLER'S PROPERTY DISCLOSURE (ALL TYPES
OF PROPERTIES)
ETC59-10-05 EXCLUSIVE TENANT CONTRACT (FOR ALL TYPES
OF PREMISES)
CIC33-10-05 COMMON INTEREST COMMUNITY (CIC) DOCUMENTS
RECEIPT AND DISCLOSURE TO BUYER
BDD56-10-05 BROKERAGE DUTIES DISCLOSURE TO SELLER
(REO and Non-CREC Approved Listing Agreements)
At the time of the printing of this Manual, the
above-mentioned forms are available for use but
not mandatory until January 1, 2006.
Advice on travel
to Oxford is available (see also
Oxford travel and timetables).
The department is
a brisk 15-minute walk from the railway station, or a brisk
10-minute walk from the bus station, but taxis are readily
available.
The map on this page shows the immediate surroundings of the Wolfson
Building (marked "OUCL" on the map). The building is on the corner
of Keble Road and Parks Road, with the main entrance on Parks Road.
The map of the City Centre shows the area of the department (close
to the University Parks) as well as the railway and bus stations
(see also other maps).
Public parking in the city centre is very limited and the
best advice for those coming by car is probably to use the
Park & Ride services on the city outskirts (see
map).
However, "Pay and display" parking for up to two hours (at
£1.50/hour) is usually available on Keble Road.
Note that the road junction between Keble Road and Banbury Road has
been closed to motor vehicles. Access from Banbury Road is now
via the junction with Parks Road at the northern end of the
"Keble Road triangle".
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Home
-
Join Arnold 2006
Governor Schwarzenegger Announces He's In For
a Second Term
September 16, 2005
"I love this state and I love my job.
"California is coming back. Two years ago, our state was on the verge of bankruptcy. We had a $22 billion debt. Businesses and jobs were fleeing out of state to get away from our crippling workers compensation rates. The car tax had been tripled and the legislature wanted to keep on raising taxes. Roads were crumbling while billions that were supposed to go to fix them was squandered by the legislature.
"Today we are on the road to recovery. We averted bankruptcy. Four hundred thousand new jobs have been created. The car tax increase was repealed. We invested $3 billion new dollars into public education and now spend more on schools than ever before. Today, California's business climate helps create jobs, not run them out of state.
"And we did it all without raising taxes.
"But there is still much to be done. Rebuilding California is not a 24-month job. It is a 5-year job. As I have said before, I never start something without finishing it. I am going to deliver on my dream: a new Golden State. A strong, reformed and rebuilt California. To do that, I am going to run next year for reelection, and I hope I can earn your support."
Paid for by Californians for Schwarzenegger – 2006
New York City still retains
many of its bricked and cobblestoned streets, many of which date back to
early in the twentieth Century, when horses and carriages ruled the streets
instead of automobiles.
On this page, we'll show you a few stone artifacts.
SLATE, MATE. Some of the remaining bluestone or slate sidewalks that preceded poured concrete.
JAMAICAN RED.A nearly untouched stretch of gorgeous red brick pavement
in Jamaica, Queens.
BANK STREET BRIDGE.A vintage
cobblestoned bridge in Staten Island has recently...well, hit the bricks.
BRICK STREETS.
In Williamsburg, Brooklyn; Jamaica; Bay Ridge; and the West Village
MORE
BRICK STREETS. In Bay Ridge; Red Hook; the West Village;
and Brooklyn Heights
TRIBECA.Probably New York City's capital of brickfaced streets.
JUMEL TERRACE.
Brick streets and landmarked historic homes in the heart of Harlem.
"I
firmly believe that the storms that are approaching the United States
economy have developed largely in part by the actions of the Federal
Reserve Bank 'pumping money' into the monetary system. The credit
bubble, which is the largest storm cloud on our horizon, has grown to epic
proportions during the last decade." ~ Jim Puplava, July 2000
"Any
investment strategy should include knowledge of the Federal Reserve,
their influence and their actions."JP
TSUNAMI! The
Perfect Financial Storm
Part
2 Aug.10, 2002
“The
one lesson history teaches in the financial markets is that there
will come a day unlike any other day. At this point the participants
would like to say, "all bets are off", but in fact, the
bets have been placed and cannot be changed. The leverage that once
multiplied income will now devastate principal.”
Martin
Mayer, 1999
"A
democratic society
requires a stable
and effectively
functioning
economy. I trust that we
and our successors at the
Federal Reserve will be important
contributors to that end."
~
Alan Greenspan, 1996
Interesting
reference sent by FSO Visitor, Head of Research at a Foreign Bank International
Finance Discussion Paper No. 641, July 1999
Monetary Policy & Price Stability
link
to pdf report
Note in particular pages 26 - 28
Famous
Irrational Exuberance Speech Remarks by Chairman Alan Greenspan "But
how do we know when irrational
exuberance has unduly escalated asset
values,
which then become subject to unexpected and
prolonged contractions as they have in Japan over
the past decade?"
At the Annual Dinner and Francis Boyer Lecture of
The American Enterprise Institute for Public
Policy Research, Washington, D.C. December 5, 1996
Saturday, February 11, 2006 Grogan, John, will be promoting MARLEY & ME
XM SATELLITE RADIO/Life's Work with Lisa Belkin
Washington, DC Check your local listings.
Laura Restrepo tells how she came to find her novel Isle of Passion, in the history of Mexico. En espańol.
Susan Kandel would like to introduce you to Cece Caruso, amateur sleuth, biographer of dead mystery authors, and vintage-shopper extraordinaire.
For Jess Walters, one of his favorite parts of researching Citizen Vince was wandering around New York City with old pictures and a 1980 subway map. Read First Look reviews.
Paulo Coelho talks about the universal human experience of obsession and how it drives the characters in his new novel, The Zahir.
Brian Francis talks about his debut novel, The Secret Fruit of Peter Paddington and reflects on how to summon humor in the midst of pathos.
David Laskin chronicles what we most forget when recounting history -- that it is made up of individuals. In The Children's Blizzard the author brings these individual's stories to vivid life.
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OECD Science, Technology and Industry Scoreboard 2003 - Towards a knowledge-based economy
OECD Science, Technology and Industry Scoreboard 2003 - Towards a knowledge-based economy
OECD Science, Technology and Industry Scoreboard 2003
The purpose of the web-edition of the 2003 STI Scoreboard is to provide easy access to a wide range of indicators that show the movement of OECD countries towards a knowledge-based economy. The Scoreboard presents indicators across 4 different dimensions: 1) the creation and diffusion of knowledge; 2) the information economy; 3) the global integration of economic activity; and 4) productivity and economic structure. A highlights section provides a synthetic overview of these different themes.
A detailed table of contents allows users to click on each individual indicator. The indicator is then presented in graphical form, complemented with key findings in bulleted form, a methodological box that provides background on the data and methods underlying the indicator, as well as annex tables. The underlying data for each of these graphs, in excel-format, can be obtained by clicking on the graphs.
This kind of dissemination of OECD work is carried out as an experiment, feedback on how to improve the method is welcome.
M13, also called the `Great globular cluster in Hercules', is one of the
most prominent and best known globulars of the Northern celestial hemisphere.
It was discovered by Edmond Halley in
1714, who noted that `it shows itself to the naked eye when the sky is serene
and the Moon absent.'
According to Charles Messier, who
cataloged it on June 1, 1764, it
is also reported in John Bevis' "English"
Celestial Atlas.
At its distance of 25,100 light years, its angular diameter of 20' corresponds
to a linear 145 light years - visually, it is perhaps 13' large. It contains
several 100,000 stars; Timothy Ferris in his book Galaxies even says
"more than a million".
Towards its center, stars are about 500 times more concentrated than in
the solar neighborhood. The age of M13 has been determined by Sandage as
24 billion years and by Arp as 17 billion years around 1960; Arp later
(in 1962) revised his value to 14 billion years
(taken from Kenneth Glyn Jones).
According to Kenneth Glyn Jones, M13 is peculiar in containing one
young blue star, Barnard No. 29, of spectral type B2. The membership of
this star was confirmed by radial velocity measurement, and is strange
for such an old cluster - apparently it is a captured field star.
Observers note 4 apparently star-poor regions in M13 (e.g., Mallas).
Suggestions of them can be noted in some photos.
Globular cluster M13 was selected in 1974 as target for
one of the first radio messages
addressed to possible extra-terrestrial intelligent races, and sent
by the big radio telescope of the Arecibo Observatory.
Nearby, about 40 arc minutes north-east of M13, is the faint (mag 11)
galaxy NGC 6207, visible in many large- and medium-size-field photographs
of M13, e.g., in the
DSSM image.
This galaxy has recently produced a type II supernova (SN 2004A).
International
Tribunal for the Prosecution of Persons Responsible for Serious
Violations of International Humanitarian Law Committed in
the Territory of the Former Yugoslavia since 1991
Establishment of the list of candidates for Permanent Judges
The situation concerning the Democratic Republic of the
Congo
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Amtrak passesUSA by Rail - Amtrak (Amtrack) and VIA Rail train travel in the US and Canada,Amtrak (Amtrack) and VIA Rail railroad passes.
Amtrak trains are among the world's great travel experiences and a range of passes makes them amazingly economical. TheNational pass covers Amtrak's entire rail network, while theNortheast version lets you go from Virginia up as far as Montreal and across to Niagara Falls. TheEastern pass is for routes from the east coast as far west as Chicago and down to New Orleans.
TheFar West pass covers trains from the Pacific inland to Denver, Albuquerque and El Paso. TheWestern pass lets you explore from the Pacific across to Chicago and down to New Orleans.Western andEastern passes both permit travel on the City of New Orleans train.Coastal passes allow 30 days travel in either the west (from Vancouver down to San Diego) or the east (Montreal to Miami). Peak season is from June to early September and the following $US prices currently apply -
Off Peak
Peak
National 15 days
295
440
30 days
385
550
Northeast 15 days
185
205
30 days
225
240
Western 15 days
200
325
30 days
270
405
Eastern 15 days
210
260
30 days
265
320
Far West 15 days
190
245
30 days
250
320
Coastal 30 days
235
285
Some trains, such as the International and the Maple Leaf, are operated jointly by Amtrak and VIA Rail. For details oftheNorth AmericaandNortheastern Americarail passes, which include Amtrak routes plus those of the VIA Rail in Canada, see VIA Rail passes.
Amtrak ticket agents in the UK include Leisurail, PO Box 5, 12 Coningsby Road, Peterborough PE3 8XP (Tel 0870 7500222; www.leisurail.co.uk; Fax 0870 7500333; E-mail: info@leisurail.co.uk); Trailfinders, 215 Kensington High Street, London W8 6BD (Tel 020 7937 5400); Destination Marketing, Molasses House, Plantation Wharf, London SW11 3TW (Tel 020 7253 9009) and Explorers Tours, 233 Coppermill Road, Wraysbury TW19 5NW (Tel 01753 681 999).
A complete list of international Amtrak agents can be found in USA by Rail.
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Chiropractic, Bonesetting, and Cultism: Contents
Bonesetting, Chiropractic, and Cultism
A critical study of chiropractic (its history and methods) in its relationship
with past amd present-day medical science, along with analyses, conclusions,
and speculation regarding its status and its future.
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Study Skills, Information Skills & How to Study Articles Mind Tools
The Memletics Accelerated Learning Program is
a well-researched accelerated learning course that helps you improve your memory
and assimilate information more effectively.
With more than
50 important stress management tools, this Mind Tools course shows you how to
tackle the deep structural problems that cause job stress.
Design the life of your
dreams, and live the life you design! Decide how you'll focus your life using
our structured life design program. And then set the clear, vibrant, compelling
goals that power you to achievement.
Mind Tools is pleased to work with
Assessment.com to offer you a free career assessment. This helps you identify
the careers that would be most satisfying for you.
Good information skills are essential
for successful professionals.
Early
in your career you must successfully study and digest a
huge volume of information, simply to become effective.
As you become increasingly successful, you will need to
assimilate a vast number of documents, data and reports,
as well as all the information you need to keep up-to-date
in your field.
This
section of Mind Tools gives you a range of skills to help
you do this. The articles on reading help you to increase
your reading speed and become highly selective in what you
read. The item on review techniques helps you to keep information
fresh in your mind. The article on note-taking gives you
a powerful tool for
recording useful information.
Mind
Tools
E-book
All
of the tools on the Mind Tools site, brought
together into one easy-to-download, easy-to-print
PDF.
While
you are reading these articles, have a look at the study skills
book reviews, resources and stores on the sidebars - these will
help you to develop your study skills even further.
In the
first of these articles, we look at how these tools fit together.
To read this, click 'Next article' below. Other relevant destinations
are shown in the "Where to go from here" list underneath.
USP
Analysis - Identifying your Unique Selling Proposition.
Directory:
Mind Genius - Mind
Genius provides easy-to-use software that helps you to draw Concept
Maps. Concept Maps are very useful for taking notes in a way that
helps you remember the structure of a subject.
Managing Stressfor Career Success - This
practical course shows you how to win control of your job and career,
build positive relationships with powerful people and co-workers
and thrive under intense pressure.
Tthe
sites on the left are partner sites that we have checked out and
think that you will find useful.
To see the next
article-set in this series, click the right navigation arrow below.
This article-set is one of number of a Mind Tools sections - click
here for to see an article-set on
memory skills. Click here
to visit our home page showing the whole range of Mind Tools career
development skills.
If you find the Mind Tools web site useful, please
let your HR department and co-workers know about it! You may also know many
people who would benefit from these tools and techniques. Click
here for an easy-to-modify email to send to your HR people, and
here for an email you could send to co-workers.
Subscribe to the free
Mind Tools newsletter, and get new career skills
delivered to your inbox every two weeks. Plusreceive ourhow-to
guide on self- and team-motivation when you
subscribe!
"Great
newsletter. Simple and not too long. Great articles.
Thank you."
Mind Maps are an important study tool - they
are useful for taking notes in a format that is concise, visual and memorable.
Mind Maps are particularly helpful in that they show the structure of
information as well as the facts themselves.
If you don't know how to draw
Mind Maps, then buy this book - you do need to know! If, however, you already
know how to draw Mind Maps, give this a miss - you will not learn much that is
new.
Study Power is a good introduction to study
skills. It reveals many of the simple, learnable skills that can help students
excel. Skills discussed in detail include effective listening, note taking,
reviewing of information, use of reading strategies, the setting of study goals
and time management, among others. The book also covers exam preparation, exam
technique and stress management.
Steve Moidel's book introduces the basic skills of speed
reading in a simple and concise format. It lays out an effective 6-week course
of study focused on helping managers increase their reading speed many times
over.
Okay here's an idea. I'm going to be in NYC much of July. Who wants to go to a Mets game?
Outliners.com poster: "I am re-posting this which was posted just prior to the whatever-it-was-that-happened of outliners.com." It got knocked off the air by the problems with weblogs.com, and the resulting flood of traffic.
Metafilter thread: "Pompous sociopath or not, you've got to admit, he pretty much has us pegged."
BTW, the topic of discussion on Metafilter has meandered into a quote of mine from a MF thread in Y2K where I introduced myself by saying everyone there is full of shit. I'm afraid they might have misunderstood me. All my friends are full of shit at one time or another. All of yours are too. I did a search of the term on this weblog and came up with some good hits. Some people are proud to be full of shit (these are people I admire, like Scoble) and then some people will take offense if you say they're full of shit (names withheld). My attitude is that if you say I'm full of shit that's a sign of respect, because you're acknowledging that I exist.
9/20/03: "There's little point arguing about whether I'm full of shit or not. I am. It's demonstrable."
See, Don Park says I'm full of shit, and I point to him. There's some kind of invisible brotherhood between Koreans and NY Jews. Not sure what it is, but we get along in some basic way that's very mysterious.
I like William Grosso and point to him often, at least in part because he might be the only O'Reilly author who reads my site, but every time I link to him, I'm reminded that O'Reilly doesn't support RSS 2.0. On Sunday I asked "What are you going to do help the tech-weblog world get back on its feet?" One thing O'Reilly (the company) could do is accept that RSS 2.0 is here to stay, and help to close the wounds that keep us all from working together. "Ask not what the Internet can do for you, ask what you can do for the Internet."
Grosso is great because he notices irony in software. For example, yesterday he found out about Apple's RSS reader that might crowd NetNewsWire, by reading about it in NetNewsWire. The software is fair, and has no ego. "There's something spiritual about computers," 1997.
News.Com: When standards don't apply. "A growing roster of de facto standards is testing the need for bureaucratic agencies and design-by-committee technologies."
Gary Lerhaupt writes: "Etree.org has converted their RSS feed to support BitTorrent enclosures. Etree is an awesome repository of legal concerts (Phish, Grateful Dead, etc). I'm downloading my last Phish show from my TV as we speak."
News.Com got it right. The current standards organizations have the wrong strategy, they get in the way of progress instead of fostering it. After years of studying this, I now think we need a new standards organization that adopts de facto standards, like BitTorrent and RSS, OPML, XML-RPC, the ones with market momentum, that have proven their value. The current SO's form committees and bureaucracies, that's their purpose it seems, and by the time they're ready with a format or protocol, their proposal is too complex and too late.
Dan Bricklin: "I've just posted the 1.0 version of my ListGarden RSS Generator Program."
eWeek on Apple's RSS offerings, announced yesterday.
I got an email from Scott Love who I used to work with at Living Videotext in the 80s. He said something really nice and I want to thank him, but there's no return address on the email. So Scott if you see this, send me your email address or phone number, I'd love to catch up.
Yesterday I posted a note saying I'm looking for work. I've gotten a bunch of interesting responses, not with offers, but with ideas about what I should do next. Someone said I should be an entrepreneur-in-residence at a VC firm. Interesting idea. Yesterday I had dinner with a friend who's well-connected in financial circles in Boston and Silicon Valley to talk about something like that. We surveyed the landscape of companies doing stuff in and around the technologies I've worked on. Aggregators, blogging, formats, protocols, etc. It turns out I do have a pretty good understanding of the companies, products and individuals. But I'm not sure if EIR is the right thing, because honestly I don't see myself putting in the 18 hour days, seven day weeks, to crank out the 1.0s. I said I wished we had hooked up five years ago when that's what I was doing. I've also got a possible career in academia, with a good credential on my resume, the 1.5 year stint at Berkman Center. It's true, I love to teach. Maybe some place exotic like New Mexico or Geneva. I leave Boston on Sunday. It's making me sad. Really, no shit. But it's also exciting. When a big tree falls, it leaves room for new growth. Someone said that once..
8/14/98: "Like the big tree that fell last March, the death of a huge human being like Jerry Garcia frees up a huge amount of space. Once there was a tree, now there are seedlings. After the sadness, there will be huge creativity."
CBS Marketwatch profile of Craig Newmark of Craigslist.
Chris Heilman comments on the lack of user interface consistency in today's Mac apps. "But connecting diverse software is RSS's main job, right?" he asks. Yes, and that's a good way to put it, and that's why UI consistency is so important.
What to do when the platform vendor "validates" your product by copying it and announcing it will bundle the copy with the OS. I love what Konfabultor did, kick them in the ass, hard, with their own humor. "Cupertino, start your photocopiers." It's funny because that's what Apple said yesterday to poke Microsoft in the ribs (in a nice way of course). That's often been the lie around Apple, that they invent and Microsoft steals. I like to tell the story of how Mac scripting software came to be. I was in the audience at a Bill Gates speech in the early 80s in Palo Alto where he described a system-level scripting language for a personal computer, connecting various apps, a spreadsheet, word processor, plotting app. I made a note. That's a good idea. A few years later I started work on such a program. Showed it to Apple. Next thing you know, Apple has this great idea. A system-level scripting language for a personal computer, connecting various apps, a spreadsheet...
5/6/98: "Competition with humor is the best idea."
From the If It Weren't So Sad It Would Be Funny Department
NY Times: "They're copying our concepts," Mr. Jobs said. "I'd kind of like to get credit sometime."
The irony gets deeper and twistier. Paul Boutin notes that the NY Times misquoted Apple's ripoff of "Gentlemen start your engines." I suppose he gave Indianapolis 500 appropriate credit for copying their concept?
Last update: Tuesday, June 29, 2004 at 10:27 PM Eastern.
Les fleurs de la mémoire, c’est une association de bénévoles soucieux de fleurir les tombes des soldats enterrés dans les cimetičres militaires américains de Colleville-sur-Mer et de Saint-James en Normandie.
“La paix est un bien des plus précieux. Elle a un prix. Celui de l’effort, toujours; celui du sang, parfois hélas et, beaucoup trop souvent celui du don de la vie.
Cette paix que nous connaissons en Normandie et en France, nous a été redonnée, en 1944, au prix de combats et de pertes terribles par les troupes alliées.
Au cimetičre militaire Américain de Colleville sur Mer, 10.944 tombes et disparus et au cimetičre de Saint-James 4.908 tombes et disparus nous rappellent le sacrifice supręme de ces valeureux soldats morts pour nous libérer du joug nazi.
Aujourd’hui, goűtant chaque jour le bonheur d’ętre libres, nous pouvons, sans le vouloir, oublier ceux qui dorment ŕ jamais sur notre sol. D’autant que deux générations n’ont pas connu - et c’est heureux - les horreurs de la guerre.”
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building strong communities for good causes
Search the Cause, Organization and Event directories, contribute money or time to a cause, and spread the word with Causezines, Tributes, eCards and more.
Taxpayers have until year's end to take advantage of new tax breaks for charitable contributions, thanks to the Katrina Emergency Tax Relief Act of 2005. In general, the Act provides for individuals who itemize and make cash contributions to nonprofits between August 28 and December 31, 2005 to deduct such contributions up to 100 percent of their adjusted gross income (AGI), taking into account their other contributions. Donations to any public charity - not just those related to Hurricane Katrina - made within the time period can be deducted.
San Diego's favorite creative destination for kids and families, the Children's Museum, has served more than 3 million visitors since 1981. Seeking to enrich the community by offering creative experiences that make a difference in the lives of visitors, the Museum involves artists, arts educators, child development specialists, a variety of community organizations, and the children themselves as active partners in all aspects of Museum programming. Read More >
View the Prostate Cancer Foundation Tribute to Bob Anderson created by his children. The Prostate Cancer Foundation's Monument Park is a Memorial and Tribute virtual park dedicated to people who have been diagnosed with prostate cancer. Read More >
Million Books for Kids Campaign The I AM Foundation's Million Books for Kids Campaign is donating books to schools, libraries and homes of children affected by the hurricanes. They have shipped over 10,000 books since the hurricanes began. Now, over 12,000 books have been collected. They need your help to either collect books or fundraise for shipping. Get more information at www.iamfoundation.org
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The National Response Plan is an all-discipline, all-hazards plan that establishes a single, comprehensive framework for the management of domestic incidents. It provides the structure and mechanisms for the coordination of Federal support to State, local, and tribal incident managers and for exercising direct Federal authorities and responsibilities. The NRP assists in the important homeland security mission of preventing terrorist attacks within the United States; reducing the vulnerability to all natural and man-made hazards; and minimizing the damage and assisting in the recovery from any type of incident that occurs.
Disability preparedness resource centers which provides practical information on how people with and without disabilities can prepare for an emergency.
Fact Sheet: A Better Prepared America: A Year in Review
Preparedness is the responsibility of every American. At the Department of Homeland Security, we are hard at work creating and implementing preparedness plans; developing procedures and policies that will guide our actions in the event of a terrorist attack; conducting training and exercises to ensure that our first responders possess a necessary level of preparedness; enhancing partnerships with state and local governments, private sector institutions and other organizations; and funding the purchase of much-needed equipment for first responders, states, cities, and towns.
Fact Sheet: National Incident Management System (NIMS)
National Incident Management System (NIMS) establishes standardized incident management processes, protocols, and procedures that all responders--Federal, state, tribal, and local--will use to coordinate and conduct response actions. Learn about NIMS and download the document.
Three Key Steps that Individuals and Families Should Take to be Properly Prepared for Unexpected Emergencies
Improving our national preparedness is not just a job for the professionals - law enforcement, firefighters and others. All Americans should begin a process of learning about potential threats so we are better prepared to react during an attack.
In addition to the natural and technological hazards described in this publication, Americans face threats posed by hostile governments or extremist groups. These threats to national security include acts of terrorism and acts of war.
The following is general information about national security emergencies. For more information about how to prepare for them, including volunteering in a Citizen Corps program, see the "For More Information" chapter at the end of this guide.
The mission of DHS includes preparing for natural disasters and terrorist attacks through preventative planning, technology, and coordinated efforts. In the event of a natural or man-made disaster, DHS will be the first federal department to utilize a full range of state, local, and private partnerships to alleviate the effects of a potential disaster
This report describes what open source communities are and how they
work. In particular, it addresses the following questions: (499)
What is the open source landscape as a whole? How many projects
exist, what kinds of software do these projects develop, and how
many people are involved with these projects? (49A)
What are the demographics of those who participate in these
communities? Why do they join, and how long do they stay? How do
they interact with each other? (49B)
How do open source communities work? What are the patterns of
collaboration within successful open source communities? (49C)
In examining these questions, this report discusses existing,
relevant research, and presents original case studies of two open
source projects: TouchGraph
and SquirrelMail. It
identifies some patterns of collaboration that both of these projects
share, and describes how these patterns might apply to other types of
communities. Finally, it reviews what is not yet well understood
about open source communities, and proposes several paths for further
research. (49D)
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Correctness and Intention: Conditions of
Reformation
By
Abű 'Âliyah Surkhîl
ibn Anwar Sharîf
Change your background colour:
The State of Affairs
From the fundamentals of
knowledge which have been neglected by many Muslims is how and when an action
becomes righteous and acceptable to Allâh.
In fact, the matter has grown
worse than that! We live in an age in which many Muslims assume that whatever
actions they undertake as regards the Dîn, then they must surely be
acceptable to Allâh!
Such assumptions - arising
from ignorance - have played a destructive role in the collective affairs of
this Ummah - may Allâh increase it in nobility - and may possibly being
destructive to one's own salvation in the Hereafter, as Allâh says: [1]
Say! Shall we tell you of those who lost most with respect to their actions?
Those whose efforts have been wasted in this life, whilst they thought that
they were acquiring good by their actions. [al-Kahf 18:103-104] [2]
So "the
people are of three classes: The righteous Scholar, the student of Knowledge
being upon the path of salvation and the confused rabble who follow everyone who
calls out - bending along with every wind - they are not enlightened by the
light of Knowledge, nor do they lean upon a firm support." [3]
Two Essential Conditions
It is a must that two great
and important matters be considered for actions to be acceptable:
Firstly: That the one
undertaking the action must intend only the pleasure of Allâh - the Mighty and
Majestic.
Secondly: The action
must be in agreement with the Sunnah of His Messenger sallallâhu 'alayhi
wa sallam.
If any of these two conditions
are not fulfilled, then the action will neither be righteous, nor accepted by
Allâh. The proof for this is in His saying:
Whosoever expects to meet His Lord, then let him work actions of righteousness
and in the worship of his Lord associate no one as a partner. [al-Kahf
18:110] [4]
In this noble âyah
Allâh commanded that the action should be righteous - in agreement with the
Sharî'ah - and it should be sincere - associating none with him. [5]
Similar to this is the saying
of the Prophet - sallallâhu 'alayhi wa sallam:
"Indeed Allâh does not look at your faces nor your wealth. But he looks at
your hearts and your actions." [6]
So, contrary to what many
people think, sincerity alone is not sufficient for worshipping Allâh - but
along with that it must be in conformity with the Sunnah. Thus the
condition of the action must be such that it confirms.
Righteous Actions
Personal tastes, desires and
perceptions - intellectual or otherwise(7) - are not the criteria for judging
whether actions are righteous or not. Allâh says:
Who
is more astray than one who follows his own desires without guidance from
Allâh [al-Qasas 28:50]
Rather, a righteous action is
one "that is commanded by Allah and his Messenger - and
that is obedience." [8] And this obedience must be upon the understanding
of the companions - radiallâhu 'anhum. Since they are for this Ummah
- after its Prophet sallallâhu 'alayhi wa sallam - the custodians of
correct Knowledge ('Ilm), action ('Aml), belief (I'tiqâd)
and methodology (Manhaj). As the Prophet 'alayhis-salâm said:
"My
Companions are the custodians for my Ummah, so when my companions go, that
which has been promised to my Ummah will come to it." [9]
And the Prophet sallallâhu
'alayhi wa sallam warned us about actions which have no basis from the Book
of Allâh and the Sunnah of His Messenger, by saying:
"Whosoever does an action that we have not commanded then it will be
rejected." [10]
Sincerity - the Essence of Tawhîd
Sincerity demands that one
seeks to do actions which Allâh is pleased with, in way in which He is pleased
with. The root of this is Knowledge, as one of the Imâms of the
Tâbi'în, az-Zuhrî (d.124H) - rahimahullâh - said:
"The people will not trust the action of one who acts
without knowledge; and they will not be pleased with the saying of a Scholar who
does not act." [11]
As regards sincerity, then it
is "the stripping of ones intentions from all impurities
in order to draw close to Allâh, ensuring that the intention behind all acts of
worship and obedience are exclusively for his pleasure." [12] As Allâh -
the One free from all imperfections - says:
They have not been commanded except to worship Allâh, being sincere and making
the Dîn for Him. [al-Bayyinah 98:5]
The Prophet sallallâhu 'alayhi
wa sallam said that Allâh - the Blessed, the Most High - said:
"I am so self-sufficient that I am in no need of having
partners. Thus, whoever does an action for someone else's sake as well as Mine,
will have that action rejected by Me to him who he associated with Me."
[13]
Thus, if a person does an
action, then even if he performs it according to the Sunnah, but he does
it so that people may speak well about him, his action thereby becomes null and
void. If the deed just became void then the following hadîth would apply
in such a case:
"How many fasting people obtain nothing from their fast except hunger and
thirst and how many people stay up at night (praying) obtain nothing from
their fast except sleeplessness and tiredness." [14]
However, this is not the case.
For this person's action has turned into a sin, since he acted without intending
to seek only the face of Allâh, thus associating partners Shirk along
with Allâh in his action. [15]
Success for the Muslims -
individuals and groups - will not be attained except when actions are carried
out with Sincerity, following the Sunnah, upon the Path (Sabîl) of
the Pious Predecessors (as-Salaf us-Sâlihîn) as Ubayy ibn Ka'b (d.22H) -
radiallâhu 'anhu - said:
"Adhere to the Sabîl and Sunnah - who remembers the
Most-Merciful and his eyes swell up with tears due to the fear of Allâh -
except that he will never be touched by the fire. Indeed moderation in the
Sabîl and Sunnah is better than exertion in opposition to it."
[16]
And our final supplication is
that all praise belongs to Allâh - Lord of the Worlds.
1. All quotes are
translations of the meanings of the Qur'ân.
2. Ibn Kathîr - rahimahullâh - says in his Tafsîr Qur'ân al-'Adhîm
(3/112): "It (the âyah) is general regarding
everyone who worships Allâh in an unacceptable way, thinking that he is correct
in it and his action is correct in it and that his action is acceptable, whereas
he is in error and his action his rejected."
3. Part of a lengthy piece of advice by 'Alî (d.40H) radiallâhu 'anhu to
Kumail ibn Ziyâd - as is reported by Abű Nu'aym al-Asbahânî in
Hilyatul-Awliyâ (1/79-80). From the principles of correction and reformation
- O noble reader - as mentioned by Ibn al-Qayyim in Lighâthatul-Luhfân
(p.397), is that: "The foundation of all good as knowledge
and Justice and the foundation of all evil is ignorance and Oppression."
Thus the one involved in Da'wah and reformation must have adequate
Sharî'ah Knowledge, or else more harm will occur than good - as the saying
of old goes: Sa'd brought the camels leading them. O Sa'd - that is not the
way to bring in camels!
4. Ibn Kathîr says in his Tafsîr (3/114): "So - for
an action to be acceptable it has to fulfil two conditions. Firstly: It must be
sincere for Allâh alone. Secondly: It must be correct in accordance with the
Sharî'ah. So if the action is sincere, but not correct, it will not be
acceptable."
5. al-Lâlikâ'î relates in his Sharh Usűl I'tiqâd Ahl us-Sunnah wal-Jamâ'ah
that Sa'îd ibn Jubayr (d.95H) - rahimahullâh - said:
"No word is acceptable except with action and no action is
acceptable except with words and no word nor action are acceptable except with
intention and no word, action or intention is acceptable except when it confirms
to the Sunnah."
6. Sahîh - related by Muslim (2564), Ibn Mâjah (4143) and Ahmad (2/285) - from
Abű Hurayrah radiallâhu 'anhu. The wording with Muslim is:
" ... your bodies nor your faces ... "
7. Imâm al-Barbahârî (d.329H)- the Imâm of Ahl us-Sunnah wal-Jamâ'ah
of his time - says in his Kitâb Sharh as-Sunnah:
"And know - may Allâh have mercy upon you - that the Dîn came from Allâh
- the Blessed and Most High - and was not left to the intellect and opinions of
men - and knowledge of it is with Allâh and His Messenger. So do not follow
anything based upon your desires and so deviate from the Dîn ... Since
Allâh's Messenger sallallâhu 'alayhi wa sallam explained the Sunnah
to his Ummah and made it clear to his Companions that they are the
Jamâ'ah and the Great Majority (as-Sawâd ul-A'dham); and the Great
Majority is the Truth and its People."
8. al-Hisbah fil-Islâm (p.82) of Ibn Taymiyyah.
9. Sahîh - related by Muslim (16/82), Ahmad (4/398) and al-Baghawî in
Sharh as-Sunnah (14/71-72) - from Abű Műsa radiallâhu 'anhu.
10. Sahîh - related by Muslim (5/132), ad-Dâraqutnî (pp.520-521) and
Ahmad (6/146, 180) - from 'Âishah - radiallâhu 'anhâ. Refer to the
Booklet: Understanding the evil of Innovations by our brother Abű
Muntasir - may Allâh reward him with goodness - for a detailed explanation of
this hadîth and the principles connected to it. And it is available from
this Jam'iyyah - and all praise is for Allâh.
11. Iqtidâ ul-'Ilm il 'Aml of al-Khatîb al-Baghdâdî. Yet today, it is
sufficient for one to be a speaker and that is enough credentials for him to be
a guide for the Ummah - regardless of whether he has knowledge or not! So
let the noble reader reflect upon the saying of the Companion Ibn Mas'űd
(d.32h), related by at-Tabaranî in al-Kabîr (8066) and al-Bukhârî in
Adab al-Mufrad (789) and declared to be Sahîh (authentic) by al-Hâfidh
Ibn Hajr in Fath al-Bârî (10/510) that he - radiallâhu 'anhu -
said: "You are in a time whose Scholars are many and its
speakers are few. After you will come a time whose Scholars are few and its
speakers are many." How yesterday's warning depicts today's action!
12. Tazkyatun-Nufűs (p.4) of Ahmad Farîd.
13. Sahîh - related by Muslim, Ibn Mâjah (4202) and Ibn Khuzaymah in his
Sahîh (8/223) - from Abű Hurayrah radiallâhu 'anhu.
14. Sahîh related by at-Tabarânî in al-Kabîr - from Ibn 'Umar and
also by al-Hâkim and al-Bayhaqî - from Abű Hurayrah radiallâhu 'anhumâ.
15. Similar to this are actions based on party-spirit ('asabiyah) about
which our Messenger sallallâhu 'alayhi wa sallam said - as is related by
Muslim in his Sahîh: "Whosoever fights under the banner
of the blind, becoming angry for party-spirit, or calling to party-spirit, or
assisting party-spirit, then if he dies, he dies a death of jâhiliyyah
(pre-Islamic ignorance)." And how damaging - O seeker of unity - has
its modern counter-part, Partisanship (Hizbiyyah), been in destroying the
very fabric of comprehensive brotherhood. Such that the one immersed in this
Hizbiyyah loves and hates, builds and destroys - not due to the ties of
correct faith (Îmân) - but due to this vile Hizbiyyah - thereby
having enmity for the friends ('awliyâ) of Allâh, competing thereby with
the enemies of the Prophets!!! We seek Allâh's protection against this and only
He guides to a way that is Straight.
16. Related by Ahmad in az-Zuhd (p.196) and the isnâd is hasan.
This information and other information on this
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intended to address specific medical conditions. This information
is not a substitute for professional medical advice or a medical
exam. Prior to participating in any exercise program or activity,
you should seek the advice of your physician or other qualified
health professional. No information on this site should be
used to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any medical condition.
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Poker Game Five Card Draw Poker at Pokertropolis: Your Secure Online Poker Cardroom
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At the Showdown the high hand wins. Each player must use all five cards from his/her hand. Click here for more information on how to play poker and for poker hand rankings.
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fig2pstricks
fig2pstricks - convert xfig to pstricks
News (2005-09-14)
Version 0.6.8 released.
Major bugfixes (Thanks to Tim Gollnik):
The depth of a 'compound' object is now better handled (but not
perfect yet).
Text are better handled. A new commandline option --latex-symbols
is introduced. If fig2pstricks is called with --latex-symbols,
then texts are translated into latex symbols. Default is that
the texts are copied verbatim so that any latex commands are
nicely copied to pstricks. But if unusual characters (such as #, %,
etc) are included in the xfig file, then the resulting latex file
obtained without the '--latex-symbols' option would not compile.
ASCII code 128-255 are (almost) perfectly handled (e.g., umlauts,
etc). Try with test/crazytexts.fig with and without --latex-symbols.
I do not yet understand what is going on with the 'free' function
in sort_by_depth() in node.c.
Download
Source: Version 0.6.8
(29,829 bytes, tar.gz) Linux binary (48,020 bytes,
use Save Link Target As ...)
MS-DOS binary (version 0.6.8)
(291,377 bytes, compiled by mingw32 without booting to Windows.)
Please check if this MS-DOS version works.
If you like it, drop me a line at "chirok dot han at vuw
dot ac dot nz".
What is fig2pstricks
Fig2pstricks converts a xfig or equivalently a fig file to pstricks.
Current version works with FIG 3.2.
I wrote it for my personal purpose of teaching
econometrics. It's not bad to use it to process an xfig (or fig) file
generated by the xfig() device of R.
Here is a sample R file which generates leastsq.fig file. Then the fig file is
processed by fig2pstricks to produce leastsq.tex (command: fig2pstricks
leastsq.fig -o leastsq.tex -c --prosper -d -T "A Simulation"). You can run 'latex leastsq' (twice if
necessary), followed by 'dvips leastsq' and 'ps2pdf
leastsq.ps'. Here is the resulting pdf
file.
Screenshot
A screenshot for the pdf slide generated by R and
fig2pstricks with Prosper is found here. The pdf file is here. The R source is here (with data from Ramanathan,
Introductory Econometrics with Applications).
No manual page is available. (I have no time to write it.)
But you can
use "--help" (or "-h") option for help. Here is
the output of fig2pstricks --help:
$ fig2pstricks --help
fig2pstricks: A fig to pstricks converter
Usage: fig2pstricks [options] [input_file]
Options:
-o FILE Set output file to FILE, default=stdout
-c Produce complete latex file
-u UNIT Specify unit, (default=1cm)
or ux,uy xunit is ux, yunit is uy (eg 1in,2.54cm)
use in, cm or mm (default=cm)
unit is unit*scale (cm)
-s SCALE Scale factor is SCALE (default=0.8)
or sx,sy x scale factor is sx, y scale factor is sy
unit is unit*scale (cm).
--prosper Output with full Prosper support.
-T title Set the slide title to title in prosper.
Ignored in non-prosper mode
-F format Prosper style format (default=frames).
One of frames, lignesbleues, azure, troispoints,
contemporain, nuancegris, darkblue, alien glow,
autumn, gyom, and rico.
Ignored in non-prosper mode.
-d, --use-dot Convert ellipses to dots instead of ellipses
-m, --math-label Use math (enclosed by two $'s) for labels
--latex-symbols Convert characters to latex commands
--ignore-specials Ignore depth change specials
See --depth-help option.
--depth-help Help on bringing forward or sending backward objects.
-v, --version Show version
-h, --help Show this help
Copyright, excuses, porting
Fig2pstricks is released under GPL version 2.0. It may contain
errors. Please do not expect any beauty in the program logic for I am
just a novice amature programmer and I wrote this solely for my
personal purpose.
There may be out there some good ones. But I had no time to search,
and decided to write one myself.
It's written on Linux. I think no OS specific
codes are included, so it should compile on other operating
systems.
+++URL: http://www.irs.gov/newsroom/article/0,,id=122440,00.html
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Treasury and IRS Issue Guidance on S Corporation, Tax Exempt Entity Transaction
Treasury and IRS Issue Guidance on S Corporation, Tax Exempt Entity Transaction
IR-2004-44, April 1, 2004
WASHINGTON — The Treasury Department and the Internal Revenue Service today issued guidance on certain kinds of abusive tax avoidance transactions involving S corporations and tax-exempt entities, such as charities. These transactions are structured to improperly shift taxation away from taxable S corporation shareholders to an exempt party, for the purpose of deferring or avoiding taxes.
In Notice 2004-30, the IRS says it intends to challenge these transactions on a number of grounds. It further declares that these abusive transactions are considered "listed transactions." Participants in a listed transaction who are required to file tax returns must disclose their participation to the IRS. In addition, promoters of listed transactions must keep lists of investors and, in certain cases, register those transactions with the IRS.
This notice is the first time the IRS has exercised its authority under the tax shelter regulations to specifically designate a tax-exempt party as a "participant" in a tax avoidance transaction.
"The participation of tax-exempt entities in these abusive transactions is a worrisome trend," said Mark W. Everson, Commissioner of Internal Revenue. "We are acting today to ensure the integrity of our charities. We don't want Americans to lose faith in a unique and vital part of our nation's social fabric."
"These transactions are structured to eliminate tax on certain S corporation shareholders by inappropriately shifting income to a tax-exempt organization. This abuses the special status that the law gives to tax-exempt organizations," said Gregory F. Jenner, Acting Assistant Secretary (Tax Policy). "Use of tax-exempt organizations as mere accommodation parties should not be permitted."
In addition, the IRS will amend Form 8886, Reportable Transaction Disclosure Statement, to require parties filing the forms to identify the names of all parties to a listed transaction. This includes any tax-exempt parties that facilitate the transaction.
The tax-exempt area is one of the IRS's four top service-wide priorities. The IRS will discourage and deter non-compliance within tax-exempt and government entities, and the misuse of such entities by third parties for tax avoidance or other unintended purposes.
Related Items:
Notice 2004-30, S Corporation Tax Shelter (PDF 46K)
Notice 2004-31, Intercompany Financing Using Guaranteed Payments (PDF 47K)
Jerod Poore's Bipolar
Blog - Epileptic Blog - Autistic Blog
A stupid compendium of essays on
being a bipolar, epileptic, autistic, agoraphobic spazz who recently crashed &
burned after a 15-year-long mania. I'm trying to explain who I was then while
trying to figure out who I am now. All while being hopelessly in love with
Mouse, a similarly bipolar-autistic-epileptic uberspazz.
This blog will be updated infrequently and in
spurts, as befits the heavily medicated spazz.
I just can't seem to get anything done, blog-wise.
OK, so I'm out of the hospital, details to follow eventually. Bits and
pieces of the details are in an aborted entry that I'll just leave up for now.
And I've rented a small house in Missoula Montana.
I'll be moving up there in a matter of days. I'll be off-line for the
most part when I pack up my computer and have it shipped up to me. So
don't expect to see anything from me, get any e-mail responses or anything like
that until the beginning of September.
My house is officially on the market, although it probably won't be shown
until after Labor Day.
If, for some reason, crazymeds.org goes off the air again, please send word
to support@1and1.com Everyone,
please complain loudly and daily to them for as long as the site is down.
I can't tell you how much calmer I am in Missoula. At some point I
will. Just take my word for it, I'm in a much better place up there.
Soon to be chillin' by the Clark Fork,
Jerod
Friday, 9 July, 2004
I'm back from the hospital now. I went to the ER last Monday and got
5150'd for my trouble of trying to get an emergency appointment with a
neurologist.
Notes from the Tower of Bipolarland
Sunday, 27 June. I suspect that the Provigil might be contributing to
the increased seizure activity after the Seroquel lowered my seizure threshold
through the fucking floor. So I discontinue the Provigil, which sucks.
Monday, 28 June. Today's the day I go to the ER. The constant
seizures and ultradian cycling are just too much. I plan on going in as
early as I can. This plan is, of course, completely hosed by Mouse finally
making contact with me - by showing up at 2:30 in the morning. She's still
wired and uses the computer, chain smokes, makes phone calls, paces around the
house and the like. I finally force her to come to bed at 4:30 a.m.
She is able to fall asleep right away. I doze fitfully for a couple hours,
then try to put some food together. Going into the yard to get some
blackberries causes a major panic attack and seizure. It's lorazepam and
an hour of wait time before I can eat something. Mouse wakes up around
11:00 a.m. and we get to the ER around 1:00 p.m. The ER is packed.
She had missed her therapy appointment. Mouse leaves around 3:00 p.m. and
I didn't see her again until three days after my return.
Around 5:00 p.m. a doctor sees me. The doctor is far more interested in
my mood swings than my seizures. How depressed am I getting? Any
suicidal ideations? Just how would I do myself in? Do I own any
guns? Did I have any previous suicide attempts? Was I hospitalized
before?
Really these were very fleeting ideations, and the only reason why I thought
about eating a bullet is because it was the most expeditious method. None
of the elaborate schemes I was constantly planning when in high school, only to
fall back upon convenience of pills that turned out to be non-fatal when taken
in high quantities. My scraggly goatee should be evidence that I wish to
live - I'm not shaving because I'm having seizures and I don't want to cut
anything vital! And the whole not eating bit - food is an issue because
I'm not going to the store because I'm not driving due to the seizures!
The seizures are the immediate problem!
The doctor thinks they might be med related.
Right, which is why I stopped taking Provigil yesterday. I just want to
see a neurologist right away to figure everything out.
By 8:00 p.m. I'm 5150'd and off to the Herrick psychiatric hospital locked
ward. It's not until after 10:00 p.m. that everything is sorted out and I
exchange all of my clothes and possessions for a set of badly fitting gowns and
pants (hey, when you're about 5'9" and weigh 115 pounds, nothing is going
to fit right). This includes the meds I had brought with me, but that's
OK. They let me take most of my nightly meds, deciding that I can do with
just 100mg of Topamax each night. But they'll give me 100mg of Topamax
during the day. That'll calm me down for sure. They also give me a
real Ativan and it's off to my creaky bed.
Tuesday, 29 June. I sleep most of the day. What with the lack of
food and sleep, the beddy-bye benzo, all the seizures and getting 50mg of
Topamax right after a breakfast of suspicious sausages, plus no vitamins, what
the hell else am I supposed to do? I only awaken for the hyper-allergenic
meals that I do my best to eat around and my meds. The psychiatrist I'm to
see during my stay sees me after dinner. He's pushing Depakote. OK,
he does have some valid points. For ultradian cycling if Topamax doesn't
do it, Depakote will. He's also correct that the seizures have been
aggravating the mood swings, and Depakote is a tried'n'true anticonvulsant.
But my whole issue is to have a neurologist make some med recommendations for
seizure control. Also I've been wandering the wilderness of Bipolar 2
territory, and Depakote is likely to just bring me down even more. I'm
maxed out on Strattera and I don't have much in the way of antidepressant
options, nor can I take any antipsychotics to give it a much needed boost.
From a mood disorder standpoint Lamictal would make sense, but from a seizure
disorder standpoint I don't have a fucking clue if Lamictal is appropriate for
me or not. Hence my wanting to see a goddamned neurologist.
The swing-shift psychiatric nurse keeps asking about the suicidal ideation
and I keep telling her that I want to live, which is why I've been so concerned
about the seizures and why I want to see a neurologist. Why I haven't
shaved in several weeks, why I've run out of food because I wouldn't get in my
car. She says I need to interact with people more, starting with my fellow
patients. Go to the groups and the like.
I spend that night in a lovely mixed state. The ghost of Chairman Mao
wanders around my room. I dream of satanic birthday parties with 666
emblazoned decorations. I dream of a very realistic seizure that is
dealt with by porno nurses who restrain me with old-fashioned bed restraints.
The seizure could have been real, as nocturnal seizures accompanied by succubi-populated
dreams are standard procedure for me. But none of the nursing staff for
that ward fit the porno model. Some of the other staff did, just not the
nurses. And the bed has no restraints. Whenever I did manage to get to sleep the half-hourly
bed check wakes me up. During one of them the attendant apologizes.
That must have been when I was seizing away.
Chairman Mao doesn't have any wisdom for me, but I
take his presence as a sign that I really do need to see if I can sell those
artifacts of the Cultural Revolution that I have.
Wednesday, 30 June. I can't tell if I have a seizure hangover or not,
what with the bad food, crappy sleep and everything else going on. But,
OK, I decide to make friends anyway. Except today they have to be working
on one of the rooms on the ward, which means drills and hammering and I just
can't deal with the noise. So I sit as far away from the noise as possible
in a public space - the back of the day/dining/TV room. There I'm found by
the visiting chaplain, a young man named Tat. He asks if I need any
spiritual counseling, and after last night I could certainly use some. I
gave a brief description of my night and he asked what my religious affiliation
is. I told him about my wacky admixture of Buddhism and Catholicism and
his jaw hit the floor. "Me too! I started out Buddhist and then went
to a Jesuit school." Tat is truly hardcore. He's not just any flavor
of Buddhist, he follows the zazen path. And the Jesuit school. And he goes into
locked wards of psychiatric hospitals to attend to the spiritual needs of the
real nutcases like me. He was one of the few people I've spoken with who
really got the idea of how many Catholic saints mirror many of the Tibetan
deities as meditation focal points for the Eight Fold Path. He also taught
be how to do zazen breathing. I've incorporated the deep, slow breaths into
my Yoga and Qi Gong practices and they've really helped a lot. I've also
taken to zazen-style meditation, and I find it a lot more effective.
The swaying so works with being an autistic spazz.
The first group activity I attend is a "spiritual movement" group.
Thinking I might be on a roll and hoping to get some Yoga or Tai Chi in, I
attend. What we get instead is a little breathing and stretching and then
some wacky "Native American" tarot cards. Everyone is asked to pick one or
two. Most everyone in the group picks two. They are asked why they
chose the particular cards, and most give these very long-winded explanations.
I select only one - the squirrel card. When asked why I give only one of
the two reasons - "Because winter is coming."
That freaks everyone out.
I don't think that anyone who is committed to a psychiatric locked ward
really wants to face that winter is always coming even when it's not yet July.
And, of course, the Squirrel card is for people who think just like that.
I'm really good at this making friends business, aren't I?
While the person leading this group tries to put a positive spin on all the
cards selected, she hits the wall with the guy who picks the Bear card.
He's not quite the stereotype of Telegraph Avenue denizen you'd think would wind
up in the lock ward, that's another guy we had in there. But the Bear is
pretty close - homeless, on SSI and trying to find an SRO hotel room somewhere
in the People's Republic. I could never find out what his problem is
because he wasn't one to talk to anyone. The whole Bear card spiel was to
go inside one's self, find inner strength, yadda-yadda-yadda. "But I do
too much of that already."
"What?"
"Go inside of myself."
No amount of newage spin made any sense at all. He picked the right
card indeed, but it was more a sign to quit hibernating. The nice group
leader just couldn't see that. Everyone was trying to go along with the
whole inner strength motif. I was more reminded of the episode of "South
Park" and the Underwear Gnomes' business plan. No one had a clue about
step 2. It was the same scene, they were just jumping from step 1 (Collect
underwear / Go inside yourself) to step 3 (Profit! / Mental health). He
kept asking "How do I do that?" and they kept giving non-answer answers.
So who are some of my other fellow inmates?
Well there is one guy who is the stereotype of the Telegraph Avenue dweller
you expect to wind up in the psych ward. Tall, skinny, long hair, short
beard, always going on and on about sinkholes off the coast of India that lead
to the climatic change that melted the ice caps and caused the Biblical flood.
Or other deep spiritual matters. One day over breakfast he seemed a bit
upset when I set him straight over what the main temple of the
Sukyo Mahikari
is really like, having been there myself in the late 1980s, and not just read
about it in some obscure book. Like many in the schizophrenic community he
did his best to overcome the dopamine-dampening effects of his particular
antipsychotic by mainlining sugar (eating it straight out of the packets) and
drinking all of the coffee provided with each meal service.
I managed to run into yet another uberspazz. She was 5250'd because she let her
section 8 apartment go to hell after refusing in-home care from anyone who
wasn't white and female. She has a very specific variant of the food dye allergy - yellow. She
flipped out when she paid attention to the Abilify they tried to give her. But
she had no issues with it on previous nights. I looked at it, and it was the
same color as the Topamax 100s. It had to be the iron oxide. I explained that
to her and she calmed down and took her "sedative" along with her two big-ass
neon-pink Depakote 125s. She was working on getting a hearing to prevent her
being transferred to a long-term psychiatric care facility, and she'd describe
every update in her case with a detailed explanation of what had already
transpired to date, including names and relationships of all the players.
No wonder the answering service at the patients' rights advocacy group would run
out of time with all of her phone calls. Yet she was still surprised when it
happened.
I was actually there longer than 72 hours. I signed up for an extra night to
make sure I didn't flip over into mania, and because a discharge at night is a
real pain in the ass for the staff at that facility.
Friday, 25 June, 2004
At least a month to get an appointment to see a neurologist.
Time, ever against me.
Everything is too late. Always too late.
I can't deal with anything. Eating, cleaning up, bathing, nothing.
I haven't been outside to get the mail all week.
Mouse completely flaked on me. She said last night she'd have a
neurologist our psychiatrist referred. She said she'd be over.
She never showed up, never called. Not returning my calls.
I don't blame her. I can't stand being like this. The constant
mood swings through one form of depression or another and the frequent seizures.
Why should anyone else put up with it?
My arms and legs flailing around, albeit slowly today.
I'll just latch onto something stupid and repeat it for five minutes.
No one should be around that.
Mouse has been through enough.
Auras. I saw auras. I haven't seen auras in over thirty years.
And a full-on visual hallucination. Haven't had one of those in a
seizure event in about twenty years.
I'm all alone. Somehow I have to deal with this all myself.
I'm fucked if I stay here. I can't afford to stay here any longer.
I'm running out of options.
Thursday, 24 June, 2004
Trying to see a neurologist.
Normally I would have an event or two, maybe three and that would be it.
Then it would be weeks, months, many months before the next one. Except
for the
myoclonic jerks. I don't count those. This is different.
Ever since the goddamn Seroquel
it's been a seizure event every freaking day. And since that five-hour
long event Sunday night / Monday morning it's been two a day, an hour or two in
duration. One to wake up to and one to fall asleep to.
And, as expected, the depression has set in. Triggered by Mouse not
returning when she said she would, with no contact from her at all.
Not that I can blame her. I can't put up with this shit. I don't
expect her to.
During one of the wakey-wakey seizures it progressed into a complex partial
seizure. So as I tried to apologize for saying something stupid at five
o'clock in the morning when she does show up here one morning (I've already been
up since four, seizing away merrily), I'm not thinking all too clearly. I
let slip the very hated words, "I'm sorry." Given Mouse's history those
don't alleviate, rather they just become knives through her heart.
Unfortunately I slip into complex partial mode and just start repeating them
over and over and over.
"I'm sorry."
"I'm sorry."
"I'm sorry."
"I'm sorry."
"I'm sorry."
Just some fucking gatling gun into her soul as I spiral-shuffle out of the
office and back into the bedroom.
"I'm sorry."
"I'm sorry."
"I'm sorry."
"I'm sorry."
"I'm sorry."
I scrunch myself under the covers, take my meds and some lorazepam and just
keep apologizing as I slap and kick myself or swim through the ether.
Eventually I calm down, Mouse joins me and we both fall asleep. She's
out for most of the day. I just nap. That's what I do a lot of now -
nap. Between the depression and the seizures I sleep a lot now.
Later that evening she leaves, with a promise to return that night.
That was Tuesday.
I keep trying the neurologist's phone, but it's still busy. I used to
prefer to do this sort of thing first thing in the morning, but now I can't get
out of bed until two or three in the afternoon. And then for only a couple
hours a day.
I'll try again tomorrow. Maybe if I talk to someone while I'm having a
seizure it'll mean something.
Or maybe the whole damn thing is just pointless.
Monday, 21 June, 2004
Seizure hangover.
I half-expected not being able to sleep all that well from discontinuing the Seroquel
and
Risperdal. But I
didn't expect what happened at all.
I was more-or-less conscious until about 3:00 a.m.
But from about 10:00 p.m. until I finally passed out I was in a constant
state of simple partial /
partial onset seizures. Five hours of anxiety, headache, confusion,
and twitchy fingers, toes, calves, cheeks, eyes.
Nothing helped.
There's no evidence of any nocturnal seizure activity of note. I wasn't
tangled in the sheets, I was still in the bed, I didn't wake up with any
bruises, let alone a concussion or any cracked or broken bones as I have in the
past. Even all the stuffed animals were still piled up on the pillows next
to me. So I didn't really spazz out too much once I finally slept.
But I feel as if I had a
tonic-clonic seizure.
Only without the muscle ache. Epileptics know what I mean, the
post-seizure hangover. After a real bad one when you have to go to sleep,
and you just wake up with a hangover. I can't eat anything, I couldn't get
out of bed until 2:00 this afternoon.
I guess five hours of simple partial seizures, or one huge-ass simple partial
seizure, will do that as well.
I tried to call Mouse about it this morning. When she called me back
all of an hour ago I was completely monosyllabic. I'm sitting here
writing, but I don't think I can carry on much of a conversation right now.
As is often the case after a big seizure event, my speech centers get really
hosed for awhile.
In talking with Mouse it's likely that she had had
tonic seizures
before. It's also possible that she's been suffering from similar forms of
simple partial seizures that have been misdiagnosed as an anxiety disorder.
She's been having similar or related symptoms - twitchy extremities, stomach and
head pains, a head spinning around like an unbalanced washing machine, jamais
vu, strange tastes or smells. It got worse when she was on Seroquel as
well.
Antipsychotics can lower the seizure threshold, but this was fucking
ridiculous!
Oh well, at least the annoying TD forehead twitch appears to be gone.
So I'm back on full seizure protocol for awhile. No driving, no knives,
no baths. I still haven't shaved, so I have my scruffy little goatee
again.
Catch-22. I'm stressed out about moving and selling my house, so that's
contributing to my being more prone to seizures. But I can't do anything
about moving and selling my house, because I'm spazzing out all the time.
Is it any wonder why epileptics are second only to the bipolar in the
successful suicide statistics? So where do we comorbid types fall?
Or is that just too morbid to contemplate?
Trying to deal,
Jerod
Sunday, 20 June, 2004
The Tardive Dyskinesia
is back. So ends the short-lived experiment with adding
Risperdal back to
the
cocktail. And the Seroquel
has failed in dealing with the symptoms of TD. OK, so all I'm experiencing
is the slightly annoying forehead twitch, but that's enough. When it comes
to TD, the slightest onset of symptoms is enough to stop the offending
medication when one has had full-on symptoms before.
So the Risperdal is out as of tonight.
So is the Seroquel.
I'm convinced that Seroquel is causing these wacky panic attack & seizure
combinations. It's the new variable and they are the new result.
So no antipsychotic will likely mean I'll be wandering through the wilderness
of Bipolar 2 land in a day or two. And I'll be absolutely withdrawn and
unable to deal with people. And be very agoraphobic. Which will make
moving a real struggle.
Unless, of course, the panic attacks aren't themselves a form of simple
partial seizure, and the Seroquel has just lowered my seizure threshold through
the fucking floor. That wouldn't surprise me. After all, Mouse is
more prone to seizures when she's not taking enough stimulants. She's been
out of Adderall for days
now and besides that tonic seizure the other day she's been going cataleptic on
me left and right.
That's what it's all about when you're an epileptic-bipolar-autistic
uberspazz, you're just the opposite of yourself as Kassiane so brilliantly
coined. Paradoxical reactions aren't just paradoxical reactions, they're
reactions to meds, or lack thereof, that are in looking-glass territory.
Every day is a struggle and celebration to be alive.
Struggling to celebrate,
Jerod
Saturday, 19 June, 2004
The fun just never stops.
On Wednesday Mouse comes over and starts talking about the problems and
fucked-up lives of various people with whom she has recently been in contact.
She is involved with these people as a way of understanding her own utterly
fucked-up past. And, of course, she needs to talk about these people and
how their lives relate to hers.
But therapy sessions last only so long.
After several hours of this my head literally feels as if it is about to
explode.
I ask her to stop, but it turns out that it's too late.
That's the thing when you mix autism, PTSD and bipolar. The wacky,
exaggerated emotional responses will sneak up on you. Everything is just
fine until it's too late and your brain is spinning out of control.
Keep in mind that I was the idiot here. I'm the one who put my e-mail
on autorespond mode and has reduced participation to a bare minimum in the
online support
forum that is part of Crazy Meds. Why? Because I can't deal with
my own problems, let alone anyone else's!
So what happens? After Mouse leaves to deal with her life, I have one
of my patented fake heart attack panic attacks. It didn't mimic a heart
attack as much as others have, so it was easier to distinguish as a panic
attack. So it was just pop some
lorazepam and problem solved,
right?
Wrong.
Later I started to feel kind of weird.
Impending seizure weird.
OK, that's been the pattern lately. Panic attack, then seizure.
But this was different somehow. Things were really off. Things
were really different and weird.
Then one thing sprung to mind - accounts of the people who died of
SUDEP.
Mouse's housemate had flipped out, bolted the doors and wouldn't let her in.
Not that I remember answering the phone or most of the conversation. My
memory kicks in at the point where I said, "No no no no no no no no no no no
no." Then there was a discussion over the context of that alliterative
argument, at which point the connection was lost and Mouse and I both, it turns
out, thought it best to not try to continue any communication.
Being most grateful to wake up the next morning, I made my way through the
day in a GABAergic daze. I had to do all of the chores - shopping, dishes,
taking out the garbage and cooking dinner. I got stuck when it came to
making food. I just couldn't deal with it. There was no good food
porn on the Food Channel, so that wasn't inspiring me. Then Mouse comes
over, still unsure of how to handle the housemate situation. She falls
asleep on my chest around 6:30 in the evening and I follow suit shortly
afterwards.
Friday is Straw Poll day. Mouse is polling everyone to see how to
handle the flipped-out housemate. See, at the time she had thought he had
changed the locks, not just bolted the doors. That's an amount of
escalation that calls for police intervention. I vote for the cops.
Her therapist voted for the cops. Her mother voted for more talking.
Eventually Mouse heads down to the police station. The police and her mom
(who lives in another state) talked to the housemate and figured out what the
deal was.
He was afraid of one of the fucked-up people mentioned above.
And while I agree with his sentiments, I'm not buying all of his story about
the incident.
Everything is worked out now.
But to get it all worked out took hours and hours of talking.
Then Mouse had to catch up with her e-mail and voice mail. Then she's
wired all night.
So she comes over here at 7:00 a.m. this morning.
Hey, we're on the Ladyhawke schedule again. She's ready to fall asleep
just when I'm waking up.
It figures she would have one of those after all the stress, as I had an
atonic seizure
once.
Her yin to my yang. Her total paralysis to my becoming completely limp.
And like many people with temporal lobe issues, as she was coming out of it
when she tried to speak it was total gibberish.
It wasn't like sleep paralysis. She's had that before. This was
different. I could tell from the outside.
With any luck it will be like that atonic seizure I had, a one-time
occurrence.
Still glad we're all alive, if utterly spazzing out,
Jerod
Monday, 14 June, 2004
Last night was fun. Panic attack, seizure and diarrhea all at once.
I haven't had a scat attack in over ten years. The seizure wasn't all that
bad, I think it's just because I'm so freaked out over everything that I
literally just didn't give a shit.
These frequent panic attacks that are followed by seizures is a new
experience for me. It totally hoses the warning I used to get before having a
seizure. I'm used to a bit of warning, anything from 20 minutes to a full
day. But now I'll just get a panic attack and a seizure can follow in just
a few minutes. Sure, that's still more notice than a lot of people get,
but it's quite an adjustment for me. So now I'm on full seizure protocol
- no shaving, showers instead of baths, no driving, no cooking that involves
knives. What little cooking, and eating, I'm doing at all now.
This is making the concept of selling my house and moving to Montana really
fun. I can't deal with people at all and I freak out when faced with the
complex task of washing the dishes. The
lorazepam is barely helping.
And how the hell do I see a neurologist now? Will I be here, will I be in
Missoula? What's the deal with Medicare? I can't deal with it. I just
can't deal with it at all.
I think the Seroquel is
making matters worse. The only good it's done so far is lessen the depression
and get rid of the last TD symptom - the annoying forehead twitch. Mouse and I
talked about it, so I'm willing to risk taking
Risperdal along with the
Seroquel because the panic is so bad. Then phase out the Seroquel and see if
any TD symptoms return. Like Mouse, the Seroquel is making me hear things
that aren't there. At least she was tuned into a cosmic Jazz station.
Last night it was a hammer on metal. This morning, at least, it was
pleasant music.
I've also got the walk again. That loping gait that my first
neurologist, Dr. Schear, used to identify problems with my temporal lobes.
As he told me 17 or 18 years ago, when I'm dragging my foot, it's a sign that
I'm heading for trouble. I'm dragging my left foot all the time now.
The walk was just one of the many indicators or symptoms of epilepsy that
presented themselves during my childhood that were thought to be symptoms of
autism.
Shaking all over,
Jerod
Sunday, 13 June, 2004
I'm still stuck.
Mostly the problem is paralyzing anxiety now. The depression, for the
most part isn't quite as bad as before, but the agoraphobia, panic attacks and
social anxiety/avoidance are back in full force. I'll try to do something
about moving to Missoula or selling my house or just try to deal with the daily
activities of keeping my life together and it's as if someone has hit me in the
pit of my stomach. I bend over, crying, overwhelmed by every little thing
I have to do in order to do the next step in doing something else and the
ramifications of what what happens if they are not done by a certain time or not
done correctly or at all.
It takes a mere matter of seconds for it all to fill my brain and have me
curled up on the ground, weeping, my arms and legs moving of their own volition.
Sometimes as if I'm swimming, sometimes just jerking and twitching, sometimes
hitting and kicking myself. It's a combination of panic attack and either
a partial onset or partial-complex seizure. The seizure type I'll get is
all dependent upon the phase of the moon as far as I can tell.
The ability to have all the prerequisites and ramifications of various
related tasks to a complex job spread out before me in my head all at once used
to be such an asset. That's how I was able to take user requirements from
a meeting, sketch a few things out, make a few phone calls or e-mails to confirm
some things and within the next day or two after riding my bicycle about 9 miles
to work then downing a double espresso at 6:45 a.m. upon arrival, have the
entire project mapped out from design and coding specifications to testing and
installation plans. Then I'd code it following a similar regimen.
But that's when I was manic most of the time, when mania was usually the
winner of the rocks-paper-scissors game of my psyche. Of course I wasn't
on meds then and I was also an unpredictable, arrogant jerk who would sometimes
lay into people with such quiet, understated, eloquent verbal violence that only
some aura of total batshit craziness could have been what had protected me all
those years. And it was results that kept me with companies until they
either moved away from me (yet still offered me jobs in Iowa or Texas) or I
managed to actually program myself out of work so that somebody in Bangalore
could just monitor the software.
Now with all the meds I'm rarely manic. Plus the whole idea is to stop
cycling and be neither manic nor depressed anyway.
So what does that mean? Right now without the arrogant jerk that was
the manic me I can't handle the overwhelming everything that it takes to
do anything. Laundry. Dishes. Grocery store. I'm
lucky if I eat once a day now, between the freezing and the agoraphobia.
So I freeze. And I get little, if anything done. Thus getting
more anxious about not getting anything done. You can understand where
that's going.
My e-mail is on auto-responder. There's no way I can deal with other
people's problems right now when I can't even deal with my own.
I've tried to get some help with the moving. People aren't returning my
e-mails. Or they send me e-mail about completely unrelated subjects.
Or I get suggestions about asking complete strangers on Craig's List for help. HELLO!
I'M HAVING A HARD ENOUGH TIME DEALING WITH PEOPLE I KNOW!!!
I know what the deal is. It's the stigma of being too close to someone
who is too crazy. It was OK when I was ready to go to Liberia with a
machete because I was just typing it. I wasn't asking for traveling
companions. But now that I need help that is beyond typing supportive words, help
that requires packing things into boxes, help watching my house and critters for
when I try to rent an apartment, that requires being in my proximity, or at
least in my house when I'm gone. That's getting to be way too close.
Especially when I seem to be getting a little more crazy than I have been in
awhile.
So I have to do everything myself.
Mouse has too much on her plate to help consistently. That I
understand. It's the same with some other people. For everyone else,
I just don't know. Either my grasp of interpersonal communications is much
suckier than I originally thought, so when I ask for help it comes out as crazy
Moon talk. Or maybe it's just the stigma after all.
No, I can't just hire movers. I still don't know what I want to keep
and what I want to take with me. I don't know when I'm going to be moving.
I want to start packing all the stuff that I know I want to move, through
methods I've yet to determine, to get an idea of how I want to actually do it.
I won't know exactly how I'm going to move until I can see what most everything
that will be moved looks like when it's boxed before hand. These are the
sorts of issues I'm having, and the sorts of things you need friends to help you
with.
So when you're a nutjob like me, I guess that means doing it all yourself.
And getting overwhelmed by it.
And freaking out.
And maybe, just maybe, coming to the conclusion of "Fuck it! Fuck it
all! If it doesn't fit in the car, it stays for the Salvation Army!"
I guess you can tell that
Seroquel is no replacement for Risperdal.
I've been on 50mg a night for over a week and all it does is make me even more
tired all the time. My panic seems to be worse. I can't drink real
coffee anymore, but at least I had no symptoms of caffeine withdrawal due to
whatever the hell
my current medication
cocktail is doing to my brain.
Yesterday I managed to break the cup I've always used for lattés. That
triggered a nasty autistic reaction that segued into a partial onset seizure.
Rock, paper, scissors.
Overwhelmed and underfed,
Jerod
Tuesday, May 18, 2004
I'm stuck.
I've been mostly paralyzed by crippling depression. Having to stop taking
Risperdal because of TD has really, really sucked. I can't deal with people, I
can't deal with my life. Minute after minute slowly drags by in pain as my life
otherwise quickly passes by me, the shit piling up. I can't get my act together
to move, to sell my house, to deal with Mouse having cancer.
I'm still in bipolar 2 land, cycling between various stages of depression. At
least the cycles have stretched out to days now. A couple days of paralytic
suicidal depression. A couple days of just being mildly depressed. That sort
of thing. Mostly paralytic. I'll get so depressed that I have some kind
of myclonic or partial onset seizure now and then. Every now and then I
can move over to my computer, deal with e-mail. Sometimes do some work on
crazymeds to distract me from how much everything else sucks. It doesn't
help that the servers hosting the site have been crashing periodically.
At least I'm not hopeless about this all. It just comes at a bad time. I
really do need to move because of my financial situation, but I'm paralyzed and
unable to either do it all myself or deal with people to help me do it. Yet if
I do nothing things will get really bad.
A couple weeks back I took six boxes of books down to Moe's. They wanted
only one box worth. $30.00 for all my trouble. The vinyl and CDs are all boxed
up, I expect a similar exercise in frustration.
It would almost be worth the TD to go back on the Risperdal. It's not like I
leave my house and interact with people that much anyway. Who cares if I'm
twitching and blinking like a cartoon owl doing Morse code with its eyes and my
tongue is doing the Watusi? With the partial onset seizures I'm spazzing out no
matter what.
I just want it all to be over and done with. I want to be out of here,
away from the overwhelming crush of people made worse by the absence of
Risperdal. I want my house to be sold and the credit card debt gone.
One day it was 25mg of Topamax an hour to deal with the ultradian rapid
cycling - all in the depressive & mixed state part of the spectrum. By late
afternoon I was intensely involved with the lives of the characters on TV
dramas. It is very weird what a lot of Topamax does to me. Still, the cycling
has stopped. I'm just mildly bummed out all the time now.
The next day I was involved in a minor auto accident with a big rig. I'm
fine. Unfortunately I had a bit of an autistic moment, so the police got
involved, because more severe injuries were suspected. My inability to
communicate things correctly led to a report being filed. In the end no one was
really at fault. Tractor trailers just aren't the easiest things to control all
the time. But that's life in the big city.
Mouse has something cancerous in her girly plumbing. Fortunately this was
caught early. And it's probably the same thing she's been through before. Some
lump, some weird pap smear. I'm not in any shape to really comprehend it all.
But she's convinced that it's more an annoyance than a threat, and as she's the
one who has been through this all before, I'm not going to argue with her.
I'm trying to prepare to just get rid of most of my stuff and get the hell
out of town. Without Risperdal this is a problem as I'm more autistic than ever.
But what the hell, I'll just have to try.
Now I'm severely depressed. I wake up, do my Yoga and I was about to
start the Qi Gong when it hits me in the pit of my stomach. All I can do
is crawl back under the covers for an hour. Eventually I crawl out of bed
because surprisingly I have an appetite. I'm dealing with stuff. Not
important stuff. But I'm answering e-mail and checking in with people.
Maybe that is important, I can't tell any more. In any event that the
cycling is down to daily is something I can handle.
Maybe the Strattera has pooped out. Or maybe I can tolerate more
now. We'll see.
The idea of just abandoning everything and letting other people deal with
selling my house and sending me whatever money is left over is becoming more and
more appealing. In my two previous nervous breakdowns I just left
everything behind. This time at least I'd get a check.
Still coming to terms with fight or flight,
Jerod
Tuesday, May 4, 2004
I still can't get this thing written.
Look, here's how it is -
I'm currently living in Bipolar 2 land again. I'm cycling through
various levels of depression and mixed states. I'll go from moderately
bummed out to shaking and suicidal then to just being pissed off at everything
in the course of an hour.
I've been meaning to write about the
death of Sarah Jacobson. I've been meaning to write about Mouse
getting really psychotic and my having to prevent her from getting 5150'd.
But that was back on my birthday. Happy birthday to me.
Then I was meaning to write about my road trip to Missoula to scout out a new
place to live. The Californication of Western Montana is well under way.
My moving there will just be yet another contribution to that process. I'm
sure it will begin to really suck some time in the future, and while some things
about it suck now, it sucks less than the real California. Like everything
else I get involved with, I get there too late and then it all goes to hell.
Never follow me.
I can't take Risperdal
any longer, and that really sucks. I began to develop symptoms of
Tardive Dyskinesia.
They came on suddenly and were unmistakable - uncontrollable & exaggerated
blinking, facial tics, and my tongue had a mind of its own. Even at 0.25mg a day
the symptoms flared up now and then. The absence of Risperdal is just
contributing to the cycling, depression and having more and more autistic
moments where I just freeze like a rabbit caught in the predatory glare of life
not going precisely like I need it to.
In place of the Risperdal I've added the Reminyl back to the cocktail.
Even though that was the med that originally fucked me over. OK, so I
didn't start having the TD symptoms until I took Reminyl. The thing is,
the Reminyl stopped me from acting like an idjit on psychiatric meds and it
lifted me from the moderate depression I was suffering for a few months
previously.
I'm desperate.
My hypothesis (i.e. wild-ass guess) is that between the
Strattera, the Risperdal
and the Reminyl my CYP2D6 enzymes had had enough. So I couldn't process
Risperdal's active metabolite and that's why I started having TD symptoms.
Now what I need to do is give the CYP2D6 enzymes a break. When I next see
my doctor I'm going to try another anti-Alzheimer's med, one that doesn't use
CYP2D6. Despite positive results from Reminyl my liver can do only so
much. Then after a few months I can make the usual decision: which sucks
more, the autistic traits I can't stand
where Risperdal turned down their volume, or the threat of TD symptoms?
I have some hope. I woke up this morning at 5:30. I wasn't
depressed. I felt good for the first time in over a month.
Unfortunately I fell asleep again and when I woke up an hour later I was
depressed again. But it's a start. I haven't had a Strattera-induced
early rising incident in some time. I feel good on those days.
And I have to just deal with moving. It's so big and frightening that I
freeze and don't know what to do. Sometimes I feel like I should just get
in my car, drive back to Missoula, and start looking for an apartment.
Then once an apartment is acquired and all the utilities are turned on and
there's the barest amount of furnishings needed to survive, drive back to winnow
down what I really need to take with me. Ship the stuff I can live with
eventually, and take everything else in a car. Then all the rest is just
given away. Friends. Salvation Army. Whoever will take it.
Then let my realtor deal with all the crap to sell the house.
I just have to do it.
Frozen in life's predatory glare,
Jerod
Thursday, April 15, 2004
Get your taxes in?
If anyone out there is still reading this piece o'crap you may have noticed
the entry following this one
never got published. That's how much of my life got in the way of things
like publishing a blog. I've either been working on Crazy Meds, dealing with my life or
being, well, crazy. Or some combination of two of the three. But not
all three. Not like when I used to have a job. I can't do that any
more.
So, what the hell is going on? Why haven't I been on the
about.com bipolar forum or
The WELL very much? Let alone Tribe or
Orkut?
To put it simply, I've got issues. I've been trying to deal with them.
Stuff is piling up. And I'm trying to make
Crazy Meds a good site, and that takes
work. About all the work I'm capable of, other than the usual crap of just
keeping my life together.
Saturday, February 07, 2004
Sorry the blog has been screwed up for so long. Microsoft was
unresponsive. Because it
is an HTML document, it was obviously a FrontPage issue, despite it having been
created in Word and hosed by Word. Every time I opened a problem, it was
closed automatically because I had another completely different FrontPage issue
resolved quickly and correctly by FrontPage technical support.
But I came up with a solution.
Find a back up and copy and paste stuff from Word into FrontPage.
There, now I don't have to deal with pointy-haired shit-heads who refuse to
deal with their buggy products. At least, not this time.
Otherwise everything is same old same-old. Work continues on the
Crazy Meds site.
I wake up every morning and am grateful to be breathing, as anywhere from
8-17% of people who have experienced my pattern of seizures have died in their
sleep from some kind of wacky seizure.
I'm just waiting for Spring, when the roads clear and I'll be able to go and
see what properties are like in the cheap states I have my eyes on.
Otherwise it's juggle, juggle, juggle.
The anxiety thing ended after a week. That's how long it took for the
extra Provigil to clear out of my system. What with my being a poor
metabolizer and all. So now I'm completely calm about selling my house,
reducing my possessions to the barest minimum and moving somewhere cheap.
Tuesday, January 06, 2004
Happy fucking New Year.
I’m into day three of an
anxiety attack that I can’t feel. Other than having a pulse rate of 110. My
body knows that I’m fucked. Intellectually I know that I’m fucked. But I’m
sufficiently medicated to be emotionally oblivious. That, and my finely honed
sense of denial.
I’m in way over my head in
debt. My medical bills have just piled up. The time has come to put the house
up for sale and move somewhere dirt cheap. Somewhere no one else wants to live.
I look at Quicken and see
$40,000 in credit card debt. Sure, it’s all fixed, low-interest debt, but that
doesn’t matter. I can’t afford to stay here any longer.
Bye-bye Bay Area.
It’s scary. It’s a very
scary idea. I’m scared shitless. That’s why my heart is racing. That’s why I
had yet another of my ersatz heart attacks the other night. But I’m so
medicated that I’m otherwise very calm about the whole situation. So, yes, I’m
scared, but at least I’m not panicking. Mostly. I’ll figure out what to do. I
always do.
Get rid of most of my
stuff. Sell the house. Take all the cash and buy as much house as I can for
cash. Then figure out what I’ll do.
Meanwhile, for a limited
time,
see what Mouse and I look like in the Dreamtime, courtesy of Jesse Reklaw.
Coming to a weekly freebie near you. Now Jesse and I have met a few times, so
that he captured me is not all that amazing, given what a good artist he his.
What’s truly incredible is how well he represented Mouse based on my limited
description. She’s just thrilled by how she looks in the strip! If you scroll
back to the July 6, 2003 entry in this blog you can read the original text
description of the dream.
And if you look closely at
Jesse’s site you’ll see a small link for
Applicant, which is one of the funniest and most insightful works I’ve seen
in a long time. Were I still doing Factsheet Five it would easily be an
Editors’ Choice. It wowed people at two zine shows in the Bay Area. Think of
it as the Ivy League Grad School year book from Hell. The concept is simple
enough – the photographs of Ph.D. candidates from the biology program of an Ivy
League university, 1965-1975. Underneath are the comments from the dissertation
committee. Unless you’ve been through that grueling process yourself, you’d be
amazed at what some of those assholes think. Jesse has created something that
will cause your jaw to drop to the floor in shock and delight. That it is of
dubious ethics and legality makes it all the better.
East Jesus North Dakota,
here I come,
Jerod
Wednesday, November 26, 2003
Yow, a month since the last entry.
My life has pretty much been taken over by working
on the Crazy
Meds site. It's getting there. New content
is going up almost daily.
I had a nasty breakthrough depression yesterday. It was just the sort of
hit-you-in-your-gut, curl-up-in-a-fetal-position-and-wail depression that would
hang around for weeks. It lasted all of a couple of hours. I'm still feeling the
after-effects of it today. After all, you don't have that much of a mood swing
without some sort of residual effects, but I'm just carrying on with my life as
if it were a regular day. My cocktail has me really stable!
So it's all a question of what the hell do I do with my life now? I still
have to figure that one out.
Jerod
Sunday, October 26, 2003
Awe, the shock is over.
I should have known better.
I'm not over this yet. I go into a wonderful state of shock when the shit
comes down. I can handle any crisis while it's happening. Nothing bothers me. I
can deal. Then as soon as I have a chance to breathe, I fall apart.
It happened last night when I was doing my nightly Yoga routine, the falling
apart. Bent over, face to my knee, I was confronted with the barely noticeable
scar from the incision. I don't really scar. I always took great care of the
cuts I made, so I never left a mark. Unlike most self-injurers, I can wear
short-sleeved shirts. Even my tattoo is fading, and those things are supposed to
be permanent, dammit! So the scars from the surgery I had are something you
would never see if you didn't know to look for them, if you didn't know why my
knees were such an odd shape. But whose knees aren't shaped funny?
The surgery presaged what would happen to my older half-brother. Both of his
knees are artificial now, mementos of his career as a motorcycle racer. Just
part of the Poore family tradition of living dangerously. Our father once held
the land speed record for a motorcycle, back in the 1940s, and my son takes his
Australian-made muscle cars that are just about my age out into the desert to
race.
In a way the surgery was pointless. With my autism, and then the later head
trauma that would cause the epilepsy, I would never walk right anyway. So
whatever they partially cured had left me with this compulsion to amputate bits
of myself when I was severely depressed. I would want to do things like bite off
my thumbs or shoot off a toe.
And when I got really crazy, I wanted to get all Lizzy Borden on the
world. Chop, chop, chop.
This is beyond self-injury. My doctor had told me long before this that the
amputation compulsion comes from intense abuse in very early, usually pre-verbal
childhood. So, here it is. Surgery with anesthesia that didn't quite work.
That's some pretty intense abuse. And the amputation stuff totally makes sense.
Cutting into my knees, my being aware of their cutting into my knees.
For what? So I could still walk funny. So I could still get shit from gym
teachers about not keeping my legs straight. My legs were straight asswipes, as
straight as they were going to get. They have a permanent bend to them. No
matter how cold it got, I never wore sweatpants during gym class. I never hid
the defect. I took the shit. They were the ones who eventually gave up. No one
can compete with a soul of iron.
I could get only so far in karate. There are certain kicks that are just
impossible for me to do.
The same with Yoga. While I can twist and bend all sorts of ways just fine,
other ways are going to go only so far.
So I couldn't do my Yoga last night. I just broke down and cried. Cried over
my scars. The pointless surgery. The pointless torture and trauma. Dr. Benway
strapping down a toddler who has a paradoxical reaction to anesthesia.
Cut, cut, cut.
The dreams last night, all inspired by Ballard's Crash. No car
crashes, just the kinky sex involving people who have had their bodies altered
by traumatic events and outdated medical procedures. You can call me 'Vaughn'
for the evening.
All pointless, unless the point was to make me the twisted little fuck that I
am today.
No wonder people hate doctors.
No Yoga or Qi Gong this morning. My body has turned traitor, it has turned
against me. I can't face it. Not now. I was up at 5:30, STANDARD TIME, shell
shocked, alone, running on autopilot.
I was working on the new & improved version of
crazymeds.org and I just had a personal breakthrough.
In a recent conversation with my mother when the
subject of the bipolar paradoxical reaction to medications came up, she told me
about paradoxical reactions to anesthesia that I had as a really little kid.
During a period when I had a bunch of orthopedic
surgery.
Suddenly all of the amputation ideation and
compulsions make total sense.
I don't think I was fully under.
Now, the conversation dealt with two other
procedures, and not the orthopedic surgery, so that's why it took awhile to put
it all together.
My doctor told me that usually such compulsions
result from nasty abuse during a child's pre-verbal period.
Well, I think we've sorted that out.
Vintage "therapy" from the 1960s. There wasn't much
a little surgery couldn't fix. And if the kid isn't all the way out, just strap
him down a little tighter.
Those of you who know me fairly well know that I've
milked the fact that during my weird Hollywood infancy one of our neighbors and
my sometime babysitter was Yvonne Craig.
Yup, the original Batgirl.
So when I went in for surgery she arraigned for some
of the actors to come visit me when I came out. Caesar Romero and Frank Gorshin
dropped by. In costume. I was still zonked from the anesthetic, however little
it worked, so I always thought their visit was a hallucination, a dream, one of
those weird things that I remembered anyway. Until one day I found the menu from
the hospital with their autographs.
Now there is an entirely new context to two
Bat-villains visiting me.
It's horrible, but in a way it's much less horrible
than the other possibilities of abuse during my preverbal period. As usual there
was no malice involved, or no more than the usual amount that one random person
would have for another.
I haven't had any amputation compulsions since 2002.
Maybe now I won't have any more.
Still keeping away from machetes,
Jerod
Tuesday, October 21, 2003
So the earthquake yesterday triggered an autistic
reaction. I geeked out. I made the new home for my guide to psychiatric
medications work. 1and1.com's lack of technical support be damned, I figured it
out myself. Just one more thing for you to know, in case you were thinking of
using their service, I sent them a question Sunday morning, and here it is
Tuesday evening and I've yet to receive even a response that they've received my
e-mail in the first place. And, you know, it's e-mail only support.
So, anyway, check out
CrazyMeds - Mental Illness
With an Attitude!.
No longer the consumers' guide to psychiatric
medications because for one thing I'll be expanding the scope of the site, when
I update the shitty format, to include things like dealing with the stigma of
mental illness. Also it turns out there's a book called The Consumer's Guide
To Psychiatric Medications. I swear to Buddha I had no idea! I did an Amazon
search and everything before I used that title, but apparently I suck at Amazon
searches. Only later did I stumble across the title in a google search.
Also you might note that I've got my
page of links
up. That will keep growing, so if you're
looking for something in particular and you don't find it today, check back
later.
You bet I've got an attitude problem,
Jerod
Monday, October 20, 2003
Yet another earthquake!
Yesterday 3.5 near Lafayette.
Today 3.4 near Orinda. It
seems like we're having another
cluster of quakes, this time
centered between the Calaveras and Hayward faults. Note, the URL showing the
cluster of quakes may not be any good by the end of this week, as it's a map of
recent events in the area. If you peek at it after the 27th of October 2003, you
may not see the cluster to which I'm referring. You'll see whatever else has
been happening around here of late.
No wonder I've been such a spazz lately.
The extra Risperdal I took yesterday wasn't enough.
I required an additional 25mg of Topamax and 1mg of lorazepam to finally calm
the fuck down.
I thought about how I might deal with what I was
trying to work on yesterday, but once the earthquake hit, that settled it, no
work for me today. Tomorrow I'll try to deal. Tomorrow. I'm afraid that if any
little thing went wrong today I'll be living in Rainman country all over again.
Still a spazz after all these years,
Jerod
Sunday, October 19, 2003
Anniversary Earthquake! Well, almost. A couple days off. Just a little jolt.
Of course now I no longer get this special type of depression prior to
earthquakes, instead I get super-autistic immediately before and, worse yet,
after them. Thanks a fucking lot!
Just to make matters worse, I woke up early this morning. 4:30 a.m. and the
BBC is explaining rugby, something I've been watching of late. So I start
geeking out first thing in the morning and can't go back to sleep. Screw it, I'm
awake and I start my day with a long Yoga workout and figure I'll do something.
I'll do something very dangerous.
I make a plan.
I plan to work on my new website. The new home for the guide to psychiatric
meds. With its own domain and everything. I find this deal, see, three free
years of hosting with no freaking banner ads and $5.99 domain registration.
"What's the catch?" you may ask.
They suck. They suck, they suck, they suck, suck suck so much stinky ass that
I've had to take an extra 0.25mg of Risperdal so as not to throw my computer
across the room in frustrated, earthquake-aggravated autistic rage.
1 and 1 dot com. They're hoping for word of mouth. Here's the word, don't
sign up. At free it is not worth what you pay. They have a user-hostile
interface to do anything. It's slow and Byzantine. Whoever designed it was
smoking so much crack that they personally financed the CIA's delusion about
Iraq's nuclear weapons program.
It took me three hours of running around in circles and reading their
worthless FAQ and running even more worthless searches on their site to try to
set up an FTP account for my new domain until I finally found the crucial piece
of information - I'm not allowed to set up an FTP account for the freebie
domain.
HOW MUCH ASS DOES THAT SUCK??? PLENTY!!!! THAT'S HOW MUCH!
I already have a page to put up on the domain. It's a sucky page to be sure.
I want to use their web creation tools to make something better, that was part
of my plans for the day. I just wanted to do a simple FTP of one fucking file.
But I couldn't, and it took three fucking hours to find that out.
You suck 1 and 1 dot com.
Now I'm trying to just copy my fucking page into their fucking editor.
It sucks, sucks, sucks, sucks, sucks.
It takes tens of minutes for their fucked-up editor to load.
I'd use FrontPage, but the copy of FrontPage that I won on EBay hasn't shown
up yet. It's been 10 days. I haven't heard from the seller, no e-mail, nothing.
I've already paid for it and everything.
This is some of the most fucked-up software I've seen since Bank of America's
payroll software. That set the standard for user-hostile interface. Until now.
I can't even fit the full title that I want for the page in the minuscule
space they provide.
My whole fucking day is ruined.
Now that I've registered the domain I might just move it somewhere else.
1 and 1 dot com, you suck so much ass you're probably oblivious to how much
ass you suck!!!!
Planning on being a spazz,
Jerod
Monday, October 13, 2003
If you read the 12 Steps for Mania from this blog or
from
its own page last Friday, please read it
again, as I've made some changes. Not any really big changes, the steps are
still the same and all, there are just some tweaks and the intro is longer. The
longer intro is probably a mistake, but that's how I am about it.
So we've been discussing my application of the
Twelve Step methodology to bipolar over on the bipolar forum in this thread:
And the following bit of dialogue came up, which I think is appropriate. I'm
replying to a post by the member oakfronds. The bits preceded by > are text
quoted from oakfronds' post. The rest is my reply.
--------Begin quoted text----------
> I don't subscribe to addiction theories for every behavior ever known
> to humanity, including bipolar.
Absolutely. It's way too easy to take one psychological model and apply it to
everything. My hypothesis of mania-as-addictive-behavior could well be a
load of crap.
It's just that there have been a few discussions here and there about the
parallels between euphoric manias and drugs. So I started looking into my own
behavior, especially how I did nothing extra to quell that two-day hypomania I
had last month, and wondered if 12-Step would help. I didn't know squat about
the 12 Steps. So I look at some sites and holy crap! I've been living those very
12 steps for the past year!
So is everyone addicted to mania? Hardly. Are some of us? I think so. Maybe.
I think the model applies. I feel like the 12 Step methodology certainly helps
in keeping people med compliant and coming to terms with what it takes to fight
this illness.
Best method for everyone? Of course not. Everyone's mileage is going to vary.
> Maybe euphoria does cause our bodies to want more, but dysphoria??
As I wrote, there are a very small percentage of alcoholics who have
never had a pleasant experience with booze, yet they keep drinking.
I question it myself. Presuming my original hypothesis is correct, I don't
know if dysphoric-only mania can be addictive. If so, those people would be a
very small part of the population.
Just keep this in mind - rage can be addictive. That's one of the things I'm
going on. The power & the fury of truly blind rage, if you've experienced it,
you know that you actually can want to feel like that often.
> I keep hearing people all over the place saying oh I am addicted to
> this, addicted to that, the whole word is being rendered useless.
In a way it does dilute the word. Yet there are behaviors that are truly
addictive and divorcing the person from said behavior causes physiological
changes, everything from gambling to watching soap operas. Just because the
general public is misusing and diluting the term doesn't mean that behavioral
addiction is not an actual phenomenon.
Who knows, some of these people might in fact be addicted to whatever they
speak of.
The other question is, there are biochemical changes when we are manic, even
during a dysphoric mania. Do our bodies become dependent upon these biochemical
changes, just as someone taking an SSRI is dependent upon it, even if that SSRI
makes them feel like crap in the first place? I have absolutely no idea if that
is the case or not, it's just something that came into my head as I'm trying to
work out the issues in my life.
> So even though the driver keeps ending up someplace they didn't want
> to go, if they don't go somewhere they'll be dead, so they go down
> the nearest, clearest road.
Or as Brian points out from his life, purely dysphoric manias are great ways
to encourage people to stay med compliant. Good old positive or negative
reinforcement, depending on which way you look at it. That is going to have a
much stronger impact than the addictive traits anyway, so even if my hypothesis
is correct (and I'm not taking any bets on it yet), the nasty experiences from
purely dysphoric manias would trump the addiction for most people.
------End of quoted text-------
Please, join in on the debate. I really could be over-applying the model of
addictive behavior. Or maybe not. Purely by accident did I find the 12-Step
methodology to be extremely helpful in staying med compliant and fighting off
mania. Perhaps mania isn't an addictive behavior, but putting it in the terms of
an addiction is useful even if inaccurate.
I spoke with my mother yesterday. That was a very therapeutic conversation.
Amongst other things I got yet another version of the story as to what was the
head trauma that was the primary cause of my epilepsy.
Let me explain, I suffered several significant head traumas before I was five
years old. But there was one that landed me in the hospital, required me to have
my friggin' skull pieced back together, and left me with a nice scar across my
forehead. That is the one my money is on as to being the primary cause of
my epilepsy. However I've had several different stories as to which head trauma
it was that resulted in my hospitalization, or what the circumstances were of
particular trauma. So now it's yet another story. But this time it jives with
what I originally thought was the cause. There are some other aspects to how my
memory worked before and after that event that were significantly different. And
the story is better anyway. Therefore I'm sticking with this event as to the
primary cause of my epilepsy. All other trauma are just cumulative events,
including when I got mugged for being a punkrock with multicolored hair and was
repeatedly kicked in the head with steel-toed boots and hallucinated for two
days afterwards. I was suffering absence seizures prior to that event, so
the epilepsy was already there. All the mugging could have done was make it
worse, adding a few sticks of dynamite to the time bomb that the lithium
triggered.
Here's the scene, it's early February. 1966. We had recently moved from
Hollywood to Stockton (the exact opposite of Janet Leigh, although her daughter
Jamie Lee Curtis did bop up to town to attend UOP). I have some kind of cold or
'flu. So I'm in bed all day long watching TV, all of four channels back then,
bored shitless. My dad comes home and he has a new book for me. Books were a
really big deal for me. A new Dr. Seuss book was something to get excited about.
I was reading them myself, so all the ones I had already read and read and read
just weren't doing it for me at that time. Here was the promise of new words
along with new pictures and new creatures and some new Dr. Seuss world. This was
a Big Fucking Deal!
So I get excited the way autistic kids do. Screw being sick! I start jumping
up and down on the bed! My mom just seems to be happy that I'm feeling better.
But my dad, well in his bipolar way he gets all manic about how he cured me by
bringing home a Dr. Seuss book, so he starts encouraging me to jump higher. Mom
is kinda weirded out by this whole interaction, but the interactions between my
father and me are so few and far between, what is she going to do?
I'm practically touching the ceiling and chanting a mantra of "New! Book!
New! Book!"
Somehow I managed to turn in midair. Maybe I did brush the ceiling. I don't
know. But I came down headfirst onto a wooden headboard.
My next memory is in May, three months later. The hot late spring of the
Central Valley. The grass is high and everything smells so green. All that fresh
hay, newly cut for the horses living next door. Someone is visiting the
neighbors and my mom and I are at the fence and my mom is showing off my scar
and explaining the accident to the visitor.
From that point on, until my third nervous breakdown on my fortieth birthday,
I remembered everything that happened in my life with excruciating clarity.
Every fucking detail of every fucking day. Prior to that point I had a rather
exceptional memory of childhood events, going back to when I was a little over a
year old, but not every single day, and certainly not the amount of detail in
each day. I had an eidetic memory, of sorts. I just didn't have full control
over it. I would try to remember facts and stupid events from my life would
replay themselves. Not always, just sometimes. And trying to get the order in
which things occurred was just hopeless. It was an experiential memory. I
couldn't bring up a sheet of paper from a book like a photographic memory,
nothing that useful. Names and faces were lost on me, always a jumble. I have a
catalog of about a hundred or so generic humans, and more than 99% of the
world's population fits into it. Sorry, but you all look alike to me. So it was
rather confusing at times when only a visual record came back. Oh, yeah, that
was the other thing, the replays included all five senses, but not always all at
the same time. So if I didn't get sound and smell along with a visual, I had no
idea who the cast of characters really were.
There were a few blank spots in this record of my life.
The baby-sitter, I think it was, who sexually abused me - that was always a
complete jumble. I'm still not completely sure about who, what, when. I just
know where and approximately what went on. The therapy sessions over that have
just been personally nightmarish. The first person I accused of being the
molester... well, while it didn't happen that way, the fact that it came up in
my head that way is still messing with me. Similar accusations have
destroyed families. Fortunately it did not destroy what is left of mine, but I
totally understand why there is an entire movement of people to abolish the
practice of recovered memories. And I didn't even do a single recovered memory
exercise! It was just something that hit me in the middle of the night, I had a
panic attack and I had to call my therapist about it. I don't know the rights or
wrongs of recovered memories. My memory system is way too alien to use as an
example.
Anything right before, during, and immediately after a tonic-clonic (a.k.a.
grand mal) seizure. Damned if I know what triggered them.
The rages. I don't know what exactly was going on then. Somehow kids were
unconscious yet I was still standing. And all that furniture smashed into little
pieces. The hole in the wall, my arm through it, my fist on the outside of the
house, I'm hanging from the wall, I don't know how it happened.
And that fugue state. One day I'm in Melbourne. Then I'm in San Francisco.
Point A, point B, yet I can't trace the line.
So now I no longer have that eidetic memory. I can no longer be the human
camcorder who can recite verbatim the contents of any meeting, right down to
gestures and seating arrangements. That's fine with me. I'm no longer plagued
with random junior high moments popping up in my life. I no longer wake up at
2:00 a.m. being mugged, feeling the boot crashing into my skull again and again.
I'm no longer Billy Pilgrim.
I gave up trigonometry for that? Hey, I'll accept the bargain. No problem.
In many cultures one of the things the spirit of a recently departed person
does is drink from a cup of forgetfulness. Such a thing is considered necessary
in order to rest, otherwise you become a wandering ghost, haunting the living
with your unresolved issues as you seek out some group therapy.
I'm getting stuff under control.
Agoraphobia: check.
Epilepsy: check.
PTSD: check.
One disorder at a time, one day at a time,
Jerod
Friday, October 10, 2003
Hi, I'm Jerod and I'm a mania addict. But you knew
that already.
But if you're reading this and you're bipolar,
somewhere around the bipolar 1 part of the spectrum, at least part of the time,
ask yourself if you're a mania addict as well.
There are many reasons why we don't want to be med
compliant. The meds suck! They change how much we weigh, they make our hair fall
out, they make us sleep all the time, we can't think straight anymore, we forget
everything, we break out like it's two weeks before the senior prom and we still
don't have a date, you can't get it up with a forklift, food tastes funny now,
ow! another goddamn kidney stone, on and on with the side effects. And we get to
pay lots and lots of money for the privilege of feeling like shit. Why? So
you're not manic anymore. So you're not smarter, sexier, more confident, more on
top of things, more fun and just plain better than everyone else.
Whom did we kill and which circle of Hell is this?
What was the method of execution used? Or, as mentioned in a previous entry,
were we really that bad in a past life? Mouse and I have dibs on being low-level
Nazis. It would certainly explain a lot of things. Maybe the universe is just
random after all. As the Buddha said, "Shit happens."
The point is, our selective memories act so we
remember all the fun-fun-fun manias. So of course we don't want to take the meds
because we want to be our euphoric manic selves. There are even some dysphoric
manias we'd like to be in. What? You don't believe me? Rage, people, rage. Have
you heard the term rageoholic? It's not wholly some bit of psychobabble thrown
at people, there is a core of truth in it. The power of true fury is a melange
of potently addictive substances coursing through your system, both physical and
psychological. Anyone who has met me can tell you that Andy Warhol could have
wrestled me to the ground two rounds out of three, post-Valerie Solarnis. Yet I
punched a hole through the wall of a house with my bare fist. I've destroyed
rooms of furniture. No one messed with me in school, scrawny brainiac autistic
teachers' pet that I was because I sent three kids to the hospital who did mess
with me. That was by the third grade. I don't even know what happened, they
started something then they were unconscious. Same with the hole in the wall and
all the deceased furniture. That's what true rage is like, you don't remember
the details. Just the feeling of power. It was always a struggle not to let it
out.
There are alcoholics who never have a good time with
booze, but they keep drinking. Could the same be true with mania? Could even the
dysphoric manias be addictive? I don't know.
But I'm convinced that the fun manias are
addictive. Behavior can be addictive, that's been proven. So it is doubly hard
to stay on our meds, triply hard if we're paying for them out of pocket. We have
to fight with the side effects, we have to fight with the addiction to mania and
we have the battle of the budget to pay for the damn things.
I've put together the
Poppin' Zits! Consumers' Guide to Psychiatric Medications
to help you with the side effects. I don't
advise shopping around for side effects as the best way to pick a medication,
but doctors do that all the time, so what do I know.
You're on your own with the money thing. The
Needy Meds
people can help if you're really broke. If
you're not that broke but still have to pay full retail, check out buying meds
from
Canada Meds. Yeah, I've had problems with
them in the past, but they have really had their act together lately, like
calling me a month before my prescription runs out to remind me to reorder. Not
all meds are available to buy from the Great White North, nor are they all
cheaper, but it's worth a look. I highly recommend Canada Meds now, they have
the largest selection that I've found and generally the best prices. You may
also find meds at even lower prices in other countries, but that just became too
much of a hassle for me.
Now let's discuss being mania addicts. Since my last
breakthrough hypomania last month, the first in nearly a year, I've been giving
a lot of thought on the subject of mania as addiction. I can even see depression
as being addictive, but it's not my bag, despite accusations to the contrary. I
just like to complain about it when I'm depressed because that helps me work
through it. Anyway, the meds are great, the meds are necessary, we can't fight
mania without the meds. But the meds aren't enough. We need to do something like
the 12-Step program for mania. I know it reads weird, and it is basically
replacing one addiction ("Keep coming back!") for another, but the 12-Step
addiction is basically harmless. Yeah, it can waste a lot of your time, and the
people involved, while for the most part are really wonderful; well if you ever
read Fight Club or saw the movie, that whole thing about people going to
support groups for kicks and manipulating the members for sick pleasures? It's
not fictional. And the 12-Step groups attract the worst of that type. I know, I
dated one. Her idea of fun was going from one meeting to another. And this was
long before Fight Club. So 12-Step for bipolar, I can guarantee you a
healthy percentage of sociopaths. But there is a way around that. Do the 12-step
part on your own, or just one-on-one or in very small groups with people you
trust. People you know from other bipolar support groups. Preferably online.
It's all doubly anonymous that way.
You see, we need the support of other people, people
who have been through a lot of the same shit we've been through. But the 12-Step
stuff, you can do that by yourself. There may even be a better model for dealing
with addictive behaviors, it's just that walking the 12-Steps is free and
relatively effective, so that's why I'm advocating it. It's not the only way of
dealing with addictive behavior. Just as there are a plethora of drugs to deal
with bipolar, there are probably other ways of dealing with the behavioral
aspects of just wanting to be manic again. I know you're just itching to ruin
your credit rating, destroy your relationships, pick up an STD, wreck your car,
get injured in a bar fight and lose your job after you scream at your boss for
not being able to see how simple the solution to all the problems are!!!
I just think the twelve steps need a little
tweaking. Sure,
Affective Disorders Anonymous
is applying the traditional twelve steps to bipolar and similar disorders, but I
honestly don't think that they'll work as written. And if you don't like my
adjustments, feel free to make some of your own. And that crap about not being
able to progress from one step to the next? I wouldn't worry about that too
much. Once you get past step one, hit all the others as you see fit in whatever
order you can deal with. Yes, the best way is in the order they are presented,
but that is just not going to work for everyone. And you shouldn't get held up
because you can't complete a step. Steps 4, 5 and 8 are truly difficult. So,
here we go with the annotated 12-step program for mania addiction:
Step 1: Come to accept that the bipolar
diagnosis is correct and that in our manic periods we have made a right mess of
things. See, the thing is, we're not completely powerless, and our lives are not
utterly unmanageable. Now when you go into an AA group or website you are
blasted with guilt at this point, and maybe you should be blasted with guilt
about all the stupid, lives-destroying shit you've done when manic. However I
think the side effects from the meds are better penance, and I was raised
Catholic. As for the powerlessness and unmagageablilty, look, once we find the
right med(s) and as long as we stay med compliant, we have the power over the
mania and we can keep our shit together. Don't be fooled for one second that
there won't be breakthrough manias or that meds won't fail. But modern science
is getting more modern by the day. It's a struggle, but we can win. I'm not
powerless over mania, but I'm not ignorant of the fact I'm fighting a powerful
enemy. But you have to come to terms with the fact that you are bipolar
and you have fucked things up when you
were out of control during your manias. If you are not currently medicated, then
you are powerless. You're completely deluded if you think you have things
under control. Get with the program. Right now.
Step 2: Come to believe that a power greater
than ourselves can and will restore us to sanity. Indeed. Pharmaceutical
companies, psychiatric research, clinical studies, therapists getting together
and exchanging notes on what works and what doesn't, potent molecules where
0.25mg of Risperdal can have so much impact on my life, those are all way
more powerful than I am. All of that and more have gone a long way to
restoring my sanity. Oh, hey, if you think that some sort of deity is involved
as well, that works too. But $DEITY alone is not going to do it. Force of will
alone is not going to do it. You need meds to do it and you need the help of
people who are going through the same struggle to remind you that you're not
alone and that a breakthrough depression or mania is not the end of the world.
Step 3: Make a decision to turn our lives
over to the care of medical science. A part of your life does get turned over to
the meds and medical science, and they certainly are a higher power of sorts.
You gotta take your meds every day and on schedule. So if you look at medical
science as the Higher Power, then we must certainly take this step
wholeheartedly. But your psychiatrist is not your God, your psychiatrist is, at
best, your priest. You confess your sins to your psychiatrist, and you get
communion wafers that come in many different shapes and colors. At least they
don't taste as bad as the stale communion wafers they served up at St.
Bernadette's 7:00 a.m. Mass. Unless you're taking Risperdal syrup for some
reason. Yeeee-uck! Oh, and like priests it is not right for your psychiatrist to
touch you in an inappropriate manner, nor will God get angry at you if you
report any bad touches.
Step 4: Make a searching and fearless moral
inventory of ourselves. Dude, this is the decade of the blog. Aren't we all
doing this already? Yeah, well dig a little deeper. Just how much of a jerk were
you when manic? We know how much we suck when depressed, so just don't go there,
OK. But when we're euphorically manic we are just the best people on the planet,
right? Right! So meditate on all the betrayals, the people you treated like dirt
in your manic arrogance because you were king shit, and the lives made extra
sucky by ruined credit histories. I could go on and on. Oh yeah, we were blind
to the pain of others because we pissed rose water and shat gold when we were
manic. It's not pretty. Do not do this when depressed. Really, deal with this
step only when you are in a period of decent emotional stability. It can make
some of the side effects seem far less adverse.
Step 5: Admit to God, to ourselves and to
other human beings the exact nature of wrongs. Hey, confession is good for the
soul. Open up and spill, it'll do you good. Go ahead and start with your flavor
of God, work up to your therapist, and after that the anonymous support groups.
Then you can start dealing with people face-to-face. Or through e-mail. They
can't punch you in the face when you tell them something in e-mail.
Step 6: We're entirely ready to have our
medications remove all these defects of character! Damn straight we are. We're
ready to put up with the side effects to quit being the worst jerks on the
planet. We're willing to shell out lots of money to stop hurting the people we
love, and to stop hurting ourselves. Got that? Good.
Step 7: We swear to remain med compliant. If
we don't stay on our meds, all of this is just a load of crap. Now some meds
don't work and some side effects are too much to bear, so it's OK to stop one or
more medications and switch to other medications. And for that very, very small
percentage of people for whom nothing has worked, well, I'm sorry, this
obviously is not the program for you. With any luck there will be something that
will work for you. Not every psychological problem requires medication, but the
vast majority of people in the bipolar spectrum sure as hell do. Vast majority?
Yeah, I'll admit that some cyclothymes could possibly get along without meds.
But they are a tiny minority of the population in bipolarland, as are those who
can't tolerate any medication. Plenty of people give up after trying five
or six different meds, when there are over forty, count them, forty
medications that act as mood stabilizers. That's all of the antipsychotics, all
the lithium variants, a couple benzodiazepines and most of the anticonvulsants.
I'm not even counting any of the antidepressants. Don't give up so easily.
Step 8: Made a list of persons we had harmed
and became willing to make amends to them all. This is the step that makes
everyone hate people who are in AA. Why? Because the people in The Program do
things to make amends that just make themselves feel better, and get really
obnoxious and pushy about it. Or there's an insincere "I'm sorry," as if that's
going to make up for all the shit you've done, and it's on to Step 9. Making
amends is tough. You have to find something that is going to make a difference.
You might not be able to do that. You may never be able to make amends with some
people. That's life, deal with it. You're going to feel shitty about it. It
sucks. That's why God invented therapists. Or find some kind of charity that you
can associate with the people you've wrong and can't make up to and do some work
in their names, not yours, their names. Hey, you're the one making up for
misdeeds, if you have to work under a gender reassignment, that's your problem.
There's nothing easy about this. Try not to be another type of jerk in this
category.
Step 9: Get involved with a support group and
help people, just try not to fuck them up. That second part is the killer. We
all make mistakes, we say or do the wrong things. Please be careful with other
people, especially those in crisis. Otherwise your list in Step 8 will keep
growing. But don't freeze up and be silent and do nothing. Let others know what
you've been through, share your experiences. Let people know what worked for you
and what didn't. Just remember these words of wisdom that should always be added
to any advice you give, "Your mileage may vary. What worked for me may not work
for you." If nothing else, just letting other people know that they are not
alone, that someone else has been there, that is sometimes a huge help.
Step 10: Lather, rinse, repeat. Just because
you've gone this far, presuming you're going through the steps one at a time,
doesn't mean you're cured. Not by a long shot. If you've been keeping a mood
chart, keep doing so. If you've been digging into your past about all those
hurts, keep digging. If you're going to therapy and exorcising demons, keep
exorcising even if you think your psyche is all buff and shit. Oh, and if you've
been feeling stable for some time and think you can stop taking your meds,
DON'T!!!!! That's pyramid-scheme thinking. How do you think you got stable in
the first place? Obviously your meds are working. After a few years of
stability, and I mean total stability with no breakthrough manias or
depressions, you can consider discussing with your doctor a reduction of some of
your meds or even a phasing out of one or more meds from a cocktail. At this
point I'm not even sure if I'm going to do that or just resign myself to a life
sentence of medications.
Step 11: Learn as much as we can about
medications and therapies to make informed decisions about them and to help
guide others in making informed decisions. Does this mean you need to be a
junior psychopharmacologist? Of course not. But as long as you learn where to go
for good information about different meds and therapies and can point other
people in those directions, that's all you need to do. Remember Step 9, just
don't mess anyone up.
Step 12: Go out and recruit other bipolar
types for this new cult so Jerod can get rich as a guru. Make them get cash
advances on what credit cards they have left and send him all the money. Paypal
works. What? That's what this step is in the AA book, I'm just cashing in on it
instead. Oh, all right, you don't have to send me any money. And please, leave
your credit cards locked up in a safe place. I'm putting the twelve steps up on
their own page
here. If you think they can
be of any help, spread the URL.
Support groups are important to make this work. I
personally think the online support groups are superior to the face-to-face
support groups, but I'm mildly autistic and had a truly messed up childhood and
I don't play well with others. The advantages to the online groups are:
They are always there (there's not a guarantee
that someone else is in a chatroom, which I despise anyway, but the fora are
always there, so you can read and type and read and type so it's like there
is someone always there).
It's much more difficult for someone to follow
you home. It's not impossible, just a lot harder.
By the same token it's much more anonymous. Not
that I'm Mr. Anonymity, because I'm all about breaking the goddamn stigma,
but for all of you who wish to remain anonymous, it's easier to remain
anonymous when no one has to see your face. Again, a determined person can
still break the veil of anonymity, but it's just harder to do.
No one can punch you in the face after you say
something stupid and hurtful.
Moderators can make your stupid and hurtful
things disappear. Dangerous words and phrases can be altered to be less
dangerous or warning signs can be put up.
It's easier to ignore particular people through
the wonders of filtering technology.
No driving to across town or to another town.
No perfume assaults.
Less psychodrama.
10. Access to vast amounts of information
referred to is just a mouse click away.
The advantages to the face-to-face groups are:
The warmth and fuzziness of human contact, if
you're into that sort of thing.
Body language and tone of voice play a huge
part of human communication, for those of you who pick up on them.
Hugging. Again, if you're into that sort of
thing.
Dinner.
Group activities.
More cathartic experiences, both in quantity
and quality.
Once you ban someone, they can't come back
because you know who they are. You ban someone from an online group, they
just get another e-mail address and they're back to stir up shit.
Med exchanges. Hey, as long as you have a
prescription for the medication, it's perfectly legal to receive free
medications from someone. As for giving away meds you no longer use to
someone else, that could get you in trouble. But in these fucked up times
what else are we going to do?
Better chances for dating. Look, it's still
pretty damn lonely for a lot of us.
10. Endless amounts of free coffee.
So if you've decided to at least check out a
support group or two, where do you start?
Here's where I hang out:
the bipolar
fora on about.com. I'm the co-host of
the Medications folder and host of the News & Information folder on the main
forum.
A bunch are listed
here. A few more
here.
I think you're together enough to use google to wean down the 74,000
listings for online bipolar support groups to something that is a bit more
of a closer fit to your particular needs if none of these is good enough.
You can do it. You can walk away from mania,
with the help of medications, a change in your lifestyle, the help of your
doctor(s) and the help of others who have been through it. Give back that
help, it will help you in return.
"Keep coming back!"
Jerod
Thursday, October 09, 2003
Happy National Bipolar Awareness Day! I hope you
liked the yo-yo somebody got you, as that is the new traditional gift that I'm
trying to start in honor of this new national day. Were you aware of today? Are
people in your community more aware of bipolar? Did you read anything
about bipolar disorder in your local paper? No? That's not surprising, as there
wasn't a hell of a lot of coverage anywhere. Not according to
news.google.com
anyway. OK, sure, they don't get every newspaper
in North America, but they do get a lot, as does Yahoo News, and there wasn't
much there.
NAMI puts out
a
press release. I'm sure they sent it all
over the place. The results?
San Francisco Chronicle - Zip, zilch, nada. They run
my
first-person story
last year, you know the thing that started this
whole blog, and several articles about bipolar since, but on this our special
day it's bupkis. But, hey, Barret Robbins is back as starting center for the
Oakland Raiders despite his bipolar meltdown prior to the Super Bowl. That's
some good news at least. But it wasn't mentioned today, that was last week's
news.
From
the Daily Pennsylvanian
the former dean of the Yale School of Medicine
comes out of the bipolar closet. Yowza! Quoting from the article:
During this time, he published "Brainsick: A
Physician's Journey to the Brink" -- an article that advocates destigmatizing
mental illness in the scientific world.
That mission is one that Rosenberg still promotes.
"Every time someone steps forward and says something
about mental illness, it has a positive effect," he said.
Rosenberg emphasized the relevance of bipolar
disease to college students, but also gave it an optimistic spin.
He stressed that mental illness is treatable and is
compatible with a successful career.
"The stigma associated with mental illness is unjust
in humanity today," he said, explaining it is only a brain disease.
-----------
That was the biggest positive news story
news.google.com could find. The one from the St. Louis paper was a real downer,
so much so I'm not even giving the URL.
Psychology Today
reprinted an even smaller part of the press
release under the headline "Bipolar Disorder: Is It Ignored?". Unlike the
Atlanta paper, they provided no links to the NIMH site for more information or
an online screening test. Thanks ever so much for all the support Psychology
Today! I feel so less ignored already.
A small
paper
for a community of 10,000 in Canada did a piece that is
pretty astonishing. The gist of it is: Guess what Salt Springs? Some of your
neighbors are bipolar and they aren't a threat to the community! They're mainly
a threat to their credit histories.
A Yahoo news search has produced some more results,
but still not a hell of a lot of coverage. Mostly the same repeated line as part
of the whole mental-health week and National Depression Screening Day,
"screening day is to educate the public about depression, bipolar disorder,
anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder."
But at least they bothered to mention that in
Honolulu, Missoula, Ventura County, Tucson, The Arizona Daily Sun (wherever
that's published), Miami, Washington DC, Amarillo, Billings, and in USA Today.
Plus a couple other papers with no locations in their names. Thanks folks, it's
a hell of a lot better than nothing.
HealthDay just ran a small
part of the NAMI Press Release.
Then there were the usual downer stories. You know
the drill. Suicide. Overdose. Death by homelessness. We don't all get out of
this alive, so let's be reminded of it on our one official day. Thanks
journalists of North America! Oh well, I guess awareness is awareness.
Hey, one more success story, this one from
Tallahassee. Diagnosed at 13
and has a life at 28. No, it didn't take that long, he's just getting recognized
for it now. Is having a life as much of a success as being the Yale Dean of
Medicine? In bipolarland it sure the fuck is.
-----------------------
And now, the latest tale from the dreamtime...
Early this morning I was Death's apprentice. Just
call me Mort. Finally, a job I could really enjoy! Harkening back to my very
first job, as gofer for the pathology department at the county hospital. Anyway,
Death had changed his look. No more black cowl and sickle. Nope. Instead He's
opted for a white athletic training outfit with blue and red stripes, the sort
of outfit the hip-hop kids are wearing. Complete with headband. I didn't catch
the brand.
Death was pretty buff. He wasn't wearing that as a
fashion statement, He'd actually been working out. He had translucent muscles
and flesh over that skeleton.
So what was my job? Well Death decided that He would
give certain people a little warning that their time was coming. We would pay
them a visit and let them know how long they had. There was this device,
basically it was Prof. Farnsworth's Death Clock, as mentioned in Futurama. The
Death Clock was like a hologram keno board. I'd carry this big half-sphere, sort
of like those anti-shoplifting camera covers in many stores, set it on the
ground before the person we're visiting, push a few buttons, and the keno screen
would pop up in the air in front of everyone. Then the old guy (it was always
old guys that we visited in this dream) would touch it. As soon as a bead of
sweat hit, for it took some sweat and when Death and his lackey came to visit
the elderly always shook and sweat, the number of days or years left would glow
a brighter green on the black background (Death liked the old mainframe
interface) and note below if they represented years, months, or days.
So we go to this one fancy retirement apartment
complex and there is this one guy riding an exercycle by an empty Olympic-sized
pool. I set everything up. He's going through the whole begging & bargaining
routine just like everyone else had done. His bead of sweat touches the Death
Keno Clock and the numbers come up in hours and minutes. "Better get your shit
together," says Death (or words to that effect) and we pack up and leave. I ask
why everyone else had weeks or even years worth of notice, but this guy just had
a few hours. His notice was more torture than anything else.
"He was always a jerk," said Death.
--------------------
Here's hoping that Social Security's Vocational
Rehabilitation can sign me up to work with Death. I hope He has a good 401(k)
package, because he wasn't a bad guy to work with, and the Keno Death Clock
wasn't too heavy.
After my most recent visit with my doctor we decided
to increase my Neurontin dosage. While I've been rather stable, that stability
has been fragile. I missed one afternoon dose of 400mg of Neurontin and 25mg of
Topamax; the result was two days of hypomania. I'm pretty med compliant. A
hectic day and Topamax memory impairment, despite post-it notes all over the
place to remind me to take my meds, and I often space out on that particular
dose. I'll miss the schedule by an hour or two some days, but it wasn't until I
was taking my nighttime meds that I found the untaken pills in the container.
Oops. The effect wasn't until the next day, and the day after that. Yow!
So while I thought could live with that risk, my
doctor didn't think it was all that great an idea, and he's right. He originally
wanted to increase the Topamax, but that was not going to work. I'm finally over
the worst of Topamax's freaky cognitive side effects. Sure, I still get extra
bizarre spatial distortions on top of my already Asperger's-impaired spatial
distortions. And I no longer remember everything. Which is great, because
I no longer remember every detail of every day of junior high. At random.
Against my will. I can finally do simple math in my head again. I'm up to
multiplying single-digit numbers with some smaller two-digit numbers. For a guy
who used to do trig in his head, that's a big deal. Sometimes the right word is
just out of reach, but I can use a thesaurus or dictionary to get it. Once in a
great while aphasia strikes, but everyone seems to have a brain fart like that
now and then. I'm far from being a normal human being, but I no longer feel like
I'm a mental cripple. I don't want to risk any changes in that.
Plus there are physical effects that I don't want to
make worse. I've lost about twenty pounds. I know, I know, you've got the
world's smallest violin playing for me on that account. Look, compared to the
health problems and body image issues from the weight gain associated with drugs
used to treat bipolar disorder, I know that this is the lesser problem. But it's
still a problem. You can be too thin. I want to stop the weight loss before it
reaches a point of being dangerous. I'm 5'8" and I weigh 125 pounds. You do the
BMI math. A runway model could take me down in a cagematch. Then there are the
kidney stones. OK, you can stop grimacing. They aren't that bad. No, really.
I've always had a problem with them, and they're always been ibuprofen bad. All
right, sometimes I really could have used some Vicodin or Codeine for the first
couple hours for one or two of them. It was something that happened once every
two to four years. Now I'm getting one every two to three months. Fortunately
with all the water and cranberry juice I drink every day the stones are smaller
still. No ibuprofen or aspirin required. It's just some days it's like, "Good
morning Jerod, there's a stone traveling down your ureter. Feel it? Cranberry
juice for breakfast this morning." I'm aware of the presence of those accreted
minerals on their journey of excretion, and that's about it. I'm just sure
they're not doing my innards too much good. So I drink even more water and
cranberry juice and by the time the stones hit my bladder they dissolve.
So it's more Neurontin. We know that Neurontin does
something for me, as when I tried to stop it I became horribly depressed over
every least little thing. I also noticed that 400mg TID was slightly less
effective than 300mg QID. But not so much so to turn down free Neurontin. So as
long as it's free, let's boost it up to 1600mg a day! All the more reason to
increase the Neurontin instead of the Topamax, Doc! It makes total sense that
Neurontin didn't work as well taken only three times a day. Neurontin's big
problem is in its metabolism. Just because I'm a circus freak who metabolizes
Neurontin well enough to get any benefit from it does not mean I do so well
enough to get away with taking it only three times a day.
I want to strengthen that stability. I don't want
everything to be such a razor's edge. I've had too much of a life like that. I
know that being med compliant, and getting up to my eyeballs in credit card debt
just to pay for the meds are my responsibilities. I'm willing to take on those
responsibilities. Honestly, officer, I just forgot to take my meds that one
time. I went into my bedroom with the intent to take them, got sidetracked by
something else and since I intended to take them I thought I had. That's how
Topamax makes me forget regularly scheduled things when you have a memory that
is already pretty weird to begin with.
The stereotype of mania, the type of mania that I
often get, is as exhilarating, euphoric and addictive as any street drug on the
market. It almost takes a 12-step style approach to deal with it. Meds and
therapy just aren't enough. You need to be part of a support group to have
people reminding you of all the shit they've caused in their manias and all the
shit you've done in yours. All those great ideas that wound up costing hundreds,
even thousands of dollars and were complete and total busts. Maybe more for some
of you high-rolling manic-depressives. All those shopping sprees. Those affairs.
The drug abuse - not partying now and then, because there's really nothing wrong
with most of that, but the serious abuse of legal and illegal substances. And I
don't even have to mention the dysphoric manias, I'm just writing about the
fallout from the euphoric manias. OK, I will mention the dysphoric manias, when
mania goes bad, when it turns to rage and anxiety and paranoia and you're all
hyped up and have to do something about being full of rage, anxiety and
paranoia. You have to be reminded that when you feel relatively normal and
stable on meds that it is not time to stop taking them, that's pyramid scheme
thinking. When you feel relatively normal and stable then it's time to move
forward and start putting your life back together, with the help of those meds.
Yeah, I can understand why it's completely
unacceptable to my doctor that missing one dose of meds led to a two-day
euphoric hypomania. It sure as hell was unacceptable to me at the time, and I
was the one who was in the state of euphoria. Did I take extra Topamax? Did I
take any lorazepam? Did I take extra Neurontin of which I had plenty? Did I take
extra Risperdal?
No, of course not. I stayed compliant with my
regular meds, but I didn't take any extra to deal with the hypomania. I'm just
as addicted to it as anyone else with bipolar. I didn't do anything crazy, I
didn't do anything out of the ordinary at all, but just as I documented
previously I could not get past the feeling of what it used to be like. That was
how I was for most of fifteen years. Fifteen years of extended hypomanias.
People in AA backslide all the time. Am I weak? Do I suck? No, not really. I'm
taking more meds so it shouldn't happen again.
But it's not easy to be part of a mental health
support group these days. We all know support groups are great. Science backs
this claim with study after study. Doctors tell people with one ailment or
another to join a support group because from bipolar to bulima to breast cancer
belonging to a support group helps you get well. But support groups have their
dark side, especially for the mental health issues. Intense emotional scenes and
not being able to find a place to sit down and talk to each other are but two of
the problems that plague one such group that tries to meet in the flesh.
Their story sums up
why I find online support groups to be far superior, without even getting into
the issue of being assaulted by someone's cologne.
A couple of excerpts:
But there are no magic bullets or miracle cures at
the Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance of Southern Nevada meeting. Every
Wednesday evening gathering, held in a nondescript state building on West
Charleston Boulevard, is a tangle of psychodrama, half-answers, tales of
torment--and a tiny bit of solace. There are few happy endings to the meetings
of this roughly year-old group, geared toward sufferers of bipolar disorder and
their friends and relatives. Every week they converge to shore up some comfort,
share stories about setbacks and small triumphs and maybe puzzle out some
answers about this mental disorder that affects an estimated 2.3 million
Americans.
...
"We've called schools, churches, fire departments,"
says DBSA president Cheryl Murphy. "We have tried absolutely any place we can
think of [to hold our meetings], and once they hear 'mental illness,' they don't
want us there."
[...]
And on the subject of stability, my computer seems
stable for the moment. The most aptly named Linda Rong found a solution to my
ills - revert to a previous version of Internet Explorer then install IE 6
directly from the Microsoft website. That, and some system maintenance on my
part, took care of all the crashes I've been having while using a browser and a
lot of the other assorted crap I've been experiencing. Thank you Ms. Rong! The
one problem I'm still having she correctly identified as being McAfee's fault.
This time the Microsoft answer is not acceptable, to disable McAfee products
while using IE. Hello? Firewall? Ms. Rong left for a week just when the problem
was resolved, on what I hope was a pleasant vacation. The person to whom she
handed off the issue seemed a bit monofocused. He just latched onto the whole
spyware thing and couldn't even bring himself to discuss the firewall. During
the time I was debugging the problem McAfee's firewall stopped two series of
port-scan attacks and one fragment attack. That is why I use a firewall at all
times. Fortunately Mozilla does not have a problem with McAfee as often as IE
does, or as badly. Sure, it still happens and sometimes Mozilla will crash
because of it. Every once in a great while there's a reboot. But Mozilla is far
more stable than IE. There are still a few quirks with some websites that I use,
so I have to fire up IE once in awhile, but I'm not connecting to the Internet
without a firewall. This isn't 1988. This isn't even 1995. There are too many
malicious idiots out there with bad cases of processor and/or penis envy who
need to do something to get over their shame. I'm not really expecting the
people at McAfee to do anything about it. I'm running Windows ME for God's sake.
I just happy that I can still get product updates. I do make backups of my more
important data far more frequently, though.
This too shall pass,
Jerod
Sunday, September 14, 2003
Mouse got her Adderall and things calmed down a bit.
My schedule was just completely hosed for three days running and that just
freaked me to no end. The extra Risperdal has helped, but only so much. I don't
know if my sensitivity to earthquakes has returned or if it was just a
coincidence that I was really freaking before the little jolt we had.
We gave Mouse's latest doctor, one who actually
looks stuff up in the books in his office, an abstract on a study on Buprenex
for refractory depression and a reference to another study using it for bipolar
depression. Mouse has had it before for something else and it just lifted her
out of the black pit of despair. She's been taking Suboxone, which has some
buprenorphine in it, but unfortunately the naloxone component is notorious for
making depression much worse after a few doses, and there are several studies to
back up her experience. She needs pure buprenorphine. The Ultram she's been
taking is OK as both an antidepressant and a pain reliever for the fibromyalgia,
but the physical dependency is morphine-like. Buprenex is not known to have a
physical dependency. Plus Ultram isn't good to take for longer than a year, and
Mouse has been on it for two years now.
Listened to His Holiness the Dalai Lama version 14.0
on KUSF back on the fifth as part of a day-long Tibetan Buddhist & interfaith
lovefest as he received yet another degree and gave a lecture. He had many words
of wisdom, especially on how violence on a small scale is illegal yet on a large
scale is legal, and the differences in the psychic damage between friendly fire
and enemy fire. But I was most touched by the prayer that ended the session, it
sums up what I'm trying to do with the
Poppin' Zits! Consumers' Guide to Psychiatric Medications.
A Prayer from the Book:
Ethics for a New Millennium
May I Become At All Times,
Both Now and Forever
A Protector
For Those Without Protection
A Guide
For Those Who Have Lost Their Way
A Ship
For Those With An Ocean To Cross
A Bridge
For Those With A River To Cross
A Sanctuary
For Those in Danger
A Lamp
For Those Without Light
A Place of Refuge
For Those Who Lack Shelter
And A Servant to All In Need
I heard from Sebastien the other night. I finally got through the accent and
the language barrier to learn just what the hell it is he does for a living,
which is being the gofer and bottle-washer for a branch of Kendall's, I think
that's the name, one of Australia's largest equipment rental companies. Up at
5:00 a.m., driving all around the Perth area to deal with recalcitrant machinery
and customers. His original plan was to save money to get an apartment to avoid
dealing with the latest insanity of his mother's. I.e. selling the land from
under the houses she and her schizophrenic siblings inherited, and in which she
and Sebastien live, and then buying another plot of land and moving the
buildings onto that land. Voila, instant housing. Oh, who cares about little
details like foundations or plumbing or electricity. It's all magic and will
just be taking care of without any problems. Great plans, but instead the money
is going to rock climbing, CDs and his two muscle cars that are almost as old as
I am. That's just being 19.5 years old. I hope. He takes one of the muscles
cars, a Holden, the classic Australian car as featured in "Mad Max" out to the
desert to race and spin doughnuts. That's until it won't run anymore and it'll
just be used for parts for the other muscle car, another Holden. Rock climbing,
racing ancient muscle cars, it may be the onset of mania or it may just be
living dangerously. Both are Poore family traditions. My father, besides being a
rollerderby star, once held a land-speed record for a motorcycle. My older
half-brother was once a professional motorcycle racer, now both of his knees are
artificial amalgamations of stainless steel and porcelain. My actual paternal
grandfather, I have no idea what sort of crazy shit he was ever mixed up in, but
in looking back at the crazy shit he did when he lived with us, I'm pretty sure
he was just as bipolar as every other male in the immediate family. He had to
have had some kind of manic charm going to have married my grandmother, unless
he just knocked her up after a one-night stand. Those two had nothing in common.
Frenchy, the Quebecois Jewish money launderer and professional gambler she
married, and for whom she converted from Irish Catholicism to a very lax Reform
Judaism, Frenchy was the sophisticated guy that my grandmother wanted. Eddie Sr.
was just some crazy coot from Appalachia.
My current
cocktail is working quite well, but it is a
very delicate balance. I missed my afternoon dose of Topamax and Neurontin one
day and it was two days of slight hypomania that followed. There was so much
that I wanted to do, that I felt I could do, but fortunately I knew that I would
be going nowhere and didn't bother to start some manic project or another that
would just lead to frustration and heartache. I missed the dose because of
banging my head against the wall of errors in all the computer problems I've
been having since a degrade to IE that I downloaded from Microsoft. One of those
critical patches to protect against nasty worms and viruses and evil hackers and
the like. My operating system hasn't been the same since, I can't uninstall it,
I couldn't do a system restore, and every suggestion the person from Microsoft
has made to correct the problem has just made things worse. Fortunately I've
been able to undo all of the "fixes" to the degrade. That's what you get for
such a tight integration of the browser and the operating system. At least,
that's what I get, an OS that is hanging on by a thread thinner than my own
mental health.
Hanging on by all the short hairs I can grab,
Jerod
Wednesday, September 03, 2003
It's been Rainman country lately. Yesterday I found out that I totally fucked
up one of my credit cards. I have a huge balance on it at a fixed 4.9% rate and
never put anything else on it. For those of you following the story from the
bipolar forum, this is the balance that resulted from Mouse's Geodon-fueled
mania that was originally spread over three different cards. Unfortunately I got
seduced by an offer that I thought was for another of my cards, so I started
buying my regular stuff on that card instead of my Discover card. It
didn't help matters that the customer service rep to whom I spoke was named
Vince Lombardi. ("Need the last four digits of my social? Yes Coach! They are:
XXXX Coach!" I'm so sure he is so sick of such crap.) And instead of trying to
sell me a bunch of credit guard crap I don't want or need, he asked me how the
weather was in Berkeley and if I surfed and what it was like to live in
Australia. I don't know if that's a welcome change in Citibank policy or if
Coach Vince was just looking for an excuse to get fired for being too nice to
the customers (explain that one to the unemployment department
Citibank!). When I updated Quicken the other day and found out just how badly I
fucked up it was rocking in a non-rocking chair all balled up and wailing for
half an hour.
Eventually I figured out how to deal with that mess. Temporarily at any rate.
I have a few months in which to find another fixed rate for enough money. Oh
well, at least at 0% it will pay for the balance transfer fees by not having any
interest payments on the balance for a few months. I may come out ahead on the
deal.
Mouse had a really shitty day and I needed to pick her up from the BART
station and bring her over to my place to let her decompress. She wound up in
one of those depressions where every decision is the wrong decision, every
choice leads to something worse, so she just sat at 16th & Mission (and you have
to be really fucking depressed to just sit at that corner) for three
hours, staring at nothing, waiting for something to happen to force her to do
something. Three fucking hours. Finally nicotine withdrawal made her get up and
go to a store, where the guy working the register kept chatting her up as if she
were a hooker. That made the decision for her to make her way back to the East
Bay. Once she had some Provigil she could figure stuff out from there. She's
been out of Adderall and I've been giving her some of my Provigil to hold her
over. It works OK for her. Much better than Ritalin so far. Anyway after dinner
and a night of watching anime (lots of Cowboy Bebop on DVD, then Adult Swim's
Inuyasha, Blue Gender, Trigun and more Cowboy Bebop) I get my meds together for
the night and the next morning, having flaked on filling my containing for the
past couple of weeks.
Like a total idjit I take my morning meds and put my night meds in the
container for the morning. Once I realize that I'm throwing the container across
the room and pounding on the bed repeatedly. Mouse retreats under the covers.
The last thing she needed was my freaking out. I take a bunch of Topamax, and
extra .5mg of Risperdal and some lorazepam. Eventually I pass out, but not after
freaking out Mouse just that much more.
Around one or two in the morning Mouse isn't able to sleep and is in
destroy-things mode. She calls a friend to come pick her up and she spends the
night wandering around the 24 hour WalMart. I wake up around 5:00 to find her
gone. I call her on her cell and eventually she calls me back to let me know
what happened.
Today we have to see if we can get her a new Adderall prescription and get it
filled ASAP.
The stuff I want and need to do is just piling up. The more it piles up, the
harder it is to deal with it.
The extra Risperdal has helped, but I'm still on edge today. My schedule is
disrupted yet again. I'm probably going to need another .5mg tonight to keep
from doing some serious pounding on things.
So I'm writing this down, getting it out of my system as I eat my breakfast.
Mouse already had something to eat, else we'd be eating together and watching
the Hitler channel or more Cowboy Bebop DVDs. With any luck she's dealing with
her doctors on the phone like I told her to do, but I doubt it. I think this is
one more day I'm going to have to write off. At least I got the grocery shopping
done, since I've been awake since 5:00 a.m. And did a very long Yoga routine,
which helped.
Jerod SMASH!!!!
Friday, August 22, 2003
It's been close to two years since I last had a job.
It's been approximately 18 months since my third nervous breakdown, when I
suddenly lost all my skills of how to program and The Answer was to go to
Liberia and get a machete. Now I have an account on
netshare400.com
to develop my
Open Source System for IRV
and I'm overwhelmed with emotion. Somehow the Strattera has helped me recover my
memories, so it's not like I've had 17 years of experience flushed down the
toilet, just put up in the attic. Now the Strattera & Provigil cocktail, toned
down a bit so I'm not hypomanic, has really helped me recover my memories. OK,
I'm rusty. Shit, I haven't done any coding in two years. Plus I'm just
overwhelmed. I'm on the verge of tears. But I'm back. I may be programming in a
dead language, but I'm back. I can start over, just as I have after the previous
two nervous breakdowns.
I was just in Big Iron geek heaven when I saw the
familiar green-on-black screen and logged on to my very own account. There were
all the familiar tools. I wanted to stay up all night working on it, but I
limited myself - just the data model and that was it for yesterday. It was
harsh, in a way, having to look at coding examples for the most basic of
requirements to define and create a physical file, but I got it done. A bunch of
physical and logical files have been created. Today I work on a couple of
printer files, and one thing that hasn't changed, RLU bugs the shit out of me, I
have a huge mental block about it and I refuse to use it. SDA and I get along
just great, but there's something about RLU that I just can't stand. I don't
know, I may not even do the printer files, I may do all the printing stuff
within RPG. We'll see how it goes. I'm going to be googling like mad to find
examples and whatnot. Of course, just as I threw out shitloads of material for
Poppin' Zits! last year when I just knew I'd never make another issue, I
threw out shitloads of AS/400 magazines. Thankfully I did not throw out any
books. I've got plenty of refresher material, but I still need a helping hand
with stuff that I used to be able to do in my sleep. Literally. When I was paged
at three in the morning. Or when I was drunk and/or stoned. I would code with
confidence under those conditions. Now I remember bits and pieces of what was
bleeding-edge stuff two years ago and am struggling to remember the basics while
all sorts of stuff at the middle range of the skill set is right there. Ah, so
apt for a one-time mid-range guru.
This whole IRV/Internet voting thing is probably
just a bipolar-autistic pipe dream. I doubt if anyone will make use of it, but
working on it is therapeutic as hell, and that's the important part.
Getting back to work, if just for a dream,
Jerod
Wednesday, August 20, 2003
Time to fuck with the meds again. Just when I
thought I had a stable cocktail, I had to get greedy and want more. More
concentration, more motivation, more focus. I wanted to me more like I used to
me, I couldn't just settle for what was probably normal for a standard human.
Once again, I fucked up and I get to pay for it. At
least I can deal with that. It's when other people fuck up and I have to pay for
it that I get pissed off. I especially get pissed off when I said something
before hand to avoid the fuckup, and the fuckup happened anyway and I'm the one
paying for it.
There, I feel a little better now.
The increase to 50mg of Strattera just hosed me. The
week I evaluated it I was just exhausted and my heart was doing weird things.
Fine, it didn't work. It's like that with meds. OK,
I'll just go back to 40mg a day.
Except that now 40mg a day doesn't work like it used
to.
I had something good enough, and I lost it for the
want of something better. Now I have neither.
So after a couple weeks of being like I was with
almost nothing to help the lethargy, I was getting, I don't know how I was
getting. I wasn't depressed, as Strattera still seemed to be working its
antidepressant magic. I was ADDing all over the place, but not nearly as badly
as when I was taking nothing at all. I was certainly lethargic, not quite as
lethargic as before Provigil or Strattera, but still pretty damned tired. I was
back to sleeping 10-11 hours a night and not having the energy to do much of
anything at all during the day outside of caring for myself, some online support
group stuff and helping Mouse once in awhile. That was it. In driving Mouse out
to the clinic I ran into Dr. Goldman in the waiting room and explained what
happened. He suggested adding Provigil back into the mix. I had taken 200mg of
Provigil to stay awake through the San Francisco Zine Fest and the party
afterwards on the final day of taking 50mg of Strattera. It worked in that
regard. I said that I'd consider it. A big consideration is the cost. I'm barely
keeping my head above water. Getting four months worth of Neurontin for free
(from a friend with MS who found she doesn't need anywhere near as much as she
used to take, but dealing with the insurance company and the health industry on
that point is a nightmare, especially if she has to increase her dose down the
road), and cutting back my Risperdal intake to 0.25mg a day have made my drug
costs manageable. The switch from Provigil to Strattera was also a big cost
savings. Adding Provigil back in, not as a replacement but as an addition, I
don't know if I can afford it.
I sat in with Mouse at her last session, and she was
in tears at the prospect of being a slug. It didn't matter that she had a
tenuous emotional stability on a cocktail of the weakest of possible mood
stabilizers, Neurontin and Klonopin, the only two she can tolerate and she takes
each drug for other reasons anyway, so any mood stabilization she gets at all is
just a bonus. She just couldn't live like that. Floodgates opened, other issues
came to the surface, but that was the linchpin, she couldn't be a slug. So now
she's evaluating Adderall XR, 5mg a day, the lowest dose possible. Immediate
release Adderall would give her migraines. I haven't been able to contact her
yet to see what the results have been.
But it got to me. Can I be a slug? Actually, I
could. I've been worse. I just tried for better and had acceptable taken away.
But I'd be filled with regrets. Stuff would gnaw at me. The floodgates wouldn't
open, rather I'd be tortured drop by drop.
So yesterday I took 200mg of Provigil along with my
usual course of 40mg of Strattera 25mg of Topamax and 300mg of Neurontin (OK,
really Canadian gabapentin. In a couple weeks I'll be back on the brand-name
stuff.)
The results: Holy fucking shit. Now in the previous
entry I asked, "a big part of the problem, is figuring out what a normal amount
of motivation, concentration and focus are. 15 years of near constant hypomania
interrupted with periods of paralyzing depression or wildly dangerous mixed
states is not helpful in gauging a metric for 'normal.'" I can tell you that
with 200mg of Provigil I now remember very clearly what it was like back then. I
have been working on and off on little thing I call
Open Source Democracy
and for some time I had been stuck on something.
Believe me that Provigil got me unstuck. And just when I think I'm finished with
it, I'm looking for someone to let know about it when I find the actual San
Francisco Charter Amendment. Hey! User Requirements from the actual users. Well,
lookee here, the software wouldn't meet the user requirements. No problem, it's
just a bit of a rewrite. Done and done.
That's how I used to be. I could crank out a
complicated program in a day. Sure, in this case it was just pseudo-code, but
still.
Scary. Scary, scary stuff.
And I just wanted to work on it all night. The
hyperfocus, the autistic determination, the confidence, they were all back. No
more rock-paper-scissors, no more conflicts within my head, I was immersed in
something and it was good. The totally in control hypomanic Jerod was back!
So today I'm trying 100mg of Provigil. We'll see how
it goes. So far, so good.
Searching for that ever-so-fine line of balance,
Jerod
Saturday, August 09, 2003
We bring you another important message from the
dreamtime:
Winston Churchill, FDR, Josef Stalin and some minor
political figures from that era were having a piano playing competition. They
were all banging out the tunes simultaneously, but Churchill was really going at
it in some kind of ragtime groove. He then raised his hand to indicate that he
was finished while everyone else was still playing. They were all playing pieces
that they themselves had composed. Churchill gave me a copy of the piece he
composed, but I can't read music, so he translated it for me. "When a man has no
more goals, he has reached the end of his life. Or the beginning. The trick is
knowing which point he's at."
I woke up and wrote down that bit of wisdom.
OK, there had to be some sort of error in the
transcription, we all know that Sir Winston would never had ended a sentence
with a preposition. Cut me a little slack, it was four in the morning. Plus FDR
was the best musician of the lot.
Anyway it is a meaningful message. This blog
is a little over a year old, and I had no goals a year ago. I was adrift in a
sea of ultraradian rapid cycling, side effects, agoraphobia, self-pity and
self-loathing. Now most of those issues are under control. Like my previous two
nervous breakdowns, it's time for a new beginning. I have the personal blessing
of the ghost of Winston Churchill to get started on a new life, and for a World
War II geek, there's no better omen. It's all a question of figuring out just
what the hell to do and how the hell to go about doing it.
Part of the problem, a big part of the problem, is
figuring out what a normal amount of motivation, concentration and focus are. 15
years of near constant hypomania interrupted with periods of paralyzing
depression or wildly dangerous mixed states is not helpful in gauging a metric
for "normal." It's more than not just being as young as I once was, I'm no
longer burning the candle at both ends with a blowtorch. The Neurontin, Topamax
& Risperdal cocktail is doing its job by slowing my brain down. Unfortunately
that means the ADD that was there all along that no one knew about is now a big
deal. No longer do I get all hyperfocused about things, instead I'm all prone to
easy distractibility. Enter Strattera, which has done wonders. I upped the
dosage to 50mg a day, but that has turned out to be counterproductive. That
extra 10mg has made me as tired as I used to be without Strattera or Provigil.
After a week it has just gotten worse. Screw it, I'm going back to 40mg. At 40mg
I had a fair amount of motivation, concentration and focus. I discussed it all
with my doctor and was hoping for more so I could do something radical like
getting back into programming, taking up Social Security on their vocational
rehabilitation offer and learning another programming language or two. It's
looking like RPG is a dead language, and what bits and pieces are coming back to
me aren't going to do much good. Now, I don't know. Maybe I was expecting too
much. Maybe I was used to that sort of thing being just too easy. That's not the
metric anymore. Maybe I have to lower my expectations and make a lot more effort
to learn something. Maybe that's what normal is all about. Geez, it's like being
in a
Kurt Vonnegut story, having
to pay money to take drugs to not be able to pick up a new programming language
in just a couple of weeks. No wonder people are non-compliant with meds. Well,
there's no reason to worry about that with me. I just have to go back and look
over some of the bad craziness I was thinking and acting, and the news media are
kind enough to remind me of my Liberian death-wish of late.
Work progresses on the
Poppin' Zits! Consumers' Guide to Psychiatric Medications.
Pretty much all the meds that are popularly used
to deal with manic-depression, vanilla depression, high-functioning autism, OCD
and panic/anxiety disorders are covered, although there will always be updates
on meds already written up.
Sir Winston said it, I believe it, that settles it!
Jerod
Monday, July 21, 2003
The other night when I was doing my Yoga what comes on Dish Network's
classical ambiance channel but Kurt Weil's "Cannon Song" from Weil, Brecht &
Blitzstein's Threepenny Opera. And thanks to the joys of randomness, it
came up again this morning! Now that's what I call classical music to warm the
cockles of any anarchist's heart in these days of war for the profits of the
kleptocracy. Here are the lyrics:
John was all present and Jim was all there
And Georgie was up for promotion
Not that the Army gave a bugger who they were
When confronting some heathen commotion
Chorus:
The troops live under
The cannon's thunder
From Sind to Cooch Behar
Moving from place to place
When they come face to face
With a different breed of fellow
Whose skins are black or yellow
They quick as winking chop him into
Beefsteak tartar
Johnny found his whiskey too warm
And Jimmy found the weather too balmy
But Georgie took them both by the arm
And said "Don't ever disappoint the army!"
Chorus repeat
John is a write-off and Jimmy is dead
And Georgie was shot for looting
And young men's blood goes on being red
And the army still goes on ahead recruiting
Chorus repeat
Meanwhile, Mouse is in the hospital with pneumonia
and maybe even TB. She's fighting with them to let her have her regular
psychiatric meds and enough sugar to keep her from going into a hypoglycemic
crisis. Welcome to 21st century medical care. No wonder she
avoids doctors until she is so ill she can't fight being dragged to a hospital
and dumped in the ER by someone.
Praying for Mouse's recovery,
Jerod
Friday, July 18, 2003
If you want to see the work-in-progress version of
the
Poppin' Zits! Consumers' Guide to Psychiatric Medications,
feel free. It is updated whenever we get enough work done on it to warrant an
upload. There's crap copied'n'pasted from various sources all over the place, no
cites as yet and still a lot of drugs yet to be covered.
I'd appreciate any ideas y'all have for advertisers
for Poppin' Zits!. Yeah, there are the Geocities ads, but I don't see
anything for that. I see from the referral logs that Paul Wright's article on
prison survival is suddenly really popular with one prison forum, and I'm sure
that prisoners like to buy specific brands of cigarettes and all, I just don't
know how to go about getting a banner ad that pays.
Trying to make pennies off of my past glories,
Jerod
Thursday, July 10, 2003
In the previous entry I mentioned classical music. I
was using the generic term. Fortunately the satellite music channel plays music
from the classical, modern, baroque, renaissance, romantic and rarely (and not
often enough for my taste) medieval periods. Just to be clear. I'd prefer more
renaissance, baroque and medieval pieces and fewer modern pieces, but that's
just me. Their selections change over time.
A couple months ago I was asked to write an article
on Asperger's syndrome for the
library of articles of the bipolar support
site at about.com. I wrote it in a couple days, I've yet to see it published. So
here it is. I could have written more, but
there was a size limit. I may expand the article at a later date.
Back in the days when I was all obsessed about
hunting wild mushrooms I found a bunch that are real scores: porcinis (the one
that did me in), chanterelles, some magic mushrooms, bluettes, maple syrup
mushrooms (yes, they do taste like maple syrup), almond-flavored agarics, one
huge Caesar's amanita, even some white matsutakes. But I never found any morels.
Until last week.
Fruiting in my fucking basement.
Just when I can eat the really tame ones, I find
morels in my basement. White coastal morels. Just the thing to cap 24 hours of
absolute environmental and emotional chaos that took a couple of days to recover
and clean up from.
I just cut them and hung them on the laundry line to
dry. I'll keep them as pointy curios. Yet more curios that I'll probably have to
throw away soon when I move.
Oh well, at least I finally found some morels. I
left that Caesar's amanita where it sat, because there was no fucking way I was
going to eat any kind of amanita. My manic hubris was something else, but it was
never that mighty.
The Universe so likes to have these little jokes at
my expense. Like how I'm so sensitive to a variety of chemical and environmental
factors, but I can roll around naked in poison oak and poison ivy and barely
feel their effects.
Meanwhile, another interesting message from the
dreamtime...
Mouse had painted a triptych in the style of H.
Bosch meets R. Crumb. The triptych told the story of an androgynous child whose
parents used food as a substitute for affection, or any form of emotional
attachment. In the final panel of the triptych we see the child grown to an
adult who had just sold his/her soul for a piece of multi-layered cheese. As a
fiery, multi-tentacled demon was consuming the hapless protagonist's soul, a
cartoon dialogue bubble proclaimed, "It was a fair bargain."
After going over the triptych, Mouse explained that
she was challenged to create a piece of cheese-related art.
Work is progressing on Issue B of
Poppin'
Zits!. The consumers' guide to psychiatric
medications is huge and still getting bigger. As we research these meds we're
finding more and more weird and wonderful stuff. Who knew that smoking makes
Tegretol work better? Or that 7 people out of nearly 1,000 died in the
clinical trials of Zonegran. Somebody did! It's all in the PDR.
And either my genius programming skills are coming
back, or the coding for an instant runoff voting system really is quite simple,
or some combination of the two. I'm just about done with the abstract for the
code. There's a place that offers a free account for open source software on an
AS/400. Maybe I'll be able to code again after all. It's really looking like San
Francisco is getting ripped off for the software they're buying to handle
instant runoff voting.
I've become a real stats whore for the
Poppin'
Zits!
site. Not so much for the number of hits, but how they
got referred to the site. Sure enough 64% of the, to date, 164 page views of the
main page come from typing "loose the zits" into google. Thank the gods for
acne-scarred illiterates with web access. Further analysis of hits on other
pages finds similar results. "Zits on butt," "zits on penis," "really gross
zits," and so forth. I've put several of those popular terms, including the
charming desire to loosen one's zits, onto Pat Dobbin's most excellent piece,
The Way of Zit. Oh well,
Poppin' Zits! was described in Details as a zine about sex, high
tech, worker revolt and skin care. Just what the fuck can I expect with a zine
called Poppin' Zits! anyway?
I'm still practicing Yoga & Qi Gong. I've taken to
having classical music playing during my practices. It helps me concentrate and
keeps distracting thoughts at bay. I've become such a stereotype of an American
guy who has rolled over 40, listening to the music he loved in high school.
What is the sound of one hand popping anyway?
Jerod
Monday, June 09, 2003
Poppin' Zits! is now completely online. All
back issues are up on its new home at Geocities. I had to move it from The WELL
because with the graphics it was too big for the WELL's meager 10 megabytes of
web space.
I've gone back and updated the links to Poppin'
Zits! on this blog (if you're reading this on the blogger version, see the
archives section for what I mean). I know you're not supposed to do that sort of
thing, but it's only links that were changed. Mouse tells me that several people
have linked to
Diary of the Aftermath of a Car Crash. So
they had better update their links.
I'm working on Issue B. I'm writing a consumer's
guide to psychiatric medications, as Mouse and I have taken practically every
mood stabilizer, antidepressant, atypical antipsychotic and benzodiazepine in
the American apothecary. It's easier to list the drugs we haven't taken:
Abilify, Lexapro, Zonegran, and one of the MAOIs. Plus there will be an article
on the curse of The Simpsons and a piece of fiction for which the first draft is
already written, "Veterans of the Psychosurgery Wars." Last November during that
period when I had a brief interlude of living in Bipolar II land and was
convinced that I'd never publish another issue of Poppin' Zits! and have
to sell my house immediately, I recycled most of my source material for
backgrounds. More than a decade's worth of material culled from subscriptions to
over 100 trade magazines, plus assorted Japanese fashion magazines and various
porn, all bagged and set out on the curbside. I put out the call on the WELL for
more invisible literature and Japanese fashion magazines and already it is
arriving! I have a copy of Black Meetings & Tourism. Once the bingo cards
and copies of American Laboratory and Biomedical Products and the
like start coming in, Poppin' Zits! will arise like a phoenix from the
fires of my kindling brain.
Getting those creative juices flowing,
Jerod
Monday, May 19, 2003
I think part of the problem was a bad med adjustment. It looks like I cannot
live without some small amount of Risperdal. Last night I went back on 0.25 mg.
I'm optimistic that I'll start feeling better in a couple days.
I mean, I'm not suicidally depressed anymore, but for the past couple of days
I've been incredibly tired. I couldn't get out of bed before noon, I wasn't
sleeping at all well, I'm not thinking that well, some particularly autistic
behaviors are especially bad. I had weaned myself off of Risperdal and that
seems to have been a bad move after all.
I had to take some Lorazepam to sleep while I go through the adjustment
period of Risperdal acting as an upper as it did the first couple of weeks that
I took it. I was hoping it wasn't going to do that again, but it is, so I guess
I'll start taking the Risperdal in the mornings until I start noticing that I
get tired after taking my morning meds instead of waking up more, then I'll
switch it to nights again. Or maybe I'll just keep taking it at night and lay
off the Lorazepam every third or fourth day and see if I can sleep without it.
Who knows how long that will take? Probably long enough to become addicted to
the Lorazepam. Oh well, I've kicked benzos before. The 1 mg a day habit isn't
that bad of a withdrawal.
The Risperdal should take the edge off of some of the more extreme emotional
magnifications.
At least I had a decent night's sleep for the first time in over a week. That
helped a lot.
I'm looking at my credit card statement with the cost of my meds on it. $550
for two month's worth of Topamax. $275 for three month's worth of gabapentin,
and that's buying generic Neurontin from Canada, a practice the FDA is cracking
down on and may no longer be possible for much longer. I'll still need to take
Risperdal. Plus the Strattera. Two years before Medicare kicks in and I could
sign up for Medigap insurance of some kind that may cover these meds with some
kind of a co-pay. The numbers don't lie, I'm just going to have to sell my house
soon and move somewhere cheap.
There's no deluding myself. I go on a date and wind up in bed for four days
fighting the urge to put a gun in my mouth. I'm not ready for the real world.
Economics are making that Unabomber shack look mighty attractive as well.
Montana, here I come!
Jerod
Friday, May 16, 2003
Two weeks of joy and trauma. The bipolar is back, and it sucks.
Mouse was becoming toxic. It was mostly to herself, but that was, of course,
rubbing off on everyone else. By hanging on to sociopaths, projecting her
emotions onto others and going out of her way to make her life a mess she was
making it impossible for anyone to help her, to deal with her, just to be her
friend. I tried to tell her as much, but she projected her emotions onto me, and
that pushed one button that I have yet to detach from myself. I just cannot
stand it when people assign the wrong emotion to me, as frequently as that
happens. It used to make me go ballistic. Now it just annoys me. Some progress,
anyway. So that annoyance and confusion of the misassigned emotion combined with
the pain of seeing and feeling what was happening to Mouse, well, when I tried
to explain what was going on it just came out that she was toxic and I couldn't
put up with her anymore. We said Goodbye. It felt like a big relief when it was
really a big trauma being masked by my usual denial and shock reaction. I'd deal
with it later, like I usually do in my typical PTSD fashion.
While that is going on, I'm trying to get a date. I've been lonely. And being
the way I am, the personal ads are the best way to go because you already know
the other people are also looking for someone with whom to get involved at some
level. The amount of frustration involved in finally being able to talk to
someone in some random situation, which is inordinately difficult for me in the
first place, then by some miracle find there is something of a connection, only
to discover that she's already in a relationship and her other half just wasn't
around on that occasion. It's amazing I haven't blown my brains out already. Of
course I fall into the trap of answering women's ads. What does that buy me?
More trauma. First after searching for women whose criteria I meet I
agonize over what I would write. So it's just rejection after rejection to start
with because I'm not tall enough or I'm too old or I'm unemployed or obviously
mentally unstable or some other fucking thing is just plain wrong with me or not
good enough. You know, women all say in public they want brains and sensitivity
and a sense of humor, but what most of them really want is height, bland
status quo-ness and a fat paycheck. So once I narrow it down to those who might
consider me and I write to them, do they even have the consideration to write
back to with a polite, "No thank you." Of course not. I am beneath their
contempt. I am far too fucked up to consider for further communications. Don't
dare encourage me, for I might be some kind of stalker freak loser.
If all men are treated like this, is it any wonder that women are held in
such low regard by men. Oh sure, I know there's a lot more going on, but every
time I go through this I think the same thing. No wonder guys treat women like
shit, because women treat guys like shit. And vice versa.
Silence. Silence. A little correspondence that goes nowhere because I
invariably fuck up. Silence. Silence. Silence. Etc. Etc. Etc. Finally a reply
where something seems to be happening! Long e-mails exchanged and we actually
meet for a date! More e-mails exchanged and we go out on a second date!
And that's when I get friended.
That's a record for me. My charm has never worn off that quickly, but I was
manic before. I don't have the manic charm anymore. I should just expect this
now. But expectations aside I'm plunged into despair. The Strattera fails. She
asks if she can come over on Thursday to read some of my writing. I agree.
Nothing matters. I somehow make it home and crawl into bed for four straight
days. Not eating. Not bathing. Not brushing my teeth. I try 50 mg of Strattera,
that may have helped, I can't tell. I roll out of bed once to log on, check
e-mail and such. I fire off a quick note to explain how depressed I am, which is
why I haven't written. I leave a message on her answering machine. Thursday
rolls around and she calls saying she doesn't want to have anything to do with
me ever again.
That's really the quickest I've ever cycled through that, from infatuation to
"never want to see you again" in under two weeks. Honestly though, I can't blame
her. No one in their right mind should have anything to do with me.
I was just paralyzed with horrible, suicidal depression. It was all I can do
not to eat a bullet. Only one person I know could understand what it's like to
have feelings that are reflected by a funhouse mirror then magnified by the
Hubble telescope, and that's Mouse. She's the only other bipolar-autistic spazz
I can call, so I call her and apologize for being such an asshole when I told
her to fuck off. She graciously accepts my apology, but she still understood
what I was getting at and started to get to work on her own life while mine was
going to hell. As we spoke I started feeling immensely better. I didn't get to
go into what was bothering me, just hearing her babble, as she will at times,
was enough.
Losing Mouse was the real trauma. As toxic and fucked-up as she is, no one
else knows what it's like to be me. I'm getting my life back together now. I'm
still a little traumatized, a little out of it, but I'm way better than I was
earlier this week.
As for dating, I don't know. A Unabomber shack deep in the woods is looking
very attractive. All the women in my life have told me that my feelings are
inappropriate and out of proportion to events, and they were right. Isolation
and solitude might be the way to go after all.
Alone again, naturally,
Jerod
Friday, May 02, 2003
Mmmm, lattés. I can have up to two a day, double
shots of espresso made from freshly ground dark French (Freedom?) roast, and
still sleep more soundly than I have in quite some time. Thank you Strattera!
Thank you for letting me get really motivated. And bless my foamy
caffeinated beverage,
almost-saint inventor of cappuccino
and
fiery defender of Vienna,
Father Marco d'Aviano.
While
Saint
Drogo is the
patron of
coffee shops, the eventually-to-be-sainted
Father Marco should be the patron of our favorite foamy drinks.
Another road trip anecdote. We drove along the back
side of Mount Shasta, the mountain and not the town, just to see how far we
could take a Volvo up that sacred peak. As far as the railroad tracks that cross
Military Pass Road if you must know. On the way back we found the road occupied
by radio-controlled vehicles. Withholding Volvo rage we waited for the RC cars
to clear off. Who was in control? Someone best described as the reincarnation of
Benito Mussolini. Right down to the beneficent pose he struck to let us pass,
arms crossed over chest and aquiline nose used to sight down upon us plebeians.
Things just get weird along those ley lines.
I got around to updating
the page dealing with
my meds. Strattera has been great for my
memory, but I'm still spacing out on things now and then. I found that I had
forgotten my gas cap. Oops. I space out on taking some of my meds. Little things
like that. I'm getting better, and better is better, it's just making me a
little cocky, memory-wise. Anyway, after a little research here's some more info
on Strattera:
Drug-drug interactions:
Strattera may not get along with Paxil and Prozac.
They all rely on the same enzyme for absorption and metabolization. While a lot
of us avoid SSRIs like the plague, some of us still take them, and we have a lot
of unipolar friends who may want to jump on the Strattera bandwagon. So if mixed
with Paxil or Prozac dosages of both drugs may need to be adjusted. Or maybe
not. It really depends on the individual and the individual's liver.
Oddly enough, Strattera seems to get along fine with
booze. No temperance lectures from me where Strattera is concerned.
And, of course, MAOIs throw everything for a loop.
There's just been a recent warning about Strattera
and Wellbutrin not getting along. I don't know what that's all about. My
wild-assed guess is that at the higher doses too much norepinephrine and too
much dopamine reuptake can make anybody hyper.
---
Cardiovascular Alert:
Strattera tends to elevate blood pressure and
increase your heart rate. No wonder I feel so alive after I take it! I normally
have low blood pressure and a slow heart rate, and both of those have been
aggravated by my drug cocktail. So this has been a plus for me. It may not be a
plus for you.
---
Allergic and Hypersensitive Reactions:
They've been reported. You see a rash, stop taking
it. It's uncommon, but it happened. Also don't take Strattera if you have Narrow
Angle Glaucoma.
---
Pregnancy Category C - not recommended but they
honestly don't have a clue one way or the other.
---
Adverse effects chart is the same. They do point out
that urinary hesitation seemed to be an odd effect at first. I think it might be
an ADD/ADHD specific issue that highlighted that adverse effect.
---
I asked my doctor to pass on my thanks to the Lilly
rep and to have that person profoundly thank whoever it was that ripped off
Roboxetine for them. I have never seen my doctor laugh so hard or so long.
Norepinephrine? I'm soaking in it!
Jerod
Saturday, April 26, 2003
More on the road trip. I was asked about the guy on
the trike. He was gaunt and could've been anywhere between 50 and 85. He was
riding a red adult trike, and leaning way to his right in doing so. I think he
was wearing a suit, cuz it was Easter, but I'm not sure. He looked like his last
gainful employment was either swallowing swords or freshly bitten off chicken
heads. He needed a shave. I guess he was riding towards one of Yreka's many
social clubs. I could practically smell the booze, or the need for booze, from
the car.
Yreka is Lynch territory for sure.
In Eugene the urge to publish is alive and well. And
not this web wanking either, but real publishing on real paper. There were more
free papers available than I've seen since Santa Cruz in the '80s. I guess all
that clear cutting they do up there does some good. Don't see any clear cutting?
It's just over the ridge from I-5. Sometimes the GPS gets hosed and they
clear-cut over the ridge and you can see it from I-5. Oops. Paper and printing
must be cheap, or the community just gets behind the idea that paper is
the superior medium and buys adspace. Or both. A pack of homo jockus
fraternus saw us reading one of the free rags, an issue that focused on
partying, and laughed. Ha-ha, what do such old guys know about partying? Well,
we do know that some of the information published about psychedelic mushrooms
and the biology of hangovers is incorrect, but you idiots can learn that for
yourselves, ha-ha.
Thursday, April 24, 2003
Road trip!
I'm back now from the first of several planned road
trips to scope out potential places to relocate. If I decide to relocate. I
still don't know if I'm going to try to stay in the Bay Area or not.
Anyway I checked out Yreka and Eugene. I need to go
back to Eugene for more. One overnight stay wasn't enough to get a feel for the
place, but was enough to know that I do want to go back to get a better idea of
the place.
Eugene on Easter weekend was weird. I knew they
mainlined Christianity outside of Portland, but I had no idea just how intense
it was. A Christian punk band played the Starbucks in the University district
Saturday night. We didn't get their name, but from all the stickers on their
amps, and from the van we saw at the gas station earlier that day, they're
either called Abortion Holocaust or they are protesting the abortion holocaust.
The bass player's face was pierced in every place imaginable and he wore a
T-shirt imploring us to reject religion and embrace Jesus. The geeky-cute coed
who worked the Quizno's that shared the same space as the Starbucks told us
during her cigarette break that the manager of the Starbucks brought in loud
Christian music every Saturday night, making her job very difficult. I asked if
she wanted to get fired and she thought about it and said, sure, she could get
unemployment benefits while attending school. I suggested she smile and nod and
say to the Starbucks manager, "Ezekiel 4:15, brother,
Ezekiel 4:15." It inspired us to come up
with a T-shirt slogan of our own. "Man cannot live by bread alone - Ezekiel
4:15." Just the thing to wear around Eugene. Serves us right for sitting in
Starbucks when there was a much better coffee shop just two doors down the
street. Oh well, we were confused after the long drive and being stuffed with
delicious Thai food. Forgive us our trespass, Lord. We found the better
non-corporate caffienated beverages on Easter Sunday, so that should count for
something.
Anyway, the real estate guides had some nice
Unabomber shacks in the Eugene area. I'm definitely going back for more recon.
Maybe I'll have a T-shirt made by then.
Yreka is off the list, though. Sure, it has some
things going for it. The real estate prices are right, there's this whole
secessionist vibe going with the State of Jefferson movement, the scenery is
great, it's on a ley line coming off of Mount Shasta, and David Lynch should get
his ass up there to check out the locals. What with the very cute Junior College
girls taking a couple courses and working the espresso shacks and Denny's and
saying things like "I'm going to Heck for working on Easter Sunday, but made up
for it by going to services on Good Friday." And the toothless motel maid
cleaning up the rooms that I'm sure I've seen in porn shoots: the cinder block
construction, the padded headboards on king-sized beds, the winged back chairs,
the carpeting that instantly absorbs all liquids, the faux Victorian lampshades;
the motel room I stayed in just screamed "Porn palace!" Then there was the guy
riding around on the tricycle, leaning over to his right as he rode, looking
like he escaped from a circus sideshow retirement home. Oh yes, Yreka is David
Lynch territory. That's a big plus for me.
But the down sides. Crappy food. Questionable water
quality. No culture. Crappy health care infrastructure. Yeah, it's just a few
hours drive to my psychiatrist, but what if something else happened? And while
the prices were good, there wasn't really any property that grabbed me. I'd have
to go to Shasta to shop, and prices around Shasta are not in my price range.
There was just a vibe that wasn't right. That ley line stuff works both ways.
I think another visit to Missoula is next, this time
to check out real estate and hospitals. I know the air and water are dodgy in
Missoula proper, but I'd be looking at places in the hills with well water.
Before I left I put up the redone version of
issue 7
and
issue 8
of
Poppin'
Zits! online. Issues 9 and A will be coming
up. Issue B is percolating in my head.
Tonight I drop down to 0.25 mg of Risperdal. I've
also added l-tyrosine to the mix of supplements, to boost my norepinephrenine
reuptake. At 25 mg a day Strattera has been an incredible antidepressant, but
it's just not quite there yet as an ADD med. Maybe going off of Risperdal and
adding l-tyrosine will do it, or maybe I'll just have to go up to 40 mg a day.
With it's fabulous antidepressant effects I'm a wee bit concerned about getting
manic. If that happens I can always go back down to 25 mg. I'd just hate to miss
out on the focusing and concentrating action. We'll see. At least I have samples
of the 40 mg to try first.
Finally getting my life back,
Jerod
Thursday, April 03, 2003
This is such a PTSD thing. Now I'm getting hit with
all the pain from Mouse's leaving me. That was the biggest factor in all the
events that precipitated my third nervous breakdown around my birthday last
year. The memories and emotions and scents just loop around in my head over and
over and over.
The good thing is, on my new & improved med
cocktail, I can handle it much, much better.
Strattera is getting rave reviews as an
antidepressant. I'll rave about it as such. I can feel all sorts of depression
tendrils trying to grab hold of me and my brain is more teflonly than Ronald
Reagan in his prime. It's just refusing to get depressed for more than ten
minutes here and there and just mild depressions at that. Then it's all over,
back to feeling good. Not hypomanic, just good.
And I'm taking it for its intended purpose, as an
ADD medication. The antidepressant effects are just gravy.
This stuff should be a first-line antidepressant for
anyone with bipolar. It doesn't seem to trigger manias in most bipolar types who
take it for either ADD or depression at the low to middle range of the
therapeutic dose. In the upper range it can make people manicky, though. The
side effect profile is a lot mellower than any SSRI. I don't know what the
withdrawal is like, and I'd rather not find out thank you, I like feeling like
this. I've had no side effects at all. I can even take it on an empty stomach,
although I wouldn't recommend that for everyone else. I am the person who
successfully mixed durian and Scotch and lived to tell about it.
It hasn't solved all my ADD-related problems. I may
need to increase the dose, but I'm really happy with this med. Really
happy.
But not too happy.
Hey, I can even drink coffee again! My espresso
maker and coffee grinder are working fully to spec on hi-test and not unleaded
anymore! Lattés and cappuccinos on the house!
I'm drinking my homemade lattés and eating my
homemade hypoallergenic muffins and it reminds me of when Mouse and I used to
sit in bed drinking lattés, eating those muffins and watching the Hitler
Channel. It was something right out of Culturcide's song "Industrial Band":
Those fine ladies
They had plans
They were out to meet the boys in the band
They said, "Come on dudes, lets have sex!"
But we just talked about child abuse and Hitler's SS
The PTSD makes the memory loop around. The Strattera
just makes me laugh. We sat around talking about our fucked up, abusive
childhoods with the images of the Camps on the TV, eating our muffins, drinking
our lattés and occasionally having sex. We are twisted little fucks.
And, of course, the Asperger's just forces me to
keep making muffins and lattés for breakfast. All change is bad.
Anyway, I'm getting motivated enough to start
putting up the remaining back issues of
Poppin'
Zits! online. I'm redoing issue 7 so it
looks more like a dead-trees edition. Look for issues 8-A Real Soon Now! Hell, I
may even put out issue B. On Strattera it feels like anything is possible.
Slipping out of depression's tendrils,
Jerod
Tuesday, April 01, 2003
Mouse's writings at Thought Café have moved. They
are now
here.
She still hasn't written anything about us. I think.
I can't tell with poetry. Maybe I do matter, maybe I don't. Either I don't
matter or I'm evil incarnate.
She wrote about the rape that she didn't tell me
happened when we were still together. She mentioned it in an offhand way after
she left me. Now it turns out to be a bigger deal than she lets on to me.
I offered to sell my house to live with her so we
could look after each other. Make sure we took our meds and that she ate the
right foods at the right times. We could call our doctors if either flipped out
so bad that the flipper couldn't call for help. Instead she had a convicted
murderer from Arkansas whom she met on them thar Internets come live with her. I
would have paid for food. He had no way of supporting himself. Yet his company
was preferable to mine.
Now she has a restraining order against him.
No matter what I did, it was never enough. It could
never be enough. I'm not worth enough.
I've written before that it seems that serial
killers have better luck with women than I do. It was written in one of those
periods when my self-esteem was lower than whale shit on the bottom of the
ocean. Yet it is apparently true. A convicted murderer's company is preferable
to mine. You can see the sort of obsessive stalker shit
he writes on Thought Café as
well.
It's all part of the death of a thousand cuts. All
the betrayals, the rejections and disappointments, the holding me accountable
for everything I said or did under the influence of being bipolar while
rationalizing every reprehensible action she has taken as part of her illness
and thus she should be forgiven and understood. And I can say nothing, for to
reveal my pain would cause her great amounts of pain, for my pain would become
her pain.
Just more cuts. I don't know what the number is. It
might be getting close to a thousand, and then I'll surely die.
"Oh, make those minimum payments on the credit card
debt I ran up buying new computers and cameras for projects I never hope to do?
Please, I have books to buy that I'll never read, just like all those books I
left in your attic, and more computers to buy. Perish the thought that I'd
actually sell any of this stuff to pay my debts like I promised time after time
I'd do. I have a murderer with a history of dissociative identity disorder to
feed. He never yelled at me."
Cut. Cut. Cut.
After all a crusade to cure her father's Alzheimer's
means much more than I do. Screw such niceties as a house and a job, because I
raised my voice, and that was enough, the engagement is off, the notice will be
phoned in from San Luis Obisbo.
Cut. Cut. Cut.
I met a couple of lovely people at the
Anarchy
Trade Show, Bug & Katy. They are traveling
about the country by rail, and not on Amtrak. They stayed with me a couple days
and ate my delicious kim chee and tsukemono. A good time, more or less, was had
by all, although there was still an undercurrent of rejection and
disappointment. We played Axis & Allies, discussed literature, politics and
religion. We went over the complete works of
Poppin'
Zits! and I might
be inspired enough to put the remaining issues up
online, as well as publish Issue B. Bug cut my hair. Now I look like a fucking
serial killer. I should be a real chick magnet now, as serial killers really do
have better luck with women than I do. I'm unemployable and will soon have to
sell my house, so that should make me all the more attractive. I just have to
get over the commitment thing I have and I'll have to fend them off with a
stick. Despite the reports in the popular press, girls just do not want a
stable, employed, home-owning guy who buys $800 engagement rings.
Channeling Ted Bundy for love,
Jerod
Monday, March 24, 2003
At an Oscar party last night at Cynthia & Bradburn's
house, we were all quite pleased by Michael Moore's blatant anti-war and
anti-Bush speech. Bringing up all of the nominated documentary filmmakers, who
all deal with reality, to protest the fictious election of a fictious president
fighting a war for fictious reasons brought down the house in our neighborhood.
Go Michael! So many of the presenters said much by saying nothing, but that
would have gone past the vast majority of viewers. Michael Moore was blatant and
that what was needed for the global audience. It was brilliantly timed as well.
Anyway, when they panned over the surviving winners
of best actors & actresses, there was Mickey Rooney. That brought up the subject
of Mickey Rooney portraying my father in
The Fireball,
the heartwarming biopic that was more or less about my father's life up to a
point. The filmmakers didn't want to pay him a lot of money, so they changed the
story a bit and changed the main character's name to a variant on one of his
fellow skater's. So instead of being Eddie Cazar, the name he skated under,
Mickey Rooney played "Johnny Casar," which was close to his teammate's name of
John Cazar. In the movie Johnny was an orphan raised by ubiquitous movie priest
Pat O'Brien. In real life my paternal grandmother ran off with a French-Canadian
Jewish gangster (blame Canada!) and converted from Irish Catholicism to Reform
Judaism, just with all the Irish and gangster heavy drinking. Leaving my father
in the benignly neglectful care of my backwoods paternal grandfather. I never
understood why my grandparents got married. Frenchy, the gangster she hooked up
with, him I could understand her marrying, but not Eddie Senior, the hick from
Appalachia. Easier to just orphan him in the Hollywood version. His rise as a
skater was close enough for 1950s era moving pictures, including how much of a
jerk he was.
The big disappointment in the movie is how they
downplay the polio. Polio was a big fucking deal back then, and they really
gloss over it. It really belittles my father's struggle and accomplishment. You
get a montage of treatments, including brief scenes of Mickey Rooney in an iron
lung, and that's about it. No massive weight loss, no being rendered mute, no
long time spent in that iron lung; just a little paralysis, no big whoop. It was
just like a bad 'flu or something. They should have treated it more like the war
injuries were in
The Best Years of Our Lives.
Maybe that would have been too expensive or
something. Of course it makes his comeback for one final season of skating all
the less spectacular.
The choice of Mickey Rooney is odd, given that my
father is around six feet tall. It's probably because Mickey Rooney could sort
of skate, and the studio had a pro skater who could pass for Mickey Rooney
available. I'm just guessing. Anyway my father was hired as a technical
consultant and did some extra work as one of the skaters. He got to hang out
with Mickey Rooney and Marilyn Monroe, and would show the pictures of him and
Marilyn Monroe any chance he gets. As Mickey Rooney did a guest shot on the
Simpsons, and Marilyn Monroe was involved with the Kennedys, I'm only three or
four degrees of separation from practically everyone in Hollywood and Washington
DC.
There is, of course,
a fan site
for the movie, my father and the skating
association he was involved in. Thanks to Steve Cole for filling in some of the
blanks in my knowledge of my father's past.
The post-script to the movie. Some twelve years
after it's release I was born. Four years later my father slips into a nasty
bipolar- and methamphetamine-fueled psychosis. He holds me and my mother hostage
at gunpoint for about a night and a day. That's one of the reasons why I have
PTSD. He was walking around with the gun, asking me to decide what to do, go
with him to the mountains or stay with my mother. The whole family structure is
up to a four-year-old with Asperger's, who can't work out interpersonal
relations anywhere near as well as other children the same age. I keep repeating
I want to stay with my mother as long as she can go to the mountains with us.
That doesn't work, but fortunately he doesn't shoot us, he just gets so
frustrated with me that he freaks out and leaves. I don't see him or hear a word
from him until fifteen years later, when, purely by accident, I run into Chris,
my older half-brother at our grandmother's house. Chris was on his way to
deliver some cocaine to our father and I went along. It was a mistake, but so
were so many things in my life at that time. I wind up succumbing to my father's
manic charm and moving in with him. I stay for all of a month, and eventually
despise him so much that I steal his car and his stash of marijuana when I
leave. That was over twenty years ago, and that was the last contact I ever had
with him.
In my twisted little psyche, when I feel like things
are just unbearable, the mountains are where I want to run. Montana, Idaho,
Wyoming, parts of Oregon or even California. Where did I almost die when I fell
into a very cold and very swift river while wearing a heavy pack? Yosemite, in
the mountains. This is not uncommon with PTSD. I still think it's weird, but I
don't freak out about it.
I seem to like the Strattera. The effects last
longer than Provigil, which is good. I'm good until about five in the afternoon
instead of three. That's a big improvement.
I'm still a bit of a space cadet. Maybe that will
improve as I continue to take this drug. Maybe my focus will improve if I
increase the dose to 40 mg. Or maybe I'll concentrate better as I tritrate down
on Risperdal. We'll see. I don't expect overnight results.
I also need to see if there's any chance of mania
being triggered. The odds are low, but they are greater than zero.
I did start to fall asleep at 8:30. That was two
nights in a row where I was calling it a night before nine p.m. Granted I am one
of those hideous morning people who get up a little before six in the morning
and start doing Yoga some days, but that's a bit early, even for me. That may be
life with Strattera. Last night I was actually able to stay up until ten to see
the end of Riverworld, because I'm such a geek.
Concentrating on the positive,
Jerod
Friday, March 21, 2003
I'm evaluating
Strattera, a new med for ADD. Strattera is a
selective norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor, a new class of treatment that works
differently from the other ADHD medications available.
Today is my third day of trying this med. So far I
like it.
I actually had some brief suicidal ideations on
Wednesday. It was really weird. They were intense, but brief and manageable. I'm
chalking it up to the switch in meds. Both Provigil and Strattera have
antidepressant properties and are prescribed off-label as antidepressants.
Strattera is getting a lot of buzz as an antidepressant for bipolar, as it is
unlikely to trigger mania at therapeutic dosages.
So I start Strattera at the lowest dose possible, 18
mg, thanks to some samples. It was way too low to really do anything, but since
I can be such a cheap date I never know.
I just had to write yesterday off and spend it in
bed. Not a big deal, that happens with a med switch. But the brief suicidal
ideations were odd. I wasn't having that bad of a day at all! Surely I
can spend one day in bed. The ideations hit me before I even crawled under the
covers.
I think I just wasn't getting enough antidepressants
in me.
So yesterday I take 100 mg of Provigil and again the
same minimal 18 mg dose of Strattera. Nice combo, no ideations.
Today I'm at 25 mg of Strattera and no Provigil. I'd
like to cut the Provigil out entirely to save money. 100 mg a day of Provigil
and any amount of Strattera will wind up costing me about the same as 200 mg a
day of Provigil. Sure, I'll trade that for more effectiveness, and as Provigil
has no apparent side effects, other than the hit in my wallet, I'm OK with
continuing to take it. So far I'm really happy with the effects of just 25 mg of
Strattera.
Provigil helped regulate my sleep. Strattera has a
weird relationship with sleep. With some people it makes the sleep cycle better.
With some people it totally fucks it up. Too soon to tell with me.
Strattera has a stronger antidepressant factor than
Provigil, for most people, as the NRIs are used in a couple of antidepressants,
notably Effexor. Dr. Amen, head of the clinic I go to and on the leading edge of
ADD research and treatment, was using Effexor as an ADD med just to get the NRI
action. They are all over Strattera now at the Amen clinic, and had a closet
full of samples. The drug rep handed out every tchotkes possible, pads, pens,
clocks, and calendars. The offices were saturated with Strattera.
I don't feel as buzzed as I do with Provigil.
Provigil gave me a slight stimulant lift. Strattera doesn't have it. If I didn't
discover Yoga & Qi Gong to counter the lethargy from my other meds, and if I
weren't cutting back on the Risperdal, that would be a big disadvantage. As it
is, I think I can live with it.
The jury is still out as to how long it lasts.
Provigil would cut out by three in the afternoon, and taking more just made me
more aware of how tired and spaced out I was. I'll know better after a few days
on how the Strattera is in duration during the day, day-to-day.
I just submitted a 60 count prescription to be
filled at my pharmacist. He'll have it in on Monday. I'm good with samples until
then.
Anyway, I'm liking it so far. I need to let it shake
down to see just how much I like it. If it lets me cope like Provigil did at
half the cost, fine. What I really want, though, is something that will let me
hold down a job. I seem to have the mental stability thanks to the right med
cocktail, the anxiety is on the back burner thanks to the Yoga & Qi Gong, all I
need to do is keep a train of thought long enough to be useful at something and
to remember instructions and the like. Basic employment skills.
Meanwhile, the tsukemono and kim chee turned out OK.
The kim chees were good. They could have been hotter, but were still good. The
salted cabbage was a bit too salty. Less salt, more chili next time around.
Trying to stay focused,
Jerod
Monday, March 17, 2003
OK, not entirely. The broken windshield did stir up
a bunch of stuff. There's still more letting go that needs to be done, but I am
letting go.
The Yoga mat is a way off the therapist's couch I
think. Not a substitute for it, but just a way to find yourself off of that
couch eventually. As I wrote before, it can be a part of that balanced diet of
meds, therapy, good food and exercise.
Following the chain of synchronicity that has dogged
my path of Yoga, the latest edition of the online version of Yoga Journal has a
couple articles on anger.
Unmasking Anger
and
Why We Hate Our Parents.
Of course they do.
I've started to make more kim chee and tsukemono.
It's very therapeutic. First it was mizu kim chee and the start of the process
of hakusai-zuke, or salted cabbage. Then I made kim chee cabbage. Today I make
daidon kim chee.
Of course kim chee and tsukemono are redundant
terms, kim chee being Korean for tsukemono, and tsukemono being Japanese for kim
chee. Although the Japanese now use kim chee, or "kimochee" for the spicy,
Korean-style pickles.
I went down to Pusan Market on Telegraph & 23rd to
get some dried peppers for the kim chee and found they have fish for 99 cents a
pound. I think I'll be shopping there a lot more often. And they have a variety
of bulk kim chees, so all the stuff I don't make myself I can just get a little
container of, like some spicy pickled squid, or slightly fermented potatoes.
The big experiment the other night: adding shitake
mushrooms to my miso soup. I haven't eaten mushrooms in eleven fucking years
because of a
nasty allergic reaction. But
when I was in the Berkeley Bowl waiting to see if they would be getting some
garlic chives in (for the daikon kim chee, I might just run down to Pusan Market
for some), I was standing by the mushrooms and realized that I haven't craved
mushrooms for quite some time.
You crave what you're allergic to. Every time
there's a fucking Domino's ad on I fight not to call for the shittiest pizza on
Earth because I just crave the wheat and the yeast so much. I can smell
it when someone has a pizza delivered in the immediate vicinity and I am
Pavlov's dog.
No cravings, no urge to stuff my face with oysters
and woodears and all the other exotics that were on display. I figure it might
be safe. If not, I'll just take a bunch of Lorazepam and sleep the worst of it
away.
Plus the mushroom reaction was always worse when
mixed with booze, and I haven't had any alcohol in over a year. My liver must be
pink, or whatever color a healthy human liver is.
Results from the mushroom experiment: my allergy
seems to be gone for now! Yeah! I was savoring each bite of shitake. God but
they were yummy. So woody and scrumptious. There's just a special taste of good
mushrooms. Just as there are a very few
mutant women with four color cone receptors
so too are there a greater number of mutants with
five taste sensations. Called
umami, this fifth taste is found in mushrooms, fermented foods and exotic
(to the average Westerner) dishes like uni (sea urchin) and durian (the
deliciously stinky fruit described as eating the world's best custard near an
open sewer). The umami taste mutation is frequently found in East Asia,
although you'll find plenty of Japanese and Koreans who can't stand the
traditional fermented foods, and mutant gaijin like myself who love them,
along with uni and durian. I don't know if it's an odd thing or not, but
after eating the shitakes I had a craving for durian. I haven't eaten durian
since I was in Singapore, not for lack of availability in the Bay Area, but
mainly for lack of quality. Once I tasted the good stuff available in the region
where it's grown, I was spoiled. After all these years I thing my standards are
much, much lower. I'll head out to my local
99 Ranch Market
and see if they have some frozen slices. No need
to splurge on a whole durian. I couldn't afford one anyway. In my old
neighborhood in San Francisco it would amuse the locals to see a gwei lo
picking out a durian and comparing prices and quality at the various markets
along Clement street that sold them. Over here it's 99 Ranch or head down to
Oakland's Chinatown, and 99 Ranch is easier to get to and way easier to park in
on a weekday morning.
Another message the other night from the dreamtime:
I was backstage at some concert and an unknown band sang the following:
Everything rages
Everything dies
Everything changes
Everything slides
From...
Then the scene switched to monitors showing fans at simulcasts of the
concerts around the world as they shouted out the names of their hometowns. "Los
Angeles! Cincinnati! Madrid! Genoa!"
I awoke to write that one down. I think I'll adopt that as my personal motto
until something better comes along. It's long past time to slide out of
Berkeley, as things are raging and changing.
Raging, changing & sliding,
Jerod
Monday, March 10, 2003
The word on the street is that the person who
smashed my windshield has been apprehended. Mine was not the only car he
vandalized. Why did he go on his mini-rampage Friday night? I don't know. My
neighbor Freddie says he was "off his meds" and released to the country
psychiatric unit. If that were the case at least I can understand what happened,
not why my car was a particular trigger for his rage but just that general
lashing-out rage. I do hope that he does find the right meds and/or stays
compliant. A night in jail might be just the motivation towards that end. I just
hope he got his meds and wasn't in the general population.
The debate goes round'n'round about responsibility
and mental illness in cases like this, and worse. From the perspective of
someone who is mentally ill all I can write is, there is a responsibility. You
are responsible to stay on your meds. You are responsible not to harm other
people when and if you flip out. If you do harm other people, you need to be
humanely reminded and reinforced that said behavior is unacceptable. If the
behavior cannot be changed, you need to be placed somewhere where you don't hurt
yourself or others.
I've been told that it's amazing I'm not on a rage
binge myself after this incident. It is amazing and it isn't. Nervous breakdown
#3 and the subsequent treatment for it have resulted in a major personality
transplant. Plus all the Qi Gong has left me much calmer. I'm doing Qi Gong
exercises every day that release anger and, as the tape promises, allows me to
face the day with a joyous heart. It's certainly working. Given all the shit
that's happened to me in my life I've had a lot to be angry about. I'd visualize
the people and events while doing the exercises and release the anger, letting
go of it. For a couple of weeks I had absolutely nothing to think about when
doing those particular exercises. Even now after just two days the anger over
the windshield is gone. Qi Gong has worked wonders for me.
Last night I was still able to see some friends of
mine do a gig nearby.
David Gans
and
Lemon JuJu. I won't bore you
with reviews, you can check out their web pages for lyrics and samples to read
or hear for yourself how great they are. Thanks to Cynthia who gave me a lift!
My windshield is replaced, I'm out $165, which is a
very good price for that sort of thing, and life goes on.
Agoraphobia and cracked windshields be damned,
Jerod
Saturday, March 08, 2003
Last night someone decided to smash the windshield on my car. Not for profit,
just for fun, as nothing was taken. My car was parked in the same spot as my
neighbors' was a couple nights ago when their car was broken into for a badly
stolen radio. My wild-ass guess is that the local dealers want to keep that
parking space open for their customers.
This sort of thing is just motivating me to get the hell out of Berkeley all
the sooner. Time for some scouting expeditions to cheaper places I'm considering
moving to.
I went to a gallery opening the other night. I was antsy, but reasonably
coping. The only thing that kept me from staying longer was that the perfume
level was atrocious. Even after I got home my clothes still reeked of Eau de
Pretentious Artiste. Still, it was a huge victory in the war against
agoraphobia. Who knows, maybe I might be able to hold down a job again. I don't
know what the hell I would do, as I've lost my programming skills. I'll figure
something out. Paper or plastic? You want fries with that?
Tomorrow night I was planning on seeing a couple friends performing, but with
no car that won't be possible. I need to have an out in case I get panicky in
public, that being the nature of agoraphobia. With my own wheels I'm more in
control, less likely to freak out. Bummers.
Meanwhile I made tsukemono for the first time in ages yesterday. Chigusa-zuke
for those of you keeping score. With my weird food restrictions I'm thinking of
going on a Japanese-Korean food kick. If I'm going to be buying cheap meat I may
as well marinade it in spicy marinade and serve with rice and fermented veggies.
Yummers.
Smash the state, not windshields,
Jerod
Friday, March 07, 2003
I've cut back my Risperdal intake to 0.75 mg a day and am planning on
tritrating it down further, maybe eliminating it all together. That's one thing
I'll be discussing with my doctor. When I started Topamax we discussed
eliminating one of the other meds, probably Neurontin, but when I had to cut
back on Neurontin recently and got depressed over every least little thing I
know that to be a very bad idea. Now that I'm feeling reasonably better I
thought I'd see if I could try to reduce the amount of meds I take. I know that
I'll be medicated for some time, if not permanently. Topamax and Neurontin are
here to stay, at the doses I'm at, regardless of my Yoga and Qi Gong workouts.
Anyway, one effect of reducing the Risperdal is that my dreams are more
dreamlike, and not just boring replays of my boring life.
Last night was my night for extreme emotions.
Dream 1:
I'm at a crowded beach vacation spot. I need to get to a restaurant, and the
only way to the restaurant is by balloon transport. There's no gondola, just
some thin ropes, no more than strings really, to stand on and to hang onto.
We're told that the balloon would just glide a few feet above the beach. I have
one foot in a rope strap and am holding on by just two fingers of one hand when
the balloon lifts off high above the ocean. I'm paralyzed with fear and can't
get a better grip.
I wake up, unable to move or even open my eyes for close to a minute.
Eventually I roll over, turn on the BBC to lull me to sleep.
Dream 2:
I'm in the yard working on some topiary and it's not going very well. Inside
the house the phone rings and I know that will mean more trouble. I try to get
inside but it's too late. My mother is on a foldout couch bed, drunk, covered in
trash from trying to answer the phone. Cigarette butts, candy wrappers, used
tissues. She's slurring at me that someone wants to talk to my supervisor. I
pick up the phone it's someone from a trade magazine who wants the phone number
for my supervisor. "Why the fuck do you want to talk to her?" I yell. "Why do
you want to harass my supervisor?" I'm put on hold and hold muzak plays as I try
to clean the trash off of my mother and the bed. The supervisor of the person
who called me is on the phone but cannot answer my repeated questions.
I wake up, my heart is pounding and I'm sweating, and I'm still talking. "You
can't even tell me which magazine this is for, can you? What kind of fucking
database do you have where you don't know which magazine I read and you want to
know my supervisor's phone number to harass her!" Once again it's up to the Beeb
to calm me down.
Dream 3:
I'm late for the meeting of the NASA group that is to deal with handling how
children are to come to terms with the Columbia disaster. I sit next to the head
of NASA and begin taking notes. I double check with him. "Are they really
saying, 'The trouble with Hubble is in the cupboard.'?"
He tells me they are. I tell him I thought my meds were making me hallucinate
again. Then several of the scientists, ex-astronauts and other NASA bureaucrats
got on the floor and began playing with games that would help the kids deal with
the loss. One guy had Legos with LEDs that represented different stars and was
upset that Aldebaran was misplaced. One woman had a game that consisted of
numbers on hexagon shaped counters that were placed on a spinning/floating
component in such a way that scored different points for different types of
numeric sequences. When it dawned on me what she was trying to do I went over to
her. She had put the game away, there were only the pieces left over from
assembling it. "Mathematics was my life," I told her. "And to associate math
with death and tragedy will not help children grieve, but turn them away from
science and engineering."
I woke up with tears on my face. Time to get up anyway.
I might also swap Provigil for another med to handle the ADD symptoms and
deal with the lethargy of all the other meds. Provigil is OK, and I'll live with
it if the others suck, I just want something better. Provigil is expensive, over
$5.00 a pill. OK, it's not AZT expensive, but it's still expensive. Adderall is
in the $1.50 a pill range. Older and cheaper might work better for me, not just
for price but for effect. The time is coming to start checking out other places
to live, and I'm going to need the concentration and stamina for road trips to
Montana and Oregon.
Dreaming a not-too-impossible dream,
Jerod
Tuesday, March 04, 2003
It's Fat Tuesday and for the past couple of days
I've been thinking about how I'm living Lent. Except for the meat part, as I had
to give up being a vegetarian because of food allergies. Yet I still had to give
up all of my favorite foods due to allergies and sensitivities. No pizza, no
noodles (except for expensive, crappy noodles made from something other than
wheat), no Italian desserts, no exotic vegetarian delights, no Chinese takeout,
limited Japanese and Indian selections, no bread, no sandwiches...I could keep
going on and on but it sucks enough.
I can't drink anymore because of meds. I had to
switch to decaf because of meds. I shouldn't smoke anymore because of meds and
along those lines the interaction of nicotine and Topamax has greatly reduced my
enjoyment of cigars, so I just don't bother. SSRIs aren't the only drugs that
can kill your sex drive, and I've gone from being voraciously hypersexual to
just not caring anymore. Which is good, because I'm not in a relationship, don't
see myself being in one anytime soon, find it hard to even think about dating
and that Unabomber shack in Montana is looking better every day. I don't even
cook the really good food like I used to, mainly because I have to be a real
cheapskate now and also because of all the allergies. I can only go out to eat
if it's on someone else's dime, I'm medicated enough, and I'm not all panicky,
so that doesn't happen much.
Go on, give up something for Lent. I'm down to
satellite TV, the Internet, and the BBC overnight service when I can't sleep.
All of which allow me to have a tenuous grasp on sanity.
On the Qi Gong side of things, here's an interesting
website. Meridian
Qi Gong
where someone claiming to be a medical doctor gives a
very reasonable explanation of
how Qi Gong
works. There's obviously much more to it,
but that is just a teaser for the guy's book. Plus his work is focused on Qi
Gong as therapy for disease, but as that's my use of it I'm happy with what he
has to say. He demonstrates some
14 different
exercises.
Giving up giving up for Lent,
Jerod
Tuesday, February 25, 2003
It was my birthday last week. Three blahs for me. I
survived another year, and that is cheery enough, but the day in itself was
mildly depressing. My birthday also marks the anniversary of my third nervous
breakdown, more or less. I'm not sure exactly when it happened, but it was
around my birthday, so I use that day as it is a day that I will remember. I can
say this is the point where I am no longer able to code my way out of a do-loop
to save my life, this is when everything changed.
On the yoga front it looks like I need to expel
myself from the Suckassi School of Yoga, as I can now do an
upward bow.
Granted my upward bow is not so archway-like as
illustrated in that page, more like a low coffee table, but at least I can get
my head off of the ground. The upward bow is supposedly good for depression. No
shit! If you can contort your body like that you feel like you can do most
anything. This is just one of nine poses
on the Yoga Journal site listed with the
therapeutic application of
mild depression. I note that
six of the nine, including the upward bow pose, are in the
blood-rushes-to-your-head class of poses, which may explain that lift one feels.
That might also explain why this Yoga program I'm on is making my meds work
better, as I'm doing the
standard
forward bend
several times a day, along with three upward bows
and/or
bridge poses
and an
intense leg
stretch.
My medicine-rich blood is rushing to my brain!
While they have nothing specific for mania, Yoga
Journal does have collections of poses for
anxiety,
stress and generally focusing
on the
brain. There's a bunch of
overlap, but I guess there are only so many Yoga poses to work with.
I shouldn't worry about kicking myself out of the
Suckassi School, I still suck ass at plenty of other things.
Sucking ass,
Jerod
Monday, February 17, 2003
I guess my SSDI claim has been approved. There was a
buttload of money deposited in my bank account from the Social Security
Administration a couple of days ago. Or maybe I just drew the "Bank error in
your favor" card in the Monopoly game that is Life.
Today is a holiday. Maybe I'll find out Tuesday.
Gee, thanks for telling me! Or maybe they did tell
me, and I misunderstood what they said or completely forgot. It wouldn't be the
first time since my breakdown last year. That's why I'm on SSDI and all. I've
posted about this on about.com's
bipolar forum
and the feedback from the experienced is that's how it works. The money is
deposited first and the forms come some time later. Our government in action.
I have no idea what the Medicare situation is like,
so I don't know if I can sign up at an HMO somewhere and get my meds subsidized
somehow. I know Medicare doesn't pay for drugs directly. I'm just trying to stay
in denial about having to sell my house and move. My understanding is that it
will be around another year before Medicare even kicks in, so if anything
happens to me it's the nearest free clinic as a first resort.
I just have to let go and move on. I have to let go
of my house and move on to a state with one Congresscritter, a place where no
one wants to live and houses can be had for under fifty grand. Most of my social
interactions are done online, my entertainment is via satellite TV, so does it
really matter where I actually live?
I wonder, I really do.
Breathing more easily,
Jerod
Wednesday, February 12, 2003
There's an article in the current online version of Yoga Journal about Yoga
and Depression.
The article has a general "practice Yoga and you can dump your meds!" tone,
which I can't really endorse, but for unipolar depression that might just be an
achievable goal. Lots of explanations about how Yoga works with depression, from
a medical, psychological and several Yogic views. There's one mention of a
bipolar woman who used Yoga to help stabilize her moods and calm her panic
attacks. No mention if she stopped taking her meds, reduced her dosage or what.
Yoga Journal is pretty heavy into the "Yoga cures all that ails you" vibe. If
you are interested in just why Yoga is doing wonders for me, please do read this
article. You don't just have to take my word that it's a good idea for those of
us who are fucked in the head.
I'm too ignorant of unipolar depression to know if you can ease your way off
of SSRIs. I thought that was the goal, and I heartily endorse Yoga as part of a
balanced diet including meds, talk therapy and decent food. Maybe some unipolar
types can get off of Prozac eventually, but Yoga alone isn't going to do it.
I think the best I can hope for, medication-wise, is to lower the amount of
the Risperdal I take. Maybe to the point of not taking any Risperdal. But the
Topamax and Neurontin, they stay, along with something for the ADD. I'm still
open to taking Risperdal forever. Hell, I'm managing to leave the house without
taking Lorazepam. Not all the time. I couldn't even get the mail yesterday, but
baby steps, baby steps. Having a day where I couldn't get the mail doesn't
bother me. I've had plenty of those.
Today I went to a freaking Target without any Lorazepam! I'm a bit shaky now,
but it's still tremendous for me. OK, it was 10:00 a.m. in the middle of the
week, so the Target was pretty dead, probably the only way I could deal with it,
but still.
I'm still holding onto a prescription for Lorazepam, though. You never know.
Jerod
Monday, February 10, 2003
I was looking for any videos that might have
exercises specifically for bipolar disorder when I came across this review of a
book on Qi Gong. Seems that someone else with bipolar has been helped. Here's
the salient part of the review, where the author made the same discovery two
years ago that I have just now:
This book will tell you that qigong has been shown
to help those with mental illnesses. No one's entirely sure why. Maybe it's
because it increases the flow of oxygen to the brain. Maybe it's because it
teaches us to relax, and almost every mental illness is aggravated, sometimes
severely, by stress.
I was skeptical. I have bipolar disorder type II
(translation: I'm mildly manic-depressive). I also have seasonal affective
disorder (translation: from December to March every year I get depressed).
I started doing qigong at the end of last November.
Since then I have practiced it faithfully every day, even if I only felt up to
doing it for five minutes. (Usually I manage 20-30 minutes.)
And you know what? This has been the best December
and January I can remember ever having. I've had remarkably little mood-swinging
for this time of year. So maybe it's a coincidence, but maybe it's the qigong.
It isn't like it costs a lot to try, so what do you have to lose?
[...]
Meanwhile Alex Beam of the Boston Globe wrote
an article on sex and Yoga,
reprinted in the San Francisco Chronicle. The article was actually positive, sex
sells, there's nothing wrong with sex and so forth. In general, he's right. For
normal people the sexiness of Yoga classes is probably a good, healthy thing,
but for us bipolar types with hypersexuality issues it's just one more reason to
stay at home and work out with Rodney Yee or whoever on a tape or DVD. Given the
dynamics going on at Yoga and Qi Gong classes, it would be too much like giving
an otherwise unmedicated beeper a potent SSRI antidepressant. You think you're
helping, but actually you're not. Yes, the bipolar person feels better, probably
too better, and starts acting a little out of control, making everyone else way
more than just uncomfortable. I've seen people get out of control at martial
arts classes, I have no idea why they were getting out of control, just that
they were.
No, until I know for sure that I won't make anyone
else's experience unpleasant, I'm staying home with my tapes. Until people who
are similarly fucked in the head achieve some kind of inner peace through the
right meds and the right exercises, they to should stay at home with their
tapes. OK, I doubt there are many other people out there similarly fucked in the
head as I am, but you know what I mean. You at there, you with the panic
attacks, you want to have one of those in the middle of a class? And you, you
with the sex drive that won't quit, you want to be hitting on everyone in class?
OK, maybe you do, but do they want you hitting on them? Do you
want to be the self-loathing asshole that everyone hates?
I thought not.
Besides, the tapes are so convenient. I woke up with
the onset of depression this morning. I started the Yoga routine anyway right
after I took my morning meds. During the routine I could really feel one of the
physical symptoms of my depression - my hamstrings were so much tighter and I
was remarkably less limber than yesterday, even less so than first thing
yesterday morning. But staying true to the Suckassi School of Yoga, I just
didn't care. I did my Yoga and Qi Gong in a half-assed way. By the time I was
done, the depression had lifted. Again I can't say why. More oxygen to the
brain? More Qi to the meridians around my liver? Better metabolization of my
meds? I don't know and I don't care, it just works. I didn't have to go to a
class for the results, they were there with push-button ease.
The same is true when I awaken with racing thoughts.
I begin the Yoga routines after taking my meds. I'm far more flexible than
usual, a sure sign of mania. The Yoga and Qi Gong calm me down. By the time I'm
done I have some focus and I'm not bouncing off the walls.
OK, tapes and DVDs can supplement classes, just as
these exercises are supplementing my meds; but I still stand by my original
assertion you asses, if you're mentally imbalanced, stay at home until you
achieve some kind of mental balance and keep it for a few months. Then think
about signing up for classes. Don't fuck it up for other people.
Always trying to keep my yin-yang out of trouble,
Jerod
Friday, February 07, 2003
More thoughts on Yoga and Qi Gong,
including the manifesto for a new school specifically for people with mental
problems and how Yoga and Qi Gong have helped tremendously in reducing the
effects of my bipolar and agoraphobia.
Recycling my Chi,
Jerod
Saturday, February 01, 2003
Of course my meds arrive after I put up an entry complaining about my meds
not arriving. I need to complain about their not arriving sooner. Instead of
just filling the remaining two-thirds of my previous order, the good folks of
the Point Douglas Pharmacy just filled a full three-month order. Good for them,
the less often I have to deal with this crap, the better. The big delay was
customs. No anthrax in my Gabapentin, officer, honest!
Between the meds and the Yoga and the Qi Gong I'm more stable than I've ever
been. $500 a month for the meds, but I'll pay for it somehow. I'd rather get
into some kind of Medicare HMO deal that keeps me on my same cocktail and I pay
a lower monthly fee & co-pay total, but one way or the other I'm staying on this
cocktail. Well, OK, I'm not married to the Provigil. I'm willing to try other
ADD medications. And maybe I can come down a little on the Risperdal, maybe not,
I'm just willing to try that. But the Topamax and Neurontin stay where they are
at barring any breakthroughs that don't go away.
I'm really feeling the benefits of the Yoga and Qi Gong. Another good thing
about doing it at home is that I can totally suck at it and not care. Yeah, I
need a yoga strap to do those leg stretches, and it's not even a yoga strap,
it's the tie for my bathrobe, who cares? Sure, I need a yoga brick for the
triangle pose and side stretches, and it's not an official yoga brick but a
glass brick leftover from miscalculated how many I needed for bookends. No, I'm
not threatened by Rodney Yee's manhood, that little swimsuit is just painted on
him, isn't it? I'd be happy if Yoga will do that for me, but if not, I don't
care. I'll keep doing it in my jammies anyway. I can't even come close to some
of the poses, but I try. In my jammies, on a sleeping bag instead of a yoga mat.
Hey, but I'm really good at all the poses that deal with bring my knees to my
chest and the like. All that time spent in a fetal position has really paid off
for once.
By staying at home I don't have to deal with yoga rage at all. No problem.
But I could totally see it happening. Guys being threatened by other guys'
packages. Women getting insecure by some of the poses and freaking out by real
or imagined harassment from classmates. Everyone with accouterment envy. I know
I'd be too busy trying to be good to concentrate on the Yoga itself. Doctors and
therapists recommend exercise, and frequently recommend yoga as part of a
regimen to deal with mental health issues. I think they need to be more specific
and say to do it at home with tapes and DVDs.
Wondering if Yoga will bring truth to Spam's promises,
Jerod
Friday, January 31, 2003
I've updated
the page dealing with
my meds. There have been some changes in
dosage and effects. Mainly I've discovered that Neurontin really does work as a
mood stabilizer for me. Really, it does. Once again there was a screw-up with my
order from
Canadameds and I had to
decrease my Neurontin intake from 1200 mg a day to 900, then to 600. I got so
depressed over the least little things when I was down to 600 mg a day.
Fortunately my saintly family pharmacist where I buy the rest of my meds will
still fill a Neurontin prescription for a week at a time as need be. Once I was
back up to 1200 mg a day the depression lifted. At my current cocktail I'm
actually rather stable. Sure, I'm worried about finances and my future and
everything, but I'm not anxious, and there's a difference. I'm not depressed.
Even 'worry' isn't the right word, 'concerned' is more appropriate. Anyway, my
order is held up in customs or stuck in some US Postal service center somewhere.
I have a tracking number for it this time and I keep checking.
I've been doing some really basic yoga for my back
for a few months and decided to move up a bit. I know the yoga makes a big
difference. I started with Rodney "Sex God" Yee's "Back Care Yoga for Beginners"
because of lower back pain I started getting from laying around watching TV all
day. It helped enough that I stopped doing it after a period of depression and
didn't need to start again because the back pain didn't get that bad. But I did
start experiencing some really intense twitches and shivers in my thighs, arms
and fingers. I thought it was early indications of a nasty side effect from the
Risperdal. I told Dr. Goldman about it and he grilled me about when they
occurred, what they felt and looked like, where on my fingers they happened
most. He thought it wasn't from the drugs but from nerves getting all pinched up
from my being a lazy SOB. So back to doing the yoga and rolling around on the
Styrofoam logs I got from the physical therapists when I had really bad RSI. The
result: the twitchiness is now rare and much less intense.
I acquired some ultra basic Qi Gong for Dummies
videos along with some yoga DVDs from Rodney Yee line. These are all from
Living Arts
whose website's name is designed to make junior
high boys laugh well into their thirties.
I'm two days into doing the Qi Gong and yoga twice a
day and I'm feeling better already.
In the many great coincidences that surround my life
like Jung's synchronicity, or the many delusions of bipolar where the TV is
talking to me personally, the Daily Show ran a story on yoga rage. Yoga has been
shown to improve depression and self-esteem issues, which leads to yoga classes
being filled with self-loathing assholes ready to act out at the drop of a yoga
mat. The piece really made clear my vague unease of going to any sort of class
again. But the videos, while they lack a lot in the way of synching up the
breathing with the movements and detailing the positions and movements, can be
replayed and paused and replayed and paused without additional expense or
instructor exasperation. Plus I don't have to deal with any other self-loathing
assholes whose meridians aren't lined up right.
Take, for instance, one of the yoga sections where
the positions Upward Facing Dog and Downward Facing Dog are used over and over.
You've got Rodney Yee barking "Up dog! Down dog! Up dog! Down dog!" with a few
other positions now and then. Is it a canine obedience DVD or is it Doggy Style
with Rodney Yee?
Anyway, I think yoga tapes/DVDs are the way to go.
Sure, you don't have someone there to kick your prime meridian / first chakra
into action. But you don't have a bunch of self-loathing first chakra-wipes
making comments about how someone looks in a unitard when doing Downward Facing
Dog either. My own personal issues with agoraphobia and social phobia aside, of
course.
I really should have done this sooner. I'm feeling
much, much better.
It helps that I stabilized with the meds, though. If
I were still cycling around and tried Qi Gong I may have been put off it, so
it's probably all for the best that I did wait until I've been stable for a few
weeks first.
On the SSDI front, my lawyer and my caseworker are
optimistic. I have more paperwork due any day now. They think I'm going to get
approved. I'll believe it when I see a check or something on paper saying I'm
approved. No matter what I'm still going to have to sell my house and sell it
soon. That still saddens me, and I still need to figure out where I'm going to
live. One prospective location fell through. More and more it's looking like
moving in with my mother. I don't know if that would be healing or detrimental
for this mental case.
Last night Dave & Dionne stopped by and, fully
medicated with plenty of Lorazepam, I ventured out to dinner. I had been having
a moderately ultradian day, with the one working TV losing its sound and my
trying to deal with that. I'm so 21stcentury white
trash, with two TVs in my living room that don't work but that maybe, could be
repaired, and one in my bedroom that works most of the time. I can't live
without 150 channels of crap-on-demand TV. I still no longer have the
concentration and memory required to read books, and radio alone doesn't do it.
The silence would just cause my head to fill with my own thoughts, and that
would be an explosion of pain and grief. So I try to make one of the old TVs
work, it doesn't really do it, so I move the one whose sound died back and think
to hook up my stereo and get sound from the satellite receiver or VCR or
something when it's a Christmas miracle! The shaking up of the TV restored the
sound! Hallelujah! Praise Jah and Halle Berry! I'm saved, for now, the horrible
experiences of shopping and spending money I don't have. So Dave & Dionne catch
me on a hypomanic upswing, and I'm able to venture out.
We go to Genki, one of my favorite neighborhood
restaurants. I stick with saba shioyaki because my appetite could disappear, and
something safe and comfortable is the easiest thing to force down. It's a really
good night, with Lorazepam dulling and delaying the panic and anxiety until this
morning (I had planned on an errand, but even with Lorazepam I could not leave
the house today). One of the waitresses comes over and asks me if I'm Henry. She
explains how she knows the voice of this Henry, but has never met him. I
apparently sound and talk just like him.
"No," I say, "but I wish that I was Henry."
She laughs and withdraws.
Dionne comments that the waitress likes me.
The manic charm had just kicked in, without my even
thinking about it.
I'm lonely. I get depressed about it at times. But
I'm not going to subject anyone else to the bouts of madness that I'm going
through. I need way, way more stability before I could even think about a
relationship, and that is probably a pipe dream anyway.
Where do agoraphobes go to date in the first place?
I couldn't go out without plenty of prescription
drugs, the right phase of hypomania, supportive friends, a safe location, and
mutual understanding about the potential need to freak-out and run home. And
that's after I'm relatively stable, which could be years from now. If ever.
It's just going to be me, my cat Karuna and a bunch
of stuffed animals in my bed for the foreseeable, frustrating, future.
Lonely heart still beating,
Jerod
Wednesday, December 18, 2002
Dr. Goldman called me yesterday. He suggests the
Topamax cure (25 mg an hour) when walking around in circles and repeating some
word over'n'over. He tried to explain what was going on, but between a bad cell
phone connection and neurology that was way over my head (har-har), I didn't
really understand. As Homer Simpson said, "What is mind? No matter. What is
matter? Never mind." If I have the presence of mind to try it, I shall.
I'll make an appointment to discuss the pros and
cons of increasing my daily Topamax intake, and try to get a better
understanding of what is happening to me when I am walking around in circles and
how Topamax can help that. I felt so much better with an extra 100 mg or
so a day. But was that why I felt like Max Headroom that one day? What about
kidney stones? He was worried about my memory and general cognitive effects, but
I'm resigned to trade them for emotional stability.
That's where you have to live through bipolar hell
to really understand the pain and what you will give up to make it stop. I'm a
living example of the
kindling effect. I fucked up by leaving
myself untreated after an initial diagnosis for 16 years. Now I have to pay the
price of rapid cycling and being resistant to treatment. The price for a hope of
long-term emotional stability may be a big chunk of my memory and intellect; on
top of what I'm paying for the drugs out of pocket.
Life sucks that way.
Dropping and rolling to smother the bonfire of my
soul,
In early November I was going through a period of
hellish ultradian rapid cycling. I'd been cycling between flat and various
levels of depression, from the barely functional to curled in a fetal position
and sobbing. Add to that periods of paralyzing anxiety and mixed states where
I'd pace around the house sobbing, my thoughts racing from one depressing topic
to another. Also some nasty intrusive thoughts and violent urges came back as
well. Really nasty. Go directly to jail nasty.
So now I'm taking 150 mg of Topamax, 1 mg of Risperdal, 1200 mg of Neurontin
and 200 mg of Provigil daily. When the anxiety gets too bad I take as much
Lorazepam as I need.
The rapid cycling stopped, the intrusive thoughts stopped, the violent
ideations and urges are gone.
For about a month anyway.
Woke up around 1:00 a.m. in a raging mixed state, but couldn't think clearly
enough to take any meds. Just anguished over to call or not to call anybody.
Kept drifting in and out of sleep, thoughts racing all darkly and sweaty until
about five this morning. Then the mixed state was thankfully replaced by severe
depression. It seemed better at the time, until the ideations of an early exit
started. Really visual, very detailed, very PTSD/autistic visual and detailed.
Handgun to mouth, trigger cocking, problems ending.
Those didn't last long, because the ultra rapid cycling kicked in. Don't like
this mood? Wait five minutes, max. Yeah, I was ready to apply for some high
paying job. I could do it. If I could just get out of bed. Tomorrow maybe.
Around 8:00 a.m. my head cleared enough to remember what my doctor told me:
25 mg of Topamax every hour on the hour on top of my regular medications.
I keep my meds at my bedside. I need glow-in-the-dark notes or something to
tell me at one in the morning when these crises happen.
I have a canopy around my bed, maybe I should just write it all around the
curtains. "TAKE LORAZEPAM AND TOPAMAX DIPSHIT." In something non-toxic yet
dayglow.
I took two mg of Lorazepam with my nighty-night dose of meds: 125 mg of
Topamax, 300 mg of Neurontin, 0.75 mg of Risperdal. I expected to just pass out
but I didn't. I felt like Max Headroom. My head was detached from the rest of my
body, floating towards the TV and spewing non-sequitors. I felt like I was
inside of the TV, living someone else's life, a new life each commercial break.
Finally I got about nine hours of uninterrupted sleep.
After my morning meds, 300 mg of Neurontin, 25 mg of Topamax, 0.25 mg of
Risperdal, 200 mg of Provigil, I still felt Lorazepam mellow enough to deal with
the post office.
After getting back that turned out to be a mistake. Delayed agoraphobic
reaction. Not uncommon. Even when doped up sometimes the panic attacks happen
after I get home. So more Lorazepam, just 1 mg.
Just in time for the ultradian rapid cycling to hit again.
So 25 mg of Topamax on the bottom of the hour (when I noticed it). Flashback
to radio training. Top of the hour / bottom of the hour.
The thing is, the ultra rapid cycling would stop after about three hours, or
an extra 75 mg of Topamax. By the time I've added an extra 100 or 125 mg I'm
feeling really good.
But did all that extra Topamax make me feel like Max Headroom?
Something to bring up with my psychiatrist.
The next couple of days the autism and anxiety keep beating the bipolar in
the game of rock-paper-scissors that my psyche keeps playing for control of my
body.
I didn't know what was going on with Mouse, she didn't know what was going on
with me. There was a bad conjunction of stars and bipolar cycles and the like.
We got in an e-mail-based fight. I felt like garbage, first for what I thought
she had done and not done, then for what I had done in anger because I didn't
know all that was going on. Garbage, garbage, garbage. Some kind of autistic
thing kicks in, and I start repeating the same word over and over again, and
"garbage" was the word for two days. I'd walk in circles for minutes at a time,
saying "garbage" over and over. Maybe extra Risperdal would help in such a
situation. I'll bring it up, but like when the ultradian rapid cycling hits, I
have to be clear-headed enough to take extra meds when I'm extra crazy. The
Risperdal seems to be helping with some of the other symptoms: rages, hair
pulling, throwing myself at things, hitting things, breaking everything in
sight, getting totally non-verbal instead of just semi-non-verbal.
The joys of being mentally ill and living alone.
Returning you to Network 23,
Jerod
Saturday, October 26, 2002
The mania of the last entry lasted close to 48 hours. What a ride. It was
very seductive to be like that again. I still wonder how I survived 15 years of
it.
I've finally started to put stuff up for auction on eBay. You can just look
me up on eBay, as jerod23.
It's depressing doing this. Really depressing. Depressing because of the
money, and depressing because of the lack of money the items will bring in. The
maps probably won't bring in anywhere near $100. The Hungarian tin toys, the
Star Trek Barbie & Kent set, the Spinal Tap lunch box, the Pee-Wee Herman lunch
boxes, the Hello Kitty stuff - the market is saturated with this crap and nobody
is buying. Worst of all are the games. Not only due to the lack of interest on
the part of buyers, but that I need to part with a physical manifestation of the
one set of happy memories from my fucked up adolescence. I didn't have many
friends, coming from the one-friend-at-a-time school of mild autism. My
interests were too obscure for anyone else, my pursuits solitary. My weekend
gaming sessions were the extent of my social interactions. My mother was so
conflicted about the whole thing. On one hand she was extremely happy I was
getting out of the house and going somewhere else besides the library or the
pinball pallor. She was happy I was making friends (at least, she thought it the
plural, she never got the one-friend-at-a-time concept) with kids who lived in
the very nice part of town. What she couldn't stand was the subject matter, what
with her older brothers serving in WWII. I couldn't keep it straight if some
died or not, as family history outside of my immediate genetic forebears is just
a muddled jumble to me. Worse still was my frequent insistence of playing the
Axis side. This had nothing to do with politics, I disagreed with most of the
Nazi platform. I liked the idea of the concentration camps, without the ovens
and the firing squads, but not for people based on ethnic qualifications. No, my
test would be simple, if someone thought that rounding up certain ethnic groups
and putting them in concentration camps was a good idea for Germany, then
those people would go to the concentration camps. No, my whole obsession
with Germany's winning of WWII was based on my rudimentary and self-taught
understandings of game theory and military planning. Germany was outnumbered and
out gunned; yet they had superior optics, superior communications and a vastly
superior officer corps. Plus they equipped foot soldiers with submachine guns,
so man-to-man they were the ones out-gunning the enemy. But the main thing was
having the CCC, Command, Control and Communications totally in the bag. With a
little better strategic planning, Germany could have conquered Europe, or could
they? That's what I wanted to know, and have some fun in trying to get to the
answer. My mother, who served in the Air Force during and/or shortly after the
Korean Conflict, just didn't get it.
I tried to get back into gaming a few years ago, but various roadblocks
prevented it. Now I'm too cowardly to find opponents in a hobby that is dying
out, and too afraid to leave my house anyway. My ADD is getting worse,
aggravated by ever increasing dosages of mood stabilizers, so I couldn't learn
any new games and probably couldn't finish the easier games like Stalingrad or
Afrika Korps, or any of the WWII classics from the mid-1960s. Presuming, of
course, that I could even remember how to play them or even relearn them, the
way my memory has been acting up. Which just depresses me further, as another
skill, more aspects that used to be so definitive of my life are slipping out of
my grasp. No longer am I the quick study, the guy who just knows how
certain things work so quickly and so effortlessly. No longer am I a gamer.
A gamer, we who were deemed lower than the SciFi convention geeks and the SCA
/ RenFairies in social graces and in the utter lacking of lives. I was never
ashamed to admit to being a gamer, the loser's losers who would spend afternoons
moving little cardboard squares across hexagon gridded maps of bits of Europe,
always consulting rule books like junior paralegals, relishing in a "D-Elim"
result meaning so many people died, so many surrendered, so many went missing.
I'm 40 years old, I'm supposed to be buying the stuff that made me happy when
I was in high school, not selling it.
So some days I cycle between depression and being flat, some days I wallow in
depression, and some truly hellish days I cycle between depression and mixed
states; all the while trying to write up cheerful auction descriptions for a
maximum of one buyer. It's a frustration and a sense of being overwhelmed and
hopelessness that only other bipolar types can understand from experiencing it
in their own lives. It'll be lose-lose no matter what. And I still have to
figure out how I can sell the chess set I bought from INXS' now dead singer back
in 1984 when I lived in Australia. At least, I'm pretty sure it was he, it could
have been their current singer, such is the joy of Asperger's and not being able
to tell people apart. I'll send their PR people an e-mail and hope for a
response. I can't offer potential buyers any hard proof of the provenance of a
really beat-up chess set of Chinese rats from the Boxer Rebellion, but I can't
lie to them either, even if the lie is unintentional. It was from one of
the INXS guys, and I'm pretty sure he said he was the singer. What did I know, I
was totally into punk fucking rock and the post-Birthday Party Melbourne sound
back then, I never heard of INXS before.
I doubt if I'll get any new items up today. It's a struggle to put up one or
two items for sale a day. It's too slow, trying to get the on the Xmas sales
cycle and all. I should be use to it, selling my gamer soul, the loser's loser
soul.
If some of the games don't sell, I may not relist them, I just may hang onto
the fond memories, hang onto them as best I can, as the ultradian rapid cycling
and the meds have fucked with my memories so much as it is.
None of these games is original from the time of my teenage gamerhood. My
mother saw to that, along with a lot of other stuff that was precious to me,
prior to moving to Seattle with my stepfather. A move that I did not take part
in until some six months after it happened, and then for about two months. They
tried to make up for it later, but it never really balanced out. I've been
buying games to assuage my anger towards them. Now I have to sell those very
same games. But that's OK. The meds are really effective in helping me
let go of anger.
I put too much of a claim on stuff, and it in turn does the same on me. But
the Asperger's puts a wall of Plexiglas between me and most of the world, like
I'm always in the lobby of a bank that has been robbed one too many times. I can
get overwhelmingly emotional around and about stuff, and the stuff doesn't run
away, doesn't hold it against me, doesn't blackmail me with it later, the stuff
just accepts me as I am. Even when I cry as I write up cheerful descriptions
about it, trying to find someone who probably won't appreciate it as much as I
do.
I'm selling my loser soul, and no one is buying,
Jerod
Saturday, October 05, 2002
Rock, paper, scissors.
I was manic enough to leave the house today. Really
manic. I went to the
annual map sale at UC Berkeley.
To be surrounded by cartography geeks.
Mania beats agoraphobia, I could leave the house. I
could deal with being around a lot of people. My kind of people at least,
cartography geeks. I could talk about how Soviet maps of the 1960s compared with
maps published by the Royal Geographic Society of the late 19th century. I could
struggle with Cyrillic and not be embarrassed by my struggle. I could date maps
at a glance. Good old manic charm. Trumps agoraphobia any time.
This mania has been going for over thirty hours now.
3.5 hours of sleep last night. That bit wasn't pleasant. The mania wasn't
dysphoric, I just wanted to sleep. I couldn't take a Lorazepam, because I knew
it would kill the mania, and I wanted, needed to be manic today. I intended on
making that map sell and getting there early. Plus I really needed to clean this
pigsty, and I did a lot of cleaning yesterday.
Rock, paper, scissors.
But ADD beat Autism. I was scatter brained about it.
Couldn't get my act together. Got easily distracted by stupid stuff. Even though
the mood stabilizers seemed to have dropped the ball a bit on this breakthrough
mania, they still did their job in making the ADD worse. I knew I should have
taken my Alertec sooner. But even with the Alertec working I had problems. I got
lost on the short drive, but that could be a temporal lobe issue, and not an ADD
one. Who the fuck knows. Didn't get there until 9:15.
By then, the good stuff was gone.
On to the haul.
There is only one map I bought that I plan on
keeping. Yup, all the rest will go up on eBay. The keeper is a gorgeous,
multicolored 33x24 inch Soviet map of Tuva. The maps of that period are very
19th century in their aesthetic, the way they color the political units within
the Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republics or Oblasts.
I was straining with my very rusty Cyrillic 'skills'
to read the selections of maps in the pile. I struggled and thought I had found
a map of Tuva. Then, as I looked for a price I saw, "Tuvin Autonomous S.S.R."
written on the bottom. Yup, it's Tuva.
And there, with all the commie geography facts is
the date of the coup, 13 October, 1944.
It's the keeper.
Now about the rest that I intend on selling. The
whole point of going to this sell was to get maps to sell on eBay. Which was
everyone else's point who cleaned out the really good stuff by 9:15. But I
crawled under the tables checking folders and found one that was unopened. It
said, "Line Maps." As I inspected it, that was the case. Mostly boring line
maps. I flagged down a worker and he told me that it wasn't a set, so we made
some room on a table and opened it to the public. I grabbed a few things that I
had an eye on already, and started to paw through it with everyone else, and
extracted a bunch of WWII related maps.
The big prize, I think, is a 46 x 36-inch weather
plotting chart of the North Atlantic for September 1942. It has RESTRICTED
warnings all over it and is "Prohibited by law to reveal its contents to
unauthorized personnel under the Espionage Act 50 U.S.C. 31 and 32 amended." So
no selling to professed Nazi spies. The map is in orange with are and water
currents in bluish gray.
The chart shows political boundaries for early 1938,
although East Prussia looks funky, like the Climatological Division of the Army
Air Forces recognized the unions of Danzig and Memel with Germany, but no other
political changes, including Soviet annexation of Finnish Territory.
There's also a chart for the Pacific, bordered by
California, Japan and Australia. It doesn't have the RESTRICTED espionage
warnings, so it must be OK to sell it to Japanese or Thai spies. What it does
have is a matrix of ever so cool obsolete weather symbolism, with no key as to
what it all means. It's also in orange.
I'm selling them as a set.
There was a second Atlantic map, but someone grabbed
it and I didn't feel like claiming the entire folder just cuz I found it and got
it blessed as not being an entire set.
Next up there's two full color war maps from a set
of God knows how many, covering the Congo. These two are for Brazzaville and
Leopoldville (now known as Kninshasa) and heading south into the Loanda region
of Angola. One map is in English and one is in English and Afrikaaners. Some
officer wrote on both maps comments about how useless they were when it came to
mountains. Contours wrong, no scarp, division off - stuff like that.
I'm mystified as to their purpose. To protect
diamond and gold mines from Hitler? Some anti-submarine warfare took place here,
not a hell of a lot and mountains didn't have anything to do with it. I'm
selling these together, to keep the mystery together.
I got a lovely, black and white 41 x 26 inch map of
Anatolia and Armenia, although it includes most of Syria and Mesopotamia too.
It's the northern part of the Ottoman Empire, circa 1913. No date on the map,
but I'll do a little digging on some city names and try to nail this one down.
For some reason I picked up a couple of base outline
maps of northwestern Europe, one from 1938 and one from about 1969. I hope to
get a couple of bucks for each of them. The 1969 map might be my test auction.
Finally I have two identical outline maps by the
Office of Foreign Agricultural Relations, U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Europe, 1939. But the boundaries are from 1937. No countries are named, but are
outlined in heavy black line. Instead all of their internal political units are
identified, named and defined in a greenish grayish bluish hue. Sometimes the
provinces are named; sometimes the name of the major city is used. In the Soviet
Union all the sub units are named, so you get all the Autonomous Soviet
Socialist Republics within the bigger Soviet Socialist Republics.
Germany's nigh infinite principalities and earldoms
and baronies needed tiny,
tiny
type to deal with naming them. I'll put one up for auction. If it gets a decent
price, I'll put the other one up. If not, I'll just keep it. It's a cool map. I
suspect it's some kind of spy map, and has little to do with agriculture.
That's my haul. All I need to do is get another 2 or
3 days of sustained, euphoric mania to figure out the details of mailing these
maps and other items that I wish to sell right away, buy the shipping material,
get the postage down, make sure everything is set up on eBay correctly and do a
quick test auction to see if paypal or the ebay payment system really works.
I have a shitload of stuff that I've collected over
the years that I need to sell and start selling soon. I hope these maps get me
started. If I net over $100 profit on the maps then the board games, the old
Hungarian toys, the Hello Kitty stuff and related Japanese kitsch and at least
one didjeridu will go up on the international garage sale auction block but
quick.
I'm hoping to make a dent in my property tax
payment.
The total damage on today's manic spending spree -
$23.00. Not bad as manic spending sprees go. Nothing will ever compare to the 50
acres of bush land in Australia in a manic attempt to keep my marriage together.
Auctioning my memories to pay my taxes,
Jerod
Friday, September 27, 2002
I did receive my meds. There was an attempt to deliver the first batch of
them to me on September fifth. Canadameds.com didn't tell me the meds were being
shipped priority mail, nor did they send me a tracking number for that delivery,
so I didn't know to leave my gate unlocked. Then for whatever reason, no
delivery notice was left after the one and only delivery attempt by the post
office. On September 16th I went to the post office and collected most of my
meds. The delivery of the remainder of the prescription went more smoothly. I
was told it would be priority mail, was e-mailed a tracking number and had my
gate unlocked to receive the delivery. The postman had no explanation for the
lack of a delivery notice. Canadameds.com did not charge me for delivery for the
second order.
Now I get to reorder my next batch just in time for the holidays. I'm phoning
in my next order, and speaking to the person who helped me get my meds.
Of course, I'm still undermedicated. I can't afford to take Provigil daily,
so I'm pretty much done for the day by one in the afternoon. And my
concentration is shot.
I'm still in Limbo, back to waiting for Social Security to make another
decision, probably an unfavorable one, in my claim for SSDI. No matter what I'll
have to sell my house early next year. Getting SSDI or not will just determine
if I can get a decent house somewhere cheap and sparsely populate with a low
mortgage that will allow me to pay for all of my meds, or if I have to buy a
Unabomber shack for cash and continue to exist undermedicated while the appeal
process continues for another year or more.
Undermedicated and in Limbo,
Jerod
Friday, September 13, 2002
Because some assholes in Washington DC rescheduled
one of my meds, I can no longer buy it from Canada. Which means I can no longer
take it daily. So my cocktail is a little different.
Meds.htm
has been updated to reflect the changes.
Speaking of Canada, I've still yet to receive my
meds from Canadameds.com. It's been over two months since I placed my order.
What gives with these hosers, eh? Their customer disservice people have done
nothing but politely lie to me. For the third time I've been promised an order
would arrive in five to seven days. The last time I've had that promise was 11
days ago, and still no drugs. I'll be out of Neurontin this evening. In a week
I'll be back on the Risperdal syrup (yeee-uck) if the order doesn't arrive.
Here's a
fax and e-mail
I sent to the last customer disservice person with whom I spoke. I only know her
name because I wrote it down.
The sad thing is, between my autism (all change is
bad) and what research I've done on all other Canadian drug stores that sell to
health-crisis America, Canadameds.com has the least amount of complaints. I just
got lucky, I guess. I'll have to order from them again in just a few weeks,
because after all the bullshit they're sending my original reorder. Which will
last less than ten weeks on my new dosages. Despite my having to have my doctor
fax them brand new prescriptions and my having to fill in a new patient profile
reflecting the new amounts of drugs that I'll be taking.
There's a provision in NAFTA for the aboriginal
peoples of North America. Nations with members on both sides of a border, like
the Salish and Blackfeet and Iroquois who live in both the US and in Canada, are
allowed to trade goods with each other and sell them at whatever the hell they
feel like charging, regardless of the complicated rules and schedules for what
goods they are. Canadian wheat and timber makes it way across the border to the
reservations in Montana for resale with no tariffs. Now there might be a
loophole there big enough to drive the trucks for a wholesale pharmaceutical
business. Lawyers for the Salish, and maybe other nations, are looking into it.
There's no Indian gambling monopoly in Montana; anyone with a business and a
not-too-filthy criminal record can open a small casino. But selling medications
at 10-15% markup over Canadian wholesale prices, without the delays and hassles
of buying from Canada, that could make some of the nations wealthier than those
with gambling monopolies.
A letter I have been dreading has arrived: Jury Duty
Summons. I served on a jury before with no problems, back during the Mania. I
ran into an old girlfriend and Dirk Dirksen while waiting to be assigned to a
trial that never should have seen the inside of a courtroom. But now, with my
severe agoraphobia there's no way in hell I could deal with the daily commute
and all those people with the extra-added potential to do me harm. I've been in
a low-grade constant freak-out since the letter arrived. I just hope my doctor
can and will provide me with a medical excuse soon enough to avert my having to
serve. They don't give you much time to provide them with the information.
And just to add to the pile, the SciFi channel has
canceled Farscape. I want to send letters and faxes to them and to potential
networks to pick up season five, but I just don't have the energy. And e-mail is
worthless in such a campaign. All the action to save Farscape is at
http://farscape.wdsection.com/
I'd appreciate any help you can give them.
Undermedicated and freaking out,
Jerod
Tuesday, September 03, 2002
The hosers at Canadameds.com must really have it in for me, eh?
Two months to fill a refill. It should take 21-30 days for refills.
They lost my patient profile and my old prescriptions.
So I send the new prescriptions, reflecting the increase in what I need to
take, along with my patient profile.
Finally they say they ship my meds.
At the old prescription rate.
So after two months of waiting, I won't have a three-month supply, more like
a 10 week supply.
After two months of charges and reversals of charges and charges and
reversals of charges on my credit card, racking up currency conversion charges
that I don't recover on the reversal of charges.
And Alertec/Provigil/Modafinil is now a controlled substance that they can't
ship across the border. So when I'm out of that, I'm out of it because I can't
afford to pay US prices for it at all. Even putting it all on credit cards like
I am now. I can run up only so much, as I still have to make payments on them.
And when did this happen? Why, just after I ordered some. But I can't get
any, because of the way they fucked up my order. And no one told me that they
won't be shipping a drug I've ordered from them before.
This has gone from several small problems with canadameds.com / Point Douglas
Pharmacy to one big problem in ordering from canadameds.com / Point Douglas
Pharmacy.
So much for my few good hours a day.
I guess I'll be watching even more TV now. Drifting in and out of fitful
dozing.
Fucking hosers.
Fucking FDA or DEA bureaucrats.
Still undermedicated and still looking for a good machete,
Jerod
Friday, August 30, 2002
I met with my lawyer yesterday. That's right, I took everyone's advice and
got a lawyer now, for the reconsideration. We did the paperwork for the
reconsideration. For the hell of it we added my chemical sensitivities to why
I'm disabled. Why not? It makes it that much harder for me to find a regular job
somewhere.
She said that the odds were not good for me to get my claim on the
reconsideration. Good on the appeal, but not good on the reconsideration.
So I have to figure out what to do.
SDI will keep me going until I'm either approved or denied. Then what?
The way I figure it, I'll have to sell my house, move somewhere really
cheap and sparsely populated, buy a Unabomber shack, set aside some money for
the IRS, and live off of whatever is left until the appeal goes through. I'll
have to find another lawyer, but that's life. They'll work out splitting the
fee.
Of course, the time to sell my house is now. But I can't. I need the security
of the SSDI income. I have to wait for the reconsideration, despite the fact
that the real estate bubble will burst and I'll have less money. And, no, I
can't sell and rent and then move later, that's way too much for me to deal
with.
If the appeal fails, that's it. I have to find some way to support myself from
home. Stuffing envelopes. Mohair washing. Writing porn. Anything.
But I'm still afraid, afraid that I'll have to cut back on my meds and let
the Mania out a bit to get a job of some sort. There may not be enough money to
live off of after I sell my house. And Social Security will force me into
another breakdown. Who knows what will happen then? Will I still have the
willpower to keep myself from doing something crazy bad like going to Liberia?
It may not even be Liberia; it may even be the nearest Social Security office.
They took 7% of my hard-earned money these last twenty-three years and refuse to
give it back to me.
The hosers at Canadameds.com are still drinking too much beer, eh.
They've reversed the charges once again on my order, and are now charging me
only for Risperdal and Gabapentin (generic for Neurontin).
Yet I reordered Alertec (Canadian for Provigil) because I'll need more about a
month from now.
I try to call their customer service number, and get a busy signal.
I've sicced my credit card company on them. We'll see if that gets them
going.
Two months to fill a fucking reorder.
Over $20.00 in additional fees charged by my credit card company to convert
Loonies to real money for the constant reversal of charges and new charges.
And if the Alertec comes in a separate order, that's another $20.00 shipping
charge.
Fucking hosers.
Undermedicated and looking for a good machete,
Jerod
Monday, August 26, 2002
The question has been raised on the
bipolar forum on
about.com if I have just managed to convince
myself that only one person can do it for me where the deep emotional stuff is
concerned. And that I still could manage to spread it out, in less intense ways,
with other people.
No, it's just been a lifetime of observing myself,
not convincing myself. It's not through lack of trying to convince myself the
other way. It's just how I am. And in recent readings I've found that the "only
one friend" trait a common one amongst people with the Asperger's variant of
autism, like I have.
It does bring up hellish memories of my mother's
yelling at me to go out and make friends. I made a friend. He was busy. Or sick
of my overly intense friendship. So I decided to stay home. Made sense to me.
Get mouth washed out with soap for using "that tone of voice." A.k.a. the flat
affect common in autistic children. Repeat for five years.
Anyway...
The intensity is a problem. It burned out all the
other non-BP women in my life. And the intensity of the connection between me
and Mouse was just too much.
I tried so hard to cowboy up and cover, cover like a
good beeper does, cover the pain and frustrations and melancholia so I could
have as much of her in my life as I could get. All on her terms, but I'd take
whatever terms were offered. She means that much to me. It did no good. The
empathic connection was still there. She'd pick up on all the pain and
frustrations and whatnot and they would become hers. Once more on the
pain-go-round we'd go as her pain became my pain became her pain became my pain.
As always the suggestions are made that I take up a
relationship with a popular deity, and to go slowly, take things one day at a
time, it's not all or nothing, and so forth.
So I offer this metaphor:
God is always with you, right? You need Him and you
do whatever it is for his intercession and He's there, in your heart.
OK, what if it weren't like that anymore. What if
suddenly the rules changed? Sorry, God can be in your heart only in an approved
church during posted service hours. Intercessions will be handled by ordained
priests after a sufficient contribution.
You'd have less of a connection for less time. Would
you go to an approved church?
And a minimum number of people are required to show
up on all Holy Days of Obligation in order to sustain God's existence.
Contributions will be mandatory.
That's the sort of partial or nothing choice I'm
having to make.
Without the full connection, I'm in various states
of frustration and pain and melancholy. I can cowboy up and cover, oh boy can I
cover. But it doesn't work. Because that empathic connection is as strong as
ever. So she feels it all, and takes it in. And I feel it in her, and take it
in. And round and round we go.
I can be alone and hurt alone and rage alone and cry alone.
I'll survive.
But she says she can't. She needs to go to the approved church once a week or
she'll die. And she needs me to go with her. But if I go with her we get on the
pain-go-round, because that partial connection just doesn't do it for me.
I'd do it to keep her alive. But how do I deaden the
pain I feel? How do I alleviate the frustrations and melancholia? Otherwise it
would kill her (and then me) all the same.
And not just metaphorically.
This morning there was a long, sad and very painful
email from Mouse.
She has come to terms with what will, in the long
run, hurt the least. If "least" is really the right word.
A more complete separation.
Standing alone.
There were no betrayals. No lies. No reason to hate.
We still love each other very much. But our brains are wired in such a way, and
our life histories are such that our love, no matter how pure, is incompatible.
She could give me and be exactly what I needed, but only at times that were not,
in the long run, healthy for her. And when I gave her all that she needed, she
felt like she was using me, despite my giving freely at times. Other times it
was in the desperation to keep her and she was using me.
So other than a few details about moving her stuff
out of her room and out of the attic, and some financial entanglements, it's all
over.
We can still talk. At some point we can see each
other. But nothing will ever be the same.
Three times in a row, my heart is broken.
I'll just stand alone from now on.
Jerod
Friday, August 23, 2002
Things are coming to a head with Mouse. A really bad head. It's all pain.
Pain when we're together. Pain when we're apart. We can't figure out which pain
is the lesser pain, which pain will lead to the lesser pain. We each blame
ourselves, our own failings and failures; our own damage and damaging effect
upon the other. I made a stand, to stand alone. But that kills Mouse from the
inside, kills her by degrees until there is nothing left, no one left, nothing
but pain and emptiness. Until she would just die, just to put an end to it.
What to do? Which is the least bad choice? What will hurt the less?
It's very much a Greek tragedy. We do love each
other very much. But my wacky combination of autism and phobias and
manic-depression forces me to rely upon just one person for total emotional and
sexual and, for lack of a better word, spiritual interaction and connection and
support and outlet and need and just about everything. Plus I need
this person to like a lot of the cultural stuff I like and to keep up with me
intellectually. Just one person. I can't spread it all out like other people
can, I'm just not wired that way. Truly, my brain can't process deep emotional
stuff for more than one person at a time. I've learned to look and act empathic
with other people, but most of it is an act. I can be empathic with only one
other person at a time, someone who has to take it all, the bad with the good.
Nobody can do that. No one has. I doubt that anyone
will. Mouse was the one I felt the closest to, the most connected to, the most
empathic with. Everything just clicked with her.
But she can handle only so much. There are other
priorities. Her father's early onset and rapidly progressing Alzheimer's, her
own treatment-resistant bipolar disorder with plenty of ADHD and GAD and mild
autism.
So she can't be the everything that I need. So stuff
inside of me piles up, builds up, twists up, burns up and explodes in hurtful
ways. Or I just keep it all inside, and it just becomes pain. But all that
empathy is still there; all that connectivity is still there. My pain becomes
her pain, which becomes my pain which, in turn, adds to her pain that will, of
course, add to my pain that then adds to her pain...
Iniquity. Some sins of our parents are being
punished seven-fold in us. Karma. Some horrid crimes we committed in past lives
are being atoned for. We're both obsessed with Nazis, so I'm betting we were
both some kind of Nazi sex fiends. Or just plain bad luck.
Meanwhile, Point Douglas Pharmacy, the good people
behind
http://www.canadameds.com/HowtoOrder.htm
continues to fuck up my order for my drugs. It's close to two months since I
ordered a Goddamned refill, and I still don't have my meds. My file has been
lost, although they say it's not lost, it's just in some unknown department and
no one can find it, but it's not "lost." I had to resubmit my patient profile,
and have my psychiatrist once again fax the prescriptions to them. I may or may
not get two shipments of meds. I may or may not get charged twice on my credit
card. No matter what, the drugs go out via Canada Post, then US Mail, because
"there are less likely to be customs problems." Right. But more delays because
of anthrax problems and crappy mail service here in the People's Republic of
Berkeley. I'm living off of samples I got from my psychiatrist, my choice of
Risperdal syrup or 2 mg tablets that I'll somehow manage to split into my 0.75
and 0.25 mg doses. If the syrup is truly vile, I may just take 1 mg a night and
screw the morning dose. And I have a little prescription for 10 days worth of
Neurontin at my local family pharmacy. Looks like I'll have to get another
refill. And maybe one more before this is all done with.
And if I do get sent two shipments, fuck sending one
back. Fuck the law and it's limit on a three-month supply. I'm not going through
this shit again for another six months.
Heart brokenly undermedicated,
Jerod
Friday, August 16, 2002
I've just come off of yet another bought of
ultradian rapid cycling. So I did a bit of rewriting of some posts I made early
this year all about the fun of switching from manic to depressed several times
an hour. Here are
The Ultra Rapid Cycling Blues.
I'm trying to get all my shit together to start the
appeals process for my Social Security Disability Insurance claim. I spoke with
one of the helpful people at my local field office (the ones who didn't make the
decision about my relative sanity and who have, in fact, been helpful) and was
told that it would be three to four months before I know the results of the
reconsideration. That's getting close to when my State Disability Insurance
money runs out. I could last another two or three months after that on my
savings. Then what?
So I keep thinking about working.
Right now I'm in that nice, predictable sine wave
pattern of moods. Nothing too extreme, as the meds are seeing to that. Today
begins a hypomania that should last two to three days. Maybe longer, but not
much longer than that. It will be followed by a moderate depression that will
last just as long, if not a day or two longer. If I don't increase my intake of
mood stabilizers, this pattern will continue for up to a year, possibly a year
and a half, before I hit a sustained mania with intermittent periods of mixed
states in lieu of true depressions.
Just like I was for fifteen years.
Just like I didn't want to be again.
But just like the Social Security Administration is
forcing me to be again.
I may have to give up the idea of trying to fully
recover and go back to work, which would mean some downward adjustment in my
medications. I just have to be somewhat manic again to keep the agoraphobia and
PTSD and autism in check to deal with the real world. Rock paper scissors. And
in doing so risk yet another breakdown and period of ultradian rapid cycling
where I may not be able to control the impulse to do something horrible crazy
like go to Liberia.
Either that or I somehow find some legitimate job
that allows me to work from home, as I can go outside only with the help of
extra Lorazepam and at times when there are few people about and in situations
where I have minimal interactions with other people. I doubt if there are any
jobs where I could work under those circumstances, despite what Social Security
thinks.
Please, send me some e-mail (jerod23@well.com)
if anybody is reading this and has an idea for a legitimate job that meets
either major requirement of:
I stay at home and work 7:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m.
my local time zone. Or
I work outside my home, which will have to be
located somewhere cheap and sparsely populated, I don't interact with a lot
of people, and I don't have to do anything really complicated because of the
tranquilizers I'll need to be on.
Rapidly cycling, but going nowhere,
Jerod
Monday, August 12, 2002
I'm still wondering about working for a living. I
can't leave the house. I really can't unless tranquilized. I can't code anymore,
which is a job that is suited for agoraphobes, but leaves me out, or just in the
cold now. My meds start putting me to sleep at two, three in the afternoon.
So, what are my job options?
No freelancing. I need a steady paycheck. Otherwise
the autism and anxiety start winning at rock-paper-scissors.
What can I do part-time outside of my house heavily
sedated, or almost full time at home?
Proofreading? Copyediting?
Or do I just cut back on the meds, let the Mania
have its hand at rock-paper-scissors for awhile. Let it keep the autism and
agoraphobia down. Find some junior college somewhere cheap and sparsely
populated and teach the computer tricks of the trade that I can no longer do.
I don't need to earn a lot of money. I'm still going
to appeal the decision, but I've been questioning how far I should take it. Win
or lose I plan on selling my house and moving somewhere cheap and sparsely
populated.
The fewer people around, no matter how entrenched in
Rush Limbaughland, the better I can deal. Unless the timing really sucks and the
real estate market crashes and burns here, I should have enough equity to buy a
place outright somewhere else.
I'm in crisis now and on the ultradian rapid cycle.
Manias and depressions are lasting ten, fifteen minutes. No appetite, no sleep,
just trying to distance myself from my moods and get on with life. I need to get
my psychiatrist to fax a script for 40 Neurontin to my Pharmacist today to cover
canadameds.com's fuckup, otherwise the Mania will break out and my house
will be on the market next week as I see if MSU Great Falls will consider me for
one of their open positions teaching networking and micro-computer support.
With the Mania struggling against its chemical
straight jacket this idea has come up before during the last period of
breakthrough ultradian rapid cycling I experienced back in May.
Once again I'm considering teaching. After all, "Those who can, do; those who
can't, teach."
And I mean that in the old way, the good way, that
of the soldiers too wounded to fight, but not so wounded that they can't teach
the recruits how to fight. That's me, a coder too wounded to code, but maybe not
so wounded that I can't teach the recruits how to code.
I've had a 17-year career in the computer business. I've coded, designed,
tested, repaired, done forensics, crawled into machines, replaced disk units
that weighed half as much as I do, analyzed business requirements, gone out into
the field and questioned business decisions, tuned hardware and software. I've
done accounting, manufacturing, distribution, forecasting and payroll software.
I did that all with an A.A. degree from a private trade school. There's a
teaching crisis in this country, right? There's a call to give back to the
community, right? I have the degree that I'd be teaching, and plenty of
experience with it.
But this is all mania uselessly typing. If anything
I need to find the agoraphobic work. Legitimate agoraphobic work.
Hand officially stamped "Not Insane"
Jerod
Sunday, August 11, 2002
My claim for Social Security Disability Insurance
got turned down. According to them I am able to adjust to emotional stresses,
get along with others, think clearly, and remember basic instructions well
enough to hold down a job that pays at least $780 a month.
While not surprising, it's still very depressing.
Just compounding the depression I've been feeling since the breakthrough manias,
which has had other things piled upon it.
It's not lawyer time yet. The next step is just
reconsideration, where different people look at my claim. I'll deal with that
once I'm undepressed enough to deal with anything. After they turn me
down it's lawyer time.
But I'm wondering how far I should go with this. My
real problem is leaving the house and interacting with other people. That, and
getting too sleepy to do much of anything after three in the afternoon. Maybe
there is some sort of legitimate work-from-home sort of work I could do. Or
maybe there's some sort of part time work I could do that doesn't require much
in the way of thinking or spatial orientation that I could do outside of my
house.
All of this somewhere cheap, where I take the equity
from my house in Berkeley and trade it for a house I'd own outright elsewhere. I
just need to make basic living expenses & taxes + $400 a month for my meds.
For now officially "Not Crazy,"
Jerod
Friday, August 09, 2002
Back on August 2nd the question came up on the
bipolar
forum on about.com regarding the prices and
reliability of Canadian pharmacies. Here is what I wrote then:
I, too, am uninsured. I did some shopping around and
took a chance with the Point Douglas Pharmacy through their website at:
The up side is the cost of some of my meds is one
third to one sixth of what it costs here. And there's just one flat shipping
fee, not a fee per each med ordered.
The down side is that it takes a month to get them
shipped here. So your doctor will have to write out a prescription for three
months worth of meds and four refills to make it worth the effort. You may also
need a prescription for a local pharmacy or a bunch of samples just to hold you
over until your order arrives.
Not all meds are cheaper. It's not worth it to save
just a few bucks to buy my Topamax from them, so I still get that from my local
pharmacy. Not all meds are approved in Canada. Like Depakote. They won't ship
benzos across the border.
As for the reliable bit, I'm wondering about that.
My first order went through OK and arrived about 33 days after I placed it. My
second order was not for all of my meds. At first it hit my credit card as if it
were just what I ordered. Then, a couple of days ago that charge was reversed
and a new charge was there as if my first order was completely refilled. Now
this actually works out for me, because I miscounted how much I had on hand, and
would've just needed to reorder the next bunch of meds anyway in a couple of
weeks. But it looks kinda weird. I called about it. They're supposed to call me
back about, but haven't yet. If I don't hear from them today, I'll call them
again on Monday. If it delays my order any, I'm kinda screwed, as I'm starting
to run low on stuff. I reordered with a 30-35 day window, so I'd be starting to
run out of stuff if it takes 30 days from NOW to get my meds.
It might be their system. They might just not be
really setup to do partial reorders.
Anyway, I looked at several Canadian online
pharmacies, and Point Douglas had the best prices and selection for meds that
Mouse and I need.
So we'll see about how reliable they are.
But I'm paying for all of this out of pocket as
well, and I have to go up north to do it. Drugstore.com and the like just don't
have the discounts. Plus some meds are already generic in Canada.
This may be moot in a matter of months. There's
debate in Washington to allow pharmacies to buy drugs from Canada. I'd rather
get everything from my local pharmacy.
-------------------------
Now it's a week later. I wondered if it was going to
take yet another 30 days to get my meds.
It looks like I wasn't too far off.
For some reason that their customer service
representative would not or could not admit to, they screwed up my order and
delayed it's processing by 20 days. So now I'll be lucky if I'll be getting my
meds by the end of this month. Sometime next week I'm supposed to get a call
from their shipping department about when the order shipped. If it goes out
Canada Post, like their orders usually do, then it will be towards the end of
the month when I receive it. I just couldn't make whats-her-name at Point
Douglas understand that mail service has radically changed in the US. And is
really bad is some parts of the country. Like where I live. And it doesn't take
just four days.
So now I have to figure out what to do.
I mean, I know I can get my psychiatrist to write a
small script to tide me over. I could probably get my pharmacist to just
partially fill the existing prescriptions that he himself faxed to Point Douglas
when my fax machine went wonky. (I'm nominating my pharmacist for sainthood). 40
Neurontin and 20 Risperdal. No big deal.
But now I'm getting all Autistic about it. This
totally defeats the purpose of buying meds from Canada in the first place. And
planning on just when to buy. And when I order my Alertec without the Neurontin
and Risperdal, will that be messed up as well? My old systems analysis senses
tell me that filling a partial order causes problems.
Yet, being totally Autistic about it, I can't find
another Canadian pharmacy. I'm stuck with Point Douglas. All change is bad.
Still, I'm freaking out because I'm running low on
meds. I'd better deal with that partial fill, just to keep the freak-out factor
lower.
I can quit anytime I really want to,
Jerod
Wednesday, August 07, 2002
Later yesterday evening I found the heirloom
tomatoes that I had bought for salad (on sale, because everything I buy is
deeply discounted these days) had gone moldy. Another few minutes of pogoing
around the pantry, smashing the bag of gooey tomatoes. There went my treat for
last night and tonight. It's not like I can afford to treat myself to the foods
that I used to enjoy so much. And, since the Mania is relatively contained and
has its outbursts only at night, I don't even get to enjoy said foods as much as
I used to. Because my senses aren't as sharp as they used to be when I was
manic.
All meals are planned now, because it's the only way
to get me over the Agoraphobia and out of the house to do the shopping. Yet, in
a way, it's already a defeated purpose, an invitation to depression and
suppression of appetite, because the food won't be as good as it used to be (due
to cost constraints), won't be prepared as well as I used to prepare it (as I
can't juggle the kitchen like I used to) and I can't taste it like I used to
anyway.
Defeated purposed on top of defeated purpose.
So I'm still depressed. Beyond the rebound from a
breakthrough mania.
And something else has changed. Something has
dramatically and, in the moment, surprisingly changed. Reflecting upon it, it
makes sense, but it's like totally, "Who-o-oa, this is a different world now!"
when it happens. See, my depressions would only end when a random event would
occur that would let the Mania seize the moment and take complete control. Part
of the deal was, during the last fifteen years I was never truly depressed,
rather I spent days, weeks, months in a mixed state. Right now I'm actually
depressed, and it's much easier than being in a mixed state. Anyway, the random
event happened, along comes a check from the EDD with my name on it for a bunch
of money. Retroactive money. $100 a week for signing up early and getting laid
off because of 9/11. And I'm still depressed. Because the Mania is in a straight
jacket and can't play rock-paper-scissors. It can only do it's little Houdini
routine every now and then when I'm asleep.
So I have extra money, and I don't care. That's real
depression.
No Triumph of the Will. No Soul of Iron. And no help
from any medication, because that would just let the Mania out of its straight
jacket.
I've fed the cats. I've taken my meds. I have one
goal for the day, to write a letter to the person handling my case for my
disability claim and let her know what things have been like lately, as I don't
know how often she gets information from Dr. Goldman, or how detailed that
information is.
Because I can still go on and on and on about how
fucked up I am.
Still going on and on about being fucked up,
Jerod
Tuesday, August 06, 2002
Another breakthrough mania in the middle of the
night, all night long. It wasn't particularly dysphoric, so no waking up with
the overwhelming sense of being strangled or dreams with amputation themes
running through them. This was a rather vanilla mania, with dreams of brilliant
ways to add depth to the banal comic strips they run in the local newspaper.
The real sucky part is now. Now I'm depressed as
fuck. I sleep through a mildly creative mania. Just as I've been more-or-less
sleeping through all the breakthrough manias of late. Dr. Goldman is stumped
about the reasons and mechanics behind these nocturnal manias. Mouse even called
me at one in the morning, but I slept through the phones' ringings. So I miss
her first call in a week.
But now I'm depressed. It just flipped right over.
Good old ultradian rapid cycling. And I had plans. Autistic plans. Nothing big
mind you. Just the sort of stuff to deal with my life. Today I was to do the
laundry and take a bath. Those were my big plans. Now they are hosed. I'm too
fucking depressed. I just about lost it, well, I did lose it, in
preparation for doing the dishes when a little piece of hardware fell out of the
countertop dishwasher. Autistic crisis in the kitchen. Stand and wail for five
minutes, stomping feet, pounding the counter, slapping the poor little
dishwasher.
The study on Risperdal and Autism has shown that it
reduces such behavior from daily to weekly. OK, it's been about two weeks since
the last autistic crisis, so maybe it is doing some good in that regard.
But it's rock-paper-scissors time again. My autistic
inclination is to make a plan. As long as I can follow through, I'm OK. But
while Mania beats Autism, and no plans are required, Depression foils Autism. My
plan is fucked. And the Autistic laid plan is, of course, to help prevent
further Depression. Because Autism can help prevent Depression just as it can
help prevent Agoraphobia.
But bad Depression trumps Autism. The plan is hosed.
So I get more depressed because the laundry and bath will be deferred. My
Triumph of the Will was that I did do the dishes. No Yoga today, either. Nothing
else but opening of the vein and bleeding onto the blog and watching more TV
than usual.
And waiting, waiting in Limbo. Waiting for Social
Security to make a decision about just how crazy I am. Waiting to know when I
can sell my house and move to someplace cheap and sparsely populated so I can go
outside and not feel like there are a million people ready to hurt me in my own
back yard. Waiting to know when I won't have to run up credit cards just to pay
for my medications, because state disability barely covers food and mortgage.
Waiting to know when I can finally physically isolate myself, so the emotional
isolation isn't conflicting with it's own rock-paper-scissors spiral of
frustration, loneliness and angst. Waiting. Fist to counter top. Open hand to
dishwasher. Fingers pointed back in accusation. Waiting.
Spiraling downwards, always choosing the wrong rock,
paper or scissors,
Jerod
Sunday, August 04, 2002
Just how medicated am I? Do they work? What are the
side effects? Are they worth it? What about the cost? It's all right here.
Meds.htm
Just an idjit on drugs,
Jerod
Thursday, July 25, 2002
I've made a few changes to
NothingNice.htm. Nothing major, but it's all
about rewrites and edits now.
If you have any comments, questions, whatever, feel
free to contact me. My e-mail address is still
jerod23@well.com
I'll be announcing updates to this page on the forum
at bipolar.about.com and a few places around The WELL. Maybe in some e-mail to a
few friends. That's about all I can handle right now. Otherwise I suggest just a
random check.
Looking forward to that hermetic shack,
Jerod
Wednesday, July 24, 2002
OK, I'm not trying to be Mr. Popularity or anything.
But if you know someone who knew me, even vaguely from the corporate, music,
zine, outlaw sex, guerrilla theater, social sabotage, or film scenes, feel free
to pass this URL on to them. It's not a secret or anything. I'm totally out
about being bat shit crazy.
Part of the deal is this: my social graces were all
learned behavior. True, you can say that about all of us. But in my case they
were literally beaten into me at ages when such things should have been second
nature. They run contrary to my autistic tendencies. Now I don't have the mania
to keep the autism in check, nor the PTSD that had a contribution from those
deportment classes. So I lose touch. Fast. Really fast.
Anyway, here's a piece on what it's like when the
autism and the bipolar and the PTSD and the agoraphobia all combine for a super
fun weekend. And how the potential cure will just make what little creativity I
have left fizzle up. I guess I should be thankful that with all the
anti-epileptic drugs I'm taking, the epilepsy hasn't been bothering me much.
NothingNice.htm
Mouse was over the other night. We spoke of things
that two bipolar people often speak of: suicide, suicide pacts, and the
pointlessness of such things as this is just a circle of Hell and how suicide
will just send you into a deeper circle of Hell. That brought up one of the
short stories I wrote. Here you can compare how I used to write, from a mixed
state, first draft style.
Diary of the Aftermath of a Car Crash
That story was one of the last things that I
finished writing and published in what is probably the final issue of Poppin'
Zits!. I don't have it together enough to put up the remaining back issues
in HTML format. What you see on the Poppin' Zits! web page at
http://www.geocities.com/poppinzits/index.html
is all you're going to get for the time being.
Between then and my breakdown in February of 2002 I started and worked on a
bunch of stuff, none of which is likely to ever see the light of day.
That's it for now.
Keeping away from machetes,
Jerod
Sunday, July 14, 2002
The Chron published a couple letters about the piece. They can be found here:
There have, of course, been many other comments sent
via phone calls and e-mails and posted on
bipolar forum on
about.com and on
The WELL. The
e-mails are private. You'll just have to sign up to the aforementioned services
to read the rest of the public feedback. The consensus of the feedback is that a
very good point did get across, even if it wasn't my original point. And I'll
concede to that. It is far better that a good point about what it's like to be
bipolar did get out, rather than no point at all.
Somewhat stable, albeit stable in a morass of sadness and grief about a bunch
of other stuff,
Jerod
Sunday, July 07, 2002
Did you see it? Did you see "my" piece on being bipolar in the Chronicle?
It sucked. It wasn't much of what I wrote.
I guess it's traditional for writers to hate the edited results of their
work.
I can't complain too much. I sent in a 3,700-word piece that had to fit into
1,200 words worth of space. Then the flip side of my bipolar cycling and an
adjustment of medication kept me from doing much editing after the initial
offering. Eventually I did edit the piece down to 1,700 words and offered that,
thinking that maybe the pros could get rid of the additional 500 words and still
keep the essence of the piece whole. But I didn't hear back from the editor.
Maybe the July 4th holiday messed with the deadline too much.
I can't code HTML any more, but I can paste addresses into Word and save a
Word document as HTML, so here it goes.
Anyway, if you haven't seen it, here is the article as it ran in the Sunday
Chronicle of July 7, 2002:
That got passed around, and I was asked to write the
bipolar first person thing. Two days later, I had 3,700 words ready. Oh the joys
of a manic breakthrough when my medication stops working.
Now to bitch about the butchering of my article.
Maybe I am just a really crappy writer, but I feel like the true essence of the
piece was removed. Without the mania I'm an autistic, agoraphobic spazz who can
do nothing more than cower in his house and complain about how messed up he is.
Only when manic am I a productive, wage-earning citizen, with the potential for
great verbal, emotional and physical violence ready to come to the surface at
the whim of unstable biochemistry. It's not just the medication that keeps me
from holding a job; it's the lack of mania. The mania kept my autism and
agoraphobia in check so I could leave my house when required. The mania allowed
me to think about everything that I had to think about in order to function. The
mania conquered my fears.
And there were factual errors as well.
You can decide if I suck at getting my point across,
or if deadline pressures and lack of comprehension on the edit.
I've also been asked to somehow get other stuff I've
written about the bipolar experience published. I don't know how or where. I
mean, I used to do the self-publishing thing and know that there are a shitload
of 'zines out there that will take anything. But I need to exchange my pain for
cash. So I'll just keep opening the metaphorical vein as required and posting
pieces on The WELL and on the forum at bipolar.about.com, and if something seems
to get a lot of response, I'll try to add it here.
Like this piece, about what happened when I tried to
make myself feel better after the inevitable depression set in following the
mania where the above mentioned articles were spawned:
TrySoHard.htm
+++URL: http://www.arrakis.es/~kastor/buscalink/buscalink.htm
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Fri, 10 Feb 2006 20:00:29 GMT
Server: Apache/1.3.34 (Unix)
Last-Modified: Fri, 10 Feb 2006 17:36:27 GMT
ETag: "d04f5-55df-43eccf1b"
Content-Length: 21983
Keep-Alive: timeout=15, max=128
Connection: Keep-Alive
Content-Type: text/html
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Capitalism Frequently Asked
Questions
If you don't see your question
here and you have a question you would like us to answer, please ask.We'll pick from the best questions we receive and put them on our
website. Ask away—we're ready to answer!
Question:
You say you are in favor of the free market—but can't big corporations, interfere with free competition? Can't they force
employees, distributors, and suppliers to accept their terms? So isn't
government force, such as antitrust prosecution, necessary to protect
individuals from this "economic force"?
Answer: As private corporations, business has no
power to force anyone. The entire case against Microsoft, for example
(and, indeed, the entire case for the antitrust laws) is based on equation
between economic power and political power. The difference between these
two forms of power must be kept strictly in mind—for it is a difference
with life-and-death consequences.
In "The Dollar and the Gun" (The Objectivist Forum, June 1983),
philosopher Harry Binswanger defines the difference between these two
forms of power:
"'Political power'
refers to the power of the government. The special nature of that power is
what differentiates government from all other social institutions. That
which makes government government, its essential attribute, is its
monopoly on the use of physical force. Only a government can make laws—i.e.,
rules of social conduct backed up by physical force. ...The penalty for
breaking the law is fines, imprisonment, and ultimately, death. The symbol
of political power is a gun.
"Economic power,
on the other hand, is the ability to produce material values and offer
them for sale. E.g., the power of Big Oil is the power to discover, drill,
and bring to market a large amount of oil. Economic power lies in
assets—i.e., the factors of production, the inventory, and the cash
possessed by businesses. The symbol of economic power is the dollar.
"A business can
only make you an offer, thereby expanding the possibilities open to you.
The alternative a business presents you with in a free market is:
'increase your well-being by trading with us, or go your own way.' The
alternative a government, or any force-user, presents you with is: 'do as
we order, or forfeit your liberty, property, or life.'"
The only power Microsoft has to
induce customers to give it money is the value of its products. If
Microsoft started to produce an inferior product, or even if it chose not
to update Windows to incorporate new features, it would eventually lose
the market; equipment manufacturers and consumers would seek out a better
operating system. By contrast, the only power that the government (and
those of Microsoft's competitors who are calling for government
interference) has to offer is a threat: "We'll dictate what can go into
the Windows operating system—and you'd better toe the line or we'll throw
you in jail."
In the case of Web browsers—the
specific issue in the current court case—the equation between the dollar
and the gun becomes utterly absurd. Microsoft is seeking to gain
predominance in the Web browser market by giving its product away for
free. To talk of giving a product away for free as an act of force is a
frightening instance of Orwellian "doublespeak."
The consequence of this
"doublespeak" is truly disastrous: In answer to the pseudo-force of
showering consumers with free products, the antitrust case against
Microsoft threatens to introduce the genuine coercion involved in
government regulation of operating systems.
Question: Under
capitalism, what will happen to those who are born without the wealth and
opportunities enjoyed by others? Doesn't capitalism make the rich richer
and the poor poorer?
Answer:
Quite the opposite. Capitalism is the one system that leaves everyone free
to rise by his own efforts. The history of capitalism provides countless
instances of people who improved their lives through work and ability.
There are the millions of immigrants who came to America and worked their
way up to the middle class—or higher. One of the great historical examples
was Andrew Carnegie, who rose from a penniless sweeper at a steel mill to
revolutionize the steel industry and make one of the largest fortunes of
his day. It is no coincidence that 19th century America—the most purely
capitalist era in the nation's history—brought us the phrase "from rags to
riches."
The reason why capitalism allows
people to rise by their own efforts is that capitalism is driven by only
one fundamental consideration: profit. But profit comes from an increase
in the production of wealth: it comes from inventing a new product,
producing a good more efficiently, promoting it to a wider market, etc. It
comes from doing things better, faster, and smarter than before. This
means that capitalism offer an open field to anyone who works hard to
improve his skills—and it offers riches to anyone who thinks hard
and comes up with new and better ideas. It is under capitalism, for
example, that a company like Microsoft creates scores of millionaires out
of individuals whose qualification is not inherited wealth or social
connections, but only the ability to create and sell computer programs.
The rule under government
regulation, by contrast, is very different. It is a common error today to
talk about "crony capitalism." Cronyism is in fact a hallmark of state-run
economies. When politicians and bureaucrats hold power over the economy,
the only hope for success comes from currying their favor. Thus the
competition for wealth becomes a competition, not over who can produce the
most, but over who can make the most bribes or call in the most favors. It
is under these systems that established wealth, family connections, and
the "Old Boy's Network" become the determinants of success, rather than
individual ability. But that is a problem created and perpetuated by
statism, not capitalism.
Question: If capitalism
rewards only ability, what will happen to those who can't compete? What
will happen, for example, to people with physical or mental disabilities,
who can't work as hard or as fast as others?
Answer: The first question in evaluating any
social system cannot be: What happens to those who are helpless and
incapable of supporting themselves? Such people, by definition, are
dependent for their survival on others—on those who are capable of
working and who can produce wealth. Thus, the first question must
be: What happens to the thinkers and producers? What conditions make it
possible for them to think and produce? The fundamental answer to that
question is: freedom—the freedom to direct their own actions and to keep
the property the have produced. Thus, to advocate taxes and regulations on
the producers in the name of helping the disabled is a hopeless
contradiction—it means helping the non-producers by throttling the
producers on whom they depend.
It should
also be pointed out that, under capitalism, those who are incapable of
supporting themselves are a tiny and ever-shrinking minority. The trend
today is to inflate the ranks of the allegedly helpless by defining
everything to be a “disability”—including such vague and non-debilitating
conditions as “chronic fatigue,” allergies, and “depression.” But the
reality under capitalism is that fewer and fewer conditions are disabling.
In a pre-industrial society, where most people lived by heavy physical
labor, an injury to a hand or leg could make a worker destitute. Today, a
quadriplegic can make a living simply from the power of his mind to solve
problems—and the power of computers (produced by capitalism) to help him
communicate his thoughts.
Under
capitalism, therefore, the genuinely helpless are a very small minority
who could easily be supported by private charities—charities made possible
by a capitalist society’s extraordinary wealth. But the condition that
makes this charity possible is that those who cannot support themselves
respect the rights and freedom of those who do.
Question:
Under capitalism, how can you justify the disproportionate rewards given
to CEOs, who earn hundreds of times as much as their lowest-paid
employees?
Answer:
A recent study claimed that corporate CEOs make, on
average, 400 times as much as the company's lowest-paid employee. Let us
assume that this figure is correct. Is that really "disproportionate"?
Let us concretize the question.
What kind of work is performed by the lowest paid worker in a company?
This worker might be, for example, a janitor. His work consists of
performing routine, pre-established tasks, requiring little thought and
only moderate physical effort. If he performs his work well, there is a
moderate benefit: a clean workplace is more productive than a dirty one.
But if he performs his work poorly, the consequences are minor—and the
worker can easily be replaced by a better janitor; since the skills
required are not complex, almost anyone can perform the job properly.
In the case of a CEO, by contrast,
his work consists primarily in making decisions—decisions about what
products the company should produce, how much it should invest in
improvement of its equipment, whether it should raise money through stocks
or bonds, etc.
Bear in mind that wealth is not
produced by blind, uncoordinated action. The best employees in the world
working the longest hours are useless unless they are making a useful
product backed by adequate funding and good marketing. Consider, as an
example, the recent failure of the satellite telephone venture Iridium, a
project with no shortage of brilliant engineers and rocket scientists—but
without a realistic business plan.
But ensuring that a company's
resources and personnel are being used productively is the job of the CEO.
In justice—if justice means
rewarding merit—an employee ought to be paid in proportion to the value he
brings to the company. By that criterion, is there anything
"disproportionate" about paying the CEO an enormous salary? If there is,
the disparity is in the other direction. A good CEO of a
multi-billion-dollar company is not worth so little as 400 employees, much
less 400 janitors; he is worth as much as thousands of employees.
Their work is profitable only as long as he makes the right decisions.
Of course, a bad CEO—one who makes
poor decisions and wastes a company's resources—can wipe out the work of
thousands of employees. But that is precisely why companies offer their
CEOs such enormous financial rewards, rewards that are often dependent on
the company's performance. For such a crucial position, nothing less will
attract and motivate the best minds.
Question: Aren't capitalists just "exploiters" of laborers? Isn't it
workers who physically create products and generate economic values?
Answer: The labor theory
of value states that all economic value is created by labor. Thus, on this
theory, the value of a loaf of bread, for example, is dependent on how
much people worked to produce that loaf. If this were true, then all wages
paid for anything other than physical labor (i.e. management work) would
be unearned since only labor creates value.
But economic value is
objective. That is, value is not produced by sheer physical labor, but
also by the mental effort of businessmen who coordinate the efforts of
those laborers, and by the entrepreneurs and stockholders who put their
money on the line to fund such enterprises (and deserve a return on their
investment). The value of the product of this work is determined by both
the cost of these things and the value of the product to potential
purchasers. This last (among other things) is what the Marxist ignores. By
the Marxist theory, labor deserves payment, even if no one wants to buy
the product that has been produced, simply because of its labor.
Question: Under
capitalism, would business owners be allowed to discriminate based on
race, sex, and other irrelevant characteristics? Wouldn't capitalism help
perpetuate racism?
Answer:
Freedom has to include the freedom to make mistakes.
Freedom of speech, for example, cannot mean "Say whatever you want, as
long as you agree with me." It has to include the freedom to espouse wrong
and even vicious ideas (including racism).
For the same reason, individual
rights must include the right to act irrationally. People have a right to
decide who they will hire and who they will accept as a tenant, customer,
business partner, and so on. To take away that freedom is to take away a
person's right to control his own life and property. It is contradiction
to say, "Your life is yours to live—so long as you don't do anything I
disapprove of."
Left free to control their own
lives, some people will act irrationally; they will refuse to hire
employees or to accept customers on the basis of race, sex, or other
irrelevant characteristics. Capitalism recognizes their right to make such
irrational decisions—but it does not grant them the right to escape the
consequences of their irrationality.
A man who runs his business on the
basis of irrational prejudice will suffer the economic consequences. If he
hires a mediocre man in place of a talented woman, he suffers the loss in
productivity—while someone else, who does hire the woman, profits from her
talent. If he refuses to serve a customer because he is black, he loses a
customer—while a rival gains that customer. The free market encourages
rationality. It does not encourage a businessman who arbitrarily rejects
talented workers and paying customers.
This is why, as a matter of
historical fact, every entrenched system of prejudice has been backed by
government support. Segregation in the south and Apartheid in South Africa
are just two examples. If left free, businessmen will seek profits by
hiring the most competent workers and by accepting every paying customer,
regardless of race. That's why government regulations—regulations
excluding the mixing of races in the workplace and forbidding businesses
from serving customers of a particular race—were required to prop up
racism.
But that, once again, is a problem
created by state controls, not by capitalism.
Question: Doesn't
unrestrained capitalism lead to the destruction of the environment?
Answer: The essence of capitalism is man’s
attempt to improve his environment—but not in the sense meant by the
environmentalists.
The goal of
production in a free market is to give man an ever-greater power over his
environment. Consider the power man has gained after only 200 years under
capitalism’s Industrial Revolution. To give just a few examples that bear
directly on human health: fertilizers and pesticides have made possible an
unprecedented production of food, eliminating the periodic famines that
plagued all pre-industrial societies; rapid and inexpensive
transportation, powered by fossil fuels, has made all kinds of foods
available everywhere year-round, making improved nutrition possible;
universal availability of refrigeration (thanks to CFCs) has made possible
the safe storage of food; air conditioning (also thanks to CFCs) has
minimized the health danger of extremely hot weather; electrical power,
generated by nuclear and coal-fired power plants, provides a source of
heat and light that is safer and more reliable than fire; the development
of plastics has made possible the invention of numerous life-saving
medical implants and devices. This is just the tip of the iceberg. Thanks
to thousands of advances such as these, life today under capitalism is
incomparably safer, cleaner, and healthier—not to mention more
comfortable—than it has ever been in human history. But all of these
advances were produced by corporations seeking profit on the free market.
Thanks to capitalism, the average lifespan in industrial countries has
increased steadily to more than 70 years—compared to less than 40 in
pre-industrial societies.
But this is
not what the hard-core environmentalists mean by protecting the
environment. They seek to protect the environment, not for man, but
from man. They do not merely oppose, say, dumping toxic chemicals
into the drinking water (which would be illegal under capitalism). They
seek to preserve nature in an untouched state for its own sake, and
not for any benefit it brings to man. Nature, many mainstream
environmentalist thinkers declare, has intrinsic value. Thus, they seek to
stop all industrial activity, regardless of whether it helps or harms
human life. This is why environmentalists have opposed every single
advance mentioned above: fertilizers, pesticides, fossil fuels, CFCs,
nuclear power, electric power lines, plastics and so on. The
environmentalists oppose these things because they value the inviolability
of nature more than they value human life.
If “the
environment” means what today’s greens defend—nature preserved for its own
sake, apart from and against the value of human life—then we may be
grateful that capitalism destroys the environment. What capitalism offers
instead is, in reality, the best “environment” for man: nature harnessed
by industry and technology and used for man’s benefit.
Question:
Don't recent events in Russia and the Far East show the "dark side" of
capitalism? Doesn't unrestrained capitalism lead to kleptocracy, cronyism,
and anarchy?
Answer: Russia and the Far East are hardly
examples of “unrestrained capitalism.” Laissez-faire capitalism means not
only private property and the rule of objective law but the complete
separation of the state from economic activity—conditions that do not
exist in these areas.
The fall of the Soviet Union in
1991 did not usher in capitalism. It merely replaced communism with
socialism. Most property there has not been privatized, and the legal
system remains anti-business. No businessman in Russia can count on a
legal system that upholds contracts. The theft of Western aid by former
party officials and state-favored gangsters is only further evidence that
a corrupt government, not private business, runs the Russian economy.
Moreover, the Western aid to Russia
came from the International Monetary Fund, an anti-capitalist agency whose
funding derives from taxes on Western producers. No capitalist system
would permit such a theft—whether from taxpayers or by gangsters and
cronies of the state posing as independent businessmen.
Russia’s devaluation of the ruble
in August 1998 was, again, an act of theft by the state bank and a further
example of the expropriation of wealth. Only under socialism does one find
such “robber barons.” Under capitalism the money and banking system is
owned and operated by private banks, not by financial ministries that are
mere appendages of the state.
“Crony capitalism” is a misnomer.
Under capitalism, there are no state favors or subsidies to business.
Entrepreneurs succeed solely on the basis of merit, not state handouts. It
is socialism and a mixed economy that breed “cronyism.” State interference
in the economy can make or break businessmen, and thus it’s unavoidable
that these businessmen will spend money trying to influence state
officials. To get money out of politics, one must get politics out of
money-making. That’s what capitalism does. There is no
“influence-peddling” under capitalism because the system bars the state
from exerting influence over business.
The Far East is also a mixed
economy— although with a lesser degree of state control than in Russia.
But, like Russia, the Far Eastern finance ministries devalued their
currencies and thereby caused a wave of bank failures and recessions. The
International Monetary Fund’s involvement in these countries only made
matters worse, as the IMF advocated raising taxes, intensifying
regulation, and imposing capital controls.
It is commonly believed that
socialism means government favors to labor, that fascism means government
favors to some racial group, and that capitalism means government favors
to business. But what about a system with no government favors to any
group? That’s true capitalism.
The labeling of any failed system
in the world today as “capitalism” is but a repeat of the same old
socialist myth. Once again, just as in the Great Depression, capitalism is
being blamed for the evils engendered by statism. Capitalism once again is
made into a scapegoat. No rational observer should fall for it. Russia did
not become communist in a day and it won’t become capitalist overnight.
Achieving capitalism requires fundamental philosophic change: a respect
for reason and rational self-interest, the protection of individual
rights, and the complete separation of government from business.
Question:
How can you refer to a big, powerful corporation as being "persecuted"?
Why do businessmen need someone to defend them—as if they didn't have
enough money to do it themselves?
Answer:
To
answer this question, we need only look at the Microsoft antitrust case.
Who is arrayed against Microsoft? A coalition of anti-business leftists
and self-appointed "consumer advocates"; a cabal of jealous competitors
who have hired high-powered lawyers
and lobbyists to promote a government attack on Microsoft; and then there
is the Attorney General and the Justice Department, with virtually
unlimited resources at their command; there is the Congress, where both
Democrats and Republicans support the attacks on Microsoft; there is a
federal judge who is ignorant of the technical issue in this case and who
does not regard the issue of individual rights as relevant to the
antitrust laws; finally, there is the press, which alternates between
portraying Microsoft as a malevolent Big Brother and portraying the case
as too complicated or technical for the layman to take sides.
Who is on the side of Microsoft?
There is Microsoft itself—and us. Furthermore, Microsoft's efforts are
widely dismissed on the grounds that it is merely protecting its own
interests. In the code of modern American politics, it is the victim of
government intervention who is considered to have the least right to speak
in his own case.
If the majority of businessmen
spoke up consistently in defense of their own rights, and the rights of
other businessmen, then an organization like ours would be
unnecessary. But the tragic aspect of the growth of government controls is
that the victims do not understand the justice of their own cause. Part of
our goal is to help businessmen to grasp this fact.
In the meantime, who will speak up
for the rights of businessmen? Today, even the lowest specimen of
humanity—especially the lowest specimen of humanity—can count on support
from numerous sources. A homeless drug addict has a dozen different
organizations, agencies, shelters, rehab programs, and the like devoted to
his aid. A Nazi who burns a cross on his front lawn knows he can call the
ACLU to protect his rights. But what if a peaceful, responsible,
productive businessman—even a hero of American business—finds himself
under attack? Who can he call?
That is our purpose. In her essay
"America's Persecuted Minority: Big Business," Ayn Rand called for a
"civil liberties union for businessmen." That is one of the functions of
the Center for the Advancement of Capitalism.
Here
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Conquer the Crash: You can Survive and Prosper in
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Got an extra 400 bucks? How about spending it on a yo-yo? A really nice yo-yo, a state-of-the-art, forged-magnesium-alloy, ultralong-spinning yo-yo. Later this year, Duncan Toys, a seller of inexpensive yo-yos for 75 years, will roll out this new high-end yo-yo, which the company plans to call the Freehand Mg. It comes with the latest in axle and bearing technology, and its balance is ensured with precision tooling to micrometer tolerances by a computer-controlled lathe.
"It's gonna be awesome," says champion yo-yoer Stephen D. Brown, Duncan's chief yo-yo designer. "I've gotten a few prototypes of it. It rules!"
STOP ACTION. Multiple loops of string entrap a whirling yo-yo's axle during one stage of an elaborate string trick. Dean MacAdam
Not so long ago, Duncan sold only $2 or $3 yo-yos, many of them not much different from the product that the company offered in 1929, when Donald F. Duncan Sr. bought a fledgling yo-yo company. In the last decade, however, the company has been scrambling to keep up with a wave of technological innovation launched by other yo-yo aficionados and small manufacturers. Those developments have been transforming yo-yos into precision instruments.
But isn't a $400 yo-yo a bit over the top? Even Brown admits that its premium materials and precision of the machining go well beyond what's needed for even the highest levels of play. But with those additions, Brown says, the company has made a top-notch toy for dedicated yo-yo fans and competitors, and the high-tech plaything does double duty as a publicity gimmick.
Manufacturers are in the midst of a "science-innovation war," says Dale Oliver, a yo-yo producer and champion yo-yo player. "It's the search for the Holy Grail of the yo-yo."
Fans today commonly pay $40 for a competition-grade yo-yo. It can sport features such as minimal-friction axles, a string-grabbing response system for enhancing tricks, and modular construction for easy repairs and upgrades.
The high-teching of yo-yos has fomented a revolution in the ways in which people play with yo-yos. Today's hotshots put their ever-spinning yo-yos through long-lasting sequences of leaps, bounces, and swings as they weave the string on their fingers into patterns resembling configurations in the game cat's cradle.
Yo-yoing has gone extreme.
Getting some sleep
As mostly everyone knows, a yo-yo is a puck-shaped toy, usually made of wood or plastic, that's split down the middle except for an axle at the center that holds the two halves together. By means of a string in contact with the axle, a player can make the yo-yo fall and spin under the influence of gravity, unwinding the string as it descends. The yo-yo then rises as its rotation makes it rewind the string around its axle.
Yo-yos have been around for millennia. Historians have found evidence in a painting on a Greek bowl from around 500 B.C., for example. No one knows whether it was the ancient Greeks or Chinese or someone else who invented this toy.
The main difference between high-tech yo-yos today and all the yo-yos that went before is the time that the modern ones can spin at the ends of their strings. In yo-yo parlance, that's called sleeping. A few decades ago, a good player could make a yo-yo sleep for 15 to 20 seconds. Last October at the World Yo-Yo Championships in Chico, Calif., Rick Wyatt made his yo-yo sleep for 14.03 minutes, a new record.
For a yo-yo to sleep at all is a fairly modern development. Although the history is murky, it seems that right up to the early 1900s, strings were attached directly to axles of such toys, which the French called "emigrettes" and the British called "quizzes". As it reached the end of its string, the simple yo-yo immediately would start its ascent.
By 1928, Pedro Flores had introduced to the United States a toy, called a yo-yo, from his native Philippines. With it arrived the key innovation behind today's versions: looping the string around the axle so that the axle could spin freely within the loop. Since then, yo-yo popularity has had its ups and downs, reaching its latest peak in 1998, largely through successful commercial promotions.
When a yo-yo sleeps, a world of tricks opens up. Those include rolling the dangling, spinning yo-yo along the ground "walking the dog", swinging it back and forth through a triangle of string "rock the baby", and flinging the swinging yo-yo in giant circles at the end of the string "around the world".
When a yo-yo sleeps for minutes, rather than seconds, the number of possible tricks climbs. "For 50 years, there were probably between 150 and 200 tricks," says Oliver, who runs Spintastics Skill Toys in Euless, Texas. He estimates the repertoire of tricks now tops 2,000. What's more, trick complexity has soared.
Rip van Winkled
Two modifications give today's yo-yos their remarkable sleepiness. Manufacturers have redistributed the weight across the disks and have practically banned friction between the yo-yo's spinning axle and the string.
Yo-yos sleep longer when their weight is concentrated at the outer edges, thereby increasing the rotational inertia. That has the effect of boosting resistance to starting the toy's spinning, but it also increases an already-spinning yo-yo's tendency to keep spinning.
This rim weighting also has a stabilizing effect that preserves long-lasting sleeps. This benefit derives because rapidly spinning yo-yos act as gyroscopes—spinning gadgets that resist changes in their orientation in space. The more a yo-yo's weight is biased toward the rim, the more gyroscopic stability the yo-yo exhibits.
Oliver says that in the early 1990s he came up with snap-on metal rings for rim weighting. Since then, another manufacturer has devised a way to mold such rings directly into yo-yo bodies. Oliver notes that, as a result of this trend, overall weights of high-performance yo-yos in the past 4 years have increased by about 50 percent.
To banish friction in their high-tech models, manufacturers have replaced the old wooden axle with a metal shaft surrounded by a donut-shaped bearing assembly, or transaxle. It's made of two concentric steel cylinders with balls between them.
The ends of the inner cylinder, or race, make snug contact with the halves of the yo-yo, causing that race to spin with them. Meanwhile, the outer cylinder makes no contact with the yo-yo sides. The yo-yo's string loops around this outer race.
Such yo-yos lose only a trickle of rotational energy to the slight friction between the hard balls in the bearing and their races.
Today's yo-yo is a far cry from the first one to have a ball bearing axle. In 1984, a Swedish ball bearing company slapped a ball bearing into an unsophisticated yo-yo as a promotional gimmick. The resulting yo-yo was unplayable, yo-yoers remember. San Francisco dentist Thomas R. Kuhn, also known as Dr. Yo in the yo-yo community, is credited with inventing the first playable ball-bearing yo-yo, the Silver Bullet 2, in the early 1990s.
In the past 2 years, makers of high-end yo-yos have started offering transaxles with ceramic balls, which they claim can be made some 15 times smoother than steel. "That's the new, hot thing," Oliver says. Enthusiasts are buying up ceramic-ball yo-yos, but not everyone is convinced there are noticeable gains in player performance.
Making yo-yos better sleepers has also made them harder to wake up. So, some yo-yo makers have added mechanisms that permit the player to customize the gap between yo-yo halves, making it slightly wider for a more soundly sleeping yo-yo or slightly narrower for easier wake-ups.
There's a ratcheted, gap-adjustment apparatus in a German yo-yo known as the Mondial, which Duncan bought and has been marketing for $100 as "the most advanced yo-yo ever designed." When a player rotates the yo-yo halves in opposite directions between tricks, the machinery clicks into each new setting. The distance moved with each click is half the width of a human hair, the company claims.
Already on the drawing boards of one of Duncan's competitors is a yo-yo with an even finer ratcheting mechanism. However, that yo-yo—dubbed the Silver Bullet 3—was patented and prototyped just as the last yo-yo craze crashed, and so it hasn't yet been manufactured. Kuhn designed it with engineer Donald W. ("Captain Yo") Watson of Rohnert Park, Calif.
As string-trick masters execute complex, multistep maneuvers, they parse the yo-yo's string into multiple segments, some of them switched back into the shaft's gap. The welter of string segments in the gap raises the chance that friction will cut short the yo-yo's sleep. To counter that threat, manufacturers have recently begun making yo-yos with gaps that are wider than the widest gaps of the ratcheting, adjustable yo-yos.
INNER SANCTUM. To make nearly frictionless, spinning yo-yos climb back up to players' hands, yo-yo makers devise string-grabbing mechanisms such as the eight-pronged assembly (blue) that's tucked inside each half of a yo-yo made by YoYoFactory. A ball-bearing transaxle (rightmost object) fits between the halves of this butterfly-shaped yo-yo. Dean MacAdam
With this expansion of yo-yo gaps, a race has erupted among yo-yo makers. Gaps have become so wide that players need help in getting the sleeping yo-yo to snag the string when they want the yo-yo to wake up. So, yo-yo makers have developed response systems that put back in some of the friction that the new designs lack.
Late last year, for example, a manufacturer known as YoYoFactory in Gilbert, Ariz., introduced an elaborate response system in which the pointed ends of springy plastic arms protrude into the yo-yo gap at eight positions surrounding the central bearing. Those points retreat from the gap's center when the yo-yo string is under tension. However, if the string goes slack, then the plastic arms grab the string, putting an end to the yo-yo's sleep. Thus, it takes the traditional upward jerk on the string to wake the yo-yo.
To fit more string into the yo-yo for increasingly complex tricks, some tinkerers make yo-yo gaps so wide that jerking the string no longer has any effect, notes Dick Stohr, a yo-yo enthusiast, teacher, and performer from Springfield, Va.
These players have to throw extra loops of string around the yo-yo axle, in a move called a bind, to force contact with the response mechanism, he says.
Different strokes
While advances in yo-yo technology influence how players use the toys, the creativity and preferences of players also feed back into the toy's designs. Yo-yo–related patent applications are up since 1998, the peak of the last yo-yo craze, Oliver notes.
Instead of weaving complex string patterns with sleeping yo-yos, some yo-yoers pursue another type of play in which their yo-yos are ever zooming to the ends of their strings and back. Called loopers, these players keep their yo-yos—often one in each hand—continuously in orbit, or looping, in long, elliptical sweeps. Often, loopers send their yo-yos overhead, under their arms, and over their shoulders in a fashion reminiscent of jugglers.
Loopers' play demands yo-yos with characteristics different from those of the more numerous string-trick players. For example, loopers shun rim weighting.
Because the yo-yo must flip at the far reach of its ellipse, extra stability is detrimental. Manufacturers sell yo-yos with extra weight toward the center for loopers to use.
Even among the string-trick players, different styles demand different instruments. Since the late 1990s, players have invented two approaches that have spread swiftly and already stand as distinct categories in national and world competitions.
In the style known as off-string, players throw a yo-yo into the air so that it completely separates from its string. Then, they use the string as both a tightrope and a trampoline for the disk. Finally, they throw a loop around the yo-yo and cinch it tightly to force the yo-yo to rewind.
In freehand style, invented by Duncan's Brown, the player end of the yo-yo string connects not to the player's hand but to a small counterweight that is heavy enough to keep the string taut yet light enough that it doesn't act as too much of a drag on the yo-yo as it gets thrown and flipped around. At the start of a trick, the string near the counterweight rests between the player's fingers, but later the player repeatedly releases and catches either the string or the counterweight.
Each style has spawned specific yo-yo designs. Both require wide gaps to make the high-flying yo-yos easy to catch on thin strings. For freehand yo-yos, Brown says, it took a lot of experimenting to discover that the best ratio of yo-yo mass to counterweight mass is 7 to 1.
Yo-yo enthusiasts say that they expect the symbiosis between yo-yo designers and players to continue to drive innovation. Not-yet-invented styles of play will push manufacturers to revise their designs. Meanwhile, players will be stretching to fully exploit the expanded performance offered by the designs already available.
"It's like the training wheels are gone," says Stohr. "The kids are limited only by their own creativity."
Textbook Yo-yo-ology
Labor of love elucidates spinner science and technology
Students sometimes use yo-yos to investigate physics, but almost no one ever uses physics to investigate yo-yos. That's probably because every physicist knows that yo-yos must follow Newton's laws. So who would expect anything very interesting to be learned?
Donald W. ("Captain Yo") Watson for one. He's a retired mechanical and electrical engineer who cares deeply about yo-yos. Watson is also an engineering consultant to some of the world's top yo-yo inventors.
"Until very recently, most people have thought of the yo-yo as nothing more than a toy," Watson says. "I don't see it like that."
Having found technical literature on yo-yos to be almost nonexistent, he has created some reports of his own. In a series of five pamphlets, the last of which he completed last October, Watson lays out his findings from what may be the most extensive studies of yo-yo physics ever conducted.
Rather than submit his work to peer-reviewed journals for publication, Watson provides his photocopied booklets of meticulously neat engineering drawings, graphs, and handwritten text to two yo-yo Web sites that sell them for him (http://www.skilltoys.com/cgi-bin/commerce/index.cgi; http://www.yoyoguy.com/yoyo/bookmag/?). He says that he's sold a "couple of thousand" of the series.
Among specific results reported in the monographs: Watson derives equations for calculating yo-yo rotation rates after free fall or a hard throw; he analyzes features of yo-yo strings and investigates why yo-yos wobble; and he discovers a "yo-yo constant" that links yo-yo spin speeds to the rotational property known as the radius of gyration.
Moreover, as Watson writes at the end of the final booklet, there's another "salient principle" to be gleaned from those monographs: "Investigating yo-yo physics is fun."
Stephen D. Brown, who designs yo-yos for Duncan Toys but has not collaborated directly with Watson, has studied the monographs. He finds them a "great help" in his work and rates Watson as a "hell of an engineer."
"[Watson] has certainly been part and parcel of a lot of the advancement of yo-yo technology," adds Oliver.
If you have a comment on this article that you would like considered for publication in Science News, send it to editors@sciencenews.org. Please include your name and location.
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Project management skills are just a
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If you've enjoyed these articles, why not look at the
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USP
Analysis - Identifying your Unique Selling Proposition.
Directory:
ITToolkit.com - ITToolkit
provide a wide range of services to project managers including
advice, IT assessments, workbooks and worksheets. These are designed
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TaskComplete
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development skills.
If you find the Mind Tools web site useful, please
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You may also know many people who would benefit from
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an email you could send
to co-workers.
This book is one of my favorite
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While the very largest projects will need more formal techniques
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As usual for books in this series,
Project Management for Dummies is full of common sense, practical
information. It focuses on all types of projects (not just
IT projects), and gives useful advice on assembling a team,
resource analysis, scheduling and day-to-day management.
ArtWorks 2.5, the latest release of the most popular advanced vector graphics package for
RISC OS finally offers Direct PDF Export.
Discover the power of graduated transparency, multiple transparency types
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for professional printing or viewing on other platforms as high-quality PDF files
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The preceding 2.4 release introduced many new features for
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The new features complement the advanced features already present in earlier versions, such as
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ArtWorks 2 runs on all RISC OS machines equipped with RISC OS 3.5 or higher, from low-end A7000 and
RiscPC computers to StrongARM and Kinetic RiscPCs, Microdigital's Omega and Castle's XScale-powered
Iyonix PC. The ViewFinder graphics card is supported, as is emulated operation under VirtualRPC.
The above pictures show front covers for the Acorn
Publisher June 2002 and December 2002 issues designed by Henk Huinen
(Creatief Beeldwerk) using ArtWorks.
For further information contact webmaster@mw-software.com
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Nowhere is the battle between north and south
more dramatic than off the North Carolina coast. It is there warm
ocean currents from the south clash with cold northern currents,
creating treacherous conditions that have been feared by mariners
for centuries. The waters off the North Carolina's Outer Banks are
so hazardous that they have earned the name "Graveyard of the Atlantic,"
in reference to all the ships that have found a permanent home on
the sandy bottom.
The latest additions to the shifting sands have been not shipwrecks,
but vacation houses. It seems the same conditions that spawn occasional
violent weather, also produces a remarkable number of recreational
opportunities. The confluence of arctic and tropical water brings
fish of both varieties, making the Outer Banks a justifiably famous
fishing destination. There are also the steady winds that lured
the Wright Brothers and now delight hang glider pilots. Then of
course there's the beach, much of it practically deserted, due to
the National Seashore which prohibits development along much of
the coast. Thrown in for good measure are wildlife refuges hosting
millions of migratory birds, historical sites, and one of the most
famous lighthouses in the world. We try to refrain from making sweeping
statements, but it is no exaggeration to say that on the Outer Banks,
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eGO's Outer Banks Bookstore has a
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find beach houses, hotels, shopping malls and centers, chain restaurants
and a variety of amusements. Even though this is the most developed
area on the barrier islands, the term is relative, this is nothing
like Ocean City, Virginia Beach or Myrtle Beach.
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Tennessee State Library and Archives
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The PT Boat Page
The PT Boat Page
I searched the Web for information about PT Boats and came up pretty
dry so I decided to start a page dedicated to the men who served in the
"Mosquito Fleet" during World War II. It struck me that many people out
there may not even have seen the sitcom McHale's Navy, let alone heard
anything about what PT Boats were and what part they played in the war.
The PT Boat was a small, wooden craft that carried enough firepower
to sink a battleship, was faster than anything on the water, and could
sneak right up to shore to perform reconnaissance or drop off troops.
For a more detailed list of specifications, check out my PT Specs page.
My father served in the English Channel during World War II on PT
507, an 80' Elco Boat. He was part of Squadron 34. Here is 'Ron 34's
logo that decorated their boats.
Where are the PT Boats?
Sadly, there are very few of these noble craft left. After the war,
many of the boats were stripped and burned. Others were transferred to
other countries; the Soviet Union, for example. The boats were always
considered expendable and the Navy made good on that assessment after
the war.
Fortunately, some of the boats, particularly those that were still
in the U.S., were not destroyed. Some made their way into use as
private vessels. Others were kept by the Navy. I have a list of PT Boat Locations compiled. If you can add to
this list, please let me know.
About Those Boats in Virginia...
Many people have written to inform me of seven PT Boats in Virginia,
near the entrance to the locks at Great Bridge. Apparently, these PT's
came out of Viet Nam, and had been based at Subic Bay in the
Philippines. They are owned by a California company, and are for sale,
I'm told. I have obtained a picture of these boats (Thanks, Dave!) and
was able to identify the boats as PTFs of the Viet Nam era, built by
John Trump & Sons. You can check out a scan of the boats in
Virginia and a 1975 scan of a similar PTF on my Virginia
PTFs page. For more about the Nasty Class PTF, check out The
Nasty Class Fighting Boat Home Page. Great job, Dan!
PT 728 of the Conch Republic
PT 728 is owned by Broker Bill Bohmfalk. It is the only operational
PT boat in military configuration. Check out their web site and book a
tour http://www.ptboat728.com/.
The PT 728 is an authentic WWII PT Boat built in Annapolis, Maryland in
1945. "Broker Bill" has done a fine job in restoring and preserving the
PT Boat heritage.
Some History and facts about the PT Boats
Steve Laroe has compiled a complete list of all the PT Boats, when
they were made and what happened to them after the war. I'm adding a
copy of his list here. He's also compiled a summary of the different types of PT Boats and
how many were made. There's some more information Steve has put
together that I'll put up when I get a chance. Thanks, Steve.
The Story of The PT 509
The PT 509 was lost in action during August 1944. For an account of
this action, check out The Story of The PT
509.
Restoration Projects and Organizations
PT Boats, Inc.
I'm a member of PT Boats, INC., an
organization founded by J. M. "Boats" Newberry for the preservation of
the PT boat legacy. For almost 50 years they have been at work making
sure the PT Boaters are not forgotten. If you're interested, you can
reach them at ptboats@aol.com .
OR via regular mail at P.T. Boats, Inc. P.O. Box 38070 Memphis, TN 38183-070 (901) 755-8440
PT Boats, Inc. is the largest repository of PT Boat information that
I know of. You can join (you don't have to be a veteran) for $25.
You get a twice yearly newsletter, discounts on merchandise, and free
admission to Battleship Cove in Fall River, MA. They offer numerous
items for sale; pins, T-shirts, caps and some great books, videos and
reprints. If you are a modeler, they offer line drawings and reprints
of items in their extensive photograph collection. If your interest in
PT Boats is anything more than passing, I urge you to join. You can
check out their web site at PT Boats, Inc.
The PT 796, a Higgins boat, is in Fall River, MA at Battleship Cove.
It is on display and is being restored.When I saw it last in the Fall
of 2000, the deck work was progressing nicely. PT 617, an Elco, is also
on display. You can check out their site at Battleship Cove.
PT 658 - Save The PT Boat, Inc.
The PT 658 is on permanent loan to Save The PT Boat, Inc., a
non-profit organization chartered in Oregon. They intend to restore the
boat to it's original operating conditions, with full armament and
three Packard V-12 engines. The effort is being performed mostly by
ex-PT Boaters. I've been in touch with Ken Nissen, one of the men
working on this worthwhile project. Ken sent me a videotape of a
demonstration they gave at the PT
Boats reunion in Oregon this year. I've converted some of the audio
portion to a .wav file, Packard V12.
This organization could use some help. I've seen a bit of the
enthusiasm and progress they've made and it would be thrilling to see
this boat in operation. A tax-deductible donation can be made to:
The latest and greatest from the director of the Nimitz Museum, as
of May 4, 1998.
"YES!! We're in the water and look terrific!
We went in on April 26, 11:47 a.m. and now have the cabin done, the
gun tubs done, the 40mm mounted, all four torpedo racks on, two
torpedos mounted, a 20 mm mount on the bow. Last weekend were in
a fancy wooden boat and classic car show. Gave tours to nearly
700 people, got lots more volunteers and support to help finish the
restoration.
Still no power yet, but engines are being worked on. Lots more
structural work to do inside but hull and deck are done and we are very
presentable. Had two 309 vets here for the weekend and a load of
other PT vets as well. Tears all round. It was great. We'll
get some photos on the web site soon. nimitz-museum.org."
There's more about all these boats on the PT
Locations page.
PT Boat Models
Many people are interested in building models of PT Boats. They
range from the Revell 1/72 scale plastic model kit of PT 109 to a 1/4
scale (that's about a 20 foot boat, folks!) scratch built model of PT
103 by a gentleman in California. You can see a list of resources I've
been able to find on the PT Boat Model Resources
page.
When I started this page, there was really nothing on the web about
PT Boats. Fortunately, others have joined me in adding their own web
sites with PT Boat related themes. The more, the merrier!
The Story of PT 518 and Squadron 35.
Ken Campbell has a very interesting site at The Campbell House Home
Page. Ken has put together a site based on a paper he wrote about
his time serving on PT 518. Numerous pictures and nice diaries of the
adventures of PT 518
and Squadron 35. This
sight is well worth spending some time at. You get a flavor of the
day-to day life on a PT Boat. Great job, Ken!
The Elco company in Bayonne, NJ is where many of the PT Boats were
built. There's a nice history of the Elco Boat Company here at the Elco History
page.
I've been told this picture isn't actually of the PT 109 or even an
actual PT Boat. It's from the movie "PT 109" and is of one the boats
used to depict a PT boat. PT 109 (25k jpg)
Here's a nice picture of a depth charge going off. Depth Charge
The PT Boat was a versatile craft. They ferried passengers and
freight, performed courier duties, sank battleships, etc., etc. Here
are a few examples of how they were used.
Motorcycle I've been told this is probably a
Harley-Davidson. The votes are in. Most of you have identified this as
a Harley-Davidson.
Here are some other links to pictures of PT Boats available on the
Web. These links will take you to an index. Be warned, some of these
images are quite large. National
Archives gopher site
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OD2:On Demand Distribution : Digital Music Distribution for the 21st Century
On Demand Distribution (OD2) ist Europas führender Serviceanbieter für digitale Musikdistribution
Das digitale Zeitalter bietet Konsumenten mehr und vielfältigere Möglichkeiten als jemals zuvor, Musik zu hören und zu kaufen. Das OD2-Vertriebssystem bietet höchstmögliche Sicherheit und Zuverlässigkeit bei der Abwicklung von digitalen Musikverkäufen und wird damit den Bedürfnissen von Künstlern, Labels und Handelspartnern gleichermaßen gerecht.
Mithilfe der von OD2 angebotenen Serviceleistungen können Künstler und Labels ihre Zielgruppe mühelos erreichen, wobei die Kontrolle über das Repertoire und die damit verbundenen Urheberrechte vollständig gewahrt bleibt. Online-Shops profitieren von fortschrittlichster Technologie, einer einzigartigen Repertoirevielfalt und einer für den User einfach zu bedienenden Oberfläche.
Von der Kodierung der Originalaufnahmen über diverse Promotionmöglichkeiten, kommerziellen Vertrieb einschließlich Zahlungsabwicklung bis hin zur Lizenz- und Rechteverwaltung sowie der Unterstützung beim Aufbau einer Endkunden-Datenbank: OD2 bietet Komplettlösungen aus einer Hand.
Das OD2-Team, welches langjährige Erfahrungen aus Musik und IT-Industrie auf sich vereint, hat eine Infrastruktur geschaffen, welche auch bei extrem hohen Zugriffszahlen eine zuverlässige und und zeitgleiche Abwicklung aller Downloads Streamings garantiert. Darüber hinaus liefert das System Shopbetreibern und Rechteinhabern detailllierte Informationen über alle Transaktionen.
New Orleans banks on Mardi Gras for economic help
NEW ORLEANS -- As in past years, labor attorney Eve Marie Stocker plans to fly from Virginia to New Orleans for Mardi Gras, ride costumed on a float with her mother in the all-female Krewe of Iris parade and catch up with family and friends.
Best in Business Entry Form The News Journal will recognize top companies in Delaware in its annual Best in the Business magazine on April 23. Readers are encouraged to nominate businesses for community involvement, growth and innovative developments, or the qualities that make them among the best places to work. Click here for a nomination form.
This month's theme is Spells and Spellcasters! With the release of the Spell Compendium, what sort of characters will make use of the spells? What prestige classes will embrace such a wealth of information?
Experience Moreover’s high quality, real-time aggregated online news firsthand.
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Back surgery and spine surgery
Pain relief
after a vertebral compression fracture: Kyphoplasty
case review December 30, 2005
Osteoporosis-related spine fractures are fairly common, especially in people
over age seventy. When these fractures cause pain, a procedure called kyphoplasty
may be an option—but usually only within a few months after the fracture.
This article presents the case of a patient who had successful kyphoplasty solely
under local anesthesia. Read more...
By: Andrew P. Manista, MD and A. Jay Khanna, MD
Back surgery and neck surgery overview October 7, 2005
Spine surgery—whether back or neck surgery—is
an advanced treatment option for pain and disability
caused by an identifiable lesion in the patient’s
anatomy that has not adequately improved with non-surgical
treatments. Spine surgery should not be performed on
patients where an anatomical lesion cannot be determined
as the cause of pain. Read
more...
By: Peter F. Ullrich, Jr., MD
Lumbar
Artificial Disc Surgery for Chronic Back Pain (Research
article) August 4, 2005
An artificial disc offers several theoretical benefits over spinal fusion for
treatment of chronic back pain, including the potential for enhanced pain relief
and to avoid premature degeneration at adjacent levels of the spine. This article
provides an in-depth review of lower back disc replacement surgery and clinical
trials. Read
more...
By: Jack Zigler, MD
Getting a referral
to a spine surgeon July 21, 2005
If you are a candidate for spinal surgery, the next obvious step is to ask the
physician treating you for a referral to a spine surgeon. However, this process
may not always be as straightforward as it may sound. This article includes guidelines
to help patients evaluate their spine surgeon. Read
more...
By Peter Ullrich, Jr., MD
Disc
nucleus replacement as an alternative to artificial
disc replacement(Research article) June 14, 2005
Disc nucleus replacement is a new type of surgery for low back pain from degenerative
disc disease. Unlike artificial disc replacement, which involves replacing the
entire disc, disc nucleus replacement surgery replaces just the inner part of
the disc. Read more...
By: John Sherman, MD
Kyphoplasty for vertebral compression fractures June 1, 2005
Kyphoplasty is an elective surgery designed to achieve
two main goals in patients suffering from painful vertebral
compression fractures: to reduce or eliminate back pain;
avoid an increase in spinal deformity; and restore spinal
alignment, thus improving the patient’s posture.
Read more...
By: Rafael Levin, MD
Surgery for spinal arthritis May 25, 2005
Although spinal arthritis tends to be
chronic, the symptoms are rarely progressive and rarely
require surgery on the painful spinal joints. However,
surgery may be needed in severe cases, and may include
a spine fusion, decompression and/or laminectomy. Read
more... By: Vert Mooney, MD
Spinal disc
replacement with the CHARITÉ Artificial
Disc Updated March 30, 2005
The goal of the CHARITÉ Artificial Disc replacement surgery is to reduce
or alleviate chronic low back pain from degenerative disc disease by restoring
the intervertebral disc height and neuroforaminal height while returning physiologic
motion (similar to that of a healthy disc) in that segment of the spine. This
artificial disc surgery requires complete removal of the unhealthy disc in order
to implant the new artificial disc. Read
more...
By: Paul McAfee, MD
IDET: an alternative to invasive surgery for chronic
low back pain November 30, 2004
Intradiscal Electrothermal Annuloplasty
(IDET) is a minimally invasive treatment for patients
with chronic low back pain from certain types of degenerative
disc disease or a contained disc herniation. Read more...
By: Jonathon Lester, MD
All about the
Charité artificial disc: now approved for
use in the U.S. November 17, 2004
Artificial disc replacement surgery is now available in the US for select patients
with ongoing back pain from degenerative disc disease. As with any new surgical
procedure, a number of factors should be considered before any patient has artificial
disc surgery, including the surgeon's relevant training, the surgeon's skills,
patient selection and appropriate indications, and more. Read
more...
By: Stephen Hochschuler, MD and Paul McAfee, MD
Minimally invasive anterior approach to spine surgery October
22 2004
The anterior approach to spine surgery allows the surgeon
to have direct access to the degenerated disc without
having to manipulate any nerve roots. Better correction
of the collapsed disc to its native height can also
be achieved by having a better leverage point to open
the disc space. Read more...
By: Mark Mikles, MD and Jeffrey A. Goldstein, MD
When to see a surgeon
for lower back pain June 21, 2000 (Updated
October 5, 2004)
Many patients with lower back pain wonder if they will need surgery and if and
when they should consult a surgeon. This article reviews a number of symptoms
and considerations regarding when it may be advisable to consult with a spine
surgeon. Read more...
By: Peter F. Ullrich, Jr., MD
Elements of a spine fusion July 21, 2004
In order to obtain a successful spine fusion for treatment of low back pain caused
by painful motion of the vertebrae, several elements must be available, such
as bone graft, preparation of the bed for the bone graft, and adequate fixation.
Read more...
By: Ali Araghi, DO
Artificial
disc for cervical disc replacement(Research
article) April 12, 2004
The intent of the artificial cervical disc device is to preserve motion at the
disc space. It is an alternative to the use of bone grafts, plates and screws
in pursuit of a fusion following removal of a cervical disc. Read
more...
By: Mark Mikles, MD and Jeffrey A. Goldstein, MD
Update on minimally invasive spinal fusion February 23, 2004
There is some new evidence about spine fusion surgery performed in both the front
and back of the spine, and the use of a minimally invasive spinal fusion system
may sometimes be considered. Read more...
By: Rakesh Patel, MD and Jeffrey A. Goldstein, MD
Career:
Called to Northern Ireland Bar 1954;
Junior Counsel to Attorney-General for Northern Ireland 1969;
Queen's Counsel (NI) 1970;
Judge of the High Court of Justice (NI) 1979-88;
Lord Chief Justice of Northern Ireland 1988-97;
Lord of Appeal in Ordinary 1997-
Take your pick from the
multitude of performing and visual arts.
Whether you’re looking for museums, a zoo, theater,
opera, ballet, a symphony orchestra or something less
traditional, you’ll find it all in Houston.
With resident performing arts
groups in the four disciplines, as well as fringe
theater, you’re sure to find
a performance that pleases. Houston’s multicultural
side comes alive with theater and dance from around
the world.
The Museum District’s 16 institutions have everything
from fine arts to family fun. From modern art to fine
art to treasures of the past, from natural science
to medicine, there’s plenty to visit. Families
will love The Children’s Museum of Houston and
Houston Zoo. For an interesting experience, visit some
of the multicultural arts venues that encompass the
cultures of Houston, including African-American, Hispanic
and Asian.
So, take a seat and enjoy the
shows. Houston’s busy stages and museums are
easy to find. See Here & Now for
information on performances and installations this
season.
Find more
details through (713) 658-8938
or visit the Web
site www.houstontheaterdistrict.org
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When you eat or drink things that are stored in plastic,
taste it, smell it, wear it, sit on it, and so on, plastic is incorporated into
you. In fact, the plastic gets into the food and food gets into the plastic and
you. So, quite literally, you are what you eat[1]. . . drink. . . and breathe —
plastic!
These plastics are called "Food Contact Substances" by the US Food and
Drug Administration (FDA), but until April 2002,
they were called "Indirect Food Additives."[2] The new name is
cleansed of the implication that plastic gets into your food. In spite of this
semantic deception, migration is a key assumption of the FDA.
According to Dr. George Pauli, Associate Director of Science
Policy, FDA Office of Food Additive Safety, the regulations mandated in 1958
assume that all plastics migrate toxins into the food they contact. Migration is
the movement of free toxins from plastic into the substances they contact — in
this case it’s your food. The manufacturer must "prove" that the
migrations fall within an acceptable range.[3] I agree with the assumption of
migration from all plastics, but I find a critical disparity between the level
of science employed by the regulations and the current scientific knowledge
regarding the levels at which they migrate and the effects they can have. In
particular, I am more concerned with extremely low concentrations. There is also
a conflict of interest in allowing the manufacturer to submit its own testing to
the FDA as proof of anything. We invite the fox into the henhouse and are
surprised when there’s nothing left but eggshells and feathers.
The amount of migration and corresponding toxicological effects
are highly disputed topics, even within the FDA, which has commonly acquiesced
to industry in its regulation of technologies that are used in the production of
our foods — plastics, pesticides, growth hormones, irradiation, and microwave.
This is clear from the mass of expert and citizen testimony against such
technologies that regulatory agencies bend over backwards and jump through
flaming hoops to please their corporate clients, as they are called.
There is a worst plastic for any purpose — polyvinylchloride (vinyl or PVC).
However, there is no best plastic to contain food or drink. It is my hope that
this article will clarify this viewpoint. By the time you’ve finished reading,
you should be closer to forming your own evaluation of plastics.
Its Uses
Plastic is used in contact with nearly all packaged foods. Most
cardboard milk containers are now coated with plastic[4] rather than wax. It is
sprayed on both commercial and organic produce to preserve its freshness.
Plastic is even used to irrigate, mulch, wrap, and transport organic food.
Organic bananas now come from wholesalers with a sticky plastic wrapping the cut
stem to protect the bananas from a black mold.[5] The mold is controlled on
non-organic bananas by dipping the cut ends in a fungicide. Chiquita would only reveal that it’s a "food grade plastic," which
means that it meets minimum regulatory standards. But since it has a sticky feel
to it, I suspect it either carries a fungicide or its physical characteristics
act as a fungicide. Either way, if it is or acts as a fungicide, the EPA
regulates it as a pesticide, which fungicides are considered a subset of. [6] In
a way, this is similar to the regulation of corn that is genetically engineered
to carry the toxic bacterium bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) in every cell. Rather
than the FDA regulating it as a food, the EPA regulates it as a pesticide.
Incredible as it may seem, they see our food as a pesticide.
According to the FDA scientist I spoke with, it’s a
proprietary formula that he doesn’t know about and would offer nothing beyond
that. Disclosure of proprietary information is a criminal offense.[7] All
plastic manufacturers hide behind trade secrets. This is true with nearly all
consumer products. It is quite impossible to know the chemical makeup of any
plastic without paying a substantial amount of money for an independent lab
analysis.
How is it made?
In a nutshell, plastic is made by combining monomers into
polymers under great heat and pressure in a process called polymerization. Each
manufacturer has its own proprietary formula for each plastic. And each uses a
variety of additives such as plasticizers for flexibility, UV filters for
protection from sunlight, antistatic agents, flame-retardants, colorants,
antioxidants, and more. Heavy metals such as cadmium, mercury, and lead are
common additives. There are also chemicals used to facilitate production such as
mold releases, and countless other toxic chemicals regularly added to plastic
consumer goods without our knowledge or approval. Many of the products and
byproducts of the intermediary steps of plastics production are used in other
plastics or industrial processes and products such as pesticides or fertilizer.
For holistic thinkers, the mention of plastics and pesticides in the same
sentence should begin an informative thought process, while keeping in mind that
they all have complete regulatory approval.
The True Cost of Plastic
Plastic is ubiquitous in our lives because it is convenient and
relatively inexpensive. It is advertised as safe and that it saves lives.[8] Its
safety is based on outdated science and regulations. And while it saves lives in
the short run, the record against plastic is looking quite different.
Its convenience comes from being lightweight and its ability to
absorb impact shock without breaking, which on its own merit, is hard to argue
with. It comes in an endless range of colors and finishes, is pliable, and is
easily formed and molded. Most would say it's a perfect material, right? Here’s
where the bad news begins.
Its inexpensiveness is the result of a large portion of the
costs associated with its life — production, use and disposal — being put onto
society as a whole. This unsolicited financial burden on society manifests
itself as increased taxes to finance municipal curbside recycling programs,
landfill space, and incineration. It also increases health care and insurance
costs as a result of its incineration polluting the air, water, and food. I’ll
give much more detail on the negative health effects later, but for now, suffice
to say that a full and truthful lifecycle analysis would reveal that the
long-term negative health and socioeconomic effects at the local and global
scales far outweigh the benefits realized by the use of plastics.
What's so bad about plastic?
For decades, the plastics industry has deceived us with
assurances that the polymerization process binds the constituent chemicals
together so perfectly that the resulting plastic is completely nontoxic and
passes through us without a hitch. In spite of this industry
disinformation,[9] the polymerization process is never 100% perfect. Logically
then, there are always toxicants available for migration into the many things
they contact — your food, air, water, skin, and so on. Both the FDA and the
industry know this. However, because of many millions of dollars worth of
advertising and public relations work, consumers are educated to think that
plastics are safe.
The additives utilized are not bound to the already imperfect
plastic, leaving them quite free to migrate. One quick example: without a
plasticizer additive, PVC would be rigid. The plasticizer resides between the
molecules of the PVC, acting as a lubricant that allows those molecules to slide
by each other, and thus flex. Many containers used for food or water are made of
it. Even Barbie dolls are made of it. The plasticizer migrates out from day one.
And as it ages, the migration can visibly weep out of it.[10]
Plastics, their additives and other processing
chemicals can be toxic at extremely low concentrations. In fact, some are
significantly more toxic at extremely low concentrations than at much higher
concentrations, which is contrary to the FDA scientist’s paradigm that,
"The dose makes the poison," meaning that the higher the
concentration, the more toxic something is. It is an interpretation of the
writings of Paracelsus, an alchemist who wrote in the 16th century that, "Alle
Ding sind Gift und nichts ohne Gift; alein die Dosis macht das ein Ding kein Gift
ist" [All things are poison and nothing without poison; alone it is the
dose that makes a thing no poison].[11] It’s now 500 years later and that
assumption of Paracelsus is still the basis for the many regulations. Except on
chemical-by-chemical investigations by various independent, institutional, and
academic labs, plastics are not explored for harmful effects or regulated in any
meaningful way.
Extremely Low Doses and Synergy
Since it is known that all plastics migrate into food, it
behooves us to look for the evidence at meaningful levels of detection, at and
below single-digit parts-per-trillion (ppt) or ng/kg. Extremely low doses are
especially relevant because they can upset the natural balance of the endocrine
system. To paraphrase the report of an EPA workshop in 1996, endocrine
disruptors (EDs) are external agents that interfere with the production,
release, transport, metabolism, binding, action or elimination of natural
hormones in the body responsible for maintaining internal balances and the
regulation of developmental processes.[12]
Current knowledge of EDs turns the work of Paracelsus — that guy
born in the 15th century — upside down. Some chemicals can be more toxic at
extremely low doses than extremely high doses. The timing of the exposure can be
much more relevant than its dose. Most vulnerable times are in periods of rapid
growth, such as those in embryo and children right up to puberty. They can be
exposed in the womb and before conception, if sperm and/or ovum are
contaminated. The maladies of the children of Gulf War veterans are a prime
example of this type of exposure.[13]
Synergy is an important issue that is mostly disregarded by the
FDA. Many will even debunk the idea that low dose synergy is real. In
combination with other commonly used products, the toxicity of the migratory
chemicals from plastics can be potentiated by synergy. A synergy can occur
between two or more chemicals that elevate the combination’s toxicity to
hundreds of times greater than that of the individual chemicals. Besides
plastics, other household chemicals can be part of a synergy with plastics.
Nuclear radiation can also severely damage the endocrine system.
According to Dr. Ernest Sternglass, Professor Emeritus of Radiological Physics
at the University of Pittsburgh Medical School, the synergy between nuclear
radiation and chemical toxicants is well documented.[14] Gulf War vets (I and
II) were and still are being exposed to depleted uranium (DU) from the tons of
armour-busting shells they fired being distributed across the Gulf Region as an
aerosol smaller than the size of a virus.[15] The hazardous materials (MOPP)
suit that soldiers are given do not protect them from the infinitesimally small
particles of DU because the high efficiency particulate air (HEPA) filters do
not work below 1/10 of a micron (0.1µ). Each one of us is exposed to extremely
low levels of radiation from the nuclear power plants scattered about the
US.[16]
On the home front, even the products in our day-in and day-out
humdrum lives are coated with, contain, or are made of synthetic chemicals that
can interact synergistically with each other. The list is endless but includes
beauty products such as nail polish, eyeliner, deodorant and aftershave;
household cleaning products such as tile and carpet cleaners, air fresheners
that are solid, plug-in, or spray. Even gas and diesel engine exhaust are
included. Quite frankly, the FDA doesn’t even consider all sources of a
chemical in its review of industry product applications.
Consider that there between 87,000 to 100,000 chemicals in
commercial production. At the time I wrote this, there were 22,241,247 organic
and inorganic substances registered with Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS)
registry.[17] Only eight months before that, there were 1,112,474 fewer
chemicals.[18] They are regulated and tested in what I would call a "don’t
look — don’t see" style of science that boggles the minds of those who
look just a little below the surface of the happy little corporate-science
myths. The focus is on the wonders of plastic with a purposeful avoidance of the
painfully evident negative human and environmental health effects. Using the
more conservative 87,000 chemicals, there are approximately 1.063725377 x 1086,991
different combinations possible that could have a synergistic effect on
toxicity.[19] For the purposes of this article, that number is roughly 1 with
87,000 zeros after it. Even if researchers had the time and money to test them
all, they still wouldn’t know what to look for, because there is no precedent.
In addition, one must account for the uniqueness of each living organism and its
unique environment, which further expand the possible synergies and
possibilities.
Water Stored in Plastic
Water bottles are be made from various types of plastic —
polycarbonate (PC), polyethylene terephthalate (PET), Polypropylene (PP),
high-density polyethylene (HDPE), low-density polyethylene (LDPE), polyvinyl
chloride (PVC or vinyl), and others. To reiterate, they all migrate to some
degree. I will focus on just one chemical that migrates out of one plastic that
is used to make products with high use and sales profiles.
Bisphenol-A (BPA) is a monomer used in the synthesis of PC
plastics, epoxy resins, and composites, as well as a heat stabilizer in PVC. The
list of products containing BPA is long. Some rigid containers such as water and
baby bottles are made of PC. The popular Nalgene® water bottles are made of
Lexan® brand PC. In the medical industry, it is used for syringes, containers,
lenses, and dental products. Keep in mind that the FDA regulates only plastics
in contact with foods and not any of the other exposures a person might commonly
experience every day at home, school, or the office. Because the FDA approves
plastics for specific uses rather than for individual chemicals, BPA is not
explicitly regulated.[20] It is important to note that all exposures, no matter
what origin, are relevant and cumulative. Even other chemicals that act in the
body in similar ways can be part of the total effect. The body’s natural
defenses try to breakdown toxins as they enter. These are called metabolites and
can be significantly more toxic than the original chemical.
Today it is common that dentists coat children’s teeth with
dental sealants [21] that harden (polymerize) within the mouth. This exposure to
BPA is large enough to have biologic effects. [22] Just as with other plastics,
dental sealants polymerize imperfectly, leaving free monomers to be ingested or
absorbed through the skin within the mouth. When it comes to dental solutions
without plastic, the choices are limited. And I must say that I am extremely
frustrated by the situation. One orthodontist I spoke with creates retainers
from metal wire that can replace the standard polycarbonate ones. In tooth
replacement, even some materials that dentists call ceramic have a polymer
matrix. Gold caps or crowns are an excellent choice, but they too are glued into
place with a volatile polymer. By far, the best alternative is to keep your
teeth healthy by brushing and flossing regularly, and by eating a healthy diet.
Food and beverages cans are coated with a BPA-containing
plastic. During the processing of canned food, it is sterilized in the can at
250°F for 1 hour. Because heat increases its migration, this is an especially
large exposure for people who eat canned foods. As PC plastics grow old, BPA and
other chemicals are released. But even when they are new BPA migrates out of PC
plastic.
The Code of Federal Regulations section on PC plastics allows
for migratory chemicals in the hundreds of parts-per-million (ppm) range as well
as a percentage of the plastic’s total weight. While concentrations of ppm and
higher are relevant, there is vast area of exposure that falls well below the
FDA’s radar in the parts-per-trillion (ppt) range and lower. Testing methods
are available, but the cost would be far greater. Because the industry is
responsible for testing, it protests madly about the idea that these
concentrations are relevant. If the table was turned and the burden of proof was
on the consumer, the FDA would demand the most up to date testing methods. A
graphic example of 1 ppt is one drop of liquid in 660 rail tank cars. That’s a
train 6 miles long!
In the year 2000, Consumers Union (CU) tested water from
five-gallon PC plastic bottles for BPA, They found from 0.5 ppb to 11 ppb in
water samples from eight of the ten 5-gallon jugs.[23] After industry
spin-meisters discredited the study as being flawed, not many regulatory red
flares were sent up within the FDA. This type of industry disinformation is
standard operating procedure. Most times, the statements made could be compared
it to one child calling another derogatory names, hoping that the recipient will
become persona non grata with the other children. However, the CU study
was indeed valid and the concentrations of BPA that were found are extremely
relevant.
CU also found BPA in samples from baby bottles at worrisome
levels.[24] CU advised its readers to avoid exposure to BPA by "dispos[ing]
of polycarbonate baby bottles and replac[ing] them with bottles made of glass or
polyethylene, an opaque, less-shiny plastic that does not leach
bisphenol-A."[25] That advice attracted the wrath of the plastics industry.
But I will go further and advise readers not to serve or store any food — liquid
or solid, water-based or fatty, hot or cold — in any plastic.
In April 2003, a study was published about BPA accidentally
killing mice that had been held in polycarbonate cages at a lab.[26] It was
found accidentally when it ruined a lab experiment that heated yeast in PC
flasks to find out if the yeast produced estrogens. It was discovered that BPA
from the PC flasks was the material that was estrogenic, and that it competed
with the natural estrogen in a rat’s body. [27] I asked one noted researcher
why labs still use plastics considering what it has been known since 1993 that
BPA migrates and is hormonally active. The response was, "What are we
supposed to do, go back to glass?" The tone of voice made it seem as if I
had advised going back in time to live in the Stone Age. This is the state of
what is still amazingly called science. There is a lack of reason and logic that
goes well beyond what I knew possible before I began looking at the many aspects
of this technology. Truth is sought, but the obvious is knocked to the ground
and trampled over in the stampede to secure funding.
BPA’s Rap Sheet
The list of negative health effects associated in some way
with exposure to BPA is remarkably long. The most visible effect may be
aneuploidy, a chromosome abnormality found in more than 5% of pregnancies. Most
aneuploid fetuses die in utero. About one-third of all miscarriages are
aneuploid, making it the leading known cause of pregnancy loss. Among
conceptions that survive to term, aneuploidy is the leading genetic cause of
developmental disabilities and mental retardation. About 1 in 300 liveborn
infants and 1 in 3 miscarriages are aneuploid. It is associated with Down
syndrome,[28] Patau syndrome, [29] Edwards syndrome,[30] Klinefelter syndrome,
[31] Turner syndrome, [32] Cri du chat syndrome, [33] and Alzheimer's
disease.[34] And each of these bears its own extensive list of maladies covering
all parts and functions of the human body — both physical and mental. The
condition at birth is directly related to the type of chromosome abnormality
present in the embryo at the time of conception.[35] It is well documented that
aneuploidy contributes to the increased risk of spontaneous abortion when the
female partner is older, but it is also thought that males more than 30 years
old may increase the risk of spontaneous abortion when the female partner is
less than 30 years of age.[36]
Being one of many known endocrine disruptors, BPA affects
development, intelligence, memory, learning, and behavior, skeleton, body size
and shape, significant increase in prostate size, decreased epididymal weight
and a longer anogenital distance,[37] prostate cancer, [38] reduced sperm
count,[39] both physical and mental aspects of sexuality. It may have something
to do with obesity,[40] and so many more that a separate article is required to
list them all. In other words, if the fetus lives, any one or many parts of its
body can be permanently affected. The problems may become evident at any age.
Alzheimer's disease generally occurs after the age of 50. In
those afflicted with it, areas of brain become smaller with cell death and the
cavities left become enlarged. The areas most affected are control memory,
logical thinking, and personality. Only 5-10% of the cases are inherited. 14
million people with Alzheimer’s disease are predicted by 2050.
BPA is about 10,000-fold less potent than 17ß-estradiol, a
potent estrogen that is synthesized primarily in the ovary, but also in the
placenta, testis and possibly adrenal cortex. Because of the disparity, industry
representatives claim it causes no harm at the levels that the majority of
people are exposed to. However, a study in 2001 showed that even at such low
potency, when combined with other xenoestrogens (estrogens from outside the
body), they act together additively, effectively raising the body load of
estrogen to dangerous levels.[41] Another study showed that there is an
increased sensitivity to BPA during the perinatal period, which begins with
completion of the twentieth to twenty-eighth week of gestation and ends 7 to 28
days after birth.[42] Exposure to BPA increases risk of mammary tumors.[43] To
reiterate, there is no shortage of research published on the negative health
effects of BPA.
Avoiding Plastic
While it’s impossible to avoid all plastics, we must rid our
diets and lives of this toxic material as much as possible. There is a huge
amount of data confirming the migration of plastic monomers and additives in all
steps of food processing.[44] And in my opinion and that of many top research
scientists, it is only a matter of time and money spent on new studies before
the harm is found. Because of corporate political campaign financing, meaningful
regulations resulting from studies will take even longer to become law. We must
protect our families while the obvious results trickle in.
I strongly advise individuals and governments to ban plastics
wherever possible by utilizing the precautionary principal. The Wingspread
Statement on the Precautionary Principle is the consensus statement of a
conference in 1998. Simply put it states that if you have reasonable suspicion
of harm coming from (plastic in this case) then you must stop it from happening;
the burden of proof must be on industry, not consumers; alternatives must be
fully explored before using a new material or technology; and any decisions
regarding such activities must be "open, informed, and democratic" and
"must include affected parties."[45]
Evidence of the negative health effects of plastics already
exists in sufficient quantity to halt the use of it in contact with food. More
importantly, I feel that the manufacture of plastic itself must be halted for a
multitude of reasons. Besides causing an endless number of human deaths,
disabilities, and diseases, plastic is clogging all habitats of the world and
destroying the ecosystem. There is now 6 times more plastic than plankton
floating around in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Plankton is a major food
source for sea animals.[46] A large portion of it is preconsumer plastic that
has not been made into a product yet. Called nurdels, they look very much like
plankton in size and color. According to a paper by Arrigo et al in Geophysical
Research Letters in October 2003, plankton production has been declining for
the last 20 years with rising ocean surface temperatures. Along with increasing
plastic quantities, the ratio of plastic to plankton is increasing, making it
more of a target for hungry animals.
The researcher who found this, Captain Charles Moore, Director
of the Algalita Marine Research Foundation, told me that new data indicate that
the ratio of plastic to zooplankton is even higher in two so-called floating
plastic "Garbage Patches" that are each bigger than the State of
Texas.[47], [48]
Nurdles are incorporated into all strata of the oceans with no
known method of removal. DDE, a metabolite of DDT, and other dioxin-like
chemicals concentrate on the surface of the plastic nurdles at a rate up to a
million times that found in the ocean.[49] Captain Moore’s presentation
includes images of sea animals that have suffocated and starved as a result.
Even more startling is seeing plastic bits incorporated into the flesh of the
sea animals.
Conclusion
I spent about two years answering telephone inquiries at an
environmental organization in Berkeley. A great number of the callers asked what
the safest plastic to use in contact with food or water is. They also wanted to
know what the safest plastic is to microwave food in. My answer was that plastic
should never contact food. And that one should never microwave food — it's
probably as bad or worse than putting it in plastic because it creates free
radicals in the food that damage cells in your body. It also heats the plastic,
thus increasing the rate of migration into the food. That answer wasn’t popular with either the caller or the
organization, which likes to point out positive alternatives. However, plastic is
the alternative! And glass, wood, metal, and ceramics are the real things.
Plastic is merely a foul imitation thereof. By using the
least offensive plastic, one only prolongs and increases the toxic load on the Earth
and in our bodies. If saving trees is your aim, stop using so
much stuff. But in the mean time, don’t further degrade the environment with
more plastic.
As consumers, we always look for ways to maintain the status quo
of our modern lives. However, the only logic I can see in the regulation of food
contact plastics is profit at the expense of our health, the economy, society,
and environment. You needn’t be a polymer scientist to know that plastic
shouldn’t contact food. What is essential though is a firm standing in reality
and a good grip on logic. It also requires being free of ties to the industry
before that logic becomes evident.
First set aside your assumptions and look at the known long- and
short-term negative effects of plastic on health, economy, environment, and
society, as well as the long-term viability of the human race. Next contrast
that with what you find as benefits. I guarantee that the stack of chips will be
far larger in the negative pile.
[1] Brillat-Savarin, JA. Physiologie du Gout, ou Meditations de
Gastronomie Transcendante...Paris: Sautelet et Cie, 1826. Note: Jean Anthelme
Brillat-Savarin (1755-1826) was a French lawyer and politician who achieved fame
through a book, Physiologie du Gout. "You are what you eat comes from the
quote by Brillat-Savarin "Tell me what you eat and I will tell you what you
are."
[2] Guidance for Industry: Preparation of Food Contact Notifications and Food
Additive Petitions for Food Contact Substances: Chemistry Recommendations FINAL
GUIDANCE U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Center for Food Safety & Applied
Nutrition, Office of Food Additive Safety April 2002 http://www.cfsan.fda.gov/~dms/opa2pmnc.html
[3] Telephone conversation with Dr. George Pauli, Associate Director of Science
Policy, FDA Office of Food Additive Safety, and Mike Herndon, Head of Media, FDA
Office of Food Additive Safety 22 October 2003 12:49 PM
[4] Polyethylene (source FDA telephone conversation)
[5] Cladosporium: Ascomycete. The most common mold in the world, found in
soil and on textiles, tomatoes, spinach, bananas, and dead vegetation. For image
http://www.carolinafilters.com/FunclspP.jpg
[6] Fungicides are a category of pesticide as regulated by the EPA. See What is
a Pesticide? U.S. EPA Office of Pesticide Programs 14feb97 http://www.mindfully.org/Pesticide/What-Is-A-Pesticide.htm
[7] Telephone conversation with Dr. George Pauli, Associate Director of Science
Policy, FDA Office of Food Additive Safety, and Mike Herndon, Head of Media, FDA
Office of Food Additive Safety 22 October 2003 12:49 PM
[8] Plastics: An Important Part Of Your Healthy Diet You could think of them as
. . . Advertising by the American Plastics Council found in National Geographic
magazine (abt.1996) http://www.mindfully.org/Plastic/6th-Basic-Food-Group.htm
[9] Disinformation pronunciation: (")di-"sin-f&r-'mA-sh&n
Function: noun Date: 1939 : false information deliberately and often covertly
spread (as by the planting of rumors) in order to influence public opinion or
obscure the truth Merriam-Webster online http://webster.com/
[10] Barbie's PVC Body Gets Sticky as Dibutyl Phthalate Migrates Yvonne Shashoua
/ Conservation Department The National Museum of Denmark 19apr99 http://www.mindfully.org/Plastic/Barbies-Health-Hazard.htm
[11] Paracelsus: Dose Response. in the Handbook of Pesticide Toxicology WILLIAM
C KRIEGER / Academic Press Oct01. Robert Krieger, ed. University of California,
Riverside, Riverside, California, U.S.A. http://www.mindfully.org/Pesticide/Paracelsus-Dose-ToxicologyOct01.htm
[12] Research Needs for the Risk Assessment of Health and Environmental Effects
of Endocrine Disruptors: A Report of the U.S. EPA-sponsored Workshop
Environmental Health Perspectives, v.104, s.4, Aug96 http://www.mindfully.org/Pesticide/RJ-Kavlock-et-al-Aug96.htm
[13] What Are Endocrine Disruptors? Paul Goettlich 2jul03 http://www.mindfully.org/Pesticide/EDs-PWG-16jun01.htm
[14] Telephone conversation with Ernest Sternglass, Ph.D., Professor Emeritus of
Radiological Physics at the University of Pittsburgh Medical School has
written numerous articles on the health effects of low-level radiation. He is
Director and Chief Technical Officer of the RPHP Baby Teeth Study [www.rphp.org].
[15] Leuren Moret Speaking on Depleted Uranium in Los Altos, California 21apr03 http://www.mindfully.org/Nucs/2003/DU-Leuren-Moret21apr03.htm
[16] As evidenced by strontium-90 being detected by the Tooth Fairy Project in
many thousands of baby teeth http://www.radiation.org/envelope.html
[17] CAS Registry Numbers for new compounds and assistance with nomenclature can
be obtained by writing to Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS) Client Services, 2540
Olentangy River Road, P.O. Box 3343, Columbus, OH 43210, or by visiting their
website at http://www.cas.org
[18] Today’s date: 9 October 2003
[19] Formula: 2^n - n - 1 This is called a factorial. Dr. Bruce Sagan, a
mathematician at Michigan State University, did the calculation. Example: where
2^n means 2 to the power n. So, for example, when n = 10 then there are 2^10 -
10 - 1 = 1024 - 11 = 1013. This formula accounts for duplications such as 1,2,3 =
1,3,2 = 2,3,1 = 2,1,3 = 3,1,2 = 3,2,1
[20] 21 CFR § 177.1580 Polycarbonate Resins. Code of Federal Regulations
rev.1apr03 http://www.mindfully.org/Plastic/PC/21CFR177.1580-Polycarbonate-1apr03.htm
[21] Bisphenol-A (BPA) For Doctors and Dentists. Paul Goettlich 7may02 http://www.mindfully.org/Plastic/Plasticizers/Bisphenol-A-For-Doctors-Dentists.htm
[22] Determination of Bisphenol A and Related Aromatic Compounds Released from
Bis-GMA-Based Composites and Sealants by High Performance Liquid Chromatography
Environmental Health Perspectives v.108, n.1, Jan00 http://www.mindfully.org/Plastic/Bisphenol-A-Aromatic-Compounds.htm
[23] http://www.mindfully.org/Plastic/5-Gallon-Water-Jugs.htm
[24] Food For Thought: What's Coming Out of Babyąs Bottle? Janet Raloff /
Science News 31jul99 v.156, n.5 http://www.mindfully.org/Pesticide/Babys-Bottle-Roloff.htm
also see: http://www.mindfully.org/Plastic/Plasticizers/BPA-Baby-BottlesJul03.htm
[25] Baby Alert: New Findings about Plastics Consumer Reports Special Report
21apr99 http://www.mindfully.org/Plastic/Baby-Bottles-CU21apr99.htm
[26] BPA and Plastic Lab Animal Cages When Disaster Strikes: Rethinking Caging
Materials Lab Animal v.32, n.4, Apr03 http://www.mindfully.org/Plastic/Plasticizers/BPA-Lab-Animal-CagesApr03.htm Also see: Bisphenol A Exposure Causes Meiotic Aneuploidy in the Female Mouse
Current Biology, v.13, 1apr03 http://www.mindfully.org/Plastic/Plasticizers/BPA-Mouse1apr03.htm
[27] Bisphenol-A: an estrogenic substance is released from polycarbonate flasks
during autoclaving Endocrinology 132(6):2277-8 Jun93 http://www.mindfully.org/Plastic/BPA-Polycarbonate-Flasks.htm
[28] Terry Hassold and Patricia Hunt. To Err (meiotically) Is Human: The Genesis
of Human Aneuploidy Nature Reviews Genetics 2, 280 -291 (2001); V.2, n.4 Apr01 http://www.nature.com/cgi-taf/DynaPage.taf?file=/nrg/journal/v2/n4/abs/nrg0401_280a_fs.html
Also see: Bisphenol A Exposure Causes Meiotic Aneuploidy in the Female Mouse
Current Biology, v.13, 1apr03 http://www.mindfully.org/Plastic/Plasticizers/BPA-Mouse1apr03.htm
[29] Patau Syndrome - Robert G Best, PhD, Director, Professor, Department of
Obstetrics and Gynecology, Division of Genetics, University of South Carolina
School of Medicine - eMedicine.com http://author.emedicine.com/ped/topic1745.htm
[30] Edwards syndrome - Harold Chen, MD, MS, FAAP, FACMG, Chief, Professor,
Department of Pediatrics, Section of Perinatal Genetics, Louisiana State
University Medical Center - eMedicine.com http://www.emedicine.com/ped/topic652.htm
[31] Klinefelter syndrome - Harold Chen, MD, MS, FAAP, FACMG, Chief, Professor,
Department of Pediatrics, Section of Perinatal Genetics, Louisiana State
University Medical Center http://www.emedicine.com/ped/topic1252.htm
[32] Campbell Biology 6th ed. http://webpages.marshall.edu/~adkinsda/B111OutlinesChromInhAlt.html
Verified by personal conversation with author of the URL, Dr. Dean A. Adkins, a
biology professor at Marshall University
[33] Cri-du-chat syndrome - Harold Chen, MD, MS, FAAP, FACMG, Chief, Professor,
Department of Pediatrics, Section of Perinatal Genetics, Louisiana State
University Medical Center. eMedicine.com http://www.emedicine.com/ped/topic504.htm
[34] Alzheimer Disease - Jeffrey A Gunter, MD, Staff Physician, Department of
Surgery, Division of Emergency Medicine, Denver Health Medical Center.
eMedince.com http://www.emedicine.com/aaem/topic12.htm
[35] Reproductive Science Center of the San Francisco Bay Area website 14oct03 http://www.rscbayarea.com/articles/pgd_indications.html
[36] Does Male Age Affect the Risk of Spontaneous Abortion? An Approach Using
Semiparametric Regression - Am. J. Epidemiol. 2003 157: 815-824. 1may03 v.157,
i.9 http://ifr69.vjf.inserm.fr/~web292/fer/Remyhtml/Slama5-2003-AmJEpidemiol.pdf
[37] Reproductive Malformation of the Male Offspring Following Maternal Exposure
to Estrogenic Chemicals - Proceedings of the Society for Experimental Biology
and Medicine 224:61-68 Jun00 http://www.mindfully.org/Pesticide/Maternal-Exposure-Repro-Malform.htm
[38] The Xenoestrogen Bisphenol A Induces Inappropriate Androgen Receptor
Activation and Mitogenesis in Prostatic Adenocarcinoma Cells - Molecular Cancer
Therapeutics May 2002 http://mct.aacrjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/1/7/515
[39] Sakaue, M, S Ohsako, R Ishimura, S Kurosawa, M Kurohmaru, Y Hayashi, Y
Aoki, J Yonemoto and C Tohyama. 2001. Bisphenol-A Affects Spermatogenesis in the
Adult Rat Even at a Low Dose. Journal of Occupational Health 43:185 -190.
[40] A Synthetic Antagonist for the Peroxisome Proliferator-activated Receptor
Inhibits Adipocyte Differentiation - J Biol Chem, Vol. 275, Issue 3, 1873-1877,
January 21, 2000. http://www.jbc.org/cgi/content/full/275/3/1873
[41] Rajapakse, N, D Ong and A Kortenkamp. 2001. Defining the Impact of Weakly
Estrogenic Chemicals on the Action of Steroidal Estrogens. Toxicological
Sciences 60: 296-304. http://www.mindfully.org/Pesticide/Estrogenic-Steroidal-EstrogensApr01.htm
[42] PPT presentation by James Tilton, PhD, Professor of Reproductive
Physiology, Department of Animal & Range Sciences, North Dakota State
University, Fargo, ND http://www.ndsu.nodak.edu/ndsu/jtilton/powerpointpresentations/gonadotropins.ppt
[43] Beverly S. Rubin et al. Perinatal Exposure to Low Doses of Bisphenol A
Affects Body Weight, Patterns of Estrous Cyclicity, and Plasma LH Levels.
Environmental Health Perspectives Volume 109, Number 7, July 2001 http://ehpnet1.niehs.nih.gov/members/2001/109p675-680rubin/rubin-full.html
[44] Email communication (9oct03) with Dr. Nicolas Olea, Dept. Radiologia y
Medicina Fisica, Facultad de Medicina, Universidad de Granada, Granada 18071,
Spain http://www.ugr.es/university.htm
[45] The Wingspread Statement on the Precautionary Principle Rachel's
Environment & Health News n.586, 19feb98 http://www.mindfully.org/Precaution/Precautionary-Principle-Rachels.htm
[46] A comparison of plastic and plankton in the North Pacific central gyre -
Marine Pollution Bulletin, v.42, n.12, Dec01 http://www.mindfully.org/Plastic/Moore-North-Pacific-Central-Gyre.htm
[47] Email from Charles Moore, Director of the Algalita Marine research
Foundation.
[48] I am an advisor to the Algalita Marine Research Foundation (AMRF) in Long
Beach, CA www.algalita.org
[49] Plastic Resin Pellets as a Transport Medium for Toxic Chemicals in the
Marine Environment - Environ. Sci. Technol. 2001, 35, 318-324 http://www.mindfully.org/Plastic/Pellets-Transport-Medium.htm
Following is the ballot language of Constitutional Amendment A as it
will appear on the 2004 General Election ballot:
The adoption of this amendment eliminates a maximum on the amount of revenues rebated from school districts with
assessed valuations exceeding statewide averages.
For a complete copy of Senate Enrolled Joint Resolution 2,
original Senate Joint Resolution 6, 2003 General Session,
please click here.
Like all internet formats, weblogs, also known as 'blogs', have developed many terms which may baffle newcomers. The Blogging glossary is a resource for people who want to decode and demystify the jargon they may encounter whilst cruising through the blogosphere.
Although this glossary does not purport to be exhaustive by any means, it is one of the most complete of its kind regarding blog terminology and it is periodically updated. Most of the terms herein really are in use but we must confess that a few are, shall we say, rather whimsical.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR
[Russ.,= self-publishing house]
·· = not in English link = Struck out blogs are on 'death watch' and may be removed soon unless updated.
1. noun. A link to a specific article in the archives of a blog, which will remain valid after the article is no longer listed on the blog's front page (i.e after it has archived).
2. noun. [Deprecated] A link in a blogroll (qv, sense 1).
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Lokomotive Hüpfburg
Hüpfburg "Lokomotive"
Zum Hüpfen Spielen und Spaß haben für bis zu 5 Kinder gleichzeitig, wobei die Kinder nicht älter als 6 Jahre sein sollten. Sehr stabile Hüpfburg mit kleinem Eingangsbereich damit kein Kind so schnell herausfällt.
Größe 3m x 3m x 2m Höhe dadurch für Innenbereich geeignet,Strombedarf 220 V 10 A - Dauergebläse wird mitgeliefert.,Für Selbstabholer: Transport unkompliziert mit großem Kombi möglich, wiegt ca. 50 kg
Sie möchten sich die Lokomotive gern als Video ansehen - Hier Klicken !
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Puppies for Sale, Dogs for Sale
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Draft Norms on the Responsibilities of Transnational Corporations and Other Business Enterprises with Regard to Human Rights
Draft Norms on
the Responsibilities of Transnational Corporations and Other Business Enterprises
with Regard to Human Rights, E/CN.4/Sub.2/2003/12 (2003).
1.In its resolution 2001/3, the Sub-Commission
asked the Working Group on the Working Methods and Activities of Transnational
Corporations to “contribute to the drafting of relevant norms concerning human
rights and transnational corporations and other economic units whose activities
have an impact on human rights.”(U.N. Doc. E/CN.4/Sub.2/RES/2001/3)In response to that request and a previous, similar request in resolution
1998/8, the Working Group prepared the Draft Norms of Responsibilities of
Transnational Corporations and Other Business Enterprises with Regard to Human
Rights. (E/CN.4/Sub.2/2002/13, annex)
2.In its resolution 2002/8 of 14 August
2002 the Sub-Commission requested that the Working Group’s report (E/CN.4/Sub.2/2002/13),
and the annexed Draft Norms be widely circulated in the expectation that comments
will be taken into account when the draft is considered by the Working Group
at its meetings during the Sub-Commission’s fifty-fifth session in July-August
2003, as well as by the Sub-Commission, and “in the further expectation that
the working group will submit a draft in the light of comments already received
and to be received by the Sub-Commission for plenary consideration at the
fifty-fifth session.”
3.In its resolution 2002/8, the Sub-Commission
also requested that the Working Group, and in particular the authors of the
Draft Commentary for the Norms on the Responsibilities of Transnational Corporations
and Other Business Enterprises with Regard to Human Rights [Draft Commentary]
continue working on the Draft Norms and Draft Commentary, so that the Commentary
may serve as a reference for the practical interpretation and further development
of the Draft Norms and may be submitted to the Working Group and to the Sub-Commission
at the fifty-fifth session in July-August 2003.
4.Various versions of the Draft Norms were
disseminated as widely as possible, so as to encourage governments, intergovernmental
organizations, nongovernmental organizations, transnational corporations,
other business enterprises, unions, and other interested parties to provide
any suggestions, observations, or recommendations.The Working Group received a number of comments
as a result of these requests and also received useful comments at a seminar
6-7 March 2003 at the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, OHCHR
- Palais Wilson, Geneva, Switzerland.All
of the comments were considered at a meeting of the Working Group on 8 March
2003.The present version takes into
account all of the comments received by the Working Group and represents a
consensus of the Working Group in the expectation that the draft and other
proposals will be discussed at the public meetings of the Working Group to
be held in connection with the 55th session of the Sub-Commission
and in the further expectation that the Working Group will submit the Norms
for consideration by the Sub-Commission’s 55th session 28 July
– 15 August 2003 at the Palais des Nations, Geneva, Switzerland.
NORMS ON THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF TRANSNATIONAL
CORPORATIONS AND OTHER BUSINESS ENTERPRISES WITH REGARD TO HUMAN RIGHTS
PREAMBLE
Bearing in mind the principles and obligations under the United Nations Charter, in particular
the preamble and Articles 1, 2, 55, and 56, inter alia, to promote universal respect for, and observance of, human
rights and fundamental freedoms,
Recalling that
the Universal Declaration of Human Rights proclaims a common standard of achievement
for all peoples and all nations, to the end that Governments, other organs
of society, and individuals shall strive by teaching and education to promote
respect for human rights and freedoms and by progressive measures to secure
their universal and effective recognition and observance, including equal
rights of women and men and the promotion of social progress and better standards
of life in larger freedom,
Recognizing
that even though States have the primary responsibility to promote, secure the
fulfilment of, respect, ensure respect of, and protect human rights, transnational corporations
and other business enterprises, as organs of society, are also responsible
for promoting and securing the human rights set forth in the Universal Declaration
of Human Rights,
Realizing that
transnational corporations and other business enterprises, their officers,
and their workers are further obligated to respect generally recognized responsibilities
and norms in United Nations treaties and other international instruments such
as theConvention on the Prevention
and Punishment of Genocide; the Convention Against Torture and Other Forms
of Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment; the Slavery Convention
and the Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery, the Slave Trade,
and Institutions and Practices Similar to Slavery; the International Convention
on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination; the Convention on
the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women; the International
Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights; the International Covenant
on Civil and Political Rights; the Convention on the Rights of the Child;
the four Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949 and two Additional Protocols
for the protection of victims of war; the Declaration
on the Right and Responsibility of Individuals, Groups and Organs of Society
to Promote and Protect Universally Recognized Human Rights and Fundamental
Freedoms; the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court; the United
Nations Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime; the Convention on
Biological Diversity; the International Convention on Civil Liability for
Oil Pollution Damage; the Convention on Civil Liability for Damage Resulting
from Activities Dangerous to the Environment; the Rio Declaration on the Environment
and Development; the World Summit on Sustainable Development Plan of Development;
the International Code of Marketing of Breast-milk Substitutes of the World
Health Assembly (WHA); the Ethical Criteria for Medical Drug Promotion, and
Health for All Policy for the twenty-first century of the World Health Organization
(WHO); theUnited Nations Education,
Scientific, and Cultural Organization Convention Against Discrimination in
Education; conventions and recommendations of the International Labour Organization
(ILO); the Convention and Protocol relating to the Status of Refugees; the
African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights; the American Convention on Human
Rights; the European Convention on Human Rights; the Charter on Fundamental
Rights of the European Union; the Convention on Combating Bribery of Foreign
Public Officials in International Business Transactions of the Organization
for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD); and other instruments,
Taking into account the standards set forth in the International Labour Organization Tripartite
Declaration of Principles Concerning Multinational Enterprises and Social
Policy, and the ILO Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work,
Aware of the
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development Guidelines for Multinational
Enterprises and its Committee on International Investment and Multinational
Enterprises;
Further aware of the U.N. Global Compact
initiative which challenges business leaders to “embrace and enact” nine basic
principles with respect to human rights, including labour rights and the environment,
Consciousof
the ILO Committee on International Investment and Multinational Enterprises;
the interpretation of standards by the ILO
Governing Body Sub-Committee on Multinational Enterprises of the Committee
on Legal Issues and International Labour Standards, the ILO Committee of Experts,
the Conference Committee on the Application of Standards, and the Declaration
Expert-Advisors; as well as the ILO Committee on Freedom of Association which
has named business enterprises implicated in States’ failure to comply with
ILO Conventions No. 87 concerning the Freedom of Association and Protection
of the Right to Organize and No. 98 concerning the Application of the Principles
of the Right to Organize and Bargain Collectively, and seeking to supplement
and assist their efforts to encourage transnational corporations and other
business enterprises to protect human rights,
[Further conscious of the Commentary for the Norms on the Responsibilities of Transnational
Corporations and Other Business Enterprises with Regard to Human Rights and
finding it a useful interpretation and elaboration of the standards contained
in the Norms,]
Taking note of global trends which have increased the influence of transnational corporations
and other business enterprises – and particularly transnational corporations
-- on the economies of most countries and in international economic relations;
and the growing number of other business enterprises which operate across
national boundaries in a variety of arrangements resulting in economic activities
beyond the actual capacities of any one national system,
Noting that
transnational corporations and other business enterprises have the capacity
to foster economic well-being, development, technological improvement, and
wealth as well as have the capacity to cause deleterious human rights impacts
on the lives of individuals through their core business practices and operations,
including employment practices, environmental policies, relationships with
suppliers and consumers, interactions with governments, and other activities,
Noting also that
new international human rights issues and concerns are continually emerging
and that transnational corporations and other business enterprises often are
related to these issues and concerns, such that further standard-setting and
implementation are required at this time and in the future,
Acknowledging the
universality, indivisibility, interdependence, andinterrelatedness of human rights, including the right to development,
that entitles every human person and all peoples to participate in; contribute
to; and enjoy economic, social, cultural, and political development in which
all human rights and fundamental freedoms can be fully realized,
Reaffirming
that transnational corporations and other business enterprises, their officers,
and their workers have, inter alia, human rights obligations and responsibilities and that these human rights
norms will contribute to the making and development of international law as
to their responsibilities and obligations,
Solemnly proclaims these Norms on the Responsibilities of Transnational Corporations and Other Business Enterprises
with Regard to Human Rights and urges that every effort be made so that they
become generally known and respected:
A.General Obligations
1.States have the primary responsibility to promote, secure the
fulfilment of, respect, ensure respect of, and protect human rights recognised in international as well
as national law, including assuring that transnational corporations and other
business enterprises respect human rights.Within their respective spheres of activity and influence, transnational
corporations and other business enterprises have the obligation to promote,
secure the fulfilment of, respect, ensure respect of, and protect human rights recognized in international as well
as national law.
B.Right to Equal Opportunity
and Non-Discriminatory Treatment
2.Transnational corporations and other business enterprises shall ensure
equality of opportunity and treatment, as provided in the relevant
international instruments and national legislation as well as international
human rights law,
for the purpose of eliminating discrimination based on race, colour, sex,
language, religion, political opinion, national or social origin, social status,
indigenous status, disability, age (except for children who may be given greater
protection), or other status of the individual unrelated to the inherent
requirements to perform the job, or complying with special measures designed to overcome past discrimination
against certain groups.
C.Right to Security of Persons
3.Transnational corporations and other business enterprises shall not
engage in nor benefit from war crimes; crimes against humanity; genocide;
torture; forced disappearance; forced or compulsory labour; hostage-taking;
extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions; other violations of humanitarian
law; and other international crimes against the human person as defined by
international law, in particular human rights and humanitarian law.
4.Security arrangements for transnational corporations and other business
enterprises shall observe international human rights norms as well as the
laws and professional standards of the country or countries in which they
operate.
D.Rights of Workers
5.Transnational corporations and other business enterprises shall not
use forced or compulsory labour as forbidden by the relevant international
instruments and national legislation as well as international human rights
and humanitarian
law.
6.Transnational corporations and other business enterprises shall respect
the rights of children to be protected from economic exploitation as forbidden
by the relevant international instruments and national legislation as well
as international human rights and humanitarian law.
7.Transnational corporations and other business
enterprises shall provide a safe and healthy working environment as set forth
in relevant international instruments and national legislation as well as
international human rights and humanitarianlaw.
8.Transnational corporations and other business
enterprises shall provide workers with remuneration that ensures an adequate
standard of living for them and their families.Such remuneration shall take due account of
their needs for adequate living conditions with a view towards progressive
improvement.
9.Transnational corporations and other business
enterprises shall ensure the freedom of association and effective recognition
of the right to collective bargaining by protecting the right to establish
and, subject only to the rules of the organization concerned, to join organizations
of their own choosing without distinction, previous authorization, or interference,
for the protection of their employment interests and for other collective
bargaining purposes as provided in national
legislation and the relevant ILO conventions.
E.Respect
for National Sovereignty and Human Rights
10.Transnational corporations and other business enterprises shall recognize
and respect applicable norms of international
law; national laws; regulations; administrative practices; the rule of law;
the public interest; development objectives; social, economic, and cultural
policies including transparency, accountability, and prohibition of corruption;
and authority of the countries in which the enterprises operate.
11.Transnational corporations and other business
enterprises shall not offer, promise, give, accept, condone, knowingly benefit
from, or demand a bribe or other improper advantage.Nor shall they be solicited or expected to
give a bribe or other improper advantage to any government, public official,
candidate for elective post, any member of the armed forces or security forces,
or any other individual or organization.Transnational corporations and other business enterprises shall refrain
from any activity which supports, solicits, or encourages States or any other
entities to abuse human rights.They
shall further seek to ensure that the goods and services they provide will
not be used to abuse human rights.
12.Transnational corporations and other business
enterprises shall respect civil, cultural, economic, political, and social
rights, and contribute to their realization, in particular the rights to development;
adequate food and drinking water; the highest attainable standard
of physical and mental health; adequate housing; privacy; education; freedom
of thought, conscience, and religion; and freedom of opinion and expression;
and refrain from actions which obstruct or impede
the realization
of those rights.
F.Obligations
with regard to Consumer Protection
13.Transnational corporations and other business
enterprises shall act in accordance with fair business, marketing, and advertising
practices and shall take all necessary steps to ensure the safety and quality
of the goods and services they provide, including observance of the precautionary
principle.Nor shall they produce,
distribute, market, or advertise potentially harmful or harmful products for
use by consumers.
G.Obligations
with regard to Environmental Protection
14.Transnational corporations and other business
enterprises shall carry out their activities in accordance with national laws,
regulations, administrative practices, and policies relating to the preservation
of the environment of the countries in which they operate as well as in accordance
with relevant international agreements, principles, objectives, responsibilities,
and standards with regard to the environment as well as human rights, public
health and safety, bioethics, and the precautionary principle; and shall generally
conduct their activities in a manner contributing to the wider goal of sustainable
development.
H.General Provisions
of Implementation
15.As an initial step towards implementing these
Norms each transnational corporation or other business enterprise shall adopt,
disseminate, and implement internal rules of operation in compliance with
the Norms.Further, they shall periodically report on and take other
measures fully to implement the Norms and to provide at least for the prompt
implementation of the protections set forth in the Norms.Each transnational corporation or other business
enterprise shall apply and incorporate these Norms in their contracts or other
arrangements and dealings with contractors, subcontractors, suppliers, licensees,
distributors, or natural or other legal persons that enter into any agreement
with the transnational corporation or business enterprise in order to ensure
respect for and implementation of the Norms.
16.Transnational corporations and other businesses
enterprises shall be subject to periodic monitoring and verification by United
Nations, other international, and national mechanisms, already in existence
or yet to be created, regarding application of the Norms.This monitoring shall be transparent, independent,
and take into account input from stakeholders (including nongovernmental organizations)
and as a result of complaints of violations of these Norms.Further, transnational corporations and other businesses enterprises
shall conduct periodic evaluations concerning the impact of their own activities
on human rights under these Norms.
17.States should establish and reinforce the necessary
legal and administrative framework for assuring that the Norms and other relevant
national and international laws are implemented by transnational corporations
and other business enterprises.
18.Transnational corporations and other business
enterprises shall provide prompt, effective, and adequate reparation to those
persons, entities, and communities that have been adversely affected by failures
to comply with these Norms through, inter alia, reparations, restitution, compensation, and rehabilitation
for any damage done or property taken.In connection with determining damages, and in all other respects,
these Norms shall be enforced by national courts and/or international tribunals
if appropriate.
19.Nothing in these Norms shall be construed as
diminishing, restricting, or adversely affecting the human rights obligations
of States under national and international law. Nor shall they be construed as diminishing, restricting, or adversely
affecting more protective human rights norms.Nor shall they be construed as diminishing,
restricting, or adversely affecting other obligations or responsibilities
of transnational corporations and other business enterprises in fields other
than human rights.
I. Definitions
20.The term “transnational corporation” refers
to an economic entity operating in more than one country or a cluster of economic
entities operating in two or more countries – whatever their legal form, whether
in their home country or country of activity, and whether taken individually
or collectively.
21.The phrase “other business enterprise” includes
any business entity, regardless of the international or domestic nature of
its activities, including a transnational corporation; the corporate, partnership,
or other legal form used to establish the business entity; and the nature
of the ownership of the entity.These
Norms shall be presumed to apply, as a matter of practice, if the business
enterprise has any relation with a transnational corporation, the impact of
its activities is not entirely local, or the activities involve violations
of the right to security as indicated in paragraphs three and four.
22.The term “stakeholder” includes stockholders,
other owners, workers, and their representatives, as well as any other individual
or group that is affected by the activities of transnational corporations
or other business enterprises.The
term “stakeholder” shall be interpreted functionally in light of the objectives
of these Norms and include indirect stakeholders when their interests are
or will be substantially affected by the activities of the transnational corporation
or business enterprise.In addition to parties directly affected by the activities of business
enterprises, stakeholders can include parties which are indirectly affected
by the activities of transnational corporations or other business enterprises
such as consumer groups, customers, governments, neighbouring communities,
indigenous peoples and communities,nongovernmental organizations, public and private lending institutions,
suppliers, trade associations, and others.
23. The phrases “internationally
recognized human rights” and “international human rights” include civil, cultural,
economic, political, and social rights, as set forth in the International
Bill of Human Rights and other human rights treaties, as well as the right
to development and rights recognized by international humanitarian law, international
refugee law, international labour law, and other relevant instruments adopted
within the United Nations system.
Even when the weather is warm, do not forget that
in many areas the water can be very, very cold. A sudden unexpected wake or other
"unbalancing event" can land you in the frigid water. Although the possibility
of drowning from falling into the water is a real threat, so too is hypothermia.
Hypothermia is a condition that exists when the
body’s temperature drops below ninety-five degrees. This can be caused by exposure to
water or air. The loss of body heat results in loss of dexterity, loss of consciousness,
and eventually loss of life. A few minutes in cold water makes it very difficult to swim,
even to keep yourself afloat. In addition, a sudden, unexpected entry into cold water may
cause a reflexive "gasp" allowing water to enter the lungs. Drowning can be
almost instantaneous.
Your body can cool down 25 times faster in cold
water than in air. If you examine the chart below you will see that survival time can be
as short as 15 minutes. Water temperature, body size, amount of body fat, and movement in
the water all play a part in cold water survival. Small people cool faster than large
people and children cool faster than adults.
PFDs can help you stay alive longer in cold water.
You can float without using energy and they cover part of your body thereby providing some
protection from the cold water. When boating in cold water you should consider using a
flotation coat or deck-suit style PFD. They cover more of your body and provide even more
protection.
Hypothermia does not only occur in extremely cold
water. It can, and does, occur even in the warmer waters of Florida and the Bahamas.
Hypothermia Chart
If
the Water
Temp. (F) is:
Exhaustion
or
Unconsciousness
Expected
Time
of Survival is:
32.5
Under
15 min.
Under
15 - 45 min.
32.5
- 40
15
- 30 min.
30
- 90 min
40
- 50
30
- 60 min.
1 -
3 hours
50
- 60
1 -
2 hours
1 -
6 hours
60
- 70
2 -
7 hours
2 -
40 hours
70
- 80
3 -
12 hours
3 -
Indefinite
Over
80
Indefinite
Indefinite
Hypothermia is progressive - the
body passes through several stages before an individual lapses into an unconscious state.
The extent of a person’s hypothermia can be determined from the following:
1. Mild Hypothermia - the person
feels cold, has violent shivering and slurred speech.
2. Medium Hypothermia - the
person has a certain loss of muscle control, drowsiness, incoherence, stupor and
exhaustion.
3. Severe Hypothermia - the
person collapses, may be unconscious and shows signs of respiratory distress and/or
cardiac arrest probably leading to death.
Conservation of heat is the foremost objective for
a person in the water. To accomplish this, limit body movement. Don't swim unless you can
reach a nearby boat or floating object. Swimming lowers your body temperature and even
good swimmers can drown in cold water.
If you can pull yourself partially out of the
water - do so. The more of your body that is out of the water (on top of an over-turned
boat or anything that floats), the less heat you will lose. Especially keep your head out
of the water if at all possible - this will lessen heat loss and increase survival time.
Wearing
a PFD in the water is a key to survival. A PFD allows you float with a minimum of energy
expended and allows you to assume the heat escape lessening position - H. E. L. P.
This position, commonly referred to as the fetal
position, permits you to float effortlessly and protect those areas most susceptible to
heat loss including the armpits, sides of the chest, groin, and the back of the knees. If
you find yourself in the water with others, you should huddle as a group to help lessen
heat loss.
Treatment of hypothermia can be accomplished by
gradually raising the body temperature back to normal. Re-establishing body temperature
can be as simple as sharing a sleeping bag or blanket with another individual, or applying
warm moist towels to the individual’s neck, sides of chest and groin. Remove wet
clothes as they inhibit heat retention. A warm bath could be used for mild to medium
hypothermia, gradually increasing the temperature. Keep arms and legs out of the water and
do not attempt to raise the body temperature too quickly.
Do not massage the victim’s arms and legs.
Massage will cause the circulatory system to take cold blood from the surface into the
body’s core, resulting in further temperature drop. Do not give alcohol, which causes
loss of body heat, or coffee and tea which are stimulants (and cause vasodilation) and may
have the same effect as massage.
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There are frequently articles in Usenet news group asking about the Ordnance
Survey national grid in Britain.
Questions like :
What is the OS reference system?
How do I convert references to and from latitude and
longitude?
How do I set my GPS receiver?
Can someone give waypoint information for cities in
Britain?
Where can I buy UTM maps for Britain?
These notes and the accompanying software are an attempt to give background
information which will either answer those questions directly or show
an alternative way of working which is more helpful in Britain.
They have been compiled as a special thanks to all those newsgroup contributors
out there who have been so helpful to me in the past.
Britain is covered by a series of maps produced by an organisation called
the Ordnance Survey (OS). As the name suggests, the organisation
has military origins but it is now an independent company. These maps
are the natural choice for all sorts of activity from walking and motoring
to land surveying. They are so well established that OS references
are given in publications describing the location of campsites, youth hostels
and features on walks etc rather than longitude and latitude. The
maps are readily available in bookshops, newsagents and outdoor pursuit shops
across Britain and many ‘tourist traps’ stock a few local maps. They
cover mainland England, Scotland, Wales, the Isle of Man, the Orkney and
the Shetland Islands but do not cover Ireland, Northern Ireland or the Channel
Islands.
The scales published include 4cm/25Km for route planning, 2cm/Km for motoring
or walking and 4cm/Km for walking. More detailed maps for surveying
and land ownership matters are also available. The OS web site is
http://www.ordsvy.gov.uk
and has lots of interesting information. The email address
for customer service is custinf@ordsurv.gov.uk.
Road atlases published by the AA (Automobile Association) are also based
on the Ordnance Survey grid, are widely available and can often be found
at discount prices so shop around. At one time they included
the 100Km square identifying letters both in the index and on the maps but
this was discontinued in the mid 1990s when the letters were totally omitted.
I am pleased to note that the year 2000 edition (on sale from Sept 1999)
has reintroduced the letters on the pages but not in the index.
You will also find atlases such as Collins which seem to be based on their
own grid system.
Harvey's publish maps covering the the more popular walking areas as well
as many long distance paths. They have 1:25,000 scale (4cm/Km), conform
to the OS grid and are plasticised so are waterproof. These are produced
especially for the walking public so place less stress on land ownership
boudaries which do obscure the OS maps in places and are very clear as a
result. See http://www.harveymaps.co.uk
You may also find Bartholomew maps for walkers. These have essentially
the same co-ordinate system as OS but a modified reference system.
They have references which omit the two letter square of the OS system
but give eastings and northings in metres from the OS false origin.
See http://www.bartholomewmaps.com
The visitor to Britain will find that detailed maps based on longitude
and latitude or on UTM are impossible to obtain (I have never seen them!).
Whilst longitude and latitude are shown on OS maps, they are only shown
on the margins of the map and are very clumsy to use compared with the OS
reference with its regular 1Km or 10Km grid lines which I would encourage
the visitor to use.
The Ordnance Survey of Great Britain is a Transverse Mercator projection.
This is a particularly ideal choice for a tall thin area like Britain
(or Chile!) in that distances, areas and angles are well mapped with minimal
error. Whilst Transverse Mercator is also used in USA and USSR
and for UTM it has limitations when used for areas with long east/west
distances (like the Soviet Union) which force the cartographer to segment
the area with discontinuities which are quite absent with the OS system
across Britain.
The OS projection is based on a true origin at 49 degrees North, 2 degrees
West which is near the Channel Islands.
From this origin, a square grid is imposed on top of the ‘converging’
lines of longitude and the ‘curved’ lines of latitude. Points are located
by measuring distances in metres east and north from this true origin.
Since this process will introduce distortion as you move away from the central
longitude of 2 degrees west, a scale factor of 0.9996012717 is introduced
which reduces this distortion - two lines of longitude with zero distortion
are thus created. Incidentally, this is very slightly different to
the factor of 0.9996 used for UTM. Furthermore, to eliminate the inconvenience
of negative values of easting, the concept of a false origin is introduced.
A value of 400000 (400 Km) is added to eastings and 100000 (100 Km) subtracted
from northings so placing this false origin near the Isles of Scilly off
Lands End in the south west. The model uses the Airy spheroid,
OSGB of 1936. Readers wishing to delve very deeply into the topic
of map projections are referred to a publication by a former colleague at
the University in Swansea, South Wales:
Coordinate Systems and Map Projections, D H Maling,
Pergamon Press, ISBN 0-08-037234-1.
A full reference which is unique across Britain will consist of two letters
followed by (usually) six digits giving resolution to 100 metres eg (SS
599 939). Eight digits are needed for 10 metre resolution and 10 digits
for one metre. The two letters indicate the 100Km by 100Km square
in which the point lies and are often omitted since this is usually unambiguous.
The first letter gives the 500Km by 500Km square. 25 different
letters (omitting I) could be given here though only four actually
map to the covered land areas: S for south west, T for south east, N for
the north and Scotland and H for the Shetland Islands. The second
letter gives the 100Km by 100Km square within that and is laid out with
A in the North West corner, Z in the South East thus:
ABCDE FGHJK LMNOP QRSTU VWXYZ
The digits should be split into two groups - in the above example of
SS 599 939 the point is 59.9 Km east and 93.9 Km north of the south west
corner of square SS.
The measurement of a reference is made easier by the regular grid of squares
representing 1Km (or 10Km for motoring maps) on the ground and printed on
every map. The references of those grid lines are shown on the margins
of the map and, on some, at intervals across the map. To determine
a reference on a map with a 1Km grid:
note the letters square from a description in the margins of the
map or overprinted in the corners (eg SS)
read off the two digit eastings number at the bottom or top of
the map against the vertical line to the left of the point (eg 59)
estimate the horizontal distance in tenths from the line (eg
9)
read off the two digit northings number against the side of the
map (eg 93)
estimate tenths north from this (9)
The resulting reference SS 599939 resolves to 100 metres and the procedure
is described on the margin of every OS map. If you wish you can
use a centimetre ruler (there is one on my compass) to help you achieve
more accuracy or you could invest a pound and buy a plastic scale called
a romer. Be warned though that a romer is transparent and easily
lost - mine vanished a week after I purchased it and hid for a year but
has been well behaved since! Note that dividers or special
scales are not needed as I understand they are with some US maps.
I can recommend an inexpensive index to the maps which is FREE in good
bookshops and which describes the grid and the coverage of each map.
Note there was a misprint on the back of the 1997 edition - Kingston on
Hull is in square TA and not in square T.
The margins of the maps also have 'ticks' and blue crosses on the body
of the map to show latitude and longitude. Note that these are relative
to the OS 1936 datum and not WGS84 which is becoming increasingly standard
acoss the world. Also note that the lines of latitude and longitude
are both curved and are not parallel to the printed OS grid.
You will find references to three different norths in the margin of OS
maps. True north is just that - a direct line to the North Pole and
the Earth's spin axis. Grid North is as defined by the grid
lines on the map which cannot match true north because the map is a flat
representation of a curved surface. Magnetic North is the direction
indicated by a magnetic compass; it does not coincide with true or grid north
and wanders slowly from year to year.
The north-south grid lines point west of true north for areas west of
the true origin at 2 degrees west, and east for those to the east but this
difference is only about 0.75 degrees per degree of longitude. For
practical purposes though true north is not very relevant and we are only
interested in grid and magnetic north, the difference between which varies
uniformly across the country with only small anomalies. This
difference is small compared with that in many parts of the world but not
quite small enough to be ignored - it was 4 degrees west of grid in Wales
in 1996, decreasing by a degree every 8 years. I hope to be still walking
when it's zero! Whittaker's Almanac documents this variation
in Britain, is published annually and should be found in the reference section
of any public library.
This difference between magnetic and grid bearings is called magnetic
variation in Britain and in nautical circles but declination in US.
Neither term is actually printed in the margins of the OS maps.
To add to the confusion, declination is used to describe the latitude
of stars universally (forgive the pun!) and, in Britain, the vertical angle
between the horizontal and the earth’s magnetic field (magnetic dip in the
US?).
If contemplating use of a global positioning system (GPS) receiver in
Britain it is almost essential that the OS format is catered for.
Garmin receivers
In the case of the Garmin 38, 45, 12, 12XL , eTrex family you should
set 'British Grid' for format on the navigation setup page. Datum
should be set to 'Ord Srvy GB' to avoid errors of up to hundreds of metres.
Note that the Garmin holds references in some unpublished internal format
but applies appropriate conversions to keyboard input and screen output
to reflect currently set format and datum. I choose to
set my GPS for metric measurements rather than statute for walking since
the maps have a 1Km grid, but tend to use statute for motoring to match the
odometer in the car and the road signs, both of which use miles!
'Auto magnetic' for north gives good results and complements my trusty Silva
compass, and that was how I set my GPS when I first used it.
More recently though I have found it much more convenient to set the GPS
to 'Grid' and I then have consistency between GPS, map and the protractor
scale on the compass. Magnetic variation is then corrected for when
I use the compass by pointing the red end of the needle to 4 degrees west
on the scale instead of zero. This is very easily done by pointing
it to the bottom left corner of the N printed on the bezel. This avoids
having to remember whether to add or subtract the variation, is the same action
whether working from GPS, map or by taking a compass bearing, and is much
quicker. I can recommend it!
The OS reference is given by a Garmin with a resolution of one metre (but
not to that accuracy!) - eg.
SJ 12345 BNG 67890
This example shows we are in the 100Km square SJ some 12345 metres
east of the square origin and 67890 metres north. The BNG refers
(presumably) to British National Grid. When inputting the
grid reference of a waypoint, note that the receiver requires the two letters
and five digits of eastings on one line, and five digits of northings on
a separate line.
Magellan Blazer 12
Paul Slootweg has kindly sent
information on the Blazer 12 GPS system:
"This GPS received includes support for the OSGB grid system. To
configure, simply use the 'menu' button and select the 'Setup' menu.
It will then offer the option to select 'COORD SYS' (coordinate system)
and choose the OSGB option. Then select the 'MAP DATUM' and
choose GRB36 (OSGB)
If you pick OSGB it won't allow any other datum than GRB36, which avoids
the possibility of positional errors. It imposes similar restrictions
with
some of the other grid systems to ensure the positional data is correct.
The unit also allows the selection of magnetic or true north.
The display will show OS references
SJ 1234
6789
consisting of 2 letters and 2 groups of 4 digits - i.e. 10m resolution,
which seems more than enough for my use."
Paul believes that the same settings will apply to other Magellan systems.
The AA road atlas includes a reference to all cities, towns and villages
which is good to the nearest kilometre and is fine for motoring purposes,
but unfortunately the grid square letters are omitted. The
motoring maps published by the Ordnance Survey office give the full reference
and are slightly dearer but still good value.
Another useful site was http://www.ITatWork.freeserve.co.uk/waypoints.htm
where John Seymour had a listing of over 5000 waypoints in Britain including
places to eat, motorway services and junctions, car parks, petrol stations,
munros, etc., and which were suitable for upload to a GPS receiver. Sadly
they no longer seem available.
There is excellent information on walks in the Lake District with good
photos compiled by John Dawson which is updated fairly regularly at
http://www.lakedistrictwalks.com/
With an OS map and a GPS system which will display OS references there
should be no need for conversion of OS reference to latitude and longitude
or vice-versa - simply 'think OS' - the references are very
easy to read off the map scales. I can think of only two instances
when one might need the conversion:
when writing a program to handle data from a GPS which is in latitude
and longitude. I still want to work in OSGB format.
when relating the location of points in Britain to those outside
(eg Where is Sofia? Where is Sirius?).
Conversion routines are available as functions in Microsoft Excel (tm) spreadsheet format These perform
conversion between longitude/latitude in OS 1936 or WGS84 datum, OS references
and eastings and northings as well as giving additional related functions.
Full examples are given. With Excel in the office XP suite you
will need to lower security levels before loading this.
This code was based on an original version written in Quickbasic
available either in source form or
as a DOS executable which is essentially obsolete
now. Despite any references to the contrary, the Quickbasic version
assumes latitude and longitude with respect to OS 1936 datum.
Accuracy of these routines are well within that of a consumer quality
GPS, even without selective availability, well within one's ability to read
a 1:25000 map, and probably within the limits of stability of paper maps.
I have found that they agree, invariably to the exact metre, with the conversions
performed by my old Garmin 38 GPS, and Garmin confirm that the accuracy
of their conversions is about 1 metre. This meets my recreational needs.
They have not been designed, written or validated for professional work,
though they are in use by a borough in Kent for plotting their drains!
Implementations of the code for other platforms are referenced below.
The routines use the algorithms published by Derek Maling, though I must
claim credit for any errors in the implementation! My gratitude
to Steve South, Steve Rouse and John McCrae for their assistance and encouragement
with implementing and testing the datum transformation code.
I frequently receive requests for this code written in C or C++.
Russ Hore has done
some work in converting the code and might be able to help if you email
him. Chuck Gantz has also
produced some C code which we are hosting for him
in a zip file but I have not examined this. Please email
any comments directly to Chuck.
Russ has also provided an online web convertor which does latitude and
longitude to OS reference at http://www.russ-hore.co.uk/
The information and the program code given are believed to be accurate
and the opinions are my own, though no warranties or guarantees are given.
Liability will not be accepted for any way in which this information or
the code is utilised.
Please report any inaccuracies, alternative views or suggested improvements
to this document or the program - I may be reached via email but no more
spam please to me or any other contributors. The email address, as
from Mon 26 Sept 2005, will be phil <dot> brady <at> bangor
<dot> ac <dot> uk.
My thanks go to the many contributors who have helped improve this document
and provided useful additional information, and the the University for
continuing to host these pages.
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Once
upon a time there was a place: Hotel Costes, and its music guru:
Stéphane Pompougnac. Two names definitely linked
to each other, as the music lovers all over the world have identified
the place to its famous series of compilations "mixed by
Stéphane Pompougnac". During all those years proposing
to all the hotel customers the best lounge music from each part
of the globe, Stéphane Pompougnac bult the musical history
of this Parisian place reputed for its hype and chic happenings,
bringing in a unique vibration countries and cultures as different
as USA, Russia, France, Brazil.
Born in Paris in April 1968, son of a psychotherapist and a dental
surgeon, nothing pointed to the makings of a DJ. But early on,
a fascination for different kinds of music had him playing pop,
rock, new wave… all the while pursuing his tourism studies.
The real trigger happened in the late 80s, when he discovered
house, long before the Chicago sound was even a reference.
In Paris, Stéphane started out at Café Costes,
at Queen, at Privilège, at Diable
des Lombards, and then
moved on to Les Bains, where he encountered Claude
Challes, who
broadened his music scope. And then one day he met up again with
Jean-Louis Costes, who asked him to mix music at his hotel restaurant.
This was back in 1997. Little by little, Stéphane started
leaving his musical mark at Hotel Costes. The customers, hooked
into his universe, asked him about his music and his mixing.
This sparked the idea of a compilation in order to spread in
the world the spirit of the Hôtel Costes, a mythic place
where baroque is woven into avant-garde, where at any moment
the muffled mood might go electric.
A trial shot turned into a master hit. The first compilation
is quickly became the undeniable reference for all the "places
compilations" that have been released following this success.
If the first compilation was a snapshot of the music played by
Stéphane at Hôtel Costes, now he wrote a complete
musical encyclopaedia in seven volumes, seven successful and
intense compilations. Now, time has come to visit again the seven
floors of the hotel, with a best of compilations including all
the titles that have made the history of the compilations.
Today, the Hotel Costes have already spun round the earth, drawing
almost two millions passengers aboard this ship of Parisian nights,
mesmerized by the stories told by Stéphane Pompougnac.
Like any writer, he has ripped up his work countless times, rewritten
it, combed through it, wild about some kind of music, of mood,
only to then give it up, already lured by others. This has nothing
to do with the track-gluing and sound-layering that is about
surfing on a musical trend or a rhythmic whim, or even a music
opportunism that surfs on the current beat. Stéphane Pompougnac
has mixed, the way others might take up the pen, in order to
write a story, but not just any story: that of his life, in his
own words. Each track marks a moment of his life, a snapshot
of an intense romantic encounter, an infatuation, or a fantasy,
awakening the senses, all the better for bodies to move.
This is the real Stéphane Pompougnac, seen as an “urban
neo-aristocrat” in Italy, as a “French signature
DJ” in England, as Hotel Costes’ little prince turned “Baroque
Olympus” in Germany, and hailed worldwide as the icon of
New French Sophistication. Today he is DJing at Gucci, hopping
from Bristol (where he plays at Massive
Attack’s open bar)
to Rio, working with Madonna (he remixed “What
it feels like for a girl”), whirling Nicole
Kidman at Cannes for
the release of “Moulin Rouge” or performing at Cameron
Diaz’s restaurant in Miami, the Bamboo Bar. Mixing jet
lags and forever between planes…
He now looks at his trajectory with humour, feeling that this
whirlwind is a little to much. He gets away now and then from
the waves of hype by wooing beautiful women, who are a constant
inspiration for him, especially for his producing and composing.
He doesn’t want to get pegged under the heading of “DJ
lounge mixer”. That would be a far too narrow way of grasping
what he’s about.
Stpéhane Pompougnac is indeed a fulfil musician, composing
and producing his own songs as well as he can mix and producing
compilations.
A first album ("Living On The Edge"), released in 2003,
have been the right demonstration: 12 audacious tracks, breaking
with the compilations spirit, inviting first choice artists for
voices : from Michael Stipe(REM) to Clémentine, from
Cathy Battistessa to Juliette Oz, also with Yves
Montand's voice
on "Pour faire le portrait d'un oiseau".
Today, Stéphane Pompougnac is one of the most required
DJ, spreading the music "à la française" all
over the world.
And far from resting and looking at his success, side to the
Hôtel Costes compilations to which he still provide his
talents – the 8th edition will be released in September
2005 –, he is currently composing his second personal album
which should be released early in 2006.
The
16 best tracks of the Hotel Costes Compilation serie
with an exclusive remix of Madonna.
For
this 7th edition of Costes compilation, Stéphane
Pompougnac has been guided by his feeling and presents
an eclectic mix of exclusive tracks.
LIVING
ON THE EDGE - BY
STEPHANE POMPOUGNAC
Album - February 2004
After
six volumes of the famoust lounge compilations Hotel
Costes, Stephane Pompougnac releases his
first album "Living on the Edge".
From jazzy influencies, to bossa, break beat, pop rock,
house and even hip hop, he offers 12 original tracks
featuring Michael Stipe, rock singer of REM, Cathy
Battistessa and Clementine, a huge star
in Japan….
HOTEL
COSTES 6 - MIXED BY
STEPHANE POMPOUGNAC
Compilation - September 2003
After
five compilations and more than a million and fifty
thousand sales worldwide, the Hotel Costes serie
is more than ever the ultimate reference of parisian
luxury and sophistication. For this sixth volume, Stephane
Pompougnac has been inspired by eclectic tastes,
he gives us an impeccable and intimate mix of exclusive
tracks in the pure spirit of Hotel Costes.
SAKS FIFTH AVENUE - MIXED
BY STEPHANE POMPOUGNAC
Compilation - January 2003
Unparalleled for style, selection, and service, Saks Fifth Avenue features
the finest in women's and men's designer collections, sportswear, shoes,
accessories, cosmetics, fragrances, and jewelry. Currently, there are 62
stores in the USA, and now Saks Fifth Avenue releases its first compilation
worldwide mixed by the talented and so chic Stephane Pompougnac.
HÔTEL
COSTES 5 - MIXED
BY STEPHANE POMPOUGNAC
Compilation - November 2002
Do we still need to present the Hotel Costes compilations that have
already seduced more than a million aficionados around the world? With
more than an hour of exclusive tracks and rediscovered classics, Stéphane
Pompougnac makes Hotel Costes 5 the essential sonic accessory
HÔTEL COSTES
4 - MIXED
BY STEPHANE POMPOUGNAC
Compilation - 2001
“Hotel Costes 4” is a new variation of an out of the world encyclopaedia,
whose first three volumes have already spun round the earth, drawing over half
a million mesmerized passengers aboard this ship of Parisian nights.
HÔTEL COSTES
3 - MIXED
BY STEPHANE POMPOUGNAC
Compilation - 2000
After the success of the first two volumes "Costes" and "Costes
La Suite", the hotel's sound designer Stephane Pompougnac give
us "Costes, Etage 3", a long voluptuous elixir, wickedly
sweet and sweetly wicked with warm rythms, intoxicating sounds and the
famous cosy ambiance, so characteristic of the Costes trilogy.
COSTES
LA SUITE - MIXED BY STEPHANE POMPOUGNAC
Compilation - 1999
Second volume of the "Hotel Costes" series, "Costes
La Suite" plays 15 new pearls of lounge music featuring Cesaria
Evora, Mo'Horizons, De-Phazz, Pink Martini, Rollercone, I:Cube. More
than 78 minutes of pure pleasure, by Stephane Pompougnac.
COSTES
- MIXED BY STEPHANE POMPOUGNAC
Compilation - 1999
Once upon a time there was a mythic place in Paris, and its music guru: Stéphane
Pompougnac, linked more than ever to tell a story, first chapter of
a musical odyssey called “Hotel Costes”.
NEW ORLEANS -- It's a groundbreaking court decision that legal experts say will affect everyone: Police officers in Louisiana no longer need a search or arrest warrant to conduct a brief search of your home or business.Leaders in law enforcement say it will keep officers safe, but others argue it's a privilege that could be abused.The decision in United States v. Kelly Gould, No. 0230629cr0, was made March 24 by the New Orleans-based 5th Circuit Court of Appeals.The ruling stems from a lawsuit filed in Denham Springs in 2000, in which defendant Gould filed a motion to suppress information gleaned from a search of his home. The motion was granted by district court, and the government appealed this decision. The March 24 ruling by the 5th Circuit is an affirmation of that appeal.
In the case, the Livingston Parish Sheriff's Office was contacted on Oct. 17, 2000, by a Gould employee who told officers that Gould intended to kill two judges and unidentified police officers and to destroy telephone company transformers. The LPSO informed the East Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff's Office of the threats.A search of Gould's criminal history revealed several arrests and that he was "a convicted felon for violent charges," according to the Facts and Proceedings section of the 5th Circuit ruling.When officers went to question Gould, they were told he was asleep. The officers asked if they could look inside for Gould, and were allowed to enter.The officers testified that that they believed a search of the home was necessary to ensure their safety, given the allegations by Gould's employee and Gould's criminal history, according to the Facts and Proceedings section of the 5th Circuit ruling.Gould's bedroom door was ajar, and officers testified they peered inside and saw no one. Thinking Gould could be hiding, the officers looked in three closets. In one of the closets, the officers found three firearms, according to the Facts and Proceedings section of the 5th Circuit ruling.Gould was found hiding outside the home a few minutes later. He was taken into custody and questioned about the guns. The officers asked for and received Gould's consent to search the home, with Gould signing a waiver of search warrant. Gould subsequently was arrested for allegedly being a felon in possession of firearms.One judge, Judge Grady Jolly, said he concurred in part and dissented in part with the majority opinion. Judge Jerry Smith, however, completely disagreed with the majority ruling, saying: "I have no doubt that the deputy sheriffs believed that they were acting reasonably and with good intentions. But the old adage warns us that 'the road to hell is paved with good intentions.'"New Orleans Police Department spokesman Capt. Marlon Defillo said the new search power, which is effective immediately, will be used judiciously."We have to have a legitimate problem to be there in the first place, and if we don't, we can't conduct the search," Defillo said.But former U.S. Attorney Julian Murray said the ruling is problematic."I think it goes way too far," Murray said, noting that the searches can be performed if an officer fears for his safety.Defillo said he doesn't envision any problems in New Orleans."There are checks and balances to make sure the criminal justice system works in an effective manner," Defillo said.
Copyright 2004 by TheNewOrleansChannel.com. All rights reserved. This material may not be
published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Get the goods on where to start your shopping adventures. This internationally acclaimed shopping destination includes deluxe malls with hundreds of stores, classy European-style shopping centers, eclectic shopping districts in historic neighborhoods and bargain-filled outlet centers.
Clusters of Boutiques & Big Names •
Rice Village: Near Rice University and the Museum District, Rice Village shines
as one of the city’s oldest, best-loved shopping enclaves. The
Village Arcade is home to anchor stores like Gap, Banana Republic,
Express, Eddie Bauer and more. But it’s the unique boutiques
like Z. Bead, White Buffalo and La Taste, bars/clubs like
Gatsby and The Gingerman and the city’s best cluster
of Thai restaurants that grant the Village its eclectic personality.
River Oaks Shopping Center:
River Oaks offers top-notch shopping at stores such as Chico’s,
Talbot’s, J. Jill, upscale resale shops like Twice New,
home goods havens such as Events and Sur La Table, plus artsy
outposts such as Mad Potter (paint your own pottery) and Texas
Gallery make spending a day in River Oaks fun.
Highland Village:
This shopping center is a must-shop destination for home furnishings.
Explore Crate & Barrel, Williams-Sonoma, Pottery Barn, Z Gallerie,
West Elm, and more. You’ll also find fashion and beauty icons
such as Tootsies, lucy, Donald J. Pliner, Cole Haan, Joseph,
Kiehl’s Since 1851, Ann Taylor, Jos.A. Banks Clothiers, Harold Powell
and Lucky Brand Dungarees.
Uptown Park:
This European-style shopping village is lined with boutiques, fountains,
lavish landscaping and intimate gathering spots. Find fresh fashions at
BB1 Classic, Merrill & Watson, Runway Fashion Boutique, Todd’s
Place and others.
West Oaks Mall:
Located at the busy intersection of Hwy. 6 and Westheimer, West Oaks
Mall offers a true Texas shopping experience. This recently renovated
mall boasts 115 specialty stores, Alamo Drafthouse Cinema for
movies and pubstyle dining, a Children’s Soft Play Area,
Steve & Barry’s, and anchor stores Dillard’s, Foley’sand Sears. (281) 531-1332, www.shopwestoaksmall.com.
Unique Shopping Districts •
Harwin Drive:
Like New York’s Orchard
Street, this area boasts many stores selling
leather goods, jewelry, perfume and clothing
— some real and some faux, but most at
incredible prices. Don’t miss Charming
Charlie, the chic women’s accessory store
(corner of Savoy and Harwin) with musthave
handbags, silver jewelry, watches,
fashion jewelry, scarves and sunglasses.
Historic Houston Heights:
Antiques,
unique décor, vintage clothing, art galleries
and garden shops abound in this picturesque
neighborhood, boasting well-preserved
Victorian architecture along verdant
Heights Boulevard and Yale Street. Don’t
miss 19th Street’s multitude of shops.
Old Town Spring Shopping Village:
Shop for home décor,
art, antiques at more than 150 merchants in this enchanting
Victorian village north of Houston just off
I-45.
The Woodlands:
Surrounding the
picturesque Woodlands Waterway, the
deluxe Woodlands Mall offers traditional
mall shopping, while the nearby Market
Street area provides a scenic village
shop-and-stroll.
Much more than a Mall •
The Galleria:
The crown jewel of the Houston shopping, The Galleria features a
spacious layout, topped by atrium roof panels that add sunlight and
serenity to the bustling shopping scene. In addition to glamorous
shops such as CH Caorlina Hererra, Christian Dior, Sigrid Olsen,
Fendi, Sephora, Gucci, Armani Exchange and Versace stores, there’s
an ice rink and a huge selection of dining options. Macy’s, Foley’s,
Saks Fifth Avenue and Nordstrom anchor the mall’s 375 stores, which
include Kenneth Cole, Ralph Lauren, Lacoste, Banana Republic and
Abercrombie and Fitch. The Galleria is also home to both the Westin
Galleria and Westin Oaks hotels. (713) 531-1332; www.simon.com.
For information on shopping, contact the Greater Houston Convention and Visitors Bureau, (800) 4-HOUSTON or www.visithoustontexas.com
Using plugins, tubes or other add-ons in a graphics, video or animation application can be a frustrating experience. As your effect collection grows your application needs longer to start up and your menus and lists become cluttered making it very difficult to find the particular effect you are looking for. Now you can take control of your effects using Plugin Commander.
Plugin Commander is a tool for dealing with various image formats, plugins and effect types from various graphics applications. It allows you to manage and preview your plugin, tube and add-on collection quickly and easily. There is commercial Pro Edition as well as a feature-limited Light Edition of Plugin Commander, which is freeware.
Manage and preview your plugins comfortably
Plugin Commander Pro enables you to control which plugins and effects are displayed in your host application. Support for more than 30 different plugin types and other effect materials (especially Photoshop-compatible, Premiere plugins and PSP effect files) is provided as well as the possibility of defining your own plugin types. You can make Photoshop-compatible and After Effects plugins display anywhere in the Filter menu and see a simulation of Photoshop's Filter menu. You can also disable plugins, PSP tubes and materials that you rarely need.
The effects of Photoshop-compatible plugins, certain Premiere plugins and Paint Shop Pro add-ons are calculated in real-time and additionally preview images of other plugin types can be viewed. These previews are shown in the Preview window, the thumbnail browser or the Picture Editor.
Apply and convert plugins and images easily
You can apply Photoshop-compatible plugins directly to images within Plugin Commander Pro to create interesting image effects. You can either process one image at a time in the Picture Editor or use the Batch dialog to apply a series of image effects to a list of images. Additionally, the Batch dialog can convert between different image formats as well as resize and rename images at the same time. Furthermore, Plugin Commander Pro is capable of converting among four Filter Factory plugin formats and Operating Systems: Photoshop, Premiere, Windows and Macintosh.
Dozens of other useful features
At any rate, Plugin Commander Pro offers a variety of other remarkable possibilities. For example, it allows you to edit your images, archive thousands of free Filter Factory plugins, create your own plugins with the Filter Factory Editor and manage your files. It is flexible and partly skinable interface makes it easy and effective to use. With Plugin Commander you can also download and modify thousands of Filter Factory plugins as well as easily grab specific PSP tubes that are freely available on the net. You can even create your own plugins.
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European Union - Delegation of the European Commission to the USA
The Winter 2006 issue of Threshold: Exploring the Future of Education features articles focused on New Literacies for a Changing World, produced in partnership with The Friday Institute for Educational Innovation.
Current Articles
Download these thought-provoking PDF documents-print them, save them, forward them to friends & colleagues. [Download help]
Or get the complete digital edition of Threshold, just like print, with Web functionality. Check out a free sample or get a full year for just $9.95.
The Search for Truth Chris Sperry explores how the core concepts of media literacy help teach academic content and essential skills for a healthy democracy.
Shared Vision: A Threshold Forum Milton Chen, Don Knezek, Faith Rogow, and Dawn Vaughn seek common ground among media literacy, information literacy, and ICT literacy—and map out a road for education to reach it.
Where's Media Literacy? Frank W. Baker presents a sampling of media-literacy standards found in today's classrooms.
Framing the Future of Literacy Alan November, Kathleen Tyner, and Henry Jenkins explore the new, active literacies students will need in a global, participatory culture.
Departments
Contributors The people behind the words and ideas in this issue.
Explorations New Literacies for a Changing World: Helen Soulé and Hiller A. Spires advocate expanding the vision of literacy to embrace new technologies.
Eye on Research Media Literacy & Core Curriculum: Nellie Gregorian reveals initial results from the evaluation of a new media-literacy program funded by the U.S. Department of Education.
New Voices Joe Millionaire Meets Ulysses: Donna Alvermann looks at how preservice teachers resist—and adapt—when exposed to media-literacy training.
Threshold: Exploring the Future of Education
is designed for state and district administrators and technology directors, and national education policymakers and association leaders.
features educational experts and nationally known authorities, education-oriented policymakers, and other leaders in the fields of education and technology offering provocative ideas, opinions, and research for transforming education.
is produced in collaboration with a major national education association.
Winter 2006
Fall 2005 (Click on image below to go to archives).
Network Closure "The power of reputation rests on the idea of network closure, which is the degree to which everyone knows everyone else in a network. In a subgroup or "clique" where everybody knows everybody else, reputation can have currency much more powerful than money. Promises within the group can be trusted because the consequences of breaking a promise would be catastrophic. Anyone who mistreated a fellow member in such a group would quickly find himself ostracized by the entire group, his reputation ruined."
Posted by gsiemens at July 13, 2004 06:30 PM
+++URL: http://netsports.baseball.com/default.asp?c=baseball&page=minorbase/index.htm
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The Sports Network
Dirk Nowitzki scored 27 points as Dallas crushed the Miami Heat, 112-76, at American Airlines Center last night.
The Dallas Mavericks try to tie a franchise record tonight, as they go for their 14th win in a row against the Denver Nuggets at the Pepsi Center.
The Mavericks are on their longest winning streak since capturing a franchise- best 14 straight to open the 2002-03 campaign. Dallas leads the San Antonio Spurs by one-half game in the Southwest Division.
All-Star Dirk Nowitzki scored 27 points as Dallas crushed the Miami Heat, 112-76, at American Airlines Center. Jason Terry netted 16 points for Dallas, which got its league-leading 13th consecutive win. The Mavericks have held every opponent during the streak under 100 points.
Josh Howard, Jerry Stackhouse and Keith Van Horn each scored 14 points in the win over Miami for the Mavericks, while Erick Dampier grabbed 11 rebounds in the victory.
Flames continue homestand
Jarome Iginla
The Calgary Flames' lead in the Northwest Division is hanging by a thread, as their homestand continues Friday against the St. Louis Blues at the Pengrowth Saddledome.
Calgary has 71 points and holds a slim two-point advantage over the Vancouver Canucks in the division. The two teams will meet in Alberta on February 28 -- the first game back after the Olympic break.
On Wednesday, Miikka Kiprusoff made 31 saves to lead the Flames to a 3-1 win over the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim. Kiprusoff was making his seventh straight start and 18th in the last 19 games.
Pulling
signals out of the air just got easier! Thanks to YOU. Many of the
improvements in the IC-756PROII came from hams who offered suggestions
on how to make the incredibly popular '756PRO even better. Click
on the small image to get a large picture of the IC-756PROII.
"Icom supplied
a Pro II for a recent DXpedition. It worked so well, that I
bought TWO as soon as I returned home. Others on the DXpedition
bought them, too. I can't believe the performance of the
receiver, particularly on the low bands! The pre-amp REALLY
works without distortion. The adjustable filters and twin
passband tuning are a dream and so easy to operate. The digital
noise reduction is truly amazing. You can't get "lost" with the
operation of the controls....it's simple to back out a level
I've operated literally every HF radio made in the last 30
years, contesting and DXing, and the Pro II is in a class all by
itself! We have a six ham family and we all love our new Pro
II's!!! The "fun" is back into ham radio more than ever now."
- Glenn Johnson, WŘGJ
Tell me about the new, optional
PS-125 power supply to go with my new IC-756PROII.
--
9:30 - Major Kevin
D. Randle, Phd. author/investigator
- currently back in the USA from Iraq - discusses what he sees
currently happening in Ufology...
Olympic experience resonates
The year was 1980. With the Cold War firmly in place and President Carter's edict that the United States would boycott the Summer Olympics in Moscow, the atmosphere for the Winter Games in Lake Placid, N.Y., was anything but friendly and cooperative — the hallmarks of this sporting event.
EPGateway is a new and inventive way of processing and managing email messages automatically. EPGateway automates all the steps
and actions you are performing manually on your inbound messages.
Email has over the years become the most effective way of
communicating and conducting business. It plays a major
role in how companies conduct their businesses. Along with that has
come the need to use information from email in a variety of ways.
Unfortunately manual processing of email messages is
time consuming and very ineffective. This is where EPGateway can help.
EPGateway allow you to create a set of
commands and run them in sequence against the email messages. With these commands you will be able to automate processes and:
Extract data for use with other applications. Such as databases, spreadsheets and accounting packages.
Send auto responses based on filtered conditions. You can also
create personalized responses with the merge text functionality.
Save attachments to your hard drive automatically.
Delete unwanted email automatically.
Create multiple mailing list files.
Forward specific messages automatically.
and much more depending on your requests and needs.
sp ace
EPGateway acts as the 'middle man' between your Internet mailboxes
and your mail reader is perfect for your email management. While in the gateway the messages are processed by the
defined scripts that are ran against the message, automating many of the
actions you would do manually. This results in major improvements in time management and efficiency.
s pace
The flexibility of EPGateway makes
automating virtually any type of required action simple and
easy.
EPGateway's most outstanding feature is
it's flexibility. This flexibility enables you to effectively and
automatically deal with your email processes.
Greeks, Romans, Santeria, Woodoo, American Indians, Mayas, Witches, Ancestors, Hindus...
The "Primitive Religions" were born in the five Continents,
more than 3,000 years ago, mostly in the form of "Animism", because they
believed that everything has a "soul", an "anima" in latin, a
"spirit"... including animals, plants, rocks, mountains, rivers, stars... each
"anima" is powerful, spiritual, that can help or hurt them, including the souls
of the dead, the "ancestors".
For thousands of years they deified animals, stars, idols of any
kind... and practiced spiritism, witchcraft, divination, astrology... and they used magic,
spells, enchantments, superstitions, prayers, amulets, talismans, charms... often with the
worship of an Absolute, or the Great One...
But they usually did not care much about a Creator God, only about the
"spirits" that can help or hurt them... and what they sometimes called
"gods", are "demons"... or simply a "lie"... and this is why
the Bible condemns them with very strong words, "abominations to God",
"stone them to death" (Deut.18, Lev.20, Isa.44,47, Mat.10).
God, for the Animist, is not a person... as for the
Hindu, god is the Energy, the Force, the Power, the Universal Mind, the Absolute, the
Unknown, the Divine Being... is not a "he" but an "it"... it is not
somebody but something... but something powerful able to get wonderful things for you
using Magic... and worshiping it!... yes, worshiping the Force or the Energy...
Since god is not a person, there are no revelations from a
non-person... you never find in Animism or Wicca or Hinduism, God said... Yahweh
calls...
The gods never existed, they are the product of novels or the
imagination... they are myths, legends... but they never existed and they do not exist
today.
The big problem is that "Today" an estimated
40% of the world's population is animistic (Van Rheenen), including all kinds of
occultism, often in syncretism with Christianity, Islam, Buddhism...
The Animism is attractive because infuses the sacred into the
real life, and mainly, because offers people a way to cope with one's
everyday needs and problems: Healing of an illness, to be successful in a
business, or in love, or to find a job, or to restore a soured relationship, to find a
mate, to gain guidance for the future...
The animist views the "formal
religions" as being relevant with respect to "ultimate" issues, but
irrelevant when it comes to addressing the "immediate" issues of everyday
life... which is totally wrong!, because Christianity, Islam, and all "formal
religions" deal with issues of everyday's life... but this is the reason why
a Christian or a Jew go to the witch or consult the Zodiac... They go to church on
Saturday or Sunday to take care of their soul, and they go to the witch or astrologer on
Monday to take care of their business or illness... absolutely wrong!...
Come to Jesus... Believe in him!... is the solution of
all the problems in this life, and on top of the glorious life on earth, he offers you
eternal life of joy in Heaven.
The World View of Animism:
Pantheism is the first logical consequence of Animism: All
the world is divine: A mountain is god, a rock, an animal... you are god!... though you
can't make stars not even atoms, but you are god!... a planet, and even a cockroach is
god!... they are the "idols" often mentioned in the Bible.
Polytheism is the next obvious consequence: There are
thousands of gods... the concept of 333 million deities is believed to emphasize the
fundamental doctrine of Animism, Hinduism, Wicca...
The first verse of the Bible contradicts these views:In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth... so, in the Bible, there
is one God, a person, and everything else in the world are creatures of God... God created
and is the soul and life and is inside everything, but everything is not God... there is
only one God, Creator.
Of course, for Animists or Hindus, the aim of this life is to stop
the relentless and frightful reincarnation, and become nothingness, not-a-person, but the
drop of water in the ocean of the Absolute... for a Christian, an eternal life of joy is
waiting, and not like a drop of water, but as a person, recognizable by God and by every
neighbor... a person!, an individual!, eternally!, as God is an eternal Person!...
eternally in Hell or in Heaven!...
Would you risk eternal Heaven or Hell for something you are not sure
off?... are you sure eternal Hell does not exist?... for 2 billion people now on earth it
is a fact, like Paris or Moscow... believe it or not... like it or not. Heaven-Hell
+++URL: http://www.ritzcarlton.com/hotels/boston/default.html
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The Ritz-Carlton, Boston - A luxury hotel in Boston
The Ritz-Carlton, Boston
The Ritz-Carlton, Boston celebrated its 75th Anniversary with a major restoration of the grande dame, adding a new vitality to its classic grandeur. The oldest Ritz-Carlton hotel in continuous operation in the United States, it anchors fashionable Newbury Street and the picturesque Public Garden in the heart of the Back Bay. The tradition continues with surprises like a Fireplace Butler, Children's Suite and new Fitness Center.
Facing across the gardens between the Financial and Theatre Districts is The Ritz-Carlton, Boston Common, a contemporary luxury urban sanctuary.
Let us help you discover the romance of Boston. Reconnect at The Ritz-Carlton, Boston while enjoying all the city has to offer.
The Bed and Breakfast experience suits those who want an elegant oasis in the heart of the city.
Relax in front of a roaring fire, take in the views of the Public Garden and enjoy a romantic getaway in the heart of Boston with the Fireplace Butler package.
(c) 1998-2006 The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company, L.L.C. All rights reserved.
WINDOW 5.2 is a
publicly available computer program for calculating total window thermal
performance indices (i.e. U-values, solar heat gain coefficients, shading
coefficients, and visible transmittances). WINDOW 5.2 provides a versatile heat transfer analysis method consistent with the
updated rating
procedure developed by the National Fenestration Rating Council (NFRC) that
is consistent with the ISO 15099 standard. The program can be
used to design and develop new products, to assist educators in teaching heat transfer
through windows, and to help public officials in developing building energy
codes.
Program
Updates
WINDOW5.2 is a
significant update to the LBNL WINDOW4.1 computer program and includes all
of the WINDOW4.1 capabilities as well as:
a
state of the art Microsoft WindowsTM interface
updated
algorithms for the calculation of total fenestration product
U-values and Solar Heat Gain Coefficient consistent with ASHRAE
SPC142, ISO15099, and the National Fenestration Rating Council
a
Condensation Resistance Index in accordance with the NFRC 500
Standard
a
surface temperature map
an
integrated database of properties
links
to other LBNL window analysis software:
THERM
5, for calculating 2-D frame and edge effects
RESFEN,
for calculating the energy effects of windows in typical houses
throughout the United States
Optics5
for the optical properties of all coated and uncoated glazings,
laminates, and applied films.
Program Capabilities
WINDOW 5.2 offers the following features:
The ability to analyze products made from any combination of glazing
layers, gas layers, frames, spacers, and dividers under any environmental conditions and
at any tilt;
Directly accessible libraries of window system components, (glazing
systems, glazing layers, gas fills, frame and divider elements), and environmental
conditions;
The choice of working in English (IP), or Systeme International (SI)
units;
Help Screens and a manual;
A print feature which generates detailed results for a window,
window component, or library;
The ability to specify the dimensions and thermal properties of each
frame element (header, sills, jamb, mullion) in a window;
A multi-band (wavelength-by-wavelength) spectral model;
A Glass Library which can access spectral data files for many common
glazing materials from the Optics5 database;
A night-sky radiative model;
A link with the DOE-2.1E and EnergyPlus building energy analysis program.
Performance Indices and Other Results
For a user-defined fenestration system and user-defined
environmental conditions, WINDOW calculates:
The U-value, solar heat gain coefficient, shading coefficient, and
visible transmittance for the complete window system;
The U-value, solar heat gain coefficient, shading coefficient, and
visible transmittance for the glazing system (center -of-glass values);
The U-values of the frame and divider elements and corresponding
edge-of-glass areas (based on generic correlations);
The total solar and visible transmittance and reflectances of the
glazing system;
Color properties, i.e. L*, a*, and b* color coordinates, dominant
wavelength, and purity for transmitted and reflected (outdoor) solar radiation;
The damage-weighted transmittance of the glazing system between 0.3
and 0.38 microns;
The angular dependence of the solar and visible transmittances,
solar and visible reflectances, solar absorptance, and solar heat gain coefficient of the
glazing system;
The percent relative humidity of the inside and outside air for
which condensation will occur on the interior and exterior glazing surfaces
respectively;
The center-of-glass temperature distribution.
Updated:
10/12/05
+++URL: http://www.unctad.org/Templates/Page.asp?intItemID=1397&lang=1
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UNCTAD.ORG >> Digital Library
Digital library of UNCTAD publications, CD-ROMs and On-line data sources
The digital library of UNCTAD’s publications enables interested readers to access references to the knowledge generated by the organization through its intergovernmental and expert meetings, as well as its analyses and research. UNCTAD’s Reference Service would be ready to assist readers in identifying printed or electronic publications, including CD-ROMs and On-line databases that might be of interest to readers. Contact:library@unctad.org
NEWS
UNCTAD Handbook of Statistics 2005 23 January - The Handbook of Statistics 2005 provides a comprehensive collection of data reflecting the changes in international trade, financial flows, debt, commodity prices trends, as well as development indicators. More >>
UsableNet's latest product, LIFT Text Transcoder, is a server-based
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disabled users by adding text-only pages to your site or quickly
replace the text-only versions you have now reducing your maintenance
overhead and expanding the text-only format across every page and
every new piece of content.
The complexity of retrofitting large websites
Fixing accessibility defects on running sites (i.e. retrofitting) is
not always possible or easy. This is especially true when the site is
deployed using software architecture that is difficult or impossible
to change, for example, a Content Management System (CMS) that
implements inaccessible forms. The sheer dimension of the website can
also cause a lot of retrofitting problems, including months of manual
work. A third reason why retrofitting for accessibility is not always
viable is that accessibility sometimes requires changes which
compromise the look and feel and usability of the site. For example,
though use of JavaScript might violate WCAG AA conformance, many web
architects choose not to remove it because it is utilized to improve
efficiency (e.g. Jump menus) and usability.
Additionally it is difficult to create and maintain a text-only
version of your site that encompasses all of the pages from the normal
version. Lots of additional time and resources are needed.
The solution
LIFT Text Transcoder solves the problem with three main functions:
The transcoder will produce transcoded pages, on-the-fly,
that are more accessible than the original ones. The resulting
pages can be more effectively used by disabled persons, PDAs and
cell phones (not supporting JavaScript or frames) users or by
users who need pages which download quickly (because the size of
a text-only page is usually smaller as there are no images and
no multimedia objects).
Anyone navigating through the text-only version of a site has
the freedom to choose their viewing preferences. For example,
the way that the page is perceived, operated and
understood. This personalizes the website for the user and
therefore adds value.
LIFT Text Transcoder includes tools that allow the webmaster to
make the text-only pages more accessible without having to
recode them.
Solution options
LIFT Text Transcoder can be purchased as a Managed Service or as a locally
installed stand-alone server. In both cases the pricing includes the
optimization service to ensure good assistive technology support.
The Managed Service (ASP/Hosted) adds the power of the LIFT Text Transcoder
to your site in hours. In this case all text-only pages are
delivered to the end-user's browser by UsableNet and there is no
maintenance, hardware or set-up required. You can purchase a single web
server license or a unlimited web server license.
It is also possible to purchase a license of LIFT Text Transcoder (Local)
server and place it on one of your machines.
Transcoder can be licensed to support either Content Servers or
Application Servers. One Transcoder installation can handle multiple of
each.
Discounts are available for Education or Government.
Definition of Web Server for License
The definition of a single license includes the main name server and
sub-directories that are on the same server (sometime referred to as vanity
name servers). For example, If you have 10 name servers that point to one
physical server: www.xyz.edu, www.busines.xyz.edu, www.history.xyz.edu
where all content is on the same server; these fall under a single server
pricing. However, a name server like library.xyz.edu that covers content
on another server would need an additional license.
NOTE: unlimited host name means that LIFT Text Transcoder will transcode
any webpage that is stored on any webservers of yours that is
appropriately registered on LIFT Text Transcoder. The set of registered
servers can be changed at any time by the LIFT Text Transcoder
administrator by editing a configuration file. For the Managed Service
simply send a request for changing the list to tt.support@usablenet.com.
Prices
LIFT Text Transcoder - Initial License Fee - (Managed or Purchase)
Content Servers
Standard
Government
Education
First Server
$7,000
$6,160
$5,600
Each Additional Server
$3,500
$3,080
$2,800
Â
Unlimited Servers
$36,250
$32,260
$29,000
Â
Application Server
Standard
Government
Education
Each Server
$10,000
$8,800
$8,000
Initial Costs - The Initial costs are the same for managed or purchase, as
they include all the optimization work to ensure accessibility and ease of
access to content. This optimization is standard - because of its
importance to true accessibility - and UsableNet provides at no added cost
and with no additional resources required by the client.
On-Going Options: All first-year costs are included in the initial fee.
Then, in each subsequent year, the cost is 50% of purchase price for the
Managed Services and 20% of the purchase price for an ongoing support
contract for the Purchase/Local Install version.
Prices are for the North American markets and International users should
contact UsableNet for International pricing.
Examples of Application Servers: WebCT, BlackBoard, Luminus, BannerWeb, e-commerce.
Support Contract for the first year is included in the initial purchase price. Yearly renewal of support is equal to 20% of the initial purchase price.
Performance factors
While LIFT Text Transcoder is very efficient, to transcode a page it has to:
receive a request from the visitor's browser,
issue a request to the webserver hosting the site,
wait for the webserver and the network to yield the data,
transform the page, and finally
send the transformed page to the user's browser.
The response time for getting a text-only page (i.e. the time the web
visitor has to wait to see some results), compared to the time to get
the original page, is affected by steps 2, 3 and 4.
The Managed Service, compared to a LIFT Text Transcoder installed in the
same local network where the web server is located, is less efficient
because the transcoder steps 2 and 3 require more time.
On the other hand it is interesting to compare the time required to
get a page through LIFT Text Transcoder with respect to the time required to get it
directly from the web server. We performed a simple, but reliable
benchmark. Results are interesting...
System requirements
LIFT Text Transcoder supports the following Operating Systems:
Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS/ES/WS 4.0,
Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS/ES/WS 3.0,
Fedora Core 4,
Fedora Core 3,
Fedora Core 2,
Red Hat Linux 9.0,
Red Hat Linux 8.0,
Red Hat Linux 7.3,
Apple's Mac OS X 10.3,
Sun Solaris 9 for Sparc platform.
LIFT Text Transcoder is based on the following underlying products:
Mozilla: an open source project that includes a
robust HTML parser (LIFT Text Transcoder is based on version 1.7.12 on Linux and Sun Solaris 9, 1.5 on Mac OS X).
Tomcat: an open source project that offers a
JavaServerPages processor (LIFT Text Transcoder is based on version 5.0.28).
JAVA: which is required by Tomcat (LIFT Text Transcoder is based on jdk 1.4.2).
Apache Cocoon: an open source project that supports
on-the-fly processing of XML files (LIFT Text Transcoder is based on
version 2.1.7).
These components are used in their original version and integrated
within the LIFT Text Transcoder software architecture. To install LIFT Text Transcoder you need
a supported operating system with the proper Tomcat and Java packages
already installed. All packages are supplied also by
UsableNet but have to be installed and upgraded manually before
installing LIFT Text Transcoder.
In terms of hardware on which to run the LIFT Text Transcoder,
consider than any linux box with a 1Ghz processor, 512 MB of RAM and 6
GB of disk space is enough to support a good amount of web
traffic. Should you identify traffic bottlenecks, then a faster
network connection and additional RAM can solve the problem.
If that is not sufficient, please contact tt.support@usablenet.com to learn
how to install a pool of LIFT Text Transcoder that work in parallel on more than one machine.
Security aspects
LIFT Text Transcoder works basically as a proxy server. Except for some limitations
on the way in which HTTPS connections and non-public certificates are
handled (see the appropriate section in the LIFT Text Transcoder User's
Manual), the LIFT Text Transcoder is not expected to reduce the security
level of your infrastructure. For further discussion and clarification
please send email to tt.support@usablenet.com.
If you need to run the LIFT Text Transcoder and make it available to the
public, you need to open access on port 8080 (by default). If you need
to use it only within your intranet, then no external port need to be
open.
+++URL: http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/styles/harmful.html
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Fri, 10 Feb 2006 20:07:53 GMT
Server: Apache
Last-Modified: Thu, 11 Oct 2001 16:14:53 GMT
ETag: "13fbb1-673b-80ae9940"
Accept-Ranges: bytes
Content-Length: 26427
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Why style sheets are harmfulIT and communication -
Web authoring and surfing:
Why style sheets are harmful
Summary
Style sheets in general, and the
Cascading
Style Sheets, level 1 (CSS1)
specification
in particular, are an ambitious
effort to solve serious problems which are caused by the
controversy between "structuralists" and "visualists" on the
World Wide Web.
At first sight, style sheets are appealing.
Style sheets are
complex and
quite
incompletely defined,
and not implemented yet in general.
But in addition to such problems,
the style sheet approach is fundamentally
on the wrong track.
It works in the direction of
preserving author-controlled layout.
It just tries to prevent
author's control from having
too harmful effects on the HTML language.
It provides new and more structured layout design tools - to authors.
It is the right way of doing the wrong thing.
Readers' control over layout cannot
be harmonically combined with author's control over layout,
and since layout is a physical thing, it should be designed for the
physical device, and for the individual user.
Style sheets ultimately work in favor of postponing the necessary change
towards control by readers.
Fortunately the work on style sheets has produced useful material for
defining one way in which the reader might control the layout.
For this purpose the cascade concept must be removed, the specifications
simplified syntactically and elaborated semantically, and serious
modifications to the HTML language
- adding structural features and removing layout attributes -
must be considered.
Style sheets
may look like an ideal solution to the problem
that the HTML language has been and is being contaminated
with new tags for layout control. Style sheets provide,
it is claimed, a method for fully separating presentation issues from
the logical structure described in HTML. Moreover, cascading style
sheets allow delicate combinations of author and user preferences.
For example, instead of standardizing vendor extensions to HTML for
specifying the background color of table elements, the
Cascading
Style Sheets, level 1 (CSS1) specification provides
a general method for specifying the background color for any
element. Style sheets even make most HTML element attributes,
such as ALIGN attribute and the attributes of BODY,
quite redundant, since the same effects plus a lot more can be
achieved using style sheets.
The language used in style sheet declarations is sufficiently different
from HTML to carry the message of separating structure (expressed in HTML)
from presentation (expressed in style sheets). On the other hand the
language is almost intuitively understandable. Anyone who has elementary
knowledge about HTML will probably realize
without saying
that a declaration like
BLOCKQUOTE { background-color: yellow }
says that BLOCKQUOTE elements be presented so that their background
is yellow. (Of course some study of the style sheet language is needed
to be able to write such declarations.)
As the CSS1
specification clearly shows, style sheets are a very complicated system.
It is difficult to understand how it is intended to work, and even if you
understand, you won't remember. The system really begs to be misunderstood
and misused, especially
since
its specification is sketchy.
Consider the very basic issue of style sheet preferences,
or cascading order in CSS1 terminology. The
cascading order rules
in CSS1 can be roughly presented as follows:
the precedence order is
author's !important declarations
reader's !important declarations
author's normal declarations
author's implicit declarations expressed as HTML attributes
reader's normal declarations
user agent defaults
Presumably reader's option settings,
such as changing font size using a pull-down menu,
would fit there somewhere.
It is
difficult to say what their role would be, particularly because they do
not conform to CSS1 syntax and concepts.
Within each of the above-mentioned categories, there are additional
rules of preference: complicated specificity rules are applied,
involving a special treatment of declarations in STYLE attributes of
elements. Ultimately, the textual order of declarations in
a style sheet is taken into account to handle conflicting declarations.
This means of course that there is very little semantic checking
that can be applied, since conflicts cannot be treated as errors.
The complexity of CSS1 results, you may say, from the necessity of
guaranteeing
author-reader balance.
But when people refer to the need of such balance, they just use the
word balance to avoid the tough questions. Either you let the user have
the final word or you don't. Either you use logical markup and not
physical or you don't.
The idea of authors and readers somehow jointly setting up the
presentation ignores the fact that
good style is not just a sum of "style" selections
for various features.
Moreover, it is utterly unrealistic;
readers can, at most,
be expected to select the presentation for a few dozens of different
logical structures (HTML elements) in general. Not to map, say, pink color
into some font, without knowing why the author suggested pink color.
And the "why" question should logically be expressed by using logical
markup, avoiding any particular colors.
What will most probably happen
is that when people have found out that their own style sheets,
whether as author or as user style sheets, are not honored, they
will flag everything
!important. Since there is no true balancing -
preference is given to author style sheet - some users will simply accept
the situation and take what they get, discarding the idea of user
style sheets. The rest of the users will turn style sheets off, since
this is their only way of getting the final word. This brings us back
to the time before style sheets, but with added confusion.
Consider the typical example of declaring the
background color for
some element. There is nothing in the CSS1 specifications that says
how this should really be done. Most people will just write
a background-color declaration and think they've done it right.
They won't even care about setting text and link colors as well,
since no official specification requires it and no commonly used
software warns about not doing so. Even less will they give any thought
to the complicated issue of nested elements having their own color
declarations from various sources.
Apart from causing a lot of confusion and technical complexities,
the cascade of style sheets is a bad idea.
Can there
be any style
in a style which is some kind of sum of varying features
from varying sources?
It would be like letting one person select a suit for you, someone
else choose the shirt, defaulting shoes to whatever you happen to be
wearing,
picking up socks yourself, carefully but ignorant of what the
other selections are,
etc.
It has been argued that some presentation issues, e.g. selection of
fonts
on one hand and selection of colors on the other, are
orthogonal in the sense that you can do the selection
(relatively) independently of each other. But consider the following
simple example.
Assume an environment which has a lot of colors but only a single font.
One would probably like to use (different) colors for several
purposes like headings, emphasis, block quotations, elements like VAR
and CODE, etc. Then assume another environment which is rich in fonts
but just black and white. Now if an author has provided a style sheet
specifying some particular background color for his examples, and if
there is a need to separate examples from the rest of the text clearly,
this would fail - because the style sheet model is too
concrete.
(What was really needed is a standardized element for specifying that we have
an example here, letting each environment and user decide how to present
such elements in general. Style sheet ideology works against such
reasonable improvements to HTML, since they promise to deal with the
problem in other methods.)
The CSS1 specification is neither exact enough
nor accompanied with
realistic examples and
a good stylistic guide, so it fails to communicate
the ideas behind and intended interpretation and application.
HTML specifications have mostly been attempts to unify common
practices in browsers and to find greatest common denominator. But
the interpretation of CSS1 has no similar background, since it is intended
for directing the development of browsers (which in itself is a good
approach).
Therefore,
unambiguous and easy-to-read semantic descriptions would be crucial
in CSS1.
What we have is syntax specification (in an ad hoc formalism) plus
a few sentences about their meaning.
The descriptions of the effects of individual declarations, taken in
isolation, are usually satisfactory in the CSS1 specification.
The problem is that their interplay is described vaguely, if at all.
Consider colors, for example. Obviously if I define a background color
I should define text color and link colors, too, to avoid the unhappy
situation where the text color (from some other style sheet) coincides
with the background color I have defined. But this is not enough.
Suppose I define white background for normal paragraphs (P elements),
yellow background for quotations (BLOCKQUOTE elements),
pink background for ADDRESS elements, etc. Assuming that I wish to use
red as text color, I must declare it cleverly. The obvious solution of
defining BODY { color: red } does not work in general,
since my reader might have background-color: red
for some element which is used by me but not taken care of in my
style sheet, since I don't care. Thus, in practice both authors and
readers should be very careful and assume the worst about each
other's style of using styles. It seems that the current style sheet
model provides no easy way to formulate practical rules in order to
avoid such conflicts.
Separating structure from presentation, or mixing them up hopelessly?
At first sight, the style sheet concept seems to separate structure
from presentation very sharply: structure is expressed in HTML,
presentation in style sheet language. Although HTML would still contain
attributes for controlling presentation, such as ALIGN=CENTER,
the intent seems to be that these would be obsolescent.
However, the flexibility of CSS1 has a high price. You could, and you
probably would, easily define classes for various purposes,
such as declaring some texts as warnings by attaching, say,
CLASS=WARNING to them and declaring some prominent presentation
(say, blinking red) for them. Effectively, you would be extending
the HTML language with an element for warnings - but you would do it
in your personal way. A user who wants to have warnings presented
in some other way couldn't specify that, except very clumsily on
per-document basis after looking at your HTML code!
Conceivably, conventions and standards might be developed. But since
this issue really deals with structure, not presentation, it should
be treated at the HTML level. If new structural features are
needed, then HTML should be extended. And even if we really wanted to have
a hypertext markup language which is flexibly
extensible by authors,
the extension mechanisms should belong to that language, not to a
language for mapping that language into visible presentation.
Some of the above-mentioned serious problems could be alleviated by
modifying and clarifying the specifications. However, inherent and
unavoidable difficulties would remain. CSS1 is based on thinking
which has very good aims and which inevitably leads to disaster.
Perhaps the designers of CSS1 thought that the "visualists" should
be given toys to play with so that they will stop playing with
adults' tools (HTML). This will fail; they will take the toys and
still continue using HTML constructs for layout purposes.
The key idea of supporting both author and user style sheets
fails to accept the essential nature of the World Wide Web as a medium.
The
traditional
system of publishing,
applied in newspapers, books, TV programs, etc,
involves the preparation of a
publication up to the smallest detail, including layout, by the authors
(in the broad sense, including a lot of technical and artistic staff
in many cases). Once prepared, the publication is reproduced in some
sort of mass production, i.e.
identical copies
are issued.
The role of
the consumer is to take it or leave it. This paradigm has already
been challenged by factors other than Internet, e.g. the feasibility
of print on demand.
The paradigm was applied for obvious economic reasons.
On the Web,
each access to a document by a user involves
customized formatting according to users' screen, browser,
option settings, etc.
Moreover,
publishing takes place every day and everywhere, with
no definite publication dates. The difference between a simple
personal home page and some popular document is not technical - both
could be single HTML files and accessible to anyone on the Internet.
There are no strict borders - a document can slowly move from one
extreme to another as it becomes more interesting and known to people.
Copies of the publication can be made at ease, typically one at a time,
and in greatly varying forms.
In addition, the contents of a publication
may vary, since the author may update it or the user may
customize even the contents
e.g. by requesting some HTML elements
to be ignored.
In the future, publications
themselves may support customizability.
The common idea of designing Web pages with newspaper-like format
is therefore inherently archaic: it binds itself to a
primitive system of mass production of copies, and that
system doesn't even work, since people do not use the same kind of
hardware, software, and settings as the designers. (It would be
impossible to do that, because different designers work on
different systems.)
Far from being progressive, it essentially takes the limitations
and features dictated by the old medium to a new one.
It is, in a deeper sense,
similar to putting typewriter-style text (within PRE element)
onto the Web.
The products of ambitious "visual design" on the Web usually don't
even pass the simple mouse test: take the mouse and modify the size
of the browser window horizontally and vertically.
The above-mentioned
traditional paradigm
of publishing
will soon be considered as a necessary
evil which is no more necessary. It was, during a few centuries,
necessary for economical reasons to issue publications in thousands or
even millions of identical copies. But it was contrary to the basic
nature of human communication; human beings are different,
they live in different environments, and they
need and prefer different methods of presentation.
People employed or otherwise involved in traditional publishing
presumably feel
uneasy, and not without reason. They are accustomed to seeing their
job and professional competence as important and essential in
publishing. Now they are faced with the situation where the careful
and detailed design of layout is not only unnecessary but also
harmful.
Layout
will not lose its importance but it will take place
on users' workstations.
A user, that is a customer, will have his own
layout preferences and styles, with colors and margins and fonts
and so on, perhaps designed by a professional, but anyway selected by him
to suit his personal preferences. Any layout by the author or by
the publishing side will just not get through; an attempt to enforce it
will fail miserably, since if a document is not formattable according
to user's specification, it will look like a mess and the user will
therefore discard it.
What is left to the author is the production of contents and
structure.
This has always been the author's most essential job,
and it should be regarded as a relief that the author neither can nor need
care about presentation issues.
Let's have a dream. Suppose that I'm starting to read a real
newsdoc (that's my neologism, a structural, device-independent
counterpart of newspaper) using my Web browser on the screen
(or as printed out on my printer, if I prefer that).
The browser will obey my presentation preferences and format the entire
newsdoc according to them. My personal preferences are irrelevant here,
but they might include the following: display first a table of contents
in pure text form, with the most important items (as designated by
the editor, using structural markup) first but otherwise all headings
in thematic order; text in single column, 130 mm wide;
images aligned to the left, never alongside with text;
video clips in separate window, to be started on my command only;
background music, if suggested by author, to be started automatically
but with low volume. Alternatively, when tired or doing some cooking,
I might ask my browser read the headlines to me, and I'd whistle when
something is so interesting that I want to hear the entire text of
an article. You might have entirely different preferences - and
get them obeyed.
Exactly because visual presentation and other external expressions of the
contents of a document are so important, it shall be left to the customer
(who ultimately pays the bill, by the way, either as paying customer,
taxpayer, or target of advertising).
What is "contents" and "structure"?
Thus far I have intentionally formulated my propositions so that
I have
probably been seriously misunderstood.
Now it is time to clear things up.
"Contents and structure" does not mean plain boring text with
a few different types of headings.
Contents includes figures, images,
photographs, formulas, music, videos, and lots of other forms of
communication, most of which have not been invented yet. Structure
is not only a simple hierarchical division into sections and
subsection; it
includes the relationships
of various kinds and pieces of contents
with each other and with the contents and structure of other documents.
And what looks like an ordinary page of text would, in this new mode
of thinking, actually be structured as a rather complicated entity;
it might contain quotes from other texts, mathematical and scientific
symbols, emphasized parts, less important parts, unordered and ordered
lists of things, and so on. Depending on the user and his environment,
the various elements might each have its own style of presentation,
or the entire text might be just plain text in one font, or something
between the extremes.
This
way of thinking does not mean that you
should, as a general rule, just divide the document into parts
according to the internal logical structure of the subject matter
and fill this hierarchical, analytical structure with text contents.
Even less does it mean that you take a long piece of plain text
and put a few headings
(like Introduction and
Test arrangements
and References)
here and there.
Such a paradigm of document authoring seems to be dominant in the
production of research reports and many other papers, and it may have
a restricted area of applicability. But the normal way should be to
pay a lot of attention to
separating the most essential from less
essential,
providing readable introductions and summaries
illustrating main ideas with relevant pictures or diagrams
and specifying which figure relates to which piece of text
designating the role of various pieces of text and other material,
such as being a quotation or a technical or formal
specification or illustrating example
and whatever it takes to make the document more easily and
nicely representable in various media and under
various conditions.
Thus, journalists may still have jobs. In fact, they will be desperately
needed - but only if they are able to adopt entirely new forms of
expression.
They will have to learn to speak fluent HTML.
They will lack fonts, colors and layout; they will have
to concentrate on the structure and contents.
This means,
inevitably, that they will have to learn to think and communicate
more abstractly. Of course they will not be writing HTML 3.2 but
something that resembles it. Their language will be a lot richer
in expressions for structural relations, and it will lack expressions
for presentation issues.
Some possible counterarguments
Abusus non tollit usum, that is,
potential abuse should not be used as a decisive argument against any use.
So if style sheets will come into use,
shouldn't we make the best possible use of them?
Instead of criticizing CSS1 in general, shouldn't we concentrate on
methods of avoiding the problems described above, as far as possible?
My answer to this is that by attaching style sheet declarations into
your documents you support and encourage the principle of author's
dominance over presentation. And in practical terms you gain very little.
Most browsers do not support style sheets yet, there is no guarantee
that they will do and do it correctly, and in particular they might
discard the difficult concept of cascade - but just in the wrong way,
ignoring user declarations.
A common motivation for setting up some particular layout for Web pages is the
need for uniformity, "company look".
(The word company should be understood generically here; it could
equally well refer to an institution or even a private person.)
There is a good point behind this idea.
When I visit a lot of interlinked Web documents, I would very often like to
see, at a glimpse, where I am in terms of page owner and officiality.
But "company look" is not the right answer. It makes the
recognizability of pages dependent on presentation, which in any case
varies a lot. And a "company look" says nothing to a casual visitor
who sees it the first time.
The HTML language should be made more structured, and this includes
requiring
the presence
indispensable metainformation like
source, author, officiality,
language, abstract etc.
The key question is not how the author could provide a company look
but how the reader can check what company the information comes from and
have this displayed in a manner the reader likes.
Some users might prefer seeing a company logo on each page (and for this
purpose the address of a suitable logo might be one part of the
metainformation);
some others
might prefer just the company name since they think logos are usually awful;
occasionally one might even wish to have the company main page displayed in
a separate window alongside with each document from that company;
and still some other might let such information to stay on the background,
to be popped up when desired.
Finally, one may argue that if document layout is left to browsers and
users only, each browser will have different aspects of presentation
that can be controlled by the user and different methods of doing it.
In a sense, each browser would have its own syntax and semantics for
(users') style sheets.
My reply is that this need not be more disastrous than differences between
browsers in general. Moreover, why shouldn't it be possible to standardize
this? The style sheet model would be essentially simpler than the cascading
style sheets concepts, so it should be at least technically more easily
standardizable.
The document
Publishing on the Web Is Different
is essentially an extract from this document, presenting the basic idea
of reader control in a more general context.
+++URL: http://www.co.fairfax.va.us/jobs/listing/listing.asp
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Fri, 10 Feb 2006 20:07:56 GMT
X-Powered-By: ASP.NET
Connection: keep-alive
Connection: Keep-Alive
Content-Length: 7847
Content-Type: text/html
Cache-control: private
Fairfax County Job Openings - Important Information
Important Information Friday, February 10, 2006
Please read the following information which applies to all
advertised jobs,
unless otherwise noted.
How to Apply:
Unless otherwise stated in the job announcement, apply using
the on-line Fairfax County
AIMS Resume Builder. If you have additional material,
such as training certificates, references, etc., you should bring
these materials with you at the time of interview. Resumes are
accepted only for positions which are currently advertised and
for current eligible lists.
We do not accept hard copy resumes or resumes submitted via e-mail
or fax.
Closing
Date:
The Closing Date for each
advertised position is displayed in the
job list
as well as the detailed job description. The closing date is the
date by which your resume must be submitted via the AIMS
System
in order to ensure consideration for the advertised vacancy.
Minimum
Qualifications:
In most cases experience can
be substituted for education, and vice versa, on a year-for-year
basis, unless otherwise noted.
Selection
Procedure
The selection procedure involves
an evaluation of relevant education and experience and a personal/panel
interview of top-rated applicants, unless otherwise noted.
Reasonable
Accommodation:
Applicants with disabilities
may request reasonable accommodation during the selection process.
Please call 703/222-5872 (voice) or 703/222-7314 (TDD).
Salary
Ranges:
Advertised positions generally
list the recruitment salary range. For most positions this range
includes the minimum and midpoint salaries.
Benefits:
Most positions advertised here are merit system positions funded
for full benefits such as health insurance, retirement, life insurance
and paid leave. Follow the link for details on Fairfax County's
comprehensive benefits
program for merit system employees. If a position is not funded
for benefits that information will generally be included in the
job announcement.
Refer to the General Information page for detailed information on how to apply for a position with Fairfax County.
+++URL: http://www.genealogytoday.com/genealogy/states/new_york.html
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New York State Genealogy Links - NY StateGenSites
Historical societies are a great resource when you are unable to visit the town of your ancestors. Many societies keep local records, photos and even information about cemeteries.
In the summer of 1862, thousands had already died in the second summer of a terrible war that few believed would last more than several months. On July 17, Congress enacted legislation authorizing the President to purchase "cemetery grounds" to be used as national cemeteries "for soldiers who shall have died in the service of the country."
Calverton National Cemetery
Long Island Sound
Long Island, NY
Cypress Hills National Cemetery
625 Jamaica Ave
Brooklyn, NY 11208
Pinelawn National Cemetery
Wellwood Ave
Pinelawn, NY
Polish National Cemetery
East Maine Rd.
Johnson City, NY
Saratoga National Cemetery
200 Duell Rd.
Schuylerville, NY 12871-1721
"The Census, while not created for the purpose of genealogical research, is nevertheless one of the public records that genealogists find most helpful and tend to use most often. The amount of information that can be found or verified by finding a single family's census record is enormous." - Genealogy.com
It is sad to think about all the people who pass away on a daily basis, however, it is sadder still for the relatives and friends who don't even know. If you just happen to stop by today and have the local paper handy, take a few minutes and catalog the obits.
The biggest thing lacking in the Adoption Community is the fact that all sides of the Triad need to listen, understand and learn from the other sides. It seems to often go unnoticed that in order for adoption to work there has to be three sides to the story. Each side is very unique in what they bring to scenario. They are equally important to each other and need to be recognized as such.
+ AdoptionLinks.org
Civil War
"No soldier in any army ever did more service, or suffered more hardships, and none can boast of a prouder or more brilliant record than that of the Confederate Soldier. From the spring and summer of 1861 they bravely took up arms in defense of the South, and did not lay them down until General Robert E. Lee surrendered the army of Northern Virginia at Appomattox Courthouse on the 9th day of April, 1865."
All film cameras are just dark boxes into
which you can insert any kind of film you want. It's the film you choose that gives
photographs distinctive colors, tones, and grain. If you think one film gives images that
are too blue or red, you can change to another film. With digital cameras, the
"film" is permanently part of the camera so buying a digital camera is in part
like selecting a film to use. Like film, different image sensors render colors
differently, have different amounts of "grain," different sensitivities to
light, and so on. The only ways to evaluate these aspects are to examine some sample
photographs from the camera or read reviews written by people you trust.
Until recently, charge-coupled devices (CCDs) were the only image sensors used in
digital cameras. They have been well developed through their use in astronomical
telescopes, scanners, and video camcorders. However, there is a new challenger on the
horizon, the CMOS image sensor that promises to eventually become the image sensor of
choice in a large segment of the market. Both CCD and CMOS image sensors capture light on
a grid of small pixels on their surfaces. It's how they process the image and how they are
manufactured where they differ from one another.
This photo shows the pixels on an image sensor
greatly enlarged. Courtesy of IBM.
CCD image sensors
A charge-coupled device (CCD) gets its name from the way the charges on its pixels are
read after an exposure. After the exposure the charges on the first row are transferred to
a place on the sensor called the read out register. From there, the signals are fed to an
amplifier and then on to an analog-to-digital converter. Once the row has been read, its
charges on the readout register row are deleted, the next row enters, and all of the rows
above march down one row. The charges on each row are "coupled" to those on the
row above so when one moves down, the next moves down to fill its old space. In this way,
each row can be read-one row at a time.
The CCD shifts one whole row at a time into the
readout register. The readout register then shifts one pixel at a time to the output
amplifier.
CMOS image sensors
Image sensors are manufactured in factories called wafer foundries or fabs where the
tiny circuits and devices are etched onto silicon chips. The biggest problem with CCDs is
that there aren't enough economies of scale. They are created in foundries using
specialized and expensive processes that can only be used to make other CCDs. Meanwhile,
more and larger foundries across the street are using a different process called
Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor (CMOS) to make millions of chips for computer
processors and memory. CMOS is by far the most common and highest yielding chip-making
process in the world. The latest CMOS processors, such as the Pentium II, contain almost
10 million active elements. Using this same process and the same equipment to manufacturer
CMOS image sensors cuts costs dramatically because the fixed costs of the plant are spread
over a much larger number of devices. As a result of these economies of scale, the cost of
fabricating a CMOS wafer is one-third the cost of fabricating a similar wafer using a
specialized CCD process. Costs are lowered even farther because CMOS image sensors can
have processing circuits created on the same chip. When CCDs are used, these processing
circuits must be on separate chips. Early versions of CMOS image sensors were plagued with noise problems, and used mainly
in low-cost cameras. However, great advances have been made and CMOS image sensors with
quality comparable to CCDs are used in some of the finest cameras.
The Canon EOS 10D is a high-end digital SLR
from a major manufacturer that uses a CMOS image sensor. The Canon EOS
1Ds, used by professionals, also uses a CMOS sensor and has 11.1
million pixels. Courtesy
of Canon.
As you've seen, image resolution is a way of expressing how sharp or detailed images
are. Low-end point and shoot cameras currently have resolutions around 3
million pixels or less, although this number constantly moves upward. Better cameras,
have somewhere between 4 to 6 million pixels. The most expensive professional digital cameras give you
about 12-million pixels (3000 x 4000). Although impressive, not even these resolutions match the
estimated 20 million or so pixels in traditional 35 mm film and 120 million in your eye.
The Collision of Two Worlds
The term
"resolution" was introduced in the computer world as a way to describe screen
displays. In the early days, a screen would have a CGA or VGA resolution. Later, other
names were introduced to describe even larger screens. The terms were used to describe the
number of pixels on the screen. For example, a screen may have 1024 pixels across the
screen and 768 down (1024 x 768). No one was concerned about the use of the term at the
time it was introduced. It's only when photography became digital that another group of
people entered the scene with a totally different use of the term. To photographers, or
anyone in optics, resolution describes the ability of a device to resolve lines such as
those found on a test chart.
As you might expect, all other things being equal, costs rise with a camera's
resolution. Greater resolution also creates other problems. For example, more pixels means
larger image files. Not only are larger files harder to store, they are also harder to
edit, e-mail, and post on a Web site.
Lower resolutions such
as 640 x 480 are perfect for Web publishing, e-mail attachments, small prints, or images
in documents and presentations. For these uses, higher resolutions just increase file
sizes without significantly improving the images.
Higher
resolutions of 3 million pixels or more, are best for printing photo-realistic enlargements larger than
5" x 7".
Kodak states that a camera with about 1-million pixels will give a 5 x 7
photo-realistic print. However, you'll get more detail and brighter colors
with more pixels in the image. For prints up to 8 x 10 you can get
good results with 3 million pixels. In most cases the prints are superior to
those based on film. This is partly because
inexpensive mass-produced prints from negatives are downright
awful. Digital prints shine by comparison.
Beware of claims about resolution for cameras and scanners because there are two kinds
of resolution; optical and interpolated. The optical resolution of a camera or scanner is
an absolute number because an image sensor's pixels or photoelements are physical devices
that can be counted. To improve resolution in certain limited respects, the optical
resolution can be increased using software. This process, called interpolated resolution,
adds pixels to the image to increase the total number of pixels. To do so, software
evaluates those pixels surrounding each new pixel to determine what its color should be.
For example, if all of the pixels around a newly inserted pixel are red, the new pixel
will be made red. What's important to keep in mind is that interpolated resolution doesn't
add any new information to the image-it just adds pixels and makes the file larger. This
same thing can be done in a photo-editing program such as Photoshop by resizing the image.
Beware of companies that promote or emphasize their device's interpolated (or enhanced)
resolution. You're getting less than you think you are. Always check for the device's
optical resolution. If this isn't provided, flee the product-you're dealing with marketing
people who don't have your best interests at heart.
When working with digital images, you always have
a fixed number of original pixels to work with. The number is determined by the number of
photosites on the image sensor. To make an image smaller, some of those pixels are
removed. To make an image larger, new pixels have to be added. Since adding new pixels
doesn't add any new information to the image, it's a form of "empty
magnification." The image to the left was first "interpolated" to a smaller
size (below left) and then that image was interpolated to a larger size (below right) to
dramatize the effect. Images don't get better, they just get bigger.
Image sensors have different aspect ratios-the ratio of image height to width. The
ratio of a square is 1:1 (equal width and height) and that of 35mm film is 1.5:1 (1.5
times wider than it is high). Most image sensors fall in between these extremes. The
aspect ratio of a sensor is important because it determines the shape and proportions of
the photographs you create. When an image has a different aspect ratio that the device
it's displayed or printed on, it has to be cropped or resized to fit. Your choice is to
loose part of the image or waste part of the paper. To imagine this better, try fitting a
square image on a rectangular piece of paper.
The aspect ratio of an image sensor determines the
shape of your prints. An image will only perfectly fill a sheet of paper is both have the
same aspect ratio. If the ratios are different, you have to choose between loosing part of
the image, or leaving some white space on the paper.
Image
Width x height
Aspect Ratio
35 mm film
36 x 24 mm
1.50
Display monitor
1024 x 768
1.33
Digital camera
1600 x 1200
1.33
Photo paper
4 x 6 inches
1.50
Photo paper
8 x 10 inches
1.25
Stationary
8.5 x 11
1.29
HDTV
16 x 9
1.80
To calculate the aspect ratio of any camera, divide the largest number in its
resolution by the smallest number. For example, if a sensor has a resolution of
3000 x 2000, divide 3000 by 2000. In this case the aspect ratio is 1.5, the same as 35mm film.
Resolution isn't the only factor governing the quality of your images. Equally
important is color. When you view a natural scene, or a well done photographic color
print, you are able to distinguish millions of colors. Digital images can approximate this
color realism, but whether they do so on your system depends on its capabilities and its
settings. The number of colors in an image is referred to its color depth, pixel-depth, or
bit depth. Older PCs are stuck with displays that show only 16 or 256 colors. However,
almost all newer systems can display what's called 24-bit True Color. It's called True
Color because these systems display 16 million colors, about the number the human eye can
distinguish.
TIP: Checking Your System
You may
have to set your system to full-color, it doesn't happen automatically. To see if your
Windows system supports True Color, right-click the desktop and then
click Properties on the pop up menu that appears. Click the Settings tab on the dialog box and check the
Color palette or Color quality setting.
Why does it take 24 bits to get 16 million colors? It's simple arithmetic. To calculate
how many different colors can be captured or displayed, simply raise the number 2 to the
power of the number of bits used to record or display the image. For example, 8-bits gives
you 256 colors because 28=256. Here's a table to show you some other
possibilities.
Name
Bits per pixel
Formula
Number of
colors
Black and white
1
21
2
Windows display
4
24
16
Gray Scale
8
28
256
256 color
8
28
256
High color
16
216
65 thousand
True color
24
224
16 million
Some digital cameras (and scanners) use 30 or more bits per pixel and professional
applications often require 36-bit color depth, a level achieved only by professional-level
digital cameras. These extra bits
aren't used to generate colors that are later displayed. They are used to improve the
color in the image as it is processed down to its 24-bit final form and then discarded.
An ISO (International Organization for Standardization) number that appears on the film
package specifies the speed, or sensitivity, of a silver-based film. The higher the number
the "faster" or more sensitive the film is to light. If you've purchased film,
you're already familiar with speeds such as 100, 200, or 400. Each doubling of the ISO
number indicates a doubling in film speed so each of these films is twice as fast as the
next fastest.
Image sensors are also rated using equivalent ISO numbers. Just as with film, an image
sensor with a lower ISO needs more light for a good exposure than one with a higher ISO.
To get more light you need a longer exposure time that can lead to blurred images or a
wider aperture that gives you less depth of field. All things being equal, it's better to
get an image sensor with a higher ISO because it will enhance freezing motion and shooting
in low light. Typically, ISOs range from 100 (fairly slow) to 3200 or higher (very fast).
Some cameras have more than one ISO rating. In low-light situations, you can increase
the sensor's ISO by amplifying the image sensor's signal (increasing its gain). Some
cameras even increase the gain automatically. This not only increases the sensor's
sensitivity, it also increases the noise or "grain," making the images softer
and less sharp.
Dim light requires a fast lens and a high ISO or
you have to resort to flash.
The size of an image file depends in part on the resolution of the image. The higher
the resolution, the more pixels there are to store so the larger the image file becomes.
To make large image files smaller and more manageable most cameras store images in a
format called JPEG after its developer, the Joint Photographic Experts Group and
pronounced "jay-peg." This file format not only compresses images, it also
allows you to specify how much they are compressed. This is a useful feature because there
is a trade-off between compression and image quality. Less compression gives you better
images so you can make larger prints, but you can't store as many images. More compression
lets you store more images and makes the images better for posting on a Web page or
sending as an e-mail attachment. The only problem is that your prints won't be as good.
(For more on compression, see the chapter 8 "Image Compression and
File Formats.")
A heavily compressed image will show blockiness
when enlarged past a certain point.
An image with less compression retains a smooth
look.
Instead of using compression, some cameras allow you to change resolution as a way of
controlling the size of image files. Because you can squeeze more 640 x 480 images into a
storage device than you can squeeze 1024 x 768 images, there may be times when you'll want
to switch to a lower resolution and sacrifice quality for quantity.
Henri Cartier-Bresson is famous for his photographs that capture that "decisive
moment" when random actions intersect in a single instant that makes an arresting
photograph. His eye-hand coordination was unrivaled, and he was able to get the results he
did because he was always ready. There was never any fumbling with controls or lost
opportunities. Most digital cameras have an automatic exposure system that frees you from
the worry about controls. However, these cameras have other problems that make decisive
moments hard to capture. There are two delays built into digital cameras that affect your
ability to respond to fast action when taking pictures.
The first
brief delay you experience is between pressing the shutter button and actually capturing
the image. This delay, called the refresh rate, occurs because the camera clears the image
sensor, sets white balance to correct for color, sets the exposure, and focuses the image.
Finally it fires the flash (if it's needed) and takes the picture.
The second delay, the
recycle time, occurs when the captured image is processed and stored. This delay can range
from a few seconds to half a minute.
The delay between pressing the shutter release and
taking the picture means you have to anticipate actions or you'll miss the high point.
Both of these delays affect how quickly a series of photos can be taken one after
another, called the frame rate, shot-to-shot rate, or click to click rate. If the delays
are too long, you may miss a picture. To capture rapidly unfolding actions,
many cameras have a burst, continuous, or sequential mode that lets you take
one photo after another as long as you hold down the shutter button. To make
this possible, these cameras store the images in a memory area called a buffer
and then process them when the sequence is finished. How many pictures you
can take at one time depends on the size of the images and the size of the
buffer.
Todas las receta de cocina de las comidas de todo el mundo. Preparate para
cocinar de lo mejor! :) Aquí podrás encontrar las recetas de cocina de tus comidas
favoritas.
Recetas de Cocina de miles de comidas. Más de 35.000 recetas de comidas más
variadas y de diversas culturas. Tus favoritas! Recetas de Cocina de Aperitivos,
Postres, Primeros Platos, Segundos Platos, Comidas Navideñas, Salsas,
Carnes
Currently, there are more than 100 different types of anabolic steroids that have been developed, and each requires a prescription to be used legally in the United States.1
Anabolic steroids can be taken orally, injected intramuscularly, or rubbed on the skin when in the form of gels or creams.2 These drugs are often used in patterns called cycling, which involves taking multiple doses of steroids over a specific period of time, stopping for a period, and starting again. Users also frequently combine several different types of steroids in a process known as stacking.3 By doing this, users believe that the different steroids will interact to produce an effect on muscle size that is greater than the effects of using each drug individually.4
Another mode of steroid use is "pyramiding." This is a process in which users slowly escalate steroid use (increasing the number of drugs used at one time and/or the dose and frequency of one or more steroids) reaching a peak amount at mid-cycle and gradually tapering the dose toward the end of the cycle.5
Results from the 2004 Monitoring the Future Study, which surveys students in eighth, tenth, and twelfth grades, show that 1.9% of eighth graders, 2.4% of tenth graders, and 3.4% of twelfth graders reported using steroids at least once in their lifetimes.6
Percent of Students Reporting Steroid Use, 2004
Student Steroid Use
Eighth
Grade
Tenth
Grade
Twelfth
Grade
Past
month use
0.5%
0.8%
1.6%
Past
year use
1.1
1.5
2.5
Lifetime
use
1.9
2.4
3.4
Regarding the ease by which one can obtain steroids, 19.7% of eighth graders, 29.6% of tenth graders, and 42.6% of twelfth graders surveyed in 2004 reported that steroids were "fairly easy" or "very easy" to obtain. During 2004 55.7% of twelfth graders surveyed reported that using steroids was a "great risk."7
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) also conducts a survey of high school students throughout the United States, the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System (YRBSS) 6.1% of all high school students surveyed by CDC in 2003 reported lifetime use of steroid pills/shots without a doctor's prescription. 7.1% of ninth graders, 6.1% of tenth graders, 5.6% of eleventh graders, and 4.9% of twelfth graders reported lifetime illegal use of steroids.8
During 2003, 1.8% of young adults (ages 19-28) reported using steroids at least once during their lifetimes, 0.5% reported past year steroid use, and 0.2% reported past month steroid use.9
Anabolic steroid abuse has been associated with a wide range of adverse side effects ranging from some that are physically unattractive, such as acne and breast development in men, to others that are life threatening. Most of the effects are reversible if the abuser stops taking the drug, but some can be permanent. In addition to the physical effects, anabolic steroids can also cause increased irritability and aggression.10
Some of the health consequences that can occur in both males and females include liver cancer, heart attacks, and elevated cholesterol levels.11 In addition to this, steroid use among adolescents may prematurely stop the lengthening of bones resulting in stunted growth.12
People who inject steroids also run the risk of contracting or transmitting hepatitis or HIV.13 Some steroid abusers experience withdrawal symptoms when they stop taking the drug. These withdrawal symptoms include mood swings, fatigue, restlessness, loss of appetite, insomnia, reduced sex drive, and depression. This depression can lead to suicide attempts, and if left untreated, can persist for a year or more after the abuser stops taking the drugs.14
Illicit anabolic steroids are often sold at gyms, competitions, and through mail operations after being smuggled into this country.15
The most common source for obtaining steroids for illegal use is smuggling them into the U.S. from other countries such as Mexico and European countries. These countries do not require a prescription for the purchase of steroids, making it easier to smuggle them.16
In addition to this, steroids are also illegally diverted from U.S. pharmacies or synthesized in clandestine laboratories.17
Concerns over a growing illicit market and prevalence of abuse combined with the possibility of harmful long-term effects of steroid use led Congress to place anabolic steroids into Schedule III of the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) in 1991.18 It is therefore illegal to possess or sell anabolic steroids without a valid prescription. Some States have also implemented additional fines and penalties for illegal use of anabolic steroids.19
The International Olympic Committee, National Collegiate Athletic Association and many professional sports leagues (including the Major League Baseball, National Basketball Association, National Football League, and National Hockey League), have banned the use of steroids by athletes due to their potentially dangerous side effects and because they give the user an unfair advantage.20
Anabolic Steroids: Hidden Dangers
This fact sheet provides information on the dangerous medical health effects of illegal steroid use and how to help a friend if they are abusing steroids.
SteroidAbuse.Org
This NIDA site provides information about steroids.
Steroid Abuse in Today's Society
This guide will help you understand why steroids are being abused, and how you can educate athletes and others about the dangers of these drugs.
Steroids and Young People
This fact sheet provides an overview of recent data related to steroid use among youth.
World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA)
The mission of WADA is to promote and coordinate at international level the fight against doping in sport in all forms.
EPoX
offers a wide range of mainboards for all popular platforms. "Easy
Assembly" is the main principle of EPoX's mainboard design. We
design products supporting AMD and Intel processors.
EPoX IPC division
is offering assured performance products including full size SBC,
Industrial Boards, Embedded SBC for Industrial control, automation
applications as well as products for the telecommunication industry.
Read more...
To complete EPoX offering,
we now carry VGA cards in our production lines. Just after our launch
we carry mainstream and entry level adapters, but check back soon
if you are interested in more levels of graphics from EPoX.
In recent years, Web application security has become a focal center
for security experts. Application attacks are constantly on the
rise, posing new risks for the organization. One of the most dangerous
and most common attack techniques is SQL
Injection, which usually allows the hacker to obtain full access
to the organization's Database.
With the rise in SQL Injection attacks, security vendors have begun
to provide security measures to protect against SQL Injection. The
first ones to claim such protection have been the various Web Application
Firewall vendors, followed by most IDS/IPS vendors.
Most of this protection, however is Signature based. This is obviously
the case with common IDS/IPS vendors, as they come from the network
security world, and revolve around signature-based protection. However,
most of the Web Application Firewalls base their SQL Injection protection
on signatures as well. This is due to the fact that they inspect
HTTP traffic only, and are able to look for attack patterns only
within HTTP traffic. Moreover, it has lately become a common belief
that signatures are indeed sufficient for SQL Injection protection.
This belief has been backed up by a recently published article,
describing, allegedly, a thorough guide for building SQL Injection
signatures, in Snort™-like format.
The research done at Imperva's Application Defense Center shows,
however, that providing protection against SQL Injection using signatures
only is not enough. This paper demonstrates various techniques that
can be used to evade SQL Injection signatures, including advanced
techniques that were developed during the research.
The paper further demonstrates why these techniques are actually
just the tip of the iceberg of different evasion techniques, due
to the richness of the SQL language. Eventually, the conclusion
that the research leads to is that providing protection against
SQL Injection using only signatures is simply not practical. A reasonably
sized signature database will never be complete, while an attempt
to create a complete comprehensive signature database, even if theoretically
possible, will yield an amount of signatures that is impossible
to handle while maintaining a reasonable performance requirement,
and is likely to generate too many false positives.
Introduction
In this paper, we will look at a theoretical hacker, named Autolycus.
In Greek mythology, Autolycus was an accomplished thief and trickster.
He was a son of the god Hermes, who gave him the power of invisibility,
a trait required for evading detection.
In ancient times, Autolycus spent his days sneaking into fortresses,
through the main gate, pretending to be no other than a mere visitor.
Once in the fortress, Autolycus headed towards the treasury and
stole its entire contents. In modern times Autolycus found out that
breaking into a system through the exposed Web application and stealing
the entire contents of the database is as much fun, and involves
substantially less physical risk.
One of Autolycus's most favorite techniques is called SQL
injection. This technique allows him not only to steal the entire
contents of databases but to make arbitrary changes to data as well.
Autolycus has mastered this technique so well that by now he is
now able to reach the treasury even when blindfolded.
When Autolycus first approaches our fortress he knows, as usual,
nothing or very little about it. He is, however, determined as ever,
to get through the main gate, sneak into the treasury, and steal
what he thinks should be his. Based on his recent experiences, Autolycus
believes today will not be any different, and proceeds through the
main gate.
What Autolycus does not know at this point, however, is that a
new old guard, known by the name of Signatorious, has been posted
to our fortress. Signatorious has been around since the 'old days',
when network security was the main issue. Back then Signatorious
was posted to the external walls. Now, he is asked to examine all
the passersby going through the main gate. Although unable to see
Autolycus (he is invisible, after all), Signatorious has learned
the pattern of common SQL Injection attacks, and can now identify
and stop Autolycus, when attempting such attacks.
Note: many of the examples shown in this paper refer to MS SQL
Server, while some others refer to MySQL or Oracle. The reader
must not conclude that one database or another is more or less
vulnerable to evasion techniques, based on the number of examples
shown here. There are many more specific examples, in any database,
whether listed here or not, to be found. The basics concepts of
these techniques, however, remain the same.
Recognizing Signature Protection
Autolycus, unaware of the new guard, sticks to his old habits,
and is quickly stopped and thrown out of the fortress. Luckily,
Autolycus has nothing stopping him from coming back a minute after
being thrown out, and he repeats his attempts. Having enough experience
in this technique, Autolycus quickly understands that something
new is holding him back, and he moves on to identifying what is
it that blocks his way to the treasury. It will not be long before
Autolycus recognizes his foe from the old times, Signaturious.
In modern days, Autolycus is a savvy hacker. He makes a point
of reading all relevant mailing lists, being up to date with new
security features and security products, and understanding how they
work. After noticing that all of his attempts are blocked, unrelated
to their actual content, Autolycus is likely to understand, very
quickly, that signature protection is set on the Web server, and
that his requests are failing not because his SQL Injection is wrong,
but because the Web server or the security gateway in front of it
have noticed some SQL keywords.
Guessing, however, is never sufficient, and Autolycus decides to
run a series of tests to verify that this is indeed the case. Luckily,
for this test, Autolycus doesn't really need to be able to
do any kind of SQL Injection. The mechanisms which recognize these
signatures can not tell whether a parameter is subsequently transferred
to an SQL query or not. The identification of the signature-trigging
strings can therefore be easily done on any page with no relation
to its actual functionality in the system.
Autolycus, therefore, needs for his first step to simply identify
a location in the application where an arbitrary string, that is
unlikely to trigger a signature, can be inserted without invoking
any server side error. Using such a plain string allows eliminating
the cases where other security mechanisms are stopping Autolycus.
(For instance, inserting a string instead of an integer inside a
numerical parameter may trigger a type mismatch error in the server.
When detailed errors are hidden, this error can not be differentiated
from the error generated by the signature mechanism.).
The insertion of such an arbitrary string into the HTTP request
can be done in a variety of ways:
Any free input field in any of the pages in the application
(remember – the signature detection operates on all the
pages in the site), including search fields, form submissions,
etc.
If no free input fields are presented, any of the parameters
that are in string format can be examined to check if free string
insertion is available.
Alternatively, if no string fields exist at all in the system,
a new parameter can be simply added to the request, and is likely
to be ignored by the application itself. (Notice that some of
the application security products would block such an attempt.)
For example:
…&id=43&testparam=ARBITRARY
In other cases, where SQL Injection has already been detected,
and assuming no signature exists for the SQL comment characters
(-- or /* */), a working simple injection can be built and the
suspicious pattern placed inside a comment. For example:
…&dbid=originalid' -- ARBITRARY
Another technique, assuming SQL Injection has already been
detected, and no signature exists on the word AND, is to place
the suspicious pattern inside a string literal:
…&dbid=originalid' AND 'ARBITRARY'='ARBITRARY'
Eventually, in almost every application, a location can be found
where an arbitrary string can be inserted without causing any other
error. Once it is located, the second stage of the testing can take
place.
In the second stage, Autolycus tries to verify whether indeed signature
blocking takes place. This is simply done by replacing the arbitrary
string with a string that is likely to trigger the signature mechanism,
such as:
UNION SELECT
OR 1=1
EXEC SP_ (or EXEC XP_)
Assuming the site is indeed protected, any, or at least most of
these requests will yield an error, generated by the signature mechanism.
Autolycus now knows that signature protection is in place, and can
move to the final step, namely enumeration (at least partial) of
the signature list.
Sadly, this part is not very glamorous. It involves a tedious,
methodical process, of trial and error. Autolycus simply takes a
list of the attacks he uses during the hack, and tries them out
one by one. Those that do not cause an error are listed as safe.
Those that are blocked by the server are broken down into components,
until the exact string or regular expression is identified. This
may sound like a sisyphic project, but it normally does not take
too long to identify those signatures that actually disturb the
attack.
Common Evasion Techniques
After recognizing his archenemy Signaturious, Autolycus sits on
the ground, next to the fortress, and plans his next move. He now
knows which of his actions are monitored by Signatorious, yet this
just builds up frustration. All of his normal moves are detected
by this new guard. He goes back home, and digs up from his library
a book titled 'The Oldest Tricks in the World'. "I was able
to fool Signatorious in the old times", he thinks to himself,
"Maybe there are some old tricks he still hasn't learned…"
Surprisingly enough, many of the new generation products fail
where older generation products also failed in the past. It is therefore
likely that the first move of Autolycus would be to try some of
these old tricks, before proceeding to the advanced techniques.
Some such common old tricks are presented below.
Different Encodings
Various encoding tricks have proved themselves useful throughout
the history of computer attacks. The reasons for this are many.
Some products simply fail to do the right implementation or sufficiently
understand the application level protocol. Others are aware of
the problem, yet the performance requirements limit what they
can do in real time. One way or another, using a variety of encoding
techniques, such as URL Encoding, UTF-8, etc. may prove useful.
White Spaces Diversity
Many of the signatures that are used to prevent SQL Injection
attacks are a sequence of two or more expressions, separated by
a white space. The reason for this is simple, a single word, such
as SELECT, may generate a lot of false positives. The expression
UNION SELECT, however, is quite unique to the SQL world, making
it a good signature. This, however, carries the potential for
the white spaces problem. If the signature is not accurately built,
all Autolycus needs to do is replace a single space with two spaces,
or a space with a tab, rendering the signature useless, and allowing
the attack to take place.
IP Fragmentation and TCP Segmentation
Although less likely, some of the signature detection mechanisms,
(usually those that focus on the network rather than those that
actually parse the application protocol), may still be vulnerable
to fragmentation of lower level network protocols.
Advanced Evasion Techniques
Autolycus is now tired. He tried every trick in his book, yet
was thrown out of the fortress over and over again. A little voice
in his head whispers "Let it go, there are so many other fortresses
around". Autolycus gives in to the voice, and returns home.
At night, however, he is restless. It can't be that he will give
up on this. Signatorious is not that smart. He only knows what he
was shown. "There must be a way to fool this guard" he
thinks as he falls asleep.
In the morning, after dreams of the treasures found inside the
fortress, he decides to try another move. He realizes that using
old books from his library is not the solution, and he decides to
sit down, and think of creative ideas of his own, and then to try
again. "If I will come up with a good idea of my own, the guard
will never catch me", he thinks to himself, and rightfully
so.
We assume now that Autolycus has reached the point where common
evasion techniques were not successful, and he moves on to the next
step. We review here several techniques researched in Imperva's
Application Defense Center that have proven successful in avoiding
many common signature based protection mechanisms.
The 'OR 1=1' Signature
One of the common signatures used by such mechanisms is some
sort of variant on the famous OR 1=1 attack. Signatures are usually
built as a regular expression, aimed at catching as many possible
variations of the attack. Sadly (or luckily, for Autolycus), many
of them can be tricked by using sophisticated matches. For example,
an unusual string can be used, such as:
OR 'Unusual' = 'Unusual'
Yet, with some better systems, this might not be enough. Autolycus
therefore must find a way to make the two expressions look different,
yet still be the same. A very simple trick is to add the character
N prior to the second string, like this:
OR 'Simple' = N'Simple'
This character tells the SQL Server that the string should be
treated as nvarchar. This doesn't change anything in the
comparison for the SQL itself, but definitely makes it different
for any signature driven mechanism.
An even better technique would be to break one of the strings
into two, concatenating it on the SQL level. This will render
useless any mechanism which compares the strings on both sides
of the = sign (the example is in MS SQL Server syntax, but can
be done in a similar manner in any other database).
OR 'Simple' = 'Sim'+'ple'
One of the above mentioned techniques is likely to evade most
of the signature based mechanisms. Yet, some vendors might choose
a much wider regular expression to cope with this attack. Something
along the lines of the word OR followed by an equal sign (=) anywhere
in the string.
This, however, can also be easily avoided by simply finding an
expression which evaluates as true, without having the equal sign
in it. For instance, replacing the equal sign with the SQL word
LIKE (which performs a partial compare):
OR 'Simple' LIKE 'Sim%'
Or to use one of the < or > operators, like one of these
examples:
OR 'Simple' > 'S'
OR 'Simple' < 'X'
OR 2 > 1
Or to use the IN or BETWEEN statements:
OR 'Simple' IN ('Simple')
OR 'Simple' BETWEEN 'R' AND 'T'
(The latter is valid in MS SQL Server only, but can be easily
modified to work on any database.)
And this can go on forever. SQL is a very rich language, and
for every signature invented, a new evasion technique can be developed.
Trying to add signatures to cover all of the above presented techniques
is bound to fail, and will most likely badly damage the performance.
Another possibility is, of course, to define signatures that are
very general, such as an 'OR' followed, anywhere in the string,
by an SQL keyword or Meta character. This, however, is likely
to result with many false positives. Think of the following URL:
http://site/order.asp?ProdID=5&Quantity=4
Although far from being an invalid URL, it will trigger such
a signature:
http://site/order.asp?ProdID=5&Quantity=4
Clearly, this is not the solution.
Evading Signatures with White Spaces
As already mentioned before, common signatures nowadays include
white spaces within them. Patterns like 'UNION SELECT' or 'EXEC
SP_' (under MSSQL Server), provide relatively high accuracy for
signatures. Other signatures, aimed at neutralizing the above
described false positives may include signatures such as 'OR '
(an OR followed by a white space) or similar signatures.
In a previous section, a simple, common technique of replacing
the number or type of white spaces was discussed. Many of the
modern protection mechanisms, however, evolved past this stage,
and can properly handle any combination of white spaces. As a
result, a better technique is developed so that Autolycus can
penetrate the site.
The technique takes advantage of vendor specific SQL parsing
decisions, and creates a valid SQL statement without using spaces
or by inserting arbitrary characters between them. The techniques
here differ from one database to another, yet share the same principles.
The basic technique, which operates on databases that perform
a rather loose (and more user-friendly) parsing of the SQL syntax,
is to simply drop the spaces. With Microsoft SQL Server, for instance,
spaces between SQL keywords and number or string literals can
be completely omitted, allowing an easy evasion of signatures
such as 'OR '. Instead of typing:
…OrigText' OR 'Simple' = 'Simple'
(which is the basic attack), Autolycus can simply type:
…OrigText'OR'Simple'='Simple'
This works exactly the same way, but has no spaces in it whatsoever,
completely evading any spaces based signature.
This, however, will not work for injections such as 'UNION SELECT',
since there must be a separation between the two keywords. The
solution is, therefore, to find a way to separate them with something
other than a white space. A good example of this technique is
presented by the C-like comment syntax available in most database
servers (this was tested on MS SQL, MySQL and Oracle).
Most readers are probably familiar with the double hyphen (--)
comment syntax, that comments out everything up to a new line.
However, another syntax for comments is supported by most database
servers. This is the C-like syntax, using /* to start a comment
and */ to end it. This means that a valid SQL statement can look
like this:
SELECT *
FROM tblProducts /* List of Prods */
WHERE ProdID = 5
Similarly, this can be taken into the injection code, generating
an injection string as follows:
…&ProdID=2 UNION /**/ SELECT name …
Any signature attempting to detect a UNION followed by any amount
of white spaces, followed by a SELECT, will fail to detect this
signature. Moreover, in most cases the /**/ can actually replace
any of the spaces (in the above example it was in addition of
the spaces), allowing evasion of more sensitive signatures such
as 'SELECT ' or 'INSERT ' (an SQL keyword followed by a single
space), which have been noted to be used by some SQL signature
protection mechanisms. The previous example then would appear
like this:
…&ProdID=2/**/UNION/**/SELECT/**/name …
(The above example works in MS SQL and in Oracle, but not in
MySQL. In MySQL, at least one space has to be present. It can
be present, however, after the comment, which still allows evading
the signature that holds the space right after the keyword).
This technique can also be used in SQL Injections to Oracle,
to replace the OR 1=1 example showed above for MS SQL. Although
Oracle will not allow omitting the white spaces, it does allow
replacing them with a comment, which can lead to the following
exploit:
…OrigText'/**/OR/**/'Simple'='Simple'
This technique can be even further exploited, providing even
better evasion (especially in the cases of advanced application
firewalls that check the signatures on the parameter value only)
in cases where two separate parameters are inserted into the SQL
statement. Imagine a login page, where the following requests:
http://site/login.asp?User=X&Pass=Y
Generates the following query:
SELECT * FROM Users
WHERE User='X' AND Pass='Y'
In this case, the beginning of the comment can be injected into
one parameter, whereas the termination of the comment can be injected
into the other.
…login.asp?User=X'OR'1'/*&Pass=Y*/='1
Resulting in the following query, which easily logs Autolycus
in:
SELECT * FROM Users
WHERE User='X'OR'1'/* AND Pass='*/='1'
As with the techniques described for the 'OR 1=1' signature
evasion, there is no real solution here. It is of course possible
to add /* and */ to the signature list. However, a new trick is
likely to be devised shortly after. Alternatively, the actual
keywords, such as SELECT and INSERT can be placed as a signature,
but as with the OR keyword, this will result in many false positives
in real world applications, providing no real solution. (Imagine
a 'Contact Us' form in an ecommerce site, where the customer has
typed '…I have selected the product, but then had a problem…'.
This would trigger a signature on the word SELECT, without any
attack taking place.)
Evading Any String Pattern
Despite the example showing why standalone keywords are likely
to generate false positives, some stricter sites may choose to
apply such signatures, while limiting the functionality so that
no free text will be entered by the users (for instance, the main
portion of a banking application does not have to allow free texts
from the user). In this case, Autolycus will need other techniques,
which allow breaking strings in the middle.
Luckily, Autolycus still does not need to do a lot of research,
as the previously mentioned techniques can, with some modification,
be used for the purpose of this as well. The first technique goes
back to the C-like comments. With MySQL, the C-like comments would
not work as a replacement for a space. However, what was disturbing
back there is now an advantage. The same comments can be used
in MySQL to break words in the middle, for instance:
…UN/**/ION/**/ SE/**/LECT/**/ …
Another very promising prospect lies back in the string concatenation
demonstrated earlier. Most databases allow the user to execute
an SQL query through one or more statements (built in operations,
stored procedures, etc.), that receive the SQL query as a string.
All Autolycus therefore needs to do, is find a way to build
an exploit to the SQL Injection that will allow the execution
of such a string. Once this exploit was created (either with no
evasion techniques at all, because no one thought of this attack,
or using previously mentioned techniques), all the other patterns
can be evaded simply by using string concatenation in the middle
of the suspicious string.
A simple example is demonstrated with MS SQL's built in EXEC
command. This command can also be used as a function, receiving
any SQL statement as a string, which can be naturally concatenated:
…; EXEC('INS'+'ERT INTO…')
Since the word INSERT was split into two parts, no signature
mechanism is able to detect it. The SQL, however, rebuilds the
string, allowing it to execute as planned.
As with our other examples, this is not a singular example.
A similar attack, on MS SQL can be done with a stored procedure
named SP_EXECUTESQL. This is a new version of the outdated (yet
still functioning) SP_SQLEXEC procedure. Both of them will receive
a string containing an SQL query and will execute it. Naturally,
this problem is not limited to MS SQL. Other databases suffer
from the same problem. With Oracle, the syntax 'EXECUTE IMMEDIATE'
can be used to execute a string which can, of course, be concatenated.
Another interesting twist on this attack, in MS SQL, can be
based on a hexadecimal encoding of the string to be executed.
This way, the string 'SELECT' can be represented by the hexadecimal
number 0x73656c656374, which will not be detected by any signature
protection mechanism. This, combined with the loose-syntax nature
of SQL, allows executing many signature defined statements.
Another good example, in MS SQL relates to the OPENROWSET statement.
This technique was published in a white
paper over a year and a half ago, yet despite it being an
old, known technique, most signature based products fail to look
for it (for instance, the recently published article in SecurityFocus™,
mentioned before, completely ignores this keyword). Again, since
OPENROWSET receives a string parameter, it is possible to concatenate
into it the required query without it being detected by the signature
mechanism.
One may argue that the number of statements that can be used
for such a technique is limited within each Database. Yet although
this might be true to some extent, it is likely that while building
signatures some of them will be forgotten.
An excellent example for that is provided by MS SQL, which contains
unlisted stored procedures that can be used for execution of SQL
queries. Microsoft's implementation of prepared statements in
MS SQL Server is actually done using several internal, unlisted,
stored procedures. When running a prepared statement, a stored
procedure named sp_prepare runs first, preparing the statement,
and then a stored procedure named sp_execute is run in order to
execute the query. With these procedures not appearing in any
listing of SQL Server, they are obviously likely to be missing
from any SQL Injection signature database.
Obviously, similar undocumented procedures and functions may
exist in other databases, exposing them to future attacks evading
existing signatures.
Conclusion
The next morning, Autolycus is home again. Next to him, lies the
stolen treasure. "I did it again," he thinks to himself,
as the sunlight reflects off the gold bars. With a satisfied smile
he sits down to write his new book 'New Guards – New Tricks'.
Sadly, he will choose to distribute that book only to his friends
inside the thieves' guild, preventing the guards of the other fortresses
to learn anything new from it.
Three days later, an angry man approaches the gates of the fortress.
He claims he saw his mother's necklace, stored for safekeeping in
the fortress treasury, on sale in the market. All the fortress'
guards run down to the treasury, and find that indeed it was plundered.
Signatorious then understands that he was outsmarted by Autolycus.
Frustrated by his defeat, and in a desperate attempt to prove his
worth, he starts to frantically stop anyone he imagines as suspicious,
throwing out many innocent passersby out of the fortress. The chief
of guards then understands that Signatorious is simply unable to
fulfill his task, and relieves him from duty.
At this point, we believe the conclusion of this paper is clear
to the reader. Signature protection against SQL Injection is simply
not enough. Although this paper demonstrates only some of the variety
of evasion techniques for avoiding SQL Injection signatures, some
or even all of these techniques are likely to operate on most of
today's signature protection mechanisms.
Sadly, the trivial solution of adding a few more signatures to
your protection mechanism is not a real solution. It can help thwart
some of the technique shown here, but other techniques can be developed.
This is due to the richness of the SQL language implemented by many
database vendors. The richness of the language means that many different
statements can be sent to the server, all resulting in one specific
operation.
Trying to provide full security for such a rich language must take
one of two approaches. The first approach is an attempt to perform
an accurate detection of all possible dangerous SQL statements.
For a single Database type, this should include all sufficiently
accurate combinations of SQL keywords (such as INSERT… INTO,
UNION SELECT), all stored procedures and functions (these usually
have distinctive names, allowing them to appear as they are in a
signature), and any other relevant SQL related syntax.
That approach, however, has many disadvantages. Even if theoretically,
covering all possible attacks and evasion techniques was possible,
this would require building hundreds of signatures, many of them
fairly complex, regular expression based. Although providing reasonable
good accuracy, this is simply not practical, performance wise.
Having several hundreds of signatures for every database type easily
rises to over a thousand signatures in a diverse organization holding
several different database types. These are on top of the already
existing signatures for other attacks. The performance price (throughput
and latency) is simply unacceptable for such a large number of signatures.
The second approach is to generate very few, very generic signatures.
With MSSQL Server such a policy can include the following keywords
(with their matching different encodings of course):
And also some Meta Characters (and their encodings), such as:
; -- + ' ( ) = > < @
This, however, can only work on a specifically built application
running in a lab. In the real world, this minimized set of signatures
is bound to block more users than hackers.
A fine example of this is provided by the previously mentioned
'Detection of SQL Injection and Cross-site Scripting Attacks' article.
This article tried a reduced set of the second approach, using regular
expressions seeking specific Meta characters, as well as regular
expressions that allow the detection of specific key words, such
as OR. Sadly, this is bound to result with many false positives.
This amount of false positives may be acceptable in some IDS systems,
but is definitely not acceptable in an IPS or a Web Application
Firewall, which blocks any such request. Not many organizations
will agree to block any user who studies in St. John's University,
and wishes to fill in his personal details.
We are now at the point where the original claim has been proven.
Using SQL Injection signatures is simply not a good enough mechanism
to protect against SQL Injection attacks. Any attempt to create
a signature base good enough to prevent all SQL Injection attacks
is bound to fail for one of two reasons – too many false positives,
or too many signatures, more than the mechanism can handle.
Although using SQL Injection signatures does, of course, provide
a certain level of security (which pushes off many less capable
hackers) it provides a false sense of security, as the more capable
hacker would be able to penetrate through it.
Oregon's largest and best known mountain stands guard beside the Columbia River within viewing distance from Portland. The summit area is incorporated in the Mount Hood Wilderness. Several glaciers, including the Reid, Zigzag and Sandy glaciers, have developed on the west and northwest slopes of Mt. Hood, which receives up to 300 inches of snow each year.
In 1792, WR Broughton of the Lewis & Clark Expedition discovered and named Mt. Hood and the river in honor of Lord Hood of British Admiralty. Perhaps Mr. Broughton was over tired that day, or maybe he was overwhelmed by the sheer beauty and magnitude of the area to have purged the word ‘Hood’ from his mind. Perhaps we’ll never know the answer, nor does it matter. Oregon's Mt. Hood Territory is a 'World Class' vacation destination with something for everyone. The mountain is enjoyed by recreationists during summer and winter seasons alike.
The higher elevations of this dormant volcano receive 60" to 100" of precipitation per year, almost all of it in the form of snow. The mountain is easily accessible, about an hour east of Portland on Highway 26. It can also be reached by following Hwy 35 south from Hood River for about 45 minutes.
Mt Hood is the most frequently climbed glaciated peak in North America. All routes to the summit are technical climbs, and should not be attempted without experience and a guide.
Test:
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ukomplisert, skriver Cecilie Kjensli på sin nye sex-blogg.
Er du klar for en romanse?
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Materialet pĺ dette nettstedet er omfattet av ĺndsverklovens bestemmelser.
Uten sćrskilt avtale direkte med TV 2 Nettavisen AS (utgiver) eller med Mediebedriftenes Klareringstjeneste (www.klarering.no) er enhver kopiering, lagring, eksemplarfremstilling og tilgjengeliggjřring bare tillatt i den utstrekning det er hjemlet i lov.
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Facts & Figures: Marijuana - Drug Facts, ONDCP
Marijuana is a green, brown, or gray mixture of dried, shredded leaves, stems, seeds, and flowers of the hemp plant (Cannabis sativa). Cannabis is a term that refers to marijuana and other drugs made from the same plant. Other forms of cannabis include sinsemilla, hashish, and hash oil. All forms of cannabis are mind-altering (psychoactive) drugs.
The main active chemical in marijuana is THC (delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol). Short-term effects of marijuana use include problems with memory and learning, distorted perception, difficulty in thinking and problem solving, loss of coordination, increased heart rate, and anxiety.
Marijuana is usually smoked as a cigarette (called a joint) or in a pipe or bong. Marijuana has also appeared in blunts, which are cigars that have been emptied of tobacco and refilled with marijuana, sometimes in combination with another drug, such as crack. It can also be mixed into foods or used to brew a tea.1
Marijuana is the most commonly used illicit drug. According to the 2004 National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH), approximately 96.8 million Americans ages 12 and older reported trying marijuana at least once during their lifetimes, representing 40.2% of the population ages 12 and older. Approximately 25.5 million people (10.6%) reported past year marijuana use and 14.6 million people (6.1%) reported past month marijuana use.2
Additional 2004 NSDUH survey results indicate that 12.7% of past year marijuana users used the substance on 300 or more days in the past 12 months, meaning 3.2 million persons used marijuana on a daily or almost daily basis over a 12-month period. The number of youths aged 12 to 17 using marijuana daily or almost daily declined from 358,000 in 2002 to 282,000 in 2003 but increased to 342,000 in 2004.3
A 2002 SAMHSA report, Initiation of Marijuana Use: Trends, Patterns and Implications, concludes that the younger children are when they first use marijuana, the more likely they are to use cocaine and heroin and become dependent on drugs as adults. The report found that 62 percent of adults age 26 or older who initiated marijuana before they were 15 years old reported that they had used cocaine in their lifetime. More than 9 percent reported they had used heroin and 53.9 percent reported non-medical use of psychotherapeutics. This compares to a 0.6 percent rate of lifetime use of cocaine, a 0.1 percent rate of lifetime use of heroin and a 5.1 percent rate of lifetime non-medical use of psychotherapeutics for those who never used marijuana. Increases in the likelihood of cocaine and heroin use and drug dependence are also apparent for those who initiate use of marijuana at any later age.4
Among students surveyed as part of the 2005 Monitoring the Future study, 16.5% of eighth graders, 34.1% of tenth graders, and 44.8% of twelfth graders reported lifetime use of marijuana. In 2004, these percentages were 16.3%, 35.1%, and 45.7%, respectively.5
Percent of Students Reporting Marijuana Use, 2004–2005
8th Grade
10th Grade
12th Grade
2004
2005
2004
2005
2004
2005
Past month
6.4%
6.6%
15.9%
15.2%
19.9%
19.8%
Past year
11.8
12.2
27.5
26.6
34.3
33.6
Lifetime
16.3
16.5
35.1
34.1
45.7
44.8
Approximately 74% of eighth graders, 65.5% of tenth graders, and 58% of twelfth graders surveyed in 2005 reported that smoking marijuana regularly was a "great risk."6
Percent of Students Reporting Risk of Using Marijuana, 2005
Say "great risk" to:
8th Grade
10th Grade
12th Grade
Try marijuana once/twice
31.4%
22.3%
16.1%
Smoke marijuana occasionally
48.9
36.6
25.8
Smoke marijuana regularly
73.9
65.5
58.0
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's 2003 Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System (YRBSS), 40.2% of high school students surveyed nationwide used marijuana during their lifetime.7
Percent of Students Reporting Lifetime Marijuana Use, 1999–2003
Grade
1999
2001
2003
9th
34.8%
32.7%
30.7%
10th
49.1
41.7
40.4
11th
49.7
47.2
44.5
12th
58.4
51.5
48.5
Total
47.2
42.4
40.2
Additional results from the YRBSS indicate that 22.4% of high school students surveyed in 2003 reported current (past month) marijuana use.8
Percent of Students Reporting Current Marijuana Use, 1999–2003
Grade
1999
2001
2003
9th
21.7%
19.4%
18.5%
10th
27.8
24.8
22.0
11th
26.7
25.8
24.1
12th
31.5
26.9
25.8
Total
26.7
23.9
22.4
During 2004, 49.1% of college students and 57.4% of young adults (ages 19–28) reported lifetime use of marijuana.9
Percent of College Students/Young Adults Using Marijuana, 2003–2004
College Students
Young Adults
2003
2004
2003
2004
Past month
19.3%
18.9%
17.3%
16.5%
Past year
33.7
33.3
29.0
29.2
Lifetime
50.7
49.1
57.2
57.4
According to data from the Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring (ADAM) Program, a median of 44.1% of adult male arrestees and 31.6% of adult female arrestees tested positive for marijuana at the time of arrest in 2003. The adult male samples were compiled from 39 U.S. sites and the adult female samples were compiled from 25 sites.10
Marijuana abuse is associated with many detrimental health effects. These effects can include frequent respiratory infections, impaired memory and learning, increased heart rate, anxiety, panic attacks and tolerance. Marijuana meets the criteria for an addictive drug and animal studies suggest marijuana causes physical dependence and some people report withdrawal symptoms.11
Someone who smokes marijuana regularly may have many of the same respiratory problems that tobacco smokers do, such as daily cough and phlegm production, more frequent acute chest illnesses, a heightened risk of lung infections, and a greater tendency toward obstructed airways. Cancer of the respiratory tract and lungs may also be promoted by marijuana smoke. Marijuana has the potential to promote cancer of the lungs and other parts of the respiratory tract because marijuana smoke contains 50 percent to 70 percent more carcinogenic hydrocarbons than does tobacco smoke.12
Marijuana's damage to short-term memory seems to occur because THC alters the way in which information is processed by the hippocampus, a brain area responsible for memory formation. In one study, researchers compared marijuana smoking and nonsmoking 12th-graders' scores on standardized tests of verbal and mathematical skills. Although all of the students had scored equally well in 4th grade, those who were heavy marijuana smokers, i.e., those who used marijuana seven or more times per week, scored significantly lower in 12th grade than nonsmokers. Another study of 129 college students found that among heavy users of marijuana critical skills related to attention, memory, and learning were significantly impaired, even after they had not used the drug for at least 24 hours.13
Drug Episode: A drug-related
ED episode is an ED visit that
was induced by or related to the
use of drug(s).
Drug Mention: A drug mention
refers to a substance that was
recorded during an ED episode. Because up to 4 drugs can be reported for each drug abuse episode, there are more mentions than episodes.
During 2002, marijuana was the second most frequently mentioned illicit drug reported to the Drug Abuse Warning Network (cocaine was the first) by emergency departments (ED) nationwide. There were 119,474 marijuana ED mentions during the year, up from 110,512 in 2001. While marijuana ED mentions were statistically unchanged from 2001 to 2002, they have risen 164% since 1995 when there were 45,259 mentions and 24% since 2000 when there were 96,426 mentions. Approximately 16% of the marijuana ED mentions in 2002 involved patients ages 6–17, 31% involved 18–25 year-olds, 21% involved 26–34 year-olds, and 32% involved individuals 35 years of age and older.14
DAWN also collects information on deaths involving drug abuse that were identified and submitted by 128 death investigation jurisdictions in 42 metropolitan areas across the United States. Cannabis ranked among the 10 most common drugs in 16 cities, including Detroit (74 deaths), Dallas (65), and Kansas City (63). Marijuana is very often reported in combination with other substances; in metropolitan areas that reported any marijuana in drug abuse deaths, an average of 79 percent of those deaths involved marijuana and at least one other substance.15
From 1993 to 2003, the number of admissions to treatment in which marijuana was the primary substance of abuse increased from 111,418 in 1993 to 284,532 in 2003. The marijuana admissions represented 6.9% of the total drug/alcohol treatment admissions during 1993 and 15.5% of the admissions in 2003. Approximately 75% of those admitted to treatment for marijuana during 2003 were male and almost 55% of the total marijuana admissions were white. The average age of those admitted to treatment for marijuana during 2003 was 23 years.16
There were a total of 1,745,712 state and local arrests for drug abuse violations in the United States during 2004. Of the drug arrests, 5.0% were for marijuana sale/manufacturing and 39.2% were for marijuana possession.17
In FY 2003, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) made 5,679 arrests related to cannabis, accounting for 20.9% of all DEA arrests during the year. This is an increase from FY 2002, when 5,576 cannabis-related arrests were made by the DEA, accounting for 18.5% of all DEA arrests.18
According to a 1997 Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) survey of Federal and state prisoners approximately 19% of Federal and 13% of state drug offenders were incarcerated for a marijuana-related offense. The survey also measured prior drug use by prison inmates. Approximately 65% of Federal prisoners had tried marijuana/hashish, 47% had used it regularly, 30% used it in the month before their offense, and 11% used it at the time of their offense. In 1997 77% of State prisoners had tried marijuana/ hashish, 58% had used it regularly, 39% had used it in the month before their offense, and 15% had used it at the time of their offense.19
Marijuana was involved in 40.4% and 43.1% of the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force (OCDETF) investigations in FY 2001 and FY 2002, respectively, second only to cocaine. The proportion of OCDETF indictments in which marijuana was charged was 18.5% in FY 2001 and 16.3% in FY 2002, falling behind cocaine, crack, and methamphetamine.20
In FY 2003, the U.S. Sentencing Commission (USSC) reported that there were 6,788 Federal drug offenders sentenced in U.S. Courts for marijuana-related offenses. The majority (89.2%) of the marijuana-related cases involved offenders sentenced for committing a drug trafficking offense.21
The Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring (ADAM) program collects drug use data from booked arrestees in over 30 sites nationwide. A recent report focussing on youthful adult arrestees (18-20 years old) surveyed in ADAM sites has shown an increase in marijuana use among this population. Starting around 1991, most ADAM locations experienced a rapid increase in recent use among youthful adult arrestees, from an average low of 25 percent in 1991 to 57 percent in 1996, as detected by urinalysis. The report concludes that marijuana appears to be the drug of choice for arrestees born since 1970.22
According to Domestic Cannabis Eradication/Suppression Program (DCE/SP) statistics, 3,200,121 cultivated marijuana plants were eradicated by state and local law enforcement agencies in the United States during 2004.23
Much of the outdoor cannabis cultivation in the United States occurs in remote areas on Federal lands. From 2002 to 2003, the number of cannabis plants eradicated on National Forest System (NFS) lands increased from 597,797 to 729,481. Eradication on Department of Interior (DOI) lands increased from 168,645 plants in 2002 to 263,356 plants in 2003.24
Additionally, data indicate that a significant amount of marijuana is seized each year on NFS and DOI lands, particularly while being transported along the U.S.-Mexico border and, to a much lesser extent, the U.S.-Canada border. For example, seizures of marijuana on NFS lands increased from 59,733 pounds in 2002 to 71,766 pounds in 2003. Approximately 77% of the 71,766 pounds seized in 2003 was seized along the U.S.-Mexico border. The amount of marijuana seized on DOI lands has fluctuated in recent years from 259,314 pounds in 2001, to 447,545 pounds in 2002, to 263,356 pounds in 2003.25
U.S. Federal agencies seized more than 2.7 million pounds of marijuana in FY 2003. This is up from approximately 2.4 million pounds in FY 2002.26
The Pulse Check: Trends in Drug Abuse report presents findings on drug use patterns and drug markets as reported by ethnographers, epidemiologists, treatment providers, and law enforcement officials in 20 U.S. metropolitan areas. The majority of Pulse Check respondents report that marijuana is widely available in their communities.27
Pulse Check respondents report that marijuana potency ranges from 4–6 percent THC for Mexican commercial-grade marijuana to 15–22 percent THC for sinsemilla. Commercial-grade marijuana (Mexican or domestic) ounce prices are generally in the $100–$200 range. The highest reported prices are for hydroponic or sinsemilla marijuana, which sell for up to $1,200.28
Marijuana sellers are more likely to operate independently than as part of organized operations. However, organizations with varying degrees of structure do exist in several cities. Marijuana sales often involve acquaintance or referral networks, posing a challenge to law enforcement disruption efforts. Marijuana tends to be sold both indoors and outdoors and in all types of geographic areas-central city, suburban, and rural.29
According to 2003 NSDUH, most marijuana users (56.9%) got the drug for free or shared someone else's marijuana. Almost 40% of marijuana users bought it. Most marijuana users obtained the drug from a friend. More than half (54.3%) of users who bought their marijuana purchased it inside a home, apartment, or dorm. Almost 9% of youths who bought their marijuana obtained it inside a school building, and 4.6% bought it outside on school property.30
Marijuana is a Schedule I substance under the Controlled Substances Act (CSA). Schedule I drugs are classified as having a high potential for abuse, no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States, and a lack of accepted safety for use of the drug or other substance under medical supervision.31
In the case of United States v. Oakland Cannabis Club the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that marijuana has no medical value as determined by Congress. The opinion of the court stated that: "In the case of the Controlled Substances Act, the statute reflects a determination that marijuana has no medical benefits worthy of an exception outside the confines of a government-approved research project."32 The case reached the U.S. Supreme Court after the federal government sought an injunction in 1998 against the Oakland Cannabis Buyers Cooperative and five other marijuana distributors in California.33
The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit issued a ruling on May 24, 2002, upholding DEA's determination that marijuana must remain a schedule I controlled substance. The Court of Appeals rejected an appeal that contended that marijuana does not meet the legal criteria for classification in schedule I, the most restrictive schedule under the Controlled Substances Act.34
Marijuana Fact Sheet
An overview of information on medical marijuana, marijuana trafficking, seizures, price and purity.
Marijuana Fact Sheet
This fact sheet provides information on marijuana use, health effects, availability, and related enforcement and treatment activities.
Marijuana-Info.Org
This page lists useful resources regarding marijuana use, its effects and treatment.
Marijuana Photos
This site provides photos of marijuana, hashish, and indoor growing operations.
Marijuana Prevention Initiative
To dispel myths and misconceptions about the drug, ONDCP has launched a comprehensive marijuana prevention initiative.
Marijuana Publications
A listing of publications related to marijuana from various sources.
Misinformation Clouds Medical Marijuana Issue
This Op-Ed by Dr. Andrea Barthwell, ONDCP Deputy Director of Demand Reduction, discusses the current issues surrounding the use of marijuana for medical purposes.
German Immigrants; Lists of Passengers Bound from Bremen to New York,
ed. Gary Zimmerman and Marion P. Wolfert (Baltimore, MD: Genealogical
Publishing Co., 1985-1993). Vol. 1 (1985): 1847-1854; vol. 2 (1986): 1855-1862;
vol. 3 (1988): 1863-1867; vol. 4 (1993): 1868-1871.
Germans to America; Lists of Passengers Arriving at U.S. Ports,
ed. Ira A. Glazier and P. William Filby (Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 1988ff.).
A list of volumes published
is maintained by Jim Eggert.
Le mangeur de cigogne se nourrit de cigogne. Personne ou animal ? Mangeur il est, de cigogne de surcroît. Mais, dis-moi, mangeur de cigogne, pourquoi donc manger une cigogne ? Mmm ?
Vous ĂŞtes plutĂ´t ou plutĂ´t
"La cigogne est un plat très nourissant pour tout mangeur de cigogne qui se respecte.
Le 14 mai : l'ignare gagne 3 places : 90 ! Soit 10 places en une semaine. Bon, sachant qu'il reste 4 semaines en gros, ce rythme ne suffit pas. L'ignare du web va devoir sortir de sa tanière du web et en appeler à tous les amis du mangeur de cigogne.
802.11s - IEEE Standard For Wireless Mesh Networks
Esme Vos of MuniWireless.com wrote me recently: Don't you think mesh is going to be commoditized, if it isn't already?
My reply: Bottom line - done right, Mesh really, REALLY works- to the point where you'd swear that it cannot possibly work, but it does. But it's not cheap, it's not easy, and it's nothing resembling standardized. Dynamic Wireless Mesh Networking is at the same stage as WLANs were in the early 90's; they work, but they're expensive and proprietary.
To become commoditized, the economic pressures have to drive the players to a standards process like IEEE's. There doesn't seem to be that pressure yet; those who really need what mesh can do need it badly enough that they're willing to pay and put up with proprietary.
Oops...
Apparently pressure to standardize Mesh Wireless Local Area Networks (MWLANs) is in fact being felt. In her Network World Wireless In The Enterprise column this week, Joanie Wexler describes the formation of IEEE 802.11s, which seeks to standardize Meshed Wireless Local Area Networks (MWLANs).
Posted by Steve at 7:30 AM
Wexler translates the "standards-ese well: 802.11s aims to define a MAC and PHY [layer] for meshed networks that improve coverage with no single point of failure. In such networks, 802.11 cellular WLAN access points relay information from one to another, hop by hop, in a router-like fashion.
Scope of the Project. An IEEE 802.11 Extended Service Set (ESS) Mesh* is a collection of APs interconnected with wireless links that enable automatic topology learning and dynamic path configuration.
The proposed amendment shall be an extension to the IEEE 802.11 MAC. The amendment will define an architecture and protocol for providing an IEEE 802.11 ESS Mesh using the IEEE 802.11 MAC to create an IEEE 802.11 Wireless Distribution System that supports both broadcast/multicast and unicast delivery at the MAC layer using radio-aware metrics over self-configuring multi-hop topologies. An ESS Mesh is functionally equivalent to a wired ESS, with respect to the STAs relationship with the BSS and ESS.
The amendment shall enable interoperable formation and operation of an ESS Mesh, but shall be extensible to allow for alternative path selection metrics and/or protocols based on application requirements. A target configuration is up to 32 devices participating as AP forwarders in the ESS Mesh. However, larger configurations may also be contemplated by the standard. It is intended that the architecture defined by the amendment shall allow an ESS Mesh to interface with higher layers and to connect with other networks using higher layer protocols.
The amendment shall utilize IEEE 802.11i security mechanisms, or an extension thereof, for the purpose of securing an ESS Mesh in which all of the APs are controlled by a single logical administrative entity for security. The amendment shall allow the use of one or more IEEE 802.11 radios on each AP in the ESS Mesh.
As Wexler notes in her article (and well documented at Mobile Mesh Networking), there are now a number of incompatible MWLAN systems from various vendors. Given the maturity and rapid evolution of 802.11, it's no surprise that despite "mesh extensions" being included in the 802.16 standard (the basis of WiMAX), 802.11 will likely develop interoperable Wireless Mesh systems first, and that Wireless Mesh will be a good fit for, and go a long way in compensating for the "shorter range" nature of 802.11 used as Last Mile Broadband Wireless Internet Access.
The development of 802.11s serves to illustrate my point about why 802.16a/d/e/WiMAX won't necessarily and/or rapidly usurp other Last Mile BWIA technologies such as modified Wi-Fi and proprietary systems. It's not likely, but possible, that WiMAX will end up playing the role of "IBM Token Ring" to the "Ethernet" of rapidly evolving 802.11 systems. WiMAX will not enter a virgin BWIA marketplace; WiMAX will have to prove itself as more cost-effective, more robust, seamlessly interoperable, and generally better overall. That could likely happen... but it's far from a given, especially when the competing technologies aren't "standing still" such as the development of 802.11s.
Steve Stroh
Copyright (c) 2004 by Steve Stroh (except for IEEE 802.11s and Wexler column excerpts). This article appears on Corante by special arrangement.
Europe weakness in industrial R&D is often highlighted to explain the gap between Europe and the United States in term of innovation and competitiveness. The Barcelona target to reach 3% of national spending in R&D within the European Union is thus largely aimed at increasing private investments in science and technology. However, such goal is unlikely to be attained without important actions.
The aim of this new workgroup is to determine the key issues which prevent industrial companies to invest in science and technology in Europe and propose original solutions to the various stakeholders. For instance, what are the expectations and needs of the industrial community in term of science and technology education, tax incentives, intellectual property right systems, public research infrastructures, academic or defense contracts etc… Obviously, the needs of SMEs may be different from that of larger companies, and the formation of entrepreneurs or the demand for venture capital are also important factors. One has also to examine the career prospects offered by industry in R&D, its organization and reactivity compared to its competitors etc…
If you are interested in joining this workgroup, and/or have valuable contribution to make, please contact us.
Euroscience questionnaire on industrial R&D
An inquiry among European industrial researchers and developers on Europe’s industrial R&D.
Publication of the Survey Results delayed
Due to unforeseen difficulties, we regret that the preliminary analysis of the answers to the questionnaire on Industrial R&D cannot be released in the short term as planned. We apologise for this delay to all who have participated to the study and were expecting these results. We are trying our utmost to solve this problem and will keep you updated on this website.
For more information, you can contact Frédéric Sgard at the following e-mail address:
.
+++URL: http://www.enfermeras-cachondas.com/enfermeras/galeria23H/index.html
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fotos varias
If you have this page book marked,
don't forget to update it.
+++URL: http://www.chmi.cz/meteo/rad/index.html
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Fri, 10 Feb 2006 20:08:55 GMT
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CHMI Radar Department
<BODY>
<h1>Oddělení radarových měření ČHMÚ</h1>
Váą prohliľeč nepodporuje rámy. Verze bez rámů je k dispozici <A href="rad_main.html">zde</A>.
</BODY>
+++URL: http://www.wimax.co.uk/PR2004/Jan2004/2019.htm
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1,000th Orange WiFi Hotspot
1,000th
Orange WiFi Hotspot
23rd
February , 2004
Europe
: France Telecom announces the activation of its 1,000th hotspot at
the Palais Brongniart (Paris Stock Exchange). With its Orange WiFi access
network and easy to use offers, Orange, in less than a year, has become
the WiFi leader in public places in France.
Early
2003, Orange paved the way and announced the installation of 400 hotspots
in France before the end of the year. In late January 2004 this commitment
was surpassed with 1,000 activated hotspots, from which everyday hundreds
of clients already use high-speed wireless Internet access on their
laptops. Supporting "business" mobile users throughout their
trips (airports, hotels, conference centers), this is certainly the
largest WiFi network in France, in particular thanks to partnerships
signed with groups such as Accor or Air France and to deployment support
provided by France Telecom's regional teams.
Accelerated
deployment
By the end of 2004, Orange plans to deploy 4,500 hotspots under new
agreements signed with Virgin, Club Med, Disney Resort and Total. Moreover,
smaller establishments such as cafés, hotels and restaurants
can easily activate an Orange hotspot by purchasing a Wanadoo Extense
Pro WiFi pack. Additionally, France Telecom's Paris Regional Division
is launching an experiment conducted with local governments to develop
"WiFi areas."
Simplicity,
security and efficiency for all Orange customers
Beyond the service's availability, WiFi development requires providing
users with simple and secure offers. No specific computer parameterization
is needed to use Orange WiFi access and a bilingual French and English
dedicated hotline is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
Didier
Quillot, Executive VP, Orange France, adds, "Our mission as a mobile
phone telecommunications carrier is to enable our customers to maintain
their connection with their environment when far from home or the office,
in complete serenity and as easily as possible."
Already
bolstered by the market's largest selection of prepaid cards, subscription
plans (Orange PC Entreprise) or online bankcard payment services, Orange
introduces the Orange mobile phone as a means of obtaining one's WiFi
access codes. Starting in April, Orange's 2 million business customers
can use their mobile phone plan for WiFi Internet connection on their
laptops.
While
waiting for this latest offer to be launched, as a promotional offer,
all Orange customers can try out the Orange WiFi access service for
free until April 15, 2004. Just send an SMS with the key word "WiFi"
to 10114 to take advantage of 4 free hours of Internet access, worth
€ 30.
Finally,
in order to simplify everyone's access to a high quality WiFi service,
Orange is actively involved in the WiFi Multi-carriers Association to
guarantee the interoperability of hotspots in France starting from the
second quarter of 2004, and is implementing its expertise in roaming
agreements developed within the GSM world to offer a more extensive
international WiFi coverage.
With
Orange WiFi access, Orange is undertaking actions that aim to provide
its customers with improved coherence between various mobile terminal
uses, whether at home, at the office or in a public place.
All
Material Subject to Copyright. All logos, graphics and trademarks are
the property of their respective owners.
Established
wireline and wireless network providers will be among the big beneficiaries
of the $163 billion to be spent worldwide over the next five years on
WiFi services
Military
Communications Technologies, Inc. announced that its Australian-based
affiliate, Military SDR Technologies, has successfully implemented an
OFDM waveform on its SpectruCell and PC4 Software Defined Radio platforms.
WiMAX, the
global non-profit organization dedicated to the realisation of IEEE 802.16
and ETSI HiperMAN wireless standards for last-mile broadband access, announced
that its wireless broadband technology was recognized as the "Most
Promising Technology of the Year
Wireless
phone companies pouring billions of dollars into "third generation"
networks that offer high-speed Internet connections without the tether
of a cable or phone line have been casting a wary eye on a cheap wireless
broadband
In the race
to deliver broadband to consumers and businesses, many wonder if WiMAX
will be another arrow in an incumbent's quiver or a new weapon employed
by nimble competitors.
Dr Irwin
Jacobs, CEO and chairman of Qualcomm, the US-based CDMA chipset maker,
has played down any possible negative impact that WiFi may have on 3G
data revenue.
WiMaxcouk
, 54 Brunel Avenue, Newport UK NP10 ODN.
+++URL: http://www.centrum.is/aflagr34/PDC/index.html
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The Platinum Downline Club - join for FREE now! // Get more affiliates (referrals) in your Six Figure Income downline and earn a residual income
Welcome to The Platinum Downline Club. Our goal
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La auténtica
previsión del futuro tiene en cuenta tu día de nacimiento. Ahora podrás disponer
de tu propio horóscopo. Haz clic en tu signo para descubrirlo. Aries Tauro Géminis
Cáncer Leo Virgo Libra Escorpio Sagitario Capricornio Acuario Piscis
El Horóscopo es el estudio del Sol,
la Luna y los planetas y cómo ellos
influyen en nuestras vidas. Usted
debe haber leído su horóscopo
probablemente en una revista,
periodico o incluso en el Internet.
Es interesante para las personas leer sus predicciones del horóscopo. Comprueba el parecido de tu perso-
nalidad con famosas y famosos que
comparten tu signo zodiacal. Más
famosos click aqui...
Descubre
ahora información real del futuro. Entérate
si podrás conseguir ese trabajo
que esperas. Descubre
como conquistar a los signos
del sexo opuesto. Mantente
alerta a las predicciones de tu
salud para prevernirte. Resolvemos
tus dudas sobre sexualidad,
salud, dinero, personalidad, belleza,
compatibilidad con otros signos.
Cada
signo del
zodíaco tiene
una personali-
dad bien defi-
nida según los astros.
Compruebalo hoy...
No todos somos iguales,
depende de la forma de
ser de cada uno son los
cuidados que debemos
tomar para mantenernos
saludables y bellos.
Los
secretos
de la sexua-
lidad segun
el signo te los reve-
lamos aqui. No te
los pierdas.
Características del
signo Compatibilidad de signos Autos y el zodiaco Zodiaco del Romance Zodiaco
infantil Horóscopo chino Postales del zodiaco Calendario lunar Astrología y
Nueva Era Tarot en línea
Zodíaco Lo que le
gusta a... Afinidad Cómo enamorar a... Chino Famosos y astros Juego de arcanos
Test de personalidad Artes de adivinación Consultorio online Portada
Retired Army Lt. Gen. Jay Garner, the former interim administrator of post-conflict reconstruction efforts in Iraq, said Thursday that a U.S. military presence in Iraq should last "the next few decades," but questioned the mix of forces already there and current plans to reconfigure the armed forces as a whole.
Echoing concerns raised by lawmakers at this week's defense budget hearings, Garner said in an interview with National Journal Group reporters and editors that the size of the Army and Marine Corps should be increased by enlarging the infantry or ground forces. And he warned that the current strain on National Guard and Reserve forces deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan could cripple efforts to retain experienced soldiers.
Garner, who previously served as commanding general of the Army's V Corps in Germany and as an Army assistant vice chief of staff for force development, said he does not subscribe to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's vision of a future Army, in which smaller units of soldiers rely heavily on high-tech weapons and communications systems.
"Certainly the high-tech war is faster, it's neater and it works pretty good, but not in all scenarios," he said. "The problem with the Army is they just don't have enough infantry."
The Army's current force structure plan is to move away from the traditional division structure toward self-sustaining brigades equipped to work for any division commander. Rumsfeld has been saying this modular approach to force management means that 75 percent of the Army's brigade structure should always be ready.
But the Army actually needs two more infantry divisions while "the Marines need to be larger," Garner said. He also complained about the downsizing of the Air Force and the Navy, limiting the critical lift capability needed to dispatch troops and equipment overseas.
In addition, Garner worried about the impact extended deployments would have on reserve troops, who have been tested "more than they thought possible." National Guard troops "are going to vote with their feet" and leave what they thought would be a part-time commitment when they enlisted, he predicted.
In his testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee Wednesday, Rumsfeld asserted that reports of stress on reservists are exaggerated, noting that since Sept. 11, 2001, the Pentagon has mobilized only 36 percent of the Selected Reserve. Only 7.15 percent have been called up more than once since 1990, Rumsfeld said.
In Iraq, regions patrolled by infantry soldiers and Marines have not seen the everyday violence and security problems occurring in areas assigned to Army mechanized units, Garner said. Soldiers in mechanized units, who are trained not to stray too far from their vehicles, cannot be as effective in Baghdad as infantry patrols on foot, he observed.
Asked how long U.S. forces should remain in Iraq, Garner said, "I hope they're there a long time."
But he made clear that the number of troops in Iraq could be reduced every time an Iraqi army battalion or brigade is activated to take over security operations. Some U.S. military units should be stationed nearby as a "little 9-1-1 force for the guys you put on the street," he said. Other U.S. soldiers would function as advisers, furthering training and development of Iraqi security forces from behind the scenes.
"I think one of the most important things we can do right now is start getting basing rights" in both northern and southern Iraq, Garner said, adding that such bases could provide large areas for military training. "I think we'd want to keep at least a brigade in the north, a self-sustaining brigade, which is larger than a regular brigade," he added.
Noting how establishing U.S. naval bases in the Philippines in the early 1900s allowed the United States to maintain a "great presence in the Pacific," Garner said, "To me that's what Iraq is for the next few decades. We ought to have something there ... that gives us great presence in the Middle East. I think that's going to be necessary."
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Council refers photograph to government agencies
Council refers photograph to government agencies
An employee of this major municipality during his routine work as a traffic engineer took a photograph of a level railway crossing at Beveridge north of Melbourne using a digital camera.
When it was downloaded from the camera on to a computer an object appeared in the sky on photograph.
(you can download a full size image from the RELATED DOWNLOADS box to the right)
This Council has no opinion about the object.
We just do not know what the object could be and would welcome any explanation.
This Council believes it has an obligation to pass the image on to the relevant authorities for their consideration and investigation.
The image has been referred by Council to the Chief Defence Scientist, Defence Science & Technology Organisation, and the Civil Aviation Authority.
Council is considering referring it to NASA and other authorities.
My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute.
— Ayn Rand, Appendix to Atlas Shrugged
Objectivism is the philosophy of rational individualism founded by Ayn Rand (1905-1982). In novels such as The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, Rand dramatized her ideal man, the producer who lives by his own effort and does not give or receive the undeserved, who honors achievement and rejects envy. Rand laid out the details of her world-view in nonfiction books such as The Virtue of Selfishness and Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal.
Objectivism holds that there is no greater moral goal than achieving happiness. But one cannot achieve happiness by wish or whim. Fundamentally, it requires rational respect for the facts of reality, including the facts about our human nature and needs. Happiness requires that one live by objective principles, including moral integrity and respect for the rights of others. Politically, Objectivists advocate laissez-faire capitalism. Under capitalism, a strictly limited government protects each person's rights to life, liberty, and property and forbids that anyone initiate force against anyone else. The heroes of Objectivism are achievers who build businesses, invent technologies, and create art and ideas, depending on their own talents and on trade with other independent people to reach their goals.
Objectivism is optimistic, holding that the universe is open to human achievement and happiness and that each person has within him the ability live a rich, fulfilling, independent life. This idealistic message suffuses Rand's novels, which continue to sell by the hundreds of thousands every year to people attracted to their inspirational storylines and distinctive ideas.
The answers to the questions in the FAQ section of this website provide a summary of the core ideas of Objectivism and the relationship between those ideas within a philosophical system. So we must first consider what philosophy is, and why it must be systematic.
Les « Cellules » ont été réalisées
dans un premier temps en 1992 dans la prison de Varces
en Isère. En 1997 ayant obtenu l’aide à
la création individuelle de la DRAC Rhône-Alpes
le travail se poursuivit à Lyon, prisons St Paul,
St Joseph et Montluc, ainsi qu’au Centre pénitentiaire
des femmes de Rennes en 1997 et 1998. Plusieurs approches
photographiques antérieures – « Images
de l’intérieur », « Une année
lumière » - plus proches du reportage traditionnel,
m’ont introduit dans une relation étroite
avec les hommes et la part intime de leurs lieux et
de leurs histoires.
La photographie est une approche sensible du
monde. Regarder, rencontrer, interroger, donner un sens
au quotidien, à la vie, par l’image. La
vie des autres est aussi la nôtre. La prison nous
appartient. Pour échapper aux barreaux, coursives,
surveillants et autres évidences carcérales
et pour parler plus justement du paysage intérieur
des êtres concernés par une longue détention,
j’ai choisi le langage des murs, ceux de leurs
cellules. En cellule, l’espace comprimé
et contraint, la vie concentrée autour de quelques
objets-clefs laissent aux seuls murs la part d’espace
réservée aux projections intimes et personnelles.
Le hasard n’existant pas, tous ces objets souvent
artisanaux et créatifs, usuels et quotidiens,
ces images, ces photographies, ainsi que tous ces petits
signes plutôt quelconques, ordinaires, les éraflures
ou le faux papier-peint ont soudain pris sens et corps
à mes yeux. Transformés, déplacés,
investis par l’image, ils se sont alors resserrés,
émancipés, redéfinis dans le cadre
neuf du liseré photographique.
Né
à Paris le 31 décembre 1949, Michel Gasarian
est membre de l’agence
Editing depuis 1989. Après une formation
professionnelle au CEFREP de Crolles, il oriente son
travail vers le reportage humain. Responsable de l’atelier
photographique du Centre audio-visuel de Grenoble et
intervenant auprès des classes artistiques "option/photographie"
du collège de Saint-Marcellin jusqu’en
2001, il se consacre aujourd’hui à son
travail personnel ainsi qu’à son engagement
dans le cadre de l’agence
Editing Server.
For Ramin Bahrani, N.C. native and one of the newest faces in world cinema, the work never stops
The product of two years of research and writing by N.C. native Ramin Bahrani, Man Push Cart dramatizes the plight of a pushcart vendor in New York City who was once a star pop singer in Pakistan. By David Fellerath - February 8, 2006
DANCE – The next step is in question Two concerts leave us wondering where local dance goes from here By Byron Woods - February 8, 2006
– The Secret Triangle
Uncommon knowledge about raleigh, durham, chapel hill and beyond By D. L. Anderson and Cara Galati - February 8, 2006
– Book Shorts
We've got some catching up to do, so you'll see books from fall 2005 in this inaugural Bookshorts, a place for short reviews of books by N.C. authors. February 1, 2006
FASHION – Lingerie-buying tips for men Learn French, your lover’s sizes—and don’t be nervous By Paul Savery - February 8, 2006
HURRICANE KATRINA – The disaster that shouldn't have been Warnings about problems at FEMA were sounded soon after Bush put a political appointee in charge--including in the Indy. By Jon Elliston - September 7, 2005
+++URL: http://www.focusinfo.com/products/mxprodv/mxprodv.htm
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It's little wonder that so many wistful songs have been penned over the years about France's capital,
Paris
. Few cities leave the visitor with such vivid impressions, whether it's the drifting cherry blossoms in the tranquil gardens of Notre-Dame, the riverside quais on a summer evening, the sound of blues in atmospheric cellar bars, or the ancient alleyways and cobbled lanes of the historic Latin Quarter and villagey Montmartre.
Paris has no problem living up to the painted images and movie myths with which we're all familiar. Indeed, the whole city is something of a work of art. Two thousand years of shaping and reshaping have resulted in monumental building, sweeping avenues, grand esplanades and celebrated bridges. Many of its older buildings have survived intact, having been spared the ravages of flood and fire and saved from Hitler's intended destruction. Moreover, they survive with a sense of continuity and homogeneity, as new sits comfortably against a backdrop of old - the glass Pyramid against the grand fortress of the Louvre, the Column of Liberty against the Opéra Bastille. Time has acted as judge, as buildings once surrounded in controversy - the Eiffel Tower, the Sacré-Coeur, the Pompidou Centre - have in their turn become well-known symbols of the city. Yet for all the tremendous pomp and magnificence of its monuments, the city operates on a very human scale, with exquisite, secretive little nooks tucked away off the Grands Boulevards and very definite little communities revolving around games of boules and the local boulangerie and café.
Architecturally, the
Cathédrale de Notre-Dame, Sainte-Chapelle
and the
Palais du Louvre
, in the city's centre, provide a constant reminder of Paris's religious and royal past. The backdrop of the streets is predominantly Neoclassical, the result of nineteenth-century development designed to reflect the power of the French state. Each period since, however, has added, more or less discreetly, novel examples of its own styles - with
Auguste Perret, Le Corbusier, Mallet-Stevens
and
Eiffel
among the early twentieth-century innovators. In recent decades, the architectural additions have been more dramatic in scale, producing new and major landmarks, and recasting down-at-heel districts into important centres of cultural and consumer life. New buildings such as
La Villette, La Grande Arche de la Défense
, the
Opéra Bastille
, the
Institut du Monde Arabe
and the
Bibliothčque Nationale
have expanded the dimensions of the city, pointing it determinedly towards the future.
Paris's
museums and galleries
, not least the mighty
Louvre
, number among the world's finest. The tradition of state cultural endowment is very much alive in the city and collections are exceedingly well displayed and cared for. Many are also housed in beautiful locations, such as old mansions and palaces, others in bold conversions, most famously the
Musée d'Orsay
, which occupies a former train station. The Impressionists here and at the
Musée Marmottan
, the moderns at the
Palais de Tokyo
, the smaller
Picasso
and
Rodin
museums - all repay a visit. In addition, the contemporary scene is well represented in the
commercial galleries
that fill the Marais, St-Germain, the Bastille and the area around the Champs-Élysées, and there's an ever-expanding range of museums devoted to other areas of human endeavour - science, history, decoration, fashion and performance art.
Few cities can compete with the thousand-and-one
cafés, bars
and
restaurants
that line every Parisian street and boulevard. The variety of style and décor, cuisine and price is hard to beat too. Traditional French food has become increasingly innovative and the many ethnic origins represented among the city's millions have opened eateries providing a range of gastronomic options for every palate and pocket.
The city entertains best at night, with a deserved reputation for outstanding
film
and
music
. Paris's cinematic prowess is marked by annual film festivals, with a refreshing emphasis on art, independent and international films. Music is equally revered, with nightly offerings of excellent jazz, top-quality classical, avant-garde experimental, international rock, West African
soukous
and French-Caribbean
zouk
, Algerian
raď
, and traditional
chansons
.
If you've time, you should certainly venture out of the city. The region surrounding the capital - the Île de France - is dotted with cathedrals and châteaux as stunning and steeped in history as the city itself -
Chartres, Versailles
and
Fontainebleau
, for example. An equally accessible excursion from the capital is that most un-French of attractions,
Disneyland Paris
.
The city
Geography and history have combined to give Paris a remarkably coherent and intelligible structure. The city lies in a basin surrounded by hills. It is very nearly circular, confined within the limits of the the ring road, the boulevard périphérique,... read more >>
Please visit our partners: Budapest HotelsDiscount HotelsReal Estate
+++URL: http://www.politicalgraveyard.com/geo/MA/kmindex.html
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The Political Graveyard: Index to Cemeteries in Massachusetts
PLEASE NOTE that this site only lists cemeteries where I know
political figures to have been buried! For access to a much more
complete list, with more than twenty times as many cemeteries, please
visit the U.S. Geological Survey's GNIS
Database. Specify the state and county, and enter cemetery
for Feature Type.
The Political
Graveyard is a web site about U.S. political history and
cemeteries. It is the Internet's most comprehensive source for
American political biography, listing 138,150 politicians, living and
dead.
The coverage of the site includes certain federal officials,
state officeholders and candidates in all 50 states, state and
national political party officials, federal and state judges, and
mayors (including candidates at election for mayor) of qualifying
cities.
The listings are incomplete; development of the database
is a continually ongoing project.
Information on this page — and on all other pages of this
site — is believed to be accurate, but is not
guaranteed. Users are advised to check with other sources before
relying on any information here.
The Political Graveyard is created and maintained by Lawrence Kestenbaum, of Ann Arbor,
Michigan, who is solely responsible for its structure and content.
Web hosting is provided by Paul
Haas, of Ypsilanti, Michigan. The site opened on July 1,
1996; the last full revision was done on March 10, 2005.
+++URL: http://www.discounthotel-worldwide.com/hotels/germany/berlin-hotel.htm
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Berlin Hotels - Best Berlin Hotels - Discount Berlin Hotels
The division of
BERLIN
into zones of occupation in 1945, although seemingly arbitrary, followed exisiting local government boundaries, and the dual profile which emerged was by no means solely a product of the Cold War. In his famous interwar collection of short stories,
Goodbye to Berlin
, Christopher Isherwood wrote:
Berlin is a city with two centres - the cluster of expensive hotels, bars, cinemas, shops around the Memorial Church, a sparkling nucleus of light, like a sham diamond, in the shabby twilight of the town; and the self-conscious civic centre of buildings around the Unter den Linden, carefully arranged
.
The latter, the political and cultural core of the Imperial German capital, duly became the heart of East Berlin and of the GDR, while the former quickly adapted itself to the makeshift role of city centre. Because of the decades of division, the reunited city found itself with two of almost everything, but the rationalization process has already reduced the duplication quite markedly, and will eliminate it almost entirely over the course of the next decade.
Although never a conventionally beautiful city, Berlin has much fine architecture, as well as an extraordinary spread of
museums
which collectively rank among the very richest on the planet. It also has a wide range of
bars
and
restaurants
, a vibrant
nightlife
and strong traditions in the
performing arts
. Because it occupies a vast geographical area, one interrupted by a plethora of parks, forests and lakes, Berlin is not a place that is appreciated easily or quickly.
Please visit our partners: Budapest HotelsDiscount HotelsReal Estate
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Welcome to Fortean Slips!
Welcome to Fortean Slips, ParaScope's wild and wacky outpost on the
paranormal fringe! It's a mind-wrenching real-life theatre of the absurd,
presented with due irreverence. Abandon all hope, ye without a sense of
humor who enter here. Something funny is happening...
A Kinder, Gentler Satan
The Roman Catholic Church has revised its official views on the nature of Satan, and this particular overhaul of foul wickedness is far from being your average P.R. con job.
The Bra of Nostradamus
Yes, ladies, there is now special lingerie custom-designed for the End Times. This stylish new garment alerts you of the impending end of the world while it gently lifts and separates.
Aliens Chewing the Fat?
A crass advertising campaign has cast EBE's and the obese as mortal enemies, kicking off intergalactic hostilities of hefty proportions.
Hackers don't have to be helpless chum in the dating-game shark pool.
We have some advantages; with a little understanding of human ethology
we can learn how to use them effectively.
This page collects articles that were inspired by A.J.'s troubles in
the User Friendly comic
strip, and which subsequently appeared in Iambe's advice column on
that site.
Criteria voor opname: aantal kwaliteitsrecords relevant voor het onderwerp voor de Europese gebruikers. We proberen enkel het beste beginpunt voor elk onderwerp te houden.
'Geselecteerd' = een lijst met een selectie van de beste bronnen; 'alle' = een allesomvattende lijst met enkele hulpmiddelen voor een preselectie (korte beschrijving, zoekmiddel, ..); 'databank' = een volledig consulteerbare (meta)databank. De lijsten zijn in het Engels indien geen andere taal vermeld wordt.
Bedankt aan Josef Barth, Michelle Batten, Tom Bauler, Christian Brodhag, Jos Boelens, Robert Bourdeau, Sarah Deutsch, Sam Droege, Carol A. Fedora, Seth Finkel, JEZwick@aol.com, Asger Garnak, Walter Hecq, Jacques Jedwab, Marc Leemans, Dirk Le Roy, Marc Levy, J.P. Myers, Shay Mitchell, Nestor Navarro, Adora Pozolinski, Steve Habib Rose, Rinaldo Sikking, Dave Story, Kit Strange, Dave Story, Sarah Reeves, Glenn Ronsse, Fred Stoss, Joe Strahl, Michel Vasic, Mathias Verlie, Joana Villas-Boas, Catherine Vits, Erik Vloeberghs, Edwin Zakai, Konrad Zirm en zoveel anderen!
The essay below introduces a spreadsheet compiled by CHE member scientists that summarizes representative knowledge about links between environmental exposures and human diseases. While extensive, it is not an exhaustive list.
Of special value is the perspective it provides on the strength of the scientific evidence linking a given health condition with a particular chemical exposure.
References and footnotes are in separate sheets in the spreadsheet.
Access to the spreadsheet is available via link below, at the end of the introductory materials. Please make sure to read about the information's limitations before making use of the database.
Chemical Contaminants and Human Disease:
A Summary of Evidence
Human disease results from complex interactions among genes and the environment. Chemical, physical, and biological agents may cause or otherwise influence the onset of various illnesses or disorders in susceptible individuals. Nutritional status and socioeconomic conditions also alter disease susceptibility. Personal lifestyle factors, such as diet, smoking, alcohol use, level of exercise, and UV exposure, are often the primary focus when considering preventable causes of disease. However, exposures to chemical contaminants on the job, at home, in the outdoors, and even in utero are increasingly recognized as important contributors to human disease. These exposures are the focus of this project.
Toxic effects of chemical agents are often not well understood or appreciated by health care providers and the general public. Some chemicals, such as asbestos, vinyl chloride and lead, are known to cause human disease. Other studies suggest that increases in the incidence of some cancers, asthma, and developmental disorders also can be attributed to chemical exposure, particularly in young children. More than 80,000 chemicals have been developed, used, distributed, and discarded into the environment over the past 50 years. The majority of them have not been tested for potential toxic effects in humans or wildlife. Some of these chemicals are commonly in air, water, food, homes, work places, and communities. Whereas the toxicity of one chemical may be incompletely understood, an understanding of the impacts from exposure to mixtures of chemicals is even more deficient. Chemicals may have opposing, additive, or even synergistic effects. In one example of a synergistic effect, tobacco smoking coupled with asbestos exposure increases the risk of lung cancer by 25-fold—a risk much higher than that resulting from the sum of the risks of the individual agents.
The effects of chemical exposures in humans are difficult to study because human experimentation is generally unethical. Therefore, much of the information is gathered from accidental exposures, overdoses, or studies of workers exposed occupationally. Epidemiologic studies in the general population can also be useful though they often have limitations. Many diseases, such as cancer, may not appear until 10-20 years after an exposure has occurred making it difficult for causal associations to be drawn. Exposure assessment, a critical step in environmental epidemiologic studies, is also often difficult. Retrospective exposure assessment usually requires estimates and considerable judgment and is subject to significant error. An individual's exposure may change over time, and exposures often occur to multiple chemicals both in the home and work environments. It is difficult for individuals to remember what they have been exposed to and, moreover, most people are unaware of what their exposures were.
The effects of chemical exposures may vary, depending on the age of exposure (in utero, childhood, adult), the route of exposure (ingestion, inhalation, dermal), amount and duration of exposure, exposures to multiple chemicals simultaneously, and other personal susceptibility factors, including genetic variability. Animal experimentation provides important data about the toxicity of chemicals and adds biological credibility to suspected causal associations in humans.
The Database:
The accompanying database summarizes many links between chemical contaminants and about 200 human diseases, disorders, or conditions. We have designed this database to reflect the current state of knowledge about toxicants and human disease, organized by disease categories. Although the database focuses mainly on specific diseases, some clinical symptoms also have been included where clinical knowledge is lacking. For example, few chemicals are directly associated with the clinical syndrome of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, but a larger number are associated with decreased attention span.
Data were obtained from three major textbooks on the topic of Environmental Medicine and Toxicology. These sources are:
Klaassen CD, Ed. Casarett and Doull's Toxicology: The Basic Science of Poisons, 6th ed. (2001) McGraw-Hill publishing, New York .
LaDou J. Ed. Occupational and Environmental Medicine, 2nd Edition (1997) Appleton & Lange, Stamford , CT
Rom WM, Ed. Environmental and Occupational Medicine, 3rd edition (1998). Lippincott-Raven, Philadelphia , PA.
Literature searches for epidemiological studies and reviews of disease topics were carried out to supplement and update information from the textbooks. These additional manuscripts are referenced in the database.
The database is designed in Microsoft Excel and is sortable by organ system categories. For example, if someone is interested in oncology, the diseases can be sorted by “onc”. The database can not be sorted by chemical names, but individual chemicals can be located by using the “find” function in Excel.
The three columns to the right of each disease or disorder list the corresponding categories as noted above by the abbreviations in parentheses. For example, uterine cancer is placed in the categories of oncology (onc), genitourinary (G.U.), and women's health (female). References for and notes on each condition are found in the far right columns.
Strength of Evidence:
Chemicals that have been linked to a condition are placed in one of three categories based on the strength of evidence for the association.
The "strong evidence" category is reserved for chemicals where a causal association to disease has been verified. The toxicity of these chemicals has been well-accepted by the medical community and are noted in textbook references as, "It is well known that x chemical causes y condition" or "There is strong evidence that x compound causes y disease". Other chemicals were put into this category by causal associations drawn from more recent large prospective or retrospective cohort studies. Finally, chemicals listed as Group 1 human carcinogens by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) are included in this category. These are chemicals that have been determined to have sufficient evidence for causing cancer in humans.
The "good evidence" category is for associations of chemicals and disease drawn from smaller epidemiological studies (cross-sectional, case-series, or case-control studies) or for chemicals with some human evidence and strong corroborating animal evidence of an association. The strength of these associations is assumed from the texts where no indication of a causal association in human studies was made. IARC Group 2A chemicals, those with limited evidence for causing cancer in humans and sufficient evidence in experimental animals, also are included in this category.
The "limited/conflicting evidence" category contains chemicals that have been weakly associated with human disease by reports from only a few exposed individuals (case reports), or from conflicting human epidemiological studies that have given mixed or equivocal results. In some cases, reports demonstrating toxicity in animals were used but the animal toxicity literature was not comprehensively reviewed. Also included in this category are IARC Group 2B chemicals and EPA Group B2 chemicals. These chemicals show limited or inadequate evidence of causing cancer in humans and limited animal evidence of causing cancer. Many of these chemicals in this category were found in the studies published since the textbooks were last updated.
The majority of the chemicals in the database fall into this limited evidence category. This is because, as noted above, human epidemiological studies are very complex and difficult to design and interpret. Exposures to mixtures of compounds, such as pesticides or solvents, can provide hints of possible associations with disease and direct future research efforts but often cannot provide strong evidence of causation. Most toxicity research is conducted in laboratory animal or test tube (in vitro) studies. Often, human epidemiologic studies are conducted only after an association has been hypothesized, based on other sources. As more scientific research is done some chemicals in the database may be found to have stronger evidence for causing disease, new chemicals will be added, and others may be found to have no association with a disease and fall of the list entirely.
Database Limitations:
This database has significant limitations that are important to keep in mind. First, the chemicals listed are a representation of toxicants that contribute to human disease and disorders. This is not an exhaustive or comprehensive list and includes primarily chemicals and diseases found in major textbooks and medical literature reviews. Other chemicals that are not listed may also be causally associated with a disease.
Second, the database does not address the route, timing, duration, or amount of exposure required to result in a particular condition. Some chemicals may only be toxic if inhaled, whereas others need to be ingested in order to be toxic. Some diseases result from only high dose exposures whereas low-level exposures may be less important. Moreover, variations in the susceptibility to toxic effects, depending on the timing and duration of exposure, are not regularly addressed. For example, a fetus or developing child is often more susceptible to a given exposure than an adult. For details on the dose, timing, duration, and route of exposure, etc. the reader is referred to the textbooks and the references included in the database.
Third, the database makes no attempt to quantify the proportion of the individual diseases that are caused or contributed to by specific environmental factors. For example, mesothelioma, a rare form of cancer, is almost entirely due to exposure to asbestos. In contrast, the proportion of more common kinds of lung cancer cases caused by asbestos exposure is relatively small compared to the number of cases caused by tobacco smoking or radon.
Finally, this is a work in progress. In many cases, the authors exercised judgment when considering the strength and categorization of evidence. Comments from readers are welcome.
Gina Solomon MD, MPH: Natural Resources Defense Council; University of California San Francisco
Ted Schettler MD: Science and Environmental Health Network; Boston Medical Center
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American Arab Anti Discrimination Committee
15 September 2001
Informational Resources on Arab-Americans, the Arab
World and Islam
As part of its response to the aftermath of the September
11 hijacking attacks and the anti-Arab backlash in some quarters of
American society, ADC has compiled and made available the following
resource guide for Americans seeking more information on Arab-Americans,
the Arab World and Islam. This will be updated and expanded in coming
weeks. Please email any suggested additions to <adc@adc.org>.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Unless they were published by ADC, ADC does not sell
any of these books. When ordering ADC publications, be sure to include
your street address and make out a check to ADC, 4201 Conn. Ave. NW,
Suite 300, Washington, DC 20008. Orders can also be placed by emailing
to <adc@adc.org> or calling 202-244-2990.
ADC has brief issue papers on “Kahlil Gibran”
(author of The Prophet) and “A Celebration of Life: Memories of
an Arab-American in Cleveland.” (Available from ADC for $1.00 each)
Nabil Abraham and Andrew Shryock, eds.,, Arab Detroit:
From Margin to Mainstream. Analytical articles, memoirs, poems present
the diversity of the largest Arab-American community – Lebanese,
Chaldeans, Yemenis, Palestinians. Covers food, music, religion, identity,
and politics with academic sophistication and personal immediacy.
Anan Ameri and Dawn Ramey, eds., Arab American Encyclopedia
(Detroit: ACCESS/The Gale Group, 2000). Articles cover every aspect
of Arab-American life. Designed for middle school, but can be used much
more broadly by anyone. History, immigration, language, religion, work,
education, family, and gender roles, holidays, health, civil rights,
organizations and political activism, music, literature, arts, media.
Should be a standard reference in every school.
Evelyn Shakir, Bint Arab: Arab and Arab American Women
in the United States (Praeger Publishers, 1997). The story of Arab and
Arab-American women in the U.S. from the late 19th century until today.
Based on interviews in which Arab-American women tell their own stories
of struggles with identity and cultural value.
Michael W. Suleiman, ed., Arabs in America: Building
a New Future (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2000). Interdisciplinary
essays by 21 scholars: community profiles, civil rights, youth, family
life, political activism, and identity issues.
The Arab American Institute (www.aaiusa.org):
has excellent online resources on Arab-American demographics.
Anti-Arab Discrimination
The ADC Education page has an annotated bibliography
on anti-Arab discrimination, stereotyping and hate crimes. [http://www.adc.org/education/education.html]
Anti-Arab Hate Crimes and Discrimination, 1998-2000
(Washington, DC: ADC, 2001). 77 page report on assaults and threats,
hate speech, employment discrimination, civil liberties issues, educational
bias, cultural stereotypes in the media, political bias in the new,
and other defamation and bigotry. (Available from ADC, $10.00 for shipping
and handling)
ADC Hate Crime Reports during the Gulf War and after
the Oklahoma City bombing. (Available from ADC, $3.00 each)
Suha Sabbagh, “Sex, Lies and Stereotypes: The
Image of Arabs in American Popular Fiction.” (ADC, 1990). 57 pages.
(Available from ADC, $3.00)
Mary Marcon, “Arab Contributions to Civilization.”
ADC issue paper, 5 pages. Overview of aspects of medieval Arab civilization.
($1.00)
Albert Hourani, A History of the Arab Peoples. (Cambridge,
Harvard University Press, 1991). A classic history.
Margot Badran and Miriam Cooke, eds., Opening the Gates:
A Century of Arab Feminist Writings. (Indiana University Press, 1990).
John Esposito, Islam: The Straight Path (New York,
Oxford University Press, 1988). An excellent popular introduction to
Islam as a living faith by a noted western scholar. History, religious
beliefs, and modern interpretations, including politicized “Islamism.”
Elizabeth Fernea, ed., Children in the Muslim Middle
East (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1995). Essays, stories, poems,
on growing up, work, education, play, politics and war. Available from
AWAIR.
Elizabeth and Robert Fernea, The Arab World: Personal
Encounters (Garden City, NY: Anchor Press, 1985). A scholarly couple
takes a reflective look back at human and personal aspect of their lives
in the Arab world. An insightful look into daily life. It emphasized
the lives and circumstance of women in south Lebanon and the West Bank.
Elizabeth Fernea and Basima Berzirgan, eds., Middle
Eastern Women Speak. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1977). Biographical
and autobiographical essays, poems, lullabies, excerpts from novels
and the Quran. Available from AWAIR.
Naomi Shehab Nye, Sitti’s Secrets (NY: Four Winds
Press, 1994), 32 pages. For younger children. Set in a small West Bank
village, this is the story of a young Arab-American girl and her Palestinian
grandmother. After meeting for the first time, they transcend differences
in age, language, and culture to form a unique friendship.
Naomi Shihab Nye, Habibi (Simon and Schuster, 1997).
An excellent novel for ages 13-17. A 14 year-old Palestinian-American
girl’s family returns home to Jerusalem and the West Bank. We see
Palestinian culture and family life and the Israeli occupation through
her eyes. She discovers a grandmother that she has never met before,
aunts and uncles in a West Bank village, and a history much bigger than
she is. Her friendship with an Israeli teen helps to provide a balanced
perspective. Highly recommended.
Ronald Stockton, The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict:
A Unit for High School Students. (Center for Middle Eastern and North
African Studies, University of Michigan, 1993). This is the best resource
for teaching on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. 200 pages of lessons
on the historical background. Used by teachers from middle school to
college. Available from the Center (www.umich.edu)
Arab World and Islamic Resources (AWAIR) has an extensive
catalogue of resources for teachers, students and parents. We recommend
the Arab World Studies Notebook, 540 pages of lesson plans, essays,
classroom exercises, and information on every aspect of Arab culture
and Islam. (www.telegraphave.com)
Amideast has many excellent resources on the Arab world
and Islam for k-12. We especially recommend the video “Young Voices
from the Arab World,” a colorful and appealing presentation of
Arab culture as reflected in the lives of five young people in Jordan,
Lebanon, Egypt, Kuwait and Morocco. (www.amideast.org)
The Council on Islamic Education has resources for
educators. It also has online resources about Islamic civilization and
history, including material on aspects of art, science and culture.
(www.cio.org)
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A mystery revolves around the sun
A mystery revolves around the sun
Researchers suggest that huge unseen object orbits on fringe of solar system
This diagram, produced by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, shows the nine planets as a small inset within the much larger Oort Cloud, extending trillions of miles out from the sun. The hypothetical planet or brown dwarf would lie about halfway out from the center of the cloud.
Oct. 7, 1999 — Two teams of researchers have proposed the existence of an unseen planet or a failed star circling the sun at a distance of more than 2 trillion miles, far beyond the orbits of the nine known planets. The theory, which seeks to explain patterns in comets’ paths, has been put forward in research accepted for publication in two separate journals.
SPECULATION ABOUT the existence of unseen celestial companions dates back far before the discovery of Pluto in 1929 — and even figures in more recent fringe phenomena such as the 1997 “Heaven’s Gate” tragedy and talk of a new “Planet X.” This latest hypothesis, however, is aimed at answering nagging scientific questions about how particular types of comets make their way into the inner solar system.
Some comets, like Halley’s Comet, follow relatively short-period orbits — circling the sun in less than two hundred years. These comets are thought to originate in the Kuiper Belt, a disk of cosmic debris that lies beyond Neptune’s orbit.
The best way to think of the distances involved is in terms of Astronomical Units. One AU is the distance from Earth to the sun (93 million miles or 149.6 million kilometers). Pluto, the most distant of the planets, is at 39 AU. The Kuiper Belt extends from 30 AU to perhaps 1,000 AU.
Even further out is the Oort Cloud, a spherical haze of comets surrounding the solar system at distances between 10,000 AU and more than 50,000 AU. That’s where long-period comets such as Hale-Bopp are thought to come from. For some time, astronomers have noticed that the directional patterns of these comets are not completely random. And after years of study, some researchers are reporting that the patterns hint at something big out there perturbing the cometary paths.
WHAT COULD IT BE?
No telescope has yet detected this object. But on the basis of its gravitational effect, John B. Murray, a planetary scientist at Britain’s Open University, speculates that the object could be a planet larger than Jupiter, the biggest of the solar system’s known planets. Murray puts the object’s orbit at 32,000 AU, or 2.98 trillion miles from the sun. His proposal appears in the Oct. 11 issue of the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
Meanwhile, researchers at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette say the object could be a planet or brown dwarf — that is, a dark, failed star — roughly three times the size of Jupiter and orbiting at 25,000 AU. The researchers, led by physicist John Matese, say their paper is to be published by the journal Icarus.
Both studies acknowledge that other factors could influence the pattern seen in long-period comets: for example, the Milky Way’s gravitational tidal effects. But the Louisiana researchers say the cometary patterns are best explained by the existence of “a perturber, acting in concert with the galactic tide.”
Matese said the proposed object should make one orbit around the sun every 4 million to 5 million years. Murray said the object he had in mind would make one orbit every 6 million years, circling the sun in a direction counter to that followed by the nine traditional planets.
The two researchers said they were familiar with each other’s work but hadn’t taken a close look at each other’s studies. They acknowledged that their estimates for the mass and orbit of a mysterious object were similar, but couldn’t say whether they were talking about the same object.
MORE QUESTIONS
How could such a massive object exist so far from the sun? The researchers say a planet or dark star could have coalesced during the formation of the solar system billions of years ago, but more probably would be a passing celestial body that was captured by the sun’s subtle gravitational pull.
Advertisement
Another question: Why hasn’t such an object been seen? Murray says that even a Jupiter-scale planet could not be observed at the immense distances involved. Matese and his colleagues say that their hypothetical brown dwarf wouldn’t have been detected even by the Infrared Astronomical Satellite, which surveyed the heavens in 1983 — but that the yet-to-be-launched Space Infrared Telescope Facility just might be able to pick it up.
All this may sound like science fiction, but an expert in the field notes that the hypothesis has been a subject of serious speculation for years.
“We’ve all wondered whether there was something out there,” said Brian Marsden, who heads the International Astronomical Union’s Central Bureau for Astronomical Telegrams as well as the Minor Planet Center at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory.
However, Marsden also expressed some skepticism about the evidence behind the latest research.
“I’m not convinced it is not due to chance,” he told MSNBC in an e-mail message. “In any case, the data may not be as good as one would like.”
SPECULATIVE SCENARIO
If the research holds up, it could open the door for renewed speculation on even spookier questions: Some theorists have proposed that the gravitational effect of a massive unseen object in a distant orbit — nicknamed “Nemesis” or the “Death Star” — could set off periodic cometary storms, which would increase the chances of a catastrophic impact with Earth. Indeed, physicist Daniel Whitmire, a colleague of Matese’s who is a co-author of the new research, laid out just such a scenario in 1985 to explain mass extinctions on Earth, such as the demise of the dinosaurs.
Matese also speculated back then about such an effect, but he emphasized that the newly detected object didn’t fit the doomsday profile.
“This object is not a Nemesis,” he told MSNBC. “It does not create comet storms.”
He said his proposed object appeared to have an influence on about 25 percent of the long-period comets coming in from the Oort Cloud.
More "Mysteries"
MSNBC probes "Mysteries of the Universe" twice a month
Typically, collision detection in games is carried out into two steps:
(1) determine which pairs of shapes need to be tested for collision (broad phase)
(2) determine collision results for each pair identified in step (1) (narrow phase)
In N, step (1) is implemented using a uniform "loose" grid of square cells; each shape is stored in the cell which contains its center, and each shape is collided against any shapes in its current cell, or the 8 cells touching the current cell.
Later tutorials will explain this system in greater detail; this tutorial will explain how step (2) was implemented in N.
The algorithms we used to handle this step are of use to any game which requires fast collision detection that provides more than a simple boolean result.
--= Collision Response via Projection =--
Before thinking about how to detect collisions, we should first think about what should happen to two objects which collide.
Given only the fact that objects a and b overlap each other, a simple response would be to destroy one or both objects, or move one or both back to their previous positions.
While this might be sufficient for some types of objects, we'd also like physically simulated objects which behave in a more realistic manner. In order to support this feature, we'll need more information than simply "a and b are overlapping". Specifically, information about the nature of the overlap is needed.
Projection [Jakobsen] is one physically-plausible method for dealing with overlapping ("penetrating") objects. The basic idea is to move the objects out of penetration using the smallest possible displacement. Solving the collision then becomes equivalent to finding the vector v which moves the two objects out of penetration by the shortest distance possible.
Some other ways to deal with collision are using penalty-force or impulse-based methods. Penalty methods use spring forces to pull objects out of collision. Impulse-based methods use instantaneous impulses (changes in velocity) to prevent objects from interpenetrating.
Another way to look at the different collision-response methods is in terms of the object's position. Projection modifies the position of objects directly; impulse-based methods modify the first derivative of the positions (i.e velocities), and penalty-methods modify the second derivative of the positions (i.e accelerations, cause from spring forces) -- all three methods are trying to move the objects to some target position.
In this case, we want to move the objects so that they're not penetrating each other. All three collision response methods can be used with the collision detection methods we implemented; we chose to use projection because it was the simplest method, and it seemed to work well in test cases.
So, not only do we need a boolean result from our collision detection routines, we also need a projection vector. Note that this projection vector can be described as a (unit) direction vector and a (scalar) penetration depth.
--= Bounce and Friction =--
Once we've projected our two objects so that they no longer collide, we'd also like to change their velocities to model physical phenomena such as "bounciness" and friction.
While the model used in N is quite simple and not realistic, we also developed a more realistic model for bouncy objects with friction -- we then discovered that this realistic model wasn't as fun-feeling as the simple model.
Our collision response method was:
. project out of collision
. split velocity vector into two components: one parallel and one perpendicular to the collision surface
. calculate bounce using the perpendicular component
. calculate friction using the parallel component
instructions:
drag the red and blue sliders to change the coefficients of friction and bounce .
comments:
the resulting velocity of the particle is determined by scaling the parallel and perpendicular components of the incoming velocity by the coefficients of friction and bounce , respectively.
Figure 0. The Path of a Particle as it Collides with a Horizontal Surface
--= NOTE =--
For a brief review of a few concepts of 2D geometry you'll need to know in order to understand the source code, see Appendix A.
We're assuming you know what a vector is, how to scale and add vectors, and what a dot product is; that's pretty much all you'll need to know.
The separating axis theorem tells us that, given two convex shapes, if we can find an axis along which the projection of the two shapes does not overlap, then the shapes don't overlap. See [Eberly] for an in-depth examination of the theorem.
In 2D, each of these potential separating axes is perpendicular to one of the faces (edges) of each shape.
Figure 1. A convex polygon and its potential separating axes
So in general, we're solving our 2D overlap query using a series of 1D queries; each query tests if the two shapes overlap along a given axis. If we find an axis along which the objects don't overlap, we don't have to continue testing the rest of the axes: thanks to the SAT we know that the objects don't overlap.
This is the major strength of an SAT-type approach: in most games it's more likely for two objects to not overlap than to overlap, so this "early-out" capability speeds things up nicely.
instructions:
click and drag the red point to change the direction of the axis.
comments:
the thick blue line represents the size of the box when measured along the axis defined by the red line.
the thick green line is the sum of the projections of the box's halfwidth vectors onto the same axis.
(a box's halfwidth vector is similar to a circle's radius, but has a direction as well as a size)
Note that the length of the thick blue line is always twice the length of the thick green line; since the length of the thick green line is far easier to calculate than that of the thick blue line, this allows us to quickly calculate the size of the box along any axis.
Figure 2. Projection of a Box onto an Arbitrary Axis
--= calculating the projection vector =--
If the objects overlap along all of the possible separating axes, then they are definitely overlapping each other; we've found a collision, and this means we need to determine the projection vector, which will push the two objects apart.
At this point, we've already done most of the work: each axis is a potential direction along which we can project the objects. So, all we need to do is find the axis with the smallest amount of overlap between the two objects, and we're done -- the direction of the projection vector is the same as the axis direction, and the length of the projection vector is equal to the size of the overlap along that axis.
instructions:
drag the boxes around and observe the results.
comments:
the overlap of the boxes along each axis is drawn as a gray arrow if it exists. if the boxes overlap along both axes, they are colliding and the projection vector is drawn as a purple arrow.
for each axis, the red and blue lines indicate the halfwidths of the boxes along the axis, and the green line indicates the distance between the centres of the boxes along the axis.
note that, for each axis, the length of the overlap line is equal to the combined lengths of the red and blue lines minus the length of the green line.
Figure 3. Using the Separating Axis Theorem with Two Boxes
So, we now have our general approach to collision detection: for a pair of objects, test each potential separating axis, stopping if we find separation. If none of the axes are separating, use the axis of smallest overlap to generate a projection vector.
A common shape used in 2D games to represent moving objects is an axis-aligned bounding box, or AABB. An AABB is defined by a position p, and a pair of half width vectors xw and yw, which define the box's size along the world axes.
A halfwidth is similar in concept to a radius, except it's defined along a specific direction instead of along all directions.
Figure 4. An AABB and its halfwidth vectors.
Now, to perform collision detection between this AABB and another shape, we simply need to use our SAT-type method and test along x and y (the two potential separating axes of the AABB), as well as any other potential separating axes of the other shape.
--= triangles =--
We've already seen above how to use this method with two AABBs; what about non-axis-aligned shapes?
The (right) triangular tiles used in N have two edges parallel to the world axes; this means that to test an AABB vs. a triangular tile, we only need to test along one other axis -- the axis perpendicular to the triangle's hypotenuse.
instructions:
drag the box around and observe the results.
comments:
the overlap of the shapes along each axis is drawn as a gray arrow if it exists. if the shapes overlap along all axes, they are colliding and the projection vector is drawn as a purple arrow.
for each axis, the red and blue lines indicate the size of the shapes as measured along the axis.
Figure 5. Using the Separating Axis Theorem with an AABB and a Right Triangle
Note that the hypotenuse's normal (i.e. unit direction vector perpendicular to the hypoteneuse) can be precalculated and stored for triangles which don't rotate or change shape.
--= round shapes =--
We can now handle AABBs vs. convex polyhedral shapes, but what if we want circular shapes?
Circles aren't directly handled by the SAT because, essentially, they have an infinite number of separating axes -- any direction is perpendicular to their surface.
In order to apply our method, we need to determine which axes to test (in addition to the world axes generated from the AABB) in order to represent such circular shapes properly. Fortunately, the answer is straightforward: if you consider a point p which is the center of a circle, and a point b which is the center of the AABB, then the additional potential separating axis is the axis parallel to the vector from p to b.
In N's collision system, tiles made of "empty" circular sections are called concave tiles, and those made by "solid" circular sections are called convex.
instructions:
drag the box around and observe the results.
comments:
the overlap of the shapes along each axis is drawn as a gray arrow if it exists. if the shapes overlap along all axes, they are colliding and the projection vector is drawn as a purple arrow.
for each axis, the red and blue lines indicate the size of the shapes as measured along the axis.
Figure 6. Using the Separating Axis Theorem with an AABB and a Convex Circular Shape
instructions:
drag the box around and observe the results.
comments:
the overlap of the shapes along each axis is drawn as a gray arrow if it exists. if the shapes overlap along all axes, they are colliding and the projection vector is drawn as a purple arrow.
for each axis, the red and blue lines indicate the size of the shapes as measured along the axis.
Figure 7. Using the Separating Axis Theorem with an AABB and a Concave Circular Shape
Note that the above is a slight oversimplification: specifically, the above would be correct if we wanted to collide an AABB against a full circle, but since we're interested in 1/4-circle sections, we only consider the circular axis if the box is contained in the same quadrant as the circular section we're interested in. If it's not, then we shouldn't consider this axis as a possible candidate for projection; this can be seen in the above diagrams.
Another common collision shape for moving 2D objects is the circle.
In the previous section we saw that round shapes require special treatment in order to be compatible with our SAT-like method; in this section we'll see how to extend those ideas in order to handle collision between a circle and various other shapes.
For AABBs, the direction of minimum projection will always be perpendicular to one of the edges of the AABB (i.e. with one of the world axes); with circles, we have to consider not only the shape's edges, but also its vertices; for example, the set of potential separating axes for a circle and a box is the two axes perpendicular to the box's edges, and the four axes parallel to the circle-->boxvertex vectors.
instructions:
drag the circle around and observe the results.
comments:
for each axis, the red and blue lines indicate the size of the shapes as measured along the axis.
note that even when the shapes overlap along the x and y axes, one or more of the circle->vertex axes can be a separating axis.
Figure 8. Naively Using the Separating Axis Theorem with a Circle
Having to consider all the vertices in a shape will add a lot of extra calculations; however, it's also clear that, in the above example, while in general each of the circle-->vertex axes can be a separating axis, for any specific position of the circle there is only a single vertex which can reasonably be considered a potential separating axis: the vertex which is closest to the circle's center.
But, how can we determine which vertex is closest? Naively testing the distance to each vertex would undermine the whole point of finding the closest vertex, which is to be able to reject the other vertices trivially, without expensive distance calculations. The very useful concept of voronoi regions can be used.
--= voronoi regions =--
The voronoi regions (VR) of a polygon are simply the regions in the space around the polygon which contain all of the points closest to a feature of the polygon.
a feature of a polygon is an edge or vertex of the polygon.
instructions:
drag the blue point around and observe the results.
comments:
the voronoi region containing the blue point is highlighted in green.
all the points contained within each green region are closer to the triangle vertex/edge contained in the region than to any other vertex/edge.
note that the point on the surface of the triangle which is closest to the blue point is contained in the same voronoi region as the blue point.
Figure 9. The Voronoi Regions of a Triangle
Thus, if we know which VR contains the circle's center, we know which feature is closest to the circle, and thus we know not only if we have to test the circle vs. a vertex, but which vertex to test against.
The beauty of VRs is that, by looking at the results of the tests along the world axes, we can infer which VR of the AABB contains the circle in without having to perform any further tests! This idea was first presented in [Arvo].
instructions:
drag the circle around and observe the results.
comments:
the overlap of the shapes along each axis is drawn as a gray arrow if it exists. if the shapes overlap along all axes, they are colliding and the projection vector is drawn as a purple arrow.
for each axis, the red and blue lines indicate the size of the shapes as measured along the axis.
note that we only consider a thrid axis when the circle is contained in the voronoi region of one of the AABB's vertices.
Figure 10. Using the Separating Axis Theorem and Voronoi Regions with a Circle
--= other shapes =--
Colliding a circle vs. other shapes, such as right triangles and convex/concave circular sections, can be accomplished in the same way as with an AABB, except that (as in the above diagram) an additional axis must be considered if the circle is inside one of the voronoi regions of the other shape.
While we can apply the above ideas for testing a point vs. various tile shapes, the results will usually not be satisfactory. This is not due to our collision detection routines, but instead due to our decision to handle collisions via projection.
The problem with always projecting along the shortest possible vector is that it's not always the "right" vector. Specifically, it might not be the vector which looks or behaves the way you would expect.
For instance, consider the AABB-vs-AABB case; note that the projection vector sometimes "jumps" from one axis to the other suddenly. This means that while you might see an AABB move down into another, it will be pushed out to the left or right (instead of upward) because, due to how far down it moved in one frame, the left/right direction produces a smaller projection vector.
This problem is an unavoidable part of the projection method of collision response, and happens if objects in the world move too far in one frame. The smaller an object is, and the faster it is moving, the more likely it is that this problem will occur.
However, keep in mind that even though the projection info returned by a point-vs-tile query might not be what you want, the actual boolean result will always be correct -- and so our SAT-like method can be used for very fast point-vs-tile boolean queries, by simply using the AABB-vs-tile code, but setting the xw and yw to 0 (or simply removing them), and skipping the projection-vector calculations.
In N, the homing-rocket vs. tilemap collision is implemented using point-vs-tilemap queries; we also use point-vs-tilemap queries to quickly determine if the ninja is close to a wall in order to allow/disallow wall interaction, such as jumping or sliding.
As mentioned above, small and/or fast-moving objects can produce problems when using a static collision test. There are several approaches that can be taken to handle such objects -- the simplest is to constrain your game design so that such objects aren't needed.
If you absolutely must have them, there are two common methods to deal with small and/or fast-moving objects: swept-collision tests, and multisampling.
--= sweep tests =--
Instead of testing for intersection between two static shapes, we can instead create new shapes by sweeping the original shapes along their trajectory, and testing for overlap between these swept shapes.
The basic idea is described in [Gomez], for circle-circle and AABB-AABB sweep tests.
--= multisampling =--
A much simpler alternative to swept tests is to multisample; instead of performing a single static test at the object's new position, perform several tests at several positions located between the object's previous and new position. This technique was used to collide the ragdoll in N.
If you make sure that the samples are always spaced at distances less than the object's radius, this will produce excellent results. In our implementation, we limit the maximum number of samples, so very high speeds will sometimes result in problems; this is something that can be tweaked based on your specific application.
Hopefully this has given you some ideas about how to implement collision detection and response in 2D.
We're sure that our method isn't the fastest or most elegant solution, but it's the one we used and it ended up working fairly well.
Certainly, the above approach to collision can be extended in various ways -- for instance, different shapes, such as arbitrary triangles, can be implemented as tile shapes, or as dynamic shapes. Really, any of the tile shapes should be implementable as dynamic object shapes -- if you want to use any given shape with the above approach, all you need to be able to do is determine the shape's halfwidth when projected onto a given axis. If speed is really important (as it is in actionscript), then the trick is to only use shapes for which these halfwidths can be either precomputed or easily computed.
--= source code =--
Here is a demo application containing the N source code relating to this tutorial:
You are free to use this code however you'd like, provided you notify us if it's for commercial use; a link to our site would also be appreciated.
--= contacting us =--
Please let us know if you have any corrections, comments, or suggestions about this tutorial. tutorials@harveycartel.org -- be sure to reference the tutorial you're writing about.
PLEASE don't contact us with questions about the source, you'll just have to figure it out on your own.
There is a section on our forum where you can post questions.
Our next tutorial will explain the broad-phase grid-based collision detection system, which uses the above collision routines to collide objects vs. a tilemap and vs. each other. It will also explain a method to optimize collision vs. tilemaps, and code for intersecting a ray with tiles and objects.
Note that unless you can guarantee that v isn't a null (0-length) vector, you might want to add tests which detect this case, or the dreaded division-by-0 will occur.
--= dot product =--
the dot product of two vectors a and b is given by:
dp = a.x*b.x + a.y*b.y;
Note that the result is a scalar value (a single number).
You can think of it as describing the relative orientation of a and b; a negative dot product means that a and b point away from each other; a positive dot product means they point in the same direction.
However, since the magnitude of the dot product is determined by the lengths of a and b, only the sign (positive/negative) of the dot product is directly useful without further manipulation.
--= projection =--
The formula for projecting vector a onto vector b is:
where dp is the dotprod of a and b: dp = (a.x*b.x + a.y*b.y)
Note that the result is a vector; also, (b.x*b.x + b.y*b.y) is simply the length of b squared.
If b is a unit vector, (b.x*b.x + b.y*b.y) = 1, and thus a projected onto b reduces to:
proj.x = dp*b.x;
proj.y = dp*b.y;
instructions:
drag points p0, p1, and p2 around and observe the results.
comments:
the green vector is the result of the projection of the vector p1->p0 onto the line containing p1 and p2.
Figure 11. Vector Projection
--= perproduct =--
Another useful concept in 2D geometry is the "normal"...not to be confused with normalization!
Basically, the normal of a line is simply the direction which is perpendicular to it.
Every 2D vector has two such normals: the right hand and left hand normal. As you might expect, the right hand normal points to the right of the vector, and the left hand normal points to the left.
Given a vector a, the right hand normal of a is simply:
rn.x = -a.y;
rn.y = a.x;
and the left hand normal is:
ln.x = a.y;
ln.y = -a.x;
Note that ln = -rn.
The perproduct of two vectors a and b is simply the dot product of a and the right hand normal of b.
Figure 12. A vector and its right hand and left hand normals.
Want to see the planets for yourself? It's actually pretty easy to make a simple but powerful telescope. Here's how.
This website is an overview
of the history, mythology, and current scientific knowledge
of each planet and the major moons in our solar system.
Each page has my text and NASA's images, some have sounds and movies, most
provide references to additional related information.
All nine planets can be seen with a small telescope; all but Pluto can be seen with binoculars.
And large observatories continue to provide much useful information.
But the possibility of getting up close with
interplanetary spacecraft has revolutionized planetary science.
Very little of this site would have been possible without the space program.
Nevertheless, there's a lot that
you can see
with very modest equipment
or even with just your own eyes.
Past generations of people
found beauty and a sense of wonder contemplating the night sky.
Today's scientific knowledge further enhances and deepens
that experience. And you can share in it by simply going out in the evening
and looking up.
Our knowledge of our solar system is extensive.
But it is far from complete.
Some of the worlds have never even been photographed up close.
The Nine Planets is an overview of what we know today.
We are still exploring. Much more is still to come:
We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to
arrive where we started and know the place for the first time. -- T. S. Eliot
In Part One of this series, we covered the origin of the "New Perspective
on Justification." The view began with a man named Sanders who insisted
that the Jews at the time of Christ and Paul believed in salvation by grace.
This new view was necessitated by a new understanding of secular Jewish
literature written contemporaneously with the New Testament Scriptures.
This made it necessary to take a completely new approach to Paul’s theology
of justification. Ultimately, nearly everything hangs on whether Sanders’
view is correct. We then discussed whether it is correct to call the view
advocated by men like James Dunn, N.T. Wright, Don Garlington, Thom Smith,
John Armstrong, and Scott Hafeman, a new view of justification, or is it only a new view of Second-Temple Judaism? We concluded that the
view is indeed a radically different view of justification than that preached
by Luther, the Reformers, and of most Reformed people today.
We listed some specific points where the Old and New views differed greatly.
In this article, we will look at one major difference between these views.
We will examine the very different views of the true nature of the Old
Covenant. As we mentioned before, the New View insists the Old Covenant
could be kept because it did not require sinless perfection. The Old View
says the exact opposite. The Old View insisted that the basic purpose of
the Old Covenant was to convict sinners of their need of a Messiah. The
two views see two different basic purposes of the Torah of God. Garlington’s
New Perspective view of the Old Covenant is set forth in his book, Role Reversal and Paul’s Use of Scripture in Galatians 3:10-13. The purpose of this book is to resolve a supposed difficulty in Galatians
3:10-13. On the surface, the passage certainly appears to teach that Paul
is insisting all men who are under the law are guilty sinners simply because
they could not obey the terms of the Old Covenant. Garlington is insisting
the exact opposite. He is insisting that the Torah could, and was in some
cases, kept. What then can Paul mean in Galatians 3:10-13?
Garlington quotes a man named C.D. Stanley:
Whereas Paul’s own statement appears to pronounce a "curse" upon
anyone who would appear to live by the Jewish Torah, the biblical text
to which he appeals [Deut. 27:26 in Gal. 3:10b] clearly affirms the opposite:
its "curse" falls not on those who do the law, but on those who
fail to do it. From: Role Reversal and Paul’s Use of Scripture in Galatians 3:10-13, p. 86
Garlington’s immediate comment on Stanley’s statement is as follows:
Therefore, while elements of the passage are straightforward enough, what
remains contested is the rationale behind the apostle’s conviction that
his adversaries are under the curse of the Torah, and how exactly the text
chosen by him supports his accusation.
Perhaps we should print out the verses being discussed:
10. For as many as are of the works of the law are under the curse: for it
is written, Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things which
are written in the book of the law to do them.
11. But that no man is justified by the law in the sight of God, it is evident:
for, The just shall live by faith.
12. And the law is not of faith: but, The man that doeth them shall live in
them.
13. Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for
us: for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree: Galatians 3:10-13
The meaning of Stanely’s quotation, and Garlington’s comment on it, is
determined by the meaning of the phrase "to live by the Jewish Torah."
I assume that "those who do the law" means the same thing as
"those who live by the Torah." In no way does verse 10 say or
imply that either Paul or Moses is pronouncing a curse on people who sincerely
"attempt to live," in the sense as a rule for their life, "by
the Jewish Torah." Jewish Christians, Seventh Day Adventists, as well
as some covenant theologians, do that very thing today. However, seeking
to obey the Torah, or "to live by it" because you love God, and
seeking to obey the Torah in order to gain life, or be saved, are two entirely
different things. This difference is the heart of the difference between
Luther’s view of justification and that of the New Perspective. In no sense
is Paul condemning a person just because he uses the Torah as the guide
for his life. Paul is condemning the man who is attempting to earn life, or salvation, by obeying the Torah. He is condemning the Judaizers who
insist that circumcision and obedience to the Torah are essential to be
saved or to be a true child of Abraham. Paul is clearly setting forth the
two ways that men use to secure justification before God. The view of the
Judaizers is "salvation by works" and the view of Paul is "salvation
by grace." Are we justified by faith or are we justified by obedience
to Torah? Are we justified by grace or by works? That is the issue and
the real problem that Paul addresses. Of course, if Paul is comparing salvation
by grace and by works, then the New Perspective is wrong at its starting
point. Luther’s understanding of Paul cannot be reconciled with the New
Perspective’s view that Second-Temple Judaism promoted salvation by grace
and did not believe in a salvation by works. The New Perspective insists
that Luther did not understand Paul because he read his fight with Rome
into Galatians and Romans.
Garlington’s problem, articulated by Stanley, arises when he attempts to
make the Law to be something totally different from the traditional view’s
definition. In the New View, the Old Covenant can no longer be seen as
a "ministry of death" (2 Cor.3) with a primary purpose of convicting
unbelievers of sin. There is indeed a problem in Paul’s theology if Torah
was given to a redeemed people for their sanctification instead of given
to a nation of lost rebels as a covenant of life and death to convict those
lost rebels of their need of a redeemer. Here is a clear example of the
radical difference between the New Perspective and the view of Luther and
the Reformers.
Stanley is half-right when he says, "the biblical text to which he
[Paul] appeals [Deut. 27:26 in 3:10b] clearly affirms the opposite: its
‘curse’ falls not on those who do the law, but on those who fail to do
it." Deuteronomy 27:26 does indeed affirm that a curse falls on all
who fail to keep the whole Law. However, Stanley is dead wrong in the way
in which he tries to make Paul say something different than Moses. Paul
is not contradicting Moses, he is quoting Moses. And he is quoting Moses simply because he, Paul, is saying the same thing that Moses said. Garlington insists that unless we realize that Paul is using "Reverse
Role Playing" then we will not understand that Paul is contradicting
Moses. It seems to me that Stanley, Garlington, and the New Perspective
are totally missing Paul’s point in Galatians 3:10-12. The whole point
of the passage is that Torah cannot give life unless it is kept to perfection.
The New Perspective must reject this view because it believes the Old Covenant
could indeed be kept simply because it did not require perfect obedience.
This is where the Old View would disagree with Garlington, Stanley, and
the New Perspective. Here is Paul’s logic:
The Torah demands perfection.
The Torah’s curse must fall on those who do not keep it perfectly.
No one can perfectly keep the Torah; therefore all who try to be justified
by keeping Torah are under the Torah’s curse. Moses and Paul are in clear
agreement.
The Galatians were going back to the very view of Torah they had left in
order to become Christians. They were trying to earn salvation by law-keeping.
Stanley uses this text to teach that some people can actually "do
the law" or keep the Torah. What else can he mean by, "its [Torah’s]
‘curse’ falls not on those who do the law,but on those who fail to do it."? This statement clearly implies that that there are some who are able
do the law and will thus avoid its curse. The New View teaches that the
Old Covenant did not demand perfection and could be kept. I think it is
quite clear that when Paul, in Galatians 3:10-13, talks about "living
by the law" he does not mean using the Torah as a standard to guide
our behavior. He is talking about gaining life before God, or being justified,
by one’s obedience to the Torah. The New Perspective people that I know
personally are quite emphatic that they no longer believe, as they once
did, that the primary purpose of the Torah was to convict of sin and lead
to faith.
Garlington makes it very clear that he agrees with Stanley concerning the
nature of the Old Covenant when he criticizes a man named Peter Craig for
"two mistakes." Garlington says that one of Craig’s mistakes
is a failure to see that Deuteronomy 27:15-26 is dealing primarily with
idolatry, and not with keeping the law perfectly. He then gives Moses a whole new
twist. The emphasis in bold type is mine.
One [mistake] is a failure to recognize that Deut. 27:15-26 revolves around
idolatry, with its resultant problems. The cursed one [in Deut. 27], "who does
not confirm the words of this law by doing them", is not merely the
one who falls short at various points, but the apostate and the idolater. The ‘reach of the law’ is not perfect compliance with its demands, or anything approaching it, but fidelity to the God who graciously gave it to Israel. Ibid. p 97.
The Old View has always understood and preached that the Law demanded perfect
obedience, and used Galatians 3:10-13 as a proof text. The Old View taught,
and I still do, that, "whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles
at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it" (James 2:10). That
sounds like a demand for sinless perfection to me. Merely "falling
short at various points" cannot be made to mean the same thing as
"if you stumble at one point you are guilty of breaking all"
of the law. The man in Numbers who was stoned to death for picking up a
few sticks certainly appeared to merely stumble at one point. The shift
of the New View on this point is not only forcing its adherents into clear
conflict with the historic view of justification, but is really a whole
new approach to all of Scripture. It uses a radically different paradigm
than historic Reformed Theology does.
Garlington continues with his criticism of Craig, and again the emphasis
in bold is mine:
The other mistake [by Craig] is a failure to realize that the law is in fact performable. Obedience to the Torah in the Hebrew Scriptures themselves (as distinct
from later theologies) is never portrayed as an unobtainable goal. Rather, according to Deut. 30:11-20, it is a thing within Israel’s grasp
(‘this commandment … is not too hard for you, neither is it far off’, v.11).
One is able to say this because, again, ‘keeping the law’, ‘obedience’,
and such expressions, speak of perseverance, not sinless perfection. Ibid.,
p. 97.
The New View’s position that the Old Covenant can indeed be kept is not
just contrary to "later theologies," it is contrary to how the
New Testament writers understand and apply the true intent of the Law.
Paul clearly states that the Law was given "to stop every mouth and
prove all men are guilty…By the law is the knowledge of sin… I had not
known sin but by the law…The law was added so the trespass might increase…the
law works wrath…the law was added because of transgressions…Now if the
ministry that brought death, which was engraved in letters on stone…"
(Rom. 3:19, 20; 7:7; 5:20; 4:15; Gal. 3:19; 2 Cor. 3:7). The primary purpose
of the law was to make sin increase so its true nature could be seen and
sinners could feel their awful guilt. I cannot see how anyone can reconcile
these texts stated above with the New View’s claim that the Old Covenant
did not demand perfection and was in fact performable.
I think Garlington misunderstands and misuses Deuteronomy 30. His whole
position rests on insisting that the Israelite could perform the obedience
that the law demanded. Is he not in danger of throwing total depravity
right out the window? The New View insists that the law did not demand
either perfection or anything approaching it, but was primarily concerned only with the sin of idolatry and not with
all the individual commandments. Did not our Lord condemn the Rich Young
Ruler for this very thing? Did he not insist on every "jot and tittle"
being kept?
As long as a person did not go into idolatry then, according to the New
View, he was OK. They then use Deuteronomy 30:11-30 as proof of these claims.
Since the New View’s whole position of the nature and purpose of the Old
Covenant is tied up with this interpretation, let us look at the whole
giving of the covenant in Deuteronomy, chapters 27-30, and see if their
understanding is correct. The key text is Deuteronomy 27:26 which Paul
quotes in Galatians 3:10. The question is this: "Is the major concern
stated in this text, and context, merely idolatry or is there an equal
concern for every detail of all the commandments in the Torah?" The
New View’s whole position of the Old Covenant rests on that specific question.
I think the text and context are quite clear that it is the "whole
law" without a single exception and not just idolatry. This is an
example of how the New View will make a statement, build a whole point
of doctrine on that statement, and then ignore texts that cannot be made
to confirm what has been said.
In Deuteronomy 27:1, Israel was commanded to "Keep all these commands that I give you today." Idolatry is not singled out or even mentioned. In verses 2 and 3, they
are told to set up some large stones and "Write on them all the words of this law…." and again idolatry is not singled out or even mentioned. It is equally
essential that all of the commandments are kept. Verse 14 says, "The Levites shall recite to all the people of Israel in a loud voice"
and then follows a list of specific commandments. If any of these are disobeyed
by the Israelites, God will curse them. Notice the list of things that
will earn God’s curse:
15: "Cursed is the man who carves an image or casts an idol…"
16: "Cursed is the man who dishonors his father or his mother."
17: "Cursed is the man who moves his neighbor's boundary stone."
18: "Cursed is the man who leads the blind astray on the road."
19: "Cursed is the man who withholds justice from the alien, the fatherless
or the widow."
20: "Cursed is the man who sleeps with his father's wife…"
21: "Cursed is the man who has sexual relations with any animal."
22: "Cursed is the man who sleeps with his sister…."
23: "Cursed is the man who sleeps with his mother-in-law."
24: "Cursed is the man who kills his neighbor secretly."
25: "Cursed is the man who accepts a bribe to kill an innocent person."
26: "Cursed is the man who does not uphold the words of this law by carrying them out."
It is true that verse 15 lists idolatry as earning God’s curse. However,
verses 16-25 then list ten other specific sins that equally earn the curse
of God. Idolatry is clearly put on an equal level with the other ten sins.
These verses not only do not back up Garlington’s claim, they clearly refute
it. It is impossible, from these texts, to prove the New View’s thesis
that the passage is talking only, or even primarily, about idolatry. Idolatry
is one of eleven equal sins worthy of God’s curse. Garlington insists that
Deuteronomy 27:15-26 is "dealing primarily with idolatry" without a stitch of textual evidence and in the face of contrary evidence.
There is a ten to one ratio between idolatry and the other sins, and all
are equally under God’s curse. Garlington’s essential distinction making
idolatry to be the primary emphasis is nowhere mentioned or even hinted
at in the proof text.
Verse 26 is conclusive and proves beyond doubt that for Paul "continuing
in the law" did not merely mean persevering within some covenantal
markers and not going into idolatry, but it meant keeping all of Torah
to perfection. This verse is stating the exact opposite of what the New
Perspective claims as the foundation point of its thesis on Galatians 3:10-13.
I think Garlington misuses this text. Idolatry, in Deuteronomy 27 and in
Paul’s theology of "keeping the law" in Galatians, and for James
in his Epistle, is, in one sense, no worse than sleeping with animals.
Both are equally cursed of God in Torah and will earn God’s curse.
Again, as we continue on in Deuteronomy 28:1, we have the same exhortation.
"If you fully obey the LORD your God and carefully follow all his commands I give you today, the LORD your God will set you high above all the nations
on earth." The text does not single out idolatry, but it certainly
does sound like God is demanding the same sinless perfection that James
referred to when he talked about breaking the law in only one point.
Deuteronomy 28:14-15 again speaks of "all his commandments." Idolatry is not singled out as the primary sin
but is merely "one" of the "all commandments."
Do not turn aside from any of the commands I give you today, to the right or to the left, following other gods and
serving them. However, if you do not obey the LORD your God and do not
carefully follow all his commands and decrees I am giving you today, all these curses will come upon you and overtake
you.
In no way can those words be made to mean that only idolatry or apostasy
could bring the curse of God upon an individual.
Deuteronomy 28:58 sets forth the same message. Again, idolatry is not mentioned.
"If you do not carefully follow all the words of this law, which are written in this book . . ."
Deuteronomy 29:1 records the specific covenant terms: "These are the terms of the covenant the LORD commanded Moses to make with the Israelites in Moab, in addition
to the covenant he had made with them at Horeb." In verses 2 through
8, Moses reminds them of God’s love and care for them in the past. He then
exhorts them in verse 9 to, "Carefully follow the terms of this covenant, so that you may prosper in everything you do." God then again warns
them about the consequences of disobeying the covenant in any of its parts
or terms. Again, idolatry is not singled out.
Deuteronomy 30:1-2 again exhorts obedience to "everything I command you." Idolatry is not singled out.
When all these blessings and curses I have set before you come upon you
and you take them to heart wherever the LORD your God disperses you among
the nations, and when you and your children return to the LORD your God
and obey him with all your heart and with all your soul according to everything I command you today."
There is not one iota of textual evidence for the basic presupposition
of the New View concerning the nature of Torah. Where, in the whole of
Deuteronomy 27 - 30, can anyone find evidence for the following statement?
One [mistake] is a failure to recognize that Deuteronomy 27:15-26 revolves
around idolatry, with its resultant problems. The cursed one [in Deut. 27], "who does
not confirm the words of this law by doing them", is not merely the
one who falls short at various points, but the apostate and the idolater. The ‘reach of the law’ is not perfect compliance with its demands, or anything approaching it, but fidelity to the God who graciously gave it to Israel." Ibid.,
p. 97.
Both Deuteronomy 27:15-26, and its context, say the very opposite of what
the New View is claiming. These texts clearly state the very thing the
New View is trying to deny. I think it is important to remember that the
New Perspective is forced into its view concerning idolatry because of
its view of the nature of the Old Covenant. Of course, the same is true
of Luther. He was also forced into his view by his understanding of the
nature of the Old Covenant. The contrasting conclusions demonstrate how
radically different Luther’s view of the Old Covenant is from that of the
New Perspective.
The New View uses Deuteronomy 30:10-14 to prove its thesis that Israel
could have obeyed the covenant. Again, it seems to me the texts do not
back up this position.
If you obey the LORD your God and keep his commands and decrees that are
written in this Book of the Law and turn to the LORD your God with all
your heart and with all your soul. Now what I am commanding you today is
not too difficult for you or beyond your reach. It is not up in heaven,
so that you have to ask, "Who will ascend into heaven to get it and
proclaim it to us so we may obey it?" Nor is it beyond the sea, so
that you have to ask, "Who will cross the sea to get it and proclaim
it to us so we may obey it?" No, the word is very near you; it is
in your mouth and in your heart so you may obey it.
First, nowhere do these texts even mention idolatry let alone single it
out. Moses is very emphatic that everything, all of the "commands and decrees that are written in the Book of the
Law," are to be kept.
Secondly, Garlington is using these verses to prove that it was possible
for Israel to keep the law. He said, "according to Deuteronomy 30:11-20,
it is a thing within Israel’s grasp (‘this commandment…is not too hard
for you, neither is it far off’, v.11)." It seems to me that the thing
that is not "beyond Israel’s reach" is not perfect, or even partial,
obedience to the law but the clear knowledge of the law. It was not hidden. They did not have to go up to heaven or
across the sea to find the law. God had clearly given it to them. That
is surely the way Paul uses these verses in Romans 10:9-13. The following
verses, 15 and 16, support this idea. God again reminds Israel of the covenant
of life and death set before them. "See, I set before you today life and prosperity, death and destruction.
For I command you today to love the LORD your God, to walk in his ways, and to keep his commands, decrees and laws; then you will live and increase, and the LORD your God will bless you
in the land you are entering to possess" (Deut. 30: 15,16). Again, idolatry is not singled out or even mentioned.
The exhortation is to obey every commandment and decree God has given.
If the new view is right concerning idolatry being the primary emphasis,
why would God have a man stoned to death for merely picking up sticks on
the Sabbath? Why was that such a heinous sin? That act had nothing to do
with idolatry.
Garlington’s problem with Galatians 3:13 really confuses me. He says,
"Moreover, an additional complication arises out of the proposition
of v. 13 that Christ, assuming the place of the incorrigible son of Deut
21, delivered
[out from under the curse of the law, being a made a curse for us]. In
what sense could the Messiah, for Paul, have actually been considered the
"glutton and drunkard" of Deuteronomy 21 who would not obey the
voice of parents?" Ibid., p.86.
I cannot follow his exegesis here. Nowhere does Paul in any way suggest
that Jesus was the "glutton and drunkard" in Deuteronomy 21.
Garlington seems to be putting words into Paul’s mouth. Let me quote the
context (Deut. 21:18-23) of the specific passage (Deut. 21:22, 23) that Paul actually
quotes in Galatians 3:13.
If a man have a stubborn and rebellious son, which will not obey the voice
of his father, or the voice of his mother, and that, when they have chastened
him, will not hearken unto them: Then shall his father and his mother lay
hold on him, and bring him out unto the elders of his city, and unto the
gate of his place; And they shall say unto the elders of his city, This
our son is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey our voice; he is a
glutton, and a drunkard. And all the men of his city shall stone him with
stones, that he die: so shalt thou put evil away from among you; and all
Israel shall hear, and fear.
(Deut. 21:18-21)
These three verses (18-21) are not quoted by Paul in Galatians 3:13. The following two verses are the verses
Paul quoted in Galatians 3:13.
And if a man have committed a sin worthy of death, and he be to be put
to death, and thou hang him on a tree: His body shall not remain all night
upon the tree, but thou shalt in any wise bury him that day; (for he that
is hanged is accursed of God;) that thy land be not defiled, which the
LORD thy God giveth thee for an inheritance. (Deut. 21:22 -23)
It is true that verses 18-21 are talking about a stubborn and rebellious
son, but verses 22 and 23, the verses Paul quotes, are not talking about a "stubborn son" but about "any man." There is a world of difference between "a rebellious son" who
is stoned to death and "any man" who is publicly hung on a tree.
Garlington seems to totally misunderstand Paul’s point. Paul is not saying
that Jesus was the rebellious son that earned God’s curse. Paul is emphasizing
that death on a cross, regardless of who ("a man, any man") it
was that was crucified, was proof that the person died as a covenant breaker
under the curse of God. Jesus was "made to be sin" and treated
by God (death on a cross) as if he were a real sinner or covenant breaker.
The rebellious son in Deuteronomy 21 was stoned to death, not hung on a tree. The kind of death Christ died means he was dying under the curse of God
as a deliberate covenant breaker. This was the great problem for the Jews.
They would ask, "How can Jesus be the Messiah when he dies under the
curse of God as a covenant breaker?" They were right that he died
under God’s curse, but they did not understand that his death under the
wrath of God was for our sins. His death delivered us from the curse of
the law.
I fail to see Garlington’s problem with the text. How can he possibly think
that when Paul uses Deuteronomy 21:22, 23 the death by hanging on a tree
somehow refers to Christ as the stubborn and rebellious son in verse 18-21
that was to be stoned? The passage from Deuteronomy 21:22, 23 refers to
"a man, ANY man" who "commits a sin worthy of death by hanging
on a tree." Paul never mentions verses 18-21 in Galatians 3:13. He
is showing that anyone, not just a rebellious son, who in any way sins
against Torah is not only worthy of death, but a specific kind of death
to prove they are covenant breakers.
It seems to me that all of the New View’s problems with Galatians 3:10-13
are of their own making. If we accept the traditional view (and as far
as I am concerned it is the biblical view) of the purpose and function
of the Torah as given to "make the trespass increase" (Romans
5:20) there is no problem. Garlington’s whole approach, along with Stanley’s,
does not seem to fit Paul’s view of Torah. It certainly cannot be reconciled
to Luther’s view.
In our next article we will look more carefully at the New View’s understanding
of "getting into the covenant" and "staying in the covenant."
This aspect of the New Perspective presents a different concept of the
Gospel from that of traditional Reformed theology.
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National Building Museum: Lectures and Symposia
Home:
Events/News: Calendar
of Events: Lectures & Symposia
Lectures
and Construction Watch Tours •February–March 2006
Registration
is required for all lectures and symposia unless otherwise noted. Online
registration for certain programs is available. Three full business
days in advance of a program is required for all refunds. No tickets
are mailed for Museum programs. Confirmation of registration available
upon request. Sign language interpreters available with two weeks’
advance notice. The National Building Museum is
a registered provider for The
American Institute of Architects Continuing Education System. To obtain learning credits please visit the Continuing Education table at the Museum program.
Lecture Architectural Designs for Early and Modern Washington, DC
Thursday, February 2
6:30–8:00 pm
Showing seldom-seen architectural drawings at the Library of Congress, C. Ford Peatross, the library's curator of architecture, design, and engineering collections, will discuss some of Washington's most important buildings, monuments, and memorials as well as anonymous structures of everyday life and ambitious projects that were never built. The drawings tell the sometimes surprising story of the capital's planning and growth over two centuries. After the lecture, he will sign copies of his edited volume Capital Drawings: Architectural Designs for Washington, DC, from the Library of Congress (Johns Hopkins University Press). •1.5 CEU
$10 Members and students; $15 Nonmembers. Registration required. Click
here to register
Smart Growth The State of Growth in the Commonwealth of Virginia
Thursday, February 2
12:30–1:30pm
For the past several years Virginia has experienced very rapid growth, particularly in northern Virginia. The consequences of this growth for traffic, school expenditures, and quality of life have brought growth issues to the forefront of Virginia's politics, where they were a key factor in last year's governor's race. Lately, the highly polarized discussion about growth has become more nuanced. Patrick McSweeney, former chairman of the Virginia Republican Party, will share his thoughts on the policy changes Virginia needs to make to better accommodate its rapid and continuing growth. •1.0 CEU
Free. Registration not required.
Construction Watch Tour Swiss Ambassador’s New Residence
Saturday, February 4
12:00–1:30 pm
A new residence for the Swiss Ambassador is nearing completion in Washington, D.C. Designed by New York architect Steven Holl and Swiss architect Justin Rüssli, the building’s cruciform shape is reminiscent of the cross in the Swiss flag and will provide spectacular views of the Washington Monument. Olaf Schmidt with Steven Holl Architects and Peter Ege with James G. Davis Construction will lead a tour of this nearly 14,000-square-foot project, scheduled for completion in May. •1.5 HSW CEU Open only to Museum members, $18. Space is limited. Prepaid registration required. This tour is sold out.
Lecture Greening the Built Environment in Response to Climate Change
Thursday, February 9
6:30–8:00 pm
The National Building Museum and the Koshland Science Museum (KSM) present a discussion by Tim Beatley, Teresa Heinz professor of sustainable communities, University of Virginia (UVA), and Bruce Hayden, professor and chair, department of environmental sciences at UVA, about green design concepts for homes and communities. They will examine the relationship of architecture and climate change, and specific design features that can diminish the potential impact of climate on the urban environment. •1.5 HSW CEU
Note: This program will be held at the Koshland Science Museum, corner of 6th and E Streets, NW.
This program is sold out; no tickets will be available at the door.
Office Tour Toyota Government and Industry Relations Office
Saturday, February 11
10:00 am–12:00 pm
Toyota’s recently renovated Government and Industry Relations Office in Washington, D.C. reflects the automaker’s commitment to environmental excellence. Gensler associate Jill Goebel, IIDA, will lead a tour of this 25,000-square-foot sustainable workplace, which includes extensive use of natural light, locally quarried stacked stone walls, and veneer and substrates from managed forests. The project is one of the first in Washington to participate in the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED Commercial Interiors certification program. •2.0 HSW CEU
Open only to museum members, $18. Space is limited. Prepaid registration required. Click
here to register
Spotlight on Design Antoine Predock, FAIA
2006 AIA Gold Medal Winner
Saturday, February 11
4:00–5:30 pm
The works of architect Antoine Predock, FAIA, respond in many ways to both the natural and the cultural landscapes in which they are built. Recipient of the 2006 American Institute of Architects Gold Medal, the internationally acclaimed architect draws inspiration from the elemental, historical, and mythical forces of a site. In this exclusive appearance, the Albuquerque, New Mexico-based architect will discuss his award-winning work.
Following the lecture, Predock and Robert Ivy, FAIA, editor-in-chief of Architectural Record magazine, will discuss the designer’s philosophy and projects, including the Shadow House in Santa Fe; the Flint RiverQuarium in Albany, Georgia, and the San Diego Padres baseball stadium. After his lecture, he will sign copies of his books. This program is co-presented with the American Architectural Foundation (AAF) and the American Institute of Architects. •1.5 CEU
$15 Museum, AAF, and AIA members; $20 nonmembers; $10 students. Prepaid registration required. Click
here to register
D.C. Builds Extending Modernism in the Monumental City
Monday, February 13
6:30–8:00 pm
Usually demonized as a failed 1960s urban renewal effort, Washington's Southwest neighborhood has an unappreciated fabric of modernist residential architecture. Last fall the Anacostia Waterfront Corporation (AWC) sponsored a design studio at the Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD) to investigate the extension and redefinition of this architectural legacy in rebuilding the Southwest Waterfront. Inspired by this studio work, a panel of leading architects will discuss the role of modernism in a city largely characterized by monumental classicism and historic patterns of urbanism. Moderated by Toni L. Griffin, AWC vice president and director of design, the panel will include: Andrea Leers, GSD adjunct professor of architecture and urban design and principal of Leers Weinzapfel Associates; Marion Weiss, principal of Weiss/Manfredi Architects; and Shalom Baranes, FAIA, founding principal of Shalom Baranes Associates. This program is co-sponsored with the AWC. •1.5 CEU
$12 Museum members and GSD alumni; $17 nonmembers; $10 students. Registration required. Click
here to register
Lecture Engineering Large-Scale Structures
Tuesday, February 14
6:30–8:00 pm
For five decades Thornton-Tomasetti Group has devised creative engineering solutions for some of the world's iconic structures, from skyscrapers and stadiums to museums and airports. Charles H. Thornton, Ph.D., P.E., founding principal, former co-chairman, and now consultant, and Richard L. Tomasetti, P.E., Hon. AIA, chairman and founding principal, will explore the technical demands involved in creating large, complex buildings, including Petronas Towers in Malaysia, Taipei 101 (currently the world's tallest building) in Taiwan, Soldier Field in Chicago, and the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth. Following their lecture, they will sign copies of the recent book Expressing Structure (Birkhäuser), surveying the firm's notable projects. •1.5 CEU
$10 Museum, ASCE, and NSPE members, and students; $15 nonmembers. Registration required. Click
here to register
Spotlight on Design
Moshe Safdie
Thursday, February 16
6:30–8:00 pm
Since his seminal Habitat project for Montreal's Expo '67, architect Moshe Safdie, FAIA, has designed richly geometric housing and mixed-use complexes, airports, public buildings, and cultural and educational facilities throughout the world. The principal of Moshe Safdie and Associates will discuss his recent museum designs, which include the Boston Museum, the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts, the Skirball Museum and Cultural Center in Los Angeles, and the recently opened Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem. In addition, he will describe current projects in Washington, D.C., including the Institute for Peace and a major federal building. This program is presented in collaboration with the Mid-Atlantic Association of Museums. •1.5 CEU
$12 Museum members; $17 nonmembers; $10 students. Prepaid registration required. Click
here to register
Lecture The Willard Hotel: A Landmark Reborn
Wednesday, February 22
6:30–8:00 pm
A fixture in Washington history for more than 150 years, the Willard Hotel has a fascinating history of its own. Richard Wallace Carr, president of The Oliver Carr Company which redeveloped the hotel in the 1980s and author of The Willard Hotel, An Illustrated History, will discuss the hotel's history from its beginnings on Pennsylvania Avenue, the purchase by the Willard family, its history during the Civil War, redevelopment at the turn of the 20th century, and its demise in 1968 and resurrection in 1986. After the lecture he will sign copies of The Willard Hotel, An Illustrated History, and his wife Marie will sign Dolly and Ike at The Willard. •1.5 CEU
Note: This lecture will be held at The Willard Hotel in the Crystal Room, 1401 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW.
$10 Museum members, Friends of the Willard, and students; $15 Nonmembers. Prepaid registration required. Click
here to register
Building in the Aftermath Symposium The Gulf Coast: Restoring the Landscape
Thursday, February 23
6:30–8:00 pm
Hurricanes Katrina and Rita not only destroyed countless buildings along the Gulf Coast, but also killed plant life and devastated the already-compromised coastal wetlands. The loss of these natural elements is doubly tragic, because if still intact, they could mitigate damage from future storms. A panel of landscape architects and planners will examine the role of these critical components in a healthy ecosystem and discuss the vital need for restoration of the wetlands and other issues. Moderated by Joseph E. Brown, FASLA, president of EDAW, the program will include Paul Rookwood, ASLA, AICP, managing principal of WRT, a planning and design firm working on the redevelopment of New Orleans; and Kevin Shanley, ASLA, who will address the importance of wetlands in the recovery planning process, and JamesSocash, ASLA, who will examine the various ways that plant life and landscapes survive hurricanes. •1.5 CEU
$12 Museum and ASLA members; $17 nonmembers; $10 students. Prepaid registration required. Click
here to register
Construction Watch Tour 1247 Wisconsin Avenue
Saturday, February 25
10:00 am–12:00 pm
Located north of Georgetown's main shopping district, this mixed-use project renovates two mid-19th-century commercial/residential buildings and fills the remaining site with additional offices and street-level retail space. Two residences are in renovated space within the historic buildings, and four new metal-clad houses sit above the new commercial space to create a rooftop village with courtyards and terraces. Mark McInturff, FAIA, founding principal and Peter Noonan, AIA, both with McInturff Architects, will lead a tour of this 22,000-square-foot project scheduled for completion in March. •2.0 HSW CEU
Open only to museum members, $18. Space is limited. Prepaid registration required. Click
here to register
Smart Growth Is Smart Growth “Zoned Out”?
Thursday, March 2
12:30–1:30 pm Jonathan Levine, associate professor and chair of the urban and regional planning program at the University of Michigan, will discuss how current land use patterns primarily reflect regulatory requirements because land development is one of the most regulated sectors of the U.S. economy. He will present examples of U.S. communities that have changed regulations to allow more innovative development and explain the constituencies and policies that led to these changes. After the lecture, he will sign copies of his new book Zoned Out: Regulation, Markets, and Choices in Transportation and Metropolitan Land-Use (Resources for the Future). •1.0 HSW CEU
Free. Registration not required.
Construction Watch Tour ASLA Green Roof
Saturday, March 4
10:00 am–12:00 pm
The American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) is currently installing a green roof atop its downtown Washington, D.C., headquarters building. The 3,300-square-foot, state-of-the-art installation, designed by New York-based Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates Inc., in collaboration with green roof consultants Conservation Design Forum, is being constructed by Bethesda-based Forrester Construction Company. The design incorporates a number of innovative uses of extensive and intensive green roof materials in an unprecedented way, creating a new landscape type that has obvious environmental benefits and creates an uplifting garden experience for people. Chris Counts, ASLA, of Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates, and John Fritz of Forrester Construction will lead the tour. •2.0 HSW CEU
Open only to museum and ASLA members, $18. Space is limited. Prepaid registration required. To register, call the Museum or visit www.nbm.org beginning Tuesday, February 24.
Lecture The L’Enfant Plan from Idea to Landscape
Tuesday, March 14
6:30–8:00 pm
Architect and architectural historian Don Alexander Hawkins will present a fresh thesis about the origins of Pierre L’Enfant’s plan for the capital city of the new American federal republic. He will demonstrate that L’Enfant did not imitate Baroque gardens and city plans such as those at Versailles, London, Paris, and Madrid but instead conceived of an entirely original plan inspired by Alexander Hamilton’s ideas about the relationship between American government and commerce. Hawkins will also discuss the surveyors’ sequential laying out of the plan on the site. This lecture complements the exhibition Washington: Symbol and City, which will be open for viewing and for which Hawkins was the guest curator. •1.5 CEU
$10 members of the Museum and the Latrobe Chapter of the Society of Architectural Historians, and students; $15 nonmembers. Registration required. Click
here to register
Construction Watch Tour Q14
Saturday, March 18
10:00 am–12:00 pm
Q14 is the latest residential project under construction along the bustling 14th Street corridor in Northwest Washington. The design of this new 28-unit, 7-story condominium responds to both the brick 19th-century row houses along Q Street and the limestone 20th-century automotive buildings along 14th Street. Bill Bonstra, founding partner with Bonstra Haresign Architects, will lead a tour of this project, which features three interlocking building forms of varying heights and character.
•2.0 HSW CEU
Open only to museum members, $18. Space is limited. Prepaid registration required. To register, call the Museum or visit www.nbm.org beginning Tuesday, February 24.
Environmental Film Festival Tall: The American Skyscraper and Louis Sullivan
Saturday, March 18
1:00–3:00 pm Tall: The American Skyscraper and Louis Sullivan (82 min., 2004) traces the experiments of the early skyscraper architects, especially Louis Sullivan, the Chicago architect who pioneered new building forms. His elegant buildings, some still standing and featured in the film, bear out his reputation as the father of the skyscraper. Fierce rivals, led by Daniel Burnham, designer of the Flatiron Building, competed with him. The film documents the showdown between Louis Sullivan and Daniel Burnham. Following the screening, filmmaker Manfried Kirchheimer will engage the audience in a discussion of the film. •2.0 CEU
$5 Museum members and students; $7 nonmembers. Registration required. For festival information, visit www.dcenvironmentalfilmfest.org. Click
here to register
Environmental Film Festival Documenting I.M. Pei on Screen: Double Feature
Sunday, March 19
1:00–4:15 pm
Museum on the Mountain
1:00–2:30 pm
This film follows the building of the Miho Museum on a sacred mountain top near Kyoto, Japan from conception to execution. Through I.M. Pei’s personal commentary, we learn the immense difficulties that had to be overcome in order to build a large museum on a remote, environmentally protected site. Following the screening, filmmaker Peter Rosen will engage the audience in a discussion of the film (52 min., 1998). •1.5 CEU
$5 Museum members and students; $7 nonmembers. Registration required. For festival information, visit www.dcenvironmentalfilmfest.org. Click
here to register
First Person Singular
2:45–4:15 pm
In this revealing 1997 film, I.M. Pei leads viewers through several internationally known projects. He also discusses his long-spanning career in architecture and teaching, and the different personalities he has worked with over the years. •1.5 CEU Free. Registration not required.
Building in the Aftermath The New Orleans Levees: What Went Wrong and What Do We Do Now?
Thursday, March 30
6:30–8:00 pm
The multiple breaches of New Orleans’s levees in the immediate wake of Hurricane Katrina constitute one of the most spectacular and consequential failures of urban infrastructure in modern history. What went wrong? Is it possible to build a levee system that will reliably protect the city from future disasters? What is required to create such a system? What lessons can be learned from sophisticated flood control structures in the Netherlands and elsewhere? A panel of engineering experts, including Dr. Ivor van Heerden, deputy director of the Hurricane Center at Louisiana State University, will address these and related questions. •1.5 CEU
$12 Museum members; $17 nonmembers; $10 students. Prepaid registration required. Click
here to register
Featured Program Series Emerging Voices
In collaboration with The Architectural League of New York, the Museum will present, as part of its Spotlight on Design series, lectures by the architects and firms selected by the League this year as “emerging voices.” The League’s Emerging Voices series began in 1982 in order to recognize and encourage architects who are beginning to achieve prominence in the profession. The series focuses primarily on built work at a variety of scales and is structured to reflect the diversity of contemporary practice—geographically, stylistically, and ideologically. Previous architects identified as “emerging voices” include Steven Holl, Samuel Mockbee, Rick Joy, Deborah Burke, and Eric Owen Moss.
The 2006 Emerging Voices are: Mark Goulthorpe of dECOi, Cambridge, MA and Paris, France; Jeanne Gang of Studio Gang, Chicago; nARCHITECTS, New York, NY; Lead Pencil Studio, Seattle, WA; George Yu, Los Angeles; Estudio Teddy Cruz, San Diego; Frank Escher and Ravi GuneWardena, Los Angeles; and Bercy Chen Studio, Austin, TX. The League’s Emerging Voices program is sponsored by USM Modular Furniture. •1.5 CEU (each program)
$12 Museum and Architectural League members; $17 nonmembers; $10 students. Special rate of $30 for all four programs for Museum members and students only. Prepaid registration required.
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Anniversary 25th Silver, 50th Gold - Traditional and Modern Gifts to Give
25th
Anniversary
Gifts
Anniversary
Gift
Ideas
50th
Anniversary
Wedding
Anniversary Gifts:
The Anniversary Gift list below state the traditional
and modern gifts to be exchanged on the designated
anniversary year. This may help you in choosing a gift
for your spouse or the married couple. Looking for Traditional
& Modern Anniversary Gift List 1st - 5th, 6-10th
Send Roses That Last and Last and Last Send real roses preserved in 24kt gold!
Or choose from crystal paper roses, hand carved soap
roses, chocolate roses, porcelain roses and more. These
roses make a lasting impression to anyone that receives
them. Thanks - Tonya
If they like to dine out and go to shows, get
them an Entertainment
Book, the new ones are due out
soon, so get the 2002 edition - Thanks Michelle -
Littleton, CO
Have great ideas? We'd love to include them here.
Send Yours
Coffee farmers are becoming even more impoverished, going further into debt and losing their land due to extremely low world coffee prices. Meanwhile coffee companies such as Starbucks have not lowered consumer prices but are pocketing the
difference, even taking into account the quality premiums in the specialty industry.
According to Fair Trade Labeling Organizations International, Fair Trade farmers sell only about 20% of their coffee at a Fair Trade price. The rest is sold at the world price, due to lack of demand. Demand can be created by large corporations selling Fair Trade.
Since 2000, consumers have been demanding that Starbucks offer BREWED Fair Trade coffee as well as whole bean. Many Starbucks cafes will brew a pot of Fair Trade - but only if specifically asked.
Meanwhile Fair Trade Coffee has yet to be promoted as the brewed Coffee of the Day, which is the only way to ensure real volume for Fair Trade Farmers.
Read Global Exchange's statement on Starbucks recently introduced "CAFE Program."
What you can do:
Participate
in OCA's ongoing campaign to pressure Starbucks to offer rBGH-free
milk, ban GMOs, and offer BREWED Fair Trade Certified as Coffee of the
Day once a week.
Download our new Starbucks flyer here
(PDF 1.6mb).
Demand that Starbucks offer brewed Fair Trade Coffee of the Day -- every
week!! Write or fax a letter to Starbucks.
If you are a Starbucks customer, always buy Fair Trade! Tell
the Starbucks workers and customers -- our potential allies -- about
your commitment to buy only Fair Trade, and keep asking for Fair Trade
brewed coffee.
Gather petitions
asking Starbucks to sell Fair Trade brewed coffee.
Starbucks will offer Fair Trade coffee only at universities
where students demand it. Let your voice be heard!
Get connected with the Fair Trade coffee campaign moderated
listserve!
Read more about Starbucks and Fair Trade in the
news.
History:
In 2000, a campaign by thousands of activists across the country
pressured Starbucks to carry Fair Trade coffee in all their cafes.
See press release and
detailed history for more information. As a
result, on October 4 Starbucks introduced whole bean Fair Trade
Certified coffee at over 2,300 stores, which brought the number of
Fair Trade outlets to almost 5,000 nationwide (it's currently over
7,500). This is an amazing testament to the power of grassroots Fair
Trade activism and the real concrete changes that citizens can make in
global trade system when we demand products made under fair labor
conditions. This was achieved because of the pressure of our grassroots campaign, including 84
organizations that signed an Open
Letter to Starbucks as well as 29 national demonstrations that were planned across
the country. Still, people should know that there is no guarantee that
coffee without the Fair Trade seal is not sweatshop coffee.
+++URL: http://www.scca.com/News/News.asp?Ref=84
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Other health benefits noted include increased
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The study participants had high doses, but results have been reported at much lower levels of Calcium Pyruvate.
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*These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease
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TV Listings - [TV Guide Online]
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National Building Museum: Affordable Housing
Home:
Exhibitions: Current Exhibitions: Affordable
Housing: Designing an American Asset
AFFORDABLE HOUSING
DESIGNING AN AMERICAN ASSET
February 28 - August 8, 2004
"The generally accepted
definition of affordability
is for a household to pay
no more than 30 percent of
its
annual income on housing.
Families who pay more than
30 percent
of their income for housing
are considered cost burdened
and may have difficulty affording
necessities such as food,
clothing, transportation,
and medical
care.-U.
S. Department of Housing and
Urban Development The
need to design and construct affordable
housing in America is urgent. Twenty-five
percent of all American households face
severe housing challenges, including insufficient
funds for monthly rent or mortgage payments,
maintenance, and repairs; overcrowding,
both within individual dwellings and in
high-density multi-family developments;
and structural deficiencies. These 30 million
households include not just the poorest
and those without jobs, but also teachers,
librarians, firefighters, health-care workers,
and many others who make significant contributions
to our communities.
Slums,
tenements, chain-link "cages" enclosing
concrete high-rises, filth, crime, and
racial segregation: such often-frightening
visions illustrate many chapters of the
affordable housing story in our cities
and towns.
In recent years, however, a
new emphasis on design excellence in
affordable housing has yielded encouraging
alternatives that create substantial
assets for both residents and their communities.
In Washington, D.C.'s, LeDroit Park,
for example, financing from Fannie Mae,
in partnership with Howard University,
spurred the development of 12 new and
28 restored homes, significantly transforming
the physical character and composition
of the existing neighborhood while bringing
renewed vitality and stability to a historic
community. In Santa Monica, California,
Colorado Court's contemporary architecture
incorporates energy-efficient strategies,
enhancing tenants' quality of life on
many levels. And in Albany, New York,
and Oakland, California, developers and
architects recycled and reinvigorated
existing historic structures, providing
many units of housing while conserving
and strengthening local character. These
innovative projects, and many others
across the country, point toward a better
way to design affordable housing.
Fact: Someone who makes the current minimum wage
of $5.15 per hour and allocates no more than 30% of annual
income for housing, should not have to pay more than $257.50
per month in rent and utilities. The average monthly cost
of a reserved parking space in downtown Washington, D.C.,
is $280.
The
18 projects illustrated in this exhibition,
from across the nation and in a range of
urban and rural settings, demonstrate that
well designed developments can offer new
opportunities for the least wealthy Americans,
while creating real value as assets for their
surrounding communities. The projects show
an increased recognition of the needs of
tenants, and display sensitivity to the human
experience in all spaces, from public and
private areas to transition spaces such as
entrances, porches, lobbies, hallways, and
foyers. Many provide flexibility for different
family types, easy expansion, and personalization.
They also show consideration of unit and
building positioning, thereby optimizing
views, ventilation, and accessibility. As
these projects demonstrate, America's architects
are increasingly creating affordable housing
that is durable, environmentally sensitive,
comfortable, attractive, and economical to
maintain-in other words, well designed.
The
design excellence achieved in the highlighted
projects is prologue to some of the exciting
possibilities for affordable housing's future,
now being designed and conceived by architects
across the nation.
Acknowledgements
Guest Curators: Ralph Bennett, AIA, and Isabelle
Gournay, Ph.D.
Chief Curator: Howard Decker, FAIA
Curatorial Associate: Matt Kuhnert
Director of Exhibitions: Catherine Crane Frankel
Exhibition Writer/Editor: Jayson Hait
Exhibition Timeline Editor: Barry Jacobs
Exhibition Design and Graphic Design: Chester Design
Associates
Picture Researcher: Joan Mathys
Film and Video Production: Video Takes
Exhibitions Coordinator: Hank Griffith
Exhibitions Preparators: Christopher Maclay and MaryJane
Valade
Collections Team: Dana Twersky, Martha Sharma, and
Shelagh Cole
Curatorial Assistant: Matthew Fitzsimmons
Advisory Committee
Emily H. Axelrod, Bruner Foundation
Luis Borray, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban
Development
Juanita Britton, D.C. Department of Housing and Community
Development
Simeon Bruner, Bruner Foundation
Henry Cisneros, American CityVista
Suzanne Corcoran, Corcoran Jennison
Chuck Edson, Nixon Peabody LLP
Conrad Egan, National Housing Conference
David Engel, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban
Development
Alan Hirmes, Related Capital
Stanley Jackson, D.C. Department of Housing and Community
Development
Marty Jones, Corcoran Jennison
G. Allan Kingston, Century Housing Corporation
Jeffrey Lesk, Nixon Peabody LLP
Robert Reid, Center for Housing Policy
Stephen Ross, The Related Companies
Anthony Schuman, School of Architecture, New Jersey
Institute of Technology
Daniel Solomon, Solomon E.T.C.
Vickie Tassan, Bank of America, Inc.
Honorary
Committee
The Honorable Christopher S. Bond
The Honorable Barney Frank
The Honorable John F. Kerry
The Honorable Barbara A. Mikulski
The Honorable Michael G. Oxley
The Honorable Jack Reed
The Honorable Paul S. Sarbanes
The Honorable James T. Walsh
The Honorable Anthony A. Williams
Affordable
Housing is
made possible by the generous support of
the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban
Development, Nixon Peabody LLP, and Related
Capital Company, a CharterMac Company,
along with Bank of America, Century Housing,
Fannie Mae Foundation, National Association
of Home Builders, NATIONAL ASSOCIATION
OF REALTORS ®, Corcoran Jennison Companies,
Council of Federal Home Loan Banks, Horning
Brothers, Meridian Investments, Inc., and
Newman & Associates, Inc. Additional
funding was received from the U. S. Environmental
Protection Agency, National Council of
State Housing Agencies, National Housing
Trust, National Leased Housing Association,
Reznick Fedder & Silverman, Affordable
Housing Tax Credit Coalition, Bruner Foundation,
Homes for America, Inc., Housing and Development
Reporter, Institute for Responsible Housing
Preservation, The John Stewart Company,
Katz & Korin, P.C., Local Initiatives
Support Corporation, National Foundation
for Affordable Housing Solutions, National
Housing Conference, Neighborhood Reinvestment
Corporation and the NeighborWorks ® System,
and Southern California Housing Development
Corporation.
Disclosure Regarding Market Timing and Selective Disclosure of Portfolio Holdings
Agency: Securities and Exchange Commission.
Action: Proposed rule.
Summary: The Securities and Exchange Commission is proposing amendments to Form N-1A under the Securities Act of 1933 and the Investment Company Act of 1940 to require open-end management investment companies to disclose in their prospectuses both the risks to shareholders of the frequent purchase and redemption of investment company shares, and the investment company's policies and procedures with respect to such frequent purchases and redemptions. The proposals would also amend Forms N-3, N-4, and N-6 to require similar prospectus disclosure for insurance company separate accounts issuing variable annuity and variable life insurance contracts. The Commission is also proposing to amend Forms N-1A and N-3 to clarify that open-end management investment companies and insurance company managed separate accounts that offer variable annuities, other than money market funds, are required to explain both the circumstances under which they will use fair value pricing and the effects of using fair value pricing. In addition, the Commission is proposing to require open-end management investment companies and insurance company managed separate accounts that offer variable annuities to disclose their policies and procedures with respect to the disclosure of their portfolio securities, and any ongoing arrangements to make available information about their portfolio securities.
Dates: Comments must be received on or before February 6, 2004.
Addresses: To help us process and review your comments more efficiently, comments should be sent by one method only. Comments should be submitted in triplicate to Jonathan G. Katz, Secretary, Securities and Exchange Commission, 450 Fifth Street, NW, Washington, DC 20549-0609. Comments also may be submitted electronically at the following E-mail address: rule-comments@sec.gov. All comment letters should refer to File No. S7-26-03; this file number should be included in the subject line if electronic mail is used. Comment letters will be available for public inspection and copying in the Commission's Public Reference Room, 450 Fifth Street, NW, Washington, DC 20549. Electronically submitted comment letters also will be posted on the Commission's Internet website (http://www.sec.gov).1
For Further Information Contact: Kieran G. Brown, Attorney, or Sanjay Lamba, Attorney, Office of Disclosure Regulation, Division of Investment Management, (202) 942-0721, at the Securities and Exchange Commission, 450 Fifth Street, NW, Washington, DC 20549-0506.
Supplementary Information: The Securities and Exchange Commission ("Commission") is proposing for comment amendments to Form N-1A [17 CFR 239.15A and 274.11A], Form N-3 [17 CFR 239.17a and 274.11b], Form N-4 [17 CFR 239.17b and 274.11c], and Form N-6 [17 CFR 239.17c and 274.11d], registration forms used by investment companies to register under the Investment Company Act of 1940 ("Investment Company Act") and to offer their securities under the Securities Act of 1933 ("Securities Act").
Millions of individual American investors hold shares of open-end management investment companies ("mutual funds"), relying on these funds for their retirements, their children's educations, and their other basic financial needs.2 The tremendous growth of mutual funds reflects the trust that investors have placed in funds and the regulatory protections provided by the federal securities laws.
Recent allegations regarding late trading and abusive market timing, however, point to instances where it appears that some in the mutual fund industry, and some intermediaries that sell fund shares, have lost sight of their obligations to investors.3 These allegations relate to abuses in at least three areas:
"Late trading," the practice of placing orders to buy or redeem mutual fund shares after 4:00 p.m., Eastern time, as of which most funds calculate their net asset value ("NAV"), but receiving the price based on the 4:00 p.m. NAV;
Abuses related to "market timing," including the alleged overriding of stated market timing policies by fund executives to benefit large investors at the expense of small investors, or to benefit the fund's investment adviser; and
The selective disclosure by some fund managers of their funds' portfolio holdings in order to curry favor with large investors.
The Commission is extremely concerned by the abuses that have surfaced in the mutual fund industry, and we have taken vigorous enforcement action where abuses have been uncovered.4 We also believe, however, that regulatory reforms are necessary to help prevent such abuses from recurring in the future. The Commission is proposing a package of rule amendments intended to address abuses that have surfaced in the areas of late trading, market timing, and selective disclosure. In this release, we are proposing disclosure reforms intended to shed more light on market timing and selective disclosure of portfolio holdings. In a second release, we are proposing amendments that would require that an order to purchase or redeem redeemable securities of a registered investment companybe received by the company, its designated transfer agent, or a registered securities clearing agency by the time that the fund establishes for calculating its NAV in order to receive that day's price. In addition, we are publishing a release adopting rules requiring registered investment companies and investment advisers to adopt and implement written compliance policies and procedures, review those policies and procedures annually, and designate a chief compliance officer responsible for their administration.
A. Forward Pricing and Market Timing
Section 22 of the Investment Company Act of 1940 (the "Investment Company Act") regulates the pricing, distribution, and redemption of redeemable securities, including mutual fund shares.5 Paragraph (c) of section 22 gives the Commission broad power to regulate the pricing of redeemable securities, including the power to prescribe by rule methods for computing the price that a shareholder will receive upon redemption. Rule 22c-1(a) under the Investment Company Act requires mutual funds to sell and redeem their shares at a price based on the NAV next computed after receipt of an order. This requirement is referred to as "forward pricing." The purpose of this requirement is to prevent dilution and assure that prices bear an appropriate relation to the current NAV of a mutual fund's shares.6 Rule 22c-1 generally requires mutual funds to compute their NAVs at least once daily, Monday through Friday, at a specific time or times as determined by their boards.7 Typically, mutual funds calculate their NAVs once each day at or near the close of the major U.S. securities exchanges and markets (usually 4:00 p.m., Eastern time).
Mutual funds generally calculate their NAVs by using the closing prices of portfolio securities on the exchange or market on which the securities principally trade. In some cases, however, the closing price of a security held in a mutual fund's portfolio may not reflect its current market value at the time of the fund's NAV calculation, for example, if an event that will affect the value of those securities has occurred since the closing price was established, but before the fund's NAV calculation.8
When market quotations for a portfolio security are not readily available (including when market quotations are unreliable), a mutual fund is required to calculate its NAV by using the fair value of that security, as determined in good faith by the fund's board.9 In a separate release adopting rule 38a-1 under the Investment Company Act, we are reemphasizing the obligation of mutual funds to fair value their securities under certain circumstances. If a mutual fund misprices its shares by failing to use fair value pricing when market quotations for its portfolio securities are unreliable, an investor may take advantage of the disparity between the portfolio securities' last quoted prices and their fair value. When mutual fund shares are mispriced, short-term traders have an arbitrage opportunity that they can use to exploit the fund and disadvantage the fund's long-term investors by extracting value from the fund without assuming any significant investment risk, through market timing.10 Mutual funds that fair value their portfolio securities consistent with their obligations can effectively reduce or eliminate the profit that market timers seek to exploit.11
Mutual funds that invest in overseas securities markets are particularly vulnerable to market timers who may take advantage of time zone differences between the foreign markets on which international funds' portfolio securities trade and the U.S. markets which generally determine the time as of which NAV is calculated ("time-zone arbitrage"). For example, a market timer may purchase shares of a mutual fund that invests in overseas markets based on events occurring after foreign market closing prices are established, but before the fund's NAV calculation, that are likely to result in higher prices in foreign markets the following day. The market timer would redeem the fund's shares the next day when the fund's share price would reflect the increased prices in foreign markets, for a quick profit at the expense of long-term fund shareholders. Market timing opportunities are not limited to international funds. Mutual funds that invest in small-cap securities and other types of investments which are not frequently traded, including high-yield bonds, also can be the targets of market timers.12
Market timing itself is not illegal. However, market timing may dilute the value of long-term shareholders' interests in a mutual fund if the fund calculates NAV using closing prices that are no longer accurate. Dilution may occur, for example, if fund shares are overpriced because redeeming shareholders will receive a windfall at the expense of the shareholders that remain in the fund. Similarly, dilution may occur when a fund sells its shares at a price lower than its NAV.13
Market timing also may harm shareholders because it may cause mutual funds to manage their portfolios in a disadvantageous manner. For example, a mutual fund's investment adviser may maintain a larger percentage of its assets in cash or may be forced to liquidate certain portfolio securities prematurely to meet higher levels of redemptions due to market timing. This is particularly true for mutual funds that invest primarily in foreign or emerging market securities, which are often thinly traded. Mutual funds also may incur increased brokerage and administrative costs related to the frequent purchases and redemptions associated with market timing.
In order to discourage market timers, many mutual funds have developed policies and procedures with respect to frequent purchases and redemptions of fund shares. Some mutual funds disclose in their prospectuses that they do not permit market timing, and many mutual funds have taken steps to discourage market timing. These steps may include, for example:
Imposing redemption or exchange fees on shares that are redeemed or exchanged within a certain time period following their purchase;
Restricting exchange privileges, for example, by restricting exchange requests submitted through a particular medium, such as telephone or facsimile transmission, or received after a certain time of day, or by delaying both the redemption and purchase sides of an exchange;
Restricting frequent trading, for example by limiting the total number of exchanges that an investor may make within a certain time period, or by limiting the number of "round trip" transactions where an investor purchases shares of a fund, exchanges those shares for shares of a different fund, and then exchanges back into the originally purchased fund;
Delaying the payment of the proceeds from the redemption of fund shares for up to seven days;14 and
Identifying market timers and restricting their trading privileges or expelling them from the fund.
While many mutual funds disclose in their prospectuses that they discourage market timing, many do not identify with specificity the frequency or type of trading that they consider to be problematic, or the specific steps that they will take to ensure that market timing trades are detected and prevented. Other mutual funds disclose specifically the number of trades that they consider to be problematic and the steps that they take to prevent and detect market timing. Item 7(c) of Form N-1A requires mutual funds to disclose in their prospectuses procedures for redeeming the fund's shares, including any restrictions on redemptions; any redemption charges, including how these charges will be collected and under what circumstances the charges will be waived; and the circumstances, if any, under which the fund may delay honoring a request for redemption for a certain time after a shareholder's investment.15 Item 8(a)(2) of Form N-1A requires a description of exchange privileges, which may be provided in the prospectus or the Statement of Additional Information ("SAI").16 Item 3 of Form N-1A requires a mutual fund to include any exchange fee or redemption fee in the fee table of its prospectus.17
Other aspects of mutual fund policies and procedures to deter market timing are not explicitly required to be disclosed, however. For example, our registration forms do not explicitly require funds to describe with specificity the circumstances under which restrictions on frequent purchases and redemptions will not be imposed, or the terms of arrangements with particular investors pursuant to which frequent purchases and redemptions are permitted.18
We believe that it may be useful to require mutual funds to describe with specificity the restrictions they place on frequent purchases and redemptions and the circumstances and arrangements under which the restrictions are not imposed. These additional disclosure requirements would enable investors to better assess a mutual fund's risks, policies, and procedures in this area, and to determine if a fund's policies and procedures are in line with their expectations.
B. Selective Disclosure of Fund Portfolio Holdings
Currently, mutual funds are required to include their complete portfolio holdings in the reports that are delivered to all shareholders twice a year.19 In December 2002, we proposed amendments that would require mutual funds to disclose their complete portfolio schedules on a quarterly basis.20 A significant majority of funds already make their full portfolio schedules publicly available at least quarterly.21
Recent allegations, however, have highlighted instances where some mutual fund managers may be selectively disclosing their portfolios in order to reward large investors. Specifically, allegations have been made that certain funds gave frequent updates of their portfolio holdings to favored shareholders, enabling these shareholders to use a fund's portfolio information to short the fund's holdings in the same or similar proportions to the fund's established positions.22 In addition, more than 30% of mutual fund complexes that responded to a recent Commission examination request for information sent to 88 of the largest such complexes appear to have disclosed portfolio information in circumstances that may have provided certain fund shareholders with the ability to make advantageous decisions to place orders for fund shares. This selective disclosure can facilitate fraud and have severely adverse ramifications for a fund's investors if someone uses that portfolio information to trade against the fund, or otherwise uses the information in a way that would harm the fund.
We are concerned about the misuse of material, nonpublic information that may occur when a mutual fund's portfolio holdings are selectively disclosed and professional traders are given the opportunity to use this information to their advantage to the detriment of fund shareholders. For many issuers, Regulation FD generally requires that when an issuer discloses material information, it do so through public disclosure, not through selective disclosure.23 Regulation FD does not, however, apply to mutual funds.24 We have concluded that the recent allegations regarding selective disclosure of portfolio holdings by some mutual fund managers suggest that we need to take steps to reinforce funds' and advisers' obligations to prevent the misuse of portfolio holdings information that is selectively disclosed.
C. Disclosure Proposals
The Commission is proposing form amendments to require better disclosure with respect to the tools that mutual funds use to combat market timing activity. First, in order to enable investors to assess a mutual fund's practices regarding frequent purchases and redemptions of fund shares to determine if they are in line with their expectations, the Commission is proposing to require improved disclosure in fund prospectuses of a mutual fund's risks, policies, and procedures in this area. The proposals would:
Require a mutual fund to describe in its prospectus the risks, if any, that frequent purchases and redemptions of fund shares may present for other shareholders;
Require a mutual fund to state in its prospectus whether or not the fund's board of directors has adopted policies and procedures with respect to frequent purchases and redemptions of fund shares and, if the board has not adopted any such policies and procedures, state the specific basis for the view of the board that it is appropriate for the fund not to have such policies and procedures;
Require a mutual fund to describe any policies and procedures for deterring frequent purchases and redemptions of fund shares, and any arrangements to permit frequent purchases and redemptions of fund shares; and
Require similar disclosure in prospectuses for insurance company separate accounts offering variable insurance contracts, with respect to frequent transfers among sub-accounts.
Second, we are proposing to clarify instructions to our registration forms to require all mutual funds (other than money market funds) and insurance company managed separate accounts that offer variable annuities to explain in their prospectuses both the circumstances under which they will use fair value pricing and the effects of using fair value pricing. As described above, fair valuation of a fund's portfolio securities, which is required under certain circumstances, can serve to foreclose arbitrage opportunities available to market timers.
In addition, in order to provide greater transparency of fund practices with respect to the disclosure of the fund's portfolio holdings, and to reinforce funds' and advisers' obligations to prevent the misuse of material, non-public information, the Commission is proposing to require mutual funds and insurance company managed separate accounts that offer variable annuities to disclose their policies with respect to disclosure of portfolio holdings information. The proposals would:
Require a fund to describe in its SAI any policies and procedures with respect to the disclosure of the fund's portfolio securities to any person and any ongoing arrangements to make available information about the fund's portfolio securities to any person; and
Require a fund to state in its prospectus that a description of the policies and procedures is available in the fund's SAI, and on the fund's website, if applicable.
II. DISCUSSION
A. Disclosure Concerning Frequent Purchases and Redemptions of Fund Shares
The Commission is proposing amendments to Form N-1A, the registration form used by mutual funds, that would require disclosure of both the risks to fund shareholders of the frequent purchase and redemption of fund shares, and a fund's policies and procedures with respect to such frequent purchases and redemptions.25 As discussed above, market timing strategies often involve such frequent purchases and redemptions of fund shares. These proposals are intended to require mutual funds to describe with specificity the restrictions they place on frequent purchases and redemptions, if any, and the circumstances under which any such restriction will not apply. This additional disclosure would enable investors to assess mutual funds' risks, policies, and procedures in this area and determine if a fund's policies and procedures are in line with their expectations.26 We are also proposing similar amendments to the registration forms for insurance company separate accounts that issue variable annuities and variable life insurance policies.27
The amendments that we are proposing to Form N-1A would require that a mutual fund's prospectus describe the risks, if any, that frequent purchases and redemptions of fund shares may present for other shareholders of the fund.28 These risks may include, among other things, dilution in the value of fund shares held by long-term shareholders, interference with the efficient management of the fund's portfolio, and increased brokerage and administrative costs. The disclosure should be specific to the fund, taking into account its investment objectives, policies, and strategies. For example, we would generally expect a fund that invests in overseas markets to describe the risks of time-zone arbitrage.
The proposed amendments would also require a mutual fund's prospectus to state whether the fund's board of directors has adopted policies and procedures with respect to frequent purchases and redemptions of fund shares by fund shareholders.29 If the fund's board of directors has not adopted any such policies and procedures, the fund's prospectus would be required to include a statement of the specific basis for the view of the board that it is appropriate for the fund not to have such policies and procedures.30 On the other hand, if the fund's board of directors has adopted such policies and procedures, the fund's prospectus would be required to include a description of those policies and procedures, including:
whether or not the fund discourages frequent purchases and redemptions of fund shares by fund shareholders;
whether or not the fund accommodates frequent purchases and redemptions of fund shares by fund shareholders;
any policies and procedures of the fund for deterring frequent purchases and redemptions of fund shares by fund shareholders; and
any policies and procedures of the fund for detecting frequent purchases and redemptions of fund shares, including any arrangements for detecting frequent purchases and redemptions of fund shares through intermediaries, such as investment advisers, broker-dealers, transfer agents, and third party administrators.31
The description of the mutual fund's policies and procedures, if any, for deterring frequent purchases and redemptions of fund shares by fund shareholders would be required to include any restrictions imposed by the fund to prevent or minimize such frequent purchases and redemptions, including:
any restrictions on the volume or number of purchases, redemptions, or exchanges that a shareholder may make within a given time period;
any exchange fee or redemption fee;
any costs or administrative or other fees or charges that are imposed on shareholders deemed to be engaged in frequent purchases and redemptions of fund shares, together with a description of the circumstances under which such costs, fees, or charges will be imposed;
any minimum holding period that is imposed before an investor may make exchanges into another fund;
any restrictions imposed on exchange or purchase requests submitted by overnight delivery, electronically, or via facsimile or telephone; and
any right of the fund to reject, limit, delay, or impose other conditions on exchanges or purchases or to close or otherwise limit accounts based on a history of frequent purchases and redemptions of fund shares, including the circumstances under which such right will be exercised.
The proposals would require that the policies and procedures for deterring frequent purchases and redemptions, including any restrictions imposed to prevent or minimize such frequent purchases and redemptions, be described with specificity.32 For example, a fund might state that a 2% redemption fee will be applied to all redemptions within 60 days after purchase or, in describing any restrictions on the volume or number of purchases, redemptions, or exchanges that a shareholder may make within a given time period, a fund might state that it prohibits more than 3 exchanges per year.
A fund would also be required to indicate whether each restriction applies uniformly in all cases or whether the restriction will not be imposed under certain circumstances. If any restriction will not be imposed under certain circumstances, the fund would be required to describe with specificity the circumstances under which the restriction will not be imposed.33
We are also proposing to require a mutual fund to describe in its prospectus any arrangements with any person to permit frequent purchases and redemptions of fund shares.34 This description would include the identity of the persons permitted to engage in frequent purchases and redemptions and any compensation or other consideration received by the fund, its investment adviser, or any other party pursuant to such arrangements. A proposed instruction would clarify that the consideration required to be disclosed includes any agreement to maintain assets in the fund or in other investment companies or accounts managed by the investment adviser or by any affiliated person of the investment adviser.35
We emphasize that a mutual fund that enters into an arrangement with any person to permit frequent purchases and redemptions of fund shares may only do so consistent with the antifraud provisions of the federal securities laws and the fiduciary duties of the fund and its investment adviser to fund shareholders. Disclosure provided pursuant to these proposed amendments would not make lawful conduct that is otherwise unlawful. For example, disclosure would not render lawful an arrangement whereby an investment adviser permits frequent purchases and redemptions of a mutual fund's shares in return for consideration that benefits the adviser, such as an agreement to maintain assets in other accounts managed by the adviser.
The proposed amendments to Form N-1A would also clarify that the new disclosure that would be required regarding frequent purchases and redemptions of fund shares may not be omitted from the prospectus in reliance on current Item 7(f), which would be redesignated as Item 7(g).36 Current Item 7(f) permits funds to omit from the prospectus certain information concerning purchase and redemption procedures if, among other things, the information is included in a separate document that is incorporated by reference into, and filed and delivered with, the prospectus.37 We believe that the information required by new Item 7(e) is more appropriately included in the same document as the prospectus.
We are proposing to require similar disclosure in Forms N-3,38 N-4,39 and N-6,40 the registration forms for insurance company separate accounts that issue variable annuity and variable life insurance contracts, with respect to both the risks of frequent transfers of contract value among sub-accounts, and the separate account's policies and procedures with respect to such frequent transfers. However, we are proposing the following modifications to address the different structure of these issuers:
The proposed amendments to Forms N-3, N-4, and N-6 would require disclosure regarding the risks of, and policies and procedures with respect to, frequent transfers of contract value among sub-accounts of the registrant. A person attempting to engage in market timing of mutual funds through a variable annuity or variable life insurance contract typically would make tax-free transfers of contract value among sub-accounts, each of which invests in a particular underlying mutual fund.41
The proposed amendments to Forms N-4 and N-6 would require disclosure with respect to whether the separate account or its depositor has policies and
procedures with respect to frequent transfers of contract value among sub-accounts, rather than whether such policies and procedures have been adopted by the separate account's board of directors. The separate accounts registered on these forms are unit investment trusts, which do not have boards of directors, and the depositor would be responsible for adopting and implementing any policies and procedures.42 If neither the separate account nor the depositor has any such policies and procedures, the proposals would require that the prospectus include a statement of the specific basis for the view of the depositor that it is appropriate for the separate account and depositor not to have such policies and procedures.43
The proposed amendments to Forms N-3, N-4, and N-6 would require disclosure of the risks that frequent transfers of contract value among sub-accounts may present not only for other contractowners, but also for other persons who have material rights under the contract (including, in the case of Forms N-3 and N-4, participants, annuitants, and beneficiaries, and, in the case of Form N-6, the insured or beneficiary).44
The proposed amendments to Forms N-3, N-4, and N-6 that require disclosure of any arrangements for detecting frequent transfers of contract value among sub-accounts would not explicitly reference arrangements for detecting transfers through intermediaries, such as investment advisers, broker-dealers, transfer agents, and third party administrators.45 Because the variable annuity and variable life insurance contracts registered on these forms are typically held in the name of the contractowner and not an intermediary, insurance companies generally will not need to enter into any such arrangements with intermediaries in order for the insurance company to be able to detect frequent transfers among sub-accounts. If an insurance company had any such arrangements with intermediaries, however, disclosure of those arrangements would be required.
The proposed amendments to Forms N-3, N-4, and N-6 would specifically require disclosure concerning any consideration received by the sponsoring insurance company pursuant to any arrangements to permit frequent transfers of contract value.46
A proposed Instruction in Form N-3 clarifies that consideration received pursuant to arrangements to permit frequent transfers of contract value includes any agreement to maintain assets in the registrant or in other investment companies or accounts managed or sponsored by the investment adviser, the insurance company, or any affiliated person of the investment adviser or the insurance company.47 The parallel proposed Instructions in Forms N-4 and N-6 would include as consideration any agreement to maintain assets in the registrant or in other investment companies or accounts managed or sponsored by any investment adviser of a mutual fund in which a sub-account of the registrant is invested, the sponsoring insurance company, or any affiliated person of such an investment adviser or the insurance company.48
We request comment generally on the proposals described above and specifically on the following issues:
Should we require that mutual funds and insurance company separate accounts make each of the proposed disclosures discussed above? Should we require any additional disclosures?
Is the prospectus the appropriate location for each of the proposed disclosures? Would all or part of the disclosure be more appropriately located in the SAI, reports to shareholders, Form N-CSR, the registrant's website, or another location? Should we permit mutual funds to disclose any of the required information in the separate disclosure document referenced in current Item 7(f) of Form N-1A?
Several Items of Forms N-1A, N-3, N-4, and N-6 (e.g., Items 3, 7(c), and 8(a)(2) of Form N-1A; Items 3 and 8(b)(ii) of Form N-3; Items 3 and 7(b)(ii) of Form N-4; and Items 3 and 6(b)(2) of Form N-6) call for disclosures that are related to the disclosures called for by the proposals. Should we amend any of these other Items or alter the proposals in any way to better coordinate the disclosure requirements of these Items?
Exchange traded funds ("ETFs) are investment companies that are registered under the Investment Company Act as open-end management investment companies or unit investment trusts. However, unlike typical open-end funds or unit investment trusts, ETFs do not sell or redeem their individual shares at NAV. Instead, ETFs sell and redeem their shares at NAV only in large blocks, generally in exchange for a basket of securities that mirrors the composition of the ETF's portfolio, plus a small amount of cash. Shares of ETFs are listed on national securities exchanges for trading, which allows investors to purchase and sell individual ETF shares among themselves at market prices throughout the day. Should ETFs be expressly excluded from the proposed disclosure requirements?
B. Disclosure of Circumstances Under Which Funds Will Use Fair Value Pricing
The Commission is proposing to amend the Instruction to Item 7(a)(1) of Form N-1A, and to add a corresponding Instruction to Form N-3, to clarify that all mutual funds and managed separate accounts that offer variable annuities, other than money market funds, are required to explain briefly in their prospectuses both the circumstances under which they will use fair value pricing and the effects of using fair value pricing.49 We are proposing to amend this instruction to clearly reflect that funds are required to use fair value prices any time that market quotations for their portfolio securities are not readily available (including when they are not reliable). Money market funds would not be subject to the proposed requirement to disclose the circumstances under which they would use fair value pricing and the effects of such use, because such funds are subject to rule 2a-7 under the Investment Company Act, which contains its own detailed pricing requirements.50
We note that the disclosure regarding the circumstances under which a fund would use fair value pricing and the effects of such use should be specific to the fund. For example, if a fund invests exclusively in frequently traded exchange listed securities of large capitalization domestic issuers and calculates its NAV as of the time the exchange typically closes, there may be very limited circumstances in which it would use fair value pricing (e.g., if the exchange on which a portfolio security is principally traded closes early or if trading in a particular portfolio security was halted during the day and did not resume prior to the fund's NAV calculation). By contrast, if a fund invests primarily in securities that are traded on overseas markets, we would expect a fuller discussion of the circumstances under which the fund would use fair value pricing, such as specific events occurring after the close of the overseas exchange that would cause the fund to use fair value pricing. Similarly, we would expect that the description of the effects of using fair value pricing would be fund specific, e.g., minimizing the possibilities for time-zone arbitrage, in the case of a fund investing in overseas markets.51
We request comment generally on the proposed disclosure regarding fair value pricing and specifically on the following issues:
Is the proposed Instruction requiring funds to explain briefly the circumstances under which they will use fair value pricing and the effects of using fair value pricing appropriate? Is this proposed disclosure necessary in light of the fact that all funds are required to use fair value pricing if market quotations for a portfolio security are not readily available (including when they are not reliable)? Will the disclosure provide useful information to investors about the particular circumstances under which a fund will use fair value pricing and the effects on that fund of using fair value pricing? Should money market funds or any other types of funds not be required to provide the disclosure?
Is the fund prospectus the appropriate location for the proposed disclosure, or would the SAI provide investors with adequate access to this information? Are there any other locations, such as Form N-CSR, reports to shareholders, or the fund's website, that would be more appropriate for this disclosure?
Are there cases where disclosure of the circumstances under which a mutual fund will use fair value pricing and the effect on the fund of using fair value pricing may assist investors who intend to engage in market timing strategies? If so, how should we modify the proposed Instruction to address these cases?
C. Selective Disclosure of Fund Portfolio Holdings
We are proposing amendments to Form N-1A that would require mutual funds to disclose their policies and procedures with respect to the disclosure of their portfolio securities and any ongoing arrangements to make available information about their portfolio securities.52 We are also proposing parallel amendments to Form N-3 for managed separate accounts that issue variable annuities.53 These amendments are intended to provide greater transparency of fund practices with respect to the disclosure of the fund's portfolio holdings, and to reinforce funds' and advisers' obligations to prevent the misuse of material, non-public information.
We emphasize that a mutual fund or investment adviser that discloses the fund's portfolio securities may only do so consistent with the antifraud provisions of the federal securities laws and the fund's or adviser's fiduciary duties to fund shareholders. Disclosure provided pursuant to these proposed amendments would not make lawful conduct that is otherwise unlawful. Divulging portfolio holdings to selected third parties is permissible only when the fund has legitimate business purposes for doing so and the recipients are subject to a duty of confidentiality. Examples of instances in which selective disclosure of a fund's portfolio securities may be appropriate, subject to confidentiality agreements and trading restrictions, include disclosure for due diligence purposes to an investment adviser that is in merger or acquisition talks with the fund's current adviser, disclosure to a newly hired investment adviser or sub-adviser prior to commencing its duties, or disclosure to a rating agency for use in developing a rating.
Our proposals would require a mutual fund's SAI to describe the fund's policies and procedures with respect to the disclosure of its portfolio securities.54 The mutual fund's prospectus would be required to state that a description of its policies and procedures is available in its SAI and, if applicable, on its website.55 The SAI description of the mutual fund's policies and procedures with respect to the disclosure of its portfolio securities would be required to include:
how the policies and procedures apply to disclosure to different categories of persons, including individual investors, institutional investors, intermediaries that distribute the fund's shares, third-party service providers, rating and ranking organizations, and affiliated persons of the fund;56
any conditions or restrictions placed on the use of information about portfolio securities that is disclosed, including any requirement that the information be kept confidential or prohibitions on trading based on the information, and any procedures to monitor the use of this information;57
the frequency with which information about portfolio securities is disclosed, and the length of the lag, if any, between the date of the information and the date on which the information is disclosed;58
any policies and procedures with respect to the receipt of compensation or other consideration by the fund, its investment adviser, or any other party in connection with the disclosure of information about portfolio securities;59
the persons who may authorize disclosure of the fund's portfolio securities;60
the procedures that the fund uses to ensure that disclosure of information about portfolio securities is in the best interests of fund shareholders, including procedures to address conflicts between the interests of fund shareholders, on the one hand, and those of the fund's investment adviser; principal underwriter; or any affiliated person of the fund, its investment adviser, or its principal underwriter, on the other;61 and
the manner in which the board of directors exercises oversight of disclosure of the fund's portfolio securities.62
A mutual fund's disclosure of its policies and procedures with respect to the disclosure of its portfolio securities would be required to include any policies and procedures of the fund's investment adviser, or any other third party, that the fund uses or that are used on the fund's behalf.63
We are also proposing to require a mutual fund to describe in its SAI any ongoing arrangements to make available information about the fund's portfolio securities to any person, including the identity of the persons who receive information pursuant to such arrangements and any compensation or other consideration received by the fund, its investment adviser, or any other party in connection with such arrangements.64 A proposed instruction would clarify that the consideration required to be disclosed would include any agreement to maintain assets in the fund or in other investment companies or accounts managed by the investment adviser or by any affiliated person of the investment adviser.65 As indicated above, however, divulging portfolio holdings to selected third parties is permissible only when the fund has legitimate business purposes for doing so, and legitimate business purposes generally would not include the receipt of consideration by the fund's investment adviser or its affiliates. With respect to these ongoing arrangements, funds would also be required to describe:
any conditions or restrictions placed on the use of information about portfolio securities that is disclosed, including any requirement that the information be kept confidential or prohibitions on trading based on the information, and any procedures to monitor the use of this information;
the frequency with which information about portfolio securities is disclosed, and the length of the lag, if any, between the date of the information and the date on which the information is disclosed; and
the persons who may authorize disclosure of the fund's portfolio securities.66
We request comment generally on the proposed disclosure requirements regarding disclosure of a fund's portfolio securities and specifically on the following issues:
Should we require mutual funds and insurance company managed separate accounts to disclose their policies and procedures with respect to the disclosure of portfolio securities to any person? If so, what information should they be required to disclose?
Are there any types of arrangements that should be excluded from the requirement to disclose ongoing arrangements to make available information about portfolio securities, such as arrangements where the information that is disclosed is subject to a confidentiality requirement or a prohibition on trading based on the information?
What is the appropriate location for any disclosure about a mutual fund's or separate account's disclosure of its portfolio securities (e.g., prospectus, SAI, Form N-CSR, Form 8-K, shareholder reports, website, etc.)?
In addition to disclosing ongoing arrangements, should we require mutual funds and insurance company managed separate accounts to disclose all instances of selective disclosure of portfolio securities? If so, when should this disclosure be required to be made? What facts should be required to be disclosed regarding each such instance of selective disclosure (e.g., the names of persons or entities who receive portfolio holdings information; the terms of the disclosure, including any compensation paid for the information; the reasons why the disclosure is in the best interests of fund shareholders; the terms of any confidentiality agreement)? Should funds be required to disclose whether the board of directors has approved each individual instance of selective disclosure?
Currently, Regulation FD, which governs the selective disclosure of material non-public information, does not apply to funds, other than closed-end funds.67 Should Regulation FD apply to mutual funds or managed separate accounts with respect to their disclosure of portfolio holdings or other information?
Are there any other measures that we should consider to reinforce the obligations of funds and their advisers to comply with their fiduciary duties and to prevent the misuse of material, non-public information, including the selective disclosure of portfolio holdings information?
D. Compliance Date
If we adopt the proposed disclosure requirements, we expect to require all new registration statements and all post-effective amendments to effective registration statements filed on or after the effective date of the amendments to comply with the proposed amendments. The Commission requests comment on this proposed compliance date.
III. GENERAL REQUEST FOR COMMENTS
The Commission requests comment on the amendments proposed in this release, whether any further changes to our rules or forms are necessary or appropriate to implement the objectives of our proposed amendments, and on other matters that might have an effect on the proposals contained in this release.
IV. PAPERWORK REDUCTION ACT
Certain provisions of the proposed amendments contain "collection of information" requirements within the meaning of the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995 [44 U.S.C. 3501, etseq.], and the Commission is submitting the proposed collections of information to the Office of Management and Budget ("OMB") for review in accordance with 44 U.S.C. 3507(d) and 5 CFR 1320.11. The titles for the collections of information are: (1) "Form N-1A under the Investment Company Act of 1940 and Securities Act of 1933, Registration Statement of Open-End Management Investment Companies"; (2) "Form N-3 — Registration Statement of Separate Accounts Organized as Management Investment Companies"; (3) "Form N-4 — Registration Statement of Separate Accounts Organized as Unit Investment Trusts"; and (4) "Form N-6 under the Investment Company Act of 1940 and the Securities Act of 1933, Registration Statement of Insurance Company Separate Accounts Registered as Unit Investment Trusts that Offer Variable Life Insurance Policies." An agency may not conduct or sponsor, and a person is not required to respond to, a collection of information unless it displays a currently valid OMB control number.
Form N-1A (OMB Control No. 3235-0307), Form N-3 (OMB Control No. 3235-0316), Form N-4 (OMB Control No. 3235-0318), and Form N-6 (OMB Control No. 3235-0503) were adopted pursuant to section 8(a) of the Investment Company Act [15 U.S.C. 80a-8(a)] and section 5 of the Securities Act [15 U.S.C. 77e].
We are proposing amendments to Form N-1A to require mutual funds to provide improved disclosure regarding their policies and procedures with respect to frequent purchases and redemptions of fund shares. The proposals also would amend Forms N-3, N-4, and N-6 to require similar disclosure in prospectuses for insurance company separate accounts offering variable insurance contracts, with respect to frequent transfers among sub-accounts. In addition, we are proposing amendments to clarify instructions to Forms N-1A and N-3 to require all mutual funds (other than money market funds) and managed separate accounts that issue variable annuities, to explain in their prospectuses the circumstances under which they will use fair value pricing, and the effects of using fair value pricing.
Finally, we are proposing amendments to Form N-1A to require disclosure regarding mutual funds' policies and procedures with respect to the selective disclosure of their portfolio holdings to any person. We are also proposing parallel amendments to Form N-3 for managed separate accounts that issue variable annuities.
Form N-1A
Form N-1A, including the proposed amendments, contains collection of information requirements. The likely respondents to this information collection are open-end funds registering with the Commission. Compliance with the disclosure requirements of Form N-1A is mandatory. Responses to the disclosure requirements are not confidential.
The current hour burden for preparing an initial registration statement on Form N-1A is 809 hours per portfolio. The current annual hour burden for preparing post-effective amendments of Form N-1A is 101 hours per portfolio. The Commission estimates that, on an annual basis, registrants file initial registration statements on Form N-1A covering 483 portfolios, and file post-effective amendments on Form N-1A covering 6,542 portfolios. An additional burden of 1,694 hours for the preparation and filing of initial registration statements and 22,897 hours for the filing of post-effective amendments is expected to result from the Commission's recent proposed rulemaking relating to "fund of funds" arrangements.68 Thus, the Commission estimates that the current total annual hour burden for the preparation and filing of Form N-1A is 1,076,080 hours.69
We estimate that the proposed amendments would increase the hour burden per portfolio per filing of an initial registration statement by 10 hours and would increase the hour burden per portfolio per filing of a post-effective amendment to a registration statement by 4 hours. Thus, if the proposed amendments to Form N-1A are adopted, the total annual hour burden for all funds for preparation and filing of initial registration statements and post-effective amendments to Form N-1A would be 1,107,078 hours ((10 hours x 483 portfolios) + (4 hours x 6,542 portfolios) + 1,076,080 hours).
Form N-3
Form N-3, including the proposed amendments, contains collection of information requirements. The likely respondents to this information collection are separate accounts, organized as management investment companies offering variable annuities, registering with the Commission on Form N-3. Compliance with the disclosure requirements of Form N-3 is mandatory. Responses to the disclosure requirements are not confidential.
The current annual hour burden for preparing an initial registration statement on Form N-3 is 915.2 hours per portfolio. The current annual hour burden for preparing post-effective amendments of Form N-3 is 150.4 hours per portfolio. The Commission estimates that, on an annual basis, 3 initial registration statements will be filed on Form N-3 and 38 post-effective amendments will be filed on Form N-3. We estimate that the average number of portfolios per filing is 4, and therefore that annually there are a total of 12 portfolios covered by initial registration statements on Form N-3 and 152 portfolios covered by post-effective amendments on Form N-3. The Fund of Funds Proposing Release would require additional cumulative burdens of 42 hours and 49 hours, respectively. Thus, we estimate that the current total annual hour burden for the preparation and filing of Form N-3 is 33,934 hours.70
We estimate that the proposed amendments would increase the hour burden per portfolio per filing of an initial registration statement on Form N-3 by 10 hours and would increase the hour burden per portfolio per filing of a post-effective amendment to a registration statement on Form N-3 by 4 hours. Thus, if the proposed amendments to Form N-3 are adopted, the total annual hour burden for all funds for preparation and filing of initial registration statements and post-effective amendments on Form N-3 would be 34,662 hours ((10 hours x 12 portfolios) + (4 hours x 152 portfolios) + 33,934 hours).
Form N-4
Form N-4, including the proposed amendments, contains collection of information requirements. The likely respondents to this information collection are separate accounts, organized as unit investment trusts that offer variable annuity contracts, registering with the Commission on Form N-4. Compliance with the disclosure requirements of Form N-4 is mandatory. Responses to the disclosure requirements are not confidential.
The current annual hour burden for preparing an initial registration statement on Form N-4 is 273.2 hours per separate account. The current annual hour burden for preparing a post-effective amendment on Form N-4 is 195 hours per separate account. The Commission estimates that annually, 157 initial registration statements are filed on Form N-4 and 1,242 post-effective amendments are filed on Form N-4. The Fund of Funds Proposing Release would require additional cumulative burdens of 39.5 hours and 310.5 hours, respectively. Thus, we estimate that the current total annual hour burden for the preparation and filing of Form N-4 is 285,432 hours.71
We estimate that the proposed amendments would increase the hour burden per filing of an initial registration statement on Form N-4 by 5 hours and would increase the hour burden per filing of a post-effective amendment to a registration statement on Form N-4 by 2 hours. Thus, if the proposed amendments to Form N-4 are adopted, the total annual hour burden for separate accounts for preparation and filing of initial registration statements and post-effective amendments on Form N-4 would be 288,701 hours ((5 hours x 157 portfolios) + (2 hours x 1,242 portfolios) + 285,432 hours).
Form N-6
Form N-6, including the proposed amendments, contains collection of information requirements. The likely respondents to this information collection are separate accounts, organized as unit investment trusts that offer variable life insurance policies, registering with the Commission on Form N-6. Compliance with the disclosure requirements of Form N-6 is mandatory. Responses to the disclosure requirements are not confidential.
The current annual hour burden for preparing an initial registration statement on a Form N-6 is 765 hours per separate account. The current annual hour burden for preparing a post-effective amendment filed as an annual update on Form N-6 is 65 hours, and the annual hour burden for preparing a post-effective amendment filed for other purposes is 10 hours. The Commission estimates that annually, 50 initial registration statements, 150 post-effective amendments that are annual updates, and 350 additional post-effective amendments are filed on Form N-6. The Fund of Funds Proposing Release would require additional cumulative burdens of 12.5 hours for initial registration statements, and 37.5 hours for annual update post-effective amendments and additional post-effective amendments. Thus, we estimate that the current total annual hour burden for the preparation and filing of Form N-6 is 51,550 hours.72
We estimate that the proposed amendments would increase the hour burden per filing of an initial registration statement on Form N-6 by 5 hours, and would increase the hour burden per filing of a post-effective amendment that is an annual update on Form N-6 by 2 hours. Thus, if the proposed amendments to Form N-6 are adopted, the total annual hour burden for separate accounts for preparation and filing of initial registration statements and post-effective amendments on Form N-6 would be 52,100 hours ((5 hours x 50 portfolios) + (2 hours x 150 portfolios) + 51,550 hours).
Request for Comments
We request your comments on the accuracy of our estimates. Pursuant to 44 U.S.C. 3506(c)(2)(B), the Commission solicits comments to: (i) evaluate whether the proposed collection of information is necessary for the proper performance of the functions of the agency, including whether the information will have practical utility; (ii) evaluate the accuracy of the Commission's estimate of burden of the proposed collection of information; (iii) determine whether there are ways to enhance the quality, utility, and clarity of the information to be collected; and (iv) evaluate whether there are ways to minimize the burden of the collection of information on those who are to respond, including through the use of automated collection techniques or other forms of information technology.
Persons submitting comments on the collection of information requirements should direct the comments to the Office of Management and Budget, Attention: Desk Officer for the Securities and Exchange Commission, Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, Room 10102, New Executive Office Building, Washington, DC 20503, and should send a copy to Jonathan G. Katz, Secretary, Securities and Exchange Commission, 450 5th Street, NW, Washington, DC 20549-0609, with reference to File No. S7-26-03. OMB is required to make a decision concerning the collection of information between 30 and 60 days after publication of this release. Consequently, a comment to OMB is best assured of having its full effect if OMB receives it within 30 days after publication of this Release.
V. COST/BENEFIT ANALYSIS
The Commission is sensitive to the costs and benefits imposed by its rules. Our proposals would require mutual funds to provide enhanced disclosure about their policies and procedures with respect to frequent purchases and redemptions of fund shares. Specifically, the proposals would:
Require a mutual fund to describe in its prospectus the risks, if any, that frequent purchases and redemptions of fund shares may present for other shareholders;
Require a mutual fund to state in its prospectus whether or not the fund's board of directors has adopted policies and procedures with respect to frequent purchases and redemptions of fund shares and, if the board has not adopted any such policies and procedures, state the specific basis for the view of the board that it is appropriate for the fund not to have such policies and procedures;
Require a mutual fund to describe any policies and procedures for deterring frequent purchases and redemptions of fund shares, and any arrangements to permit frequent purchases and redemptions of fund shares; and
Require similar disclosure in prospectuses for insurance company separate accounts
offering variable insurance contracts, with respect to frequent transfers among sub-accounts.
The Commission is also proposing amendments to clarify instructions to our registration forms for mutual funds and insurance company managed separate accounts that offer variable annuities to require that all such funds (other than money market funds) explain in their prospectuses both the circumstances under which they will use fair value pricing and the effects of using fair value pricing.
In addition, our proposals would require mutual funds, and insurance company managed separate accounts that offer variable annuities, to disclose their policies with respect to the disclosure of portfolio holdings information. The proposals would:
Require a fund to describe in its SAI any policies and procedures with respect to the disclosure of the fund's portfolio securities to any person and any ongoing arrangements to make available information about the fund's portfolio securities to any person; and
Require a fund to state in its prospectus that a description of the policies and procedures is available in the fund's SAI, and on the fund's website, if applicable.
A. Benefits
The proposed form amendments will benefit fund investors by providing them with more detailed information about mutual fund practices relating to frequent purchases and redemptions of fund shares (or, in the case of insurance company separate accounts offering variable insurance products, frequent transfers of contract value among sub-accounts). These proposals are intended to require mutual funds and insurance company separate accounts to describe with specificity the restrictions they place on frequent purchases and redemptions (or frequent transfers among sub-accounts), if any, and the circumstances under which a restriction will not apply. Market timing arbitrage strategies often involve such frequent purchases and redemptions of mutual fund shares or frequent transfers among sub-accounts of insurance company separate accounts. By increasing transparency of funds' policies and procedures in this area, the proposals are designed to help restore investor confidence in the fairness of fund operations and in the practices and procedures of intermediaries selling fund shares. This additional disclosure would enable investors to assess funds' risks, policies, and procedures in this area and determine if a fund's policies and procedures are in line with the investor's expectations. In addition, these proposed amendments may benefit fund shareholders by deterring decisions relating to portfolio management that are motivated by considerations of the interests of the fund or the fund's adviser rather than the interests of fund shareholders.
The proposed amendments to Forms N-1A and N-3 relating to fair value pricing also will benefit investors by clarifying that all mutual funds and managed separate accounts that offer variable annuities, other than money market funds, are required to explain both the circumstances under which they will use fair value pricing and the effects of using such pricing. These amendments would clearly reflect that funds are required to use fair value prices any time that market quotations for their portfolio securities are not readily available (including when they are not reliable). Fair valuation of a fund's portfolio securities, which is required under certain circumstances, can serve to foreclose arbitrage opportunities available to market timers.
Similarly, the proposed amendments to Forms N-1A and N-3 relating to funds' policies and procedures with respect to the selective disclosure of portfolio holdings information may benefit investors by providing greater transparency of fund practices relating to the disclosure of the fund's portfolio holdings, and reinforcing funds' and advisers' obligations to prevent the misuse of material, non-public information. We have no means by which to quantify these benefits, however.
We seek comment on the benefits of the proposed amendments (and any alternatives suggested by commenters) as well as any data quantifying those benefits.
B. Costs
The proposals would impose new requirements on mutual funds to provide disclosure of their policies and procedures with respect to frequent purchases and redemptions of fund shares (or frequent transfers of contract value among sub-accounts, in the case of insurance company separate accounts offering variable insurance contracts), and selective disclosure of portfolio holdings information. We estimate that complying with the proposed new disclosure requirements would entail a relatively small financial burden. The information regarding a fund's policies and procedures in these areas should be readily available to management and the board of directors of a fund. Therefore, we expect that the cost of compiling and reporting this information should be limited.
Our proposals would require additional disclosure by a mutual fund in its prospectus regarding its policies and procedures relating to frequent purchases and redemptions by fund shareholders and additional disclosure by an insurance company separate account that issues variable insurance products in its prospectus regarding its policies and procedures relating to frequent transfers among sub-accounts. In addition, we are proposing to require each mutual fund and insurance company managed separate account to describe in its SAI any policies and procedures regarding the disclosure of the fund's portfolio holdings information, and to state in its prospectus that a description of those policies and procedures is available in the fund's SAI.73 These costs may include both internal costs (for attorneys and other non-legal staff of a fund, such as computer programmers, to prepare and review the required disclosure) and external costs (for printing and typesetting of the disclosure).74 For purposes of the Paperwork Reduction Act, we have estimated that the proposed new disclosure requirements would add 35,545 hours to the burden of completing Forms N-1A, N-3, N-4, and N-6.75 We estimate that this additional burden would equal total internal costs of $1,608,411 annually, or approximately $423 per fund.76
The external costs of providing the new prospectus disclosure relating to frequent purchases and redemptions of mutual fund shares and frequent transfers among sub-accounts of insurance company separate accounts may or may not be significant, depending on the complexity of a fund's policies and procedures in these areas, the extent to which restrictions on frequent purchases and redemptions or transfers among sub-accounts apply uniformly in all cases or will not be imposed under certain circumstances, and the extent to which a fund currently provides specific disclosure in this area. We expect that the external costs of providing the new disclosure relating to each mutual fund's and insurance company managed separate account's policies and procedures with respect to disclosure of portfolio holdings information would be minimal, because the required description of a fund's policies and procedures with respect to the disclosure of the fund's portfolio securities to any person and any ongoing arrangements to make available information about the fund's portfolio securities will be required in the fund's SAI, which is delivered to investors upon request.77
We request comment on the nature and magnitude of our estimates of the costs of the additional disclosure that would be required if our proposals were adopted.
C. Request for Comments
We request comments on all aspects of this cost-benefit analysis, including identification of any additional costs or benefits of, or suggested alternatives to, the proposed amendments. Commenters are requested to provide empirical data and other factual support for their views to the extent possible.
VI. CONSIDERATION OF EFFECTS ON EFFICIENCY, COMPETITION, AND CAPITAL FORMATION
Section 2(c) of the Investment Company Act [15 U.S.C. 80a-2(c)] and section 2(b) of the Securities Act [15 U.S.C. 77(b)] require the Commission, when engaging in rulemaking that requires it to consider or determine whether an action is necessary or appropriate in the public interest, to consider, in addition to the protection of investors, whether the action will promote efficiency, competition, and capital formation.
The proposed amendments are intended to provide greater transparency for mutual fund shareholders regarding a fund's policies and procedures with respect to frequent purchases and redemptions of fund shares (or frequent transfers of contract value among sub-accounts, in the case of insurance company separate accounts offering variable insurance contracts), and selective disclosure of portfolio holdings information. These changes may improve efficiency. The enhanced disclosure requirements are intended to enable shareholders to make a more informed assessment as to whether a particular fund is in line with shareholders' investment objectives, which could promote more efficient allocation of investments by investors and more efficient allocation of assets among competing funds. The proposed amendments may also improve competition, as enhanced disclosure may prompt funds to compete to provide investors with policies and procedures that effectively protect long-term investors from harmful market timing, and from the misuse of portfolio holdings information through selective disclosure. Finally, the effects of the proposed amendments on capital formation are unclear.
Although, as noted above, we believe that the proposed amendments would benefit investors, the magnitude of the effect of the proposed amendments on efficiency, competition, and capital formation, and the extent to which they would be offset by the costs of the proposals, are difficult to quantify. We note that, with respect to our proposals regarding funds' policies and procedures with respect to frequent purchases and redemptions (or frequent transfers among sub-accounts), in many cases funds currently provide disclosure in their prospectuses or elsewhere of the limitations that they place on frequent trading in order to discourage market timing.
We request comment on whether the proposed amendments, if adopted, would promote efficiency, competition, and capital formation. Commenters are requested to provide empirical data and other factual support for their views if possible.
VII. INITIAL REGULATORY FLEXIBILITY ANALYSIS
This Initial Regulatory Flexibility Analysis ("Analysis") has been prepared in accordance with 5 U.S.C. 603, and relates to the Commission's proposed form amendments under the Securities Act and the Investment Company Act to require funds to provide additional disclosure about their policies and procedures with respect to frequent purchases and redemptions of mutual fund shares (or, with respect to insurance company separate accounts, frequent transfers among sub-accounts) and selective disclosure of fund portfolio holdings to any person. Specifically, the proposals would:
Require a mutual fund to describe in its prospectus the risks, if any, that frequent purchases and redemptions of fund shares may present for other shareholders;
Require a mutual fund to state in its prospectus whether or not the fund's board of directors has adopted policies and procedures with respect to frequent purchases and redemptions of fund shares and, if the board has not adopted any such policies and procedures, state the specific basis for the view of the board that it is appropriate for the fund not to have such policies and procedures;
Require a mutual fund to describe any policies and procedures for deterring frequent purchases and redemptions of fund shares, and any arrangements to permit frequent purchases and redemptions of fund shares; and
Require similar disclosure in prospectuses for insurance company separate accounts offering variable insurance contracts, with respect to frequent transfers among sub-accounts.
The Commission is also proposing amendments to clarify instructions to our registration forms for mutual funds and insurance company managed separate accounts that offer variable annuities to require that all such funds (other than money market funds) explain in their prospectuses both the circumstances under which they will use fair value pricing and the effects of using fair value pricing.
As noted above, the Commission also is proposing to require mutual funds, and insurance company managed separate accounts that offer variable annuities, to disclose their policies with respect to disclosure of portfolio holdings information. The proposals would:
Require a fund to describe in its SAI any policies and procedures with respect to the disclosure of the fund's portfolio securities to any person and any ongoing arrangements to make available information about the fund's portfolio securities to any person; and
Require a fund to state in its prospectus that a description of the policies and procedures is available in the fund's SAI, and on the fund's website, if applicable.
A. Reasons for, and Objectives of, Proposed Amendments
Recent allegations regarding late trading, abusive market timing, and other abuses point to instances where it appears that some in the mutual fund industry, and some intermediaries that sell fund shares, have lost sight of their obligations to investors. The proposed amendments include disclosure reforms intended to shed more light on market timing and selective disclosure of portfolio holdings information. The proposals are intended to require mutual funds to describe with specificity the restrictions they place on frequent purchases and redemptions, if any, and the circumstances under which any such restriction will not apply. The proposals would require similar disclosure by insurance company separate accounts that offer variable insurance contracts, with respect to the restrictions, if any, that they place on frequent transfers among sub-accounts. This additional disclosure would enable investors to assess mutual funds' and insurance company separate accounts' risks, policies, and procedures in this area and determine if the policies and procedures are in line with their expectations. The proposed amendments also are intended to provide greater transparency of mutual fund and insurance company managed separate account practices with respect to the disclosure of a fund's portfolio holdings, and to reinforce funds' and advisers' obligations to prevent the misuse of material, non-public information. The proposals are part of a package of rule amendments intended to address abuses that have surfaced in the areas of late trading, market timing, and selective disclosure.
B. Legal Basis
The Commission is proposing amendments to Forms N-1A, N-3, N-4, and N-6 pursuant to authority set forth in sections 5, 6, 7, 10, and 19(a) of the Securities Act [15 U.S.C. 77e, 77f, 77g, 77j, and 77s(a)], and sections 8, 22, 24(a), 30, and 38 of the Investment Company Act [15 U.S.C. 80a-8, 80a-22, 80a-24(a), 80a-29, and 80a-37].
C. Small Entities Subject to the Rule
For purposes of the Regulatory Flexibility Act, an investment company is a small entity if it, together with other investment companies in the same group of related investment companies, has net assets of $50 million or less as of the end of its most recent fiscal year.78 Approximately 145 investment companies registered on Form N-1A meet this definition.79 We estimate that few, if any, registered separate accounts registered on Form N-3, N-4, or N-6 are small entities.80
D. Reporting, Recordkeeping, and Other Compliance Requirements
The proposed amendments would require a mutual fund to disclose in its prospectus both the risks to shareholders of the frequent purchase and redemption of fund shares, and the fund's policies and procedures with respect to frequent purchases and redemptions of fund shares. The proposals would require similar prospectus disclosure for insurance company separate accounts issuing variable insurance contracts. The proposed amendments would also clarify that all mutual funds and insurance company managed separate accounts that issue variable annuities, other than money market funds, are required to explain both the circumstances under which they will use fair value pricing, and the effects of using fair value pricing. Finally, the proposals would require mutual funds and insurance company managed separate accounts that issue variable annuities to disclose their policies and procedures with respect to the disclosure of their portfolio securities to any person and any ongoing arrangements to make available information about their portfolio securities.
The Commission estimates some one-time formatting and ongoing costs and burdens that would be imposed on all funds, including funds that are small entities. We note, however, that in many cases funds currently provide disclosure in their prospectuses of the limitations that they place on frequent trading in order to discourage market timing. For purposes of the Paperwork Reduction Act, we have estimated that the proposed new disclosure requirements would increase the hour burden per portfolio per filing of an initial registration statement on Form N-1A by 10 hours and would increase the hour burden per portfolio per filing of a post-effective amendment to a registration statement by 4 hours. We estimate that this additional burden would increase total internal costs of an initial filing by $452.50 per mutual fund portfolio annually, and would increase total costs of filing a post-effective amendment by $181 per mutual fund portfolio annually.81
The external costs of providing the new prospectus disclosure relating to frequent purchases and redemptions of mutual fund shares and frequent transfers among sub-accounts of insurance company separate accounts that issue variable insurance contracts may or may not be significant, depending on the complexity of a fund's policies and procedures in these areas, the extent to which restrictions on frequent purchases and redemptions or frequent transfers among sub-accounts apply uniformly in all cases or will not be imposed under certain circumstances, and the extent to which a fund currently provides specific disclosure in this area. We expect that the external costs of providing the new disclosure relating to a mutual fund's or insurance company managed separate account's policies and procedures with respect to disclosure of portfolio holdings information would be minimal, because the required description of a fund's policies and procedures with respect to the disclosure of the fund's portfolio securities to any person and any ongoing arrangements to make available information about the fund's portfolio securities will be required in the fund's SAI, which is delivered to investors upon request.
The Commission solicits comment on the effect the proposed amendments would have on small entities.
E. Duplicative, Overlapping or Conflicting Federal Rules
There are no rules that duplicate, overlap, or conflict with the proposed amendments.
F. Significant Alternatives
The Regulatory Flexibility Act directs us to consider significant alternatives that would accomplish our stated objective, while minimizing any significant adverse impact on small issuers. In connection with the proposed amendments, the Commission considered the following alternatives: (i) the establishment of differing compliance or reporting requirements or timetables that take into account the resources available to small entities; (ii) the clarification, consolidation, or simplification of compliance and reporting requirements under the proposed amendments for small entities; (iii) the use of performance rather than design standards; and (iv) an exemption from coverage of the proposed amendments, or any part thereof, for small entities.
The Commission believes at the present time that special compliance or reporting requirements for small entities, or an exemption from coverage for small entities, would not be appropriate or consistent with investor protection. The proposed disclosure amendments would provide shareholders with greater transparency of mutual funds' policies and procedures with respect to frequent purchases and redemptions of fund shares (and, with respect to insurance company separate accounts that issue variable insurance contracts, frequent transfers among sub-accounts) and mutual funds' and insurance company managed separate accounts' policies and procedures with respect to selective disclosure of their portfolio holdings. Different disclosure requirements for funds that are small entities may create the risk that the shareholders in these funds would not be as able as investors in larger funds to assess a fund's risks, policies, and procedures with respect to frequent purchases and redemptions of fund shares, as well as a fund's practices with respect to the disclosure of its portfolio holdings. We believe it is important for the disclosure that would be required by the proposed amendments to be provided to shareholders by all funds, not just funds that are not considered small entities.
We have endeavored through the proposed amendments to minimize the regulatory burden on all funds, including small entities, while meeting our regulatory objectives. Small entities should benefit from the Commission's reasoned approach to the proposed amendments to the same degree as other investment companies. Further clarification, consolidation, or simplification of the proposals for funds that are small entities would be inconsistent with the Commission's concern for investor protection. Finally, we do not consider using performance rather than design standards to be consistent with our statutory mandate of investor protection in the present context.
G. Solicitation of Comments
The Commission encourages the submission of written comments with respect to any aspect of this Analysis. Comment is specifically requested on the number of small entities that would be affected by the proposed amendments and the likely impact of the proposals on small entities. Commenters are asked to describe the nature of any impact and provide empirical data supporting the extent of the impact. These comments will be considered in the preparation of the Final Regulatory Flexibility Analysis, if the proposed amendments are adopted, and will be placed in the same public file as comments on the proposed amendments themselves. Comments should be submitted in triplicate to Jonathan G. Katz, Secretary, Securities and Exchange Commission, 450 Fifth Street, NW, Washington, DC 20549-0609. Comments also may be submitted electronically at the following E-mail address: rule-comments@sec.gov. All comment letters should refer to File No. S7-26-03; this file number should be included on the subject line if E-mail is used. Comment letters will be available for public inspection and copying in the Commission's Public Reference Room, 450 Fifth Street, NW, Washington, DC 20549-0102. Electronically submitted comment letters also will be posted on the Commission's Internet website (http://www.sec.gov).82
VIII. CONSIDERATION OF IMPACT ON THE ECONOMY
For purposes of the Small Business Enforcement Fairness Act of 1996,83 a rule is "major" if it results or is likely to result in:
an annual effect on the economy of $100 million or more;
a major increase in costs or prices for consumers or individual industries; or
significant adverse effects on competition, investment, or innovation.
The Commission requests comment on the potential impact of the proposed amendments on the U.S. economy on an annual basis. Commenters are requested to provide empirical data to support their views.
IX. STATUTORY AUTHORITY
The Commission is proposing amendments to Forms N-1A, N-3, N-4, and N-6 pursuant to authority set forth in sections 5, 6, 7, 10, and 19(a) of the Securities Act [15 U.S.C. 77e, 77f, 77g, 77j, and 77s(a)] and sections 8, 22, 24(a), 30, and 38 of the Investment Company Act [15 U.S.C. 80a-8, 80a-22, 80a-24(a), 80a-29, and 80a-37].
List of Subjects
17 CFR Part 239
Reporting and recordkeeping requirements, Securities.
17 CFR Part 274
Investment companies, Reporting and recordkeeping requirements, Securities.
TEXT OF PROPOSED RULE AND FORM AMENDMENTS
For the reasons set out in the preamble, the Commission proposes to amend Title 17, Chapter II, of the Code of Federal Regulations as follows.
PART 239 — FORMS PRESCRIBED UNDER THE SECURITIES ACT OF 1933
1. The authority citation for Part 239 continues to read in part as follows:
Note: The text of Forms N-1A, N-3, N-4, and N-6 do not, and these amendments will not, appear in the Code of Federal Regulations.
3. Form N-1A (referenced in §§ 239.15A and 274.11A) is amended by:
a. In Instruction 6 to Item 1(b)(1), revising the reference "Item 7(f)" to read "Item 7(g)";
b. In Instruction 6 to Item 1(b)(1), revising the reference "Item 7(f)(3)" to read "Item 7(g)(3)";
c. In Item 4, revising the title and adding new paragraph (d);
d. In Item 7, revising the Instruction to paragraph (a)(1);
e. In Item 7, redesignating paragraphs (e) and (f) as paragraphs (f) and (g), respectively;
f. In Item 7, adding paragraph (e);
g. In newly redesignated Item 7(f)(2)(i), revising the reference "paragraph (e)(1)" to read "paragraph (f)(1)";
h. In newly redesignated paragraph (g) of Item 7, revising the introductory text;
i. In paragraph (a)(2) of Item 8, revising the reference "Item 7(f)" to read "Item 7(g)"; and
j. In Item 12, adding paragraph (f).
The additions and revisions read as follows:
FORM N-1A
* * * * *
Item 4. Investment Objectives, Principal Investment Strategies, Related Risks, and Disclosure of Portfolio Holdings
* * * * *
(d) Portfolio Holdings. State that a description of the Fund's policies and procedures with respect to the disclosure of the Fund's portfolio securities is available (i) in the Fund's SAI; and (ii) on the Fund's website, if applicable.
* * * * *
Item 7. Shareholder Information
(a) * * *
(1) * * *
Instruction. A Fund (other than a Money Market Fund) must provide a brief explanation of the circumstances under which it will use fair value pricing and the effects of using fair value pricing.
* * * * *
(e) Frequent Purchases and Redemptions of Fund Shares.
(1) Describe the risks, if any, that frequent purchases and redemptions of Fund shares by Fund shareholders may present for other shareholders of the Fund.
(2) State whether or not the Fund's board of directors has adopted policies and procedures with respect to frequent purchases and redemptions of Fund shares by Fund shareholders.
(3) If the Fund's board of directors has not adopted any such policies and procedures, provide a statement of the specific basis for the view of the board that it is appropriate for the Fund not to have such policies and procedures.
(4) If the Fund's board of directors has adopted any such policies and procedures, describe those policies and procedures, including:
(i) Whether or not the Fund discourages frequent purchases and redemptions of Fund shares by Fund shareholders;
(ii) Whether or not the Fund accommodates frequent purchases and redemptions of Fund shares by Fund shareholders;
(iii) Any policies and procedures of the Fund for deterring frequent purchases and redemptions of Fund shares by Fund shareholders, including any restrictions imposed by the Fund to prevent or minimize frequent purchases and redemptions. Describe each of these policies, procedures, and restrictions with specificity. Indicate whether each of these restrictions applies uniformly in all cases or whether the restriction will not be imposed under certain circumstances. Describe with specificity the circumstances under which any restriction will not be imposed. Include a description of the following restrictions, if applicable:
(A) Any restrictions on the volume or number of purchases, redemptions, or exchanges that a shareholder may make within a given time period;
(B) Any exchange fee or redemption fee;
(C) Any costs or administrative or other fees or charges that are imposed on shareholders deemed to be engaged in frequent purchases and redemptions of Fund shares, together with a description of the circumstances under which such costs, fees, or charges will be imposed;
(D) Any minimum holding period that is imposed before an investor may make exchanges into another Fund;
(E) Any restrictions imposed on exchange or purchase requests submitted by overnight delivery, electronically, or via facsimile or telephone; and
(F) Any right of the Fund to reject, limit, delay, or impose other conditions on exchanges or purchases or to terminate or otherwise limit accounts based on a history of frequent purchases and redemptions of Fund shares, including the circumstances under which such right will be exercised; and
(iv) Any policies and procedures of the Fund for detecting frequent purchases and redemptions of Fund shares, including any arrangements for detecting frequent purchases and redemptions of Fund shares through intermediaries, such as investment advisers, broker-dealers, transfer agents, and third party administrators.
(5) Describe any arrangements with any person to permit frequent purchases and redemptions of Fund shares, including the identity of the persons permitted to engage in frequent purchases and redemptions pursuant to such arrangements, and any compensation or other consideration received by the Fund, its investment adviser, or any other party pursuant to such arrangements.
Instruction. The consideration required to be disclosed by Item 7(e)(5) includes any agreement to maintain assets in the Fund or in other investment companies or accounts managed by the investment adviser or by any affiliated person of the investment adviser.
* * * * *
(g) Separate Disclosure Document. A Fund may omit from the prospectus information about purchase and redemption procedures required by Items 7(b)-(d) and 8(a)(2), other than information that is also required by Item 7(e), and provide it in a separate document if the Fund:
* * * * *
Item 12. Description of the Fund and Its Investments and Risks
* * * * *
(f) Disclosure of Portfolio Holdings.
(1) Describe the Fund's policies and procedures with respect to the disclosure of the Fund's portfolio securities to any person, including:
(i) How the policies and procedures apply to disclosure to different categories of persons, including individual
investors, institutional investors, intermediaries that distribute the Fund's shares, third-party service providers, rating and ranking organizations, and affiliated persons of the Fund;
(ii) Any conditions or restrictions placed on the use of information about portfolio securities that is disclosed, including any requirement that the information be kept confidential or prohibitions on trading based on the information, and any procedures to monitor the use of this information;
(iii) The frequency with which information about portfolio securities is disclosed, and the length of the lag, if any, between the date of the information and the date on which the information is disclosed;
(iv) Any policies and procedures with respect to the receipt of compensation or other consideration by the Fund, its investment adviser, or any other party in connection with the disclosure of information about portfolio securities;
(v) The persons who may authorize disclosure of the Fund's portfolio securities;
(vi) The procedures that the Fund uses to ensure that disclosure of information about portfolio securities is in the best interests of Fund shareholders, including procedures to address conflicts between the interests of Fund shareholders, on the one hand, and those of the Fund's investment adviser; principal underwriter; or any affiliated person of the Fund, its investment adviser, or its principal underwriter, on the other; and
(vii) The manner in which the board of directors exercises oversight of disclosure of the Fund's portfolio securities.
Instruction. Include any policies and procedures of the Fund's investment adviser, or any other third party, that the Fund uses, or that are used on the Fund's behalf, with respect to the disclosure of the Fund's portfolio securities to any person.
(2) Describe any ongoing arrangements to make available information about the Fund's portfolio securities to any person, including the identity of the persons who receive information pursuant to such arrangements. Describe any compensation or other consideration received by the Fund, its investment adviser, or any other party in connection with such arrangements, and provide the information described by paragraphs (f)(1)(ii), (iii), and (v) of Item 12 with respect to such arrangements.
Instruction. The consideration required to be disclosed by Item 12(f)(2) includes any agreement to maintain assets in the Fund or in other investment companies or accounts managed by the investment adviser or by any affiliated person of the investment adviser.
* * * * *
4. Form N-3 (referenced in §§ 239.17a and 274.11b) is amended by:
a. In Item 5, adding paragraph (f).
b. In Item 8, adding paragraph (e).
c. In Item 11, adding an Instruction to paragraph (c).
d. In Item 19, adding paragraph (e).
The additions read as follows:
FORM N-3
* * * * *
Item 5. General Description of Registrant and Insurance Company
* * * * *
(f) State that a description of the Registrant's policies and procedures with respect to the disclosure of the Registrant's portfolio securities is available (A) in the Registrant's Statement of Additional Information; and (B) on the Registrant's website, if applicable.
* * * * *
Item 8. General Description of Variable Annuity Contracts
* * * * *
(e)(i) Describe the risks, if any, that frequent transfers of contract value among sub-accounts of the Registrant may present for other contractowners and other persons (e.g., participants, annuitants, or beneficiaries) who have material rights under the variable annuity contracts.
(ii) State whether or not the Registrant's board of managershas adopted policies and procedures with respect to frequent transfers of contract value among sub-accounts of the Registrant.
(iii) If the Registrant's board of managershas not adopted any such policies and procedures, provide a statement of the specific basis for the view of the board that it is appropriate for the Registrantnot to have such policies and procedures.
(iv) If the Registrant's board of managershas adopted any such policies and procedures, describe those policies and procedures, including:
(A) whether or not the Registrant discourages frequent transfers of contract value among sub-accounts of the Registrant;
(B) whether or not the Registrant accommodates frequent transfers of contract value among sub-accounts of the Registrant;
(C) any policies and procedures of the Registrant for deterring frequent transfers of contract value among sub-accounts of the Registrant, including any restrictions imposed by the Registrant to prevent or minimize frequent transfers. Describe each of these policies, procedures, and restrictions with specificity. Indicate whether each of these restrictions applies uniformly in all cases or whether the restriction will not be imposed under certain circumstances. Describe with specificity the circumstances under which any restriction will not be imposed. Include a description of the following restrictions, if applicable:
(1) any restrictions on the volume or number of transfers that may be made within a given time period;
(2) any transfer fee;
(3) any costs or administrative or other fees or charges that are imposed on persons deemed to be engaged in frequent transfers of contract value among sub-accounts of the Registrant, together with a description of the circumstances under which such costs, fees, or charges will be imposed;
(4) any minimum holding period that is imposed before a transfer may be made from a sub-account into another sub-account of the Registrant;
(5) any restrictions imposed on transfer requests submitted by overnight delivery, electronically, or via facsimile or telephone; and
(6) any right of the Registrant to reject, limit, delay, or impose other conditions on transfers or to terminate or otherwise limit contracts based on a history of frequent transfers among sub-accounts, including the circumstances under which such right will be exercised; and
(D) any policies and procedures of the Registrant for detecting frequent transfers of contract value among sub-accounts of the Registrant.
(v) Describe any arrangements with any person to permit frequent transfers of contract value among sub-accounts of the Registrant, including the identity of the persons permitted to engage in frequent transfers pursuant to such arrangements, and any compensation or other consideration received by the Registrant, its investment adviser, the Insurance Company, or any other party pursuant to such arrangements.
Instruction:
The consideration required to be disclosed by Item 8(e)(v) includes any agreement to maintain assets in the Registrant or in other investment companies or accounts managed or sponsored by the investment adviser, the Insurance Company, or any affiliated person of the investment adviser or the Insurance Company.
* * * * *
Item 11. Purchases and Contract Value
* * * * *
(c) * * *
Instruction:
A Registrant (other than a money market fund or sub-account) must provide a brief explanation of the circumstances under which it will use fair value pricing and the effects of using fair value pricing.
* * * * *
Item 19. Investment Objectives and Policies
* * * * *
(e)(i) Describe the Registrant's policies and procedures with respect to the disclosure of the Registrant's portfolio securities to any person, including:
(A) how the policies and procedures apply to disclosure to different categories of persons, including contractowners, participants, annuitants, beneficiaries, institutional investors, intermediaries that distribute the Registrant's contracts, third-party service providers, rating and ranking organizations, and affiliated persons of the Registrant;
(B) any conditions or restrictions placed on the use of information about portfolio securities that is disclosed, including any requirement that the information be kept confidential or prohibitions on trading based on the information, and any procedures to monitor the use of this information;
(C) the frequency with which information about portfolio securities is disclosed, and the length of the lag, if any, between the date of the information and the date on which the information is disclosed;
(D) any policies and procedures with respect to the receipt of compensation or other consideration by the Registrant, its investment adviser, the Insurance Company, or any other party in connection with the disclosure of information about portfolio securities;
(E) the persons who may authorize disclosure of the Registrant's portfolio securities;
(F) the procedures that the Registrant uses to ensure that disclosure of information about portfolio securities is in the best interests of contractowners, participants, annuitants, and beneficiaries, including procedures to address conflicts between the interests of such persons, on the one hand, and those of the Registrant's investment adviser or principal underwriter; the Insurance Company; or any affiliated person of the Registrant, its investment adviser or principal underwriter; or the Insurance Company, on the other; and
(G) the manner in which the board of managers exercises oversight of disclosure of the Registrant's portfolio securities.
Instruction:
Include any policies and procedures of the Registrant's investment adviser, or any other third party, that the Registrant uses, or that are used on the Registrant's behalf, with respect to the disclosure of the Registrant's portfolio securities to any person.
(ii) Describe any ongoing arrangements to make available information about the Registrant's portfolio securities to any person, including the identity of the persons who receive information pursuant to such arrangements. Describe any compensation or other consideration received by the Registrant, its investment adviser, the Insurance Company, or any other party in connection with such arrangements, and provide the information described by paragraphs (e)(i)(B), (C), and (E) of Item 19 with respect to such arrangements.
Instruction:
The consideration required to be disclosed by Item 19(e)(ii) includes any agreement to maintain assets in the Registrant or in other investment companies or accounts managed or sponsored by the investment adviser, the Insurance Company, or any affiliated person of the investment adviser or the Insurance Company.
* * * * *
5. Item 7 of Form N-4 (referenced in §§ 239.17b and 274.11c) is amended by adding paragraph (e), to read as follows:
FORM N-4
* * * * *
Item 7. General Description of Variable Annuity Contracts
* * * * *
(e)(i) Describe the risks, if any, that frequent transfers of contract value among sub-accounts of the Registrant may present for other contractowners and other persons (e.g., participants, annuitants, or beneficiaries) who have material rights under the variable annuity contracts.
(ii) State whether or not the Registrant or depositor has policies and procedures with respect to frequent transfers of contract value among sub-accounts of the Registrant.
(iii) If neither the Registrantnor the depositorhas any such policies and procedures, provide a statement of the specific basis for the view of the depositor that it is appropriate for the Registrant and depositor not to have such policies and procedures.
(iv) If the Registrant or depositor has any such policies and procedures, describe those policies and procedures, including:
(A) whether or not the Registrant or depositor discourages frequent transfers of contract value among sub-accounts of the Registrant;
(B) whether or not the Registrant or depositor accommodates frequent transfers of contract value among sub-accounts of the Registrant;
(C) any policies and procedures of the Registrant or depositor for deterring frequent transfers of contract value among sub-accounts of the Registrant, including any restrictions imposed by the Registrant or depositor to prevent or minimize frequent transfers. Describe each of these policies, procedures, and restrictions with specificity. Indicate whether each of these restrictions applies uniformly in all cases or whether the restriction will not be imposed under certain circumstances. Describe with specificity the circumstances under which any restriction will not be imposed. Include a description of the following restrictions, if applicable:
(1) any restrictions on the volume or number of transfers that may be made within a given time period;
(2) any transfer fee;
(3) any costs or administrative or other fees or charges that are imposed on persons deemed to be engaged in frequent transfers of contract value among sub-accounts of the Registrant, together with a description of the circumstances under which such costs, fees, or charges will be imposed;
(4) any minimum holding period that is imposed before a transfer may be made from a sub-account into another sub-account of the Registrant;
(5) any restrictions imposed on transfer requests submitted by overnight delivery, electronically, or via facsimile or telephone; and
(6) any right of the Registrant or depositor to reject, limit, delay, or impose other conditions on transfers or to terminate or otherwise limit contracts based on a history of frequent transfers among sub-accounts, including the circumstances under which such right will be exercised; and
(D) any policies and procedures of the Registrant or depositor for detecting frequent transfers of contract value among sub-accounts of the Registrant.
(v) Describe any arrangements with any person to permit frequent transfers of contract value among sub-accounts of the Registrant, including the identity of the persons permitted to engage in frequent transfers pursuant to such arrangements, and any compensation or other consideration received by the Registrant, the depositor, or any other party pursuant to such arrangements.
Instruction:
The consideration required to be disclosed by Item 7(e)(v) includes any agreement to maintain assets in the Registrant or in other investment companies or accounts managed or sponsored by the depositor, any investment adviser of a portfolio company, or any affiliated person of the depositor or of any such investment adviser.
* * * * *
6. Item 6 of Form N-6 (referenced in §§ 239.17c and 274.11d) is amended by adding paragraph (f), to read as follows:
FORM N-6
* * * * *
Item 6. General Description of Contracts
* * * * *
(f) Frequent Transfers among Sub-accounts of the Registrant.
(1) Describe the risks, if any, that frequent transfers of Contract value among sub-accounts of the Registrant may present for other Contractowners and other persons (e.g., the insured or beneficiaries) who have material rights under the Contract.
(2) State whether or not the Registrant or Depositor has policies and procedures with respect to frequent transfers of Contract value among sub-accounts of the Registrant.
(3) If neither the Registrant nor the Depositor has any such policies and procedures, provide a statement of the specific basis for the view of the Depositor that it is appropriate for the Registrantand Depositornot to have such policies and procedures.
(4) If the Registrant or Depositor has any such policies and procedures, describe those policies and procedures, including:
(i) whether or not the Registrant or Depositor discourages frequent transfers of Contract value among sub-accounts of the Registrant;
(ii) whether or not the Registrant or Depositor accommodates frequent transfers of Contract value among sub-accounts of the Registrant;
(iii) any policies and procedures of the Registrant or Depositor for deterring frequent transfers of Contract value among sub-accounts of the Registrant, including any restrictions imposed by the Registrant or Depositor to prevent or minimize frequent transfers. Describe each of these policies, procedures, and restrictions with specificity. Indicate whether each of these restrictions applies uniformly in all cases or whether the restriction will not be imposed under certain circumstances. Describe with specificity the circumstances under which any restriction will not be imposed. Include a description of the following restrictions, if applicable:
(A) any restrictions on the volume or number of transfers that may be made within a given time period;
(B) any transfer fee;
(C) any costs or administrative or other fees or charges that are imposed on persons deemed to be engaged in frequent transfers of Contract value among sub-accounts of the Registrant, together with a description of the circumstances under which such costs, fees, or charges will be imposed;
(D) any minimum holding period that is imposed before a transfer may be made from a sub-account into another sub-account of the Registrant;
(E) any restrictions imposed on transfer requests submitted by overnight delivery, electronically, or via facsimile or telephone; and
(F) any right of the Registrant or Depositor to reject, limit, delay, or impose other conditions on transfers or to terminate or otherwise limit Contracts based on a history of frequent transfers among sub-accounts, including the circumstances under which such right will be exercised; and
(iv) any policies and procedures of the Registrant or Depositor for detecting frequent transfers of Contract value among sub-accounts of the Registrant.
(5) Describe any arrangements with any person to permit frequent transfers of Contract value among sub-accounts of the Registrant, including the identity of the persons permitted to engage in frequent transfers pursuant to such arrangements, and any compensation or other consideration received by the Registrant, theDepositor,or any other party pursuant to such arrangements.
Instruction. The consideration required to be disclosed by Item 6(f)(5) includes any agreement to maintain assets in the Registrant or in other investment companies or accounts managed or sponsored by the Depositor, any investment adviser of a Portfolio Company, or any affiliated person of the Depositor or of any such investment adviser.
* * * * *
By the Commission.
J. Lynn Taylor
Assistant Secretary
Dated: December 11, 2003
Endnotes
1 We do not edit personal identifying information, such as names or electronic mail addresses, from electronic submissions. You should submit only information that you wish to make available publicly.
2 A management investment company is an investment company other than a unit investment trust or face-amount certificate company. See section 4 of the Investment Company Act [15 U.S.C. 80a-4]. Management investment companies typically issue shares representing an undivided proportionate interest in a changing pool of securities, and include open-end and closed-end companies. See T. Lemke, G. Lins, A. Smith III, Regulation of Investment Companies, Vol. I, ch. 4, § 4.04, at 4-5 (2002). An open-end company is a management company that is offering for sale or has outstanding any redeemable securities of which it is the issuer.
3 See, e.g., Riva D. Atlas, Another Fund Faces Inquiry Over Trading, New York Times, October 22, 2003, at C4; Tom Lauricella, Two-Tier System: For Staid Mutual Fund Industry, Growing Probe Signals Shake Up — Investigators Find Indications of Widespread Abuses Hurting Small Investors — Unfair Pricing for Big Players, Wall Street Journal, October 20, 2003, at A1; Brooke A. Masters, Spitzer Alleges Mutual Fund Improprieties, Washington Post, September 4, 2003, at E1.
4 See, e.g., In the Matter of Putnam Investment Management, LLC, Release No. IC-26255 (Nov. 13, 2003) (investment adviser violated antifraud provisions of the federal securities laws by failing to disclose potentially self-dealing short-term trading of mutual fund shares by several of its employees, and by failing to take adequate steps to detect and deter such trading activity through its own internal controls and its supervision of investment management professionals); In the Matter of James Patrick Connelly, Jr., Release No. IC-26209 (Oct. 16, 2003) (vice chairman of investment advisory firm violated antifraud provisions of the federal securities laws by allowing select investors to time mutual funds managed by the firm); In the Matter of Steven B. Markovitz, Release No. IC-26201 (Oct. 2, 2003) (hedge fund trader who engaged in late trading of mutual fund shares violated antifraud provisions of the federal securities laws and rule 22c-1(a) under the Investment Company Act).
5 Both mutual funds and unit investment trusts issue redeemable securities. See section 4(2) and 5(a)(1) of the Investment Company Act [15 U.S.C. 80a-4(2) and 80a-5(a)(1)]. For purposes of simplicity, this section of the release only refers to mutual funds.
9 See Accounting Series Release No. 118 (Dec. 23, 1970) [35 FR 19986 (Dec. 31, 1970)]; Investment Company Act Release No. 14244 (Nov. 21, 1984) [49 FR46558, 46559-46660 n.7 (Nov. 27, 1984)]. Subsequent to the issuance of these releases, our staff has reminded funds of their fair valuation obligations. In 1999 and 2001, the Division of Investment Management issued interpretive letters elaborating on funds' obligations under sections 2(a)(41) of the Investment Company Act and rule 22c-1 [17 CFR 270.22c-1] thereunder. Letter from Douglas Scheidt, Associate Director and Chief Counsel, SEC Division of Investment Management, to Craig S. Tyle, General Counsel, Investment Company Institute (Dec. 8, 1999) (http://www.sec.gov/divisions/investment/guidance/tyle120899.htm); Letter from Douglas Scheidt, Associate Director and Chief Counsel, SEC Division of Investment Management, to Craig S. Tyle, General Counsel, Investment Company Institute (Apr. 30, 2001) (http://www.sec.gov/divisions/investment/guidance/tyle043001.htm).
10 See Rule 22c-1 Adopting Release, supra note 6 (describing market timing). Market timing may take many forms. In this release, we use the term to refer to arbitrage activity involving the frequent buying and selling of mutual fund shares in order to take advantage of the fact that there may be a lag between a change in the value of a mutual fund's portfolio securities and the reflection of that change in the fund's share price.
11 "Fair valuation" refers to the process of determining the current market value of a security when market quotations are not readily available (such as when there are no market quotations for the security or if the market quotations for the security are unreliable). When market quotations for a security are not readily available, a fund is required to calculate its NAV by using the fair value of that security, as determined in good faith by the fund's board.
12 See Eric Zitzewitz, Who Cares About Shareholders? Arbitrage-Proofing Mutual Funds, Research Paper No. 1749, Stanford Graduate School of Business Research Paper Series (Oct. 2002), available at http://faculty-gsb.stanford.edu/zitzewitz/Research/arbitrage1002.pdf ("Zitzewitz"), at 2 (estimating arbitrage returns available in domestic small-cap equity funds at 20-25 percent and estimating arbitrage returns available in convertible and high-yield and convertible bond funds at 10-25 percent). See also William Goetzmann, Zoran Ivkovich, and K. Geert Rouwenhorst, Day Trading International Mutual Funds: Evidence and Policy Solutions, Working Paper No. ICF-00-03, Yale School of Management, Yale University (Oct. 2000), available at: http://papers.ssrn.com/paper.taf?abstract_id=217168, at 7-8 (describing opportunities for arbitrage in stale pricing of Russell 2000 index).
13 By one estimate, dilution resulting from market timing can cost investors in international stock funds that are focused on a particular geographic region as much as 2.3% of their assets each year, and may cost fund shareholders as a whole up to $4.9 billion per year. See Zitzewitz, supra note 12, at 2 and 16; Jason Greene and Charles Hodges, The Dilution Impact of Daily Fund Flows on Open-End Mutual Funds: Evidence and Policy Solutions, 36 Journal of Financial Economics, 131-158 (2002) (estimating annualized dilution from market timing of 0.48% in international funds and nearly 1% for a subsample of funds whose daily flows are particularly large).
14 Under section 22(e) of the Investment Company Act [15 U.S.C. 80a-22(e)], in general no registered investment company may suspend the right of redemption, or postpone the date of payment or satisfaction upon redemption of any redeemable security, for more than seven days after the tender of such security to the company or its agent designated for that purpose for redemption.
15 Items 7(c)(1), (c)(2), and (c)(6) of Form N-1A. Form N-1A is the registration form used by mutual funds to register under the Investment Company Act and to offer their shares under the Securities Act of 1933 [15 U.S.C. 77a].
16 Item 8(a)(2) of Form N-1A. Similarly, Items in the registration forms for insurance company separate accounts that issue variable annuities and variable life insurance policies require disclosure of provisions and limitations for transfers of contract value among sub-accounts of the separate account. Item 8(b)(ii) of Form N-3; Item 7(b)(ii) of Form N-4; Item 6(b)(2) of Form N-6.
The SAI is part of a fund's registration statement and contains information about a fund in addition to that contained in the prospectus. The SAI is required to be delivered to investors upon request and is available on the Commission's Electronic Data Gathering, Analysis, and Retrieval System.
17 Item 3 and Instructions 2(b) and 2(c) to Item 3 of Form N-1A. Similarly, Item 3(a) and Instruction 10 to Item 3(a) of Form N-3; Item 3(a) and Instruction 11 to Item 3(a) of Form N-4; and Item 3 and Instruction 2(b) to Item 3 of Form N-6 require fee table disclosure of fees charged for transfers of contract value among sub-accounts.
18 Commission staff sent information requests to 88 of the largest mutual fund complexes, with approximately 90% of the fund industry's total assets and 4,100 individual funds or portfolios under management. Fifty percent of the fund groups that responded to these staff information requests appear to have one or more arrangements with certain shareholders to allow these shareholders to engage in market timing.
19 Section 30(e) of the Investment Company Act [15 U.S.C. 80a-29(e)] (requiring a registered investment company to transmit to its stockholders, at least semi-annually, reports containing financial statements and other financial information as the Commission may prescribe by rules and regulations); rule 6-10(c)(1) of Regulation S-X [17 CFR 210.6-10(c)(1)] (requiring that a portfolio schedule be filed in support of the balance sheet entry for investments in securities of unaffiliated issuers).
21 See Scott Cooley, Tell Investors What They Own, Morningstar Online, Feb. 6, 2002 (more than 70% of funds currently provide monthly or quarterly portfolio disclosure to Morningstar). See also Tom Lauricella and Aaron Lucchetti, To Industry, Silence is Golden — Mutual Funds Embrace Disclosure Rules — As Long as it Doesn't Involve Them, Wall Street Journal Europe, Aug. 1, 2002, at M1 (roughly 200 fund firms and 17 of the top 20 largest funds provide quarterly or monthly holdings updates to investors); Survey of Fund Groups' Portfolio Disclosure Policies Summary of Results, Investment Company Institute (2001), available at: http://www.ici.org/port_holdings_appdxa.html.
22 SeeState of New York v. Canary Capital Partners, LLC, et. al., at 25 and 41, (N.Y. Sup. Ct., filed Sept. 3, 2003) available at: http://www.oag.state.ny.us/press/2003/sep/canary_complaint.pdf (alleging that fund group regularly provided investor with detailed breakdowns of the portfolios of the target funds, allowing the investor to sell short the stocks that the portfolios contained); Ian McDonald, Will Funds Disclose More — Publicly?, The Wall Street Journal, Sept. 9, 2003, at C1 (describing allegations that fund groups provided hedge fund with more frequent reports on their fund holdings than were available to other investors).
26 In our release adopting rule 38a-1 under the Investment Company Act, we state that a fund must have procedures reasonably designed to ensure compliance with its disclosed policies regarding market timing.
27 Proposed Item 8(e) of Form N-3; proposed Item 7(e) of Form N-4; proposed Item 6(f) of Form N-6.
Persons that are not registered as broker-dealers need to consider whether the securities activities that they are undertaking are brokerage activities that require them to register as broker-dealers. Section 3(a)(4) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 ("Exchange Act") defines a broker as a person engaged in the business of effecting transactions in securities. It includes several exceptions for certain bank activities. Section 15 of the Exchange Act essentially makes it unlawful for a broker or dealer "to effect any transactions in, or to induce or attempt to
induce the purchase or sale of, any security (other than an exempted security or commercial paper, bankers' acceptances, or commercial bills)" unless the broker or dealer is registered with the Commission.
32 Proposed Item 7(e)(4)(iii) of Form N-1A. A fund need not repeat this disclosure to the extent it is provided in the prospectus in response to other Items of Form N-1A, including Items 3 (redemption and exchange fees), 7(c) (restrictions on redemptions, and redemption charges), and 8(a)(2) (exchange privileges).
38 Proposed Item 8(e) of Form N-3. Form N-3 is used by all insurance company separate accounts offering variable annuity contracts that are registered under the Investment Company Act as management investment companies.
39 Proposed Item 7(e) of Form N-4. Form N-4 is used by all insurance company separate accounts offering variable annuity contracts that are registered under the Investment Company Act as unit investment trusts. See section 4(2) of the Investment Company Act [15 U.S.C. 80a-4(2)] (defining "unit investment trust").
40 Proposed Item 6(f) of Form N-6. Form N-6 is used by all insurance company separate accounts offering variable life insurance policies that are registered under the Investment Company Act as unit investment trusts.
41 Increases in the cash values of variable annuity and variable life insurance contracts — known as the "inside buildup" — are tax-deferred until the contract's surrender or maturity. See I.R.C. § 7702(g) (1986).
42 Proposed Item 7(e)(ii) of Form N-4; proposed Item 6(f)(2) of Form N-6.
43 Proposed Item 7(e)(iii) of Form N-4; proposed Item 6(f)(3) of Form N-6.
44 Proposed Item 8(e)(i) of Form N-3; proposed Item 7(e)(i) of Form N-4; proposed Item 6(f)(1) of Form N-6.
45 Proposed Item 8(e)(iv)(D) of Form N-3; proposed Item 7(e)(iv)(D) of Form N-4; proposed Item 6(f)(4)(iv) of Form N-6.
46 Proposed Item 8(e)(v) of Form N-3; proposed Item 7(e)(v) of Form N-4; proposed Item 6(f)(5) of Form N-6.
47 Proposed Instruction to Item 8(e)(v) of Form N-3.
48 Proposed Instruction to Item 7(e)(v) of Form N-4; proposed Instruction to Item 6(f)(5) of Form N-6.
49 Proposed Instruction to Item 7(a)(1) of Form N-1A; proposed Instruction to Item 11(c) of Form N-3. We are not proposing to amend Forms N-4 and N-6 because these forms are used by insurance company separate accounts that are organized as unit investment trusts and typically hold only securities issued by underlying mutual funds. These underlying mutual funds are responsible for valuing their own portfolio securities, including, as required, through fair valuation.
50 Rule 2a-7(c) (describing the requirements for calculating the share price of money market funds using the amortized cost and penny-rounding methods).
51 We also note that the Commission is issuing a release adopting new rule 38a-1 under the Investment Company Act, which requires funds to adopt policies and procedures that require a fund to monitor for circumstances that may necessitate the use of fair value prices, establish criteria for determining when market quotations are no longer reliable for a particular portfolio security, provide a methodology or methodologies by which the fund determines the current fair value of the portfolio security, and regularly review the appropriateness and accuracy of the method used in valuing securities and make any necessary adjustments.
52 Proposed Items 4(d) and 12(f) of Form N-1A. In the release adopting rule 38a-1 under the Investment Company Act, we state that a fund's compliance policies and procedures should address misuses of nonpublic information, including the disclosure to third parties of material information about the fund's portfolio, its trading strategies, or pending transactions.
53 Proposed Items 5(f) and 19(e) of Form N-3. We are not proposing to amend Forms N-4 and N-6 because these forms are used by insurance company separate accounts that are organized as unit investment trusts, which typically hold only securities issued by underlying mutual funds.
54 Proposed Item 12(f)(1) of Form N-1A; proposed Item 19(e)(i) of Form N-3.
55 Proposed Item 4(d) of Form N-1A; proposed Item 5(f) of Form N-3.
56 Proposed Item 12(f)(1)(i) of Form N-1A. With respect to managed separate accounts issuing variable annuity contracts registered on Form N-3, the categories would include contractowners, participants, annuitants, and beneficiaries. Proposed Item 19(e)(i)(A) of Form N-3.
57 Proposed Item 12(f)(1)(ii) of Form N-1A; proposed Item 19(e)(i)(B) of Form N-3.
58 Proposed Item 12(f)(1)(iii) of Form N-1A; proposed Item 19(e)(i)(C) of Form N-3.
59 Proposed Item 12(f)(1)(iv) of Form N-1A. With respect to managed separate accounts issuing variable annuity contracts registered on Form N-3, this description would also be required to include any policies and procedures with respect to the receipt of compensation or other consideration by the sponsoring insurance company. Proposed Item 19(e)(i)(D) of Form N-3.
60 Proposed Item 12(f)(1)(v) of Form N-1A; proposed Item 19(e)(i)(E) of Form N-3.
61 Proposed Item 12(f)(1)(vi) of Form N-1A. With respect to managed separate accounts issuing variable annuity contracts registered on Form N-3, this description would be required to include the procedures that are used to ensure that disclosure of information about portfolio securities is in the best interests of contractowners, participants, annuitants, and beneficiaries, including procedures to address conflicts between the interests of such persons, on the one hand, and those of the separate account's investment adviser or principal underwriter; the sponsoring insurance company; or any affiliated person of the separate account, its investment adviser or principal underwriter, or the sponsoring insurance company, on the other. Proposed Item 19(e)(i)(F) of Form N-3.
62 Proposed Item 12(f)(1)(vii) of Form N-1A; proposed Item 19(e)(i)(G) of Form N-3.
63 Proposed Instruction to Item 12(f)(1) of Form N-1A; proposed Instruction to Item 19(e)(i) of Form N-3.
64 Proposed Item 12(f)(2) of Form N-1A. With respect to managed separate accounts issuing variable annuity contracts registered on Form N-3, disclosure of any compensation or other consideration received by the sponsoring insurance company would also be required. Proposed Item 19(e)(ii) of Form N-3.
65 Proposed Instruction to Item 12(f)(2) of Form N-1A. With respect to managed separate accounts issuing variable annuity contracts registered on Form N-3, the consideration required to be disclosed would also include any agreement to maintain assets in other investment companies or accounts managed or sponsored by the sponsoring insurance company of the registrant or by an affiliated person of such sponsoring insurance company. Proposed Instruction to Item 19(e)(ii) of Form N-3.
66 Proposed Item 12(f)(2) of Form N-1A; proposed Item 19(e)(ii) of Form N-3.
68 See Investment Company Act Release No. 26198 (Oct. 2, 2003) ("Fund of Funds Proposing Release").
69 This estimate is based on the following calculation: (809 hours x 483 portfolios) + (101 hours x 6,542 portfolios) = 1,051,489 hours. The additional annual hour burden of 24,591 hours (22,897 + 1,694) resulting from the proposed rules described in the Fund of Funds Proposing Release yield a total annual hour burden of 1,076,080 hours.
70 This estimate is based on the following calculation: (915.2 hours x 12 portfolios) + (150.4 hours x 152 portfolios) + (42 hours + 49 hours) = 33,934.2 hours.
71 This estimate is based on the following calculation: (273.2 hours x 157 separate accounts) + (195 hours x 1,242 separate accounts) + (39.5 hours + 310.5 hours) = 285,432.4 hours.
72 This estimate is based on the following calculation: (765 hours x 50 initial registration statements) + (65 hours x 150 annual update post-effective amendments) + (10 hours x 350 additional post-effective amendments) + (12.5 hours + 37.5 hours) = 51,550 hours.
73 The proposed amendments that would clarify mutual funds' and insurance company managed separate accounts' disclosure requirements with respect to fair value pricing are not expected to result in any significant costs.
74 We note that, with respect to our proposals regarding mutual funds' policies and procedures with respect to frequent purchases and redemptions and insurance company separate accounts' policies and procedures with respect to frequent transfers among sub-accounts, in many cases funds currently provide disclosure in their prospectuses or elsewhere of the limitations that they place on frequent trading in order to discourage market timing.
75 This would represent 30,998additional hours for Form N-1A, 728 additional hours for Form N-3, 3,269 additional hours for Form N-4, and 550 additional hours for Form N-6.
76 These figures are based on a Commission estimate that approximately 3,800 investment companies would be subject to the proposed amendments and an estimated hourly wage rate of $45.25. The estimate of the number of investment companies is based on data derived from the Commission's EDGAR filing system. The estimated wage figure is based on published compensation for compliance attorneys outside New York City ($37.60) and programmers ($29.44), and the estimate that attorneys and programmers would divide time equally on compliance with the proposed disclosure requirements, yielding a weighted wage rate of $33.52 (($37.60 x .50) + (29.44 x .50))= $33.52). See Securities Industry Association, Report on Management & Professional Earnings in the Securities Industry 2002 (Sept. 2002). This weighted wage rate was then adjusted upward by 35% for overhead, reflecting the costs of supervision, space, and administrative support, to obtain the total per hour internal cost of $45.25 (33.52 x 1.35) = $45.25.
77 A fund would be required to state in its prospectus that a description of its policies and procedures is available in the fund's SAI, and on the fund's website, if applicable.
79 This estimate is based on analysis by the Division of Investment Management staff of information from databases compiled by third-party information providers, including Morningstar, Inc. and Lipper.
80 This estimate is based on figures compiled by Division of Investment Management staff regarding separate accounts registered on Forms N-3, N-4, and N-6. In determining whether an insurance company separate account is a small entity for purposes of the Regulatory Flexibility Act, the assets of insurance company separate accounts are aggregated with the assets of their sponsoring insurance companies. Rule 0-10(b) under the Investment Company Act [17 CFR 270.0-10(b)].
81 These figures are based on an estimated hourly wage rate of $45.25. Seesupra note 76.
82 We do not edit personal identifying information, such as names or electronic mail addresses, from electronic submissions. You should submit only information that you wish to make available publicly.
83 Pub. L. No. 104-21, Title II, 110 Stat. 857 (1996).
The Maidenhead
Locator System is used to divide the world up into
grid squares, identified by a four-character or
six-character grid square locator. This form allows you
to enter either a grid square locator or the latitude and
longitude of a location. If you enter a grid square and select
Convert to Lat/Lon, the latitude and longitude fields will
be filled in with the postion of the center of
the grid square.
Astro Notes are designed to
be a concise description of some aspect of astronomy,
amateur astronomy or the Astronomical League. Each is,
by necessity, rather narrow in scope. Although Astro
Notes are produced by the Astronomical League as
a service to its members, permission is granted to copy
the notes for redistribution or inclusion in society
newsletters, provided the note is copied in its entirety
with the Astronomical League cited as its source. The
information contained in the Astro Notes is generally
available from a variety of sources. Regional officers
may make copies available at Regional Conventions with
fees to cover their duplicating costs. Additional information
on Astro Notes is available in Astro Note 20.
Glossary: Defense Acquisition Acronyms and Terms, 12th Edition, July 2005
Download Information Title: 12th Glossary of Defense Acquisition Acronyms and Terms File:
12th Glossary 2005.pdf Type:
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The GLOSSARY: Defense Acquisition Acronyms and Terms contains most acronyms, abbreviations, and terms commonly used in the systems acquisition process within the Department of Defense (DoD) and defense industries. It focuses on terms with generic DoD application but also includes some service unique terms. It has been extensively revised to reflect the publication of the new 5000 Series and adoption of the Planning, Programming, Budgeting and Execution (PPBE) process in May 2003 and the issuance of the Joint Capabilities Integration and Development System (JCIDS) in June 2003.
Appendix A contains a listing of common abbreviations and acronyms. Appendix B contains definitions of terms used throughout the DoD acquisition community, including terms that have commonality between U.S. and allied acquisition programs.
While the GLOSSARY identifies and highlights many terms, it is not all-inclusive, particularly regarding the Services and other organizationally unique terms. For those, the reader must turn to service specific indices and/or local publications. The GLOSSARY contains some jargon and "buzzwords," but on the other hand does not attempt to be a "Dictionary of Pentagon-ese."
The GLOSSARY is published for use by students of the Defense Acquisition University (DAU), and others working on defense acquisition matters, including Congressional staffs, Pentagon and other headquarters staffs, weapon systems program managers, and defense contractors.
Acronyms and abbreviations generally are capitalized for ease of reference. This does not imply they are capitalized in general usage. Readers should follow the style used by their own organizations.
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They are
there for support and because they care. They've gone to
great lengths to help make this day the most memorable
of your life. So, how do you say thank you? With a gift
that comes from the heart.
Bridemaids
Gift Ideas:
On
The Go
Having
a wedding far from home? Bahamas perhaps, create
a gift pack for the trip. Include cooler, beach
towels, sun screen, ready-made frozen drinks,
etc... It's a great welcoming
Keep
Your Eyes Open
Look
for a small luxury that they won't buy for
themselves - Cashmere scarves for example. Pick
up bargains during a sale
Engraved Keepsake Gifts Consider
a personalized keepsake gift for your
bridesmaids, silver locket, frame or antique
jewelry box.
Engraved Candles Give
them a gift of light and reflection personalized
candles allow you to give a personal and
practical gift.
Write
Them
Write
a personal note or poem to each bridesmaid and
place inside a special gift such as a jewelry
case.
In
The Spirit
If
you having a theme wedding, consider a gift that
matches the theme. Example: Irish weddings -
give claddaugh necklaces
Relax
Have
they had to deal with "your" stress.
Give each of them a gift
certificate to a spa
where they can get a manicure and a massage.
Time
To Give
If
you have the skills consider making
personal throw quilts for your
bridesmaids. They don't have to be big, maybe
something for the curling up on the couch. Each
quilt can have an image or color that pertains
to each person.
Brushstrokes
Go to a do-it-yourself pottery place and
make each attendant an item painted with your wedding colors, but specially decorated with each maid in
mind.
Out of Ideas
Let
them decide for themselves, with so many choices
let them get something unique. Get Gift Certificates
Do
they have as many photographs as you do? Try a
beautiful scrapbook and include some of the
memories you've shared together. Find
photo album & scrapbook supplies here
Thanks Michelle - Boulder, CO
Seasonal Idea
Brides being married around the holidays could give bridesmaids beautiful Wedding Cake Christmas Tree brooches.
Christmas tree pins are really popular.
Thanks - Crissy - University City, MO
The Carlyle Group and QUALCOMM Close Venture Capital Investment in China
- Enorbus Technologies Secures US$3 Million in Venture Funding and Commits to Bringing Top Game and Entertainment Content to Chinese Mobile Subscribers and the BREW(R) Solution -Â Â
Beijing, China -- Global private equity firm, The Carlyle Group and QUALCOMM Incorporated , pioneer and world leader of Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) digital wireless technology, today announced the successful closing of a US$3 million investment in Enorbus Technologies. Based in Beijing, Enorbus is a leading wireless application publisher and developer of games and entertainment content for wireless phones. Enorbus is also an elite BREW developer and BREW Global Publisher (BGP), and has been actively developing next-generation mobile applications since its founding in 2000. Â
"The investment by Carlyle and QUALCOMM is a further endorsement of our current strategy, execution, and overall business approach," said Norbert Chang, CEO of Enorbus. "We have worked very hard to lead the Chinese market, and this investment validates our position, while strengthening our overall presence globally. The BREW solution has already proven to be a key component to bringing high quality content to China and enables us to rapidly bring our games to market and generate revenue. We look forward to the added value and global perspective that both Carlyle and QUALCOMM provide."Â Â
"We are very excited about the mobile application and entertainment space worldwide, especially in China," said Wayne Tsou, managing director of The Carlyle Group. "We look forward to working with Enorbus to build it into a worldwide market leader for mobile entertainment," added JP Gan, vice president of The Carlyle Group. Â
The venture follows QUALCOMM's $100 million commitment announced in June 2003, to invest in early- to mid-stage Chinese companies engaged in the development and commercialization of CDMA-based products, applications and services. QUALCOMM believes that venture investments in a variety of market segments in China will promote the continued adoption of CDMA worldwide. Â
"QUALCOMM's investment in Enorbus underscores our commitment to supporting the growing CDMA value chain in China," said Jing Wang, senior vice president of QUALCOMM and chairman of QUALCOMM China. "QUALCOMM is thrilled to have such a high-caliber player in the Chinese wireless game industry join the expanding BREW developer community based in China. In addition to developing its own original titles, as a BREW Global Publisher, Enorbus will also help import BREW game and entertainment content from overseas markets thereby enabling Chinese CDMA operators to offer their subscribers a wide range of compelling BREW-based services and applications."Â Â
QUALCOMM's BREW system provides products and services that connect the mobile marketplace value chain, which includes application developers, publishers, content providers, device manufacturers, operators and consumers. Â
In addition to the outstanding paper and other
competitions sponsored by The Minerals, Metals & Materials Society,
student members have the opportunity to apply for a number of scholarships. Except for the International Symposium on Superalloys Scholarship, all TMS academic scholarships are available only to sophomore and junior undergraduate applicants.
Students are encouraged to apply for up to two of the scholarships described below. Additional competition opportunities can be found on the Material
Advantage web site.
ACADEMIC SCHOLARSHIPS
J.
Keith Brimacombe Presidential Scholarship
MAXIMUM VALUE: $6,000
FUNDING BY: TMS Foundation
One $5,000 cash award scholarship is made to an undergraduate
student majoring in metallurgical engineering, materials science
and engineering, or minerals processing/extraction programs.
In addition, a travel stipend of $1,000 is available for
the recipient to attend the TMS Annual Meeting, to formally receive the scholarship.
Light
Metals Division Scholarship
MAXIMUM VALUE: $5,000+
FUNDING BY: TMS Light Metals Division
REQUIREMENT: Coursework/projects must relate to the light metals area.
Three-$4,000 cash award scholarships are available to undergraduate students majoring in metallurgical and/or materials science and engineering with an emphasis on both traditional (aluminum, magnesium, beryllium, titanium, lithium and other reactive metals) and emerging (composites, laminates, etc.) light metals. Additionally, the scholarship recipients are given the opportunity to select up to $300 worth of Light Metals Division-sponsored conference proceedings or textbooks to be donated in the recipient’s name to his/her college or university library. Each recipient may also choose up to $400 worth of books for his/her personal use. As the awards are presented during the Light Metals Division luncheon at the TMS Annual Meeting and Exhibition, up to $600 for travel expenses is available to each recipient.
This scholarship is open to full-time undergraduate applicants in their sophomore or junior years and to individuals who have participated in relevant industrial co-op programs. Scholarship recipients are known as LMD Scholars.
Structural
Materials Division Scholarship
MAXIMUM VALUE: $3,000
FUNDING BY: TMS Structural Materials Division
REQUIREMENT: Coursework/project must relate to the structural materials area.
Two-$2,500 scholarships are available to undergraduate students majoring in metallurgical and/or materials science and engineering with an emphasis on the science and engineering of load-bearing materials, including studies into the nature of a material’s physical properties based upon its microstructure and operating environment.
Awards are presented at the TMS Annual Meeting and Exhibition, and up to $500 is available for each recipient’s travel expenses.
This scholarship is open to full-time undergraduate applicants in their sophomore or junior years. Scholarship recipients are known as SMD Scholars.
Extraction & Processing
Division Scholarship
MAXIMUM VALUE: $2,500+
FUNDING BY: TMS Extraction & Processing Division
REQUIREMENT: Coursework/project must relate to the extraction/processing area.
Four-$2,000 cash award scholarships are available to undergraduate students majoring in the extraction and processing of minerals, metals and materials. Each scholarship recipient is also given the opportunity to select up to five Extraction & Processing Division-sponsored conference proceedings or textbooks to be donated in the recipient’s name to his/her college or university library.
Awards are presented during the Extraction & Processing Division luncheon at the TMS Annual Meeting and Exhibition. Up to $500 for travel expenses is available to each recipient in order to accept the award at the luncheon.
This scholarship is open to full-time undergraduate applicants in their sophomore or junior years. Scholarship recipients are known as EPD Scholars.
Electronic,
Magnetic & Photonic Materials Division
Gilbert Chin Scholarship
MAXIMUM VALUE: $2,500
FUNDING BY: TMS Electronic, Magnetic & Photonic Materials
Division
REQUIREMENT: Coursework/project must relate to the electronic, magnetic, and photonic materials area.
One-$2,000 cash award is available to an undergraduate student studying subjects in relation to synthesis and processing, structure, properties, and performance of electronic, photonic, magnetic, and superconducting materials as well as materials used in packaging, and interconnecting such materials in device structures. An additional $500 for travel expenses is available to the recipient in order to personally accept the award at the TMS Annual Meeting and Exhibition.
This scholarship is open to undergraduate applicants in their sophomore and junior years who are enrolled full-time in a program that includes the study of electronic materials. The scholarship recipient is known as the EMPMD Gilbert Chin Scholar.
International
Symposium on Superalloys Scholarship
MAXIMUM VALUE: $2,000
FUNDING BY: Organizing Committee of the International
Symposium on Superalloys
REQUIREMENT: Coursework/project must relate to the superalloys area.
Two-$2,000 cash award scholarships with up to $500 in travel reimbursements are available to undergraduate and graduate students majoring in metallurgical and/or materials science and engineering with an emphasis on all aspects of the high-temperature, high-performance materials used in the gas turbine industry and all other applications. Awards are presented in conjunction with the Materials Science and Technology Conference.
This scholarship is open to undergraduate and graduate students. Recipients are chosen by a specially appointed selection committee of the TMS Student Affairs Committee and by the International Symposium on Superalloys Organizing Committee.
Judging
Criteria
Scholarship
recipients are chosen by specially appointed selection committees
of the TMS Student Affairs Committee. The following judging
criteria are employed:
Relevance of Coursework/Experience to division's focus
Scholarship Application
Academic Achievement
Activities
in and out of School, Including Work Experience
Applicants must be undergraduate sophomores or junior unless otherwise noted.
Applicants must be enrolled full time in a metallurgical/materials
science engineering program at a qualified college or university.
Relatives
of members of the TMS Student Affairs Committee or of the funding committee/division are not
eligible.
Additional
eligibility requirements are included within the scholarship
descriptions.
Submission
Guidelines
Applications are only accepted via mail.
Applications
for TMS scholarships
are to be made by the students themselves.
Applicants
must submit their typed information on the official TMS Scholarship
Application Form.
Photocopies
of the official Scholarship Forms may be reproduced locally.
In
addition to information requested on the Scholarship Form, applicants must attach an individual statement of 200
words or less, typed, double-spaced, describing career plans,
reports on special projects, leadership roles, work experience,
and community involvement. This is an opportunity for the applicant
to convey specific career plans relating to a particular area
of interest.
Evidence of academic achievement (including rank in class) is
an important factor; therefore, a transcript or facsimile of recent
academic record and current GPA is required.
Applications
should include three official Recommendation
Forms from educators or employers.
Applicants
may apply for up to two of the six scholarship programs. This
must be indicated at the bottom of the Scholarship Application
Form.
We've cooked up some great ideas for your table! This booklet is not only packed with useful information—it's also FREE!
The Art of Living For Those Who Enjoy Cooking & Entertaining The Art of Living features delicious dishes and entertaining tips that are perfect for any occasion, whether you're hosting a Sunday afternoon garden party or planning a romantic dinner for two.
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Tour de France 2004: welcome on the official website
EDITO of Jean-Marie Leblanc
"How can we make sure it's as good next year?" That was the delighted question that could be heard on the 27 July in Paris while the crowds were disbursing after the Tour.
Of course, it is impossible to talk about the Tour de France 2004 without recalling once again that feeling of plenitude and joy that swept over us at the time, and which we were able to share with thousands of spectators and television viewers. For the riders had a special talent, as if inhabited by the grace and magic of this Centenary celebration, also a great success from a commemorative and celebratory angle.
But the lamps of the Centenary celebration have gone out! We shall have to count on something else next year. Of course we will still have Lance Armstrong, Jan Ullrich, Joseba Beloki, Alexandre Vinokourov and many other riders displaying the panache that we have come so much to appreciate.
Our main concern has been to prepare the terrain so that they are once again motivated to provide us with as fine a contest as this year. Discover the terrain; see how it has been split up; study the regulations: nothing is conventional, everything has been designed to create suspense and uncertainty.
First of all, the course seems to us to respond well to today's requirements: reasonable distances, fairly long stages at the beginning, and somewhat shorter at the end, a first rest day after eight days of flat cycling and another one after the Massif Central and Pyrenees have been crossed – just before the Alps; no individual time trial before the last week, but what a trial: the ascension of the Alpe d’Huez!
With a time trial by teams and adjusted time gaps, with a tight points scale for the Best Climber Rankings, we can expect constantly changing rankings and, above all, potential turnaround situations: sporting directors, you will need to be clever strategists!
And let us not forget the atmosphere: the Grand Start in Wallonia, a country of festivities, the reunion with Brittany, a region of cycling, the salute of the Tour to Raymond Poulidor and Saint-Léonard-de Noblat, the first stage of the Tour de France in the Creuse (at last!); all that augurs for a quality vintage.
Without forgetting the question that is already on the tips of everyone's tongues: will "He" be the first to obtain six victories? Well, we will just have to be patient…
+++URL: http://www.niace.org.uk/ALW/Events/EventDetai_list.asp
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Server: Microsoft-IIS/5.0
Date: Fri, 10 Feb 2006 20:33:47 GMT
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Content-Type: text/html
Set-Cookie: ASPSESSIONIDCCDBRTCD=MDPDAHCCKCONIOGPMCBJBDBJ; path=/
Cache-control: private
Event Details
This calendar is available all year round for providers to add
details of learning events, for use by adults who wish to take part in short
sessions of learning in a venue close to them.
SCROLL DOWN TO SEE RESULTS OF YOUR SEARCH
Click on the Event Title to read more about that particular event.
Clicking on a column heading sorts the results by that column.
Clicking it again reverses the sort.
For inspiration and ideas for your own event, see the
Event Archive
Groove Networks next week will release Version 3 of its flagship peer-to-peer collaboration suite, changing the name and increasing the price to allow for new functionality.
ADVERTISEMENT
The product, formerly known as Groove Workspace, becomes Groove Virtual Office in this release. The new name reflects the company's increasing focus on connecting remote employees. A host of new functionality in the more advanced versions of the technology will also necessitate a 20 percent price increase.
Groove Virtual Office Professional Edition will be priced at $179 per user. The Project Edition, which includes advanced project management capabilities and is Groove's most popular version, will be priced at $229 per user.
Pricing for the entry version of the suite, now known as the File Sharing Edition (formerly Standard Edition), remains $69 per user.
Chief among new features across all editions of Version 3 is that Windows Explorer on a user's PC becomes a Groove workspace and can be synchronized across other users' PCs, lessening reliance on e-mail for file transfer, according to company officials.
Another key new feature is the Groove LaunchPad, a starting point for managing workspaces, contacts, and presence and awareness.
Professional and Project editions get advanced forms capabilities supporting forms scripting, layout, preferences and integration with back-end operational applications. These versions also support visual and audible alerts of user presence activities.
Groove is including search capabilities within its workspaces for the first time in this version. The product is also harkening back to its original version with support for launching Groove Virtual Office at Windows startup. This feature was discontinued after customers complained that Groove Version 1 was a resource hog that slowed performance. But better memory management and native Windows controls in this version have enabled the company to offer that feature again, if customers so choose.
Hackers, spammers and identity theft rings are growing in scope and sophistication, setting the stage a year wrought with new challenges for organizations, IT systems and top executives. Join this one-day, live, interactive IT Security Solutions Virtual Tradeshow on March 22 as leading analysts, consultants, government officials and vendor execs share their knowledge on the latest threats facing IT systems and the best, proactive solutions.
Join Dr. Michael Grieves, Core Strategies Principal, and expert guests on Feb. 9 at 9 a.m. ET, for this live, interactive symposium, and learn how a smart identity management strategy can help avoid disaster and increase efficiency.
They'll be standing beside on your biggest day. So how
do you say thank you. It's not spending the most, but
giving a gift you want to give. Get some ideas here and
get back to planning for the big day.
Groomsmens
Gift Ideas:
Stay
On Time Watches
can be exceptional gifts.
Sportwatches for the athletic types or
traditional styles that can be worn at the
wedding.
Not
Risky Business
Every guy has a pair of sunglasses
but they can
always use another pair - purchase stylish Sunglasses
or get a gift certificate for them.
Writing
in Style
For
friend that are going a fine pen that can be
engraved makes a stylish gift. Cross
pens
Groomsmen Classic
A personalized flask, choose from a classic
style, the golf course model, binocular flasks
and more. Include your own tasty beverage.
Cigars make for great gift that everyone in
my wedding party enjoyed at the wedding.
Thanks - Jack - Ohio
A great groomsman gift, if they are into golf, is a
round of golf at an excellent course. If you have a
chance invite the groom to join you when you play, after
he returns from his honeymoon.
Thanks - Steve - Arizona
+++URL: http://www.pr.state.az.us/Parks/parkhtml/redrock.html
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Fri, 10 Feb 2006 20:37:43 GMT
Server: Apache/1.3.33 (Darwin)
Cache-Control: max-age=60
Expires: Fri, 10 Feb 2006 20:38:43 GMT
Last-Modified: Thu, 26 Jan 2006 23:39:01 GMT
ETag: "e36e-3ed7-43d95d95"
Accept-Ranges: bytes
Content-Length: 16087
Connection: close
Content-Type: text/html
Red Rock State Park
The Red Rock State Park property was acquired by the Arizona State Parks Board in 1986 and the park was opened to the public in 1991. The park's 286 acres were originally part of the Smoke Trail Ranch, owned by Jack and Helen Frye. Arizona's famous Oak Creek meanders through this scenic park, creating a diverse riparian habitat abounding with plants and wildlife. This riparian habitat, the land-based ecosystem closely associated with Oak Creek, provides the setting and the opportunity for Red Rock State Park to offer a center for environmental education.
Herbarium and Natural History Guides
Guests can learn about the native plants and animals of the area through the park's guide books. Subjects include birds, plants, shrubs, trees and reptiles. The complete collection can be viewed with prior arrangements.
The family-oriented trail system is well marked for your safety and pleasure. The 5-mile network consists of interconnecting loops, which lead you to vistas of red rock or along the lush greenery of Oak Creek. The Eagle's Nest Loop and the Apache Fire Loop are joined together by the Coyote Ridge Trail. Eagle's Nest is the highest point in the park with an elevation gain of 300'. These three major loops are connected along the riparian corridor by the Kisva Trail, which also leads up to the short loop of the Yavapai Ridge Trail. The Javelina Trail takes you into the pinyon/juniper woodlands and back to the other loops. Rattlesnake Ridge rises just above the Twin Cypress Picnic area. Stop by the visitor center desk for detailed information before starting out on the trails. Bikes and horses are only allowed on designated routes.
Self-Guided Interpretive Trails
Two self-guided trails with numbered points along the route explain environmental aspects of the area. The Smoke Trail guide takes you along Oak Creek for 1/2 mile. The Ethno-botany guide explains the traditional uses of plants found along the Kisva Trail. Pick up the guides at the visitor center desk for a returnable deposit.
School Field Trips
The "Connection Program" is Red Rock State Park's school field trip environmental education program. The program is designed for students from K-12th grade. There is a group-size limit and it is recommended that reservations be made early in the school year due to its popularity. Registration must take place at least one month prior to your visit.
Amenities: Ramada – Water, electric, tables, grills. Visitors Center Rooms – chairs, tables. For weddings we have "wedding information packet" upon request.
Maximum Group Size: Ramada – 75 with existing tables and up to 250 with additional tables/chairs, user must provide portable tents. Visitor Center roof – 50 people, Wedding Tree – 250 people.
Picnic Areas: Yes
Reservation Policy: Normally we will take them 6 months in advance. For a wedding we will take 12 months in advance. Payment must be received to secure facility 30 days in advance.
Restrictions: No pets allowed, pack in pack out trash, no swimming/wading.
Group Use Fees: Ramada - $25/4 hours for groups up to 75; $40/4 hours for groups over 75. Weddings - $50/4 hours for Wedding Tree, $50 for room rental, $50 for Visitor Center Roof Top, $50 for Sentinel Crossing or Noteman seating areas.
Contact Name and Phone Number: Manager – (928) 282-6907, FAX (928) 282-5972.
Protect Red Rock's Resources!
Stay on marked roads & trails.
No pets allowed.
Charcoal fires in grills only. Wood gathering prohibited.
No swimming or wading.
No firearms, BB, pellet guns, bows, or fireworks.
Do not remove vegetation, wildlife, rocks, or artifacts.
Keep all sound devices to an individual hearing level.
Be sure to pack out trash you bring into park.
Visitors must stay on designated trails.
No rock climbing.
Interpretive Programs
Guided Nature Walks - (Daily 10:00 a.m.) - 1-1/2 hrs.
Special Program - (Daily 2:00 p.m.) 45-minutes.
Bird Walks - (Wed. & Sat.) Call for times.
Eagle's Nest Guided hike. (3mi/3hr) Call for times.
First Sunday Program - Once a month - (2:00 p.m.) This program includes presentations by noted speakers and experts in the field.
Moonlight Hikes - (April - Oct.) Call for times
Exhibits
The hands-on educational exhibits are based on the theme of biotic communities. The panels bring to life the variety of habitats found within the park.
Videos and Slide Programs
Various topics ranging from Archaeology to Zoology are presented upon request in the Visitor Center's Red Rock Theatre. Visitors should inquire at the desk.
PLEASE NOTE: Applications will only be accepted if they are for positions posted to the website.
Certified and Non-certified Positions
Please print and complete the Employment Applications or one may be obtained at the ACSO Human Resources Bureau, Monday through Friday, 8:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.
You will need Adobe Acrobat Reader to view the following positions. Click on the link to download your free version of Acrobat Reader
Why Work for the Sheriff's Office
VARIETY: ACSO offers a wide variety of career opportunities for individuals interested in law enforcement and corrections. Positions are classified as either “certified” or “staff.”
SALARY/BENEFITS ACSO provides a comprehensive benefits package for employees. It includes life, health and dental insurance, paid leave and tuition reimbursement. See Benefits for
details.
TRAINING: ACSO provides some of the most comprehensive training available in law enforcement. The equipment, facilities and instructors are superior. If what you need is not available within ACSO, the George Kirkpatrick Law Enforcement Training Center offers a variety of courses approved by FDLE. For more information about a career in law enforcement go to Criminal Justice Selection Center at Santa Fe Community College www.policecareers.org.
SERVICE: ACSO offers you the opportunity to serve your community in many different ways. In both certified and support positions you have an opportunity to assist others in need, provide protective services when necessary, and offer guidance and example to the youth of the community. You are also able to work in volunteer or extra duty jobs which enrich everyone involved.
ATMOSPHERE: At ACSO you will be working with some of the most professional law enforcement and support personnel in the area. Their pride in the agency and its capabilities are evident in the way they perform their jobs.
ACSO is looking for the very best to fill important and influential public service positions. Are you ready to join?
ASP
Conference Series Timely
accounts of the important meetings in astronomy & astrophysics
Since
1988 the non-profit Astronomical Society of the Pacific (ASP)
has published the renowned Conference Series as part of its
century-old mission to provide resources for astronomers and
advance the science of astronomy.
New!
Electronic access
is now available for all titles produced in 2004 and
beyond.
Browse
the e-Book Access site for a free preview of select volumes
and expanded information on each title. All titles must be
purchased from the AstroShop
before obtaining full electronic book access. Meeting
attendees, Standing Order Customers, and individual purchasers
of available volumes receive additional free electronic access
as well as shipment of the printed volume.
Dr.
Harold McNamara retires as Managing Editor for the ASP Conference
Series. Read more...
For information about publishing with the ASP Conference Series,
contact:
Astronomical
Society of the Pacific
ASP Conference Series/IAU Publications
Room N221 -- ESC / PO Box 4666
Brigham Young University
Provo UT 84602-4666 USA
Publication Staff:
J. W. Moody, Managing Editor
Enid L. Livingston, Publication Manager
Lisa B. Roper, Technical Specialist support@aspbooks.org
Jeremy C. Roper, e-Books Specialist
T.
J. Mahoney, LaTeX Computer Consultant (Spain) tjm@iac.es
+++URL: http://www.plyrics.com/lyrics/nofx/idiotsonofanasshole.html
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Fri, 10 Feb 2006 20:37:39 GMT
Server: Apache/1.3.33 (Unix) PHP/4.4.1 mod_deflate/1.0.21
Last-Modified: Tue, 21 Dec 2004 22:09:22 GMT
ETag: "4c821b-990-41c89f12"
Accept-Ranges: bytes
Content-Length: 2448
Keep-Alive: timeout=10, max=50
Connection: Keep-Alive
Content-Type: text/html
NOFX LYRICS - Idiot Son Of An Asshole
NOFX LYRICS
"Idiot Son Of An Asshole"
He's not smart, a C student
And that's after buying his way into school
Beady eyes, and he's kinda dyslexic
Can he read? No one's really quite sure
He signs stuff and he executes people
Maybe that's why, he doesn't have any friends
Cocaine and a little drunk driving
Doesn't matter, when you're the Commander in Chief.
Idiot son of an asshole
He's the idiot son of an asshole
Idiot son of an asshole
He's the idiot son of an asshole
Put on some make-up, turn on the 8-Track,
I'm putting a week back on the shelf,
Suddenly I'm the President, of the United States,
But then I woke up, and realized I'm still me.
He's too dumb, to eat pretzels, apparently smart enough to fix an election.
Moved boldly into the White House,
but most people voted against him.
He likes naps, He really likes naptime, A couple of naps and then a nap and then he's ready for bed,
He may be from Bush descent, but he's always gonna be the unpresident.
Idiot son of an asshole
He's the idiot son of an asshole
Idiot son of an asshole
He's the idiot son of an asshole
Idiot son of an asshole
He's the idiot son of an asshole
He's our president!
Thanks to Michael Stringer (TheHybridTheorist@hotmail.com) for these lyrics
Thanks to Jerry, Mike Ricahrdson (mike@hakuma.com), Joe Lyons (Bradleystp@hotmail.com) for correcting these lyrics
The risk assessment of this threat has been upgraded to Medium due to it's prevalence.
If you think that you may be infected with this threat, and are unsure how to check your system, you may
download the Stinger tool
to scan your system and remove the virus if present. This is not required for McAfee users as McAfee products are capable of detecting and removing the virus with the latest update. (see the removal instructions below for more information).
Note:Receiving an email alert stating that the virus came from your email address is not
an indication that you are infected as the virus often forges the from address.
-- Update July 5th, 2004 --
The risk assessment of this threat has been upgraded to Low-Profiled due to media attention at:
This is a mass-mailing worm with the following characteristics:
contains its own SMTP engine to construct outgoing messages
harvests email addresses from the victim machine
the From: address of messages is spoofed
attachment can be a password-protected zip file, with the password included in the message body (as plaintext or within an image).
contains a remote access component (notification is sent to hacker)
copies itself to folders that have the phrase shar
in the name (such as common peer-to-peer applications; KaZaa, Bearshare, Limewire, etc)
uses various mutex names selected from those W32/Netsky variants have used, in order to prevent those W32/Netsky variants running on infected machines.
the sample is packed with UPX runtime compressor.
Note:
The worm carries its source code (assembler) in its body, encrypted. When mass-mailing itself, the worm may also include a copy of the source code (within a ZIP archive, SOURCES.ZIP). It is not unlikely therefore that we will see further trivial variants based on this source. Though various differences may be expected, the following parameters are most likely (easy) to be modified:
port number used by backdoor
backdoor password
date of 'expiry'
Mail Propagation
The details are as follows:
From :(address is spoofed) Subject :
Re: Msg reply
Re: Hello
Re: Yahoo!
Re: Thank you!
Re: Thanks :)
RE: Text message
Re: Document
Incoming message
Re: Incoming Message
RE: Incoming Msg
RE: Message Notify
Notification
Changes..
Update
Fax Message
Protected message
RE: Protected message
Forum notify
Site changes
Re: Hi
Encrypted document,0
Body Text:
Various message bodies are used, in some cases containing the password for an encrypted attachment (either in plaintext, or within an image).
Attachment:
The following filenames are used:
Information
Details
text_document
Updates
Readme
Document
Info
Details
MoreInfo
Message
using one the following extensions:
Script dropper - using one of the following file extensions:
HTA
VBS
Executable, using one of the following file extensions:
exe
scr
com
cpl
Executable dropper, CPL file with .CPL file extension.
If the attachment is a ZIP file, the archive may be encrpyted (password protected). The password is contained in the message body (plaintext or image).
Installation
The virus copies itself into the Windows System directory as LOADER_NAME.EXE. For example:
C:\WINNT\SYSTEM32\loader_name.exe
It also creates copies of itself (with differing appended garbage) in this directory to perform its functions:
loader_name.exeopen
loader_name.exeopenopen
The following Registry key is added to hook system startup:
A mutex is created to ensure only one instance of the worm is running at a time. One of the following mutex names is used in an attempt to stop particular variants of W32/Netsky running on the infected machine:
MuXxXxTENYKSDesignedAsTheFollowerOfSkynet-D
'D'r'o'p'p'e'd'S'k'y'N'e't'
_-oOaxX|-+S+-+k+-+y+-+N+-+e+-+t+-|XxKOo-_
[SkyNet.cz]SystemsMutex
AdmSkynetJklS003
____--->>>>U<<<<--____
_-oO]xX|-S-k-y-N-e-t-|Xx[Oo-_
This worm attempts to terminate the processes of various security programs (and other worms).
The worm opens port 1234 (TCP) on the victim machine.
This virus constructs messages using its own SMTP engine. Target email addresses are harvested from files with the following extensions on the victim machine:
.wab
.txt
.msg
.htm
.shtm
.stm
.xml
.dbx
.mbx
.mdx
.eml
.nch
.mmf
.ods
.cfg
.asp
.php
.pl
.wsh
.adb
.tbb
.sht
.xls
.oft
.uin
.cgi
.mht
.dhtm
.jsp
The virus spoofs the sender address by using a harvested address in the From: field.
The virus avoids sending itself to addresses containing the following:
@hotmail
@msn
@microsoft
rating@
f-secur
news
update
anyone@
bugs@
contract@
feste
gold-certs@
help@
info@
nobody@
noone@
kasp
admin
icrosoft
support
ntivi
unix
bsd
linux
listserv
certific
sopho
@foo
@iana
free-av
@messagelab
winzip
google
winrar
samples
abuse
panda
cafee
spam
pgp
@avp.
noreply
local
root@
postmaster
Peer To Peer Propagation
Files are created in folders that contain the phrase shar
:
Microsoft Office 2003 Crack, Working!.exe
Microsoft Windows XP, WinXP Crack, working Keygen.exe
Microsoft Office XP working Crack, Keygen.exe
Porno, sex, oral, anal cool, awesome!!.exe
Porno Screensaver.scr
Serials.txt.exe
KAV 5.0
Kaspersky Antivirus 5.0
Porno pics arhive, xxx.exe
Windows Sourcecode update.doc.exe
Ahead Nero 7.exe
Windown Longhorn Beta Leak.exe
Opera 8 New!.exe
XXX hardcore images.exe
WinAmp 6 New!.exe
WinAmp 5 Pro Keygen Crack Update.exe
Adobe Photoshop 9 full.exe
Matrix 3 Revolution English Subtitles.exe
ACDSee 9.exe,0
Remote Access Component
The virus listens on TCP port 1234 for remote connections. It attempts to notify the author that the infected system is ready to accept commands, by contacting various websites, calling a PHP script on the remote sites.
After 25th January, 2005 , this component of the worm is also deactivated.
W32/Bagle.gen!pwdzip (for password-protected archive containing the worm)
W32/Bagle.gen!vbs (script dropper)
Modifications made to the system Registry and/or INI files for the purposes of hooking system startup, will be successfully removed if cleaning with the recommended engine and DAT combination (or higher).
+++URL: http://www.nlectc.org/virlib/InfoList.asp?strType=Funding
HTTP/1.0 200 OK
Connection: close
Date: Fri, 10 Feb 2006 20:37:47 GMT
Server: Microsoft-IIS/6.0
X-Powered-By: ASP.NET
Content-Length: 15617
Content-Type: text/html
Set-Cookie: LBServerID=1285; path=/
Set-Cookie: ASPSESSIONIDSCSADSCS=GCKHIIPBJODPIDJHBCCMFLDL; path=/
Cache-control: private
JUSTNET - NLECTC Virtual Library
The National Institute of Justice is the research and development agency of the U.S. Department of Justice. NLECTC is a program of NIJ's Office of Science and Technology.
Call the NLECTC Information Hotline at 800-248-2742 or email asknlectc@nlectc.org.
-- Update August 16th, 2004 --
The risk assessment of this threat has been lowered to Low-Profiled due to decreased prevalence. --
-- Update April 28, 2004 --
The assessment of this threat has been upgraded to Medium due to an increase in prevalence
If you think that you may be infected with this threat, and are unsure how to check your system, you may
download the Stinger tool
to scan your system and remove the virus if present. This is not required for McAfee users as McAfee products are capable of detecting and removing the virus with the latest update. (see the removal instructions below for more information).
Note:Receiving an email alert stating that the virus came from your email address is not
an indication that you are infected as the virus often forges the from address.
This detection is for a new variant of W32/Netsky. It bears the following characteristics:
harvests email addresses from the victim machine
contains its own SMTP engine to construct outgoing messages
emails arrives as a PIF extension attachment
spoofs the From: address
Mail Propagation
The virus harvests email addresses from files on the victim machine with the following extensions:
.adb
.asp
.cfg
.cgi
.dbx
.dhtm
.doc
.eml
.htm
.html
.jsp
.mbx
.mdx
.mht
.mmf
.msg
.nch
.oft
.php
.ods
.pl
.ppt
.rtf
.sht
.shtm
.stm
.tbb
.txt
.uin
.vbs
.wab
.wsh
.xls
.xml
Messages are constructed using the virus' own SMTP engine. They bear the following characteristics:
From:
spoofed (using harvested email addresses) Subject:
(selected from one of the following)
Correction
Hurts
Privacy
Password
Wow
Criminal
Pictures
Text
Money
Stolen
Found
Numbers
Funny
Only
love?
More
samples
Picture
Letter
Question
Illegal
Body:
(selected from one of the following)
Please use the font arial!
How can I help you?
Still?
I've your password.
Take it easy!
Why do you show your body?
Hey, are you criminal?
Your pictures are good!
The text you sent to me is not so good!
True love letter?
Do you have no money?
Do you have asked me?
I've found your creditcard.
Check the data!
Are your numbers correct?
You have no chance...
Wow! Why are you so shy?
Do you have more samples?
Do you have more photos about you?
Do you have written the letter?
Does it hurt you?
Please do not sent me your illegal stuff again!!!
Attachment:
(PIF extensions with one of the following filenames)
corrected_doc.pif
hurts.pif
document1.pif
passwords02.pif
image034.pif
myabuselist.pif
your_picture01.pif
your_text01.pif
your_letter.pif
your_bill.pif
my_stolen_document.pif
visa_data.pif
pin_tel.pif
your_text.pif
loveletter02.pif
all_pictures.pif
your_letter_03.pif
your_picture.pif
abuses.pif
The virus installs itself on the victim machine as CSRSS.EXE:
%WinDir%\CSRSS.EXE
(%WinDir% = Windows directory, such as c:\windows or c:\winnt)
The following Registry key is added to hook system startup:
Welcome
to CareerMart's Resume Center. By posting your resume into our database
your skills will be seen by today's hottest companies. Head Hunters
and Staffing companies cannot access our database. So the only calls
and/or e-mails you will receive will be from your potential next employer.
There is no charge for you to post your resume into our database.
Socio-economic
devastation caused by the occupation of territory of Azerbaijan
Republic
by Republic of Armenia, 1991-1994
As
the result of aggression by the Republic of Armenia against
the Republic of Azerbaijan, during the 1988-1994 period,
serious material damage has been inflicted, currently estimated
at $22 billion dollars. Overall
area of the occupied territories of the Republic of Azerbaijan
includes:
the
territory of the Nagorno-Karabakh region (former Nagorno-Karabakh
Autonomous Oblast (NKAO), abolished in 1991);
the
territories of 7 regions bordering with Nagorny Karabakh
(Aghdam, Fizuli, Djabrail, Zangelan, Gubadly, Lachin and
Kelbajar);
the
territories of 4 regions bordering with Armenia (Gazakh,
Agstafa, Tovuz and Gedabey);
the
territories of 4 regions bordering with the Line of Contact
(Ter-Ter, Goranboy, Agdjabedi and Beylagan);
the
territories of the administrative regions of the Nakhichevan
Autonomous Republic (Azerbaijani exclave, separated from
the rest of the republic in 1920),
Total:
17,000 sq.km. (10,563 sq. miles) Occupied
regions of Azerbaijan has been totally destroyed and robed.
The great economic damage has been inflicted also to 4 regions
of Azerbaijan bordering with Armenia, 4 regions bordering
with the Line of Contact and the territories of the administrative
regions of the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic. Detailed
data on each of the seven occupied regions of Azerbaijan Republic
— excluding Nagorno Karabakh (former NKAO) and regions
bordering Armenia or Line of Contact, suffering from minor
occupation or continued hostilities — are provided below:
To
find out more about Armenian aggression and occupation of
Azerbaijani territories, as well as all ASA activities and
how to help, visit official website of ASA: www.azerbaijan-america.org.
Researchers can also visit Karabagh.com,
Karabakh.org
and Khojaly.net
websites for more information.
Assembly
of Turkish American Associations Home
of 54 Turkish-American Associations
across U.S., Canada and Turkey
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There are several very basic parts that show up in every successful
interface. Elements such as wires, screws, and metallic tubes and plates
are absolutely necessary to mimic technology. In this tutorial I have gathered
together a compilation of the techniques used to create these various parts.
Make no mistake, most of the material here is not terribly original. You'll
find half a dozen Photoshop and PSP tutorials on creating screwheads, plates,
and wires. But these are the methods that I use to create these parts,
as done with PSP 7.
Metal Bars
Metal bars are among the easiest things to create.All
they require is a simple Linear Gradient - black to white to black. Start
by opening a new file ( File > New) with a white (or transparent) background
and 16 million colors. Use your Selection tool to create a rectangular
selection. Make sure that Feather is set to 0 and that the Antialias box
is checked.
Now choose the Flood Fill tool from the Tool Bar. Then click on the
Foreground Style box and hold down your mouse button. Select the Gradient
style from the popup (it's the second one in the list.) A gradient will
appear as your Foreground Style. Click on the style box once to open the
Gradient dialogue box. In the Dialogue, click on the small arrow next to
the gradient image, and select the Black-White gradient from the list.
Next, choose the Linear Gradient Style (the first one in the list), set
the angle to 0 (90 if your bar is going to run vertically), repeats to
1, and make sure that the Invert Gradient box is Unchecked. Now go to your
Tool Options palette. make sure that your Blend mode is set to Normal,
your Match Mode is set to None, and your Opacity to 100. Click once inside
your selection. Hit Ctrl + D to release the selection.
To make ridged or striped metal bars, first create
a bar with the gradient as noted above. Don't release the selection at
the end. Now open a new file, 4 x 4 pixels, with a transparent background
color and 16.7 million colors. Zoom in tight on this window. Set your foreground
color to black then choose the Paint Brush tool. Set the Size to 1 pixel,
the Step to 1, and the Hardness, Opacity, and Density to 100. Draw a line,
pixel by pixel along the right or left edge (or the top/bottom edge if
your bar runs vertically.) Be sure to note the name of this file.
Click on the Foreground Style box again and hold the
button. This time, choose the Pattern fill from the popup. It looks like
a square made up of nine spots. A pattern will now appear as your Foreground
fill style. Click the box once to open the Pattern dialogue box. Click
the little arrow next to the pattern image and scroll to the top of the
list. Look for the file that you created with the 1 pixel line, and choose
that for the fill (it will actually appear as an image with a series of
parallel lines in the list.) Set the Scale to 100 and the Angle to 0. Click
the OK button to exit the Dialogue box, and then click once on your selection.
If you want to give your bar a "threaded" look, set
the angle in the Pattern dialogue box to about 352 degrees (for a horizontal
bar.) and then Flood Fill your bar.
A wide variety of results can be obtained by using
different patterns, such as a transparent/white/black pattern.
Below are just a few of the possible effects.
If you want to add a "wheel" to the end of a bar,
make a second rectangular selection at one end, making it wider than the
original bar. Try to center the selection on the earlier bar.
Flood Fill the new selection with the same Black/White/Black
linear gradient.
Choose the Draw tool and set the Line Type to Single
Line, the Width to 1, and leave all the boxes unchecked. Set the
Foreground color to Black and the Background Style to Null. Draw a black
line between the wheel and the bar to delineate the two. Holding
down the Shift key while you draw the line will help keep the line vertical
(or horizontal.) Add another at the other end of the wheel.
Fusing Gradient Parts
Sometimes it can be convenient to have a way to
fuse parts seamlessly into complicated structures. This can be done with
a simple layers trick. Start by opening a new file (Layers > New) with
a transparent background and 16.7 million colors. Paste in or create a
new part with a metallic gradient on this first layer. Now create a new
layer (Layers > New) above the first one. On this second layer paste the
part that you want to fuse with the one you placed on the botton layer.
Two such parts are shown below.
Select the second (top) layer in the Layers Menu. Next go to Layers
> Properties. In the Layer Properties dialogue box, set the Blend
Mode to Lighten. The two gradient parts will appear to merge. To make the
bond permanent, go to Layers > Merge > Merge Visible. The new interface
part can now be copied and moved as a single piece.
Metal Plates
Start by opening a new file (File > New), with a
transparent background and 16.7 million colors. Choose the Selection tool
and create a rectangular selection. Make sure that the Antialias box is
checked and that Feather is set to 0.
Next go to the Style palette and set your Foreground
color to light gray (RGB 192/192/192) and your Background color to White.
Click on the Foreground Style box and hold down the mouse key. Choose the
Gradient style from the popup. In the Gradient dialogue, choose the Linear
Gradient, set the angle to 315 degrees, the Repeats to 1, and make sure
that the Invert Gradient box is UNchecked. Click once inside your selection.
To give a 3-D look, add an inner bevel (Effects
> 3D Effects > Inner Bevel.) Use the Metallic preset.
To give a more metallic look to the plate, adjust the contrast a bit.
Go to Colors > Adjust > Brightness/Contrast. Set the Brightness to -61
and the Contrast to 52
To finish, release the selection by typing Ctrl + D.
Some monitors show banding with gradients, so it doesn't hurt to add 3%
Uniform Noise (Effects > Noise > Add.)
One final note: Sometimes the look of a metal plate can be vastly improved
by applying what's called a "Pool Shadow" filter. This was done in the
title graphic. Both Greg's
Factory Output Vol II and Filter
Factory Gallery A contain Pool Shadow filters
Spheres and Spherically Curved Parts
Start by creating a new file with a white background
and 16.7 million colors. Next, create a new layer above the background
(Layers > New.) Now choose the Preset Shapes tool and set the Shape Type
to Ellipse, the Line Style to #1 Solid, and make sure that only the Antialias
box is checked. To create a sphere, set your Foreground Style to Null,
and your Background color to Black. To create a circular ring, set the
Foreground to Black, the Background to Null, and the Line width to a high
setting (10-30) While drawing the circle, you must hold down your Shift
key and click with the right mouse button to create the shape from the
center.
Switch to the Selection tool and in the Tool Options
palette, set the Selection Type to Rectangle, Feather to 0, and check the
Antialias
box. Draw a reactangular selection around your circle. Now click once on
the circle to float it. The marqee should contract to outline your circle
Select the Flood Fill tool. In the Style palette,
set the Foreground Style to Gradient (Click and hold on the Foreground
swatch and select the gradient icon from the popup. Click on the style
box once to open the Gradient dialogue box. In the Dialogue, click on the
small arrow next to the gradient image, and select the Black-White gradient
from the list. Next, choose the Sunburst Gradient Style (the third one
down in the list), set the Vertical and Horizontal offsets to 25,
and make sure that the Invert Gradient box is checked. Set the Repeats
to 0 or 1. Now go to your Tool Options palette. Make sure that your
Blend mode is set to Normal, your Match Mode is set to None, and your Opacity
to 100. Click once inside your selection. Hit Ctrl + D to release the selection.
If you had the Repeats set to 0, you should get a soft rounded look.
If you set the Repeats to 1, the shape will seem more dramatically lit.
Cutting Through Metal Sheets
There are two basic ways to create an opening through
one of your interface parts, to pass through tubes, wires, etc. One way
is to actually make a hole through the part, so that the layers below show
through. This can be convenient if you have some details on lower layers
that you want to show. The other way is the just make it seem like a hole
is present, creating a pseudo-opening so to speak.
To create a real opening, start by opening a new file (File > New) with
16.7 million colors and a white or transparent background. Create a new
layer (Layers > New) and either create or paste in a "metallic" part.
The metal plate below was created using a slightly modified Black-White
gradient.
Create a selection on the plate, representing the
holes that you want to cut. This selection can be simple or complicated.
Extremely complicated selections may be created in another window and then
stored (Selections > Save to Alpha Channel) and reloaded from the Alpha
channel (Selections > Load from Alpha Channel.)
3) Hit the Delete key to remove the selected portions.
Leaving the selection active, switch to the background
layer by selecting it in the Layers menu. Now create a new layer above
the background (Layers > New.) Invert your current selection (Selections
> Invert) and switch to the Airbrush tool. Color in the edges around your
hole with a medium to dark gray. Choose the Selections tool now and while
holding down the Shift key, use the arrow pad on your keyboard to move
your selection up two pixels and to the left two pixels. Release your selection
(Ctrl + D.) The metal plate now has an inner edge at the holes.
5) Return to the background layer and use the airbush
to color the region behind the holes a deep black
Objects beneath the plate can be added by creating
a layer just above the background (Layers > New) and placing them on the
layer. Remember, objects will become darker the lower they are beneath
the plate. A drop shadow (created after merging the plate with the inside
edge highlight) can also add to the illusion of depth.
Pseudo-holes
Begin again with a metal gradient plate of some kind
(preferably on its own layer above the background.)
Create a new layer above your plate (Layers > New.)
Now select the Preset Shapes tool and set your Background color to Black
and your Foreground Style to Null. In the Tool Options palette, set the
Shape Type to Circle, and make sure that the Retain Style and Create as
Vector boxes are Unchecked, and that the Antialias box is checked. Create
a circle in black Position it where you want the hole.
Duplicate the layer with the circle (Layers > Duplicate)
and convert the circle color to white by inverting the color (Colors >
Negative Image.)
Go to the Selection menu and choose Select All.
Now hold down the Shift key and use the arrows on the cursor pad to move
the selection down two pixels and to the right two pixels. Release your
selection by hitting Ctrl + D
Open the Layers Property box (Layers > Properties)
and change the Blend Mode to Soft Light. The hole will now appear with
a highlight along the inner edge.
Create a new layer on top and you can add wires, tubes,
etc. to pass into the opening.
Inset Lines
Inset lines can be used to create grills, speakers,
or other bits of detail on the surface of an interface. The general procedure
for creating such lines can also be applied to text.
Begin by selecting the surface you wish to incise.
A medium dark colored surface works best. Too dark or too light and the
effect won't be seen. Here we start with a bevelled gray plate.
Create a new Raster layer above your surface (Layers
> New) and add some black lines and/or shapes.
Duplicate the layer with the black lines (Layers >
Duplicate) and invert the color (Colors > Negative Image.) The lines should
now appear white.These white lines will become the highlight of the inset.
Use the Selection tool to draw a selection around
the white lines. Hold down the Shift key and use the cursor arrows on your
keyboard to move the selection down two pixels and to the right two pixels.Now
open up the Layer Properties box (Layers > Properties.) Set the Blend mode
to Soft Light to complete the effect.
If you wish to have a particular color inset into
your surface, follow the same procedure as above. When you are done, return
to the layer with the black lines by selecting it in the Layers menu or
palette. Duplicate this layer (Layers > Duplicate.) Use the Selection tool
to create a selection around the black lines on this new layer, and then
click on the lines to float the selection. Flood Fill with the color of
your choice or use the Air Brush tool to provide color. Return to the layer
with the black lines, select them, and move the selection up one pixel
and to the left 1 pixel. The result of such a procedure (using blue for
the inset) is shown below.
Fasteners: Rivets and Screws
Screws and other fasteners add important detail
to an interface, details which can make all the difference in the world.
Use them in empty places, at the edges between interface parts, or to give
a one piece casing the look of having been assembled from parts.
Choose the surface on which to create your screw.Here
we've used the same plate as for the inset lines.
Create a new raster layer above the surface (Layers
> New.) Now select the Preset Shapes tool and set your Background color
to Black and your Foreground Style to Null. In the Tool Options palette,
set the Shape Type to Circle, and make sure that the Retain Style and Create
as Vector boxes are Unchecked, and that the Antialias box is checked. Create
a small black circle. This will be the size of your screw head.
Duplicate the layer with your black circle twice (Layers
> Duplicate, times two.) You shouldn't see much change to your image.
On the uppermost circle layer, use the selection tool
to draw a selection around the circle. Click the selection once to float
it.. Set your foreground color to white and your background color to dark
gray (RGB 64, 64, 64.) Now, in the Style palette, set the Foreground Style
to Gradient (Click and hold on the Foreground swatch and select the gradient
icon from the popup.) Click on the style box once to open the Gradient
dialogue box. In the Dialogue, click on the small arrow next to the gradient
image, and select the Foreground - Background gradient from the list. Next,
choose the Sunburst Gradient Style (the third one down in the list), set
the Vertical and Horizontal offsets to 25, and make sure that the
Invert Gradient box is Unchecked. Set the Repeats to 0 or 1. Now
go to your Tool Options palette. Make sure that your Blend mode is set
to Normal, your Match Mode is set to None, and your Opacity to 100.
Click on your selection to create the screw head. Release your selection
by hitting Ctrl + D.
Now return to the layer just above your surface, the
one containing the first black circle. Use the Selection tool to create
a selection around the circle. Hold down the Shift key and use the cursor
arrows to move the circle up one pixel and left one pixel. Again release
your selection.
Move up one layer and invert the color to create a
white circle (Colors > Negative Image.) Select this circle and move it
down one pixel and right one pixel.
Move back to your uppermost layer by selecting it
in the Layer palette. Now create a new layer above it (Layers > New.) Zoom
in on your screw and select the Draw tool. Set your Foreground Style back
to Solid color and set the color to Black. Set the Background Style to
Null. On the Tool Options Palette, set the Line Type to Single Line, the
Width to 1 pixel, the Line Style to #1 Solid, and make sure that Antialias
is the only box checked. Now use the tool to create a single straight
black line across the surface of the screw.
Duplicate your layer with the line (Layers > Duplicate.)
First invert the color (Colors > Negative Image) to create a white line.
Use the Selection tool to draw a selection around the white line. Hold
down the Shift key and use the cursor arrows on your keyboard to move the
selection down one pixel and to the right one pixel.Now open up the Layer
Properties box (Layers > Properties.) Set the Blend mode to Soft Light
to complete the effect. The completed screw will appear as shown below.
If you have access to Blade
Pro or Super Blade Pro, a nice metallic preset can add some nice color
and shine to your screws. Here I've used a preset called Brass Knocker,
created by Tony Cheroke. You can get it at the Cheroke
Family Homepage, in the Graphics
section (it's in Set # 10.)
To create a rivet rather than a screw, complete the
above steps through creating the rounded head. Make a new layer above
all the others (Layers > New) and use the preset Shaped tool to add a small
filled black circle. Be sure that Antialias is checked while creating the
circle and that Create as Vector is unchecked.
Use the Selection tool to create a selection around
the circle and click on it once to float it. Be sure that you have Antialias
checked. Now choose the Flood Fill tool from the Tool palette. Then click
on the Foreground Style box and hold down your mouse button. Select the
Gradient style from the popup (it's the second one in the list.) A gradient
will appear as your Foreground Style. Click on the style box once to open
the Gradient dialogue box. In the Dialogue, click on the small arrow next
to the gradient image, and select the Black-White gradient from the list.
Next, choose the Linear Gradient Style (the first one in the list), set
the angle to 135, repeats to 0, and make sure that the Invert Gradient
box is Unchecked. Now go to your Tool Options palette. make sure that your
Blend mode is set to Normal, your Match Mode is set to None, and your Opacity
to 100. Click once inside your selection. Hit Ctrl + D to release the selection.
Wires
Wires are used to give your interface that electronic
look, and to link various parts that would otherwise seem unconnected.
Getting that rounded look is actually quite easy by using PSP's Inner Bevel
effect. For this part, you will need to download the wires
inner bevel preset
Start by creating a Bezier curve. Select the Draw
tool and set the Line Type to Bezier Curve, the Line Style to #1 Solid,
the Width to 5 or so, and check the Antialias and Create as Vector boxes.
Draw a line that appeals to you.
You may wish to alter your line in Node Editing
mode, either to make it more complicated or to make it better fit your
interface. This is the purpose of starting with a Vector object. A line
altered in such a way is shown below. For more on Node Editing see the
tutorials here
or here.
When you are happy with the shape of your line, convert
the Vector layer to Raster (Layers > Convert to raster.) Now we add our
bevel. If you have not already done so, download the wires
preset and unzip it to your PSP presets folder. Go to Image > Effects
> Inner Bevel. Select the wires preset from the dropdown menu and then
hit OK.
Now just add a drop shadow (Effects > 3D Effects >
Drop Shadow) to create additional depth.
A Final Note on Interfaces.
Don't underestimate the power of a simple drop shadow
to create depth in an image. As you add each piece to your interface, ask
yourself how far the piece is above the parts below it. Create the drop
shadow accordingly.
Also, don't hesitate to use a lot of layers. It's
probably best if each detail is on its own layer. This facilitates corrections
and modifications later. Sometimes it's even a good idea to put shadows
on their own layers, so as not to alter a carefully created part.
Finally, make use of the Alpha Channel. It's a great
way to save selections for later use. It might bloat the size of your .PSP
file, but it will make it much easier to add shadows and other effects
as your design matures. I frequently find myself adding a part to it's
own layer, saving the selection to the alpha channel, and then recalling
the selection on another layer and using it to create a drop shadow.
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NCAA TOURNAMENT
at Edwardsville, Ill. (CST)
Thu., Nov. 10
#2 Truman State 1 #3 Rockhurst 0
Sat., Nov. 12
#1 SIU Edwardsville 0 Truman State 0 SIUE Advances on Penalty Kicks 4-2
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GLVC TOURNAMENT
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at #4 Quincy 1 #5 Lewis 0
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at St. Louis, Mo.
Rockhurst 4 Northern Kentucky 1
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+++URL: http://www.opera.com/windows/changelogs/720b/
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Changelog for Opera 7.20 Beta 7 for Windows
Support for encoding unrepresentable characters in output as HTML entities (for use in forms)
Changed default Accept header: "application/xml" instead of "application/xhtml"
Accept header change ("XHTML+XML" and "XHTML")
Removed Send charset to validator
Added experimental support for IPv6
Added the preference
[Adv User Prefs]
Force Winsock2 API=1
to force Opera to use the Winsock 2 API when available, even if the presence of dialups would normally have prevented it
Images and animation
Enabled synchronized animations
GIF animation fixes
Improved image display speed
Plug-ins
Various fixes
Hotlist
Fixed a re-parenting problem in the hotlist that would result in lost bookmarks/contacts/notes: Moving a parent folder into a child folder
Do not place a copy of a bookmark/contact in trash when CUT'ing it
Show an error dialog box if a hotlist list could not be saved to file
Fixed a sort sync problem (hotlist vs bookmark menu)
Fixed a bookmark parser problem that prevented old bookmark files (pre version 6) from being imported
Do not use 'BASEURL=' but 'URL=' in ie-explorer favorites import
Fixed a save-selected-as problem. The saved items would be out of sync with the selected if the list was sorted
Panels
Context menu support in Window panel
Pressing Enter/Return will now activate the selected page in Windows panel
Show an archive icon for files with extension 'gz' in Links panel
Clear Links panel when closing a window (use lock if you want to keep them around)
Enabled drag and drop within the Windows panel
Fixes to URL handling in Notes panel
Toolbars and menus
New "Closed" menu under the "Window" menu on the main menu bar listing the 100 last closed windows
Added support for bolded menu items
Improved the algorithm that assigns accelerators to a popup menu entries. It could make duplicates depending on the menu structure
Added context menu support (activated from keyboard) in hotlist toolbar
Added find in page to "Customize toolbar" dialog box
Added a "Clear" button that can be used to erase contents of the address entry field. Use "Customize toolbar" dialog box to activate it
Support for opening a page at a specified index in the page bar. Enhances drag and drop functionality
Move keyboard focus to document when pressing Esc in search dropdown, zoom dropdown and search edit fields
Let "Compose" from document popup menu use the mailto address of the clicked link
Page cycler popup window will now expand into a new column when needed
Support for toolbar extender in page and personal bar. Enable "Show extender" in the page and personal bar context menus to use it.
Proper enable/disable handling of "Add all to bookmarks"
Disable Copy and Cut menu entries for edit fields that contain a password (the Copy and Cut handling itself was already disabled)
Fixed overflow problem in progress bar for large documents (percent value became negative, or just wrong in general)
Dialogs
Fixed a number of mime type problems regarding download dialog handling
Added support for confirmation when closing all pages or closing all but active page
Append addresses that are entered from the "Go to" dialog box (F2) to the typed history list
Added a "Minimize" button to the JavaScript console
Show image file name (excluding path) in image property dialog caption
New settings in Preferences dialog
Load default (fallback) language file when changing UI language [Languages]
Give page background color to documents when updated. No longer required to restart to see the change [Page style]
Added option to style forms and/or scrollbars [Page style]
Added "Smooth scrolling" option [Windows]
Added "Open new page next to active page" option [Windows]
Added option to tune delay before page is updated [Windows]
Simplified interface for setting up trusted protocols and external programs [Programs and paths]
Added "Pass web address directly to application" checkbox. Activate in "File type" dialog box
Mouse, keyboard and shortcuts
Ctrl+Alt+Z available as shortcut for reopening most recently closed page
Fix for entering special characters into edit fields while at the
same time supporting various shortcuts. Differentiate between the
special AltGr key and the left Control+Alt key combo, so that it is
now possible to press AltGr+some key for special characters, but also
Alt+Control+same key to produce a shortcut instead
Let special forward mouse buttons try fast forward if no normal forward
Support for function keys F13 to F20
Actions
Added "Open background image" action
Close page action returns false if nothing to close (makes it possible to do "Close page | Exit" kind of actions)
Moved handling of "Clear disk cache", "Clear visited history" and "Clear typed in history" actions to allow shortcut support
"Maximize frame" shall always open in the same page
Added support for symbolic "COMMA" and "SEMICOLON" tags for use in shortcut files
Drag and drop (DnD)
Added support for disabling drags. The option must be set in opera6.ini
[User Prefs]
Enable Drag=3 (default)
1=links
2=bookmarks
3=links and bookmarks
It is now possible to drag links from the mail view and the web
panels
Privacy and security
Added Actalis Root Certificate
Improved Server Manager dialog. Now possible to press Delete on a server item and the most logical things will happen, depending on context:
Server and associated cookies are removed
Server and associated wand logins are removed
Server and both cookies and logins are removed
Server is reset to default cookie filter
Changed Trusted protocol handling to also check URLs that do not
use "://" in the URL, only checks for ":" before checking against the list
of trusted protocols
Adjusted security password policy: Minimum 6 characters and either
At least one alphabetic character and one non-alphabetic character, or
At least one character from a non-western european character set (specifically: not Latin-1)
On non-file/non-javascript URLs we remove the %XX escaping for "." and "/" in the path component of the URL
and processes all resulting
"/./" and "/../" segments, not just the unencoded ones. This is done in order to fix a cookie path processing
vulnerability that also
requires certain XSS vulnerabilities serverside to be successful.
Manually setting authentication method should overrule reported CAPA capabilities.
M2, Opera's new e-mail and news client
Initial support for mail export to mbox format added for Access points/views
Improvements to the internal spam filter
Make sure internal spam filter never is applied to news messages or outgoing mail
Implemented new authentication-system in NNTP. Added support for CRAM-MD5
Progress should show totals when multiple accounts have same status
Toggling between list, message and split view in mailer. Double-click e-mail will open the mail in new window
If IMAP server does not give an AUTH capability, try all supported ones
Allow composing an e-mail to multiple receivers by selecting "Compose" on a folder in the contact list
Don't fetch/send messages when in offline mode
Messages are now html, not xml
Let user choose between deleting messages or just remove them from view in the warning/info dialog
Added counter to "Trash"
Support for showing only mail belonging to specified account - dropdown in Hotlist, or available from "Mail > Show account"
Support for account categories. Set category under "General" tab in account properties (Mail > Manage accounts.. dialog). Also available from dropdown in Hotlist
Support for hiding mail in custom views from other views (properties, "Filter" tab)
+++URL: http://www.frbsf.org/publications/fedinprint/index.html
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Fed in Print: An index to Federal Reserve System economic research publications, searchable by author,title/subject keywords, publication date, and Bank, from the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco
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Wisconsin.gov - - Domestic Preparedness
Philippe Starck owns a dozen houses worldwide. As he strolls his domains, he almost always knows the temperature outside, the atomically accurate time, the moon's current phase, and the probable incoming weather. The data comes from microprocessors scattered among his rooms, all of them packaged in polycarbonate boxes with LCD screens. They're manufactured by a Hong Kong company called Oregon Scientific, and he's been collecting them for a decade.
"It's a drug," Starck says of his home supply of climatic information. "I am complete addict," he adds, in his inimitable English.
Starck is not only a heavy user of Oregon Scientific, he has also become a co-developer. Two years ago the company hired him to create a line of weather stations after executives learned of his obsession when they spotted his name on order slips. The resulting "Philippe Starck with Oregon Scientific Collection" is not a technological breakthrough—the 15-year-old company had already packed weather statistics into clock radios and even phones. Starck did, however, clarify the graphics and streamline the shells. Clark Chen, the company's marketing director for North America, acknowledges that its previous weather-tracking instruments "tended to look very industrial."
Starck devised 11 models in three sizes: At three, five, and seven inches square, and with gray, red, or pale-green screens and silvery cases, they're priced at $75 to $325 each. Slits in the sides let in air samples for tiny thermometers, hygrometers, and barometers. Time readings (which can be projected on ceilings) are determined by radio signals from a cesium atomic clock in Colorado. Flexible polymer buttons on the back of each unit allow for custom settings based on trilingual instruction booklets. The more expensive models also come with moon-phase calculators, alarms chiming piano chords (Starck hates beeping sounds), and remote sensors to post outdoors.
"It looks like nothing, almost a gadget, but it can bring you more than you think," Starck explains. "I use this object to know the big physical rules around me, and to understand the people around me, which is not nothing. You can check the weight of the air on your shoulder or the position of the moon, and see why you're nervous. Just before you think it's you, you check your 'armony with the universe." At the very least, Starck adds, he enlarged the clock numbers and arrayed other data in boxed rows below: "After [age] 42 you lose your eyes."
Over 100,000 units from his collection have been sold since it debuted in Europe and Asia late last year. Different nationalities have favored different styles: The French like the medium greens, while Asians prefer large grays. No trends have yet emerged in the U.S., but—as I.D. editors proposed to Oregon Scientific execs during a publicity stopover in New York this spring—psychiatrists furnishing offices would make good marketing targets. Patients could know how much the atmosphere is burdening them, whether tomorrow will be sunny, and how many atomically correct seconds remain in their therapy sessions.
Eve M. Kahn is a contributing editor at I.D.
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For the last quarter of century, the name of Emmylou Harris has
stood for quality, graciousness and dignity in country music.
Aside from her legendary work with Gram Parsons, Harris has produced
more than 20 solo albums, many of them gold, all of them priceless.
Her shimmering voice is as familiar as that of any other artist,
male or female, in the genre.
Her most recent album, Building the Wrecking Ball, is an
ambitious project produced by longtime Peter Gabriel and U2 producer
Daniel Lanois. It features guest performances from Neil Young
and Larry Mullen Jr. of U2 and was atop many critics' best-of
lists in 1995 and 1996.
Harris will bring her legendary live show to Indianapolis on May
5 at the Vogue. Call 239-5151 for ticket information.
Last week, Harris talked with NUVO music editor Steve Hammer about
the album, her tour and her opinion on the state of current country
music.
The critics seemed a little confused by Wrecking Ball.
What do you make of the critics' opinions on this one?
The critics have been overwhelmingly into this record. The few
people who don't get it are people who think that I should be
doing what I did before. But that's confusing to me, because I
don't think I've ever stuck to just one formula. But I will admit
that, as much as I've zigged and zagged over the years, that this
was a pretty big zag. [Laughs]
How did you hook up with Daniel Lanois for this album?
I met him through his records. I discovered his solo album around
the time I discovered the album he did with Dylan, the No Mercy
album, and I became a really huge fan, and so I started looking
for his other work and realized a lot of my favorite records were
ones that he'd produced: Peter Gabriel, Robbie Robertson and the
Neville Brothers. Of course, I was familiar with his work with
U2. So then, when I was sort of given a green light to work with
anybody I wanted, I said I wanted to work with Daniel Lanois.
So some phone calls were made, and it turned out he had some time
and interest. I didn't meet him in the flesh until we were talking
about working together.
So what contemporary artists do you listen to?
[Pause] Let's see. Contemporary. I try to keep up with what's
going on. I like Patty Griffith very much. I think she's made
an astonishingly brave and moving album. She's garnering some
fans the hard way; she's out there in the trenches. We did a tour
last year with a great band called Innocence Mission. I like them
very much. I do like Beck, and, um, there's a lot of artists out
there. I love Lucinda Williams. She's been out there a while,
but I don't think the world has discovered her.
I don't listen to Top 40, so I don't know what's popular there.
But I do listen to alternative radio. If something interests me-I
just bought a Drivin' and Cryin' record. So I'm always stretching
out. But I still listen to Bill Monroe. I still listen to Loretta
Lynn. Merle Haggard. So I listen to all kinds of music.
What's your take on all the female singer-songwriters who've
emerged over the past few years?
I think a lot of them can draw their roots back to Joni Mitchell
probably, and later, Rickie Lee Jones.
You're being a little humble. You're an influence on a lot
of them.
Well, I don't really consider myself an influence. As far as a
working woman on the road, yes. But a lot of us have been out
there a long time. My God, Bonnie Raitt has been out there for
years. Loretta Lynn, she's been out there. I know what you're
saying. It seems like there's been this female population explosion.
There are a lot of great women out there: Shawn Colvin, Patty
Griffith. And of course, Tracy Chapman is making great records.
The McGarrigles have always made great records. It does seem like
there have been a lot of young'uns coming around. [Laughs]
Gram Parsons is such a mythical figure to people these days,
almost as if he was some kind of superhuman. Could you tell us
something very mundane about him, just to put him in perspective?
Gosh, well, it always seemed like he let his food cool until it
was almost cold before he'd eat it. He was really very funny,
and a very generous person. Very bright. I don't think he ever
did any damage or hurt any human being except himself.
Do you miss those days? Do you wish you could turn back the
clock?
Turn back the clock. Oh, I don't know about that. Certainly I
have a very special place in my heart for Gram and that time.
That was the real seminal time for me. What I became as an artist
was forged in that time. That holds a very important place to
me. I can't even imagine going back in time. I don't dwell on
that time.
Do you find that performing live holds as much excitement for
you as it once did?
Yeah, oddly enough it is. I think there were times where I was
at a low ebb and I kept going because it was all I knew, plus
I had to, or thought I had to. But right now, I'm really excited.
I got such a creative surge from Wrecking Ball, not just
as a recording artist, but, now, performing these songs with a
band. I can't wait to get out on the road. We take a couple of
months off, and it's like, "Where's the gig?"
What kind of material are you playing this time around? Mostly
the new material or -
Well, the lion's share of material will be from Wrecking Ball,
but there'll be material from all the other albums. It's hard
to showcase everything when you've got 20 albums. But there's
certain songs that seem to shimmer with this band. I like to think
about stringing songs together like a string of pearls, or a string
of beads, but ultimately it has to be stuff that really works
with the band, and gives a spin to the older material.
One interesting thing I read in a bio about you: you were a
beauty pageant contestant as a teenager. That had to be an interesting
experience for you.
Well, I wasn't very politically correct as a teenager. I just
wanted to popular. I was like every other teenage girl. It wasn't
horrible. We're talking Woodbridge, Virginia. I mean, there were
seven girls in the contest. What can I say? They actually asked
me to be in the contest. I was very interested in going to college
and I told them I wasn't interesting in going on if I won. And
they said they didn't care. I did win and I did get the money.
But I was Miss Woodbridge. It wasn't like I was Miss Virginia
or anything. But I did get the scholarship money.
Did you have a tiara and everything?
Of course I had a tiara. I wouldn't be in a beauty pageant
without a tiara!
Can you tell me what you think of the current state of country
music?
I find it pretty vapid and bloodless. You listen to Bill Monroe
and he sings about the dark side of life. There's an inherent
adultness and grabbing the mettle of the other side of life that
is kind of not there in country music right now, in what's being
heard on country radio. I listen to Lucinda Williams' new record,
and that girl has some soul. But you're not going to hear her
on commercial country radio except via performances by Patty Loveless,
who I think has done some great stuff, and Mary Chapin, who is
great. There are a couple of exceptions to the rule, because it
can't all be as bad as it appears. You turn on the radio and it's
very greeting-card. Very generic. Very cookie-cutter. And sometimes
I feel like there's one male singer and one female singer out
there cutting all the records with the same band. And yet I know
there's good stuff out there. But it's not being heard, and I
think at some point this mass popularity of country is going to
explode, that it's going to eat itself. But maybe not.
Browse our collection of 14 wall posters and photographs in our eCard gallery.
Brooke Shields Biography
Brooke Shields was born on 31 May 1965 in New York, New York, USA. Brooke Shields has recently starred in Bob the Butler (2005) playing the role of Anne Jamieson, and Easter Egg Escapade (2005) as Horrible Harriet Hare. Brooke Shields has also featured in many movies such as Gone But Not Forgotten (2004), Mariti in affitto (2004), and Miss Spider's Sunny Patch Kids (2003) ... more
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Drawing the Line -- A Guide to Developing Effective Sexual Assault Prevention Programs for Middle School Students
Drawing the Line
A Guide to Developing Effective Sexual Assault Prevention Programs for Middle School Students
+++URL: http://www.exotic-filipina.com/pretty-girls/sixjen/index.html
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Contains
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In red flannel and a beard, the unfamous and uncool middle-aged namesake of the beer, Pete, cannot get into various clubs. Usually, the doors to the club are barred by tough doormen. Text announces the brand and Pete are "Not yet world famous."
Toward the end, he encounters a gothic drag queen, wearing all blackand...more
Trip-for-Two-to-Asia Auction Winner Wesley Perry of Benton Harbor, Michigan, was the highest auction bidder in our trip for two to Asia, courtesy of ORBITZ. 100% of his generous bid of $1450 will benefit Commercial Closet's nonprofit work -- thanks Wesley!!
Commercial Closet Best Practices Get Pickup The Association of National Advertisers has added the Commercial Closet Best Practices for "Integrating GLBT Sensitivity and Diversity into Mainstream Business-to-Business Advertising" to their member web site. Also carrying the Best Practices are GLAAD, and the Human Rights Campaign.
The anti-gay American Family Association issued a warning statement to Ford saying it planned to reinitiate its boycott by Jan. 20.The AFA had "suspended" a threatened Ford boycott from last spring until now, after it thought it had won concessions over gay-friendly ads. In December, Ford reaffirmed the company's four-year-old advertising efforts in gay publications as well as sponsorship of gay and lesbian organizations and events after it was perceived to have capitulated to AFA demands. Ford said it will advertise all eight of its brands in gay media for the first time. However, cost cutting would prevent dedicated ads from those already in the market, Jaguar, Land Rover and Volvo, but that new corporate ads would support those brands brands as well as Ford, Lincoln, Mercury, Mazda, and Aston Martin.
Gay Network LOGO Testing in Mexico & Brazil Six-hour gay programming blocks from LOGO is being tested for six months as pay-per-view, non-advertiser-supported services, beginning Nov. 4 in Mexico and Nov. 18 in Brazil, to create the first research about gay viewing habits in those countries, and test market viability.
Viacom's new 24-hour gay channel LOGO is now available in 17 million U.S. households, supported by Eastman Kodak, Continental Airlines, Ameriprise Financial, Tourism Australia, eBay, Dell Computer, Bacardi Ltd./DiSaronno, Motorola, General Motors/Pontiac & Saturn, Subaru, Saab, American Express. E*Trade, Earthlink, Glaxo SmithKline/Valtrex, Johnson & Johnson/Tylenol PM, Hewlett Packard, Travelocity, Miller Brewing/Miller Lite, Anheuser-Busch/Bud Light, The New York Times, Lions Gate Films, Tower Records, 1-800-Mattress, Sleepy's, Sharper Image, Berkeley Premium Nutraceuticals/ Enzyte, AARP, and a host of direct response ads including Time-Life Music, Bowflex, 1-800-PetMeds, Select Comfort beds, and others. Dedicated gay commercials came from Showtime, Orbitz, Key West, InsightOut Books, and the Greater Philadelphia Tourism & Marketing Corp. Some local New York City area advertisers include Toyota, Cushman & Wakefield, ABC Carpet, PC Richard & Son, and Interactive Male.
It was a tumultuous year in American gay advertising. The much-awaited arrival of 24-hour gay network LOGO brought the first chance to target the community on TV, even as evangelicals targeted a growing list of corporations for gay friendliness.
Continuing a gay celebrity endorsement trend, Carson Kresssley, flamboyant star of "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy," started 2005 by ogling an attractive man in a Diet Pepsicontinue...
Las carteleras españolas estrenan este viernes: "En la cuerda floja", "Una Rosa de Francia", "Secretos compartidos" y "Underworld Evolution", entre otras películas.
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How to Deconstruct Almost Anything
How to Deconstruct Almost Anything--My Postmodern Adventure
Chip Morningstar, Electric Communities
"Academics get paid for being clever, not for being right." --
Donald Norman
This is the story of one computer professional's explorations in
the world of postmodern literary criticism. I'm a working software
engineer, not a student nor an academic nor a person with any real
background in the humanities. Consequently, I've approached the
whole subject with a somewhat different frame of mind than perhaps
people in the field are accustomed to. Being a vulgar engineer I'm
allowed to break a lot of the rules that people in the humanities
usually have to play by, since nobody expects an engineer to be
literate. Ha. Anyway, here is my tale.
It started when my colleague Randy Farmer and I presented a paper
at the Second International Conference on Cyberspace, held in Santa
Cruz, California in April, 1991. Like the first conference, at
which we also presented a paper, it was an aggressively interdisciplinary
gathering, drawing from fields as diverse as computer science,
literary criticism, engineering, history, philosophy, anthropology,
psychology, and political science. About the only relevant field
that seemed to lack strong representation was economics (an important
gap but one which we don't have room to get into here). It was in
turn stimulating, aggravating, fascinating and infuriating, a
breathtaking intellectual roller coaster ride unlike anything else
I've recently encountered in my professional life. My last serious
brush with the humanities in an academic context had been in college,
ten years earlier. The humanities appear to have experienced a
considerable amount of evolution (or perhaps more accurately,
genetic drift) since then.
Randy and I were scheduled to speak on the second day of the
conference. This was fortunate because it gave us the opportunity
to recalibrate our presentation based on the first day's proceedings,
during which we discovered that we had grossly mischaracterized
the audience by assuming that it would be like the crowd from the
first conference. I spent most of that first day furiously scribbling
notes. People kept saying the most remarkable things using the most
remarkable language, which I found I needed to put down in writing
because the words would disappear from my brain within seconds if
I didn't. Are you familiar with the experience of having memories
of your dreams fade within a few minutes of waking? It was like
that, and I think for much the same reason. Dreams have a logic
and structure all their own, falling apart into unmemorable pieces
that make no sense when subjected to the scrutiny of the conscious
mind. So it was with many of the academics who got up to speak.
The things they said were largely incomprehensible. There was much
talk about deconstruction and signifiers and arguments about whether
cyberspace was or was not "narrative". There was much quotation
from Baudrillard, Derrida, Lacan, Lyotard, Saussure, and the like,
every single word of which was impenetrable. I'd never before had
the experience of being quite this baffled by things other people
were saying. I've attended lectures on quantum physics, group
theory, cardiology, and contract law, all fields about which I know
nothing and all of which have their own specialized jargon and
notational conventions. None of those lectures were as opaque as
anything these academics said. But I captured on my notepad an
astonishing collection of phrases and a sense of the overall tone
of the event.
We retreated back to Palo Alto that evening for a quick rewrite.
The first order of business was to excise various little bits of
phraseology that we now realized were likely to be perceived as
Politically Incorrect. Mind you, the fundamental thesis of our
presentation was Politically Incorrect, but we wanted people to
get upset about the actual content rather than the form in which
it was presented. Then we set about attempting to add something
that would be an adequate response to the postmodern lit crit-speak
we had been inundated with that day. Since we had no idea what any
of it meant (or even if it actually meant anything at all), I simply
cut-and-pasted from my notes. The next day I stood up in front of
the room and opened our presentation with the following:
The essential paradigm of cyberspace is creating partially situated
identities out of actual or potential social reality in terms of
canonical forms of human contact, thus renormalizing the phenomenology
of narrative space and requiring the naturalization of the
intersubjective cognitive strategy, and thereby resolving the
dialectics of metaphorical thoughts, each problematic to the other,
collectively redefining and reifying the paradigm of the parable
of the model of the metaphor.
This bit of nonsense was constructed entirely out of things people
had actually said the day before, except for the last ten words or
so which are a pastiche of Danny Kaye's "flagon with the dragon"
bit from The Court Jester, contributed by our co-worker Gayle
Pergamit, who took great glee in the entire enterprise. Observing
the audience reaction was instructive. At first, various people
started nodding their heads in nods of profound understanding,
though you could see that their brain cells were beginning to strain
a little. Then some of the techies in the back of the room began
to giggle. By the time I finished, unable to get through the last
line with a straight face, the entire room was on the floor in
hysterics, as by then even the most obtuse English professor had
caught on to the joke. With the postmodernist lit crit shit thus
defused, we went on with our actual presentation.
Contrary to the report given in the "Hype List" column of issue #1
of Wired ("Po-Mo Gets Tek-No", page 87), we did not shout down the
postmodernists. We made fun of them.
Afterward, however, I was left with a sense that I should try to
actually understand what these people were saying, really. I figured
that one of three cases must apply. It could be that there was
truly some content there of value, once you learned the lingo. If
this was the case, then I wanted to know what it was. On the other
hand, perhaps there was actually content there but it was bogus
(my working hypothesis), in which case I wanted to be able to
respond to it credibly. On the third hand, maybe there was no
content there after all, in which case I wanted to be able to write
these clowns off without feeling guilty that I hadn't given them
due consideration.
The subject that I kept hearing about over and over again at the
conference was deconstruction. I figured I'd start there. I asked
my friend Michael Benedikt for a pointer to some sources. I had
gotten to know Michael when he organized the First International
Conference on Cyberspace. I knew him to be a person with a foot in
the lit crit camp but also a person of clear intellectual integrity
who was not a fool. He suggested a book called On Deconstruction
by Jonathan Culler. I got the book and read it. It was a stretch,
but I found I could work my way through it, although I did end up
with the most heavily marked up book in my library by the time I
was done. The Culler book lead me to some other things, which I
also read. And I started subscribing to alt.postmodern and now
actually find it interesting, much of the time. I can't claim to
be an expert, but I feel I've reached the level of a competent
amateur. I think I can explain it. It turns out that there's nothing
to be afraid of.
We engineers are frequently accused of speaking an alien language,
of wrapping what we do in jargon and obscurity in order to preserve
the technological priesthood. There is, I think, a grain of truth
in this accusation. Defenders frequently counter with arguments
about how what we do really is technical and really does require
precise language in order to talk about it clearly. There is, I
think, a substantial bit of truth in this as well, though it is
hard to use these grounds to defend the use of the term "grep" to
describe digging through a backpack to find a lost item, as a friend
of mine sometimes does. However, I think it's human nature for
members of any group to use the ideas they have in common as
metaphors for everything else in life, so I'm willing to forgive
him.
The really telling factor that neither side of the debate seems to
cotton to, however, is this: technical people like me work in a
commercial environment. Every day I have to explain what I do to
people who are different from me -- marketing people, technical
writers, my boss, my investors, my customers -- none of whom belong
to my profession or share my technical background or knowledge. As
a consequence, I'm constantly forced to describe what I know in
terms that other people can at least begin to understand. My success
in my job depends to a large degree on my success in so communicating.
At the very least, in order to remain employed I have to convince
somebody else that what I'm doing is worth having them pay for it.
Contrast this situation with that of academia. Professors of
Literature or History or Cultural Studies in their professional
life find themselves communicating principally with other professors
of Literature or History or Cultural Studies. They also, of course,
communicate with students, but students don't really count. Graduate
students are studying to be professors themselves and so are already
part of the in-crowd. Undergraduate students rarely get a chance
to close the feedback loop, especially at the so called "better
schools" (I once spoke with a Harvard professor who told me that
it is quite easy to get a Harvard undergraduate degree without ever
once encountering a tenured member of the faculty inside a classroom;
I don't know if this is actually true but it's a delightful piece
of slander regardless). They publish in peer reviewed journals,
which are not only edited by their peers but published for and
mainly read by their peers (if they are read at all). Decisions
about their career advancement, tenure, promotion, and so on are
made by committees of their fellows. They are supervised by deans
and other academic officials who themselves used to be professors
of Literature or History or Cultural Studies. They rarely have any
reason to talk to anybody but themselves -- occasionally a Professor
of Literature will collaborate with a Professor of History, but in
academic circles this sort of interdisciplinary work is still
considered sufficiently daring and risquÝ as to be newsworthy.
What you have is rather like birds on the Galapagos islands -- an
isolated population with unique selective pressures resulting in
evolutionary divergence from the mainland population. There's no
reason you should be able to understand what these academics are
saying because, for several generations, comprehensibility to
outsiders has not been one of the selective criteria to which
they've been subjected. What's more, it's not particularly important
that they even be terribly comprehensible to each other, since the
quality of academic work, particularly in the humanities, is judged
primarily on the basis of politics and cleverness. In fact, one of
the beliefs that seems to be characteristic of the postmodernist
mind set is the idea that politics and cleverness are the basis
for all judgments about quality or truth, regardless of the subject
matter or who is making the judgment. A work need not be right,
clear, original, or connected to anything outside the group. Indeed,
it looks to me like the vast bulk of literary criticism that is
published has other works of literary criticism as its principal
subject, with the occasional reference to the odd work of actual
literature tossed in for flavoring from time to time.
Thus it is not surprising that it takes a bit of detective work to
puzzle out what is going on. But I've been on the case for a while
now and I think I've identified most of the guilty suspects. I hope
I can spare some of my own peers the inconvenience and wasted time
of actually doing the legwork themselves (though if you have an
inclination in that direction I recommend it as a mind stretching
departure from debugging C code).
The basic enterprise of contemporary literary criticism is actually
quite simple. It is based on the observation that with a sufficient
amount of clever handwaving and artful verbiage, you can interpret
any piece of writing as a statement about anything at all. The
broader movement that goes under the label "postmodernism" generalizes
this principle from writing to all forms of human activity, though
you have to be careful about applying this label, since a standard
postmodernist tactic for ducking criticism is to try to stir up
metaphysical confusion by questioning the very idea of labels and
categories. "Deconstruction" is based on a specialization of the
principle, in which a work is interpreted as a statement about
itself, using a literary version of the same cheap trick that Kurt
Gđdel used to try to frighten mathematicians back in the thirties.
Deconstruction, in particular, is a fairly formulaic process that
hardly merits the commotion that it has generated. However, like
hack writers or television producers, academics will use a formula
if it does the job and they are not held to any higher standard
(though perhaps Derrida can legitimately claim some credit for
originality in inventing the formula in the first place). Just to
clear up the mystery, here is the formula, step-by-step:
Step 1 -- Select a work to be deconstructed. This a called a "text"
and is generally a piece of text, though it need not be. It is very
much within the lit crit mainstream to take something which is not
text and call it a text. In fact, this can be a very useful thing
to do, since it leaves the critic with broad discretion to define
what it means to "read" it and thus a great deal of flexibility in
interpretation. It also allows the literary critic to extend his
reach beyond mere literature. However, the choice of text is actually
one of the less important decisions you will need to make, since
points are awarded on the basis of style and wit rather than
substance, although more challenging works are valued for their
greater potential for exercising cleverness. Thus you want to pick
your text with an eye to the opportunities it will give you to be
clever and convoluted, rather than whether the text has anything
important to say or there is anything important to say about it.
Generally speaking, obscure works are better than well known ones,
though an acceptable alternative is to choose a text from the
popular mass media, such as a Madonna video or the latest Danielle
Steele novel. The text can be of any length, from the complete
works of Louis L'Amour to a single sentence. For example, let's
deconstruct the phrase, "John F. Kennedy was not a homosexual."
Step 2 -- Decide what the text says. This can be whatever you want,
although of course in the case of a text which actually consists
of text it is easier if you pick something that it really does say.
This is called "reading". I will read our example phrase as saying
that John F. Kennedy was not a homosexual.
Step 3 -- Identify within the reading a distinction of some sort.
This can be either something which is described or referred to by
the text directly or it can be inferred from the presumed cultural
context of a hypothetical reader. It is a convention of the genre
to choose a duality, such as man/woman, good/evil, earth/sky,
chocolate/vanilla, etc. In the case of our example, the obvious
duality to pick is homosexual/heterosexual, though a really clever
person might be able to find something else.
Step 4 -- Convert your chosen distinction into a "hierarchical
opposition" by asserting that the text claims or presumes a particular
primacy, superiority, privilege or importance to one side or the
other of the distinction. Since it's pretty much arbitrary, you
don't have to give a justification for this assertion unless you
feel like it. Programmers and computer scientists may find the
concept of a hierarchy consisting of only two elements to be a bit
odd, but this appears to be an established tradition in literary
criticism. Continuing our example, we can claim homophobia on the
part of the society in which this sentence was uttered and therefor
assert that it presumes superiority of heterosexuality over
homosexuality.
Step 5 -- Derive another reading of the text, one in which it is
interpreted as referring to itself. In particular, find a way to
read it as a statement which contradicts or undermines either the
original reading or the ordering of the hierarchical opposition
(which amounts to the same thing). This is really the tricky part
and is the key to the whole exercise. Pulling this off successfully
may require a variety of techniques, though you get more style
points for some techniques than for others. Fortunately, you have
a wide range of intellectual tools at your disposal, which the
rules allow you to use in literary criticism even though they would
be frowned upon in engineering or the sciences. These include
appeals to authority (you can even cite obscure authorities that
nobody has heard of), reasoning from etymology, reasoning from
puns, and a variety of word other games. You are allowed to use
the word "problematic" as a noun. You are also allowed to pretend
that the works of Freud present a correct model of human psychology
and the works of Marx present a correct model of sociology and
economics (it's not clear to me whether practitioners in the field
actually believe Freud and Marx or if it's just a convention of
the genre).
You get maximum style points for being French. Since most of us
aren't French, we don't qualify for this one, but we can still
score almost as much by writing in French or citing French sources.
However, it is difficult for even the most intense and unprincipled
American academician writing in French to match the zen obliqueness
of a native French literary critic. Least credit is given for a
clear, rational argument which makes its case directly, though of
course that is what I will do with our example since, being gainfully
employed, I don't have to worry about graduation or tenure. And
besides, I'm actually trying to communicate here. Here is a possible
argument to go with our example:
It is not generally claimed that John F. Kennedy was a homosexual.
Since it is not an issue, why would anyone choose to explicitly
declare that he was not a homosexual unless they wanted to make it
an issue? Clearly, the reader is left with a question, a lingering
doubt which had not previously been there. If the text had instead
simply asked, "Was John F. Kennedy a homosexual?", the reader would
simply answer, "No." and forget the matter. If it had simply
declared, "John F. Kennedy was a homosexual.", it would have left
the reader begging for further justification or argument to support
the proposition. Phrasing it as a negative declaration, however,
introduces the question in the reader's mind, exploiting society's
homophobia to attack the reputation of the fallen President. What's
more, the form makes it appear as if there is ongoing debate,
further legitimizing the reader's entertainment of the question.
Thus the text can be read as questioning the very assertion that
it is making.
Of course, no real deconstruction would be like this. I only used
a single paragraph and avoided literary jargon. All of the words
will be found in a typical abridged dictionary and were used with
their conventional meanings. I also wrote entirely in English and
did not cite anyone. Thus in an English literature course I would
probably get a D for this, but I already have my degree so I don't
care.
Another minor point, by the way, is that we don't say that we
deconstruct the text but that the text deconstructs itself. This
way it looks less like we are making things up.
That's basically all there is to it, although there is an enormous
variety of stylistic complication that is added in practice. This
is mainly due to the genetic drift phenomenon I mentioned earlier,
resulting in the intellectual equivalent of peacock feathers,
although I suspect that the need for enough material to fill up a
degree program plays a part as well. The best way to learn, of
course, is to try to do it yourself. First you need to read some
real lit crit to get a feel for the style and the jargon. One or
two volumes is all it takes, since it's all pretty much the same
(I advise starting with the Culler book the way I did). Here are
some ideas for texts you might try to deconstruct, once you are
ready to attempt it yourself, graded by approximate level of
difficulty:
Beginner:
Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and The Sea
Robert Heinlein's Starship Troopers
this article
James Cameron's The Terminator
issue #1 of Wired
anything by Marx
Intermediate:
Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn
the Book of Genesis
Francois Truffaut's Day For Night
The United States Constitution
Elvis Presley singing Jailhouse Rock
anything by Foucault
Advanced:
Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene
the Great Pyramid of Giza
Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa
the Macintosh user interface
Tony Bennett singing I Left My Heart In San Francisco
anything by Derrida
Tour de Force:
James Joyce's Finnegans Wake
the San Jose, California telephone directory
IRS Form 1040
the Intel i486DX Programmer's Reference Manual
the Mississippi River
anything by Baudrillard
So, what are we to make of all this? I earlier stated that my quest
was to learn if there was any content to this stuff and if it was
or was not bogus. Well, my assessment is that there is indeed some
content, much of it interesting. The question of bogosity, however,
is a little more difficult. It is clear that the forms used by
academicians writing in this area go right off the bogosity scale,
pegging my bogometer until it breaks. The quality of the actual
analysis of various literary works varies tremendously and must be
judged on a case-by-case basis, but I find most of it highly
questionable. Buried in the muck, however, are a set of important
and interesting ideas: that in reading a work it is illuminating
to consider the contrast between what is said and what is not said,
between what is explicit and what is assumed, and that popular
notions of truth and value depend to a disturbingly high degree on
the reader's credulity and willingness to accept the text's own
claims as to its validity.
Looking at the field of contemporary literary criticism as a whole
also yields some valuable insights. It is a cautionary lesson about
the consequences of allowing a branch of academia that has been
entrusted with the study of important problems to become isolated
and inbred. The Pseudo Politically Correct term that I would use
to describe the mind set of postmodernism is "epistemologically
challenged": a constitutional inability to adopt a reasonable way
to tell the good stuff from the bad stuff. The language and idea
space of the field have become so convoluted that they have confused
even themselves. But the tangle offers a safe refuge for the
academics. It erects a wall between them and the rest of the world.
It immunizes them against having to confront their own failings,
since any genuine criticism can simply be absorbed into the morass
and made indistinguishable from all the other verbiage. Intellectual
tools that might help prune the thicket are systematically ignored
or discredited. This is why, for example, science, psychology and
economics are represented in the literary world by theories that
were abandoned by practicing scientists, psychologists and economists
fifty or a hundred years ago. The field is absorbed in triviality.
Deconstruction is an idea that would make a worthy topic for some
bright graduate student's Ph.D. dissertation but has instead spawned
an entire subfield. Ideas that would merit a good solid evening or
afternoon of argument and debate and perhaps a paper or two instead
become the focus of entire careers.
Engineering and the sciences have, to a greater degree, been spared
this isolation and genetic drift because of crass commercial
necessity. The constraints of the physical world and the actual
needs and wants of the actual population have provided a grounding
that is difficult to dodge. However, in academia the pressures for
isolation are enormous. It is clear to me that the humanities are
not going to emerge from the jungle on their own. I think that the
task of outreach is left to those of us who retain some connection,
however tenuous, to what we laughingly call reality. We have to go
into the jungle after them and rescue what we can. Just remember
to hang on to your sense of humor and don't let them intimidate
you.
+++URL: http://www.arboretum.com/products/hyperengine-av/hav_main.html
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Arboretum Systems | HyperEngine-AV | Mac Video Editing Software
Creators of audio / video editing and processing software for multimedia authoring, sound design, audio restoration, post-production, mastering, for both the entertainement industry professional and the hobbyist.
WHAT IS HYPERENGINE-AV?
A non-linear video editing software that lets you capture, import, edit, arrange together and process video, photos, audio and text to create DV quality movies and slide shows.
It combines an extensive set of features with a streamlined user-interface. It gives you an unprecedented ease of use while retaining the power of real time compositing and real time video and audio effects.
The FEATURE MAP lets you discover how simple non-linear digital video editing can be. Just mouse over the user-interface graphic elements to get a definition for each of them (Note: The interactive map window may take a few seconds to load).
Visit our SHOWCASE to see projects made with HyperEngine-AV. Submit your own project and get a $100 Instant Rebate on the purchase of any of our plug-ins! This means you can get a free
Ray Gun or a free
Hyperprism Silver plug-in!
HYPERENGINE-AV FEATURES DESCRIPTION
A full scale video, audio and text editor for Macintosh OS X computers
HyperEngine-AV's free-form document window, lets you quickly
and easily combine video, photo, audio and text media for the creation of full dv quality
slide shows, familly movies, corporate presentations or your own feature films.
HyperEngine-AV has a very smooth learning curve and a better efficiency leaving extra headroom for creativity.
The Overview window offers multiple features such as direct import and move of clips,
instant zoom to any parts of the project that the user has recorded and a wide range of
independent x and y zoom sizes.
Since all clips generate their own magnetic grid, it is very easy to accurately splice, trim,
split, time stretch
(resulting in high quality speed motion change for video and tempo change
for audio) and synchronize all media elements in just single mouse strokes.
Numerous other features contribute to making HyperEngine-AV a powerful video
editing software but a very fun one to use too! Chain, stack, merge, align, nudge, group are just a
few of the numerous basic commands that not only are easy to apply but also make the authoring
process as rigorous and accurate as it needs to be.
HyperEngine-AV was thought out and designed without any pre-conception to the analog methods
of video and audio editing because they are irrelevant in a virtual computer world.
Other than the basic operating system knowledge, there is no pre-requisite to get started with HyperEngine-AV.
Interface complexity comes downstream of the user's need not upstream!
HyperEngine-AV and Video
Image clips can be imported or captured from a FireWire DV camera using remote
machine control, then easily organized along the timeline to make movies.
Dragging video or still clips on top of each other creates instant real-time dissolves
- clicking on the resulting connection graphic brings up a selection of fully editable
real-time video compositing and transition tools such as dissolve, wipes, zoom...
The software gives you access to the whole range of QuickTime video effects (See
Features for details), including edge detection,
emboss, film noise, and color tint are available and can be applied to any video clip; a real-time video effects preview box takes the guesswork out of adjusting effect parameters. Supported formats
are dv, mov, mpeg-4, jpg, tiff, gif and more by means of the program's built-in QuickTime
format translator.
Supported formats are DV, mov, mpeg-4, jpg, tiff, gif and more by means of the program's built-in
QuickTime format translator.
Third party QuickTime effects are available and can be easily added such as the ones from Buena Software and http://www.mazy.be/soft/.
HyperEngine-AV and Audio
With Arboretum's prestigious history as a music software manufacturer, HyperEngine-AV's audio
capabilities are second to none. Audio clips can be edited and processed to generate stunning
soundtracks.
The program comes with a wide variety of free studio-quality real-time audio effects from Arboretum's
acclaimed Hyperprism suite ofprocessors (See Features
for details), including an excellent Reverb.
More can be added via a flexible plug-in architecture - including the popular Ray Gun and Ray
Gun Pro audio restoration software
for cleaning up scratchy vinyl, tape hiss, hum, and other problem recordings.
HyperEngine-AV also comes with over 70 royalty-free audio clips from celebrated sound
designer Frank Serafine (Star Trek, TRON, Poltergeist, Hunt for Red October, Virtuosity).
HyperEngine-AV is an ideal video editing software to also enhance your final movies with cutting-edge audio.
HyperEngine-AV and Text
Take advantage of powerful text features to import or create and display credits, section
titles, subtitles or karaoke lyrics.
Text boxes can be placed over video clips or keyed against an editable background with
adjustable duration for scrolling.
Set font, size, type, color, style, alignment, scroll direction and auto clip duration. Place
text against transparent background or user-defined background color.
The design of HyperEngine-AV was influenced by our on-going commitment to make user-interfaces as simple as can be, obviously without sacrificing to efficiency or performance. We also based our reflexion on two simple facts:
Associating audio and text to video is in many ways essential to the final expressive and
aesthetical qualities of a movie. We wanted to reconcile the image and the sound because one
can hardly be much without the other. This is why we gave them equal ground, by letting users
freely associate them in the same document window.
The notion of tracks, heritage of the old days, is mostly irrelevant in a computer world:
We based our design on the virtual approach, where track constraints have no reason to be.
And as an added bonus to this design, no tracks also means no track limits, and no limits to the
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Click on the movies below to get a glimpse of projects made with HyperEngine-AV.
[More Projects are currently being prepared and will be uploaded as they are ready]
If you are a HyperEngine-AV user and you would like to be part of this Showcase,
click here to see the guidelines and submit your project.
+++URL: http://usinfo.state.gov/products/pubs/muslimlife/
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Muslim Life in America - Office of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of StateUS Dept of State - Publications
Executive Editor: George Clack
Managing Editor: Chandley McDonald
Art Director: Min-Chih Yao
Photo Research: Maggie Johnson Sliker
JS Photo Research
John Wicart
Members of the Tagouri family in Charles County, Maryland, are some of the growing number of Muslims moving into more rural parts. (Jim Blair)
Islam is one of the fastest-growing religions in the United States today. According to one recent survey, there are 1,209 mosques in America, well over half founded in the last 20 years. Between 17 and 30 percent of American Muslims are converts to the faith.
At the center of both traditional American life and the lives of the generally more recent Muslim immigrants is the family. As Shahed Amanullah, an engineer who lives in San Franciso, California, puts it, " American values are, by and large, very consistent with Islamic values, with a focus on family, faith, hard work, and an obligation to better self and society."
This booklet is a brief introduction to a complex subject, an attempt to explore in words and images the extraordinary range and richness of the way American Muslims live. That point of cross-cultural commonality -- the family -- is where we begin.
This site is produced and maintained by the U.S. Department of State's Bureau of International Information Programs.
Links to other internet sites should not be construed as an endorsement of the views contained therein.
De pagina's van het Landenportaal
werden herwerkt op 1 juli 2004. Het gevraagde document bevindt zich nu op de
volgende URL : http://statbel.fgov.be/port/cou_nl.asp
De bedoeling van dit portaal is de gebruiker op een gemakkelijke manier de weg
te wijzen naar gegevens, statistieken en informatie over alle landen ter wereld.
Niet minder dan 224 landen en gebieden komen op dit ogenblik aan bod.
Om als land erkend te worden zijn er voor een grondgebied ten minste vijf
elementen nodig:
1) een grondgebied (ongeacht hoe groot);
2) een volk dat op dat grondgebied leeft en dat de wil heeft om “samen te leven”
(= “nationaal gevoel”);
3) een overheid;
4) die staat moet een actief en passief vertegenwoordigingsrecht hebben, hij
vaardigt een onafhankelijkheidsverklaring uit, waardoor hij zich bijvoorbeeld
kan afscheiden van een andere staat;
5) de staat moet erkend worden door de internationale gemeenschap (waarbij
onduidelijk is door hoeveel staten).
Dat is nochtans niet voldoende. Neem bijvoorbeeld de republiek Noord-Cyprus, die
enkel wordt erkend door Turkije. Is dat volgens bovengenoemde definitie wel een
staat? Volgens de principes van het internationale recht kan men Cyprus niet als
een onafhankelijke staat beschouwen.
Een natie onderscheidt zich van een staat doordat een natie doorgaans een zeer
oud historisch, taalkundig, cultureel verleden heeft, dat de organisatie van de
internationale gemeenschap heeft beďnvloed.
Vandaar lijkt het aannemelijk dat voor punt e) “internationale gemeenschap” moet
verstaan worden als een groep staten. Een logisch criterium zou bijvoorbeeld het
lidmaatschap van de UNO (Verenigde Naties) zijn. Maar wat dan met Vaticaanstad, waarvan niemand
betwist dat het een staat is en dat toch geen lid is van de UNO?
(Bron : FOD Buitenlandse Zaken, Buitenlandse Handel en
Ontwikkelingssamenwerking.)
Opmerking: het Landenportaal volgt de
GEOBEL-indeling, een nomenclatuur van het
NIS (FOD Economie) die op zijn beurt is afgeleid van de
GEONOM-nomenclatuur van Eurostat. Deze laatste nomenclatuur wordt gebruikt
door de douanediensten en bij alles wat met in- en uitvoer te maken heeft.
* All bicycle photographs are provided for
viewing and informational purposes only. Photo slideshows require
Macromedia Shock Wave
Player. Download
times for slideshows may vary depending on internet connection.
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Web graphic, banner design. Quality banners, buttons, logos.
Your homepage and why not even your
company need advertisements.
And of course one of the main forms of advertisment lies in banners.
Effective and eye-catching banners will enlarge
the number of visitors on any site.
If you lack the resources to make such banners
then I can make banners for anyone, fast and at a reasonable price.
Here you will find some examples of the types of banners you may
order,
but I can also design to your specifications.
Works will be made in gif.- or jpg. format. The size is up to
the orderer.
Also feel free to join some of my programs or do a search for
me :)
CLICK ON
BUTTON FOR
MORE SAMPLES
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Avon and Somerset Constabulary - The page you tried to view cannot be found
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We have recently launched our new website which means that a lot of pages have been moved. Please update any links accordingly. Sorry for any inconvenience caused.
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Blancards Seminarcentre for Human Development, Ardeche, France, for residential artistic and therapeutic one week's courses, workshops, seminars.
Courses and workshops for
Personal Development
Every year "Les Blancards", Seminarcentre for Human Development in
South French Ardeche, offers you a large specter of artistic, therapeutic
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and end Saturdays-morning after breakfast. Your sejourn is on full board
in single or double rooms with character.
You can relax, be artistically engaged under the direction of skilled
Course Carriers. Also you can devote yourself to your self-development
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this in an ambiance where you will be relieved from stress.
You will notice that it is worth to invest in yourself. We are used
to easily buy all kind of material things, but oftenly we forget ourselves.
And are not you - and your fellowman - the most beautiful and valuable
that is? Les Blancards is a meetingplace for people that want to discover
beauty, and inner light. But also for people that follow consciously
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Opposite you see a - non-exhaustive - Courselist. If you click on the
Course you are interested in, on your screen you obtain full information
on the Course and the Course Carrier. At the bottom of the page you
can register yourself by clicking in the menu on "Inscription". Do you
have any questions, please click on "Contact". Under "Create yourself"
we offer you the unique possibility to create and organize your own
Course, in close contact with our centre. Many issues are possible,
like aquarellepainting or other painting techniques, drawing, sculpture,
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for Art- Music- and Gestalttherapy, Psychsosyntheses of Roberto Assagioli,
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the Mediterranean nature, esoteric coaching, workshops choral singing,
masterclasses for professional singers, QiGong and spirituality, TaďChi
and Reiki, mental health training, and in general alternative medicine,
self-development. Not to forget language courses with Silent Way of
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COURSES
2006
for
a description of your course click
on the course of your choice
A little story about the mediterranean Ardčche...
The blazon of the Ardčche is the same as the old country Vivarais,
from which came the Department, that constitutes the eastern part
of the Languedoc province.
Many roads lead to "Les Blancards" and we extend a hearty
welcome to you all!
Our teachers are selected for their special qualities, their original
ideas, their skills and their willingness to accompany you with
your discoveries.
Your stay is on full board to free you from your daily
worries and to let you enjoy our typical dishes, partly vegetarian,
of the Ardčche, all of which are prepared with organic ingredients
The splendid nature, the age-old monastery Les Blancards,
the fine Mediterranean climate and the historical surroundings
guarantee you an unforgettable experience
Water: the source of life in the organic vegetable garden
of "Les Blancards".
LES BLANCARDS Centre Créatif Culturel et Artistique
07110 Laurac en Vivarais - France
Tel : 00 33 4 75 36 91 79 of 00 33 4 75 94 50 96 Fax : 00 33 4 75 94 56 76
Email : info@blancards.com
+++URL: http://www.discountcityhotels.com/London/Hotels/Strand-Palace-Hotel-Strand-INFO.htm
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Strand Palace Hotel, The Strand,London UK, in the hart of London
The Strand Palace is a first-class
hotel located on the Strand, in the heart of Theatreland. The is unusually well situated, within easy walking distance to
Covent Garden, major theatres and a myriad of attractions. Originally
built as an art-deco showpiece after the turn-of-the-century, the hotel has been carefully updated and equipped with modern
amenities. The Strand Palace also offers four restaurants and three bars
onsite for their guests' complete convenience. The guest rooms at the
hotel are attractively decorated with a contemporary décor and
furnishings. All of these rooms are appointed with modern comforts and
conveniences. Room service is available 24-hours a day. The hotel has a dedicated concierge team, who can assist guests
with tours and tickets. The hotel is convenient to fine dining,
shopping and entertainment venues.
The
Restaurant: The Strand Palace
Hotel offers round the clock room service, with a variety of choice in
menu to choose from. Apart from that the hotel offers wide variety of
restaurants to enjoy.
372 The Strand
Offers a traditional English Carvery buffet. A limited 'a la carte' menu
of grills and stir fry is also available.
Biancone Restaurant and Bar
Our friendly Italian bistro serves a variety of pastas, pizzas and
authentic regional specialities.
Johnston's Café & Bar
Offers a lively, split-level café whilst serving a selection of grills,
burgers, salads and sandwiches.
Café Express
Café Express is the ideal meeting place to relax and unwind with
friends. Enjoy freshly ground coffee, light snacks and a wonderful
selection of pastries.
Continental
Breakfast at Ł
10.95 &
English Breakfast at
Ł 13.95
Bar:
The Strand Palace hotel also
offers the following bars to chill out.
Biancone Bar
An informal bar with large Screen featuring live sport events. Mask Bar
The Mask Bar is the perfect place to enjoy an exotic cocktail or a
warming single-malt. An ideal place for a relaxing sun downer after a
hectic business meeting, a busy day's sightseeing or shopping. Hops! Bar
Offers a pub atmosphere with lively music and a great selection of beers
and spirits. Also features a sports screen.
Bedrooms:
The Strand
Palace
Hotel offers a total of 783 comfortable rooms on nine floors. Options
include standard single, double and twin bedrooms and upgraded Club
rooms. Non-smoking and interconnecting rooms are available on request
and all bedrooms have colour TV with remote control, free satellite
channels, pay movie channels, answer phone, tea and coffee making
facilities, hairdryer and trouser press.
The Strand Club Bedrooms provide superior amenities and benefits, as
well as a Club Lounge where guests can relax. Access to the Internet and
e-mail is also available in the Club Lounge.
Available also are two very large Luxury Suites, with full air
conditioning, Mini Bars and additional benefits and services.
Leisure: Cannons Leisure Club is
within a 5 minute walk from the hotel with discounts offered to the
Strand Palace's guests.
Groups
& Meetings: Conference and Events
provides the ideal venue for meetings, conferences and exhibitions. Its
modern setting has also attracted clientele seeking stylish surroundings
for luncheons, receptions, weddings and other private events. The focal
point of the Conference and Events is a large reception area with
comfortable seating surrounded by a variety of modern air-conditioned
rooms which can accommodate anything from a one-on-one interview through
to a reception for two hundred.
To add impact to presentations, Conference and Events offers complete
audio visual Facilities and fully adjustable lighting. One room has a
large working wall allowing for back screen projection. The Conference
and Events reception and Business Centre completes the experience by
providing full business support services.
Local Attractions: Just outside the doors
of this magnificent Strand Palace hotel are London's famous theatre land and the
cosmopolitan bustle of Covent Garden. The City (London's financial
district), China Town, Leicester Square and Piccadilly Circus are just
minutes away. You will also be on the doorstep of The Opera House,
Covent Garden's famous Piazza, where you can see lively street
entertainment, the shopping areas of Oxford Street, Regent Street, Bond
Street and Knightsbridge, home to Harrods, the world famous department
store. Also within a short walk are the Guild Hall, Whitehall, Trafalgar
Square, Soho, Waterloo Bridge (with beautiful views of the City), the
South Bank Arts Centre, the Royal Festival Halls, Big Ben and the Houses
of Parliament.
Travel
Information:
Tube Station:
The nearest tube is Covent
Garden, served by the Piccadilly line.
Train Station:
Waterloo station is close by
with the Eurostar terminal.
Motorway
Junction:
Follow A4 to reach the Strand
palace hotel.
Whereas IPv4 address representation uses a binary system of four octets of numbers representing a total of 32 bits, IPv6 uses eight 16-bit hexadecimal values used to represent a total of 128 bits. To read more about this address representation scheme, please review RFC 2373.
IPv6 Registration Services
IPv6 addresses are organized into a topological hierarchy, consisting of a public topology, a site topology, and interface identifiers. The public and site topologies comprise the network portion of the address, while the interface identifiers form the host portion. RFC 2374 describes this addressing hierarchy in more detail.
ARIN takes its guidance from IPv6 allocation policies and procedures set forth in the Number Resource Policy Manual.
In the future, it is possible that an organization and its customers may have to renumber out of their address space. While in some ways IPv6 has made renumbering easier, it is recommended that organizations design their networks to allow for ease of renumbering. It is also recommended that upstream providers who receive a /32 prefix directly from the RIR enter into contractual arrangements with their customers at the time of the initial allocation or assignment stipulating that the address space may have to be returned, which would require all end-sites to be renumbered.
The guideline documents below are designed to provide step-by-step instructions on how to complete each process, as well as other important information.
The Directory of Health Care Professionals Key personnel and facility contact information for approximately 160,000 professionals at more than 5,900 hospitals/health systems.
The Directory of Retirement Facilities Reference profiles and contact information for more than 111,000 contacts at more than 14,000 senior citizen residential alternatives.
The Directory of Nursing Homes Facility and contact information for more than 171,500 contacts at more than 15,000 nursing homes.
Rule Twelve
Special Rules for The Documentary Awards
I. DEFINITION 1. An eligible documentary film is defined as a theatrically
released non-fiction motion picture dealing creatively with cultural,
artistic, historical, social, scientific, economic or other subjects.
It may be photographed in actual occurrence, or may employ partial
re-enactment, stock footage, stills, animation, stop-motion or other
techniques, as long as the emphasis is on fact and not on fiction.
2. A film that is primarily a promotional film, a purely technical
instructional film or an essentially unfiltered record of a performance
will not be considered eligible for consideration for the Documentary
awards.
II. CATEGORIES The Documentary Awards are divided into two categories:
1. Documentary Feature - films more than 40 minutes in running time,
and
2. Documentary Short Subject - films 40 minutes or less (including
all credits) in running time. .
III. ELIGIBILITY 1. To be eligible for award consideration for the 2004 awards
year, a documentary film must qualify via theatrical exhibition
(within two years of the film’s completion date) between September
1, 2003 and August 31, 2004. No television or internet transmission
shall have occurred at any time anywhere in the world in any version
prior to the qualifying run or furthermore contrary to section III.2.B(1)
or III.2.B(2) of these rules.
2. THEATRICAL EXHIBITION REQUIREMENTS
A.) The Qualifying Exhibition: The film must be publicly
exhibited for paid admission in a commercial motion picture theater
in either Los Angeles County or the Borough of Manhattan in New
York for a run of at least seven consecutive days, by means of 16mm,
35mm or 70mm film or in a 24-frame progressive scan digital format
(minimum native resolution 1280 by 1024 pixels), delivered to the
screen by an image and sound file format suitable for existing digital
cinema sites.
B.) In addition, one of the following two requirements must be
met:
(1) The film must have theatrical runs in at least four additional
cities, each engagement to be a minimum of two consecutive days.
All screenings of the film must begin between 10:00 AM and midnight,
and must commence by the day nominations are announced for the 2004
awards year. No television or internet transmission shall occur
at any time prior to, or within the nine months following, the first
day of the qualifying exhibition, and not before completing the
minimum four-city two-day theatrical runs. Any documentary which
is transmitted anywhere in the world in any version as a television
or internet program within this period will automatically be disqualified
from award eligibility.
OR
(2) If exhibition requirements of the above are not met [III.2.B.(1)]
then the submitted film must be withheld from television and/or
internet transmission until the day nominations are announced for
the 2004 awards year. Should the film be nominated, it must be withheld
from television and/or internet transmission for an additional nine
months following the day nominations are announced.
3. OTHER REQUIREMENTS AND RESTRICTIONS
A. Public notification of the exhibition(s) is required in the form
of paid advertising on the film page of a major newspaper. The ad
copy must contain the dates, title and screening times of the film.
The ad may either stand alone or appear in combination with the
title of another film playing on the same bill. Only one ad is required
if it covers all the seven days of the qualifying exhibition.
B. The Academy documentary office requires the submission of a
screening information form for the theatrical 7-day qualifying exhibition
described in III.2.A above before the exhibition run begins.
Upon completion of the run, a letter of validation from the exhibitor
must be filed with the Academy office (no later than September 1,
2004, 5:00 PM PDT). For any documentary film fulfilling exhibition
rule III.2.B.(1) above, Letters of Validation from four exhibitors
must be filed with the Academy office within five business days
from the day nominations are announced for the 2004 awards year.
If validation letters are not received by this deadline, then rule
III.2.B.(2) above shall apply.
C. Only individual documentary films will be considered
eligible. This excludes from consideration:
(1) episodes extracted from a larger theme series,
(2) segments taken from a single "composite" program,
(3) alternate versions of ineligible films (short or feature-length),
and
(4) short subject documentaries created from materials substantially
taken from or cut down from publicly exhibited (in commercial theaters,
festivals, and/or television), completed feature length documentaries.
D. Significant dialogue or narration must be in English, or the
film must have English subtitles.
IV. SUBMISSION 1. The deadline for receiving the completed entry form, synopsis
(of the film’s subject written in English), theatrical exhibition
plan, the film’s complete credits list (as they appear on
screen), filmographies of the director(s)/producer, stills, 20 VHS/NTSC
videocassettes or 20 DVD-Rs and proof of qualifying is WEDNESDAY,
SEPTEMBER 1, 2004 5:00 PM PDT. FOREIGN ENTRIES MUST ALSO COMPLY
WITH THIS RULE. The videocassettes or DVD-Rs submitted to the
Academy must be the final product, without trailers or other extraneous
content. These materials should be marked "Documentary Entry"
and shipped PREPAID to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences,
8949 Wilshire Boulevard, Beverly Hills, CA 90211-1972.
2. It is intended that the documentary award statuette be presented
on behalf of the entire film to the individual(s) most involved
in the key creative aspects of the filmmaking process and most responsible
for the film’s excellence. To this end, receipt of a statuette
shall be limited to two persons, one of whom must be the credited
director who exercised directorial control, and the other of whom
must have a producer or director credit. If a producer is named,
that person must have performed a major portion of the producer
functions in the following five areas: acquisition and development;
pre-production; production; post-production; marketing and distribution
(see “Documentary Producer Definition,” obtainable from
the Academy). Production companies or persons with the screen credit
of executive producer, co-producer, associate producer, produced
in association with, or any credit other than that of director or
producer, shall not be eligible to receive a statuette on behalf
of the film. In the case of a dispute, the Documentary Branch Executive
Committee, appointed each year, shall determine and resolve all
questions.
3. Films submitted for Documentary Awards consideration may also
qualify for Academy Awards in other categories if they meet the
specified requirements. However, documentaries may not qualify for
the Best Live Action Short Film category, nor will any film submitted
for the documentary award be eligible for consideration in any category
in subsequent awards years. An Animated Documentary Short Subject
may be submitted in either the Documentary Short Subject category
or the Animated Short Film category, but not both.
4. SEMI-FINAL ROUND
A) For films that reach the semi-final round of voting, 30 additional
VHS/NTSC videocassettes or 30 DVD-Rs and two film prints will be
required to facilitate further voting. The prints submitted to the
Academy must be composite film prints, identical in content and
length to the print or data essence utilized for the qualifying
exhibition. The deadline for delivery to the Academy of these additional
materials are: for Short Subjects, Friday, October 22, 2004; for
Features, Wednesday, December 1, 2004.
B) The submitted Semi-Final films will be retained by the Academy
until the voting process is completed and will not be loaned to
anyone outside the Academy during the voting process. One videocassette
or one DVD-R will be retained for the Academy’s archives to
document the entry. Films not chosen as nominations for final balloting,
as well as those found to be ineligible in this category, will be
returned to the sender at Academy expense. Academy Bylaws (Article
VIII, Section 6.) state that "Every award shall be conditioned
upon the delivery to the Academy of one print of every film nominated
for final balloting ... such print shall become the property of
the Academy, with the proviso, however, that the Academy shall not
use such print for commercial gain." THE ACADEMY WILL RETAIN
FOR ITS ARCHIVES ONE PRINT OF EVERY FILM CHOSEN AS A NOMINATION
FOR FINAL BALLOTING ON THE DOCUMENTARY AWARDS.
V. VOTING
1. All eligible documentaries will be screened for Documentary Branch
Screening Committees. The Preliminary Screening and Semi-Final Committees
will be made up of active and life members of the Documentary Branch
who serve on a volunteer basis.
2. Nominations will be determined by an averaged point system of
voting using 10, 9.5, 9, 8.5, 8, 7.5, 7, 6.5 or 6. Those films receiving
an average score of 8.0 or more shall be eligible for nomination.
However, there may not be more than five nor fewer than three nominations.
Final voting shall be restricted to active and life Academy members
who have viewed all of the nominated achievements in a theatrical
setting. Viewing Documentary entries on videocassette or DVD-R will
NOT qualify a member for voting purposes in the Final voting stage
of these categories, with the exception of Screening Committee members
who have participated in the Preliminary and/or Semi-Final voting
process.
3. The Documentary Branch Executive Committee shall determine and
resolve all questions of eligibility or submissions for this year.
Additional or altered viewing procedures may be issued to accommodate
such annual factors as the number of entries, total viewing hours,
size of viewing groups, available venues, or other considerations.
VI. ADVERTISING / PUBLICITY
Only films which receive nominations or Awards may refer to their
Academy endorsements in advertising and publicity materials. A
film which is selected for inclusion in the Semi-Final round competition
may not identify itself as an "Academy Award Finalist,"
"Academy Award Short-list Film" or the like. Nominated
or Award-winning documentary short subjects which are subsequently
modified to run longer than 40 minutes may not be advertised as
Academy Award-nominated or -winning pictures.
Academy of Motion Picture
Arts and Sciences
Academy Foundation
8949 Wilshire Boulevard
Beverly Hills, California 90211
Phone: 310-247-3000 Legal Notices
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Las Vegas City Map
To enlarge sections of the map, click Click Here and then double click on section you would like to enlarge
The world's #1 fax broadcaster of junk faxes. They sent over half the junk
faxes in America; they sent more faxes than their next two closest competitors
combined; about 1 to 2M a day.
As of Oct. 5, they are permanently kaput, thanks to the tireless efforts of California
Deputy Attorney General Judith Fiorentini:
So if you got a fax that appears to be from them, please let us know using
the contact link.
For example, the faxes sent around Dec 04 appear were sent using the fax.com
database which Doug Kaplan (a former client of fax.com) illegally obtained
Response: 800-634-5106 floridareservation.net which tries to sell you
AmeriHost and Ramada Plaza packages for $99/per person (Florida Reservations,
ST-32566)
Removal: 800-910-6919 "Welcome to the toll free fax number removal service. To
have you fax number removed...."
Most of their advertisers have switched to using Vision lab for illegal
faxing. So you should notice a shift to Visionlab in your faxes.
Do your fax headers have "<- ..... ->" in them?
Was your fax received prior to October 5, 2004?
Is the removal number one of these numbers (this is the complete list
of removal numbers used by fax.com obtained from former fax.com
employees):
fax.com is out of business, but according to fax.com insiders involved in the
transmissions, over 95% of fax.com's traffic was sent by Global Communications
Consulting Corporation.
On July 5, 2004, they changed their name (once again) to:
Access Sales Inc. 65 Enterprise, Suite E235 Aliso Viejo. CA 92656-2601
949-330-7040
Old URL: www.accesssalesinc.com
They may all look completely different, but if you get a junk fax, chances are >50% that it came from
one company: fax.com. Pump
and dump stock offers, vacation getaways, mortgage lending, Disney vacation
getaways, medical insurance are the most common. QBEasy,
financialsanity.com, reachwealth.com, herbalife faxes, Corporate Travel, etc....
they are all fax.com.
They have a database of over 10 million fax numbers in the United States and
there are estimates that they send over 2 million faxes in a single day. They charge between
.05 and .02 per fax, and their marginal costs are now zero because they get a
flat rate deal (it was between .005 and .01 per fax). That means their
profit (after all expenses) is over $2M dollars a month. That is why they do it.
That's why you are getting all the junk. Because even with all the lawsuits,
they still make a ton of money. TONS!!!
Stacked in a pile, the 500 million junk faxes per year they send would be over
25 miles high.
Identifying characteristics: How to tell if fax.com sent your faxes
Here are 31 additional verified fax.com faxes: FDCfaxes.PDF.
If any of these faxes is familiar to you, then you are on fax.com's "call
list" and you should expect to receive more faxes from them.
View these on- line (because some printers will cut off the headers) at while
reading the material below . Note that the scanner may have cut off the headers
on some, and on others, the phone numbers have been redacted by us.
Sometimes, your removal number might be disconnected. If you see a removal number of:
800-274-4978
800-390-0761
800-390-0984
800-390-1403
800-658-8133
800-658-8134
800-658-8135
800-658-8136
800-658-8137
800-658-8138
800-658-8139
800-658-8140
800-658-8141
there's 99% chance it's from fax.com since we can show by subpoena
to XO that these numbers were subscribed to by a fax.com entity (Data
Research Systems, Inc.). But anyone can add these numbers to their faxes so it's
still not definitive. If you have old fax.com faxes, then check out this list:
fax.com removal
numbers sorted by number per the FCC. All of these numbers were
determined by the FCC as belonging to fax.com at the time of the
citation (2002). The advertiser information was determined through research
by the FCC. In many cases, the advertisers admitted they used fax.com.
Fax.com provided no information whatsoever to the FCC on the removal numbers
they use or the advertisers that employ them.
If they answer as:
California Mortgage Services
Mortgage Services
Debt Services
The Award Center
Consumer Source
Bridge21 training
Quickbooks training
you've probably got the fax.com
call center (no matter what their denials are).
If you see a response number of:
800-281-1762 "Debt Services"
800-670-6036
800-697-0996 "Mortgage Services"
800-709-0757 "Quickbooks Training"
800-709-0768 "California Mortgage Services"
which answer as one of the call centers above, then there's 99% chance it's
from fax.com since another broadcaster usually isn't going to promote a fax.com
call center.
However, a response number that answers as "Consumer Source" is associated
with Linkpoint Marketing.
The fax sender can be reliably identified by the removal number and the headers. The
response number is usually consistent, but with Consumer Source, this is
not the case.
If you see a header similar to:
7/10/2004 6:37:54 PM <-
1 555 222-1234 -> Page 1
there's a 99% chance it's from fax.com. The phone number is your phone number
(the 555 number is just a placeholder). That is the equivalent of writing
"this fax was sent to you by fax.com." Again, headers can be forged
and about 1% of the faxes sent have forged headers.
Recent fax.com faxes have carried the following advertising language (so if
you see this, it's further confirmation):
Attention: Business Owners & Individuals Health Care for the Entire Family
(8-9-04)
OTC Info Wire (8-23-04)
Wall Street Money Report (8-11-04)
Wall Street Trading Topics (8-11-04)
Vacation blowout! 3 vacations for the price of 1 (8-10-04)
Enjoy a new home... (8-4-04)
Stop Procrastinating! Purchase or Refinance now (7-26-04, 7-29-04)
Wall Street Trading Topics (7-24-04)
Check this out! D- ECONOMIC NEWS CUT YOUR PAYOFF TIME IN HALF! (7-23-04)
You'll find that this is the LOWEST Mortgage Rate Available Today!
Convert your Equity To CASH FAST!
Lowest Mortgage Rates Available Today
Wall Street News Bulletin
Make Money By Learning QuickBooks
ARE YOU FRUSTRATED...Keeping Track of your business or personal accounts?
LOWEST RATES IN 45 YEARS!
Save Money NOW...While Rates Are Still Low!
Start 2004 Off Fresh! Pay Off All Your Bills
Save Money... We Still Have Last Months Rates Available!
We Still Have Last Month's Rates!
California Company Refinancing California Homes
Mortgage World News RATES PLUNGING!
Attention Homesowners: If Your Looking To...
Facsimile Cover sheet: Mortgage Services
Summer Rates Are Rising!
Statistically speaking, if both the removal and headers match the pattern,
you have well more than the required "preponderance of the evidence"
that it was fax.com. Note that anyone that may be spoofing
the "fax.com look" doesn't have anywhere the total volume per day that
fax.com has (because they don't have the sales force and the the volume) and thus wouldn't have been likely to have reached your phone
number, i.e., close to 99% of the faxes with one or more of these characteristics are
fax.com; none of the major vendors is deceptive; they each have their own style
so that they can tell it is their fax if challenged in court.
If you want to have even more certainty you can add additional tests:
the fax content matches a faxes received at a fax.com "spam
trap" location (numbers that receive only fax.com faxes), e.g., these
faxes are all fax.com faxes received at a spam trap so if you have many of
these faxes, "fax.com has your number"
you have other fax.com faxes that have been verified, i.e., you've
verified that fax.com "has your number"
a friend of yours who also gets fax.com faxes got the same fax you did
the advertiser admits they use a fax.com entity for advertising
Here are 9 recent verified fax.com faxes: VerifiedSamplesJul
(the phone number of header of the first fax was blacked out by us to protect
their identity).
Here's how we proved it was fax.com on these samples and how you can prove it
too. Every single data point we checked was consistent with fax.com. The chance
that a given junk fax matches on all these points and was not sent by fax.com is
virtually zero.
fax.com uses a distinctive header style with distinctive fonts, character
positioning, and the use of <-.....-> between your phone number. They
are one of the few vendors to include your phone number on the fax. Study
the examples here: VerifiedSamplesJul.
See how they are all alike in the header and removal number?
fax.com uses removal numbers (listed above) such as 800-658-8133 which gives
you 3 options; other broadcasters give you no options.
The response numbers were all answered by a fax.com call center
800-281-1762 answered on July 23, 2004 as "Debt Services." I
answered the questions and based on the answers I gave (I wanted a
mortgage, and not debt consolidation and I said I had a zip of 90025), I
got transferred to Tony at Optima Funding in Santa Ana which is a
long-time fax.com customer that we've sued before.
800-709-0768 answered on July 23, 2004 as "California Mortgage
Services...this is Jeff...how can I help you?"
800-709-0757 answered on Jul 23, 2004 as "Quickbooks
Training" call center. But the fax itself has the QB-Easy logo. QB-Easy
is a well-known fax.com company.
The faxes were also received at known "spam traps" for fax.com.
We've identified phone numbers all over the country that receive nothing but
fax.com junk faxes because the other fax broadcasters haven't discovered them yet.
These faxes matched faxes received at those spam traps.
All of this constitutes proof beyond any reasonable doubt that fax.com sent
the faxes. But that is the criminal standard of evidence. In court, all you need
to prove is preponderance of the evidence, i.e., >50%. To be safe, look for
header style match and a removal number match.
I've been hit by fax.com. So now what are my options?
You have several options:
You can try calling the removal number and see if they take you off
You can sue them in your local superior court (don't do this in california
or you'll get coordinated with every other suit)
You can do nothing
If you are interested in taking action, see the first question on the Junk fax Q&A.
fax.com background information
The following information is provided for you if you are curious or are
pursuing a case against them.
Fax.com still exists as a graphic design shop where Erwin Dass works. But
their main sales operation (certainly as of July 5, but somewhat earlier than
that), is now called:
ACCESS SALES INC.
Corporation Number: C2614387 Date Filed: 5/27/2004 Status: active Jurisdiction:
NEVADA Mailing Address: 3972 BARRANCA PARKWAY SUITE J-499 IRVINE, CA 92606 (this
is a UPS store) Agent for Service of Process (for California cases only): C T CORPORATION SYSTEM 818 WEST SEVENTH STREET LOS
ANGELES, CA 90017
but their real address and phone are:
Access Sales www.accesssalesinc.com
65 Enterprise, Suite E235
Aliso Viejo. CA 92656-2601
949-330-7040 is the receptionist (not the main PBX).
800-692-6454
Richard Charles Lamarre aka Richard C. Lamarre (is a real person whose
name was used by fax.com for signing settlement documents and setting up phone service,
etc.); they used a stamp for his signature
fax.com
Twingem, Inc. (Eric Brenner's company)
Martec Consulting Service Inc (Eric Brenner's company)
Everglade Enterprises LLC (Joe Garson's company)
United States (Voice) Mail & Fax Service Corporation
For example, check out these two fax.com faxes that were sent two months
apart. Different phone numbers, different layout, but a lot of common
stuff....in fact, the 800 numbers to call at the bottom are in the exact same
place and the exact same font size. And the examples are the exact same numbers.
One of these faxes came from an attorney, the other came from my fax machine:
Mortgage1 (received
2/05/04 by the General Counsel at a company I do business with) Mortgage2 (received 4/06/04 by me)
Here are the 2 main header styles used by fax.com:
Note the different date styles, time styles, use of -> and <-
... -> and Page numbering styles. The header style changes over time
and is different from machine to machine, so expect header variations in the
faxes you receive, but eventually, you'll recognize their style.
Here are four recent fax.com faxes. FDCJunkFaxesJune2004.
See the header? Look like the headers in your faxes? Check the response and
removal numbers listed below. They keep changing them all the time to make it
harder to identify that all your faxes come from them.
So, for example, when Jim Sutton subpoenaed the information from XO
Communications, you get something like this:
"XO Communications' records indicate that telephone number (800)
658-8133 is
operated by XO Communications, by contract, for:
Subscriber information for telephone number (800) 658-8133
Company Name: Data Research Systems, Inc.
Billing Location:
Address: 92 Argonaut, #225
City: Aliso Viejo
State: California
Zip Code: 92656
Contact: Richard Lamarre / Gary Anzaroot
Contact Number: (800) 600-2492
Service Location:
Address: 9000 Southwest Nimbus Avenue
City: Beaverton
State: Oregon
Zip Code: 97008
Associated Numbers:
8006588132 8006588134 8006588135 8006588136 8006588137
8006588138 8006588139 8006588140 8006588141 8003900761
8003900984 8002744798 8003901403
Beware of similar sounding remove recordings! Fax.com uses "You have reached the fax removal number".
Here are a couple of similar sounding recordings, that are actually quite
different and indicate a different broadcaster
There is no identification of the firm when you call any
of these removal numbers and there is no ID of fax.com on any of the faxes. So why
do they need >60 different toll free lines? Perhaps it is the case that by using a lot of different numbers, it
makes it look like it is coming from a different company each time. So nobody
ever suspects that all their junk faxes come from fax.com. In fact, fax.com will even switch the removal number on the same promo for a client within
60 days so it looks like it came from a different company.
Wonder why they put those number on at all? I thought it was because it's
expensive to have a human take the call to remove. The truth is that it's not
that it is expensive, it is that is very, very, very, very abusive. People go
off the depend they are so mad about the faxes....obscenities, death threats,
bomb threats...it gets really ugly. And the more deletes that they don't know
about, the more lawsuits they get.
Response numbers 800-237-5848, 800-816-0435, 800-670-6024, 800-364-3061, and 800-819-5256
belong to Lighthouse Marketing (shown as a wholesaler), 15440 Laguna Canyon Rd.,
Irvine, CA 92618, and all ring-through to 949-265-3486. The contact names are
Dan Freeman and Erwin Dass. Lighthouse Marketing has about 400 toll free
numbers through the same resp org, all of which ring-through to the same number.
See fdc800.PDF
and fdc800-2.PDF for details.
If you've ever answered the phone to a fax machine, chances are also pretty
good that it is fax.com war-dialing, looking for fax numbers. My whole company
got attacked on May 12, 2002...they dialed all the voicemail numbers looking for
fax machines.
Few people figure this out. Almost nobody. It's extremely hard for the average person to find
out since there is no legal way available to the average citizen to find out who
owns the 800 number. So fax.com hides in a clever veil of obscurity. They can get away with not removing you since you never know who they are.
We've collected here, from lawsuits filed all over the country, a list of the
key players who are involved in the process and may be personally responsible
for sending you those junk faxes.
When you receive a junk fax from fax.com, these are the people who you can
contact to resolve the matter.
A * denotes an officer of fax.com (as determined from facts gathered by the
California Attorney General as presented in their lawsuit). A + denotes that the
FCC has determined that they are liable in the FCC Notice of Forfeiture. People
with a + or a * have already determined to be liable under the TCPA for sending
junk faxes by either the FCC or California Attorney General. People with a $ are
also liable, but we aren't aware of any cases pending against them. People
without a + or a * or $ may or may not be liable, depending on the facts and
circumstances and what the judge decides in your particular case.
Companies who knowingly provide the telecommunications lines for sending junk
faxes, if notified of the violation, are liable. For example, BellSouth was
named in a suit in Georgia as violating the TCPA because they provide the telco
lines to Sunbelt. Actual knowledge of junk faxing by the customer is enough to
establish liability of the carrier. "It's a slam dunk," according to
one TCPA expert.
NOTE: Please do not name Erwin Dass in any of your suits.
Person
Title and Role
Locations
Kevin Katz*+
President
(founder, largest shareholder. He runs the company.)
31 Lagunita Drive
Laguna Beach, CA 92651-4237
(home)
Impact Marketing
15440 Laguna Canyon Road
Irvine, California 92618
(949) 265-6700
This address is obsolete
fax.com
600 Anton, 11th floor
Costa Mesa, CA 92626
(Erwin Dass, Tom Roth, and a few other people work there; fax.com's attorney said
this was their official address and this was verified by Katz)
714-371-4096
30872 South Coast Highway, Suite 201
Laguna Beach, CA 92651-4237
Eric Matthew Wilson*+
CTO
(in charge of the Super Faxcaster machines that actually send out the
faxes; Eric gets the faxes from the graphics department)
Tech Access Systems Corp.
280 W. Sierra Madre Blvd., #231
Sierra Madre, California 91024 (work)
Tech Access Systems Corp.
521˝ South Myrtle Avenue, Suite 1
Monrovia, CA 91016
678 Alta Vista Drive
Sierra Madre, CA 91024 (home)
Most recently served legal process
at his mother's house:
1236 Jason Drive, Lompoc, CA 93436
Joseph A. Garson+
President
Everglades Enterprises
(runs the company that
acquires the telecommunications to send
out the junk faxes; also was in charge of faxcasters earlier)
Everglades Enterprises
Old address:
352 South Canon Drive
Beverly Hills, CA 90212
Joe is now at:
27300 WILLOWGREEN CT
FRANKLIN MI 48025-1787
Garry Anzaroot$
Anzaroot & Miller, Inc. provide the telecommunications services
(under contracts with Kevin Katz and Joe Garson) to send out those junk faxes you get.
AMI uses the name US Mail (a Florida Corporation, located
at 1201 Hays Street Tallahassee, Florida 32301) in their contracts with
fax.com, then buys the phone lines for them as US Mail, but using a
different corporate location. They started in March 2002.
Kirsch notified Anzaroot via email on 3/16/04 and
confirmed they received notice on a phone call on 3/17/04. Anzaroot claims
he knows nothing about any of these people or any contracts. A complete
"Sgt. Schultz" defense. He's lying. Even Katz (under oath)
admitted he knows Anzaroot.
Anzaroot & Miller, Inc. dba
AMI Communications
600 Reisterstown Road Suite 700
Baltimore, MD 21208
410-415-6776
Michael Franklin
Douglas Keller
Gary P. Stukes
Christopher Ricca
Todd Stone
GCC buys lines from Covista Communications, Global Crossing,
Worldcom,
and Qwest.
GCC provides the telecommunications lines to
Anzaroot who provides them to Garson who provides them to fax.com. They've
been doing it since March 2002. Confirmed in Tom Roth's deposition Jan 31,
2003 by the SEC.
Kirsch notified GCC of illegal use on 3/18/04. so that they may
take appropriate steps to comply with the law. They are currently
investigating the matter.
Global Communications Consulting Corporation
25 Kilmer Drive, Suite 217
Morganville, NJ, 07751
(732) 972-7300
Dennis Habgood
Justin Tanos
Carey Adams
Bruce Tran
Handle the faxcasters (usually placed at offices
of the advertiser)
Telecom Tech Support, LLC
26081 Merit Circle, #112
Laguna Hills, California 92653
In Novermber, 2003, Fax.com switched from using VMBC (VMBC dropped them when they found
out the story behind fax.com) to XO Communications so all their 800 numbers have
changed.
Old address
Fax.com, Inc.
120 Columbia Street STE 500
Aliso Viejo, California 92656
Salesperson decides which numbers to target [22:19]
most of the numbers are from InfoUSA [29:22],
sales person provides reports to the customers about success of the
fax[70:19],
fax.com doesn't keep a record of the numbers dialed for a particular fax
[73:23, 80:11],
a host of people are responsible for sending the fax out [86:16]
Martin does compliance [93:1]
no records are kept about where a fax is sent out from [119:21]
no reporting structure in the company; the departments function separately
[126:23]
Here's the complete Kevin
Katz deposition (taken by Lieff Cabraser December 8, 2003). Here are some of the highlights:
Kevin doesn't remember where fax.com is located (His attorney said it is
600 Anton, 11th floor, Costa Mesa, CA 92626)
Kevin doesn't know whether he is the CEO of fax.com or not
Eric Wilson and Kevin Katz are the sole shareholders of fax.com
He has no documents showing the ownership or management of fax.com (nor
does he know anyone who has these documents)
David Felsenthal has been fax.com's attorney for the past 5 years
Fax broadcasting is "sending a fax".
Kevin says he isn't involved in any other company involved in fax
broadcasting
Kevin claims he knows nothing about Impact Marketing Solutions or
Lighthouse Marketing or Data Research Systems or Tech Access Systems or Soho
Marketing, etc. (see the deposition for the entire list)
He's not sure if he's sent out faxes using fax machines
He's not sure who owns the faxcasters
He says Charles Martin doesn't work there anymore and there is no one in
the compliance department
He doesn't remember when he was last at the new location of fax.com even
though he later said it was a week ago
The latest news on fax.com is that Covington and Burling won their $2.3M
suit, so fax.com either has to pay the judgment or post a bond by December 15,
2003. They chose to do neither.
The sign is still up, but Fax.com has apparently cleared out of its building
in Aliso Viejo. The company next door has a sign in the window saying that for
inquiries about Fax.com, call 562-903-0407. American Benefit Mortgage is next
door on the other side of Fax.com, and is still in business. The Aliso Viejo
post office that likely put on the post mark for all the Martin YAP letters
people have received is right across the street from Fax.com.
Kevin Katz' direct line: (949) 916-6502 (now disconnected)
Charles Martin's line: (949) 916-6530 (now disconnected)
Main company number: (800) 310-5188 (now disconnected)
fax.com also has used the name SOHO Marketing for months in order
to obfuscate people going after them. Same people, different location. Website
is www.soholeads.com
soholeads.com is registered to Nelson Frappier. He is the father of the number
one salesperson at fax.com (Frank Frappier). It is not in the same location as fax.com, but
is around the corner at 85 Enterprise. It is a call center
They are also using the name Lighthouse Marketing http://www.lhmarketing.com.
It is registered to Eric Brenner with an
email address of eric@soholeads.com. Also that address is a residential complex
and one of the streets in the complex is called Lighthouse, hence the name.
So in addition to having dozens of 800 numbers to confuse
people as well as disconnecting all their machines in the fax.com domain (their domain
registration record is out of date so that qualifies their domain name as being
"up for grabs" to the first taker), fax.com now (in 2002) has split itself into several companies to avoid detection:
Latest motion to dismiss D.C. lawsuit (MORRIS vs. FAX.COM, INC. denied by
Judge. Attorney Michael C. Worsham reports that Judge Kravitz in the Superior
Court in the District of Columbia denied a second effort to dismiss for lack
of subject matter jurisdiction which argues the theory that states must "opt
in" to the TCPA. A motion of reconsideration is now pending before the
original judge who initially ruled that "opt-in" by a state was necessary
before a junk fax victim could sue under the TCPA. For the complete ruling see
the Acrobat PDF:
Order Denying Defendants' Motion to Dismiss...
Jan 12, 2004: Wired Reporter Ryan Singel wrote about the difficulties encountered by
various judges, state attorneys general, and the $2.2 trillion Kirsch lawsuit in
terms of collecting judgments. To summarize the article, fax.com CEO Kevin Katz
simply ignores court orders. See "FAX.COM Still Dodging Legal Steps"
Here is some information from various sources (they don't
all agree on exactly the same numbers but people who have read this list tell me
that it is reasonably accurate):
Established 1998
The CEO Kevin Katz is 37
Revenue is about $50M per year
They don't cover WA state anymore because of a settlement agreement
Sales people claim total database today (Jan 2002) is 22 million fax
numbers, but officers say 8 million.
They can send 3-4 million a day and typically send 2 to 3 million faxes
200 days a year.
They charge as little as 5c per page for 10-20M faxes. 12 cents per fax
for small volumes.
Minimum order is 10,000 faxes (which implies that a class action against any
single fax.com
client should be for $15M or more!)
They advise their clients that they "have a team of lawyers in case
you need help"!
Within the greater Los Angeles area as an example, they have around
400,000 fax numbers.
Most fax numbers belong to small businesses (1-50 employees).
They have no
big name clients, but do a lot of business with cell phone and stock promoters.
Also, Dale
Carnegie, InfoUSA .
They send out 1M faxes/day just for stock promoters.
Their website claims their customers include: Merrill Lynch,
Flagstar Bank, Mail Boxes Etc., Carl's Jr., Super 8 Motel, Buy.com and the
Broadcasting Marketing Group
They don't pay their judgments, even small ones. For example, Robert Braver got a $5K judgment against
fax.com in District Court in Cleveland County, OK and they never paid it.
They are currently cash flow positive. In 4th year of operation.
Became profitable 2001.
Charge 5 cents per successful fax.
Can cross reference against other databases to target.
Trying to target F1000.
There were at one time over 800 faxcasters in people's homes or offices
Get fax numbers through war dialing from the faxcasters they give their
clients and other techniques. Have been known
to purchase fax numbers from people with war dialers.
They do have lots of "call sheets" which documents incoming
calls, however, the vast majority of these are complaints and requests for
removal. In short, they can only have express permission from a relatively small
part of their database (well under .1%). So 99.9% or more of their faxes are
sent illegally.
Also look at some of these excerpts from the fax.com website
where it is clear that they are still blatantly flouting the law after 6 FCC
citations. If they really have 20M fax numbers, that's just about every fax
machine in the US (see this graph
of number of fax machines in the US). When you consider that they have well
under 200K "permission slips" and the majority of those are complaints
about junk faxes, it basically means that virtually all their faxes that they
send to their database of fax numbers violate the TCPA.
We know of no one who has actually expressly consented to receive a fax.com
fax. If you are such a person, please let us know.
You can also see the KGO junk fax story where Kevin admits sending
unsolicited faxes (part I and part
II) and tries to hide behind the California law that is preempted by federal
law. The story ran Jan 31, 2001. Here's the
transcript to part I.
See the fax.com clients page for information about
the fax.com clients you may recognize. Or maybe you'll recognize one of the
22 faxes I've received from fax.com at my
home that I scanned in. I've received hundreds.
You are not obligated to call them to remove your number since they didn't
get your permission in the first place, so what they are doing is illegal. You
can try to get your number removed, but most people find it doesn't work (see
this horror story). You may
find it more satisfying to keep getting the faxes and sue the companies who send
it to you (and/or fax.com) in small claims court. That is the enforcement
mechanism Congress intended.
In fact,
even if you complain to a fax.com advertiser, fax.com will reply and hide their identity!!!
Gee, I wonder why they would do that if what they are doing is legal???
Robert Battaglia is the name used for
registering phone lines belonging to fax.com (used for war dialing and/or faxing).
From a posting on the Internet:
Robert Battaglia of C&M Maintenance a/k/a Ceiling Pro, was the manager
for Moneyfor fax.com. Through that company, Battaglia contacted individuals
across the state to have war dialers placed in a closet in their home.
Battaglia ordered the phone lines in his name and shipped the device as if
it came from him.
His name was used as the subscriber for all numbers ordered in the states
where the devices were used but the address where each device was located was
used as his address for each account.
Thus, when one did a call trace or caller ID, the name Robert Battaglia would come
up with an address local to each resident who got a call within a given state.
However, If one was to do a search of phone numbers at a certain address,
they would come up with a different name, especially if the homes are one
family.
That is how I came up with the name Silverstein in my situation.
Silverstein owns the house where Battaglia has a war dialer in this part on
NJ. Silverstein has the device in a closet and is paid $60 per month probably
from FDC.
Battaglia set up the device and ordered the numbers so the account is in
his name at the NJ address even though Battaglia actually is in CA.
The exact same thing happened to me. Some of the calls to my number show up on callerID as being from Robert
Battaglia, San Jose, CA 95101
(and 95118 under some lookups). Phone:
408-448-4130 which is always busy (probably sending out faxes).
Since 2002 (thanks the Abika service), I've discovered that I've been
getting fax.com faxes from a
set of numbers (408-243-8336, 408-243-8214, etc). These are billed to (you
guessed it):
Robert Battaglia
1584 Lexington St
Santa Clara, CA 95050
After I confronted the owner of the house (who is
actually a really nice guy), he shut the machine down.
Here's a message from someone in Maryland about a faxcaster:
It appears this bunch of creeps has broadened into Virginia. We have
received "fax" identifiable calls from this name using telephone
numbers 703-549-8737; 703-549-8904; and 703-549-8906. A search of local areas
(Virginia, DC, and Maryland) reveals only one person with this name, but he is
with the USDA in DC and resides in Maryland, area codes 202 and 301, so he is
probably not connected with the California bunch. Also, most of the calls have
come after 10:00pm EDT. We put all the numbers in "Call Block," but
it seems they keep adding new outgoing numbers.
The bottom line on Battaglia is that he was an independent contractor for
fax.com, just like Esme Vaughn and Paul Stanton. Battaglia thought at the time
what they were doing was legal. He quit in February 2004 after the Supreme Court
denied cert. on fax.com cases which made it obvious that what they were doing
was illegal. He's also counseled people who ask him about it to get out of the
business. If you are going to sue someone, going after Robert would send the
wrong message and for that reason, we've removed his contact information from
the public site (if you need it, contact us). The people to go after are the
people still doing it (see list above).
Tom Roth is VP Finance/CFO.
Eric Wilson is CTO.
Other people:
Attorney is James E. Mudd in Irvine, CA. They also serve as Fax.com's
Registered Agent.
In-house counsel for fax.com is Felsenthal. Ironically, Felsenthal used to
work for Scott Zimmerman (who now has a case against fax.com). Felsenthal hired
Cozen.
Aaron Read is lobbyist in California. Fax.com's ID for contributions is
#1235655. So far, they've
paid Read over $52K to defeat AB 839 since Q2 of 2001. After Read learned
more about fax.com, he terminated his relationship with fax.com.
Here's how they try to manipulate the system:
As Alan was
presenting his arguments for AB 839, Senator Johannessen made a statement
indicating that he liked how Senator Figueroa's bill, SB 771, works (it creates
a "do not call" list maintained by the Dept. of Consumer Affairs) and
asked Alan if he would consider amending his bill to establish a "do not
fax" list. Alan declined, stating that would not offer the protection he
was seeking. Senator Johannessen made a motion to amend the bill so that it
established a "do not call" list. Senator Polanco seconded the motion,
and the motion was passed. Alan then pulled his bill before it could be voted on
in its current, "hostile" form.
For washington case, they used (in the past):
Shari Odenheimer, Cozen & O'Connor, Pennsylvania 800-379-0695
Jennifer Brown, Seattle office
but it various from state to state. http://www.cozen.com/site/attorneys.asp
Incoming fax response numbers on the outgoing faxes are not owned by fax.com.
These include:
800-992-5329 (used for outbound)
888-537-0886 (used for Y2Marketing campaign)
800-355-5676 (used for Tower Group campaign and belongs to "Who's
Calling")
800-341-7352 (used for Tallclocks, Inc campaign)
They have local associates doing faxing for them too. They call them "affiliate
partners." The callerID is usually blocked.
The name Cynthia Williams from AT&T is also a pseudonym that some people
believe has been used by fax.com.
They will call you and try to get information out of you. Beware of suspicious
calls.
Litigation and citations
Fax.com is currently the market leader in violating the TCPA, accumulating
over six
separate citations by the FCC in 2001 alone (they
averaged one FCC citation a month in the first half of 2001). Here are the cases
against them I know about:
South Carolina
Allendale County Bank v. Fax.com, Inc.
They got an injunction to preserve records (but not sure how extensive this
is). And fax.com finally entered an appearance. Robert
Biggerstaff has the details on this one.
Maryland
Silver Spring lawyer Bruce Levitt filed
a class action suit (he is the plantiff not the attorney) in Baltimore.
Levitt took action after receiving three unsolicited ads for vacation deals.
He filed the suit in Baltimore City Circuit Court and can be reached at bruce2nd@aol.com.
He's represented by Mike Worsham, michael@worshamlaw.com.
Pittsburgh, PA
Filed the class actions here in PA against the advertisers and not the sender,
i.e. Fax.com.The Fax.com lawyers
enter their appearance and handle the matter on behalf of the advertisers.
Clayton S. Morrow
Attorney at Law
304 Ross Street, 7th Floor
Pittsburgh, PA 15219
412-281-1250
Fax 412-209-0658
claytonm@sgi.net
Los Angeles, CA
Kevin Tripi filed a class action.
Kevin M. Tripi
1920 Main St.
Suite 1000
Irvine, CA 92614
(949) 833-9112
Fax: (949) 756-0596
kevintripi@hotmail.com
Joe Osefchen.
I am an attorney with the law firm of Philip Stephen Fuoco in Haddonfiled, New
Jersey. We have filed a proposed class
action against Fax.com and Kevin Katz. I have attached a copy of the
complaint. Recently, Katz has moved to dismiss arguing the New Jersey court
has no personal jurisdiction over him because the faxes were sent from
California (and were sent to New Jersey). I am looking for any TCPA case which
holds that the state where the unsolicited junk fax is received has
personal jurisdiction over an out of state broadcaster.
Washington state
fax.com settled with the state of
Washington after they were confronted with evidence that indicated that they
blast-faxed thousands of patients at the
University of Washington Medical Center. The state got fax.com to pay $90,000 in
restitution. That's a travesty. That's pocket change for them. I have heard
that THEY ADMITTED
TO THE AG THAT THEY USED A WAR DIALER to blast into hospitals (it isn't in
writing in the settlement agreement but you can call the washington AG to
verify).
My favorite is the most
recent FCC citation where fax.com is reprimanded for faxing their
unsolicited ads to none other than the FCC offices! I guess after 5 citations,
fax.com may have wanted to really rub it in the nose of the FCC by spamming the FCC
itself and prove to the world that they can get away with it! That was in May,
2001.
So you really got to hand it to fax.com. They've junk faxed both the FCC
and the author of the law and it's still business as usual.
They have an
agreement with efax.com/j2 Global Communications not to send faxes to
their numbers (probably because J2 has so many faxes they could easily sue
fax.com and win without going the class action route).
See ThinkTank Companies Fax.com
for a profile of the company, and a bio and picture of the CEO. They orginally financed
him. ThinkTank.com was founded by Scott Blum, the founder of Aliso Viejo-based
Buy.com Inc. According to a deposition of Eric Wilson, Blum (Value Capital)
owned 33% of fax.com, Kevin Katz owned 35%, Eric Wilson (CTO) owned 23%, and the employees own the rest.
Scott Blum has disassociated himself with the company shortly
thereafter. As of late 2002, Blum has divested of fax.com and has no
association whatsoever with them anymore. References to fax.com on their website
have been removed.
"If Mr. Biggerstaff is the expert for the Plaintiff, you will likely
lose."
-- Statement from an FCC attorney in 2001, to a defendant who called the FCC
for assistance with a TCPA case.
they will do from fax.com from fax.com HQ for 7 to 10 cents per
transmission. OR
sell to a client a faxcaster. PC using fax.com software to do war dialing
to find fax machines. faxcaster then snarffs info from fax machine, then
person transmits fax and MUST give fax.com the numbers that they find! So
that helps fax.com build their database of fax numbers. You don't get a
better price though. 8k to 10k for the faxcaster.
It is hard to use discovery to find how it was sent out because they don't
keep records. However, they have recently been ordered to preserve this
information (see below).
The FCC can't discuss contemplated actions but when the FCC does determine
that a fine is in order, they basically just use the complaints that have been
sent in, i.e., they don't do a class action sort of thing like an Attorney
General would. So the FCC is unlikely to put fax.com out of business
because their actions are limited to forfeiture (limited by the number of
complaints received). They cannot enjoin fax.com like a state AG can. When the
FCC receives enough complaints, they generally go after forfeiture.
Fax.com in the past also has sent out unsolicited
faxes to solicit your approval (see "Your
Permission Please" for the original sent out by the faxcaster). These faxes are written as to assume your
consent unless you call the 800 number to be removed. You'll note from this fax that they try
to hide their identity with *67 in the header in order to block the caller ID
number. Gee, I wonder why? Also, note that they give the impression that they are a public service organization that does a limited amount of
commercial advertising to support the charitable work that they do. I personally
have received several hundred fax.com faxes. I've only seen one missing child
ad.
Lighthouse Marketing LLC has somehow taken over Soho. Nelson and Kevin
had a falling out in March. Lighthouse is not a residential complex, although
there is a Lighthouse street. The actual address is a Postal Annex across the
street from there. And if you look up the name server IP for Lighthouse, you
will see that it belongs to Quest, but is assigned to Database Logistics, which
is Eric Wilson’s company. So that means Eric is hosting their website from his
house. You will see Database Logistics intertwined with Tech Access Systems (see
details of this obfuscation and all addresses here).
Before running to hide in South Africa, Kevin took his voice off of the voice
mail on his direct line, but a female voice directs you to someone in his
office.
Kevin will be 40 in December.
They pay another company to fax for them in the state of Washington. That is
how they can get around the agreement with the state of washington's attorney
general.
Satellite Direct Systems, was partially owned by Kevin Katz. And his partner
Eric Wilson had no clue.
Robert Battaglia is actually a nice guy. About a year ago, Kevin moved the
Tech Support Dept. for the Faxcasters out of fax.com and put it under Battaglia’s
name as Telcom Tech Support. It is on Merit Circle, only a few minutes from Fax.com and there is a T1 that runs between
them. And then Robert works out of his house, along with 2-3 employees in north
San Diego County.
Felsenthal is no longer inhouse, per se. He now has an office in Los Angeles,
but is still their main counsel. He did not hire Cozen, they hired him. Now
Cozen wants nothing to do with fax.com.
They are now targeting 40 million faxes per month and have no
intention of halting any of their plans. They will say here we are, but we
aren’t making any money. That is because it is spread out everywhere under
different names and different locations.
My company too has been SPAMmed by fax.com. We got heavy handed and finally
got there attention several months back. In the recent month or so, some
faxing had started back to a couple ranges of numbers. I called all the
numbers I had previously and found them disconnected. What a surprise.
Even more surprising is I called and left a message that I was trying to
Reach Darrell and low and behold, he actually called me back. I called back
and got Laura at Data Research Systems and she gave me an email address to
mail the numbers to to have them removed.
Laura's number: 949-580-2625 Darrell's number: 949-580-2629 (did not
actually speak to him on that number) Laura's email address: m102@dataresearchsystems.com
here's another tidbit:
As far as the Opt out list, I do believe it got put in the deleted list. We
actually did make some effort to not fax to people who asked to be
deleted. Here's a little tidbit...out of the 33 million fax numbers we gathered, there are 39 million deletes (higher because blocks of numbers are
deleted to accommodate huge companies, cell phones, etc.) and there are only
11.5 million good fax numbers.
Terri Breer shows up to represent fax.com. She works with Charles Martin. I
have confirmed that she is also using the name Terri Cleland, both in court
and out. Don't know the origin of the names, maybe one is a maiden name, but
she is using both identities. There is no Terri Cleland registered with the
State Bar. She is registered with the State Bar as Terri Breer. By the way, I
personally know her and have seen her with my own eyes using both names in
court on different cases.
You end up paying for all the faxes; they pretty much send you the fax at
virtually no cost to them (.5 per minute and a fax only takes 40 seconds; 0
cost if done via local faxcaster).
In addition, they avoid paying any income tax or other taxes using techniques
such as:
They've arranged so that their communications lines bought via GCCC are
tax exempt
They have customers pay via credit card that is cleared in Canada and
part goes to fax.com the rest goes to Kevin's accounts in South Africa
Advertisers like America's Toner pay directly to the Millenium Marketing
Swiss bank account. That's just a front for fax.com. Only part goes to
fax.com. Kevin pockets the rest.
Millenium Marketing is a non-profit so doesn't pay taxes. It just does
faxes for missing children. That's what they want you to believe.
Kevin Katz gets kickbacks on the telecommunications bills that are paid
by fax.com
Here's the scoop on IVR
Prior to Jan, 2003 Kevin 'outsourced' his inbound call center to an independent Company in Orange County. Advertisers were complaining that when customers called this Co. they were either not properly assisted, not understood, or placed on hold forever.
When the former IBM space became available (Eric Brenner-Lighthouse) Kevin decided to hire college grads, sales driven individual and keep the inbound operation in place/house at Brenner's location.
The IVR was created to stop the bleeding of the customers advertisers and to increase profits on the hot cuts.
HOT CUTS are when a caller qualifies for a loan or an insurance policy, or a refinance they are qualified by IVR and transferred over to the actual Company
advertising w/ IVR-Kevin.
Example: I call looking to refinance my home. The IVR telemarketer asked some very specific questions like, how much is your mortgage, what rate per APR, have you ever file for bankruptcy, are you married, both working, etc.
The total score of yes vs. no's gives the caller an option. 1) would you like to speak with a loan/refinance officer w/ ABC company now, 2) if this is a bad time or you don't have 30 minutes now, may we have a loan officer call you? or 3) would you like us to fax you an application and we can place it with three loan
companies?
Each answer is a different method of IVR profits, hot cut is the most profitable, loan lead second, and #3 slightly less.
Note: The caller is also asked questions about cars, insurance home and life, vacation interest, etc. to sell to other advertisers.
(see also Vision Lab Telecommunications
for information on IVR, Inc. which is used by Vision Lab for removal numbers)
Fairon-2004.pdf is
a letter from Fairon denying he uses fax advertising. This is particularly
interesting in light of the
SuttonCallSource Results
that lists his company as a fax.com customer!
February 23, 2004: AquaVieComplaint
(shows how fax.com is paid $1.2M for promoting one company with a pump and
dump campaign)
Oct 25, 2004: Wilson v. Kirsch judgment for Kirsch for $13,000:
WislonVKirschJudgment.pdf (Case 04CC07429)
Oct 4, 2004: California Superior Court Judge Baines correctly rules that
multiple junk faxes cases are not a split cause of action (this was a
fax.com advertiser):
BainesAppeal.pdf
Eric Wilson
Affidavit (June 15, 2004) where he denies using any 877 numbers which is
surprising since 877 numbers were in the FCC Order of Forfeiture and we have
plenty of faxes with 877 removal numbers like fdc877removal.pdf
which is answered by "Consumer Source" (aka fax.com; see below).
However, we know that fax.com is very consistent in their headers and
removal numbers. Thus, in this case, we believe that Wilson is, in fact,
telling the truth!
Subpoenaed fax.com removal/response number information
SuttonCallSource Results
shows a huge number of 800 numbers belonging to fax.com (Data Research
Systems Inc.) supplied by CallSource. Also shows that they lie about their
names when contracting for this. Also shows that Loan Now is a
customer is of fax.com (and lists names of other fax.com customers!)
fdc800.PDF
and fdc800-2.PDF shows 800 numbers belonging
to fax.com (Lighthouse Marketing) supplied by Paetec Communications
FDCdirList.txt: A
directory listing of every fax sent by fax.com. Note: within a directory
might be hundred different versions of a fax, so this is just a high level
list of the faxes sent. This directory list is an EXCELLENT way to search
for fax.com's customer's names
fax.com's mortgage
lead customers (July 2001). This is Eloansites.com customers: 98 mortgage brokers who used fax.com to send
out faxes (approximately 2K to 5K faxes per weekday per customer):
http://63.201.144.76/stk/Casters/
If there is no 800 response
number listed, it is usually because the customer was supplying their own
direct number.
FirstChartered16: 16 different ads that fax.com sent over a period of almost 2 years
for one customer (First Chartered Investments). Note the variations in the
headers.
Mortgage1 (received
2/05/04 by the General Counsel at a company I do business with)
The information on this page is just the "tip of the iceberg." If you are an attorney, Attorney General, etc., there is an even more vast
array of information about fax.com available on the web in a variety of
locations. Contact us via e-mail if you'd like more information on fax.com.
Last Minute adverts are very popular in the period before a holiday season.
A Last Minute advert makes your holiday home very exposed to people searching of holiday homes:
Ferieboligweb.dk, Cottage-Rental.com etc. is an effective internet media
that makes your holiday home very exposed to people searching holiday homes.
Ferieboligweb was one among 20 companies but brought 44 % of all visitors to a private homepage presenting an Italian holiday home i 2005:
The primary
school of
Binca, in
Kosovo. In
Albanian,
it’s called
Endre Mjeda.
In Serbian:
Miladin Markovic.
This school
is attended
by both Serb
and Albanian
children.
In the playground,
the children
speak to each
other through
an interpreter.
During the
classes, the
two groups
follow different
curricula.
It took some
time for the
parents to
accept this
joint school
concept.
Noe Gega, Albanian
parent: “I feel
OK about that,
what can you
do, everybody
should study
together,
we should
forget the
past and start
a new life
in a good
way.”
Vera Ilic,
Serbian woman:
“We have lived
well with
Albanians
here, but
after what
happened the
situation
has changed.
Both them
and us think
differently.
We hope it
will be all
right.”
Liman Kanberi,
School Director:
«This
integration
can be an
example for
other places
where there
are Albanians
and a Serb
minority»
But the school
in Binca is
a very isolated
example –
it is the
only multiethnic
school in
Kosovo, organized
by an Italian
NGO. Relations
between Serbs
and Albanians
are far from
idyllic and
the tension
and mistrust
are still
very tangible.
Mitrovica
is a divided
town and the
bridge in
the center
is a kind
of border
crossing,
on which both
sides have
had serious
clashes with
international
forces. The
tension is
not that visible
anymore, but
there is still
no freedom
of movement,
neither for
Serbs, neither
for Albanians.
Only escorted
by KFOR can
one cross
to the other
side of the
bridge.
Man in KFOR
truck, sound
bite: “People
working with
us, who live
nearby or
come with
KFOR, aren’t
allowed to
cross either.
They can come
in a truck,
but the bridge
is as far
as they can
get.”
In such an
edgy environment,
every attempt
to contact
the other
side is perceived
as betrayal,
or just hopeless.
Ivan Radic
tries to organize
dialogues
between Serbs
and Albanians
within the
Nansen Dialogue
Center. In
spite of his
own refugee
experience
and all the
difficulties,
Ivan says
he is optimistic:
Ivan sound
bite: Regardless
the political
solution of
the problem,
regardless
the final
status of
Kosovo, I
hope that
we will be
able to live,
if not together,
then at least
side by side.
But even that
requires dialogue.
»
Those who want
to initiate
dialogue are
often unwelcome
on both sides
of the bridge.
Ivan occasionally
crosses to
the other
side to meet
his Albanian
colleagues
in the so-called
«Confidence
Zone”. In
this zone,
there is a
multiethnic
computer workshop.
It is the
only gathering
place for
young Serbs
and Albanians.
Rina Mehmeti,
sound bite
“We both
miss the same
things; we
miss company
just like
them. Both
sides feel
deprived of
something.”
But dialogue
is limited
to narrow
confidence
zones protected
by international
forces, and
limited to
a handful
of people.
The majority
still stays
on their side
of the fence,
in fear and
mistrust of
those on the
other side.
How
to break out of
the limited circle?
How to cross that
bridge, and speak
out on the need
for reconciliation?
These same questions
were addressed
at a conference
in Thessaloniki.
“Reconciling for
the Future”, an
initiative launched
by the Stability
Pact and the Center
for Democracy
and Reconciliation,
wants to start
spreading good
examples across
the region. One
of the ideas discussed,
was a simultaneous
joint apology
to be signed by
the leaders of
the countries
of Southeastern
Europe.
Zarko Puhovski
, Croatian
Helsinki Committee
“A simultaneous
apology is
the only chance
for this to
happen. But
it also needs
simultaneous
pressure from
the international
community.
To be honest,
without that,
it will never
happen.”
Elisabeth Rehn,
Stability
Pact “Most
of the people
are sick and
tired of wars
and problems;
they really
want to build
up their future,
a future that
will allow
the young
people to
stay in the
region”
Nenad
Sebek, Center
for Democracy
and Reconciliation
in SEE: “We watch
as our neighbours
Romanians, Bulgarians,
let alone Hungarians
and Slovenes hurry
towards Europe
or are already
there, while we
lag behind. I
think that we
are all tired
of misery, poverty
and all the other
consequences of
war and I think
that the feeling
is now there for
a new page to
be opened.”
From the roofs
of Sarajevo,
the view on
the Mosque,
the Orthodox
and the Catholic
Church testifies
the unique
beauty of
this place.
But this mixture
of cultures
brought to
Sarajevo more
evil than
good in the
last decade.
The Bosnian
war has divided
three ethnic
communities,
not only in
the present,
but also in
their perception
of the past.
History lessons
in Bosnia
are taught
according
to three different
curricula.
In
the parts dominated
by Serbs, teachers
rely on books
from Serbia. Same
situation in the
Croat parts of
Bosnia where curricula
from Croatia are
in use. Different
and often opposite
interpretation
of history in
such a small place
put teachers in
a delicate position.
Ekrem Barakovic,
History Teacher,
Sarajevo: “I don’t
like to talk
about practical
history, because
it ultimately
becomes political.
In these times,
we as a society
seem to be
infected with
politics and
everything
tends to become
political.”
The Gavrilo
Princip Bridge
in Sarajevo
is being reconstructed,
but the interpretation
of Princip’s
deed varies
from heroism
to terrorism,
depending
on the schoolbook.
Student, Sarajevo: "Although
he was referred
to as a hero
in the pre-war
books as well
as by my parents,
today everyone
has rejected
him, suddenly
he’s no good."
Second
Student, Sarajevo: “I thought
that he was a
terrorist, and
now my opinion
on him is somewhat
split. I don’t
like at all that
complacency around
the Mlada Bosna
organization and
its goals. In
any case, I don’t
know if there
are any good or
bad sides to it.”
A couple of
kilometers
from the center
of Sarajevo,
in Lukavica,
where Serbs
live, secondary
school students
do not have
any dilemmas
about whether
Gavrilo Princip
was a positive
historical
character.
Student, Lukavica: “The people
accepted Gavrilo
Princip as
a hero, because
he literally
sacrificed
his freedom
and his life
for something
that would
eventually,
after all
the hardships,
bring salvation
to the people.”
Mutually opposed
histories
are common
in the Balkans
– what is
called occupation
in one book,
is liberation
in the other.
With a group
of history
teachers from
all over the
region, the
Center for
Democracy
and Reconciliation
made an in-depth
analysis of
history teaching
in the Balkans.
Dubravka Stojanovic
is one of
these professors
now developing
teaching packs
to offer different
perspectives,
to open windows
on other interpretations.
Dubravka Stojanovic,
History teacher,
Belgrade "It
is always
the other
who is responsible.
With that
responsibility,
which is always
“theirs” and
the fabrication
of a picture
of other nations,
a source of
intolerance
is created
and that source
is very easily
used when,
for political
reasons, it
fits well."
Student, Lukavica: “I think
that Tito
is indirectly
responsible
for the recent
civil war
in Bosnia
because Tito
didn’t solve
many ethnic
issues in
the former
Yugoslavia.”
Student, Sarajevo: “We believe,
or rather
we know, that
we have been
victims of
an aggression.
Until in Banja
Luka they
thought that
there was
no aggression
whatsoever
in Bosnia-Herzegovina...
They simply
maintain that
it was a civil
war in which
they rebelled
against the
secession
from Yugoslavia.”
The last day
of the school
year was celebrated
by high school
graduates….
both in Sarajevo
and Lukavica.
They maybe
believe in
different
truths, but
they still
sing the same
songs…
Version 1.01 November 4, 2004
ASV SOL Viewer and Editor adds 'View and Edit SOL Files' option to ASV.
SOL (Local Shared Object) files are created by SWF files to store persistent data on the user's computer, similar to a cookie.
With ASV SOL Viewer and Editor you can,
Open and view SOL files,
Edit contents of SOL files,
Create new SOL files.
Usage Opening a SOL File
You can open an existing SOL file by either,
Using the File|Open command and locating a SOL file.
Using the File|Open from Player Folder command and browsing the subfolders to locate a SOL file.
Dragging&Dropping a SOL file into the main window.
You can also create a new SOL file by using the File|New command.
(You can change the folder used in File|Open from Player Folder command, by using File|Set Player Folder. By default, this folder is 'Macromedia/Flash Player' folder under the 'Application Data' for the current user).
Viewing SOL Files
The contents of the open SOL file will be presented as a tree structure. The root item indicates the name of the Shared Object. You can edit this name using the File|Edit Object Name command. (However, changing the Object Name will render the SOL file useless. Not recommended unless you are creating a new SOL file).
Items listed at the first level below the Object name correspond to the properties of the Shared Object, of various types. Certain types can only have a value, some (like array) can have a child items which can be any of the other types.
Various types are:
Number: Contains a value of integer or floating point number.
Boolean: Contains a value that can be either True of False.
String: Contains an array of characters.
Object: Contains a list of child items each with a property name.
Null: Does not contain a value. Corresponds to "null".
Undef: Does not contain a value. Corresponds to "undefined".
Type7: Contains an integer value. (its purpose currently unknown)
Mixed (aka Mixed Array): Contains a list of child items each with an index.
Array: Contains a list of child items. (not normally used in SOL files)
Date: Contains a Date/Time/Zone value.
XML: Contains a string in XML format.
Custom (aka Custom Class): Contains a class name and a list of child items.
Editing SOL Files
Editing existing items:
When an item is selected, name of the selected property and its value (if applicable) will be shown on the panel to the right.
You can edit the Property Name and the Value fields, then press Enter or the Apply button to make it permanent (You'll still need to save the file though). For String and XML types, you can edit the Value in the text box (to insert a return character, press ctrl+Enter).
You can also save the contents of the text box to a file, or load it from a file, using the Save/Load buttons. (UTF8 encoded text/xml files are not fully supported in this version).
Creating new items:
You can either use the toolbar buttons or right-click menu to access the item related commands.
The root item (Object Name) can only have child items. When an item that can have child items is selected, the New Child command will be enabled. Use this command to create a child item as the first child in the list. To add further child items, you can select an existing child item and use New command to insert/add a new child item.
After New or New Child commands are issued, a pop up menu will appear which allows you to select the type of the new item. You can edit this newly created item as described above. You can delete an item by using the Delete command. You can move items around using the Cut, Copy, Paste and Paste Child commands.
When you are finished editing the SOL file, you can use the File|Save command to overwrite the original file, or you can use the File|Save As command to save it as a different file.
Known Issues
UTF8 / UNICODE support in this version is very limited. If you use special characters (non-ASCII) that are in accordance with your current Regional Settings, all will be OK.
SOL file format is not officially documented. There may be unsupported types by ASV SOL Viewer and Editor. We will improve the application promptly as soon as new information about SOL format is revealed.
pxdom is a implementation of the W3C DOM standard for
document manipulation.
Its main features are:
Complete support for the DOM Level 3 Core and LS Recommendations.
Passes all applicable level1-level3 tests in the DOM Test Suite at the
time of writing, modulo a few suite flaws (see W3 Bugzilla).
In-built parser for XML 1.0/1.1 (optionally with namespaces), non-validating
but with full DTD parser and optional external entity/subset support.
Stand-alone pure-Python module, also embeddable in other packages.
(No dependencies other than the standard string and URL library modules.)
Compatible with Python 1.5.2 and later; tested up to 2.4.2. (Requires Python 1.6
or later for proper Unicode support, and Python 2.3 or later for the optional
character normalisation features.)
When to use pxdom
There are of course a number of other Python DOM implementations.
You might want to consider using pxdom if your DOM application:
wants to use DOM Level 3 methods;
requires complete standards-compliance;
needs to work on a range of setups, regardless of Python
version and what XML tools are installed.
You might want to consider not using pxdom if your
DOM application:
must run as quickly as possible: pxdom is written
for correctness, not efficiency;
wants to work together with other parts of Python’s
XML frameworks, eg. SAX, pulldom.
Op de meeste plaatsen is het bewolkt, maar wel overwegend droog. Zowel in het oosten als het zuidwesten van Zeeland komen enkele opklaringen voor, maar over het algemeen houden deze niet lang stand. Vannacht blijft de bewolking dan ook overheersen en vooral in het kustgebied kan nog een enkel winters buitje vallen. De temperatuur daalt tot iets boven het vriespunt. Mocht het toch wat langer opklaren, dan kan het makkelijk 1 of 2 graden vriezen met kans op gladheid. De wind is veranderlijk en zwak tot matig, kracht 3 of minder.
4/12/2005
zonsondergang pacifac Ingezonden door: willem asselbergs
De Bilt en omstreken
Het weer voor uw regio? Vul hier uw postcode in:
Weer in het nieuws: 10 Feb: Tweedeling in de Alpen
De weersverschillen in de Alpen zijn groot. Aan de noordkant sneeuwt het onophoudelijk, terwijl het zuiden te maken heeft met meest droog weer en zonnige perioden.
Lees verder >>
+++URL: http://www.sharondurdel.com/PageManager/Default.aspx?PageID=330135&NF=1
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Las Vegas Real Estate, Las Vegas Homes by Las Vegas Real Estate Agent Sharon Durdel with Alpha Realty Services. View Las Vegas Homes for Sale & Las Vegas Nevada real estate,Las Vegas condos,Las Vegas hi-rises,homes for sale,relocation to Las Vegas,retirement in Las Vegas,las vegas homes,las vegas homes for sale,real estate las vegas, relocation to las vegas nevada,the truth on las vegas real estate
World title boxing, PGA golf track and off-road auto racing, championship rodeo, major tennis matches - everything from national archery to wrestling - are regular features of the Las Vegas scene
Though the word "Bible" is commonly used by non-Jews -- as
are the terms "Old Testament" and "New Testament" -- the
appropriate term to use for the Hebrew scriptures ("scripture"
is a synonym used by both Jews and non-Jews) is Tanakh. This
word is derived from the Hebrew letters of its three components:
Torah: The Books of Genesis (Bereshit), Exodus (Shemot),
Leviticus (Vayikrah), Numbers (Bamidbar) and Deuteronomy
(Devarim).
Nevi'im (Prophets): The Books of Joshua, Judges, I Samuel, II
Samuel, I Kings, II Kings, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Hosea, Joel,
Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habukkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai,
Zechariah, and Malachi. (The last twelve are sometimes grouped
together as "Trei Asar" ["Twelve"].)
Ketuvim (Writings): The Books of Psalms, Proverbs, Job, Song of
Songs, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, Esther, Daniel (although
not all that is included in the Christian Canon), Ezra and Nehemiah,
I Chronicles, and II Chronicles.
It should be noted that the breaking of Samuel (Shmuel), Kings
(Melachim) and Chronicles (Divrei hayamim) into two parts
is strictly an artifact of the Christian printers who first issued
the books. They were too big to be issued as single volumes. Because
every one followed these de facto standards, the titles of Volume
1 and Volume 2 were attached to the names. The division of the
Tanakh into chapters was also done by medieval Christians, and
only later adopted by Jews.
Also, many Christian Bibles have expanded versions of several
of these books (Ester, Ezra, Daniel, Jeremiah and Chronicles)
including extra material that is not accepted as canonical in
Judaism. This extra material was part of the ancient Greek translation
of the Tanakh, but was never a part of the official Hebrew Tanakh.
Jews regard the additional material as apocryphal. Among Christians,
there is a difference of opinion. Catholics regard this material
as canonical, while many Protestant sects regard this material
as Apocrypha. What is and is not regarded as Apocrypha varies
among the many Christian sects.
+++URL: http://www.courttv.com/archive/casefiles/nuremberg/
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Court TV: A Look Back at Nuremberg
A Look Back At Nuremberg
About the Indictments
In early October 1945, the four prosecuting nations -- the United States, Great Britain, France and Russia -- issued an indictment against 24 men and six organizations. The individual defendants were charged not only with the systematic murder of millions of people, but also with planning and carrying out the war in Europe.
About the Defendants
On November 20, 1945, 21 Nazi defendants filed into the dock at the Palace of Justice in Nuremberg to stand trial for war crimes. The 22nd defendant, Martin Bormann, was believed to be dead.
Who was Who at Nuremberg
An index of the major participants at the trial, including defendants, attorneys, judges and witnesses.
The Creation of the Tribunal and the Law Behind It
Background on the theory and history behind the creation of the tribunal and a look at some of the major differences between the American system of justice and that used at Nuremberg.
Interview with Drexel Sprecher
Court TV News Editor Jim Lyons recently interviewed former American Nuremberg prosecutor Drexel Sprecher at his home in suburban Washington, D.C. Sprecher led the U.S. prosecution of Nuremberg defendants Hans Fritzsche and Baldur von Schirach. After the Nuremberg trials, Sprecher went on to become vice chairman of the Democratic Party.
The Legacy of the Trial
What are war crimes and crimes against humanity? What can the rest of the world do when a government brutalizes its people? Here is some background on the trial that has become a milestone in international law.
The Transcripts
The following transcripts were generously provided by Aristarchus Knowledge Industries, the first publisher to electronically store the more than 126,000 pages of the historic proceedings on CD-ROM. Aristarchus Knowledge Industries is a Seattle-based producer of online and CD-ROM databases and reference books. Major products include the Asia Pacific Database (available from Knight-Ridder Information Services' online services), Nuremberg War Crimes Trials Online, Women Worldwide Database, and Electrons, Lobbies & PACs Database (all three available on CD-ROM and from Library Corp.'s Nlightn online service). Contact Aristarchus at P.O. Box 45610, Seattle, WA, 98105.
Some of these transcripts have also been provided in a compressed (zipped) format for faster downloading. You will need an unzipping utility to use the compressed versions of these files.
The Indictments and the Entering of Pleas
Hermann Goering, Albert Speer and other top Nazi leaders listened from the Nuremberg courtroom prisoners' dock on Nov. 21, 1945 as their indictments were read. About eight months earlier, most of them were still under Adolph Hitler's command.
Prosecutors said the defendants carried out Nazi master race policies under the belief that Germans were accordingly entitled to subjugate, dominate, or exterminate other races and peoples.
After listening to prosecutors read a long list of atrocities in slave labor factories and concentration camps, each defendant pled not guilty to charges of crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. Download a compressed version.
Robert Jackson's Opening Speech
In this opening speech, the chief U.S. prosecutor promised that a paper trail of official documents would prove the Nazis wreaked wanton violence at unprecedented levels, systematically murdering and enslaving millions of people. Although the accused tried to hide their atrocities at the end of the war, they "shared a Teutonic passion for thoroughness in putting things on paper." Download a compressed version.
Jackson, a justice on leave from the U.S. Supreme Court, argued for the legitimacy and need for this trial, saying, "the wrongs which we seek to condemn and punish have been so calculated, so malignant, and so devastating, that civilization cannot tolerate their being ignored, because it cannot survive their being repeated."
Sir Hartley Shawcross's Opening Speech
In this opening speech, the chief British prosecutor described the Nazis' gross disregard of international treaties and their intention of worldwide conquest. He quoted Adolf Hitler saying, "I shall give a propagandist cause for starting the war, never mind whether it be true or not. The victor shall not be asked later on whether he told the truth or not."
The task for Nuremberg prosecutors would be two-part, Shawcross said. "The first is to demonstrate the nature and the basis of the crime against peace, which is constituted under the Charter of this Tribunal, by waging wars of aggression and in violation of treaties; and the second is to establish beyond all possibility of doubt that such wars were waged by these defendants." Download a compressed version.
SS General Otto Ohlendorf
Testifying for the prosecution, SS General Otto Ohlendorf said that as the head of "Einsatzgruppe D" he led a 500-man division that "liquidated" 90,000 people, primarily Jews, between June 1941 and June 1942. Men, women and children were taken from their homes, stripped, lined up at the edge of a tank ditch and shot by firing squad. Victims would fall into a ditch, which would be plowed over to form a mass grave.
German troops complained about shooting women and children, the 38-year-old Ohlendorf testified. In reaction, Nazi commanders ordered only the men to be shot. The women and children, in groups of 15 to 25, were gassed to death in special vans on the way to the grave sites.
Ohlendorf, considered too minor a figure to be tried at the initial trials, was convicted of war crimes in 1951 and hanged along with three other Einsatzgruppen commanders.
The American Cross-Examination of Hermann Goering
The following is the cross-examination by chief U.S. prosecutor Robert Jackson of Hermann Goering, the man Adolf Hitler named as his successor. Though Hitler had called for Goering's arrest in the final days of the war, Goering was unapologetic, comparing the Germany's treatment of the Jews with the United States' treatment of Native Americans. When asked if it was true that the Nazis abolished democracy when they came to power, Goering said, "We found it no longer necessary." Download a compressed version.
The Auschwitz Commandant
Rudolf Hoess wrote poetry about the beauty of Auschwitz, the concentration camp he commanded. At peak efficiency the camp had the capacity to "get rid of ten thousand people in 24 hours," he testified in this cross-examination. By the end of the war, the camp accounted for more than two million deaths, according to German estimates. Hoess was taken to Nuremberg too late to be included in the prosecution's case. He was called to testify in the defense of SS officer Ernst Kaltenbrunner. In 1947, Hoess was hanged at Auschwitz by Polish authorities. Download a compressed version.
The Katyn Forest Massacre
Sometime after 1939, when Germany and the Soviet Union attacked and divided Poland, 11,000 Polish soldiers disappeared. Soviet prosecutors claimed the Nazis were responsible. The Nazis said they found the soldiers' unmarked graves in Poland's Katyn forest after they invaded the Soviet Union in 1941.
In this testimony, German and Soviet experts contradict each other as to when the deaths occurred. More than four decades later, following Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev's "Glasnost" policy, the Soviet Union released documents indicating that it was responsible for the Katyn massacre. Download a compressed version.
Albert Speer: Hitler's Architect
Adolf Hitler considered Albert Speer a fellow artist and friend. When Speer completed construction on the Reich Chancellery, Hitler gave him a watercolor portrait of a church that Hitler had painted in 1909 while studying art in Vienna. In 1942, at Hitler's urging, Speer became Germany's armaments chief, controlling a vast work force of slave laborers. Download a compressed version.
Robert Jackson's Closing Speech
In this landmark in international law, Robert Jackson, the Chief U.S. prosecutor at Nuremberg, makes his final speech of the trial. To answer the defendants who claimed that Hitler's plans were unknown to them, Jackson said, "The plans of Adolf Hitler for aggression were just as secret as Mein Kampf (Hitler's political manifesto), of which over six million copies were published in Germany." Download a compressed version.
Il
testo che segue è tratto da Internet 2004 - Manuale per
l'uso della rete, di M. Calvo, F. Ciotti, G. Roncaglia e M.A.
Zela, in corso di pubblicazione presso l'editore Laterza. Il testo
è in versione provvisoria e non comprende aggiunte e modifiche
apportate in sede di correzione di bozze. Il testo definitivo sarà
inserito in rete appena possibile, e sarà consultabile anche
- all'interno della versione elettronica dell'intero libro - all'indirizzo
http://www.laterza.it/internet/.
Versione
1.0, del 2 agosto 2003
Dalle pagine personali
ai sistemi di gestione dei contenuti
Fin dalla prima edizione
di questo manuale, abbiamo sottolineato come il World Wide Web non
andasse considerato solo un enorme deposito di informazioni, ma
anche uno strumento di comunicazione da utilizzare attivamente:
inserire informazione in rete, creando un piccolo sito personale,
era (e - come vedremo - continua ad essere) un'operazione forse
non proprio elementare, ma comunque alla portata di qualunque utente
dotato di un minimo di buona volontà.
Negli ultimi anni, con
la progressiva introduzione di strumenti sempre più semplici
per la condivisione di informazioni attraverso la rete, l'uso del
Web come strumento di comunicazione personale alla portata di tutti
ha conosciuto un ulteriore sviluppo, fino a rivoluzionare, almeno
sotto certi profili, il volto tradizionale di molti siti.
I primi sintomi di questa
evoluzione si sono avuti con l'offerta da parte di molti provider
di strumenti che semplificano la creazione di pagine personali,
permettendo la realizzazione di pagine Web direttamente sul server
remoto, anche a chi non conosca il linguaggio HTML e non sappia
utilizzare gli editor più evoluti e i programmi per il trasferimento
di file. Si tratta di procedure interattive che permettono in genere
- utilizzando solo il browser - di decidere l'impaginazione grafica
della nostra pagina (scegliendola all'interno di un'apposita raccolta
di template, e cioè di modelli realizzati da grafici e impaginatori
esperti), di assegnarle un titolo, di inserirne o modificarne il
testo, di aggiungere qualche immagine. Niente di troppo complesso,
ma abbastanza per inserire in rete con poca fatica una pagina personale
dall'apparenza dignitosa.
Col tempo, questi strumenti
si sono ulteriormente sviluppati: anziché permettere la creazione
guidata di una singola pagina Web, sono ora in grado di gestire
interi siti, separando la 'forma' (cioè l'impaginazione grafica
delle pagine, i menu e le componenti di interfaccia, ecc.) dal 'contenuto'
specifico (i testi e le immagini che devono essere via via pubblicati
nel sito, e mantenuti aggiornati). I contenuti di un sito vengono
in questo caso inseriti all'interno di un vero e proprio database,
e recuperati al volo dal server - che si preoccupa di impaginarli
correttamente in base al template prescelto - al momento della pubblicazione
del sito o al momento della richiesta da parte del browser dell'utente
remoto. Per fare un'analogia, è un po' come se ci si trovasse
ad essere redattori di un quotidiano o di una rivista: noi scriviamo
il testo dell'articolo (e magari forniamo le relative immagini),
ma non ci occupiamo della sua impaginazione, che è invece
demandata a grafici e tipografi professionisti (e cioè -
nel nostro caso - al programma che si occupa della gestione e impaginazione
dei contenuti).
I programmi in grado
di effettuare questo tipo di operazioni si chiamano Content Management
System (CMS), e cioè sistemi per la gestione dei contenuti.
Se volete una panoramica dei principali CMS e delle loro caratteristiche,
un buon punto di partenza è il sito CMSWatch (http://www.cmswatch.com).
I primi CMS erano molto
cari, ed erano utilizzati soprattutto da grandi siti aziendali e
da siti giornalistici. Per un giornale in rete, infatti, offrire
ai propri giornalisti uno strumento 'facile' per scrivere gli articoli,
e disporre di procedure uniformi per raccoglierne i testi e impaginarli
in maniera automatica, rappresenta ormai non solo un vantaggio ma
una vera e propria necessità. Questo tipo di prodotti 'professionali'
ha continuato a svilupparsi offrendo funzionalità sempre
più avanzate: per fare solo qualche esempio, possibilità
di stabilire i tempi di permanenza di un articolo in prima pagina,
capacità di indicizzare automaticamente gli articoli, capacità
di offrire stili di impaginazione diversi ad utenti con esigenze
diverse e di selezionare automaticamente gli articoli in modo da
rispondere agli interessi individuali degli utenti registrati, gestione
automatica dei forum di discussione sui singoli articoli, abbinamento
fra articoli e banner pubblicitari, e così via.
Progressivamente, accanto
ai prodotti destinati alle fasce più alte del mercato, si
sono sviluppati CMS piuttosto economici, e in alcuni casi addirittura
gratuiti. Fra questi ultimi ricordiamo PHPNuke (il sito di riferimento
è http://www.phpnuke.org, una attiva comunità di utenti
italiani può essere contattata all'indirizzo http://www.phpnuke.it).
Il nome di PHPNuke deriva dalla tecnologia utilizzata, il linguaggio
di scripting PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor), in grado di gestire dinamicamente
la creazione di siti anche assai complessi e di interagire direttamente
con dei database. PHP è un linguaggio open source, utilizzabile
dunque gratuitamente, ed è disponibile per programmi server
in grado di funzionare su molti sistemi operativi diversi1.
Il problema della maggior
parte dei CMS - incluso PHPNuke - è che pur essendo molto
semplice per gli utenti utilizzarne le funzionalità principali
una volta che siano stati installati e configurati, installarli
e configurarli non è per niente semplice. Inoltre, essi richiedono
la disponibilità di un server web. E un server web - per
essere utile - deve essere sempre acceso e sempre collegato alla
rete (in modo da essere sempre pronto a 'servire' le pagine web
che ospita), deve essere a sua volta correttamente installato e
configurato, e deve essere adeguatamente difeso da possibili attacchi
esterni. Tutte operazioni che richiedono un certo livello di esperienza.
Per tentare di superare
questa difficoltà è possibile imboccare due strade
diverse: da un lato, è possibile cercare di semplificare
ulteriormente sia i CMS sia le procedure di attivazione e gestione
di un server, in modo da renderle, se non proprio alla portata di
tutti, almeno alla portata di una fascia abbastanza ampia di utenti
'avanzati': singole persone, ma anche piccole aziende, associazioni,
organizzazioni di ogni genere. Le tecnologie ADSL offrono ormai
a basso prezzo un collegamento a Internet discretamente veloce e
attivo 24 ore su 24: l'ipotesi di ospitare anche a casa o nella
sede di una piccola organizzazione (ad esempio una scuola) un server
web non troppo trafficato è dunque ormai praticabile con
costi non proibitivi. In alternativa, è possibile sviluppare
programmi che offrano a più utenti un servizio di CMS per
così dire 'centralizzato', ospitato su un server comune.
A scegliere questa seconda strada sono sempre più spesso
i provider che fino a pochi mesi or sono offrivano ai propri clienti
un semplice 'spazio web', e che integrano oggi la loro offerta con
la disponibilità di un sistema che aiuti gli utenti non solo
a pubblicare una singola pagina, ma a gestire dinamicamente - nella
maniera più semplice possibile - i contenuti del loro sito.
Una scelta analoga può essere fatta da organizzazioni o aziende
interessate a fornire alle proprie strutture interne la possibilità
di gestire con una procedura semplificata e centralizzata dei mini-siti
autonomi (ad esempio, dei siti di progetto). Infine, l'offerta di
uno spazio web accompagnato da funzioni 'centralizzate' di CMS è
alla base, come vedremo, di diversi servizi specifici (gratuiti
o a pagamento) nati negli ultimi mesi.
Nella situazione di
forte crisi economica nella quale tutto il mondo delle aziende che
operano attorno a Internet si è venuto a trovare dopo il
2001, c'era il rischio che queste possibilità fossero esplorate
solo in maniera lenta e limitata. A scongiurare questo rischio è
venuto però un fenomeno che è letteralmente 'esploso'
nell'ultimo anno: quello dei cosiddetti weblog. Vediamo insieme
di cosa si tratta.
Una nuova tipologia di siti: i weblog
Capire quali contenuti
sia utile e produttivo inserire in rete, e quale sia il modo migliore
per organizzarli, è un problema fondamentale (il problema
fondamentale) per qualsiasi sito Web. In una forma o nell'altra,
questo problema deve essere affrontato dai siti delle grandi aziende
e da quelli delle piccole associazioni, dai siti delle scuole e
delle biblioteche e da quelli della pubblica amministrazione, dai
siti di commercio elettronico e da quelli dei partiti politici.
Ovviamente, questo problema deve essere affrontato anche dai siti
personali: quali informazioni può offrire, il sito di un
singolo utente, che possano risultare di un qualche interesse anche
per gli altri? E quale sarà il modo migliore per organizzare
tali informazioni?
Come abbiamo già
accennato nel capitolo precedente, le risposte a queste domande
possono essere naturalmente diversissime. Ma se esaminiamo un certo
numero di siti personali - anche di quelli creati nei primi anni
del Web - ci accorgiamo facilmente che ci sono alcune tipologie
di contenuti, e alcune modalità di organizzazione di questi
contenuti, che pur non esaurendo un panorama comunque estremamente
vario e composito risultano tuttavia particolarmente frequenti.
E ci accorgiamo che questi modelli, pur essendo assai diffusi nel
caso dei siti personali, possono risultare utili anche in siti di
altro genere.
Molto spesso, ad esempio,
i siti personali propongono qualcosa che assomiglia alla lontana
- e talvolta non troppo alla lontana - alle pagine di un diario:
una serie di annotazioni, che in mancanza di un termine più
adatto2
chiameremo 'articoli', ciascuna delle quali può essere dedicata
ad argomenti diversissimi (un avvenimento, un'osservazione, una
lettura, una sensazione...). Ogni articolo è identificato
di norma (proprio come le pagine di un diario) anche o soprattutto
attraverso la data nella quale è stato scritto. Molto spesso
- ma, anche in questo caso, non sempre - questi articoli, essendo
destinati a una sede pubblica quale è il Web, propongono
segnalazioni che pensiamo possano essere utili agli altri: il libro
che ho appena letto è interessante (o non lo è) per
questo o quel motivo, il film che ho visto o il disco che ho comprato
mi sono o non mi sono piaciuti, e così via. E queste segnalazioni,
a loro volta, riguarderanno spesso (ma non sempre...) risorse disponibili
su Web: pagine di altri utenti, siti che ci sembrano particolarmente
utili o interessanti, articoli o interventi che abbiamo trovato
in rete...
Se mettiamo per un momento
da parte la questione dei contenuti, e ci concentriamo sulla struttura
dell'informazione, siti di questo tipo hanno una forma abbastanza
costante: articoli (spesso chiamati anche da noi con i termini inglesi
post o entry) caratterizzati da una data di pubblicazione (e cioè
la data nella quale sono scritti e inseriti in rete) ed eventualmente
da un titolo, ordinati dal più recente al meno recente. Infatti,
mentre la nuova pagina di un diario su carta segue quella precedente,
nei 'diari in rete' - sfruttando la fluidità caratteristica
del testo elettronico - tendiamo ad aggiungere il testo più
recente sopra quello meno recente, in modo da metterlo in evidenza
e far notare per primi ai nostri visitatori i contenuti che abbiamo
aggiunto per ultimi e che sono dunque più aggiornati.
Spesso (ma non sempre)
questi articoli conterranno anche collegamenti ad altre pagine Web.
E' proprio questo tipo
di organizzazione dei contenuti che costituisce il primo elemento
caratterizzante dei weblog. Nel weblog tuttavia tale organizzazione
non è occasionale ma si trasforma in struttura portante del
sito, e si arricchisce di ulteriori e specifiche funzionalità.
Innanzitutto, un meccanismo di archiviazione: dopo una certa permanenza
sulla home page del weblog, gli articoli - sostituiti progressivamente
dagli interventi più recenti - vengono trasferiti in pagine
d'archivio. Proprio per questo, il link alle pagine d'archivio -
spesso nella forma di un piccolo calendario navigabile - è
presente nell'home page della quasi totalità dei weblog.
Ogni articolo ha però di norma, fin dal suo primo inserimento
nel weblog, anche un proprio indirizzo specifico, che non cambia
col tempo ed è per questo motivo denominato permalink. Il
permalink permette di far riferimento all'articolo con la sicurezza
che l'utente lo potrà comunque reperire, anche quando sarà
scomparso dalla home page; in questo modo, è possibile ad
esempio far riferimento - all'interno di un weblog - a un articolo
inserito da qualcun altro all'interno di un altro weblog. I rimandi
da un weblog all'altro sono frequentissimi, e danno vita a una vera
e propria ragnatela di riferimenti incrociati3.
Inoltre, molti weblog dispongono della capacità di inserire
e gestire eventuali commenti dei lettori ai singoli articoli. Il
mondo dei weblog si trasforma così in uno spazio condiviso,
popolato da utenti che dispongono di strumenti simili e li utilizzano
non solo per scambiarsi informazioni ma anche per approfondirle
collaborativamente e per discuterle; a questo spazio condiviso è
stato dato il nome suggestivo di blogosfera.
In prima approssimazione,
possiamo dire che un weblog (viene usato assai spesso anche il termine
abbreviato blog) è un sito dotato proprio del tipo di struttura
che abbiamo appena descritto.
Se ripensiamo un istante
a quanto si è detto a proposito dei CMS, e cioè dei
sistemi di gestione dei contenuti, noteremo subito come una struttura
di questo tipo sia particolarmente adatta ad essere gestita da un
CMS, e da un CMS piuttosto semplice. Si tratta infatti di una struttura
semplice e uniforme, che rimane costante: a variare saranno i particolari
contenuti di ogni articolo, e la sua lunghezza. Non ci stupirà
dunque sapere che esistono diversi sistemi di gestione dei contenuti
espressamente dedicati alla realizzazione e gestione 'semplificata'
di un weblog. Proprio la disponibilità di tali strumenti
ha contribuito all'enorme successo che il 'modello weblog' ha avuto
negli ultimi mesi: sono ormai attivi centinaia di migliaia di weblog
(nel maggio 2003 il Weblog Crawler Report (http://www.idlewords.com/crawler/crawl_report.pl)
ne elenca oltre quattrocentomila, ma i numeri effettivi sono senz'altro
assai maggiori: il solo servizio offerto da Blogger (ne parleremo
in seguito) ha infatti già superato il milione di utenti.
Weblog diversi per scopi diversi
Pur avendo una struttura
ragionevolmente uniforme, i weblog naturalmente non sono tutti uguali.
Fra i principali fattori che differenziano un weblog dall'altro
sono la tipologia dei contenuti, la lunghezza dei post, gli strumenti
tecnici utilizzati. I tentativi di classificazione sono numerosi4;
dal canto nostro - senza nessuna pretesa di esaustività ma
solo come aiuto all'orientamento in un settore estremamente fluido
- proponiamo in questa sede una duplice distinzione: una che riguarda
i contenuti, e una che riguarda gli strumenti utilizzati. Va detto
subito, comunque, che queste distinzioni - soprattutto quelle basate
sui contenuti - vanno considerate cum grano salis: certo, ogni weblog
ha una sua personalità, ma la tipologia degli articoli che
vi compaiono può essere (e in genere è) assai varia,
rendendo difficili classificazioni troppo rigide5.
I contenuti
Weblog di rassegna e segnalazione
Dal punto di vista dei
contenuti, una prima categoria è rappresentata dai weblog
di rassegna e segnalazione. In un weblog di questo genere, la maggior
parte degli articoli ha lo scopo primario di segnalare una particolare
risorsa informativa reperibile su Web: un sito, una singola pagina,
un altro articolo, un'immagine... La segnalazione è in genere
costituita da un link accompagnato da una breve descrizione o da
un breve commento. Ovviamente, le segnalazioni rispondono agli interessi,
alle abitudini di navigazione, alla sensibilità personale
dell'autore del weblog. Uno strumento di questo genere è
dunque prezioso per un utente che si senta in qualche misura 'in
sintonia' con gli interessi generali (più che con le singole
opinioni) dell'autore del weblog. Si tratta di quelli che Rebecca
Blood chiama filters ("questi weblog hanno una cosa in comune:
il primato dei link"6),
e a questa categoria appartengono molti fra quelli che Giorgio Nova
chiama weblog cacciatori.
Fra i precursori dei
weblog di rassegna e segnalazione vanno senz'altro ricordate le
moltissime raccolte commentate di link, presenti in rete fin dagli
albori del Web: ad esempio la pagina What is New presente fra il
1993 e il 1996 sul sito del primo Web browser, il glorioso e ormai
scomparso Mosaic, o la pagina Links from the Underground gestita
a partire dal 1994 dall'allora giovanissimo Justin Hall (abbiamo
già avuto occasione di parlarne a proposito dei siti personali)7.
In ambito giornalistico, un ruolo di precursore spetta senz'altro
al sito americano Drudgereport, (http://www.drudgereport.com), di
orientamento repubblicano-conservatore, che raccoglie ormai da anni
link ad aggiornamento continuo relativi per lo più a notizie
di attualità e gossip sulla vita politica statunitense (famosi
i suoi scoop, di basso livello giornalistico ma di alto impatto
politico, sulla vicenda Clinton-Monica Lewinsky).
In Italia fra gli esempi da citare sono senz'altro alcuni weblog
di carattere prevalentemente politico-giornalistico: i due weblog
collegati al giornale Il Foglio (http://www.ilfoglio.it), Wittgenstein
(http://www.wittgenstein.it) di Luca Sofri e Camillo (http://www.ilfoglio.it/camillo)
di Christian Rocca; Supergiornale (http://www.supergiornale.it),
rassegna dei principali articoli sui quotidiani del giorno, a cura
della redazione della rivista Internazionale (http://www.internazionale.it);
Giornalismo&Giornalismi di Giovanni Cocconi (http://giornalismi.splinder.it);
Leibniz di Piero Macchioni (http://leibniz.splinder.it/); Klamm
di Edoardo Camurri e Gabriele Gambassini (http://www.klamm.splinder.it/),
Network Games di Beppe Caravita (http://blogs.it/0100206/). Sempre
in campo giornalistico, in ambito internazionale il modello del
weblog di rassegna e segnalazione è seguito dai weblog di
diversi giornali, riviste e siti informativi: fra gli altri, segnaliamo
quello del giornale inglese Guardian (http://www.guardian.co.uk/weblog)
e la sezione Best of the Web Today del sito web del Wall Street
Journal (http://www.opinionjournal.com/best/). Un modello in parte
diverso è quello del babelico weblog collaborativo Metafilter
(http://www.metafilter.com/). Tornando in Italia, merita di essere
ricordato anche un esempio interessante di meta-weblog di segnalazione:
il blog delle United Blogzine of WWW (http://www.matteoc.com/united),
che raccoglie notizie di attualità ma anche link a articoli
e interventi dei circa quaranta weblog aderenti all'iniziativa.
Molti weblog di rassegna
e segnalazione sono dedicati ad ambiti più specifici, e si
rivolgono in primo luogo a chi per tali ambiti ha un forte interesse
personale o professionale. La quantità dei casi che si potrebbero
citare è immensa, anche volendosi limitare a weblog di un
certo livello qualitativo. Senza alcune pretesa che quella di voler
fornire qualche esempio, ricordiamo Arts & Letters Daily (http://www.aldaily.com/)
nel campo della cultura umanistica; Kairosnews (http://kairosnews.org/)
nel campo della cultura e della didattica legate ai nuovi media;
il notissimo Slashdot (http://slashdot.org/), vera e propria tappa
obbligata nel campo delle tecnologie e delle culture di rete (e
non solo); il tedesco Netbib (http://log.netbib.de/) e lo statunitense
Library Stuff (http://www.librarystuff.net/) in campo bibliotecario.
Weblog di commento
Molto spesso anche i
weblog di commento hanno come punto di partenza il collegamento
a un'informazione disponibile in rete. In questo caso, però,
il link non rappresenta una semplice segnalazione ma l'occasione
per un commento di un qualche respiro. Al centro dell'articolo non
è il link in quanto tale ma l'opinione dell'autore del weblog,
il suo commento all'informazione raggiungibile attraverso il link.
Del resto, l'informazione discussa e commentata può anche
non trovarsi in rete: può trattarsi di un film appena visto,
di un libro appena letto, di un disco, di qualcosa letto sul giornale
o visto alla televisione, di un'esperienza diretta... Così
come è invece possibile che l'articolo metta in relazione
e discuta informazioni diverse, ed offra quindi più di un
link. Il lavoro del 'blogger' (neologismo non proprio entusiasmante
ma ormai estremamente diffuso per designare l'autore di un weblog)
è in questo caso un lavoro di riflessione e di tessitura:
nelle parole di Giorgio Nova, i weblog tessitori
"sono (...) più portati ad aggregare informazioni diverse,
a costruire trame, a fare tessuto, chi tra le informazioni, chi
tra i blog. Sono meno rapsodici e fulminanti dei cacciatori, scrivono
cose meno frequenti e più lunghe, a volte sono più
lenti (può anche capitare che non postino per giorni), ma
possono essere anche logorroici. Costruiscono discorsi, coltivano
interessi nel tempo, li aggregano, esprimono opinioni articolate,
confrontano."8
Si tratta di una categoria
assai ampia, e il cui confine rispetto ai weblog di rassegna e segnalazione
è spesso difficile da tracciare. Ad essa appartiene probabilmente
la maggior parte dei weblog personali. Fornire esempi è davvero
difficile, perché ogni selezione dipende inevitabilmente
dai gusti (e anche dalle conoscenze) di chi la propone. Chi volesse
farsi un'idea di questa tipologia di weblog può comunque
consultare, fra mille altri, in italiano, 4Banalitäten di Cesare
Lamanna (http://blogs.it/0100214/), Brodo Primordiale di Carlo Berardelli
(http://www.brodoprimordiale.net/), EmmeBi (http://www.emmebi.blogspot.com/,
Fuori dal coro di Carlo Annese (http://fuoridalcoro.blogspot.com),
Leonardo (http://leonardo.blogspot.com/), Manteblob di Massimo Mantellini
(http://www.mantellini.it), Momoblob di Massimo Morelli (http://blog.morellinet.com/categories/momoblog/),
Onino di Cristiano Siri (http://onino.splinder.it/), Paferrobyday
di Paolo Ferrandi (http://homepage.mac.com/paferro/iblog/paferrobyday),
Paolo's Weblog di Paolo Valdemarin (http://paolo.evectors.it/italian/),
Skip Intro (http://w.skipintro.org/) di MatteoC. Gino Roncaglia,
autore della sezione del manuale che state leggendo in questo momento,
ha anch'egli un suo weblog: si chiama Merzlog (http://www.merzlog.com),
e comprende una sezione di link che può essere utilizzata
dal lettore per allargare e mantenere aggiornati i riferimenti contenuti
in queste pagine.
In inglese, un weblog
di commento molto seguito è quello del giornalista Andrew
Sullivan (http://www.andrewsullivan.com: uno dei pochi weblog redditizi,
dato che il suo autore ha raccolto in poche settimane circa 80.000
dollari di sottoscrizione fra gli utenti del sito). Vanno poi segnalati
almeno lo storico Scripting News di Dave Winer (http://www.scripting.com/),
Instapundit di Glenn Reynolds (http://www.instapundit.com/), Rebecca's
pocket di Rebecca Blood (http://www.rebeccablood.net/), il blog
di Doc Searl (http://doc.weblogs.com/), quello di Ross Mayfield
(http://radio.weblogs.com/0114726/), Sivacracy.net (http://www.sivacracy.net/)
di Siva Vaidhyanathan, Talking Points Memo di Joshua Micah Marshall
(http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/), Public Opinion di Gary Sauer-Thompson
(http://www.sauer-thompson.com/). Anche fra i weblog di commento,
molti sono prevalentemente dedicati a settori specifici: lo spagnolo
eQuaderno (http://orihuela.blogspot.com/) e l'australiano-norvegese
Jill/txt (http://huminf.uib.no/~jill/) offrono ad esempio ottimi
punti d'osservazione sul campo delle culture digitali, LawMeme (http://research.yale.edu/lawmeme/)
si occupa soprattutto di diritto d'autore e copyright, Elearningspace
(http://www.elearnspace.org/cgi-bin/elearnspaceblog/) è dedicato
al mondo dell'e-learning, TeleRead (http://www.teleread.org/blog/)
è un bel weblog dedicato ai libri elettronici, A klog apart
(http://dijest.com/aka/) è specificamente dedicato ai k-logs,
ovvero ai weblog utilizzati come strumento di knowledge management,
Catalogablog (http://catalogablog.blogspot.com/) offre segnalazioni
e commenti relativi al mondo bibliotecario, mentre l'eccellente
weblog italiano Blog Notes (http://www.bookcafe.net/blog/) di Giuseppe
Granieri offre riflessioni sempre pacate e ragionate, dedicate prevalentemente
(ma non unicamente) al mondo dei weblog e alle sue caratteristiche
comunicative.
Weblog di narrazione (e affini)
Fra i punti di riferimento
storico e concettuale ai quali si collega l'idea di weblog, vi è
sicuramente il modello rappresentato dal diario e dalla scrittura
diaristica. Non stupirà dunque che diversi weblog preferiscano,
alle forme del commento, dell'informazione e della segnalazione,
la forma più propriamente narrativa del racconto, della cronaca
personale (spesso rivisitata in chiave creativa o fantastica).
I weblog di questo tipo
offrono raramente link esterni, e quando lo fanno i link stessi
sono funzionali alla narrazione. La scrittura è di norma
in prima persona, e ricorre spesso ai registri della satira o dell'ironia.
L'efficacia e l'interesse degli articoli dipendono fortemente dalla
capacità di scrittura dell'autrice (si tratta della tipologia
di weblog con maggiore presenza femminile9,
un dato sul quale può essere probabilmente interessante riflettere)
o dell'autore. Hanno tuttavia un loro interesse - se non altro sociologico
- anche le migliaia e migliaia di weblog e siti 'diaristici' tenuti
da teen-agers statunitensi: una moda non ancora esplosa in Italia,
ma che meriterebbe di essere studiata.
In italiano, fra i weblog
di narrazione dagli esiti più felici vanno citati almeno
quelli di Personalità Confusa (http://personalitaconfusa.splinder.it/),
Massaia (http://www.massaia.splinder.it/), La Pizia (http://digilander.libero.it/pizia98/)10;
in ambito anglosassone possiamo segnalare il weblog - di difficile
classificazione, dato che vi si fondono narrazioni personali ma
anche segnalazioni e commenti - del già citato Justin Hall
(http://www.links.net/), Invisibile Shoebox (http://invisibleshoebox.blogspot.com/)
di Meredith Badger, e What's New Pussycat? (http://www.shauny.org/pussycat/)
di Shauny.
All'ambito dei weblog
di narrazione possono forse essere accostate due tipologie di weblog
piuttosto particolari: i weblog di scrittori e quelli che potremmo
provare a definire come 'weblog di montaggio'. Per quanto riguarda
la prima categoria, ricordiamo almeno i blog del 'padre' del movimento
cyberpunk, William Gibson (http://www.williamgibsonbooks.com/blog/blog.asp),
e di Neil Gaiman (http://www.neilgaiman.com/journal/journal.asp),
autore emergente dalle ottime capacità narrative, a cavallo
fra fumetti, fantasy e letteratura gotica. Quanto ai weblog di montaggio,
mi sembra possa essere opportuno individuare uno spazio relativamente
autonomo per i blog caratterizzati da una sorta di 'collage' di
suggestioni visive e testuali tratte dalla rete. Rispetto a queste
suggestioni, raccolte e offerte senza alcuna pretesa di sistematicità
o completezza, l'autore non impone una propria presenza testuale
'forte' (come accade invece i quasi tutti gli altri modelli di weblog),
anche se ovviamente la selezione dei materiali ne lascia comunque
trasparire interessi e personalità. Un esempio interessante
(ma se ne potrebbero fare diversi) è Wood s lot di Mark Woods
(http://www.ncf.ca/~ek867/wood_s_lot.html).
Weblog di progetto
Le tipologie di weblog
fin qui considerate sono tutte legate in forma piuttosto diretta
all'espressione della personalità di un autore. Un weblog,
tuttavia, può avere anche altre funzioni: Può essere,
ad esempio, un ottimo strumento per raccogliere e distribuire informazioni
su un progetto (lo sviluppo di un software, l'organizzazione di
un convegno, il marketing di un prodotto, la campagna elettorale
di un candidato, gli appuntamenti e le iniziative di un'associazione
culturale, gli aggiornamenti di un libro, l'applicazione di una
normativa, la preparazione di una tesi di laurea... le possibilità
sono innumerevoli). Weblog di questo tipo hanno in genere un prevalente
scopo informativo, ma possono anche diventare un vero e proprio
strumento di lavoro collaborativo: è il caso ad esempio dei
weblog che nascono all'interno di un corso scolastico o universitario,
con lo scopo di organizzare nel tempo il lavoro didattico e di raccoglierne
i risultati.
Gli esempi di weblog
di progetto cominciano ad essere abbastanza numerosi e tendono a
crescere col tempo, man mano che ci si accorge come in un numero
crescente di situazioni i weblog possano rappresentare uno strumento
semplice e comodo di gestione di contenuti anche al di fuori di
siti strettamente personali. Volendo fornire qualche indirizzo possiamo
citare il sito Urp degli Urp (http://www.urp.it), nato da un'iniziativa
comune del Dipartimento della Funzione Pubblica e della Regione
Emilia Romagna e dedicato agli Uffici Relazioni con il Pubblico
della Pubblica Amministrazione. Il sito ospita un weblog di progetto
organizzato in numerose categorie tematiche, all'indirizzo http://www.urp.it/database/urpdegliurp/weblog.nsf?OpenDatabase.
Trai i weblog didattici, esempi interessanti sono offerti da Webgol
(http://webgol.splinder.it/), il weblog del Master di giornalismo
on-line dell'università di Firenze coordinato da Antonio
Sofi, e da Fermo 2003 (http://fermo2003.blogspot.com/), il weblog
di due corsi di ambito bibliotecario tenuti da Giovanni Bergamin
presso l'Università di Macerata. Due esempi tutt'altro che
isolati: facendo una ricerca su Google con chiave "weblog del
corso" si arriva nel maggio 2003 a oltre 300 risultati (è
una facile profezia presumere che aumenteranno parecchio nel corso
dei prossimi mesi), la maggior parte dei quali relativi a sperimentazioni
di weblog didattici.
A livello internazionale,
non a caso è organizzato come weblog (di progetto) il sito
di Movable Type (http://www.movabletype.org/), un software per la
gestione di weblog sul quale torneremo fra breve. Un esempio interessante
- fra i tanti che potrebbero essere citati - di come i weblog possano
essere utilizzati, a bassissimo costo, come strumenti per migliorare
l'interazione con e fra i partecipanti a un convegno è invece
fornito dal weblog della conferenza "History and Society since
1970" organizzata a Bucharest nell'aprile 2003 dal British
Council di Romania (http://www.historyandsociety.net/blog/). Mentre
nel parlare di weblog elettorali non si può fare a meno di
citare quello di Howard Dean, candidato alla nomination democratica
per le presidenziali statunitensi del 2004. Si chiama Blog for America
(http://www.blogforamerica.com/), ed è collegato non solo
al sito ufficiale del candidato ma anche a una vera e propria rete
di altri weblog di supporto.
Parlando di weblog di
progetto, il riferimento conclusivo è quasi obbligato: il
weblog collegato a questo manuale. Lo trovate - a partire dal settembre
2003 - all'interno del sito del libro, all'indirizzo http://www.laterza.it/internet.
Weblog collaborativi e Blogzine
Parlando dei weblog
di progetto, si è già accennato al fatto che un weblog
non deve essere necessariamente espressione di un singolo autore.
Possiamo così individuare, trasversale rispetto a quelle
fin qui considerate e particolarmente diffusa nel caso dei weblog
di commento e di quelli di progetto, la categoria dei weblog collaborativi,
nei quali la responsabilità dell'inserimento dei contenuti
è condivisa da un gruppo di 'redattori'. Ognuno di essi dispone
di un proprio nome utente e di una password, attraverso le quali
inserire notizie e articoli nel weblog. Diversi fra i weblog che
abbiamo fin qui citato sono weblog collaborativi: in particolare,
la collaborazione di una vasta comunità di utenti è
il punto di forza di siti come i già ricordati Slashdot e
Metafilter. In ambito italiano, al modello Slashdot si ricollega
in qualche misura il sito Wup.it (http://www.wup.it/).
In alcuni casi, i weblog
collaborativi si trasformano in un vero e proprio prodotto editoriale,
una rivista in rete con un nucleo fisso di collaboratori, una struttura
redazionale articolata, e magari anche l'attribuzione di un codice
ISSN (International Standard Serial Number). La dimensione in qualche
misura 'amatoriale' caratteristica di molti weblog è in questi
casi spesso sostituita dalla ricerca di professionalità,
pulizia grafica, cura dei contenuti, anche se talvolta al prezzo
di una certa perdita di immediatezza e originalità. Quando
la professionalità del prodotto e/o la specificità
dei contenuti hanno il sopravvento si può parlare di vere
e proprie riviste in rete, o E-Journals (naturalmente una rivista
in rete può essere realizzata anche con strumenti diversi
da quelli nati per la gestione di weblog); quando la natura spontanea
e 'contaminante' dei weblog viene preservata si parla piuttosto
di Blogzine.
Nel panorama italiano
esistono diversi siti interessanti che si possono ricondurre a queste
tipologie, anche se - al solito - ogni tentativo di classificazione
troppo specifica finisce per rivelarsi inadeguato. Possiamo comunque
ricordare The Gnu Economy (http://www.gnueconomy.net/), coordinato
da Gianluca Neri; QuintoStato (http://www.quintostato.it/); Società
delle menti (http://www.clarence.com/contents/cultura-spettacolo/societamenti/);
Tel&Co. (dedicato al mondo del wireless: http://www.telconews.it/).
Carmilla (http://www.carmillaonline.com/), blogzine di Valerio Evangelisti
e Giuseppe Genna, costituisce la rivisitazione forse più
diretta del modello rappresentato dalle vecchie fanzine cartacee,
mentre - se si supera il fastidio per l'orribile grafica e l'uso
sconsiderato di pubblicità, finestre pop-up e icone animate
- Il Barbiere della Sera (http://www.ilbarbieredellasera.com/) offre
un curioso 'dietro le quinte' sul mondo del giornalismo italiano,
con gossip, curiosità e notizie i cui autori si celano di
norma dietro fantasiosi pseudonimi. Blog.it (http://www.blog-it.net/)
è infine un weblog collaborativo interamente dedicato al
mondo weblog.
Per chi vuole sperimentare: Photoblog, Audioblog,
Videoblog, Moblog...
I weblog tradizionali
sono prevalentemente testuali, ma naturalmente non c'è alcun
motivo per il quale gli strumenti di gestione dei contenuti utilizzati
per creare un weblog testuale non possano essere utilizzati - con
le opportune modifiche - per gestire 'in forma di weblog' anche
immagini, appunti sonori, filmati. Particolarmente numerosi sono
i photoblog: il sito http://www.photoblogs.org/ ne elenca oltre
1.500, una trentina dei quali in Italia. I videoblog (o vog) sono
decisamente di meno. Un esempio interessante è offerto dal
sito australiano http://hypertext.rmit.edu.au/vog/, un progetto
iniziato già nel 2000 che comprende anche un vero e proprio
manifesto teorico sulle differenze fra video blog e streaming video.
Gli audioblog sono di norma strettamente legati agli strumenti di
comunicazione mobile (telefonini e affini) utilizzati per aggiornarli;
gli esempi disponibili sono comunque relativamente pochi, e le proposte
di servizi commerciali in quest'ambito (http://www.audblog.com/,
http://www.audioblogger.com/ e, in Italia, http://www.audioblog.it/)
non sembrano aver avuto finora particolare successo. Il rapporto
fra weblog e comunicazione mobile sembra legato assai più
direttamente alla possibilità di aggiornare 'sul campo',
attraverso strumenti di comunicazione mobile, i weblog testuali
tradizionali. E' questa l'area dei cosiddetti mblog o blog mobili,
nati attorno all'obiettivo di poter aggiornare il proprio weblog
in ogni momento e da qualunque località11.
Per approfondire questo tema, due buoni punti di partenza sono il
weblog di Joi Ito (http://radio.weblogs.com/0114939/outlines/moblog.html)
e Em-Brof (http://doping.sics.se/prof/), il weblog di Emmanuel Frécon.
Weblog e giornalismo: un dibattito
Alcuni fra i weblog
più noti, sia in Italia sia nel mondo anglosassone, sono
opera di giornalisti professionisti (un elenco di weblog giornalistici,
relativo al mondo anglosassone, è alla pagina http://www.cyberjournalist.net/cyberjournalists.html).
Ma la grande maggioranza dei 'blogger' è rappresentata da
persone che, anche quando riprendono o commentano notizie di attualità,
lo fanno da un punto di vista assolutamente personale, senza particolari
pretese di completezza, affidabilità, obiettività.
Del resto, gli stessi giornalisti professionisti sembrano considerare
i propri weblog come uno spazio diverso da quelli dedicati alla
scrittura propriamente giornalistica: uno spazio con meno vincoli
nella scelta degli argomenti, nello stile di scrittura, nella lunghezza
degli articoli. E tuttavia, nonostante queste considerazioni, il
rapporto fra weblog e giornalismo è al centro del dibattito
probabilmente più vivace e vitale fra quelli che animano
la blogosfera.
Per capire le ragioni
di questo dibattito occorre tener presenti diversi fattori. Innanzitutto,
se è vero che alcuni giornalisti professionisti sembrano
utilizzare i propri weblog anche come strumento per sperimentare
forme di scrittura e di comunicazione diverse da quelle che sono
loro abituali, è altrettanto vero che moltissimi blogger
che non sono giornalisti professionisti mostrano di percepire il
proprio weblog come uno spazio editoriale di tipo giornalistico.
Se il mondo è pieno di aspiranti scrittori e aspiranti poeti
con un romanzo o una raccolta di poesie nel cassetto, il Web sembra
pieno di aspiranti giornalisti, entusiasti di aver trovato lo strumento
adatto per poter finalmente pubblicare i propri articoli e i propri
commenti, e spesso preoccupati (proprio come i loro colleghi 'professionisti')
dal numero dei lettori e dalle reazioni del proprio pubblico ai
singoli interventi pubblicati.
Eppure, questa considerazione
- che ha indubbiamente qualche elemento di fondatezza - non basta.
In particolare, non basta a spiegare il fastidio piuttosto evidente
che l'uso dei weblog come strumento di 'giornalismo amatoriale'
sembra spesso suscitare nel mondo del giornalismo professionale.
C'è dunque un'altra faccia della medaglia da tenere presente:
il fatto, difficilmente contestabile, che in diversi casi questo
'giornalismo amatoriale' abbia poco da invidiare - e talvolta abbia
qualcosa da insegnare - al giornalismo professionale in termini
di immediatezza di scrittura, freschezza di analisi, capacità
di rassegna e valutazione delle fonti. Un buon blogger è
in genere anche un virtuoso della navigazione su web, della ricerca
in rete, del confronto fra fonti informative diverse: tutte abilità
che dovrebbero ormai fare parte - ma che non sempre fanno parte
- del bagaglio di competenze di un buon giornalista professionista.
Ecco dunque che i weblog migliori mettono in crisi l'idea del mondo
giornalistico come 'casta' chiusa, con i propri riti di accesso,
il proprio Ordine, i propri modelli (più o meno rigidi) di
scrittura, e un'alta propensione all'autoreferenzialità.
Inoltre, la natura fortemente
reticolare e interconnessa della blogosfera costituisce un perfetto
'brodo di coltura' per far crescere e sviluppare notizie trascurate
o ignorate dai media tradizionali, e imporle all'attenzione generale.
In un certo senso, i weblog sono uno strumento di 'public opinion',
anche se limitato a una sfera sicuramente ristretta e piuttosto
specifica della popolazione. E il fatto che comunque esista una
zona di intersezione fra giornalismo professionale e blogosfera
aiuta a garantire una visibilità esterna alle notizie, ai
commenti, ai 'memi' di maggior successo sviluppati nel mondo weblog.
Si aggiunga a tutto
ciò che in determinate situazioni e in determinati contesti
i weblog possono rappresentare anche una fonte informativa diretta.
Famoso è stato, a tale proposito, il caso del weblog di Salam
Pax, Where is Raed (http://dear_raed.blogspot.com/). Esso ha raccolto
durante la guerra in Iraq - e continua a raccogliere nel difficile
'dopoguerra' - i racconti e le opinioni di un giovane ingegnere
di Baghdad, capace di osservare la situazione del suo paese con
l'occhio in parte disincantato e ironico di chi ha studiato e lavorato
a lungo in occidente, e conosce dunque il meglio (e il peggio) di
entrambi i mondi. La figura piuttosto misteriosa di Salam Pax, e
la temporanea incertezza sulla sua sorte durante le fasi più
drammatiche del conflitto, hanno immediatamente colpito la fantasia
dei media; giorno dopo giorno, la sua voce è diventata una
delle più seguite per rendersi conto, al di là delle
notizie di stretta contabilità bellica o post-bellica, degli
sviluppi quotidiani della situazione irachena.
Il caso di Salam Pax
- pur essendo il più noto - non è certo isolato: il
lettore con un po' di propensione alla ricerca e alla navigazione
troverà senza troppa fatica weblog di grande interesse sulla
difficile situazione dei paesi dell'America Latina (a cominciare
da Argentina e Venezuela), sulla contrapposizione fra 'movimento
studentesco' e autorità islamiche in Iran, sulla situazione
nei Paesi Baschi e in Irlanda del Nord. Non è un caso, del
resto, che il Web in generale e i weblog in particolare costituiscano
strumenti di comunicazione essenziali per movimenti dalla natura
spesso transnazionale e fortemente eterogenea come il movimento
no-global. Fra gli esempi più noti ricordiamo il sito dell'Independent
Media Center (http://www.indimedia.org/), al centro di una vera
e propria ragnatela di siti e di weblog interconnessi (per l'Italia,
il sito di riferimento è http://italia.indymedia.org/).
Gli strumenti
In linea teorica, un
weblog può essere costruito anche senza ricorrere a strumenti
particolari, utilizzando un normale editor HTML. Ma le caratteristiche
più avanzate e interessanti dei weblog richiedono (o almeno
suggeriscono fortemente) l'uso di strumenti specifici. Strumenti
che possono essere divisi in due grandi categorie: 1) quelli offerti
dal sito di un fornitore di servizi che metta a disposizione degli
utenti, via Web, un programma di gestione per weblog e un server
centrale per ospitarne i contenuti. Siti di questo tipo permettono
(gratuitamente o dietro pagamento di una piccola cifra mensile o
annuale) di creare e gestire il proprio weblog direttamente sul
server remoto, utilizzando un normale browser per l'inserimento
dei contenuti: non occorre dunque, di norma, installare programmi
o strumenti particolari sul computer di casa; 2) quelli basati su
programmi di gestione che l'utente deve installare e configurare
autonomamente, su un server sotto il suo diretto controllo.
La prima tipologia di
strumenti è evidentemente più semplice e facile da
usare per l'utente finale, e rappresenta dunque la soluzione più
diffusa. La seconda permette un controllo assai maggiore sul weblog
e sulle sue funzionalità, e una personalizzazione più
completa sia dell'interfaccia di gestione sia del weblog stesso:
si tratta dunque della soluzione scelta da molti fra i weblog più
complessi e strutturati.
Va ricordato, comunque,
che il primo obiettivo di qualunque strumento per la gestione di
un weblog è quello di permettere all'autore di concentrarsi
sui contenuti più che sulla realizzazione tecnica del sito.
Un sistema di gestione troppo complesso finirebbe per compromettere
proprio il raggiungimento di questo obiettivo.
Servizi in rete per la gestione di weblog
Il più noto fra
i servizi in rete per la creazione e gestione di weblog è
sicuramente quello offerto da Blogger (http://www.blogger.com).
Blogger è nato nel 1999 da una piccola società, la
Pyra Ltd., ad opera soprattutto di Evan Williams. Alla fine del
1999 Blogger ospitava poco più di 2000 weblog: due anni dopo
i weblog ospitati dal sistema erano oltre centomila, e nel 2003
la cifra complessiva ha superato il milione. Un successo impressionante,
ma anche difficile da gestire per una piccola società: come
era facile prevedere, cifre del genere suscitano l'interesse dei
maggiori protagonisti della Web economy, e nel febbraio 2003 Blogger
è stato acquistato da Google.
Blogger permette di
creare gratuitamente weblog dalle caratteristiche abbastanza avanzate
(è anche possibile creare weblog collaborativi, giacché
il sistema permette di associare a un weblog un 'team' di redattori),
propone una serie di semplici modelli grafici per la loro impaginazione
(ma gli utenti più esperti possono facilmente crearne di
propri), e consente di gestire il weblog e inserire nuove notizie
attraverso una semplice interfaccia web. I weblog creati possono
essere pubblicati via FTP su qualunque sito esterno, oppure, in
maniera ancor più semplice, sui server di Blogspot (http://www.blogspot.com/),
un servizio di Web hosting direttamente controllato da Blogger.
La pubblicazione su Blogspot è anch'essa gratuita, a patto
di accettare un banner pubblicitario sulla testata del proprio weblog.
Sono disponibili versioni a pagamento sia del servizio di creazione
e gestione di weblog offerto da Blogger (il servizio a pagamento
si chiama Blogger Pro e, nel momento in cui scriviamo, costa 35
dollari l'anno) sia del servizio di pubblicazione su BlogSpot (per
circa 5 dollari al mese è possibile eliminare i banner pubblicitari
e incrementare lo spazio disponibile per il proprio weblog, aggiungendo
la possibilità di pubblicare immagini).
Creare un weblog su
Blogger - come del resto sugli altri servizi che citeremo in seguito
- è estremamente semplice: una serie di pagine di istruzioni
guidano l'utente passo passo, e anche gli utenti meno esperti dovrebbero
riuscire a realizzare in pochi minuti l'intelaiatura del loro weblog.
A quel punto, l'unico problema sarà quello di... scriverne
i contenuti! Nel momento in cui scriviamo l'interfaccia di Blogger
è in inglese, ma sono annunciate versioni 'nazionalizzate'
per il prossimo futuro; i testi inseriti nel weblog possono comunque
essere tranquillamente in italiano.
Sull'onda del successo
di Blogger, numerosi altri siti offrono funzionalità specifiche
per la creazione e gestione di weblog. Per quanto riguarda il mondo
anglosassone ci limitiamo a segnalare LiveJournal (http://www.livejournal.com/:
anche questo servizio - orientato alla creazione di siti più
vicini al diario su Web che al vero e proprio weblog, e popolarissimo
fra le teen-ager americane - ha superato il milione di utenti) e
Blog-City (http://www.blog-city.com/), mentre in Italia vanno ricordati
in particolare Splinder (http://www.splinder.it/; al momento in
cui scriviamo ospita circa 15.000 weblog), Clarence FreeBlog (http://blog.clarence.com/;
nel momento in cui scriviamo il servizio - che si segnala per la
notevole completezza dei servizi offerti - ha da poco superato i
3.000 weblog ospitati), TiscaliBlog (http://blog.tiscali.it/ il
servizio offriva inizialmente funzionalità assai limitate,
ma sono annunciati miglioramenti), e due aggiunte recentissime:
quella di Virgilio Blog (http://blog.virgilio.it/) e quella di Blog
by Aruba (http://blog.aruba.it/). E' possibile creare un proprio
blog anche attraverso il sito Il Cannocchiale, all'indirizzo http://www.ilcannocchiale.it/.
Programmi per la creazione e gestione di weblog
Una tipologia di strumenti
in qualche modo intermedia fra i servizi centralizzati di creazione
e gestione di weblog e i programmi da installare autonomamente su
un proprio server è rappresentata da uno dei primi e più
famosi programmi in quest'ambito: Radio, della Userland (http://radio.userland.com;
distributore italiano http://www.evectors.it/). Allo sviluppo di
Radio - e del programma che come vedremo ne è un po' il fratello
maggiore, Manila - ha contribuito uno dei pionieri del mondo weblog,
Dave Winer, il cui blog Scripting News abbiamo già avuto
occasione di ricordare.
Radio è sostanzialmente
un programma client per realizzare e gestire un weblog: il weblog
creato utilizzando Radio viene ospitato su un server esterno, ma
l'uso da parte dell'utente di un client autonomo accanto alla interfaccia
di gestione via Web permette un alto livello di personalizzazione,
consentendo di implementare molte funzionalità avanzate.
Inoltre, Radio funziona come aggregatore di notizie: una tipologia
di programmi sulla quale torneremo più avanti. La versione
italiana di Radio costa al momento in cui scriviamo 60 euro, e nel
prezzo è compreso un anno di hosting del proprio weblog sul
server di Blogs.it (http://www.blogs.it).
I server che ospitano
weblog creati utilizzando Radio sono basati su un altro programma
della Userland, Frontier (http://frontier.userland.com), che offre
un sistema di gestione dei contenuti piuttosto potente e altamente
configurabile, basato su database e collegato a un server web proprietario
per la generazione dinamica delle pagine. Frontier è venduto
(al prezzo non proprio economico di circa 900 dollari, comprensivo
di un anno di aggiornamenti; la versione educational costa circa
300 dollari) assieme a un programma per la gestione e creazione
di weblog denominato Manila (http://manila.userland.com): attraverso
l'accoppiata Manila/Frontier è possibile creare e gestire
via Web su uno stesso server un gran numero di weblog, ciascuno
dei quali altamente personalizzabile e dotato di un autonomo team
redazionale: può trattarsi dunque di una buona soluzione
per le situazioni nelle quali è prevista la creazione centralizzata
da parte di un'azienda o di un'istituzione (ad esempio una scuola
o un'università) di un gran numero di weblog di progetto.
In questo caso, al 'webmaster' centrale sono richieste competenze
informatiche un po' più sviluppate, mentre i responsabili
editoriali dei singoli weblog potranno utilizzare strumenti di gestione
assai semplici e immediati.
Se Radio e Manila sono
a pagamento, completamente gratuito (a meno di non voler richiedere
assistenza per l'installazione, o di non voler effettuare autonomamente
una donazione) è invece un altro ottimo strumento per la
creazione e gestione di weblog, Movable Type (http://www.movabletype.org/).
Dotato di un'interfaccia assai elegante e intuitiva, e di un team
di sviluppo al quale si deve l'introduzione nel mondo weblog di
molte funzionalità di grande interesse (ad esempio il ricordato
meccanismo di 'trackback'), MovableType richiede ai propri utenti
una discreta familiarità con gli strumenti informatici e
di editing Web, ma consente in cambio di realizzare siti molto avanzati,
utilizzando caratteristiche quali i fogli stile e XML. Il sito realizzato
può essere ospitato su un proprio server o su un server esterno,
ed è possibile la gestione di più siti e di un gruppo
di redattori separato per ognuno di essi. Chi volesse iniziare a
sperimentare in maniera 'soft' le caratteristiche di Movable Type,
senza la necessità di installarlo su un proprio server, può
farlo creando un blog attraverso il già ricordato servizio
Clarence FreeBlog (http://blog.clarence.com/), che si basa proprio
questo ambiente software.
Se i programmi di casa
Userland e Movable Type costituiscono probabilmente gli strumenti
più diffusi per la creazione e gestione autonoma di un weblog,
esistono tuttavia numerosi altri programmi che possono essere utilizzati:
all'indirizzo http://www.urldir.com/bt/ trovate uno strumento per
comparare le caratteristiche di molti di essi.
Strumenti per la blogosfera: feed RSS e aggregatori
Uno degli aspetti che
rendono più interessante e affascinante il mondo dei weblog
è la rapida evoluzione di tutto un bagaglio di strumenti
e meccanismi nati per creare relazioni fra post, classificarli semanticamente,
organizzarli e raccoglierli in base a criteri prestabiliti, distribuirli,
facilitare l'integrazione di discussioni e commenti sugli stessi
temi, e così via. Un esame dettagliato di questi strumenti
richiederebbe molto più spazio di quello qui disponibile,
ma almeno ad uno di essi è bene dedicare qualche attenzione:
i feed RSS. Non fatevi spaventare dal nome piuttosto 'criptico'
e dal fatto che i feed RSS si basino su XML (un metalinguaggio di
marcatura del quale ci occupiamo in un'altra sezione del nostro
manuale): i principi di base di questi strumento sono assai semplici,
e le sue applicazioni davvero notevoli.
L'acronimo RSS può
essere sciolto come 'Really Simple Syndication'12,
e per capire di cosa si tratti puo' essere forse utile cominciare
proprio dal concetto di Syndication. Dietro a questo concetto c'è
qualcosa di molto simile a un'agenzia di stampa. Un'agenzia produce
un flusso di notizie, organizzate in base a una struttura comune:
un titolo, il corpo della notizia, data e ora di emissione, e magari
l'indicazione dell'autore e di una categoria tematica. Le notizie
di agenzia sono riprese ed eventualmente pubblicate dai giornali
'abbonati' all'agenzia in questione. L'agenzia non si preoccupa
di 'impaginare' la notizia: una stessa notizia potrà essere
ripresa e impaginata in forme diverse da giornali diversi (mentre
resteranno costanti la sua struttura e il suo contenuto). Per 'Syndication'
si intende originariamente proprio la possibilità offerta
da un fornitore di contenuti informativi - ai propri abbonati o
a chiunque - di ricevere automaticamente ed eventualmente ripubblicare
le informazioni da esso prodotte.
Quando questo meccanismo
si sposta sul Web, non riguarda più solo le agenzie di stampa:
è ogni tipo di sito che produce informazioni e notizie che
può consentire - a pagamento o gratuitamente - di ricevere
automaticamente ed eventualmente ripubblicare i propri contenuti
informativi. Perché questo sia possibile in maniera automatica,
occorre evidentemente che le notizie siano strutturate in maniera
uniforme, e che le loro varie 'componenti' (titolo, corpo, data
e ora, ecc.) siano opportunamente 'marcate'.
Il formato RSS nasce
proprio per marcare articoli e notizie destinate ad essere scambiate
via Web. Una marcatura finalizzata non all'impaginazione delle notizie
(se necessaria, l'impaginazione sarà operata autonomamente
dai siti 'abbonati') ma alla loro strutturazione logica. Un feed
RSS non è altro che un flusso strutturato di notizie (ognuna
delle quali costituisce un 'item'), messo a disposizione da un fornitore
di contenuti informativi e pronto per essere ripreso e utilizzato
da altri.
Anche se è possibile
realizzare 'a mano' un feed RSS, normalmente è il sistema
di gestione dei contenuti utilizzato dal sito a generarlo automaticamente,
salvandolo in una apposita pagina Web (o meglio, in un file XML
accessibile via Web) e aggiornandolo ogni volta che viene aggiunta
una nuova notizia. Di norma, un feed RSS comprende un massimo di
una quindicina di notizie: quando viene aggiunta una notizia nuova,
viene anche cancellata la più vecchia fra quelle presenti
nel feed.
Ma cosa c'entrano i
feed RSS con i weblog, e quali strumenti ha a disposizione l'utente
per 'abbonarsi' ai feed RSS dei siti che lo interessano?
La risposta alla prima
domanda è semplice: i post di un weblog assomigliano molto
da vicino, dal punto di vista strutturale, alle notizie di un'agenzia
informativa: hanno un titolo, un contenuto, una data ed ora di pubblicazione,
un autore... Il formato RSS (le cui prime specifiche sono state
non a caso sviluppate nel 1997 proprio dalla Userland) è
dunque perfetto per un weblog che voglia offrire all'esterno i propri
contenuti non solo nella forma graficamente più piacevole
ma assai meno 'riciclabile' di una pagina Web, ma anche in una forma
più grezza: una forma che conservi la strutturazione logica
ma non l'impaginazione, e permetta dunque agli utenti di raccogliere,
organizzare, leggere, analizzare ed eventualmente ridistribuire
le notizie apparse sul weblog in maniera totalmente indipendente
dai vincoli grafici e dalle mille componenti accessorie, di interfaccia
e di impaginazione, sempre presenti su una pagina Web.
Inoltre, un feed RSS
permette di associare alle singole notizie anche metainformazioni
semantiche: l'argomento trattato, una serie di parole chiave...
E' probabile che proprio il settore delle metainformazioni semantiche
associabili alle notizie sia quello sul quale si lavorerà
di più in futuro (al momento, esistono diverse 'versioni'
delle specifiche RSS, in parte indipendenti: è auspicabile
- e prevedibile - una loro integrazione e uno sviluppo pubblico
e unitario del formato, come accade per gli altri standard Web).
Quanto agli strumenti
disponibili per 'utilizzare' in pratica i feed RSS, il primo che
occorre ricordare è rappresentato dai programmi aggregatori.
Si tratta sostanzialmente di programmi client, in grado di 'seguire'
più feed RSS (il sistema più semplice è quello
di controllare a intervalli di tempo prefissati se il relativo file
è stato aggiornato; ma esistono anche sistemi più
evoluti, che consentono a chi offre un feed RSS di segnalare automaticamente
agli aggregatori interessati la disponibilità di nuove notizie).
L'utente indica all'aggregatore i feed RSS che intende seguire (la
presenza di un feed RSS all'interno di un sito è spesso marcata
da un piccolo rettangolino arancione con la scritta 'XML' e l'indicazione
del formato RSS utilizzato), e l'aggregatore 'aggrega' i relativi
messaggi, organizzandoli per sito di provenienza, per data, ed eventualmente
- si tratta degli sviluppi più interessanti - anche in base
alle metainformazione semantiche associate ai singoli post. Abbiamo
detto che un aggregatore funziona di norma come un programma client;
alcuni aggregatori possono tuttavia svolgere anche le funzioni di
un programma server, 'servendo' all'esterno - come pagine Web o
nuovamente come (meta)feed RSS - il risultato del proprio lavoro
di aggregazione.
Un programma aggregatore
offre insomma all'utente una raccolta organizzata e sempre aggiornata
delle notizie fornite dai siti informativi che lo interessano: siano
essi weblog, siti di attualità giornalistica, o altro ancora.
Esistono diversi programmi
aggregatori, e - trattandosi di un campo relativamente nuovo - il
settore è in evoluzione assai rapida. Ci limitiamo qui a
segnalare, fra i principali, accanto ai già citati Radio
e Manila (che nascono come strumenti per la gestione di weblog ma
funzionano anche come aggregatori), Amphetadesk (http://www.disobey.com/amphetadesk/),
FeedReader (http://www.feedreader.com/), NewsMonster (http://www.newsmonster.org/;
basato su Java, è disponibile su tutte le piattaforme sulle
quali si può usare Mozilla), NewzCrawler (http://www.newzcrawler.com/),
Syndirella (http://www.yole.ru/projects/syndirella/), e, per Mac,
NetNewsWire (http://ranchero.com/netnewswire/). E' anche possibile
utilizzare via web un aggregatore centralizzato, al quale indicare,
attraverso un meccanismo di account, i feed RSS che interessano
ai singoli utenti del sistema. Il risultato dell'aggregazione sarà
in questo caso una pagina web personalizzata, accessibile attraverso
login e contenente, opportunamente impaginate, le notizie contenute
nei feed ai quali l'utente è 'abbonato'. Un esempio è
costituito da NewsIsFree (http://www.newsisfree.com/). Esistono
poi directory, indici e motori di ricerca specializzati nei feed
RSS: ricordiamo Daypop (http://www.daypop.com/), Syndic8 (http://www.syndic8.com/),
Feedster (http://www.feedster.com/) e BlogStreet (http://www.blogstreet.com/).
Quanto al formato RSS,
due buoni punti di partenza per chi ne volesse sapere di più
sono i siti http://www.oreillynet.com/rss/ e http://backend.userland.com/rss.
Blog directory, aggregatori semantici, indici
di popolarità
Feed RSS e aggregatori
non esauriscono certo il campo degli strumenti disponibili per organizzare
e 'mappare la blogosfera. Esiste anche una gran quantità
di indici e directory di vario genere, la cui funzionalità
è tuttavia limitata da un serio problema: ad essere indicizzati
da questo tipo di strumenti sono di norma i weblog, ed è
assai spesso difficile 'incasellare' un weblog in una categoria
tematica specifica. Potete comunque dare un'occhiata a Eatonweb
(http://portal.eatonweb.com/, al momento in cui scriviamo indicizza
circa 12.000 weblog) e Blogwise (http://www.blogwise.com/, circa
5.000 i weblog indicizzati) sul piano internazionale, e per l'italia
a Bloggando (http://bloggando.splinder.it/), alla Blog Directory
di Quinto Stato (http://www.quintostato.it/links/) e a BlogNews
(http://www.blognews.it/). The Gnu Economy ha realizzato una comoda
BlogBar (http://www.gnueconomy.net/blogbar/) che si aggiunge alle
barre di Explorer e semplifica la navigazione nella blogosfera italiana.
Se gli aggregatori personali
consentono il massimo di flessibilità in termini di scelta
dei feed RSS da raccogliere, presentano tuttavia ancora notevoli
limiti nella classificazione semantica dei post, anche perché
non sempre gli utenti aggiungono ai propri post metainformazioni
semantiche, e comunque difficilmente lo fanno ricorrendo a categorizzazioni
sufficientemente uniformi. Un tentativo interessante di risposta
a questo problema è costituito dall'italianissimo Blog Aggregator
(http://www.bookcafe.net/blog/aggregator/) sviluppato da Giuseppe
Granieri. Blog Aggregator è basato su un meccanismo misto
(è possibile segnalare i post sia in maniera automatica,
qualora si disponga di un feed RSS comprendente metainformazione
semantiche organizzate secondo una categorizzazione compatibile
con quella del sito, sia in maniera manuale), e utilizza una griglia
di quindici categorie tematiche.
Un'altra tipologia di
strumenti potenzialmente assai utili è rappresentata dai
popularity index: siti che seguono in automatico i post di un gran
numero di weblog, e analizzano i link in essi contenuti per cercare
di risalire alle notizie di momento in momento 'più discusse'
all'interno della blogosfera. Spesso, i popularity index permettono
di fare anche molte altre interessanti operazioni: ad esempio ricostruire
la 'costellazione di appartenenza' di un weblog (e cioè l'insieme
dei blog che lo citano e/o ne sono citati), costruire classifiche
dei weblog più popolari, e così via. Fra i più
interessanti potete consultare Technorati (http://www.technorati.com/),
Blogdex (http://blogdex.media.mit.edu/), Popdex (http://www.popdex.com/),
Organica (http://www.organica.us/), Memeufacture (http://memeufacture.com/),
Myelin (http://www.myelin.co.nz/ecosystem/), e l'italiano Skip Pop
(http://pop.skipintro.org/). Non fatevi poi sfuggire All Consuming
(http://www.allconsuming.net/), interessante esempio di popularity
index relativo alla citazione di libri all'interno dei weblog (permette
di scoprire al volo i libri 'caldi' del momento, almeno all'interno
del mondo anglosassone).
Non mancano neanche
strumenti di 'mappatura grafica' della blogosfera: basati sui link
fra weblog e weblog (un esempio interessante è reperibile
sul sito della Ryze Blog-Tribe: http://blog-tribe.ryze.com/) o sulla
loro collocazione geografica (date un'occhiata al notevole The World
as a Blog, all'indirizzo http://www.brainoff.com/geoblog/).
Infine, anche nel campo
dei weblog esistono preziose metarisorse. Segnaliamo in particolare
il Weblogs Compendium (http://www.lights.com/weblogs/index.html)
di Peter Scott: vi troverete, opportunamente catalogate, risorse
di ogni genere: dalle discussioni sulla definizione di weblog a
indici e aggregatori, dai programmi per creare weblog ai servizi
di hosting, dagli strumenti di ricerca su feed ai servizi per lo
scambio di mini-annunci pubblicitari.
1
Una tecnologia proprietaria per certi versi simile a PHP - ed
utilizzabile anch'essa per la creazione dinamica di pagine web
a partire da un database di contenuti - è rappresentata
dalle Active Server Pages (ASP) introdotte da Microsoft.
2
L'inglese utilizza spesso per le singole annotazioni di un diario
il termine 'entry', che - in quest'accezione - non ha un corrispondente
diretto in italiano. Noi parliamo talvolta di 'pagine' di un diario,
ma nel contesto del Web questo termine rischierebbe di risultare
fuorviante.
3
Esiste un meccanismo, denominato trackback, che permette di tenerne
traccia: se due weblog (chiamiamoli per comodità A e B)
utilizzano programmi di gestione capaci di trackback, quando un
articolo sul weblog A fa riferimento a un articolo del weblog
B, il programma di gestione del weblog A 'comunica' in maniera
automatica al programma di gestione del weblog B che quel determinato
articolo è stato citato, e il programma di gestione del
weblog B aggiunge - sempre in maniera automatica - l'indirizzo
dell'articolo del weblog A alla 'trackback list' dell'articolo
originario. In questo modo, chi trova all'interno di un weblog
un articolo particolarmente interessante o discutibile può
sapere subito se quell'articolo è stato citato o discusso
da altri, e dove.
4
Ricordiamo in particolare la suddivisione dei weblog in blog,
notebook, filtri e weblog collaborativi proposta in R. Blood,
The Weblog Handbook, Perseus Books, Cambridge (MA) 2002, pp. 6-8,
e l'originale classificazione in weblog cacciatori, tessitori
e sciamani proposta da Giorgio Nova (b.georg) nel suo weblog Falso
Idillio (http://falsoidillio.splinder.it/1043518643#32422). Su
alcune di queste categorie torneremo in seguito.
5
Come ha giustamente osservato Giuseppe Granieri, infatti, è
il singolo articolo - più che il weblog nel suo insieme
- a costituire l'unità semantica da considerare nell'indagare
l'articolazione comunicativa della blgosfera (cfr. http://www.bookcafe.net/blog/blog.cfm?id=60).
7
La pagina http://www.links.net/vita/web/start/original.html propone
una delle prime versioni del sito di Justin Hall: un 'viaggio
nel tempo' nel Web del 1994, che può risultare interessante
anche per i navigatori di oggi.
9
Anche se alcuni weblog 'nati al femminile' sono in realtà
scritti da uomini: è il caso ad esempio dei weblog di Personalità
Confusa e di Massaia. Anche in questo caso, la rete si propone
come strumento per eccellenza di contaminazione di ruoli e personalità.
10
Da questo weblog è nato anche un libro: Eloisa "La
Pizia" Di Rocco, Mondo Blog, Hops libri 2003; un altro libro
legato al mondo dei weblog di narrazione è Blogout. 13
diari dalla rete, a cura di Alessandro Marzi e Fabrizio Ulisse,
Novecento Libri 2003.
11
Può essere forse questa l'occasione adatta per ricordare
il recente libro di Howard Rheingold, Smart Mobs. The Next Social
Revolution, Perseus Publishing, Cambridge (MA) 2002, dedicato
proprio alle conseguenze sociali e culturali dello sviluppo degli
strumenti di comunicazione mobile.
12
L'acronimo RSS viene tuttavia sciolto - in particolare nell'implementazione
che ne ha fatto Netscape - anche come 'RDF Site Summary' o 'Rich
Site Summary'.
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Besten Dank.
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Merci beaucoup.
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Uitgeverij Vassallucci - Klaas de Vries jr. - Joe ken call me uncle Klaas
Klaas
de Vries jr.
Joe
ken call me uncle Klaas!
Een volkomen hilarische
– op waarheid berustende – briefwisseling van een Groningse
impressario en een koninklijk lid van een
Nigeriaanse oplichtersbende
U
kent de e-mails wel: een Nigeriaanse man van koninklijke afkomst roept
uw hulp in om hem bij te staan met enkele financiële transacties, onder
het motto: u bent miljonair voor u er erg in heeft.
U
verwijdert de e-mail en gaat verder met uw dagelijkse besognes.
Klaas
de Vries jr. besluit anno november 2002 te doen wat niemand doet: hij
begint een correspondentie met de afzender van de e-mail, en verstuurt
mail na mail die zich kenmerken door een volkomen uniek taalgebruik: het
soort Engels dat - weinig ontwikkelde maar zich superieur wanende -
Nederlanders plachten te bezigen die op vakantie gaan - ze ‘putten de
flowers outside’. Het hele arsenaal van advocaten, faxen, mobiele
telefoons, bankgaranties, Western Union, vliegtuigen die gemist worden,
adoptie, geestelijke crises, familiefoto’s, foundations etc. wordt in
deze correspondentie opengetrokken, waarmee Klaas de Vries zijn
Nigeriaanse ‘vriend’ volledig tot wanhoop drijft. Werkelijk alles
wat mis kan gaan, gaat ook mis. Wanneer Klaas jr. van de opwinding op
Schiphol instort en Klaas de Vries sr. de correspondentie tijdelijk
overneemt gaan alle remmen los...
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World Summit on
the Information Society, First Phase:
10-12 December 2003
The World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) is held in two phases. The
first phase of WSIS took place in Geneva hosted by the Government of Switzerland from
10 to 12 December 2003.The
objective of the first phase was to develop and foster a clear statement of
political will and take concrete steps to establish the foundations for an
Information Society for all, reflecting all the different interests at
stake.
At
the Geneva Phase of WSIS nearly 50 Heads of state/government and
Vice-Presidents, 82 Ministers, and 26 Vice-Ministers and Heads of
delegation as well as high-level representatives from international
organizations, private sector, and civil society provided political support
to the WSIS
Declaration of Principles and Plan of
Action
that were adopted on 12 December 2003. More than 11,000
participants from 175 countries attended the Summit and related events.
The Life and Works of Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179)
Introduction
Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179) was a remarkable woman, a "first" in many
fields. At a time when few women wrote, Hildegard, known as "Sybil of the Rhine", produced major works of theology and visionary writings. When few women were accorded respect, she was consulted by and advised bishops, popes, and kings. She used the curative powers of natural objects for healing, and wrote treatises about natural history and medicinal uses of plants, animals, trees and stones. She is the first composer whose biography is known. She founded a vibrant convent, where her musical plays were performed. Although not yet canonized, Hildegard has been beatified, and is frequently referred to as St. Hildegard. Revival of interest in this extraordinary woman of the middle ages was initiated by musicologists
and historians of science and religion. Less fortunately, Hildegard's visions and music had been hijacked by the New Age movement, whose music bears some resemblance to Hildegard's ethereal airs. Her story is important to all students of medieval history and culture and an inspirational account of an irresisible spirit and vibrant intellect overcoming social, physical, cultural, gender barriers to achieve timeless transcendence.
The Early Years
Hildegard was born a "10"th child (a tithe) to a noble family. As was customary
with the tenth child, which the family could not count on feeding, she was
dedicated at birth to the church. The girl started to have visions of luminous
objects at the age of tree, but soon realized she was unique in this ability
and hid this gift for many years.
At age 8, the family sent this strange girl to an anchoress named Jutta to
receive a religious education. Jutta was born into a wealthy and prominent
family, and by all accounts was a young woman of great beauty. She spurned all
worldly temptations and decided to dedicate her life to god. Instead of entering a convent, Jutta followed a harsher route and became an anchoress.
Anchors of both sexes, though from most accounts they seem to be largely women,
led an ascetic life, shut off from the world inside a small room, usually built
adjacent to a church so that they could follow the services, with only a small
window acting as their link to the rest of humanity. Food would be passed through
this window and refuse taken out. Most of the time would be spent in prayer,
contemplation, or solitary handworking activities, like stitching and embroidering.
Because they would become essentially dead to the world, anchors would receive
their last rights from the bishop before their confinement in the anchorage.
This macabre ceremony was a complete burial ceremony with the anchor laid out
on a bier.
Jutta's cell was such an anchorage, except that there was a door through which
Hildegard entered, as well as about a dozen of girls from noble families who
were attracted there by Jutta's fame in later years. What kind of education did
Hildegard receive from Jutta? It was of the most rudimentary form, and Hildegard
could never escape the feelings of inadequacy and lack of education. She learned to read Psalter in Latin. Though her grasp of the grammatical
intricacies of the language was never complete - she always had secretaries to
help her write down her visions - she had a good intuitive feel for the intrintricacies of the language itself, constructing complicated sentences fraught with
meanings on many levels, that are still a challenge to students of her writings.
The proximity of the anchorage to the church of the Benedictine monastery at
Disibodenberg (it was attached physically to the church) undoubtedly exposed
young Hildegard to musical religious services and were the basis for her own
musical compositions. After Jutta's death, when Hildegard was 38 years of age,
she was elected the head of the budding convent living within cramped walls
of the anchorage.
The Awakening
During all these years Hildegard confided of her visions only to Jutta and another
monk, named Volmar, who was to become her lifelong secretary. However, in 1141, Hildegard had a vision that changed the course of her life.
A vision of god gave her instant understanding of the meaning of the religious
texts, and commanded her to write down everything she would observe in her
visions.
And it came to pass ... when I was 42 years and 7 months old, that the
heavens were opened and a blinding light of exceptional brilliance
flowed through my entire brain. And so it kindled my whole heart and breast
like a flame, not burning but warming... and suddenly I understood of the
meaning of expositions of the books...
Yet Hildegard was also overwhelmed by feelings of inadequacy and hesitated to act.
But although I heard and saw these things, because of doubt and low opinion of
myself and because of diverse sayings of men, I refused for a long time a call
to write, not out of stubbornness but out of humility, until weighed down
by a scourge of god, I fell onto a bed of sickness.
The 12th century was also the time of schisms and religious foment,
when someone preaching any outlandish doctrine could instantly attract a large
following. Hildegard was critical of schismatics, indeed her whole life she preached
against them, especially the Cathars. She wanted her visions to be sanctioned,
approved by the Catholic Church, though she herself never doubted the
divine origins to her luminous visions. She wrote to St. Bernard, seeking his
blessings. Though his answer to her was rather perfunctory, he did bring it
to the attention of Pope Eugenius (1145-53), a rather enlightened individual
who exhorted Hildegard to finish her writings. With papal imprimatur, Hildegard was able to
finish her first visionary work Scivias ("Know the Ways of the Lord")
and her fame began to spread through Germany and beyond.
Major Works
Around 1150 Hildegard moved her growing convent from Disibodenberg, where the
nuns lived alongside the monks, to Bingen about 30 km north, on the banks
of the Rhine. She later founded another convent, Eibingen, across the
river from Bingen. Her remaining years were very productive. She wrote
music and texts to her songs, mostly liturgical plainchant honoring saints
and Virgin Mary for the holidays and feast days, and antiphons. There is some evidence that her music and moral play Ordo Virtutum ("Play of Virtues")
were performed in her own convent. In addition to Scivias she wrote
two other major works of visionary writing Liber vitae meritorum
(1150-63) (Book of Life's Merits) and Liber divinorum operum(1163)
("Book of Divine Works"), in which she further expounded on her theology
of microcosm and macrocosm-man being the peak of god's creation, man
as a mirror through which the splendor of the macrocosm was reflected.
Hildegard also authored Physica and
Causae et Curae (1150), both works on natural history and curative powers
of various natural objects, which are together known as Liber subtilatum
("The book of subtleties of the Diverse Nature of Things"). These works were
uncharacteristic of Hildegard's writings, including her correspondences, in that
they were not presented in a visionary form and don't contain any references
to divine source or revelation. However, like her religious writings they
reflected her religious philosophy-that the man was the peak of god's
creation and everything was put in the world for man to use.
Her scientific views were derived from the ancient Greek cosmology of
the four elements-fire, air, water, and earth-with their complementary
qualities of heat, dryness, moisture, and cold, and the corresponding four
humours in the body-choler (yellow bile), blood, phlegm, and melancholy
(black bile). Human constitution was based on the preponderance of one or
two of the humours. Indeed, we still use words "choleric", "sanguine",
"phlegmatic" and "melancholy" to describe personalities. Sickness upset the
delicate balance of the humours, and only consuming the right plant or animal
which had that quality you were missing, could restore the healthy balance
to the body. That is why in giving descriptions of plants, trees, birds,
animals, stones, Hildegard is mostly concerned in describing that object's quality
and giving its medicinal use. Thus, "Reyan (tansy) is hot and a little damp
and is good against all superfluous flowing humours and whoever suffers from
catarrh and has a cough, let him eat tansy. It will bind humors so that they
do not overflow, and thus will lessen."
Hildegard's writings are also unique for their generally positive view of sexual
relations and her description of pleasure from the point of view of a woman.
They might also contain the first description of the female orgasm.
When a woman is making love with a man, a sense of heat in her brain,
which brings with it sensual delight, communicates the taste of that delight
during the act and summons forth the emission of the man's seed. And when
the seed has fallen into its place, that vehement heat descending from her
brain draws the seed to itself and holds it, and soon the woman's sexual
organs contract, and all the parts that are ready to open up during the time
of menstruation now close, in the same way as a strong man can old something
enclosed in his fist.
She also wrote that strength of semen determined the sex of the child, while
the amount of love and passion determine child's disposition. The worst case,
where the seed is weak and parents feel no love, leads to a bitter daughter.
Divine Harmonies
Music was extremely important to Hildegard. She describes it as the means of recapturing the original joy and beauty of paradise. According to her before the Fall, Adam had a pure voice and joined angels in singing praises to god. After the fall, music was invented and musical instruments made in order to worship god appropriately. Perhaps this explains why her music most often sounds like what we imagine angels singing to be like.
Hildegard wrote hymns and sequences in honor of saints, virgins and Mary. She
wrote in the plainchant tradition of a single vocal melodic line, a tradition
common in liturgical singing of her time. Her music is undergoing a revival
and enjoying huge public success. One group, Sequentia, is planning
to record all of Hildegard's musical output in time for the 900th anniversary of
her birth in 1998. Their latest recording Canticles of Ecstasy
is superb. Be sure to read the translations of the latin text of the songs
which provide a good example of Hildegard's metaphorical writing, and are imbued
with vibrant descriptions of color and light, that also occurs in her
visionary writings.
The Most Distinguished Migraine Sufferer
It is now generally agreed that Hildegard suffered from migraine, and that her
visions were a result of this condition. The way she describes her visions,
the precursors, to visions, to debilitating aftereffects, point to classic
symptoms of migraine sufferers. Although a number of visual hallucinations may
occur, the more common ones described are the "scotomata" which often follow
perceptions of phosphenes in the visual field. Scintillating scotomata are also associated with areas of total blindness in the visual field, something Hildegard
might have been describing when she spoke of points of intense light, and also
the "extinguished stars." Migraine attacks are usually followed by sickness,
paralysis, blindness-all reported by Hildegard, and when they pass, by a period
of rebound and feeling better than before, a euphoria also described by her.
Also, writes Oliver Sachs
Among the strangest and most intense symptoms of migraine aura,
and the most difficult of description and analysis, are the occurrences
of feelings of sudden familiarity and certitude... or its opposite. Such
states are experienced, momentarily and occasionally,by everyone;
their occurrence in migraine auras is marked by their overwhelming intensity
and relatively long duration.
It is a tribute to the remarkable spirit and the intellectual powers of this woman
that she was able to turn a debilitating illness into the word of god, and
create so much with it.
Bibliography
Hildegard of Bingen, a Visionary Life, by Sabina Flanagan. (Routledge, London, 1989).
The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales, Oliver Sachs. (New York : Perennial Library, 1987).
Symphonia: A Critical Edition of the "Symphonia armoniae celestium
revelationum, trans. and commentary Barbara Newman (Ithaca: Cornell Univ.
Press, 1988).
Scivias, trans. Mother Columba Hart and Jane Bishop, The Classics
of Western Spirituality (New York/Mahwah: Paulist Press, 1990).
Illuminations of Hildegard of Bingen, text by Hildegard of Bingen with
commentary by Matthew Fox. (Santa Fe, N.M. : Bear & Co., 1985).
Hildegard of Bingen : the Book of the rewards of life (Liber vitae
meritorum), translated by Bruce W. Hozeski. (New York : Garland Pub., 1994).
The letters of Hildegard of Bingen, translated by Joseph L. Baird, Radd
K. Ehrman. (New York : Oxford University Press, 1994).
Sister of wisdom : St. Hildegard's theology of the feminine, by Barbara
Newman. (Berkeley : University of California Press, 1987).
The "Ordo virtutum" of Hildegard of Bingen : critical studies edited by
Audrey Ekdahl Davidson. (Kalamazoo, Mich. : Medieval Institute Publications, Western Michigan University, 1992).
Hildegard von Bingen : Mystikerin, Heilerin, Gefahrtin der Engel, by Ingeborg Ulrich. (Munchen : Kosel, 1990).
German mysticism from Hildegard of Bingen to Ludwig Wittgenstein : a
literary and intellectual history, by Andrew Weeks. (Albany : State University of New York Press, 1993).
Discography
Bison Tales has recently released two recordings of Hildegard's music and spoken word by Ellen Oak. Ellen Oak has been studying and performing the life and work of Hildegard for more than a decade.
3: having blood as the predominating bodily humor; also: having the bodily conformation and temperament held characteristic of such predominance and marked by sturdiness, high color, and cheerfulness
The
brochure
of the course will be made available at the beginning of the
winter 2006
OBJECTIVES OF
THE COURSE
Every seminar focuses on one specific issue of copyright law,
which participants explore in depth with the lecturer. The
course extends over a period of six days from July 10 to
15, 2006 and is divided into ten seminars, given during
morning or afternoon sessions. All lunch breaks are spent
together as a group.
At the
conclusion of the course, participants will have gained
valuable insight in the most crucial current issues of
copyright law, examined from a comparative law perspective and
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case law, and other background materials. The lectures
are given by internationally renowned scholars and
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experience in the field of international copyright law.
FEE € 1.900,- including
course material, five lunches, opening dinner, and closing
reception.
A limited number of participants from academic institutions
will be allowed to join for € 850.
LOCATION
Faculty of Law, University of Amsterdam, Oudemanhuispoort 4,
Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
APPLICANT
PROFILE
The course is aimed at lawyers, academics and other
professionals involved in questions of copyright law.
Participants are expected to have some prior knowledge of the
field.
CERTIFICATE
At the close of the course, each participant will receive a
Certificate of completion of the programme.
ORGANISERS
Bernt Hugenholtz, Professor of copyright law at the
University of Amsterdam and co-director of the Institute for
Information Law.
Lucie Guibault, Assistant professor in copyright law
at the University of Amsterdam and researcher at the Institute
for Information Law.
FACULTY Mireille van Eechoud,
Assistant Professor, Faculty of Law, University of
Amsterdam, The Netherlands; Daniel
Gervais, Associate Professor, Faculty of Law,
University of Ottawa, Canada; Pamela Samuelson,
Professor at the University of California at Berkeley, USA; Thomas
Vinje, Partner at Clifford Chance, Brussels,
Belgium;
Bernt Hugenholtz, mentioned above;
Lucie Guibault, mentioned above.
Institute for Information
Law, University of Amsterdam,
Rokin 84, 1012 KX AMSTERDAM
THE NETHERLANDS
tel: +31 20 525 3406 /fax: +31 20 525 3033
email:
A.G.J.M.Dobbelsteen@uva.nl
Website: http://www.ivir.nl
The 2004 Canon Envirothon will be hosted July 26th - August 1st at Wesleyan
College in Buckhannon, West Virginia. As information concerning the 2004
international competition becomes available, it will be posted here for
your viewing.
I/OMagic’s USB 20GB Hard Drive w/ Built-in 6-in-1 Card Reader is a portable palm-sized storage device that is a great solution for all of your digital data storage needs. Combining the high storage capacity with rechargeable battery, the drive allows users to transfer high-resolution photos or digital data from memory cards into the built-in HDD.
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Gaia, known as Earth or Mother Earth (the Greek common noun for "land" is ge or ga). She was an early earth goddess and it is written that Gaia was born from Chaos, the great void of emptiness within the universe, and with her came Eros. She gave birth to Pontus (the Sea) and Uranus (the Sky). This was achieved parthenogenetically (without male intervention). Other versions say that Gaia had as siblings Tartarus (the lowest part of the earth, below Hades itself) and Eros, and without a mate, gave birth to Uranus (Sky), Ourea (Mountains) and Pontus (Sea).
Gaia took as her husband Uranus, who was also her son, and their offspring included the Titans, six sons and six daughters. She gave birth to the Cyclopes and to three monsters that became known as the "Hecatonchires". The spirits of punishment known as the Erinyes were also offspring of Gaia and Uranus. The Gigantes, finally, were conceived after Uranus had been castrated by his son Cronus, and his blood fell to earth from the open wound.
To protect her children from her husband, (the Cyclopes and the Hecatoncheires, as he was fearful of their great strength), Gaia hid them all within herself. One version says that Uranus was aghast at the sight of his offspring so he hid them away in Tartarus, which are the bowels of the earth. Gaia herself found her offspring uncomfortable and at times painful, when the discomfort became to much to bear she asked her youngest son Cronus to help her. She asked him to castrate Uranus, thus severing the union between the Earth and Sky, and also to prevent more monstrous offspring. To help Cronus achieve his goal Gaia produced an adamantine sickle to serve as the weapon. Cronus hid until Uranus came to lay with Gaia and as Uranus drew near, Cronus struck with the sickle, cutting the genitalia from Uranus. Blood fell from the severed genitals and came in contact with the earth and from that union was born the Erinyes (Furies), the Giants and the Meliae (Nymphs of the manna ash trees).
After the separation of the Earth from the Sky, Gaia gave birth to other offspring, these being fathered by Pontus. Their names were the sea-god Nereus, Thaumas, Phorcys, Ceto and Eurybia. In other versions Gaia had offspring to her brother Tartarus; they were Echidna and Typhon, the later being an enemy of Zeus. Apollo killed Typhon when he took control of the oracle at Delphi, which Gaia originally provided, and then the "Sibyl" sang the oracle in Gaia's shrine.
It was Gaia who saved Zeus from being swallowed by Cronus, after Zeus had been born, Gaia helped Rhea to wrap a stone in swaddling clothes, this was to trick Cronus in to thinking it was Zeus, because Cronus had been informed that one of his children would depose him, and so to get rid of his children he had swallowed them, Gaia's trick worked and Zeus was then taken to Crete.
Gaia being the primordial element from which all the gods originated was worshiped throughout Greece, but later she went into decline and was supplanted by other gods. In Roman mythology she was known as Tellus or Terra.
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We have noticed that sometimes a Male Betta will attack and kill Ghost Shrimp, and sometimes Aquatic Snails will eat Aponogeton plants, but the
Aquatic Snails do not seem to have an appetite for the Java Ferns.
We recommend keeping a Betta in a fish bowl that will hold at least one gallon of water. We sell a fish bowl that will hold 1.5 gallons of water. Click
here for more about buying a Fish Bowl Kit from us.
Click here for more about keeping fish in large fish bowls.
Please click on our advertiser's links like those
in the ad just below.
The New
Ebook with The
Truth,
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Get all
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Bettas usually do fine in a temperature range of 65 to 80 degrees F. But may do best in range of 70 to 75 degrees F. If the water is cool and your Betta is not eating enthusiastically, you should
move it's fish bowl to a warmer spot or increase the temperature in the aquarium.
You should also be sure the temperature doesn't change too much, too fast. A change of 3 degrees per day usually doesn't cause stress or disease, but a drop from 75 degrees to 65 degrees in one day would
not be natural or good for a Betta.
Please click on our advertiser's links like those
in the ad just below.
Click
here to
listen to Tom and
Nevin Bailey
interview Dean
Pomerleau and his
son, Kyle, about how
to train pet fish,
including Goldfish,
Betta Fish, and
Oscars, to do cool
tricks.
Recommended Diet.
Floating Food and Freeze Dried Blood Worms both available
in most places that pet
fish are sold. Bettas are not an active fish, so they don't require as much oxygen or as much food as energetic active fish do.
Feed your Betta twice each day. I feed my Bettas in the morning and in the evening.
Be careful not to feed
your Bettas more than
they will eat. Remove uneaten food with a small net after 10 minutes. Click here
for more about feeding fish.
I feed all my Bettas a few Black Worms every other day. Click here for more about Black Worms.
Compatibility. Male Bettas do best in a large Fish bowl with a few Ghost Shrimp and some live plants as mentioned above.
Usually White Clouds are compatible with Bettas and can live in a Large Fish Bowl with a Betta, but sometimes the Betta will chase and annoy the White Clouds, and
very rarely White Clouds have nipped on a Betta. Click here for more information about White Clouds.
Click here to read more about several groups of compatible fish.
Size and Life Span. Male Bettas grow to about 3" and live for 2 to 3 years.
Here is an email comment from Bradley, "How old my Betta was. My Betta reached 5 years and 7 months before he died. I kept him by the stove
for warmth and he did great."
Links to other pages in this web site with more information and advice about Bettas.
Click here for more about Breeding Siamese Fighting Fish.
Click here for more about Caring for a Betta in a Vase.
Click here for more information about Fish Bowls.
Books about Betta Fish. The books shown below are listed on Amazon.com. You can click on the title or on the image of a book
to go to the page at Amazon.com, where that book is listed and discussed. In some cases you can preview several of the pages in that book.
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JESOLO.IT - Holiday Jesolo Lido. Reservation hotel. Rooms Jesolo Italy - Lido di Jesolo does not mean alone sea, beach and summer. The PalaFiera, the continuous manifestations and its geographic position render it the ideal place for every type of stay in any season. For your vacations to the sea you will find with harmonious and gradevole to guarantee of a stay with the comfort to which you are it accustoms to you. Holiday Jesolo Lido. It knows them large and pleasant, furnished with every taste in particular. Know the love for the art, the pleasure to surround of pictures and objects searches to you, the glad vivacity to approach various styles.
iNEMI has several projects and initiatives related to lead-free electronics. This page contains presentations, papers and other materials on topics and issues surrounding lead-free electronics. You can also link to the project sites listed below for additional information, including press releases, articles and presentations.
Pb-free Assembly, Rework, and Reliability Analysis of IPC Class 2 Assemblies, Jerry Gleason (HP), Charlie Reynolds (IBM), Jasbir Bath (Solectron Corporation), Quyen Chu (Jabil Circuit), Matthew Kelly (formerly Celestica, now at IBM), Ken Lyjak (IBM) and Patrick Roubaud (HP), IEEE ECTC, May 31-June 3 (Lake Buena Vista, FL).
Pb-Free Reflow and Rework (cover story), Matt Kelly (Celestica International), Quyen Chu (Jabil Circuit) and Jasbir Bath (Solectron Corporation), Circuits Assembly, November 2004, pp. 32-35.
Selective Soldering with SN3.9AG0.6CU: Process Development, Ursula G. Marquez and Denis C. Barbini, Vitronics Soltec, Inc.; Richard A. Szymanowski, Celestica, Inc., SMTAI International conference, September 26-30, 2004 (Chicago, IL).
Status of Pb-Free Activities in the North American Supply Chain, Galen Reeder, Rick Charbonneau, Bob Pfahl and Carol Handwerker (presented by Carol Handwerker), IPC/JEDEC 4th International Conference on Lead-Free Electronic Components & Assemblies, October 21-22, 2003 (Frankfurt, Germany).
NEMI Pb-Free Solder Projects: Progress and Results, Carol Handwerker, NIST, IPC/JEDEC 4th International Conference on Lead-Free Electronic Components & Assemblies, October 21-22, 2003 (Frankfurt, Germany).
NEMI Pb-Free Solder Project, presented by Carol Handwerker (NIST), September 25, 2003, SMTA International conference (Chicago, IL).
"NEMI Environmental Programs," Dr. Robert C. Pfahl, NEMI, presented at the Electronics Recycling Summit, IEEE International Symposium on Electronics and the Environment, May 22, 2003, Boston.
COMMISSION DECISION amending RoHS Directive, establishing the maximum concentration values for certain hazardous substances. (8/18/05) (PDF)
JOINT INDUSTRY GUIDE for Material Composition Declaration of Electronics Product (final). This guide, from EIA (Electronic Industries Alliance), JGPSSI (Japan Green Procurement Survey Standardization Initiative) and JEDEC, establishes the materials and substances that must be disclosed by suppliers to meet RoHS requirements.
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Buenos Aires hotels and Buenos Aires city guide with Buenos Aires hotel discounts
Buenos Aires Hotels and Buenos Aires City Guide with Buenos Aires Hotel Discounts, Maps, Travel Information and Area Attractions
Buenos Aires Hotels and City Guide
Buenos Aires Hotels and Buenos Aires Guide with Buenos Aires Maps, Photos, Attractions, Room Reservations and Hotel Discounts at a Wide Range of Buenos Aires Hotels
Nearly half the population of Argentina resides in the enormous, European-styled city of Buenos Aires. The tree-lined streets and large squares retain an air of faded French elegance and throng with the sophisticated echelons of a society renowned for its passionate indulgence in the good things of life.
Planning a visit to Buenos Aires - stay at the InterContinental Buenos Aires Hotel, located in the heart of the gaslight district of the Old Town, amid the Buenos Aires’ sprawling mix of the old and the new. Buenos Aires is a city whose identity lies in its 48 barrios... More Hotel Information
"En Route To Global Occupation" - Gary Kah
"One World" - Tal Brooke
"Our Global Neighborhood: The Report of the Commission on Global Governance" - Commission on Global Governance [see the article on 
"New World Order: Ancient Plan Of Secret Societies" - William Still
"The Unseen Hand" - Ralph Epperson
"The New World Order" - Ralph Epperson 
"The Keys Of This Blood: Pope John Paul II Versus Russia And The West For Control Of The New World Order" - Malachi Martin
"Wall Street And The Bolshevik Revolution" - Antony C. Sutton
"The Best Enemy Money Can Buy" - Antony C. Sutton
"America's Secret Establishment: An Introduction to the Order of Skull & Bones" - Antony C. Sutton
"Secrets of the Tomb: Skull and Bones, the Ivy League, and the Hidden Paths of Power" - Alexandra Robbins
"Secret Societies of America's Elite: From the Knights Templar to Skull and Bones" - Steven Sora
"Secret Societies and Psychological Warfare" - Michael A. Hoffman II
"None Dare Call It Conspiracy" - Gary Allen
"Who's Who of the Elite: Members of the Bilderbergs, Council on Foreign Relations, & Trilateral Commission" - Robert Gaylon Ross Sr.
"The Shadows of Power: The Council on Foreign Relations and the American Decline" - James Perloff
"Trilateralism: The Trilateral Commission and Elite Planning for World Management" - edited by Holly Sklar
"Pawns in the Game" - William G. Carr
"Now Is The Coming Of The New Age New World Order" - Dr. Dennis Cuddy
"Secret Records Revealed: The Men, the Money, and the Methods Behind the New World Order " - Dr. Dennis Cuddy
"The Globalists" - Dennis L. Cuddy
"September 11 Prior Knowledge" - Dennis Laurence Cuddy
"Circle Of Intrigue" - Texe Marrs
"Conspirator's Hierarchy: The Committee of 300" - John Coleman
"One World Order: Socialist Dictatorship" - John Coleman
"Government by Decree: From President to Dictator Through Executive Orders" - James L. Hirsen
"Global Tyranny...Step by Step: The United Nations and the Emerging New World Order" - William F. Jasper
"United Nations Global Strait Jacket" - Joan M. Veon
"The Occult Conspiracy: Secret Societies - Their Influence and Power in World History" - Michael Howard
"Blood Lines of the Illuminati" - Fritz Springmeier
"They Cast No Shadows: A Collection of Essays on the Illuminati, Revisionist History, and Suppressed Technologies" - Brian R. Desborough
"Proof of the Illuminati" - Seth Payson and Benedict J. Williamson
"Incredible Technologies Of The New World Order; UFOs - Tesla - Area 51 " - Commander X, 
"The New World Religon " - Gary Kah
"The United Nations Exposed" - William F. Jasper
"The Coming Collision" - James L. Hirsen
"Death in the Air: Globalism, Terrorism And Toxic Warfare" - Leonard G. Horowitz
"Conceiving the New World Order: The Global Politics of Reproduction" - edited by Faye D. Ginsburg and Rayna Rapp
"The New Knighthood : A History of the Order of the Templet;" - Malcolm Barber
"Rule by Secrecy: The Hidden History That Connects the Trilateral Commission, the Freemasons, and the Great Pyramids" - Jim Mars
"Masonic Rites and Wrongs: An Examination of Freemasonry" - Steven Tsoukalas
"The Deadly Deception: Freemasonry Exposed By One Of Its Top Leaders" - Jim Shaw
"Hidden Secrets of the Eastern Star" - Cathy Burns
"Masonry: Conspiracy Against Christianity; Evidence That The Masonic Lodge Has A Secret Agenda" - Ralph Epperson
"Please Tell Me...: Questions People Ask About Freemasonry-And the Answers" - Tom C. McKenney
"The Dark Side of Freemasonry" - Ed Decker
"The Freemasons: A History of the World's Most Powerful Secret Society" - Jasper Ridley
"The Secret Teachings of the Masonic Lodge: A Christian Perspective" - John Ankerberg
"Fast Facts on False Teachings" - Ron Carlson and Ed Decker
"The Brotherhood: The Explosive Expose of the Secret World of the Freemasons" - Stephen Knight
"Behind the Lodge Door" - Paul A. Fisher
"Secrets Of The Temple: How The Federal Reserve Runs The Country" - William Greider
"The Immaculate Deception: The Bush Crime Family Exposed" - Russell S. Bowen
"The Dirty Truth, The Oil and Chemical Dependency of George W. Bush" - Rick Abraham
"Forbidden Truth: U.S.-Taliban Secret Oil Diplomacy, Saudi Arabia and the Failed Search for bin Laden" - Jean-Charles Brisard
"Dreaming War: Blood for Oil and the Cheney-Bush Junta" - Gore Vidal
"Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace" - Gore Vidal
"The Mafia, CIA and George Bush" - Pete Brewton
"The Power Elite" - C. Wright Mills
"Derailing Democracy: The America the Media Don't Want You to See" - David McGowan
"The Best Democracy Money Can Buy: The Truth About Corporate Cons, Globalization and High-Finance Fraudsters" - Greg Palast
"Freedom in Chains: The Rise of the State and the Demise of the Citizen" - James Bovard
"Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty" - James Bovard
"Reassessing the Presidency: The Rise of the Executive State and the Decline of Freedom" - John V. Denson
"Inside the Gemstone File" - Kenn Thomas and David Hatcher Childress
"The Gemstone File" - Jim Keith
"Mass Control: Engineering Human Consciousness" - Jim Keith
"Haarp: The Ultimate Weapon of the Conspiracy (The Mind-Control Conspiracy Series)" - Jerry E. Smith
"Angels Don't Play This Haarp: Advances in Tesla Technology" - Nick Begich and Jeane Manning
"Psychic Dictatorship in the U.S.A." - Alex Constantine
"Liquid Conspiracy" - George Piccard
"Mind Control, World Control" - Jim Keith
"MKULTRA : The CIA's Top Secret Program in Human Experimentation and Behavior Modification" - George Andrews
"Search for the 'Manchurian Candidate" - John D. Marks
"Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion" - Gary Webb and Maxine Waters 
"Whiteout: The CIA, Drugs and the Press" - Alexander Cockburn
"Cocaine Politics: Drugs, Armies, and the CIA in Central America" - Peter Dale Scott
"The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade" - Alfred W. McCoy
"Drugs, Oil, and War: The United States in Afghanistan, Columbia, and Indochina" - Peter Dale Scott
"Manufacturing Consent - Noam Chomsky and the Media - DVD" [this title is also available in VHS video format]
"Educating for the New World Order" - B. K. Eakman
"Cloning of the American Mind: Eradicating Morality Through Education" - B. K. Eakman
"Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling" - John Taylor Gatto
"Dumbing Down Our Kids: Why American Children Feel Good About Themselves but Can't Read, Write, or Add" - Charles J. Sykes
"The Feel-Good Curriculum: The Dumbing Down of America's Kids in the Name of Self-Esteem" - Maureen Stout, Ph.D.
"The Islamic Nation: Status And Future of Muslims in the New World Order" - Ali Nawaz Memon
"The Schools We Need: And Why We Don't Have Them" - E. D. Hirsch, Jr.
"NEA: Trojan Horse in American Education" - Samuel L. Blumenfeld
"Power Grab: How the National Education Association Is Betraying Our Children" - G. Gregory Moo
"The Teacher Unions: How They Sabotage Educational Reform and Why" - Myron Lieberman
"The Worm in the Apple: How the Teacher Unions Are Destroying American Education" - Peter Brimelow
"The New Thought Police: Inside the Left's Assault on Free Speech and Free Minds" - Tammy Bruce
"The Death of Right and Wrong: Exposing the Left's Assault on Our Culture and Values" - Tammy Bruce
"The Language Police: How Pressure Groups Restrict What Students Learn" - Diane Ravitch
"The Conspiracy of Ignorance: The Failure of American Public Schools" - Martin L. Gross
"The Praetorian Guard : The US Role In The New World Order" - John Stockwell
"Global Dreams: Imperial Corporations And The New World Order" - Richard Barnet 
"When Corporations Rule the World" - David C. Korten 
"Unequal Protection: The Rise of Corporate Dominance and the Theft of Human Rights" - Thom Hartmann
"One World Ready Or Not: The Manic Logic Of Global Capitalism" - William Greider
"The Silent Takeover: Global Capitalism and the Death of Democracy" - Noreena Hertz
"Globalization and Its Discontents" - Joseph E. Stiglitz
"What Went Wrong?: The Clash Between Islam and Modernity in the Middle East" - Bernard Lewis
"The Crisis of Islam: Holy War and Unholy Terror" - Bernard Lewis
"Of Paradise and Power: America and Europe in the New World Order" - Robert Kagan
"The Lexus and the Olive Tree: Understanding Globalization" - Thomas L. Friedman
"Jihad vs. McWorld: How Globalism and Tribalism Are Reshaping the World" - Benjamin R. Barber
"Out of Control: Global Turmoil on the Eve of the Twenty-First Century" - Zbigniew K. Brzezinski
"The Geostrategic Triad: Living with China, Europe, and Russia" - Zbigniew K. Brzezinski and John J. Hamre
"The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives" - Zbigniew K. Brzezinski
"The Perestroika Deception : Memoranda to the Central Intelligence Agency" - Anatoliy Golitsyn, edited by Christopher Story
"Fortress America: The American Military and the Consequences of Peace" - William Greider
"Trick or Treason: The October Surprise Mystery" - Robert Parry
"Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press And 'Project Truth'" - Robert Parry
"Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire" - Chalmers Johnson
"Firewall: The Iran-Contra Conspiracy and Cover-Up" - Lawrence E. Walsh
"Bushwhacked: Inside Stories of True Conspiracy" - Uri Dowbenko
"Betrayal : How the Clinton Administration Undermined American Security" - Bill Gertz
"Year of the Rat: How Bill Clinton Compromised U.S. Security for Chinese Cash" - Edward Timperlake, et al
"The Clinton Chronicles Book" - edited by Patrick Matrisciana
"The Secret Life of Bill Clinton: The Unreported Stories" - Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
"Hell to Pay: The Unfolding Story of Hillary Rodham Clinton" - Barbara Olsen
"The Case Against Hillary Clinton" - Peggy Noonan
"High Crimes and Misdemeanors: The Case Against Bill Clinton" - Ann Coulter
"The Clinton Record: Everything Bill and Hillary Want You to Forget" - Kevin H. Watson
"Uncovering Clinton: A Reporter's Story" - Michael Isikoff
"The Strange Death Of Vince Foster" - Christopher Ruddy
"Unlimited Access: An FBI Agent Inside the Clinton White House" - Gary Aldrich and Michael Reagan
"No One Left To Lie To: The Values of the Worst Family" - Christopher Hitchens
"Partners in Power : The Clintons and Their America" - Roger Morris
"Waco: Beyond the Mena Connection" - Ethel Halstead
"Okbomb!: Conspiracy and Cover-Up" - Jim Keith
"Into the Buzzsaw: Leading Journalists Expose the Myth of a Free Press" - Kristina Borjesson
"Mark of the New World Order - Terry Cook [VHS]" 
"Mind Control: America's Secret War - VHS" ![The United Nations And The New World Order - Christian Action Network [VHS]](unandnwovid.jpg)
"The United Nations And The New World Order - Christian Action Network [VHS]"
"The Skulls [VHS]" - also available in DVD; highly accurate fictionalized account of Yale's secretive 'Skull and Bones Society' for the sons of the super-elite. We recommend it - an excellent and eye-opening movie!.
"The Skulls II - VHS" - the follow-up to the excellent 'The Skulls' movie, above.
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Ottoman
Rule (Eve of WWI)
Listen to this story via 
Principal, and expert guests on Feb. 9 at 9 a.m. ET, for this live, interactive symposium, and learn how a smart identity management strategy can help avoid disaster and increase efficiency.
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Tune in this fall as sixteen new Survivors compete to outwit, outplay and outlast each other on SURVIVOR AFRICA.
What a nightmare assembling this thing was!! The reason why I am still up right now is because I started assembling this thing around 8pm, and didn't finish until around 2am!! And then I had to spend another hour or so setting up my computers again (if you've ever seen it, my desk is an amazing haven of nerd-dom with 3 monitors hooked up to two computers, along with a little accessory cart with two printers and a scanner on it!). So yeah. After putting out so much physical effort for the last six hours, it's kind of hard for me to just settle down and go to bed. So I'm up making this somewhat overdue update.
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promoters than they be provided with clean towels and a few bottles of soft drinks. As the audiences grew larger, promoters stood to make more and more money from staging concerts, which meant that not only could rock stars command higher prices for their performances, but they were able to demand other perks as well, such as luxurious accommodations, lavish backstage buffets, and chauffeured transportation. It was inevitable that some high-demand acts, all their financial and pampering whims satisfied, would exercise their power and start making frivolous demands of promoters, simply because they could.
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Retired FBI Agent Reveals Details Of JFK's Assassination
Hosty said he was already looking into Oswald before Kennedy's death, but was missing some details.
"We found out after the assassination that Oswald had offered to kill Kennedy to the Cubans," he said.
Hosty said that lack of information happened in part because investigative agencies were not sharing information.
"There was a breakdown on the part of the National Security Council, breakdown on a part of the FBI, breakdown on part of the CIA," he said.
Antonia reported that the pictures of the past are still not complete -- a sentiment which Hosty shared.
"We'll never know for sure because Oswald's dead," he said. "In fact, many of the people involved are deceased. It's been 40 years; it's kind of hard to put it all together."
Hosty was interviewed for a Nov. 20 ABC News special that will tie into the 40th anniversary of the Kennedy assassination. He is also slated to speak Thursday at 7 p.m. at Johnson County Community College in a free event.
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oucl
More brick streets to come!
to
1.00%
January
18, 2006
July
20 Report
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BTW, the topic of discussion on Metafilter has meandered into a quote of mine from a MF thread in Y2K where I introduced myself by saying everyone there is full of shit. I'm afraid they might have misunderstood me. All my 
What to do when the platform vendor "validates" your product by copying it and announcing it will bundle the copy with the OS. I love what 
Elliott
Wave Principle
from Elliott Wave... 
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AWViewer download (free ArtWorks viewer)
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Columns
From the Associated Press - Updated every 15 min.
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Save My Game
This month's theme is Spells and Spellcasters! With the release of the Spell Compendium, what sort of characters will make use of the spells? What prestige classes will embrace such a wealth of information? 
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Click through to find out what positions are open with KXAN-TV 36, KXAM-TV 14, and Austin's WB.
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Section 5 - Hypothermia
Wearing
a PFD in the water is a key to survival. A PFD allows you float with a minimum of energy
expended and allows you to assume the heat escape lessening position - 
Watch The Opening Ceremonies Friday Night!
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West Oaks Mall:
The Galleria:
Plugin Commander 1.60
is designed for state and district administrators and technology directors, and national education policymakers and association leaders.
HF
-
9:30 - 
-
9:30 - Major 
Add GreenBayPressGazette.com RSS feeds
Extract data for use with other applications. Such as databases, spreadsheets and accounting packages.
Animism:
The animist views the "formal
religions" as being relevant with respect to "ultimate" issues, but
irrelevant when it comes to addressing the "immediate" issues of everyday
life... which is totally wrong!, because Christianity, Islam, and all "formal
religions" deal with issues of everyday's life... but this is the reason why
a Christian or a Jew go to the witch or consult the Zodiac... They go to church on
Saturday or Sunday to take care of their soul, and they go to the witch or astrologer on
Monday to take care of their business or illness... absolutely wrong!...
MUNSTER
10 February 2006- updated at 18:00
Lower resolutions such
as 640 x 480 are perfect for Web publishing, e-mail attachments, small prints, or images
in documents and presentations. For these uses, higher resolutions just increase file
sizes without significantly improving the images. 
imperva.com
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ou plutĂ´t 
82 
82 
105 
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The
Aruban Flag and Anthem
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The Nine Planets: Theoretical Planets
Space.com: Geminid meteors at their peak
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The
need to design and construct affordable
housing in America is urgent. Twenty-five
percent of all American households face
severe housing challenges, including insufficient
funds for monthly rent or mortgage payments,
maintenance, and repairs; overcrowding,
both within individual dwellings and in
high-density multi-family developments;
and structural deficiencies. These 30 million
households include not just the poorest
and those without jobs, but also teachers,
librarians, firefighters, health-care workers,
and many others who make significant contributions
to our communities. 
In recent years, however, a
new emphasis on design excellence in
affordable housing has yielded encouraging
alternatives that create substantial
assets for both residents and their communities.
In Washington, D.C.'s, LeDroit Park,
for example, financing from Fannie Mae,
in partnership with Howard University,
spurred the development of 12 new and
28 restored homes, significantly transforming
the physical character and composition
of the existing neighborhood while bringing
renewed vitality and stability to a historic
community. In Santa Monica, California,
Colorado Court's contemporary architecture
incorporates energy-efficient strategies,
enhancing tenants' quality of life on
many levels. And in Albany, New York,
and Oakland, California, developers and
architects recycled and reinvigorated
existing historic structures, providing
many units of housing while conserving
and strengthening local character. These
innovative projects, and many others
across the country, point toward a better
way to design affordable housing. 
The
18 projects illustrated in this exhibition,
from across the nation and in a range of
urban and rural settings, demonstrate that
well designed developments can offer new
opportunities for the least wealthy Americans,
while creating real value as assets for their
surrounding communities. The projects show
an increased recognition of the needs of
tenants, and display sensitivity to the human
experience in all spaces, from public and
private areas to transition spaces such as
entrances, porches, lobbies, hallways, and
foyers. Many provide flexibility for different
family types, easy expansion, and personalization.
They also show consideration of unit and
building positioning, thereby optimizing
views, ventilation, and accessibility. As
these projects demonstrate, America's architects
are increasingly creating affordable housing
that is durable, environmentally sensitive,
comfortable, attractive, and economical to
maintain-in other words, well designed.
Affordable
Housing is
made possible by the generous support of
the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban
Development, Nixon Peabody LLP, and 
-a.gif){kind=logo}
GridSquare Conversion
CareerBuilder.com Customer Service: 866-438-1485 |
Fund
EDITO of Jean-Marie Leblanc
search for a solution
home
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Philippe Starck owns a dozen houses worldwide. As he strolls his domains, he almost always knows the temperature outside, the atomically accurate time, the moon's current phase, and the probable incoming weather. The data comes from microprocessors scattered among his rooms, all of them packaged in polycarbonate boxes with LCD screens. They're manufactured by a Hong Kong company called Oregon Scientific, and he's been collecting them for a decade.
"It looks like nothing, almost a gadget, but it can bring you more than you think," Starck explains. "I use this object to know the big physical rules around me, and to understand the people around me, which is not nothing. You can check the weight of the air on your shoulder or the position of the moon, and see why you're nervous. Just before you think it's you, you check your 'armony with the universe." At the very least, Starck adds, he enlarged the clock numbers and arrayed other data in boxed rows below: "After [age] 42 you lose your eyes."
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WHAT IS HYPERENGINE-AV?
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C’est
la fęte des amoureux ! Découvrez
nos idées-cadeaux, testez
vos sentiments et faites votre déclaration en ligne… Pour
un 14 février numérique et romantique !
Les
news Psychologie
Une
literie ça ne dure pas toute la vie, et il faut parfois
songer à en changer. Mais comment savoir quand le moment
est arrivé d'acheter un
sommier et un matelas neufs ?
Un test pour un diagnostic impartial.
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Items listed at the first level below the Object name correspond to the properties of the Shared Object, of various types. Certain types can only have a value, some (like array) can have a child items which can be any of the other types.
You can also save the contents of the text box to a file, or load it from a file, using the Save/Load buttons. (UTF8 encoded text/xml files are not fully supported in this version).
’´‰ą”g”üŠçŠíu\Ź“\jbNv‚Ě‚˛ŹĐ‰î
€ 25.000 lenen? 
Brussels talks suit Belgium
News
Klaas
de Vries jr.
Print deze
pagina
RSS Feed
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