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Ambassadors | Be Like Peter.
Be Like Peter. Ambassadors are creators, founders and artists within the community who are willing to have coffee with a stranger, share their stories and share their talents. They inspire and motivate others to Be Like Peter. | {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaC4"
} |
FORM N-CSR
CERTIFIED SHAREHOLDER REPORT OF REGISTERED MANAGEMENT
Investment Company Act file number 811-08476
The Gabelli Multimedia Trust Inc.
(Exact name of registrant as specified in charter)
One Corporate Center
Rye, New York 10580-1422
(Address of principal executive offices) (Zip code)
Bruce N. Alpert
Gabelli Funds, LLC
(Name and address of agent for service)
Registrant's telephone number, including area code: 1-800-422-3554
Date of fiscal year end: December 31
Date of reporting period: June 30, 2020
Form N-CSR is to be used by management investment companies to file reports with the Commission not later than 10 days after the transmission to stockholders of any report that is required to be transmitted to stockholders under Rule 30e-1 under the Investment Company Act of 1940 (17 CFR 270.30e-1). The Commission may use the information provided on Form N-CSR in its regulatory, disclosure review, inspection, and policymaking roles.
A registrant is required to disclose the information specified by Form N-CSR, and the Commission will make this information public. A registrant is not required to respond to the collection of information contained in Form N-CSR unless the Form displays a currently valid Office of Management and Budget ("OMB") control number. Please direct comments concerning the accuracy of the information collection burden estimate and any suggestions for reducing the burden to Secretary, Securities and Exchange Commission, 450 Fifth Street, NW, Washington, DC 20549-0609. The OMB has reviewed this collection of information under the clearance requirements of 44 U.S.C. § 3507.
Item 1. Reports to Stockholders.
The Report to Shareholders is attached herewith.
Semiannual Report — June 30, 2020
(Y)our Portfolio Management Team
Mario J. Gabelli, CFA
Christopher J. Marangi
Co-Chief Investment Officer BA, Williams College
MBA, Columbia
To Our Stockholders,
For the six months ended June 30, 2020, the net asset value (NAV) total return of The Gabelli Multimedia Trust Inc. (the Fund) was (15.7)%, compared with a total return of (5.8)% for the Morgan Stanley Capital International (MSCI) World Index. The total return for the Fund's publicly traded shares was (12.3)%. The Fund's NAV per share was $6.14, while the price of the publicly traded shares closed at $6.50 on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). See page 2 for additional performance information.
Enclosed are the financial statements, including the schedule of investments, as of June 30, 2020.
Beginning on January 1, 2021, as permitted by regulations adopted by the Securities and Exchange Commission, paper copies of the Fund's annual and semiannual stockholder reports will no longer be sent by mail, unless you specifically request paper copies of the reports. Instead, the reports will be made available on the Fund's website (www.gabelli.com), and you will be notified by mail each time a report is posted and provided with a website link to access the report. If you already elected to receive stockholder reports electronically, you will not be affected by this change and you need not take any action. To elect to receive all future reports on paper free of charge, please contact your financial intermediary, or, if you invest directly with the Fund, you may call 800-422-3554 or send an email request to info@gabelli.com.
Comparative Results
Average Annual Returns through June 30, 2020 (a) (Unaudited) Since
Year to Date 1 Year 5 Year 10 Year 15 Year Inception
Gabelli Multimedia Trust Inc.
NAV Total Return (b)
(15.69 )% (11.19 )% 1.90 % 10.62 % 5.13 % 7.70 %
Investment Total Return (c)
(12.31 ) (7.83 ) 4.52 12.23 6.79 8.32
MSCI AC World Communication Services Index
0.54 9.26 4.17 7.88 6.59 N/ A
MSCI World Index
(5.77 ) 2.84 6.90 9.95 6.55 7.00 (d)
Returns represent past performance and do not guarantee future results. Investment returns and the principal value of an investment will fluctuate. The Fund's use of leverage may magnify the volatility of net asset value changes versus funds that do not employ leverage. When shares are sold, they may be worth more or less than their original cost. Current performance may be lower or higher than the performance data presented. Visit www.gabelli.com for performance information as of the most recent month end. Performance returns for periods of less than one year are not annualized. Investors should carefully consider the investment objectives, risks, charges, and expenses of the Fund before investing. The MSCI World Index is an unmanaged indicator of stock market performance. The MSCI AC World Communication Services Index is an unmanaged index that measures the performance of Communication Services from around the world. Dividends are considered reinvested. You cannot invest directly in an index.
Total returns and average annual returns reflect changes in the NAV per share, reinvestment of distributions at NAV on the ex-dividend date, and adjustments for rights offerings and are net of expenses. Since inception return is based on an initial NAV of $7.50.
Total returns and average annual returns reflect changes in closing market values on the NYSE, reinvestment of distributions, and adjustments for rights offerings. Since inception return is based on an initial offering price of $7.50.
From November 30, 1994, the date closest to the Fund's inception for which data are available.
Summary of Portfolio Holdings (Unaudited)
The following table presents portfolio holdings as a percent of total investments as of June 30, 2020:
U.S. Government Obligations
Computer Software and Services
Telecommunications: National
Hotels and Gaming
Telecommunications: Regional
Business Services: Advertising
Diversified Industrial
Telecommunications: Long Distance
0.0 %*
Amount represents less than 0.05%.
The Fund files a complete schedule of portfolio holdings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the SEC) for the first and third quarters of each fiscal year on Form N-PORT. Stockholders may obtain this information at www.gabelli.com or by calling the Fund at 800-GABELLI (800-422-3554). The Fund's Form N-PORT is available on the SEC's website at www.sec.gov and may also be reviewed and copied at the SEC's Public Reference Room in Washington, DC. Information on the operation of the Public Reference Room may be obtained by calling 800-SEC-0330.
The Fund files Form N-PX with its complete proxy voting record for the twelve months ended June 30, no later than August 31 of each year. A description of the Fund's proxy voting policies, procedures, and how the Fund voted proxies relating to portfolio securities is available without charge, upon request, by (i) calling 800-GABELLI (800-422-3554); (ii) writing to The Gabelli Funds at One Corporate Center, Rye, NY 10580-1422; or (iii) visiting the SEC's website at www.sec.gov.
The Fund's Chief Executive Officer has certified to the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) that, as of June 5, 2020, he was not aware of any violation by the Fund of applicable NYSE corporate governance listing standards. The Fund reports to the SEC on Form N-CSR which contains certifications by the Fund's principal executive officer and principal financial officer that relate to the Fund's disclosure in such reports and that are required by Rule 30a-2(a) under the 1940 Act.
Schedule of Investments — June 30, 2020 (Unaudited)
COMMON STOCKS — 86.4%
DISTRIBUTION COMPANIES — 54.1%
Broadcasting — 8.0%
10,000 Asahi Broadcasting Group Holdings Corp. $ 42,567 $ 71,313
6,400 Chubu-Nippon Broadcasting Co. Ltd. 46,376 31,533
16,000 Cogeco Inc. 317,869 954,862
30,000 Corus Entertainment Inc., OTC, Cl. B 105,934 63,000
170,000 Corus Entertainment Inc., Toronto, Cl. B 713,046 358,132
34,000 Discovery Inc., Cl. A† 289,684 717,400
178,000 Discovery Inc., Cl. C† 3,848,439 3,428,280
30,000 Fox Corp., Cl. A. 1,246,500 804,600
27,000 Fox Corp., Cl. B. 1,059,531 724,680
81,000 Grupo Radio Centro SAB de CV, Cl. A†. 39,884 17,268
30,000 iHeartMedia Inc., Cl. A† 427,026 250,500
16,000 Informa plc. 176,942 93,259
350,000 ITV plc 903,888 323,875
4,000 Lagardere SCA† 90,044 56,939
10,500 Liberty Broadband Corp., Cl. A† 662,168 1,282,995
31,000 Liberty Broadband Corp., Cl. C† 2,095,036 3,842,760
17,000 Liberty Media Corp.- Liberty SiriusXM, Cl. A† 396,897 586,840
92,361 Liberty Media Corp.- Liberty SiriusXM, Cl. C† 3,333,824 3,181,836
68,566 Media Prima Berhad† 34,965 2,400
55,000 MSG Networks Inc., Cl. A† 629,757 547,250
4,000 Nexstar Media Group Inc., Cl. A 341,960 334,760
33,000 Nippon Television Holdings Inc. 500,589 356,360
4,000 NRJ Group 17,822 24,717
3,000 RTL Group SA†. 107,299 96,059
25,000 Salem Media Group Inc. 22,276 28,250
27,000 Sinclair Broadcast Group Inc., Cl. A 957,805 498,420
75,000 TEGNA Inc. 1,254,216 835,500
45,000 Television Broadcasts Ltd. 166,753 52,255
22,000 Television Francaise 1† 219,175 118,987
36,000 Tokyo Broadcasting System Holdings Inc. 743,833 573,799
240,000 TV Azteca SAB de CV 58,305 3,289
Business Services — 1.9%
6,000 Carlisle Support Sevices Group Ltd.†(a) 200 595
4,000 Fluent Inc.† 32,492 7,120
6,000 Impellam Group plc† 8,600 17,025
14,500 S&P Global Inc. 2,808,849 4,777,460
Cable — 8.5%
15,000 Altice Europe NV† $ 82,571 $ 57,888
22,000 AMC Networks Inc., Cl. A† 1,428,242 514,580
300 Cable One Inc. 333,624 532,455
3,800 Charter Communications Inc., Cl. A†. 757,519 1,938,152
36,000 Cogeco Communications Inc. 815,159 2,593,665
143,000 Comcast Corp., Cl. A 5,397,629 5,574,140
32,931 Liberty Global plc, Cl. A† 458,982 719,872
130,177 Liberty Global plc, Cl. C† 4,221,114 2,800,107
19,400 MultiChoice Group† 133,926 118,809
104,000 Rogers Communications Inc., New York, Cl. B 4,618,840 4,179,760
88,000 Shaw Communications Inc., New York, Cl. B 272,829 1,439,680
4,000 Telenet Group Holding NV 234,227 164,659
195,000 WideOpenWest Inc.† 1,530,964 1,027,650
Computer Software and Services — 1.6%
6,000 CyrusOne Inc., REIT 323,811 436,500
5,000 Groupon Inc.† 462,614 90,600
40,000 SVMK Inc.† 699,308 941,600
1,000 Tencent Holdings Ltd. 44,193 64,331
9,000 Zoom Video Communications Inc., Cl. A†. 670,522 2,281,860
15,000 Zuora Inc., Cl. A† 240,754 191,250
Consumer Services — 2.4%
1,500 Expedia Group Inc. 146,003 123,300
14,500 IAC/InterActiveCorp.† 1,885,424 4,689,300
35,000 Liberty TripAdvisor Holdings Inc., Cl. A†. 395,439 74,550
137,000 Qurate Retail Inc., Cl. A† 1,699,532 1,301,500
Diversified Consumer Services — 0.0%
4,000 Facebank Group Inc.† 47,674 41,800
Diversified Industrial — 0.7%
16,000 Bouygues SA†. 449,280 546,648
3,000 Fortune Brands Home & Security Inc. 125,326 191,790
23,000 Jardine Strategic Holdings Ltd. 595,515 495,650
6,000 Malaysian Resources Corp. Berhad 4,297 658
50,000 Trine Acquisition Corp.† 500,000 560,000
Entertainment — 9.0%
85,000 Borussia Dortmund GmbH & Co. KGaA 675,844 551,495
25,000 Gogo Inc.† 119,686 79,000
290,000 Grupo Televisa SAB, ADR† 4,280,769 1,519,600
See accompanying notes to financial statements.
Schedule of Investments (Continued) — June 30, 2020 (Unaudited)
COMMON STOCKS (Continued)
DISTRIBUTION COMPANIES (Continued)
Entertainment (Continued)
18,000 Liberty Media Corp.- Liberty Braves, Cl. A† $ 397,667 $ 361,440
115,000 Liberty Media Corp.- Liberty Braves, Cl. C† 2,267,369 2,270,100
8,000 Liberty Media Corp.- Liberty Formula One, Cl. A† 210,094 233,440
33,000 Liberty Media Corp.- Liberty Formula One, Cl. C† 1,002,728 1,046,430
4,000 M6 Metropole Television SA† 35,208 45,120
22,000 Madison Square Garden Entertainment Corp.† 1,603,483 1,650,000
21,500 Madison Square Garden Sports Corp.† 3,393,288 3,158,135
28,000 Naspers Ltd., Cl. N 2,621,432 5,103,995
5,000 Netflix Inc.† 1,355,617 2,275,200
43,000 Reading International Inc., Cl. A† 672,127 182,750
8,000 Reading International Inc., Cl. B† 85,625 128,080
4,000 Roku Inc.† 56,000 466,120
40,000 Sirius XM Holdings Inc. 227,782 234,800
24,500 Take-Two Interactive Software Inc.† 2,357,012 3,419,465
550,000 Wow Unlimited Media Inc.†(b)(c) 535,492 119,512
Equipment — 0.8%
3,600 Amphenol Corp., Cl. A 7,014 344,916
44,000 Corning Inc. 1,208,193 1,139,600
6,500 QUALCOMM Inc. 191,784 592,865
Financial Services — 3.3%
15,000 Caribbean Investment Holdings Ltd 14,944 7,528
35,500 Kinnevik AB, Cl. A 673,200 929,579
28,000 Kinnevik AB, Cl. B 794,554 736,494
4,800 LendingTree Inc.† 1,062,203 1,389,744
31,000 PayPal Holdings Inc.† 2,435,971 5,401,130
14,000 Waterloo Investment Holdings Ltd.†(a) 2,009 2,940
Food and Beverage — 0.3%
2,400 Pernod Ricard SA 148,081 377,629
2,500 Remy Cointreau SA 302,970 340,419
Information Technology — 1.0%
26,500 Prosus NV† 2,223,449 2,463,385
Real Estate — 1.8%
12,500 American Tower Corp., REIT 1,705,635 3,231,750
3,000 Crown Castle International Corp., REIT $ 310,549 $ 502,050
5,500 Digital Realty Trust Inc., REIT 720,500 781,605
15,000 Midway Investments†(a) 96 186
Retail — 0.3%
200 Amazon.com Inc.† 35,729 551,764
2,000 Best Buy Co. Inc. 70,450 174,540
Satellite — 3.2%
107,000 DISH Network Corp., Cl. A† 4,859,954 3,692,570
70,000 EchoStar Corp., Cl. A† 1,899,244 1,957,200
5,000 Eutelsat Communications SA 78,158 46,119
30,000 Iridium Communications Inc.† 241,684 763,200
86,000 Loral Space & Communications Inc. 2,902,766 1,678,720
250,000 PT Indosat Tbk† 52,779 41,127
3,000 SKY Perfect JSAT Holdings Inc. 15,472 11,114
10,050,057 8,190,050
Telecommunications: Long Distance — 0.6%
38,000 AT&T Inc. 1,251,938 1,148,740
5,594 BCE Inc., Toronto 250,825 233,303
Telecommunications: National — 4.3%
5,000 China Telecom Corp. Ltd., ADR 126,250 140,350
5,000 China Unicom Hong Kong Ltd., ADR 38,450 27,250
50,000 Deutsche Telekom AG, ADR 646,760 838,500
14,000 Elisa Oyj 138,048 851,564
3,605 Hellenic Telecommunications Organization SA 41,551 48,643
6,000 Liberty Latin America Ltd., Cl. A† 95,749 58,320
85,000 Liberty Latin America Ltd., Cl. C† 1,529,023 802,400
1,000 Magyar Telekom Telecommunications plc, ADR 9,280 6,240
4,000 Maroc Telecom† 60,473 57,074
40,000 Megacable Holdings SAB de CV 148,072 117,366
20,000 Nippon Telegraph & Telephone Corp. 230,089 465,941
5,000 Oi SA, ADR† 1,613 1,123
4,000 Orange SA, ADR 65,705 47,600
22,000 PLDT Inc., ADR 370,294 537,020
6,000 PT Telekomunikasi Indonesia Persero Tbk, ADR 12,340 131,280
6,000 Rostelecom PJSC, ADR 41,408 43,770
22,000 Swisscom AG, ADR 579,192 1,155,660
6,000 Telecom Argentina SA, ADR 5,820 53,700
340,000 Telecom Italia SpA 897,754 133,581
17,500 Telefonica Brasil SA, ADR 283,641 155,050
Telecommunications: National (Continued)
105,710 Telefonica SA, ADR $ 1,139,289 $ 509,522
140,000 Telekom Austria AG† 962,459 967,329
55,000 Telesites SAB de CV† 41,755 34,817
15,172 Telia Co. AB 42,639 56,662
2,400 Telstra Corp. Ltd., ADR 30,324 25,930
100,000 VEON Ltd., ADR 183,016 180,000
63,500 Verizon Communications Inc. 2,591,305 3,500,755
Telecommunications: Regional — 2.3%
28,000 CenturyLink Inc. 421,685 280,840
35,000 GCI Liberty Inc., Cl. A† 1,917,485 2,489,200
85,500 Telephone and Data Systems Inc. 3,440,688 1,699,740
80,000 TELUS Corp., New York 517,468 1,341,600
Wireless Communications — 4.1%
78,000 Altice USA Inc., Cl. A† 1,726,265 1,758,120
55,000 America Movil SAB de CV, Cl. L, ADR 367,164 697,950
240,000 Jasmine International PCL(a) 5,040 27,799
24,000 Millicom International Cellular SA, SDR 1,497,524 627,932
75,000 NTT DOCOMO Inc. 1,162,358 2,001,852
19,000 Orascom Investment Holding, GDR† 29,430 1,805
60,000 ORBCOMM Inc.† 483,714 231,000
34,000 SK Telecom Co. Ltd., ADR 761,600 656,880
4,203 TIM Participacoes SA, ADR 108,533 54,387
29,000 T-Mobile US Inc.† 2,235,431 3,020,350
10,000 Turkcell Iletisim Hizmetleri A/S, ADR 123,780 57,600
30,000 United States Cellular Corp.† 1,107,291 926,100
25,000 Vodafone Group plc, ADR 971,225 398,500
TOTAL DISTRIBUTION COMPANIES 124,822,223 137,361,073
COPYRIGHT/CREATIVITY COMPANIES — 32.3%
6,500 Scientific Games Corp.† 72,843 100,490
Business Services: Advertising — 1.2%
1,000 Boston Omaha Corp., Cl. A† 16,970 16,000
200,000 Clear Channel Outdoor Holdings Inc.† 863,783 208,000
13,000 JCDecaux SA† 330,623 241,720
18,400 Lamar Advertising Co., Cl. A, REIT 1,131,304 1,228,384
15,000 Ocean Outdoor Ltd.† 144,925 96,000
1,500 Publicis Groupe SA 10,478 48,552
4,000 Ströeer SE & Co. KGaA $ 89,263 $ 269,189
56,000 The Interpublic Group of Companies Inc. 1,295,150 960,960
10,820 The Rubicon Project Inc.† 22,112 72,169
Computer Hardware — 2.9%
20,000 Apple Inc. 3,585,655 7,296,000
Computer Software and Services — 10.7%
48,000 Activision Blizzard Inc. 2,582,754 3,643,200
4,000 Actua Corp.†(a) 0 200
4,300 Alphabet Inc., Cl. A† 4,268,254 6,097,615
1,300 Alphabet Inc., Cl. C† 973,732 1,837,693
50,000 eBay Inc. 1,241,780 2,622,500
4,000 Electronic Arts Inc.† 367,870 528,200
39,000 Facebook Inc., Cl. A† 5,311,420 8,855,730
90,000 Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co. 1,262,543 875,700
10,000 Microsoft Corp. 1,316,071 2,035,100
7,000 QTS Realty Trust Inc., Cl. A, REIT 232,035 448,630
300 Red Violet Inc.† 1,920 5,292
6,000 SoftBank Group Corp. 175,747 302,848
Consumer Products — 1.2%
2,000 Nintendo Co. Ltd. 241,733 889,280
38,000 Nintendo Co. Ltd., ADR 831,904 2,124,200
2,200 Marriott Vacations Worldwide Corp. 260,590 180,862
Electronics — 5.6%
2,000 IMAX Corp.† 10,333 22,420
5,000 Intel Corp. 105,992 299,150
3,440 Koninklijke Philips NV† 36,704 161,130
29,036 Micro Focus International plc, ADR 687,234 159,117
50,000 Resideo Technologies Inc.† 652,883 586,000
188,000 Sony Corp., ADR 6,847,923 12,996,440
8,341,069 14,224,257
79,200 GMM Grammy Public Co. Ltd. 52,488 25,112
4,000 Lions Gate Entertainment Corp., Cl. B† 67,258 27,320
18,000 Live Nation Entertainment Inc.† 707,208 797,940
11,000 Manchester United plc, Cl. A 200,475 174,130
17,000 STV Group plc 13,537 49,186
10,000 Tencent Music Entertainment Group, ADR† 140,864 134,600
38,000 The Walt Disney Co. 4,408,256 4,237,380
36,000 Universal Entertainment Corp.† 935,873 697,495
85,500 ViacomCBS Inc., Cl. A 2,631,152 2,188,800
COPYRIGHT/CREATIVITY COMPANIES (Continued)
75,000 ViacomCBS Inc., Cl. B $ 3,102,945 $ 1,749,000
85,000 Vivendi SA 2,045,981 2,181,152
4,000 Warner Music Group Corp., Cl. A† 115,520 118,000
8,000 World Wrestling Entertainment Inc., Cl. A 412,048 347,600
Hotels and Gaming — 3.0%
65,000 Boyd Gaming Corp 1,395,042 1,358,500
1,800 Churchill Downs Inc. 52,401 239,670
15,000 Full House Resorts Inc.† 49,514 19,950
14,000 Golden Entertainment Inc.† 150,730 124,880
4,200 Greek Organization of Football Prognostics SA 45,444 39,849
18,427 GVC Holdings plc 238,757 169,100
85,000 International Game Technology plc 1,374,549 756,500
8,500 Las Vegas Sands Corp. 463,913 387,090
180,250 Mandarin Oriental International Ltd 294,057 272,178
29,000 Melco Resorts & Entertainment Ltd., ADR 193,802 450,080
22,000 MGM China Holdings Ltd. 43,826 28,385
38,000 MGM Resorts International 1,084,858 638,400
4,000 Penn National Gaming Inc.† 26,016 122,160
49,000 Ryman Hospitality Properties Inc., REIT 1,823,942 1,695,400
16,200 Wynn Resorts Ltd. 1,707,512 1,206,738
Publishing — 1.0%
20,000 Arnoldo Mondadori Editore SpA† 63,826 21,571
974,000 Bangkok Post plc† 47,100 41,283
850 Graham Holdings Co., Cl. B 449,232 291,270
600 John Wiley & Sons Inc., Cl. B 4,269 23,754
26,500 Meredith Corp. 871,497 385,575
5,263 Nation International Edutainment PCL† 265 307
1,000,000 Nation Multimedia Group Public Co. Ltd.† 53,346 5,500
28,000 News Corp., Cl. A 130,834 332,080
38,500 News Corp., Cl. B 633,354 460,075
6,779 Novus Holdings Ltd. 3,053 441
235,000 Singapore Press Holdings Ltd. 689,576 214,158
600 Spir Communication SA†(a) 3,279 3,370
79,000 The E.W. Scripps Co., Cl. A 1,405,558 691,250
1,800 Wolters Kluwer NV 40,781 140,590
5,000 Equinix Inc., REIT 2,103,490 3,511,500
37,500 Outfront Media Inc., REIT $ 712,690 $ 531,375
TOTAL COPYRIGHT/CREATIVITY COMPANIES
TOTAL COMMON STOCKS 190,784,869 219,460,538
CLOSED-END FUNDS — 0.1%
8,000 Altaba Inc., Escrow† 52,053 172,000
PREFERRED STOCKS — 0.0%
DISTRIBUTION COMPANIES — 0.0%
5,500 GCI Liberty Inc., Ser. A, 7.000% 112,525 144,155
RIGHTS — 0.0%
14,000 Media General Inc., CVR†(a) 0 0
29,000 T-Mobile US Inc., expire 07/27/20† 0 4,872
TOTAL RIGHTS 0 4,872
WARRANTS — 0.0%
600 Malaysian Resources Corp. Berhad, expire 10/29/27† 0 15
Telecommunications — 0.0%
117,647 Jasmine International PCL, expire 07/05/20† 0 1,751
TOTAL WARRANTS 0 1,766
CONVERTIBLE CORPORATE BONDS — 0.0%
$100,000 Gogo Inc., 6.000%, 05/15/22 100,000 70,336
U.S. GOVERNMENT OBLIGATIONS — 13.5%
34,215,000 U.S. Treasury Bills,
0.030% to 0.300%††,
08/27/20 to 11/05/20 34,196,526 34,205,488
TOTAL INVESTMENTS — 100.0%
$ 225,245,973 254,059,155
Other Assets and Liabilities (Net)
$ (48,283 )
(3,986,911 preferred shares outstanding)
(99,922,525 )
NET ASSETS — COMMON STOCK
(25,104,488 common shares outstanding)
NET ASSET VALUE PER COMMON SHARE
($154,088,347 ÷ 25,104,488 shares outstanding)
Security is valued using significant unobservable inputs and is classified as Level 3 in the fair value hierarchy.
At June 30, 2020, the Fund held an investment in a restricted and illiquid security amounting to $119,512 or 0.05% of total investments, which was valued under methods approved by the Board of Directors as follows:
Wow Unlimited Media
06/05/18-
$535,492 $0.2173
Security exempt from registration under Rule 144A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended. This security may be resold in transactions exempt from registration, normally to qualified institutional buyers.
Non-income producing security.
††
Represents annualized yields at dates of purchase.
ADR American Depositary Receipt
CVR Contingent Value Right
GDR Global Depositary Receipt
REIT Real Estate Investment Trust
SDR Swedish Depositary Receipt
Geographic Diversification
79.5 % $ 202,024,724
8.1 20,522,176
2.1 5,223,246
0.0 * 58,879
Total Investments
100.0 % $ 254,059,155
Statement of Assets and Liabilities
June 30, 2020 (Unaudited)
Investments, at value (cost $225,245,973)
Foreign currency, at value (cost $6,329)
Receivable for investments sold
Deferred offering expense
Dividends and interest receivable
Prepaid expenses
Distributions payable
Payable for investments purchased
Payable for investment advisory fees
Payable for accounting fees
Payable for payroll expenses
Payable for stockholder communications expenses
Payable for legal and audit fees
Payable for preferred offering expenses
Preferred Stock, $0.001 par value:
Series C Cumulative Preferred Stock (Auction Rate, $25,000 liquidation value, 1,000 shares authorized with 10 shares issued and outstanding)
Series E Cumulative Preferred Stock (5.125%, $25 liquidation value, 2,000,000 shares authorized with 1,996,700 shares issued and outstanding)
Series G Cumulative Preferred Stock (5.125%, $25 liquidation value, 2,000,000 shares authorized with 1,990,201 shares issued and outstanding)
Total Preferred Stock
Net Assets Attributable to Common Stockholders
Net Assets Attributable to Common Stockholders Consist of:
Paid-in capital
Total distributable earnings (a)
Net Assets
Net Asset Value per Common Share:
($154,088,347 ÷ 25,104,488 shares outstanding at $0.001 par value; 196,750,000 shares authorized)
Includes net unrealized depreciation of $4,601 in deferred Thailand capital gains tax during the six months ended June 30, 2020.
Statement of Operations
For the Six Months Ended June 30, 2020 (Unaudited)
Investment Income:
Dividends (net of foreign withholding taxes of $102,449)
Total Investment Income
Investment advisory fees
Stockholder communications expenses
Stockholder services fees
Directors' fees
Audit and legal fees
Custodian fees
Accounting fees
Payroll expenses
Miscellaneous expenses
Less:
Advisory fee reduction (See Note 3)
(1,243 )
Expenses paid indirectly by broker (See Note 3)
Total Reductions and Credits
Net Expenses
Net Investment Loss
(93,028 )
Net Realized and Unrealized Gain/(Loss) on Investments and Foreign Currency:
Net realized loss on investments
(1,555,314 )
Net realized gain on foreign currency transactions
Net realized loss on investments and foreign currency transactions.
Net change in unrealized appreciation/depreciation:
on investments(a)
on foreign currency translations
Net change in unrealized appreciation/depreciation on investments and foreign currency translations
Net Realized and Unrealized Gain/(Loss) on Investments and Foreign Currency
Net Decrease in Net Assets Resulting from Operations
Total Distributions to Preferred Stockholders
Net Decrease in Net Assets Attributable to Common Stockholders Resulting from Operations
$ (33,411,953 )
Includes net change of $(1,368) in deferred Thailand capital gains tax on unrealized appreciation during the six months ended June 30, 2020.
Statement of Changes in Net Assets Attributable to Common Stockholders
(Unaudited) Year Ended
Net investment income/(loss)
$ (93,028 ) $ 3,185,626
Net realized gain/(loss) on investments and foreign currency transactions
(1,553,350 ) 19,943,525
(29,205,807 ) 26,104,341
Net Increase/(Decrease) in Net Assets Resulting from Operations
Distributions to Preferred Shareholders:
Accumulated earnings
(950 )* (3,820,425 )
Return of capital
(2,558,818 )* —
Net Increase/(Decrease) in Net Assets Attributable to Common Stockholders Resulting from Operations
Distributions to Common Stockholders:
— (20,626,172 )
(10,981,915 )* (1,128,870 )
Total Distributions to Common Stockholders
Fund Share Transactions:
Net increase in net assets from common shares issued upon reinvestment of distributions
Net increase in net assets from redemption of preferred shares
Offering costs for preferred shares charged to paid-in capital
— (1,852,000 )
Net Increase in Net Assets from Fund Share Transactions
Net Increase/(Decrease) in Net Assets Attributable to Common Stockholders
Net Assets Attributable to Common Stockholders:
Beginning of year
$ 154,088,347 $ 197,326,554
Based on year to date book income. Amounts are subject to change and recharacterization at year end.
Selected data for a common share outstanding throughout each period:
For the Year Ended December 31,
Operating Performance:
Net asset value, beginning of year
$ 7.93 $ 7.04 $ 9.34 $ 8.13 $ 8.36 $ 9.81
(0.00 )(a) 0.13 (b) 0.03 0.01 0.05 0.03
Net realized and unrealized gain/(loss) on investments and foreign currency transactions
(1.25 ) 1.86 (1.28 ) 2.11 0.60 (0.49 )
Total from investment operations
Distributions to Preferred Stockholders: (c)
(0.00 )*(a) (0.02 ) (0.00 )(a) (0.00 )(a) (0.00 )(a) (0.00 )(a)
Net realized gain
(0.00 )*(a) (0.13 ) (0.15 ) (0.08 ) (0.05 ) (0.05 )
(0.10 )* — — — (0.00 )(a) —
(0.10 ) (0.15 ) (0.15 ) (0.08 ) (0.05 ) (0.05 )
— (0.12 ) (0.01 ) (0.03 ) (0.06 ) (0.03 )
(0.44 )* (0.05 ) — (0.12 ) (0.03 ) (0.02 )
Increase in net asset value from repurchase of common shares
— — — 0.00 (a) — —
Increase in net asset value from common shares issued upon reinvestment of distributions
0.00 (a) 0.00 (a) — — — —
Increase in net asset value from redemption of preferred shares
0.00 (a) — — 0.12 — —
Offering costs and adjustment to offering costs for preferred shares charged to paid-in capital
— (0.07 ) (0.00 )(a) (0.07 ) — (0.00 )(a)
Total Fund share transactions
0.00 (a) (0.07 ) (0.00 )(a) 0.05 — (0.00 )(a)
Net Asset Value Attributable to Common Stockholders, End of Period
NAV total return †
(15.69 )% 25.86 % (16.54 )% 26.50 % 7.59 % (5.57 )%
Market value, end of period
Investment total return ††
(12.31 )% 26.67 % (14.93 )% 40.21 % 7.97 % (16.33 )%
Ratios to Average Net Assets and Supplemental Data:
Net assets including liquidation value of preferred shares, end of period (in 000's)
$ 254,011 $ 297,577 $ 243,309 $ 297,503 $ 232,399 $ 238,049
Net assets attributable to common shares, end of period (in 000's)
Ratio of net investment income/(loss) to average net assets attributable to common shares before preferred share distributions
(0.12 %)(d) 1.62 %(b) 0.39 % 0.13 % 0.70 % 0.33 %
Ratio of operating expenses to average net assets attributable to common shares before fees waived/fee reduction(e)(f)
1.99 %(d) 1.69 %(g) 1.62 % 1.45 % 1.49 %(h) 1.45 %
Ratios to Average Net Assets and Supplemental Data (Continued):
Ratio of operating expenses to average net assets attributable to common shares net of advisory feereduction, if any(e)(i)
Portfolio turnover rate
5.9 % 17.5 % 20.5 % 16.8 % 10.3 % 14.0 %
Financial Highlights (Continued)
June 30, 2020 For the Year Ended December 31,
Cumulative Preferred Stock:
6.000% Series B Preferred(j)
Liquidation value, end of period (in 000's)
— — $ 19,775 $ 19,775 $ 19,775 $ 19,775
Total shares outstanding (in 000's)
— — 791 791 791 791
Liquidation preference per share
— — $ 25.00 $ 25.00 $ 25.00 $ 25.00
Average market value (k)
Asset coverage per share(l)
— — $ 86.86 $ 106.21 $ 167.07 $ 171.13
Series C Auction Rate Preferred
Liquidation value, end of Total shares outstanding (in 000's) (in 000's)
$ 250 $ 250 $ 250 $ 250 $ 15,000 $ 15,000
0 (m) 0 (m) 0 (m) 0 (m) 1 1
$25,000 $ 25,000 $ 25,000 $ 25,000 $ 25,000 $ 25,000
Liquidation value (n)
$49,988 $ 74,209 $ 86,865 $ 106,212 $ 167,071 $ 171,134
5.125% Series E Preferred
$49,918 $ 50,000 $ 50,000 $ 50,000 — —
1,997 2,000 2,000 2,000 — —
$ 25.00 $ 25.00 $ 25.00 $ 25.00 — —
Average market value(k)
$ 49.99 $ 74.21 $ 86.86 $ 106.21 — —
5.125% Series G Preferred
$49,755 $ 50,000 — — — —
1,990 2,000 — — — —
$ 25.00 $ 25.00 — — — —
Asset Coverage (o)
200 % 297 % 347 % 425 % 668 % 685 %
Based on net asset value per share, adjusted for reinvestment of distributions at the net asset value per share on the ex-dividend dates. Total return for a period of less than one year is not annualized.
Based on market value per share, adjusted for reinvestment of distributions at prices determined under the Fund's dividend reinvestment plan and adjustments for the rights offering. Total return for a period of less than one year is not annualized.
Amount represents less than $0.005 per share.
Includes income resulting from special dividends. Without these dividends, the per share income amount would have been 0.02 and the net investment income ratio would have been 0.20%.
Calculated based on average common shares outstanding on the record dates throughout the years.
Annualized.
The Fund received credits from a designated broker who agreed to pay certain Fund operating expenses. For all periods presented there was no impact on the expense ratios.
Ratio of operating expenses to average net assets including liquidation value of preferred shares before fee waived/fee reduction for the six months ended June 30, 2020 and the years ended December 31, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, and 2015 would have been 1.23%, 1.25%, 1.22%, 1.23%, 1.27%, and 1.26%, respectively.
In 2019, due to failed auctions relating to previous fiscal years, the Fund reversed accumulated auction agent fees. For the year ended December 31, 2019, there was no impact to the ratio of operating expenses to average net assets attributable to common shares and the ratio of operating expenses to average net assets including the liquidation value of preferred shares.
During the year ended December 31, 2016, the Fund received a one time reimbursement of custody expenses paid in prior years. Had such reimbursement been included in this period, the annualized expense ratios would have been 1.32% attributable to common shares before fees waived, 1.32% attributable to common shares net of advisory fee reduction, 1.13% including liquidation value of preferred shares before fees waived, and 1.13% including liquidation value of preferred shares net of advisory fee reduction.
Ratio of operating expenses to average net assets including liquidation value of preferred shares net of advisory fee reduction for the six months ended June 30, 2020 and the years ended December 31, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, and 2015 would have been 1.22%, 1.25%, 1.15%, 1.23%, 1.27%, and 1.13%, respectively.
The Fund redeemed and retired all its outstanding Series B Preferred Shares on December 26, 2019.
Based on weekly prices.
Asset coverage per share is calculated by combining all series of preferred shares.
Actual number of shares outstanding is 10.
Since February 2008, the weekly auctions have failed. Holders that have submitted orders have not been able to sell any or all of their shares in the auctions.
Asset coverage is calculated by combining all series of preferred shares.
Notes to Financial Statements (Unaudited)
1. Organization. The Gabelli Multimedia Trust Inc. (the Fund) is a non-diversified closed-end management investment company organized as a Maryland corporation on March 31, 1994 and registered under the Investment Company Act of 1940, as amended (the 1940 Act). The Fund commenced investment operations on November 15, 1994.
The Fund's investment objective is long term growth of capital. The Fund will invest at least 80% of its assets, under normal market conditions, in common stock and other securities, including convertible securities, preferred stock, options, and warrants of companies in the telecommunications, media, publishing, and entertainment industries (the 80% Policy). The 80% Policy may be changed without stockholder approval. The Fund will provide stockholders with notice at least sixty days prior to the implementation of any change in the 80% Policy.
2. Significant Accounting Policies. As an investment company, the Fund follows the investment company accounting and reporting guidance, which is part of U.S. generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) that may require the use of management estimates and assumptions in the preparation of its financial statements. Actual results could differ from those estimates. The following is a summary of significant accounting policies followed by the Fund in the preparation of its financial statements.
Security Valuation. Portfolio securities listed or traded on a nationally recognized securities exchange or traded in the U.S. over-the-counter market for which market quotations are readily available are valued at the last quoted sale price or a market's official closing price as of the close of business on the day the securities are being valued. If there were no sales that day, the security is valued at the average of the closing bid and asked prices or, if there were no asked prices quoted on that day, then the security is valued at the closing bid price on that day. If no bid or asked prices are quoted on such day, the security is valued at the most recently available price or, if the Board of Directors (the Board) so determines, by such other method as the Board shall determine in good faith to reflect its fair market value. Portfolio securities traded on more than one national securities exchange or market are valued according to the broadest and most representative market, as determined by Gabelli Funds, LLC (the Adviser).
Portfolio securities primarily traded on a foreign market are generally valued at the preceding closing values of such securities on the relevant market, but may be fair valued pursuant to procedures established by the Board if market conditions change significantly after the close of the foreign market, but prior to the close of business on the day the securities are being valued. Debt obligations for which market quotations are readily available are valued at the average of the latest bid and asked prices. If there were no asked prices quoted on such day, the securities are valued using the closing bid price, unless the Board determines such amount does not reflect the securities' fair value, in which case these securities will be fair valued as determined by the Board. Certain securities are valued principally using dealer quotations. Futures contracts are valued at the closing settlement price of the exchange or board of trade on which the applicable contract is traded. OTC futures and options on futures for which market quotations are readily available will be valued by quotations received from a pricing service or, if no quotations are available from a pricing service, by quotations obtained from one or more dealers in the instrument in question by the Adviser.
Securities and assets for which market quotations are not readily available are fair valued as determined by the Board. Fair valuation methodologies and procedures may include, but are not limited to: analysis and review of available financial and non-financial information about the company; comparisons with the valuation and changes in valuation of similar securities, including a comparison of foreign securities with the equivalent U.S.
Notes to Financial Statements (Unaudited) (Continued)
dollar value American Depositary Receipt securities at the close of the U.S. exchange; and evaluation of any other information that could be indicative of the value of the security.
The inputs and valuation techniques used to measure fair value of the Fund's investments are summarized into three levels as described in the hierarchy below:
Level 1 – quoted prices in active markets for identical securities;
Level 2 – other significant observable inputs (including quoted prices for similar securities, interest rates, prepayment speeds, credit risk, etc.); and
Level 3 – significant unobservable inputs (including the Board's determinations as to the fair value of investments).
A financial instrument's level within the fair value hierarchy is based on the lowest level of any input both individually and in the aggregate that is significant to the fair value measurement. The inputs or methodology used for valuing securities are not necessarily an indication of the risk associated with investing in those securities. The summary of the Fund's investments in securities by inputs used to value the Fund's investments as of June 30, 2020 is as follows:
Valuation Inputs
Quoted Prices Level 2 Other Significant
Observable Inputs Level 3 Significant
Unobservable Inputs(a) Total Market Value
at 6/30/20
INVESTMENTS IN SECURITIES:
ASSETS (Market Value):
Common Stocks:
Copyright/Creativity Companies
$ 27,252,508 — $ 200 $ 27,252,708
2,537,317 $ 70,537 3,370 2,611,224
Other Industries (b)
52,235,533 — — 52,235,533
Distribution Companies
20,244,850 17,268 — 20,262,118
4,801,605 — 595 4,802,200
22,725,170 119,512 — 22,844,682
8,464,475 — 2,940 8,467,415
10,432,476 — 27,799 10,460,275
Total Common Stocks
219,218,131 207,317 35,090 219,460,538
— 172,000 — 172,000
Preferred Stocks (b)
144,155 — — 144,155
Rights (b)
4,872 — 0 4,872
Warrants (b)
15 1,751 — 1,766
Convertible Corporate Bonds (b)
— 70,336 — 70,336
— 34,205,488 — 34,205,488
TOTAL INVESTMENTS IN SECURITIES – ASSETS
$ 219,367,173 $ 34,656,892 $ 35,090 $ 254,059,155
Level 3 securities are valued by the last available closing Price/Spin-off and Merger/Acquisition Price analysis. The inputs for these securities are not readily available and are derived based on the judgment of the Adviser according to procedures approved by the Board of Directors.
Please refer to the Schedule of Investments for the industry classifications of these portfolio holdings.
During the six months ended June 30, 2020, the Fund did not have transfers into or out of Level 3.
Additional Information to Evaluate Qualitative Information.
General. The Fund uses recognized industry pricing services – approved by the Board and unaffiliated with the Adviser – to value most of its securities, and uses broker quotes provided by market makers of securities not valued by these and other recognized pricing sources. Several different pricing feeds are received to value domestic equity securities, international equity securities, preferred equity securities, and fixed income securities. The data within these feeds are ultimately sourced from major stock exchanges and trading systems where these securities trade. The prices supplied by external sources are checked by obtaining quotations or actual transaction prices from market participants. If a price obtained from the pricing source is deemed unreliable, prices will be sought from another pricing service or from a broker/dealer that trades that security or similar securities.
Fair Valuation. Fair valued securities may be common or preferred equities, warrants, options, rights, or fixed income obligations. Where appropriate, Level 3 securities are those for which market quotations are not available, such as securities not traded for several days, or for which current bids are not available, or which are restricted as to transfer. Among the factors to be considered to fair value a security are recent prices of comparable securities that are publicly traded, reliable prices of securities not publicly traded, the use of valuation models, current analyst reports, valuing the income or cash flow of the issuer, or cost if the preceding factors do not apply. A significant change in the unobservable inputs could result in a lower or higher value in Level 3 securities. The circumstances of Level 3 securities are frequently monitored to determine if fair valuation measures continue to apply.
The Adviser reports quarterly to the Board the results of the application of fair valuation policies and procedures. These may include backtesting the prices realized in subsequent trades of these fair valued securities to fair values previously recognized.
Investments in Other Investment Companies. The Fund may invest, from time to time, in shares of other investment companies (or entities that would be considered investment companies but are excluded from the definition pursuant to certain exceptions under the 1940 Act) (the Acquired Funds) in accordance with the 1940 Act and related rules. Stockholders in the Fund would bear the pro rata portion of the periodic expenses of the Acquired Funds in addition to the Fund's expenses. During the six months ended June 30, 2020, the Fund's pro rata portion of the periodic expenses charged by the Acquired Funds was approximately 1 basis point.
Foreign Currency Translations. The books and records of the Fund are maintained in U.S. dollars. Foreign currencies, investments, and other assets and liabilities are translated into U.S. dollars at current exchange rates. Purchases and sales of investment securities, income, and expenses are translated at the exchange rate prevailing on the respective dates of such transactions. Unrealized gains and losses that result from changes in foreign exchange rates and/or changes in market prices of securities have been included in unrealized appreciation/depreciation on investments and foreign currency translations. Net realized foreign currency gains and losses resulting from changes in exchange rates include foreign currency gains and losses between trade date and settlement date on investment securities transactions, foreign currency transactions, and the difference between the amounts of interest and dividends recorded on the books of the Fund and the amounts actually received. The portion of foreign currency gains and losses related to fluctuation in exchange rates between the initial purchase trade date and subsequent sale trade date is included in realized gain/(loss) on investments.
Foreign Securities. The Fund may directly purchase securities of foreign issuers. Investing in securities of foreign issuers involves special risks not typically associated with investing in securities of U.S. issuers. The risks include possible revaluation of currencies, the inability to repatriate funds, less complete financial information about companies, and possible future adverse political and economic developments. Moreover, securities of many foreign issuers and their markets may be less liquid and their prices more volatile than securities of comparable U.S. issuers.
Foreign Taxes. The Fund may be subject to foreign taxes on income, gains on investments, or currency repatriation, a portion of which may be recoverable. The Fund will accrue such taxes and recoveries as applicable, based upon its current interpretation of tax rules and regulations that exist in the markets in which it invests.
Restricted Securities. The Fund may invest up to 15% of its net assets in securities for which the markets are restricted. Restricted securities include securities whose disposition is subject to substantial legal or contractual restrictions. The sale of restricted securities often requires more time and results in higher brokerage charges or dealer discounts and other selling expenses than the sale of securities eligible for trading on national securities exchanges or in the over-the-counter markets. Restricted securities may sell at a price lower than similar securities that are not subject to restrictions on resale. Securities freely saleable among qualified institutional investors under special rules adopted by the SEC may be treated as liquid if they satisfy liquidity standards established by the Board. The continued liquidity of such securities is not as well assured as that of publicly traded securities, and, accordingly, the Board will monitor their liquidity. For restricted securities the Fund held as of June 30, 2020, refer to the Schedule of Investments.
Securities Transactions and Investment Income. Securities transactions are accounted for on the trade date with realized gain/(loss) on investments determined by using the identified cost method. Interest income (including amortization of premium and accretion of discount) is recorded on an accrual basis. Premiums and discounts on debt securities are amortized using the effective yield to maturity method. Dividend income is recorded on the ex-dividend date, except for certain dividends from foreign securities that are recorded as soon after the ex-dividend date as the Fund becomes aware of such dividends.
Distributions to Stockholders. Distributions to common stockholders are recorded on the ex-dividend date. The characterization of distributions to stockholders is based on income and capital gains as determined in accordance with federal income tax regulations, which may differ from income and capital gains as determined under GAAP. These differences are primarily due to differing treatments of income and gains on various investment securities and foreign currency transactions held by the Fund, timing differences, and differing characterizations of distributions made by the Fund. Distributions from net investment income for federal income tax purposes include net realized gains on foreign currency transactions. These book/tax differences are either temporary or permanent in nature. To the extent these differences are permanent, adjustments are made to the appropriate capital accounts in the period when the differences arise. These reclassifications have no impact on the NAV of the Fund.
Distributions to stockholders of the Fund's Series C Cumulative Preferred Stock (Series C Preferred), 5.125% Series E Cumulative Preferred Stock (Series E Preferred) and 5.125% Series G Preferred Stock (Series G Preferred), are accrued on a daily basis and are determined as described in Note 5.
Under the Fund's current distribution policy related to common shares, the Fund declares and pays quarterly distributions from net investment income, capital gains, and paid-in capital. The actual source of the distribution is determined after the end of the calendar year. Pursuant to this policy, distributions during the year may be made in excess of required distributions. To the extent such distributions are made from current earnings and profits, they are considered ordinary income or long term capital gains. Distributions sourced from paid-in capital should not be considered the current yield or the total return from an investment in the Fund.
The tax character of distributions paid during the year ended December 31, 2019 was follows:
Common Preferred
Distributions paid from:
Ordinary income (inclusive of short term capital gains)
$ 3,952,388 $ 732,070
Long term capital gains
1,128,870 —
Total distributions paid
$ 21,755,042 $ 3,820,425
Provision for Income Taxes. The Fund intends to continue to qualify as a regulated investment company under Subchapter M of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986, as amended (the Code). It is the policy of the Fund to comply with the requirements of the Code applicable to regulated investment companies and to distribute substantially all of its net investment company taxable income and net capital gains. Therefore, no provision for federal income taxes is required.
The following summarizes the tax cost of investments and the related net unrealized appreciation at June 30, 2020:
Cost Gross
Unrealized
Appreciation Gross
Depreciation Net Unrealized
$ 226,602,913 $59,778,217 $ (32,321,975 ) $27,456,242
The Fund is required to evaluate tax positions taken or expected to be taken in the course of preparing the Fund's tax returns to determine whether the tax positions are "more-likely-than-not" of being sustained by the applicable tax authority. Income tax and related interest and penalties would be recognized by the Fund as tax expense in the Statement of Operations if the tax positions were deemed not to meet the more-likely-than-not threshold. Except as disclosed above, for the six months ended June 30, 2020, the Fund did not incur any income tax, interest, or penalties. As of June 30, 2020, the Adviser has reviewed all open tax years and concluded that there was no impact to the Fund's net assets or results of operations. The Fund's federal and state tax returns for the prior three fiscal years remain open, subject to examination. On an ongoing basis, the Adviser will monitor the Fund's tax positions to determine if adjustments to this conclusion are necessary
3. Investment Advisory Agreement and Other Transactions. The Fund has entered into an investment advisory agreement (the Advisory Agreement) with the Adviser which provides that the Fund will pay the Adviser a fee, computed weekly and paid monthly, equal on an annual basis to 1.00% of the value of the Fund's average weekly net assets including the liquidation value of preferred stock. In accordance with the Advisory Agreement, the Adviser provides a continuous investment program for the Fund's portfolio and oversees the administration of all aspects of the Fund's business and affairs.
The Adviser has agreed to reduce the management fee on the incremental assets attributable to the Series C Preferred Stock if the total return of the NAV of the common shares of the Fund, including distributions and advisory fee subject to reduction, does not exceed the stated dividend rate on each particular series of the Preferred Stock for the year. For the six months ended June 30, 2020, the Fund's total return on the NAV of the common shares did not exceed the stated dividend rate of Series C Preferred Stock. Thus, advisory fees with respect to the liquidation value of the Preferred Stock were reduced by $1,243.
During the six months ended June 30, 2020, the Fund paid $7,774 in brokerage commissions on security trades to G.research, LLC, an affiliate of the Adviser.
During the six months ended June 30, 2020, the Fund received credits from a designated broker who agreed to pay certain Fund operating expenses. The amount of such expenses paid through this directed brokerage arrangement during this period was $1,497.
The cost of calculating the Fund's NAV per share is a Fund expense pursuant to the Advisory Agreement. Under the sub-administration agreement with Bank of New York Mellon, the fees paid include the cost of calculating the Fund's NAV. The Fund reimburses the Adviser for this service. During the six months ended June 30, 2020, the Fund accrued $22,500 in accounting fees in the Statement of Operations.
As per the approval of the Board, the Fund compensates officers of the Fund, who are employed by the Fund and are not employed by the Adviser (although officers may receive incentive based variable compensation from affiliates of the Adviser). During the six months ended June 30, 2020, the Fund accrued $6,684 in payroll expenses in the Statement of Operations.
The Fund pays each Director who is not considered an affiliated person an annual retainer of $6,000 plus $500 for each Board meeting attended and each Director is reimbursed by the Fund for any out of pocket expenses incurred in attending meetings. All Board committee members receive $1,000 per meeting attended. The Audit Committee Chairman receives an annual fee of $3,000, the Nominating Committee Chairman and the Lead Director each receives an annual fee of $2,000. A Director may receive a single meeting fee, allocated among the participating funds, for participation in certain meetings held on behalf of multiple funds. Directors who are directors or employees of the Adviser or an affiliated company receive no compensation or expense reimbursement from the Fund.
The Fund engaged in a sale transaction with a fund that has a common investment adviser. This sale transaction complied with Rule 17a-7 under the Act and amounted to $2,531,500.
4. Portfolio Securities. Purchases and sales of securities during the six months ended June 30, 2020, other than short term securities and U.S. Government obligations, aggregated to $13,495,149 and $23,635,254, respectively.
5. Capital. The Fund's Articles of Incorporation permit the Fund to issue 196,750,000 shares of common stock (par value $0.001). The Board has authorized the repurchase of up to 1,950,000 common shares on the open market when the shares are trading at a discount of 5% or more (or such other percentage as the Board may determine from time to time) from the NAV of the shares. During the six months ended June 30, 2020 and the year ended December 31, 2019, the Fund did not repurchase any of its common shares.
Transactions in common stock were as follows:
Shares Amount Shares Amount
205,973 $ 1,126,513 280,650 $ 2,236,670
The Fund has an effective shelf registration authorizing the offering of an additional $400 million of common or preferred shares. As of June 30, 2020, the Fund has approximately $300 million available for issuance under the current shelf registration.
The Fund's Articles of Incorporation authorize the issuance of up to 3,001,000 shares of $0.001 par value Preferred Stock. The Preferred Stock is senior to the common stock and results in the financial leveraging of the common stock. Such leveraging tends to magnify both the risks and opportunities to common stockholders. Dividends on shares of the Preferred Stock are cumulative. The Fund is required by the 1940 Act and by the Articles Supplementary to meet certain asset coverage tests with respect to the Preferred Stock. If the Fund fails to meet these requirements and does not correct such failure, the Fund may be required to redeem, in part or in full, the Series C, Series E and Series G Preferred at redemption prices of $25,000, $25 and $25, respectively, per share plus an amount equal to the accumulated and unpaid dividends whether or not declared on such shares in order to meet these requirements. Additionally, failure to meet the foregoing asset coverage requirements could restrict the Fund's ability to pay dividends to common stockholders and could lead to sales of portfolio securities at inopportune times. The income received on the Fund's assets may vary in a manner unrelated to the fixed and variable rates, which could have either a beneficial or detrimental impact on net investment income and gains available to common stockholders.
The Fund has the authority to purchase its auction rate preferred shares through negotiated private transactions. The Fund is not obligated to purchase any dollar amount or number of auction rate preferred shares, and the timing and amount of any auction rate preferred shares purchased will depend on market conditions, share price, capital availability, and other factors. The Fund is not soliciting holders to sell these shares nor recommending that holders offer them to the Fund. Any offers can be accepted or rejected in the Fund's discretion.
For Series C Preferred Stock, the dividend rates, as set by the auction process that is generally held every seven days, are expected to vary with short term interest rates. Since February 2008, the number of shares of Series C Preferred Stock subject to bid orders by potential holders has been less than the number of shares of Series C Preferred Stock subject to sell orders. Holders that have submitted sell orders have not been able to sell any or all of the Series C Preferred Stock for which they have submitted sell orders. Therefore the weekly auctions have failed, and the dividend rate has been the maximum rate, which is 175% of the "AA" Financial Composite Commercial Paper Rate on the day of such auction. Existing Series C stockholders may submit an order to hold, bid, or sell such shares on each auction date, or trade their shares in the secondary market.
The Fund may redeem at any time, in whole or in part, the Series C Preferred Stock at its redemption price. In addition, the Board has authorized the repurchase of the Series E and Series G Preferred Stock in the open market at prices less than the $25 liquidation value per share. During the six months ended June 30, 2020, the Fund repurchased 3,300 shares of Series E and 9,799 shares of Series G Preferred Stock. During the
year ended December 31, 2019, the Fund did not repurchase or redeem any shares of Series E or Series G Preferred Stock. During the year ended December 31, 2019, the Fund redeemed and retired all of the remaining shares of Series B Preferred Stock.
On December 20, 2019, the Fund issued 2,000,000 shares of Series G Preferred receiving $48,148,000, after the deduction of estimated offering expenses of $277,000 and underwriting fees of $1,575,000. The Series G Preferred has an annual dividend rate of 5.125%, is perpetual, noncallable for five years, and has a liquidation preference of $25 per share. Distributions are to be paid quarterly beginning on March 26, 2020.
The following table summarizes Cumulative Preferred Stock information:
Series Issue Date Authorized
Outstanding at
Net Proceeds
2020 Dividend
Rate at
Accrued
Dividends at
C Auction Rate
March 31, 2003 1,000 10 $24,547,465 0.088% to 2.783% 0.175% 8
E 5.125%
September 26, 2017 2,000,000 1,996,700 48,192,240 Fixed Rate 5.125% 35,532
G 5.125%
December 20, 2019 2,000,000 1,990,201 48,148,000 Fixed Rate 5.125% 35,416
The holders of Preferred Stock generally are entitled to one vote per share held on each matter submitted to a vote of stockholders of the Fund and will vote together with holders of common stock as a single class. The holders of Preferred Stock voting together as a single class also have the right currently to elect two Directors and under certain circumstances are entitled to elect a majority of the Board. In addition, the affirmative vote of a majority of the votes entitled to be cast by holders of all outstanding shares of the preferred stock, voting as a single class, will be required to approve any plan of reorganization adversely affecting the preferred stock, and the approval of two-thirds of each class, voting separately, of the Fund's outstanding voting stock must approve the conversion of the Fund from a closed-end to an open-end investment company. The approval of a majority (as defined in the 1940 Act) of the outstanding preferred stock and a majority (as defined in the 1940 Act) of the Fund's outstanding voting securities are required to approve certain other actions, including changes in the Fund's investment objectives or fundamental investment policies.
6. Industry Concentration. Because the Fund primarily invests in common stocks and other securities of foreign and domestic companies in the telecommunications, media, publishing, and entertainment industries, its portfolio may be subject to greater risk and market fluctuations than a portfolio of securities representing a broad range of investments.
7. Indemnifications. The Fund enters into contracts that contain a variety of indemnifications. The Fund's maximum exposure under these arrangements is unknown. However, the Fund has not had prior claims or losses pursuant to these contracts. Management has reviewed the Fund's existing contracts and expects the risk of loss to be remote.
8. Subsequent Events. Management has evaluated the impact on the Fund of all subsequent events occurring through the date the financial statements were issued and has determined that there were no subsequent events requiring recognition or disclosure in the financial statements.
Stockholder Meeting – May 11, 2020 – Final Results
The Fund's Annual Meeting of Stockholders was held virtually on May 11, 2020. At that meeting, common and preferred stockholders, voting together as a single class, re-elected Frank J. Fahrenkopf, Jr., Werner J. Roeder, Salvatore J. Zizza, and Daniel E. Zucchi as Directors of the Fund, with 21,874,449 votes, 21,918,008 votes, 21,946,939 votes, and 21,957,616 votes cast in favor of these Directors, and 966,884 votes, 923,325 votes, 894,394 votes, and 883,717 votes withheld for these Directors, respectively.
Mario J. Gabelli, John Birch, Anthony J. Colavita, James P. Conn, Christopher J. Marangi, and Kuni Nakamura continue to serve in their capacities as Directors of the Fund.
We thank you for your participation and appreciate your continued support.
Board Consideration and Re-Approval of Investment Advisory Agreement (Unaudited)
Section 15(c) of the Investment Company Act of 1940, as amended (the 1940 Act), contemplates that the Board of Directors (the Board) of The Gabelli Multimedia Trust Inc. (the Fund), including a majority of the Directors who have no direct or indirect interest in the investment advisory agreement and are not "interested persons" of the Fund, as defined in the 1940 Act (the Independent Board Members), are required to annually review and re-approve the terms of the Fund's existing investment advisory agreement and approve any newly proposed terms therein. In this regard, the Board reviewed and re-approved, during the most recent six month period covered by this report, the Advisory Agreement (the Advisory Agreement) with Gabelli Funds, LLC (the Adviser) for the Fund.
More specifically, at a meeting held on May 12, 2020, the Board, including the Independent Board Members meeting in executive session with their counsel, considered the factors and reached the conclusions described below relating to the selection of the Adviser and the re-approval of the Advisory Agreement.
1) The nature, extent and quality of services provided by the Adviser.
The Board Members reviewed in detail the nature and extent of the services provided by the Adviser under the Advisory Agreement and the quality of those services over the past year. The Board Members noted that these services included managing the investment program of the Fund, including the purchase and sale of portfolio securities, as well as the provision of general corporate services. The Board Members considered that the Adviser also provided, at its expense, office facilities for use by the Fund and supervisory personnel responsible for supervising the performance of administrative, accounting, and related services for the Fund, including monitoring to assure compliance with stated investment policies and restrictions under the 1940 Act and related securities regulation. The Board Members noted that, in addition to managing the investment program for the Fund, the Adviser provided certain non-advisory and compliance services, including services for the Fund's Rule 38a-1 compliance program.
The Board noted that the Adviser had engaged, at its expense, BNY Mellon to assist it in performing certain of its administrative functions. The Board Members concluded that the nature and extent of the services provided was reasonable and appropriate in relation to the advisory fee, that the level of services provided by the Adviser, either directly or through BNY Mellon, had not diminished over the past year, and that the quality of service continued to be high.
The Board Members reviewed the personnel responsible for providing services to the Fund and concluded, based on their experience and interaction with the Adviser, that (i) the Adviser was able to retain quality personnel, (ii) the Adviser and its agents exhibited a high level of diligence and attention to detail in carrying out its advisory and administrative responsibilities under the Advisory Agreement, (iii) the Adviser was responsive to requests of the Board, (iv) the scope and depth of the Adviser's resources was adequate, and (v) the Adviser had kept the Board apprised of developments relating to the Fund and the industry in general. The Board Members also focused on the Adviser's reputation and long standing relationship with the Fund. The Board Members also believed that the Adviser had devoted substantial resources and made substantial commitments to address new regulatory compliance requirements applicable to the Fund.
2) The performance of the Fund and the Adviser.
The Board Members reviewed the investment performance of the Fund, on an absolute basis, as compared with its Broadridge peer group of other SEC registered open-end and closed-end funds. The Board Members
Board Consideration and Re-Approval of Investment Advisory Agreement (Unaudited) (Continued)
considered the Fund's one, three, five, and ten year average annual total return for the periods ended March 31, 2020, but placed greater emphasis on the Fund's longer term performance. The peer group considered by the Board Members was developed by Gabelli and was comprised of other selected closed-end core, growth, and value equity funds (the Performance Peer Group). The Board Members considered these comparisons helpful in their assessment as to whether the Adviser was obtaining for the Fund's stockholders the total return performance that was available in the marketplace, given the Fund's objectives, strategies, limitations, and restrictions. In reviewing the performance of the Fund, the Board Members noted that the Fund's performance was below the median for the one year, three year, five year, and ten year periods. The Board Members concluded that the Fund's performance was reasonable in comparison with that of the Performance Peer Group.
In connection with its assessment of the performance of the Adviser, the Board Members considered the Adviser's financial condition and whether it had the resources necessary to continue to carry out its functions under the Advisory Agreement. The Board Members concluded that the Adviser had the financial resources necessary to continue to perform its obligations under the Advisory Agreement and to continue to provide the high quality services that it has provided to the Fund to date.
3) The cost of the advisory services and the profits to the Adviser and its affiliates from the relationship with the Fund.
In connection with the Board Members' consideration of the cost of the advisory services and the profits to the Adviser and its affiliates from the relationship with the Fund, the Board Members considered a number of factors. First, the Board Members compared the level of the advisory fee for the Fund against a comparative Gabelli expense peer group comprised of other selected closed-end core, growth, and value equity funds (Expense Peer Group). The Board Members also considered comparative non-management fee expenses and comparative total fund expenses of the Fund and the Expense Peer Group. The Board Members considered this information as useful in assessing whether the Adviser was providing services at a cost that was competitive with other similar funds. In assessing this information, the Board Members considered the comparative contract rates. The Board Members noted that the Fund's advisory fee and total expense ratios were higher than average when compared with those of the Expense Peer Group.
The Board Members also reviewed the fees charged by the Adviser to provide similar advisory services to other RICs or accounts with similar investment objectives, noting that in some cases the fees charged by the Adviser were the same, or lower, than the fees charged to the Fund.
The Board Members also considered an analysis prepared by the Adviser of the estimated profitability to the Adviser of its relationship with the Fund and reviewed with the Adviser its cost allocation methodology in connection with its profitability. In this regard, the Board Members reviewed Pro-forma Income Statements of the Adviser for the year ended December 31, 2019. The Board Members considered one analysis for the Adviser as a whole, and a second analysis for the Adviser with respect to the Fund. With respect to the Fund analysis, the Board Members received an analysis based on the Fund's average net assets during the period as well as a pro-forma analysis of profitability at higher and lower asset levels. The Board Members concluded that the profitability of the Fund to the Adviser under either analysis was not excessive.
4) The extent to which economies of scale will be realized as the Fund grows and whether fee levels reflect those economies of scale.
With respect to the Board Members' consideration of economies of scale, the Board Members discussed whether economies of scale would be realized by the Fund at higher asset levels. The Board Members also reviewed data from the Expense Peer Group to assess whether the Expense Peer Group funds had advisory fee breakpoints and, if so, at what asset levels. The Board Members also assessed whether certain of the Adviser's costs would increase if asset levels rise. The Board Members noted the Fund's current size and concluded that under foreseeable conditions, they were unable to assess at this time whether economies of scale would be realized by the Fund if it were to experience significant asset growth. In the event there were to be significant asset growth in the Fund, the Board Members determined to reassess whether the advisory fee appropriately took into account any economies of scale that had been realized as a result of that growth.
5) Other Factors
In addition to the above factors, the Board Members also discussed other benefits received by the Adviser from its management of the Fund. The Board Members considered that the Adviser does use soft dollars in connection with its management of the Fund.
Based on a consideration of all these factors in their totality, the Board Members, including all of the Independent Board Members, determined that the Fund's advisory fee was fair and reasonable with respect to the quality of services provided and in light of other factors described above that the Board deemed relevant. Accordingly, the Board determined to approve the continuation of the Fund's Advisory Agreement. The Board Members based their decision on the evaluation of all these factors and did not consider any one factor as all important or controlling.
AUTOMATIC DIVIDEND REINVESTMENT
AND VOLUNTARY CASH PURCHASE PLANS
Under the Fund's Automatic Dividend Reinvestment Plan and Voluntary Cash Purchase Plan (the "Plan"), a stockholder whose shares of common stock are registered in his or her own name will have all distributions reinvested automatically by Computershare Trust Company, N.A. ("Computershare"), which is an agent under the Plan, unless the stockholder elects to receive cash. Distributions with respect to shares registered in the name of a broker-dealer or other nominee (that is, in "street name") will be reinvested by the broker or nominee in additional shares under the Plan, unless the service is not provided by the broker or nominee or the stockholder elects to receive distributions in cash. Investors who own shares of common stock registered in street name should consult their broker-dealers for details regarding reinvestment. All distributions to investors who do not participate in the Plan will be paid by check mailed directly to the record holder by Computershare as dividend-disbursing agent.
Enrollment in the Plan
It is the policy of The Gabelli Multimedia Trust Inc. (the "Fund") to automatically reinvest dividends payable to common stockholders. As a "registered" stockholder you automatically become a participant in the Fund's Automatic Dividend Reinvestment Plan (the "Plan"). The Plan authorizes the Fund to credit shares of common stock to participants upon an income dividend or a capital gains distribution regardless of whether the shares are trading at a discount or a premium to net asset value. All distributions to stockholders whose shares are registered in their own names will be automatically reinvested pursuant to the Plan in additional shares of the Fund. Plan participants may send their stock certificates to Computershare Trust Company, N.A. ("Computershare") to be held in their dividend reinvestment account. Registered stockholders wishing to receive their distributions in cash may submit this request through the Internet, by telephone or in writing to:
c/o Computershare
Louisville, KY 40233-5000
Telephone: (800) 336-698
Website: www.coputershare.com/investor
Stockholders requesting this cash election must include the stockholder's name and address as they appear on the Fund's records. Stockholders with additional questions regarding the Plan or requesting a copy of the terms of the Plan may contact Computershare at the website or telephone number above.
If your shares are held in the name of a broker, bank, or nominee, you should contact such institution. If such institution is not participating in the Plan, your account will be credited with a cash dividend. In order to participate in the Plan through such institution, it may be necessary for you to have your shares taken out of "street name" and re-registered in your own name. Once registered in your own name your distributions will be automatically reinvested. Certain brokers participate in the Plan. Stockholders holding shares in "street name" at participating institutions will have dividends automatically reinvested. Stockholders wishing a cash dividend at such institution must contact their broker to make this change.
The number of shares of common stock distributed to participants in the Plan in lieu of cash dividends is determined in the following manner. Under the Plan, whenever the market price of the Fund's common stock is equal to or exceeds net asset value at the time shares are valued for purposes of determining the number of shares equivalent to the cash dividends or capital gains distribution, participants are issued shares of common stock valued at the greater of (i) the net asset value as most recently determined or (ii) 95% of the then current market price of the Fund's common stock. The valuation date is the dividend or distribution payment date or, if that date is not a New York Stock Exchange ("NYSE") trading day, the next trading day. If the net asset value of the common stock at the time of valuation exceeds the market price of the common stock, participants will receive shares from the Fund valued at market price. If the Fund should declare a dividend or capital gains distribution payable only in cash, Computershare will buy shares of common stock in the open market, or on the NYSE or elsewhere, for the participants' accounts, except that Computershare will endeavor to terminate purchases in the open market and cause the Fund to issue shares at net asset value if, following the commencement of such purchases, the market value of the common stock exceeds the then current net asset value.
The automatic reinvestment of dividends and capital gains distributions will not relieve participants of any income tax which may be payable on such distributions. A participant in the Plan will be treated for federal income tax purposes as having received, on a dividend payment date, a dividend or distribution in an amount equal to the cash the participant could have received instead of shares.
Voluntary Cash Purchase Plan
The Voluntary Cash Purchase Plan is yet another vehicle for our stockholders to increase their investment in the Fund. In order to participate in the Voluntary Cash Purchase Plan, stockholders must have their shares registered in their own name.
Participants in the Voluntary Cash Purchase Plan have the option of making additional cash payments to Computershare for investments in the Fund's shares at the then current market price. Stockholders may send an amount from $250 to $10,000. Computershare will use these funds to purchase shares in the open market on or about the 1st and 15th of each month. Computershare will charge each stockholder who participates $0.75, plus a per share fee (currently $0.02 per share). Per share fees include any applicable brokerage commissions Computershare is required to pay and fees for such purchases are expected to be less than the usual fees for such transactions. It is suggested that any voluntary cash payments be sent to Computershare, P.O. Box 6006, Carol Stream, IL 60197-6006 such that Computershare receives such payments approximately two business days before the 1st and 15th of the month. Funds not received at least two business days before the investment date shall be held for investment
until the next purchase date. A payment may be withdrawn without charge if notice is received by Computershare at least two business days before such payment is to be invested.
Stockholders wishing to liquidate shares held at Computershare may do so through the Internet, in writing or by telephone to the above-mentioned website, address or telephone number. Include in your request your name, address, and account number. Computershare will sell such shares through a broker-dealer selected by Computershare within 5 business days of receipt of the request. The sale price will equal the weighted average price of all shares sold through the Plan on the day of the sale, less applicable fees . Participants should note that Computershare is unable to accept instructions to sell on a specific date or at a specific price. The cost to liquidate shares is $2.50 per transaction as well as the per share fee (currently $0.10 per share) Per share fees include any applicable brokerage commissions Computershare is required to pay and are expected to be less than the usual fees for such transactions.
For more information regarding the Automatic Dividend Reinvestment Plan and Voluntary Cash Purchase Plan, brochures are available by calling (914) 921-5070 or by writing directly to the Fund.
The Fund reserves the right to amend or terminate the Plan as applied to any voluntary cash payments made and any dividend or distribution paid subsequent to written notice of the change sent to the members of the Plan at least 30 days before the record date for such dividend or distribution. The Plan also may be amended or terminated by Computershare on at least 30 days written notice to participants in the Plan.
AND YOUR PERSONAL PRIVACY
The Gabelli Multimedia Trust Inc. (the "Fund") is a closed-end management investment company registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission under the Investment Company Act of 1940. We are managed by Gabelli Funds, LLC, which is affiliated with GAMCO Investors, Inc., a publicly held company that has subsidiaries that provide investment advisory services for a variety of clients.
What kind of non-public information do we collect about you if you become a Fund stockholder?
When you purchase shares of the Fund on the New York Stock Exchange, you have the option of registering directly with our transfer agent in order, for example, to participate in our dividend reinvestment plan.
Information you give us on your application form. This could include your name, address, telephone number, social security number, bank account number, and other information.
Information about your transactions with us. This would include information about the shares that you buy or sell; it may also include information about whether you sell or exercise rights that we have issued from time to time. If we hire someone else to provide services — like a transfer agent — we will also have information about the transactions that you conduct through them.
What information do we disclose and to whom do we disclose it?
We do not disclose any non-public personal information about our customers or former customers to anyone other than our affiliates, our service providers who need to know such information, and as otherwise permitted by law. If you want to find out what the law permits, you can read the privacy rules adopted by the Securities and Exchange Commission. They are in volume 17 of the Code of Federal Regulations, Part 248. The Commission often posts information about its regulations on its website, www.sec.gov.
What do we do to protect your personal information?
We restrict access to non-public personal information about you to the people who need to know that information in order to provide services to you or the Fund and to ensure that we are complying with the laws governing the securities business. We maintain physical, electronic, and procedural safeguards to keep your personal information confidential.
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Rye, NY 10580-1422
Portfolio Management Team Biographies
Mario J. Gabelli, CFA, is Chairman, Chief Executive Officer, and Chief Investment Officer - Value Portfolios of GAMCO Investors, Inc. that he founded in 1977, and Chief Investment Officer - Value Portfolios of Gabelli Funds, LLC and GAMCO Asset Management Inc. He is also Executive Chairman of Associated Capital Group, Inc. Mr. Gabelli is a summa cum laude graduate of Fordham University and holds an MBA degree from Columbia Business School and Honorary Doctorates from Fordham University and Roger Williams University.
Christopher J. Marangi joined Gabelli in 2003 as a research analyst. Currently he is a Managing Director and Co-Chief Investment Officer for GAMCO Investors, Inc.'s Value team. In addition, he serves as a portfolio manager of Gabelli Funds, LLC and manages several funds within the Fund Complex. Mr. Marangi graduated magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa with a BA in Political Economy from Williams College and holds an MBA degree with honors from Columbia Business School.
We have separated the portfolio managers' commentary from the financial statements and investment portfolio due to corporate governance regulations stipulated by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002. We have done this to ensure that the content of the portfolio managers' commentary is unrestricted. Both the commentary and the financial statements, including the portfolio of investments, will be available on our website at www.gabelli.com.
The Net Asset Value per share appears in the Publicly Traded Funds column, under the heading "Specialized Equity Funds," in Monday's The Wall Street Journal. It is also listed in Barron's Mutual Funds/Closed End Funds section under the heading "Specialized Equity Funds."
The Net Asset Value per share may be obtained each day by calling (914) 921-5070 or visiting www.gabelli.com.
The NASDAQ symbol for the Net Asset Value is "XGGTX."
Notice is hereby given in accordance with Section 23(c) of the Investment Company Act of 1940, as amended, that the Fund may from time to time, purchase its common shares in the open market when the Fund's shares are trading at a discount of 5% or more from the net asset value of the shares. The Fund may also, from time to time, purchase its preferred shares in the open market when the preferred shares are trading at a discount to the liquidation value.
800-GABELLI (800-422-3554)
info@gabelli.com
GABELLI.COM
Chairman &
Chief Executive Officer,
GAMCO Investors, Inc.
Executive Chairman,
Associated Capital Group Inc.
John Birch
The Cardinal Partners Global
Anthony J. Colavita
Anthony J. Colavita, P.C.
James P. Conn
Former Managing Director &
Chief Investment Officer,
Financial Security Assurance
Holdings Ltd.
Frank J. Fahrenkopf, Jr.
Former President &
Kuni Nakamura
Advanced Polymer, Inc.
Werner J. Roeder
Former Medical Director,
Lawrence Hospital
Salvatore J. Zizza
Zizza & Associates Corp.
Daniel E. Zucchi
Daniel E. Zucchi Associates
John C. Ball
Andrea R. Mango
Secretary & Vice President
Richard J. Walz
Carter W. Austin
Vice President & Ombudsman
Laurissa M. Martire
State Street Bank and Trust Company
TRANSFER AGENT AND REGISTRAR
GGT Q2/2020
Item 2. Code of Ethics.
Item 3. Audit Committee Financial Expert.
Item 4. Principal Accountant Fees and Services.
Item 5. Audit Committee of Listed Registrants.
Item 6. Investments.
Schedule of Investments in securities of unaffiliated issuers as of the close of the reporting period is included as part of the report to shareholders filed under Item 1 of this form.
Disclosure of Proxy Voting Policies and Procedures for Closed-End Management Investment Companies.
Item 8. Portfolio Managers of Closed-End Management Investment Companies.
There has been no change, as of the date of this filing, in any of the portfolio managers identified in response to paragraph (a)(1) of this Item in the registrant's most recently filed annual report on Form N-CSR.
Purchases of Equity Securities by Closed-End Management Investment Company and Affiliated Purchasers.
REGISTRANT PURCHASES OF EQUITY SECURITIES
(a) Total Number
of Shares (or Units)
Purchased)
(b) Average Price Paid per
Share (or Unit)
(c) Total Number of Shares
(or Units) Purchased as
Part of Publicly
Announced Plans or
(d) Maximum Number (or
Approximate Dollar Value)
of Shares (or Units) that
Month #1
Common – N/A
Preferred Series G –
Preferred Series E –
Preferred Series G – N/A
Preferred Series E – N/A
Common – 24,898,515
N/A Common – N/A
Preferred Series E – $22.00
Preferred Series G – 5,399
Preferred Series E – 1,600
2,000,000 – 5,399 =
Preferred Series G – $23.34
Preferred Series E –$23.25
1,998,400 -1,700 = 1,996,700
Preferred Series G –1,990,201
$22.6250 Common – N/A
Footnote columns (c) and (d) of the table, by disclosing the following information in the aggregate for all plans or programs publicly announced:
The date each plan or program was announced – The notice of the potential repurchase of common and preferred shares occurs semiannually in the Fund's reports to shareholders in accordance with Section 23(c) of the Investment Company Act of 1940, as amended.
The dollar amount (or share or unit amount) approved – Any or all common shares outstanding may be repurchased when the Fund's common shares are trading at a discount of 7.5% or more from the net asset value of the shares. Any or all preferred shares outstanding may be repurchased when the Fund's preferred shares are trading at a discount to the liquidation value of $25.00.
The expiration date (if any) of each plan or program – The Fund's repurchase plans are ongoing.
Each plan or program that has expired during the period covered by the table – The Fund's repurchase plans are ongoing.
Each plan or program the registrant has determined to terminate prior to expiration, or under which the registrant does not intend to make further purchases. – The Fund's repurchase plans are ongoing.
Item 10. Submission of Matters to a Vote of Security Holders.
There have been no material changes to the procedures by which the shareholders may recommend nominees to the registrant's Board of Directors, where those changes were implemented after the registrant last provided disclosure in response to the requirements of Item 407(c)(2)(iv) of Regulation S-K (17 CFR 229.407) (as required by Item 22(b)(15) of Schedule 14A (17 CFR 240.14a-101)), or this Item.
Item 11. Controls and Procedures.
The registrant's principal executive and principal financial officers, or persons performing similar functions, have concluded that the registrant's disclosure controls and procedures (as defined in Rule 30a-3(c) under the Investment Company Act of 1940, as amended (the "1940 Act") (17 CFR 270.30a-3(c))) are effective, as of a date within 90 days of the filing date of the report that includes the disclosure required by this paragraph, based on their evaluation of these
controls and procedures required by Rule 30a-3(b) under the 1940 Act (17 CFR 270.30a-3(b)) and Rules 13a-15(b) or 15d-15(b) under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended (17 CFR 240.13a-15(b) or 240.15d-15(b)).
There were no changes in the registrant's internal control over financial reporting (as defined in Rule 30a-3(d) under the 1940 Act (17 CFR 270.30a-3(d))) that occurred during the period covered by this reportthat has materially affected, or is reasonably likely to materially affect, the registrant's internal control over financial reporting.
Item 12. Disclosure of Securities Lending Activities for Closed-End Management Investment Companies.
Item 13. Exhibits.
(a)(1)
Certifications pursuant to Rule 30a-2(a) under the 1940 Act and Section 302 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 are attached hereto.
Certifications pursuant to Rule 30a-2(b) under the 1940 Act and Section 906 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 are attached hereto.
Pursuant to the requirements of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and the Investment Company Act of 1940, the registrant has duly caused this report to be signed on its behalf by the undersigned, thereunto duly authorized.
(Registrant) The Gabelli Multimedia Trust Inc.
By (Signature and Title)* /s/ Bruce N. Alpert
Bruce N. Alpert, Principal Executive Officer
Pursuant to the requirements of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and the Investment Company Act of 1940, this report has been signed below by the following persons on behalf of the registrant and in the capacities and on the dates indicated.
By (Signature and Title)* /s/ John C. Ball
John C. Ball, Principal Financial Officer and Treasurer
* Print the name and title of each signing officer under his or her signature. | {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaCommonCrawl"
} |
Albums - Vande Mataram (1997) | On The sets,Stills,Making
Category 1997, albums, albums-vm-1997, photos-albums
Vande Mataram | Album
Category : Albums
Vande Mataram - Two words that became a fiery war cry and electrified the nation towards freedom. A mantra that instlls a sense of pride and belonging. Today , a vibrant musical movement that evokes in each one of us a whole new expression of freedom. A concept brought to life by Bharatbala and musically enriched by A R Rahman.
Vande Mataram – Photos - On The Sets >
Vande Mataram – Photos - Stills >
Vande Mataram – Behind The Story
Vande Mataram - Two words from the past. And three men who transformed them into a magical anthem that has stirred the patriotic spirit of a cynical nation.
To see these people at first glance is to wonder of that dream. A 33-year-old ad filmmaker, G. Bharat (Bala), with an eager face and an impressive stomach, and his spirited wife Kanika, his father V. Ganapathy, a freedom fighter, a music director A.R. Rahman who surely feels ill at the mention of the word "prodigy"; and a lyricist named Mehboob who once ran a pet shop called Fish & Bird. Who started it all? A dismayed father but of course.
"I do not like what this country has become," says V. Ganapathy, a man for whom Vande Mataram and the national flag was life. Bala must have grown up hearing these stories. Now he could do something for a nation his father fought for; this was 1996, and a challenged son responded. He would empty his bank balance, lock his office and embark on an unreal project. To make 300 one-minute films, an album, but most of all one unforgettable song. All with one intention: to unite a nation with two words. Vande Mataram.
To hear him talk, about meeting Nelson Mandela and Lech Walesa, and getting them and every Indian to say Vande Mataram, was to roll your eyes, clap him on the back and say 'impossible'. Sponsors demurred too. History just sneered. To say Vande Mataram was not cool in India anymore. It was the sound of freedom maybe, but it was a sound from the past. "I needed something to bridge the gap between the freedom fighter and the young," says Bala. He needed a song. Not any song, but a song for one people that could tug familiarly at old hearts and yet beckon new ones.
A new Vande Mataram sound to catalyse an entire country: this brief in his brain, Bala went to see the only man he believed could invent it. His old school friend A.R. Rahman. Was a smiling God watching, for again the timing was uncanny. Rahman the music director, chained by film music, was seeking fresh adventure. Says he: "It's easy making a masti number but this was challenging." Rahman the singer too, once the portrait of a reluctant artiste, was ready to be seduced.
It had begun !
Now only a lyricist was left, and Rahman chose Mehboob, the once-Pet Shop Boy who had written songs for Bombay, Rangeela and Daud. The instructions were clear: no archaic verse. Don't create anything that "youngsters would respect but never sing", says Mehboob. In a studio in Chennai, in a home in Mumbai, two men worked, the same words surely hammering in their heads: patriotism, Mother India, pride. And you can see Mehboob, sitting there one day, pen in hand, paper on lap, thinking and suddenly the words arrive. "It just hit me," he says "and I wrote the phrase Maa Tujhe Salaam." And the story of a man returning to his Mother India had its beginning. Then Mehboob went to his mother, his sister and he sang it. They wept. Says his mother: "I am very proud my son has written this song."
Meanwhile, Rahman found his Indian tune. And so in late January, on the 27th day of Ramzan, an auspicious time when legend has it that angels open the gates of heaven and all prayers are answered, Rahman descended on his studio. It was 2 a.m. and his sound engineer had disappeared. "And so I called Bala and when he arrived I told him you're the sound engineer." And then he sang for the first time, a few verses for just the two of them. "It was magical," says Bala. "He laughed, then he cried," says Rahman.
Two months hence, in March 1997, amidst Sony Music executives in Mumbai came a sort of penultimate test. Shridar Subramaniam, director, marketing, tells the story best. "Everybody was really nervous. It's an exhausting song and Martin (Davis, head of Sony Music Asia) doesn't speak a word of Hindi, but in 40 seconds we knew. It was fresh, new."
It got better. In May, at a Sony conference in Manila, where the bigger the name you can drop (Michael Jackson is a start) means the more attention you get, they got 20 minutes. They played the song; pandemonium reigned. The head of Columbia records ( a Sony label) said, "It's unbelievable, I want it." The head of Epic records (another Sony label) said, "I don't care, I want it." Says Subramaniam: "It was the hit of the conference." Now as Columbia plans a 27-country release in September, Bala must be smiling. Vande Mataram is going global.
Bala in truth wasn't smiling, he was sweating. He was criss-crossing India -- from the Rann of Kutch to Kerala to Jaisalmer to Ladakh -- filming the video for Maa Tujhe Salaam. He hired Kevin van Neikerk who had filmed Phil Collins videos, and persuaded a shy Rahman to act in it -- "I was afraid I would lose my privacy," says the singer. His actors, all villagers, required no persuasion. "It was wonderful," says Bala. "Everywhere, when they saw the flag they came and stood by it." Every day he was moved.
Perhaps not every day. After having spent lakhs without much assistance, when he found a sponsor, they were deemed politically incorrect: an MNC like Colgate, said some MPs, should not be linked to Vande Mataram. So the line "Colgate Keeps India Smiling" was dropped but one question in all this silliness went unanswered: why had Indian companies shut the door in his face?
But in a time of hope, this was trivial. On August 12 the cassette released and sold 107 copies in an hour at Rhythm House in Mumbai. And Rahman came to Delhi and sang it on the streets to a listening nation on August 14. "They just wanted me," he says, "to play it again and again." Only then, he knew, this journey was complete.
Listen Ghaijini (2008) BGM - Voiceless Background Score | {
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An early childhood education certification allows teachers to teach from preschool through third grade. Other requirements may include: up-to-date immunizations, background check, CPR certification, and additional training in a preschool setting. For more information on �... RECE�s should be paid minimum $21-$25/hr. with the constant upgrading of paying and participating in workshops and having the biggest responsibility of taking care of another human being should be valued and respected and should be rewarded with a proper compensation.
5 tips to get that pay Integricare chief executive Domenic Valastro says the early childhood education sector is looking for educators who can relate to children and parents from diverse... Salary of a teacher back The starting salary for teachers in NSW public schools is not only above the average salary for new graduates, but one of the highest starting salaries in Australia.
6/01/2019�� Gavin Newsom, campaigning last fall with his son Dutch, emphasized family-friendly issues like early childhood education programs and prenatal �... While those with an associate's degree in early childhood education earned $9.31-$16.31 an hour, teachers with a bachelor's degree made a median wage of $15.48 an hour. Those with teacher certification made a median wage $12.56 an hour. Those with the Child Development Associate (CDA) credential made $9.11 - $15.67 an hour.
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Q: Best pattern to use with inheritance model I have a model whereby I have an abstract class (lets call it Vehicle) and several inherited classes, such as Bike, Motorbike, Car, Van etc. This is essentially a simplified version of a real world problem.
abstract class Vehicle
int ID;
int WheelCount;
string OwnerName;
class Bike
DateTime lastSafetyCheck;
class Motorbike
int EngineCC
class Car
double EngineSize
class Van
double StorageCapacity
I have within my system an IEnumerable<Vehicle> which contains each of these. This is contained in a thread safe singleton class, essentially acting as an in-memory database.
I wish to have a method in my application (in either the singleton or a seperate class) which allows me to query for only a certain type of Vehicle.
Initially I considered a method like:
internal IEnumerable<T> GetVehicles<T>() where T : Vehicle
in order that I would be able to supply a type T which would specify the type I wish to retrieve. I know that I can then use typeof() in order to perform logic. But what I cannot figure out is how to return my values? I'm basically struggling with the contents of the method, and I am beginning to think there must be a design pattern out there which would make a lot more sense.
AK
A: LINQ already has this method - OfType:
var vans = Vehicales.OfType<Van>();
As an aside, to determine whether an instance is an instance of a type you do not need to use typeof(), you can use the is and as operators (and they can be used with generic types also):
if (vehicle is Van) ...
if (vehicle is T) ...
Or
var van = vehicle as Van;
if (van != null) ...
var instance = vehicle as T; // Will need T : class generic type constraint
if (instance != null) ...
var instance = vehicle as T?; // Will need T : struct generic type constraint
if (instance != null) ...
A: Why not just use OfType()?
From MSDN:
Filters the elements of an IEnumerable based on a specified type.
Your code could look like this:
internal IEnumerable<T> GetVehicles<T>() where T : Vehicle
{
return AllVehicles.OfType<T>();
}
A: If you have a collection of Vehicles, and your method returns an IEnumerable instead, you should just be able to run the following
var cars = GetVehicles().OfType<Car>();
That way your method GetVehicles does not need to do any logic, and you can filter by type in the Linq call instead.
| {
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It has only been a few short weeks since we have launched "The Plantiful Blonde" and the response from everyone has been amazing. When I get private messages from readers, run into some of you at the grocery store and even chat up moms after school I hear much of the same thing. I want to eat healthier, add more fruits and veggies into my diet and my families diet but don't know where to start. How can I adapt a plant-based lifestyle for me and my family, they say? My response is always the same thing. 1) study and read books and articles by professionals such as Dr. Campbell and Dr. McDougall, 2) ease into a plant-based diet adding more and more plant-based foods while cutting back on the amounts of animal protein and 3) every week pick one day when every meal and snack is meatless (infact, animal protein-less). With that small piece of advice you will be amazed in how you feel, your skin begins to look more full of elasticity and your body will feel well hydrated.
This week I will post recipes that will get you and your family on your way to incorporating a plant-based diet. Next week, on Monday you will have a full day of recipes and shopping list to start your Meatless Monday! I know you can do it!
The first recipe is breakfast but this smoothie can be enjoyed at any time of day as it is packed with calcium, vitamin C, protein, Fiber and antioxidants. What does this do for me is the most asked question when I make someone a smoothie and I will provided you a guide or ammunition, if you will so that you may explain to your wondering spouse or family. Although, once they taste this they wont even wonder…its that delicious. | {
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Extraordinary Contemporary Crystal Chandeliers In Modern Chandelier Shape Round Rs 23500 | Goodbookslately contemporary swarovski crystal chandeliers. contemporary square crystal chandeliers. contemporary chrome and crystal chandeliers. | {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaC4"
} |
Danuta Straszyńska (née le à Ostrowiec Świętokrzyski) est une athlète polonaise, spécialiste du 100 mètres haies.
Titrée sur 100 mètres haies lors des Universiade d'été de 1965, elle remporte la médaille d'or du relais 4 × 100 mètres aux championnats d'Europe 1966, en compagnie de Elżbieta Żebrowska, Irena Kirszenstein et Ewa Kłobukowska.
Elle se classe sixième du 80 mètres haies lors des Jeux olympiques de 1968, et sixième du 100 m haies lors des Jeux olympiques de 1972.
Elle termine au pied du podium du 100 m haies lors des championnats d'Europe d'athlétisme 1971.
Notes et références
Liens externes
Hurdleuse polonaise
Sprinteuse polonaise
Coureuse de 100 mètres haies
Championne d'Europe d'athlétisme
Athlète (femme) aux Jeux olympiques d'été de 1968
Athlète (femme) aux Jeux olympiques d'été de 1972
Naissance en février 1942 | {
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The Sopwith Biplane F. 1 was developed from the Sopwith Pup. It was a snub nosed, hump backed little biplane with staggered single bay wings. Its lower wing had a pronounced dihedral, which contrasted with the flat top wing and accentuated the fuselage hump, which housed the breeches of two Vickers .303 machine guns. This hump was how the F.1 became known as the Camel.
The success of the Camel was due to its outstanding maneuverability which resulted from the concentration of all its masses within a small area of fuselage. The engine, guns, pilot, and fuel were all located within seven feet of fuselage length. The Camel's sensitivity to the controls made it the supreme dog fighting airplane of World War I. More enemy aircraft (1,294) were shot down by the Camel than any other single type aircraft.
The print depicts Camel D9649 which was the aircraft usually flown by David Ingalls. It was one of one hundred built by the firm of Clayton & Shuttleworth.
Wing span:28'. Length 18' 9". Engine: 130hp Clerget. Maximum Speed: 112 m.p.h. at 10,000ft. Service ceiling: 19,000 ft. Weight Fully Loaded: 1,482 Ibs. | {
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"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaC4"
} |
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"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaC4"
} |
Category Archives: Rosh Hashanah
The World to Come: Sermon for Rosh Hashanah 5781
photo: Thahitun Mariam/Bronx Mutual Aid Network
On Rosh Hashanah, Jewish tradition comes to tell us every new year that everything we've ever known is on the line. The zodiac sign for Tishrei, the first Jewish month of the year, is the scale, and for good reason. Over and over again our liturgy tells us that the world is hanging in the balance. The Books of Life and Death have yet to be sealed and we pray the rawest of prayers, literally pleading for another year of life. In ancient times, so we're told, the Jewish people would gather outside the Temple in Jerusalem, hoping against hope that the High Priest would emerge from the Holy of Holies to let them know the world would indeed be sustained for one more year.
I don't think we've ever experienced a Rosh Hashanah in which it felt more viscerally that the world was indeed actually hanging in the balance. In our communities, throughout our country, around the world, the new year is arriving in time that feels completely and utterly uncertain. For me – and I suspect for you as well – our Rosh Hashanah prayers this year have a powerful, even unnerving resonance.
It's difficult to know where to even start, and it's almost unbearable to contemplate all at once: a global pandemic has taken over 200,000 lives in the US and almost one million worldwide. It has permanently changed our world in ways we've barely begun to understand. Our health system is overwhelmed and overtaxed. The leaders of our country have been criminally negligent in their response to the pandemic. As a result, in a moment when we desperately need to come together, they are politicizing community health measures like mask-wearing and social distancing, further tearing our national community apart.
And of course, none of this is occurring in a vacuum. It's astonishing to witness how quickly COVID has unleashed this terrifying domino effect of economic chaos in our country and around the world, leaving increasing numbers of people unemployed, homeless and uninsured. And contrary to the cliche, the pandemic is not a great equalizer: its impact has been particularly devastating for communities of color, the poor and too many other disenfranchised communities in our midst.
There is no getting around it: this Rosh Hashanah, we're greeting this new year in a state of genuine grief over the sheer enormity over what we have already lost and fear over what is yet to come. That's why, I believe, the first order of business this new year is to give ourselves the space and permission to grieve our collective loss and name these fears out loud. To acknowledge what is no more and affirm openly and honestly that the world has been forever changed in ways we cannot yet fully grasp. Frankly, I don't know how we can pray these prayers unless we find a way to acknowledge this together.
I think grief is an apt metaphor for this moment. As anyone who has experienced grief knows all too well, there is a period of deep shock and disbelief that occurs immediately after the loss of someone we love. In many ways, this feels like what we're going through now: the disbelief, the magical thinking, the inability to fully grasp our new reality, the uncertainty of everything except the hard truth that nothing in our lives will ever be the same.
When we grieve, however, we do know some things for sure. We know that isolation is our enemy. We know that we have to depend upon each other to move forward. We know that we need community more than ever before. Though this new world is a painful and uncertain place, we must resist the temptation to withdraw from it. This will be a particular challenge in this new age of social distancing: when our survival literally depends upon our being physically apart, we know instinctively that we must find new ways to connect with one another if we are to survive.
Over the last few months, people have found ways to connect with each other with resilient creativity. Yes, life in the COVID era is surreal, frustrating, and often downright bizarre. Yes, I never, ever dreamed I would one day find myself leading a High Holiday Zoom service, and yes, I'm very sure you never expected you would ever attend one. But over the last few months, as we've negotiated this brave new world in our congregation, we've discovered that these challenges have come hand in hand with new opportunities we never could have anticipated.
Here at Tzedek Chicago, since the pandemic began, we're busier than ever before. We now have four weekly programs and our attendance has grown exponentially. We've inaugurated a communal care Hesed Committee to check in on the immediate needs of our members. We now have new members participating regularly in our services and programs from across the country and around the world, from as far away as New Zealand and the UK. In the end, however, this isn't just a matter of greater access. On a deeper level, I think, this new growth is a testament to the deep desire folks have to connect with others, to overcome their isolation, to find new ways to create community in this moment of profound loss.
At the same time, amidst all of this massive change, even as we adjust to this new world, there's that nagging question lurking in the background: how long will we actually have to do this? When will we get our lives and our world back? When will things get back to "normal?" Again, as with the experience of grief, I personally think it's important to challenge this kind of magical thinking; to resist the temptation to assume that this is only a temporary moment; a period we just have to muscle through before things get back to the way they were. As with the experience of grief, I think it's important for us to accept that the world we once knew is gone. Something will indeed come in its place, but whatever it is, we need to accept that things will never be the same.
It occurs to me that Rosh Hashanah might actually be coming at just the right time to help us with this acceptance. After all, when we pray the words "t'chadeish aleynu shanah tovah u'metukah" – "renew us for a good and sweet new year" – we're not asking for the world the way it used to be. On Rosh Hashanah, we center renewal. Over and over again we proclaim throughout our liturgy that every new year, the world can be recreated and reborn.
This idea is actually the exact opposite of that famous line from the book of Lamentations,"chadeish yameninu ke'kedem;– "renew our days as days of old." Whatever else it may be, Rosh Hashanah was never meant to be an exercise in nostalgia, a yearning for an idealized, mythic time that never really was. On the contrary, it is an occasion for dreaming of the world that might yet be.
No, we will not go back to "normal." But amidst the grief, it's worth asking, do we really want to? Should we want to? The great activist poet Sonya Renee Taylor has written powerfully to this point:
We will not go back to normal. Normal never was. Our pre-corona existence was not normal other than we normalized greed, inequity, exhaustion, depletion, extraction, disconnection, confusion, rage, hoarding, hate and lack. We should not long to return my friends. We are being given the opportunity to stitch a new garment. One that fits all of humanity and nature.
That's right. For far too long, too many in this country have assumed it's somehow normal to live in a world with a deep and deepening economic divide separating rich from poor, to tolerate a toxic environmental crisis, to treat endemic state violence and systemic racism as just a given. But none of this has been in any way "normal."
In truth, we've been living unsustainably for far too long. Deep down, we must have known that one day this bubble would burst. And now it has. The world as we knew it has broken wide open. So yes, if there is a spiritual imperative to this particular moment, it's not "renew our days as in days of old" – it must be "recreate this word anew."
Judaism actually gives us a powerful paradigm for this – a framework for living when the only world we've ever known has fallen away from beneath us. It is, in fact, one of the central mythic moments at the heart of Jewish tradition itself: namely the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in 70 ACE. Jewish spiritual memory views this as the formative moment in our history: the cataclysmic moment when Jewish life was cracked wide open. As we have come to understand it, this was the moment when everything in our world changed forever.
Yes, the destruction of the Temple constituted a massive collective crisis for the Jewish people – but it's also important to note that it represented an opportunity to stitch a new garment as well. After all, this was the moment that Judaism as we know it came into being. The diaspora might have been a place of exile, but it was also the fertile ground upon which the Jewish people staged their spiritual rebirth. In short, when the only world we ever knew was shattered, we responded in the spirit of hope, resilience and creativity.
A line from a famous midrash teaches, "when the people of Israel were exiled, God went into exile with them." Among other things, this means that God wasn't destroyed along with the Temple. God accompanied us into this new and unknown world. And while this spiritual truth may speak directly to the Jewish experience, it's certainly not unique to it. It's a universal truth: at the moments of our deepest loss, we become more spiritually attuned. We can see God more clearly: in the hearts that have been broken and in the wells of strength we never knew we had. In the memory of those we've lost, the faces of those we love and who have suffered loss as well. And I would suggest it is this very Presence that is accompanying us right now as we face this uncertain new world.
So, if we are ready to fully enter this changed and changing new kingdom, what do we do now? I think it goes without saying that the order of the moment is care for each other. Too many lives have been devastated already and we know that this devastation will continue in the coming year. For now – and forever more – we must view mutual aid as a mitzvah – a sacred imperative. I know many of you are involved in these kinds of projects, which are founded on the ethics of solidarity and not mere charity. At Tzedek Chicago, we've been compiling an ongoing list of efforts in which we can participate locally – mutual aid that supports those who were already economically vulnerable before the onset of the pandemic, in particular low-income workers, day laborers, domestic workers, those who work in the gig economy. If you know of initiatives that are not on our list, please let us know about them so we can make them available to our membership.
It's also important for us to bear in mind that radical empathy is not only a means to an end. Yes, we empathize with each other because we are social animals that depend on each other for our survival – and this must certainly never be underestimated. But at the same time, it's worth considering that our empathic support for another actually creates the world we want to see in real time. When we support and find comfort in one another, we need not yearn for the world to come because in a sense, it's here right now. Beyond the pain, beyond the loss, we would do well to realize that the world we've been struggling for all along is being built by our love and support for one another.
And how do we find hope when that pain and loss feels like it is too much to bear? For me, I've always been taken with the definition of hope offered by folks like Vaclav Havel and Cornell West. Optimism, they say, is the shallow expectation that things will naturally get better. Hope, however, is the conviction that some things are worth fighting for no matter what may happen. Hope is the courage to act, even in – especially in – those times when doubt might be warranted.
So let this be my blessing for us all this Rosh Hashanah-like-no other, when so much in our world is hanging in the balance as never before: let us grieve for the world that we've lost, show up for those who need it most, and fight like hell for the world we know is possible.
Shanah Tovah to you all.
This entry was posted in COVID 19, Economic Justice, Environmentalism, Fear, God, Health Care, High Holidays, Homelessness, Judaism, Poverty, Prayer, Religion, Rosh Hashanah, Sermons, Spirituality, Tzedek Chicago on September 20, 2020 by Rabbi Brant Rosen.
"Birthday of a World on Fire" – A Sermon for Rosh Hashanah 5780
photo credit: Reuters
One of the signature moments on Rosh Hashanah is the sentence traditionally proclaimed after the shofar is sounded: "Hayom Harat Olam" ("Today is the birthday of the world.") On Rosh Hashanah, tradition tells us, we celebrate a world reborn, joyfully acknowledging the order and balance of God's creation and the awesome power embedded deep within it. What better way to celebrate the potential for our own renewal in the year ahead than by looking to a world that renews itself every year according to the sacred rhythms of birth and rebirth?
While I personally find this idea to be among the most profound of this season, I'll confess, I've been struggling with it in recent years. With the hard reality of the global climate crisis hitting home deeper and deeper every year, I find myself asking, what does it mean to gather every Rosh Hashanah to reaffirm creation even as we are literally undoing it? How can we honestly celebrate the power embedded in God's world, even as human power is steadily destroying it? Even as the world is literally on fire? To be completely honest, in this era of global climate crisis, I'm not sure the traditional understanding of Rosh Hashanah really makes much sense any more.
And it is indeed a crisis. Many are suggesting, in fact, that we've moved beyond crisis and have entered the category of emergency. And we can't say we haven't been warned. As far back as 1992, 1700 scientists around the world issued a famous statement called a "warning to humanity," declaring that we were on a "collision course" with the natural world if we did not "fundamentally change" the way we lived upon it.
More than 25 year later, almost all of their chilling predictions are now in full swing. Last year, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued the first in a series of three reports that describe in vivid detail the effects of greenhouse gas emissions throughout the world. The first of three reports, which came out last October, warned that we have only a dozen years to keep global warming to a maximum of 1.5 degrees Celsius beyond pre-industrial levels. If we go up even half a degree beyond this, we will significantly worsen the risks of drought, floods, extreme heat and poverty for hundreds of millions of people.
However, this was not merely a prediction: the report made it clear that this crisis was already well underway. The world is currently 1.1 degrees warmer than pre-industrial levels. The average global temperature for 2015–2019 is already the hottest of any five-year period on record. The Amazon rainforest, even as I speak now, is still burning. It's been estimated that we've already lost 50% of the planet's biodiversity in the past four decades. 20% of the earth's coral reefs have died. The Antarctic ice sheet has lost three trillion tons of ice in the last 25 years. In roughly that same amount of time, the rate of global ocean warming has doubled. Many, if not most, of these losses are irreversible.
And these losses are increasing exponentially. Every new half degree will cause rapidly increasing and irreversible chain reactions: growing species extinction, greater food insecurity, the disappearance of coastal cities and island nations, increased migration and social conflict, more wildfires and hurricanes, the destruction of polar ice, the loss of entire ecosystems.
It's important to note however, that the IPCC report did not conclude that all is lost. The scientists repeatedly stressed that it was still possible to limit warming to 1.5 degrees. But they also made it clear it will take a radical global effort to achieve this goal. Jim Skea, Co-Chair of IPCC Working Group put it this way: "Limiting warming to 1.5°C is possible within the laws of chemistry and physics, but doing so would require unprecedented changes."
Unprecedented indeed. Given our voracious dependance upon fossil fuels – and the economic interests in the companies that produce them – the hard truth is that we have only twelve years to reverse the growth of global capitalism itself. This is not a radical statement – I'd argue it's actually quite reasonable under the circumstances. Those who dismiss advocate structural proposals such as the Green New Deal as naive, "pie in the sky" ideas routinely miss this one essential point: we need radical solutions if we are to take on the unfettered economic greed that has brought us to this terrifying moment in human history.
Now I know that many, if not most of you have heard these facts and figures before. But even so, as I pondered what to talk about this Rosh Hashanah, it felt enormously important to me that the findings of the IPCC report be spoken out loud. We need to say them out loud. Otherwise, I'm really not sure if the rest of our prayers really make much sense.
I realize how depressing, how enormous – how terrifying – it is to contemplate all of this. But as we gather for Rosh Hashanah, I really can't think of a more important issue for us to talk about. And so this morning, I'd like to push a brief pause on our celebration of creation's power and face the ways we are willfully degrading that power. I'd like to offer a few thoughts on how we might reframe our understanding of this crisis so that we might avoid the inevitable overwhelm, paralysis and despair that comes with it. Ultimately, I suppose, what I'd really like to do is offer a measure of hope in the face of an increasingly hopeless reality. To take our cue from the new year and imagine a world reborn – so that we might feel that much more ready to go forth and actually make it so.
When most of us confront the overwhelming reality of the global climate crisis, I think we tend to do what comes naturally: we compartmentalize it. We silo it into its own separate category the way we do with so many other complex social issues. We view it as one issue among many in the desperate hope that if we isolate it, we might be able to find a way to somehow address it.
But in truth, the climate crisis isn't one issue. In fact, I would say it is in many ways the issue. It's the one universal issue that connects all others. The changes we are causing to the earth's temperatures have direct causal relationships to immigration, to human rights, to poverty, to housing, to war, to so many examples of social and political upheaval worldwide.
So yes, addressing this crisis means we must advocate for policies that will keep global temperatures from reaching the 1.5 mark. But it cannot only mean that. It must also mean that we must stand with the scores of people around the world who are already suffering from the effects of the climate crisis. In the end, there is really no contradiction between working for justice and climate activism. They are, in fact, intimately intertwined.
We know full well that the primary brunt of the global climate crisis is being borne by the poor and communities of color. It has been estimated that the global climate crisis could push more than 120 million more people into poverty by 2030. Even if we do manage to increase to only 1.5 degrees by 2100, extreme temperatures in the global south will leave disadvantaged populations increasingly food insecure, with less incomes and worsening health. Increasing numbers of people will have to make the agonizing choice between starvation or migration.
Here in the US, we can see the connection between the climate crisis and structural racism all too well. Polluting facilities are routinely built in low-income neighborhoods and communities of color, which means that people with marginalized identities experience more asthma, a greater likelihood of heart attacks and premature death. The disadvantages that come with those health issues create a cycle of poverty and lack of access to opportunity for people of color and the poor in the United States.
It's a sad irony that the ones least responsible for the climate crisis are bearing the brunt of it – and have the least capacity to protect themselves. This phenomenon has been referred to as "environmental racism" or "climate apartheid" – in which the wealthy have the means to escape overheating, hunger and conflict while the rest of the world is left to fend for itself.
We witnessed climate apartheid in full swing when the devastating Hurricane Dorian slammed into the Bahamas earlier this month. In advance of the hurricane, the ultra-wealthy homeowners on Abaco Island hired local workers to board up their vacation houses, while they escaped to their primary homes in the US or Europe. The Baker's Bay Golf & Ocean Club hired a private security team, equipped with helicopters and assault rifles, to protect their property. The rest of the island's residents, made up mostly of undocumented Haitians, had nowhere to go and had to ride out the storm in shanty towns and church shelters. Within hours, the community was almost completely flattened. Dozens of poor residents were killed and thousands more are still missing.
As Jews, we need to acknowledge that climate apartheid is deeply enmeshed throughout Israel/Palestine as well. Since the Middle East is among the hardest hit by global warming, the issue of justice in Israel/Palestine is directly related to the control of water resources – and Israel has almost complete control over water sources in the region. The so-called Mountain Aquifer, the most critical water source in Israel/Palestine, is situated almost completely east of the Green Line. This goes a long way to explain why Israel has not and likely will never give up the West Bank – as doing so would mean surrendering its most valuable water source.
The environmental situation in Gaza is even more dire, due largely to Israel's crushing blockade. At present, 97% of Gaza's freshwater is unsuitable for human consumption, and only 10% of Gaza's two million people have access to safe drinking water. As a result of Israel's regular military assaults, 110 million liters of raw and untreated sewage are pouring directly into the Mediterranean every day, creating a massive sanitation crisis.
But, as is invariably the case in all forms of climate apartheid, what goes around comes around. This past June, Ha'aretz reported on the effects of Gaza's toxic pollution on Israel. The headline read: "Collapsing Environmental State of Gaza Poses Threat to Israel's National Security, Report Warns." Tellingly, even as it maintains total control over natural resources, Israel cannot escape the devastating impact of the growing climate crisis.
My friend and colleague, Robert Cohen, a writer and blogger from the UK, recently wrote a post in which he argued that "the climate emergency makes Zionism obsolete." In it, he made this very compelling argument:
How can Israel present itself as a Jewish safe haven from a hostile world when its water security is at high risk, crop yields will soon be falling and fires will be raging all year round. In a region already fraught with conflict, climate analysts expect temperature rise to have a multiplier effect that exacerbates and accelerates wars and mass migrations. Promoting Zionism starts to look like an invitation to Jews to jump from the metaphorical frying pan into the literal fire.
When it comes to climate change, national borders will offer no protection from antisemitism. Climate has no interest in faith or ethnicity or in historical or religious claims to a particular piece of land. Climate change is staunchly apolitical, ahistorical and agnostic.
Of course, climate change won't make antisemitism go away. But like much else that's wrong and unfair about the world, the Climate Emergency compels us to look at things differently, consider the root causes, and understand the interconnectedness of injustice. As well as terrible threats, climate change forces upon us the possibility of a profound ethical revolution.
I believe Robert hits the nail on the head with this analysis. In a way, the Israel/Palestine issue is a microcosm of a much larger, universal issue. In the face of global climate crisis, nationalism will not save us. Stronger borders will not save us. Sooner or later this crisis will come for us all. In the meantime, however, we can be sure that those who have more power will do everything they can to protect themselves from its effects until the very bitter end – at the expense of everyone else.
This is where, as Robert Cohen puts it, the "profound ethical revolution" comes in. Yes, to address the climate crisis, we must be advocating for policies and practices that decrease our global carbon output – but it must mean standing in solidarity with those most affected by the crisis as well. There can be no separation between the two. And in this regard, we all have a part to play.
The first step, I believe, is to resist the temptation toward overwhelm and despair. This is, quite frankly, a luxury we cannot afford. While it can be tempting to adopt a fatalistic, "all is lost" attitude, we would do well to remind ourselves that some of the most committed, inspired climate activists are those who are most directly affected by it. If they have not succumbed to despair, than neither can we.
In fact, the movement for climate justice is being led by members of indigenous nations worldwide. This past April in Brazil, an estimated 4,000 indigenous peoples from various tribes gathered for three days in that nation's capital to protest for their rights, demonstrate their traditions and confront congressional leaders. This nonviolent mobilization, called Free Land Camp, has taken place every year since 2004 and is organized by the Articulation of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil — an alliance of indigenous communities and organizations from several regions of the country.
Closer to home, the resistance by at Standing Rock has been at the vanguard of the fight for climate justice in this country. And as this movement is increasingly youth led, we need to be lifting up the work of indigenous youth activists – young people such as 15 year old Autumn Peltier, of the Wiik-wem-koong First Nation in Northern Ontario who recently spoke at the UN and 19 year old Naelyn Pike, of the San Carlos Apache tribe in Arizona, who had this to say in her speech at a youth leadership gathering in 2017:
I'm saying no! And many people, millions of people in this world, are saying no! We have so many sacred lands that are going to be desecrated, so many fights to protect Chaco Canyon, to protect Bears Ears, to protect Indigenous land, food, water, the right to live, our identity. We're fighting against so many pipelines. And the thing is that these generations behind us had told us this prophecy.
But there's another prophecy: That the youth is going to stand. And that's us today. That's us here and now.
In addition to Indigenous-led movements, there are any number of growing climate justice movements that deserve our attention and support – and I know many in this room have long been active in these efforts: the Sunrise Movement, the Climate Strike, +350 and Extinction Rebellion, to name a few. And as I mentioned earlier, given everything that is at stake, we need to wage an all-out political fight against the economic interests that make greater profit through increased greenhouse gas emissions. In this country, this fight is primarily being waged nationally via the Green New Deal, but it is also being fought on state and local levels as well. As I said before, there is a part we can all play. The main thing is to connect the dots, to understand that the climate crisis is at heart a justice issue – and that all struggles for justice are ultimately bound up with the movement to roll back the climate crisis.
So what can Rosh Hashanah mean at this moment in human history, in this unprecedented time when the very future of our world is literally hanging in the balance? I want to suggest that we can no longer celebrate the new year – the birthday of the world – without explicitly spelling out what is at stake. Yes, it is a day of hope, but this hope must be celebrated together with a hard and sober realism.
We know that the task ahead of us will be daunting. We know that some of the effects of climate change can yet be turned back. But we also know that some of the damage we've inflicted upon the earth is permanent. We do have a window of time in which we can stop or decrease global temperatures, but it will take a Herculean world-wide effort to achieve this. We've been told by scientists that we have 12 years before the social and economic fabric we take for granted starts to unravel beyond the point of no return. We need to admit this and say it out loud if these New Year's rituals are to retain any meaning for us whatsoever any more.
In the end, it may well be that the High Holidays will hold more meaning than ever before. After all, when the new year is through, when we move toward Yom Kippur, our prayers will literally evoke a world that hangs in the balance. We will ask "who shall live and who shall die?" We will plead to be written into the Book of Life. We will ask ourselves honestly, how can we change our ways to ensure it shall be so? It seems to me that these prayers have never had more universal, global meaning than right now.
One of the things I love most about Judaism and Jewish culture in general, is that it invites us to work toward the world to come, the world as it should be. Yes, this work can be a struggle, but it can also be filled with joy and celebration. And there are yet times during the struggle when we create a microcosm – when we get a glimpse of the world to come. These moments remind us we must continue to live with a spirit of joyous resistance, even if we know full well that world we seek may never be at hand.
How do we possibly do this? How do we find the strength to fight a fight we know we may not win? And to so joyfully? Let me share with you the words of indigenous activist and organizer, Kelly Hayes, who offers us as eloquent a manifesto for the new year as I can imagine:
I would prefer to win, but struggle is about much more than winning. It always has been. And there is nothing revolutionary about fatalism. I suppose the question is, are you antifascist? Are you a revolutionary? Are you a defender of decency and life on Earth? Because no one who is any of those things has ever had the odds on their side. But you know what we do have? A meaningful existence on the edge of oblivion. And if the end really is only a few decades away, and no human intervention can stop it, then who do you want to be at the end of the world? And what will you say to the people you love, when time runs out? If it comes to that, I plan on being able to tell them I did everything I could, but I'm not resigning myself to anything and neither should you. Adapt, prepare, and take the damage done seriously, but never stop fighting. Václav Havel once said that "Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something is worth doing no matter how it turns out." I live in that certainty every day. Because while these death-making systems exist both outside and inside of us, so do our dreams, so long as we are fighting for them. And my dreams are worth fighting for. I bet yours are too.
This new year, let us commit to fight like hell for the world of our dreams, for a world reborn anew. Let us fight with joy, commitment and solidarity, knowing full well that this is a fight for the survival of the world as we know it. And let us fight not with the certainty that we will ultimately be victorious, but with the faith that it is worth waging no matter what.
Ken Yehi Ratzon – May it be our will this new year – and every new year from this time forward.
Shanah Tovah.
This entry was posted in Energy Efficiency, Energy Policy, Environmentalism, Gaza, Global Activism, High Holidays, Human Rights, Immigration, Israel, Judaism, Palestine, Politics, Racism, Religion, Rosh Hashanah, Sermons, War, Water, Zionism on October 2, 2019 by Rabbi Brant Rosen.
Reckoning with the Arc of the Moral Universe in the Age of Trump: A Sermon for Rosh Hashanah 5779
Writing topical High Holiday sermons is a process fraught with peril. It's common knowledge among rabbis that if you sit down to write at the beginning of the summer, chances are pretty good that your chosen issue will be obsolete by the time the holidays roll around. In the current political moment however, where current events have accelerated to warp speed, it feels as if issues become obsolete every hour on the hour. Thus my challenge this year: how do I respond without contributing to the ever-increasing barrage that has become our current reality?
More to the point: how do I avoid contributing to the widespread despair that so many of us are feeling? I'm sure most of us are experiencing current events as an onslaught. They come at us faster and faster: every new policy strike-down, every new act of deregulation, every new appointment feels like yet another kick to the stomach.
To put it simply, the world that so many of us fought for seems to be unraveling before our eyes. So many of the socio-political gains we've struggled so hard for for so long are being rolled back on an almost daily basis.
So this Rosh Hashanah, I want to forgo the topical sermon in favor of some deeper questions. Namely, how can we maintain our equilibrium during the current political moment? How do we respond to the onslaught? How do we resist the despair that for so many of us, characterizes the nightmare age of Trump?
Since the election, we've been hearing from mental health experts that there's been a dramatic spike in anxiety and depression since the election – a kind of "political stress disorder" – but that's not what I'm talking about. Rather, I'd like to explore why so many of our previously held beliefs about our world seem to have come crashing down on top of us. In particular, I want to look closely at the assumptions that Americans – particularly liberal Americans – use to understand the history of progress in our country.
I'd like to ask, have they been harmful in ways we don't often stop to realize? And if they are, might there be different frames we can use to understand the world around us? Ones that will help us stand down the despair and give us the strength to fight for the world we want to see? And finally, on this new year, I'd like to explore how Torah and Jewish tradition address this question in ways that might help us find a way forward together.
Let's start with one very common assumption: the view that history is a march toward progress. This view is considered a central tenet of liberalism and it dates all the way back to the Enlightenment. In fact, this idea is so deeply embedded in the mindset of so many Americans that it is almost taken for granted.
Now certainly, when we look at the unfolding of American history, we could make a very strong case for this view. It certainly seems that the arc of history bends toward justice. Our march toward progress is well known: the abolition of slavery, the creation of labor laws, the right of women to vote, civil rights legislation, environmental regulation.
The idea in a nutshell: "We struggled, we won, progress was achieved." This linear view of socio-political progress is deeply ingrained in the mythos of liberal America. When these historical moments occur, they enter into our national consciousness and become part of a collective narrative of progress. We venerate them, we celebrate them – often on an annual basis – and then either consciously or unconsciously, we assume that history will continue to progress in a linear fashion from that point onward.
The only problem with this assumption is that it doesn't. And it never has.
Let's use the first example on the list I just mentioned: abolition. Most of us date the abolition of slavery back to 1865 with the adoption of the 13th amendment – but in truth, abolition resulted from over century of struggle on many different fronts. But it wasn't a linear struggle. And the struggle is far from over.
During Reconstruction, former slaves did make meaningful political, social and economic gains. Black men voted and even held public office across the South. Biracial experiments in governance flowered. Black literacy surged, surpassing those of whites in some cities. Black schools, churches and social institutions thrived.
But as W.E.B. Du Bois famously wrote "the slave went free; stood a brief moment in the sun; then moved back again toward slavery." After the formal fall of slavery in the South, there was sharecropping, in which black farmers became debt slaves to their white landlords; there was the convict lease system, in which black men were leased out to wealthy plantation owners and corporations; there were widespread lynchings in the South and yes, often in the North as well. There was Jim Crow – a legal caste system that literally divided black and white Americans.
And after the civil rights movement helped bring down segregation, we've seen the emergence of the "New Jim Crow" as a result of mass incarceration. As scholar Michelle Alexander and others have pointed out, more black men are currently behind bars or under the thumb of the criminal justice system than there were enslaved at the height of slavery.
Yes, the abolition of slavery was a significant victory and yes, we should celebrate our victories. But we cannot assume that injustice will simply end or evaporate with these victories. More often than not, it morphs into different forms in insidious ways.
It seems to me that liberal Americans – particularly white liberal Americans – chronically underestimate the tenacity and staying power of injustice. Why? Well for one thing, although we don't often acknowledge it, this country was founded on injustice – on the original sins of indigenous genocide, slavery and the economic supremacy of white property-holding men. Injustice is part of our national DNA. As long as we fail admit this, it's too easy to ignore the ways injustice is chronically manifest in the life of our country.
Our American political culture reinforces the notion that struggles for liberation invariably lead to the eradication of injustice. The way we memorialize the civil rights movement provides a good example. In her recent book, "A More Beautiful and Terrible History," Professor Jeanne Theoharis writes powerfully about the ways political elites – who historically fought the passage of civil rights – regularly use this history as proof of how great our country is. President Ronald Reagan for instance, repeatedly resisted efforts to turn Dr. Martin Luther King's birthday into a national holiday. He finally relented however, when he realized he could co-opt MLK and the civil rights movement.
When Reagan signed the bill into law, he said,
We've made historic strides since Rosa Parks refused to go to the back of the bus. As a democratic people, we can take pride in the knowledge that that we Americans recognized a grave injustice and took action to correct it. And we should remember that in many countries, people like Dr. King never have the opportunity to speak out at all.
But it's not only conservative politicians who promote this new mythic history. Theoharis also quotes Barack Obama from a 2007 speech in Selma, Alabama. Referring to the civil rights generation, he said, "They took us 90 percent of the way there, but we still got that 10 percent in order to cross over to the other side." The implication that we have eradicated 90% of the racial problems in our country is of course, serious political hyperbole. And it speaks to a very common trope in our national culture: that our great nation was founded on a struggle for freedom, that these struggles are what make this country great, and that these struggles somehow eradicate injustice from our midst.
In reality, however, these struggles don't succeed because of our country – they succeed in spite of our country. And they certainly do not end racism and injustice once and for all. Whether they stem from hyperbole, ideology or unconscious assumptions, I believe that these false tropes breed complacency. After all, why worry too much if we believe history proves our struggle will eradicate injustice in end? And when injustice metastasizes into new and different forms, it upsets our neat, linear assumptions about American progress. As a result, we're ill-equipped – emotionally and strategically – to respond properly to this new reality.
I'd like to turn now to Jewish tradition and explore whether or not the Torah has anything to offer us on this particular question. It's often been observed by liberal scholars in fact, that this linear view of historical progress can be traced back to Biblical tradition. According to this school of thought, the polytheistic traditions of the Ancient Near East viewed history as circular, embodied in the never ending, constantly repeating cycles of nature. Israelite monotheism however, upended these traditions, sublimating the gods of nature to the one God of history, who alone could control nature and events according to his will.
Here's a good representation of this view – I'm quoting from an essay by Rabbi Ismar Schorsch, the former Chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary:
The consequences of this shift from nature to history reinforce the idea of ethical monotheism. Judaism develops a linear concept of time as opposed to a cyclical one and sanctifies events rather than places. The mountain of Sinai is not holy, or even known, but the moment of revelation is. The Torah intentionally conceals from us the place where Moses is buried. Time is a medium less susceptible to idolatry or polytheism, in which God's presence is made manifest audibly rather than visually. Time becomes for Judaism the realm in which humanity and God join to complete together the work of creation…The triumph of morality will eventually render nature perfect, bringing history to its messianic conclusion.
While this is a popular view of many Jewish scholars, I find it to be problematic on so many levels. Particularly this notion that "the triumph of morality will eventually render nature perfect, bringing history to its messianic conclusion." This kind of linear messianic thinking leads to a concrete end game, a victory that will solve all our problems. Messianic movements of course, have historically arisen during periods of acute crisis – times in which the vision of the ideal world becomes profoundly exciting and intoxicating to the growing numbers of people. But as we know all too well, messianic movements almost always end in upheaval, disillusionment and too often, tragedy.
You don't have to be fundamentalist or even particularly religious to engage in linear messianic thinking. We all have a tendency, particularly during difficult times, to focus our expectations on an idealized conclusion. While this is undeniably inspiring and motivating, we too often end up mistaking the victories we experience along the way as the end game itself. We fall into the trap of viewing progress as an entitlement rather than something that must be constantly, constantly struggled for in every generation. It sometimes feels to me that this fixation on the end game is itself a kind of idolatry. We might say that we create a false god whenever we objectify one idea or concept or movement as the ultimate panacea for the problems of the world.
This is not however, the only Jewish frame for understanding history. I'd like to suggest another – one that I personally find to be much more helpful and inspiring. It is embodied by the word,"Yisrael" which literally means "one who struggles with God." In the book of Genesis, Jacob's name is changed to Yisrael after he wrestles with a mysterious night visitor that turns out later to be God. Jacob is victorious – and this moment marks a critical turning point in his life. But at the same time, he is wounded by the encounter – he limps as he crosses the river the next morning.
It's also notable that Jacob's struggle does not end with this one episode. His life certainly does not follow a straight line from this point on. Nor does the journey of the people of Israel who bear his name. In fact, the Torah narrative always ends before the Israelites enter the Promised Land. Just when they arrive at the threshold, we literally rewind the Torah back to the beginning and we start the journey anew. The cycle begins once again.
In other words, redemption is not located in any particular place or point in time – it is experienced in the act of struggle itself. God cannot be found in a land or place, nor at some literal end time. God is in the struggle. We might even say, God is the struggle.
Now I know for some this might seem on the surface to be a bit on the bleak side. Some might of you might be thinking, "Is this all we have to look forward to? Life is just one long endless struggle? And we never even get to the Promised Land? How is this inspiring?
Please understand: I'm not saying we can ever give up on our vision of our the world we want to see. I am suggesting that at some point it is important to let go of the expectation that we must inevitably get there – because I really do believe that holding on too tightly to that expectation is a set up for despair and disillusionment.
Yes, this spiritual frame does involve an acknowledgement that we will not literally arrive in the Promised Land; that the Messiah will not actually come. But at the same time, its worth considering that we do indeed enter into messianic time in ways we never stop to consider: when we show up for our fellow strugglers, when we celebrate our victories along the way, when our efforts are infused with our highest values of justice and equity and sacrifice, at those moments we find ourselves dwelling in the world we've been fighting for all along. We experience the world we want to see because we create it for one another.
Struggle is hard work, but if we view it exclusively as a means to an end, it will be only that: hard work. However, if we view struggle as an inherently sacred act, we may yet see the face of God in our comrades and those who have gone before us. We may come to understand that the messianic age is not simply a far off dream. We may yet find we are dwelling in the Promised Land in ways we have never been able to realize before.
According to Jewish tradition, Rosh Hashanah is a kind of "spiritual reboot" for ourselves and our community. In the traditional liturgy we say "Hayom Harat Olam" – it is the birthday of the world! On one level I think this means we never forfeit the ability to view the world with different eyes, through new and different frames. And if we can do this, we may well be able to transform the world itself. Yes, we live in painful, difficult times, but this is nothing new. Yes, there have been significant setbacks to many hard won battles in our country, but the struggle is far from over. In fact, as our liturgy would have it, it may be just beginning.
To all of you in Am Yisrael – and by this I mean all who struggle side by side for the cause of justice in the world – I wish you a heartfelt chazak ve'ematz – strength and courage. May it be a sweet and victorious year for us all.
This entry was posted in Civil Rights, Current Events, High Holidays, Politics, Prison Justice, Racism, Religion, Rosh Hashanah, Sermons, Torah Commentary, Tzedek Chicago on September 12, 2018 by Rabbi Brant Rosen.
Gaza and the High Holidays
My weekly message to congregants at Tzedek Chicago:
Yesterday I read a devastating blog post by Abdalrahim Alfarra, a Palestinian Gazan activist who wrote about his cousin Ali Firwana, who was recently was shot and paralyzed at the Great March of Return.
One passage in particular continues to haunt me:
At the protest, we found the usual: tear gas canisters falling thickly, leaving us barely able to breathe or talk; ambulances and paramedics fanning out everywhere; and the sound of live bullets whizzing past.
The sound of a bullet elicits contradictory feelings. All of us know that it will hit someone. But if we hear it, we are safe, just like when we hear shelling it means it has exploded but not on us.
It's a powerful a description as we might find of what it must be like for unarmed demonstrators to experience an overwhelming military assault such as this. But it also made me think of something else.
We've just begun Elul – the month that precedes the Jewish New Year. Among other things, this the season in which we begin to contemplate the randomness and fragility of our world. We look ahead to a year to come and ask with uncertainty: "Who shall live and who shall die?" I can't think of a more gut-wrenching expression of this question than the testimony of this young Palestinian man. And I can't think of a more critical collective moral imperative for the Jewish people than the crimes Israel is committing against Palestinians in Gaza.
Alfarra concludes his post with these words:
Ali requires further surgery. He is still hoping to move his legs again. He is still hoping to defy the treacherous bullet fired by a heartless sniper, and a world that answers Israel's crimes with shocking silence.
When Jewish congregation gather next month for the High Holidays, it is safe to say many will "answer Israel's crimes with shocking silence." Others will actually attempt to justify Israel's criminal assaults on Palestinians in Gaza. I'm proud to be part of a congregation that will choose a different way:
For blockading 1.8 millon Gazans inside an open air prison; and for unleashing devastating firepower on a population trapped in a tiny strip of land.
For wedding sacred Jewish tradition to political nationalism and militarism; and for rationalizing away Israel's oppression of the Palestinian people.
For all these, source of forgiveness, forgive us, pardon us, receive our atonement.
May our prayers inspire us to hasten the day in which all Gazans and Palestinians are free.
This entry was posted in Gaza, High Holidays, Human Rights, Israel, Judaism, Palestine, Religion, Rosh Hashanah, Tzedek Chicago, War, Yom Kippur on August 19, 2018 by Rabbi Brant Rosen.
Sealing the Gates of Heaven
According to an order from the most high
the first day of the month shall be a sacred occasion
when the shofar is sounded the gates will be sealed
and all roads will be closed to you.
You shall not you leave your homes
nor work at your occupations.
lest you and your kin be put to death.
Like fires lit on ancient mountaintops
the announcement spread throughout the land;
when the new moon came the wall was locked tight
so the people could gather in their houses of prayer
to greet another new year.
And the Chazan sang:
As a shepherd numbering his flocks
passing his sheep under his staff
thus I count you off one by one,
marking your every move, noting your every thought
writing you down in my Book of Life
that I may decree
who shall live and who shall die.
Day after day they sent out
fearful prayers into the dark dread
of a year they did not yet know,
desperately hoping their lives would be spared
by the merciful judge on high.
For today it is written
and in ten days it will be sealed
who will be taken in the dead of night
and who shall sleep until morning
who will die and who will be born
into a cruel and merciless world
When the festival came to an end
the great shofar was sounded
how could they know that
the gates of heaven had never opened
to their prayers?
This entry was posted in High Holidays, Israel, Judaism, Palestine, Poetry, Prayer, Religion, Rosh Hashanah on February 1, 2018 by Rabbi Brant Rosen. | {
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I recently wrote about my quick patio shade screen and how one weekend we had gotten the inspiration to turn our burning hot, sun beating down back yard deck into one that had a little bit of shade by putting up a deck privacy screen that we had improvised from five trellises that we stood erect along the side of the deck that gets the late afternoon sun.
Since the trellises could not bear a lot of weight, I chose to use some lightweight fabric to fashion the screen. I sent away for some ripstop nylon (the stuff they make parachutes out of) in a khaki green, which I planned to make into panels to cover each of the trellises. And even if it isn't my dream of a sun screen solution, at least it will suffice for the time being.
This project took a little longer than I had planned. Now I am an experienced seamstress, but ripstop nylon is a fabric in a category by itself. It is very lightweight and ravels horribly. The challenge was in squaring up the fabric, then cutting even panels. This done, I sewed them together, but they are so lightweight that the fabric slithered off the machine. However, I got through it and got the panels made a few days ago.
Today, I finished the job by stringing the tops of the panels with some covered garden wire, which I wired to the tops of the trellises. The bottoms I also secured. The fabric billows in the wind, but hopefully this will not be a problem. I have the patio shade screens up on the trellises now. This didn't turn out to be so quick. My little garden project is not an outdoor room that Jamie Durie would build, but it doesn't look bad, it will be functional and it will make my back deck more livable this summer and let me enjoy my garden. Then we can work on making something that will grace the pages of House Beautiful later. | {
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This position is for an Exploration Geoscientist in Hess's Exploration Gulf of Mexico (GoM) Regional Team. The Regional Team is responsible for the geological underpinning of Hess's growing Miocene and Mesozoic portfolio with regional analysis. Work that supports the exploration and exploitation teams includes field analog studies, sub-regional interpretation and evaluation of hydrocarbon play elements and the integration of those elements to help extend plays and/or de-risk prospects. This position reports directly to the Exploration Manager, Regional Gulf of Mexico.
Basin scale regional 2D and 3D seismic interpretation integrating well logs and seismic stratigraphy when possible.
Additional duties could also include Lease Sale and data room evaluations support. Background and experience in structural geology is a plus.
Experience and expertise to include: subsurface mapping, well-seismic integration, cross sections and fluid systems.
The ideal candidate will have regional-play-prospect evaluation skills, display competence in salt tectonic regimes and possess both geological and geophysical interpretation experience.
Strong analytical and synthesis skills and commitment to continued learning and improvement. | {
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Single player third person detective adventure RPG with elements of combat and exploration.
Into The Valley is a single player third person role playing game set in east Africa in a time before the pyramids were built. It combines elements of exploration and combat, but it is primarily an detective adventure RPG in which you have to follow the clues to rescue your daughter who has been captured by slave traders. | {
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The Power of Dowsing
The power of dowsing mystifies, attracts or goes unnoticed. Which describes you? Those who are interested in psychic powers or tools for change may be drawn to dowsing. Others may find it confusing or out of reach. But the majority of people don't even notice the power of dowsing. This includes dowsers themselves.
Why Can't We All Embrace The Power of Dowsing?
Why is dowsing not seen as practically a superpower that can change your life dramatically? Because unless you have the intention of improving your life, you won't notice when the Universe presents you with a simple, affordable and natural tool. At best, most dowsers use dowsing infrequently for a few situations, like testing their supplements or predicting the future. Do we underuse dowsing because we lack the intelligence or imagination to recognize its power? I don't think so. I think our energies determine how we respond to dowsing.
Dowsing is a very empowering natural intuitive tool for making your life easier, healthier and happier. But if you don't want those things or if you focus instead on how disempowered and vicitmized you are, you won't even see the opportunity dowsing presents. If you have poverty mentality or a sense of not being good enough, dowsing will slip by you, because you don't resonate with its potential as a natural, affordable tool for creating the life you want.
How Can You Embrace The Power?
You'll need to shift or transform energies like the following:
Poverty mentality
Beliefs that involve negativity
It is possible to change your energies and your outlook using any number of tools. We often recommend meditation (click here for our favorite free meditations), yoga nidra, guided visualization, EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) and other energy practices to create a more harmonious, empowered state of being. These methods are cheap and easy to learn and practice, and they will help you recognize the power of dowsing as a creative tool.
How Can Dowsing Be Powerful?
You could ask, why is dowsing so powerful? Isn't dowsing simply a tool for getting answers to questions? That's true. But if you master dowsing and use it, you become vastly more intelligent than when you only use your brain for charting a course through life. Having the answers is one of the most powerful gifts you can give yourself.
In addition, dowsing technique, meaning learning all the steps to proper dowsing, is a transformational experience. You can't be fearful and dowse accurately. Seeing yourself as a victim blocks good answers to your questions. Also, it's vital to have a calm center to tap into your dowsing state. All of these skills are easy to learn and will transform you to a victor.
Dowsing has been the most empowering tool of the very many we have mastered in the past twenty years. It has helped us to become conscious co-creators of the life we want to live. How has dowsing empowered you?
Dowsing and Religion READ MORE Why You Need To Learn Dowsing: Empowerment READ MORE Dowsing and Enlightenment READ MORE Dowsing and Living Consciously READ MORE Dowsing and Empowerment: A Lie? READ MORE The Myth About Psychic Powers READ MORE It's Hard To Dig A Grave... READ MORE Are You Dowsing the "Man in the Mirror"? READ MORE Pendulum Healing READ MORE Crystal Dowsing Can Be Revealing READ MORE Dowsing Gurus READ MORE Dowsing The Aura READ MORE Use Your Brain - Both Of Them! READ MORE How Dowsing Works READ MORE Talent vs. Skill: Why Most People Don't Dowse Much READ MORE Pendulum Dowsing Exercise #1: Restaurant READ MORE Why Dowse? Why Bother? READ MORE What is the Dowsing State and Do You Need It? READ MORE The Water Diviner with Russell Crowe READ MORE The Bare Bones Of Dowsing READ MORE Why You Need To Learn Dowsing: Be Self-Aware READ MORE Intuitives As Rebels READ MORE Dowsing Doesn't Work? READ MORE How To Dowse Past Lives READ MORE How To Power Intention READ MORE Bad Dowsing Questions READ MORE Are You a Spiritual Know-It-All? READ MORE Hollywood Gets It Right: Watch This Dowsing Movie! READ MORE Yes and No Scale: Refine your dowsing answer! READ MORE Dowsing: Skill or Psychic Ability? READ MORE Dowsing For Baby Gender READ MORE How To Make A Dowsing Pendulum READ MORE Dowsing READ MORE Be Prepared For Change READ MORE
Greg Carroll on August 5, 2020 at 6:59 am
Thank you for sharing the free videos and for this post. I was interested in dowsing 4/5 years ago and had an experience using a pendulum and letter chart that scared me off. I now know that I regularly shield and protect myself with love. So I'm starting from scratch again and you are helping. Many thanks, Greg from Whitley Bay, UK.
Maggie Percy on August 6, 2020 at 7:08 am
We are glad that you are once again dowsing, Greg! We look forward to answering any questions you have.
Peter Foxx on August 5, 2020 at 6:47 pm
Yes it is so important to have the right answers, especially the right answers for as an individual. There are so many answers out there via OP opinions etc. Asking questions and getting my answers are now part of my internal dialogue. It took time and some clearing of old patterns but boy was it worth it. You guys played a major role in that so thank you.
Thanks for the kind words! We look forward to continuing to support you on your dowsing journey.
Thanks Maggie. I bought new dowsing rods recently and only the right hand one moved- the left one only moved when I asked questions about direction. I had more consistency with a little pendulum so have ordered a small pendulum. Interestingly, my 11 year old daughter picked them up, asked what 'yes' was, got a very clear answer, and then started chatting away with yes/no questions. She asked "Are you a loving spirit guide?" and got a yes and a bit later, after some more questions, told me "I have a 35 year old female spirit guide who's a relative on my side of the family. We (not just me any more!) are very new to this. Does all that seem normal ? I promise not to pester you with questions!! Thanks, Greg (and Eve!) | {
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Hello Praise 96.5 FM Listener's ! I'm your Precious Jewel of Gospel Music…. Miss Ferrin. I am the daughter of Angelia D. Flowers and Fredrick Lewis, Jr. I'm a 14 yr. old honor student who attends Booker T. Washington Magnet High School. My hobbies include cheering, hanging out with friends. I contribute my accomplishments so far in life by having Faith in God and listening to those life lessons that my Grandmothers Mrs. Daisy M. Cook, Mrs. Darlene Lewis-Favor and my Great Grandmother Mrs. Pauline M. Jeter-Wately taught me. I invite you to listen to me every Saturday from 9 a.m. – 11a.m. as I open up the first edition of Teen Scene Gospel. | {
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Vero News > All News > News > Sebastian Police investigating car-bike crash
Sebastian Police investigating car-bike crash
Written by: Admin November 04 2010
SEBASTIAN – The Sebastian Police Department is investigating the cause for a crash that sent a bicyclist to a hospital in critical condition.
The crash happened Wednesday around 12:32 p.m. at the 1200 block of Main Street. A 2008 Toyota collided with a bicycle. The bicyclist, identified as James Shaw, was transported to Holmes Regional Medical Center where he is listed in critical condition.
The driver, Tammy Carnohan, was not injured.
Charges have yet to be filed, pending the outcome of the investigation.
Anyone with information pertaining to the crash is encouraged to call the Sebastian Police Department at (772) 589-5233.
bicyclistcarnohancentercharges:conditioncrashcriticaldepartmentdriverencouragedholmesinjuredinvestigationlistedmedicalpoliceregionalsebastianstaff reporttammythe
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Proin id ullamcorper urna, non placerat diam. Praesent nulla ma. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Proin id ullamcorper urna, non placerat diam.
GoLine hub gets the boot from Vero City Council
Authorities nab Melbourne man accused of robbing Vero Beach TD Bank
Man charged in July crash that left woman seriously injured
SEBASTIAN — A 25-year-old man is waiting to go before a judge on several charges from a July crash that left a woman seriously injured. The woman suffered a broken shoulder blade and had to undergo surgery, reports show. "(Dillon) Wright was under the influence of an alcoholic beverage while operating a motor vehicle at the time of the crash and fled the scene on foot, failing to render aid to the victim or provide information to her," reports show. "Inside of the vehicle operated by Wright was a safe containing 407.5 grams of suspected cannabis in multiple different packages." Sheriff's officials said Wright's blood alcohol level was more than three times the legal limit. Wright, of the 800 block ...
1 hurt after two tractor trailers collide on I-95
INDIAN RIVER COUNTY — A driver was injured after a tractor-trailer slammed into the back of another tractor-trailer on Interstate 95 on Tuesday morning, fire rescue crews said. The crash happened at 8:15 a.m. on I-95 southbound near the 142 mile-marker, officials said. The tractor-trailer that struck the other vehicle had significant damage, Indian River County Fire Rescue Bureau Chief of Emergency Medical Services Steve Greer said. The driver of the heavily damaged tractor-trailer was flown to HCA Florida Lawnwood Hospital in Fort Pierce, Greer said. The condition of the driver, a man, was not immediately known. The driver of the other tractor-trailer refused treatment, Greer said. Photos provided by Indian River County Sheriff's Office and Rick Kulmann
Woman hurt in overnight rollover crash
INDIAN RIVER COUNTY — A woman suffered traumatic injuries after her car rolled over into a grassy area in an overnight crash Monday, authorities said. The single-vehicle wreck happened about 12:15 a.m. in the 6200 block of County Road 510 in West Wabasso, fire rescue crews and Indian River County sheriff's officials said. The woman, who was driving a light-colored sedan, was taken by ambulance to Health First's Holmes Regional Medical Center in Melbourne, Indian River County Fire Rescue Bureau Chief Bill Herrington said. Deputies briefly closed the roadway in the area of the crash. The sheriff's office continues to investigate the wreck. Photos contributed by Indian River County Sheriff's Office | {
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New Alliances in Vape Industry Could Mean Global Regulation
The Smoke-Free Alternatives Trade Association (SFATA) announced in a press release that it will join the North American Vapor Alliance (NAVA). These organizations, as a joint venture, will help to build and vie for a comprehensive regulatory framework for vape products across North American borders and abroad. NAVA currently is comprised of the American E-Liquid Manufacturing Standards Association (AEMSA) and the Canadian Vaping Association (CVA). NAVA and CVA have each recently held meetings with federal authorities to develop better working relations between the vape industry and government bodies.
"SFATA has always supported the need for sensible regulation of the vapor industry," said Executive Director Mark Anton. As it stands, there are few regulations for vapes, most of which overlap with tobacco regulation – causing problematic stigma and inapplicable policies for the tobacco-less product. Important to both the industry and the government, though, is to effectively regulate vapes and paraphernalia to keep products out of the hands of kids.
New Business Standards
To that end, the organization has specific and stringent principle requirements for any business that looks to join. From their website: "SFATA and its members sell only to adults. SFATA and its members do not market to minors. SFATA and its members support a national age standard on the sale of vapor products and e-liquids that aligns with the national age of majority for other adult responsibilities such as voting, paying taxes, and serving in our U.S. military." The organization's site states any business applying for membership implicitly agrees to adhere to these principles.
Yet, much of the current outcry for better vape regulation comes on the heels of increased e-cigarette use by minors, specifically. As more businesses receive warning letters and fines from the FDA for sale to minors, the vape industry overall needs to act quickly to salvage the initial and intended purpose of smokeless alternatives. Some companies, like Juul, already claimed they intend to arrange and fund education initiatives for youth about the dangers of nicotine products like theirs.
But more regulatory work is still needed. Anton said organization leaders and FDA Commissioner, Scott Gottlieb, recently sat down together to discuss the importance and necessity of industry-specific standards. The industry, in working to unify and solidify better regulatory standards for not only manufacture, but more importantly for sale, could help keep vapes out of the hands of youth. "We believe this can best be accomplished by a united industry – including outside of the USA," Anton said.
The SFATA joined with NAVA to ensure more than just North American protections. The alliance seeks to "encourage effective global regulation to ensure the industry thrives and expands as more people quit smoking deadly cigarettes for a less harmful alternative," Anton said. Proper global regulations are ultimately good for the booming US vape industry, as more manufacturers and e-commerce companies start up to meet growing demand. "SFATA is committed to the growth of our small, American businesses," said Anton.
April Meyers, SFATA Board President, echoed Anton's statements. "Since our meeting [with the FDA], it's become our goal to develop global professional-level manufacturing standards for e-liquids, hardware, and retail accreditation and certification,' Meyers said. She called the agency the "global gold-standard regulatory body" for vape products and said that they are looking to the vape industry "for leadership and solutions."
SFATA and NAVA have a unique opportunity here to help dictate the future of vape regulations for not only the North American markets, but the world over. The two groups plan to work on a second round of updated manufacturing standards, as well as "develop new standards that will be state of the art for e-liquid components and hardware." The joint parties will also create and develop a set of accreditation standards to vape product retailers, including e-commerce sales channels.
PrevPreviouseBay, FDA Combat Online Juul Sales. But Did it Work?
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Starting Monday, January 10 we will be reducing our operating hours in response to reduced staffing as a result of the current COVID surge.
Our new hours will be:
Monday & Wednesday: 9am-5pm
Tuesday & Thursday: 11am-7pm
Friday: 12pm-5pm
All programming will be held online for the rest of January.
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Pearl River Public Library National Medal for Museum and Library Services
The Pearl River Public Library is pleased to announce that they have been nominated for the prestigious National Medal for Museum and Library services. Congressman Mondaire Jones of the 17th congressional district nominated the library on the basis of the level and quality of service the Pearl River Public Library provides the community.
The National Medal for Museum and Library Service is the nation's highest honor for institutions that make significant and exceptional contributions to their communities. Since 1994, IMLS has presented the award to institutions that demonstrate extraordinary and innovative approaches to community service.
"We are extremely proud and honored to have been nominated this year," said Library Director Eugenia Schatoff. "It's highly gratifying to be recognized for all the work we've been doing, especially during the pandemic, to provide our neighbors with top of the line enrichment programs for all ages."
The Library's Learning Lab is one highlight featured in the nomination packet. Since its inception in 2014, the Learning Lab has seen exponential growth in the amount of program offerings. During the pandemic, Learning Lab librarians continued to provide programs through ZOOM, YouTube, and Facebook Live. Today, the Learning Lab offers a mixture of in-person, virtual, and hybrid programs to patrons of all ages.
The following is just a sample of the many programs the Learning Lab has offered since its inception:
Robotics for Kids 2nd-6th
Robotics for Teens/Tweens 6th-12th
Tech Help Monthly Outreach
Learning Lab Annual Tech Fair
Math Club STEAM Projects
Photography Club/Photography Show
Adobe Suite Workshops
Cyber Security Workshop
in-Residence Lecture Series
STEAM Hot Topics Lecture Series
Teen Tech Tutors
Adult-Tech, Coding, App Development and Robotics programs
Camp Robot
Genealogy for Adults
Pearl River Library Press Books: Writing from Life Volumes I-IV and local history titles.
Great Performances Series
Is Social Media Right for Me? A 2-part series for seniors
Cyber Security and Online Etiquette for Teens
"For the past seven years, the Pearl River Public Library has been a leader in creating original enrichment programs for the entire community," said John Aiello, Head of Programming and Outreach at the library and the founding creators of the Learning Lab.
"Because technology affects nearly all aspects of life now," he added, "the offerings in our Learning Lab have broadened to include a full range of interrelated STEAM programming. Our Senior Writing group has published 4 books while studying in the Learning Lab, simultaneously learning to use Chromebooks, Google Drive and Zoom. Our robotics club kids used Python to teach robots to draw Mother's Day cards. Our preschool patrons learned that making a bead necklace is a lot like writing a line of code. Our teen tech kids learned that Blender 3D Animation would be impossible without the programming skills they're learning about."
The Pearl River Public Library provides a variety of exciting and informative programs, events, and services for the entire community, from children and teens to adults and seniors. Whether it's science or writing classes through the Learning Lab, online workshops, museum passes, or notary services, the Pearl River Public Library offers something for every resident.
Pearl River Public Library, 80 Franklin Avenue, Pearl River, NY
80 Franklin Ave
Pearl River, NY 10965
© 2022 - Pearl River Public Library
Monday & Wednesday: 9:00 am - 5:00 pm
Tuesday & Thursday: 11:00 am - 7:00 pm | {
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Q: Modifiable Array of strings in PostgreSQL I am looking to store an Array of strings in a table which I can then append more data to.
My table looks like this:
CREATE TABLE users (id SERIAL, username varchar(32), password char(40), name varchar(64), age integer, successful_logins varchar(32)[10], failed_logins varchar(32)[10], roles text[3]);
I have tried this but it doesnt do anything:
UPDATE users SET successful_logins = array_append(successful_logins, :timestamp) WHERE username = :username;
The :varname comes from a JDBI Driver I am using, but I am passing in a String. Why doesnt this work? Is there a better way to get the same result?
EDIT:
Here is the driver I am using:
<dependency>
<groupId>postgresql</groupId>
<artifactId>postgresql</artifactId>
<version>9.1-901.jdbc4</version>
</dependency>
I get no error and it seems to be releted to my DAO or driver.
Here is the DAO code:
import org.skife.jdbi.v2.sqlobject.Bind;
import org.skife.jdbi.v2.sqlobject.SqlUpdate;
@SqlUpdate("UPDATE users SET successful_logins=ARRAY_APPEND((SELECT successful_logins FROM users WHERE username=:username),:timestamp)WHERE username=:username")
void addSuccessfulLogin(@Bind("timestamp") String timestamp, @Bind("username") String username);
When I try this in psql with the vars replaces with values it works. I am wondering if this this a casting issue? Do I need to cast my String to something?
A: I am not familiar with your JDBI library, but I tried this in the Postgres console and it worked:
UPDATE mytable SET successful_logins =
ARRAY_APPEND(
(
SELECT successful_logins FROM mytable WHERE id=1),
'Some additional value'
)
WHERE id=1
Perhaps the problem is that you need to select the existing successful_logins value before you pass it to the array_append.
EDIT: Well, it looks like you're missing a space between ARRAY_APPEND() and WHERE...
A: When I was making the call to addSuccessfulLogin I was doing:
addSuccessfulLogin(username, timestamp);
instead of
addSuccessfulLogin(timestamp, username)
So it was trying to find a username based on a timestamp, which doesnt exist. This is why there were no errors. SO make sure you call your own API correctly!
| {
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Q: org.springframework.beans.factory.wiring.BeanWiringInfo.BeanWiringInfo is initialized with null name I'm trying to re-wire an @Autowired field after a session serialization to Redis using Spring Session and Aspectj.
This is the bean:
@UIScope()
@SpringComponent(value = AboutView.VIEW_NAME)
@SpringView(name = AboutView.VIEW_NAME)
//
@Configurable(autowire = Autowire.BY_NAME, value = AboutView.VIEW_NAME, dependencyCheck = false, preConstruction = true)
public class AboutView extends AbstractView {
public static final String VIEW_NAME = "butterfly-effect-frontend-system:about";
private Table tableFrontEndInformation;
private GridLayout backendLayout;
private GridLayout frontendLayout;
@Autowired
private transient DiscoveryClient discoveryClient;
This bean is using @Configurable and the name of the bean definition (value). Unfortunately the aspect is creating a BeanWiringInfo with null bean name, that will raise an error as the name is required.
@Configurable(autowire = Autowire.BY_NAME, value = AboutView.VIEW_NAME, dependencyCheck = false, preConstruction = true)
The error happens due the following constructor which is called by AnnotationBeanWiringInfoResolver
/**
* Create a new BeanWiringInfo that points to the given bean name.
* @param beanName the name of the bean definition to take the property values from
* @param isDefaultBeanName whether the given bean name is a suggested
* default bean name, not necessarily matching an actual bean definition
* @throws IllegalArgumentException if the supplied beanName is {@code null},
* is empty, or consists wholly of whitespace
*/
public BeanWiringInfo(String beanName, boolean isDefaultBeanName) {
Assert.hasText(beanName, "'beanName' must not be empty");
this.beanName = beanName;
this.isDefaultBeanName = isDefaultBeanName;
}
The AnnotationBeanWiringInfoResolver instantiates the BeanWiringInfo from this code:
protected BeanWiringInfo buildWiringInfo(Object beanInstance, Configurable annotation) {
if (!Autowire.NO.equals(annotation.autowire())) {
return new BeanWiringInfo(annotation.autowire().value(), annotation.dependencyCheck());
}
else {
if (!"".equals(annotation.value())) {
// explicitly specified bean name
return new BeanWiringInfo(annotation.value(), false);
}
else {
// default bean name
return new BeanWiringInfo(getDefaultBeanName(beanInstance), true);
}
}
}
This is the error:
Caused by: java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: 'name' must not be null
at org.springframework.util.Assert.notNull(Assert.java:115) ~[spring-core-4.3.5.RELEASE.jar:4.3.5.RELEASE]
at org.springframework.beans.factory.BeanFactoryUtils.transformedBeanName(BeanFactoryUtils.java:72) ~[spring-beans-4.3.5.RELEASE.jar:4.3.5.RELEASE]
at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractBeanFactory.transformedBeanName(AbstractBeanFactory.java:1109) ~[spring-beans-4.3.5.RELEASE.jar:4.3.5.RELEASE]
at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractBeanFactory.getMergedBeanDefinition(AbstractBeanFactory.java:970) ~[spring-beans-4.3.5.RELEASE.jar:4.3.5.RELEASE]
at com.vaadin.spring.internal.SpringViewDisplayPostProcessor.postProcessAfterInitialization(SpringViewDisplayPostProcessor.java:66) ~[classes/:na]
at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.applyBeanPostProcessorsAfterInitialization(AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.java:423) ~[spring-beans-4.3.5.RELEASE.jar:4.3.5.RELEASE]
at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.initializeBean(AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.java:1594) ~[spring-beans-4.3.5.RELEASE.jar:4.3.5.RELEASE]
at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.initializeBean(AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.java:400) ~[spring-beans-4.3.5.RELEASE.jar:4.3.5.RELEASE]
at org.springframework.beans.factory.wiring.BeanConfigurerSupport.configureBean(BeanConfigurerSupport.java:142) ~[spring-beans-4.3.5.RELEASE.jar:4.3.5.RELEASE]
at org.springframework.beans.factory.aspectj.AnnotationBeanConfigurerAspect.configureBean(AnnotationBeanConfigurerAspect.aj:63) ~[spring-aspects-4.3.5.RELEASE.jar:4.3.5.RELEASE]
at org.springframework.beans.factory.aspectj.AbstractDependencyInjectionAspect.ajc$before$org_springframework_beans_factory_aspectj_AbstractDependencyInjectionAspect$1$e854fa65(AbstractDependencyInjectionAspect.aj:79) ~[spring-aspects-4.3.5.RELEASE.jar:4.3.5.RELEASE]
at com.scipionyx.butterflyeffect.frontend.configuration.ui.view.AboutView.<init>(AboutView.java:72) ~[classes/:na]
at sun.reflect.NativeConstructorAccessorImpl.newInstance0(Native Method) ~[na:1.8.0_45]
at sun.reflect.NativeConstructorAccessorImpl.newInstance(NativeConstructorAccessorImpl.java:62) ~[na:1.8.0_45]
at sun.reflect.DelegatingConstructorAccessorImpl.newInstance(DelegatingConstructorAccessorImpl.java:45) ~[na:1.8.0_45]
at java.lang.reflect.Constructor.newInstance(Constructor.java:422) ~[na:1.8.0_45]
at org.springframework.beans.BeanUtils.instantiateClass(BeanUtils.java:142) ~[spring-beans-4.3.5.RELEASE.jar:4.3.5.RELEASE]
... 107 common frames omitted
Does anyone knows what can be wrong on this configuration ?
Your help us much appreciated.
A: I'm still trying to understand why, but it seems that removing the autowire = Autowire.BY_NAME from the @Configuration seems to solve the problem.
Now the Class looks like this:
@UIScope()
@SpringComponent(value = AboutView.VIEW_NAME)
@SpringView(name = AboutView.VIEW_NAME)
//
@Configurable(value = AboutView.VIEW_NAME)
public class AboutView extends AbstractView {
| {
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Plug-A-Long Plumbing & Gasfitting can supply and install a wide range of LP and natural gas heaters . We can also carry out servicing, repairs and test for carbon monoxide. Carbon monoxide is a tasteless, colourless and odourless deadly gas. It is highly recommended that you have your gas heater serviced and tested for carbon monoxide every 2 years minimum.
Central Heating - Ducted central heating comprises a central heating unit, which is connected to a series of outlets and LP or natural gas. Positioned strategically throughout your home, these outlets, or ducts, are installed either in the floor or ceiling. Positioning of the heating unit depends on your house. Ducted central heating is the most efficient way to warm your entire house.
Space Heating - Flued Space Heaters combine cosy radiant warmth with superior quality and reliability. Ranges of space heating also include gas log heating and gas energy saver heating.
Wall Furnace Heating - When you need to warm the living areas of your home, that's the time to choose a wall furnace. With their sleek and stylish design, they'll suit any decor. Depending on the size of the area you wish to heat there are various sizes to choose from.
Wood Heaters - Wood heating consists of various different models and brands which can effectively heat from 10 squares up to 30 squares of spacious living. If you're looking for a homely, cosy feel, this is the best option for you.
Plug-A-Long Plumbing & Gasfitting can supply and install a wide range of LP, natural gas, electric, solar and heat pump hot water systems. We can also make repairs or spare part replacements when necessary.
Instantaneous Hot Water - Hot water that never runs out. Heats water continually on demand. Internal or external options. Compact design and great for limited space.
Solar Hot Water - Solar water heaters work by absorbing energy from the sun's rays in roof mounted solar collectors. This energy is transferred to heat water stored in the storage tank. Electric or gas boosted models are available.
Storage Hot Water - (Gas or electric) Heats and stores water ready for use. Comes in various sizes to suit the amount of occupants in the house. Internal or external options.
Heat Pump Hot Water - Delivers hot water by efficiently utilising a free and abundant source of energy- the heat that is in the air around us. Refrigerant vapour compression technology enables the heat pump to intensify this heat, which is used to produce hot water. | {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaC4"
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Ayatollah Khomeini returns to Iran
On February 1, 1979, the Ayatollah Khomeini returns to Iran in triumph after 15 years of exile. The shah and his family had fled the country two weeks before, and jubilant Iranian revolutionaries were eager to establish a fundamentalist Islamic government under Khomeini's leadership.
Born around the turn of the century, Ruhollah Khomeini was the son of an Islamic religious scholar and in his youth memorized the Qur'an. He was a Shiite–the branch of Islam practiced by a majority of Iranians–and soon devoted himself to the formal study of Shia Islam in the city of Qom. A devout cleric, he rose steadily in the informal Shiite hierarchy and attracted many disciples.
In 1941, British and Soviet troops occupied Iran and installed Mohammad Reza Pahlavi as the second modern shah of Iran. The new shah had close ties with the West, and in 1953 British and U.S. intelligence agents helped him overthrow a popular political rival. Mohammad Reza embraced many Western ideas and in 1963 launched his "White Revolution," a broad government program that called for the reduction of religious estates in the name of land redistribution, equal rights for women, and other modern reforms.
Khomeini, now known by the high Shiite title "ayatollah," was the first religious leader to openly condemn the shah's program of westernization. In fiery dispatches from his Faziye Seminary in Qom, Khomeini called for the overthrow of the shah and the establishment of an Islamic state. In 1963, Mohammad Reza imprisoned him, which led to riots, and on November 4, 1964, expelled him from Iran.
Khomeini settled in An Najaf, a Shiite holy city across the border in Iraq, and sent home recordings of his sermons that continued to incite his student followers. Breaking precedence with the Shiite tradition that discouraged clerical participation in government, he called for Shiite leaders to govern Iran.
In the 1970s, Mohammad Reza further enraged Islamic fundamentalists in Iran by holding an extravagant celebration of the 2,500th anniversary of the pre-Islamic Persian monarchy and replaced the Islamic calendar with a Persian calendar. As discontent grew, the shah became more repressive, and support for Khomeini grew. In 1978, massive anti-shah demonstrations broke out in Iran's major cities. Dissatisfied members of the lower and middle classes joined the radical students, and Khomeini called for the shah's immediate overthrow. In December, the army mutinied, and on January 16, 1979, the shah fled.
Khomeini arrived in Tehran in triumph on February 1, 1979, and was acclaimed as the leader of the Iranian Revolution. With religious fervor running high, he consolidated his authority and set out to transform Iran into a religious state. On November 4, 1979, the 15th anniversary of his exile, students stormed the U.S. embassy in Tehran and took the staff hostage. With Khomeini's approval, the radicals demanded the return of the shah to Iran and held 52 Americans hostage for 444 days. The shah died in Egypt of cancer in July 1980.
In December 1979, a new Iranian constitution was approved, naming Khomeini as Iran's political and religious leader for life. Under his rule, Iranian women were denied equal rights and required to wear a veil, Western culture was banned, and traditional Islamic law and its often-brutal punishments were reinstated. In suppressing opposition, Khomeini proved as ruthless as the shah, and thousands of political dissidents were executed during his decade of rule.
In 1980, Iraq invaded Iran's oil-producing province of Khuzestan. After initial advances, the Iraqi offense was repulsed. In 1982, Iraq voluntarily withdrew and sought a peace agreement, but Khomeini renewed fighting. Stalemates and the deaths of thousands of young Iranian conscripts in Iraq followed. In 1988, Khomeini finally agreed to a U.N.-brokered cease-fire.
After the Ayatollah Khomeini died on June 3, 1989, more than two million anguished mourners attended his funeral. Gradual democratization began in Iran in early the 1990s, culminating in a free election in 1997 in which the moderate reformist Mohammed Khatami was elected president.
History.com Editors
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/ayatollah-khomeini-returns-to-iran
Middle EastIran
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Puccini's La bohème premieres in Turin, Italy
By the time the first of his three career-defining operas had its premiere, Giacomo Puccini was no longer living a life of impoverished artistic struggle. His previous opera, Manon Gascaut, had made his name in the world of Italian opera, and, more important, it had earned him a ...read more
First session of the U.S. Supreme Court
In the Royal Exchange Building on New York City's Broad Street, the Supreme Court of the United States meets for the first time, with Chief Justice John Jay of New York presiding. The U.S. Supreme Court was established by Article Three of the U.S. Constitution, which took effect ...read more
Oxford Dictionary debuts
On this day in 1884, the first portion, or fascicle, of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), considered the most comprehensive and accurate dictionary of the English language, is published. Today, the OED is the definitive authority on the meaning, pronunciation and history of ...read more
Germany resumes unrestricted submarine warfare
On this day in 1917, the lethal threat of the German U-boat submarine raises its head again, as Germany returns to the policy of unrestricted submarine warfare it had previously suspended in response to pressure from the United States and other neutral countries. Unrestricted ...read more
Nixon announces his candidacy for president
Richard M. Nixon announces his candidacy for the presidency. Most observers had written off Nixon's political career eight years earlier, when he had lost to John F. Kennedy in the 1960 election. Two years after losing to Kennedy, Nixon ran for governor of California and lost in ...read more
Mormon president goes underground
John Taylor, the president of the Mormon Church, goes "underground" to avoid arrest and continue resisting federal demands for reforms within the community of Latter-day Saints. A former Methodist minister, Taylor converted to Mormonism in 1836, not long after Joseph Smith ...read more
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Official registration of Hollywood
On this day in 1887, Harvey Wilcox officially registers Hollywood with the Los Angeles County recorder's office. Wilcox and his wife, Daeida, had moved to Southern California four years earlier from Topeka, Kansas, where Harvey had made his fortune in real estate. They bought 160 ...read more
Columbia Space Shuttle mission ends in disaster
On this day in 2003, the space shuttle Columbia breaks up while entering the atmosphere over Texas, killing all seven crew members on board. The Columbia's 28th space mission, designated STS-107, was originally scheduled to launch on January 11, 2001, but was delayed numerous ...read more
Serial killer Ted Bundy strikes again
On this day in 1974, University of Washington student Lynda Ann Healy disappears from her apartment and is killed by Ted Bundy. The murder marked Bundy's entry into the ranks of serial killers as he had recently attacked his first victim, Sharon Clarke, in her Seattle home. By ...read more
Texas secedes
On this day in 1861, Texas becomes the seventh state to secede from the Union when a state convention votes 166 to 8 in favor of the measure. The Texans who voted to leave the Union did so over the objections of their governor, Sam Houston.A staunch Unionist,Houston's election in ...read more
Japanese begin evacuation of Guadalcanal
On this day, Japanese forces on Guadalcanal Island, defeated by Marines, start to withdraw after the Japanese emperor finally gives them permission. On July 6, 1942, the Japanese landed on Guadalcanal Island, part of the Solomon Islands chain, and began constructing an airfield. ...read more | {
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The City of Devine has created this page for any bids and contracts announcements. It will be posted when the city is accepting bids and what department to call for a bid package.
The City of Devine follows the Texas Local Government Codes and the Texas Municipal Law and Procedure Manual for the bid process. | {
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As in many developing countries, radio reaches the widest audience in Haiti. Estimates vary, but more than 300 radio stations are believed to broadcast throughout the country. Talk show programs serve as one of the few ways in which ordinary Haitians can speak out about politics and the government. A law passed in 1997 declares the airwaves to be the property of the government, but at least 133 unlicensed radio stations operate freely. In addition, there are 50 community-based stations throughout the country.
Television has experienced in the last 12 months, a dramatic expansion with, in the metropolitan area, no fewer than 25 stations broadcasting on the airwaves. Tele Haiti, the oldest TV station, offers on its cable network many foreign channels.
Haiti's three French-language newspapers have a total circulation of less than 20,000. Small, Creole-language newspapers are printed irregularly.
History
The media sector in Haiti has a long history and its situation today might be understood in the light of its progress through the years.
1724: Media existed for the first time in Haiti, with the newspaper of French journalist Joseph Payen who received an authorization from the King of France.
1764: Antoine Marie, a printer from France, founded in Cap-Haïtien the weekly publication: "Gazette de Saint-Domingue". The publication was forced to change locations to Port-au-Prince. lt had 1500 subscribers in 1788.
The French Revolution in 1789 brought some freedom for the press, and other papers went into print. In 1802, fifty newspapers have been listed in Saint-Domingue.
1804: The « Gazette politique et commerciale d'Haïti», the first publication in the new independent country. This publication dropped out of circulation.
1806: When the Emperor Jean-Jacques Dessalines died on October 17, 1806, «Sentinelle d'Haïti» replaced the Gazette. lts name will change several times but spreading the government ideology remained its main objective.
From 1804 to 1949. Max Bissainthe has counted 885 newspapers, some of which exist until today, such as Le Moniteur (1845), Le Nouvelliste (1898) and Le Matin (1907). The period before the American occupation was characterized by the breach and violation of ethical and professional rules. Successive governments and their opponents seized the press sector to their profit.
Between 1914 and 1934, during the American occupation, three laws were adopted to regulate the press sector. These laws restricted freedom of the press. The more outspoken journalists were put in jail, e.g. Georges J. Petit, who went to prison seventeen times between 1915 and 1960. He wrote an article in Le Petit Impartial, along with Jacques Roumain who was also critical of the occupation and advocated that the youth take a stand.
1930: Emergence of the broadcasting media. Print media was almost completely abandoned. Broadcasting imposed itself as a real alternative in the country where nearly 85% people were illiterate. Several of today's well-known stations were created during this time period, such as Radio Haiti (1935) and Radio Caraïbes in Port-au-Prince (1949). The provinces, Radio Voix du Nord (1945), Radio Citadelle (1950) and Voix Évangélique in the North department and Radio Indépendance in Gonaïves/Artibonite (1953) emerged.
1957–1986. The coming of TV established the domination of audiovisual media. Télé Haiti, in 1959, became the first TV station in the country. During the twenty-nine year Duvalier dictatorship, there is systematic violation of basic freedoms of the press; harassment, torture of journalists, censorship. Many journalists went into exile.
In 1979, the government launched the Télévision Nationale d'Haïti (TNH) a TV "real" mass medium. Unfortunately, since its creation TNH has remained an instrument of propaganda for the government.
Since 1986, the press sector has experienced constant change. Indeed, several journalists have been imprisoned or killed for their ideology, their affinity for political groups or their objectivity.
The hope for a free media vanished with the military coup against Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
When Aristide returned from exile in 1994, the press was expecting an improvement in freedom. The assassination of Jean-Léopold Dominique, owner and director of Radio Haiti-Inter in 2000, and Brignol Lindor, political columnist and editorial director in Radio Echo 2000 in 2001 showed that the hope for assuring press freedom was destined for disillusionment.
Governmental policy and Regulation
The decree of October 12, 1977, published during Jean Claude Duvalier's regime, the principal document governing the operation of the sector of telecommunications in Haiti gives the Haitian State the monopoly of services in telecommunications. The authority placed in control of this sector is the National Council of Telecommunications (CONATEL).
The press and media sector is running under a Decree issued on July 31, 1986 by the General' Henri Namphy's government. This publication makes provision for aIl press industries, which outline the privileges and duties that go with the media professions.
"Press" refers to the followings:
Newspapers or all kind of periodical publications
Broadcasting and television
Printing house, bookshop, publishing house
Press agencies
Journalists are the press enterprise's editors, radio broadcast announcers, TV presenters, cameramen, researchers, columnists, contributors to the editing, editors, translators, reporters, picture editors, and photojournalists.
The Ministry of Information and Coordination issue accreditation cards, renewable each year, to the press enterprises that have legal registration. The conditions for obtaining a professional card that attest the capacity of a journalist include a University degree or equivalent, and a credential card from a registered organ of the press.
Foreign journalists who want to practice their profession in Haiti have to request a professional card from the Ministry of Information and Coordination.
The creation of the press enterprise is subject to a prior declaration addressed to the Ministry of Information and Coordination, the National Archives and the National Library for a registration of copyright. The owner of an audiovisual media makes a declaration to the Ministry of Publics Works, Transport and Communication, and the Ministry of Justice.
Media landscape
In Haiti, three news agencies, two daily and two weekly newspapers published in the capital, Port-au-Prince, form the core of the written press. Other periodicals (political journals and varieties magazines) exist, but appear to be very irregular.
Nearly 400 radio and TV stations broadcast on Haitian territory. Only half work legally, with a license of Conatel, the agency that regulates communications.
Experts talk of a large territorial coverage by those 400 media, for a country of 10 million people and 27,750 sq km. However, the statistics for measuring the audience ratings and penetration are non-existent. In a country where the literacy rate is 53% and the standard of living low, we know that radio is the most popular medium.
The majority of 400 radios and TVs are small independent businesses, mainly concentrated in big cities. They broadcast on FM. AM transmitters are too costly to operate.
Public media, grouped in the consortium RTNH (Radio Télévision Nationale d'Haïti), despite the out datedness of their equipment, cover much of the territory.
Haiti has thirty community radio stations, which are located in rural areas. They are managed by farmers' organizations. They diffuse news, educational programs on health, agriculture and environment.
The religious stations are present in many localities. Excepted the stations of the Baptist network Radio Lumière, these Christian media are managed by local churches or dioceses.
Unlike other countries in the region, there are no big press groups, with large financial resources in Haiti. However, a movement of grouping of stations begins with the constitution of two groups of media, from the two dailies in the country: Le Nouvelliste group and Le Nouveau Matin SA group, which manage each a daily journal, a weekly magazine (respectively, Ticket Magazine and Spotlight Magazine), online newspapers including Balistrad and Ayibopost, one or two radio stations, and soon television channels.
Another group, Caraïbes FM, consists of seven radio stations and two TV channels network. There is a trend for most important radio stations to have their own TV channel.
Many stations of the capital work in network with radios of province, through the country. They broadcast especially news.
All major Haitian media have their own websites, which distributes audio or written contents. These texts or audio signals are widely relayed by other media in the Haitian Diaspora. Three television channels are broadcast by the site JumpTV.com.
Four news agencies publish only on the Internet: Balistrad, Agence Haitienne de Presse, Haiti Press Network and MediAlternatif.
Formats
Newspapers
Newspapers in Haiti include the following:
Balistrad, est. 2018 (online)
Le Nouvelliste, est. 1898
, est. 2015
Le Matin, est. 1907 (Defunct media)
Le Moniteur, est. 1845 (official journal)
Haïti Liberté, est. 2007
Haïti Observateur
Haïti en Marche
Haïti Progrès
Radio
Radio stations in Haiti include the following:
Radio Antilles Internationale, est. 1984
Radio Caraïbes, est. 1949
Radio Cacique, est. 1961
Radio Celeste, est. 1991
Radio Galaxie, est. 1990
Radio Ginen, est. 1994 http://haitimedia.live/radio/92-9-fm-radio-ginen/
Radio Kadans FM, est. 1991
Radio Kiskeya, est. 1994 http://haitimedia.live/radio/88-5-fm-radio-kiskeya/
Radio Lakansyel
Radio Lumière, est. 1959 http://haitimedia.live/radio/95-9-fm-radio-lumiere/
Radio Magic Stereo, est. 1991
Radio Métropole, est. 1970 http://haitimedia.live/radio/100-1-fm-radio-metropole/
Signal FM http://haitimedia.live/radio/90-5-fm-signal-fm/
Radio Soleil
Radio Tele Zenith
Radio Vision 2000 http://haitimedia.live/radio/99-3-radio-vision-2000/
Defunct stations include:
Radio Haiti-Inter, 1935-2003
Television
TV stations in Haiti include the following:
Tele Caraibes http://hbiptv.com/tele-caraibes/
Tele Ginen http://hbiptv.com/tele-ginen/
Tele Metropole http://hbiptv.com/tele-metropole/
Television Nationale d'Haiti http://hbiptv.com/tele-nationale-dhaiti/
Nago TV http://nago.tv
Radio Tele 6 Univers http://hbiptv.com/tele-6-univers/
Tele Kiskeya http://hbiptv.com/tele-kiskeya/
Tele Super Star http://hbiptv.com/tele-super-star/
Tele Espace http://hbiptv.com/tele-espace-2/
Hebdo TV http://hbiptv.com/hebdotvcom/
Tele Eclair http://hbiptv.com/tele-eclair/
Tele Hirondelle http://hbiptv.com/tele-hirondelle/
Tele Signal http://hbiptv.com/tele-signal/
Tele Amani-Y http://hbiptv.com/tele-amani-y/
Tele Haiti ' http://telehaiti.com/
Tele Variété Chaine 30 https://www.tva30.com/
Netalkole TV https://haitibroadcasting.com/netalkoletv/
Cinema
Media's development: challenges and advantages
Challenges
The Haitian press faces many challenges with limited resources.
First challenge: survive as a company - or nonprofit institution - in a country economically weak and politically fragile. The majority of the Haitian media are small businesses operating in a very risky and very competitive.
The media fail to operate properly and to meet their financial obligations, as renew their equipment and improve working conditions and salaries of technicians and journalists.
In Haiti, due to major economic difficulties facing the country, the advertising market is low and is concentrated mainly in the capital, Port-au-Prince. Because of rationing electricity, the operating budget of the media is burdened by the cost of fuel and maintenance of generators.
The media in the Diaspora, Canada and the United States, operating in a more structured, less confront these problems, due also to the greater access to funding sources, such as advertising and subsidies.
The second challenge: to manage the precarious and the low skill level of its employees. Very few journalists are able to live decently on their wages. Very few are trained properly, even though the number of training schools tends to increase.
Third challenge: to carry out its mission of information. Because of the deficiencies in the education system, it is incumbent upon the media, particularly radio, to inform and educate the Haitian people. This requires large financial resources and adequate human resources.
Illiteracy and low enrolment rates are obstacles that prevent the spread of the media, including the written press.
The Haitian journalists often become mercenaries, against ethics and professional ethics. This is a serious credibility problem.
Fourth challenge: working in security. Journalists can cope with various acts of violence: persecution, threats, intimidation, arrests, attacks on the facilities. These physical attacks can be fatal. Example murder of Jean Dominique, were never punished until today.
Fifth challenge: master the new technologies. As elsewhere in the world, the Haitian Press faces the benefits but also the constraints created by the new information technologies and communication.
The development of the Internet and cellular phones over the past five years has allowed the media to benefit from a better flow of information. But it has also revealed other media competitors, such as webradios, webTV, sites for sharing videos, such YouTube, blogs, and so on.
Despite the cyclical and structural problems, the Haitian media manage to reflect a certain vitality of journalism in Haiti and to forge a sense that the media have a crucial role to play in the country's future.
Advantages
The development of the Internet and cellular phones over the past five years has allowed the media to benefit from a better flow of information. But it also revealed other media competitors, including web radios, web TV, sharing sites like YouTube videos, blogs, and so on.
See also
Telecommunications in Haiti
References
Bibliography
in English
; + "Press", p. 214
. (About alternative and community media)
+ List of community radio stations, p. 68+
in French
External links
SUR LES ONDES: la meilleure source d'informations sur les médias haïtiens
HAITI MEDIA LIVE: the best source for news about haitian media
Atelier des Médias de RFI: le blog de Claudel Victor
Digital Library of the Caribbean contains newspapers, gazettes, and many other publications from Haiti
Ann Kite Yo Pale or Let Them Speak, an infoasaid report on Best Practice and Lessons Learned in Communication with Disaster Affected Communities after 2010 earthquake - published in November 2011 and written by Imogen Wall and Yves Gérald Chéry.
(Digitized copies of 17th-19th c. books, newspapers, maps, some published in Haiti, now in the John Carter Brown Library, Brown University, US)
Haiti
Haiti | {
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Al Dente Restaurant - Orient. Everyone is ok but island is mashup...bad. But everyone is working hard to clean things up. The trees are already getting new leafs! Please let us know when you come back to Sxm you will most welcome in al Dente.
Sky' s The Limit in Grand Case is OPEN!!
Spiga in Grand Case, unlike many other businesses there, had minor damage. They had planned earlier to reopen in November after their seasonal closing; we'll keep you posted. Creative Italian.
Several weeks of hard work and lots of dedication are paying off. Saturday October 7 Karakter will reopen. Opening hours for now: week days from 11 am till 9 pm for lunch and dinner, Saturdays and Sundays from 9 am till 9 pm for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
Rebuilding will continue and therefore we start with a limited menu. The beach did not yet come back completely, so there is a temporary access. Other than that Karakter will always be Karakter, so we kick off with our long time musical friends Connis Vanterpool and Betti V. Saturday October 7 they will perform from 5 pm till 9 pm. See you all on Saturday.
p.s.: limited time only: 50% off on selected cheese in the store... Happy Hour: Mon-Fri from 4-6pm. | {
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Minister accused of spending N10bn on private jet
A serving minister in the cabinet of President Goodluck Jonathan has been accused of maintaining a jet in the private hangers of the nation's airports with a whopping sum of N10 billion in two years.
Of this amount, the cost of stationing the jet in private hangers of the airports had cost N3.120 billion within the period.
This allegation was contained in a petition forwarded to President Jonathan by some workers at the nation's airports, under the aegis of Concerned Aviation Professionals (CAP) at the weekend.
The petition, also copied to the Senate President, David mark; Speaker of the House of Representatives, Aminu Tambuwal; Senate Committee on Public Petitions, House Committee on Public Petitions, all political parties with members in the National Assembly and civil society organisations, has it that CAP is in possession of details of operation of the jet, a Challenger 850 with registration number 0E-ILA.
It was signed by both the coordinating chairman and coordinating secretary of CAP, Abdul Malik Masaya and John Obande Anihinru, respectively.
"We have details and impeccable records which confirm that the 'Super Minister' has been frittering away scarce Nigerian resources in maintaining the Challenger 850 aircraft at one of the private hangers in Nigerian airports in the last two years.
"The incontrovertible evidence we have is that the minister has been committing 500,000 euros (N130 million), monthly, to maintaining the aircraft in the last two years. Thus, in two years, the minister has committed the sum of N3.120 billion to keeping the jet, which is for personal and family use alone," the professionals said.
They alleged further that the cost of flying the jet around the world was what cumulated to the said N10 billion, boasting that records of the many trips, solely on vacation and personal ventures, that the jet had been on were available.
They said, "We make bold to say the amount above is just a tip of the iceberg. Many other billions have been wasted in flying the jet around the world, obviously for leisure, by the minister and solely members of the immediate family.
"Our records show that the amount already wasted by this minister and members of the family on trips that are, in no way, beneficial to Nigeria runs into not less than N10 billion.
"The worst of all, Sir, is the fact that an agency of government is paying the billions used to maintain this jet. We are aware of a war that is now brewing in the lucrative government agency when some directors got wind of the huge funds being channeled into maintaining the minister's private jet."
Members of CAP challenged the president to investigate not only their allegation, but also the contractor involved in the maintenance of the aircraft so as to ascertain whether or not the services were being paid for by Nigeria.
"We want you to investigate who entered into the contract for maintaining the Challenger jet on behalf of Nigeria. Is it a formal or informal contract? Why is Nigeria paying for the jet? We cannot comprehend the sense in keeping a plane solely for the use of a minister, especially when the plane is not part of the presidential fleet.
"Sir, we are not speculating. We know the implication of details contained in this letter for your government, but we are concerned that this is no longer something to be kept under the table.
"Details in our possession include the series of flights the minister had engaged in with the plane in the last two years. The details also include the different locations, time and date of the flights, as well as dates the plane returned to Nigeria at each instance.
"In fact, we can confirm to you that the plane has been in use since July 2002.we are concerned that the waste has continued even in the face of dwindling national budget," CAP said.
Story and comments/reaction: http://www.tribune.com.ng
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SRTP: the newest EPC scheme
The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and should not be attributed to the European Payments Council.
On 30 November 2020, the European Payment Council (
) launched the first version of its Single Euro Payments Area (
) Request-To-Pay (
SEPA Request-To-Pay
) scheme rulebook. The
is a messaging functionality that complements end-to-end payment flow because it allows a payee to request the initiation of a payment from a payer in a wide range of both physical and online use cases. We interviewed Jean-Yves Jacquelin, the chair of the ad-hoc RTP Task Force (RTP TF) responsible for the development of the
scheme, to shed some light on the future of the new scheme.
First, could you briefly describe the recently published
Request-to-Pay (
) scheme rulebook and the key steps towards its creation?
Following a three-month public consultation and with the close involvement of stakeholders from the entire payment value chain, the
published the first version of the
scheme rulebook on its website on 30 November 2020.
scheme rulebook, which is based on the RTP specifications document produced by the RTP Multi-stakeholder Group (
The Request-To-Pay Multi-Stakeholder Group
) and endorsed by the Euro Retail Payments Board (
Euro Retail Payments Board
) in November 2019, consists of a set of rules, practices and standards that makes it possible for any eligible
RTP Service Provider to join, participate and operate in the
scheme. It should be noted that the
scheme will be available to all eligible entities from all
countries according to the level playing-field principle between payment service providers (
) and non-
The effective date of the first rulebook is set to 15 June 2021 and takes into account the need for an independent certification body (to be selected and become operational) for the certification of applicants to the
scheme as described in the Trust and Security Framework Annex of the rulebook. This six-month period will also allow interested service providers to prepare themselves to become active in the
scheme as from its beginning.
scheme adherence process is planned to be opened in the first week of May 2021 to allow applicants to prepare their adherence application ahead of the effective date of the
scheme.
What are the main business benefits of the
scheme?
The current version of the RTP covers a compelling functionality that complements the use of credit transfers for a better end-to-end payment user experience in retail transactions, E-invoice Presentment and Payment (EIPP) transactions – i.e. Business-to-Customer (B2C), Business-to-Business (B2B) and Business-to-Government (B2G) – and proximity Person-to-Person (
Person-to-Person
) transactions.
The RTP helps streamline the end-to-end payment experience for all parties involved and facilitates reconciliation. Moreover, the scheme aims to facilitate the request of a payment in a digital manner (including interoperability and reachability) and allows payees to express their payment preferences (e.g. pay now/pay later) in alignment with their specific needs.
scheme can be considered a complement to the payments flow because it supports the end-to-end process and lies between the underlying commercial transaction and the payment itself. The RTP as such can be seen as an enabler for digital payments, especially in connection with instant payments.
How will the scheme's change management cycle be organised?
scheme change cycle will be organised in accordance with the structured and transparent change management process that is governed by the rulebook.
As a first step, the
has already invited the market to submit its change requests in relation to the first release of the rulebook by close of business on 26 February 2021.
In the last week of May 2021, a three-month public consultation on all change requests will be launched, with the aim of publishing a second version of the
rulebook by 30 November 2021 (entering into effect six months or one year later – to be confirmed).
Possible topics to be addressed in new versions of the
scheme rulebook include payment guarantee, instalment payments, pre-authorisation of payment, payment initiation in payer's application, possibility to include a URL and making the scheme currency agnostic. Some of these elaborate functionalities were identified in the 2019
specifications document.
What's next on
scheme's agenda?
Besides the preparation of the second release, the
is busy preparing a number of
scheme-related deliverables:
To ensure full transparency, the
will publish the document containing the public consultation comments received last summer and the related
responses as well as the input from the
(on these comments) by the end of 2020.
The implementation guidelines related to the first version of the
scheme rulebook are envisaged to be published by the end of January 2021.
In February 2021, the
plans to publish a Clarification Paper in relation to the first release to provide further background information to the market that could not be incorporated into the rulebook. In the same month, the
will also launch a Request for Proposal (RFP) for the selection of an independent certification body for the certification of applicants to the
Jean-Yves Jacquelin
Senior Payments Expert at Erste Bank Vienna
Jean Yves Jacquelin is in Product Management & Development of Erste Bank Austria as Senior Expert Payments for Erste Bank, Austrian Savings Banks, Erste Group Bank and Group countries. He is a chairman of the
Scheme Evolution & Maintenance (SEM) working group having the responsibility for the four
Rulebooks and
Scheme Management Board member.
European payments: a look at the past, present, and future
SEPA Request-to-Pay (SRTP) Scheme - A new driver for innovation in European payments
Strong corporate appetite for European Request to Pay services
Smarter access to cash in Belgium | {
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* Seven-Eights inch seamless collar.
* Shoulder to shoulder taping.
First Square: Switzerland set record with 559 minutes without receiving a goal.
Second Square: Goal in extra time minute 116 that beat Holland in the final.
Third Square: Spain was the first team to loose its first game and get the world cup trophy. | {
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TICKETS ON SALE FRIDAY, OCTOBER 17 AT 9:00 A.M.
THE WHO, one of rock's most legendary and defining bands, will celebrate their 50-year legacy when they bring their "THE WHO HITS 50!" tour to North America in 2015. "THE WHO HITS 50!" tour will play The Arena at Gwinnett Center on April 23. Tickets go on sale to the general public on Friday, October 17 at 9:00 AM (local time) at www.thewho.com. "THE WHO HITS 50!" tour is being presented by AEG Live.
Tickets on-sale Friday, October 17 at 9:00 A.M. Buy tickets at www.gwinnettcenter.com, The Arena box office or by calling 1-888-9-AXS-TIX.
The classic songs fans can expect to hear on "THE WHO HITS 50!" tour will appear on the band's forthcoming WHO HITS 50! collection. Set for an October 27, 2014 release on Geffen/Universal Music Enterprises (UMe), this definitive collection of THE WHO's greatest tracks--from their very first recordings as The High Numbers right up to the present day with the brand new track "Be Lucky"--is being released to coincide with the band's 50th anniversary tour. | {
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Apr. 28, 2017 | 12:08 AM
A quagmire of death
A still image taken from a video posted to a social media website and said to be shot on April 27, 2017, shows explosions and rising flames amid lights in distance, said to be shot in Damascus, Syria. Social Media Website via Reuters TV
A version of this article appeared in the print edition of The Daily Star on April 28, 2017, on page 7.
The quagmire of violence in Syria intensifies by the day.
The Syrian government has been making false threats such as these from long before the conflict there began.
Thursday's strike, if reports are to be believed, follows the usual pattern of targeting Iranian-supplied arms to hamstring Hezbollah's ability to attack Israel from Syria and Lebanon.
Both President Bashar Assad and the Kremlin spoke in generalities about the raid, offering hollow words as explanation for their inability to keep Syria's enemy out. | {
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May 2, 2019 | "Musical chemistry": local band Kapowski communicates through music
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April 29, 2019 | Working to understand, lessen effects of micro-plastics in St. Augustine
April 29, 2019 | Photo story: Jenna Boyter, Electric Chair Tattoo
April 28, 2019 | Cultivating authenticity at the St. Augustine Pirate and Treasure Museum
Joyner inaugurated as college's fourth president
Joseph Joyner takes the podium after being officially inaugurated as president. Photo: Katie Garwood
By Katie Garwood | gargoyle@flagler.edu
Surrounded by dignitaries, trustees, faculty, students and alumni, Joseph Joyner was officially inaugurated as the fourth president of Flagler College Saturday morning.
The inauguration ceremony held in Lewis Auditorium, was the first of its kind in the college's 50-year history. Joyner officially stepped into his role as president over the summer after being chosen by a search committee that looked nationwide for a replacement for William Abare, who served as president of the college for 15 years. Joyner previously served as superintendent of St. Johns County Schools.
Those who spoke in the ceremony sat alongside Joyner on-stage, and included Florida State University President John Thrasher, University of Central Florida President John Hitt, St. Augustine Mayor Nancy Shaver, Flagler faculty, staff and students.
Former Flagler presidents William Proctor and William Abare were in attendance for the inauguration. Photo: Katie Garwood
Two former Flagler presidents, William Proctor and William Abare were also onstage, and were there to pass along the presidency to Joyner, by placing a medallion around his neck, which is the symbol of the "high office" at Flagler.
"While I may be an unworthy servant, I possess a great deal of passion and determination and it is my firm intention to continue to bring greatness to this wonderful college," Joyner said.
In Joyner's speech, he acknowledged his father who passed away, and credited him with sparking his passion for education.
"He is without question my inspiration for pursuing educational leadership," Joyner said. "I just so much wanted to be like my dad."
Events held throughout the week built up to Saturday's inauguration, following the theme "Citizenship in a Diverse Democracy," which Joyner said could not have been a more appropriate message. Events included alumni and scholar panels, lectures and a naturalization ceremony.
"Our classrooms should be models of democracy and action," Joyner said, quoting the Association of American College and Universities. "The skills students need to form better understanding are very similar to those they need to become engaged citizens in a pluralistic democracy."
Frank Upchurch, William Abare and William Proctor prepare to inaugurate President Joseph Joyner. Photo: Katie Garwood
Thrasher, president of the university where Joyner received his bachelor's degree, said he and Joyner met when he was a state legislator and Joyner was superintendent of St. Johns County Schools.
"It's impossible not to like him, it's impossible not to respect him," Thrasher said. "He has a leader's courage, a scholar's curiosity and a servant's heart."
As for the future of the institution, Joyner said he feels a responsibility to lead the college to a new level, but that can't be done all on his own. He said he's spent a large chunk of time meeting with members of the college community to find the direction best suited for the college to take going forward.
"In the end, what's most important is building an organization that has trust as its foundation," Joyner said. "We are distinguished by our character and our integrity and our priority is always the students that we serve."
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FCTV News: University of Florida Bat House
By Austin Sanchez | gargoyle@flagler.edu The University of Florida's Bat Houses are the largest occupied colony living in man-made structures. Producer Austin Sanchez documents the importance of bats to our eco system as well as the agricultural industry.
FCTV News: Mediumship and Healing
FCTV News: Shell Bluff Landing
Spreading a message through the art of dance
By Rachel Gibson | gargoyle@flagler.edu We all have that rhythm inside. The beat of our heart flowing down to the step in our feet and in every move we make. Dancing is all around us, and for some, it is…
Students find 'family' in quidditch team
COM Week returns with a theme and several first-time events
© 2019 The Gargoyle | {
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You have reached the whowascallingyou.com reverse caller information page for 0113 346 3234. Below you will find all the information we have on this phone number and feedback and comments left by other visitors just like yourself. We also have a sophisticated algorithm to make a guess as to where the phone number originated from. If you have any extra information, please leave your feedback in the form below.
This is the telephone number of NEXUS telcomms systems based in Leeds.
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0113-346-3234 was parsed into our database on Sunday, 01.1.2017 @ 19:11pm. 71 visitors have read the information on this phone number. | {
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by StudentPulse | May 1, 2018 | Advocacy, communication, Governance, Representation, Student Voice, students, volunteering
Student representation turns 40
On 2 May 1978 then principal of the Waiariki Community College, Malcolm Murchie recognised the importance of having students actively engaged in decision making and strategy setting. In his words, ""An association of students is a critically important body to represent students". Actions speak loudly and the inclusion of Miss E Roberts onto the Council of the College marked a historical moment: the need for students being partners in education delivery and strategy had been formalised.
From that date forward student representation in Council and across the organisation, in its various forms, has been of significant importance. Waiariki, in short form, transformed itself from a Community College into a Polytechnic, and then an Institute of Technology. This became Toi Ohomai Institute of Technology in 2017.
In keeping with Murchie's instigation, over the last four decades a dedicated student association has represented and supported students through their studies. The first students association was created in 1981, under the legal authority of the institute. In 1987 significant progress was made and the Waiariki Polytechnic Students Association (WPSA) was registered with the Societies Office. The leaders of WPSA made the bold decision to join the national body known as Aotearoa Polytechnic Students Associations (WPSA) in 1990. It was in this same year that the association made its home in the M Block offices on Mokoia Campus, which still house the team today.
1998 was the first year that signaled dramatic changes in the conversation about student associations and representation in New Zealand. The student council put to the vote a motion to make WPSA a membership based association, which was passed. Management of Waiariki understood that a student association could be a powerful group and engaged WPSA in a contract for service model whereby WPSA would tender for delivery of programs on behalf of Waiariki.
Jump forward two years to 2000 and the students voted for WPSA to return to compulsory membership for all students. It was at this same time that WPSA changed its name to Waiariki Institute of Technology Students Association (WITSA). The beginning of the new century was a strong time in the history of WITSA. A number of presidents, beginning with Julie Pettet, created a lasting legacy that would establish WITSA as the representative of students, delivering measurable outcomes and creating impact in the community.
A key strength of any representative body is being able to positively engage with its members. The New Zealand Union of Students Associations (NZUSA), the voice of tertiary students at a national level, was joined in 20017. In addition to being the voice of tertiary students across the country, the union has the ability to influence government policy.
The decision of the National Government in 2010 marked a significant milestone in the history of student representation. Thirty two years after students were granted the opportunity to sit at the decision making table of the Polytechnic Council, the responsibility was removed. Then in 2012 the Government decided that membership of Student Associations across the polytechnic sector would be voluntary. This had – and continues to have – a significant impact upon the association. WITSA was very fortunate to have support from the executive management team of Waiariki who chose to reinstate a contract for service, ensuring the survival of student representation. From 2012 onwards the Presidents, Executive Officers and staff of WITSA have looked for opportunities to grow the services of WITSA. Some Presidents were more successful than others, such as Richard Williams, who formed the first Student Council in 2014, which provided true representation for all students from all campuses.
In the background, during 2012 to 2017, the government was positioning Waiariki Institute of Technology to merge with another tertiary education provider, the Bay of Plenty Polytechnic. The merging of two organisations with very different philosophies and approaches to delivering quality education was a huge undertaking. Throughout this period WITSA made its voice heard under the leadership and guidance of Virgil Iraia. All students were concerned at how they would be affected and the WITSA Executive did their very best to ensure a smooth transition occurred.
At this time that the WITSA Executive made the decision to transition from WITSA to a new brand that incorporated the merger. A significant amount of planning and strategizing took place, which culminated in the birth of Student Pulse Te Runanaga Tauira Incorporated. Student Pulse Te Runanga Tauira is a student association whose purpose is to serve and support the students of Toi Ohomai Institute of Technology. With six major delivery sites, Toi Ohomai is much larger than either Waiariki or Bay of Plenty polytechs were on their own, creating pressure on resources and increasing the need to be both innovative and smart about how Student Pulse delivers its services. We are committed to providing support to students and representation of students at all levels of management and governance.
Jerusha Eden was the first student elected as Vice President for the Tauranga region in 2017. Being a student of marine studies Jerusha has a strong passion for environmental and social causes.
"Student Pulse is a necessary system to have on campus at all Toi Ohomai campuses to ensure students are heard and feel comfortable in their learning space. As a student I feel having student representatives is a vital way to understand what students really want and what they're expecting out of the institution, their tutors and their course. I feel having students, rather than staff, makes it easier for students talk openly about issues they are facing – issues that they may not feel comfortable talking to a staff member about or an issue that they feel a staff member can not relate to". .
Forty years on from its initial inception, the need for student representation is just as important as it has ever been. The challenges students face in the classroom and in life are almost entirely the same. Balancing the need for income with time constraints, striving to achieve aspirational outcomes. Stephanie Thomson, office manager for the association for many years, provided many hours of service for to support students.
"Student representation and advocacy is at the core of Student Pulse – it is what the organisation is here to do; it's what students for more than thirty years have decided is its core business – to independently support the students at Toi Ohomai. Like government, Student Pulse operates through a representative system with office holders elected from the student body. Students and trained to listen and inform other students of what help is available", Stephanie stated.
The Executive Office Holders of Student Pulse acknowledge the impact through service of past Presidents, Executive Office Holders, employees and the thousands of student volunteers. The hours of work contributed by so many have made positive impacts that are immeasurable.
Dr Margriet Theron, the President of the Rotorua Multicultural Council, is an appointed member of the Executive Committee of Student Pulse. She has been aware of the importance of student representation in the governance and management of Waiariki Institute of Technology and now Toi Ohomai Institute of Technology since 1978 – the year she arrived in New Zealand and joined Waiariki Institute of Technology both as a teacher of Economics and a student of Commercial Law. Since then she has been the Dean of the Faculty of Forestry and Technology, a Patron of WITSA, and a mentor for Marlise de Vries, Past-President of WITSA.
Dr Theron commented, "In all these roles I have appreciated the importance of student representation in programme development and quality management, and in addressing the complaints that students might have. Congratulations on this 40th anniversary of student representation, and may we once again see students represented in the governance of Toi Ohomai Institute of Technology."
Emire Khan-Malak is the elected President of Student Pulse for 2018. Emire said, "the forty year anniversary of student representation is a great milestone and shows how important the student association is for all our students both domestic and international". Emire is the first Muslim to be elected into the Presidents position and she is very proud to hold the role of President.
"We are all one and together we achieve goals for the benefit of all our students", she went on to say. Emire shared her philosophy of Me Aroha Ki Tangata Ki Tangata which means Show Love to Everyone. This philosophy is lived out through "Ka Puawai Nga Tangata Katoa" when translated means "Together we achieve".
The future is uncertain for Student Pulse as it is for the entire tertiary education sector in New Zealand. The review of the education sector initiated by the Government could see dramatic changes occur that may have a direct effect upon student representation in the Bay of Plenty. The review occurs at the same time as a seat for student representation has been returned to the Council. We continue to operate with a contract for service, which is not unusual for a non-government organisation. It is an arrangement that provides both challenges and opportunities.
Reviewing the last 40 years shows a contiuum of change for students and representation. We know that continuum will continue into the future and it is vital that the association creates strategies for success, implements operational successes, and draws upon the knowledge and resources of its alumni to ensure another 40 years of existence can be celebrated.
https://studentpulse.nz/files/uploads/2018/05/video-1525219879.mp4 | {
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The protest by Jats, demanding Other Backward Classes status, engulfed large parts of Haryana and some parts of Punjab as well. Here are pictures the massive destruction these protests caused.
Burnt vehicles by Jat protesters piled up in Rohtak, on Sunday. | {
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Rouse Properties Acquires Greenville Mall for $50.3 Million
Written by Nate Hunter
Greenville, N.C. — The property is 95.5 percent leased with average inline sales of $375 per square foot.
Greenville, N.C. — Rouse Properties Inc. has purchased the 460,800-square-foot Greenville Mall in Greenville for nearly $50.3 million. The seller was a private partnership managed by Gregory Greenfield & Associates. The property is the only enclosed regional mall within a 40-mile radius and serves a trade area of more than 400,000 people, according to Rouse Properties.
The development opened in 1966 and was renovated in 2001. The center is anchored by Belk and JC Penney. Dunham's Sports will also anchor Greenville Mall when it opens in late 2013. Additional tenants include Victoria's Secret, Buckle, American Eagle and Bath and Body Works. The mall is 95.5 percent leased with average inline sales of $375 per square foot. Rouse Properties assumed an existing $41.7 million non-recourse loan with a 5.29 percent interest rate and a December 2015 maturity date.
Rouse Properties is a publicly traded real estate investment trust based in New York City. The company's portfolio includes 32 malls in 19 states totaling 21.8 million square feet.
acquisition Belk Greenville Mall Gregory Greenfield & Associates JC Penney loan private partnership publicly traded REIT retail Rouse Properties Inc shopping center shopping center business
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Progressive Real Estate Partners Brokers $9.3 Million Sale of Convenience Store, Gas Station in Jurupa Valley, California January 11, 2022 | {
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En el corazón del mar (título original: In the Heart of the Sea) es una película estadounidense, dirigida por Ron Howard y protagonizada por Chris Hemsworth como Owen Chase. Está basada en un libro de no ficción titulado En el corazón del mar: La tragedia del ballenero Essex, escrito por el autor Nathaniel Philbrick, que relata la historia real del hundimiento del ballenero Essex en 1820, un evento que inspiró la novela Moby-Dick de Herman Melville en 1851.
Se estrenó previamente en la ciudad de Nueva York el 7 de diciembre de 2015 y más tarde, el 11 de diciembre del mismo año en Estados Unidos por Warner Bros. Pictures. A pesar de que recibió críticas mixtas por parte de los críticos, fue un éxito de taquilla al lograr recaudar 93 millones de dólares contra un presupuesto de 100 millones.
Argumento
En 1850, el autor Herman Melville (Ben Whishaw) visita al posadero Thomas Nickerson (Brendan Gleeson), el último sobreviviente del hundimiento del ballenero Essex, ofreciéndole dinero a cambio de su historia. Nickerson inicialmente se niega, pero finalmente acepta a regañadientes cuando su esposa interviene.
La historia se retrocede a la década de 1820: una compañía ballenera en Nantucket ha reacondicionado el Essex para participar en el lucrativo comercio de aceite de ballena, y Nickerson (Tom Holland), de 14 años, firma como un chico de cabaña. Los propietarios contratan al veterano ballenero Owen Chase (Chris Hemsworth) como primer oficial, aunque está decepcionado de no recibir una comisión de capitán. El capitán es George Pollard, Jr. (Benjamin Walker), un marinero inexperto de una familia ballenera establecida que envidia la habilidad y popularidad de Chase. Chase y Pollard se enfrentan, lo que lleva a Pollard a navegar en una tormenta contra el consejo de Chase. Los dos acuerdan dejar de lado sus diferencias, en lugar de arriesgar su reputación al regresar a puerto sin ganancias, y pronto, la tripulación mata a su primer cachalote toro.
Pasan tres meses sin más éxitos, y Pollard se da cuenta de que el Océano Atlántico no tiene avistamiento de ballenas. El Essex navega más allá del Cabo de Hornos hasta el Pacífico, con la esperanza de tener mejor suerte para atrapar uno. En Atacames, Ecuador, los oficiales se encuentran con un capitán español (Jordi Mollà) que les dice que su tripulación encontró el abundante "Offshore Grounds" a 2.000 millas al oeste, pero afirma que una vengativa "ballena blanca" destruyó su barco, matando a seis de sus hombres. Descartando la historia como un mito, Pollard y Chase lideran la expedición hacia el oeste. Encuentran los terrenos tranquilos, pero cuando lanzan los barcos balleneros, la ballena blanca, un cachalote toro albino masivo ataca, dañando los botes y encendiendo el barco.
Chase le lanza un arpón desde la cubierta del Essex, pero la ballena embiste el casco de madera del barco, matando a dos hombres. Con el casco estufado y las bombas sin funcionar, la tripulación abandona el Essex que se hunde en los tres barcos balleneros intactos, y debe navegar cientos de millas hasta la costa con suministros muy limitados. La ballena la sigue y ataca de nuevo, pero escapan a la pequeña isla Henderson. Mientras recolecta comida, Chase descubre los cadáveres de náufragos anteriores, y concluye que la tripulación pronto morirá en la isla antes de que pase otro barco. Cuatro hombres deciden quedarse, mientras que el resto zarpa de nuevo en los barcos con la esperanza de encontrar tierra. Poco después, uno de los hombres muere, y la tripulación restante decide a regañadientes canibalizarlo.
El mayor Nickerson se ve abrumado por el remordimiento de su canibalismo y detiene su historia, pensando que su esposa no podría amarlo si lo supiera; sin embargo, cuando su esposa lo consuela, asegurándole que todavía lo ama, se siente lo suficientemente animado como para terminar. Durante esa década, los tres barcos están separados por las corrientes y uno de ellos se pierde en el mar. Los otros dos recurren aún más al canibalismo para sobrevivir, con el primo de Pollard, Henry Coffin (Frank Dillane), sacrificándose tras el suicidio.
La ballena blanca regresa repentinamente, y Chase se pone en posición para un ataque final. La ballena se rompe por un momento, lo que permite a Chase observar una parte de su arpón previamente lanzado todavía incrustado sobre el ojo de la ballena. Chase duda y mira fijamente el ojo izquierdo de la ballena, mientras la ballena mira a Chase. Después de un momento de pensamiento, Chase baja su arpón y decide no matar a la criatura. Después de este encuentro, la ballena se aleja nadando pacíficamente y nunca más se la vuelve a ver.
Un barco que pasaba cerca del perímetro marítimo rescata el bote de Pollard, pero el bote de Chase continúa a la deriva sin comida ni agua. Finalmente, con los sobrevivientes al borde de la muerte, el bote de este último llega a la isla chilena Alejandro Selkirk. Todos los sobrevivientes son cuidados y alimentados, para finalmente ser llevados de regreso a Nantucket, donde finalmente se reúnen con sus angustiadas familias. Los propietarios de los barcos de Nantucket le piden a Pollard y Chase que encubran la historia para proteger la reputación de la industria, pero Chase, decidiendo que ya ha tenido suficiente de su deshonestidad y que ya no se preocupa por ellos, se niega a seguir adelante y renuncia. Pollard revela la verdad en la investigación, para su enojo de los propietarios.
El mayor Nickerson relata que un barco fue enviado a la isla Henderson para rescatar a los hombres sobrevivientes ahí, Chase continuó navegando por los mares y se convirtió en un capitán mercante, que su esposa había dicho anteriormente que no cambiaría su amor por él, y Pollard dirigió otra expedición para encontrar y matar a la ballena. Sin embargo, nunca pudo encontrar al animal y el barco encalló frente a las islas hawaianas, lo que provocó se viera obligado a retirarse. Cuando el mayor Nickerson termina de contar la historia, Melville se despide de él y parte del lugar para componer su novela, Moby-Dick, comenzando por escribir su primera línea: "Llámame Ismael".
Reparto
Chris Hemsworth como Owen Chase.
Benjamin Walker como George Pollard, Jr.
Cillian Murphy como Matthew Joy.
Tom Holland como Thomas Nickerson (joven)
Brendan Gleeson como Thomas Nickerson (viejo).
Ben Whishaw como Herman Melville.
Michelle Fairley como Sra. Nickerson.
Jordi Mollà como Capitán español.
Joseph Mawle como Benjamin Lawrence.
Frank Dillane como Henry Coffin.
Charlotte Riley como Peggy.
Donald Sumpter como Pablo Macy.
Paul Anderson como Caleb Chappel.
Producción
Casting
La película estaba en desarrollo en 2000, con Barry Levinson como director para Miramax Films.
Chris Hemsworth fue elegido para interpretar el papel principal, Owen Chase, en junio de 2012. Tom Holland ganó el papel del joven Nickerson en abril de 2013. Cillian Murphy firmó como Matthew Joy en junio. Antes de que Benjamin Walker interpretara al Capitán, otros actores que se consideraron incluían a Benedict Cumberbatch , Tom Hiddleston y Henry Cavill .
Rodaje
El rodaje comenzó en septiembre de 2013 en Londres y en los estudios Leavesden (Warner Bros) en Hertfordshire, Inglaterra, Reino Unido. También fue grabada en La Gomera y en Lanzarote, parte del archipiélago de las Islas Canarias, España. El 22 de noviembre de 2013 se anunció que la película iba a ser estrenada el 13 de marzo de 2015.
Para las escenas de la tormenta, el equipo de producción construyó un tanque de agua en Leavesden Studios, donde se construyó una plataforma sobre un cardán para imitar el tono de una tormenta. Para obtener el efecto correcto, se vertieron 500 galones de agua helada con cañones.
Durante un punto de la filmación, el elenco y el equipo se vieron obligados a retirarse a su hotel por una tormenta en las Islas Canarias, que se convirtió en una rara inundación repentina. La producción se cerró durante un día y medio, ampliando el rodaje a 73 días, exactamente como esperaban los cineastas.
En una entrevista en Jimmy Kimmel Live! , Hemsworth declaró que para prepararse para el papel de marineros hambrientos, el elenco estaba en una dieta de 500 a 600 calorías al día para perder peso. Hemsworth también tuvo que bajar de peso de 215 a 175 libras (97,5 a 79,3 kg) interpretando a Owen, y dijo que In the Heart of the Sea es "física y emocionalmente la película más difícil de la que he formado parte ... . Perdiendo el peso a esta longitud, simplemente no quiero volver a hacerlo nunca más, pero tuvo un efecto tan emocional en nosotros ... de alguna manera, sentimos que estábamos haciendo lo que estos hombres hicieron con justicia ".
Estrenos
También se estrenó este 2020 la película en Netflix.
Véase también
Ballenero Essex
Moby-Dick
Ann Alexander (ballenero)
Referencias
Enlaces externos
Películas basadas en hechos reales
Películas dirigidas por Ron Howard
Películas de Estados Unidos
Películas en inglés
Películas de 2015
Películas rodadas en Canarias
Películas con música de Roque Baños | {
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Q: Get bits from a ByteBuffer I am working on a BitBuffer that will take x bits from a ByteBuffer as an int, long, etc, but I seem to be having a whole lot of problems.
I've tried loading a long at a time and using bit shifting, but the difficulty comes from rolling from one long into the next. I am wondering if there's just a better way. Anyone have any suggestions?
public class BitBuffer
{
final private ByteBuffer bb;
public BitBuffer(byte[] bytes)
{
this.bb = ByteBuffer.wrap(bytes);
}
public int takeInt(int bits)
{
int bytes = toBytes(bits);
if (bytes > 4) throw new RuntimeException("Too many bits requested");
int i=0;
// take bits from bb and fill it into an int
return i;
}
}
More specifically, I am trying to take x bits from the buffer and return them as an int (the minimal case). I can access bytes from the buffer, but let's say I only want to take just the first 4 bits instead.
Example:
If my buffer is filled with "101100001111", if I run these in order:
takeInt(4) // should return 11 (1011)
takeInt(2) // should return 0 (00)
takeInt(2) // should return 0 (00)
takeInt(1) // should return 1 (1)
takeInt(3) // should return 7 (111)
I would like to use something like this for bit packed encoded data where an integer can be stored in just a few bits of a byte.
A: The BitSet and ByteBuffer ideas were a bit too difficult to control so instead, I went with a binary string approach that basically takes a whole lot of headache out of managing an intermediate buffer of bits.
public class BitBuffer
{
final private String bin;
private int start;
public BitBuffer(byte[] bytes)
{
this.bin = toBinaryString(bytes); // TODO: create this function
this.start = 0;
}
public int takeInt(int nbits)
{
// TODO: handle edge cases
String bits = bin.substring(start, start+=nbits);
return Integer.parseInt(bits, 2);
}
}
Out of everything I've tried this was the cleanest and easiest approach, but I am open to suggestions!
A: You can convert the ByteBuffer into BitSet and then you'll have continuous access to the bits
public class BitBuffer
{
final private BitSet bs;
public BitBuffer(byte[] bytes)
{
this.bs = BitSet.valueOf(bytes);
}
public int takeInt(int bits)
{
int bytes = toBytes(bits);
if (bytes > 4) throw new RuntimeException("Too many bits requested");
int i=0;
// take bits from bs and fill it into an int
return i;
}
}
| {
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In this webinar, Linedata's Innovation Projects Leader Bertrand Cocagne talks about Linedata's approach on Artificial Intelligence (AI).
What is influencing the industry in 2018?
This is the second in the webinar series, hosted in December 2016 by Matt Gibbs of Linedata and featuring a panel of industry experts. | {
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Use nopCommerce capabilities with an SMS extension that works for any bulk SMS service provider of your choosing. Use our plug-in to customize your SMS text and trigger them for individual events like, order placed; order confirmed; order shipped; order delivered; order cancelled; Or Mobile Verification;. Send an SMS to your customer while simultaneously updating the order note to reflect the updated status. This feature is particularly helpful when requested by regulatory bodies in certain countries.
Now vendors can receive SMS notification of the order. In case of multiple vendors it sends SMS to individual vendors about the items ordered respectively.
Never lose track of your SMS usage count. Use our extension and have your SMS usage details available at your fingertips.
Some bulk SMS service providers need the country code for an entered phone number. Unfortunately, there is no default validation in nopCommerce for phone numbers. There is no mandate for country code or length of number for phone numbers, causing inconsistencies while sending SMS. Overcome this issue using our extension.
The Configurable SMS extension supports both GET and POST HTTP API methods. | {
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Powerful House GOP Majority in Good Hands
On November 4th, the Pennsylvania electorate turned right and included in the General Assembly's sweep a more conservative Pennsylvania House of Representatives. A week later those lawmakers in turn elected a House leadership team* that will have a clear set of priorities ready for action when the two-year session begins in January. The agenda will hinge on what incoming Majority Whip Bryan Cutler (R-Lancaster) described as "creating an environment that encourages job creation – private sector job creation".
Political analysts cite the floundering Obama Presidency for the surge of Republican winners on November 4. The new House leaders can also thank the ongoing benefits of the political fall-out from the 2005 legislative pay raise.
"They (the new leaders) are a direct result of the changes in the complexion of the House since the elections in 2006," said G. Terry Madonna, Professor of Public Affairs and Director of the Center for Politics and Public Affairs at Franklin and Marshall College. "Half the members of the House are new in the just the past eight years. They are reform-minded, and many are new to politics, not having been in elected or appointed office before."
The historic eight seat gain for the GOP, now with a 35 seat (119-84) lead over the Democrats, should more than just serve to offset an incoming governor whose one resonant campaign message was a call for higher taxes. With such overwhelming control over the legislative process, the House Republicans also have the firepower to bargain for other needed business reforms they couldn't achieve the past session.
One long-time House Republican said the next four years will be "a fun ride." He continued, "We don't have to go to the floor worrying about a handful of our members taking a walk on us," the House member said. "If he (Governor-Elect Tom Wolf) wants anything at all he's going to have to offer something very good on the other end."
The new power is in good hands. Calling the elections a "very promising turn", PMA Executive Director David N. Taylor praised the incoming House leadership team as "great friends of Pennsylvania competitiveness" who have proven themselves as pro-growth allies in many policy battles over the years.
The list includes Speaker-designate Mike Turzai (Allegheny) -- who awaits final confirmation by the full House on January 6, Majority Leader Dave Reed (Indiana), Cutler as Whip, Bill Adolph (Delaware) returning as Appropriations Chair, Caucus Chair Sandra Major (Susquehanna), Caucus Secretary Donna Oberlander (Armstrong), Caucus Administrator Brian Ellis (Butler), and Policy Committee Chair Kerry A. Benninghoff (Centre).
The more high profile battles from last session include doing away with state monopoly control of liquor sales and distribution by the Liquor Control Board; an effort to reform the two fiscally out-of-control pensions systems, one for the state workers (SERS) and the other for public school teachers (PSERS), which are piling-on debt at a staggering rate of $10 million a day; eliminating the automatic collection and disbursement of political money by taxpayers to organized labor; and striking an absurd provision from the crimes code that protects stalking, harassment, and deadly threats during labor disputes. Dozens of other needed reforms await action.
Leader Reed said they were already at work in putting together their agenda, but that they are also waiting to hear what Tom Wolf says in his first budget address in March. It's a near certainty tax increases will be part of the proposal. Governor-elect Wolf campaigned on an inadequately explained change in the structure of the personal income tax (PIT), and for applying a severance tax on Marcellus natural gas drillers.
"No chance he's going to get us to vote to amend the Constitution to change how the PIT is applied," Reed said. "And if he's going to have to make a very good argument indeed why a severance tax makes more sense than the impact fee we now have."
It's difficult to imagine a sufficiently compelling argument. Pennsylvania is the only state that imposes an impact fee on the industry. The fee has generated more than $630 million over the past three years, money that goes directly to local government for infrastructure improvement projects. Additionally, more than $2.1 billion in other shale-related taxes have been generated across the commonwealth. A call for new energy taxes is even less persuasive in light of plunging gasoline prices from America's fracking-driven oil boom.
"A severance tax will hurt everyone's bottom line, everyone in the supply chain, from the mom and pop stores, to the middle-size business," said Stephanie Catarino Wissman, executive director of the Associated Petroleum Industries of Pennsylvania. "We will absolutely fight against any increase.
Mike Turzai recently told a meeting of Pittsburgh business people that the first place to look for revenues is through auctioning the state liquor stores. His office estimates the sale would generate between $1 billion and $1.5 billion.
At the same time, all three top leaders say they are determined not to descend into gridlock as Congress and the president have. House GOP spokesman Steve Miskin said Turzai has a track record of consensus building, including many pieces of legislation that passed with bipartisan majorities. And Cutler, with no cracks in his conservative mantle, has a history in his short time in office of reaching over to the other side. "One of the first thing I'm going to do as Whip is find where the compromise points are in the Caucus early in the negotiation process."
*We will be reviewing the new Senate team in next Bulletin | {
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NEW VOICES! Singer Shaun Millz Releases New Single "Well Done" | WATCH NEW VIDEO!
Shaun Millz releases his new single "Well Done" – WATCH the official music video below!
Shaun Millz debuts his NEW single "Well Done", this song was inspired by an inevitable tragedy that all souls must face in this wondrous life. | {
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So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God (1 Corinthians 10:13).
There are few things that are as common and mundane as eating and drinking. Everyone must do both regularly to live and to be healthy. Unlike breathing, which is also necessary to live, we can take great pleasure in the foods we eat and the drinks we drink. We find also that, unlike the oxygen that we must breathe to live, there are bountiful varieties in the foods and drinks available to us.
For this reason, the nature of the Apostle's command, "Whether you eat or drink, do all to the glory of God," revolves around the conscious choices that we make each time we eat and drink and the reasons behind those choices. This glorification of God, unlike breathing which is done to the glory of God simply by its testimony of God's good design and provision, is accomplished by our will. In the context of the command, this glorification of God is accomplished particularly by not offending our brother with the foods we eat—by regarding our brother as better than ourselves. And though this is the context, the implications of the command reach much further than offense.
Every time that we make a conscious choice in our lives, that choice immediately demonstrates whom we regard as Lord at that particular moment. This demonstration is not simply relegated to the "big things" of life, but it is relegated to all things. The Apostle uses the most common of activities, eating and drinking, to declare that regardless of the commonality of a choice God is to be Lord of it. That is also to say that ultimately there is nothing that we do in the physical world that does not have spiritual ramifications. With each choice in life, we are either lining up with God, or we are lining up against him. With each conscious turn of the radio dial, with each button-press of the remote control, with each click of the mouse, we are either consciously glorifying God or we are consciously defying him.
There is a contemporary saying that has been manipulated and abused by marketers, but its truth still rings forth: "What would Jesus do?" It was the will of Jesus Christ to do the will of the Father in all things and thereby glorify the Father in all things. Do you, as Christ did, seek to glorify the Father in all things? Do the television shows that you watch, the songs that you listen to, and the things that you buy declare that God is glorious and sufficient for all your needs? Evaluate the decisions that you make, and make all of them acts of worship to the Lord. | {
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Home Dining Winfield's Gathering Place Closing July 2
Winfield's Gathering Place Closing July 2
Mark Winfield and former St. Louis Cardinal Jim Edmonds opened the Kirkwood restaurant in January 2015.
by George Mahe
Mark Winfield announced on Facebook this morning that his namesake restaurant, Winfield's Gathering Place, located at 10312 Manchester in Kirkwood, would close on July 2 after an 18 month run.
His partner in the venture was former St. Louis Cardinal and current baseball announcer Jim Edmonds. The partnership began in 2007 at the multi-story, multi-venue Fifteen (Edmonds' jersey number as a Cardinal) at 1900 Locust Street in Downtown West. Fifteen transitioned into Jim Edmonds 15 Steakhouse, and then to the The Precinct Sports Bar & Grill and the banquet area as Jim Edmond's Space 15, both which closed in May of last year.
When the duo opened Winfield's in early 2015, Winfield (right) described it as "busy as hell," a factor that played into the decision to close The Precinct. "When one restaurant does in an hour what the other does all day, on a Friday, the reality hits you pretty quickly," Winfield said at the time.
Then the restaurant experienced a few unexpected turns. The Wood Cask opened in the same center as Winfield's few months later (which always has an impact), but in this author's mind, it was an unnecessarily harsh and one-sided article in the St. Louis Business Journal that inflicted the most damage. The Jan 12, 2016 article correctly stated that Mark Winfield had filed for personal bankruptcy but never mentioned whether Winfield's Gathering Place would remain in business or not. At the time, SLM fielded numerous inquiries regarding the status of the business, which would remain open. At the time, gift cards were apparently redeemed in droves, which spoke volumes. Business plummeted. It is likely that Winfield's never recovered from the blowback of that article.
There are rumors that another ownership group is in the wings, but in the meantime, customers old and new have a few more days to check out Winfield's award-winning BBQ ribs, lobster wontons, a wined-and-brined-and-smoked half-chicken, and the #1 selling sandwich, a burnt ends sourdough melt.
Winfield ended the Facebook post with the following: "Thank you again for your business and if you would like any other details about the close please contact me directly (314) 920-1168."
George Mahe
Mahe is St. Louis Magazine's dining editor. Originally a finicky eater, he has owned or operated restaurants most of his life. He began reviewing them for SLM in 1991.
Read more by George Mahe | {
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Illinois Beef Association
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IJBA
Career Paths Virtual Meeting
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IJBA Career Paths Virtual Meeting
Hear from past IJBA members on how they got to where they are today. Speakers will share their stories and then we will have a Q+ A session to answer any questions you may have!
If you have any specific questions for the speakers ahead of time, please email Mareah at [email protected] and she will make sure your questions are answered.
Watch the recording below:
Layna Bond
Layna is from a livestock farm of beef cattle and show pigs outside of Galatia, Ill. After finishing her associate's degree at Lake Land College, she continued her education at Oklahoma State University (OSU). Layna received a bachelor's in Animal Science-Business and a minor in Agriculture Economics. At OSU Layna was a member of the 2017 National Livestock Judging Team and the 2017 Reserve National Meat Evaluation Team. She has held a number of livestock industry internships with the National Junior Swine Association, National Western Stock Show, Oklahoma Youth Expo, and American Chianina Association.
Layna is now finishing her master's degree at Kansas State University in the breeding and genetics program, focusing on beef cattle. She has recently returned to Illinois to work for Hueber, LLC where she is the Roanoke Location Manager and Livestock Specialist. Layna is also President of the Illinois Club Pig Association.
Lena Head
Lena is the Global Product Manager for GSI Grain Storage at AGCO where she is responsible for leading the development of global product platforms that fulfill customer needs and profitability goals. Her professional experience also includes founding and managing AGCO's first university innovation center, the AGCO Acceleration Center.
Lena was raised and currently resides on a commercial grain and livestock farm with her husband Alex. She is a mentor in the Big Brothers Big Sisters program, a member of the Cultivating Master Farms Program Class of 2021 and recently served on the advisory board for the Professional Science Master's Program at the University of Illinois. Lena received her Bachelor of Science in Agribusiness Markets and Management and Master of Business Administration from the University of Illinois.
Gracia Ramp
Gracia is originally from Yates City, Ill. where she grew up showing cattle and participating in 4-H and FFA. Gracia attended Lake Land College and the University of Illinois where she was a member of both livestock judging teams.
Gracia graduated from the University of Illinois with a bachelor's degree in Animal Science in 2018 and a master's degree in Agricultural Education in 2020. While in graduate school, Gracia coached the 2018 Illinois State 4-H Team to win the national championship. She now resides in Reddick, Ill. and serves as the Livestock Judging Coach and Animal Activities Specialist at Joliet Junior College.
© 2021 Illinois Beef Association | {
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The Intersection of the Fair Credit Reporting Act and the Federal Consumer Bankruptcy Laws | {
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We answer your financial questions on the Financially Simple in the form of blog posts, videos, and podcasts.
What Happens in a Typical Quarterly Business Planning Meeting?
Not long ago I received a Twitter message asking "Justin, what happens in a typical quarterly business planning meeting?" Today I'm giving you a little insight into just such a meeting I had recently. While I can't go into tons of detail due to confidentiality issues, I can tell you about a meeting I had with one of my clients – a first-generation business owner.
Should My Investment Strategies Change if I'm Selling My Business Soon?
Have you ever heard of the 5x5x5 growth technique for business? It's a great tool to ensure you are making the most out of the income your business is providing.
Retirement Savings Advice When Changing Jobs – 401k or IRA?
Let's face it – the job you are working at today, may not be the job you are working at tomorrow. On average people change jobs 12 times over the course of their career. Many times, when they leave a job they leave their 401(k) too. However, doing that is not an avenue I would suggest most of the time. Recently a friend of mine experienced this exact transition. Here is a little about how our conversation went.
When it comes to selling a business, making your company more attractive than another, is all about dependability. Who is your business depending on, you or your staff?
Should You Use a ROTH IRA to Fund Your Child's College Education? | {
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One of the key factors contributing to this market growth is the ability of ERP to integrate all organizational activities. The Global ERP Software market has also been witnessing steady demand from small and medium-sized businesses. However, slow implementation processes and revenue turnaround times could pose a challenge to the growth of this market.
TechNavio's report, Global Enterprise Resource Planning Software Market 2011-2014, has been prepared based on an in-depth analysis of the market with inputs from industry experts. The report covers the Americas, and the EMEA and APAC regions; it also covers the Global ERP Software market landscape and its growth prospects in the coming years. The report also includes a discussion of the key vendors operating in this market.
Key vendors dominating this market space include SAP AG, Oracle Corp., The Sage Group and Infor Global Solutions.
Commenting on the report, an analyst from TechNavio's Enterprise Computing team said, In a small business, it is relatively simple to track data, control business processes, and enter information in storage without too many issues. However, with organizational development this approach becomes less practical. ERP is a good way for a business to grow without necessarily increasing the number of employees. Bigger companies need a much more sophisticated system such as ERP software to manage various aspects of the day-to-day operations more effectively.
According to the report, many organizations have begun examining the potential of ERP solutions to improve their business processes. They are also trying to incorporate ERP software solutions in other segments such as web-based ordering, customer relationship management and product configuration. Due to the ever-growing supply chains, collaborate planning is gaining importance. | {
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Finding a trustworthy plumber can be hard, but when you choose Sidney & Richardson you know your plumbing is in safe hands from the get-go.
Our Ballina plumbers work around the clock to ensure all of our customers receive a service that is fast, affordable and reliable. Whether you need help clearing a blocked drain, want new plumbing installed or your septic tank maintained, we'll provide the service you require.
Fill out this quick and easy job request form to arrange your next plumbing service in the Northern Rivers.
Located in Ballina, Sidney & Richardson travels throughout the region—north to Ocean Shores, west to Casino, and south to Yamba. | {
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Things to Do on Molokai and Trip Planning Tips!
First of all, here are a few tips we've learned along the way that might help you out when planning your tip to Molokai.
Generally it's cheaper to fly into Honolulu, Hawaii then into Maui from the mainland.
Alamo car rental is at Hoolehua Airport, Molokai. It may be cheaper to set up a rental car through the Costco Travel Site. If you want to do some deeper exploring, get a 4x4. High season rentals are reserved early – so be sure to book your vehicle as soon as possible.
Kaunakakai, Hawaii is the main town, small and only several blocks long, but it has several groceries stores with pretty much everything you need. Most stores are closed on Sundays.
Molokai Wines & Spirits is downtown across the street from the grocery stores.
Fresh local grown fruits can be found at local roadside markets.
Saturday market is every Saturday downtown in the morning. This is a must do!!!
Take a guided hike up Halawa Valley to Hipuapua falls (about three miles each way, fairly flat). Here lived an ancient civilizations with birthing rocks and human sacrificial rocks. Very fascinating history. On a calm day, you can swim under the waterfall.
Kualapu'u Cookhouse - great for breakfast, haven't tried dinner yet!
Kamakou Preserve - hard to find the road and will need a 4 wheel drive if rainy or if you are skittish (we didn't need one but it was dry). At the top is a glorious view of a waterfall (mornings are best to see it) and then there is a hike over a boardwalk that we have heard is incredible. | {
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NEET-PG Counselling: Resident Doctors Launch Protest
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The statue will be installed under the grand canopy. Earlier canopy had a statue of King George V, which was removed in 1968.
Justice Murari, writing the 51-page judgment for the bench, also dealt with the question of whether such property will devolve on to the daughter upon the death of her father, who died without a will, by inheritance or shall devolve on to father's brother's son by survivorship . | {
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For me, 'yoga' means wholeness.
My understanding of yoga is extremely wide. At this extreme, it has to do with almost nothing. I do, however, love practicing modern yoga at the studios…
'lokah samastah sukhino bhavantu.' Peace. Om.
Tips from friends:
'Going beyond' is not to be considered as any kind of transcendence in the traditional sense. The whole import of Dōgen's key term 'dropping off' is diametrically opposed to 'climbing over' (trans-cendere) and refreshingly obviates meta-physics, trans-metaphysics, meta-meta-meta-physics and the whole business of 'meta' of which it is fervently hoped we have truly had our philosophical fill.
–Joan Stambaugh, The Formless Self (1999)
For example, a personally based mode of inquiry reflecting his own mystical experiences and interest in psychoanalysis animates [Romain Rolland's] depiction of Yoga. Yoga, he correctly related, was derived from the same Sanskrit root as the English 'yoke,' which meant 'to join,' and implied union with the divine. However, the purpose of Yoga consisted in far more than the inducement of mystical feelings of unity. Yoga was a 'science of the soul,' a psychophysiological method that was experimentally and scientifically verifiable. Yoga adopted the introspective-empathic mode of observation with the aim of coming to 'know the laws that govern the passions, the feelings, the will of mankind.' Yogic techniques enabled the ego to gain access to and hence mastery of unconscious contents. Its goal, like that of psychoanalysis, was freedom. The characteristic of mystical introversion was not weakness and 'flight' – that is, the employment of any number of defense mechanisms against repressed contents, as many in the West had taken it to be, but strength and combat. 'The ancient Yogi's,' states Rolland, 'did not wait for Dr. Freud to teach them the best cure for the mind is to make it look its deeply hidden monsters straight in the face.' Strength and the will to arrive were essential to undertake the rigors of Yogic training. The practical results of this psychic surgery were insight, renunciation of instinct, freedom from the return of the repressed, and a strengthening of individuality. Yoga was also seen as conducive to the generation of creativity–great artists had 'instinctively' and 'subconsciously' practiced it.
– William B. Parsons, The Oceanic Feeling Revisited (1998)
The practice of respiration, the practice of diverse kinds of breathing certainly reduces the darkness or the shadows of Western consciousness. But above all it constitutes the mental in a different way. It grants more attention to the education of the body, of the senses. It reverses in a way the essential and the superfluous. We Westerners believe that the essential part of culture resides in words, in texts, or perhaps in works of art, and that physical exercise should help us to dedicate ourselves to this essential.
For the masters of the East, the body itself can become spirit through the cultivation of breathing. Without doubt, at the origin of our tradition—for Aristotle, for example, and still more for Empedocles—the soul still seems related to the breath, to air. But the link between the two was then forgotten, particularly in philosophy. The soul, or what takes its place, has become the effect of conceptualizations and of representations and not the result of a practice of breathing. The misunderstandings are so profound, proportional to historical forgetting and repressions, that bridges between the traditions are difficult to restore.
An Eastern culture often corresponds to becoming cultivated, to becoming spiritual through the practice of breathing. In this becoming the body is not separated off from the mental, nor is consciousness the domination of nature by a clever know-how. It is a progressive awakening for the entire being through the channeling of breath from centers of elemental vitality to more spiritual centers: of the heart, of speech, of thought. This requires time! Often an entire lifetime, a time that must remain in harmony with the rhythm of life in general, that of the universe and that of other living beings, which the candidate to the spiritual must respect, and even try to aid if such is their wish.
Spiritual progress is therefore not separated off from the body nor from desire, but these are gradually educated to renounce what harms them. To be sure, it is not a matter of renouncing for the sake of renouncing, but of renouncing what impedes access to bliss in this life. Asceticism is not therefore privative as it has too often been in the West. It is a limitation, accepted and willed, in order to progress toward happiness.
Such is the case with sexuality for example. Chastity is not presented as a good in itself, and the candidate for monasticism is often invited to first prove himself on the sexual plane. The gods of India, moreover, generally appear as a couple: man and woman creating the universe through their familiarity with certain elements, through their love as well, and they destroy it through their passion.
On this subject it is important to meditate on the fact that a spirituality or a religion centered on speech, without insistence on breathing and the silence that makes it possible, risks supporting a nonrespect for life.
In patriarchal traditions individual and collective life both wants to and believes it is able to organize itself outside of the surroundings of the natural world. The body—also called microcosm—is then cut off from the universe—which is called macrocosm. It is submitted to sociological rules, to rhythms foreign to its sensibility, to its living perceptions: day and night, seasons, vegetal growth . . . This means that acts of participation in light, sounds or music, odors, touch, or even in natural tastes are no longer cultivated as human qualities. The body is no longer educated to develop its perceptions spiritually, but to detach itself from the sensible for a more abstract, more speculative, more sociological culture. Yoga taught me to return to the cultivation of sensible perception. In fact, I have always loved it. Since my childhood, nature has helped me and has taught me how to live. But yoga brought me back to this taste with texts that lead me from the innocence of sensations to a spiritual elaboration that permits their development, and sometimes their communication or sharing.
According to me, to learn, in the best of cases, is to learn from someone's experience.To teach is to transmit an experience. What is taught is guaranteed by the life of the one who teaches, and by that of his or her own masters. In this way a concrete and spiritual knowledge is elaborated, a knowledge useful for a cultivation of life, for which the life of the teacher himself remains the support of truth, of ethics, and even of aesthetics. This practice of teaching constitutes a genealogy that is at the same time natural and cultural. In certain families knowledge is handed down from father to son, from mother to daughter, from father to daughter, from mother to son. In other cultural lineages the transmission occurs outside the natural family, from master to disciple. But, remaining linked to experience, it engenders a sort of milieu that is at once natural, sensible, and spiritual where knowledge of the past circulates and where that of the present and the future is elaborated. Indeed, a culture tied to experience cannot be reduced to the repetition of an already written corpus. Such a culture evolves, be it only according to the evolution of the universe, but also in the way of thinking the link between cosmic history and the history of living beings, particularly human beings, of this world.
But why could love not come about in the respect and cultivation of my/our bodies? It seems to me that this dimension of human development is indispensable. Through scorn or forgetting of the body, what remains of it in our traditions is often reduced to elementary needs or to a sexuality worse than animal. To restrict carnal love to a reproductive duty, preceded by elementary coitus, at best by some vague caresses—when the man is not too overwhelmed with work, when one has the time—seems to me, in fact, a degeneration worse than bestial. The majority of animals have erotic displays that we no longer even have. Humiliation— especially of the woman—violence, guilt . . . are the lot of most couples in our supposedly evolved civilizations. This is something to be ashamed of! Because this means that love, for us and between us, has become less than human, except for some generous yet rare and often limited exceptions.
– Luce Irigaray, Between East and West (1999) (Translated by Stephen Pluháček)
I am much more interested in a question on which the 'salvation of humanity' depends far more than on any theologians' curio: the question of nutrition.
– Friedrich Nietzsche, Ecce Homo (1888) (Translated by Walter Kaufmann)
What we do.– What we do is never understood but always only praised or censured.
– Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, Book Three (1887) (Translated by Walter Kaufmann)
*Note: You may have heard some hippies talking about "non-judgment."
On the contrary, the point is to realize that by virtue of what you always are, have been, and will be, there is no need whatsoever to defend yourself or prove yourself.
– Alan Watts, Introduction to The Secret Oral Teachings in Tibetan Buddhist Sects (Alexandra David-Neel) (1967)
We shall speak by and by of health as being the foundation of all real manly beauty. Perhaps, too, it has more to do than is generally supposed, with the capacity of being agreeable as a companion, a social visitor, always welcome—and with the divine joys of friendship. In these particulars (and they surely include a good part of the best blessings of existence), there is that subtle virtue in a sound body, with all its functions perfect, which nothing else can make up for, and which will itself make up for many other deficiencies, as of education, refinement, and the like. We have even sometimes fancied that there was a wonderful medicinal effect in the mere personal presence of a man who was perfectly well! While, on the other hand, what can be more debilitating than to be continually surrounded by sickly people, and to have to do with them only?
Do not be startled at the words, excellent reader. It is, in our view, indispensably necessary that a man should be a fine animal—sound and vigorous. This, to be candid with you, is the text and germ of most of our remarks—which arise out of it, and seek to promulge and explain how it can be fully accomplished.
We, at the same time, know with the rest that a man has a moral, affectional, and mental nature which must also be developed; but we say that, at present, the whole tendency of things is to over-develope those parts, while the physical is cramped and dwindled away. Yes, reader, we teach that man must be perfect in his body first— we start with that as our premises, our foundation. We would throw into something like regular form a few principal hints and suggestions. Now this is to be done.
With all this, we have an idea, amounting to profound conviction, that the highest and palmiest state of health, ministering to a long life, and accompanied throughout by all that makes a man physically the superior animal of the earth, and crowned at last with a painless and easy death—we have an idea, we say, that all this is only attainable, (except in rare natural instances,) by a cultivated mentality, by the intellectual, by the reasoning man. What else, indeed, is the whole system of training for physique, but intellect applied to the bettering of the form, the blood, the strength, the life, of man?
In other and shorter terms, true intellectual development, not overstrained and morbid, is highly favorable to long life, and a noble physique; and what falls short of these latter aims, (if attributable to anything in the mentality of the subject,) is, that the mentality of that subject was in a vitiated condition, or, (as in these latter days is often the case,) that there was not enough brute animal in the man. We repeat it, strange as it may seem, this is generally the case in these extra-mental and extra-philanthropic days of ours. That the half-way and unwholesomely developed mentality of modern times, as seen in large classes of people, literary persons, many in the professions, in sedentary employments, &c., acts injuriously upon the health, and militates against the noble form, the springy gait, the ruddy cheek and lip, and the muscular leg and arm of man, we know, full well. But, without wishing to be severe, what, critically considered, is the amount of modern mentality, except a feverish, superficial and shallow dealing with words and shams? How many of these swarms of "intellectual people," so-called, are anything but smatterers, needing yet to begin and educate themselves in nearly all real knowledge and wisdom?
Whatever is done, however, ought to be in the open air; don't be afraid of that—drink it in—it won't hurt you—there is a curious virtue in it, to be found in nothing else.
It is a singular fact that what might be supposed such a simple accomplishment as perfect and graceful walking, is very rare—is hardly ever seen in the streets of our cities. We have plenty of teachers of dancing—yet to walk well is more desirable than the finest dancing. Perhaps some of the teachers we allude to might take a hint from the foregoing paragraph. A great deal may be done by gymnastic exercises to increase the flexibility and muscular power of the legs. The ordinary exercise of bending forward and touching the toes with the tips of the fingers, keeping the knees straight meanwhile, is a very good one, and may be kept on with, in moderation at a time, for years and years.
The voice can be cultivated, strengthened and made melodious, with an ease and certainty, and to degrees of which very few people have any notion. We do not know a better exercise, either for young or middle-aged men, than practicing (at first with moderation), in loudly reciting and declaiming in the open air, or in some large room. This should be systematic and daily; it strengthens and develops all the large organs, opens the chest, and not only gives decision and vigor to the utterance, in common life, and for all practical purposes, but has a most salutary effect on the throat, with its curious and exquisite machinery, hardening it all, and making it less liable to disease. It helps, indeed, the bodily system in many ways—gives a large inspiration and respiration, provokes the habit of electricity through the frame, plays upon the action of the stomach, and gives a dash and style to the personality of a man.
The habit of rising early is not only of priceless value in itself, as a means toward, and concomitant of health, but is of equal importance from what the habit carries with it, apart from itself. In nature, there is no example of the bad practice of an animal, in full development of health and strength, in fine weather, lingering in its place of rest, nerveless and half dead, for hours and hours after the sun has risen.
One great point we would again impress on you, reader, (we have before reverted to it,) is the fact that your own individual case doubtless has points and circumstances which more or less modify all the general laws, and perhaps call for special ones, for yourself. This is an important consideration in all theories and statements of wealth [sic].
Not only the looks and movement, but the feelings, undergo a transformation. It may almost be said that sorrows and disappointments cease: there is no more borrowing trouble. With perfect health, (and regular agreeable occupation,) there are no low spirits, and cannot be. A man realizes the old myth of the poets; he is a god walking the earth. He not only feels new powers in himself—he sees new beauties everywhere. His faculties, his eyesight, his hearing, all acquire superior capacity to give him pleasure. Indeed, merely to move is a pleasure; the play of the limbs in motion is enough. To breathe, to eat and drink the simplest food, outvie the most costly of previous enjoyments. Many of those before hand [sic] gratifications, especially those of the palate, drink, spirits, fat grease [sic], coffee, strong spices, pepper, pastry, crust, mixtures, &c., are put aside voluntarily—become distasteful. The appetite is voracious enough, but it demands simple aliment. Those others were was vexations [sic] dreams—and now the awakening. How happily pass the days! A blithe carol bursts from the throat to greet the opening morn. The fresh air is inhaled—exercise spreads the chest—every sinew responds to the call upon it—the whole system seems to laugh with glee. The occupations of the forenoon pass swiftly and cheerfully along; the dinner is eaten with such zest as only perfect health can give—and the remaining hours still continue to furnish, as they arrive, new sources of filling themselves, and affording contentment. How sweet the evenings! The labors of the day over—whether on a farm, or in the factory, the workshop, the forge or furnace, the shipyard, or what not—then rest is realized indeed. For who else but such as they can realize it? It is a luxury almost worth being poor to enjoy. The healthy sleep—the breathing deep and regular—the unbroken and profound repose—the night as it passes soothing and renewing the whole frame. Yes, nature surely keeps her choicest blessings for the slumber of health—and nothing short of that can ever know what true sleep is.
– Walt Whitman, Manly Health and Training, With Off-Hand Hints Toward Their Conditions (1858) (Available in full here)
*Note: This document, recently unearthed by a graduate student perusing the catacombs of knowledge, must reveal that something like the "yogic" spirit is universal, for Whitman seems alone to have come up with this wholesome advice. (Yoga, as we have it, was unknown to him, though a certain New Englander, noticing Whitman's elective affinity for the East, recommended some books.) We are inclined to style this event: "qualified revelation." Against revelation, we've long since speculated that knowledge is synthesized "inside" the metaphysical subject, that is, in the mind of the individual, whose bifurcated faculties – loosely speaking: reason and sensation, the one active, the other passive – cognize the world on the basis of a highly suspicious egoic unity. (And let it be clearly observed that even the so-called "black box" – the mind as referred to in computational and neuro-scientific discourses – is beholden to this suspicious unity: evidenced by the typically metaphysical distinction between what is inside the box and what is outside.) Never mind that the journalistically authoritative "naturalistic" reductionism which passes for insight among philosophical careerists cannot tolerate the existence of such a subject! (The so-called "hard problem of consciousness.") If our claim concerning "qualified yogic revelation" – what a slogan! – were to be met with a skepticism respectable in the 1700s – "What do you mean revelation? It was Whitman's opinion!" – we would with the best intentions refer our interlocutor to that other question: "Where did Whitman come from?" And if necessary, the questioning would be referred back and back until the mind fell into its nothingness. The return to sanity first made possible by this abyssal adventure would mean becoming whole: that holism which knows on the basis of existential experience that fact and value cannot be separated and that there is more to truth than correspondence with the facts!
When the warrior has unwavering discipline, he takes joy in the journey and joy in working with others. Rejoicing takes place throughout the warrior's life. Why are you always joyful? Because you have witnessed your basic goodness, because you have nothing to hang on to, because you have experienced that sense of renunciation we discussed earlier. Therefore, your mind and body are continually synchronized and always joyful. This joy is like music, which celebrates its own rhythm and melody. The celebration is continuous, in spite of the ups and downs of your personal life. That is what is meant by being continually joyful.
The principle of meditative awareness also gives you a good seat on this earth. When you take your seat on the earth properly, you do not need witnesses to confirm your validity. In a traditional story of the Buddha, when he attained enlightenment someone asked him, "How do we know you are enlightened?" He said, "Earth is my witness." He touched the earth with his hand, which is known as the earth-touching mudra or gesture. That is the same concept as holding your seat in the saddle. You are completely grounded in reality. Someone may say, "How do I know you are not overreacting to the situations?" You can say simply, "My posture in the saddle speaks for itself."
At this point, you begin to experience the fundamental notion of fearlessness. You are willing to be awake in whatever situation may present itself to you, and you feel that you can take command of your life altogether, because you are not on the side of either success or failure. Success and failure are your journey. Of course, you may still experience fear in the context of fearlessness. There may be times on your journey when you are so petrified that you vibrate in the saddle, from your teeth to your hands to your legs. You are hardly sitting on the horse–you are practically levitating with fear. But even that is regarded as an expression of fearlessness, if you have a fundamental connection with the earth of your basic goodness.
Cheering up is not based on artificial willpower or creating an enemy and conquering him in order to make yourself feel more alive. Human beings have basic goodness, not next door, but in them already. When you look at yourself in the mirror you can appreciate what you see, without worrying about whether what you see is what should be. You can pick up on the possibilities of basic goodness and cheer yourself up, if you just relax with yourself. Getting out of bed, walking into the bathroom, taking a shower, eating breakfast–you can appreciate whatever you do, without always worrying whether it fits your discipline or your plan for the day. You can have that much trust in yourself, and that will allow you to practice discipline much more thoroughly than if you constantly worry and try to check back to see how you are doing.
– Chögyam Trungpa, Shambhala, The Sacred Path of the Warrior (1984)
Learning to see – habituating the eye to repose, to patience, to letting things come to it; learning to defer judgment, to investigate and comprehend the individual case in all its aspects. This is the first preliminary schooling in spirituality: not to react immediately to a stimulus, but to have the restraining, stock-taking instincts in one's control. Learning to see, as I understand it, is almost what is called in unphilosophical language 'strong will-power': the essence of it is precisely not to 'will', the ability to defer decision. All unspirituality, all vulgarity, is due to the incapacity to resist a stimulus – one has to react, one obeys every impulse.
– Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols (1888) (Translated by R.J. Hollingdale)
*Note: This invites comparison with the yogic concept pratyahara.
And now and then one hears from the lips of a traveler strange tales, tales of mysterious performances, of formidable feats practised in the observance of strange ritual. The masters of the art have nearly always served a rigorous spiritual apprenticeship. Self-discipline is the clue to their prowess. The man of God, in short, seems to have it over the gladiator.
– Henry Miller, The World of Sex (1941)
The destruction of the onto-theological foundation entails the destruction of moral science: "Thus, if you ask a genuine man who acts out of his own ground: 'Why are you doing what you do?,' he will reply, if his answer is correct: 'I do it because I do it!'" As a rose that flowers without why, man's life is an unexplained blossoming out of his own core. "Those who, with their deeds, look after something, those who work for a why, are bondsmen and hirelings."
–Reiner Schürmann, Heidegger and Meister Eckhart on Releasement (1973) (Eckhart sermons: DW I, 92, 3-6; DW II, 253, 4f)
Even the wise act according to their nature.
All beings follow their nature.
So what can suppression accomplish?
–Bhagavad Gītā (1993) (Translated by Michael von Brück; my translation from the German)
In the dust-wiping type of meditation (tso-ch'an, zazen) it is not easy to go further than the tranquilization of the mind; it is apt to stop short at the stage of quiet contemplation, which is designated by Hui-neng 'the practice of keeping watch over purity'. At best it ends in ecstasy, self-absorption, a temporary suspension of consciousness. There is no 'seeing' in it, no knowing of itself, no active grasping of self-nature, no spontaneous functioning of it, no chen-hsing ('Seeing into Nature') whatever. The dust-wiping type is therefore the art of binding oneself with a constructed rope, an artificial construction which obstructs the way to emancipation. No wonder Hui-neng and his followers attacked the Purity school.
– Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki, The Zen Doctrine of No-Mind (1949)
The thought: 'I am the doer' is the bite of a poisonous snake.
To know: 'I do nothing' is the wisdom of faith.
–Ashtavakra Gita (2005) (Translated by Bart Marshall)
I wish to speak to the despisers of the body. Let them not learn differently nor teach differently, but only bid farewell to their own bodies – and so become dumb.
'I am body and soul' – so speaks the child. And why should one not speak like children?
But the awakened, the enlightened man says: I am body entirely, and nothing beside; and soul is only a word for something in the body.
The body is a great intelligence, a multiplicity with one sense, a war and a peace, a herd and a herdsman.
Your little intelligence, my brother, which you call 'spirit', is also an instrument of your body, a little instrument and toy of your great intelligence.
You say 'I' and you are proud of this word. But greater than this – although you will not believe in it – is your body and its great intelligence, which does not say 'I' but performs 'I'.
Behind your thoughts and feelings, my brother, stands a mighty commander, an unknown sage – he is called Self. He lives in your body, he is your body.
There is more reason in your body than in your best wisdom. And who knows for what purpose your body requires precisely your best wisdom?
Your Self laughs at your Ego and its proud leapings. 'What are these leapings and flights of thought to me?' it says to itself. 'A by-way to my goal. I am the Ego's leading-string and I prompt its conceptions.
–Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, A Book for Everyone and No One (1883) (Translated by R.J. Hollingdale)
Everything leads to the belief that, at the present moment, a more accurate knowledge of Indian thought has become possible. India has entered the course of history, and, rightly or wrongly, Western consciousness tends to take a more serious view of the philosophies of peoples who hold a place in history. On the other hand, especially since the last generation of philosophers, Western consciousness is more and more inclined to define itself with reference to the problems of time and history. For over a century, the greater part of the scientific and philosophical effort of the West has been devoted to the factors that 'condition' the human being. It has been shown how and to what degree man is conditioned by his physiology, his heredity, his social milieu, the cultural ideology in which he shares, his unconscious –and above all by history, by his historical moment and his own personal history. This last discovery of Western thought–that man is essentially a temporal and historical being, that he is, and can only be, what history has made him–still dominates Western philosophy. Certain philosophical trends even conclude from it that the only worthy and valid task proposed to man is to assume this temporality and this historicity frankly and fully, for any other choice would be equivalent to an escape into the abstract and non-authentic and would be at the price of the sterility and death that inexorably punish any betrayal of history.
It does not fall to us to discuss these theses. We may, however, remark that the problems that today absorb the Western mind also prepare it for a better understanding of Indian spirituality. Indeed, they incite it to employ, for its own philosophical effort, the millennial experience of India. Let us explain. It is the human condition, and above all the temporality of the human being, that constitutes the object of the most recent Western philosophy. It is this temporality that makes all the other "conditionings" possible and that, in the last analysis, makes man a "conditioned being," an indefinite and evanescent series of "conditions." Now, this problem of the "conditioning" of man (and its corollary, rather neglected in the West, his "deconditioning") constitutes the central problem of Indian thought. From the Upanishads onward, India has been seriously preoccupied with but one great problem – the structure of the human condition. (Hence, it has been said, and not without reason, that all Indian philosophy has been, and still is "existentialist.")
With a rigor unknown elsewhere, India has applied it self to analyzing the various conditions of the human being. We hasten to add that it has done so not in order to arrive at a precise and coherent explanation of man (as, for example, did nineteenth century Europe when it believed that it explained man by his hereditary and social conditioning), but in order to learn how far the conditioned zones of the human being extend and to see if anything else exists beyond these conditionings. Hence it is that, long before depth psychology, the sages and ascetics of India were led to explore the obscure zones of the unconscious. They had found that man's physical, social, cultural, and religious conditionings were comparatively easy to delimit and hence to master. The great obstacles to the ascetic and contemplative life arose from the activity of the unconscious, from the samskāras and the vāsanās–"impregnations," "residues," "latencies"–that constitute what depth psychology calls the contents and structures of the unconscious. It is not, however, the pragmatic anticipation of modern psychological techniques that is valuable, it is its employment for the "deconditioning" of man. Because, for India, knowledge of the systems of "conditioning" could not be an end in itself. It was not knowing them that mattered, but mastering them, if the contents of the unconscious were worked upon, it was in order to "burn" them. We shall see by what methods Yoga conceives that it arrives at these surprising results. And it is primarily these results which are of interest to Western psychologists and philosophers.
As we said earlier, the problem of the human condition–that is, the temporality and historicity of the human being–is at the very center of Western thought, and the same problem has occupied Indian philosophy from its beginnings. It is true that we do not there find the terms "history" and "historicity" in the senses that they bear in the West today, and that we very seldom find the term "temporality." In fact, it was impossible that these concepts should be found under the particular designations of "history" and "historicity." But what matters is not identity in philosophical terminology. It is enough if the problems are homologizable. Now, it has long been known that Indian thought accords considerable importance to the concept of māyā, which has been translated–and with good reason–as "illusion," "cosmic illusion," "mirage," "magic," "becoming," "irreality," and the life. But, looking more closely, we see that māyā is illusion because it does not participate in Being, because it is "becoming," "temporality"–cosmic becoming, to be sure, but also historical becoming. It is possible, then, that India has not been unaware of the relation between illusion, temporality, and human suffering. […] What modern Western philosophy terms "being situated," "being constituted by temporality and historicity," has its counterpart, in Indian philosophy, in "existence in māyā."
To repeat, it is not a matter of purely and simply accepting one of the solutions proposed by India. A spiritual value is not acquired after the fashion of a making a new automobile. Above all, it is not a matter of philosophical syncretism […] still less of the detestable "spiritual" hybridism inaugurated by the Theosophical Society […] The problem is more serious. It is essential that we know and understand a thought that has held a place of the first importance in the history of universal spirituality. And it is essential that we know it now. For, on the one hand, it is from now on that, any cultural provincialism having been outstripped by the very course of history, we are forced […] to think in terms of universal history and to forge universal spiritual values.
The conquest of absolute freedom, of perfect spontaneity, is the goal of all Indian philosophies and mystical techniques, but it is above all through Yoga, through one of the many forms of Yoga, that India has held that it can be assured. This is the chief reason we have thought it useful to write a comparatively full exposition of the theory and practices of Yoga, to recount the history of its forms, and to define its place in Indian spirituality as a whole.
–Mircea Eliade, Foreword to Yoga, Immortality and Freedom (1954) (Translated by Willard R. Trask) | {
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Home » Palermo's Poised to Expand in 2010
Palermo's Poised to Expand in 2010
Palermo's Pizza plans to expand its corporate headquarters in Milwaukee, Wis., after purchasing nearly three acres adjacent to its current location.
According to the producer of Italian-style frozen pizzas, the expansion will pave the way for future growth and enable the company to respond to increased demand for its nationally recognized product line. The Redevelopment Authority of the City of Milwaukee will take action on the request to buy 2.98 additional acres in the Menomonee Valley Industrial Center at its October 15 meeting.
The company, which currently employs more than 400 people at its 135,000-sq.-ft. facility, hopes to break ground on site preparation in October and on building construction in April 2010. The purchase of the property will accommodate a phased expansion that's anticipated to be complete in the next three to five years, according to the company.
"Back in 1995 our decision to invest in the Menomonee Valley was rooted in our love of Milwaukee and the promise of this newly developed area," says Giacomo Fallucca, president and CEO of Palermo's Pizza. "This expansion underscores the success we've enjoyed and our ongoing commitment to invest in our vibrant community."
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Pledge at University of North Texas Fraternity Reports Hazing
By: Charmaine Santos
In the fall of 2013, transfer and commuter student Derek Elrod was rushing the Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity at the University of North Texas (UNT). The fraternity was his first choice and he thought the brothers at the fraternity were very welcoming. He felt like he finally found the social support and atmosphere he was longing for. Elrod said, "It was extremely inviting and friendly. I met so many people I thought were really nice people. The feeling was just like, 'how did I not know that this existed?' It felt like this was UNT's greatest secret." When Elrod got an offer to become a part of the fraternity, he was ecstatic.
When the Sigma Phi Epsilon pledges went to the fraternity house to celebrate, the cheerful mood quickly went away. Elrod called 911 around 3 p.m. in the afternoon to report hazing. According to the police report, the fraternity's president at the time, Richard Randall, forced the pledges to drink straight vodka and "complete countless push-ups" in one of the rooms inside the house. In 2005, Elrod had been diagnosed with a medical condition involving abnormal nervous system functions. He panicked and recalled, "I felt like I was trapped…The lights were off, the blinds were closed…the door was closed, and there were guys in front of it…I had gotten to the point where I couldn't even lift my own body up. It was the first moment in my life that I could not lift my own body up from the ground…I felt like I was not free to leave."
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Eventually Elrod got up raced down the stairs to dial 911. When a police officer arrived, Randall admitted that the brothers didn't want Elrod there because he was homosexual. Randall said to the police officer, "I honestly thought he was homosexual. Hey guys, we shouldn't invite him over to our house. It's kind of weird that he is here." The question raised is whether the fraternity invited Elrod to pledge, thinking he was gay, so they could torture him with hazing rituals. Hazing rituals are not uncommon within Greek communities at colleges, though not every fraternity or sorority participates and severity levels vary among schools.
Charmaine Santos is a junior at the University of San Francisco pursuing a Bachelors of Science in Biology as well as minors in Chemistry and Health Studies. She volunteers alongside UCSF medical students at a student-run homeless clinic in San Francisco and is also an active volunteer with Operation Access. Charmaine is also a Social Media Assistant at Cancer InCytes Magazine.
Brayton, Ed. (2015, July 18). "Another Fraternity Horror Story." Retrieved July 19, 2015 from http://freethoughtblogs.com/dispatches/2015/07/18/another-fraternity-horror-story/
Photo Credit: http://ocm.auburn.edu/stop_hazing/ | {
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Kediri is een stadsgemeente in Oost-Java, Indonesië. Het ligt circa 128 kilometer ten zuidwesten van Soerabaja in een mooi tropisch berglandschap. De stad is omringt door het regentschap Kediri, maar is administratief gescheiden van het regentschap, waarvan het vroeger de hoofdstad was.
Geschiedenis
In de periode 850-928 gaat het Mataram-Rijk naar Kediri in verband met de rivaliteit van het Sriwaijay-Rijk. In 1049 valt Mataram uiteen in Kediri en het oostelijker gelegen Janggala. Tot 1222 had Kediri de overhand. In 1222 wordt de koning van Kediri verslagen door een vazalvorst; die wordt dan koning Rajasa van het rijk Singosari. In maart 2007 werd bekendgemaakt dat in de stad en omgeving 392 nog oudere religieuze vondsten waren gedaan, die mogelijkerwijze duiden op de locatie van het mysterieuze Kadari koninkrijk.
Omgeving
Het ligt aan de rivier de Brantas in een vallei aan de voet van de 2552 meter hoge vulkaanberg Wilis. In de omgeving wordt suiker, koffie, tabak en rijst verbouwd. De stad is een belangrijk productiecentrum voor suiker en sigaretten.
Onderdistricten
De stadsgemeente bestaat uit drie onderdistricten (zogenaamde kecamatan). In deze onderdistricten liggen 46 plaatsen die een administratieve eenheid zijn.
Verbindingen
]
]
Kediri heeft het spoorwegstation station Kediri aan de lijn Soerabaja-Tulungagung. Er is verder een groot busstation.
Sport
Brawijayastadion
Burgemeester/Walikota
In 1906 kreeg Kediri een gemeenteraad voorgezeten door een assistent-resident; vanaf 1929 kreeg ze als stadsgemeente een eigen burgemeester.
Nederlands-Indische tijd
Mr. L.K. Wennekendonk (1929-1936)
J.G. Ruesink (1936-1940)
M. Scheltema (1940-1941)
Dr. J.R. Lette (1941-1942)
Indonesische periode:
R. Soeprapto (1945-1950)
R. Dwidjo Soemarto (1950-1960)
R. Soedjono (1960-1966)
Hartojo (1966-1968)
Anwar Zainuddin (1968-1973)
Drs. Soedarmanto (1973-1978)
Drs. Setijono (1978-1989)
Drs. Wijoto (1989-1999)
H.A. Maschut (1999-2009)
Dr. H. Samsul Ashar Sp.PD (2009-2014)
Abdullah Abu Bakar, S.E. (2014-heden)
Geboren in Kediri
Thilly Weissenborn (1889-1964), fotografe
Anthony Fokker (1890-1939), luchtvaartpionier en vliegtuigbouwer
Johannes Bernardus Herman Willemsz Geeroms (1902-1944), kapitein Indisch leger en Bronzen Leeuw
Gerard Bakker Schut (1905 - 1990), ingenieur en Rallye rijder. In 1938 winnaar Rallye Monte Carlo.
Paul Louis van Eeden (1907-1996), kunstschilder
Stad in Indonesië
Regentschap of stadsgemeente in Oost-Java | {
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Blackmoon (BMC) is a cryptocurrency token and operates on the Ethereum platform. Blackmoon has a current supply of 60,000,000 BMC with 21,942,544 BMC in circulation. The last known price of Blackmoon is 0.131664 USD and is up 4.90% over the last 24 hours. It is currently trading on 9 active market(s) with 215,195 USD traded over the last 24 hours. More information can be found at https://www.blackmooncrypto.com/. | {
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Take gifitng to the next level with this really pretty silk box, filled with a selection of 36 of our finest Belgian, luxury and classic truffles, pralines and an assortment of real almond marzipan in seasonal colours and designs. This box can be used as a jewellery box, long after the truffles remain a lingering memory.
Total Net weight: 412 grams. | {
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Learn about the unique ecosystem that is the Long Island Pine Barrens during this guided hike at Quogue Wildlife Refuge. A walk in the beautiful Quogue Wildlife Refuge is a short course in Pine Barrens ecology. You'll see wetlands, creeks, ponds, tall lowland pitch pines, and dwarf pines. Tour is guided by naturalist and Pine Barrens Society board member, Tom Casey. Inclement weather cancels this hike, registrants will be notified by email. Cost is $5 for adults, $3 for children. | {
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Crackpottery: BBC journalists told to stop interviewing science deniers.
BBC Journalists Told to Stop Giving Airtime to Crackpots. Finally.
Photo by Teach the Controversy T-shirts, which are fantastic.
In very welcome news, BBC journalists have been told to stop inviting crackpots on news shows in the name of balance.
Oh, I do so love this. It's precisely the right thing to do, sorely needed and sorely overdue. In this specific case, back in 2012 the BBC was criticized for news shows inviting on people with fringe views, especially when the science being discussed was solidly understood.
Obviously, the topic most abused in this way was the reality of global warming. That should come as no surprise to anyone who has been paying any attention at all.
But more broadly, most TV news shows do this, especially when they are done with a talk show format. It's all too easy for a news program or other venue with a biased ideological objective (cough cough Fox News cough Wall Street Journal cough) to bring on people who sound authoritative, but who are in fact simply cranks or contrarians with outlandish claims. This sort of bias sows doubt, which is far easier to do than to debunk it.
News shows don't put on a flat-earther whenever they show a map. They don't get an opposing opinion from a young-Earth creationist when a new dinosaur fossil is found. They don't interview an astrologer when a new exoplanet is discovered. So why put on a climate change denier when we're talking about our planet heating up?
As you (Energy & Environment Cabinet official) sit there in your chair with your data, we sit up here in ours with our data and our constituents and stuff behind us. I don't want to get into the debate about climate change, but I will simply point out that I think in academia we all agree that the temperature on Mars is exactly as it is here. Nobody will dispute that. Yet there are no coal mines on Mars. There are no factories on Mars that I'm aware of.
If your brain survived that onslaught, then I'll dispute that. The average temperature on Earth is very roughly 14° C (57°F). The average temperature of Mars is -55°C (-67° F). Not really "exactly the same".
Ironically, if Mars ever did have the same temperature as Earth, it would be due to global warming from the greenhouse effect. The atmosphere of the Red Planet is less than 1 percent as thick as Earth's, but it's mostly carbon dioxide. That gas raises the planet's temperature a few degrees. On Earth, given our distance from the Sun and other factors, the average temperature should hover around freezing. Thanks to greenhouse gases like CO2, it's far more clement … but since we're adding huge amounts of carbon dioxide to our air, it won't stay that way for much longer.
People would actually be a whole lot better off if those coal mines were on Mars.
Just as we'd be a whole lot better off if all our politicians acknowledged the reality of reality and our media kicked folks who think otherwise to the curb. I applaud the BBC for its stance (as well as the L. A. Times and other venues), and hope to see a lot, lot more of this in the near future. | {
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HDR welcomes Kevin Spady as a vice president and healthcare principal in the Los Angeles architecture studio. As a healthcare principal, Kevin is responsible for expanding HDR's healthcare practice in Southern California, which includes developing new business, market development and strategic outreach, maintaining client relationships, and managing project teams. He says he is excited to join HDR and have the opportunity to utilize his knowledge and skills in such an exceptional organization.
Kevin's eclectic portfolio includes healthcare, science and technology, and higher education projects, as well as laboratory planning and programming. While he enjoys participating in organizations such as the AIA and DBIA, Kevin is most proud of the leadership roles he has had throughout his 39-year career, especially when he has been able to mentor staff and help with staff development. | {
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Babylon Beach is situated between Santa Eulalia and Es Canar. They pride themselves on producing fresh organically grown food. Taking full advantage of the local produce of the island they offer a delicious selection of meals and snacks from pizzas and rotisserie style chargrilled chicken to salads and fish of the day along with a selection of tasty homemade desserts.
It boasts the fantastic Babylonitos Adventure Playground which is designed to encourage creative play and comprises a zip wire, climbing wall, sandpit and circular swing. Wooden picnic tables and benches under shady trees are the perfect spot for children to enjoy the Kids Menu. It always receives a big thumbs up from 3 to 12 year olds.
Babylonitos Adventure Playground is fully supervised by Kids in Ibiza 3 times per week but open daily, perfect for allowing you to relax and kick back with a cocktail, enjoying the beautiful views whilst the kids play and have fun.
The venue boasts great family friendly facilities and services. They have a baby changing room, you can celebrate your child's birthday party there and their annual kids Halloween party is infamous. | {
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No one can stay at 1 location all their life. 1 has to transfer. There may be numerous factors for this alter of place. While sometimes this change of location is short-term, there might be times when one has to shift permanently. Training, new job, new family members – the reasons are limitless.
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Educationally Entertaining
For the Scientist
[ January 19, 2021 ] Breakthrough Technique Calculates Gene Regulation at the Single-Cell Level Using Deep-Learning For The Scientist
[ January 5, 2021 ] Nut Consumption Improves Sperm Parameters and May Alter Epigenome Diet
[ December 15, 2020 ] Reversing Vision Loss by Restoring Youthful Epigenetic Information Aging
[ December 1, 2020 ] Epigenetic Regulator TET1 May Prevent Beiging of Fat Cells Diet
[ November 17, 2020 ] Researchers Characterize Chromatin State & Gene Expression Dynamics During Heart Development News & Reviews
Epigenetic Marks May Regulate Liver Disease
April 21, 2020 Brandon Eudy Diseases & Disorders, News & Reviews
Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is an increasingly alarming health problem in the United States where it is estimated that up to 30% of the population has a fatty liver. Approximately 10% of NAFLD patients will progress in disease severity leading to inflammation and fibrosis and eventually more serious consequences such as cirrhosis or liver cancer. Better understanding the molecular and epigenetic changes in the liver driving disease progression could lead to better treatments.
Understanding how DNA methylation is altered in disease states such as NAFLD could lead to better insight into how key genes involved in the disease become activated. Scientists are currently seeking to identify how genes involved in liver disease might be regulated at an epigenetic level by DNA methylation. Better understanding of the early molecular switches that causes dysregulation of key genes involved in NAFLD could lead to better preventative measures or treatments.
A team of researchers at the Translational Genomics Research Institute in Phoenix, Arizona measured DNA methylation in liver biopsies of histologically-determined obese NAFLD patients with cirrhosis and compared the findings to samples from an obese control group without liver disease. Importantly, the researchers wanted to determine whether changes in DNA methylation was correlated with altered gene expression in the cirrhosis patients.
The researchers found a different pattern of DNA methylation of genes involved in reactive oxygen and reactive nitrogen species production, both of which are produced by immune cells during liver inflammation.
"Our findings showed statistically significant evidence for differential DNA methylation between fibrotic and normal tissue samples from obese individuals," said Dr. Johanna DiStefano, who is a professor and head of the Translational Genomics Research Institute Diabetes and Fibrotic Disease Unit.
Genes involved in cell signaling pathways involved in lipid metabolism including FXR/RXR and LXR/RXR were also differentially expressed.
The authors compared the results of their study to four previous studies which sought to determine whether NAFLD was associated with altered DNA methylation in the liver and found key similarities including altered methylation of the AQP1, FGFR2, RBP5, and MGMT genes. AQP1 and FGFR2 are especially known to be upregulated in fibrotic liver tissue and these genes could represent new therapeutic targets.
The results of this study further drive home the idea that epigenetic regulation of gene expression is altered during the course of NAFLD and cirrhosis may be a result of aberrant expression of key genes involved in inflammation and lipid metabolism driven my epigenetic changes.
SEE ALSO: Breakthrough Technique Calculates Gene Regulation at the Single-Cell Level Using Deep-Learning
The authors suggested that it would be prudent to determine if genes in other tissues such as blood cells were differentially regulated during NAFLD. Currently, there are no definitive blood biomarkers for NAFLD. If NAFLD was associated with a unique epigenetic signature in peripheral blood cells, it is possible that diagnosis of the disease could be improved, potentially leading to earlier intervention and reduced burden of the long-term consequences of disease among the population.
Source: Gerhard, Glenn S., et al. (2018) "Differentially methylated loci in NAFLD cirrhosis are associated with key signaling pathways." Clinical Epigenetics 10. 93.
Reference: Steve Yozwiak "TGEN-Led Study Shows DNA Methylation Related to Liver Disease Among Obese Patients" Translational Genomics Research Institute. 18 Jul. 2018. Web.
About Brandon Eudy 6 Articles
Brandon received his PhD in Nutritional Sciences from the University of Florida and is currently a postdoctoral scholar at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is fascinated with the impact of nutrition on health and physiology and is ever curious about the role of epigenetics in mediating nutrient-gene interactions. Outside of the lab, Brandon provides thought-provoking and informative posts on food, cooking, and nutritional sciences at his blog https://www.realfoodexplored.com.
Early Detection of DNA Methylation in Pancreas Could Help Identify Diabetes
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Epigenetics is the study of mechanisms that switch genes on or off. It is involved in every aspect of life and such reversible, potentially heritable changes affect the way we live as well as our future generations.
As it is believed that epigenetics holds the key to many of life's mysteries, our intiative is to bring awareness and knowledge of epigenetics to a broader audience without neglecting the important, scientific aspects. We break down the science and present it in a way that a regular person can understand.
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De M1-helm is een stalen gevechtshelm die tussen 1941 en 1985 werd gebruikt door het Amerikaanse leger, onder andere tijdens de Tweede Wereldoorlog, de Koreaanse Oorlog en de Vietnamoorlog.
De M1-helm was onderdeel van de gevechtsuitrusting van militairen van alle krijgsmachtdelen, en werd een icoon van het Amerikaanse leger. Zijn bijnaam was "Steel Pot" (kookpan (nl)/kookpot (vl)).
Het model werd na de Tweede Wereldoorlog door krijgsmachten over de hele wereld gekopieerd. Het werd ook de standaard-gevechtshelm van de NAVO.
Geschiedenis
Sinds 1917 gebruikte het Amerikaanse leger een lokaal geproduceerde versie van de Britse Brodie Mk I helm, die Helmet, M1917 genoemd werd.
De M1917-helm was gemaakt van mangaanstaal met een vast binnenwerk en een leren kinriem met schuifgesp. Het binnenwerk van leder en vilt en bood niet veel comfort. De M1917 was olijfgroen geverfd. De verf had een antireflecterende textuur door toevoeging van zaagsel. In 1934 werd de M1917A1 of "Kelly" helm geïntroduceerd, een verbeterde versie met een nieuw lederen binnenwerk dat was voorzien van met haar gevulde 'kussentjes' en een tweedelige webbing kinriem met koperen haak-en-oog sluiting.. Een kleine moer aan de top van de helm hield het binnenwerk op zijn plaats. De M1917A1 weegt 1,1 kg (2 lbs 6 oz).
Het M1917-model, ontworpen om militairen die in loopgraven staan te beschermen tegen vallende granaatscherven en -splinters, voldeed niet op het moderne slagveld. In 1940 werkte een onderzoeksteam van het Amerikaanse leger in Fort Benning in Columbus (Georgia), onder leiding van majoor Harold G.Sydenham, aan een nieuw ontwerp voor een tweedelige helm die de drager veel meer bescherming bood dan de M1917A1.
Onderzoek wees uit dat de ideaal gevormde helm een koepelvormige bovenkant heeft en de contouren van het hoofd volgt. Daarnaast moet de voorkant naar voren uitsteken om het voorhoofd te beschermen zonder het zicht te belemmeren, en moeten de zijkanten zo ver mogelijk omlaag lopen zonder het gebruik van het geweer of andere wapens te hinderen, en moet de achterkant zo laag mogelijk zijn zonder dat de helm naar voren geduwd wordt als de drager op zijn buik ligt. Om ervoor te zorgen dat regen niet in de kraag lekt zou de onderrand rondom wat naar buiten gebogen moeten zijn.
De eerste M1-helmen van mangaanstaal werden gemaakt door de McCord Radiator Company uit Detroit (Michigan), terwijl de fiber (geperst palmvezel) binnenhelm werd gemaakt door de Hawley Products Company uit Geneva (Illinois). Op voorstel van generaal George Patton werd het binnenwerk van de binnenhelm overgenomen van een ontwerp van John T. Riddell. Riddell had in 1940 de eerste plastic american footballhelm ontwikkeld, met een binnenwerk dat verhoogd en verlaagd kon worden door een veter midden bovenin losser of strakker dicht te knopen.
Een aantal prototypes werd getest en de helm bleek ruimschoots te voldoen aan de gestelde eisen. In juni 1941 werd de helm goedgekeurd als Helmet, Steel, M1. Direct daarna ging hij in massaproductie
Ontwerp
De Amerikaanse M1-helm bestaat uit een stalen buitenhelm met vaste tweedelige kinriem en een kunststof binnenhelm met afneembare kinriem en verstelbaar binnenwerk dat om het hoofd sluit. Een voordeel van een tweedelige helm is dat er geen gaten in de stalen buitenhelm gemaakt hoeven te worden voor de klinknagels waarmee het binnenwerk vastzit. Gaten verzwakken de ballistische bescherming.
De buitenhelm wordt niet gedragen zonder binnenhelm. Andersom kan de binnenhelm wel gedragen worden zonder buitenhelm, en biedt dan bescherming tegen vallende objecten en tegen stoten, vergelijkbaar met een bouwhelm.
Het gewicht van de eerste M1-helmen was ongeveer 1,3 kg (2,85 lbs), inclusief binnenhelm en kinriem.
Buitenhelm
De M1 buitenhelm is gemaakt van mangaanstaal. Alle helmen hebben dezelfde maat. De buitenhelm is 17,8 cm (7") diep, 24,1 cm (9.5") breed en 27,9 cm (11") lang. De dikte is 3,2 mm (1/8"). Hij wordt in één stuk geperst uit metalen plaat, waarna en een dunne stalen bies om de rand gekrompen wordt. Aan beide zijden is een metalen beugel bevestigd; aan elk wordt een deel van de tweedelige webbing kinriem met T1-veiligheidssluiting bevestigd. De helmen werden dof olijfgroen gespoten, waarbij de buitenkant opgeruwd werd, eerst met fijn kurkpoeder en later met silicazand.
De vorm van de buitenhelm leidde tot een aantal nieuwe, oneigenlijke, toepassingen: hij kon bijvoorbeeld worden gebruikt als schep, hamer, wasbak en emmer. Zelfs als kookpot, hoewel dat werd afgeraden omdat het de metaallegering broos zou maken. Ook was hij hoog genoeg om enigszins comfortabel op te zitten, ook met de binnenhelm erin.
Binnenhelm
De eerste binnenhelmen waren gemaakt van geperst karton, latere van fiber (geperste palmvezel), geperste repen kunststof ('laminaat') en plastic. De binnenhelm past strak in de buitenhelm. In de binnenhelm is met zes halfholle klinknagels een binnenwerk van verstelbare webbing riemen bevestigd dat op het hoofd rust. Het binnenwerk is voorzien van een zweetband. Aan de achterkant is met drie extra halfholle klinknagels een webbing neksteun aangebracht. Aan de binnenkant van de binnenhelm is aan beide zijden met een extra halfholle klinknagel een bevestigingspen voor een eigen kinriem bevestigd. De vlakke ronde koppen van de klinknagels zijn aan de buitenzijde van de binnenhelm zichtbaar.
Als de binnenhelm samen met de buitenhelm gedragen wordt wordt de kinriem van de binnenhelm over de voorzijde van de helm gelegd, of onder de helm achter het hoofd langs gelegd, als nekriem. De eerste binnenhelmen waren van geperst papier, maar deze werden al snel vervangen door kunststof exemplaren.
De binnenhelm werd vaak zonder buitenhelm gedragen door militaire politie (in wit), schietbaanpersoneel, bij wachtdiensten en bij militaire ceremonies en parades.
Draagwijze
Kinriem
Veel Amerikaanse soldaten droegen de kinriem van de buitenhelm vaak los, of legden deze om de achterzijde van de helm. De belangrijkste reden hiervoor was omdat een vijand die van achteren aanviel, de helm zou kunnen pakken en, als de kinband werd gedragen, het hoofd naar kon trekken en zo slachtoffer uit evenwicht kon brengen. Daarnaast geloofden veel mannen ten onrechte dat explosie dichtbij de helm weg zou kunnen blazen en de kinriem, ondanks de T1-veiligheidssluiting, de nek van de drager zou breken.
Rangonderscheidingstekens
Amerikaanse officieren droegen voorop hun helm hun rangonderscheidingsteken.
Functie emblemen
Gedurende de landingen in Normanië droegen bij sommige eenheden officieren een helm met een verticale lijn op de achterzijde. Onderofficieren hadden een horizontale lijn achterop hun helm. De streep was vaak wit, maar ook minder opvallende kleuren werden gebruikt, zoals geel of lichtgroen. Door deze "leadership stripe" of "follow me stripe" konden manschappen hun officieren en onderofficieren tijdens gevechtsoperaties gemakkelijk herkennen, terwijl de vijand (die zich meestal vóór je bevindt) dat niet ziet. De strepen verdwenen kort na Normandië weer.
Medisch personeel schilderde aanvankelijk geen Rode Kruis-symbool niet op hun helmen. Toen ze zich realiseerden dat herkenbaar medisch personeel door de Duitsers ze (meestal) niet beschoten zou worden. werden de helmen voorzien van rode kruisen, vaak in witte cirkels.
Sommige officieren schilderden hun ranginsignes in wit of zwart op de voorkant van hun helmen, terwijl anderen juist de opvallendste rangonderscheidingstekens van hun uniformen verwijderden om sluipschuttervuur te vermijden. Aalmoezeniers en predikanten droegen in plaats van een ranginsigne een latijns kruis (✝) voorop hun helm.
Onderdeelsemblemen
Tijdens de Tweede Wereldoorlog en ook daarna werden op de helmen vele verschillende emblemen aangebracht. Bijvoorbeeld divisie-, regiments-, of bataljonsemblemen.
Op D-Day zou de Amerikaanse 101e Luchtlandingsdivisie in Normandië landen, waarbij de troepen verspreid zouden raken over een groot gebied. Om te groeperen zou was het nodig elkaar gemakkelijk te kunnen herkennen. Daarom ieder onderdeel van de divisie een ander symbol op hun helmen. De vier infanterieregimenten 501, 502 en 506 PIR en 327 GIR droegen resp. een ruit (♦), hart (♥), schoppen (♠) en klaver (♣). De veldartillerieafdelingen droegen een cirkel (⚫︎); het luchtdoelartilleriebataljon een driehoek (▲); het geniebataljon de letter 'E' (Engineers); de geneeskundige compagnie een Geneefs kruis (✚) en overig personnel een vierkant (■). Tegenwoordig gebruikt de 101e Luchtlandingsdivisie nog steeds deze helmsymbolen. Andere eenheden namen deze werkwijze over, vaak met andere symbolen.
US Army Rangers van het 2e en 5e Rangerbataljon schilderden een oranje ruit op de achterkant van hun helmen. Binnen deze ruit stond in zwart het cijfer dat hun bataljon aanduidde.
Marine-eenheden die tijdens D-Day op de stranden zouden opereren, schilderden een brede grijze band om hun helmen, zodat ze herkenbaar waren als marinepersoneel.
Helmnet, helmovertrek en helmband
Over de M1-helm wordt vaak een helmnet en/of helmovertrek aangebracht. Hiermee wordt de ronde vorm en de glans van de helm verborgen. Bovendien kan er ander camouflagemateriaal aan bevestigd worden, bijvoorbeeld stroken stof, gras, takken of bladeren.
De helmovertrek voor de M1-helm is gemaakt van 4-6 driehoekige (of 2 halfronde) stukken stof die aan elkaar gestikt zijn en zo een koepel vormen in de vorm van de helm. De onderrand bestaat uit een aantal flappen, die in de buitenhelm gevouwen worden, waarna de binnenhelm er in gedaan wordt en zo de helmovertrek vastklemt. Er zijn overtrekken in allerlei verschillende kleuren en camouflagepatronen. Sommige helmovertrekken zijn voorzien van gaten waarachter camouflagemateriaal gestoken kan worden.
Meestal wordt er om de helmovertrek en/of het helmnet een elastische helmband gedaan, waarachter extra camouflagemateriaal gestoken kan worden, en die de helmovertrek en/of het helmnet beter op zijn plaats houdt.
Gebruik
De M1-helm werd gebruikt door de United States Army van 1941 tot halverwege de jaren '80, toen hij werd vervangen door de PASGT-helm (PASGT = Personnel Armor System for Ground Troops) die een betere ergonomie en betere ballistische bescherming bood.
De M1-helm werd in de jaren '50 de standaard NAVO-helm, en veel Europese NAVO-landen voerden hun eigen lokaal geproduceerde versie van de M1-helm in. Van de meeste weken de afmetingen enigszins af van de oorspronkelijke helm. Ook werden er andere binnenwerken en kinriemen gebruikt. De Nederlandse versie staat bekend als helm M53, en de Belgische als helm/casque M51. De Deense varianten heten Stålhjelm m/48 en Stålhjelm m/63, de Noorse Stålhjelm M58 en de Oostenrijkse M58 Stahlhelm 2 und Innenhelm 2 en M75 Stahlhelm 1 und Innenhelm 1 De eerste Duitse versie heette Gefechtshelm of Stahlhelm M56. In 1958 voerde de Duitse Bundeswehr een nieuwe versie in met vaste binnenhelm; de Gefechtshelm of Stahlhelm M 1A1; verschillende versies daarvan met verschillend binnenwerk zijn M60, M62 en M62 modifiziert. De Franse M51-OTAN helm week het meest af van de oorspronkelijke M1, door een verder naar voren uitstekende voorrand en rechtere zijkanten
M1 Parahelmet
Het Amerikaanse leger gebruikte een speciale M1-binnenhelm voor parachutisten. Deze had aan elke kant een 'omgekeerde A'-vormige kinriem, met een voorgevormde lederen kinbeschermer. Op deze kinriem van de binnenhelm zaten drukknopen die vastgemaakt werden aan drukknopen op de tweedelige kinriem van de buitenhelm. Daardoor bleef de buitenhelm beter op zijn plaats bij plotselinge bewegingen.
M3 Flakhelm en M5 Flakhelm
Tijdens de Tweede Wereldoorlog droegen de bemanningen van Amerikaanse bommenwerpers M1-helmen. Het grootste probleem hierbij was dat de helm niet over de hoofdtelefoons van een lederen vlieghelm paste. Bovendien was de M1 te groot voor gebruik in krappe ruimtes zoals geschutskoepels. Daarom werden in 1942 de M3 Flakhelm en M4 Flakhelm ingevoerd. De M4 Flakhelm of 'Grow'-helm was een nieuw ontwerp speciaal voor personeel in krappe posities zoals geschutskoepels.De M3 is een fabrieksmodificatie van de M1. Hij had geen binnenhelm, maar het binnenwerk was aan de stalen buitenhelm geklonken. De helm was voorzien van een lange lederen kinriem met snelsluiting. Aan de zijkanten waren grote uitsparingen aangebracht zodat de helm goed paste over een RAF C-type of USAAF A-11 vlieghelm met communicatieapparatuur. Boven de uitsparingen waren met scharnieren viltgevoerde ronde schelpvormige stalen kappen aangebracht die over de oorschelpen van de hoofdtelefoon pasten.
Om brandwonden te voorkomen, een risico bij het aanraken van blank metaal bij temperaturen ver onder nul op grote hoogten, werd de helm geverfd met een olijfgroene verf gemengd met zaagsel of soortgelijk materiaal.
Uit de M3 werd de M5 Flakhelm ontwikkeld, die meer bescherming bood bij de slapen door langere, druppelvormige, stalen beschermkappen over de hoofdtelefoon. De onderrand van de M5 was recht, in tegenstelling tot de naar buiten gebogen onderrand van de M1 en M3 Flakhelm.
Parachutistenhelm M1A1LL
De M1A1LL-helm (ook wel FJ59-helm genoemd) werd in 1961 geïntroduceerd als de nieuwe helm voor de parachutisten van de Bundeswehr ('LL' staat voor 'Luft-Landetruppen' (luchtlandingstroepen)). Hieraan was een uitgebreid beproevingstraject voorafgegaan, waarbij vrijwel alle geteste modellen aanpassingen waren van de Duitse M38 Fallschirmjäger helm uit de Tweede Wereldoorlog.
De M1A1LL werd vervaardigd door de Duitse firma Schuberth en bestaat uit een metalen helm van hetzelfde model als de in 1958 ingevoerde Duitse M1A1 helm. Evenals de M1A1 heeft de M1A1LL parahelm geen losse binnenhelm maar een vast binnenwerk. Anders dan de gewone M1A1 heeft de M1A1LL een kinbandsysteem dat is afgeleid van van de Duitse M38 Fallschirmjäger helm uit de Tweede Wereldoorlog. De maat van het binnenwerk was niet verstelbaar: er waren verschillende vaste maten bechikbaar. De helm werd bij de Bundeswehr gebruikt totdat hij in de jaren '90 vervangen werd door de M92 ballistische helm.
De M1A1LL is van de standaard M1-helm te onderscheiden door het kinbandsysteem en de aan de buitenzijde zichtbare koppen van de halfholle klinknagels waarmee het binnenwerk vastzit. De Duitse helmen waren uitgevoerd in "gelboliv" (RAL 6014).
De M1A1LL werd ook door de Nederlandse Krijgsmacht en de Belgische Krijgsmacht gebruikt.
Nederland
M1-helm
Een deel van de militairen van het Korps Mariniers waren vanaf 1943 in de Verenigde Staten uitgerust met amerikaans materieel, inclusief de M1-helm. De mariniers bleven deze na de oorlog gebruiken totdat hij door de Nederlandse kopie M53 werd vervangen. De mariniers droegen in Nederlands-Indië helmovertrekken in het USMC Pacific camouflagepatroon (ook wel "frog skin" of "duck hunter" genoemd).
M53 Troepenhelm
De M53 Troepenhelm verving bij de Nederlandse Krijgsmacht vanaf 1953 de Engelse Mk II model, en bleef in gebruikt tot hij medio jaren '90 werd vervangen door de Gevechtshelm composiet M95. De helm stond ook bekend als de binnen-buitenhelm of bibuhelm.
De M53 Troepenhelm is een kopie van de Amerikaanse helm M1. De eerste binnenhelmen waren gemaakt van laminaat, latere van plastic. De tweedelige helm weegt ongeveer 1,5 kg.
De tweedelige kinriem van de buitenhelm wordt gesloten met een ander type veiligheidsluiting (insteek) dan de M1. De smallere eendelige kinriem van de binnenhelm wordt op maat gemaakt en gesloten met een schuif-klemgesp. Het binnenwerk is van het Riddell-type, hetzelfde als van de M1. De helmen van het Korps Mariniers hadden een ander model binnenwerk, dat door de Marine Werkplaats werd aangebracht.
De binnenhelm werd vaak zonder buitenhelm gedragen, bijvoorbeeld door personeel van Koninklijke Marechaussee (in wit), schietbaanpersoneel, bij wachtdiensten, bij militaire ceremonies en parades. Ook werd de binnenhelm gedragen als veiligheidshelm bij vredesverplaatsingen achterin in militaire vrachtwagens.
Bij de Koninklijke Landmacht en Koninklijke Luchtmacht werd een stuk jute, gekleurd met bruine schoensmeer en groene blanco gebruikt als helmovertrek, meestal aangevuld met een helmnet, en vastgezet met een brede rubberen band gemaakt van autobinnenband. Bij sneeuw werd soms van witte doeken een helmovertrek gemaakt, of werden er witte stroken in het helmnet vastgemaakt. Veel militairen schaften zelf bij dumpzaken een 'amerikaanse' camouflageovertrek aan.
Pas bij de invoering van het "woodland" camouflagetenue in 1992 werd er een helmovertrek in het camouflage-patroon "woodland" in de uitrusting opgenomen.
De M53 Troepenhelm werd in de jaren '90 vervangen door de Gevechtshelm composiet M95.
Parahelm
Eind jaren '70 werd bij de Nederlandse krijgsmacht voor personeel dat bij het Korps Mariniers of het Korps Commandotroepen een parachutistenopleiding volgde de Duitse Parachutistenhelm M1A1LL ingevoerd, dezelfde helm die bij de Bundeswehr in gebruik was. Hij bleef tot eind jaren '80 in gebruik. De Nederlandse helmen waren uitgevoerd in dezelfde kleur als de Duitse; de kleur werd in Nederland legergroen genoemd.
België
De Belgische Helm NATO 1951/Casque OTAN 1951 met binnenhelm (fr: 'sous casque' of 'coiffe') is een getrouwe kopie van de Amerikaanse M1-helm.
De helm verving de Belgische Helm Model 49/Casque Modèle 49, een kopie van de "Engelse helm", het model Mark II. Deze werd ook wel FN 49 genoemd, hoewel FN - Fabrique Nationale - niet betrokken was bij de vervaardiging ervan. De Mark II was bij de Belgische troepen in Groot Brittanië ingevoerd, en was als zodanig de opvolger van de Helm Model 31/Casque Modèle 31-helm, een kopie van de Franse Modèle 26 'Adrian'.
Voor zover bekend werden er van rijkswege geen helmovertrekken verstrekt voor de Helm NATO 1951/Casque OTAN 1951. Als helmovertrek voor de M51-helm werd een stuk jute, gekleurd met bruine schoensmeer en groene blanco gebruikt, vastgezet met een brede rubberen band gemaakt van autobinnenband. Ook werden er zelfgemaakte of in dumpzaken gekochte helmovertrekken gebruikt.
De Helm NATO 1951/Casque OTAN 1951 werd in de jaren '90 vervangen door de Kevlar-helm
Paracommandohelm M71
Rond 1972 vervingen het Belgische Regiment Para-Commando/Régiment Para-Commando haar oude britse Helmet Steel Airborne Troop (HSAT) parahelmen, die ze gebruikten sinds de oorlog door de Parachutistenhelm M1A1LL. De Belgische versie werd Paracommandohelm M71 (fr: Casque Para-commando M71) genoemd en is voorzien van een moderner binnenwerk dan de Duitse versie, nl. hetzelfde binnenwerk dat in de Franse Casque F1 (of Casque modèle 1978) helm gebruikt wordt. De Belgische helmen waren uitgevoerd in NAVO olijfgroen/olive OTAN (RAL 7013), en aan de linkerkant was een Belgische vlag aangebracht.
Zie ook
Brodiehelm
Gevechtshelm M16
Gevechtshelm M27
Adrianhelm
Stahlhelm
Gevechtshelm composiet M95
Afbeeldingen
Bronnen, referenties en voetnoten
Helm
Amerikaanse landmacht
Militaire beschermende kleding | {
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Room 2-428, Dept. of Genetics, The Alexander Silberman Inst. of Life Sciences, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem 91904, Israel.
Lamins and their associated proteins in health and disease The roles of the nuclear lamina in development and aging The role of the nuclear envelope in apoptosis Molecular and genetic analysis of matefin/SUN-1 The sensing and responding to high CO2 levels.
The nuclear and cytoplasmic compartments of eukaryotic cells are separated by the nuclear envelope. The nuclear envelope consists of an inner and outer nuclear membranes, nuclear pore complexes and an underlying nuclear lamina. The nuclear lamina is a network of lamin polymers and lamin-binding proteins embedded in the inner nuclear membrane. In the nuclear interior, lamins also form stable complexes. It is increasingly clear that lamins support a broad range of functions through interactions with multiple proteins that function in diverse cellular processes. Mutations in lamins and lamin-binding proteins cause a wide range of heritable or sporadic human diseases, collectively termed laminopathies ranging from muscular dystrophy to accelerated aging. Our research is concentrating on understanding the structure and functions of the nuclear lamina and why mutations in nuclear lamina proteins cause laminopathies. We use the C. elegans as our main model organism because it has a simple, but evolutionarily conserved composition of the nuclear lamina. | {
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identify whether one is primary and the other secondary, or whether the gene in question acts directly in both affected processes. For example, spermatids in males mutant for proteins required for nuclear shaping fail to individualize, because correct shaping of the nucleus is required for the normal assembly of the investment cone (27). Mutations affecting spindle structure may show defects in both chromosome segregation (uneven nuclear size at onion stage) and cytokinesis (Nebenkern larger than wild type and fewer in number) because of the relationship between spindle structure, especially the central spindle, and the cleavage furrow.
Cell division is an extremely dynamic process; however, the transient nature of standard squash preparations observed by phase contrast yields only snapshot images of meiosis. In many cases, it is desirable to observe cells undergoing the divisions using time-lapse microscopy (40,41). By observing living cells, we can characterize in much more detail the exact nature of any meiotic defect. For example, a four-wheel-drive phenotype, where karyokinesis is unaffected but cytokinesis fails (e.g., Fig. 7D), could be the result of one of two fundamentally different defects. There may be a failure in the contractile ring, such that there is no contraction; alternatively, the intercellular bridge that should remain after incomplete cytokinesis may not be stabilized (42). Observations of living cells can rapidly distinguish between these possibilities (32). For analysis of live specimens undergoing meiosis see Subheading 3.1.3. and Chapter 3.
1. Dissect testes from a newly eclosed male in fresh testis buffer (0-1 d old) (see Note 2).
2. Place a drop of testis buffer on a clean microscope slide, using the surface tension of the buffer transfer the testes to this drop.
3. Open up the testes (and seminal vesicles if looking for motile sperm) by cutting them open with the tungsten needles or by ripping with the forceps (see Note 3).
4. Place a clean cover slip over the testes; this will gently squash the cells. Squashing can be increased to give better phase contrast by wicking buffer out using a Kimwipe. This can be done while observing the cells under the phase-contrast microscope (see Note 4).
Nuclear morphology can be examined in live squashes by staining the DNA with the vital dye Hoechst 33342. This is included in the testes buffer at 2-5 ^g/mL during dissection.
1. Proceed as described in Subheading 3.1., but allow the testes to sit in the buffer for 5 min after dissection and before adding the cover slip (see Fig. 1I-L). Alternatively, chromatin can be observed using a stock carrying a His2-GFP transgene (41) (see Fig. 5).
Meiotic chromosome morphology can be assessed in acetic acid squashes. Because acid destroys much of the cellular structure, the morphology of the squashed testis will be compromised; however, condensed meiotic chromosomes and sperm heads will be visible (14).
1. Dissect testes as described in Subheading 3.1., step 1, then transfer to 45% acetic acid on the slide, and allow to swell for 15 s before cutting.
2. Proceed to step 3 of Subheading 3.1.
1. Dissect out the testes and place into a large drop of halocarbon oil on a cover slip. Remove as much nontestis material as possible from the preparation.
2. Cut the testes open and spill the contents out by pulling the sheath around the cover slip.
3. Pick up the cover slip with a slide and observe with phase-contrast optics for up to 1 h (32). The addition of extra cover slips (or pieces of cover slip) as supports alongside the testes prevents oversquashing and increases the viability of the cells to 2 h (see Note 5).
Fig. 7. (continued) meiosis, and four are still primary spermatocytes. (C) No meiotic divisions (e.g., twine, boule, mgr, p2-tubulin): Failure to form a meiotic spindle results in failure of both chromosome segregation and cell division. Onion stage cysts can be seen containing 16 rather than 64 cells, each having a large (4N) nucleus and a large (usually misshapen) Nebenkern. (D) Cytokinesis failure (e.g., fwd, shank): Normal chromosome segregation followed by failure of cytokinesis at both meiotic divisions results in an onion stage cell (arrow) containing four nuclei associated with just one very large mitochondrial derivative. If only one cytokinesis fails, two nuclei are associated with one large mitochondrial derivative (arrowhead). (F) Chromosome nondisjunction (e.g., asp, compound chromosomes): Chromosome nondisjunction results in one daughter nucleus having more DNA than its sister nucleus. Because the nuclear size at onion stage is directly proportional to DNA content, this is manifest as variable nuclear diameters in early spermatids (compare arrowed nuclei). (E) Cytokinesis failure and chromosome nondisjunction: Mutants that affect both cytokinesis and chromosome segregation can result in postmeiotic cysts containing 64 variable-sized nuclei associated with 16 large Nebenkern. (G,H) No mitochondrial derivative (e.g., nmd): Failure of mitochondrial aggregation and fusion results in a cloud of mitochondria in onion-stage cells (G). At the leaf blade stage (H), they are scattered, mostly to one side of the nucleus, but a normal Nebenkern is never formed. (I,J) Mitochondrial fusion (e.g., fzo): At onion stage, mitochondria aggregate but fail to fuse. Wrapping of pairs of mitochondria forms a Nebenkern, which at this stage (I) looks somewhat lumpy. By the comet stage (J), many individual mitochondrial pairs are seen elongating from each nucleus. Panel E was provided by Cayetano Gonzalez (EMBO), and panels G-J were provided by Karen Hales (Davidson College).
Because in each preparation only one field can be imaged, it is wasteful to dissect more than one male per slide. Care should be taken in choosing the image field; cells near the edge of the displaced testis contents may be easier to see, but will die sooner than those that remain surrounded by other testis material in slightly more physiological conditions. Cytokinesis seems to be more sensitive to perturbation than chromosome segregation. If the aim of the experiment is to observe cytokinesis in a mutant, it is best to select cells in anaphase at the start of the recording session. Cells can easily fuse during preparation of the slide; if two cells in meiotic prophase are artificially fused, both spindle morphology and kinetochore attachment to microtubules may be disrupted. The effect will be an aberrant meiosis, and often failed cytokinesis, which could be misinterpreted as representing the true mutant phenotype. | {
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The foot and ankle contains a total of 26 bones. Any one of the bones can become fractured as a result of injury. Tendons are the connective tissue that connects bones to each other and holds them together. When these become strained or torn, often as a result of being hit or twisted, the result is a sprain. If a ligament is completely torn, sometime a pop is heard or felt.
Fractures can be diagnosed with the use of an X-ray, or other imaging such as a CAT scan or MRI. Sprains are often diagnosed on the basis of the type of injury and where the pain and tenderness is. Sometimes an MRI can help diagnose a specific sprain.
The initial treatment of either a sprain or a fracture includes rest, elevation and ice. It is important to keep weight off of the affected foot or ankle. In some cases a cast or splint is applied to minimize motion so that the foot or ankle can heal properly. In other cases surgery may be needed to repair a ligament or to stabilize a fracture.
If the support of the foot is compromised, then permanent damage may result. If the tissues do not heal properly then pain may progress and not go away. | {
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In the age-old battle between multinational corporations trying to pay as few tax dollars as possible, and the state of Oregon trying to hold them to their responsibilities, Oregon has often been out-gunned. This is worse now, due to the Oregon legislature's decision in the last legislative session to eliminate one of Oregon's most effective weapons, the tax haven law.
A new report by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), a national think tank, explains that Oregon is now largely defenseless against corporations shifting profits overseas to escape paying taxes.
"Repeal of the tax haven provision was premature at best and will damage Oregon's ability to protect itself from aggressive international income shifting," writes Michael Mazerov, a CBPP Senior Fellow.
Ultimately, as corporations artificially shift their profits abroad, they avoid taxes they would otherwise pay to Oregon. That means less revenue to fund schools, affordable housing, and services that protect the most vulnerable.
The anticipation of a tax "windfall," though, served to justify the legislature's decision to get rid of Oregon's tax haven law. That law generated $28.4 million in corporate income tax revenue in 2014, the first year it was in effect.
In sum, the Oregon legislature eliminated a law that was working — it was helping Oregon fight back against corporate abuse of tax havens. The legislature's decision to repeal the law placed undue confidence in the new federal law's ability to deter these tax games.
When the legislature meets again in 2019, one of the orders of business ought to be rearming the state with new weapons to fight against corporate tax avoidance. | {
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The Consumer Discretionary Sector encompasses those industries that tend to be the most sensitive to economic cycles. Its manufacturing segment includes automotive, household durable goods, textiles & apparel and leisure equipment. The services segment includes hotels, restaurants and other leisure facilities, media production and services, and consumer retailing and services.
View more Consumer Discretionary news. | {
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Be the first to hear about their new releases and deals. Download the Booksprout app and search for Shandi Boyes today!
Shandi Boyes is a USA Today Bestselling Author who was an avid reader for many years before she discovered the love of writing in February 2016. Her first penned novel 'Perception of Life' is a modern new adult rockstar romance that will have you sitting on the edge of your seat until the very last word. In September 2016, her focus shifted to hot alpha men in steamy contemporary reads that sizzle off the pages. Shandi's penned novel 'Enigma of Life' is an award-winning story on FBI agent and the subject she was signed to investigate. Her men are swoon-worthy, devoted, and alpha; and her heroines are strong-willed, determined, and loveable. You should consider starting her stories first thing in the morning or you may not sleep.
You will laugh and you will cry, but Shandi's characters will stay with you for a lifetime! | {
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Join Café Bahia for the most exciting time to eat out, San Diego Restaurant Week!
Gather your favorite dining companions and enjoy a Chef curated three-course dinner in a charming Mediterranean atmosphere. Don't miss out on this delicious opportunity to try a variety of favorite dishes at Café Bahia. | {
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Within the body of roasty oats and barley, there is spice at the heart of a stout ale. There are chocolate and caramel, coffee and molasses notes in those grains. Sometimes we add those literal items to accentuate the hints found in the base. This hopless ale doesn't attempt anything quite so obvious. Nutmeg, licorice, vanilla, bourbon and oak form the aromatic accents of this stout.
This saison recipe is part II of my five part series on hop-free ales. I have already transferred the ale to secondary and it smells fantastic. It's also my second attempt at ageing an ale on oak chips. This time I have soaked the french oak on some chardonnay, to replicate the effect of barrel-ageing in a chardonnay barrel. We'll have to see how well that goes, but the recipe for the main brew is below.
This is the first in a series of unhopped gruit ales I have been researching and planning for the past few months. The inspiration for this brew is the simple availability of certain herbs to our forebears in hedgerows and the margins of forests. The herbs I'm using are Nettle, Horehound, Yarrow, St. John's Wort, Elder (berry and flower). I am aiming to produce an ale that is analogous to an American Pale Ale. It will be around 6% with a medium-high level of bitterness.
This is going to be my last hopped ale for a little while. I decided on an English Pale Ale, of which ESB is the heaviest class. Maybe it's pure nostalgia, but I am really hoping to recreate the brews I drank back in Merry Olde England when I were a lad. So I got my (organic) Whitbread Goldings hops and my biscuit malt and my Marris Otter LME and my fingers crossed!
Homebrewing is about results. Whether you're opening your 1st beer kit you got as a Christmas gift, or you're planning a new 10-gallon all-grain recipe from scratch, we all need help and information from time to time. I have collected what I think are the six best homebrewing resources online for beer making. I look forward to hearing from you guys in the comments about your favorite sites/books/whatever.
These notes are mostly for myself. But I also want to keep y'all up to date with what I am planning on brewing, fermenting and writing about. Join me below the fold for stream of thought note taking!
Over the past year, I have been focused very much on improving my beer brewing knowledge and skills. Brewing different styles, brewing from kits and making my own recipes. Experimenting and reproducing. Today I am going to write about my most recent brew, which was bottled on December 9th 2013. It is a Belgian Wit style, brewed with seasonal spices.
Note: To get updates straight to your face whenever I post something new to the site, like the Real Fermenting page on Facebook. Thanks! | {
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A recent article in the Exeter News-Letter reported the Stratham Board of Selectmen are considering moving emergency dispatch service to the Rockingham County Dispatch Center. The reason given was "increased prices and dissatisfaction with Newmarket dispatch." Selectman Bruno Federico was quoted indicating that the problem was —¦poor service because of a poor connection." Federico stated "the cost has escalated out of control. When we started it was $20,000 and now it is over $90,000." In my opinion it's not a problem of "poor service" but "poor reception." To suggest that you are receiving poor service is a misrepresentation of my staff that I feel does an exceptional job at providing quality service to all of you.
Although I have only been the Newmarket Chief of Police for less than four years, I have worked for the Newmarket Police Department since the 1970s when we opened our dispatch center. At the time of its inception, it was a separate town department charged with handling Newmarket's emergency services. The center was located in the old fire station on South Main Street. The transmitter was located on Zion's Hill downtown where it remains today.
Newmarket took on Stratham's Police, Fire and EMS dispatching services in 1983. The annual dispatch operating budget at the time Stratham joined us was $49,548. During that period the center handled about 2,000 total calls for service for both communities. These figures were taken from the 1983 Newmarket Town Report.
We handled 21,245 calls for service last year. Of those calls 10,001 (48 percent) were Newmarket Police and Fire calls, 7,408 (34 percent) were Stratham Police and Fire calls, 3,474 (16 percent) were Newfields Police and Fire calls, and 362 (2 percent) were Nottingham Fire calls.
In 2008 it cost Newmarket nearly $300,000 to operate the dispatch center. This figure includes personnel costs, utilities, repairs to equipment, software leases and upgrades, training and supplies. The combined revenue received from contractual agreements for dispatch services for all communities serviced was $102,694. The Newmarket taxpayers have been paying a higher percentage of the cost for their dispatch services than residents of Stratham. In addition Newmarket residents have paid 100 percent of the infrastructure improvements since the inception of dispatch over the last 25 years.
When Stratham Chief Michael Daley first mentioned, a few years ago, that his officers were having problems in certain areas of your town receiving our police radio transmissions, we consulted our radio repair technicians who reported that we are transmitting at our maximum FCC licensed power. The solution proposed for Stratham's reception problems was to install a repeater system on high ground in your community to relay the signal. Stratham Hill Park was discussed as a site.
Occasionally over the last few years, we've received complaints that Stratham officers have missed radio transmissions. Whenever we receive these complaints, we call out our radio repair technicians who come in and check our equipment. Whenever a radio part is in need of repair it is immediately addressed. Most of the time, when a radio transmission has been missed, its not as simple as replacing a broken piece of radio equipment. It usually comes back to the need for a repeater to increase the signal strength in your reception area. When I inquire about it, I always get the same response, that the Stratham isn't going to do it.
If the radio in your car has poor reception, do you repair the radio or complain to the radio station?
Selectman Federico is correct about one thing. You're not paying $20,000 anymore. The current five-year dispatch contract has increased annually in an attempted to bring the fees charged to Stratham closer in line to the actual cost of providing the service.
As a police chief I know you can't place a price tag on public safety. That is why as long as a dispatch contract exists between our communities I will continue to exhaust every option within my control, to improve the reception issues that have been reported to me.
If Stratham officials really believes they're getting "poor service" and are truly dissatisfied with the Newmarket Dispatch, I suggest you terminate the contract and seek services elsewhere or open your own center. It may be less costly for the Newmarket taxpayer to adjust our budget for the revenue shortfall caused by losing Stratham's dispatching business, than to keep operating at a loss and spending money in an attempt to repair a reception problem that can't be rectified on our end.
The facts are the facts. Newmarket Dispatch has worked long and hard to ensure that Stratham Police and Fire receive the best service our center can provide. We will continue to do so as long as Stratham continues to utilize our dispatch center. I believe we have been fair and reasonable in working to resolve the reception issues that Stratham has experienced. Stratham should also implement solutions on its end to improve reception issues.
When we work together we can resolve problems and improve services. Without working relationships, we end with poor connections, and the public we serve suffers.
Kevin P. Cyr is the chief of the Newmarket Police Department. | {
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Shop > Artists' Books
Do It: The CompendiumHans Ulrich Obrist (ed.)
Independant Curators Inc
Edited and with introduction by Hans Ulrich Obrist. Foreword by Kate Fowle. Text by Bruce Altshuler.
Curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist, Do It began in Paris in 1993 as a conversation between the artists Christian Boltanski and Bertrand Lavier and Obrist himself, who was experimenting with how exhibition formats could be rendered more flexible and open-ended. The discussion led to the question of whether a show could take "scores" or written instructions by artists as a point of departure, which could be interpreted anew each time they were enacted. To test the idea, Obrist invited 13 artists to send instructions, which were then translated into nine different languages and circulated internationally as a book. Within two years, Do It exhibitions were being created all over the world by realizing the artists' instructions. With every version of the exhibition new instructions were added, so that today more than 300 artists have contributed to the project. Constantly evolving and morphing into different versions of itself, Do It has grown to encompass "Do It (Museum)," "Do It (Home)," "Do It (TV)," "Do It (Seminar)" as well as some "Anti-Do Its", a "Philosophy Do It" and, most recently, a "UNESCO Children's Do It." Nearly 20 years after the initial conversation took place, Do It has been featured in at least 50 different locations worldwide. To mark the twentieth anniversary of this landmark project, this new publication presents the history of this ambitious enterprise and gives new impetus to its future. It includes an archive of artists' instructions, essays contextualizing Do It, documentation from the history of the exhibition and instructions by 200 artists from all over the world selected by Obrist, among them Carl Andre, Jimmie Durham, Dan Graham, Yoko Ono, Christian Marclay and Rosemarie Trockel, including 60 new instructions from Matias Faldbakken, Theaster Gates, Sarah Lucas, David Lynch, Rivane Neuenschwander and Ai Weiwei, among many others. | {
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Henry VIII.jpg
Discover more about the life of one of England's most controversial monarchs.
Home Discover our stories and collections Explore by theme King Henry VIII
Known for his six wives and for his tumultuous relationship with the Catholic Church, Henry VIII was born in Greenwich in 1491. He is also known for establishing the Royal Navy.
Discover more about Henry VIII and the Tudors
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Henry VIII timeline
28 June 1491 | Born in Greenwich Palace to Henry VII and Elizabeth of York
2 April 1502 | Henry's older brother Arthur dies, placing Henry next in line to the throne
24 June 1509 | Crowned at Westminster Palace
11 June 1509 | Marries Katherine of Aragon
18 February 1516 | Henry's first child, Mary Tudor born in Greenwich
1532 – 34 | Henry breaks with the Catholic Church
25 January 1533 | Marries Anne Boleyn
7 September 1533 | Elizabeth born in Greenwich Palace
30 May 1536 | Marries Jane Seymour
12 October 1536 | Edward VI born
6 January 1540 | Marries Anne of Cleeves
28 July 1540 | Marries Katherine Howard
12 July 1543 | Marries Katherine Parr
28 January 1547 | Henry dies at Whitehall Palace
Royal Greenwich
Henry VIII was not only born in Greenwich, but the birth of his daughters and two of his marriages also took place in the area.
Find out more about Tudor history in Greenwich
Henry VIII facts
Did you know that Henry VIII was the person who established Woolwich and Deptford as the Royal Dockyards?
Find out more Henry VIII facts
Mary I and Philip II of Spain, Henry VIII, Edward VI and Elizabeth I
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7 Facts about Henry VIII
Henry VIII (1491–1547) is one of the most written about kings in English history. He established the Church of England and the Royal Navy.
Henry VIII and his navy
Henry VIII (1491–1547) is one of the most famous kings in English history. An important part of his legacy was his establishment of the Royal Navy, encouraging shipbuilding and creating dockyards.
Full hull model of 'Mary Rose' (1509), a 60-gun sailing warship D8553-1_slider.JPG
The Mary Rose was a warship built in Portsmouth for King Henry VIII. It sank in 1545 and was recovered in 1981, with many artefacts still on board.
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The Tudor dynasty and Elizabeth I
The Tudor dynasty was founded in 1485 by Elizabeth's grandfather, Henry VII, when he emerged victorious after the dynastic Wars of the Roses.
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Royal Naval Dockyards
In the 17th and 18th centuries there were six Royal Navy Dockyards in England, at Deptford, Woolwich, Chatham, Sheerness, Portsmouth and Plymouth.
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Explore Greenwich park
Greenwich Park is said to be the most historic of all London's Royal Parks.
Where did King Henry VIII live and die?
Henry VIII was born in Greenwich in 1491, and died in Whitehall at the age of 55. But Greenwich wasn't just the place of the king's birth: find out how an infamous jousting accident here resulted in a wound that would plague him for the rest of his life.
Who were Henry VIII's wives?
Henry VIII (1509-1547) is one of history's most famous monarchs. His radical political and religious upheavals reshaped the Tudor world. He is best known for his six marriages and his life-long pursuit of a male heir. His six wives and their lives are the subject of much fascination and speculation that continues to this day.
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How many children did Henry VIII have?
Henry VIII is possibly the most famous King of England, known both for his six wives and for the splitting of the Church. He had several children from different women, but only three were legitimate and survived past infancy. These were King Edward VI, Queen Mary I and Queen Elizabeth I. Many others were born illegitimately and only one of these was recognised - Henry Fitzroy.
Palace of Placentia
Greenwich Palace and the Tudors
Conveniently situated beside the River Thames, Greenwich had been a popular royal residence for centuries. However, during Tudor times the area became a vital hub for the royal family. | {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaCommonCrawl"
} |
With IBC nearly upon us, CSI starts its countdown to Europe's largest broadcast trade fair, offering a preview of what visitors can expect to see and hear at the RAI during the six-day event. This part of the site will be updated regularly until the show starts.
IBC 2013 opens its doors at a slightly later date of September 12 this year, but this is unlikely to dampen the enthusiasm to the 50,000 or so people that make the annual pilgrimage to Amsterdam.
Conference keynotes will come from senior execs from ZDF, TDF, Channel 4, Tata Sky, Multichoice, Twitter and Shazam, as well as retailers such as Amazon and Tesco. The conference programme kicks off early Thursday morning, with a session focused on sports broadcasting, set against the backdrop of major events in 2014 such as The FIFA World Cup in Brazil, the Winter Olympics in Sochi, and the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow.
Leading satellite and broadcasting organisations are hosting a series of interference prevention meetings throughout IBC. The meetings, hosted by the Global VSAT Forum (GVF), the Satellite Interference Reduction Group (IRG), the World Broadcasting Unions- International Satellite Operators Group (WBU-ISOG) and the Radio Frequency Interference – End Users Initiative (RFI-EUI), will be sponsored by Eutelsat and SES. Workshops will also take place in the SES Balcony Suite BM10/11. The groups are keen to engage a wide cross-section of the industry to address recent developments and discussing the next steps in interference prevention.
Among other topics to be debated are 2nd screening, Big Data & analytics, the future of broadcast spectrum, Cloud and IP in broadcast and, of course, 4K.
This year's Future Zone prototypes include HbbTV with contextual recommendations, Cisco's Project Fresco, augmented broadcasting from ETRI and High Dynamic Range (HDR) video among others. A German university will propose a Tower Overlay network for LTE-Advanced, which it is positioning as more efficient concept than eMBMS.
Wolverine on the big screen: The Wolverine, the latest film with Hugh Jackman to reprise the titular role, has just been announced as The Big Screen Saturday Night Movie for this year. Doors open at 18:15 for an 18:30 start.
The text below highlights some of the demos due to take place on the show floor, taking in multi-screen, OTT, compression, home networking, media transport and 4K/Ultra HD among other areas.
Ultra HD is this year's hot topic, but it comes with a lot of unanswered questions about value, content, cost and mass market potential.
This hasn't stopped much excitement being generated by the industry, with content owners exercising the most restraint in this area. As a number of service providers dip their toes in 4K by testing the waters, Sky Deutschland is leading a demo of an end-to-end live on-air broadcast chain in tandem with Sony, 3net, SES and Pace.
The companies will show a trailer comprising Ultra HD content, mixing sports, movies and documentaries, aired live over satellite by SES in a sponsored session free to all delegates. The content will be encoded in HEVC by Harmonic and will be received by a prototype UHD receiver presented by Pace. The results will be displayed on several Sony 4K displays of different sizes.
Sky began testing ultra HD during the Bayern Munich/Borussia Dortmund match in December 2012, with further recordings taking place both on and off the pitch since then, with the goal of gradually approaching a full end-to-end UHD live production capability.
There will be a large number of other 4K, HEVC and associated demos taking place every day, including Intelsat, which is organising a live 4K UHD demo on Sunday 15 at 3pm. This will also be an opportunity to watch live the Saracens v Gloucester rugby match in UHD.
AirTies will be demonstrating what it claims is the first 4x4 video bridge to support the new 802.11ac wireless standard, as well as the one of the first set-top boxes to support MPEG-DASH.
The Air 4820 enables almost triple the throughput of video and data over greater distances to connect more devices, such as TV, Tablets and mobile devices, to stream and view HD video, according to the company. The Video Bridge uses 4X4 Quantenna chipset, providing 1.7Gbps throughput and supports advanced beamforming to expand the field of delivery.
Staying with the 802.11ac front, AirTies will be introducing a VDSL Gateway, the Air5770, which is a combined wireless gateway and video bridge with integrated 11ac technology.
The company will also be demonstrating a STB running the latest Broadcom chipset featuring the new video compression standard HEVC-H.265, as well as one of the first STBs that meets the MPEG DASH adaptive bit rate standard.
The first phase of development of a 'smart LNB' for a Direct-to-Home antenna has been completed by Eutelsat, which hopes it will open the door for broadcasters to operate their own ecosystem of linear television and connected TV services directly by satellite.
It will enable broadcasters and platform operators to bolt interactive value-added services onto their broadcast platforms, circumventing viewer dependency on terrestrial fixed and mobile networks.
The 'smart LNB' is based on open standards protocols developed by Eutelsat, combined with use of satellite spectrum in multiple frequency bands. It will also enable content to be viewed on mobile devices in the home (smartphones, tablets, laptops).
Eutelsat has launched the industrialisation process with the first manufacturers with the objective that this new product will be adopted by further hardware manufacturers.
GlobeCast will present a new look and positioning for the broadcast service provider, underlining the company's shift toward working with its broadcast clients on tailored solutions based on each broadcaster's strategy.
As the company transitions from a satellite service to a cross-platform solutions provider, GlobeCast will highlight new OTT deals, such as an application developed for sport firm beINSport, as well as a suite of B2B services for OTT content. On the traditional side, new satellite capacity agreements have recently been concluded, such as a deal with Arabsat in North Africa, and will be highlighted at the show, as well as increased fiber connectivity to the four corners of the globe.
Philips uWand, the intuitive camera-based direct pointing remote control technology, has partnered with video game publisher Gamious to for the first time bring same-screen multiplayer gaming to Smart TV.
Philips has enhanced its direct pointing technology to enable up to four uWand equipped remotes to be used simultaneously and to individually control distinct on-screen elements. To demonstrate this, Gamious' latest title, Dark Day LA, will be multi-playable at the uWand booth at IBC. In the game, one player assumes the role of a vampire trying to mingle with the crowds, while the other is a police sniper tasked with tracking the vampire down.
uWand technology uses an infrared camera embedded within the body of a remote control. The camera monitors the remote's position relative to a small 'beacon' on the TV. This direct pointing technology makes uWand ideal for multiplayer gaming, as the cursor appears exactly where the user is pointing. Now up to four remote controls can be monitored at once.
Teleste has teamed with major media technology companies from five European countries to participate in a research project investigates the hybrid distribution of TV programmes and services over broadcast and broadband networks.
The Celtic-Plus project, H2B2VS - HEVC Hybrid Broadcast Broadband Video Services, focuses on key factors that will significantly impact the delivery of multimedia content in Europe. The project will be carried out until 2015 and is coordinated by Thomson Video Networks.
The H2B2VS project, which takes in developments such as the new HEVC video compression standard, aims to propose solutions that will ensure the best quality of experience for end-users and drive the development of new video streaming services and future commercial products. During the project, Teleste will be closely involved in exploring content transport and synchronisation between broadband and broadcast transmission in cable networks.
Verimatrix is focusing on revenue security in a world irreversibly moving towards multi-screen, multi-network and hybrid services.
The security company will highlight its key strategies to enable revenue security in the 'post-smartcard era.' Senior representatives will be on hand to offer guidance on how operators can best address revenue security challenges presented by multi-network architectures and next-generation TV Everywhere video services through single security platforms.
Focus areas at IBC 2013 include IP-Hybrid Network Security, DVB-Hybrid Security, MultiRights DRM.
In addition, Verimatrix is hosting its largest ever Multi-Network Solutions in the Real World Forum event on 14 Sept from 8:30–10:30 am at the RAI, featuring experts from Ziggo, Sony Pictures Technologies, Elemental Technologies, Akamai, Ericsson, and Verimatrix to discuss the strategies for making hybrid networks smarter.
Livewire Digital will launch NetCaster, an iPhone and iPad app that can be used by groups of untrained personnel to send in real-time photos, sequences of stills and video to a producer or a command centre.
Targeted at broadcasters, event organisers, the emergency services, the military and NGOs, this new application is designed to be used for breaking news coverage of sporting events, expeditions and situation awareness.
There is a range of applications aimed at being used for news reporting, live interviews from mid ocean, or special event coverage. There is also a hosted service for organisations without broadcast infrastructure that need to interface with TV, radio, corporate video conferencing or web streaming audiences.
The International Association of Broadcasting Manufacturers has announced the winners of its Engineering Student Awards for this year, who will receive funding to attend IBC.
Presented to ten students, the IABM-sponsored awards programme recognises high-achieving college students in the fields of broadcast engineering or media technology and offers each winner full financial support for attendance at IBC. The awards are part of the IABM's global training initiative.
Zoe Wyeth of the University of Salford, Julian Theis of the RheinMain University of Applied Sciences, Adam Plowden and Amy Tinker of Kingston University, Pierre Hamme-Gerome and Antonin Morel of the Université de Valenciennes, Kathryn Savage of Southampton Solent University, Lennard Bredenkamp of HTWK Leipzig, and Evgenii Smirnov and Anna Nikolaeva of St. Petersburg State University of Film and Television are the ten chosen students to make the IBC trip in 2013.
IBC will see the debut of the Ericsson AVP 4000 platform, which is powered by the company's first-ever in-house developed programmable video processing chip.
Also to debut at the show will be what Ericsson claims is the world's first end-to-end LTE Broadcast solution combining three new standards (eMBMS, HEVC and MPEG-DASH technologies) to efficiently deliver premium content in LTE wireless networks.
Other demonstration highlights include a live "true" 4K UHDTV video contribution at p50, 4:2:2, 10bit resolution, and the launch of Ericsson's Managed Media Internet Delivery a new OTT managed service.
"We see the hallmarks of a great TV service providing greater control, interactivity and personalisation. For our customers the new benchmark for engagement is traditional content quality intertwined with next-generation discovery, interaction and accessibility," said Ove Anebygd, VP and head of solution area media.
A number of Ericsson executives are scheduled to speak at the conference sessions on topics ranging from ultra HD and LTE broadcast in hybrid networks to the future of spectrum. The company is lead sponsor of the IBC Leaders' Summit, where it will present the finding of its 2013 ConsumerLab TV report as well as its vision for the future of the TV industry.
Advanced Digital Broadcast will be unveiling new products for multi-screen environments, showing how its end-to-end solutions make it easy for pay-TV and broadband operators to launch new services.
For the first time in Europe, ADB will demonstrate version 2 of its Commercial Video Solution (CVS), launched in June. Now available as a cloud-based service, CVS is used by cable operators to deliver a cost-effective, easy-to-use, HD TV and broadband experience for hotels. Cable operators and hotels benefit by offering a high margin service while hotel guests can enjoy the same high quality TV viewing experience that they expect at home with over 100 HD channels and DVR-Lite features.
Other highlights will include the launch of its STB Remote Monitoring and Audience Measurement System, a new STB testing tool, as well as the company's Epicentro software platform.
"We enable operators to manage the chaotic world of convergence by offering a simple, convenient and personalised service to their subscribers," said Peter Balchin, the company's recently appointed CEO.
Thomson Video Networks will showcase an HEVC playout system, powered by its own HEVC technology, which enables broadcasters to trial and demonstrate Ultra-HD content on their networks.
Thomson will showcase both real-time and off-line HEVC encoding on the ViBE VS7000 encoding/transcoding platform for multi-screen and OTT applications, using MPEG-DASH packaging to tablets, smart phones and connected TVs.
Other new solutions on display include premium broadcast video compression systems for DTH, cable, and DVB-T2, satellite and telco contribution solutions, ad insertion capabilities of the Sapphire MPEG broadcast server, as well as the NetProcessor solution for DVB-T2 regional headends, shown as a standalone multi-PLP DVB-T2 gateway that is fully compatible with all major transmitter vendors.
Also on display will be a solution for HbbTV1.5/MPEG-DASH streaming that harmonizes the delivery of broadcast and broadband services. It relies on both the ViBE EM4000 and ViBE VS7000 multi-screen video platforms as well as Flextream 2.0 statistical multiplexing technology.
New functionality for artec's technology adds the ability for infinite time-shifting in the cloud.
The latest version of Xentaurix from artec technologies, to be launched at IBC, adds the capability to time-shift live streaming online and to mobile devices by minutes, hours, years or even decades, according to the company. The potential is that television stations need no longer maintain their own long-term archives, putting all their material online, protected by closed user groups. Online monitoring and editing is creating millions of hours of video which are directly accessible, and which can now be searched.
The company's media and broadcast platform is already widely used for practical applications including audience analysis and compliance logging. The new functionality adds the ability to time-shift over extended periods of time. In combination with the XENTAURIX search engine users can search through recordings of many television stations, using metadata including the EPG, subtitles and audio transcriptions.
Technicolor will demonstrate a HEVC mobile set top box, the Px36, or, SVELTE box. The portable Android-based box is Wi-Fi enabled to allow end users to access TV Everywhere services on their mobile devices over 4G LTE.
The company will also offer a first look at its latest products for the connected home. These will include the Px39, the company's first HEVC Media Server; using a Broadcom chipset, it will support HEVC 4K/p60 Ultra HD video. The Px39 will also feature 8 tuners to offer multi-room HEVC/AVC streaming to multiple connected devices over standard Wi-Fi.
Conax is introducing a brand new Cardless CAS addition to its Contego portfolio of solutions.
The company will announce the details of the newest Cardless addition to the Conax Clients offering at IBC, following the launch at Anga of the Secure OTT clients solution based on a Conax security hardened PlayReady Client.
Other highlights include Conax Contego Unite, which enables pay-TV operators to provide secure, consistent and flexible service offerings across any device or network, and Conax Xtend Multiscreen, a pre-integrated solution with benchmark time-to-market for a secure, unified approach to video and TV content consumption - any device or network.
The security provider will also introduce details of its new partnering programme, Conax Connect.
Edgeware will preview a new solution to address the needs of broadcasters and OTT providers struggling to deploy scalable multiscreen services.
The company will demonstrate its latest Distributed Video Delivery Network (D-VDN) solutions for network operators, including a range of content-aware delivery options for retail and CDN wholesale services.
The multiscreen version of the D-VDN solution includes session and content management options. With its content-aware clustering, the multiscreen D-VDN solution enables increased savings in backhaul costs when delivering large back-catalogues, catch-up TV or network PVR (nPVR) services, according to the company. Its advanced monitoring features enable true, real-time content analytics, even when delivering adaptive bit rate (ABR) streaming to millions of simultaneous devices.
The IPTV version of the Edgeware D-VDN solution enables control and streaming between existing STBs and new companion apps for second-screen devices, such as smart phones or tablets.
Beamr Video has developed a proprietary coding algorithm it claims can compress any video stream up to four times without losing the perceptible quality visible to the human eye.
and streaming services like Hulu, Netflix and YouTube by 20-40%.
It is positioning its product as an "encoder controller" that will enhance current bitrates to make smarter decisions. At IBC, two 50" screens will challenge guests as to which video was optimised via beamr video.
Already operating in market segments such as photos, Beamr is launching its video solutions in the coming weeks after lengthy testing, and says it is in talks with the top movie studios for distribution deals.
Akamai Technologies demonstrations will include cloud-based online content workflows, synchronised delivery of complementary second-screen content, and immersive, glasses-free 3D video delivery.
Through its Sola Media Solutions suite of services, the technologies on display will include Sola Vision Transcoding for VoD content, designed to automatically create multiple renditions of one high-quality video file for adaptive bitrate streaming across multiple devices and networks.
Sola Vision capabilities also include ad integration services and analytics, the latter which provides insight into audience behavior and real-time video quality. Verimatrix, an Akamai NetAlliance partner, has integrated Sola Analytics technology into itsViewRight Live application, enabling demonstrations of Sola Analytics' real-time measurement capabilities integrated with a secure video delivery platform. Also on the partnership front, Akamai will in conjunction with Dolby Laboratories and Philips, offer visitors the opportunity to experience immersive online Dolby 3D video content that can be viewed without glasses.
The second-screen 'Hyperconnected Living Room' proof-of-concept demo will show how content can be synchronously delivered to smartphones and tablets to complement what is being viewed on the primary screen.
SeaChange International is promising products that enable service providers to deliver a "new wave of fully monetised and personalised" multi-screen services.
Featured software demos will incorporate the Adrenalin and Nitro multi-screen video platform that's enabling operators to deliver streaming video experiences and promotional packages to set-tops and other IP-connected devices.
The Nucleus Soft Box will also be on show, an open gateway and application framework supporting a variety of apps, content services and guides, and putting service provider branded experiences on every video device at home.
Finally, the Infusion ad platform targets across television environments (linear, on-demand, Internet) and video devices with second screen app placements as well as pre-rolls, mid-rolls, banners, overlays and click action ads.
Highlights from the S3 Group include scalability in test automation and presentation of integrated methodology for the RDK initiative.
Visitors to the company's stand will see the capability to validate multiple devices, and progress several releases simultaneously. Featured on the stand will be the latest additions to the StormTest Development Center product family, the HS64 designed to undertake large-scale device stress and reliability testing for up to 64 devices, and the HV16HD which validates up to 16 HD digital receivers in parallel.
The company will also show how it can act as an end-to end system integrator and how it can help with the delivery of multi-party collaborative developments of RDK-based products.
Bridge Technologies is unveiling a number of new products, as part of its 'Objective QoE' campaign.
Ditching concepts such as Mean Opinion Scores and arbitrary values such as blurriness, Bridge argues that Objective QoE provides a more accurate and informative monitoring service by evaluating a range of key errors that occur in media delivery, including audio silence, colour freezes, colour black, and freeze frames, to detect failures affecting quality of experience.
The company is embedding such criteria in products including the new VB288 server-based system to give a true indication of quality of experience using metrics appropriate to broadcast and digital media delivery (one robot can monitor around 100 channels and an OTT engine performs multi-screen validation too). The platform comes with virtual videowalls that can be viewed through any browser. It can also power displays of large numbers HD H.264 channels in multiple browser windows.
"Objective QoE is a rational reinvention of quality of experience monitoring for our industry. We wanted to create something that's useful and open. Usability is a key factor in getting things resolved properly," said Simen Frostad, chairman of Bridge Technologies, which is also launching a number of other products at the show as the company looks to celebrate its tenth anniversary in 2014.
Nevion will demonstrate its enhanced VideoIPath 3.0 managed media transport platform, along with easy IP migration solutions.
Attendees will see VideoIPath's support for the full range of Nevion products including the Video Gateway series for IP transport and nSure monitoring and switching products, a result of Nevion's merger with T-VIPS. VideoIPath also now supports advanced security features, protecting network resources through authentication, authorisation and privacy mechanisms.
VideoIPath 3.0 allows broadcasters, telcos and service providers to gain the operational benefits and financial advantages of next-generation media networks built upon a mix of IP and optical transport technologies, according to the company. "VideoIPath was conceived and designed for the new age of media transport," said Arnhild Schia, chief commercial officer, Nevion.
Agama Technologies is introducing support for MPEG-DASH and broadening its OTT client and device support for embedded consumer-end service quality assurance.
The company will also present the latest edition of Analyzer OTT, its adaptive bitrate (ABR) streaming QA probe range for fully automated QoS/QoE monitoring and testing of OTT video. This now supports the MPEG-DASH ABR streaming technology standard for active monitoring of live and on-demand MPEG-DASH streams, in addition to the already supported HTTP Live Streaming (HLS) and Smooth Streaming protocols.
Eutelsat Communications will be showing the world's first live demo of 'smart LNB' satellite technology, as well as a second test channel devoted to ultra HD.
The satellite operator launched the first dedicated ultra HD channel in January and is now taking the next step with the launch of a channel with HEVC encoding that will be multiplexed with the existing Quad HD signal in the same Eutelsat 10A transponder. This second channel is aimed at being decoded by Ultra HD set top boxes equipped with HEVC chipsets that will feed consumer UHD TV sets via a single HDMI cable. Working in partnership with leading broadcasters, exclusive Ultra HD content will also be shown on the latest generation of consumer displays.
The smart LNB demo is designed to show how the interactive technology opens the door for broadcasters to operate their own ecosystem of linear television and connected TV services directly by satellite. The smart LNB is an electronic feed connected to an antenna with an embedded transmitter to provide services such as HbbTV, pay-per-view, social networking, live show participation, personal subscription management and audience measurement.
Eutelsat will also show the performance of DTH/broadband platforms that show how a hybrid infrastructure can deliver new levels of interactivity to enhance the user experience.
intoPIX has been developing a new advanced image and video compression algorithm, conceived for utilisation as a mezzanine compression format, which will be officially released at IBC.
The visually lossless compression standard will be known collectively as TICO (pronounced 'Teeco'), designed to have an extremely tiny footprint in FPGA/ASIC fabric, but also powerful in software applications for real-time operation, according to the company, in order to efficiently and invisibly tackle cost and bandwidth challenges faced by the industry.
TICO can be used as a smart upgrade path to manage HD and higher resolution (4K, 8K etc) workflows and frame rates. TICO assures visual quality using a 2:1 to 4:1 compression ratio, but keeps power and bandwidth at a "reasonable budget". On top of this, intoPIX said its selectable latency down to as little as 1 pixel line ensures absolute real-time and instant operation.
The company will also present its new compact JPEG 2000 IP-cores within a video over IP reference application on the Altera Cyclone V GX board running with low footprint usage.
Pace is previewing a new platform to support ultra HD and H.265 technology.
The new ultra HD, High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) platform will be showcased along with a range of new hardware, software and services for broadcast and broadband providers, as the company continues its transition to being a full end-to-end solutions supplier.
Pace is targeting its HEVCs H.265 compression technology not just for ultra HD broadcast (with momentum predicted to grow from 2015), but also existing HD broadcasts enabling them to both improve their operational efficiency and increase the number of channels they can offer.
Other demos will include Titanium software-only Unified Rights Management Solution, the Elements Whole Home solution and the ECO Service Management Platform for configuring, monitoring and managing triple-play and connected home services.
IneoQuest Technologies will be previewing its new global cloud-based video service assurance solution for post-CDN video quality.
Starting in September, IneoQuest will begin offering a new global cloud-based video service assurance solution that provides complete visibility at the later stages of the chain, aimed at broadcasters, content providers, and service providers who rely on third-party CDNs for video delivery.
The company will also be showcasing its solutions for multiscreen/OTT and hybrid video networks with end-to-end visibility, giving operators real-time data and business intelligence.
Among the highlights at Harmonic's stand will be an ultra HD demonstration powered by the company's HEVC-ready ProMedia family of multi-screen solutions.
Also new at IBC is linear ad-splicing capabilities on Harmonic's ProStream 9100 real-time stream processor.
An end-to-end true-HD 1080p50 playout, encoding and distribution workflow, showcasing 3G-SDI and 1080p support on the Spectrum MediaPort 7000 real-time video encoder/decoder, as well as 1080p50 H.264 encoding on the Electra 8000 universal encoder and 1080p50 H.264 decoding with 3G-SDI output on the ProView 7100 integrated receiver-decoder and stream processor.
RGB Networks will o demonstrate how its 'Multiscreen 2.0' solutions, consisting of several next-generation products for live, on-demand and time-shifted delivery, can allow VSPs to expand and streamline their TV Everywhere deployments, while generating new revenues.
The newly launched Video Multiprocessing Gateway (VMG) Gen 2, the heart of RGB's Multiscreen 2.0 live streaming solution, will also be shown. The carrier-class transcoding platform performs the industry's highest density real-time transcoding with the best video quality available. Integrated with RGB's flexible TransAct Packager, this unique pairing can easily scale through 'pay-as-you-grow' licensing to meet growing demand for multiscreen services.
RGB experts will also be on hand to discuss multiscreen monetization with the company's Ad Insertion for Multiscreen (AIM) solution.
Visual Unity will be joining forces with PROVYS to show how the two companies are integrating VU's vuMedia OTT platform with PROVYS' broadcast management and planning system.
The ability to manage and monetise audio, video and image libraries is offered by Visual Unity's vuMedia. By allowing content owners and distributors to publish content online, this Cloud-based service alleviates the need for businesses to build an expensive, in-house and resource-intensive media library The platform also supports live streaming of 4K UHD, or HD video.
PROVYS' software solution provides broadcasters with the channel management and advertisement sales tools needed to increase productivity and gain strategic insight into business processes.
VuMedia features include statistical analysis, advertisement injection and social network integration bringing the power of OTT to a much wider audience. TV schedules can also appear within vuMedia.
IBC will see solutions integrating NetFront Browser NX, NetFront Living Connect and MediaPilot from Access to provide operators with end-to-end multiscreen monetisation solutions.
Access will demonstrate how they will try to enable operators to monetise multiscreen through: Sharing content between set-tops, TVs, smartphones, tablets and other CE devices, Enabling and measuring deeper consumer interaction with content, operators, broadcasters and brands, Reducing the cost and time to deploy multiscreen monetization.
The ACCESS multi-room and multiscreen solutions on show include a DLNA Technology Component which has been integrated with conditional access to provide 'studio confident' media-sharing and also enables Operators to deploy DLNA Premium Video Guidelines, as well as a WebKit-based HTML5 browser that provides a UI and application development platform for advanced TV services.
WISI will show the latest version of its next-gen headend systems and a new device combining HbbTV with classical IPTV in a single set-top box.
For the first time at IBC, WISI will show OR 200, a new set-top box working with the ETSI DVB-IP standard that can process and display HbbTV functionalities and content (multicast TV channels) via IP.
The company has also has extended its Tangram product family with new software modules, including the new DVB-IP Gateway IP streamer GT 31, the switch extension board GT 12, the decryption module GT 42, the Edge-COFDM module GT 24, and the ASI Input/Output module GT32. Tangram is a high-density platform for extremely cost efficient 'Edge' applications (IP-Gateway, Edge-QAM, Edge-COFDM, Edge-PAL and Edge-FM), and a aimed at the ongoing digitalization of networks and the increasing use of IP transmission.
Motama is introducing new servers and transcoders that combine OTT and IPTV delivery in managed networks.
The CodecCaster 8000 HD are high density transcoders that can transcode up to 80 channels in SD resolution or 16 in HD resolution in a single unit.
The new PolyCaster servers enable distribution of live streams to a broad range of devices, including PC browser, mobile phones, tablets, and set-top boxes. PolyCaster supports the major streaming formats and protocols, including HLS.
Used as an edge server for OTT streaming, PolyCaster can be combined with Motama's DVB gateways (TVCaster), transcoders (CodecCaster), and servers for content distribution (RelayCaster). This backbone is demonstrated with middleware from Beenius, and set-top boxes from Albis Technologies. Motama's RCSP is also available as client-side software stack for set-top boxes (STB), in particular for ABOX42's M12 STB platform.
Clearleap will be demonstrating its cloud-based multi-screen platform for the first time in Europe.
The platform, which comprises of two components, ClearFlow and ClearPlay, simplifies the logistics of managing, processing, and offering massive video libraries of high-value content on any screen. Clearleap's platform and solutions are currently used by the likes of HBO, Time Warner Cable, Verizon, the Food Network and the Travel Channel.
Clearleap launched into the European market earlier this year, with data centres up and running in both Frankfurt and Amsterdam and a number of contracts secured.
Elemental Technologies plans to showcase significant advances of its software-upgradable video processing solutions, including real-time HEVC video processing both on the ground and in the cloud.
Activities and highlights include recent advances in HEVC video compression, including an end-to-end, 10-bit video processing pipeline and full frame rate HEVC encoding. Demonstrations will include 4Kp60 10-bit Ultra HD HEVC processing using Elemental Server, real-time 1080p60 HEVC encoding using Elemental Live and live HEVC encoding via Elemental Cloud.
The infrastructure-agnostic flexibility of Elemental's unified software approach will be showcased in a variety of live and file based workflows running on the Elemental Cloud platform. Support for on-premise, pure cloud, and hybrid encoding solutions allows customers to optimize large-scale video operations, according to the company. Demonstrations will include cloud bursting scenarios, where peaks in video processing demand are absorbed by resources in the cloud.
OTTilus has launched a new release of its over-the-top (OTT) video platform which incorporates several key enhancements for handling premium content, including secure delivery and efficient and automated media ingest and preparation.
The platform integrates with broadcast operations and is compatible with all security, streaming, device, and monetization options. The solution can be deployed quickly as a cloud service or to drive a local OTT headend.
OTTilus has added support for digital rights management (DRM). The OTTilus platform now features a hardened media player with embedded DRM technology supporting output control, link protection, a secure content path, and protection against code obfuscation.
Wyplay is opening the full source code of its set-top box middleware and backend add-ons, thereby helping pay-TV operators speed deployment of new services.
Frog by Wyplay, already being deployed to more than ten million subscribers at Canal+, Belgacom, SFR, and Vodafone, will be accessible free of charge for evaluation and development purposes, the company said. It includes development kits for TV client devices, reference hardware, optional backend add-ons, and companion apps for smartphones or tablets.
Frog by Wyplay is based on the philosophy that traditional "black-box" models prevent software reuse, restrict partnerships, stop independent innovation, and cause development resource bottlenecks that lead to increased costs and delays in the introduction of new devices and services.
Envivio is improving its encoders not just with HEVC/H.265, but also MPEG-4 and MPEG-2.
Live or on-demand HEVC encoding, at resolutions up to 4K Ultra HD, are supported in the newest versions of the Muse software, and several tier 1 customers around the world are actively engaged with Envivio in HEVC field trials as part of the company's HEVC Early Access Program. Customers testing its HEVC encoders include US cable operators and telco/satellite operators in Asia and Europe.
Envivio is also introducing enhancements to its statistical rate control for variable bitrate (VBR) multiplexing and distribution. The latest generation of statistical rate control for MPEG-2, AVC and HEVC improves bandwidth efficiency without adding delay from multi-pass encoding, using a proprietary pre-analysis module capable of estimating picture complexity and providing more refined rate control information.
Digital TV Labs is launching its Ligada iSuite test solution for the MPEG-DASH streaming protocol to support the development of the DASH264 profile.
Designed to run on the Ligada iSuite Test Harness, it can be used for compliance testing of the DASH264 profile on any compliant video player on any device, offering interoperability for streaming of adaptive, high-quality, media over IP networks.
Alongside testing the functionality of the DASH264 profile as created by the DASH Industry Forum, the series of test cases offered by Ligada iSuite for DASH include conformance testing for MPEG DASH segmented video streaming such as the insertion of advertisements in both on-demand and live cases. It will also provide audio and video codec support for live and on demand MPEG-DASH profiles, containing over 100 ISO BMFF files as well as network manipulation functionality to simulate live networks and test bit-rate adaption.
Haivision's technology research group, HaiGear Labs, will exhibit end-to-end live streaming of HEVC/H.265 in combination with the company's newly developed Secure Reliable Transport (SRT) technology.
Haivision's R&D team will demonstrate live baseband HD HEVC/H.265 encoding and live IP-to-IP HD HEVC/H.264 transcoding. For video backhaul challenges, combining HEVC encoding and transcoding is essential to maximize video quality and to assure stream ubiquity, the company said.
HaiGear Labs will show how HEVC and SRT can be used together to provide optimal video quality and performance over unpredictable networks.
Making its worldwide debut at IBC is AmberFin's new iCR Transcode Farm Controller functionality, bringing improved resilience to a multi-node transcode environment.
With the new iCR Transcode Farm Controller the transcode segment of the workflow is scalable, provides an appropriate level of redundancy to suit a specific application and enables a combination of high throughput and advanced system functionality.
The new iCR Transcode Farm Controller works by providing a single, reliable, redundant interface to the iCR Transcode capabilities. By combining the Farm Controller with AmberFin's Network Licensing Server an even larger scale model can be created with pools of transcode nodes that can dynamically float across the underlying server hardware and no longer require fixed node-to-server relationships. This achieves even greater levels of redundancy and operational efficiency over a large-scale transcode network through efficient use of available hardware nodes, irrespective of node fall out at any given time.
• Beenius will demo its new Android Set-Top Box (STB) client, which extends the company's Beesmart open interactive TV middleware platform. The Android STB app features Beenius' new Chameleon interface, also being launched at the show. Beesmart is available on a range of Set-Top Boxes powered by both Linux and now Android. Stand 14.121. | {
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Tag: 1 million
Paco Rabanne lighten up with 1 Million Cologne
On April 15, 2015 By groomingguruIn Fragrance, News, Product reviewsLeave a comment
Love it or loathe it Paco Rabanne's 1 Million is a fragrance phenomenon. It's a heady cocktail, though, so if it's a little bit too 'in-your-face' for you maybe you should check out 1 Million Cologne. Sharper and fresher than its best-selling brother it has a slightly bitter, cocktail feel (the result of mandarin orange and a fresh marine accord) which makes it a much better option for summer. It's spikier and not quite as rounded and creamy as the original 1 Million fragrance but is just as ferociously commercial and has lost non of its tenacity – when I tested it out on my skin I could still smell it 12 hours later.
Paco Rabanne 1 Million Cologne is available now.
Paco Rabanne's Invictus: standing on the shoulders of a giant?
On October 25, 2013 October 28, 2013 By groomingguruIn Fragrance, Insider Interviews, News3 Comments
It's already hit the top spot of the best selling men's fragrances in the UK and now that we're in the frenzied run up to Christmas you can be sure that Paco Rabanne's Invictus, which launched at the end of July, is going to be at the top of many a man's festive wish list.
It's success, of course, comes in the wake of a fragrance phenomenon – Paco Rabanne's 1 Million. Since its launch back in 2008 1 Million has become the envy of fragrance houses worldwide. So popular has it become that, remarkably, a bottle is sold every five seconds. Such popularity isn't without its drawbacks though. After all, how do you follow a fragrance that that's become a modern classic and also a benchmark for commercial success in a notoriously fickle market?
It was this very question that I put to Paco Rabanne Vice President Vincent Thilloy when I met him in Paris a while back. "In truth we could not have imagined how successful 1 Million would become or how it would end up a market leader," he told me. "Although I suppose key to its success was the fact that we took a risk with it, especially with the bottle. Few companies are willing to take real risks these days but the way I look at, it's not taking a risk that's the risk!"
Certainly, 1 Million's gold bullion bar bottle and the novel 'trophy' flacon of Invictus are both unlike anything on the market but according to Thilloy it's still the 'juice' inside that matters most. "Having a great bottle is only part of the story," he believes. "Ultimately, the smell of the fragrance is everything because you'll only buy a fragrance again if someone says you smell great."
So how does Invictus – a fragrance that was over two and a half years in development – smell? Well, if you haven't tried it yet it's at the other end of the spectrum to 1 Million. Where that fragrance is sweet, warm and sexy Invictus is fresh and sporty. Sure, it features earthy patchouli and warm woody notes but there's a fresh 'marine' vibe (think the smell of ocean spray) and a slight metallic something going on there too. Fundamentally, though, it's a fragrance of two halves.
"With Invictus we really wanted to create something that was fresh but not in a traditional 'cologne fresh' way – we wanted a fragrance that had two distinct sides to it," says Thilloy. The beauty of this olfactory duality – and what differentiates it from 1 Million is that you can wear Invictus in the day and into the night, as the warmer base notes develop.
Paco Rabanne's fragrances have always tapped into man's most ardent aspirations. 1 Million was about a desire for wealth and the playboy lifestyle, Black XS was about wanting to be a rock star and Invictus is about being a champion. So now that this latest fragrance is firmly on the fragrance map what next? "I can't tell you," says Thilloy coyly. "But what I can tell you is that we're already working on it!"
Viktor & Rolf hope to spice up fragrance market with new fragrance
On January 27, 2012 January 27, 2012 By groomingguruIn Fragrance, News, Product reviews4 Comments
In the last few years the Holy Grail in terms of men's fragrance has been to come up with something as successful as Paco Rabanne's surprise hit 1 Million. I say surprise because, in reality, the fragrance itself is a bit 'meh' – its natural home being a Wolverhampton nightclub on a rainy Saturday night. But the bling bling bottle is genius which kind of makes it the 'all-fur-coat-and-no-knickers' of the fragrance world. Or 'all-leather-jeans-and-no-Y-fronts' if you prefer. But still it sells – by the bucket load.
In a crowded, increasingly competitive, market bottle design really matters (witness Marc Jacobs' novel Bang flacon) so it's no surprise that a stand-out bottle was top of mind when creating Viktor & Rolf's new fragrance for men, Spicebomb.
Designed to resemble a hand grenade (it even has its own pin) it's certainly eye-catching, though I'd have liked to have seen it a little heavier myself, since a weighty bottle always says quality to me.
And, so, what about the fragrance itself? Well, it's quite different to the design duo's first men's fragrance, Antidote. The brief here was clearly to create something sexy, wearable and very 'now' and in this respect it succeeds admirably.
Spicebomb hits you like…well, a bomb really, with one big olfactory wallop. There's chilli, saffron and pink pepper along with fresh bergamot and grapefruit notes and leather, tobacco and vetiver ones. It's a more conventional blend than the press bumpf would have you believe and to me it has a headiness akin to fragrances like Mugler's A*Men and a faint gourmand quality (the cinnamon maybe?).
It doesn't feel quite as sophisticated, daring or as complex as Antidote, nor as quirky, but because of this it should be able to reach way beyond the former's narrow customer base. Who knows? It may even go off like a….No, I'll resist that one.
Viktor & Rolf's Spicebomb is available exclusively from Harrods now and nationwide from 7th March priced £45 for 50ml eau de toilette.
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Karen Napier, Director
While studying dance, Karen grew weary of seeing Christianity removed from the art, and vowed to provide a place where Christian dancers could study classical ballet and other dance arts in a God-glorifying manner. This became the Audience of One dance studio. Our mission is to always dance in God's honor, whether in our studio classroom or a national ballet competition. Mrs. Karen reared her daughters in a dancing home, and it is a joy to have them now teaching for her, in this family dance ministry.
Monica Halvorson
Monica is a proud graduate of Florida State University. She has been on staff with us for 12 years and is known throughout the dance community for her creative contemporary and jazz pieces. Her students have received numerous top awards at regional and national dance competitions, and she is often complimented by dance judges for thinking "outside of the box". Monica works with our upper elementary, high school and college dancers and enjoys fine tuning their technique to create a versatile, well-rounded dancer. Her goal is to inspire her students to express themselves through their movement, and to be a positive role model for each student. Monica teaches elementary jazz & acrobats, as well as advanced tap, jazz and contemporary.
Roxanne Rich
Roxanne has been taking dance since she was 2 years old and has been an instructor with Audience of One dance since she was 16. She received her dance training from our studio and is known for her talents as a dancer and choreographer. Roxanne is also a principal dancer of the Redeemer Dance Company as well as a professional aerialist. Her goal is that her passion for dance will be contagious and continue in her students. Roxanne is a proud FSU graduate and is a licensed Physical Therapist Assistant. Roxanne teaches advanced hip hop and our stretch and condition class.
Laura Odom
Laura is 24 years old and a Panama City native. She holds her Associate of Science degree from Gulf Coast State College and is a licensed Physical Therapist Assistant. Laura has been dancing since 2000 and has been teaching for Audience of One since 2013. She has trained heavily in classical ballet and continues her dance education yearly. Laura regularly attends technique classes and often participates in Alabama Dance Theatre's summer dance intensive under the instruction of American Ballet Theatre's former prima ballerina Shawn Black. Although Laura's first love is ballet, she equally enjoys contemporary and jazz. She desires for all of her students to build a solid foundation of good technique, and hopes that her classes will be a space for each dancer to express their unique artistic voice through movement.
Alex has been dancing since she was 2 years old and trained with Audience of One since 2015. She co-leads the dance team at High Praise Worship Center and continues to train and take dance classes to further build her dancing abilities & technique. Her goal is to share her love and passion for dance with her students, to help them step out of their comfort zones, to develop the gifts God has given them, and to excel as dancers.
Emily French
Emily began dancing at the age of 5. She has trained in various styles from ballet to hip hop but has a strong passion for contemporary. During the years she danced competitively, Emily won numerous top awards for both on and off stage. She attends classes regularly to stay fresh on new choreography and styles. Emily is also a RaDanceCrew member where she assists teachers and choreographers at workshop classes. Her hearts cry is to pour into others what she has learned over the years and to help develop the gifts and talents of her students that God has given them.
Jamiah Robison
Jamiah has been dancing since she was 6 years old, and has been training at Audience of One for many years. She has competed with AO1, NBH Dance Team, & UDA, and received platinum as well as various other awards. She currently coaches the North Bay Haven Dance Team, as well as teaches for Audience of One. Her favorite dance styles are Hip-Hop, Jazz, and Contemporary, and she continues to further her dancing abilities and technique in all aspects of dance. As a dance teacher, her desire is for her students to be challenged, grow their abilities, recognize their gifts, & share their passion for dance with others! She is looking forward to a great year of teaching more outstanding students!
Lauren Kolmetz
Lauren is a Panama City native with a BA in Theatre from the University of South Florida. She is currently a dance adjunct at Gulf Coast State College. TV and Film credits include Law & Order, Hope & Faith, Third Watch, The Stepford Wives and The Producers. Choreography credits include Forum, Cabaret, Guys & Dolls, Into the Woods, and Annie. Lauren is the Artistic Director of Redeemer Dance Company. Recent projects include teaching for Emerald Coast Theatre Company, board member of Global Arts Society and traveling with Project Dance. | {
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Dell Drivers and Software Download
Dell XPS 15 9570 BIOS Update
Dell XPS 15 9570 BIOS Update Windows 10 – The Dell XPS 15 9570 BIOS Update is a small program stored in flash memory on the motherboard. Because the BIOS is an essential component of system startup, errors or viruses in the BIOS can make a computer completely unusable by normal means. If this happens, you must reinstall your BIOS. Here, we offer the Dell XPS 15 9570 BIOS Update by an appropriate installation guide. It is quite simple to download the Dell XPS 15 9570 BIOS, just simply click the "Download Link" below.
Dell XPS 15 9570 BIOS Update Windows 10
The Dell XPS 15 9570 is equipped with a Wi-Fi module from Killer Networks (wireless n / a / ac 1535, 2×2). As a result, the notebook reached a maximum transfer rate of 675 Mbps (reception) and 551 Mbps (sending) in our Wi-Fi test (Linksys EA8500, at a distance of 1 m). This result is lower than that of the XPS 2017 with the same Wi-Fi module, which could be due to different factors or measurement uncertainties. The Dell XPS 15 9570 has a long list of security measures. You will find a good overview of the functions supported in the BIOS, from classic passwords of different levels up to TPM 2.0 and to Computrace. The XPS 15 also offers a fingerprint reader (touch, no scan) integrated into the Power button. You will find many accessories available at the end of the online configuration process. The range of colors ranges from external bags and input devices to adapters and docking stations. The latter can be very interesting because it lacks an Ethernet RJ45 connector, for example. The solution would be the appropriate Dell USB-C adapter, which adds HDMI, VGA, Ethernet and USB 3.0 ports. The available Thunderbolt TB16 240W dock is also of exceptional quality. This docking station offers a variety of additional ports, but it also supports device power, which means that you only need one cable connected to the device. The price of $ 240 seems quite appropriate for this accessory. While you have a Phillips or Torx T5 screwdriver, you will have no problem opening the XPS 15. Dell has plastic tabs to attach the aluminum plate to the base unit. Just keep in mind that there are two other screws hidden under the flap with type information. After removing the aluminum cover, users have full access to the main components, such as the hard disk, SSD, RAM, battery, Wi-Fi module and, of course, both fans and heatpipes. It is relatively easy to exchange RAM or SSD, for example. The 57 Wh version has a smaller battery, but offers space for a 2.5-inch SATA storage device.
The keyboard is exactly the same as the predecessor. The experience of writing, sound and movement are always pleasant, the individual keys are well adjusted and respond well even when you touch them on the edges. Dell also included a two-level keyboard backlight with PWM (pulse width) modulation at a frequency of 64 Hz and a lower brightness level. The 2017 model also had PWM here. This will not be a problem for most users, but sensitive people may notice it. The flicker is easily seen in a slow motion recording, which we did in our 2017 review: Dell XPS 15 2017 7300HQ. The keyboard of the XPS 13 is approximately 5 mm narrower than that of our test unit. Dell has not made any changes to the touchpad either. We had no problem using it to navigate during our test. The sliding is easy and comfortable on the surface of the glass and the mechanical areas of the ClickPad also work very well. You do not have to apply too much pressure to click, but the clicks are not too lax either. The touch panel responds with a muffled sound and a well adjusted tactile response. The Dell XPS 15 has two speakers built into the front of the unit, with sound coming from the openings along the front edge. The sound produced is balanced, clear and strong enough (although not loud enough for a party). The speakers can be used to listen to music. Apple MacBook Pro 15, which is currently the best asset that laptops can offer in terms of sound quality, offers better results when processing low frequencies that play an important role in "full" sound. Apart from this, both laptops have very similar sound characteristics.
Dell XPS 15 9570 Windows 10 BIOS Update
Here, we offer Direct Download Link for Dell XPS 15 9570 BIOS Update for Windows 10 64-bit. The BIOS is original, not repacked or modified by us anyway. Just simply click the "Download Link" below.
How to Enter and Update Dell XPS 15 9570 Setup for Windows 10Download Link
Dell XPS 15 9570 BIOS Setup
How to install the BIOS update using a USB flash drive:
Create a bootable USB flash drive.
Download the Dell XPS 15 9570 BIOS Update file and save it to the USB flash drive. For example. O9010A12.exe
Turn off the Dell XPS 15 9570.
Connect the USB flash drive and restart the Dell XPS 15 9570.
Press the F12 key on the Dell logo screen to access the single start menu.
Using the arrow keys, select the USB storage device and press the Enter key.
At the command prompt, type the full name of the BIOS file, for example. O9010A12.exe and press the Enter key.
Follow the instructions on the BIOS update utility screen to complete the update process.
Note: Don't turn off the laptop when your laptop flashing Dell XPS 15 9570 BIOS Update.
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Copyright © 2021 Dell Drivers Software. All rights reserved. | {
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Does It Snow In Monaco?
Snowfall in Monaco
Can you ski in Monaco?
Monaco is often described as the jewel of the French Riviera, set on the gorgeous shores of the Mediterranean. A welcoming country for travelers and business people.
The climate is Mediterranean, with warm dry summers and mild rainy winters. There are no snowfalls in Monaco. The city has a sunny average of 316 days per year.
Anchored at the southwestern tip of France and bordered by Italy on three sides, the Principality of Monaco is the second-smallest independent country in the world, smaller than even Vatican City.
Monaco's average temperatures have many things to consider. With a small area and the Mediterranean Sea acting as a redirector for air currents coming from northern Africa, there is not a big difference between winter and summer.
There is no real snowfall in Monaco. Located on the French Riviera, Monaco's climate is Mediterranean with mild winters and hot summers.
The average temperature in July is 82 Fahrenheit, (82C) making it warmer than most of France, while January's temperatures are a cool 55 Fahrenheit (13C).
Monaco's location in sunny south-western Europe will never fail to warm you.
With daylight savings time, the sun doesn't set until nearly 10 pm in the summer.
Of course, the weather is unpredictable and can be windy and rainy at any time, but when the sun is out, you have a warm Mediterranean climate.
Not in Monaco, no, but the nearest ski resort is Isola 2000, 68 miles (110km) from Monaco.
If you're looking for great ski deals and a resort with guaranteed snow, Isola 2000 is the place to choose in the French Alps.
With more than 68 miles (110km) of ski runs served by 120 snow-making cannons and two parks, it's easy to enjoy proper skiing whatever the weather.
The resort focuses on high-quality, highest standards. Features include 187 ski runs, 40 pistes for all abilities, just over 62 miles (100km) of trails, and 18 cable cars and lifts. Isola 2000, just two hours away in the heart of the French Alps, is one of the most sought-after resorts for skiing. | {
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Experience Mexico
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Oaxaca, Mexico Tour
Experience the beautiful scenery of this destination
Duration: 6 Days / 5 Nights
Location: Oaxaca, La Verde Antequera, Monte Albán, and The Mitla Valley
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Tour through Oaxaca, Mexico
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Oaxaca (wa-hah-kah) is a land of bountiful possibility. Striking scenery, ancient history, authentic cuisine and a lively arts scene come together here to create an unforgettable journey.
Framed by the Sierra Madre del Sur Mountains, Oaxaca is as diverse in landscape as it is in culture. To the south is the Pacific Ocean, and the coastline claims stunning beach resorts such as Huatulco and Puerto Escondito. The city of Oaxaca – a popular and alluring destination – rests roughly 300 miles south of Mexico City.
Aptly nicknamed "Tierra del Sol" (The Land of the Sun), Oaxaca sits 5000 feet above sea-level, giving it a beautiful, temperate climate suitable for endless exploring. Just outside Oaxaca City grows the magnificent Árbol del Tule. With a reported age of over 2,000 years, this is widely known as world's oldest tree. The trunk of this Montezuma cypress measures a remarkable 42 meters (137 feet) in diameter.
Oaxaca City features a wealth of cultural experience. The essence of ancient civilizations remains alive here in vivacious markets, old-style handicrafts and enduring colonial architecture dating back to the city's 16th-century establishment. Wander through the lively downtown streets to take in the history and the innovation as one. Galleries, museums and restaurants now find their homes in expertly restored colonial buildings.
The ruins of Monte Albán comprise the state's best-known archaeological site – one popular for its historical richness and astonishing views. Located just west of Oaxaca City, the ancient city was erected on a hilltop overlooking the Valley of Oaxaca and served as the capital of the indigenous Zapotec civilization for over 1000 years.
The ruins of Mitla lie southwest of Oaxaca City. Here, visitors can see intricate stone masonry and mosaics still steeped in centuries-old tradition of the Zapotec and Mixtec peoples. The influence of these and countless other ancient civilizations thrives in Oaxaca to this day.
Tradition is particularly influential in a culinary sense. The diverse cuisine of Oaxaca includes pre-Hispanic dishes and elaborate recipes of the colonial era. Each dish is a masterpiece in the "Land of the Seven Moles." Trademark dishes include mole, tamales, and excellent cheeses. Wake up your senses with a warm cup of creamy atole or café olla.
With A Closer Look Tours, not only will you see the sights, but you will truly learn about and connect with the environment and culture of Oaxaca.
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Category Archives: Politics
Posted by Jason on April 29, 2018
The whole "violence in video games" thing made an unexpected comeback recently, I guess because "first as tragedy, then as farce" is some kind of metaphysical law now. Anyway, for all the puffed-up pontificating that pervades this issue, no one's ever really done a proper analysis of it, so, y'know, someone probably should.
Obviously, video games do not "cause" violence for any reasonable definition of the term. The mental hurdles that have to be cleared before a person can make the active decision to arbitrarily murder a bunch of strangers are somewhat extensive. Specifically, "desensitization to violence" has almost nothing to do with it. The reason people mostly don't kill each other isn't because they're scared of seeing blood, it's because they don't want to in the first place. And of course spree killings require a whole other level of motivation on top of that, because in that case you're killing people you don't know in a way that doesn't benefit you at all. Indeed, the entire reason spree killings attract attention is that they don't make sense; most people literally can't imagine how you would actually do something like that.
The typical tendency to latch on to the easiest available explanation is particularly pernicious here, because the fact that we're talking about something very far outside of ordinary experience means that any real explanation would have to be extremely complicated. Remember, spree killings are vanishingly rare (which is part of the reason they attract so much attention when they do happen), so whatever "causes" them can't be common; indeed, it can't even be just one thing. You'd basically have to take a person's entire life experiences into account, at which point you lose the ability to simply point your finger and blame one thing. (So yes, even blaming guns here is not really apropos. Spree killings actually provide an extremely weak case for banning guns. The strong case is the combination of the facts that a) most gun deaths are accidents or suicides, so guns really are the proximate cause there (suicides are generally impulsive, so even though there are other underlying issues there, removing the means can still be a decisive preventative measure) and b) individual gun ownership doesn't have any positive functions.) One can, of course, imagine a situation where some game or other provides the "but for" cause for a particular killing, but everything that would have to happen for a person to get to that point would clearly be the overwhelmingly more significant issue. Basically, if fucking Doom or whatever can convince you to kill people, then literally anything can.
At the same time, it's implausible to argue that games have no effect on anything. I mean, this actually was the popular argument back in the day: that games are a purely escapist pastime that have no effect on anything whatsoever. This is honestly pretty hilarious, because it's precisely the argument for banning games. If games are completely useless, if they don't do anything at all, then you might as well ban them. Nothing of value would be lost. But of course this is nonsense. Games aren't in any way "fake"; they're real things that exist in the real world, and engaging with them necessarily has to have some effect on a person simply by virtue of the fact that they're things. Furthermore, games aren't just arbitrary amalgamations of colors and noises – what they actually are, usually, is feedback loops. You take an action, you get feedback from it, you modify the actions you're taking to account for the feedback and get new feedback in response, and you keep doing this forever. This is the style of interaction that is most likely to have an effect on human behavior; it's the specific thing that the human brain responds to. And we know this is the case because game developers are completely shameless about it. The most prominent current example of this is the "loot box" system, which is explicitly intended to mimic the effects of slot machines for the purpose of manipulating addiction-prone people into dumping tons of money into them. And the reason games like this get made is that they're profitable, meaning this works. In short, there really is something going on here, and beyond vague notions of "addiction," nobody's ever really bother to figure it out.
In order to understand what we're actually talking about here, we first have to understand what "violence in video games" actually is. It's not actual violence, obviously, but it's also not a simulation of violence. People usually talk about it as though that's what going on, that violence is being "portrayed," but it's clearly not, because if it is, it's the worst portrayal ever. Two people holding weapons and clicking on each other until one of their life numbers reaches zero is about as far as you can get from an accurate portrayal of violence. I mean, this is usually a joke, like in Street Fighter or whatever you have two people punching and throwing fireballs at each other and they're perfectly fine and uninjured the entire time until one of their life bars runs out, at which point they suddenly fall over, completely incapacitated. The joke is precisely that this is absolutely nothing like a street fight.
So if that's not it, then what is it? What it is is a metaphor. "Violence in video games" is an aesthetic layer that exists to help us understand the underlying computational phenomena. What's actually happening in a fighting game is that each player has a set of spatial coordinates that they can move around and project other sets of coordinates from, and if one player's projected coordinates intersect with the other's fixed coordinates, then the counter belonging to the intersecting player gets decremented by a certain amount, and the player whose counter reaches zero first loses. The problem is that that sentence makes no sense; if you actually had to explain games to people in this way, nobody would ever be able to figure out what the hell was going on. So what you do is you draw a picture of a street fight, and then people are immediately like "oh, I get it, I'm supposed to punch that guy." This also, just as importantly, provides the player with a motivation for what they're supposed to be doing. We don't just understand "fighting" in mechanical terms, we also understand what you're supposed to do when you get into a fight, which is to win it. So while the metaphor isn't mechanical, it's actually the more important part of the design: it's the thing that the players are actually interacting with pretty much the whole time (in fact, it's probably the thing that the developers were interacting with most of the time, too).
But the thing to note about metaphors is that they're always somewhat arbitrary. The mechanics are the thing that's actually happening, and you can always put a different metaphor on top of them. For example, in a RPG the two sides typically have different "attacks," which are portrayed as things like swords and guns and fireballs, and their counters are portrayed as "life," so the win condition is that one side eventually runs out of "life" and "dies." But you could just as easily present the exact same mechanics as, for example, a debate, where instead of "attacks" you have "arguments," and instead of "life" you have "credibility," and the side that runs out of "credibility" first "loses" the debate. The game would work exactly the same way. So if violence isn't a portrayal, and it's also not a necessary consequence of the mechanics, then this is where we arrive at the real question: why do almost all games use violence as a metaphorical basis when doing so is completely unnecessary? Even in something like a Mario game, which is supposed to be all cute and family-friendly, there are still "enemies" that you have to "defeat," and the climax occurs when you face off against the biggest enemy and boil him alive in a vat of lava. What's really going on here?
The question can be answered in one word: dominance. This is the real underlying dynamic. A game might contain more or less explicit violence, but the thing that you're supposed to do in every case is to "beat" it. This is actually clearer in single-player games: we sometimes talk about playing "against" the "A.I.", but this isn't really what's happening, because the game as an overall system controls your actions as much as it controls your "opponent's." What's actually happening is simply that you're interacting with a computerized rule system. You're not really "beating" anyone or anything when you "win" the game, you're just placing the system into a certain state. But since this is difficult to understand on its own, we explain it to the player by means of ideological content. Everyone knows what it means to "beat the bad guys," so presenting this situation provides an immediately comprehensible entry point into any set of underlying mechanics.
But explanation isn't really the main purpose here. The purpose is motivation. Dominance isn't just understandable, it's morally significant. The purpose of establishing a "defeat the bad guys" scenario is to make the player want to do so, because it's the right thing to do. And it's this aspect that is truly pervasive, far more so than explicit violence. Portal, for example, is notable for being a first-person shooter that doesn't have any violence in it, but it still presents you with a "bad guy," and you ultimately "beat" the game by blowing them up. And even in abstract games like Candy Crush or whatever, you're still presented with a series of "challenges" that you have to "overcome" by getting a "high score" – the game's metaphor isn't violent, but it's still dominance-based.
And of course as soon as you notice this you notice that this happens everywhere. Movies, for example, often don't have a lot of explicit violence (less so now that we've devolved to producing nothing but superhero movies, but still), but the plot almost always gets "resolved" by a symbolic assertion of dominance. There's often a contest or sports match or something at the end where the good guy winning it somehow solves the interpersonal problems that the movie is supposed to be about. A classic example occurs in Back to the Future: the story of George McFly's lack of self-confidence gets resolved by him punching someone in the face. What's funny about this is that it doesn't even make sense. George obviously doesn't know how to throw a punch, and punching someone doesn't generally render them instantly unconscious. But while the situation doesn't make sense in factual terms – the movie would be a failure if the point of it were to portray violence – it does make sense in ideological terms. What the movie is telling us is that the symbolic assertion of dominance is the most important thing in the world.
And it's far from the only thing telling us this. Indeed, we frequently hear this message in even more explicit terms from such sources as, oh, I don't know, the entire United States government.
I believe that the US, UK, & France did the right thing by striking Syria over chemical weapons. It will not stop the war nor save the Syrian people from many other horrors. It is illegal under international law. But it at least draws a line somewhere & says enough.
— Anne-Marie Slaughter (@SlaughterAM) April 14, 2018
What this is saying is precisely "this action was illegal, and it killed people, and it didn't accomplish anything, but it was still the right thing to do, because it was a symbolic assertion of dominance." This isn't a pathology or a mistake or a bad trend. It's how our society works. Spree killings get politicians super hard for the opportunity to put on their serious faces and play-act moral indignation, but when the government decides that some other country is impeding its geopolitical goals, then suddenly unleashing an orgy of omnidirectional violence is the only rational choice.
So you can see where the last dot is now, right? Spree killings don't make sense in functional terms, but they do make sense in symbolic ones – they are precisely symbolic assertions of dominance. The reason the mental health dodge is a dodge is because it's trivially true: a person capable of deciding to murder a room full of strangers is by definition not what we mean by "mentally healthy." It's not a explanation; it's a tautology. But the thing that it's dodging is the fact that the underlying ideology of spree killers is in no way deviant from the general ideology that society constantly pushes on everyone. Indeed, the problem that spree killers have is simply that they take this ideology too seriously. What they're supposed to do is release their frustrations in socially acceptable ways such as hating foreigners or bullying their subordinates at work or beating their wives. They're not supposed to act like they really mean it.
In case you care, though, video games still suck. The fact that they're not important enough to matter when compared to everything else doesn't change the fact that they're almost universally doing the wrong thing. There's still a strong distinction between the general form of engagement offered by video games compared to other forms of media. Other forms of media often rely on symbolic assertions of dominance as a emotional crutch, but the general case when playing a video game is that symbolically asserting dominance is the only thing you do.
If you're reading a book, for example, you have to work with the language you're reading it in, which is a social medium created by the interactions of everyone in the society, over time, and you have to consider what effect specific word choices have and how they convey the things that the book is trying to convey, which requires accounting for social context and psychology and all kinds of other things. All of this stuff comes into play even when you're just reading some juvenile action novel like Harry Potter where there's an evil wizard who gets blown up at the end. This is why reading and seeing movies and listening to music are all generally healthy habits to have, even when their specific content isn't all that great. At the very least, their basic structure connects to things that matter. Engaging with them forces you to be a person.
Indeed, pretty much the only activity you can engage in that doesn't work like this is playing a video game. Ironically for a medium that prides itself on "interactivity," gaming is frequently a completely thoughtless activity. You figure out – or, more often, the game just tells you – what action you need to take to "win," and then you just do that over and over again. Engaging with a video game forces you to be a robot.
This problem is so endemic to the medium that its influence is overwhelming even in cases that are explicitly trying to do the exact opposite. I'm not sure if people realize this, but Final Fantasy 7 is actually a prime example. The main character is your typical stoic mercenary coolguy, but the plot twist is that this is a facade. He's actually a dropout loser whose dreams of grandeur end up manifesting as a severe inferiority complex, such that he has to pretend to be a big strong hero in order to see himself as a worthwhile person. This is an explicit repudiation of the whole idea of the "hero" being the most powerful person who beats up the most bad guys; what the game is saying is that people who need this kind of assurance are delusional children. Except that then the game ends with a one-on-one macho shirtless swordfight where the hero uses his super cool sword attack to beat up the bad guy. What's amazing is that even within the context of the story, this doesn't resolve anything: the denouement concerns an entirely separate issue that doesn't have this sort of easy resolution, such that the game actually ends ambiguously. But the people making the game literally could not think of any climax other than a symbolic assertion of dominance, even though they had written an entire plot about how that sort of thing is stupid bullshit.
So the real problem with the "violence in video games" angle is aesthetic: it's the wrong criticism. Violence isn't the thing causing the problem. Indeed, one of the ways to make progress here is precisely by taking violence seriously as a concept. What violence actually is is a constraint: it physically prevents you from doing something. Furthermore, violence is not just one thing. It's not just about "winning"; there are a lot of different ways you can deploy it. A game that was really about violence would precisely not be a simplistic fetishization of dominance. So in this sense, video games actually need to become a lot more violent. They need to start imposing real constraints.
But the defensive reaction to this criticism is ultimately just denialism. Criticism is always an opportunity to do better (or, at the very least, in the case of bad criticism, to refine your approach such that you don't attract bad criticism), and games are capable of doing much, much better. Still, it's correct to point out that this line of argument gets nowhere near the real problem. The real reason that games don't cause violence is that all the damage a game could potentially do has already been done, far more effectively, by almost everything else in society. If you think banning games is going to help anything, you'd better start by banning the military.
Leave a comment Posted in Games, Politics Tagged aesthetics, dominance, Final Fantasy 7, game design, imperialism, spree killings, violence
Posted by Jason on March 29, 2018
Today in takes that I never expected would require levying: emotional teenagers are not going to redeem American politics. Surprisingly, I'm not enough of an asshole to criticize school shooting victims, so I'll start by pointing out that they're not actually doing anything wrong. They experienced a traumatizing event caused by a failure of policy, so they're raising the issue to the people who have the ability to do something about it. This is precisely the role that citizenry is supposed to play in a society that's supposed to be a democracy. The problem is with everyone else.
First of all, the media is completely full of shit here. They've had the ability this entire time to emphasize gun violence as a relevant political issue, and they've chosen to ignore it. They try to blame politicians for not responding to the fact that large majorities of people want more gun control, but what those numbers actually mean is that the media should already have been on top of this issue, because the numbers demonstrate that people care about it. One of the problems with the gun issue specifically is that the pro-gun forces are myopic zealots about it while the anti-gun forces recognize that there are other more important problems in the world, so the people who vote based on guns are overwhelmingly the former group. One of the jobs that the media is supposed to perform is to balance out coverage such that it accurately represents the distribution of opinions in the populace. Of course, what actually happens is the opposite: the media reliably locates the most psychotic available representatives of any given position and portrays them as the norm. (And this doesn't even get into framing; for example, any discussion of the Second Amendment here is a complete red herring, because the Second Amendment was not understood to protect an individual right to bear arms until literally 2008. If you take the "well-regulated militia" thing seriously, the Second Amendment is actually compatible with banning individual gun ownership.)
Furthermore, now that they're being forced to notice the issue, they're doing it in exactly the wrong way. The overwhelming majority of gun violence takes the form of suicides or accidents – school shootings are its least representative example. So not only should a properly functioning media be making this clear, but because the real causes of gun violence have been ongoing and are not based on dramatic spectacles, they should have been doing that this entire time. The fact that it falls to teenagers to shoulder this burden should be the furthest thing from a point of pride: it's a source of deep, irredeemable shame. I mean, I'm not actually on an anti-media rant here; there have been plenty of people contextualizing the issue properly and pointing out that a lot of the proposed solutions would be deeply counterproductive. But the fact that the media is indulging in spectacle here, as well as the fact that they required a spectacle in order to get off their asses, illustrates the fundamental failure: the media doesn't actually "investigate" or "raise issues." They chase trends.
But the fact that we're talking policy at all here is also its own problem. There's nothing condescending about pointing out that most people have no fucking idea what would or wouldn't be a good gun control policy. It will always necessarily be the case that most people don't know about most things, because there are only so many hours in the day to spend reading up on shit. It's natural for people, especially people who have been directly affected by an issue, to come up with objectively asinine solutions like this:
"Why don't we have Kevlar vests in classrooms for our students? Why don't we build our walls with Kevlar so that kids aren't being shot through their own walls because they're so cheaply built?"
Having people who specifically know stuff about policy and whose job it is to come up with effective solutions is not "elitism," it's just, like, people having different jobs. Everyone can't be an expert on everything. So, again, the role of the general citizenry is to raise the issue, which should then lead the people whose job it is to both understand the issue in its proper context and come up with good solutions. Yet it's pretty much a constant in political discourse to ask random assholes off the street to start opining about policy details, which is at best a complete waste of time and usually actively counterproductive. It's not their job. Indeed, the failure in the above quote belongs not to the person who said it, but to the person who framed the issue such that the quote was produced in the first place. Shoving a camera in a grieving person's face and asking them to elucidate policy prescriptions on the spot is exactly how you don't do political journalism.
But of course we don't actually have "elites" in this country, in the substantive sense of the term. We have a ruling class, but it very rarely includes anyone who's any good at anything. What we actually have is elitism without eliteness. Our op-ed columnists are all anti-intellectual hacks, our philanthropists have all the philosophical sophistication of teenage Randroids, and our think tanks are all either partisan hackeries or nepotist sinecures. The role of think tanks here is especially important. The actual function they perform is to take the existing ideological biases of the ruling class and develop policies that satisfy those biases. The increasing salience of healthcare is making this particularly obvious. Everyone knows that the only real solution here is to take the profit motive out of medicine, but we've had to deal with decades of nonsense about "market-based solutions" or fucking whatever for no reason other than the ruling class having already decided that only solutions that preserve the ability to extract profits out of people's illnesses were acceptable. An actual good-faith effort to develop a better healthcare system would have had single-payer implemented almost immediately, but instead it's only just now becoming a credible option due to literally everyone in the country clamoring for it. Which is, you know, nice, but there's no excuse for making us push that boulder all the way up the hill. It is, indeed, the exact opposite of the way that our society is supposed to be organized, and it gives the lie to the entire notion of having "qualified" people in charge. Not only do we have politicians who pick their own voters, but we also have policies that pick their own advocates.
And the thing about politicians really does bear repeating: the American political process fundamentally does not respond to what people actually want. The things that are supposed to function as democratic inputs to the system are almost all distractions. It doesn't matter if some goober like Marco Rubio goes on TV and "gets his ass handed to him," because after that he just goes back to Washington and keeps voting for more guns. It's all just a day at the office for him. And the fact that it's entertaining for us is a problem, because it focuses our attention in the wrong place, and makes us feel like something's happening when it isn't. It seems like a politician being humiliated on an important issue ought to matter somehow, but it just doesn't. It's empty catharsis. The reason people want this to be a watershed moment is, ironically, because they want to believe that they live in a functional society. They want to believe that a strong enough emotional appeal is enough to change things. Unfortunately, there's little evidence to support this assumption. There's no necessary connection between what people care about and the actions the ruling class chooses to take.
Worse, our general understanding of how to change things is similarly flawed. It's beyond cliche to assert that "real change" is made by "ordinary people" going "out in the streets," but there's no necessary reason for this to be true. Politicians are just as capable of ignoring protests as they are of ignoring news stories and adversarial interviews. We're still sort of razzled and dazzled by the mythology of the Civil Rights Movement, which is understandable, since that actually did result in unbelievably sweeping changes and it actually was powered by protests. So that really makes it seem like protesting is the thing to do. But even Martin Luther King, Jr. recognized that his commitment to nonviolent protest was as much a tactical choice as it was a moral one: it was the thing that happened to be effective at that time. It's obvious that this wouldn't have worked at earlier points in history – nobody would have given a shit if the slaves had "protested" – and it can't simply be assumed that it's going to continue working at this point in history.
It's important to emphasize here that the point is not whether protesting is "good" or "bad," but simply that it's not magic. It has specific effects at specific times. For example, the first Women's March last year actually turned out to have important effects, which I'll admit I didn't anticipate. Due to the combination of Trump's inauguration being underattended and the immediately proceeding marches being overattended, they had the effect of creating the narrative of an embattled presidency from day one. This wasn't necessarily going to happen. The first time Trump gave a speech off of a teleprompter and exploited a war widow, the media fell right on his dick. All those hacks are thirsty as fuck for legitimizing whoever the big man wearing the suit happens to be, so there was a real danger that Trump was going to become the new normal. Consistent and indeed obnoxious opposition made this not happen. (Worryingly, though, only half of this is actually due to the opposition – the other half is because Trump really is that much of a clueless bumblefuck. It would be the easiest thing in the world for him to just "act presidential" while doing all of the exact same things, but he's just plain too incompetent to hack it. This has been said before, but what we're really learning here is how deeply vulnerable America is to a competent fascist.) The second march, on the other hand, had no such contextual focus, so it didn't do anything. It came and went. Even striking only works when you actually have your ducks in a row. The exact same tactic can just as easily be effective or useless depending on when and how it's deployed.
And there's still a very real danger that this is going to backfire. I mean, if you're demanding "action" from the current administration, that's exactly what you're going to get. Naomi Klein's "shock doctrine" theory still holds up pretty well here: whenever there's cause for change, the ruling class uses the opportunity to make the changes they want. The NRA responds to literally every situation by calling for more guns, because that's what they want, and they're the people who are capable of getting what they want. It's not at all surprising that we're now seeing calls for constant police presence in schools: this is exactly the thing that we should expect to happen, given the current parameters of the society that we live in. This is the real threat that requires our opposition.
So there actually is a problem with what the teens are doing here: they're making this about "safety."1 It's not. You can't ever fully prevent things like mass shootings. Like, it's appropriate to say "never again" to something like the Holocaust that has a lot of moving parts. Everything had to go wrong in order for it to happen, so as long as we remember to stay on guard against it, we should always be able to stop things before they get to that level (though that's obviously a heavy "should"). A mass shooting is the opposite type of event: only one thing has to go wrong in order for it to happen, which means something like that is always going to be a possibility (even if you actually ban guns, there are still cars and homemade explosives and what have you). Obviously, things can be made safer; reducing the raw number of guns present will naturally reduce the number of gun-related accidents, and reduce the probability that the wrong person will have access to a gun at the wrong time. But there's always going to be a chance that a gun is going to get through somewhere, which means, if you're fully insistent on safety, that you have to institute a safeguard against that . . . and it has to be more of a threat than the gunner is capable of providing, or else it won't be a deterrent . . . and it has to be everywhere, since you never know where the breach is going to occur. There's only one conclusion: the logic of safety leads inexorably to a police state.
Thus, the quietist argument is in fact the best argument to be made against gun control. The rate of school shooting deaths is extremely low, and the rate of other deaths is comparable to other everyday threats, so the problem simply does not merit bothering with. If preventing deaths is what you're after, you're better off looking just about anywhere else. But there's a better argument to be made on the other side: because guns don't do anything useful, we might as well just go ahead and ban them. More than that, guns themselves already have negative utility, even before anyone gets shot. The whole "guns don't kill people" thing is really the worst argument ever made, because of course guns kill people. Killing people is the only thing that guns do; it's the entire reason they exist. Guns are objects, but nothing is "just" an object, because objects aren't neutral. Without a gun it's pretty fucking difficult to kill a person on accident, or even on purpose, but with a gun it's trivially easy. This is a direct result of what type of object a gun is: it's an object that kills people as effectively as possible.
The police state response at least honestly accounts for this: it acknowledges the fact that guns are extremely dangerous, and therefore advances an equally dangerous countermeasure as the only way to stop them. And this is a pro-safety argument: it is precisely not based on the idea that gun violence is "the price of freedom," but rather the idea that safety must be preserved at any cost. It's exactly the logical conclusion you get from following through on statements like "we cannot allow one more child to be shot at school." The problem with this conclusion isn't that it's unsafe, it's that it sucks. The threat of school shootings is better than a police state – and it's also better than owning guns in the first place. That is, if it really were that case that "the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun," we should still be opposed to guns, because guns are bad. We should accept the threat of gun violence for the sake of getting rid of guns.
That is: let's grant the NRA their empirical argument. It may in fact be that case that, in a gun-saturated society, a lot of people who would otherwise do bad things won't do them, but the reason for this is that they're afraid of getting shot. And the only way this works is if everyone lives in that state of fear, all the time. A society where everyone constantly carries guns with the intent of using them to stop crimes is just a distributed and untrained police state. So the empirical issue of whether this type of society is "safer" or not is ultimately beside the point, because it's an undesirable way to live regardless of the specific consequences that ensue from it. The cure is worse than the disease. The other alternative is that we remove as much violence as possible from everyday living, which will necessarily make us more vulnerable on those occasions when violence does end up occurring. Obviously, we're not going to make ourselves naively vulnerable, reasonable safeguards are still reasonable, but it is within our abilities to focus on living well rather than jumping at every shadow and cowering around every corner. This is the argument that actually disarms the NRA, because it takes away the only real motivation they have, which is fear. What the NRA truly stands for is cowardice, so it's important for those of us who oppose them to ensure that we do not make the same mistake.
An excessive focus on safety will always eventually resolve itself into illusion. There isn't really anything that's perfectly safe, but there are things that look that way, so doing something that looks safe is your actual practical option. If you're scared of violent immigrants, there isn't any real approach you can take to ensure that you're never victimized. But you could, hypothetically, build some kind of big symbol that represents safety, such that looking at it and knowing that it's there makes you feel safe, even though it doesn't really do anything. I mean, living in denial really is a real choice you can make, and it's the choice that most Americans make most of the time. So this isn't a trivial dilemma. We really do have to decide what our values are. A magical Care Bear society where nothing bad ever happens is not one of the options, because there's no such thing. The actual options are a society of constant violence where all problems are solved through further repression, or a society of civility where we accept the threat of tragedy for the sake of preserving human dignity. This is a real choice that has honest advocates on both sides. It's clear to me what the right choice is, and if it's clear to you, too, you shouldn't hide behind facile invocations of "safety" and "responsibility." You should say what you really believe.
And the extent to which the teens aren't doing this is simply the extent to which they're acting the way they've been taught to. They watch the news and they know that you're supposed to say things like "this is not a political issue" and ask "tough questions" and make histrionic statements about "living in terror," so that's what they've been doing. But their initial emotional response was the right one. If the same number of kids had died as the result of a bus crash or something, it wouldn't have had the same galvanizing effect, because there wouldn't have been anything obviously "wrong" with it. But a society swimming in guns is, to these kids, obviously wrong, which is why they're not standing for it. They actually do have a strong grasp on the relevant value claim here. The only problem is that the rest of us are doing our damnedest to pry it away from them. The potential negative consequences of their actions are simply a result of their being filtered through a society that gets literally everything wrong.
Violence is always a political issue, and there are more than two sides to every story. Getting your own story straight – making the right argument instead of the easy one – is the only thing that gives an ordinary person any real power. Doing the opposite, saying the easiest thing, or the thing that attracts the most attention, is how you ensure that society will be able to resolve your passion into support for the status quo. Most importantly, any issue of substance is not merely a "mistake" or an "inefficiency," but a real value contest, with someone on the other side who is genuinely opposed to what you believe in and is pushing against you as hard as they can. They'll act like they aren't, like they "want what's best for everyone" and are "just trying to find a reasonable solution," but the fact that there was a problem in the first place – that you felt that scream in your heart insisting that this is wrong – is what proves them to be liars. The task of creating a real society is precisely the task of identifying your enemies and figuring out how to kill them. None of the easy targets here matter. Indeed, the reason they're easy targets is because they don't matter – they're decoys. The thing we need to call BS on here is America.
We're never going to be able to return to innocence, because innocence was an illusion in the first place. There never was a Garden of Eden, there's just the regular kind of garden, where sometimes things grow and sometimes they don't – which, of course, makes it all the more important to apply our full efforts to the task. But the real threat we have to watch out for isn't that young lives might be cut short. It's that they're going to grow up shaped by the confines of the same system that killed their peers, and, in so doing, become just like the rest of us.
Yeah, I know, I'm an asshole. Surprise! ↩
Leave a comment Posted in Politics Tagged fuck the police, gun control, guns, media dorks, NRA, Parkland shooting, Second Amendment, so many cowards so little time, violence
We all had a good laugh when Apple decided that the future of technology was making you unlock your phone by wiggling it in front of your face, every time you need to use it, in public. But the thing about extremely stupid ideas is that they have real underlying causes, which is why the funniest things are often simultaneously the most serious. This is no exception, and the real issue here is particularly not pretty.
We should start by admitting an oft-ignored truth, which is that passwords are good. They're the correct form of security at the level of the individual user, and the reason for this is that they are a proper technical implementation of consent. The problem is that, when a system gets a request to provide access to an account, it has no idea why or from where the request is coming in; it just has the request itself. So the requirement is that access is provided if and only if the person associated with the account wants it to be provided. The way you implement this is by establishing an unambiguous communication signal. This works just like a safe word in a BDSM scene: you take a signal that would normally never occur and assign a fixed meaning to it, so that when it does occur, you know exactly what it means. That's what a password is, and that's why it works. "Security questions," on the other hand, are precisely how passwords don't work, because anything personally associated with you is not a low frequency signal. Anyone who knows that information can just send it in, so it doesn't accord with user consent. All those celebrities who got hacked were actually compromised through their security questions, because of course they were, because personal information about celebrities is publicly available. They would have been perfectly fine had their email systems simply relied on generic passwords.
Furthermore, none of the alleged problems with passwords are real problems. The reason for all the stupid alternate-character requirements on passwords is supposedly that they increase complexity, but this doesn't actually matter. The only thing that matters is that the signal is low frequency, and the problem with a password like "password123" isn't that it lacks some particular combination of magic characters,1 but is simply that it's high frequency. But anything that wouldn't be within a random person's top 100 guesses is, for practical purposes, zero frequency, so a password like "kittensarecute" or "theboysarebackintown" is essentially 100% secure. There's no actual reason to complicate it any further, and in fact several reasons not to, because forgetting your password or having to write it down are real security threats.
Literally the only problem with simple passwords like this is that they can be hacked; that is, a computer program can derive them from a fixed pattern. If your password is a combination of dictionary words, then a "dictionary attack" can derive it from all the possible combinations of all the words in the dictionary in a relatively short amount of time, because that's actually not all that much data. The frequency isn't low enough. But the thing about this is that it's portrayed as an end-user problem when it isn't one at all; it's a server problem. A user can't actually guess how their password is going to be hacked; the attacker might use a dictionary attack, or they might pick a different pattern that happens to match the one you used in an attempt to evade a dictionary attack. The real way to prevent this is for the server to disallow it – the server shouldn't allow a frequency of attempts high enough to convert a low-frequency signal into a high-frequency one. Preventing this isn't the user's job, because they can't actually do anything about it. The server can.
And of course no one is ever actually going to hack your password. You don't matter enough for anyone to care. What actually happens, as one hears about constantly in the news, is that a company's server gets breached and all the passwords on it are compromised from the back end. When this happens, the strength and secrecy of your password are completely irrelevant, because the attacker already has your credentials, no matter what form they're in. Again, this is not a problem with passwords. The passwords are doing their job; it's the server that's failing.
So the thing about biometrics is that they're worse than passwords, because they don't implement consent. At best, they implement identity, but that's not what you want. If the police arrest you and want to snoop through your phone without a warrant, they have your identity, so if your phone is secured through biometrics, they have access to it without your consent. But they don't have your password unless you give it to them. Similarly, the ability of passwords to be changed when needed is a strength. It's part of the implementation of consent: if the situation changes such that the previously agreed-upon term no longer communicates the thing its supposed to communicate, you have to be able to change it. In BDSM terms, if your safe word is "lizard," but then you want to do a scene about, y'know, lizard people or something, then the word isn't going to convey the right thing anymore, so you have to come up with a new one. This is the same thing that happens in a data breach: because someone else knows your password, it no longer communicates consent – but precisely because you can change it, it can continue to perform its proper function. Whereas if someone steals your biometric data, you're fucked forever. So when Apple touts the success rate or whatever of their face-scanning thing, they've completely missed the point. It doesn't matter how accurate it is, because it implements the wrong thing.2
So, given all of this, why would a major company expend the amount of resources required to implement biometrics? We've already seen the answers. First, passwords look bad from the end-user perspective, because they feel insecure – unless you're forced to use a random jumble of characters, in which case they feel obnoxious. And in either case you have to manage multiple passwords, which can be genuinely difficult. Biometrics, by contrast, feel secure, even though they're not, and they're very easy to use. They also feel "future-y," allowing companies to sell them like some big new fancy innovation, when they're actually a step backwards. In short, they're pretty on the outside. At the risk of putting too fine a point on it, Apple is invested in the conceptualization of technology as magic.
More than that, though, biometrics demonstrate a focus on the appearance of security at the expense of its actuality – that is, they're security theater. What all those data breaches in the news indicate is that, for all the ridiculous security paraphernalia that gets foisted on us, companies don't actually bother much with security on their end. They don't want to spend the money, so they make you do it, and because you can't do it, because you don't actually have the necessary means, the result is actual insecurity. Thus, the appearance of security, mediated by opaque technology that most people don't understand, provides these companies with cover for their own incompetence. The only function being performed here by "technology" is distraction.3
What this means, then, is that technology isn't technology. That is, the things that we talk about when we talk about "tech" aren't actually about tech. Indeed, "tech companies" aren't even tech companies4. Google and Facebook make their money through advertising; they're ad companies. The fact that they use new types of software to sell their ads is only relevant to their business model in that provides a shimmery sci-fi veneer to disguise their true, hideous forms. Amazon is not actually a website; it's a big-box retailer in exactly the same vein as Target and Wal-Mart. A lot of people thought it was "ironic" when Amazon stated opening physical stores, but that's only the case if you assume that Amazon has some kind of ideological commitment to online ordering. What Amazon has an ideological commitment to is capturing market share, and they're going to keep doing that using whatever technological means are available to them. Driving physical retailers out of business and then filling the vacuum with their own physical stores is precisely in line with how Amazon operates – it's what you should expect them to do, if you actually understand what type of thing they are. Uber is only an "app" in the sense that that mediates their actual business model, which is increasing the profits of taxi services by evading regulations and passing costs on the the drivers (Uber's business model doesn't account for the significant maintenance costs incurred by constantly operating a vehicle, because those costs are borne by the drivers, who aren't Uber's employees. But Uber still takes the same cut of the profits regardless.) Apple is the closest, since they actually develop new technology, but even then they mostly make money by selling hardware (after having it manufactured as cheaply as possible), meaning they're really just in the old-fashioned business of commodity production.
So if you try to understand these companies in terms of "tech," you're going to get everything wrong. There isn't a design reason why Apple makes the choices it does; there's a business reason. Nobody actually wanted an iPhone without a headphone port, but Apple relies on their sleek, minimalist imagery to move products, so they had to make the phone slimmer, even if it meant removing useful functionality. And of course no one is ever going to be interested in a solid-glass phone that shatters into a million pieces when you sneeze at it, but Apple had to come up with something that looked impressive to appease the investors and the media drones, so that's what we got.
But this isn't even limited to just these "new" companies; it's the general dynamic by which technology relates to economics. There's been a recent countertrend of elites pointing out that, actually, modern society is pretty great from a historical perspective, but they're missing the point that this is despite our system of social organization, not because of it. That is, barring extreme disasters along the lines of the bubonic plague or the thing that we're currently running headlong into, it would be incomprehensibly bizarre for the general standard of living not to increase over time. As long as humans are engaged in any productive activity at all, things are going to continuously get better, because things are being produced. The fact that we're not seeing this – that real wages have been stagnant for decades and people are more stressed and have less leisure time then ever – indicates that we are in the midst of precisely such a disaster. Our current economic system is a world-historical catastrophe on par with the Black Death.
Do I even need to explicitly point out that this is why global warming is happening? It isn't because of technology, it's because rich fucks have decided they'd rather destroy the world for a short-term profit than be slightly less rich. It's somewhat unfortunate that the physics are such that everyone is going to die, but the decision itself was made a long time ago. If it wasn't greenhouse gasses, it would be something else. There's always nuclear war or mass starvation or what have you. The fact of the matter is that we've chosen a social configuration that doesn't support human life. That's the whole story.
To address this technically, it's certainly true that the age of capitalism has seen a vast increase in worldwide standards of living, but it's not capitalism that caused that. It's actually the opposite: trade and industrialization created the conditions for capitalism to become possible in the first place. Capitalism is not the cause of industrialization or globalization, it's the response to these things. It is the determination of how the results of these things will be applied, and what actually happens it that it ensures that the gains will always be pointed in the wrong direction. The fact of globalization has nothing to do with any of the problems attributed to it; the problems reside entirely in how globalization is happening: who's managing it, what their priorities are, and where the results are going. Like, it's really amazing to consider how much potential productivity is being wasted right now. All the people employed in advertising, or in building yachts, or in think tanks, or on corporate advisory boards, or in failed attempts at "regime change," or designing new gadgets that are less functional then the old ones, or all those dumbass "internet-connected" kitchen appliances, all of that, all of the time and energy and resources being spent on all of that stuff and far more, is all pure waste. Imagine the kind of society we could have if all of that potential were actually being put to productive use.
And it's deeply hilarious how committed everyone is to misunderstanding this as thoroughly as possible. Like, the actual word we have for someone who negatively fetishizes technology is "Luddite," but the Luddites were precisely people who cared about the practical results of technology – they cared about the fact that their livelihoods were being destroyed. They attacked machines because those machines were killing them. Every clueless takemonger inveighing about how globalization is leaving people behind or social media is dividing us or smartphones are alienating us is completely failing to grasp the basic point that the Luddites instinctively understood. The results of technological developments are not properties of the technology itself; they arise from political choices. The technology is simply the means by which those choices are implemented. In just the same way, attacking technology is not merely a symptom of incomprehension or phobia or lifestyle. It is also a political choice.
An engine doesn't tell you where to go or how to travel. It just generates kinetic energy. It can take you past the horizon, but if you instead point it into a ditch, it will be equally happy to drive you straight into the dirt. There's nothing counterintuitive about that; the function of technology is no great mystery. It just obeys the rules – not only the physical ones, but the social ones as well. All of the problems that people attribute to technology (excepting things like software glitches that are actual implementation failures) are actually problems with the rules. The great lesson of the age of technology is that technology doesn't matter; as long as society continues on in its present configuration, everything will continue to get worse.
The way you can tell that complexity requirements are bullshit is that they're all different. There are plenty of nerds available to run the numbers on this, so if there really were a particular combination of requirements that resulted in "high security," it would have been figured out by now and the same solution would have been implemented everywhere. But because the actual solution is contextual – that is, it's the thing that no one else is guessing, which also means it's unstable – you can't implement it as a fixed list of requirements. The reason it feels like each website's requirements are just some random ideas that some intern thought sounded "secure" enough is because that's actually what they are. ↩
I mean, face-scanning can't actually work the way they say it does, because of identical twins. If the scan can distinguish between identical twins, that means it's using contextual cues such as hair and expression, which means there are cases when these things would cause it to fail for an individual user, and if it can't distinguish between identical twins (or doppelgangers), then that's also a failure. I'd also be curious to know how much work the engineers put into controlling for makeup, because that's a pretty common and major issue, and I'm guessing the answer is not much. ↩
The real situation is significantly more dire than this. It isn't just that Equifax, for example, sucks at security, it's that Equifax should not exist in the first place. Taking the John Oliver Strategy and making fun of Equifax for being a bunch of dummies completely misses what's really going on here. ↩
I'm not giving up my "tech assholes" tag though, it's too perfect. ↩
Leave a comment Posted in Politics Tagged Apple, biometrics, capitalism, global warming, passwords, security, tech assholes, we are all devo now
A glass darkly
Posted by Jason on February 26, 2018
Oprah Winfrey and Donald Trump are the same person. If you don't understand this, you don't understand anything.
First of all, they're both rich fucks. This isn't, like, a coincidence. People don't "just happen" to get rich. Your relationship to the material conditions of your existence is one of the primary determinants of who you are as a person. Before we even get into any other considerations, the actual act of being rich is itself immoral. When you or I imagine being "rich," we imagine things like having a big house in a quiet neighborhood and a fancy car and an extensive record collection, but this isn't what being actually rich is like. Being actually rich means literally having more money than it is physically possible to spend – even after resorting to ridiculous luxuries like owning three summer vacation mansions filled with rare art collections that you only visit one week a year or buying a Hawaiian island. It's difficult to really imagine what things like this are like, which is why a lot of people resist this argument: they can't imagine a situation where losing money results in no material deprivation whatsoever. But this is the real situation that our society has decided to create for some people, and it's the situation that Winfrey and Trump both inhabit every waking moment. Every dollar they hoard is a dollar's worth of food taken out of the mouth of a starving person. There is no word for this other than "evil."
People like to talk about whether rich fucks "deserve" their money or not, but this is completely irrelevant to the argument. Remember, we're talking about money in excess of the amount that you can actually spend on all the luxuries and projects during the amount of time you're awake each day. Since you would lose absolutely nothing by giving it away, since your life would remain exactly the same with or without it, whereas lots of other people's lives would improve immeasurably upon receiving even the tiniest fraction of it, there can be no possible justification for keeping it, regardless of its source. It doesn't matter whether the money came from a big sack you found in the street or whether it was a boon bestowed upon you by god herself in recognition of your exceptional personal character. Philanthropy, which we'll discuss further in just a moment, has no effect on this, because the issue is not how much money is being given away, but how much is being kept. A person living paycheck to paycheck does not lose virtue points for not giving to charity, because all the money they have is already being put to valuable use. A rich fuck does lose virtue points for every dollar they keep in the bank, because that money is being kept from people whom it could be helping. It is the actual holding of the money, in a situation where billions of others need money to survive, that constitutes the immorality. And considering the scale of the situation, this pretty much overrides any other possible concerns regarding what kind of person someone is. Like, if you knew someone whose construction company built concentration camps, you wouldn't really give a shit if they seemed nice and empathetic in person. This is almost exactly the same thing.
But even if we do feel the need to interrogate the source of money as an indication of its recipient's character, Winfrey and Trump are still in the same situation. Just as being rich is not a coincidence, getting rich is also a matter of a particular type of interfacing with present social conditions. Again, when you or I imagine getting rich, we imagine things like getting a big promotion or writing a bestselling novel or something – something that reflects our own abilities and doesn't hurt anyone else. This isn't how getting actually rich works. In a capitalist society, they way you make money is through exploitation. People who work for a living can only ever make enough to cover their own expenses, maybe with some extra left over for luxuries and savings if their skills happen to be in demand at the time. The way you make walking-around money is by extracting the value of other people's labor, and the way you make a lot of money is by extracting a lot of value from the labor of a lot of people. The way you get actually rich is by building an empire. I mean, that's exactly the term we use, we call things "media empires" or "construction empires," and that's exactly what they are. They're giant exploitation engines in which the lives of millions of people are ground up into lubricant for the lifestyles of the rulers. It's really not even a metaphor; they literally consume people's flesh and blood. The fact that Winfrey is a self-made man and Trump is a trust fund baby doesn't really impinge on any of this. If anything, it reflects worse on Winfrey; Trump inherited his father's immorality, while Winfrey built her towering edifice of bullshit with her own two hands. Because we live in a society that allocates resources immorally, the people who succeed in it are the people who are the most immoral. Making money is a bad thing that makes you a bad person.
Those are the general principles, but this particular comparison is especially interesting, because Winfrey and Trump are not merely representatives of the same class, but representatives of the same belief system, with exactly the same M.O. Like, Bill Gates got rich by being a monopolist, but his company actually did produce products that people use. He added something to the world. Winfrey and Trump do not merit even this basic distinction; they are pure self-advertisers whose only product is their own image. The way Trump operated was not by actually building things, but by buying other people's products and inflating their value through hype campaigns. Since the hype always far exceeds any actual value (especially since Trump has negative taste and can therefore be counted on to always select the worst products), there's inevitably a collapse, at which point Trump sends out his lawyers and accountants to pocket the proceeds and leave other people holding the losses. In almost exactly the same way, Winfrey attaches herself to other people's books and ideas and uses them to inflate her own image. Since the marketing of these things always far exceeds their actual content (especially since Winfrey is a credulous hack and can therefore be counted on to always select the most diluted variety of snake-oil on display), the fad inevitably dies out, at which point Winfrey shields herself from any fallout by simply moving on to the next trend (or occasionally issuing a Serious Apology if there's a real scandal). People like this are worse even than rentiers, since they don't even own the things they put their names on. They are pure value extractors; perfect parasites.
Even more than that, though, the similarities in Winfrey's and Trump's approaches point to something deeper than circumstantial convergence; they point to the same underlying ideology. Focusing solely on image and advertising necessarily requires complete adherence to existing values and standards. This is because symbols have to have referents; people have to know what you're talking about, and if there's no actual underlying product with its own value, the only way this is possible is if you're saying something that people already believe.
When personal computers first came out, they were a new type of thing, so people didn't already understand what they could do. This meant they couldn't be marketed with pure bullshit, but had to actually function such that people who used them got something out of it. The same thing happened with smartphones; Apple's insufferable advertising notwithstanding, it was only once people started using smartphones and experiencing the various things they could do (not all of it good, but still) that they became popular. A less compromised example is the Sriracha hot sauce guy. Sriracha has become a cultural buzzword in the complete absence of any marketing or promotion of it whatsoever. I had no idea where the stuff even came from until I saw that article. Because it's a quality product, you don't have to conjure up fantasies of fun-loving bikini girls or rugged manliness in order to sell it. It's actually good; it has its own value, and is therefore able to speak for itself.
So here's the important part: if you don't have something with its own value, then you do have to rely on all that other stuff; you have to piggyback off of preexisting sources of value. You obviously have to have some sort of value claim in order to make a pitch to people. If you have a valuable product, this claim can potentially be something new. The concept of "personal productivity" didn't used to be a thing, but once various types of machines became popularly accessible, it became something that could actually exist and was therefore possible to value. New values like this may or may not end up being good things, of course, but at least they're new, and they're based on real things that people can do. If you don't have a source of value, you have no basis from which to make a new claim, so you have to make an old one. You have to play to a preestablished fantasy.
The fantasy that Trump plays to is the fantasy of opulence. It's the idea that money determines everything in the world, and therefore aligning yourself with money gets you the best possible experience. Buying Trump-branded products ensures that you're getting the most expensive and therefore highest-quality goods, and therefore living the best possible life for that and only that reason. The fantasy that Winfrey plays to is the fantasy of self-help. This is almost exactly the same idea: that choosing the right products and thinking the right way amounts to a secret formula for living a perfect life. Buying the products and following the trends chosen by Winfrey's magical insight ensures that you're getting real true meaning, and therefore living the best possible life for that and only that reason. (Also, do people really not notice that Winfrey specifically plays to the Magical Negro stereotype? Her whole thing is being "spiritual" and "authentic" and using that to serve as a lifestyle guide for rich white women. I don't understand why people who would raise hell about this sort of thing in any other context give a pass to the one person who deserves it the least.)
The only actual difference between Winfrey and Trump is aesthetic. Specifically, Trump caters to the masculine side of the consumerist fantasy, selling suits and steaks and golf club memberships to promote the ideal of being a big important businessman, while Winfrey caters to the feminine side, selling diets and empathy and mindfulness to promote the ideal of being a magical unicorn princess. The reason this makes Winfrey look better on the TV is that femininity is significantly closer to a real standard of what being a decent person is like than masculinity is. (As just a few examples, femininity includes care, attention to detail, a focus on practical reality, and a basic level of concern for other people.) But a) aesthetics, while nontrivial, do not override morality, and b) Winfrey's aesthetics are still overwhelmingly the aesthetics of rich fucks, which is to say their similarities with Trump's are greater than their differences. Trump's business books actually are self-help books, just marketed to a different audience. Trump University is exactly the same thing as The Secret, sold with exactly the same language.
Thus, Winfrey, no less than Trump, is a complete prisoner of the existing social order. Under ordinary circumstances this would merely be pitiable, but because these people have actual power, they do not only suffer from but also actively advance these harmful values. Their ideological commitments go so deep that they are unable to escape them even when they're trying to help. Trump's idea of charity is giving away free rounds of golf, and his idea of helping people is Trump University, an actual shakedown factory so blunt mafiosi would consider it beneath their honor. Winfrey, while less of an explicit con artist and more of an actual philanthropist, still favors spectacle over substance, as most famously illustrated by her stupid car giveaway stunt. Like, first of all, this was a stunt. I fucking cannot stand people who treat stunts like they're real things. They're fake. That's the whole thing that a stunt is. Anyway, the point is that this is also bad charity. Cars are a modern necessity, so people generally have the number of cars they need, and people attending Oprah tapings are not exactly those in the most dire need of financial assistance. The reason she did this was not out of any consideration of how much it would help people, but because it would reflect well on her: because the recipients are sympathetic and the narrative plays into the "American Dream" – and of course because it gives her a big televised platform to grandstand on. Indeed, this is the exact definition of "philanthropy": even "good" philanthropy isn't actually good, because philanthropy is bad charity that promotes the giver more than it helps anyone.
The more concise way to put all of this is that Winfrey and Trump have both killed people through active negligence. Trump hires undocumented workers on the cheap and skimps on safety, resulting in injury and death. Obeying the capitalist imperative to generate profit, he stiffs contractors for his own gain, forcing them to forgo medical care and other necessities. Winfrey promotes quack science, fad diets, and fraudulent psychology, covering up their reality with her own aura of glamour. These are things which people, trusting her, take into their bodies, physically harming them. It's hard to trace causality here, but given her reach, it's a statistical certainty that this has harmed people's health and resulted in deaths. There's no room for sentimentality here. (Also, people with sentimental feelings toward Winfrey should consider that Trump's fans have exactly the same sentimental feelings towards him, for exactly the same reasons.) People like this have no place in any decent society. I mean, come on. Both of them sell magazines named after themselves with pictures of themselves on the cover, every month. Come on. I'm embarrassed to even be talking about this.
Maybe this line of argument strikes you as a particularly unfair variety of false equivalence, because Winfrey is clearly a much better person than Trump. Of course she is. Trump is the worst possible person; you get exactly zero virtue points for being better than him, because literally every human is a better person than Donald Trump (as are most dogs and cats and probably a fair number of moles and squirrels). Like, the fact that Winfrey is against sexual assault rather than being a confessed sexual assailant is, y'know, better, but it's not impressive. Back in the day, we used to call things like that "meeting basic standards of human decency." More to the point, though, it doesn't really matter whether you're a good person or not. It matters what you do; it matters what effect your existence has on the rest of the world. It matters whether you're doing something useful for people or whether you're paving the road to hell.
I genuinely cannot believe that it has come to this, but I'm actually going to throw the fucking bible at you:
13 Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.
2 And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing.
3 And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing.
4 Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up,
5 Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil;
6 Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth;
7 Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.
8 Charity never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away.
9 For we know in part, and we prophesy in part.
10 But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away.
11 When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.
12 For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.
13 And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.
Our only access to reality is through perception, and perception is always partial. Sometimes what we're seeing is obscured by the glass we're looking through, and sometimes what we're seeing is actually just a smudge on the glass itself rather than something on the other side. Because of this, no piece of evidence is ever a slam dunk. Anything that looks good from one angle might turn out to be hideously ugly from another. What this means is that you need to have an organizing principle with which to make sense of your observations. Without that, each individual observation can only stand briefly on its own before the changing wind sweeps it away into insignificance; "whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away." If you don't have the truth, you don't have anything.
The tricky part, of course, is to determine what kind of thing we're really talking about here; that is, what exactly is meant by "charity." It's originally a translation of the Greek word agape, which means something along the lines of selfless loyalty. It's not something that you like or that makes you feel good, but something that you choose to be for, regardless of circumstance. Thus, the fact that someone says something that sounds good or does something that appeals to you can never be taken as independent evidence. It must always be evaluated for its accordance with the truth. As Nietzsche puts it, "the knight of knowledge must be able not only to love his enemies, but also to hate his friends." (You're reading claws of love dot com, the internet's #1 source for Nietzschean bible study.)
The part of this that's wrong is the part where the truth is magic. It is incorrect to say, as people often do, that perception is "flawed" or "misleading," as this implies that there exists a source of "correct" information that reveals things "as they really are." In fact, there is no reality outside perception, but rather only reality through perception. This does not license us to engage in knee-jerk subjectivity. It does exactly the opposite. It requires us to go beyond each individual impression and to formulate a broad understanding composed of the data from multiple lines of perception. "There is only a perspective seeing, only a perspective 'knowing'; and the more affects we allow to speak about one thing, the more eyes, different eyes, we can use to observe one thing, the more complete will our 'concept' of this thing, our 'objectivity,' be." It's not just that "that which is perfect" will never actually come, but that there is no such thing, which means that "that which is in part" constitutes everything that there is. We can never get out of the wicked game; no one is ever a saint or a hero, no indicator is ever universally reliable and no narrative is ever complete. We always have to do the work of figuring out how things fit together, how multiple perceptions accord, and how to create understanding out of disparate parts. You can't do this using "just the facts," because the facts themselves can't tell you how to organize those facts. You need something outside of the facts. Christians call this thing "charity," Nietzsche calls it "will," but I just think of it as the truth. And in a society that insists on smooth, clean, one-line narratives, the truth will always cut hard against the grain. It is the responsibility of anyone who claims to be a person to make those cuts. This is the only way to make anything make sense. As Hamlet learned, there's nothing contradictory about smiling, and smiling, and being a villain.
Leave a comment Posted in Politics Tagged 1 Corinthians 13, bible study, Donald Trump, Friedrich Nietzsche, neoliberalism, Oprah Winfrey, philanthropy, pure ideology, rich fucks, the truth
Cry rape
Posted by Jason on December 20, 2017
Now would appear to be the opportune moment to discuss the rape-specific aspect of the general euphemism treadmill phenomenon. This pretty much always happens but it's been especially difficult to avoid lately. Basically, rape-culture-related claims are always described as one level less severe than what they really are. Rape gets euphemised as sexual assault, assault becomes harassment, harassment becomes "inappropriate misconduct" or some shit, and everything else basically falls off the map.
There are a few reasons why this is more than typical bourgeois overpoliteness. The first is the general instinct to soften claims against powerful people. It's not exactly news that society is built around flattering the prejudices of elites, but there's an ideological tilt to it as well: pretty much everyone gives benefit of the doubt in proportion to how powerful the target already is. Naturally, this is backwards. Claims against powerful people are automatically going to be downplayed simply by virtue of that fact; that's pretty much what being powerful means. So it's much safer to err on the side of viciousness, since there's basically no chance a powerful person is ever going to face consequences that are too severe relative to their behavior (especially since they should all just be killed a priori). For example, the Iraq War is usually described as a "mistake" or "quagmire" or something along those lines, when the truth is that even "catastrophe" is far too genteel – what it actually was, and still is, is a war crime. People have literally been executed for less. But calling it a war crime isn't going to bring Bush any closer to a guillotine, so if anything the correct move is to overstate the case just to push the envelope further in that direction (assuming there's actually a way to overstate "war of aggression"). Being skittish about this completely defeats the purpose of bringing up the issue in the first place. Just throw the punch.
But this type of euphemism also plays an important role in rape culture specifically. One of the key aspects of rape culture is an implicit denial of not just the severity of particular cases of abuse, but of sexual violence as a concept. People sometimes like to say that rape is the worst thing that can happen to a person, but once the issue actually comes up it's clear that they don't really believe it. Typical excuses are frequently things like "she was being a tease" or "he's a guy, he couldn't help himself" or "what did she expect, doing <insert literally any action>", and in cases of obvious guilt the lines become things like "she was acting friendly with him afterwards, so it couldn't have been that bad" or "it's not worth ruining his life over." What's notable about these arguments is not just that they're always bullshit, but that they're extremely weak. Swap murder in for rape and even vaguely implying any of these things would make you look like a straight up sociopath. After all, if someone has an "instinctive desire" to say, kill people and eat them, and if the victim of such a person "brought it on themselves" by acting carelessly, we don't consider that to be any kind of excuse – if anything it just makes the person even more condemnable. In fact, these claims are so weak that they are only comprehensible at all if you are operating under the assumption that rape is nothing more than a minor inconvenience. Even things like theft and adultery that are genuinely several orders of magnitude less harmful than rape don't elicit these kinds of responses. We don't always think they're that big of a deal, but we address them with an appropriate level of seriousness.
So one of the functions of euphemisation is to uphold this order of values. This begins with the false distinction between "violent rape" (or, in Whoopi Goldberg's famously idiotic formulation, "rape-rape") and "date rape." Since the entire thing about rape is that it's physical coercion, a lack of injury doesn't indicate a "less severe" type of rape any more than asphyxiation or poisoning are "less severe" types of murder. Rather, the fact that some rapes involve more bodily harm than others simply means that in those cases an additional crime is being committed – they're cases of rape and also battery or murder. Euphemising some rapes as "sexual assaults" is one of the ways that people convince themselves that a distinction exists, when it doesn't. From what I understand, Harvey Weinstein has been credibly accused of multiple counts of rape and attempted rape, so the term to use here is not "harasser" or "creep" or "asshole" or anything like that. Those things sound superficially condemnatory, but given the actual facts of the situation, they're just letting him off the hook. The correct term is "rapist."
Other distinctions do of course exist – the proper use of the term "sexual assault" is to indicate situations involving physical coercion but not intercourse. (There is some slipperiness here, but it's a direct result of the slipperiness in what counts as "sex" in general; the assault part is straightforward by comparison.) In fact, groping, which often gets glossed as "harassment," is actually worse than assault. Assault, legally, requires only a physical threat rather than actual contact – actual contact is called "battery," hence the term "assault and battery," because they're different things, but when you punch someone you're committing both of them. Groping is sexual battery. Louis C.K.'s actions – masturbating in front of people in situations they felt unable to exit due to intimidation – are correctly classified as sexual assault. Direct verbal intimidation – for example, walking up to someone on the street and telling them "what you'd like to do to them" – is not "creepy" but is in fact assault.
Continuing down the line, "harassment" means to impede someone by creating a hostile environment for them. For example, the extremely lame joke that that one Uber guy made during the Uber meeting about how Uber is totally going to start doing something about sexism was described as "sexist" and "inappropriate," but what it actually was was harassment. The attitude that it expresses stifles women's actions on the basis of their being women and creates an environment in which they cannot operate effectively. It wasn't "tone-deaf" or "out of place," it was actively harmful (or it would have been, had there been any non-extremely-rich women present).
It's important to insist on the correct terms not just for the sake of conceptual accuracy, but because without them, the real issue drops out of the picture. The issue is not about sex; sex in these cases is the means by which dominance is exercised. This obviously results in a unique set of dynamics – sex is uniquely suitable for exercising dominance due to the fact the we conceptualize ordinary sex as dominance in the first place – but getting rid of the sex doesn't get rid of the coercion. Precisely because the issue is not really about sex, men who "act appropriately" are nowhere near off the hook. Recognizing the conceptual gap between sex and dominance reveals the possibilities of being a filthy pervert who only gets off consensually, and also of being a prude whose ordinary non-sexual behavior oppresses women. The Mike Pence Strategy of not interacting with women in the first place is actually just as bad as the Harvey Weinstein Strategy of using women for your own gratification in the course of working on their careers, because both have the same practical effect of relegating women to second-class status and denying them access to power. (Honestly, while it's not for me to say, the Weinstein approach could be considered the preferable alternative, because someone like that might actually end up helping your career in the course of otherwise being a shitbag, whereas someone like Pence simply has no role for you other than "Mother".)
Thus, the net effect of this whole chain of expressions is to negate the part of each concept that relates to the actual problem. Rape folds into sex, assault folds into flirting, and harassment folds into jokes and banter, and in each case the true central dynamic – coercion and dominance – precipitates out of the solution. (By the way, there's still room for umbrella terms such as "abuse" or "violence," and in fact it's important to these terms when grouping together behaviors like Weinstein's and C.K.'s, so that you're accurately generalizing rather than conflating distinct behaviors.) The importance of defining deviance upward is not just not respond to the issue with the appropriate ardency, but to respond to the part of the issue that is the actual issue.
Doing this requires arguing in terms that the Keepers of the Norms will dismiss as "extremist" and "hysterical" and "shrill" and "intemperate" and I could literally go on all day with this, also you should probably notice how many gatekeeping terms are simultaneously sexist insults. While we do, at long last, have a culture that actually talks about abuse, this should provide no comfort. In fact, it introduces a significant new danger: the conversation about abuse is being conducted on patriarchal terms, with the implicit goal of channeling outrage and placating anxiety without actually changing anything. Seeing yourself acting in accord with rich fucks is the number one red flag that your tactics are counterproductive.
It is therefore critical to draw a distinction between extremism, which is potentially justified depending on how big the problem in question really is, and inaccuracy, which is never justified by any amount of good intentions. Centrist op-ed assholes fucking love to conflate these things, but they're entirely different. You can be a frothing ideologue while also being right, and you can be a polite even-hander who is wrong about literally everything. In the same sense, though, trying to overstate the issue as much as possible (such as if, hypothetically, you were trying to make yourself look good on some kind of public forum) is generally a good way to take a correct stance and make it wrong.
Specifically, current events have encouraged a number of people to back themselves into the following corner:
I really doubt you could find a lot of women outside of ethnic cleansing campaigns who would be willing to describe their life experiences in this way, and if we're talking about the experiences of successful women in Hollywood, which we mostly are right now, then this is downright farcical. (Also, acting all shocked and aghast about basic information that you didn't know because you've somehow failed to ever pick up a fucking book in your life while transparently begging for head-pats re: what a good sensitive boy you are is not an attractive look.) (Also, if you're a man and you believe this, you are the movie monster, so you're ethically obligated to kill yourself, which you aren't going to, so stop lying.)
The problem with this isn't that it's overwrought (although still stop it please), it's that it's a factually incorrect description of the situation. While all men are complicit in patriarchy by virtue of the fact that their gender allocates privileges to them without their consent (and this is actually bad for men in the long run, which is why patriarchy hurts men too), very few men are actual abusers. Rape rates along the line of one-in-four are occasionally cited as ridiculous overestimates, but what a number like that actually says is that the vast majority of women go their whole lives without being raped. And because predators are predators, they usually attack multiple victims, which means the number of male assailants is even lower than that. None of this makes the issue less serious – indeed, the fact that a tiny minority of abusers is able to define what gender means for an entire society is properly horrifying – but it does mean that the issue operates differently than a simplistic conception in which all men are constantly out to get all women (also, plenty of women are collaborators, which is one of the problems with "believing women"). Inaccuracy in the advocacy of a just cause harms that cause, and should therefore be considered just as dangerous as outright opposition. Once you've got the dynamics, right, though, you should address them in the most extreme terms that you possibly can. Being extreme when you're wrong makes your wrongness worse, but being extreme when you're right makes your rightness better. So, you should get things right, and you should be an extremist about them, in that order.
For example, one of the classic radical feminist arguments is that, because patriarchal society does not take consent seriously as a concept and instead assumes that male sexuality is inherently predatory, "rape" in patriarchal terms is simply sex that violates certain social norms. Thus, patriarchal ideology does not draw a real conceptual distinction between sex and rape, making it accurate to assert that, from the patriarchal point of view, "all sex is rape." (To be clear, since everyone constantly gets this backwards, it is sexists who believe this proposition, and feminists who reject it in favor of the proposition that men are people.) To insist on this interpretation of the situation while simultaneously insisting on the facts that few women experience rape and very few men are actual rapists (as opposed to unreflective rape-sympathizers) is to describe the true dynamics of the situation with maximum severity.
No matter what issue you're working on, you're eventually going to run into a "Rolling Stone campus rape article" situation that puts you on the wrong side of the consensus and threatens to discredit your approach. The correct response to these events is to ignore them – you shouldn't even try to argue against them, because even if you win, it doesn't actually help your case. That Rolling Stone article appropriately reflects on no one but the people who wrote and edited it, and the lie itself reflects on no one but the liar. The fact that one person lied and one magazine sucks provides zero evidence one way or the other about how rape operates in society. I mean, if you seriously thought that no women ever lied about rape, then yeah, that's news for you, but nobody's really operating under that assumption, and no similar belief is required for making sense of the issue. There's all kinds of fucked up people in the world, and getting hung up on the details of this or that case is exactly how you fail to understand anything. Narratives can be useful tools, but narrative cannot be allowed to supersede analysis. If your analysis is actually correct and not merely convenient, then it's correct even in the face of complicated real-world situations, and you should continue to advance it even as a response to those very situations. The correct response to a woman falsely crying rape is for women to continue to cry rape.
I'll close with a personal example. Back when I first started reading about feminism on the internet, I was briefly stymied by frequent use of the term "rape culture." I'd be reading an article and finding it persuasive, but that term always caused me to stop short, since it seemed so straightforwardly wrong. Rape is obviously officially proscribed by society, to the extent that you can ask pretty much anyone what the worst thing you can do to a person is and "rape" will almost always be right at the top of the list. So it seemed to clearly be "too much" to describe the problem as a pervasive cultural effect rather than specific areas that weren't being accounted for or taken seriously enough. But I kept running into the term, so I kept having to think about it, and eventually I realized where the gap in my understanding was. First, "rape" as a term does not have a necessary mapping onto a particular category of physical behavior (because no term does), which means that the things people officially proscribe are only a tiny subset of what sexual violence actually is. Shifting standards from a general sense of impropriety to a specific technical definition of violation changes which things count as rape, and a lot of the things that count under the latter standard end up being things which most people condone. Second, just because people say they're against rape doesn't mean they're going to do anything about it. (What cultural criticism does a lot of the time is just to get people to change the way they talk about things while continuing to take the same actions as they were before.) It's easy to talk big in the abstract, but when an actual person is being accused of something, interested parties tend to revert to denial and excuse-making. And these problems aren't personal idiosyncrasies, but rather general aspects of the way we define and discuss the issue as a society – they result in predictable behavior that has predictable effects. Ergo, rape culture.
In short, I learned something, and this only happened because the people I was reading were willing to describe the situation in extreme terms that were also accurate. If these writers had been describing the situation incorrectly, such as by saying that most men were rapists, I would have correctly concluded that they weren't worth paying attention to, and I wouldn't have learned anything. But if they had been accurate while also "to be fair"-ing themselves into oblivion, I would never have noticed that I was missing anything, and I would have considered myself enlightened without actually changing anything about my beliefs or behavior. Properly applied extremism is the thing that distinguishes empty talk from effectiveness.
If this really is a crisis, then it merits yelling loudly and unpleasantly enough to make people uncomfortable. Talking about "inappropriateness" or "misconduct" is not going to convince anyone of anything (because those terms are non-specific except for their built-in negative valence, they're incapable of telling anyone anything they don't already know). Correct analysis requires extremism, and actually doing something about it requires extreme actions. The best moderation can do is manage the danger, temporarily, until the day when it finally gets fed up with your bullshit and lunges.
Leave a comment Posted in Politics Tagged category errors, extremism, feminism, harassment, Harvey Weinstein, Louis C.K., Mike Pence, rape, rape culture, sexual assault
Horsin' around
Hot take alert: Roy Moore pretending to ride a horse is in fact the most serious of all political issues. This is a serious argument which I am making seriously.
The first thing to consider is why a person would do such a thing in the first place, which is of course to cosplay as a cowboy. We've seen the same sort of thing with George W. Bush "clearing brush" or Donald Trump putting on a coal mining helmet. The political significance of these stunts is that they evoke a socially-understood image of rugged, individualist masculinity, the evocation of which acts as an argument for a particular value system. The thing is, though, if these people really did embody their stated values, there would be no need for stunts. In fact, if there existed anyone who embodied these types of values, that person would instead have risen to become the relevant candidate. The reason this never happens is that there exists no such person, which is because the set of values is question isn't real. It can't actually be instantiated, which is why it can't be rationally argued for, which is why it can only exist through theatrification.
So it's a form of lying, obviously, it's presenting the candidate as someone they're not, but it's more than that. It's mythologization as support for an incoherent system of values. The images of things like the "cowboy" and the "wild West" are forged copies of an original that never existed in the first place (one of those postmodern sociology nerds probably has a term for this, but I don't care enough to look it up). Moore's failure to actually ride his horse demonstrates this quite concisely. Horseback riding is a real skill, and horsemanship has a real history and real functions. Furthermore, cowboys were real people, and there really was a period of Western expansion and pioneering. But the image of the cowboy and the horse has no connection to any of this history. It merely appeals to people's unexamined instincts in favor of positive-valence concepts like "independence" and "manliness" and "nature." The thing is, you can make up a concept for anything, but reality is going to stay the same underneath it. The only way concepts are justified is through a connection to that underlying reality that helps people grasp it, like reins attached to a horse. When there is no such connection, evocation of the concept results only in noise, and attempts to act on it result in mere flailing, like an old man barely balancing on top of a presumably very annoyed horse.
Of course, since incoherent values by definition cannot exist, what actually happens when these people get elected is that they revert to their true values. Republicans' recent attempts at legislation bear this out. The first thing they tried to do was "repeal Obamacare," which was one of the false images they used to get elected. Since Obamacare is a regulations tweak and not actually its own distinct structure, there's no such thing as "repealing" it (because the policy has already changed the landscape of American healthcare, changing it back to what it was before would not in fact revert things to the same situation.) All you can do is change the regulations to something else, which is what the actual bill ended up being. But no one actually wants that; free-market zealots just want to slash spending on poor people, and everyone else wants a real healthcare system. The fact that Republicans almost passed a nonsense bill anyway shows how deeply they're trapped in their own image. When that failed, they moved on to their real priority of just giving money to rich people, which is not something that anyone voted for. Here, again, the constructed image of "resistance to big government" and "job creation" masks a real material policy of direct upward wealth transfer. And it's not just that the image disguises the real policy, but that, without the image, the policy could never have existed in the first place. The present instantiation of the Republican Party only exists as a vector for this image of "fiscal responsibility" and "traditional values," and the desires that constitute the source of that image are the real underlying problem.
Democrats have exactly the same problem, only their false image is one of "rational administration" and a "civic religion." If recent history has clarified anything at all, it is that the actions of elites have nothing to do with expertise or responsibility and everything to do with their own class-driven ideology. Indeed, there's no such thing as rationality in general; you have to make the decision as to what you actually want before rationality can help you get there. So again, this is a incoherent set of values, and what actually happens is, again, a reversion to the underlying dynamics. Privatization, imperialism, austerity, and wealth concentration all get framed as "smart solutions" when in fact they are nothing more than the blunt advancement of specific interests.
In order to prove that this is actually the most serious issue, I have to demonstrate that it's global warming in disguise, which it is. Capitalism justifies itself on the basis of the imagery of prosperity and growth. What it actually is, specifically, is a schema for distributing material resources. The resources themselves, including the technologies used to take advantage of them, are just things, we can make different decisions and they'll keep existing. So when a particular material circumstance comes up, such as the fact that continued use of our primary energy source will destroy the environment, we need to be able to adapt to that on a material basis. But the imagery of capitalism doesn't allow for this sort of decision-making; quite the contrary, it insists that the operation of capital is necessarily correct under all material conditions. In fact, it doesn't even allow for the possibility of anything other than automatic capitalist dynamics having any effect on the world; thus, anyone who believes this is incapable of penetrating through to reality (this one I actually know, it's what Marxists call "mystification"). So the response to global warming, even among right-minded liberals, is to invoke the imagery of "responsiblity" and "sustainability" without any reference to the actual material changes necessary to make those words mean something.
But remember, just "doing the math" is itself a false image, because the math follows from whatever your starting axioms were. You have to have your ideas in order before anything you do is going to make any sense. Otherwise you'll end up voting for a narcissistic billionaire out of concern for the working class, or voting for an elitist powermonger out of concern for social justice. So, in a rare and shocking turn of events, that pro-horse Twitter pile-on is actually the ideologically correct course of action. It's isn't enough to ignore the image in favor of the "real issues," because as long as you try to do that, the image retains its mystique. (Also, you can only argue in terms of images anyway, because language is an image.) It usually seems like the easiest thing to do in an argument is to accept your opponent's terms and simply show where they're mistaken. For example, if the Republicans are trying to "reform taxes" in order to "fix the defect," and their tax plan that adds a ton of money to the defect and doesn't actually simplify anything, then you can just point that out. But the reason this is the easiest argument is because it's the least effective. As long as you maintain a false image, the argument can end up going in any direction, because it isn't based on anything. You can lose because one of the words you picked makes a particular 4.7-second clip of your speech sound bad, and someone else can win by insisting that ignoring sexual abuse is the best way to protect women.
People sometimes say that humans are gods trapped in the bodies of apes, but it's actually the opposite: we're real physical beings bound in the invisible straitjacket of imagery. Representation is the only weapon we have, so correct representation is our only means of adherence to the truth. Ignoring that fact in favor of "facts" is its own form of false imagery. Reason is not self-evident, and the only way to manifest changes in the world is to both explore the territory and chart it out using a system and a legend that makes the map usable by other people. You have to learn how to ride a horse.
Leave a comment Posted in Politics Tagged capitalism, global warming, ponies, pure ideology, Roy Moore, this is not a joke
Viva hypocrisy
The Harvey Weinstein revelations have provided political operatives with a golden opportunity to do their absolute favorite thing in the whole wide world: accuse other people of hypocrisy. Accusations of hypocrisy are basically the coin of the realm in political discussions, so this isn't exactly unexpected behavior. Given how impoverished such discussions almost always are, though, it's worth considering whether the concept possesses any real value.
The idea behind hypocrisy is that identifying a contradiction between a person's stated beliefs and evident actions demonstrates that the person does not actually believe what they say they believe. This is already a problem, because it means that the best we can get out of the concept is a one-time, surface-level, circumstantial criticism of a single person. It doesn't penetrate through to the part that matters. In the classic example of the anti-gay crusader who secretly fucks men, one might presume that the recognition that gay behavior is naturally occurring would serve as an argument against the underlying ideology. But of course this never happens; the underlying ideology is not simply "gay sex is bad," but is rather adherence to the entire patriarchal world order. If you believe that patriarchy is the correct way for the world to be, then the particular causes and details and distributions of gay behavior are of only instrumental importance. This is where "ex-gay" therapy comes from: the belief that, despite the state of the underlying reality, something must be done. This is the kind of response that hypocrisy actually generates, because hypocrisy does not target ideology.
It is inherent to the concept that hypocrisy is always an argument against a person and not against an idea. This is true at the most general level. Patriarchy supposedly requires exacting standards of behavior on the part of men. They're supposed to be the moral, honorable law-givers; that's why patriarchy is allegedly justified. But whenever a man sticks his dick somewhere he's not supposed to, it always ends up being framed as some woman's fault. The ideology endures the failures of its adherents.
Hypocrisy is different from incoherence. Hypocrisy is when an action you take conflicts with your stated values. Incoherence is when your stated values conflict with themselves. For example, if you complain about the Republicans obstructing Obama throughout his tenure and claim that they should have tried to compromise, but you also complain about people who try to compromise with Trump and claim that they should obstruct him instead, you're being incoherent (assuming you actually believe that and aren't just being tactically cynical). The problem with incoherence is that it's impossible for anyone to take your advice, because you're advocating two different incompatible courses of action in the same situation. When you state incoherent values, you're actually saying nothing. Thus, pointing this out to people has, potentially, the useful effect of forcing them to pick a real side.
Still, it would seem that hypocrisy retains the limited value of arguing against certain in-the-moment courses of action. You should be able to use it to either get a sincere person to change their behavior to be more in line with their beliefs, or to expose a cynical professor of righteous-sounding beliefs as a fraud. In practice, though, its signal-to-noise ratio is pretty shit, and there's probably an explanation for that.
The reason hypocrisy doesn't help to change people's behavior is that everyone is already trying to act out their values. That's what having values means: they're the things that you're trying to do. If someone's doing something that goes against their values, it's because they don't realize that it's doing that. So what's required here is a material explanation of how the relevant behavior counterindicates the relevant values. For example, if someone claims to be a feminist, but complains about women who act "slutty," it's probably because they've internalized ideas about women's sexuality being a source of weakness and frivolousness. In other words, they think they're helping, because they think women need to be less sexual in order for feminism to succeed. The truth, of course, is that the problem is not the particular types of sexual behavior that women engage in, but rather the idea that there is a "correct" type of behavior at all. Substituting one mandate for another continues to oppress women. While some behaviors are in fact immoral (anything that doesn't involve consent, obviously; also particular behaviors are potentially open to aesthetic rather than moral criticism, but that's a whole other topic), the mandating of specific behaviors for certain classes of people rather than the development of a general moral theory is in fact what oppression is. Calling the person a hypocrite, though, doesn't clarify any of this for them. You have to give them a real explanation.
As for discreditization, that doesn't have a great track record either. I'm getting pretty sick of the tendency to turn every political issue into a referendum on Donald Trump, but unfortunately that's the move here, because Trump is the biggest possible hypocrite. As you may have read on the internet somewhere, the philosopher Harry Frankfurt draws a technical distinction between lies and bullshit. The liar is someone who wants to convince you that a particular fact is not in fact a fact. A criminal trying to create an alibi wants you to believe that they were in a certain place at a certain time, even though they weren't; establishing that belief in contradiction to the facts is their goal. The bullshitter, however, doesn't care about the truth or falsity of the relevant facts in the first place; their goal is to use the appearance of facts to establish something else entirely. Our primary vector for bullshit is advertising. An ad will make a claim like "American Moms' #1 Choice" or something, which looks like a fact-based statement. Presumably there was some sort of survey of American moms and most of them chose the product in question. And the company may in fact have conducted such a survey and gotten such results, if only for the sake of legal plausibility, but conveying that factual information isn't the point. The point is simply to associate the product with positive-valence terms such as "America" and "Mom" and "#1" and "Choice." In other words, bullshit may very well be true, but it doesn't matter, because the intent of the statement is something else entirely.
So, Trump, who only understands the world in terms of marketing, will say whatever gets a positive response at the time, and will take whatever action seems like it will inflate his brand. Because of this, and because he has no other motivations, his stated beliefs and actions are entirely disconnected; he is a perfect hypocrite. The times when his actions and beliefs do align are mere coincidences; some of his beliefs may in fact be "true," but they're bullshit either way, because he doesn't believe them as facts, but rather as instrumental vectors for self-promotion. He never actually encountered evidence that his inauguration had the biggest crowd ever, that was just the thing he had to say in order to make himself seem more impressive (the fact that it had the opposite effect was lost on him, because, in addition to being full of shit, he's not very bright). Even if he really had had the biggest crowd, he still would have been bullshitting.
Now, some people have recognized this dynamic and been confused by it, because it seems to sort people into one of two camps. Either you're opposed to Trump's stated beliefs, in which case you oppose him, or you're in favor of his stated beliefs, in which case you should be opposed to his actions, because he's a hypocrite and is therefore betraying your beliefs, meaning you should oppose him. Thus, his thoroughgoing hypocrisy should prevent him from having any base at all. But the opposite is the case: Trump has an extremely strong base of support that is pretty much guaranteed to stick with him to the particularly bitter end. So this already completely discredits the concept of hypocrisy on an empirical level, because if it doesn't work in the most glaringly obvious case, it's clearly never going to work at all.
We can still figure out why this is, though. In the case of political support, stated beliefs are what matter. The government is big and complicated, so you can never assign simple blame for any particular failure. During Obama's term, liberals made excuses for everything he failed to do or did wrong, and conservatives are doing the same for Trump right now. This is actually reasonable behavior. The president's actual function is mostly "setting the agenda," and given the limited number of options, the only thing you can really do is support the person who's mostly somewhere in the vicinity of what you're after. Conservatives understand this perfectly well. As much as they like to grandstand about decorum and shit, they know that Trump's their boy. He's the one who's going to give them their judges and agency appointments. As long as it benefits them, they're going to keep supporting him until it becomes politically untenable. Among ordinary voters, it's the same thing: Trump is the only person even pretending to speak to their concerns, and he actually is sort of moving the general political agenda in their direction, and since that's all they're going to get, they're going to take it. This is hypocritical, but it's also just a basic utilitarian calculation, which is the only sensible way to approach electoral politics. (Of course, this is also why electoral politics are not worth spending much time on.)
What's actually wrong with both Obama and Trump is not the fact that they're hypocrites, it's the fact that they're liars. Obama ran as an anti-war candidate knowing full well that he was never going to oppose imperialism or indeed do anything at all about foreign policy other than formalize and normalize everything that he made it seem like he was criticizing Bush for. He played the role of racial redeemer without ever intending to do anything to help black people. He presented himself as a populist in public while specifically telling bankers that he was going to protect them from the people they fucked over. These are not instances of hypocrisy, they are instances of immoral belief. Calling these things "hypocrisy" lets Obama off the hook; it implies that nothing was really his fault, like he was just trying his best and if only he had more power and the opposition wasn't so mean he could have fixed everything. What actually went wrong with Obama's presidency was the fact that he holds beliefs that are actively harmful to humanity.
Trump is a somewhat different case; as mentioned, his claims don't generally rise to the point of qualifying as "lies." But there is one exception: the claim that he ever intended to act as a public servant at all. This was actually at the core of his campaign: he stated many times that he used to be a freewheeling capitalist, but now he was going to buckle down and serve the people. This, augmented of course by his unwavering allegiance to whiteness and masculinity, was the key to establishing in many people the perception that Trump was "on their side" and "the only one looking out for people like me." Calling Trump a "hypocrite" does not attack this perception. It reinforces it; it makes it sound like Trump is trying his best but being stifled, which is exactly the excuse that his supporters are currently making for him. Undoing this perception requires targeting not his stumbles and gaffes, but the true center of his image: the fact that he's a rich fuck. This is the relevant quality that ensures that he is never going to help anyone other than himself, but this cannot be seen by those operating under the notion that rich people are the "winners" of society, the ones who are the smartest and the most qualified. Hypocrisy keeps the dividing line in the same place, but attempts to position Trump on the wrong side of it. This can't work, due to the simple fact that Trump really is a rich fuck; he really is a representative of the upper class, even if they're all embarrassed by him. Turning people away from Trump requires redrawing the line where it really belongs. It requires, yes, class consciousness.
To address the specific recent issue, liberals are being accused of hypocrisy for acting all aghast about sexual assault while harboring people like Weinstein and Bill Clinton on their midst. It's true that liberals are in the wrong here: they're wrong to harbor predators, and they don't actually care about sexual assault like they say they do. But neither of these things is an example of hypocrisy. What's actually happening is that establishment liberals a) don't really want to end patriarchy and b) care more about schmoozing and power-grubbing than changing society in any case. It's not that there's a contradiction between their beliefs and actions, it's that their beliefs and actions are both morally wrong on their own terms. This line of analysis applies to basically any possible accusation of hypocrisy: the problem is never the contradiction; it's either that the beliefs are wrong or the actions are harmful, or both. Ignoring hypocrisy doesn't mean that things are "okay," it means the opposite. The things that are really wrong are the things that should really be argued against. If, hypothetically, someone who claimed to care about gay people were to pose with the people responsible for Don't Ask, Don't Tell and the Defense of Marriage Act, it would make sense to call them out on that. But the reason it makes sense is not because it's hypocritical. It's because whitewashing history prevents us from understanding why things are wrong and therefore from being able to do anything about it, because fetishization of trendy causes harms those causes, and because making nice with evil people normalizes evil.
There isn't actually anything wrong with liberals taking Weinstein's money. The whole rejecting-the-tainted-donation pageant is actually really fucking annoying. Money is fungible, you dumb fucks! That's like the entire point of the concept. There's no such thing as "blood money"; money doesn't change based on where it comes from. The money doesn't magically "corrupt" you due to some kind of phantom influence from its source. In fact, it's more virtuous to take bad money than it is to take good money. Bad people are probably going to use their money to do bad things, so taking that money and using it to do good things is doubly virtuous.1 Contrariwise, all those people donating $27 to Sanders' campaign probably needed that money.
There is, of course, a real problem with having rich patrons, but it has nothing to do with hypocrisy. The problem is that having rich patrons is bad regardless of what you believe. Republicans also have rich patrons, but even though they aren't hypocrites about this, because they believe that wealth itself has moral force, their situation is still just as bad. It's still causing bad things to happen. The real problem is that establishing long-term relationships with rich fucks and relying on them as sources of support naturally entails adopting their values as your own. When you start thinking of rich fucks as your "us," the question of "what's good for the country?" becomes "what's good for us rich fucks?" You start to see the world through their eyes, and to frame all problems in their terms. Hillary Clinton's "no quid pro quo" defense against bribery was actually accurate: quid pro quo is not how the influence of wealth works in the modern world. Clinton's problem wasn't the money, it was the fact that she really was "one of them." Her problem was that she wasn't a hypocrite. Besides, the correct solution here is publicly funded elections paid for by progressive taxation, in which case it would in fact be rich people paying for political campaigns.
The ironic thing about hypocrisy is that it's slung about like a vicious accusation, but it actually gives the target the maximum possible benefit of the doubt. Calling someone a hypocrite assumes that they're not a liar or a con artist; it assumes that their beliefs are true and they're making an honest attempt to live up to them, but that they just happen to be failing. Hypocrisy is always the weakest possible accusation you can make; there is always a better argument. Hypocrisy is like accusing a person of accidentally stubbing their toe, when the real problem is that they're busy stabbing someone.
But it's actually quite a bit worse than that, because there's a real, vile reason why accusations of hypocrisy are the most common form of political discourse. They're ubiquitous because they're counterproductive. Conservatives obviously can't argue against liberal sexism by being anti-sexist, because conservatives are also sexist. So, instead, they use accusations of hypocrisy to attack their enemies without actually engaging in any sort of discussion about ideas or behaviors. The goal is not to actually discuss sexual assault; in fact, it is to avoid discussing sexual assault in any real way. It is simply to take advantage of the opportunity to discredit one's enemies while ignoring the real issue altogether. In other words, it's bullshit. It pretends to be a political discussion, when it's really nothing more than tribalistic sniping and noise-generation.
For us ordinary citizens, the problem is even worse. As people without power, we have no options other than to engage with society as it exists. This means that we are all necessarily complicit in whatever evils we are trying to destroy, no matter what they are. You can't be against capitalism or sexism or racism without also engaging in capitalist and sexist and racist practices, because the entire thing about these things is that they're social systems. They're not mistakes that happen here and there, but are rather how the world we live in is constituted. So if non-hypocrisy is the condition for action, no action is possible. The concept of hypocrisy does not help us to distinguish between better and worse actions, because all actions are fatally contaminated in its eyes. The way to argue for or against actions is on the basis of material results, which can actually be analyzed rather than merely yelled about. This is the truly important reason we must jettison the concept of hypocrisy entirely. It forces us into a morass of fruitless defensiveness and scares us away from the real actions we're capable of taking. It smothers us in self-righteous snobbery and prevents us from making real, bold arguments – the kind that might actually change something. One of the few genuinely important, non-bullshit functions of talking about politics as ordinary citizens is to get people to take stronger stances. Debating the merits of this or that policy is completely irrelevant for most of us, since we have no control over which specific policies actually get implemented. What we do have a non-zero amount of control over are our values and priorities, and it's important to get these right.
This point might seem too simple to be worth making, but it is in fact the case that people use this line of attack all the time, against everything. If you use social media to criticize social media, you're a hypocrite. If you buy a shirt with an anti-capitalist slogan on it, you're a hypocrite. If you're an anarchist, anywhere, ever, you're a hypocrite. Again, there is potentially a real argument that can be made about the likely effects of certain actions; if there's a readily available alternative to a company that uses sweatshop labor, or an easy vegan substitute for a meat dish, it can be helpful to point those things out. But they still exist in context: all consumption supports the economy that relies on sweatshop labor, and all food is part of the production chain that tortures animals. This is the difference between sincere progressiveness and reactionary accusations of hypocrisy: one aims at the best that can be done in this world, the only place where things can happen, and one is simply a shouting-down of any possible action at all.
Also, global warming.2 We all believe that the planet should continue to exist, and we're all engaged in the behavior that's destroying it. We're all hypocrites. Like, seriously, we suck, okay? It's great if you're all self-actualized or whatever, except it's actually not, because the world's still being destroyed, which means you actualized yourself wrong (or at least prematurely). Quit trying to act cool.
These are the truly pernicious "purity politics." They are the ones that come from the amoral center, striking against any possible alternative to the world as it happens to exist at this particular moment. If the problem is hypocrisy, then the solution is to stop expressing political beliefs – or, more dishonestly, to claim "nuance" and accuse your opponents of being "purists." Hypocrisy motivates people to change in the wrong direction: away from proclaiming their values openly and honestly, and towards the most tepid and inoffensive actions. We want people to feel comfortable stating their beliefs as strongly as possible, because that's the only way we can have a real conversation, and we want people to act like they mean it, because that's the only way anything is ever going to change.
There is, then, a necessary solution, which is to be a hypocrite. You should say what you really believe and value, rather than saying that thing that makes you sound the most "reasonable." You should then try to figure out what actions will be the most effective at advancing those beliefs, rather than which actions will expose you to the least criticism. Given the current state of the world, doing this will cause various people to hate you for various reasons, and it will leave you open to accusations of hypocrisy. The correct response is to not care. If someone has a real argument against you, that's great, you should listen to them, but if it really is a real argument, hypocrisy won't enter into it. In a world of ersatz rationality, where human potential is locked down by false certainty, the recklessness of hypocrisy is our best weapon against the worst future. The only worthwhile political stance is to be a first-world anarchist.
(It's also a useful defense against taking yourself too seriously.)
Besides, it's obvious that none of the people making accusations of hypocrisy care when the same accusations are leveled at them. If you don't think accusations of hypocrisy are significant when they're directed at you, then accusing others of hypocrisy as though such claims were significant is itself hypocritical. That's not why it's wrong, though. It's wrong because it's useless either way.
So, yes, for the record, Lisa Simpson is a total moron in that one episode. ↩
I'm starting to feel like this phrase should be mandatory in any article about anything. ↩
Leave a comment Posted in Politics Tagged Barack Obama, bullshit, Donald Trump, feminism, Harvey Weinstein, hypocrisy, purity of essence, rich fucks, sexual assault, this is not a joke
A critique of ponies
Posted by Jason on October 27, 2017
Ponies are apparently the major political issue of the current era. Some people think everyone should get a pony, others think that all ponies should be distributed exclusively to factory owners for the purpose of making glue, and still others think that ponies are nice in theory, but nobody should actually get to have a pony, because that would just be irresponsible. It's all very contentious.
The first thing that's strange here is that the meat of the pony is actually just the standard liberal-democratic agenda: healthcare, education, stimulus spending, and the rest of the welfare state. This is the normal stuff that liberals are supposed to be in favor of, so portraying it as magic beans is somewhat suspicious. The "free college" thing is an especially odd sticking point. We are constantly being told by mainstream politicians that education is the only viable path to the future and that anyone who doesn't retrain themselves to meet the demands of an increasingly automated economy is going to get flattened by the steamroller of progress. But when people respond by making the completely obvious follow-up demand that education and retraining actually be accessible, they're suddenly accused of pie-in-the-sky unicornism. The demand here isn't for "ponies" at all; the demand is simply for oatmeal. And, at the risk of beating a dead horse, this demand is being made in a world where some people own multiple mansions with private jets to fly between them at will, while others are being evicted from roach motels and literally starving to death. If this is what we're talking about when we talk about ponies, it's long past time for rich fucks to pony up.
But we shouldn't get complacent just because some people are being completely disingenuous. This is one gift horse that we really do need to look in the mouth. The facts of the matter are that America is a very rich country, and that it contains about 5% of the world's population. It's straightforwardly incoherent to rail against the 1% in the name of a guaranteed middle-class existence for all Americans, because middle-class America is the 1% of the global economy. I'm not saying that you're only allowed to care about the worst things. Anything that's bad merits opposition and anything that's wrong merits righting. Given that we can't transform the economy overnight, there's nothing particularly immoral about enjoying a reasonable standard of living in America.
And it's really bizarre and honestly very upsetting that we can't actually talk about this. Everything is still being framed in terms of what's good for "the economy" rather than what actually makes people's lives better. The recent increased focus on inequality has caused a lot of people to start making the argument that inequality is bad for the economy, that it's inefficient and decreases overall productivity. I'm sure this is true, but opposing inequality on this basis is an extremely terrible argument. When you do this, you're completely conceding the only part of the argument that matters: the assumption that overall economic growth is the only acceptable value, and that every policy has to be justified on this basis. The omnipresence of this argument is not mysterious: it's like that because it's what rich fucks want. Given that rich fucks are already on top of the economy, the only thing that can further benefit them is accelerated growth. There's only so much money you can steal from poor people, and most of it is already being stolen. So as long as the discourse remains constrained by this framework, not only ponies and oatmeal but even hay and salt licks are going to remain entirely out of our reach. The best we're going to get is gristle.
Once we decide to take this seriously, though, it becomes incumbent upon us to ensure that we're betting on the right horse. The thing is, America's world-historical prosperity is not a coincidence. There is a specific material reason that America possesses enough wealth to provide everything for all of its citizens, and that reason is called imperialism. The whole "two cars in every garage" thing is an ideal of very recent vintage: it's a direct consequence of America's global dominance following the devastation of the second World War. America has more resources than everyone else because America takes them from the rest of the world, by force.1 So while it might seem justified to simply make the internal claim that America's resources should be distributed more evenly, that claim rests upon the availability of those resources in the first place. In order to support such an arrangement, you're implicitly required to support the conditions that make it possible. This is why liberals are imperialists.
(Also, this is not a theoretical point. Bernie Sanders got some positive press recently for articulating a slightly less psychotic approach to foreign policy, but that approach is still fundamentally imperialist. For people who think that Sanders represents the "extreme left," anti-imperialism is literally an unthinkable position.)
So, in the final analysis, it is indeed the case that ponies are the ill-considered playthings of spoiled rich kids. In order to create a world that genuinely works for everybody, we have to focus on the basics. It is properly within the realm of human rights to insist that everyone should have a comfortable place to live and access to food and healthcare and maybe even internet-capable computers, but 70" TVs and new smartphones every year and overnight-shipped meal kits are things that we can only afford by offloading their real costs onto someone else. Like, the whole thing about the "information economy" or the "service economy" or whatever we're calling it now is that it assumes that the resource extraction and manufacturing are being done elsewhere. Someone has to actually build the automated service kiosks, you know. So if we have that type of economy, what we have is precisely a global 1%: we have shit countries doing the shit work and doughy Americans yelling at their robot butlers.
At the same time, though, people also shouldn't be obligated to constantly hustle in order to scrape together enough paychecks to survive, or spend eight years bullshitting for the sake of an official certification entitling them to an entry-level office job, or maintain an impeccably professional social media profile to prove right-thinking. Most of the "privileges" of our first-world society are actually shit deals. This is the truly pathetic thing about liberals: the unrealistic utopia they're trying to sell us isn't even any good. It's a lame horse. So we can not only fulfill our moral obligations by evening things out on a global scale, but also provide a preferable alternative to the sad future of austerity and apps by making an actual good deal: dignified living in exchange for civil responsibility. This is the real positive argument that we have at our disposal, and making it effectively requires us to dispense with fantasy and describe the world as it really can exist, and how we really can get there though a long, determined march over the dead bodies of billionaires. Rather than a pony, then, what we need is something more like a pack-bearing mule. It won't be any of the obvious choices on display; it'll be a hybrid creature, something that we wouldn't have expected to exist at all. I'll be slow, and it won't be pretty, but that's okay, because it won't be for show. For the first time in human history, it will be something that works.
As always, this brings us to the real problem, which is, as always, global warming. American-style outsized resource utilization is not just unfair, it's literally destroying the world. This is also not a coincidence. The thing about fossil fuels is that they provide an immense amount of energy in a very small and effective package. Their existence is a great boon for humanity: everything about our modern lifestyles relies on the unprecedented amount of energy generation that they afford us. The problem is that, due to the aforementioned social arrangements, this boon has been largely squandered. We've used it to drive an unhealthy amount of growth solely for the sake of rich fucks' desires for ego gratification and escapism. A responsible long-term plan would have used this energy to develop a global infrastructure for keeping everyone fed and healthy and then worked on converting that infrastructure into a more2 sustainable form. This is the kind of bootstrapping that actually works. If we had ever tried to do that, we'd already be done. Again, that's what's so frustrating and sad and insane about this whole arrangement. There never should have been a problem in the first place, but we went to the maximum amount of effort in order to create one, and we did it for no reason. We weren't outmatched or conned; we didn't make mistakes or fail to figure anything out. The reason the planet is burning is simply that we've shoved it into an oven.
As mentioned, the focus right now is on finding "solutions" to "problems" within the existing liberal-capitalist framework, and global warming is the strongest and most important example of why this won't work. I'll do you a favor and spare you the full rehashing, but the basic problem is that, while increasing the use of renewables is nice, what we're ultimately going to have to do is stop using fossil fuels entirely, which is incompatible with a growth-based capitalist framework at all, let alone with the maintenance (and, indeed, promotion) of billionaire lifestyles. Global warming is just plain not a solvable problem within our current societal configuration. The society in which it is solvable has not yet been instantiated, and doing so will require destruction as much as creation. We are facing an Old Testament-level threat, and we require an Old Testament-style solution. We don't need a pony here so much as we need four horsemen.3
This is extraordinarily important to keep in mind in the current context of "the resistance." The particular grotesquenesses of the immediate present are strongly motivating a desire to get things "back to normal," and even those attempting to look forward – the people who are increasingly being called "the left" – are mostly doing so within the parameters of the not-quite-discredited liberal-capitalist consensus (the fact that "socialism" now means "going halfway back to the New Deal era" tells you everything you need to know here). Certainly, some of the "norms" being "eroded" are in fact real accomplishments that we need to preserve, but a norm isn't a good thing just because its a norm. The more important concern here is that our world was birthed wrong in the first place, resulting in many more and more important norms that are not mere politenesses but are in fact the carrots and sticks spurring us on down our current path to destruction. Most of these are still being upheld, and any real future requires their eradication. If humanity is to have any hope of tightening the widening gyre, the center must not hold.
Nowadays this is generally indirect, modern imperialism is less about pillaging and slave labor and more about opening up markets, but the basic idea is the same, and economic force is still force. Also we still have slave labor in America through the prison system, so there's that too. ↩
Nothing is literally sustainable. Ozymandias, entropy, etc. ↩
Global warming is the third horseman, by the way. The first is conquest, a.k.a imperialism. The second is war, which is the state of nature that the world descends into when imperialism inevitably fails (for something that's supposedly about spreading civilization, it's a notably uncivilized endeavor). The third is famine, or more broadly resource depletion, which is what's going to happen when we lose half of our agricultural yields, all of our port cities, and exist at the mercy of constant natural disasters. So, y'know, we're getting there. The fourth is what happens after that. ↩
Leave a comment Posted in Politics Tagged capitalism, global warming, imperialism, ponies, rich fucks, this is not a joke, this is what liberals actually believe
Endless talk
Posted by Jason on September 29, 2017
Given recent developments in Nazis, this is probably a good time for some real talk on the whole free speech thing. While this topic has been discussed to death, it's attracted a truly staggering amount of dullardry in the process, so I feel the need for boring philosophical clarity.
First, there is no such position as free speech absolutism. You cannot begin understanding the issue until you understand this. We like to talk about "rights" as though they are unlimited, but that's not how the concept works. In terms of moral philosophy, a right is something that you don't violate for utilitarian purposes. There are times when killing someone might actually result in the best overall outcome, but you still don't kill people in those cases, because you have the right not to be killed.1 But it's for this same reason that you can and indeed have to violate rights in order to preserve other rights. In the real world, rights conflict, so you can't always preserve all of them.2 This isn't a novel interpretation, it's just how rights work. Even Second Amendment zealots don't argue that individuals ought to be able to own and operate intercontinental ballistic missiles.
When it comes to speech, there are already plenty of laws on the books restricting it on this basis. Ordering an assassination is not "protected speech," because it violates the target's right to life. And the restrictions aren't only for extreme cases; lots of practical, everyday speech acts are prohibited in the same way. Credible death threats are illegal because they violate the target's right to basic security. Shouting "fire" in a crowded theater is illegal because it causes direct physical harm. Libel is illegal because you have the right not to suffer harmful consequences based on falsehoods (of course, you do not have the right to avoid the consequences of truths, which is why only falsehoods qualify as libel. In other words, this is a specific instance of the right to due process). There's even a legal category that's actually called "fighting words," referring to speech that directly precipitates harm or illegal action. The decision referenced in that link clearly conveys the balance of interests required in making these determinations:
It has been well observed that such utterances are no essential part of any exposition of ideas, and are of such slight social value as a step to truth that any benefit that may be derived from them is clearly outweighed by the social interest in order and morality.
Furthermore, speech not only conflicts with other rights, it also conflicts with itself. One of the problems with libel is that preemptive damage to the target's reputation prevents them from being able to correct the record – one person's speech restricts another's. Similarly, highly provocative speech can prevent a discussion from taking place, and certain types of intellectual climates make certain ideas inadmissible. You can't respond to these types of situations simply by picking the side with "more speech." There can be valid speech on both sides, and you have to decide which side you value more.
In a broader and more important sense, this is the real problem with hate speech. It's not that it hurts people's feelings or even that it's "harmful" in general. It's okay and frequently desirable for harmful things to happen. Racists get their feelings hurt when people call them racists, but this is a good thing, because it's correct for your feelings to hurt when people call you out for doing bad things. The problem is that hate speech is detrimental to overall human expression.3 Arguing that black people are inferior to white people necessarily reduces their effective ability to speak. The argument itself does this, even before anyone accepts it, because refuting the argument becomes a prerequisite to listening to black people. If you spend all you time arguing about whether black people's ideas deserve to be taken seriously, you spend none of your time actually taking black people's ideas seriously. This is exactly why the affected groups often try to shut these discussions down: because they have to, or they will never be able to say anything else.
So if you call yourself a "free speech absolutist" and refuse to make any determinations on the issue, all you're actually doing is allowing existing forces to make those determinations on their own. The real world has a variety of conditions and constraints that allow certain types of expression to happen and disallow others, and a "hands off" approach means tacit agreement with the results. So you are not in fact an "absolutist" at all, you're just a naive censor.
This also means that "maximizing speech" (as in "the solution to bad speech is more speech") is not a coherent goal, because some ideas crowd out others. The idea that black people are inferior to white people and the idea that black people should be equal participants in society cannot just float around abstractly without affecting each other. They conflict on the basis of their inherent content. To the extent that one of those ideas is expressed more, the other is expressed less.
This is compounded by the fact that there is a limit on how much speech can actually exist. We are finite beings living in a finite world, so we can never inhabit a situation in which we are expressing and considering "all" ideas. (When someone says "all options are on the table," they really just mean that an option that would make them look bad if they directly argued for it is in fact being argued for.) The space of potential ideas is infinite, and choosing which are worthy of consideration is a large portion of what it means to be an intelligent lifeform. Not all expression is of equal quality. Putting forth an argument that has been widely rebutted is inferior to a new version of the same argument that takes the rebuttals into account, or to an entirely new argument. Substituting one of the latter options for the former increases overall quality of expression. The way that the 24-hour news cycle effectively forces some new thing to become the Most Important Thing every day is anti-free-speech behavior, because it restricts the ability to distinguish between levels of real importance. Furthermore, context matters. It matters that the New York Times has completely godawful op-ed columnists because lots and lots of people read the New York Times and take it seriously just because it's the New York Times. The fact that better ideas are free to exist elsewhere doesn't cancel this out. Ideas being expressed in more prominent venues matter more.
I'm being pedantic; this is really all just the basic stuff we do when we communicate: we try to understand things and make useful contributions to the discussion and say things that are right instead of wrong. We try to get useful ideas expressed in the places where people can actually hear them. We criticize the elevation of trash, not because we think people don't know better, but because there are better uses of our limited resources.
Obviously, we do not want to respond to this situation by censoring any idea that someone deems "not good enough." But that's exactly the point: the only question here is how we're going to manage speech. In terms of what we want to accomplish, increasing the overall quality of ideas expressed is the only thing that makes sense. We don't want a "robust discussion" about fascism, we want a discussion where nobody is arguing for fascism.
There is, of course, a specific meaning to the term "free speech," which is that the government should not be able to restrict expression on the basis of its content. But this is still not an absolute condition. Here's Ludwig von Mises being completely wrong about this:
But whoever is ready to grant to the government this power would be inconsistent if he objected to the demand to submit the statements of churches and sects to the same examination. Freedom is indivisible. As soon as one starts to restrict it, one enters upon a decline on which it is difficult to stop. If one assigns to the government the task of making truth prevail in the advertising of perfumes and tooth paste, one cannot contest it the right to look after truth in the more important matters of religion, philosophy, and social ideology.
Of course you can. I think it's pretty obvious that the slope between banning poisonous toothpaste and banning political opinions is not particularly slippery. There are specific reasons why the government is (potentially) competent at the former but not the latter. First, the government has an obvious bias regarding which political ideas get expressed, which makes it an incompetent judge of which ideas deserve suppression. As the entity that manages power distribution, the government has the strongest possible vested interest in regulating ideas. But the government is just as capable as any other entity of running tests to determine what's poisonous, and it has no vested interest in the results4. So the problem here has nothing to do with "big government," it's simply a matter of competent discrimination.
Second, because the government is the entity with a monopoly on the legitimate use of force, ideas prohibited by the government are absolutely prohibited. It's okay to ban one brand of toothpaste, because that's not a significant restriction on anyone's choices (if the toothpaste really is significantly harmful, it's actually an enhancement of people choices, because it prevents them from accidentally making a decision they never would have made based on real information). But ideas are more complicated. Even an obviously bad idea might have positive effects through clarifying arguments or inspiring counterpoints. So, unlike being poisoned, which is something you never want, bad ideas are not absolute negatives. You might want to restrict them in particular times and at particular places, but you don't want them absolutely restricted. Since people obviously disagree about ideas, discrimination is properly applied on the level of voluntary groups – that is, organizations can decide individually which ideas are worthwhile for them and which are not.5 And while there are in fact ideas that deserve complete eradication (again, fascism), this has to be done organically. Ideas are not magic; they have physical causes. If you try to banish an idea without addressing why it came about in the first place, it's inevitably going to regenerate at some point. That's exactly what's happening right now: everyone thought we had gotten over fascism, when in reality all we had done was to shove it into the category of "Bad Things" without doing anything about its real causes. But once you've processed an idea and moved into a new situation where it no longer applies, artificially preserving it restricts speech. It prevents you from moving on to the next stage of discussion.
So these are the two actual criteria that matter for assessing speech restrictions. The first is accurate judgment: whether the idea is being restricted on its own merits or out of other motivations such as prejudice or political interest. The second is breadth: whether the restriction is being applied at the correct level. It's fine for one explicitly capitalist magazine to disallow socialist opinions, because that's not what anyone reading it is there for. It's not okay for a larger entity to disallow the creation of any other types of magazines. But banning death threats throughout all of society is the correct level of applicability for that case, because death threats affect all humans.
Understanding the issue in terms of these criteria shifts the terrain of the debate considerably. The main point here is that speech restrictions have to be considered in context and not as absolutes, so I'm not going to try to formulate any kind of rules about what's good and what's bad. But since this issue has attracted such an unfortunate amount of misdirected chatter, I will work through a few examples to show how this works.
An extremely important story that has not received nearly enough attention is a recent change Google made to its search algorithm to promote more "authoritative" results. Naturally, this resulted in traffic drops for a variety of "alternative" news sources. This isn't the kind of thing that normally gets discussed as a free speech violation. After all, none of the affected websites have actually been "censored," and there are other search engines available. But the result is the same, because it fails both criteria. It's improper discrimination because it's intended to improve the "quality" of results, but all it actually does is impose a particular political viewpoint on them, based on Google's collective internal assumption as to what counts as "fake news." And it's also overly broad, because it affects everyone who goes looking for information on any topic, regardless of what their individual desires are. If you're trying to find alternative news sources, this change will prevent you from doing so, and there's no way to opt out of it. And of course Google doesn't tell you how it's filtering its results, and it's constantly changing things without telling anyone, so you don't know whether there really is something else out there or not. Furthermore, Google is entrenched enough that it's more accurate than not to say that this affects "everybody," even though there are technically alternatives available. In other words, Google users constitute an involuntary group that has not consented to this restriction. If this were just one explicit, publicly understood option among many – if, say, it were one search engine marketing itself as an "authoritative news source" or something – then there wouldn't be a breadth problem. The people who chose to use it would know what they were getting.
This applies just as much to the general movement to get social media companies to "do something" about "fake news." Again, this isn't an absolute condition; there's no such thing as a "neutral" platform. But the criteria still apply. Scams and death threats are examples of things that social media companies can (potentially) accurately identify and which merit prohibition. Banning Twitter users who make "jokes" about putting people into ovens is more free-speech-friendly than not doing so. People who pull that shit are specifically trying to intimidate others out of speaking. And this does actually bleed into politics somewhat: if your ideas cannot be expressed without direct dehumanization and death threats, then it is correct for them to be suppressed. When it comes to actually discriminating based on ideology, though, giving Facebook the ability to decide which ideas are worthy of expression means conducting public discourse from inside Mark Zuckerberg's head, which is clearly the worst possible outcome.
As mentioned, the big issue is Nazis, and unfortunately there isn't a trivial solution here. If we're talking specifically about literal Nazis, then censorship is probably fine. We can be as certain as we are of anything that Nazism is not a viable political option, and removing it from the public discourse doesn't prevent people from cosplaying as Nazis on their own time. But of course there is no actual Nazi Party anymore; the entire issue is identifying which ideologies are really dangerous. Trump was widely condemned as a white supremacist for equivocating after Charlottesville, but all the mainstream Republicans who denounced him are also white supremacists. In fact, they're more effective white supremacists, because, unlike Trump, they're actually capable of closing deals. Declaring only overt Nazism beyond the pale sets the paling far too far to the right.
The thing that's being called the "alt-right" is not one thing. It's an umbrella term that covers a lot of different ideas and reactions. We can assume they're all wrong, but even then, they've come up for real reasons, in response to real problems. Trying to sweep this stuff under the rug is exactly how you get surprised by someone like Trump. Dealing with these problems for real requires creating a society that fixes them, and developing that blueprint requires engaging with the underlying ideas. Expecting the government to take care of the bad guys is not going to accomplish this. In fact, it's the opposite: the government is on the side of the fascists more than it is on yours.
Importantly, though, "engaging" here does not mean restricting yourself to the realm of cable-friendly "rational debate." It means having a real fight. Making group efforts to deny fascists the use of social resources meets both free speech criteria. Such efforts can only come to fruition when there is widespread, non-idiosyncratic agreement as to what's going on, and shutting down individual gatherings is not equivalent to censorship. People making the collective decision to disallow certain types of speech from the platforms over which they have influence is pro-free-speech activity, because it allows better ideas (by the standards of the involved parties) to be expressed. So shutting down fascists is indeed the right thing to do, but it only works if you do it yourself. Anyone who claims to be doing it for you is actually just fattening you up so they can eat you.
Also, violence is not a unique problem. The problem with violence is simply that it violates the criteria: it discriminates on the basis of who's better at fighting rather than which ideas are better, and it completely prohibits expression rather than singling out particular ideas. But in situations where this isn't the case, or where violence is already being applied, there's no case for rejecting violence as such. Like, it's pretty ridiculous to get all huffy about individual acts of defensive violence when they only stand out because you're living in a cocoon created by the greatest purveyor of offensive violence in world history. Violence is generally a bad thing, but, given the current situation, a lot of the time it's less bad than doing nothing.
(By the way, antifa has nothing to do with any of this, because they don't start shit. As Cornel West and others have testified, their whole thing is defending people against fascist violence. From what I understand, they will actually escort neo-Nazis out of danger in order to defuse violent situations. Fretting about "violence" here, especially in the face of fascists who come armed to what they intend to be public confrontations, is nothing but typical anti-leftist bogeymanning.)
On a lighter note, the whole thing about university speakers being protested is a perfect example of something that is not a real problem. First, such protests can only happen through mass mobilization on the part of the affected constituency, which is proper discrimination. Second, being denied a speaking slot at a university has basically no other repercussions. Your ideas are still out there for people to engage with. Even the specific students at that university can look them up if they want to. In fact, the direction of suppression here is exactly the opposite of how it's normally portrayed. It is the granting of the speaking slot in the first place that is suppressive behavior. If a group of college students wants to create a discursive climate in which trans people are not bullied, giving Milo Yanniopolis a speaking slot censors that political opinion.
To be honest, none of this is particularly relevant. Invoking "free speech" is almost always a dodge away from discussing actual political issues. It's a way for people who don't have the guts to take a meaningful stand to pretend like they're principled when they really just want to avoid the discomfort of genuine values conflicts. The real problem is the fact that it works. As long as "free speech" is thought to be at issue, everyone has to spend all their time preemptively defending themselves instead of making real arguments. In other words, talking about free speech is a means of suppressing speech.
You might want to keep in mind that this is all highly theoretical, because of course the government kills people and commits other rights violations for utilitarian reasons all the time, so talking about any kind of "pure" standard here is fantasyland from the getgo. ↩
This applies broadly. If you try to take just one right and treat it as absolute, you run into internal contradictions. For example, treating the right to life as absolute and sacrificing everything else to it leads to the Repugnant Conclusion: valuing only life destroys the things that make life valuable in the first place. ↩
So, if you hadn't noticed, "hate speech" is a complete misnomer. Hatefulness has nothing to do with anything. The problem is with dehumanizing speech. This is actually why a lot of people get confused: they think they're looking for "hate," so when they don't see it, they assume there's no problem. Having a level of conceptual organization beyond "bad things are bad" matters. ↩
There can, of course, be other interests at work: the relevant agency might be in the pocket of Big Toothpaste (this is called "regulatory capture"), or the government might want to direct poisoning at a specific undesirable community (this is called "environmental racism"). But these aren't arguments against regulation, they're arguments for good regulation. ↩
This doesn't work for involuntary groups. You can't argue both that people need to work to eat and that their employers should be able to restrict their political opinions, unless you're willing to accept that people with the wrong kind of ideas ought to be murdered. Either work is involuntary and employment is protected, or working is not a prerequisite for staying alive and associations can be fully voluntary. ↩
Leave a comment Posted in Politics Tagged fascism, free speech, know your rights, tech assholes, violence | {
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Democrat CA Gov. Newsom to Use Texas Abortion Law as Model to Install Gun Control
Democrat Gov. Gavin Newsom recently announced California will be a "sanctuary state" for women seeking to abort their child in the wake of the Texas Heartbeat Act that protects the unborn. Now he wants to use the legislation as a template to put gun control laws in place.
The Texas law not only prohibits abortion after a heartbeat is detected but also allows citizens to report violations of the law. California state officials are crafting a measure that would let residents seek damages of at least $10,000, plus legal fees, against gun manufacturers and retailers.
"If states can now shield their laws from review by the federal courts that compare assault weapons to Swiss Army knives," Newsom said in a press release issued on Saturday. "Then California will use that authority to protect people's lives, where Texas used it to put women in harm's way."
"If the most efficient way to keep these devastating weapons off our streets is to add the threat of private lawsuits we should do just that," Newsom said.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom thrilled many this weekend by saying that his administration will model a new law on Texas' abortion ban that would let private citizens sue anyone who makes or sells assault weapons or ghost guns. It won't work…https://t.co/jOooxEeGq3
— Jonathan Turley (@JonathanTurley) December 12, 2021
The San Francisco Chronicle reported on the development:
Newsom's office … billed the gun announcement on Saturday as a direct response to a Supreme Court decision on Friday that allowed the Texas abortion measure — which also awards citizens $10,000 if they successfully sue — to stand in most places.
"SCOTUS is letting private citizens in Texas sue to stop abortion?!," Newsom tweeted on Saturday. "If that's the precedent then we'll let Californians sue those who put ghost guns and assault weapons on our streets."
"He is proposing to use a mechanism that many — that he and many others — have vilified. But I think it's quite smart, right? I think it's a big 'F— you' to the Supreme Court," Jessica Levinson, identified as a Supreme Court expert who teaches constitutional law at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, told the Chronicle.
But Levinson, who like others on the left vilified the Texas law as "vigilante," is embracing the gun control strategy.
"In one case we might be comfortable with (the strategy) because we don't want assault weapons on the streets, and in the other case we might not be comfortable with it because we want women to be able to exercise their right to choose," Levinson said. "If you use it in one, then you really have to use it in another."
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PoliticsAbortionCaliforniaDemocratsGavin Newsomgun controlTexas Heartbeat Act | {
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/*global ut */
/// Class: CanvasRenderer
/// Renders the <Viewport> into an HTML5 <canvas> element.
///
/// *Note:* This is an internal class used by <Viewport>
ut.CanvasRenderer = function(view) {
"use strict";
this.view = view;
this.canvas = document.createElement("canvas");
if (!this.canvas.getContext) throw("Canvas not supported");
this.ctx2 = this.canvas.getContext("2d");
if (!this.ctx2 || !this.ctx2.fillText) throw("Canvas not supported");
view.elem.appendChild(this.canvas);
// Create an offscreen canvas for rendering
this.offscreen = document.createElement("canvas");
this.ctx = this.offscreen.getContext("2d");
this.updateStyle();
this.canvas.width = (view.squarify ? this.th : this.tw) * view.w;
this.canvas.height = this.th * view.h;
this.offscreen.width = this.canvas.width;
this.offscreen.height = this.canvas.height;
// Doing this again since setting canvas w/h resets the state
this.updateStyle();
};
ut.CanvasRenderer.prototype.updateStyle = function(s) {
"use strict";
s = s || window.getComputedStyle(this.view.elem, null);
this.ctx.font = s.fontSize + "/" + s.lineHeight + " " + s.fontFamily;
this.ctx.textBaseline = "middle";
this.tw = this.ctx.measureText("M").width;
this.th = parseInt(s.fontSize, 10);
this.gap = this.view.squarify ? (this.th - this.tw) : 0;
if (this.view.squarify) this.tw = this.th;
};
ut.CanvasRenderer.prototype.clear = function() { /* No op */ };
ut.CanvasRenderer.prototype.render = function() {
"use strict";
var tile, ch, fg, bg, x, y;
var view = this.view, buffer = this.view.buffer;
var w = view.w, h = view.h;
var hth = 0.5 * this.th;
var hgap = 0.5 * this.gap; // Squarification
// Clearing with one big rect is much faster than with individual char rects
this.ctx.fillStyle = view.defaultBackground;
this.ctx.fillRect(0, 0, this.canvas.width, this.canvas.height);
y = hth; // half because textBaseline is middle
for (var j = 0; j < h; ++j) {
x = 0;
for (var i = 0; i < w; ++i) {
tile = buffer[j][i];
ch = tile.ch;
fg = tile.getColorRGB();
bg = tile.getBackgroundRGB();
// Only render background if the color is non-default
if (bg.length && bg !== view.defaultBackground) {
this.ctx.fillStyle = bg;
this.ctx.fillRect(x, y-hth, this.tw, this.th);
}
// Do not attempt to render empty char
if (ch.length) {
if (!fg.length) fg = view.defaultColor;
this.ctx.fillStyle = fg;
this.ctx.fillText(ch, x+hgap, y);
}
x += this.tw;
}
y += this.th;
}
this.ctx2.drawImage(this.offscreen, 0, 0);
};
| {
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Over the last four weeks, Nats fans have watched the team's season unravel. After losing the second game of a 4-game set against the Giants, our odds of reaching the playoffs, which recently had stood at 90% or higher, have plunged to 36% according to FanGraphs and 21% according to Baseball Prospectus. What happened? And more importantly, what can be done to turn things around?
We can break up the season into three periods. At the end of the first 45 games, May 25 (after the first game of a series in Wrigley against the Cubs) the Nats record stood at 27–18, a .600 winning percentage, or on pace for 97 wins. Although the Nats led the surprisingly strong Mets by only 2-1/2 games, the forecasts favored the Nats' stronger talent to easily win the division—according to FanGraphs, their odds of winning the division stood at 95%, and of reaching the playoffs at 98%. The Nats had played well, scoring 4.8 runs per game while hitting .257/.324/.417, while allowing 4.2 runs per game, recording 8.1 strikeouts, 2.4 walks, and 0.6 home runs per 9 innings.
Looking deeper, there were some causes for concern. Several key players were out with injuries (Anthony Rendon, Jayson Werth, Denard Span, Doug Fister) while others seemed to be struggling (Ryan Zimmerman, Ian Desmond, Stephen Strasburg). The team appeared to be overly reliant on two big stars—Bryce Harper, who had emerged as perhaps the best player in the National League, and Max Scherzer, who was dominating National League hitters. Another pleasant surprise was the renewal of Danny Espinosa's ability to hit.
Our second period runs from May 26 through July 17, the first game after the All-Star Game (that bizarre game when the lights kept going out, which was won the next day on Matt den Dekker's 8th inning home run). During that period, the Nats went 22–21, or just a little over .500. Their hitters fell to 3.8 runs scored per game during that span, while the pitchers improved to 3.5 runs allowed per game. The team, which was suffering from injuries, wasn't playing great, but the Mets were also playing .500 ball so the Nats still had a 3-game lead. At that point, the Nats were 10 games over .500 and on pace to win 90 games.
During that period, Strasburg, Zimmerman, and Span went out on injuries, and Rendon came back and played 18 games, then went on the DL again. The team became increasingly reliant on Harper and Scherzer.
Over the four weeks from July 18 to August 14, the Nats have gone 9–18, and are now trailing the Mets by 4 games, only one game over .500. They've scored only 3.6 runs per game, while they've allowed an average of 4.3 runs per game. They are striking out more (23.7% compared to 20.7% through July 17) and are walking less (7.9% compared to 8.2%). Their batting average is down more than 30 points (.224 compared to .255) and slugging is down 45 points (.357 compared to .402).
It's true that the Nats have faced some tough pitching. Kershaw, Greinke, Harvey, deGrom, Cole, and Fernandez would be on anyone's list of the top 15 starters in the NL.* If starts were distributed randomly, the Nats would expect to face one of the top 15 starters in 20% of the games, whereas they've faced these pitchers 10 times in the last 27 games—and have lost 9 of 10! They've also lost games to pedestrian starters like Rubby de la Rosa and Ryan Vogelsong.
I think the key reason that I'm pessimistic is that the Nats seem to be straining. In the second half, their "whiff" (swinging strike) rate of 12.4% is the highest of all major league teams. In comparison, in the first half their 9.9% rate was only slightly higher than the major league average (9.7%). As the situation becomes ever more dire, they are chasing pitches and trying to hit home runs, leading instead to more strikeouts.
Move Werth into a partial platoon with Clint Robinson. Werth came back to soon and is still struggling to find his stroke. It isn't clear yet whether he'll find it this season, but for now, I'd have Robinson start in his place about half the games we play against right-handed pitchers, or 2 or 3 times a week. I'd also have him replace Zimmerman once a week against right handers to give Zim some rest.
I'd also try to start Espinosa at least three times a week, spelling Rendon, Desmond, and Yunel Escobar. Between his glove and his power, he's a valuable player and should be used regularly, both to keep him sharp and to keep the others rested.
Scherzer looks like he may have a sore arm. If nothing warrants putting him on the DL, I'd at least consider letting him rest for one turn through the rotation, skipping his next start that's scheduled in Colorado. While Williams can be forgiven for letting him pitch complete games in his 1-hitter and no-hitter, he clearly overworked him in several subsequent games, and I'm wondering if Scherzer's arm is now paying the price.
The bullpen is mediocre, and although Rizzo made a move at the trade deadline, it's really a problem that was foreseeable and should have been repaired last winter. I'm doubtful that much can be done with a waivers deal, so my best advice is to ask Williams to focus on: a) making sure that the relief pitchers are used regularly, neither over-worked nor under-worked; b) concentrate on using the lefties, Matt Thornton and especially Felipe Rivero in favorable platoon matchups. Right-handed batters have an .851 OPS against Rivero, compared to .468 by lefties. Yet 57% of the batters that Rivero has faced have been right-handed. In too many games, I see Williams send out pitchers in seeming disregard for the platoon advantage.
I guess the last thing is somehow, let's try to get the confidence and the swagger. This team is good—I think it's still fundamentally a better team than the Mets—and it only takes a few victories to start turning things around.
*Update – I guess if I'm going to refer to the top 15 starters in the NL, I probably ought to give my list. Here it is, based both on this season's statistics and on the projections shown at FanGraphs: 1) Clayton Kershaw, 2) Zack Greinke, 3) Jose Fernandez, 4) Jacob deGrom, 5) Max Scherzer, 6) Jake Arrieta, 7) Jaime Garcia, 8) Gerrit Cole, 9) Jon Lester, 10) Matt Harvey, 11) Madison Bumgarner (would rank higher if we included his hitting), 12) Shelby Miller, 13) Noah Syndergaard, 14) Tyson Ross, and 15) Stephen Strasburg (yes, I still rank him ahead of Zimmermann!).
In giving the statistics above, I debated whether to include Syndergaard, who—as you see—makes my own top 15, but the way I worded it was they'd be on "anyone's list," so I decided to leave Sydergaard off. Frankly, things get really fuzzy after # 11, so it isn't clear that number 12 through 15 are any better than pitchers ranked 16 through 25. To fill things out, here are the near misses for my top 15 list: 16) Lance Lynn, 17) Michael Wacha, 18) Mike Bolsinger, 19) Francisco Liriano, 20) Carlos Martinez, 21) Jordan Zimmermann, 22) Gio Gonzalez, 23) John Lackey, 24) Taylor Jungmann, 25) Jason Hammel. | {
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Q: Ruby on rails console I have an issue with a nested model in my application. I can't get the values to show. I know I have to do it like this: @modelname.attribute (view), but it doesn't seem to work. That's why I started to look in the console if everything I did in the controller was right.
Everything seems ok. But I have one question, in the console, when you do this (example):
@modelname = Modelname.find(an id)
it gives you the corresponding object like this:
=>#< Modelname, id: x, other attributes >
and when I'm trying to find my other object in the console, I get this:
=>[#< Modelname, id: x, other attributes >]
Why? What's the difference and could that be my problem?
A: The second time –in the console– you're getting an array. That's the difference. As of why, we don't know what your wrote to find the model, but you must be calling ModelName.where or one fo the other methods in the ActiveRecord query API that returns an array (an ActiveRecord::Relation to be precise)
| {
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The Charities (Protection and Social Investment) Bill returned to the House of Lords on Tuesday 2 February for consideration of Commons amendments in 'ping pong'.
What is ping-pong/consideration of amendments?
Lords members discussed MPs' amendments relating to fund-raising and the powers of the Charity Commission.
Members discussed subjects including the regulation of fundraising. The Bill now goes to the Commons for its consideration.
Cabinet Office minister, Lord Bridges of Headley (Conservative), introduced the bill as one which would 'strengthen the public's trust in charities and help charities to do more'. He explained the majority of the proposals within the bill concern the powers of the Charity Commission.
Members of the Lords offered broad support for the bill, but called for additional powers for the Charity Commission and extra responsibilities for charities to be added. Several members identified the issue of proper protection for vulnerable people and children as an area which needs more consideration as the bill progresses.
Committee stage, the chance for line by line scrutiny, begins in the Lords on Tuesday 23 June.
The bill is designed to protect charities from people who present a risk of abuse, and give the Charity Commission for England and Wales new and tougher powers to tackle serious abuse of charities.
It also seeks to give charities a new legal power to invest their funds in a way that provides a financial return, and furthers the charity's aims. | {
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Can You Tell Cindy Crawford and Kaia Gerber Apart? The Internet Can't
This afternoon, supermodel Cindy Crawford shared a yearbook photo of herself from the '80s next to one of her daughter Kaia Gerber now. In a world where yearbook photos fall into the same category as passports and licenses—as in a stark, high-contrast universe in which everyone appears to have jaundice and a gormless expression that's fit for a mug shot—Crawford and Gerber's portraits both have that rare, otherworldly supermodel quality. Crawford's black-and-white photo shows her sporting a perfectly coiffed bouffant, while Gerber sports a pin-straight blowout and trendy gold chain. Despite the difference in time and place, the resemblance is so uncanny it had the Internet fooled. Katie Grand posted an image of Gerber and captioned it "Young Cindy." (Crawford herself had to chime in and correct Ms. Grand.) Even Instagram account Diet Prada, the arbiter of "who copied who" in fashion called out Grand's rib-tickling error, which she later corrected, posting a screenshot of the hilarious Instagram exchange.
Furthermore, the picture tells a bigger story about Cindy Crawford than meets the eye. Take a closer look at the post, and you'll discover just how accomplished Ms. Crawford was in high school. There's a half-visible list of clubs and extracurricular activities next to her image that's impressive to say the least. In an earlier Instagram video, Crawford points out that she was on the student council executive board, on the math team, and made National Honor Society, too. Crawford was also valedictorian of her high school and later received an academic scholarship to attend Northwestern University where she studied chemical engineering. Though she later dropped out to pursue modeling, the supermodel certainly hasn't lost any of her college smarts: She went on NPR almost 30 years later and managed to answer science trivia on the spot. Sounds like A-plus genetic makeup to us.
Cindy Crawford Sings George Michael and Tours Her Malibu Home
TopicsCindy Crawford | {
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Home > Blog > Business
One-to-One Customer Service Sets Tea Shop Up for Success
It takes a certain volume of customers for any business to survive. And Mark Biviano wasn't certain his new venture—Loka Leaf Tea Lounge—would be able to draw enough from the small town Cazenovia, NY, population when he opened in 2015. Afterall, coffee was the preferred beverage to sit, sip and savor.
Four years later, he'd seen enough. He was ready to buy the building he'd rented over that time knowing that Loka had made its way into the hearts of his customers. His patrons lauded his attention to detail as he provided a unique experience with each visit that was curated just for them. Unfortunately, he struggled to get that same attention from other banks when trying to secure a loan. So, he turned to Barbara Houghton at Community Bank.
"When I went to Community Bank, they made the appointment immediately to come and see my place," he said. "We traded paperwork, had some tea, and then, within a few short weeks, I owned the building. How wonderful is that?"
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A few weeks ago, when 19-year-old Dustin Snyder was told by doctors that he had terminal cancer and just weeks to live, he began checking off items on his bucket list—like riding a Zamboni and meeting the Tampa Bay Lightning hockey team.
Then Snyder tackled his final wish: planning a wedding and marrying his high school sweetheart, Sierra Siverio. The couple exchanged I-dos in an intimate ceremony on Sunday in a red barn outside Plant City, Florida, surrounded by family and friends.
"We have made the most amazing memories," Siverio, 21, said as the couple recited their vows, according to Florida newspaper The Ledger. "You are truly my soul mate."
Snyder was first diagnosed with synovial sarcoma, which the National Institutes of Health describes as a "rare and aggressive" form of cancer that attacks soft tissue, in 2016 after graduating high school. Though he was given treatment, the cancer returned a second and third time.
Snyder's sister, Brittany Hails, was instrumental in helping the couple pull off planning an event that usually takes months to manage. Hails posted requests for a tuxedo and other items on Facebook. Within five days, a GoFundMe account started by Hails had over $39,000. Everything from the dress to the venue was gifted in support of the groom- and bride-to-be.
Their love story starts in sixth grade.
"It' been amazing to see people in the community coming together and helping me out and supporting my family after everything we've been through," Snyder told the Tampa Bay Times.
Siverio shared similar sentiments, and had a positive outlook on the emotional day and the couple's future together. "Like I tell Dustin, no matter what, it's not the end," she told the Tampa Bay Times. "I feel like this is the beginning." | {
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I have not seen you around in a looong time!! Miss ya!
We are having a BIRTHDAY party in the COUNTRY PORCH thread in the NH forum, for NICOLE M. & "WANNA COME HOME" AKA Judy! Please stop by for some BIRTHDAY CHEER & CAKE!
HAVE A MERRY CHRISTMAS & AN AWESOME 2019!!!
Please stop by the COUNTRY thread, in the New Hampshire forum.
He is having a BIRTHDAY!!
We have CAKE & DRINKS!!!
PLEASE COME BACK TO THE FORUM!!
We have another BIRTHDAY PARTY!!
We are having CAKE, pies, drinks, come on over!!!
It is NH2NCMom SPECIAL BIRTHDAY!!!
I hope all is well! PLEASE COME BACK TO THE FORUM!!
"WANNA COME HOME" 2 BIRTHDAYS!!!
Thanks for everything!! I always enjoy your posts!!
MERRY CHRISTMAS TO YOU & YOURS!!!
and help us CELEBRATE our DEAR "NH2NCMom's" BIRTHDAY!!!
our DEAR FRIEND, VALERIE C.
As you know, the COUNTRY PORCH/THREAD is inside of the NEW HAMPSHIRE forum!!
PLEASE STOP by the "COUNTRY" thread in the New Hampshire forum for a special BIRTHDAY party !!
We are celebrating our DEAR FRIEND "LOL"!! Please help us celebrate him!
Thanks for coming to WANNA's BIRTHDAY PARTY!!
Now, PLEASE join us for "NICOLE M"'s BIRTHDAY PARTY!!
Please come back to the COUNTRY thread/PORCH in the New Hampshire forum!! Another BIRTHDAY PARTY, this time it is NICOLE's DAY!!
This member's posts were read 4,446,382 times. | {
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Banks of the RIver Marne near Montévrain
Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection on loan at the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza
Inv. no. (
CTB.1994.9
Henri Lebasque
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VEGAP, Madrid
Henri Lebasque was born in 1865 in Champigné. After attending secondary school in Angers, he enrolled at the École des Beaux Arts in the same town, as his passion for art began to show very early on. In 1885, at the age of twenty, he was declared unfit for service due to his rheumatism, which he suffered all his life, and moved to Paris. While attending Bonnat's classes, he earned a living working as a decorator, which he found rather tedious. However, he was always good-humoured, as his inner joy never left him.
In 1893 he met Luce and Signac at the Salon des Indépendants. Divisionism had just appeared and, like Cross and Van Rysselberghe, Lebasque could not totally escape the influence of Seurat's technique.
But very soon Lebasque abandoned this school whose limits were too narrow and restrictive for an artist who liked above all to show in his paintings his own vision of nature.
Similarly, his friendship with the Fauves and with Manguin never prevailed over his slightly introvert, but also tenacious, personality.
Married and with children, Lebasque moved to the east of Paris in 1900 and remained there until 1906; he took up residence first in Pierrefonds and Montévrain, where the neo-Impressionists met up. Lebasque was using some Pointillism when he moved with his family to Lagny, on the banks of the Marne, where he stayed for about five years. This was one of the most fruitful periods of his life.
There, still under the influence of Impressionism, he was overcome by the joy of painting outside; his pictures already reflected his joie de vivre. His landscapes, bright or delicately coloured, are full of freshness, while at the same time they convey the soft light of the Île-de-France. In the Marne valley he found a myriad of simple and pretty landscapes and a river running quietly between grassy verges, often lined with trees; the light is slightly filtered, almost damp, and gives his paintings a charming delicacy. In the area of Lagny Lebasque had also met Pissarro, and his luminosity influenced him more than the remembrance of Bonnat's teaching.
Here, the artist led a simple life, contemplating nature and its changes with the passing of hours and days. In such quiet surroundings, his talent gradually developed and asserted itself. It was during these laborious years that Lebasque painted many times the banks of the Marne, under a sky tinted with subtle hues, in which he expressed the deep emotions conveyed by the delicate light of the Île-de-France, which reminds us of Sisley's paintings. The rustling trees, whose branches filter the light, frame the scenery with bright meadows spreading in perspective.
Nobody has summed up better Lebasque and his art than Louis Vauxcelles in the catalogue of the exhibition held at the Galerie Pétridès in 1938: "Lebasque was as intelligent as he was sensitive, impulsive, with his own personal culture, and he never ceased to reflect upon the principles and conditions of his art. Technique, the study of form, the concern for balance and rhythm obsessed him. Nevertheless, he had kept the divine gift of childhood, marvelling at the vast spectacle of Nature, and he knew that, according to Nietzsche's words, for a poet, "to say no to nature is madness." He painted as a bird sings, when it sings well-a smooth and expressive drawing, elegance of lines, freshness and haziness, transparency of shadows [...]"
But Lebasque soon grew tired of systematic, monotonous, impersonal Pointillism, as fantasy and the painter's own temperament did not counterbalance the strictness of the theory.
It was precisely before the views of the banks of the Marne at Montévrain and at Lagny, contemplating the wide and quiet landscapes through which runs the shimmering river bordered with meadows that, in 1900, Lebasque painted Banks of the River Marne near Montévrain, in which he reveals his full spontaneity.
Deep inside, Lebasque was a landscape painter, but not just that; he was too sensitive for his paintings to be "uninhabited." This view of the Marne could not do without the presence of a boat with two fishermen.
In Lebasque, quietness and serenity do not exclude life, but it is set in nature, and is as if framed by it. The village and its bell tower are there, in the background, bearing witness to the perfect communion between Nature and its inhabitants.
Denise Bazetoux
Sunset on Pont-Aven (Young Man by the Sea)
Louis Valtat
Skaters in Winter (The Garden of the Petit Trianón in Versailles) (?)
Charing Cross Bridge
Factory in the Moonlight
Siglo XXs.XIX - Pintura francesaPaintingOilcanvas
If the images are being used for purposes other than those described above in paragraph 4, prior written permission from the Fundación Colección Thyssen-Bornemisza is required.
The reproduction of the images made available free of charge by the Fundación Colección Thyssen-Bornemisza for the purposes described in paragraph 4 are protected by copyright. In Spain, copyrights are managed by an independent body called the Visual Entidad de Gestion de Artistas Plásticas (VEGAP). The material may not be reproduced without first obtaining a licence from VEGAP, (for more information go to www.vegap.es). Any previously licensed reproductions of the copyrighted images, whether in part or in whole, must mention the copyright holder and the following note: Provenance: Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection on deposit at Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid. | {
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That's me on the camel in the back!
The day started with a drive along the palm tree oases about 20 minutes from here to a town called Tinfou, where the sand dunes begin. There are still mountain formations, though they trail off a bit more down the road, and I imagine that's where the fun really begins! There are signs all around which say "Timbuktu – 52" meaning 52 days by camel! Uhhhh, not this time around! Anyway, the winds have deposited sand in these large dunes off the main road. The Toureg people (dark skinned nomadic Africans from the Sahara) occupy the area with their camels (occupy for the tourists.....), and of course, for a price, you can ride one.
So, ride the camels we did! We each got our own camel, they tied a few together, and then the Toureg guides lead them through the sand, and up and down the dunes. They have carpeted tents set up for the tourists who come to spend the night, as well as modern amenities as motorcycles. These people are obviously accustomed to tourists, as they spoke basic English, and were happy to take your picture of you on your camel with your camera, and happily took your money for the fabric they wove around your head into a turban. (I actually have become quite fond of my royal blue fabric, I just have no idea how to recreate the desert turban look!) We would lurch along, and then stop for some picture taking, and then pitch forward as the camel headed down the dunes. The saddle on top of the camel isn't the most comfortable thing in the world, and it took a second to get your land legs back once you got off, but great fun! It was a good 30 – 40 minute ride, and thoroughly entertaining! When else are you going to ride a camel in the Moroccan Sahara?!?? It was a treat!
From there, we headed back up the road to a town called Tamegroute, which oddly enough, is known for its Islamic library. It used to have upwards of 40,000 volumes, and scholars came from all around to study the books on math, astronomy, philosophy, Koranic verse, and other sciences. Adjacent are pottery makers, who do ceramics with a green glaze made from natural manganese, mined from a nearby region. We had a tour of their rustic studios, and of course had buying opportunities. Lunch was back in Zagora at a small riad (cooked carrots and a beef pot roast tagine), and then to an antique & rug store, operated by men in traditional Toureg dress (blue kaftans & turbans), though they didn't look like it ethnically speaking. As in, I think the dress was for the tourists. Some time to rest in the late afternoon, and dinner at the hotel of kefta, (instant) rice, and veggies. | {
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Upholstered chaise lounge has a simple, elegant design with rolled edges and tucked skirt. Removable cushions. Solid and composite wood frame. Assembly required. 300-lb. capacity. 31" w x 34" h x 56" d.
Skirted Lounger is rated 2.7 out of 5 by 3.
Rated 5 out of 5 by Diane from Nice look! Received our lounger today and Love it! Just what I was looking for our coastal bedroom!
Rated 1 out of 5 by Judy from Disappointed. Allergic. Can't use. It did not say 'foam' anywhere in description. But the cushions ARE made of FOAM. And the upholstery is scratchy. I am allergic to the fumes from the foam. But it's too big to return. I don't know what to do. Guess I'll have to pay someone to pick it up and donate it somewhere.
Rated 2 out of 5 by CMM from Disappointed Quality is what you would expect being made in China. Smaller than what I thought. Package arrived with box having several tears from carrier abuse. Dirty spot on lounger. Cleaned with spot remover and material started pilling up. Lounger is not comfortable.......hard cushion. Will not buy furniture online again. I regret this purchase.
What color is this piece? | {
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What is happening to the timber wolf today?
Native Americans and early settlers often went to sleep to the sound of a lonely lullaby(催眠曲). It was the song of the wolf howling in a distant forest. There were many wolves then. One kind was the North American timber wolf.
Wolves are important to the balance of nature because they eat sick and weak animals. In Colorado, people tried to help deer by shooting wolves. But then there were so many deer that many of them starved to death.
The timber wolf is on the endangered special list. Animals on this list are in danger of disappearing from the earth. People drove the wolves away by cutting down the forests to build houses, towns, and highways. Timber wolves are now found only in Canada, Alaska, Michigan, and Minnesota.
This special animal may soon disappear from our forests forever. Then, its lonely howl will never be heard again.
1. Animals that are in danger of disappearing from the earth are called a _______species.
2. Wolves help the balance of nature because they _______.
3. At one time, the timber wolf was found _______.
4. Which of the following happened first?
A. People built towns and highways.
B. The timber wolf was driven away from its home.
C. People cut down the forests. | {
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