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Portraits in carbon: forget oxygen--carbon may be the most important element on the planet.
Oh, and carbon is the basis of more than 20 million chemical compounds and thus of life as we know it.
Those are the raw, actuarial facts, perhaps carbon's dullest mugshot face. But carbon is more interesting than these facts suggest, and like a quick-change artist has many faces. Here are five more:
Carbon is born in dying stars and scattered when they explode. Our own solar system formed from such remnants, a collector hoarding from interstellar estate sales. Carbon represents less than one-tenth of the Earth's crust by mass, but is the only element capable of forming robust single bonds with other atoms at ambient temperatures, which is why it is the chemical backbone of the living world. "Organic chemistry" is carbon chemistry. Carbon is proteins, carbohydrates, hydrocarbons, and DNA. Shakespeare was mostly carbon, and so were his quill, ink, and the paper on which he scratched Hamlet. It's perfume and plastic, trash bags and tennis balls and tree stumps.
It's also natural gas and oil and coal--the fossil fuels that modern civilization runs on.
Much of this was formed during the aptly named Carboniferous Period, a part of the Paleozoic Era from 354 to 290 million years ago. That period saw untold millions of swamp trees with two-meter-diameter trunks die but not rot--in part, some believe, because herbivores, termites, and certain bacteria had not yet evolved to eat lignin (a new plant innovation at the time), which is the glue differentiating wood from leaves. Unable to decompose, the resulting peat piled up in northern Europe, parts of Asia, and in the eastern and midwestern United States. Seas rose and fell, covering the swamps intermittently and cutting off the oxygen that would otherwise fuel organic decay. Pressure and heat over millions of years converted the material to coal, specifically anthracite, the hardest and most energy-rich form, composed of up to 98 percent carbon.
Bituminous coal, softer and younger, is only about 60 percent carbon, but it's lower in sulfur too, and thus emits less acid-rain-forming pollutants when burned. This coal, from places like the Powder River Basin, began as giant ferns and other plants flourishing in the lush effluvial plains of what is now Wyoming about 55 million years ago. Men listening to satellite radio in enormous dump trucks move the obsidian bulk gouged from 15-meter-thick seams to railheads, dispatching 400 million tons every year--40 percent of the coal burned in the United States--to power plants around the country.
Which brings us to carbon's dark side. Atmospheric carbon likes to run with pairs of oxygen atoms like some celebrity with arms around identical twins--carbon dioxide (C[O.sub.2]). It is an association born in fire, through the combustion of trees, dung, and fossil fuels. The fossil fuels are the main culprits. Their carbon, largely buried and sequestered until James Watt came up with the steam engine, is being unlocked and flung into the atmosphere at a rate of 7 billion metric tons of carbon every year. (That's just the carbon; the C[O.sub.2] gas weighs more like 27 billion tons. The United States emits nearly 6 billion tons of that total.) The weight of 7 billion tons of carbon is roughly equal to that of a concrete block as tall as the Empire State Building and covering 450 hectares.
The current global average atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide is about 380 parts per million (ppm).
That may not seem like much--the equivalent of less than a nickel in $100--but it's 36 percent more than the 280 ppm present in the air before the industrial revolution. Even such trace concentrations of C[O.sub.2] help keep Earth from a state of ice-age frigidity by creating the greenhouse effect, in which carbon is, with water vapor, methane, and a host of other trace gases, a key player.
Carbon dioxide's heat-trapping properties are a matter of chance, the product of the molecule's affinity for certain bands of infrared light. Infrared waves, which radiate invisibly from a good campfire or a sunlight-warmed Earth, make carbon and its escort oxygen atoms dance. As Steve Montzka, an atmospheric chemist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Earth System Research Laboratory in Boulder, Colorado, describes it, oxygen and nitrogen, the dominant atmospheric gases, pay the infrared light no heed. But the bonds in carbon dioxide "have a certain frequency, like two balls on a spring. If you hit the balls, they'll start vibrating back and forth in a nice, coherent way. That's kind of what happens when infrared light hits carbon dioxide molecules, and that's why it adds energy to the molecule." The carbon dioxide molecules vibrate, rotate, and stretch for an instant, then spit the infrared light--heat--back out in all directions.
So while 280 ppm was cozy, 380 ppm (and rising) looks like trouble. The U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research's top climate model has estimated that a doubling of current concentrations--a real possibility by century's end unless we temper our use of coal and other fossil fuels--will raise global average temperatures nearly 6 Fahrenheit degrees by 2100 (3.3 Celsius degrees).
Coal's outsized global-warming footprint has led the U.S. Department of Energy to commit hundreds of millions of dollars to carbon capture and storage research. This is suddenly the Holy Grail of the fossil energy industry. The idea is to sequester C[O.sub.2] emissions from coal-fired power plants in underground reservoirs. The carbon came from beneath the Earth, after all--why not just put it back?
Well, for one thing, it would require the extremely expensive scrapping of conventional coal-burning plants and their replacement with plants using integrated gasification combined cycle technology. IGCC plants convert coal to a gas of carbon dioxide and hydrogen. The hydrogen is burned to run a turbine, and then the exhaust generates steam to run a second turbine. Such plants are about 10 percent more efficient than conventional coal-fired plants, which convert less than a third of their coal energy into electrical energy, and also scrub pollutants such as mercury and sulfur dioxide more effectively. The carbon dioxide would be injected directly into deep saline aquifers or other geological formations, or even pumped down to the sea floor, where the enormous pressures and frigid temperatures would liquefy it and allow it to pool forever on the bottom. In theory.
There are challenges. Only four IGCC power plants exist in the world, including two in the United States. Contrast that with 5,000 large coal plants, with many more proposed or being built (See "Coal Rush," page 8, and "China and Her Coal," page 14). Of the roughly 150 new U.S. coal plants currently planned, only a handful would use IGCC technology, and just one (proposed for Colorado by Xcel Energy) is slated to actually sequester the C[O.sub.2]. It won't become operational before about 2013, Xcel officials say.
Nor is sequestration itself a thoroughly known quantity, although oil companies have been injecting C[O.sub.2] underground to force more petroleum out of existing fields for decades. At Chevron's Rangely oil field in western Colorado, for instance, they go through 36 million cubic feet of C[O.sub.2] a day, piped 260 kilometers from Wyoming's Green River Basin. It comes with a financial and energy cost. Chevron engineer R.J. Wackowski estimates that the company has spent "hundreds of millions of dollars" on C[O.sub.2] injection. It takes 33,000 kilowatts distributed across 11 howling compressors to squeeze the gas into the 2,100 pounds per square inch pressure needed for injection.
That's not cheap, but consumers seem ready to pay almost anything for oil and it fetches high prices. But coal's historic benefit is its cheapness, and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's Special Report on Carbon Dioxide Capture and Storage, released in September 2005, estimates that a new IGCC plant with carbon storage would be from 20 percent to 100 percent more expensive per kilowatthour than a new conventional coal-fired plant, assuming no carbon taxes.
And will carbon forced into sequestration actually stay put? Only our descendants will know for sure. There is just one production facility in the world, run by Norway's Stadtoil, that is sequestering C[O.sub.2] for sequestration's sake, and it's only been operating for 10 years. The U.S. Department of Energy is spending more than $100 million through 2009 to understand the technical feasibility of storing billions of tons of carbon dioxide under U.S. soil.
Jeff Goodell, author of Big Coal, has his doubts about geologic sequestration. He questions the electric power industry's will to implement carbon capture and storage on any significant scale. "They like to pretend it's a really simple thing--pump it down there and cap it off," Good-ell says. "But the Earth is like a giant pincushion, and this C[O.sub.2] can migrate for miles and come up through fissures." The IPCC report, on the other hand, concludes that 99 percent of sequestered C[O.sub.2] would likely stay put for a millennium. Ken Caldeira of the Carnegie Institution of Washington's Department of Global Ecology, a co-author of the IPCC report, says sequestration needs to play a role in future energy portfolios, but that there will be political challenges. "It implies you're going to have some sort of globally coordinated carbon police, part of some incorruptible squad," he said. "My brother works in a food plant that makes kosher food. When the rabbi walks away, they keep putting the label on it even when no one is blessing it,"
Displaced Person
Anyone aspiring to carbon neutrality can take action immediately. Drive a mid-sized car 20,000 kilometers a year? A onetime payment of $72 to CoolDriver.org will let you release the resulting six tons of C[O.sub.2] skyward with a clean conscience. Flying from New York to Los Angeles? TerraPass.org's Puddle Jumper package can make up for the ton of C[O.sub.2] emissions for $9.95.
Both programs deal in carbon offsets, in which fossil fuel burners indirectly pay someone else to make up for their combustion. CoolDriver and TerraPass send the money to renewable energy projects and are among many organizations offering consumers, businesses, and municipal and state governments ways to ease their carbon load by investing in everything from groves of trees to new wind farms.
This is still an unregulated and confusing business. To offset six tons of carbon emissions costs $72 at CoolDriver.org, $40 at DriveNeutral.org and $49.95 at TerraPass.org, where you also get a free luggage tag. There also have been questions about the accountability of outfits promising to offset flights to Singapore by planting trees in Central America. "What was on the land before those trees in Costa Rica and so on were planted? Did they cut other trees down and get paid to replant?" asks Russ Schnell, director of the U.S. National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration's global atmospheric gas sampling network. Done properly, Schnell said, such projects do have the benefit of sequestering the weight of the tree in carbon.
Carbon-offset equivalents of companies like PriceWaterhouseCoopers have emerged to assuage such fears. The San Francisco-based Center for Resource Solutions runs the Green-e verification program, and the Climate Neutral Network has its Climate Cool program to make sure it's all on the up-and-up.
How much impact carbon offsets are having on the market remains a question. Kevin Rackstraw, North American development leader for Clipper Windpower, says it's hard to convince lenders on $200 million wind-farm projects that 100,000 people buying green power today will do the same in 15 years. Even major buys of renewable energy credits by companies or municipalities wanting to offset their electricity use have a limited effect compared to federal tax subsidies. "If renewable-energy credits go away, we can still do business. If the production tax credit goes away, we're at a standstill, practically," he says.
In the wrong form or place, carbon can be troublesome. But it also has remarkable properties that might be valuable. Consider carbon fiber, for instance.
Spun at high temperature from strands of the polymer polyacrylonitrile, carbon fiber's combination of strength, lightness, and relative imperviousness to heat and cold has landed it a role in the Space Shuttle's nosecone and countless satellites. It is coveted by military aircraft designers and, lately, by those designing warships. Massive wind turbines would be impossible without it. Voices as diverse as former CIA director James Woolsey (now an energy efficiency champion) and Amory Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute want to see carbon fiber auto bodies, which could weigh a third less than steel. Given the U.S. automakers' financial situation and the fact that carbon fiber bodies would cost at least 10 times more than steel, that might be a stretch. But then, the new boss at Ford Motor Company was formerly CEO of Boeing Commercial Airplanes, and Boeing has certainly seen the carbon fiber light.
Fully half of the wings and fuselage of the efficient, $150-million Boeing 787 Dreamliner, due to fly in 2008, is made of carbon-fiber composites. The move lightens the aircraft enough to boost fuel efficiency 3 percent, but also allows for bigger windows, higher cabin air pressure, and higher cabin humidity because corrosion isn't an issue. Boeing archrival Airbus is also using carbon fiber extensively in its gargantuan new A380.
Carbon fiber is so hot that it's hard to come by. Toray Carbon Fibers America, Inc., which is supplying carbon fiber for the Boeing 787, has been running at 100 percent capacity for three years straight, according to sales manager Buster Tipton. The company opened a new U.S. plant last year and has three more planned in Japan and Europe. "Make no mistake, there's a global shortage," Tipton said--which may explain why high-end carbon fiber bicycles can cost as much as small cars did 10 years ago.
Then there are nanotubes.
In 1985, scientists at Rice University created a new form of carbon, consisting of 60 atoms vaguely resembling a soccer ball. The Buckminsterfullerene, or "buckyball," launched the field of carbon nanotechnology and won its co-discoverers the 1996 Nobel Prize in chemistry. Six years later, Japanese scientist Sumio Iijima reported his creation of carbon nanotubes--cylindrical fullerenes.
Carbon nanotubes are an entirely new and potentially miraculous material, 60 times stronger than steel and capable of conducting electricity 1,000 times better than copper. Carbon nanotube research is among the hottest areas of research in nanotechnology, which refers to engineered structures less than 100 nanometers in size. (A nanometer is a billionth of a meter, or the same part of a meter as the length of your thumbnail is of the Earth's diameter.)
Nanotubes are as thin as one nanometer wide, but can be thousands of nanometers long. Potential applications range from next-generation transistors and solar cells to artificial muscles and blast-resistant clothing. Some firms are using nanotubes in the electrodes of experimental fuel cells, as electron guns in field-emission displays, and in radiation-hardened computer memory for military and space applications. Commercial applications include nanotube-infused plastic that dissipates static electricity, an attractive feature in automotive fuel lines and microelectronics manufacturing, where a spark can be costly.
Ken McElrath, vice president at Carbon Nanotubes Inc. in Houston, says that if the first half of the 20th century was the age of steel and the latter half the age of polymers, then the coming decades belong to carbon nanotubes: "We're on the ground floor of a new material."
Can nanotubes possibly live up to the hype? Dean Aslam, director of the Micro and Nano Technology Laboratory at Michigan State University, thinks they will. Aslam is most bullish on nanotubes for use in miniaturized chemical or biological sensors. His group and a University of Michigan team are collaborating in an effort to use carbon nanotubes to make a microchip-based gas chromatograph, or airborne chemical detector. Carbon nanotubes have a huge surface area per unit volume, which is perfect for capturing molecules as they float by. Heat the nanotubes and they drop their contents into a tiny chamber for analysis. Such a system embedded in a watch could enable the equivalent of food labeling for air. "We know what kind of food we're eating. We don't know what kind of air we're breathing," Aslam says.
What's the downside? So far, nanotubes don't come cheap: Research grades of the tubes cost up to $2,000 per gram, though commercial varieties are far less pricey. Kalman Migler, a scientist at the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology who is working on developing nanotube standards, says nanotubes remain poorly characterized and that the market remains nascent. Another issue, he says, is understanding the possible environmental and human health impacts before nanotubes become the next plastic: "I believe there's a need for a much greater effort to understand the effects of nanotubes and nanomaterials on safety, health, and the environment, and it's clearly an area of concern to great numbers of people thinking about nanotechnology."
Rice University's Center for Biological and Environmental Nanotechnology focuses on health impacts and medical applications of nanotubes. Kristen Kolinowski, the center's executive director for policy, says nanotubes pried apart in solution have been shown to kill cell cultures, and that nanotubes forced into the lungs of rats and mice caused irritation. A University of Michigan study has shown nanotubes to accumulate in living cells and with that, potentially, food webs.
"We have to think about the impacts of putting these things in the body. There are people who think that carbon nanostructures are not going to be the best materials in the human body unless we can isolate them or they turn out to be pretty nontoxic," Kolinowski said. "I think the jury's still out on that."
Todd Neff covers science for the Daily Camera in Boulder, Colorado. He is writing a book about NASA's Deep Impact mission to strike a carbon-carrying comet.
For more information about issues raised in this story, visit www.worldwatch.org/ww/carbon.
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photo credits: fish bear, hello mr fox, bloom grow love, yyellow bird, emerson merrick, ginny branch, helveticaneue, lina scheynius, bee hives
Things I'm loving right now:
- Watching the WWII in HD series on the History Channel. It's like crack for history nerds.
- Dry shampoo! Thanks so much for all of your recommendations. What would I do without you gals? I ended up buying Bastiste because, well, it was the first one I found at Sally's Beauty and it was cheap. Now that I know I like it maybe I'll try something different next time (or try a DIY home version?).
- Listening to Simon & Garfunkel. For some reason that music just sounds like autumn to me.
- The My Parents Were Awesome tumblr page. So funny. So good. So true.
- Looking throught the archives of William Gedney's photography. Especially the San Francisco series. This deserves a post all its own.

subset: commoncrawl


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text: Rocky Raccoon song (Spoken:) Now somewhere in the Black Mountain Hills of Dakota There lived a young boy named Rocky Raccoon. And one day his woman ran off with another guy. Hit young Rocky in the eye Rocky didn't like that. He said "I'm gonna get that boy." So one day he walked into town Booked himself a room in the local saloon. Rocky Raccoon checked into his room, Only to find Gideon's Bible. Rocky had come, equipped with a gun, To shoot off the legs of his rival. His rival, it seems, had broken his dreams, By stealing the girl of his fancy. Her name was Magill, and she called herself Lil, But ev'ryone knew her as Nancy. Now she and her man, who called himself Dan, Were in the next room at the hoedown. Rocky burst in, and grinning a grin, He said, "Danny boy, this is a showdown." But Daniel was hot, he drew first and shot, And Rocky collapsed in the corner. Now, the doctor came in, stinking of gin, And proceeded to lie on the table. He said, "Rocky, you met your match," And Rocky said, "Doc, it's only a scratch, And I'll be better, I'll be better, Doc, as soon as I am able" Now Rocky Raccoon, he fell back in his room, Only to find Gideon's Bible. Gideon checked out and he left it no doubt To help with good Rocky's revival. "Rocky Raccoon" Song by The Beatles from the album The Beatles Released 22 November 1968 Recorded 15 August 1968 Genre Folk rock Length 3:33 Label Apple Records Writer Lennon–McCartney Producer George Martin The Beatles track listing 30 tracks Side one "Back in the U.S.S.R." "Dear Prudence" "Glass Onion" "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da" "Wild Honey Pie" "The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill" "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" "Happiness Is a Warm Gun" Side two "Martha My Dear" "I'm So Tired" "Blackbird" "Piggies" "Rocky Raccoon" "Don't Pass Me By" "Why Don't We Do It in the Road?" "I Will" "Julia" Side three "Birthday" "Yer Blues" "Mother Nature's Son" "Everybody's Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey" "Sexy Sadie" "Helter Skelter" "Long, Long, Long" Side four "Revolution 1" "Honey Pie" "Savoy Truffle" "Cry Baby Cry" "Revolution 9" "Good Night" "Rocky Raccoon" is a song by the Beatles from the double-disc album The Beatles (also known as The White Album). The song was primarily written by Paul McCartney, who was inspired while playing acoustic guitar with John Lennon and Donovan in India (where the Beatles had gone on a retreat). Please note the text from Wikipedia is imported without editing or authentication. Rocky Raccoon (White) Rocky Raccoon (Anthology 3) ©1968 Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC. All rights reserved. Used by permission.


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Each Health Indicator includes a five-color "Filter by Priority" index. The "Filter by Priority" index compares all counties in the state that have the same indicator in the same timeframe. It then calculates where the selected county falls in that range and displays the color that best reflects how the county is doing in comparison to the other counties in the filtered group.
In general, counties in the green range are ranked higher than other counties in the filtered group, while counties in the red are ranked lower. Some indicators display a blue bar, which means the data is not meant for health-status comparison, but is intended simply to provide information. When a Healthy People 2020 target is available for the selected Health Indicator, that target is included in the range.
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Monetary policy and financial vulnerabilities - Deputy Governor Paul Beaudry of the Bank of Canada, speaks at Laval University. (15:30 (Eastern Time) approx.)
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Does the government need a search warrant, requiring a showing of probable cause, in order to read your email—as it would if it wanted to read a physical letter? Not if the email has been "in electronic storage" for more than 180 days, under the 1986 Stored Communications Act (18 U.S.C. Section 2703). The Stored Communications Act (SCA) is Title II of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA). In contrast, that same Act states that Continue Reading →


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I am sorry to see that the Grand Prix of Baltimore will not return ("Grand Prix of Baltimore canceled through 2015, and likely beyond," Sept. 13).
Huge kudos to Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, Councilman Bill Cole, Visit Baltimore CEO Tom Noonan, Race On's JP Grant, Tim Mayer of Andretti Sports Marketing and hundreds of others for their tremendous collaborative efforts in staging the highly successful Grand Prix this year.
As a Federal Hill resident, I experienced little to no inconvenience during the race weekend, and like many residents I was extremely appreciative of the thorough pre-event information on the track build and the street closures.
Lastly, I was very pleased with how much positive national exposure Baltimore received through print and broadcast outlets. The Grand Prix was good for our city.
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DWTS Maksim Chmerkovskiy Attends The Salsa Rengue 3 Anniversary In Montreal, Canada
Twitter is alive today with several Maksim Chmerkovskiy fans raving about the time he spent in Montreal, Canada last night. Maks came to the city to take part in the Salsa Rengue 3 Anniversary. PureDWTS reader Evaine was able to attend the event and met him at a fan meet and greet. She described Maks as "a lovely, lovely man" and he was "sweet and charming." She said he smelled good of a "very light, nice scent" too (which is what I was wondering about. 🙂 ). In fact, someone asked Maks what cologne he wore and he "couldn't quite believe that people really wanted to know this". According to Evaine, Maks was "assured by everyone that we did indeed want to know". He answered, but there was so much noise that Evaine or her friend were able to catch his answer (LOL!!!).
Evaine also said Maks looked "RIGHT into your eyes" when you talked to him. The Snooki rumors were brought up as well to which Maks didn't sound too approving of like many of us.
Maks also mentioned "working for the cause of Ukrainian orphans in conjunction with ABC" which Evaine wonders if this is why he returned for another season of Dancing With The Stars? If Evaine hears more in her local papers, she said she'll be sure to let us know.
What a night it must have been!! Special thanks to our beloved Evaine for taking us there. She may have even more to add in the comment section.
The pic above was taken by @AC_VirginRadio at twitter. Though sideways, you can see Maks dancing a salsa with a fan here. Thanks to @Lisanneshaw for the video.
Stay tuned. Maks will be travelling to Chattanooga, TN for a special fundraising and belated show next. Because of flight issues and coming down with a bug, he had to cancel in June. But, he'll be making up for it on Saturday. For event and ticket information, go here.


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Designers are, without question, an opinionated bunch but when it comes to typography, man you really see the sparks fly! Comic Sans has entire websites devoted to hating it, while Helvetica boasts a documentary film committed to its worship.
Recently, typography luminary Peter Biľak embarked on a fascinating project: to determine what exactly makes a typeface beautiful and what makes one ugly. He suspected that these two poles are in fact two sides of the same coin and his findings strongly confirmed this to be the case.
For his exemplar of beauty he chose Bodoni, a lovely modern serif defined by its high contrast between thick and thin lines. For his exemplar of ugly, he chose the infamous "monstrosity" Pica Italian.
Like Bodoni, Pica Italian's defining quality is a contrast between thick and thin lines. But here's the kicker: Pica is Bodoni's inverse —thick in the places that Bodoni is thin, and thin in the places Bodoni is thick.
Bodoni (top) was Peter Biľak's example of a beautiful typeface; Pica Italian (bottom) was his example of an ugly one
Could beauty and ugliness in type design really come down to the placement of weight? Biľak designed a typeface himself to test the hypothesis.
Called Karloff, it has three versions:
- "positive" – thick and thin in the conventional places
- "negative" – thick and thin in the reverse
- neutral – a mathematical merging of the two.
Sure enough, "positive" turned out to be a real beauty, while "negative" is hard to look at. And "netural" is, well, neutral.
Karloff positive (top), Karloff negative (middle), and the neutralized combination of the two (bottom)
Enthralled by Biľak's discovery, we decided to tackle the even broader question of why some typefaces receive so much love and others, so much hate. The answers, we believe, are much more complex than simple aesthetic judgment.
Here are the hypotheses we came up with. First we'll look at the hated, then the loved.
Why the hate?
The tar pit of history
People love to hate typefaces like Brush Script and Souvenir ("Real men don't set Souvenir," type scholar Frank Romano famously said), but are they really so terrible looking? Objectively, we wouldn't say so.
The issue is that these typefaces both became extremely overused at specific moments in history; Brush Script in the 1940s-1960s and Souvenir in 1970s advertising.
As a result, it is now impossible to use either of them without bringing all of their historical baggage along too. Not a load you want to carry.
Brush Script (top) and Souvenir (bottom) are the opposite of timeless — they fell into the tar pit of history
The rattle of inauthenticity
Designs like Papyrus and Neuland Inline clearly try to mimic or evoke particular "exotic" cultures or regions; Papyrus goes for ancient Egypt and Neuland Inline — some sort of African tribal situation. This sort of contrived exoticism rings awfully false and is frowned upon with good reason.
Papyrus (top) and Neuland Inline (bottom) smack of inauthentic exoticism
The vice of gluttony
Let's get one thing straight: at the end of the day, the purpose of a typeface is to be legible. Certain typefaces, however, overindulge in "design" to the point of becoming hard to read.
Jokerman and Matisse, for example, lose sight of their core purpose and justifiably incur the wrath of type nerds everywhere.
Jokerman (top) and ITC Matisse (bottom) are two examples of gluttonously over-designed typefaces
The just-plain-ugly
As Biľak demonstrated with Pica Italian, some design styles appear fundamentally ugly, simple as that. Many people found 2012 Headline, the typeface created for the London Olympics, rather unsightly.
Copperplate Gothic, in addition to not actually being gothic, fuses a stone-cut look with a Victorian display style to produce something that is simultaneously abrasive and dull — definitely one of our least favorites.
2012 Headline and Coperplate Gothic have gotten bad raps for being, well, ugly
The opiates of the masses
Comic Sans, Arial, Harabara. These typefaces receive by far the most hate mail of all. But really, calm down, take a deep breath and consider: are they really that bad? After all, they must have become popular for a reason, right? In fact, we think that's exactly it: people like to hate these designs because they're so popular.
When it comes to logo design, that's a different story, as an overused typeface will actually decrease the design's potential to serve as a unique, distinctive and effective branding. So lose Harabara, logo designers.
Comic Sans (top), Arial (middle), Harabara (bottom) have won the popularity contest but little else.
Why the love?
Test of time
Here are some of the typography world's most beloved typefaces: Garamond (1540), Clarendon (1845), Times New Roman (1931).
If they've stuck around for this long at such widespread use, there must be something great about them — right? Otherwise, Darwinian type evolution would have weeded them into the rubbish bin of history long ago. Hard to hate on anything so resilient.
Garamond, Clarendon and Times New Roman have firmly stood the test of time
Beauty incarnate
Some typefaces, like Didot and Bodoni, are just so damn attractive, you have to wonder if they were engineered to please our visual perception systems. Or, if you are of the nurture-over-nature persuasion, you might say we are socially programmed to find them immediately beautiful.
After all, sans serifs that we now find delightful were once considered grotesque (hence the term), so evidence does point to a necessary adjustment period.
Didot (top) and Bodoni (bottom) have had the typography world drooling for centuries
Neutrality fetish
Gill Sans, Futura, Helvetica, Verdana and Myriad, despite being extremely common, manage to avoid the scorn of type snobs. To the contrary, this is perhaps the most worshipped set of all: the neutral.
All of these typefaces seem to strive toward the elimination of individualistic identifiers, which makes them extremely legible, versatile, and hence admirable.
Gill Sans, Futura, Helvetica, Verdana and Myriad are 20th and 21st century sans serif typefaces, beloved for their neutrality and versatility
Or this would seem like a plausible explanation, if it weren't for the curious case of Arial. If neutral is the goal, then it seems Arial would be king, yet we see the typeface topping lists alongside Comic Sans as one of the worst!
Is it possible that Arial is too neutral? Is there is a sweet spot that it just barely misses? If so, the boundaries of that ideal gulch would seem to be beyond my powers of perception.
That's a lot of factors, and this list surely doesn't come close to exhausting all of the criteria that typography critics consider when evaluating a font. Which means, beyond baseline factors like legibility, any font's reputation is up for discussion.
So in the spirit of active criticism, let's reconsider a typeface whose fate has not yet been sealed: 2012 Headline. Contrary to popular consensus, we loved the London Olympics logo. We're undecided on the typeface, though.
What do you think — beauty, or beast?


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This class meets on SATURDAYS.
Sophie Dance is a non-competitive, recreational dance studio that focuses not only on dance skills, but on creative movement, original choreography, dance as art and gently encouraging your child's self esteem with age appropriate expectations and the joy of dance. Our program is based upon multiple-class lessons which we believe offers the best opportunity for children to learn, improve upon and combine new skills and routines, develop their dancing abilities and improve their mind, body and soul connection.
Main Season Information:
Our Main Season is much like a school schedule, in that we begin in September and run through May, and split it up into three trimesters that are approximately 12 weeks each in length. Once you are enrolled in our Main Season, you are guaranteed your spot until our Main Season ends, however you may chose to drop your class before end of the 36 week session. The total cost of the entire Main Season is $975, but can be paid in three (trimester) payments of $325.
Sophie Dance registration (i.e., tuition) is non-refundable. There are no refunds and no credits for missed or dropped classes.
|September 7, 2019
|May 23, 2020
|11:00 am - 12:00 pm
5867 West 3rd Street
Los Angeles, CA 90036
(323) 395-3050
- Instructor
- Miss Annie


text: Where do dreams come from? What stealthy nighttime messengers are the guardians of our most deeply hidden hopes and our half-forgotten fears? Drawing on her rich imagination, two-time Newbery winner Lois Lowry confronts these questions and explores the conflicts between the gentle bits and pieces of the past that come to life in dream, and the darker horrors that find their form in nightmare. In this haunting novel that tiptoes between reality and imagination, two people—a lonely, sensitive woman and a damaged, angry boy—face their own histories and discover what they can be to one another. Their strength comes from a tiny, caring creature they will never see.


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While November 6 may feel a little too early to start buying gifts for others, it's never too early to buy some fabulous jewelry. Vintage fits the bill perfectly with stunning vintage-inspired (thus the name) pieces, many of which are made with found objects. With prices ranging from $24 to $600, you can afford a week day treat for yourself, or an investment piece for the holiday parties you have coming up.
Look closer at the photos below and you'll see the creative use of pearls, keys, ruler pieces (perfect for the teachers in your life), foreign coins, and the show stopping vintage Chanel button pieces. The shop owner tells us that the most popular items are made from their hand-stamped initial charms - a wonderful, personal piece to treasure.
While you're in the shop, be sure to check out the custom chandelier made from spoons!
Booth G10 in the 42nd Street Allée (map)
The Holiday Shops at Bryant Park
Monday - Friday: 11am - 8pm
Saturday: 10am - 9pm
Sunday: 10am - 6pm


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Honda: Grrr
"Can Hate Be Good?" Why not!
The commercial is from 2004, but I just caught on it again and decided it was time to post it. After all, it never gets old.
The spot was directed by Smith & Foulkes and produced at Nexus. Creative agency: W+K London. Song performed by Garrison Keillor (as Be Nice to the Pigeons).Also tagged archery, birds, bubbles, butterfly, Charlie Tinson, Charlotte Bavasso, chicken, Chris O'Reilly, fireworks, flower, Garrison Keillor, Honda, John Waddel, Johnny Burn, Julia Parfitt, Kim Papworth, Michael Russoff, Motion graphics, Nexus Productions, penguin, rabbits, rainbow, Richard Russell, Rob Steiner, Sean Thompson, Smith and Foulkes, smoke, sun, Tony Davidson, topiary, typography, underwater, W+K, Wave Studios, Will Parnell


text: I decided to really try my hand at traditional style single bevels. Figured i would start with a 240 mioroshi deba in a traditional style construction. First we need steel....2 pieces of 1018 back to back with a piece of W2 on one side. Dimensions of each piece is 5x2x3/8 Time to get it hot and squish it!!! Finally getting thinner and longer I noticed with this construction, it wants to warp as it is cooling, i would assume the steels have different expansion/contraction rates. Wiping scale and flux off as much as possible And finally i am happy with where the billet is for now. Billet dimensions are 13 inches longx2.2 inches widex10mm thick. Tomorrow as time permits, i will get it forged to shape and hopefully get it HT'd. It is soaking in vinegar overnight to hopefully eat away the scale and leftover flux. More to come, stay tuned folks!!


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Family Readers
Family Readers
Writing Activities
|Teach reading with the The Family Readers: 72 phonics storybooks that feature entertaining stories and characters, plus each book teaches a new moral value.
|Designed to enable parents to teach reading skills in a home school environment. Includes The Family Readers, Writing Activities, and more.
|Improve writing comprehension with more than 900 reproducible writing activities correlated directly to the Family Readers. Buy them separately or in the Family Readers Deluxe Set.


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Related Suppliers
Rollomatic will provide information on its CNC tool grinding and peel grinding machines, as well as updates to its fine laser cutting and ablation machine. The GrindSmart five- and six-axis tool grinding machine offers versatility for virtually all kinds of rotary and stationary cutting tools, including end mills, drills, form tools, indexable inserts, taps, reamers, routers and medical instruments. The ShapeSmart NP5 five-axis peel grinding machine offers high concentricity for pinch grinding even long and thin parts. Rough and finish grinding can be performed in one pass, avoiding two separate processes and reducing cycle times. The company's LaserSmart five-axis CNC fine laser cutting and ablation machine is designed for super-hard materials such as PCD, PCBN, CVD and natural diamond.


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Find A Game
Voted best current and next-generation NBA hoops franchise by both press and gamers, NBA 2K7 will continue its legacy of dominance this year on the hard court. With incredible graphics, tight control and a revolutionary shooting game, NBA 2K7 is poised for another run as #1 rated NBA simulation. READ MORE [+]
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Poll: Romney has slight edge over Obama
Updated: May 15, 12:45 p.m.
CBS News Poll analysis by the CBS News Polling Unit: Sarah Dutton, Jennifer De Pinto, Fred Backus and Anthony Salvanto.
(CBS News) Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney has a slight edge over President Obama in the race for the White House in the latest CBS News/New York Times poll.
According to the survey, conducted May 11-13, 46 percent of registered voters say they would vote for Romney, while 43 percent say they would opt for Mr. Obama. Romney's slight advantage remains within the poll's margin of error, which is plus or minus four percentage points.
Last month, a CBS News/New York Times poll showed Mr. Obama and Romney locked in a dead heat, with both earning 46 percent support among registered voters. Polls conducted in February and March showed Mr. Obama with an advantage over Romney, while a January poll showed Romney edging out Mr. Obama 47 percent to 45 percent. Another January poll showed the two tied.
Neither candidate, however, has had more than a six-point lead over the other since CBS News/New York Times began conducting head-to-head in polls this January.
Despite recent controversies surrounding issues like same-sex marriage, which Mr. Obama came out in support of last week, the poll indicates that the economy remains the most important issue to voters in the presidential election.Poll: One in four less likely to back Obama over same-sex marriage
Poll: Most Americans support same-sex unions
Full poll results (PDF)
Sixty-two percent of registered voters cited the economy as the most important issue in the presidential election. Concern over the budget deficit ranked a distant second at 11 percent, followed by health care at 9 percent. Seven percent picked same-sex marriage, 4 percent cited foreign policy and 2 percent chose immigration.
Most Americans (67 percent) believe the economy is in bad shape, but respondents expressed the most optimism on that issue since January 2008 - months before the economic crisis was in full swing. Thirty-two percent of Americans said the economy was in good shape, and 36 percent said they thought it was getting better. Twenty-four percent of Americans said they thought the economy was getting worse, and 39 percent said they thought it was staying the same.
Fifty percent of Americans said they approve of Mr. Obama's performance as president, while 48 percent disapproved. Except for the month following the death of Osama bin Laden, when Mr. Obama's approval rating ticked up to 57 percent, this matches highest his approval rating Mr. Obama has enjoyed in two years.
Romney now leads the president among independents, while Mr. Obama has an advantage among moderates. Independents opted for Romney 43 percent to Mr. Obama's 36 percent, whereas moderates supported Mr. Obama 50 percent to Romney's 39 percent.
Romney took the lead among women voters, who supported the former Massachusetts governor 46 percent to Mr. Obama's 44 percent, which is within the poll's margin of error. In April, Mr. Obama had an edge among women voters, with 49 percent support to Romney's 43 percent.
Both candidates continue to perform well with their political base. The president gets solid support from Democrats and liberals, while Romney is running strong with Republicans and conservatives.
Neither candidate has particularly strong favorability ratings, although Mr. Obama outperforms Romney in that arena: 45 percent of Americans each said they view the president favorably and unfavorably. Only 31 percent gave Romney a favorable rating, while 38 percent gave him a negative rating. Many voters continue to be undecided about Romney or haven't heard enough about him to have an opinion.
Obama team's attack on Romney mirrors 1994 race
Search the CBS News polls database
This poll was conducted by telephone on May 11-13, 2012 among 615 adults nationwide, including 562 registered voters, who were first interviewed for a CBS News/New York Times Poll conducted April 13-17, 2012. Phone numbers were dialed from samples of both standard land-line and cell phones. The error due to sampling for results based on the entire sample could be plus or minus four percentage points. The margin of error for the sample of registered voters is four percentage points. The error for subgroups is higher. This poll release conforms to the Standards of Disclosure of the National Council on Public Polls.


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Highway Frontage Real Estate specialises in the sale of self storage facilities. As the leading nation wide specialists in the industry, we pride ourselves on providing exceptional service to our clients, with the expertise and knowledge built up over 15 years.
We have strong relationships within the Self Storage industry, and for anyone interested in entering this industry, the SSAA - Self Storage Association of Australasia is a valuable resource.


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The most striking change in American society in the past generation—roughly since Ronald Reagan was elected President—has been the increase in the inequality of income and wealth. Timothy Noah's "The Great Divergence: America's Growing Inequality Crisis and What We Can Do About It" (Bloomsbury), a good general guide to the subject, tells us that in 1979 members of the much discussed "one per cent" got nine per cent of all personal income. Now they get a quarter of it. The gains have increased the farther up you go. The top tenth of one per cent get about ten per cent of income, and the top hundredth of one per cent about five per cent. While the Great Recession was felt most severely by those at the bottom, the recovery has hardly benefitted them. In 2010, ninety-three per cent of the year's gains went to the top one per cent.
Since rich people are poorer in votes than they are in dollars, you'd think that, in an election year, the ninety-nine per cent would look to politics to get back some of what they've lost, and that inequality would be a big issue. So far, it hasn't been. Occupy Wall Street and its companion movements briefly spurred President Obama to become more populist in his rhetoric, but there's no sign that Occupy is going to turn into the kind of political force that the Tea Party movement has been. There was a period during the Republican primary campaign when Romney rivals like Newt Gingrich tried to take votes from the front-runner by bashing Wall Street and private equity, but that didn't last long, either. Politics does feel sour and contentious in ways that seem to flow from the country's economic distress. Yet much of the ambient discontent is directed toward government—the government that kept the recession from turning into a depression. Why isn't politics about what you'd expect it to be about?
Traditionally, class figured less in politics in America than in most other Western countries, supposedly because the United States, though more economically unequal, and rougher in tone, was more socially equal, more diverse, more democratic, and better at giving ordinary people the opportunity to rise. That's what Alexis de Tocqueville found in the eighteen-thirties, and the argument has had staying power. It has also been wearing thin. During the five decades from 1930 to 1980, economic inequality decreased significantly, without imperilling "American exceptionalism." So it's especially hard to put a good face on the way inequality has soared in the decades since. Even if you think that all a good society requires is—according to the debatable conservative mantra—equal opportunity for every citizen, you ought to be a little shaken right now. Opportunity is increasingly tied to education, and educational performance is tied to income and wealth. When it comes to social mobility between generations, the United States ranks near the bottom of developed nations.
Like the competitors on cooking-contest TV shows, writers who are presented with these socioeconomic ingredients do quite different things with them analytically, but nobody approves of the situation and almost everybody blames the élite. Charles Murray points out, in his new book, "Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010" (Crown Forum), that indices of social disorganization at the bottom of the income distribution—imprisonment, joblessness, divorce, out-of-wedlock childbearing—have been rising substantially. "Coming Apart" reprises elements from all Murray's previous books, most notably "Losing Ground," from 1984, which counterpoised a liberal élite and a socially dysfunctional underclass, but the differences are telling. In "Losing Ground," the underclass being examined was mainly black, and the argument was that the élite had helped to create that underclass by enacting social-welfare programs. Poor people reacted to their perverse incentives by losing an ethic of work and family, and the social fabric of their communities disintegrated. But the social program that was the main villain of "Losing Ground," Aid to Families with Dependent Children, doesn't exist anymore, and Murray no longer blames misguided policies for the behavioral problems of the poor.
Instead, the malign influence of the élite is purely a matter of ethos, or moral tone-setting. The élite—who, in Murray's account, live in unprecedented geographic and social isolation from poor and working people—are themselves hardworking, unlikely to divorce, dedicated to their children, and even comparatively religious, but, unlike the élite of Victorian England, they don't "preach what they practice." Somehow this manifests itself in the breakdown of social mores at the opposite end of society.
"Coming Apart" is, in effect, an analysis of inequality that rules out a program of redistribution. In Murray's view, trying to shift resources away from the élite wouldn't do much good, because (as Murray and Richard Herrnstein argued, in far more detail, in "The Bell Curve") the élite are genetically endowed with higher intelligence: as long as the United States is a meritocratic society, and as long as these people keep meeting at selective colleges, marrying, and improving their breeding stock, they'll keep doing better than everybody else. Anyway, what the non-élite need isn't money, Murray thinks; it's better values. Very little of "Coming Apart" is devoted to government policy.
Murray's élite live in an archipelago of "SuperZips," mainly blue-state inner-ring suburbs, like Chevy Chase, Maryland. They are a type that sounds awfully familiar: Obama-supporting, kitchen-renovating professionals with graduate degrees, who, unable to rest comfortably in the knowledge that they have passed economically dispositive high I.Q.s on to their children at conception, obsess relentlessly over education. In David Rothkopf's "Power, Inc." (Farrar, Straus & Giroux), we encounter an even more exalted "Superclass"—a group Rothkopf introduced in a previous book by that title—whose members are the sort of people one might encounter at the World Economic Forum, in Davos. They are rich, rooted primarily in global banking and business rather than in any particular communities or set of social values, and ideologically committed to unimpeded markets above all else. Unlike Murray's élite, they are not merely the product of inexorable natural processes. They flourish in a world they deliberately built for themselves, by expertly altering the rules. Rothkopf, who was a Deputy Under-Secretary of Commerce during the Clinton Administration and is now a globe-trotting consultant, writes as a quasi-penitent member of this group.
Rothkopf's book is astonishingly ambitious. It traces the relationship between state and market—a relationship that, he says, has succeeded the relationship between church and state as the dominant conflict in societies—from the thirteenth century to the present. During the past thirty years, he says, we've adopted the view that politics and markets were actually allied: freedom in one realm meant freedom in the other. The result of this idea, along with the increasing influence of business within both political parties, was a series of policies that deregulated national currencies and banking systems and enabled the globalized economy of the Superclass.
Meanwhile, the overwhelming majority of people still live in specific places and depend on local and national governments for social benefits, beginning with items as basic as stable currencies. Globalization, in its present form, strengthens a cadre of very large businesses that Rothkopf calls "supercitizens," and diminishes government, which is becoming, in his nice phrase, "too small to succeed." The result is that "there has been a decoupling of the interests of supercitizens and those of the ordinary people around them, between those who represent the views of people who must necessarily live within borders and those for whom borders no longer have meaning, between those who require jobs and capital flows and those who view people, villages, cities, and states as economic options, part of a constantly changing calculus in which efficiencies and profits rule."
Rothkopf writes as a grand strategist, not as a reporter, but there are a few moments in his book when he visits members of the Superclass whom he obviously knows from having worked with them. Both Robert Rubin and Lawrence Summers explain to him that the globalization and deregulation of finance that they helped to bring about when they were in government was a historical inevitability, not a policy choice. And Hank Greenberg, of A.I.G., bitterly describes the government's rescue of his company, in September of 2008, as having been simply a way of protecting the interests of Goldman Sachs, which had a substantial stake in A.I.G.'s fate. Rothkopf doesn't get very specific about what he proposes to do to reverse the power imbalance between governments and markets, but he makes it clear that he thinks that political decisions created the present situation and that only different political decisions will alleviate it.
Tony Judt—who died in 2010, of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a degenerative disease that completely disables the body while leaving the mind intact—shares with Rothkopf an insistent disapproval of the current apotheosis of global finance. Immobilized and understandably in an elegiac mood, he dictated his book "Ill Fares the Land" (Penguin) to assistants. Because he has so much less historical ground to cover than Rothkopf, he is able to pay close attention to the vanished heyday of social-democratic politics in the West, a subject that Rothkopf skates past quickly to get to the present. The result is a startling reversal of our political common sense. If there's anything we all think we know, it's that Britain and the United States were in terrible shape just before Reagan and Margaret Thatcher came to power: drab, inflationary, prone to shortages and delays, incapable of dynamism, crippled by organizational failure. Not so, Judt says. Actually, those were wonderful days.
Some of Judt's argument is particular to Europe. When American conservatives declare the "European model" to be obsolete—as Charles Murray does—they overlook how miraculous it seemed, during the second half of the twentieth century, for the blood-soaked ground of the Continent to be free of war, free of public ethnic hatred, democratic, and prosperous. In the United States no less than in Europe, the welfare state's benefits—health care, old-age pensions, public transportation, and education—hadn't existed as universal guarantees before the twentieth century. Dramatic increases in longevity and health coincided with rising and more evenly distributed prosperity. The achievements of social democracy were large, and its failures, by comparison, relatively minor.
Judt candidly acknowledges that individual choice and economic growth weren't the primary goals of social democracy; it was trying to create order and predictability, by building universal systems that bound people together. He evidently didn't mind that when he was a child Britain had only one, government-owned broadcast network, which aimed for uplift, that London taxis had to be black, and that soccer teams were proudly local and uncommercial. The eclipse of social democracy resulted not from any failure on its part, Judt says, but from other factors—such as the rise of the individualistic New Left, the exaggerated preoccupation of influential Austrian economists like Friedrich Hayek and Ludwig von Mises with the dangers of a powerful state, and the inexorable process by which social democracy's beneficiaries, as their situations improved, began to think of the system as a burden. Of course, all these considerations would similarly explain why inequality hasn't flourished as a political issue. Judt also cites the fall of Communism and the end of the Cold War. It's clear in retrospect that the existence of the Soviet empire was a spur to social democracy, in the United States and in Europe, because it was a serious competitor whose main selling point was generous social provision. The West had no choice but to compete.
The United States never had a BBC or a National Health Service, but other, now diminished or vanished features of American society had some of the same effects. Before the late nineteen-seventies, corporations were not managed for "shareholder value" to the extent that they are today, and many of them offered de-facto lifetime employment and generous health benefits and pensions. The more regulated and localized American economy had all sorts of inefficiencies and trade barriers that created safe harbors for institutions like banks, department stores, insurance companies, fixed-commission stock brokerages, and middlemen in supply chains. Unions were more powerful. In the "new economy," each line of business tends to have one dominant, global, mainly non-union player, such as Apple, Facebook, or Google. Judt isn't naïve enough to believe that people will simply come to their senses and reinstate social democracy as it was during its prime, but he does insist, like Rothkopf, that we will have to find ways to shift power from the market and back toward the state.
At the top of most liberals' list of what to do about inequality is to use the tax system to redistribute income—first of all by raising the top income-tax rate and the capital-gains rate. In "The Great Divergence," Noah describes a number of other possible remedies: increase government employment, regulate Wall Street more tightly, strengthen labor unions, cut the price of higher education. President Obama has at least made gestures toward most of these. But, if these are the natural responses, at least from a Democrat, why aren't such remedies at the center of political debate this year?
The left and the right give completely different answers to that question. On the left, Tony Judt complains that intellectuals "have shown remarkably little informed interest in the nitty-gritty of public policy, preferring to intervene or protest on ethically defined topics where the choices seem clearer." Young people with activist inclinations may mistakenly believe "that, conventional avenues of change being hopelessly clogged, they should forsake political organization for single-issue, non-governmental groups unsullied by compromise." Idealistic, rights-oriented campaigns soak up some of the energy that used to go into old-fashioned liberal politics.
In a bleak article published in The National Interest last fall, the Harvard economist Benjamin Friedman took a more systemic view. Whenever the country is in an economically stagnant period, he suggested, the result is deep, bitter social fragmentation; people try to protect what they have against perceived attempts by others to take it away, and this defensive mistrust becomes a central theme of politics. "The unwillingness to entertain compromise with one's political opponents on the central issues of the day is a phenomenon all too familiar in times when participants in a democratic society lose the sense that that society is delivering any material improvement in their lives," he wrote. Americans supported a large expansion of government during the New Deal only because the Great Depression had an unusually wide impact: "Americans had a sense of everyone's going down together—a condition certainly not shared in the most recent financial crisis, nor in the general stagnation of incomes and living standards that set in more than a decade ago." So now we're back to normal. Public-employee pensions and employment contracts, which Tony Judt thinks of as a socially binding force, are now—from Athens to Madison, Wisconsin—the object of hostility by people who don't have them and of fierce, to-the-barricades protectiveness by people who do. None of this bodes well for a politics aimed at alleviating inequality.
Still, progressives have certainly tried to devise a political program of this sort. Dylan Ratigan, the MSNBC host, does so in "Greedy Bastards: How We Can Stop Corporate Communists, Banksters, and Other Vampires from Sucking America Dry" (Simon & Schuster). Ratigan started as a television business reporter, but, he says, he became so angry that he switched to the talk-show side of journalism. In his book, he makes a number of the standard cable-news moves: he rages, he oversimplifies, he invents social categories so that he can vilify them. He makes politics and government look easier than they are by proposing, for example, that business can be neatly divided into productive and blood-sucking categories. But he's also fascinated by the details of how the political system works. He conducts public-policy reviews of banking, trade, currency, health care, education, and energy, telling us what's wrong and how to fix it.
Ratigan's engagement with the details of government—unusual for someone in his job—only deepens the mystery of why American politics is the way it is. Why aren't more Americans furious about derivatives trading and the devaluation of Chinese currency, the way he is? Tea Partiers find fuel for anger in the Federal Reserve Board and the direct election of U.S. senators—what makes those issues take? You can feel an adept liberal politician like President Obama struggling to find a way to talk about the financial crisis and inequality. There must be some means of doing so that will resonate with most Americans, without driving away the considerable funding base that Obama has among one-per-centers or opening himself up to caricature as a socialist. But the formula hasn't presented itself yet.
On the conservative side, Mark Meckler and Jenny Beth Martin, the founders of the group Tea Party Patriots, declare in their new book, "Tea Party Patriots: The Second American Revolution" (Holt), that, as small-business owners, they were in severe distress during the financial crisis, but did not want any help from the government. "Tea Party Patriots" is suffused with a sense that other people have Washington connections and get things they don't deserve, while people like them don't, and that the only solution is to disable government entirely. But we shouldn't take at face value the stated desire of many conservatives to do away with all the major features of twentieth-century government. The Harvard scholars Theda Skocpol and Vanessa Williamson did extensive interviews for their study "The Tea Party and the Remaking of American Conservatism" (Oxford). They find that the members of the movement, who tend to be older, really don't want to roll back government pensions and health care for senior citizens (which, according to Benjamin Friedman, make up about three-quarters of all entitlement spending by the federal government). Even Ron Paul didn't complain much about Medicare during the Republican primary campaign. Still, the idea of "government" as villain clearly resonates. It can't just be that less affluent conservative voters have been brainwashed by Fox News. Something else must be going on.
For now, the biggest, meatiest available conservative take on American politics is "Spoiled Rotten: How the Politics of Patronage Corrupted the Once Noble Democratic Party and Now Threatens the American Republic" (Broadside Books), by Jay Cost, a young blogger and columnist for The Weekly Standard. Cost has a master's degree in political science from the University of Chicago, and his book feels like a dissertation topic that was repurposed for the political debates of the moment. Its aim is to present a history of the Democratic Party from the Jackson through the Obama Administrations, and to show how the Party lost its way. Cost hasn't done any original research, but he has mastered a remarkable range of material, and produced a full-bore, non-caricatural critique of liberalism.
What's refreshing about Cost is that he has been trained to think about politics not as a battle between good guys and bad guys but as an ever-shifting series of alliances that seek things from government in response to the conditions of the time. This gives his book a real sophistication; he deftly accounts for changes in the Democratic coalition and for the efforts of Democratic Presidents to use policy to strengthen the Party. Andrew Jackson invented the spoils system to reward supporters with government jobs. Franklin D. Roosevelt passed laws that brought labor and African-Americans into the Party, but declined to push for laws that would have driven away the white segregationist South. And so on. But Cost also wants to draw bright conceptual lines between the times (mainly before the nineteen-sixties) when this way of practicing politics was understandable, and the times (mainly after the nineteen-sixties, and especially during the Obama Administration) when it has been malignant.
Once politics is understood in terms of interest groups, it's difficult to use concepts like "the public interest" and "the national interest" unself-consciously. What makes some groups "special interests" or (Cost's favorite term) "clients" and others not? James Madison, the patron saint of American political pluralism, warned in Federalist No. 10 against "the violence of faction," but he was just as worried about small groups being oppressed by large ones as he was by the prospect that the American government would not attend to the good of the whole nation. Nor did Madison imagine that any one actor in the American political system—the President, or the commentariat—would be able to discern and direct government toward "the permanent and aggregate interests of the community." He did not traffic in modern notions of a readily apparent public interest—but Cost, though he duly quotes Madison, does. He offers breezy formulations like this: "Identifying the public interest seems like it might be a tricky problem. How do we know if something is good for the whole country or merely the projection of our self-interest onto everybody else? In practice, however, it is often pretty easy to figure out, as some issues are obviously urgent national concerns." This allows him to dismiss the grand initiatives of the early Obama Administration—the economic stimulus package, the health-care bill, the (failed) attempt at legislation to limit carbon emissions, the rescue of the banking system—as cases of "clientelism" that demonstrate that the Democrats today are nothing more than "a fractious group of rent seekers" and "a threat to the American Republic itself."
The interest groups that led the Democrats astray, according to Cost, have come to prominence in the Party since the Great Society: public-sector unions, elements of Wall Street, feminists, environmentalists, and members of Congress who represent districts drawn to be majority-minority. When modern Democrats are centrist, Cost judges them to be more closely attuned to the public interest; when they are more liberal, he finds them to have fallen prey to clientelism. Thus the early years of the Clinton Administration (think of the unsuccessful health-care-reform plan) were devoted to clients and the later years (think of the elimination of Aid to Families with Dependent Children) to the public interest. Democrats of previous generations are treated more generously. Cost deems Harry Truman's unsuccessful proposal for universal national health insurance an example of "broad proposals that would benefit the country at large." By contrast, Obama proposed universal health care "regardless of what the broader public wanted," because it would "disproportionately aid Democratic clients." Cost treats political parties as inherently perilous, partly because the Founders didn't see them as an important part of the system. Yet, because parties are necessarily alliances of disparate constituencies, political scientists have mainly regarded them as a healthy way of counteracting the power of single-issue interest groups. It's hard not to wonder about an account in which a party is captive to interest groups at some moments but not at others.
Liberals would do well to read Cost's book, for reasons other than what he intended: it demonstrates how powerful the impulse is to see what you're for as unself-interested and what the other guy is for as interest-group greed. A full sense of what conservatives object to in the Obama program can be hard to extract from daily conservative discourse. Cost provides this. You can put on his glasses and see that "Obamacare" looks like a set of deals with privileged health-care companies that got a seat at the bargaining table, that the stimulus and the financial rescue were ways of helping banks and unions that contributed to the 2008 campaign, that cap-and-trade environmental legislation was a way of rewarding big environmental groups and corporations. Even the underlying problems that these initiatives were meant to address don't strike him as having to do with the national interest: you might favor universal health-care as an anti-inequality measure, but Cost views it as just another goody for non-majoritarian groups trying to claw more from the government. The liberal conversation has exactly the same limits: the impulse to see conservative causes as payoffs to interest groups—and conservative political successes as demonstrations of structural flaws in the political system—is well-nigh irresistible.
Because groups with wildly different perspectives dominate politics, the observation that ninety-nine per cent of Americans are being left behind economically isn't of much use politically. The ninety-nine per cent is too big a category to be an effective political force. For all that, inequality already is a political cause, though in strange and unexpected ways. (Cost is upset about inequality, and comes close to predicting that the Republicans will be the party that takes it on, because the Democrats have become the party of Wall Street.) But if we are to go further—and get the political system to try seriously to reverse the trends of the past thirty years—somebody will have to figure out how to stitch together a coalition of distinct, smaller interest groups that, in their different ways, care deeply about inequality, and, together, can pressure Washington in favor of specific policies. It's an unlovely business, but if you believe that government is the best instrument with which to address the problem it's also a morally urgent one. ♦


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Housing discrimination is prohibited by the Fair Housing Act. Discrimination covered by the Act can take many different forms beyond just raising prices or lying about availability. For example, the Act addresses wheelchair access in some newer properties. Learn what the Fair Housing Act covers, how to complain, and how the investigation process works.
*NO PURCHASE NECESSARY. VOID WHERE PROHIBITED. The VETERANS UNITED HOME LOANS AND REALTOR.COM® New Home for the Holidays $200k Veteran Homebuyer Giveaway sweepstakes starts 10/1/2018 (12:01p.m., Eastern Time) and ends 11/30/2018 (11:59a.m., Eastern Time). Open to qualifying U.S. military service members and U.S. military veterans who are domiciled in the U.S. and are at least the age of majority in their place of domicile, be it 18 or an older age. One entry per person per allowed method (maximum of 5 entries per person, total). Prize is US$200,000 for, or toward, the purchase of a home in the U.S., but may be subject to tax withholding. Prize awarded by random drawing. Odds of winning depend on number of eligible entries received. See Official Rules for how to enter, prize details, restrictions and other conditions and requirements. Sponsor: Mortgage Research Center, LLC, d/b/a Veterans United Home Loans, 1400 Veterans United Drive, Columbia, MO 65203.
Real estate in MumbaiFlats in MumbaiFlats for Rent in MumbaiNew Projects in MumbaiReal estate in BengaluruFlats in BengaluruFlats for Rent in BengaluruNew Projects in BengaluruReal estate in HyderabadFlats in HyderabadFlats for Rent in HyderabadNew Projects in HyderabadReal estate in PuneFlats in PuneFlats for Rent in PuneNew Projects in PuneReal estate in ChennaiFlats in ChennaiFlats for Rent in ChennaiNew Projects in ChennaiReal estate in DelhiFlats in DelhiFlats for Rent in DelhiNew Projects in DelhiReal estate in GurgaonFlats in GurgaonFlats for Rent in GurgaonNew Projects in GurgaonReal estate in NoidaFlats in NoidaFlats for Rent in NoidaNew Projects in NoidaReal estate in KolkataFlats in KolkataFlats for Rent in KolkataNew Projects in KolkataReal estate in AhmedabadFlats in AhmedabadFlats for Rent in AhmedabadNew Projects in AhmedabadReal estate in FaridabadFlats in FaridabadFlats for Rent in FaridabadNew Projects in FaridabadReal estate in GhaziabadFlats in GhaziabadFlats for Rent in GhaziabadNew Projects in Ghaziabad
Due to the high price of real estate in Sri Lanka, rental properties are a more convenient alternative for many. Expats find a house for rent in Sri Lanka a cheaper option compared to houses for sale in Sri Lanka due to tax reasons. Vacation rentals are on a short term basis and ideal for tourists. But those who move to the country for the long term can find fully furnished houses with a range of facilities in highly residential areas. Air conditioned bed rooms are important, especially due to the tropical weather and hot summer days. Rent in Sri Lanka varies based on the location. In the city centre the average price of a single story, 1 bedroom house for rent is likely to be Rs. 40-60,000 while outside the city centre the rent is much lower between Rs. 15-25,000. A 2 to 3 bedrooms' house is ideal for an average family with dining and living rooms, house located close to local amenities. The surrounding facilities also affect the house rent.
The Fair Housing Act does not specifically prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity. But discrimination against someone who is lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender (LGBT) may still be in violation of the Act or other state or local regulations. If you think you've been discriminated against for these reasons, file a complaint as described above, or email HUD at email@example.com with general questions about LGBT housing issues.
NYCHA and other City employees can participate in NYCHA's automated payroll rent deduction program. Half of the monthly rent amount will be deducted from the first two paychecks of every month. Deductions can be higher than half of the monthly rent because deductions are half of the outstanding balance, not just the rent. If no deductions are being taken out, the development did not enter the employee into the system or his or her agency is not part of the program. To terminate payroll deductions, a termination form must be completed and submitted to your property management office. To sign up, please click this link: NYCHA Self-Service Login/Register.
The mission of the Office of Housing (OH) is to create strong, healthy communities, prevent displacement and increase opportunities for people of all income levels to live in Seattle. OH supports development and preservation of affordable multifamily homes, homeownership opportunities, policy and program development, free weatherization services and home repair loans and stewardship of city-funded affordable homes.
Housing discrimination is prohibited by the Fair Housing Act. Discrimination covered by the Act can take many different forms beyond just raising prices or lying about availability. For example, the Act addresses wheelchair access in some newer properties. Learn what the Fair Housing Act covers, how to complain, and how the investigation process works.
In 2017, 37,000 homes were built as rentals, according to the National Association of Home Builders. That grew to 43,000 last year, or just under 5% of total single-family housing starts. But that is just homes built and held by builders for rent and doesn't include those sold directly to investors, so the numbers are likely larger and growing more quickly.
People with low income Low Income: a total family income that's no more than the Section 8 low-income limit established by HUD. Individuals are considered one-person families. , seniors Senior: for housing benefit eligibility purposes, a person who is 62 or older. , and people with disabilities Person with a Disability: a person whose physical or mental impairment substantially limits one or more major life activities, such as eating or walking. may qualify for help from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to get affordable rental housing. HUD doesn't own rental property. It gives money to states and building owners, who in turn provide low-income housing opportunities.


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The most technically proficient standup paddleboarders in the world may well be a group of fishermen in Myanmar who have never heard of the increasingly popular sport. These boatmen, who teach their technique in Inle Lake's reed-choked waters, stand on one leg at the back tip of their canoes while using the calf of their free leg to guide a paddle tucked under their arm for leverage. Locals accomplish this while minding their nets and wearing traditional skirts – all the more reason to embrace local knowledge on the way to better SUP form.
Lessons are taught in hand-hewn dugout canoes, which – due to their round-bottom design – are much less forgiving than the wide, buoyant paddleboards used for traditional standup. Standing still at the back of an empty boat is hard. Standing still at the back of an empty boat on one leg while paddling with the other is harder. Initial instruction often takes place in shallow rice paddies with the teacher steadying the boat for students.
Burmese standup drills a few important lessons into SUPers. Participants must keep their backs straight while paddling, bending only at the waist and knees; to turn, paddlers use a variation of the forward sweep stroke, stretching the free leg forward to place the paddle toward the front of the boat and pulling back in a wide away from the stern.
The real workout starts once students begin propelling their boats forward into the 45-square-mile lake, an intense core and lower body workout that intensifies with speed. And Inle is not a no-wake zone. Boats ferrying tourists and locals between bustling markets throw off waves big enough waves to knock cocky paddlers into the drink.
Fortunately, the view from the water is lovely. The shores are dotted with charming villages and ancient monasteries where exhausted paddlers can use afternoon meditation as an excuse to rest their weary legs. Burma's verdant northeast is attracting so many international travelers these days, which means paddlers can retire to luxury when the balanced boatmen's lesson comes to a close.
More information: The easiest way to reach Inle Lake is by hopping a domestic flight from Yangon or Mandalay on AirMyanmar, both worthwhile destinations themselves. A night at the excellent Shwe Inn Tha runs from roughly $60. For standup lessons, head to the Smiling Moon agency and ask for Mr. U Paw San.
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Easter: May 1st
Optional Memorial of St. Joseph the Worker
» Enjoy our Liturgical Seasons series of e-books!
Old Calendar: St. Joseph the Worker; St. Peregrine, priest & religious (Hist)
The feast of St. Joseph the Worker was established by Pope Pius XII in 1955 in order to Christianize the concept of labor and give to all workmen a model and a protector. By the daily labor in his shop, offered to God with patience and joy, St. Joseph provided for the necessities of his holy spouse and of the Incarnate Son of God, and thus became an example to all laborers. "Workmen and all those laboring in conditions of poverty will have reasons to rejoice rather than grieve, since they have in common with the Holy Family daily preoccupations and cares"(Leo XIII).
St. Joseph the Worker
"May Day" has long been dedicated to labor and the working man. It falls on the first day of the month that is dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary. Pope Pius XII expressed the hope that this feast would accentuate the dignity of labor and would bring a spiritual dimension to labor unions. It is eminently fitting that St. Joseph, a working man who became the foster-father of Christ and patron of the universal Church, should be honored on this day.
- May 1 is celebrated in Communist countries as the Day of the International Solidarity of Workers. Today would be a good day to pray for athesistic Communism's influence to cease and a proper application of the principles explained by Leo XIII in Rerum novarum and John Paul II in Centesimus annus to be the guide used by nations.
St. Peregrine
As a young man St. Peregrine was a member of an anti-papal party until he encountered St. Philip Benizi, the head of the Servite order, who had been sent to try to reconcile the divided community. While trying to preach in Forli, Philip was heckled and even struck by Peregrine, who was overcome by momentary political fervor. But that moment also changed Peregrine. He began to channel his energies in new directions, engaged in good works and eventually joined the Servites in Siena and went on to be ordained a priest. Returning to his home town, he founded a new Servite house there and became well known for his preaching and holiness as well as his devotion to the sick and poor.


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A while back I started posting some contractor related articles.The articles were mainly for the those people that wanted to start their own business and work for themselves as a contractor. I work in the IT sector through my own company with several clients both based in the UK and across the pond in the US. I have been running my company and working for myself for almost five years now and I even through one of the most difficult economic times in modern history I have thoroughly enjoyed it and I wouldn't change anything that has happened thus far.
A while back I started a new section of gethynellis.com that I intended to have a focus on contracting and also some career based themes. At the time I thought it would useful to split up the SQL Server content that usually gets published on gethynellis.com from the contractor/career type posts. This week for a number of reasons I have decided that was not such a good idea.
My reasons for splitting at the time were simple, the two people who read my blog (My wife Lisa and my Mum, Thanks Both!) are expecting the content to be SQL Server related and I didn't want to mix the two. It turns out that I don't post that often to the contracting blog and I don't write the career contracting posts frequently enough to warrant splitting out the content into a blog of its own. I have crossed posted some of those posts and they have been quote well received on the main SQL Server blog. So I will be removing the Contractor/Career blog and from now on all my posts, whatever the subject will here.
So as its December and a New Year is just around the corner I have decided that the blog needs a bit of tidy up and spring clean. Over the next few weeks you will be seeing some small changes occur in the look and feel. Not a major changes but some old things will be removed like the contracting and section and some new things added I will hopefully have more posts and articles from both Ian and David. I do have a couple outstanding that I need to publish. There will be more SQL Server content, with the release of SQL Server 2012 due by the end of June next year hopefully we will have lots of posts showing off the new features.
So when will we get an RTM version of SQL Server 2012? Here are my thoughts SQL BITS which is scheduled for the end of March 2012 is the official launch and I believe the March/April SQL Connections in Las Vegas is also a launch event. Even though the launch is planned for the spring and we recently got RC0 (Release Candidate 0), the official line at the PASS keynotes was the first half of 2012. The launch events of SQL Server 2008 were before the RTM date too . This means it could be as late as June. In fact Teched is due to start June 25th if I was a betting man that would be the date I would pick.


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M&M Home Remodeling Services is a full-service, exterior remodeling company that delivers quality services while keeping your objectives in mind. Remodeling is one of the single biggest investments you make. An M&M Remodeling consultant will work with you every step of the way, offering quality advice to develop the remodel that is right for you.
GuildQuality customer satisfaction surveys enable homeowners to rate their contractor on a scale of zero to four (with zero being the worst and four being the best) in all sorts of categories. Our members can publish a summary of those answers here on their profile page, displaying a bar for as many or as few questions as they like. The score for each category indicates the percentage of survey respondents who answered a three or four to that particular question.Learn more about the feedback published on this page.
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Reviews are different than comments. These are star ratings that homeowners ask us to publish, and they come with a written description of the type of experience they had working with their contractor. We publish all of the reviews we receive: positive and negative alike.Learn more about reviews and comments.
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In this report, M&M Home Remodeling Services has published a summary of the customer feedback they've received in the past 12 months. In that time, 147 out of 289 customers (51%) responded to a GuildQuality satisfaction survey, with the most recent response in January 2020.
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Freedom of the Press
You are here
South Korea
South Korea
2011 Scores
Press Status
Press Freedom Score (0 = best, 100 = worst)
Legal Environment(0 = best, 30 = worst)
Political Environment(0 = best, 40 = worst)
Economic Environment(0 = best, 30 = worst)
Status change explanation: South Korea declined from Free to Partly Free to reflect an increase in official censorship, particularly of online content, as well as the government's attempt to influence media outlets' news and information content. Over the past several years, an increasing number of online comments have been removed for expressing either pro–North Korean or anti–South Korean views. The current conservative government has also interfered in the management of major broadcast media, with allies of President Lee Myung-bak receiving senior posts at large media companies over the objections of journalists.
Freedom of the press is guaranteed under South Korean law and is generally respected in practice. However, despite having had one of the freest media environments in Asia, since the inauguration of President Lee Myung-bak in 2008 South Korea has experienced a noticeable decline in freedom of expression for both journalists and the general public. Though the government censors films for sex and violence, censorship of the media is against the law. However, Article 7 of the 1948 National Security Law allows imprisonment for praising or expressing sympathy for North Korea. As political tensions with neighboring North Korea have intensified—leading in several cases to armed engagement and skirmishes—officials appear to have become more concerned about the expression of pro–North Korean sentiments, particularly online. In 2010, more than 20 people were booked for making pro–North Korean comments, while over 40,000 pro–North Korean online posts were deleted by operators after pressure from police, more than 100 times the number of deletions five years ago. The government has also blocked access to 13 social networking accounts owned by the North Korean government. Interacting with North Korea's new Twitter account can lead to up to three years in jail.
Defamation remains a criminal offense, and charges are occasionally threatened or brought against those journalists who express critical views. In June 2009, four producers and a writer for the television program "PD Notebook" were indicted on defamation charges for a 2008 report on U.S. beef imports that sparked weeks of protests; the accused faced five-year prison sentences, but were exonerated in January 2010. A Broadcasting Act passed in 2009, which allows investment by conglomerates and newspaper companies in the broadcasting sector, raised fears that media diversity could be compromised through increased cross-ownership.
The government has also been accused of seeking to extend its influence over several state-controlled broadcast media companies. Since Lee's inauguration, former presidential aides and advisers have been appointed to key positions at a number of major media companies over the objections of journalists who have sought to maintain those broadcasters' editorial independence. Under the Lee administration, approximately 160 journalists have been penalized for writing critical reports about government policies, as well as for their roles in advocating for press freedom since 2008. At the end of 2010, eight journalists remained dismissed from their positions at the YTN station and the public Munhwa Broadcasting Corporation (MBC) network for their participation in similar acts. The Seoul District Court ruled in November 2009 that the dismissals were an abuse of management's disciplinary discretion. The court ordered YTN to reinstate six of its employees, but the station has failed to comply.
Otherwise, South Korea has a vibrant and diverse media, with numerous cable, terrestrial, and satellite television stations and more than 100 daily newspapers in Korean and English. Many newspapers are controlled by larger industrial conglomerates and also depend on large corporations for their advertising revenue. There are both public and private radio and television stations, including an American Forces Network for the U.S. military. The public Korea Broadcasting System (KBS) and MBC networks maintain the highest viewership. According to Reporters Without Borders, following the March 2010 torpedoing of a South Korean warship, allegedly by North Korea, the South Korean government resumed the dissemination of propagandistic messages via radio.
Approximately 84 percent of the population accessed the internet in 2010, and a significant number of young people get their news exclusively from online sources. South Korean online media are especially vigorous and innovative. For example, an interactive internet news site called OhMyNews, launched in 2000, allows citizens to submit their own news articles for immediate publication on the site. Aside from pro–North Korean content, the internet is generally unrestricted by regulators, but the government requires all website operators to indicate whether their sites might be harmful to youth. In a unique case in 2009, a blogger, Park Dae-sung, who went by the alias "Minerva," was arrested on the charges of spreading online rumors that the prosecution claimed led to dollar hoarding, prompting the government to inject $2 billion to stabilize the currency market. The prosecution had sought an 18-month prison term, but Park was acquitted by the Seoul Central District Court.