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Welcome to Books for All Scotland Database
The Books for All Database will close on 19 February 2020 and is being replaced by our new
Books for All Web site.
The new system is up and running and so we encourage you to create an account now, and to get into the habit of using the new facility so that you won't be surprised when this database stops working next year.
Head over to https://www.booksforall.org.uk/home/ and create your own personal account.
We would like to thank the team at Scran for all the help and support you have provided since the database was first created in 2010. Over the past 9 years over 230,000 files have been downloaded and thousands of children and young people with print disabilities have been able to access learning materials in accessible formats, and thereby be more included in learning.
Books for All provides books in accessible formats for pupils in Scotland who have difficulty with ordinary printed text, including those with dyslexia, who have a physical disability or who are blind or partially sighted.
We regret that books cannot be downloaded for learners outwith Scotland at this time.
Books should be downloaded by staff - not pupils - to comply with copyright terms and conditions.
1. First, log in to the database:
Staff can either log in with your Glow account or your school's Scran account. All Scottish teachers have Glow accounts, and all Scottish schools have Scran accounts.
2. Then search for and download book(s) you need:
3. Read the books:
The Books for All Database is managed by CALL Scotland and funded by the Scottish Government. The database is maintained by Scran.
"I find this site invaluable because we can download on to iPads and then the screen and fonts can be adapted for dyslexic students and students with sight issues." (Secondary school teacher, Moray)
Hodder Gibson PDF textbooks
Hodder Gibson textbooks have been temporarily (we hope) removed from the Database at the request of the publisher, following a copyright issue. We are working with Hodder to find a distribution mechanism that will solve this problem and hope that Gibson textbooks will be available again in future.
If you require access to a specific Hodder Gibson book on behalf of such a student, please follow the guidance for access on their website: https://www.hoddereducation.co.uk/rightsandpermissions.
Hodder Gibson textbooks are still available from RNIB Bookshare. RNIB Bookshare is similar to the Books for All Database in that it is a free service for schools in the UK, providing digital and accessible books for people with print disabilities.
Latest news
26 July 2018
TeeJay books with answer boxes:
16 July 2018
We regret that Hodder Gibson textbooks have been temporarily (we hope) removed from the Database at the request of the publisher, following a copyright issue. We are working with Hodder to find a distribution mechanism that will solve this problem and hope that Gibson textbooks will be available again in time for the 2018/19 academic session. In the meantime, Hodder Gibson will continue supporting students with difficulties accessing ordinary printed texts directly. If you require access to a specific Hodder Gibson book on behalf of such a student, please follow the guidance for access on their website: https://www.hoddereducation.co.uk/rightsandpermissions.
8 March 2018
New TeeJay Lifeskills PDFS - thanks!
26 January 2018
2017 Book Awards books:
25 January 2018
Contributed books from Aberdeenshire Council VI Service - thank you!
And lots of Double Takes:
12 September 2017
New Hodder books:
12 July 2017
New: Teejay Maths 1a with answer boxes. This is a Zipped file so follow the instructions on the Download page to download and unzip it.
3 July 2017
Scottish Children's Book Award BookBug books 2016 - Switch prompt and narrated versions:
New from Hodder:
20 April 2017
New: Teejay Maths 2b with answer boxes. This is a Zipped file so follow the instructions on the Download page to download and unzip it.
5 January 2017
New uploads:
20 December 2016
Two new Hodder PDFs:
14 November 2016
Portfolio versions of Teejay Books:
8 November 2016
New uploads:
And thanks to Marie Lawson, Shetland, for large print versions of National 5 Maths by David Alcorn.
And thanks to Dianne Williams, Edinburgh, for a Scanned version of:
13 October 2016
New Hodder Books:
9 September 2016
Another new audio short story:
17 August 2016
New audio short story:
11 July 2016
2 new books from Hodder:
20 June 2016
6 June 2016
2 new books from Hodder:
5 May 2016
Some recorded narration MP3s:
And from The Red Door - Iain Crichton Smith
27 April 2016
Marie Lawson from the Vision Service in Shetland has contributed Nelson Thornes Maths in Action S4-1, in large print 18 - thanks again!
11 March 2016
Some Keynote Versions:
1 March 2016
Scottish Children's Book Awards Bookbug books with recorded narration:
29 January 2016
Scanned copy of Abacus Number Workbook 3
28 January 2016
Lots of new Hodder PDFs:
8 January 2016
Thanks again to Marie Lawson in Shetland for more Large Print secondary maths books. We now have:
13 November 2015 - T! Thanks again to VTSS Edinburgh.
30 October 2015
Thanks once more to Marie Lawson in Shetland for contributing an 18 point Large Print version of National 4 Maths by David Alcorn, published by Hodder Gibson. Marie has uploaded:
The database also has the original PDF of the book, courtesy of Hodder Gibson.
11 September 2015 - Couple of scanned Heinemann Maths Textbooks:
26 August 2015 - 'U' to 'Z'
'T' will come later...
31 July 2015 - 'S'
30 July 2015 - Yet more VTSS books:
24 July 2015 - Yet more VTSS books:
22 July 2015 - More VTSS books:
22 July 2015 - Two more BrightRED Study Guides:
20 July 2015 - More from VTSS Edinburgh - English books batch 'H'
17 July 2015 - N5 Study Guides from BrightRED
Thanks to BrightRED for these PFDs of their Study Guides.
7 July 2015 - English Books from VTSS (F-G)
More English books from VTSS Edinburgh. Most are Large print PDFS.
7 July 2015 - BrightRED Publishers - CfE National 5 Study Guides
BrightRED Study Guides for National 5 - PDFs
2 July 2015 - BrightRED Publishers - CfE National 4 Study Guides
BrightRED Study Guides for National 4 - PDFs
1 July 2015 - BrightRED Publishers - CfE Higher Study Guides
Big thanks to BrightRED who have supplied us with digital versions of their Study Guides. The CfE Higher ones are now uploaded, the National 4/5 ones will follow shortly.
29 June 2015 - New Maths in Action S3-2 18 pt Large Print
Thanks once more to Marie Lawson in Shetland who has contributed New Maths in Action 32 in 18 point Large Print. This adds to Large Print versions of 11, 12, 21, 22 and 31 books that Marie has already provided to the database.
25 June 2015 - VTSS English Books - Batch B-E
Lots of new books - all English Books, All PDFs, mostly large print.
15 April 2015 - VTSS English Books - Batch A
The first batch of English books from VTSS Edinburgh are now available. Most of them are Large Print versions, and many are available as both Word Docs and PDFs. There are a few scanned books in here too.
'A' titles:
26 March 2015 - more VTSS books
Classical Studies:
24 March 2015 - more VTSS books
24 March 2015 - new books from Inverclyde
Large Print Word and PDF files from Inverclyde:
And some Oxford Reading Tree Books:
18 March 2015 - new books from VTSS in Edinburgh
We've uploaded a new batch of VTSS files - these are a mix of scanned and Large Print.
Home Economics
Modern Studies
3 March 2015 - new French books from VTSS in Edinburgh
Just before Christmas Mary Matson from Edinburgh and Lothians VTSS transcription team kindly gave us over 15,000 files to add to the database. Rebecca Gow here in CALL, with help from James, a student, have gone through this treasure trove and sorted the files into complete books. Some of the books are beautifully laid out Large Print, whilst others are scanned copies of paper books. The scanned files have been converted into text, but (as you can imagine) we've not had time to proof-read and correct them, so you will find some errors. Over the next few weeks we will check and upload these books to the database and post a list of the new titles here.
The first batch are French books:
23 February 2015
Thanks to Forbes Smith in East Dunbartonshire for contributing these scanned copies of secondary textbooks:
28 January 2015
Thanks to Caroline Jamieson in Moray for sending us a Large Print 16 point version of New Higher History Migration and Empire 1830-1939 by Simon Wood – ISBN 978-1-444-12437-8. This compliments the PDF version of the book from the publisher that is also on the database.
So why use the Large Print version and why use the original PDF? Briefly:
13 January 2015
Following the incident where a TeeJay book was found available on the internet (see 7 January below), we have modified the wording of the Books for All Database records and we hope that it is clearer and encourages staff to read and understand the terms and conditions.
Tom Strang at TeeJay is happy with the wording and so we have made the TeeJay books available once again. We are very grateful to Tom for his understanding and for allowing us to share his publications, free of charge, so that learners with print disabilities can access them.
You can see all the TeeJay books by clicking here.
7 January 2015
The TeeJay maths PDFs from the publisher have been temporarily removed from the database. Just before Christmas one of the files appeared on Wikispaces, freely downloadable. This is not permitted under the agreement we have with TeeJay. We are discussing how the files can be made more secure with TeeJay and once we have a solution we hope to have them available again soon.
This emphasises how important it is to abide by the Books for All terms and conditions and to ensure that the files are only provided for learners with print disabilities. If we collectively don't protect the publishers' rights and property, they very likely won't let us share their files.
15 December 2014
New books uploaded from Hodder Gibson are:
15 December 2014
Thanks to Forbes Smith from East Dunbartonshire for contributing scanned versions of:
31 October 2014
Thanks yet again to Marie Lawson in Shetland who has contributed New Maths in Action 31 in 18 point Large Print. This adds to the 11, 12, 21 and 22 books that Marie has already provided to the database.
10 October 2014
We have uploaded new versions of the TeeJay Curriculum for Excellence Maths books 1a and 1b. These have been adapted so that learners with print disabilities can type answers into boxes on screen, and can use drawing and annotation tools to complete the exercises. We undertook this task because of the good response to the adapted Heinemann maths books, but it has been a challenging job because of the scale (thousands of answer boxes had to be drawn in) and also because we had to devise different ways to try and make the books work as interactive PDF files. Thanks to Sarah and Rebecca for their enormous efforts and ingenuity!
You can download the books by clicking the links below.
Read the blog to find out more on how download and access the books on PC and iPad, and read the quick guide for more detail on how to use the books.
12 September 2014
Rebecca here in CALL has uploaded another 11 Hodder Gibson textbooks to the database and these are now available. They are:
9 September 2014
Our grateful thanks to Tom Strang and colleagues at TeeJay for providing us with PDFs of their new National 4 and 5 maths textbooks. The CfE Books N4-1, N4-2, N4+ and N5 are now available from the Database.
The books are PDF files and we have added bookmarks to aid navigation, and reader-extended them so that learners can use the comment, markup and drawing tools to type answers and complete some of the exercises on screen.
(We've not added answer boxes to these books because: there are few questions that can be answered with plain text answer boxes (the maths is more advanced); in many cases there isn't space on the page to insert the answer boxes; and we're still working on the earlier levels.)
These books are for learners who cannot read or access the paper copies, and we've had feedback that they are helpful for learners with visual impairment, physical disability, dyslexia and ASD.
28 August 2014
Hodder Gibson textbooks are now available from the Books for All Database!
For a few years now we have been distributing digital versions of Hodder Gibson textbooks on CD, and the service has become increasingly popular with schools. A teacher recently emailed: "Sincere thanks for the digital copies of the National 4 & 5 Physical Geography book. My pupils were absolutely delighted to hear and see their textbooks being used with Read and Write Gold. Fantastic service."
However, as more schools have requested more files the workload has increased and Rebecca here it CALL is spending a lot of time processing your paper application forms, burning CDs, and sending them to you in the post.
So we're very pleased to say that Hodder Gibson have now given us permission to make the books available for download via the Books for All Database which will be much faster and more convenient for you, as users, and also much more efficient for us.
So far, we have 217 books available including many of the National 3/4/5 textbooks and we will be adding to the set when we can get more books from Hodder.
Click on this link to browse the books.
The books are PDF files and so they can be opened and read using Windows or Mac computers, iPads, Android and Windows tablets, as well as smartphones.
We are particularly pleased to have taken this next step in our relationship with Hodder Gibson, and huge thanks to John Mitchell, Managing Director of Hodder Gibson, for his valuable support in making these files available to learners with disabilities.
26 June 2014
Thanks yet again to Marie Lawson in Shetland who has contributed an 18 point Large Print version of New Maths in Action S21. A huge amount of work has gone into this (it's 568 pages!) and the other New Maths in Action Large Print books and so we're grateful to Marie for sharing them.
3 February 2014
Thanks to Marie Lawson from the Vision Service in Shetland for contributing a new 18 point Large Print copy of New Maths in Action S22. It's available as two parts and you can find them on the Database by clicking the links below:
Marie previously contributed Large print copies of New Maths in Action S1-1 and S1-2. Click here to see all the New Maths in Action books on the database.
Remember also that you can get some Nelson Thornes Maths in Action books as PDF files from the Load2Learn database. Load2Learn currently has PDFs of New Maths in Action S2/2, S3/2 and S3/3 and also PDFs of the new Curriculum for Excellence titles - Maths in Action: National 4 and Maths in Action National 5. Load2Learn is like a 'sister' database of Books for All and is run by RNIB and Dyslexia Action.
19 August 2013
Following on from the Set Scottish Texts for National 5, we have scanned ad uploaded the texts for Higher as well. The books have been converted to readable text automatically, so there may be some errors. The table gives links to the books on the Database.
3 July 2013
For the new National 5 English courses, there are a set of Set Scottish Texts, which we have scanned and OCRd and uploaded to the database. The books with links to the various titles on the Database are given below.
2 July 2013
Large Print TeeJay and Heinemann books
Thanks to Caroline Jamieson in Moray for some new Large Print maths books:
Click here to see the new Large Print books.
These books can be printed out, or read and accessed directly on screen. Because the font size is large to begin with, they work very well on devices with small screens, because learners do not need to zoom in to enlarge the text. They are 'reader-enabled' PDF files so pupils can type their answers directly on top of the PDF.
Heinemann Scottish Secondary Mathematics
We also have scanned digital copies of the seven Heinemann Scottish Secondary Mathematics books: B1, B2, G1, G2, R1, R2 and R3.
Like most of the books we adapt here in CALL, they were done for pupils with physical disabilities where the main objective is to have digital copies that look like the original, so that the learner can find their way round the book using a laptop or tablet.
But since you can use text-to-speech to read the text, and zoom in to enlarge it, they may also be useful for learners with reading of visual difficulties. The books are 'reader-enabled' so students can add bookmarks, highlight the text, add sticky notes and other annotations to aid study.
Click here to see the Secondary Maths books.
1 July 2013
SHM 6 and 7 completes the set
The latest additions to the Books for All Database are Scottish Heinemann Maths 6 and 7 Textbooks, Extension Textbooks and Assessment Books. This completes the set we think of the SHM books. These titles have all been scanned and then adapted with answer boxes. In some cases extra pages have been added where there was no space to fit the answer boxes on the page, or to add in graph paper for drawing. The books were originally made for learners with physical disability or handwriting difficulties, so that they can just type their answers on screen, but pupils with dyslexia or reading difficulties might also find them useful because the text can be read out by the computer (not always accurately - there will be some recognition errors from the scanning), while learners with visual impairment can zoom in and magnify the text. We have also heard that some pupils on the autistic spectrum find the digital books more accessible than the paper versions. Click here to see all of these adapted new SHM books.
Thanks to Rebecca and Sarah here in CALL, and to our hard working volunteers from George Heriot's School, for adapting these and for drawing in the 7,454 answer boxes for the SHM 6 and 7 titles - all by hand!
On a computer, use the free Adobe Reader or Foxit Reader to type answers in, or even record audio answers, and also to draw and to measure dimensions and angles. Download a quick guide here.
On an iPad, you can use the free Adobe Reader app, but you are probably better off with PDF Expert, which has better tools for typing answers and annotating PDFs. (If you have an iPad 3. Mini or later, try dictating your answers using Siri - it works pretty well (for me....)).
Please let us know what you think of these adapted books - they have taken a lot of effort to produce and we have had good feedback so far, but it would be good to get more from staff, learners and parents.
21 May 2013. We are very grateful to TeeJay Publishers who have kindly provided PDFs of their six new Curriculum for Excellence textbooks. We have added bookmarks to aid navigation, matched the page numbers to the paper books, and 'reader-enabled' the files so that learners can use the typewriter, drawing, audio recording and highlighting tools in Adobe Reader to access the books. Click here to see these new books in the database.
21 May 2013. Thanks to Caroline Jamieson in Moray for contributing a Large print copy of the new TeeJay Maths Curriculum for Excellence Book 1b. Caroline has created the first 10 chapters and is working on the rest. See it here.
20 May 2013. Thanks to Marie Lawson in Shetland for uploading an 18 point Large Print version of New Maths in Action S1/1, to add to the 24 point Large Print copy of the S1/2 book that's already there.
We have also uploaded scanned PDF copies of New Maths in Action S1/3, S1/B and S2/3. These are most suitable for learners with physical disabilities who need digital versions of books because they have difficulty handling the paper copies. They can be accessible to some pupils with dyslexia or reading difficulties, or mild visual impairment, because the scans have been converted to readable text that can be magnified and read out with text-to-speech software. (We do not have the resources to manually check and correct the text and so there may be some errors.)
Click here to see these new books.
Remember that you can also download publisher-quality PDFs of New Maths in Action S2/2, S3/2 and S3/3 free from the Load2Learn database.
17 May 2013. 25 Scottish Heinemann Maths books from P1 to P5 have been added to the database. These are particularly aimed at learners with physical disabilities who have difficulty writing on the paper versions, but they are also useful for children with a visual impairment, who can zoom in to make the text larger and young people with dyslexia, who can use text-to-speech to help read the questions. We have also found that some children on the autistic spectrum like these electronic versions of the books.
The books have been scanned in the PDF and then CALL staff and some volunteers from George Heriot's School here in Edinburgh have drawn in thousands of answer boxes so that learners just need to click and type their answers. We have also added in extra pages with for example grid paper, for drawing exercises.
Click here to see the new books.
17 September 2012. Another 229 books have been added to the Database. These were kindly provided by the VTSS transcription team in Edinburgh. The books are all Large Print PDF files which can either be printed out or read on the computer. There are a range of titles and subjects including for example Oxford Reading Tree books, Heinemann Maths, and Nelson English textbooks.
August 2012. We have agreed with our long standing partner, Seeing Ear, to provide listings of their books directly within the Books for All Database. This makes it easier for teachers and pupils to get hold of their favourite titles.
August 2012. CALL Scotland are again working with the Scottish Book Trust to bring accessible copies of the 2012 Scottish Childrens' Book Awards shortlisted books to print disabled pupils across Scotland. These should be available in September.
For Glow users


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subset: commoncrawl


text:
bbuddies needed a new logo design and created a contest on 99designs.
A winner was selected from 52 designs submitted by 19 freelance designers.
Busy Buddies, Inc. Move Managers are like a wedding planner but for people who're moving and trying to juggle family, work, and time.
Busy Buddies, Inc.
Desired Color Scheme:
Desired Style:
Accepted File Formats:
Vector, uncertain open to suggestions
Busy Buddies, Inc. is redoing all our stuff to go to the next level. We're starting with our logo. Have been blown away by the designs on sitepoint. Know someone out there can blow us away with a logo. Our move management reduces stress for people who are trying to find balance with family , work, time and moving. We used to say we unpacked organized and settled - now want to stress whole picture of move management
current website http//www.busybuddiesinc.com
Thanks, can't wait.
Find out how a design contest works or learn more about our logo design services.


text:
The Akallabêth is the story of the destruction of the realm of Númenor. It tells how the Númenóreans, the descendants of those Men who aided the Elves in their fight against Morgoth during the First Age (described in detail in the Quenta Silmarillion), turned by degrees against the Valar and the Eldar and were ultimately destroyed by Sauron. The Akallabêth was written by Elendil near the end of the Second Age.
At the end of the First Age, the Dúnedain, who alone among the race of Men were loyal defenders of the Elves during their war against Morgoth, were given a new land of their own in reward for their efforts, free from the troubles and sadness of Middle-earth. It was located in the middle of the Great Sea, between the western shores of Middle-earth and the eastern shores of Aman, where the Valar lived.
The Men of Númenor were forbidden by the Valar to sail westward so far that they could no longer see the island—"the Ban of the Valar", as it became known. As a result, the majority of their voyaging was eastward and in time they returned to the shores of Middle-Earth. For two thousand years Númenor grew in bliss. Númenórean ships sailed the seas and established remote colonies in Middle-earth. During that time, the Elves of Middle-earth were engaged in a bitter fight with Morgoth's former servant Sauron, who had turned into a Dark Lord himself. Gil-galad asked for the help of the Númenóreans, and they agreed. King Tar-Minastir sent an army to the aid of the Elves and its timely arrival ensured victory over Sauron.
The Beginning of Discontent
But having tasted the power of conquest and victory in arms, it was only a matter of time before the Númenóreans made settlements of their own in Middle-earth. Many began to speak openly of their envy of the Eldar's immortality and in defiance of the Ban. It appeared to the Valar that the shadow of Morgoth had returned to plague their hearts. Emissaries of the Valar came to Númenor, seeking to remind them that death was not given as a punishment. But the people of Númenor became split between the King's Men—those loyal to the King and prone to oppose the restraints upon Númenor, and the Faithful—those who remained true to their friendship with the Eldar and loyalty to the Valar. As time went on, Númenor continued to grow in wealth and might, yet somehow its people's bliss was diminished.
After the defeat of Sauron halfway through the Second Age he retreated to the security of Barad-dûr as his hatred of Númenor grew. As the Númenóreans established colonies along the shores of Middle-earth Sauron eventually assailed them. By the time of the last King of Númenor, Ar-Pharazôn, Sauron had staked his claim on the title of King of Men. Ar-Phârazôn became angry with Sauron's attacks against his people, and furthermore wanted to claim the title "King of Men" for himself. He came with a great host to the shores of Middle-earth at Umbar and bade Sauron to come before him and bow to the might of the King. Sauron, to the surprise of many, did as he was asked. But the King was not content with his show of obedience, and brought Sauron back to Númenor as a hostage.
The Influence of Sauron
Sauron gave the impression that this was against his will, but in truth it was exactly what he wanted. Sauron exploited his power to corrupt the Númenórean King to his will. Soon he became his advisor, and most of the King's Men obeyed his will and worshipped Morgoth. Sauron convinced the King to assail Aman in order to gain immortality, desiring to destroy Númenor with the wrath of the Valar. However, as this was done, the Valar appealed to Eru Ilúvatar.
The Downfall of Númenor
Eru destroyed the army of Ar-Pharazôn that had landed on Aman by crushing it under stones; however, he also caused the whole of Númenor to sink under the Great Sea. Arda was made spherical at this time, and Aman was put beyond it, out of the reach of mortal Men. Just a few people still uncorrupted by Sauron managed to escape the catastrophe; they fled Númenor by ship, carrying some gifts that the Dúnedain had received from the Valar and the Elves in times of peace. This group of Faithful Númenóreans was led by Elendil the Tall and his two sons, Isildur and Anárion.
They landed in Middle-earth, where the followers of Elendil established two kingdoms which came to be known as as the realms of Exile: Gondor in the south, and Arnor in the north. Some of the King's Men, enemies of Elendil, who were in Middle-earth at the time of the Downfall established other realms in exile to the south; of these the Haven of Umbar was the chief. The culture of Númenor became the dominant culture of Middle-earth (thus, Westron, a descendant of the Adûnaic language of Númenor, became the Common Speech). The sadness and the shock from the loss of their island home always remained in the hearts of Kings of Númenórean descent. And they were dismayed to discover that Sauron, although greatly diminished and bereft of shape, had survived the Downfall and returned to Middle-earth to continue troubling its inhabitants.
The Name "Akallabêth"
"Akallabêth" was also a general name for the island of Númenor after its Downfall. The Exiles became reluctant to speak of the land by any other name, or indeed much at all; but at times "they turned towards the West in the desire of their hearts" and remembered Akallabêth, their former home.
The study of Númenor's history was suppressed in the realms of Exile because it was seen as a vain pursuit, "breeding only useless regret". Only one story from the former home of the Dúnedain remained generally known: the cautionary tale of the pride of Ar-Pharazôn and his "impious armada", which corresponds to the last half of the Akallabêth.
Akallabêth is an Adûnaic word meaning "She that hath Fallen" (from the verb kalab, meaning 'fall down'). The Quenya translation of this word is Atalantë, derived from the verbal stem talat-.
As the Quenya translation of the word makes obvious, the Akallabêth is a retelling of the story of Atlantis in the setting of Arda. Even so, as Tolkien himself noted, the Quenya root TALÁT 'slope, sliding' dated back to c. 1918, well before the legend of Númenor was invented.
Textual History
The Akallabêth originated with The Lost Road, an abandoned time-travel novel. The Lost Road, and the supporting legends Tolkien devised at the same time (which are the true germ of the Akallabêth itself), was written in the mid-to-late thirties. Tolkien abandoned The Lost Road before writing much of it, but he began to develop the tale of Númenor's Downfall further when writing The Notion Club Papers in the 1940's. At this time he made two traditions concerning Númenor's history, each with its own retelling of the Downfall: The Fall of Númenor, a more Elvish version, and a "Mannish" form, The Drowning of Anadûnê. These texts can be found in Volume IX of The History of Middle-earth, Sauron Defeated.
A highly abbreviated version of the story, as well as a direct allusion to the Akallabêth, is also found in Appendix A of The Lord of the Rings.
Tolkien's final revisions of the Akallabêth were published in the last volume of The History of Middle-earth, The Peoples of Middle-earth. It was from this version that Christopher Tolkien got the document that he published in The Silmarillion. Since the latest version of the Akallabêth contained references to Ælfwine, Christopher Tolkien had to edit it somewhat before attaining a story that would be compatible with Tolkien's later envisioning of the in-universe development of the tradition, in which Ælfwine did not play a role.
See also
- Númenor
- Dúnedain/Númenóreans
- Second Age
- Sauron
- Ar-Pharazôn
- Great Armament
- Downfall of Númenor
- Tar-Míriel
- Amandil
- Elendil
- Isildur
External Links
- Westernesse, an attempt by Helge Kåre Fauskanger to show how the Akallabêth could be adapted as a prequel to Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings movies rather than, or in addition to, The Hobbit
|The Silmarillion
|Ainulindalë · The Valaquenta · The Quenta Silmarillion · The Akallabêth · Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age


text: This is a ring of sites dedicated to the protection of animals against everything from abuse, neglect or homelessness to vivisection or other torture to hunting or hastened extinction. Some decry the wrongs; others are proactive about the good. Some sites are managed by vegetarians who eschew eating our animal friends; others are by omnivores who devote themselves to animal rescue. Others simply have personal stories to tell.


text:
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text:
Arvest Bank is proud to present a night of dinner, music and dancing – all to benefit the United Way – on Friday, July 28.
The BBQ, BAND & BREW fundraiser will be held at the Medicine Park Music Hall and feature a performance by the Smilin Bob English Band.
Doors will open at 6:30 p.m. and the band's performance will start about 7 p.m. Festivities will conclude at 11 p.m.
Arvest's commitment to the communities it serves is a core part of its philosophy, and proceeds from this event will be donated to the United Way.
Individual tickets are $40 and will be sold at all local Arvest branches. Table sponsorships also are available.
Seating is limited; contact Lindsay Roman at email@example.com or by calling (580) 250-4547 for details.
You're invited to a free seminar – Cyber Security: Identifying and Mitigating Risks to Your Business – on Wednesday, June 28, 2 – 4 p.m. at McMahon Lecture Hall at Great Plains Technology Center, Business Development Center 1601 S.W. Parkridge Blvd., Lawton, Okla.
Limited edition cards to display popular destinations across Oklahoma.
Arvest Bank and the Oklahoma Tourism and Recreation Department collaborated to create a series of specialty debit cards that showcase some of the state's most popular state park attractions.
The six debit card designs feature images from throughout the state, including Beavers Bend, Boiling Springs, Lake Murray, Osage Hills, Robbers Cave and Roman Nose. The cards will be available to new and current Arvest Bank customers at any bank location across Oklahoma, as well as the communities the bank serves in Arkansas, Kansas and Missouri, on May 22.
"This opportunity gives our customers access to unique designs for their specialty cards, along with the ability to show their sense of pride in Oklahoma State Parks and promote it every time a transaction is made," said Angela Spradlin, Southwest Oklahoma marketing manager for Arvest Bank. "These six cards showcase distinct places, but each one displays some of the inherent beauty to be found in the state of Oklahoma."
"In celebrating 80 years of Oklahoma State Parks, we want to share all of the wonderful sites Oklahoma offers, so it was an easy decision to partner with Arvest Bank, and to have the opportunity to promote our parks outside the state as well," said Kris Marek, director of Oklahoma State Parks.
Debit cards are free to customers who open a new account with Arvest or they may be purchased to replace an existing card for $7.50. See the limited-edition designs on our website.
Lawton native builds on four-year career with Arvest with recent promotion.
LAWTON, Okla. — After more than four years at Arvest Bank, Jordan Bethel has been promoted to commercial banker at our Cache Road location. She brings years of experience as a commercial loan assistant and credit analyst to her new role.
Bethel is a native of Lawton, where she lived until high school. She then moved to Elgin where she starred as a softball player for the Owls. She earned a softball scholarship to Division-I Louisiana Tech University. After two years there, she transferred to Southern Nazarene University in Bethany, Okla., where she finished out her softball career and earned a Bachelor of Science in business management.
Bethel and her husband, Zachary, live in Elgin with their three-year old daughter.
Submitted questions will be answered by an Arvest banker and may appear on the Arvest Blog.
All Arvest banks are Equal Housing Lenders and Member FDIC.
Investment products and services are provided by Arvest Investments, Inc., doing business as Arvest Asset Management, member FINRA/SIPC, an SEC registered investment adviser and a subsidiary of Arvest Bank. Trust services are provided by Arvest Bank. Insurance products are made available through Arvest Insurance, Inc., which is registered as an insurance agency. Insurance products are marketed through Arvest Insurance, Inc., but are underwritten by insurance companies.
Securities and Insurance Products: Not Insured by FDIC or any Federal Government Agency, May Lose Value, Not a Deposit of or Guaranteed by a Bank or any Bank Affiliate.


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If you've wondered what the graphic below is that's suddenly appearing throughout our print ads (with more to come), it's a Microsoft Tag, and it makes new levels of content immediately available on your smart phone.
Tags are two dimensional bar codes that allow an enormous amount of information to be stored in a compact format. Their design is meant to be scanned by the camera on smart phones including iPhones, Androids, Blackberrys and Windows Mobile among the group. Before you can have fun with them, however, you need to know how to use them.
To get started, simply go to http://gettag.mobi on your web-enabled smart phone and download the Tag Reader. Then when you see a tag, simply scan it to unlock content that allows you to interact with Okuma materials in new and exciting ways. For example, most of our tags in print advertising will connect you to new product videos. Rather than wait to get to a store to inquire about the features and specifications of a reel you've seen in an ad… just scan the tag and take a quick video tour!
Microsoft Tags are still in their infancy, with uses growing quickly in numerous and fascinating ways. As we progress, we'll continually look for new ways to allow you to get more from your experience with Okuma Fishing Tackle, with a goal of better fishing experiences every trip out.


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Choosing mates based on how attractive they are to you is not as shallow as it sounds.
Female mice seem to be able to choose the males they will make better babies with — babies with stronger immune systems to fight off disease, specifically.
That's what researchers at the University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna found in a new study published Jan 23 in the journal BMC Evolutionary Biology.
In the lab, the researchers let some female mice mate with a male they were interested in, while others were set up in "arranged" matings. The researchers then tested the babies immune systems.
"Our findings provide the first direct experimental evidence to our knowledge that partner preferences enhance offspring survival following infection," the authors say in the paper.
The scientists think the research could be helpful for understanding how our genes help us fight off infections.
Sexy mice
Scientists have long thought that given the choice, females will choose males that are healthy and disease-resistant and so will produce offspring that are also healthy and disease-resistant. They can tell the healthy males from the unhealthy males based on secondary sexual characteristics — things like larger body size and more muscle mass.
But this has all been a theory — studies attempting to confirm the theory have only measured disease resistance indirectly by looking at things like the amount of parasites the offspring have.
In the new study, the researchers found that females mated with their preferred mate were more likely to get pregnant and had more babies. The babies were then infected with the bacteria Salmonella to see how well their immune systems could fight off the disease.
Stronger babies
Of the 72 baby mice infected with Salmonella, 53 survived to the end of three weeks. You can see the difference in the survival of the babies that came from preferred mates and non-preferred mates in the graph below.
The babies from "love"-matings were more likely to survive:
The dose of Salmonella didn't make a significant difference in whether the baby mice survived, so the researchers don't think the preferred mating gave the the baby mice an enhanced resistance to Salmonella specifically. Instead they seemed to have a generally enhanced ability to fight off disease — a stronger immune system.
The scientists still need to figure out why the preferred-mate babies were healthier. Was it because the female mouse could tell that the preferred male was of better genetic stock, or because females that were mated against their preference devoted fewer resources to her pregnancy?
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January 4. Brilliant George Monbiot critique of cars. "The more you drive, the more bloody-minded and individualistic you become." And here's a related Ivan Illich critique of cars.
January 9. Two articles that (when you look closely) are about the psychology of the collapse. First, in Strapped for adulthood, a reviewer of a new book writes:
My mom actually took notes while reading. Her best notation? "Book premise -- harder and more costly to become an adult." Now that my mother is in tune with the pressing issues facing young people trying to become a full-fledged adult with a spouse, a home, a car, and a job...
Hold on! The real problem here is that they're clinging to a definition of "adult" that only made sense for about 40 years in the entire history of the world. People born after 1962 can either suffer and die trying to live like our parents, or lead the change to a new definition of maturity: to emerge from the childlike state of total dependence on the corporate economy and industrial civilization, and learn to thrive on very little money: to find food without a job, to find shelter without a mortgage, to get around without a car, to build savings and avoid debt, and to form alliances with other people that reduce our need for money instead of increasing it... generally to become less dependent on institutions, and more dependent on people we know personally.
Next, from an article about "Dark, eerie New Orleans":
"It's scary at night. No neighbors, it's pitch black, it's awful," said Mark Wiltz ... "I want to go back, but I'm scared," said Antoine Shropshire, a 41-year-old truck driver visiting his house in the Ninth Ward. "There's no people. It's creepy here. It's too weird."
Yet murder rates are lower! Although they might have good reason to fear mercenaries and bulldozers, they have no rational reason to feel creeped out by the darkness and silence that our ancestors lived with for the whole history of life on Earth. I can't help thinking they're like little kids still afraid of the dark -- and the late 20th century, with its perverse definition of adulthood as isolation and toy-buying, was an age of extreme infantilism, from which we're now beginning to mature.
January 15-18. Two good essays from Toby Hemenway: Urban vs. Rural Sustainability, and the sequel, Cities, peak oil, and sustainability. The idea is that the city might be better than the country in the collapse, and this position deserves more attention, with so many crashies taking for granted that urbanites will eat each other and cities will go extinct. I continue to believe that some urban areas will adapt, that the best cities will be preferable to many rural areas, and that cities will play a big role in the future of humanity.
But wait -- aren't cities unsustainable? Derrick Jensen argues that cities require importation of resources, and therefore they must deplete the surrounding land and collapse. But I think it's possible for a city to give back what it takes, if the residents compost their shit and food scraps, and export that compost to local farms, and if they don't demand crops or quantities that destroy fertility. And even if cities do deplete the land and crash, this can take hundreds of years, and meanwhile new cities are forming elsewhere. People throw around the word "unsustainable" as if it means "impossible" or "immoral." But in reality, things that can't be sustained are always coming into being and existing. In the strictest sense, nothing is sustainable -- even the Sun will burn out. So instead of dividing everything into "sustainable / not sustainable," we should ask, "How long will it last?" and "What role does it play in the larger world?"
Toby Hemenway comments:
I often describe sustainability as the midpoint between degeneration and regeneration. We've damaged so many ecosystems that we've got to do better than just treading water; we need to do regenerative work.
January 18. Fascinating excerpt from the book Synthetic Worlds:
Nothing is more eerie than a large, unpopulated city. It happens often in the cities constructed in virtual worlds, because the cities have no economic rationale and hence no economic activity. They are large, beautiful, empty spaces. Meanwhile, somewhere out in the countryside, all the players have accumulated somewhere to conduct their marketing activity. In the first few years of EverQuest, the main market was located in a tunnel in the wilderness because that happened to be the main route by which people traveled; a nearby city was evidently built to feel like a capital but was usually empty simply because the tunnel was the most direct route through that area.
All our present cities are full of people and commerce because of their roles in the economy of industrial civilization. In America, most of our cities were even built in that context. As the corporate/industrial economy breaks down, the economic rationale for many of our cities will dry up, and they will become large (beautiful?) empty spaces. This has already been happening for years in downtown areas, as commerce moves out to the suburbs.
We will always have economies. What we call "the economy" will crumble and other economies will grow through the cracks. These economies will have "cities" -- locations where people make a living not by producing anything but by serving as catalysts for trade. Without oil to burn, we will not be able to afford the luxury of giant buildings full of people who make a living by rearranging pieces of paper. Our cities will be smaller and leaner. Some of them will be in the same streets and buildings as our present cities. Some will be in spots where there are now no cities, and some of our present cities will not be cities at all, but places where people go to scavenge.
January 19. If the various end-of-the-world factions are really interested in saving people, and not cheering as the bad people die, they will be researching and writing books and websites about super-dense food production, like permaculture, sprouting, and home algae cultivation. That link goes to the wikipedia page, but there's not much information online. Here's an expensive book, Microalgae, and there's a very rare book called Spirulina production and potential. Also Eric found a manual translated from French, Grow your own spirulina, now available only in the web archive minus illustrations, and Anne found this spirulina medium chemical list.
My thought is, it can't be this hard! If edible algae grows in nature, there must be natural materials that will feed it. Aha! But if you read the French manual closely, you find this:
In case of necessity ("survival" type situations), all major nutrients and micronutrients except iron can be supplied by urine.
January 19. 1491 is a new book arguing that "native Americans had created vast cities and civilizations on a scale that dwarfed Europe at the time." And they all died from smallpox in time for dominant history to ignore them:
De Soto ignored the taunts and occasional volleys of arrows and poled over the river into what is now Eastern Arkansas, a land "thickly set with great towns," according to the account, "two or three of them to be seen from one." Each city protected itself with earthen walls, sizable moats, and deadeye archers.
After De Soto's army left, the Caddo stopped erecting community centers and began digging community cemeteries. Between the visits of De Soto and La Salle... the Caddoan population fell from about 200,000 to about 8,500.
"That's one reason whites think of Indians as nomadic hunters," Russell, an anthropologist at UCLA, said to me. "Everything else -- all the heavily populated urbanized societies -- was wiped out."
January 22. In this Village Blog post, Aaron quotes permaculturist Joe Polaischer on what happened in WWII when the cities ran out of food. It's a little more complex than the murderous "roving gangs" myth:
My first 10 years in Austria after the war -- on a peasant farm that was so isolated we had no road access, no electricity, no fossil fuels -- and it was an excellent time because we were functioning up there self-sufficiently.
We had all of a sudden all these relatives came out of Vienna because they were bombed and they had nothing to eat. And they all said "we are related, do you remember we're second and third so and so" and we said bugger off. They said, "I'm hungry, can I stay here" and "our house was bombed" and we said OK and all of a sudden we had 15 to 20 people in that household and then we said we can't actually support you, move on, so people started moving and then we got into trouble.
Then, those people became dangerous -- they turned the necks of our free range chooks and they disappeared. We planted potatoes, it was our staple food -- we planted them in daylight and the people were sitting in the forest waiting for darkness -- came out, dug out the seed potatoes, boiled them and ate them and we waited for our staple food crop to come up and they wouldn't sprout -- and the same thing through the rest of the neighbourhood.
January 23-26. A summary of the permaculture discussion:
1) When I talk about "permaculture," I mean a set of principles and techniques to simultaneously grow food with great efficiency, and increase soil fertility. It's not the same as "horticulture" because it includes some techniques and concepts that are totally new. And it's not just a pretentious word for growing a home garden, which has more in common with an industrial monoculture crop than it does with permaculture. They both grow annuals (tomatoes, corn) and permaculture grows mostly perennials (blueberries, oregano); they both till the soil and permaculture doesn't; they both deplete soil fertility and permaculture, when done right, builds it.
2) Permaculture can feed people even in arid regions. The ancient Nabateans used a network of giant cisterns to thrive on only a few inches of rain a year. In theory, even the present bloated human population can feed itself with no fossil fuels, but in practice we have neither the time nor the will. Industrial civilization will collapse, the population will drop, and in the process the survivors will be motivated to learn about self-sufficiency... and then it will be easier to feed everyone!
3) There is no clear line between permaculture and foraging. The more foragers know about planting, and the more space permaculturists have, the more they blur into each other. If there's a berry bush you like, you're going to plant it wherever it will survive and you can eat from it. There is not even a clear line between permaculture and hunting. If flocks of birds come to eat your cherries, throw a net over them and eat the birds! Or, if you plan to be hunting in the same region for the rest of your life, you would be smart to use techniques from "permaculture" to slow down and cycle water, to build topsoil, and to encourage the growth of plants that will attract the animals you're hunting.
4) In a depleted ecosystem, permaculture and even agriculture are better survival strategies than foraging and hunting. But the more we succeed in rebuilding the abundance of nature, the easier it will be to live by pure foraging/hunting, and the more likely our ancestors will choose that.
5) We have a lot of room to make permaculture knowledge affordable. The books are more expensive than other books of the same size, and the classes are not much cheaper than overpriced college tuition and new age seminars. It's frustrating, with a system that allows you to grow loads of food with little effort, that no one has used it to get so self-sufficient that they can teach classes for next to nothing, and then those students could do the same thing, and so on. I suspect this is only a problem in the first world, where there are so many more costs of living.
6) I think some people fear permaculture because it would be sustainable, and therefore it could be used to feed a bad society which would then never crash for ecological reasons, and could lock us in for a million years. We have to have faith that even a physically sustainable society will break down if it's not spiritually acceptable. In fact, this almost makes me think techno-utopia is more likely than ecotopia, when the techies, with their movement of free and open source software, have such a head start in building a gift economy -- which I believe is the only economy that's emotionally sustainable.
January 30. Village Blog has posted more of the Joe Polaischer interview that sparked the whole permaculture discussion. There's great info about how people grew food in a shantytown in Peru. But he saw this back in 1973! And at the end he says:
I've been to many places and I've found out one thing, I've been through 140 countries of the world and I don't want to go back any more because wherever I go back to places that I have been to 30 years ago it's all deterioration, it's all downhill, I don't want to see that.
So in 1973, before Bill Mollison even invented the word "permaculture," people were already doing it, and now that we have a word and books and institutes and programs, the actual practices are dying! It's almost like the ability to explain something in words is inversely related to the ability to do it. Or maybe we've failed, the world is effectively already dead, and the present surge of awareness is like our deathbed illumination.
January 31. Humans are getting stupider. Apparently, schools have been faking an increase in the intelligence of kids by making tests easier. But a research project in the UK burst the bubble by giving kids exactly the same test as kids 10 and 30 years ago:
In 1976 a third of boys and a quarter of girls scored highly in the tests overall; by 2004, the figures had plummeted to just 6% of boys and 5% of girls. These children were on average two to three years behind those who were tested in the mid-1990s.
Everyone is blaming video games, and they might be right, but I wonder if there are other factors. Are the school systems getting better at crushing critical thinking skills and training us to obey? Is our food getting less nutritious because of processing and industrial farming? Is it mercury vaccines? Aspartame? Or are humans, on some metaphysical level, leaving the building?
For the school theory, here's John Taylor Gatto's classic essay The Six-Lesson Schoolteacher. Or check out his giant book The Underground History of American Education.
February 2-3. Homeland Security contracts for vast new detention camps. Obviously, the contract went to Halliburton. The question is: Who will be detained? The contract itself says "an emergency influx of immigrants, or to support the rapid development of new programs." New programs? The author of the article thinks the camps will be used to support martial law. Daniel Ellsberg says "this is preparation for a roundup after the next 9/11 for Mid-Easterners, Muslims and possibly dissenters." I'm thinking about New Orleans, and how the next time hundreds of thousands of poor people have to leave a city, the rulers don't want them moving around freely.
Aric at In the Wake (dead link) has a good insight: it's cheaper for them to control us by controlling food, than by actually locking us up physically. Therefore, the camps will not be used for people who are already dependent on the system for food. They will be used for people who can produce their own food! Or, I'm thinking, for people who have already been denied food and are desperate.
February 6. I accept that Superbowl commercials resonate with the American collective unconscious, and therefore can be used to predict the future (though predicting it accurately is much harder). What I noticed was a repeating theme of something coming from off the screen and surprising us by smacking into someone. There was the caveman crushed by the dinosaur foot, the tool chest falling through the roof and hitting the guy the head, the guy getting creamed at the end of the office beer hunt commercial, the guy getting knocked over by his son on the swing, and one or two more I've forgotten, and there was even an asteroid smashing into the Earth. And maybe I'm overanalyzing, but all these "surprise" blows were something you could have seen coming.
February 10. Google appears to be planning a second physical internet, which will be controlled by Google, and accessed by $100 "computers" sold by Google, which will be useful only as nodes in the Googlenet. Here's what I figure: Assuming the regular internet doesn't get ruined, non-wealthy people will have two options: buy the googlebox and do shiny high-bandwidth stuff on the googlenet, or buy an old cheap computer and do clunky slow stuff with more privacy and autonomy. That's one reason this site will always have small, fast-loading pages.
February 14. Yesterday, Patricia and I thought it would be interesting to go a whole day with no talking and no computer, and we also decided to have no clocks or electric lights. I didn't much miss the lights. With four or five good candles you can see well enough for almost anything. Without the computer, we did a lot of stuff we normally don't have time for. No talking got interesting after about five hours. Just reading a book and saying the words in my head felt strange. But by twelve hours, with another person I needed to say things to, it was frustrating. Even if language has made it possible for humans to nearly exterminate life on Earth, it's now part of who we are, and going without it too long is kind of like monks who torture themselves to get enlightened.
February 16-20. The phrase "cartoon riots" makes me think of Bugs Bunny showing an offensive picture to Yosemite Sam in a turban, who gets really angry. But it's more complicated. For one thing, the cartoons are mostly just a catalyst for riots that turn out to be about perfectly sensible social justice issues. Also, as Dan suggests, the whole thing seems to have been orchestrated to turn liberals against the Islamic world, by pushing their "free speech" button.
"Free speech," like "terrorism" or "freedom," is propaganda: a piece of language with huge emotional baggage, multiple definitions that are never compared, and lots of built-in hidden assumptions. In fact there is no free speech. What we call "free speech" in modern America is nothing more than the right to shout into the wind. Frederick II of Prussia said it best: "I let them say what they want, and they let me do what I want." What is forbidden in America, and in every other empire in history, is powerful speech.
Or, powerful speech is permitted when and only when it goes with the flow of the life cycle of Empire. The radical speech of the Reformation or the "Enlightenment" was permitted because it set the foundation for the industrial age and Empire's final ascendancy. We are now in a collapse phase. Speech that would prolong Empire is forbidden -- like the overwhelming evidence that Republicans are rigging elections, which if acknowledged would bring in the anti-collapse Democrats. But the Mohammed cartoons will encourage world war, so they spread. And I think attempts to kill the internet will fail, until it has done its job of undermining central control.
February 24. I don't like to get caught up in scaring myself and you about fascism. What we have to understand is that central control doesn't work. The forest doesn't have a king tree that tells the other trees where to grow. Squirrels don't have forced nut-gathering camps, because they enjoy gathering nuts. Many forager-hunter societies don't even have the concept of "freeloading" -- they have no pressure to "work," not even social pressure, because their activity is so in tune with their nature that everyone just wants to do it. This is 100% spiritual efficiency, the default condition of the whole universe. But something has got into humans that makes us build top-down systems of forcing each other to do what we hate. This works so badly that these systems burn themselves out in centuries, while other living systems persist for tens of millions of years.
Socialists think we can make centrally controlled systems that are benevolent and enduring. But it's the nature of these systems to reach for more and more control, at worse and worse functional value, until they burn themselves out. In a strange way, fascism is natural: it's a safety mechanism that makes anti-natural systems unstable. America will have labor camps, and then it will have ruins of labor camps.
February 26. Biowar for Dummies, an article supposedly about how easily those "terrorists" could release a scaaaaaary disease, thereby justifying a tighter police state even if they don't do it. But the interesting part is the section called Biotech's growth curves leave Moore's Law in the dust. The good news is, this means we no longer have to worry about the evil robots. If the system somehow keeps going another 50 years, new biological life will overtake and pass new computer "life." The singularity will be eaten by dragons! Or maybe by bacteria. If there is a benevolent intention behind civilization, this could be what it's intending, an age of DIY genetics that creates biodiversity a million times as fast as nature. (I know this is controversial, even for the fringe. Here's an archived post on the same subject.)


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After closing 155 stores and filing for bankruptcy last year, the nation's second largest electronics retailer Circuit City is now planning to liquidate its remaining 567 U.S. stores.
The troubled company had been trying to find a buyer or secure financing in order to stay afloat, but today they announced that their last-ditch attempts had failed.
"This is the only possible path for our company," James A. Marcum, acting chief executive, said in a statement. "We are extremely disappointed by this outcome."
The closing of the remaining 567 stores could mean unemployment for another 30,000 Americans at a time when being unemployed is not something you want to be. It's also another blow to the nation's malls, as the closures will result in a flood of empty big box retail locations in an economy where no one is in a position to fill them.
"It will bring to market a glut of big box spaces across the country," said John Bemis, head of Jones Lang LaSalle Inc.'s retail leasing team. "It will have one of the largest impacts on big box real estate across the country."
Troubling news indeed. Our condolences to those who will be left jobless in the wake of the closures. We wish them the best of luck in finding gainful employment elsewhere.
Circuit City to liquidate remaining US stores [San Francisco Chronicle]


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Inflation remains largely flat
WASHINGTON U.S. consumer prices rose slightly in May as higher energy costs were partly offset by cheaper food. The small increase underscores that inflation is mild.
The consumer price index ticked up a seasonally adjusted 0.1 percent last month, only the second increase in seven months, the Labor Department said Tuesday. Consumer prices fell 0.4 percent in April, the largest decline in four years. In the past 12 months, prices have increased 1.4 percent.
Higher natural gas and electricity costs pushed up energy prices 0.4 percent. Gas prices were flat. Food costs fell 0.1 percent, as grocery prices dropped by the most in almost four years.
Outside the volatile food and gas categories, core prices rose 0.2 percent in May and 1.7 percent in the past 12 months, in line with the Federal Reserve's inflation target of 2 percent.
Tame inflation makes it easier for the Fed to continue its extraordinary efforts to boost economic growth. It has also allowed consumers to increase spending this year, despite weak wage gains and higher Social Security taxes.
Retail sales rose at a healthy clip in May from April, the Commerce Department said last week. Americans spent more on cars and trucks, home improvements and sporting goods.
Wholesale prices rose 0.5 percent in May, as gas and food costs increased, the Labor Department said last week. But in the past year they have risen just 1.7 percent.
Fed policymakers are meeting Tuesday and Wednesday to discuss the economy's health and consider their next moves.
Steady job gains and resilient consumer spending have fueled intense speculation that the Fed may soon start reducing the pace of its monthly bond purchases. That's caused heavy volatility in stock and bond prices.
The Fed is purchasing $85 billion a month in bonds to keep longer-term interest rates down. That's intended to encourage more borrowing, investing and spending. The Fed says it will continue to buy bonds until the job market improves substantially.
The Fed also says it plans to keep the short-term interest rate it controls at a record low near zero until the unemployment rate falls below 6.5 percent, provided inflation remains under control. The unemployment rate ticked up in May to 7.6 percent, though it is down 0.6 percentage points in the past year.


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ALBANY, N.Y., Nov. 26 (UPI) -- Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Monday New York needs $42 billion to repair damage from Hurricane Sandy and take steps to limit such devastation in the future.
Cuomo met in Albany with the state's congressional delegation, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and officials from Nassau, Suffolk and Westchester counties to assess damage from the Halloween-week superstorm that devastated parts of the East Coast.
"The devastation caused by Hurricane Sandy is of unprecedented proportions, ranking among the worst natural disasters in our nation's history in terms of loss of life, property damage, and economic impact," Cuomo said.
Cuomo estimated the storm caused $32.8 billion in damage. He also estimated the state will need $9.1 billion for "commonsense" mitigation and prevention projects, including flood protection for the World Trade Center site and road and subway tunnels, fuel supply system power generation and sewage treatment protection, and secondary power supply systems for hospitals.
"We will do everything we can to maximize the relief New York receives," Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said. "Make no mistake, this will not be an easy task, particularly given the impending 'fiscal cliff,' and a Congress that has been much less friendly to disaster relief than in the past. ... We will not rest until the federal response meets New York's deep and extensive needs."
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., said the federal government must step in.
"Images of the devastation New York suffered from Hurricane Sandy only tells half the story," she said. "I have spent day after day meeting with New York families whose lives have been shattered, their homes destroyed and businesses in rubble. New Yorkers are resilient, we bend but we do not break, but we can't do it alone."
"Given the catastrophic damage inflicted on New York, I am committed to working with Governor Cuomo and the congressional delegation to ensure that Long Island and New York get the federal assistance they need to recover," Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., said.


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Welcome to NVG Inc Saturday, January 18 2020 @ 10:52 PM UTC
As a Guest of this site, you can read Articles our members have contributed, view the Calendar, read Documents outlining our constitution, safety rules and training information, make use of our Links and view photos in our Gallery. You can also read our periodical magazine, Varangian Voice.
To contribute an Article, add or comment on a photo in the Gallery, add a Link or add an event to the Calendar, or email any user on the site by clicking on their name, you must be logged in (see the User Functions box on the left).
To read about the site features and how to use them, visit Website Help. If all else fails, email the Webmaster. (You don't need to be logged in to use this link)
If you have lost or forgotten your password, please use the link in the User Functions box on the left of the screen to ask for your password to be reset.
Who is the New Varangian Guard?
The New Varangian Guard Inc. (NVG Inc) is a historical re-enactment organisation with branches throughout Australia, and sister organisations in several other countries.
The core area and period of interest of the New Varangian Guard is the Byzantine Empire, its allies and enemies, during the 9th to 13th centuries A.D. Members of the Guard attempt to learn about the lifestyle of these peoples by study and reconstruction of the materials and practices of the period.
We aim to make our recreation as realistic as possible without compromising safety, the law, or personal enjoyment. We also endeavor to create and maintain channels of communication amongst members, other recreation groups, educators, government and the business community. In this way we provide opportunities and venues for members to practice, display and teach the skills, arts and crafts that they pursue.
Historical Basis for the New Varangian Guard
Like other Vikings and Rus' before them, they served with distinction in the regular army, but sometime around or before the middle of the eleventh century, Varangians replaced the existing native Imperial guards. Their boldness, bravery and unswerving loyalty is recorded by Byzantine chroniclers.
These Emperor's Varangians, also know as the 'axe-wielding guard' (though one Emperor nicknamed them "Winebags"), were primarily Vikings and Rus until the late eleventh century, when a large influx of Englishmen fleeing Norman persecution significantly changed the ethnic composition.
Scandinavian involvement revived during the Crusades, and indeed, the heyday of the Emperor's Varangians seems to have run from the late 11th to the mid 12th century.
After the destruction caused in the capture of Constantinople by the Fourth Crusade in 1204 A.D., the Varangian Guard continued to exist in name but became a hereditary ceremonial guard, largely drawn from internal Byzantine sources.
What were Vikings commonly eating as food?
By Jennifer Baker
Using the The Viking Food Data base * as a source to answer this question we come up with the following answer to this question
Out of a total number 18 of country/ regions looked at (Denmark, Frisia, Zeeland, Norway, Sweden, Gotland, Poland, Russia, England, Scotland, Isle of Man, Ireland, Orkney, Shetlands, Faroe Islands, Iceland, Greenland, Vinland, ) that Viking lived in and that there is archaeological data from
* NOTE: This is a 126KB Microsoft Excel file. To view this file you must have Excel or download the Excel viewer from the Microsoft website


text:
Court dates have been set for former congressman Jesse Jackson Jr. and his wife, former Chicago alderman Sandi Jackson.
They will both appear in court in Washington D.C. on Wednesday — Jackson Jr. at 9:30 a.m. central time and Sandi Jackson at 2:30 p.m. central time.
Both are to appear before the Honorable Robert L. Wilkins.
Jackson Jr. is accused of misusing $750,000 in campaign funds over a 7-year period. The money was allegedly spent on furs, rolex watches, and Hollywood memorabilia.
Sandi Jackson is accused of filing false tax returns.


text:
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text:
March 2, 2009
SANTA CLARA, Calif. - Santa Clara sophomore forward Lena Gipson earned All-West Coast Conference honorable mention accolades; it was announced Monday by the league. Gipson started in all 29 games for the Broncos and averages 13.6 points and a league-best 10.0 rebounds per game.
The sophomore is ranked in two of Santa Clara's single-season categories. With 290 rebounds, she takes over the No. 3 spot this week from Amy Vanos' 1991-92 season of 287 boards. Gipson's boarding average (10.0) also ranks in the top-10 of the single season list. She is tied for No. 4 with Liz Bruno's sophomore season (1979-90).
She has produced double-digit scoring performances in 25 of the Broncos' 29 games and has had a double-double in 18 of SCU's 29 games. Since Day 1 of the 2008-09 season, she leads the West Coast Conference in rebounds, averaging 10.0 per game. She also ranks No. 1 in defensive rebounds with 7.24 per game.
The 6-foot-1 Gipson transferred to the Mission Campus after one season at Fresno City College, where she earned All-America honors in 2007-08 as she was the frontcourt star for a team that boasted a school-best 35-3 record. She led the Rams in scoring (18.0 per game), rebounds (11.0), blocks (1.9) and field goal percentage (.653). Gipson also averaged 2.8 steals per game. The Hanford native set school records at Fresno City by scoring 683 points on the season. She also set a school record for points and rebounds in a single game as she tallied 42 points and 29 rebounds against Merced College for the Central Valley Conference title.
Gipson and the Broncos begin play at the 2009 WCC Basketball Tournament on Friday, March 6 against the Gaels of Saint Mary's. Tip-off is scheduled for Noon at the Orleans Arena in Las Vegas, Nev.


text:
Perl 5 version 8.0 documentation
File::Spec::Win32 - methods for Win32 file specs
- require File::Spec::Win32; # Done internally by File::Spec if needed
See File::Spec::Unix for a documentation of the methods provided there. This package overrides the implementation of these methods, not the semantics.
- devnull
Returns a string representation of the null device.
- tmpdir
Returns a string representation of the first existing directory from the following list:
- SYS:/temp
- C:/temp
- /tmp
- /
The SYS:/temp is preferred in Novell NetWare.
Since Perl 5.8.0, if running under taint mode, and if the environment variables are tainted, they are not used.
- catfile
Concatenate one or more directory names and a filename to form a complete path ending with a filename
- canonpath
No physical check on the filesystem, but a logical cleanup of a path. On UNIX eliminated successive slashes and successive "/.".
- splitpath
- ($volume,$directories,$file) = File::Spec->splitpath( $path );
- ($volume,$directories,$file) = File::Spec->splitpath( $path, $no_file );
Splits a path in to volume, directory, and filename portions. Assumes that the last file is a path unless the path ends in '\\', '\\.', '\\..' or $no_file is true. On Win32 this means that $no_file true makes this return ( $volume, $path, undef ).
Separators accepted are \ and /.
Volumes can be drive letters or UNC sharenames (\\server\share).
The results can be passed to catpath to get back a path equivalent to (usually identical to) the original path.
- splitdir
The opposite of catdir().
- @dirs = File::Spec->splitdir( $directories );
$directories must be only the directory portion of the path on systems that have the concept of a volume or that have path syntax that differentiates files from directories.
Unlike just splitting the directories on the separator, leading empty and trailing directory entries can be returned, because these are significant on some OSs. So,
- File::Spec->splitdir( "/a/b/c" );
- ( '', 'a', 'b', '', 'c', '' )
- catpath
Takes volume, directory and file portions and returns an entire path. Under Unix, $volume is ignored, and this is just like catfile(). On other OSs, the $volume become significant.
Note For File::Spec::Win32 Maintainers
Novell NetWare inherits its File::Spec behaviour from File::Spec::Win32.


text:
Mozilla.org Unleashes Mozilla 1.0
Page 1 of 1
In what has been described as "a huge milestone for the free software community," Mozilla.org Wednesday launched Mozilla 1.0, the first major-version public release of the source code which powers the Netscape 7.0 browser.
Mozilla.org was created by the former Netscape Communications Corp. (now an AOL Time Warner subsidiary) in 1998 to coordinate the Mozilla community's open source development of the Netscape source code.
"The Mozilla project has quietly become a key building block in the open source infrastructure," said Tim O'Reilly, founder and chief executive officer of O'Reilly & Associates Inc. "In addition to the open source Mozilla browser and the Netscape 7.0 browser, the Mozilla toolkit has been used to create additional browsers for platforms such as Linux and Mac OS X, instant messaging clients such as Chatzilla and the cross-platform Jabber client, and software development tools such as ActiveState's Komodo IDE."
Mozilla 1.0 consists of a full-fledged browser suite based on the latest Internet standards, and a cross-platform toolkit for developing Internet-based applications. The cross-platform suite was built on the Gecko layout engine and integrates a core set of applications, including a Web browser, e-mail reader and chat client.
The Mozilla 1.0 suite features full support for HTML 4.0, XML 1.0, Resource Description Framework (RDF), Cascading Style Sheets level 1 (CSS1), the W3C Document Object Model Level 2 (DOM2), and XHTML. It's standards support also includes XML data exchange and manipulation of XML documents with SOAP 1.1, XSLT, XPath 1.0, and FIXptr, as well as support for display of mathematical equations using MathML. It also supports data transport protocols (including HTTP, FTP and SSL/TLS), multilingual character data (Unicode), graphics (GIF, JPEG, PNG and MNG), and JavaScript 1.5.
The toolkit also includes Mozilla's XML-based user-interface development technology (XUL), networking libraries, ECMAScript implementation and security and encryption libraries.
Additionally, Mozilla.org said the suite has been designed for easy localization into languages other than English. The first localized versions of Mozilla 1.0 will be Asturian, Chinese, Dutch, Greek, Estonian, Galician, German, Georgian, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Malay, Polish, Slovak, Sorbian and Ukranian.
While the Mozilla 1.0 components are all open source and free of charge, Mozilla.org has especially aimed Wednesday's release at developers, noting that the release "expands the range of developers who can write complex applications since Mozilla's architecture enables the creation of such complex applications by building upon the same technologies that are used to create Web content."
Mozilla 1.0 is available for free download at Mozilla.org's Web site.


text:
Dir/scr: W.J.A. Kluijfhout. Netherlands. 2012. 76mins
There is a current cinematic love affair going on with documentaries of a culinary bent – clear by the amount of food-and-drink strands many film festivals are staging – and this delightful delve into the hardy mussel is a charmer of a film, and an easy fit into many a film festival.
An enjoyably quirky film that is both informative and engaging.
The film, which has opened in The Netherlands, screened at CPH:DOX in Copenhagen (where it was confirmed that Autlook Films had take international sales rights) and at IDFA. At CPH:DOX a mussels-themed food event was staged after the screening, and it its highly likely that cross-promotional marketing for event screenings will be the name of the game for international platform, festival and general releases.
Willemiek Kluijfhout's film was shot on 35mm, and certainly benefits from some impressive up-close-and-personal filming of mussels as he seeks to tackle all aspects of their existence – from cooks through to biologists, the life (and the love life in particular) of the modest mollusc is dwelt with in fascinating detail.
The underwater filming is delicate and enthralling – and naturally often plays on the sexual look of the mussel – and acts as a nice contrast to the matter-of-factness of the mussel fishermen; the enthusiasm of biologist Annelies Pronker (whose pregnancy during the filming heightens the 'love' angle); the culinary craft of Dutch chef Sergio Herman, whose three star Michelin restaurant Oud Sluis is famed for its mussel dishes and even a gynaecologist who has utilised the unique glue that mussels use to stick to things to help save unborn children.
An enjoyably quirky film that is both informative and engaging, Mussels In Love should be an easy sale to broadcasters as well of possible interest to niche distributors.
Production company: Trueworks
International sales: Autlook Films, www.autlookfilms.com
Producer: Reinette van de Stadt
Cinematography: Remko Schnorr
Editors: Dieter Diependaele, Govert Janse. Jan Deprest, Willy Versluys, Norbert Dankers, Annemarie Noorthoek, Jaap Schot
With: Sergio Herman, Henk Jumelet, Annelies Pronker


text:
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Video layout can be adapted to virtually any screen and projection configuration.
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GoToMeeting has quickly become an integral tool that is used at our company. It is cost-effective and essentially saves the company money and time by providing access from anywhere that Internet access is available...


text:
Wow ! What a title! How did it come to coin this name, someone asked me once…
Here is how this name came to be one of my most cherished paintings….CHAOS & TRUTH. It started one summer in early 2000. Summers in Southern California can be scorching – especially for some of us, born in moderate European continental climate across the ocean. The trees in my luscious mini forest – seem to take it better than the patio, which is turning into an oven for many hours a day.
I had just begun to experiment with large scale abstract painting, as a diversion from the endless and tedious hours of sculpting. In large scale paintings – every layer consumes a great deal of paint and needs to dry completely before the next layer be applied. So – the more I experimented – the more time it needed to dry. The temperature is never the same – so all I could control in the process was the time, not the exposure. Eventually, the frames that I especially create for each piece, stays for great periods of time- waiting its turn to be completed.
In reality – these new large scale abstract pieces are as much of a creation of the Sun as they were by me. Really! The temperature makes its own changes on that particular layer – sometimes they are spectacular in its effect! Other time – not so much. In these cases – you have to start over form that point on. This is the spontaneous part I like. Constant discovery!
One time – I had imagined a very large, sprawling canvas, that is very gentle at the sale time…I wanted to make a piece that is very large, horizontal, that has this strong, but calming presence. I make my own frames – it is an involved physical, a little tough – but while I am laying out the wood and the fabric – it gives me time to put even more thought in the end result. So I built the frame 36″ by 120″ and let is wait. I used a very fine , but strong blend of linen and silk. I believe in integrity – when you create something – make sure it is genuine to its core – including the materials. The purity of material is important to me, whether it is sculpture or a painting.
One summer passed – the large frame stayed untouched. The next summer I did one layer. Another summer passed. Then – 3 years later – I put it outside, where I usually work under the blue sky – and I let my imagination free.
Then one afternoon – in 2009 I had this moment of discovery and innovation. I was ready to do something entirely different from the ZEN SWIRLS I first did in 2000. And right there , on the ground – next to the blossoming orange trees – I started layering the spontaneity of many years of suppressed intentions to complete for this piece.
The more my determination grew – the softer I wanted it to look! Somehow it always takes more effort to make something that looks effortless…
Like the ancient hieroglyphs – which express and entire event – not just a single thing! It is almost impossible to register the thoughts that were occupying my mind at that time. At this moment, you may say – this is my own private performance. It is full of emotions, joy, wonder, discovery, impatience, – it runs the gamut of human expression. Then you wait a few hours, because the heavy layers need to settle and be protected from everything – from falling orange blossoms petals –to the tiny cute faced lizard, who live under a near by decorative rock to a wanderer squirrel or a cat, who see this is just a part of the yard , only wet and slippery …
If one had a glimpse of the scene, while I was doing this painting – it would have been quite baffling to the unknowing eye – the scene would have been closer to a dance, than to painting, simply because of scale. And that is maybe the reason why each of these large scale paintings have so much meaning for me.
In a few hot summer days in 2010 I managed to complete CHAOS & TRUTH. There was this gentle lace-like effect, when you look from a distance; when you come close to explore in depth – it transforms itself into an organic universe with unexpected spatial depth, impossible to describe. In the end – this canvas is as appealing vertical as it is horizontal.
The truth is – this piece is very dear to me. It took years to complete. And I fulfilled my goal – to have a complex large scale painting, that changes with the distance it was viewed. And the chaos, that preceded its completion was simply a precursor for a truth, that emerged in the end.
Isn't that always the case – Truth always emerged from Chaos.
Chaos always preceded the Truth.And that is my very own story behind this piece! Hope you enjoy it!
Yours truly, Tsvetana for TheArtcChronicle
PS. The CHAOS & TRUTH is featured in a DVD, which showcases in videoart the paintings of Tsvetana Yvanova. The idea is to find a brand new way to experience the viewing of art – a very artistic way of viewing . This DVD selection is available for the first time on Amazon.com.


text:
|Milton, Mass.
|High School:
|Acton Boxborough Regional
|House Affiliation:
Junior • 2012-13
Played on the third line and totaled +1 in Harvard's first two wins of the year at Quinnipiac and Princeton Oct. 26-27 ... Was +1 in a 4-0 win at Yale Nov. 3 ... Picked up the first point of her season Jan. 4 with an assist in a 9-0 win over Union ... Earned a career-high rating of +4 vs. Union Jan. 4.
Sophomore • 2011-12
Collected the game-winning goal in 2-0 victory at Colgate Nov. 11 … Registered a goal and a pair of blocked shots in 6-1 win over St. Lawrence Nov. 19 … Got Harvard on the board in a 2-1 comeback win at Dartmouth Nov. 30 … Scored in 5-1 win at Providence Dec. 8 … Had the game-winning goal in 2-0 win over Union Jan. 13 … Also scored in 8-0 win over Yale Jan. 27.
Freshman • 2010-11
Finished freshman season with six points on three goals and three assists ... Picked up first career point with a goal in 5-3 win over No. 9 Dartmouth Nov. 19 ... Notched an assist Jan. 22 against Union ... Registered an assist against Princeton Feb. 4 ... Had a goal against Clarkson Feb. 11 and recorded an assist the following day at St. Lawrence ... Picked up a goal in 6-1 win over St. Lawrence in game one of ECAC quarterfinal Feb. 25.
Before Harvard
Played ice hockey, lacrosse and field hockey during high school career at Acton Boxborough Regional and Middlesex … Played for Boston Shamrocks ice hockey team as a junior and for Assabet as a senior … Three-year participant in USA Hockey development camps … Part of USA Hockey national championship teams in 2004 and 2010 … Helped team capture five state championships and reach the finals of the Division II New England Championships in 2008 … Received the national Latin exam Cum Laude award as a senior along with the Community Service Award … Enjoys volunteering, reading, race car driving and watching the Bruins … Uncle, Al Hulbert, played minor league baseball in the Boston Red Sox system.


text:
This is an article I saw on webmd. It's very interesting.
Good chance, you've heard something about it. It's about the mother who let her 9yr old son ride the NYC subway by himself. Apparently that's called free range parenting.
I read the article, and found it pretty interesting to say the least. I lean more towards the free range parenting. No, I'm not going to let my child go get on a large city subway by herself. I'm not quite that extreme. But, I'm not one to force my child to be overly dependent on me. Here's a quote that I love from the article above.
"The message you get if your parents do everything from driving you to school to waiting at the bus stop to doing your science fair project is 'I love you so much, but I don't think you can do this,'" Skenazy says. "That's why they call it self-confidence, not parent-assisted confidence."
I have first hand experience with that. You see, Simon's parents believed in the parent-assisted confidence and he has NO self confidence now. I mean, the worse of anybody I know, its pretty bad. But, when he was young and somebody asked him his name, his mom jumped in, not allowing him to answer. That was just the beginning. She did his homework a lot for him. His dad didn't allow him to play outside until he was 9yrs old. Even then it was only in the yard w/ close supervision. He slept with his parents till he was like 10yrs old. I know there are other examples, but I can't think of them. So now as an adult, they haven't changed much. Oh, their little baby boy shouldn't have to do anything, shouldn't have to stress things, shouldn't have to work hard. He ALWAYS thinks that other people are smarter, faster, and just plain better than him with everything. He never thinks he's good at something. But he does require constant affirmation, similar to what you may see with a 10yr old. So in my eyes this is where that OVER protecting parenting gets you.
Now my sister in law has two children, 5 and 7, sleeps in the bed w/ her and her hubby. Talk about a crowded bed. She doesn't let them out of her sight. She is a stay at home mom, homeschools, and has a social "mom's group." That way the children are always brought to her house. In one way it's great that she is involved and active in her children's lives. In other way I have learned that the reason for the involvment is so that her kids are always with her. She has lots of fears, which are starting to wear off on her children. I'm looking forward to seeing how these kids grow up. Will they be confident and independent adults, or will they have low self confidence and be dependent on mom and dad.
I don't really have any story's about the free range parenting. Most families I know really well are over protecting like my sister in law's family. I guess I'm more from the free range parenting. I feel like I had a life. I went to girl scout meetings without mommy. I went to overnight camps starting at age 8, for a week during the summer. I learned a lot from experiencing some independence. How I turned out...well I don't know how I compare to Simon. I mean, I'm not perfect. But, I don't think everybody else is better than I am. If nothing else I had a funner and more rewarding childhood than he did.
So, how will we raise our child/ren? Well, I do want her to go to camps, if she wants to. I do want her to spend nights with her grandma's if they are up for it and again, if she wants. I don't want her to be the homesick child. I want her to have independence, but at the same time I want to ensure her safety. I don't want a family bed, children sleep in their bed, in their room. I want them to be involved with something, that I'm not. For example, girl scouts or some other kind of club/organization. Maybe somewhere in the middle of sending a 9yr old to a subway on their own, and putting my child in virtual bubble would be nice.
Where do you stand w/ parenting? Even if you aren't a parent yet; where do you stand with this?
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
Free Range Parenting
This is an article I saw on webmd. It's very interesting.
Posted by ssbean at 7:12 AM 4 comments Links to this post


text:
Brontez Purnell
Saturday 10th July @ the Dew Drop, London, 8pm £5
The Younger Lovers is fronted by Brontez Purnell, formerly of Gravy Train!!!!, and creator of Fag School zine, as well as current columnist for Maximum RocknRoll.
As well as being a musician and a dancer and probably many other things, Brontez is a writer. I love reading his pieces in zines like Shotgun Seamstress and Maximum RocknRoll, partly because he's just so damn uncompromising in terms of his personality, his politics and his opinions. Plus he's smart and passionate. I'm totally into passionately written pieces. I hate reading things which, while sound in their politics, are just so wrapped up in "how" they're written, or what words they're choosing that it's just kind of dead on the page, and barely creates a spark in me. Brontez probably wants this issue to be done and dusted now, but I just have to post this link which I found one time while looking stuff up about him. His response to a situation in which a member of the band Black Lips was racist, is amazing. It's interesting to read the comments that come after it too, the first one implying that the grammer and spelling is wrong. Oh god. Typical come back whenever someone of colour or a queer or feminist or whatever has a completely justified, passionate rant. That kind of "your grammer was wrong" argument is just like a bloodless fish to me, where's your goddamn pulse, mate?
Anyway, The Younger Lovers is a garage punk band, with a kind of retro sound, like, I want to say 60s girl group, but don't really know why. The Newest Romantic LP was recently released, which features great songs such as:
The Younger Lovers – Kiss me on the Bus
which just make you feel happy to be queer, and you can hold hands with your friends, sauntering down the summer street listening to it.
The Younger Lovers is gonna be amazing, I can't wait.
Posted 3490 days ago | By Melissa |
Sounding like the meeting point between Young Marble Giants and DIY hardcore, Woolf are more uncategorisable than other new London bands playing the queer/indie/punk circuit at the moment, but nevertheless this is a band comprised of members of other bands from these scenes: Roseanne Barrr, Corey Orbison, Gender Fascist & NZ girl punk band Toxic Shock Syndrome, among others.
The name "Woolf" kind of makes me think of serious, book reading, woods-walking girls with a penchant for fierce animals and whiskey drinking. Which kind of describes the music pretty well, actually.
Woolf have a sort of "offness" and an awkwardness about them, which at first I put down to the idea that maybe the band members (Colette on vocals, Sophie on drums, Georgina on guitar & Irene on bass) were all perhaps bringing their own idea of what sort of music Woolf should be playing; this was a new band after all, and I wondered if there was a bit of a schism between the "punk" and the "experimental". After seeing a few of their shows, however, I realised this was the point of Woolf, they exude a no-wave, dark punk sound which resists categorisation and provides a challenging listen. When they're on, their "off" is amazing.
The last show I saw them at (Brighton Queer Mutiny at the Cowley Club), their timing was spot on and the menace & often anti-climactic bad-mood, ellipticism was perfectly evoked. (You probably don't know me, but let me tell you, "anti-climactic, bad-mood, ellipticism" is a very good thing). Most of their songs leave you unsettled. A few, like "December" are out-and-out girlpunk, and easier to get your head around.
Colette's vocals are outstanding. "Witch" is my favourite – "I met you…in Dulwich woods"...What is this song about? Dunno, but south London never sounded so creepy.
Woolf are playing next at Club Milk, along with Bellies, Covergirl, Drunk Granny & Peepholes. So go see what I mean. They have a tape you can buy too.
Posted 3516 days ago | By Melissa |
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