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[Part Two of "Religious Revival and the Transformation of English Sensibilities in the Early Ninteeenth Century" © Herbert Schlossberg]
efore Christie Davies' U-curve of anti-social behavior began its descent to relative rectitude it had reached a very high level indeed. Stories of the moral disfunction to which all classes were prone in the eighteenth century are too plentiful to need much elaboration here. The upper classes took their cue from a frivolous and immoral court. Marital fidelity was openly mocked, and associations such as the Hell Fire Club and the Medmenham Brotherhood parodied Christian faith. License was common also at the lowest levels of society. [There is considerable material on this in Whiteley, Wesley's England.] Along with general dissolution and brutality the legal system was extremely punitive, with the death penalty being exacted for numerous paltry offenses.
Religious life had reached a correspondingly low state, although of course pockets of genuine piety remained scattered throughout the realm. But in regions distant from civilization, tiny country hamlets could be hotbeds of the old paganism, far from not only the church but also the chapel. Folklore studies limn a picture of a countryside full of magic and fairies and great fears of the supernatural over which people had no control. [McLeod, "Recent Studies in Victorian Religious History," 249. McLeod cites the work of Obelkevich.]
As we might expect the state of the church, both establishment and dissenting, was about as low as that of the society at large. Halévy put it this way: "An Established Church apathetic, skeptical, lifeless; sects weakened by rationalism, unorganized, their missionary spirit extinct. This was English Protestantism in the eighteenth century." [ Halévy, England in 1815, vol. 1 of A History of the English People in the Nineteenth Century, 410f.] The power to fill vicarages belonged to various persons as property rights; only a minority of clergy could be placed by the bishops. Multiple offices were common, and thus spiritual duties were undertaken on behalf of absentee vicars by underpaid and overworked curates, if at all. It was a thoroughly corrupt system, and it gave rise to endless stories of clergymen who would ride to the hounds by day and gamble away the night. Boswell confided to William Wilberforce that Dr. Johnson had never been intimately acquainted with even one religious clergyman. [Wilberforce, The Life of Wilberforce, 5: 339. Johnson presumably was referring only to parsons not in the reform movement, since he was a good friend of both the Wesley brothers.
Wilberforce was not convinced things were quite that bad, perhaps because he remained loyal to the Church in a period of great weakness when many were defecting to Dissent; he told Boswell that Johnson's failure to meet a good parson might have something to do with his method of choosing companions!] The old religious societies that had originally been intended to bring some life into the church eventually hardened and themselves begged for reform. The Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge by the 1780s was blackballing leaders of the new Evangelical movement in the Anglican church, who solved such problems by starting their own societies.
I am adopting the definition of evangelicalism found in a recent book by Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain, 2f:
There are the four qualities that have been the special marks of Evangelical religion: conversionism, the belief that lives need to be changed; activism, the expression of the gospel in effort; biblicism, a partiular regard for the Bible; and what may be called crucicentrism, a stress on the sacrifice of Christ on the cross.
Still, any definition should not be taken as erecting an impenetrable fence around the evangelicals. As Bebbington makes clear in an accompanying passage, often the only thing separating the evangelicals from others is a shift of emphasis. In this paper I follow the common practice of using Evangelical to refer to those within the Anglican Church, and the lower-case evangelical to refer either to dissenters or to the movement in general. The Methodists represent a special case, being Anglicans up to a point (for convenience, I would say up to the death of John Wesley in 1791, although that event did not bring a sharp break) and dissenters thereafter.
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"'Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots' by
25-year-old Deborah Feldman ... is painfully
good. Through a narrative voice that is almost hypnotic, she puts you
immediately in the center of her chaotic world." from a review by Elaine Margolin in JewishJournal.com 2/10/2012
A number of negative comments can be made about this memoir, starting with the title which sensationalizes the "scandalous" nature of the author's narrative. But to focus on the negative is to miss the larger, quite compelling, story about the author's childhood and adolescence and her struggle to leave the Satmar Hasidic community in which she was raised.
For those interested in the Satmar Hasidic community this memoir has a lot to offer, keeping in mind that it's written by a disenchanted young woman who I think would say feels traumatized by her upbringing. Drawing from her own experiences, Feldman discusses how women are raised and treated within the Satmar religious community. The restrictions and expectations are limiting, and Feldman, a questioning child, found herself frequently in trouble at school. At 17 she entered into an arranged marriage and she describes the highly ritualized process of meeting her future husband's mother, then the occasion of meeting her future husband, then the tradition of gift-giving, then the role of the mikvah, then the wedding itself, then the marriage.
Her marriage was hollow. There was no place in her marriage or in the community for her to satisfy her hunger to explore and experience the world, especially the world of the mind, because the needs of the community took precedence over the needs of any individual. So, after five years of marriage and one child, she left. Beyond her own needs, she felt strongly that she provide her son with opportunities he would not have had if he had grown up a Satmar Hasid.
Feldman includes a disclaimer at the beginning of the memoir that states that all identifying names and characteristics have been changed and some events conflated and transposed to honor people's privacy, but she also includes many family photos which probably are only identifiable within the Satmar community. Despite the disclaimer, she has been called to task by members of the Satmar community who have pointed out inaccuracies and who call her motives into question, emphasizing that the picture she paints of the community is one-sided and, therefore, distorted. But Feldman calls it as she sees it, and it's understandable that she would ruffle many feathers.
Although the author is critical of much of the beliefs and behavior within the community, she tries to understand her grandparents who raised her, and she agrees with those who feel that the contemporary Hasidic way of life is, to some degree, a reaction to the heavy losses in their community during World War II. Satmars take to heart the belief promulgated within the community that the Holocaust was a punishment from God because so many Jews had strayed from a devout religious life. It is clear that the author feels that this belief, often repeated by teachers in schools, has the effect of further insolating and isolating its adherents.
To read an article in the New York Times about Hasidic Jews and clothing traditions, click here.
To watch a three-part of a video of a Satmar wedding when the Grand Rebbe engages in a ritualized dance with the bride - his youngest daughter , click here for part 1. Click here for part 2. Click here for part 3. The three together add up to less than a half an hour.
There are no names to list as all names, except the author's, have been changed.
Williamsburg, Brooklyn, NY
Kiryas Joel, New York
Monday, September 3, 2012
2 comments:
Overall, I enjoyed this book. I'm fascinated with accounts of women (and men) who manage to escape from extreme religious backgrounds, and Unorthodox is the first book I've read about the Hasidic community. I was very interested to read about Feldman's day-to-day life in Williamsburg, including the bizarre (to me) religious rituals and the community's treatment of women.
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subset: commoncrawl


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Thompson Brewery & Public House
In 1905, when the South Salem Hills were planted in orchards, a splendid house was built along the market road to Eugene as a dwelling for Civil War vet Franklin Thompson. Today, the Thompson Brewery & Public House is the first brewery in Salem to be established post-Prohibition.
Is it any surprise that the interior echoes with the laughter of an old friend? Nothing, it seems, hangs heavy in the air in this comfortable, century-old building. There's always a welcoming easiness extending to all. The deck at the Thompson is a perfect place to enjoy a meal and a housemade McMenamins pint.


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Savior of pitchers' elbows
In the summer of 1974, Dodger pitcher Tommy John heard his arm snap like a guitar string after delivering a pitch. The torn ligament was the type of injury that commonly ended athletic careers, but John, then a 31-year-old star, pushed team doctors "to figure it out."
Orthopedic surgeon Dr. Frank Jobe made what many consider the most extraordinary medical advance in baseball history that September when he invented a transplant procedure that resurrected the pitcher's arm.
Jobe borrowed the idea of transferring a tendon from one body part to another, which had been used in hand surgery and to reinforce the joints of polio patients but never to repair a joint that endures so much stress -- the elbow of a major league pitcher.
He snipped a 6-inch tendon from the pitcher's good arm and wove it like a figure eight through holes drilled in the elbow of the injured left arm to replace the ligament destroyed by overuse. It worked so well that Pete Rose, then a player with the Cincinnati Reds, quipped: "I know they had to give Tommy John a new arm. But did they have to give him [Sandy] Koufax's?"
Jobe, 88, died Thursday in Santa Monica, the Dodgers announced. No cause was given.
"Many of us go into medicine thinking we are going to change the world, and it just doesn't happen, certainly not to this magnitude," Dr. Timothy Kremchek, the Cincinnati Reds' medical director and one of the few doctors who perform the Tommy John procedure on major league pitchers, said in a 2005 interview with The Times.
Over the next 30 years, Jobe saved hundreds of pitching careers by performing the surgery. He attributed its popularity in part to the increase in million-dollar salaries, which put pressure on team doctors to consider near-bionic solutions to keep such players in the game.
Dr. James Andrews, a Jobe protege widely credited with perfecting the Tommy John surgery, has repeatedly called Jobe a founding father of sports medicine who brought treatment for baseball players out of the Dark Ages.
"Jobe initiated all of the things that have made elbow injuries both commonly recognized and treatable," Andrews, an orthopedic surgeon in Birmingham, Ala., told Investor's Business Daily in 2002.
As of 2013, more than 1,000 Major League Baseball players -- most of them pitchers -- had undergone the Tommy John procedure, the popular term for ulnar collateral ligament reconstruction.
"The impact he's had on the game can't be measured," Lewis Yocum, the longtime team physician for the Los Angeles Angels and Jobe's colleague, said in 1999. Yocum died in 2013.
The Baseball Hall of Fame honored Jobe last summer for developing the "historic elbow procedure" that has helped extend so many major league careers.
"Baseball lost a great man and Tommy John lost a great friend," John said in a statement Thursday night. "There are a lot of pitchers in baseball who should celebrate his life and what he did for the game of baseball."
If the Tommy John procedure remains the Mona Lisa of sports surgeries, as Times sportswriter Chris Dufresne once declared, then Jobe's landmark 1990 operation to rebuild the right shoulder of then-Dodger Orel Hershiser could be enshrined down the hall in the Louvre.
When Hershiser, a Cy Young Award winner who led the team to the World Series in 1988, needed surgery to repair cartilage damage and tighten the ligaments in his shoulder, Jobe proposed a revolutionary procedure that had been done on only about 30 people. None were major-league pitchers trying to throw 90 mph fastballs.
Until then, such an operation meant disturbing and damaging muscles, which made it almost impossible for a pitcher to come back. Jobe designed a less-invasive approach -- instead of detaching the muscle to repair the joint, he split the muscle and made the repair. He used microscopic tools and newly invented anchors that secured the ligament to the bone, minimizing trauma.
Hershiser recuperated from the 45-minute operation in secrecy and allowed no photographs of his 13-month rehabilitation. After winning his first game post-surgery in 1991, he threw a party in honor of Jobe and gave him a trophy.
"He gave me back the thing I love," said Hershiser, who went on to pitch 10 more seasons and in two more World Series with the Cleveland Indians.
The two medical breakthroughs "revolutionized baseball because they have kept players on the field," Kremchek said.
Jobe, whose elegant hand strokes in the operating room have been compared to those of a symphony conductor, repeatedly said he would rather be remembered for the strides he made that kept athletes off the operating table.
In 1979, he established a biomechanics laboratory at Centinela Hospital Medical Center in Inglewood and pioneered motion analysis on the act of throwing. Rotator cuffs, a series of muscles that control overhead shoulder motion that can be abused by pitching, were the subject of the first study.
"We developed a lab that would photograph at 500 frames a second," Jobe said in 1989. "We put electrodes in the muscles of the rotator cuffs, and we also coordinated that with pictures so we would know which was active at which part of the pitch."
Rotator cuff injuries became less common, Jobe said, because of knowledge gained in his laboratory. The lab conducts studies in sports other than baseball, including running, tennis and swimming, and develops exercise programs to prevent and rehabilitate injuries.
Frank Wilson Jobe, the son of a postman and farmer, was born July 16, 1925, in Greensboro, N.C., and grew up there. His high school baseball career did not presage his impact on the sport -- he spent most of the time on the bench.
After graduation, Jobe joined the Army's 101st Airborne Division in 1943 as a medical supply sergeant. Working with doctors who risked their lives on the front lines, he realized his calling.
"These guys would be operating in tents with bullets and shrapnel flying around," Jobe told The Times in 1991. "These guys were my heroes."
He vowed to treat any athlete who needed help, regardless of whether he ended up helping an opposing team, just as military doctors tended to the enemy.
"I consider myself a doctor for individuals, not teams," Jobe said. "You don't use medicine as a means of winning."
Back home after the war, he attended junior college in Tennessee and what is now La Sierra University in Riverside. After earning his medical degree from Loma Linda University in 1956, Jobe spent three years in family practice so he could pay off school loans.
While working in the emergency room during his three-year residency at Los Angeles County General Hospital, he became interested in orthopedic medicine. He also hit it off with an orthopedic specialist, Dr. Robert Kerlan.
After completing his residency in 1964, Jobe offered to help Kerlan with his workload. They sealed their partnership with a handshake.
"We really had a wonderful relationship for 35 years," Jobe said of Kerlan in 1998. "It was almost like a marriage; we were very, very close."
There was no jealousy between them, "and you usually can't say that about doctors," Kerlan told the Sporting News in 1993, three years before his death at 74.
The Kerlan-Jobe Orthopaedic Clinic opened in Inglewood in 1965 and later moved to Westchester. The Dodgers were already a client since Kerlan had been named their team physician when they moved from Brooklyn in 1958. Eventually the Angels, Lakers, Kings, Ducks and other teams joined their roster.
Baseball got a preview of what Jobe could do when he removed bone chips from the elbow of Dodger pitcher Johnny Podres in 1964. Post-surgery, Podres pitched two more seasons.
When Jobe operated on John a decade later, the ulnar nerve, which provides strength in the hands and fingers, became irritated during surgery.
Weeks after the operation John's left arm dangled at his side, his numb hand curled into a claw. A second operation kept secret from the public three months after the first shifted the nerve to the back of the arm and allow the tendon to learn to become a ligament.
John said Jobe gave him a "1 in 100" chance of pitching again.
"That was a wild guess," Jobe said in 1989. "I didn't have any idea what the chances were."
The ever-modest Jobe admitted "it was probably the one thing in my career that stands out" but gave "the intelligent, cooperative" John credit for taking his 18-month rehabilitation seriously.
John had 288 pitching victories in his 26-year career, and more than half -- 164 -- came after the surgery. He went on to play for the Angels, the Oakland Athletics and the New York Yankees.
Former Dodger relief pitcher Eric Gagne, once one of the most dominant closers in baseball, was among those forever linked to Tommy John when he had the surgery in 1997. While still in the minor leagues, David Wells had the operation in 1985 and pitched a perfect game for the New York Yankees in 1998.
When Tom Candiotti sought out Jobe in 1981 while still in the minor leagues, Jobe had done only a handful of operations and was not sure he should risk it unless a player was going to make it in the majors. (Five of Candiotti's 15 years in the majors would be with the Dodgers.)
"I said, 'Are you a real prospect?' " Jobe recalled in 1999. "He said, 'Well, I hope so.' Ever since then, any communication I get from him, he always signs, 'The Prospect.' "
Jobe resisted his own fame, refusing to sign an autograph for the son of a star athlete because he thought the request ridiculous.
Jobe, a resident of Brentwood, is survived by his wife of 54 years, the former Beverly Anderson; their sons Christopher (an orthopedic surgeon), Meredith, Cameron and Blair; and eight grandchildren.
Nelson is a former Times staff writer.


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Even though I set the prompt, I was less than impressed. I have always followed the mantra if you want someone else to do something, then you should be prepared to do it too! So here goes -
I am fairly short, at 5 foot 1", little and good, although I think there are a few that would disagree! My shoe size is size 5 (UK). My hair is typically short, although longer than my profile picture. Currently in a bob style; and my husband has taken to irritatingly calling me Bob and to my horror, I even answer him!
The day we went to buy our rings was a lovely day, in our saved items box we still have the boxes and receipt. We looked at loads, but I am fairly traditional so I opted for a plain band and I wanted my husband to have the same style as me. My eternity ring, is 18 carat gold diamond set and was my anniversary gift from my husband on our 15th wedding anniversary. I guess I wear that about 50% of the time and always take it off at night, but my wedding ring never comes off, unless it is absolutely essential.
Here we are in July 2013 This was taken a day or two before our anniversary |
having had two surgical procedures
and the result is that I take medication to replace the natural thyroid, it does not completely do the job, but as close as it can. So this means my metabolism is fairly slow. This hasn't been helped by my working life of eating irregularly, often on the hoof, supplemented by the odd sandwich, packet of crisps and chocolate bar, so my poor body stores the fat as it is never sure when it will next be fed. Since I have had a change in my professional life, I have lost about a stone in weight, but I am not going to tell you what the numbers are! but I feel better than I have done in years.


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Case Studies
Automated Test System Traversing Unit for Rail Inspection
Industry: Transportation Sector; Rail Vehicle Sub-Sector
Problem: A measuring sensor module required guidance and tracking over a long distance and at high speed rate. The sensor travel requirement was 36 meters at a speed of 50km/hr.
Solution: Macron 14 Configured With:
Extra long cart
50 mm wide belt
80 x 160 beam (extrusion)
Dual output motor drive pulley
Automation System Benefits:
The Macron 14 linear actuator is the workhorse product and easiest to configure for all kinds of automation, gantry, multi-axis and single-axis motion applications. The track roller guidance system provides smooth cart motion and by adding bearing block assemblies, a variety of standard or application specific cart lengths can be constructed.
At more than 118 feet, actuator length was quite long in this application but not a problem for the Macron 14. Macron designs are well suited for long distance automated motion requirements and environments. Macron extra long actuators have been installed in applications under the sea, in the air and in factories around the world providing reliable, low maintenance linear motion solutions.
High-Tech Distributor Comment:
"Macron provided a solution to our long length linear motion requirement. In fact, once a distance exceeds 1 meter of travel, Macron is the go to solution. Their application engineers have consistently created rapidly configured solutions that allow us to win projects."


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Guest Blogged by Special BRAD BLOG CPAC Correspondent Daniel Borchers
EDITOR'S NOTE: The BRAD BLOG has obtained media credentials to cover this year's "Conservative Political Action Conference" (CPAC) which began on Thursday, and will be taking place this weekend in Washington D.C. We've asked Dan Borchers of Citizens for Principled Conservatism, Brother Watch & Coulter Watch, to cover the event as our correspondent. We've written about Borchers --- who was escorted out of CPAC in 2002 for distributing material critical of CPAC darling Ann Coulter and disallowed media credentials in the years following --- in several previous articles here, here, both of which include videos he's compiled showing Coulter to be a detriment to the Conservative Movement. As well, we wrote about Borchers in an article for the February issue of Mother Jones. We're pleased to have him corresponding for us from "Bloggers Row" at CPAC this year. This is his first dispatch...
If you think all conservatives think alike, guess again. CPAC is a great place for an education in Conservatism.
The 33rd annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) is being held in Washington, DC, February 9-11, 2006. CPAC features prominent national speakers, with thousands of students in attendance. White House officials, senators and congressmen, special interest groups and media personalities all converge at this largest annual gathering of conservatives to network, debate political issues, channel grassroots activism and define the direction of Conservatism for the coming year.
Conservatives of all stripes coalesce at CPAC, though anti-war paleoconservatives have been scarce in recent years. Neoconservatives predominate. Pro-market conservatives abound. Cultural conservatives thrive. Libertarians are free to liberate (to whatever degree they can) the Conservative Movement from the pro-security and pro-life wings of the party. This year, even the legalization of marijuana is formally debated.
You can find conservatives opposed to the Iraq War, Muslims supporting President Bush and an organization against the war on Christmas.
This year's theme was modestly called, "The Conservative Agenda for America." Among this kaleidoscope of conservatives, what that agenda will be remains to be seen. Unquestionably, the majority at CPAC favor President Bush and the neoconservative. What, exactly, unites these disparate threads of Conservatism? I suspect a mixture of freedom and faith, family and fortune.
As this year's CPAC Conference progresses, I'll file additional reports and photos. (See below for a selection of photos from the first day.)
Till then,
Dan Borchers
(Ed Note: Photos from CPAC Day 1, taken by Dan follow, along with photos of Velvet Revolution's "ImpeachMobile" which was parked out front, and a report from the driver about the various "friendly gestures" they received from CPAC attendees, and a group he described as "Hitler Youth")...
UPDATE: Borcher's dispatch from Day 2, including details (audio and video) from Ann Coulter's big keynote speech is now posted here...
(Ed Note: This above is a sample of one of the photo boards at the the Free Republic booth. Note the comments about "GOOD GUYS" versus "CODE PINK...AMERICA-HATING LEFTIST SWINE" and "COMMIES" next to some of the photos. Click here for a larger detailed version of this, and another adjacent photo board.)
Ed Note: The Velvet Revolution "ImpeachMobile" was also parked outside of the Omni Shoreham Hotel yesterday where CPAC is taking place! One of our drivers --- The BRAD BLOG is a co-founder of VR --- reported that after weeks of getting thumbs-up signs while driving around DC, the rolling billboard received quite a different response out of CPAC...Here are a few choice quotes from their report:
"The vendors here really seem to be hate mongers."
During the late evening, we received a call from one of the drivers who reoprted that "Hitler Youth" wearing "strange uniforms" seemed to be dogging them. "In unison," he said, "they all gave us the finger and told us to 'go fuck ourselves.' When the police told us we had to keep moving, we did, but both the police and the Hitler youth followed us."
We asked for photos, if they were able to snap any, even though it was late in the day. They send back a few, which were too hard to really make out to much. Here's a couple of them, lightened a bit, with an explanation from the driver below it...
Eventually, Dick Cheney, who came to speak to CPAC on the first night, rolled right by the "ImpeachMobile" in his motorcade...Said the VR truckdriver:


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The SE Clay Green Street project starts construction soon
Jul 19, 2013 at 11:32 AM 0 Comments
The time is here! 21 new green street facilities will be built this summer along SE Clay Street between SE 12th Avenue and SE Water Avenue.
This is part of the Clay Street Route to the River project that helps connect the neighborhood to the Eastbank Esplanade while improving stormwater infrastructure. The green street facilities will remove an average of 1.6 million gallons of stormwater runoff from the combined sewer system each year. This helps protect Portlanders' investment in the big pipe projects and keeps the river clean by allowing water to soak into the ground naturally. As an added bonus, these improvements also help our climate by storing carbon.
Learn more in the new project newsletter , and on the project website: www.portlandoregon.gov/bes/SEClay
For construction information, contact Debbie Castleton at 503-823-2831
This old curb and gutter at SE 2nd Ave. and Clay will be upgraded as part of stormwater improvements on the Clay Street Route to the River, similar to the project completed at SE 12th Avenue and Clay.
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It's Friday! Yaay. I hope everyone has a good weekend! I'm looking forward to doing some baking; I've had that baking itch all week, but have been resisting it. There may be a trip or two to Hyvee in my future, too. :)
I can't believe I don't have a recipe for pumpkin cinnamon rolls on my blog. I searched and searched, and couldn't find one. Well today is the day. You have to make these Pumpkin Cinnamon Rolls with Butterscotch-Pumpkin Glaze.
They're amazing! I actually tested this recipe a couple of times before I got it right. They're flavorful, flaky and moist. The dough is a sweet yeast dough made from pumpkin, milk, yeast, sugar, oil, eggs, flour and lots of spices.
The dough is rolled out and slathered in brown sugar-cinnamon butter, then rolled up, sliced and baked. The glaze is made from melted butterscotch chips, cream cheese, confectioners' sugar, milk, vanilla, and a little bit of pumpkin. I love that the glaze uses pumpkin, too.
These rolls would be perfect for an autumn weekend brunch, served with coffee. Or pumpkin spice lattes. They're great as a dessert, too. I had one for dessert one night. Later on I found cinnamon roll icing in my hair. I hate when that happens.
Oh! I forgot to tell you the most important part! These are no-knead cinnamon rolls. No mixer or kneading required!
1/3 cup warm milk (not hot) (around 100-110 degrees F.)
2 1/4 teaspoons active dry yeast
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup canned pumpkin
2 tablespoons oil
1 large egg
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/4 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
1/8 teaspoon ground clove
3 1/2 cups all purpose flour
2 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened
1/3 cup brown sugar
1 1/4 teaspoons ground cinnamon
3 tablespoons butterscotch chips
2 tablespoons cream cheese
1 tablespoon pumpkin puree
1 tablespoon milk
2/3 cup confectioners' sugar
1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
To make the dough, in a large mixing bowl whisk together 1/3 cup milk, yeast and granulated sugar until well combined. Allow to sit for 10 minutes until yeast is activated and bubbly. Whisk in pumpkin, oil, egg, baking powder, salt, 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg and clove until well combined. Stir in flour until combined, and a dough ball forms. Lightly cover and allow to rise in a warm area for 1 hour and 30 minutes, or until doubled in bulk. (I used my oven. I preheated it on the lowest temperature, turned it off, then allowed my dough to rise in there.)
On a floured surface, roll out dough to a 1/4-inch thickness, into a rectangle. In a medium bowl, stir together butter, brown sugar and 1 1/4 teaspoons cinnamon until well combined; evenly spread on top of dough. Roll up dough, jelly-roll style. Slice into 10 equal pieces. Place in a greased 9-inch cake pan. Lightly cover and allow to rise in a warm area for 30 minutes.
Heat oven to 400 degrees F. Bake rolls for 15 minutes or until golden brown. Cool pan on a wire rack. To make the glaze, in a medium bowl, stir together butterscotch chips, cream cheese, 1 tablespoon pumpkin and 1 tablespoon milk until combined. Microwave for 30-60 seconds, stirring frequently until melted (It doesn't take long! Don't scorch your butterscotch!). Whisk in confectioners' sugar and vanilla until well combined and smooth. Drizzle glaze over cinnamon rolls.
Makes 10 cinnamon rolls


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03 LS with bad coils not under warranty
I just found out that my 2003 Lincoln LS has 7 out of 8 bad coils. I also understand that Lincoln extended the warranty on these coils to 10 yrs or 100,000 miles. My dealer is telling me that my coils are not under warranty because there is no evidence that they went bad from water or oil leakage from the head cover gasket. Does anybody know if this info is correct? It would seem to me that either the coils are under warranty or there not. Any help you can give is appreciated
akirby Member Posts: 8,062That's not how I read it.
http://www.allstatetrucks.com/Recalls/cust%20satisfaction%20recalls/07m07/R07M07- %20dealer%20bulletin.pdf
If any of the above mentioned drivability issues are reported on an affected vehicle, dealers are to
identify any engine cylinder that is misfiring and perform an ignition coil stress test on the affected
cylinders. If the coil fails the stress test, dealers are to replace the ignition coil and associated
spark plug. If any coil boot is contaminated with engine oil, dealers are to contact the Special
Service Support Center for prior approval to replace the contaminated ignition coil boot, the
associated spark plug and install a new valve cover gasket set. This service must be performed
on affected vehicles at no charge to the vehicle owner.0 -
rma1a Member Posts: 3I appreciate your response. I took the info you sent on the warranty extension with me when I picked the car up today. They said that the coils were not covered by the warranty because they had not "misfired" but because there was an "RFI concern from the coils". If I understand it correctly, the coils were sending a signal that was interfering with the throttle body signal and causing the car to go into failsafe mode. Both the service manager and the mechanic suggested that I contact Ford and ask them to include this concern in the warranty and reimburse me for the work done ($1,300). Would like your opinion of this. Should it have been covered? What are the chances Ford would reimburse?
Thank you again for your response - I appreciate it very much0 -
akirby Member Posts: 8,062Were the coils actually replaced? If so then you'd have a good case. But RFI does not sound like the typical coil failure problem covered by the ext. warranty so I wouldn't be surprised if they said no. Won't hurt to ask though.0
rma1a Member Posts: 3Yes, they said that 7 out of 8 coils were bad so they replaced all 8 of them.0
This discussion has been closed.


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Take a look again at the photograph of the inside of Ossuary 4, below. I have highlighted a crack in the top right hand corner:
Inside Ossuary 4, kokh 2, 2011, Preliminary Report, p. 32, fig. 7, annotated to draw attention to the crack at the back of the ossuary. |
Now, according to James Tabor, this ossuary is the same one that was photographed in 1981. He explains (Preliminary Report, 14) that:
This ossuary is in its original position. It is ornamented but due to its distance in the niche and its closeness to the wall we were not able to examine its façade closely. Its far end has a name inscribed in Greek but unfortunately even our snake camera probe could not reach far enough inside the niche to shoot back at that end and get a clear wide shot of the letters. All we have is the 1981 enhanced photo in which the Greek letters are faintly visible but remain undeciphered.It is featured on the right in the picture below:
"1981 Photo of Ossuary 4 (right) with faint inscription in Greek", Jesus Discovery Website |
In this picture, the façade is facing to the left, towards ossuary 5. The panel with the faint inscription is facing towards us. Although the ossuary is apparently in its original location in kokh 2, it is clearly not "in its original position". If this is the same ossuary, it is now switched around, with the façade facing the wall and the inscription panel on the far side. Now, if this is the case, then we have an anomaly. Look again at the photograph above that is taken inside ossuary 4. There is a crack at the back, on the top right. The same area in the 1981 photograph ought to be the top left as we look at it now, but there is no crack:
1981 Photo of Ossuary 4 (right), top left highlighted to the lack of a crack |
There are two possibilities here. It could be that the crack was caused in 1981, but this seems unlikely given that only "scratches" are mentioned (Preliminary Report, 5) and not major damage. It seems more likely that we are not looking at the same ossuary.
There is a related question. Ossuary 4 is described in the Complete Findings as "Plain (Not fully explored)", which conflicts with the idea that it is "ornamented" ("Preliminary Report", 14). If the 1981 photo above is of Ossuary 4, there is no question that it is ornamented. Here is the detail of the façade as we see it above:
Close-up of ornamented facade on ossuary 4 (1981) |
In summary, there are conflicts between ossuary 4 as it is apparently represented in the picture from 1981 and as it is represented in the recent investigations. In one it has a big crack and in the other it does not. And while it is described as "plain" in one place, it is described as "ornamented" in another.
I am grateful also to David Meadows for useful discussion of the issues here -- see his Pinterest page on this topic.


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Audio Video Graphics Spec 5fR2
Draft 0.3
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Rationale
- 3 Terminology
- 4 Platforms
- 5 Audio Specification
- 6 Video-in/Capture Specification
- 7 Video-out/Graphics Specification
- 8 Work in progress
- 8.1 Framebuffer specification
- 8.1.1 YCbCr Format
- 8.1.2 Font rendering
- 8.1.3 Basic 2D acceleration
- 8.1.4 Video format control
- 8.1.5 Multi-plane support
- 8.1.6 DirectFB specification
- 8.1.7 Important Terminology
- 8.1.8 YCbCr Format
- 8.1.9 Basic 2D acceleration
- 8.1.10 Video format control
- 8.1.11 Multi-plane support
- 8.1.12 GFX Card Driver
- 8.1.13 DirectFb benchmarks
- 8.1 Framebuffer specification
- 9 References
- 10 Remaining Issues
Audio, video, and graphics processing is at the core of many CE products. The AVG requirements for CE devices are different than those for PCs/Servers, notably with respect to footprint, input devices, interlacing, streaming, etc.. Multiple graphics planes and video planes may be combined using, e.g., alpha blending and animation.
No single default/standard interfaces exist for AVG. Having a well defined, well supported interface for AVG devices will reduce fragmentation of solutions and encourage the CE community to develop solutions that apply to conforming interfaces, so that they can be deployed across a wider range of systems.
Acronyms and terms
Term | Definition |
ALSA | Advanced Linux Sound Architecture -- functional level audio API, now standard in 2.6 Linux kernels, replacing OSS. |
API | Application Programmers Interface |
ARIB | Association of Radio Industries and Businesses. Most relevant to AVG is the proposed graphics architecture proposed for High Definition TV Broadcast (the 5-plane model). |
ATSC | Advanced Television Systems Committee. American standard body for digital television broadcasting. |
Back-end Scaler | A Scaler which manipulates the graphics planes and data, but does not allow the host processor access to the (blended) end result, mainly for efficiency reasons. |
CCIR 601 | In 1982 CCIR 601 established a digital video standard, which uses the Y, Cr, Cb color space (often incorrectly referred to as YUV). Unlike YUV, Cr,Cb range [-0.5, -0.5]. A full conversion matrix is included below (*) |
CE | Consumer Electronics: a class of devices used in the home or on the move. Includes DVD, DVR, PVR, PDA, TV, set-top box, cellular phones, etc. |
DVB | Digital Video Broadcast: European standards body for digital television broadcasting. |
DVD | Digital Versatile Disc: high capacity multimedia data storage medium. |
DVR | Digital Video Recorder: a consumer electronic device. |
FB,Framebuffer | Abstraction of video-out hardware with a low level (ioctl) API. Standard in >2.4 Linux kernel (see the /usr/src/linux/Documentation/fb kernel tree directory for more information). |
Front-end Scaler | A Scaler which manipulates the graphics planes and data and allows the host processor access the (in-between and) end results. |
HDTV | High Definition Television: provides a higher quality television broadcast, with progressive and interlaced ( 720p to 1080i ) video and support for 16:9 aspect (movie) ratio. |
JPEG | Joint Photographic Experts Group: (lossy) still image compression standard. |
MHP | Multimedia Home Platform: an API used together with MPEG-2 transmissions. |
MIME | Multipurpose Internet Mail Extension: a standard for identifying the type of data contained in a file. MIME is an Internet protocol that allows sending binary files across the Internet as attachments to e-mail messages. This includes graphics, photos, sound, video files, and formatted text documents. |
MP3 | MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3: a popular audio compression standard. |
MPEG-1/2/4 | Moving Picture Experts Group: a compression standard for digital audio & video with varying levels of complexity and achievable compression ratios. |
NTSC | National Television Systems Committee: American standard for analog television broadcasting. |
PAL | Phase Alternating Line: American standard for analog television broadcasting. |
PNG | Portable Network Graphics: (lossless) still image compression standard. |
PVR | Personal Video Recorder: a consumer electronic device. |
RGB[A] | Colorspace representation commonly used in computer graphics. It uses three orthogonal components -- Red, Green and Blue -- to represent colors in to human visible spectrum, e.g. by combining red and green as additive colors it can fool the eye into seeing "yellow" light. An optional A at the end denotes the presence of per-pixel alpha. See also CCIR 601. |
Scaler | Graphics hardware accelerator which may scale and reformat (e.g. convert from YCC to RGB) graphics data and merge multiple independent graphics planes for final display. |
V4L | Video for Linux: low level (ioctl) video input and overlay API, standard in 2.4. Originally designed for control of analog video capture and tuner cards, as well as parallel port and USB video cameras. Incorporated in many other higher level APIs such as DirectFB. |
!V4L2 | Video for Linux, second version, made to be more flexible and extensible. Added specifications for digital tuner control and capture. |
YC'bCr[A] | Colorspace representation commonly used in analog and digital video broadcasts, and video compression technologies such as MPEG. It uses three orthogonal components, one for luminance (Y) and two for the color-difference signals (Cr,Cb). Since the eye is less sensitive to color than luminance, the color difference signals often get a smaller bandwidth allocated (or lower pixel resolution in the digital domain). An optional A at the end denotes the presence of per-pixel alpha. See also CCIR 601. |
YIQ | Colorspace representation commonly used in North American TV broadcast and is similar to YUV (see definition of YUV). The relation with YUV is: I == 0.74 V - 0.27 U and Q == 0.48 V + 0.41 U |
YUV | Colorspace representation commonly used in European TV broadcast. It is similar to YC'bCr and often meant to be the same (incorrectly) with U referring to Cb and V referring to Cr. With Y (luminance) defined as Y==0.299 R + 0.587 G + 0.114 B, by definition, U==B-Y, thus U represents colors from blue (U>0) to yellow (U<0). Likewise V==R-Y, thus V represents colors from magenta (V>0) to Cyan (blue green) (V<0). |
Cr | == | 0.500 -0.419 -0.081 | G |
Cb | -0.169 -0.331 0.500 | B |
Compliance classifiers
Terminology conventions are adopted here as they are defined in IETF RFC 2119, "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement Levels" (by S. Bradner, March 1997). A compliance classifier from the following set may be used:
- [M]ust, Required, Shall
- This is the minimum set of requirements. The CELF based products are expected to comply with these requirements when expressed in unconditional form. A conditional requirement expressed in the form, "If X, then Y must be implemented", means that the requirement "Y" must be met when the conditional aspect "X" applies to a given implementation.
- [S]hould, Recommended
- Recommended items are optional items that are strongly recommended for inclusion in CELF based products. The difference between "recommended" items and "optional" items, below, is one of priority. When considering features for inclusion in a product, recommended items should be included first.
- [O]ptional, May
- Optional items are suggestions for features that will enhance the user experience or are offered as a less preferred choice relative to another recommended feature. If optional features are included, they should comply with the requirement to ensure interoperability with other implementations.
- E[X]pressly Forbidden
- This term means that an item must not be incorporated in a CELF based product.
[O] Three target platforms are used or under consideration:
- Renesas SH4 host with SM501 graphics (See SzwgPlatform3)
- TI OMAP (See SzwgPlatform1)
- X86 generic with Matrox G450/550
For the first two, the System Size Spec page has a full description under "Definition - Platform".
Audio Specification
[O] No additional Audio specifications have been defined. ALSA, defined in kernel 2.6, may be used. Further evaluation is required before it can be considered for recommendation (see work in progress). Future extensions relate to AV streaming and synchronization.
Video-in/Capture Specification
[O] No additional Video input (capture) specifications have been defined. !V4L2, as defined in kernel 2.6, may be used.
[O] Proprietary solutions may also be used for video capture and digital tuners if !V4L2 does not suffice.
[O] DirectFB may be used as a higher level API.
Note: Video output can be seen as an (interlaced) sub-set of graphics. See graphics specification below for more details.
Video-out/Graphics Specification
[S] The standard Framebuffer is recommended for use in embedded CE devices.
[O] DirectFB may also be used in combination with the framebuffer.
Extensions to both are under consideration (see work in progress).
Graphics formats
[O] The framebuffer supports CLUT, RGB and RGBA packet data formats, but not YC'bCr[A]. Hardware capable of accelerating the display YC'bCr[A] packed data may develop their own extensions to the framebuffer for now.
[O] Also, the DirectFB framework which supports these formats may be used.
Multi-plane support
[O] Graphics hardware capable of multiple planes may be implemented with a single or multiple device drivers with one device per plane e.g. /dev/fb0, /dev/fb1,.../dev/fb5 for a 5 plane capable device. Front-end based scalers are recommended to use the DirectFB framework.
[O] Back-end scalers may add ioctl's to their framebuffer drivers.
Work in progress
Both DirectFB and the Framebuffer can be extended with YCbCr formats and multi-plane blending features commonly found in embedded CE devices. However, it is likely that only one of them will be supported in the future.
Framebuffer specification
YCbCr Format
Resolution Support
The recommended formats are:
- 4:4:4 Equal number of samples of Y, Cb and Cr.
- 4:2:2 Cb/Cr are subsampled by a factor of two horizontally.
- 4:2:0 Cb/Cr are subsampled by a factor of two in both directions.
- 4:1:1 Cb/Cr are subsampled by a factor of four horizontally (used in DV).
If any of these formats are used, the CCIR 601 standard must be used. It defines how the data is interleaved and the relative positions of the Cb/Cr samples in relation to the Y samples.
Memory representation
YCbCr may be stored in e.g a framebuffer in various ways:
- packed YC'bCrA 4:4:4 : 32-bit unit containing one pixel with alpha
- packed YC'bCr 4:2:2 : 16-bit unit, two successive units contain two horizontally adjacent pixels, no alpha
- planar YC'bCr[A] 4:2:2 : three [four] arrays, one for each component
- semi-planar YC'bCr 4:2:2 : two arrays, one with all Ys, one with Cb and Cr.
- planar YC'bCr[A] 4:2:0 : three [four] arrays, one for each component
- semi-planar YC'bCr 4:2:0 : two arrays, one with all Ys, one with U and Vs
Following CCIR601, only the packed formats are recommended, with the possible exception of a separate alpha plane in some cases (see ARIB [O6] proposal).
Font rendering
- freetype [O5]
Basic 2D acceleration
- lines (horz./vert. vs. anti-aliased lines)
- rectangles (fill and copy)
- pixmaps (bitblt, scaling)
Video format control
- resolution
- interlaced/progressive
Multi-plane support
- Each plane is represented by... [/dev/fb0, /dev/fb1,...]
- Additional API (ioctl) calls... [display order, placement, scaling,...]
DirectFB specification
DirectFB overview [G2] provides a list of currently supported features, summarized below.
Important Terminology
- Surface
- Memory region physically reserved for rendering pixels. Surfaces are used for regular rendering of pixels, sprites and so on.
- Sub-surface
- Sub-region of surface. No physical memory allocated.
- Primary Surface
- Visible screen in full screen mode.
- Layer
- Each layer is different video memory. They are alpha-blended and displayed.
- Window/Windowstack
- Each layer may have multiple window. Windowstack is a stack of windows. Each window has surface. Their locations and orders may be changed.
YCbCr Format
Resolution Support
Supported formats are:
- 4:2:2 Cb/Cr are subsampled by a factor of two horizontally.
- 4:2:0 Cb/Cr are subsampled by a factor of two in both directions.
Memory representation
- packed YCbCr 4:2:2 : 16-bit unit, two successive units contain two horizontally adjacent pixels, no alpha
- planar YCbCr 4:2:0 : three arrays, one for each component
Font rendering
- DirectFB bitmap font
- !TrueType (using !FreeType2)
- No bold or italics support other than by specifying a different typeface from the same font family. For example, 'Times New Roman Regular' and 'Times New Roman Italic' correspond to two different faces.
Basic 2D acceleration
- lines (anti-aliased)
- rectangles (fill and copy)
- triangle (fill and copy)
- pixmaps (bitblt, scaling)
- Per-pixel alpha blending (a.k.a. texture alpha)
- Per-plane alpha blending (a.k.a. alpha modulation)
- Colorizing (a.k.a. color modulation)
- Source and destination color keying
Video format control
- resolution
- interlaced/progressive support
Multi-plane support
- DirectFB layers (not surfaces) support the concept of planes.
- Layer API is provided through IDirectFBD'isplayLayer Interface.
- Opacity is available through IDirectFBD'isplayLayer::!SetOpacity.
- IDirectFBD'isplayLayer::!SetScreenLocation() controls scaling of the plane. Back-End Scaler(BES) is used, for instance for Matrox. It requires hardware support.
- Explicit Front-End Scaler(FES) is not available. Thus, stretched blit to the primary surface should be used.
- To execute a specific graphics operation (e.g. blitting of a surface), the DirectFB driver will access the memory mapped io ports of the graphics hardware to submit the command to the acceleration engine (actual hardware acceleration is done entirely from user space).
GFX Card Driver
- DirectFB abstracts the video driver through GFX driver.
- Graphic operation is executed through IDirectFBSurface interface. The interface calls appropriate callback routine in gfxcard driver(src/core/gfxcard.c). The callback routine decides whether the video device has hardware acceleration capability or not, and invokes appropriate functions.
- The following is the model used in the core gfxcard driver. Blit, !DrawLine,
DrawRect and similar operations are implemented in this way:
void dfb_gfxcard_OPERATION() { bool hw == false; lock(); /* check if acceleration is available, and then acquire */ if (hardware_accel_available(OPERATION) && hardware_accel_acquire(OPERATION)) { hw == card->funcs.OPERATION(); } /* if hardware acceleration is not available */ if (!hw) { gAcquire(); gOPERATION(); gRelease(); } unlock(); }
DirectFb benchmarks
You can refer 'DirectFB' benchmark on various environment from Benchmark section of Evaluate Direct Fb Task Page
G - Graphics/Video out: 1 Framebuffer - http://www.kernel.org/ (1) KD26/fb - http://linuxconsole.sourceforge.net/fbdev/HOWTO/ - http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Framebuffer-HOWTO.html 2 DirectFB (uses 1) - http://www.directfb.org/ - http://www.directfb.org/documentation/DirectFB_overview_V0.2.pdf 3 NanoX - http://www.microwindows.org/ 4 SDL - http://www.libsdl.org/ 5 Gstreamer - http://www.gstreamer.net/ 6 OpenGL (OpenML) - http://www.opengl.org/ - http://www.khronos.org/opengles/
V – Video in: 1 V4L[2] - http://www.kernel.org/ (1) KD26/video4linux - http://bytesex.org/v4l/ 2 OpenML - http://www.khronos.org/openml/ 3 LinuxTV (DVB API) - http://www.linuxtv.org
A – Audio in/out: 1 OSS - http://www.kernel.org/ (1) KD26/sound/oss - http://www.4front-tech.com/opensound.html 2 ALSA - http://www.kernel.org/ (1) KD26/sound/alsa - http://www.alsa-project.org 3 OpenAL - http://www.openal.org/
U – Users of AVG: 1 V'ideoLan - http://www.videolan.org 2 Freevo - http://freevo.sourceforge.net 3 LinuxTV - http://www.linuxtv.org/ 4 MythTV - http://www.mythtv.org/ 5 DVR - http://dvr.sourceforge.net/html/main.html 6 OpenPVR - http://www.funktronics.ca/openpvr/ - http://sourceforge.net/projects/openpvr/
O – Other: 1 TV Linux Alliance - http://www.tvlinuxalliance.com/ 2 TV Anytime - http://www.tv-anytime.org/ 3 Digital Home Working Group - http://www.dhwg.org/ 4 B'ootSplash - http://www.BootSplash.org/ 5 F'reeType - http://freetype.sourceforge.net/freetype2/ 6 ARIB architecture - http://www.arib.or.jp/english/html/overview/ov/std_b24.html
Note (1) - KD26 refers to the Linux 2.6.X kernel tree, which has a "Documentation" sub-directory.
Remaining Issues
See Work in progress.


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If you would like to exercise on your own you can come during any of the lap swim times. Recreational swim is unstructured time for everyone.
Show All Answers
All patrons must wear proper swimming attire in the pool. There are additional exceptions for the outdoor pools which are: males can wear athletic shorts with a functional drawstring and boxers/briefs underneath and females can wear athletic shorts with a functional drawstring and panties underneath. Females can also wear a t-shirt with a sports bra underneath.
We do not provide towels. All of the pools have lockers available for patron use. Patrons are encouraged to bring a lock to secure their belongings.
U.S Coast Guard approved flotation devices (life jackets) are allowed but not inflatable devices or toys. Parents must remain with children in flotation devices and they are not allowed in the deep end. There are a limited number of life jackets available for patron use at each pool.
During recreational swim, only goggles, which cover just the eyes, are allowed. Masks, fins, and snorkels are allowed during lap swim times and snorkel classes.
During recreational swim noodles, kickboards and other swim and exercise aides are not permitted. Toys such as squirt guns, balls and other items that endanger the safety or enjoyment of other swimmers are not permitted.
Yes, if your child is 5 years old or younger, and/or is less than 4 feet tall, an adult, 18 years or older, must be in the water with them. Children 6 to 9 years old who are more than 4 feet tall can swim on their own, but an adult must be present in the pool area with them.


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Vista/Cruz Snack Tray
Vista/Cruz Snack Tray
Keep your little ones satisfied while strolling with the perfect snacking surface and drink holder for your toddler.
Compatible with VISTA and CRUZ models.
- Formed cup holder fits sippy cup and juice boxes of various sizes
- Recessed bowl allows for easy scooping by little hands
- Complements the UPPAbaby Cup Holder
- VISTA/CRUZ folds with SnackTray attached
- BPA free, dishwasher safe
- Sturdy construction of Triton® and plastic
- Conveniently snaps into VISTA bumper bar attachment and includes adapters for CRUZ strollers


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I was watching recent episodes of the BBC series, "Sherlock and Strike Back, this week, and towards the end of last night's show, I wondered, again, why it was British TV shows were generally so much better than American TV.
Why did do most British dramas seem more realistic, the characters more believable, the sets less artificial? Yes, having a longer tradition of acting, script writing and production plays into it. A robust public broadcasting system that doesn't have to cater to corporate tastes or duck sticky political issues is another reason. So does not catering to pop fashion trends and using actors and actresses who look like real people (a trend slow to come to fashion- and celebrity-obsessed American culture).
Perhaps, I thought, it's also because every scene is not liberally peppered with product placement. British shows look more natural and less like set-piece advertising. Viewers are not as often distracted by what are often clumsy and obvious product positionings.
To be fair, in the past decade, American TV has improved remarkably thanks to well-written and well-acted series like The Sopranos, The Wire, Mad Men, The Borgias, West Wing, The Newsroom, and 24. I've been impressed by many new series – I even liked the uneven, meandering and ultimately unsatisfying Lost (despite some intriguing threads, it failed to fulfill the promise of its first season).
Before The Sopranos, it was pretty much a given that British TV was light years ahead of similar American efforts. Acting, sets, and writing were generally far superior in the British shows. But that has changed and American TV programming – at least from producers like Showcase and HBO – has shown welcome improvement.
At the same time, the quality of American popular TV has fallen into the lightless abyss of self-described "reality" shows replete with thuggish, greedy garbage pickers, unwashed swamp dwellers with bad dentistry, barely literate truck drivers and bottom feeding, irrelevant Jersey-ites. That these have replaced such classic series as M*A*S*H and All in the Family merely underlines the paucity of creativity in American pop TV. And anything that was once launched as a documentary channel (Discovery, National Geographic, History) has descended into trivial silliness with trite, shallow lifestyle pap instead of meaningful content.*
American film, too, has continued its downward trend, riding the wave from grand spectaculars like Dr. Zhivago and Lawrence of Arabia towards the trough of cookie-cutter CGI-driven action films, teen coming of age, predictably violent and ugly slasher flicks, and flaccid, tired comedy films. Yes, there are still good films being made – Avatar was brilliant, Michael Clayton was thoughtful and well-written. The Jane Austen Book Club was a thoughtful romantic comedy. But they are the exceptions, not the rule.
But I digress. I was writing about whether product placement has a role in how viewers appreciate a TV program or movie.
Before February, 2011, product placement was actually banned on British TV. That changed last year, although not without challenges:
The Church of England and doctors' leaders have opposed the move, saying it could damage trust in broadcasters and promote unhealthy lifestyles.
Even so, there are significant, stringent restrictions on product placement:
Under Ofcom regulations, broadcasters must inform viewers by displaying the letter 'P' for three seconds at the start and end of a programme that contains product placement.
The telecoms regulator has said any placement must be editorially justified and not unduly prominent.
It will not be allowed in news, current affairs or children's programmes – or for alcoholic drinks and foods high in salt, sugar and fat.
And it will continue to be banned for BBC shows.
Get that last one? Even when allowed on commercial channels, England's public broadcaster will not be allowed to have such placements. Interesting.
On Strike Back (a Sky production), I noticed the make of the car in one scene – an Audi. And I noticed that the Mercedes Benz logo on a truck had been rather obviously and clumsily (to me) removed (leaving a circular hole in the rusty grill). The shot of the Audi from the front prominently displaying the logo on the grill was pretty blatant. Was this product placement or simply the use of an actual vehicle? The angle of the shots suggests to me the former. However, this page shows numerous, recognizable brands and logos on other vehicles used in the show, so it's open to debate which were placements and which were simply used for realism.
But in Sherlock (a BBC production), I did not notice any particularly obvious product placements. I tried to see what sort of computer and phone Sherlock was using, but it wasn't evident. Products appear as they would in real life – logos and brands might be seen, but are not a focal point of any shot. It takes some work to identify anything. But looking at the database of vehicles used in TV and film, I see several brands that are easily recognized. Sherlock should be free of paid product pacement, however, since it's a BBC production, so one assumes they were used for realism, not profit.
I can't say I can recall any product placement in my favourite British shows – Doc Martin, Darling Buds of May, Coupling, Downton Abby, Inspector Morse, All Creatures Great and Small, As Time Goes By, Blackadder, Fawlty Towers… so many I can't recall all of the British shows I've watched. None ever struck me as commercial, however. In fact, many British shows actually provide the full 60 minutes per hour of programming – not the 40-odd minutes we get here – because they aren't interrupted by advertising.
(Sidebar: On average, Canadians watch more than 25,000 TV commercials annually… and there are no limits on the amount of time a broadcaster in Canada can use for ads vs content.)
But does seeing a brand or model you know make a show more or less realistic? Is it realistic to show generic, unbranded products like computers or cars? Or does it contribute to a sense of distance from reality, a detachment from the story?
Does it make the product more or less attractive to be seen on TV? I watched all eight seasons of 24 without once purchasing a Dell laptop. And despite the numerous placements of Apple computers in TV and film, I never bought one of their laptops. In fact, when I bought a new laptop last year, I didn't look at either manufacturer – I chose one based on price, features and some online reviews. And the fact that the local seller had it on sale.
Although I don't watch TV shows like the amateur hour contests shown in the image above**, the clumsy product placement of Coke cups doesn't impress me. In fact, it makes me wonder if their votes are also for sale. Judges should be impartial and product placement in front of them is clearly a signal that impartiality is open to question. Seeing this would definitely affect my viewing experience negatively.
Does product placement spoil or interrupt the viewing experience for others? While I say yes it does if it's blatant enough to be noticed, according to one poll on YouGov most viewers don't notice:
Product Placement Doesn't Spoil Viewing, Claims the Public
Of those surveyed by YouGov in July 2011, 59% said they did not have a negative experience of product placement and claimed that it made no difference to their viewing experience. 33% of those polled disagreed that product placement advertising negatively impacts the integrity of a TV programme.
The poll also showed that young audiences, aged 18 to 34, were the most likely to form a positive impression of product placement, with 25% of those aged 18 to 24 stating their brand perception would become more positive if seen in a UK TV Programme.
So despite it being early days for product placement on UK TV, these positive reactions show it could prove very lucrative for brand advertisers.
But people are aware of product placement, says another poll:
A YouGov poll, taken at the end of February 2011 shortly after the decision was made, found that over one third of respondents had no idea what product placement was. However another poll, taken in July 2011, found that nearly three quarters of respondents (72%) knew what product placement was, with nearly half (46%) stating that real brands placed in TV programmes can make them seem more realistic.
Since February 2011, there have been less than 20 examples of product placement advertising in UK TV programmes. However, despite a slow start, the product placement market in the UK is estimated to be worth up to £120m in the next five years. Adele Gritten, head of media consulting at YouGov, said: "There appears to be a gradual acceptance taking place as people see product placement more and more. We're all consumers of brands, and as long as placements aren't too overt, it's very realistic for us to experience the same household brands in the programmes we watch."
Of course the actual number of people surveyed in either poll isn't mentioned in these news pieces, so one can't give a lot of credence to the reports until those numbers are produced. After all, 59% of six people is irrelevant.
The other question this issue raises is about how blase consumers have become to advertising: have we been numbed by so many ads that product placement is invisible to the average viewer? In which case, those megabucks being spent on product placement are being wasted and advertisers need a new venue. Maybe even a new paradigm.
So does product placement make a difference? I don't know. I do know that my own perspectives and prejudices will affect how I see a product or brand in any context. Just like if I see someone smoking on TV or in a film, it causes me to disassociate from the story and make a mental judgment of the character. If I see someone sipping a soda, I do the same (both negatively affect my viewing experience). But seeing a blender brand? Or a washer brand? It doesn't affect me. I probably don't notice it unless the placement is clumsy and too obvious. See a guitar brand? A ukulele brand? A tequila brand or anything else I might have some interest in? I might pay more attention, but it doesn't sway my consumer soul one way or the other. At least consciously.
Product placement may be good business for marketing companies and good revenue for film and TV producers (look up the value of product placement in the ad-dense James Bond flicks). But I question whether they have significant impact on consumers today, aside from distracting us from the storyline.My advice: look for ways to engage the viewers, not simply try to seduce them.
* Looking at today's listings (your local lineup may be different), I see the following depressingly craptastic shows scheduled for Saturday evening viewing (this partial list doesn't include the paid programming and infomercials like "Hair Loss News: More Hair in as Little as 4 to 6 Weeks: running on Fox): Storage Wars, Showbiz Moms & Dads, The Real Housewives of New York City, Pick a Puppy, The Great Food Truck Race, Pawnathon Canada, Canadian Pickers, Pawn Stars, The Real Housewives of New Jersey, Paranormal Witness, Parking Wars, Love It or List It, Dumbest Stuff on Wheels, Keasha's Perfect Dress, Impractical Jokers, 1 girl 5 gays, SugarStars, Billy the Exterminator, 30 Seconds to Fame, Cheaters, Punk'd, Buy Herself, World's Worst Tenants, Cash Cab, Tabatha Takes Over, Celebrity Style Story, Keeping Up With the Kardashians, Anna & Kristina's Grocery Bag, Rescue Mediums, Party Mamas, Caught on Camera, Baby First Club, Marriage Under Construction, Swamp Wars, Styleography, Style by Jury, Oh So Cosmo, Fashion Hunters, The Hunks, Playboy's Coeds and others – more than 800 TV channels and half this drek is repeated over and over, not only on channels, but back to back in time slots.
Thank the gods for CBC, TVO and PBS, which still continue to give us content. Unfortunately, we cannot get BBC America on Canadian networks – we are instead forced to get the generally unwatchable and crass BBC Canada which mostly replays Mike Holmes and HGTV shows, surrounded by dreary "reality" restaurant shows: Jamie's Meals in Minutes, Restaurant Makeover, Jamie's Food Escapes, Food Inspectors, Kitchen Nightmares, and so on. BBC Canada is an embarrassment.
** My ability to withstand TV commercials grows less every year. By the second ad, I've started to fidget, check the Blackberry for email. By the third I'm surfing to other channels looking for content. At the fourth, I've muted the TV and am playing the ukulele parked beside the sofa. More than that, and I've lost interest in the program entirely, and have either changed channels, or picked up a book.
We don't watch a lot of commercial TV for the simple reason of the increasingly longer ad clusters. I will buy a season of a recommended show on DVD, and watch it without ads, however. I would consider a PVR to record shows only if it could edit out the ads and save the result to a DVD or USB drive. As I understand it, the PVRs available from Rogers do not have these necessary features.


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Will you comment on the 'kenosis' heresy?
There is a true and biblical doctrine of kenosis, but the Greek used by Paul in Philippians 2:7 has been wrenched out of its New Testament context to make it mean what it does not. It does not mean that Christ divested Himself of His divine attributes, but only that He veiled them and laid aside the voluntary use of those attributes when He took the form of true humanity. They were still His and He still possessed them, for as God the Son who is immutable (unchangeable) and eternal, He could never cease to be God. One of the attributes of God is immutability from the standpoint of His divine essence. Deity cannot stop being deity or He would never have been truly God.
One of the things we must understand about the person of Christ is that, according to Scripture, He is both undiminished deity and true humanity united in one person. This is, of course, a mystery and most difficult for us to grasp because of our finite minds. Nevertheless, it is the plain teaching of the Bible including the Old Testament. In keeping with this, it is also important to understand that when things were prophesied about Jesus as to His life, actions, and thoughts on earth, though always speaking about the person of Jesus Christ, some statements applied to His human nature while others applied to His divine nature. For instance, as man Jesus grew tired, He learned, and experienced all forms of human pain, even temptation. But from the standpoint of His divine nature, none of these things applied. As God the Son, even while in human form, He was omnipotent, omnipresent, and even omniscient. It appears that for the most part, when He manifested His divine power (e.g., calming the sea or knowing men even before He met them) that He did this at the direction of the Father and the Spirit. Again, as God, He had all the divine attributes of God, but in becoming man, He humbled Himself as a servant, and this included, not the removal of His attributes, but the veiling and surrender of their use voluntarily. From the standpoint of His humanity, He walked in dependence on the Father and the Spirit (Matt. 12:17f; John 5:30; 8:28; 14:10f; Phil. 2:8).
When Jesus made the statement in Mark 13:32, "But about that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father," Jesus openly expressed this limitation and affirmed His humanity. In His Incarnation Jesus voluntarily accepted human limitations, including this one (cf. Acts 1:7), in submission to the Father's will (cf. John 4:34). On the other hand, Jesus' use of the title "the Son" (only in Mark) instead of the usual "Son of Man" revealed His own awareness of His deity and Sonship (cf. Mark 8:38). Nevertheless He exercised His divine attributes only at the Father's bidding (again cf. 5:30; John 8:28-29). Undoubtedly, this is a mystery, but it does express the plain truth of Scripture. Note that Paul plainly affirms that in Jesus Christ is all the fullness of God and this includes all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. Carefully read Colossians 1-2.
All of this means that it is was Christ, the Son, who created the angels before the world was created as described in Genesis 1. Jesus, the humanity of Christ, was miraculously conceived in the womb of Mary and was born on earth as described in Matthew and Luke. Thus, when the Bible speaks of the person of Christ as creator, etc., it is making a statement that relates to his deity, not the humanity of Jesus. This is part of the mystery of the incarnation.
Related Topics: Christology


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Videos by American Songwriter
On Wednesday, January 23, American Songwriter is pleased to present John McCauley of Deer Tick and Robert Ellis at Nashville's The Stone Fox. We sent these questions for Robert Ellis in a bottle out to sea, and got back these answers.
What's happening? We hear you are at sea? What's been the best show so far on Cayamo?
I'm in San Juan today. This cruise has been badass so far. Seen a lot of good music and lost some money in the casino. I don't want to not mention anyone so let's just say there has been a ton of great music. Lots of my favorite songwriters are on this boat.
You recently moved to Nashville. What are some of the things you're enjoying about the city? Restaurants, bars, locals, etc.?
I am loving Nashville. I wish I was able to be there more. When I am home I have been frequenting Santa's Pub. It's walking (or stumbling) distance from my house and has cheap beer and great karaoke. I also get cheeseburgers at M.L. Rose occasionally and Thai at the Smiling Elephant, as well as good Mexican food at Hacienda. We get a lot of our groceries from their market too.
Photographs came out in July 2011. When can we expect the next Robert Ellis record?
Gosh, hopefully soon. I would have liked to have started recording by now but all of these great touring opportunities have kept popping up and there just hasn't been time. I'm not complaining though. When I get back from this Australian/UK run in March we are going to try and hit the ground running. I have 10-12 songs written and ready to go.
We hear you're touring with label mate Richard Thompson in Europe. Has he been a big influence on your songwriting and music?
Honestly I didn't know much about him until recently but I have been doing my homework and really like his stuff. His new record on New West is killer and he totally shreds.
This is the first American Songwriter Presents show at the Stone Fox. Are you looking forward to playing with John McCauley?
Hell yeah! I love that guy and his songs. I hope we can get into some trouble and have some fun.
Limited advance tickets are available at Grimey's New and Preloved Music, The Groove, and the Stone Fox. More info at Facebook and The Stone Fox.


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Black Komboskini with Ivory Cross Prayer Rope Bracelet
- Hand Made Greek Orthodox Prayer Rope Komboskini Bracelet
- Black with Ivory Cross
- Imported from Greece
- Bead Color may slightly vary from photo because each komboskini is unique.
About the Komboskini (Prayer Rope)
People look to religion for a number of reasons, whether it is for faith or to get through a troubling time in their life. There are also plenty of objects that can help instill that faith. From a cross or bible, to even a scripture that they carry around in their pocket, there are a number of things that can help keep the faith strong and alive. There is one influential Greek object that helps people keep focus, and that is a prayer rope, or Komboskini / Chotki. There are prayer rope bracelets, or Komboskini or Chotki, out there that people use to focus not only on your religion but goals that you may have, and it keeps you strong in a dire time of need. These ropes are part of a habit that people of Eastern Orthodox monks and nuns use and they are usually used to counter the number of times someone has prayed the Jesus Prayer, or any number of prayers.
At the end of the day, prayer rope bracelets are a symbol and what people do with that symbol is up to them. It is a very strong religious symbol that has been used for centuries and it serves as a purpose far greater than a lot of other objects. Prayer can be done in any shape, size, or form, and there are many Greece – made prayer bracelets that can be found or made for your liking. That is the beauty of rope prayer bracelets; they are unique for every individual.


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When a deployed WebLogic Web service has been configured to use message-level security (encryption and digital signatures, as described by the WS-Security specification), the Web services runtime determines whether a Web service security configuration is also associated with the service. This security configuration specifies information such as whether to use an X.509 certificate for identity, whether to use password digests, the keystore to be used for encryption, and so on. A single security configuration can be associated with many Web services.
WebLogic Web services are not required to be associated with a security configuration; if the default behavior of the Web services security runtime is adequate then no additional configuration is needed. If, however, a Web service requires different behavior from the default (such as using an X.509 certificate for identity, rather than the default username/password token), then the Web service must be associated with a security configuration.
At development time, a programmer uses the
JWS annotation
in the JWS file that implements the Web service to specify the name of
the security configuration that is associated with the Web service. The
following procedure describes how to create this security configuration
using the Administration Console. Later you can update this
configuration with the specific security behavior required by the Web
When the programmer uses the @WssConfiguration
annotation, they specify the name of the associated security
configuration using the value
attribute; if the
programmer does not specify this attribute, then the service is
associated with the default security configuration:
. This default security configuration must
also be explicitly created using the Administration Console, as
described in this procedure.
The following procedure describes how to create a simple Web services security configuration.
If you are creating the default one, call it
. If you are creating one that a
particular Web service needs, name it the same as the
attribute of the corresponding
After you finish
The preceding task describes how to create an empty Web services security configuration. The following tasks describe how to update this configuration to change specific security behavior:
You must also redeploy any Web service to which this new security configuration is associated so that the new security behavior can take effect.


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Hackaday forum user [arfink] has shown us a brilliant practical joke he built. This is a magic 8 ball that will blind you with a flash when you flip it over. Have you ever been in a room with one of these and not flipped it over? Neither have we. Using a basic flash circuit ripped from a disposable camera in conjunction with a mercury switch, this project took him about 2 hours to make. Admittedly, most of that time was just trying to split the 8 ball in half without completely destroying it. The circuit is pretty simple. Just figure out what 2 wires need to be crossed to trigger the flash and install your tilt switch there. He added a power cut off so you could disable it as well.
UPDATE: video added after the break!


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The book was written in a hurry. It had to be, because William Stuntz was dying, and the story he wanted to tell was long and complicated. It would be the Harvard Law School professor's final major work, a sweeping indictment of the system he had been studying for 25 years.
Stuntz was 49 when he found out he had stage four colon cancer. For the remaining three years of his life, he worked on the book whenever he could: in his office at Harvard; at his family's home in Belmont; even at the Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center, where he would sit with his laptop in the infusion chair and type. Stuntz passed up pain medication so he could think more clearly. In the final days, after he entered hospice care, he had his assistant mail him a draft of his manuscript so he could go over any last minute changes.
What drove Stuntz to finish the book -- even as he continued teaching classes and trying to spend as much time as he could with his wife and three children -- was a belief that something had gone fundamentally awry in America. Stuntz, an evangelical Christian and an avowed conservative, wanted people to grasp the profundity of the crisis he had observed -- how, over the past 50 years, our criminal justice system had been transformed into an unfair, amoral bureaucracy--one that had given up on the very idea of justice.
Stuntz submitted his completed manuscript to his editor at Harvard University Press in January 2011, about three months before he died at age 52. "The Collapse of American Criminal Justice" was published the following fall. In it, Stuntz describes how America's incarceration rate came to be the highest in the industrial world; how the country's young black males came to bear the brunt of its increasingly harsh penal code; and how jury trials became so rare that more than 95 percent of people sent to prison never had their guilt or innocence deliberated in court. At the heart of the book is Stuntz's surprising argument about how we reached this point: that well-intentioned Supreme Court rulings meant to protect defendants from unfair and discriminatory police practices combined with the harsh laws passed in response to the crime wave of the 1960s and '70s to produce a system that is merciless, destructive, and above all, unjust.
Concern about the prison population is usually a liberal issue, but Stuntz, who favored small government, opposed abortion, and made no secret of voting Republican, was driven in his academic work by a sense of concern for the disenfranchised and the poor that would have struck many members of his party as unforgivably left-wing. It is precisely because Stuntz was such a peculiar political animal that his book - which has been praised in outlets as politically diverse as the Nation and the National Review, and has been endorsed by the likes of Richard Posner and former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens - is now being described by legal scholars as a work of potentially huge influence.
"Bill's not of the typical knee-jerk lefty camp," said Carol Steiker, one of Stuntz's colleagues at Harvard Law School, and one of a group of friends he deputized before his death to help steer the book through publication in his absence. "And he's willing to say what non-knee-jerk lefties want most to be said, which is that...crime is a terrible thing, and it's something we should want to have as little of as possible. But he's also saying there are prices we should not be willing to pay, and that as a society we should be ashamed to be paying, in the service of that laudable goal."
Though the early critical reception for the book has been enthusiastic, ideas for major social change typically grow as their authors promote, defend, and develop them over time. Without Stuntz alive to speak for it, it remains to be seen how the book's legacy will grow. And although it seems like a deeply pessimistic work--more a grim diagnosis of what has gone wrong than a plan for how to fix it--the colleagues who have vowed to spread his ideas believe it has arrived at a moment when, thanks to historically low crime rates and budget crunches in the prison system, reform seems more possible than it has in years.
IN 2010, THE MOST recent year for which the Justice Department has figures available, there were an estimated 2.3 million adults in jail or prison in the United States. That means nearly 1 in 100 American adults are behind bars, an incarceration rate more than five times higher than it was 40 years ago. The numbers for African-Americans are even more grave: According to the Sentencing Project, a Washington think tank, a third of all black males born today will serve time at some point in their lives.
The debate over what these numbers mean has tended to break down along a neat political fault-line, with liberals blaming unfair drug laws, racist prosecutors, and excessively harsh "three strikes" sentencing guidelines, and law-and-order conservatives pointing to the nation's falling crime rate as evidence that whatever our justice system is doing is actually working quite well.
Instead of pointing the finger one way or the other, Stuntz decided to look at the entire "political economy" of the justice system, as he called it: the prosecutors who charge people with crimes, the attorneys who defend them, the courts that determine who is allowed to do what, and the legislators who craft the laws in the first place. Stuntz's approach grew out of his experience as a student, and later a professor, at the University of Virginia School of Law, which was a hotbed for a movement within the legal academy known as "law and economics," whose proponents believe laws should be assessed not just on principle and precedent, but on what kind of behaviors they incentivize in the real world.
Applying this approach to the mass incarceration problem, Stuntz concluded that the single most important development in the recent history of American criminal justice was the so-called rights revolution ushered in by Earl Warren's Supreme Court during the 1960s. Through a series of landmark rulings, including Miranda v. Arizona, the Warren Court had instituted a set of procedural mandates that sought to protect defendants from abusive and unfair prosecution tactics. Evidence collected through illegal search and seizure became inadmissible in court. Police officers were required to inform suspects of their rights before arresting them. Defendants who couldn't afford a lawyer were to be provided one by the state. The rulings were hailed by the left as major victories in the fight for civil rights, and condemned by right-wing critics who thought they made it harder to catch and convict criminals.
But as Stuntz saw it, the Warren Court's reforms had another, far less obvious effect: They created new incentives that changed the way defense lawyers and prosecutors did their jobs. Stuntz described it as a chain reaction, set off by the fact that the court had focused all its efforts on procedure, and had failed to impose any substantive limits on what legislators could criminalize and the punishments they could impose. The result was that defense attorneys--especially overworked public defenders--realized they could score easy victories for their clients by getting charges dismissed on procedural grounds; legislators, in turn, reacted by criminalizing a much broader range of activities and imposing harsh minimum sentencing requirements, which prosecutors could use as leverage to win guilty pleas.
As criminal justice became a clash of mandates and bureaucratic rules, it became untethered from what was once its basic function: separating the guilty from the innocent and delivering fair punishment to those who deserved it. Today, most criminal cases are resolved without any verdict on a defendant's guilt in a courtroom, but instead through a sort of procedural crossfire. In effect, those rights that the Warren Court gave defendants have become bargaining chips, to be traded away by defense attorneys in exchange for shorter sentences.
"He suggested that the question of guilt or innocence had been lost in the shuffle," said Yale Kamisar, professor emeritus at the University of Michigan Law School, who is considered the intellectual godfather of the Warren Court's rulings. "The way the system worked, it wasn't really the dominant thing anymore."
IN HIS BOOK, Stuntz conjures an idealized vision of America's past - a time when criminal defendants, at least in the North, could expect their fates to be determined in open court, by a jury of their peers, rather than negotiated in a plea bargain behind closed doors. In those days, Stuntz writes, criminal justice was essentially local: Police officers patrolled the neighborhoods in which they lived, and criminal cases were decided by juries composed of people who could be expected to treat defendants with a degree of empathy. Under the current system, justice is essentially administered by prosecutors, who have every incentive to threaten defendants with the harshest possible sentence--and indirectly driven by politicians, who court the favor of voters by passing more and tougher laws. The practical result, Stuntz writes, is that the criminal justice system is now anything but local, and mostly indifferent to the people whose lives are most directly affected by it. Poor minorities who live in the urban neighborhoods with the most crime are living under laws passed to please middle-class voters who live elsewhere, and processed by a system built to force a guilty plea rather than determine whether they actually deserve to go to prison.
That imbalance is at the center of Stuntz's book, and it reads as a wake-up call to Americans under the illusion that our justice system still centers around the jury trials promised in the Constitution. But in arguing that fair-minded and consistent procedure is not, in itself, enough to guarantee just outcomes, Stuntz was also issuing a profound challenge to his own profession.
"It is the lawyer's conceit to believe, on some level, that if you can get the procedure to be perfect, that will ensure that the results will be perfect," said Joseph Hoffmann, a professor at the Indiana University Maurer School of Law, who has known Stuntz since the two of them clerked together on the Supreme Court. "It's the way most lawyers look at the world....They would say procedural justice is how you get to substantive justice."
Stuntz believed one needed only to look at the extraordinary racial disparity in America's prisons to know that notion was wrong. And it was this belief that caused him to take a position that truly distinguished him from his fellow conservatives: that America's higher courts shouldn't just restrict themselves to procedural doctrine, but should think instead about the substance and the effects of laws, and be willing to strike them down if they are not enforced fairly. Many legal thinkers would regard an approach so focused on outcomes as naïve, even dangerous, leaving us open to the whims of activist judges. But in a system that took justice seriously as a goal, Stuntz argued, American courts would act more aggressively than even the liberal Warren Court did to ensure that the laws they help enforce were used for good, and were applied equally to everyone.
OVER THE COURSE of his career, both at Virginia and Harvard, Stuntz's work helped reshape the field of criminal procedure by compelling his colleagues--even those who disagreed with him about how much responsibility the Warren Court deserves for the current state of criminal justice--to think about laws less abstractly and more pragmatically, and to see them as levers in a complex system whose unintended consequences can outweigh their intended ones. Stuntz's contributions to the field were the subject of a two-day conference at Harvard Law School shortly before he died, and earlier this year, a book of essays exploring his legacy was published by Cambridge University Press.
For all his passion on the subject, and influence in the legal academy, Stuntz's book left one question largely unanswered: What should be done? Indeed, though the book includes several practical proposals about what should change--Stuntz believed there should be more police officers stationed in dangerous neighborhoods, for instance, and that more funding should be spent on hiring public defenders--the famously modest professor did not presume to know how to roll back the pernicious chain of events he observed.
"The last thing he would ever think was that people would read his book, put it down, and march off knowing precisely what the next move should be," said Daniel Richman, a professor at Columbia Law School who helped with the book's publication. "This isn't a call to arms as much as an explanation. It's a plea for an understanding of a history, and a strong suggestion of how that history should inform our dismantling of a system that isn't working."
Stuntz wanted to show that there was nothing inevitable about our present circumstances--that what has gone wrong in our criminal justice system is the result of decisions and miscalculations that can be identified and understood. That doesn't mean they can be easily annulled, of course, but it does provide hope that change is possible.
"His turn to history is not just a matter of telling a story, but of reminding us that even those who would, at least initially, think that he's naïve, are too caught up in their own historical moments," said Richman. "And that the world doesn't have to be the way it seems."
Leon Neyfakh is the staff writer for Ideas. E-mail email@example.com.