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Independent Game Forums => Half Meme Press => Topic started by: Ben Miller on May 22, 2010, 05:14:43 AM
[MLwM] Convention game thoughts
Post by:
Ben Miller
May 22, 2010, 05:14:43 AM
I'm going to be running a game of My Life with Master in a couple of weeks at a mini-convention. I've run a couple of games already for friends - the players at the convention won't have played before though. Last time I ran it we played it like this: we made the Master and Minions between us and then went straight in the game. It went Ok but I felt that my imagination really let the game down - I just wasn't able to respond to the players' wishes for scenes quickly enough (or rather, I did respons quickly bu the scenes were a bit dull and got repetitive quickly).
So, what I'm thinking for this upcoming convention game is that I'll generate the Master in advance. This will give me the chance to plot out some interesting scenes, including key locations in the town, the Master's house and even some interesting NPCs. I'd feel much more comfortable running the game this way, I think. I've got a notion that I could even create some Minions in advance.
My question is has anybody done this before and did it work? Will it break the players' immersion in the game too much?
Interested to hear your thoughts!
Re: [MLwM] Convention game thoughts
Post by:
May 22, 2010, 10:45:37 AM
As someone who's played but not run MLWM, I think I'd miss the fun of creating the master together and I think it would have a negative effect on play during the game. Part of creating the master is figuring out how you fit into the nefarious plot.
Re: [MLwM] Convention game thoughts
Post by:
May 22, 2010, 06:29:20 PM
I have run Paul's Gencon demo scenario (the one set on the Mediterranean island) three times at cons. Each time has worked brilliantly, with full engagement from the players, and - with a bit of pushing - we got through the full story arc each time.
Re: [MLwM] Convention game thoughts
Post by:
Eero Tuovinen
May 23, 2010, 03:36:49 AM
Pregenerated Master can work fine or fail - the reason for doing the generation with the whole group is that it increases the chances of success to near-certainty levels instead of the crap-shoot you get when the GM tries to create an enticing Master on his lonesome in advance.
My own strategy in this regard has been to do Dracula: I have this Dracula convention scenario that I whip out if I need to get MLwM off the ground quickly. Dracula is familiar to everybody and it's easy to prep some bangs even without knowing the player characters: they're going to be a mixture of gypsies, vampire maids, living servants and Englishmen and women lured to Transylvania. I have the literary background down pat myself, so I've no trouble bringing in suitable snippets of Eastern European culture or van Helsing himself if an Outsider is needed. Easy-peasy to run, really, and most importantly most players will have an immediate emotional connection to Dracula, thus alleviating the lack of a shared Master creation.
One thing I often do with this scenario is that I'll ask the players for input in determining Vlad's scores before we start. For instance, I let them pick whether he'll be a Brain or a... what's that other option in English, again? Beast? Whatever, the point is that I can run any scene I've prepped regardless of whether Dracula's a cold schemer or a lustful monster, it just affects my characterization. Most of the mechanical prep is like that, so no reason not to let the players create their own characters and set some basic facts about Dracula. I also have a set of premade characters that we can use for shorter demos and such. They're also useful with stodgy players who wouldn't ever choose a female character or other clearly vulnerable protagonist for themselves; stodgy gamers often perform best in MLwM with a premade character, because that avoids their character ownership instincts and lets them play the character in a carefree manner.
Re: [MLwM] Convention game thoughts
Post by:
Ben Miller
May 23, 2010, 05:58:44 PM
Ooh, Eero that sounds good. I might consider the Dracula angle - thanks!
Hix, can I get hold of Paul's Mediterranean scenarion somewhere?
Re: [MLwM] Convention game thoughts
Post by:
May 23, 2010, 08:29:49 PM
Hi Ben,
The easiest thing to do would be to PM or email Paul. I'm happy to track down some of the advice he sent me about running it, once I get home.
Re: [MLwM] Convention game thoughts
Post by:
Ben Miller
May 24, 2010, 07:32:25 AM
Thanks Steve, I've shot off a message to Paul. :)
This My Life with Dracula idea then: so they're going to kill Dracula!? I like that I think. Eero, how did you bring Van Helsing in as an Outsider? (I'm probably showing my ignorance of the source details there - perhaps I need to re-read Dracula quickly!) I think I could dream up a set of template Minions characters, put them on the table and allow the players to choose. Then I could put down a bunch of interesting NPCs active in the area who players can choose to have a Love relationship with. I could also lay down some names on bits of paper that the players can choose from and put together to form genre-appropriate names (I think that will help to keep the atmosphere appropriately Transylvanian?). In fact, I could even let people choose from a set of More Than/Less Than Human cards too. I suppose what I'm trying to do here is make sure they're sensible. One thing that concerns me with
pre-generating characters is time it would take for me to make sure 6 or 7 players all have decent MtH/LtH phrases.
Re: [MLwM] Convention game thoughts
Post by:
Eero Tuovinen
May 25, 2010, 09:01:43 AM
Do note that 6 or 7 players is a huge number for MLwM. Three or at most four is much more typical, and likely more appropriate.
As for Dracula, my standard premade player characters are thus:
An English realtor who's travelled to castle Dracula on business. He does not suspect the nature of the good Count, and is in fact unaware that Dracula has been warping his sense of time for months now as he prepares for his nefarious plans in England and plays with this delightfully civilized victim - every morning the poor Englishman wakes up vaguely convinced that he's spent at most a week at the castle, and tonight the good count will at last sign the final papers concerning his estate transactions in England, allowing the realtor to return home. His best relationship at the beginning is to his fiance in England, who he contacts by correspondence, not realizing how worried and even frantic her letters have started to sound.
A gypsy chief beholden to the Count for sanctuary and the safety of his daughter. The wheels of the gypsy wagons rot on the field near to the Castle, and the tribe is scared witless, but the chief doesn't dare to leave, for he's mortally afraid of the Count and glad to do his bidding to forestall the doom that he knows to be coming. His strongest relationship is to his daughter, naturally.
A fresh, young vampire bride of the Count. She's confused and her memory is foggy after the long months and years she's spent jailed in the castle dungeons with the rest of the Count's harem. Now that she's finally allowed out, she likely does not remember her previous life as a gypsy queen and the wife of the aforementioned chief. She would do anything to please the Count who gave her this new life. (I should note that I handle the vampiric condition in the gothic style in this scenario - as opposed to modern superhero vampires - so it's an open question whether the soul and person of the human being is still present here at all; it's up to the player to display such spirit if he would.)
I also have a couple of secondary characters, such as townsfolk the characters have relations with. Usually the most important of these is the beatiful gypsy princess daughter of the chief, above - she's Innocent, and it's usually easy to pull player strings by threatening various sorts of fates worse than death on her.
Typical antics in my scenario include having the Count demand of the Englishman that he should break off his English betrothal in favour of staying in Rumania indefinitely among the beastly joys the Count can offer; asking any and all minions to bring the priest of the nearby town to join in midnight revels in the castle; requiring the gypsy chief to provide his daughter for the entertainment of the English guest. These are all rather to the point, mid-game developments, but that's because I usually play this scenario as a demo - it's essentially begun in medias res and finished in an hour or two if allowed to run its course. No reason not to start from the beginning, of course; I seem to remember that the first time MLwM was played from the Finnish text in 2004 was a Dracula scenario, too :D
As for Van Helsing, nothing special to it - he can just appear in the village of Arefu one day, hanging around in the post office or tavern, gathering intelligence about the Count. Could be that the naive old fool gets killed in short order, but if I'm using him as an Outsider (or rather, representative of the western civilization in toto, which is what the Count is fascinated by and fearsome of), then it so happens that the Count does not want to confront this old enemy of his just yet due to the great influence Van Helsing wields in his mind.
Hmm... I probably have some old writeup of this scenario lying around somewhere in English - unless I misremember, I wrote the original for 2006 Essen Spiel. Perhaps I'll find it and post it somewhere.
Re: [MLwM] Convention game thoughts
Post by:
Ben Miller
May 26, 2010, 05:16:00 PM
Eero, thanks so much for all this information. I'm going to take some if these pieces and fit them together with a few of my own ideas, see how that looks. How do you normally specify Dracula's wants and needs? Does having him regularly needing to feed off locals seem too obvious a need? Does he actually want to travel to England?
Re: [MLwM] Convention game thoughts
Post by:
Eero Tuovinen
May 26, 2010, 08:12:38 PM
I've never had Dracula travel to England, but it's certainly a constantly looming possibility in the scenario. I wouldn't hesitate to swap settings mid-run when I run out of ideas for Transylvania if I were to play this thing in multiple-session length, for instance. Harker's fiance Mina could get introduced as more than voicemail, Van Helsing would have even more reason to hang around, Dracula (read: his minions) could tussle with civilization, he could get a new minion out of Renfield or whatshisname (if that one went right, I must conclude that I'm obsessed with this novel)... lots of opportunities.
When I'm running this as a demo I don't bother the players with customizing Wants and Needs and such - those things are there to guide group Master creation, which I'm not doing in a demo anyway (that's why I'm doing Dracula in the first place, right?). Let's see, I'll find Dracula's sheet... here's my default Dracula, although I'll usually have the players make changes to the more interesting bits if we're playing more than a couple of scenes.
Count Dracula, Master
Type: Feeder
The vampire count is preternaturally vitalized by ingested human blood.
Aspect: Beast
His intense gaze and languid movements are remindful of a great hunter.
Need: Blood
Dracula needs young blood to keep up his ancient existence and inhuman appeal.
Want: Control
Forced to face a world on the brink of modernization, the count clings to power.
Demesne: Castle Poena
A medieval battlement Dracula rules by right of conquest, the castle is a memento of his life.
Outsiders: Civilization
Fearful yet fascinated, the count is determined to master this new world.
Village: Arefu
A backwards place near castle Poena, mere remnant of Dracula's former domain.
Fear 3
He is Vlad Tepes, Son of the Dragon, ancient ruler of this land and beyond.
Reason 3
It is year 1897, and most of the world is illuminated by the light of Reason.
As can be seen, my default set-up is very obvious and canonical, which I find desirable in a demo scenario. Still, that blood-sucking thing is usually something of a background matter in actual play; I wouldn't be ingenious if I wrote
Need: Corruption
on that sheet, considering the antics my Dracula gets up to. He likes torturing his flesh-puppets psychologically and enticing them with the cold flesh of his female companions; he hates the Church and hounds the priest of Arefu; he seduces young women; his usually very staid castle erupts in wild bacchanals on some nights, when all forces of hell join him in celebration - the blood-sucking thing might come up, but what my beastly Dracula really gets off on is corrupting and controlling people. This comes in stark contrast to his skin-deep civilized flair; Dracula likes to think of himself as an epitome of culture, even though as his mores and knowledge of the world come to be more and more anachronistic, causing him great anxiety.
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Spring Market - Happy Menocal
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Depending on the amount of water and amount of damage the water has caused usually determines weather or not you should attempt to clean it up yourself or call in a professionals like Ramp Construction, E&M Restorations or a Restoration of NJ to handle the clean-up. They would bill your Insurance Company directly.
The biggest danger is the mold spores that are present everywhere. They need one thing to start to grow and that is water. So if you have a large amount of contents that have been damaged you may want to contact a professional. Depending on how the water damage occurred, it may be covered by insurance. Water Damage Clean-up is a serious matter and unless it's a small amount you should contact your Insurance Company. If it's not properly cleaned up you can have a much larger problem on your hands. Mold.
First thing you want to do is obvious, find the cause of the leak and put a stop to it. If your not sure where the water is leaking from, turn off the main. Everyone should make themselves familiar with the location of their main shut-off value. Once you have stopped the water leak there may be left over water that will continue to leak awhile after you have shut the water off. If it's forming a "belly" in your drywall ceiling, you can poke holes into the water damaged drywall to drain the water. Next you want to turn off the power to the effected area.
Now that you have stopped the water from leaking, you want to minimum the amount of water damage.
1st Move out any contents you can and raise furniture up onto blocks to prevent the furniture from being drawn up the furniture.
2nd Depending on the amount of water, either set a pump into the water with a hose running outside or to a drain. If it's not that much water you can start to shop-vac the water up.
3rd Any carpets and padding that have been damage must be cut out and disposed of.
4th Any baseboards or drywall that was damaged should be cut out, if there is insulation behind the wall that must be removed.
5th You want to start drying out the structure, for that you want to use air movers or fans to start the water to evaporate into the air.
6th Set up dehumidifiers to remove the water from the air.
7th Spray a mildacide to prevent mold growth from starting, this is why time is of the essence, mold will start to grow with-in 24 to 48 hours after a water loss.
8th Evaluate the damage to your home and make a decision to call your Insurance Company or make the repairs yourself.


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It may sound counterintuitive, but a panel of experts from the Institute of Medicine has concluded that the best way to slow the nation's breakneck spending on medical care is to impose a tax on every health care transaction.
That tax — amount TBD, but possibly a half-percent or so — would go to replenish the coffers of the nation's state and local public health agencies. In so doing, according to the IOM panel, the public health workforce could renew its historic role in looking at population rather than individual health care, and thus "offer efficient and effective approaches to improving the nation's health."
Currently, said Marthe Gold, professor of Community Health and Social Medicine at the City College of New York and chair of the panel, the U.S. spends only about 3 percent of the $2.5 trillion it spends on health care overall on public health. It has a history of "unpredictable, inadequate and uncoordinated funding."
Yet "public health also has a track record of achievement in vanquishing the historic causes of death and disease," she said, from early successes like ensuring clean water and sanitary food to more recent campaigns to get people to stop smoking or use seat belts.
The public health infrastructure has taken a hit during the recent economic downturn: Roughly one-fifth of the local public health workforce has been lost through attrition and layoffs. Renewing that infrastructure could have a profound impact on slowing the rate of growth in health spending, the panel argues.
For example, public health measures — including community-based outreach — could help reduce adult obesity by 50 percent, the panel says. Sounds ambitious, but as the panel notes, that's about the same relative reduction in smoking rates that resulted from the "public health community's multifaceted attack on smoking" in the past few decades. It would also save the U.S. an estimated $58 billion in health care spending.
In order to meet those goals, the panel says every public health agency would need to be able to deliver a "minimum package of services." That would include what it calls "foundational" services, such as the ability to do basic disease surveillance and communicate with the public, and "programmatic" services, such as injury prevention and communicable disease prevention.
But to get there, the federal government would need to at least double the $11.6 billion it invests each year in public health activities, according to the panel's estimates.
Which brings us to that pesky tax.
Panel member George Isham, medical director at HealthPartners in Bloomington, Minn., acknowledged that "it's difficult to propose any kind of increase in taxation." But the group considered a number of different financing mechanisms before settling on a minimal tax on medical transactions as the best solution: It's a tax related to the goal; it would raise sufficient funds; and it would not have a bad economic consequence. In short, said Isham, "it's an investment we can't afford not to make."
Copyright 2016 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.


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Red Sox - 100 101 010 2 - 6 13 0Back-to-back home runs from Kevin Youkilis and Coco Crisp led the Sox to an extra-inning win -- after Jonathan Papelbon had surrendered a game-tying dong in the ninth.
Reds - 010 000 111 0 - 4 8 1
Jacoby Ellsbury stole his 30th and 31st bases of the season, tying the team's rookie record. Amby McConnell stole 31 bases in 1908.
Tim Wakefield (4.33, 101 ERA+) / Edinson Volquez (1.56, 283 ERA+)
Volquez's highly impressive game log (14 games, 13 starts).
He made 17 starts over three seasons with Texas (2005-07). The only current Red Sox player he has faced is Sean Casey (1-for-2).
Red Sox RedsLineup change: Cora in for Lugo (stomach ailment).
Ellsbury, LF Bruce, CF
Pedroia, 2B Janish, SS
Drew, RF Griffey, RF
Lowell, 3B Phillips, 2B
Youkilis, 1B Dunn, LF
Crisp, CF Encarnacion, 3B
Cora, SS Votto, 1B
Cash, C Bako, C
Wakefield, P Volquez, P
Also: Marlins/Rays at 6 PM and Yankees/Astros at 7 PM. Can New York go three games over .500 for the first time this season?


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Education For The New Economy
By David Korten
07 February, 2010
Yes Magazine
A new economy requires a new approach to education. David Korten discusses how we can rethink our goals, reskill ourselves, and teach Spaceship Management 101.
On January 29, 2010, David Korten addressed the Education for Sustainable Development Conference in Stockholm, Sweden. His remarks follow.
We humans are in the midst of a potentially terminal economic, social, and environmental crisis of our own making. Our economic systems are unstable, extreme inequality is tearing apart the social fabric, and Earth's critical living systems are collapsing. We have gathered for this conference, not to debate the seriousness of our situation, but rather to explore how our educational institutions can contribute to the solution.
Building an Earth Community
I want to start by quoting from the preamble of The Earth Charter, a document that grew out of the 1992 Rio Earth Summit. It is a summation of conversations over several years involving thousands of persons representing the grand diversity of the world's people and cultures. Its opening words frame the work at hand:
We stand at a critical moment in Earth's history, a time when humanity must choose its future. As the world becomes increasingly interdependent and fragile, the future at once holds great peril and great promise. To move forward we must recognize that in the midst of a magnificent diversity of cultures and life forms we are one human family and one Earth Community with a common destiny.
The Earth Charter preamble goes on to make clear that we must not only recognize that we are one Earth Community, we must restructure our institutions in ways that allow us to function as a global Earth Community, a community of life. And it tells us why:
The dominant patterns of production and consumption are causing environmental devastation, the depletion of resources, and a massive extinction of species. Communities are being undermined. The benefits of development are not shared equitably and the gap between rich and poor is widening. Injustice, poverty, ignorance, and violent conflict are widespread and the cause of great suffering. An unprecedented rise in human population has overburdened ecological and social systems. The foundations of global security are threatened. These trends are perilous—but not inevitable.
The choice is ours: form a global partnership to care for Earth and one another or risk the destruction of ourselves and the diversity of life. Fundamental changes are needed in our values, institutions, and ways of living.
Institutional change is perhaps the most important and yet most neglected of the crucial changes we must navigate. If we humans are to adapt to 21st century reality, we must restructure or replace the economic institutions of the 20th century, which lock us into a dynamic of perpetual economic growth, with institutions designed to support ecological balance, shared prosperity, and living democracy—terms I will define in a few minutes.
This presents an unprecedented challenge for institutions of higher learning organized to prepare young graduates to succeed in a world that we must now put behind us. They are ill-equipped to prepare people of all ages for their necessary roles in creating and staffing the institutions of a new civilization. They must rethink, retool, and reorganize.
Contextualizing the Problem
The truly epic nature of the challenge is best expressed by placing it in its deeper historical and evolutionary context. For the past 5,000 years, we humans have been living in a cultural trance of our own making that alienates us from the land, our true human nature, and our human place in the cosmos.
So who are we humans? From where did we come? For what purpose? And how did we get ourselves in such a mess? Here is how I understand the new story based on the data of science, the wisdom of indigenous peoples, and the teachings of Jesus and other mystics.
Hundreds of thousands of years ago, the integral spiritual intelligence that expresses itself through what we know as creation embarked on a bold and risky experiment in reflective consciousness by bringing forth a species able to step back and to reflect on creation in awe and wonder and to participate as a conscious co-creator in the continued creative unfolding. We humans are that species.
Our reflective consciousness gives us the capacity to choose our future with conscious collective intent. It was a risky experiment, however, because the capacity for self-awareness gives us an ego that can run out of control if it forgets that it exists only as part of a larger whole.
As our human consciousness was first awakening, our capacities for conscious self-direction grew. We learned to communicate through speech, master fire, domesticate plants and animals, and construct houses of skins, wood, stone, and dried mud. We developed the arts of pottery, painting, weaving, and carving. We undertook vast continental and transcontinental migrations to populate the planet and adapted to vastly different physical topographies and climates. We created complex languages and social codes that allowed for life in larger communities.
In our earliest days, we humans raised our children collectively in the clan, tribe, or village, initiating them to the ways of life and teaching them the need to serve the community and to care for our Earth Mother as she, in turn, cares for us.
Then some 5,000 years ago, something went terribly wrong: We turned from the ways of Earth Community to the ways of Empire. It was a time of separation and forgetting. Community, partnership, and the celebration of life gave way to domination and violence.
The few expropriated the wealth of the many. The masculine drove out the feminine. We worshiped our Sky Father, but turned against our Earth Mother. We came to value the power to kill and destroy more highly than the ability to create and nurture life.
Conquest became the measure of greatness. Economies came to be based on servitude. With a few on the top and the many on the bottom, everyone was placed in competition with everyone else for the favored positions; the bonds of caring and sharing were broken. Money and power became the prime arbiters of relationships. The creative energy of the species was redirected from securing the well-being of the tribe and Mother Earth to advancing the technological instruments of war and the social instruments of domination.
Resources were expropriated by the winners to maintain the system of domination. The positions of power too often went to the most ruthless and psychologically damaged members of society.
If this discussion of Empire sounds familiar, it is for good reason. Although kings and emperors have been replaced by corporate CEOs and hedge fund managers, we are still living in the Era of Empire. Our institutions have evolved to grow the power and wealth of a small ruling class that in some respects lives even further beyond the reach of public accountability than the kings and emperors of an earlier time.
In the past 100 years, we humans have achieved a technological mastery beyond the imagination of previous generations. Yet, lacking in the wisdom of place and community that is the heritage of indigenous peoples, the consumer culture fabricated by the institutions of Wall Street has led us to forget what it means to be human and to deny our connection to the web of planetary life. The result is an ecological and social crisis that threatens the very survival of the species. The time has come to rediscover our humanity, reclaim the power that Wall Street institutions and their global counterparts have usurped, and bring ourselves back into balance with one another and with Earth—our living home.
Think of this as our final examination to determine whether we are a species worthy of survival. If there is to be a human future, we must reinvent ourselves and our institutions—and do so with all possible speed. This is the challenge with which our educational institutions must now engage.
We need a new vision for the human future that goes far beyond current policy proposals for adjustments in technology and market incentives. The values and institutions of the 20th century that led us to recklessly squander Earth's abundance for the benefit of the few were shaped by an economic mindset that reduces all values to financial values and all human exchanges to financial transactions for private financial gain. This mindset gave us collapsing environmental systems, unconscionable inequality, and rule by global corporations that operate beyond the reach of democratic accountability.
Ecological Principles for the New Economy
The economic systems and institutions of the 21st century must be designed to serve three very different outcomes: ecological balance, shared prosperity, and living democracy. We properly turn to ecologists, not economists, for guidance. The underlying principles of the new economy are ecological principles. They are central to the ecologist's intellectual frame, but alien to the financial frame of most professional economists.
1. Ecological Balance: I call this spaceship management 101. The defining human imperative of our time is to bring ourselves into balance with Earth's biosphere. This requires shrinking global GDP, starting with the most profligate nations while creating a planetary-scale economic system that mimics the structure and behavior of Earth's biosphere. Listen closely, because the following is key: Earth's biosphere is segmented into countless self-organizing local ecosystems, each locally rooted, locally self-reliant, and exquisitely adapted to its particular place on earth to optimize the use of locally available resources in service to life. We must similarly organize our human economies as subsystems of local ecosystems. To the extent that each local economy is in balance with its local ecosystem, the biosphere itself will be in balance.
2. Shared Prosperity: As we act to reduce aggregate consumption and rebuild local economies that integrate with local ecosystems, we need to recognize that Earth's bounty is the shared birthright of all living beings and learn to share it equitably for the benefit of all. It is the right thing to do and essential to our survival. It is also a necessary path to increasing human health and happiness. According to a massive body of public health research, societies that share wealth equally are healthier, have stronger families and communities, less crime and violence, and healthier natural environments than do less equal societies. Inequality creates psychological and emotional stress, including for those at the top, discourages sharing, and increases insecurity. Societies that distribute wealth equitably also tend to be more democratic and more resilient in the face of crisis.
3. Living Democracy: In living democracies, popular sovereignty is integral to the fabric of community life. Living democracy is a daily practice of civic life. Living democracies celebrate and affirm diversity within a framework of individual rights, community responsibility, and mutual accountability. Their political and economic institutions support local decision making within a framework of cooperation and mutually agreed rules. Shared power, shared resources, and shared prosperity go hand in hand.
Redesigning the System
The defining structural characteristics of economies organized to support ecological balance, shared prosperity, and living democracy will be near mirror opposites of the structures of power and privilege that the current economy supports. Here are three key system design issues:
1. Indicators. We currently use gross domestic product (GDP) and corporate stock share price indices as the primary indicators against which we evaluate economic performance, and we manage our public policies to maximize their growth. GDP is basically a measure of the rate at which we are turning useful resources into garbage and stock price indices are basically a measure of the rate at which rich people are getting richer relative to the rest of us while doing no useful work.
We get what we measure, so we should measure what we want by assessing economic performance against non-financial indicators of the health of people, community, and nature. Indicators like the Living Planet Index and the Ecological Footprint promoted by the World Wide Fund for Nature are an excellent place to start.
2. Money system. Our present economic system centralizes and monopolizes control of the creation and allocation of money in the hands of a very few private banks that use this power to finance socially destructive speculation, asset bubbles, loan pyramids, and corporate buyouts, and to force working people and productive Main Street enterprises into debt slavery. The official money system is the operating system of the economy. It can and should be decentralized, localized, and managed as a public utility comprised primarily of locally rooted nonprofit or publicly owned community banks and credit unions providing basic financial services and funding productive local investment. Financial speculation should be eliminated either by legal prohibition or through the imposition of confiscatory taxes. For all the attention given to financial analysis, the money system is one of the least understood aspects of modern society and it gets little attention in university programs. Understanding money as a system of power and the implications for society should be considered an essential foundation of education for responsible citizenship to which every student should be exposed.
3. Business Enterprises. The global economy is organized under the control of global mega-corporations with internal economies larger than those of most countries, which are accountable only to absentee owners whose sole interest is financial return. The living economies of the future are properly organized around locally owned small and medium-sized living enterprises that root economic decision making in the community, treat profit as a means rather than an end, and define their purpose in terms of meeting community needs. Large corporations must be broken up and restructured as smaller worker- or community-owned businesses. Business schools that prepare managers to serve the financial bottom line of large corporations will need to reorganize to prepare managers for living enterprises.
When Money Rules
Modern money is perhaps the most mysterious of human inventions. It is nothing but a number of no substance or intrinsic worth. Yet in contemporary societies, money determines our access to virtually every essential of life. The decisions of those who control the creation and allocation of money determine the fate of nations and shape the booms and busts of economic life They determine who among Earth's people will have food, shelter, education, and health care—and who will not.
It is all just numbers and creative accounting, but the system that generates and allocates these special numbers is the most effective and undemocratic of tyrannies, because its inner workings are largely invisible and therefore difficult for ordinary people to challenge. We may express outrage against the bankers who abuse the power the system gives them, but we generally take the system itself for granted.
The money system largely defies understanding, because it is based on illusions, beginning with the illusion that money itself is wealth and that people who make money are thereby creating wealth.
Economist John Kenneth Galbraith once famously observed that the process by which money is created is "so simple it repels the mind." When you take out a loan from a bank, the bank opens an account in your name and enters the amount of the loan in its ledger. That becomes a liability on the bank's accounts, offset by the corresponding asset of your promise to repay with interest. Two simple accounting entries and money magically appears from nowhere. This simple fact makes banking a very profitable business and is the key to the ability of the institutions of global finance to rule the world.
Mayer Amschel Rothschild, founder of the Rothschild banking dynasty, once famously said, "Permit me to issue and control the money of a nation and I care not who makes its laws."
Money created out of nothing, unrelated to the creation of anything of corresponding value, is phantom wealth. In the United States, Wall Street has built a whole industry devoted to creating phantom wealth. They call it financial innovation. It is a form of theft and should be treated as such. Understanding how this works is essential to fulfilling one's civic responsibility in a democratic society, yet it is rarely addressed in existing university curricula.
Real Wealth
Real wealth has intrinsic value: land, labor, food, and knowledge are all examples. The most valuable of all forms of wealth are those that are beyond price: love; a healthy, happy child; a job that provides a sense of self-worth and contribution; membership in a strong, caring community; a healthy, vibrant natural environment; peace. None of these has any place on corporate balance sheets or in our calculations of gross domestic product. Consequently, many of our ruling economic institutions have become highly efficient in converting real living wealth into phantom financial wealth.
From the standpoint of society, money is properly treated as a means, not an end. Rather than directing money to financial speculators and scam artists devoted to creating phantom wealth for personal gain, we must create new official money systems designed to effectively link underutilized resources to unmet needs to improve the health of our children, families, communities, and the natural environment. Such systems will necessarily be highly decentralized and publicly accountable to local people and communities.
Unfortunately, most students who graduate from our institutions of higher learning—even with degrees in economics—have no idea how the money system operates and no intellectual tools to address such questions.
Educating for a Sustainable World
Although I'm sometimes called an economist, I view the economy through the lens of an organizational systems designer. As a Harvard Business School professor in the early 1970s, I taught the art of structuring human relationships in corporations to maximize profit. Partly, it involved getting the incentives right; it was also about culture, authority, communication flows, and a host of other influences subject to management intervention.
The same intellectual tools can be used to design the institutional structures of whole societies either to consolidate the power of ruling elites or to share power and facilitate creative, democratic self-organization directed to enhancing community well-being.
Understanding the nature and implication of such choices is essential to anyone who is going to provide effective leadership in creating the institutions of the future. Yet I am not aware of any place within our universities where the necessary skills are taught, except in business schools that teach their application for purposes contrary to the purposes our new institutions must be designed to serve.
This suggests something of the magnitude of the implications for our educational institutions. For the most part, our existing educational programs and institutions are preparing their graduates for jobs in institutions destined to fail or be replaced. Not only must future graduates be prepared to serve institutions, for which we now have few models, that support ecological balance, shared prosperity, and living democracy, they must be prepared to create such institutions. It isn't just about young people. The entire society must be retooled and reskilled—immediately.
Few of our existing educational institutions, including our institutions of higher learning, are prepared for what they are now called upon to do. They are organized around narrowly defined academic disciplines, some of which bear major responsibility for promoting the cultural beliefs and institutional arrangements that got us into our current mess.
The academic programs of the future must produce citizens who think and act in terms of systems, not disciplines—and most particularly, citizens who think and act in terms of the needs, potentials, and dynamics of living systems.
A Three Part Strategy
Such a dramatic transformation of an institutional system so powerful and so deeply entrenched as the complex of economic power that is driving the neoliberal agenda would be unimaginable, except for the fact that millions of people are already engaged in making it happen. YES! Magazine, for which I serve as board chair, is devoted to telling the stories of these initiatives. The more intentional we are about the desired outcome and the change strategy by which we pursue it, the greater our prospect for success.
The emerging change strategy features three elements:
1. Change the defining stories of the mainstream culture. It is a simple, but rarely noted truth. Every transformational social movement begins with a conversation that challenges a prevailing cultural story with a new story of unrealized possibility and ultimately displaces the old story. The civil rights movement changed the story on race. The environmental movement changed the story about the human relationship to nature. The women's movement changed the story on gender. Our current task is to change the prevailing stories about the nature of wealth, the purpose of the economy, and our human nature. Examination of our old and new versions of these stories should have a prominent place in the curriculum.
2. Create a new economic reality from the bottom up, as millions of people the world over are doing in their efforts to rebuild local economies and communities. They are supporting locally owned human-scale businesses and family farms, developing local financial institutions, reclaiming farm and forest lands, changing land-use policies to concentrate population in compact communities that reduce automobile dependence, retrofitting their buildings for energy conservation, and otherwise working toward local self-reliance in food, energy, and other basic essentials. This is the work, for example, of the Transition Towns Movement. In the United States, I serve on the board of the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies (BALLE), which is building a national support system for such efforts. People involved in these efforts are learning to create the institutions of the New Economy by doing it. Our universities should develop the capability to facilitate this process through the creation of community-based social learning centers.
3. Change the rules: Current law and public policy largely favor the self-serving and deeply destructive corporate-led global economy. That works well for the interests of big money. People and the planet are better served by rules and policies that support local control and protect community interests. University programs in public policy can and should develop public policy programs that address this need.
Here are some other specific implications for our universities:
1. Take down the walls that separate the university from the community. Engage university faculty and students in the social learning processes by which locally rooted human communities are learning to align themselves with the structures and processes of their local ecosystems. Place less focus on degree programs and more focus on continuing, lifelong learning.
2. Break down the disciplinary barriers and reorganize as interdisciplinary teams engaged in the study and design of critical institutional systems.
3. Teach history as an examination of large forces that have shaped history, in search of insights into how large-scale social change happens.
4. Replace existing economics departments with departments of ecology. Include ecological economists in these departments, but put the focus on the ecology. Invite the conventional economists who currently staff most university economics programs to retire, retrain as ecological economists, or be assigned to teach economics as one of a number of courses on the intellectual history of the 20th century and where it went wrong.
5. Feature courses on human developmental psychology that explore how the pathways to a fully mature human consciousness are shaped by differing cultural and institutional experiences.
6. Replace the metaphor of the machine with the metaphor of the living organism as the defining intellectual frame. Staff biology departments with new biologists who strive to understand life on its own terms rather than through the dead-world lens of Newtonian physics.
We humans are engaged in a monumental work of reinventing our societies and ourselves. It is the most exciting intellectual challenge and creative opportunity in the whole of the human experience. We have the power to turn this world around for the sake of ourselves and children for generations to come. It requires rethinking and reorganizing our institutions of higher learning in the most fundamental ways. We are the ones we have been waiting for. Thank you.
David Korten is board chair of YES! Magazine and author of Agenda for a New Economy: From Phantom Wealth to Real Wealth, The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community, and When Corporations Rule the World. He serves as a board member of the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies and co-chair of the New Economy Working Group.
YES! Magazine encourages you to make free use of this article by taking these easy steps. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License


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New reality TV series The Chair on making of two films
Viewers of a new TV reality show will soon find out what happens when two fledgling directors are given $850,000 to direct their own movies from the same script.
The Chair debuts on Sept 6 on the cable network Starz and documents the making of both movies. The show will be followed shortly after by the theatrical and digital releases of the two movies at the center of the docuseries.
The 10-week series will air in one-hour installments each Saturday through mid-November. It's the brainchild of Chris Moore, who produced the movies American Pie and Good Will Hunting.
Both movies in the docuseries are based on a script by Dan Schoffer called How Soon is Now. They are coming-of-age stories about friends who return home to western Pennsylvania during their first Thanksgiving holiday break in college.
Shane Dawson's adaptation, Not Cool, is a broader comedy similar in tone to Superbad and other teen films, he says. Dawson, a 26-year-old Los Angeles film-maker known for his YouTube shorts, stars in his version.
The other version, Hollidaysburg, is a more "thoughtful, introspective and grounded" approach, says Anne Martemucci, a 32-year-old screenwriter and actress who makes films with her husband.
Her movie is named for a small town near State College, where Martemucci spent the first 20 years of her life.
"It was really important for me to make a teen movie that was based on my experiences," Martemucci says. "It was just too good that I got to make a coming-of-age movie in the place where I came of age."
Setting the movies in and around Pittsburgh wasn't just a matter of artistic license. The project was based there because a key partner on the project is Pittsburgh-bred producer and actor Zachary Quinto, who plays Spock in the most recent Star Trek movies.
Quinto and partner Corey Moosa's production company, Before the Door, have networked with western Pennsylvania's burgeoning film industry, including movie incubator Steeltown Entertainment and Point Park University.
More than 100 Point Park students and alumni worked on the series or one of the two movies or served as paid interns.
"You really can't recreate that any more than you can recreate a play in the classroom," says Ronald Lindblom, the vice-president and artistic director of Point Park's Conservatory of Performing Arts. "They spent several weeks, handson, in a day-to-day operation."
The final two episodes will include audience reaction to the two movies, as well as behind-the-scenes information about the movies' release and marketing. While Moore expects the show will serve as a promo for the movies, and vice versa, he also expects some moviegoers will see both films without realizing they're part of this grand experiment.
"They'll be like, 'Is that allowed? Are you allowed to release two movies with the same plot?'" Moore says.
Viewers can vote on which film they like better by completing an on line survey. The winning director will get $250,000, but both say the experience and exposure were invaluable.
"My whole goal was just to get my first movie made-whether it was terrible or whether it was amazing," Dawson says. "Luckily, the movie's great."


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This post started out as a bump for another great Boston Globe Big Picture Blog post, this time on the 2010 Asian Games opening ceremony in Guangzhou. The deeper I dug into this opening ceremony, the more my mind was blown. Imagine a huge performance stage covered with differing depths of water, and thous…
Nah, don't imagine it. Just check out these pictures and video. This thing is amazing.
From the Big Picture Blog post on the games:
Then, check out some videos – there are a ton here. I found a bunch in Chinese, but you'll do what you can… enjoy! Also, the official website for the 2010 Asian Games, check that out too!
How much does something like this cost? I asked myself the same question. From Wikipedia:
Several statements were made prior to the official statement about the cost. On March 11, 2005, Lin Shusen of the Guangzhou Municipal Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) said the Games "will not cost more than ï¿¥2 billion", in stark contrast to an earlier report, which had claimed that the cost could exceed ï¿¥200 billion.
In March 2009, the director of the marketing department of the Games, Fang Da'er, claimed that the Games were short of funds, due to lack of sponsorship and the global financial crisis. An informal estimate put the Games' expenditure at about US$420 million and revenue at US$450 million.
On October 13, 2010, Mayor of Guangzhou Wan Qingliang officially revealed in a press conference that the total cost of staging the Asian Games and Asian Para Games is about ï¿¥122.6 billion ($17 billion), with ï¿¥109 billion spent on infrastructure, ï¿¥6.3 billion on the venues and some ï¿¥7.3 billion spent on Games' operation.
Holy crap. Go big or go home, I guess.
Thanks, Wikipedia!


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Yellow 21---But Not For Much Longer
Wow! I am absolutely overwhelmed by the incredible response to the First Ever Farmgirl Fare Name That Sheep Contest. I had no idea how many people out there want a sheep to call their very own. And it is really wonderful to hear from all of you new visitors. Welcome! Yellow 21 (who was kind enough to pose for these new photos just moments ago) is thrilled by all the attention, and The Secret Panel Of Judges is having a great time sifting through the dozens and dozens of entries. You have certainly come up with some interesting, innovative, often hysterical, and, well, truly unique names!
Because we want to give careful consideration to each and every entry (and because we are also sort of swamped by farm duties after being away), it is going to be a few days before The Big Winner is announced.
In the meantime, new entries (or comments stating why other suggested names should not be chosen) are still welcome. And as per your request, I also have a little more information for you about our girl--as well as these up-to-the-minute photos.
A Good Sheep Knows To Stay Alert When Out In The Field
Yellow 21 And Her Mother, Doll Face
Yellow 21 was born sometime between 9:00pm Sunday, March 23rd and 2:00am Monday, March 24th in 2003 to Doll Face (one of my oldest and favorite ewes). At 9:00pm I knew Doll Face was fairly close to giving birth, and so I put her in a bonding pen for the night. When I went down to check on her at 2:00am, she was busy taking care of her healthy, newborn twins.
Doll Face's father was a black Border Leicester named The Count, and her mother was a Finn cross named Ulla (after Ulla Procope, a Finnish potter; at that time all sheep were being named after early 20th century female potters).
Yellow 21's father was a large, friendly Hampshire ram named Big Boy.
In late February of this year, Yellow 21 gave birth to the first lamb of the season, an adorable girl named Babs (or Babsie).
And a few miscellaneous comments:
The original contest photos of Yellow 21 were fairly dark because I took them in the barn. I am wondering if the people who suggested names such as Cocoa and Chocolat are thinking she is a brown sheep. She is actually (dirty) white with a dark greyish face. My apologies for any confusion. (And your entries will still be considered no matter what color you thought she was.)
If you really, really want to win this sheep, you might want to read through the entries again, as I noticed some people voted for names that had already been suggested (Alisha, this would be you). Or you can stick with your original vote and realize that you may only win half a sheep. I know I didn't list the past and present names of all my sheep, but I will quickly mention that I already have a sheep named Mary (she is Doll Face's triplet sister), and one of the sheep in my original flock was a wonderful Rambouillet named Gertie (short for Gertrude). Oh, and Molly Doodle absolutely refuses to allow a sheep to be named after her.
And just one last thing. You know those obnoxious recipe contests where they claim complete ownership of your recipe even if you don't win? Yep, well, I'm doing that. This means I can use any of your entries to name any of my sheep without even giving you credit (which of course you know I would never do) and without giving you the actual sheep (which I may or may not do).
Good luck, and I sure hope everyone is having as much fun as I am naming that sheep!
Click here to read the contest rules and the dozens of names already submitted.


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The Learning Filter (Bayesian Filter) uses the rules of Thomas Bayes (English mathematician, 18th century) and calculates a certain Spam-Probability for every E-Mail. You can train this filter! So it will know your messages even better than you. Hence the recognition rate will continuously increase.
The program works with almost every E-Mail client, such as Outlook 2000/XP/2003/Express, Eudora, Mozilla Thunderbird, IncrediMail, Pegasus Mail, Phoenix Mail, Opera, etc... It supports POP and IMAP accounts, as well as secure connections.
Spam Recognition Filters:
- The Learning Filter recognizes more than 98% of all incoming spam mails. Use the Training Area, to increase the recognition rate continuously.
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Follow the links below for an informative video on what you can expect at your first visit to our office, a medical library that has information about the conditions we treat and how we treat them, downloadable patient forms, information on the insurance carriers with which we work, testimonials from patients we have treated in the past, links to external health related resources and answers to frequently asked questions about physical therapy.
- 1st Visit Video - this video outlines what to expect before and during your first visit with us.
- Medical Library - get information on the conditions we treat and how we treat them.
- Patient Forms - save time on your first visit by downloading and completing the patient forms before you go in for your appointment.
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- Links - outside resources with information on physical therapy and other health related topics.
- FAQ - answers to commonly asked questions on what to expect when you come in for your first visit.


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Estimated read time: 2-3 minutes
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
Associated Press
PHOENIX (AP) - An anonymous benefactor has purchased and wants to preserve a Frank Lloyd Wright-designed home in Phoenix that had been threatened with demotion, a real estate broker, city officials and a preservationist group said Thursday in separate announcements.
Wright designed the 1950s home for his son and daughter-in-law. It was twice sold in recent years, and preservationists objected last summer when they learned a development company planned to demolish the home in order to split the property.
The Chicago-based Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy said the new buyer wants to remain anonymous. The property was purchased through a corporation that will transfer it to a not-for-profit organization, which will restore, maintain and operate the home for educational purposes, the conservancy said.
The purchase means "this important piece of our Phoenix history and the Frank Lloyd Wright legacy will be preserved for generations to come," Mayor Greg Stanton said.
The conservancy said the home is the only Wright-designed residence that uses a circular spiral plan similar to the Wright-designed Guggenheim Museum in New York, which was built after the home.
Robert Joffe, a real estate broker who marketed the property, said the home sold for $2,379,000. That was the original asking price but less than a $2.5 million price put on the property several weeks ago because of recently incurred expenses, Joffe said.
Two previous sales fell through, so this transaction was kept under wraps until the deal closed Thursday, Joffe said.
Joffe and Janet Halstead, the Wright conservancy's executive director, both emphasized that the purchase is final.
"This is closed and recorded," Halstead said. "That's why we didn't announce it until now."
Joffe said the buyer won't be living in the home and is purchasing it "for the love of the property" and to help the community, not as a business decision.
"They're really not looking for the notoriety. The public will never know who they are," he said.
City Councilman Sal DiCiccio praised the buyer. "Words cannot express our gratitude."
Joffe said the buyer was the first potential buyer to whom he showed the property when it went on sale several months ago. But the person stepped aside when somebody else started the process of purchasing the home before backing out.
The conservancy said the new owner will ask the city to designate the home as a landmark. Further information on plans for the home will be released in January, the group said.
Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy: http://www.savewright.org
(Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.)


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Hey All,
I would like to repost something that I think is important to really really really pierce ... about "right" Zazen and "wrong" Zazen. Someone wrote to ask if there was a general "litmus test" for when we are Practicing "right". It is also a good time to briefly review just what is "just sitting" Shikantaza, good for new folks and old folks too:
Don't think we don't make progress in our Zen Practice even as we toss out all thought of anywhere to get. Don't think that we reach no true attainments, and that our life does not radically change, even as we drop all idea of "attainment" or a "need to change". Remember too that that all takes time and diligent Practice, even as we give up all worry about "time".
The following is the closest I come to a "litmus test" for someone's Practice, a couple of things I wrote awhile back ...
Shikantaza is "radical non-doing", radical goallessness, to-the-marrow non-attaining. However, it is vital to know that "radical non-doing" is worlds away from merely "sitting doing nothing, attaining nothing". I post the following description from time to time:
I also wrote this on thoughts during Zazen, and "doing Zazen wrong" ...So, we have to work very diligently to sit every day, and strive with great effort, all to realize that there is nothing to attain ... It is the way of effortless effort. We must aim carefully for the goalless goal!
Being the "Buddha" all along, and having not a thing about you that is in need of change ... that does not mean you don't have some work to do to realize truly that you are the Buddha without need of change. To realize that you are never, from the outset, in need of change is a VERY BIG CHANGE! There is absolutely nothing about you and the universe (not two) to add or take away, and tasting that there is "nothing to add" is an important addition!
And how do you realize that non-realization?
By Just Sitting to-the-marrow, radically dropping all goals, judgments, attempts to get somewhere or to achieve some realization. That gets you somewhere, and a revolutionary realization!
Truly understanding that everything is completely beyond need for change is a complete change, and finding that there was never a place to get to is finally getting somewhere.
Get how that goes? :shock:
Oh, and by the way ... even as there is not a thing about us to change ... still we have much greed, anger and ignorance, various harmful habits and ways, to change about us.
I hope that helps. And by the way, as we "do" Zazen", Zazen does us ... and ultimately there is just the "doing" ... .There is no way to do Zazen "wrong" ... even when you are doing it completely "wrong".
(That does not mean, though, that there is not a "right" and "wrong" way to "do" it).
There is no 'bad" Zazen, even the bad Zazen. So, we sit looking at the clear, open blue sky without clouds (clouds represent thoughts, the blue sky represents the mind clear of thoughts). Clouds drift in and out, while some days are very blue and some days completely cloudy without any blue sky visible. It is just the weather, which changes. The blue sky is there even when hidden by the clouds. Also, nothing "wrong" with clouds ... it is all the natural sky. Something like that. Blue sky and clouds are all the sky, do not wish to break up the sky. The sky and the weather are just the sky and the weather on any given day.
We do not try to "silence the thoughts before they arise" in Skikantaza. It is more that we allow the thoughts that naturally drift into mind to naturally drift out of mind, much as clouds naturally drift in and out of a clear blue sky. In this way, return again and again to the open, clear blue sky.
One of the key points about Master Dogen's approach to Zazen is to allow the clouds (of thought) to drift naturally out of mind (our thoughts of this and that, likes and dislikes, judgments, events, etc) and we come back again and again to the clear blue sky. Do that again and again, 100 billion times and 100 billion times again. So, no need to "catch" the thoughts and chase them away, even as we seek during Zazen to find the open, blue sky.
HOWEVER, Dogen taught "non-thinking" (also called "thinking not thinking"). That means that there is nothing "wrong" with the clouds. It is not that blue sky is "good" while clouds are "bad" (some Buddhism and other Eastern philosophies imply that). We allow the clouds to drift out of mind, but neither do we resent the clouds when present or on very cloudy days. Even on those days when the sky is all cloudy, and not an inch of blue is present, the blue sky is still there behind the clouds. WE DO NOT SEEK TO BREAK UP OR RESIST ANY PART OF THE SKY, CLOUDS OR BLUE ... It is all the unbroken sky. Understand?
Thus, allowing things to just be the way they are, no judging, not resisting, being with the flow, allowing 'happy' days to be happy and 'sad' days to be sad, all while dropping all idea of 'happy' and 'sad', whether really enjoying or really not enjoying ... fully dropping away any and all thought of doing Zazen 'right' or doing it 'wrong' ... THIS IS DOING IT RIGHT. And when you are doing it right, it will usually feel like you are doing it right, for there is no resistance, and a great sense of balance.
Fighting things, wishing things were some other way that how they are, judging, resisting, going against the grain and the flow, wishing 'sad' days were happy or 'happy' days were happier ... filled with a sense of self bumping up against all the other 'selfs', with a mind held by thoughts of doing Zazen 'right' or doing it 'wrong' ... THIS IS DOING ZAZEN WRONG. And when you are doing it wrong, it will usually feel like you are doing it wrong, for there is resistance, and a sense of imbalance.
But as well, even at those times when Zazen feels 'wrong', when there is resistance or imbalance ... it is still 'right', still 'Zazen', still just what it is. IT CANNOT BE WRONG. This last point is vital to understanding.
Yes, that is a Koan. Is it clear? Please really really penetrate in your body and mind what I just wrote.
Gassho, Jundo


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- City Fajr Shuruq Duhr Asr Magrib Isha
- Dubai 04:35 05:51 12:21 15:49 18:46 20:03
President Barack Obama will announce in his State of the Union address that 34,000 U.S. troops will be home from Afghanistan within a year, a senior administration official said Tuesday.
That is about half the U.S. forces currently serving there, and marks the next phase in the administration's plans to formally finish the war by the end of 2014. The U.S. now has 66,000 troops in Afghanistan, down from a peak of about 100,000 as recently as 2010.
The U.S. is still finalizing plans for the size and scope of its military presence after the war ends. The White House has said it would be open to leaving no troops in Afghanistan, though it is likely that a small presence will remain, in keeping with the Pentagon's preferences.
Obama will not announce troop numbers beyond 2014 in Tuesday's speech and has not yet made that decision, said the official, who requested anonymity in order to discuss the troop withdrawal ahead of the president.
Obama discussed the next phases of the pullout with Afghan President Hamid Karzai during a day-long meeting in Washington last month, the first meeting between the two leaders since Obama's re-election. The two leaders agreed to accelerate their timetable for putting Afghan forces in the lead combat role nationwide, moving that transition up from the summer to the spring.
Obama will announce the troop drawdown and the future of the U.S. role in Afghanistan during a joint meeting of Congress in a speech that is otherwise expected to be dominated by the economy and other domestic issues.
Foreign policy has intruded in recent days, however, and the White House quickly condemned North Korea early Tuesday for its nuclear launch hours before Obama's address. The president is expected to make further remarks on this in his primetime speech.
Some private security analysts, as well as some Pentagon officials, worry that pulling out of Afghanistan too quickly will leave the battle-scarred country vulnerable to collapse. In a worst-case scenario, that could allow the Taliban to regain power and revert to the role they played in the years before Sept. 11, 2001 as protectors of al-Qaida terrorists bent on striking the U.S.
Many Americans, however, are weary of the war, according to public opinion polls, and are skeptical of any claim that Afghanistan is worth more U.S. blood. Registered voters are roughly split between those who say the U.S. should remove all troops and those who favor leaving some troops in place for counterterrorism efforts, according to a recent Fox News poll.
The Obama administration gave the first clear signal in early January that it might leave no troops in the country after December 2014. Administration officials have said they are considering a range of options for a residual U.S. troop presence of as few as 3,000 and as many as 15,000, with the number linked to a specific set of military-related missions like hunting down terrorists.
Follow Emirates 24|7 on Google News.


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A garnet coloured Pinot Noir with aromas of ripe berry fruit. A rich, fruit forward palate with a fine tannin structure and spicy lingering finish. This Pinot Noir has rich, sweet fruit and cherry flavours.
Product of New Zealand
Alcohol – 13.0%
Contains Sulphites.
May contain traces of Egg Products & Milk Products
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Lil Wayne's New Orleans Skate Park Hits More Snags
The building that houses the park didn't pass a city electrical inspection and had to be re-wired, and only a handful of children are able to skate at a time because of a shortage of staffing. Many days, the Trukstop skate park – named after the rapper's skateboarding-inspired Trukfit clothing line – hasn't been open at all.
"We really put the cart before the horse on this project, and right now we're at a crossroads," said Ward "Mack" McLendon, who manages the facility.
But, he said, "Everybody wants to make this work."
McLendon says Lil Wayne dropped by the facility and skated with some kids while in town Super Bowl weekend.
"He's on board, and he really wants this for the community," McLendon said.
The 30-year-old rapper, whose publicists did not return phone calls or emails for comment, announced the park's launch last September, along with corporate partners Mountain Dew and Glu Agency, a New York-based advertising firm . At the time, the park was supposed to be open to the public seven days a week beginning Oct. 1, 2012, but opening was delayed because the facility didn't have enough staffing or insurance coverage.
McLendon said the insurance issue has been resolved, so the park is open. Staffing continues to be a problem. The park is only open when there is adequate supervision, and organizers are relying on volunteers.
Miatta David, spokeswoman for Glu Agency, said the sponsors are working to help establish permanent staffing.
"Everyone involved in this project is committed to ensuring the park is available to our community members year round," she said. "As such, we will soon be shifting from a volunteer to a full-time based staff."
The park is in the Lower 9th Ward, which was all but wiped out by floodwater from Hurricane Katrina in August 2005.
While much of the city has rebounded, the Lower 9th Ward has been slower to recover. Homes were pushed off their foundations, and many residents haven't returned. Blocks where homes once stood are empty and overgrown with weeds.
Lil Wayne, 30, whose given name is Dwayne Michael Carter, Jr., has a new album, I Am Not A Human Being II, due out next month. He is a New Orleans native.


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Patrick Buchanan: Stirrings Of Secession – OpEd
"When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another …"
So begins the Declaration of Independence of the 13 colonies from the king and country to which they had given allegiance since the settlers first came to Jamestown and Plymouth Rock.
The declaration was signed by 56 angry old white guys who had had enough of what the Cousins were doing to them. In seceding from the mother country, these patriots put their lives, fortunes and honor on the line.
Four score and five years later, 11 states invoked the same right "to dissolve the political bands" of the Union and form a new nation. After 620,000 had perished, the issue of a state's right to secede was settled at Appomattox. If that right had existed, it no longer did.
What are we to make, then, of petitions from 25,000 citizens of each of seven Southern states — 116,000 from Texas alone — to secede?
While no one takes this movement as seriously as men took secession in 1861, the sentiments behind it ought not to be minimized. For they bespeak a bristling hostility to the federal government and a dislike bordering on detestation of some Americans for other Americans, as deep as it was on the day Beauregard's guns fired on Fort Sumter.
Our Pledge of Allegiance still speaks of "one nation under God, indivisible," but that is far from the reality in the America of 2012.
The social, cultural, moral and political revolutions of the 1960s, against which Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan inveighed to win their 49-state triumphs, have now captured half of the country.
One America believes our history is a catalog of crimes against people of color, that women have an inviolable right to abortions, that condoms should be handed out to sexually active teens in schools where Darwinism should be taught as revealed truth, while Bibles, prayers and religious symbols should be permanently expelled.
The other America sees all this as unpatriotic, godless and decadent.
One America believes in equality of rights; the other demands equality of results brought about through the redistribution of income and wealth, affirmative action, racial and gender set-asides, and quotas.
One America believes in gun control; the other in gun rights.
Now that Christmas and Easter have been expunged from public schools and the public square and the popular culture has been thoroughly de-Christianized, we Americans seem to have but one holy day of obligation that brings us all together: Super Bowl Sunday.
Where one America divinizes diversity, the other seeks out our lost unity and community. Half the country pays no federal income taxes, but half depends on federal benefits.
The occasions when we come together as one, as after 9/11 and during natural disasters such as Katrina and Sandy, seem few and farther between, and the resurrected unity rarely lasts.
Could today's America come together to build an interstate highway system or send astronauts to the moon, as we did just seven years after John Glenn first orbited the Earth?
Environmentalists would have killed Ike's highway system and the Hoover and Grand Coulee dams, as today they seek to stop the fracking for oil and natural gas and block the Keystone XL pipeline.
As for states seceding, however, is that really a solution to national disintegration? Tens of millions with Blue State mindsets live in Red State America, and vice versa. While folks in Texas may talk of seceding from the Union, folks in Austin talk of seceding from Texas.
Yet we should take seriously what is behind this desire to separate and sever ties, for it mirrors what is happening across our civilization.
The West is decomposing.
British Tories seek to cut ties to the European Union. Scots want to leave Britain. Catalans vote to divorce from Spain, to which they have been wedded since the 15th century. Flemish talk of leaving Walloons behind in Belgium. Northern Europeans are weary of carrying their profligate southern brethren and muse about cutting Greece adrift and letting it float out into the Mediterranean.
And Americans are already seceding from one another — ethnically, culturally, politically. Middle-class folks flee high-tax California, as Third World immigrants, legal and illegal, pour in to partake of the cornucopia of social welfare benefits the Golden Land dispenses.
High-tax states like New York now send tens of thousands of pension checks to Empire State retirees in tax-free Florida. Communities of seniors are rising that look like replicas of the suburbs of the 1950s. People gravitate toward their own kind. Call it divorce, American-style.
What author William Bishop called "The Big Sort" — the sorting out of people by political beliefs — proceeds. Eighteen states have gone Democratic in six straight presidential elections. A similar number have gone Republican.
"Can we all just get along?" asked Rodney King during the Los Angeles riot of 1992. Well, if we can't, we can at least dwell apart.
After all, it's a big country.


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The National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association says its president, Michael Triplett, has died. Triplett, who was an assistant managing editor at Bloomberg BNA, was 48.
The association said in an email that Triplett had cancer and died Thursday. A spokeswoman for Bloomberg BNA said he died in Alabama, where he was visiting family. He lived in Washington.
Triplett was a board member and then president of the Washington chapter of NLGJA. He became president of the national group last year.
Triplett worked on the daily tax report at Bloomberg BNA. He had worked with BNA since 2000. BNA was acquired by Bloomberg in 2011.
He was a graduate of the University of Missouri-Columbia and the American University Washington College of Law.


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A mind reader, a clown and a comedian walk into a bar.
Actually, we don't know about a bar. But we do know they walked into a conference of federal workers held outside Las Vegas in October 2010.
And though it sounds like the start of a joke, it isn't. Someone at the General Services Administration, the federal agency charged with managing government property, actually approved using taxpayer money to pay the three to appear at the meeting.
Obviously, it's the kind of embarrassing story any administration wants to avoid on its watch, especially during a time of fiscal austerity when federal workers are coming under attack from some conservatives and a general election looms for a president seeking a second term.
Which likely helps explain the sudden departures Monday from the GSA of its administrator, Martha Johnson, and two of her deputies. The Washington Post first reported on the unusual spending for the conference and has a report on the resignations, including Johnson's resignation letter. A report based on a government investigation is due out soon, which is why heads are pre-emptively rolling now.
An excerpt from the Post:
"Organizers spent $835,000 on the event, which was attended by 300 employees. The expenses included $147,000 in airfare and lodging at the hotel for six planning trips by a team of organizers. Among the other expenses were $3,200 for a mind reader; $6,300 on commemorative coin set displayed in velvet boxes and $75,000 on a training exercise to build a bicycle." 'When the White House was informed of the Inspector General's findings we acted quickly to determine who was responsible for such a gross misuse of taxpayer dollars,' White House Chief of Staff Jack Lew said in a statement to The Washington Post. President Obama 'was outraged by the excessive spending, questionable dealings with contractors, and disregard for taxpayer dollars,' Lew said, 'and called for all those responsible to be held fully accountable.' "
We can be fairly confident that this won't be the last time something some federal employees do will have at least a few people recalling the song "Send in the Clowns" and its lyrics:
"... And where are the clowns? There ought to be clowns. Don't bother they're here."Copyright 2016 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.


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Latitude: 40° 22' 43" N | Longitude: 96° 43' 43" W |
Duration of Totality*: 2m 37s | Partial phase start: 11:37:11AM (CDT), at "1:00 o'clock" on the sun's disk |
Totality Start*: 1:02:08PM (CDT) *All times shown are calculated for the lat/long specified above, and are accurate to within a couple of seconds, due mainly to influences of the "edge effects" at the start and end of totality. For a more detailed explanation of this, please see the "About Accuracy" section of this great 2017 eclipse page by Ernie Wright of NASA! Please also note that these times have been converted from UTC; if you see times on other sites that say "UTC"/ "UT", or "GMT", those are NOT the local times for you in Pickrell! |
Pickrell is in the path of totality for the
Total Solar Eclipse of August 21, 2017!
Observers there will see (appx.) 2m 37s of totality!
(Get your eclipse glasses here – you MUST have them to safely view the partial phases!)
No viewing plans for Pickrell have been submitted to us yet!
No pictures of Pickrell have been submitted yet!
If you are an official of Pickrell, who is responsible for Eclipse2017 public outreach,
please send us information about your community's 2017 eclipse plans – so we can share it here with everyone!
(Please note, we are completely swamped with requests, so NO more pictures - and PLEASE give us the text EXACTLY so we can cut and paste it in!)
Eclipse2017.org encourages everyone to get into the path of totality on eclipse day,
and see one of the greatest sights the sky has to offer!
(And make sure to have eclipse glasses on hand for everyone!)


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LOS ANGELES – "The Hunger Games" devoured the competition at the People's Choice Awards, emerging the top victor with five trophies.
Katy Perry won three awards at the Wednesday night ceremony in Los Angeles, at which fans selected the winners in categories spanning music, movies and television.
"Hunger Games" was named favorite movie, action movie and movie franchise, and stars Jennifer Lawrence, Chris Hutcherson and Liam Hemsworth had fans' favorite on-screen chemistry. Lawrence also won favorite movie actress and "face of heroism."
Perry was the fans' favorite female artist and pop artist. Her video for "Part of Me" also won.
Sandra Bullock picked up the show's first favorite humanitarian award for her efforts in New Orleans.
Actress Kaley Cuoco hosted the ceremony at the Nokia Theatre, where performers included Christina Aguilera, Jason Aldean and Alicia Keys.
The night's winners:
Movie: "The Hunger Games"
Movie actor: Robert Downey, Jr.
Movie actress: Jennifer Lawrence
Action movie: "The Hunger Games"
Action movie star: Chris Hemsworth
Face of heroism: Jennifer Lawrence, "The Hunger Games"
Comedic movie: "Ted"
Comedic movie actor: Adam Sandler
Comedic movie actress: Jennifer Aniston
Dramatic movie: "The Perks of Being a Wallflower"
Dramatic movie actor: Zac Efron
Dramatic movie actress: Emma Watson
Movie franchise: "The Hunger Games"
Movie superhero: Robert Downey, Jr., "Iron Man"
On-screen chemistry: Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson, and Liam Hemsworth, "The Hunger Games"
Movie icon: Meryl Streep
Network TV comedy: "The Big Bang Theory"
Network TV drama: "Grey's Anatomy"
Cable TV comedy: "Awkward"
Cable TV drama: "Leverage"
Premium cable TV show: "True Blood"
TV crime drama: "Castle"
Sci-fi/fantasy TV show: "Supernatural"
Comedic TV actor: Chris Colfer
Comedic TV actress: Lea Michele
Dramatic TV actor: Nathan Fillion
Dramatic TV actress: Ellen Pompeo
Daytime TV host: Ellen DeGeneres
Late-night talk show host: Jimmy Fallon
New talk show host: Steve Harvey
Competition TV show: "The X Factor"
Celebrity judge: Demi Lovato
Male artist: Jason Mraz
Female artist: Katy Perry
Pop artist: Katy Perry
Hip-hop artist: Nicki Minaj
R&B artist: Rihanna
Band: Maroon 5
Country artist: Taylor Swift
Breakout artists: The Wanted
Song: One Direction, "What Makes You Beautiful"
Album: One Direction, "Up All Night"
Music video: Katy Perry, "Part of Me"
People's voice: Christina Aguilera
Humanitarian: Sandra Bullock