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Salmon Sharks, Lamna ditropis
« Database Home Animalia Chordata Elasmobranchii Lamniformes Lamnidae Lamna ditropis
Description & Behavior
Salmon sharks, Lamna ditropis (Hubbs and Follett, 1947), are closely related to porbeagle sharks, Lamna nasus. Salmon sharks measure up to 3.7 m in length and weigh a maximum of 454 kg. They have heavy spindle-shaped bodies with short, blunt, conical snouts and large gill slits relative to their body size. Their first dorsal fin is dark in color. Their dorsal (upper) sides and flanks are dark blue to gray or black in color. Their ventral (under) sides are white with darker blotches or spots.
Salmon sharks have been observed both singly and in schools, usually feeding. This species is a very fast swimmer.
In the eastern North Pacific, female salmon sharks live up to 20 years, males to at least 27 years.
In the western North Pacific, males mature at about 1.77-1.86 m in total length and 5 years of age, and females mature at about 2.00-2.23 m when they are 8-10 years old. Salmon sharks in the eastern North Pacific appear to have a faster growth rate than those in the western North Pacific; males mature at 1.58 m at 3-5 years old, females at 2.05 m when they are 6-9 years old. Females in the eastern North Pacific are larger than those in the western North Pacific.
Like other sharks in Lamnidae family, salmon sharks are endothermic, meaning they are able to thermoregulate, or maintain a body temperature above the temperature of the surrounding water. Most other marine life is ectothermic, which means they maintain an internal temperature that matches the surrounding water. Fast swimmers, like sharks and tuna, are more commonly endothermic.
Lamnids have vascular counter-current heat exchangers or retes (retia mirabilia) that enable them to retain the heat produced by their metabolism. Salmon sharks have retes near their eyes, in their muscles used for locomotion, and in their viscera (body cavity organs). They also regulate their temperature with vascular shunts that enable them to alter the route of blood flow.
Most Lamnids are able to raise their temperature up to 10°C above the surrounding water. Salmon sharks are unique in that they can raise their internal body temperatures up to 15.6°C above surrounding water.
The ability to control body temperature allows Lamnids, and other endothermic species, to increase their vertical range in the water column and move through varying water temperatures in search of prey.
World Range & Habitat
Salmon sharks, Lamna ditropis, are found in the North Pacific near Japan, Korea, and the Sea of Okhotsk to the Bering Sea and southward to southern California, USA and Baja California, Mexico.
Salmon sharks are coastal-littoral and epipelagic sharks that inhabit cool temperate waters (2.5°-24°C) down to at least 152 m.
Feeding Behavior (Ecology)
Salmon sharks, Lamna ditropis, feed on fishes such as Pacific salmon, steelhead trout, herring, sardines, pollock, Alaska cod, tomcod, lancetfishes, daggerteeth, sauries, lanternfishes, pomfrets, mackerel, lumpfishes, and sculpins.
Similar to other pelagic elasmobranch species, the migratory range of salmon sharks is wide, and are likely associated with the migratory patterns of their prey fishes.
Life History
Salmon sharks are ovoviviparous. Litters of 2-5 pups are born after a gestation period of about 9 months. Newborns measure about 84-96 cm in length.
Salmon sharks mate during summer and autumn and give birth in the spring. Like other shark species, the male shark grasps the female by biting her while he inserts a clasper into her cloaca.
Ovoviviparous: eggs are retained within the body of the female in a brood chamber where the embryo develops, receiving nourishment from a yolk sac. This is the method of reproduction for the "live-bearing" fishes where pups hatch from egg capsules inside the mother's uterus and are born soon afterward. Also known as aplacental viviparous.
Conservation Status & Comments
Salmon sharks, Lamna ditropis, are potentially dangerous to humans due to their size, but have not been associated with injuries to humans.
This species is commonly caught as bycatch, and is considered a nuisance by salmon fisheries because of the damage salmon sharks apparently cause to fishing gear.
Juvenile salmon sharks have been discovered stranded along the Pacific coast of the US, the cause for which is unknown but thought to be associated with coastal development or more likely, commerical fishing.
Commercial fishing of the salmon shark in Alaska has been banned, and recreational fishing of this species has been heavily regulated since 1997.
Salmon sharks, Lamna ditropis, are now listed as Least Concern on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species due to:
"The Salmon Shark occurs in the eastern and western North Pacific and its population appears to be stable and at relatively high levels of abundance. Currently there is no directed fishery in the Northeast Pacific, apart from a small sport fishery for the species in Alaska. Bycatch in the Northeast and Eastern Central Pacific appears to be at low levels and is not increasing at this point-in-time. Additionally, with the current ban on commercial fishing in Alaska state waters and fairly conservative sport fishing limits, it appears that the population is stable. In the Northwest Pacific, a small directed fishery still exists, but typically takes no more than ~5,000 animals per year. Bycatch in the Eastern and Western Central Pacific has been significantly reduced since the elimination of the drift gillnet fishery and the population appears to have rebounded to its former levels. In addition, the most recent demographic analysis supports the contention that salmon shark populations in the Northeast and Northwest Pacific are stable at this time and it is assessed as Least Concern. Nevertheless, there are very little data on catch in other fisheries, discards and potential finning from the major pelagic fisheries in the North Pacific. Bycatch in U.S. State and Federal waters should be documented in order to foster responsible management and catch records should be obtained from the Northwest and Central Pacific."
A taxon is Least Concern when it has been evaluated against the criteria and does not qualify for Critically Endangered, Endangered, Vulnerable or Near Threatened. Widespread and abundant taxa are included in this category.
References & Further Research
Shark Info - Fact Sheet: Salmon Shark
CONSERVATION SCIENCE INSTITUTE :: Salmon Sharks
Biology of the Salmon Shark (Lamna ditropis) - ReefQuest Centre for Shark Research
Arctic Science Journeys Radio: Shark Invasion
Goldman, K., Kohin, S., Cailliet, G.M. & Musick, J.A. 2008. Lamna ditropis. In: IUCN 2009. IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. Version 2009.2. www.iucnredlist.org. Downloaded on 23 December 2009.
Research Lamna ditropis » Barcode of Life ~ Taxonomy ~ BioOne ~ Biodiversity Heritage Library ~ CITES ~ Cornell Macaulay Library [audio / video] ~ Encyclopedia of Life (EOL) ~ ESA Online Journals ~ FishBase ~ Florida Museum of Natural History ~ GBIF ~ Google Scholar ~ ITIS ~ IUCN RedList (Threatened Status) ~ Marine Species Identification Portal ~ NCBI (PubMed, GenBank, etc.) ~ Ocean Biogeographic Information System ~ PLOS ~ SIRIS ~ Tree of Life Web Project ~ UNEP-WCMC Species + Database ~ WoRMS
Search for Salmon Sharks » ARKive ~ Flickr ~ Google ~ Creative Commons search ~ Wikipedia ~ YouTube
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I can't find the stormtrooper in this line at my local walmarts. Anyone else finding them? I want to buy two of them. If so, message me and we can work something out.Thanks Troopers
I finally got Kylo and the stormy..... But oddly enough can't find medal ceremony Leia
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Freedom in the World
You are here
2012 Scores
Freedom Rating (1 = best, 7 = worst)
Civil Liberties (1 = best, 7 = worst)
Political Rights (1 = best, 7 = worst)
Malawi received a downward trend arrow due to the government's violent suppression of public protests, intimidation of journalists, and threats to academic freedom.
The administration of President Bingu wa Mutharika responded with violence to antigovernment protests in July 2011, killing 18 people. International donors reacted by suspending hundreds of millions of aid dollars to Malawi. The government's heavy-handedness toward critics was also increasingly evident in its threats to media independence, including the introduction of a harsh new press law, and academic freedom.
Following Malawi's independence from Britain in 1963, President Hastings Kamuzu Banda ruled the country for nearly three decades, exercising dictatorial power through the Malawi Congress Party (MCP) and its paramilitary youth wing. Facing an economic crisis and strong domestic and international pressure, Banda accepted a 1993 referendum that approved multiparty rule. Bakili Muluzi of the United Democratic Front (UDF) won the 1994 presidential election, which was generally perceived as free and fair. He was reelected in 1999.
Muluzi handpicked Bingu wa Mutharika, a relative political outsider, as his successor ahead of the 2004 presidential election. While Mutharika defeated his MCP opponent, the MCP led concurrent parliamentary elections. In early 2005, a rift between Mutharika and Muluzi, who remained the UDF chairman, worsened after several powerful UDF figures were arrested as part of Mutharika's new anticorruption campaign. Mutharika resigned from the UDF and formed the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), which many lawmakers subsequently joined. With the UDF and the MCP forming an opposition alliance against the president, the remainder of Mutharika's first term was characterized by acute tension between the executive and legislative branches, sometimes leading to the paralysis of governing institutions.
Despite predictions that Muluzi would challenge Mutharika in the May 2009 presidential contest, the constitutional two-term limit prevented him from standing again. Instead, Muluzi and the UDF formed an alliance with the head of the MCP, John Tembo, and backed his candidacy for the presidency. Mutharika ran a highly effective campaign and defeated Tembo with approximately 66 percent of the vote. In concurrent parliamentary elections, Mutharika's DPP won a total of 112 seats in the 193-seat legislature; the MCP took 26, and the UDF captured 17, leaving independent candidates and smaller parties with the remaining seats. According to international and domestic election observers, the 2009 polls were more free and competitive than in previous years. However, incumbents enjoyed a clear advantage due to the use of state resources during the campaign period and a clear bias from government-controlled media outlets.
In late 2010, Mutharika attempted to fire Joyce Banda, who had become Malawi's first female vice president in the 2009 elections. Banda's dismissal sparked a crisis because the vice presidency is an elected position that cannot be appointed or removed by the president. Although Mutharika claimed he had attempted to fire Banda for missing cabinet meetings, opponents asserted that the president was merely attempting to clear the way for his brother and heir apparent, Peter Mutharika, to assume the vice presidency. Banda refused to resign.
With Mutharika and his party enjoying dominance in the legislature, a new autocratic and repressive style of governance emerged. In January 2011, the president promulgated a harsh new press law, passed in November 2010, that empowered the information minister to prohibit any news story deemed contrary to the public interest. In February 2011, a lecturer at Chancellor College was questioned by police after comparing Malawi with Tunisia and Egypt, which were undergoing profound political upheaval at the time. The teachers union cancelled lectures in protest, and four lecturers were fired. The president intervened, condemning the lecturers for encouraging rebellion and closing the university via his role as its chancellor. In April, the British ambassador to Malawi was expelled from the country after a leaked diplomatic cable quoted him as criticizing the president.
In July 2011, discontent over recent economic turmoil and increasingly authoritarian governance led to public protests. Police shot unarmed demonstrators, killing 18 people in Lilongwe; the government forces insisted that the protesters had been looting. Journalists were targeted for beatings, and all radio stations were shut down. Mutharika declared that the protesters were "led by Satan" and promised to hunt down anyone participating in the demonstrations. Further protests were scheduled in August, but were abandoned when the government agreed to talks with civil society representatives facilitated by the United Nations. Activists quit these talks in September and held further protests. In August, the president dismissed his entire cabinet, temporarily assuming all portfolios himself, and in September, he appointed a new cabinet that included his wife. Mutharika also appointed his brother minister of foreign affairs.
International donors, after years of applauding economic management under the Mutharika administration, responded swiftly to the 2011 crackdown. In July, the U.S. Millennium Challenge Corporation announced that it was suspending its sole project in Malawi, a $350 million investment in the energy sector, which had only been announced in April. The British government, Malawi's largest donor, suspended all its aid, as did the World Bank, European Union (EU), Norway, Germany, and the African Development Bank.
Malawi is an electoral democracy. The president is directly elected for five-year terms and exercises considerable executive authority. The unicameral National Assembly is composed of 193 members elected by popular vote to serve five-year terms. The 2009 presidential and parliamentary elections, though characterized by an uneven playing field in favor of incumbents, were the most fair and competitive since the first multiparty elections in 1994.
While opposition groups had questioned the impartiality and legitimacy of the Malawi Electoral Commission (MEC) in previous years, key observers concluded that it operated with sufficient transparency during the 2009 elections. Concerns have arisen over delayed local government elections, which have not been held since district-level assemblies were dissolved in 2005. In apparent contravention of a court order, the president suspended and closed the MEC in December 2010 after an audit report revealed that large sums of money allocated to run the 2009 elections were unaccounted for. This once again delayed local elections, which had already been postponed to April 2011 and are now scheduled to run concurrently with presidential elections in 2014.
The main political parties are the ruling DPP, the opposition MCP, and the UDF. The opposition was able to organize and campaign freely during the 2009 elections.
While President Bingu wa Mutharika has pledged to fight corruption, opposition and civil society groups have charged that the effort has been directed primarily at his political opponents. The new National Anti-Corruption Strategy launched in 2009 included a plan to establish "integrity committees" in public institutions. However, a February 2010 report by Global Integrity indicated that the Anti-Corruption Bureau has largely focused on low-level civil servants while avoiding high-ranking officials under political pressure. After years of investigation and two prior arrests, former president Bakili Muluzi was arrested in 2009 and charged with 86 counts related to his alleged theft of public resources during his time in office. His trial remained ongoing in 2011, amid delays for medical reasons. Malawi was ranked 100 out of 183 countries surveyed in Transparency International's 2011 Corruption Perceptions Index.
Freedom of the press is legally guaranteed but has come increasingly under threat; journalists were beaten and detained during the July 2011 protests, and radio stations were closed. Despite government pressures, Malawi's dozen or so newspapers present a diversity of opinion. There are approximately 20 radio stations and 2 television stations in the country. However, the government-controlled Malawi Broadcasting Corporation and TV Malawi—the historically dominant outlets in the country—display a significant bias in favor of the government. Independent broadcast outlets have been playing an increasingly important role, though broadcast and print media have been targets of government harassment. In January 2010, the government placed a ban on advertising at the largest independent daily in response to unflattering articles about the president's family. In November 2010 parliament passed a harsh new media law, of doubtful constitutionality, granting the minister of information power to ban publications deemed contrary to the public interest. It remained in force at the end of 2011.
Religious freedom is generally respected. Academic freedom has come under attack, with the ongoing dispute over Chancellor College demonstrating the government's unwillingness to tolerate critical opinions. Additionally, on September 24, a student democracy activist, Robert Chasowa, was found dead; the police verdict that he had committed suicide was discredited by the fact that the suicide note misstated his father's name.
Freedoms of assembly and association have come under pressure in recent years, especially in light of the crackdown on the 2011 protests. Civil society activists have faced harassment, intimidation, death threats, and violent treatment from government forces and the ruling party's own militia, known as the Cadets. The right to organize labor unions and to strike is legally protected, with notice and mediation requirements for workers in essential services. Unions are active, and collective bargaining is practiced, but workers face harassment and occasional violence during strikes. Since only a small percentage of the workforce is formally employed, union membership is low.
During Mutharika's first term, the generally independent judiciary became involved in political disputes and faced government hostility; the courts have rendered several significant decisions against the government in recent years. However, due process is not always respected by the overburdened court system, which lacks resources, personnel, and training. Police brutality is reportedly common, as are arbitrary arrests and detentions. Prison conditions are appalling, with many inmates dying from AIDS and other diseases.
Consensual sexual activity between same-sex couples is illegal and is punishable with prison terms. Malawi faced international attention and outcry in December 2009 when a gay couple who had become engaged through a traditional ceremony was charged with gross public indecency. In May 2010, the couple was found guilty of engaging in unnatural acts, among other violations, and was sentenced to 14 years in prison. However, they were pardoned by Mutharika later that month.
Despite constitutional guarantees of equal protection, customary practices perpetuate discrimination against women in education, employment, business, and inheritance and property rights. Violence against women and children remains a serious concern, though in recent years there has been greater media attention on and criminal penalties for abuse and rape. Forced marriages and the secret initiation of girls into their future adult roles through forced sex with older men remain widespread. The practice of kupimbira, in which young girls are sold by families to pay off debts, still exists in some areas. However, Malawian women recorded significant gains in the 2009 elections, winning 22 percent of the seats, and Banda became the first female vice president in the country's history.
Trafficking in women and children, both locally and to locations abroad, is a problem. Penalties for the few successfully prosecuted traffickers have been criticized as too lenient. A 2010 Child Care, Protection, and Justice Bill details the responsibilities of parents for raising and protecting their children and outlines the duties of local authorities to protect children from harmful, exploitative, or undesirable practices.


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Roasting Games Pt. 2: Hunger Games Parody
"4 of ATL's Top Comedians Battle it out to see who the Best Roaster in the A" - Funarios
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text: I think that a global space limit per user should be something ispconfig must have. Right now, I offer (for example) 1GB of hosting, but I am assigning 500MB to site and 500MB to mail... if the user wants to use 800MB for site and just 200MB for mail, well, I have to modify values for the client. In my case, if a "global space limit" exists, I just could set it to 1GB, and same value for site/mail, and the user will never use more than 1GB, and he will have the freedom he wants with his space. Is it possible to implement this?


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1. All-inclusive doesn't always mean what you think.
More than 60 years ago, Club Med pioneered the all-inclusive resort concept by charging travelers a flat fee for food and accommodations. Since then, hundreds of resorts have popped up across the globe to cater to consumers searching for a one-stop-shop to escape, and some cruise lines and luxury hotels have adopted the business model, too.
In the U.S., all-inclusive resorts are rebounding from a slide that corresponded with the recession, according to research firm IBISWorld; all-inclusive vacation revenue is expected to increase at an annual rate of 2.5%, to $150.09 million by 2017. International all-inclusives — a much bigger part of the overall market — are also on the rise, with companies like Club Méditerranée S.A. (Club Med's parent) and Playa Hotels & Resorts creating additional resorts.
But the "all" doesn't always mean everything, experts say. "It's 'all inclusive' with an asterisk," says Laura Mandala, the managing director of tourism-industry research firm Mandala Research. At some resorts, only the basics, like food and some activities are included in that one-size-fits-all fee. At others, drinks and transportation to and from the airport are added in.
The more premium the perk, the more likely you'll pay extra for it. Even Club Med charges extra for things like spa treatments and motorized water sports. (At Club Med Sandpiper Bay in Florida, for example, a 60-minute massage is $125 per person.) Xavier Mufraggi, the CEO of Club Med North America, says that guests in general don't mind the additional fees. "What they're going to pay additional is minimal because so much is already included," he says.


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Goodness me! Seems we might have been too fast clamping down on diesel as one of primary culprits behind global warming. Instead, a new and far more dastardly global warming perpetrator may be at work, going about its fiendish warming ways silently and sneakily.
That culprit is … wait for it … WATER; specifically water trapped by man-made dams and funneled into man-made reservoirs.
This is the initial conclusion of research by Bridget Deemer, a doctoral student at Washington State University-Vancouver.
In a story published on the WSU website and now getting wide distribution (I first stumbled on it within the electronic folds of the Economic Times of India myself) Deemer said she measured dissolved gases in the water column of Lacamas Lake in Clark County and found that methane emissions – a substance 25 times more effective than carbon dioxide at trapping heat in the atmosphere; the so-called "greenhouse effect" that scientists in the global warming camp say causes global temperatures to rise – jumped 20-fold when the water level was drawn down.
A fellow WSU-Vancouver student, Maria Glavin, went on to sample bubbles rising from the lake mud and measured a 36-fold increase in methane during a "draw down," which is when water is taken out of the reservoir by the local municipality to supply fluid for drinking, washing clothes, fire suppression, etc.
Deemer went on to say that while dams and the water behind them cover only a small portion of the earth's surface, they harbor "biological activity" that can produce large amounts of greenhouse gases. And this ain't a small problem in her eyes, either, as there are also some 80,000 dams in the U.S. alone, according to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers National Inventory of Dams.
"Reservoirs have typically been looked at as a green energy source," Deemer told WSU science writer Eric Sorenson. "But their role in greenhouse gas emissions has been overlooked."
OK, while it's tempting to make snarky comments about Deemer's findings (maybe the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) should file suit against reservoir water bacteria to cease and desist from their heinous warming activity) she's actually performed a very valuable service here.
I mean, if reservoir-bound bacteria potentially pose the biggest global warming threat, maybe it provides the basis for tempering a whole host of federal regulatory efforts.
Take the EPA's Mercury Air Toxics Standards (MATS) scheduled to take effect in 2015, which propose some costly caps on power plant emissions in part to reduce the production of greenhouse gases (GHG).
The rule, now being hotly contested in court, could result in removing a lot of electrical generation capacity in the U.S. – meaning that many folks might end facing less access to things like air conditioning. Care to go without when the temperature is 100 degrees out? I didn't think so.
Or how about the GHG rules for heavy trucks? Maybe the global warming threat posed by bacteria in reservoir water might convince the EPA to give OEMs more time to comply with them – might help reduce the cost impact on truckers, too, if manufacturers get a little more time to fine tune their technological solutions.
I'm just saying!


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Mysterious Flash on Jupiter Left No Debris Cloud
Detailed observations made by the Hubble Space Telescope have found an answer to the flash of light seen June 3 on Jupiter. It came from a giant meteor burning up high above Jupiter's cloud tops. The space visitor did not plunge deep enough into the atmosphere to explode and leave behind any telltale cloud of debris, as seen in previous Jupiter collisions.
Hubble's sharp vision and ultraviolet sensitivity were brought to bear on seeking out any trace evidence of the aftermath of the cosmic collision (right inset). Images taken on June 7 show no sign of dark debris above Jupiter's cloud tops. This means that the object didn't descend beneath the clouds and explode as a fireball. If it had, dark sooty blast debris would have been ejected and subsequently would have settled down onto the cloud tops.
Australian amateur astronomer Anthony Wesley saw the flash at 4:31 p.m. (EDT) on June 3. He was watching a live video feed of Jupiter from his telescope. In the Philippines, amateur astronomer Chris Go confirmed that he had simultaneously recorded the transitory event on video.
This natural color photo was taken in visible light with Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3.
NASA, ESA, M.H. Wong (University of California, Berkeley), H.B. Hammel (Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.), A.A. Simon-Miller (Goddard Space Flight Center), and the Jupiter Impact Science Team


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"There are some people who don't wait." Robert Krulwich on the future of journalism
On May 7th, Robert Krulwich gave the commencement speech to Berkeley Journalism School's Class of 2011. That's Robert Krulwich, who hosts the singular radio show Radiolab, one of the most accomplished pieces of science broadcasting in any nation. Robert Krulwich, who won a Peabody Award for broadcast excellence a few months ago. Robert Krulwich, whose blog Krulwich Wonders should be on everyone's reading list.
Robert emailed me a few days after the speech with the following:
"I wanted to let you know that after the meeting in North Carolina [Science Online 2011 – Ed], and after watching the little brigade of you and Carl and Brian and your sisteren and bretheren doing your up-from-the-streets form of journalism, I decided to turn you guys into a Important New Thing in The World. Over the weekend, I gave the commencement speech at Berkeley's Journalism School and if you wade through the first two thirds, you become A Paradigm at the end. I don't know if this is a gross over-Romanticization, but this is how it seems to me."
I've always wanted to be a paradigm. I might get a T-shirt made.
Robert was kind enough to allow me to post the full text of his speech. It's light, lyrical, full of stories – exactly what you'd expect. It's long at 5,500 words but I really recommend reading it all. If you can't, here's a jump-link to the bit he mentions. But really, and especially if you have any aspirations to be a science writer or journalist, read it all.
This is Robert Krulwich speaking to our generation, telling us how things have changed, telling us to be hopeful, telling us how to win.
Commencement Speech at Berkeley May 7, 2011
So, ladies and gentlemen of the Class of 2011 –today you're on the brink, about to cross over….
Last week, you had projects and deadlines and meetings and not a second to spare… And next week? Well, for many of you next week will be luxuriously relaxed with just a touch, or for some of you maybe more than a touch of "Uh Oh" because your tomorrows may be looking just a bit too relaxed, just a little bit too "I don't know what's next-ish" than you'd like and that's what I want to talk about today.
I want to talk to you about your tomorrows in journalism….
It is, I know, hard to find a job.
I'm guessing you look at the world of newspapers and magazines and broadcasters and webcasters and Huffposts and Daily Beasts and sometimes the whole bunch of 'em feel like the City of Troy – you know, this high walled, Fortress of Journalism, occupied by people who somehow got in before you did and now they're looking down at you… little you, a newbie standing alone on the beach and you're looking up, thinking: "Hey! How'd you get in there?… and they're not telling…
But the question's still a good one: How these days does anybody get a good job in journalism, a job where you are surrounded by good people, people you envy and admire, people like the folks you just spent two years with at this school? (I mean not all of them –but I imagine that each of you now have one or two or maybe three friends that you made here that you know are good at what they do, and sometimes better than good… and sometimes better than you. )
So how do you taste more of what you tasted here, which (if I can presume) includes the thrill of occasionally writing a good sentence, of asking exactly the right question at the right moment, of making two pieces of tape fit perfectly together, of getting to meet new people, go new places, see things unfold… these little satisfactions of journalism… how can you have more of that?
That's all you're asking, right? That's all you want. That, and a salary.
And yet it seems so hard right now.
You can send resumes, you can phone friends. You can phone friends of friends, call up people and try to make a quick impression, but does that get you the job? For some of you, yes. Some of you, not yet.
It took 10 years for those Greeks to figure a way into Troy… ten years on the friggin' beach until finally the cleverest guy in the group – the "wily' Ulysses – figured out a way, involving an oversized horse, which makes you wonder: how wily do you have to be to get a job?
What if – and here's a horrible thought – that because you were born in 1980, or 82, 85, 87, graduating into a job-stricken, wildly changing economy… maybe you're just doomed.
Some of you must be thinking that—and for you who are, and to your parents, I say: No, no, and no.
I am here to tell you, that you are stepping into a world that is riper, more pregnant with newness, new ideas, new beats, new opportunities than most generations of journalists before you. You are lucky to be you, very lucky, though you may not be feeling it at the moment.
So let me tell you a feel-bad story that should make you feel good.
It's about a guy who got a job as a correspondent at CBS News, in its day, the best place in the world to work. And he got it at the age of 23. He'd had a short stint at the Charlotte News in North Carolina; he'd written some good pieces and got a call… literally, he got called and was asked to come to the CBS Building, then on Madison Avenue in New York, where he was offered a writing job on the spot. These things actually happened. And because he was fast, a natural stylist with a keen eye, it happened to Charles Kuralt. That was his name, Charles Kuralt.
And he knew how lucky he was…because at that first job interview, as he walked from the elevator to the guy he was supposed to talk to, on his way down the hall, he passed a door – it was closed, but on it, lettered in gold, were the words "Mr. Murrow", as in Edward R. Murrow, who was at that moment the anchor of the evening newscast. And when he was hired as a writer there, he could looked around at the mailboxes with names on them that in those days, those names, you may not know them now, but those names back then were legends: Eric Serveried, Charles Collingwood, Richard C. Hottelet, Daniel Shorr, Robert Trout. This was friggin unbelievable: to be one of Murrow's boys – at 23 – when you practically ARE a boy! Oh my god.
And then, not too long after, he had his big break.
As I say, he was a news writer, writing copy off in a corner, sometimes for Murrow, but he's pretty much an indoors guy, and he's dreaming of course, of getting outdoors where things are happening and one night – in the middle of the night, on the graveyard shift, two a.m.—the bell on the wire ticker goes off and says an airplane has just fallen short of the runway at LaGuardia Airport and is sinking in the East River, right now.
And Kuralt and the night editor flip a coin for who's going to go, Charles wins and runs downstairs, jumps into a cab and says "Take me To LaGuardia." The problem is, no sooner are they out of the midtown tunnel, then the cab gets snarled in some weird pre dawn, fire engines-heading-to-the-airport traffic jam, so Kuralt leaps out, and starts running through the tangled cars up the highway when he sees a guy on a motorcycle weaving his way through the traffic, so he waves his hands wildly, flags him down, says he's a news reporter, there's a plane in the water, he's on deadline, "take me!" and the motorcycle guy jerks his thumb at the saddle on his bike, says "Hold On' and then, like a stunt driver, zigzags through the cars to the airport and Kuralt is one of the first on the scene, where he climbs over fences, gets the interviews, and makes it onto the evening news. After which he's anointed "correspondent", the youngest ever…at 23.
Charles Kuralt not only could write nicely. He had a voice and a calm and a style that was… well, let's just say when I got to CBS, I felt about Charles Kuralt they way Kuralt felt about Edward R. Murrow… I thought he was remarkable. There have been few reporters in my lifetime that I admired more.
So fast forward 40 years… to 1990 or so. Now I am on the same floor with Kuralt, right next door. And I liked to wander into his office because, well, because, it felt like a privilege. Every time I walked through his door I felt that I had a hall pass to yak with Zeus, if only I could disguise my… well, my admiration… I liked him so…
So on one particular day, it was a late fall afternoon, near to Thanksgiving, and the sun was low in the sky and when I walked in Charles was at his desk, sitting there, back lit by the sun, like a saint. And at first all I could see was his silhouette… but when my eyes adjusted, it was strange. He was holding what looked like a reefer between his thumb and index finger (which wasn't a habit I would ever associate with Charles). It was rolled, like a joint, very tight, but I could tell this bit of paper had been carved out of the front page of a Wall Street Journal that was lying on his desk. He had seen something on that front page, and he had, with his pen, drawn a circle around it so many times – over and over – that the piece had come loose and he'd taken this fragment and twisted it into this skinny little shape… and when I walked in, he put the twisted thing down on his desk top, all alone, then he looked at me, got up, a little unsteadily, he pointed to the paper, and then he left the room.
And I wondered, What is it? What's he got? So I looked at the paper, and on the front page there was a story about CBS. This was a while ago, so I may not have all the details right, but it seems that CBS had paid a huge hunk of money to get a new station manager to work at WBBM, their premier Chicago station… and the story of this producer was that he had been hired by a Miami station that was very low rated, nobody watched it, until this guy, who's name I don't remember any more, got the idea to hire very buff, very curvey, very news-delicious newscasters, both men and women, and have them deliver many of their reports from the beach, often in beach wear and sometimes, from in the water, where they got kind of wet, showing off their extra beautiful parts, and the station in a multi-station market had leapt from a, you know 6 percent share to something miraculous, like a 50 percent share. Half the people in Miami who were watching news on television were now watching this guy's station… and when I opened the little twisted bit of paper, Charlie's reefer, the paragraph that he had circled over and over, that paragraph said that CBS, Edward R. Murrow's CBS, Charlie Kuralt's CBS, had just hired this guy to be the new station manager.
And that's when Charles came back into the room, and slumped down in his chair and looked at me like a man who had lost a friend. Or like a man betrayed. And the thing is, as I tell you this story now, I'm sure a lot of you are thinking, "Of course. CBS is a business and if a business can get a 50 share of a market, (If any business can get a fifty percent share of any market, if there's a way to do that….) you've gotta know someone's going to try. Maybe it'll work, maybe it won't. Beachwear in Chicago can be a little tricky come October, but come on, this isn't shocking, this is what businesses do.
But when Charles Kuralt went to CBS, it wasn't a business. It was a calling. It had saints. It had heroes. It had character. And it protected its own. If you went into battle, in World War 2 or in Korea or in Vietnam, for CBS, and you found yourself under fire, in harm's way, if you survived, you were honored the way soldiers honor each other. Charles and his cameraman Freddy Deitrich, had been fired on Vietnam. They were caught in an ambush, and a soldier they'd been covering, a Lieutenant Son, from the South Vietnamese Army had come over to see if they were ok and at that moment, a sniper shot Son through the head and he fell right where Kuralt was. Right next to him.
After that, Kuralt knew, because this is how it worked back then… everybody at CBS would remember his service, would remember what he'd risked to get a story and after that, he pretty much had a lifetime contract. Even if, later, they didn't like you that much, they wouldn't fire you. I'm not saying CBS was always honorable. It wasn't. I'm not saying it was always noble. It wasn't. But it did offer men like Kuralt a deal: It said to you: "Give us your heart, give us your best years, and we will protect you. We will pay you. We will keep you. And you will part of us. And you will be proud to be part of us."
And Charles Kuralt bought that deal hook, line and sinker, but then – on the afternoon I'm talking about… in the 1990s, after a bunch of ownership and management shuffles, by the time he read that story in the Wall Street Journal, he knew that the bloom was off his rose, that CBS was becoming, like so many companies before and after, a place where they would go for the quick fix, hire the hottie, then fire the hottie, love you on Monday, leave you on Thursday, or maybe even Wednesday… or Tuesday, and he hadn't seen it coming. He had believed in Murrow. He just didn't believe in this.
And I remember saying to him on that day… in that office, me on my side of his desk, and him on his side, in the setting sun… "Here's the difference, Charles, between my generation and yours. Here's what my friends will never do, that you and your friends DID do: we will never trust a company that hires us, no matter how good, how proud it is at this moment, to stay loyal to us. To protect us. We will never put our faith in a corporation, even a good one. We can't. Because everything we know tells us that we will be disappointed. That we are vulnerable. And you, sitting here, are just another example of what my friends already know."
Though I'll tell you… thinking of him hitching a ride on a motorcycle, gunning his way down the Grand Central Parkway from a plane crash, clasping the hottest story of the day to his chest and taking it home to Mr. Murrow, a young news gladiator working for the best company on earth… it would be so wonderful to be able to walk into a place and not have to worry again about anything but your work. But that world has vanished. Poof!
Which is only to say that the notion that if you could get yourself into the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, CBS, NBC, Time, Newsweek, they'd take you in, teach you, protect you….
Those days – first, didn't last long…
Maybe one, one and a half generations got that deal.
And for you, the generation after me, I'll say to you what I said to my hero, Charles:
You can't trust big companies to keep you safe.
I know most of you don't and I'm just here to remind you: A job at NBC, ESPN, New York Times, NPR, may look safe today – but things change. They always change. And companies won't protect you from that change. They can't. And these days, they don't even try.
Which brings me back to where I started.
If you want to make a life in this business, if you want to begin, and survive and flourish, how do you do it?
How do you start?
Well I think there's a way.
There's always a way, but lately I've noticed a pattern emerging. And I've seen it work for a number of people who are close to your age… I've watched them step from obscurity… to notice… to a little money… and then to a actual salary, following this route.
It isn't easy.
But here's what I've noticed.
Some people when they look for a job in journalism ask themselves, What do I like to do and Who can take me there? Who can get me to a war zone? To a ballpark? To Wall Street? To politicians, to movie stars? Who's got the vehicle? And you send them your resume and you say, "I want a seat in your car." … And you wait.
But there are some people, who don't wait.
I don't know exactly what going on inside them; but they have this… hunger. It's almost like an ache.
Something inside you says I can't wait to be asked I just have to jump in and do it.
I was one of those people. When I was a teenager I loved political conventions. My mom watched them on TV, she was really into politics, so I watched with her… and there was something about nominating conventions… all those senators and mayors and political bosses in a huge, blazing room with the banners and balloons and funny hats, choosing and bargaining, will it be Kennedy or Stevenson, the cameras, the lights, the drama, I just… when I got a little older… I just wanted to see it for myself.
So at age 20, I think it was, and this is just really kind of crazy behavior, I decided I'd just go. There was a political convention in Chicago in 1967, one year before the riots in 68. It was a political convention for left wing anti-war activists planning to nominate Dr. Martin Luther King and Dr. Benjamin Spock the world famous baby doctor/pediatrician as President and Vice President… it was called The New Politics Convention. And I thought, I'm going to go and "cover" that convention.
I had no idea what it meant to "cover" anything…except that when you watched real reporters on TV… I noticed they all had "credentials", something impressive hanging around their necks. So, to prepare, I went to Art Brown's Art Supply store in New York and got some pre-inked letters, called LettraSet , cause in those days no one had printers and fonts at home. All you had was a typewriter, and no one's going to fall for a credential that's typed. No. So, for $2.50, I got myself a sheet of pre-inked Bodoni bold letters, fifty a's, fifty b's fifty c's…and letter by letter, rubbing with a stylus, I forged an I.D. for some reason from the Yale Daily News.
I didn't go to Yale. I went to Oberlin College. I was on the Oberlin paper. But some sick impulse told me Oberlin wouldn't be impressive enough, so I painstakingly created a Yale Press card with a Yale logo and made up all these different looking signatures with different colored pens, and I then laminated the thing, twice. I thought lamination was crucial. The more plastic you had around your ID, the more credible the forgery and when I walked into the Hilton Hotel in Chicago I was looking pretty good…except for the fact that the Yale Daily news had actually sent a reporter to this convention, he later became an undersecretary of state, Strobe Talbot, and he was two people behind me on the registration line when we were waiting to get in, so for the next three days, I had to constantly make sure that Strobe Talbot and I were never, ever in the same room… But the thing is: they let me in. And I just… did it. I learned what reporters do by watching them, and then copying what I saw. I ran up corridors. I interviewed people. I took frantic notes. I'd rush from ballrooms to the convention pressroom and type like crazy, what exactly I don't remember, cos nobody had sent me there; I was writing nothing to nobody. It was a pantomime, the whole thing, but I was in heaven. At one point there was a fight in a corridor, while the fight was still going on – and this was Chicago, people really hit each other – I squirreled on my belly underneath the fighting to get a quote from the first victim, whose name happened to be Maliewsky, or some long Polish name with lots of vowels, not easy to spell but I knew everybody would want to know the right spelling – I'd just learned that – so lying on the floor I say to him, "How do you spell Maliewsky? M, A, L, I or is it E? and with his head pressed to the carpet, he tells me, and I squiggle back out, and ten minutes later I'm standing in the pressroom… once I was sure Strobe Talbot wasn't there, and I'm spelling Maliewsky and then, generously I'm…. sharing my quote! Oh man.
When I went home, by total chance, I was seated on the plane back to New York (which cost, by the way, in those days, 30 dollars if you were under 22) next to none other than Dr.Benjamin Spock, the now anointed vice presidential nominee. So I had an exclusive interview with THE GUY! It was an exclusive for nobody… but still… I was so excited, we shared a cab back downtown and I left my clothes in his cab. The next day, my mother called me (cause my parents' address was on the bag) and she said, "Do you know Dr. Spock? Cause he just left your clothes in our lobby." And there was no way I could tell my mother what I'd done. No way.
I still have trouble explaining to myself. I just wanted to be there. And, I should tell you I wasn't, like, planning a career or dreaming dreams of a life in journalism. In fact, I had just seen Gregory Peck in To Kill A Mockingbird and I wanted to be him. A trial lawyer, that was my dream. So after college and national service I went to law school. Journalism wasn't my first love… or my only love, but the seed was planted. And then later, when I graduated law school and had this deep, haunting feeling that I'd made a mistake, and I'd didn't have the talent or the character to be Gregory Peck, then asked myself… well, what can I do? What am I good at? And I thought, well, I'm good at explaining things… I like learning stuff and meeting people and who gets to do that? And I remembered my weekend in Chicago…
And the thing is, at that moment, after law school, I was desperate to be good at something, and Journalism, I thought, might save me from being a nobody.
And, because I'd had that crazy weekend, I had a sly feeling, maybe it could be better than that. Some combination of desire and desperation gave me my next plan: I went to my living room, with a tape recorder and I composed a ten part series about Presidential Impeachments. Richard Nixon was being investigated by Congress at that time… this was the Watergate era, and I just wrote ten questions I thought might be on peoples' minds:
If a president is impeached does he go right to jail? No. He goes on trial.
Who runs the trial? Who's the judge?
Who's the jury?
If Senators are supposed to weigh the evidence like jurors, what if 6 of them are in the bathroom during important testimony. Normal Jurors can't go to the bathroom, but I bet Senators can?
Who is Nixon's lawyer?
Who is the prosecutor?
Does the President go to work when he's being impeached?
And so on…
And I took all these questions, and because I'd gone to law school, I answered them and performed a question and answer 40 minute drama, for some reason, in the style of Howard Cosell, the great ABC sportscaster. Why I did my impeachment lesson as a sportscast, I have no idea. It was not a… uh… big success, But one radio station, a community, underground, lefty kind of station, found it curiously plausible. And that's all it took, one. That tape got me my first job…
But the impulse, to explain, to write, to tell, began here… [tapping heart] On my insides.
Journalism doesn't have to be your first love… or your only love.
You can come to it in desperation, because you can't think of anything better to do with your life, that it's this or the abyss.
But once you get going… it helps if you love it. There are different things to love. Some of you, no doubt, have learned to love the spotlight, you want to be the narrator… the on-camera, the presenter, the voice, the big byline.
Others of you may choose producing, designing, managing, staying out of sight, shaping the product.
Some of you like speed. Find something, get it right, get it on, go home. Some of you like it slower: go somewhere, hang out, mull it over, write a draft… take your time…
What you love can differ, but the love, once it comes, that feeling of waking up with a kind of eagerness, a crazy momentum that pushes you into your day, an excitement you realize you don't ever want to go way… that's important.
If you don't have that feeling, maybe you're lucky. You can lead a more sane life. But if you do – I say congratulations. You have what it takes to begin.
What you do next? Well, the obvious option is to go to Conde Nast, Sports Illustrated, MTV. They're there. You can go in and pour coffee for the person who sharpens the pencil for the person who writes the copy and work your way all the way to the top. That's what Charles Kuralt did. And in his day, with his talent, he did it very fast.
But here's another way.
It's not easy. It's not for everybody. Just something to think about.
Suppose, instead of waiting for a job offer from the New Yorker, suppose next month, you go to your living room, sit down, and just do what you love to do. If you write, you write. You write a blog. If you shoot, find a friend, someone you know and like, and the two of you write a script. You make something. No one will pay you. No one will care, No one will notice, except of course you and the people you're doing it with. But then you publish, you put it on line, which these days is totally doable, and then… you do it again.
Now I understand that if you're married, or have a kid, you can't not make money. And I know that it is not fun, it's the opposite of fun, to juggle rent payments with car payments, to fudge medical bills, to play roulette with your credit cards, to have bills that must be paid month after month after month, that don't go down, and I know about friends and siblings who didn't go crazy, who didn't try to become professional storytellers, who became normal things, like sales people, and doctors and teachers and are now moving into homes, buying real furniture and making you feel like you are slipping backwards in the world for the sin of following a dream. I know about that.
But let me tell you what I've also seen.
I've also seen, in my most recent area, science journalism, I've seen people do just what I've proposed. I've seen people, literally, go home, write a blog about dinosaurs (in one case), neuroscience, biology. Nobody asked them. They just did. On their own. By themselves.
After they wrote, they tweeted and facebooked and flogged their blogs, and because they were good, and worked hard, within a year or two, magazines asked them to affiliate (on financial terms that were insulting), but they did that, and their blogs got an audience, and then they got magazine assignments, then agents, then book deals, and now, three, four years after they began, these folks, five or six of them, are beginning to break through. They are becoming not just science writers with jobs, they are becoming THE science writers, the ones people read, and look to… they're going places. And they're doing it on their own terms! In their own voice, they're free to be themselves AND they're paid for it!
How they managed, I don't know. Some of them worked by day and wrote by night.
Some lived with their parents. Some must have struck deals with spouses or with friends.
But I notice, because I talk to them, and now I often work with them… I notice that they get courage from each other. They've got a kind of community. At first it was virtual; they wrote each other. Then they met each other. Now they support each other. Watch out for each other. One day, I imagine, they will get and give each other jobs. And they share a sensibility, a generational sense, that this is how "we" do it.
News, after all, is a spin of words and pictures. It's a kind of music. There are beats in a newscast, a newspaper story. Ed Murrow sounded like Ed Murrow. Huntley and Brinkley sounded different. Anderson Cooper, different still. When you grow up in different decades, you laugh at different jokes, hear different machines, (typewriters versus computers, pinball machines versus Mario Brothers), you hear different ads, jingles, songs, sounds.
When you talk or write or film, you work with the music inside you, the music that formed you. Different generations have different musics in them, so whatever they do, it's going to come out differently and it will speak in beats of their own generation.
The people in charge, of course, don't want to change. They like the music they've got. To the newcomers, they say, "Wait your turn".
But in a world like this… rampant with new technologies, and new ways to do things, the newcomers… that means you… you here today, you have to trust your music… It's how you talk to people your age, your generation. This is how we change.
After all, when it began in the 1930's, Time, the weekly news magazine, was a radical idea created by young Henry Luce and his college friends. The New Yorker got its beats from young James Thurber and his buddy E.B. White, and their boss Harold Ross, I was at Rolling Stone when Jann Wenner put together his amazing gang of writers, designers, critics, photographers. Then Ira Glass did it again with Gen Xers. Each of these groups have a shared feel; they are expressing something that belongs to their age, their time.
So for this age, for your time, I want you to just think about this: Think about NOT waiting your turn.
Instead, think about getting together with friends that you admire, or envy. Think about entrepeneuring. Think about NOT waiting for a company to call you up. Think about not giving your heart to a bunch of adults you don't know. Think about horizontal loyalty. Think about turning to people you already know, who are your friends, or friends of their friends and making something that makes sense to you together, that is as beautiful or as true as you can make it.
And when it comes to security, to protection, your friends may take better care of you than CBS took care of Charles Kuralt in the end. In every career, your job is to make and tell stories, of course. You will build a body of work, but you will also build a body of affection, with the people you've helped who've helped you back.
And maybe that's your way into Troy.
There you are, on the beach, with the other newbies, looking up. Maybe somebody inside will throw you a key and let you in… But more likely, most of you will have to find your own Trojan Horse.
And maybe, for your generation, the Trojan Horse is what you've got, your talent, backed by a legion of friends. Not friends in high places. This is the era of Friends in Low Places. The ones you meet now, who will notice you, challenge you, work with you, and watch your back. Maybe they will be your strength.
If you choose to go this way, you won't have Charles Kuralt's instant success. It will take time. It will probably be very lonely. A living room is not a news room. It doesn't feel like one. You know you're alone. And on the way, you might get scarily close to not being able to afford a living room.
But what I've noticed is that people who fall in love with journalism, who stay at it, who stay stubborn, very often win. I don't know why, but I've seen it happen over and over.
So, here, for what it's worth, ladies and gentlemen of the Class of 2011, is my graduation advice. Some of you will say, "This is a fantasy. Pay this man no attention," but hey, you invited me, so here's what I've got:
If you can… fall in love, with the work, with people you work with, with your dreams and their dreams. Whatever it was that got you to this school, don't let it go. Whatever kept you here, don't let that go. Believe in your friends. Believe that what you and your friends have to say… that the way you're saying it – is something new in the world.
And don't stop. Just hold on… and keep loving what you love… and you'll see. In the end, they'll let you stay.
Thank you.
Update: And here's a video of the man himself, giving the speech
Comments (54)
This is such an inspirational post.. what a passionate speech by a great man! Thanks for posting this
I love it. I'm inspired. Maybe I can put my creative writing degree to some use after all…
As a journalism grad circa 1979 (and then lamentably law 1982), I can only say: bravo.
"Horizontal loyalty" is both brilliant career advice, and the only feasible approach to climate-change. Don't wait for the older generations (i.e., mine) to act, for they will claw out eyes to maintain their illusory reality of business as usual.
That is awesome. If someone could be that inspirational for young scientists, it would change science as we know it. I hope it helps change journalism as we know it. Thanks Ed.
Simply fantastic.
I feel inspired to write more. I'm the guy with the wife and child who can't afford not to get paid, but I still try to squeeze my writing time between baby bath time and bed time.
I have no idea where it will take me, but I plan to stick with it.
Thanks for posting.
Robert Krulwich, ALL BY HIMSELF, justifies at least one year's appropriation of money to NPR.
I have long admired Robert Krulwich's work. When I read this, I can literally hear his voice, speaking these words. I find him a very compelling story teller.
Good stuff. A hopeful message for new grads entering the world, most of whom will be young adults. Very appropriate.
Beautiful. Thanks so much for sharing.
Bravo! This should be carved in stone.
No guys, THE EMPEROR HAS NO CLOTHES!
Working for nothing is not 'brilliant', it is not a paradigm, it is simply playing into the hands of those who have already degraded the worth of a fine and once valued craft.
Brilliant, Robert. Thank you for sharing this, Ed.
Amazing read. You are both great sources of inspiration.
And, yes, you should make, and wear, a paradigm T-shirt.
Brilliant, wise, inspirational. … Bravo!… and thanks!
Seldom in the history of human endeavor has so much eloquence been employed to persuade so many to work so hard for so little.
A wonderful message for journalists and aspiring journalists alike. Thank you for posting!
I will BUY that t-shirt.
All those who've commented before me – this is about us!
I'm GenX and Ira Glass is where it's at – no doubt.
Robert Krulwich, you not only keep me running with your RadioLab podcast, you now keep me writing and believing in the 'horizontal loyalty' I've already been experiencing, just didn't realize how much it meant to me.
We are all creators of history.
As one of those entrepreneurial journalists Robert Krulwich is referring to (although me and my friends are not so young anymore) — passionate about what I do, but not yet totally sure we're going to win — this is one of the most inspiring things I have read. It gives me courage to continue.
Jay Rosen of NYU linked to this on Twitter, so I forwarded it to a young science journalist I know, and now I'm reading it for myself. Excellent stuff. Very inspirational, even for this person who is way older than GenX.
Of course he's right. But when you can be right and eloquent. Now that's so Kuralt.
Great speech that recognizes the energy and possibilities of our times and points to the future without denigrating the past. Count me among the inspired.
I'll echo everyone else in thanking you for posting this. These words give so much fuel and inspiration to so many people like myself who are still trying to scale the wall.
LOVE this. It probably rings even truer to those of us who've been in the business for a while, paddling like mad to try to stay on top of the whipsaw changes that make journalism these days a more exciting and occasionally terrifying line of work than ever. Thank you so much for posting it.
Quite honestly, this one of the greatest and most inspirational things I've ever read. Thanks so much.
Wonderful…. So would Mr. Krulwich or Berkeley please put an audio recording of this online. I'd like to have students play it as they fall asleep… and let it keep whispering its way into their dreams.
Generals give their best speeches when sending men to certain doom.
win. Total win.
Thanks for saying this in a more eloquent and passionate way that I ever have.
Every job I've loved I got this way. I did what I loved in my spare time. I didn't wait for permission, I just did it. I learned the hard lessons, built up a portfolio and got the work. It's amazing how much more powerful a portfolio of your own work is over a CV.
And if I wasn't willing to do it when no one was watching I knew I wouldn't love doing it when someone was.
Very encouraging. Some things I tell myself and and hope for! I chose to write for myself rather than another unpaid internship, and want be one of the innovators of something new rather than aiming to work for a big-name company.
Sorry, I agree with those who say the eloquence doesn't shroud its main message about working for next to nothing. Unlike Mr. Krulwich's staunch belief that 'blogging' and hustling for nothing will get one somewhere, most of us don't believe such pie-in-the-sky nonsense. As he says earlier in his speech, sure, it *might* happen for a few lucky people, but it's not exactly a way for most to forge a career.
WOW…. I wish my own graduation's commencement speech in 2009 had been as poignant and inspiring as Robert Krulwich's.
This is exactly what I needed to hear/read: affirmation that I'm not crazy for working a day job and doing my own project on the side in hopes that it'll pay off eventually.
Wonderful message. Thank you for posting it!
Um, the New Yorker was bankrolled by Raoul H. Fleischmann, This American Life is funded by Public Radio International etc etc. Find a rich dude or institutional support seems to be another life lesson.
A good read.
My thoughts:
1) Good overall lesson for generation entitled to learn.
2) Would have liked to see some female names dropped in there. I know it's meant to be personal, but the speech makes it seem as though there are no worthy women pounding the pavement for stories.
3) I still feel adrift in a sea of not hiring.
The story of my life, thank you for sharing and continuing to inspire the owrk and efforts of independent journalists
Inspirational, Tocayo!
got that buzz in my stomach again after reading this (no it wasn't the fish i had for dinner). 20 years in the biz, and feeling like a newbie as i reinvent myself. it's nice to be reminded of why i'm here. thanks.
Such a fantastic speech. Krulwich's words moved me as I sit here at my desk on a Thursday morning. Can't imagine the emotions I could have felt had I sat in front of him wearing a cap and gown. Looks like I've got some new quotes for the inspiration wall.
a straight to the jaw of my doubting heart.
This is an awe-inspiring speech for anyone who is going out into the unknown. Wow, what I wouldn't give for ten minutes with Robert Krulwich!? Thank you for publishing this in its entirety. I will now, finally, go chase after my own dreams…
To this very nice speech about persistence and passion, I'd also recommend that new graduates equip themselves with a) a beat that they can report better than anyone else and b) proficiency in at least one technical/new media skill (ie web design, seo, video shooting/editing, data vis, data scraping, etc.)
This is a time in which success seems anything but probable, and failure nearly inevitable. This is truly an inspiring speech. Its relevance spreads far beyond journalism and touches writers of any genre. Thank you for inspiring us to continue on a most uncertain path. We could all use this motivation, now more than ever.
Thank you Ed, for sharing this commencement address by Rbt. Krulwich. Truly a treat and inspirational, to aspiring and well-seasoned journalists!
We know what an original and free-thinker Mr. Krulwich is, but I propose one additional inspiration:
Troy–really? Why? Must we wait?
Ed's blog and Mr. Krulwich's work have shown us that if WE BUILD it, then perhaps Troy comes… to us. Or quite possibly (probably) something better. Let's continue to dream BIG. Keep up the good work.
A great speech, thank you to the writer and to the people who invented the internet so that we could read it. As a career journalist, I agree wholeheartedly with the sentiment. As an optimist, I'm so grateful to hear a positive take on what truly is a brave new world of journalism. Not just brave in the Sir Humphrey (Yes Minister) sense but brave as in brash and perhaps foolhardy but truly worthwhile nonetheless. Thank you.
Coming into this late, since I've had my head buried in the sand, but: I feel like the Big K snuck into my head, plucked out all of my career insecurities, and forged them into his speech. I, for one, will never forget it.
Very inspiring and very true.
The job market might appear bleak for students and grads, but there may never have been a time of greater opportunity. I'm a sportswriter covering a major college program, and in the last couple of years a motivated young blogger has written more copy than anyone on the beat … all for his own website. He has built an audience and has more Twitter followers than anyone on the beat. And now he's been hired to write for the local affiliate of a national online network. The best part is he is still devoted to his blog and the audience he built.
So not only is it possible for young people to build their own Trojan horses, they are undoubtedly better equipped to thrive in this new age of social multi-media.
I'm not getting this. Sure it's great to dream and have the entrepreneurial spirit, but we're asking young people who have taken out loans and toiled for 4 years to do what? Write for free? Play at being journalists and hope that someone discovers you?
The current media environment has created two things: No one wants to pay for content, however good it may be, when they can get something that appears almost as good for free.
And, secondly, everyone with a cell phone and a computer and some idea that they know something now believes that they can write about topics that that it took seasoned journalists years to learn to understand and report on accurately.
No amount of turd-polishing can change these facts. Yes, there are some very good bloggers out there, and there are some very good journalists doing online work. But the vast majority of the jobs Mr. Krulwich are trying to promote are the journalistic equivalent of sweatshops. Stitching together piecemeal assignments and Waiting to Be Discovered is exciting and fun when you're in your 20s and early 30s. It's not sustainable when you're a grown-up making mortgage payments and praying that your spouse doesn't lose his/her really good health insurance.
My father John (Jack) VB Sullivan sat in the Fifth Avenue (NYC) office of WNEW for 3 decades. At his 25th anniversary we all danced and sang and hoped he and it would go on forever. When he left WNEW it went into it's death throes.
Writing was my father's first love and I know he would have loved this speech, this writing, as much as I do. I hope they heard and will remember and share this vision….that is the hope for our future. I hope it will be printed as well. Printed on beautiful paper, and distributed in bound books, preserved everywhere it can be as well as in cyberspace. I will hold it in my heart and frame it on the wall over my bed so my hit and miss 71 year old mind can remember to pass it on. Thank you.
One of Jack's children who will always remember.
Thank You. Simply Inspiring.
Mr. Krulwich name-dropped everyone in his fun Golden Age anecdotes but failed to mention even one of the "five or six" journalists he knows carving their own path in New Media, whose examples serve greater purpose to his audience and identifications strengthen his thesis.
And so he went from CBS to NPR and co-host on Radio Lab. Is this progress or a sign of the decline and crumbling of the field? Can we ask people to work for free or on spec? I think not.
On the changing face of journalism and the newspaper business, Bob Gibson, Executive Director of the University of Virginia's Sorensen Institute for Political Leadership, recently said: "I think our journalism and our politics are changing at an ever-increasing rate. The rapid change in journalism is very unsettling to the business. They are finding new business models that can work for newspapers in the internet age. Radio and television are also cutting back as advertising has shifted. They have to find working business models. They've also started cooperating with non-profit groups…. I think new partnerships are going to change the way the media is covering the news and the way the platforms are for reporting the news…. Everyone is trying new business models because old print newspaper empires will die if they view themselves as old print newspaper empires. They are either in the news business or in the newspaper business, and if they are in the news business they will adapt a new business model and survive. If they are in the newspaper business, they'll just go out of business." (Gibson appeared on the Charlottesville, VA, interview program Politics Matters with host Jan Paynter discussing journalism http://bit.ly/pm-gibson)
I wish I could have heard these words in 1979, when I graduated with a BA in journalism from NYU into an economy even crappier than this one. I stayed in journalism, although I allowed myself to drift into places far from those I'd dreamed about. Now, 30+ years later, the wonderful Mr. Krulwich inspires me in another enterprise that provokes much fatalism and scorn: a mid-life career transition. Just do it!
Beautiful, Robert! I've taken your advice and just started a blog called The Houdini File. Did you know Houdini's father killed a prince in a duel, and it was all Harry's fault? The story at houdinifile.com.
This is a really inspirational piece. I'm struggling through a PhD where I feel really overwhelmed, but writing and science communication keep me sane and are often the only things that still excite the passion that got me here in the first place. I often think that I'm dreaming to even consider that I might make it away from data crunching and in to science communication work one day, but after reading this maybe it's not that impossible after all


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Published On : Feb 2017
Category : Avionics
No. of Pages : 120 pages
Avionics refers to electronic systems and devices fitted in aircraft, spacecraft, and artificial satellites, such as navigation, communication, and display systems. There has been a recent increase in aircraft deliveries, which has eventually led to the rising demand for avionic systems. The need for modern avionics is increasing due to surging concerns related to the safety and operational cost of flights. Players in the industry have been investing in a number of strategies such as agreements, partnerships, joint ventures, mergers, and acquisitions in order to gain a strong foothold.
The study provides a clear overview of the China avionics systems market research report 2017 market, shedding light on the key trends and their impact in the short and long term. The report provides insights pertaining to various regional and domestic markets and focuses on the factors that are expected to alter their growth trajectory. The target audience for this report includes system manufacturers, subcomponent manufacturers, original equipment manufacturers, and system integrators. The report highlights the drivers, restraints, and opportunities in the market. The study also presents details pertaining to regulations and policies of government agencies, imports and exports, and products circulated and sold.
The report offers readers a comprehensive understanding of the China avionics systems market research report 2017 market. It also includes a complete assessment of the vendor landscape of the China avionics systems market research report 2017 market and their main activities and developments. The assessment is based on the individual contribution by each player as well as the overall performance of all the vendors. The readers can get a clear view of the competitive landscape and various tactics being used by key players. The study offers an informative outline of research activities, company revenue, product portfolio, mergers, and growth strategies.
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PLAINVIEW -- Wayland Baptist University golf coach Tom Harp received a special honor as his team wrapped up its fourth-place finish in the Region VI Golf Tournament last Tuesday. Harp, who has coached the golf team for five years, was named Coach of the Year as voted on by his peers.
"In our region, this is special because (Oklahoma) Christian is No. 1 in the country, (Oklahoma) City is the four-time defending national champion and Texas Wesleyan is fifth or sixth in the country," Harp said. "For me to get this honor means a lot."
It is the second time Harp has been named Coach of the Year. In 2003, region coaches voted to abolish a standing rule stating that the coach of the team that wins the regional tournament would be named Coach of the Year in order to vote Harp in as the honored coach.
Harp's second trophy validates what has been Wayland's best golf season since the program began in 1995. The team has posted the lowest average round in team history and shot a single-round record 274 in Phoenix a few weeks ago with two rounds of 68 and two 69s. The Pioneers had to throw out a round of 72.
"We used to never even find a 72," Harp said. "Shooting a 72 was a dream. And now we throw out a 72."
Based on their success and rankings this season, the Pioneers should receive an invitation to the national tournament May 16-19 in Olathe, Kan., marking the fourth straight trip for the team. Harp said he should find out for sure during the first week of May.
"I'm making plans accordingly," he said.
The Pioneers will have a few weeks off and away from competition while waiting for the tournament. Harp said the time will still be fairly hectic for the team as the players must focus on final exams. After finals, two players, Kevin Stinson and Jeff Dagg, will drive home to British Columbia, Canada, where they will spend a couple of days, then fly back in order to get in a practice round with the team prior to leaving for Olathe. Michael Martinson, Tyler DeHay and J.J. Brumley will round out the five who will compete in the national tournament.
Harp said he couldn't ask for five stronger players.
"For the first time ever in my history as a coach, every guy on the team has led the team in a tournament," Harp said. "Usually, you just have two or three guys who always finish on the top of your team and the fourth and fifth man struggle to just kind of help out for a couple of rounds. But we don't have anything like that. Each one of our five guys has been the low man on our team.
"This team is so good and so talented. We are definitely one of the strongest teams in the country."
And Harp hopes to prove that at nationals.


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The collection is name searchable. Looking for a family that I am familiar with, I did a search for Samuel Goldberg who was born in 1882 in England. I know he married a woman by the names of Yetta, who was born in Russia in about 1889. As of the 1940 United States Census, this family is living in Rochester, New York. That record is below:
Doing the search I was able to locate the following record:
Going one step further, I was able to click on the link that allowed me to view the original record. That record shows that the happy couple were also married in Rochester.
As with all FamilySearch databases, it free of charge and available to all.


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Blood Pressure & Stroke: What You Need to Know to Act "FAST"
NASHVILLE – The Tennessee Department of Health estimates one of every three adults in the state has high blood pressure. Because the medical condition often has no signs or symptoms as it damages vital organs, it is sometimes known as the "silent killer."
"For many years, I have likened high blood pressure to a car driven at high RPMs; it will run, just not as long," said TDH Commissioner John Dreyzehner, MD, MPH. "Over time, it will quietly destroy every part of your body. It can thicken or narrow blood vessels throughout the body, leading to brain damage, blindness, amputations, kidney failure and stroke. Because stroke is among the results of untreated high blood pressure, everyone should know how to recognize it using the 'FAST' test."
If you suspect a person is having a stroke, the FAST test involves four simple steps to help you gauge a person's condition:
Face: Does one side of the person's face droop when he or she attempts to talk or change expressions?
Arms: If the person tries to lift both arms, does one arm not want to respond or drift downward?
Speech: If the person tries to repeat a short sentence, can he or she do so correctly, without slurring any of the words?
Time: If any of these symptoms are present, time is critical. It's important to call 911 or get the person to a hospital fast. Getting rapid treatment may mean the difference between full recovery and permanent loss of vital brain functions.
A good way to prevent strokes and other high blood pressure-related conditions is to have regular blood pressure checks. A blood pressure check is painless and for most people can be done in less than three minutes.
Clinicians generally use an inflatable cuff around the upper arm to measure blood pressure. Blood pressure is recorded as the systolic pressure, when the heart is pumping, and the diastolic pressure, when the heart is at rest. The two numbers are written with the systolic pressure first, for example 110/70. For most people, normal blood pressure is less than 120/80; borderline high blood pressure is between 120/80 and 139/89, and high blood pressure is considered as 140/90 or greater. High blood pressure, also called hypertension, carries an increased risk of stroke.
There are several treatment options for borderline or high blood pressure. For some, changes to diet and exercise are sufficient; for others, medications are necessary. Remember stroke can be prevented! Don't wait too late to identify and treat this potentially devastating condition.
For additional information about high blood pressure, see your healthcare provider or visit the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services website at www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/health-topics/topics/hbp/
For more information about FAST and stroke, visit www.stroke.org/site/PageServer?pagename=FAST
The mission of the Tennessee Department of Health is to protect, promote and improve the health and prosperity of people in Tennessee. For more information about TDH services and programs, visit http://health.state.tn.us/.


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Exposed zippers are one of those things that I really didn't care for the first time I saw one. I've warmed up to them though, and now I quite like them. They add just a touch of modernness that I like. Here is a super simple way to put one on anything you've made, or bought for that matter. I'm applying one here, on a silk chiffon top I made for my Etsy shop.
Start with a top laid out flat, like so.
Find the center of the neckline. Center your zipper down the shirt and tape it on. Make sure the zipper pull is flush with the hemline.
Start sewing the zipper to the shirt, as close to the teeth of the zipper as possible. Fold the extra zipper tape down at the top before you begin sewing.
When you get to the base of the zipper, fold up the extra zipper tape under the zipper.
Leave enough at the base for you to be able to sew around the mettle.
When you get finished, remove the tape. Sew around the perimeter of the zipper, as close to the edge as you can get.
Now, open the zipper.
Use a fine pair of scissors and cut open the shirt.
Trim the fabric as close to the seam line as you can get. Apply fray check to seal the edges.
Enjoy your new top!
Proverbs 10:12 Hatred stirreth up strifes: but love covereth all sins.


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An adaptive sailing chair designed for Richard Ramos by four RIT engineering students will make its competitive debut this summer, turning Ramos' physical challenges into championship possibilities.
"I just got back into sailing," Ramos says. "I had a spinal injury in 1979, when I was 16. I had sailed as a child growing up in Nantucket, but I had not been back in a boat for 31 years, until two years ago."
Ramos made several Rochester connections, including one at the Rochester Yacht Club and another with the Kate Gleason College of Engineering. He came away with an older model adaptive sailing chair from the former and plans for a new system designed just for him from the latter, putting him in the captain's seat for this season's competitions.
Keith Burhans, commodore of the Rochester Yacht Club, built the older model and used it when he was on the United States Disabled Sailing Team competing for a place at the 2004 Athens Paralympic Games. He considered RIT for redesign work and knew Kate Leipold, a lecturer in the mechanical engineering department, from the local sailing community. She proposed the challenge for a senior-design project to Aleef Mahmud, Mitchel Rankie, Steve Gajewski and Christopher Sullivan, all fifth-year mechanical engineering majors.
Mahmud worked with Ramos and Burhans to assess the design requirements that would become the basis for the custom-made, adaptive seating and driving system for a Sonar, a 23-foot Olympic and Paralympic-class sailboat.
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Sailing crews need to be able to move from side-to-side during a tack, a shift in the boat's direction and orientation. "The old system was over a 100 pounds," Ramos says, "and in sailing, you want to be light and go fast."
Built on a half-moon track mounted on the deck, the new system consists of the modified chair with a user-interface of adjustable handgrips and crank-steering mechanisms. Decisions about turns and tactics are Ramos' responsibility, relayed to the crew, often while the boat is leaning precariously into winds from 18 to 25 knots on rough seas.
It's like a dance, Ramos says of the actions between him and his two crew members while onboard: "My arms are cranking to turn the boat—at the same time the seat is swinging downward, carried by gravity going into the tack. Just to call it a 'chair' doesn't communicate its dynamism."
With limited range of motion in his neck, Ramos also needed a chair that could tilt back slightly to allow a view of the sails. The students added a 10-degree recline to the chair design. Although custom-made for Ramos, the entire model can be adjusted and modified for different body types, Mahmud says.
"I had no idea how much of an impact this project would have," he adds. "It is not just a device we designed for quadriplegic users, it is an intangible sense of freedom and an opportunity to experience the true joys of sailing like never before."
With a four-year plan, Ramos is training for the 2016 Paralympic Games and advocating for other disabled sailors—and showing them a viable option for sailing.
"I'm starting a nonprofit organization and will be approaching community sailing centers. If they don't already have a community sailing program, or an adaptive program for people with disabilities, I'm going to propose that they start one—using this equipment as a way to do that."


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Jersey Joey needed a new logo design and created a contest on 99designs.
A winner was selected from 74 designs submitted by 30 freelance designers.
Clutch Auto Group
We are a wholesale Auto Group, that focuses on consulting clients on buying new vehicles, also our sales are predominantly internet sales. This is a modern style company. We pride on giving our clients the very best vehicle, for the very best price, and we are able to do that because we do not have the large overhead other dealerships have. Our personality, stylish, sleek, modern, a younger energetic feel, but with a lot of class. And we range from everything 3000-200000 dollar vehicles. Our culture is Italian, honest and loyal to our clients.
We are targeting the internet buyers. Anyone from 16.17-70 yrs of age. These are people that are in tune with the net and buying on the net.
name of company-Clutch Auto Group/with a graphic example wheel, car, ect ect..
I want your creativity to flow so be free.
Please look at our website which we are still building for the colors..we like Silver, Blacks, Whites...think SHARP!
Find out how a design contest works or learn more about our logo design services.


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A simple example would be the experience of space as a real 3-d box within which everything happens. If you think about it, 3-d space is just a way in which the brain builds relationships between the objects it experiences. It is not literally there, it is just a story. It is a story which, to us, is real.
Neptune is leaving Aquarius, the sign on a collective level of Science and Democracy. And what do we find? In America, the home (as they see it) of Democracy, the system is ceasing to work. In July and August, at a time of financial crisis, the government was paralysed by partisan dispute, and as a result America for the first time had its credit rating reduced. In Europe, another proudly democratic continent facing a financial crisis, the collective government is also paralysed, not this time by partisanship, but by a system that was a product of political idealism that got carried away with itself. The system that is working and that is on the rise, and which is anything but democratic, is Chinese totalitarian government.
Ad Break: I offer full webcam astrology readings (£60) and written responses to specific questions (£30). Price negotiable if you're hard up. Contact me on Dharmaruci71(at)hotmail.com.
Only yesterday on BBC News there was an article entitled 'Dark matter theory may be wrong'. A few days ago there was an article in which the idea of supersymmetry was brought into doubt. In both cases the doubt came as a result of experimental evidence. These theories have become fundamental to the way science sees the universe at the galactic and quantum levels respectively. Science has been stuck for some decades now in trying to develop theories, backed up by evidence, as to how the universe works when faced with the extremely large and extremely small.
I have always doubted the existence of dark matter. You could say Dark Matter is a projection onto the universe of our own ignorance: there's lots of it – 96% of the universe – and it's impossible to detect. It's a case of the Emperor's New Clothes.
As Neptune leaves Aquarius, so it seems to me is the dream of Science as in principle able to explain everything, fading. I, for one, am delighted!
There is a difference between ignorance and not knowing. Not knowing is a wonderful place to be: the Universe opens up as a 'Great Mystery', and wisdom flows from it. Socrates claimed to be the wisest man in Athens because he knew he didn't know. In the West, we have become addicted to certainty, whether through the claims of Christianity, or latterly through Science and political ideologies. And this is ignorance, which comes from the word ignore, suggesting something wilful: it's obvious when you think about it that there's very little, if anything, that we really know. But we don't think about this, we feel about it, and it feels uncomfortable and insecure. So we ignore it, we choose to be ignorant. Ignorance is thinking you know.
So this is where Neptune is starting to take us as he enters Pisces: into the place of not knowing which, for humanity as a collective beast, is a very uncomfortable place to be. I think this is why the prophecies around 2012 are so popular: they provide a sense of certainty and even hope in a world which is increasingly uncertain, and in which we are rapidly destroying the environment and resources we need in order to have a future.
All the big ideas of the 20th century are failing: communism and democracy as political absolutes, scientific knowledge as metaphysical underpinning, the inevitability of economic progress. Neptune in Pisces is underscoring this. The Great Recession, which seems about to double-dip, and the rise of China, have given the West a tremendous blow to its self-confidence, and this has not fully played through yet by a long chalk. We are still hoping that things will go back to what they were.
So Neptune in his own sign of Pisces is tremendously powerful. It is a cauldron of the Imagination. His Ingress into Pisces represents the old certainties failing, and that creates much collective anxiety. We can inevitably expect a retreat into right-wing governments and fundamentalist religions as a response, for now, to that anxiety and insecurity (as well as into millenarian, 2012-type prophecies.) And that is described by the Uranus-Pluto square which is occurring concurrently: the empowerment (Pluto) of radicalism (Uranus), whether of a left or right wing variety. Uranus is an archaic god, and can describe a collective retreat into primitive, less conscious forms at times of insecurity: look at the rise of Fascist regimes under the last Uranus-Pluto square in the 20s/30s.
There is an issue of survival which has not filtered through to the collective yet, blinded as we are by advertising and politicians. The survival issue is of course based around environmental degradation and the profligate consumption of limited resources. Perhaps the larger a collective is, the stupider it gets. Any intelligent individual can see the danger, but what can they do? Preach to the converted? Any 'primitive' tribe would have acted by now.
But all the while Neptune will be in Pisces, a subterranean collective re-dreaming on the part of what is now a global tribe. Uranus-Pluto will come to an end in 4-5 years, but Neptune will remain in Pisces for a further 9-10 years. The party will be continuing, but not with the old certainties: they will be in Neptune's cauldron.
Interestingly, Neptune's passage through a sign, 14 years, is about the same time as Saturn takes to complete half a cycle round the Sun. Saturn is the opposite of Neptune, he is the planet of manifestation. When he is opposite himself – opposite where he was when Neptune entered that sign – then there is a strong impulse to manifest. In this way Saturn brings Neptune's dreams into reality, makes his visions grow corn.
Uranus-Pluto is not just about the shift in the world balance of power. Its influence will be felt at many levels, locally as well as globally. And the empowerment of Uranian radicalism, which is so central to the meaning of this transit, will feed into the re-dreaming of Neptune in Pisces, in the progressive sense of Uranus. Pluto is about survival, and while one response to the current crisis will be a retreat into right wing governments and fundamentalism, another will be a growing awareness of the real threat to our survival.
So there is this other, more hopeful, side to Uranus-Pluto which is kind of inevitable, because Pluto is there to ensure our survival. He is the life-force. You put that together with Neptune in Pisces, and you can see a growing current in the collective, determined that we should survive (Pluto), open to radical solutions (Uranus) and quietly dreaming the sort of world in which this is possible (Neptune.) As I said earlier, there are no certainties, and if we do build a slightly saner world, there is no knowing at this stage what form it will take. But if the outer planets teach us anything, it is that there are powers beyond us, creative depths to nature that in our hubris we overlook. The present situation is certainly an outcome of hubris, and you cannot avoid the eventual cost of that; but the outer planets, nature itself, has a way of surviving, and humanity is part of nature.
We are not just another species, we are a new development, and maybe we won't last, or maybe most of us will be wiped out, only to repeat the same mistakes, as in Battlestar Galactica, some millennia down the line.
The chart for Neptune's first entry into Pisces, on 3/4 April 2011 (depending where you live) is quite remarkable, for it has 6 planets, including a New Moon, in Aries.
It sends a strong message that out of the collective re-dreaming, the search for new ideas/mythologies, of the next 14 years, something very, very new will be born. As if to underscore this point, the Ingress chart for Neptune into Aries in 2025 also takes place under a New Moon in Aries. Spooky!
I want to be fanciful for a moment, but I have talked about Neptune in Pisces in terms of the Dreamtime, which is an Australian aboriginal idea. And Uluru, or Ayers Rock has come for us westerners to most symbolise that dreamtime. So what was happening at Uluru when Neptune entered Pisces?
As you can see, the Ascendant was at the midpoint of Pluto and the North Node, both of which were within 5 degrees of the Ascendant. This suggests the power (Pluto) and significance (Node) of the idea of Neptune in Pisces as humanity's Dreamtime.