text:
Heaven on Earth: Temples, Ritual, & Cosmic Symbolism in the Ancient World
Organizer, Deena Ragavan
The Oriental Institute, University of Chicago
1155 East 58th Street, Chicago, IL 60637
March 2-3, 2012
- The Conference — Introduction, Background, and Goals
- Participants
- Participant Bios
- Contact
- References
- Abstracts
- Program Poster
- Conference Program & Abstracts (pdf)
Claus Ambos (Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg)
Title: "Temporary Ritual Structures and Their Cosmological Symbolism in Ancient Mesopotamia"
Abstract: In ancient Near Eastern rituals, temporary structures and installations which existed only for the duration of the respective ritual performance played an important role. Such ritual space was composed of buildings or structures made of perishable materials as, for example, reed, flour or dust, and (loose) earth. Both by their architectural design as well as by the movement and actions of the ritual's participants performed in them, these buildings expressed essential features of Mesopotamian world view and cosmic geography.
This topic is discussed in detail with examples from various rituals which served to get rid of impurity. The ritual handbooks that form the base of this study are from the first millennium BCE. The focus of this talk is on the written sources, since pictorial representations of these rituals are not extant.
John Baines (University of Oxford)
Title: "Sources of Egyptian Temple Cosmology: Divine Image, Ritual Performer, King"
Abstract: The aim of this paper is to address a gap in interpretations of ancient Egyptian pictorial compositions and of the architectural form of temples. From predynastic times (late 4th millennium) onward, cosmological elements can be identified in the design and imagery of objects dedicated in ritual contexts. The most powerful of these objects, the palettes, relate to ritual use of pigments, presumably for painting the body of the deity, a ritual performer, or both. The vital mediating figure in these compositions is the king, who is presented as the sole or prime performer. The earliest examples show rituals outside temples, while later sources, first attested from the late Early Dynastic period (ca. 2600), represent the interaction of king and deity in an abstract, consecrated space. The ultimate aim of the king's depicted actions and of the decoration of sacred objects and temples is to assert and to celebrate order against disorder. The fruits of order are dedicated to the gods, who must be enticed to dwell in consecrated spaces and to bestow their benefits on the world.
What is little understood in this configuration is the relationship between the figure of the deity and the architectural form of the temple. The latter is much studied for the Graeco-Roman period, which provides the richest evidence, and similar ideas can be traced back to earlier times. The deity and temple cosmology are bound together essentially by rituals that enliven the deity's presence. Two principal sets of questions emerge. How did ritual enact order, who performed the ritual, and how did the performer's role relate to the crucial symbolic figure of the king? And can we improve interpretations of the relationship between the rituals performed and the configuration of the spaces in which they took place?
Gary Beckman (University of Michigan)
Title: "Intrinsic and Constructed Sacred Space in Hittite Anatolia"
Abstract: As a society well adapted to its environment, the Hittite kingdom paid appropriate attention in its state religion to the powers perceived to be responsible for the thriving of nature and humans. Prominent among these forces in second-millennium Anatolia was water — provided by rivers and springs as well as by precipitation sent by the Storm-gods resident upon mountain peaks. While the cosmic forces immanent in these components of the world as experienced by men and women could be — and were — worshiped on the spot in the countryside, they were also represented by built elements in and around the Hittite capital. This paper discusses the role within Hittite cult of both cosmic features reconstructed within Hattusa (e.g., the Sacred Pool complex) and natural places architecturally modified to serve as shrines (e.g., Yazılıkaya and Gavurkalesi).
Matthew Canepa (University of Minnesota)
Title: "The Transformation of Sacred Space, Topography, and Royal Ritual in Persia and the Ancient Iranian World"
Abstract: This paper explores the development of Iranian sacred space, topography, architecture, and royal ritual from the Achaemenid through the Sasanian era (550 BCE–642 CE). It analyzes the impact of the Seleukid Empire on Iranian cultures and religions (broadly defined) and the subsequent emergence of new traditions of sacred architecture and cult under the Arsacids, Kushans, and Sasanians. In addition to considering the transformation of Iranian traditions, it investigates the impact of these new traditions on the Mediterranean and the lands in the interstices, such as Armenia, Pontos, and Commagene, which selectively appropriated Greek, Iranian, and Mesopotamian traditions. As an important subtheme, this paper considers the introduction of new sacred topographies within the context of royal competition and active manipulation of patrons who inhabited and competed in multiple religious, architectural, and royal idioms.
Elizabeth Frood (University of Oxford)
Title: "Egyptian Temple Graffiti and the Limits of State Religion and Personal Piety"
Abstract: The late second and early first millennium BCE in Egypt is characterized by broad changes in non-royal display in temples. Included among these developments is an increase in the frequency of graffiti inscribed on the exterior and interior walls of temples, including prayers, images of gods, and records of involvement in festivals. These inscriptions, particularly the scenes of gods, have been widely interpreted as expressions of popular cult practices and personal piety. The graffiti in these contexts require a critical reassessment, particularly in light of restrictions on access imposed in temples, the diversity of motivations for and styles of graffiti, and, more generally, problems with their dating. This paper uses clusters of graffiti in the state temple complex of Karnak in Thebes (modern Luxor) as case studies to reassess perceived distinctions between personal and state religion in temple environments. This paper explores preliminary sets of criteria for dating and establishing the different styles, based, in part, on context, content, and the media used to inscribe the graffiti. These considerations begin to reveal how the inscription of some graffiti was an institutional practice that created alternative topographies of sacred space, appropriating potent inner areas and intensifying the significance of exterior and secondary spaces. The deities selected for display may also generate distinct cosmologies — new patterns of divine relation and action — which overlay, complement, or extend traditional temple decoration. Graffiti as a devotional and ritual act intersects, and perhaps mediates, personal and institutional agency, structures, and practices in temples; this paper examines the implications of such potential mediations for priestly power structures and changing meanings of sacred space in the first millennium.
Uri Gabbay (Hebrew University of Jerusalem)
Title: "'We Are Going to the House in Prayer': The Cultic Topographical Context of the Emesal Prayers in Ancient Mesopotamia"
Abstract: Prayers written in the Emesal register of Sumerian were known to have been part of the temple cult of ancient Mesopotamia from the end of the third millennium BCE up to the end of cuneiform culture in the last centuries BCE. The content of these prayers was lamentful, mourning the destruction of cities and temples. But the prayers were not intended as memorial rites. They were intended for the pacification of the divinity, recalling past or potential destructions, and asking the god to stay calm and not bring such destruction again.
There is internal evidence from the content of the prayers themselves and external evidence from ritual texts for the cultic topographical context of the prayers. They could be performed in the cella of the god or elsewhere in the temple, very often during processions. A close look at the prayers reveals that the theology expressed in various parts of the prayers fits the topographical context in which these parts were performed. For example, the image of the god abandoning his own temple in rage was reflected by processions which escorted the cultic image out of its temple.
Similarly, the final sections of various prayers, which asked the god to calm down, were closely connected to a recitation in front of the seated deity in his or her cella after the procession. This emphasizes the theological perception that the seated god in his cella is the place where he is most calm. When a section asking for the pacification of the god does not occur in prayers, it can be shown that this is to be connected to the cultic topographical context of that specific prayer, which occurred outside the cella. Thus, a close connection could be found between the cultic topographical context of the Emesal prayers and their theological content and perception.
Susanne Görke (Johannes Gutenberg-Universität, Mainz)
Title: "Hints at Temple Topography and Cosmic Geography from Hittite Sources"
Abstract: As the title of this paper indicates, its main focus lies in "temple topography" and "cosmic geography." "Ritual practice," the second focus of the conference, is rather disregarded; Hittite cult inventories and festival texts provide some information about the veneration of gods and rituals in temples. Some short examples will be presented. More attention is drawn to temple topography: the first part of the paper focuses on hints of Hittite texts concerning temples, their physical appearance, their position in town, and divine journeys. The second part takes account of Hittite cosmic geography. Volkert Haas, in his 1994 Geschichte der hethitischen Religion, gave an overview of Hittite(-Hurrian) creation myths, Hittite conceptions of heaven and earth and genealogies of gods. Already Heinrich Otten and Jana Siegelová suggested that, besides the tri-partition of the world known from Mesopotamia (heaven, earth, underworld), a second concept might have existed in Anatolia that opposed heaven to earth (and) the underworld. Irene Tativili was recently able to underline the existence of two different cosmological concepts in Hittite Anatolia, already distinguished by Itamar Singer: a Hurrian-Mesopotamian one that explains the world being divided into three vertical zones: heaven, earth, and underworld, and a Hattian-Hittite one, that consists of two zones: heaven and earth.
This paper aims at analyzing to what extent — if at all — concepts of Hittite cosmos or the perception of a Hittite world are mapped in Hittite sacred space.
Ömür Harmanshah (Brown University)
Title: "The Cattle Pen and the Sheepfold: Cities, Temples, and Pastoral Power in Ancient Mesopotamia"
Abstract: The construction of cities, their monumental structures and ceremonial spaces, and their cultural life occupy considerable space in the early literary compositions from southern Mesopotamia. The scholarship on Mesopotamian cities has been limited to questions of the emergence of urbanism, social complexity, state formation, labor organization, craft specialization, population estimates, and settlement hierarchies during the Late Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Ages. This paper contributes to these debates through the discussion of a series of concepts concerning the city and urban life drawn from the early Mesopotamian corpus of poetry in Sumerian, with special emphasis on the so-called city laments. This is, on the one hand, an attempt to bridge the gap between the archaeological accounts of early cities in the ancient Near East and the literary representations of urban space. On the other hand, the goal is to move toward understanding the poetics of urban space in Mesopotamia, to read cities as places of human experience, everyday practice, political discourse, and cultural imagination. The paper focuses on two frequently encountered metaphors concerning the city in early Mesopotamian poetry: the cattle pen and the sheepfold (Sumerian tur and ama), which takes us to the Mesopotamian conceptualization of the king as shepherd and the society as his flock. This paper suggests that early Mesopotamian economy and political structure presents an intriguing case of what Michel Foucault has termed "pastoral power."
Considering Foucault's notion of "pastoral power" as a technology of governance and royal rhetoric, This paper discusses the cattle pen and sheepfold as spatial metaphors that define the Mesopotamian city between movement and settlement, between economies of pasturage and agriculture. Here, the city appears as a site where the king's ideals of beneficence and pastoral power find expression, while royal power is characterized not so much as governance over a territory but over a "multiplicity" (the "flock"). This rhetoric of power based itself on a regime of beneficence and care, rather than on violence and terror.
Julia A. B. Hegewald (University of Bonn)
Title: "Images of the Cosmos: Sacred and Ritual Space in Jaina Temple Architecture in India"
Abstract: The Jainas, a relatively small but ancient religious group in India, have developed a particularly complex picture of their religious cosmos. A correct and detailed understanding of the nature of the universe is considered by the Jainas necessary to enable the practitioner to attain enlightenment and to break out of the continuous circle of rebirth by departing from the human areas of the cosmos. Due to the high status that cosmography gains in a Jaina context because of its religious and ontological significance and as a means to gain enlightenment, Jaina art and architecture regularly depict cosmic formations.
Highly intricate and convoluted textual descriptions of the Jaina universe have been translated into visual and concrete physical shape and through this they have been made easier to understand. Paintings, carved panels, sculptural representations, and architectural models illustrating aspects or views of the universe are commonly put on display in Jaina temples throughout South Asia. They are educational tools but at the same time they are also objects of veneration.
The Jaina community also constructs entire temple structures that form three-dimensional architectural interpretations of cosmic components. Particularly widespread are temples inspired by the shape of sacred mountains and certain cosmic continents, to which human beings in reality have no access. Through this, the temples offer devotees the opportunity to enter sacred extraterrestrial space, to participate in cosmic events and to anticipate their own enlightenment.
However, ritual practices carried out in Jaina temples, which have no immediate visual connection with cosmic structures, also relate to and re-enact mythical and cosmic events by transforming the space around ritual objects and ceremonial activities into cosmic space and time.
Clemente Marconi (New York University)
Title: "Mirror and Memory: Images of Ritual Actions in Greek Temple Decoration"
Abstract: This paper addresses one critical issue about ancient Greek temple decoration, namely, the representation of rituals. It is traditionally assumed that the figural decoration of Greek sacred architecture was mostly devoted to deities and heroes, and to scenes with a mythological content. Within this approach the representation of rituals, such as the Panathenaic procession on the Parthenon frieze, has generally been regarded as exceptional. However, a systematic look at the evidence for figural decoration of temples and other sacred buildings, from the Archaic to the Hellenistic period, shows that rituals such as processions, parades, and dances played a significant role in this tradition. Besides reassessing the significance of depictions of rituals on buildings, this paper explores the meaning and function of such images, highlighting their double role as mirror and memory.
Michael W. Meister (University of Pennsylvania)
Title: "Seeds and Mountains: The Cosmogony of Temples in South Asia"
Abstract: A widely shared origin myth in South Asia, the "golden germ" (hiranyagarbha), commonly found in popular texts and imagery — the calyx of the ripe lotus supporting deities and divine emblems — can also be traced in early architectural constructions, from Mauryan-period pillars to early prototypes of Indic temples. The purpose of this paper is to question and problematize those material remains. By the first century BCE, the lotus had been joined (and later replaced) by the amalaka-seed as emblem of cosmic parturition, then used to crown stone temples by early in the fifth century CE. Development of 'amalaka-crowned' temples is one of the themes of this paper.
Kramrisch pointed out a "construction" described in the cosmology of the Arthava-veda that for her foreshadowed the form of the Hindu temple one-and-a-half millennia later: "creation of the Sole Vratya […] has three phases: the birth of a god, the vision of that god, and the building of his monument […] built up by the words of hymns. […] The sole Vratya arises as the lord of the space-time universe […] the central pillar of a four-sided pyramid."
That "earth" was the base, deity the seed, and mountain the form is a symbolism worked out in significant ways in later temple architecture. The first "amalaka-shrine" may have been an altar; "flat-roofed" temples, constructed "caves"; towering temples sheltering "mountains" — an evolution visually preserved. In the early fifth-century Gupta period, symbolic structures were placed on pyramidal platforms imbued with royal symbolism. Through many centuries of social changes, transformation of rituals, and shifting patronage connection to this deeply intuited cosmogony remained.
Tracy Miller (Vanderbilt University)
Title: "Naturalizing Buddhist Cosmology in the Temple Architecture of China"
Abstract: This paper addresses the manner in which a new cosmology, that of Buddhism, was adapted to the environment of the Yellow River valley during the first centuries of the Common Era. By deconstructing a single monument from the sixth century CE, I illustrate the how concepts of ritual space developed within the religious traditions of South Asia were transmitted and translated for the sake of an indigenous audience in northern China.
Prior to the introduction of Buddhism, ritual architecture of the Yellow River valley consisted of temples for worshiping ancestors (zu 祖) and more abstract deities such as those of grain and soil (she 社). As spirits of the deceased, ancestors were worshiped in temple/palace halls (tang 堂), whereas rites to deities of grain and soil took place on altars (tan 壇). Both types of architecture were constructed from indigenous materials readily available in the Yellow River valley and organized into walled building complexes emphasizing bilateral symmetry and a north–south axial alignment.
When Buddhism was introduced into East Asia in the early centuries CE, we see indigenous populations naturalizing the forms of ritual architecture by translating concepts of altar, palace, and temple from South Asia into the local architectural language. By focusing on a single monument, the stone Yicihui Pillar (ca. 567 CE), I show how the ritual diagrams associated with the vāstupurusha mandala were applied and adapted to an architecture emphasizing different geometries than those in the homeland of the Buddha. The use of the mandala to reorganize morphemes like the tang palace/temple hall allowed for the creation a new, and symbolic potent, architecture — one that could encompass the space and time of a cultural tradition as rich as that of early medieval China.
Deena Ragavan (The Oriental Institute)
Title: "Entering Other Worlds: Gates, Rituals, and Cosmic Journeys in Sumerian Sources"
Abstract: The doors and gateways of Sumerian temples and cities were visually distinctive, monumental structures, marking and enabling the passage between one space and another. Their appearance in the mythological tradition and their occurrence in cult practice suggest that movement through the gate may symbolize the transition from one part of the cosmos to another. This paper addresses the function and meaning of gates in the Sumerian tradition, in particular, the literary and administrative texts from the late third and early second millennium BCE.
There is substantial evidence in Mesopotamian cosmological tradition for the idea of cosmic gates, situated in the east and west, through which the celestial gods, particularly the sun god, would pass to enter and exit the visible sky. Several Sumerian literary sources which describe the journeys of the gods through the cosmos, most notably Inana's Descent to the Netherworld, feature gates as the key starting or stopping points as part of the divine itinerary. Both archaeological remains and textual evidence indicate that the gates of Sumerian cities, sacred precincts, and temples were often massive, imposing constructions, while administrative records of sacrificial offerings and other cult practices reveal that gates could function as the locus of ritual activity. Through close examination of these various sources, this paper questions the extent to which these mythological journeys may correlate with ritual movement, similarly punctuated by stops at the actual gates that permitted access through city, precinct, and temple walls. Furthermore, the significance of this ritual usage for the cosmological symbolism of these structures, and the spaces which they connect, is considered.
Betsey A. Robinson (Vanderbilt University)
Title: "Airs, Waters, Places: Mountain Sanctuaries and Mythic Itineraries in Ancient Greece"
Abstract: The aerial perspectives of divine beings articulated complex realities of space, identity, and ideation. Mountain views, from Olympian and Idaean omniscience to Apollo's purview from Parnassus, reflected and reified the sacred charisma of such places. Aerial itineraries like Pegasus's transits among the peaks around the Corinthian Gulf emphasized their intervisibility and linked them in ancient imagination. Springs, caves, and other marks of divine presence drew deities and humans in admiration and reverence. While the dangers of flight for lesser beings (Bellerophon, Icarus, Phaethon) were well known, sacred mountains offered highly affective climbs and climactic revelations. Focusing on Hellenistic and Imperial evidence, this paper considers setting, monuments, and rituals on the slopes of Helicon and Parnassus, places to be seen and from which to gaze as with the eyes of gods. The nature of such sacred landscapes is viewed through the imagery of two mountain reliefs, one — of Helicon personified — found in the Heliconian Valley of the Muses, the other — the "Archelaos relief," with poets depicted within ranks of inspiration — from the suburbs of Rome. Contrasting one another in representational strategies and epigraphic modes, the two reliefs provide insights into perceptions and experiences of place and divine agency. This paper thus examines interplays of narrative itineraries, pictorial and poetic imagery, and cultic topography.
Yorke M. Rowan (The Oriental Institute)
Title: "Sacred Space and Ritual Practice at the End of Prehistory in the Southern Levant"
Abstract: Dynamic and continuously renegotiated, religion is often expressed through ritual performance. In the archaeological record, ritual paraphernalia, iconography, and sacred built or natural space provide evidence for understanding the human need to materialize the ethereal nature of religious belief. During the late prehistoric periods in the southern Levant, an apparent increase in ritual practice suggests a dramatic change during a time of demographic expansion and economic intensification. In this paper, the spaces for ritual practice are examined in relationship to the larger community and society, concentrating on the Chalcolithic period (ca. 4500–3600 BCE). Specifically, the identification of sacred ceremonies and the built or natural space for their performance is contrasted to earlier Neolithic and later Bronze Age practices. Comparative analysis allows for some insight into continuity and changes during this period of high ritual density and some possible reasons for this intensification.
Karl Taube (University of California, Riverside)
Title: "The Classic Maya Temple: Centrality, Cosmology, and Sacred Geography in Ancient Mesoamerica"
Abstract: With their elaborate sculptural programs and often-detailed texts, Classic Maya temples have dominated our understanding of the ancient Maya. Indeed, for too long we have described their communities as "ceremonial centers," as if the monumental structures were hollow edifices only used for occasional, calendrically timed events. Although during the past fifty years Maya archaeological field research generally has turned away from the monumental architecture in favor of daily human existence, still they remain. Oddly, few studies have investigated what the "pyramids" meant to the people who created and sustained them for centuries. This presentation focuses on some of the underlying meanings of these structures, including the basic symbolic significance of being humanly created and ordered structures replicating the four-cornered house and the maize field. From this basic model, temples also encapsulate the world center framed by the inter-cardinal points. As such, ancient Maya temples often evoke imagery pertaining to the three-stone hearth of the household as well as the pivotal world tree as another form of the axis mundi. In addition, pyramid temples are also symbolic mountains. As such, many evoke Flower Mountain, a paradise realm of honored ancestors. Appearing as zoomorphic mountains, many such structures have entrances in the form of a toothy maw, with the dark interior being a symbolic cave. At the sides of these doorways are breath scrolls, frequently elaborate, denoting the temples as living entities providing vital soul essence, probably in the form of aromatic incense in ritual practice.


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[Speaking Truth To Power]
New York Rep. Peter King and Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich are staunchly opposed to the building of an Islamic center near Ground Zero.
Do the sentiments they've expressed suggest patriotism on their part or ignorant xenophobia?
President Obama, in a statement, said "As a citizen, and as president, I believe that Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as everyone else in this country. That includes the right to build a place of worship and community center."
True to form, Rep. Peter King whined, "President Obama is wrong--It is insensitive and uncaring for the Muslim community to build a mosque in the shadow of Ground Zero."
The proposal, for the Islamic Center, was spearheaded by the Cordova Initiative and the American Society for Muslim Advancement. The projected 13 floor center would feature several services intended for the entire community, not just Muslims.
The center's amenities would include: a performing arts center, a gym, a swimming pool, office spaces, and a mosque. The site of the center would be two blocks from Ground Zero, in the old Burlington Coat Factory building.
The construction of a prayer room within the center has overshadowed the rest of the initiative, engendering considerable controversy by those who equate Muslims with terrorists. Some have called the undertaking a "monument to terrorism."
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich opined: "The folks who want to build this mosque—who are really radical Islamists who want to triumphantly prove that they can build a mosque right next to a place where 3,000 Americans were killed by radical Islamists—those folks don't have any interest in reaching out to the community. They are trying to make a case for supremacy."
But, Cordova Initiative's Imam Faisal Abdul Rauf stated "there is no other project like this in the United States. It will be a centre for everybody and will not be limited to just Muslims."
Mayor Michael Bloomberg endorsed the proposal saying "If somebody wants to build a religious house of worship, they should do it and we shouldn't be in the business of picking which religions can and which religions can't. I think it's fair to say if somebody was going to try to on that piece of property build a church or synagogue, nobody would be yelling and screaming. And the fact of the matter is that Muslims have the right to do it, too."
Rep. King, the ranking Republican on the Homeland Security Committee, said he wants an investigation into the funding of the center, estimated to cost $100 million. He declared "I think the 911 families have a right to know where the funding comes from; I think there are significant questions." He also stated: "It's a house of worship, but we are at war with Al-Qaida."
Nihad Awad, the Executive Director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations CAIR admitted "there are parties that have a political agenda and want to intimidate the American people against the mosque project--and this includes
Republican Congressman Peter King, and his opinions should not be considered because his ideas are extreme."
Apparently, some 70 percent of Americans also agree with the bigoted views of King and Gingrich, according to a survey. Many people decry the building of this cultural center as "insensitive." The real "insensitivity" here is that Republican reprobates, like Gingrich and King, ignore the fact that more than 60 Muslims were among those killed on 9-11.
Moreover, don't they realize they are equating Islam with terrorism? Indeed there are indeed terrorists who abuse the religion and hide behind Islam. The Ku Klux Klan claimed they were good Christians.
Should we therefore equate Christianity with the KKK's bloody deeds? If we carry this nonsense to its conclusion, should African Americans see all White people as terrorists because of the deeds of nightriders and lynch mobs?
There are those who attack Islam by claiming it isn't a real religion. The irony here is there's an affinity between Islam and Christianity that political provocateurs omit. The truth is: Islam is one of the three Abrahamic religions, along with Judaism and
Christianity. Biblical figures like Abraham, Moses and Jesus are also venerated within the Quran and Islam.
There are more similarities between Christianity and Islam—cultural dressings notwithstanding—than many people realize. Of course—like Christianity—there are different denominations with their frictions and peculiarities. Islam is the second largest religion in the world. Does America really want to denigrate the two billion Muslims worldwide?
Do Peter King and Newt Gingrich realize the Masjid Manhattan Mosque has been on Warren Street, four blocks from Ground Zero, since 1970, the same year the Twin Towers were built?
The United States can't subjugate its principles and ideals because manipulative individuals, including King and Gingrich, irrationally stoke fear.
Has the United States repudiated the First Amendment?
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof..."
"Speaking Truth To Empower."
I think you have "Filtered HTML" turned on here. If you switch to "Full HTML," it will probably...
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subset: commoncrawl


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My top five winners from Tuesday's elections (not-on-the-ballot division):
1. Immigrants. This is not your father's California. It turns out that scapegoating unauthorized immigrants for the state's budget problems is a losing strategy, even in a Republican primary, as Steve Poizner learned the hard way Tuesday. His opponent Meg Whitman had to talk tough on amnesty, but stayed away from backing Arizona's tough law on immgiration, despite its popularity among the GOP. The lesson: Even for those who want tougher action on illegal immigration, the issue is not decisive in terms of how they vote.
2. Arnold Schwarzenegger. The governor scored a big political victory with the passage of Prop 14, the measure to establish a new primary system in which the top two candidates, regardless of party, advance to the general election. In so doing, Schwarzenegger fulfilled his two political reform promises -- redistricting (approved by voters as Prop 11 in 2008) and the open primary (Prop 14). The governor's appointee for lieutenant governor also won a contested Republican primary. Arnold the Duck may be lame, but he's still quacking.
U.S. & World
News from around the country and around the globe
3. Sarah Palin. When not hunting moose, she apparently can surf -- California GOP politics, that is. She showed the power of her political brand by endorsing the surprisingly easy winner in the Republican primary for U.S. Senate Carly Fiorina.
4. Local governments. California's cities dodged a bullet with the defeat of Prop 16, a measure that would have reduced their power to approve public power and alternative energy schemes.
5. Rich people. OK, rich people are always winners. But the rich had a very good day Tuesday, even for rich, with Whitman and Fiorina using their personal wealth to put them over the top. And on the ballot measures, voters made sure that rich candidates will maintain their huge advantages by voting down a modest measure that would have opened the door to the public financing of elections.


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I can't even remember how I found this recipe, but you can find it on the web here (elly says opa!), and here (Pink Bites). This is a really easy recipe, and I bet you already have most of the ingredients in your fridge and pantry. I went with the original Pink Bites recipe, reproduced here below.
makes 2 or more servings*
1 lb of flank steak, thinly sliced crosswise (or stir-fry-cut beef)
1/4 cup of cornstarch
3 teaspoons of canola oil
1/2 teaspoon of grated ginger (about 1/2 inch piece)
1 tablespoon of chopped garlic (about 2 -3 large cloves)
1/2 cup of water
1/2 cup of soy sauce (I use low sodium)
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon of red pepper flakes**
3 large green onions, sliced crosswise into thirds
* We got 4 dinner-sized servings from this recipe when paired with generous spoons of steamed white rice.
**I only used 1/4 teaspoon because we (read: I) don't really like super-spicy foods.
Pat the steak pieces and make sure they're dry; then, toss the steak and cornstarch together. Be sure all pieces are fully coated, but shake off excess corn starch. Mix together the soy sayce, water, brown sugar and red pepper flakes.
Heat half the oil in a wok at medium-high heat and add the ginger and garlic. Once fragrant (30 seconds or so), add the soy sauce mixture. Cook for about 2 minutes and transfer to a bowl.
Turn the heat up on the wok and add the remaining oil. Add the beef and cook, stirring until just browned. Pour the sauce back in and let it cook with the meat. Let the sauce thicken to your liking, and then add the green onions in just before plating.
This is EASY, this is DELICIOUS, this is everything good about weeknight meals you could ever want. Make it and just tell me it isn't a fantastic meal — and cheaper than going out for Chinese!


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How To Grip Your Pistol (2002-10-01)
Modern day pistols are becoming ever more ergonomic, with advanced designs that mould grips to fit the human hand. One good example of an evolving pistol is the Glock. Two generations of improvement started from the "grenade grip" checkering that began in the 80?s to the finger grooves of the late 90?s have only made the gun easier to use. Other pistol manufacturers have come out with winners in brand new designs, such as the Walther P99 and the SigPro series. Of course, if you have a relatively old design, a host of aftermarket slip-on and replacement grips are available to enhance the feel of your favorite pistol. I for one installed a set of nice Pachymr grips on my Sig P226 for optimum performance.
However, no matter how good a grip design is, one gun cannot deliver the the best fit to every hand and every purpose. The target shooter may prefer one grasp, the competitive IPSC player shooting against the clock may need or want a different grasp entirely, and a third "hold" on the gun might be best for a serious skirmisher who un-holsters his pistol to squeeze off 5 to 10 rounds in a high adrenaline situation. Oh and lets not forget those cowboy-style shooting competitions that are ever so popular in Japan.
It?s not so much how we re-configure a pistol?s grip to our hands, but more about how we adapt our grip of the hand-gun. In this article, we?ll explore the elements of the pistol grasp, step by step. Note however that we will not explore the physics of stance, which is the total body position of the shooter from head to foot. Here we will only explore the single element of grasp, which occurs between the hand and the pistol.
Strength of Grasp
I will present this discussion in four schools of thought, each of which has an application for the various ways you might use your handgun. We?ll go from the lightest to the heaviest.
Light Grasp
Some target shooters prefer a very light grasp. Only the encircling middle finger of the firing hand is actually applying any pressure at all, for fear that muscle tension can move the front sight from its tiny point of aim. The pistol is more or less resting on top of the middle finger on the web of the hand as, ever so slowly, the tip of the index finger gently draws the trigger to the rear.
This type of grasp is for slow speed target shooting only and cannot be used for any other situation. The light grasp accentuates the blowback recoil and this hold is normally used only in slow-fire scenarios with target bull eyes, where the rate of fire is only 3 ? 4 rounds per minute. Only the first joint of the index finger should be on the trigger (as permitted by the size of your hand). Giving the trigger "too much finger" might again deviate your delicate aim and you trade off muscle dexterity.
I?ve personally found this grip to be the most accurate and allows me to pinpoint a coin from 15 feet. Optimally, this works best with pistols that have a short trigger travel (and a light trigger at that), such as the Infinity SV Colt 1911 variants. Remember to use this grip only for precision shooting. Also remember to place your trigger finger at ready against the side of the pistol until you are ready shoot. A rule to remember is that your finger should never rest on the trigger unless you are prepared to fire your weapon. I can't tell you how many times I have picked up a new airsoft pistol to inspect it, and instinctively pulling the trigger and discharging the pistol as I absent-mindedly rest my finger on the trigger. This rule applies to any grip type and should be remembered at all times, and applies to all weapons types (not only pistols).
Medium Grasp
By its very definition, "medium" is a subjective word that is defined by an individual?s ability to give a maximum and a minimum. To add measure to our definition here, some expert shooters have been known to call this the "quail" grip. Imagine yourself holding onto a quail and your grip must be strong enough to prevent it from flying away, let gentle enough so you don?t kill it. In fact, this grip has been very popular with IPSC shooters who sometimes describe their grip as "40% hand strength from the firing hand, and 60% hand strength with the supporting hand.", or for short, the 40/60 grip. When shooting real steel pistols, this can be greatly complicated by the weight of the gun relative to the weight of the trigger, which is the determining factor in how hard you grip the pistol. Most airsoft pistols have fairly light triggers, which do not require a heavy grip. Unless you are working with an extremely light weight pistol, then it might make sense to grip the gun a little harder for fear that pulling on the relatively heavy trigger will move the gun in the palm of your hand.
Medium Heavy
A grip that is often used by shooters firing rapidly, this grasp resembles "holding a hammer and pounding nails", or like "shaking hands with a man you want to impress but not injure". In relative terms to maximum grip strength, this clocks in at around 85% and can be achieved by grasping the gun as hard as you can until your hand starts shaking, and then backing off gently until the shaking stops. This grip is the best for one-handed shooting in a high adrenaline situation such as close quarters skirmishing. The strong grip keeps the pistol generally aligned in your firing direction despite the blowback recoil, which gradually throws your aim off with each cycling. Firing with this grip pressure will take practice and one way to tell if you have developed this as second nature can be told with the following test. Using a pistol with checkered grips (e.g. Infinity SV, Glock 17, 18C) and load a full magazine of rounds. Fire them off in a string at around 1 round per second and then holster your gun. Wait one second and then check the palm of your firing hand. If you can?t see the checkering of the grip impressed into the skin of your palm, then it probably means you were holding the gun at something less than medium-heavy level force.
This refers to the maximum force grasp, or the "crush grip" as referred to in the real-steel world. Critics of this grip sometimes call it the "gorilla grip". Whatever the name, the technique is simple: hold the pistol as hard as you can with both hands. Obviously significant downside comes with this grip since you develop hand tremors almost immediately, and muscle tightness affects the ability of your trigger finger to pull back in a smooth non-interfering motion. The upside is that the blowback recoil is minimized and subsequent shots are grouped in the same general direction even in rapid-fire modes. In high adrenaline situations where you are applying 200 pounds of force on the trigger, this grip will less likely throw off your aim. And more importantly, the gun is less likely to jam since it is relatively stationary and is able to operate like it was designed without any external forces applied that may affect the slide movement. Under stress, this is the best grip to use since you don?t have to worry about applying precise grip strength before firing. You just grab as hard as you can and squeeze off your rounds. Incidentally, this grip is also best when shooting full-auto pistols such as the Infinity SVF, Glock 18C, and Beretta 93R. Owners of these guns will probably have experienced "climb" during full-auto firing. Using the crush grip greatly reduces this and allows you to better control your "bullet hose". Some advocates of this grip also suggest starting in medium-heavy mode, and then clamping down into heavy mode just before firing to reduce tremors. This can be complicated since your timing has to be impeccable to prevent from losing your aim as you squeeze down on the gun.
Newer airsoft pistols have relatively controllable recoil and the heavy grip can be left to full-auto firing. Some older model airsoft pistols such as the MGC?s, which did not sport a delayed blowback design, would actually dip the barrel just before recoil, lowering your shots if the pistol were not held firmly. One example is the Omega Glock 17, which had a strong tendency to dip and only by grasping the gun with maximum strength was I able to maintain consistent accuracy.
It is important to note that the grip strength you choose to apply should not be predicated on how strong you are. It is all about the relative strength you apply (ie. What percentage of your maximum you are applying).
Seating Your Pistol
There is much less debate among experts about how to seat your pistol. Almost all agree that the higher up the grip you hold the pistol, the better. This theory is dictated by the laws of physics; momentum equals force multiplied by distance. Momentum in this case refers to the ability of the gun to raise its barrel during recoil. Distance refers to the distance from the point that force is applied to the fulcrum (pivot). In our case, the force is the recoil of the pistol and the pivot is the point which we grasp the pistol grip. With the blowback power being constant, the farther down you hold the grip, the stronger the recoil is going to feel as a result of increased momentum. Therefore the higher up the grip you hold the pistol, the less recoil and blowback will affect your ability to keep the barrel leveled. One way of telling whether you have an optimally high grip is to check if a little ripple of flesh appears against the edge of your pistol?s grip tang. The middle finger of your firing hand should also be positioned as high as possible smack up against the trigger guard. Airsoft pistols were designed in an engineering environment where the frame was clamped down and the blowback and cycling tested. The closer your replicate this environment, the more reliable your pistol will be.
Support Hand Grasp
The position of your supporting hand is partially dictated by the size of your hands and by what works best to stabilize the pistol during aiming and shooting. By inspecting guns like the Glock and the SV Infinity series pistols, you will notice the checkered edge of the front trigger guard, which invites you to place your supporting index finger over it. However you will rarely see people using this position in real shooting scenarios. Unless you have unusually large hands, this position is difficult for many people and introduces the possibility of misaligned aiming if your supporting hand pulls on the trigger guard in a surge of adrenaline. On smaller framed pistols that have equally small trigger guards, this position may be possible but again if you watch real-steel shooters, this is a position rarely taken. One exception is cowboy pistol shooting, where many shooters seem to prefer this. That is the exception though rather than the norm.
For most people, a stronger and more consistent grasp is achievable by putting all four fingers of the support hand under the trigger guard. This is generally referred to the "wrap-around grip". In this position, the supporting index finger will no longer be slipping, or pulling the gun off target in one direction or another, as generally happens when the index finger is on the front of the trigger guard.
A variation of this grip is "the wedge", which involves moving the supporting middle finger up flush against the trigger guard and in front of the middle finger of your firing hand. You then cram your supporting index finger in front of your supporting middle finger as well so that all three fingers form a straight line under the trigger guard. This grip works especially well on double-action pistols that require a vice-like grip to maintain aim while shooting. It is a difficult grip to master and may not work with all hands on all grips, especially if your have thick fingers.
An alternate grip that I find very easy to use in conjunction with the light grasp is what I call a "platter grip". For lack of a better name, it resembles your support hand holding the butt of the pistol like you were holding a platter of food. It is a grip used more predominantly by people with weak arms. This grip allows you to lower your support hand elbow and prop it against your rib-cage for support. This grip can best be used when you need to train your pistol on a target for a long time (such as in a skirmish ambush situation) and want to minimize fatigue and tremor.
If you own an older model pistol that has very non-human friendly grips, you might consider investing in a grip-sock that enhances the grip of your pistol. This practice has been quite popular among police officers across the world.
Thumbs Up
Where to place your thumbs is probably one of the most frequently asked questions by new shooters. On some pistols like the Colt 1911 and variants, right hand shooters naturally find it easy to place their firing hand thumbs on the safety lever. This is known as the "high thumb position" and actually detracts from accuracy, as your thumb is prone to apply pressure and push the gun aim to the right. Many sharp shooters prefer the "straight-thumb position" which involves pointing the tip of your thumb forward to your target. This position actually gives you finer control of your trigger finger. The thing to watch out for in this position is for long thumbs to ride the slide lock lever. If you inadvertently hold down the slide lock, then the slide will not lock back on an empty magazine.
A third variation sees the thumb cocked 90 degrees at the joint and pointing down towards the ground. The good news is that the design of the human hand actually allows maximum grip pressure to be applied in this manner. The bad news is that shooters with large thumbs will find it obstructing the trigger finger as you pull the trigger back.
What about the support thumb? In all honesty, the supporting thumb does little to help aiming and recoil management, but it must be placed in a manner that least interferes with the operation of the pistol. Some shooters just stick it out so it doesn't get in the way. If you are using a straight thumb grip with your firing hand, you can choose to point your support thumb forward as well and slip it right underneath the firing thumb.
If you are using the "thumbs down" position, then you can either place your supporting thumb over the bent joint of the firing thumb, or over the thumbnail of the curled thumb. This combination offers the maximum gripping force and should be used by shooters favoring a crush grip. A more extreme version of this grip can be achieved by tilting the support hand forward and down to exert even greater grip pressure, but you may need to raise your shoulders a bit to compensate for this peculiar position.
No matter how big your hands are, and what size pistol you carry, it is important to master the grip that works best for you. Like a car and its driver, a gun is only as good as its shooter and mastering the interface between you and your pistol is the first step to better shooting.
I often enjoy your stories in your Bite The Bullit section, and had a bit of a remark on your "How to grip your pistol". In the section describing the 'support'-hand you were talking about a "platter grip", supporting your gun by grabbing the butt of the grip. Well, in the real-steel world, this is NOT the way to grip your pistol, unless it has no magazine place in its grip ( i.e. revolvers). If you take for example a Desert Eagle, which uses a free-floating magazine and hold it "platter" style, you're asking for jams, because you put pressure upwards on the magazine, which was ment to be 'loose' according to its design. Perhaps a funny side note, the Desert Eagle was developed as a target practice gun, which I think is funny when you see the intimmidating size of this canon.
But the fact remains, if you put too much pressure upwards on a grip-seated magazine, it results in more jams. This grip style is OK for most guns, but because of the exceptions it is wise not to adopt this technique. When I was in the military service my personal weapon was the Glock 17, which was also quite some time ago (about 10 years) and I was tought the same technique (platter-grip). It was only later when I heard about pistols jamming because of this technique.
It is true there are only a few weapons with which this is the case, so you could remember which guns and when using one, you make sure you don't grip these like that. But I find it easier to not use the platter-grip at all, so you won't make a mistake in the heat of the moment.
I do have to say that this is not the case with the airsoft counterparts, I never heard of an airsoft gun jamming beacause of the platter-grip.
For your bite the bullet article how to grip your handgun, not only is gripping essential for shooting but how you position your arms is important too. One of the things for arm positioning is keep your arms loose, elbows bent so they can absorb the recoil. If your firing arm is pushed into the socket and you are using a high caliber handgun, it can cause injury. The support hand arm should be loose too since this will help with steadiness when you are using the wrap around grip. With your support hand for optimum support, its alright to keep your firing arm a bit straightened out, but make sure the elbow is slightly bent to absorb recoil for quicker recovery between shots. Of course with the limited recoil in airsoft, this isn't really a problem, but its a nice tip to know for real world shooting. Another topic of interest is how to rest your firing finger on the trigger, because most people tend to miss when they pull the trigger incorrectly, and its all too common that the pull and not press the trigger. For target shooting, its best to press the trigger with the tip of your finger around the trigger. For other stuff that's pumping adrenaline, its best to just pull the trigger.


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Albert Tacon appointed to coordinate UH aquaculture programs
International expert aims to strengthen UH expertise and develop programs to better serve a growing industryUniversity of Hawaiʻi
UH Manoa Chancellor's Office
Albert G.J. Tacon
AQUAHANA Program
Albert G.J. Tacon — internationally-renowned scientist in the field of aquaculture — has joined the University of Hawaiʻi to identify and coordinate UH programs dealing with aquaculture research and development.
Tacon comes to the university to lead a new UH systemwide Aquaculture Development and Co-ordination Program that has been dubbed AQUAHANA — Aʻohe hana nui ka aluʻia — no task is too big when done together.
"AQUAHANA's goal is to elevate the university to become a world class aquaculture institution with cutting edge expertise," Tacon said, "taking advantage of our strengths in research and development, patenting and licensing, and education and training.
"UH already has more than 60 PhD-level faculty and research staff engaged directly or indirectly in aquaculture-related activities. That represents one of the largest groups of professionals within the U.S. and the Western Pacific region in this field," he added. "The potential for significant contributions to state and regional economies is waiting to be tapped."
Tacon will report to both the UH system Vice President for Research and to the UH Manoa Vice Chancellor for Research and Graduate Education. Manoa Vice Chancellor Gary Ostrander said, "We are very pleased to be able to attract such a high caliber candidate for this key position. The university's expertise in ocean sciences is well-known internationally, and we expect Dr. Tacon to add new vitality to our several aquaculture programs with a much more unified approach."
After receiving his academic degrees at universities in England and Wales, Tacon was a university researcher and lecturer at institutions in England and Scotland. He then worked for the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in Italy, Brazil and Indonesia, before coming to Hawaiʻi in 1998.
Tacon was for two years Director and Program Manager of the Aquatic Feeds and Nutrition Program at the Oceanic Institute. He comes to the university from Aquatic Farms, Ltd., a private aquaculture and fisheries consulting company based in Kaneohe. During his time in the islands he has served as affiliate faculty in Food Science and Human Nutrition at UH Manoa College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources, UH Hilo College of Agriculture, Forestry and Natural Resources, UH Manoa Hawaiʻi Institute for Marine Biology, and the UH Sea Grant College Program.


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Sina (SINA) reported tepid forward guidance on Thursday night last week. The stock tanked on Friday. On Monday's market run-up, it was up 9%.
The reason is that Alibaba, the Chinese ecommerce giant, announced that it would buy a 15-20% stake in the Weibo microblogging service.
The action in the last two days and the investment by Alibaba says less about Sina Weibo and more about the growing battle between Tencent and Alibaba.
Tencent has traditionally been the giant of Chinese Internet stocks. There have been brief moments where Baidu (BIDU) has surpassed it. Even today, Tencent is the biggest with a market cap of more than $58 billion. And that's 12% below its 52-week high reached at the beginning of November.
Tencent built its internet empire on messaging. It connected people with a Chinese messaging system that was unique for China.
Alibaba is known as a leader in e-commerce with the equivalent of the eBay (EBAY) and Amazon (AMZN) of China. It's staggeringly successful. Earlier this month, it exceeded $3 billion in sales on one day.
It is still private, but will probably go public in the next year or two.
Its most recent private valuation pegged Alibaba at $48 billion. My own analysis suggests that if Alibaba was to go public before the end of 2012, it would likely get a post-IPO valuation of $60 billion. By the end of next year, with continued growth, I think they're likely to hit a market cap of $78 billion. Yahoo! (YHOO) still owns 24% of Alibaba, so they stand to greatly benefit when this IPO event occurs.
So, Alibaba and Tencent will continue to battle to be the kings of the Chinese Internet for the foreseeable future. Where does Sina fit it?
Sina Weibo now has 400 million accounts. It's China's Twitter, although it's more interesting as a messaging platform than Twitter. To this point, it's really captured the attention of the most influential Chinese netizens and celebrities.
But Tencent has launched WeChat (or Weixin) recently and it's already up to 200 million users. They're not direct competitors. WeChat is more of a direct copy of WhatsApp. It's like a souped-up BBM for multiple platforms. Yet, the messaging takes time away from other net activities and Sina CEO Charles Chao said as much on Friday's Sina earnings call.
What's good for Tencent is bad for Alibaba it seems. That's probably why Alibaba moved so quickly now to buy a piece of Sina Weibo.
Sina Weibo still has a long way to go to prove to its investors that its investment in marketing and censorship costs will pan out to long-term profits. There's no question that it's a powerful platform, but it will continue to require heavy investments. The quick rise of WeChat shows how even dominant social platforms can quickly come under pressure from unexpected places.
Alibaba is a good partner to have in your corner, although it's not clear what expertise they'll bring immediately to help make Weibo suddenly more profitable. Perhaps heavy promotion on their Taobao and Tmall platforms. We'll see.
It's good news for Sina, but I wouldn't get too carried away expecting the stock to continue to run from here.


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Photo: google.com
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|==Noam Chomsky==
|'''Noam Chomsky''' (born December 7, 1928) is a [[Jewish American]] linguist who was a pioneer in [[Chomsky hierarchy|generative grammar]]. Later he became an extreme [[left-wing]] [[propagandist]], [[gun grabber]] and [[genocide]] denier<ref>http://www.jim.com/chomsdis.htm</ref><ref>http://www.paulbogdanor.com/chomsky/labedz.pdf</ref>. He advocates holding America to an absolute standard of ethics in foreign relations, but has not held such a standard elsewhere. He tends to ignore such violations by other countries, even when they have been far worse. Fellow liberal academic, [[Arthur Schlesinger]], once referred to Chomsky as "an intellectual crook." <ref>"He begins as a preacher to the world and ends as an intellectual crook." -- [[Arthur Schlesinger]] - ''Commentary'' magazine, December 1969</ref>
|Return to [[Jews and Communism Socialism]] or [[Jewish communists]]
|He is an institute professor of [[linguistics]] (Emeritus) at the [[MIT|Massachusetts Institute of Technology]] (MIT) <ref>http://web.mit.edu/linguistics/people/faculty/chomsky/index.html</ref> and the author of dozens of books on U.S. foreign policy. He writes a monthly column for The New York Times News Service/Syndicate.
|Chomsky is very critical of [[America]]n and [[Israel]]i foreign policy, sympathizes with [[Palestine|Palestinians]] and has shown support for the terrorist organization [[Hezbollah]]<ref>http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_context=7&x_issue=11&x_article=1151</ref>. He has also been criticized for [[anti-Semitism]]. It should be noted that Chomsky comes from a Jewish family and in the past has spoken and written in Hebrew,<ref>http://books.google.com/books?id=RKUbyYPG4mcC&pg=PA7&lpg=PA7&dq=noam+chomsky+%22jewish+heritage%22&source=bl&ots=_DSi5cwxKc&sig=xHoUkX3zV4_dFwO2Gb-xrIxMJbw&hl=en&ei=Bf8iS7-DB5CXlAeXx8zzCQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=6&ved=0CBoQ6AEwBQ#v=snippet&q=chomsky%20jewish%20family&f=false</ref> but it is possible to argue that he is a self hater.
|{{wp>Noam Chomsky}}
|== Background ==
|Chomsky was born '''Avram Noam Chomsky''' in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the son of William Chomsky, a [[Russia]]n immigrant, and Elsie Simonofsky Chomsky. His parents both practiced [[Judaism]]. His father taught [[Hebrew]], and published a scholarly edition of a medieval Hebrew grammar.<ref>http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/information/biography/abcde/chomsky_noam.html</ref>. He received his education at the [[University of Pennsylvania]] where he studied linguistics, mathematics, and philosophy, and eventually earned his Ph. D. in 1955. Since then, he has taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He previously held the Ferrari P. Ward Chair of Modern Language and Linguistics, and is now an Institute Professor.
|==Linguistic Works==
|Chomsky's work is considered to be the spark of modern linguistic thought. His research deals with questions including the critical analysis of language and grammar, the role of biology in language and language acquisition, and the importance (or lack there of) of structural grammar and formal grammar in language function and development.
|Chomsky has argued that the primary role the linguist should play is to decipher a language's grammatical structure. Chomsky has provided the field of linguistics path and policy in describing language as a concept and particular languages, as well as core functions of any particular language.
|===Generative Grammar===
|Noam Chomsky advocates the view that the human mind has innate ability to generate grammatical sentences, thus, all utterances deemed sensible to the speaker are necessarily grammatical. All humans, he argues, share a core of grammar that explodes into the thousands and thousands of distinct languages spoken by humans over time and place. Generative grammar ultimately suggests that the brain is like an unlabeled map, and a child's role is to assign different "paths" with particular labels.
|===Universal Grammar===
|Noam Chomsky also proposed the theory that a kind of universal grammar, a grammar that underlies all human languages, is hard-wired in the human brain. Thus all human languages are fundamentally the same, with only superficial differences.
|Both the theory of universal grammar as well as generative grammar have been criticized over time. A primary argument is that the majority of Chomsky's studies are based in English, and do not represent "human language" as a whole. Linguist Geoffrey Sampson suggests that the core of his arguments are not scientifically falsifiable, and therefore hold no more weight than mere opinion or conjecture. Sampson follows that Chomsky does not seem to be able to make predictions of what is possible in a language.
|Finally, many of his critics claim that Chomsky's books are riddled with factual inaccuracies <ref>http://www.paulbogdanor.com/200chomskylies.pdf</ref>.
|In 2005 former [[missionary]] Daniel Everett published a controversial article titled "Cultural Constraints on Grammar and Cognition in Pirahã" which challeneged the notion that [[recursion]] is inherent in universal grammar. Since this oublication Everett has experienced academic and (stemming from this) political bullying and Chomsky himself labelled him a charlatan.
|==Political Views==
|Chomsky has stated that his "personal visions are fairly traditional anarchist ones, with origins in The Enlightenment and classical liberalism" and he has praised libertarian socialism.
|His opponents accuse him of expressing admiration for governmental systems such as the Soviet Union, Chinese and Cambodian governments which are characterized by central control, xenophobia, and rejection of free expression, though he has openly expressed opposition to the Soviet Union and other regimes characterized by authoritarianism, arguing that they are not legitimate forms of socialism.<ref>http://chomsky.info/articles/1986----.htm</ref> He also counters that he is merely pointing out the West's own crimes and not condoning authoritarian governments that the West opposes. His stated justification for this is that criticism of other authoritarian governments will do nothing except give the United States ammunition against other countries, while being able to freely ignore their own crimes, whereas criticism of his own country may bring about what he considers to be positive reform. Chomsky identifies himself as a "libertarian socialist" who is opposed to both neoliberalism and authoritarianism. <ref>http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=19446</ref>
|=== Anti-Semitism ===
|Chomsky has been accused for [[anti-Semitism]].<ref>http://www.jbooks.com/interviews/index/IP_Dershowitz.htm</ref><ref>http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=15381</ref>. In addition to his support for Hezbollah, He has stated that Jews are "the most privileged and influential part of the population", and that "Anti-Semitism is no longer a problem. It's raised, but it's raised because privileged people want to make sure they have total control, not just 98% control"<ref>http://www.variant.randomstate.org/16texts/Chomsky.html</ref>.
|''"For a century, the Zionist colonization of [[Palestine]] has proceeded primarily on the pragmatic principle of the quiet establishment of facts on the ground, which the world was to ultimately come to accept. It has been a highly successful policy... Only One Thing Will Make Israel Change Course: Israel's brutalization of Palestinians through exercises like "mowing the lawn" will persist without a change in U.S. policy".'' <ref> [http://inthesetimes.com/article/17214/noam_chomsky_keeping_palestine_gaza_in_a_stranglehod Noam Chomsky: Only One Thing Will Make Israel Change Course.] </ref>
|Chomsky has supported controversial author [[Norman Finkelstein]], author of ''The Holocaust Industry'', who has argued that claims of anti-Semitism are used to silence critics of Israel and that the Holocaust is exploited by some Jewish institutions for their own gain.<ref>[http://www.mg.co.za/articlePage.aspx?articleid=311000&area=/breaking_news/breaking_news__international_news University denies tenure to Holocaust academic], ''Mail & Guardian'', 12 June 2007.</ref> Noam Chomsky has also supported the right of Holocaust deniers, among them the notorious Robert Faurisson, to express their views. Chomsky has claimed he sees this as a free-speech issue and does not himself support Holocaust deniers. <ref>[http://frontpagemag.com/2011/02/15/chomsky-calls-elie-wiesel-%E2%80%9Cone-of-the-major-frauds-of-our-time%E2%80%9D/ Chomsky Calls Elie Wiesel "One of The Major Frauds of Our Time"] - [[FrontPage Magazine]]</ref>
|It should be noted that both Finkelstein and Chomsky are from Jewish-American backgrounds <ref>[http://www.normanfinkelstein.com/article.php?pg=11&ar=150]</ref><ref>http://www.tikkun.org/rabbi_lerner/noamchomsky2005</ref>, and that both Chomsky's parents were devout and involved in Jewish scholarship. It is unclear whether Chomsky still practices Judaism.
|#Chomsky denied the Cambodian Genocide, claiming that the killing had been inflated "by a factor of 100."<ref>http://www.paulbogdanor.com/chomsky/encounter.pdf</ref><ref>http://www.paulbogdanor.com/chomsky/labedz.pdf</ref> He further asserted that the (in reality) 2 to 3 million Cambodians slaughtered by the [[Khmer Rouge]] from 1975 to 1978 were morally comparable to Nazi collaborators during WW2, and that [[Pol Pot]]'s Cambodia was "comparable to France after liberation [from the Nazis]."<ref>http://www.mekong.net/cambodia/chomsky.htm</ref>
|#Chomsky recently (1995) claimed, in the wake of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, that the death toll in Cambodia may have been inflated "by a factor of a ''thousand''."<ref>http://www.mekong.net/cambodia/chomsky.htm#fn61</ref> Since he was responding to an estimate of two million dead, his words would imply that the real toll was on the order of two thousand. (Note: Investigators have uncovered and examined the remains of 1,386,734 Cambodians found in mass graves near Khmer Rouge execution centers whose cause of death has been determined by the investigators to have been virtually exclusively execution by the former Khmer Rouge regime.<ref>http://www.mekong.net/cambodia/deaths.htm</ref><ref>http://www.mekong.net/cambodia/toll.htm</ref><ref>http://welcome.to/dccam</ref> Because no ''more'' than roughly ''half'' of those who died during the Khmer Rouge years were executed (the rest having died from other causes like state-created famine, the deliberate withholding of basic necessities by the state, the refusal by the state to allow foreign aid, the abolishing of medicine and hospitals by the state, systematic overwork and slave labor by the state, and normal mortality), the Documentation Center of Cambodia estimates that the former regime killed or otherwise caused the unnecessary deaths of, between 2 and 2.5 million Cambodians (with 2.5 to 3 million dying and half a million of these representing normal mortality for the period).<ref>http://www.mekong.net/cambodia/deaths.htm</ref> A UN investigation reported 2-3 million dead, while UNICEF estimated 3 million dead.<ref>William Shawcross, The Quality of Mercy: Cambodia, Holocaust, and Modern Conscience (Touchstone, 1985), p115-6</ref> Even the Khmer Rouge acknowledged that 2 million had been killed—though they attributed those deaths to a subsequent Vietnamese invasion.<ref>Khieu Samphan, Interview, Time, March 10, 1980</ref>
|#Chomsky has claimed that [[Pearl Harbor]] saved millions of lives and that America and Britain used Nazi armies to attack the [[Soviet Union]] and prolong the [[Holocaust]].<ref>http://www.paulbogdanor.com/chomsky/newyorker1.html</ref>
|#Chomsky has stated: "Of course, no one supposed that Mao literally murdered tens of millions of people, or that he 'intended' that any die at all."<ref>"Second Reply to Casey," ZNet, September 2001: http://www.zmag.org/chomreply2.htm</ref> In fact, a comprehensive analysis by Professor R.J. Rummel concluded that Mao was responsible for the deaths of 76 million Chinese.<ref>http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/NOTE1.HTM</ref>
|#Chomsky regularly compares the "alleged" genocide in Cambodia to the 24-year occupation of [[East Timor]] by [[Indonesia]]. He wrote: "The harshest critics claim that perhaps 100,000 people have been slaughtered [in Cambodia]… Comparing East Timor with Cambodia, we see that the time frame of alleged atrocities is the same, the numbers allegedly slaughtered are roughly comparable in absolute terms, and five to ten times as high in East Timor relative to population… my own conclusion is that the sources in the [case of] East Timor are more credible…"<ref>Radical Priorities (rev. ed., AK Press, 2003), p80.</ref> Based on the findings of genocide investigators, as mentioned above; about 2.2 million people were killed by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia in less than 4 years. A Truth Commission found that 89-214,000 Timorese out of more than 700,000 were killed during the 24-year occupation, about 3/4 of them by Indonesia.<ref>Final Report of the Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation in East Timor (CAVR), January 30, 2006, part 6, paras. 47, 56-7: http://www.ictj.org/en/news/features/846.html</ref> [[Suharto]] killed far less people in absolute terms over decades in one of the world's most populous countries than Pol Pot killed in three years in a country with 8 million people, and exponentially less relative to the size of the population.
|#Chomsky denied any genocide or mass reprisals in [[Laos]] after the Communist victory, stating that the Pathet Lao "have made some efforts to achieve a reconciliation with the mountain tribesmen who had been organized in the CIA clandestine army."<ref>After the Cataclysm (South End Press, 1979), p122.</ref> Some 100,000 tribespeople had been exterminated in a campaign of genocide at the time.<ref>Forced Back and Forgotten (Lawyers' Committee for Human Rights, 1989), p8 (estimate); Jane Hamilton-Merritt, Tragic Mountains: The Hmong, the Americans, and the Secret Wars for Laos, 1942-1992 (Indiana Uniersity Press, 1999), pp337-460 (atrocities).</ref>
|#Chomsky once wrote: "At the end of 1978 Cambodia [under the Khmer Rouge] was the only country in Indochina that had succeeded at all in overcoming the agricultural crisis that was left by the American destruction."<ref>Language and Politics (AK Press, 2004), pp245-6. Cf.: "it was a condition of survival to turn (or return) the populations to productive work. The victors in Cambodia undertook drastic and often brutal measures to accomplish this task… At a heavy cost, these measures appear to have overcome the dire and destructive consequences of the US war by 1978," After the Cataclysm (South End Press, 1979), pviii.</ref> By late 1979, UN and Red Cross officials were warning that another 2.25 million Cambodians faced death by starvation due to "the near destruction of Cambodian society under the regime of ousted Prime Minister Pol Pot,"<ref>New York Times, August 8, 1979.</ref><ref>http://www.time.com/time/magazine/printout/0,8816,912511,00.html</ref> who were saved by American and international aid. The Cambodian communists' economic plans were, at times, utterly surreal. Scholar David Chandler notes that, in a Democratic Kampuchea report on General Political Tasks of 1976, there are three lines devoted to education, and six devoted to urine. The document states that, regarding human urine, "We collect thirty per cent. That leaves a surplus of 70%." These were indicative of the types of policies that Chomsky and his co-writer, Edward Herman, claimed had lifted Cambodia out of the ashes of war.
|#Chomsky openly claimed in 1977 that Pol Pot had saved up to one million lives.<ref>http://www.paulbogdanor.com/chomsky/cambodiacomments.pdf</ref> He did so by citing a Ford administration prediction that the Khmer Rouge would likely kill more than one million people, and then falsely restating it to imply that more than one million Cambodians would starve to death if US aid was cut off. At the time of this essay, the Khmer Rouge had probably already killed more than one million people, but Chomsky was still claiming that "executions numbered at most in the thousands," that Khmer Rouge atrocities had been "inflated by a factor of 100" and that those the Khmer Rouge had allegedly refrained from killing were actually ''saved'' by the Khmer Rouge. One million people had not died since aid was terminated, he said, therefore one million lives had been saved from starvation by the Khmer Rouge's ingenious economic policies. Thus did Chomsky praise Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge for "saving" the lives of dead people ''who they had murdered''. (Chomsky is also implying that the US cut off aid to Cambodia, when it actually had an unconditional offer to supply aid to it. Aid was terminated ''by the Khmer Rouge'').
|#Chomsky has praised Imperial Japan for allegedly "saving maybe tens of millions of lives."<ref>Interview, International Socialist Review, September-October 2002.</ref>
|#Chomsky has expressed support for the former Communist dictatorship of [[Angola]]: "The defense of Angola was one of Cuba's most significant contributions to the liberation of Africa."<ref>Hegemony or Survival (Penguin, 2004), p94.</ref> Cuban military intervention in support of the communist MPLA dictatorship in Angola led to decades of civil war that cost 1 million lives. Other Cuban "contributions to the liberation of Africa" include fighting for the communist dictatorship in Ethiopia, which killed 1.25 million people by massacre and forced starvation.<ref>Médecins Sans Frontières, "Angola: An Alarming Nutritional Situation," August 1999 (Angola death toll); Washington Post, March 18, 1978 (Ethiopia intervention); New York Times, December 14, 1994(Ethiopia death toll).</ref>
|#Chomsky has repeatedly denied that the former Sandinista regime in [[Nicaragua]] committed any human rights violations at all.<ref>The Culture of Terrorism (South End Press, 1988), p137.</ref> According to the Nicaraguan Commission of Jurists, the regime carried out some 8,000 political murders within its first three years in power.
|#Chomsky also strongly approved of the Sandinista's economic policies, writing that "the crime of the Sandinistas was to carry out successful development… they immediately began to divert resources to the poor part of the population."<ref>Latin America: From Colonization to Globalization (Ocean Press, 1999), p57.</ref> Within a few years of Sandinista rule, wages had been fixed below poverty level and there was mass unemployment. There were shortages of nearly all basic goods, with inflation at 30,000%. Government studies found that three-quarters of schoolchildren suffered from malnutrition, while living standards were lower than Haiti. The World Bank found that Nicaragua was on the economic level of Somalia.<ref>Roger Miranda and William Ratliff, The Civil War in Nicaragua (Transaction, 1993), pp183-4.</ref>
|#Chomsky referred to 22 Israeli schoolchildren murdered by Palestinian terrorists as "members of a paramilitary youth group."<ref>Pirates and Emperors, Old and New (rev. ed., Pluto Press, 2002), p65.</ref> He falsely claimed there had been "an exchange of fire" between the schoolchildren and the terrorists.
|#Chomsky claimed after the [[9/11]] attacks that "Western civilization is anticipating the slaughter of, well do the arithmetic, 3-4 million people or something like that [in Afghanistan]… Looks like what's happening is some sort of silent genocide… we are in the midst of apparently trying to murder 3 or 4 million people…"<ref>"The New War Against Terror," Lecture, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, October 18, 2001.</ref> Far from killing millions, the American intervention saved lives. UNICEF figures indicate that the deaths of 112,000 children and 7,500 pregnant women have been prevented every year since as a result.<ref>New York Times, February 1, 2002.</ref> The US invasion ''saved'' millions of Afghans from starvation.<ref>http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A42858-2001Dec30?language=printer</ref><ref>http://archive.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=24019</ref> Chomsky responded by claiming in 2002 that it was still possible that millions might starve to death, but that the Americans and the media could cover it up: "What the effects will be, we will never know. Starvation is not something that kills people instantly. People eat roots and leaves and they drag on for a while. And the effects of starvation may be the death of children born from malnourished mothers a year or two from now, and all sorts of consequences. Furthermore, nobody's going to look because the West is not interested in such things and others don't have the resources."<ref>http://www.leftwatch.com/articles/2004/chomsky-backpedals-on-silent-genocide-in-afghanistan/</ref>
|#Chomsky believes that there are "no anti-Semitic implications in denial of the existence of gas chambers, or even denial of the Holocaust."<ref>Quoted in W.D. Rubinstein, "Chomsky and the Neo-Nazis," Quadrant, October 1981.</ref>
|#Chomsky has repeatedly claimed that there has never been so much as a misplaced comma in any of his writings and that no valid criticism of any of his statements or ideas has ever been published by anyone.<ref>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKPtwYzehYM</ref>
|#Chomsky has lied about the views of Holocaust deniers (Faurisson, Serge Thion) by praising them as "libertarian Socialists with a long-standing record of opposition to all forms of totalitarianism."<ref>"His Right to Say It," The Nation, February 28, 1981.</ref> He also published one of his books (The Political Economy of Human Rights, a book filled with more noble efforts to disprove the bloodbath in Cambodia) in a series directed by a Holocaust denier (Pierre Guillaume). He has praised Holocaust deniers, endorsed their political and academic credentials, collaborated in their propaganda campaigns, and whitewashed their antisemitic and neo-Nazi agenda.<ref>http://www.paulbogdanor.com/200chomskylies.pdf</ref> He signed a petition in support of Faurisson's denials of the Holocaust; although he claimed that he was only expressing solidarity with his right to free speech, the petition that Chomsky signed dignified Faurisson's writings by affirming his scholarly credentials ("a respected professor" of "document criticism"); describing his lies as "extensive historical research"; placing the term "Holocaust" in derisory quotation marks; and portraying his lies as "findings" (a very typical Chomsky propaganda technique).<ref>The text of the petition is reproduced in Werner Cohn, Partners in Hate: Noam Chomsky and the Holocaust Deniers (Avukah Press, 1995), pp53-4.</ref> More obscenely, Chomsky added that "I sign innumerable petitions of this nature, and do not recall ever having refused to sign one."<ref>Language and Politics (AK Press, 2004), p290.</ref> At the time of this controversy, Chomsky had just finished publicly bragging about his outspoken refusual to sign petitions calling for human rights in Communist Vietnam--even as it massacred many hundreds of thousands of South Vietnamese men, women, and children en masse and drowned at sea hundreds of thousands more. On that occasion, he had explained that "public protest is a political act, to be judged in terms of its likely human consequences," which included the likelihood that the American media "would distort and exploit it for their propagandistic purposes."<ref>Unpublished interview, March 28, 1977; Language and Politics (AK Press, 2004), p176.</ref>
|#More recently, Chomsky has promoted a conspiracy theory (now popularized in Oliver Stone's ''Untold History of the United States'') that Zbigniew Brzezinski (national security advisor under president [[Jimmy Carter]]) secretly armed the Afghan mujahideen prior to 1979 in an elaborate plot to "trap" the Soviets. Brzezinski, however, has strongly denied anything of the kind,<ref>Interview, ''The Real News'', January 15, 2010.</ref> while Cyrus Vance's close aide Marshall Shulman "insists that the State Department worked hard to ''dissuade'' the Soviets from invading and would never have undertaken a program to encourage it."<ref>''The Nation'', November 12, 2001.</ref> Needless to say, declassified records from the time are at variance with Chomsky's fantasy. (It is likely, given the crucial Soviet role in initiating the Korean and Vietnam wars, that this claim is the product of projection.)
|== External links ==
|*[http://web.mit.edu/linguistics/people/faculty/chomsky/publications.html List of Chomsky's Publications]
|*[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mk8pxyAWTBk Chomsky Speaks about American Politics] Chomsky believes the Democrats and Republicans are a single entity
|*[http://www.memritv.org/search.asp?ACT=S9&P1=1136# Video of Noam Chomsky with Hezbollah Leaders in Lebanon]
|*[http://www.paulbogdanor.com/chomskyhoax.html The Chomsky Hoax] by Paul Bogdanor
|*[http://www.grsampson.net/AGwg.html Grammar Without Grammaticality] by Geoffrey Sampson
|*[http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=23543 Chomsky's New Blood Libel] by Alan Dershowitz
|*[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXMZZCvFtlw Chomsky on Middle East Television] Chomsky speaks about American "imperialism."
|{{DEFAULTSORT:Chomsky, Noam}}
|[[Category:American Jews]]
|[[Category:Jewish History]]


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Carson CityHome Menu
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ's) and Definitions
Can I Drop the Charges Against the Defendant?
No. The crime has been committed against the state, and you are either the victim or witness. The decision to whether to proceed on the charges is given to the prosecutor, not the victim. Although you may be reluctant to proceed to court, keep in mind that it is important that a defendant accepts responsibility for their criminal conduct, and they should be discouraged from committing crimes against other people in the future. You cannot fail to appear for court, or you will face contempt of court charges (punishable by up to 25 days in jail and a fine of $500). Of course, you do have the right to request that charges not be pursued, and you should express any concerns you have to your prosecutor. If the prosecutor does agree with your request to drop charges, you may be asked to put your request in writing. In some kinds of cases, particularly D.U.I. and domestic battery cases, Nevada law expressly prohibits dropping or reducing the charge unless the prosecutor "knows or it is obvious that the charge is not based upon probable cause, or cannot be proved at trial."
What is the Difference Between Probation and Parole?
Probation is where a convicted defendant is not sentenced to jail or prison, but is given a suspended sentence. Probation can be revoked if the defendant does not comply with the terms of probation. If that happens, the suspended sentence is imposed and the defendant is generally sent to jail or prison.
Parole is where a defendant has been sentenced to prison for a felony conviction, and has served a certain amount of time that makes him eligible for parole (early release from prison, upon terms of parole). Even though a prisoner may achieve parole, they are still under the jurisdiction of the Department of Prisons until their term of sentence has expired. Violation of parole terms can result in return to prison to complete the remainder of the sentence.
What If the Defendant or Someone Else Threatens Me?
Contact 911 immediately and report it. Fill out a statement about what occurred. After the law enforcement officer has taken your report, notify your prosecutor. It is against the law to threaten, harass or intimidate any witness, with the purpose of affecting the court proceedings.
Do I Have to Talk With the Defense Attorney Prior to Testifying?
No. As a matter of fact, you do not have to talk to anyone prior to testifying in court. This includes police investigators, prosecutors and the defendant and his representatives. This decision is entirely yours. Therefore, if the defendant, defense attorney or private investigator contacts you prior to trial and wishes to discuss the case, you are under no obligation to discuss it with them. However, refusing a reasonable request to discuss the facts of the case may be used in court to show your bias or prejudice. You always have the option of telling them that you want the prosecutor to be present for any such discussions. It is suggested that you contact the prosecutor and tell them about any such contacts. If you do discuss the case without the prosecutor present, you should take note of what you said and the questions that were asked. Anything you say during such interviews can be used in the trial, so it is important to be careful and accurate about the information you provide.
What If I Need an Interpreter?
Contact your prosecutor's office and notify them that you need an interpreter. They will arrange to have one available, at no charge, for your court appearance.
What is the Difference between Criminal and Civil Courts?
In a criminal case, a crime has been committed and the State of Nevada or a city is the plaintiff. The purpose of a criminal case is to hold the defendant accountable for his illegal actions. A crime is an offense against society in general, not just a particular victimized person. Criminal courts are concerned with punishing and rehabilitating the defendant. A defendant in a criminal case who faces incarceration upon conviction is entitled to an attorney at public expense if he or she cannot afford to hire one. The standard burden of proof, which must be shown before a defendant can be found guilty of a crime, is "beyond a reasonable doubt." This is the highest standard of proof required in courts of law.
In a civil case, the plaintiff is a private party, such as yourself, who files a civil lawsuit against someone who has injured you in some fashion. A defendant in a civil case is not entitled to legal representation at public expense if he cannot afford an attorney. The standard of proof which must be shown before a defendant can be held liable is a preponderance of the evidence (a "more probable than not" standard), which is a lower burden of proof than that required for criminal cases. Some civil actions, such as cases involving fraudulent conduct, require that the plaintiff prove his case by "clear and convincing evidence."
Do I Need to Hire My Own Attorney?
It depends. In a criminal case, the public prosecutor is given the sole responsibility for handling the case. A private attorney cannot prosecute a criminal case. The prosecutor represents the state or city against which a crime has been committed.
If the case is a simple misdemeanor and the damages are minimal, you probably do not need to hire a private attorney to advise you. However, if you suffered extensive losses, you may want to consult with a private attorney regarding the possibility of filing a civil lawsuit against the defendant.
Are There Any Special Rules for Children Who Testify?
Yes. NRS 174.571 provides that when the victim or witness is younger than 16, the prosecutor shall request that the court, in its discretion, consider the effect a delay in the beginning of a trial would have on the child in setting the trial date.
NRS 178.571 provides that if the victim or witness is a minor, or if the crime involves sexual assault, then an attendant may be present during the preliminary hearing and trial. The attendant may sit next to the minor, or may stand in a strategic location, to provide support for the child. The attendant is not allowed to participate on the child's behalf, only to provide emotional support to aid the child in testifying fully.
Can I Testify Without the Defendant Being Present?
No. The defendant has an absolute right guaranteed by the United States Constitution to "face his accusers." However, the defendant does not have the right to attempt to intimidate you while you are testifying. Notify your prosecutor if the defendant is trying to intimidate you while testifying.
Am I Entitled to a Witness Fee for Testifying?
Yes. Nevada law (NRS 178.5696) provides that the prosecutor must inform each witness of the fee to which they are entitled for testifying and how to obtain that fee. The allowed fees in criminal cases are established by the Legislature in Chapter 50 of NRS. Presently, a witness subpoenaed to court is entitled to $25 for attending court, plus mileage expenses to and from court.
As a Victim of Domestic Violence, Is There Any Additional Protection for Me?
Yes. A court may order a temporary or extended order for protection for a victim of domestic violence, stalking or harassment. Contact your prosecutor and/or court for more information on how to obtain such an order.
Can I Fire My Prosecutor and Get Someone Else to Prosecute the Defendant?
No. Remember that the prosecutor represents the State of Nevada or the city, and is either elected or appointed to fulfill that function. If you have concerns about your prosecutor, contact the district or city attorney and notify them of the problem you are experiencing.


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'Leccy Tech The metaphorical dust cover was yanked off the latest 'leccy motorcycle at the TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) conference in Long Beach, California, yesterday - and an arresting looking bit of kit it is too.
Mission Motors' Mission One: striking looks
Called the Mission One, the bike has been designed by Yves Béhar – who also has the Jawbone Headset and OLPC XO laptop on his list of design credits – and come 12 June, you'll be able to see it do its stuff at the "carbon free" TTXGP race on the Isle of Man.
According to the folk from Mission Motors, the bike will hit 150mph and has an average operating range of around 150 miles. Power comes from a liquid-cooled, three-phase AC induction motor that puts out 100lb-ft of torque via a single-speed transmission.
Wheels of Steel - or something more eco-friendly?
The lithium-ion battery pack can apparently be recharged in eight hours from a 120V outlet or in just two and a half from a 240V outlet. The battery can be replenished on the go from an adjustable regenerative rear-wheel brake.
The Mission One will also come "wireless enabled", allowing riders to download technical data and performance profiles and make system adjustments directly from their laptops, Formula One-stylee.
How many Fireblades can I get for that?
If you like what you see, the first 50 "Special Edition" bikes will be ready for sale in 2011 at $68,995 (£47,178/€53,949) a go. Not cheap, we grant you – you could get five Honda CBR1000 Fireblades for that sort of money - but highly desirable nonetheless.
At least desirable to those of us who fancy the idea of a twit-proof twist-and-go super bike. Will it appeal equally to the serious supersport-loving biker brigade who, in our experience, are fiercely proud of their ability to tame and control their complex and powerful mounts? Time will tell.
Complete with F1-style telemetry downloads
Either way, come the summer Mission promise to announce the cost of the regular, "affordable" version of the One, though as Forbes.com has pointed out, the $1.5m it has so far raised from private investment and venture capital is only enough to keep it going for six months. Without further, and substantial, investment, the One could remain a pipe dream, albeit a striking one.
While perusing the list of who's who at Mission Motors, the first thing that hit us – after the pretty impressive list of technical and engineering talent on display - was the number of ex-Tesla bods on the payroll, including CEO Forrest North, Finance VP Dan Kaplan and Product Manager Jeremy Cleland - who also served time with Ducati North America.
We are taking the Tesla staff DNA as a good thing – after all the Tesla Roadster has actually made it to the consumer, albeit with the aid of Elon Musk's deep pockets. ®


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NASHVILLE, Tenn. – The Tennessee State men's basketball team started team practices on Monday in preparation of the team's first contest against the University of Hawai'i on Nov. 8.
The Tigers welcome back six letter winners from a year ago, including reigning All-OVC guard Patrick Miller.
Last year, Miller scored 14.8 points per contest and broke the school's single season record for assists in a season with 195. He was also one of the team's main workhorses, averaging 35.9 minutes a game.
The other returnees for TSU are seniors Michael Green and Chaed Wellian, juniors Jay Harris and M.J. Rhett and sophomore Jordan Gaither.
Post players Green, Rhett and Wellian will be called upon to replace Robert Covington and Kellen Thornton who graduated last season. The trio of current Tigers averaged 10 points and nine rebounds combined last season.
This year's squad will also have to replace Jordan Cyphers and Tashan Fredrick at shooting guard and small forward which could be a job for Harris, Gaither or one of the nine incoming players that the program has brought in.
The newcomers to this year's club include forwards Alex Bates, Kennedy Eubanks, Ugo Mmonu and Jaylen Reid and guards Jamonte Graham, Jacquan Nobles, Jaleel Queary, Rhyan Townes and Gerald Williams.
Graham, Mmonu, Reid and Townes are true freshmen while Bates, Eubanks, Nobles, Queary and Williams all have some level of prior collegiate experience.
The Tigers will host Lemoyne-Owen in an exhibition game on Nov. 4 before heading to the Aloha State four days later.