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If you need to reach Jan Chipchase, the best, and sometimes only, way to get him is on his cellphone. The first time I spoke to him last fall, he was at home in his apartment in Tokyo. The next time, he was in Accra, the capital of Ghana, in West Africa. Several weeks after that, he was in Uzbekistan, by way of Tajikistan and China, and in short order he and his phone visited Helsinki, London and Los Angeles. If you decide not to call Jan Chipchase but rather to send e-mail, the odds are fairly good that you'll get an "out of office" reply redirecting you back to his cellphone, with a notation about his current time zone "GMT +9" or "GMT -8" so that when you do call, you may do so at a courteous hour.
Keep in mind, though, that Jan Chipchase will probably be too busy with his job to talk much anyway. He could be bowling in Tupelo, Miss., or he could be rummaging through a woman's purse in Shanghai. He might be busy examining the advertisements for prostitutes stuck up in a São Paulo phone booth, or maybe getting his ear hairs razored off at a barber shop in Vietnam. It really depends on the moment.
Chipchase is 38, a rangy native of Britain whose broad forehead and high-slung brows combine to give him the air of someone who is quick to be amazed, which in his line of work is something of an asset. For the last seven years, he has worked for the Finnish cellphone company Nokia as a "human-behavior researcher." He's also sometimes referred to as a "user anthropologist." To an outsider, the job can seem decidedly oblique. His mission, broadly defined, is to peer into the lives of other people, accumulating as much knowledge as possible about human behavior so that he can feed helpful bits of information back to the company to the squads of designers and technologists and marketing people who may never have set foot in a Vietnamese barbershop but who would appreciate it greatly if that barber someday were to buy a Nokia.
What amazes Chipchase is not the standard stuff that amazes big multinational corporations looking to turn an ever-bigger profit. Pretty much wherever he goes, he lugs a big-bodied digital Nikon camera with a couple of soup-can-size lenses so that he can take pictures of things that might be even remotely instructive back in Finland or at any of Nokia's nine design studios around the world. Almost always, some explanation is necessary. A Mississippi bowling alley, he will say, is a social hub, a place rife with nuggets of information about how people communicate. A photograph of the contents of a woman's handbag is more than that; it's a window on her identity, what she considers essential, the weight she is willing to bear. The prostitute ads in the Brazilian phone booth? Those are just names, probably fake names, coupled with real cellphone numbers lending to Chipchase's theory that in an increasingly transitory world, the cellphone is becoming the one fixed piece of our identity.
Last summer, Chipchase sat through a monsoon-season downpour inside the one-room home of a shoe salesman and his family, who live in the sprawling Dharavi slum of Mumbai. Using an interpreter who spoke Tamil, he quizzed them about the food they ate, the money they had, where they got their water and their power and whom they kept in touch with and why. He was particularly interested in the fact that the family owned a cellphone, purchased several months earlier so that the father, who made the equivalent of $88 a month, could run errands more efficiently for his boss at the shoe shop. The father also occasionally called his wife, ringing her at a pay phone that sat 15 yards from their house. Chipchase noted that not only did the father carry his phone inside a plastic bag to keep it safe in the pummeling seasonal rains but that they also had to hang their belongings on the wall in part because of a lack of floor space and to protect them from the monsoon water and raw sewage that sometimes got tracked inside. He took some 800 photographs of the salesman and his family over about eight hours and later, back at his hotel, dumped them all onto a hard drive for use back inside the corporate mother ship. Maybe the family's next cellphone, he mused, should have some sort of hook as an accessory so it, like everything else in the home, could be suspended above the floor.
This sort of on-the-ground intelligence-gathering is central to what's known as human-centered design, a business-world niche that has become especially important to ultracompetitive high-tech companies trying to figure out how to write software, design laptops or build cellphones that people find useful and unintimidating and will thus spend money on. Several companies, including Intel, Motorola and Microsoft, employ trained anthropologists to study potential customers, while Nokia's researchers, including Chipchase, more often have degrees in design. Rather than sending someone like Chipchase to Vietnam or India as an emissary for the company loaded with products and pitch lines, as a marketer might be the idea is to reverse it, to have Chipchase, a patently good listener, act as an emissary for people like the barber or the shoe-shop owner's wife, enlightening the company through written reports and PowerPoint presentations on how they live and what they're likely to need from a cellphone, allowing that to inform its design.
The premise of the work is simple get to know your potential customers as well as possible before you make a product for them. But when those customers live, say, in a mud hut in Zambia or in a tin-roofed hutong dwelling in China, when you are trying as Nokia and just about every one of its competitors is to design a cellphone that will sell to essentially the only people left on earth who don't yet have one, which is to say people who are illiterate, making $4 per day or less and have no easy access to electricity, the challenges are considerable.
One morning last fall, I arranged to meet Chipchase in a neighborhood in Accra where he and a few other Nokia people were doing research. At his suggestion, I took a taxi to the general area and then called him on his cellphone. This part of the city, called Nima, was a jumble of narrow alleyways hemmed in by a few major thoroughfares and anchored by a teeming marketplace. The homes in Nima were small, low-roofed and usually one or two rooms made from concrete or crumbling mud bricks, often set back behind a homegrown business someone's peanut stand or a shack selling dust-coated secondhand stereos and television sets. The streets around the market were swollen with a slow-moving river of people. On their heads, Ghanaian women toted pyramids of pomegranates, bagged loaves of fresh bread, baskets of live chickens. Trucks belched diesel exhaust; men pushed carts full of sugar cane and fat, purplish bulbs of garlic.
From an unseen distance, Chipchase used his phone to pilot me through the unfamiliar chaos, allowing us to have what he calls a "just in time" moment. "Just in time" is a manufacturing concept that was popularized by the Japanese carmaker Toyota when, beginning in the late 1930s, it radically revamped its production system, virtually eliminating warehouses stocked with big loads of car parts and instead encouraging its assembly plants to order parts directly from the factory only as they were needed. The process became less centralized, more incremental. Car parts were manufactured swiftly and in small batches, which helped to cut waste, improve efficiency and more easily correct manufacturing defects. As Toyota became, in essence, lighter on its feet, the company's productivity rose, and so did its profits.
There are a growing number of economists who maintain that cellphones can restructure developing countries in a similar way. Cellphones, after all, have an economizing effect. My "just in time" meeting with Chipchase required little in the way of advance planning and was more efficient than the oft-imperfect practice of designating a specific time and a place to rendezvous. He didn't have to leave his work until he knew I was in the vicinity. Knowing that he wasn't waiting for me, I didn't fret about the extra 15 minutes my taxi driver sat blaring his horn in Accra's unpredictable traffic. And now, on foot, if I moved in the wrong direction, it could be quickly corrected. Using mobile phones, we were able to coordinate incrementally. "Do you see the footbridge?" Chipchase was saying over the phone. "No? O.K., do you see the giant green sign that says 'Believe in God'? Yes? I'm down to the left of that."
To someone who has spent years using a mobile phone, these moments are common enough to feel banal, but for people living in a shantytown like Nima and by extension in similar places across Africa and beyond the possibilities afforded by a proliferation of cellphones are potentially revolutionary. Today, there are more than 3.3 billion mobile-phone subscriptions worldwide, which means that there are at least three billion people who don't own cellphones, the bulk of them to be found in Africa and Asia. Even the smallest improvements in efficiency, amplified across those additional three billion people, could reshape the global economy in ways that we are just beginning to understand. This is part of what Chipchase was eager to show me, if only I could spot him. "I'm by the hair-salon stall," he was saying into his phone. "Next to that goat. Do you see it? See me? Ah, yes," he said brightly, "there you are." And then, face to face and sweating in the climbing equatorial sun, we hung up.
To get a sense of how rapidly cellphones are penetrating the global marketplace, you need only to look at the sales figures. According to statistics from the market database Wireless Intelligence, it took about 20 years for the first billion mobile phones to sell worldwide. The second billion sold in four years, and the third billion sold in two. Eighty percent of the world's population now lives within range of a cellular network, which is double the level in 2000. And figures from the International Telecommunications Union show that by the end of 2006, 68 percent of the world's mobile subscriptions were in developing countries. As more and more countries abandon government-run telecom systems, offering cellular network licenses to the highest-bidding private investors and without the burden of navigating pre-established bureaucratic chains, new towers are going up at a furious pace. Unlike fixed-line phone networks, which are expensive to build and maintain and require customers to have both a permanent address and the ability to pay a monthly bill, or personal computers, which are not just costly but demand literacy as well, the cellphone is more egalitarian, at least to a point.
"You don't even need to own a cellphone to benefit from one," says Paul Polak, author of "Out of Poverty: What Works When Traditional Approaches Fail" and former president of International Development Enterprises, a nonprofit company specializing in training and technology for small-plot farmers in developing countries. Part of I.D.E.'s work included setting up farm cooperatives in Nepal, where farmers would bring their vegetables to a local person with a mobile phone, who then acted as a commissioned sales agent, using the phone to check market prices and arranging for the most profitable sale. "People making a dollar a day can't afford a cellphone, but if they start making more profit in their farming, you can bet they'll buy a phone as a next step," Polak says.
Last year, the World Resources Institute, a Washington-based environmental research group, published a report with the International Finance Corporation entitled "The Next Four Billion," an economic study that looked at, among other things, how poor people living in developing countries spent their money. One of the most remarkable findings was that even very poor families invested a significant amount of money in the I.C.T. category information-communication technology, which, according to Al Hammond, the study's principal author, can include money spent on computers or land-line phones, but in this segment of the population that's almost never the case. What they're buying, he says, are cellphones and airtime, usually in the form of prepaid cards. Even more telling is the finding that as a family's income grows from $1 per day to $4, for example their spending on I.C.T. increases faster than spending in any other category, including health, education and housing. "It's really quite striking," Hammond says. "What people are voting for with their pocketbooks, as soon as they have more money and even before their basic needs are met, is telecommunications."
There are clear reasons for this, but understanding them requires forgetting for a moment about your own love-hate relationship with your cellphone, or iPhone, or BlackBerry. Something that's mostly a convenience booster for those of us with a full complement of technology at our disposal land-lines, Internet connections, TVs, cars can be a life-saver to someone with fewer ways to access information. A "just in time" moment afforded by a cellphone looks a lot different to a mother in Uganda who needs to carry a child with malaria three hours to visit the nearest doctor but who would like to know first whether that doctor is even in town. It looks different, too, to the rural Ugandan doctor who, faced with an emergency, is able to request information via text message from a hospital in Kampala.
Jan Chipchase and his user-research colleagues at Nokia can rattle off example upon example of the cellphone's ability to increase people's productivity and well-being, mostly because of the simple fact that they can be reached. There's the live-in housekeeper in China who was more or less an indentured servant until she got a cellphone so that new customers could call and book her services. Or the porter who spent his days hanging around outside of department stores and construction sites hoping to be hired to carry other people's loads but now, with a cellphone, can go only where the jobs are. Having a call-back number, Chipchase likes to say, is having a fixed identity point, which, inside of populations that are constantly on the move displaced by war, floods, drought or faltering economies can be immensely valuable both as a means of keeping in touch with home communities and as a business tool. Over several years, his research team has spoken to rickshaw drivers, prostitutes, shopkeepers, day laborers and farmers, and all of them say more or less the same thing: their income gets a big boost when they have access to a cellphone.
It may sound like corporate jingoism, but this sort of economic promise has also caught the eye of development specialists and business scholars around the world. Robert Jensen, an economics professor at Harvard University, tracked fishermen off the coast of Kerala in southern India, finding that when they invested in cellphones and started using them to call around to prospective buyers before they'd even got their catch to shore, their profits went up by an average of 8 percent while consumer prices in the local marketplace went down by 4 percent. A 2005 London Business School study extrapolated the effect even further, concluding that for every additional 10 mobile phones per 100 people, a country's G.D.P. rises 0.5 percent.
Text messaging, or S.M.S. (short message service), turns out to be a particularly cost-effective way to connect with otherwise unreachable people privately and across great distances. Public health workers in South Africa now send text messages to tuberculosis patients with reminders to take their medication. In Kenya, people can use S.M.S. to ask anonymous questions about culturally taboo subjects like AIDS, breast cancer and sexually transmitted diseases, receiving prompt answers from health experts for no charge.
Some of the mobile phone's biggest boosters are those who believe that pumping international aid money into poor countries is less effective than encouraging economic growth through commerce, also called "inclusive capitalism." A cellphone in the hands of an Indian fisherman who uses it to grow his business which presumably gives him more resources to feed, clothe, educate and safeguard his family represents a textbook case of bottom-up economic development, a way of empowering individuals by encouraging entrepreneurship as opposed to more traditional top-down approaches in which aid money must filter through a bureaucratic chain before reaching its beneficiaries, who by virtue of the process are rendered passive recipients.
For this reason, the cellphone has become a darling of the microfinance movement. After Muhammad Yunus, the Nobel-winning founder of Grameen Bank, began making microloans to women in poor countries so that they could buy revenue-producing assets like cows and goats, he was approached by a Bangladeshi expat living in the U.S. named Iqbal Quadir. Quadir posed a simple question to Yunus If a woman can invest in a cow, why can't she invest in a phone? that led to the 1996 creation of Grameen Phone Ltd. and has since started the careers of more than 250,000 "phone ladies" in Bangladesh, which is considered one of the world's poorest countries. Women use microcredit to buy specially designed cellphone kits costing about $150, each equipped with a long-lasting battery. They then set up shop as their village phone operator, charging a small commission for people to make and receive calls.
The endeavor has not only revolutionized communications in Bangladesh but also has proved to be wildly profitable: Grameen Phone is now Bangladesh's largest telecom provider, with annual revenues of about $1 billion. Similar village-phone programs have sprung up in Rwanda, Uganda, Cameroon and Indonesia, among other places. "Poor countries are poor because they are wasting their resources," says Quadir, who is now the director of the Legatum Center for Development and Entrepreneurship at M.I.T. "One resource is time, another is opportunity. Let's say you can walk over to five people who live in your immediate vicinity, that's one thing. But if you're connected to one million people, your possibilities are endless."
During a 2006 field study in Uganda, Chipchase and his colleagues stumbled upon an innovative use of the shared village phone, a practice called sente. Ugandans are using prepaid airtime as a way of transferring money from place to place, something that's especially important to those who do not use banks. Someone working in Kampala, for instance, who wishes to send the equivalent of $5 back to his mother in a village will buy a $5 prepaid airtime card, but rather than entering the code into his own phone, he will call the village phone operator ("phone ladies" often run their businesses from small kiosks) and read the code to her. She then uses the airtime for her phone and completes the transaction by giving the man's mother the money, minus a small commission. "It's a rather ingenious practice," Chipchase says, "an example of grass-roots innovation, in which people create new uses for technology based on need."
It's also the precursor to a potentially widespread formalized system of mobile banking. Already companies like Wizzit, in South Africa, and GCash, in the Philippines, have started programs that allow customers to use their phones to store cash credits transferred from another phone or purchased through a post office, phone-kiosk operator or other licensed operator. With their phones, they can then make purchases and payments or withdraw cash as needed. Hammond of the World Resources Institute predicts that mobile banking will bring huge numbers of previously excluded people into the formal economy quickly, simply because the latent demand for such services is so great, especially among the rural poor. This bodes well for cellphone companies, he says, since owning a phone will suddenly have more value than sharing a village phone. "If you're in Hanoi after midnight," Hammond says, "the streets are absolutely clogged with motorbikes piled with produce. They give their produce to the guy who runs a vegetable stall, and they go home. How do they get paid? They get paid the next time they come to town, which could be a month or two later. You have to hope you can find the stall guy again and that he remembers what he sold. But what if you could get paid the next day on your mobile phone? Would you care what that mobile costs? I don't think so."
In February of last year, when Vodafone rolled out its M-Pesa mobile-banking program in Kenya, it aimed to add 200,000 new customers in the first year but got them within a month. One year later, M-Pesa has 1.6 million subscribers, and Vodafone is now set to open mobile-banking enterprises in a number of other countries, including Tanzania and India. "Look, microfinance is great; Yunus deserves his sainthood," Hammond says. "But after 30 years, there are only 90 million microfinance customers. I'm predicting that mobile-phone banking will add a billion banking customers to the system in five years. That's how big it is."
When he is not doing his field work, Jan Chipchase goes to a lot of design conferences, where he gives talks with titles like "Connecting the Unconnected." He also writes a popular blog called Future Perfect, on which he posts photographs of some of the things that amaze him along with a little bit of explanatory text. "Pushing technologies on society without thinking through their consequences is at least naïve, at worst dangerous . . . and IMHO the people that do it are just boring," he writes on his blog's description page. "Future Perfect is a pause for reflection in our planet's seemingly headlong rush to churn out more, faster, smaller and cheaper."
Clearly, though, Chipchase's work puts him smack in the middle of this rush, and no company churns out phones like Nokia, which manufactures 1.3 million products daily. Forty percent of the mobile phones sold last year were made by Nokia, and the company's $8.4 billion profit in 2007 reflects as much. Chipchase seems distinctly uncomfortable talking about his part as a corporate rainmaker, preferring to see himself as a mostly dispassionate ethnographer, albeit one with Nokia stock options. The only time I saw him get even slightly prickly or indeed behave like anything but a mild-mannered guy who is wholly absorbed by the small, arcane things that serve as clues to bigger patterns of communication was when I happened to muse that maybe there were still places in the world where technology might not be so vital.
We were sitting under a slow-revolving ceiling fan in a small restaurant in Accra, eating bowls of piquant Ghanaian peanut-and-chicken stew. Chipchase told a story about meeting some monk disciples at a temple in Ulan Bator, when he vacationed in Mongolia a few Decembers ago. (Most of Chipchase's vacation stories, it turns out, take place in less-developed countries, often in forbidding weather and frequently relating back to cellphone use.) Despite their red robes and shaved heads and the fact they were spending their days in a giant monastery at the top of a windy hill where they were meant to be in dialogue with God, some of the 15 monk disciples had cellphones Nokia cellphones and most were fancier models than the one Chipchase was carrying. One of the disciples asked to look at Chipchase's phone. "So he's got my phone and his phone," Chipchase told me. "And as we're talking, he's switching on the Bluetooth. And he then data-mines my phone for all its content, all my photographs and so on, which is absolutely fine, but it's kind of a scene where you think, I'm here, I'm so away from everything and yet they're so technically literate. . . . "
This is when I voiced a careless thought about whether there might be something negative about the lightning spread of technology, whether its convenience was somehow supplanting traditional values or practices. Chipchase raised his eyebrows and laid down his spoon. He sighed, making it clear that responding to me was going to require patience. "People can think, yeah, monks with cellphones, and tsk, tsk, and what is the world coming to?" he said. "But if you wanted to take phones away from anybody in this world who has them, they'd probably say: 'You're going to have to fight me for it. Are you going to take my sewer and water away too?' And maybe you can't put communication on the same level as running water, but some people would. And I think in some contexts, it's quite viable as a fundamental right." He paused a beat to let this sink in, then added, with just a touch of edge, "People once believed that people in other cultures might not benefit from having books either."
For the last year, Chipchase has been working on a project he calls Future Urban, the goal of which is to explore what the cities of tomorrow will be like. Which is why one afternoon in Ghana he provided me with minute-to-minute cellphone instructions ("Do you see the sewing stall? O.K., now look to the right") for finding him at the outskirts of Buduburam, a densely populated refugee settlement about an hour's drive west of Accra. For the previous 11 days, Chipchase, two of his female colleagues from Tokyo Indri Tulusan and Younghee Jung and a small group of hired Ghanaians had been running what they called an "open design studio" in the heart of Buduburam, which is home to approximately 40,000 people, most of whom had fled from the civil wars in neighboring Liberia, Sierra Leone and Ivory Coast.
Nokia's temporary design studio sat in a rented two-room concrete hut at the intersection of two busy dirt lanes, across from a woman selling chunks of watermelon and peeled lemons and next to a large water tank labeled "Church of God." There was a sheet of fabric strung up in front, with neat painted lettering that read: "Your Dream Phone. Share it with the world." It went on to describe how the community was invited to come share ideas and drawings for the ideal mobile phone. Prizes were offered. So far, 140 people had shown up to sketch their dream phone.
"For the first time, there are more people living in urban centers than in rural settings," Chipchase explained as we sat in the shade outside the studio. "And in the next years, millions more will move to these places." At current rates of migration, the United Nations Human Settlements Program has projected that one-quarter of the earth's population will live in so-called slums by the year 2020. Slums, by sheer virtue of the numbers, are going to start mattering more and more, Chipchase postulated. In the name of preparing Nokia for this shift, he, Jung and Tulusan, along with a small group of others, spent several weeks in various shantytowns in Mumbai, in Rio, in western China and now here in Ghana.
People in the mobile-handset business talk about adding customers not by the millions but by the billions, if only they could get the details right. How do you make a phone that can be repaired by a streetside repairman who may not have access to new parts? How do you build a phone that won't die a quick death in a monsoon or by falling off the back of a motorbike on a dusty road? Or a phone that picks up distant signals in a rural place, holds a charge off a car battery longer or that can double as a flashlight during power cuts? Influenced by Chipchase's study on the practice of sharing cellphones inside of families or neighborhoods, Nokia has started producing phones with multiple address books for as many as seven users per phone. To enhance the phone's usefulness to illiterate customers, the company has designed software that cues users with icons in addition to words. The biggest question remains one of price: Nokia's entry-level phones run about $45; Vodafone offers models that are closer to $25; and in a move that generated headlines around the world, the Indian manufacturer Spice Limited recently announced plans to sell a $20 "people's phone."
Even as sales continue to grow, it is yet to be seen whether the mobile phone will play a significant, sustained role in alleviating poverty in the developing world. In Africa, it's still only a relatively small percentage of the population that owns cellphones. Network towers are not particularly cost-effective in remote areas, where power is supplied by diesel fuel. "I don't see cellphones as a magic bullet per se, though they're obviously very helpful," says Ken Banks, founder of kiwanja.net, a nonprofit entity that provides free text-messaging software and information-technology support to grass-roots enterprises, mostly in Africa. "Many people in the developing world don't yet have a phone not because they don't want one but because there are barriers. And the only way companies are going to sell phones is to understand what those barriers are." He cites access to reliable electricity as a major barrier, noting that Motorola now provides free solar-powered charging kiosks to female entrepreneurs in Uganda, who use them to sell airtime. The company is also testing wind- and solar-powered base stations in Namibia, which could bring down the cost of connecting remote areas to cellular networks. "Originally mobile-phone companies weren't interested in power because it's not their business," Banks says. "But if a few hundred million people could buy their phones once they had it, they're suddenly interested in power."
Many of the people in Buduburam who came to sketch their ideas for a perfect phone at the Nokia studio did not actually own one. The community's power grid had been down for the last month, so those who did have one had been paying to have their phones charged at a local shop with a diesel-run generator. But when I paged through the fat three-ring binders where the Nokia team was storing those sketches, it was evident that the future, or at least some vision of it, had already arrived. Some of the drawings were basic pencil sketches; others were strikingly elaborate, with arrows pointing to different dream features, which were really just a way of pointing I realized then to the dreams themselves.
Jung and Tulusan said they'd found this everywhere, the phone representing what people are aspiring to. "It's an easy way to see what's important to them, what their challenges are," Jung said. One Liberian refugee wanted to outfit a phone with a land-mine detector so that he could more safely return to his home village. In the Dharavi slum of Mumbai, people sketched phones that could forecast the weather since they had no access to TV or radio. Muslims wanted G.P.S. devices to orient their prayers toward Mecca. Someone else drew a phone shaped like a water bottle, explaining that it could store precious drinking water and also float on the monsoon waters. In Jacarèzinho, a bustling favela in Rio, one designer drew a phone with an air-quality monitor. Several women sketched phones that would monitor cheating boyfriends and husbands. Another designed a "peace button" that would halt gunfire in the neighborhood with a single touch.
Interestingly, the recent post-election violence in Kenya provided a remarkable case study for the cellphone as an instrument of both war and peace. After the government imposed a media blackout in late December last year, Kenyans sought news and information via S.M.S. messages on their phones and used them to track down friends and family who'd fled their homes. Many also reported receiving unsolicited text messages to take up arms. The government responded with an admonition, sent, of course, via S.M.S.: "The Ministry of Internal Security urges you to please desist from sending or forwarding any S.M.S. that may cause public unrest. This may lead to your prosecution."
As a joke, Chipchase sometimes pulls out his cellphone and pretends to shave his face with it, using a buzzing ring tone for comic effect. But there's a deeper truth embedded here, not just for people in places like Kenya or Buduburam but for all of us. As cellphone technology grows increasingly sophisticated, it has cannibalized for better or worse the technologies that have come before it. Carrying a full-featured cellphone lessens your needs for other things, including a watch, an alarm clock, a camera, video camera, home stereo, television, computer or, for that matter, a newspaper. With the advent of mobile banking, cellphones have begun to replace wallets as well. That a phone might someday offer a nice close shave suddenly seems not so ridiculous after all.
One morning I followed Chipchase as he waded deep into the Nima market, a hodgepodge of vegetable stalls and phone-booth-size stores selling sundries like candles and palm oil. He was accompanied by a Ghanaian interpreter and two Nokia designers who had flown in from California to test the cultural waters for a phone that if everything played out perfectly could cost as little as $5. The $5 phone was still a pie-in-the-sky concept, explained Duncan Burns, one of the designers, something they were fiddling with to see if it might be possible someday probably years from now. Each time the group stopped to chat with someone, Burns pulled out several prototypes or "physical sketches," as he called them for potential phones, handing them over one by one for examination.
These were elegant, futuristic-looking things, just odd enough to seem as if they'd arrived not from California but from outer space. One was long and wandlike, looking something like an aluminum version of a thick vanilla bean. Another was a slimmer rendering of an everyday phone but with no keypad and no screen, just a single unmarked button. A third did not look at all like a phone but rather like a credit card. There were a couple of small digital photos of people's faces stuck to the front of the card, and it came with a small stylus that could be used, Burns said, to touch a face on the card, which would then dial that person's number a pictorial address book for someone who was illiterate. A fourth had a camera that took pictures and deposited them right into the phone's address book.
A young man selling beans stared at each of the pretend phones uncomfortably, as if he mistrusted the devices or perhaps the small crowd of sweat-soaked foreigners suddenly leaning in close to see how he handled them.
"How would you use that?" Chipchase asked through the interpreter, using a dialect called Twi and pointing to the wand phone. The bean seller tentatively lifted it to his ear. "Where would you keep it?" The young man gestured to his neck. "On a rope?" Chipchase said. The man, still looking bewildered, nodded yes.
Moments later, we came upon an ample-bodied woman dressed in a bright gold wrapper and matching head scarf, sifting rocks and twigs out of scoopfuls of corn beneath an umbrella in a quiet corner of the market.
"Hellllloooooo," Chipchase said, smiling broadly.
"Helllllooooo, Brudda," she said back in English.
"We work for Nokia. You know Nokia?"
The woman said nothing, but reached down and from the folds of her wrapper produced a Nokia phone. "Not good," she said, shaking her head disparagingly. "You call. It switches off."
Chipchase enlisted the interpreter to explain that her problem sounded like a network problem and not a Nokia problem. Shrugging, the woman went on to inspect the prototype phones, testing their weight in her palm, pressing them against her cheek, punching buttons. She pooh-poohed the stylus phone but said she liked the one-button model if it meant she didn't need to use a lot of numbers. "Brudda, how do you charge it?" she asked. From his bag, Burns pulled another still-conceptual design, this one a thin metal cylinder with a whirlybird antenna on top. He showed the corn seller how to rotate the cylinder in small circles, causing the antenna to swing, which, he explained, in 15 minutes or so would generate enough power to charge her phone battery.
The woman picked up the futuristic gizmo and began to swing it; the antenna whipped around and around. She let out an enthusiastic whoop. Then a friend of hers who'd been sitting in the shadow of her umbrella started to laugh. Another woman, a spice seller perched on a stool next to small mountains of turmeric and cumin heaped on canvas cloths, began to laugh also. "Very nice," the corn seller said to Burns and Chipchase, swinging the antenna like a toy. "It's good!" Then, after a moment, she gathered her composure and handed the charger off to her son, a heavy-lidded teenager who was lounging on a sack of corn nearby. "Doing that," she said blithely as she returned to picking through her kernels of corn, "can be his job."


text:
'Though BlackBerry devices have packed in phones for years, holding them up to your head has always felt and looked awkward.'
'It's often difficult to find the sweet spot for both the earpiece and microphone.'
'It's slender and slab-like, comfortable in the hand, with the usual full QWERTY keyboard and a bright 160-by-240 color screen that looks especially good in sunlight.'
'Slow Web browsing.'
'While the Nokia N91 has been available in Europe and Asia for some time, it's just now hitting the United States, and unfortunately, it's starting to show its age.'
'Half-zoom is somewhat helpful, while maximum zoom is absolutely useless.'
'All the proprietary connectors that used to tie you into Nokia accessories are gone, thankfully.'
'quite small buttons'
'It was hardly intuitive, and to access some options required going into several menus and submenus.'
'Our outdoor shots offered excellent colour reproduction and crisp detail.'
'Encased in a conservative metallic shell, the V635 offers a sophisticated feel uncompromised by unnecessary flash.'
'Earset volume may be low for the hard hearing'
'"This is a great phone" '
'Sound is brutish but loud - always a bonus for video-calling or playing MP3s stored on the memory card.'
'The entire keypad is lit up by a bright blue backlight that turns on when needed (and stays off when not).'
'I do not like this phone'
'distinctive rotating display'
'Display photos of special events or loved ones, or an image from your favorite artist on the large, brilliant display'
'It has some great features, including stereo sound MP3 files and ringtones.'
'If you have some text stored in the box, the phone reactions slows down so that it's almost unacceptable.'
'total music immersion experience'
'Shame they couldn't have made it smaller.'
'poor standby battery life'
'built-in one-touch activation camera'
'Though it supports 65,000 colors, it wasn't the most vivid screen we've seen, and its small size (1.5 inches diagonal) didn't help things.'
'Ringer speaker may be low at times.'
ReviewGist helps you find the best products to buy by making sense of online reviews.
We are currently aggregating 376,500 reviews
covering over 29,474 products.
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subset: commoncrawl


text:
Amanda Bynes was arrested Friday in West Hollywood on suspicion of driving under the influence and side-swiping a police car, according to the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department.
The 26-year-old "Easy A" star tried to pass a marked police car in her BMW at the intersection of Robertson and Santa Monica boulevards about 3 a.m. Friday, police said.
The BMW collided with the right-rear quarter panel of the radio car, according to deputies. Each vehicle suffered minor paint damage.
Local news from across Southern California
No injuries were reported.
The former Nikelodeon star was booked at the West Hollywood Sheriff's Station and held on $5,000 bail.


text:
Submit a Claim Online
Or to speak to a representative, call:800-999-1030
We have a full line of products tailored to meet your needs coupled with programs specifically designed for teachers.
Find out why Horace Mann is right for you.
Spring has sprung! And while we're happy to see winter go, it may have left some damage in its tracks. Winter can be tough on your home's exterior, so now is the perfect time to head outside and do some damage control or preventative maintenance.
Clean your gutters. Poor drainage can cause water damage to your home. Clear your gutters and downspouts of debris, and check for any that are loose or leaking. You also want to ensure all downspouts are facing away from your home's foundation.
Inspect your roof. Look for missing or damaged shingles, rusted flashing or cracked caulk on vents. A good pair of binoculars is a great substitute for standing on a ladder if you're disinclined to climb.
Check your seals. Inspect the seals around your windows and doors for any that are loose, hardened or cracked. Repairing the seals will help prevent water from seeping inside your home and make it more energy efficient as you keep it cool during the hot summer months.
Trim trees and bushes. If you did this in the fall, you may not need to do it until later in the spring, but it's easiest to do before vegetation gets thick. When vegetation touches your house, it can transfer moisture to your roof and siding, which can be problematic. It can also provide rodents and insects easier access to your interior.
Fill in cracks. Check your driveway and sidewalks for cracks or shifting, and fill in any cracks with concrete filler or silicone caulk. It's also a good idea to power wash and seal the concrete.
Repair or replace missing paint and shingles. Exposed wood can become moist and begin to rot, which can lead to a host of issues, including leaks, mold, mildew and insect infestation.
A little spring maintenance will go a long way to help ensure your home is in optimal condition for the rest of the year. Now, go enjoy the spring weather!
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New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie's seemingly dour, shell-shocked facial expressions during Donald Trump's Super Tuesday victory speech ignited a plethora of meme's on social media.
And though the former Republican presidential candidate has asserted he wasn't being held hostage by the GOP frontrunner, "Saturday Night Live" couldn't help itself from mocking the normally outspoken governor, depicting him as an abductee forced to welcome Trump's brutal insults.
"SNL" alum Darrell Hammond reprised his roll as Trump in the show's cold open, which looked back at the "crazy week in politics" from CNN's election center with the network's host "Jake Tapper," played by cast member Beck Bennett.
U.S. & World
"Everyone loves me, I even got this fat piece of crap behind me now," Hammond's Trump said, pointing at an obedient Christie, played by Bobby Moynihan. "Isn't that right Chris?"
"Yes, sir. Thank you, sir. Please, sir, may I have another," Moynihan's terror-stricken Christie says.
Hammond's Trump boasted about running "the best campaign" the media has seen since "Germany in the 1930s," likening the discriminatory tone of Trump's campaign rhetoric to the rise of Adolf Hilter.
"I mean everyone loves me: racists, ugly racists, people who didn't know they were racists," Hammond says.
The sharpest commentary on the 2016 presidential race came in a satirical political ad titled "Voters for Trump" purporting to show what "real Americans" feel about the former "Apprentice" host, characterizing his ardent supporters as white supremacists. [[371190751, C]]
"The media's been saying pretty negative things about Donald Trump," the narrator begins as the camera rolls over a suburban American neighborhood. "But what are real Americans saying?"
The ad depicts close-up shots of blue collar folks singing Trump's praises, with Moynihan as a house painter, Vanessa Bayer as a housewife at the ironing board and Aidy Bryant as an office worker.
"He's the only one who's actually creating jobs," Moynihan says.
"He's authentic," Bayer gushes.
But as these "typical" Americans continue to defend their nominee, a wide-angle shot reveals Bayer is ironing a Klu Klux Klan hood, Taran Killan is wearing a Nazi swaztika armband and Moynihan painted the words "White Power" on the side of a house.
"Some of his ideas seem a little out there, but I like that he's looking towards solutions," Bryant says as she walks over to her bulletin board, covered with images that include President Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, and the word "Muslims" across the top.
The spoof came after a week-long campaign by other political comedy shows bashing Trump, including John Oliver's "Drumpf" campaign on "Last Week Tonight" and "The Daily's Show's" tweet-storm about the real-estate mogul being a fascist.
In a break from the political world, host Jonah Hill played a reporter on assignment from a low budget news show called "Inside SoCal." [[371191461, C]]
Hill, who is best known for his supporting roles as comic relief to Leonardo Dicaprio on "The Wolf of Wall Street" or Channing Tatum in "21 Jump Street," plays the lead reporter covering a breaking news story.
And what would be the top story for a low budget news show shot inside a garage? The town's most popular girl is having breast reduction surgery to the horror of all the boys who have dated her, or want to date her.
The Weeknd made a special cameo appearance during musical guest Future's performance . [[371190921, C]]


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Graduate education at Ithaca College involves the attainment of both an extended and more sophisticated knowledge of a discipline. In the course of graduate study, students enhance their ability to apply new skills and information toward more challenging professional situations. Graduate study in these disciplines fosters the qualities that characterize an educated person and professional worker -- logical interpretation of information, independent and constructive thought, highly refined skills, intellectual initiative, and a reasoned approach to all problems and situations.
The College's graduate programs began in 1943 with establishment of a graduate studies department, primarily to prepare teachers for master's degrees in physical education and music education. That department evolved into the Division of Graduate Studies, which currently offers 19 programs at the master's and doctoral levels.
Graduate Studies
The College has seven major academic units -- the Division of Graduate Studies, the Division of Interdisciplinary and International Studies, and the Schools of Business, Communications, Health Sciences and Human Performance, Humanities and Sciences, and Music.
An account of the development of the College since its founding in 1892 is given at the following website:
History of Ithaca College
Ithaca College is located in Ithaca, New York, a community of almost 50,000 year-round inhabitants in the heart of the Finger Lakes region. For more information about the local area, as well as detailed facts and statistics about the College, see the following:
Our Local Area
Facts in Brief
The following graduate degree programs are offered at Ithaca College. The numbers in parentheses are the Higher Education General Information Survey (HEGIS) classification codes.
Enrollment in other than registered or otherwise approved programs may jeopardize a student's eligibility for certain student aid awards. A graduate student should raise any questions about his or her program with the respective graduate chair.
With consultation and approval from the student's major adviser, a second major field may be listed on a student's transcript when 50 percent of the second program's additional coursework is completed (e.g., 15 additional credits for programs requiring 30 credits for completion). A second major field does not lead to an additional degree or additional certification.
Many graduate courses are offered during the various summer sessions. M.B.A. courses are offered during the first summer session. Study in music education, required for permanent teacher certification, can be completed in three or four summers. See the annual summer sessions catalog for course listings, registration procedures, fees, academic regulations, and housing, dining, and campus facilities available during the summer.
The catalog is online and can also be obtained through the Division of Continuing Education and Summer Sessions (CESS). For the summer sessions calendar, visit the CESS website.
Summer Sessions Catalog
Continuing Education and Summer Sessions
The Graduate Council determines and recommends to the provost and vice president for academic affairs policies and procedures in the general administration and conduct of the graduate program, including approval of the members of the graduate faculty. The council is responsible for reviewing and recommending curricula, determining the eligibility of candidates for degrees, and prescribing the conditions on which degrees are awarded.
The membership of the Graduate Council includes the dean of graduate studies, who chairs the council, deans of schools offering graduate programs, the registrar, the director of continuing education and summer sessions, the chair of each graduate program, and one student representative from each graduate program. Student representatives serve terms of one year but may be reappointed. The registrar and the director of continuing education and summer sessions serve the council as ex officio nonvoting members.
A student's behavior must not interfere with the activities of the College or with the pursuit by other students of educational objectives. Any behavior on the part of individual students or groups that endangers the health or safety of the College community will not be tolerated. Standards of conduct designed to protect the rights of all members of the College community and preserve the functioning of the College as an educational institution are published in appropriate College documents, such as the "Student Conduct Code."
Student Conduct Code
Ithaca College does not normally provide housing for graduate students. Graduate students interested in requesting on-campus housing should do so by contacting the Office of Residential Life at 607-274-3141. Ithaca College does not offer married, family, or specially designated graduate student housing.
Graduate students on campus live in our undergraduate housing areas. Summer housing is available for those who request it. For any housing questions please contact the Office of Residential Life.
For graduate students interested in off-campus housing, a wide range of apartments and other housing options are available in Ithaca and the surrounding communities. Although Ithaca College does not arrange for or inspect off-campus housing, the residential life office provides a listing of available rooms, apartments, and houses.
Residential Life Off-Campus Listings
Meal plans may be purchased at the time of registration.
The Ithaca College J. David Hammond Center for Student Health Services functions 24 hours a day during the spring and fall semesters and is prepared to expedite the care of any illness or injury that may occur to IC matriculated students. During the summer term, care is offered 8:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.
Hammond Health Center
The staff consists of full-time physicians, physician assistants, registered nurses, and support personnel. The health center has been accredited by the Accreditation Association for Ambulatory Health Care. It has a state-licensed clinical laboratory and X-ray department.
There is a fee charged for medications, X rays, laboratory work, and other special treatments.
The Ithaca College student health service urges all patients to comply with treatment and will educate students about the dangers of noncompliance. However, refusal of treatment will in no way affect the care or treatment given to the patient at any future date. A full statement of patients' rights is posted at the health center.
A health and accident insurance policy is available to graduate students. This insurance covers students at all times from August 15 to August 15 of the following year and supplements the regular College health service. For more information about insurance, inquire at the health center's business office at 607-274-3177.
The Ithaca College counseling center offers short-term individual, group, and relationship counseling, as well as referral to mental health resources in the community, at no charge to enrolled students. Counselors are also on call after hours to respond to psychological emergencies.
Counseling Center
Confidentiality is maintained in a manner consistent with New York State law and the ethical principles of the American Psychological Association. Counseling can help individuals address personal concerns, clarify values and feelings, make more effective decisions, and deal with a range of psychological difficulties such as depression and anxiety.
The counseling center staff includes licensed psychologists, social workers, and other counselors. To obtain more information or to schedule an appointment, call 607-274-3136.
The health promotion and substance abuse prevention program, a program of the counseling center, works to create a campus culture in which members make informed and responsible decisions about personal and community health. The health promotion program provides workshops, consultation, peer advocacy, staff and faculty development, services for students at risk, and research regarding health-related topics.
The health promotion resource room, located on the lower level of the Hammond Health Center, is open from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Monday-Friday and provides a variety of educational information, including pamphlets, journals, books, and audiovisual materials.
Graduate students on the threshold of the job market or additional schooling can gain valuable assistance from the professional counselors and trained student staff in the Office of Career Services. The office helps students identify interests and abilities, explore career opportunities, and develop résumé-writing and interviewing skills. Also offered are career information, testing services, videotaped mock interviews, and a career resource library. Ithaca graduates are also invited to join the Ithaca College Alumni Association Online Community.
The office brings recruiters from major corporations and nonprofit agencies to campus and helps coordinate interviews with potential employers. For additional information, visit the career services website or call 607-274-3365.
Career Services
The security of all members of the campus community is of vital concern to Ithaca College. An annual security report provides information on personal safety and crime prevention strategies, the law enforcement authority of the Office of Public Safety, policies and procedures for reporting any crimes that may occur on campus, and crime statistics for the most recent three-year calendar period. The College will provide upon request all campus crime statistics as reported to the United States Department of Education:
Campus Security
Further information related to the campus crime statistics may be obtained by contacting Robert Holt, director of public safety at 607-274-3353 or the Office of Student Affairs and Campus Life at 607-274-3374.


text:
B.J. Evans (Media Relations for U.S. Men's National Team)
Manager, Media Relations and Publications
Phone: 719-228-6800
E-Mail: email@example.com
Bill Kauffman (Media Relations for U.S. Women's National Team)
Manager, Media Relations and Publications
Phone: 719-228-6800
E-Mail: firstname.lastname@example.com
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (May 26, 2009) – USA Volleyball Head Coach Hugh McCutcheon (Christchurch, New Zealand), who led the U.S. Men's National Team to the gold medal at the 2008 Olympic Games before taking over the U.S. Women's Team in December 2008, has been named the 2008 National Coach of the Year by the U.S. Olympic Committee.
McCutcheon, 39, is the first volleyball coach to receive the award since the program was initiated in 1996. McCutcheon and the other honorees will be presented with their awards on June 13 during a luncheon at the 2009 National Coaching Educators' Conference in Pittsburgh. The conference will be held at the Sheraton Station Square and hosted by West Virginia University's Athletic Coaching Education Department.
"It's a wonderful honor," McCutcheon said from his office at the American Sports Centers in Anaheim, Calif. "I think in very large part it reflects the work and the success of the team and the staff. While it's nice to get singled out for this individual award, I am certainly accepting it on behalf of everyone who was part of that program."
As head coach of the 2008 U.S. Men's Volleyball Team, McCutcheon guided the squad to the gold medal at the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing - the first gold medal for the team since 1988.
Although hit by personal tragedy shortly after his arrival in China and missing the team's first three matches, McCutcheon returned to guide Team USA undefeated through the Olympic Games. The U.S. Men, ranked third entering the 2008 Olympics, defeated Venezuela, Italy, No. 4 Bulgaria, China, Japan, No. 5 Serbia in the quarterfinals, No. 2 Russia in the semifinals and finally No. 1 Brazil in the gold-medal match.
McCutcheon also led the U.S. Men to their first-ever FIVB World League title in 2008 and coached Team USA to a 29-5 record last season. As the head coach for the U.S. Men during the past Olympic quadrennial, he led the team to an overall 107-33 record.
McCutcheon accepted the U.S. Women's National Team head coaching position in December 2008, taking over for "Jenny" Lang Ping, who led the U.S. to a silver medal at the 2008 Olympic Games.
U.S. Olympic and Pan American sports organizations selected their 2008 Coaches of the Year as part of the USOC Coach of the Year Recognition Program. The winners in each category were chosen by a panel of coaching and sport education professionals.
The USOC Coach of the Year award was initiated in 1996. The program was developed using the philosophy that, to succeed in Olympic sport, athletes must strive for excellence almost from the moment they begin to compete. At every stage of their careers, coaches empower athletes to rise to the next competitive level of sport. If coaches do their job well, their athletes will ultimately receive the highest accolades for their achievements and become better human beings along the way. The USOC Coaching Committee developed the criteria for each Olympic sports organization to follow in selecting a Coach of the Year in both the elite and developmental categories.
Other coaches honored by the USOC were:
Developmental Coach of the Year Rajul Sheth, Table Tennis
Volunteer Coach of the Year Rita Gladstone, Tennis
Paralympic Coach of the Year Ken Armbruster, Paralympic Goalball
"Doc" Counsilman Science Award Honoree Dave Bennett, Wrestling


text:
Tai chi is a mind-body practice that goes back thousands of years.
Arthur Rosenfeld, one of the world's foremost experts, calls tai chi one of the crown jewels of traditional Chinese culture, and explains that it is built on a tripod: traditional Chinese medicine, Chinese martial art and Taoist philosophy.
Rosenfeld has been practicing tai chi for more than 30 years. His books are available online, his "Longevity Tai Chi With Arthur Rosenfeld" runs on PBS, and he has created a series of six short YouTube videos that do a masterful job of explaining tai chi. He is the tai chi go-to guy.
"One of the dimensions of me being in this field is that most really senior skillful guys in this art are not Yale literature majors, and they're not media people," he said. "They're old Chinese men. They're fantastically gifted masters, and I am dirt on their shoes. What they don't have is the ability to pass these on to people skillfully."
Rosenfeld, however, does. Here he offers five exercises that combine the body and the mind, a starter's kit if you will to tai chi. Learn them and grow; the result will be better physical and mental health and self-defense. "You have a recipe no other exercise can offer," he said.
Depending upon how many repetitions you want to do — Rosenfeld recommended a number with each exercise — this sequence could take from 10 to 20 minutes. He emphasized that because tai chi is a mind-body practice, "these exercises must be performed with mindful attention. If the mind wanders, tai chi is lost."
Click here for tai chi examples.
Tai chi is a mind-body practice that goes back thousands of years.


text:
How long will it take to get my order?
All orders placed before 13:00, Monday-Friday are usually dispatched on the same day. Orders placed any other time will be dispatched on the next working day.
This does not include pre-ordered items.
Once your order has been dispatched, we will send you an email informing you that your order is on its way.
Below is a rough guide of how long orders can take to get to you once they've been dispatched.
|Service / Destination
|Estimated delivery time
(business days)
|UK 1st Class
|2-3 days
|UK 2nd Class
|3-7 days
|Western Europe
|10-21 days
|- Spain, Portugal, Italy
|14-28 days
|Eastern Europe
|21-28 days
|USA / Canada
|10-21 days
|21-28 days
|Rest of the world
|7 days - 6 weeks
(depending on location)
These delivery estimates do not apply to pre-orders until they have been dispatched.
Pre-orders are dispatched to arrive as close to the release date as possible. International orders may take slightly longer.
Customs & Import Charges
All import and export costs are the responsibility of the customer. We have no control over the length of time your order will be held at customs for clearance and suggest that you contact them directly for further information. We mark all packages for overseas delivery with contents and order value marked accordingly.


text:
There's never been a better time
to apply to Otterbein University.
Apply online today!
I am a
Once you open the doors to the Battelle Fine Arts Center and hear the music pouring from the rehearsal rooms, you'll know that you've arrived someplace very special. Your musical talent is a gift. We love musicians. Whether you play an instrument, sing or create your own music, or want to teach, perform, cut CDs or manage in the music industry, we've got talented faculty to help lead the way.
Check out these areas:
Get to know...
Otterbein University, 1 South Grove Street, Westerville, OH 43081 614.890.3000
Otterbein University is a private, non-profit, United Methodist affiliated, regionally-accredited institution.
© 2019 Otterbein University. Otterbein University is an affirmative-action, equal-opportunity employer


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Find Our Latest Video Reviews on YouTube!
If you want to stay on top of all of our video reviews of the latest tech, be sure to check out and subscribe to the Gear Live YouTube channel, hosted by Andru Edwards! It's free!
Wednesday December 19, 2007 12:19 pm
Go is Top of the Line GPS
Posted by Sheila Franklin Categories: GPS, Transportation, Wireless / WiFi
TomTom has released its new GPS Go 920T with a 4.3-inch touchscreen, hands-free operation with text-to-speech ability, a built-in FM transmitter and enhanced positioning technology. With integrated Bluetooth remote and a storage capacity of 4GB, the device comes with maps of both Europe and North America. It has a RDS-TMC Traffic Receiver with a free year's subscription to its traffic warning service. If you want more mapping capacity, there is an SD slot for additional input. Available with a mounting arm, the Go 920T carries a top of the line price of $599.95 after holiday rebate.
Read More | TomTom
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text:
Browse the Handbook of Texas
Browse lists enable readers to search the Handbook of Texas Online by subject categories and historical time periods as well as alphabetically. Researchers can view all entries alphabetically by title. The Handbook also offers the opportunity to search by thematic topics (such as agriculture, education, law, ranching, peoples, visual arts, and more), time periods, and geographic locations by selecting from a menu of four choices: WHO, WHAT, WHEN, and WHERE.
Many major categories are also broken down into links for three subcategories: Overview, General, and Biographies. "Overview" articles present detailed summaries and chronologies of major subjects. The "General" subcategory contains a further breakdown of types of entries that cover an array of topics such as events, organizations, institutions, businesses, and more. "Biographies" include all of the biographical entries and their related subcategories for specific thematic subject.
Browse by Title:
Browse alphabetically all entries in the Handbook of Texas Online
Browse by Subjects:
- WHO - Browse all biographies alphabetically and browse through Texas Political figures: Governors, Republic of Texas Congressmen, and State Legislators.
- WHAT - Browse Handbook entries by major thematic classifications. Click on a major category and three subcategories (Overview, General, and Biographies) will appear. The "Peoples" classification contains a listing of twenty-five different cultural groups (such as Czechs, Germans, Mexican Americans, Vietnamese) with their own subcategories that direct users to browse groups of specific entries.
- WHEN - Browse groups of entries by time periods in Texas history, from Prehistory through the Texas Revolution up through modern times.
- WHERE - Search all Texas communities and Texas counties alphabetically and connect to the Texas Town Database and the Texas Almanac for a regional map, the latest population figures, and additional sources.


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In stock
Add instant shimmering colour to your celebration cakes, cupcakes, cookies and more with this PME lustre spray.
Please Note: This item cannot be shipped internationally, Mainland UK only.
Due to new shipping regulations aerosols can no longer be shipped by Royal Mail.
Use this PME Pearl lustre spray to colour your sugarpaste, marzipan, flowerpaste etc. with a beautiful shimmery lustre finish.
Ideal for all your celebration cakes, cupcake, cake pops etc.
Lustre sprays can also be painted or even sprayed into the lid of the can, then once dry dusted onto the desired area.
For a more controlled application use with PME spray gun.
To Use:
Shake well before use, Spray a little onto a paper towel to begin with so you can achieve the right colour on your cake. Hold at 45° angle and at least 6" from area that is to be covered.
Butane E943a; isobutane E943b; propane E944; ethyl alcohol; potassium aluminium silicate E555; flavour; titanium dioxide E171.
Allergy Advice:
Suitable for vegetarians & vegans.
Gluten free. Kosher certified.
May contain soya.


text: Farthingale chair, armless chair with a wide seat covered in high-quality fabric and fitted with a cushion; the backrest is an upholstered panel, and the legs are straight and rectangular in section. It was introduced as a chair for ladies in the late 16th century and was named in England, probably in the 19th century, for its ability to accommodate the exceptionally wide-hooped skirts known as farthingales. An earlier English name was "imbrauderer's chair," or "upholsterer's chair." The farthingale chair was one of the earliest comfortable upholstered seats and was used in many parts of Europe and the United States.


text:
George Clooney's got a new movie, "The American," out today and now it appears he's got a new project lined up, a political thriller that he's hoping to pack with A-list talent.
After sitting on the project for three years, Clooney is ready to get to work on "Farragut North," based on the off-Broadway play that debuted in 2007 about a political operative who gets caught up in a web of intrigue and scandal, reported Vulture.
"Farragut North" (the name is taken from the Washington DC metro station closest to the hub of lobbying in our nation's capitol) was written by Beau Willimon, who based the story loosely on his experience working on Howard Dean's run for president in 2004. Here's the synopsis from the 2009 Geffen Playhouse production:
U.S. & World
News from around the country and around the globe
Set against the backdrop of a close presidential race, Stephen ( Star Trek 's Chris Pine) a young press secretary working for a fast-rising candidate. With confidence and power beyond his years, he's convinced that he and seasoned campaign manager, Paul ( Sex & the City 's Chris Noth), can steer their team into the west wing without breaking a sweat. But before the polls close at the primaries, Stephen's perceived invincibility is shattered as he falls prey to backroom politics, the manipulations of veteran operatives and the wiles of a seductive young intern ( Juno 's Olivia Thirlby). With quick-witted banter and an inside look into the world of politics, Farragut North is a timely tale of hubris, loyalty and the lust for power.
Clooney is hoping to bring back Pine as Stephen, along with Phillip Seymour Hoffman as Paul, Paul Giamatti as the manager of a rival candidate, Evan Rachel Wood as the "seductive young intern," and Marisa Tomei as an investigative journalist.
We liked Clooney's "The American," which is out today, while Giamatti's film "Barneys Version" premieres at the Toronto International Film Festival Sept. 10, Hoffman's directorial debut, "Jack Goes Boating," arrives Sept. 23, and Pine can next be seen Nov. 12 in "Unstoppable" opposite Denzel Washington, in which they team up to stop a runaway train.


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I realize I've been a little M.I.A. lately, but I have a good excuse! I have started to use my organizing skills in a new way. As you may know, the grant that made my position possible at the San Francisco based Jewish Community Federation and Endowment Fund reached its successful completion early this spring. So, after many years, I left the work of advancing the lives of LGBT Jews in the very capable hands of Sasha T. Goldberg who is the Bay Area Director of Keshet (info).
I am still in the loop: I still serve on local committees for JCRC, NUJLS, and Keshet, proudly claim my membership at Sha'ar Zahav, as well as continue to be involved in the work of a variety of groups. After only a few months consulting outside of the Jewish community, I accepted a temporary position with the New Israel Fund as Interim Regional Co-Director while Becky Buckwald is out on maternity-leave through August. I am already deep into helping with the Annual Guardian of Democracy Dinner (info), shaping the logistics of NIF's International Board Meeting and promoting local events such as Love, Hate and the Jewish State (info).
Working with the brilliant folks like Orli Bein, Steve Rothman, Daniel Sokatch, Penina Eilberg-Schwartz, Hannah Ellenson and Etai Freedman has already given me an incredible opportunity to engage with topics that I care about in a whole new context.
This new professional chapter for me has just started and already it has been incredibly rewarding. While I don't know where I am specifically going to land again in September, I do know that I'd like to continue using my organizing skills for a cause I care about, but that could of course could be within a variety of areas.
I'm open to ideas and I want to hear from you! I'm excited to see what happens next! Much love and hope to see you soon!


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Bavarian Ulan Officer Fangschnur - Pakistanprice: contact company for price
We are the leading manufacturers and exporters of Blazer & Bullion Badges, military uniforms accessories & accoutrements, Caps & Visors, Masonic Regalia Products.
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Company Contact:
- Posted By: Eland Group
- Phone: 03008589090
- Address: Gali Pindi Araian Rang Mahal Street Rangpura City, Sialkot, Punjab , Pakistan
- Email:
- Website: http://www.elandgroup.biz/
Published date: November 16, 2016 -
- Business Description: We are the leading manufacturers and exporters of Blazer & Bullion Badges, military uniforms accessories & accoutrements, Caps & Visors, Masonic Regalia Products, R.A.O.B Regalia Products.
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text: Bot Exclusive Permissions Folgen grilme99 28. Dezember 2018 12:31 Personally, I think that bots need some more ability's and power in a server, and my solution to this is bot exclusive permissions. These are permissions that only bots can be granted. One major one that I be forever grateful to see is for the ability for bots to intercept a message before it appears for other users. This would be especially useful for automated moderation bots, like mine. My bot is able to detect inappropriate text, image and video using machine learning algorithms, but the bot has to be as fast as possible because the content will still show up for other users before it can be moderated. If this feature were to be added, I could make it so that messages only show up once they have been approved by my bot, and, to make it so the feature cannot be easily abused, you could make it so that messages can only be held back for up to a second, and maybe have some sort of rate limit where the bot can only hold 5 users back in a server at a time? 9


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Epidemic - Making of Third Exposure (Feat. Black Dada, ReddEyezz, Novaking) [Unsigned Artist]
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The Lausanne Movement is volunteer-driven and globally distributed. As such, we have no global headquarters or central office. The leaders in the Movement all work remotely from their local contexts, allowing for diversity in our leadership and very low overhead costs.
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Inventors killed by their own inventions? It happens.
You may know that Nobel-winning chemist Marie Curie died from the effects of the radioactive materials she studied, but what about the Franco-Austrian tailor who tried and failed to parachute from the Eiffel Tower, or the Russian blood transfusion pioneer who gave himself malaria-infected blood?
In the slideshow below, read the stories of 10 ill-fated inventors--all killed by their own inventions. While some of the creations were obviously ill-advised, others were just ahead of their time. Being the first person on the scene with a new invention comes with a whole set of hazards, especially when rockets are involved.
All photos are public domain unless otherwise noted.
Calling all HuffPost superfans!
Sign up for membership to become a founding member and help shape HuffPost's next chapter
Inventors Killed By Their Own Inventions


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Antitrust Case Filings
Antitrust Case Filings
To filter the list of cases, select desired options from the left navigation pane.
View the list of NAICS and SIC industry codes used by the Division. To view all industry codes, visit Census.gov.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2
|Case Open Date
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|Federal Court
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|U.S. v. Standard Oil Co. (New Jersey) and Potash Co. of America
|October 22, 1964
|Civil Merger
|New Jersey, District of
|Potash, Soda, & Borate Minerals, Potash, Soda, and Borate Mineral Mining
|U.S. v. Broadcast Music, Inc.
|December 10, 1964
|Civil Non-Merger
|New York, Southern District
|Lessors of Nonfinancial Intangible Assets (except Copyrighted Works), Patent Owners and Lessors


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The investigation panel of the International Crimes Tribunal (ICT) has started quizzing war crimes suspect Jamaat-e-Islami chief Motiur Rahman Nizami at its 'safe home'.
The questioning began at 10am on Thursday and it will continue until 5pm with a one-hour pause at noon, Abdur Razzak Khan, a member of the investigation committee told bdnews24.com.
Egyptian-born doctor and surgeon Ayman al-Zawahri is al Qaeda's second-in-command expected to succeed Osama bin Laden following his killing in a firefight with U.S.forces in Pakistan.
Zawahri has been the brains behind bin Laden and his al Qaeda network, and at times its most public face, repeatedly denouncing the United States and its allies in video messages.
In the latest monitored by the SITE Intelligence Group last month, he urged Muslims to fight NATO and American forces in Libya.
The Bangladesh Fund has begun pumping money into the sagging stock market with the purchase of a lot of 50 shares of government-run Titas Gas.
The open-ended mutual fund with Tk 5 billion in initial capital entered the market on Thursday, a day after the Securities and Exchange Commission approved its registered trust deed and certified its floating..
Manchester United will face Barcelona in a mouthwatering Champions League final later this month after they fielded a second-string side and still handed Schalke 04 a 4-1 thrashing on Wednesday.
United reached their third European Cup final in four seasons thanks to a 6-1 aggregate demolition of the Germans with two second-half goals from Anderson after Antonio Valencia and Darron Gibson had already put the tie out of reach.
The government-distributed pills have done it again.
Around 150 students of a government primary school of Mirzapur Upazila in Tangail district have fallen sick after swallowing the pills distributed by the health directorate as part of nationwide school de-worming campaign.
They have been admitted to the Upazila Health Complex, Mirzapur Kumudini Hospital and Tangail General Hospital for treatment.
Workers vandalised several open and serving restaurants on May Day—a holiday—in different parts of the capital.
Police said the vandalism started at 10am and lasted until noon in Karwanbazar, Gulistan and Hazaribagh areas.
Tejgaon police sub-inspector Mohammad Asad told bdnews24.com that the labourers vandalised eight to nine shops in Karwanbazar alone.
Dhaka, 3, Bangladesh
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DescriptionFrom SEO to performance, keeping your site optimized is no easy feat. Thankfully, there's Checkbot, the SEO, speed, and security tester for Chrome. Checking everything from broken links to duplicate content and insecure forms, this Chrome extension will tell you if you're following more than 50 of the web's current best practices on your site. You can test hundreds of pages in minutes, and Checkbot will tell you which fixes to make and why they're important. And, unlike other site checkers, Checkbot doesn't limit how many tests you can make: you're free to test as many sites as you want as often as you want!
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New England's Mohawk Trail
March 12, 2012 by Applegate Inn
The Mohawk Trail became the first scenic road in New England in 1914, and it has been sharing great views, history, and culture with motorists and bicyclists ever since.
Long before it became a road, The Mohawk Trail was a well-worn foot path used by Native Americans and then colonists. Metacomet, called King Philip, traveled "The Trail" some time around 1676. Benedict Arnold followed in his footsteps nearly 100 years later. It is thrilling for American history buffs to travel The Trail today.
The current Mohawk Trail spans more than 60 miles and travels through 50,000 acres of state parks and forests. It stretches from the Massachusetts-New York border to Millers Falls on the Connecticut River; in between, there are over 100 attractions worth exploring.
Read the rest of this page »


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Art Basel in Miami Beach attracts artists and art lovers from around the world and the entire city of Miami is transformed as multiple art fairs and festivals pop up from the beach to the Wynwood arts district and beyond.
Tachyons + (former Jacksonville noise collective members Logan Owlbeemoth and Omebi Velouria from Telepathik Friend) created trippy visuals using custom electronics and video effects during the Look Alive Festival at Churchill's Pub featuring Wolf Eyes and Silver Apples.
Zac Freeman had a piece displayed in the Context Art Miami show where Folio Weekly caught up with Overstreet Ducasse and Princess Simpson Rashid.
Ducasse's brilliant artwork was featured in two shows just north of Wynwood (including the African Heritage Cultural Arts Center). Florida painter Kevin Grass displayed seven new photo realistic / surreal paintings at Spectrum Miami. More
Al Letson isn't letting anyone off the hook.
If that's not clear in the buildup to John Coffey Refuses to Save the World, it becomes abundantly so when these imaginary characters get real.
"Black lives matter and so do imaginary black lives," Letson says after opening night of his play's first-ever staging, for The 5 & Dime, A Theatre Company.
The setup appears simple enough but also incredibly demanding of a talented cast — take fictional characters we know and know too well, then trap them in a room together. They are John Coffey of The Green Mile, the god of Bruce Almighty, Mother Abigail of The Stand, and Bagger of The Legend of Bagger Vance.
You might call them the "League of Extraordinary Black Stereotypes."
Here, as they've been called in the past by Spike Lee and others, they're "Magical Negroes."
Playwright Letson and director Michelle Simkulet utilize them to far more potent effect than their creators ever did — or could.
"The important thing about this script is that a lot of people who are creating our entertainment don't understand black people," Letson explained.
Letson makes it clear that his writing of these characters, especially John, came from a place of love, not loathing. Here, they fight for a chance to defy — if defying means simply to live real lives.
Letson wrote the play on a trip to the southeast African Republic of Malawi in 2012 — before the killing of Trayvon Martin, the acquittal of George Zimmerman, and the fatal shooting of Michael Brown.
Letson points out he could have written the play in 2000 or 2017. The news may be different, but the fact remains: "America does not deal with its race problem."
The WJCT host and producer of State of the Re:Union and Reveal, poet and artist may not be able to see the future, but he remains at the leading edge of critical … More
You might accuse the Artist Series of having a formula.
When closing out a season, take a 1950s' icon (or a few) and pop them in a feel-good show that's heavy on nostalgia with a narrator who'll make sure no dullards are left in the dust.
In 2014, the Artist Series did that with one of the weakest shows they've brought to the Times-Union Center for the Performing Arts in years — in Million Dollar Quartet (see Folio Weekly review: Mediocre Quartet).
In 2015, the formula proves tried and true and not totally tired. The legendary Lucy and Ricky Ricardo deliver where Elvis and company could not.
The opening of I Love Lucy Live on Stage proves uneven — a little too much exposition from the Desilu Playhouse Host (played by Mark Christopher Tracy). He offers three too many era-setting 1950s' quips (at least), and the production would be smarter to run stars Thea Brooks and Euriamis Losada on stage sooner.
Brooks has the stage command and charm to create a lovable Lucy who's more than enough to carry the comedy past its weaker moments.
Losada has the charisma and voice to wow. Both hit the familiar catchphrases — "you've got some 'splainin' to do" — for those old enough to remember the groundbreaking show or curious enough to catch episodes on TV Land. Neither goes into caricature in roles that risk just that.
Kevin Remington and Lori Hammel have their moments as Fred and Ethel Mertz with comic chemistry to match Brooks and Losada. The commercial breaks, beginning with one for Brylcreem, mostly hit their marks.
The crowd at the T-U Center was decidedly more, well, experienced than for The Book of Mormon or even Annie, and they went home happy.
Some of those who laughed up Lucy might have walked out of last month's F-bombing-dropping The Book of Mormon. That's fine. The theater crowd in Jacksonville is diverse enough and risk-taking enough to … More
The world is divided into two distinct groups: Those offended by The Book of Mormon and those still laughing at the jokes days or even weeks later.
If you're still not sure where you belong, consider:
• "F-You, Heavenly Father?! Holy, moley! I said it like 13 times!"
• "I know you're really depressed, what with all your AIDS and everything."
• "I can't believe Jesus called me a dick!"
• "I have maggots in my scrotum!"
I'm laughing as I type these, and you'll have to trust that they're even funnier when sung on stage than read off a computer screen.
With Mormons in the cross hairs, Trey Parker and Matt Stone (the creators of South Park) are unrelenting. They skewer from every angle. They know God has a plan, and one of their stars believes "that plan involves me getting my own planet."
Stone and Parker have made a career (and millions) off vulgarity and sacrilege. They've pushed the line so far that most of the crowd at the Times-Union Center on Wednesday night — with a median age likely in the late 40s or 50s — was laughing far too hard to be offended. There's certainly a subset of Jacksonvillians who might find this offensive, but they aren't the type of crowd to spend $122 a seat to take a chance.
The stars of The Book of Mormon, David Larsen (as Elder Price) and Cody Jamison Strand (as Elder Cunningham), are a revelation. They're a classic oddball pair sent off to a village in Uganda to convert the locals while trying to avoid tribal warlord General Butt-Fucking Naked.
Elder Price's high-energy narcissism could easily go over the top in less skilled hands. Here, Larsen nails it.
That gives Strand the chance to "Man Up" as Elder Cunningham. By then, he's easily won over the crowd, going from the awkward weirdo who's just looking for the Type-A Price to be his best friend to a plucky hero ready to share the Book of Mormon, even if he hasn't read it.
Stone, Parker and Robert Lopez weave … More
The first week in December is becoming know as Miami Art Week every year since Art Basel (the world's premier international contemporary art fair formed in Basel, Switzerland in 1970) started to work with roughly 250 leading art galleries around the world to showcase work in the Miami Beach convention center. The show spills out into the environment transforming Collins Park and surrounding public spaces with sculptures, film, and live performance art. With Art Basel comes over 20 other major art fairs which take over an area stretching from South Beach to downtown Miami to the Wynwood Arts District.
Northeast Florida artists always flock south to participate in this international spectacle, which draws over 70,000 people from around the globe.
I met Florida painter Kevin Grass at the Red Dot art fair in 2013 as he was selling an original work to a Jacksonville resident. This year, partially aided by a crowd funding campaign, Grass was set up in the Spectrum art show run by the same people who put on Artexpo in New York. "It worked out so much better for me than Red Dot did. A guy who wants to show my work in Shanghai has already followed up with me from the show. I'm keeping my fingers crossed!"
Allow at least four days if you ever make the trek south for Art Basel and the surrounding art fairs. Miami can seem rough, decadent and even Babylonian. The beautiful weather and transformation possible through such a grand event as multiple international contemporary art fairs make it an epic journey.
Below are the personal takes by four Northeast Florida artists who attended and participated in this year's festival:
"What I am always so grateful for is the fact that I can take a drive down I-95 and find myself at the very center of the contemporary art world. And I feel grateful that I can experience all of this once every year while never even leaving my state. This year I visited four different fairs in three days. It was the most I had ever … More
Jacksonville filmmaker Damian K. Lahey can be a bit of a recluse at times, so — being the annoyingly prodding journalist friend that I am — I attempted to crack open his oyster shell and, in the spirit of All Hallows' Eve, ask him to give me a list of his favorite horror films. For those not familiar with Lahey from his award-winning Indie film work, his feature-length movies include Cocaine Angel and The Heroes Of Arvine Place, both shot here in picturesque Cowford. Arvine Place, a Christmas holiday-themed movie, is currently finishing up its festival run after winning several awards, and will be released this December on Blu-ray and all major digital platforms. The tireless Lahey has also just completed post-production on a lil' horror/comedy short that he shot in L.A. in July called Soccer Moms In Peril, and is in pre-production on his next feature, which will be shooting in Jacksonville at the beginning of 2015.
Anyway, Lahey agreed to churn out the list at my behest. Curiously (and I would say criminally) missing from his compilation is Tales From the Crypt: Bordello of Blood, featuring a post-relevancy Corey Feldman and pre-right wing Dennis Miller. I'll now step aside and let Mr. Lahey take over the scene from here:
Lahey: When RDS3 asked me to shoot him a list of my favorite horror movies, I was already tired from a long day of work and writing. Nonetheless, I threw back a can of HyperFizzics (a potent locally produced energy drink) and marched forth. Suddenly, it was 4 in the morning and I had not only finished this list, but had also nearly completed the construction of a fully operational time machine in the basement of my apartment building AND finished reading all of Dave Sim's Cerebus tomes.
Now, this is a purely subjective list. This is not what I believe are the best horror movies or the most influential horror movies. This is a list of MY … More
When Sir Paul's people hook up media types with review tickets, they really hook you up with review tickets. Like, on the floor, 12th row, maybe a hundred feet from the man who has defined rock 'n' roll for the last 50 years, a living legend in every sense of the word. These were $500 seats, as I heard some clearly intoxicated bro behind me announce. (My photographer was not so lucky; he learned that his photo pass only granted him access for the first two songs. After that, he was escorted out of the building, and had to wait outside for me, as I was his ride. Clearly, I got the better end of that deal.) For that kind of coin, you expect not just a concert, but a show. And Sir Paul delivered.
Before we continue, a confession: I wasn't a huge Wings fans, beyond maybe "Live and Let Die" and "Band on the Run." And I'm not sure I could name three songs from the entirety of McCartney's solo efforts, but then again, neither could most of the 12,000 or so people in attendance. Without John Lennon as a sort of ballast, McCartney leans a little too much toward sap and sentiment. That's what made The Beatles work so well: John and Paul balanced out each other's impulses. And so I, like almost everyone else, was hoping for a set list deep in Beatles songs. We got what we came for — "Yesterday," "Back in the USSR," "Paperback Writer," "Maybe I'm Amazed," "Magical Mystery Tour," etc. — especially toward the end of the evening.
When you are Paul McCartney, and you are doing a world tour, you can afford to hire some of the finest musicians on the planet, and McCartney's backing band was indeed flawless, effortless, as you would expect. And while Paul's voice showed its 72 years from time to time, especially on the high parts of "Maybe I'm Amazed" — no, Times-Union, he has not … More
When Paul McCartney rolls into town this weekend, the legendary statesman of rock gives old and new fans of The Beatles a chance to reflect on a member of one of the most seismic forces of pop culture of the 20th century. Yet there is another person who, over the years, and almost by default, has become the proverbial "fifth Beatle." Vilified by most, glorified by some, Yoko Ono might forever be known as the person who "broke up The Beatles," when in fact most Beatles bibliophilia points the guilty finger at Sir Paul. Regardless of who pulled the plug, like that crazy relative every family seems to have, the one that is unilaterally loved or loathed by the rest of kin, there is no in between with Yoko.
Why is Yoko the target of such animosity? To some degree, she was surely a victim of the place and the time. When she met John Lennon in 1966, the Western world was only two decades away from the aftershocks of WWII and knee-deep in the conflict in Viet Nam. Second-wave feminism was just beginning to rise. Would it be an overstatement to believe that there was an immediate suspicion, if not outright prejudice, towards an Asian woman (who was – gasp – a strong-minded artist in her own right) who would dare snag the Alpha Male of the Fab Four?
By the time John met Yoko (or vice versa) she had already established herself as a viable force on the NYC avant garde art scene, having collaborated with creative heavyweights like John Cage and La Monte Young and participated in a variety of visual and performance art activities. Art school dropout John was admittedly drawn to Yoko for her artistic output - he first met her at London's Indica Gallery, which was exhibiting a show of her conceptual work. Over the next decade-plus, and up until John's murder, the line between the pair's romantic and creative partnership remained in a steady state of diffusion. Much to the dismay of close-minded Beatles fans, Yoko was … More
Among his CEO duties helming self-started Grand Hustle Records, rubbing elbows with the likes of Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe in Hollywood films, and serving two stints in county clinks, it's undeniably impressive that Atlanta-based rapper T.I. (pictured) has found time to write and release eight studio albums, nearly all to chart-topping reception. The three-time Grammy-winning rubberband man brings his brand of hip-hop street cred to Jacksonville's Aqua Nightclub. Say what you will about one-dimensional songwriting, objectification of women and migraine-inducing grammar – this man knows how to top charts and fill clubs.
When you play the game of thrones, you win or you die. Or sometimes you just enjoy a really fabulous Game of Thrones-inspired cocktail. Superfans celebrate their obsession this weekend with a GOT-themed party, complete with fire-dancers, GOT-inspired burlesque shows and a costume contest. The best represented house will claim the Iron Throne and the glory that goes with it, and all can take pictures seated on the massive replica, created just for the event. Oh, and, uh, brace yourselves. Winter, and lots of geeky-fun cosplay, is coming. More