text:
Admissions Requirements
1. Online Graduate Application Form
Required for all applicants.
2. Non-refundable $65 Application Fee
Required for all applicants.
3. Official Transcripts
Required for all applicants.
|Apply Now
Official transcripts of all undergraduate and graduate work are required. Transcripts must be submitted from each institution attended, even if transfer units appear on another document. If you attend(ed) an institution with pass/fail grades, please also include any accompanying narrative evaluations.
It is the applicant's responsibility to see that all transcripts are submitted as a part of the application. It may be necessary to submit transcripts on which final grades have not yet been posted, in which case you should provide supplementary transcripts as soon as possible. If there is a delay in processing your official transcript request, you should submit unofficial photocopies of transcripts in the interim. Without a complete set of transcripts, your application will be considered incomplete.
International applicants and those who received bachelor's degrees and/or master's degrees from higher education institutions outside the United States are required to submit official transcript evaluations. See the Graduate Admissions Requirements for further instructions.
4. Grade Point Average Exemption Petition
Required only if GPA is below 3.0.
California School of Professional Psychology requires that applicants have an undergraduate and graduate (if applicable) minimum grade point average of 3.0 on a 4.0 scale. If your undergraduate or graduate (if applicable) GPA is below 3.0, you must submit a petition requesting an exemption from this academic requirement. Please use the designated space in the online application to indicate which of the following options will constitute your GPA exemption petition:
- A brief statement discussing past special academic or personal circumstances explaining academic performance below 3.0
- Official copies of test scores (GRE) supporting academic ability (strongly recommended)
- A list of scholarly publications supporting past academic/intellectual achievement
If you choose to submit the statement or the supporting publication material, please do so in the GPA Exemption Petition field on the online application. If you choose to submit official test scores, please provide additional detail in the Test Scores section of the online application.
5. Resume/Curriculum Vita
Required for all applicants.
Submit a current resume or curriculum vita, which includes your experience relative to the field of clinical psychology, including volunteer work if applicable.
6. Essay
Required for all applicants.
Applicants to all Clinical Psychology programs must submit an essay as a part of the application. Please respond in one comprehensive essay of 6-7 double-spaced pages to the following, using distinct sections for each part. Include your name and the page number at the top of each page.
A. A brief autobiographical sketch. Discuss your life up to now: your family, friends, home, work and community. We are particularly interested in those experiences most relevant to your interest in professional psychology and how those experiences have helped formulate your career goals (at least 3-4 pages).
B. Since many different graduate programs exist, and the choice is such an important one, explain specifically why you have chosen to apply to the PsyD program or the PhD program at CSPP, and which aspects of CSPP, its programs, its approach to diversity, and its mission have attracted you to the school (1 page).
C. What research or applied clinical problem would you like to explore in your PhD dissertation? Please be specific. Tell us something about your knowledge of research methods and other investigative formats, integration of the professional literature on the topic, and the application of theory and scholarship to this research problem. We are interested in your own past activities and experiences as a scholar or researcher, and encourage you to draw on those experiences. (1-2 pages)
D. In what emphasis, proficiency or academic area would you choose to concentrate your studies at CSPP? Please relate this to your career goals.
Doctoral Respecialization Applicants: Please answer sections A, B and D (understanding that you are applying as a respecialization candidate rather than PhD or PsyD per se). Instead of question C, submit a copy of your dissertation abstract.
7. Course Descriptions
Course descriptions are required in the following two instances:
Graduate Entry Requirement: If you are using courses to meet the graduate entry requirements for a program, you must submit course descriptions if the courses you are using to fulfill the required subjects are titled differently from program requirements. Appropriate documentation includes copies of course descriptions, outlines or syllabi. This information should be submitted with your application material.
Clinical Psychology Graduate Entry Requirement: Preparation in Psychology
You must have completed one of the following three options prior to matriculation. All coursework used to fulfill graduate entry requirements must have been completed prior to beginning the program. All coursework must have been taken at fully accredited institutions. Please use the designated space in the online application to indicate how you are meeting the graduate entry requirement.
Option #1: Earned a BA/BS degree in psychology. (A master's degree will not fulfill this requirement.)
Option #2: If the BA/BS degree is not in psychology, you must have completed coursework in the following four areas with a grade of "C" or better:
For Fall 2016 starts and beyond:
- Statistics
- Abnormal Psychology or Psychopathology
- Experimental Psychology/Research Methods
- Physiological Psychology, Learning/Memory, Cognitive Psychology or Sensation/Perception
Option #3: Earned a score in the 80th percentile or better on the GRE Psychology Test. Official test scores are required for this option.
Content for the coursework option is as follows:
STATISTICS: The nature of normal distribution, principles of sampling theory, probability, simple statistics (t-tests, F-ratios, chisquare, r, non-parametric), introduction to analysis of variance. May be taken outside the psychology department.
ABNORMAL PSYCHOLOGY/PSYCHOPATHOLOGY: Major disorders, personality disorders, sexual disorders, psychophysical disorders, adjustment reactions, alcoholism and drug abuse, child psychopathology, organic brain syndromes.
EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY: Introduction to scientific procedures and methods in psychology. Directed experience in research design and control, analysis, bibliographic and report writing techniques. May include a specific research techniques course in perception, physiology, learning, or complex behavior (social, cognition).
PHYSIOLOGICAL PSYCHOLOGY: The study of human behavior from a physiological viewpoint. Sensorimotor systems, sleep, dreaming and attention, motivation, neural transmission and synaptic function, heredity, drugs, organic brain pathology. Must focus on the relationship between the psychological and physiological aspects of behavior.
LEARNING THEORY: Broad theoretical coverage of such learning theories as classical and operant conditioning, Gestalt, functionalism, mathematical learning theory, information theory, technology of instruction. Theorists include Pavlov, Thorndike, Guthrie, Hull, Tolman, and Skinner. Should not be limited to a single theory or theorist.
COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY: Survey of cognitive psychology: how people acquire, represent, transform, and use verbal and nonverbal information. Perception, attention, imagery, memory, representation of knowledge, language, action, decision making, and thinking should be covered.
SENSATION/PERCEPTION: Acquisition of information about physical world through basic sensory mechanisms and perceptual processes. Perception of objects, surfaces, space, motion, and events. Connections between information, computations, and biological mechanisms in vision, audition, and other systems.
Alliant's Continuing Education Division offers many of the prerequisite courses in an online format. Contact your admissions counselor or the CE website for details.
Transfer Credit: If you are petitioning to receive transfer credit for previous graduate work, you must submit a detailed coursework portfolio along with your application, which includes course outlines, syllabi or letters from instructors describing specific course content for all relevant graduate courses completed. If coursework was taken at more than one institution, indicate the institution where each course was taken.
Applicants to CSPP graduate programs may be eligible to receive credit for previous graduate work, at the discretion of the program to which they are admitted. These credits must be completed with a grade of "B" or better from a regionally accredited institution within the past seven years. Applicants to the San Diego campus Clinical Psychology PhD or PsyD programs may also submit verification of supervised professional experience, and should contact the campus admissions office for additional information.
A maximum of 30 semester units of graduate coursework can be accepted into a doctoral program. All applicants must meet the graduate level entry requirements for the program of application before they will be reviewed for transfer credit. Program-specific information about transfer credit eligibility may be obtained from the admissions office and is included in the university catalog.
8. Test Scores
Test scores are required in the following three instances. In these cases, please include this information in the Test Scores section of the online application.
- English Proficiency: Applicants whose native language is not English or who have not earned an undergraduate or graduate degree from an accredited U.S. higher education institution are required to submit test scores to show English proficiency. Please see the Alliant International University Graduate Admissions Requirements for further instructions. If you have a unique situation and can demonstrate English proficiency in a manner not outlined in one of these options, please contact your admissions counselor directly to request an exemption from this requirement.
- GPA Exemption Petition: Applicants may elect to submit GRE scores to support the GPA Exemption Petition.
- Graduate Entry Requirement: Applicants may elect to submit GRE Psychology Subject Test scores to fulfill the Graduate Entry Requirement.
9. Recommendations
Two recommendations are required for all applicants.
Recommendations should be from references familiar with your work, your academic abilities, or your potential for scholarship and professional accomplishment. If you have been out of school for several years, please feel free to submit recommendations from persons who are familiar with you on any level of professional involvement.
10. Additional Requirements for International Applicants
International applicants should review the additional requirements outlined in the Alliant International University Graduate Admissions Requirements.


text:
PORTLAND, Ore. — Most of the 112 protesters arrested in Portland last week didn't vote in Oregon, according to state election records. Approximately 30 percent did cast a ballot in Oregon or in another state.
At least seventy-nine demonstrators either didn't turn in a ballot or weren't registered to vote in the state.
Following Tuesday's presidential election of Donald Trump, thousands of people took to the streets in downtown Portland for five straight nights. The activity included at least one night that the police declared to be a riot, with more than $1 million in property damage. The bulk of the arrests happened on Friday and Saturday evenings as protesters faced off against police.
KGW compiled a list of the 112 people arrested by the Portland Police Bureau during recent protests. Those names and ages, provided by police, were then compared to state voter logs by Multnomah County Elections officials.
Records show 39 of the protesters arrested were registered in the state but didn't return a ballot for the November 8 election. Thirty-five of the demonstrators taken into custody weren't registered to vote in Oregon.
Kevin Grigsby was one of 71 arrested during the Saturday night protest. He said he didn't do anything wrong, but told KGW he also did not vote.
"I did not (vote) and the reason why is because we know that the electoral college is really what matters the most. And I think that we need to change that because your vote doesn't matter if you don't have enough electoral college points.," said Grigsby.
Another protester said those arrested are not representative of the thousands who took to the streets last week.
"You just look at your sample and it's the people who got arrested. And the people who got arrested, I just don't think they're representative of the majority of the people who are out protesting."
It is unclear if those who aren't registered in Oregon are registered to vote in other states. Most of those gave Oregon addresses as their official residence in court records.
Four of the 112 arrestees are under the age of 18 and thus not eligible to vote, and 34 of the protesters did vote.
There have been theories floating around the internet that protesters are being brought in from elsewhere and encouraged by outside agitators.
Our analysis of court records shows the majority of those arrested in Portland are from either Oregon or Washington. Of the 112 arrested protesters we looked at, 89 listed Oregon addresses and seven listed Washington addresses.
One listed a California address and one listed a Texas address. Fourteen protesters didn't have addresses listed in court records.
Discuss this story on our Facebook page now
Statewide, nearly 79 percent of Oregon's registered voters cast their ballots, representing just over 2 million votes. While nearly 9 out of every 10 Republican and Democratic voters did vote, only 63 percent of those not registered with one of those parties did participate. Officials attribute some of the lack of voting to Oregon's new motor voter law, which has automatically registered hundreds of thousands of people as new voters.
This article originally stated that 35 people were registered to vote and did not. One woman who was arrested told KGW she recently moved to Washington and did vote in Washington. She was also registered to vote in Oregon.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
15 killed in Afghan attacks as vote count stops
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Attacks across Afghanistan, including hundreds of Taliban fighters swarming police checkpoints across the south, killed at least 15 people Saturday, officials said, as a recount in the country's presidential election halted before a major holiday.
The Taliban attacks focused on Kandahar province, where Taliban fighters killed six police officers — including a district police chief — in assaults on some 15 checkpoints, said Dawa Khan Menapal, a spokesman for the provincial governor. Menapal said reinforcements later arrived to combat the Taliban fighters and the combat continued into Saturday night.
In Helmand province, a bomb hidden inside a motorcycle killed four civilians and wounded four others in Marjah district, said Omer Zwak, a spokesman for the governor of Helmand province. In Kabul, a bomb blast killed an army officer and wounded his driver, police spokesman Hashmat Stanikzai.
In Herat province, gunmen on motorcycles shot and killed two army officers in the city of Herat, said a provincial security official who spoke on condition of anonymity as he wasn't authorized to brief journalists.
In a blow to hoped-for peace talks, the Taliban's reclusive leader warned Friday that a bilateral security pact allowing thousands of U.S. troops to stay in Afghanistan beyond the end of this year will mean more fighting. Mullah Mohammad Omar called on both Afghan presidential candidates not to sign the agreement.
"We believe the war in Afghanistan will come to an end when all foreign invaders pull out of Afghanistan and a holy Islamic and independent regime prevails here. Presence of limited number of troops under whatever title it may be will mean continuation of occupation and the war," Mullah Omar said in a message issued ahead of the Eid al-Fitr holiday that marks the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. The message was translated into Dari, Arabic, English and Pashto.
Meanwhile in Kabul, Afghanistan's Independent Election Commission stopped a recount in the runoff presidential election. Commission chairman Ahmad Yousuf Nouristani told reporters that the recount will resume later next week after Eid al-Fitr .
Unofficial and disputed preliminary results of the June 14 runoff election showed former Finance Minister Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai well ahead of his rival, former Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah.
But since fraud was alleged on both sides, a deal negotiated by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry provides that every one of the 8 million ballots will be audited under national and international supervision over three or four weeks.
Sorry we are not currently accepting comments on this article.


text:
Louis Vuitton Monogram Pochette Accessoires 4154031
This item is no longer available
This is an authentic, pre-owned LOUIS VUITTON Pochette Accessoires Bag. This is the popular and classic petite tote. It features the signature Monogram canvas with a detachable vachetta leather strap. The interior has a brown textile lining with space for your small necessities and a gold-tone zip closure. It's the great handbag for any occasion. This item is in very good condition, will have minor signs of wear and/or use, hardly noticeable. Please view photos carefully for details. Pay close attention to sizes and measurements.
- Handle Drop: 6.3 in.
- Condition Quality: Very Good
- Color: Brown
- Material: Descriptive Monogram
- Exterior Condition: Very Good
- Hardware Description: Gold Hardware
- Height: 5.1 in.
- Interior Condition: Very Good
- Interior Pockets: None
- Length: 1.6 in.
- Material: Canvas: Monogram
- Width: 8.3 in.
Authenticity code: Louis Vuitton
Item Condition: Pre Owned
Product Code: 4154031
Read more about Louis Vuitton Date Code here.
All photos are of actual item being sold. © 2007-2019 LuxeDH.
This Louis Vuitton® item is guaranteed to be authentic. Louis Vuitton is a registered trademark of Louis Vuitton. LuxeDH is not affiliated with or represents Louis Vuitton in any way or form.
All pre owned designer handbags come with a white LuxeDH dust bag. New with Tags items come with original tags attached and original designer dust bag, if applicable.


text:
Ceira Roberts took the liberty of using Levi's backyard to sunbath while he was at the beach surfing. When he arrived back at his place, he was surprised that his hot MILF neighbor was laying poolside in a bikini with her big tits hardly covered. Hunter went into full stealth mode, he maneuvered around trees and boulders until he was close enough to capture his prey. Levi reached for one of Ceira's big boobs and she was startled. Soon after the pleasantries, Hunter fucked Ceira all over his backyard and then sent her home with a mouth full of cum.
Source: Realitykings.com


text:
A family were told they were lucky to be alive after a dodgy workman bodged the job of moving their boiler – filling their home with deadly carbon monoxide.
A judge at Derby Crown Court heard Steven Colson put the Tingay family and their neighbours at risk of carbon monoxide poisoning or explosion.
Nazia and Neil Tingay, along with their teenage daughter, started feeling ill after Steven Colson - using the name Steven Barkway and trading under a company called SBC Bathrooms - was contracted to move their boiler at their flat in Ambervale House, Moor Road, Ashover, in 2010.
Nazia, a project manager, said: "I'd been saying to my husband, 'I don't know what's wrong with me, I've been so light–headed'."
The couple had British Gas inspectors look at the boiler and it was immediately found to be unsafe.
"They said it's putting out gas and we're surprised you're not dead," Nazia added.
"I think the only thing that saved us was the fact that it was summer and we had the windows open."
Speaking in court Tim Pole, prosecuting on behalf of HSE, said: "It exposed the occupants of that flat and the neighbouring flats to a serious risk of harm. There were potential catastrophic consequences that could have come from it."
The 46–year–old pleaded guilty to four offences of contravening the Health and Safety Act 1974.
Mr Pole said Colson, of New Street, Bolsover, had falsely claimed he was a qualified gas fitter and would be able to move the family's boiler while carrying out work on their bathroom. But Colson fitted the boiler in such a way that dangerous fumes could not be dispersed and it was impossible for flue products to exit and fresh air to enter.
Mr Pole said this could have led to a build up of lethal carbon monoxide fumes and potentially an explosion. He added that Colson had put a screw through a carbon monoxide detector in the family's home, rendering it useless.
Laura Pitman, defending, said her client had never claimed to be a qualified gas fitter and had not sought to carry out work he was unqualified to do.
"He is deeply ashamed by his actions," she added. "He offers no explanation for why he did what he did other than he is a man that had a legitimate business."
Judge David Pugsley said Colson showed a "cynical, callous and reckless disregard for other people."
He sentenced him to two months in prison and ordered to pay £1,000 costs.


text:
Received the following question from a reader of the blog:
I notice that I/we can no longer read full posts in Google Reader (or other feed readers, I'd imagine). Is this because you're now sporting ads from an ad network? (And if not, might you consider resetting the new and handsome looking blog back to full feeds?)
When we talked to our tax preparers this year, I decided I would try to write off some of the not insignificant costs for the blog.
Talking to them, however, they told me it is difficult to claim these expenses unless you are at least trying to make money off of what you are doing. Since I have never even tried to make a cent off the blog, I decided the easiest way to try to make money, would be to run an ad network. Not that the fairly meager traffic which crosses the blog will actually even make enough money to pay for the hosting.
What do people think of the Foodbuzz ads? They are often for giant companies like Quaker and whatnot, but I find them fairly tasteful and non-distracting. Besides, I do, in fact, have Oatmeal for breakfast every day, though from Bob's Red Mill, not Quaker.
I briefly tried google ad words, but they kept putting up ads for things that I was trash talking in the posts, so that really didn't work for me.
I have been experimenting with truncating the RSS feeds, not to drive traffic, but to prevent content theft. There are a lot of sites out there that harvest RSS feeds and republish them without credit. I guess they somehow make money from them using google ad sense. A number of my friends have fallen prey to these "sploggers", as have I. Apparently the two best ways to prevent content theft are to include a copyright in your RSS feed and to truncate your feed.
How inconvenient is this for people?
I'm still experimenting with the settings of the "Better Feed" plugin so nothing is really written in stone at the moment.


text:
Your Study Guides and Strategies starts here!
You are not alone if you have
attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder.
About 4% of school age children are also affected.
In addition, other students have one or a few of the characteristics of ADHD.
These strategies are suggested as part of a professionally organized program of assistance. They are derived from the American description of ADHD1. However, as a student, you also have your own personal learning style, including "intelligences" (c.f. Kolb), personality types (c.f. Myers-Briggs), etc. These will be helpful to know and develop in overcoming ADHD
In class:
To help you follow instructions:
Answering out of turn, or interrupting the class or teachers is normal for ADHD, but it is best to remember that you are trying to learn
To take good notes is task for all students. These techniques may give you an advantage:
To help you concentrate:
To help you remember:
To help with details
Remember that making mistakes, or overlooking details, is not for lack of intelligence, but rather a characteristic of this condition.
Help with learning
Take care of yourself; get the help you need:
Patience is a challenge for those with ADHD.
If you are feeling angry, discouraged, or frustrated over your progress, find some support. Our learning involves family, teachers, professionals, as well as ourselves. We all need patience. Their messages should be steady and consistent, but try to understand if they aren't always so.


text:
To meet the demand for rapid dissemination of information, many reports are now available on the web. Links below will take you to full text reports PDF format.
Copies of reports are available from BOEM free of charge, as long as supplies last by contacting the Alaska Region at firstname.lastname@example.com. Once the supply is exhausted, copies can be purchased from the National Technical Information Service (NTIS) at www.ntis.gov, or borrowed through an Interlibrary Loan from the Alaska Resources Library & Information Services (ARLIS) or reviewed at participating Federal Depository libraries.


text:
Cobra Bio Cell+ Orange
Year Introduced: 2014
Type: Fairway Wood
Head material: 17-4 Stainless Steel
Home » Golf Equipment » Cobra » Fairway Wood » Cobra Bio Cell+ Orange
Features & Benefits
- MyFly8 features 8 adjustable loft settings, allowing you to maximize distance on every shot.
- Smartpad allows the sole of the clubhead to sit squarely on 8 different loft settings.
- Forged E9 BiO CELL face technologies reduce the weight in the crown and face to deliver a lower CG, and fast ball speeds.
- Forged thin, shallow high strength steel face inserts enable more face flex for greater distance.
- More compact and pear shaped head than the standard BiO Cell fairway wood.


text:
Public Tour – 4:00 pm
Date of Event: Saturday, May 4
Time: 4:00 pm to 5:00 pm
Join us for a Public Tour and Tasting of our recently expanded distillery. Tours last about one hour and include optional samples of our OYO craft spirits. The cost is $10 per guest, limited off-street parking is available.


text:
In case you missed it, yesterday was National Regifting Day. So let's see a show of hands here: Who has ever regifted before? Not just during the holidays, but at any time?
You can't see me (duh), but my hand is squarely placed in the air—yes, I have regifted. With three girls between the ages of 18 and 21, I've seen them open a fair number of gifts with a forced smile and a fake "thank you," signaling to me that we'll either be returning that one or possibly regifting it.
And let's be honest: We've all been in that position where we realize, as we're heading out the door, that we failed to secure a suitable hostess or birthday gift for the party we're about to attend. That's when regifting really comes in handy.
Along the way I've learned a few good rules to follow about regifting, and it's helped me shed any guilt I feel about the practice. Here's a list of suggested dos and don't:
REGIFTING DOs
- Be thoughtful. Only regift an item if you think it's perfect for the new recipient, not just because you want to get rid of it.
- Keep a stash of items to regift for when the perfect occasion arises. For me, I typically save several bottles of wine that I can choose from, which makes an excellent last-minute hostess gift.
- Use sticky notes to keep track of who originally gave you the gift.
- Rewrap items. Include a new card, too.
- Regift meaningful or sentimental items. This could include passing a family heirloom from a father to his son, giving a treasured book to a special friend or giving a special piece of jewelry that's been in the family for generations.
- Regift to charity. Gifts can go to help those in need or to be used in auctions that help support the organization.
REGIFTING DON'Ts
- Give a used gift. Even if you think you can try to make it look new. It must be in its new and original condition.
- Regift in the same circle of friends or family members. Stay safe and regift in another group.
- Regift gift cards—unless you're sure that, 1) no amount has already been used (how awkward to give a gift card with a balance of $23.97), or 2) fees have not been taken off due to inactivity.
- Regift promotional items or swag (that was obviously procured for free at a conference or a trade show).
- Regift just for the sake of giving. If you don't have something on hand that you believe the recipient would genuinely love, save the regifting for another time. Regifting is never more apparent when someone opens a gift that's clearly not geared for her.


text:
Top Items:
Daniel Strauss / The Hill:
Postal Service to halt Saturday mail delivery — The U.S. Postal Service announced on Wednesday that it would discontinue mail delivery on Saturday but still continue to deliver packages six days per week, according to the Associated Press. — Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla), hailed the decision …
Discussion: Politico, Balloon Juice, CNN, americanthinker.com and Gawker
Kevin Cirilli / Politico: USPS to stop Saturday mail delivery
Jennifer Liberto / CNN: Postal Service to end Saturday mail service Aug. 1
Neetzan Zimmerman / Gawker: Neither Snow, Nor Rain, Except on Saturdays: USPS to Cease Weekend Mail Delivery
Postal Service to Cut Saturday Mail — ABC OTUS News - US Postal Service to End Saturday Mail Delivery (ABC News) — Apparently trying an end-run around an unaccommodating Congress, the financially struggling U.S. Postal Service says it will stop delivering mail on Saturdays but continue to disburse packages six days a week.
Paul Waldman / American Prospect: No More Saturday Mail? Blame Yourself.
Doug Mataconis / Outside the Beltway: Post Office To Eliminate Most Saturday Mail Delivery
Pauline Jelinek / Associated Press:
Postal Service to Cut Saturday Mail to Trim Costs — Empty crates site next to a U.S. Postal Service (USPS) mail box in New York, U.S., Nov. 15, 2012. The U.S. Postal Service will stop delivering mail on Saturdays but continue to deliver packages six days a week under a plan aimed at saving …
Discussion: The Raw Story, Hit & Run and The BLT
David Ferguson / The Raw Story: U.S. Postal Service to cut Saturday delivery
Scott Shackford / Hit & Run: Ailing Postal Service to Bypass Congress to Stop Saturday Deliveries
CBS News:
USPS to announce Saturday service cuts in effort to slash costs — (CBS News) Get ready for some big changes in your mail service. After losing $16 billion last year, the postmaster general will make announce Wednesday that the Postal Service intends to halt Saturday delivery of first-class mail …
Discussion: Washington Monthly, Poynter and Hot Air, more at Mediagazer »
Ed Kilgore / Washington Monthly: RIP Saturday Postal Delivery
Andrew Beaujon / Poynter: Newspapers, magazines will have 'not-great' choices as USPS plans to end Saturday delivery
Ed Morrissey / Hot Air: Post Office to end Saturday deliveries
Debbi Wilgoren / Federal Eye:
Postal Service plans to end Saturday mail delivery by August
Postal Service plans to end Saturday mail delivery by August
Alex Fitzpatrick / Mashable!: USPS Cutting Saturday Mail Delivery
USA Today:
Postal Service to stop delivering mail on Saturdays
Postal Service to stop delivering mail on Saturdays
Discussion: The Week and iOwnTheWorld.com
New York Times:
With Brennan Pick, a Light on Drone Strikes' Hazards — SANA, Yemen — Late last August, a 40-year-old cleric named Salem Ahmed bin Ali Jaber stood up to deliver a speech denouncing Al Qaeda in a village mosque in far eastern Yemen. — It was a brave gesture by a father of seven …
Discussion: Telegraph, BBC, Shakesville, Guardian, DAWN.COM, Washington Examiner, Hit & Run, IHT Rendezvous, The Hill and The PJ Tatler
Melissa McEwan / Shakesville: Drones Come Under Scrutiny
Chris McGreal / Guardian: John Brennan faces grilling over leaked drone memo as senators demand answers
Washington Examiner: Morning Examiner: CBO's rosy assumptions can't hide government's spending problems
Jesse Walker / Hit & Run: Creating Militants By Killing Militants
Stephen Green / The PJ Tatler: NYT Bemoans Lack of Coverage it Won't Provide
Washington Post:
Brennan nomination exposes criticism on targeted killings and secret Saudi base — President Obama's plan to install his counterterrorism adviser as director of the CIA has opened the administration to new scrutiny over the targeted-killing policies it has fought to keep hidden from the public …
Discussion: Pew Research Center, Booman Tribune, The Atlantic Online, Guardian and AEIdeas
Conor Friedersdorf / The Atlantic Online: Let's Hope Obama's Secret Drone Base in Saudi Arabia Doesn't Inspire Blowback
Roy Greenslade / Guardian: Washington Post was forced into finally revealing drone base secret
Marc Thiessen / AEIdeas: Obama, drones, and the 'imperial presidency'
Sheldon Alberts / The Hill: White House, Congress square off over Justice Dept. rules for drone strikes
Ken Dilanian / Los Angeles Times:
Memo gives U.S. broad powers to kill Al Qaeda targets
Memo gives U.S. broad powers to kill Al Qaeda targets
Discussion: American Prospect and emptywheel
Robert Reich / American Prospect: The Real Debate over Citizenship
Andrew Rafferty / NBCNews.com:
American drone deaths highlight controversy
American drone deaths highlight controversy
Discussion: The Gateway Pundit, Moe Lane, Mother Jones and NewsBusters blogs
Mark Finkelstein / NewsBusters blogs: Meacham On Drone Kills: Obama Acting Like 'American King'
Obama to nominate REI chief Sally Jewell for Interior Secretary — President Barack Obama on Wednesday will nominate Sally Jewell, president and CEO of the outdoor and recreational retailer REI, to replace outgoing Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, a White House official confirmed to POLITICO.
Discussion: Federal Eye, Hot Air, msnbc.com and Post Politics
Ed Morrissey / Hot Air: Obama picks REI exec Jewell for Interior
Rachel Weiner / Post Politics: Obama to nominate Sally Jewell for Interior
Meghashyam Mali / The Hill:
Obama to nominate REI chief executive Jewell for Interior secretary
Obama to nominate REI chief executive Jewell for Interior secretary
Discussion: CNN
Brianna Keilar / CNN: Obama will nominate Jewell to replace Salazar at Interior
Juliet Eilperin / Washington Post:
Obama to nominate CEO of outdoor equipment giant REI to become interior secretary
Obama to nominate CEO of outdoor equipment giant REI to become interior secretary
Discussion: Althouse
Dana Milbank / Washington Post:
Eric Cantor's empty happy talk — Republicans have happened upon a felicitous new strategy for reviving their party from its depressed state: They need only think happy thoughts. — At a retreat for Republican leaders last month, former House speaker Newt Gingrich told them to …
Discussion: Washington Monthly, AEIdeas, Althouse, Wonkblog, msnbc.com, FIRST DRAFT and The Heritage Foundation
Ed Kilgore / Washington Monthly: Bad Speech Poorly Delivered
Ann Althouse / Althouse: Signs that people are tired of thinking about politics.
Ezra Klein / Wonkblog: Full text: Eric Cantor's 'Make Life Work' speech
Matthew Spalding, Ph.D. / The Heritage Foundation: Morning Bell: Fighting Government Cronyism with an Opportunity Agenda
Karen Tumulty / Washington Post:
Republicans try a softer focus — on life issues
Republicans try a softer focus — on life issues
Discussion: First Read and Post Politics
Rachel Weiner / Post Politics: Schumer to GOP: Follow Cantor
Frank Newport / Gallup:
Americans Widely Support Immigration Reform Proposals
Americans Widely Support Immigration Reform Proposals
Anna Palmer / Politico: Immigration's latest ally: Christian right
Ted McLaughlin / jobsanger: Strong Support For Immigration Reform
Ashley Parker / New York Times: House G.O.P. Open to Residency for Illegal Immigrants
Greg Dworkin / Daily Kos: Abbreviated Pundit Round-up: How divided government works
Ashley Killough / CNN: Poll: Americans favor immigration reform proposals
Jonathan Easley / The Hill: Gallup: Key immigration-reform proposals hold broad support
Ron Fournier / NationalJournal.com:
How Eric Cantor Is Trying to Soften the Republican Party
How Eric Cantor Is Trying to Soften the Republican Party
Discussion: msnbc.com, The Reaction, NBCNews.com and The PJ Tatler
Aliyah Frumin / msnbc.com: The GOP's image problem: Eric Cantor to the rescue?
Richard K. Barry / The Reaction: Polishing a turd - cont.
First Read / NBCNews.com: Obama floods the zone
Stephen Kruiser / The PJ Tatler: One Tiny Nod To Anchor Babies Makes Cantor An MSM Darling For A Day
Igor Volsky / ThinkProgress:
CNN Host Destroys Supporter Of Boy Scouts Discrimination For Equating Pedophilia With Being Gay — CNN's Soledad O'Brien challenged the conservative opposition to keeping gays scouts and leaders out of the Boy Scouts on Wednesday morning, comparing the organization's ban to past restrictions on African Americans and women.
Discussion: The Raw Story, Good As You and Daily Kos
David Edwards / The Raw Story: Soledad O'Brien shames Perkins for defending gay scout ban with homosexuality-pedophilia link
G-A-Y / Good As You: Yes, Tony Perkins, you are in fact conflating homosexuality and child sexual abuse. Own it.
Bill / Daily Kos: Cheers and Jeers: Tuesday
Terence P. Jeffrey / CNSNews:
Karl Rove Is Not a Conservative — Karl Rove — "The Architect," as President George W. Bush called him — crafted Bush's two presidential campaigns and served as a key player in Bush's White House. — Now, with an assist from The New York Times, Rove is presenting himself as a conservative leader.
Discussion: Hot Air, Cold Fury, The Other McCain and The Right Scoop
Smitty / The Other McCain: Karl Rove On Hannity
The Right Scoop: EXTENDED AUDIO: Mark Levin exposes Karl Rove, Steven J. Law and why they are bad for GOP
Steve Deace / Politico:
How to beat Karl Rove at his own game
How to beat Karl Rove at his own game
Discussion: CNN, The Maddow Blog and americanthinker.com
Kevin Liptak / CNN: Rove on new group: 'I don't want a fight'
Steve Benen / The Maddow Blog: Crossroads invites rivals, starts to backpedal
Rick Moran / americanthinker.com: Fox News Dumps Morris, Renews Rove
International Business Times:
Women's Unclean Breasts Cause Diarrhoea, Says Egypt Prime Minister Hisham Qandil — By VASUDEVAN SRIDHARAN: Subscribe to Vasudevan's RSS feed — Egypt's prime minister, Hisham Qandil - Reuters — The inability of women in rural Egypt to clean their breasts is causing a diarrhoea epidemic …
Discussion: The Jawa Report, Weasel Zippers and This ain't Hell …
Embattled Scott plans $100M campaign vs. Crist — Rick Scott is preparing to defend the Florida governorship with the most expensive reelection campaign in state history, drawing up plans for a battleship-sized political operation aimed at overcoming the Republican's deep personal unpopularity.
Discussion: Washington Monthly and The Hinterland Gazette
Josh Rogin / Foreign Policy:
GOP senators call for delay in Hagel committee vote — Two senior GOP members of the Senate Armed Services Committee told The Cable Tuesday that they won't consent to a committee vote on Chuck Hagel's nomination to be secretary of defense until the former Nebraska senator discloses …
Discussion: Post Politics
Rachel Weiner / Post Politics: Republican senators want delay on Hagel vote
Hagel approval all but certain
Hagel approval all but certain
Discussion: Business Insider and The American Conservative
Daniel Larison / The American Conservative: Report: Hagel Confirmation "All But Certain"
Greg Holyk / ABCNEWS:
Poll Finds a Boost for Obama on Handling Immigration — Public approval of Barack Obama's handling of immigration has jumped to a career high in the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll, buttressed by majority support for a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants and, much more broadly, endorsement of stricter border control.
Discussion: The Maddow Blog and Mother Jones
Steve Benen / The Maddow Blog: Defining the 'extremes' in the immigration debate
Kevin Drum / Mother Jones: Support for Immigration Reform is Paper Thin
Fredreka Schouten / Associated Press:
Ex-House members spend campaign money after they depart — WASHINGTON — Former House members are spending their leftover money to pay for everything from luxury cars to foundations that bear their names, a USA TODAY review of new campaign-finance reports shows.
Shane Goldmacher / NationalJournal.com:
Bob Menendez Spent Up to 87 Percent of Wealth Paying Back Donor — When Robert Menendez arrived in the U.S. Senate in 2006, he was a relative pauper in a chamber often called a millionaires' club. The New Jersey Democrat ranked 97th out of 100 senators in terms of his personal wealth …
Discussion: The Fix
Scott Clement / The Fix: Obama makes immigration comeback
Dylan Byers / Politico:
Dick Morris out at Fox News — Fox News has decided not to renew its contract with political commentator and pollster Dick Morris, an industry official tells POLITICO's Mike Allen. — Morris, who was on contract with Fox News throughout the 2012 presidential campaign …
Discussion: Guardian, DickMorris.com, The Moderate Voice, Washington Times, Taylor Marsh and The Hinterland Gazette
Harry J Enten / Guardian: Dick Morris exits Fox News: even he might have predicted this correctly | Harry J Enten
Joe Gandelman / The Moderate Voice: Fox News Boots Dick Morris
Jennifer Harper / Washington Times: Dick Morris exits Fox News, arrives at CNN
Steven T. Dennis / Roll Call:
The Budget War Is Back — A familiar script: The GOP rejects Obama's demand for new tax revenue in a short-term deal to avoid automatic spending cuts — The nation's brief respite from the serial budget battles that have consumed Washington, D.C., is officially over …
Discussion: NBCNews.com
First Read / NBCNews.com: First Thoughts: Budget battle resumes


text:
In Which We Tell You What Can You Say Now
The New York Review of Hooks
by Alex Carnevale
Here's some research I did:
Me: what albums should I review that I'm not reviewing?
Danish: http://tumbledore.tumblr.com/post/77816250/these-are-the-2009-album-releases-ive-acquired
Me: TLDR
We haven't spoken since. As the world collapses around you, do you really need a soundtrack?
"The Death of Me" - City and Colour (mp3)
"Body in the Box" - City and Colour (mp3)
Throaty singer-songwriter pablum...with a harmonica! At first you're asking yourself what you've done to deserve this. If Elliott Smith never existed, what would have become of male angst? Answer: it probably would have stuck to Langston Hughes poems. Sometimes Dallas Green (the city and the color GET IT? GET IT?) sounds like a parody of a college music station, and other times he sounds like Justin Vernon if he never got dumped by that betch Emma. Standout track: none.
Was there ever an outing of Emma? Are we sad or happy that she dumped Bon? How was the sex? Did he sing during sex? Was she like, if you don't score above an 8.0 on Pitchfork I'm never going down on you again? I guess I'll have to wait for a tell-all biography, I'm too lazy to do anything else but send the Aubrey O'Day Playboy spread to all my closest friends.
Why has this woman not guest starred on Nip/Tuck yet? She also seems so down to earth. I really hope we see more of her, possibly in Penthouse or The Paris Review. Either way I want to be present for what's sure to be a tumultuous emotional journey. I can only hope Gavin Rossdale and this chick get engaged down the road. She would also be fantastic as the rumored fifth friend in the Sex in the City sequel.
There was this weird equating in Sex and the City: The Movie of Miranda's paramour Steve's infidelity with Mr. Big not showing up at Carrie's wedding. No-showing a wedding is way worse than getting your business on with some Brooklyn hottie. For one you're just having a little fun down at Union Pool, and in the other you're coming up empty on the biggest day of Sarah Jessica Parker's life. I feel I will regret saying this, but it is true.
LeBron and Dwight Howard doing half-court shots is the second greatest YouTube experience of my week. It comes on the heels of a Kevin Garnett commercial for NBA TV that inspires me everyday.
There is no amount of times I will watch this commercial and not sob. Whoever put this together deserves an honor higher than whatever crap Danny Boyle movie won Best Picture.
"Daniel" - Bat for Lashes (mp3)
"Moon and Moon" - Bat for Lashes (mp3)
"Peace of Mind" - Bat for Lashes (mp3)
Scott Walker and Yeasayer pitch in but this is a more confident album than anything she's ever done, and it's more fun, too.
You guys haven't been watching The Bachelor? Last week the talky-friend type got dumped, and in this case we were able to enjoy it all the more because the woman dumped, Jillian, is (a) Canadian and (b) an interior designer. She never stopped talking, and when the most annoying bachelor since Charlie O'Connell showed his vagina in front of a live studio audience on The Bachelor Tells All is telling you to hit the road...you've hit rock bottom. When it came time for the tearful limousine ride, Jillian openly wondered in her distinctive accent whether or not she was too independent for this d-bag, while the viewing audience wondered why exactly she was pronouncing aboot like that. Also, when you are a small man, and this d-bag is a small man, do not let yourself be photographed in New Zealand unless in fact you are a member of Flight of the Conchords.
John MacLean's new album is happy sounding dance music, sounding like it's from every other decade than the one it's in. Where LCD Soundsystem is on some level desperate and cynical sounding, MacLean brings Puritan New England to the dance floor and ends up making something both familiar and new, as on the utterly addictive single, "The Simple Life." Like in James Murphy songs, vocals appear and disappear. This would probably be a James Murphy album if it wasn't for all the optimism. The Puritans made this world so they can try to save it, too. "Now you're gone," croons Nancy Whang, and you come back again.
"Accusations" - The Juan MacLean (mp3)
"Happy House" - The Juan MacLean (mp3)
"The Future Will Come" - The Juan MacLean (mp3)
"Printemps" - Coeur de Pirate (mp3)
"Berceuse" - Coeur de Pirate (mp3)
"Francis" - Coeur de Pirate (mp3)
The hot version of Madeleine Peyroux is 18 year old singer-songwriter Beatrice Martin. It will surely not be long before she's winehousing herself all over the place, and probably ending Johnny Depp's marriage and ruining the emotional lives of his children.
"Head Rolls Off" - Frightened Rabbit (mp3)
"Keep Yourself Warm" - Frightened Rabbit (mp3)
"Who'd You Kill Now?" - Frightened Rabbit (mp3)
This is a live recording of the 13th best album of last year. Frightened Rabbit has the best covers in the business, and unlike most of these bands they are an excellent live act. Excessive production is just flat out unnecessary.
You can bet the record would never have been mixed like this before Justin Vernon was born into the world. This is pop and dance music masquerading as goth-folk. On her blog she talks about being strong and resisting covering Joni Mitchell but she has the voice for it. Crooning "life seems so empty" on "Heart Paper Lover" is half-laughable. "Ghosts and Lovers" deserves an upbeat dance remix, but it's pretty good on its own. There is nothing more enjoyable than a depressing album, but I don't know that she sounds all that sad. Pop music is for everyone to enjoy. With that said this is probably the most enjoyable release of the year so far.
"Brittle, Crushed, And Torn" - Marissa Nadler (mp3)
"Little Hells" - Marissa Nadler (mp3)
"Ghosts and Lovers" - Marissa Nadler (mp3)
"Ring Ring" - Sleigh Bells (mp3)
"Infinity Guitars" - Sleigh Bells (mp3)
DJs and tattooed female vocalists are the third best invention of the past 20 years, topped only by the George Foreman grill and erotic Twilight fan fiction. Brooklyn-based duo Sleigh Bells everyone. "Ring Ring" is my mother's favorite song of the year.
"The King Must Die" - Elton John (mp3)
"Sixty Years On" - Elton John (mp3)
"Your Song" - Elton John (mp3)
This talented young singer-songwriter has exploded on the scene with his debut self-titled album. Sers though, the idea that EJ once played backing vocals blows my mind. I just want to do it all over again with Elton. That's my real problem with him being gay and in committed relationship. If he was straight he'd have divorced several times by now and he would need to keep recording better albums to pay off his exes. The world would have been better served if Elton had just rehabbed that sexual preference. God damn it.
"Yoko Ono" - Ben Lee (mp3)
"Bad Poetry" - Ben Lee (mp3)
I don't know what shocks me more, that Ben Lee is now married to Ione Skye or that he's recorded four albums since I last seriously listened to him. Lee is more well known in his native Australia, but he was known to me in 1998 for writing hot love songs for Claire Danes and appearing suspiciously like what I imagine a weevil looks like. Lee's always been a good pop songwriter - "Cigarettes Will Kill You" and "Nothing Much Happens" are both minor classics - and The Rebirth of Venus is either terrible or brilliant, and sometimes both. "Rise Up" is the perfect Lee song and that does wonders for the album. Plus the b-sides includes Lee covering a song "Ben Lee" by the Ataris about how much he sucks. The Ataris compare him (unfavorably) to Bob Dylan, but he's more like a poor man's Billy Joel. That's no slam, and this album is definitely better than anything Baz Luhrmann has ever done.
I'm a little offended you haven't already bought CapGun. It's inappropriate, frankly. Do you know how hard it is to get Dick Cheney to write for my website? I had to make Lambert eat ramen noodles for over a month. Things are tight, even for blogs. I need your help to keep This Recording going, or else I'm going to curl up in a little ball and probably take Danish down with me. Please buy our third issue, it has already appreciated $7.4 percent. And you haven't even bought it yet. At these prices, who can say no?
CapGun features the finest poetry in the land, prose from the most inventive new writers around, plus Will hand-letterpressed the covers. Well I guess more properly he managed a small, illicit sweatshop that hand-letterpressed the covers, but either way, it's a significant outlay, and I'd like to thank Will for doing that. Please buy the third issue.
"Heartbreaker" - MSTRKRFT ft. John Legend (mp3)
"Vuvuvu" - MSTRKRFT (mp3)
"Fist of God" - MSTRKRFT (mp3)
Pronounced Masterkraft, there are a lot of great dance songs here. It's not a Justice album, but then what is except Cross? John Legend and Lil Mo stay ubiquitous, and other rappers make appearances. Young people and Danish will no doubt enjoy this music, and if I took ecstasy, I'm sure I would too. Unfortunately I am drifting towards the stage in my life where I can barely stay patient for the endings of movies (I just go to wikipedia and read what happens) let alone the ends of six minute long house music tracks. "1000 Cigarettes" is a hot track though.
I e-mailed Danish because I don't understand this band, but I do like their cover done in blue Bic.
Basically what everyone's been saying (and I agree) is that it's no Source Tags and Codes but it's a lot better than their last two albums (possibly due to the fact that they're no longer on Interscope). It walks a fine line between dramatic and melodramatic, not really sure what the single is/would be.
"Halcyon Days" - ...And You Will Know Us By The Trail of the Dead (mp3)
"Fields of Coal" - ...And You Will Know Us By The Trail of the Dead (mp3)
"Luna Park" - ...And You Will Know Us By The Trail of the Dead (mp3)
"We Build Then We Break" - The Fray (mp3)
"Ungodly Hour" - The Fray (mp3)
I didn't really understand how a person as attractive as Patrick Dempsey could be depressed, and then this four-piece outfit from Denver explained how to save my life. Would that Grey's Anatomy were just a compilation of Ellen Pompeo taking her bra off to different songs by this talented pop band. They have truly filled the role Coldplay was born to play of recording the same song to a slightly different tempo so people can be soothed in the waiting rooms of doctor's offices. This is an underrated skill -- like women who are easily fulfilled sexually, The Fray are the great unappreciated champions of this depressing time in American life.
"Heartswarm" - Swan Lake (mp3)
"Spanish Gold, 2044" - Swan Lake (mp3)
Sometimes the very thing you're looking for is the one thing you can't see. Sometimes the snow comes down in June, sometimes the sun goes 'round the moon. Just when I thought our chance had passed, you go and save the best for last.
Alex Carnevale is the editor of This Recording. He lives in Manhattan, and he tumbls here.
The best of William Faulkner.
A little less conversation.
Ambiguity is so attractive to the young.


text:
Spiraling Around
Spiraling Around
Acrylic with combined media on canvas framed in black wood, 24" x 18"
Helen Becker is a contemporary collage artist. Becker's fine art collage artworks are all unique creative pieces that tell an artistic story. Fine art collage artists who work in contemporary collage utilize a wide array of mixed media art materials to create artwork.
Helen Becker has studied under famous collage artists and has adapted her learned skills to her own unique artistic style. As a collage artist Becker focuses on working with artistic themes and direction as she moves through a series of collage art.
Helen Becker views being a collage artist as artistically liberating. Becker's discovery of fine art collage has enabled her to pursue her artistic journey free of "material" constraints.


text:
After 12 years of commitment, Japan shocked all of us by announcing at the beginning of the week that they were thinking of leaving the Kyoto Protocol! We knew we had to work quickly to show Kyoto that there was still some love in the house, so along with our tcktcktck partners, we organized a "Hug Kyoto" event at the UN climate conference in Cancun. There was a lot of love in the house with hundreds of folks(including delegates) stopping to give our Kyoto reps a hug and take a pic.
Not sure why abandoning Kyoto is such a bad idea? Take a read through the questions below and if you have another question about Kyoto, leave us a comment and we will get a campaigner to answer.
Q – What is the Kyoto Protocol?
A - The Kyoto Protocol is an international agreement that sets legally binding emission targets for 37 industrialised countries and Europe.
Q – Why is it so important?
A – global greenhouse gases must be reduced if we are to avoid climate chaos and it is only fair that rich countries, who are mainly responsible for the current high levels, act first. The Kyoto Protocol establishes the rules for these industrialized country reductions and sets out the targets and timetables by which they must be achieved. It is a huge step towards a truly global agreement.
Q – How long is the Kyoto Protocol "good for?"
A – The Kyoto Protocol is a treaty and once signed treaties are binding for all of the parties involved. However, The Kyoto Protocol currently binds industrialized countries to reduce emissions for the period 2008-2012 ( known as the first Commitment Period).
Q - Why is Japan talking about leaving now?
A - Unless the Kyoto Protocol is extended for a further 'Commitment Period' there will be no legal duty for industrialized countries to cut their pollution. It has been recognized that we need an international agreement that can deliver the serious emission cuts that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has told us are mandatory to combat climate change. Instead of working to strengthen the Kyoto Protocol, Japan is using the flimsy excuse that the Kyoto Protocol isn't strong enough to walk away from the commitments it has already made and to avoid making more in the future.
Jess Miller is the Managing Editor for the Americas Communications Hub at Greenpeace USA.
===== http://www.fashiongoods.us ====
Air jordan(1-24)shoes $30
Handbags(Coach l v f e n d i d&g) $35
===== http://www.fashiongoods.us ====
Air jordan(1-24)shoes $30
Handbags(Coach l v f e n d i d&g) $35
Tshirts (Polo ,ed hardy,lacoste) $15
Jean(True Religion,ed hardy,coogi) $30
Sunglasses(Oakey,coach,gucci,A r m a i n i) $15
New era cap $12
Bikini (Ed hardy,polo) $20
accept paypal and free shipping
====== http://www.fashiongoods.us ====
====== http://www.fashiongoods.us ====
3 December, 2010 at 15:37
Flag abuse
To post a comment you need to be signed in.
Dan Cass
Good on you for doing great work, GPI and everyone else, but do you really think its worth trying to keep the UNFCCC cadaver alive any longer?
Good on you for doing great work, GPI and everyone else, but do you really think its worth trying to keep the UNFCCC cadaver alive any longer?
So many activists waste so much time at every meeting, for what? Is it really the only way to use international law for the clmiate? I doubt it!
The whole premise of voluntary, consensus based action was always a silly sounding approach to climate law and the 18 years history of the Convention just proves that doesn't it?
I think new approaches are needed, within international law. For example, use trade law, after all, the WTO has enforcement power, the UNFCCC is just a bunch of meetings. Or use public law to pursue climate criminals. I know these things won't work immediately, but frankly, it couldn't be more futile than the UNFCCC could it.
Just a thought.
3 December, 2010 at 16:14
Flag abuse
The Kyoto Protocol is less then 11 years old. Dan Cass mentions 18 years of history for the UNFCCC. These institutions are necessary to foster change; perhaps not in the exact form they currently exist in, but less then 20 years of work is not a long time. Especially when considering what they are looking to solve problems for.
The agricultural revolution started around 9000 years ago, and the industrial revolution around 310 years ago. The environmentalist movement started around 70 years ago. Sometimes it may seem like these conferences don't make a lot of progress, but there's a lot more to consider then just one two week meeting period. The meetings and the work done are important parts of the process.
7 December, 2010 at 22:30
Flag abuse
Is it so easy to leave the Kyoto Protocol?
16 December, 2010 at 20:56
Flag abuse
1 - 4 of 4 results.
Are you sure to remove this comment?
Are you sure to report this comment as abuse?


text:
I had a grandfather who played the horses. That was about as close as anyone in my family got to competitive sports, unless you count mixed doubles. Sports, or, as my relatives used to put it, "that damn fool athletic stuff," were not among our household enthusiasms. In general, we did not genuflect much before the temple of the body. Just the concept of exercise, the notion that a person should "work out" in order to "stay in shape," would have been greeted with incomprehension. In shape to do what? Health we understood. We knew what made a person healthy: sleeping with the windows open and drinking three glasses of whole milk a day. It was pretty simple.
A more principled reason for this indifference was an aversion to the belief, popular when I was growing up, that the ability to run faster or throw farther than other people is a contribution to the common good, and that we ought to honor the athlete in the same way that we honor the artist and the statesman. Games, in my house, were O.K., because games are fun. Sports are games taken much too seriously. Organized sports are an attempt, through regimentation (uniforms and trophies) and rhetoric (rah-rah boosterism and coach talk), to give an inherently pointless activity some kind of point, to inject a purpose into play.
In this flock, I was the unlikely black sheep. I didn't play Little League, which, along with the Boy Scouts, my father regarded as a paramilitary organization. But I didn't think that sports were silly, or for blockheads and Neanderthals. I thought that sports were sublime, and I set my boyish heart on playing a part in what "ABC's Wide World of Sports" called "the human drama of athletic competition." To be worthy of those words someday, I was prepared to endure a great deal of sarcasm.
These hopes were cruelly shattered. It turns out—something they don't tell you when they're urging you to go for the gold, follow your dream, etc.—that, in most sports, size and strength are kind of important. I had imagined that all I needed was brains and the will to win. Though a strapping five-nine today—closer to five-nine and a half, really—in the prepubescent days of my love affair with sports I was a shrimp. One of my idols was Bob Cousy, the playmaking guard of the Boston Celtics, regularly described as undersized for his sport. As I diligently heaved basketballs in the general direction of distant rims, I pictured myself a future Houdini of the Hardwood (one of Cousy's nicknames), swift and savvy, executing the behind-the-back pass or finishing off the fast break with a supercool underhand layup. One day when I was in junior high, the Cooz, now retired, came to town to direct a clinic at the local high school, and our gym class was invited to watch. It was an experience I'll never forget. Cousy walked onto the court, and my heart sank. Bob Cousy was tall.
A lot of kids get hooked on sports by television. Television—another altar we didn't worship at in my house. But I did get to watch "Wide World of Sports." The show, which was on the air for thirty-seven years, was created and produced by Edgar Scherick and Roone Arledge, telecommunications visionaries who grasped a basic ingredient of male psychology, which is that, no matter what kind of contest you put on the screen, men will say, "Wait a second. I just want to see how this comes out."
"Wide World of Sports" was significant for two reasons. First, it lived up to its promise of "spanning the globe to bring you the constant variety of sport" (a classy touch, the singular noun). It was the first program to broadcast Wimbledon in the U.S., and to cover exotic and far-flung sports like surfing, curling, and jai alai. The producers were right: people who knew little and cared nothing about curling still wanted to see how it came out.
Second, and more important, the show established an intonation, a cadence, a discourse for high-level athletic competition. This was not the hopped-up staccato of ordinary play-by-play. It was weightier, more momentous, more world-historical. "The thrill . . . the agony . . . " It was Churchillian.
That voice is the voice of the Olympics, a competition where contestants pursue not "victory" but "glory." The London Summer Games are being broadcast from July 25th to August 12th, and although one can complain about the commercialization (Visa, which has a longtime association with the Olympics, has an app that Facebook users can deploy to cheer on athletes who are sponsored by Visa) and the cost (upward of fourteen billion dollars, in a country undergoing drastic cutbacks in social services and with an unemployment rate above eight per cent) and the draconian security precautions (anti-aircraft missiles have been mounted on the rooftops of apartment buildings near the sports venues, over the owners' objections), the Games will be good to have.
And probably better to have in your own house, rather than over there, because showing people performing amazing feats with their bodies is one thing that television does really well. Yes, television organizes the perceptual field—it "tells" you what to look at—but, unless you know the sport and the competitors pretty well beforehand, you are not going to make much sense of what you're looking at otherwise. The Olympics present themselves as pure spectacle—as Auden said of poetry, the Games appear to make nothing happen—and television loves a spectacle. Even more, television loves a spectacle that has a script, a live event for which every camera angle can be plotted—that is, a ritual.
If someone described to you an ancient civilization in which, every four years, at great expense, citizens convened to watch a carefully selected group perform a series of meticulously preset routines, and in which the watching was thought of not as a duty but as a hugely anticipated and unambiguously pleasurable experience, you would guess that, socially, this ritual was doing a lot of work. You would assume that it was instilling, or reinforcing, or rebooting attitudes and beliefs that this hypothetical civilization regarded—maybe correctly, maybe just superstitiously—as vital to its functioning. You would say that the spectacle had a content. Do these Summer Games have a content? What are we really watching when we watch the Olympics?
A little history is always useful. The Games have a history, but so does every event. Topping the list of helpful companions to this year's Games is David Wallechinsky's "Complete Book of the Olympics: 2012 Edition" (Aurum), prepared with Jaime Loucky, a 1,334-page record of every event—results plus, in most cases, detailed highlights—at every Summer Olympics since the first modern Games were held, in Athens, in 1896.
Wallechinsky's marvellous book reminds us that the issues that have surrounded the Games in our time have been present almost since the start—from politics (nations were banned from or boycotted the Olympics regularly starting in 1920, when Germany and its allies were not allowed to participate) to performance enhancement (long-distance runners once consumed brandy and strychnine as stimulants, sometimes with calamitous results) and prosthetic limbs. Oscar Pistorius, a.k.a. the Blade Runner, the South African sprinter who runs on two carbon-fibre lower legs, will compete this year in London; in the 1904 Games, the American gymnast George Eyser won six medals in one day, including a gold in the vault, with a wooden leg.
Also entertaining are the capsule stories of the athletes themselves. Some are paragons in sports history, legends from a time before specialization, like Jim Thorpe, who, in the 1912 Stockholm Games, won, by huge margins, both the classic pentathlon and the decathlon, even though it was the first decathlon he had ever competed in; and Babe Didrikson, who was allowed to compete in only three events in the 1932 Games, in Los Angeles. She finished first in two, the javelin throw and the eighty-metre hurdles (a world record), and tied for first in the high jump (another world record). Thorpe was retroactively stripped of his amateur status and his medals when it was discovered, well after the official deadline for filing a challenge, that he had played minor-league professional baseball for two summers before the Olympics. Didrikson, after touring briefly as the only female member of the House of David baseball team, became one of the greatest professional golfers in history.
There are also, in Wallechinsky's book, many profiles of huge stars in sports that the average American fan doesn't follow. The Bulgarian-born Turkish weight lifter Naim Süleymanoğlu, for example, won gold medals in three Olympics, from 1988 to 1996. By the time of the 1996 Games, in Atlanta, he was one of the most famous men in Turkey, where he owned twenty-one houses. It was said that the Turkish government had promised to give him a twenty-second house plus ten kilograms of gold if he won again.
In Atlanta, Süleymanoğlu defeated the Greek lifter Valerios Leonidis for the gold medal in an intense final round, in which both athletes broke the world record, and with the spectators in a frenzy because of the long history of hatred between the two nations that the athletes represented. Süleymanoğlu was said to be, pound for pound, the strongest man in the world. To win the medal, he had to clean-and-jerk four hundred and thirteen pounds, almost three times his body weight. He was known as the Pocket Hercules, and lifted in the featherweight division. He was under five feet tall, and smoked fifty cigarettes a day.
"The Complete Book of the Olympics" is for fans, people who need to know who won the most consecutive gold medals in Olympic history (Aladár Gerevich, of Hungary, won a gold in team sabre in six straight Games), or who was the oldest medalist (Oscar Swahn, of Sweden, was seventy-two when he won the silver in team double-shot running deer shooting—whatever that is, I'll have what he's having—in the 1920 Games). For grownups who have a life, "How to Watch the Olympics" (Penguin), by David Goldblatt and Johnny Acton, will suffice. The authors offer information from the ground up about every sport in the Summer Games—they explain why it's worth watching canoeing and field hockey—along with loads of facts about the rules, the scoring, and even the equipment specs.
The width of the women's balance beam, for example, is ten centimetres, a hair under four inches, a measurement thereby associated with more than one female athletic event. In the 2000 Games, women's beach-volleyball players were required to wear bikini suits with a maximum size for the bottom half. (The rule has since been modified.) The diameter of the table-tennis ball has been increased from thirty-eight millimetres to forty, so that spectators have a better chance to see it when it is in play. (A bigger ball also slows down the game.) The authors advise, when watching water polo, to look out for groin grabbing, which is illegal. And so on. Something to browse through during the Visa commercials, which will feature plenty of your favorite Visa-sponsored athletes.
John D. Barrow's "Mathletics: A Scientist Explains 100 Amazing Things About the World of Sports" (Norton) is about sports in general, not just Olympic sports, and may sometimes seem to fly far over the head of the ordinary math slob. We learn, for instance, that the maximum speed, V, possible for a racewalker is given by the formula V2 = ½gL 22[3√ (4 – S2/L2) – 4], where g is the acceleration caused by gravity, L is the length of the walker's leg, and S is the length of the stride.
There is a payoff, though. First, the formula explains why racewalkers make that windup-toy hip movement: they're trying to increase V by effectively increasing L, the length of their legs. Second, it turns out that world-record speeds in racewalking are mathematically impossible, unless both feet are losing contact with the ground, which is a violation of the rules of the sport. It's time to clean up racewalking!
Barrow's larger point is that achievement in sports must comply with the laws of physics. This was, minus the math, my own youthful realization. You can dedicate your life to the sport, but, if you are under six feet tall and weigh less than two hundred pounds, you are never going to throw the discus seventy metres. The motto of athletic competition should not be "Follow your dream." It should be "Follow your reality."
Innovative techniques are therefore basically efforts to tweak one of the coefficients in the equation governing speed, height, or distance in a sport. When you jump, you are exerting energy, by running and pushing off the ground, to raise as high as possible not simply your body but your center of gravity. If you curl into a U shape at the top of your leap, as high jumpers and pole vaulters do, you will be able to clear a bar while your center of gravity passes underneath it. The curvier you become, the greater the height you can achieve. In the 1968 Games, in Mexico City, the American high jumper Dick Fosbury won the gold medal by flipping himself over the bar head first and backward—a technique now known as the Fosbury Flop. He set an Olympic record, which made it a lot easier for people to forget that his leap looked like something out of the Ministry of Silly Jumps, and now every high jumper does it.
Innovations in equipment are somewhat less noble. Forty-three world records were broken at the 2009 World Swimming Championships, in Rome. Barrow thinks that one reason for this was the use of seamless whole-body polyurethane swimsuits. He says that these suits not only reduce drag in the water; the fabric also traps tiny pockets of air, which raise the swimmer higher out of the water. Since the drag on a human body is approximately seven hundred and eighty times as great in water as in air, swimmers wearing the suits were able to post faster times. In the London Games, polyurethane swimsuits are banned. Michael Phelps, who has won more Olympic gold medals than anyone, in any sport, threatened, through his coach, to boycott competitions in which the suits were permitted.
Books can't adequately reproduce "the human drama of athletic competition," of course. You need to see it. There are the great races: the Czech runner Emil Zátopek, in Helsinki, in 1952, winning the men's five thousand and ten thousand metres, and then entering the marathon, which he had never competed in before, and breaking the Olympic record; the Ethiopian runner Abebe Bikila winning the marathon running barefoot through the streets of Rome, in 1960; Billy Mills breaking out of the pack and sprinting past Mohamed Gammoudi and Ron Clarke, the world-record holder, as though they were standing still, in the last twenty metres of the ten-thousand-metre race in Tokyo, in 1964; the stork-like Dave Wottle passing seven runners with less than a lap to go to win the eight hundred metres by three one-hundredths of a second in Munich, in 1972.
And the otherworldly gymnasts, who have a different relation to gravity from the rest of us: Larysa Latynina, who won eighteen medals, the most of any athlete ever; Nadia Comăneci, who scored the first perfect ten in gymnastics competition (under a scoring system that has, sadly, been abandoned); the charismatic seventeen-year-old Olga Korbut, whose backward somersaults on the balance beam and the uneven bars, in the 1972 Games, stunned the crowd; sixteen-year-old, four-foot-nine Mary Lou Retton, a human beach ball, who came from behind with two perfect scores to win the all-around in Los Angeles, in 1984, her first international competition; and Kerri Strug, who, despite a sprained ankle, stuck her landing in the vault in Atlanta, in 1996, where the United States won the team gold medal.
There are few more courageous Olympic performances than Strug's. The Japanese gymnast Shun Fujimoto, who, in the 1976 Games, in Montreal, stuck his dismount from the rings on a broken leg and helped his team win the all-around gold medal, gave another. Strug and Fujimoto never fully recovered from their injuries, and Wallechinsky says that, contrary to legend, the U.S. team did not even need Strug's score. It was virtually guaranteed the gold already.
The best resource for moments like these would be the documentary archive of Bud Greenspan, who filmed many Olympics, from the Los Angeles Games, in 1984, to Beijing (he died in 2010)—except that almost none of his work has been issued on DVD. Greenspan also produced compilations and Olympics histories using old footage, and you can get some of these, notably the eight-cassette "Olympiad: Greatest Moments," in VHS format from online remainder stores.
Greenspan's work is the consummation of the old "Wide World" style. It's unashamedly monumental and oratorical, a combination of Leni Riefenstahl and Ted Baxter. The voice is not merely Churchillian; it's the voice of God. (Actually, up until 1992, it was the voice of David Perry, né Greenspan, brother of Bud.) The campy solemnity—there are a lot of "On this day"s, and so forth—is just right for the old "thrill of victory" sensation. The downside is that, since God already knows how everything turns out, He never gets too excited about any particular event. You miss the animation of live play-by-play. Still, for people who have seen these documentaries on television, where they often turn up, many Olympic moments are really Bud Greenspan moments.
Just about any contemporary sport has corollaries in competitions in the ancient world, or a pedigree in folk games or aristocratic recreations. Competition is natural and spontaneous. Once there were boats, people would race them. Given fists, people will box. Kids contrive all sorts of ad-hoc "sports" based on the shape of their garage roof or the length of the hallway in their apartment or the number of manhole covers on the street outside.
We call these ad-hoc contests games, and one of the ways games get turned into sports is standardization. A sport is a game that, no matter where it takes place, is always played by the same rules. This is not a prerequisite for competition. When someone says, "I'll race you to that tree," the person who reaches the tree first is the winner. The loser does not complain that the race was not run at regulation distance. Regulation and standardization insure that, when competitors meet, everyone will have trained for the same event, and the results can be compared across competitions. Standardization is what makes it possible to have world records.
The place where most modern sports were standardized was nineteenth-century Britain. The Duke of Wellington probably did not really say, "The Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton" (for one thing, he hated Eton), but athletic competition was a prominent feature of British public-school life. Before the nineteenth century, school games were often idiosyncratic, because of local traditions and conditions. A classic case is the Eton Wall Game, which dates to the eighteenth century, and which can be played only at Eton, since that is where the eponymous wall is. But when schoolboys went on to university they wanted to play the same games they had enjoyed in school, and this was one of the things behind the movement to standardize. Soon, men were not simply competing in games with their classmates according to whatever rules came to hand; they were training themselves in a sport that was transportable.
And the great means of transportation was the British Navy. Everywhere Englishmen went, they took their games along and taught them to the locals. The British brought modern tennis to the French. Table tennis, a sport now commonly associated with East Asia, is supposed to have started when British officials shaved the corks of their champagne bottles into balls and played the game on the dinner table. It is because of Britain that West Indians play cricket, South Africans play rugby, and Pakistanis play squash. It is because of Britain that the world plays soccer.
The other thing necessary for creating a sport out of a game is organization. Sports have bureaucratic structures: national and international associations, which have police powers to insure standardization, and which organize competitions and tournaments in order to produce No. 1 teams and world champions. Britain was also the leader in this area.
Leagues and tournaments draw larger audiences to a sport, as athletes and teams start to be imagined as representing cities and, on a bigger stage, nations. The Olympics are the biggest stage, and have the largest audience of any sporting event in the world, including the World Cup. According to "How to Watch the Olympics," 4.7 billion people, or seventy per cent of humanity, watched some portion of the Beijing Games. That figure seems hyperbolic, but the Olympics do command a gigantic audience.
It was from Victorian Britain that the founder of the modern Olympics, Pierre de Coubertin, took his inspiration. Coubertin was a French aristocrat with a passionate interest in education. He wanted the French to be more manly, meaning more disciplined and self-reliant (he was reacting partly to the country's defeat, in 1870, in the Franco-Prussian War), and he believed that introducing sports into education could be the basis for this transformation in the national character. In other words, he wanted the French to be more like the British. He made his first trip to England in 1883, when he was twenty, after reading about British public schools in Hippolyte Taine's "Notes on England" (1872), and he returned frequently.
Around 1890, he heard about an annual event in the town of Much Wenlock, in Shropshire, called the Wenlock Olympian Games. These had been established, in 1850, by a physician named William Penny Brookes, as a means of fortifying British manhood. Coubertin arranged a visit, and Brookes mounted a special Wenlock Games for his guest. They discussed Brookes's efforts to persuade the government of Greece to revive the ancient Games, which were held in Greece from 776 B.C.E. to 393 C.E. or thereabouts—something that Coubertin had also been contemplating.
When Coubertin returned to France, he published an article about the Wenlock Games. If the Olympic idea still survives, he wrote, "it is due not to a Hellene but to Dr. W. P. Brookes." Britain's culture of sports, he explained, is the reason for its empire, and he quoted from a speech that Brookes had delivered: "If the time should ever come when the youth of this country once again abandons the fortifying exercises of the gymnasium, the manly games, the outdoor sports that give health and life, in favor of effeminate and pacific amusements, know that that will mean the end of freedom, influence, strength, and prosperity for the whole empire."
Brookes died in 1895, at the age of eighty-six; less than a year later, Coubertin was finally able to launch, in Athens, the modern Games. He rarely referred to Brookes and his Olympian Games again, but the mascot for this year's London Games is named Wenlock.
The modern Games could be international from the start because the British had spread standardized versions of most of the Olympic sports around the world. And the Olympics themselves became agents of standardization. In the first modern Olympiads, for example, the length of the marathon was inconsistent. Each marathon course was approximately twenty-five miles, believed to be the length of the route from Marathon to Athens run by Pheidippides in 490 B.C.E. As long as every competitor ran the same distance, it didn't matter what the precise measurement was. Those first Olympic marathons were essentially "I'll race you to that tree" events. But, at the 1908 Games, held in London, the course was designed to start at Queen Victoria's statue at Windsor Castle and to finish in front of the Royal Box in the Olympic stadium. This turned out to be a distance of twenty-six miles three hundred and eighty-five yards. In 1921, that became the regulation length of the marathon.
Standardization was also a way of reprogramming life elsewhere in the default settings of the metropole. In 1896, the European imperial powers governed a large portion of the planet, and the Games were a tribute to their success in spreading their way of life—from the idea that life is essentially competition right down to the unit of measurement—throughout the world. For the first sixty years of the modern Olympics, people from around the globe came to mostly European capitals (two Summer Games were held in the United States) to play European games. You can see residues of the imperial reprogramming in the anomalous-seeming distances in track. The four-hundred-metre race is a descendant of the 440—four hundred and forty yards, or two furlongs—which was run at almost every Olympics until 1952. Fifteen hundred metres is the "metric equivalent" of the mile.
Today, the agents of standardization are not empires but industries, like financial services and telecommunications, that need everyone everywhere to be on the same frequency, so that they can use their products. These businesses are happy to have the old nationalisms as a beard. That's why we have Team U.S.A., and not Team Visa—even though, in certain respects, Team Visa is what it is.
Twenty-six sports will be played in London this summer, with medals awarded in three hundred and two events. The majority of those medals will be given in sports that originated, in their modern form, in Britain: archery, athletics (track and field), boxing, badminton, field hockey, football (soccer), rowing, sailing, swimming, water polo, table tennis, and tennis. Britain is also the birthplace of curling, cross-country, cricket, croquet, golf, squash, and rugby—which is scheduled to become an Olympic sport in 2016. No other country comes close. Three Olympic sports originated in the United States: basketball, volleyball, and the triathlon, which was invented in 1974. Two originated in Germany: handball and gymnastics.
The modern Olympics are a model example of what the historians Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger have called invented traditions—ritualized official or quasi-official events, often presented as revivals of ancient practices or in other ways designed to imply continuity with the distant past. In the Wenlock Games, for example, the winners knelt and a wreath was placed on their head by a lady.
The late nineteenth century was an inventive time for tradition-making. That's when many national holidays were created: Independence Day (1870), Bastille Day (1880), May Day (1890), Columbus Day (1892), Labor Day (1894). Many annual sports championships date from that period, too. The British Open Championship in golf began in 1860, Association football championships in 1871, cricket championships in 1873. Lawn tennis was invented in 1873; Wimbledon started in 1877. The practice of commemorating the fiftieth and hundredth anniversaries of notable persons and events also dates from the late nineteenth century. The celebration throughout the Empire of Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee, in 1887, the fiftieth year of her reign, was so successful that it inspired similar anniversary celebrations in other monarchies, and led the British to celebrate, in 1897, her Diamond Jubilee.
Modern societies are still obsessed with these secular rituals, in part because almost all of them have become successfully commercialized. Maybe they offer an illusion of permanence and continuity in a world characterized mainly by mobility, change, and uncertainty. No matter what happens to us next year, there will be a Super Bowl. Or maybe they feed our tribal instincts, stimulate the irrational basis of loyalty to our community or our country. Even the most cosmopolitan American viewer of the Olympics has a hard time not rooting for the American. If you watch, you don't just want to see how it comes out. You care who wins.
And, despite the virtuous talk about the honor of competing and the comity of sport—and the talk is virtuous, and fine as far as it goes—winning really is what the spectacle is all about. Athletes settle for silver; they win the gold. Is there a hope (though whose hope would it be, exactly?) that watching the Games will recharge our competitive energies, and that we will go back and "win" at our jobs? And are we meant to be reassured, by the closing ceremony, where the athletes commingle without regard to who won medals or what nations they represent, that those we have "defeated" in the Game of Life have no hard feelings? Are we supposed to believe that the reason we honor winners is that competition is the lifeblood of community? Probably. So what? We have the Games, however we got them, whatever they mean. Let them begin! ♦


text:
In the last few years I've had a declining interest in cricket, which is sad because for most of my life it's been my number one sport.
My declining interest can be attributed to a number of factors:
The 2007 World Cup
A horribly long, slow, boring World Cup. There was no emotion from the crowds, and sadly they had their instruments taken away from them. There was the bitterness of finding out that Bob Woolmer had been murdered, and the exasperation of finding out that he hadn't been murdered after months of scandel. Worst of all was the final, a farsical event, horribly run. I think the best team won, but it was a tained game.
The horribly bitter 2007/08 series between Australia and India
I won't go into much detail about this because it'll stir up some feeling here at CW. I'll just say that both teams acted poorly in my opinion. Both teams acted contrary to the spirit of the game. In any other sport both teams would have been punished. I'll just note that in no other sport would a team be allowed to criticise an umpire/referee as much as India did. When they said Steve Bucknor was an incompetent referee and should be dropped or else India wouldboycott the tour, I was shocked. A week later Criag Bellamy, the Melbourne Storm coach, went on a similar tirade and got punished harsher than any other coach I've heard of.
Over-saturation of cricket
If it's not regular 20/20 it's the IPL. It's it's not that it's Test cricket etc. The same thing happened to me with wrestling a couple of years ago. I used to follow Japanese wrestling, but then 2 major promotions became three, and then four. Now there's no limit to the number of Japanese promotions there are to follow. I lost interest. It's the same with cricket.
20/20 cricket is ruining the game
I hate how little people care one-day cricket after 20/20 cricket. 20/20 cricket is worthless to me. To me any side on any day could beat any side because there's not much different between hitting a six and hitting the ball and going out. I know you have to be skilled to play 20/20, but you also need luck. What works in one game, might not work in the next.
Average players dominating games
OK this is sure to stir some debate here. Take Shane Watson. He can't swing the ball, he doesn't make it talk, yet he dominates games. How? By definition people would say only good players can win games and only Watson being a good player can win games. Watson is a good batsman, but he doesn't possess the same skill set as other bowlers do. Even Glen McGrath, who didn't do much with the ball, is someone I'd consider extremely skilled because he's so accurate. I just don't see great skill being rewarded in games these days. To me it's like watching South Africa win games with that kick-chase style that works for them. I'd rather sides win in a more challenging way, preferably using all 15 men etc.
If anything I now have a greater appreciation for Test cricket, because that awards skill better than anything.
But for all that, this recent One Day series between India and Australia has really got me excited about cricket. You had:
Tendulkar's massive century
To me probably the best one-day century I have ever seen. He's just a freak and I think perhaps my favourite batsman ever.
Australia doing it with injuries
Australia won despite injuries plauging them. They were disciplined (a few fielding errors aside), determined, and play to a game plan.
The spirit of the games
It was bloody competitive yet both teams seemed to keep the fire inside this time.
Bravo both teams. That was a fantastic series, and I hope I see more cricket like that in the future.
Does anybody else feel rejuvinated by this series?


text:
25 Januari 2013
Tu-22M3 Backfire (photo : Max Bryansky)
MELBOURNE (UPI) -- China is to purchase Tupolev Tu-22M3 bombers through a contract with the Russian Federation for 36 aircraft.
The agreement calls for 12 bombers to be delivered first and the other 24 coming in a second tranche.
The Tupolev Tu-22M3 is a supersonic, swing-wing, long-range strategic and maritime strike bomber developed by the Soviet Union. A number the bombers remain in service with the Russian military -- as of 2010, the Russian air force fielded 93 Tupolev Tu-22s and the Russian navy 58 -- and represent a significant upgrading of the operational abilities of the Chinese air forces.
Since the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, the Tupolev company has sought export customers for Tu-22M bombers.
The Tupolev Tu-22M3 can fly at 1,240 mph and has a 1,500-mile combat radius.
The Chinese naval air forces designation for the Tu-22M3 will be the "H-10."
The Tu-22, a Soviet-era aircraft, was designed as a long-range strategic and maritime strike bomber and the Chinese variants will be updated with indigenous systems and an extended range. That will allow Beijing to extend its military presence by having a counter to many advanced Western latest generations weapon systems.
The Tupolev Tu-22M3 aircraft will replace China's H-6 bombers, which are Chinese-built versions of an older Tupolev design, the Tu-16.
H-6 PLAAF bomber (photo : Militaryphotos)
Analysts are speculating on what weaponry might be included with the bomber sale, which might include the Russian-built Raduga Kh-22 long-range, anti-ship missile, the Viet Times reported Tuesday.
China's acquisition of the Tu-22M3 will introduce another element into the evolving situation in the western Pacific, where the United States is increasingly shifting military forces.
The Tu-22M3 bombers will give China another element in its efforts to assert claims in the South China Sea and the Pacific theater.
The aircraft will significantly increase China's aerial capabilities, as the Tu-22M3, which can carry nuclear weapons, will allow China to cover the South China Sea, East China Sea and even the western Pacific.
Not all Chinese analysts are enamored of the acquisition however.
People's Liberation Army Academy of Military Science researcher Col. Du Wenlong noted during a recent interview with Hubei TV that the Tu-22M3 is an old design, which, as a strategic bomber, isn't comparable to its U.S. equivalents, such as the B-1 and B-2.
"I personally think that chances for the Tu-22M3 to join the Chinese air force as a strategic strike bomber are not high," Du said. "The carrier-borne E-2 early warning aircraft of the U.S. has a detection range of more than (250 miles) against modern fighter planes whose radar cross section is much smaller than that of the Tu-22M3."
Although the Soviet Union designed the Tu-22 to be a "carrier killer," U.S. analysts say the Tu-22M3 would be vulnerable to most air-defense assets employed with modern U.S. carrier air groups.
China's interest in purchasing Tu-22 bombers from the Russian Federation dates to 1998 but Moscow initially refused to sell the aircraft to Beijing out of concerns of changing the military balance in eastern Asia.
The Hong-10 components will all be built in China under technology transfer agreements with the exception of the engine, with the first aircraft scheduled to roll off the assembly line in 2013.
25 Januari 2013
China is to Purchase Russian Tu-22M3 Bombers
Label: ANGKATAN UDARA, CHINA, Pesawat Tempur
Langganan: Posting Komentar (Atom)


text:
Ring K2 - black
By Pluma Cubic
Floor Lamp
Material: Black goose quill feathers, plumes on outside, quills pointing inwards ; shade covering white fabric
Dimensions: Diameter approx. 55cm, height approx. 40cm
Package: Incl. Stainless steel tripod stand and electric dimmer, transparent power cable approx. 300cm, entire height approx. 160cm, E27 sockets; use max. 105 watt halogen bulb.
Heike Buchfelder studied architecture at the University of the Arts Berlin and at the Oslo School of Architecture. In 2005 she founded Pluma Cubic creating the beautiful Pluma Feather Lights. Today, her design collection includes 21 unique pieces and is sold internationally.
In Heike's light objects, the illumination, with the proud opulence of the goose feathers, is bright and calm. The lights illustrate two opposing sides: one shows the soft, fluffy, natural flowing beauty; the other, the hard, internal rigidity, fixing each individual component. Thus, from the plumage of goose and rooster feathers emerge opulent minimalist light objects.
Read more
If you would like to know how to take care of your Pluma light, you can download our cleaning instructions:
Pluma Lights - Cleaning Instructions (PDF)
3 to 4 weeks lead time, subject to availability with the supplier.
12 weeks lead time for bulk orders.
Depending on the size of the order the goods will be shipped either by Australia Post's regular parcel delivery or by courier.
- For any order under $1,000 the shipping cost will be $15 plus GST
- Between $1,000 and $2,999 the shipping cost will be $50 plus GST
- Over $3,000 the shipping cost will be $100 plus GST
- For international shipping please inquire


text:
For you who are having the crummiest days ever, and you who are having the best days of your lives. For you who could use a hug, and you who always give the hugs. For you who are human, and you who just want to feel more human… This post is for you. All of you.
The following collection features all my favorite things that I've come across while adventuring around Facebook and the internet today. I hope this evening installment makes your day just a little more awesome!