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Blog of the Year Badge--from John, Neer, & Sergio!
Badge given for the 2012 Fascination Awards. I made the Top Ten!
Badge for Level One of the Read Your Own Library perpetual challenge sponsored by The Beauty of Eclecticsim
Badge Awarded for completing the bonus level in the 2011 Forgotten Treasures Reading Challenge


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Our philosophy is simple: Quality, reliability and safety are key ingredients when it comes to pet food manufacturing.
As a leading developer and reliable contract producer of premium and super-premium pet foods for U.S. and international markets, BrightPet Nutrition Group elevates what people everywhere feed their pets. Our partners trust and share this philosophy.
Confidence is about trust.
We specialize in custom formulation and custom label (OEM). Every recipe we deliver is a new opportunity to earn consumer, retailer and industry trust. Our thorough cooking process creates a higher starch conversion, which can lead to increased stamina and energy. Organic, natural and holistic recipes are well within our capabilities. We keep more than 150 different ingredients on-hand and export product to more than 25 countries around the world.
Quality is a tradition.
Our commitment to quality pet foods spans three generations. The continued success of our own Blackwood®, Adirondack® and Makin' Trax™ brands is due in large part to a time-honored family tradition. We slow-cook our recipes in small batches to create nutritionally complete formulas that are appetizing and easy for pets to digest.

subset: commoncrawl


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- 2005 Brazilian Grand Prix
Montoya wins; Alonso takes title in Brazil
- Race:
- Brazilian Grand Prix
- Championship:
- FIA Formula One World Championship
- Drivers:
- Fernando Alonso
- |
- Juan Pablo Montoya
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- Kimi Räikkönen
- Circuits:
- Autódromo José Carlos Pace
Third place in Brazil was enough to give Fernando Alonso the title to become the sport's youngest World Champion.
Alonso had pledged to make a race of it but after a wheel-to-wheel duel with Juan Pablo Montoya, the Spaniard decided points were the priority. He backed off and took third to secure the title.
Up front, Montoya took a third win, begging the question 'What might have been but for early-season unreliability?' Kimi Raikkonen was second despite a hard battle with Giancarlo Fisichella early in the race which allowed Michael Schumacher to get on terms with them. Schumacher took fourth behind Alonso and ahead of Fisichella, while Rubens Barrichello was sixth in his last Brazilian Grand Prix as a Ferrari driver. For 2006, he would move to BAR-Honda.
Alonso was delighted with his championship, Spain's first World Champion. "I come from a country with no tradition in F1," he said. "I have had to fight alone, with no help from anybody. I think this is the maximum I can achieve in my career."


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Delegates from several Arab countries gathered in Oman to discuss ways to protect their Arabian Oryx populations.
The Oman observer daily reports that members of the Coordinating Committee for the Conservation of the Arabian Oryx in the Gulf States are discussing ways to exchange information, resolve cross-border conservation issues and provide suitable Oryx stock for breeding and reintroduction. They also discussed eradicating trans-boundary trade, ways to protect the animals as well as monitoring projects and solving problems such as hunting.
Delegates came from Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, Jordan, the UAE and Oman to participate. Oman is considered a specialist in this field because of its history of dealing with Oryx conservation. The Sultanate became the first country in the region to reintroduce the Oryx into the wild in 1982. The population of this animal had greatly deteriorated because of poaching. But since the authorities addressed this issue, the population rebounded and today there are 150 Arabian Oryx in Oman, primarily in the wild.
Three years ago, the UAE also began a reintroduction program. Today, the country has 1,000 of these animals and the largest captive-bred population. Although poaching is not a problem, the government plans to discourage it through education, monitoring and laws. Saudi Arabia began also began releasing Oryx into the wild in 1994. There are roughly 1,200 Oryx, half in the wild.
© 2000 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)


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After Vote, Lawsuits Likely Next Hurdle for Volcker Rule
and Sarah N. Lynch
WASHINGTON -- When U.S. regulators adopt the Volcker rule Tuesday, they will make good on a promise by politicians to rein in banks' ability to gamble with their own money.
The coordinated action by five separate regulatory agencies is seen sparking a court challenge as Wall Street tries once again to avoid one of the harshest elements of the post-financial crisis crackdown.
The rule, championed by former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, was a last-minute addition to the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform law and takes aim at a business that had been a big money spinner for banks before the crisis.
The measure bans banks from making bets for their own profits, an activity known as proprietary trading that regulators deemed too risky for banks that enjoy government backstops.
But banks argue the roughly 800-page rule will hurt markets because it is virtually impossible to distinguish profit-seeking trades from those needed to hedge against risks or trades executed on behalf of clients.
"For something of this magnitude and this controversial ... there will be somebody who will challenge it," said Brian Cartwright, an adviser at consultancy Patomak Global Partners and a former general counsel at the Securities and Exchange Commission, one of the agencies voting on the measure.
Banks had hoped the rule would be watered down from when it was proposed more than two years ago, but JPMorgan Chase's (JPM) $6 billion loss in 2012 -- named the London Whale after the giant trading bets the bank took -- put an end to that speculation.
The final rule is expected to tighten potential loopholes, and could trim billions of dollars in annual revenues from large banks including Goldman Sachs (GS), Morgan Stanley (MS) and JPMorgan.
Legal experts have identified three possible avenues of attack once the rule becomes final. Banks could challenge on procedural grounds, %VIRTUAL-article-sponsoredlinks%including that they didn't have an adequate chance to comment on major new elements the final rule contains from when it was proposed two years ago.
They could also argue that certain regulators did not sufficiently analyze the costs and benefits of the rule. And lastly, they could argue that parts of the rule hammered out by the regulators contradicts the Dodd-Frank law.
The five agencies involved in Tuesday's final vote are the Federal Reserve, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, all bank regulators, plus the SEC and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
Costly Gamble
Few banks are expected to individually challenge their supervisors. Lawyers working on these issues said the likely candidates to sue were the industry groups that have done so against other Dodd-Frank rules.
These groups, such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, have so far been coy about whether they will challenge the Volcker rule.
A hurdle for possible litigants is that regulators have in all likelihood blocked some of the most obvious routes for a lawsuit, these lawyers said, potentially making a lawsuit a risky and costly gamble.
"The agencies have been very attuned to the fact that there are many who would litigate about what comes out here," said Satish Kini, co-chair of the banking group of Debevoise & Plimpton, a law firm in Washington.
Banks could use procedural arguments under the Administrative Procedures Act, which bans regulators from writing rules that are "arbitrary and capricious."
If the final rule is tougher and contains substantially new elements, they could argue they didn't have a chance to comment on those elements, despite already having sent in 17,000 comment letters to regulators on the proposed rule.
"[Regulators] have to be quite careful that any changes are within the scope of the proposal," said Scott Cammarn, a partner at law firm Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft. But the proposed rule was already very detailed, said another lawyer who asked not to be named, containing more than 350 questions the industry was asked to respond to.
Economic Test
Banks could also argue that some of the regulators failed to meet requirements to conduct proper cost-benefit analyses weighing the economic impacts of the rule.
Wall Street trade groups have already successfully used this tactic to defeat other Dodd-Frank rules from the CFTC and SEC, including one that would have made it easier for shareholders to nominate directors to corporate boards.
The OCC could be particularly vulnerable to this tactic.
Under a federal law known as the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act, the OCC must prepare a budgetary statement if a rule will cost either the government or the private sector more than $100 million, but it decided not to do so.
The Chamber of Commerce has already deemed that decision "clearly erroneous," in a November letter to regulators. But attacking an individual agency is a tricky strategy and the largest Wall Street banks are under Fed oversight.
"If you can't challenge the regulation that applies to bank holding companies [under the Fed], then it doesn't do you all that much good to succeed in a challenge against the other regulations," said Patomak's Cartwright.
Banks could also argue that the rule hammered out by the regulatory agencies contradicts the Dodd-Frank law, for instance if it restricts activities that Congress intended to permit such as hedging or market-making.
Judges could be wary about wading into complex trading matters, Cartwright said. "They need to be persuaded that they understand it well enough to know that what was done was arbitrary and capricious."
See Gallery


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carriec necesitaba un nuevo diseño de logotipo y lanzó un concurso de diseño en 99designs.
Un ganador ha sido elegido entre 91 diseños de 31 diseñadores freelance.
Need a logo for new ecommerce site selling a wide range of products which fit into the criteria of high quality, longevity and have the 'feel good' factor.
Cromwell's Choice
We want a logo designed for our ecommerce website called Cromwell's Choice.
Cromwell's Choice will be selling products that the partners would buy themselves and/or highly recommend to friends and family.
Some of the products that we're thinking about launching include bicycle parts (tools, seats, pedals, lights), eco-friendly detergents/soaps, organic pet food, high quality baby products, herbal remedies.
The most important pages on the site are the product landing pages. We'll be providing as much detail about each product as we can including displaying the brand logo for each product. Therefore, our own logo shouldn't compete with the product logo.
- possibly a tagline, but haven't got one thought of yet - maybe something along the lines of "proud of what we sell" or "handpicked choices" - we're open to suggestions!
- a logo that will suit a business card
- feelings that the logo should invoke include:- trust / reliability / confidence
- authority, but in the way you look up to a father, grandfather or wise family member
- sense of comforting happiness / warmth
- don't want a logo that's too over powering - it will need to sit on pages where a product logo may also be displayed
- nothing corporate looking
Descubre cómo funciona un concurso de diseño u obtén más información sobre nuestros servicios de diseño de logo.


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AUBURN HILLS, Mich. — Memphis coach Josh Pastner smiles widely from behind the dais, channeling his inner Joe Namath.
Pastner isn't guaranteeing sixth-seeded Memphis will beat No. 3 Michigan State on Saturday in a third-round NCAA tournament game at the Palace.
UPDATED BRACKET: 2013 NCAA tourney field
BRACKET BRIEFING: Everything you need to know
Instead he's predicting high-flying Tigers senior forward D.J. Stephens is ready to shock the professional world.
"If Commissioner (David) Stern will allow him in, he will win the NBA dunk contest next year," Pastner said Friday. "He's that good of a leaper.
"I can't put up a million dollars like Magic (Johnson) said he would for LeBron (James). But if someone is willing to put up a million dollars for D.J. Stephens to win the dunk contest, I guarantee he'll win."
Stephens burst onto the national stage during Memphis' 54-52 opening win over St. Mary's on Thursday. His circus slam in the closing moments of the first half off an alley-oop pass from Joe Jackson sent the crowd into a tizzy. Another dunk in the second half brought more oohs, ahhs and accolades.
"When my teammates put the ball where the majority of the population in the world can't get it, but luckily I can, I just feel blessed," Stephens said.
Stephens' dunks have become the stuff of YouTube legend and he was dubbed a tournament breakout star on the Internet.
"He's got incredible hops," Michigan State coach Tom Izzo said. "I've never seen a guy dunking the ball coming down way more often than on his way up. And he's smooth about it.
"I don't know of anybody that's quite like him."
What a journey it's been for the one-time, zero-star recruit, who Pastner took a flyer on four years ago after getting a pleading letter from his AAU coach. The Killeen, Texas native thought he was headed to play at North Texas, only to be told, no thanks, at the 11th hour.
Rejection back then brought him to tears. The crying is long over.
"I've definitely come a long way," Stephens said. "If you'd have looked at me my freshman year and you look at me now, you'd think I'm a completely different person. I've grown as a basketball player and as a person. I've worked on a lot of things and I've overcome a lot of barriers."
Stephens was scrawny when he arrived on the Memphis campus, unable to do more than two pushups in a row.
Now Pastner projects the 6-foot-5, 188-pounder as a second-round NBA draft choice.
"That first year he helped us win a lot of games making energy plays," Pastner said. "He did the same his sophomore and junior years. This year, he's just been fantastic, turning himself into a pro prospect.
"His dunks, even behind the scenes, are surreal. But he's not just an athlete. He makes basketball plays."
Stephens could always jump. But his dedication to defense has made him more marketable. He blocked eight St. Mary's shots in Memphis' first NCAA tournament win in three years. Stephens was named Conference USA's Defensive Player of the Year this season, averaging 2.4 blocks per game.
Learning to maximize his natural talent has been a process, Stephens said.
"My advantage on the court is my athleticism," he said. "If a guy outweighs me, if he gets his body into me, I can't use my special abilities. I just try and keep space between me and my opponent and try to block the shot once it goes in the air. Or better for me if I come from the weak side."
Michigan State's Branden Dawson, who will play opposite Stephens, has heard the hype and seen the slams. He's been impressed.
"He's a great athlete," Dawson said. "Coach calls him the skywalker. They just throw the ball up and he goes and gets it (on offense). Given his shot-blocking ability, our guards are definitely going to have to adjust in the lane."
Why is Pastner so positive Stephens is destined for dunk contest glory? Stephens already has his routine worked out.
"He wants to jump over a convertible, dunk the ball, land in the convertible and drive off," Pastner said.
Imagine the views that video would bring.


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Welcome to the Environment Web site. Our goal is to establish a one-stop navigation source for your information needs. We develop DOE-wide environmental policies and assist the DOE site offices and their contractors in carrying out these policies to protect the public and the environment.
For additional information regarding this page or feedback on its content, please contact:
Edward P. Regnier, Acting Director, Office of Environmental Policy and Assistance


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How well do you know the Code? Think you can spot violations the original installer either ignored or couldn't identify? Here's your chance to moonlight as an electrical inspector and second-guess someone else's work from the safety of your living room or office. Joe Tedesco, who has a knack for finding shoddy electrical work, did the dirty work and found this mess. Now it's your turn to identify the violation.
Find the Answer
If you think you have this one figured out, you might be wrong. What once would have been a Code violation is now an acceptable installation. Per a change in the 2005 NEC, the requirements of 250.119 allow green to be used as a means of identifying the grounding electrode conductor (GEC). The exact wording is as follows:
"Unless required elsewhere in this Code, equipment grounding conductors shall be permitted to be bare, covered, or insulated. Individually covered or insulated equipment grounding conductors shall have a continuous outer finish that is either green or green with one or more yellow stripes except as permitted in this section. Conductors with insulation or individual covering that is green, green with one or more yellow stripes, or otherwise identified as permitted by this section shall not be used for ungrounded or grounded circuit conductors."
In previous editions of the Code, the use of green was specified for the equipment-grounding conductor only.
An equipment-grounding conductor larger than 6 AWG must be installed per the requirements of 250.119(A)(1) and (A)(2). Part (1) requires you to permanently identify the equipment-grounding conductor at each end and at every point where the cable is accessible.
And what about the bonding of this grounding electrode conductor? Well, it's missing in this installation, isn't it? The bonding of the grounding electrode conductor to the raceway is only required when a ferrous conduit is used. Since this conductor is run in a ferrous conduit it must be bonded per the requirements of 250.64(E).
For a close-up of this picture, click here.


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Tunisia had barely drawn breath following its revolution early last year when tens of thousands of people started arriving on its borders as an uprising in neighboring Libya gained momentum.
The amazing generosity of Tunisians who opened their homes and hearts to people fleeing Libya is revealed in the latest issue of Forced Migration Review (FMR), which looks at last year's Arab Spring revolutions in North Africa.
"The response from ordinary Tunisians was remarkable in its altruism," Antonio Guterres, the head of the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR), says in an introduction to the FMR report published on the eve of World Refugee Day.
IN PICTURES: Libya: Daily life after Qaddafi
"I witnessed villagers sharing their homes and land while others drove for miles to provide sandwiches for those stuck in the crowds at the border."
The first people to arrive in southeast Tunisia were migrant workers who had been employed in Libya's huge oil industry, agriculture, and elsewhere.
Tunisian villagers organized cooking crews and took food to Djerba airport as the migrants waited for flights home, writes Katherine Hoffman, associate professor of anthropology at Northwestern University in the United States.
As the civil war escalated, Libyan families also began pouring into Tunisia.
"We helped the Egyptians, we helped the Chinese, we helped the Bangladeshis. So when the Libyans came to stay, how could we not help them too?" one man in Djerba, Tunisia, is quoted as saying.
Another describes how he and his friends raised money for food, diapers, and mattresses, piled it into 20 trucks and headed to the border where tens of thousands of people were massed.
Some 60,000 to 80,000 Libyans arrived in Tunisia during the revolution, which erupted in February 2011 and which eventually toppled strongman Muammar Gaddafi. Some went to camps, wealthier families rented hotel rooms or properties, but many Libyans ended up living with Tunisian families.
In addition, Hoffman describes how one person in each village or town took responsibility for collecting keys for abandoned houses, emigrants' summer residences, and other empty housing.
Villagers cleaned and refurnished homes, put in stoves and fridges, and turned electricity and water back on.
"Even seasoned aid officials said they had never witnessed such a reception by a host country during a refugee crisis," Hoffman says.
Although the UNHCR referred to these arrangements as 'rentals', money rarely changed hands, she adds.
In a separate article, UNHCR staff say when Tunisian families were offered financial help with water, gas, and electricity bills, many took offense, saying they did not expect compensation.
The UNHCR subsequently arranged a contract with Tunisian utility companies to provide subsidies directly.
The UNHCR staff in Tunisia highlight other acts of kindness.
One doctor traveled hundreds of kilometres to offer his services. When he learned the Tunisian Red Crescent did not take new volunteers in the middle of a crisis he made a donation and then started picking up the rubbish left by all the people passing through.
There is also the story of a cook who arrived at Shousha transit camp with bread and rice. He only planned to spend one day, but was so moved by the sight of so many traumatized and hungry people that he returned the next day with friends. They put up a tent and started cooking with supplies provided by locals.
After two weeks the Red Cross began funding them, and from there the camp's main kitchen was born, providing up to 28,000 meals a day.
This outpouring of generosity came without high-level orchestration – people simply responded with compassion, the UNHCR staff write.
Some contributors to FMR contrast the response in Tunisia to the reaction in Europe where the media and politicians fretted about the prospect of a mass influx from North Africa – a prediction that never materialized.
There is criticism of the lack of willingness among EU countries to accept refugees displaced by the violence. Those who fled Libya included many sub-Saharan Africans from countries like Eritrea, Sudan, and Somalia who cannot go back home. Many are still in camps.
Other unresolved issues following the revolution include the future of people still displaced in Libya where property confiscations and redistributions during the Gaddafi era have complicated access to housing and land.
FMR also looks at the repercussions for the vast numbers of unemployed migrant workers who have returned to their home countries and the fate of other migrants who are detained inside Libya.
• This article originally appeared at AlertNet, the world's humanitarian news site.
• Sign up to receive a weekly selection of practical and inspiring Change Agent articles by clicking here.


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Consensus Report
Toxicity Testing in the Twenty-first Century: A Vision and a Strategy (2007)Board on Environmental Studies and Toxicology
Each report is produced by a committee of experts selected by the Academy to address a particular statement of task and is subject to a rigorous, independent peer review; while the reports represent views of the committee, they also are endorsed by the Academy. Learn more on our expert consensus reports.
Advances in molecular biology and toxicology are paving the way for major improvements in the evaluation of the hazards posed by the large number of chemicals found at low levels in the environment. The National Research Council was asked by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to review the state of the science and create a far-reaching vision for the future of toxicity testing. The report finds that developing, improving, and validating new laboratory tools based on recent scientific advances could significantly improve our ability to understand the hazards and risks posed by chemicals. This new knowledge would lead to much more informed environmental regulations and dramatically reduce the need for animal testing because the new tests would be based on human cells and cell components. Substantial scientific efforts and resources will be required to leverage these new technologies to realize the vision, but the result will be a more efficient, informative and less costly system for assessing the hazards posed by industrial chemicals and pesticides.
Key Messages
- A critical factor for success is the conduct of the transformative research to establish the scientific basis of new toxicity-testing tools and to understand the implications of test results and their application in risk assessments used in decision-making.
- After chemical characterization, decisions might be made about what further testing is required or whether it is needed at all.
- Chemical characterization is meant to provide insights to key questions, including a compound's stability in the environment, the potential for human exposure, the likely routes of exposure, the potential for bioaccumulation, possible routes of metabolism, and the likely toxicity of the compound and possible metabolites based on chemical structure or physical or chemical characteristics.
- In the vision proposed, dose-response models would be developed for environmental agents primarily on the basis of data from mechanistic, in vitro assays as described in the toxicity-testing component.
- In the vision proposed, toxicity testing has two components: toxicity-pathway assays and targeted testing.
- Population-based and human exposure data are important components of the committee's toxicity-testing strategy. Those data can help to inform each component of the vision and ensure the integrity of the overall testing strategy.
- Targeted testing would be used to complement toxicity-pathway tests and to ensure adequate evaluation.
- The committee's vision for toxicity testing is a process that includes chemical characterization, toxicity testing, and dose-response and extrapolation modeling. At each step, population-based and human exposure data are considered, as is the question of what data are needed for decision-making.


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Egypt will launch a 10-billion-dollar project to boost petrochemical production and take advantage of the country's natural gas reserves, Oil Minister Sameh Fami said, as quoted Friday by state media.
The 20-year plan calls for the construction of 24 industrial complexes that will produce 15 million tonnes of petrochemical products each year, Fami said.
Some 100,000 new jobs are expected to be created in the petrochemical sector, mostly in Alexandria, Dumyat and the north of the Gulf of Suez.
"This enormous project is destined to cover the needs of the local market as well as exports," Fahmi said.
He said the project will eventually yield another 4 billion dollars a year in profits from exports, which will begin in 2005.
Fahmi announced in January that new gas deposits had been found in the Mediterranean, which will more than triple Egypt's reserves to 120 trillion cubic meters.
Of the reserves, the government will have 60 trillion cubic meters in natural gas, representing some $120 billion, according to oil ministry officials.." - (AFP)
© Agence France Presse 2000
© 2000 Mena Report (www.menareport.com)


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NextFab Studio necesitaba un nuevo diseño de logotipo y lanzó un concurso de diseño en 99designs.
Un ganador ha sido elegido entre 492 diseños de 158 diseñadores freelance.
NextFab Studio
NextFab Studio is a "gym for innovators" and prototyping service center opening winter 2009 at 3711 Market Street, Philadelphia, PA, USA, in the University City Science Center. Our brand-new 3600 sq.ft. facility includes everything from hand tools to 3D printers and computer controlled laser & machine tools, software, collaborative workspaces, training - everything necessary for you to invent, repair, create - innovate! It's the R&D lab, workshop, or studio you would have if price were no object, with expert instructors and a community of collaborators there to help you achieve your vision.
NextFab Studio provides:
• membership-access to our innovation facility for individuals, organizations, and businesses
• technical courses and workshops on software and equipment use, creativity, design and engineering, and all aspects of entrepreneurship.
• prototyping and consulting services: providing technical support for member projects, and product prototyping and model building on a contract basis for the community at large.
• a technical community to which individuals, organizations, and businesses, can turn for fresh perspectives, skilled problem solvers, and interdisciplinary solutions.
• retail sales of raw materials, safety gear, and tools to assist innovators in realizing their vision.
For more details, see: http://www.nextfabstudio.com.
The target audience is extremely diverse but linked by a drive to be hands-on and proactive in learning new skills, creating works of art, solving problems, inventing new products, starting new businesses...
Target groups for facility memberships:
• Technology enthusiasts and hobbyists
• Entrepreneurs and small companies in the region needing access to an R&D facility
• Artists and designers needing workspace/technology/diverse collaborators
• University departments, students, faculty, alumnae associations in fine arts/engineering/sciences/architecture/design desiring enhanced facilities and community interaction
• High school arts/technology project groups/teams
• Primary/secondary teachers looking to learn about new technologies to enhance their classes
• Retirees seeking creative/intellectual/social activity
• Anyone wanting to acquire or maintain technical skills (returning veterans, unemployed)
Target groups for prototyping services:
• Architects/product designers needing accurate architectural/product models built using advanced 3D printing technologies
• Museums needing 3D scanning and/or 3D printed replicas of artifacts/specimens
• Companies needing small quantities of posters, signs, awards
• Individuals needing unique, personalized/customized gifts
The logo needs to seem friendly enough to attract someone with no technical skills while still commanding the confidence of the corporate R&D budget.
We'd like it to be simple and iconic, in the sense that for the broadest possible range of viewers it immediately and memorably conjures up:
• Cutting edge technology
• Do-it-yourself spirit
• Friendly collaboration
• "Philadelphia identity" (Benjamin Franklin, the Liberty Bell, etc.)
Please visit our website for some images of our facility and more details on our business: http://www.nextfabstudio.com.
The winning logo will be used in the following:
• Selecting interior finish colors for our facility
• All ad/web materials (including print, signage, videos)
• Messenger bags/hats/t-shirts/work aprons
• Member ID badges
The winner should provide the logo in one of the following formats:
Adobe Illustrator (.ai)
Adobe Photoshop (.psd)
Contact us to ask about alternative formats.
Suggestions (only - no licenses) for fonts to be paired with the logo will be appreciated as well.
Please do not use any stock images or clip art in the logo - submissions should be entirely new creations of the designer.
10 finalists will be selected by NextFab Studio management. The winner will be selected from among the finalists by a jury of prominent Philadelphia-area professionals.
The winning designer will be engaged for subsequent graphic design work with NextFab Studio, and will be offered a free membership to our facility.
For this reason, submissions by designers located in Philadelphia are preferred.
Descubre cómo funciona un concurso de diseño u obtén más información sobre nuestros servicios de diseño de logo.


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Lightspace Stage Decking
Are you interested in having your own custom flight case made?
We make thousands of custom cases, to order, every year. Our Pro Flightcase Team combines knowledge, skill, passion and practical understanding to deliver quality, on budget and on time. Every time. Whether you're looking to upgrade existing kit, audit your flightcases for 2017 or need an entirely bespoke solution - make Flightcase Warehouse your first stop.


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Cole Sprouse Used Tumblr for an Experiment. Tumblr crazies are mad!
So late October, I made this epic post that chronicled Cole Sprouse having a tumblr.
Turns out, he created it for a sociology class experiment. He deleted his tumblr page over the weekend and posted about it on his twitter. The tweets have been deleted since, but I have some screencaps courtesy of Tumblr.
This is all that is left from the debacle:
The youtube link goes to "Careless Whisper" by George Michael
Some of the comments are funny:
The Cole Sprouse tag on Tumblr is golden right now.
EDIT: An ARCHIVE OF COLE'S TUMBLR. ALL OF THE CRAZY POSTS
Click for a better understanding
EDIT: I Pulled Some Posts from His Old Tumblr
The reveal of the "experiment"
So my goal for this website was accomplished. I got all the information that I needed and now I'm deleting this account. Thanks to all who watched, read, and listened, I hope that in some small way my words carried weight.
The next time you see or hear from me I will, most definitely, be a changed man.
Before I go I'll answer a question that people keep asking about my ring. My ring is the skull of a chameleon.
The chameleon can see everything that happens around it. Constantly aware of its environ, the small reptile changes color depending on the situation it enters. Its very special form of adaptation is one I try to mimic, every time I enter a space I try to become aware of what I step into and change my color accordingly. The way I move, feel, argue, and all the discourse of my life, changes in order to succeed within that space. This adaptation to environmental and social pressure will allow me to succeed, much like Darwin had so brilliantly noted. You take a role and embrace it, but know that you arenever whole, and those who fall in love with you or otherwise fall for your performance, not you, for you is never constant.
My life is lokinous, but there are many levels to deceit, and cheating is only frowned upon when you're caught. So goodbye and remember that the next time you see or hear from me I will, most definitely, be a changed man.
The POC Post
I'll answer you, for it seems you are still quite upset about me apparently "parading around for the justice of, and as a symbol of white-upper/middle class male power."
Lets start with your statement:"POC can't be racist against white people. They can be discriminatory and prejudice, but not racist. That is because in our society racism is privilege + institutional power, and in our society POC as a whole do not have power over white people as a whole. The same way women as a whole do not have power over men as a whole."
Your definition is all too specific. If a member of race A, class C kills a member of race B, class B, and justifies this because of differences in skin tone, is that not a racial killing? One doesn't need to be in the position of power to be racist. Racism separates one "race" from another based on biological or culturally established normality. Of course white men have the most power, I never said they didn't, does that mean I'll allow ethnocentric racism directed towards me? no.
Now let's move to your statement: "But it is completely justifiable for a POC to say "white people are inherently racist" because on a societal level, we ARE."
No….It really isn't, turn to the teachings of MLK jr and I'm sure he'll be in agreement. "because on a societal level, we ARE." No, my gods no, we are not. For that statement to prove false, all it takes is one example of someone in disagreement, good hypothesis there buddy.
Touching upon the first paragraph.
I understand the problem is that you've assumed I said "DONT REMEMBER THE PAST, BECAUSE WE LIVE IN THE NOW-AMIRITE?" Which I didn't say, easy enough? One always has to remember the past, does that mean we ACCEPT the way things are now because of it? (No, my gods, no)
I'm not going to try and argue for an upset group of people who have all made up their minds, but I will say this: Racism has no prerequisites, It can come from everyone, in any position, and is DEFINITELY culturally determined. There are many levels of racism, there is not one racism, and one alone.
If you wish me to be the bad guy in this situation, fine, direct your wrath towards me and I shall absorb as much as I can. To call me racist however, after my own defense was launched as a means of dealing with ethnocentrism, is like placing a veil in front of a hanging and saying that you had watched the whole event.
thank you, no more will be said from my side about this topic
Source:Cole Sprouse Twitter/TUMBLR/TUMBLR AGAIN


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BBC News
- Milton Keynes stabbing: Two teenagers dead
- Brexit: Johnson 'has the numbers' in Commons to pass deal, says Raab
- Wales beat France 20-19 to reach Rugby World Cup semi-finals in thriller
- Haringey Borough v Yeovil: Police investigate as FA Cup tie abandoned after reports of racial abuse
- Spotlight reveals IRA plan to hit south east England's power supply
- Harlow murder arrests after man knocked down by car dies
- Paul Gascoigne describes 'year of hell' before trial
- Leeds v Birmingham: Police arrest 11 during trouble at game
- European Open: Andy Murray beats Ugo Humbert to set up Stan Wawrinka final
- Hawk-Eye company apologises for VAR confusion
- Leicester City helicopter crash: Walk to honour victims
- Glasgow 'Love Rally' for those who have experienced care
- What will happen in the next few days?
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- Brexit deal: Did your MP vote for the Letwin amendment?
- MPs vote for delay: What has just happened?
- What is in Boris Johnson's new deal?
- Brexit sparks boom in applications for politics courses
- Sir David Attenborough: 'People thought we were cranks'
- What's it like working with someone you're married to?
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Liberty News
Adoption: a gift from God
For Les and Connie Schofer, the longest sermon they ever heard was on Sunday, Dec. 16, 1984. It wasn't because the preacher was going over his time or that he was boring — it was because they were antsy, waiting out the last hours before they could call themselves parents.
The Schofers picked up their 5-week-old daughter later that day, "Homecoming Day" as they call it. It was made possible by an adoption through Liberty Godparent Home (then called Save a Baby).
The bond was immediate, Connie Schofer said.
"The second I saw her, I knew she was mine. It was instantaneous."
Les Schofer said he remembers the drive home.
"I remember having the feeling that there was something in the car right then that was more important than my own life," he said. "And I sort of had the thought, 'Yep, if I had to trade my own life right now, I would.'"
The Schofers, who have both worked for Liberty University since the college's early years and are members at Thomas Road Baptist Church, named their baby Stacy Beth.
Now at age 23, Stacy is a Liberty University graduate with degrees in Biblical Studies and Social Sciences. She is currently taking Seminary classes at LU, with hopes to teach at the college level.
The Schofers have another momentous day that will stick in their memories forever — Stacy's wedding day on Jan. 5 this year. She was married in Pate Chapel at TRBC.
"I just thought she looked like an angel," her mother said. "That's exactly what I thought. God gave me an angel. It amazes me that God entrusted her to me."
And it all started with the Liberty Godparent Home.
There is no doubt the home has played a major role in the family's lives, but their involvement with that ministry didn't stop after the adoption. Stacy had her rehearsal dinner there and the Godparent Home's new flower shop did the flowers for her wedding. Les and Connie Schofer have talked at workshops there and have helped to counsel couples on adoption. Stacy is a regular volunteer, doing everything from mopping floors to cooking, running errands and helping with fundraisers. But what she likes most is interacting with the residents, sharing her testimony and counseling the girls.
"Usually the best way for this to happen is to have them get to know me first just as the person who comes and helps them dry dishes. … The best thing to do is let them get to know me, then they are very comfortable asking questions about very deep things, like 'How do you feel towards your birth mother? I'm afraid that if I give my child up, he or she will feel unwanted.'"
She said God is using her experience in a big way.
"It's very unique being older and saying this [the Godparent Home] is someplace I came from. Most people think of it as [just] saving a baby — well these babies grow up and they do things with their lives."
The ministry, she said, has given her "a sense of activism." She wants to stay involved with the home and work with at-risk teenagers in other settings as well.
"If somebody didn't do something, I might not be here. So am I going to be quiet and not speak up and do something with my life? How ungrateful would that be to do nothing when you've been given a gift? I think being adopted makes you realize very quickly that you're here for a purpose."
Les and Connie Schofer said the Godparent Home holds a special place in their hearts.
"When I think of that ministry, what they do for all the girls and their familes, it's an awesome service … but to me all I can think of is how thankful I am for Dr. [Jerry] Falwell because if he didn't have that vision to have that GH, then we wouldn't have been able to adopt our little girl from there. It's very close to home for me," she said.


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text:
slotRadio Music Player Recognized as Most Innovative Flash Memory Consumer Application of 2009
Santa Clara, Calif., August 13, 2009 - SanDisk Corporation (NASDAQ: SNDK), the global leader in flash memory cards, today announced that the slotRadio™ player has received the 2009 Best of Show award in the Consumer Application category at the fourth annual Flash Memory Summit , being held at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, Calif.
The slotRadio player is a small, stylish, portable device that plays music directly from pre-loaded slotRadio™ cards, eliminating the hassle of software installations, time-consuming music selection and file-by-file downloading. Most slotRadio cards contain 1,000 songs* featuring artists from Billboard® top charts. The cards are professionally arranged into a variety of genre-themed playlists.
"SanDisk has delivered a seamless solution for music lovers who want to listen to their favorite songs but don't want to deal with the hassle of downloading content and creating playlists", said Jay Kramer, chairman of the awards program and vice president, worldwide marketing, SEPATON. "The slotRadio player and card give listeners instant access to 1,000 songs at an affordable price, and we are proud to select the slotRadio player for the Best of Show Innovation Award."
"We are honored to receive the Best of Show award for the innovative flash memory consumer application that is the slotRadio player and card," said Noam Kedem, vice president, content, SanDisk. "slotRadio entertainment is all about making great music effortless - and this translates into a quicker and easier experience for consumers who wish to simply enjoy the music without the technological drama."
About SanDisk
SanDisk Corporation is the global leader in flash memory cards, from research, manufacturing and product design to consumer branding and retail distribution. SanDisk's product portfolio includes flash memory cards for mobile phones, digital cameras and camcorders; digital audio/video players; USB flash drives for consumers and the enterprise; embedded memory for mobile devices; and solid state drives for computers. SanDisk is a Silicon Valley-based S&P 500 company, with more than half its sales outside the United States.
*slotRadio cards contain songs pre-programmed in music playlists for unlimited playback with a slotRadio To Go player; slotRadio player; and Sansa® Fuze™ player (with firmware update). Much like radio, these songs are played in sequence and cannot be rewound or rearranged, yet in slotRadio™, individual songs can be skipped as often as you want. Song and playlist files cannot be copied or viewed (for example on a PC).
SanDisk's product and executive images can be downloaded from
SanDisk's web site/home page address: http://www.sandisk.com
SanDisk, the SanDisk logo, and Sansa are trademarks of SanDisk Corporation, registered in the United States and other countries. slotRadio mark and logo are trademarks of SanDisk Corporation. microSD logo is a trademark of SD-3C LLC. Other brand names mentioned herein are for identification purposes only and may be the trademarks of their respective holder (s).
This press release contains certain forward-looking statements, including expectations for new product introductions, applications, markets, and customers that are based on our current expectations and involve numerous risks and uncertainties that may cause these forward-looking statements to be inaccurate. Risks that may cause these forward-looking statements to be inaccurate include among others: market demand for our products may grow more slowly than our expectations or there may be a slower adoption rate for these products in new markets that we are targeting, these products may not perform as expected, these products may not be available when expected or at the prices expected, and the other risks detailed from time-to-time in our Securities and Exchange Commission filings and reports, including, but not limited to, our Form 10-K and our quarterly reports on Form 10-Q. We do not intend to update the information contained in this press release.
|Media Contact:
|Carm Lyman
|Lyman PR for SanDisk


text: Dossier Services Instruction Page How To Open a Dossier File To open a dossier file, complete and submit the Request to Open a Dossier form. Your dossier can include transcripts and letters of recommendation, which the Assistant Dean will send to prospective employers at no charge. Please follow the links below fore more information on how to add these items to your dossier file. Instructions for Letters of Recommendation Instructions for Transcripts


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Font Family: Vitesse, Number of fonts: 24*OTF, Type Foundry: Hoefler & Co., Design date: 2006
Vitesse: A slab serif for the 21st century.
Engineered for responsive handling and a sporty ride, Vitesse is confident and stylish in any situation.
Many of the typefaces we know the best, and use the most, are those whose foundations are centuries old. The typographic models that have survived the longest are those that have proven most adaptable: the Antique species of slab serif may be two hundred years old, but its formula is flexible enough to allow constant reinterpretation. Our Sentinel typeface was based on this nineteenth century genre, just as our Archer typeface was based on a twentieth century invention, the Geometric slab serif. Both are vibrant and living models, yet they invite a third option: the twenty-first century slab serif.
Our exploration into new kinds of slab serif began with a study of slab serifs past. Noting that nineteenth century designs were based on the ellipse, and twentieth century ones on the circle, we wondered what other geometries might prove similarly fertile, and were inexorably drawn to the rounded rectangle. Surprisingly, this attractive and familiar shape, so iconic of both the industrial and digital eras, has seldom been employed typographically as anything more than a novelty. There are customary ways of using rounded rectangles to look quaint, brutal, primitive, or faddish, but no obvious way to use them in the service of a more broadly expressive typeface. Since all rectilinear typefaces are ultimately a struggle between letterforms and their geometric underpinnings, our goal was to avoid either obvious endgame — rigidly conforming to the grid, or whimsically abandoning it — and to instead find a way to exploit this tension, turning it into gripping and energetic forms.
In developing Vitesse, we outlined the challenges that highly structured typefaces most often encounter. One test of whether a typeface's recipe is too simple is whether it reduces the letters D and O to the same shape, an obvious (but common) blow to legibility. A typeface is too doctrinaire if it obliterates natural subtleties in the alphabet, such as the grace of the lowercase a, the gentle incline of the figure 5, or the ballet of curves that defines a well-balanced ampersand. A well-planned design program will prevent a font from becoming overgrown, and keep its handsome S and G from becoming lost in a thicket of serifs. And letters like the lowercase f, t, and r, whose compact profiles offer limited space for embellishment, must not become casualties to the design, but instead emerge as the font's proudest moments.
Instead of using the rounded rectangle as a motif, the strategy we devised for Vitesse was to use a more sophisticated shape as its central theme: a modified rectangle with flat surfaces above and below, gently curved sides, and quick turns at the corners. The complexity of these ingredients allows Vitesse to escape the grid when necessary, helping to preserve both the natural poise of intricate letters, and the typeface's personality throughout its complete range of styles. The design that emerged has many of the qualities of a beloved sports car: Vitesse is agile, steady, suave, confident, and stylish.


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This week's gaming conversation has been dominated by Grand Theft Auto V, but these screenshots from a modded PC version of GTA IV are the most mind-blowing thing you'll see today.
Via Reddit, and modder darkdeus, these screenshots could probably pass for real photos of New York City if not for the misshapen people and GTA-style licence plates. We've shared video footage of crazy GTA IV mods before, but these are the best I've seen yet. They're unreal. Scroll all the way down — the last one is my favourite.


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The Jayco Story
Jayco, Inc. was founded in 1968 by a man of strong faith and vision. The late Lloyd J. Bontrager, family man and inventor, felt he could build the world a better RV. He longed to create a company of his own, one that clearly reflected his ideals: a company where everyone would be treated as "family" — from our factory to our front office, our salespeople to our suppliers, and our customers to our community.
With encouragement from his wife Bertha, Lloyd started Jayco on their farm in two chicken houses and a barn! He developed his own prototype camping trailer and a unique lifter system for fold-down campers, the basic design of which is patented and still in use today. By the end of 1968, his fledgling company of 15 employees had sold 132 fold-down camping trailers. Today, Jayco's "family" of employees has grown to nearly 1,600 people, with more than 25,000 people joining our "extended family" of customers each year.
Blending Old World Amish craftsmanship with innovative technology, Jayco is the nation's largest family-owned and operated RV manufacturer today, developing a full lineup of recreation vehicles at our company headquarters in rural Middlebury, Ind. And while our product line has grown considerably, every unit we build is still guided by Lloyd's vision and a humble desire to help make it easier for families to explore together and relax together. With a history dating back to 1968, Jayco's mission remains unchanged – to build exemplary RV's and provide customers with extraordinary service after the sale. It's what separates us from other RV manufacturers.
"In 1968, in a barn on a country road, our dream became a reality."


text:
Isaac Bashevis Singer was still alive when I began working at the Forward in 1990, though he no longer came into the office to deliver the stories and articles and serialized novels that the paper had published in Yiddish for more than fifty years. By then, he was dying in Florida, his mind erased by Alzheimer's disease. But it was possible to uncover traces of his presence.
"Of course I knew Singer," an old typesetter told me, in answer to my eager questions. "He was a pornographer!" This typesetter, an Orthodox Jew and a survivor of several concentration camps, added that he often took it upon himself to edit out the more licentious passages of Singer's prose. What's more, he boasted, when the paper moved from its Lower East Side location to Thirty-third Street and Park Avenue, he had gathered up a manuscript of "Enemies, A Love Story" and thrown it into a dumpster.
Then there was the woman claiming to have been Singer's longtime mistress—one of many. She was peddling a tell-all manuscript that promised astonishing revelations and that I deeply regret not having photocopied.
And there were the Yiddishists, tiny men in ties and woollen vests, who explained to me that I. B. Singer wasn't half as good a writer as I. J. Singer—I. B.'s older brother, Israel Joshua—who had died in 1944. In their view, Bashevis—as I. B. Singer was known to his Yiddish readers—wasn't really a Yiddish writer at all, just an Anglicizing panderer who, through cunning and longevity, had snookered an ignorant American readership into believing that his concocted shtetl stories were the real thing. For years, the widow of a well-known Yiddish writer used to call me at the Forward to tell me that Singer had stolen her husband's Nobel Prize. And all the while, as if to stick it to his critics, Singer himself kept popping up. In the years following his death, in 1991, Farrar, Straus & Giroux published "Scum," "Meshugah," "The Certificate," and the monumental "Shadows on the Hudson"—more novels than many living writers publish in an entire career.
Singer would have celebrated his hundredth birthday this year, on July 14th. And if he inhabits that inevitable gray zone that follows the death of a major writer, he has already managed to perform so many literary miracles that, to use a heretical metaphor, his ultimate canonization seems assured. To coincide with the centenary, the Library of America will publish three volumes of Singer's stories, each volume almost a thousand pages. It is the first time the august series has featured a fiction writer whose works were originally produced in a language other than English.
Singer was a master of so many modes that it is difficult to think of him as a single writer—as befits an artist who used multiple pseudonyms and whose stand-in characters have multiple lovers and sometimes even multiple wives. He was a high modernist who perfected the simple folktale and the not-so-simple folktale. He wrote sweeping historical sagas, intensely personal novels of self-discovery, and at least one scathing political parable. Along with the novels, and hundreds of short stories, he wrote many volumes of memoir artfully blended with fiction. Late in life, he launched an enormously successful career as a children's-book author, and he developed an interview style that became a kind of cosmic standup comedy: "Of course I believe in free will. I have no choice."
Singer was a humorist steeped in tragedy, a post-Holocaust chronicler who often wrote as if the Holocaust hadn't happened, a Jewish writer at war with the Jewish culture he memorialized, and, most remarkable of all, a Yiddish master who became one of the great American writers of the twentieth century.
Singer was born in Leoncin, Poland. Like the narrator of his novel "Shosha," he was "brought up on three dead languages—Hebrew, Aramaic, and Yiddish." He would not have thought of them as dead, of course, any more than the Poles around him would have viewed Polish as dead, or doubted the existence of their homeland, despite the fact that Poland had been partitioned in the late eighteenth century and no longer appeared on maps.
Singer's town was under Russian rule, and his father, a rabbi, refused to learn Russian—he considered books in that language unclean. Pinchas Mendel was therefore only a quasi-legal rabbi, which seriously hampered his ability to make a living. A mystic of deep piety who would leave the family for weeks at a time to study, dance, and pray with his rebbe, Pinchas Mendel was untroubled by his financial straits and, like a Hasidic Mr. Micawber, kept assuring the family that something would turn up, possibly even the Messiah. This seems to have been a lifelong source of exasperation for Singer's mother, Batsheva, whose father was himself a renowned rabbi—though he was a rationalist and viewed Pinchas Mendel as a feckless schlemiel.
Batsheva's father was also a man of powerful religious conviction who woke daily at 3 a.m. and wrote Torah commentaries till dawn. Bilgoray, the religious community he ruled over not far from the Austrian border, was to have a deep impact on Singer. His visits to the remote shtetl gave him a glimpse of a centuries-old community that the Yiddish scholar David Roskies refers to as "the Polish equivalent of Brigadoon."
But Singer's traditional childhood is something of an illusion, if only because "traditional" is a misleading word. He grew up studying Talmud, praying, and outwardly following the rabbinic path, but, under the influence of his brother, eleven years older, he was simultaneously reading about forbidden subjects like astronomy and evolution in Yiddish. As a boy, he listened in as Israel Joshua declared, to the horror of their parents, that there was no God. Krochmalna Street, in Warsaw, where Singer spent most of his childhood, was itself a mixture of pious Jews, prostitutes, and gangsters. Even the ingrained Hasidism of Singer's father was the product of a movement scarcely a hundred and fifty years old. Singer was like an Indian on horseback—an image of authenticity until you realize that horses were only brought to the Americas by the Spanish conquistadores. He was an authentic product of a world in flux.
Israel Joshua's rebellion fuelled Isaac's but also neutralized it in some ways. Isaac watched his older brother head off to Kiev in 1918 to work for a Yiddish publication and join the revolution. He also watched him return in 1921, embittered by the violence and chaos that the revolution had unleashed. Singer seems to have been free of the political hopes that motivated his brother and other socialists. He was, perversely, saved by his pessimism, at least as a writer. It shielded him from the political distractions and the terrible disappointments that paralyzed so many of his peers.
With the help of his brother, Singer got various proofreading jobs, and by the time he was twenty he was hanging out at the Warsaw Yiddish Writers' Club, where he plunged into the raging debates about Yiddish culture and chased women. And women, sprung from the same religious confines, often chased him. In a memoir, Singer's nephew describes entering Israel Joshua's Warsaw apartment unannounced and finding Isaac, then twenty-three years old, in the hall: "His arms are stretched out to their full length and effectively nailed in place by, on the one side, a skinny young woman who has dug her fingernails into the wrist she is clutching and, on the other side, a more buxom one who is doing the same. Each wants him wholly to herself."
Sex became for Singer the greatest symbol of liberation and the readiest representation of sin. For Dostoyevsky—a huge influence—the godless world in which "everything is possible" is tested by murder. If Singer had written "Crime and Punishment," Raskolnikov wouldn't have killed the old pawnbroker; he would have slept with her. Procreation was another story. Even after moving in with the "buxom one," Singer retained a horror of having a family. When she became pregnant and refused to have an abortion, Singer suggested they throw themselves under a trolley.
Singer was, at the time, influenced by the deeply pessimistic, misogynistic writing of Otto Weininger, the self-hating Austrian Jewish convert to Christianity who saw Jews and women as morally inferior and who killed himself in 1903, at the age of twenty-three. That Singer was turning himself into a Jewish writer (and had adopted his mother's name, Batsheva, to differentiate himself from his brother) while under Weininger's spell is a good indication of the contradictions he thrived on. So is the fact that he translated "The Magic Mountain" and the novels of Knut Hamsun into Yiddish while churning out a great deal of anonymous or pseudonymous trash, absorbing the lessons he learned writing pulp into his high-art literary ambitions. Or that, a vocal advocate of the Yiddish avant-garde, he sought inspiration in the Jewish past.
Singer's first novel, "Satan in Goray," was serialized in 1933 in Globus, a Polish Yiddish journal that Singer helped edit. A study in failed messianism, the novel is set in Poland in the wake of the Chmielnicki massacres of the sixteen-forties, a dark period in Polish Jewish history in which tens of thousands of Jews were murdered and whole towns wiped out. Out of the despair of that calamity grew faith in a false messiah, Shabbetai Tzevi. Singer's novel chronicles the way that messianic fervor grips and destroys a single town.
"Satan in Goray" is about the release of the repressed forces breaking loose in a rupturing Jewish world. To his account of a self-destructive sexual revolt against a repressive religious world, Singer harnessed the political disillusionment of his brother to create a bitter parable about Communist hysteria. "Satan in Goray" is like Arthur Miller's "The Crucible" told from the opposite perspective: Satan really is at large, and those who seem to be possessed by evil truly are. The richness of Singer's evocation and the ambiguity of his art, however, set the novel apart from pure political satire. Singer could not have written "Satan in Goray" without Bilgoray, the ancient shtetl where his grandfather served as rabbi for many years. Bilgoray gave religious ballast to Singer's political horror.
By the mid-nineteen-thirties, with Hitler ascendant in Germany and Polish Fascism on the rise, it was clear to Singer that he would have no future in Poland. I. J. Singer, who had immigrated to America in 1933, was by then internationally famous. In 1935, Singer followed, sent for by his brother and Abraham Cahan, the editor of the Jewish Daily Forward, as the Forward was known in its original incarnation. Cahan saw merit in "Satan in Goray" and had been persuaded by Israel Joshua, a star at the paper, to take a chance on his brother. Singer abandoned the Lenas and Ginas and Stefas who populate his quasi-fictional memoir "Love and Exile," and also a five-year-old son whom he does not bother to mention but who would miraculously survive, make his way to Israel, and become—what else?—Singer's Hebrew translator.
Singer's attitude toward the world he left behind is chillingly captured in a paragraph from "Love and Exile":
**{: .break one} ** I knew that I would never come this way again and that Warsaw, Poland, the Writers' Club, my mother, my brother Moishe, and the women who were near to me had all passed over into the sphere of memory. The fact is that they had been ghosts even while I was still with them. Long before I ever heard of Berkeley and Kant, I felt that what we call reality had no substance other than that formed in our minds. I was, one might say, a solipsist long before I ever heard of the word. **
It is a particularly unsettling account, given that Singer's mother and younger brother, Moishe—the lone sibling to remain observant—died during the war, after deportation to the Soviet Union. (His older sister, Hinde Esther—also a writer, though in the thwarted manner of Alice James—was saved by a miserable arranged marriage that sent her to England.)
In America, Singer put in his seven lean years first. He spoke almost no English; he had lost his girlfriends; his brother was famous and translated, and he was writing articles with titles like "People Who Enjoy Hurting Others and People Who Get Pleasure from Being Hurt" and "Divorced His Wife and Took Her as a Lover." The socialist bent of the Forward made him, with his pessimism and apolitical tales of demons and dybbuks, the odd man out. For his part, Singer declared that "Yiddish America is hell," writing to his abandoned wife, then living in Palestine, "The very idea that a work of mine would be published in the Forward makes me want to shun literature. I hate their broken and vulgar Yiddish and their notions of literature."
In 1940, Singer married Alma Wassermann, a German Jewish refugee who, improbably enough, spoke no Yiddish and who left a prosperous husband and two children to be with him. She supported Singer by working as a saleslady at various department stores while he wrote, hung out in cafeterias where refugees gathered, and conducted an elaborate web of affairs. The marriage gave him a home and, finding its own mysterious equilibrium, lasted for more than fifty years.
The anchor of marriage and the growing trust of the Jewish Daily Forward no doubt stabilized him, but what gives Singer's career its demonic arc is that the Holocaust, which destroyed everything and nearly everyone he knew, set his imagination on fire, as if the loss of the world he came from liberated him to re-create it. Added to this was the unexpected death of I. J. Singer, who suffered a massive heart attack in 1944. Singer often said that he never recovered from his brother's death, but he also confided to his nephew Maurice Carr that, for the first time, he felt free. In 1945, Singer finished "The Family Moskat," a kind of "Buddenbrooks" for Polish Jews that traces Jewish life in Warsaw from the beginning of the twentieth century to the eve of the Holocaust. From that moment on, he began producing stories and novels at a feverish pace.
The story of Singer's introduction to the English-speaking literary world gives a good idea of how simultaneously random and overdetermined his success can seem. Irving Howe, in his memoir "A Margin of Hope," describes how he had developed an interest in Yiddish literature as a way of confronting his own "troubled sense of Jewishness" and was collaborating with a Yiddish poet, Eliezer Greenberg, on an anthology of Yiddish stories. One day in 1953, Greenberg read a story aloud to him in Yiddish. "It was a transforming moment: how often does a critic encounter a major new writer?" The story was Singer's "Gimpel the Fool."
Howe persuaded Saul Bellow, "not quite so famous yet," to do the translation. They sat Bellow down in front of a typewriter. Greenberg read the story aloud slowly in Yiddish:
**{: .break one} ** Saul occasionally asked about refinements of meaning, and I watched in a state of high enchantment. Three or four hours, and it was done. Saul took another half hour to go over the translation and then, excited, read aloud the version that has since become famous. It was a feat of virtuosity, and we drank a schnapps to celebrate. **
It says something about the way Yiddish culture still tugged like an undertow on assimilated Jews—and American literary culture itself—that a great postwar American critic sat in a room in New York with a great postwar American novelist, translating a writer known only to readers of the Jewish Daily Forward. And who better than Bellow to reverse the flow of Singer's prose so that it emptied into an American ocean? Having grown up in a Yiddish-speaking household, he had done as much for himself. Bellow had just completed "The Adventures of Augie March," and no great leap was required for him to pass from writing "I am an American, Chicago born," to typing out "I am Gimpel the Fool."
Disguised as a folktale, "Gimpel" is really a portrait of the artist, and it functioned as a perfect advertisement for the author. The story, which captures the sort of radical innocence that only a cynic and doubter can create, is about a cuckolded simpleton who refuses to suspect his wife, despite her slew of bastards, until she is dying and confesses all. Tempted by the Devil, Gimpel, a baker, pisses in the dough to get his revenge on the mocking shtetl that arranged his marriage in the first place. But he is saved by a dream—his wife, suffering in the next world, warns him to save his soul. And so Gimpel buries the tainted loaves and leaves the shtetl to become a wandering storyteller. Followed by children, supported by alms, Gimpel becomes a kind of holy man. The fool has persisted in his folly and become wise. The power of the story, characteristic of much of Singer's work, is that although the evidence is all against him, we wish to believe with Gimpel; his transformation seems plausible and even enviable. Whether this is the power of faith or the power of fiction is one of the great challenges of Singer's work.
Howe sent the translation to Philip Rahv, at the Partisan Review. Rahv, Howe wrote, "immediately grasped the canny mixture of folk pathos and sophisticated overlay that made 'Gimpel' so brilliant a story and thus became the fourth man in this chain of discovery."
Of course, Howe discovered Singer the way Columbus discovered America; by this point in his career, Singer already had thousands of Yiddish readers and "The Family Moskat" had been published in English by Knopf. Still, Howe isn't wrong to see him as born again in the Partisan Review. In those days, it was hard to tell if Singer was a Yiddish writer living in America or an American writer producing stories in Yiddish. After "Gimpel," the balance began to shift. Howe's story is itself an emblematic fable about the merging of the marginal and the mainstream. New York Jewish intellectuals brought Singer to American literature the way one might bring a beloved uncle over from the Old Country.
The uncle, however, refused to behave himself. Singer never contacted Bellow for further translations, because, he later admitted, he did not wish to be overshadowed by him. (For his part, Bellow claimed that Singer was "an opportunist" and too "Jewy.") What is more, Singer began eclipsing all the Yiddish writers that Howe was laboring to promote, and his appeal was built not on what Howe prized in that literature, the moral and social values of secular Yiddish culture, but on something stranger, pre-rational, and at the same time more starkly modern.
Consider a story like "Blood," about a married woman who falls in love with a ritual slaughterer. Risha's infatuation begins when she observes the pitiless way that Reuben kills birds, flirting with the housewives as the bloody creatures flap at his feet. Before long, Risha and Reuben are having an affair: "In their amorous play, she asked him to slaughter her. Taking her head, he bent it back and fiddled with his finger across her throat." Soon Risha insists on slaughtering animals herself, thereby rendering them unkosher and drawing the whole town into sin.
The story is framed as a morality tale about the link between "Thou shalt not kill" and "Thou shalt not commit adultery," but Singer imposes a modern load of evil on his hapless shtetl dwellers. A spy watches Risha cutting the throats of cattle:
**{: .break one} ** The steaming blood gurgled and flowed. While the beasts were bleeding, Risha threw off all her clothes and stretched out naked on a pile of straw. Reuben came to her and they were so fat their bodies could barely join. They puffed and panted. Their wheezing mixed with the death-rattles of the animals made an unearthly noise. **
The post-Holocaust perversion that creeps into the story, the throat in love with the knife, is far more unnerving than a mere gothic tale. Singer was a sort of reverse dybbuk, throwing his mordant, contemporary voice back in time to speak through the mouths of the dead.
All writers can be accused of betraying the world of their childhood as much as they preserve it, but when that world has been brutally destroyed the challenge to the literary imagination itself is larger, the unease inevitably greater. Reading Singer, one has no sense that, had the Nazis not come, the struggles of European Jews with the Enlightenment, and with each other, could have produced a rich and sustaining Jewish culture. Even Singer's generous biographer Janet Hadda has suggested that, in "The Family Moskat," Singer made his Polish Jews, whether assimilated or pious, so spiritually exhausted, so morally bankrupt and inept, that their ultimate destruction looks more like suicide than murder.
There is a context for Singer's dark view of Jewish life. The same assimilationist forces that were reshaping American Jews had been unleashed in Poland as well, but after the devastations of the First World War—and in the face of the virulent anti-Semitism that took on new intensity with Polish independence—neither assimilation nor a return to former piety was possible. Jewishness could seem simultaneously obsolete and ineluctable. Singer captures this sense of futility perfectly in "The Family Moskat." When, during the First World War, an order of expulsion comes to the shtetl where the hero grew up, the pious rabbi finds himself fleeing next to the town atheist:
**{: .break one} ** Reb Dan's wagon drew up alongside the cart on which Jekuthiel the watchmaker sat, the tools of his trade piled around him. He looked at the rabbi and smiled sadly. "Nu, rabbi?" he said. It was clear that what he meant was: Where is your Lord of the Universe now? Where are His miracles? Where is your faith in Torah and prayer? "Nu, Jekuthiel," the rabbi answered. What he was saying was: Where are your worldly remedies? Where is your trust in the gentiles? What have you accomplished by aping Esau? **
After the 1953 translation of "Gimpel the Fool," when Singer's stories began appearing regularly in The New Yorker, Harper's, and Playboy, he developed a system that his longtime publisher Roger Straus called "super-editing" rather than translation. His hastily written stories and serialized novels, published first in the Jewish Daily Forward, were polished and shaped into English, often with multiple translators, many of whom knew no Yiddish at all. By eventually treating the work he produced in Yiddish as a rough draft for the English "original," Singer seemed to deny the wounded world that had spawned him. (There are critics today who argue that Singer should be read as two writers, Yiddish and English, and who would find my discussion of his work, without engaging the Yiddish texts, a betrayal of Singer, even if it is the outgrowth of his own literary behavior.) In 1943, Singer had declared that a real Yiddish writer could not write about America; he would lack the vocabulary to keep pace with a modern metropolis. Not one to be bound by his own declarations, Singer did come to set a great deal of his work in America, though his characters are primarily refugees grappling with the psychological equivalent of his linguistic dilemma. But, in a certain way, Singer fulfilled his pledge. Without formally abandoning Yiddish, he managed to make it the rocket fuel, consumed in the journey, that propelled him into American literary life.
"The Family Moskat," along with "The Manor" and "The Estate," which followed it, are capacious novels that bow to history. One feels Singer, driven by guilt and pity and a doom-filled exhilaration, trying to gather up everything that was lost. Gradually, however, his novels begin to shed their historical freight. They become shorter, more personal, and, though often set in the Jewish past, they are written in a kind of burning eternal present. Built around a single central consciousness, they take on a subjective, modern, confessional tone that gives them immediacy and an oddly American flavor.
"The Slave," Singer's most beautiful work, tells the story of Jacob, a man sold, after the 1648 Chmielnicki massacres, to Polish peasants for whom he tends cattle in almost total isolation. A Jewish Robinson Crusoe, Jacob has no books, but scratches all he can remember of the six hundred and thirteen Jewish commandments on a rock. When at last he is redeemed and brought back to his rebuilt shtetl, he discovers just how out of tune he has become with any community:
**{: .break one} ** His love for the Jews had been wholehearted when he was distant from them. He had forgotten the shifty eyes and barbed tongues of the petty—their tricks, stratagems and quarrels. True, he had suffered from the primitiveness and savagery of the cowherds, but what could be expected from such a rabble? **
What saves Jacob is his love for Wanda, a Polish peasant. Together they represent a new birth of freedom for Jewish consciousness. Theirs is not the communal Judaism of Eastern Europe but something built on an almost Emersonian individualism. Singer found a way to transform misanthropy and self-interest into a road to spirituality. The book, serialized in the Forward in 1960-61 and published in English a year later, has a mythic energy that is deeply religious but requires a betrayal of history to achieve. The fusion of the ancient—Jacob is more than a little like his Biblical namesake—and the new makes the book as much a product, perhaps even a prophecy, of American religion as of traditional Judaism.
Singer's postwar fiction defies easy summary. For one thing, there is an astonishing amount of it—nearly a dozen novels and as many collections of short stories—often of wildly varying quality. The short stories exhibit a greater range of styles—elegiac, demonic, journalistic, personal, phantasmagoric. He was a master of the genre, and his stories, at their best, seem to hover in unresolved ambiguity. The novels, though they embrace more of life, and perhaps more of Singer himself, often fall into a certain schematic pattern. In many, a prodigal yeshiva boy, hungering for one or more women, and for an unattainable freedom, feels the call of his past, which he tries to obliterate with increasingly reckless behavior.
The heroes of Singer's novels are unbound Jews, but their destinies are shaped by conventional morality and his characters are often made to suffer and repent; they compensate with self-loathing for what they've achieved in liberation. The hero of "The Magician of Lublin," a Houdiniesque escape artist, recoils in horror after one of his lovers commits suicide; he walls himself into a tiny room with no door, where he will be unable to act on the carnal impulses that have ruled his life and ruined the lives of others. Most of Singer's heroes live with a nameless dread, an expectation that they are deserving of death and that it is only a matter of time before the axe falls.
Such fatalism, however, does not diminish the spitting fury of Hertz Grein, a philandering refugee who, in "Shadows on the Hudson," contemplates the Florida Jews who have snubbed his new lover: "Why should it matter to me if they massacre types like these or burn them in ovens? . . . The tragedy is that they destroyed the good ones and left this trash behind." More than one character in the novel—written in the nineteen-fifties but left untranslated until after Singer's death—compares God, unfavorably, to a Nazi.
Though much of the darkness of a novel like "Shadows on the Hudson," filled with self-hating survivors, stems from the Holocaust, Singer was chronicling a more complicated phenomenon. Most of his characters, despite Orthodox childhoods, began their rebellion against God and Judaism before the Second World War, in the nineteen-teens and twenties, when many Polish Jews were stepping out of traditional Jewish culture for the first time, as Singer himself had. The Holocaust brought the curtain down on their unresolved rebellion, and left them quarrelling with murdered parents and a culture that had been annihilated, punishing themselves for having wished to be rid of what was now gone.
Singer may have inverted the world he came from, but he came from a world of such upheaval that it would have been hard to say where solid ground was. Secular Jews saw Berlin, a beacon of hope for the Jewish enlightenment since the eighteenth century, become, in the twentieth, the epicenter of genocidal hatred. Religious Jews, who had survived for centuries with the expectation of messianic redemption, found abandonment and death. It may have taken Singer's ice-cold eye and taste for paradox to do this world justice and to weather the despair that might otherwise have engulfed anyone attempting it.
America—where Singer's sideshow attractions were taken as the main events of Eastern European Jewish life—became the most paradoxical place of all. His eventual success—the best-sellers, the movie adaptations, the National Book Awards—seemed, even to him, an absurdist joke told at the expense of his pious ancestors and his high-minded peers. He may have felt like Alchonon in "Taibele and Her Demon," the scrawny schoolteacher with the fabulous imagination who pretends he is a demon, romancing the gullible Taibele with fantastic stories of the netherworld. Taibele's lonely need is such that, like Singer's readers, she willingly submits to the ravishments of the imagination.
But if Singer's very success suggested to him a triumph of the dark forces of the universe, demonic reversals of fortune made the irreverent Singer a pious figure as well as an impious one. A man who wore sober suits wherever he went, a vegetarian who claimed he did it for "the health of the chicken," a writer as devoted to literature as his father was devoted to Torah commentary (he even used the same kind of notebook to write in), an icon of Jewish life and culture, however much he quarrelled with it, Singer did become a kind of secular rabbi. In "The Magician of Lublin," Yasha, doing penance, is embarrassed by the parade of seekers who come to his little doorless hut hoping for advice and blessing. Distressed that anyone should seek the blessing of a sinner, Yasha consults a rabbi, who responds, "He to whom Jews come in audience is a rabbi." This does not seem to have been a wholly ironic notion for Singer. America became for him what Yiddish literature was supposed to be—an alternate Jewish reality.
It is remarkable how naturally Singer fits into the American literary tradition. His demon-loving orphans and sin-obsessed rabbis may have little in common with actual Eastern European Jews, but they have a great deal in common with Hawthorne's Puritans, those New England shtetl dwellers who scurry off to their black Sabbaths and dream of witches while preaching piety, and who somehow gave birth to our republic. Singer's own guilt-ridden journey allowed him to channel a powerful current that is the flip side of Emersonian optimism: the uplift of Biblical promise disturbed by a deep anxiety that God's blessing has been forfeited by human folly or, what is more sinister, rescinded by a deceiving deity.
In that American context, Singer's work seems surprisingly mainstream. The greatest American novel of the nineteenth century, after all, tells the story of a whaling ship—a whole civilization, really—that sinks; everyone dies except one solitary survivor with a Biblical name, who narrates the story. Or consider the novels of Hemingway, steeped in a postwar bleakness so deep that distraction alone holds despair at bay—a condition with which Singer's survivors, a truly lost generation, are intimately acquainted. These lost souls would not be out of place in the novels of Faulkner, where the past is so tormenting that, as one character says, it's not even past.
The fictional hero of his own whom Singer most identified with, or so he told his son, was Herman Broder, of "Enemies, A Love Story"—a man with three wives. He is unable to choose among the pious bride of his youth, the slavishly devoted Polish maid who saved him from the Nazis and has followed him to Brooklyn, and the sexy, suicidal Holocaust survivor. The book's title is intended to refer to Herman and the half-mad survivor, but it has always seemed to me an equally apt description of Singer's relationship to himself, to Judaism, and to God.
"Don't leave your child," the survivor urges Herman, not long before killing herself.
"I will leave everybody" is Herman's chilling reply—the last words he speaks in the book. We do not know Herman's fate; it may be, as one of his wives speculates, that he, too, will commit suicide. Or it may be that he will return, beached like Jonah on the shore of an inescapable Jewishness. Most likely, he will remain in motion. Fleeing responsibility, religion, social entanglements, marriage, morality, the past, himself, the beleaguered refugee lights out for new territory. Herman would like to find the utopia that Singer himself envisioned in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, where one can "attain all possible pleasures" and "still serve God." In the meantime, he has discovered America. ♦