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Quieter and more efficient than radial bladed fans for air purification applications
Howden American Fan Company Announces BCS Backwardly Inclined Fan for Air Purification Applications
Fan delivers non-overloading horsepower characteristics over entire pressure curve
July 6, 2016 – Howden American Fan Company, the leading manufacturer of high-quality industrial fans and blowers, announces that it offers the BCS Backwardly Inclined Fan for air purification in applications like woodworking, chemical mixing, welding, dry storage, and more. The BCS fan delivers non-overloading horsepower characteristics and stable performance over the entire pressure curve for maximum efficiency.
The Howden American Fan BCS Backwardly Inclined Centrifugal Blower Fan is quieter and more efficient than radial bladed fans for air purification applications, and delivers better performance due to its non-overloading design. The BCS fan is typically installed on the clean side of an air purification system's dust collection bag or cartridge, thereby reducing maintenance needs and improving overall product life.
Unique in the industry, the BCS fan is independently tested and certified by the Air Movement and Control Association (AMCA) for air and sound. It is proven to be stable throughout the entire performance curve, and can be dampened back to approximately 40% of maximum flow. It is suitable for use in a variety of air purification applications, including in outdoor installations.
The fan is available with both high temperature and spark free construction designs, as well as with corrosion-resistant or other special alloys according to the needs of individual customers. It is available in 18 different fan sizes, from 12-1/4″ through 66″ diameter wheels, in Class I, II, or III construction. With the available percentage widths of the BCS fan product line, nearly any flow range can be met with the direct drive fan.
For more information, visit www.americanfan.com.
About Howden American Fan Company
Howden American Fan Company is the leading manufacturer of high quality industrial fans and blowers that set the standard within the industry. Howden supplies axial fans, centrifugal fans, and blowers for a wide range of industries, including marine, industrial manufacturing, and building and construction. Located near Cincinnati, OH, Howden American Fan is part of the Howden Industrial Fan Group, made up of American Fan, Joy Fan, and Garden City Fan. For more information, please visit http://www.americanfan.com/ or call 866-771-6266 toll-free.
SOURCE: Howden American Fan Company


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The Patent Pending Arisaka Offset Scout Mount is designed specifically for the Surefire Scout Light M600 and M300 series weapon lights, the Modlite PLH and OKW weapon lights, the Arisaka 300 and 600 Series Lights, the Streamlight Protac Rail Mount 1, 2 and HL-X (non-laser), and Olight Odin. It replaces the stock Picatinny rail adapter with a low profile mount for M-Lok handguards. The Offset Scout Mount is very low profile at less than 0.20" thick.
When used on the side mounting surfaces of M-Lok handguards, the Offset Scout Mount places the light at a 45 degree angle and tucks it in closer to the rail system. Oriented upwards, the light is located at approximately the 1:30 or 10:30 clock positions. Oriented downwards, the light is located at approximately the 4:30 or 6:30 clock positions.
The Offset Scout Mount also provides three lateral mounting positions for the light body, which allows the user to position the light closer or farther away from the top rail, front sights, or other accessories. Three positions are provided, spanning approximately 0.240". When used with the Arisaka 300 Series Light Body or 600 Series Light Body, even more clearance can be gained for larger front sights.
As shown in the pictures, the Offset Scout Mount is compatible with most M-Lok handguards like the BCM MCMR, Geissele SMR MK4, MK8, MK13, MK14, MK16, Mega MML and Wedge Lock, Midwest Industries SSM, EraThr3, SMOS, and SLR Rifleworks M-Lok models.
Compatible with the Modlite PLH and OKW, Surefire M300A, M300B, M300C, M300V, M312, M322, M312V, M313V, M322V, M600B, M600C, M600P, M600U, M600V, M600DF, M612, M622, M603V, M612V, M622V, Streamlight Protac Rail Mount 1, 2 and HL-X (non-laser), Olight Odin, and Arisaka 300 and 600 Series.
M620, M951/2 and M961/2 series lights can also be used with the Offset Scout Mount with the addition of the Arisaka Offset M620 Adapter.
Length: 1.265"
Weight: 0.4 oz
The mount is CNC machined from 6061-T6 aluminum and MIL-A-8625 Type III hard coat anodized. Includes necessary screws to attach light body to mount. Requires an IP25/T25 and IP20/T20 Torx driver for installation (not included). Recommended torque: 30 inch lbs for M-Lok screws and 20 inch lbs for light body screws with Loctite 222 or 243.

subset: commoncrawl


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Competing Through Innovation: The Case of Broderbund
As product life-cycles become shorter, the ability to innovate becomes a more important factor. But how do you innovate consistently? And how do you manage creative people whose jobs require them to "think differently"? Broderbund shows the way.
In the world of high technology, where legions of 25-year-old programmers have seven-figure net worths and the operational definition of eternity is 18 months (the length of an average product cycle), the management of creative people is a skill akin to herding cats. Nonetheless, most high-technology companies, which eschew traditional management and organization structures, have based their long-term survival on finding ways to operate without stifling creativity and innovation, often the heart and soul of their corporate cultures.
In the consumer software market, for example, an industry barely 20 years old, the log of best practices in managing creativity is hardly a hefty volume. Software is an industry of fits and starts, of intense product cycles, where the phrase "business as usual" is out of place because the fundamental business can change almost every year. Much of what drove the early successes -- a deep belief in a radical or innovative idea and a willingness to do whatever it took to get a product out into the market -- eventually gave way to harsher business realities.
With success and growth came real management challenges, chiefly how to recruit, retain and motivate a band of brilliant and iconoclastic product developers with self-worths highly inflated by the new technology-driven economic model.
At a company like Broderbund Software Inc., the highly successful pioneer of the PC-based education/entertainment software market, the formulas for success, like the industry itself, have shifted dramatically, forcing the company in the last year to restructure and reevaluate its long-term strategy. The market -- flooded with competition, bloated by too many products and moving swiftly from the shrink-wrapped, off-the-retail-shelf model to the Internet -- has undergone a metamorphosis and confronts a new, uncharted landscape. As distribution channels shift, creativity and innovation are, more than ever, the fuel for future growth. One thing remains clear: past glory is a poor barometer for future success in a highly fickle, highly dynamic business.
Broderbund knows that truism as well as any company, having seen its fortunes soar in the early years of the 1990's and then sag under competitive and creative pressures. Much like the film industry, Broderbund's market is a "hits" business, with a few blockbuster titles producing a high percentage of the earnings. Tomorrow's best sellers can emerge from a raft of new, unknown shops while former winners may drift into irrelevance. Like "Monopoly" or "Clue," some software titles become evergreens and sell well for years. But most are gone and forgotten in a year or two. Products are as affected by the "buzz" on the World Wide Web as by massive marketing campaigns. In the customer base of young "gamers," the shelf life of a product is often measured in days or weeks and even the biggest sellers are just vague memories a few years past their halcyon days.
But Broderbund (Danish for "brotherhood" and pronounced BROO-der-bund), founded in 1980 by brothers Douglas and Gary Carlston and based in Novato, Calif., has amassed a wealth of knowledge and management skill and fostered a creative culture unparalleled in the software business. If there are lessons to be learned in managing creativity in a software company -- or any other business where creativity is key -- Broderbund is a seasoned teacher. Indeed, how Broderbund has managed to roll with the punches, and how it has been forced to reshape the special culture that is its lifeblood, is a story that will resonate with managers of many other companies in flux.
In a market where a single hit product is a rare achievement, Broderbund has produced a long string of winners -- from its hugely popular "Print Shop" series and innovative children's offerings like "Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego?" "Kid Pix" and "The Living Books" series to "Myst," the most popular software game ever (with nearly four million copies sold since it was introduced in 1993, generating close to $200 million in revenues). Last year, after a long delay, the company brought out "Riven: The Sequel to Myst," selling more than a million copies between late October and January 1998, and pent-up demand quickly vaulted the new game to the top of the best-seller list.
For much of its history, Broderbund operated more like a Hollywood studio or book publisher than a technology company. Though it is located in the hills of Marin County, north of San Francisco, and a good two-hour drive from the more notable Silicon Valley, Broderbund attracted an army of young, talented animators, musicians, writers, designers, engineers and programmers who heard through the grapevine that the company was a haven for creative types. People had "room to roam," said Harry Wilker, an 11-year Broderbund veteran and senior vice president for product development.
With profit margins of 80 percent providing virtually unlimited resources, the creative teams building Broderbund's products had freedom to push the limits of the available technology. Unlike its Silicon Valley counterparts, Broderbund was not driven by stock options (though they were an important enticement). Creativity, in fact, was the company's currency and its lure. Recruitment and retention of the best and the brightest was made easy by a combination of reputation, performance and location. Marin, with its proximity to San Francisco, the Napa Valley and the nearby coastline, proved seductive to those who found Hollywood and Silicon Valley distasteful.
Operating as both a production house and a publisher, Broderbund was never hung up on the "Not Invented Here" syndrome. In fact, Broderbund's early business model, according to Doug Carlston, was to acquire software from independent "authors," and handle the final programming, if needed, as well as marketing and distribution. As technology and the resulting products grew more complex, the number of people required to complete the technical and support tasks grew significantly and Broderbund built facilities to do what outside contractors couldn't do on their own.
At the same time, Broderbund executives also recognized that the costs and resources required to create everything in-house were prohibitive and the company could better leverage its reputation in the marketplace by distributing titles like "Myst" or "Prince of Persia" that were produced elsewhere. Hybrid solutions -- employees working with outside contractors -- became commonplace. In some cases, when Broderbund sought out the best talent and they couldn't be persuaded to come in-house, relationships were formed and long-term deals were cut.
For much of the 1990's, Broderbund set the pace in consumer software, a market that grew to $2.63 billion in 1997. As profit margins and revenues soared, the company became a Wall Street darling, going public in 1991 at $11 a share and growing steadily to a peak of $76 a share in September 1995. "Myst," a compelling and graphically rich fantasy created by Cyan Inc., a tiny game maker in Spokane, Wash., fueled much of the growth, sitting on top of the best-seller list for two years.
But in 1996, growth slowed sharply in the consumer software market while a flood of products jockeyed for shelf space. Forced to cut prices to stay competitive and hurt by the delay of the "Myst" sequel, Broderbund watched as its margins shriveled. It felt the full force of the slowdown in 1997. Though revenues increased marginally last year -- to $190 million, from $186 million in 1996 -- net income dropped to just under $10 million, from $36 million. Wall Street punished the stock, which dropped as low as $17.75 a share in 1997, and Broderbund was forced to restructure.
The shakeup was orchestrated by Joseph P. Durrett, a veteran of the consumer packaged goods industry, who was named chief executive by the board in late 1996. In 1997, Mr. Durrett proceeded to reorganize the company into business units by product segment, rather than by business function, in an attempt to focus more on the customer. The company's entertainment division, which produced a string of exciting computer games and distributed "Myst" and "Riven," was renamed Red Orb Entertainment in order to create a strong brand in its particular niche and to differentiate Broderbund's games from its education and productivity products.
The most profound change for veteran Broderbunders was the belt-tightening and cost controls, in effect a dose of old-fashioned, traditional management by the bottom line. The days of flexible budgets and free spending were quickly replaced by a cost consciousness that put every creative decision under scrutiny. The Creative Center is now shuttered and sabbaticals are no longer discussed. In this environment, employees feel pressure to meet deadlines and to contain costs in ways that had always been foreign in Novato.
As the high-technology sector matures, more of its companies will face a similar transition and similar problems. For veteran Broderbund managers like Mr. Wilker, the shift to the new hard-edged environment has made it absolutely necessary to find ways to retain the vital link to the creativity that made the company what it was in the first place.
Teresa Amabile, a professor of business administration at the Harvard Business School, has spent the last 20 years studying the management of creativity in organizations. The most essential element -- and the one most often ignored -- is motivation, she said.
"People will be most creative when they are motivated -- primarily by interest, enjoyment, personal challenge, involvement in the work itself, and not by external inducements," Professor Amabile said.
Particularly in high-tech companies, this "intrinsic motivation principle" is crucial to successfully managing creativity, she stated. Thus, while stock options and outlandish compensation packages grab the headlines around Silicon Valley, the true motivator for creative people is to offer them the toughest challenge.
In her research, Professor Amabile compiled a list of six stimulants and supports to creativity. They are:
1) Freedom or autonomy -- feeling a sense of control over your own ideas.
2) Challenge -- working on important, complex problems that others can't solve. This has a huge effect, particularly in high-tech companies where people feel they are doing what everyone says is impossible.
3) Sufficient resources -- having enough backing to do a job well.
4) Work group supports -- receiving support from a creative team trying to solve a problem. This encompasses a mutual sense of trust, a free flow of ideas and information and a shared sense of commitment to the project. While there may be moments of heated debate, there is always an openness to other opinions.
5) Supervisory encouragement -- having an immediate supervisor who sets clear, strategic goals for the team but at the same time allows operational autonomy. Such a supervisor communicates effectively and also protects the group from corporate interference.
6) Organizational encouragement -- having upper-level management who foster creativity with an effective system of rewards and recognition, along with a free flow of ideas and information.
Professor Amabile uses the "creativity" maze as an analogy. If an employee thinks of a task as a maze to get through, there is often one clear path to the solution. But with most tasks, especially in high-tech settings, there are many ways to solve a problem, and these are often much more interesting, exciting and elegant than the one obvious way.
"If you are extrinsically motivated, if you are the rat with the cheese outside, the best thing to do is get out of the maze," Professor Amabile said. "But if you are intrinsically motivated, the process is exciting and challenging to you. You enjoy the maze, and deviating, finding other solutions."
Most people who go into high-technology careers do enjoy the maze, she said, and they need a work environment that fosters that enjoyment. "They can't be loaded down with creativity killers," such as too much employee evaluation and surveillance or severely constrained resources, she said.
For that reason, a company like Broderbund, which suddenly found itself going from abundant to constrained resources, has faced a stern test of its ability to manage creativity, not only in recruiting and retaining talented employees but in maintaining the appropriate culture.
Mr. Wilker, the senior vice president for product development, has always enjoyed the maze. As the company's creativity chief, he has been responsible for the definition, design and publication of its software. In that capacity, he helped define the culture for Broderbund's creative teams -- the writers, designers, animators, musicians and engineers who produced its string of hits. An exuberant 52-year-old entrepreneur and ex-New Yorker, Mr. Wilker loved that culture, notably the freedom to push the envelope of both the technology and the game concepts that flowed in and around the Broderbund "studio."
Today, Mr. Wilker acknowledges that the world has changed and he is frustrated. "Now every creative device has an economic question," he said. "Can you sell this? Can it be merchandised?" At the same time, many new titles are sequels or extensions of existing products, thus cutting off some of the challenge and incentive that software developers get from pursuing hot new games.
Mr. Wilker and other Broderbund managers are most frustrated by the squeezed prices and crowded display shelves that now define the company's business environment. But it was Broderbund's very success -- its stratospheric margins and skyrocketing stock price -- that helped transform that environment by attracting so many new competitors. Many of the new arrivals focused far less on quality than Broderbund has and flooded the market with inferior products. A parent who goes to the mall, spends $49.95 for a computer game and watches in horror when her bored 5-year-old shuts off the computer after 20 minutes is unlikely to buy more software, regardless of the vendor.
Nonetheless, Mr. Wilker knows that a huge audience remains for Broderbund's products -- the company shipped 46 new titles in 1997, up from 42 and 36 in the two previous years -- and he has succeeded in holding onto a solid staff. In the realignment, he no longer runs the entire creative group. But his nearly two decades in the software business makes him a full professor of high-tech creativity management.
Mr. Wilker believes that the commandments for successfully managing creative people are simple, intuitive and more art than science -- and that they apply now more than ever, given all the new constraints. The key ingredients:
Fostering good communication.
Trusting your people.
Realizing that the entire organization is creative and that good ideas can and will come from anywhere.
Making sure there is a well-conceived design document or blueprint for every project.
Checking milestones along the way; evaluating prototypes, keeping projects flowing.
Having the ability to champion projects but also to kill projects, if the economics or market demands it.
Avoiding divisive practices, like paying internal product royalties to employees.
Knowing when and how to shake up stalled projects.
Recruiting the best and brightest; promoting the ones with vision and organizational skills; distrusting formal credentials and long résumés.
Mr. Wilker echoes Professor Amabile on the question of what drives creative people. "Most of the people in this industry, outside of the few stars, are not primarily driven by economics," he said. "Making good money is important to them and they are well paid, but that is not what drives them." At Broderbund, where the stock is far off its all-time high, stock options are even less of a motivating factor than before.
Indeed, according to Ken Goldstein, vice president and general manager of the Red Orb Entertainment division, most of his creative people have done the same work at some point in their lives for free.
"My people are hard-core gamers," Mr. Goldstein said. "They are our own customers. They play a lot of games. And if you don't love the art and science of making games, you'll burn out after the 600th night in front of the computer and the 4,000th piece of pizza. The only thing that carries you is a passion for making really cool software."
And in the interest of avoiding turf battles and political infighting, employees don't get product royalties. Paying internal royalties "is incredibly divisive," Mr. Wilker said. "You don't really know who contributed more than someone else, and with teams of 10 to 12 people contributing to the development of a product, it's hard to determine how royalties would be divided."
So Broderbund pays competitive salaries and bonuses and appeals to the creative souls of its 1,000 employees to keep them around. That appeal generally works. Even with the constraints imposed by the tougher operating environment, the company is still considered by many to be the best at creating games, although Broderbund executives concede that recruitment at the top ranks is harder than it used to be.
The typical Broderbund employee looks a lot like those who work in Silicon Valley or Redmond, Wash., where the Microsoft Corporation reigns. Most Broderbunders are in their late 20's or early 30's, have college degrees, are single and are intensely driven, with a deep visceral love and understanding of their product, in this case, games. Jeans, T-shirts and tennis shoes define the dress code.
Often socially shy and awkward, they tend to watch cartoons, shop at F.A.O. Schwarz and spend their vacations at Disneyland or playing computer games, their own and those of competitors. When "Quake II," a competitor's hot new game, hit the stores, for example, three Broderbund developers rushed out, bought a copy and immediately set up an all-night "Quake-a-thon" at the office to test the product.
When veteran employees, those in their 30's and 40's, take their young children to the office, a practice that is actively encouraged, the younger staffers bring out the abundant toys they have on their desks, sit on the floor and play with the kids, testing their new ideas and enjoying themselves. "Some part of them is a child that never grew up," said Michelle Bushneff, an art director and 13-year Broderbund veteran.
But while software programmers have earned a well-deserved reputation as lone wolves, preferring long, solitary hours in front of the computer monitor, Broderbund's employees are just the opposite. Here, collaboration is the foundation of a team-based approach that prizes the individuality of its members. Mr. Goldstein, a six-year veteran, said it is a "very vocal and opinionated culture," with spirited and heated discussions a regular part of the workday.
"Everyone here is creative in some form," Mr. Goldstein said. "Without that creative spirit, you'll have a hard time working here."
Added Laurie Strand, vice president of the education studio unit, "The best creative team is one with a shared vision and an ability to respect each other's disciplines. Content is what really motivates people. They feel they are really contributing creatively. Taking cartoon characters they grew up watching, for example, and bringing them to life in a computer game."
And with consumer tastes shifting quickly, constantly and without obvious logic, flexibility is crucial for managing the creative teams. Ms. Strand described the recent birth of a "Carmen Sandiego" spinoff, "Carmen Sandiego Word Detective." That product began as an educational game called "Word Workshop," a language-learning companion to the company's popular "Math Workshop."
After six months of intense design and development, "Word Workshop" was nearly complete when management decided that the competition for shelf space had become too cutthroat. To have a better chance in the stores, the game would have to be recast as a line extension to Carmen Sandiego.
"I had to call everyone into a room and tell them that we had to redo everything and put it into the context of Carmen," Ms. Strand said. Rather than grumbling, the team pressed forward without missing a beat.
Like a SWAT team leader, the product manager, who acts much like a movie or television producer, marshaled the creative forces. In the first meeting were eight staffers and outside contractors: artists, writers, software designers and programmers. The first order of business was brainstorming a story line that would fit in with Carmen. As with all such projects, the one essential element is to decide what the core game is about -- how will it work, what will make it exciting and addictive? Without that element, called the game play in the business, there is nothing to work on.
Ideas were tossed about. Someone suggested that Carmen, the noted international thief, would steal the unstealable: language. She would scramble the words and players would have to decode her diabolical actions. She would also need to be tracked down and caught. A freelance screenwriter, brought in for the meeting, suggested that a new character be introduced, a secret agent with a checkered past who works for the good guys. The idea was adopted.
Once the story line was set, the product manager drew up a mission statement and assignments were made. A script had to be written, and the sights and sounds of a new electronic world had to be created. Someone suggested sponsoring a contest on America Online to name the new character, an approach that eventually produced the moniker Chase Devineaux.
The artists began drawing the characters and 20 contract animators were hired from around the United States to help with the laborious task. If Carmen was to dash off to 20 different places, each location had to be drawn in a certain cohesive way. Software code had to be adapted to the new structure of the game; it could not be played the same way as other Carmen games. The product, aimed at children 8 through 14, also had to offer different degrees of difficulty as succeeding levels of play were reached. And throughout the process, the educational content had to be run past a panel of teachers serving as advisers.
Armed with a design document, team members went off with their assignments. Prototypes were built at each step of the way, and two-hour meetings were held twice a week to chart progress. The game went into full production mode within six months, about a third the usual time, and hit the shelves late last year.
Mr. Wilker noted that throughout this type of process, "there is immense room for creativity." Nonetheless, he added, it is only by everyone following a single vision that the goal is reached. "The person with the design vision must be in control," he said.
One of the keys to Broderbund's success, according to Mr. Wilker, is that it has always been agnostic about creative visions: they can come from anywhere, from project managers, artists, programmers or outside contractors. But once the vision is identified and put in position, Broderbund managers protect it like guardians of the flame. Part of that process is shielding creative people from the bureaucracy, Mr. Wilker said, by steering clear of committees "and insulating them from the suits." Without this shield, he explained, new products will feel as if they have "come right out of a focus group."
Nonetheless, Mr. Wilker, who views formal organizational rules and regulations with disdain, recognizes that the "suits" need to be represented; business acumen is an increasingly necessary ingredient for success in today's harsher marketplace.
"You need to get that stuff into the process," he said, but not without translating it, filtering out the nonsense and guiding it. He said the mantra of his creative teams has long been, "Tell me what you need done -- don't tell me how to do it."
Broderbund clearly understands those parameters, even with the new constraints that it must operate under. Working as closely as it does with Cyan, the creative house behind "Myst" and "Riven," tests the company's understanding of managing creativity. "Riven," the brainchild of designers Rand Miller and his brother, Robyn, was four years in the making, required a team of 25 writers, artists, designers and engineers and cost upward of $10 million. (Part of that cost went for the construction of a building to house the development team.) In the world of entertainment software, it was akin to Hollywood's "Titanic" in terms of its expense and how much was riding on its success.
Though "Riven" was a year late and Broderbund's stock paid the price for the tardiness, the company gave Cyan its creative space. "They were very hands-off in the development and creativity of the game," said Tony Fryman, Cyan's project manager for "Riven."
Mr. Wilker, in fact, explodes the myths of high-tech creativity, all those images of individual geniuses huddled over keyboards turning out dazzling, bug-free software. "The process requires constant attention and it is driven by the design documents, which always bring us back to what we want to do," he explained. "It is an iterative, by-touch process, and extremely people-intensive."
Indeed, complex software, like "Riven" or "Journeyman Project 3," another new Broderbund title, is often the result of more than one inspired vision. It is cumulative, built over time and fleshed out like a novel, with regular and rapid feedback as the design process unfolds. Constant testing of prototypes is also required. As a project scales up, the costs committed to it increase exponentially, "so you need to know you are right," Mr. Wilker said. "Wasted effort is the great killer of software."
Doug Carlston added that the fostering of mutual respect is crucial to product development. "We want people not to feel that in order to get their own moment in the sun, they have to deny it to others," he said.
Besides wasted effort, the other great menace in the design process is the onset of ennui. Then heels drag and costs begin to mount. In these instances, Mr. Wilker says, a manager must shake things up and "destabilize" the situation. That can be done in different ways: by moving key people off the project and replacing them with others, by implementing zero-based accounting ("If you can't cost justify this, we'll kill it") or by making a consultant-like assessment to figure out what is wrong. "A project gone awry never rights itself," Mr. Wilker insisted. "The worst thing you can do is nothing."
As Broderbund moves forward, Mr. Wilker faces his toughest challenge. Shrink-wrapped software, the company's meat and potatoes, is no longer the sweet spot in the market. Broderbund has created an on-line business unit to accelerate sales of its products over the Internet. But as any high-tech company caught in a market transition knows, this is the time when it is hardest to recruit and retain the top people.
Mr. Wilker looks to savvy producers like Mr. Goldstein and Ms. Strand to drive the creative engine forward. Recognizing talent, "avoiding the self-aggrandizing types" and putting the right people in charge are among the most critical skills for managing creativity, he said.
His advice is to question résumés and formal credentials. "This is a business where people have résumés as long as your arm," he said. "I'm sure there are 50 people out there who claim to have written 'Carmen Sandiego.' "
"I look for people who are really intelligent, cooperative and organized," he added. "These projects have big budgets and get very complex. If you are not in control, they can eat you alive."
A New Division Fueled By Creativity
Ken Goldstein, the 35-year-old vice president and general manager of the Red Orb Entertainment division at Broderbund Software Inc., began his career as a television writer, once working for the executive producer of the award-winning "Hill Street Blues." A Yale graduate, Mr. Goldstein has an unusual background for high technology but it was actually a lure for Broderbund, which prizes writers, artists and designers as highly as software programmers.
Over the last two years, Mr. Goldstein has been tapped for a key assignment: to snare a bigger piece of the growing entertainment segment of the consumer software market. Broderbund executives had become concerned that more than 40 percent of the market was devoted to entertainment and that the company's only successful offering in the category was "Myst." When Red Orb was spun off as a separate brand last year, Mr. Goldstein, an accomplished product designer and manager, took the reins. Finding and managing creative talent who can help Broderbund take bigger steps in entertainment is now his mandate.
Under Mr. Goldstein, Broderbund has shipped a spate of new CD-ROM games, including "Warlords III," "Take No Prisoners," "Journeyman Project 3," "War Breeds" and "Extreme Warfare," most of which were produced by third-party developers and then published by Broderbund. The $70 million business unit scored its biggest win when "Riven: The Sequel to Myst" shipped in October 1997 and immediately drove Broderbund from No. 10 on the entertainment games list to No. 1.
"This is a hits business," Mr. Goldstein said. "Now you have to create hype, get the excitement going, get the product on the shelf and pray." Mr. Goldstein points out that the market has shifted in the last three or four years. There used to be more room for "art films," he said, experiments or pet projects that might be nurtured into successful products. In the past, a game might have had six months of shelf time in a computer store or educational software outlet before it was dubbed a flop.
But with the hype generated by the promise of multimedia personal computers, a flood of CD-ROM games has deluged the market, setting off a battle for shelf space and forcing game makers to quickly win the hearts and minds of customers. Like the movie business, the first weekend of product reviews can make or break a new game.
Today, most of Broderbund's products are sold through mass channel retail outlets like CompUSA or Best Buy, where strict performance hurdles such as "inventory turns" or revenue dollars per square foot determine how long a game will be displayed.
"I know if I don't sell through a good 10,000 units in the first month, I'm in trouble," Mr. Goldstein said. "I've seen games go from prime real estate to the discount bin in 60 days. The retail price literally drops from $49.95 to $19.95 in that time."
To compete in such a market, the proper management of the creative process has become more crucial than ever before. Mr. Goldstein understands that he must not only have a productive internal staff but also actively mine the outside opportunities. "I used to listen to a lot of product pitches," he said, "but it wasn't all that fruitful. Today, I do more outreach, more missionary work."
When he or his staff finds a great game, Mr. Goldstein calls the author and starts the courting process -- what are the plans for a sequel, is the author happy with the current publisher, is there any interest in working with Red Orb?
If there is a positive response, Mr. Goldstein solicits a brief product plan from the author. As the publisher, Broderbund can throw seed money at a project to get it started. Early on, before any large sums are promised or spent, Mr. Goldstein must decide whether the project is worth "taking all the way."
After getting a complete outline of the game and how it will be played, Mr. Goldstein asks for a design document, a 50-to-200-page blueprint or road map for the software development. Prototypes of characters and situations are "built" and Mr. Goldstein gets a sense of whether the developer can actually produce what is promised in a reasonable time frame. A product cycle is 18 months on average, and one of the key issues that Mr. Goldstein must resolve is where the technology is likely to be at that point.
Michael Foulger, Broderbund's chief technical officer, consults with Mr. Goldstein and his staff. He not only forecasts what the technology landscape will look like -- software designers operate under Moore's Law of Computing, which holds that computing power doubles every 18 months -- but also points out what tricks are now available, or soon will be, that can jazz up a game or give it an effect that is unique. "Riven," for example, makes spectacular use of digital audio and video to give it a surrealistic, movie-like feel but requires a PC with a Pentium chip that has a minimum of 100 megahertz of processing power..
The gamers who buy these products are avid techies who upgrade their systems often and want only the state of the art with the most power. If a product is hugely successful, Broderbund can later issue a "light" version for less powerful PC's.
The first 60 to 90 days of the development process are crucial. If the designers are way off track, taking six months to complete the initial work, Mr. Goldstein gets nervous and may pull the plug. At this stage, if he commits, there is little chance of turning back; the commitment goes from 10 percent of the proposed budget to 70 percent, and contractors will be hired and engineers assigned. As the market has changed, budgets for building games have soared. "Myst," for example, was developed for $600,000. "Riven" cost upward of $10 million, including the expense of putting up a building to house its small army of creators. Games developed for under $1 million are rare nowadays.
As publisher, Broderbund often pays for all upfront costs as advances against royalties, thus assuming almost all of the financial risk, and pays the developer in fixed increments as pieces of the game are delivered. Product developers, like authors and songwriters, make their money on royalties. A hit software package can be highly lucrative. It can, indeed, be a rags-to-riches business. Cyan Inc.'s Rand and Robyn Miller, barely able to pay their rent before creating "Myst," took in more than $25 million on the megahit game.
"It's a cyclical business," Mr. Goldstein said, "just like Hollywood. One minute you're hot, the next minute, you're not." Even the coolest and most financially successful games of a few years ago, like "The Seventh Guest," are little more than fond memories and technical anachronisms, virtually unknown to a new generation of 14-year-old gamers.
All of which means that there are no guarantees, even when the best and most creative game makers are on the job. "Rand and Robyn Miller are brilliant and I definitely want to publish their next product," Mr. Goldstein said. But he also understands that the odds for a big payoff are long. Of 800 software games released in a given year, only 25 will make money while another 80 will break even. "If you're not willing to accept failure, you shouldn't even put your toe in the water," he said.
Douglas Carlston, Broderbund's chairman and co-founder, agreed. Because of the increasingly high cost of producing games, software publishers "want a high level of certainty," he said. "The more money they put in, the more certainty they want. But it's hard to get certainty. Everyone wants to get products that will become classics, evergreens. You can say you'll only do evergreen products, but those are rare. You have to do a lot of products to find one."
To find its evergreens, Red Orb fields a core staff of 50 full-time employees. With six to eight development teams operating internally and externally at any given time, the number of contract workers it uses can ramp up to 200.
These product developers -- young game fanatics who gladly put in 16-hour days and six-day weeks during the final stages of product testing and debugging -- need a certain environment in which to thrive.
"The No. 1 consideration is work environment," Mr. Goldstein said. "Does it have the heart of a creative shop, in the sense that you allow people the freedom and resources to try new things? That is the No. 1 issue in talent retention." The process is team-oriented, iterative and highly creative. Those seeking individual glory will not thrive at Broderbund.
Only the superstars, like the Miller brothers at Cyan, have marquee value. The average professional salary at a place like Broderbund is $50,000 to $75,000 while veteran product designers can earn double that, hardly the kind of financial rewards that stock options can bring in Silicon Valley. "Most people who work for the game companies are not going to get wealthy," Mr. Goldstein said.
Still, though Broderbund's growth has slowed and its stock price has faltered, its long-term prospects remain strong. And that is proving increasingly attractive to its employees as they get older, start having families and become more concerned about financial stability.
"Just as growth investors often swap out for value investors in our stock," Mr. Goldstein said, "we've had growth employees swap out for value employees."
Reprint No. 98205
Glenn Rifkin, firstname.lastname@example.com Glenn Rifkin has covered technology for the New York Times and has written for the Harvard Business Review and Fast Company. He is coauthor of Radical Marketing (HarperBusiness, 1999) and The CEO Chronicles (Knowledge Exchange, 1999). |


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It's Time to Think Harder About Income Inequality
Mother Jones
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Over at the Prospect, David Callahan writes that a new critique of rising income inequality is starting to get some attention. It doesn't rely on arguments about fairness, but on arguments that high income inequality hurts economic growth:
This argument follows a simple causal chain: unequal growth concentrates wealth in the hands of a tiny slice of consumers who can only spend so much money. In turn, the vast majority of earners are left with little extra cash for goods and services. Resulting weak demand undermines growth. Low growth makes everyone poorer than they otherwise might be, including those who own the means of production. Inequality produces other bad economic outcomes, too, such as the underutilization of the nation's human capital, inadequate public investment in both human and physical capital, and social ills that are costly to address, diverting away resources from investment.
The basic idea here is that low and middle-income people spend most of their income, while rich people spend only a fraction of what they earn. So if the rich get a bigger share of total income, then total consumption goes down and the economy flounders. Here's a simple example to give you an idea of how this works. Suppose a country has a total income of $1,000. Furthermore, rich people spend half the money they make while everyone else spends their entire income:
Bottom 99 percent receives $900 of income and spends all $900.
Top 1 percent receives $100 of income and spends $50.
Grand total consumption = $950.
Now suppose that income inequality goes up:
Bottom 99 percent receives $800 of income and spends $800.
Top 1 percent receives $200 of income and spends $100.
Grand total consumption = $900.
This makes a lot of intuitive sense. Unfortunately, the evidence doesn't really seem to support it. "I've been surprised at just how much the rich can spend," said Jared Bernstein, former chief economist to Joe Biden, when I called to ask him about this last year. He's a pretty progressive guy, but he just didn't think there was much convincing research to back this theory.
However, there are some other theories that strike me as better grounded. One theory suggests that as inequality goes up, the rich save more and the middle class borrows more, eventually causing an economic crisis when the debt bubble bursts. There's also an argument that rising inequality leads to the financialization of an economy, which produces economic instability. Or that rising inequality produces political instability as the rich gain more and more influence on the levers of politics. Or that inequality leads to poorer educational opportunities for the middle class, which in turn produces low growth.
Are any of these correct? I happen to particularly believe the first one might be, but the plain truth is that it's still pretty speculative. You can state the thesis in a few paragraphs (simple example here, more scholarly example here), and that's about all there is to say about it. To go further, we need evidence, and this is why all of us on the left should be pleased at the founding of the Washington Center for Equitable Growth, which is dedicated to commissioning serious research on the causes of inequality and how they relate to economic growth.
For myself, I'll happily continue to favor lower levels of inequality purely for reasons of basic fairness and human decency. It's just flatly obscene for the top 10 percent to be hoovering up nearly all the fruits of economic growth while everyone else stagnates. I can't think of any reason why anyone would consider this an acceptable state of affairs. Nonetheless, as Callahan notes, that's not enough for most people. If we want to convince them that this is a problem worth addressing, we need other arguments.
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Since June 1967, operations in the West Bank and Gaza by the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) have been carried out in accordance with an explicit agreement with Israel, which has repeatedly indicated its support for the agency's humanitarian activities.[1] Yet this support, which reflects recognition of the genuine humanitarian plight of many of the refugees, has not prevented the Israeli government from expressing its conviction that UNRWA could better serve its beneficiaries by following in the footsteps of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), specifically with regard to resettlement and local integration. As recently as 2011, Jerusalem noted that "UNRWA's mandate should include … in the Palestinian context … the broadly applied United Nations goals of resettlement and local integration of refugees."[2] Given UNHCR's remarkable success in finding sustainable solutions for millions of refugees around the world, UNRWA would do well to implement similar policies for the Palestinians.
Conditions in UNRWA-maintained "refugee camps" remain subpar and, for the most part, residents enjoy few of the rights and options available to citizens. This directly contradicts the agency's original mandate to engage in activities that promoted the integration of refugees into their host countries. |
UNRWA's Mandate
Of the three durable solution strategies employed by UNHCR—repatriation, local integration, and resettlement—protracted situations tend to be those in which repatriation is unfeasible, whether due to a continuing conflict within the prospective country of repatriation or to the demographic implications repatriation would entail.
Given UNHCR's successful implementation of local integration within diverse refugee settings over the course of several decades (see Table 1), on the one hand, and the overwhelming opposition in Israel to a large-scale migration of Palestinians to the country, on the other, local integration seems the best option. The alternatives, including continued suspension of durable solutions by UNRWA until the signing of a full-fledged Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement will make such an agreement progressively more difficult to achieve and, most importantly, will deprive UNRWA's beneficiaries of their right to become fully integrated and active citizens within the societies in which they now live.
But is local integration consistent with UNRWA's mandate? There are two levels on which to examine the question: procedural and substantive. For both, a strong case can be made that the agency is free to promote local integration if the commissioner-general chooses to do so.
Table 1: UNHCR and Local Integration
Country of Asylum | Country of Origin | Refugees locally integrated |
Angola | DRC | 13,000 |
Côte d'Ivoire | Liberia | 2,400 |
Guinea | Liberia, Sierra Leone | 62,000[i] |
Liberia | Sierra Leone, Côte d'Ivoire, Guinea | 3,563 |
Namibia | Angola, DRC, Rwanda, Burundi | 8,700 |
Sierra Leone | Liberia | 6,000 |
Tanzania | Rwanda, Somalia, Burundi | 199,600 |
Uganda | Sudan, Burundi, DRC, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Kenya | 150,000[ii] |
Belize | El Salvador, Guatemala | 3,423[iii] |
Costa Rica | El Salvador, Nicaragua | 10,200 |
Mexico | Guatemala | 9,595 |
Ecuador | Colombia | 27,700[iv] |
Kyrgyzstan | Tajikistan | 9,310 |
Tajikistan | Afghanistan | 1000 |
Turkmenistan | Tajikistan | 10,158 |
China | Vietnam | 300,000[v] |
India | Afghanistan, Tibetans, Sri Lanka, Pakistan |
260,135[vi] |
Malaysia | Philippines | 57,000 |
Papua New Guinea | Indonesia | 4,141[vii] |
Armenia | Azerbaijan | 65,000 |
Serbia | Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia | 143,000 |
[i] UNHCR: Guinea Global Appeal 2009 Update, p. 200.
[ii] 2012 UNHCR Country Operations Profile—Uganda.
[iii] Number of naturalized refugees, 1996-2005, 2005 UNHCR Statistical Yearbook—Belize, accessed June 8, 2010.
[iv] Finding Durable Solutions, UNHCR Global Report 2010, p. 60.
[v] Alexandra Fielden, "New Issues in Refugee Research: Local integration," UNHCR Policy Development and Evaluation Service, June 2008, p. 15.
[vi] "Report of Refugee Populations in India," Human Rights Law Network, New Delhi, Nov. 2007; W.F. Adams, "Tibetan Refugees in India: Integration opportunities through development of social, cultural, and spiritual traditions," Community Development Journal, Apr. 2005, pp. 216-9.
[vii] The figure is drawn from Fielden, "Local integration," p. 17, and "Papua New Guinea," 2002 UNHCR Statistical Yearbook, pp. 420-1.
As is true of most U.N. organs, the General Assembly resolutions pertinent to UNRWA are the primary source for determining the agency's mandate.[3] Yet specific activities need not be explicitly cited within such resolutions in order to be considered a legitimate domain of activity for an agency.
This conclusion was elaborated by none other than Lance Bartholomeusz, chief of UNRWA's International Law Division, who stated that the agency's actions themselves, simply by having been carried out—provided they are consistent with one or more of the U.N.'s goals—have a measure of legitimacy and essentially serve to define the agency's mandate. Furthermore, UNRWA considers the discretion of its commissioner-general, in consultation with the Advisory Commission, the ultimate arbiter of what its mandate entails: "The Assembly has provided UNRWA with a flexible mandate designed to facilitate, rather than restrict, the agency's ability to act as and when the Commissioner-General, in consultation with the Advisory Commission as appropriate, sees fit."[4]
The fact that a policy is not currently implemented by UNRWA cannot in itself serve as grounds for regarding it as outside the agency's mandate as noted by Bartholomeusz: "The Agency's mandate and its actual activities are distinct: UNRWA's actual activities at a given time are a subset of the activities within its mandate."[5]
This means that incorporation by UNRWA of lasting solutions, such as local integration or resettlement, would not necessarily require an explicit alteration in any of the pertinent General Assembly resolutions. If the commissioner-general were to decide on such activities, this would seem to suffice from a procedural perspective.
While Bartholomeusz argues that UNRWA "does not have a mandate as such to seek durable solutions for Palestine refugees," this assertion is belied by his own acknowledgment that "in its early years, it had a mandate to engage in activities that promoted the integration of refugees into their host country." He then goes on to argue that the integration aspect of the mandate "probably ended by 1960 when reference to 'reintegration' was dropped from General Assembly resolutions relating to UNRWA."[6] Still, this, too, should not prevent the organization from renewing activities in this area. Given the strong substantive grounds for viewing local integration as instrumental to UNRWA's human development goals, the plausibility of ruling it out on equivocal procedural grounds seems rather weak.
Nor does the fact that UNHCR, unlike UNRWA, has an explicit mandate for local integration and resettlement imply that UNRWA is barred from pursuing such strategies. As Bartholomeusz noted, the agency's mandate is "rarely expressed in terms of what the agency may not do."[7] The decision as to whether UNRWA may or may not engage in local integration, or any other activity pertinent to its beneficiaries' interests, ultimately rests with its commissioner-general.
Procedural questions aside, perhaps the clearest and most substantive argument in favor of local integration derives from UNRWA's stated commitment to advancing the human development of its beneficiaries: "UNRWA has a clear mandate to engage in human development, as defined by the U.N. Development Programme [UNDP]."[8] Citing a UNDP human development report, UNRWA's chief legal counsel noted that the concept of human development includes "political, economic and social freedom"[9] and that the enjoyment of "human rights to the fullest extent possible … underpins the agency's current overall strategy and programme management."[10]
Thus the UNDP's core understanding of the concept of human development should be most relevant to UNRWA's activities. In UNDP associate administrator Rebeca Grynspan's view:
human development—our defining mandate—is not only about helping to ensure a decent income level and standard of living for everyone but also about helping to ensure that every person has the capacity, right, freedom, and choice to take and be part of the decisions that affect a person's life, to select the leaders that take those decisions, and to then hold them to account.[11]
By the UNDP's own definition, which UNRWA expressly adopts, it is fundamental to the goal of advancing human development to assist "governments at all levels to address MDG [Millenium Development Goals] gaps and reversals by strengthening their ability to deliver, to be accountable, transparent and responsive—in particular to those traditionally excluded from services and the opportunities of citizenship."[12]
There can be little debate as to the important role that full integration in the social and political fabric of some polity through naturalization or acquisition of citizenship plays in an individual's human development. This same principle was explicitly stated in the seminal 1951 U.N. Refugee Convention, which stipulated that "the contracting states shall as far as possible facilitate the assimilation and naturalization of refugees [and]… expedite naturalization proceedings."[13]
Local integration is, thus, ultimately geared toward naturalization and is clearly consistent with a human development agenda, especially in relation to refugee matters. It is difficult to see how UNRWA's avowed commitment to ensuring that its beneficiaries "enjoy human rights to the fullest extent possible"[14] can be interpreted other than entailing a willingness to at least make some efforts to promote Palestinian refugees' local integration in their current places of residence. The fact that the agency looks favorably upon the attainment of citizenship by most of its beneficiaries in Jordan suggests a tacit acceptance of the fact that a measure of local integration is indeed consistent with its mandate. Yet, the agency refrains from reaching the logical conclusion that naturalized individuals should no longer be considered refugees. This could not occur with regard to other refugee groups since UNHCR, under the terms of the 1951 refugee convention, would be compelled to rescind refugee status from those of its beneficiaries who obtain citizenship.[15]
Finally, the argument that the particular circumstances of UNRWA's beneficiaries might preclude local integration flies in the face of the conclusions reached by UNHCR, which has found that local integration is a particularly appropriate solution for
refugees born in asylum countries who might otherwise become stateless; and/or refugees who, due to their personal circumstances including the reasons prompting their flight, are unlikely to be able to repatriate to their country of origin in the foreseeable future; and/or refugees who have established close family, social, cultural, and economic links with their country of asylum, including those who already have, or have the capacity to attain, a considerable degree of socio-economic integration.[16]
In short, there are strong substantive grounds to view local integration of refugees as a key aspect of their human development, a goal to which UNRWA is openly committed. This is certainly the way in which UNDP and UNHCR regard the matter, reflecting a basic acceptance of the core principles of democracy and human rights, as commonly understood and interpreted. Moreover, UNRWA's own interpretation of its mandate does not imply procedural or legal reasons to prevent it from including local integration within its activities should it, or more specifically, its commissioner-general, choose to do so.
A Boon for Regional Stability
Earlier in the twentieth century and prior to the establishment of UNHCR, a number of instances of major population exchanges transpired, all creating, for a time, massive refugee crises: in 1923 between Turkey and Greece (involving an estimated two million individuals); between 1944 and 1951 in the context of the large-scale demographic upheavals that transpired in post-World War II Europe (an estimated twenty million people);[17] and in 1947, between India and Pakistan (involving some 14.5 million individuals). All of these cases, as well as that of the State of Israel, which naturalized an estimated 586,070 Jewish refugees from Arab countries in the years 1948-72,[18] demonstrate the feasibility of successful integration of a large number of refugees as an enduring solution.
A 2008 UNHCR study, documenting its own experience over the course of several decades in implementing local integration policies (see Table 1), showed the main instances where integration had been successfully implemented (or was being envisaged) in cooperation with local authorities. Defining local integration as consisting of three dimensions—legal, economic, and sociocultural—the survey made it clear that this option implied that "refugees will remain indefinitely in their country of asylum and find a solution to their plight in that state. Ideally, but not necessarily, that will involve the acquisition of citizenship."[19]
The absorption of hundreds of thousands of Indo-Chinese refugees in the early 1980s by China has been referred to by Antonio Guterres, the U.N. high commissioner for refugees "as one of the most successful integration programmes in the world."[20] In Central America, "the welcoming and integration of displaced people in the 1990s contributed to the overall stability of the region."[21]
Whereas many asylum countries regard the hosting of refugees on their soil as a burden, increasing attention is being paid to the benefits of integrating refugee communities. For example, in a UNHCR study of local integration in Mexico, Uganda, and Zambia, author Ana Low notes:
Economically integrated refugees contribute to development of the host country rather than constituting a "burden." They become progressively less reliant on state aid or humanitarian assistance and better able to support themselves. Social and cultural interactions between refugees and local communities enable refugees to live amongst or alongside the host population.[22]
There is a growing realization that local integration is a key solution to many protracted refugee cases, alongside recognition of the inefficacy of an insistence on repatriation. As UNHCR analyst Alexandra Fielden notes:
There appears to be an emerging consensus concerning the ineffectiveness of policies which insist that everyone should live in their country of origin and, if they have been forced into exile, return to that country. In protracted refugee situations, it is in fact often the case that the people concerned have never lived in their putative "homeland." … In this context, local integration becomes the most forward-thinking and realistic refugee solution.[23]
Sowing the Seeds of Peace
The existence of refugees is one of the consequences of civil or international conflict. It has, however, become increasingly clear that refugees can themselves play a destabilizing role, aggravating or perpetuating conflict. In particular, in those protracted refugee situations where large-scale repatriation or migration is unfeasible, local integration provides the only means of enabling refugees to develop their human potential and to become productive members of their host societies. The alternative of maintaining refugee populations in a state of limbo over a protracted period of time, according to UNHCR analyst Jeff Crisp "creates a situation in which refugees—especially young males—are more prone to becoming involved in illicit and antisocial activity."[24]
In a 2004 report, UNHCR identified some of the negative consequences of maintaining refugees in an indeterminate state, referring to "wasted lives, squandered resources, and increased threats to security."[25] Conditions within refugee camps and among refugee communities typically foster poverty and poor standards of health and education, which in turn are often associated with radicalism and engagement in illicit, sometimes violent, behavior.
Individuals with protracted refugee status tend to remain in a downward spiral of poverty, due to the fact that they typically suffer from all three dimensions of poverty identified by the World Bank: "lack of income and assets; voicelessness and powerlessness in the institutions of State and society; and vulnerability to adverse shocks … The prolongation of refugees' dependence on external assistance also squanders precious resources of host countries, donors and refugees."[26]
In the words of the report,
a consequence of protracted refugee situations is that they can serve as incubators for future problems. Festering crises can nurture instability and conflict. Large, disaffected, and alienated populations relying on subsistence-level handouts are prime targets for recruitment into armed groups.[27]
There is a growing understanding in the policy and scholarly community as to the beneficial effects of local integration as a means of securing durable solutions for protracted refugee problems. This understanding reflects several decades of experience acquired by UNHCR in the different arenas of its activity. Increasingly, scholars have taken note of this experience and have developed a body of theory that helps to explain the mechanisms through which local integration serves as an effective means for enabling beneficiaries of international humanitarian assistance to achieve independent, productive lives within the social and political fabric of their host countries. Moreover, there can be little doubt that such outcomes are important for the achievement of regional stability and for lessening conflict.
Unlike UNHCR, UNRWA interprets its mandate in such a manner as to preclude local integration and resettlement as proactive strategies. This (mis)interpretation—not required by the General Assembly resolutions that together constitute UNRWA's mandate—prevents UNRWA from implementing policies that have a proven record of resolving the plight of a great many refugees all over the world.
Were UNRWA to adopt policies of local integration and resettlement, as successfully practiced by UNHCR, an important contribution would be made toward addressing one of the core obstacles in the quest for a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. While there would no doubt be many advantages to such a development, none would gain more than UNRWA's own beneficiaries, who would be assisted in building lives of dignity and self-reliance for themselves and their children.
Uri Resnick is policy advisor to Israel's minister of foreign affairs and former deputy director of the Department for U.N. Political Affairs in Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The views expressed here are solely those of the author.
[1] See the Comay-Michelmore exchange of letters from June 14, 1967, UN Juridical Yearbook, 1968, pp. 47-9; see, for example the statement by Gilad Cohen, Israel's representative to the Fourth Committee session on UNRWA, Permanent Mission of Israel to the United Nations, Nov. 2, 2010.
[2] "Palestine refugees' properties and their revenues. Report of the Secretary-General," U.N. General Assembly (UNGA), A/66/318, Aug. 22, 2011.
[3] "Mandating and delivering: Analysis and recommendations to facilitate the review of mandates," report of the secretary-general to the General Assembly, U.N. doc. A/60/733, Mar. 30, 2006, cited in Lance Bartholomeusz, "The Mandate of UNRWA at Sixty," Refugee Survey Quarterly, 2-3 (2009): 453.
[4] Bartholomeusz, "The Mandate of UNRWA at Sixty," pp. 455, 474.
[5] Ibid., p. 453.
[6] Ibid., p. 471, fn. 84.
[7] Ibid., p. 474.
[8] Ibid., p. 464.
[9] "Defining and measuring human development," Human Development Report 1990, U.N. Development Program, p. 10, cited in Bartholomeusz, "The Mandate of UNRWA at Sixty," p. 465.
[10] Bartholomeusz, "The Mandate of UNRWA at Sixty," pp. 464-5.
[11] Rebeca Grynspan, U.N. Development Programme associate administrator, "Debate on Democracy and the Millennium Development Goals," The International Conference of New or Restored Democracies Interactive Debate on World Democracy Day, New York, Sept. 15, 2010.
[12] Ibid.
[13] Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, 1951, UNHCR, Geneva, July 28, 1951, art. 34, cited in Alexandra Fielden, "New Issues in Refugee Research: Local Integration: An under-reported solution to protracted refugee situations," research paper no. 158, U.N. High Commissioner on Refugees (UNHCR) Policy Development and Evaluation Service, June 2008, p. 2.
[14] "Core Programme Budget," UNRWA, accessed June 7, 2012.
[15] Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, 1951, art. 1 C(3).
[16] "Conclusion on Local Integration," no. 104 (LVI), UNHCR, Oct. 7, 2005.
[17] Joseph B. Schechtman, "Postwar Population Transfer in Europe: A Survey," The Review of Politics, Apr. 1953, p. 151.
[18] Ada Aharoni, "The Forced Migration of Jews from Arab Countries and Peace," The Neaman Institute, Israel Institute of Technology-Technion, Haifa, Aug. 2002.
[19] Fielden, "Local integration," p. 2.
[20] News Stories, UNHCR, May 11, 2007.
[21] Fielden, "Local Integration," p. 12.
[22] Ana Low, "Local Integration: A Durable Solution for Refugees?" UNHCR: Reintegration and Local Settlement Section, Geneva, 2005.
[23] Fielden, "Local integration," p. 5.
[24] Jeff Crisp, "The local integration and local settlement of refugees: A conceptual and historical analysis," working paper no. 102, UNHCR, Apr. 2004, p. 6; see, also, Christian G. Mesquida and Neil I. Wiener, "Male Age Composition and Severity of Conflicts," Politics and the Life Sciences, Sept. 1999, pp. 181-9; Helen Ware, "Demography, Migration and Conflict in the Pacific," Journal of Peace Research, July 2005, pp. 435–54; Helge Brunborg and Henrik Urdal, "The Demography of Conflict and Violence: An Introduction," Journal of Peace Research, July 2005, pp. 371-4.
[25] "Protracted Refugee Situations," Executive Committee of the High Commissioner's Programme, UNHCR: EC/54/SC/CRP.14, June 10, 2004, p. 2.
[26] Ibid., p. 3.
[27] Ibid.


text:
In Life After Life Raymond Moody investigates case studies of people who experienced "clinical death" and were subsequently revived.
This classic exploration of life after death started a revolution in popular attitudes about the afterlife and established Dr. Moody as the world's leading authority in the field of near-death experiences.
The extraordinary stories presented here provide evidence that there is life after physical death, as Moody recounts the testimonies of those who have been to the "other side" and back — all bearing striking similarities of an overwelming positive nature.
These moving and inspiring accounts give us a glimpse of the peace and unconditional love that await us all.


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Here are the paper's conclusions:
Conventional wisdom has it that oil shocks are bad for oil-importing countries. This is grounded in the experience of slumps in many advanced economies during the 1970s. It is also consistent with the large body of research on the impact of higher oil prices on the U.S. economy, although the magnitude and channels of the effect are still being debated. In this paper, we offer a global perspective on the macroeconomic impact of oil prices. In doing so, we are filling a void of research on the effects of oil prices on developing economies.If oil shocks are not so bad in aggregate, and associated with "good times for the global economy" then maybe the price of oil should be higher?
Our findings indicate that oil prices tend to be surprisingly closely associated with good times for the global economy. Indeed, we find that the United States has been somewhat of an outlier in the way that it has been negatively affected by oil price increases. Across the world, oil price shock episodes have generally not been associated with a contemporaneous decline in output but, rather, with increases in both imports and exports. There is evidence of lagged negative effects on output, particularly for OECD economies, but the magnitude has typically been small.
Controlling for global economic conditions, and thus abstracting from our finding that oil price
increases generally appear to be demand-driven, makes the impact of higher oil prices stand out more clearly. For a given level of world GDP, we do find that oil prices have a negative effect on oil-importing countries and also that cross-country differences in the magnitude of the impact depend to a large extent on the relative magnitude of oil imports. The effect is still not particularly large, however, with our estimates suggesting that a 25 percent increase in oil prices will cause a loss of real GDP in oil-importing countries of less than half of one percent, spread over 2–3 years. One likely explanation for this relatively modest impact is that part of the greater revenue accruing to oil exporters will be recycled in the form of imports or other international flows, thus contributing to keep up demand in oil-importing economies. We provide a model illustrating this effect and find supporting empirical evidence.
The finding that the negative impact of higher oil prices has generally been quite small does not mean that the effect can be ignored. Some countries have clearly been negatively affected by high oil prices. Moreover, our results do not rule out more adverse effects from a future shock that is driven largely by lower oil supply than the more demand-driven increases in oil prices that have been the norm in the last two decades. In terms of policy lessons, our findings suggest that efforts to reduce dependence on oil could help reduce the exposure to oil price shocks and hence costs associated with macroeconomic volatility.13 At the same time, given a certain level of oil imports, developing economic linkages to oil exporters could also work as a natural shock absorber.
H/T VoxEu


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[[File:|320x480px|thumb|center|"One of the Teleri" by Marya Filatova]] | |
People | |
Teleri | |
General Information | |
Pronunciation | tel-air-ee |
Other names | Nelya, Lindar, Sea-elves |
Locations | Alqualondë, Isle of Balar, Ossiriand, Doriath, Tol Eressëa, Edhellond, Mithlond, Lothlórien, Mirkwood |
Languages | Common Telerin, Telerin, Sindarin, Nandorin |
Members | Elwë, Olwë, Celeborn, Círdan, Lenwë |
Physical Description | |
Lifespan | Immortal |
Distinctions | Adoration for the sea/forest |
Average Height | Tall |
Hair | Dark, silver |
Skin | White |
Gallery | Images of Teleri |
The greatest host came last, and they are named the Teleri, for they tarried on the road, and were not wholly of a mind to pass from the dusk to the light of Valinor. In water they had great delight, and those that came at last to the western shores were enamoured of the sea. The Sea-elves therefore they became in the land of Aman, the Falmari, for they made music beside the breaking waves.
The Teleri were the third of the Elf clans who took the Great Journey. To them belonged the Valinorean Teleri (known as the Falmari), and the Sindar, Laiquendi, and Nandor of Middle-earth.
At first they were known as Nelyar ("The Third"), and were the largest of the three houses of the Firstborn. According to legend, they were descended from Enel, the third Elf to awake in Cuiviénen, his spouse Enelyë and their seventy-two companions; half of the Avari originally belonged to this clan.[note 1][1]
In ancient times they named themselves Lindar, or "Singers", because they were known for their fair voice.
According to legend, the clan was founded by Enel, the third Elf to awake at Cuiviénen. With him were his spouse Enelyë and their 72 companions, and this clan became known as the Nelyar.
During the Great Journey
When the Valar decided to bring the Quendi to Aman, they chose three ambassadors. Ingwë, Finwë and Elwë travelled there and tried to convince their people to make the journey. Out of the original 74 Nelyar who awoke at Cuiviénen, 28 refused and became part of the Avari, "The Unwilling".
The Teleri clan was so numerous that it was led both by Elwë and his brother Olwë. They were the last clan to depart, and the only ones who were unwilling to leave the wild lands of Middle-earth and were usually the hindmost of the Great Journey. In their earliest days they had begun the crafting of rafts and paddle-driven boats, and their ships became larger and stronger upon their need to traverse the Sea of Rhûn on their westward journey.[2]
Unlike their brethren who traversed Greenwood the Great, the Teleri chose to circumvent it from the south, after travelling for many years, when they joined the other Clans who had settled in the Vales of Anduin. That land was called Atyamar, until it was afflicted by evil weather and the Elves had to resume their Journey. The Teleri provided boats to cross the Anduin (which was wild and flooded due to the great snowstorms in the Misty Mountains). But many were against this, frightened by the river and the sight of the Mountains.[3] A group led by Lenwë departed from the journey and headed south. They were called the Nandor ("Those who turn back"). Eventually, the other Teleri passed the Misty Mountains and reached Eastern Beleriand near the river Gelion.
That was the time when Elwë fell in love with Melian the Maia and became separated from the Teleri, standing alone in the forest of Nan Elmoth for a long time only staring at her. Olwë became their leader, but some Teleri, especially Elwë's friends and close relatives were searching for him for a long time and refused to continue their journey without him, hoping to find him. Those in Sindarin were known as the Eglath as they forsook the Great Journey.
Being the hindmost, the Teleri were still near Gelion and failed to hear Ulmo's call when the Vanyar and the Noldor travelled into the West. When they learned that the others had already departed, they headed to the shores of Beleriand near the mouth of the river Sirion waiting for Ulmo. The Maia Ossë kept them company while they waited, and became their friend. When they first beheld the sea, the Teleri became enamoured with it, and ever after desired to live close to the shore, being named 'Sea-elves' in Aman. [4]
Later, when Ulmo arrived again with the island ferry, most of the Teleri agreed to travel. Again, there were some who wanted to stay with Ossë, and they became known as Falathrim in Sindarin, with Nowë as their leader.
Out of the 46 original Telerin Eldar who began the Great Journey, only 20 among them arrived in Aman with their offspring, whereas the other 26 firstborn remained in Middle-earth as Sindar or Nandor.[5]
After the Great Journey
The island was stabilized by Ulmo near the Bay of Eldamar, and it was named Tol Eressëa, The Lonely Island. The Teleri lived there for many years until they felt that they should see the other Eldar who lived in Aman proper. With the help of Ossë they built ships and travelled to the coasts of Aman, where they dwelt. There Olwë built Alqualondë, the greatest city of Teleri, and its people were united with the people of Tirion and Finwë.
In Beleriand, Elwë and Melian recovered from their enchantment. He united the Eglath who stayed back, and the Falathrim who accepted him as King of Beleriand. The folk of both Elwë and Nowë became collectively known as the Sindar. Later they were joined by the Laegil, the Nandor who resumed their journey to the west under Denethor and came to Ossiriand.
Later, when Melkor stole the Silmarils, the Noldor led by Fëanor demanded that the Teleri let them use their ships. When the Teleri refused, they took the ships by force, committing the First Kinslaying. For this reason few or none of the Teleri joined the host of the Valar which at the end of the First Age set out to capture Morgoth for good. It is recounted that the Teleri eventually forgave the Noldor for the Kinslayings, and the two kindreds were at peace again.
The Teleri valued silver above gold, and the Noldor admired the Teleri's silverwork.[6]
Sundering of Teleri
- Falmari, led by Olwë, they (along with Elwë) were the only Calaquendi of the Teleri clan. They lived in Tol Eressëa and along the east shores of Eldamar.
- Nandor, those who abandoned the Great Journey near river Anduin, led by Lenwë.
- Laiquendi, the Elves of Ossiriand, who were themselves Nandor led by Denethor.
- Silvan, the Wood Elves, primarily in the Woodland Realm of Mirkwood and Lothlórien.
- Sindar, all Teleri who remained in Beleriand. The Sindar of Beleriand called themselves simply Edhil, which means Elves, and is related to the Quenya word Eldar of the same meaning. Elwë was their King. These were further divided into:
- Iathrim,[7] those who lived in Doriath, the realm directly ruled by King Thingol, that is Elwë.
- Falathrim, those who lived in the Falas ruled by Círdan.
- Mithrim,[7] or Sindar of the North, those who lived north of Beleriand: in Hithlum, especially in the area called after them Mithrim, in Dorthonion or in Nevrast. They suffered most from Morgoth's attacks before the first rising of the Sun, and their remnants were largely absorbed by the Noldor who afterwards occupied those lands.
The Teleri spoke the Common Telerin language during the Journey, from which Sindarin (with its dialects of Doriathrin, Falathrin and North Sindarin) and Nandorin were derived, as well as the Telerin of Aman, often considered a dialect of Quenya (if only by virtue that it preserved more of the archaic Common Eldarin features than any other language and remained mutually intelligible with Quenya).
Teleri is the plural of Teler which means "last", root TEL.[source?]
In The Silmarillion the word Teleri refers both to the Third Clan in general, and that branch that made it to Aman, taken from the Vanyar and Noldor point of view; particularly the Teleri of Aman were called Falmari.
Other names
Equivalent names of the Teleri were Nelyar and Lindar. Lindar (Quenya "singers", pron. [ˈlindar]) was the name by which the Teleri called themselves.
Another name was Sindarin Glinnil (sing Glinnel), a name which appears to have been used only by the loremasters among the Eldar.[8]
Sea-elves was yet another name of the Teleri, specifically those of that kin who came to Aman and dwelt at Alqualondë (the Falmari), for their love of the sea and reverence of Ulmo. The name "Sea-elves" was rendered Veaneldar in Quenya,[9] consisting of vea(n) ("sea") + eldar ("elves").[10]
The Teleri were also known by many other names: the Foam-riders, the Singers of the Shore, the Free, the Swift, the Arrow-elves (for their love of bow and arrow), the Elves of the Sea, the Ship-wrights, the Swanherds, the Gatherers of Pearl, the Blue Elves, and the people of Olwë.[11]
Other versions of the legendarium
In the early versions of Tolkien's mythology (see: The History of Middle-earth), they were known as Solosimpi ("Pipers of the Shores"), while the name Teleri was given to the clan of Elves known in the published version of The Silmarillion as Vanyar.
In a struck out note, Tolkien considered blonde hair to be more common among the Teleri/Lindar than the Noldor (where it was rare and through intermarriage).[12]:154
Elves (Quendi · People of the Stars · Firstborn · Elder Kindred) | |
Three Kindreds: (Eldar · Eldalië · Edhil) |
Vanyar (Fair-elves · Minyar) · Noldor (Deep-elves · Tatyar) · Teleri (Lindar · Nelyar) |
Calaquendi: (High-elves · Amanyar) |
Vanyar · Noldor · Falmari |
Úmanyar: | Sindar (Grey-elves · Eglath · Falathrim) · Nandor (Green-elves · Silvan Elves) |
Moriquendi: | Úmanyar · Avari (Cuind · Hwenti · Kindi · Kinn-lai · Penni · Windan) |
See also: | Awakening of the Elves · Sundering of the Elves · Great Journey |
- ↑ J.R.R. Tolkien, Christopher Tolkien (ed.), The War of the Jewels, "Part Four. Quendi and Eldar: C. The Clan-names, with notes on other names for divisions of the Eldar", pp. 380-83
- ↑ J.R.R. Tolkien, Christopher Tolkien (ed.), The Peoples of Middle-earth, "XIII. Last Writings" p. 391-392
- ↑ J.R.R. Tolkien, Carl F. Hostetter (ed.), The Nature of Middle-earth, "Part One. Time and Ageing: VII. The March of the Quendi", pp. 50-51
- ↑ J.R.R. Tolkien, Christopher Tolkien (ed.), The Silmarillion, "Quenta Silmarillion: Of the Coming of the Elves and the Captivity of Melkor"
- ↑ J.R.R. Tolkien, Christopher Tolkien (ed.), The War of the Jewels, "Part Four. Quendi and Eldar" p. 381
- ↑ J.R.R. Tolkien, Carl F. Hostetter (ed.), The Nature of Middle-earth, "Part Three. The World, its Lands, and its Inhabitants: XVI. Galadriel and Celeborn", p. 350
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 J.R.R. Tolkien, Christopher Tolkien (ed.), The War of the Jewels, "Part Four. Quendi and Eldar: B. Meanings and use of the various terms applied to the Elves and their varieties in Quenya, Telerin, and Sindarin", 3
- ↑ J.R.R. Tolkien, Christopher Tolkien (ed.), The War of the Jewels, "Part Four. Quendi and Eldar", pp. 378, 385
- ↑ J.R.R. Tolkien, Christopher Tolkien (ed.), The Lost Road and Other Writings, "Appendix: I. The Genealogies", p. 403
- ↑ J.R.R. Tolkien, "The Entu, Ensi, Enta Declension" (edited by Christopher Gilson), in Vinyar Tengwar, Number 36, July 1994, p. 20
- ↑ J.R.R. Tolkien, Christopher Tolkien (ed.), Morgoth's Ring, "Part Three. The Later Quenta Silmarillion: (I) The First Phase: 3. Of the Coming of the Elves", p. 164
- ↑ J.R.R. Tolkien, "Words, Phrases and Passages in Various Tongues in The Lord of the Rings", in Parma Eldalamberon XVII (edited by Christopher Gilson)


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