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The procedure for creating an art history essay is not as simple as "giving a hundred examples of artwork from the ancient to the modern times and then analyzing those examples. "
Such a task would take much longer than ten minutes, if such an assignment was assigned. Art history is not a number-driven discipline.
However, it is necessary to delve into the past before one can predict the future. Fortunately, there are some simple "pieces of advice" one can follow to make the process a little easier. It is even possible to use online resources to supply an essay example. Some online resources allow for the browsing of numerous examples, not only of art history but of other topics, pro essay writing service including education, psychology, religion, entertainment, or literature.
Online essay examples may seem to be very simplistic, but they are in fact very effective. Students will easily learn the different elements that must be present when writing an essay. Also, the presence of these elements will help students to fully understand the nature of the art history and the subject matter of the subject.
An essay example does not need to be delivered via e-mail, in an email that is posted on a site or in an article. A simple, one-page essay is sufficient. There is no reason why it should be a lengthy document; just contain enough information for the reader to understand the material without further ado. It is a fine idea to outline the essay topic in the first paragraph, so that the main point is the focus of the first few sentences.
Art history essay examples do not have to be based on specific historical events, although it is possible to use that idea. Another idea would be to use both events and facts to represent the various points of view on an issue. It is important to remember that an essay may be classed as a study if it is the purpose is to examine the opinions of the school's scholars. However, it could be used to present knowledge that pertains to the type of work performed by a particular artist.
When composing essays in an art history field, one cannot rely on references that are constantly changing. There is no reason to carry out multiple searches in order to locate art history quotations, especially when they are available at the fingertips of the students. Instead, the students can compose their own essay by collecting examples in an organized fashion. Their professors may have made the task easier; however, online resources do not provide information that does not have a physical counterpart.
Essays, especially art history essays, are hard work. Teachers may have very specific deadlines, yet students do not know how long they are working with and how long they must finish their assignment. In order to keep students focused, many professors create homework assignments that require the student to complete assignments that have a deadline.
Online essays are designed to follow a basic structure, similar to how essays in other disciplines are formatted. They are also extremely common. As mentioned earlier, assignments can be handed out on demand or submitted on a regular basis.
Because of the fact that multiple examples are available, students are able to express their own thoughts and opinions. This is especially true when the students themselves create a syllabus. Not only do these forms take the students from the introductory information to the ending conclusion, they allow for students to personalize their essays and write about their own passions and interests.
Students also gain a lot of confidence by using the resources. They will often come up with ideas that they did not even know existed. They will be able to come up with the right answers by following the instructions and requirements that are provided by the site.
Online essay examples can also make the task of constructing an essay much simpler. Such information can be useful to be included in the assignment. In addition, such details to help the students to familiarize themselves with the essay topic.
When an essay is finished and submitted, the student has a number of choices to choose from when choosing an essay examples. Most of the essay examples that are available are already researched and are fairly polished. Complete, although there are many more loose ends to tie up.


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Surprising Troughs on Asteroid Vesta Might Have Resulted From Collision
Giant troughs that stretch across the asteroid Vesta may have formed after a fellow asteroid smacked into Vesta's south pole, researchers say.
These findings add to evidence that, like Earth, Vesta is divided into a core, mantle and crust, supporting the theory that Vesta is a protoplanet that never fully developed into a planet.
Vestais the brightest asteroid in the solar system, and the second-largest, a goliath 330 miles wide (530 kilometers) that circles the sun between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter with the rest of the main asteroid belt.
NASA's Dawn spacecraft spent about a year orbiting the asteroid, but recently left Vesta to move on to the dwarf planet Ceres, which is considered the solar system's largest asteroid. Dawn's observations recently revealed that Vesta is enveloped in a surprisingly large amount of hydrogen.
Intriguingly, Vesta is encircled with an extensive series of gigantic troughs. The largest of these, named Divalia Fossa, exceeds the Grand Canyon in size, reaching 289 miles (465 kilometers) long, 13.6 miles (22 km) wide and 3 miles (5 km) deep. [Photos: Asteroid Vesta and NASA's Dawn Spacecraft]
"I really didn't expect to see anything like what we found," lead study author Debra Buczkowski, a planetary geologist at the Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md., told SPACE.com. "The troughs on Vesta are spectacular, far more like features identified on the rocky planets and moons that we've studied than the other asteroids."
Puzzling finding
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These unusual troughs have puzzled scientists ever since Dawn helped discover them in 2011. Surface deformities on asteroids are usually straightforward cracks that form due to crashes with other asteroids, but the trenches seen on Vesta are too complex to be explained by simple collisions.
New analysis of pictures Dawn took of Vesta's surface now suggest a large collision may have created the troughs, but only if Vesta was separated into crust, mantle and core layers, a quality normally seen in larger bodies such as planets.
"Our models indicated that that these features might be so spectacular because Vesta really is more like a planet or a moon than like an asteroid," Buczkowski said.
Each of these layers would vary in density and react differently to the force from the impact. A large collision would make a cracked surface on such a body slide apart. The result would be a type of trough known as graben, involving stretch marks that form after faults move apart and the ground between them sinks. One example on Earth of graben is Death Valley in California; other instances have been seen on the moon, Mars, Mercury, Venus and Jupiter's largest moon Ganymede.
Images from Dawn show that Vesta's troughs have many of the qualities of graben, Buczkowski said. For instance, while the walls of troughs on simpler asteroids such as Eros and Lutetia are shaped like the letter V, troughs on Vesta have floors that are flat or curved, possess walls shaped like the letter U, and have bottoms that are relatively flat and slanted toward what is probably a dominant fault, much as what happens with graben on Earth.
Vesta collision
Another way Vesta's troughs might have formed has to do with the collision it experienced on its south pole, which gave the asteroid its current speedy spin rate, where it completes a rotation on its axis about once pevery 5.35 hours. Planetary scientist Britney Schmidt at the Institute for Geophysics in Austin, Texas, who did not take part in this study, suggested this whirling caused Vesta's equator to bulge outward so far and so fast that troughs resulted.
"I really wouldn't call Britney's hypothesis conflicting," Buczkowski said. "I think the two models are complementary, and that it is entirely possible that the troughs are as large and deep as they are because both resultant stresses were at work."
The scientists will continue to analyze Vesta data collected by Dawn to improve their computer simulations of its evolution. "I will also continue to study the smaller structures on Vesta," Buczkowski said. "There are numerous smaller structures on Vesta that need to be evaluated with the same level of detail — they are also important toward our understanding of Vesta's tectonic history."
The researchers detail their findings in a paper to be published online Sept. 29 in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.
This story was provided by SPACE.com, a sister site to LiveScience. Follow SPACE.com @Spacedotcom. We're also on Facebook & Google+.

subset: commoncrawl


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Today is the Day Against DRM
Join us and the Free Software Foundation in the fight against DRM! Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) is any technology that is built into an electronic product or service with the aim of limiting its use. It is designed to prevent customers from using digital technology in ways that do not correspond to the business agenda of a content provider or device manufacturer.
Digital Restrictions Managements often restricts individuals from doing things that are perfectly legal, so we might not be able to put together a mix of music files we bought legally, or to lend an e-book to a friend. Even backups can be restricted. Restrictions management technology removes basic rights and freedoms in the digital world. All DRM systems have one thing in common: They give businesses control over things that we, the owners, should be in control of. For example, businesses decide how often we can play the movies we paid for and what kind of files we can read on our e-book reader.
Free Software is software that puts the user in control of their own devices. In contrast, DRM Digital Restrictions Management is technology to put the user under control of a third party: these two goals are fundamentally incompatible.
If you want to get active on this topic, you can support the Day Against DRM which takes place every year. This campaign is organised by the Free Software Foundation, our sister organisation based in the US. On the campaign website you also can find a list of DRM-free-platforms for books, videos and audio files. To raise more awareness about the topic yourself, you can order our leaflet about DRM or recommend the first episode of our Software Freedom Podcast with Cory Doctorow on this topic.


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WebGL - OpenGL ES 2.0 for the Web
WebGL is a cross-platform, royalty-free web standard for a low-level 3D graphics API based on OpenGL ES 2.0, exposed through the HTML5 Canvas element as Document Object Model interfaces. Developers familiar with OpenGL ES 2.0 will recognize WebGL as a Shader-based API using GLSL, with constructs that are semantically similar to those of the underlying OpenGL ES 2.0 API. It stays very close to the OpenGL ES 2.0 specification, with some concessions made for what developers expect out of memory-managed languages such as JavaScript.
WebGL brings plugin-free 3D to the web, implemented right into the browser. Major browser vendors Apple (Safari), Google (Chrome), Mozilla (Firefox), and Opera (Opera) are members of the WebGL Working Group.


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This is TELL ME MORE from NPR News. I'm Michel Martin. Coming up, you've heard about the Tennessee woman who sent her adoptive son back to Russia because she decided she couldn't cope. We'll hear from an investigative reporter who says this actually happens more often than you might think because the Internet makes it easy. She's going to explain more about that in just a few minutes.
First, though, we're going to look at some of the latest political headlines.
Joining us now are two of our veteran analysts. They are both former White House aides. Ron Christie was an assistant to President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. He's now president of Christie Strategies. That's a consulting group. Corey Ealons is a former communications advisor to the Obama administration. He's now a senior vice president at VOX Global. That's a communications firm. They're both back here with us in our Washington, D.C. studios. Welcome back, gentlemen. Thanks so much for joining us once again.
RON CHRISTIE: Happy Friday.
COREY EALONS: Always good to be here.
MARTIN: Now I'd like to start with an event that - it is admittedly close to home here in Washington, D.C. - in fact just about a mile and a half south of Capitol Hill - and that was the shooting at Washington's Navy Yard that killed 12 people on Monday morning. And just last night, 13 people were shot on a basketball court on Chicago's South Side, including a three-year-old who's pulling through, you know, thankfully.
So, Corey, I'll start with you and just ask - you know, there's been a lot of talk about how little we're talking about this actually in the wake of incidents that are just really traumatic. So I'd like to ask, why you think that is. I mean, are we just - is there any policy conversation that anybody is willing to have about this stuff right now?
EALONS: Well, I tell you, I think we may have gotten our fill, unfortunately, during the gun debate earlier this year. I mean, if you can't get comprehensive gun legislation through after the tragedies that we saw at the schools with the children being killed, how in the world could you expect to get anything done otherwise? And so the fact that we're not having a visceral reaction to the events that have taken place this week is unfortunate. But I think...
MARTIN: So are the progressives just throwing up their hands on this? I mean, the Tea Party hasn't stopped trying to defund Obamacare...
EALONS: Right.
MARTIN: ...So why is it that the progressives haven't continued to try to advance gun safety issues? They just don't...
EALONS: Well, I don't know that they have stopped. I know that there has been a lot of conversation amongst progressives, but the challenge is they're not the ones that need to be convinced. It's our folks - the folks you just mentioned - the Tea Party folks who are holding up everything in Congress right now who need to be dealt with. And so we'll see how the conversation develops over the coming days.
MARTIN: Ron, your thoughts?
CHRISTIE: I think it's always fascinating when you have a national tragedy that some on the left like to bring up the Tea Party, as if this is the Tea Party's fault. This was a former Navy reservist who actually had gone through a legal background check and had come through with this background check. To me, it's more striking that the Navy knew that he had mental issues and allowed him to have an honorable discharge, which then allowed him to have the ability to get a background check to obtain a weapon. So I don't see how another law would have changed this. The man actually followed the system that many of the progressives want to keep in place.
MARTIN: You don't see any policy lapse here. You think this is an administrative fail. Is that your idea?
CHRISTIE: I think this is an administrative fail. Absolutely. And by the fact that this man has had several incidents - has been arrested several times over the last several years - dealing with gun violence. He never should have had a permit to have a gun. Period.
MARTIN: So let's talk about the Food Stamp Program. The House voted yesterday to cut $40 billion from it. They cited widespread abuse within the program. Ron, could you just talk about the politics of this. You know, Republicans have been focused on this for a while. They originally tried to include this language in a farm bill, they separated, sort of, the issue. Now they're trying again. But why is this a priority right now? Can you explain that?
CHRISTIE: No, actually, I can't. I understand the need to reform the Food Stamp Program. I think many Democrats understand that we need to reform the Food Stamp Program. But when you say that we are at the lowest workforce participation rate in nearly 30 years, you have so many Americans who are looking for a job who don't have the ability to get it. The Republicans come across as being coldhearted, tone deaf, out of touch. I have no idea what thought went through the leadership and said, you know, with everything going on in the world, let's cut the Food Stamp Program right now. That's a great idea.
MARTIN: Corey, what are your thoughts about this? You know, certainly Democrats have reacted furiously to this. Democratic Congresswoman Jackie Speier ripped Republicans holding up - you know, she held up, like, steak and vodka and caviar on the floor to represent Republicans who took fancy trips abroad or took subsidized trips, you know, abroad. And said that - and got big food allowances and saying that, you know, people, you know, thousands of people in their district could've eaten on what they got in food allowances on these international sort of trips. So what about that on the Democrat side? What are we going to do about this?
EALONS: Well, I'll tell you this. It goes back to what Ron just said before. Ultimately, this bill was allowed to go to rules and then come to the floor. And so this was a leadership decision. This was a very conscious decision on their part. And I think it's because Boehner felt like he needed to give cover - individual, political cover - to folks who, maybe, are going to have to make some adjustments in their thinking and their voting in the coming days and weeks over big issues like the debt ceiling and other issues. So you put this out here.
It is a - it is not a real gesture. It is one that's meant to send a signal to a very small constituency in districts back home that, I'm still with you and we're still going to get these guys. Reform is still a big part of our agenda. But ultimately, obviously, it's not going to go anywhere.
MARTIN: Who do you think - forgive me for using this kind of language, I know people resent it because they feel it trivializes the issue - but who do you think wins this one, this round?
EALONS: Nobody wins. Nobody wins ultimately because, again, the Republicans continue to undermine their ability to redefine their brand. Reince Priebus has to be pulling his hair out right now.
MARTIN: He's the chairman of the Republican National Committee.
EALONS: Absolutely. And then on the other side, again, it takes away from the energy that we need here in Washington to get real things done. It's just one more distraction that we don't need.
MARTIN: Well, speaking of, you know, the question of whether it's a real thing or a distraction - the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare - Republicans are trying to defund it again. They've tried, apparently - what like, 40 times already?
CHRISTIE: It's less than...
EALONS: More than 40.
CHRISTIE: ...It's less than, actually 40, in the House. But I mean, oh, gee, is it 30, or is it 40? I mean, it's still a remarkable number of times.
MARTIN: So this is House Speaker John Boehner explaining why they're doing this. Here he is.
SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE JOHN BOEHNER: The law's a train wreck and it's going to raise costs. It's destroying American jobs and it must go.
MARTIN: So, Ron, what do you make of this? I mean, I think people have noted this week that Senator Ted Cruz, who's considered extremely conservative as a Tea Party favorite, he opposes the law but he says defunding it is not realistic and it's just not a good use of their time. What's your take on the politics?
CHRISTIE: I agree with that. If you are going to repeal the bill, repeal the bill and replace it with something else. I think that the notion of we're going to defund Obamacare in the House and send it to the Senate, that it's going to pass the Senate and reach the president's desk - it's a fantasy, it's not going to happen. Harry Reid said yesterday that it's dead. It's dead. It's not going to pass the Senate.
So, again, from an optic standpoint, I understand that. If you want to have a bill that's going to replace Obamacare, put that on the floor and say, here's our policy disagreement. We want to repeal Obamacare. Here's what our vision, our plan, is and this is why it's better. But the notion that we're going to defund this and somehow put the government in a position of being in a government shutdown I think is foolish policy.
MARTIN: But the difference here, Corey, is that this law is now being coupled with a bill that would be needed to avoid a government shutdown. So it strikes me that people are suggesting right now of the possibility of a shutdown really is likely. First of all, do you agree with that? And secondly, would then the Democrats share some responsibility for that, or how do you think this would be seen, politically?
EALONS: Oh, certainly not. The Democrats would not share any responsibility in that but that's certainly how people who are putting this issue forward are working to position it. But look, here's where we are, first and foremost, we're not going to not pay our bills. We're not going to stand by and let the full faith and credit of the United States be undermined by political posturing. That just can't happen. So the president is taking the right position by having a no-negotiation stance on this particular issue.
And when it comes to Obamacare - look, the Congress passed it, the president signed it, the Supreme Court upheld it. It's a done deal. So this is a fight that needs to be exorcised and done away with. And here's what we know - polls are telling us right now that as much as people supposedly don't like Obamacare, what they want is for Congress, if they don't like it, to fix it. They don't want it to go away. That's what polls are telling us right now so that's - if Republicans in the House and the Senate have issue with the bill, with the law, then they need to fix it.
MARTIN: But do you think the public really sees it that way or does the public just see it as yet more dysfunctional government. So people - a pox on both your houses, you know, as it were. You know, whatever the facts indicate, do you think the public sees it that way? I mean, wouldn't the public see this as yet another sign that their government is dysfunctional?
EALONS: It is that, but here's the thing - the fact that they are now coupling these two issues. We've been through this - we've seen this horror movie. 2011 is the first time we had Tea Party members come in and hold the American people hostage. The Republicans paid for that. The economy paid for it, but the Republicans paid for it as well. The fact that they saw that movie and they also appreciate that if you don't like Obamacare, we should fix it - those two things combined contribute to the sense of dysfunctioning that we have.
MARTIN: Could you tell - help us understand this a little bit more, Ron, because I think that - I don't know if you agree with Corey's assessment of past history here...
CHRISTIE: I don't.
MARTIN: But during the Clinton administration, the government shut down, he's saying, really redounded to the detriment of Republicans. They were blamed for it, they paid a political price for it in the midterm elections. It was was a lose-lose - it was a lose for them - it was a lose-lose for the economy. But from a political stand point, the Clinton administration and Democrats benefited from it. So the politics are all negative on the Republican side. Your assessment?
CHRISTIE: Well, two things here - I remember sitting in the leadership room when then Speaker Gingrich was saying what a great idea this was and he said, wait, what did you just say? Because I leaned to my boss, then the former chairman - the House Budget Committee chairman, John Kasich, and I said, we're going to get blamed for this. And he said, what do you mean? I said, we're going to get blamed for this. They're going to stick somebody out on the Mall and sure enough, what do they do? They had the cabinet out there in the Mall saying, oh, well, you would've had this tour except the Republicans shut the government down. So I think from an optic standpoint I've been through the la vida loca - I don't want to go through that again.
But here's where I disagree with Corey. I think if you look at the most recent NBC Wall Street Journal poll, it says that 63 percent of Americans don't believe that they're going still be able to have the same level of coverage with their healthcare coverage now. If you look at the UPS, if you look at the University of Virginia, if you look at unions of either thousands of people will lose their coverage or thousands of people will lose spousal coverage, I think the more that people learn about this bill as we head closer to the open enrollment on October 1st, they realize this really is a train wreck. Premiums really are going up. My ability to have a good coverage is going down. So we do need to repeal and replace certain aspects of this law that are hurting people rather than helping them.
MARTIN: So you're saying the Republicans will benefit from being seen as having the correct assessment in the end?
CHRISTIE: No, no, no. Republicans in the end will benefit if they actually have a concrete plan that says this is what we're for, these are the deficiencies in the current law that we need to fix. But if they say let's defund it, we're going to lose.
EALONS: Which they failed to put forward over the past five years, so we got to think there's no there there. I think it's very clear.
MARTIN: Corey Ealons is a senior vice president for VOX Global and a former director of media for the Obama administration. Ron Christie is a Republican strategist. He is a former assistant to President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. Now president of Christie Strategies. Thank you both so much for joining us.
CHRISTIE: Always a pleasure.
EALONS: Good to be here. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.


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Alabama - Alaska - Arizona - Arkansas - California - Colorado - Connecticut - Delaware - Florida - Georgia - Hawaii - Idaho - Illinois - Indiana - Iowa - Kansas - Kentucky - Louisiana - Maine - Maryland - Massachusetts - Michigan - Minnesota - Mississippi - Missouri - Montana - Nebraska - Nevada - New Hampshire - New Jersey - New Mexico - New York - North Carolina - North Dakota - Ohio - Oklahoma - Oregon - Pennsylvania - Rhode Island - South Carolina - South Dakota - Tennessee - Texas - Utah - Vermont - Virginia - Washington - West Virginia - Wisconsin - Wyoming
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Algonkian of Coastal Carolina __ You will find a lot of information about the history and archaeology of the Algonkian-speaking peoples. While the Algonkian-apeaking people occupied an area from coastal North Carolina to Canada, from the Atlantic Ocean to the Rocky Mountains, this site deals with the North Carolina Algonkian settlements. - From Carolina Algonkian Project - http://homepages.rootsweb.com/~jmack/algonqin/algonqin.htm
The Archaeology of Coastal North Carolina Page 1 __ "In 1954 the Coastal Studies Institute of Louisiana State University contracted to make a comprehensive survey of the Cape Hatteras area of the Carolina Coast. The work was to include the archeology, cultural geography, botany, coastal morphology, and geology of the region." The results of that study - From rootsweb.ancestry.com - http://homepages.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~jmack/algonqin/haag1.htm
The Archaeology of Early North Carolina __ "In any case, the state's first inhabitants, these early American Indians, likely arrived in what is now North Carolina from the north. They would have seen a much different landscape than we see today." An overview. - From ncpedia.org - http://ncpedia.org/history/early/archaeology
The Archaeology of Native North Carolina __ An intense collection of papers. PDF file - illustrated - From southeasternarchaeology.org - http://www.southeasternarchaeology.org/PDF/bulletins/SEAC%20Special%20Publication%2007.pdf
The Archaeology and Prehistory of Projectile Points and other Artifacts of the
North Carolina Piedmont __ Just what the title says it is. "From an
archaeological perspective, most of what we know of these first, ancient North
Carolinians exists as stone artifacts, fired clay pottery, and a few large,
earthen structures. Typically, wood, bone, leather and similar materials have
not survived the moist conditions and acid soils of the Piedmont." - illustrated
Cape Island Report __ "An archaeological investigation was conducted at 31ON190
between November 4 and November 23, 1996, by Garrow & Associates, Inc." You will
find a full report on the research. - illustrated - From State of North Carolina
Category:Archaeological sites in North Carolina __ Index of articles relating to North Carolina archaeology found in Wikipedia. - From wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Archaeological_sites_in_North_Carolina
dig: North Carolina Archaeology Events __ "dig's guide to special archaeological
programs, events, and exhibits in North Carolina" - From digonsite.com -
Exploring Joara Foundation __ "At the Berry site near Morganton, North Carolina, archaeologist have unearthed the location of the Native American settlement of Joara where Pardo built Fort San Juan in 1567." Learn about the history, research and field school. - illustrated - From joarafoundation.org - http://www.joarafoundation.org/
Fort Neoheroka Excavation and Artifacts __ "What is not shown are the thermal images of the ground where the mass grave lies. Images of over 900 skulls were found. That makes this the largest Indian massacre burial site in the country." Photo and text essay. - illustrated - From tuscaroras.com - http://tuscaroras.com/fortneoheroka/
Intrigue of the Past: North Carolina's First Peoples __ You will find click-to-view information which is actually a set of lesson plans. - From unc.edu - http://www.rla.unc.edu/lessons/Menu/menu.htm
NC Historic Sites - Town Creek Indian Mound __ "Town Creek Indian Mound is an unusual phenomenon in the history of North American archaeology. Most archaeological sites are investigated for a few years and then… archaeologists move on to new locations." Find out why this site is different, learn what the research has accomplished and much more. - illustrated - From nchistoricsites.org - http://www.nchistoricsites.org/town/town.htm
NC Project Archaeology: Lesson Plans __ "Project Archaeology lesson plans for North Carolina are available in a book called Intrigue of the Past: North Carolina's First Peoples, published by the Research Laboratories of Archaeology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill." If you do not want to get the book, you will find the plans online. - From University of North Carolina - http://rla.unc.edu/Service/PA_lessplans.html
North Carolina Archaeological Society __ Learn about the organization, its history, membership information, accomplishments and goals. - From unc.edu - http://rla.unc.edu/ncas/
North Carolina Archaeology __ Overview of archaeology in
North Carolina - photos
and other illustrations -
North Carolina Archaeology Museum Directory __ List of archaeology museums in North Carolina - From museumsusa.org - http://www.museumsusa.org/museums/?k=1271407%2CCategoryID%3A1601640%3BState%3ANC%3Bdirectoryid%3A200454
North Carolina General Statutes Chapter 70 Indian Antiquities, Archaeological Resources and Unmarked Human Skeletal Remains Protection __ North Carolina laws regarding Native American artifacts and remains, - From onecle.com - http://law.onecle.com/north-carolina/70-indian-antiquities-archaeological-resources-and-unmarked-human-skeletal-remains-protection/index.html
North Carolina GIS Archaeological Predictive Model Project __ "This major project will develop a series of GIS-based predictive models of the location of prehistoric and historic archaeological sites in North Carolina, and will computerize all of the state's archaeological site records." Learn how this will be of help. - From Environmental Services, Inc. - http://www.informatics.org/ncdot/
North Carolina Office of State Archaeology __ "Articles and information about the prehistoric and historic archaeology of the state from the Office of State Archaeology." - illustrated - From ncdcr.gov - http://www.archaeology.ncdcr.gov/
Office of State Archaeology __ This office oversees the statewide survey of historic and prehistoric sites, including underwater archaeological surveys, and conducts fieldwork, technical assistance, and permitting to protect unmarked burials, shipwrecks and archaeological resources on state owned land. Learn about the office, its goals and accomplishments. - From ncdcr.gov - http://www.archaeology.ncdcr.gov/
The Queen Anne's Revenge Shipwreck Project __ "In 1997, under the direction of the Underwater Archaeology Branch of the North Carolina Division of Archives and History, archaeologists began exploring, documenting, and recovering archaeological remains at the Queen Anne's Revenge shipwreck site." You will find the results of that research and plans for the future. - illustrated - From qaronline.org - http://www.qaronline.org/
Subsistence Remains from Prehistoric North Carolina Archaeological ...
__ You
will find a detailed and technical paper. A 'sign-in' may pop-up but I found
that it can be ignored when accessing the click-to-read articles. - From Office
of State Archaeology -
Type Descriptions of the Projectile Points of the Appalachian Mountains of North Carolina __ Descriptions and images of various points. - illustrated - From warren-wilson.edu - http://www.warren-wilson.edu/~arch/pointtype
Western NC Ceramics Typology __ Annotated gallery and click-to-read articles. - illustrated - From warren-wilson.edu - http://www.warren-wilson.edu/~arch/ceramics
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In 2011 researchers realized that they could use NASA's Vector Electric Field Instrument aboard the Air Force's Communications/Navigation Outage Forecast System satellite to detect Schumann Resonance and now they believe it can be used to study other planets in the solar system.
Every second, lightning flashes some 50 times on Earth. Together these discharges coalesce and get stronger, creating electromagnetic waves circling around Earth, to create a beating pulse between the ground and the lower ionosphere, about 60 miles up in the atmosphere. This electromagnetic signature, known as Schumann Resonance, had only been observed from Earth's surface until, in 2011, scientists discovered they could also detect it using NASA's Vector Electric Field Instrument (VEFI) aboard the U.S. Air Force's Communications/Navigation Outage Forecast System (C/NOFS) satellite.
In a paper published on May 1 in The Astrophysical Journal, researchers describe how this new technique could be used to study other planets in the solar system as well, and even shed light on how the solar system formed.
"The frequency of Schumann Resonance depends not only on the size of the planet but on what kinds of atoms and molecules exist in the atmosphere because they change the electrical conductivity," says Fernando Simoes, the first author on this paper and a space scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "So we could use this technique remotely, say from about 600 miles above a planet's surface, to look at how much water, methane and ammonia is there."
Water, methane, and ammonia are collectively referred to as "volatiles" and the fact that there are different amounts on different planets is a tantalizing clue to the way the planets formed. Determining the composition of a planet's atmosphere can be done with a handful of other techniques – techniques that are quite accurate, but can only measure specific regions. By looking at the Schumann Resonance, however, one can get information about the global density of, say, water around the entire planet. Simoes and his colleagues believe that combining this technique with other instruments on a spacecraft's visit to a planet could provide a more accurate inventory of the planet's atmosphere.
"And if we can get a better sense of the abundance of these kinds of atoms in the outer planets," says Simoes, "We would know more about the abundance in the original nebula from which the solar system evolved."
Accurate descriptions of planetary atmospheres might also help shed light on how the evolution of the solar system left the outer planets with a high percentage of volatiles, but not the inner planets.
Detecting Schumann Resonance from above still requires the instruments to be fairly close to the planet, so this technique couldn't be used to investigate from afar the atmospheres of planets outside our solar system. Instead, scientists imagine something much more dramatic. After a spacecraft is finished observing a planet, it could continue to detect Schumann resonance as it begins its death dive into the atmosphere. During the process of self-destruction, the spacecraft would still provide valuable scientific data until the very last minute of its existence.
Reference: "Using Schumann Resonance Measurements for Constraining the Water Abundance on the Giant Planets—Implications for the Solar System's Formation" by Fernando Simões, Robert Pfaff, Michel Hamelin, Jeffrey Klenzing, Henry Freudenreich, Christian Béghin, Jean-Jacques Berthelier, Kenneth Bromund, Rejean Grard, Jean-Pierre Lebreton, Steven Martin, Douglas Rowland, Davis Sentman, Yukihiro Takahashi and Yoav Yair, 17 April 2012, The Astrophysical Journal.


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In August 2010, we spent 17 days in Bulgaria. Our main destinations were: Melnik & Rozhen, Rila Monastery, Plovdiv & Bachkovo Monestary, Veliko Tarnovo, Kazanlak & Tryavna, Belogradchik & Vidin, and last but not least Sofia. Continue Reading →
Archive | Bulgaria
Travel Guide To Bulgaria
In August 2010, we spent 17 days in Bulgaria. Our main destinations were: Melnik & Rozhen, Rila Monastery, Plovdiv & Bachkovo Monestary, Veliko Tarnovo, Kazanlak & Tryavna, Belogradchik & Vidin, and last but not least Sofia. Our most sensible advice: if you can, visit Bulgaria in spring or fall. The temperatures in August were just too much. We NEVER had a day with less than 34 degrees Celsius, and it was no comfort that locals told us that these were unusually high temperatures. In Plovdiv, the mercury scale even reached 41 degrees (106 degrees Fahrenheit). Continue Reading →
Bulgaria – Budget Guide
For this trip we chose a far more comfortable way of travelling than usual – first of all we stayed only 17 days, secondly the temperatures were oppressing and above all, the prices incredible cheap. So we rented a car, stayed in mid-range and sometimes even at Boutique Hotels. And of course, we tested the Bulgarian food to the limits, usually accompanied by local wine. Continue Reading →
Sophia – The Very Capital
We were not sure what to expect from Sophia and very positively surprised by the walk able center, the parks, the museums, the many cafes and above all The National Gallery with its amazing paintings. Continue Reading →
Dancing The Night Away At Belogradchik
Repeatedly Bulgarian tourists we met on this trip raved about the bizarre rock formations and the Roman fortress in Belogradchik. We were a bit sceptical, but since we were right there, at the foothills of the Balkan Mountains in northwest Bulgaria, we gave it a try. Besides the very name, Belogradchik, was so intriguing, so very "Balkanic". Continue Reading →
Rivertown Vidin – Bulgaria's Link To Romania
Locals immediately assume that foreigners who come here, do so for business only. To everybody's surprise, we insisted we were here for pleasure. We simply loved this quiet river town with its long tree-lined promenade along the Danube, where "tout Vidin" strolls, rolls and chats in the evening. Lots of restaurants – some even float on the very river – offer the catch of the day. Continue Reading →
Bulgaria's Frontier – The Northwest
The term "roads less travelled" was coined to describe areas not often visited by tourists. In the northwest of Bulgaria, it takes on a literal meaning. We drove over bits of roads where the weed crept through the cracks in the tarmac. Here Bulgaria gets as rural as it can get. Continue Reading →
Touristy Tryavna
This small town in the hills near Veliko Tarnovo has a very romantic and well restored historic center. Its renovated buildings all line cobble-stoned Angel Kanchev Street. So it took us not more than an hour to cover all of it. Tryavna's most famous sight is its old church with its thatched roof that almost touches the ground. Inside lots of wood carved icons are on display, a craft Tryavna is famous for. Continue Reading →
Swinging That Incense Burner – Shipska Monastery
Heading towards Tryavna, all of a sudden we noticed a brightly shining golden copula in the distance, the rest of the building was hidden in the thick forest around it. A look at the map and we knew, this was famous Shipska Monastery. Continue Reading →
Mood Swings In Kazanlak
Our tour de force to the Black Sea and back, all within a day, ended in Kazanlak. We kept going by munching peaches which we bought from vendors along the road. Exhausted and miserable we started hotel hunting. A nice, quiet place we wanted. Oh boy, the rooms in the huge Grand Hotel Kazanlak were horrid and noisy, we even feel sorry for the young lady who showed us around. Next was Hotel Palas for no less than 65 Euros, lots of suffocating extravagant velvet interior design. Continue Reading →


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Chia Seed Pudding
Category: Breakfast Recipes
Giada's bulks up Greek yogurt with chia seeds for a little bit of crunch and maple syrup for a little bit of sweet — it's the perfect healthy make-ahead breakfast.
- 1 cup vanilla-flavored unsweetened almond milk
- 1 cup plain low-fat (2 percent) Greek yogurt
- 2 tablespoons pure maple syrup (preferably grade B), plus 4 teaspoons for serving
- 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
- Kosher salt
- 1/4 cup chia seeds
- 1 pint strawberries, hulled and chopped
- 1/4 cup sliced almonds, toasted
- In a medium bowl, gently whisk the almond milk, yogurt, 2 tablespoons maple syrup, the vanilla and 1/8 teaspoon salt until just blended. Whisk in the chia seeds; let stand 30 minutes. Stir to distribute the seeds if they have settled. Cover and refrigerate overnight.
- The next day, in a medium bowl, toss the berries with the remaining 4 teaspoons maple syrup. Mix in the almonds.
- Spoon the pudding into 4 bowls or glasses; mound the berry mixture on top and serve.


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A statement from Marxist intellectual Slavoj Žižek on the Pussy Riot trial
The True Blasphemy
Pussy Riot members accused of blasphemy and hatred of religion? The answer is easy: the true blasphemy is the state accusation itself, formulating as a crime of religious hatred something which was clearly a political act of protest against the ruling clique. Recall Brecht's old quip from his Beggars' Opera: "What is the robbing of a bank compared to the founding of a new bank?" In 2008, Wall Street gave us the new version: what is the stealing of a couple of thousand of dollars, for which one goes to prison, compared to financial speculations that deprive tens of millions of their homes and savings, and are then rewarded by state help of sublime grandeur? Now, we got another version from Russia, from the power of the state: What is a modest Pussy Riot obscene provocation in a church compared to the accusation against Pussy Riot, this gigantic obscene provocation of the state apparatus which mocks any notion of decent law and order?
Was the act of Pussy Riot cynical? There are two kinds of cynicism: the bitter cynicism of the oppressed which unmasks the hypocrisy of those in power, and the cynicism of the oppressors themselves who openly violate their own proclaimed principles. The cynicism of Pussy Riot is of the first kind, while the cynicism of those in power — why not call their authoritarian brutality a Prick Riot — is of the much more ominous second kind.
Back in 1905, Leon Trotsky characterized tsarist Russia as "a vicious combination of the Asian knout and the European stock market." Does this designation not hold more and more also for the Russia of today? Does it not announce the rise of the new phase of capitalism, capitalism with Asian values (which, of course, has nothing to do with Asia and everything to do with the anti-democratic tendencies in today's global capitalism). If we understand cynicism as ruthless pragmatism of power which secretly laughs at its own principles, then Pussy Riot are anti-cynicism embodied. Their message is: IDEAS MATTER. They are conceptual artists in the noblest sense of the word: artists who embody an Idea. This is why they wear balaclavas: masks of de-individualization, of liberating anonymity. The message of their balaclavas is that it doesn't matter which of them got arrested — they're not individuals, they're an Idea. And this is why they are such a threat: it is easy to imprison individuals, but try to imprison an Idea!
The panic of those in power — displayed by their ridiculously excessive brutal reaction — is thus fully justified. The more brutally they act, the more important symbol Pussy Riot will become. Already now the result of the oppressive measures is that Pussy Riot are a household name literally all around the world.
It is the sacred duty of all of us to prevent that the courageous individuals who compose Pussy Riot will not pay in their flesh the price for their becoming a global symbol.
—Slavoj Žižek


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Use color thresholding to specify a color range and return a black and white image. All colors between the start and stop colors (inclusively) become white and the rest of the image pixels become black. The two colors are separated with a hyphen between them. Thresholding, by default, take place in the sRGB colorspace. Use the -colorspace to perform the thresholding in an alternative colorspaces (currently limited to sRGB, Gray, HSV, HSL, HCL, HSB, and HSW). Start and stop colors can be specified in any colorspace (recognized by ImageMagick), but in general, we advise you specify them in the colorspace corresponding to the -colorspace option. For colorspace Gray, be sure to use a start value lower than the stop value. Note that Hue is cyclical -- 0 and 360 are the same. However, a range of colors that spans hue = 0 may still be useful, if the start hue value is higher than the stop hue value.
Caution is advised when mixing the colorspace of the start and stop colors and that of the image. A large range in one colorspace may map to only a narrow range in another colorspace. For example, one might naively think that sRGB(0,0,0) to sRGB(255,255,255) would produce a white image, catching all colors, even when using -colorspace HSV. But these two colors are black and white and so map only to a range of grayscale as hsv(0,0%,0%) and hsv(0,0%,100%). For a color image, you would likely not find too many gray pixels.
To illustrate how color thresholding performs, use this image:
convert input-image -colorspace XXX -color-threshold "start - stop" output-image
The following are some typical examples of use:
Start by choosing one sRGB color (somewhere on the image -- in this case the yellow of the flowers) and offset it low and high to form two sRGB colors. The lower values form the start color and the higher values form the stop color. Begin with sRGB(183,132,20). Offset its values by +-20 to identify the start color (-) and the stop color (+); namely, R=183+-20, G=132+-20, and B=40+-20:
magick monet.jpg -color-threshold 'sRGB(163,112,0)-sRGB(203,152,40)' monet.gif
this returns the outline of the yellow flower petals:
Now, pick two RGB colors: sRGB(159,150,0) and sRGB(205,100,45):
magick monet.jpg -color-threshold 'sRGB(159,150,0)-sRGB(205,100,45)' monet.gif
Next, select one sRGB color and convert it to HSV and offset its values low and high to generate the start and stop HSV colors. Use -colorspace HSV to convert the image to HSV. For our HSV example, we pick sRGB(183,132,20) and convert to HSV:
magick xc:"srgb(183,132,20)" -colorspace HSV txt: # ImageMagick pixel enumeration: 1,1,65535,hsv 0,0: (41.227,89.071%,71.7647%) #1D51E405B7B7 hsv(41.227,89.071%,71.7647%)
Now, offset its HSV values as H=41+-20, S=89+-10, and V=72+-10, to create the start color (-) and stop color (+):
magick monet.jpg -colorspace HSV -color-threshold 'hsv(21,79%,62%)-hsv(61,99%,85%)' monet.gif
Next, pick two RGB colors. Use -colorspace HSV to convert the image to HSV, and apply the RGB start and stop colors. Choose sRGB(158,77,33) and sRGB(213,217,2):
magick monet.jpg -colorspace HSV -color-threshold "sRGB(158,77,33)-sRGB(213,217,2)" monet.gif
Here is the expected results:
Next, choose two sRGB colors and convert them to gray. Now convert the image to gray and use the gray thresholding colors.
magick xc:"sRGB(159,150,0)" -colorspace gray txt: # ImageMagick pixel enumeration: 1,1,65535,gray 0,0: (36259.1) #8DA38DA38DA3 gray(55.3278%) magick xc:"sRGB(205,100,45)" -colorspace gray txt: # ImageMagick pixel enumeration: 1,1,65535,gray 0,0: (30418.2) #76D276D276D2 gray(46.4152%)
Notice that the start intensity must be smaller than stop intensity:
magick monet.jpg -colorspace gray -color-threshold 'gray(46.4152%)-gray(55.3278%)' monet.gif
Here is the results of the color thresholding operation:


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Graduate Students Financial Aid
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Cinco de Mayo, or the fifth of May, is a holiday that celebrates Mexico's victory over France at the Battle of Puebla in 1862. It does not, as many people assume, commemorate Mexican independence, which was declared more than 50 years before the Battle of Puebla. Read on to learn more about Cinco de Mayo and how the holiday has become a worldwide phenomenon.
1. Mexico had just gotten over a civil war in 1862.
The so-called War of the Reform broke out in 1858 soon after liberals drafted a new constitution aimed at reducing the power and influence of the Catholic Church. During the armed conflict, Mexico had two governments: a conservative one in Mexico City led by General Félix Zuloaga and a liberal one in Veracruz led by Benito Juárez, president of the supreme court. The conservatives, who had the support of the pope, won a series of initial skirmishes, but the liberals controlled the ports and were therefore better able to equip their troops. They emerged victorious in January 1861 when they retook Mexico City. The country remained starkly divided, however, with conservatives plotting their revenge.
2. European troops invaded because Mexico was broke.
After the War of Reform, Mexico had virtually no money in its treasury and owed tens of millions of dollars to foreign debtors. The sale of expropriated church property brought very little relief. As a result, newly elected President Juárez suspended payment of all foreign debt for two years, a move that prompted an immediate backlash from Spain, France and Great Britain. With the United States too consumed by the Civil War to enforce the Monroe Doctrine, troops from those three European powers began arriving in Veracruz in late 1861. Spain and Great Britain almost immediately withdrew, but about 6,000 French troops pushed inland toward the capital, backed by Mexico's vanquished conservative leaders.
3. France was considered extremely potent militarily when it attacked Mexico.
In 1862, the French had one of the best armies in the world. Arriving at Puebla on May 4, they were coming off a series of victories in Southeast Asia and Northern Africa and were loaded with firepower, including long-range rifles that put the Mexicans' creaky muskets to shame. They were so overconfident, in fact, that they didn't even bother to properly prepare their artillery. On the morning of May 5, the French tried to intimidate the Mexicans with screeching bugle calls and advanced bayonet maneuvers. But after a full day of fighting, including three unsuccessful uphill charges, they were forced to retreat due to heavy casualties.
4. After losing the Battle of Puebla, France went on to win the war.
Mexico's victory at Puebla slowed, but did not stop, France's assault. In the wake of the battle, an infuriated Emperor Napoleon III ordered that almost 30,000 more troops be sent to Mexico. This time around, under a new commander, they were able to overrun Puebla and easily conquer Mexico City. Juárez and his supporters then fled to the mountains to conduct guerilla operations while Napoleon III installed Ferdinand Maximilian von Habsburg, second in line to the Austro-Hungarian throne, as Mexico's ruler.
5. The French occupation of Mexico was short-lived.
Back in France, Napoleon III was growing increasingly concerned that Prussia, fresh off victories against Denmark and Austria, would next try to reclaim the perpetually disputed territories of Alsace and Lorraine. Meanwhile, the Civil War had wrapped up, and U.S. officials were exerting diplomatic pressure on the French and supplying weapons to Juárez's army. With his coffers running low, Napoleon III decided in 1866 to end France's occupation of Mexico. Maximilian unwisely stayed and briefly fought on, surrendering only after his troops were routed at Querétaro. On June 19, 1867, he and his top generals were executed by a firing squad.
6. Porfirio Díaz began making a name for himself at Puebla.
Porfirio Díaz, Mexico's longest-serving president, was a relatively unknown cavalry commander until the Battle of Puebla, where he outflanked the French on their third charge and sent them into a disorderly retreat. Over the next few years he won battles at Oaxaca and elsewhere. Following the war, however, Díaz became so disillusioned with his onetime friend Juárez that he unsuccessfully ran for president against him. He later launched a couple of coup attempts, finally seizing power in 1876. Except for one four-year break, his reign lasted until 1911, when he was finally deposed by the Mexican Revolution.
7. Cinco de Mayo is more widely celebrated in parts of the United States than in Mexico.
Juárez declared Cinco de Mayo a holiday immediately after the Battle of Puebla, but for many Mexicans it has always taken a backseat to such events as the September 16 Independence Day, which commemorates the start of hostilities against Spanish rule in 1810. In the United States, on the other hand, Cinco de Mayo gained traction during the 1960s, when Chicano activists began looking for a way to honor their history and culture. Today, the biggest Cinco de Mayo celebrations are held in U.S. cities with large Hispanic populations, such as Los Angeles, which every year attracts hundreds of thousands of people to its Fiesta Broadway festival.


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Artist, scholar, organizer, and professor, Gregory Sholette embodies multiple ways that artists can interrogate history, politics, and public discourse. Through his initial work with the group REPOhistory (1989-2000) (as in, "repossessing history"), he, along with other art groups and individuals of the 80s and early 90s, effectively drew attention to the artist as a social and political actor. Sholette's collaborations with REPOhistory also presented art works as vehicles for addressing submerged socio-political histories, such as in the group's Lower Manhattan Sign Project (1992-1993), in which they posted signs around Manhattan offering information about "the unknown or forgotten history of Manhattan below Chambers Street." Sholette has also been an active participant in PAD/D (Political Art Documentation and Distribution [1980-1986]), an organization devoted to the publication and distribution of documents regarding the intersection of aesthetic politics and activism. Most recently Sholette has founded an archive for futures that "never happened" (The Imaginary Archive, 2010-present), and has been involved with The Institute for Wishful Thinking, an organization that attempts to harness the "untapped" potential of artists by soliciting proposals for projects which might effect governmental and social change.
Despite Sholette's robust participation with other artists and activists and his tendency to only exhibit his own work in group shows, the works and projects he has produced independently of collaboration feedback vitally into a more collective practice (something he discusses at length below and in a previous "Inside the Artist's Studio" feature). Meeting Sholette in person, I was struck by his interest in subjects ranging from the popular to the occult and counter-cultural. Sholette's range of interests are brought to a focus in the book Dark Matter: Art and Politics in the Age of Enterprise Culture, in which he considers artworks that have fallen through the cracks of official art-historical discourse. Such works offer sites of (potential) resistance and autonomy inasmuch as they are not perceived as "art" proper and so remain liminal to the expropriative tendencies of cultural capital. Works by the "outside" artist, the craft artist, the hobbyist, the amateur, and the self-critical "drop-out" appear throughout Sholette's book, offering examples, if not models, of what art can do guided by different values and habits.
After the work of the film-essayist Chris Marker or the literary theorist Walter Benjamin (two professed heroes of the artist), Sholette turns his attention to the abandoned and unattended, cultural products so prosaic that they would seem neither worthy of our critical attention, nor our powers of reappropriation. The stuff ripe for re-use in Sholette's work one would hardly call "redemptive," and yet something is redeemed through the artist's taking them up—a potential to make legible things just below the attention, what becomes "dark matter" because the culture at large just doesn't know where to put it. Through the use of action figures in particular, a preferred format of hobbyists, he addresses problems ranging from post-Fordist labor practices (i am NOT my office, 2002-2004) to representations of Italian Fascism (Deconstructing Mussolini, 2007) and the exploitation of child workers (Little Workers Collectibles).
Sholette's dirty messianic approach also comes across in his appropriation of dioramas, window and museum displays, and souvenirs. Playing upon our familiarity with these 19th century formats, Sholette moves fluidly between sentimentality and criticality, ironic abandon and the recognition that, as Walter Benjamin famously wrote (and Sholette quotes through a particular work of his citing the relationship between John D. Rockefeller's founding of the New York MoMA and management of his public image after a mining disaster): "There is no document of civilization which is not at the same time a document of barbarism." Moving within the flicker of "civilization" and "barbarism," Sholette tells history slant, through the eyes of the losers, the unrecognized (and unrecognizeable), citing the places where anomalies and antagonisms crucial to history's retelling "flash-up."
Oriented by the Cold War era (as he recognizes below), Sholette's analysis of barbarism and civilization deconstructs American exceptionalism in the post-war period, particularly the ways that American art and the management of its geopolitical interests intersect. In his video Return of the Atomic Ghosts (2005), for example, Sholette spoofs extraterrestrial cover-up documentaries in order to reveal another cover-up of the previous half-century: the US government's involvement in countless foreign coups, assassinations, and occupations.
In his bas relief, Men Making History/Making War, Sholette draws attention to the US government's use of Jackson Pollock and other Abstract Expressionists to wage culture war against Soviet communism. In yet another work, Preparing for War (1983), exhibited at the Brooklyn Naval Terminal just before the US invasion of Grenada, he questions links between avant-garde Modernist art and the causes and repercussions of World War I, reproducing works by Duchamp, Picasso, Brancusi, and others from the period preceding the "great war." Preparing for War reflects on the connections between war, nation building, and avant-gardism (a military term before it was used to describe certain art attitudes and practices). In another work, Express Yourself (1993), Sholette bronzes his American Express card, placing it among other bronze reproductions of well-known Expressionist art works. The message is clear: art is no longer the privileged site of self-expression (if it ever was) during a cultural moment in which buying power and creative potential (expression) are equated.
Buffering the seriousness of his political and social commitments, and his unflinching belief that art can intervene effectively in public discourse (if only through its counter-cultural potential), is a sense of the weird and wondrous, a commons of the odd. One gets this sense from a recent photo-installation work, Mole Light: God is truth and light his shadow (2010), wherein one views a series of cartoon eyes accompanied by thought balloon with quotations from Plato, Marx, Courbet, Glenn Beck, Snow White's Grumpy, and others. In another work, appropriating the format of 50s television and radio commercials, Sholette provides a "recipe" for real estate futures (Cooking Up Real Estate Futures for Lower Manhattan, 2006). Heating up a track of land in Iraq through continuous missile fire, one need only cut out the piece of land and transplant it to Manhattan. Few artists I know strike so boldly and lovingly at the heart of the American project, creating sites where the American obsession with novelty and consumerism can collide with its geopolitical realities.
1. What is your background as an artist and how does this background inform and motivate your practice?
Post-war America filled art schools with optimistic young artists like me: born in the middle of last Century from white, working class (but also home-owning) parents and taking seriously John F. Kennedy's claim that the artists was "the last champion of the individual mind and sensibility against an intrusive society" [from a speech by President John F. Kennedy given at Amherst College on October 26, 1963]. I imagined a future in which labor and pleasure converged. Then came the political and economic trauma of the late 1970s and early 1980 –the years I really began to come of age while moving to New York City from Philadelphia– which was not so much an end to that spirit of hopefulness, as much as it was a re-grounding of expectations within an oppositional space out on the far periphery of the art world.
2. Do you feel there a need for the work that you are doing given the larger field of visual art and the ways that aesthetic practices may be able to shape public space, civic responsibility, and political action? Why or why not?
Work is a necessity. It defines us. I do not mean employment defines us, or your job defines us, or even "productive" work defines us (whatever that may be today). Rather simply the activity of being in the world requires us to exert a material force within it and sometimes against it (just as it in turn pushes against us). This definition of work of course includes both physical as well as mental capacity, and it could also mean refusing to be productive like the character Bartleby the Scrivener in Melville's classic tale. Why? Because refusing to be productive is also a kind of activity that requires working at not working if you like. The young Marx put it most succinctly when he wrote that a human being only really works in the fullest sense of that word when free from the bridal of necessity. Being chained to the needs of the market economy is therefore the opposite of freedom.
This is where culture comes in. In the minds of most people the artist is the epitome of non-productive work. More than that, the artist also represents a kind of non-socialized work. She stands apart from the communal coil, traveling her own road, and that means the artist exists at the exact point of friction where the autonomous individual and the collective social need collide. At least this is the common character of the "artist": a slightly or seriously anti-social human being. Most likely this sentiment leads to the always-present anxiety so many people (including those in the art world) express towards art that is produced collaboratively or collectively. My artistic labor consciously engages such acts of collaboration and collectivity. They become central to my production as an artist, and in fairness as a writer and teacher. I think some of these concerns are thrashed out in my new book Dark Matter: Art and Politics in the Age of Enterprise Culture (Pluto Press, 2011). But does that mean any of this work is politically responsible or socially necessary?
While that is a fair question, Thom, I think it tends to collapse the contradictions mentioned above, contradictions between work and non-work, individual and social that are inherent to cultural production. Maybe a different question to ask is what necessary role does the non-social, and the concretely material play within the emerging arena of community art and social practice art? To put it differently: how does one learn to embrace not only an agency that is socially generated, often the easy part of a project, but also the active or inert resistance of a specific urban space or history or historical archive? This material resistance sometimes can be constructive, giving us something to push against. At other times it can stand in stolid opposition to our intentions, no matter how good they appear to be. It is a question that I think needs to be addressed right now especially as these civically-inspired artistic practices gain purchase within the worlds of contemporary art and academia. (Neither are these contradictions absent from my own "work.")
3. Are there other projects, people, and/or things that have inspired your work? Please describe.
- Moby Dick
- Wikileaks
- The poetry of Bertolt Brecht
- Chris Marker's films Sans soleil and La jetée
- The dioramas at the American Museum of Natural History
- Martha Rosler's videos, essays, and pedagogical texts
- Andrew Heminway's treatise Artists on the Left
- Coleoptera (which make up 25% of all known life forms)
- J.P. Gorin's docu-fictional cinema such as Routine Pleasures
- Weird new groups like themm.us
- Carol Duncan's scholarship on museum semiotics
- Hans Haacke's installations, public works, and critical research methodologies
- The Communist Manifesto
4. What have been your favorite projects to work on and why?
Certainly I am most proud of the work I did with REPOhistory in the 1990s, but especially the project CIRCULATION, whose concept I conceived of in 1995 and which the group realized in 2000. I am also very pleased with Mole Light: God is truth and light his shadow (2010), a site-specific installation I made for the unique exhibition space Plato's Cave in Brooklyn.
Perhaps my all time favorite art "work" from the years past is Insurrection (1984) – a long, horizontal wall piece made with wax, latex, wood, plastic, paper, and a silkscreened text that measured 36″ x 106″ x 8″ inches. Insurrection was based on the writings of Ephram Squire who in 1849 was the Charge d'affaires for Central America under President Polk. The text describes Squire's view that the non-white peoples and strange zoology of the region (now known as Nicaragua). He goes on to state that this odd flora and fauna will inevitably be superseded by the northern, animal and plant life (and its people will be supplanted by the "white race"). "Deus Vult – it is the will of god" he proclaims in the 19th Century language of Manifest Destiny. But in my piece, his words are gradually engulfed by a mat of foliage and flowers recreated using techniques I learned from a friend – Michael Anderson — an artist and exhibition technician who once worked on the dioramas at the American Museum of Natural History. The piece was made with assistance from Anderson and was exhibited as part of the Artists Call Against US Intervention in Central American in 1984
5. What projects would you like to work on in the future? In what directions do you imagine taking your work?
Right now, I am working on several new installations that combine conceptual and sculptural elements that grow out of and feed into my research on "Dark Matter." All will be realized in collaboration with people I both like and admire:
Imaginary Archive is a collection of both real and fictional documents describing a future whose past did not exist (or a past whose present does not exist). The work takes the form of booklets, newspapers, small constructions, posters, some of which I created and others produced by a group of invited artists. Its first version was installed last June at Enjoy Public Art Gallery in Wellington, New Zealand (2010), and Imaginary Archive will continue as a second chapter this November at Gallery 126 in Galway, Ireland for the Tulca Arts Festival (2011).
The other project I am working on is Islands. It will open in February 2012 and is being made for the massive panorama of New York City at the Queens Museum of Art. Once again, this project will involve a group of collaborators, however this time I am interpreting their ideas, not asking them to make things. About ten people known for their critical writings about social practice art are being asked to imagine an island that appears unexpectedly off the shoals of New York City right after the ten-year anniversary of the 911 attacks. What kid of solitary land mass does someone concerned with social and political art envision? Will it be a communal space or more diffident, even private? I will be fabricating these visionary, scale-model islands and then have my collaborators pose with them before adding the islands (temporarily) to the QMA panorama.
Finally, I will also contribute to Temporary Services project for Creative Time's Living As Form at the Essex Street Market in Manhattan in the Fall.


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We love trains and train rides. For the scenery and for the vacation it spells for us. We are able to spend quality time with each other without any engaging ring tones or emails. We are also lucky that Medha enjoys it as much as we do. She basks in the 100% one-on-one attention she gets when we travel by train.
We took the California Zephyr from Denver to Chicago on one of our innumerable trips from New Lenox to Louisville last year. It was supposed to take just 14 hours but took almost 17 hours. Since Amtrak does not own the railroads, they are at the mercy of the railroad companies whose freight trains get first preference. We don't mind the delays as we give up all semblance of control and enjoy the train ride. However, I was a little apprehensive as that was a year ago and the route from Denver to Emeryville, California is 36 hours long. But it was so much fun that I would do it again in a heartbeat.
The bedrooms were sold out so we booked two roomettes instead. Luckily for us, these were across from each other so we were able to hop over from one side to the other whenever the scenery changed!
The train glides through the Front Range into the Rockies and the spectacular scenery begins...
We crossed the Continental Divide when we went through the 6.2 mile Moffat Tunnel, at an elevation of 9000 feet.
The Colorado river then joins the route and runs alongside the train through most of the route in western Colorado...
...with views of the river basin...
...and white-water rafters, who gave us the Amtrak salute, if they were rafting through calm waters. It was Medha's first exposure to mooning and she just kept yeowing, after the initial wide-eyed jaw-open silence.
...and mesas and canyons...
...through rocks from a hundred years old to over a million years old.
I felt like I was looking into a set for Mackenna's Gold.
The Colorado river bade us farewell near the Utah border and the relentless desert of Utah began.
The lack of scenery and the fading light outside allowed me to teach Medha how to knit. She took to it rather quickly, having woven potholders with looms before.
I took the opportunity to finish the scarf I have been knitting for about five years now and started on my next five year project, a crocheted airy diamond Afghan.
The Sierra Nevadas started soon after Reno...
We also passed the exquisite Donner Lake area that nestles in the Sierra Nevadas.
The gradual descent and the approaching signs of civilization signaled that the first truly relaxed and amazing part of our vacation was over. We reached Emeryville, California with a renewed respect for Mother Earth and her natural beauty.
We stayed for a week, camping at Big Sur, checking out Slow Food in San Francisco and experiencing the city. We flew back with a stop at Las Vegas, which I have awarded the dirtiest and most horrible airport in the USA. The landing and take-off at Vegas were very bumpy. So bumpy that the landing at Denver seemed rather smooth in comparison. We reached home so exhausted that we felt like we needed that proverbial vacation to recover from the last one. But it was really just the last leg that drained us. If I have to do it again, I will fly out to California and return by train, relaxed and rejuvenated! But, it's good to be home again.
I will be posting pictures of the rest of our vacation on Inner Lens. These will include pictures of our camping trip at Big Sur and the city of San Francisco.


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Welcome to IBProvider site!
If you were looking for high-quality components for working with Firebird and InterBase databases from native and managed Windows applications, then your search is completed.
Your devs seem to be the only ones in the world to be able to get 3rd party Interbase connectivity to work as advertised. Great work!
With our OLE DB and ADO.NET providers you can work with any of the listed versions of Firebird and InterBase:
With server client
Without server client
Moreover, IBProvider supports Yaffil SQL Server work.
… My first test of selecting a few hundred thousand records worked too fast, which initially gave me the impression something was wrong. Upon checking, everything seemed to be fine.
… The previous driver we used for interbase would occasionally throw an access violation. There is no way of catching an access violation, so with this previous driver, if we got unlucky our entire application would crash.
As if the driver crashing our entire program wasn't bad enough — occasionally it would return nulls for the first column returned. There was no consistency for these errors and it was impossible to tell what the cause was without debugging into it.
Luckily a workmate referred me to IBProvider… Full case description >>
Samuel Davis
Software Developer
Affinity Team
1. Upgrade to the new versions of Firebird/InterBase will be much more simple.
If you use IBProvider for connecting to Firebird and InterBase, the upgrade to other database server versions as well as the switching between servers will be much easier then in case of using other components.
IBProvider makes automatic setup of its own core to the specific SQL server that includes the following steps:
- Defining list of key words, reserved by SQL server.
- Loading metadata provider.
- Setup of ODBC Escape Sequences parser.
- Choice of embedded transactions algorithm and supported dialect.
- Connection of algorithms, optimized for concrete database server version.
You only need to write the queries, IBProver will make all the additional work:
- Request the information about metadata from SQL server.
- Specify the command parameters, their type, precision and size.
- Make the correct values transformation to the specified data type.
- Upload the data to the own swap-file if their size will exceed the required value in RW memory.
- Process Unicode rows in ordinary columns, arrays, BLOB-fields as well as storage-objects correctly.
… IBProvider support (I mean it REALLY support) InterBase from the earliest version.
I discovered IBProvider searching google for the best component to use for native InterBase connectivity. I was looking for full InterBase support, smallest footprint and best integration ever. So I was not considering ODBC and I was looking for an OLE-DB/ADO.NET provider.
IBProvider fit the work very well because:
- It's only one step above InterBase communication library (well not a native .net provider but as mentioned before, ole-db is enough)
- It support (I mean it REALLY support) InterBase from the earliest version
- It's well designed (and have a good support forum) so you can install & use or distribuite & use.
- The data type converter does all for you in a fashionable way.
Since I'm an enough skilled programmer I was trying to save me some pain in the ass choosing the right provider. IBProvider is far above what I need so I choose to tell my customer about it. This is because if I do a good job I like to be acknowledged for that and the same apply for software solutions that I use.
I'm a consultant and a software developer. I wish to thank you for such a great product. I want to say also that I'm not interested in winning the prize, it's enough to witness how I like IBProvider. Full case description >>
Alessandro Furlanetto,
In IBProvider we try to take into account all the nuances of InterBase и Firebird API implementation, covering them with standard OLE DB interfaces. It helps working with Firebird and InterBase, usage of client libraries OLE DB, ADO, dbGo (ADO Express), ADO .Net, as well as some others.
2. A wide selection of development tools for interaction with Firebird and InterBase.
OLE DB providers technology is supported by practically all the modern development tools. Among them:
- Report builders: Crystal reports, Fast Reports, Reporting Services (SSRS).
- Analysis and OLAP tools (Analysis services (SSAS)).
- Microsoft Office applications (Word, Excel, Visual Basic For applications (VBA)).
- Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Linked Server and Business Intelligence.
ADO Library
ADO.Net Library
You may use IBProvider and ADO.Net for connection to Firebird and InterBase in Visual Studio 2008-2013, develop modern applications on C#, Visual Basic .Net and other languages.
In ADO.Net Library there is a large set of components for the work with data: DataGrid, DataView, TableAdapter, OLE DB components, built-in masters and utilities (Server Explorer, Data connection wizard, DataSet designer) and other tools.
Client library on C++ for OLE DB
It enables to develop the applications on C++ in Visual Studio 2003-2013 and in С++ Builder. IBProvider is spread free of charge as the part of distributive.
Delphi and C++ Builder
The access to InterBase and Firebird from Delphi or from C++ Builder you may choose among the following variants:
- Interact with ADO via COM interfaces.
- Use dbGo (ADO Express) components.
Moreover, for C++ Builder you may use C++ library from IBProvider distributive free of charge.
MS SQL Server 2005 Business Intelligence
IBProvider enables working with InterBase and Firebird not only via the MS SQL Linked Server but also as the component of Business Intelligence tools:
- Use Integration Services (SSIS) for developing ETL processes (Extract/Transform/Load).
- Develop the reports with Reporting Services (SSRS).
- Form the analytic reports and develop the cubes with Analysis Services (SSAS).
… with IBProvider we solved the problem of data lost in the course of transfer to the new Firebird-based information system
In 2010, our company had its 15-year anniversary. The top management decided to purchase a ready-made and polished by years information system that will cover most business areas.
The upload took place. Oh, God! Some imported data was distorted or lost. How were we to find the difference, taking into account that the source data was on MS SQL Server and the target DBMS was Firebird. After the linked server had been created, we discovered that the ODBC driver was unable to cope with quite large amount of data, we are not talking about millions of entries, just several dozens of thousands. The queries directly merging data from the two DBMSs were run disastrously slowly.
We decided to test IBProvider. Wow! The same query was run in several seconds. We couldn't believe it, it was perfect! We compared the data and corrected the differences. Moreover, we decided to transfer the new information system to new x64 server. We though this provider was not suitable for x64. Nevertheless, we read instructions and tried. And it worked! Full case description >>
Head of information systems development and support department
ZAO TelekomPlus, Perm
3. Possibility to work with 32-bit and 64-bit applications.
IBProvider Professional exists in 2 editions:
- IBProvider Professional Edition for 32 bits — a standard version allowing to create 32 bits applications.
- IBProvider Professional Edition for 64/32 bits — a component package allowing to develop 32 bits as well as 64 bits applications.
4. You don't have to reinvent the wheel, all you need for work is already available!
Valuable transactions support
- Embedded transactions.
- Distributed transactions, two-phase commit, MS DTC transactions coordinator support.
- Transaction retain (Commit Retain/Rollback Retain).
- Transactions auto commit mode.
- All the isolation levels: read committed, snapshot, Snapshot Table Stability.
- Named Savepoints.
Work with commands parameters
- Named and positional parameters support.
- Automatic specifying of parameters descriptions, data sizes, precision and types.
- Direction Support — In/Out parameters.
Data types
- Support of all the InterBase and Firebird data types, including arrays and BLOB-fields.
- Support of special types like BOOLEAN in InterBase 7, InterBase 2007, InterBase 2009
- Emulation for BOOLEAN and GUID types in Firebird and in InterBase before InterBase 7.
- Implementation of the wide OLE DB Types range.
- Built-in types converter (client errors protection).
SQL queries parser
- Support of SQL-scripts
- Special support of DML for Firebird 2.0, Firebird 2.1 (MERGE, UPDATE OR INSERT, RETURNING, EXECUTE BLOCK, etc).
- ODBC Escape Sequences parser.
- DDL queries support (CREATE/ALTER/DROP).
- Connection pool support.
- Query pool support.
- Updatable Rowsets and Bookmarks support.
- Work with multithreaded applications.
- Asynchronous rowset loading, which can give up to 30% to speed of data processing.
- Client and server cursors support.
- Support of 49 Firebird and InterBase code pages, including UNICODE, UTF8 and binary OCTETS.
- Multilingual support and built-in connection wizard — Microsoft Data Link.
5. Saving of application development time.
IBProvider is a big choice of development tools and support of all the InterBase and Firebird servers. Don't waste your time studying the low-level Firebird and InterBase API. Don't learn the components that limit you in choosing the development tool, download IBProvider.
You can find the answers to the majority of questions in the detailed documentation chapter and on forum.
… In our tests, the transaction execution speed for a table of 4,500,000 was only 9 seconds compared to 13 seconds for the same Delphi query
The 3 main reasons for choosing IBProvider were the following:
- The transaction execution speed for a table of 4,500,000 was 13 sec for a Delphi query and 9 sec for a IBProvider query (this was the test to ground the purchase of the product).
- Economical resource consumption — possibility of parallel work with other database filling Delphi programs.
- Crucial for the decision to buy IBprovider was the ability not to interfere with our company's main product — Volga hardware and software complex.
Igor Horev
Samara horizons.