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« Mibzar | Micah | Micah, Book of » |
A shortened form of Micaiah, who is like Jehovah? (1.) A man of Mount Ephraim, whose history so far is introduced in Judg. 17, apparently for the purpose of leading to an account of the settlement of the tribe of Dan in Northern Palestine, and for the purpose also of illustrating the lawlessness of the times in which he lived (Judg. 18; 19:1-29; 21:25).
(2.) The son of Merib-baal (Mephibosheth), 1 Chr. 8:34, 35.
(3.) The first in rank of the priests of the family of Kohathites (1 Chr. 23:20).
(4.) A descendant of Joel the Reubenite (1 Chr. 5:5).
(5.) "The Morasthite," so called to distinguish him from Micaiah, the son of Imlah (1 Kings 22:8). He was a prophet of Judah, a contemporary of Isaiah (Micah 1:1), a native of Moresheth of Gath (1:14, 15). Very little is known of the circumstances of his life (comp. Jer. 26:18, 19).
« Mibzar | Micah | Micah, Book of » |


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subset: commoncrawl


text:
Sunday, October 10, 2010
10-10-10 Sunday Brunch
Hey, if Julie's blog contains the number 7 and Betsy's features the number 8...maybe I should add the number 9 to the title of my blog, just to keep things nice and sequential.
Speaking of numbers, do you know what today is (besides my mother's birthday)?
It's 10-10-10!
Here are TEN children's books to celebrate the day:
TEN LITTLE FINGERS AND TEN LITTLE TOES by Mem Fox and Helen Oxenbury
TEN APPLES UP ON TOP by Dr. Seuss
TEN BLACK DOTS by Donald Crews
10 MINUTES TO BEDTIME by Peggy Rathmann
TEN KIDS, NO PETS by Ann M. Martin
TEN THINGS TO DO BEFORE I DIE by Daniel Ehrenhaft
THE TENTH GOOD THING ABOUT BARNEY by Judith Viorst
TWENTY AND TEN by Claire Huchet Bishop
ALEX ICICLE : A ROMANCE IN TEN TORRID CHAPTERS by Robert Kaplow
THE ADVENTURES OF TINTIN by Herge
I always love getting comments on this blog -- keep 'em coming (well, except for you spammers from gift shops in Malaysia and India.) Last week an anonymous reader left an intriguing comment about a painting that has been referenced in at least four children's books.
Here's the reference in HENRY REED'S JOURNEY by Keith Robertson:
"Have you two children ever seen that painting of the Russians in a sleigh being chased across the snow-covered steppes by wolves?"
"I have," I told him.
"Do you remember what the woman in the back of the sleigh was doing?"
"She was about to toss a baby to the wolves," I said.
"What a horrible idea," Midge said. "Why would she do a thing like that?"
"I always assumed she was sacrificing her baby to the wolves to allow those in the sleigh time to escape."
It's mentioned in two books by Elizabeth Enright, THE FOUR-STORY MISTAKE ("Look, here's a whole story pasted up; illustrations and everything. Pretty nifty, too," said Rush. "It's called 'Pursued by Siberian Wolves!'") and THEN THERE WERE FIVE ("The dogs were loving it. They bounded and snapped and barked their great hollow, brutal barks. Through Randy's panic-stricken mind flashed the image of a picture on the Office wall: an old steel engraving entitled 'Pursued by Siberian Wolves.'")
There is also a possible reference in Arthur Ransome's GREAT NORTHERN:
"They won't kill him even if they catch him," said Peggy.
"We've got to count him as a baby thrown to the wolves," said Dorothea.
Anonymous is trying to track down this mysterious painting -- and now I am too! It does seem like a picture I've seen at some point...but maybe I just conjured it up in my head when I read the above books.
Does anyone know this image?
And can you think of any other children's books that make reference to it?
Children's books pop up in the most unexpected places. This past week I was reading the new issue of Vanity Fair and came across a squib on Pee Wee Herman's upcoming Broadway show. And in the photo he's shown reading the 1965 picture book PART-TIME DOG by Jane Thayer (pen name of Catherine Woolley, who died a few years ago at age 100.)
I bet the sight of PART-TIME DOG -- a frequent book club selection in the 1960s -- brought back memories for a lot of babyboomers, who probably rushed out to get copies for their own kids.
On second thought, perhaps those parents didn't try to track down a copy. After all, PART-TIME DOG is a picture book. The internet has been abuzz about this article from last Friday's New York Times, which notes a recent decrease in the publication and sales of picture books. The article states:
The economic downturn is certainly a major factor, but many in the industry see an additional reason for the slump. Parents have begun pressing their kindergartners and first graders to leave the picture book behind and move on to more text-heavy chapter books. Publishers cite pressures from parents who are mindful of increasingly rigorous standardized testing in schools.
"Parents are saying, 'My kid doesn't need books with pictures anymore,' " said Justin Chanda, the publisher of Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers. "There's a real push with parents and schools to have kids start reading big-kid books earlier. We've accelerated the graduation rate out of picture books."
What a shame. Not only will small kids who bypass picture books miss an important part of childhood (imagine growing up without GOODNIGHT MOON!) but one wonders how many will end up rebelling against reading altogether after encountering a few chapter books that they are too young or unsophisticated to understand.
Of course not all kids will rebel. I have to admit I was raised mostly on chapter books from the time I was born. But every kid is different. I guess the best thing to do is provide kids with every type of book (hey, the library is full of 'em!) and let them gravitate where they will.
And while it's great to challenge oneself with difficult or demanding books, there's also a lot to be said for pleasure reading at any age:
When I was in high school, I was blown away by the Pulitzer-Prize winning book PILGRIM AT TINKER CREEK by Annie Dillard. Every line sounded like something you could write on a poster and hang on the inside of your locker door. Trying to be hip and cool and pre-collegiate, I bought a yellow highlighter and went through the book, marking all the "profound" passages. After a couple chapters, I noticed that nearly every page was yellow from top to bottom. So I gave up on that plan. But it makes me wonder which children's books are so quotable that they'd be yellow from cover to cover if we highlighted all the most beguiling passages. ALICE IN WONDERLAND? The aforementioned GOODNIGHT, MOON? Any suggestions?
I was thinking about one of my highlighted passages from PILGRIM AT TINKER CREEK this morning. In this section, Annie Dillard talks about her fascination with weather:
Any time you care to get in your car and drive across the country and over the mountains, come into our valley, cross Tinker Creek, drive up the road to the house, walk across the yard, knock on the door and ask to come in and talk about the weather, you'd be welcome.
I'm not sure if I'm that obsessed with the weather myself...BUT, any time you care to get in your car and drive across the country and over the flat midwest, come into Farmington Hills, Michigan, cross I-696, drive up the road to the house, walk across the wooden deck, knock on the door and ask to come in and talk about the Newbery Awards, you'd be welcome.
My favorite subject to talk about, think about, and argue about is the Newbery Medal. That's why I'm glad that Nina Lindsay and Jonathan Hunt are back to work at School Library Journal's Heavy Medal blog. Recently, a Heavy Medal reader was concerned that the Newbery committee may not give enough consideration to books outside the category of middle grade fiction. Jonathan Hunt responded:
Sometimes, I wish ALSC would publish all of the books that got official nominations throughout the fall–or all of the books on the final ballot. The Medal and Honors tend to skew toward middle grade fiction (i.e. 4th-8th grade), but I think if we saw these kinds of lists we would be more pleased with the diversity of literature represented. Peter Sieruta told me that back in the day, they *did* publish these lists, but somewhere along the way it changed.
Yep, back in the day the preliminary Newbery and Calecott lists were published -- and they were extraordinarily informative. Everyone in the children's book world has heard me blather on and on (ad nauseum) about what an important role those lists played in my teenage years. I was already a Newbery Nerd at the time, so having access to the lists of nominated titles sent me into maximum overdrive. I obsessively hunted down as many of the books as I could -- buying a handful with my paper route money, but mostly tracking them down at the library. My world got bigger and bigger as I moved beyond my local library to discover other branches of the Detroit Public Library system...ordering books through interloan from the Main Library...and over time even traveling into the suburbs to find these books. It was really a growing up experience. And I'd never been exposed to so many wonderful books and authors in my life. Some of the books on those lists remain favorites to this day. Many of the authors I still follow.
Well, you've heard all this before.
But what you've probably never seen are the lists of titles nominated for the 1973 through 1976 Newbery Medals. To my knowledge, they are not printed anywhere else on the internet...so even though this next section of the blog is going to be lengthy, I think it's important to document this info on the net. Things have probably changed a lot in the Newbery nominating process in the past thirty years, but even back in the mid-seventies, you will get a sense of the "diversity of literature represented" on these preliminary lists. They include poetry, nonfiction, picture books, high-end YA novels, and even a few adult books (LIFE IS A LONELY PLACE; IN A BLUEBIRD'S EYE) that the committee thought deserved consideration for the Newbery.
It all started with this announcement in the October 1972 issue of SCHOOL LIBRARY JOURNAL:
For the first time in 50 years, the Newbery-Caldecott Committee of ALA has decided to publish lists of preliminary selections for the awards. The one-year experiment is designed to stimulate discussion of the merits of each title and to allow the membership to become more familiar with the best books published each year. The committee thinks that the experiment will aid the membership when it votes for the winners in December.
Whatever the case, these were the books that were considered for the 1973 Newbery:
COCKLEBURR QUARTERS / Charlotte Baker
ONLY THE NAMES REMAIN / Alex W. Bealer
IT'S NOT THE END OF THE WORLD / Judy Blume
DOODLE AND THE GO-CART / Robert Burch
THE HOUSE OF WINGS / Betsy Byars
THE MOUNTAIN OF TRUTH / Dale Carlson
DELPHA GREEN & COMPANY / Vera and Bill Cleaver
THE YEAR OF THE THREE-LEGGED DEER / Eth Clifford
ME AND THE EGG MAN / Eleanor Clymer
A TRICK OF LIGHT / Barbara Corcoran
FAR IN THE DAY / Julia Cunningham
WHEN THE WORLD'S ON FIRE / Sally Edwards
THIS STAR SHALL ABIDE / Sylvia Louise Engdahl
OH, LIZZIE! : THE LIFE OF ELIZABETH CADY STANTON / Doris Faber
BLACK PILGRIMAGE / Tom Feelings
THE DEATH OF "EVENING STAR" : THE DIARY OF YOUNG NEW ENGLAND WHALER / Leonard Everett Fisher
STICKS AND STONES / Lynn Hall
W.E.B. DUBOIS : A BIOGRAPHY / Virginia Hamilton
THE SECRET OF THE CRAZY QUILT / Florence Hightower
THE MAN WITHOUT A FACE / Isabelle Holland
LONGHOUSE WINTER / Hettie Jones
MOM, THE WOLF MAN AND ME / Norma Klein
FOG / Mildred Lee
THE FARTHEST SHORE / Ursula LeGuin
THE MAGIC MOTH / Virginia Lee
THE WITCH OF FOURTH STREET AND OTHER STORIES / Myron LeVoy
FROG AND TOAD TOGETHER / Arnold Lobel
THE IMPOSSIBLE PEOPLE : A HISTORY NATURAL AND UNNATURAL OF THINGS TERRIBLE AND WONDERFUL / Georgess McHargue
WHARF RAT / Miska Miles
THE TREASURE OF TOPO EL-BAMPO / Scott O'Dell
THE UPSTAIRS ROOM / Johanna Reiss
THE WATCHERS / Barbara Rinkoff
FREAKY FRIDAY / Mary Rodgers
THE WICKED CITY / Isaac Bashevis Singer
BLACKBRIAR / William Sleator
THE WITCHES OF WORM / Zilpha Keatley Snyder
DOMINIC / William Steig
TATU AND THE HONEYBIRD / Alice Wellman
THE FOG COMES ON LITTLE PIG FEET / Rosemary Wells
THE LIFE AND DEATH OF A BRAVE BULL / Maia Wojciechowska
In the January 1973 issue of SLJ, the committee published this second list of titles also being considered:
THERE'S A PIZZA BACK IN CLEVELAND / Hope Campbell and Mary Anderson
THE ICE GHOSTS MYSTERY / Jane Louise Curry
PEOPLE OF THE DREAM / James Forman
JULIE OF THE WOLVES / Jean Craighead George
CROSS FIRE / Gail Graham
GHOST PADDLE / James Houston
DINKY HOCKER SHOOTS SMACK! / M.E. Kerr
CHILDREN OF VIETNAM / Betty J. Lifton and Thomas C. Fox
TEACUP FULL OF ROSES / Sharon Bell Mathis
UNDERGROUND MAN / Milton Meltzer
DEATHWATCH / Robb White
You'll note that the winning book, JULIE OF THE WOLVES, appeared on the second list, while all three of the Honors (FROG AND TOAD TOGETHER; THE UPSTAIRS ROOM; THE WITCHES OF WORM) appeared on the first.
Although originally intended as a "one-year experiment," the preliminary list for the 1974 Newbery was also published:
AMERICAN GHOST / Chester Aaron
THE CAT WHO WISHED TO BE A MAN / Lloyd Alexander
MILLS OF GOD / William Armstrong
IN THE COMPANY OF CLOWNS / Martha Bacon
THE HOUSE WITH A CLOCK IN ITS WALLS / John Bellairs
THE WINDS OF ALTAIR / Ben Bova
GILDAEN : THE HEROIC ADVENTURES OF A MOST UNUSUAL RABBIT / Emilie Buchwald
THE 18TH EMERGENCY / Betsy Byars
ME TOO / Vera and Bill Cleaver
THE WHYS AND WHEREFORES OF LITTABELLE LEE / Vera and Bill Cleaver
THE WAYFARERS TREE / Ann Colver and Stewart Graff
DREAMS OF VICTORY / Ellen Conford
THE DARK IS RISING / Susan Cooper
SHE, THE ADVENTURESS / Dorothy Crayder
NA-NI / Alexis Deveaux
BEYOND THE TOMORROW MOUNTAINS / Sylvia Louise Engdahl
UNDER THE HAYSTACK /. P.A. Engebrecht
GORILLA GORILLA / Carol Fenner
THE WOLF / Michael Fox
GOOD ETHAN / Paula Fox
AT THE MOUTH OF THE LUCKIEST RIVER / Arnold Griese
TIME AGO LOST : MORE TALES OF JAHDU / Virginia Hamilton
HEADS YOU WIN, TALES I LOSE / Isabelle Holland
CHILDREN OF MORROW / H.M. Hoover
GUESTS IN THE PROMISED LAND / Kristin Hunter
THE ENDLESS PAVEMENT / Jacqueline Jackson and William Perlmutter
IT'S NOT WHAT YOU EXPECT / Norma Klein
A PROUD TASTE FOR SCARLET AND MINIVER / E.L. Konigsburg
ZOO CONSPIRACY / Betty Levin
A WIND IN THE DOOR / Madeleine L'Engle
I WILL GO BAREFOOT FOR YOU ALL SUMMER / Katie Letcher Lyle
THE HOUSE ON PARCHMENT STREET / Patricia McKillip
SNOWBOUND / Harry Mazer
THE CRYSTAL NIGHTS / Michele Murray
FREDDY'S BOOK / John Neufeld
THE CRUISE OF THE ARCTIC STAR / Scott O'Dell
A DAY NO PIGS WOULD DIE / Robert Newton Peck
PATH OF HUNTERS : ANIMAL STRUGGLE IN A MEADOW / Robert Newton Peck
CALL ME HELLER, THAT'S MY NAME / Stella Pevsner
RASS / Bernice Rabe
IN SEARCH OF A SANDHILL CRANE / Keith Robertson
THE TRUTH ABOUT MARY ROSE / Marilyn Sachs
THE GENIE OF SUTTON PLACE / George Selden
THE MAGICIAN / Uri Shulevitz
RUN / William Sleator
TASTE OF BLACKBERRIES / Doris Buchanan Smith
THE VISIONARY GIRLS : WITCHCRAFT IN SALEM VILLAGE / Marion Starkey
THE REAL THIEF / William Steig
THE MALDONADO MIRACLE / Theodore Taylor
OPPOSITES / Richard Wilbur
WALKING AWAY / Elizabeth Winthrop
TAKERS AND RETURNERS / Carol Beach York
The second preliminary list was brief, but it had the eventual winner on it:
THE COURT OF THE STONE CHILDREN / Eleanor Cameron
A HERO AIN'T NOTHING BUT A SANDWICH / Alice Childress
THE SLAVE DANCER / Paula Fox
SUMMER OF MY GERMAN SOLDIER / Bette Greene
SWEETWATER / Laurence Yep
My head is still reeling with the thought of FREDDY'S BOOK (otherwise known as "that book about a kid trying to find the meaning of the F word") was ever given serious consideration.
Another year passed and the committee posted their 1975 nominations:
I'M NOBODY, WHO ARE YOU? / Mary Anderson
THE DEVIL'S STORYBOOK / Natalie Babbitt
THE SPIRIT IS WILLING / Betty Baker
HOW MANY MILES TO SUNDOWN? / Patricia Beatty
JENNY'S CORNER / Frederic Bell
BRIGHT CANDLES / Nathaniel Benchley
BLUBBER / Judy Blume
HUT SCHOOL AND THE WARTIME HOME-FRONT HEROES / Robert Burch
SOMEBODY GO AND BANG A DRUM / Rebecca Caudill
THE WORLD OF SAMUEL ADAMS / Donald Chidsey
I TELL A LIE EVERY SO OFTEN / Bruce Clements
GREENWITCH / Susan Cooper
WINDS OF TIME / Barbara Corcoran
THE CHOCOLATE WAR / Robert Cormier
THE SON OF THE LEOPARD / Harold Courlander
THE LOST FARM / Jane Louise Curry
FIDDLESTRINGS / Marguerite DeAngeli
WHERE THE ROAD ENDS / Ella Thorp Ellis
DUFFY'S ROCKS / Edward Fenton
GREENHORN ON THE FRONTIER / Ann Finlayson
WARLOCK OF WESTFALL / Leonard Everett Fisher
RETURN OF THE GREAT BRAIN / John Fitzgerald
WHY DON'T YOU GET A HORSE, SAM ADAMS? / Jean Fritz
PHILIP HALL LIKES ME. I RECKON MAYBE / Bette Greene
SISTER / Eloise Greenfield
M.C. HIGGINS THE GREAT / Virginia Hamilton
SLAKE'S LIMBO / Felice Holman
GLORY IN THE FLOWER / Norma Johnston
THE SON OF SOMEONE FAMOUS / M.E. Kerr
CONFESSIONS OF AN ONLY CHILD / Norma Klein
RATTLESNAKE CAVE / Evelyn Lampman
GOODBYE TO BEDLAM / John Langone
JASON AND THE MONEY TREE / Sonia Levitin
MAMA'S GHOSTS / Carol Lorenzo
FAIR DAY, AND ANOTHER STEP BEGUN / Katie Letcher Lyle
FORGOTTEN BEASTS OF ELD / Patricia McKillip
DRIFTER / Daniel Mannix
LISTEN FOR THE FIG TREE / Sharon Bell Mathis
POOR JENNY, BRIGHT AS A PENNY / Shirley Murphy
THE JARGOON PARD / Andre Norton
LAVENDER-GREEN MAGIC / Andre Norton
CHILD OF FIRE / Scott O'Dell
SOUP / Robert Newton Peck
THE PERILOUS GARD / Elizabeth Marie Pope
FIGGS & PHANTOMS / Ellen Raskin
WINGS / Adrienne Rich
A BILLION FOR BORIS / Mary Rodgers
TRYING HARD TO HEAR YOU / Sandra Scoppettone
HOUSE OF STAIRS / William Sleator
TOUGH CHAUNCEY / Doris Buchanan Smithh
THE HAYBURNERS / Gene Smith
THE TRUTH ABOUT STONE HOLLOW/ Zilpha Keatley Snyder
WITCH OF THE CUMBERLANDS / Mary Jo Stephens
JOHN, COME DOWN THE BACKSTAY / Caroline Tapley
NONE OF THE ABOVE / Rosemary Wells
THE GIRL WHO CRIED FLOWERS / Jane Yolen
THE MAGIC THREE OF SOLATIA / Jane Yolen
MY GRANDSON LEW / Charlotte Zolotwo
Second preliminary list:
WHIRLWIND IS A GHOST DANCING / Natalia Belting
ME AND THE TERRIBLE TWO / Ellen Conford
THE OSTRICH CHASE / Moses Howard
THE SYCAMORE YEAR / Mildred Lee
CITY / David Macaulay
THE DOLLAR MAN / Harry Mazer
THE REAL ME / Betty Miles
C/O ARNOLD'S CORNERS / Suzanne Newton
OF NIGHTINGALES THAT WEEP / Katherine Paterson
DARK DREAMS / C.L. Rinaldo
KICK A STONE HOME / Doris Buchanan Smith
I just love those 1975 lists. The winner and all the Honors appear on the first preliminary list though, intriguingly, one honor MY BROTHER SAM IS DEAD by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier appears on neither list. But look at all the treasures here: M.E. Kerr and Sandra Scoppettone and Robert Cormier...an early book by Norma Johnston...TWO nominations for both Andre Norton and Jane Yolen (you'll note that it's not unusual for authors to have two noms in one year back then; nowadays few authors even published two books in a year)...a serious nonfiction book about mental illness (GOODBYE TO BEDLAM)...our first Katherine Paterson sighting....plus those always-fascinating titles by authors who got nominated for a Newbery with their very first book (hello, C.L. Rinaldo!) and then never published another. Who knows how their fortunes would have changed if they'd actually won?
The "one-time experiment," stretched to four years, but unfortunately ended after the publication of these preliminary lists for the 1976 Newbery:
WIZARD IN THE TREE / Lloyd Alexander
TO NOWHERE AND BACK / Margaret J. Anderson
REBELLION AT CHRSTIANA / Margaret Hope Bacon
THE FIGURE IN THE SHADOWS / John Bellairs
THE TERRIBLE THING THAT HAPPENED AT OUR HOUSE / Marge Blaine
JOHNNY MAY / Robbie Branscum
YEAR WALK / Ann Nolan Clark
RAMONA THE BRAVE / Beverly Cleary
THE GREY KING / Susan Cooper
THE CLOWN / Barbara Corcoran
BERT BREEN'S BARN / Walter D. Edmonds
THE GREEN HERO / Bernard Evslin
A PRIVATE MATTER / Kathryn Ewing
WHERE WAS PATRICK HENRY ON THE 29th OF MAY? / Jean Fritz
LIFE IS A LONELY PLACE / James Fritzhand
RUMBLE FISH / S.E. Hinton
NEW LIFE : NEW ROOM / June Jordan
IS THAT YOU, MISS BLUE? / M.E. Kerr
THE SECOND MRS. GIACONDA / E.L. Konigsburg
A GRIFFON'S NEST / Betty Levin
FUNNY BANANAS : THE MYSTERY IN THE MUSEUM / Georgess McHargue
STONEFLIGHT / Georgess McHargue
THE HUNDRED PENNY BOX / Sharon Bell Mathis
SATURDAY, THE TWELFTH OF OCTOBER / Norma Fox Mazer
A HEART TO THE HAWKS / Don Moser
GARDEN OF BROKEN GLASS / Emily Cheney Neville
Z FOR ZACHARIAH / Robert C. O'Brien
FROGS, TOADS, SALAMANDERS, AND HOW THEY REPRODUCE / Dorothy Hinshaw Patent
THE GHOST BELONGED TO ME / Richard Peck
FAWN / Robert Newton Peck
MADE IN WEST AFRICA / Christine Price
NAOMI / Bernice Rabe
THE TATTOOED POTATO AND OTHER CLUES / Ellen Raskin
LONG MAN'S SONG / Joyce Rockwood
HENRIETTA, THE WILD WOMAN OF BORNEO / Winifred Rosen
THAT WONDERFUL PELICAN / Jack Denton Scott
BELOW THE ROOT / Zilpha Keatley Snyder
CAT IN THE MIRROR / Mary Stolz
ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE GATE / Yuri Suhl
JENNIE JENKINS / Mark Taylor
SONG OF THE TREES / Mildred Taylor
THE DARK DIDN'T CATCH ME / Crystal Thrasher
THE FRIGHTENED FOREST / Ann Turnbull
A LITTLE DEMONSTRATION OF AFFECTION / Elizabeth Winthrop
Second preliminary list:
TUCK EVERLASTING / Natalie Babbitt
HOSEA GLOBE AND THE FANTASTICAL PEG-LEGGED CHO / Grayden Beeks
TO THE GREEN MOUNTAINS / Eleanor Cameron
TITANIA'S LODESTONE / Gail Hamilton
OF TIME AND OF SEASONS / Norma Johnston
IN A BLUEBIRD'S EYE / Anita Kornfeld
PYRAMID / David Macaulay
FAST SAM, COOL CLYDE, AND STUFF / Walter Dean Myers
THE WITCHES OF BARGUZIN / Kyra Wayne
DRAGONWINGS / Laurence Yep
People often gripe that TUCK EVERLASTING didn't win the Newbery. Well, there's the list of its competitors. THE GREY KING won and THE HUNDRED PENNY BOX and DRAGONWINGS were the Honors. But that year the winner could also have been a nonfiction volume (FROGS, TOADS, SALAMANDERS, AND HOW THEY REPRODUCE -- can you imagine that one winning?), a picture book (HENRIETTA, THE WILD WOMAN OF BORNEO), a second undeserved title by Ann Nolan Clark (can you imagine the griping if she'd won: "It was bad enough that she won in '53, but then she turned around and got another in '76!"), or one of several titles that are now completely forgottten, such as HOSEA GLOBE AND THE FANTASTICAL PEG-LEGGED CHO or THE WITCHES OF BARGUZIN.
These lists really do show the wide net that is cast by the Newbery committee -- and the broad diversity of titles that are considered for the award. Reading these lists of books, even now, can be a real education in children's books. Reading them "back in the day" (i.e. 1972-1975), when the awards had not yet been decided, trying to figure out which books might win, and developing a critical voice of my own, was a life-changing experience for me.
Bring back these preliminary lists, Newbery committee!
A whole new generation of critics, teachers, librarians, and kids should have the same experience of discovering the books -- and with the internet, there could be nationwide discussions about the Newbery nominees!
Lists of Caldecott nominees were published for 1973 to 1976 as well, but I am not sure I have the complete lists here...nor the energy to type them all up. I'll leave that for a Caldecott enthusiast. What I did find in the file folder holding my old Newbery lists was a 1972 SCHOOL LIBRARY JOURNAL called "Victim of Success? : A Closer Look at the Newbery Award" by Peggy Sullivan, an assitant professor at the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Library and Information Sciences. I remember seeing Ms. Sullivan's name on several articles "back in the day," but reading her article again today I found it dull and rather uninformative.
Two lines toward the end of her piece really stand out though:
Surely by this time, someone has noted that the Caldecott Awards have not been mentioned. I do not consider them similar to the Newbery in terms of controversy, even in terms of prestige.
Was that just Ms. Sullivan's personal view -- or did the Caldecott actually have less prestige than the Newbery back in 1972?
Do you think the Caldecott and Newbery are equally prestigious today?
A couple weeks back, I blogged about some comments that Rebecca Webb posted regarding real-life locations from Laura Ingalls Wilder's "Little House" books. Her original remarks appeared on a children's book listserve way back in 1999.
I was delighted to get a note from Rebecca Webb the other day, stating that she's still alive and well and "had another nifty Laura adventure recently." You can read about it right here.
Does anyone remember the old days of Harper books?
They were published in two editions -- a trade edition with a cloth cover and a "Harpercrest" library edition that had a shiny paper cover, often imprinted with the cover illustration on the binding. The library edition also had an ugly gold band around the spine, identifying the book as a HARPERCREST LIBRARY EDITION. The library editions were supposed to be sturdier, so they'd hold up better over many readings...but book collectors like me always hated those shiny covers and obtrusive gold stickers on the spine.
I'm not sure if the Harpercrest stickers are still used on the spine...or if the binding is much different from the trade editions. But I do know that library editions are still published. The other day I tried to purchase Terry Pratchett's new YA novel, I SHALL WEAR MIDNIGHT, but when the bookstore owner started to ring it up, she noted that the price ($17.89 instead of $17.99) indicated that this was the library edition. I looked at the binding, which was cloth and even had the title embossed on the front cover; the spine of the dj did not have the gold seal either. Yet the dustjacket said this was the library edition. Has anyone else run across this problem with the Pratchett book or any other recent Harper title?
I recently blogged the following:
or Tom Angleberger (AKA Sam T. Riddleburger) of the Berger and Burger blog recently sent me a challenge. He asked: "Which current day kidlit author (not illustrator) was an animator on Nimh? Hint: his main character is rather loud."
I didn't know the answer, so asked for another hint.
Tom wrote back to add: "He wrote a bunch of funny poem books and more recently a series if graphic novels for kids. Also worked on Mulan, All Dogs Go to Heaven and Rockadoodle!"
Gregory K. responded with the correct answer:
For your trivia question, I'm going with David J. (D.J.) Steinberg, whose "loud" character is Daniel Boom.
Thanks for the answer, Gregory K!
We've all had the experience of getting so engrossed in a book that the real world just fades away....
The other day I had some heavy reading to do, so stopped at 7-Eleven on the way home from work and got a Diet Coke with lots of ice from the pop machine. Then I started reading WICKED GIRLS, a novel-in-verse about the Salem witch trials by Stephanie Hemphill. As I read, I nursed my Diet Coke along, occasionally chomping on the ice (yes, I know that chewing ice is terrible for your teeth; yes, I know that diet soda is terrible for you in general) as I grew increasingly engrossed in the story.
When I finally set the book down, I looked into my paper cup and noticed one particularly large piece of ice that, unlike the rest, had not melted at all.
I fished it out and examined it:
It was the plastic spout from the pop machine.
Have you ever been so engrossed in a book that you've not noticed a hunk of plastic paraphernalia in your Big Gulp? Have you ever let dinner burn or the bathtub overflow because you've been so involved in a novel?
Do you have any stories to share about being too engrossed in a book?
Share them here!
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10 comments:
- grrlpup said...
Speaking of nines, I'm a fan of both the title and the content of Nine Kinds of Pie!
I skipped over picture books because our public library had a six-book checkout limit and I wanted my books to last all week. I definitely missed out. Now I love seeing kids and parents in line at the library with a BIG stack of picture books. Even if they are in front of me. - October 10, 2010 at 4:02 PM
the best info i can find on the picture is here:
"This alias refers to the image of a sled, drawn by three horses (hence, a "troika"), being pursued by wolves. The passengers of the troika elect that one of their number be thrown to the wolves, in hopes that the rest might escape."
it even includes this tantalizing comment:
"Anyway, it wouldn't be such a cool painting if they did it right."
but alas none of the images there seem to depict the incident described
if you do a google images search for 'wolves troika' there is an amazing number of results, but again none of them seem to be the one described - October 10, 2010 at 8:53 PM
- Daughter Number Three said...
I love the Newbery lists. You and I are just about of an age, so reading them was like a return to my mid-teen years. So many friends, so many memories. Thanks.
- October 10, 2010 at 9:58 PM
- hschinske said...
Adolf Schreyer (German, 1828-1899)
A Troika Pursued by Wolves
Seems like a good bet.
Helen Schinske - October 10, 2010 at 11:35 PM
I don't see a baby in that one hschinske
- October 11, 2010 at 1:33 AM
- Elizabeth Winthrop said...
Peter, a million thanks to you. I had no idea until you posted these lists that my first two novels were considered for the Newbery. What a lovely piece of my own publishing history you've just given me.
Elizabeth Winthrop - October 11, 2010 at 10:55 AM
- Fran Manushkin said...
Congrats, Elizabeth! And I was also delighted to see C. L. Rinaldo's first and only novel on the list. I was its editor at Harper & Row --it was an unsolicited ms.
- October 11, 2010 at 1:02 PM
- Laura Canon said...
The wolves-and-troika thing forms a whole chapter of My Antonia also (as a story, not a picture.) Perhaps it was a late nineteenth century thing.
The list brought back a lot of memories for me as well. I can't understand how I went from SOMEBODY GO AND BANG A DRUM to A PROUD TASTE FOR SCARLET AND MINIVER in the space of a few years, but I loved them both. I still think MINIVER is one of the unlikeliest historical novels ever written.
I'm sure this has been brought up, but I am struck by how little fantasy there is on those lists (Susan Cooper and LeGuin being obvious exceptions.) One of the reasons I secretly enjoy YA fantasy today is because there was so little of it around when I was growing up. - October 11, 2010 at 2:06 PM
Wasn't 1977 the first year that the Newbery and Caldecott committee were separated? That is, prior to 1977 one big supercommittee of, like, 23 members picked both the Newbery and Caldecott?
Jonathan - October 11, 2010 at 11:25 PM
- Jess said...
On the question of library editions - boy, do those old ones hold up! I don't think they make them like they used to, because our newer library eds don't seem quite as sturdy. We order them when they're available (public library) and I haven't noticed the gold on any newer titles (although we have a lot of older books that do have that gold sticker that sort of wraps around the spine onto the front).
Unfortunately, a lot of new library eds come without a dustjacket, and with no plot summary on the back, which drives me bonkers (and makes it hard for kids to browse). - October 12, 2010 at 5:57 PM


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- Good morning/evening everybody we are here with a new challenge. First its time to announce the winners. We loved seeing all your wonderful creations and a BIG thank you for joining us, we hope you come back to play along for this challenge
- Random Org has chosen a lucky winner for our last challenge. The winner will receive three (3) digi stamps from the shop.
Huge congrats! Please contact us at firstname.lastname@example.com with your image choices. Here is your Top Prize badge to proudly display on your blog. Please link back to our Online Store: https://cute-as-a-button-stamps.myshopify.com/
Our Top three are (in no particular order):
Our Top three are (in no particular order):
Congrats to all of you. The "Top three" get a Top 3 Badge to display your awesomeness! You also win One (1) free digi from the Shop. Display it on your blog with pride. Please link back to our Online Store: https://cute-as-a-button-stamps.myshopify.com/
We have also picked a Designer's Choice winner who will be invited to be a "Guest Designer" at our upcoming challenge. Congratulations Francesca! You have won our as Guest Designer for next month's challenge! Please contact me via email re details.
#3 Francesca
- Please link back to the online store https://cute-as-a-button-stamps.myshopify.com/
Onto our challenge. The theme is ANYTHING GOES
Winners will be announced next month and the prize must be claimed before the next challenge goes live.
The winner will be chosen at random and a top 3 will be chosen by our Design Team.
We will allow you to play along with any image but will be limited to 3 entries
If you enter with using a Cute As A Button "Button" images, you can play as much as you wish. You may also enter your project into as many other challenges as you wish.
The winner will receive 3 images but if the random winner has used a Button image you will get 4 images.
Your image must be new and posted on or after the challenge goes live.
We allow all paper crafting projects, cards, altered art, up-cycling, ATC's etc
We also have a Facebook Fan Group, which has contests just for Cute As A Button images so if you have used one of Francesca's images in this challenge do not forget to enter it there too. Images and GDT spots can also be won there
We also have a Facebook Fan Group, which has contests just for Cute As A Button images so if you have used one of Francesca's images in this challenge do not forget to enter it there too. Images and GDT spots can also be won there
Now for the details....
You can use any digital or rubber stamp image but if you use a Cute As A Button digistamp, you have more chances to win the top 3 and additional images. Max of 3 entries per person. Also, please leave a link to the blog *post* featuring your challenge card:). This challenge is open until July 31st. The randomly chosen winner will be posted along with the new challenge:)!
The winner is random. Because it will be too hard to choose just one:). But-- the DT girls and I will be choosing a *Top Three* also. Top three girls: you will receive a badge for your blogs only:) that announces your awesomeness!! We will also be choosing a Designer's Choice for the opportunity to be our Guest Designer for the upcoming challenge. Guest DT will win one free digi and will receive a special badge for your blog.
Random winner, you will receive your choice of 3 digi's from the Cute As A Button Stamps Online Store :)!!
Craft Dee - Donna Poore. She does such beautiful work! Here is a little about this beautiful lady. Check out her blog for some awesome inspiration.
Hi, my name is Donna, I live in the Northern Suburbs of Perth, Western Australia with my husband of 38 years and my Jack Russell Rocky. I have two adult sons, and three-year-old twin grandchildren, who are the BEST :-) I do bookkeeping from home for our own business and a few select clients
My lovely husband is so supportive of my craft addiction, yup, I know it's an addiction! I've done MANY crafts over the years, my current passion is cardmaking, The discovery of digital stamps has been of great joy to me and great detriment to my bank account, lol. I love to colour with markers and pencils - I'm determined to master those pencils! I don't know what my "style" would be described as, it just about always involves a lot of colour - and not a lot of embellishments though I love that style and wish I could "do" it. I've been blogging my craft since 2010 and don't see it ending anytime soon
I'm so pleased to be a Guest on the Design Team for Cute as a Button's Challenge, thanks for asking me!
Here is her beautiful make using "Surfing USA" which can be found in the Cute As A Button Designs Shop here.
Now, for some inspiration from my beautiful and talented Design Team using Cute As A Button Digistamps by Francesca Lopez....Check 'em out-- they are gorgeous!!:)
We invite you to visit our Inspirational Showcase page to be inspired by our wonderful DT. You will see some beautiful projects along with step by step instructions on how to you too can accomplish the same look.


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It's a bold headline from my alma mater: "A Reality Check on High Speed Rail" is how UC Berkeley bills a recent HSR symposium. Already Morris Brown is peddling this as yet another reason why HSR is terrible and doomed to fail. Morris wants us to not dismiss the symposium lightly. OK, I'll dismiss it heavily:
Even if high-speed rail attracted everyone who drove and flew between the Los Angeles basin and the San Francisco Bay Area during the year 2007, it would amount to only eight million passengers per year, nowhere near the numbers projected by the California High Speed Rail Authority, explained CEE professor Mark Hansen. But even that estimate is optimistic. HSR would be extremely unlikely to capture most current air travelers due to lack of transportation connectivity in most California cities and regions.
"In Europe and Japan, where HSR has been especially successful, it is a very simple thing to take a subway to the HSR station, go upstairs and get on the bullet train," explained Madanat. For example, access to Eurostar—the HSR system that passes under the English Channel to link Britain with mainland Europe—is easy and car-less; a typical business passenger traveling from London arrives in downtown Paris in two-and-a-half hours and can walk or take the Métro from the same station to his or her meeting. This connectivity, or short access and egress time, is essential to the success of high-speed rail, and California has very little of it.
Oh really? This would be an accurate statement if HSR stations were going to be built on the edges of city centers. But they're not. The two key endpoints will be directly in the center of the existing mass transit networks in the state: SF Transbay Terminal and LA Union Station. Both are already served by an impressive amount of mass transit, and if Antonio Villaraigosa gets his way, LAUS in particular could be reachable from West LA and much of the San Gabriel Valley by passenger rail by the time HSR opens to SF. As anyone who is even remotely familiar with both SF and LA knows, Transbay Terminal and Union Station are both far more accessible, in a shorter period of time, than slogging through traffic on the freeways to LAX or even Burbank.
We can look to the Acela as an example. The Acela is a successful HSR route. It generates operating surpluses and has no trouble attracting riders. Sure, it helps that NYC has an excellent mass transit system. Washington D.C.'s system is pretty good, built in a very similar way to BART. Stations are located in the centers of both cities, even though DC has an easily accessible airport just across the river from downtown. Suburban DC is very car-centric, as is much of NYC outside the five boroughs, and that hasn't hurt the Acela either.
The presenters at the UCB symposium are not being realistic when they dismiss CA has having "very little" connectivity. Even in cities where the network still has some work to do, like San José (a stop they do not mention), the HSR station will be located very near to the airport (and is actually closer to downtown than the airport), putting both on an equal footing. And unlike SJC, Diridon Station has a stop on the VTA light rail line.
Of course, as Joey pointed out in the comments to yesterday's post, the UCB symposium seems to have neglected the fact that HSR isn't just serving SF and LA, and includes places like San José, Fresno, and Bakersfield, where HSR would still be a compelling choice even without mass transit connectivity.
In short, their theory that HSR ridership depends on mass transit options CA lacks doesn't seem to hold water.
Travelers heading to Los Angeles from San Francisco, for example, will consider the time it takes to go to and from airports at each end of the trip, versus the time spent getting to a high-speed rail station. Time spent on the line-haul portion of the trip (actual flying or riding time) is more productive than the access and egress portions. But if access and egress times from HSR stations are as long and onerous as those for air, passengers will save time by driving to an airport instead.
"High-speed rail trades unproductive access and egress time for productive line-haul time," explained Madanat. That is advantageous to travelers, and they are willing to spend an extra hour or more in line-haul time if egress and access time are diminished. Air travel between some cities in Japan has become nonexistent, thanks to the ease of traveling by high-speed rail.
I'm sorry, but Madanat is just plain wrong here. The unproductive access and egress time belongs entirely to airplanes, at least in California. He does not appear to have included the ridiculous security theater involved in air travel that adds up to a half hour to travel times. TSA recommends people arrive two hours before a domestic flight. Add in the travel to LA-area airports, none of which have good mass transit connections (whereas LAUS is the hub of the entire Southern California mass transit network), and it is not conceivable to me that HSR is at a disadvantage in terms of travel times. If anything it is likely to have an advantage, or would be comparable, which is all it really needs to be.
Again, we can look at reality to demonstrate the point: if HSR was such a bad deal, why does the Acela have half the market share on the Northeast Corridor? Madanat apparently didn't speak to actual Acela users:
Barry Ginsberg of Deer Park, N.Y., boarded an Acela train after a meeting in Washington.
"It's a lot less hassle and more comfortable," Ginsberg says. "When you figure how much in advance you have to get to the airport, it's a lot more convenient."
So there's another strike against the "reality check."
The other piece of the symposium report deals with emissions, and claims that HSR won't actually be the cleantech wonder we expect:
Proponents of California high-speed rail tout its energy-saving, greenhouse gas–eliminating characteristics. But panelist Arpad Hovath, also a CEE professor, reported on research showing that, unless ridership is very high, rail cannot perform better than air travel. To compare the carbon footprint of rail with air or driving, he explained, far more than just tailpipe emissions must be taken into account.
Horvath's life-cycle analysis of the three modes suggests that high-speed rail will produce some 10 million metric tons of CO2 per year during construction. Furthermore, electricity to run the trains must be generated from coal-fired plants, leading to additional greenhouse gas emissions once HSR is operational.
Except that Horvath didn't mention the reality that the CHSRA has mandated that its trains will be powered by alternative, renewable sources to the maximum extent possible, with the goal being generation from 100% renewables. CHSRA's very existence helps bring online that capacity, by providing a guaranteed buyer of solar and wind power.
Horvath's assumptions also assume that ridership will be low. It will take about five years to reach the projected ridership levels (which is why many of CHSRA's projections are for 2030, not 2020), but once you're there, HSR will produce the reduced carbon footprint we expect.
He also charges that the construction alone will generate 10 million metric tons of CO2 per year. Maybe it will. But the cost of doing nothing is not zero. Even those tons of CO2 are a worthwhile investment for long-term significant reductions in CO2, since without HSR CO2 emissions are either going to continue rising and drown us in rising seas, or they'll crash totally without any alternative method of transportation when the oil gives out. And no, this symposium report does not mention "peak oil" at all. If it was discussed, UCB didn't see fit to mention it.
Oh, and the symposium report got in one last shot that Morris Brown, Stuart Flashman, and the PCL will just love:
Changes in alignment could help build ridership early, Madanat said. By switching the Northern California route from Pacheco Pass to Altamont, many more potential riders from fast-growing areas of Contra Costa and Alameda counties could be lured away from air travel.
Or Madanat could have mentioned the Altamont HSR corridor that the CHSRA is planning, which will bring the very kind of "connectivity" he claimed those potential riders needed in the form of a much faster ACE train.
Now it's possible that the problem here is with the staff producing the UC College of Engineering newsletter in which this article appeared. They didn't have to frame it as "reality check" and there may have been a more balanced discussion than what the article presented.
Still, it's a pretty lame "reality check," especially since it doesn't actually consider the realities I described above.
UPDATE: In fact, that's what seems to have happened. Alon Levy in the comments points to a post by Andy Nash about the symposium, which was apparently far more balanced, insightful, and useful than the UCB newsletter made it appear:
Professor Carlos Daganzo gave the first presentation. He showed convincingly how high speed rail can bring down the total cost of travel given the expected increase in travel demand combined with the HSR's decreasing cost per passenger model. This means that there is a very strong case for subsidizing high speed rail in the early stages of development, since it will improve the overall transport system....
Professor Mark Hansen spoke next. Hansen looked at the relationship of HSR to air travel. He believes that with HSR the air travel market will become less competitive and that the reduction in flights will be most evident in secondary airports (only a small share of SFO, LAX and SAN flights are intra-state ... although they use more than their share of capacity since they are generally smaller planes)....
Professor Robert Cervero proposed four lessons for California: (1) station siting is critical, building stations in freeway medians or surrounded by free parking will lead to more sprawl development and greater driving; (2) feeder systems are important for solving the "last mile" problem, extended TOD corridors are a good solution; (3) TOD as a necklace of pearls (e.g. like Copenhagen's approach) would be excellent, but California's current planning regime does not support this approach; (4) joint development must be high quality and pedestrian-oriented, studies of joint development in Hong Kong show that these types of joint development can be much more effective than the alternative basic systems.
So now the question is, why the biased report by the UCB "Innovations" newsletter?!


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For lovely color and spring fragrance, plant hyacinths where you can enjoy their sweet scent. A hyacinth is a bulbous plant that is related to the lily family. These adorable and easy to grow early to mid-spring flowers are packed with color and a wonderful lingering perfume. For a brilliant show, plant them in clusters around a border, in containers, or in a flower bed. Being a staple of spring, the hyacinth provides outstanding colors, such as, deep indigo, baby blues, pale pinks, white and yellow.
These bulbs need to be planted in the fall before a hard frost. Place the bulbs with pointy ends up in 4 inch holes and 6 inches apart. In colder regions, plant 6 inches deep to keep them safe over winter. They need well drained soil with sun to partial sun. For early flowering indoors, hyacinths can be forced to bloom in containers, but this takes patience! Place in a dark cold area until roots start to develop; this takes about 10 weeks. When the shoots are about an inch tall, transfer pot gradually to more light and heat (not too warm, however); water sparingly. Once they are finished blooming, they can be transplanted outdoors and will recover to bloom again, someday.
Once the hyacinths are finished blooming, cut the stems but allow the leaves to die back naturally. The leaves send food back into the bulb for the next year. For a designer look, group together purple and yellow hyacinths for a gorgeous contrast of color. We have a variety of spring bulbs to choose from so you can start planning your spring garden now!


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The other day I found an older blog post by Rob Underwood called Code Syntax Compared. In it he wrote a very simple program in 5 different languages. He used Python, Ruby, JavaScript, PHP and Java. No .NET languages. So since I was interested I wrote samples of the same program in C# and Visual Basic. Hey why not.
The most interesting thing to me is the typing. That is to say that some of the languages that Rob used are dynamic type languages while Java, C# and Visual Basic are statically typed languages. Which is better? Well like so many things in computer science – it depends. There is a good paper (the link is to a PDF) on the topic - Static Typing Where Possible, Dynamic Typing When Needed: The End of the Cold War Between Programming Languages by Erik Meijer and Peter Drayton.
Anyway, if you are curious my samples are below:


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Isabel Allende went into exile after her uncle, Chilean president Salvador Allende, was overthrown in a CIA-assisted coup in 1973. She traveled, worked as a journalist, and wrote her books, "The House of the Spirits," "Of Love and Shadows," "Eva Luna," and "The Stories of Eva Luna." Her latest novel, "The Infinite Plan," is set, as is she, in Northern California.
Q: You've lived all over the world and traveled extensively. Now that you've married an American and you live here, what do you find surprising about the United States?
A: I realize that there is much more to it than I ever thought. It is a very complex society–multiracial, multicultural, with many languages. Americans have a warrior's mentality, most of them. That's how this society was built. The fact that you own a gun and shoot to defend your life is a very American way of thinking.
There is also all this spiritual quest, mainly among women. You can afford that, because that's something you can do when you have passed the stages of survival. In other cultures, women are that the stage of feeding their children. There are many people in this country who also have that as their first prioirity, but there are many who don't. And those people can afford the luxury of searching for the god or goddess, and worrying about the body, and vitamins, and organic chicken, and the perfect cappuccino.
Q: Given the power of your feeling for women in your writing, especially for the connections they sustain over generations, what do you make of tendencies here for generations–families–to drift apart, to become disconnected?
A: One of the characteristics of North American culture is that you can always start again. You can always move forward, cross a border of a state or a city or a county, and move West, most of the time West. You leave behind guilt, past traditions, memories. You are as if born again, in the sense of the snake: You leave your skin behind and you begin again. For most people in the world, that is totally impossible. We carry with us the sense that we belong to a group, a clan, a tribe, an extended family, especially a country. Whatever happens to you happens to the collective group, and you can never leave behind the past. What you have done in your life will always be with you. So, for us, we have the burden of this sort of fate, of destiny, that you don't.
There are advantages and disadvantages to both situations. In the United States, the fact that you can start again gives a lot of energy and strength and youth to this country. That is why it's so powerful in many ways, and so creative. However, it has the disadvantage of loneliness, of individuality carried to an extreme, where you don't belong to the group and where you can just do whatever you want and never think of other people. I think it's a great disadvantage–a moral and spiritual and ethical disadvantage.
Q: So how do you see the future for this country, with its separate, isolated peoples and cultures?
A: I'm very optimistic because I think that the real strength of a nation like the United States comes from blending cultures. There's no way that you can close the frontiers, anywhere. The borders are there to be violated permanently. That is what humankind has been doing, at least during the last century. We are living in an era of communications, of masses of refugees that go back and forth crossing all lands. We see these dark–and what they call brown–people all over, and you can't stop them, why would you?
I live in Marin County, where a part of the community is fighting against the Latin American immigrants. People are terrified because they see these dark men standing in groups waiting for someone to offer a job. That's very threatening. Because they don't know them and don't understand their ways or their language, they feel that these men are criminals, that they don't pay their share in this society and yet they benefit. That is not true. They don't pay taxes, but they don't benefit.
They come here to do the kind of work that no American will ever do. You will not be able to stop them. They will integrate. Sooner or later, their children will be with the white children in the schools. It's unavoidable: In 20 years they will be part of this society, just as the Jews are, the Irish, everybody.
Q: How do you work against this fear that people have of foreigners, of threats to their way of life? How do you prevent fear from interfering with growth and expression and learning?
A: The biggest straitjacket is all the prejudices that we carry around, and all the fears. But what if we just surrender to the fear? There are things greater than fear. The great, wonderful quality of human beings is that we can overcome even absolute terror, and we do.
In Venezuela, when I was living there, crime was growing. You couldn't feel safe anywhere. You couldn't leave your car in the street because it would be stolen. You coun't live in your house if you didn't have a high-security alarm system, because you would be burglarized seven times a week.
Well, all the family got together after they had broken into the house for the seventeenth time and everything had been stolen. And we said, well, how are we going to live? Are we going to put bars on the windows and install an electric alarm system? Are we going to buy guns? We decided we were going to leave the house open and let people come in and steal everything, because we couldn't live inside our own prison.
Fear is like a black cavern that is terrifying. Once you enter the cavern and explore it, you realize that you can get out of it, go through it and get out of it. Then there's another cavern that is just as big and terrifying, and you just go in and dwell in it and see what is the worst that can happen.
Last year was a very, very difficult year for me because my daughter was very sick. She was in a coma. If you had told me the day before she fell into the coma that such a thing was going to happen, I would have killed myself. If I had known the amount of pain I would have to endure, I would have killed myself because I would have thought I would never be able to survive this thing –and I wouldn't have wanted to survive, I would have wanted to die before.
But then, one day at a time, you take it. You go through one week, and the next week; the whole year goes by. And things happen that are so horrible, and they get worse and worse. You think you are going to die at every step, but you don't die. You survive. Then one day, you are holding your daughter because she's dying. You hold her, and you hug her, you spend the day and the night with her, and she dies, very peacefully, and you realize that you have not died, that you are there. And the fear is gone, the fear of pain, and the fear of death.
Q: Is your view of the millenium, then, generally positive? What do you envision?
A: I see a more feminine world, a world where feminine values will be validated, the same as masculine values are. A more integrated world.
I see that in the future, things that we have lost in the past will be recovered. There's a search for those things, a search for spirituality, for nature, for the goddess religions, for family and human bonding. All that has been lost in this industrial era. People are in desperate need of those things. I don't think the world will destroy itself in a nuclear cataclysm. On the contrary, we have the capacity to save ourselves and save the planet, and we will use it.
From an interview by Bob Baldock and Dennis Bernstein for "Skirting the Brink: America's Leading Thinkers and Activists Confide Their Views of Our Predicament," a public radio project in progress.


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By Ann Neal
According to one industry leader, there are five machine safeguarding trends that will be strategic for fabricators and manufacturers in the coming months.
Each trend has the potential to significantly impact or even disrupt entrenched processes and may be in need of investment by manufacturers that face the risk of not being in compliance with newer OSHA/ANSI codes, or being too late to adopt productivity-enhancing equipment.
The five major trends in safeguarding are:
Manufacturers will significantly accelerate their use of robots and cobots in U.S. factories over the next decade as they become cheaper and perform more tasks. According to the Robotic Industries Association (RIA), the North American robotics market broke records for orders and shipments in 2017.
As robots and cobots continue to find homes in shops of all types and sizes, companies need to ensure these pieces of equipment are integrated properly and that they are adequately safeguarded per ANSI/RIA R15.06-2012.
For robots, incorporating a combination of safeguarding equipment, such as perimeter guards, light curtains, pressure-sensitive safety mats, and laser scanners, is an essential piece of the puzzle, but it's not the be-all and end-all in safe operation.
According to the Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA), many robot accidents occur during non-routine operating conditions, such as maintenance, programming, setup, or adjustments. More often than not, these accidents, which can result in injury or death, are preventable. Safeguarding equipment is not a one-size-fits-all solution. The best way to safeguard your robot is to observe the machine while it operates, evaluate all of the variables around it, and then use that feedback to design a system unique to that robotic cell. Some fabricators opt to have their robots safeguarded before they arrive on the shop floor.
That's a great idea in theory, but there are risks. Collaborative robot systems or "cobots" are opening up a new frontier in manufacturing and fabricating applications.
Appropriately, their use is being reflected in safety standards.
RIA TR R15.606-2016 – Collaborative Robot Safety ("TR 606") permits a cobot system and operator to share the same work area simultaneously without the burdensome use of safety fencing. This technical report offers new clarification of the four different types of collaboration: Safety Monitored Stop, Hand Guiding, Speed & Separation Monitoring, and Power & Force Limiting. Because cobots are affordable, highly adaptable, and almost plug-and-play, manufacturers are eager to integrate this technology into their processes.
Press brakes are an unforgiving piece of machinery, and a frequent cause of workplace amputations of hands and fingers. United States Department of Labor statistics indicate an average of 368 instances of amputations annually from press brake accidents.
There are a number of press brake safety options, ranging from barrier guards and pull-backs, to light curtains and two-hand down/foot devices. The newest entry into the press brake safety category is probably its most revolutionary: the Laser Active Optic Protective Device, more commonly referred to as the AOPD. Invented in 1998 as an alternative to light curtains, these systems were first used in the European Union before coming to the US in 2003 as a retrofit solution. Laser AOPDs allow the operator to work within very close proximity (15mm) of the point of hazard.
This significantly improves the productivity of the press brake by increasing cycle time and reducing operator injuries and fatigue. AODP is best suited for applications such as box bending, bending with flanges or where light curtain effectiveness is diminished due to excessive blanking or muting. The recent inclusion of Laser AOPD technology in the B11.3 is a welcome addition to the standard that now gives press brake manufacturers, dealers and users a clear guideline to implementing this technology safely.
Rapid industrialization across the world, particularly in developing regions, is propelling the demand for machine safeguarding. Developing economies in China and India are increasingly adopting modern machine safeguarding techniques. More sophisticated management, new stringent regulations, and the presence of various multinational companies in these countries is increasing emphasis on the use of safeguarding systems to align with business goals. Despite the overall economic slowdown in China, for example, the machine safeguarding market continues to perform well in this region.
Once you know its intricacies, it is understandable why LOTO, as outlined in OSHA standard 29 CFR 1910.147 "The Control of Hazardous Energy (Lockout/Tagout), has become an everyday struggle for many safety personnel. It can be very time-intensive, often requiring longer than is required to finish the actual maintenance task on the machine. Production comes to a halt, resulting in the day's production numbers potentially being missed.
This becomes even more frustrating when the maintenance task is one that must be implemented several times a day. Loss of time and profits create a strong incentive to bypass LOTO to carry out repetitive machine tasks.
Thankfully, OSHA 29 CFR 1910.147 also outlines "Alternative Protection Measure" (APM) procedures that can result in increased efficiency without compromising the safety of the operation. This exception is also referred to as the "minor servicing exception". Designed for machine tasks that demand frequent repetitive access, i.e., clearing a jam on a conveyor or a minor tool change, Alternative Measures do not require that power sources be completely cut off. Examples of Alternative Methods technology may include key-controlled locks, control switches, interlocked guards, remote devices and disconnects.
It can also mean locking out just a section of a piece of equipment, rather than the entire machine. Implementing alternative procedures to ensure equivalent protection for specific tasks is enhancing productivity without endangering employees.
But those procedures – and their benefits – come with strings attached, requiring a thorough understanding of the latest OSHA and ANSI standards.
The Darwinian concept of "adapt or die" is on the mind of every manufacturing executive, especially machine builders who seek to remain vital in a competitive global market. Automation and the Industrial Internet of Things is helping to lower the costs of integrating safeguarding equipment in production machinery such as presses, milling machines, and lathes. Savings are being realized in improved productivity, leaner inventory management and preventive maintenance. For machine builders, including safeguarding is increasingly emerging as a key competitive differentiator, one that is becoming more affordable to offer to their customers.
For more information, visit www.rockfordsystems.com.
About the author:
You can follow Ann Neal on Twitter @Ann_G_Neal
or email her at: firstname.lastname@example.com
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text:
Kagamine Rin Blonde Short Cosplay Wig
(-32.01%)Ship To
- Afghanistan
- Albania
- Algeria
- American Samoa
- Andorra
- Angola
- Anguilla
- Antarctica
- Argentina
- Armenia
- Aruba
- Australia
- Austria
- Azerbaijan
- Bahamas
- Bahrain
- Bangladesh
- Belgium
- Belize
- Benin
- Bermuda
- Bhutan
- Bolivia
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- Botswana
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- Samoa
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- Saudi Arabia
- Senegal
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- Sierra Leone
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- Slovakia (Slovak Republic)
- Slovenia
- Solomon Islands
- Somalia
- South Africa
- South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands
- Spain
- Sri Lanka
- St. Helena
- St. Pierre and Miquelon
- Sudan
- Suriname
- Swaziland
- Sweden
- Switzerland
- Taiwan
- Tajikistan
- Tanzania, United Republic of
- Thailand
- Togo
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- Tonga
- Trinidad and Tobago
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- Tuvalu
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- United Arab Emirates
- United Kingdom
- United States
- Uruguay
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- Vanuatu
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- Virgin Islands (British)
- Virgin Islands (U.S.)
- Wallis and Futuna Islands
- Western Sahara
- Yemen
- Zaire
- Zambia
- Zimbabwe
- 中国
Process Time: 4-5 business day(s)
Shipping Time: fast delivery 3-5 business day(s) | regular delivery 8-15 business day(s)
Product Review
By Nad***son
Aug 11 2022The wig is a little darker than I thought. There's two different colors in the wig, a more platinum color (as highlights) and darker yellow. It shipped in a bag with a hairnet and some tissue paper but I would recommend having a support going around the wig like cardboard because the wig came pretty squished and flat. The wig is a little thin but it's thick enough to where you can't really see the hairnet. But I think this wig would be easy to style.
By Nic***itt
May 01 2020Lovely wig, nice colour and super soft!
By Faw***pdf
Oct 25 2019I'll be honest. The wig was very thin, so the wig cap showed. I tried to style the curls as shown in the pictures, it just wasn't going to happen. I gave it two stars since the color of it was still very accurate. Overall, not the best buy but not the worst. Buy it if you want, just know that you're gonna have to style it real good for it to be like the picture. Not recommended for beginners like myself.
you may also like
We advise you to place an order early so that there is enough time before you receive the items.
We can ship items in your order separately to ensure that you will receive them earlier.
Attention: The processing and shipping of the orders during legal holiday will be delayed to some extent.We appreciate your understanding.
We accept returning for replacement or refund within 5 days after you receive the costumes, dresses or wigs. The cost on the merchandise will be totally refunded on condition that the item is still new and in good condition. But the shipping cost is not refundable.
Please follow the tips below to process your return:
- First of all, please contact our customer service, we will determine whether your merchandise can be returned for a replacement or refund according to the return policy.
- If it is confirmed that the merchandise can be returned, our customer service will inform you of the return mailing address and the following operation process.
- Under normal circumstances, the shipping cost of the return is paid by the customer, and we bear the shipping cost of the replacement. We do not charge extra fees for the return or exchange. Please note, if the customer returns the merchandise without negotiation, we will not bear any cost.
- After receiving and checking the merchandise, the refund will be processed within 3-5 working days (weekend excluded).
!!! We will not accept any return without contact before. Please do not use the address on the mailing package to return or exchange. If this happens, we will not be responsible for it and will not make any compensation.
Here are some cases in which you can return the merchandise for a replacement or refund:
- There is something wrong with the quality on the suit
- The regular size does not fit.
- If you plan to return the merchandise, you should make sure it has never been used, worn, altered and there aren't missing items. The original package, garment tag and tracking number are must-have items for you to receive the refund. Thus, be careful while checking all details on the merchandise please. Please return the costumes back with a shipping number.
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Forming / Compaction / Debulking
Since most composite materials are produced in a two-dimensional form, it is typically necessary to modify the material using some kind of Forming, Compaction or Debulking process to achieve the final part shape or even a preform for subsequent processing. In many instances a combination of two or more of these processes will be employed.
Presses are often used when stamping thermoplastic panels or high-performance molding compounds such as Hexcel's HexMC® or TenCate's Xpress process. At times, the ply/laminate construction is sufficiently stiff that the material does not readily conform to the tool geometry. This can lead to undesirable features such as fiber wrinkling or buckling which will reduce material properties. In those instances it may be necessary to form the laminate incrementally, applying a few plies at a time or even one ply at a time.
Accudyne has developed solutions for addressing this challenge using a wide range of devices such as bladders, wedges, rollers, shoes, and forming bars. These devices apply pressure to the material through the use of vacuum or positive forces applied through the device contacting the material. Elevated temperatures may be employed depending on the part thickness and part geometry.


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The U.S. Air Force base produces the first certified 3D-printed aircraft parts
The TRAVIS Air Force Base now has a tool that captures digital info, which renders 3D images of aircraft parts into specialized computer software. This tool, and two manufacturing units, gives the Air Force the capability to print aircraft parts on site. Back in 2019, the U.S. Air Force announced that, its 60th Maintenance Squadron, was the first field unit in the Air Force to be certified with an industrial-sized 3D printer that is authorized to produce nonstructural aircraft parts.
The Stratasys F900 3D printer, which is capable of printing plastic parts up to 36-by-24-by-36 inches, uses a material called Ultem 9085 that is more flexible, dense and stronger than typical plastic.
The printer, which is certified by the Federal Aviation Administration and the Air Force Advanced Technology and Training Center, offers new opportunities to create needed parts while saving time and money. "It brings us a capability that we've never had before," said Master Sgt. John Higgs, 60th MXS aircraft metals technology section chief. "There's so many possibilities available to us right now. We're just scratching the surface."
Technicians are able to download blueprints from an online database that the University of Dayton Research Institute has approved. "The Joint Engineering Data Management Information Control System is where we go to download already approved blueprints," Higgs said. "Now, the University of Dayton Research Institute is working with the engineers to get those parts they developed into JEDMICS."
The first approved project was printed on the Stratasys F900 Aug. 12 and will replace latrine covers on the C-5M Super Galaxy. Typically, parts that don't keep the aircraft from performing their mission don't have as high as a priority for replacement.
"The latrine covers we just printed usually take about a year from the time they've been ordered to the time they've been delivered," Higgs said. "We printed two of the covers in 73 hours."
Getting the printer operational was no easy task. It took eight months to get the system fully operational.
"There were facility requirements that had to be met, and then installation and certification processes to complete," Higgs said. "After, we needed to decide who could operate the printer, then have a UDRI instructor certify them."
Three members from the 60th MXS were chosen to be the first technicians trained in the Air Force for the initial certification. One of them, Tech. Sgt. Rogelio Lopez, 60th MXS assistant aircraft metals technology section chief, has been with the project since its inception.
"UDRI has not trained or certified anyone else at the field level except the three of us here at Travis Air Force Base," Lopez said. "Now that we're signed off on our training records, we're the only ones who can operate, maintain and print on the Stratasys F900."
Now with parts in production, all the hard work is paying off. There's a new sense of urgency within the organization.
"It's exciting because the Air Force is implementing new technology at the field level," Lopez said. "The Air Force continues to encourage Airmen to be innovative by finding new ways to streamline processes and save resources."
And since Travis AFB is the only field unit that is currently operational, requests from outside the organization are already coming in.
"We already have a list from the Air Force level to help them print and to backfill some supplies," Higgs said. "This will ensure other bases can replace items sooner than expected with our help."
Ultimately, the maintenance shop wants to use the printer for more than just aircraft parts.
"We have the capability to print parts on a production scale for a lot more customers," Higgs said. "The overall goal is to generate products for every organization to support whatever needs they may have."
Below is a video of Joshua Orr, 60th Aircraft Maintenance Squadron, using a CreaForm HandyScan 700 to capture digital information to render a three-dimensional image of an aircraft part into specialized computer software at Travis Air Force Base, California. The scanner will be utilized in conjunction with two additive manufacturing units, one polymer and one metal, to print aircraft parts on site.


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Updated January 25, 2022 at 2:59 PM ET
President Biden, reiterating that the U.S. has no intention of sending U.S. troops to battle in Ukraine should Russia invade, said Tuesday that such an invasion would be world-changing.
Biden, noting the more than 100,000 Russian troops surrounding Ukraine, said of Russian President Vladimir Putin: "If he were to move in with all those forces, it would be the largest invasion since World War II. It would change the world."
Speaking to reporters after a visit to a Washington, D.C., small business, Biden said it wasn't clear what Putin intends to do.
"It's a little bit like reading tea leaves," he said. "I don't think that even his people know for certain what he's going to do."
Biden said he would make the decision to deploy U.S. troops as part of beefed-up NATO forces in allied countries on the alliance's eastern flank depending on "what Putin does or doesn't do." But he said some U.S. troops could be moved closer soon.
"I may be moving some of those troops in the nearer term just because it takes time," he said. "It's not provocative."
The Pentagon announced Monday that it has placed some 8,500 U.S. troops on heightened alert.
Biden reiterated that "we have no intention of putting American forces, or NATO forces, in Ukraine." He also said that the U.S. government could sanction Putin personally if there were an invasion.
The U.S. is planning a ban on tech exports if Russia invades Ukraine
The United States is working with allies and partners to potentially ban exports to Russia of technology and products used in strategic sectors like artificial intelligence, quantum computing, defense and aerospace if Russia invades Ukraine, a senior administration official told reporters.
These "novel export controls" are part of a strategy to impose what a senior administration official called "massive consequences" on Russia if it invades Ukraine. The White House says it wants to take a tougher approach than it did in 2014 when Russia seized Crimea and invaded other parts of eastern Ukraine.
"The gradualism of the past is out, and this time we'll start at the top of the escalation ladder and stay there," the official told reporters on a conference call.
The export controls would come on top of more traditional economic and banking sanctions that would hurt the Russian economy. The novel sanctions are aimed at crimping Putin's ambitions in key sectors as he seeks to diversify the Russian economy beyond oil and gas, the official said.
But experts have questioned the impact of limiting tech exports to Russia, pointing out that withholding U.S.-made technology is unlikely to create the shock needed to deter an invasion.
"This is something of a long-term impact, and it is something in the future, Maria Shagina of the Finnish Institute of International Affairs told NPR's Jackie Northam. "This is something that I don't think will change Russia's calculus or Putin's calculus, for that matter."
The United States and its allies and partners are also preparing contingency plans if Russia cuts off its natural gas or crude oil exports to Europe as a response to Western sanctions, a second official told reporters. The U.S. has been working with countries and companies to identify supplies from North Africa, the Middle East, Asia and the United States that could be temporarily surged to Europe, the official said, declining to give details about the companies and countries involved in the plan. Europe would be able to draw on stored supplies for the first couple of weeks of a supply disruption, the official said.
The official said that if Russia has "to resort only to China in terms of purchasing oil and gas or to supplying technology, we believe that's going to make the Russian economy far more brittle."
But with some $630 billion in cash reserves, Putin may believe Russia has all the flexibility it needs to tough out any sanctions the West could impose.
The West could also kick Russia off SWIFT, the messaging system for international money transfers. The Russians have come up with their own system to circumvent SWIFT, but it's slow and cumbersome, Northam reports.
The officials emphasized that the United States and European allies were united in their resolve to apply major sanctions if Russia invades Ukraine. "While our actions and the EU's actions may not be identical, we are unified in our intention to impose massive consequences," one of the officials said.
Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.


text:
This is a followup to the following meta post:
Remove nofollow on links at a certain age
We have been in contact with Matt Cutts regarding removing nofollow:
... we're trying to encourage sites with valuable user-generated content (like Stack Exchange) to have a more nuanced approach to the nofollow attribute on user-generated links. Using the attribute on all user-generated links takes away a big incentive from spammers, and prevents spammy links from being included in search ranking. However, good links can also be made invisible to search engines with this policy, so we miss out on that ranking signal, which could be used to surface better or fresher high-quality content that your users are recommending.
Starting today we will be removing nofollow on links within posts that hit a high enough threshold to be considered reputable. The details will remain somewhat vague at the moment to discourage gaming of this feature.


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Dual Pixel RAW
What is Dual Pixel RAW?
Dual Pixel RAW is a Canon innovation utilising both photodiodes on the EOS 5D Mark IV's 30.4 Megapixel Dual Pixel CMOS AF sensor.
How it works
The Dual Pixel sensor's pixels have a dual photodiode construction. This sensor design means the sensor can receive an A and B signals from the subject and to detect any phase differences between the two signals, allowing them to attain focus as part of the Dual Pixel AF system. When capturing the image, the sensor obtains the picture info from the combined A and B image signals. This technology making both focusing and image shooting possible with the same sensor.
During Dual Pixel RAW shooting, a single RAW file saves two images into the file. One image consists of the A+B combined image data and the other only the A image data. This means the Dual Pixel RAW files contains both the normal image and also any parallax information, which can be measured and subject distance information extrapolated. As Dual Pixel RAW images contain two images they are therefore double the file size of normal RAW images.
Using the Dual Pixel RAW Optimizer in Digital Photo Professional software, users can make use of the Dual Pixel data recorded with the Dual Pixel RAW image for microadjustments of the position of maximum sharpness using the depth information contained within the file.
Image Microadjustment
When an image isn't quite sharp enough in a specific area, such as on a subject's eyes for example, it's possible to adjust the image and bring sharpness back to a desired area.
With Image Microadjustment
Bokeh Shift
With Dual Pixel RAW it is possible to adjust the position of out of focus areas, or 'bokeh' to enhance composition, for example moving an out of focus object that is obscuring the subject.
With Bokeh Shift
Ghosting Reduction
Unlike lens flare, which can sometimes be used creatively in making an image appear low in contrast and atmospherically 'hazy', ghosting is not desirable and shows internal lens reflections. This can be controlled with Dual Pixel RAW and minimized with careful adjustment.
With Ghosting reduction
For best results
Getting the most from Dual Pixel RAW requires careful adjustments of the EOS 5D Mark IV's shooting values. For the best results, shoot at a lens focal length of at least 50mm and an aperture of f/5.6 or lower, ensuring the ISO value is 1600 or lower.
Effects may differ between shooting portrait or vertical format, and for best results ensure that you shoot within the following parameters:
Focal length
Subject distance
1 - 10m (3.3 - 32.8ft)
2 - 20m (6.6 - 65.6ft)
4 - 40m (13.1 - 131.2ft)


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Apple to scan US iPhones for images of child sexual abuse
Apple unveiled plans to scan U.S. iPhones for images of child sexual abuse, drawing applause from child protection groups but raising concern among some security researchers that the system could be misused by governments looking to surveil their citizens.
Apple said its messaging app will use on-device machine learning to warn about sensitive content without making private communications readable by the company. The tool Apple calls "neuralMatch" will detect known images of child sexual abuse without decrypting people's messages. If it finds a match, the image will be reviewed by a human who can notify law enforcement if necessary.
But researchers say the tool could be put to other purposes such as government surveillance of dissidents or protesters.
Matthew Green of Johns Hopkins, a top cryptography researcher, was concerned that it could be used to frame innocent people by sending them harmless but malicious images designed designed to appear as matches for child porn, fooling Apple's algorithm and alerting law enforcement — essentially framing people. "Researchers have been able to do this pretty easily," he said.
Tech companies including Microsoft, Google, Facebook and others have for years been sharing "hash lists" of known images of child sexual abuse. Apple has also been scanning user files stored in its iCloud service, which is not as securely encrypted as its messages, for such images.
Some say this technology could leave the company vulnerable to political pressure in authoritarian states such as China. "What happens when the Chinese government says, 'Here is a list of files that we want you to scan for,'" Green said. "Does Apple say no? I hope they say no, but their technology won't say no."
The company has been under pressure from governments and law enforcement to allow for surveillance of encrypted data. Coming up with the security measures required Apple to perform a delicate balancing act between cracking down on the exploitation of children while keeping its high-profile commitment to protecting the privacy of its users.
Apple believes it pulled off that feat with technology that it developed in consultation with several prominent cryptographers, including Stanford University professor Dan Boneh, whose work in the field has won a Turing Award, often called technology's version of the Nobel Prize.
The computer scientist who more than a decade ago invented PhotoDNA, the technology used by law enforcement to identify child pornography online, acknowledged the potential for abuse of Apple's system but said it was far outweighed by the imperative of battling child sexual abuse.
"It possible? Of course. But is it something that I'm concerned about? No," said Hany Farid, a researcher at the University of California at Berkeley, who argues that plenty of other programs designed to secure devices from various threats haven't seen "this type of mission creep." For example, WhatsApp provides users with end-to-end encryption to protect their privacy, but employs a system for detecting malware and warning users not to click on harmful links.
Apple was one of the first major companies to embrace "end-to-end" encryption, in which messages are scrambled so that only their senders and recipients can read them. Law enforcement, however, has long pressured for access to that information in order to investigate crimes such as terrorism or child sexual exploitation.
"Apple's expanded protection for children is a game changer," John Clark, the president and CEO of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, said in a statement. "With so many people using Apple products, these new safety measures have lifesaving potential for children who are being enticed online and whose horrific images are being circulated in child sexual abuse material."
Julia Cordua, the CEO of Thorn, said that Apple's technology balances "the need for privacy with digital safety for children." Thorn, a nonprofit founded by Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher, uses technology to help protect children from sexual abuse by identifying victims and working with tech platforms.


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At the very inception of this collaboration i've had to do some serious soul searching about the kind of work I want to commit to. Having a baby will do that to you, it casts a harsh light onto your actions, framing them into the context of some future narrative that will take on it's own life in the mind of your child. You don't want to fuck around with that narrative. Your actions take on a lot more meaning and doing things because they are "cool" just doesn't seem like a very good reason to do anything.
So then theres our picture book. Megan and I agree that we are writing a book about the outsiders, the kids that want more out of life but aren't quite sure how to get it.
That description applies to the majority of the hispanic kids in this country right now. Kids that like me, are immigrants to this country who look to this culture to provide markers and cues as to how they fit in, cues that are not present in the tv shows, movies and, more importantly, the books they love. These kids are in a lot of ways left on their own to figure out and navigate an often actively hostile world.
But here is the thing: it also applies to little girls in Ohio who are not seeing strong female characters who are good at math and like Transformers.
It probably applies to you.
Diversity is a really loaded word, conjuring up shrill left /right political posturing. But the truth is that an increase in diversity only helps us to see deeper into ourselves as a people, acknowledging the similarities and differences that we all share.
I am really honored to have been awarded the Yuyi Morales Merit Scholarship by Hummingbird Literary thats allowing me to participate in an online workshop on writing picture books. They are really committed to increasing diversity in the field of children's publishing, which as it stands is in bad shape.
The more specific your story gets the more universal it gets. It's some sort of alchemical rule. Proven over and over.
Megan and I are working on getting this story really specific.


text: SB QST @ ARL $ARLB010 ARLB010 ARRL Seeks Input for New IARU Region 2 Band Plan ZCZC AG10 QST de W1AW ARRL Bulletin 10 ARLB010 From ARRL Headquarters Newington CT March 16, 2010 To all radio amateurs SB QST ARL ARLB010 ARLB010 ARRL Seeks Input for New IARU Region 2 Band Plan The International Amateur Radio Region 2 (IARU R2) conference -- held later this year in El Salvador -- brings together delegations from the national Amateur Radio Societies in the Western Hemisphere. One of the topics on the agenda will be the Region 2 HF band plan. This band plan is "harmonized with" -- spectrum management-speak for "very similar to" -- the IARU Region 1 and Region 3 band plans. According to ARRL President Kay Craigie, N3KN, many hams in the USA probably did not know there was such as thing as a Region 2 band plan until recently. Now, however, many more American hams have heard of it, but may not know how -- if at all -- this band plan affects them. Here are important facts for American hams to keep in mind: * IARU band plans are voluntary guidelines. They do not have the force of FCC regulations. * It would be inappropriate to incorporate Region 2 band plans into the FCC rules, and the ARRL has no plan to petition the FCC to do so. * Most other countries do not have the detailed sub-band regulations that are in Part 97 of the FCC Rules; for amateurs in those countries, IARU band plans offer the only guidance on frequency use. * The recognition of a calling frequency or band segment for a particular purpose or mode in the IARU band plan does not convey any special rights or exclusivity of use. A new, more transparent procedure will be followed this year for considering possible changes to the Region 2 band plan. The ARRL is cooperating with this procedure by inviting input to be sent to the ARRL Board of Directors' Band Planning Committee. The committee will review the existing Region 2 band plan, consider input from the amateur community and make recommendations to the ARRL Board for submission to IARU Region 2. The inadvertent omission of the AM center of activity frequency (calling frequency) -- 3.885 MHz on 80 meters -- has already been noted, and this will be one of the recommended revisions. The deadline line set by Region 2 for gathering input and formulating recommendations is rather short. Amateurs who would like to submit input should take the following steps: * First, study the existing IARU Region 2 band plan posted on the Region 2 Web site at http://www.iaru-r2.org/band-plan. The Region 1 and Region 3 band plans are also posted there, so be sure you are looking at the band plan for Region 2. * Next, formulate a clear statement of any change you propose. Include a brief explanation of why you think the change would be beneficial. Please include your name and call sign in your input. * Finally, send your input via e-mail to email@example.com no later than April 5, 2010. Messages will be automatically acknowledged. If you live in another country in Region 2, please contact your national Amateur Radio Society for information on how to submit input for the band plan process. NNNN /EX