text:
They have led us to a new way of looking, acting, thinking and moving; to a new and sensitive way of expressing ourselves in music; to freedom in conformity.
—Ann Wilson, an excerpt from her winning entry in a 1966 Beatles essay contest
Ghost houses, we used to call them. There were always one or two in the suburban community where I grew up: houses where the curtains never parted, where trick-or-treaters never knocked – empty houses. You'd hear all kinds of stories about why the people who had lived in them packed up their belongings and fled in the middle of the night – bankruptcies, scandals, sometimes worse. Most people steered clear of ghost houses; it wasn't that they were particularly spooky, but they raised doubts. In a world where everything was supposed to be just fine, a ghost house was concrete, unavoidable evidence that something was awry. Maybe that's why they tended to be favorite hangouts for a certain type of teenager: the kids who grew their hair long, sneaked out of gym class to get high. The kids who, like the ghost houses, didn't fit in.
The house where Ann and Nancy Wilson grew upon 166th Avenue in Bellevue, a middle-class suburb of Seattle – is a ghost house now. Their parents moved to a more secluded neighborhood two years ago. To get to the old house, you drive down a two-lane commercial strip, past shopping centers and Burger Kings, past new garden-apartment developments with names like Innisfree and Pine View. "There are a thousand places that look just like this. You see them when you go on the road," Ann Wilson says as she pulls her Land-Rover off the highway onto the main street of a housing complex. "But I can remember when this street seemed psychedelic to me," she adds, laughing.
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It has been threatening rain all morning, and a sudden storm blows up just as we pull into the driveway of the house marked 541. "Did you see that?" Nancy Wilson exclaims. "Just as we passed Mrs. Nelson's house, she parted her curtains and waved. It's been years since we've come by here. But it's like nothing has changed." She looks at her sister, manages a half-smile, and Ann laughs again, a little uneasily this time.
We go inside. Since the Wilsons moved out, someone had painted the foyer walls an optimistic canary yellow. But without furniture, the split-level house feels blank and chilly. Ann immediately begins exploring the place, nosing around from room to room like a detective looking for clues. She finds them: hand prints pressed into the cement on the back porch, the kitchen cabinet where the vanilla wafers always used to be, the well-worn spot on the recreation-room floor where she and her sister practiced the guitar.
"It's still here!" Nancy yells from upstairs. "Come look." She stands in the middle of the tiny bedroom that was once hers and points out an I LOVE YOU painted in Day-Glo on the window sash. "I put that there when I was about thirteen," she explains, shyly. "I'd written a song about the rain, and I wanted to let the rain know how much I loved it." She blushes a little and locks eyes for an instant with her older sister. Ann, the dark-haired Wilson, is twenty-nine. Blond, blue-eyed Nancy is twenty-six. D.W. Griffith might have made starlets of them had they been born fifty years earlier. They have a luminous, un-self-conscious beauty and opalescent complexions that make them appear oddly ageless, untouched by experience.
Inside Ann's old bedroom, across a narrow hall, the talk turns to the sisters' teenage years: the acid trips on Ringo Starr's birthday; the stoned joy rides; the pusher who'd throw lids of grass through Ann's bedroom window; the hours spent behind closed doors in those little rooms, writing poetry, playing records, daydreaming. "While we were doing all this stuff, we felt really unusual," Ann says. "But we were pretty normal for the time we grew up in. What we experienced was going on in suburbs all over the country. We weren't that different."
Something, I interject, must have made them different. But what?
Rain pounds on the macadam driveway. Somewhere, a station-wagon door slams.
"I don't know," Ann Wilson says after a long time. "I really don't know."
The House Where Ann And Nancy Wilson live now is only a fifteen-minute drive from the ghost house numbered 541, but it seems much farther away. It is a quirky little structure, full of odd angles and ambitious skylights, tucked away at the end of a long dirt road that winds through a wooded area near Seattle. When you pass the nearest house, at the foot of the hill, the owner does not look out and wave. There are a couple of horses grazing in a paddock out front, two Volvos in the driveway, a Land-Rover parked in an open garage. Nothing remarkable – just another house in the woods that happens to be shared by two of the most successful women in rock & roll.
Heart, the band that Ann, and later Nancy, joined a few years after high school, has sold several million albums since its recording debut in 1975. The first LP, Dreamboat Annie, released on Mushroom, a small, independent Canadian label, went platinum in less than seven months. In early 1977, the band left Mushroom and signed with CBS' Portrait label, touching off a complicated legal struggle. Their subsequent records – 1977's Little Queen and 1978's Dog & Butterfly – have sold upwards of a million copies. Their newest LP, Bebe le Strange, on Epic, has cracked the Top Five.
Heart (lead vocalist Ann Wilson, singer-guitarist Nancy Wilson, drummer Michael Derosier, bassist Steve Fossen and keyboardist Howard Leese) is a curious marriage of musical opposites. The most commercially successful Heart songs – "Magic Man," "Barracuda" and "Crazy on You" – graft heavy-metal musicianship to emotional, image-laden lyrics. This unlikely combination is held together by Ann's powerful, three-octave soprano. She can belt and screech the hardest rock tune, then slide through every delicate nuance of a tender folk ballad.
Ann and Nancy did not live together during most of the five years that Heart has been in the public eye. Nancy was romantically involved with Roger Fisher, Heart's original guitarist, and Ann was living with Roger's brother, Mike, the group's soundman and first manager. There have been some changes. A year and a half ago, Nancy broke up with Roger; he remained in the band, however, until October, just as Heart was about to record Bebe le Strange. Ann and Mike Fisher had been together for nine years. Then, one morning last October, Ann woke up and telephoned her mother, her sister and her childhood friend, Sue Ennis. They came over to the house she shared with Mike and loaded all her belongings into her Land-Rover.
"Wham! It hit me just like that," Ann remembers. "In the car, driving back to Nancy's house, it occurred to me – this is really over. The whole business was finished in six hours." The tears, she says, lasted considerably longer.
Ann, Nancy and Sue Ennis have shared the house in the woods ever since. "This place is like a girls' dorm right now," Sue giggles. A doctoral candidate in Germanic literature at Berkeley, Ennis has been writing songs with the Wilson sisters since high school. She collaborated on most of the material on Dog & Butterfly and Bebe le Strange. Disillusioned with academic life, she took up Ann's longstanding invitation to move back to Washington and work on songwriting full time.
They make an interesting trio: the wisecracking older sister, the delicate younger one and the tall, serious, angular best friend. A day at the house with the women is alternately sober and giddy. They will sit in the living room, doodle with the piano, hash out new song ideas in hour-long sessions (this is how much of Bebe le Strange was written). They will run over to Nancy's jukebox, press a few buttons and dance vintage 1965 steps to "Poison Ivy" and "Wooly Bully." They have a volume of inside jokes, and tend to finish each other's sentences:
"Do you remember the strange night . . . ?" Ann begins.
"The night we went to Shakey's?" says Sue.
"Oh, God, the faces on those people!" Nancy adds.
Then they will convulse in chuckles and translate for strangers.
"You see," Ann explains, "this is about . . . well, the song 'Strange Night' on the new album is about one night when the three of us dressed up really weird and went over to Shakey's Pizza Parlor. It was a real family place, and Wednesday was singalong night, and there'd be all these parents and grandparents and kids and stuff there, singing 'Old MacDonald.' We drove up, walked in and just stood there for a while, just to freak everybody out."
"The song lyrics of 'Strange Night' are about that," Nancy adds. " 'Get out that wig . . . put on those shiny pointed shoes . . . we'll have a strange night.' "
"The funny thing is that people have come up to us and asked if the song is about a drag queen," Ann snorts, "Can you beat that? I think they are disappointed when we tell them the real story. People want you to be decadent, and racy. Then they find out you're just writing about some girls!
"But," she asks, "don't you think it's more fun our way?"
Ann laughs and walks into her bedroom for a minute. She swings the door shut; there's a photograph tacked to it: Paul McCartney.
Sue Ennis Recognized the girl in the picture right away. There she was, on the front page of the second section of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, under the headline 5 BEATLE LETTER WINNERS. It was Ann Wilson, holding her first prize, a Revere "Magic Eye" camera. Ann Wilson! That strange girl who sat a few seats away in German III Class, who never talked to anybody. Sue had been watching Ann all term. She carried her books funny, under her arm instead of up against her chest like the other girls at Sammamish High School, and she didn't have any friends, and didn't seem to care. Sue was a loner too, but she kept up a couple of phony friendships with girls you hang out with just so people don't think you're a total zero. Ann didn't bother with that, and Sue respected her for it. And she was into the Beatles! Sue decided that she had to make contact with Ann. But she would have to be very cool.
The next Monday, after German, Sue sauntered by Ann's desk, humming a Beatles tune. Nothing obvious – the sitar riff from "Love You To" – something only another true believer would recognize. No reaction. Sue pulled a desperate move and started beating out the rhythm with her fingertips on her loose-leaf notebook. Dum dum dum! Finally. Ann looked up.
"So, you're into the Beatles," she said, yawning.
"Yeah," Sue twirled a strand of hair around her index finger, pretending to be bored.
"I suppose you didn't get to see 'em."
"Left mezzanine, thirtieth row, third seat in."
"What didja wear?"
They sat in the cafeteria together next period and didn't stop talking long enough to eat lunch. Ann had a younger sister, Sue found out, and they played guitar in their own folk group. Ann thought the Moody Blues' Justin Hayward was supercool, and she had a crush on that weird-looking transfer student with the British accent who Sue had been mooning after for months.
That afternoon, Sue ran home from the bus stop, clutching her books under her left arm. There was someone else!
It was in many ways a classic adolescent girls' friendship: the shared confidences, the private jokes, the neatly pulled-off capers. "Nance and Sue and I built a protective wall that we lived behind," Ann remembers. "An exclusive society with its own language and its own culture." They called each other Connie – pronounced Cah-nee in a mock little-girl voice – because the name summed up everything they hated about the super-straight high-school girls they couldn't, and wouldn't, become. They broke rules: once they stuffed Nancy, who was underage, into the trunk of Sue's Mustang to sneak her into a drive-in showing the R-rated Candy.
But because this was the suburbs, and because it was the late Sixties, the fantasy world they shared had an added dimension. "We were physically here," Ann explains, sweeping her arms to indicate the tract-home landscape outside her parents' house. "But most of the time we lived out there." "Out there" was "swinging London," go-go boots, Yardley green eye shadow. "Out there" was grass and LSD. "Out there" was also music.
They played and wrote songs constantly, moody evocations of late-adolescent alienation. "Sensitive in the suburbs," Ann jokes now, a little sheepishly. "I guess it seems funny to be writing songs like that when most of what you've been doing so far in your life is sitting in your room."
In 1968, Ann and Sue graduated from Sammamish High School, and it all changed. Sue, the girl who had always kept a few "socially acceptable" girlfriends, who always did well in class, decided to leave Bellevue and go away to college. The triumvirate was broken, at least temporarily.
Ann Wilson, the loner, had other ideas.
"Vancouver. God, the whole time I was up there, I felt like we were in a dream. I really wanted to get back home."
It is breakfast time at the Wilson house, and Ann is sipping Tab as she tells the story of what happened to her after high school. Nancy and Sue wander in and out of the kitchen. occasionally adding to her monologue.
"It began in Seattle. I met Roger [Fisher] and Steve [Fossen], and we formed a group. I was the 'chick singer' – ha! One night we had a gig playing in Bellingham. which is a college town up north. Mike [Fisher] was in Canada then, times being what they were.
"Before I knew Mike, when he lived here, he went through this 'acid priest' phase. Got into Eastern religion. At one point, he was running around in military fatigues, with his head shaved, giving acid to people. Anyway, we played this club in Bellingham, and Mike sneaked down to see his little brother's new band. He'd heard his brother say there was this chick in the group, and when he walked into rehearsal. there she was, sitting on the dance floor wearing old jeans with this big ciggie hanging out of her mouth, a glass of wine, trying to learn the words to this Janis Joplin song, 'Move Over.' Yeah, man. A tough chick, y'know? Mike kinda went, 'God, who's that!' and stuck around that night. He drank a pitcher of beer, and we started to get to know each other. It was one of those deals where things go gonnnnggggg! He asked me to go up to Canada with him. But I was too scared. The 'tough chick' thing was all a front. I thought he just wanted to, uh, make it or something. But eventually, I just had to move to Canada. I just kind of came to him. It lasted nine years.
"It was really hard times. There I was, I'd followed this man to Canada. We all lived in this one room – this is the story everybody in the band hates now – and ate brown rice. Steve and Roger were married then, and they had their wives there, and Steve had a child. I had to learn to be one of the hens. It just drove me crazy! This middle-class princess from Bellevue had to wash her hair in cold water and be the cook of the house.
"Nancy finally came up. We were so crazy to play together. And when she did, I started to return to myself, 'cause I was getting real far away, really starting to become 'a chick.' Anyway, you get the picture.
"Mike had the business head. He drove our truck. He and Rog and Steve built all the equipment for Heart. It sounds like we were spaced out, but we weren't. We were organized and efficient. We thought, 'Okay, first we'll make enough to buy a truck. Then we'll make enough to buy better equipment. Then make a record. Then, after that, we'll be able to move to the States.' "
She pauses, then continues. "After Dreamboat Annie – with things happening so fast – we got a manager. But Mike and I continued to be patriarch and matriarch of the group. As the years went on, things got more polarized – he handled the technical aspects and I sort of took care of the music. But he would still advise me on the artistic aspects of things, and that eventually turned into a problem. After a while, I stopped wanting to be advised."
From the bedroom, Nancy chimes in, "Me too."
"It was a hard fight. From the beginning, when we all had nothing, and had to really rely on each other, remembering those days makes it hard to wrench apart, to get free. Five years. It was hard. And with Mike and me, it was kind of a Pygmalion story. He was the one person who really encouraged me, who said, 'Come on, Ann, you can do it.' Then his job was finished. It was really hard for both of us to realize that. I left him, but I'd really left him a long time ago."
She sits silently for a moment, then puts down her glass and jumps off her perch on the kitchen stool.
"Come on. Let's go out driving."
Come on, Connie. You can do it. Go. Now!" Sue Ennis barks.
Ann cranes her neck around to make sure, then zips the Rover across three lanes of traffic. She manages this maneuver while maintaining a steady high-third harmony to a four-voice version of "The Cruel War" (the Land-Rover has no radio). Other songs on the four-part hit parade: "Sealed with a Kiss," "99 Bottles of Beer" and "The Name Game." It feels as if we're cruising to summer camp.
"I guess it really has come down to the boys and the girls in Heart," Ann reflects. "We didn't purposely set out that way, but that's the way it's worked out, 'cause the girls write the songs, and we all live together, and we're old friends. We don't try to beat 'em down or anything. We have boys who are very, very good musicians, but it doesn't necessarily mean they're the creators."
Has it ever occurred to her to do without the boys?
"No. Nance and I really like being in a band. If it wasn't these boys, there would be other ones. That's the real truth of it."
She shrugs, downshifts and pulls off the exit ramp for downtown Seattle.
Howard Leese Is An Affable twenty-eight-year-old with shoulder-length shag-cut blond hair. He has played keyboards, synthesizer and guitar with Heart since the Dreamboat Annie LP. His role in Heart seems to be co-musical director. He writes charts and helps the Wilson sisters translate their ideas into technical language.
"The band is a pretty democratic thing. There's no duking it out," he tells me. "The girls bring us the songs, then we hash things out. Sometimes the songs change a lot. 'Strange Night' came in as a folk song, then turned into heavy rock. Then sometimes they bring us a jewel in the rough, like 'Mistral Wind.' That song had bars of 5/7 and 9/8 in it – a pop song! Ten years from now, that's the song people will remember us by.
"Roger? He was nontechnical, a 'feel' musician, and just didn't fit the band. I did the lead on the recording of 'Magic Man' when Roger was having trouble. Sometimes he would forget his lead parts and have to learn them over before we went out on tour again. But he'd been in the band almost thirteen years, and we went along with it. Probably longer than we should have."
Roger Fisher, 30, lives with his brother in a house several minutes away from the Wilson sisters' in the Seattle outskirts. He is currently working with his own band, Fisher, and looking for a record deal, but he's willing to talk about Heart. He chooses his words carefully, and stops often to make sure he is understood.
"I have no animosity toward anybody. Whether or not I had to relearn my guitar parts, I always gave 100 percent onstage. The break was pretty mutual. The girls weren't liking anything I was playing. I was so depressed in the last year and a half. There was no future! Ann doesn't think much of lead guitar playing.
"You see," he sighs, "back in Vancouver, it was mainly Mike at the wheel. His spirit had Ann and me cranked up to do our best. But once we got more famous, we lost sight of the need for greatness. It's Ann and Nancy's band now. It's not a group."
It's two weeks before the first date of a ten-month tour to support Bebe le Strange, and Heart has rented the Seattle Paramount, a splendid old art nouveau theater, for five nights of rehearsals. There's every reason for the rehearsals to be tense; without Roger Fisher's guitar acrobatics, the band has lost much of its visual focus. In addition, all the songs have to be reworked – the guitar breaks reassigned to either Nancy or Howard Leese, or written out of the arrangement. Yet the atmosphere is relaxed, even a little careless. Most of the old songs get one run-through, and nothing is played more than twice. The evenings end promptly at 10:30.
On the last night of rehearsal, the band invites family and friends to come by. During the middle of the set, Mrs. Lou Wilson, a pretty, fiftyish woman with bright blue eyes much like Nancy's, introduces herself. We move out into the lobby, sit on the stairs and talk while the sound of her daughters' band echoes softly in the distance.
The Wilsons, she explains, are an old military family, going back several generations. John Wilson, her husband, was a colonel in the marines who settled in Seattle after retiring and taught English at Sammamish High School. While Nancy and Ann were growing up, they lived in Southern California and Taiwan with their older sister, Lynn (now in Oregon with her four children).
"Yes, the girls have been able to hold onto the friendships and the values they've had from childhood. I was so afraid when I saw they were intent on entering the world of show business. But they haven't gotten tough or hard." She smiles thoughtfully. "It's a miracle.
"I don't have all the answers to why they haven't changed, but I have a theory," she continues. "We had incredible friends, an incredible support system based around the Congregational church. It's a very liberal church, with young ministers. At the same time our children were going through the Sixties, so were John and I. We left a world of phoniness and suburban values and became active in social issues. We smoked pot with our kids and did other things we never would have dreamed of doing. I marched in a peace march with three daughters and a grandson on my shoulders."
Ann, according to Mrs. Wilson, had a difficult childhood. "She was born just about ten days before her father left for Korea. All my loneliness and my fears, and here was this beautiful little baby that looked so much like him. Well, I smothered her with more affection and love than was normal." Ann had a bad speech impediment, and was obese during adolescence. Her stammer began to disappear when she took up the guitar, but she still has a running battle with her weight. "Ann learned very early that trick she has of standing outside of herself and making fun of herself. It was a defense."
Once, Mrs. Wilson says, she asked Ann what it felt like to be onstage in front of thousands of people. "It was a silly question, but I knew she'd really tell me what was in her mind. Do you know what she said? 'I think, okay for all of you. You guys used to call me fatty!'
"She's always so scared before she goes onstage," Mrs. Wilson muses, almost to herself. "Mike used to walk her out every night. I wonder who will walk her out now?" She stands up to go back inside, drawn by the music. "She'll be all right. I know she will."
"It is a little scary. When we were on the road and I was with Mike, and Nance was with Rog, well, we were protected from being hassled, from being lonely. This time, I don't know. Nance and I are going to try to always stay in a suite with two bedrooms attached to a living room. That way, we can have friends up, play guitar, watch TV. . . . "
Nancy Wilson interrupts her sister, laughing a little. "We'll be each other's keepers!"
Sammamish High School is a low, tan-colored cinder-block sprawl, the kind of building that was built quickly and cheaply to accommodate the sudden influx of students in the early Sixties. There is a large parking lot out front, athletic fields filled with gym classes on either side, and a carved totem-pole bulletin board by the entrance that reads WELCOME TO THE HOME OF THE SAMMAMISH TOTEMS. When we pass by, on the way back from the "ghost house," Ann pulls the Land-Rover into the lot, almost by reflex.
"God, I haven't been here in ages," she says, looking at Sue. Almost at once, they both say, "Let's go in."
It should be weird, like the "strange night," but it isn't. Here are these two strange girls-well, not girls, women – one dressed in Carnaby Street regalia, the other in a large cowboy hat, being trailed through the corridors of Sammamish High between fifth and sixth periods by a woman with a notebook and a photographer with four cameras hanging from her neck. But what is weird is that, for five minutes, nobody notices.
Finally, a boy wearing a neat tie, a student government sort, one of the social types, walks over and shakes Ann's hand. "Welcome to Sammamish. Will you be attending our performance of 'The Music Man'?" He adds, almost as an afterthought, "I enjoy your records very much." And walks away.
We move farther down the corridor, past the German classroom where Ann and Sue met, past the art department. Ann turns around and sees we're being followed, discreetly, by about fifty students--cheerleaders in uniform, studious girls carrying books up against their chests, boys with their hair still wet from gym showers. Kids who fit in. She signs a few autographs, and we flee to the Land-Rover.
"Sort of like A Hard Day's Night, huh?" someone says when we get back in the car.
"Yeah." Ann chuckles wryly. "A lot like Hard Day's Night."
She hits the gas, and we high-tail it out of the parking lot, turning left instead of right at the light, which is the only way to keep from getting caught by the proctors if you're cutting out of sixth-period study to hang out at the ghost house.
This story appeared in the May 15, 1980 issue of Rolling Stone.


text:
Woodlands teen advises 'see something, say something'
Published 3:44 pm, Tuesday, February 11, 2014
Twelve-year-old Mackenzie Earls of The Woodlands recently won the title of Miss Harris County's Outstanding Teen 2014.
Beneath her beauty, talent and designer gowns, said Earls, is a girl who's been tormented by anonymous posters on social media.
Earls hopes to take aim at cyberbullying with her platform, which encourages kids not to judge a book by its cover.
"It's easy to see someone and assume certain aspects about them without knowing them," she said. "I've been bullied a lot. I've been threatened. Somebody will write 'She is not who you think she is,' but you can't figure out who they are.
"My motto is 'see something, say something,' " she added, explaining that kids should report abuses to adults. "If I can get kids to speak out, I believe that things will get better."
In a fishbowl
Her mother, Dawn Earls, said today's youth seem to live in a "fishbowl" because of the prevalence of social media.
"Her platform is very relevant," she added. "It's definitely a hot button issue. People have made comments about her because of her successes at such a young age."
The young titleholder also said, "I think we need to have programs to help boost self-confidence, so that [insecure kids] don't have to put other people down. You get judged a lot by your looks, but it's important to really try to get to know a person before you form an opinion about them."
The seventh-grader at Knox Junior High turned 13 Jan. 25, making her eligible for the Miss Texas' Outstanding Teen Pageant to be held in Richardson in July, said Sheila Milner, executive director of the Miss Houston Organization, which produced the pageant.
Last summer, Sheridan Donevant, a junior at The Woodlands College Park High School, was crowned Miss Texas' Outstanding Teen and placed in the top 12 at the national pageant, which is affiliated with Miss America.
Donevant and Earls met six years ago as students at Dance Dynamics.
"The day I met her, I knew she would be a good friend for life," said Earls. "She always makes everybody feel comfortable."
In the studio's Shining Stars special needs program, the girls help teach dance to students with developmental disabilities.
"It was a special moment to help crown Mackenzie," said Donevant.
"The advice I have for her is to stay true to herself, work hard, journal her year and remember that God has an amazing plan for her life."
Among the 11 contestants, Earls won fitness, talent and interview categories.
For details
For further information on Earls and her platform, contact Milner at email@example.com.
Visit www.misstexas.org to learn more about Miss Texas and Miss Texas' Outstanding Teen.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Rainbow Warrior sails into Doha to challenge the WTO to force the US to commit to the Kyoto Protocol on climate change.
The World Trade Organisation (WTO) is one of the most powerful
institutions in the world. It oversees the global trade in goods
and services. There are currently 146 member countries of the
The WTO's primary aim is to serve the private sector rather than
governments: 'Although negotiated and signed by governments, the
goal is to help producers of goods and services, exporters and
importers conduct their business.'
This view of the world deletes important elements such as the
environment, the hundreds of millions of poor people who produce
for themselves (not for markets) as well as many other social and
human rights issues.
When the WTO was set up in 1995, the majority of developing
countries were not at the table and were barely consulted. As a
result, the WTO essentially protects multinational corporations
based in the North and acts as a tool of rich and powerful
countries - notably the US, the EU, Japan and Canada.
Although the majority of other WTO members are developing
countries from Africa, Asia/Pacific and Latin America, many of them
have little to say in decisions that are taken at WTO meetings.
Smaller countries are blocked from entering meetings and don't have
enough to offer from an economic standpoint to have any real
Not surprisingly, even though the WTO is a fairly new
institution, there has been public scepticism and concern about how
it functions since the beginning. Find out more about
previous WTO meetings.
The WTO came into existence after a long series of negotiations
that took place between countries from 1986 to 1994. It is made up
of a series of agreements and incorporates the old General
Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), a set of global rules that
governed trade in goods.
But while the GATT only focused on trade in goods, the WTO's
rules were extended to embrace many other topics, including
intellectual property, investment, services, telecommunications and
financial services (banking).
Just weeks after we uncovered US rice on supermarket shelves in Europe contained illegal genetically engineered (GE) rice, the scandal keeps growing with more illegal GE rice being discovered. In the latest blow for the GE industry, the world's...
In a three-year game of international chess, the EU and US squared off at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in what was billed as a winner takes all game. At stake, consumer choice about what they put on their plate: the food they want to eat...
Dear Pascal, more than a year ago, the US government teamed up with Canada and Argentina to complain to the World Trade Organisation (WTO) about the people of Europe.Europeans are simply too democratic, according to the US government, and public...
Monsanto and the US Government have been telling the world that genetically engineered crops pose no contamination threat to natural indigenous species. But Greenpeace has learned from a leaked report that NAFTA disagrees and is recommending...
In a letter to US Trade Representative Robert Zoellick this week, a collected front of 22 US agribusiness lobby groups and organized farm interests called on Washington to "take every possible action" against coming EU rules on labelling and...
Mexicans are being forced to swallow Monsanto's seeds of destruction, while back in the US, Monsanto is not allowed to grow its genetically engineered (GE) cotton for fear of GE contamination. To expose this double standard our activists blocked...
Greenpeace cordoned off the UN building in Montreal, to protect it from the US attack on consumers, farmers and the environment. Activists at the Greenpeace checkpoint were on the lookout for representatives of the US administration and Canadian...
Over 100 farmers in Northern Italy have discovered that non-genetically engineered (GE) maize seeds that they bought and planted, were in fact contaminated by GE maize. The fact that cases like this are happening on a regular basis, raises...
We gave two sacks of soy contaminated with Monsanto's genetically engineered (GE) varieties to Pascal Lamy (EU Trade Commissioner) and asked him to send them back to his US counterpart, Robert Zoellick. The right to say no to genetically...
The European Parliament has adopted the world's toughest rules on the labelling of genetically modified organisms (GMOs), despite intensified pressure from the US and the GE industry. The new rules bring great news for EU consumers, farmers and...
1 - 10 of 14 results.


text:
I have a problem creating a numeric list in a blog post.
It shows a bullet list irrespective of choosing the numeric or bullet alternative in the icon heading.
Have a look at the bottom of this entry. That list actually has hash (#) signs (commanding numeric lists), but ends up as if the asterisk sign (*) has been used.


text:
Students at San Miguel, a private school in Washington D.C. for disadvantaged Latino children, were graced with a surprise visit from Marc Anthony and Jennifer Lopez on Wednesday. School president Thomas Gerrow said the famous couple was interested in the school's mission. "Latino males are the lowest graduation rate in the country. And our success so far have been superb in order to overcome those issues," he said.
"I think it was a great honor to have two celebrities to talk about our education," said 6th grader Jivier Ruiz. The couple toured classrooms, and Lopez even offered to help one student with his report on Selena. We think that kid is guaranteed an A on his homework.
Anthony and Lopez, who were in D.C. to perform at the White House, encouraged the children to stay focused on their education. "I literally got a sense when I was walking in that I was looking at the future leaders of this country," said Anthony.


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Dwight Howard to Lakers: D12 Officially Traded to LA in Blockbuster DealAugust 10, 2012
In a massive, four-team deal, Dwight Howard is officially headed to the Los Angeles Lakers.
ESPN broke the story late Thursday evening that four teams agreed to a blockbuster trade that is sure to affect the balance of power in the league.
Howard is far from the only superstar set to change locations in the deal. ESPN's Marc Stein reported that the Lakers are sending center Andrew Bynum to the Philadelphia 76ers, and the Sixers will send swingman Andre Iguodala to the Denver Nuggets in the four-team deal. Yahoo's Adrian Wojnarowski, who first broke news of the deal, confirmed Friday afternoon that the deal was done.
Trade call is done with the league office. Dwight Howard has joined the Los Angeles Lakers.—Adrian Wojnarowski (@WojYahooNBA) August 10, 2012
In exchange for Howard, the Orlando Magic will receive Arron Afflalo, Al Harrington and Nikola Vucevic as well as a protected first-round pick from each of the three teams involved in the deal.
The 76ers will also receive Jason Richardson from the Magic, and the Sixers are sending their most recent first-round pick, Moe Harkless, to Orlando.
The Lakers have made it known in recent years that they're willing to move their young star at center—for the right price. They got the price they were looking for, and were able to even hold onto All-Star power forward Pau Gasol in the process. Kobe Bryant and Steve Nash, along with the rest of Laker nation, have got to be ecstatic.
It doesn't seem apparent upon first glance that the Magic were big winners in this deal, but they can finally move on from the dilemma that has rocked their franchise for a long, long time. They may not be playoff contenders at the moment, or in the near future, but they can finally start rebuilding under new GM Rob Hennigan and head coach Jacque Vaughn.
It was far from expected that two playoff contenders would help this deal to get done, but that's exactly how it happened. The 76ers and Nuggets are both desperate to build off last season's success and made big-time moves for their respective franchises in the process.
While leaving a team like L.A. will be heartbreaking, Bynum could end up happier than ever in Philadelphia. He'll be playing his home games just an hour away from his hometown of Plainsboro and can finally assume his rightful spotlight as a franchise player.
There's no doubt that his pride took a hit throughout all of these trade talks, and heading to Philadelphia is just what the doctor ordered for Bynum.
It looks like each team got their man, or in Orlando's case, got rid of their man. In turn, the landscape of the NBA has drastically changed.


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Joan Smalls, Isabeli Fontana and Edita Vilkeviciute also star in the campaign
Is this a new girl squad in the making? Kendall Jenner, Joan Smalls, Isabeli Fontana and Edita Vilkeviciute star in the new Calvin Klein Underwear campaign, shot by Mikael Jansson. All of them wear pieces from the collection and represent the brand's theme, which is "Original Sexy."
This isn't Kendall's first time to work with the American label (she is the face of a limited edition Calvin Klein denim collection, if you remember). However, this is her first underwear ad for CK.
"It was super fun. Every girl loves posing in her underwear. It's always fun to do that," Kendall told WWD. "I'm close with Joan, and me and all the girls are friends."
Watch the campaign video below and see all the campaign images here.
Fall 2015 Calvin Kein Underwear
The original sexy. Introducing the Fall 2015 Calvin Klein Underwear ad campaign, featuring Kendall Jenner, Isabeli Fontana , Joan Smalls + Edita Vilkeviciute. #mycalvinsPosted by Calvin Klein on Wednesday, 8 July 2015
Related: Kim Gordon and Christy Turlington join the Marc Jacobs AW15 campaign
Related: Gigi Hadid shows off her bikini bod for Seafolly


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Statement by the Federation for American Immigration Reform: President Obama Orders More Whittling Away of What Little is Left of Immigration Enforcement, Charges FAIR
Mar 14, 2014, 15:47 ET from FAIR
WASHINGTON, March 14, 2014 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The following statement was issued by Dan Stein, president of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, in response to President Obama's ordered review of deportation policies:
"President Obama's order that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) review its deportation practices 'to see how it can conduct enforcement more humanely within the confines of the law,' is yet another escalation of his ongoing defiance of U.S. immigration laws and the constitutional limits of his office.
"Mr. Obama's move appears to have come as a result of a highly orchestrated public relations campaign on the part of illegal aliens and their advocates to portray him as 'Deporter-in-Chief.' Nothing could be farther from the truth. Just this week DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson testified that his department has been mixing border removals with interior removals - a practice that has made total deportations appear larger than they actually are - and has all but ceased deportations of non-criminal aliens now in the U.S. In fact, during his first five years in office, President Obama's administration has removed the fewest illegal aliens, on an annual basis, since the Ford administration.
"The Obama immigration enforcement record is inhumane and unfair. It is inhumane and unfair to the millions of Americans who are losing employment and wage opportunities to the illegal aliens his administration refuses to act against. It is unfair to millions more Americans who are burdened with the staggering costs of illegal immigration, and to millions of legal immigrants who have played by the rules.
"The United States has the most generous immigration policies in the world. It is the people who violate our laws, to the detriment of the American people, who bear the responsibility for the hardships deportation imposes on their family members.
"By his own admission, President Obama lacks the authority to halt deportations of illegal aliens. Yet, he has repeatedly and systematically ignored or rewritten immigration laws to serve his own political objectives. It is incumbent upon Congress, even those who support granting amnesty to illegal aliens, to stand up to this blatant defiance of the constitutional Separation of Powers doctrine. The fact that Congress has not enacted the immigration reforms that the president desires does not give him license to act unilaterally.
"Thursday's move by the White House should also put to rest any consideration by the House of immigration legislation similar to the bill passed by the Senate last year. President Obama cannot be trusted to carry out any enforcement requirements of new immigration laws when he so flagrantly flouts the laws Congress has already enacted."
About FAIR
Founded in 1979, FAIR is the country's largest immigration reform group. With over 250,000 members nationwide, FAIR fights for immigration policies that serve national interests, not special interests. FAIR believes that immigration reform must enhance national security, improve the economy, protect jobs, preserve our environment, and establish a rule of law that is recognized and enforced.
Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20130103/MM36576LOGO


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You can make a difference in the lives of individuals with disabilities. Consider one of these options:
- Employ or help find employment for someone with a disability. Remember, we're looking for real work, regular wages in ordinary places…one person at a time.
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For Portal to continue providing meaningful and enriching services for people with disabilities, we must generate at least one-third of our annual operating revenues through gifts, grants and fundraisers.
We hope you will consider Portal worthy of your support.
Help Us Connect With Businesses For Employment Opportunities
Share Your Time & Talent – Volunteer
Help Insure The Future
We invite you to consider making a gift to The Portal Industries Endowment Fund – managed by the Greater Milwaukee Foundation. A growing endowment fund will enable us to lessen our dependence upon government funding, allow us to realize greater financial independence and permit greater flexibility in program development and performance. Your gift to the Portal Industries Endowment Fund will help assure a more secure future for the agency, service continuity and better outcomes.
Click here to learn more about Portal Inc. Gift Options
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Will Satan + Harry Potter = Box Office success? The new teaser trailer for Daniel Radcliffe vehicle HORNS has hit the web!
The film which stars Radcliffe, Juno Temple, Sabrina Carpenter is a supernatural thriller driven by fantasy, follows Ig Perrish (Radcliffe), the number one suspect for the violent rape and murder of his girlfriend, Merrin (Temple). Hungover from a night of hard drinking, Ig awakens one morning to find horns starting to grow from his own head and soon realizes their power drives people to confess their sins and give in to their most selfish and unspeakable impulses — an effective tool in his quest to discover the true circumstances of his late girlfriend's tragedy and for exacting revenge on her killer.
Sounds like a fun shift for his Potter audience! Woo-hoo, hold on to your Phoenix wands! Watch the trailer after the jump.
[via bloody-disgusting]


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Saturday, January 26, 2013
A Crack in the TTT Foundation: Vermont Law School is Cutting Back on Staff – and Making Faculty Non-Salaried
The Splendid News:
On January 18, 2013, Valley News published an article from Jon Wolpers, under the headline "Vermont Law School Gives Buyouts to 10 Workers." Check out this excerpt, from this glorious piece:
"The downsizing comes as a result of fewer applications over the past three years, VLS officials said, a problem that exists for law schools nationwide as potential students, dissuaded by a lack of open law jobs, don't bother to apply.
[VL$ spokeswoman Carol] Westberg said that about 200 students are set to graduate with juris doctor degrees this spring. She said the school is predicting between 150 and 170 students to enroll this coming fall.
"Essentially, law schools across the country have to figure out how legal education is changing, and how to deal with fewer applicants," Westberg said.
Although the school's faculty members haven't been affected yet, [pre$idenTTT Marc] Mihaly said that a similar buyout program is in the planning stages for professors.
That plan would have professors retain their titles, but no longer be salaried, instead working on a part-time or class-to-class basis.
"It's really not a separation, as much as a change in status," Mihaly said.
Those offers will be sent to faculty members in early February, he said. He was unsure of the amount of full-time positions that would need to be excised, saying that depended on next year's total enrollment.
"We just don't know where we're at yet," he said. "We'll know more mid-year." [Emphasis mine]
I cannot wait to see these overpaid, under-worked law school pigs bring home less loot, each pay period! When you consider how many students these trash heaps have financially ruined every single year, you should not have any sympathy for the thieving bastards. For $ome rea$on, the parasites chose to release low-wage workers before getting to the foul "educators." Evidently, this makes great economic sense to these blowhards.
The Commode's Financial Health:
Let's take a look at the 2011 Form 990 for Employer ID No. 23-7251952, i.e. VermonTTT Law $chool. On the bottom of page 1, line 22, you will note that the "no-profit" corporation reported having only $26,523,138 in total net assets, as of June 30, 2011. That is a very small endowment, for a supposed "institution of higher learning."
Under line 12, you will see that the private, independent garbage heap had $36,613,766 in total revenues, for that particular tax year. Line 18 shows that the school's expenses exceeded total income. Specifically, the toilet spent a total of $36,707,377 for the tax year ending June 30, 2011. This equates to an outflow of $93,611. By the way, this was before the commode announced that it was expecting much smaller class sizes.
Scroll down to pages 17 and 18 of this tax document, i.e. Part VII – Compensation of Officers, Directors, Trustees. There you will see how the toilet could cut some of its overhead expenses. For instance, Geoffrey B. Shields, then-dean and "president" of the trash heap, raked in $322,005 in TOTAL COMPENSATION, for this specific year. Yes, the bow-tied clown – who holds a BA in Economics from Harvard College – made $306,445 in reportable compensation, plus $15,560 in "estimated amount of other compensation from the organization and related organizations."
The following figures represent TOTAL COMPENSATION: David Firestone "earned" $174,924 as a "law professor" and supposed expert in Environmental Law. Oliver Goodenough received $172,954; and Marc Mihaly took in $194,336, before becoming dean and "president" of the cesspool.
Tuition: Full-time law students will be slammed with a big-ass tuition bill of $45,207 – for the 2012-2013 school year. Apparently, the pigs have not considered lowering these prohibitive costs - as a way to attract more applicants and students.
Ranking: At such extravagant costs, this must be one hell of an academic institution, right?!?! Well…according to US "News" & World Report, VermonTTT Law $chool is rated as the 119th greatest, most magnificent and prestigious law school in the entire land. What a truly impressive accomplishment, huh?!?!
Average Law Student Indebtedness: USN&WR lists the average law student indebtedness - for those members of the Vermont Law Sewer Class of 2011 who incurred debt for law school - as $136,089. Hell, 86 percent of this class took on such toxic debt. Remember that these figures do not include interest that accrues on the outstanding balance, while the student is enrolled in school.
Conclusion: In the final analysis, VermonTTT Law Sewer is a grossly overpriced dung pile, which provides its students and graduates with abysmal job prospects. You simply DO NOT NEED to incur an additional $150K-$185K in NON-DISCHARGEABLE debt, in order to perform a "public service" or supposedly save the environment. Everything boils down to economics. Unless you come from a wealthy family, you acquire more "education" so that you can improve your employment outlook and increase your earning potential. Try purchasing a home or starting a family, while owing such immense sums of "educational" debt. All of you who helped make this movement possible should rejoice over this news. Let's make sure to keep these pigs' feet, faces and asses to the fire!
35 comments:
- AnonymousJanuary 26, 2013 at 9:09 AM
The profs are going to be working on a part time basis?ReplyDelete
I thought that's what they were fucking doing right now. Only they're getting paid outrageous sums of money. Make sure to pay these worms for their part time work.
- AnonymousJanuary 26, 2013 at 9:51 AM
As a former adjunct, I welcome these motherfuckers to my former personal hell.ReplyDelete
- AnonymousJanuary 26, 2013 at 10:00 AM
Nando, I'm glad you made a full article out of what I sent you! Hopefully declining admissions will force some of these degree mills to shutter for good.ReplyDelete
If these con artists gave a damn about the future of the legal profession or maintained a shred of professional ethics they'd cut tuition IN HALF, take across-the-board salary cuts, and scale back the length of time needed to graduate. But they don't, they're in and out for the buck and don't give a damn.
But you reap what you sow. Declining admissions means less money coming in, and sooner or later these overpaid pigs will be on the unemployment line with the JDs they suckered out of three years of their lives and long-term financial health.
Unfortunately it's not all good news though. Some people are still trying to get in on the sinking ship and suck some money off the bloated, diseased cow before it collapses in on itself. Behold, Florida Space Coast School of Law: http://daytonatimes.com/2013/01/24/attorney-law-school-not-coming-to-daytona/
- AnonymousJanuary 26, 2013 at 10:31 AM
"Essentially, law schools across the country have to figure out how legal education is changing, and how to deal with fewer applicants," Westberg said.ReplyDelete
I love this rat's PR-driven mode of thinking. Legal education isn't "changing" you ponzi-schemer. It's SHRINKING being uncovered for what it is: a con by ivory tower vermin who never had the heart to go out into the world to stake their own claim. They're panicking because the fiction they built is crumbling in front of them.
The Emperor has no clothes. And everyone is starting to figure it out.
It's been a while since I done been on dis here internets thingamajiggy. I fell asleep behind da fuckin' fryers 'n nobody done did notice shit. 'xcept when they didn't get no paycheck. Then (and only then) did somebody wake meh up 'n pick my carcass off the ground. Da floor was sticky too. Ain't dat somethin'?ReplyDelete
Ennyway, 'nuff 'bout mah ol' decrepit self. Lemme jus' say dis. These schools get'st'a pay they faculty whatever the fuck they feels like. 'Cause they be gettin' dat gummint money every year. I don'ts gets shit from them fuckas. I's a real biznessman. If we's don'ts be sellin' enough chickin er biscuits er fuckin' cole slaw guess what happens to dat franchise. The owner shuts dat mo'fucker down. Unless he be wantin' to bleed money outta his asshole fo' a little longer.
Jus' t' shows ya what a southerly gentleman I is, here's an offer t' da displaced law professor folk who gonna be gettin' busted down t' part time status soon. Ya cans comes works fo' The Colonel. How does cleanin' out some gotdamn grease traps be soundin' to you rights 'bout now? If ya don't likes dat, we can train ya on how t' run da cash register. (knowin' how much you likes dat good ol' money in yer mitts 'n such.) 'N I ain't gonna lie t' ya. Ya don'ts gets t' spend hours on bullshit skolarly research either. I 'xpects ya t' work fo' ya earnin's. Got dat, part-time law professa asshole?
- AnonymousJanuary 26, 2013 at 12:58 PM
These bastards need to reduce tuition to $6-8K per year. Then they can yap about versatility, critical thinking skills, forthcoming baby boomer retirements, and the rest of their self-serving scammer nonsense. Law school will be a rip-off for a majority of students, but it won't be a life-destroyer.ReplyDelete
However, I don't want to see them fire the groundskeepers or the janitors. The way to reduce tuition is to either replace faculty with adjuncts, or vastly reduce the pay of full-time faculty.
I look forward to the day when law school administrators approach their faculty and say: here are your choices--you can accept a "voluntary" reduction in salary from $174,924 to $80,000, or we will close down this school as financially nonviable, and you can try to make a living practicing environmental law.Replies
- AnonymousJanuary 26, 2013 at 1:09 PM
- AnonymousJanuary 26, 2013 at 3:25 PM
It's disgusting, but all I can say is FUCK THOSE CUNTS! The next story I read better be about a law professor suicide. And the one after that. And that. And that. And that...ReplyDelete
Ok,...this REALLY DOESN'T MAKE SENSE...why would they first of all be cutting back the groundskeepers/maintenance of the Vermont Law School when they are an essential part of it??? they are the ones that keep it neat. They should cut off the "non essential PROFESSORS" FIRST...ReplyDelete
I'm 110% sure that the supposed "non essential groundskeepers/janitors" actually really NEED those jobs for an income for their families, not like the highly overpaid professors who already more than likely work for someone, have their own law practice or something else during the day.
This is hypocrisy at it's worst by that school not taking into account the staff who really NEED to go.
I surely would not attend a law school where they have overgrown grass and filthy bathrooms and other services...for $46,000+ PER YEAR NO!
That the first overall impression you get of any particular place wherever/whatever it is when you see how maintained the grounds and facilities are....
Also....on the other hand....yeah...VLS will cut back, but that sure as hell won't stop the "Cooley Train" or other law schools opening up schools all over the place =(
- AnonymousJanuary 26, 2013 at 6:05 PM
For a scam that worked so well for so long the faculty would be better served taking tiny reductions in pay so the lawn mowers can stay employed and they reduce the schools negative press.ReplyDelete
However when a scam is about to crash, the crooks try to instead squeeze every last drop out of it.
I can't believe my application to the Space Ghost School of Law won't happen now. Vermont here I come.
- AnonymousJanuary 27, 2013 at 2:41 AM
Put the profs at that shithole to use. Have them clean the toilets and mop the floors each morning.ReplyDelete
You realize just how unethical law school (and other academic) administrators are when they cut "non-essential" workers. Most of them are local people or immigrants who don't have a lot of other options for employment. And, in Vermont, there really aren't very many job opportunites, period, save for seasonal ones. Those profs come from elsewhere and, as a commenter pointed out of Prof. Campos' blog, the best and brightest, or most ambitious, leave the state to realize their dreams.ReplyDelete
Don't get me wrong. I love Vermont. But you go there to live after you've made enough money to get out of the rat race. An acquaintance of mine, who is a native of the Green Mountain State, says as much. She is a lawyer who graduated about a decade ago, before the collapse of the profession. She's doing some pretty lucrative work and says that after she saves enough, she's going back to Vermont to do wills and deeds and such. "You really can't make a living on that, much less pay off those loans students have now," she says.
On January 25, 2013, Derek Tokaz/BL1Y wrote a Business Insider piece entitled "Anatomy of a Law School Collapse." Take a look at this opening:
"What if you made a law school and no one showed up?
That may well be the reality facing Vermont Law School this Fall.
While many schools are facing a shortfall of applicants, Vermont has been forced to take the unique step of downsizing its staff. [vnews, sorry about the paywall] The school gave buyouts to ten of its staff, and laid off another two.
Not a particularly large ax to fall on the administrative heads, but the school has announced that professors will be next. Professors would get to keep their titles, but would effectively become adjuncts."
Later on, the article focuses on the financial situation facing VermonTTT Law Sewer:
"But the problems for Vermont extend beyond just a decrease in new students. Vermont is also taking in less money per student. Yes, like every law school, Vermont has hiked its tuition, going from $38,800 to $43,500 over the last 3 years, but unlike many other schools, this hike in tuition has been more than offset by a significant increase in scholarships.
Here are the scholarship stats from 3 years ago:
Students receiving any award: 62.9%
Awards of less than half tuition: 58.4%
Awards of half to full tuition: 4.0%
Full tuition: 0.5%
Median award amount: $7,0000
And here's the numbers for last year:
Students receiving any award: 66.6%
Awards of less than half tuition: 42.0%
Awards of half to full tuition: 21.3%
Full tuition: 3.3%
Median award amount: $15,675
Those full tuition awards are like losing another 2.8% of your revenues, and the increase in half-to-full awards are like losing another 10% (somewhat offset by fewer less-than-half awards).
So rather than dropping from 190 new 1Ls to 154, it's more like a drop from 190 to 130. And Vermont requires only a 2.5 GPA to maintain scholarships; we don't know what their curve is, but we're guessing they don't have a particularly high scholarship attrition rate. To make up for that shortfall in tuition, Vermont would have to sack about 10-15 professors, roughly 15-20% of its full time faculty."
As I noted in this main blog entry, the "non-profit" corporation already spent more money than it received, for the tax year ending June 30, 2011. The margin was slim. However, keep in mind that this private, independent trash pit has a very small endowment. Compared to established univer$itie$, the commode's total end-of-year assets are a spit in the ocean, i.e. such a small school is vulnerable.
- AnonymousJanuary 27, 2013 at 1:38 PM
Those fucking parasites should clean the bathrooms at KFC for a living.ReplyDelete
Just think: If Vermont Law closes, this country will lose its best Environmental Law program!ReplyDelete
I guess I'll have to look into Space Law. Or maybe Latte Law.
- AnonymousJanuary 27, 2013 at 5:24 PM
Why does a state of 600,000 residents need more than 1 state-run law school anyway? Considering the closeness of New Hampshire and Massachusetts (which is busting at the seams with law sewers) an argument could be made Vermont doesn't need even a single law school. There aren't any major industries (insurance, government, pharma, healthcare, communications, etc.) headquartered up there that demand any sort of legal services. You couldn't even make a modest living as a solo criminal defense attorney since they're all aging hippies that sit around eating ben and jerry's ice cream. It's an economic desert. People in Vermont don't even respct this shithole school.ReplyDelete
First the groundskeepers go, then when the place looks like a dump with five foot high weeds and no one is attending all they have to do is board up the windows and padlock the damn gates. One day it'll be like one of those old mental asylums that kids go break into.
Keep up the good work Nando! When people google half these shitty schools your website is the first thing that comes up! This blog plus negative word-of-mouth from us mopes who learned the hard way will be the downfall of these bastards.
- AnonymousJanuary 28, 2013 at 1:54 AM
Krokus "Eat the Rich"ReplyDelete
- AnonymousJanuary 28, 2013 at 3:46 AM
That a good point about letting go of the groundskeepers, which might turn out ot be a big mistake.ReplyDelete
Nature reclaims all, and it doesn't take very long for that to happen.
I remember when a once posh and very popular restaurant closed down and how, within two years, the place looked as if it had been abandoned for over twenty years.
The weeds grew odd and tall and everywhere, and choked the parking lot and building. Vandals broke the windows and plywood was put in the place of the windows. Paint peeling etc.
But that was just one property. I have seen many a derelict, abandoned business and property go that way.
And one thing I always found kind of ironic is that the name of the derelict and abandoned restaurant or business will remain, typically on a big and fading sign either on or in front of the business on a pole or a stand.
And I guess that is because it costs money to remove the sign or name of the business, and no one either has or wants or is motivated to spend the relatively nominal cost to take the sign down or cart it away.
And so Dr. TJ Eckelberg silently remains and watches over the valley of the ashes.
If you live long enough, you see all kinds of ironic stuff. Imagine if, in 20 years, some of the abandoned law schools ended up looking like this:
- AnonymousJanuary 28, 2013 at 8:14 AM
The chickens are coming home to roost. I love it! I have a holiday in my heart after reading this! The day of reckoning is upon the law school pigs!ReplyDelete
- AnonymousJanuary 28, 2013 at 11:55 AM
You guys think these profs even understand those concepts? I mean they should.ReplyDelete
Colleges understand the importance of sellling themselves. ANd they are in the business of competing for students among thousands of other colleges. How much money is devoted to appearances? Landscaping, plant ops and capital improvement usually get big budgets.
What's one of the first things you see on college brochures? The campus, the fall leaves.
You always want to put your best foot forward. Whether as a person or institution. That's why you don;t see beautiful women advertising they have athlete's foot or their bipolar disorder. And why they still wear makeup and pretty clothes
You could be the perfect job candidate and you wouldn't volunteer to the interviewer that you have a tendency for drinking on the job. Or wearing women's panties on your head while you watch Saturday morning cartoons. Or that you beat up your landlord when you were 18 but he didn't press charges. These landscaping cuts really could hurt the school.
- AnonymousJanuary 28, 2013 at 12:37 PM
Finally, law schools are getting a taste of what law graduates have been dealing with for years. Law schools have killed the golden goose by overproducing graduates and increasing tuition. I would love to see many full time faculty, that have never practiced law, have to go into solo practice and have to talk to an actual client.ReplyDelete
This profession sucks!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
- AnonymousJanuary 28, 2013 at 1:17 PM
Unless the law professors are going to take out the trash, police the grounds for refuse and operate lawn mowing equipment, it is a terrible idea to let go of the groundskeepers and support staff first. I am sure there are law professors at Vermont that are either on sabbatical (which is in itself an unspoken part of the higher education scam) or have light teaching loads. Those professors should be targeted for the buy-outs, not the people who keep the school looking nice. This decision just goes to show how fucked up and narrow minded these sonsofbitches are. They are delaying the inevitable and perhaps even accelerating their own demise. It couldn't happen to a better group (excluding the groundskeepers who are getting a raw deal).ReplyDelete
For any 20 or 30 something kids that are thinking about taking out student loans, here is how six figure student loan debt affects the credit score:ReplyDelete
- AnonymousJanuary 28, 2013 at 4:53 PM
Our work is starting to pay off!ReplyDelete
"Avoiding Law School In Droves" by Karen Sloan of the National Law Journal January 28, 2013
- AnonymousJanuary 28, 2013 at 4:57 PM
Congratulations! Yours was for a long time a single voice calling the schools to task for their greed.
But you're only half-way there; until the Federal student loan spigot is turned off, there will still be schools to take advantage of the gullible and sadle them with $$$ in non-dischargeable debt. So next: stop the flow of Federally insured money to these educational pyramid schemes.
- AnonymousJanuary 28, 2013 at 5:50 PM
The brochures will have pictures of the grounds from years past, when they had groundskeepers.ReplyDelete
- AnonymousJanuary 28, 2013 at 8:18 PM
These motherfucking law school deans and professors created a huge mess in the legal market. The legal profession is TOO SATURATED. We have reached Thunderdome conditions for practicing law with all the competition for the few paying clients left out there. The market will now correct itself by forcing most of these diploma mills to close. I cannot wait to see these deans and professors try their hand at private practice. Those assholes will finally know what it is like for a cop to be sent to prison to meet his "victims" or "collars."ReplyDelete
- AnonymousJanuary 28, 2013 at 8:36 PM
I cannot stress enough the importance of blogs like this. Prospective law students use the internet primarily when researching schools they are stupidly thinking about attending. This website is so important as it comes back as a top search result when googling many law schools.ReplyDelete
This is the internet generation and this site is supplying them with the truth and knowledge needed to wisely choose NOT to go to law school. This is why the amount of people taking the LSAT is at its lowest point since 1983. This is why Vermont Law is cutting groundskeeper (and soon professors). This is why they are cold calling. This is why the pigs are writing Op-Eds in a pathetic display of desperation trying to keep the fiction going.
Thanks to people like Nando, we are at a point of critical mass. The momentum is in our favor. The wind is at our backs. We'll be standing on the summit watching the swine run for cover as their schools start to close. And we'll bask in the glory of knowing we always had truth and rightousness with us while they only had deceit and fudged statistics.
The jig is up you bastards.
Thank you for the kind words, 8:36 pm. I am proud of my work in documenting the law school cartel. I remember when ball-less shills would claim that these scamblogs were "pointless." How often does a small group of committed people - with the truth on their side - beat the hell out of a billion dollar industry?!?!ReplyDelete
I will continue to flush these turds down the commode. After all, they have FINANCIALLY RUINED legions of young people. The law school pigs lured people in with their false employment placement and starting salary figures. Once, the mainstream press - and educators such as Brian Tamanaha and Paul Campos - called the bastards out, then the commodes started publishing more accurate numbers.
People who had their hearts set on law school then had to do a cost-benefit analysis. Notice that those with higher LSAT scores are now avoiding law school at a much higher rate than the lemmings who scored poorly on that TTT exam.
On April 10, 2012, the Atlantic published Jordan Weissmann's piece entitled "The Wrong People Have Stopped Applying to Law School." Take a look at his biting remarks:
"Among the many unfortunate developments in higher education over the past decade, one of the most talked about has been the law school bubble. In the heat of the recession, a record number of students decided that it would be a good idea to dive six-figures into debt for a shot at a legal career. Many were lured with utterly misleading job placement stats, as well as a stubborn misperception that law was still a safe career choice, that a J.D. even guaranteed a living wage. Once they graduated, many realized otherwise.
Last month, the Law School Admissions Council (a.k.a., LSAC) published data indicating that the bubble finally seemed to have popped -- a merciful development, as I put it at the time. The number of LSAT tests administered has plummeted over the past two years, and fewer students are accepting admission. This is a happy turn of events. The fewer grads being funneled into an super-saturated industry, the better. (Full disclosure: I used to work for a law firm.)
Yesterday, LSAC released a new bit of evidence* that law school has finally lost its luster. Applicants are down more than 15 percent for the year. But there's one problem: The wrong students have stopped applying.
Take a look at the chart below, which shows the number of applications from prospective students in each LSAT range for 2012. Here's the take away: The number of students applying who probably have no business going to law school has dropped the least. The number of students applying who probably should be going to law school has dropped the most."
Here is Weissmann's conclusion:
"So the smart kids got the memo. Law school is largely a losing game, and they're not going to play, even though they can probably count on a better hand than most. Meanwhile, the number of laggards applying has barely budged.
Maybe that's just what makes the smart kids the smart kids."
Now, the overall number of applicants has declined sharply over the last two years. This is great news. However, keep in mind that the law school cockroaches will seek to delay their demise. We need to continue bringing the heat to these bastards.
- AnonymousJanuary 29, 2013 at 9:04 AM
I think it is idiotic how the administrators of this school believe they will save some money by firing the low wage earning groundskeepers. The law school higher ups would buy more time by unloading dead weight faculty. I hope these same groundskeepers harass the town inspectors to fine the law school when they fail the sanitary and municipal codes for grass height, etc.ReplyDeleteReplies
You see this mentality everywhere; for example, the Mormon Church has abandoned having full-time janitorial staffs at their churches. Salt Lake City wants the churches everywhere to volunteer to clean themselves up, while at the same time they rake in anywhere from a quarter million to one million dollars from each church. Now COJCOLDS is not in the dire straits of the lawl skools, but forcing people to clean up their churches while the Salt Lake elect spend 8 billion on a shopping mall shows more than a little myopia, yes?Delete
(The LDS does have zone janitors who go from church to church, but they only hit those churches at most twice a year.)
- AnonymousJanuary 29, 2013 at 12:15 PM
At least the groundskeepers and janitors work year round keeping the place looking nice. They aren't overpaid and they don't go on fucking sabbatical for pointless, bullshit research.ReplyDelete
Yeah, let's get rid of the low-paid, hard working guys first. Makes perfect sense...if you're a law professor that sucks dick at math.
- AnonymousJanuary 29, 2013 at 5:44 PM
Well since the trough at Vermont Law is shrinking the pigs have to kick some out and keep sucking up as much as they can before it's over.ReplyDelete
With all their education and lofty rhetoric the law school "academics" turn into cut throat wild animals when they are slightly threatened.
- AnonymousJanuary 29, 2013 at 6:52 PM
The following charts report ABA applicants and applications for each of the past three falls. Looks like the scam is starting to fall apart ...ReplyDelete
On November 26, 2012, Business Insider published a piece from Abby Rogers, under the title "Vermont Law School Prepares For The 'Revolution' With Staff Cuts." Check out this opening:
"Vermont Law School is cutting staff in preparation for what its president and dean say are revolutions sweeping the legal profession and higher education, Dave Gram reports for The Associated Press.
The law school is offering voluntary buyouts to its staff and might soon do the same for its faculty as it deals with increasingly small enrollment.
The school expects to graduate a little more than 200 lawyers this spring, a number that drops to 150 for its class of 2014.
"When our enrollment goes down, we have to downsize," law school President and Dean Marc Mihaly told the AP."
Cockroach Marc Mihaly apparently believes that it is better - and more cost-effective - to release the low-paid workers first. Hell, dead skunks have a deeper understanding of economics than this supposed "educator."
Paul Campos posted a January 23, 2013 entry labeled "Vermont Law School to start buying out faculty next month." He copied and pasted the entire Valley News piece - and then added this hilarious parting shot:
"P.S. Prospective students should be sure to check out VLS's #1-ranked environmental law program."
I am truly enjoying this news. In the end, these lying pigs are not entitled to rake in ridiculous salaries, for their minimal amount of "work." Let's see how many of these "law professors" waltz into Biglaw firms. Remember, these swine love to state that they could make more money practicing law, but they teach instead as a "public service." Of course, law firms do not pay you to conduct meaningless academic research. Plus, they expect you to work more than 4-6 hours per week.


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Skip to Content
On a windy day, my neighbor's wind turbine makes more power than she needs, so she makes hydrogen with that power and stores it up for a calm day when she needs it, or she can sell it back to the grid.
Hydrogen is the lightest element in the universe. It also holds a great deal of potential energy, which makes it a versatile energy storage medium that can be produced on-site, transported or even mixed with natural gas to create a cleaner energy supply. Let's talk about how we can use hydrogen (H2) to help us meet Maine's energy needs.
A hydrogen fuel cell at NREL


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What is wrong with me? Why do I do this to myself? Everything I want is right in front of me and I run the other way. And I'm not only hurting myself. I'm killing the only man who has ever loved me, character flaws and all.
I said yes. The morning after having wonderful, painfully passionate sex with Jim in my office, I said yes to Robert. What was I thinking?
Robert is not right for me. I'm sure he's right for someone…he really is a good man…but I'm not myself around him. By agreeing to marry him, I condemned myself to years and years of pretending to be someone I'm not.
He wouldn't recognize the woman I become at work. I tell him about cases sometimes, but it's entirely different to actually be there. He wouldn't believe the opinionated, somewhat belligerent hard-ass of the seventh floor is Alexandra Cabot. And he would hate it. He would hate that I can be so relentless. Hearing that I fought for the death penalty is one thing, but if he were to actually see the perps I'm trying to have killed, he could never look at me again.
And unfortunately, it's who I really am.
That's what Jim sees. He has been there at my worst points, at my meanest points, and he stuck by me. He doesn't abandon me and condemn me for doing my job, because he understands. He knows that I'm fighting for something that is bigger than my personal beliefs, more important than the way I appear. I'm upholding the law. I'm trying to stop violence from happening, or at least from reoccurring.
He is always at my side, supporting me, even when we are arguing so violently that we should probably be frisked for weapons. He's always there…so why do I do this to him?
I could hardly sleep last night. I kept thinking about Jim and the look in his eyes as he made love to me. The way it felt to have his weight on top of me, the feel of his muscles under my fingertips. I didn't allow myself to give in fully to the sensations at the time, knowing that I was being unfaithful to Robert, but I couldn't stop replaying it in my mind after.
I felt like I was cheating on Jim, lying in bed next to Robert and letting him trace patterns on my arm.
When Robert asked me to be his wife, I responded without even giving myself a chance to think. He looked so relieved, so happy…and it was like a stab in the chest. He came to me and pulled me against him, kissing me and guiding me back to the bedroom. I knew he wanted to make love to me, and I knew that I should have no reason not to let him, but I had several reasons.
I was afraid that I would say Jim's name instead of his. I held in my cries in my office, weighed down by the guilt of what I was doing, but I didn't think I could do it again. I didn't trust myself not to betray where I had really been last night.
I made a ridiculous excuse to Robert; I told him I was on my period. In reality, I was too sore. I could take the pain when it was Jim moving inside me, but the very thought of letting Robert do the same made my entire body hurt. So I left the house and came to the office.
I tried to act naturally with Jim, but he asked me to dinner. I knew he would do something like that, and he had every right to. We had sex. Of course he thought I was going to leave Robert for him, of course he thought I wanted to be with him. And I did. But I couldn't let myself.
The look in his eyes when I told him about the engagement…he tried to look flippant and annoyed, but I could see his heart shattering. And it was entirely my fault. I don't deserve to have the love of a man like Jim Steele in the first place, and then I threw it away.
I couldn't say no to Robert because the thought of his face if I declined was too much. I didn't want to hurt him. But why is hurting Jim so much easier?
It's not. It's harder, and I know that now. I just didn't think about it before. I thought about what Robert would feel if I said no, but I didn't let myself consider what Jim would feel if I said yes.


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"Perhaps we should have been a little clearer. At the point of generation, wind produces no pollution or consumes no water. You are right that the manufacture of wind turbines and the transporting of them uses energy; which would yield some environmental impacts. But, energy is used to make fossil fuel and nuclear plants, energy is used in the extraction of fuels during mining and drilling, and energy is used to transport the fuels to the plants, all of which also have additional environmental impacts from those sources which we did not include in the comparison. The same is true for the transmission lines."
Wonderful job soft peddling the impact of the manufacture of Industrial Wind Turbines... I might add that in China the thousands of casualties from the sulfides, heavy metals and thorium radiation from the mining and processing of the rare earth metals which make up the permanent magnets for the generators are insignificant. After all there's a billion or so of them, so no big loss. Hard to muster compassion when there's major cash to be had.


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Compiled from Times wires
© St. Petersburg Times
published February 23, 2003
ROCKINGHAM, N.C. -- Gray skies, high winds and a steady rain is not what North Carolina Speedway needed in its bid to keep two races.
Bad weather wiped out all of the on-track action Saturday, as both Winston Cup practices were canceled and the Busch Series race was rescheduled for 11 a.m. Monday. That gives NASCAR another reason to take a date away from Rockingham.
Under the realignment proposal NASCAR first brought up last month, tracks could lose races in 2004 for a combination of criteria, ranging from attendance, availability of hotels and restaurants and even Mother Nature.
On NASCAR's checklist, the tiny track in the sandhills of North Carolina would fail in every category: today's race is not sold out, the surrounding area has limited attractions, and abysmal weather limited the Winston Cup cars to one hour of track time Friday in preparation for the Subway 400.
One area in which the track does receive high marks is driver preference, with most of the field fond of the high-banked, 1.017-mile oval.
"I hope we always run two races at Rockingham -- heck, I'd run 10 races a year at Rockingham if I were in charge of NASCAR," said Johnny Benson, who scored his only Winston Cup win here in November.
Drivers enjoy Rockingham because the emphasis is on skill instead of how good the car is. With more than one groove, passing is frequent, and cars can easily slice through the field.
"I think Rockingham is an awesome race track, from a driver's standpoint and from a fan's standpoint," Ryan Newman said. "I'll always say that a real race track is one you don't have to go out and figure out if there is a passing groove or if we can run the outside line.
"A lot of drivers will tell you they can come from the back here with a good race car and pass, whereas at other tracks you get stuck in the back with a good race car."
But Newman acknowledges that the facilities lag behind the new tracks to which NASCAR wants to give Rockingham's races, so regardless of driver opinion, the track probably is in trouble.
"If it was up to me, and if I was a race track promoter, I'd build a race track like this at a different venue, provided the market was right, just because I think this is a good race track," he said.
If it was up to Jamie McMurray, who won the Busch race here in November, NASCAR would leave Rockingham alone and set its sights on other tracks -- like Darlington Raceway in South Carolina.
"I love this place. This is the best race track of any of them," McMurray said. "They could blow up Darlington. ... I hate that place."
McMurray is the highest starting rookie in today's race; he'll start from the seventh spot.
Like most teams, McMurray used what little track time there was Friday to run the car in its race setup.
So with the rain falling and the realization that there would be no practice Saturday, it was obvious in the garage who made the right call in eliminating the emphasis on qualifying the day before. "Good thing we practiced (Friday)," said Lee McCall, Sterling Marlin's crew chief.
CHECKER SCHUCK'S KRAGEN NATIONALS: Doug Kalitta claimed his second top qualifying position this season, leading a parade of track-record performances in Chandler, Ariz. Tony Pedregon and Bruce Allen also were top qualifiers.
Kalitta drove his dragster to a track-record time of 4.512 seconds at 328.62 mph to top the 16-car Top Fuel order.
Pedregon claimed both ends of the track record in Funny Car while taking his first No.1 qualifying position of the season and the 18th of his career. He ran a 4.789 at 322.11 in a Ford.
Defending event winner Allen earned his first top position at this track and 15th overall, leading the 16-car Pro Stock lineup. He clocked a track-record time of 6.831 at 201.31 in a Pontiac.


text: On Sun, May 12, 2002 at 04:10:39PM +0200, Joerg Stephan wrote: > Hello, > > i've a short problem installing my second harddisk. > I connectet it, and configured it with fdisk > and disklabel, of course it worked. > But i'am not able to mount. > > bash> mount /dev/wd1a /mnt > mount: cannot open 'dev/wd1a': Device not configured What do dmesg | grep wd disklabel -r wd1 say? Did you newfs the partitions? Cheers, Patrick


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KJ Hannah Greenberg has a new book out called Don't Pet the Sweaty Things. Check it out and check out her views on the short story market today. I'll be back tomorrow with photos from the last couple of weeks and stories from my fevered hallucinations while high on cough syrup.
Given the advent of convergent media and their impact on the world of publishing, these days, editors and writers agree that the contemporary short story market is much like the seemingly amorphic colossus described in "The Blind Men and the Elephant." More explicitly, whereas groups or individual gatekeepers and creatives get the gist of some aspects of this bold, new bazaar, no one understands this souk in its entirety.
Contemporary social expectations have evolved alongside of contemporary telecommunications, too, in a race to determine not who has the most toys, but, furthermore, whose toys are the shiniest. In simple terms, burgeoning innovation has complicated the industry. Championship, to a significant degree, has become a guessing game. It seems, nowadays, that it's better to be morphed into a gelatinous wildebeest, transported to Planet Nine, or else exposed to outer world experiences than to win a Pushcart Prize or National Endowment for the Humanities monies. Fortunately, feelings are not facts.
What continues to be true is that "the rules" have been vaporized. In their place sit poorly fitting literary brannocks. At the same time as meagerly fashioned fluff rules "popular," i.e. mass market publications, the literary and the pulp markets, the publishing world's extremes, respectively, are shifting. No longer do writers sell only science-based speculative fiction. Instead, we sell an array of imaginary stuff including, but not limited to: alternate history, bizarre fiction, cross-genre fiction, cyberpunk, slipstream fiction, soft science fiction, steam punk, and weird tales.
Despite this upheaval in what constitutes content fit to be marketed, we writers, and the folk who befriend us, remain motivated to broadcast patterned words. Presently, electronic and audio venues vie with traditional print forums for the best short fiction. Roll call URLs such as Ralan's SpecFic & Humor Webstravaganza and Duotrope's Digest help established and emerging writers, alike, find homes for their short works.
When assessing the short story market, in addition, it behooves us to appreciate that writers are no more likely to make a living being word players today than we were ten or one hundred years ago. Most short stories authors sagaciously keep their day jobs. Despite the fact that odd ducks, because of merit, fortune, or both, make five and six digits on works issued by traditional presses, by print on demand presses, or by vanity and self-publishing presses, most skilled folk are happy to get, if not membership in SFWA, then bylines at respectable locations.
All things considered, even the end that is peer recognition is not freely given. Half of the problem is the tonnage of garbage that gets mindlessly submitted to people populating mastheads (I can vouch for this phenomenon since I edit for Bound Off and for Bewildering Stories). Many newbies, but also a good per cent of older, cantankerous sorts, think it costs nothing for them to submit, at the touch of their keypad, work to multiple outlets, and to do so simultaneously; they forget someone has to read the received work.
The other half of the problem is the half-baked efforts offered up by otherwise good writers coupled with the diminishing energies available from good periodicals' exhausted staffs (see above for the rationale for droopy masthead members). Although getting published takes more than a roll of the dice, it can be very confounding either to find a welcome mat or to find work worth welcoming.
What's more, not each and every published morsel is created equally. I remember, during my stint as a literary critic at Tangent, feeling loss at the nearly formulaic, i.e. safe for sales, nature of most of the stories that managed to squeak onto the pages of renowned magazines. Fortunately, we have places as Critters.org, where "the best and the brightest," alongside of newcomers unafraid of risks, send their work for peer feedback. I've enjoyed proportionately more of that latter group of manuscripts, bumps, warts, and so forth, then the methodically published, albeit technically "well written" stuff splat on the big guys' pages.
Auxiliary to the aforementioned, in publishing, as in many other industries, the socio-economic activity of networking counts. Publishers who enjoy their authors' work often open back doors for them. Less frequently, but more astonishingly, publishers invite their favorite writers to contribute tales. In my own modest experience, I've enjoyed both modes of getting my writing into print. I'm disinclined, however, to name where I enjoy such accommodations.
Related to the boons of networking are the drawbacks of scams. From publishers who insist that their naïve contributor must buy copies of anthologies, in which those writers' work is presented, to broadcasters who create unrealistic literary contests, money is being made from the energies of innocent writers. Watchdogs such as Preditors [sic] and Editors and such as Absolute Write Water Cooler exist, yet writing remains a "sellers beware" business.
More exactingly, we live in a span during which base individuals have no compunction preying on we creatives' longing for success. Just as labdanum was produced mainly for the perfume industry, but was used, by unscrupulous sorts, as an adhesive for royalties' fake facial hair, Internet opportunities have both multiplied writing outlets and have attracted hoards of nasties. It's of small wonder that some writers prefer to obsess over pretend beasts than to struggle to get our short works to audiences.
Nonetheless, in the end, we writers can't help but respond to our urge to reveal, to scrutinize, and to gather together fantastic moments, no matter the state of the publishing industry, specifically, or of the economy, in general. Writers write and will often do amazing things to make sure that their readers can read.
As for me, I confess to continuing to be incorrigible when it comes to generating texts. Happily, my gatekeepers and readers encourage me to do more of the same. To wit, my latest book, Don't Pet the Sweaty Things, published by Bards & Sages Publishing, was born.
When readers find that their work day has diminished their endorphins, that they need a new reason to slip under the covers with a flashlight, or that they simply want to laugh a loud, a bit more, they ought to open Don't Pet the Sweaty Things. This book's anthropomorphic tales are populated with: spacelings, with anxiety-prone rabbits, and with literate penguins. This collection of seventy yarns includes stories of: postpartum tree hoppers with libido problems, multi-headed aliens intent on altering Earth's fiduciary systems, couch potatoes on notice for otherworlders' attack, and juvenile chimera chicks tilting against human culture's prejudices. Besides being good for a few hours' worth of entertainment, the existence of Don't Pet the Sweaty Things demonstrates that writers can find means to broadcast their musings in this upside down, contemporary short story market.
About the Author:
KJ Hannah Greenberg has met few imaginary friends with whom she hasn't wanted to consort. Her short, speculative fiction, particularly, blows bubbles at many addresses, including at: AlienSkin Magazine, AntipodeanSF, Big Pulp, Danse Macabre, Morpheus Tales, Strange, Weird and Wonderful, Theaker's Quarterly Fiction, and Weirdyear. More globally, her short fiction can be found at dozens of outlets, including at: American MENSA's Calliope, Fiction365, The Medulla Review, Pulp Metal Magazine, and Raphael's Village. Look for her online, "Jewish" Science Fiction, writing class this May.


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Historical records matching Norma Talmadge
Immediate Family
<private> Jesselex-husband's child
About Norma Talmadge
A major box office draw during the silent film era for more than a decade, Norma Talmadge earned the title 'The Lady of the Great Indoors' for her weepy society melodramas. She is best remembered for her role in Smilin' Through (1922), but she also scored artistic triumphs teamed with director Frank Borzage in Secrets (1924) and The Lady (1925). For her contribution to the motion picture industry, Talmadge has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1500 Vine Street.
She was born on May 2, 1894 in Jersey City, New Jersey, the eldest daughter of Fred Talmadge, a chronic unemployed alcoholic, and Margaret "Peg" Talmadge, a witty and indomitable woman. Talmadge's childhood was marked by poverty. One Christmas morning Fred Talmadge left the house to buy food and never came back, leaving his wife to raise their three little daughters. Peg took in laundry, sold cosmetics, taught painting classes, and rented out rooms.
The Brooklyn-raised Talmadge began acting at the neighborhood Vitagraph studios in the early 1910s, making impressions as the doomed seamstress in "A Tale of Two Cities" (1911) and in her first starring role, "The Battle Cry of Peace" (1915). A dark-haired, dark-eyed beauty with a classical profile, Talmadge was making a series of dramas for Triangle/Fine Arts when she wed producer Joseph Schenck in 1917.
The Schencks formed The Norma Talmadge Film Company, releasing films through First National and made scores of features through the 20s. Talmadge's salary and popularity rose year by year with such hits as "Smilin' Through" (1922), "Within the Law" (1923), "Secrets" (1924), "Kiki" (one of her biggest successes, 1926), "Camille" (1927), "The Dove" (1928) and scores of others. In 1927, Talmadge became the third star (after Pickford and Fairbanks) to immortalize her footprints in front of Grauman's Chinese Theater.
Her career pretty much ended with the silent era. Talmadge retired after two unsuccessful talkies ("New York Nights" and "DuBarry, Woman of Passion", both 1930). She left Schenck in 1934 for vaudeville star George Jessel, then settled down, wealthy and happy, with a third husband in Las Vegas. After suffering from arthritis and several strokes, she died there in 1957, largely forgotten by the public.
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norma_Talmadge
- http://www.goldensilents.com/stars/normatalmadge.html
- http://movies.yahoo.com/movie/contributor/1800117367/bio
Norma Talmadge (May 26, 1894 – December 24, 1957) was an American actress and film producer of the silent era. A major box office draw for more than a decade, her career reached a peak in the early 1920s, when she ranked among the most popular idols of the American screen.
A specialist in melodrama, her most famous film was Smilin' Through (1922), but she also scored artistic triumphs teamed with director Frank Borzage in Secrets (1924) and The Lady (1925). Her younger sister Constance Talmadge was also a movie star. Talmadge married millionaire film producer Joseph Schenck and they successfully created their own production company. After reaching fame in the film studios on the East Coast, she moved to Hollywood in 1922.
Talmadge was one of the most elegant and glamorous film stars of the roaring twenties. However, by the end of the silent film era, her popularity with audiences had waned. After her two talkies proved disappointing at the box office, she retired a very wealthy woman. She is little remembered, yet in her day she was hugely popular and the epitome of stardom.
Partial filmography
Norma Talmadge's Timeline
May 2, 1894
Jersey City, NJ, USA
December 24, 1957
Age 63
Las Vegas, NV, USA