text:
As generally happens, Pierre did not feel the full effects of the physical privation and strain he had suffered as prisoner until after they were over. After his liberation he reached Orël, and on the third day there, when preparing to go to Kiev, he fell ill and was laid up for three months. He had what the doctors termed "bilious fever." But despite the fact that the doctors treated him, bled him, and gave him medicines to drink, he recovered.
Scarcely any impression was left on Pierre's mind by all that happened to him from the time of his rescue till his illness. He remembered only the dull gray weather now rainy and now snowy, internal physical distress, and pains in his feet and side. He remembered a general impression of the misfortunes and sufferings of people and of being worried by the curiosity of officers and generals who questioned him, he also remembered his difficulty in procuring a conveyance and horses, and above all he remembered his incapacity to think and feel all that time. On the day of his rescue he had seen the body of Pétya Rostóv. That same day he had learned that Prince Andrew, after surviving the battle of Borodinó for more than a month had recently died in the Rostóvs' house at Yaroslávl, and Denísov who told him this news also mentioned Hélène's death, supposing that Pierre had heard of it long before. All this at the time seemed merely strange to Pierre: he felt he could not grasp its significance. Just then he was only anxious to get away as quickly as possible from places where people were killing one another, to some peaceful refuge where he could recover himself, rest, and think over all the strange new facts he had learned; but on reaching Orël he immediately fell ill. When he came to himself after his illness he saw in attendance on him two of his servants, Terénty and Váska, who had come from Moscow; and also his cousin the eldest princess, who had been living on his estate at Eléts and hearing of his rescue and illness had come to look after him.
It was only gradually during his convalescence that Pierre lost the impressions he had become accustomed to during the last few months and got used to the idea that no one would oblige him to go anywhere tomorrow, that no one would deprive him of his warm bed, and that he would be sure to get his dinner, tea, and supper. But for a long time in his dreams he still saw himself in the conditions of captivity. In the same way little by little he came to understand the news he had been told after his rescue, about the death of Prince Andrew, the death of his wife, and the destruction of the French.
A joyous feeling of freedom—that complete inalienable freedom natural to man which he had first experienced at the first halt outside Moscow—filled Pierre's soul during his convalescence. He was surprised to find that this inner freedom, which was independent of external conditions, now had as it were an additional setting of external liberty. He was alone in a strange town, without acquaintances. No one demanded anything of him or sent him anywhere. He had all he wanted: the thought of his wife which had been a continual torment to him was no longer there, since she was no more.
"Oh, how good! How splendid!" said he to himself when a cleanly laid table was moved up to him with savory beef tea, or when he lay down for the night on a soft clean bed, or when he remembered that the French had gone and that his wife was no more. "Oh, how good, how splendid!"
And by old habit he asked himself the question: "Well, and what then? What am I going to do?" And he immediately gave himself the answer: "Well, I shall live. Ah, how splendid!"
The very question that had formerly tormented him, the thing he had continually sought to find—the aim of life—no longer existed for him now. That search for the aim of life had not merely disappeared temporarily—he felt that it no longer existed for him and could not present itself again. And this very absence of an aim gave him the complete, joyous sense of freedom which constituted his happiness at this time.
He could not see an aim, for he now had faith—not faith in any kind of rule, or words, or ideas, but faith in an ever-living, ever-manifest God. Formerly he had sought Him in aims he set himself. That search for an aim had been simply a search for God, and suddenly in his captivity he had learned not by words or reasoning but by direct feeling what his nurse had told him long ago: that God is here and everywhere. In his captivity he had learned that in Karatáev God was greater, more infinite and unfathomable than in the Architect of the Universe recognized by the Freemasons. He felt like a man who after straining his eyes to see into the far distance finds what he sought at his very feet. All his life he had looked over the heads of the men around him, when he should have merely looked in front of him without straining his eyes.
In the past he had never been able to find that great inscrutable infinite something. He had only felt that it must exist somewhere and had looked for it. In everything near and comprehensible he had seen only what was limited, petty, commonplace, and senseless. He had equipped himself with a mental telescope and looked into remote space, where petty worldliness hiding itself in misty distance had seemed to him great and infinite merely because it was not clearly seen. And such had European life, politics, Freemasonry, philosophy, and philanthropy seemed to him. But even then, at moments of weakness as he had accounted them, his mind had penetrated to those distances and he had there seen the same pettiness, worldliness, and senselessness. Now, however, he had learned to see the great, eternal, and infinite in everything, and therefore—to see it and enjoy its contemplation—he naturally threw away the telescope through which he had till now gazed over men's heads, and gladly regarded the ever-changing, eternally great, unfathomable, and infinite life around him. And the closer he looked the more tranquil and happy he became. That dreadful question, "What for?" which had formerly destroyed all his mental edifices, no longer existed for him. To that question, "What for?" a simple answer was now always ready in his soul: "Because there is a God, that God without whose will not one hair falls from a man's head."


text:
How did I find this out? In order to prepare for the happy day in the future when permanent, high-speed connections to the Internet will be offered in my area, I decided it was a good idea to start investigating security issues. The results were shocking.
The first shock came from looking at my long-neglected /var/log/syslog* files. A few 'refused connect from' entries. One 'connect from' to ftp which apparently succeeded. Oops. Dial-up Internet users are not overlooked by the crackers after all. And my security is not bullet-proof. Better to spend some time really looking at security. And to try to understand something of it this time. So this meant reading books, FAQ's, HOWTO's, and a lot of articles on the Web; and doing some experiments.
This is the result of my investigations. Mind: I am not an expert, but just an amateur, a home user trying to make things work. Nothing of this comes with any guarantee.
The contents of /etc/hosts on heaven, and c:\windows\hosts on earth, is:
127.0.0.1 localhostThis shows that my network uses the domain name my.home. This name is unregistered and meant only for local use. Mail to the outside will have its 'message from' and 'envelope from' addresses translated (in the July and September issues, 1999, of LG I described how to do this).
192.168.1.1 heaven.my.home heaven
192.168.1.2 earth.my.home earth
A LAN which is not connected to the Internet is a private network by definition. Unplug your modem, and you make your network private. But that is a not the kind of private network that I mean. I want to use the Net, send and receive mail, browse the Web, download files, etc. I just do not want anyone from the outside to enter my network.
Linux systems generally aren't private networks. By default, the installation procedure of a Linux distribution sets up all sort of nice network services (like telnet, ftp, finger, etc.) which are accessible by anyone in the world, protected (if at all) only by a password. Also, Microsoft Windows home LAN's are generally not private. Connect two Win95 computers and enable 'file sharing', and the whole world can share your files while your Internet connection is up.
To make non-private networks safe, various techniques are used; passwords of course, and also other security techniques that have been discussed in the Linux Gazette many times, like tcpd (alias tcp wrappers) and kernel-level packet filtering (with ipchains as the user interface). These techniques give some privacy to a system which is essentially public. They are like guards at the door, put there to keep out unwanted characters, while letting the desirable customers in. But why should there be doors at all? I don't want any customers. My network is private!
If we have servers running, reachable by the outside world, we always have to worry about having made some configuration mistake which can be exploited. Also, server programs often have bugs in them which offer openings to crackers. Only recently one was discovered in named. OK, it was later patched, so people who got the newest version of named do not have to worry anymore about this bug. But what about the next one? Better not to to have any doors at all!
If you really want to enable services (mp3 distribution, or whatever) for use by computers outside your home, you must study more advanced security techniques. But if you simply want a private network for the home, read on.
So: have your system scanned! Apart from Secure Design, other scan services exist, e.g. Shields Up!, DSL Reports, Sygate Online Services, and many others. A whole lot of them can be found at an Austrian site, Sicherheit im Kabelnetzwerk ('Security in the Cable Network'; there is also an English version with almost the same information). Use several scan services. Print the results. What this 'scanning' actually means will hopefully become clearer in the course of this article.
You can also 'scan' your system yourself by calling (after su-ing to root) netstat -pan --inet. Use a wide xterm window when doing this, because the output consists of rather long lines. Programs which have 0.0.0.0 in the 'Local Address' column are visible to the whole world!
One way of creating a private network is not to install servers at all, just clients. But that is too simple if you have a network at home connecting two or more computers. Inside your network you want to telnet from one machine to another, you want to run an internal mail service, etc. In other words you can't do without servers.
What servers do is listen. They listen for a signal that says: I want your service. The signal (at least for the TCP-based services) is a special IP packet, called a SYN packet, that enters your computer and specifies the number of a service. For instance, the number of the telnet service (that the in.telnetd program, if it is running, listens to) is 23. These numbers are usually called 'port numbers'. If the in.telnetd program is not running, no one listens to SYN packets with the number 23. So, as they say, 'port 23 is closed'.
Ports do not exist by themselves, like little doors in your computer that you can open or close. A port is open if a server listens to it. Otherwise it is closed. A TCP port comes into existence if there is a program which listens to it, and if not, it does not exist!
How do the SYN packets get into your computer? In the case of heaven, a packet can get 'into' it in three different ways:
It would be nice if all the server programs available on Linux systems had options specifying which interfaces they will listen to. In that case you could just tell all your servers never to listen to the ppp line, and you'd be all set. Hardly any security measures would be needed at all (tcpd, firewalls, etc.); you would only use them 'for good measure', as an extra precaution. Maybe this will happen at some time in the future, but at the moment only a few server programs have this (including the important cases of exim and samba). So we have to do several things to make our network private:
Examples of unneeded services are:
There is usually a command to prevent a service from starting automatically upon boot-up, by removing it from the start-up directories; for instance I got rid of a tamagotchi server, automatically installed by Debian 2.1, by calling
update-rc.d -f /etc/init.d/tama remove
alias startx="startx -- -nolisten tcp"The -nolisten tcp command should really be in one of the X11 resource files, but so far I haven't found out which one. The 'alias' approach works in any case. To test, run (as root) netstat -pan --inet. X should no longer be mentioned. Of course it would be nicer if we could keep X's network abilities for the local network, only blocking them against outside access, but I couldn't find a way to do that.
bind interfaces only = TrueAfter /etc/init.d/samba restart, the Samba daemons only listen to our home LAN. They are no longer visible to the outside world. Check with netstat -pan --inet, and by having the system scanned.
interfaces = 192.168.1.1
Exim turns out to have an option local_interfaces (which goes into the MAIN CONFIGURATION section of /etc/exim.conf). This is a list of (IP addresses of) interfaces that exim will listen to. This only works when exim runs as a daemon, independent of inetd. To set this up:
listen-address 192.168.1.1:5865
and now only machines on our own network can connect to it (including the gateway machine that junkbuster runs on, heaven in this example, provided heaven is entered in the Netscape 'Preferences/Advanced/Proxies' menu, not localhost).
0 DaemonPortOptions=Addr=192.168.1.1
in the sendmail.cf file. I did not try this.
Other problem cases may remain: servers which you need in your own network but which cannot be made private, and for which private alternatives do not exist. I have this problem with cannaserver, a system for inputting Japanese characters from the keyboard. Such services must be screened from the outside world by means of a packet-filtering firewall. See section 10 of this article.
One way to configure xinetd for telnet and pop3 is to put in /etc/xinetd.conf:
instances = 10
log_type = SYSLOG daemon
log_on_success += DURATION HOST
log_on_failure += HOST
interface = 192.168.1.1
service telnet
socket_type = stream
wait = no
user = root
server = /usr/sbin/in.telnetd
service pop-3
socket_type = stream
wait = no
user = root
server = /usr/sbin/in.qpopper
So apart from a general 'defaults' section which specifies the interface, there is a separate section for each service that you want to run. Although the format is completely different, the data for the various sections can be found in your existing inetd.conf. See also man xinetd.conf.
I started xinetd and verified that is is now possible to telnet to heaven both from heaven itself and from earth. However, Secure Design no longer reports that my system has open telnet and pop3 ports! Success! NOTE: from my own machine, telnet heaven succeeds, but telnet localhost does not. xinetd can only bind to one interface; in this case 192.168.1.1, not at the same time to localhost, which is the loopback interface (127.0.0.1).
By now, all other services in /etc/inetd.conf have been commented out. Therefore inetd no longer does anything and we can get rid of it in the boot-up scripts. In Debian, it goes like this:
update-rc.d -f /etc/init.d/inetd removeIts place is taken by xinetd:
update-rc.d xinetd defaultsOK; another step towards security successfully taken.
The output of netstat -pan --inet is now something like:
heaven:~# netstat -pan --inet
Active Internet connections (servers and established)
Proto Local Address
Foreign Address State PID/Program name
tcp 127.0.0.1:25
0.0.0.0:* LISTEN 11391/exim
tcp 192.168.1.1:25
0.0.0.0:* LISTEN 11391/exim
tcp 192.168.1.1:139
0.0.0.0:* LISTEN 10761/smbd
tcp 192.168.1.1:5865 0.0.0.0:*
LISTEN 1670/junkbuster
tcp 192.168.1.1:110
0.0.0.0:* LISTEN 161/xinetd
tcp 192.168.1.1:23
0.0.0.0:* LISTEN 161/xinetd
tcp 0.0.0.0:515
0.0.0.0:* LISTEN 148/lpd
udp 192.168.1.1:138
udp 192.168.1.1:137
udp 0.0.0.0:138
udp 0.0.0.0:137
raw 0.0.0.0:1
0.0.0.0:* 7
raw 0.0.0.0:6
0.0.0.0:* 7
Almost all services now listen to a local interface. The print system is the exception: it listens to address 0.0.0.0 (i.e., everywhere) on port 515. Sure enough, if the system is scanned now, only port 515 is reported as 'open'. In fact some Windows-oriented scan services will report your system as totally 'closed', because they do not scan port 515.
What happened? Simply that earth, the Windows machine, only does three Internet-related things:
To switch IP masquerading and forwarding off, in Debian, you do
One often reads the advice to configure ipchains in such a way that 'everything is blocked by default', and then to make exceptions for the things that you want to allow. Theoretically this may be the right thing, but in practice it leads to much frustration. If everything is blocked, your system will basically not work. You are more or less groping in the dark when it comes to deciding what you have to allow. So I allow everything by default, and then add restrictions one by one. If the system breaks (e.g. no ping, or no Web page viewing) the last restriction has been too drastic, and must be undone. Setting the default policy of a chain to DENY or REJECT can then (again) be the last step, not the first.
I started by taking down the firewall (ipchains -F) and then running a simple firewall script with one rule:
# simple firewall
ipchains -F input
ipchains -P input ACCEPT
ipchains -A input -i ppp0 -p TCP --syn -j DENY -l
This blocks SYN packets coming from the outside interface, enhancing the privacy of the system very considerably. Nobody from the outside can start a connection; outside scan services report that the site is completely closed (some now even call it 'stealthed' or 'invisible'). But we can add more restrictions. That is, we can use more general DENY/REJECT rules, and more specific ACCEPT rules.
Before you add restrictions, it is useful to do some experiments. You can make ipchains-type rules which let packets through while logging them (-j ACCEPT -l). So even if (like me) you do not really know which packets to block, you can see what is going on 'normally' by keeping a window open with tail -f /var/log/syslog in it. Then afterwards you can make rules to block packets which are not 'normal'. I strongly advise you to do your own experiments, and to make rules based on your own understanding.
After a few such experiments, my firewall script in /etc/ppp/ip-up.d looks as follows. This assumes you have no nameserver running, but have the addresses of TWO nameservers provided by your ISP in /etc/resolv/conf. Mind the important backquotes (`)! They may disappear if you cut-and-paste from this page.
# A slightly more complicated firewall
# Find external name server addresses
ns="`grep nameserver /etc/resolv.conf | awk '{print
nameserver1="`echo $ns | sed -e 's/ .*//'`"
nameserver2="`echo $ns | sed -e 's/.* //'`"
# Set up INPUT rules
ipchains -F input
ipchains -P input ACCEPT
# Block outside input from reserved address ranges
ipchains -A input -i ppp0 -s 10.0.0.0/8
-j DENY
ipchains -A input -i ppp0 -s 172.16.0.0/12
-j DENY
ipchains -A input -i ppp0 -s 192.168.0.0/16
-j DENY
# Block TCP connections from the outside
ipchains -A input -i ppp0 -p TCP --syn -j DENY -l
# Block all UDP except nameserver replies
ipchains -A input -i ppp0 -p UDP -s $nameserver1
53 -j ACCEPT
ipchains -A input -i ppp0 -p UDP -s $nameserver2
53 -j ACCEPT
ipchains -A input -i ppp0 -p UDP -j DENY -l
# Allow (for now) but log all ICMP
ipchains -A input -i ppp0 -p ICMP -j ACCEPT -l
# From local net, allow only packets to us and broadcasts
# Forwarding is off, other packets won't go anywhere,
# now we can log them to detect illegal activity
on our net
ipchains -A input -i eth0 -d 192.168.1.1
-j ACCEPT
ipchains -A input -i eth0 -d 192.168.1.255 -j ACCEPT
ipchains -A input -i eth0 -j REJECT -l
# Set up OUTPUT rules
ipchains -F output
ipchains -P output ACCEPT
# Don't send packets out to reserved address ranges
ipchains -A output -i ppp0 -d 10.0.0.0/8
-j REJECT
ipchains -A output -i ppp0 -d 172.16.0.0/12
-j REJECT
ipchains -A output -i ppp0 -d 192.168.0.0/16
-j REJECT
# Block all UDP except nameserver requests
ipchains -A output -i ppp0 -p UDP -d $nameserver1
53 -j ACCEPT
ipchains -A output -i ppp0 -p UDP -d $nameserver2
53 -j ACCEPT
ipchains -A output -i ppp0 -p UDP -j REJECT -l
# Allow (for now) ICMP to the outside, but log
ipchains -A output -i ppp0 -p ICMP -j ACCEPT -l
# We do not have FORWARD rules; forwarding is off
Such a firewall (which you should adapt to your personal tastes and needs) will provide an extra 'shell' around the system. But basically, the security of your system should not depend on the firewall; if only because firewalls are complicated things, and it is far too easy to make mistakes with them. Many other things can be done first to ensure the privacy of your network.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
London, UK, 7th February 2011 – Canon today announces the launch of the new Speedlite 320EX and Speedlite 270EX II – a duo of new additions to its leading EX Speedlite range. Designed for EOS Digital SLR (DSLR) owners who want to use creative lighting techniques to make their photography more engaging, each new model is ideal for experimenting with different lighting set-ups with off-camera support, allowing users to alter subject lighting and add ambiance to a scene.
Ideal for users of the newly-launched EOS 600D and EOS 1100D DSLRs, the Speedlite 270EX II replaces the Speedlite 270EX at the entry level of Canon's Speedlite range, whilst the Speedlite 320EX is a compact, powerful and versatile flash for users of mid-level cameras who want to take more control over lighting. Both new models are compatible with Canon's distance-linked E-TTL II system, and can be used on-camera or as slave units controlled by a separate master unit or the Integrated Speedlite Transmitter of the EOS 600D, EOS 60D and EOS 7D. Ideal for more creative home studio shooting or general use, each model adds a new dimension to portraits or still life shots.
The Speedlite 270EX II – Compact, pocketable light
Perfect for users who want a small, pocketable flash unit, the Speedlite 270EX II is a compact, high-power flash with a guide number of 27 (m/ISO 100) and fast, silent recycling between shots. Flash settings can be manually controlled through the camera menu system, and photographers can experiment with the manual bounce flash head for different effects, as well as the zoom head to ensure efficient light distribution across the scene.
Providing the freedom for photographers to light a scene in a range of different ways, the Speedlite 270EX II launches with additional slave capability, allowing for creative, off-camera use. A new Remote Release function also wirelessly triggers the shutter release on a compatible EOS DSLR, allowing users to set up lighting without having to make repeat trips to the camera. Photographers can frame their shot, wirelessly trigger the two-second shutter release timer on the camera body, and then reposition the flash anywhere in the scene – capturing the image as the camera then fires both the flash and shutter release.
The Speedlite 320EX – versatile and powerful performance
Offering additional functionality, the new Speedlite 320EX is the ideal flash unit for amateurs and professionals looking for a secondary flash, featuring the ability to light a scene when recording movies. An LED flash offers a guide number of 32 (m/ISO 100), as well as the ability to change the flash coverage from 24mm to 50mm by manually extending or retracting the flash head. The flash head can also be rotated for more flexible bounce flash shooting, creating a wider variety of lighting effects.
The Speedlite 320EX's slave utility allows it to be controlled by a master unit via one of four selectable channels. Flash group A, B or C can also be selected, controlling the relative power of the flash and the resulting lighting effect. The Speedlite 320EX also features the Remote Release functionality allowing users to trigger their camera from the flash.
In a first for Canon Speedlite, the Speedlite 320EX features a Video Light function, complementing bodies with EOS Movie by enabling users to illuminate low light scenes continuously when capturing HD video. When using the Speedlite 320EX in combination with the new EOS 1100D or EOS 600D, Auto Light mode ensures that the LED light automatically turns on or off according to the ambient light of the scene when in Movie mode.
Key features of the Speedlite 270EX II
- Lightweight compact design
- Guide Number 27 (m, ISO100)
- Bounce flash head
- Wireless slave function for off-camera flash
- Trigger your EOS camera with Remote Release button
- Variable angle of coverage
- Fast, silent recycling
Key features of the Speedlite 320EX
- Guide Number 32 (m, ISO100)
- Compact lightweight design
- Bounce-and-swivel flash head, with 24mm and 50mm zoom settings
- Integrated LED video light
- Wireless slave for off-camera TTL flash
- Remote Release button
- Fast, silent recycling
When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here's how it works. |


text:
I was an early supporter of Ryan McGinley's snapshot/verite/street/ hippy/color style going so far as to suggest he join Magnum when I
was the director in 2003. But he's done just fine on his own, thank you! At 24 Ryan McGinley was the youngest artist ever to have a solo show
at The Whitney. Then last year he was awarded ICP's "Young Photographer of The Year" award.
Kathy Ryan, the New York Times Magazine's picture editor, was another early supporter commissioning McGinley in 2004 to do a portfolio of photographs of the U.S. Olympic swim team. Quite naturally, McGinley shot them underwater. Since then he has been a regular for the magazine and last week they ran 28 pages of his pictures of Oscar nominees in their annual "Breakthrough Performances in Film" portfolio. (Where their unforced plein-air inventiveness put Vanity Fair's over-produced behemoth to shame.)
As with every portfolio, there were great pictures and some merely good ones, but the most intriguing thing in this multi-media age was the accompanying film clip from the Times' website. It not only gives an interesting insight into McGinley's process, but shows that he might just be as good a video artist and film-maker as he is a photographer.
Friday, February 15, 2008
Weekend Video - Ryan McGinley
4 comments:
- Unknown said...
..or better video artist. it had a sweetness that the stills lacked, the stills almost looked like they were from another shoot. esp, the casey afflec shot at the aquarium, the video was gorgeous.
- February 15, 2008 at 11:12 AM
- momo said...
How gentle.
- February 16, 2008 at 9:30 AM
i agree; i thought the pictures were great. but maybe you're on to something -- perhaps what he really wants to do is direct...
- February 19, 2008 at 8:52 PM
Your blog is interesting and spontaneous. Ryan McGinley's work is breathtaking and beautiful.
- February 21, 2008 at 11:38 PM
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text:
Breast cancer affects 1 out of every 8 women in the USA. To successfully treat cancer, early detection is very important. It is highly necessary for women to know the signs of invasive breast cancer from its inception and seek medical help early instead of battling the latter stages of the disease.
These are the five warning signs and symptoms of breast cancer that every woman should know:
1. New moles or change in an existing mole
Moles can be seen as an early indicator of breast cancer. Women with moles had a 13% risk of developing breast cancer than women with no moles on them.
2. Hoarse throat and persistent cough
If cancer from the breasts spreads to the lungs, it can lead to persistent coughing and hoarseness of the throat. According to statistics, about 60-70% of cancer patients, breast cancer metastasizes to the lungs, causing a dry cough and shortness of breath.
3. Irregular bowel or bladder movement
Breast cancer patients may experience a change in their hormones, leading to drying of the urethra and causes incontinence. This can cause leaking of urine when laughing, coughing, exercising and even sneezing. Also, these patients may have an urgent need to urinate and the urination takes longer than usual.
4. Tiredness and fatigue that cannot be explained
Most cancers include tiredness and fatigue. Cancer patients may feel tired even after a good night's sleep. Also, they may experience depression and pain too.
The fatigue is not triggered by physical exhaustion but by a chemical imbalance in the body which is caused by cancer.
5. Unexplained pain in the back
8 out of 10 people can have back pain. Also, it has been discovered that breast cancer can be responsible for the irritating pain in the back.
The breast cancer patient feels pressure on the spine and ribs, including pain in the upper back. It may appear as if the pain is from the bones, which may also mean the breast cancer may have spread to the person's bones.


text:
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Created for: The Sims 4 Creator Terms of Use
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The annual Tunes & Blooms concert series at the Cincinnati Zoo starts tomorrow at 6pm. Just as in the past, this series features local music in a very unique setting and promises to be a great way to get back outside and enjoy the Spring season in Cincinnati.
Presented by CityBeat and WNKU, Tunes & Blooms is a free weekly concert series put on each and every Thursday evening throughout the month of April. The bands that come to play at the Zoo are some of the most respected and admired local acts and they promise to put on quite a show. The kickoff event this week features both Chuck Cleaver's Wussy as well as local indie pop sensation Pomegranates. A fairly unique pair, this promises to be quite a show on a night where the weather should be nothing but spectacular.
There are a few other things you should know about Tunes & Blooms which has five incredible shows over the next month. First off, admission to the Zoo is free after 5pm and the shows start around 6pm. While parking is $7, it is a good deal whether you drive a car over or jump on the Metro lines 1, 46, or 78. Secondly, the event will happen rain or shine. Tomorrow's weather looks very promising, but as Spring carries on it is a great reminder that regardless of what the weather is there will still be music happening at the Zoo each Thursday.
We are lucky enough to have five Thursdays in April this year, and the schedule is packed for each one. Stop over and enjoy some free music at the Zoo as one way to get back outside and enjoy all that Cincinnati has to offer. You will find the schedule of shows for this year's Tunes & Blooms below.
April 15 – The Newbees + The Seedy Seeds
April 22 – Faux Frenchmen + Psychodots
April 29 – Jake Speed & the Freddies + The Turkeys


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Red, gold porcelain earrings with carat gold plated, 925 sterling silver back. Made from coloured porcelain and hand painted with carat gold. Colour: gold, size: 2,5 cm.
Queens Gold, earrings
"Queens gold" earrings are handmade with original technique by using coloured porcelain painted with carat gold and gold plated 925 Sterling silver. Porcelain is one of the most durable, sustainable and sophisticated materials used in contemporary jewellery. Colour: gold, size: 2,5 cm.
Jewellery collection "Queens gold" was created as prototype at Meissen Porcelain Factory. Inspired by 200 year old plaster mould elements.


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BUY COOKING JEWISH by clicking here now.
What is Cooking Jewish?
Contact Judy at email@example.com
Cooking Jewish is tradition—heirloom recipes passed down through the generations. Cooking Jewish is devising modern spins on old classics. Cooking Jewish is preserving memories as we create new ones. Cooking Jewish is cooking from the heart, a memory in every bite.
And you don't have to be Jewish to cook Jewish!
There are very few dishes that can be exclusively called Jewish. Wherever Jews have wandered, they have incorporated the cuisine of their neighbors into that serendipitous amalgamation we think of as "Jewish food."
We are the ancestors of the coming generations and the keepers of memories for our children. We treasure our heritage as we create new traditions.
Food and family, family and food....I can't think of one without the other. Let's eat together, celebrate together, and enjoy!
New Passover e-book from Cooking Jewish!
Tradition! Tradition! Got kugel? Got Kugel with farfel? Now you do!
My favorite Passover recipes from Cooking Jewish are now available in a short, handy, digestible e-book: The Perfect Passover Cookbook (Workman Publishing), for your e-reader, available on amazon, barnes and noble or wherever e-books are sold.
These 54 recipes are gathered from five generations of my food-obsessed family into a celebratory saga of Passover feasts.
You'll just go mashuga for:
Gnocchi for Passover!
Orange County Register/Fullerton News Tribune
April 3, 2014
Kosher gnocchi means you don't have to pass on
kitchen delights during Passover
Seating ancient and new at the same table
My column on OU's website, Shabbat Shalom includes recipes for My Chicken Marbella from "Cooking Jewish," Orange Beets with Almonds from "The Healthy Jewish Cookbook by Michael van Straten and Apricot Jelly Roll from Joan Kekst's "Passover Cookery"
Passover is the most observed Jewish holiday of the year. Even those who never step inside a synagogue pull out all the stops for this one. With our celebratory meal, the Seder, we retell the 3500-year-old story of our ancestors' flight to freedom from the land of Egypt. And everything on the table is laden with meaning.
The centerpiece is the Seder plate, holding the traditional symbols. On every Seder plate sits karpas (a green vegetable), the symbol of spring, which we dip into salt water as we remember the tears shed by our ancestors. Actually for Jews in the shtetls (little villages) in Eastern Europe, spring arrived late, and greens were rare at Passover time. "My father's family always used potato," suggested my friend Yiddish songstress Lori Cahan-Simon, "but added parsley as karpas in the new country, so we have, in effect, parsley potatoes!" Read the whole story.
Vibrant foods flavor the Passover feast
The Orange County Register, April 17, 2008
Two new cookbooks offer traditional and fresh looks at the holiday menu.
by JUDY BART KANCIGOR
When Sarine and Murad Kattan left Aleppo, Syria, in 1947 for their honeymoon in Italy, their thoughts were of love and their future in their beloved homeland, where their family and the larger Jewish community had lived and flourished for centuries.
Back in Aleppo, the announcement of the United Nations partition of Palestine fueled the already smoldering atmosphere of anti-Semitism, setting off pogroms (organized massacres) that virtually extinguished all Jewish life, erasing centuries of this rich, thriving culture.
Find recipes for Chicken Soup With Asparagus and Shiitakes, Served With Roasted Fennel Matzo Balls and Braised Brisket With Thirty-Six Cloves of Garlic from Jewish Holiday Cooking when you read the whole story. For Stuffed Eggplant with Quince recipe from Aromas of Aleppo click here and for Candied Coconut with Pistachios click here.
Making holiday memories
Canadian Jewish News April 2008
by Judy Bart Kancigor
Happy New Year! No, I haven't forgotten how to read a calendar (and can still find my way home and hardly ever drool on my sweater.) For Jews preparing for Passover (beginning Saturday evening, April 19) the spring holiday is another way to mark the beginning of the Jewish year.
While Rosh Hashanah, literally translated "head of the year," is the spiritual new year, Nissan, the month of Passover, is sometimes considered the first month, because it denotes the beginning of our liberation from slavery and the exodus of our ancestors from Egypt.
And just in time for Passover, the culinary crescendo of the year for Jewish cooks, comes the long-awaited "Passover by Design" (Artscroll) from Susie Fishbein, with over 130 Passover-adjusted recipes, plus 30 brand-new ones, and the leap-off-the-page, glorious photos and clever décor ideas we have come to expect from this wildly popular author of the Kosher by Design series.
"Passover by Design" contains many of the recipes we love in Fishbein's previous books, conveniently reformulated for the holiday, plus some enticing additions, including Teriyaki Chicken Satés, Beef Roulade on Creamy Parsnips, Sliced Beef with Shiitakes and Cherry Brandy Sauce, Steamed Sea Bass in Savoy Cabbage, Cranberry Chicken, Quinoa Timbales with Grapefruit Vinaigrette and Chocolate Chip Cheesecake.
Celebrating Passover with her large, lively family brings back vivid memories, said Fishbein by phone from her home in New Jersey. "It was just a frenzy, people of all ages celebrating together. The women tended to live into their nineties. That was always so beautiful, so many generations sitting at the table. There were so many people, so much to do. It was just a really happy, busy time."
Got matzoh?
The festival of Passover, which begins this year at sundown on Wednesday, commemorates the exodus of the Hebrew slaves from Egypt. Because in their haste to depart they could not wait for their bread to rise, the dough was baked in flat cakes. To commemorate our passage to freedom, Jews throughout the world eat matzo for the eight-day holiday (seven in Israel). Strict rabbinical rules govern every aspect of its production.
"Our process with our Passover matzoh," explained David Rossi, vice-president of marketing for RAB Food Group, owners of the Manischewitz brand, "from the time water touches the flour and gets mixed, then sheeted, made thinner and thinner, to the end of baking in the oven – can be no longer than 18 minutes. If there is a mechanical failure or some issue or error where the matzoh did not get through that run in 18 minutes, then the whole run must be thrown away."
Before the company can begin production for Passover, the entire facility must be thoroughly cleaned and inspected – a procedure that makes Mama Hinda's routine seem like a light dusting.
"The process takes four to seven weeks," Rossi noted. "All the belts, all the lines, all the motors, all the ovens are cleaned and kashered (made kosher) to meet strict rabbinical standards for Passover."
Turning out hundreds of Passover items, in addition to 10 varieties of matzo – spelt is Manischewitz's new flavor this year – is no overnighter. "We begin making Passover products in September until early March for the following year," Rossi noted. "Because the plant is kashered at tremendous expense, we produce Passover products until we've run all the requirements for the year. Then in March we start making non-Passover products."
Passover - spring cleaning on steroids!
My grandmother, Mama Hinda, was a burier. No, not an undertaker. Okay, spell it berye. Yiddish for major-domo cleaner extraordinaire. As in white glove test above the door frame. As in you could eat off the floor. As in using the basement oven to keep the upstairs kitchen clean.
And if Mama was thorough during the year, before Passover she was fanatic, whipped to a joyous frenzy to ready the house for the holiday and remove all chometz (bread or any food containing leaven)…every last crumb.
Weeks before she would scrub, scour, scald, polish and shine. As the holiday approached, her Passover dishes – one set for milchig (dairy) and one set for fleishig (meat) – would be brought from the basement and washed. My Aunt Sally remembered, when she was a child in the 1920's, Mama soaking glasses for three days and burying silverware outside with hot coals for use during the holiday. No closet, no shelf, no corner evaded her purification ritual.
On the night before Passover, Papa Harry and the children would search the already scoured home for any remaining crumbs of chometz, which would be swept up with a feather and burned. (So stringent is the prohibition that Jews are forbidden not only to consume, but even to possess such things as bread, noodles, yeast and other leavening agents, or anything made with flour during the holiday.)
Downstairs in the cold cellar, the earthen crock of rossl (fermented beets) Mama had started weeks before stood ready to infuse her borscht (beet soup), and eggs by the crate awaited her practiced hand to whisk them into ethereal citrus sponge cakes and irresistible chocolate nut tortes.
Rising to the occasion
In a jam? Try this recipe for Hanukkah doughnuts.
The Orange County Register/Fullerton News Tribune
November 29, 2007
by Judy Bart Kancigor
An old joke goes like this: The Jewish holidays are always either early or late. They're never on time!
Hanukkah sneaks up on us early this year. We'll begin lighting candles at sundown on December 4, so prepare for an oil crisis, and I'm not referring to the price of gas. Who knew when Judah Maccabee's tiny flask of oil miraculously burned for eight days that for thousands of years Jewish families would celebrate by frying!
While Jews of Eastern Europe descent eat mountains of latkes (potato pancakes), the Hanukkah treat in Israel is sufganiyot (jelly doughnuts).
Fullerton's Pnina Shichor, a former teacher and proprietor of Bound to Travel on Euclid, has been making them for years.
"When my children were young," she recalled, "my cousin, Esther Schechter, and I would do Hanukkah at Rolling Hills Elementary School. We'd tell the story, sing songs, and teach the children to make sufganiyot."
When the Shichors were considering transferring daughter Nomi to Jewish day school, Nomi said, "But, Mom, if I go there, who will do Hanukkah for our class?"
Pnina's mother-in-law, Malka Suranyi, brought the recipe from Budapest where the family survived under Nazi rule. Luckily an uncle owned an exclusive men's clothing store, which the Nazis wanted, so they kept the workers alive. After the war the Communists took over, and Pnina's husband, David, professor of criminal justice at Cal State San Bernardino, was barely 16 when the Jewish Agency smuggled him and other children out of Hungary.
Chocolate for Hanukkah - why not?
While Jews of Eastern European descent celebrate Hanukkah with mountains of latkes, Sephardic Jews fry sufganiyot. But for everyone – and every holiday – there's always…chocolate?
Yes, just about everyone's favorite ingredient never goes out of season, claims award-winning author Alice Medrich, whose book "Chocolate Holidays: Unforgettable Desserts for Every Season" (Artisan) offers 50 luscious, decadent recipes to crown every holiday and celebration.
"I wanted to do a season-to-season book," said Medrich by phone from her Berkley, California, home. "Other ingredients we like to cook with change with the seasons. The constant is chocolate."
Jewish cooks know that Hanukkah is all about the oil. The symbolism goes back to ancient times, when Judah Maccabee and his tiny army defeated the Syrian-Greeks and recaptured Jerusalem. In attempting to rededicate the Temple, they found only enough oil to burn for one day. Miraculously it lasted eight days, and we've been celebrating with a frying frenzy ever since! But who says traditional potato latkes are the only fritter fit to fry?
"Chocolate Banana Blintzes are fried, and Hanukkah is a great excuse to serve them," noted Medrich. "They are just so delicious, a fancy party dessert that's easy to do." Restraint, she said, is sometimes the secret ingredient. "A little burst of chocolate sauce in a hot crepe with bananas is more seductive than a chocolate blintz with chocolate filling," she writes.
Another lesser-known Hanukkah tradition involves the story of Judith, a beautiful Jewish widow, who dined with the enemy general Holofernes. She plied him with cheese to make him thirsty for wine, and when he fell into a drunken stupor, she beheaded him with his own sword. Because her bravery is said to have inspired the Maccabees, some communities remember Judith by eating cheese during this holiday.


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Man of Steel (2013) vs. Superman: The Movies (1978/1980)
It's axiomatic when discussing Superman to know that the only one who can give Superman a fair fight is himself, or a close approximation of himself. That's why the comics, TV and film have consistently given us Evil Superman, Clone Superman, Bizarro Superman and, of course, Other Kryptonian Supermen.
The latter, of course, is what drove the Richard Donner-directed first two Superman films in 1978 and 1980, with the climactic arrival of General Zod and his superpowered villains, all of whom with the same powers as Superman, released from the Phantom Zone. Now, along comes Man of Steel, directed by Zack Snyder, who has taken the action of those Donner Supermans (Superman: The Movie and Superman II), smashed them into a single movie's length, and filtered them through a dark prism.
It's a fair fight then. Superman-vs.-Zod vs. Superman-vs.-Zod. By Krypton, let these games begin! […]


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Good morning, here are our early stories:
-- Mandela's Daughter: 'It Doesn't Look Good.'
-- President Obama Begins Weeklong Africa Trip.
And here are more early headlines:
Texas Executes Woman, 500th Inmate To Be Put To Death. (KUT)
Thousands Of Brazilian Protesters Clash With Police Outside Stadium. (BBC)
Kevin Rudd Sworn In As Australia's New Prime Minister. (The Australian)
U.S. Businessman Man Held Hostage By Chinese Workers Is Freed. (The Associated Press)
Mass Cremations Held For Hundreds Who Perished In Indian Floods. (Al Jazeera)
Search Widens For Missing Historic Wooden Schooner Bound for Australia. (The Telegraph)
Proposals For School Snack Nutrition Rules Are Issued. (Reuters)
Renowned National Geographic Photojournalist Bob Gilka Dies. (The Washington Post)
Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.


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Tyrepower Further Enhances Profleet Fleet Management Tool
Australia's biggest independent tyre retailer, Tyrepower Limited, has further strengthened its fleet processing tool ProFleet, with brand new updates and seamless integrations which are set to make the lives of fleet managers much easier.
With the new updates to the system, Tyrepower is continuing to build upon its award winning service, equipping its customers with an even greater level of information about their fleets' tyre usage.
The update, launching on Monday 25 July, will use smarter integration technology to enhance the way that fleet managers can handle invoicing, enforce rules and regulations to their fleet, and communicate with their suppliers.
Additionally, it will also increase the stable of brands on offer to ProFleet customers, providing them with full access to the very best brands at competitive prices. With the flexibility to choose from an even greater range of leading tyre brands, ProFleet customers can ensure their fleet is fitted with only the best products.
On top of this will be the power of a 250 store-strong network across Australia, plus an additional 15 stores across New Zealand to be added to ProFleet in the near future, providing the peace of mind that no matter the location there will be a Tyrepower store nearby.
"We are absolutely thrilled to offer Fleet Management Organisations an even more enhanced system to assist them in their day-to-day operations," said Matthew Ryan, National Fleet and IT Systems Manager.
"The updates to ProFleet enable us to be far more flexible in our dealings with our valued customers, ensuring they are completely satisfied with our service.
"Additionally, it is extremely important to Tyrepower Limited that all of our communications with customers are clear and that we can take some of the stress away of managing a large fleet.
"ProFleet already reduces some of this stress, by making fleet management processes more time-efficient and cost-effective, however with the new updates to the system, our customers can be sure that when they are dealing with Tyrepower's Dealer Network there will be absolutely no confusion about transactions."
For much easier and straight-forward invoicing, ProFleet currently provides fleet managers with the ability to track, account for and cost everything related to their fleet tyres, with seamless direct invoicing and minimal account reconciliations. And now, with the new system update, ProFleet will provide even clearer invoicing and procedures.
As part of offering a more streamlined fleet management service, the new ProFleet system has the capability to process live system changes as they are required, and benefits customers by allowing more information to be captured at the Point Of Sale.
The update also provides fleet managers with even greater control over their fleet, including a magnitude of systems options allowing particular brands, tyres, services or automotive work to be optioned as necessary, as well as enabling automatic authorisation methods through the system.
For more information about ProFleet or the new system updates, contact 1800 143 030 or email email@example.com
- See more at: http://www.tyrepower.com.au/news/tyrepower-further-enhances-profleet-fleet-management-tool/#sthash.IysHTt3e.dpuf


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Omar Khadr during an interrogation at Gitmo in 2003.
Written by James Ridgeway and Jean Casella
The Obama Administration (has begun) …its first trial of a prisoner held at Guantanamo Bay. The defendant is Omar Khadr, a Canadian national who was 15 when his allegedcrimetook placeeight years ago. Since that time, Khadr has been abused, threatened, and held is solitary confinement for long periods at both Bagram andGitmo. Daphne Eviatar of Human Rights First, who is at Gitmo covering the trial, deduces why the administration has chosen tohave a former child soldier tried bya military commission, rather than in civilian court:
Perhaps the government hopes that Khadrs statements, which he claims were extracted by various kinds of torture and abuse, will be allowed into court as evidence. Although Khadrs lawyer hasnt yet had the opportunity to present all the evidence of his clients treatment at Bagram and at Guantanamo Bay, whats come out at pretrial hearings so far is that when Khadr was captured by U.S. soldiers in July 2002, the teenager had been shot twice in the back, blinded in one eye and had a face peppered with shrapnel. Interrogators at the Bagram air base took to calling him Buckshot Bob. But that didnt stop them from interrogating him while he was still recovering from life-threatening wounds and strapped to a hospital gurney. Using what the military calls a fear up technique, an interrogator testified, Khadr was told a story about another prison just like him who refused to cooperate and who then was gang-raped and killed in an American prison.
Official documents also reveal that at Guantanamo, Khadr was subjected to the militarys frequent flyer program meaning he was moved every three hours for weeks at a time to keep him from sleeping prior to interrogations. So just how reliable are the statements he made, either at Bagram or at Guantanamo?
Now 23, Khadr, has been interviewed by dozens of interrogators, each time led to believe that his cooperation would spare him from violence and lead to his release. He told interrogators what he thought they wanted to hear, but that release never happened. If Khadr had been imprisoned in the United States, he would have been tried and either convicted or released long ago. But instead, Khadr has been held without trial on a secluded prison camp in Cuba for nearly a decade with little opportunity to defend himself.
More detail on Khadrs treatment appears in a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder and Defense Secretary William Gates, jointly signed by the ACLU,Human Rights Watch, and the Juvenile Law Center.
US forces captured Khadr on July 27, 2002, after a firefight in Afghanistan that resulted in the death of US Army Sergeant First Class Christopher Speer, as well as injuries to other soldiers. Khadr, who was seriously wounded, was initially detained at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan. There, according to his lawyers, he was forced into painful stress positions, threatened with rape, hooded and confronted with barking dogs.In October 2002, the United States transferred Khadr to Guantanamo, where the abusive interrogations continued, and where he has been ever since. Khadr told his lawyers that his interrogators shackled him in painful positions, threatened to send him to Egypt, Syria, or Jordan for torture, and used him as a human mop after he urinated on the floor during one interrogation session. He was not allowed to meet with a lawyer until November 2004, more than two years after he was first captured.
Khadrs prolonged and abusive detention at Guantanamo Bay contravenes the legal obligations of the United States under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, and is contrary to international juvenile justice standards. International law requires that juveniles are to be detained only as a last resort and that juvenile cases require prompt determination, yet Khadr was detained for more than two years before being provided access to an attorney, and for more than three years before being charged before the first military commission. After more than seven years the lawfulness of his detention still has not been judicially reviewed on the merits.
Furthermore, in violation of international law requiring treatment of children in accordance with their age, as well as segregation of children and adults, Khadr was continuously housed with adult detainees, even when other child detainees were being housed together in Guantanamos Camp Iguana. The abusive interrogations and prolonged detention in solitary confinement violated international law regarding both humane treatment and juvenile justice, including Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions, and other prohibitions against torture and cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment.
It should perhaps come as no surprise that the United States would violate these international agreements, since it routinely does so in its civilian justice system. American children are tried as adults, given life sentences, placed in adult prisons, and often locked for years in solitary confinement.
But in Khadrs case,an argument could also be made that he shouldntbe tried at all.Under international law, Eviatar writes,a child captured in combat is supposed to be treated as a victim rather than a warrior, offered rehabilitation in custody and eventually repatriated home. Khadr was nine years old when his father dragged him from Canada to Afghanistan and put him to work helping his Al Qaeda-connected friends. Khadr has said that he never had a choicea position consistent with the experience of most child soldiers. As the Center for Constitutional Rights points out:
When the military commission commences[Khadr] will become the first individual in the modern history of any international tribunal in the world, to be tried for war crimes for conduct allegedly committed as a juvenile. This ignoble precedent of prosecuting children for war crimessomething that was not done at Nuremburg after World War II, in the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda, or Sierra Leone, Kosovo or East Timorwill be established through American prosecution of a Canadian child.
(Khadr is not the only juvenile to be held at Guantanamo; see Celia Perry's 2008 piece on the subject here.)
This post originally appeared on www.solitarywatch.com. James Ridgeway is a senior correspondent at Mother Jones. For more of his stories, click here.


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Reading Martha Nussbaum's Platonic Love and Colorado Law: The Relevance of Ancient Greek Norms to Modern Sexual Controversies I came across this quote from John Finnis:
In classical Athens, there was amongst the Athenian upper classes an ideology of same-sex "romantic relationships" which were specifically man-boy relationships (inherently lacking the genuine mutuality of equals) and which in a certain number of cases doubtless resulted in sexual conduct (p.1538).What caught my eye is the phrase:
… inherently lacking the genuine mutuality of equals.For any support of traditional Catholic doctrine (as Finnis most certainly is) to talk of a sexual relationship "lacking the genuine mutuality of equals" is fairly shameless. First, there is the simple reality that, under Catholic doctrine, only men can make binding decisions about doctrine. The notion that this has not operated to the disadvantage of women is a nonsense—starting with the denial of any legitimacy to any priestly vocation among women.
The issue being not the notion that truth is complete and coherent (so, in some important sense, singular), but that there is a single, definitive, all-encompassing point of view on truth. One that is, moreover, the possession of the notionally celibate males running the Catholic Church who somehow completely transcend human epistemic frailty.
Second, the development in the modern era of something approaching genuine equality between men and women in marriage is a product of the breakdown of social notions of the public space as being a male domain. A domination that Catholic control, and later influence, over marriage law supported.
What this illustrates is how one cannot analyse matters of sex without considering matters of gender. Some conservatives object to gender-talk as an evasion of the biological reality of there being two sexes. This is wrong on several counts. First, even among humans, the biological reality is more complex than that (consider the recent Caster Semanya case). Second, defining gender as perfectly coterminous with the form of one's genitals is far from a universal human norm. Third, conceptions of what it means to be 'male' and 'female' (such as their "typical" emotional characteristics) change over time.
Indeed, that the term 'homosexual' was coined in the year John Stuart Mill published The Subjection of Women is a nice historical congruence, as homosexual liberation has marched behind women's liberation precisely because the shift towards a strong moral norm that sex should be between equals (hence paedophilia becoming the epitome of sexual evil) allows sex between men (sex between women raises less status issues) to become much less problematic. If—as has been the general pattern in many human cultures—sex is only legitimate between unequals (man and woman, man of higher status and man of lower status) then any male-male sex which fails to uphold the required status hierarchy becomes illegitimate. It "un-mans" them: a claim that is certainly not entirely absent from our age. (I remember one commentator in Commentary referring to homosexual activity as "men using men like women" in what was clearly completely unconscious misogyny.)
It is also fairly shameless for any modern Catholic supporter of natural law moral theory to cite comments attributed to Socrates or written by Plato or Aristotle as blanket condemnations of homosexual conduct. First, their sexual ethics were very clearly not the same as that of Catholic natural law theory (for example, on abortion, contraception and even infanticide). Indeed, that natural law theory in their hands had rather different conclusions is one indication of moral natural law's malleability: the way normative essentialism operates to select its own premises, thus allowing practitioners to draw such conclusions which are congenial by selecting those parts of the relevant phenomena which are convenient and dismissing the rest as "improper".
Second, because the condemnations of homosexual conduct were typically not blanket condemnations, but applied to particular acts in particular contexts—usually based on contradictions of status roles or concern about the strength of sensual passions—some of which applied equally to heterosexual acts. Moreover, often it was not even a full condemnation, but simply a rating as inferior compared to goals deemed higher. At no point did it actually feed (at least in the Greek case) into law. Given that the first civic statues in Athens not of divine subjects were of a same-sex couple, it was not likely to.
The pertinent classical Roman law seems to have been a law to protect the status of male citizens (that is, to not have young citizen males be the "passive" partner and so perform a sexual role felt incompatible with their status as citizens: they could legally penetrate lower status males all they wanted) for which no prosecutions are recorded.
What people such as John Finnis and Ed Feser are attempting to establish are rational, non-Christian grounds to support a very Judaeo-Christian natural law blanket moral condemnation of homosexual conduct and the barring of any legal support for homosexuals to live as openly in legally acknowledged ways as "practising" homosexuals. Because, of course, if it is merely a religious antipathy, then it is has no justifiable role in the public law of any state without an established church (or one with an established church but whose theology does not have any determinative status in law).
So citing Greek thought that was very concerned about a structure of status which definitely does not apply in modern societies, and incorporating a concern for excess of passion which certainly is not appropriate for modern law (and was not deemed at matter for actual law even then), is hardly much support. It is a case of "look, these people condemned some homosexual acts for completely different reasons in support of a very different sexual morality so there are non-religious grounds to engage in a blanket condemnation of homosexual conduct". No, all the Greek cases do at most is support the sexual condemnations and rankings that they actually engaged in.
But there is much worse than that going on. Let us consider the issues of "homosexual conduct" and the notion of "practising homosexual", particularly in the context of this published article (pdf) by John Finnis arguing for Catholic natural law sexual morality and its (highly selective) legal implementation.
Read More...
The unfortunate reality of sexual diversity
In the paper, Finnis holds that:
… states do have the authority to discourage, say, homosexual conduct and "orientation" (i.e. overtly manifested willingness to engage in homosexual conduct).He is concerned to defend:
The concern of the standard modern position itself is not with inclinations but entirely with decisions to express or manifest deliberate promotion of, or readiness to engage in, homosexual activity/conduct, including promotion of forms of life (e.g. purportedly marital cohabitation) which both encourage such activity and present it as a valid or acceptable alternative to the committed heterosexual union which the state recognises as marriage. Subject only to the written or unwritten constitutional requirement of freedom of discussion of ideas, the state law and state polices which I have outlined are intended to discourage decisions which are thus deliberately oriented towards homosexual conduct and are manifested in public ways.So, without being concerned with inclination or entirely private acts, nevertheless Finnis believes the state should continue to make it clear to the same-sex attracted that they should not exist as persons with such sexual natures, as such attraction is inherently wrong. (Because if they are fully entitled to exist, with such erotic orientations and all, so are those erotic orientations entitled to equal protection of the law: subject to standard constraints about protection of others.)
Given the reality of human sexual diversity, societies have a range of possible responses. At one end is to acknowledge that reality and incorporate it into their social forms and mores. At the other is to treat it as something that just should not be the case and so repress it as much as possible. Finnis is not advocating the death penalty for same-sex acts or same-sex marriage, so is not upholding the traditional Catholic position. But he is certainly operating on the premise that same-sex attraction should not exist, has no legitimate expression and should be repressed (both by those who experience it and by the state, at least in the public realm). To Finnis, a heterosexual is inherently a preferable sexual citizen than anyone who is same-sex attracted: particularly if they act on that attraction.
So, Finnis' position on the ranking of sexual conduct has an obvious selling point. It asks heterosexuals to give up nothing (since they are not attracted to members of the same sex) and the same-sex attracted to give up a great deal (any acting upon that attraction), particularly in any public way. Providing a large majority with a sense of effortless virtue against a small minority has historically often been a very easy sell. The Catholic Church engaged in it for centuries against the Jews, for example. The remarkable thing is not that the sort of position that Finnis advocates does not have significant popular support: it is that its popular support has declined so much.
Consistent with the position Finnis wants to uphold, he supports not listing sexual orientation among the anti-discrimination categories. Indeed, 'sexual orientation' is a concept he is firmly against:
For the phrase "sexual orientation" is radically equivocal. Particularly as used by promoters of "gay rights", it ambiguously assimilates two things which the standard modern position carefully distinguishes: (I) a psychological or psychosomatic disposition orienting one towards homosexual activity; (II) the deliberate decision so to orient one's public behavior as to express or manifest one's active interest in and endorsement of homosexual conduct and/or forms of life which presumptively involve such conduct.Yes, "gay activists" want to be treated as fully legitimate manifestations of the human, the bastards.
The distinction Finnis wishes to defend only makes sense if same-sex attraction is not a legitimate manifestation of the human. Which is, of course, what the entire argument is over. As many people, implicitly or explicitly, have come to realize: hence the decline in popular support for the position Finnis wishes to defend, with majorities tending to support recognition of same-sex relationships (recognition of same-sex marriage tends to have a lower level of support but the trend is upwards).
Beware of classicists bearing misogyny
On what basis does Finnis uphold what he calls the standard modern position? On the grounds that homosexual acts are immoral. Why are they immoral? After defining homosexual acts as:
… bodily acts, on the body of a person of the same sex, which are engaged in with a view to securing orgasmic sexual satisfaction for one or more of the parties.Finnis detours to attempt to recruit Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and Xenophon for blanket condemnation of all homosexual conduct so defined, including the remarkable statement:
Although the ideology of homosexual love (with its accompanying devaluation of women) continued to have philosophical defenders down to the end of classical Greek civilisation, there equally continued to be influential philosophical writers, wholly untouched by Judeao-Christian tradition, who taught that homosexual conduct is not only intrinsically shameful but also inconsistent with a proper recognition of the equality of women with men in intrinsic worth.First, the implication that it was general position in classical philosophy to defend female equality is risible. Second, the connection between attitudes to women and attitudes to same-sex activity were much more complex than that, even in the ancient world. Sparta, for example, was notorious both for formalizing same-sex relations and giving women what many other Greeks felt was a positively "unnatural" status and freedom of action. Finnis' later reference to:
… Aristotle's representation of marriage as an intrinsically desirable friendship between quasi-equals, and as a state of life even more natural to human beings than political life …indicates that some difficulties are being glided over here. Finnis also refers to:
Plutarch's severe critiques of homosexual conduct (and of the disparagement of women implicit in homosexual ideology).Let us pause and consider the breezy misogyny of that statement. Apparently, Sappho does not count. In fact, at no stage does Finnis ever stop to consider same-sex attracted women directly in his text. One could think of many possible reasons for this. I suggest a simple one: he finds what male homosexuals do to each other repellent, he does not find what female homosexuals do repellent, so he fixates on the former and ignores the latter. He is, of course, following in a long (Biblical) tradition here, St Paul providing the only reference to female-to-female sex in Scripture. What males do really, really matters (particularly if it has implications for their status as males): what females do, not so much. But this sits very badly with his breast-beating over male-female equality.
Some (though not all) Stoics did feel that procreation was the only justifiable point of sex: this was typically about restraining the passions. But, whatever your reasons, it is true that if procreation is the only justifiable point of sex, then same-sex activity is ruled out.
Finnis puts his position what makes sex legitimate or not very succinctly:
Genital intercourse between spouses enables them to actualise and experience (and in that sense express) their marriage itself, as a single reality with two blessings (children and mutual affection). Non-marital intercourse, especially but not only homosexual, has no such point and therefore is unacceptable.In other words, no one is entitled to a deliberately induced orgasm unless they are engaged in unobstructed penile-vaginal sex within marriage. Clearly, a wide range of heterosexual sex (including masturbation) is barred by this: so what distinguishes the same-sex attracted is not that they break this sexual morality (huge numbers of people do, including millions of happily married opposite sex couples). What distinguishes the same-sex attracted is that, if they have a public persona as "actively" homosexual, as a "practising" homosexual, then they must be breaking this sexual morality. With heterosexuals, one can largely pretend that they are keeping to it. This is absolutely not so with the openly erotically same-sex active.
Hence the wish to have the law, at the very least, not concede any status or legitimacy to the same-sex attracted as erotically same-sex active. Indeed, they can perform a very useful scapegoating role: denouncing "practising homosexuals" provides public proof of one's own commitment to moral rectitude, cathartic release of concern about one's own foibles and a public statement of where the moral boundaries "ought" to be. Particularly given following the sexual rule Finnis is proposing would require a massive restriction of sex compared to what actually occurs: which makes the openly same-sex active an extremely useful set of scapegoats.
Indeed, Finnis is clearly himself using the same-sex attracted as scapegoats. He does not require that the state impose his rule about sex on heterosexuals whether or not they are married. He also does not propose for the state to impose the burden of that rule on the private lives of the same-sex attracted. The rule only comes into to legal play to bar same-sex couples any standing in law as couples: making them scapegoats for the offense their existence as same-sex attracted people causes his theory of sex.
One might note that this sexual theory requires human agents to agree to a massive restriction of their human agency: a small problem. In fact, a large problem given all the benefits they are expected to forgo, the control over their own lives and pleasures to be denied, in the service of a metaphysical claim: hence the Catholic Church's notable failure to get people to adhere to it.
One might wonder why such a set-up-for-failure morality might be preached in the first place. Part of it could be a group of celibate males may well not be in the best position to see how it is set up to fail. A more cynical view (particularly given how erratic such celibacy can be) is that, within certain limits, such failure is useful. It gives priests the power of guilt. It certainly establishes their role as "gatekeepers of righteousness", saying who is "in" and who is "out". But it also makes scapegoats so much more useful—the "fallen woman", the "abominable sodomite". Which is why it has so much more power when it sells "effortless virtue", as it does against the whore and the queer.
What the adoption of natural law sexual morality did is make priests commissars of natural law. (Just as commissars were priests of Leninism.) They get to decide who is "in" and who is "out" and why. The implications of that, and of the position John Finnis defends, is examined in my next post.


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How to lower your coronavirus risk while eating out: Restaurant advice from an infectious disease expert
As restaurants and bars reopen to the public, it's important to realize that eating out will increase your risk of exposure to the new coronavirus.
Two of the most important public health measures for keeping illnesses to a minimum are nearly impossible in these situations: First, it's hard to eat or drink while wearing a face mask. Second, social distancing is difficult in tight spaces normally filled with back-to-back seating and servers who weave among the busy tables all evening long.
So, what should you look out for, and how can you and the restaurant reduce the risk? Here are answers to a few common questions.
How far apart should tables and bar stools be?
There is nothing magical about 6 feet, the number we often hear in formal guidance from government agencies. I would consider that the minimum distance required for safe spacing.
The "6-foot" rule is based on old data about the distance droplets can spread respiratory viruses. These droplets tend to settle out of the air within 6 feet, but that isn't always the case. Aerosols can spread the virus over larger distances, though there remains some uncertainty about how common this spread is. Particles generated by sneezes or someone running can travel up to 30 feet.
Talking alone has been shown to generate respiratory droplets that could be infectious.
If there is a fan or current generated in a closed space such as a restaurant, particles will also travel farther. This was shown in a paper from China: People in a restaurant downwind of an infected person became infected even though the distance was greater than 6 feet.
The closer the distance and the greater the time someone is exposed to a person who is infectious, the greater the risk.
If the servers wear masks, is that enough?
If servers wear masks, that will afford a layer of protection, but customers eating and talking could still spread the virus.
One way to mitigate that risk in this imperfect situation, at least from a public health point of view, would be to have tables surrounded by protective barriers, such as plexiglass or screens, or put tables in separate rooms with doors that can be closed. Some states are encouraging restaurants to limit each table to only one server who delivers everything.
Restaurants could also screen guests before they enter, either with temperature checks or questions about symptoms and their close contacts with anyone recently diagnosed with COVID-19. It's controversial, but restaurants in California have tried it. Washington state tried to require restaurants to record visitors' contact information in case an outbreak is discovered, but it pulled back to only recommend doing so.
It's easier to screen employees. In fact, guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommend restaurants have employee screening in place before they reopen. But while screening employees for possible infection could decrease risk, it's important to remember that people can be infectious six days before they develop symptoms. That is why masks, eye protection, social distancing and hand hygiene are critical measures for preventing infection.
Should I ask for disposable utensils and wipe everything down?
Regular dishwashing of plates, glasses and utensils, and laundering of napkins and tablecloths, will inactivate the virus. No need for disposables here.
The table should also be cleaned and disinfected between uses and marked as sanitized.
Menus are a bit more problematic, depending on the material. Plastic menus could be disinfected. Disposable menus would be more ideal. Remember, even if someone touches a surface that has infectious virus, as long as they don't touch their mouth, nose or eyes they should be safe. So, when in doubt, wash your hands or use hand sanitizer.
Can I get the virus from food from the kitchen?
The risk of becoming infected with the new coronavirus from food is very low.
This is a respiratory virus whose primary mode of infection is accessing the upper or lower respiratory tract through droplets or aerosols entering your mouth, nose or eyes. It needs to enter the respiratory tract to cause infection, and it cannot do this by way of the stomach or intestinal tract.
The virus also is not very stable in the environment. Studies have shown it loses half its viral concentration after less than an hour on copper, three and a half hours on cardboard and just under seven hours on plastic. If food were to be contaminated during preparation, cooking temperature would likely inactivate much if not all of the virus.
The use of masks and maintaining good hand hygiene by food preparers should significantly reduce the risk of food contamination.
Is outdoor seating or a drive-through any safer?
Vulnerable people may want to pass on dine-in options and focus on pickup or perhaps outside dining if the conditions are appropriate.
Drive-up windows or carry-out are probably the safest; transient interaction with one individual when everyone is wearing masks is a lower-risk situation.
Overall, outside dining is safer than indoor dining with everything else being equal on a nonwindy day due to the larger air volume. Maintaining eye protection via glasses and intermittent mask use between bites and sips would further decrease the risk.
You might also be interested in other parts of this series:
- How do you stay safe now that states are reopening? An expert explains how to assess risk when reconnecting with friends and family
- Here's how to stay safe while buying groceries amid the coronavirus pandemic
- How can you be safe at pools, beaches or parks? A doctor offers guidance as coronavirus distancing measures lifted
- Should you fly yet? An epidemiologist and an exposure scientist walk you through the decision process
[The Conversation's newsletter explains what's going on with the coronavirus pandemic. Subscribe now.]
Thomas A. Russo, Professor and Chief, Infectious Disease, Department of Medicine, University at Buffalo, The State University of New York
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.


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God created economists to make astrologers look respectable.
This is mostly an opinion piece, but I thought it interesting that someone out there calls out against laissez-faire economics, and touts the Swedes as having a good model.
Nothing new about liberals making that sort of statement. What hasn't been pointed out before, is the irony of Sweden (among the least laissez-faire economies in the world) issuing the Nobel mostly to laissez-faire advocates. (Think they're having a little inside Swedish joke at somebody's expense?)
It's funny, the article mentioned Myron Scholes. Say what you will about his politics (which I don't agree with), or his repeated failures as a fund manager, there is no doubt that his work was paradigm-shifting and is now fundamental to options trading. He probably deserved the Nobel as much as anyone.
I have no clue about the credibility of that salon.com site, but the article was a funny read. Sears also got what they deserved for messing with their clients warranty questions ;)
Man... I liked Sears. Used to be a solid, reputable company. They really have taken it on the chin lately. If this is the reason why, it's quite understandable.
A funny read, yes, but it would be funnier if he hadn't destroyed an American institution. Sears *invented* catalogue retail and the Midwest was built out of their supplies.
Everyone knows that I'm no fan of Ayn Rand, but coming from the commie rag Salon, the whole article reads like "see, capitalism doesn't work after all."
The free market is ambivalent towards good and bad business plans. The free market rewards good business strategy while allowing bad business strategy to fail.
And yes, the decline of Sears is sad to watch. They were a staple. Unfortunately though, it's evolve or die. The same could be said for Radio Shack, whose stock price is less than a tenth of what it was a decade ago, because they voluntarily made themselves insanely un-cool.
Everyone knows that I'm no fan of Ayn Rand, but coming from the
commie rag Salon, the whole article reads like "see, capitalism
doesn't work after all."
*if* you equate capitalism with this one man's wacky management philosophy. He doesn't sound like a very nice guy to work for, and one can see how the incentives he created could lead to perverse results.
I've worked for clowns like him. Aaaargh...
Google and other big American tech firms have become ersatz targets
ersatz - another german word in english? or just a not well written article?
I like this conclusion:
The biggest fear is that Germany's proud carmakers will be relegated to mere producers of "tin cans". If they lose ownership of the data and software that make self-driving cars move, and control of the display screens inside them, the firms' margins will get squeezed. There may be a more profitable business in telling a driver that the product he wants is available cheaply at the next autobahn exit than in building the car he is sitting in.
(while I right now already think of cars as tin cans anyways...)
'Ersatz', to us, comes to mean 'in place of a real version'. So, an ersatz keyboard is a keyboard that one uses in place of a proper keyboard.
And an ersatz car might be a Yugo.
The AI used for driving a car requires that the system already have the route mapped in virtual 3-d space, which they update with observations from the spinning camera above the car.
I'm curious about how well it can handle driver stupidity.
If every single car is driving by AI on something like a well maintained highway, without such error sources as pedestrians, it might work out.
Mixed scenarios, especially when they involve aggressive, egoistic and/or stupid travelers, seem to beg for catastrophes.