text:
Persuasion is the centerpiece of business activity. Customers must be convinced to buy your company's products or services, employees and colleagues to go along with a new strategic plan or reorganization, investors to buy (or not to sell) your stock, and partners to sign the next deal. But despite the critical importance of persuasion, most executives struggle to communicate, let alone inspire. Too often, they get lost in the accoutrements of companyspeak: PowerPoint slides, dry memos, and hyperbolic missives from the corporate communications department. Even the most carefully researched and considered efforts are routinely greeted with cynicism, lassitude, or outright dismissal.
Why is persuasion so difficult, and what can you do to set people on fire? In search of answers to those questions, HBR senior editor Bronwyn Fryer paid a visit to Robert McKee, the world's best-known and most respected screenwriting lecturer, at his home in Los Angeles. An award-winning writer and director, McKee moved to California after studying for his Ph.D. in cinema arts at the University of Michigan. He then taught at the University of Southern California's School of Cinema and Television before forming his own company, Two-Arts, to take his lectures on the art of storytelling worldwide to an audience of writers, directors, producers, actors, and entertainment executives.
McKee's students have written, directed, and produced hundreds of hit films, including Forrest Gump, Erin Brockovich, The Color Purple, Gandhi, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Sleepless in Seattle, Toy Story, and Nixon. They have won 18 Academy Awards, 109 Emmy Awards, 19 Writers Guild Awards, and 16 Directors Guild of America Awards. Emmy Award winner Brian Cox portrays McKee in the 2002 film Adaptation, which follows the life of a screenwriter trying to adapt the book The Orchid Thief. McKee also serves as a project consultant to film and television production companies such as Disney, Pixar, and Paramount as well as major corporations, including Microsoft, which regularly send their entire creative staffs to his lectures.
McKee believes that executives can engage listeners on a whole new level if they toss their PowerPoint slides and learn to tell good stories instead. In his best-selling book Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting, published in 1997 by Harper-Collins, McKee argues that stories "fulfill a profound human need to grasp the patterns of living—not merely as an intellectual exercise, but within a very personal, emotional experience." What follows is an edited and abridged transcript of McKee's conversation with HBR.
Why should a CEO or a manager pay attention to a screenwriter?
A big part of a CEO's job is to motivate people to reach certain goals. To do that, he or she must engage their emotions, and the key to their hearts is story. There are two ways to persuade people. The first is by using conventional rhetoric, which is what most executives are trained in. It's an intellectual process, and in the business world it usually consists of a PowerPoint slide presentation in which you say, "Here is our company's biggest challenge, and here is what we need to do to prosper." And you build your case by giving statistics and facts and quotes from authorities. But there are two problems with rhetoric. First, the people you're talking to have their own set of authorities, statistics, and experiences. While you're trying to persuade them, they are arguing with you in their heads. Second, if you do succeed in persuading them, you've done so only on an intellectual basis. That's not good enough, because people are not inspired to act by reason alone.
The other way to persuade people—and ultimately a much more powerful way—is by uniting an idea with an emotion. The best way to do that is by telling a compelling story. In a story, you not only weave a lot of information into the telling but you also arouse your listener's emotions and energy. Persuading with a story is hard. Any intelligent person can sit down and make lists. It takes rationality but little creativity to design an argument using conventional rhetoric. But it demands vivid insight and storytelling skill to present an idea that packs enough emotional power to be memorable. If you can harness imagination and the principles of a well-told story, then you get people rising to their feet amid thunderous applause instead of yawning and ignoring you.
So What is a story?
Essentially, a story expresses how and why life changes. It begins with a situation in which life is relatively in balance: You come to work day after day, week after week, and everything's fine. You expect it will go on that way. But then there's an event—in screenwriting, we call it the "inciting incident"—that throws life out of balance. You get a new job, or the boss dies of a heart attack, or a big customer threatens to leave. The story goes on to describe how, in an effort to restore balance, the protagonist's subjective expectations crash into an uncooperative objective reality. A good storyteller describes what it's like to deal with these opposing forces, calling on the protagonist to dig deeper, work with scarce resources, make difficult decisions, take action despite risks, and ultimately discover the truth. All great storytellers since the dawn of time—from the ancient Greeks through Shakespeare and up to the present day—have dealt with this fundamental conflict between subjective expectation and cruel reality.
How would an executive learn to tell stories?
Stories have been implanted in you thousands of times since your mother took you on her knee. You've read good books, seen movies, attended plays. What's more, human beings naturally want to work through stories. Cognitive psychologists describe how the human mind, in its attempt to understand and remember, assembles the bits and pieces of experience into a story, beginning with a personal desire, a life objective, and then portraying the struggle against the forces that block that desire. Stories are how we remember; we tend to forget lists and bullet points.
Business people not only have to understand their companies' past, but then they must project the future. And how do you imagine the future? As a story. You create scenarios in your head of possible future events to try to anticipate the life of your company or your own personal life. So, if a businessperson understands that his or her own mind naturally wants to frame experience in a story, the key to moving an audience is not to resist this impulse but to embrace it by telling a good story.
What makes a good story?
You emphatically do not want to tell a beginning-to-end tale describing how results meet expectations. This is boring and banal. Instead, you want to display the struggle between expectation and reality in all its nastiness.
For example, let's imagine the story of a biotech start-up we'll call Chemcorp, whose CEO has to persuade some Wall Street bankers to invest in the company. He could tell them that Chemcorp has discovered a chemical compound that prevents heart attacks and offer up a lot of slides showing them the size of the market, the business plan, the organizational chart, and so on. The bankers would nod politely and stifle yawns while thinking of all the other companies better positioned in Chemcorp's market.
Alternatively, the CEO could turn his pitch into a story, beginning with someone close to him—say, his father—who died of a heart attack. So nature itself is the first antagonist that the CEO-as-protagonist must overcome. The story might unfold like this: In his grief, he realizes that if there had been some chemical indication of heart disease, his father's death could have been prevented. His company discovers a protein that's present in the blood just before heart attacks and develops an easy-to-administer, low-cost test.
But now it faces a new antagonist: the FDA. The approval process is fraught with risks and dangers. The FDA turns down the first application, but new research reveals that the test performs even better than anyone had expected, so the agency approves a second application. Meanwhile, Chemcorp is running out of money, and a key partner drops out and goes off to start his own company. Now Chemcorp is in a fight-to-the-finish patent race.
This accumulation of antagonists creates great suspense. The protagonist has raised the idea in the bankers' heads that the story might not have a happy ending. By now, he has them on the edges of their seats, and he says, "We won the race, we got the patent, we're poised to go public and save a quarter-million lives a year." And the bankers just throw money at him.
"If you can harness imagination and the principles of a well-told story, then you get people rising to their feet amid thunderous applause instead of yawning and ignoring you."
Aren't you really talking about exaggeration and manipulation?
No. Although businesspeople are often suspicious of stories for the reasons you suggest, the fact is that statistics are used to tell lies and damn lies, while accounting reports are often BS in a ball gown—witness Enron and WorldCom.
When people ask me to help them turn their presentations into stories, I begin by asking questions. I kind of psychoanalyze their companies, and amazing dramas pour out. But most companies and executives sweep the dirty laundry, the difficulties, the antagonists, and the struggle under the carpet. They prefer to present a rosy—and boring—picture to the world. But as a storyteller, you want to position the problems in the foreground and then show how you've overcome them. When you tell the story of your struggles against real antagonists, your audience sees you as an exciting, dynamic person. And I know that the storytelling method works, because after I consulted with a dozen corporations whose principals told exciting stories to Wall Street, they all got their money.
What's wrong with painting a positive picture?
It doesn't ring true. You can send out a press release talking about increased sales and a bright future, but your audience knows it's never that easy. They know you're not spotless; they know your competitor doesn't wear a black hat. They know you've slanted your statement to make your company look good. Positive, hypothetical pictures and boilerplate press releases actually work against you because they foment distrust among the people you're trying to convince. I suspect that most CEOs do not believe their own spin doctors—and if they don't believe the hype, why should the public?
The great irony of existence is that what makes life worth living does not come from the rosy side. We would all rather be lotus-eaters, but life will not allow it. The energy to live comes from the dark side. It comes from everything that makes us suffer. As we struggle against these negative powers, we're forced to live more deeply, more fully.
So acknowledging this dark side makes you more convincing?
Of course. Because you're more truthful. One of the principles of good storytelling is the understanding that we all live in dread. Fear is when you don't know what's going to happen. Dread is when you know what's going to happen and there's nothing you can do to stop it. Death is the great dread; we all live in an ever shrinking shadow of time, and between now and then all kinds of bad things could happen.
Most of us repress this dread. We get rid of it by inflicting it on other people through sarcasm, cheating, abuse, indifference—cruelties great and small. We all commit those little evils that relieve the pressure and make us feel better. Then we rationalize our bad behavior and convince ourselves we're good people. Institutions do the same thing: They deny the existence of the negative while inflicting their dread on other institutions or their employees.
If you're a realist, you know that this is human nature; in fact, you realize that this behavior is the foundation of all nature. The imperative in nature is to follow the golden rule of survival: Do unto others what they do unto you. In nature, if you offer cooperation and get cooperation back, you get along. But if you offer cooperation and get antagonism back, then you give antagonism in return—in spades.
Ever since human beings sat around the fire in caves, we've told stories to help us deal with the dread of life and the struggle to survive. All great stories illuminate the dark side. I'm not talking about so-called "pure" evil, because there is no such thing. We are all evil and good, and these sides do continual battle. Kenneth Lay says wiping out people's jobs and life savings was unintentional. Hannibal Lecter is witty, charming, and brilliant, and he eats people's livers. Audiences appreciate the truthfulness of a storyteller who acknowledges the dark side of human beings and deals honestly with antagonistic events. The story engenders a positive but realistic energy in the people who hear it.
Does this mean you have to be a pessimist?
It's not a question of whether you're optimistic or pessimistic. It seems to me that the civilized human being is a skeptic—someone who believes nothing at face value. Skepticism is another principle of the storyteller. The skeptic understands the difference between text and subtext and always seeks what's really going on. The skeptic hunts for the truth beneath the surface of life, knowing that the real thoughts and feelings of institutions or individuals are unconscious and unexpressed. The skeptic is always looking behind the mask. Street kids, for example, with their tattoos, piercings, chains, and leather, wear amazing masks, but the skeptic knows the mask is only a persona. Inside anyone working that hard to look fierce is a marshmallow. Genuinely hard people make no effort.
So, a story that embraces darkness produces a positive energy in listeners?
Absolutely. We follow people in whom we believe. The best leaders I've dealt with—producers and directors—have come to terms with dark reality. Instead of communicating via spin doctors, they lead their actors and crews through the antagonism of a world in which the odds of getting the film made, distributed, and sold to millions of moviegoers are a thousand to one. They appreciate that the people who work for them love the work and live for the small triumphs that contribute to the final triumph.
CEOs, likewise, have to sit at the head of the table or in front of the microphone and navigate their companies through the storms of bad economies and tough competition. If you look your audience in the eye, lay out your really scary challenges, and say, "We'll be lucky as hell if we get through this, but here's what I think we should do," they will listen to you.
To get people behind you, you can tell a truthful story. The story of General Electric is wonderful and has nothing to do with Jack Welch's cult of celebrity. If you have a grand view of life, you can see it on all its complex levels and celebrate it in a story. A great CEO is someone who has come to terms with his or her own mortality and, as a result, has compassion for others. This compassion is expressed in stories.
Take the love of work, for example. Years ago, when I was in graduate school, I worked as an insurance fraud investigator. The claimant in one case was an immigrant who'd suffered a terrible head injury on a carmaker's assembly line. He'd been the fastest window assembler on the line and took great pride in his work. When I spoke to him, he was waiting to have a titanium plate inserted into his head.
The man had been grievously injured, but the company thought he was a fraud. In spite of that, he remained incredibly dedicated. All he wanted was to get back to work. He knew the value of work, no matter how repetitive. He took pride in it and even in the company that had falsely accused him. How wonderful it would have been for the CEO of that car company to tell the tale of how his managers recognized the falseness of their accusation and then rewarded the employee for his dedication. The company, in turn, would have been rewarded with redoubled effort from all the employees who heard that story.
How do storytellers discover and unearth the stories that want to be told?
The storyteller discovers a story by asking certain key questions. First, what does my protagonist want in order to restore balance in his or her life? Desire is the blood of a story. Desire is not a shopping list but a core need that, if satisfied, would stop the story in its tracks. Next, what is keeping my protagonist from achieving his or her desire? Forces within? Doubt? Fear? Confusion? Personal conflicts with friends, family, lovers? Social conflicts arising in the various institutions in society? Physical conflicts? The forces of Mother Nature? Lethal diseases in the air? Not enough time to get things done? The damned automobile that won't start? Antagonists come from people, society, time, space, and every object in it, or any combination of these forces at once. Then, how would my protagonist decide to act in order to achieve his or her desire in the face of these antagonistic forces? It's in the answer to that question that storytellers discover the truth of their characters, because the heart of a human being is revealed in the choices he or she makes under pressure. Finally, the storyteller leans back from the design of events he or she has created and asks, "Do I believe this? Is it neither an exaggeration nor a soft-soaping of the struggle? Is this an honest telling, though heaven may fall?"
Does being a good storyteller make you a good leader?
Not necessarily, but if you understand the principles of storytelling, you probably have a good understanding of yourself and of human nature, and that tilts the odds in your favor. I can teach the formal principles of stories, but not to a person who hasn't really lived. The art of storytelling takes intelligence, but it also demands a life experience that I've noted in gifted film directors: the pain of childhood. Childhood trauma forces you into a kind of mild schizophrenia that makes you see life simultaneously in two ways: First, it's direct, real-time experience, but at the same moment, your brain records it as material—material out of which you will create business ideas, science, or art. Like a double-edged knife, the creative mind cuts to the truth of self and the humanity of others.
Self-knowledge is the root of all great storytelling. A storyteller creates all characters from the self by asking the question, "If I were this character in these circumstances, what would I do?" The more you understand your own humanity, the more you can appreciate the humanity of others in all their good-versus-evil struggles. I would argue that the great leaders Jim Collins describes are people with enormous self-knowledge. They have self-insight and self-respect balanced by skepticism. Great storytellers—and, I suspect, great leaders—are skeptics who understand their own masks as well as the masks of life, and this understanding makes them humble. They see the humanity in others and deal with them in a compassionate yet realistic way. That duality makes for a wonderful leader.A version of this article appeared in the June 2003 issue of Harvard Business Review.


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Fix disappearing Compiz skydome at login
For a little while now I noticed that my Compiz skydome was disappearing whenever I logged in. I could bring it back by disabling and re-enabling the Cube plugin but from a cold-boot I was always greeted to an abysmal looking cube:
(Click on the thumbnail for larger version.)
A little bit of forensics revealed that the issue lied with the loading order of Compiz plugins. At the moment Compiz does not try to resolve any plugin dependencies at startup, so while the skydome relied on the PNG plugin the latter wasn't pre-loaded — resulting in a blank background.
The solution was to change the following line in config:
[core] s0_active_plugins = core;composite;opengl;copytex;decor;vpswitch;mousepoll;firepaint;gnomecompat;resize;compiztoolbox;wobbly;cube;screensaver;shift;scale;regex;imgpng;splash;place;move;obs;animation;rotate;expo;workarounds;freewins;ezoom;session;staticswitcher; |
[core] s0_active_plugins = core;composite;opengl;copytex;decor;vpswitch;mousepoll;firepaint;gnomecompat;imgpng;resize;compiztoolbox;wobbly;cube;screensaver;shift;scale;regex;splash;place;move;obs;animation;rotate;expo;workarounds;freewins;ezoom;session;staticswitcher; |
had to be loaded before cube
, giving me back the pretty backdrop for all things 3D:
(Click on the thumbnail for larger version.)

subset: commoncrawl


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This article forms part of the series Introduction to Orthodox Christianity | |
Holy Tradition | |
Holy Scripture The Symbol of Faith Ecumenical Councils Church Fathers Liturgy Canons Icons | |
The Holy Trinity | |
God the Father Jesus Christ The Holy Spirit | |
The Church | |
Ecclesiology History Holy Mysteries Church Life | |
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Ecclesiology is the theology of the Orthodox Christian faith concerning the Church.
The Church is the Body of Christ, a theanthropic (divine-human) communion of Jesus Christ with his people. The sole head of the Church is Christ. The Church is an object of faith, that is, Orthodox Christians believe in the Church. The traditional belief in the Church is attested to in the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed as the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church. By this phrase is meant that the Church is undivided and not many (one), sanctified and set apart for the work of God (holy), whole and characterized by fullness and universality (catholic), and has at its essence the going out into all the world to preach the Gospel and baptize the nations (apostolic).
Because the Church is the Body of Christ, it is also the temple and dwelling place of the Holy Spirit. It is a continued Pentecost.
The Church is the Bride of Christ, the eschatological spouse of the Son of God, united to him in faith and love, for which he gave himself up on the cross. The intimacy of a husband and wife is an earthly image of the intimacy that Christ has with his Church, and the union of an earthly marriage is a shadow of the union of that marriage of the Lamb of God with the Church.
The Orthodox see the Church as a mystical organism, not an organization of like thinking people. In the Church is the community where man is what he is created to be and can grow for eternity in divine life in communion with God through Christ in the Holy Spirit. The unity of the Church is not broken by time or space and is not limited merely to those alive upon the earth. The unity of the Church is the unity of the Blessed Trinity and of all of those who live with God: the holy angels, the righteous dead, and those who live upon the earth according to the commandments of Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit.
The community of the Church is the locus of salvation for mankind; it is truly the Ark in which mankind may be saved from the flood of corruption and sin. In it, Christians sacramentally work out their salvation with fear and trembling (Phil. 2:12), worshipping the Holy Trinity in spirit and in truth. The Church is the pillar and ground of truth (I Tim. 3:15) and thus may be relied upon in the Christian's struggle to apprehend the one truth for himself. The Church is eternal, and the gates of Hell will never prevail against it (Matt. 16:18).
Unity in diversity
The Church as a whole is an icon of God the Trinity, the mystery of unity in diversity. In the Trinity the three are one God, yet each is fully personal; in the Church a multitude of human persons are united in one, yet each preserves his personal diversity unimpaired. The mutual indwelling of the persons of the Trinity is paralleled by the coinherence of the members of the Church. In the Church there is no conflict between freedom and authority; in the Church there is unity, but no totalitarianism.
The Church consists of the prophets and saints of both the Old and New Covenants, the angels and the concrete, historical community of believers in this earthly life, past and future generations, in one and the same grace of God . It is both visible and invisible, both divine and human. It is visible, for it is composed of concrete congregations, worshipping here on earth; it is invisible, for it also includes the saints and the angels. It is human, for its earthly members are sinners; it is divine, for it is the Body of Christ. Not unlike the incarnation.
There is no separation between the visible and the invisible, between (to use western terminology) the Church militant and the Church triumphant, for the two make up a single and continuous reality. The Church visible, or upon earth, lives in, complete communion and unity with the whole body of the Church, of which Christ is the Head. Orthodoxy, therefore, while using the phrase 'the Church visible and invisible,' strongly insists that there are not two Churches, but one. (The term is only in relation to man.)
The boundaries of the Church are ultimately known only to God himself, but outside the historical context of the Church—that is, the Orthodox Church—the nature of the connection of any human being to the Church (whether a believer in Christ or not) is unknown to us. Throughout Church History, various groups have broken from the Church, a tragic reality which does not divide the Church but rather divides believers from the Church. The final status of Christians in such communities is dependent on God's mercy and grace, as is the case with those with membership in the Church in this life.
Before Pentecost
It is sometimes inaccurate to think that the Church started on Pentecost. The teaching of the holy Fathers is that the Church existed before all other things.
- Saint Epiphanius of Cyprus writes, "The Catholic Church, which exists from the ages, is revealed most clearly in the incarnate advent of Christ".
- Saint John Damascene observes, "The Holy Catholic Church of God, therefore, is the assembly of the holy Fathers, Patriarchs, Prophets, Apostles, Evangelists, and Martyrs who have been from the very beginning, to whom were added all the nations who believed with one accord".
- According to Saint Gregory the Theologian, "The Prophets established the Church, the Apostles conjoined it, and the Evangelists set it in order".
- The Church existed from the creation of the Angels, for the Angels came into existence before the creation of the world, and they have always been members of the Church. Saint Clement , Bishop of Rome, says in his second epistle to the Corinthians, the Church "was created before the sun and moon"; and a little further on, "The Church exists not now for the first time, but has been from the beginning".
Pentecost was the ordination of the Apostles, the commencement of the apostolic preaching to the nations, and the inauguration of the priesthood of the new Israel. The feast of holy Pentecost, therefore, determined the beginning of the priesthood of grace, not the beginning of the Church.
See also
External links
- The Orthodox Understanding of Primacy and Catholicity, by Bishop Hilarion of Vienna and Austria (paper read at the meeting of the theological commission of the Swiss Bishops' Conference in Basel, 24 January 2005)
- The Limits of the Church, by Fr. Georges Florovsky (1933)
- Church , The Orthodox Faith, by Fr. Thomas Hopko
- The Church of God (Excerpts from the Orthodox Church by Bishop Kallistos Ware, Part II: Faith and Worship)
- The Eucharistic and Holographic Ecclesiology of Orthodox Theology (81 pages of authorized excerpts from His Broken Body; Cleenewerck, Laurent, 2008)


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Bakst, Léon (1866-1924), Costume design for the ballet Sleeping Beauty by P. Tchaikovsky, Pencil, watercolour, gold on paper, Theatrical scenic painting, 1921, Private Collection
credit: culture-images/fai
author: 91900
image ID: ci01317740.jpg
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Disco Ball Kettlebell Design Pullover Hoodie
Disco Ball Kettlebell Design Pullover Hoodie
Hoodie Details
- 50% pre-shrunk cotton, 50% polyester, 8.0 oz/yd² (271.25 g/m²)
- Double-lined hood with matching drawcord
- 1x1 athletic rib-knit cuffs and waistband with spandex
- Double-needle stitched collar, shoulders, armholes, cuffs, and hem
- Large front pouch pocket
- Quarter-turned to avoid crease down the middle
- Air-jet spun yarn with a soft feel and reduced pilling
Shipping & Returns
This hoodie is made to order just for you. Once you place your order, the processing time is 2-7 business days to get it printed and ready to ship. After that, shipment time is 3-5 business days in the US, 5-10 business days to Canada, and 10-20 business days for all other international orders.
We take extra care to give you the best apparel possible, and we want you to love them. However, in the rare occasion there is an error with your order, or if you are unsatisfied with your shirt in any other way, you may return it within 30 days of receiving your package. Your satisfaction is very important to us. See details for returns.
Important note for international customers: You may be charged import duties and taxes designated by your country. Unfortunately, this is out of our control and there is nothing we can do about these fees. Please check with your local post office before placing your order.
Sizing & Care
Place the end of a measuring tape beside the collar at the top of the hoodie (high point shoulder). Pull the tape to the bottom hem.
Place the end of a measuring tape at one side of the chest area and pull the tape across to the other side of the hoodie.
Sleeve Length
Place the end of a measuring tape at the center back of the collar, then pull the tape along the top seam of the sleeve. When you get to the shoulder hold the tape in place at the shoulder and continue to pull down the sleeve until you reach the hem of the sleeve.
Pro Tip: Measure one of your hoodies you own and compare with the measurements you see in this guide.
Measurements are provided by suppliers. Product measurements may vary by up to 2" (5 cm).
Care Instructions
We want your hoodie to last a long time. Please follow these guidelines to help give it the longest life possible.
- Machine wash cold, inside-out, gentle cycle with mild detergent and similar colors. Use non-chlorine bleach, only when necessary. No fabric softeners.
- Tumble dry low, or hang-dry for longest life.
- Cool iron inside-out if necessary. Do not iron decoration.
- Do not dry clean.


text:
Belvedere Mountain Express – latest news
Our web presence
We are on Bandcamp, Facebook and Soundcloud.
Note that we are no longer on MySpace.
CDs available
Unthinkable Skies was released on 20 June 2011. You can still buy it as a download from CD Baby, Amazon or the iTunes Music Store, or order a home-made, beautifully packaged CD-R direct from us here.
This three-track, 22-minute EP, is a spoken word/music collaboration, consisting of Juliet Wilson's poetry being read to an accompaniment of Belvedere Mountain Express music. The first track is a piece in three parts which was commissioned for the launch of Juliet's chapbook Unthinkable Skies in May 2010, in which the music was specially composed to three of the poems from the book. The other two tracks are instrumental pieces from the first two Belvedere Mountain Express albums, to which Juliet has added some poetry.
18 May 2011 – last live appearance
We played a fifteen-minute set at The Golden Hour at the Forest Café in Edinburgh on Wednesday, 18 May 2011. It was semi-acoustic because the venue had lost all power to the main sound system for the first half of the evening. Becky sang as loudly as she could, I (Howard) played the accordion, which is loud anyway, and the electronic backing was played through the café's everyday sound system, which is used for background music. The audience gathered round and were very quiet!
Cauldstane Slap reviews (late 2010)
Our third album, Cauldstane Slap, was released on 15 November 2010. It is available to buy on CD from us here and as downloads from CD Baby, Amazon, iTunes etc.
It was reviewed on line by Leicester Bangs and Coke Machine Glow.
Poet and occasional collaborator Juliet Wilson wrote a clear and informative review on her blog, Crafty Green Poet.
Cauldstane Slap also received a four-star review in The Skinny, the Scottish arts/music monthly free paper. Apparently we have 'a delicate ear for sounds and samples' and 'a genuinely haunting, unearthly atmosphere not quite like anything else out there'. See the full review here.
About Belvedere Mountain Express
Belvedere Mountain Express is the musical project of Howard Goodman, a composer and keyboard player originally from southern England but now based in Edinburgh, Scotland.
The latest incarnation of Belvedere Mountain Express consists of Howard on electronics and accordion, and Becky Rose Fisher on vocals.
I also collaborate from time to time with Lená Sings, from Essen, Germany.
In 2009 as part of a small side-project, the Edinburgh-based poet and blogger Juliet Wilson has added some spoken-word texts to some older Belvedere Mountain Express instrumental pieces.
The earlier incarnation of Belvedere Mountain Express featured Vicki Giblin on vocals/lyrics on about a quarter of the tracks, the remainder being instrumental. We released two full-length CDs, A Vow in the Blue Belltower in August 2003, and Through Sulph'rous Night in January 2005.
I am still open to offers of collaboration, though, especially with singer/lyricists who can work with my music.
Listen to Belvedere Mountain Express
Recent releases
Visit our Soundcloud page to stream a selection of tracks from our most recent releases.
A Vow in the Blue Belltower (2003)
Here are one-minute samples from the first album A Vow in the Blue Belltower. Vicki sings on tracks 3, 6, 9 and 12.
Buying Belvedere Mountain Express music
Unthinkable Skies (2011)
Unthinkable Skies, the three-track collaboration between Belvedere Mountain Express and the poet Juliet Wilson, is available as a download from CD Baby, as well as from Amazon and the iTunes Store.
If you prefer a physical disc with packaging, you can order a home-made CD-R by clicking on the buttons below. It includes a card sleeve, with photographs by Juliet Wilson, and an insert with the five poems which feature in the three pieces.
Unthinkable Skies – postage to UK and Europe | £4 | |
Unthinkable Skies – postage to North and South America, Asia and Australia | £5 |
Cauldstane Slap (2010)
Cauldstane Slap is available on CD from CD Baby. This is the best option for people in North America.
If you are in the UK or anywhere in Europe, please buy the CD direct from Pigeonhouse here. Please pay by Paypal by clicking on the buttons below.
Cauldstane Slap – UK postage | £8 | |
Cauldstane Slap – Europe postage | £9 |
Cauldstane Slap is also available as a legal download from the usual places.
Through Sulph'rous Night (2005) and A Vow in the Blue Belltower (2003)
The first and second albums are only available on CD. Through Sulph'rous Night can be bought from CD Baby, which may be the easiest if you are in North America.
Both CDs can also be bought direct from Pigeonhouse here. Please pay by Paypal by clicking on the buttons below. Prices include shipping, anywhere in the world.
A Vow in the Blue Belltower | £6 | |
Through Sulph'rous Night | £6 | |
Both CDs together | £10 |
Get in touch with Belvedere Mountain Express
Belvedere Mountain Express can be contacted by email, at email@example.com
Or you can tweet to @HowardBME.
Note that the PO Box address on the packaging of the first and second CDs is now defunct.
Belvedere Mountain Express web pages
We are on Bandcamp, Facebook and Soundcloud.
- A short favourable review of Cauldstane Slap in the online fanzine Leicester Bangs
- A long and highly entertaining review in Coke Machine Glow, with a score of 78%
- 4-star review of Cauldstane Slap in Scottish arts/music monthly The Skinny
- The Wire magazine – Through Sulph'rous Night was favourably reviewed in the April 2005 edition. The review describes the LP as 'a gently inventive collection of melodies, scattered percussion and occasional samples lifted from Eastern European films and shortwave broadcasts' and goes on to say that 'the inclusion of live cicadas on "Where The White Mulberry Trees Grow" and field birds on "The Town Beneath The Sea" indicates a talent for sensitive phonographic excursions.'
- Review of A Vow in the Blue Belltower in Splendid e-zine
- Issue 13 of Eld Rich Palmer e-zine, which has a review of A Vow in the Blue Belltower (link no longer available)
- Review of Through Sulph'rous Night in Splendid e-zine
Related artists
- The visual artist Katherine Sola, who did the sleeve artwork for Through Sulph'rous Night
- The Edinburgh poet, blogger and educator Juliet Wilson, with whom I have an intermittent spoken-word collaboration. Buy her booklet, Unthinkable Skies, here
- The Edinburgh musician and writer Chelsea Cargill – quite different music from Belvedere Mountain Express, but rather lovely. Buy her CD!
Radio programmes
- Tracks from the first two albums have been played on Feedback Monitor on CIUT Radio in Toronto, Canada.
- A track from Through Sulph'rous Night was included in a mix from the radio programme The Garden of Earthly Delights on CRMK 89.8 FM in the Milton Keynes (UK) area.


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- Ph.D, Electrical Engineering, University of Southern California. Project: Fundamental Limits of Caching Networks: Turning Memory into Bandwidth
- Master of Science, Electrical Engineering (Wireless Networks), University of California, Santa Cruz. Project: Capacity of Wireless Ad Hoc Networks with Heterogeneous Properties
- Master of Science, Electrical Engineering (Information and Signal Processing), Royal Institute of Technology (KTH). Project: Realistic System Evaluation and Design of MIMO Pre-coding Schemes
- Bachelor of Engineering, Communication Engineering, Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications. Project: Polarization Control Algorithms in Optical Fiber Sensor Systems
Research Summary
I am currently running Caching, Communication and Computing (C^3) Lab in the ECE department at the University of Utah. I am interested in the general area of information Theory, Caching Networks, Storage, Communication Theory and Signal Processing, Distributed Computing. Please visit (https://sites.google.com/site/mingyuejiswebsite/caching-communication-and-computing-c-3-lab) for more information.
Mingyue Ji received the B.E. in Communication Engineering from Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications (China), in 2006, the M.Sc. degrees in Electrical Engineering from Royal Institute of Technology (Sweden) and from University of California, Santa Cruz, in 2008 and 2010, respectively, and the PhD from the Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical Engineering at University of Southern California in 2015. He subsequently was a Staff II System Design Scientist with Broadcom Corporation (Broadcom Limited), where he made a number of contributions for the standardization of the next generation of WLAN systems (802.11ax), in 2015-2016. He is now an Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at University of Utah.
He received the best paper award in IEEE International Conference on Communications (ICC) 2015, the best student paper award in IEEE European Wireless Conference 2010 and USC Annenberg Fellowship from 2010 to 2014. His main interests are in the field of communications and networking, information and coding theory, and statistics with particular focus on caching networks, next generation wireless communications, distributed storage and computing systems, and mobile ad hoc and sensor networks.


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Turn potholes into pavement with Bontrager's Race Lite IsoZone VR-CF Handlebar. Fusing IsoZone pads directly onto the bar, Bontrager created a bar that beats the buzz without added bulk so your hands and arms will feel fresh after miles of riding. Crafted from custom-butted, shot-peened 6061-T6 aluminum for the perfect balance of strength, lightness, stiffness and durability, the Race Lite IsoZone has a solid, yet svelte feel. A short reach, shallow drop and anatomic flare make riding in the drops comfortable and easy, while the etched positioning lines on the sides make lever placement a breeze.
Which Reach and Drop you prefer depends on your hand size, arm length and riding style. If you like what you're riding, simply match it as closely as possible. In general, deeper drops and longer reaches are appropriate for riders with long arms and large hands while narrow drops and short reaches fit smaller riders. Handlebar Width is related to shoulder width. Riders usually prefer a handlebar width equal to the measurement between their shoulder blades, or slightly wider if they climb a lot or ride fast and hard.


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Radiation Oncology Web based Rounds for Radiation Oncology SA-CME Program - November 2, 2020
Weekly education conference covering different disease sites, including breast cancer, rectal cancer, prostate cancer, gynecologic cancer, and brain tumors.
Target Audience
Radiation oncologist, medical physicists, dosimetrists, medical and surgical oncologists.
Learning Objectives
Upon completion of this audio conference, participants will be able to:
- Identify indications for radiation therapy.
- Learn about contouring.
- Review plan evaluation.
There is no educational content to this course. This site is designed to supplement training that has already occurred, to administer the post-test, collect CME evaluations, and issue credit.
Professor, Radiation Oncology, and Director, Residency Program Deputy Director of Radiation Services, UPMC Cancer Center Medical Director, Department of Radiation Oncology, Magee-Womens Hospital of UPMC Director, Brachytherapy, University of Pittsburgh Cancer Center Associate Pathway Director
Dr. Beriwal is a consultant with Varian and is an Assistant Pathway Director for Via Oncology .
All presenters disclosure of relevant financial relationships with any entity producing, marketing, re-selling, or distributing health care goods or services, used on, or consumed by, patients is listed above. No other planners, members of the planning committee, speakers, presenters, authors, content reviewers and/or anyone else in a position to control the content of this education activity have relevant financial relationships to disclose.
Joint Provider Accreditation Statement:
In support of improving patient care, the University of Pittsburgh is jointly accredited by the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME), the Accreditation Council for Pharmacy Education (ACPE), and the American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC), to provide continuing education for the healthcare team.
The University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine is accredited by the ACCME to provide continuing medical education for physicians. The University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine designates this enduring material activity for a maximum of 1.0 AMA PRA Category 1 Credits™. Each physician should only claim credit commensurate with the extent of their participation in the activity.
Other health care professionals will receive a certificate of attendance confirming the number of contact hours commensurate with the extent of participation in this activity.
Available Credit
- 1.00 AMA PRA Category 1 Credit™The University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine is accredited by the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education to provide continuing medical education for physicians.
- 1.00 Attendance


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CashierNo9, english band, photocredit/quelle: RISE ARTIST MANAGEMENT Ltd
Biography - Cashier No.9
Is there a Belfast sound..? Van Morrison… Stiff Little Fingers… Divine Comedy… Cashier No. 9 sound nothing like any of these, but they're as innovative and different as anything that's come from the city. They could be from California, or Manchester, or any number of places, having been variously compared with The Byrds, Beach Boys, Stone Roses, Pavement, CSN, The Flaming Lips and many others. Yet with their rich vocal harmonies, bold guitar textures and supremely catchy melodies, they've created a sound that's indeterminably none of these yet equally vibrant. The Holmes touch… Cashier No. 9's debut is produced by acclaimed DJ, film and music producer David Holmes. Combined with the mature, wryly humorous song-writing of frontman Danny Todd, the result is eclectic, layered, guitar-jangling country-laced pop. Within an ocean of standout tracks, opener and single 'Goldstar' is resplendent with bells and cascading melodies; 'Lost at Sea' skiffles with supreme rolling rhythms and sense of the 60s reborn; 'Flick of the Wrist' has an epic, Californian aura; and 'Oh Pity' sweeps the listener along with waves of rich harmonies. Cashier live… Cashier No. 9 have racked up a huge number of fans in the UK and abroad with extensive touring. The band have represented Belfast at London's Electric Proms; performed at the Knitting Factory in New York and Brighton's Great Escape; and graced the stage at Ireland's Electric Picnic festival. Personnel… Frontman Danny Todd is joined lifelong Belfast friends: James Smith on guitar, Stuart Magowan on bass, Philip Duffy on drums and Ronan Quinn on keyboards.
StarStatements.com möchte sich bedanken bei: Cashier No.9 & Tom Nicolson ( RISE ARTIST MANAGEMENT Ltd ) Frank Gerber Star Statement / Celebrity Statements


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Resource Library
APQC's Resource Library is your source for timely and topical information to help you meet your most complex business process and knowledge management challenges. Explore our ever-growing collection of more than 8,600 research-based best practices, benchmarks and metrics, case studies, and other valuable APQC content.
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Applying Agile in Knowledge Management
Agile—a project management paradigm that stresses iteration, collaboration, self-organization, and customer-centricity—is taking the business world by storm. In this article,…


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The official Librepay team of FreeCAD, the open-source 3D modeler
The Liberapay FreeCAD team:
The official Liberapay account of FreeCAD.
Any money received by this team is split equally between its members. Please note that by donating here, your money will go to each developer individually, and not to the FreeCAD project as a whole. We will always make sure that all people listed on this page are currently, active contributors to the project, in one way or another.
This platform is only one of several ways you can donate to the FreeCAD project.
Note: Upon donating to the FreeCAD team, you might see your donation go directly to one of the team members instead. That is how the Liberapay platform works, and is due to the limitations of payment processors. The platform automatically distributes donations among the different members when it is unable to split. All members end up receiving an equal amount.
FreeCAD is a large project with many contributors working on code, graphics, documentation, packaging, and support. Most contributors are volunteers who donate their time and talent to work on something that interests them. The project would not exist without them.
Some contributors, however, are working to make FreeCAD a substantial part of their career. They dedicate many hours per week toward improving FreeCAD and contribute both tactically and strategically to its future.
The Liberapay account supports contributors who are work on FreeCAD in a professional capacity and not already compensated by their employer.
Each of the team members listed below meet the following criteria:
An established history of contribution to FreeCAD in non-trivial ways.
Focused on a narrow and unique area of contribution to FreeCAD. Please read their individual pages to understand their areas.
Currently Contributing to the main FreeCAD community and code base. If a member stops contributing, they will be asked to leave the team.
Working to make FreeCAD and Open-Source Software a significant part of their career.
Committed to spending a significant fraction of each work week on FreeCAD related work.
Membership in the team is by invitation. If you meet these criteria and would like to join the team please contact any one of the team members
Q: I work on XYZ add-on workbench, can I join the team? A: Maybe. Add-on workbenches are a very important part of the FreeCAD eco-system. Some workbenches provide widely used and necessary functionality. Others are niche focused. These niche workbenches are best supported by donating directly to the developers Liberapay or Patreon accounts. If you believe your workbench has broad appeal and you meet the other criteria, please contact us for consideration.
Q: I contributed to FreeCAD in the past. Can I join? A: No. The liberapay team is to established to compensate contributors for current and ongoing work.
Q: I'm an experienced developer and I will contribute to FreeCAD if I can join. A: Trust can only be built over time. Part of being accepted to the liberapay team is an established history of contribution.
Q: I'm not a developer but like to contribute in other ways. Can I join? A: If you meet the other criteria, absolutely!
Q: How much does someone have to contribute to be included in the team? A: This is almost impossible to quantify. For example, a developer may spend many hours researching a problem to make even a small code change. Professionalism, trust, and dependability matter more than the size of the contribution.
Q: Who manages the developers on this team? A: Team members are self-managing professionals. If their situation changes so that they cannot continue in their role, they are expected and trusted to step down.
Q: One of the team members works on XXX. I also work on XXX. Can I join? A: Maybe. We would prefer to have a broad range of interest represented in the team rather than many developers in one or two interest areas. If you meet the other criteria please apply for consideration.
Linked Accounts
FreeCAD owns the following accounts on other platforms:
FreeCAD Stars 18296 Updated this week
This is the official source code of FreeCAD, a free and opensource multiplatform 3D parametric modeler.
FreeCAD-addons Stars 703 Updated 1 week ago
A convenient gathering of useful and well-developed FreeCAD plugins made by the community.
Patrons Export as CSV
FreeCAD has 60 public patrons.
The top 10 patrons are:
FreeCAD joined 7 years ago.


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New To IBM i
If you are new to the IBM i platform by IBM, then please take a quick look at the New To iSeries topic. This will explain a few points of nomenclature and warnings about the system. Please take this step if you are new to the platform because there are many things different about this system.
So you just got a new Power 520, and you don't know where to start?
A lot of things have changed, and with the current console options things aren't as simple anymore.
In this example, we'll assume that you have a machine that uses Operations Console LAN attached (vulgo: LAN console). This is usually specified when ordering the machine, so that IBM will preconfigure the machine correctly.
LAN console requires the machine to be on the same broadcast domain (hub/switch topology) in order to get initial configuration using BOOTP. It is a recommended best practice to do the initial LAN console configuration using a PC that is directly attached to the system. This will exclude several environmental factors from causing errors.
After initial configuration, the LAN console may be hosted on one or more PCs which can reach the SST IP address on your IBM i. It is heavily recommended to leave a preconfigured, single-purpose console PC right next to your system, so an IBM service representative has easy access to a console in case of a hardware fault.
Step by Step
Hardware & Console
Here's a general rundown of steps to be taken:
- Get the LAN Console PC into shape.
- Install System i Access V6R1, apply the latest service pack.
- Disable the Windows Firewall and any anti-virus firewalls - important for getting BOOTP working. It is a best practice to COMPLETELY turn off everything in your antivirus software (i.e. McAfee) because there is a lot more than just the firewall that will stop the BOOTP process from being allowed to communicate with Operations Console.
- Plan for ASMI
- If you have a DHCP server on your network, ensure that a network cable is attached to HMC Port 1 before powering on your system. This will ensure that the ASMI will obtain an IP address using DHCP.
- If not, manually configure an IP address for ASMI using a PC directly attached to HMC Port 1, which will listen to the IP address 169.254.2.147. On Power 5 systems, the default IP on HMC Port 1 is 192.168.2.147.
- Configure the PC for a static IP adress. Add an entry to the hosts file (i.e. C:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts) that will be used for your IBM i T1 ethernet port communication. In the hosts file simply make up your own name and give it an IP address that you know is not in use. Then add the appropriate LAN console configuration and specify the name you created in the hosts file. Ensure that the serial number and partition number is entered correctly. If you do not have any partitions, enter "1" as the partition number (this is valid Power 5 and Power 6 systems)
- Attach the PC to the Ethernet Port 1 of the System. Not on the HMC ports, but on the first port of the GX+ card, labeled T1. Ensure the PC is directly connected to the system. The PC will not have link until after IBM i OS is being loaded, but make sure that the cable you have is working. Crossover cables are not needed.
- Start the LAN console connection
- Attach the UPS relay cable to the system. It should be attached to serial port number 2. Important: You will need an IBM supplied adapter cable here. Do not attach the UPS cable to the SPCN ports (where it fits without the adapter)
- Attach power to the system.
- As a best practice, attach each power supply to a different UPS. In smaller installations, attach one power supply to the UPS and the other to a protected power socket. This will protect against UPS failure.
- Attach both power supplies at the same time. Leaving one power supply unplugged may cause an SRC to be raised and the attention light to be lit
- Wait till the FSP has finished initialization (~2-5 minutes). This is indicated by the green power light blinking slowly.
- Logon to ASMI
- Either use the manually configured connection per the above step, or look into what IP address your DHCP server has distributed to the FSP.
- Logon using "admin" as both username and password.
- Immediately change the password and logon again. You should now see all ASMI options.
- Logout from ASMI
- Press the white power button
- When prompted on the LAN console PC, enter "11111111" as both username and password
- You should now see the logon prompt. Logon using QSECOFR/QSECOFR
- After ensuring that you can logon, enable the Windows Firewall again.
Initial IBM i OS configuration
- Upon first signing in with QSECOFR you will be presented with "Work with Software Agreements" screen. You can read the agreements and accept them.
- Ensure that the system sees the UPS using DSPMSG QSYSOPR. You should see message CPI0962 The uninterruptible power supply is now attached
- Change QUPSDLYTIM to something sensible. 300 seconds is a good start if you use the default 1.5kVA UPS and only the Power 520 and LAN console PC is attached to it.
- Now is a good time to change the DST/SST password.
- Switch the system into manual mode using the control panel (reference on how to do this?) and execute function 21.
- You should now see the DST logon prompt. Logon using QSECOFR/QSECOFR. If you disable the QSECOFR id you can reset it using command CHGDSTPWD PASSWORD(*DEFAULT).
- You will now need to immediately change your password.
- Reset the password of the QSRV user to a known value and ensure that it's password is not set to expired
- Log out from DST
- Ensure that the system is switched back to mode B Normal.
- Change the system name using CHGNETA
- Ensure that MDMCNTRYID is set correctly for your country, otherwise this will prevent them from working
- Configure TCP/IP using GO TCPADM
- Create an ethernet line description using WRKHDWRSC *CMN / 5 / 1. Use *AUTO/*AUTO (which is the default on V6R1) unless your networking department specifies special settings.
- Configure the IP address using CFGTCP / 1
- Configure the default route using CFGTCP / 2
- Use CHGTCPDMN to set HOSTNAME, DMNNAME according to whatever your network plan specifies. Set HOSTSCHPTY to *LOCAL. Set at least two (preferably internal) nameservers on INTNETADR.
- Create a host table entry for the HOSTNAME/DMNNAME you set in the previous step using CFGTCP / 10
- Change QCCSID, QLOCALE, QDECFMT, QTIMZON, QCTLSBS etc.
- Configure the NTP client using CHGNTPA.
- If you have Windows Domain Controllers in your network, these can serve as a NTP servers
- You can also use the NTP Pool
- Perform an IPL to ensure that the system runs in mode B Normal
- Wait until INZSYS has completed before proceeding. You will see a QSYSOPR message indicating the completion.
- Install all additionally needed license programs. As a best practice, create an image catalog of the IBM i installation media supplied with the system. This can be useful if you need to install a licensed program at a later time.
- Install latest CUM/Group/Hiper/Security PTFs, preferably using image catalogs
- Configure Electronic Service Agent
- Create a copy of the QSECOFR user and call it QESAADM
- Change system value QRETSRVSEC to 1
- Logon as user QESAADM
- Use WRKCNTINF to add contact information
- Execute GO SERVICE to configure ESA
- Configure routine maintenance
- Type GO DISKTASKS and add a weekly job for disk information gathering
- Manually add a job to WRKJOBSCDE that runs STRPASPBAL weekly
If the system hangs with a A900 2000, you either did something wrong or IBM shipped the system with the wrong console configuration. You will need to perform a Procedure 65+21 to recover.
Helpful Links
BOOTP - The boot protocol for the operations console LAN port.
FAQ - A simple FAQ covering some basic how-to and troubleshooting.
Common - Get educated with a visit to a conference and learn tricks and tips!
QSECOFR Recover - Recover your QSECOFR profile after lockout.
OS/400 Commands - OS/400 Command List. Google search "IBM <command name>" to get details.


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In Counties Work, students learn about local government by playing a county official responding to citizen requests. They will explore questions like:
- Are citizens making sensible requests?
- Which county department can best address a citizen's concern?
- Should taxes be raised or lowered to maintain a balanced budget?
- How will citizens react—and what's the best action when crisis strikes?
For English and Multilingual Learners: Use the support tool, Spanish translation, voiceover and glossary.
This game was made with support from the National Association of Counties. The Spanish translation and support for English and Multilingual Learners was made with support from the Jane Nelson Institute for Women's Leadership at Texas Woman's University.
- Simulate the role of county government, including organization, responsibilities, and services
- Identify appropriate resources and departments of county government to solve problems
- Consider how a budget and major sources of local revenue affect both services and citizens
This Game is included in the following units: