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Category archive: Education
Spent the whole day fretting about not enough people coming to my Last Friday of the Month meeting this evening. Richard Carey would, I knew, be fine, but would the number of listeners be insultingly small? Happily, two people showed up who hadn't emailed that they were coming, and the room was, if not full, at least not embarrassingly empty.
Better yet, I also fixed my speaker for next month, which I had also been fretting about. Priya Dutta, who attended this evening, will be speaking about Education, libertarianism and similar things. The Gove reforms, the various attempts to set up cheap new free enterprise schools of various sorts, that kind of thing. She is a teacher, so this is bound to be good. I'll say more as I learn more.
Too tired to expand on what Richard said (about English Republicanism and its influence in the American colonies and later the USA), other than that in the brackets is what it was about and that it was very interesting. But since this is Friday, here is news of Cats on Kickstarters, and of Catstarter , which I think is a book, or maybe a blog. Also cat related: Ceiling Netanyahu is watching you tunnel.
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I want one of these:
It's a map of London, and a puzzle with each London postal district being a piece. In other words, it's a London Postcode Jigsaw Puzzle.
The thing is, I love London and everything, but I have no very clear idea of what the names are of its various bits. Or to put it another way, I have no exact idea of where Harringay, Eltham, Camden, Islington, and so on and so forth, are. I know most of the names. I know most of the places. Can't match names to places or places to names.
This puzzle will be just the ticket for sorting all that out in my head. £15.
England are now facing the distinct possibility of having to follow on in the third test, having won the first two. Because there was a pause after the second, which England won by a huge margin of 347 runs, there was a small torrent of commentary to the effect that Australian cricket is doomed, doomed, and will take years to recover, if it indeed ever recovers. Titles to savour include: A tale of two depths - While England plan, Australia dream - Australia: hubris, despair, panic - What can Australia learn from English cricket? - Ashes 2013: Sheffield Shield decline lies behind Australia's demise - There is no easy way back for these Aussies - Australia's darkest hour shows no sign of dawn.
My favourite Australian Cricket is Doomed piece has been, I think, A schoolboy curse, which is about why posh Australian schools don't produce top cricketers, apart from Warne. The problem is that promising posh boys don't play against men, only against other less good posh boys. Boys from scuzzy government schools, on the other hand, play for local clubs on Saturdays, against tough bastard older blokes, and thereby get better and better.
Yes, I know. Warne is posh?
In England the problem is that only posh boys ever seem to get good at cricket. You'd think this would make England worse.
The speakers at the Liberty League Freedom Forum were an impressive lot. I intend, Real Soon Now, to be writing at greater length (at Samizdata) about what some of the speakers said. In this posting here, I will concentrate on shoving up photos.
Here are some snaps of just a few of the speakers in action:
Top left: Douglas Carswell; top middle: Terence Kealey; top right: Mark Littlewood.
Bottom left: Sam Bowman; bottom middle: J. P. Floru; bottom right: Randy Barnett.
I did not attend anything like all the sessions, not least because many of them were simultaneous. But we all crowded into the big hall to have lunch on Saturday and Sunday, and there were a couple of speeches there also, from Mark Littlewood on the Saturday, and from J. P. Floru on the Sunday, both of whom are shown above, doing their lunchtime talks.
Impressive though the line-up of speakers was, and hard as it often was to choose which speaker to listen to, the real star of the occasion, for me, was the audience that the Liberty League people had managed to assemble for this event. It would have been quite something for me to have listened to a succession of very good talks. It was something else again to be part of a 200-strong audience listening attentively to those same talks, most of them of less than half my age.
So, here are some crowd shots:
The more I study the world and its ways, the more importance I attach to the influence of gatherings like this one. Getting a couple of hundred of Britain's most committed libertarians and free marketeers together over a weekend, and permanently connecting them with each other, will have network effects beyond calculation, especially when you consider how much easier it now is to do networking electronically.
So who put this event together? Well, I did some asking around, and three people kept getting mentioned:
Left: Anton Howes; centre: Christiana Hambro; right: Stephen Davies.
The latter two are both briefly biographised at the IEA website, and Anton Howes is likewise described on this list of Liberty Leaguers. Hannah Besford, Will Hamilton and James Lawson, also on that Liberty Leaguers list, also got several mentions, not least in the conference progamme (i.e. on page 2 of this), as having contributed importantly. Notoriously, when credit is to be shared among humans for their cooperative achievements, there are frequent mismatches between who gets given the credit and who did the actual work, so my best guess could be seriously off. Nevertheless, my best guess is that the three people pictured above were the prime movers (certainly among the prime movers), all three of them having decided independently that what the British free market/libertarian movement needs is a succession of gatherings like this one, wherever in the UK it makes sense to stage them. So, that is what they have been doing, this latest London event being merely the biggest of such events so far. There have been several others during the last few years, and it looks like there will be many more. I certainly hope so.
So I finally got around to finishing my review of Think Tank by Madsen Pirie, which is the story, so far, of the Adam Smith Institute.
Ripple: me quoting Madsen Pirie, here.
Another ripple: the ASI quoting me, here.
The ASI seems happy, despite the delay.
LATER: Madsen Pirie quoting me, here.
Two interesting early comments (two of many that follow) on this posting, which vividly (i.e. with lots of vivid photos) describes an idiotic Occupy occupation (with thanks to David Thompson for the link).
Given that the University of California, which owns this now-"Occupied" farm tract, is largely responsible for teaching the "Occupiers" the idiot theories under which they've undertaken this action, isn't this really an instance of the chickens coming home to roost?
The vast majority of the "Occupy the Farm" buffoons are not Cal students; it's mostly composed of losers who didn't get into Cal, so in jealousy and frustration, they're stealing the research equipment of the students who actually did well in school.
UC Berkeley is actually two completely distinct universities; the "liberal arts" half is thorough and irretrievably contaminated with Marxist ideologies; but the "STEM" half ("science, technology, engineering, math") is very rigorous, hardcore, not politicized (and mostly Asian).
The College of Natural Resources, which does research at the farm, is mostly in the STEM half of the school (though there is a politicized component). Notice that the professors who joined the occupiers are all from the Anthropology and Gender Studies departments, not from Natural Resources.
So, this may not be a clear-cut case of chickens and their roosting behavior.
That "mostly Asian" bit makes me very pessimistic about the future of the West.
For how long will the best Asians feel they have to go West to get the best sort of education? Will they keep coming, and after their rigorous Western educations, will they stay in the West? Or, at a pivotal point in the nearish future, will they take their rigour back to Asia and plant it there, leaving what remains of Western education at the mercy of the "humanities"?
I love what James Tooley has been doing with his life, namely telling the world about how the world's poor are now getting themselves educated. The world's poor are not getting education from their governments. They are purchasing it from their fellow citizens.
This is Tooley's description of how he got started learning about this global educational miracle, and triumph of the free market economy. It's from his book The Beautiful Tree (Chapter 1, pp. 3-7):
After a stint teaching philosophy of education at the University of the Western Cape in South Africa, I returned to England to complete my doctorate and later became a professor of education. Thanks to my experiences in sub-Saharan Africa and my modest but respectable academic reputation, I was offered a commission by the World Bank's International Finance Corporation to study private schools in a dozen developing countries.
The lure of faraway places was too enticing to resist, but I was troubled by the project itself. Although I was to study private schools in developing countries, those schools were serving the middle classes and the elite. Despite my lifelong desire to help the poor, I'd somehow wound up researching bastions of privilege.
The first leg of the trip began in New York in January 2000. As if to reinforce my misgivings that the project would do little for the poor, I was flown first class to London in the inordinate luxury of the Concorde. Forty minutes into the flight, as we cruised at twice the speed of sound and two miles above conventional air traffic, caviar and champagne were served. The boxer Mike Tyson (sitting at the front with a towel over his head for much of the journey) and singer George Michael were on the same flight. I felt lost.
From London it was on to Delhi, Chennai, and Mumbai. By day, I evaluated five-star private schools and colleges that were very definitely for the privileged. By night, I was put up in unbelievably salubrious and attentive five-star hotels. But in the evenings, sitting and chatting with street children outside these very same hotels, I wondered what effect any of my work could have on the poor, whose desperate needs I saw all around me. I didn't just want my work to be a defense of privilege. The middle-class Indians, I felt, were wealthy already. To me it all seemed a bit of a con: just because they were in a "poor" country, they were able to latch onto this international assistance even though they as individuals had no pressing need for it at all. I didn't like it, but as I returned to my room and lay on the 500-thread-count Egyptian-cotton sheets, my discomfort with the program was forced to compete with a mounting sense of self-criticism.
Then one day, everything changed. Arriving in Hyderabad to evaluate brand-new private colleges at the forefront of India's hi-tech revolution, I learned that January 26th was Republic Day, a national holiday. Left with some free time, I decided to take an autorickshaw - the three-wheeled taxis ubiquitous in India - from my posh hotel in Banjara Hills to the Charminar, the triumphal arch built at the center of Muhammad Quli Shah's city in 1591. My Rough Guide to India described it as Hyderabad's "must see" attraction, and also warned that it was situated in the teeming heart of the Old City slums. That appealed tome. I wanted to see the slums for myself.
As we traveled through the middle-class suburbs, I was struck by the ubiquity of private schools. Their signboards were on every street corner, some on fine specially constructed school buildings, but others grandly posted above shops and offices. Of course, it was nothing more than I'd been led to expect from my meetings in India already - senior government officials had impressed me with their candor when they told me it was common knowledge that even the middle classes were all sending their children to private schools. They all did themselves. But it was still surprising to see how many there were.
We crossed the bridge over the stinking ditch that is the once-proud River Musi. Here were autorickshaws in abundance, cattle-drawn carts meandering slowly with huge loads of hay, rickshaws agonizingly peddled by painfully thin men. Cars were few, but motorbikes and scooters ("two-wheelers") were everywhere - some carried whole families (the largest child standing in front; the father at the handlebars; his wife, sitting sidesaddle in her black burka or colorful sari, holding a baby, with another small child wedged in between). There were huge trucks brightly painted in lively colors. There were worn-out buses, cyclists, and everywhere pedestrians, whose cavalier attitude toward the traffic unnerved me as they stepped in front of us seemingly without a care in the world. From every vehicle came the noise of horns blaring - the drivers seemed to ignore their mirrors, if they had them at all. Instead, it seemed to be the responsibility of the vehicle behind to indicate its presence to the vehicle in front. This observation was borne out by the legend on the back of the trucks, buses, and autorickshaws, "Please Horn!" The noise of these horns was overwhelming: big, booming, deafening horns of the buses and trucks, harsh squealing horns from the autorickshaws. It's the noise that will always represent India for me.
All along the streets were little stores and workshops in makeshift buildings - from body shops to autorickshaw repair shops, women washing clothes next to paan (snack) shops, men building new structures next to the stalls of market vendors, tailors next to a drugstore, butchers and bakers, all in the same small hovel-like shops, dark and grimy, a nation of shopkeepers. Beyond them all rose the 400-year-old Charminar.
My driver let me out, and told me he'd wait for an hour, but then called me back in a bewildered tone as I headed not to the Charminar but into the back streets behind. No, no, I assured him, this is where I was going, into the slums of the Old City. For the stunning thing about the drive was that private schools had not thinned out as we went from one of the poshest parts of town to the poorest. Everywhere among the little stores and workshops were little private schools! I could see handwritten signs pointing to them even here on the edge of the slums. I was amazed, but also confused: why had no one I'd worked with in India told me about them?
I left my driver and turned down one of the narrow side streets, getting quizzical glances from passers-by as I stopped underneath a sign for Al Hasnath School for Girls. Some young men were serving at the bean-and-vegetable store adjacent to a little alleyway leading to the school. I asked them if anyone was at the school today, and of course the answer was no for it was the national holiday. They pointed me to an alleyway immediately opposite, where a hand-painted sign precariously supported on the first floor of a three-story building advertised "Students Circle High School & Institute: Registered by the Gov't of AP." "Someone might be there today," they helpfully suggested.
I climbed the narrow, dark staircase at the back of the building and met a watchman, who told me in broken English to come back tomorrow. As I exited, the young men at the bean-and-vegetable counter hailed me and said there was definitely someone at the Royal Grammar School just nearby, and that it was a very good private school and I should visit. They gave me directions, and I bade farewell. But I became muddled by the multiplicity of possible right turns down alleyways followed by sharp lefts, and so asked the way of a couple of fat old men sitting alongside a butcher shop.
Their shop was the dirtiest thing I had ever seen, with entrails and various bits and pieces of meat spread out on a mucky table over which literally thousands of flies swarmed. The stench was terrible. No one else seemed the least bit bothered by it. They immediately understood where I wanted to go and summoned a young boy who was headed in the opposite direction to take me there. He agreed without demur, and we walked quickly, not talking at all as he spoke no English. In the next street, young boys played cricket with stones as wickets and a plastic ball. One of them called me over, to shake my hand. Then we turned down another alleyway (with more boys playing cricket between makeshift houses outside of which men bathed and women did their laundry) and arrived at the Royal Grammar School, which proudly advertised, "English Medium, Recognised by the Gov't of AP." The owner, or "correspondent" as I soon came to realize he was called in Hyderabad, was in his tiny office. He enthusiastically welcomed me. Through that chance meeting, I was introduced to the warm, kind, and quietly charismatic Mr. Fazalur Rahman Khurrum and to a huge network of private schools in the slums and low-income areas of the Old City. The more time I spent with him, the more I realized that my expertise in private education might after all have something to say about my concern for the poor.
Khurrum was the president of an association specifically set up to cater to private schools serving the poor, the Federation of Private Schools' Management, which boasted a membership of over 500 schools, all serving low-income families. Once word got around that a foreign visitor was interested in seeing private schools, Khurrum was inundated with requests for me to visit. I spent as much time as I could over the next 10 days or so with Khurrum traveling the length and breadth of the Old City, in between doing my work for the International Finance Corporation in the new city. We visited nearly 50 private schools in some of the poorest parts of town, driving endlessly down narrow streets to schools whose owners were apparently anxious to meet me. (Our rented car was a large white Ambassador - the Indian vehicle modeled on the old British Morris Minor, proudly used by government officials when an Indian flag on the hood signified the importance of its user - horn blaring constantly, as much to signify our own importance as to get children and animals out of the way.) There seemed to be a private school on almost every street corner, just as in the richer parts of the city. I visited so many, being greeted at narrow entrances by so many students, who marched me into tiny playgrounds, beating their drums, to a seat in front of the school, where I was welcomed in ceremonies officiated by senior students, while school managers garlanded me with flowers, heavy, prickly, and sticky around my neck in the hot sun, which I bore stoically as I did the rounds of the classrooms.
So many private schools, some had beautiful names, like Little Nightingale's High School, named after Sarogini Naidu, a famous "freedom fighter" in the 1940s, known by Nehru as the "Little Nightingale" for her tender English songs. Or Firdaus Flowers Convent School, that is, "flowers of heaven." The "convent" part of the name puzzled me at first, as did the many names such as St. Maria's or St. John's. It seemed odd, since these schools were clearly run by Muslims - indeed, for a while I fostered the illusion that these saints and nuns must be in the Islamic tradition too. But no, the names were chosen because of the connotations to parents - the old Catholic and Anglican schools were still viewed as great schools in the city, so their religious names were borrowed to signify quality to the parents. But did they really deliver a quality education? I needed to find out.
I mentioned the difficulties I had last Saturday, at the Liberty League Conference, with indoor photography. The least unsuccessful indoor photos I took were of some of the speakers.
Part of movement building is telling each other what we all look like, so here are these snaps. Click to get bigger pictures, exactly as they emerged from my camera. If anyone uses any of these snaps elsewhere (as they are most welcome to do) they are also welcome to do whatever editing they consider might improve them.
The good gentlemen pictured below are, in the order in which they spoke at the Conference, James Stanfield (top left), Mark Pennington (top centre), Brendon O'Neill (top right), Kristian Niemietz (bottom left), Andrew Lilico (bottom centre), Mustafa Akyol (bottom left):
James Stanfield. Stanfield is a colleague of James Tooley, and was a late replacement for Tooley, who had been struck down by a travel-related bug. It seems that school spotting in far away places has its dangers. Having heard Tooley speak a number of times over the years, most recently last Wednesday, and not ever having heard James Stanfield before, I personally was not that distressed by this swap, although I'm guessing others present may have been.
Everyone, definitely including me, regretted the no-show by Toby Young, who got stuck in traffic and then failed to find anywhere to park and went back home. Bizarre. But at least Young phoned in to explain all this. The titles of two of his books, How to Lose Friends and Alienate People and The Sound of No Hands Clapping, provoked laughter when mentioned by conference supremo Anton Howes as he passed on these travel updates.
Stanfield's talk was distinguished by his assertion of the value of liberty, as a principle. Stanfield didn't justify a total free market in education merely because it would, in the opinion of onlookers, have better educational results. People should, he said, be allowed to choose whatever education they want for their children, because that is an inherently good idea, along with such ideas as it being good for people to be allowed to say what they want and go where they want.
The other of the above speakers who particularly impressed me was Mustafa Akyol. I am no admirer of Islam. Akyol is the first person (Muslim or otherwise) I have ever heard to have got me thinking that I might be mistaken about just how inherently evil Islam is. He is the author of a book entitled Islam Without Extremes: A Muslim Case For Liberty, a copy of which I purchased after he gave his talk. I probably still won't be convinced, mind, but I am looking forward to reading this.
That a particular speaker may not have impressed me as much as the above two says little about him and quite a lot about me. I have reached the nodding off stage in life. If I nod off while you are speaking at an event I am attending, you shouldn't take it personally. Could this be why so many people - people other than me - prefer not to sit at the front of the audience at events like this?
Indeed. For a report on the actual lecture, go here.
Right, seen that? Maybe while there, you also saw the little clump of glasses and bottles to the left as we look at Tooley. For quite a while I photoed them, instead of Tooley or his introducer, because, well, they just looked so much better, and were so much better lit:
I can't remember what that quote there, on the right, actually signifies. Something bad about state education.
So now here's the man himself:
Next up, on the left, the audience, who struck me as being really quite numerous, and not entirely by any means consisting only of old people whom I already knew. In fact, I hardly recognised anyone, which is good.
And on the right, Mark
Pennington Littlewood of the IEA squints into the light of the slide show machine, trying to make out who is trying to ask a question.
If you think these pictures are bit blurry, I can only say that I agree with you. One of the reasons I now want a new camera is that I want a new camera that will work better in bad light, for occasions like this.
Today I had a bizarre and rather troubling experience. I listened to a recording I had made of a single orchestral piece, performed at some point in a broadcast concert earlier this summer. My recording began, not with an announcement of what the piece was and who was playing it, but with the beginning of the performance itself. As it began, I was wondering what it was, what with the sound file being called 09081930.MP2 rather than anything more informative. That says when it was recorded (Aug 9 at 7.30pm), but not what it is.
I continued to listen to the piece. It was totally familiar, but what the hell was it? I knew I knew it, but I … did not know its name! Every note was familiar. I knew exactly what was coming next. I knew how it would end. I knew it, I knew it, I knew it. But, I did not know it.
Even more irritating was that, presumably because I obviously knew it, my recording of the piece ended with a snatch of truncated applause, rather than any further announcement of what it was and who had been playing it. What the hell was it?
After much further research of a silliness that I need not bother you with, I finally found my way to the programme of the event I had been recording. And all was revealed. Finlandia.
Finlandia, by Sibelius.
Finlandia!!!! This is one of the most famous pieces of classical music ever written, just about at the pinnacle of the classical pop chart. And what's more, I don't just know this piece, and I haven't just known it for half a century, possessing an increasing number of recordings of it as the decades have passed. I fXXXing played in it when I was at Marlborough. I played the flute, and Finlandia has lots for the flutes to do, and I did it, week after week, and then finally at the end of term concert. Not long after that I got a recording of the piece (along with the Sibelius Violin Concerto - also wonderful) by Herbert Von Karajan, to hear how it should really sound, and listened to it over and over again with huge pleasure. Yet, until I had consulted that concert programme, I could not remember the name of the piece, or who had written it.
I've had experiences like this before, such as not recognising the Beethoven Violin Concerto when hearing Beethoven's own version of it for piano and orchestra, or not recognising some famous pop tune, that I also knew I knew, when someone sang it. But this was truly bizarre.
This is not the end, but it now feels a lot like the beginning of the end.
Radio 3 is overdosing on Mozart just now. Every note he ever wrote is being broadcast this week, apparently.
I've just been listening to Donald MacLeod playing recordings of some of Mozart's very earliest pieces, all very diverting and entertaining. Right at the end of the show MacLeod reminded us that Mozart was, although MacLeod did not use this phrase, entirely home schooled, as supervised by his famous dad, Leopold. Mozart never went to school at all. Too busy working, as a composer and performer.
One of Mozart's childhood companions (and yes, home schooled children do tend to have companions) said that Mozart might, had he not been so closely watched and taught by adults in his early years, especially Leopold of course, and steered towards honest employment so early, have become … a criminal. Mozart was essentially amoral, the friend said, and constantly tempted by every passing novelty. (It was indeed like that all his life, which was one of extravagance and debt, as well as musical genius of course.)
Had Mozart not been taught, very early on, how to make money as a musician, said the childhood friend, he might simply have grabbed it wherever he could.
From the Preface of The Blind Watchmaker by Richard Dawkins:
A lawyer or a politician is paid to exercise his passion and his persuasion on behalf of a client or a cause in which he may not privately believe. I have never done this and I never shall. I may not always be right, but I care passionately about what is true and I never say anything that I do not believe to be right. I remember being shocked when visiting a university debating society to debate with creationists. At dinner after the debate, I was placed next to a young woman who had made a relatively powerful speech in favour of creationism. She clearly couldn't be a creationist, so I asked her to tell me honestly why she had done it. She freely admitted that she was simply practising her debating skills, and found it more challenging to advocate a position in which she did not believe. Apparently it is common practice in university debating societies for speakers simply to be told on which side they are to speak. Their own beliefs don't come into it. I had come a long way to perform the disagreeable task of public speaking, because I believed in the truth of the motion that I had been asked to propose. When I discovered that members of the society were using the motion as a vehicle for playing arguing games, I resolved to decline future invitations from debating societies that encourage insincere advocacy on issues where scientific truth is at stake.
I uphold the right of people to indulge in such debating games, but share Dawkins's extreme distaste for having any part in them myself. I also think that Dawkins makes his point very well, as is usual with him.
The thing that pissed me off about university debating societies like this one was not so much the insincerity, as the fact that they seemed to use the argument as a mere excuse to do bad stand-up comedy. They weren't seriously pretending to take the other side. They frivolously refused to take any side at all, and didn't give a damn that they made this entirely obvious. Poor, pathetic you for taking the subject so absurdly seriously, for caring about it all, for getting so involved.
The thing some people don't seem to get about Dawkins is how much emotion is involved in his fiercely logical harangues. They assume that because he is trying so hard to be logical, which he is, that therefore no deep feeling can be involved. But there is no necessary conflict between logic and depth of feeling, any more than there is a necessary conflict between a car engine and petrol.
Just now I am on the look out for little (or big) things from books, so that I can practice scanning stuff in, to my new computer, with my new scanner. Right now it is still a bit of a struggle, so expect more bits from more books.
A comment by James Waterton on this, deserves to be a blog posting in its own right:
A former colleague of mine was one of those exceedingly cerebral Russian science/maths boffins. He would teach maths in English for four months of the year to rich Chinese high school grads destined to study in the West. Then for the remaining 8 months of the year, he'd burn through the money he earned working on whatever mad scientist projects he could dream up. An extremely intelligent but also mild-mannered and courteous gentleman.
I had a number of chats with this man, and once sounded him out regarding his political views. He told me that his ideal political system was one where the more educated and intelligent you could prove yourself to be, the more votes you would receive in an election. Furthermore, access to public office would be made easier based on the same criteria. I remember finding this amusing. It seems obvious to me that out of all the countries that have been ill-served by extremely intelligent people (and there are many), Russia would have to have suffered the most under the yoke of the super smart who thought they were so intelligent that they had the right to tell those who they saw as less intelligent how to live.
The irony that this borderline genius still wasn't smart enough to heed the abundantly clear lesson from his country's past, and would, in his 'perfect world', introduce something similar, was not lost on me. Clearly people like this should be kept as far away from the levers of power as possible.
And now it is.
Re this now deservedly viral video, I've just commented at Samizdata, on this, thus:
I have just watched this amazing video, and frankly, it looked to me like a rather over-the-top (but very funny) attack on the green movement, done by people who really, really hate it, far more even than I do. Seriously. The fact that the teacher was such a genuinely nice lefty, and she was being very sweet about everything, right up to the bit where she murdered the dissenters, just made it all the funnier.
Greenies. Don't be fooled by the niceness. They're psycho-murderers, or they would be if they could be. Good grief. If I was making an attack on the greenies, I wouldn't have dared to go this far. This was genius.
I thought it was a nice twist that David Ginola got squelched, rather than just one of those Joe Soap footballers. That was also very funny.
Talk about an own goal. These people are making propaganda against themselves.
And they expect everyone to accept their screeching opinions about the environment, after a giant cock-up like this.
It is the amazing stupidity that I am, well, amazed by.
I very rarely get such good value for my tax contributions. As PJ O'Rourke famously said, about something else that was also over-the-top splendid (a warship I think): "This is how to waste public money!"
This made my weekend.
I am still absolutely dazed with amazement at the total, one hundred and eighty degree oppositeness of the message this video sends out to the message they were trying to send out.
All the anti-greenies seem to be angry. I'm not angry. I guffawed. But all the other greenies must now be spitting blood and biting the wallpaper.
Natalie Solent responded to my comment by taking the analysis a bit further:
… And the actress who plays Scully gets murdered because her submission to the cause, though present, is not deep enough. It's almost as if the film is saying, "these Greens - don't trust them, even if you are one of them!"
Spot on. Spot on.
Natalie continues:
Speculation on the unconscious motives of the makers could fill a landfill. Many have said that it shows what Greens fantasize about doing to non-Greens. Could it instead - or also - reveal the unconscious hatred and understanding of Greens for their own movement?
Actually, I think it was just inside-their-little-bubble groupthink that lead them into this car crash of a video. They literally did not see what they were saying, until it was too late.
I assume that what they thought they were doing was dramatising how really really serious the environment thing is. They sense that they're losing this argument, so they decided to shout. But what they ended up shouting was: "We're a bunch of vile greenie-nazis!"
LATER: And it begins.
Incoming, in a way that is ideal for one of my feline Friday postings, which I don't want only to be cuddly little kitty-witties (not that there's anything wrong with that):
Hi Brian,
I saw this and thought of you ...
Eric Raymond has been cat blogging.
The best stuff on this blog is often in the comments:
"I've wondered if this were the case ever since I saw footage of Dr. Irene Pepperberg's work with the African grey parrot Alex. She was apparently able to challenge the bird into a whole new realm of cognitive capability, and I wondered if we, by placing them into a cognitively challenging environment and exposing them to unusually complex stimuli (speech, ambient noise such as television, regular tool use in their presence) might do the same for our cats and dogs to a lesser extent?
The possibility is tantalizing. I know our cats had varying success in attempting to manipulate doors, seemingly in mimicry of human behavior. There was no "training" involved, no explicit reinforcement. They've also developed relatively sophisticated desires regarding yogurt (a favorite treat), and strategies for achieving them.
Then of course, there is the fact that cats simply don't talk to us the way they do other cats. In the wild adult cat-to-cat communication is mainly about stance and body posture, and of course smell. Cats meow because they learn that's what we respond to. And given that an adult cat's meow is in the same frequency range as a baby's cry … is this a case of us operant-conditioning them or them operant-conditioning us?"
Rob, this is the second time in as many days that you have recycled a comment for the benefit of this blog, once in the above email, and then another (which I also highly recommend) quoted within a comment of yours, on the previous posting about Devil's Kitchen. I strongly agree that comments are a great source of further postings. That often happens at Samizdata too. Many a posting there began as a comment on a previous posting.
Here's another classic comment from the same Raymond cat posting:
A few years ago there was a story of a mentally deficient man on death row in Texas. Every year they would give him an IQ test to see if he was intelligent enough to execute and for a few years he failed. One year he finally passed. Researchers believe that his IQ increase was due to the time that he spent interacting with his lawyers and participating in his own defence as they were trying to get him off of death row.
Proof positive that passing exams doesn't always enhance your life chances. Proof also that IQ is not always all it's cracked up to be. A truly intelligent man would have made sure he kept failing this particular exam.


text:
Gitane Demone
|This biographical article needs additional citations for verification. (September 2011)
|Gitane Demone
Gitane Demone in 2007
|Background information
May 16, 1958
San Francisco, California, U.S.
|Los Angeles, USA
|Deathrock, gothic rock, dark cabaret, jazz
|Years active
|Associated acts
|Pompeii 99
Christian Death
Rozz Williams
Hedone Tears
|Notable instruments
|Vocals, piano, guitar
Gitane Demone (born May 16, 1958) is a singer and musician. She was a member of Christian Death in the 1980s, and is currently a solo artist.
Pompeii 99 and Christian Death[edit]
After answering an ad placed by Valor Kand in 1981, Demone joined his band, Pompeii 99. The pair also become lovers, giving birth to a son, Sevan, in 1984, and later a daughter, Zara. Demone stayed with the band when it joined with Rozz Williams in 1983 to become the new lineup of Christian Death.[1][2] Demone split from both Kand and Christian Death in 1989.
Solo History[edit]
Demone may have had an obvious background in punk and deathrock/gothic rock, but she also had a passion for jazz and a number of legendary female vocalists, most notably Billie Holiday. Her rubber-clad S&M visual image was no less intriguing, with the fetish theme carried through into her lyrics.
Demone released a couple of EPs early in her solo career (eventually collected on the compilation Facets in Blue). She then renewed her friendship with former bandmate Rozz Williams, touring together and then recording an album, Dream Home Heartache, in 1995, which included both cover versions and their own material. She then paired up with Mark Ickx to produce a full-length album, released under the name Demonix, around the same time.
Demone recorded an album of her own, Am I Wrong?, in 1997. She also continued to provide guest vocals for bands on both sides of the Atlantic, and also released a compilation of the songs she sung in her Christian Death days. A second studio album, Stars of Trash (again self-penned, but recorded with the assistance of the band Dreadful Shadows), followed in 2000.
In 2008 a two-disc DVD titled Life After Death was released by Cult Epics, featuring footage from throughout Demone's career, including a live performance with Williams.
Demone is currently involved in a project called the Crystelles with daughter Zara Kand.
She has also performed with the experimental noise band +DOG+.
- A Heavenly Melancholy EP (1993)
- Lullabies for a Troubled World EP (1993)
- Facets in Blue (1993 - compilation of previous EPs)
- Love for Sale (1993 - Live in Bern)
- With Love & Dementia (Live in Cannes 1984) (1994)
- Never Felt So Alive (1994 - as Demonix)
- Dream Home Heartache (1995 - as Rozz Williams and Gitane Demone)
- Am I Wrong? (1997)
- The Happy Hour (1997 - with The Alpha Project)
- Life in Death '85-'89 (1999 - collection of all of the Christian Death songs she sang)
- Never Felt So Alive (The Lost Mixes) (1999 - as Demonix)
- Stars of Trash (2000)
- Solitary War CD single (2000)
- Life After Death DVD (2008)
- Attach and Detach (2010) (with current band the Crystelles)
- The Reflecting Shadow (2013)
- ^ The rough guide to rock, p. 194 (3d ed. 2003)
- ^ Issit, Michael L. Goths: A Guide to an American Subculture, p. 94 (2011)

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Edit, lineup change. Turnstile replacing Soul Search.
Posted August 16, 2013 at 7:10pm in Incendiary turnstile mindset broken teeth abolition breaking point bxp frustration forsaken malevolence inherit cornered rick it! bang bro's final rage chris mahon chris mahon is better than all of you puny humans obstruct the flex violent reaction moose blood nai harvest bleak reality prowler natural order your move war charge ego trip below mind x control
Reblog and spread the word.
's up. These will be available at Outbreak Fest Ltd. to 50 and hand numbered, i'll prolly sell them for anything between £2 - £3. Help a brother out and pick one up cos i'm broke. Standard.
These will prolly be for sale at the show ltd. to about 30 and hand numbered, they'll prolly cost about £3.50.
Please reblog.
(for no other reason than i'm broke as fuck).


text:
Using Microsoft's Chart Controls In An ASP.NET Application: Getting Started. By Scott Mitchell Introduction A picture is worth a 1,000 words...
This adage rings especially true when it comes to reporting. Chart Controls for .NET Framework Forum. Microsoft Chart with ASP.NET 3.5 – Part 2. In this article (Part 2) the MS Chart control will be bound to the SqlDataSource created in Part 1.
Introduction In this article (Part 2) the MS Chart control will be bound to the SqlDataSource created in Part 1. The chart can be bound to the data at design time without writing any code. Also, the MS Chart's methods and properties will be used to format the chart as well as rendering a 2D chart in 3D. As this is a continuation of Part 1, it is recommended that readers review Part 1 published previously on this site. New ASP.NET Charting Control: <asp:chart runat="server"/> Microsoft recently released a cool new ASP.NET server control - <asp:chart /> - that can be used for free with ASP.NET 3.5 to enable rich browser-based charting scenarios: Download the free Microsoft Chart Controls Download the VS 2008 Tool Support for the Chart Controls Download the Microsoft Chart Controls Samples Download the Microsoft Chart Controls Documentation.


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Keep my sister's accomplishments from running over mine
April 1, 2012
How do I stop diminishing my (fitness/athletic) accomplishments when hearing about friends' and family's accomplishments?
I started with couch to 5k in October, though later found that I run faster and better with interval training. I still can't run for more than 15 minutes straight. My goal for 2012 has been "12 races in 2012." My 10 year older sister and I are independently training for a half marathon in May and just the other week I did my first 10k (finished in 1:18:45 or a 12:40 pace). Apart from her, I think I would be very proud of this. In fact I was glowing after the race, knowing that I had smashed my goal of finishing in less than 1:30:00. She is very supportive and happy for me, but I can't hold these feelings back.
When I hear how well she's doing and that she runs so much faster than me (10:30 min/mile) I can't help but get jealous and frustrated. Part of this is that I feel she kind of stole my thunder, as I had been planning on the 10k as my big goal and then she invited me to do the half with her. Part is the frustration that she is 11 years older (34), has a 3 year old, does lots of yoga before but not much running and she's still way faster than me.
I would like to just chalk this all up to sibling rivalry, but the same emotions crop up when I realize that my slightly overweight, mostly couch potato boyfriend can also knock out a faster mile than me. Or my friend who is 5 years older and was a heavy smoker smoke my butt on the track.
TL:DR How do I stay focused and happy with my goal of finishing a half marathon in 2h45min when I see people who put "less" effort in than myself do better?
posted by
Health & Fitness
(19 answers total)
6 users marked this as a favorite
I would never have started really running if I hadn't joined up with a class of other beginners. I initially tried to run with my husband, and he did everything right as far as being supportive, but I had the same feelings that you describe, because he was just better. I really liked running with others at my level because I never felt like I was holding anyone up, and sometimes, I got to be faster than somebody! So I would recommend finding some other people who are your level. Maybe at the Y? Our Y lets people come to their (informal) runs even if they're not members. If there's a fleet feet, or similar store, they also might do something like this. And I see people looking for "12-min milers" too on Craigslist.
BTW, after a while, I was ok running with my husband (sometimes -- I still do prefer running with my 'crowd') -- we usually do a few 5Ks together per year, but he goes off with the 8 min'ers and I stay with the 12 min crowd. I would rather run alone than feel like I'm holding him up or push myself to keep up with him. Everybody just gets a T-shirt at the end, right? so it doesn't matter how fast we're going.....
posted by
Tandem Affinity
on April 1, 2012
I guess I didn't answer your 'real' question, but I guess my answer is that maybe there isn't a way.. so get the thing that is distracting you and bringing you down off your mind while you run -- don't run with faster people!
posted by
Tandem Affinity
on April 1, 2012
There's always going to be someone faster or stronger or better. But we're not competing on a level playing field. Some people are genetically better at [insert athletic pursuit], some people have the benefit of years of experience and practice. You can only really judge yourself against your own performance.
If it makes you feel any better, all those people that are doing better than you? They're similarly frustrated by someone who is doing better than them.
posted by
on April 1, 2012 [
1 favorite
Stick with it. Remember that you're doing something awesome for yourself, and with every run you are getting better and better. It took me years to get over the same feelings that you have, since I am just NOT athletic, and even though I try SO hard, I am still worse than a lot of my friends. Now, I am just so freakin' proud of everything that I can do. So, I don't have any advice other than to say stick with it, and it can take a long long time.
posted by
on April 1, 2012 [
2 favorites
Are you doing this because you want to, or because you want the accolades for having done it?
posted by
on April 1, 2012
Age means little - the fastest guy in my club for many years was in his mid and late 50's - he was doing sub 35 minutes for 10kms.
He's still doing roughly the same pace into his early 60's - the only reason why he's not the fastest any more is that we got a few new members who can beat him.
posted by
on April 1, 2012 [
1 favorite
My brother and I are both runners and always have been, but he's definitely the athlete of the two of us. He will always be faster than I am and he'll never have to work for it at all — and I know a lot of people just like him. I take pride in the fact that I
running, and choose to see myself as the persistent one who sticks with something to achieve a goal. I think there's a lot to admire about that.
posted by
on April 1, 2012 [
1 favorite
Don't worry about comparing yourself to others. The only person you need to compete with is yourself.
Try to characterise your sister's achievements as inspiration material, rather than envy material.
If it makes you feel any better, you could kick my arse up and down the street, any day of the week.
posted by
His thoughts were red thoughts
on April 1, 2012
Become the faster/longer-running person. Take it at a goal you have to beat, but understand that
just being out there
is, like, 99% of the accomplishment both in terms of health and in terms of will.
posted by
on April 1, 2012
I would like to just chalk this all up to sibling rivalry, but the same emotions crop up when I realize that my slightly overweight, mostly couch potato boyfriend can also knock out a faster mile than me
I just want to say if you are a woman, *especially* don't worry about this. Men have a major physiological advantage. I remember being a freshman in college having run competitively for the past 4 years, when one day I convinced my video-game-glued, junk-food-eating, non-exercising 14 year old brother to come jogging with me. It was the first time he had ever jogged and he smoked my ass. It's not unusual.
posted by
on April 1, 2012
I think it's important to figure out, really, what your goal is. And then remind yourself, really, what your goal is when the feelings crop up. Is your goal to finish a 10k? Then congrats on achieving your goal and skip the half. Is your goal to finish a half? Then finish the half and who cares if your sister has packed up and gone home by the time you hit mile 8. Is your goal to beat your sister? Then train hard, for a long time, and beat her. (Personally I feel like it can be disappointing to set goals you don't have entire control over yourself, like competing against someone else, but some people dig it. YMMV.)
Point is, decide what you're trying to do and then do whatever you can to achieve that goal — and forget everything else.
I set a goal to finish a marathon, within the course time limit. I wound up finishing about 10 minutes before the course closed, and last or second to last in my age group. Probably pretty close to last overall.
But my goal was to finish, and I achieved my goal.
I could look at the results and be embarrassed at all of the older (much older) people who finished faster (much faster) than me. Or the fact that the water stations were closing up on the last few miles, with only a table or two left open for us stragglers.
But I. Finished. a Marathon. I got a medal. I did it. I set a goal, worked hard and didn't give up the approximately 1 million times that I wanted to during training and the race. I have a couple friends who also run, and who have also run marathons, and who have smoked me. Sure, it'd be awesome if I could beat their time someday, but I did what I set out to do. I finished. I finished and probably tens or a hundred people who
didn't finish. Most people never started. Anyone who knew me 10 years ago would have laughed in my face if I'd said I was going to run a marathon. But I did.
Also, the first half-marathon, a year before the marathon, I ran along with my boss. I'm a man, she's a woman. There's also a (significantly) greater age gap between her and me than between you and your sister. But she's in fantastic shape and it was my first half. I started in a corral ahead of her based on my training. I saw her on an out-and-back part of the course, around mile 10 (I was ahead, coming back toward the finish, she was still heading out. I waved.). She blew by me at mile 11 or so, and I never saw her again until the meet-up area after the finish line.
Same deal applies. Was it discouraging that my boss beat me? Not really, because I wasn't racing against my boss. I wanted to finish. I did. I won.
posted by
on April 1, 2012
Always, always, always try to fall back to the idea that you are competing against yourself, not other people.
I mean, if you can beat the other guy, great. But if not, you're still great! Just be a better you, and find happiness and comfort in that struggle. Trying and succeeding is victory. Trying and failing is also victory. Only not trying to do something
that you care about
is shameful.
You will never be the best at running, whatever the distance might be. Like, never. Not to be a downer, but you (and I) will probably never be the best in
. Not one single fucking thing.
But we can do
than what we did the last time. And that story of personal growth and discovery is a very positive, warm and fuzzy and awesome narrative to have and hold onto.
You can't change the reality: other people will finish the race before you do. All you can change is the story you tell yourself about the reality. Are you awesome because you worked hard and improved yourself, or are you a failure because someone else ran an eight minute mile? Absolutely no one else can answer that question but you, and whichever story you decide to internalize, you'll be right. It's the nature of the beast.
Good luck!
posted by
on April 1, 2012 [
1 favorite
Not really in reply to your question, but if you can finish 12 races in 12 months, by next year at this time you will be a million times healthier and I'm guessing you won't care if someone is faster than you.
posted by
on April 2, 2012
I have a similar experience with pottery; it doesn't come naturally to me but I pay attention to the teacher and show up every week and enjoy it. A while ago, I watched a brand new student come to her first lesson and pull an amazing pot (something that I've never consistently achieved - or possibly never achieved, depending on your definiton of amazing).
I had my moment of "WOW" jealousy and frustration, as you are experiencing, but then I realized that her brilliance and natural talent didn't really change my situation. I didn't stop liking pottery because she was better and I was still sitting at my wheel with a lump of clay, so thought I'd better get on with it.
Your situation is more difficult because it's your sister, which stirs up all kinds of touchy sibling history that I didn't have to cope with, but I think the principles are the same. And I think the real question is, would you stop running if you knew you'd never be better than any of your peers? I hope the answer is "no" because you needn't stop reaping the benefits of running because you aren't the best or the most gifted.
posted by
on April 2, 2012
One of my own biggest weaknesses is comparing myself and my work to others, so I understand how deeply it can suck all the joy and accomplishment out of what you're doing. There are two things I use to remind myself:
Comparison is a thief of joy
"There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it.
It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions
. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep yourself open and aware to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open. ... No artist is pleased. [There is] no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others." --Martha Graham
That bolded bit is actually on my chalkboard right now, because I found myself really needing it last week.
You are the only one who can do what you do, and getting out there to run at all is so big, there are people who want to and will never do that. Don't downplay that. You're doing something awesome for yourself. Let yourself enjoy it.
posted by
on April 2, 2012 [
7 favorites
I try very hard to compare myself to my Younger self. So I did a (not very fast) sprint tri last summer, and considering how overweight and out of shape I've been in this life, that was Amazing. This summer I want to beat my last summer's time.
Maybe it's coming from a relationship where my brother's always been skinny and fast, but I would never compare myself to him. He's just born with a different body. And now that we're grown-ups he's really nice about occasionally going for a slow run with me or otherwise encouraging me - maybe ask your sister to be as encouraging as possible? But mostly, compare yourself to your (even one month) younger self, and try to beat her.
posted by
on April 2, 2012
My nephew does Little Athletics in Australia (i don't know if they have it in the US) the kids don't race against each other they race against their own times. They win awards for beating their PB's and my nephew has a ball. He does not get jealous of his friends running faster than him he gets super excited as they both beat their PB's.
Maybe try to think of it like that, think of it as " Oh that's a great run sis we both beat our PB's we both are amazing and high fives all around". Restate in your head the terms of the competition and remember if you focus on your PB's and how you are doing everyone can win.
Focus on what you do and how you are doing and let the other people worry about their times. I know it's easier said than done when some people do things easier/better than you but keep trying to refocus on what you are doing and how you are doing. If you feel yourself slipping into a jealous headspace try to pull your focus back on what is important, that you have gotten off the couch and are running and it feels amazing and that you are getting better each time.
If you focus on the jealousy you will give it power, and it might be the thing that ends up talking you out of doing your runs if you get into a whole "Why should I bother I'll never be as good as so and so." mindset. Make jokes about it with the people involved, compliment them on their times, be happy for them (even if you have to fake it until you make it) remove the power from the jealousy and it won't hurt as much if they do beat you.
posted by
on April 2, 2012
Some people have genetic advantages that make them great runners.
Some people have genetic traits that make them overheat easily or have trouble building up muscle.
Some people have recently recovered from injuries and illnesses.
Some people have the kind of lifestyle that allows them to train for really long runs.
Some people have the kind of lifestyle that allows them to train with short runs, but can do them every single day.
Some people have running buddies that they enjoy and who keep them motivated and encourage them to improve their pace.
Some people really really enjoy running alone.
Some people have asthma that troubles them.
Some people with asthma have Albuterol inhalers that are basically a performance-enhancing drug.
Some people are really stressed about work.
Some people have worries about their families.
Some people have a tiny rock in their shoe, right under the ball of their left toe, and are constantly debating whether it's worth it to stop and get it out.
Some people are wishing they wore a different pair of shorts, because these are riding up funny, though they've never done that before.
Lots and lots of people fall into multiple categories above.
Sports aren't
. We try to create an illusion of fairness by having everybody start at the same time and run the same course, but every runner is different and is struggling with different difficulties and leveraging different strengths.
If people ask me if I run, I say that I run short distances, slowly. And that's okay, because it's better for my health (mental and physical) than being a person who sits on the couch. If I seriously compared myself with
else I'd give up. If I beat the
in the 5K fun walk/runs that I do, I'm happy. And you did a half marathon! You go! That is awesome!
posted by
on April 2, 2012 [
1 favorite
Thank you everyone for your fantastic input. I marked a few best answers that spoke to be more than others, though all are great. These are things I that I have mostly been telling myself, but it's great to have them written out in much more eloquent ways. I'll still check back in if there are others who have something to add. Thank you all so much!
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Bionic Radd said...
signed? Not sure what else to say that hasn't been said. I wasn't going to bother with this one for the same reason I didn't bother with "With A Little Help From My Friends" in Winter Veil. Cheevos that go against the natural flow of what you would be doing anyway are just really stupid. It's one thing to offer an achievement for doing something the hard way as opposed to taking the easy way out. It's something else to turn the achievements into glorified quests with oddball objectives.


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what are these?


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Bid Offers Arbitrage and Long-Term Growth Opportunities
Mike is a member of The Motley Fool Blog Network -- entries represent the personal opinion of the blogger and are not formally edited.
Technology consulting giant Accenture (NYSE: ACN) has announced its intention to acquire Hong Kong-based marketing and consulting outfit Acquity (NYSEMKT: AQ). Although Acquity is based in Southeast Asia, the bulk of its clients operate out of North America. As such, this acquisition looks poised to give Accenture a major foothold on the continent and set it up to compete against larger rival IBM (NYSE: IBM).
At the same time, it is crucial not to overstate the strategic importance of this deal. With a value of just over $300 million, this is not a blockbuster merger. On balance, this is probably a good thing: Although this transaction has plenty of associated risks, its rather small size limits its explosive downside potential. Moreover, there are some clear upsides here. Investors who wish to gain exposure to this space would do well to take a closer look at the deal's contours.
Accenture, Acquity and the Competition at a Glance
Accenture is often cited as the world's second-largest technology consulting firm. Although this is an impressive-sounding label, it does not accurately capture Accenture's relationship with the world's largest technology consulting firm: IBM. The New York-based computing giant is more diversified than Accenture, but it does maintain a strong presence in the technology consulting space and provides IT services to an array of big-name clients. Meanwhile, Acquity is considerably smaller and more narrowly focused.
This divergence is best illustrated by these three companies' market capitalization figures. Acquity's valuation of about $300 million is not even in the same ballpark as Accenture's $52 million market cap or IBM's gargantuan $225 billion figure. Moreover, Acquity is profitable by the narrowest of margins. In 2012, it earned $220,000 on gross revenues of about $140 million. By comparison, Accenture turned a $3.1 billion profit on $28.2 billion in revenues. IBM reported income of over $16 billion on revenues of around $103 billion. As such, it should not be surprising that Acquity is cheaper than Accenture and IBM. Whereas Acquity had a price-to-book ratio of about 3.2, its larger peers had respective ratios of 9.5 and 11.8.
Acquity and Accenture are fortunate to lack significant debt loads. In fact, Acquity has cash reserves of $31.4 million and no long-term debt. Accenture has over $5.5 billion in cash and only $29,000 in debt. Needless to say, the company will probably not need to finance its purchase of Acquity with a new debt issue. For comparison, IBM has a little over $33 billion in debt and about $12 billion in cash reserves.
How the Deal Is Structured
Under the terms of the deal, Accenture will issue cash payments of $13 per share to all Acquity shareholders of record as of an undetermined record date. Market-watchers agree that this is a very generous offer: It represents a premium of more than 100 percent over Acquity's $6-per-share pre-announcement price and values the company at more than twice its 2012 revenues. In fact, there is still an arbitrage gain to be had: Relative to Acquity's current share price of about $12.80, Accenture's offer provides a 1.6 percent premium.
Potential Complications and Other Issues
Despite the seemingly unassailable premium that Accenture has offered for Acquity, this deal comes with a number of potential complications. In particular, several legal investigations have arisen since the merger's announcement. Due to past fluctuations in Acquity's stock price, many current shareholders believe that Accenture's offer actually undervalues the smaller company. Past statements from respected analysts seem to bear out this notion. However, the terms of the transaction are undeniably favorable to any Acquity shareholders who bought into the company within the past few months. As such, it is difficult to imagine a situation in which this deal did not go through as planned. A closing date has yet to be set.
Potential Synergies
Acquity's key service is a proprietary system that measures the performance of Internet marketing plans within large organizations. The company works with marketing divisions and chief marketing officers at a number of major American companies, and the sector in which it operates is growing at a tremendous rate. Since Accenture maintains a similar Internet marketing management division, this deal's inherent synergies are obvious: Accenture would subsume Acquity into this segment of its business and take steps to streamline its operations. Although a precise figure has yet to be provided, it seems clear that this merger will save many millions of dollars in redundant expenses over the long term.
Long-Term Outlook and Ways to Play
In light of its small but significant arbitrage premium and obvious synergistic potential, this deal presents an obvious profit opportunity for long-term investors and short-term traders alike. Investors who wish to pocket the immediate premium and gain exposure to the merged company should opt for a long position in Acquity. Although Acquity's post-announcement trading range has been relatively tight, news-related dips could provide key buying opportunities. Investors who wish to forgo the premium might simply wish to open a long position in Accenture. In this market, either strategy looks profitable.
The retail space is in the midst of the biggest paradigm shift since mail order took off at the turn of last century. Only those most forward-looking and capable companies will survive, and they'll handsomely reward those investors who understand the landscape. You can read about the 3 Companies Ready to Rule Retail in The Motley Fool's special report. Uncovering these top picks is free today; just click here to read more.
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My back-to-school shopping days are over but it all came back to me when I visited Staples last week. I was there for printer ink but I couldn't resist the four foot stack of 17 cent spiral notebooks and the racks of Disney character folders and the bins of colorful school tools. I didn't need any of it but I want it. . . all of it. . . it's a crazy emotional trigger made worse possibly by the fact that I was a teacher for 10 years.
Then I heard a conversation that reminded me of the real meaning of back-to-school.
"Mom! I NEED this one!"
"That one is too expensive. Get the other one."
"That one doesn't have Transformers on it! And Mrs. Shipley says I need 8 notebooks."


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22 March 2014 - FBAAC holds its 2014 Big Hat Brunch! This year, scholarships were awarded to three high school seniors from the local area. The first 2LT Lisa Nicole Bryant Memorial Scholarship was awarded to Mrs. Cindy Payne, a student from Fayetteville State University! Many thanks go to our supporters in helping us to make this happen for our deserving students!
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Haemi's High School Adventures In: Condom Conundrum!
Friday, December 7, 2012
Posted in: Comics
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I know you ran a Kickstarter called Rain where, based on the project page, you have a number of people very disappointed at the lack of any of the copies (real or digital) that they pledged for.
Can you provide any explanation for this at the Kickstarter site asap please.


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|County Ag News
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The International Safety Equipment Association (ISEA) has received American National Standards Institute approval for ANSI/ISEA Z89.1-2014, the standard related to Industrial Head Protection.
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|22 Feb 2013
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Here is how I use them, I have my main monitor hooked to the DVI on my GTX 660. I use it for gaming. I hooked up a second monitor hooked to the onboard IGPU. I use it to monitor temps, and use teamspeak etc.
Was wondering does this put an extra load on the cpu, does it benefit the discrete gpu by using less resources?
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Added Value began in April 2000 by gathering community stakeholders and outside experts to discuss the lack of meaningful educational activities and employment opportunities for Red Hook teenagers. In the spring of 2001, Added Value convened a group of local youth, neighborhood leaders, community-based organizations and regional institutions to form our Community Advisory Committee. Guided through a participatory planning process by Heifer International, the Committee outlined a three-year plan to address food insecurity, unemployment and the alienation of youth from the Red Hook community.
In support of this community-driven vision, we assembled a small staff, wove together a network of like-minded organizations, and nurtured a team of committed individuals, interns and core volunteers.
Since 2001, Added Value has provided year-long training to more than 115 neighborhood teens. On a day-to-day basis youth are engaged creating a stronger healthier, more just and sustainable community. They are growing food from seed to sale, while specializing in either the development of agriculture-related business, the electronic documentation of the food justice movement, or community education and mobilization. Working an average of seventeen hours each week in our gardens, at market and on the computers, they receive a monthly stipend for their efforts to improve the community. Through their work, youth grow as community leaders, gaining the skills necessary to achieve their educational goals and broaden their career opportunities. Participants have facilitated workshops at conferences throughout the country, traveled abroad to study food systems creation and transformed acres of vacant land into the Red Hook Community Farm.
In April 2001, Red Hook's only full service grocery store, the Big R, suddenly closed, forcing residents to purchase substandard food at the local bodegas or travel outside our community in search of fresh produce and health-promoting foods. Just eight weeks later with the support of the New York State Department of Agriculture and Markets, we opened the Red Hook Farmers' Market. (see RHFM). That spring, in the Walcott Street Community Garden we held our first induction ceremony for nine local teenagers.
2002 marked the beginning of our relationship with Heifer International. With their support Added Value drew together our Community Advisory Committee(CAC), a network of local residents and 20 community-based organizations, city agencies, and state-wide and national institutions and began to form our first five year plan.
With an injection of energy and the promise of new resources, 2002 became a year of growth and exploration. We held our first senior youth training with Jose and Steve working hard to educate and motivate their peers. That summer, inspired by the media work of Phil Shipman, Jose made a concerted effort to document his travels to Costa Rica. Upon his return, he wrote five letters to our community, thus giving birth to our Digital Horizons program.
In August 2003, Added Value partnered with the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation and Cornell University Cooperative Extension to transform an entire city block from a dilapidated playground into a center for urban agriculture. Red Hook Community Farm has become a vibrant community resource where young and old work, study and grow together as they sow, nurture and harvest plants on a 2.75 acre urban farm. The Farm is an intergenerational space that serves as an experiential educational environment for youth, adults and senior citizens. It provides sustenance to residents, creates meaningful work for neighborhood teens, generates thousands of dollars of economic activity and improves community food security.
With the opening of the Red Hook Community Farm in the fall of 2003, we were inundated with requests for field trips from local public schools. In late September, we hosted a number of classes from the Brooklyn School for Collaborative Studies. These visits and the programming that was developed with PS 27 in the spring of 2004 laid the foundation for our Farm Based Learning initiatives.
That same spring Added Value's Co-founder, Michael Hurwitz made the decision to pursue a law degree and in the summer of that year, working side by side with Ian Marvy and Senior Youth Leader Tevon McNair, he led our first Summer Youth Employment program. In August, Michael left our staff and focused on developing our Board of directors.
While Michael's departure from staff was a sad moment for those of us who worked with him and the teens whose lives he so deeply affected, it represented an incredible moment for us to reconfigure our staff and reinvigorate our board.
In the winter and spring of 2005, Caroline Loomis joined us as our community education coordinator, Shanti Nagel joined the staff as our Urban Farmer, and Cristina Chapman became our farm educator. In time, Phil Shipman would formally join our growing staff as well, supported by a greatly expanded board.
With a strong organizational structure our youth empowerment initiatives, farm based learning, and efforts to grow a more just and sustainable food system blossomed. In the fall of 2005, we drew together 800 members of community for our first annual Harvest Festival.
Since 2005 our staff and programs have grown in depth and scope. As our organization has grown our relationships with community-based organizations have strengthened, the number of individuals and institutions committed to a more food-secure New York City has expanded and the food justice movement has blossomed into a force for good throughout the country.
As a partner in this movement, Added Value's work to address food injustice, promote community food security and environmental sustainability has taken great strides. Over the years we have:
Our innovative programs are now recognized locally, nationally and internationally as models for incorporating the principles of youth empowerment, community engagement and economic development into efforts that create a more just and sustainable Red Hook. Each day we find some comfort in the fact that while our work is broad is scope, it is rooted in practical work here in our neighborhood.
History of Red Hook Community Farm
On a late summer day in 2002, Ian Marvy and Ben Balcolm, an upstate farmer selling at the Red Hook Farmers' Market went for a long stroll to see the harbor and have lunch. As they crossed the intersection of Columbia and Sigourney Streets Ben paused to consider an empty baseball field. Rather than seeing a broken fence, smashed bottles and a field of weeds, Ben saw a farm with great solar exposure, wind protection, and a chain link fence for security. The vision and foresight of this rural farmer inspired us to take action and work to build a vibrant urban farm right here in the heart of Red Hook.
Working in close concert with Partnerships For Parks, The New York City Department of Parks and Recreation, and our neighbors, we have begun to transform old Todd Memorial into Red Hook Community Farm.
In addition to being a working farm where produce is grown, the Farm serves as the primary platform for youth empowerment programs, our Farm Based Learning work, and the New Energy Initiative. Through these programs Red Hook Community Farm has become a place where we can nurture a shared vision, develop the skills necessary to build a more sustainable world, address global warming by lessening the environmental impact of our community and improving access to healthy affordable food.
Since opening the Farm in the Fall of 2003 our demonstrable outcomes include:
On the Farm our staff and Youth Leadership team are sowing the seeds of change by:
Building on their concrete experience, Added Value participants on the Farm have become leaders in our efforts to build a healthier community. Twice a week they set up and manage the Red Hook Farmers' Market. Thursday afternoons we are outside the Red Hook Seniors Center, and Saturday's Market is held at the Farm. In addition to cash sales and FMNP coupons, we utilize a cellular EBT device allowing customers to use federal benefits and credit cards throughout the Market, increasing access for residents and expanding the client base for regional farmers.
History of Red Hook Farmers' Market
The Red Hook Farmers' Market was established in June 2001. Opened in historic Coffey Park in the heart of Red Hook, Brooklyn, it has grew to become a hub of neighborhood activity and at the time served as the sole provider of fresh produce for neighborhood residents.
In May of 2001, Red Hook's only supermarket closed its doors, leaving a vacuum in the community and a serious need for safe produce. Added Value seized upon this opportunity and decided to create the Red Hook Farmers Market. Opened in June of 2001, the Market was an immediate success; within two weeks the Market served approximately 200 weekly customers, our three farmers were averaging $1000 in weekly sales. Most importantly, the Market became a hub of neighborhood activity, serving as the sole provider of fresh produce to neighborhood residents, as well a fun place to interact with neighbors and to sit and enjoy the afternoon. The Market consisted of one conventional grower, an organic farmer who also brokered organic dairy products, one orchard, and the Added Value farm stand. The 2001 season concluded on the third Saturday in November and immediate planning began to expand the diversity of the Market and to attract more vendors for the coming year.
In June 2002 the Market opened with new energy and offering new products to customers. This past season the Market expanded to provide pasture-raised poultry and lamb, locally caught fish, and local baked goods. In September 2002 the Market became one of three New York City Farmers Markets to pilot a cellular device allowing customers to use Visa, Mastercard, Debit, and EBT cards at all participating farm stands. Similar to most New York City Farmers Markets, the 2002 Market experienced a drop in weekly attendance; approximately 150 customers, reducing average sales to roughly $700. Added Value attributed the reduction to current economic conditions, rather than to the Market's popularity. To promote the Market, our youth participants distribured fliers in the three connecting neighborhoods twice each week, we coordinated special events with community partners, and offered various weekly specials to attract customers and local media attention.
In April 2003, the Red Hook Farmers' Market Advisory Committee met to discuss the relocation of the Market to make it more accessible to the majority of Red Hook residents, as well as for the rest of South Brooklyn. We believed that the Markets' new location at the intersection of Clinton Street and Centre Mall, the entrance to the Red Hook Houses East would expand foot traffic. However, it was a challenging season for us. With the acquisition of the Farm in the fall of 2003 we decided to bring the customers right to the Farm and since then our Market has been open seasonally from the first weekend in July until Thanksgiving.
The Market continues to serve as a hub of neighborhood activity that inspires, educates and motivates.