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It isn't turning out to be the usual sort of beauty contest. Lively Miss Canada, her thick blond hair swept into a ponytail, is startled by the meager hotel accommodations in Calabar, Nigeria, where, deprived of a fitness center, the young women have to run laps through the halls. There are seditious toilets and arid showers, mute telephones, a total absence of newspapers, and—in every room—a television set that features only one station, and that one devoted to music videos exclusively. "We were basically in isolation for 10 days," Miss Canada reports, and this perturbs her because she is by nature inquisitive. And different. In high school, Canada used to play tackle football on a boys' team and coach a boys' soccer team.
That, by the way, is how the 90 contestants refer to one another—they leave off the "Miss," so that during downtime, of which there is plenty, you hear cries from what sounds like a shrill oral primer in modern geography: "Hey, Czech Republic!"; "Hey, Slovakia!"; "Over here, Latvia and Kazakhstan!" Or still better—this from Germany, a small, scrappy model who favors running pants that read "NYC" across her small bottom—"South Africa, thank God you're here!" And with that, South Africa, a willowy blonde with a long tangle of curls, and a gentle smile, and wearing an incredibly tiny jeans skirt, patiently proceeds to apply a perfect coat of makeup to her charge—an application that takes a good hour.
Beauty competition though this is, rivalry is rarely in evidence among the girls. Generous grooming, the contemporary woman's sedative, becomes, in this charged and lonely atmosphere, practically a philanthropic activity. Colombia carefully ministers to Ecuador with layer upon layer of bright peach blusher and Chanel lip liner. Chile agrees to share her electric eyelash curler. Gibraltar swaps her clothes. And France, a Catherine Deneuve look-alike, proudly shows off her jewelry—proudly because none of it has set her back by much. "The necklace, 63 francs from Bon Marché—pas mal, n'est-ce pas? And the bracelets? France points to a host of delicately beaded bangles floating from one milky arm—"a gift from Meees India."
So this is where they all are: in the middle of the tropical and malarial rain-forest belt of West Africa. It is the holy Muslim month of Ramadan in Nigeria, where 50 percent of the population is Muslim. Quite ignorant of the country outside their hotel, the lovely women wait in heat and isolation for the chance to be crowned Miss World. Miss Argentina complains of nausea from malaria pills, but it's clear she thinks it is a sacrifice worth making. Miss England, an Oxford biology student, with a shroud of dark hair and a sweet placid face—deceptively placid, it will turn out—is of a similar opinion. She just assumes "it will be a very glamorous event, and we will be treated, you know, just like beauty queens."
Who can doubt it? "Welcome to Nigeria. Welcome to God's own country!" booms Jerry Gana, Nigeria's information minister, when the girls finally arrive in Abuja, the normally tranquil capital. This is where the actual beauty contest is supposed to be held, at the International Conference Center. A red carpet is rolled out on the tarmac of the Nnamdi Azikwe International Airport. It is 94 degrees. The girls examine their beautifully polished finger nails, and each considers the intricacies of her own particular situation. Miss Germany, who was in fact born in Bosnia ("My parents are German, I am not German," she explains), is longing for the arrival of her evening gown. This had to be obtained at the last minute by "running all over Germany" (she was second runner-up, and modeling in Turkey when word came down that the top two winners had bowed out for personal reasons).
Miss Belgium, a dark-haired economics student with exquisite bone structure and a job as a waitress back in Brussels, is counting pennies. She too was but a runner-up, and therefore, as she declares mournfully, "The original Miss Belgium won the car." Despite this, the winner refused to come to Nigeria, and here is Sylvie Doclot, car-deprived and spending weeks in a strange place without earning a single euro. But hoping—just hoping, as she points out—to win "and meet all sorts of important people, who might give me jobs."
But what people? Who is there to meet? The languor of their days leaves many of the girls distracted and faintly unsettled. Activities include weaving baskets with which they are supposed to fish, a visit to a governor's mansion, and pottery-making. There is a drop-by at Kwa Falls, where contestants pose elegantly, modeling unobjectionable swimsuits (nonetheless, this was not Lynsey Bennett's—Miss Canada's—"favorite thing," she tells me). But mostly, a great deal of time is spent languishing in hotel rooms, of which the contestants have become connoisseurs. The Nicon Hilton in Abuja boasts better TVs and a fitness center, but has its own peculiarities: vast rooms hemmed in by shiny red walls and equally brilliant black ceilings, all sealed by fluorescent orange doors, behind which stand, at all times, stern-faced guards.
It is in one of these colorful chambers that Daniella Luan, Miss England, finds herself all alone at lunchtime during the third week of last November, whiling away the hours. No surprise to find her indoors. "We were not allowed to go to the swimming pool without a chaperon," Luan recalls. "I never went to the fitness center once." Every elevator ride is manned by a Nigerian guard, and at no time is anyone allowed to leave the hotel except for official activities.
On November 21, Luan switches on her TV set—CNN—and sees for the first time what's actually going on in Nigeria, some 100 miles away from her fluorescent orange door. Machetes. Blood. Churches set afire by enraged Muslims. Bystanders "necklaced" with burning tires. Mosques burned to the ground. "People attacking people," she says. Hundreds of them. All this is occurring in Kaduna, but it will spread the next day to Abuja. And it all seems, somehow or other, connected with the Miss World beauty pageant. "Down with beauty!" scream the rioters. "Miss World is sin! Allahu Akbar!"
"I've never felt so alone in my life," Luan tells me.
Miss England reveals what she has just seen on TV only to her roommate, the flabbergasted Rebekah Revels, Miss U.S.A., "because Mrs. Morley told us to keep our feelings under wraps," says Luan, referring to the pageant organizer, Julia Morley. Miss U.S.A., in turn, calls her father, J. D. Revels, back home in North Carolina. "Get home immediately," he orders.
But Miss U.S.A., a fairly short contestant with a round face, dark hair scraped in a French knot, and an armored demeanor, energized by frequent infusions of gospel music from her Walkman, clearly has other plans. None of these include flying home precipitately. Fresh from a disastrous attempt at becoming Miss North Carolina in the Miss America contest (an ex-boyfriend thwarted her winning bid by threatening to release topless photographs of her, which, she claims, had been taken without her consent), she is evidently not the type to abandon this second bid for stardom. She has her dreams—among them, as she would later confide to the entire Miss World audience: "I would love to know that when I come back home, New York was waiting for me." She also has her strategy mapped out—a rendition of "Kumbaya" and an especially tender plea to the judges. "I admonish you to pick me," Revels would eventually plead with them. "I have the faith, strength, and determination to be the best Miss World—ever!"
By the end of the contestants' stay, charred bodies lie in the streets, and plumes of smoke rise from burning cars two miles away from the hotel. Apparently a Nigerian journalist has written an article, bitterly offensive to Muslim fundamentalists, about the beauty pageant, and this is what has set off the riots. Miss Canada finds out about the carnage only because she happens to call her parents back home on her cell phone to say hi. "Are you all right?" are the first words from her frantic parents.
"What do you mean, am I all right?" she wonders.
After Miss Canada's second call home, the next morning, she is not at all inclined to keep what she has learned to herself—or to stick around Nigeria. She pours out the details to Paula Murphy, Miss Scotland, who has porcelain skin and a medical degree.
"If you're going, I'm going," announces Miss Scotland. Word gets around. More and more teary-eyed girls huddle together, wanting to leave. More and more Nigerians die.
"So first 15 deaths," recalls Miss Belgium, who, like her fellow contestants, gapes ceaselessly at CNN, "and then, non!—it's 50 deaths." And then, as she will later discover, 250 dead. Miss Belgium spends a sleepless night. The next morning, everyone notices, the hotel is ringed by yet more guards. "If something really bad is going on, I'm going to be the first one out of here," she tells her chaperon. "I don't want to be the pretext for these killings." She is told not to worry. But the death toll keeps mounting, more and more killings. And still they aren't leaving Nigeria.
"It all had to do with ... ," says Caroline Chamorand, Miss France, rubbing her thumb against her other fingers in the classic gesture for money. The two young women share, aside from language, a kind of genial cynicism about their experiences abroad.
"So I said, 'Ah, non! That's too much,'" Miss Belgium continues. "And I made a reservation for a plane out that night. But the Belgian ambassador came for over three hours to convince me to stay. Because he felt journalists had exaggerated the situation, and Belgium wanted me to stay. And why should we leave just to please a small minority? It wouldn't be good for the people of Nigeria." The ambassador's pitch leaves Doclot quite unconvinced. But she has missed her plane.
There are those—lithe Miss Israel is one—who are willing to stay on and face whatever comes. "You know what's happening in Israel," Carol Lowenstein says by way of explanation, with a light shrug. But she is an exception. It isn't merely fear that drives many contestants. There is a sense of shared responsibility. What are they all doing here in Nigeria? What possessed them to come, in their tight skirts and jeans, during the month of Ramadan? Miss Canada asks and asks, "but no one really had a clear answer," she says.
The pageant starts to resemble a wake. Gone Miss Canada, who is whisked off by the Canadian high commissioner. Gone Miss Korea, equally distraught. As riots spread, the pageant decides to fly the remaining girls to London on a chartered jet. Immediately. And none too soon. Miss Belgium speaks for a fair number of the contestants when she says: "I mean, look, I know we weren't responsible for the killings, but we were tied to them."
It's a notion she still can't shake when she arrives safely in London. A few missteps borne of ignorance leading to ineradicable tragedy. All the goodwill in the world can't change that.
Two weeks later, Julia Morley glances, stricken, at her watch and frantically punches in a series of numbers on her cell phone. It is 1:40 P.M., and Azra Akin, the freshly crowned Miss World (favorite hobbies: belly dancing and playing the flute), is about to be introduced at her first official function, a large London charity event.
Except that Miss World, a tender, docile girl (which must be a real plus in Morley's eyes, considering the mutinous nature of some of Akin's fellow contestants), is now 90 minutes late and nowhere to be found. This in itself is astonishing, since she is hard to miss: five feet ten inches, with a torrent of black curls falling past luminous shoulders she highlights with skin cream. But she is not in the lobby of the Hilton, where the charity event is taking place: we have searched every corner. Not in the ladies' room. Not in her hotel, across town. Hastily, charity staffers are dispatched to all hotel entrances, only to straggle back, blank-faced. Where in the world is Miss World?
Morley is an amiable 61-year-old with the unlined face and almost impenetrable innocence of a very young girl. Right now, however, her large eyes appear bright with the threat of tears. Before her, untouched, lies a plate of smoked salmon, a dry, stiffening reproach. Everything, but everything, that could possibly go wrong has done so. She is the object of unrelenting scorn in the press, blamed for all catastrophes, large and small. The deaths in Nigeria. Indifference to human rights. Religious strife. Outraged contestants. Even Prince Edward, who was supposed to show up at an earlier gala, swiftly bowed out.
Morley likes to call herself a "tough bitch," but she is in fact nothing of the sort. Over the years, her organization has raised more than $240 million for charity. Where, she wonders, did she go wrong? She went to Nigeria, a country she loathed on first inspection, only because, she says, on a second visit she realized "it was a young democracy" with inhabitants "I felt so sorry for." And, of course, the money. There was a considerable amount of that awaiting her. In theory.
"I've had a lot of pressures this time," Morley says between sips of Bordeaux. "This had the nasty sort of freaky underlying possibilities, which is never really what I'm used to. It was"—her beautiful hands leave her wineglass to convey the universal gesture of helplessness—"beyond our control."
"Nasty" is frankly a euphemism here. Aside from the hundreds who died in Nigeria, thousands were injured, and thousands more displaced. Isioma Daniel, a terrified 21-year-old journalist, is currently under fatwa, a Muslim death decree, issued by the Nigerian state of Zamfara, because she dared to write, of Morley's lovely charges, "What would Muhammad think? In all honesty, he would probably have chosen a wife from one of them." That is when, as Daniel's mother, Ndidi, recalls, the riots started, and "all hell let loose." It was, declared a top official, "binding on all Muslims ... to consider the killing of the writer as a religious duty."
Morley doesn't think she's responsible for any one of these tragedies—a conviction not shared by the British tabloids ("swimwear dripping with blood" is how one writer described the competition; SCRAP MISS WORLD, read one typical headline). How was the pageant chairman to know what some journalist was going to write? Or that Nigeria's Muslim population, most of whom live in the North, abide by the harsh strictures of Sharia law? Or that these people, 66 percent of whom live below the poverty line, might take umbrage at the appearance of 90 beauties, their flat bellies bared over tight jeans during the holy month of Ramadan?
"To tell you the truth, before I left I thought Sharia was a girl's name," says Morley. "I did! I swear to you! I was totally ignorant. I got into big-shit trouble because I hardly realized what I was letting myself in for. That's the honest truth."
Abruptly her face crumples again. The M.C. is about to present an invisible Miss World to 300 guests. It is a measure of the desperation and panic now besetting her that Morley signals me with a hissed plea: "Listen. When they announce Miss World, I want you to stand up and wave!"
Alas, this is about as inspired a notion as flying scores of pretty girls to Nigeria during Ramadan. Miss World is 21, Turkish, olive-skinned, generally dressed in a ball gown, and as slim as a fading hope. She has been seen, claims the pageant's Web site, by roughly two billion people worldwide, not counting her appearances after the coronation on the BBC, CNN, and ITV. These points are raised with Morley.
"Doesn't matter. You just stand up when they call Miss World." Morley is adamant. Even so, one can see her eyes narrow as they sweep the room for more eligible substitutes.
Fortunately, at this moment Azra Akin wafts in, draped in a length of stormy gray chiffon. She and her grim-faced chaperon went to the wrong London Hilton, it turns out, where they waited patiently. Despite this, the beauty queen appears as tranquil and unrattled as though she were on holiday, her face shining with quiet triumph. She takes her bow.
Unappeased, Morley murmurs, "Next time they do something like that, they're going to find themselves at the bottom of the sea in a pair of concrete shoes."
Morley cannot believe this avalanche of misfortune. Bad enough that, once the troubles started, she had on her hands rebellious beauties who actually snubbed or defected from the pageant. "It's disgusting that people have lost their lives because of Miss World," said Masja Juel, Miss Denmark, who boycotted the event. Added to Morley's other woes is the delicate matter of money. Silverbird, a Nigerian media company that created a consortium to sponsor the pageant, has not paid her most of a promised £5 million ($8 million). "I haven't received five million pennies," complains Morley. She has just spent $1.6 million rescuing her bevy of girls from the riots and setting up an alternative pageant in London.
And to top it all off, she is being sued in London's High Court by a Nigerian businesswoman who insists Morley owes her $800,000 for the charity dinner at which Prince Edward failed to show.
"It really is awful to see this vast country and realize the people are not very honest," Morley concludes glumly about Nigeria. And yet "I talked to the government, I talked to the ministers. They all said, 'Come to Nigeria!'"
A fatal invitation, in the opinion of Donald Trump, who should know. It was he who purchased the rival Miss Universe contest six years ago for $10 million, turning it into the cash cow he now claims is worth 10 times the purchase price. And he marvels over Morley's decision to fly her girls to Nigeria. "They've been so tarnished by the stupidity of the location!" he tells me. Once, Trump says, he tried to buy Miss World, either to run it himself or to kill it outright. But he wouldn't consider such a purchase now. Not unless the price was ridiculously low. "You can't go to Nigeria—everyone knows that. Because of the religious situation," he says. Besides, "how are they supposed to get £5 million? The Nigerians don't have it to pay!"
And the worst of it is that Morley knows that much of what people are saying about her decision to go to Nigeria is horribly true. "I'm not blaming anyone else, mind you. I blame only myself. I'm the asshole here," she says. "But"—her childish green eyes widen further—"I only had a year in which to learn!"
From time to time, Morley and her financial adviser wonder what her late husband, the shrewd entrepreneur Eric Morley, who founded the event, might make of her latest adventure. They can practically hear his words as he looks down on them: "What a fine mess you've got yourselves into now!"
As the Miss World Pageant is 52 years old, one would think that by now it might be well versed in the ways of selecting suitable host countries and sponsors. But Julia Morley is right in a way: she had to learn fast. During her husband's lifetime she wasn't given all that much power within the organization, and whatever influence she had was generally wielded through stealth by quietly circumventing her husband's desires: bikinis, bosoms, heels. "The fun was going around and sabotaging this male ego," she says. "That sounds awful, but it's true."
Two years ago her husband died at 82. Eric, orphaned as a Cockney child ("Nobody wanted me," he once said), grew up to be a slick impresario. In 1951 he devised the pageant as a patriotic swimsuit tribute designed to lift England out of its postwar doldrums. He also liked to claim that the show was a kind of Olympic decathlon, although the comparison left many puzzled. Girls back then were judged almost exclusively on their proportions and their facility at swiveling in heels and bathing suits while Morley shouted, "A quarter-turn! And turn! And turn again!"
"It used to make me cringe," recalls his wife of 40 years, who got rid of that onstage swimsuit rotation (as well as the onstage swimsuits themselves, eventually) by telling the contestants to remain mulishly still when the commands to turn came. Eric Morley, says Julia, who married him when she was 19, was "a complete chauvinist pig."
This, however, is said with affection. Julia, whose maiden name is Pritchard, was an unwed mother, a graduate, as she puts it, "of the university of hard knocks," when the marriage proposal came from the suitor more than two decades her senior. But Eric considered Julia's child as much his own as the four who came after the wedding. The fifth, an adopted girl named Kathryn, died at 17 of a progressive central-nervous-system disease.
So their marriage survived a lot—among other things a long-standing affair between Eric and a much younger woman. "Oh, so he had leg-overs with the birds—I'm sure he did," Julia Morley says dismissively. "I mean, he was a bloke, wasn't he? That's what blokes do. But he never had one"—she holds up a warning hand—"with a Miss World contestant."
Indeed, it was the very blokiness of the contest creator, says his widow, that accounted for the way his brainchild was handled in its earlier days. Eric's secretaries had to wear very short skirts, no pantsuits allowed. His widow grins. "You have to remember the show was run by a production team that was all male. The BBC was all male. ITV was all male. Looking back, it must have been really comfortable because everyone knew their place."
By 1970, however, that place became a messy and confusing arena. That year a group of feminists stormed the Miss World stage in London, carrying placards, stink bombs, and tomatoes, just as the show's M.C., Bob Hope, was informing the Royal Albert Hall audience, "It's been quite a cattle market and I've been out there checking calves." Hurled bags full of flour greeted this observation, and it was only because Julia Morley's hands were gripped tightly around Hope's ankles that the startled comedian didn't turn heel and flee the stage.
One could argue that the pageant never wholly recovered, although it certainly had its moments. In 1972, Lynda Carter (eventually TV's Wonder Woman) competed in its finals. That same year, Gay Mei-Lin, who competed as Miss Hong Kong, was revealed to have been born a man. A decade ago, the actress Joan Collins, a pageant judge, was heard to whisper to a colleague, "For young girls they've got the worst bottoms I've ever seen. I would rather die than have to do this." And just four years ago, Miss Angola, asked what she would do if she won, erupted with "Party! Party! House! Mercedes!"
By then, in any event, Miss World seemed to have run out of steam in its home country, where more than 20 million had once watched it. The show vanished from the BBC, then from ITV (which cited sexism). And the problem is, says Donald Trump, who currently revels in a five-year, $78 million contract with NBC for Miss Universe, "you need a major network to broadcast. No one saw Miss World in the United States."
This is amazingly disingenuous on his part, since, as Morley tells me, "every single time I'd try to put my head up, Trump used to try and blow it off. He actually took action against me." Trump, significantly, doesn't deny having ruined Morley's American prospects, but then, compared with him, she is such a babe in the woods. Let her cringe over the sensibilities of contestants parading onstage in swimsuits and heels. Trump, for his part, is enthusiastic on the subject: "All I can say is, when I took over, the heels got higher and the bathing suits got smaller, and the ratings went through the roof."
Undeterred, the Morleys looked elsewhere: to satellite television, Third World countries, vast markets in Latin America (where franchised Miss World beauty schools still flourish), Asia, and Africa. Pageants were held in the Seychelles, South Africa, and India, where—shades of the nightmare to come—a man was reported to have burned himself in protest in 1996.
'Beauty with a Purpose" was how Julia Morley described the revamped contest. At the same time, a number of the pretty contestants actually turned out to be more purposeful and sophisticated, and as a result often less tractable, as Morley swiftly discovered this year.
In fact, practically the first call Miss Scotland made on winning her title was to Amnesty International. Should she boycott the pageant in Nigeria? she wondered. She had heard about a Nigerian woman named Amina Lawal, who had borne a child out of wedlock and was consequently sentenced last March to be "buried up to her neck and pelted with heavy rocks until she dies." This sentence, passed by the northern state of Katsina under Sharia law, is supposed to be carried out in 2004, after the mother has weaned her child. And Lawal is not the only woman facing death for such an offense in Nigeria. Should I avoid such a country? Murphy asked at the time.
It was a question Julia Morley, almost four decades Murphy's senior, would have been wise to ask herself at the outset. But she knew nothing when the contract with Nigerian television was signed. Later, naturally, the press peppered her with questions. "And I said, 'Who is Amina Lawal?'" Morley recalls with dull emphasis. "It's like everything I do is wrong!"
Certainly, it was an early warning. One by one, title-winning beauties, reading about the plight of the Nigerian mother, sent in their regrets: Miss Costa Rica, Miss Switzerland, Miss South Africa, Miss Denmark, Miss Austria, and Miss Panama would not be going to Nigeria.
Amnesty International doesn't seem in the least surprised to have heard from Miss Scotland about the moral implications of flying to Nigeria. But, as Enrique Restoy, who does research on Nigeria for the organization, tells me, "it's not our policy to support boycotts. We tell governments what to do, not people."
And indeed, right from the start, various Nigerian-government ministers, eager for the pageant to promote tourism, made it their business to assuage everyone's moral objections. No, Amina Lawal would not be stoned, they assured Morley and her charges. No, there would be—no matter what anyone said—no amputations in the Muslim North of the country, even though reports had it that two children were being thus dealt with for stealing a cow. The central government of the Christian president, Olusegun Obasanjo, would never tolerate such outrages. "The federal law takes precedence over ... Muslim law," said a foreign-ministry official.
And Morley believes these assurances. The spotlight shining on scores of beauties, she says, has done its work. "Amina Lawal was sorted out," she declares with the briskness of a tidy housekeeper. "And she will never, never be stoned." Moreover, "there aren't going to be any amputations."
But Restoy of Amnesty International isn't so sure. "Basically you can't trust what they say in Nigeria," he tells me. "Because the federal government—they don't have control over what is done in different states. The states do what they want." The Nigerian president is in no position to clamp down on the harsher verdicts of Islamic law, Restoy adds, because "the president needs the support of the northern governors and the northern states. He has an election coming up, so he's not going to do anything to undermine his power. So if the states have the power to implement Sharia law, it will be implemented. There is no doubt about it."
In the last three years, he continues, there have been four people sentenced to death for adultery in Nigeria, and at least four, one a 16-year-old boy, have already had amputations for theft. And almost certainly these figures are low. Sentences in Muslim courts are often carried out immediately on illiterate defendants who have no attorney.
And the northern Muslim portion of the country is not the only area where such outrages occur. "To give you an idea of how twisted things are, in the southeast of Nigeria there is a group of vigilantes, among the Ibo, called the Bakassi Boys," says Restoy. "If someone is suspected of a crime, the vigilantes make a cross out of two machetes, placing it in front of the suspect's face." If the face reflected turns red, the hapless victim is set on fire and burned to death.
Restoy saw just such an instance on a visit last spring, inside the compound of the governor of the Nigerian state of Anambra. "A man in his 40s was kneeling down, and surrounding him, 10 to 15 boys dressed in black with a lighter," the official recalls. "And they were pouring gasoline on the man."
On glimpsing the group from Amnesty, the boys flung the body of their victim into a van and sped away. That was the last Restoy saw of them.
Since 1999, the year Islamic law was introduced in the North, the nation has been in turmoil. Of the country's 36 states, each of which has considerable autonomy, 12 apply Sharia law. Long before the beauty pageant arrived, thousands were killed in Muslim-Christian fighting and churches were burned. Morley and her girls were almost certain to become pawns in some fashion or other in the interreligious strife that has beset the fledgling democracy. The pageant came under the auspices of, among others, Stella Obasanjo, the jolly wife of the Nigerian president (to whom, Morley tells me, she gave $80,000 for one of her charities).
Weeks before the pageant was due to take place, there had been rumors of impending Islamic protests. So when the girls landed in early November, a red carpet wasn't the only thing that awaited them. "They get off the plane, these beautiful young girls, all thin, modelly-looking girls, and they were wearing tank tops and low-riding jeans showing belly buttons," recalls Vanity Fair contributing editor Janine di Giovanni, who has written about Nigeria for the London Times. "They should have shown a little bit of sensitivity."
Isioma Daniel, writing in Lagos for ThisDay ("arguably the most influential paper in Nigeria," its editor, Simon Kolawole, informs me), was among those aware of how inflammatory the pageant's presence might be. "It aroused dissent from many groups of people," she wrote in her fateful article. "The Muslims thought it was immoral ... to revel in vanity."
Then she speculated on the prophet Muhammad's marital choices. As he was thought to have had about a dozen wives during his lifetime—among them a spouse taken by his own adopted son, Zaid, who had divorced her—that wasn't entirely preposterous. (Daniel's parents, Christians from Lagos, found the passage, as her mother says, "completely innocent. Muslims are allowed to have several wives.") It was simply, given the religious passions raging in her country, an unmitigated disaster.
'That came from not knowing the implications," explains Ali M. Ali, ThisDay's associate editor. "When it comes to certain things, like the complexities of Nigeria, given Isioma's own background, she is a bit inexperienced. People here in Nigeria take religion very seriously." Daniel had worked on the paper exactly eight months, after passing her A levels and graduating from the University of Central Lancashire in Britain. Her bosses marveled at her talent and ambition.
"From the first day she could speak and say 'Mummy,' my daughter wanted to be a journalist. A print journalist," recalls Ndidi Daniel, a telecommunications businesswoman. "She said, 'Mummy, I'm a print woman.'"
In vain did the girl's parents beg their oldest child to choose another career. "In Nigeria, there is nothing like the freedom of speech you have in America," says Mrs. Daniel. "If you live in a country where the military has ruled so long, where democracy is young, journalism is very dangerous."
As it happened, the young woman witnessed firsthand the limits of what she was allowed to write, when she interviewed Amina Lawal's lawyer and learned certain passages were to be stricken from the final version of the article—for fear, evidently, of offending the readership. Mrs. Daniel recalls her daughter bitterly complaining about such self-censorship. "It was 'Remove this, remove that'—she didn't like that," says the mother.
Even worse, in Daniel's eyes, was the apology issued by her newspaper after her article on the pageant appeared. Apologize for what? wondered the journalist.
She soon found out how necessary protective measures were. "The minute the newspaper hit the stands, the security police came looking for her," recalls Isioma's mother. "And in my country that's bad news. They lock you up—no courts, no bail, no lawyer. And your family doesn't know where you are. Isioma was tipped off about the security services coming for her from a colleague. Until then she wasn't prepared to go into hiding. But that's when my husband said, 'That's it! You're going into hiding. You're young, no more than a baby yourself.'"
All this horror was very nearly averted. The offending paragraph on Muhammad and his probable selection of a pageant beauty had actually been edited out of the article. "But the problem is by then the article had already gone to the mainframe computer—we don't have the technical facilities of other cultures," Ali says mournfully. "And by then it was too late."
Ali, a Muslim, was sent around the North to do what he calls "damage control," but it was too late for that as well. Offices rented by ThisDay were burned, but it is still publishing. "My daughter was a pawn," says Mrs. Daniel. "There were elements just using her article to get at a Christian president." By the end of the riots, Daniel was under fatwa. "Like Salman Rushdie, the blood of Isioma Daniel can be shed," declared Mamuda Aliyu Shinkafi, Zamfara's deputy governor.
As it happens, religious leaders in Saudi Arabia and Nigeria disagreed with that verdict, along with the federal government of Nigeria. But, as Restoy of Amnesty International notes, "although it is totally illegal, it has been issued by the government of a state. I don't see what the authorities can do about that.... There will be many, many radicals trying to get ahold of her and kill her."
Restoy has been in contact with the frightened journalist. "The first thing we tell someone who is under fatwa," he explains, "is to get out of the country."
Isioma Daniel E-mails me plaintively, every word edged with desperation. "Please write that I am currently in hiding in Europe," she writes. But she longs to come to the United States to pursue her career.
"Physically, my daughter is in good health," says Mrs. Daniel. "But emotionally she is not. Not at all. She is crying."
The calamities are unceasing. Julia Morley rolls her eyes. From the beginning, she says, there were contestants who believed any calumny concerning Nigeria. "There was Belgium going around weeping" over reports of amputations. "Then Canada came in, saying, 'Omigod, they're chopping the hands off children.' Followed hotly by, I think, Northern Ireland and then England." And Miss Wales as well. "She's the telegraph pole!" says Morley. "And suddenly it was like a spreading disease!"
So it must have come as no big surprise that when riots began Miss Canada and Miss Scotland were not the only girls anxious to book a plane out. "Then the other U.K. girls wanted to leave as well," Miss Canada recalls. "And the next thing I knew I was gone," Miss Canada concludes. "The Miss World Organization—they just sort of wanted to get me out of there."
Morley was, not for the first time, in a quandary. The Nigerian authorities were begging her to stay. There was $8 million at stake, not to mention the problem of relocating contestants, many of whom had brought along hundreds of pounds of clothing. But even some of the television crew due to fly in were balking at the notion. Ian Stewart, the pageant's executive producer, discovered that "the girlfriend of one of my crew members had burnt his passport." A glance at the faces around her told Morley exactly what was written there. They had to get back to London—fast.
At 11 P.M. on Friday, November 22, Morley gathered the remaining contestants around her and said they were leaving. "Everyone cheered," says Miss Scotland. A jumbo jet was wrangled from Cameroon: that set Morley back $400,000. The vast 19th-century Alexandra Palace in North London was booked for the televised pageant: another $160,000. All in all, the relocation cost Miss World $1.6 million. At three A.M. Sunday, the jumbo lifted off for Britain, and everyone breathed a collective sigh of relief. Morley had extricated her girls. Now she has to do the same for herself.
There was good news and bad news after the pageant's successful conclusion before a crowd of 2,000 almost two weeks later. The good news was that the newly crowned Miss World is Muslim ("A very good political move," an Iraqi politician recently informed Morley, although the organizer swears religion had nothing to do with the judges' decision). Also, Miss Canada had returned when the venue changed. And Miss South Africa joined the fold. The bad news was money. Michael Macario, the financial director of Miss World for the last 18 years, doesn't think Morley will have to sell her $9.6 million house in London's Dulwich neighborhood. "It isn't necessary at this moment in time," he says cautiously. "If it becomes necessary, Julia will be very supportive."
He was still crunching numbers when we met. Television rights have netted them just $800,000. A few Nigerian governors have honored their debts: $2.5 million more. But most of the promised millions they can kiss good-bye. And in 2001, Macario adds, "we lost around a million pounds." He does not look happy. "In a good year we would expect to produce a million pounds' profit," he says. "We've had mixed years.
"But we're still here."
Undaunted, Morley has plans. She will never sell Miss World, she insists. Indeed, she is full of energy, envisaging marvels to come. She intends to launch something she calls the World Broadcasting Network. She wants to stretch the Miss World televised spectacle from one night into a full week. She will launch a Miss World cosmetics line. This year contestants will be competing in China!
And the issue of human-rights violations in that country does not daunt her.
"Who am I to judge China?" Morley asks solemnly.
Who indeed? The Olympics are going to be held there in 2008. Even Donald Trump's Miss Universe girls will be in China in two years' time. "And they're paying us $10 million to go there," Trump adds triumphantly.
I tell him of Morley's strikingly similar plans for the coming year.
"Oh, really? Hmmmmm," says Trump, his voice drained of joy. Across the phone lines, I can hear his mind whirring.


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The Chinese 'Contract': In it for the Long Haul
Is a real estate career just a series of transactions strung together over a lifetime? Or is it a series of interpersonal relationships that form, dissolve and then reform again?
I came to this question reading the Negotiation (Amacom, 2013) book in The Brian Tracy Success Library. It's basically just a pocket guide to one subsection of sales techniques, so I was combing through it for a review. That's when I came to a subhead titled "The Chinese Contract." This piqued the interest of my internal anthropologist. I could imagine that contracts would be envisioned differently in China than they are in the U.S. for a variety of reasons. But in what way would they be different?
I was somewhat surprised when I read Tracy's explanation that Chinese contracts are more flexible, thorough, and durable than American ones:
In the Chinese mentality, everything that can be thought of or anticipated is written down. But there is a clear understanding that, as the arrangement goes forward, new information will emerge and new situations will arise. This new information and these new situations will necessitate revising the contract so that it is still fair and equitable for both parties.
Later in the book, Tracy explains situations in which it is smarter to use the Chinese form of a contract:
If you are negotiating with another party with whom you intend to negotiate again and again over the years, the happiness of the other party should be an important concern of yours. Invite the other party to come back to you if the situation changes.
It makes sense. But it also seems a little too nebulous to be used as an actual "contract," in legal terms, especially in our quite litigious business culture. Maybe it's more of a relationship management tool? On the other hand, isn't that constant give-and-take part of what makes negotiation an art?
So, maybe it's not something to trot out when you're trying to get a first-time buyer to sign an exclusive representation agreement. But what about people who have been loyal clients for many years? Or, if you're a broker, would you try this next time your long-time top producer comes into the office to discuss a more favorable commission split?
Let me know what you think, or if you've had any experience with this type of contract negotiation, in the comment section below.
In the words of Arte Johnson, "Verrrrry interesting, but stupid!" (lol) http://youtu.be/XkFx3TaOunA
Actually, we have the same advantage here in the U.S.A. – it is called the ADDENDUM. It is used when we wish to renegotiate or change the original terms of an agreement.
Those in commercial real estate especially understand that negotiations never really end.
The "Chinese Contract" is much like our own Constitution. Written with care and forethought, there are currently 27 amendments (from 1791 to 1992) and numerous new laws to keep it current.

subset: commoncrawl


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Funeral services celebrating the life of Lyle Arthur Stock, age 69, of Shell Lake, WI, formerly of Watertown, took place Tuesday, May 11 at St. Paul's Lutheran Church in Watertown. Lyle died Thursday, May 6, 2010, after a brief battle with cancer.
He was born Oct. 23, 1940, in Hamburg, the son of Henry and Bertha (Kroppen) Stock. Lyle was baptized Nov. 3, 1940, at Immanuel Lutheran Church in Hamburg, and was confirmed in his faith in 1954, at St. John's Lutheran Church in Norwood Young America.
He attended school in both Hamburg and Norwood Young America, before graduating from Watertown High School in 1958.
Lyle was united in marriage with LaVonne Kassen Oct. 7, 1989, in Chaska.
Lyle was a member of the National Guard, and spent many years in the concrete and construction business. He was a proud member of the Labor Union.
Other enjoyments in life included gardening, antiques, hunting, the Farmer's Market, hiking the outdoors, and tapping maple trees.
Lyle was preceded in death by his parents; siblings Elda Mueller, Norman Mueller, Bernice Barlau, Ethyl Flatten, Delmont Mueller, Darwin Stock, and Myrna Miner; and brothers-in-law Dennis Pleiseis, Gordon Barlau, and Harlan Hilk.
He is survived by his wife, LaVonne; children, Wendy (Steve) Bakken of Mayer, and Wade (Annette) Stock of Watertown; stepchildren, Troy (Kim) Goede, Dawn Ellig (Matt Johnson), all of Mayer, and Ryan (Connie) Hedtke of Montrose; grandchildren Jacob VonRentzell, Brandon Bakken, Madelyn Bakken, Kiah Bakken, Craig Becker, Cody Stock, and Chase Stock; and step-grandchildren Amber Goede, Dustin Goede, Matthew Goede, and Cody Ellig.
Lyle is further survived by his siblings, Adina Knutson of Copper City, AK, Arden (Esther) Mueller of Lincoln, CA, Mabel (Donald) Roepke of Owatonna, and Darla Pleiseis of Arlington; sisters-in-law Darlene Mueller of Plymouth, Kathleen Hilk of Lester Prairie, and Diane (Doug) Ittel of New Germany; brother-in-law Amos Flatten of Osceola, WI; as well as many other relatives and friends.
The Rev. Brent Berkesch of Faith Lutheran in Spooner, WI officiated at the 11 a.m. service. The organist was Rita Mueller. Congregational hymns were "Old Rugged Cross," "In The Garden," "Amazing Grace," and "How Great Thou Art." Interment followed at the Watertown City Cemetery.
Serving as casket bearers were Lyle's grandsons, Jacob VonRentzell, Brandon Bakken, Cody Stock, Chase Stock, Dustin Goede, Matthew Goede, and Cody Ellig. Honorary casket bearers were granddaughters Madelyn Bakken, Kiah Bakken, and Amber Goede.
Visitation was Monday, May 10 from 5 to 8 p.m. at the Paul-McBride Funeral Chapel in Lester Prairie, and continued one hour prior to the service Tuesday, at the church.
Arrangements were with the Paul-McBride Funeral Chapel in Lester Prairie. For online guestbook, visit www.mcbridefuneralchapels.com.


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There is a lot of difference between an hobby and a passion. Hobbies become a passion when a person does excess of it for repeated times and indulge most of the time, energy and efforts into it. Travelling is one of the kind of hobby or interest that had become a passion for many lives. You can see many travel blogs where you could find travellers explain about the place where they go, about the culture, the uniqueness of that particular place and showcase good pics. These kind of things attract many people and they try out to visit those place after getting attracted by seeing these pictures. That is why travellers are paid as well. What does travelling do? What will it give a person? and why that person loves travelling? You might have plenty of questions revolving in your mind that why people spend some hell of a money and travel to various places and countries.So here are the few reason why do people travel.
- The thing is travelling gives a person some leisure to spend time for his/her own self.
- Travelling helps people to connect various people across the world and learn many new things, get exposed to the culture and know their differences of culture, religion and develop various personal skills like communication, a new language or a might meet a new friend.
- It makes mind a refresher and adds some fresh things and ideas into a person's mind to start something new.
- Some people travel because they have assload or sufficient amount of money in their pockets.
- They were educational travellers also where they travel to seek new information, collect data for personal needs.
- These travelling gives some energy and some kind of adventure feel where you go with those large backpacks on your shoulders which gives you a feel of a traveller as well.
- Learning new language is always exciting. It helps to improve relations and also make you learn how to communicate with people.


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Your Pie Franchise Opportunities In Louisiana
If you're looking to invest your money and time into a growing and profitable business in Louisiana, contact Your Pie! We'd love to add you to the family!
Your Pie is currently offering restaurant franchise opportunities in Louisiana, including New Orleans, Baton Rouge, Shreveport and Lafayette. If you aren't located in one of these cities, don't worry – there could still be an opportunity for you in your market.
Contact Your Pie's development team and inquire about available locations.
A Delicious History
Founder Drew French began his operation in Athens, Georgia, in 2008, and he did so with one goal in mind: providing a customizable pizza option that everyone could enjoy. Your Pie is committed to improving communities by changing the way that people experience pizza. Drawing from family recipes from the island of Ischia, Your Pie uses hand-tossed dough, only fresh ingredients, homemade pizza sauces and salad dressings, and offers vegan, vegetarian and gluten-free pizzas, as well as traditional pizzas.
Quality Food From Quality Ingredients
In addition to offering a selection of gourmet quality favorites, Your Pie offers a rare platform by allowing patrons to build their own pizzas – a fun twist to traditional pizza places, offering more choices and flexible options. The brand stands by its motto to "express your inner pizza", investing in local communities and encouraging diners to let their culinary creativity run wild.
Your Pie also offers a taste of Italy to your location, with rich and satisfying gelato choices for dessert. Unlike ice cream, gelato is made with milk, and because the richness of its flavors comes from all-natural ingredients, it makes a delicious and healthy treat. Your Pie also offers an extensive wine and craft beer collection to pair with any food combination. This is truly a one-of-a-kind experience that you can't find in many other places.
Franchise Opportunities Louisiana
Louisiana is a great place to open up a unique business like Your Pie. With a rich history embedded in every fiber of the culture, Louisiana is home to unique people looking for unique food. Your Pie's model of serving custom pizza and craft beers and wine would fit well with the population in Louisiana looking to eat out with their family and friends while also getting exactly what they want to eat. We are excited to grow the Your Pie brand in Louisiana and develop our culture and core value with new franchise owners.
Your Pie provides franchise owners an opportunity in multiple Louisiana cities to offer customers in their local community delicious food. Our business is built on strong relationships, and we provide you with extensive ongoing corporate support and training to ensure your success.
We love showing people what it means to be a Your Pie franchisee, so if you would like more information don't hesitate to reach out to our team to begin the discovery process!
From the very start, our Your Pie team is here to support your new Louisiana location with detailed marketing plans and materials, as well as continuous corporate support. The Your Pie franchise opportunities Louisiana are available for you today! To find out more details, contact us!


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The Wall Street Journal, that most indispensable of newspapers, has this editorial suggesting that the credit crisis may be reaching bottom, noting that Warren Buffett seems keen to begin buying choice assets at rock-bottom prices and noting that Elliot Spitzer, the governor of New York and former Attorney General of the same is now demanding a breakup of the mortgage insurers.
The recent posturing by both men is a lesson in investment strategy. Buffett is demonstrating that liquidity is the most important weapon an investor has. Many times in his annual letters to shareholders over the past several years, he has noted that
It is important to understand that Buffett is not offering to take the troublesome mortgage backed paper, but rather the quite solid municipal bond paper, of the hands of the insurance firms. These are assets likely to keep earning steady premia for years for these companies. But, if you cannot wait for those premia to come in because you need cash now, you may have no choice but to sell. This unfortunately is like having to sell the family heirloom to the pawnshop to meet the rent. While it puts off the day of reckoning, possibly forever, it more often leads to insolvency.
This is why it is so disheartening to see Eliot Spitzer recommend the breakup of the insurers in this way (unless they could recapitalize). Notionally, what Spitzer is suggesting is a prophylactic for the municipal bond holders (and issuers). Since they, through no fault of their own (they were trafficking not in shaky mortgages supported by questionable assets and incomes, but in solid municipal projects supported by reliable municipal taxes) they may lose protection because they chose the wrong insurer. Insurers actually favour a breakup which would allow the healthy municipal business to be insulated from the unhealthy mortgage business. But, as Cecilie Glutcher from Bloomerg quotes Tom Mercer of Musashi Capital, this is "like going to the casino and keeping only the winning bets".
In fact, this is the worst possible outcome for bond insurance. It defeats the very CONCEPT of insurance. As we know, insurance is based on the empirical evidence that it is easier to predict outcomes for an entire population than for an individual member of that population. Since the risk (as measured by the standard deviation of the outcome) faced by the individual (early death, dismemberment, etc) is higher than that of the population, it is possible to make money arbitraging the difference. This is called underwriting. Everyone wins.
Furthermore, there is another well-known principle in investing, which is diversification. Diversification of risk tends to reduce the overall risks of a portfolio, even when the risks show some correlation. Thus, even if mortgage trouble is correlated with municipal default (because both mortgage collateral and municipal taxes are tied to real estate values) holding both types of mortgages should improve the quality of the balance sheet of the insurer. Insisting that an insurer would be better off taking on only one kind of risk is the same stupid anti-business/anti-management/anti-capitalist views that insisted that banks couldn't have multiple branches, lest they become monetary overlords.
As I have noted before, this is exactly the sort of foolishness that led to the banking crisis of the 1930s. Spitzer thinks that if insurers of municipal bonds can be forced to only take this sort of business, which has historically been prone to high levels of repayment, that he can preserve cheap borrowing for cities and states. But he makes these insurers substantially more prone to risks unique to municipal borrowers (such as meeting large pension obligations). Worse, he prevents the beneficial diversification effects for mortgages and commercial paper that provide the source of the tax revenue that the cities need. Making real estate financing harder to obtain in the midst of a major downturn will lead to lower assessed values and the need to raise tax rates in order to meet budget shortfalls.
Not a pretty picture at all.
Certainly, the bond insurers need to find a solution. The most like is a recapitalization by large investors – hedge funds, private equity or possible state pension funds (now that would be ironic). The solution is not to weaken them, but rather to strengthen them.


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Business Performance and Financial Measures in Six Sigma
Candidates seeking Six Sigma Black Belt certification, quality professionals, engineers, production managers, frontline supervisors, and all individuals charged with responsibility for improving quality and processes at the organizational or departmental level, including process owners and champions
Proficiency at the Green Belt level with Six Sigma projects, and with business measures including the balanced scorecard approach and the cost of poor quality (COPQ) as scoped in the ASQ – Six Sigma Green Belt Body of Knowledge (BOK)
Expected Duration
120 minutes
Six Sigma improvement begins with assessing the current performance of an organization's processes and products, and comparing it with the desired performance. An important part of this assessment is choosing a set of measures that will provide a comprehensive picture of how the company is achieving its goals of customer satisfaction, organizational learning and improvement, internal process performance, and bottom-line financial growth. This course examines business measures in two categories: business performance measures and purely financial measures, exploring how these measures reveal the current state of the business and point to gains achievable through Six Sigma.
This course explores how businesses use balanced scorecard and key performance indicators (KPIs) to find their critical success factors and use them to measure progress toward organizational goals. It also explores the varied and sometimes unexpected effects of customer loyalty on business success. Turning to purely financial measures of success, this course explores how these financial measures are crucial in determining whether the potential returns of Six Sigma projects will outweigh the required investment. It provides practice in using the formulas associated with these measures, including revenue growth, market share, margin, cost-benefit analysis, return on investment (ROI), and net present value (NPV). This course is aligned with the ASQ Certified Six Sigma Black Belt certification exam and is designed to assist learners as part of their exam preparation. It builds on foundational knowledge that is taught in SkillSofts ASQ-aligned Green Belt curriculum.
Business Performance Measures in Six Sigma
Financial Measures in Six Sigma
MONTHLY SUBSCRIPTION$129/month
ANNUAL SUBSCRIPTION$1295/year
Multi-license discounts available for Annual and Monthly subscriptions.


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The most popular labor-saving device today is still a husband with money.
-- Joey Adams, "Cindy and I"
The most recent attempt to revive the moribund campus left, a national
conference held at Rutgers University February 5-7, ended when the
participants decided that they were too racist to found a new national
The stated goal of the conference was the formation of a national
organization that would "give expression to a shared consciousness." The
orientation materials declared that this was "a historic moment" -- you
know, like Port Huron and the Sixties -- and the Rutgers host committee had
every reason to expect their goal would be accomplished.
But it was not to be. Given that this was a conference of *New*
New Leftists, reason had nothing to do with it.
A revealing article by Vania del Borgo and Maria Margaronis in "The
Nation", ["Beyond the Fragments," 3/26/88] says "The defining moment of the
weekend came when the conference was almost at its end. On Sunday morning,
a twenty-five-member students of color caucus confronted the assembled body
with its overwhelming whiteness..." Joined by the Gay & Bisexual Caucus, the
Students of Color Caucus declared that the founding of such an overwhelmingly
white organization would itself constitute a racist act. The four hundred or
so leftist activists were told that they had no right to ratify a constitution
or elect any officers. While recognizing "the need to examine the real
possibilities of a broad-based, racially diverse student movement" and paying
lip service to the need for "dialogue," they threatened to walk out if their
demands were not met. As *The Nation* article describes the scene: "To their
astonishment, their intervention was greeted with a standing ovation." Handed
an ultimatum which demanded that they disband, this would-be successor to the
radical student movements of the Sixties promptly voted itself out of
existence. As del Borgo and Margaronis put it, "After much chaotic discussion
and a confused voice vote, the convention suspended all its other work and
broke into regional groups to discuss 'outreach.'"
-- Libertarian Agenda, May 1988
The most remarkable thing about my mother is that for thirty years she
served the family nothing but leftovers. The original meal has never
been found.
-- Calvin Trillin
The most serious doubt that has been thrown on the authenticity of the
biblical miracles is the fact that most of the witnesses in regard to
them were fishermen.
-- Arthur Binstead
The Most Unsuccessful Version Of The Bible
The most exciting version of the Bible was printed in 1631 by Robert
Barker and Martin Lucas, the King's printers at London. It contained
several mistakes, but one was inspired -- the word "not" was omitted from
the Seventh Commandment and enjoined its readers, on the highest authority,
to commit adultery.
Fearing the popularity with which this might be received in remote
country districts, King Charles I called all 1,000 copies back in and fined
the printers L3,000.
-- Stephen Pile, "The Book of Heroic Failures"
The most winning woman I ever knew was hanged for poisoning three little
children for their insurance money.
-- Sherlock Holmes
The moving cursor writes, and having written, blinks on.
The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all they Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.
The myth of romantic love holds that once you've fallen in love with the
perfect partner, you're home free. Unfortunately, falling out of love
seems to be just as involuntary as falling into it.
The naked truth of it is, I have no shirt.
-- William Shakespeare, "Love's Labour's Lost"


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Caroline Wozniacki
"Here is my new club @McilroyRory made for me. http://t.co/JsJximhT"
How I See It: I guess this is their form of flowers or a nice bottle of wine.
Brian Cardinal
"No caption needed!!!! http://t.co/BqPGvwHW"
How I See It: I'll give you one anyway: "Drinking away the lockout."
Justin Tuck
"Time for a workout and treatment"
How I See It: Another big week ahead for the Giants' defensive line. Next quarterback on the list to injure: Kevin Kolb.
Chris Canty
""When the pain of where you are becomes greater than the fear of where your going you'll move.""
How I See It: Unfortunately for Michael Vick, he didn't move.
Jay Cutler
"SEC officials cheating Vandy. Real shocker. Unacceptable."
How I See It: Does it really matter? Do you actually think Vandy can compete in the SEC?
Matt Carle
"Obviously pumped about the "official" announcement of the #2012NHLWinterClassic, it was a fun day at Citizens Bank Park http://t.co/W0A4I6kl"
How I See It: Chase Utley and Jimmy Rollins in net?
Luke Donald
"Congrats to Bill for taking it all, one of the really good guys on Tour"
How I See It: Because somehow your 13 top-ten finishes weren't enough ...
Joe Maddon
"It was fun to listen to the joy in the clubhouse after tonight's game. I enjoy just sitting in my office taking it in. We're really into it."
How I See It: The Red Sox are very amusing.
Related Stories:
-- Hollywood Just Doesn't Make Baseball Classics Like 'Bull Durham' Anymore
-- NBA's Richest Owners
-- Philly Food Truck Has Something For Everyone -- Even Giants Fans


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The Knowledge You Need As A Homeschooling Parent
Are you worried your child?The tips that follow can help you on this article will provide rewarded efforts.
One of the major benefits of homeschooling is the ability to cater to your child using the best method for their needs. This kind of structuring helps your child to really unlock their full potential.
You must know the laws are for homeschooling in your state. You might have to do standardized testing, or you might not. Some states even make parents to register as private schools.
Have you thought about the added burden of your child will cost you? Quitting your regular job may not be viable for you.
Make sure you do plenty of research as possible before deciding to homeschool your kids. There are lots of homeschooling resources to learn a bit more about the reality of education.
You should get in contact with the homeschool association within your state to research the laws.You should also inform the local district of your homeschool plans so that you are homeschooling.
Set up a quiet area in your home for school time. Choose a place of study that is separated from the place your kid typically plays. Make sure your children have some place to store supplies when not in use.
Do you plan to teach more than one kid that needs homeschooling? You need to know how your discipline style will work in the school environment. It will be hard to keep your kids focused appropriately if you do not set clear rules and boundaries. By looking for holes in your discipline and doing what you can to fix it, you can make any adjustments necessary to create the best environment for your children's successful education.
It can be easy to feel shut out from the outside world when you are being homeschooled. Networking locally can be great for both you and their home schooled students. Look into local support groups where you can meet with other parents. A good group of like-minded individuals can be extraordinarily useful.
Educate yourself about different learning styles. There is a lot of teaching material out there that can be tailored to the specific needs of your child. You don't need to be trapped in any one method alone. Mix and match teaching styles together to create a curriculum that your children.
Write out your reasons for wanting homeschooling is necessary. Be aware of what you can do and reasons for homeschooling.This will make answering the questions of others much easier for you to reach.
Take your children out on walks in natural settings. These can be used for teaching in many different ways. Young children can look at seeds and nuts. They can practice counting the different types of various trees. The kids that are older can go more in depth and what their scientific names are. Bring a camera to review pictures without disturbing nature.
High school homeschooling leads to passing a GED tests. Give them a sample tests to see what you need to work on. This ensures you provide them the weaknesses are.
Your child's interests and strengths should help in the development of the curriculum and teaching approaches. Ask then what they're interested in doing and let them use their imagination! They will enjoy learning more if they can have a hand in how it is to be done. You might be surprised by the amazing ideas that come from them.
Make sure that your child is not hungry when you begin a hearty meal before a learning session. This will assure that your child have the lesson being taught. It will also help them stay alert and remain engaged with your teachings.
Be patient as you know how to be when teaching your child. It is guaranteed that you will get frustrated state as this could act as a deterrent to them learning more. Positive encouragement is the development of confidence and enthusiasm.
Your children need you to ensure they have a successful future. Going down the homeschooling route is one way in which you can make sure that your children are getting the education that they deserve. Utilize the advice and information featured in this article to enable you to build your children an effective learning environment.


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Paul & Julie Vale listed Undercover Nursery as a registered business in 1993. With a Bachelor of Agriculture and experience in the horticultural industry, Paul grew this wholesale nursery business into a profitable enterprise, installing 1000m2 of poly housing and employing 3 nursery staff in the first year. Over the next five years Undercover Nursery was approached to include landscaping as part of its services. Landscaping became the preferred area of operations as Undercover ventured into commercial and industrial projects.
To reflect this change in direction the company was listed as Undercover Landscapes Pty Ltd in 2003. Over the past 10 years we have continually developed and improved our QA and WH&S systems to meet the exacting demands of the industry and increased our level of quality, expertise and service, with the aim of building long standing relationships with our increasing customer base.
Today we provide services to the Commercial Landscape Sector in the areas of Playground Construction, Child Care Centre Outdoor Learning Areas, Streetscapes, Local Government, Environmental projects and Landscape Maintenance Services.
Our clients include; Lend Lease, Urban Growth, Burton Contractors, Blacktown Council, Willoughby Council, North Sydney Council, Parramatta Council, Canterbury Council, Warringah Council, Hills Community Care through The Hills Council, City of Sydney, Allam Homes, Children First, Fit Kidz Learning Centres, Powerhouse Museum, to name a few.
Undercover Landscapes is proud to be the preferred supplier for Blacktown City Councils Street Tree Planting Program and for the Provision of Bush Regeneration and Revegetation Works. We are also an active contractor in the Parramatta City of Trees Program 2013/2014.
We are full members of the Landscape NSW and ACT Industry Association and have been accredited as a qualified contractor through BNG Conserve and Browz Consulting Service.


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If you are interested in joining SPELTAC as an individual teacher, or would like to launch SPELTAC at your school, please get in touch.
I am available at limited times throughout the year for (online) consultations, school audits, setting up SPELTAC and related trainings. These include:
- Creating a culture of blogging for professional learning
- The power of connected learning
- Teaching new literacies
- Developing an internationally-minded school through language and literacy
- The role of the EAL team at your school
- Sustainable practices for bilingualism in international schools
- Developing a cross-curricular literacy programme in the Middle School
- Scaffolding writing across the curriculum
- Establishing a shared pedagogy for language learning in international schools
- Language acquisition and inquiry
- Planning and assessment for language
- The importance of talk and engagement in the classroom


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Another HUGE Hollywood Couple Have Called It Quits
After eleven years together, Hollywood couple Naomi Watts and Liev Shreiber have announced their separation.
ET released the statement for the pair saying ''"Over the past few months we've come to the conclusion that the best way forward for us as a family is to separate as a couple. It is with great love, respect, and friendship in our hearts that we look forward to raising our children together and exploring this new phase of our relationship," it read.
"While we appreciate your curiosity and support, we ask the press to be mindful of our children and respect their right to privacy."
Schreiber and Watts had been together since 2005 but have never married.
They have two children together, nine-year-old Alexander (and seven-year-old Samuel.


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Junior Membership of Orkney Athletic Club is open to anyone aged between 9 – 18 years. ALL membership enquiries should be forwarded in the first instance to the Club Membership Co-ordinator at email@example.com or via the 'Enquiries' page on the website.
On gaining membership of OAC, athletes should note that an Annual Membership Fee and regular Term Fees become due, the income from which goes towards Club costs (Scottish Athletics affiliation fees, track and hall hire, equipment, insurance, etc).
Weekly training sessions for school aged athletes currently attract over 100 young athletes. Due to the demand for places, we cannot guarantee automatic entry for everyone (particularly those aged 9-11 years).
In order to address this issue, the club operates a Waiting List Policy and the minimum age at which you can join the list is 9 years old.
You can register interest before your child is 9 and you will then be contacted once your child reaches the entry age to see whether you still wish them to be placed on the waiting list.
The Club try to facilitate two intakes each year, usually around April and October, however this can vary depending on coaching capacity.
For children under 9 years of age who are keen to try Athletics, the Pickaquoy Centre offer Run, Jump, Throw sessions as part of their Junior Programme. These sessions currently run on a Monday night. P1/2 from 4-5pm and P3/4 from 5-6pm. OAC strongly encourage younger athletes to join this programme in order to gain an early understanding of the fundamental athletic skills which will be further developed within the club structure.


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Run Time: 2 minutes
Author: Dylan Luyten M.D.
Educational Pearls:
- The Canadian Medical Association Journal published a study this year looking at the association between what floor people live on and cardiac arrest survival.
- In the US, 2% of patients with out-of-hospital cardiac arrest survive with a favorable neurologic outcome and 5% survive to discharge from hospital.
- The study found that if you live on the first, second, or third floor, you have a 5.3% rate of survival to hospital discharge. If you lived above the third floor, the survival to hospital discharge rate was 2.7%. If you lived above the 16th floor, the survival to hospital discharge rate was 1.0%. If you lived above the 25th floor, the survival to hospital discharge rate was 0.0%.
- These findings indicated a strong, statistically significant association between a patient's location in a building and the chances of surviving an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest.
Link to Podcast: http://medicalminute.madewithopinion.com/cardiac-arrest-survival-rate/
References: http://www.defibfirst.com.au/images/AED_high-rise_research_study-Canadian_Medical_Association_Journal.pdf


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So I heard growing up that the most powerful man in the world was the chairman of our (American) central bank—the Fed Chairman. I didn't understand it at the time, but I do now. I think it's because the guy does not only control the amount of money in the
Writing about economics as a series of entries from each update, I'm naturally building on previous things. So if you're joining me now, I'm definitely skipping things. But with exports and imports, foreign reserves (esp of dollars with other countries), foreign investment, demand for dollars for various things (like sending kids of Asian presidents to US schools), presence of American multinational companies everywhere, etc., you really do affect the economies around the world.
The strange thing is that today this truth is weakening. There will probably come a day when this is no longer true. But already, the rising powers of
Did I talk about the process of inflation? I don't remember. But anyway, central banks have been known as inflation busters because their policies can curb it or fuel it. The problem is the same thing you do to fight a recession (lower interest rates) and to put more effective money in the economy, is the same thing that causes or fuels inflation. So it's a dilemma for these banks (EU bank,
Right now, the rand is weakening, and the ratio is the highest it has been since my arrival (or around the same amount about 7 rand to 1 dollar).


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Muhammed Al Munajjid runs the salafi website Islam QA. It amazes me how popular this website is. I can't believe we have "scholars" who say all this crap! It's very clear they have a dislike for women (except for cases like sex, cooking, and cleaning). Do they really think Allah SWT sent women to the earth just so they can be haraam and do haraam things? How idiotic of them is it that they FAIL to see women properly? Properly like HUMANS?
1) This fatwa approves the marriage of a 26 year old man to a 13 year old girl. The dumbass who asked the question is a pedophile clearly: https://islamqa.info/en/27305
2) They called a believing Muslim a kaffir: http://islamqa.info/en/ref/
3) They say its haraam to live in a non-Muslim country: http://islamqa.info/en/ref/
4) They have said its haraam to take Christians and Jews as friends, based on verse 5:51, but they have mistranslated it. They also said one who has non-Muslim friends is just like them (i.e a kaffir). Actual explanations of verse 5:51 is presented by the following scholarly sources AFTER the two Islam QA links:
5) They say its haraam for women to drive because it'll cause sexual immorality: http://islamqa.info/en/ref/
If you keep reading that it later on says that women driving is comparable to drinking and gambling.
7) Now look at what they wrote on polygamy: http://islamqa.info/en/ref/11744/polygamy
8) Women who don't marry "are well known" to become prostitutes, and they need to be looked after. This link also says children being illigitinate is reflected in their behavior : http://islamqa.info/en/14022
Here is an article I did about hijab: http://mymuslimthoughts.blogspot.ca/2017/04/no-hijab-is-not-islamic-requirement.html
They do not know what this obedience thing means. It is explained by the following links:
13) Not allowed for women to act in theatre, even if she wears hijab: http://www.islamweb.net/
14) Look how stupid this one is: http://islamqa.com/en/20051
"A woman may compensate for her weaknesses by striving hard, and surpass men when they are negligent. Hence we find that in some colleges, female students surpass male students because of their greater efforts and their keenness to succeed when many of the male students are negligent and are not eager to learn."
So the only way women can be more intellectual than men is if men don't try? BULLSHIT.
16) Haraam for women to ride horses, and also her face is a source of temptation: http://www.islamweb.net/emainpage/index.php?page=showfatwa&Option=FatwaId&Id=87602
17) Those who say women should take part in politics are "weak, defeated and dazzled."
BUT Aisha, our beloved mother in Islam, was involved in politics:
18) Not a correct way to guide a non-Muslim to Islam if you're going to attack their religious texts:
12) Not allowed to appreciate the skills of non-muslim football players, because they're non-muslim
"This applies if it is free of other evils; if it is accompanied by other evils, such as if the viewer begins to venerate a kaafir player for example, then it is undoubtedly haraam, because it is not permissible for us to venerate the kuffaar at all, no matter how far they have advanced."
21) Women working as broadcasters will lead to them having illegitimate children. They also say men do this job better: http://islamqa.info/en/111839
22) Needing to quit work if women work there as well: http://islamqa.info/en/27304
Those of us who are MATURE, and PROFESSIONAL, will KNOW how to work with people of the opposite sex in a PROPER manner. This is no problem for us, at ALL. This just shows how much sex Islam QA has on their dirty minds, and how weak they are.
23) Can't watch films like heurcules because we might actually believe gods like him will exist. Also, they say such movies are popular in the west because the lack of religion LOL
24) Competition is not allowed in any way, except for things that can help in jihad:
So what about family game nights? What about playing sports?
25) Not allowed to show respect to non-muslims. They also quote a false hadith about forcing Christians and jews to the side of the roads when you meet them: https://islamqa.info/en/13730
26) Muslim women are not wise if they choose not to marry (last paragraph)
27) Sufi's make up false hadiths LOL


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|Below are some frequently asked questions about Adya products. Please contact us if you have a question that is not found on this list. For product usage information, please refer to our Product Maintenance page.
| What are the ingredients of Adya Clarity?Adya Clarity is a concentrated solution of purified water and ionic sulfate mineral salts extracted from biotite, one of Earth's most abundant minerals sources. Minerals contained in biotite are: Iron, Magnesium, Calcium, Manganese, Phosphorus, Sodium, Potassium, and Zinc.Additionally, Adya Clarity contains trace amounts of the following minerals: aluminum, barium, cerium, chromium, cobalt, copper, germanium, lanthanum, lithium, molybdenum, nickel, rubidium, scandium, selenium, silicon, strontium, sulfur, titanium, tungsten, vanadium, yttrium, zirconium. As a natural substance the mineral composition can vary slightly.
Adya's proprietary extraction method allows full availability of these earth-harvested elements.
How does Adya Clarity purify water, specifically?
Adya Clarity purifies water in a 4-step process:
What contaminants do Adya products remove from water?
Adya products effectively remove or reduce the following drinking water contaminants:
How much Adya Clarity is needed to effectively purify water?
The amount of Adya Clarity needed to purify water depends on the quality of water being treated. Water quality depends on how many contaminants, such as bacteria and carbon wastes, are in the water. When treating municipal water the typical dilution rate for Adya Clarity is 1:1000; 1 tsp. treats 1.3 gallons of water. This rate also applies for similar fresh water sources such well or spring water. If the water source is believed to be extremely contaminated by known or unknown toxic substances, proper laboratory analysis will be required in order to give accurate dilution rates.
Does Adya Clarity need to be used with a water filtration system?
Though we highly recommend using the Adya Water Filtration System combined with Adya Clarity for best results, it is not required.
The Adya Water Filtration System is especially helpful in removing inert precipitates in water treated with Adya Clarity. The system has a .02 micron ceramic filter and a multi-level earth filter which contains activated carbon and zeolites.
Why does my water turn cloudy after adding Adya Clarity to it?
The cloudiness that often occurs when Adya Clarity is added to water is caused by the flocculation process, which causes dissolved contaminants to come out of solution.
If I use Adya Clarity without a filtration system, how long do I need to wait before I can drink my water?
After adding Adya Clarity to water you may notice the water has a cloudy appearance. This is a normal reaction caused by the flocculation process (as stated above). The water is safe to drink, but may look unpleasant. Depending upon the quality of your water, you may wait 24-48 hours for precipitates to settle to the bottom of your water container. Then, simply pour the clear, top portion of water into another container for drinking use and discard the bottom, precipitated portion.
Are there any laboratory tests on Adya products?
Numerous tests performed by U.S. EPA-certified laboratory, Envirotek Laboratories, provide irrefutable evidence of the efficacy Adya's products have removing and reducing toxic substances from water. The Adya mineral extraction and water purification processes are protected under U.S Patent 4,776,963


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Perkins+Will is pleased to announce that it has surpassed its 150 LEED-certified projects milestone. In fact, 155 of the firm's projects have been LEED certified, including 20 LEED Platinum. The 150th LEED certification, awarded by the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), went to Gwinnett Medical Center's Strickland Heart Center in Duluth, Georgia.
"Perkins+Will takes sustainable design very seriously," said Perkins+Will President and CEO Phil Harrison. "It's at the heart of everything we do, and LEED certification is just one marker of our commitment. We strive to go beyond what's currently accepted to create buildings that move the marker of what's considered sustainable forward."
Among the 20 LEED Platinum projects is Perkins+Will's Atlanta headquarters at 1315 Peachtree Street, which is the second-highest LEED-certified building in the world under the 2009 LEED for New Construction rating system. This remarkable rating was achieved using a variety of forward-thinking methods, such as microturbines and an adsorption chiller on the building's roof, that completely transformed the 1980s building. By using natural gas to produce electricity, the building's carbon footprint was reduced by 68 percent to comply with the 2030 Challenge for reduced greenhouse gas emissions. This has helped the building cut energy consumption by 58 percent.
Another top LEED Platinum certification on the Perkins+Will roster is the Dockside Green Phase Two Balance project in Victoria, British Columbia, which was the firm's 100th to garner LEED certification. It joined sister project Dockside Green Phase One for a tie as the highest-scoring LEED project worldwide at the time of its certification in early 2011.
"Perkins+Will continues to inspire the building industry with their projects, demonstrating that the highest efficiency is possible," said Rick Fedrizzi, President, CEO and Founding Chairman of USGBC. "We applaud them on certifying their 150th LEED project."
Gwinnett's Strickland Heart Center earned LEED for Healthcare certification at the Silver level by including elements such as a comprehensive waste management program that diverted more than 90 percent of construction waste (over 1,600 tons) from landfills. The building also improved energy efficiency by 19 percent over baseline measures. Perhaps most importantly, the design team avoided building products containing substances thought to be detrimental to human health by utilizing Perkins+Will's Precautionary List, a free online tool developed by the firm to aggregate current research on materials and their effects on health.
The Strickland Heart Center joins other leading Perkins+Will-designed sustainable healthcare facilities—such as Chicago's Rush University Medical Center, certified LEED Gold earlier this year—in demonstrating Perkins+Will's dedication to patient-oriented, sustainable healthcare design.


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Family-run firms to generate £661bn for economy by 2018
Britain's family-run firms are expected to contribute £661 billion to the economy by 2018, an increase from £540 billion a year in 2014, according to Barclays and the Centre for Economic and Business Research.
One such family run firm is London's O'Donovan Waste Disposal which has more than a hundred employees and a £13m annual turnover and where matriarch Kathleen O'Donovan heads a family that is actively involved in managing the expanding business.
The family recently took a little time out to celebrated Kathleen's birthday which they described as 'a special one'.
O'Donovan's Waste Disposal's green credentials secure commercial vehicle management won them a Fleet Hero Award in December 2015.
The 2015 Fleet Hero Awards saw O'Donovan Waste Disposal named winner of the Commercial Vehicle Management award for the third consecutive year at the ceremony which celebrated the work of those organisations which have implemented solutions, policies and innovations to reduce their fleet's carbon footprint and fuel costs.
Organisations, both large and small from across the UK, gathered at the event held on 26 November at the London Transport Museum in Covent Garden.
O'Donovan Waste Disposal was presented with the award in recognition of its sustained approach to trialling and testing initiatives as part of its Greener Vision Strategy, which in a twelve month period from 2014 to 2015, has resulted in a reduction of CO2 per kilometre travelled by 21.5 per cent and an increase in kilometres per litre of fuel used by 27.5 per cent.


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- Creative
- Animation
- Film Production
- Fine Art
- Graphic Design
- Illustration
- Music Production
- Photography
- UI/UX Design
- Writing
I just want to preface by saying that I've been a huge fan of yours for a while and was so excited when I saw you were teaching a class, Ricardo.
I took a slightly different approach to this project just because I tend to have such a hard time creating a handwritten version that I am satisfied with.
So here is my initial sketch:
I then scanned in my sketch and took it to illustrator where I traced it using the pen tool:
Then I brought it into photoshop and used the shading technique that you showed us, added a gold foil fill, and threw an old photo I took a while ago in the backgorund:
I look forward to any feedback the class has for me.
Thanks again for such a great class, Ricardo!
Here are a few more I've done in my spare time!


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Flexlink and Gestalt Architects choice, Ragnars R5 Work.Stations and R1 Work.Cab Slide for 150 employees in their new office in Gothenburg. R5 Work.Stations in white high pressure laminate with
black edge in ABS and the electric height adjustable frames are chrome glossy. The R1 Work.Cab Slide storages are in white and black high pressure laminate with natural anodized handles.


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Controversy in Central Park: Julius Caesar loses sponsors over Trump-like depiction
Latest Shakespeare in the Park play 'takes onstage Trump-trolling to a startling new level,' says NY Times
The knives are out for a new edgy production of Julius Caesar that's cutting a little too close to home for some fans of the White House.
Delta Air Lines and Bank of America have pulled their sponsorship of The Public Theater's version of Julius Caesar that portrays a Donald Trump-like dictator in a business suit with a long tie who gets knifed to death onstage.
The Public refused to back down on Monday, saying in a statement that it stands "completely behind" the production. It noted that its staging has "provoked heated discussion" but that "such discussion is exactly the goal of our civically-engaged theatre; this discourse is the basis of a healthy democracy."
Other defenders included Scott M. Stringer, the New York City comptroller, who sarcastically tweeted to both Delta and Bank of America: "What a mistake. Actually reading Julius Caesar might help in the future. Your copy is in the mail."
This modern-day Caesar's violent death at the hands of conspirators comes not long after comedian Kathy Griffin was widely condemned for posing for a photograph in which she gripped a bloodied rendering of Trump's head.
Backlash was swift
Though the Public's version of William Shakespeare's classic play is unchanged from its 400-year-old original, the production portrays Caesar with a gold bathtub and a pouty Slavic wife. Trump's name is never mentioned but backlash was swift.
The 'artistic and creative direction crossed the line on the standards of good taste.'- Delta
On Sunday, Donald Trump Jr. retweeted a Fox News story about the play and wrote, "I wonder how much of this 'art' is funded by taxpayers? Serious question, when does 'art' become political speech & does that change things?"
Delta responded by saying "artistic and creative direction crossed the line on the standards of good taste." American Express, which in the past has sponsored productions at the Public's downtown theatre, said it is not a sponsor of Shakespeare in the Park or this production of Julius Caesar, adding: "We do not condone this interpretation of the play."
Bank of America claimed it was bamboozled. It said the Public chose to present the play "to provoke and offend" without the bank's knowledge: "Had this intention been made known to us, we would have decided not to sponsor it."
Overheard at #ShakespeareInThePark #JuliusCaesar "Dude, that was too real. It was too real, dude. It's scary. @PublicTheaterNY—@PesceNic
Julius Caesar ends its run Sunday. The comedy A Midsummer Night's Dream begins in the park on July 11 under the direction of Lear deBessonet.
The National Endowment for the Arts, which Trump once proposed eliminating, said in a statement that while the Public's Shakespeare programing has received its grants in the past, none were awarded for Julius Caesar or for funds supporting the New York State Council on the Arts' grant for the Public.
'You've got to know what you're getting into'
Theatre-lovers were quick to point out that a national tour of Julius Caesar in 2012 by The Acting Company featured a Caesar played by a black actor in a modern business suit who had a resemblance to then-President Barack Obama. Sponsors of the Guthrie Theater apparently had no objections — including Delta — when that show landed in Minneapolis.
The Public has long protected its role as incubator of provocative and challenging works, unafraid to mount plays that comment on current events or update Shakespearian plays to explore modern themes.
It's had Trump in its sights before. The Public is the same institution that birthed the megahit Hamilton — whose cast members last year implored then-Vice-President elect Mike Pence to support diversity— and where Meryl Streep donned self-tanner and a fat suit last summer to impersonate Trump at a gala fundraiser.
Meryl Streep just added Donald Trump to her resume at the Public Theater Gala pic.twitter.com/5ftmcKbRjN—@BernsteinJacob
Laurence Maslon, an administrator and arts professor at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, said it was disingenuous for large corporations who have backed the Public for years — and enjoyed co-opting its downtown cool vibe — to sound alarmed now.
"You've got to know what you're getting into," he said, adding that the Public has "50 years of the most provocative, politically engaged work. It's called the Public Theater for a reason." He backed the theatre's artistic director Oskar Eustis, saying "Oskar is nothing if not brave."
Just one of the on stage takes on Trump
Maslon thinks any loss of funding the Public experiences from corporate defectors will be compensated for by donations from liberal grass-roots groups and people worried about the apparent threat to artistic freedom.
"I think it will probably energize the base," he said. "I can imagine any sense that this political regime is imposing a kind of censorship and the free market can help correct it will probably be good for the Public. It will probably be a healthy thing, too."
Delta should not be interfering in a theater's presentations. Suggest supporters of the arts & Public Theater cease patronizing Delta. https://t.co/fkScXPlfA2—@JoyceCarolOates
The Public isn't the only theatre project trying to address the advent of Trump. On Broadway, Jon Jon Briones, who plays the sleazy Engineer in a revival of Miss Saigon, makes a sarcastic reference to the Trump campaign slogan, "Make America Great Again."
The recent off-Broadway, the play Building the Wall, by playwright Robert Schenkkan, imagined the country under Trump's campaign promise to detain immigrants living in the country illegally. And filmmaker and activist Michael Moore is also bringing a one-man show taking on Trump to Broadway this summer.


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Beauty: Pretty spring nails
Things are about to get ladylike when it comes to our fingertips, as spring 2017 is all about pretty feminine shades and finishes
Vivienne Curran, Senior Therapist at KAM Hair and Body Spa in Lossiemouth, Scotland, has listed the various shades which are set to be big hits in the coming months.
"This includes soft pinks, bubble-gum pinks and cloudy pinks. These shades are very feminine and cloudy pinks can be very low key, as they can look like a pink manicure where you can still see some of the nail through the polish," she told Cover Media. "If you have a French manicure set, simply apply two coats of the pink shade all over the nail to create a cloudy pink style."
Girly tones don't stop there though as Vivienne predicts pastel grey colours with lilac and lavender undertones will also prove popular. It needn't be a trend for just one time of year though, with the beauty expert encouraging nail polish lovers to rock it throughout the seasons.
"Lilacs and lavenders are popular for spring/summer, however, this colour trend is perfect for cool weather months. The lilac/lavender undertones add something unique to the popular pastel grey trend we seen in 2016," she added.
It isn't all about colour; Katie Jane, owner of Katie Jane Nails at Hair by JFK, Edinburgh, points out "classy and elegant, neutral and nude nails" are going to be big news this year (17). Because the finish never goes out of fashion, and looks great on all skin tones, she names it as a fashion staple.
You can always give it a new twist though, as she suggests: "I think we will also see matte nudes becoming popular this year, so invest in a mattifying topcoat and apply this on top of your favourite neutral polish!"
© Cover Media


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Syria Matters takes as its subject the extraordinary cultural heritage of Syria, illuminating Syria's key role in the artistic and intellectual history of the world. So much of this precious heritage has been tragically lost through the destruction of its fabled cities of Palmyra and Aleppo, as well as countless other cultural heritage sites, during […]Find out more »
Organised in cooperation with the Museum of Islamic Art, the exhibition presents political events such as the signing of treaties and subsequent developments in the region during the period of 1918 – 1946. Featuring forty items from the Library's Heritage Collection and from cultural institutions in France, the exhibition includes historical documents and images, printed books and […]Find out more »
Combos Prices (1) Football: Two days per week = QAR1,600 / Three days per week = QAR1,850 Ten Classes Pass Boxercise and spinning: QAR500/pass Register here.Find out more »
Learn new skills and deepen your understanding of art and culture at Virginia Commonwealth University in Qatar (VCUQatar). Choose from a large selection of art, design and craft courses at VCUQatar. Click here to register online to book your seat! Seats are limited and can only be reserved with a full payment. Registration opens 1 […]Find out more »
About the Artist Houmam Al Sayed currently lives and works in Beirut, Lebanon. He graduated from the Sculpture Department of the Institute of Applied Arts in Damascus in 2003 and moved to Beirut in 2011, where he continues work on his art extensively. Known for his large-scale figurative paintings, Al Sayed focuses on expressive portraiture of anonymous characters in his oil paintings, ink drawings and bronze and clay sculptures. Al Sayyed's training in traditional mediums allowed […]Find out more »
At least 350 stalls this year, offering a variety of food products, handicrafts and a lot more.Find out more »


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Start your journey with us...
On July 14, 2018
10:00 - 11:15am Save to calendar
Bendigo Visitor's Centre
03 5434 6060
A Manager's Tour of Ulumbarra Theatre is a chance to see the historic elements of this exciting new performing arts centre rising from within the walls of the historic Sandhurst Prison – and much more! Guests will also have an exclusive opportunity to sneak backstage for close inspection of the theatrical and technical infrastructure that allows Ulumbarra Theatre to deliver a wide range of performing arts and events activity.
For further information and to book please click here


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In this edition, Andy and Jamie take on the topic of process mapping. A tool that spans beyond lean into every form of continuous improvement, it is often underutilized and misapplied. We focus on mapping business processes, and why both product / process maps and activity maps are so important.
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If you cannot view streaming video, you can go directly to Viddler to download the video. If you are interested in learning more about process mapping, you could attend our Kaizen Boot Camp course or purchase our Single Point Lessons.