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Estimated read time: 4-5 minutes
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SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — Bojan Bogdanovic didn't hesitate to ask his new coach for the final shot.
With 1.3 seconds left, Utah coach Quin Snyder drew up a play the Jazz practiced earlier Friday, but Bogdanovic said he wanted the ball.
"Mike (Conley) was supposed to be in that corner, but I asked him if he could go to the other," Bogdanovic said.
Joe Ingles faked a pass to his right and then threw it to Bogdanovic near the left corner — one of his favorite spots. Ingles raised both his arms before the 3-pointer even settled into the net, and Utah beat the Milwaukee Bucks 103-100.
Players ran from the bench and mobbed a smiling Bogdonovic at midcourt. Bogdonovic finished with 33 points.
Utah's Donovan Mitchell was driving for a possible winner when George Hill stripped the ball and called timeout with 2.3 seconds left. Milwaukee inbounded to Khris Middleton, but he traveled as Rudy Gobert flew at him. The clock was reset to 1.3 seconds, giving the Jazz one last chance.
"It was big that we could close that out and get that win," said Gobert, who missed two free throws and had a late turnover before his defensive heroics. "If we lose that game at the end after all that, it would have really hurt."
Giannis Antetokounmpo, who had 28 of his 30 points in the second half, hit a 3 and made a follow shot to give the Bucks their first and only lead, 89-88, but later fouled out and wasn't on the court for the dizzying finish.
"I was like, 'How bad can it get?' We're down 22. I couldn't get it going but I decided to be aggressive, try and go downhill, try and shoot shots and make plays. Obviously, I was just trying to power through guys," Antetokounmpo said.
Bogdanovic made five 3-pointers and all 10 free throws on a night when nothing seemed to come easy for most players.
"I was surprised I had a standing ovation, even that I hit a game-winner, so it was a great atmosphere, like a playoff crowd," Bogdonovic said.
Mike Conley had 20 points, and Mitchell finished with 20, but it was Bogdanovic's time to shine.
"Bogey's still showing the world what he can do. A lot of people still don't know that he's that good, but he really is," Conley said.
Middleton scored 26 points and Eric Bledsoe had 22 for Milwaukee. The Bucks had won four in a row.
"I think we played as hard as we could. We didn't make shots," said Middleton, whose team shot 36%. "The guys out there gave it our all. It came down to two plays down the stretch that cost us the game."
Mitchell's step-back jumper put Utah up 100-92, but Bledsoe made a couple quick hoops and Middleton made two free throws with 8.0 seconds remaining to knot it at 100.
The Jazz led by 25 in the first half, but Antetokounmpo sparked a 21-5 run to start the third quarter and it was tight from there.
The Bucks have lost 18 consecutive games since their last road win over the Utah Jazz on Oct. 30, 2001.
The Jazz blew a 22-point lead in the first half and an eight-point advantage in the final 1:31. Snyder noted the jubilation had a tinge of angst.
"Giving up rebounds on a free throw, fouling length of the court, going after an offensive rebound at the wrong time — there were a number of things that we need to look at it and we will," Snyder said. "We should feel really good about this win ... but there's a lot of things we need to learn from that game."
Bucks: Brook Lopez picked up his fifth foul midway through the third quarter and only scored five points. ... Coach Mike Budenholzer unsuccessfully challenged Antetokounmpo's sixth foul on a dunk attempt by Gobert with 53.9 seconds to play. ... The Bucks forced 20 turnovers.
Jazz: Dante Exum is still inactive as he recovers from knee surgery, Ed Davis has a fractured leg and Emmanuel Mudiay sat out with hamstring tightness. ... Antetokounmpo poked Bogdanovic in the eye in the fourth quarter and appeared to dislodge his contact lens.
Bucks: At Oklahoma City on Sunday.
Jazz: At Golden State on Monday night.
More AP NBA: https://apnews.com/NBA and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports
Copyright © The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.


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Over the weekend, I finished "One Good Turn" by Kate Atkinson. Enjoyed it immensely–a novel of several braided lives, woven around an initial road rage incident. Contemporary. Set in Edinburgh. The second book about Jackson Brodie.
What I loved about it at first was that the action begins immediately–the road rage incident. I wasn't quite so excited when the next half-dozen or so people were introduced into the action, slowing things down. But it picked up again. I love this kind of fiction, love feeling in the hands of someone who's crafted a series of events that will eventually make sense.
I appreciated the various characters–a man who writes cozy mysteries and is hiding a hideous secret of his own, a hitman who seems to get very little attention, the wife of a crooked financier, a Russian woman who keeps turning up at unlikely times, Jackson Brodie the former policeman, and many more.
I realize that when I read a "braided lives" novel, I usually prefer one or two of the story lines over others. In this case, I especially liked Jackson Brodie, a good sign since Atkinson is crafting a series around him. As the story progressed, a few times I realized that I should have paid better attention earlier on, as someone who was introduced and then fell to the background was brought back to the spotlight.
All in all, a well-written and well-crafted mystery.
I found it by looking back at past "New York Times best of the year" lists, in this case, the list from 2006. These lists of 100 titles have enough to include a wide variety of potential books. I've found some of my favorite books by fishing through those lists–I recommend that you take a look for your own next read.

subset: commoncrawl


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Henry Kissinger once called the Trilateral Commission a 'government in exile.' His cooperation with them was inherent in his tight-knit relationship with both Nelson and David Rockefeller.
It was their work on the oil crisis that set up the Trilateral Commission with enough collateral (geopolitical power in the form of the petrodollar) in order to persuade isolationist Japan to coordinate trade with the U.S. and Germany.
Further shocks during the Carter Administration put into place the manipulation of oil prices via OPEC demands, war and conflict, etc.
By forcing debt payment on the petrodollar world currency peg, Wall Street and the American East Coast got a cut of everything that was borrowed or spent.
This is a bombshell. It's a crucial piece of history that has been ignored by mass media. I've published this interview before. Here I want to make new comments.
First of all, David Rockefeller's Trilateral Commission was born in 1973, in part because the Globalist plan to ensure "free trade" (no tariffs paid by predatory mega-corporations) had run into a glitch.
That glitch was President Richard Nixon. He began laying tariffs on certain goods imported into the US, in order to level the playing field and protect American companies.
Nixon, a substantial crook in other respects, went off-script in this case and actually started a movement to reject the Globalist vision.
After Nixon's ouster from the White House, Gerald Ford became president, and he chose David's brother, Nelson Rockefeller as his vice-president. It was a sign Globalism and free trade were back on track.
But David Rockefeller and his sidekick, Brzezinski, wanted more. They wanted a man in the White House whom they'd created from scratch.
That man was a peanut farmer no one had ever heard of: Jimmy Carter.
Through their media connections, David and Brzezinski vaulted Carter into the spotlight. He won the Democratic nomination (1976), spread a syrupy message of love and coming together after the Watergate debacle, and soon he was ensconced in the Oval Office.
Flash forward to 1978, the second year of Carter's presidency. An interview took place.
It's a close-up snap shot of a remarkable moment. It's a through-the-looking-glass secret — in the form of a conversation between a reporter, Jeremiah Novak, and two Trilateral Commission members, Karl Kaiser and Richard Cooper.
The interview concerned the issue of who exactly, during President Carter's administration, was formulating and controlling US economic and political policy.
The careless and off-hand attitude of Trilateralists Kaiser and Cooper is astonishing. It's as if they're saying:
"What we're revealing is already out in the open, it's too late to do anything about it, why are you so worked up, we've already won…"
NOVAK (the reporter): Is it true that a private [Trilateral committee] led by Henry Owen of the US and made up of [Trilateral] representatives of the US, UK, West Germany, Japan, France and the EEC is coordinating the economic and political policies of the Trilateral countries [which would include the US]?
COOPER: Yes, they have met three times.
NOVAK: Yet, in your recent paper you state that this committee should remain informal because to formalize 'this function might well prove offensive to some of the Trilateral and other countries which do not take part.' Who are you afraid of?
KAISER: Many countries in Europe would resent the dominant role that West Germany plays at these [Trilateral] meetings.
COOPER: Many people still live in a world of separate nations [!], and they would resent such coordination [of policy].
NOVAK: But this [Trilateral] committee is essential to your whole policy. How can you keep it a secret or fail to try to get popular support [for its decisions on how Trilateral member nations will conduct their economic and political policies]?
COOPER: Well, I guess it's the press' job to publicize it.
NOVAK: Yes, but why doesn't President Carter come out with it and tell the American people that [US] economic and political power is being coordinated by a [Trilateral] committee made up of Henry Owen and six others?
After all, if [US] policy is being made on a multinational level, the people should know.
COOPER: President Carter and Secretary of State Vance have constantly alluded to this in their speeches.
KAISER: It just hasn't become an issue.
SOURCE: "Trilateralism: The Trilateral Commission and Elite Planning for World Management," ed. by Holly Sklar, 1980. South End Press, Boston. Pages 192-3.
Of course, although Kaiser and Cooper claimed everything being manipulated by the Trilateral Commission committee was already out in the open, it wasn't.
Their interview slipped under the mainstream media radar, which is to say, it was ignored and buried. It didn't become a scandal on the level of, say, Watergate, although its essence was far larger than Watergate.
US economic and political policy run by a committee of the Trilateral Commission—the Commission had been created in 1973 as an "informal discussion group" by David Rockefeller and his sidekick, Brzezinski, who would become Jimmy Carter's National Security Advisor.
Shortly after Carter won the presidential election, his aide, Hamilton Jordan, said that if after the inauguration, Cy Vance and Brzezinski came on board as secretary of state and national security adviser, "We have lost. And I will quit."
Lost — because both men were powerful members of the Trilateral Commission and their appointment to key positions would signal a surrender of White House control to the Commission.
Vance and Brzezinski were appointed secretary of state and national security adviser, as Jordan feared. But he didn't quit. He became Carter's chief of staff.
Confessions of a Rockefeller World Order
Flash forward again, to the Obama administration.
In the run-up to his inauguration after the 2008 presidential election, Obama was tutored by the co-founder of the Trilateral Commission, Zbigniew Brzezinski.
Four years before birthing the Commission with his boss of bosses, David Rockefeller, Brzezinski wrote:
"[The] nation state as a fundamental unit of man's organized life has ceased to be the principal creative force. International banks and multinational corporations are acting and planning in terms that are far in advance of the political concepts of the nation state."
Brzezinski: 'It's Easier to Kill than Control a Million People'
Goodbye, separate nations.
Any doubt on the question of Trialteral goals is answered by David Rockefeller himself, in his Memoirs (2003):
"Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as 'internationalists' and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure — one world, if you will. If that is the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it."
Patrick Wood, author of Trilaterals Over Washington and Technocracy Rising, points out there are only 87 members of the Trilateral Commission who live in America.
Obama appointed eleven of them to posts in his administration.
For example: Tim Geithner, Treasury Secretary;
James Jones, National Security Advisor;
Paul Volker, Chairman, Economic Recovery Committee;
Dennis Blair, Director of National Intelligence.
Here is the payoff. The US Trade Representative (appointed by Obama in 2013), who was responsible for negotiating the Globalist TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership) treaty with 11 other nations, was Michael Froman, a former member of the Trilateral Commission.
Don't let the word "former" fool you. Commission members resign when they take positions in the Executive Branch of government. And when they serve in vital positions, such as US Trade Representative, they aren't there by accident. They're operatives with a specific agenda.
Flash forward one more time. Trump, who squashed the Globalist TPP treaty as soon as he was inaugurated, has been busy making staff appointments.
Patrick Wood writes (2/6/17):
"According to a White House press release, the first member of the Trilateral Commission has entered the Trump administration as the Deputy Assistant to the President for International Economic Affairs, where he will sit on the National Security Council:
"Kenneth I. Juster will serve as Deputy Assistant to the President for International Economic Affairs. He will coordinate the Administration's international economic policy and integrate it with national security and foreign policy. He will also be the President's representative and lead U.S. negotiator ("Sherpa") for the annual G-7, G-20, and APEC Summits."
Juster's duties will take him into the heart of high-level negotiations with foreign governments on economic policy.
Keep your eye on Mr. Juster. Will he take actions in line with Trump's avowed anti-Globalist stance?
Or will Juster work as one more covert Trilateral operative in the center of American decision-making?
If the answer is "covert operative," does Trump know this? Does he condone what Mr. Juster will do?
Or is this a case of secret infiltration, on behalf the most powerful Globalist group in the world, the Trilateral Commission?
Sources: https://jonrappoport.wordpress.com; http://truthstreammedia.com


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Human interaction with robots is about to get a little more personal. Meet "Furhat," the face of tomorrow's interactive technology.
An increasingly important -- and sometimes frustrating -- part of daily life is dealing with so-called "user interfaces." Whether it's a smartphone or an airport check-in system, the user's ability to get what they want out of the machine relies on their own adaptability to unfamiliar interfaces.
But what if you could simply talk to a machine the way you talk to a human being? And what if the machine could also ask you questions, or even address two different people at once?
These kinds of interactive abilities are being developed at KTH Royal Institute of Technology with the help of an award-winning robotic head that takes its name from the fur hat it wears.
With a computer-generated, animated face that is rear-projected on a 3D mask, Furhat is actually a platform for testing various interactive technologies, such as speech synthesis, speech recognition and eye-tracking. The robot can conduct conversations with multiple people, turning its head and looking each person straight in the eye, while moving its animated lips in synch with its words.
Samer Al Moubayed, one of the KTH researchers behind the development of Furhat, says the project represents the third generation of spoken dialogue systems that has been in development at KTH's Department for Speech, Music and Hearing during the last 15 years.
The Furhat team aims to develop its technology for commercial use, with the help of funding from Sweden's Vinnova, a government agency that supports innovation projects.The team behind the development of Furhat also includes: Jonas Beskow, Joakim Gustafson, and Gabriel Skantze.
"Furhat is becoming a popular research platform for scientists around the world who study human interaction with machines," Al Moubayed says. "It's very simple, it's potentially very cheap to make, and people want to use it in their own research areas."
Furhat also has attracted attention from researchers at Microsoft and Disney. "They have been following the development of Furhat for a long time," says Al Moubayed, who returned last week from a two-week visit to the U.S., where he presented the hardware and software behind Furhat at Microsoft's and Disney's research labs.
Al Moubayed says that Furhat has potential as an interactive user interface for a variety of applications. In schools, it could be used to conduct knowledge games with children. In assisted living centres, it could share information and chat with people.
Perched on a stand atop a bureau in Al Moubayed's office, Furhat greets a visitor and asks their name. It then addresses Al Moubayed, and after a couple more questions, asks if the visitor has any questions for Furhat. During a pause in the exchange, the robot offers to tell a joke.
Part of what sets Furhat apart from other interactive robots is its ability to make not only conversation, but eye contact -- an important element of communication.
"You want an interface that fulfills or reaches a critical quality that people can interact with in a natural way, otherwise the interaction you get is not natural anymore, and does not resemble how people interact with each other."
Furhat's ability to turn its face to multiple people in a conversation is enabled by face-tracking software. But its ability to make eye contact is achieved through projection. Unlike a 2D image, which can appear to be looking at everybody in the room at once -- a phenomenon known as the "Mona Lisa effect" -- Furhat appears to shift its gaze because the face is projected onto 3D-printed model of a human face.
"When we first experimented with this, the effect was strong immediately," Al Moubayed says. "You could bond with, or relate to, the face.
"It is an avatar that can really be present in the physical environment."
Such technologies are being explored as a potential therapeutic tool for children with autism and other disorders that affect social interaction, he says. The technology can also be used for telepresence applications in which 3D replicas of people's faces become the screens that we look at when conducting a video conference call.
"There are many different types of interest that drive this work," he says. "And we're just starting to explore its potential."
Story Source:
Materials provided by KTH The Royal Institute of Technology. Original written by David Callahan. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.
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ReROLL isn't like most survival games. For one, it uses drones—the machines map out the games' world using real-world map data. Which is to say, the open world you'll be exploring in-game is some of the terrain you'll find in the real world.
Beyond that, the weather and temperature are pulled from the real world too - so if its snowing in Toronto in real life, it'll be snowing in Toronto in the game, too. It doesn't sound like society will match ours, though—that's why you have to scavenge, craft and survive. Also, there are mutants for some reason. Hey, it's a (PC) video game. Naturally, there will be other humans you have to watch out for too—and like other survival games, it may just happen that other survivors are the thing you have to fear the most.
The game is being developed by ex-Ubisoft developers who have worked on games like Assassin's Creed and Far Cry. The game won't start out having the entire planet, since mapping it all out takes time—but this ensures that the developers will be able to give players a steady stream of new locales/content.
You can read more about how the gameplay will work—including skill systems, crafting, exploration and more—here, and contribute to the game's crowdfunding effort here.


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Fraternity, fun reign supreme in Day 1 sports activities
Mira Nila, QUEZON CITY—Part and parcel of "bene vivere" ("living well") as consecrated persons is physical exercise such as playing sports, not only to improve physical fitness and overall health but also to develop fraternity and fellowship, particularly the virtue of esprit de corps.
That was affirmed once more when the friars engaged themselves in a variety of sports activities during the mid-morning and early afternoon of November 26, Day 1 of the Province's founding anniversary celebrations.
The mid-morning schedule saw the basketball match, reminiscent of its classic seminary version, between the OAR friars of Luzon versus the joint forces of those from the Visayas, Taiwan, Mindanao, and Sierra Leone (in short, ViTaMinS) at the covered court of the Recoletos Formation Center (RFC) in Mira Nila.
At the beginning of the game, no one could really guess who would make it better after the six 10-minute sixths since both sides were equipped with an excellent manpower.
Luzon players, many of whom composed the team that outdueled the defending champion representing the Archdiocese of Manila in a recently-held "inter-clergy + OAR" basketball tournament in celebration of the Year of the Clergy and Consecrated Persons, came out from their lair with oozing confidence.
On the other side were the equally self-assured powerhouse of ViTaMinS with "imports" who speak Mandarin and Krio. They might not have any trophy to crow about but they were a squad to beat (since there was no other!)—all in the name not necessarily of securing a big win but surely of fostering the spirit of "anima una et cor unum in Deum" ("one mind and one heart intent upon God").
To prove it, the first in the series of sixths jolted a bit the title-holders, 25-24, in favor of the heterogeneous team. Although the Prior Provincial, the eldest in the court but arguably a key player of Luzon, gave the historic first shot, his team was practically tailing behind the challengers until the score tied at 19 each, with one minute and 40 seconds remaining.
The second sixth was a quick injection of fresh blood, either to re-energize the system and recover from an early deficit or to keep up and widen the lead. But Luzon's burning desire to take over paid off with a good 12-point lead, 41-53.
With Luzon's consistent advantage stretching up to the closure of the more dramatic third sixth, or half-time, the brand new electronic scoreboard registered the figures: 61-74. Would that ViTaMins' will to keep paddling up blaze up all the more, seeking to devise novel strategies to at least narrow the gap down in the next sixth! Indeed, with their collective hardwork, they were able to catch up in the fourth sixth—oh well, almost, with the score of 83-89, still in favor of their "kalaro" or "playmates" (which, by the way, is a good alternative to the oft-used term, "kalaban" or "opponents".)
Within three minutes into the fifth sixth, Luzon expectedly was the first to rake a three-digit score, 86-101, compliments of Fray Palagtiosa's three-pointer. But Fray Cepe's 16-point contributions into the coffer pushed Luzon to retrieve its lead by gaining 15 points, thus scoring 102-117 on the board when the whistle sounded to close the penultimate game.
When the last sixth unfolded, which was the funniest ever among the episodes, ViTaMinS released its new lineup of players against the formidable team of Luzon. But the comedic chain of assists, passes and turnovers turned the gym into a pandemonium of hollering, cheering, guffawing, and roaring crowd that spontaneously scattered towards the court. Upon resumption, the game continued until, despite the fierce efforts of the "multi-nationals," Luzon prevailed with the final score of 109-136.
Although the wide margin of 25 points symbolically represents the silver anniversary towards which the Province is marching on, at the end of the day, the game was still more about fraternity, friendship, fun, among other values. That's "tatak-Rekoleto" even in sports!
Shortly after the game, a boodle fight for lunch ensued.
Afternoon treat
In the afternoon, the friars continued to bear witness to their brotherhood and camaraderie as they expressed themselves through other sports events at the Celebrity Sports Plaza (CSP) in Diliman, QuezonCity.
At 1:15 PM, cheers and laughters reverberated within the complex building as the Fathers, Religious Brothers and coristas (theology seminarians) commenced their games. It was a beautiful sight to behold because, while in the morning basketball players were grouped according to their geographical area of assignment, in the afternoon they played side by side with one another.
Some of the friars played lawn tennis, others did bowling, while several others went for badminton. Due to CSP's accommodation capacity, everyone had all the opportunity to play the game of his choice.
After the brothers enjoyed each other's company, the games came to an end at thirty minutes past four. No winners were proclaimed after the game, but the quality time they spent together was indubitably priceless. When everything was set, they travelled back to the Recoletos Formation Center for another set of activities.
Reporters: Fray Jose Ernil Almayo, OAR & Fray Julius James Tinapao, OAR


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As was widely expected, Apple on Wednesday unveiled the iPhone 5, the newest entrant into its smartphone lineup. The iPhone 5 sports a taller screen, a new dock connector port, LTE support, and other refinements.
Phil Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of worldwide marketing, took the wraps off the new iPhone for press gathered at the company's San Francisco event, calling the device "the most beautiful product we've ever made, bar none."
The iPhone 5 is made entirely of glass and aluminum, Schiller said, adding that the "exacting level of standards" exhibited by the phone is Apple's best hardware engineering to date.
It's the thinnest and lightest iPhone, at 7.6mm thin, and 112 grams. Schiller said those measurements make it the world's thinnest smartphone. The iPhone 5 is also volumetrically smaller than the iPhone 4S.
The screen
The iPhone 5 keeps the Retina display moniker, but it's taller than the screens on iPhones that preceded it. The display offers 326 pixels per inch, with a 4-inch screen and 1136 x 640 resolution.
There's now a fifth row of icons on the taller home screen, and all of Apple's native apps, along with the iWork and iLife suites, have been updated on the iPhone 5 to take advantage of the larger display.
The Calendar app in landscape shows five days instead of three on the iPhone 5, for example.
Apps that aren't updated don't stretch or scale, Schiller said. Rather, such apps will display letterboxed on the iPhone, with black borders surrounding the centered app.
Schiller showed off apps from CNN and OpenTable, each of which had been updated for the taller iPhone display, adding in new content. In OpenTable's case, Schiller said, the developers added some of the iPad app's interface element, since the iPhone 5's 4-inch screen afforded more space for such niceties.
The iPhone 5 offers 44 percent more color saturation than the iPhone 4S, Schiller said, and because the touch sensors are integrated right into the display, it's 30 percent thinner, with sharper imagery, and less glare in sunlight.
Ultrafast wireless
New to the iPhone 5 is LTE, HSPA+, and DC-HSDPA support. That's on top of the GPRS, EDGE, EV-DO, and HSPA that the iPhone 4S offered. Schiller said that with LTE, the iPhone 5 can achieve a "theoretical maximum downlink of up to 100Mbps."
Schiller explained that the iPhone 5 uses one baseband chip for voice and data and a single radio chip. The new phone also improves upon the iPhone 4S's dynamic antenna, Schiller said, improving its ability to automatically switch to different networks as appropriate.
LTE partners for the iPhone 5 include Sprint, AT&T, and Verizon in the U.S, and Rogers, Fido, Bell, Telus, and more in Canada. Schiller said there are "plenty" of LTE partners in Asia, Australia, the UK, and Germany, with lots of DC-HSDPA support in Europe as well.
The iPhone 5 also gains better Wi-Fi, with support for 802.11 a/b/g/n. The 802.11n standard is 2.4GHz and dual channel 5GHz, up to 150 Mbps, Schiller said.
A6 processor
The processor in the iPhone 5 is the brand new Apple A6, which is twice as fast at CPU and graphics processing compared to the A5 that drove the iPhone 4S, Schiller said. It's also 22 percent smaller than its predecessor, freeing up more space inside the iPhone, and making it more energy efficient to boot. Schiller said that everything—launching apps, viewing attachments, loading music—would be twice as fast as before.
Schiller invited EA to show off what the A6 chip meant for them; EA debuted Real Racing 3, which included real-time reflections, functional rear view mirrors, and "console quality" graphics, according to EA Studios's Rob Murray. (The game will hit the App Store later this year.)
The battery
Schiller explained that Apple wanted "to match the battery life of the 4S in a thinner and lighter design" for the iPhone 5. The company ended up exceeding that battery life; the iPhone 5 will offer eight hours of 3G talk time and browsing and LTE browsing, ten hours of Wi-Fi browsing, ten hours of video, 40 hours of music, and 225 hours of standby time.
The camera
The iPhone 5's camera sports an eight megapixel sensor, 3264 by 2448 pixel images. It's backside illuminated, with a hybrid IR filter, five-element lens, and a fast f/2.4 aperture. And the camera is 25 percent smaller than the iPhone 4S's camera. The camera also includes a dynamic low-light mode, which can sense low light and combine elements for two f-stops greater.
The camera also includes, for the first time on an iPhone, a sapphire lens cover, which Schiller said would protect the lens and make images cleaner and sharper.
The A6 chip includes a new image signal processor, with spatial noise reduction and filtering to improve photographs. And the camera's now 40 percent faster, too.
Also new in the iPhone 5's camera arsenal is Panorama. You hold the iPhone vertically and sweep your scene; the app tells you at what speed to move. "Even if you're not perfectly stable," or if movement artifacts are introduced, Schiller said, the software can compensate in the final image.
Video performance is improved, too. The iPhone 5 offers 1080p HD video, improved video stabilization, face detection for up to ten faces, and can take photos while you're recording video. The front-facing camera is now a FaceTime HD 720p HD camera with backside illumination, a significant improvement over the iPhone 4S's VGA-quality front-facing camera.
The iPhone 5 includes three separate microphones, Schiller said: One on the front, one on the back, and one on the bottom. They improve noise cancellation and voice recognition.
The speaker gets improved, too. It now includes five magnets in its transducer, with better frequency response and better sound—while being 20 percent smaller than the speaker in the iPhone 4S. The earpiece is now noise-canceling, too, Schiller said.
With some carriers, the iPhone 5 will support wideband audio. In a typical cell phone call, the frequency of data in your voice is compressed around the midrange, Schiler said. But that doesn't sounded entirely natural. Wideband audio fills up more of the frequency spectrum to make your voice sound more normal. Schiller said 20 carriers will support the technology at launch, and didn't mention any U.S. carriers that would.
Lightning: The new dock connector port
Throw away your old dock connector cables. Or, at least, go pick up some adapters. The iPhone 5 abandons the familiar 30-pin dock connector port, which first appeared with the original iPod in 2003. In its place is a smaller port, which Apple calls Lightning.
The 8-signal Lightning connector is all-digital, with an adaptive interface and improved durability. It's reversible (meaning you can orient it either way, like a MagSafe adapter), and it's 80 percent smaller than the connector it replaces.
Schiller announced that Apple would offer a 30-pin-to-Lightning connector, but didn't mention pricing.
The iPhone 5 will come in an all black model, and a white model with a bright silver aluminum finish.
We'll have more on the iPhone 5, including pricing and availability, later on Wednesday as that information becomes available.
Updated at 1:54 p.m. ET with more details.


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Friday, October 27, 2006
Steak and Salad with a hunk of whole grain bread on the side...
I went for the fairly basic recipe of Rosemary-Asiago Chop Bread. Because this bread uses mainly whole wheat and barley flour, don't be disappointed as it will not really bake into a high rising loaf. We found the bread to not be too "wheaty" as the barley flour seems to pacify the stronger taste. Once the dough has risen for the first time, it is easily flattened into a large oval to begin an interesting filling process. On one side of the dough, chunks of sharp Asiago cheese are placed on top and then covered with the other half. This is then formed into a circle and placed in a cake pan where you get to have a little creative fun! Using a bench scraper, you randomly chop all over into the dough to create a ragged top so the chunks of cheese are allow to peek through.
As this rises and goes through the baking process, the dough slowly "heals" the cuts you made and the cheese melts into gooey pockets of love. Rosemary was an excellent choice of herb as it is very distinct and matched well with the Asiago. I choose to cut the bread into chunky wedges, but you could slice this into thin pieces that would make for a fantastic piece of toast.
Dinner tonight, Garlic-Chile Flank Steak, was the topping for a quick salad I threw together. I marinated the steak for a couple hours in a mixture of fresh garlic, white vinegar, canola oil, ground ancho chile, oregano and cumin. This combination gave the steak a complex smoky flavor, without adding much heat. Ancho chilies are just dried poblanos, which are more mild and sweet than spicy. If you can't find them, you could use chili powder - but do add a small pinch of cayenne for a little kick. We prefer steak to be around medium to medium rare, so I cooked it until the center was still fairly pink. Under the steak was just a quick mix of crisp romaine, fresh baby spinach, carrots, bits of goat cheese and toasted walnuts. This recipe also gave us just enough extra steak to make a killer sandwich for lunch tomorrow!
5 comments:
I have been seriously contemplating that King Arthur book. Glad to see a recipe from it posted on here, plus it sounds kind of fun!ReplyDelete
I've read that barley flour can be used successfully in sweeter items as well.
I've been looking at this cookbook and thinking about getting it. Also I've been thinking about you because I've been in Wickenberg, Arizona, taking a class on grilling. It's beautiful here and great weather. (Very cold in Utah right now. Hope you're not freezing where you are.)ReplyDelete
Hi Joe. What do you think of that cookbook so far?ReplyDelete
I'm seriously considering it, but I'd like to thumb through it first. Our Borders will hopefully be open very soon so I can go take a peak.
- Anonymous10/28/2006 07:52:00 PM
I have that book too. I've made 2 baked goods. One a winner, 1 not so much.ReplyDelete
Jill - I can't wait to try it out on a sweet recipe - I just have to choose one!ReplyDelete
Kalyn - Lucky you! Send some warm weather this way - it is prettytchilly here!
Alysha - I'll have to make more things to see. The recipes do call for items that I sometimes can't find, so I have to be more diligent in looking for them. I have another recipe planned out to try this week though! It looks quite promising!
Randi - I have a bunch marked to try, but I still have a lot of the book to look through. Hopefully we won't get any duds!


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Barely two months after the HP TouchPad launched, and we're already writing its obituary. Even RIM's BlackBerry PlayBook tablet has survived for longer than that. I was among the reviewers who took HP to task on the TouchPad–but even so, I'm saddened by the news that the tablet world has one fewer competitor. After using the TouchPad over the past few weeks, I can say that I liked certain aspects of the TouchPad and WebOS, and that I was looking forward to seeing these features in second-generation hardware. I can only hope that other tablet makers take a hard look at their mobile operating systems and tablets, and that they find ways to prevent these five hardware and software capabilities from dying with the HP TouchPad and WebOS.
Activity-Card Stacking
I'll admit that calling an app window an "activity card" felt a bit foreign. That said, however, I loved the ability to group related items together, regardless of which app they were in. The idea of gathering, say, a PDF with a related document, a map, and a Web page is a terrific rethinking of what "multitasking" can mean in practical use. I hope that Apple and Google figure out how to integrate a similar concept into their respective operating systems–in iOS and Android, related app content is siloed, not as manageable as in WebOS.
C'mon, it's a Web-connected world: It would be nice if the now-defunct WebOS weren't the only mobile operating system to truly exist in concert with other mobile services. The ability to unify contact information–and even access images stored on Facebook directly from the tablet–were nice add-ons that made the WebOS-based TouchPad feel more connected than its Android and iOS competitors do. The Web is one big sandbox, and everyone needs to play nicely there. The better the integration, the better users can maximize their presence across the Internet. Keeping information isolated runs counter to a connected world; the level of service integration that WebOS and the TouchPad had was a differentiator, and it's something that Apple and Google should, again, look at closely.
On tablets, I've seen just two approaches to multitasking work well–and neither one is in use by the market leaders. The first is the jog-wheel approach of some Android widgets (such as on the Lenovo IdeaPad K1, where you can move through apps that you choose to add to the wheel at the touch of a finger). And the second is the horizontal-scroll-bar approach of WebOS on the TouchPad (and, to be fair, on the QNX-based BlackBerry PlayBook, another tablet on life support right now). The horizontal-scroll design is much more finger friendly than Google's vertical-scroll "recently accessed" pop-up. Apple's approach is great on the iPhone, but on the iPad it's annoying to have to move your finger all the way down to the bottom of the tablet–far from the iPad's center of gravity–just to change apps.
Apple, Google: See how you can rework what you're doing now into something even better. The more I use tablets, the more I find that even though the bottom of the screen is useful for menus and buttons, navigation requiring two hands (such as multitasking) is better situated in the center of the screen.
Easy Menu Access
Software can always be transformed. Android is particularly malleable, thanks to its open nature. Already I've seen numerous takes on Android 3.x Honeycomb, such as reskins of annoying buttons and changes to the settings pop-up. But the base, stock Android falls a bit short–after all, tablet makers wouldn't be customizing the OS if Google had nailed the Honeycomb interface in the first place.
So what did I like about WebOS on the TouchPad? I liked the notifications system–though I fear that with my email volume, I'd have worn my fingers out flicking through incoming notifications. I loved the settings shortcut pop-up: One touch at the top of the display, and the menu gave me access to brightness, Wi-Fi, VPN, Bluetooth, airplane mode, rotation lock, and mute–in other words, most of the settings I might need quick access to. Android has some of these settings up front, but not all of them. Samsung's new TouchWiz UX rework of Honeycomb, as seen on the Galaxy Tab 10.1, adds these features to Android's quick-settings menu, but you need to scroll through them. I liked the simplicity of the menu in WebOS. Heck, I liked the clean simplicity of most menus in WebOS–something that Android can learn from (yes, Google, full disclosure is useful, and information is power, but your settings menus remain a turn-off for the average consumer).
Terrific Audio
The one thing that HP's hardware had going for it: The TouchPad has, to date, produced the best-sounding audio I've heard from a 10-inch tablet. The 7-inch RIM PlayBook does a surprisingly good job as well, but in my tests I often inadvertently covered the front-firing speakers with my fingers. The TouchPad's bottom-firing speakers produced well-balanced, undistorted audio that didn't make me cringe; in fact, I enjoyed listening to music on the TouchPad, a lot. The speakers on most every other tablet I've tested–including the Apple iPad 2 and Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1—leave so much to be desired that using them is a last-ditch option, when you need speakers and have nothing else on hand to pipe your audio through. Tablet designers, take note: Whatever HP did in its TouchPad design (the tablet's plastic backing seemed to help with the acoustics, though HP never did pinpoint what was responsible), please copy that. Now.


text: so i followed the Perfect Debian Sarge install.. no problem.. no errors So i install ISPC.. first time i make an Mysql username error. So i remove the install dir. and re-unpack. so i restart.. and this time it skipped the Mysql qeustions part! telling me set up was complete... and i cant seem to acess it ether. What should i do now? remove ISPConfig and try again? (link?) or rerun the setup? (possible, whats the cmd?) -Harm Heroin is online now Edit/Delete Message


text: In the spirit of entrepreneurship, spammers are finding new ways to send out their junk mail just weeks after the shutdown of a major web-hosting firm took many of them off the map.According to Message Labs, a division of Symantec, after Web-hosting company McColo Corp. was shut down two weeks ago, spam levels declined by 65 percent. Now new analysis finds spam levels are returning to two-thirds of what they were before the McColo Corp. takedown. McColo played host to several massive spam-sending botnets and its shutdown caused spam levels to plummet because the spammers were out of business. The lag between the initial decline and the subsequent rise is attributed to the time it took for the botnet owners to find a new ISP and bandwidth provider, according to Matt Sergeant, Senior Anti-Spam Technologist at MessageLabs."The Asprox and Rustock botnets are back with a vengeance after having found new command and control," Sergeant said in a statement. "Cutwail never went away and it seems its owners have used the opportunity to increase output. Mega-D is also on the rise again, he said. Srizbi, having once been responsible for 50 percent of all spam, is now completely defunct. Without this botnet, spam levels won't return to what they had been." The research conflicts with figures from messaging security firm IronPort, which is part of Cisco Systems. The company claims to have blocked approximately 35 million spam e-mails on Monday, which is far below the level of blocking it saw before the McColo takedown. Ironport claims to have blocked in excess of 150 million spam messages before McColo's demise.Message Labs' Sergeant urged vigilance in the face of the news."As always, businesses and consumers are urged to make sure their spam filters and anti-virus engines are up to date."


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In the Haunted Mansion at Disney World/Disneyland, "you" commit suicide during the course of the ride and become a ghost.This one's even better:
At the beginning of the ride the ghost host (the narrator) says the only way to escape the mansion is to die, and he shows that he hanged himself. Near the end of the ride there's a moment where the ride vehicle turns around backwards and you go off a balcony, which according to this theory represents you jumping to your death.
Before this part of the ride the ghosts are all trying to scare you, but afterwards they sing excitedly and invite you to party with them. (The Grim Grinnin' Ghosts song.) The only human character in the ride, a groundskeeper, appears after the balcony drop. He faces toward the riders and seems terrified of you.
Could be totally accidental, could be an intentional subtlety by the designers, but either way I've never looked at that ride the same way since.
I remember a pretty solid one about how R2D2 was Luke's father.Also, Tom Bombadil was evil.
This was before Empire Strikes Back came out.
Luke's father was mortally wounded by Vader. His brain was removed from his body and placed in life support inside a robot.
This is why C3P0 is so worried about R2's operational status. C3 knows that R2 has biological components.
Turns out Luke, who got VERY little Jedi training, isn't all that great--it's his Jedi father, inside of R2, every time. Think about it: Early on, when Luke does something with the force R2 is ALWAYS there. Except for the one time on Hoth--and what is R2 doing at that time? Deploying a long range force antenna we NEVER see again.
Also, and this may be a big Game of Thrones spoiler, maybe Jon Snow's parents are Lyanna Stark and Rhaegar Targaryen. And that's why the series is a Song of Ice and Fire.


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I deployed this blog about a week ago. Since then there has been little traffic, mostly because I have not promoted it and I have also been working on a bunch of other content and such. Since I also just needed to just get it out the door and running I have not spent a lot of time testing for performance. This blogging app is based off of Zend_Application and as such there is a bit of overhead. Since I was not expecting traffic to be that heavy I was not (and am not) overly concerned about snappy performance at this point. As long as the page loads and displays in the browser I'm fine with it.
One of my goals with this blog is to show real life examples of how to use Zend Server. While I am not overly concerned about the performance of this blog for the time being I am still monitoring it to make sure that it performs well. That means Monitoring.
However, Monitoring is really not all that beneficial if you don't know what is happening on your server. To get around that issue, Monitoring has a feature where you can send an email to one or more email addresses when an event occurs, such as slow page load times or a fatal error. This is great… except that people ignore emails. We're conditioned to. As great as Spam in a can is (I'm not Hawaiian, but Spam is a delicacy IMHO), Spam in the Inbox has conditioned us to ignore the things we're not interested in. And, to be honest, we're not interested in fixing problems. We'd rather be doing new and cool things.
Task driven development is part of the Agile process. Test driven development is too, but I'm going to talk about Task driven development. What that basically means is that if there is something to be done, a task is created and it is worked on by the next available developer. The benefit of this is that with short, well defined tasks, it is easy to track the progress that is being made on a project. That is why task driven development is part of Zend Studio.
"What? I thought you were talking about Monitoring?" Yep. Still am. What I am going to show you is how you can integrate Monitoring with Zend Studio using Gmail to make you a better developer.
First, we need to set up our Gmail account. Log in with your email address and go to Gmail's "Settings" -> "Labels" section and create a new label called "Task".
Next, click on "Filters". Create a new filter and enter a "From" address; [email protected] in my case. The actual email address is relatively unimportant, and doesn't really need to exist, as mine doesn't. What is important is that you can match it up with the "From" address that Monitoring will use, which we will set up later on. Click on "Next Step" and tell it to apply the label "Task" to any message coming in from that email address.
Zend Studio has the ability to connect in with Mylyn task connectors. To access this, go to the Planning perspective in Zend Studio. On the right hand side you should see a View window that says "Task Repository". From there you can right click on the screen and select "Add Task Repository". You will be asked to choose a specific type of task repository. I will use the Gmail type. If you don't have the Gmail connector installed click on "Install More Connectors" and install it from there. You may need to restart Studio ("may" meaning you will need to). You may (same thing) need to create a TaskTop account. It seems to be free.
Once you're back up, go back to the same view and get to the "Add Task Repository" window again. This time select Gmail as the repository type. Enter in your email address and your password, but set "Task" as the label. Click Finish.
Then you will probably get a window popping up asking if you want to configure a query. Of course you do. Set the title of the query as "Task" and then choose the label that you want to query by. This should be the new label that you had entered earlier on.
Next we will go into the Zend Server admin GUI. Select "Server Setup" and then "Monitor". From there you should see some mail server settings. The sender email address is the one you set up for the "from" address in the Gmail filter; [email protected] in my case. Click Save.
From there go to the "Rule Management" tab and select the rule that you want to receive alerts for. Scroll down to "Step 2: Event Action". Enter in your Gmail email address here, save it and restart PHP. I chose Slow Request Execution. And since slow requests are difficult to debug I also chose to enable Code Tracing when a slow request occurs.
Now you wait for an event to occur. Me? I just refreshed the home page. (I may have some optimizations to do). Go back to the Planning perspective and right click on the task list and click "Synchronize". You should see a new task listed. Double click on it and you should see something like the following.
Now, rather than using your email program and ignoring messages that come in, you can have them directly integrated into a simple task management system.
- Create Label in Gmail called "Task" with a filter for the "From" address, set up in Zend Server
- Add Mylyn connector for Gmail and set up to use your Gmail account with the label "Task"
- Set up Zend Server Monitoring to send monitoring events from the "From" address
- For a specific event set it to send an email to your Gmail account
- Wait for events to come in.
- Fix them


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The LinkedIn TransformHER conference recently had its second gathering and gave people plenty of inspiration. Its purpose is to provide a place for Latina and Black women in tech and their allies to enjoy a professional forum for building relationships and leveraging resources. The first event happened in April 2018 in New York, and the more recent one kicked off in San Francisco on February 1, 2019.
The theme of this year's event was "Up-Leveling Self, Industry and Society." Brittney Oliver, the founder of Lemons 2 Lemonade, and Simone Harvey, the Global Program Manager at Airbnb, were among the speakers at this one-day event. The event reached capacity this year, but even people who couldn't get tickets enjoyed the happenings. The content was live-streamed on YouTube and you can still watch archived footage.
Here are four essential takeaways from this year's gathering:
1. Brave Spaces Give Others the Freedom to Be Themselves
Rosanna Durruthy, Head Of Global Diversity Inclusion & Belonging at LinkedIn, appeared early in the day at TransformHER. One of her points of focus — and one of the conference at large — was bravery.
She talked about various forms of disappointment, including one that's likely especially familiar for black women in tech — The disappointment of "only-ness" which makes people wonder, "Why am I the only one who feels like me or looks this way?" Durruthy continued by pointing out that the people who feel like they are the only ones experiencing these feelings are often the ones who bravely create the spaces letting other minorities be themselves.
She clarified that a brave space also happens when a person can walk into a room and say things with a voice that inspires others to act instead of wondering whether people want to hear what they have to say or if they should even say it. Bravery means taking actions even if they don't have immediate proof of payoff. That's because bravery means making a difference for the wider community and not just for yourself.
Durruthy also spoke about how bravery doesn't mean knowing all the answers, but it involves having the willingness to invite someone else into the space and teaching them the things they've learned over time. Often, that might mean that the person who created the space misses an opportunity that someone gets, but being a leader in this way requires accepting that this form of bravery helps others find success for themselves.
2. Mentoring Is Crucial for Young People of Underrepresented and Underprivileged Backgrounds
Even though male CEOs dominate the tech world, there are some outstanding female corporate leaders to watch. One of them is Andrea Guendelman. She was one of the keynote speakers at TransformHER, and recently founded a startup called Wallbreakers that seeks to break down barriers in tech by helping people from underrepresented groups work in the field.
So, it's probably not surprising that her keynote was about how people in positions of privilege can share their "trade secrets" with underrepresented and underprivileged young people. Guendelman pointed out that when people seem to succeed without trying, it's often because they've had people of influence in their lives who willingly passed on some of the things they needed to get through life.
That option doesn't always exist for less-privileged people, and Guendelman asserted that people who do know those trade secrets should take it upon themselves to be mentors for those who don't. Besides communicating the things a person should know when working for a specific organization, the mentoring should encompass the things the mentor wished they'd known when they were younger — but adjust the points so they're applicable to today's generation.
3. Seize the Intersectionality Within Yourself and Use It for the Greater Good
Mahima Muralidharan, Chief Psychology Officer for Tiatros, Inc., challenged people of color to remember their inner intersectionality and the parts that give them power. For example, even though a person might lack power in certain spaces, they may have other aspects of themselves — such as college educations that help get their voices heard.
As such, Muralidharan urged people to recognize the parts of themselves they could use to elevate others. Then, those who are on the margins have opportunities to get heard. Afterward, her sentiments got more traction on social media.
4. It's Crucial to Get to the Heart of Why Microaggressions and Similar Problems Happen
LaFawn Davis, Head of Global Inclusion at Twilio, was part of a panel at the event and spoke about how many companies host diversity training and similar events because they merely want to "check the box." Davis brought up microaggressions as an example, though, and said it's not as simple as saying that a person is biased and that's causing their behavior.
She asserted there is often a whole slew of problems at play and that companies need all-encompassing programs to tackle them. It's not enough to have someone come to speak for an hour or two to fix the problem
An Empowering and Memorable Event
The most recent TransformHER conference gave people food for thought and reasons to stay inspired whether they attended in person or watched online. If you're interested in going to the next one, it'll reportedly be in New York with more details to come.


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Drama favorites dominate TVW primetime
"House," "Monk," and "Bones" highlight lineup
TVW is pleased to spotlight some of the best drama from TV's most recent golden age in its nightly primetime schedule.
Through the MyNetworkTV programming service, TVW has back-to-back episodes of "House" on Tuesday nights, "Bones" on Thursday nights, and the venerable favorite "Monk" on Friday nights.
In addition, the long-running "Law & Order" franchise is well-represented, with back-to-back episodes of "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit" on Monday nights and "Law & Order: Criminal Intent" on Wednesday nights.
The medical drama "House," which enjoyed a very successful run on FOX, is a series in which the villain is a medical malady and the hero is an irreverent, controversial doctor who trusts no one, least of all his patients.
"House" has been honored with five Emmy Awards, including an award for creator and executive producer David Shore (Outstanding Writing for a Drama Series). The series has been nominated for 25 Emmys, including four for Outstanding Drama Series and six for Hugh Laurie (Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series).
"Bones," is an investigative drama about Dr. Temperance Brennan (Emily Deschanel), a highly skilled forensic anthropologist who works with FBI Agent Seeley Booth (David Boreanaz) to assist on murder investigations when the standard methods of identifying a body are useless. Brennan's special expertise lies in her uncanny ability to read clues left behind in the victim's bones.
"Monk" is a comedy-drama about a brilliant detective for the San Francisco Police Department who suffers from obsessive-compulsive personality disorder, a limitation that worsens after his wife was killed. Playing the title role, Tony Shalhoub won the Emmy Award for outstanding lead actor in a comedy series three times.
"Law & Order: Criminal Intent" takes viewers into the minds of its criminals while following the psychological approaches the Major Case Squad uses to solve the crimes. In true Sherlock Holmes-fashion, Vincent D'Onofrio stars as Detective Goren, an exceptionally bright homicide investigator with well-honed instincts that match up favorably with his criminal quarry.
Finally, "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit" is a hard-hitting and emotional series from NBC's "Law & Order" brand that chronicles the life and crimes of the Special Victims Unit of the New York Police Department, the elite squad of detectives who investigate sexually based crimes.
The drama follows Detective Elliot Stabler (Christopher Meloni), a seasoned veteran of the unit who has seen it all, and his partner, Detective Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay), whose difficult past – a child of rape – is the reason she joined the unit.
TVW's primetime schedule is:
7-9 p.m.: "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit"
7-9 p.m.: "House"
7-9 p.m.: "Law & Order: Criminal Intent"
7-9 p.m.: "Bones"
7-9 p.m.: "Monk"
For more information, go to the My Network TV home page, like My Network TV on Facebook, or follow My Network TV on Twitter.


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Yep, That Would Be a Yardstick.
For the Cannes Young Lions Ad Contest, Y&R Interactive/Israel/Mizbala entered a video on behalf of Oxfam Great Britain. All it does is drive climate change-conscious users to the Oxfam YouTube page -- kind of a cheap prize after sitting through virtually nothing of entertainment value and then clicking -- actually clicking! -- on a button embedded inside the video.
by Angela Natividad May-20-09 Click to Comment
Topic: Cause, Events, Industry Events, Video
Topic: Cause, Events, Industry Events, Video


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PersonalFavorite Things |January
My favorites from January:
My new shirt is beyond perfect, it was a Christmas' Present (The outfit look)The bag and cup from SnapMade had to be in this little list, love them! (The outfit look | The decor post)My new boots from The Purple are amazing, money well spent. (The outfit look)The pink coat from Primark is so cute, I used it with my new green sneakers when I spent the day with the girls (The outfit look | The afternoon)The coat from Sheinside is an all time favorite, but I'm always forgetting about it, this month got out of the closet (The outfit look)The burgundy skirt from Zara is my favorite skirt, it was a gift from my mother. (Outfit Looks 1 & 2 & 3)And of course my car, my little "fatty".
What was you favorite thing this month?
8 Comments
Lovely selection, I really like that coat!ResponderEliminar
My favourite thing this month is my new ring from Monsoon :)
adorei as botas!ResponderEliminar
A saia é linda!ResponderEliminar
adorei as coisinhas todas. beijinhoResponderEliminar
so coisinhas giras :)ResponderEliminar
Adorei o carro aí no meio. :P E a caneca e a mala ficaram super bem. ^^ResponderEliminar
Alexandra :)
The Sweetest Life
Gostei imenso dos teus favoritos ! Tenho esse casaco da primark e também o adoro heheResponderEliminar
Branca de Neve e os Sete Batons
Página do Facebook do Blog
O casaquinho da primark é tão fofo! *-* E adoro as botas.<3ResponderEliminar


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Big Pizza: Calorie-Count Menu Boards Make No Sense For Our Product
With the FDA still fiddling with rule changes that require chain restaurants to post calorie information for the products on their in-store menu, the country's largest pizza chains have stopped fighting each other and banded together to fight federal regulators.
The American Pizza Community — which sounds like it could be the name of a really awesome prog-rock band — is a joint creation of Domino's, Papa John's, Little Caesars, Pizza Hut and others. It formed in January to make the argument to the folks in Washington that the world of pizza is too expansive to fit into the strict requirements of the menu boards.
The group argues that since pizzas generally come in multiple sizes and with a wide variety of toppings, it would require menu boards that would be larger than the menu.
The FDA proposal does allow restaurants to provide a calorie range for customizable items, but there could be a calorie swing of more than a thousand calories for people who load up on extra cheese and meats.
The Pizza Community also takes issue with the FDA requirement to list calories for an entire pie. According to the group, people only eat around 2.1 slices on average.
Reiterating arguments made last year by Domino's CEO J. Patrick Doyle, the crust coalition claims that 90% of its orders are placed online or over the phone, meaning an overwhelming majority of customers would never even see the menu boards.
A D.C.-area Domino's franchisee tells the Washington Post that she has had menu boards up in 10 of her Maryland stores and discerned no change in buying habits.
"I don't see pizza counts dropping, and I don't see salads running out the door," she tells the Washington Post.
A rep for the Center for Science in the Public Interest, which has supported many menu labeling initiatives, tells the Post that there is nothing special about the pizza business.
"We heard the same types of arguments from the whole restaurant industry when they were opposing menu labeling in the early days," she explains. "I don't know what's up with the pizza industry."
Pizza chains band together over proposed menu-labeling plan [Washington Post]
Want more consumer news? Visit our parent organization, Consumer Reports, for the latest on scams, recalls, and other consumer issues.


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By Jenny Batt. Photography by Flint Knits.
I'm on my way to Alt Design Summit in Salt Lake City, Utah! To say I am excited is an understatement. Alt is a conference for design, fashion, food and lifestyle bloggers. It's "THE" place to learn cutting edge blog design methods and smart ideas for social media. There will be fashionistas, interior designers, foodies, photographers, and lots of other fab people who will connect with marketers, share ideas and come together for informative panels and workshops on every aspect of blogging. Old friends will reconnect and new friends will be made!
I am also very excited about the line up of speakers! This event brings out the biggest names in lifestyle blogging.
Here are some of my favs....
Camille Styles, Camille Styles
Darcy Miller, Martha Stewart Weddings
Emily Henderson, Style by Emily Henderson
Erin Loechner, Design for Mankind
Kelly Beall, Design Crush
Jenny Komenda, Little Green Notebook
Jaime Derringer, Design Milk
Meg Biram, megbiram.com
Kirsten Krason, 6th Street Design School
There are so many more I can't wait to hear and meet! Reading some of these blogs daily like I do, you begin to feel like you really know these people! I will have to restrain from running up to some of them and giving them a big hug! Some of them really are my friends and I will be giving them a hug!
There are so many great panel discussion I am having a hard time trying to decide which ones to go to. Not to mention the keynote speakers are ah-maz-ing! They are Stefan Sagmeister of Sagmeister & Walsh and Chris
Anderson, 3D Robotics!
It is an action packed schedule for sure!
To put it simply, Alt Rocks!
By Sara Urquhart. Photography by Alt.
Make sure to follow me on Facebook, instagram and twitter! While I am at Alt I will be blogging about the conference. Rumor has it Jessica Alba will be here touting her new line The Honest Company!
Can't wait to share more!
Can't wait to share more!


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LAKE FOREST, Ill. -- Chicago Bears wide receiver Brandon Marshall will wear green shoes in Thursday night's game against the New York Giants, promising to double the fine that is sure to come for violating the NFL's uniform policy.
During a month in which many NFL players are wearing pink shoes, gloves and wristbands to support breast cancer awareness, Marshall will go green in support of his own foundation, which focuses on mental illness.
Marshall was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder in 2011. In going green, Marshall is sensitive about not wanting to steal the thunder of the message being sent by those wearing pink.
"I'm going to get fined and I'm going to match that, and we want to partner with a cancer-care [charity]," Marshall said. "We're still working on the details to give, really give back to an organization that is doing work in the mental health area. [Also], the diagnosis of breast cancer can hit families hard. It affects all of us."
The eight-year veteran expressed frustration after Sunday's loss to the New Orleans Saints, a game in which he had just four catches for 30 yards and was targeted only five times.
"They aren't paying me $10 million just to not make a play," Marshall said Tuesday, explaining how his personal frustrations have the team's best interest in mind. "Now it's what do you do with that frustration? What do you do when you're angry? Do you blow up? Are you a distraction in the locker room? Are you a cancer? Or do you communicate the right way?
"There are still some things I fail at. The first few weeks, coach [Marc] Trestman called me a 'palms-up guy.' I'm coming off the sideline saying, 'What's going on? It's been three drives.' So I went to Coach and said, 'I'm sorry, I won't be a palms-up guy.' I've gotten better, but it's a process."
Bears quarterback Jay Cutler said he understands Marshall's frustration.
"[Marshall is] human," Cutler said Monday. "He wants to be personally successful, but he knows for us to get where we want to go, everyone has to contribute. There's games where he doesn't get 10 balls, 12 balls. He might have five and a touchdown, and if we win, he's going to be happy. If we don't, everyone's going to work to see what we can do to fix it."


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Pearce, Mullins win GOP congressional primaries
ALBUQUERQUE — Steve Pearce will get a chance to win back his old job as a U.S. representative, defeating a little-known Republican primary challenger in the 2nd Congressional District race.
Pearce, a three-term former congressman, defeated Roswell-area farmer Cliff Pirtle in Tuesday's GOP primary. Pearce said campaigning across the sprawling southern New Mexico district helped him reconnect with longtime supporters.
"The main thing is people know us," Pearce told The Associated Press. "They know our record on keeping taxes low. They know my economic background, my business background, and they know that I've been in combat so I understand what we're asking our young people to do when they go into combat zones."
Unofficial returns showed Pearce with 85 percent of the vote with 82 percent of precincts reporting, while Pirtle had 15 percent.
Pearce advanced to the general election against first-term Rep. Harry Teague, the Democrat who took the office when Pearce stepped away to unsuccessfully pursue a U.S. Senate seat in 2008. Teague is unopposed in the Democratic primary.
"We feel we can get it done," Pearce said. "Fundraising is going well. The reaction in the district is going well. People are alarmed about what's happening in D.C. and that helps our cause."
Meanwhile, Farmington petroleum engineer Tom Mullins defeated Adam Kokesh, an Iraq war veteran from Santa Fe, in the Republican primary for the 3rd Congressional District.
Mullins will run against Rep. Ben Ray Lujan, D-N.M., in the general election. Lujan was unopposed in the Democratic primary.
With 70 percent of precincts reporting, Mullins had 72 percent of the vote and Kokesh had 28 percent.
Mullins was involved in organizing tea party events in the Farmington area over the past year.
"We have to be careful about any specific designations within the tea party, but I think I've drawn upon a variety of support," Mullins said. "I'm just proud to be a regular American who continues to be concerned about the direction of our country for my children and grandchildren."
Mullins cited his experience in the oil and gas industry, his listening skills and his background running a small business for helping him gain voters' trust.
He acknowledged Democrats outnumber Republicans by more than 2-to-1 in the northern New Mexico district, and Lujan will be favored.
"It's going to be an uphill battle but we'll make progress across the district," he said.
In the Albuquerque-area 1st Congressional District, first-term Democratic Rep. Martin Heinrich, a former Albuquerque city councilor, is unopposed in the primary. He faces a November challenge from Republican Jon Barela, an Albuquerque businessman who has no primary opposition.
Pearce and Barela are among candidates that national Republicans are watching closely in the party's effort to gain back seats in the House of Representatives.
Pearce, a former Air Force pilot and Vietnam-era veteran, won his initial bid for Congress in 2002 from the 2nd District. He served three terms before making a run at the Senate when former Sen. Pete Domenici retired but lost the 2008 Senate race to Democrat Tom Udall.


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Robert Mueller's Investigators Seek White House Documents
(WASHINGTON) — Special counsel Robert Mueller's team of investigators is seeking information from the White House related to Michael Flynn's stint as national security adviser and about the response to a meeting with a Russian lawyer that was attended by President Donald Trump's oldest son, The Associated Press has learned.
Mueller's office has requested a large batch of documents from the White House and is expected to interview at least a half-dozen current and former aides in the coming weeks. Lawyers for the White House are in the process of trying to cooperate with the document requests.
Though the full scope of the investigation is not clear, the information requests make evident at least some of the areas that Mueller and his team of prosecutors intend to look into and also reveal a strong interest in certain of Trump's actions as president.
A person familiar with the investigation who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation said investigators want information on, among other topics, a June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower that Donald Trump Jr. attended with a Russian lawyer as well as on the administration's response to it.
A statement provided to journalists in July, which the White House has said Trump had a hand in drafting, said the meeting was primarily to discuss a disbanded program that used to allow American adoptions of Russian children, but emails released days later by Trump Jr. show that he arranged the encounter with the expectation of receiving damaging information about Hillary Clinton.
Investigators also are interested in White House actions involving Flynn, such as what officials knew about an FBI investigation into him and how they responded to word that his Russian contacts had been scrutinized. Flynn was forced out as national security adviser in February after White House officials concluded he had misled them about his conversations with the Russian ambassador to the United States.
Former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates has said she warned White House counsel Don McGahn in January that that deception left Flynn and the White House in a compromised position, and that she expected McGahn to take action. That conversation took place two days after FBI agents had interviewed Flynn. But Flynn was not asked to resign until several weeks later, following news reports that said he had discussed sanctions during the transition period with the ambassador, Sergey Kislyak.
Former FBI Director James Comey has said that Flynn was facing an FBI criminal investigation "of his statements in connection with the Russian contacts and the contacts themselves. And so that was my assessment at the time."
Comey has also said that Trump, in a private Oval Office encounter in February, told him that he hoped he would end the FBI investigation into Flynn. Trump has denied that.
Comey's own firing in May is also under investigation for potential obstruction of justice, and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who appointed Mueller as special counsel and oversees his work, has been questioned by investigators about the circumstances of that event, according to people familiar with the matter.
A spokesman for the special counsel's office declined to comment.
Mueller was appointed in May to investigate potential coordination between Russia and the Trump campaign, and potential crimes arising from that probe. Investigators in July raided the home of Trump's former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, in a search of tax and banking records and in recent months have served subpoenas related both to Manafort's business dealings and those of Flynn.
Mueller's team of investigators includes prosecutors with experience in organized crime, national security and complex financial fraud cases. The primary prosecutor on the White House investigation is James Quarles, who came with Mueller from the WilmerHale law firm and was involved in Watergate prosecutions.
Among the aides expected to be interviewed in coming weeks are McGahn, former press secretary Sean Spicer and former chief of staff Reince Priebus.
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Supreme Court rejects tortured whistleblowers' suit against Rumsfeld
Two United States citizens can't sue the federal government and former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld for being subjected to torture while detained by US force during the Iraq War, the Supreme Court decided Monday.
The high court rejected an appeal early Monday filed by Donald Vance and Nathan Ertel, two US citizens who say Mr. Rumsfeld should be held responsible for the treatment they endured while detained for several weeks in 2006. Both men were placed in a military prison in Baghdad for around three months that summer. They had filed a complaint with the Federal Bureau of Investigation about the Iraqi-owned security contractor they worked for, then were scooped up by US forces and put behind bars days later.
In a 2011 interview with Democracy Now!, Vance explained that only a few months into working for the contractor, Shield Group Security, he "started to notice some pretty frightening and alarming illegal activity."
"It ranged from bribery, theft, weapons dealing," he explained. "It was a gamut of illegal activities."
Vance told the FBI about the allegations in 2005 and became an unpaid informant for them shortly thereafter. Then in April 2006, his cover was blown and he and Ertel were brought to the US embassy in Baghdad — only to be turned over to the US military and checked in to a temporary detention facility.
While detained in Baghdad, Vance and Ertel say they were tortured and their rights of habeas corpus were violated. Specifically, the men say they were subjected to sleep deprivation techniques and other inhumane treatment, and Vance wasn't allowed to make contact with anyone in America until two weeks after his arrest. Vance was kept in custody for more than two months after authorities learned from the FBI that he was an informant.
"Even Saddam Hussein had more legal counsel than I everhad," Vance later told the New York Times "While we were detained, we wrote a letter to the camp commandant stating that the same democratic ideals we are trying to instill in the fledgling democratic country of Iraq, from simple due process to the Magna Carta, we are absolutely, positively refusing to follow ourselves."
In the interview with Democracy Now!, Vance recounted exactly what happened for more than 90 days that summer:
"During my detainment, myself and Nathan Ertel, we endured the authorized enhanced interrogation techniques that the military currently employs. It ranges from sleep deprivation, food manipulation, sensory deprivation, sensory overload, a technique called 'walling.' And all of their questions surrounded on topics like, 'What did you tell the FBI? How long have you been doing this? Why did you do this?' And, of course, I answered all of their questions, but I was not seeing any end to my detention."
Both men hoped to sue Rumsfeld and the federal government for a slew of crimes, including false arrest, unlawful detention, unlawful search and seizure, denial of right to counsel in interrogations and denial of necessary medical care and denial to present witnesses and evidence.
Because Sec. Rumsfeld personally approved of the so-called enhanced interrogation techniques used in the prison, Vance and Ertel filed a suit against him and the US government in late 2006. The case has since gone through a series hoops and other obstacles, ending this week when the Supreme Court shot down an attempt to appeal an early ruling.
Vance and Ertel asked the Supreme Court to reverse in 2012 decisions by the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals in which they ruled that Rumsfeld could ont be sued for his role in approving the torture techniques. The high court rejected that request, reaffirming the Seventh Circuit Court's decision.
"The earlier ruling was so broad that it applied to all military officials, including the individuals who carried out torture," Stephen C. Webster wrote for Raw Story. "The Supreme Court rejected an appeal of that ruling on Monday without comment, solidifying the lower court's opinion that military officials are immune to civil lawsuits over torture."


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Sunday, February 28, 2010
The point
A phenomenon I treasure, experienced twice this weekend: when a piece of writing about music sends me scurrying, more or less frantically, to listen. It's like a command. Two CDs I'd had for ages, lying amid the innumerable stacks in my room, and to which I'd never paid ample attention. Two writers, persuading and prepping me. Thanks to Alex Ross, I dug into the stark but inviting Xenakis Percussion Works, and thanks to Howard Mandel, I spun Ornette's fantastically exuberant Friends and Neighbors. Reminders that, yes, there is a point to this endeavor, and the point is to point, to make a case for why, even in the midst of info overload, you should really take a minute to check this here thing out. Ross puts it as succinctly as it could be put when he titles his forthcoming book Listen to This.
Posted by Hank at 11:47 PM 1 comment:
Labels: Alex Ross, Howard Mandel, Iannis Xenakis, Jazz Beyond Jazz, Listen to This, Miles Ornette Cecil, Ornette Coleman
Thursday, February 18, 2010
Sunny Murray's time now (and then)
Where are they now, the still-living architects of free jazz? For one, they're in Sunny's time now [sic], a 2008 documentary about Sunny Murray that has just reached me on DVD. The descriptor "sprawling" was invented for films like this: It's all over the place. Sometimes rambling, sometimes pointed, but for anyone who's into this stuff, it's riveting, mainly because of the cast.
Everyone is here. It's like a family reunion. Sonny Simmons, Grachan Moncur III, Henry Grimes, William Parker, Bobby Few, Cecil Taylor, Tony Oxley, Robert Wyatt (?!) and tons of others whom I was either unfamiliar with or knew only marginally: François Tusques, Tony Bevan, Fritz Novotny and more. And then the scholars and scribes: Val Wilmer (hail), Ekkehard Jost, Tony Herrington, etc.
All assembled to illuminate a difficult personality. I adored Sunny Murray, and then I caught him live at Tonic in October of '04 with Sabir Mateen and Dave Burrell, a gig documented by Eremite but which I could barely stand to relive. Without going into detail, Murray appeared in a visibly altered state and after Burrell took it upon himself to bring some much-needed focus to a wholly disjointed and directionless performance, the drummer stood up, tapped the pianist on the shoulder and stopped him cold. Cecil Taylor recounts the incident in Sunny's time now and seems to have found it amusing. To me, it was a travesty: Burrell chose to take the gig seriously and Murray didn't, and that was that. (I hate to slander anyone, but sometimes the facts are the facts, as this review of a Murray performance from last June attests: "...Sunny Murray spent most of the performance stumbling off his drum stool, lurching through the crowd and talking loudly while [Odean] Pope gamely tried to keep some semblance of a concert together. Left to himself for most of the gig, Pope padded time with a lecture and demonstration on Clifford Brown. Just as he was wrapping it up, Murray staggered back to the stage and grabbed the mic. "I just want you to know, I'm not drunk," he asserted in a slur....")
So I've had some mixed feelings re: Murray over the years, and for a while I couldn't even listen to him. But who could stay mad at The Copenhagen Tapes or Nefertiti, the Beautiful One Has Come? And then I started to warm up to the relaxed splendor of the later work, especially the amazing Dawn of a New Vibration, a 2000 duo session with Arthur Doyle on Fractal. (A contemporaneous example of that badass partnership is here.) There just wasn't much point in staying mad at Sunny Murray.
The film doesn't shy away from Murray's foibles. Murray's son, who shows up in a few brief interview clips, expresses a bit of pride at his father's renown but even more vexation re: Dad's uneven temperament. Cecil Taylor, in his inimitably catty way, provides more evidence of same. And rehearsal footage of an insanely star-studded large-ensemble gig in Luxembourg depicts Murray as impish and distracted.
But there's so much to love and to marvel at here. Try a duo concert with Bobby Few, like the entire film, beautifully shot and recorded. Try the aforementioned Luxembourg gig. We only get a few segments, but dear God, the lineup: Murray, Grimes, Moncur, Few, Simmons, Pope, Rasul Siddick, Tony Bevan and more. And--so poetic and humble and real, I can't even begin to express--a small-group version of "Round Midnight" from a Paris club gig with Simmons, Few and some others. Tons of jazz musicians come full circle, moving through free jazz and back into standards, but rarely do they re-address the tradition with such grace as these expatriate free-jazz types. Simmons and Few, I already knew about, but Murray is such a good match for them. His restraint (perfectly content to wisp about with brushes) will astound you. Some very intrepid and enterprising producer needs to get these three together for a trio session pronto.
There's also so much here that has nothing to do with Murray. Little scraps re: the European and British perceptions of American free jazz. François Tusques praising Archie Shepp for his political awareness and mocking Frank Wright for his political ignorance. Val Wilmer going through old Murray photos she took, admiring how they capture his intense (and, she asserts, unusual for the idiom) love for his family.
Again, a mixed bag, but an essential one. The performance footage is golden. Loved seeing/hearing Murray in duet with Novotny, a soprano sax player with whom I was totally unfamiliar. And the concluding presentation of the Murray, Bevan and John Edwards trio is a mindfuck, full of brawn and sweat, but also grace. Didn't care for Spring Heel Jack contributions or another gig featuring unfortunate electric bass, but it all just hangs out there and becomes part of the film's weird patchwork quality. Maybe it's because Murray himself isn't directly interviewed (he is on the bonus disc, though), but everything here feels like a tangent. Fortunately many of these tangents also register as revelations.
But as I (tried to) indicate above, what will stick with you are the personalities of these still feisty old men, the immense variance. Simmons's absurdly charming rakishness, Few's heart-melting sweetness, Moncur's mercurial oddness, Taylor's relentless superciliousness. What an unbelievably diverse bunch of men, these first-wavers. This film's greatest triumph is to place all these artists in the NOW. We know them from records, and we often fetishize their discographies over their physical presences. (As the Murray gig I described above indicates, sometimes the artists have given us good reason to do so.) But they still have a lot to tell us.
Sunny's time now, yes. But it's also the time of all the others who lit the fire in the '60s and kept raging, albeit in a sublimated way. Think of Bill Dixon, whom I just listened to today in a fantastic trio with two young improv masters. Think of the aforementioned Dave Burrell, whose recent records are some of his very best.
In Murray's case, it's somewhere in between. For sheer ecstatic insanity, you're not going to beat his early work. But when he manages to keep his composure these days (the Bevan/Edwards band seems like a particular good focusing agent for him), he's really got something going, a droopy dance, the pinnacle of unhurriedness, following buzzy, uneven snare rolls with clumsy yet thunderous thwacks on bass drum and crash. And (as you can hear in the "Round Midnight" I mentioned above) a tremendous respect for song form, for contour, and (again, when he's behaving) for his fellow players. In the majority of the live footage in this film, he is, in fact, behaving, and accompanying in a remarkably sympathetic fashion. So if nothing else, the film helped me to further forgive Murray for the disastrous 2004 gig I'd caught. We may only get sporadic brilliance from Murray these days--a statement that applies to several of the aforementioned early-free-jazz survivors--but the good stuff is worth the required patience.
Anyone else have any similar stories of resentment and/or redemption re: first-wave free-jazzers, i.e., seen players of this style, caliber and age turn in either notably subpar or phenomenal gigs? I feel like this unpredictability is something every free-jazz fan has dealt with at one time or another.
Posted by Hank at 1:24 AM 6 comments:
Labels: Bill Dixon, Bobby Few, Cecil Taylor, Dave Burrell, Grachan Moncur, Sonny Simmons, Sunny Murray, Sunny's Time Now, Tony Bevan, Val Wilmer
Saturday, February 13, 2010
Canceled? Check
Bummed, bummed, bummed. Steeve Hurdle—see previous post—has canceled his Stone appearances for tonight and tomorrow. That makes two for two, re: 2010 shows I was looking forward to like Christmas morning (Hanukkah night, technically), and which I previewed in TONY, only to have them called off. Lest I curse another gig, I do hereby (mock-)promise not to go out of my way to prepublicize the next NYC show I'm dying to see. In the meantime, ALL and Steeve Hurdle, please reschedule soon!
Posted by Hank at 10:30 AM No comments:
Labels: ALL, canceled, Steeve Hurdle, The Stone
Sunday, February 07, 2010
O Canada
Not unusually, I have Canadian music on the brain. Thinking about the marvelous spectrum. This evening I reveled in "Last of the Blacksmiths" and "Sleeping," and read up on the upcoming Rush documentary (codirected Sam Dunn, the man responsible for the oustandingly diverse Metal: A Headbanger's Journey). Topped it all off by indulging my current obsession with the joint work of Luc Lemay and Steeve Hurdle, the latter of whom is (I seriously can't wait) headed NYC-ward in a week's time. Feel it:
Posted by Hank at 2:07 AM No comments:
Labels: Canada, Luc Lemay, Richard Manuel, Rush, Sam Dunn, Steeve Hurdle, The Band
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China's Evolving Web
HONG KONG – In a recent article, the economist Axel Leijonhufvud defines the market system as a web of contracts. Because contracts are linked with each other, one default can trigger an avalanche of broken promises, "[making] it possible to destroy virtually the entire web of formal and informal contracts which the market system requires for its functioning." The state's role is to protect, enforce, and regulate these contracts and related property rights, as well as to intervene to prevent systemic failure.
This web of contracts – often taken for granted in mainstream economics, to the extent that it becomes almost invisible – embodies the formal and informal rules embedded in the market system that shape and constrain individual and social behavior. They form the fabric of all human institutions.
Advanced economic systems have very complex webs of contracts, such as financial derivatives. For Europe, Leijonhufvud argues, this implies a three-pronged approach that focuses on "levels of leverage," "maturity mismatches," and "the topology of the web," – that is, "its connectivity and the presence of critical nodes that are 'too big to fail.'" This is because "[t]he web of contracts has developed serious inconsistencies." To insist that all contracts be fulfilled would "cause a collapse of very large portions of the web," with "serious economic and incalculable social and political consequences."
By contrast, emerging markets like China have less sophisticated systems and evolve more complex contractual/institutional links over time, particularly through globalized transactions. Under China's planned economy, most contracts were between individuals and the state, whereas more sophisticated market contracts have emerged or re-emerged only over the last 30 years. Indeed, the widespread use of market contracts with publicly-owned companies was a recent and important adaptation in the move toward a "socialist market economy."
The web of contracts, however, can also be understood as complex adaptive market systems, which encompass the state and family relations as well. To understand China's socialist market economy, it is essential to examine systematically these different forms of contracts and their institutional structures.
Family and kinship contracts, which govern marriage, adoption, cohabitation, inheritance, etc., form the basic unit of human society. These contracts are the most ancient and remain the foundation of social relationships in China today.
Corporate contracts place the profit-oriented legal person at the center of the transaction and bind all of its stakeholders. Chinese corporate contracts have grown exponentially over the last 30 years, but they have special characteristics that reflect the primary role of Chinese state-owned enterprises.
Market contracts between producers and consumers – and/or among producers in supply chains – link individuals, families, firms, governments, and public organizations through local or global markets. Over the last few decades, China has begun to practice modern contract law and joined the World Trade Organization, committing itself to international rules governing trade and investment.
Non-governmental and non-profit civil contracts bind people together for communal, religious, social, and political activities. These contracts are still relatively new and evolving in China.
Social contracts created by constitutional and administrative laws define the powers and responsibilities of the state and its constituent bodies vis-à-vis individuals and the private sector. They include the authority to impose taxes and restraints on individuals and private entities through criminal, administrative, and civil law, as well as the state's obligation to provide public goods and services. China has strengthened its unitary state with important institutional innovations that have delivered growth and middle-income prosperity, but it still retains the basic five-level administrative structure – central government on top, with provincial, city, town, and village bodies below – that first emerged two millennia ago.
Deciphering the structure of the web of contracts holds the key to understanding how an economy behaves, including its dynamic non-linear adaptation to internal and external forces. Following the physicist Fritjof Capra, one should regard living organisms, social systems, and ecosystems as an interconnected and interdependent, complex adaptive system. This means that we should view the economy and society not as rigid hierarchies or mechanical markets, but as networks or webs of life, in which contracts, formal and informal, fulfilled or violated, are the essence of human activity. Examining webs of contracts should be similar to a biologist's examination of cell structure and DNA.
China has created four functioning global-scale modern supply chains in manufacturing, infrastructure, finance, and government services, thanks to its evolving, expanding, and complex web of contracts. But how was China able to build a modern industrial base within a relatively short period of time from its traditional, patrimonial family contracts and archaic constitutional structures?
Through experimentation, adaptation, and evolution – a process that has been described as "crossing the river by feeling the stones" – China has been able to evolve a higher-order, or fifth, supply chain in political decision-making. This "top-level governance architecture," as it is known in China, has been essential for coordinating and orchestrating the different supply chains and the overall web of contracts to achieve the delicate balance among individual, family, corporate, social, and national objectives.
This top-level governance architecture is analogous to a computer's operating system, which orchestrates the other software and hardware components to form a holistic unity. Such a structure exists in many economies, but, in the Chinese context, where the state plays a central role in the economy, it is critical to the system's effectiveness. How it is shaped will depend on how China's history, culture, institutional context, and evolving web of contracts affect the country's social fabric.


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Last week I posted a story about a fascinating reunion that was to take place this past Saturday in London, England, at the Who Do You Think You Are?-Live conference. This morning, our friend Megan Smolenyak of RootsTelevision sent us a link to a video of the reunion. The video gives lots of information on how they made the connection and explains how the DNA testing made the reunion possible in a fun and easy to understand way.Â
Click here to view the video of the reunion at RootsTelevision.com. Â
Learn more about DNA testing at Ancestry.com. Â


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Airbus' A400M Aerial Transport: Delays, Development, and Deployment
Airbus' A400M is a EUR 20+ billion program that aims to repeat Airbus' civilian successes in the full size military transport market. A series of smart design decisions were made around capacity (35-37 tonnes/ 38-40 US tons, large enough for survivable armored vehicles), extensive use of modern materials, multi-role capability as a refueling tanker, and a multinational industrial program; all of which leave the aircraft well positioned to take overall market share from Lockheed Martin's C-130 Hercules. If the USA's C-17 is allowed to go out of production, the A400M would also have a strong position in the strategic transport market, with only Russian AN-70, IL-76 and AN-124 aircraft as competition.
Airbus' biggest program issue, by far, has been funding for a project that is more than EUR 7 billion over budget. The next biggest issue is timing, as a combination of A400M delays and Lockheed's strong push for its C-130J Super Hercules narrow the field for future exports. This DID Spotlight article covers the latest developments, as the A400M Atlas moves into the delivery phase. Will Airbus' 3rd big issue become its own customers?
The A400M Program
A400M: Tech Specs and Issues
A400M: Industrial Team
Contracts & Key Events
2014 – 2020
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