text:
Walls Are Talking at the Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester saw a major survey into design aesthetics through the unexpected medium of wallpaper.
At the end of the noughties the fusion of art and design is ever more apparent, with the decline of the art market nudging a move towards the middling stratums of society as traditional monied investments have dried up. The marriage between the two has seen artists' explorations into mass mediums and products of the domestic as well as of the gallery setting, with Grayson Perry's recent release collaboration with Liberty, designing a range of prints for the department store, epitomising the movement into the mass scale commerciality of art.
Design, be it product, furniture, fashion and interior, was recently branded by Christopher Townsend as "simply another aspect of the market" and the continuation naturally stems from Pop Art's insistence on the interrogation of the everyday. Donald Judd's exploration of furniture combines with the canonical nature enjoyed by Eames chairs and Anglepoise lamps, to develop a new area of output for fine art. The Whitworth Art Gallery's new exhibition, Walls are Talking: Wallpaper, Art and Culture, explores this relationship, collecting together wallpapers from over 30 artists ranging from Damien Hirst, Angus Fairhurst, Sarah Lucas, to Niki de St. Phalle, David Shrigley, Martin Boyce, Robert Gober and Thomas Demand.
Compiled by Christine Woods, Senior Curator of Prints, in the Word & Image Department at the V&A, and Jill Saunders, Walls Are Talking is a timely recognition of the preponderance of wallpaper in fine art over the last two decades, with such a wide selection attesting to the medium's popularity and the ability of the domestic to challenge and disconcert the viewer. Woods explains: "The exhibition is an exploration of the role of wallpaper in contemporary art, and we hope to show how and why artists have chosen to make or design wallpapers, and also how, why and to what effect they have used or adapted historic patterns and styles." The Whitworth venue provides the opportunity to contextualise the works within the wider realm of wallpaper practice across the 20th and 21st centuries, with a selection of the gallery's thousands of commercial papers plotting the evolution of the medium in questioning the domestic and the mundane.
The appropriation of domestic and traditional crafts for a subversive critique is nothing new, with Tracey Emin practicing a long tradition of embroidery and appliqué work, and Perry's tapestry and ceramics at the forefront of handicraft meeting fine art. Woods also argues that, "several of the artists in this show, including Gober and Green, were in the vanguard of this movement. Now more artists are choosing to use domestic crafts (embroidery, upholstery) or domestic furnishings (wallpaper, flooring, fabric, chairs) as a means of introducing or addressing 'difficult' or uncomfortable ideas about society, politics and personal experience." Walls Are Talking certainly addresses an eclectic array of issues, and the artists have not allowed the kitsch, almost chintzy connotations of wallpaper to undermine their, at times acerbic, at times humorous, observations, exploring race, femininity, popular culture, the adaptability of traditional motifs and the colourful joys of graphics at various points.
Robert Gober's Hanging Man/ Sleeping Man (1989), depicting found imagery of a sleeping white man and a lynched black man, is suggested by the artist to represent a "racist fantasy or dream," and Gober accuses us of complicity through the close approximation of the two figures, "implying that those who enjoy comfortable lives and 'untroubled sleep' are complicit in racist crimes and injustices, simply by allowing them to fade in the background." In surrounding the visitor with such a domesticated, almost comfortable, medium, the issues at hand become all the more unsettling. Race is a central theme with many artists more exultant in their treatment than Gober. Sonia Boyce's Devotional Wallpaper features a roll call of black female singers, both high profile and lesser known. The singers are presented in a repetitive, formal sequence, and celebrate, not only the omnipresence of music in our lives, but the achievements of black women in conquering racial boundaries and a notoriously difficult industry. Sedira's Une Generation de Femmes, further emphasises ethnicity, extolling the matriarchal structures of family life. Sedira repeatedly places the faces of herself, her mother and her grandmother within an Islamic grid, for the viewer to see the women as if "from behind a screen of the kind which segregates women from men in traditional Muslim households." Instead of being hidden in Muslim society, these women are suddenly all around us, their difference and identity applauded. Renée Green's Commemorative Toile (1992) addresses the inadequacies of black history more explicitly. Based on traditional toiles de Jouy courting figures, Green has substituted black figures of authority to "reminds us that Africans in the 18th and 19th centuries were not merely slaves or chattels; many were educated, independent and capable of self-determination, but we rarely see this aspect of black history represented in museum displays and exhibitions."
Walls Are Talking spans the amusing (Shrigley), to the grossly disconcerting (Gober). More subtlety (and further shock value) is offered by Thomas Demand's Ivy/Efeu (2006), where heavy ivy patterning becomes on closer inspection, the reconstruction of a building. It is only on acknowledging this as Demand's reconstruction of a cell where a child was imprisoned and murdered by family members that the harrowing connotations of the imagery becomes clear. Woods furthers: "The dense ivy evokes the menace of fairytales such as Hansel and Gretel, but also suggests the covering-up of what goes on behind closed doors. It also plays with ideas of inside/outside, and made the architecture of the gallery an explicit feature of the exhibition." More adolescent horrors are illustrated in Timorous Beasties' Devil Damask Flock, where ornate Baroque works morph into monstrous demons leering about the room, or Boyce's Clapping, the menacing hands surrounding the onlooker with taunting jeers.
The most powerful potential of the wallpapers lies in their sheer repetition; to envelope the viewer the exhibition necessitates a focus on quantity, for the disconcerting, the celebratory and the macabre to attain their aim. Many of the wallpapers will be hung on large panels, while Ivy/Efeu will be hung throughout the main exhibition space and Michael Craig-Martin will cover more than 15 metres of wall space. It's an interesting study of the fluctuations of the medium, and enables the pieces to be addressed as works of art, avoiding their decorative connotations.
Walls Are Talking becomes a part of the ongoing democratization of art, the wallpapers have become the new form of limited edition print, with Sarah Lucas' Tits in Space available to purchase at the Whitechapel, and numerous artists embracing the availability of their work to a wider audience. "The rising profile of wallpaper in the domestic interior has very much been driven by the availability of bespoke or 'interactive' wallpapers which the consumer can commission or customize, thus adding the 'hand-crafted' element themselves." Woods hopes the exhibition will continue the discourse between art and design manifested in this commercialization and the V&A's recent Telling Tales: Fantasy and Fear in Contemporary Design. "This exhibition will demonstrate that the same kinds of cross-overs and relationships are taking place in the field of wallpaper, as well as other kinds of wall-coverings, and pattern design more generally. Indeed it will make it clear that this marriage of art and design has an established history, and artists' wallpaper may indeed be one of earliest manifestations of the 'Design Art' movement."
Rather than cashing in on a popularization of their work, most of the artists have continued in a clear vein from their ongoing preoccupations. While this may be more accessible to artists such as Niki de St Phalle and David Shrigley, Woods attests, "in almost every case it is possible to trace a natural progression or a connection between an artist's work in another medium (painting, sculpture, photography etc) and their wallpaper designs," with Hirst referencing butterflies as well as his Last Supper and New Religion prints. "Given that it is now commonplace for artists to work in a range of 2D and 3D formats, and in various media, employing specialist fabricators where necessary, it is not particularly surprising to find many of them designing, if not actually printing, their own wallpaper. The artists have embraced and exploited the domestic and/or decorative qualities of wallpaper." All the pieces stand alone as previous works, demonstrating the proliferation of wallpaper throughout the last 20 years, which is now sufficiently documented through the artists' works in context of the medium's own popular renaissance.
Walls Are Talking: Wallpaper, Art and Culture ran at The Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester from 6 February to 3 May 2010.
Ruby Beesley


text:
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subset: commoncrawl


text: There is an ironic juxtaposition at play in Ohio concerning the fundamental right of property owners to control the use of their land. Ohio land owners, as a group, are of two minds about this right, at least when it comes to land atop shale oil and gas. Many property owners believe they should have the right to use their land as they please — that is, to lease drilling rights to potential shale oil and gas developers, or to have their land included in a drilling unit. After all, it's their land. They should have the right to make that decision. But what if they want to exercise their right to control the use of their land in a different way? What if the landowner wants his land not to be used for shale oil and gas development? Would a landowner have the right to make that decision as well? Actually, not necessarily. Two relatively old legal mechanisms called "mandatory pooling" and "forced unitization" allow drilling operators to access minerals beneath private property, even when a landowner objects. Effective since 1965, Ohio's mandatory pooling and unitization laws effectively negate a landowner's ability to decide whether or not drilling will occur beneath his land. And Ohio is not alone. To date, at least 38 states have enacted some version of these laws. The specific rules vary somewhat by state, but the bottom line is the same. Drillers generally can get permission to extract minerals from beneath a defined area if leases to do so have been negotiated with neighboring landowners for a specified percentage of that land. The company then can harvest oil or gas from the entire area, despite the disagreement of a landowner within that area. Here's how it works in Ohio: Drilling units have to meet an acreage requirement, which with respect to vertical shale drilling is not usually a problem. When using horizontal drilling, however, they also need to establish a drilling unit of sufficient size and shape to effectively use the technology and meet industry standards. The technology requires substantial space to function efficiently, so industry best practices call for drilling units of 640 acres. That's a lot of land and operators cannot always get that much land under lease to create an appropriate drilling unit. But never fear. The developer does not actually need to secure rights to the entire unit. There may well be a landowner within that proposed unit who objects, as suggested above. But that's basically too bad. A group of landowners can apply to the Ohio Department of Natural Resources to have a prescribed area defined as a drilling unit if at least 65% of the tract owners within the proposed unit agree to participate. If ODNR agrees, a drilling unit is created, including the tract belonging to the dissenting landowner. The oil and gas developers then can drill horizontally beneath the entire drilling unit, in compliance with the applicable regulations and industry best practices, despite that tract owner's objection. To the objecting landowners, this sounds nuts. They firmly believe they should have the right to decide whether their land is included in a drilling unit, or not. So what's the rationale for allowing the operator to proceed without this landowner's consent? The answer lies in the correlative rights doctrine. Put simply, if the objecting landowner is allowed to prevail – because withholding his consent would render the area too small or misshapen to satisfy either state regulations or industry best practices — he could prevent the development of a parcel. The landowners who agreed to lease their land for oil and gas development, or include it in a drilling unit, would be effectively barred from developing the resources that lie beneath their land. One landowner, by refusing to participate, could control the rest of the landowners and essentially block the development of the underground resource. The correlative rights doctrine protects the rights of the agreeing landowners to develop the oil and gas resources beneath their land, despite their neighbor's objection. When applied in Ohio, the correlative rights doctrine outweighs the objecting landowner's right to deny the inclusion of his land within the defined parcel. Fundamentally, at play in Ohio is a tension between the property owner's right to make individual decisions regarding the use of privately owned land and the correlative rights of neighboring land owners who would like to develop the oil and gas resources beneath their land. Currently, Ohio law favors correlative rights, and most Ohio citizens are not even aware of the conflict. As Ohio develops its shale oil and gas industry, however, this tension may well be thrust into the limelight and it will be interesting to see where public opinion falls.


text:
Jonathan Sprinkle
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"A Safe Autonomous Vehicle Trajectory Domain Specific Modeling Language For Non-Expert Development", in Proceedings of the International Workshop on Domain-Specific Modeling (DSM 2016), Amsterdam, Netherlands, 2016, pp. 42–48.
, "WiP Abstract: Stabilizing traffic with a single autonomous vehicle", in 2016 ACM/IEEE 7th International Conference on Cyber-Physical Systems (ICCPS), 2016, pp. 1-1.
, "Adaptive Multifactor Routing with Constrained Data Sets", in Wireless Innovation Forum Conference on Wireless Communication Technologies and Software Defined Radio (WInnComm), San Diego, CA, 2015.
, "Computationally-Aware Control of Autonomous Vehicles: A Hybrid Model Predictive Control Approach", Autonomous Robots, pp. 503-517, 2015.
, "DSM 2015: Proceedings of the Workshop on Domain-Specific Modeling". ACM, New York, NY, USA, 2015.
, "Experience Report: Constraint-based Modeling of Autonomous Vehicle Trajectories", in Proceedings of the Workshop on Domain-Specific Modeling, New York, NY, USA, 2015, pp. 17–22.
, "A Hybrid Model Predictive Controller for Path Planning and Path Following", in International Conference on Cyber-Physical Systems (ICCPS), Seattle, WA, 2015, pp. 139-148.
, "Intersection Management via the Opportunistic Organization of Platoons by Route", in WinnComm 2016, 2015.
, "Workshop Preview of the 15th Workshop on Domain Specific Modeling (DSM 2015)", in Companion Proceedings of the 2015 ACM SIGPLAN International Conference on Systems, Programming, Languages and Applications: Software for Humanity, New York, NY, USA, 2015.
, "A Closed-loop Model-based Design Approach Based On Automatic Verification and Transformation", in The 14th Workshop on Domain-Specific Modeling, 2014, pp. 1-6.
, "A Data-Driven Linear Approximation of HVAC Utilization for Predictive Control and Optimization", IEEE Transactions on Control Systems Technology, vol. 99, p. 1, 2014.
, "Generating Model Transformations for Mending Dynamic Constraint Violations in Cyber Physical Systems", in The 14th Workshop on Domain-Specific Modeling, 2014, pp. 35-40.
, "A Heterogeneity Based Method to Identify Major Variability Components", in International Conference on Electronics, Communications, and Networks, Beijing, 2014.
, "A Hybrid Controller for Autonomous Vehicle Lane Changing with Epsilon Dragging", in American Control Conference, Portland, Oregon, 2014, pp. 5307-5312.
, "A Modular Framework to Enable Rapid Evaluation and Exploration of Energy Management Methods in Smart Home Platforms", Energy Systems, p. Online First, 2014.
, "Motorized mobility scooters: The Use of Training/Intervention and Technology for Improving Driving Skills in Aging Adults - A Mini-Review", Gerontology, vol. 60, pp. 357-365, 2014.
, "Efficient Reconfiguration Methods to Enable Rapid Deployment of Runtime Reconfigurable Systems", in Asilomar Conference on Signals, Systems and Computers, Pacific Grove, CA, 2013.
, "Generating a ROS/JAUS Bridge for an Autonomous Ground Vehicle", in Proceedings of the 2013 ACM workshop on Domain-specific modeling (DSM '13), Indianapolis, IN, 2013, pp. 13-18.
, "How You Can Learn to Stop Worrying and Love Reconfigurable Embedded Systems: A Tutorial", in Engineering of Computer Based Systems (ECBS), 2013 20th IEEE International Conference and Workshops on the, 2013, pp. 213-214.
, "Mobile Device Software: Model-Based Architectures and Examples", in Engineering of Computer Based Systems (ECBS), 2013 20th IEEE International Conference and Workshops on the, 2013, p. 215.
, "Model Based Development with the Skeleton Design Method", in 20th IEEE International Conference and Workshops on the Engineering of Computer Based Systems, 2013, pp. 12-19.
, "Model-Based Software Synthesis for Self-Reconfigurable Sensor Network in Water Monitoring", in Engineering of Computer Based Systems (ECBS), 2013 20th IEEE International Conference and Workshops on the, 2013, pp. 40-48.
, "Modeling Autonomous Systems", AIAA Journal of Aerospace Information Systems, vol. 10, pp. 396-413, 2013.
, "Runtime Hardware/Software Task Transition Scheduling for Runtime-Adaptable Embedded Systems", in International Conference on Field-Programmable Technology (ICFPT), 2013, pp. 342-345.
, "System Throughput Optimization and Runtime Communication Middleware Supporting Dynamic Software-Hardware Task Migration in Data Adaptable Embedded Systems", in Engineering of Computer Based Systems (ECBS), 2013 20th IEEE International Conference and Workshops on the, 2013, pp. 59-68.
, "The 12th Workshop on Domain-specific Modeling", in Proceedings of the 3rd Annual Conference on Systems, Programming, and Applications: Software for Humanity, New York, NY, USA, 2012.
, "Automated Software Generation and Hardware Coprocessor Synthesis for Data-Adaptable Reconfigurable Systems", in Engineering of Computer Based Systems (ECBS), 2012 IEEE 19th International Conference and Workshops on, 2012, pp. 15-23.
, "On the Extraction and Analysis of a Social Network with Partial Organizational Observation", in Proceedings of the 19th IEEE International Conference and Workshops on Engineering of Computer-Based Systems, 2012, pp. 249-256.
, "A generic in-place transformation-based approach to structured model co-evolution", Electronic Communications of the European Association of Software Science and Technology (EASST), vol. 42, pp. 1–13, 2012.
, "Identifying key components of variability using Energy based Control", in The 2012 Workshop on Variability Modeling and Characterization (VMC), 2012, p. 2 pages.


text:
One of the least imaginative, but always popular, stories for an editor to assign in years past was the annual Tax Day frenzy at the local post office.
Younger Two-Way readers may not know this, but before e-filing was the thing to do, many procrastinators would wait until the last possible moment to finish their federal tax returns. And many post offices would keep staff on hand until midnight so that those returns could be postmarked before April 15 turned into April 16.
"Post offices no longer stay open late on tax day," is one of this morning's typical headlines. As Michigan'sMacomb Daily writes:
"Local post offices used to take on a circus-like atmosphere on April 15 when many people would file their taxes up until a midnight deadline amid tax protestors and consultants on hand, often with some dressed up as Uncle Sam.
"But those days are gone.
"Since so many taxpayers now file electronically, most post offices no longer stay open late on tax day.
" 'We really stopped extending hours at our postal locations because there really isn't a need to any more,' said Elizabeth Najduch, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Postal Service's metropolitan Detroit region."
The New York Times' City Room blog laments that:
"Way back when, it was one of the city's hottest nightspots.
"There were lines out the door and frenzy within. Amid the excitement, deals were made and hearts were broken.
"We speak, of course, of the mad scene at the city's main post office on Eighth Avenue as the clock ticked toward midnight on Tax Day. ...
"Now with over 80 percent of taxpayers filing electronically, most of the magic is gone."
Even where post offices do seem to be trying to accommodate those who prefer paper and prefer to put things off until the last minute, things just aren't that wild anymore.
"Thirteen post offices in the Denver metro area will be accepting returns until midnight for last minute tax filers," says TheDenverChannel.com. But 12 of those locations "will have self-service kiosks for customers needing stamps. Only one post office will be staffed until midnight."
Now, though there no longer seems to be much news in the last-minute rush to file, some other annual stories still do seem to be getting attention on Tax Day:
-- "Free Cookies! Free Massages! Here Are All the Best Tax Day Freebies." (Time)
-- "Tax Day! Now Comes the Great Refund Rip-off." (The Wall Street Journal)
-- " 'Marriage penalty' takes a bite out of working families." (The Washington Post)
By the way, we have a question aimed at finding out just how well-prepared — taxwise — Two-Way readers really are. You have until midnight ET to respond. No extensions will be granted.
Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.


text:
New Looks Nike Dunk Low Red Panda Sneaker T-Shirt
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text:
void XtPopupSpringLoaded(popup_shell)
Widget popup_shell;
void XtCallbackNone(w, client_data, call_data)
Widget w;
XtPointer client_data;
XtPointer call_data;
void XtCallbackNonexclusive(w, client_data, call_data)
Widget w;
XtPointer client_data;
XtPointer call_data;
void XtCallbackExclusive(w, client_data, call_data)
Widget w;
XtPointer client_data;
XtPointer call_data;
void MenuPopup(shell_name)
String shell_name;
XtAddGrab(popup_shell, (grab_kind == XtGrabExclusive), False)
The XtPopupSpringLoaded function performs exactly as XtPopup except that it sets the shell spring_loaded field to True and always calls XtAddGrab with exclusive True and spring_loaded True.
The XtCallbackNone, XtCallbackNonexclusive, and XtCallbackExclusive functions call XtPopup with the shell specified by the client data argument and grab_kind set as the name specifies. XtCallbackNone, XtCallbackNonexclusive, and XtCallbackExclusive specify XtGrabNone, XtGrabNonexclusive, and XtGrabExclusive, respectively. Each function then sets the widget that executed the callback list to be insensitive by using XtSetSensitive. Using these functions in callbacks is not required. In particular, an application must provide customized code for callbacks that create pop-up shells dynamically or that must do more than desensitizing the button.
MenuPopup is known to the translation manager, which must perform special actions for spring-loaded pop-ups. Calls to MenuPopup in a translation specification are mapped into calls to a nonexported action procedure, and the translation manager fills in parameters based on the event specified on the left-hand side of a translation.
If MenuPopup is invoked on ButtonPress (possibly with modifiers), the translation manager pops up the shell with grab_kind set to XtGrabExclusive and spring_loaded set to True. If MenuPopup is invoked on EnterWindow (possibly with modifiers), the translation manager pops up the shell with grab_kind set to XtGrabNonexclusive and spring_loaded set to False. Otherwise, the translation manager generates an error. When the widget is popped up, the following actions occur:
XtAddGrab(popup_shell, (grab_kind == XtGrabExclusive), spring_loaded)
(Note that these actions are the same as those for XtPopup.) MenuPopup tries to find the shell by searching the widget tree starting at the parent of the widget in which it is invoked. If it finds a shell with the specified name in the pop-up children of that parent, it pops up the shell with the appropriate parameters. Otherwise, it moves up the parent chain as needed. If MenuPopup gets to the application widget and cannot find a matching shell, it generates an error.


text:
61 Kane StreetWest Hartford, CT 06119Distance mi
- Curbside Pickup
- Dine-In
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IHOP® Restaurant Locations in West Hartford, CT | Breakfast, Lunch & Dinner - Pancakes 24/7
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text:
WARSAW, POLAND– The following statement on Equality of Opportunity for Women and Men was delivered by the United States at the Human Dimension Implementation Meeting of the Organization for Security and Cooperation currently being held in Warsaw, Poland:
Equality of Opportunity for Women and Men
Statement Delivered by Nicole Sobotka
U.S. Delegation to the
OSCE Human Dimension Implementation Meeting
Equality of opportunity is denied to women when they are discriminated against in access to education and economic opportunities, when police fail to provide them with equal protection against physical assault, when they are trafficked into slavery-like exploitation, when they face sexual assaults at the hands of combatants, and, above all, when their government fails to provide them with remedies against these abuses. The acts enumerated are illustrative and by no means exhaustive. OSCE members have already agreed to the importance of equality between men and women in the Helsinki Final Act and other OSCE documents and we encourage the full and complete fulfillment of the Final Act's mandate that "[t]he participating States will respect human rights and fundamental freedoms . . . for all without distinction as to race, sex, language or religion." A country's responsibility under international law for acting to counter human rights violations upon its territory applies equally when those rights are asserted by women.
Despite the commitment of OSCE states in the Charter for European Security to "undertake measures to . . . end violence against women," in some cases agents of the state continue to perpetrate violence against women. Women in conflict settings have suffered brutal sexual assaults, including rape, at the hands of combatants. The United States welcomed the judgment of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia earlier this year when it convicted three men of rape and sexual enslavement against Bosnian women in Foca. This judgment made clear that rape and sexual enslavement of women are crimes against humanity in any situation. The United States has noted previously with grave concern reports of sexual violence against women in Chechnya as well as acts of sexual violence against women committed during the conflict in Kosovo. The United States urges Russian and Yugoslav authorities to investigate these serious charges thoroughly and prosecute those responsible.
In some instances, the perpetrators of violence against women are private actors rather than agents of the state. The U.S. Delegation welcomed the meeting on violence against women convened earlier this year by the OSCE's Informal Group on Equality of Opportunity for Women and Men. The meeting effectively raised awareness among OSCE delegations of the scope and severity of the problem of violence against women, especially domestic violence. The clear message that emerged was that worldwide, countless women are not safe from violence—not even in their own homes.
Violence against women is a problem in every country and the statistics on domestic abuse in OSCE countries are shocking. Regrettably, the United States reports that as many as one quarter to one-third of American women may have been physically or sexually abused at some point in their lives; and on average more than three women are murdered by their husbands in the U.S. each day. Fortunately, in the last ten years the U.S. federal and state governments have implemented additional laws that provide for police training on proper response to domestic violence and provide the necessary support services to victims and abusers. The implementation of these laws has increased our prosecution rates and has begun to break the cycle of violence. Russian government statistics indicated that some 14,000 women died in 1997 in Russia due to domestic violence. In Hungary, NGOs estimate that 150 women die each year at the hands of their husbands or boyfriends. In Moldova, the Ministry of Internal Affairs reported 382 cases of spousal abuse last year—72 of which ended in murder.
Unfortunately there is too often unwillingness on the part of the competent authorities to intervene in situations of ongoing violence in a home, the victims of which are predominantly women. Too often there is an unwillingness to investigate and prosecute perpetrators under relevant provisions of the criminal code. Police in many countries say they lack financial and human resources to respond to domestic violence, but women tell a different story of police who won't act to aid a victim of domestic abuse "until blood is spilled." Some police officers believe that they are unauthorized, be it by law or culture, to intervene in domestic matters. It is imperative, therefore, to train police that physical abuse is never a private affair and can never be justified. It is a crime, regardless of the sex or marital status of the victim. The State must protect its citizens from such abuse and provide remedies for its victims, or be considered complicit in those actions. The U.S. Delegation calls on OSCE participating States to afford the issue of domestic violence a higher priority on the domestic policy agenda and to undertake meaningful steps, including legal reforms, if necessary, to end this abuse against women.
Human rights violations against women also take the form of discrimination on the basis of sex. In the 1991 Moscow Document, the OSCE participating States committed to "encourage measures effectively to ensure full economic opportunity for women, including non-discriminatory employment policies and practices." Despite this commitment, some women in the OSCE region do not enjoy full and equal economic opportunities, facing invasive personal questions in job interviews that have no bearing on their skills related to the job for which they applied. In Ukraine and Poland, to name but two examples, some job advertisements specify that men only need apply. Moreover, women often lack effective legal tools to sanction employers who use such discriminatory tactics.
Many states have done little to rectify human rights violations against women despite constitutional assertions of equality for all their citizens. The United States urges all OSCE participating States that have not already done so to enact anti-discrimination laws that enable women, and other targets of discrimination, to pursue an adequate and effective remedy against such discrimination. The United States further urges those states with anti-discrimination laws on the books to implement them faithfully.


text:
Monday, August 3, 2009
Pulp Fantasy Library: The Shadow of the Torturer
For that reason, I feel comparatively little shame in dubbing Gene Wolf's 1980 novel The Shadow of the Torturer a pulp fantasy. This book and its three sequels tell the story of Severian, an apprentice Seeker of Truth and Penitence, which is to say, a torturer. Unfortunately, Severian chooses to be merciful to one of his charges, allowing her to commit suicide rather than suffer, thereby breaking the oath to his fellow Seekers. Rather than being punished with death for his oath-breaking as he expected, Severian is instead sent away to a far-off city to serve as its executioner, precipitating the beginning of the protagonist's many travels and his growth and development into one of the most interest characters in recent literature.
The Shadow of the Torturer is an extremely difficult book to characterize. It definitely occupies a similar place as Jack Vance's Dying Earth novels, taking place in a world so far in the future as to be beyond time. Like Vance, Wolfe effectively uses language to convey the decadent antiquity of his setting, Urth. Through a combination of English archaisms, Latinate neologisms, and words purely of his own invention, the text can sometimes prove hard going. Additionally, Wolfe maintains the fiction that the novel is in fact a mere translation from "a language that has not yet achieved existence," which, when combined with the unreliability of Severian's first person account of his activities, creates further levels of complexity and nuance.
I read this book long ago and dismissed it out of hand, mostly because I found it impenetrable. Fortunately for me, I read some articles about Wolfe that convinced me I'd missed out on a classic of science fiction and fantasy. I then took my time and re-read The Shadow of the Torturer and very soon thereafter made my way through the rest of the The Book of the New Sun series, very much enjoying it. There's a great deal going on in these books, on both a dramatic and literary level, and it's an amazing thing to behold. Wolfe's talents as a writer are unique; I can think of no other fantasy/science fiction author else who manages to achieve what he does in this series of books.
Because of publication date, there's no question that The Shadow of the Torturer exercised no influence over the development of D&D or AD&D. Even if it had been published earlier, I'm not sure what kind of influence it could have had. Though there are certainly lots of things within it, such as Severian's sword Terminus Est, that I can easily see some gamers swiping for use in their campaigns, doing so strikes me as far more crass than any of OD&D's borrowings from Tolkien, the author whose work strikes me as closest to that of Wolfe and even his closeness is limited at best. Nevertheless, I highly recommend Wolfe's work. It is not an easy read by any means, but it does repay the time and energy spent in working through it, making him one of the few authors I've ever given a second chance.
30 comments:
Wow! A blast from the Past!
I may have read waaaay back in Junior High. Didn't finish it, though. If it's the same book, then the author is weak by being squeamish about the torture and violence and using abstract "draining magics" in place of dealing with the violence, the victims and suffering. Perhaps this is because the year before we had to read The Legend of Thyl Eulenspiegel and Lamme Goedzak (Charles De Coster Novel, not the folk tales), and that one was about the War of Dutch Independence, The Protestant Reformation, and so the spanish inquisition figures prominently in it. So, I was spoiled for the Torurer's Apprentice.
Come to think of it. The Coster story deals with Thyl, whose father burns at the stake falsely accused, and Thyl gets banihed, and wanders the conquered territories as a jester taking on the church and the establishment.Through a combination of English archaisms, Latinate neologisms, and words of purely of his own invention
Specifically Spanish words too as the book is set in a future South America as far as I can tell from various clues.
One of my favourite of his clues leads to the realisation he is describing Armstrong on the moon at some point.
Im glad to see you mention Wolfe. His ability with the English language sets him apart from most genre writers though many readers are not so interested in language.- AnonymousAugust 3, 2009 at 11:21 AM
I also had a lot of trouble with it the first time I tried to read it, back in high school I think. Not too long ago I picked up the two omnibus editions collecting the stories and I'm glad I did.
Have you read his Book of the Long Sun series? It's set in a generational ship with many of the same trappings. FWIW Gary never read these books (and it'd be an interesting alternate history if he had, and they'd influenced his work on AD&D, Dangerous Journeys, etc.). His first/only exposure to Gene Wolfe came very late in his life when someone at ENWorld (Col. Hardisson?) recommended Wolfe's The Knight and The Wizard to him and he read them -- he very much liked and strongly recommended the former, but claimed he found the latter hard to get through. When asked about his favorite post-70s fantasy authors for the last time in early 2008 he responded with the usual suspects (Cook's "Black Company," Pratchett's "Discworld," Anthony's "Split Infinity") and added something to the effect of "and to a slightly lesser extent, Gene Wolfe."
ReplyDeleteWolfe's "The Book of the New Sun" is one of my all-time favourites. Wolfe created a genuinely original world in those novels.
A friend of mine who is a Wolfe fanatic leant me a book entitled "Lexicon of Urth" (or something like that), which made the novels *much* more comprehensible during a second read. Tracking that book down, or the GURPS book on Urth, might help one appreciate just how complex and unique Wolfe's creations is."The Castle of the Otter" is another great companion book to the New Sun - it's a collection of essays Wolfe wrote about the series. I think that's where I read that one of the impetuses for the character of Severian was that Wolfe was disappointed that none of his characters were being chosen as costumes at SF convention masquerades.
ReplyDeleteVance is one of those authours who's works I adore, even when i mist concede that I can't figure out what the hell he's talking about. Although I sort of followed the New Sun, to this day i still can't figure out what the hell transpired in the Book of the Long Sun.
But even as I'm totally bewildered, he's just a great writer.
@Kent--what makes you think the setting was South America (other than the Catholicism)?Wolfe was also the lead Engineer on the Pringles Potato crisp 'saddle' design
hah! I've often wondered whether some math nerd arrived at the Pringle as an attempt to cram non-Euclidean flavour into a humble chip. Thanks for clearing that up for me.
If he'd worked for Thomas' he could have had a go at the poppyseed problem._The Urth of the New Sun_ is essentially _TDE_ rewritten by someone who had read a WHOLE LOT of Borges, and also wanted to inculcate you into a freaky Neoplatonic quasi-Catholicism.
I dig it. LOTS.
There was actually a GURPS supplement for it, which was pretty damn good. The one game I played set on Urth was an interesting little dungeon crawl with some memorable NPCS (one played by my actor and director friend Joseph "Chepe" Lockett, and one by designer of the Callahan's Crosstime Saloon (computer) adventure game (and others) Josh Mandel)."Through a combination of English archaisms, Latinate neologisms, and words purely of his own invention..."
Inspired by some of the work Ms Timeshadows has been doing recently, I picked up my ancient copy of "Shadow of the Torturer" just the other day....
Anyway, I'm pretty sure that Wolfe has always said that their were NO made-up words contained in the series - I have been looking up the ones with which I am not familiar as I go and have found all of them so far.
Part of the beauty of Wolfe's writing though is that you don't actually need to understand the exact meaning of the words as he uses them. They act as a wonderfully subtle colouring device that builds layer upon layer of atmosphere and texture. the effect of the books is like a series of oil paintings or collages.
That said though, they are a great story. And light years ahead of the sclerotic second rate Tolkien (and Ayn Rand) pastiches that have clogged the genre...I can't remember where I found this, but I've definitely read that the Urth books began as a direct response to Vance. The Book of Gold that the Master Librarian describes to Severian is actually supposed to be an ancient copy of Tales from the Dying Earth.
I wish I could remember where I saw this, but it was from what I took to be a 'reputable source' (for whatever that's worth...).James, do you mean to say that you've only read the first book in the series?
Read on! It gets heaps better... : )
@ Matthew, I think it's pretty obvious (for me anyway) that the great river he mentions, in a great southern continent is the Amazon. It's been a while since I re-read it though.
For the Tolkein fans, in an interview with Wolfe I read somewhere, he says that he loves LotR and when he got the first editions (when they came out) he wanted to take his time with them knowing it would be great, reading a chapter a night to savour the writing fully - or something along those lines.
I have to admit the Knight/Wizard novels didn't quite do it for me...
I highly recommend Peace and Devil in a Forest, esp. the latter if you're after a more mediaeval style fantasy.I have loved this series for years and years. Also, someone else mentioned the Long Sun series, which is itself followed by the Short Sun series when the generation ship finally arrives at its destination. These books are not only related thematically, but are actually set in the same world. The generation ship was actually launched by Typhon, the two-headed king that Severian wakes up and fights.
@Adam Thorton, Wolfe is very, very Catholic. The most unapallagetic Catholic writer that I think I know of (even more so than Walter M. Miller, Jr.), and more particularly, the Sun Series is Christian Kabbalah--implicitly in the first four books (as well as the follow up series), and very, very explicitly in the coda to the original-The Urth of the New Sun.
James--I seriously recommend following up this series with its coda, The Urth of the New Sun, as well as the follow up series, The Long Sun and the Short Sun books. Wikipedia tells me also that The Fifth Head of Cerberus is in the same universe, prior to the events described in any of the above books.
I hope all of that makes sense. . .A few clarifications:
The "lexicon" book referred to by another poster is Lexicon Urthus.
The Book of the New Sun is definitely set in South America. (The capybaras are strong evidence, among other things.)
And there are no "neologisms" in the book -- Wolfe has said that part of his inspiration was a desire to write a fantasy novel with no made-up words. Every word in the books can be found in a sufficiently unabridged dictionary.
(Oh, and like 'most everyone else I love and respect Gary Gygax, but I have to wonder about anyone who prefers Piers Anthony to Gene Wolfe...)


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"After nearly half a century of research in planetary and climate science for NASA, James E. Hansen is retiring on Wednesday to pursue his passion for climate activism without the hindrances that come with government employment," The New York Times' Dot Earth blog writes.
As Morning Edition reported in 2009, Hansen "first warned Congress about global warming in 1988." Over time, he became more outspoken and active:
"After spending three or four years interacting with the Bush administration, I realized they were not taking any actions to deal with climate change," he told NPR in '09. "So, I decided to give one talk, and then it snowballed into another talk and eventually to even protesting and getting arrested."
He became, as The Washington Post says, "NASA's most famous climate scientist." It rounds up some of the "more notable moments of his scientific career," from the 1988 testimony that was "one of the first and clearest public statements on global warming" to his arrest in February of this year at a protest outside the White House. He was among those objecting to the proposed Keystone XL Pipeline that would carry crude oil from Canada to the U.S. Gulf Coast.
"Perhaps the biggest fight of Dr. Hansen's career broke out in late 2005, when a young political appointee in the administration of George W. Bush began exercising control over Dr. Hansen's statements and his access to journalists. Dr. Hansen took the fight public and the administration backed down."
Now 72, Hansen is leaving NASA after 46 years. He tells the Post he wants to "spend full time on science, drawing attention to the implications for young people, and making clear what science says needs to be done."
Copyright 2020 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.


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Review: Little Women (no spoilers) - The Hot Blog
Box Office First Look - The Hot Blog
Why You Should Be Afraid Of The End Of The Paramount Decree - The Hot Blog
It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, "Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas" — some novel, you know?
So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.
And so the three projects were "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep," "Naked Lunch" and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.
There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn't find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn't even know where he was. And so I gave up.
I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled "hi" — and I'd forgot who he was.
So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey's urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, "Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you," and I said "No, fuck him," and keep walking.
But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, "Wait, he's in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick." I said, "You know a guy named—" "Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?"
My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn't get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can't get a writer, then you write."
~ Hampton Fancher
"That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I'm on the phone with you now, after all that's been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn't seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There's not a case of that. He wasn't using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I'm not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, "You know, it's not this, it's that"? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that's what it lacked. That's what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.
~ David Simon


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Project Members
- Susanne Maria Michaelis
- Martin Haspelmath
- Magnus Huber (University of Gießen)
- Philippe Maurer (University of Zurich)
- Bradley Taylor
- Robert Forkel
Atlas of Pidgin and Creole Language Structures (APiCS)
APiCS (The atlas of pidgin and creole language structures) has gathered comparable synchronic data on the grammatical and lexical structures of a large number of pidgin and creole languages. It has been published in four volumes (September 2013):
- Michaelis, Susanne Maria, Maurer, Philippe, Haspelmath, Martin & Huber, Magnus (eds.). The atlas of pidgin and creole language structures. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- Michaelis, Susanne Maria, Maurer, Philippe, Haspelmath, Martin & Huber, Magnus (eds.). The survey of pidgin and creole languages, Volumes 1-3. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
In the first volume, the Atlas volume, the data are presented in the form of maps. The other three survey volumes contain sociohistorical and grammatical surveys of each language.
The underlying database to the project, APiCS Online has been published as a freely available online version with the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology (November 2013).
Michaelis, Susanne Maria, Maurer, Philippe, Haspelmath, Martin & Huber, Magnus (eds.). The Atlas of Pidgin and Creole Language Structures Online. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. Online available.
The project covers 76 pidgin and creole languages. The language set contains not only the most widely studied Atlantic and Indian Ocean creoles, but also less well known pidgins and creoles from Africa, South Asia, Southeast Asia, Melanesia and Australia, including some extinct varieties, as well as a few mixed languages.
The database consists of 130 structural features which are drawn from all areas of grammar: phonology, morphology, syntax and lexicon. A feature has between two and nine values, shown on the maps by different colours and shapes of the language symbols. APiCS Online includes map display and various filtering and search functions, allowing users to address various research questions. Furthermore, APiCS Online includes sound files of every language, enabling the users to listen to a short text that is glossed and translated. APiCS Online also contains references for each datapoint, as well as a large number of fully glossed examples, often from naturally occurring texts. There is also additional information on phonological segments and sociolinguistic features. (The Atlas book in addition contains text chapters for each of the 130 features, written by the editors, as in WALS. These text chapters are not available online). The APiCS Online application was developed by Robert Forkel as part of the CLLD project.
Each language is the responsibility of a single author or a team of authors, which were requested to fill out a questionnaire for the 130 structural features and to write a sociohistorical and grammatical survey article for their language.
The presentation of the data in map form has two goals. On the one hand, maps are more easily accessible to students and lay persons who have a general interest in contact languages, but who would be less likely to pay attention to data presented as tables with numbers. On the other hand, the properties of contact languages are often dependent on their geographical distribution, as similar contact languages are often spoken next to each other. Since pidgins and creoles are not distributed equally around the world, and because some areas, such as the Caribbean, have a high density of creoles, the main world map of each feature will be accompanied by blow-up maps showing certain areas in detail.
The three survey volumes contain concise prose descriptions of the sociohistorical context of each language, as well as synchronic grammatical surveys highlighting the major distinguishing features.
The four-volume publication (plus APiCS Online) is a comprehensive and authoritative reference work on pidgin and creole language structures bringing together the expertise of dozens of specialists from around the world. APiCS thus serves as an invaluable tool for teaching and research, making systematic data on these languages readily available for a wide range of research questions (theories of creolization, uniformity and diversity of creoles, general properties of language contact, typological characteristics of contact languages).
APiCS was inspired by the World Atlas of Language Structures (WALS), which shows the geographical distribution of 142 features in an average of 400 languages world-wide. Pidgins and creoles were not completely excluded from WALS, but since the primary goal was to present the precolonial linguistic areas, pidgins and creoles were backgrounded. APiCS contains 48 features on which information is also available in WALS, so that creoles and pidgins can readily be compared with their substrate and superstrate languages, as well as with the world's languages in general. However, APiCS does not copy WALS blindly, but adds many features that did not make it into WALS but are important for contact languages. Other features that appear in WALS have been modified to suit the needs of the APiCS users.


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For more than two centuries the Potomac has flowed as Alexandrias lifeblood, carrying with it traders, sailors, soldiers, gamblers and prostitutes and for a time transforming the city into a major port of call.
The bustling fisheries, wharfs and factories have long since disappeared, giving way to the shops and restaurants of King Street, waterfront housing developments and aging warehouses. For about two years, city officials and residents have gone back and forth on what the waterfront of the future will look like, a roiling debate over just three miles of Alexandria.
Decades before this latest debate began another Alexandrian, Frederick Tilp, looked ahead to the future of the waterway with apprehension. After a lifetime spent in and around the river, Tilp penned This Was Potomac River in 1978, a recounting of the river since its settlement by Europeans.
Alexandria, Tilp writes, is located upon the most perfect site of any town on the East Coast. A major American Indian trade route ran through what would become the city and Europeans bartered with the indigenous population on the site as early as 1619, according to Tilp.
Alexandrias rise as a port began long before the citys founding in 1749. Decades earlier, tobaccos rise as Virginias cash crop necessitated the building of a warehouse at the foot of Oronoco Street. By the 1770s, ocean-going vessels from across the western hemisphere regularly docked in Alexandria. The city rivaled Boston and New York as one of the New Worlds busiest ports.
The port of Alexandria has seldom less than twenty-three square-rigged vessels in it and often ten more, Lund Washington wrote to George Washington, describing the harbor during that period.
But the good times didnt last. Devastating fires, outbreaks of disease, the Civil War and competition with Baltimore to the north conspired in the decline of the port city.
Around the dawn of the 20th century, the waterfront underwent a rebirth as an industrial port. Shipyards sprung up, including the Agnew Yard and the Virginia Shipbuilding Corporation; the Naval Torpedo Factory began manufacturing weapons of war; and the Ford Motor Company arrived on the citys shores in 1932.
Gamblers and prostitutes flooded the river as well, anchoring floating casinos and whorehouses from Jones Point in the south to Rosslyn in the north.
But as Tilp released his account of the rivers history, the waterfront had again fallen on hard times. The last water-related business in operation on Alexandrias shoreline was the Robinson Terminal, Tilp wrote.
Lower King Street and the waterfront were a far cry from the tourist-logged shops, restaurants and parks today, recalls Pam Cressey, a city archeologist. Founders Park was a scraggly patch of land where grass struggled to grow, she said, and empty lots dotted with weeds and abandoned cars blighted the landscape.
Marian Van Landingham, credited with the revitalization of the Torpedo Factory as an art center, remembers those days well.
The docks behind the Torpedo Factory were rotting down, she said. The site north of the Torpedo Factory where Founders Park is was just a field with tall, scraggly grass on it.
There was no access to the water, cyclone fencing separated residents from the river, she said. The only points of interest on Union Street were a clothing store and the Seaport Inn, where the Starbucks is today, according to Van Landingham.
That changed under Mayor Charles E. Beatley. After taking the city council on a trip to Europe to see how cities across the Atlantic treated their waterfronts officials created Founders Park and built walking trails along the shoreline.
Around the same time, Van Landingham was experimenting with turning the Torpedo Factory into a home for artists. By turning the munitions plant into a destination, new life came to the waterfront, she said.
We began to attract [visitors] and actually the presence of the factory brought tourists in and more shops began to show up on lower King Street, Van Landingham said. Its no question the factory helped attract crowds who helped bring in the shops.
As Van Landingham refurbished the Torpedo Factory, Tilp was petitioning the city to turn the waterfront into an arboretum of native trees. Its a vision current resident Al Kalvaitis hopes city officials will consider as they plan the waterfronts future.
Kalvaitis, a disciple of Tilp of sorts, has taken up the same call. He travels the shore on foot or by bicycle daily and views the citys plan for a revitalized waterfront, including hotels, with weary eyes. Theres a balance to be struck between the waterfront as a commercial area and the green space Tilp argued for years ago, he said.
I see [the Potomac] all four seasons and its just a wonderful experience. Id hate to have it blocked off by extensive over-commercialization, Kalvaitis said. Its a place [where] you cant avoid history and I think sometimes we ignore history because weve got so much going on in the present.


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How Many Wisdom Teeth Do You Have?
Wisdom tooth removal has become somewhat of a rite of passage – puffy-cheeked post-extraction photos, a diet of Jell-O and mashed potatoes. But not everyone gets their wisdom teeth taken out. In fact, not everyone has wisdom teeth at all! Have you ever wondered why some people have four wisdom teeth while others have fewer or even none? We've got the facts behind how many wisdom teeth people have and why!
Why do we have wisdom teeth?
Third molars, or wisdom teeth, were once very useful to our ancestors. Because prehistoric man's diet of hard-to-chew plants and uncooked meat required powerful chewing muscles, our ancestors' jaws were large enough to fit 32 teeth, not just 28. Now that humans have evolved a better means of chewing and digesting our food, we no longer have large jaws, so we simply have no need or no room for wisdom teeth. Many scientists believe humans are currently evolving third molar hypodontia, or the lack of wisdom teeth, due to their inability to develop in the first place.
How many people have wisdom teeth?
About 20-25% of the human population is born with 1 to 3 wisdom teeth, and 35% is born without any wisdom teeth at all.
Why do some people have wisdom teeth and some don't?
There are a few reasons why scientists believe that not everyone develops wisdom teeth:
- Genetics: Some evidence suggests that a genetic mutation occurred hundreds of thousands of years ago, causing some people to be born without wisdom teeth.
- Environment: Percentages of people who develop wisdom teeth varies from culture to culture. Certain ethnic groups are known for low percentages of wisdom teeth development, while others are known for high percentages. Environmental factors during dental development are also a possible explanation.
Will wisdom teeth become obsolete?
With the number of people lacking wisdom teeth steadily growing, it's possible that we could someday completely evolve to not develop wisdom teeth at all. Scientists have experimented with chemically preventing the development of wisdom teeth. Researchers have found that children ages 2-6 that are given local anesthesia for dental work have a higher chance of not developing wisdom teeth later on. Maybe in the future, simple injections at a young age will keep all of us from having to go through wisdom tooth extraction!
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The intractable issues that led to the teachers' strike in Chicago are being argued about in states and school districts across the country.
The past decade has been a time of enormous ferment in education policy, with numerous new ideas and approaches being promoted by everyone from conservative think tanks to the well-heeled Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to Obama administration officials.
The administration's $4 billion Race to the Top grant program, part of the 2009 stimulus law, encouraged states to overhaul teacher evaluation systems, promote charter schools and make better use of standardized testing, which itself has been a federal priority over the past decade.
All of those ideas have become sticking points in various states and districts. Here's what some of the debate is about:
Teacher Evaluation
It's an innocuous-seeming term, but the phrase has turned into fighting words.
Practically everyone in education agrees that the old system of monitoring teacher quality — which largely consisted of having the principal drop by and observe the classroom for an hour or so — turns out to be pretty useless, with virtually all teachers rated as at least "satisfactory."
"Teacher evaluations are broken," says Amber Winkler, vice president of research at the Fordham Institute, a conservative education policy think tank.
The problem is that there's not nearly the same kind of agreement about what would work better and be fair to teachers. Bill Gates, the software billionaire whose foundation is funding many education policy experiments, summed up the problem during a July speech to the Education Commission of the States: "Developing a great teacher improvement system is truly difficult, because there are no models."
One big question is whether evaluation systems should be used primarily to sort teachers — and help get bad ones out of the classroom — or as a tool that offers continual feedback and helps teachers to improve their methods.
"What we really believe in is effective evaluation," says Dennis Van Roekel, president of the National Education Association, the nation's largest teachers union. "It would be a system that helps you grow every single day."
Use Of Standardized Tests
The argument in Chicago, as elsewhere, is largely about how much weight to give standardized test scores in evaluating teacher effectiveness.
Annual standardized tests in language and math were mandated for grades three through eight by the 2002 No Child Left Behind Law to chart student progress. Using such tests to evaluate teachers is a priority of the Race to the Top program.
The general public and most politicians have come to believe that looking at whether student scores in reading or math are going up is a fair gauge of whether teachers are doing a good job. Still, teachers argue that the scores can be misleading, not taking into account differences in students' socioeconomic backgrounds, for instance. And the way standardized tests are paced during the school year often means teachers are being judged based on half a year's instruction offered by students' teachers the previous term.
Different tests also can lead to different results — different teachers will measure better on certain types of standardized tests taken by the same groups of students, says Rick Ginsberg, dean of the University of Kansas education school. "These test measures are good at looking at large groups but aren't good at looking at individuals," he says.
Most school districts aren't looking to tests alone. Instead, they're taking into account ratings from parents, peers, principals and students. Chicago's public schools have proposed using test scores for 25 percent of a teacher's evaluation, rising to 40 percent over five years.
"The places that have used value-added measures as part of the evaluation of the performance of teachers all take into account differences among kids, the achievement levels for students entering into the classroom," says Eric Hanushek, a senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution.
Performance Pay
There's no agreement about whether performance pay for teachers would help students. In fact, there's not even agreement about what to call it, with terms such as "merit pay" and "differential pay" also part of the mix.
No other profession determines salaries the way education does, says Winkler of the Fordham Institute. In most districts, two teachers who have the same number of years of experience and the same level of education will be paid exactly the same.
"It doesn't take into account teacher effectiveness, which merit pay has the potential to do, so they're not treated as [interchangeable] widgets," Winkler says.
Teachers unions cast doubt on whether offering performance bonuses to teachers will improve education, citing, for example, a 2010 Vanderbilt University study that found that merit pay alone is not enough to drive up test scores.
The unions were adamantly opposed to merit pay a decade ago, but they're now more open to the idea — so long as new compensation systems are designed in ways they deem fair. One model they like to point to is Baltimore, which adopted a new contract last year.
The contract eliminated the usual "step increases," automatic raises based on education level and seniority. Instead, teachers who meet certain benchmarks will move up the pay scale at a faster rate than their peers.
"The school district and the teachers agree on skills or performance levels that are noteworthy, and if you show these kinds of performances or skills, you move up the ladder," says Rob Weil, an official with the American Federation of Teachers.
Job Security
Teachers everywhere are nervous about their jobs, mostly because of budget concerns. More than 300,000 teachers have been laid off since 2009, according to the Obama administration.
Some union leaders note that many new teachers are leaving the profession because of uncertainty caused not just by widespread layoffs but by changes in tenure rules in various jurisdictions that have left their career development much less certain.
Teachers unions themselves have been losing members because of the layoffs and are threatened by the rapid growth of charter schools — which are publicly funded but don't operate under union contracts or regular district rules. In Chicago, charters haven't specifically been a strike issue, but Mayor Rahm Emanuel wants to encourage their use. Although charter schools didn't exist 20 years ago, there are now more than 5,000 of them nationwide.
A number of big-city school districts are losing students, owing both to charters and to declining population. With the loss of students comes a loss of teachers. Rehiring laid-off teachers is among the central issues in the Chicago strike and also resonates elsewhere.
Current policy in Chicago is that teachers who are dismissed aren't necessarily hired back. The union wants principals who are hiring to give right of first refusal to laid-off teachers.
That wouldn't allow principals enough flexibility in making their hiring decisions, says Winkler, because it puts a premium on seniority above everything else.
Both Randi Weingarten, who is president of the American Federation of Teachers, and Karen Lewis, the president of the Chicago Teachers Union (which is an AFT affiliate), have complained this week that the school district in Chicago has "disrespected" its teachers.
While not a technical policy term, the concept is one that has become important in education labor disputes.
Teachers complain about the "deprofessionalization" of education and say they are not being treated as responsible professionals. Unions say their members are being scapegoated for everything from poor student performance to ballooning budget and pension problems.
"The last two years have been hard for people who chose education as a profession," says Van Roekel, the NEA president. "There's a lot of blame and finger-pointing, as if the horrible economic crisis we're in is somehow the fault of people who are in the classroom."
But the unions have been too slow to adapt to changing circumstances, in terms of their resistance both to new education policy ideas and to the reality of tightening school budgets, says Hanushek, the Hoover Institution scholar. "Unions have to stop saying they want to keep what they've always had," he says.
A poll last year suggested far more Americans believe unionization of the teaching profession has hurt public instruction (47 percent) than has helped it (26 percent).
The same survey found that 79 percent give their own local schools a grade of A or B, but only 17 percent believe public schools nationwide deserve the same grade.
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