text:
Sully on Kurtz's Smears
As much as it pains me to say it, Andrew Sullivan concurs with me on Howie Kurtz's deliberate dishonesty. And he says it much better than I did.
And then there's the second straw man. No one is saying Sarah Palin should be viewed as an accomplice to murder. Many are merely saying that her recklessly violent and inflammatory rhetoric has poisoned the discourse and has long run the risk of empowering the deranged. We are saying it's about time someone took responsibility for this kind of rhetorical extremism, because it can and has led to violence and murder.
The facts, moreover, are these: Palin singles out Giffords as a "target" for attack, illustrated by cross-hairs in gun sights, and urges supporters to "reload". This is pointed out at the time and Giffords herself worries that it took things over the edge. Palin had a chance to apologize or retract or soften the rhetoric. She did nothing of the kind. An individual subsequently guns Giffords down. What more, in many relevant respects, do we need to know than this? Any humane person who had published the kind of material Palin published and used the langage she did would surely now regret it.
Kurtz is just another one of the scumbag wingnuts who has seized on a political assassination from a position of safety to claim victim status for himself and his political allies. And who is rewarded for doing so.


text:
Screen Printing Plastisol Ink
Multi-Tech manufacturers the best Screen Printing Plastisol Inks for textile applications. Plastisol inks, or sometimes referred to as t-shirt paint, adds color to the garment. These textile inks have excellent opacity and are press-ready which makes them ideal for either hand or automatic textile screen printing. We also supply glitter ink, ink additives, and ink remover. Not sure what color you need? Or help figuring ink curing times? Give us a call at 314-382-9300! We make custom ink colors.
White Plastisol
Select the White Plastisol Ink
Best for Your Application
Dynamic Ink Ready-for-Use
New formulated Screen Printing T-shirt Ink
PolySport Polyester Ink
Print on polyester garments and sports wear easier with PolySport
Multi-Choice Standard Colors
General Purpose, Plastisol Textile Ink. Great for printing on t-shirts and other textile garments.
Multi-Choice Opaque Colors
Multi-Choice Opaque Plastisol Ink
Mixing Plastisol Inks
Soft-hand, Puff Concentrate, Athletic Additive,Phosphorescent & Thinners,
LO-Bleed Curable Reducer
Bases, Clear & Additives
Soft-hand, Puff Concentrate, Athletic Additive,Phosphorescent & Thinners,
LO-Bleed Curable Reducer
Nylon Mesh & Athletic Ink Colors
Nylon Mesh & Athletic Ink Colors
Nylon Jacket Colors
Nylon Jacket Ink Color
Optilux Reflective Plastisol Ink
Optilux Reflective Plastisol Ink
Process Colors
Multi-Tech Process Colors
Intense Process Colors
Multi-Tech Intense Process Colors
Fluorescent Colors
Multi-Tech Fluorescent Colors
Opaque Fluorescent Colors
Multi-Tech Opaque Fluorescent Ink Colors
Metallic & Glitter Inks
Multi-Tech Metallic & Glitter Inks
FastFilms Ink
Specially Formulated to work with
Fast Films Separation Software
Wet-on-Wet Fluorescent
Fluorescent plastisol ink specially
formulated for Wet-on-Wet printing
Plastisol ink specially formulated
for Wet-on-Wet printing

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Now that we're all sede vacantists, there's really no point in debating the wisdom of Pope Benedict's decision any further. It's a done deal, it will bear the fruits it will bear. But now, it's time to prepare for the pontificate of the next man.
It is fitting that we should pray regarding the outcome. Today at Mass, our parish distributed this prayer, which I heartily recommend that you also pray each day at least until the new pope has been chosen:
V. I will raise Me up a faithful priest, who shall do according to My Heart and My Soul.
R. And I will build him a faithful house: And he shall walk all day before My Annointed.
Let us pray.
We must humbly entreat Thee, O Lord, that Thy boundless goodness may grant as pontiff to the most holy Roman Church one who shall ever be both pleasing to Thee, by his loving zeal in our regard, and, by his beneficent rule, deeply revered by Thy people to the glory of Thy name. Through Christ our Lord.
I hope your parish also recommended a particular prayer for this purpose.
Sunday, March 3, 2013
Prayer for the Conclave
Posted by Authentic Bioethics at 3:04 PM
1 comment:
Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)


text:
Exploring Hydrocarbon Depletion
Page added on May 23, 2012
The world is clearly reaching many limits. This graphic below shows how I see man interacting with natural systems, back before man discovered fire and back before man became intelligent enough to kill off whole species.
In these earliest days, human systems were a part of natural system. Humans behaved like other animals, and fit easily into the natural order. There weren't many humans–probably under 100,000 total in the whole world.
This is the way I see man's systems interacting with the natural system now:
In my illustration, human systems are sufficiently interrelated that they combine to form one single interrelated "humans' system". This system draws its power from the natural system. It also puts its waste products back into the natural system. Because of entropy, we know that everything we create eventually ends up as waste products. In order to keep the humans' system going, we need to keep adding new energy to the system, partly to offset entropy and partly to support the growing world population.
What limits are the human and natural systems reaching now?
Oil Limits
According to EIA data, crude oil production in 2005 averaged 73.6 million barrels a day. It has grown very little since then. Crude oil production for 2011 averaged 74.0 million barrels a day. In the first two months of 2012, crude oil production was higher yet, averaging 75.6 million barrels a day.
Even with the higher production in 2012, and with growing "other liquids" production (not shown), crude oil production has not been sufficient to bring oil prices back to the $60 a barrel or less range that we were comfortable with prior to 2006.
The Wall Street Journal recently reported, Oil Price Likely to Stay Buoyed by Marginal Costs. Thus, part of the limit we are reaching is that the cheap-to-produce oil has mostly been produced. No matter how much oil is produced, it is hard for the price to drop very much. According to the article, Bernstein Research estimates that the marginal cost of production was $92.26 a barrel for the 50 largest oil and gas companies in 2011, and will exceed $100 barrel in 2012. These high oil prices put strains on the economies of oil-importing nations.
Debt Ratios
Clearly debt ratios are a problem for many countries.
Debt ratios tend to rise, as oil importing countries have more and more problems with high oil prices. People who are laid off from work don't pay taxes; instead, they expect to get payments from government-funded programs. The combination tends to force debt levels of governments higher.
The US government is paying out a great deal more than it is taking in. Based on Bureau of Economic Analysis data, the US government ratio of outgo to income was 146% in calendar year 2011.
This wide gulf between income and expenditures is being used to try to prevent recession in the United States. Legislation which was passed last year requires that this gap be fixed, starting the beginning of 2013. The Congressional Budget Office is now warning that the United States is likely to enter recession when this happens.
Over-Promised Social Security and Other Benefit Programs
If a person looks at the information underlying the US budget for 2013 (see page 208), it becomes clear that the big gap between income and outgo is in "Mandatory Programs," in other words, Social Security, Medicare, Unemployment, and Other Mandatory Programs. It is hard to see any way the spending gap can be cut without cutting these programs.
The reason why this issue has been overlooked is because Social Security is supposedly funded on an accrual basis in accounting for the program, but in fact the funding goes through the US budget program, which is on a cash basis. While some funds were collected in advance to smooth out the baby boom bulge, these funds have already been spent. Thus, the huge payouts as the baby boomers retire look at though they will directly affect the US budget. (This issue deserves a separate post.)
Europe can be expected to have even more problems with mandatory programs than the United States because their programs have generally been more generous. Europe also has a lower birth rate, and the benefits for the old are paid by the young. If there are not enough young people, the system doesn't work.
Low Interest Rates
Artificially low interest rates are one way of making borrowing more attractive, so that businesses will take the opportunity to expand and individuals will be able to purchase homes and cars. Low interest rates also make the load of governmental debt more bearable. But at this point, interest rates are about as low as they can go–the only direction they can go is up from here.
One problem with artificially low interest rates is that they make it almost impossible for pension plans to make good on their promises (unless they are mostly invested in stocks, and the stocks miraculously go up). The US government guarantees pensions plans up to certain limits through the Federal Pension Guarantee Corporation. This program doesn't have much in the way of real funds behind it–if there are widespread defaults, somehow enough funds must be provided through "printing money" or higher taxes.
Fresh Water Shortages
Fresh water shortages are a problem in many parts of the globe. The World Bank issued a report on the subject saying, "In 1997 only 47 countries borrowed for water [projects], but by 2007 there were 79 borrowers, and lending for water had increased by over 50 percent." Besides drinking and sanitation, water is needed for irrigation and for the cooling of electrical power plants. While it is possible to convert salt water to fresh, the cost is very high. Thus, what looks like a physical problem (a shortage of water) can be "fixed," but through an approach that affects the financial system, and uses more energy supplies.
Food Supplies That Can't Keep Expanding
The green revolution allowed agricultural yields to increase in the 1940s through 1960s, through greater use of fertilizer and irrigation, and the development of disease resistant types of seeds, but we don't have any follow-on major improvements now. In fact, problems with high salt levels and declining water tables where irrigation has been used make it clear that expansion of irrigation cannot continue indefinitely. Sandra Postel in "Piller of Sand: Can the Irrigation Miracle Last?" writes, "The overriding lesson of history is that most irrigation-based civilizations fail."
Apart from difficulties in raising per-acre yields, there is also competition for land from rising biofuel production. To the extent that food shortages arise, prices can be expected to be higher, and the poor will face more difficulty in getting an adequate diet.
Pollution occurs in many forms and in many ways. The best-known is excessive carbon dioxide, which leads to ocean acidification and climate change. There are clearly many, many kinds of pollution, since everything that is made degrades with time, becoming pollution of sorts. Once concern is that much pollution may be hidden. A recent article in Science Daily reports, Today's Environment Influences Behavior Generations Later: Chemical Exposure Raises Descendants' Sensitivity to Stress. This is truly disturbing news, since it would appear that conditions of our children (autism, ADHD, weight gain) might be influenced by chemicals that we or our mothers were exposed to.
Climate Change
The activities of humans have been affecting the climate for many years, since humans started cutting down and burning forests to meet their own needs, thousands of years ago. The changes we are now seeing (higher carbon dioxide levels and ocean acidification) parallel some of those that took place in the Permian extinction 252 million years ago. We don't know exactly how things will develop from this time forward, but climate models give one indication.
Many Other Limits
This list is far too short. A person could argue that population is now reaching a limit. The concentration of nearly all ores is becoming lower and lower. Ocean acidification and overfishing are problems by themselves. Soil is eroding at higher than the rate that new soil is being formed. Loss of humus and loss of soil nutrients are issues as well.
4 Comments on "Limits We are Reaching – Oil, Debt, and Others"
BillT on Thu, 24th May 2012 3:25 am
First…Social Security is NOT the problem, the Military is. Yes, Medicare & Medicaid is going to need severe trimming because we have a for profit sick care system based on not preventing, but treating disease, but S.S. was money paid for a retirement supplement and is due the payees.
Second…We have passed the 'limits' and are now living on our cheap oil legacy. All of the infrastructure set up during the decades of plenty. There is no way to maintain all of them on today's energy budget. None. Slowly they will all melt away. Think about that. Mining, where most things begin is one of the largest legacies with all of the structures and equipment we need to mine the depleting minerals and metals we need.
Yes, we are in overshoot. We have been for some time, but now we start to pay.
BillT on Thu, 24th May 2012 3:30 am
While I am not a big fan of Ayn Rand, and disagree with some of her ideas, she painted a very good example of today's world in her book, "Atlas Shrugged". It is a scary picture of the world today, but accurate if you think about what she is saying. She was a brilliant person and almost foresaw today's world in that book. Borrow it from your local library or borrow it from a friend and read it. Yes, it is long, but I think you will not want to put it down until you reach the end, unless it scares you too much to finish it.
Indigoboy on Thu, 24th May 2012 8:59 am
Ayn Rand and ex Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan were also very close friends, and he acknowledged that he embodied much of Ayn Rand's thinking into his approach on the US economy.
Kenz300 on Thu, 24th May 2012 12:58 pm
Too many people and too few resources. Every problem is made harder to solve with the worlds ever growing population. If you can not take care of yourself you can not take care of a child.


text:
Castles Burning by Keith Wayne McCoy
November 21, 2014 by completedreviews Leave a Comment
Castles Burning by Keith Wayne McCoy
Publisher: Champagne Books
Genre: Horror, Contemporary
Length: Short Story (40 pages)
Rating: 3.5 Stars
Reviewed by AstilbeWil Warner is a tormented son tossed about by the waves of both parents. His father is a beautiful but simple father and husband, and his mother is a narcissistic woman obsessed with the art of acquisition and the relentless climb to the top of society. After his father's death, an adult Wil is left to face the ultimate horror of his mother's mental illness.
Not every terrifying thing in this world has a supernatural origin.
Horror isn't necessarily just about blood and guts. One of the things that first attracted me to it was how versatile this genre can be. As a fan of Mr. McCoy's previous work, I was intrigued by what he'd come up with this time as the last book I read from him was from a completely different genre. He made the transition nicely, though, and has definitely piqued my interest. It will be fun to see where he goes with his next project.
Even though Wil is the main character, there wasn't a great deal of time spent developing his personality. Almost everything I learned about him was due to his reactions to his severely mentally ill mother. The glimpses of Wil's harsh childhood made me wince, but I would have really liked to see more examples of how those experiences shaped him into who he became as an adult.
With that being said, secondary characters were well drawn. Stories that explore dysfunctional families are utterly fascinating to me. Almost anything can feel normal if someone is exposed to it early enough in life or for a long period of time, but that doesn't mean that those things are actually healthy or safe. It was interesting to see how the people around Wil responded to their circumstances. Based on what I've observed in real life, it was also chillingly accurate.
I'd recommend Castles Burning to anyone who enjoys horror that's set in a realistic, contemporary environment.


text:
Caribbean Tropical Disturbance UP to 40% Deep Orange ..State of the Tropics Monday Morning
The area of disturbed tropical weather in the Caribbean is up to 40% odds and has an orange circle from the NHC at 8AM. That was an upgrade of 10% if you were not watching over the weekend, as it has been holding steady at 30% for the last 24 hours.
I'm highlighting the important part of the discussion to make it easier to understand.
The point here is that no matter what happens regarding development Belize and the Yucatan Peninsular will get a lot of rain out of this and possibly stronger than expected winds. Very Squally for lack of a better word. A small center of circulation seems to be there and middle level circulation may be working it's way down to the surface. Either way it's running out of time.
As many a meteorologist has said this morning it has a "small window of opportunity" and then the proverbial door slams shut and it is a "has been" unless it emerges over the Bay of Campeche and pulls itself together again. Yes, the GFS did predict something might be there, however once there it has failed to latch onto it.
It shows a weak system again in a few days and has problems holding on to it as it seems to slip through it's fingers. Again shear was supposed to be a factor inhibiting it and yet shear has loosened up. What has not loosened up is the grip by the strong high pressure ridge that extends well into the Caribbean which should keep anything that forms in that region West or at the most NW bound for now. "For now" being the operative term here as we are moving into a period of change in the tropics over the next week to ten days.
Things can change... in the same way they shear factor changed to allow this to develop and reach out distant bands that look as if they will lash South Florida today. Hmnn...did I say "bands" ?? Yes, you'd think it has a better chance than 40% with banding going on...however it's not tightly wrapped and may still have multiple centers vying for dominance.
The Canadian model develops a storm in the Pacific.
The above image shows the chances for development.
It is worth noting that what might be developing in the Pacific comes from this current system in the Caribbean. Seems a real year for crossover dancers in the tropics....
The 7 Day Loop from the NWS shows nothing special going on in the Gulf of Mexico.. it does show a front that will come down and dissipate over North Florida in a few days. This is a great loop to look at to compare and contrast what is predicted with what the models are indicating. Posting it here, it is found down on the bottom left-middle of the page at www.spaghettimodels.com.
Lastly, for a dream team sort of wish cast.. IF this system lifted NORTH into the very warm waters of the Caribbean ...something more might happen as the water there is warm... bordering on hot. Much hotter than where it is now close into the coastline in Central America.
Down south of the Cayman Islands it is HOT HOT HOT. If anything, it's currently sitting in s bit of a cool spot. The water in the Bahamas between Miami and Cuba is much warmer as well. Just something to think on down the line in case something develops somewhere. The Loop Current is alive and well ..as well .. if some collapsed frontal boundary develops something off the West Coast of Florida...IF ...the high nudges eastward and releases it's grip on Florida and the Atlantic.
Keep watching. It is fun to watch and for now it is the only show in the tropics.
Well....there's a wave off of Africa, but to quote Carole King... it's so far away.
Besos Bobbi
Ps It IS worth noting that if the NHC sends RECON down there and decides to suddenly upgrade to a designated system it would say a lot about how they will handle the rest of the season.


text:
Traci Wilson 19TH JANUARY 2015.doc malware are being spammed out, using Traci Wilson {email@example.com} email address.
The Word document has a random attachment, however these emails aren't from daviescranehire at all, they just being used to make the email look more genuine, ie. from a real company.
The Word document has a random attachment, however these emails aren't from daviescranehire at all, they just being used to make the email look more genuine, ie. from a real company.
It's also worth remembering that the company itself may not have any knowledge of this email and it's link(s) or attachment as it won't have come from their servers and IT systems but from an external bot net.
It's not advised to ring them as there won't really be anything they can do to help you.
Call Davies Crane Hire: Founded in 1979, Davies Crane Hire Ltd is one of the largest independent crane hire companies in Wales.
Message Header:
From: "Traci Wilson" {email@example.com}
To: email@example.com
Subject: 19TH JANUARY 2015.doc
Date: Mon, 19 Jan 2015 11:05:51
Message Body:
Md5 Hashes:
19TH JANUARY 2015.doc
Malware Macro document information:
VirusTotal Report [1] (hits 0/57 Virus Scanners)
VirusTotal Report [2] (hits 0/57 Virus Scanners)
Malwr Report [1]
Decoded Macro [1]
Malware Payload: [Do Not Download] : http://chilan DOT ca/js/bin DOT exe
Hybrid-Analysis of Payload: [Detailed Report]
Sanesecurity signatures are blocking this as:
The current round of Word and Excel attachments are targeted at Windows users.
Apple and Android software can open these attachments and may even manage to run the macro embedded inside the attachment.
The auto-download file is normally a windows executable and so will not currently run on any operating system, apart from Windows.
However, if you are an Apple/Android user and forward the message to a Windows user, you will
them put them at risk of opening the attachment and auto-downloading the malware.
Currently these attachments try to auto-download Dridex, which is designed to
steal login information regarding your bank accounts (either by key logging, taking auto-screens hots or copying information from your clipboard (copy/paste))


text:
Midwives: A Reflection on the Freedom of Birthing Positions
A friend of mine in the UK recently contacted me through Facebook to support her mother-in-law's campaign to win a grant in Barclays Bank's One Small Step Competition to turn a fantastic idea into a business. It is a head-slappingly simple invention that enables midwives to work with mothers in any birthing position and it's called the Howes Birth Mirror
The idea got the second most comments out of thousands of entries, the most supporters in the south of England and the most comments out of the entire manufacturing and engineering category, but has not gone through to the late stages of the competition. A lack of vision on behalf of the judges, I suspect, because the Howes Birth Mirror has already sold 1,000 units all over the world just through word of mouth! It's a funny thing for a mere marketing guy to be writing about, I know, but I have witnessed first hand on five occasions the fantastic job that midwives do and consequently have a huge amount of respect and affection for them. Oh, and I also know a great business idea when I see one!
I have no financial interest in the project whatsoever, but it deserves this little effort as a "thank you" for the fantastic children that midwives have delivered for me and the infinite happiness that my "five stars" have brought into my life as a result. So here are a few things you can do to to help this wonderful idea to take off:
1. Watch the video clip from BBC News. Virginia Howes is a real character, so it's an entertaining two minutes! The video Virginia made for the Barclays competition will pop up next to it on YouTube and I recommend you watch that too. Rate the videos, comments and add to your favourites.
2. Leave a comment at the bottom of this blog post – just a 🙂 will do!
3. Send a link to this blog post to everyone you know – for example through Twitter, Facebook, instant messaging or email. If you know an influential blogger on childbirth, then even better!
4. If you are on Facebook add Virginia Howes as a friend.
5. If you are on Twitter, retweet one of my tweets or tweet yourself sending the video link and using the hashtags #Midwives and #HowesMirror at the end of your tweet. Keep #HowesMirror as a permanent search so you can watch support grow and get further updates.
6. Bookmark this post somewhere if you're into that and/or "Digg" it to raise awareness further.
As a minimum, you can just watch the video and leave a comment.
Bottom line is this. If enough people show support it will be easy to raise the $50,000 required to turn the Howes Birth Mirror into the business success it deserves to be. So click now and you'll be doing something fantastic – as Virginia herself says in the video – for mothers, for midwives and for society!
If you haven't done so already, watch the video now!
1 comment so far
Hi Barry, thank you so much for this! The support you have shown has been immense and I am so grateful. It is amazing to have seen so many people support and back my Mother in law on the Barclays competition and give recognition to her for her amazing ideas and ability to bring those ideas to life to help people around the world!


text:
Thursday, December 30, 2010
Saturday, December 25, 2010
Kauan - Lumikuuro
Today is Christmas day, and I cannot imagine listening to anything other than this perfect, beautiful album - Lumikuuro. I listened to it last year at Christmas and it enchanted me from beginning to end. It is the first and, in my opinion, most fluid album by the Russian doom/folk metal band Kauan. Kauan, in Finnish, means something like "a long period of time." The founding member of the band is Anton Belov, a very talented man who has worked in a few other projects (Inea, Strecosa, Helengard). Violinist Lyubov Mushnikova joined the band later on, with a few other session musicians to help orchestrate this god-tier music.
Lumikuuro, which means "Flurry," masterfully blends neofolk, classical, doom metal, and maybe even black metal. The perfectly placed distances between the darker, more doom metal parts and the softer, jazzier/classical sections make the album like a journey to be traversed and enjoyed. The variety of instruments and musical ideas are seemingly endless as well, and perhaps that is what catches me every time I listen. There is a melancholy beauty to be found at every corner of Lumikuuro, a radiant gleam of bittersweet light. I think "Koivun Ela" will always be my favorite track, but I'm growing more and more fond of the acoustic version of "Syleily Sumu."
Thursday, December 23, 2010
COLTEMONIKHA (コルテモニカ) is a Japanese electronica duo consisting of fashion designer/model Kate Sakai, as vocals, and producer/art designer, a member of Capsule, Nakata Yasutaka. This is their second "mini-album," after COLTEMONIKHA, and it is no less charming and ebulliant. I might not prefer this over their other release, but I'm really enjoying it right now... especially the track "sleeping girl."
Wednesday, December 22, 2010
Ryuichi Sakamoto (坂本龍一) - Playing the Piano
坂本龍一, or Ryuichi Sakamoto, is a Japanese composer, musician, and actor.
Born in Tokyo in 1952, Sakamoto fell in love first with English rock music (he's a big Rolling Stones fan) and then with French Impressionism. He was the founding member of the cult electro-pop trio, Yellow Magic Orchestra, and has worked collaboratively with figures as diverse as William S. Burroughs, Jose Carreras, Youssou N'Dour, Iggy Pop and the Dalai Lama. He has written vast opera music for the 1992 Olympic Games in Barcelona and for the 400th anniversary of the city of Mannheim, Germany. Most recently he has become a dedicated environmentalist, launching a carbon footprint-conscious record label, Common, and his successful MoreTrees project in Japan and the Philippines.
But to European music lovers, Sakamoto is best known as the composer of epic film scores. Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence, The Last Emperor, The Sheltering Sky, The Handmaiden's Tale, Wild Palms, Little Buddha, and dozens more, for which he has been rewarded with innumerable awards. Among them an Oscar, a couple of Golden Globes and a Grammy. - Altsounds
Playing the Piano is a gentle, beautiful collection of jazzy, eclectic piano music. There are many different influences to his music, such as classical/jazz/etc. His playing is comforting and soft, melodic and able to hum along to. "Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence" is an absolutely wonderful track, my favorite :3
Tuesday, December 21, 2010
Popol Vuh - Nosferatu
Nosferatu is the eleventh album by German krautrock/folk band Popol Vuh. Coincidentally, it is the original soundtrack to Werner Herzog's horror film Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht. This is an incredibly mystic and luminous album, one that found me lost in thought as it took me through it's soundscapes. I've not heard many other Popol Vuh albums, but this was absolutely incredible - one of my new favorites, for sure. The serene, warm atmosphere of this album feels very like "morning sun rays," despite the slightly disturbing subject matter of the film. "Venus Principle" and "Mantra II" are the stand-out tracks (to me).
Monday, December 20, 2010
Joseph Haydn - The Complete Piano Sonatas
Jenő Jandó, pianist
Joseph Haydn was an Austrian composer of classical music, and is often credited as the "Father of the string quartet" and "Father of the symphony." He worked with many mediums, one of which being the keyboard, and became a leading figure of the classical period. His style is refined and unique, a fitting influence to the young classical composers such as Mozart and Beethoven. Haydn is often seen as a pioneer of classical music, one of the first to turn away from the confines of Baroque composing and produce elegant music of a more fine and regal quality.
Jenő Jandó is a Hungarian pianist and one of the first to record the complete Haydn sonatas on an actual piano, instead of a period instrument such as a fortepiano or a harpsichord. I haven't exactly listened to like 3 hours of another recording of these, so I took these as they were - as accurate and good as they can possibly be. If you've ever heard a Mozart or Beethoven sonata, don't expect these to be as dramatic. These are true pieces of the classic form written by a man of great taste and status. I'm no music critic, but Jandó does a very nice job of interpreting these simultaneously mature and capricious pieces, shaping them and giving form to seemingly plain material.
I found an interesting fact about the nature of the sonatas while looking this recording up:
"Haydn's music has been aptly characterized as being composed 'fur Kenner und Liebhaber' - for connoisseurs and amateurs. Many of these sonatas, ranging from the earliest to some late works, were written as teaching pieces with amateurs in mind. Other works were composed for the virtuoso performer. There is a similar range of intensity of feeling and musical complexity shown in these pieces. But in many of these works of whatever level, Haydn took the materials he was working with to write music of broad appeal. Taken as a whole, the sonatas show the slow, sure movement of a composer from rather slight, conventional works to music of great depth, feeling and originality."
Here you can find more information on the piano sonatas and the boxset. It's pretty difficult to tag these, as they have both a Hoboken number and a Landon marking. The Hoboken marking for Haydn's piano sonatas is "XVI," but that's not so important right now. I have included a correct tracklisting for the pieces in each of the links, so you may use that as a guide if you wish.
Disc 2
Disc 3
Disc 4
Disc 5
Disc 6
Disc 7
Disc 8
Disc 9
Disc 10
Sunday, December 19, 2010
Vangelis - Blade Runner OST
So, yeah. I can't really imagine anything more glorious than this - Greek electronic composer and musician Vangelis' groundbreaking vision of a work, the accompanying music to Ridley Scott's 1982 film Blade Runner. This is indeed the Esper Edition, a bootleg released in 2003 including some previously unreleased background music and clips from the film. Click here for more information on this edition.
I actually recieved this soundtrack as a Christmas gift 2 years ago, although I only just watched the film for the first time last night. I can't imagine why I put it off for so long. The soundtrack works seamlessly with the film, each scene perfected by the unutterable beauty of Vangelis' futuristic score. Mantric and hypnotic, this soundtrack unites sounds from a variety of cultures and time periods. It is every bit as colorful and magical as the film... synthesizers meet Middle Eastern-influenced jazz, the pattering of rain sweeps over the orphic cascades of modern classical music in a gentle, almost scientific, way. "Rachael's Song" is definitely my favorite song, though.
Disc 2
Friday, December 17, 2010
God is an Astronaut - All is Violent, All is Bright
In honor of the birthday of my friend, Danny (Master_ov_Khaos), here is one of the most amazing albums in the universe and the first that we -both- liked a lot... I think. The track "Forever Lost" will always be our favorite song. :3
This is the second, and by far the greatest, album of the post-rock trio from Ireland, God is an Astronaut. This album is inundated with extremely melodic, powerful riffs and ideas. All is Violent, All is Bright is unlike other post-rock albums because it's concept is truly portrayed through music, each song mounting upon the other until the whole can be appreciated as a masterpiece of post-rock.
It might not be post-rock in the sense GY!BE is, but it's much more thought-out, musical, and pleasing than some of the stuff that passes as "post-rock" these days.
Blood Freak - Multiplex Massacre
Razorback Records is one of the premier labels for newer bands paying tribute to old school death metal, and Blood Freak's third and most recent album, Multiplex Massacre, is no exception. Blood Freak is a one-man thrash/grind/death metal band led by horror mastermind Maniac Neil, of Frightmare and Lord Gore. Blood Freak plays a catchy brand of thrashing death metal with horror b-movie subject matter, something that should catch your interest should you be interested in bands such as Ghoul and Carcass. It's fucking greeeat.
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
Punch - Punch & Eyeless EP
Punch is a female-fronted San Francisco punk band playing fast and dirty hardcore in the vein of RAMBO, Mouthpiece, and Rorschach. The music of Punch is genuinely INCREDIBLE. Short, fast, to the point, these intense tracks are powerful kicks to the stomach and, as so eloquently described by Last.fm, recognizable by a "fast, heavy sound with pulverizing breakdowns, intelligent song structures and absolutely plastering vocals." The vocals are definitely my favorite part... "If Not Me" off the s/t is a great track.
Estatic Fear - A Sombre Dance
This is one of the most amazing doom metal albums you will ever hear. Don't miss out.
Monday, December 13, 2010
Monsieur de Sainte-Colombe - Pièces de viole
Paolo Pandolfo, viola da gamba
Thomas Boysen, theorbo and baroque guitar
Monsieur de Sainte-Colombe was a French composer and violist. To listen to these pieces through is an extremely somber experience.
The manuscripts used for this recording are the so-called Panmure and Tournus, perhaps the work of pupils who brought back home at least part of the master's corpus of compositions. Therein lies a large proportion of extremely idiomatic music for the instrument, always highly personal and full of unforeseeable twists and turns, verging on extravagance, which in that respects brings to mind the music of his Concerts à deux violes égales. A general atmosphere emerges from the manuscripts which fully contradicts the image of an artist given to obscurity and tormented by pain, complacently abandoning himself to solitude and suffering.
Sunday, December 12, 2010
Tobacco - Fucked Up Friends
Fucked Up Friends is an insanely, INSANELY awesome album. It is insurmountably yummy and fantastic and simultaneously mind-bending and dancey, funky, groovy, and School of Seven Bells-esque, but x 10e12948. Please take a sip of the communal cup of ecstasy that is Tobacco.
By the way, this is the solo project of Black Moth Super Rainbow frontman Tom Fec, which might make you more excited, or it might not. I haven't listened to them as much as I should have, but w/e.
Saturday, December 11, 2010
Teenage Larvae - Songs For Pigs
According to Last.fm, Teenage Larvae is a "side project of Kevin Rutmanis (Cows, Melvins) with David B. Livingston (God Bullies) and 'anyone else we can exploit or lure into the studio'. That includes Shannon Selberg & Thor Eisentrager (both also from Cows)."
Songs for Pigs, while it is totally unclassifiable, is fantastic. Give it a listen or three, disappointment is not an option.
Friday, December 10, 2010
Cows - Cunning Stunts
Absolutely incredible noise rock album by the Minneapolis-based rockers Cows. They seem to be well known for their stage presence, as the lead vocalist, Shannon Selberg, has been known to hurl objects into the crowd and be all-around crazy. This raucous energy is perhaps most apparent in this thrilling, immensely enjoyable album of blues riffs, grunge-inspired noise rock, and fusion of sliding bass, bugle, harmonica, wail of a baby...(which starts the album off on a very interesting note).
The vocals might be my favorite part right now. On tracks such as "Mine," Selberg's voice lends itself to a croaking, raspy, shouting sound - much like that of Swans' frontman Michael Gira in the face-melting track "Beautiful Child." Not a second of this raw, beautiful masterpiece is to be neglected.
Thursday, December 9, 2010
Lungfish Live + 10 East 7"
Lungfish is a progressive/post-hardcore band from Baltimore, Maryland, fronted by the infamous Daniel Higgs and equipped with such outstanding musicians as Asa Osbourne, Sean Meadows, and Mitchell Feldstein. Their discography is fairly vast, each album changing in color slightly, building and building until the bitter end of their legacy...
Thank you to tsintskaro for these.
A highly meditative release... The track "Go Simple" makes my life a litle better. It is a gem among Lungfish records.
Away from my skin
The beast and all it's hornets
Collapse in the popping air
This is a nice set, well recorded, of many tracks off of Artificial Horizons (along with some others).
This is a REALLY fun and amazing set. I wish I could have been there.
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
Current 93 - Sleep Has His House
"Have pity for the dead / Sleep has his house…"
Sleep Has His House conjures a hallucinatory landscape ripe with symbolism.
Haunted, otherworldly, and more obviously personal than anything David Tibet has ever created. Tibet's harmonium roots his half-sung, half-chanted poetry. An overwhelming entreaty for compassion. - weird brother
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
Harold Budd & Brian Eno - Ambient #2 - The Plateaux Of Mirror
Harold Budd & Brian Eno are two extremely talented musicians, as well as the leaders of modern ambient/neo-classical music. Brian Eno has worked in electronic music for the better half of the 20th century, while Harold Budd has worked as a consistent member of the shoegaze/dreampop band Cocteau Twins. The Plateaux of Mirror is a calming instrumental album full of soft, synthy piano melodies.
Sunday, December 5, 2010
Jonny Greenwood - Norwegian Wood (Noruwei No Mori) Soundtrack
Beautiful soundtrack to Norwegian Wood, a film based on the novel of the same name by the amazing Haruki Murakami. 3 of the tracks are performed by the German krautrock group Can, but the rest were written by Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood.
No, I have yet to see the movie. Honestly, I am in no rush. The book itself was perfect, you should read it and listen to this. :o
Friday, December 3, 2010
Funeral stuff.
I'm going to my grandfather's funeral tomorrow and driving there tonight. I made a mix for the trip there and back and... during. Peace.
02. Kiila - Kateet Linnut
03. Kakao - Zheleznodorozhnik
04. Vangelis - Rachel's Song
05. Hymie's Basement - Lightning Bolts and Man's Hands
06. Hooray for Earth - Rolling Nectarine
07. Idaho - Hearts of Palm
08. Donawhale - 눈 내리는 소리
09. Paavoharju - Puhuri
10. Aidan Baker & Tim Hecker - Auditory Sprits
Thursday, December 2, 2010
Benoît Pioulard - Temper
Temper is a very mystic album, a glance at the world through the eyes of an outsider.
Benoît Pioulard, an American experimental folk musician/singer-songwriter/writer/photographer, is the pseudonym of Thomas Meluch. This is his 8th release and 2nd full-length album on the Kranky label. Pioulard actually had a new album come out this year, Lasted, which I just ordered!
After two tracks of laid-back folktronica, Temper plunges into an entirely ambient atmosphere saturated with the signs and sounds of new life. Nature-based ambience and soundscapes surround Temper, as the folk/electronic elements weave in and out in a very casual, pleasing way. "Modèle D'éclat" and "Idyll" are my favorite songs atmmmmm. A good descriptive word for this album would be... enchanting.
Mark Fry - Dreaming with Alice
Mark Fry is a psychedelic/acid folk artist from the 70s. I don't know everything about him or this album, but Dreaming with Alice was recorded in Rome and England and is structured very interestingly. Every other song is another verse entitled "Dreaming With Alice" and starts with the same beautiful guitar notes...
This is such an incredibly beautiful and touching album, his voice and his guitar create such magical music. A trip beyond the world, a masterpiece of psychedelic folk.
Daniel Lanois - Belladonna
I didn't know what to expect with this when I first found it in a music thread somewhere. I decided it wouldn't hurt to try out a new artist, and it turns out my time wasn't really spent on nothing. Daniel Lanois is a Canadian singer-songwriter who has worked with some "big" names, like U2 and Bob Dylan... Maybe that's what turned me off at first, but whatever.
Belladonna is an instrumental album of 13 vigniettes, differing in mood, color, and sound. It is just ethereal enough for me to enjoy it. Just enough.
Michel Legrand - Castles in Spain
I have no idea how to tag this, really. Spanish-influenced soundtrack classical with jazz, maybe? In any case, it is perfect - the exact kind of jazz music I've been looking for. Michel Legrand is a French composer of film scores and occasional jazz music, as well as an accomplished conductor and musician. He actually did an album of Satie, as well, which I am very anxious to hear... (and find).
Castles in Spain is a perfectly lovely album of jazz melodies and reincarnations of classics, such as the beautifully done "Oriental" and "Andaluza," originally penned by Enrique Granados as collections of his "Spanish Dances." These two tracks are my favorite on the album, although each track is very Spanish in sound, rhythm, and performance.
Kiila - Silmät Sulkaset
Kiila is a Finnish folk/experimental group made up of about 6 people, give or take a few. This album is truly stunning, the first freak folk album I really loved upon the first listen. The opening minutes bring be back to the first time I listened to Supreme Dicks' album The Emotional Plague, a relatively tame, yet dissonant, cacophany of twangs and odd sounds. The similarites end here, however. Silmät Sulkaset soon builds into an atmosphere of impressionistic beauty and psychedelia, touching on many different elements of music and styles.
The ensemble combines electric guitar, hand percussion, bass, violin and wooden flutes, voice, melodica, accordion and electric keyboards with a traditional Finnish instrument, the kantele (a lap-held, strummed harp with the piercing metallic twang of mandolin). This album was breathtaking from start to finish, a journey I want to make again soon.
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
Agalloch - The White EP
There is no better way to start the frigid month of December than with Agalloch. This EP, a partner to The Grey, blends the band's signature darkness with a slightly new element - neofolk. It is a masterfully made album, so beautiful and so cold.
"What begins with a sampling of the 1973 film The Wicker Man then spreads into an ethereal neofolk fable concerning religion, culture, children, morality, hindsight, and foresight."
The White further instills in the listener Agalloch's eternal theme... God is dead.
Popular Posts
Hannah Dakota Fanning (born February 23, 1994), better known as Dakota Fanning, is an American actress . Fanning's breakthrough perform...
Style of Cameron Diaz . People should know who is the Cameron Diaz and justin timberlake . Or just want to download Cameron Diaz Style of Ca...
01 Kepler - Box 3, Reel 5 02 Slim Twig - Hidden 03 Wiccans - The Third Estate 04 PJ Harvey - When Under Ether 05 友川かずき - June Rain 06 Gasp -...
Lungfish is a progressive/post-hardcore band from Baltimore, Maryland, fronted by the infamous Daniel Higgs and equipped with such outstand...
2006; 11 tracks I've always loved Korean indie/folk music, particularly Adultchild ( 어른아이 ), but this album, 보옴이 오면 ("Boomyi Comes&...
2004; 9 tracks Download. 2007; 10 tracks Download. 朝生愛 (Ai Aso) is psychedelic-y folk-ish pop music with dreamy vocals to add to it. Not mu...
2011; 12 tracks French instrumental math rock trio who clearly have a lot of fun making nonsensical noise with their guitars. Download / Pu...
2000; 10 tracks Ending Story is the first album by World's End Girlfriend (ワールズ・エンド・ガールフレンド), the solo project of Japanese electronic ...
1993; 12 tracks There is No-One What Will Take Care of You is the debut solo album of the (amazing) multi-instrumentalist and singer-songwr...


text:
Marketiva is a financial services corporation specialized in providing traders with high quality online trading services. With a team of dedicated financial specialists and technical support personnel, Marketiva operates globally as a market maker and principal counterparty to retail traders. Marketiva has established itself as an industry leader by relying on its groundbreaking internet trading platform and its superior customer service.
Marketiva's mission is to harness the power of the internet and provide traders with exceptionally effective trading tools and outstanding customer support. Traders using Marketiva enjoy the most advanced online retail trading front-end in the world, the Streamster™ software, renowned for its ease of use, flexibility and reliability.
Providing Opportunity Around the World
Our mission is to provide opportunity for individuals around the world to trade on financial markets under equal conditions like traders operating in traditionally closed financial centers and institutions.
In order to help individual traders make independent and knowledgeable trading decisions, Marketiva provides several types of service completely free of charge: an advanced charting system, daily research reports, market event alerts, expert discussion forums and several other free value added services. Marketiva also offers virtual trading desks within each customer account to make it easy for traders to experiment with strategies, improve their trading skills and get acquainted with the system before buying and selling on a live trading desk.
Multinational Team of Professionals and Scientists
Marketiva's multinational team consists of financial specialists and computer scientists residing across four continents and all time zones, giving Marketiva unparalleled edge both in exposure to market events and real-time responsiveness to customer needs.
The uniqueness of Marketiva's approach lays in the synergy of financial professionals with more than 30 years of combined experience in both trading and dealing working together as one team with computer science experts shaping Marketiva's advanced trading platform. To achieve the ultimate in customer satisfaction, Marketiva's financial and IT experts combine their skills, target-oriented attitude, team spirit and unrelenting focus on the customer.
Integrity, Initiative and Continuous Innovation
We are committed to employing people of integrity, initiative and ability, who help us continue a culture of strong work ethic, value of ideas and responsiveness to customer's goals. Traders all across Europe, Asia and Americas have recognized the dedication Marketiva has to development of long-term relationships with clients.
Marketiva continues with its commitment to technical innovation by regularly advancing the trading platform with the goal of providing individual traders with the most effective and flexible trading platform in the world.
Marketiva is proud to offer one of the most advanced online trading platforms available. Historically, online traders have struggled with problems related to the trading platform, such as unreliable software, slow trade execution, incorrect price feeds and many others. Thanks to the superior trading platform Marketiva is utilizing, traders can finally concentrate on trading instead of various technical difficulties.
Next-Generation Phoneless Customer Support
To provide the quickest and best quality customer support, Marketiva uses a unique next-generation online customer relationship management platform. Marketiva customers enjoy the most responsive, low-cost customer support available thanks to Marketiva's customer support modules within its advanced trading platform. Marketiva customers use the built-in Support chat channel within the Streamster™ software or e-mail facilities to get answers to their queries in a record short time because there is no need to spend minutes on the phone establishing and authenticating the identity of the customer and explaining the full history of the support issue. Traditional phone-based customer support requires customers to make long, frequent expensive international calls that would over time incur high cost on the customer. Instead, Marketiva customers can solve any support issue quickly, efficiently and in an affordable manner by using either the real-time Support chat channel or e-mail with around-the-clock response.
Highest Standards in Service and Security
We combine our market experience, expertise, and professionalism with the world's best online trading software. Marketiva's trading and margin lines with leading banks and counterparties ensure your trades will be automatically executed and with no slippage.
Marketiva ensures that traders experience the highest level of performance, reliability and security by taking advantage of professionally managed network operation centers with fully redundant server arrays and redundant internet connections. Our technical staff is committed to ensuring a maximum possible uptime for Marketiva's service and 24-hour service accessibility. Unlike many online trading operations, trading platform used by Marketiva utilizes industry-standard encryption technology to ensure that all communication between our customers and our servers is completely protected and confidential.
Safety of Client Funds and Transaction Integration
Client funds held with Marketiva are maintained in separate accounts at triple A rated financial institutions for the sole purpose of the clients' trading activity and are never commingled with operating capital of the company. Withdrawals from these bank accounts occur only as a direct result of clients' trading activities or an authorized request for withdrawal.
To ensure the safety of client funds, Marketiva has created three independent components operating under an integrated system of trading, settlement and risk control. The Execution Component receives and executes the clients' trading instructions; the Operations Component settles the transactions and transfers the funds; the Risk Control Component monitors transaction execution and the fund settlement process.
Marketiva utilizes transaction processing and integration services for both deposits and withdrawals, for purposes of getting one transaction stream and making the transaction processes faster, convenient and more efficient for customers.
Procedures for Prevention of Unlawful Activities
Marketiva is committed to assisting governments combat the threat from money laundering and terrorist financing activities around the world. For that purpose Marketiva has setup a highly sophisticated electronic system. This system documents and verifies client identification records, and tracks and maintains detailed records of all transactions. Marketiva carefully tracks suspicious and significant transaction activities, and reports such activities providing timely and comprehensive advice to law enforcement. To uphold the integrity of the reporting systems and provide protection to businesses, the legislative framework provides legal protections to providers of such advices. Marketiva is committed to regularly update its electronic system for inspection of suspicious transactions and for verification of client identification records, in accordance with any new regulations as they are promulgated, as well as providing training for its employees on enhancements to anti-money laundering procedures that may be required by new regulations.
Additional Information
For more information on our company and our services, please see the links at the top of this page. If you have any inquiries, please contact us by visiting the following contact page:
Contact Marketiva Team
Customer support for Marketiva services is exclusively provided through our sophisticated online facilities. The quickest and most reliable way to contact Marketiva is by talking to us directly using Live Support button at our web site or through support channels within our trading platform.
Why Us ?
Our Advantages:
- No Commissions
- Zero Overnight Interest
- No Minimum Initial Deposit Required
- Flexible Contract Size
- Tight Spreads
- Hedging Capability - Low Margin Requirement
- Free Trading Signals
- Free Currency News & Chart
- Superior System
- Realtime Account Management
- User Friendly (easy to use)
- Live Support 24 Hours
and many more !
HOW TO SIGN-UP ? (step by step)
1. Open an account for MARKETIVA(Free)
2. Account Identification
3. Download a Streamster software
4. Open an accoont for LIBERTY RESERVE account. INFORMATION
5. Login to your account with a Streamster Software
6. Let's go trading forex.
Thank You.. MARKETIVA


text:
Yep, you read right. After tabulating over 10 million online votes, men's portal AskMen.com has come out with their 2009 list of the most alluring famous females. This list takes into consideration more than just outward beauty as readers were asked to 'look beyond the sex appeal and beauty to pick women who have the characteristics they value in a potential companion, like intelligence, humour, charisma, and ambition'.
Emerging at the No. 1 spot of the Top 99 Most Desirable Women was Eva Mendes. She beat out the likes of Scarlett Johansson, Jessica Alba (No. 15!), Rihanna and last year's sexiest woman in the world, Megan Fox. Seriously, men actually prefer Eva to those other women? Wow, who'd have thought? Naturally, Eva is pleased and flattered by the results: "Of all the qualities I find attractive in a man, paying me such a compliment tops my list. Thanks, guys." Here's the Top 10 Most Desirable Women: 1. Eva Mendes
2. Megan Fox
3. Marisa Miller (model)
4. Keeley Hazell (model)
5. Anne Hathaway
6. Alesandra Ambrosio (Brazilian model)
7. Scarlett Johansson
8. Rihanna
9. Kristen Bell
10. Kate Beckinsale
Kate Winslet almost didn't make the list!
Also on the list were Kate Winslet (No. 99), Halle Berry (No. 13), Heidi Klum (No. 11), Gisele Bundchen (No. 28), Charlize Theron (No. 26), Evangeline Lilly (No. 22), Beyonce (No. 50), Angelina Jolie (No. 42) and Aishwarya Rai (No. 60).


text:
October 17, 1919
Rev. J. A. Golihew, of Washington, pastor of the Baptist Church, has moved with his family to this community.
Owing to the inclement weather, no services were held at Woodbine Church on Sunday. Sunday School will be held next Sunday at 11 a.m.
Many from this community attended an oyster supper at Independent Hill Friday evening.
Mr. Clifford Lowe, of Washington, spent the week-end with his parents, Mr. and Mrs. S. R. Lowe.
Mr. W. H. Cornwell visited friends at Marshall during the week.
Mr. and Mrs. Harry Farquhar, of Washington, spent last week at the home of Mr. and Mrs. S. R. Lowe and visited friends in this community.
Mrs. George Purcell and her daughter, Miss Evelyn Purcell, went to Washington Sunday and will make their home in the city for the present.
Mr. T. M. Russell and family motored to Manassas Monday afternoon.
Mr. A. C. Storke passed through Canova Friday, en route to Independent Hill, where he spent the weekend with his mother, Mr.s George Copen.
Mr. I. J. Breeden, of Washington, recently visited at his former home here.
Mr. Joseph Lowe motored to Manassas Monday.


text:
Hawk #1
Note how the light shines through the feathers!
Red-shouldered hawks have the distinctive light "crescent" near their wing-tips
Hawk #2
Classic Buteo hawks, soaring, circling
Using their tails for stability while they scan for prey
Thick bodies with broad, strong wings.
Oh...here comes one making a straight-line pass overhead!
Flaps to gain altitude...Glorious!
Thanks for the show!
A magical late afternoon out back.


text:
ANALYSTS said Tullett Prebon is ripe for a private equity-backed management buyout yesterday after the inter-dealer broker said a trade sale was off.
The FTSE 250 outfit said discussions with a mystery third party, announced in March, had been "constructive" but agreement on the terms of an offer had been impossible.
Shares in Tullett tanked more than 12 per cent in morning trading as bid speculators fled the stock. One broker said a trade sale was unlikely because shareholders would be unlikely to accept an offer below 500p per share, a price tag that would be unappetising for a buyer.
But analysts believed an MBO of the business, led by City stalwart Terry Smith, was an option. Vivek Raja of Panmure Gordon said: "I can't see a deal happening unless it's an MBO."
James Hamilton of Numis said: "Given the valuation, cashflow and substantial quantities of capital the private equity houses have to invest we do see the possibility an MBO backed by private equity could happen."
The speculation came as Tullett revealed its interim results. Revenue was down 12 per cent to £312m in the four months to April but analysts took heart from an increasing revenue run rate amid higher market volatility.
Raja said: "That was the key thing. Volatility is Tullett's friend, and sovereign debt concerns around the world are stoking business for them."
Tullett also took a swipe at rival BGC Partners, saying broker defections in the US in the second half of last year as a result of an alleged raid by BGC shaved six per cent off revenues.
"The benefit from actions taken to mitigate the impact of the broker defections will increase during the year," the firm said.
Shares in Tullett closed down 13.3 per cent at 314p.
Oliver Shah


text:
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
How Much?
I was just browsing a 1963 copy of the melody maker when I came across this advert for flights from London's Gatwick airport to Blackpool with British United Airways (a forerunner of British Caledonian). It's interesting to compare prices then and now. £5 one-way equates to £161 today and £8 5s is the equivalent of £266 return.
Posted by Richard Havers at 10:36 AM
Labels: Airlines
No comments:
Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)


text:
Spectacular. #nwsldraft pic.twitter.com/SPca6lGHvT
— Michelle (@xphile101) January 15, 2016
While it took a whole four hours and certainly stretched our abilities of pontification and endurance, it was a blast. I worked really hard in the build-up to research the player pool, which was pretty difficult considering there was not much consensus after the top 20.
The actual event turned out really well, I thought. I enjoyed getting to meet and interview the players in attendance, I wound up having researched 39 of the 40 players actually selected, and despite the stress, I just had fun.
You've really got to give it up to @jtyardley - two draft calls in less than 24 hours. That is after hours and hours of research. Well done
— Marc Connolly (@mconnolly10) January 15, 2016
of Keeper Notes fame, whom I have known since I was an undergraduate sports editor and she was the school advisor to the student newspaper; we talked soccer even then!
Here's the draft, in all its glory:


text:
We haven't entirely answered the question raised before: who, then, are the zombies? To proceed negatively…
They are not extensions of the capitalist injunction to consume. Or if they are, not because "purchasing unnecessary shit to bolster your social capital is like becoming part of a roving horde of undead cannibals." To be sure, the real linkage is that of non-necessity. In the Romero vision of zombies, they physiologically need to eat like we physiologically need a certain brand of jeans: not at all. But the analogy ends here. For their consumption is not the will to possess, the momentary grasp of the New in the form of the passing fashion. It is a mode of consuming that is against all ownership, against exchange value, against reification, against representation itself. [1]
Allegorically, they are both the dream and nightmare of the ruling class, the motor that turns the gears of the system and the rotting wrench forced into those gears. In an era of overproduction and overcapacity, when they are both too many workers and too many factories, what are zombies if not the total fantasy of "creative destruction", of clearing the ground of the dead weight of outmoded industry? Provided, of course, that the living eventually rid themselves of the pesky undead, the opportunities for growth, for rebuilding! As a character in the oddball Italian zombie film Nightmare City puts it, "It's part of the vital cycle of the human race. Create and obliterate until we destroy ourselves." Well, perhaps not "the human race," but we know for certain that this economic regime cannot function without the cyclical destruction of whole swathes of productive capacity. Recalling our earlier discussion of the sadism of false necessity, the zombies serve another crucial function: they are the crisis which allows for powers that be to declare a "state of emergency," to suspend the normal channels of legislation and to bring about drastic changes (the barricading of cities to "foreigners," forms of martial law, etc). And as with the false necessity of but I had to, she was going to turn…, we should ask here: sure, but for how long were you waiting for the excuse to do these things?
And yet… even in that vision of creative destruction, of being the accidental tool of the order against which you rage, helping them do a bit of necessary clearing to allow growth and being the excuse to restructure the social order, the center on which the fantasy of the zombie hinges is the horror of that which cannot quit. For what has been trailing along but missing, hinted at but rarely brought forth, in our analysis should be obvious by now: it's about labor. It's never been about consumerism gone bad, but the lost heritage of the zombie film to be necromanced, the horror from the Haitian origins, of being forced to work, of the obscene truth of the "free labor" contract of capitalism, of knowing that I've never had a choice, that "choosing" to see one's labor is a particularly nasty illusion of free will. If the surplus-life nightmare of zombies sticks with us, fascinates, and disturbs, it is because what has been brought to its logical conclusion isn't the vapid barbarism of the consuming classes but the buried antagonism of the labor relation, of a world order dragging us from our rest incessantly, to do what "must be done" yet for which we will be blamed. The infernal position of workers, cursed for doing wrong what can never be right.
To be clear, if recent zombie films have involved a certain betrayal of the Romero trajectory and its ability to think how the abstractions of totality messily affect the local, the Romero trajectory – and with it, the dominant line of zombie thought – is itself a betrayal of a history that could have been. This is the lost heritage of those forced to work, raised from the dead to do the compulsory bidding of a master, to labor indefinitely. Yet in this "betrayal," a word that should perhaps be cast out, we can register a powerful shift, one that ultimately has fidelity to the core of the voodoo inflected zombie model. The particularity of that nightmare form is distinctly postcolonial, the deep existential horror of being a slave still or once more, even after death, and the recognition that relations of domination and subordination have distinct faces: someone is doing this to me, particular actions had to be taken by that individual in order to control me as the hollow remnant of an individual. Power is personal, and so too the antagonism on which it uncertainly rests.
The zombie film, from Romero on, derails this particular emphasis on forced labor [2], and with it, the closer connection of the zombie and the laborer (in favor of the zombie and the consumer), yet in doing so, it nails something else. Not that class antagonism and its attendant anxieties are "about" consumption now: those fears are the underbelly of an older period, of postwar boom and new sectors of society getting to purchase in ways never before available to them. Rather, if the later films symptomatically capture something of the particular anxieties of the emergent post-Fordist/post-capitalism's-golden-years period, it has to do with those relations of domination. For what it approaches, however darkly, is an awareness that the problem of the age is no longer the horror of being controlled by a discernible master but the indecipherability of those relations of domination, the lack of discernible masters at whom to aim. While the voodoo-inflected zombie film recoils at the thought of being forced to assume a direction dictated by your master, the Romero mode remains troubled by lack of direction: my God, what if I'm doomed to not get anything done, other than some reprehensible cannibalism, and worse, what if there's no one I can blame for this? The powerful capacity of the zombie film to approximate totality is a consequence – if it is to be located historically at all – of 1) the violent foreclosure of organized resistance to global capitalism by counter-revolutionary state action, 2) the related dissolution of working class power and the very idea of working class identity, and 3) the emergent new planet-spanning structure of flows of finance, information, and goods. To be sure, these are trendlines that gain shape only in hindsight, but it is no stretch to see the torsion and tension of these massive shifts in the cinema of the long 70's into the 80's. And nowhere more so in the zombie film, particularly when we don't simply mean films in which the undead eat the living. [3]
But to get a sense of that lost history that roils beneath the surface of the films from this period on, absently present in the ecstatic splatterfests and dystopian grim allegories alike, we should turn to a remarkable other beginning, the British 1966 Plague of the Zombies. If we imagine the openings and closures of different traditions and lineages, this is one that both continues and reworks the Carribean roots of earlier zombie productions (White Zombie, I Walked With a Zombie) while also blazing a path that was not to be followed, one of overlapping modes of production, the literal return of the postcolonial repressed "brought home" to solve labor shortages, and a peculiarly British awareness of decorum, class, and general nastiness towards others. We are speaking of a film, after all, in which zombies work as tin miners.
Released two years before Night of the Living Dead, it shares little with that genre forger. It's a period piece in brilliant color, complete with cadmium paint blood, diabolical squires, and the other trappings of the Hammer Studios films in that period (recognizable actors, plenty of cleavage, an insistence on telling fully fleshed out narratives, even while they collapse under the weight of their own contradictions). It is not a "siege" film, thereby lacking the spatial ordering of inside barricading/outside threat. And most crucially, it features non-accidental zombies that require the active efforts of individuals: there is no zombie holocaust here, no threat of it spreading beyond the small town.
To summarize very briefly: Sir James, a retired professor of medicine, receives a letter from his ex-pupil, Peter, telling him that strange things are going on in his Cornish village. Sir James and his daughter Sylvia go to the town, it becomes increasingly apparent that the vague plague is in fact the work of voodoo, a skill picked in Haiti up by the local Squire Hamilton, who rules over the area with an occult-ring bedecked fist. Conditions in his tin mine had become too dangerous to convince laborers to work there, hence he started killing off and resurrecting members of the working class to employ as shambling corpses who require a lot of whipping to get any work done. Things go from bad to worse: Peter's wife Alice is killed, Sylvia falls under the voodoo command of Hamilton only to be saved at the last moment from becoming a (presumably) virgin sacrifice by her father and Peter bursting in. They escape, the zombies catch on fire (their voodoo dolls were burned elsewhere), attack and kill their controllers, the tin mine explodes.
From the start, Plague develops a world of barbed pleasures, of getting to respond to your daughter's exhortations with, "I don't know why I put up with you at all. I should have drowned you at birth." Unlike the sadism of false necessity, this is a world in which antagonisms remain conversational, with each character hell-bent on not giving others the satisfaction of feeling as if their satisfaction or happiness matters. That is, of course, with the exception of the class hatred on which the film turns, posing a striated world of landed aristocracy, non-landed but quite comfortable aristocracy, upper middle class educated doctors trying their hand at village life, the various government and police functionaries of the town, the farmers and working class, colonial exports brought to serve as butlers and "voodoo drummers", and the tin miner zombies. (One should ask, in all seriousness, how the film positions the last two categories, the black servants and the zombies, in terms of who is afforded more respect.) Yet while the film makes very apparent this hierarchy, it cannot – at least on the surface – deal with its implications without fleeing into a certain language of transhistorical human nature and of evil. Consider the early exchange between Sir James and Sylvia, after Sylvia has witnessed, with great displeasure, the goons of Hamilton hunting a fox.
SIR JAMES: "Men have always hunted."
SYLVIA: "For food, yes, not for bloodlust."
At that point in the film [4], we are intended to side with Sylvia, in supposing that there is indeed something qualitatively different here. Yet this difference is not that of new historical forms of cruelty and micro-barbarism. Rather, it is coded as a throwback to a blood-dimmed pastoral of aristocratic rule, of incontrovertible laws and superstition. If there is an explicit arc to the film, it is the movement toward Sir James' position away from that of Sylvia: men kill because that's what that do, but there are some who are pathological in what they do, in how they combine bloodlust with greed. And they do so because they missed the news about the Enlightenment and the solid rationality of the British middle class: they are brutes and haughty elites, superstitious fools and sadist perverts. The most explicit formations of class antagonism function in this way, as a battle between modernity and the bastions of country life. When Peter refuses – because he is unable – to give the villagers a satisfactory account of just what the hell is going on, he couches it in terms of a betrayal of his principles of scientific rationality: to give them a lie to appease them just wouldn't be "good enough." To which, in a moment that would likely elicit a cheer from not a few readers, one of the "working class" men responds, "You're not good enough for us!" However, the champions of "local custom" hardly far better from our perspective. As given in the film, the range of their positions range from sullen anger and inability to question the social structure of the feudal/pastoral to the canny nastiness and calculation of those in positions of power, well aware that the world is changing but equally aware that capitalizing on it requires an insistence on preserving the status quo. As we are reminded, "This isn't London," and it is hard to grasp this as anything other than a condemnation. That said, similarly to Lucio Fulci's brutal masterpiece, Don't Torture a Duckling, Plague is largely about a battle between "modernity" (London/science) and "backwardness" (Cornish village/superstition) in which neither option appears worth saving, in which it is precisely the contagion, slippage, and fraught intersections between the two in which violence emerges most viciously.
What the film approaches, yet remains unable to fully comprehend, is the particularly capitalist – and distinctly not retrograde – nature of the wrongdoing. To be sure, Plague paints a world in which that edifice of landed gentry and all its social codes still has sway. But it is out of sync with the progress of time: the voyage to the Cornish village is a voyage to a backwater, an earlier organization of feudal life confronted with the peculiar new horrors of capitalist accumulation. (In this case, the grinding horror of knowing that just because a job is too dangerous for workers doesn't mean that workers will not be forced to do it.) If one of our preoccupations here is the question of combined and uneven development/apocalypse, of overlapping regimes of production and accumulation, of pockets of Hell and infernal circuits of capital, Plague captures this out of the corner of its roaming eye. Literalizing all those vague allegories of undead labor, of the black magic of drawing forth value from nothing, of undermining the natural order in the name of profit, Hamilton's "disgusting" enterprise is an oblique, parodic freeze-frame of a moment in the unfreezing of capital via advanced techniques, imported from afar and brought home to mine the heart of the empire.
This first becomes evident in the assumed opposition between science and superstition. In the bravely immoral new world of Hamilton, the rational calculations of profit margins and labor affordability turn to esoteric, "magical" means. It is the scientific application of non-scientific techniques: even Sir James, upon reading on voodoo methods in the priest's library of occult volumes, declares that, "it's all clearly scientifically stated." The film here actually differs from a majority of "men of science vs. supernatural occurrence" horror movies, in which the enterprise of Enlightenment critical thought is abandoned in the face of that which cannot be explained, complete with the requisite invocations of faith and the failure of those men of science to adequately become men of action, to stop theorizing and just pull the trigger. Conversely, what we see in Plague is an indeterminate zone, in which the problem of the zombies is that they are not supernatural: they are the result of hard work, ingenious arcane methods brought to bear on a ruthless drive to reopen that abandoned tin mine. Hamilton preserves his status as the squire of the region by adopting fully the mechanisms of that new social structure which will displace him. In struggling to cling to the vestiges of authority granted by feudal order, he overleaps the logic of that order. Of course, he keeps this all quite literally underground. For he is the emergent product of a mode of domination in which nothing is sacred, a saturnine hack Nietzschean who insists on raising the dead only when the living become too expensive. A moral debate between science and superstition matters not at all. It is at that point, when the cost and difficulty of obtaining labor "scientifically" ( a calculation of wages, resources, proto-industrial reserve army, etc) as an extension of the feudal mode that Hamilton turns from science, at least in its Western conception. When you can no longer squeeze a profit from your workers, the point is not to squeeze harder. It is to change the nature of the work. To change the nature of the workers, of the structure of exploitation itself.
And change this he does. Not however, because the workers are technically dead and hence mindless slaves. (As we see, they require a fair amount of coercion – i.e. constant whipping – and remain capable of striking back when their moment comes.) Rather, because his enterprise represents a radical innovation in the shape of the colonial enterprise, folded back upon itself. Free labor is no longer to be extracted from the colonies by the intellect, will, and brute force of its colonizers. Rather, the colonial heritage comes home to roost: the repressed truth of empire returns to corrupt and innovate its tired home market, the blocks to increased productivity and profit. Black plagues strike indeed, but from afar. In short, the innovation – and perhaps the undergirding horror – is not just "how horrible to be killed and brought back to life as a slave" but: what if our past is never forgotten? Not remembered by historians or marked into the very landscape and bodies of the colonies, but smuggled back in, dark knowledge too powerful to be lost and too tempting for imperialism to ignore.
To be more specific: it is black knowledge, wielded by a white man. The racial composition of the film – and its portrayal of value creation – needs to be considered. A rich white squire left England to travel abroad. In Haiti, he was somehow educated in the arts of voodoo. (Foreign currency opens a surprising number of surprising doors.) He returned to find his father dead, the stable hold on the content of landed aristocracy in crisis. Worse, the rich vein of tin running below their lands could not be mined; the white townspeople refused to engage in that work. They refused the equation of the compensation offered for work that would possible kill them, in an approximation of worker power that is necromantically overcome. As such, he employs Haitian drummers (and, in one of the more compelling minor roles, a black butler) to aid him in the rites which kill, raise, and control the townspeople.
Here, however, is the crucial question. In what possible way is it economically advantageous to create zombie laborers? (And more, zombie laborers out of those same white villagers who turned down the work in the first place?) The film seems to say, obviously, because they are mute slaves who work for free, they just ceaselessly mine and turn a profit. But in one of those remarkable moves in which what the film is "about" and what actually happens become unmistakably divergent, it becomes unmistakably clear that maintaining an army of undead miners is a lot of fucking work, particularly for wanna-be overlord Hamilton. (What also becomes apparent throughout the film is that the only real reason for him to be doing all this is because he quite enjoys it, that he gets off on being "beyond morality," on getting to put on his voodoo mask and robes, and mess around in graveyards at night.) He does not simply dig up corpses that come to un-life to work for him. No, he has to find a way via clumsy subterfuge to cut each future zombie, surreptitiously gather a bit of that blood, perform complicated rituals, wait for the "plague" death of the individual, and dig him or her up. And it doesn't stop there.
In the establishing shots of the tin mine, we notice two things. First, the zombies require a lot of whipping to keep moving. Even though it is the sadistic stooges of Hamilton who do the whipping, they don't seem particularly to be enjoying it, as we might imagine, asserting their position in the hierarchy of masters. They seem genuinely worn out from constantly trying to goad the shambling dead into action. And when they do "work," it seems startlingly ineffective, some pathetic approximation of human labor. Raising the hammer weakly to let it fall. They may work for free, but they surely don't work very well.
Second, this would be fine if we imagined a real horde of them, hundreds of fumbling, ineffective, rotting hands pulling shreds of tine from the earth. But Hamilton's tin mine is woefully understaffed, with no more than fifteen to twenty of these workers. And hence we can only ask: how does he turn a profit? The presence of the Haitian drummers and butler immediately raise the seeming obvious solution, exporting cheap labor from afar. If the townspeople are not willing to work in the mine, Hamilton surely knows that there are those more desperate who would throw – or more realistically, be thrown – themselves into this situation at the prospect of escaping crushing poverty and famine. The other solution, one that again is more obvious than it appears, is to make the mine safer. Put in some structural reinforcements, draw workers back with minimum wages and the assurance of non-collapse, and start drawing tin from the earth at a rate far faster than that of your "free" labor. Put your very able-bodied thugs to work not whipping zombies or digging up corpse, but mining some tin themselves. If living humans won't work there, consider not just inhuman labor but non-human labor: the shadow of the real historical development, of automated machinery, looms large over this film.
If there is an answer to this question, it is in part simply that the film couldn't be this kind of film without this intersection of the occult, the murderous, the witty class-based barbed jokes, the lust and loss. In short, it couldn't be a horror movie, and that was what Hammer did consummately well. And yet, we need to clarify what kind of horror movie. More precisely, what is the horror that the film purports to be about? We know what kind of horror movie it is, in a way: lightly bloody, pseudo-surreal, atmospheric, one that splits between a whole lot of carefully scripted talking and moments in which one cannot talk, the mute fear and shock of watching your wife die a second time. In this way, it is a horror movie with intended scares every so often (the seemingly dead man threw down her corpse! Sir James just cut off her head! Hamilton is about to rape/stab her!), with a generally atmosphere of creeping unease. But what about the horror it depicts, rather than the terror/unease it hopes to provoke in us? First, there is a sense of the horror of everyday relations and their minor exceptions that merely cut away the fat to show the nastiness that lays below. Like the other Hammer (and, in a sense, the Romero inflected zombie lineage) films, equal stressed is placed on the problems caused by vampires/reanimated corpses/daughters of Jack the Ripper and by those who have to deal with them but who are plenty capable of inflicting psychic and physical damage on their own, mobilizing the external threat to justify what must be done.
Second, the horror of the "natural order" being disturbed, that doing this with corpses just goes against nature, coupled with the sense of disturbing the peace of the dead. Yet as a character in the film wonders: "peace… what is that?" And further, what is so wrong about any use of the dead? We should briefly interrogate this attachment, even from within a framework of the capitalist reproduction of life and wealth. For we could easily imagine a form in which we wouldn't care, in which we would happily sell our posthumous labor. That is, if we were properly remunerated for it. That is the true problem lurking behind the blind of meddling with the natural order of things. In a conservative form: well, if I'm not getting paid, there's no way I'm working for someone else. And in a radical form: if we refuse work, if we refuse to accept a system in which I should put myself at risk for minor recompense, if we refuse to play the game, we refuse to be brought in against our will, black magic tricked into participation. In short, the seething anger at the prospect of not having a choice. The true underbelly of "freely selling one's labor," the realization that it has been a non-choice from the start.
And out of this anger, lurking along the surface, something bursts through, intermittent at first before truly exploding at the end. Its first real expression is not one of labor betrayed, at least not in the form of masculine mining labor. It is an expression of desire that the staid middle class-ness of the film's world cannot fathom.
Peter's wife Alice, voodoo-seduced and killed by Hamilton, is to join his dead work force. (A rather odd plot conceit, given that the miner-zombies are resolutely male and that when he gets Cynthia in his clutches, his interest seems primarily in threateningly molesting her before pulling a sacrificial knife. We might question just what he has in mind and the ways in which this indicates how much Hamilton does this things for pleasure and the reassurance of knowing that he can.) When Peter and Sir James interrupt her dis-interring by Hamilton and his masked crew, they witness her skin and hair go gray before she rises. And walks, with a look of direct lascivious lust, or perhaps a proper graveside smile of some knowledge of other horizons, the likes of which has no place elsewhere in this film about men and the things they enjoy talking about. If there is a return of the repressed here, it cannot be separated from this instance as easily as her head is cleft from her body.
For as before, the question is one of apocalyptic fantasy. And this should be stressed in its particularity: apocalyptic, in the sense of the revelation of what was hidden all along, and fantasy, in that it is a mode of narrative that consists of frozen captures, a distorted way of organizing desire [5] so that it can approach what it "wants" while prohibiting ever reaching it, without having to confront the shock of drive's blind repetition. For what are all these films and cultural objects, political theories and ideologies if not series of crystallized desires, ordered to avoid the real apocalyptic confrontation, which is that of the anxiety of the same, of realizing that the emergent new – the end of days punch line – has been hidden in plain sight all along? Hence, to speak of return and repressed is misleading, for these things have never left. Shunted to the side, caught at the edge of our vision, perhaps, but only because we so resolutely turn from them, again and again.
And in this case, none more so than the colonial past repurposed in Plague, a bloody, teeming site of experimentation and innovation, brought back to break the impasses of stagnant capital. But like the attempts to manage and control these pasts, fantasies slip and fail, symptoms overwhelm, the never-left comes back wrongly. It's just a matter of time before your undead miners get their shit together. Here the occasion is perhaps an accident (the burning of the voodoo dolls that preserves their control), but what happens is striking. Because when the technics of control and animation are destroyed, the dead don't just go back to being dead. We might imagine that the destruction of the instruments of plague, the willful sickness that put them to death to put them to work, would be the end of the zombies, now just lifeless corpses in an abandoned mine. But no. The plague persists and turns back on its source. The zombies, some on fire in psychic bonds with their voodoo dolls, swarm and attack their whipping overlords. It is a plague that cannot be separated from its victims: they are nothing but the embodiment of this sickness to be given back, in full ferocious rage, to all who have capitalized on it.
And so the film ends consumed in flames, consuming the site of their condemned labor. In the particular history that could have been, of which Plague is the outpost, the zombie film writes the full apocalyptic obscenity and frivolity of this scenario: you are raised from the grave to perform the work of digging the grave of the world that brought you back. Yet we should stress this is no impossible imagining relegated to schlock horror. However hyperbolic, this is the plague of capitalism. The point is to learn how to give it back, to become infectious. Following Italian Marxist Mario Tronti, we begin to grasp that the development of capitalism is not a story imposed from above, of new technologies and modes of accumulation and circulation, of a constant drive forward against which workers struggle, like harpooning a leviathan that drags us forward and casts us off. For Tronti, capitalist development must be understood from below: it is because workers struggle, because they refuse to freely give their power to production, that capitalism develops. It innovates, becomes stronger, more flexible precisely because workers resist the world and wages it offers them.
Class antagonism – and its expressions in riotous moments and long grinding struggle, in the gulf between bourgeois ideology and proletarian theory – is not the secondary consequence of the drive to profit. It is the motor that drives the whole ungodly enterprise forward. And as this trajectory of films shows us, when the condemned and damned, plagued and unwanted begin to act in concert, when hell isn't just full but mined for its innovations, the dead won't just walk the earth. They will share that hell with us, one and all.
[1] It's hard to imagine a zombie film in which zombies felt ashamed for consuming wrongly, although I'd love to see a version in which the zombies collectively shame one of their own for hoarding flesh, rather than sharing with the collective hunt, for consuming wrongly "wrongly."
[2] There are, of course, exceptions, and the 2006 film Fido, on which I'll eventually write, raises the question of zombie labor again. However, it is telling that in that film, it is an issue of capitalizing on the already zombified, fitting them with control collars, in the arch-entreprenaurial move, making money out from something that nobody wanted.
[4] The insistence on "not giving" satisfaction shows itself clearly here, in Sir James' further response: ""I have not come all this way to interfere with local customs and antagonize the people just to satisfy your sensitivity about the welfare of wild animals." Perhaps, but he shows little hesitation in that interference and antagonism when it's on his terms.
[5] Desire here should not be thought of as the act of wanting what you really wants but rather the structure that allows for the simultaneous approach to and endless deferral of reaching those objects of desire. Desire self-reproduces in its inverted ladder of pleasure, where pleasure is taken in the negotiations with the Law of prohibition.


text:
Friday, May 28, 2010
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
KNYEW x NINJA NEISHON
"The other week I went out to Las Vegas to interview Kenn Davenport who is one of the men responsible for KNYEW Clothing Boutique."
"I had just spent a few days in sin city and I was already feeling the repercussions. Late nights full of dancing and partying, lights everywhere, gambling etc. It was a lot to recover from. Luckily I picked the one place in Vegas where I could relax and connect with some real homies for a few hours. Kenn and I began our conversation with simple formalities and interesting stories from our businesses, yet as the night wore on I was able to hear some good insights into the streetwear industry from a man who has seen it all first hand."
"Something that Kenn and I both appreciate is a brand that stays true to its roots; meaning that we like to see creativity and businesses coming from people and not from no name entities that run it from the background. Putting a face or faces to a company is important to everyone involved. Kenn's signature hair is easy to recognize and he never hesitates to be a representative for Knyew no matter what the situation."
"When DJ Crooked and DJ Neva approached Kenn three years ago to be a part of Knyew, Kenn was working at a local sneaker shop. All three of them decided that Las Vegas needed a focal point for fashion that carried something other than just the Ed Hardy. With their inspiration, their connections and a passion to be number one in the city, KNYEW was born."
"Making use of the friendships they had all formed throughout their lifetimes they were in a position to open accounts with some of the most prestigious brands on the market. When you walk in you instantly know you're in good company."
"Kenn showed me around the office. I heard about Kenn's ultimate dreams which include moving back to a beachside city in Italy that he fell in love with when traveling there. (Maybe it was the topless beaches… maybe). We talked about KNYEW's success and about the rising popularity that their store and brand has been getting."
"When people would come up to Kenn on the street because they recognized him, it really threw him off. He said he's still not used to it, but it's definitely flattering. But he pointed out to me that he is just like any other guy on the street, he just "has big fucking hair."
"I cruised around his store some more and found some of my favorite brands. We talked about The Hundreds and how he has watched them grow their business from the ground up. He is impressed with their marketing and with their ability to create a community around what they do. I shared with him a secret mission Ninja Neishon has with The Hundreds… so secret not even they know about it yet."
"I'm really diggin the art around the place. Kenn talked to me about how hard it was to define what their store was when they first opened. Las Vegas didn't have a boutique dedicated entirely to streetwear at the time and so people would try and classify their shop as "urban." He and I both agreed that the term "urban" is used in inappropriate ways. For instance the ethnicity of your skin can often determine whether a label you're starting is considered skate, streetwear or urban. Obviously this is ridiculous, but it does happen. It's a very interesting point to bring up and it deserves your attention next time you're reading into labels. What makes something urban? What makes something streetwear? Just some food for thought, Ninjas. After a few hours I eventually had to get back for another night of Ninjaing in Vegas. I thanked Kenn again for taking the time to show me around and as I walked out I resisted my urge to pick up a few things while I was there. If I hadn't been down a few hundred already I definitely would have… but next time for sure."
"Kenn showing some support for Ninja Neishon by throwing up The Neishon hands..."
-Travis NN