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Want Brighter, Whiter Teeth?
Gray or yellowish teeth are causing you not to smile? As you age, consuming certain foods and drinks can stain your teeth. Avoiding some things and applying special agents to your teeth may begin to restore the teeth's whitish luster (and smile). The following slides offer some suggestions that may help restore your sparkling smile.
Do-It-Yourself Teeth Whitening
Superficial tooth stains can often be removed or reduced by using over-the-counter items such as toothpaste with whiteners, whitener strips, and other kits. In general, the major components of stain removers are mild bleach and abrasives in toothpaste.
Tooth-Whitening Kits
Most home tooth whitening kits contain carbamide peroxide or hydrogen peroxide. These chemicals may help remove superficial and some deeper discolorations. Depending on the kit, the compounds are either brushed on with a toothbrush or the compounds are in gel form that is put into upper and lower teeth molds, placed over the teeth, and kept in the mouth for about 45 minutes although times may vary.
Home Whitening Strips
Whitening strips usually contain about a 5% hydrogen peroxide impregnated strip of polyethylene that people can apply to teeth at home. They are usually worn for a few minutes a day for about a week.
Whitening Toothpastes
Most regular toothpastes, gels, and liquids may remove some stains, but most do not contain the bleaches mentioned above, so they may have little or no effect in making your teeth whiter.
Home Remedies for Whiter Teeth
Baking soda, sometimes mixed with lemon juice, has been claimed by many to help whiten teeth. Saliva flow and the scrubbing action of foods like apples, pears, and carrots also help to keep teeth white. Strawberries are considered to contain both astringents that remove stains and vitamin C that may remove plaque. Sugarless gum helps stimulate saliva to wash teeth and neutralize acids in foods. All off these are considered "home remedies" to get whiter teeth.
Dental Work and Tooth Whitening
Be careful with tooth whiteners if you have had some types of dental work such as crowns, bonding, veneers, fillings, tooth implants, or bridges. Whiteners work on natural teeth but not on other manufactured or altered teeth. Consequently, using whiteners could result in some teeth becoming whiter but not matching well with dental work done on other teeth.
Preventing Teeth Stains
Tooth enamel, the outer whitish layer covering teeth, wears away as we age; underneath the enamel is dentin that is more yellowish. So as you age, eating foods and drinking fluids that attack and discolor or stain enamel (see following slides) may cause dentin to be exposed. By eating and drinking non-staining foods and fluids and by using whiteners carefully, whitening treatment may last about a year. However, people can overdo whitening. Using whiteners too much, too often, or that are too concentrated can cause teeth to look translucent with a resulting bluish or blue-gray coloration.
To Keep Teeth White, Don't Smoke
One of the most common and worst compounds that stains and discolors teeth is tobacco. Brownish streaks and stains along with yellowing can occur rapidly with smoking (and chewing) tobacco. Tobacco products also increase the risk for many types of cancer and contribute to bad breath and gum disease.
Beverages That Cause Teeth Stains
Common beverages that cause tooth stains and discolorations are coffee, tea, dark-colored sodas, and many fruit juices, especially the darker-colored ones. A rule of thumb: If a beverage (or food) can stain a white T-shirt, it can likely cause tooth stains, too.
Other Drinks That Cause Teeth Stains
Some drinks that may be relatively good for you may not be so good for your teeth in terms of staining them. Red wine (yes, only one glass, please), cranberry juice, and grape juice are very good at staining teeth. So should you not drink these beverages? The answer is no, but you should remember to rinse out your mouth and brush your teeth well after drinking these fluids. Remember the previous slide about staining a T-shirt? If you spill staining beverages over your white T-shirt, the best way to prevent it from staining is to wash it with water and to scrub it with mild cleaners. The same is true for your teeth; rinse and brush before the stain is set.
Foods That Stain Teeth
The previous slide discussed some beverages that are good for you, but may stain teeth. This slide presents some foods that are excellent for your health but can stain your teeth; these include blueberries, blackberries, and currants. No, don't stop eating these items. Just remember to wash out your mouth and brush your teeth immediately after eating a meal that includes such foods to protect your teeth from staining (remember the T-shirt staining rule of thumb presented previously).
Are Sports Drinks Bad for Teeth?
Sweetened drinks are not good for your teeth. Other, acidic drinks like lemonade may erode enamel over time. Sipping these drinks exposes the tooth surfaces to enamel-eroding substances. If you do indulge in these drinks, it's best to remember the T-shirt rule of thumb: Rinse with water and brush the area to reduce or stop staining.
Medications That Can Stain Teeth
Other compounds beside foods and drinks can stain your teeth. A list of some of these substances includes:
- Mouthwashes that contain chlorhexidine or cetylpyridinium chloride
- Tetracycline (causes gray teeth in developing teeth)
- Iron-containing medications
- Fluoride (usually an excess may cause tooth discoloration)
- Some antihistamines, antipsychotics, and high blood pressure medications
In some patients, the teeth are so stained that whitening methods do not help. If you have teeth that do not respond to whitening, see your dentist for other options such as bonding (covering the tooth with a whitish-colored material).
Daily Maintenance Can Help
Daily brushing of teeth, along with rinsing and flossing (removing substances trapped between teeth with dental floss) is good; brushing rinsing and flossing twice a day is better. But, doing all three after meals and snacks is best for daily maintenance of teeth. Although some dental experts suggest that electric and sonic toothbrushes are better than a manual toothbrush, the manual toothbrush, when used properly, can do a good job of keeping your teeth clean and white.
Visit Your Dentist Regularly
Visit your dentist regularly. Many U.S. dentists suggest that 6-month checkups along with a cleaning done by a professional dental caregiver will help people maintain a relatively stain-free or stain-reduced set of teeth. Good dental care should allow most people to show their "pearly whites" when they smile.
- Stefano Oppo / Photonica / Getty Images
- Image Source / Getty Images
- Phanie / Photo Researchers, Inc.
- Jose Luis Pelaez, Inc / Getty Images
- Stockbyte / Getty Images
- Glowimages / Getty Images
- Keith Brofsky / Photodisc / Getty Images
- Soren Hald / Taxi / Getty Images
- iStockphoto
- iStockphoto
- iStockphoto
- iStockphoto
- iStockphoto
- iStockphoto
- iStockphoto
- iStockphoto
- AARP Bulletin: "Foods That Whiten Teeth Naturally"
- American Dental Association: "Toothbrushes"
- Medscape: "Tooth Discoloration Treatment & Management"


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Nutrition Facts
Ingredients and Preparation
- Preheat oven to 400°F.
- Combine breadcrumbs and pecans on a large plate and set aside. Brush both sides of the chicken with the melted butter, then coat the chicken in the pecan mixture.
- Transfer chicken to a baking dish coated with cooking spray and bake in oven until chicken is done, about 20-25 minutes.

subset: commoncrawl


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Table of Contents
1 Global Market Overview
1.1 Scope of Statistics
1.1.1 Scope of Products
1.1.2 Scope of Manufacturers
1.1.3 Scope of Application
1.1.4 Scope of Regions/Countries
1.2 Global Market Size
2 Regional Market
2.1 Regional Production
2.2 Regional Demand
2.3 Regional Trade
3 Key Manufacturers
3.1 Scrippslabs
3.1.2 Company Information
3.1.2 Product Specifications
3.1.3 Business Data (Capacity, Sales Revenue, Volume, Price, Cost and Margin)
3.2 Leebio
3.2.1 Company Information
3.2.2 Product Specifications
3.2.3 Business Data (Capacity, Sales Revenue, Volume, Price, Cost and Margin)
3.3 Kamiya Biomedical Company
3.3.1 Company Information
3.3.2 Product Specifications
3.3.3 Business Data (Capacity, Sales Revenue, Volume, Price, Cost and Ma...View details
25-Feb-2019 | ICT and Media
Recently, in its new report on the economy, the Fed (Federal Reserve) said that labor market is tightened in the U.S. as businesses are struggling to find workers at any expertise level and wages usually grew moderately. The Fed's "Beige Book" report—which is a picture of the economy picked up from conversations with business contacts—reported that stiff labor m ...
25-Feb-2019 | Electrical & Electronic
Batteries are generally made using lithium or others ions which are not only harmful to the environment but also difficult to find or manufacture. However, a team from the University of Michigan has successfully developed a new material for batteries stating that the knees and smartphones have similar needs. The structural battery prototype possessing cartilage-inspired materials can actuall ...
13-Feb-2019 | Electrical & Electronic
The drone industry will grow rapidly with increased use of drones in areas such as agriculture, mining, construction, resource exploration, and supervision. By 2018, drone companies have begun to expand their scope and determine the feasibility of a drone program by reorganizing their workflows and managing the data. This year, companies are expected to focus on their strategies and benefit ...
13-Feb-2019 | Machinery & Equipments
Evonik has procured a tech startup based in the United States for 3D printing materials: Structured Polymers Inc. A conforming agreement and plot of the merger were accomplished and the deal has been sealed recently. The procurement will offer access to Evonik to the new patented technology that will enable the firm to extend its range of specialty polymer powders within the additive manufac ...
05-Feb-2019 | Medical & Health
Recently, a group of researchers from the University of Bath and Northwestern University has produced the latest type of sensor platform with an array of gold nanoparticles. The sensors are believed to have a vital role to play in the field of smart medical devices market in order to help make sensitivity related tasks simpler as well as quicker for the medical staff.
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I have a shape file with nature preservation areas (Biosphärenreservate) in Germany. I think the projection must be something like gauss-krüger zone 4 Pulkovo or something like that. When I reproject it to UTM-33N WGS84 it reprojects but is not exactly accurate. The borders don't quite match my other shape (the other file)
http://www.projektidee.org/images/extern/biosph-res-2010.prj.zip http://www.projektidee.org/images/extern/gebiet_UTM33.dbf.zip
Could anyone here help me with that problem. That would be nice!
best regards desputin


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Denying 'Terrorists' the Label
The killing of abortion docter George Tiller is an interesting microcosm of how terrorism works -- and how it can be suppressed. I wrote here the other day denying that Tiller's killer is a terrorist. Refusing to call him a terrorist will deny him strategic gains and reduce violence in the future.
Now the AP reports the killer's claim from jail that similar violence is planned across the nation. This kind of statement is not likely prediction, but rather an appeal to like-minded people to join him. Like terrorists, he has a strong ideological commitment but almost no way to advance his cause other than by inducing missteps on the part of his opponents.
Letting Dr. Tiller's killer wear the mantle of terrorism would enthuse people who might be inclined to join his cause and carry out future attacks on abortion providers. The best strategic response is to downplay his claims, refuse to call him a terrorist, and let the criminal process run its course.


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Updated 4:22 p.m. - MOUNT VERNON, IA -- President Barack Obama seized on Republican nominee Mitt Romney's rhetoric and record on Wednesday with the same aggression he displayed during his second face-to-face meeting with Romney at last night's town hall debate.
President Obama delivers remarks at a grassroots event in Mount Vernon, Iowa, at Cornell College's Richard and Norma Small Multi-Sport Center.
Speaking this afternoon in Iowa, the president was quick to revive Romney's response Tuesday night to a question about pay equity between the sexes, in which he touted his record of hiring women as Massachusetts governor by saying he had "binders full of women" who were qualified to be hired.
"I've gotta tell you, we don't have to collect a bunch of binders to find qualified, talented, terrific young women ready to work and teach in these fields right now!" Obama exclaimed as a crowd of 2,800 at Cornell College, outside Cedar Rapids, cheered.
Related: Sharp exchanges at second debate
He also hit Romney over his sales pitch for lowering taxes, saying Romney's plan is not to be trusted because it contains so few specifics.
"Iowa, you know, everybody here's heard of the New Deal, you've heard of the Fair Deal, you've heard of the Square Deal. Mitt Romney's trying to sell you a sketchy deal," he said, using the same adjective – "sketchy" – that he premiered last night at Hofstra.
Many of Obama's attacks were similar to those he voiced during last night's debate. That differed from Obama's post-debate appearance after his first debate versus Romney, where the president's attacks seemed as thought they came a day late.
Robert Gibbs, Senior Advisor for the Obama Campaign, joins The Daily Rundown's Chuck Todd to talk about the President's performance in the debate, and touches on the President's debate remarks on the 9/11 Libya attacks.
One such attack was ridiculing Romney's "five-point plan" as a "one-point plan" given its lack of specifics and goal of, as Obama says, raising taxes on the middle class to pay for a tax cut for the wealthy.
Despite deploying lines Wednesday that he seemed to believe succeeded the night before, Obama still played down his own performance, telling the crowd that he's "still trying to figure out how to get the hang of this thing, debating it."
"But we're working on it. We'll keep on improving as time goes on. I've got one left," he told the crowd.
And he has one campaign event left Wednesday, in the thick of the swing state of Ohio.
The Romney campaign responded to Obama's event with a response that noted Obama said at the debate, that "there are some jobs that are not going to come back" because of the uneven economic recovery.
"President Obama has no new ideas, no vision for the future, and is simply giving up. The choice in this election couldn't be clearer. Mitt Romney has bold new ideas that will cut taxes for middle-class families, create 12 million new jobs with higher take-home pay, and cut spending to put our nation on a course toward a balanced budget," spokesman Ryan Williams said in a statement.


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SUBSCRIBE for Auto Delivery. We will auto ship product(s) each year starting on a date you choose. Simply hit SUBSCRIBE in the shopping cart, then choose your delivery start date and frequency. Your credit card is charged only when your order is processed. This will be a recurring charge unless you cancel your subscription.
Tree Saver puts back into the soil, what man-made landscapes have taken away. In forested settings, trees & plants rely upon beneficial bacteria and mycorrhizal root systems to survive. Taken out of that setting and put into a typical suburban landscape, there is no forest for the trees. Those vitally important partnerships are diminished or eliminated, and must be supplied.
Tree Saver contains beneficial mychorrizal fungi that work to create a secondary root system that provides a dramatic increase in the plant's ability to extract water and mineral elements. This is critical for the quick establishment of a new tree or shrub. The more quickly the secondary root system can be established, the more likely the plant is to survive transplant. Tree Saver also contains Terra-Sorb® crystals that absorb and release water to the root zone, as well as beneficial bacteria to feed the soil that feeds the roots.
(1) 3 oz packet treats (1) 1" caliper tree or bush
(3) 1-gallon containerized trees/shrubs
*Tree Saver is effective for all tree and shrub species except Rhododendrons, azaleas and mountain laurel. Use of Tree Saver with these species will not harm them.
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Lake Village Real Estate
Lake Village is located in Indiana. Lake Village, Indiana has a population of 585. Lake Village is less family-centric than the surrounding county with 3.61% of the households containing married families with children. The county average for households married with children is 26.22%.
The median household income in Lake Village, Indiana is $36,992. The median household income for the surrounding county is $49,769 compared to the national median of $53,482. The median age of people living in Lake Village is 56.4 years.
Lake Village Map
View Homes for Sale in Lake Village
Lake Village Weather
The average high temperature in July is 84.5 degrees, with an average low temperature in January of 14.9 degrees. The average rainfall is approximately 39 inches per year, with 24.7 inches of snow per year.
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Review: Mindy Smith, Stupid Love
While her first two albums intermittently hinted at her full potential, singer-songwriter Mindy Smith was often hamstrung by both her lapses into naïvete and preciousness and a gauzy production style that was tepid even by ever-dulling Americana standards. Smith's latest, Stupid Love, goes a long way toward correcting those earlier mistakes, and it easily stands as her most accomplished, most substantial record. There's a surprising heft to the production here: Punchy single "Highs and Lows" boasts a terrific rhythm track that's perfectly layered for headphone listening, closer "Take a Holiday" is a near-perfect slice of '70s-era AM radio pop, while the heavy reverb in the vocal track on "If I Didn't Know Any Better" gives the song a real structural sophistication, sounding as though Smith is being chastised by a full choir of voices in her head. Her performance on that track is perhaps the best example of her growth as an interpretive singer, as she gives an effective, darker reading to one of Alison Krauss's best singles. The melancholy tone of the album suits Smith's voice well, as there's a natural sadness to her timbre that makes songs like "Love Lost" and "Couldn't Stand the Rain" fully convincing. She does begin to repeat herself to diminishing returns toward the latter half of the album ("I'm Disappointed" has a couple of awful grade school rhymes, while "Surface" drowns its lovely melody by playing like an interminable dirge), but Stupid Love impresses for its thematic focus and the leap forward in maturity in Smith's songwriting. Having her heart broken seems to have done Smith a world of good.
Label: Vanguard Release Date: August 10, 2009 Buy: Amazon
The 12 Worst Christmas Songs of All Time
Here are 12 of our least favorite holiday songs, one for each day it took the three wise men to reach the baby Jesus.
It's that time of the year again. Black Friday sales. Last-minute treks to the gym to absolve your guilt over that third slice of pecan pie. And Mariah Carey playing on every radio station and in every shopping mall for the next 26 days. Unfortunately, we'll also have to endure a litany of ill-conceived and poorly executed Christmas songs that are inexplicably resurrected every year, and will likely be until time immemorial. Here are 12 of our least favorites, one for each day that it took for the three wise men to reach the baby Jesus after he was born.
Editor's Note: This article was originally published on November 28, 2011.
12. Jimmy Boyd, "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus"
This Saks Fifth Avenue potboiler from 1952 about a child catching his mother being sexually assaulted by an elderly home invader only becomes even creepier when you realize the kid's mom isn't cheating on his dad, but that Mommy and Daddy have a Santa fetish.
11. Sia, "Puppies Are Forever"
A track from Sia's 2017 collection of holiday originals, Everyday Is Christmas, "Puppies Are Forever" is a reggae-vibed public service announcement about, well, how puppies are not forever: "They're so cute and fluffy with shiny coats/But will you love 'em when they're old and slow?" The repetitive wannabe-earworm is, at best, an admirable message about the responsibilities of pet ownership. And it comes complete with the sound of barking dogs. (Earplugs not included.)
10. Lou Monte, "Dominick the Donkey"
Lou Monte's 1960 holiday jingle about Saint Nicola outsourcing his Christmas present deliveries in the Italian mountainside to a dim-witted donkey feels more prescient than ever. But that doesn't make it any less irritating.
9. Dan Fogelberg, "Same Old Lang Syne"
The concept is touching enough: Fogelberg runs into an old flame at the grocery store on Christmas Eve and they grab a drink and reminisce. But melodramatic lyrics ("She went to hug me and she spilled her purse/And we laughed until we cried") and gratuitous details ("We took her groceries to the checkout stand/The food was totalled up and bagged") make "Same Old Lang Syne" a cloying annual annoyance.
8. Neil Diamond, "Cherry Cherry Christmas"
In this addition to the schmaltzy, nonsensical holiday song canon, Neil Diamond wishes you "a very, merry, cherry, cherry, holly-holy, rockin'-rolly Christmas," before idiotically exclaiming, "Cherry Christmas, everyone!" at song's end.
7. Cyndi Lauper, "Christmas Conga"
Holiday cheer has always been all-inclusive. Hell, even the Jewish Neil Diamond has released three Christmas albums. But I'm going to go out on a limb and say a Latin house anthem with lyrics like "Bonga, bonga, bonga, do the Christmas conga!" probably wasn't necessary. But we still love you, Cyn.
The 25 Greatest Beck Songs, Ranked
For all his humor, Beck is consistently thoughtful and earnest in building his checkered monuments.
Beck's breakout hit, "Loser," represented the sound of the nation's youth wearing their slackerdom as a badge of honor. It's a rather dubious fate for the workmanlike track, considering that if Gen X ever "had" a sound, it was the slow, snarling grunge roiling out of the Pacific Northwest, a genre far too self-possessed and clumsily aggressive to match the decidedly goofy appeal of Beck's patchwork style. If anything, "Loser" was a middle finger to the self-serious headbangers, Beck's own shrug at the angsty masses before ignoring them altogether and staking his career on offbeat lonerism.
The lonesomeness that results from possessing such an individualist streak is explored rather profoundly on albums like Sea Change and Morning Phase, but regardless of the personal costs, he's become a folk hero, having built his legacy on championing near-forgotten strains of Americana at every turn. Constructing a list of his best tracks can thus be likened to assembling a mosaic pieced together from several generations of music. The songs themselves aren't simply attention-starved amalgams strung together randomly though: For all his humor, Beck is consistently thoughtful and earnest in building his checkered monuments, empathetic to the point where his creations often cease to be facsimiles at all, but heartfelt creations born from the same cultural conscious that inspired them. You can't write if you can't relate, indeed. Kevin Liedel
Editor's Note: Listen to our Beck playlist on Spotify.
25. "Debra"
Midnite Vultures exists largely as satire, but it also serves as an opportunity for the usually cryptic Beck to let his freak flag fly. On the epic, cheesy "Debra," he hoists it way, way up, further establishing the absurdity of the album's seedy narcissism by attempting to pick up sisters. The greatest moment here, however, is the supreme elasticity of Beck's voice, sprinting from husky whispers to erotic falsettos with the kind of joie de vivre worthy of Prince. Liedel
24. "Soul Suckin' Jerk"
Beck's sense of humor has always been prevalent in his music, but what's less well-established is how his absurd, juvenile setups often dissolve into black-hearted non sequiturs. "Soul Suckin' Jerk" is one such reversal, a slacker tale that traces Beck's working stiff from the food court into the edges of civilization just as its verse descends from quiet basslines into raucous drum stomps. "For 14 days I've been sleeping in a barn," Beck's suburban drone-cum-backwoods anarchist observes, right before a guttural, bottom-heavy font of distortion hammers home the desperation in his wisecracks. Liedel
23. "Hollywood Freaks"
Beck lays claim to legitimate skills on the mic, and they've never been stronger or more precise than on "Hollywood Freaks." Of course, this being Beck, the rhymes come with a twist, delivered in a lisping, nasal drone that's part Truman Capote and part Sylvester the Cat. All the better for it, considering the slick, springy track boasts the weirdest combination of allusions Beck's ever concocted: Ripple, No Doz, Norman Schwarzkopf, tricked-out Hyundais, and the song's ubiquitous, drunken tagline, "He's my nun!" Liedel
22. "Forcefield"
Given Beck's recent lavish productions, it's easy to forget that in the early- to mid-'90s he was a lo-fi master. This is nowhere more evident than on 1994's One Foot in the Grave, a barebones album steeped in folk and blues. Its centerpiece is "Forcefield," a song built on three simple yet haunting acoustic guitar notes and intertwining vocals by Beck and Sam Jayne of the sadly unheralded post-hardcore band Lync. The lyrics are largely enigmatic, but the chorus poignantly summarizes the necessity of a metaphorical forcefield: "Don't let it get too near you/Don't let it get too close/Don't let it turn you into/The things you hate the most." Michael Joshua Rowin
21. "Rowboat"
"Rowboat," from 1994's Stereopathetic Soulmanure, is a gently strummed, classically constructed ballad of rejection and loneliness that features Beck's early penchant for lyrics that alternate between deadpan melancholy ("Rowboat, row me to the shore/She don't wanna be my friend no more") and humorous non sequitur ("Dog food on the floor/And I've been like this before"). Late Nashville legend Leo Blanc's stunning steel pedal work provides just the right amount of additional sorrow, and, as if to give it the country stamp of approval, Johnny Cash covered the song in 1996. Rowin
Review: Beck's Hyperspace Is As Lyrically Vague As It Is Sonically Minimal
Most of the album's songs blend into each other so nebulously that they become collectively anonymous.2.5
Throughout his varied and unpredictable career, Beck has achieved constancy in one respect: an almost unrelentingly bleak worldview, a portrayal of pre- and post-millennium America as a Bosch-like inferno of indignities. It was there early on, in his adherence to the folk and blues tradition of biblical prophesying ("There must be some blueprint, some creed of the devil inscribed in our minds," he sang on 1998's Mutations), and it's in his more recent work, darkening avant-pop efforts like 2008's Modern Guilt and adding a global sense of sadness to ostensibly more introspective albums like 2014's Morning Phase.
Which is why 2017's Colors was so surprising: Aside from one or two tracks, it was Beck's first unabashed, unironic feel-good party album. But if Colors was a million-dollar bash, then Beck's follow-up, Hyperspace, is the comedown. While similarly heavy on beats and electronics, the album lacks its predecessor's bounce and exuberance. This trade-in would initially appear welcome since, unlike Beck's past genre experiments, which always contained an unmistakable personal touch, Colors's glossy, airbrushed fun bordered on inhuman. By comparison, Hyperspace represents something at least relatively thoughtful, its skeletal beats and somber synth washes—a result of Beck working with co-producer Pharrell Williams—suggesting a period of midlife self-examination against a backdrop of perpetual twilight.
For a few moments early on in the album, Beck follows through on this premise. Opener "Hyperlife" acts as a brief prologue by announcing the album's core theme of melancholic and disconnected excess, the phrase "crushing life" qualifying a desire for "more and more beauty, light" amid several interweaving synth textures. This leads into "Uneventful Days," with deep keyboard washes and effervescent twinkles playing over a modest trap beat as Beck continues the theme with a lovely melodic vocal: "Never-ending days, never-ending nights/Everything I say, I know I can't get right." The mood is dreamy, numbed, and yet somehow hopeful.
But tracks like the album's lead single, "Saw Lightening," return both to the forced enthusiasm of Colors and to the hybridization of blues and hip-hop that Beck explored with far more wit on early hits like Odelay's "Hotwax." As one of the only "up" songs on Hyperspace, its forward momentum is undermined by a conventionally programmed drum track, popcorning keyboard blips, an annoying Pharrell verse, and faux-gospel background yelps that transform a lyric about the end of the world into what sounds like soundtrack music for an action movie.
What follows is a series of slight midtempo electro-pop ballads: "Die Waiting" sways with a brightness augmented by acoustic guitar strums, "See Through" emphasizes bubbling electronic percussion, and "Star" uses video game-esque bloops and a gently pulsing bassline as a nest for Beck's falsetto vocals. It's all in the chillwave vein and, while not oppressive like Colors, it's also all extremely soporific. Aside from the ascendant airiness of "Chemical," the gospel grandeur of "Everlasting Nothing," and a few interweaving vocal lines that call back to the aural density of Midnite Vultures, most of the tracks blend into each other so nebulously that they become collectively anonymous. When something stands out it's usually for an ugly reason: The title track's rap breakdown is exceedingly cornball, and a few songs fade out so abruptly and awkwardly it seems like they're embarrassed at their own meagerness.
Beck might have redeemed Hyperspace with his underappreciated lyrical genius, and he could have gone in two different directions in doing so: a return to the pared-down confessional songwriting that made 2002's vulnerable Sea Change so universally resonant, or else the absurdist wordplay, apocalyptic imagery, and pop-cultural detritus that typically fill Beck's songs to the bursting point with vivid portraiture and singular turns of phrase. (Even Colors achieved some, well, color with lines like "I want to see you with the pharaoh's curse/The apple flower doggerel, the batteries burst.") But there's little of either throughout Hyperspace, which is as lyrically vague as it is musically minimal.
Instead of creating a unique world of characters, Beck populates too many songs with first-persona clichés ("I don't care what I have to do/You know that I'm gonna wait on you"), and, elsewhere, his metaphors are rote and obvious (love is a drug on "Chemical," disorientation becomes the directionless heavens on "Stratosphere"). By the time Beck finally gets to an original, gut-punching metaphor in "Everlasting Nothing"—"And I washed up on the shoreline/Everyone was waiting there for me/Like a standing ovation for the funeral of the sun"—it's too late to make up for an album's worth of platitudes.
Beck's 2006 album The Information is a better example of his unrivaled funhouse approach to style and tone: By blending techno, folk, punk, hip-hop, Krautrock, blues, ambient, and groove-oriented rock, that album is by turns strange, aggressive, hilarious, disturbing, eerie, and fun, all while expressing wry dismay over our current cyber-Armageddon. In comparison, and for all its apparent now-ness, Hyperspace feels inconsequential and incomplete.
Label: Capitol Release Date: November 22, 2019 Buy: Amazon
The 20 Best Rihanna Singles
We took a look back through the singer's catalogue of hits and picked her 20 best singles to date.
Like Madonna before her, Rihanna possesses a shrewd ability to sniff out percolating trends and a willingness to zig when she's expected to zag. "Russian Roulette," "Diamonds," and "Four Five Seconds" were all surprising moves for an artist who could have safely preserved the status quo. The Barbadian singer's wild success, which includes 11 solo #1 hits in the U.S., can also be attributed to her seemingly steadfast work ethic, yielding seven albums in just the first eight years of her career. That streak ended with 2012's Unapologetic, and she's only dropped one album since then, 2016's ANTI. While we wait out another dry spell in one of contemporary pop's most unexpectedly enduring careers, we took a look back through Rihanna's catalogue of hits and picked her 20 best singles to date.
Editor's Note: Listen to our Rihanna playlist on Spotify.
20. "Four Five Seconds"
The reverberations of a "ella-ella" or "na-na" now feel something like a big bang: There would be no "We Can't Stop," no "Come & Get It," without the syllabic tongue games Rihanna used to galvanize pop in the latter half of the aughts. Of course, hashtagging your way through vocals only gets a career so far, and if "Stay" saw RiRi try to demonstrate greater range through familiar forms, "Four Five Seconds" does so the way she knows best: by inventing her own. Paired with Kanye West in his rough crooner mode, the two bleat bluesy woes over Paul McCartney's best Lindsey Buckingham impression. It's an oddly affecting formula that's unlikely to prove quite so imitable—though Miley and Selena are welcome to try. Sam C. Mac
To say the world wasn't exactly thrilled to hear Rihanna, after just having bared her soul in Rated R about (among other things) "that incident," singing about how much chains and whips excite her would be a gross understatement. Career momentum, and a little assist from Britney Spears on the remix, thrust "S&M" to the top of the charts anyway, but you'd be hard-pressed to find many admitting that they, too, like the smell of sex in the air. But screw it, we'll say it. "S&M" might be the boldest of all Rihanna house jams, the moment when she truly found her Janet Jackson-circa-"Throb" stride. Eric Henderson
18. "Love on the Brain"
No one would ever confuse Rihanna with Amy Winehouse, but the doo-wop-inspired fourth single from 2016's ANTI channels the late singer's brand of throwback pop with its juxtaposition of retro instrumentation and, one might say, retrograde lyrics: "It beats me black and blue, but it fucks me so good that I can't get enough." Rihanna shows off her vocal versatility throughout the track, at turns cooing in falsetto and dropping to a growl, as she unabashedly puts her heart—and her brain—on her sleeve. Sal Cinquemani
17. "Man Down"
Rihanna's follow-up to ANTI will reportedly be more reggae-influenced than any of her previous efforts. Of course, the singer has already paid homage to her roots countless times over the course of her career. One highlight is "Man Down," about a woman who shoots a man in the public square, putting a feminine twist on Bob Marley's "I Shot the Sheriff." Rihanna's vocals are surprisingly agile, and "Man Down" is one of her most confident performances to date. Alexa Camp
16. "Rehab"
If "Umbrella" was a good girl's gesture of generosity, "Rehab" is her reeling from the abuse of a bad man who squandered it. "I'll never give myself to another the way I gave it to you" is one of the saddest Rihanna lyrics, but a blow blunted by the singer's signature resigned delivery, deployed here as a coping mechanism. What might be a typical lovelorn ballad becomes tough and resilient, a tone well complemented by Timbaland snapping percussion and dramatic strings, and the anonymity Rihanna had been criticized for suddenly matures into a mode of vocalizing repressed emotion that she'd never before explored. It only took a crummy metaphor to get her there. Mac
Through the Years: Madonna's Iconic "Like a Virgin" at 35
We're taking a look back at the song the Queen of Pop has perpetually made shiny and new.
Confession: I've never cared much for "Like a Virgin." Madonna's 1984 single may be the first, if not the, signature song of her career, but it's a trifle—a novelty, really—with its plucky, noncommittal guitar licks, sub-"Billie Jean" bassline, and the singer's helium squeak of a voice. That last, integral element in particular has always irked me, as, from "Express Yourself" to "Don't Tell Me," Madonna has proven she's capable of some deep, soulful performances. Of course, the vocals on "Like a Virgin" were allegedly employed by design, sped up to render Madonna's voice more childlike and "virginal." (It's a trick she's lamentably reprised on some of her more recent recordings.)
I'm in fairly good company, however, since both producer Nile Rodgers and Madonna herself aren't particularly fond of "Like a Virgin" either, and she's chosen to completely reinvent the song in masterful ways nearly every time she's performed it. The single was released on Halloween in 1984, and this week also marks the 35th anniversary of the album of the same name. To commemorate this milestone, we're taking a look back at three and a half decades of a song Madonna has mercifully, perpetually made shiny and new by sheer force of will and ingenuity.
MTV Video Music Awards (1984)
Feminists angered by Madonna's choice of a belt buckle during her performance at the MTV VMAs in 1984 seemed to miss the fact that her groom was a mannequin and that she chose instead to consummate her vows with her wedding veil. By the time she'd descended her giant wedding cake, hit the floor, and rolled around on the stage, showing her knickers to the world, there was no confusion about what the M stood for in the giant MTV logo towering above her.
Music Video (1984)
Shot largely in St. Marks's Square in Venice, Italy, the music video for "Like a Virgin" found Madonna playing Beauty to a man dressed as a Beast, specifically a lion (which not coincidentally happens to be the symbol of Mark the Evangelist). The singer is depicted as both virginal bride—sauntering impatiently through the basilica, undressing the furniture—and street harlot, hungrily prowling the bridges and canals of the Floating City.
Blond Ambition Tour (1990)
Ostensibly growing weary of her biggest hit, Madonna reinterpreted "Like a Virgin" with a Middle Eastern-inspired arrangement for her Blond Ambition Tour, casting herself as harem girl (the other "girls" being male dancers, natch, dressed in conical bras designed by Jean Paul Gautier). Having long shed her "Boy Toy" image for a more empowering, self-reliant brand of post-feminism, the Queen of Pop once again made it clear that "Like a Virgin" is first and foremost a paean to self-love.
The Girlie Show (1993)
The story goes that Madonna looked up Gene Kelly in 1993 to ask him to give her notes on her Girlie Show Tour, the sets and choreography of which were inspired by Hollywood musicals from the 1950s like Kelly's Singin' in the Rain. "Like a Virgin" was originally intended to be sung by a man, and Madge had been toying with the idea of paying homage to Marlene Dietrich and French cabaret singer Maurice Chevalier by dressing in drag for a slapstick-and-vaudeville version of "Like a Wirgin." Kelly, then in his 80s, gave his stamp of approval, and the rest is, as they say, history.
MTV Video Music Awards (2003)
After putting the song into retirement for a decade, Madonna dusted "Like a Virgin" off for the 20th annual VMAs, this time playing the groom to Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera's not-so-blushing brides in yet another gender-bending performance of her iconic hit.
Confessions Tour (2006)
In 2005, Madonna was thrown from her horse while riding at her country estate outside London, breaking her hand, three ribs, and her collarbone. The accident served as inspiration for her Confessions Tour the following year, which opened with an equestrian-themed segment. A knowing wink to the suggestion that there was nothing left of the pop star to reveal of herself, x-rays of her cracked bones were projected onto giant screens as she mounted a carousel horse, stroking the giant pole, and performing near-acrobatic moves to the beat of a discofied revamp of "Like a Virgin." Back in the saddle, indeed.
MDNA Tour (2012)
Madonna ended up back on the floor for this striking, unexpectedly poignant rendition of "Like a Virgin" for 2012's MDNA Tour. The delicate piano waltz was juxtaposed with the singer flashing her lady parts, defying those who'd for years squawked that the fiftysomething performer should put on her clothes and take a bow. Asking fans who likely paid a pretty penny for their front-row seats to throw money at her like a stripper might seem crass, but then this tour-de-force segues into MDNA's "Love Spent," a song about the dissolution of the so-called Material Girl's marriage to Guy Ritchie, who reportedly got millions in a divorce settlement.
Rebel Heart Tour (2015)
After more than three decades performing the hit that made her a household name, Madonna took things back to basics for her Rebel Heart Tour, delivering a somewhat faithful rendition of "Like a Virgin" for fans around the globe. She didn't roll on the floor and show the world her underwear, but she did hump the stage in homage to her infamous VMA performance and at one point stripped off her shirt.
See where "Like a Virgin" landed on our list of Every Madonna Single Ranked.
Review: Celine Dion's Courage Digs Deep But Largely Comes Up Empty
In terms of both length and theme, the singer's 12th English-language album can feel exhausting.2.5
In recent years, Celine Dion has been less likely to generate headlines for her music than for her eccentric fashion choices and personal developments (her husband of over two decades, René Angélil, died in 2016). And the French-Canadian singer's first English-language effort in six years, Courage, is unlikely to change that. The album opens with the club hit "Flying on My Own," a rousing house anthem that's a bit of a red herring. With the exception of "Lovers Never Die" and "Nobody's Watching"—which deliver just enough peripheral urban-leaning pop and funk, respectively, to not offend Dion's core audience—the rest of the album's 70-minute runtime is filled with boilerplate balladry.
Though Dion doesn't write her own material, much of Courage features lyrical references to loss and mourning. "I would be lying if I said I'm fine/I think of you at least a hundred times," she sings on the title track, a heart-wrenching piano ballad whose lovely verses—"I talk to you like I did then/In conversations that will never end"—are put into stark relief by its schmaltzy hook. Co-penned by Sam Smith, "For the Lover That I Lost" is expectedly mopey, though it's less so in Dion's hands, her vocals erring on the side of understatement. She's in fine voice throughout the album, though signs of wear are obvious (and welcome) in her scratchy belt on "Change My Mind" and the husky lower register she employs on "Look at Us Now."
Co-written by Sia and David Guetta, the string-laden "Lying Down" feels both modern and classic, while "Best of All" comes closest to recapturing the timeless quality of Dion's peak output. Perhaps intentionally, it's not until the album's last third that true joy breaks through, on the soulful, doo-wop-inspired "How Did You Get Here" and the gospel-infused closing track, "The Hard Way." In terms of both its length and themes, the 20-track Courage can feel exhausting, alternating between platitudes about grief and self-empowerment that, with only a few exceptions, make what should feel cathartic sound empty and even anonymous.
Label: Columbia Release Date: November 15, 2019 Buy: Amazon
Review: DJ Shadow's Our Pathetic Age Paints a Grim Picture of Modern Life
The double album speaks to the hyper-distracted way we live today.3.5
Imagine a magician. He walks on stage and wordlessly holds up a canister of gasoline, which he then drinks from. He then places a stick of dynamite in his mouth and lights it like a cigar. The fuse burns down and the magician explodes, blowing a huge hole in the stage and soaking the audience with blood and viscera. As everyone is shocked and terrified, their ears ringing, the magician appears on a nearby balcony. Ta-da! You might ask how he did it. But a better question is: What does he do to equal if not to top himself?
Such is the problem that's faced DJ Shadow since 1996's Endtroducing…, which was genre- and era-defining in a way that few other electronic albums have ever been. His later output simply hasn't been as innovative or exciting, destined to be read in the context of that triumphant debut. Perhaps that's why Shadow's sixth album, Our Pathetic Age, announces in its very title that his concerns are immediate. The cover, rendered in Pop Art style, shows a woman in semi-profile gasping as she looks at a smartphone. The cover art and title, taken in tandem, suggests that this double album is a stinging critique of our age of technological proliferation. Despite this, Shadow has said that he doesn't intend his latest to be an indictment of modern life as much as a comment on it, one that speaks to the hyper-distracted way we live today.
Our Pathetic Age's first half showcases Shadow's renowned ability to build songs entirely out of samples. The best of these evoke clear referents through their soundscapes: "Intersectionality" layers synths on top of an icy, spare beat until it builds to a neon-lit climax that might make you wish you were riding in a spinner from Blade Runner, while "Slingblade" matches glitch-poppy drum programming to a fluttery, Koji Kondo-esque synth melody.
More compact than its sprawling title suggests, "Beauty Power Motion Life Work Chaos Law" shows Shadow's continued ability to wring humor out of his work. The track starts with a funky synth figure that morphs into something more jazz-inspired, with jittery piano on top of splash-heavy drumming. Everything except for the drums drops out as the song comes to its conclusion, and Shadow delivers the punchline with a voice telling the drummer to "shut the fuck up" against a polite smattering of applause.
On the album's second half, Shadow takes a back seat and welcomes an all-star cast of guests to bring their own identity to bear on the songs. De La Soul infuses the catchy, high-energy party anthem "Rocket Fuel" with their trademark infectiousness, while Nas and Pharaohe Monch trade furious verses on "Drone Warfare," the most explicitly political track on Our Pathetic Age. The rappers address mass surveillance, economic inequality, corporate malfeasance, and racial injustice over an explosive, take-no-prisoners beat.
Ghostface Killah, Inspektah Deck, and Raekwon contribute verses to "Rain on Snow," which starts with a tired Game of Thrones reference but recovers by showcasing the trio's dexterous lyricism. Shadow lays their vocals over a ghostly hook ("Rain on snow makes it melt away") and the juxtaposition makes their lines pop even more. "Kings and Queens" gives Run the Jewels another chance to make the case that they're one of the best rap duos in history, and the gospel choir chorus tethers the song to the group's Dirty South roots.
The title track and closer is a four-on-the-floor disco jam that makes excellent use of Future Islands's Samuel T. Herring, whose delivery splits the difference between Tom Waits and Bill Withers and settles perfectly into the groove. His lyrics paint a picture of a relationship recalled through the haze of time, his memories framed by years of emotional decay. Balanced against the propulsive music, the song is as effecting as anything Shadow has ever done.
Less successful is "C.O.N.F.O.R.M.," which is peppered with boilerplate carping about Twitter and social media from Gift of Gab, Infamous Taz, and Lateef the Truth Speaker, while "Small Colleges (Stay with Me)," featuring Wiki and Paul Banks, feels like something you'd hear in a grocery store. As is frequently the case with double albums padded with filler, Out Pathetic Age's biggest problem is that too much of it feels disposable, anodyne, or tossed off. But Shadow still manages to get some strong work out of both himself and his guests, and he deserves credit for not trying to merely recreate the same trick over and over.
Label: Mass Appeal Release Date: November 15, 2019 Buy: Amazon
Review: I Made a Place Finds Bonnie "Prince" Billy at His Most Existential
The album is autumnal in its resignation to death as a necessary part of life.4.5
"You need to knock this one out of the park," Will Oldham sings on "New Memory Box," the rollicking opening track of I Made a Place, his first album of original material in six years. If it sounds like he's suffering from diminished confidence, don't be fooled: Oldham's albums as Bonnie "Prince" Billy always achieve a cohesiveness that makes the whole greater than the sum of its parts, and I Made a Place is no exception.
The 13 songs here feature straightforward folk arrangements of guitar, drum, bass, fiddle, strings, horns, and the odd synth part. This is a song cycle with cosmic concerns in mind, and the simplicity of the music renders Oldham's voice (and lyrics) that much clearer. "Look Backward on Your Future, Look Forward to Your Past" is made up of a gently strummed acoustic guitar and the singer's indelible yowl. The lyrics tell a story about a man named Richard who undergoes a transfiguration as his materialistic worldview is reshaped both by quantum physics and spiritual renewal. It's weighty stuff, but Oldham sings the song with the playful shimmy of a George Jones tune. His ability to be profound and uproarious at the same time is on full display: "Get your sense of self from a hydrogen blast."
The word "apocalyptic" is frequently applied to Oldham's work, and with good reason: His worldview has been haunted by some unnameable or just unnamed cataclysm, from the recent past or lurking over the horizon. I Made a Place finds his fascination with catastrophe and collapse alive and well, though the subject is addressed more elliptically than on past albums. Instead of a dystopian depiction of civilization's collapse, though, the album is autumnal in its resignation to death as a necessary part of life. Oldham is, for all his oddity, a deeply human songwriter, and throughout I Made a Place his tone is alternately celebratory and comforting.
Images of darkness, shadow, and fire pervade—though it's unclear whether that fire is a conflagration or merely the world's sole remaining light source. Yet the tone is rather ruminative. "This Is Far from Over" finds Oldham contemplating "shorelines gone and maps destroyed, livelihoods dissolved and void," but he reassures us that "new wild creatures will be born" because "the whole world's far from over." Oldham's gentle warble is set to a softly plucked acoustic guitar, and a flute solo closes things on a hopeful note.
Throughout, Oldham serves as our Virgil, shepherding us through the shadowy worlds he builds. Sometimes he's funny and sometimes he's sad, but he's always there to keep the listener safe. "Squid Eye" delights in some Seussian wordplay and features the album's funniest lyrics—"I'll drive right in as if I were Aquaman's kid"—set to a Bob Wills-esque swinging bluegrass song, while "The Glow Pt. 3," the title of which nods to Phil Elverum, wrestles with love, impermanence, and dread from the vantage of the bottom of a bottle.
Some artists seem to have an uncanny ability to gesture to the infinite, to wring out from their chosen medium a staggering amount of profundity. Oldham is one such artist, having created an archive of songs that conjure the entire spectrum of human experience: hilarity and terror, joy and desolation, birth and death, and everything in between. I Made a Place is an apt title, as Oldham has carved out a niche for himself that's not quite like any of his contemporaries. He unpacks the darkest and brightest parts of life with an unblinking candor. On the title track, the singer speaks about creating a home in a world you didn't ask for. His thesis is simple: "I don't know why I was born, but I have made a place." In that one, softly delivered lyric, Oldham resolves a philosophy seminar's worth of existential crisis.
Label: Drag City Release Date: November 15, 2019 Buy: Amazon
Review: Nirvana's MTV Unplugged in New York Remains a Timeless Musical Document
Much of the power of this set is in the band's intuitive ability to imbue their songs with new dimensions of subtlety.4.5
Upon its television debut in December of 1993, Nirvana's MTV Unplugged in New York session was already monumental—intensely intimate and unique among prior episodes of Unplugged, which usually operated as greatest-hits showcases. In the wake of Kurt Cobain's suicide in 1994, however, the band's performance assumed near-mythical status, airing around the clock in the weeks following the singer's death and serving several roles for a shocked, grieving fanbase: a portent, memento, and elegy all at once.
Had they never appeared on Unplugged, it's likely that Nirvana might be perceived in a significantly different light today. They were a ferocious and often unpredictable live act, capable of wreaking mayhem on their instruments and each other while delivering their searing yet melodic brand of punk. The release of MTV Unplugged in New York in November of 1994 provided a full window onto the kinder, gentler Nirvana only hinted at on the band's three studio albums, and served as the high-water mark for '90s alternative music's ascendance to Important Art just before its descent into self-parodic commerce.
Of course, commerce is alive and well in the 25th anniversary edition of MTV Unplugged in New York, which may be viewed with understandable suspicion by fans long inundated with special editions and live-show unearthings that have effectively wrung Nirvana's catalog dry. (This year alone has already seen the release of Live at the Paramount and Live and Loud.) But considering MTV Unplugged in New York's titanic place in rock history, this edition is revelatory for a simple reason: the inclusion of five songs from the rehearsal for the band's performance that were previously only available on the show's DVD release.
Over the years myths have grown around MTV Unplugged in New York, a major one claiming that the band was in shambles leading up to the taping of their performance at Sony Music Studios. While the new tracks don't rewrite what we once knew about the performance, it nevertheless helps reinforce the skin-of-their-teeth story that's largely been known only in anecdotal form. During the rehearsals, Dave Grohl's heavy drumming undermined the acoustic sound, especially on rockers like "Come As You Are" and a cover of David Bowie's "The Man Who Sold the World," where his trashing instincts almost overwhelm the rest of the band. Thankfully, Grohl reined in his thundering style after he was offered quieter brush and Hot Rod sticks by Unplugged producer Alex Coletti just before the official performance.
While none of the five new tracks on this reissue are unlistenable, they're expectedly unpolished and, as evidenced by occasional in-song directives and banter, unfocused and tense. Cobain's vocals sound strained on "Come As You Are," while on a cover of the Meat Puppets's "Plateau," several guitar licks and back-up vocals from Cris Kirkwood—who, along with brother and Meat Puppets co-member Curt Kirkwood, accompanied Nirvana on three of their own songs—are off-time and over-emphasized. In a sudden burst of inspiration during the televised performance of "Pennyroyal Tea," Cobain performed the song on his own, and the result was more personal and harrowing than the electric version on 1993's In Utero. In rehearsal, "Pennyroyal Tea" is undone by Pat Smear's distracting backup vocals and a guitar played a turgid step lower than the one on the studio recording.
Beyond the fly-on-the-wall rehearsal tracks, the rest of MTV Unplugged in New York remains as it's always been. The album hasn't been remastered for this reissue, which is a bit of a shame, but perhaps augmentation works against its raison d'être. Much of the power of this set is in the rawness of Nirvana's delivery, but especially Cobain's. It's also in the mesmerizing spell of the group's intuitive ability to imbue their songs with new dimensions of subtlety and cast light on their own artistic worldview with several unusual yet impassioned covers, including their towering, chilling take on Leadbelly's "Where Did You Sleep Last Night." MTV Unplugged in New York is simply a timeless performance, one all the more impressive for having come together through reserves of musical acumen and sheer guts.
Label: Geffen Release Date: November 1, 2019 Buy: Amazon
Review: FKA twigs's Magdalene Is a Knotty Meditation on Self-Possession
A distinct feminine energy pulses through the singer-songwriter's shimmering sophomore effort.4.5
A distinct feminine energy pulses through FKA twigs's shimmering sophomore effort, Magdalene. Coming off the back of a major public breakup with actor Robert Pattinson and a period of ill-health which left her creatively and physically depleted, twigs made it her mission—both in the writing of this follow-up to 2014's LP1 and in the extraordinary wushu and pole training she undertook for her Magdalene tour—to embrace her pain.
Despite twigs's vocal precision, there's always been an element of unpredictability to her music, as the production on her albums is prone to spareness one moment and cacophony the next. And on Magdalene, she leans even further into that volatility, her crystalline, Kate Bush-esque falsetto shape-shifting into something richer and thicker on "Holy Terrain," angrier and rueful on "Fallen Alien," and sweeping on the transcendent "Sad Day."
At times, twigs seems caught between personas. On "Home with You," her raspy delivery of "The more you have the more that people want from you" gives way to a soaring melody in the chorus, in which she counters, "I didn't know that you were lonely/If you'd have just told me I'd be home with you." Anger and acceptance coexist here, one growing out of the other.
twigs has a knack for spinning mystical imagery out of everyday experience, and on the album she explores the shifting power dynamics at play in her life. The prying, judgmental gaze of the paparazzi can be easily imagined as a many-eyed monster in "Thousand Eyes." Elsewhere, she calls upon religious references to subvert ideas of her own power. A lyric like "I lie naked and pure with intentions to cleanse you and take you" on "Sad Day" suggests both submission and dominance; the act of cleansing recalls Mary Magdalene washing Jesus's feet, yet the phrase "take you" suggests that the object of her affections has no choice but to submit to her. Another often misrepresented biblical figure, Eve, comes to mind when twigs invites her lover to "taste the fruit of me" on the same song, but it's not an act of temptation, it's a plea.
For all the strength and self-possession twigs demands from herself and her lovers, she also provides space for the necessary grief that comes with saying goodbye to someone who wasn't able to meet her there. And for all the spiritual power she's filled with to "cleanse" and "heal" on "Sad Day," she also acknowledges the periods when she can barely move on the cyclical "Daybed." There's little sense on Magdalene that twigs believes there's an ideal way to be; all she can do is learn how to accept her own contradictions as a necessary part of growth. The album is a knotty meditation on the process of separating self-perception from public perception, and of twigs's reclamation of her body and work as hers and hers alone.
Label: Young Turks Release Date: November 8, 2019 Buy: Amazon


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New York Yankees general manager Brian Cashman skydived with the Golden Knights of the U.S. Army this week to help raise awareness for the Wounded Warriors project. But on his second jump, he suffered a serious leg injury (via NYDailyNews.com).
Cashman broke his right fibula and dislocated his right ankle on the second jump, and later needed surgery. The good news is, the injury probably brought more attention to the jump and the project than was expected.
Cashman is no stranger to stunts. In 2011, he slept in a cardboard box one night to raise awareness for homeless children. And in 2010 he repelled down a building dressed as an elf.
Here is video of the first (successful) jump...


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This week, world powers and Iran may well be poised to reach an historic agreement to limit the Islamic Republic's nuclear program—a diplomatic feat that promises to reorder the Middle East and neutralize a threat that has loomed over the region for a decade.
The talks, held in Geneva, will be the third in the Swiss city since the inauguration of Hassan Rouhani, who in September became the first Iranian president to speak with his American counterpart in 34 years when he chatted on the phone with President Barack Obama.
Story Continued Below
Key to successful talks will be direct engagement between U.S. and Iranian diplomats, a fraught enterprise with a long history of false starts, missed opportunities and failures to communicate. But for all the suggestion that these negotiations might be different, there's ample reason to worry that the same mistrust that scuttled past efforts will do so once again.
There's no question that Rouhani's phone call with Obama was significant—a dramatic breakthrough that opened some space for diplomacy. Even more significant have been the hours of direct talks between Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and Secretary of State John Kerry. Yet this is not the first high-level contact between these two bitter adversaries. Even the George W. Bush administration sought to engage Iran, former top Bush officials insisted in recent interviews, and achieved some limited results. What follows is an accounting of the diplomatic feints, partial victories, misunderstandings and might-have-beens that brought us to today.
The first encounter following the 1979 revolution did not set a happy precedent. Islamic Iran's first foreign minister, Ebrahim Yazdi, met Secretary of State Cyrus Vance on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly in October 1979 and recited a litany of grievances, recalls John Limbert, a former U.S. diplomat in Iran. Yazdi resigned a month later after radical students seized the U.S. Embassy and held 52 Americans—including Limbert—hostage for 444 days. The Iranian government subsequently outlawed Yazdi's Freedom Party and the Texas-educated pharmacologist was incarcerated several times in Tehran's Evin prison.
The most notorious talks took place in 1986, of course, when then national security adviser Robert "Bud" McFarlane led a small group to Tehran to sell U.S. arms in return for Iranian help in releasing U.S. hostages in Lebanon. Among the Iranians they met was none other than Rouhani, who, like the fictional character Zelig, appears to have been present at most crucial moments in Iranian foreign policy since 1979. The visit and the arms shipments were subsequently revealed by a Lebanese publication and dubbed the "Iran-Contra" scandal; the Ronald Reagan administration had illegally used proceeds from the arms sales to fund anti-communist guerrillas in Nicaragua.
President George H.W. Bush got off to a more auspicious start when he promised that "goodwill begets goodwill" in his inaugural address—a message clearly aimed at Iran. But direct talks eluded him. Bush once got hoodwinked into thinking that an Iranian he was talking to on the phone was his counterpart Akhbar Hashemi Rafsanjani; the caller turned out to be an imposter. New York Times reporter Elaine Sciolino, who wrote about the episode in 1997, said that Bush spoke to the man through an interpreter for more than 30 minutes and that the White House only realized it was a hoax when Iranian state radio failed to broadcast a promised message on Iran's desire for better relations.
Rafsanjani's reformist successor, Mohammad Khatami, came into office seeking to "break down the bulky wall of mistrust" with the United States but could not bring himself to shake President Bill Clinton's hand on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly in the fall of 2000 despite a speech by Secretary of State Madeleine Albright a few months earlier expressing regret for the CIA's role in a 1953 coup and for U.S. support of Saddam Hussein in the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war.
It took the 9/11 attacks to break the ice. Iranians, virtually alone among Muslim-majority countries, expressed sympathy for the victims, and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei even suspended the usual "Death to America" chants at Friday prayers. The United States and Iran also shared the geopolitical aim of removing the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. As I detailed in my 2007 book, Bitter Friends, Bosom Enemies: Iran, the U.S. and the Twisted Path to Confrontation, talks went beyond the Bonn conference of December 2001. Using as cover a U.N. process on Afghanistan that had begun in 1997, American and Iranian officials held more than a dozen meetings from the fall of 2001 through May 2003 in Paris and Geneva. To sustain the cover, talks would start at U.N. offices in Geneva or the Paris apartment of Lakhdar Brahimi, then the U.N. secretary general's special envoy for Afghanistan. Afterwards, U.S. and Iranian diplomats sojourned to the Intercontinental Hotel in Geneva or the Marriott in Paris to continue the conversations over soft drinks and potato chips. While Afghanistan was the initial focus, later topics included al Qaeda fugitives fleeing into Iran and the U.S. buildup to invading Iraq.
Retired U.S. diplomat Ryan Crocker, who participated in those talks, told me that at their first Brahimi-chaperoned meeting after 9/11, a senior Iranian envoy, whose name remains confidential, "proposed we go off and have a quiet cup of coffee." Crocker found the Iranians "very positive and forthcoming and really interested in what we could put together in Afghanistan that would be better for both of us," he said. Iran, which had almost gone to war with the Taliban in 1998 after the radical faction murdered eight Iranian diplomats and a journalist in the northern Afghan city of Mazar-e Sharif, was "very anxious for us to get on with the war," Crocker noted, going so far as to provide the United States with accurate maps of Taliban positions (as opposed to the Pakistanis, who tried to get the Americans to bomb the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance).
Crocker, whose first posting was in Iran before the revolution, took part in most of the meetings with the Iranians. Hillary Mann (now Hillary Mann Leverett), at the time a staffer on the White House National Security Council (NSC), participated in several sessions; Zalmay Khalilzad, also at the NSC but later ambassador to Afghanistan, Iraq and the U.N., was in the last two meetings. On the Iranian side were several senior diplomats including, for the final three meetings, Zarif, then Iran's U.N. ambassador. One round of talks in February 2002 was cancelled after President Bush called Iran a member of an "axis of evil" in his State of the Union address, but talks resumed—contrary to what the New Yorker's Dexter Filkins wrote recently—although they were less productive.
The talks ended in May 2003 after they leaked to the press, and after bombings took place in Saudi Arabia that the Bush administration alleged were planned by al Qaeda figures under "hotel arrest" in Iran. But Crocker, Mann, Khalilzad and former Secretary of State Colin Powell have all described the U.S.-Iran conversations as useful—Powell told me in 2006 that they "should have been restarted." Several hundred al Qaeda fugitives who had fled from Afghanistan were arrested and deported by the Iranians, according to Mann. Crocker said those turned over included a senior al Qaeda facilitator based in the eastern Iranian city of Mashhad. Zarif, in the final meetings, warned the Americans prophetically about the problems the United States was likely to face in Iraq, Khalilzad acknowledged in 2006.
"After the 'axis of evil' [speech], the heart went out of the negotiations," Crocker told me. "The Supreme Leader and [Quds Force chief] Qassem Suleimani … wrote us off," Crocker said, apparently no longer believing that the United States was prepared to end its hostility toward Iran despite Iran's help in Afghanistan. "The talks did go on but they were stilted and non-substantive," Crocker added, describing them as "an exchange of assertions, allegations and denials."
Around the time this channel was closing, Iran's ambassador to France, Sadegh Kharrazi, Zarif and the Swiss ambassador to Tehran, Tim Guldimann, drafted an agenda for comprehensive negotiations that the Swiss delivered to the State Department. The Bush administration, full of hubris after toppling its second government in two years, did not reply to what has become known as the "grand bargain" proposal. Some U.S. officials questioned whether the agenda had Khamenei's all-important backing. Others thought the United States could stabilize Iraq without Iranian help and that Iran's government – in the words of Bush appointee John Bolton – should "take a number" and might be the next to fall. The United States further alienated the Iranians by breaking a pledge to declare members of the Mujahedin-e Khalq – an anti-Iran militant group based in Iraq that was on the State Department terrorist list – as enemy combatants. Iran gave the green light to its numerous Shiite proxies in Iraq to attack American soldiers, who became bogged down in a multi-sided civil war.


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Race is a small but powerful word! Race shapes how one sees and is seen by others. In the new book, RACE: Are We So Different?, authors Alan H. Goodman, Yolanda T. Moses and Joseph L. Jones explore how the central idea of race has been challenged and changed throughout history.
The book mirrors the nationally recognized public education project and museum exhibition of the same name by the American Anthropological Association (AAA). RACE: Are We So Different? casts a critical eye on race and racism in the United States through the lenses of history, science and lived experience. The book explains how human variation differs from the idea of race and conveys three central messages: 1) Race is a recent human invention, 2) Race is about culture, not biology, and 3) Race and racism are embedded in institutions and everyday life.
"Once in a while, but very rarely, a book comes along that clarifies and reorients a whole field of study. Race: Are We So Different? is such a book. Goodman, Moses, and Jones clearly and powerfully inform and enlighten the reader, not only about the latest scientific understandings of race, but also about why democracy and freedom depend on those understandings. This book is a triumph! Highly recommended for course adoption across the disciplines…" says Howard Winant, University of California, Santa Barbara.
Engaging essays by prominent scholars reveal how the idea and realities of race and racism are experiences today. Illustrated in full color with more than 150 images, RACE: Are We So Different? is a book that will have readers visualizing and questioning what race is really all about.
About the Authors
Alan H. Goodman is Professor of Biological Anthropology and the former Vice President for Academic Affairs and Dean of Faculty at Hampshire College, Goodman has written extensively on human variation and the biological consequences of inequality and poverty. Goodman is a past President of the AAA.
Yolanda T. Moses is Professor of Anthropology and Associate Vice Chancellor for Diversity, Excellence and Equity at the University of California, Riverside. A cultural anthropologist, she has published extensively on issues of social inequality in complex societies and cultural diversity in higher education in the United States, India and South Africa. With Goodman, she co-leads the national public education project sponsored by the AAA and funded by NSF and the Ford Foundation. Moses is a past President of the AAA.
Joseph L. Jones was RACE project manager for the American Anthropological Association. He has written on race and the stresses of slavery at the historic, New York African Burial Ground. Jones teaches at Howard University in Washington, DC.


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For the ignorant, a site map is a hierarchical list of categories/sections of the website. It doesn't necessarily mean that to get to a section of a website you have to follow through to its parent section first. It's just a general overview. As suggestions come in, I'll keep this first post updated on the current site map.
Here is what I have so far:
- Home
- News
- Whatever categories we sort news into...
- Discography
- All albums and singles
- Lyrical Analysis
- Tabs
- Reviews
- Etc...
- All albums and singles
- Gallery
- Sort by concerts/artwork/fanart/etc...
- Followers
- A list of "followers" with each person filling out and adding all sorts of information to their own little profile.
- Etc...


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TrainClicker Evolution for Alcatel One Touch Pixi 4007D
- Review
- Download
- Screenshots
- Discussions
How to download free TrainClicker Evolution for Alcatel One Touch Pixi 4007D
Compatibility checkingIndicate
- Android version
- Android 9.0
- Android 9
- Android 5.0
- Android 4.4
- Android 4.3
- Android 4.2
- Android 4.1
- Android 4.0
- Android 3.2
- Android 3.1
- Android 3.0
- Android 2.3
- Android 2.2
To find Android version: go to "Settings" - "About the phone" - "Android version"
Installation options
With PC
Follow the link to Google Play and click "install"
Alcatel One Touch Pixi 4007D
Enter link in your mobile browser or scan the QR-code
Guides: «How to create a Google Play account», «How to purchase apps in Google Play»
Questions and support
Read the review TrainClicker Evolution
«Turn bucket of scraps into an amazing train»
Author: Brandon Girod 05 Apr 2017
Great concept
Poor pacing, ui doesn't look good and is difficult to navigate, low quality sound effects
If you've followed any of my previous reviews, you'd know I'm a pretty big fan of clicker games. I'm not sure what exactly it is that I find so alluring about them, but I just finding watching the numbers getting bigger to be incredibly addictive. So...


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- Bee Movie [2007]
- Hotel for Dogs [2009]
- Kung Fu Panda [2008]
- Marley & Me [2008]
- Monsters vs. Aliens [2009]
- Paul Blart: Mall Cop [2009]
- Surf's Up [2007]
- The Tale of Despereaux [2008]
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Select Marcus Theatres locations will be hosting the "Kids Rule" movie series again this summer, where a featured family-oriented movie is played for a discounted price on Wednesday and Thursday mornings at 10am.
Admission is $3.00 and includes a complimentary popcorn.
The first movie is Paul Blart: Mall Cop on Wednesday, June 17, 2009. See below for the full line-up.
Schedule of Movies
|June 17-18
|Paul Blart: Mall Cop
|June 24-25
|Bee Movie
|July 8-9
|Monsters vs. Aliens
|July 15-16
|Surf's Up
|July 22-23
|Marley & Me
|July 29-30
|Kung Fu Panda
|Aug. 5-6
|Hotel for Dogs
|Aug. 12-13
|The Tale of Despereaux
As always, the selection of movies may change without notice, and not all Marcus Theatres are participating in this program. Please see the Showtimes page for each movie by clicking the movie title above and/or the theaters listed to the right for more showtime information as it is provided by the theaters.
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Christchurch International Airport aspires to be New Zealand's
leading tourism gateway, providing a significant contribution to
both the Canterbury region and the South Island as whole, with the
total airport operation employing approximately 5,000 people across
a diverse range of companies.
CIAL seeks to enhance the economic development of the South
Island through pursuing growth in airlines visiting Christchurch
and in the level of international passengers holidaying in the
region. Such growth will directly increase tourism revenue and
ancillary activities, across an industry which provides 16,800 full
time positions in Canterbury, and contributes $2.03 billion to the
For CIAL to meet the various economic, social and recreational
needs of Christchurch and the South Island it is critical that
Christchurch Airport maintains its 24 hours a day, 365 days per
year operating capability. The ability to do this is inherently
linked to maintaining a good rapport with our customers and
neighbouring communities.
To CIAL "community" includes the local neighbourhood and
residents affected by activities at the airport, and stretches to
the populations of Canterbury and the South Island, as well as
airport campus tenants and employees, airlines, border agencies and
other stakeholders. Informing these groups of CIAL's activities
through active, open and honest communication is necessary for CIAL
to be recognised as a responsible corporate citizen.
Ongoing consultation with the local community is therefore
important to CIAL. Discussions with the community regarding
identified issues and future proposals helps to build community
relationships, identify opportunities and make choices between
preferred actions.
A full community engagement program is in development and will
be implemented to provide CIAL with a roadmap for appropriate
community consultation and engagement activities.
Image x of x


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- This event has passed.
Harvey Milk Photo Center Presents… A Student Photography Exhibit
March 11, 2016 @ 9:00 am - 5:00 pm
An event every day that begins at 9:00 am, repeating until April 29, 2016
Event Navigation
The Film and Darkroom Basics class at The Harvey Milk Photo Center is a long form introduction to processing black and white film and making prints in the darkroom. In addition to the fundamentals, students learn advanced printing techniques like split filter exposures and complicated dodging and burning.
This work exemplifies 9 weeks of focused learning, creativity, and determination on the part of the students. We hope they continue to grow their skills as members at the Photo Center. The HMPC offers a wide selection of courses in traditional, alternative, and digital photography.
For more details: harveymilkphotocenter.org
Exhibit Dates: March 11, 2016- April 29, 2016
Location: McLaren Lodge
501 Stanyan Street
San Francisco, CA 94117
Main Phone: 415-831-2700
Gallery Hours: Monday-Friday, 9am-5pm


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Financial Insight, Narrative Remarks
Since narrative and numbers work together to create the full picture for the board and a strategic direction for the company, accuracy is paramount. CCH Tagetik allows you to automatically update both textual and financial data so you have a single version of the truth across all your reports.
Multiple Contributors
A single page within a collaborative report could have a table from finance, a chart from operations and narrative written by a Line of Business manager. Whether it's twenty pages or two hundred, CCH Tagetik allows multiple contributors to work within the same document at the same time, without bottlenecks or versioning confusion.
Packaged Templates
Managerial reports and board books are never a singular request. They're repeated annually, quarterly, monthly, even weekly. With CCH Tagetik, reports roll forward and data updates automatically with current figures so board books are consistent from meeting to meeting and executives can analyze decision-making information faster for better strategic planning.
The board will always have questions. With CCH Tagetik, you'll always have answers. CCH Tagetik's audit logs store a complete history of data, from the moment it's logged, through consolidation and all the way through to the final report. With this granularity, you get insight into updates, revisions and approvals when you need it.
Increase confidence in numbers and narrative using a single source of consolidated information
Better decision-making by combining financial and non-financial information in the same report
Cut reporting time by using templates and rolling data forward into future reports
Reduce discrepancies between management reports and financial statements by using a single system
Easy to use and easy to learn, CCH Tagetik uses Microsoft Office tools: Word, PowerPoint and Excel
Eliminate manual errors and human intervention with automated data and narrative updates
Board books key capabilities include
Automated Compliance Reporting
It's easy to combine financial and non-financial data to create board books and other collaborative reports, like budget books, using CCH Tagetik. Not only is financial information easily rendered within reports, if the data changes, all reference points are automatically updated as well.
Cross-functional Collaboration
Board books are a cross-departmental project, involving input from contributors around the organization. CCH Tagetik simplifies the production of board books by facilitating collaboration and communication between contributors. Within the system, board book managers can assign sections and content items, set deadlines, view the status of contributors and send out notifications. To drive efficiency and avoid bottlenecks, multiple contributors can work within board books at the same time without risking version overlap.
Accuracy & full Transparency
CCH Tagetik's unified corporate performance management solution provides detailed audit logs so that information is completely transparent and traceable back to its source. Automated workflow shows clear accountability for updates, revisions and approvals. Answering tough questions by tracing source data just got easier.
Automated Workflow
CCH Tagetik simplifies the creation of board books and budget books by enabling you to monitor the status of contributors and reports, set deadlines and receive approvals automatically. With a process-driven dashboard, you can see all work-in-progress in real-time.
CCH Tagetik's Reporting Software is trusted by leading companies across all industries
Consolidation, Budgeting, Disclosure Management, Reporting, Dashboarding,Analysis
Budgeting & Planning, Lease Accounting Solution - IFRS 16
Customer Quotes
To support Aggreko's growth strategy, the requirements of the finance organisation to provide the business with right first time reporting that is insightful and fast is becoming ever more important. During a six month selection process, CCH Tagetik demonstrated the product's capability to meet our complex statutory and management reporting needs and CCH Tagetik will provide us with the means to step change the insight and speed with which we disseminate ever broader financial and non-financial information.
Carole Cran - CFO
With the merger of Apollo & Keepmoat Group and different underlying ERP systems, we needed an overarching EPM solution which would provide flexible management reporting across different business and statutory needs. During the selection process, CCH Tagetik proved to be robust and rich in functionality which we knew would allow us to implement our current needs as well as future plans such as budgeting, forecasting and cash flow planning.
Stefan Allanson - Deputy CFO
With CCH Tagetik, consolidation and management reporting are now at the core of our group's financial management, thanks to the software's greater flexibility and the improved response time it allows our teams.
Thierry de Taeye - VP, Group Accounting and Controlling
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Automated & Validated: The New Era of Board Reporting at GE Capital
This webinar discusses how GE Capital utilized CCH Tagetik CDM to implement a standardized & automated reporting process that yielded internal benefits and satisfied federal requirements.
Yes, I'd like to know more about CCH Tagetik
For more information, please complete the below form and a member of our team will reach out to you shortly!


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In sci-fi anime Psycho-Pass, authorities take out individuals with a high probability to commit crimes. Their weapons of choice to suppress precrime are called the "Dominator" (above) and can only be used on those likely to do illegal deeds.
As Otaku News pointed out, Japanese gun model maker Poseidon produced this full-scale Dominator model. A completed version was recently put on display in Japan. Those added LED light effects are stunning.
Priced at ¥18,900, the Psycho-Pass Dominator will go on sale in mid December.
(Top photo: Production I.G)
Kotaku East is your slice of Asian internet culture, bringing you the latest talking points from Japan, Korea, China and beyond. Tune in every morning from 4am to 8am.


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Editor's note: Amy Gahran writes about mobile tech for CNN.com. She is a San Francisco Bay Area writer and media consultant whose blog, Contentious.com, explores how people communicate in the online age.
(CNN) -- When President Obama announced his vision for a national wireless initiative last week, he emphasized how widespread high-speed wireless broadband would boost the economy and increase opportunities for individual Americans.
This may be true -- but only if users of wireless broadband networks enjoy equitable access to what's available online. Unfortunately, new regulations passed in December by the Federal Communications Commission exempt U.S. wireless carriers from key network neutrality requirements.
In a nutshell, the FCC rules require all companies that provide internet access to be transparent about how they manage network traffic. Similarly, they are forbidden to block access to legal websites or services, even ones that compete with their own offerings.
However, the rules only forbid "fixed" providers (whose networks rely on cables and wires, such as Comcast) to "unreasonably discriminate" against specific kinds of network traffic. Wireless carriers get a free pass on this one.
So for wireless carriers, the door is open for them to slow or otherwise interfere with access to certain sites or services. That is, they may not be allowed to block your access to YouTube or Netflix outright, but they could make your experience with those services slow and painful.
EWeek recently noted, "While most ISPs have said they don't intend to block access to any legal content on the Internet, there are a lot of ways to interpret what it means to block something. Throttling a movie service to near analog modem speeds, for example, may not be technically blocking it, but it has the same effect."
Wireless carriers also could try to charge you extra to access certain online offerings at an acceptable speed.
At Independent Weekly, Fiona Morgan noted, "Charging content providers for access may or may not be allowed. However, charging consumers for higher speeds -- 'usage-based pricing,' as (FCC Chairman Julius) Genachowski puts it -- seems to be OK. The fear among consumer advocacy groups like Free Press is that, instead of the monthly subscriber fees we're used to, consumers will be nickel-and-dimed in a way that will make the airlines look reasonable by comparison."
Furthermore, wireless carriers are allowed to slow all of your internet access to a crawl with a network management practice called throttling.
Already, Verizon has announced that it's reserving the right to throttle service to the 5% of its customers who consume the most data over its network. The carrier is offering almost no details about how it will conduct this practice.
VentureBeat puts it this way: "Wireless companies are free to stop some smartphone users from taking advantage of their data plans by throttling download and upload speeds."
In other words, what good is "all you can eat" data when you're only allowed to sip through a straw?
Within the next few years, mobile devices, largely served by wireless carrier networks, will become the most common way that Americans access the internet. Therefore, the limited net-neutrality protections that the FCC has passed largely won't protect most net users in the future.
It's interesting that the Obama administration specifically singled out wireless broadband internet access (not just broadband) as crucial infrastructure for citizens and our economy.
If this is true -- and it may be -- then the current regulatory situation for the wireless internet is likely to make the digital divide much worse as the internet increasingly goes mobile.
If the only way to get the level of mobile net access you need in order to make a living, understand your world or improve your life or community is to fork over extra money to your wireless carrier, then people or organizations of limited means will probably fall further behind.
The intent of the president's proposal is that a rising tide will lift all boats; but without better net neutrality protections, many wireless users may end up just treading water.
The opinions expressed in this post are solely those of Amy Gahran.


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The biggest surprise in Tuesday night's "Dancing With the Stars" was not the Michael Bolton was mercifully kicked off the reality show, but that his terrible dancing actually led to a rare feud between the show's judges.
Though they always bicker like a married couple, judges Bruno Tonioli and Len Goodman turned it up several tense notches over Tonioli's treatment of Bolton following the singer's terrible dance Monday night.
Tonioli had said he "hated" the Bolton dance, saying it was the "worst" jive in the show's 11 seasons and then gave a rare (and very low) score of a 3.
"It was too harsh," Goodman said angrily of Tonioli's comments as Tonioli angrily called Goodman's words "lies."
All of this happened as third judge Carrie Ann Inaba fanned herself with her hands as if trying to cool the tense, televised situation.
Goodman's support didn't help Bolton, who was later dismissed from the show due to his low judges' score which even viewer support couldn't help. The entirely miserable Bolton did give a shot before leaving, saying that Tonioli was "disrespectful and inappropriate" with his comments.
Even Tom Bergeron scolded Tonioli, telling him he was "a little hard on Michael Bolton last night."
Slamming Tonioli was a nice bit of dignity for the wildly-successful soul singer who had, just 24 hours earlier, literally crawled out of a dog house to do a terrible dance on national television.
But it was a lot of hypocritical piling onto Tonioli, who has been far harsher in the past. So has Goodman, who had told Bolton Monday night that the dog act only lacked a "pooper-scooper."
But apparently Tonioli kicked the wrong dog one too many times when the dog was already down.
However, his comments were hardly offensive on a Simon Cowell scale. Cowell probably says 20 harsher things before he pours the milk on his breakfast cereal.
Tonioli was unrepentant, giving one final dog slam to Bolton Tuesday night.
"I felt Rin Tin Tin could have done a better jive," he said.
Update: "Dancing" producers have sided with Tonioli in the feud.
"Bruno's role as a judge is to give his honest opinions on the quality of the dances he's judging, which is what he did in this case," producers told People in a statement Wednesday. "While we respect the feelings of our celebrities and dancers, we don't feel Bruno should be expected to apologize for doing his job."