text:
Over the last year, AMD executives have been abandoning ship for rival Nvidia, and according to a new lawsuit, they took confidential information about the Xbox 720 and PlayStation 4 with them. Engadget reports that AMD has filed suit against four ex-employees, claiming that the executives absconded with thousands of confidential documents, including sensitive information about technologies at use in next-gen consoles. As our well-placed sources told us last year, custom silicon based on AMD's A8-series APU and HD 7670 GPU will be used in the PlayStation 4, while the Xbox 720 will combine an IBM PowerPC CPU and a custom version of AMD's 6670 GPU.
Eew. I know you squeeze more out of closed-system architecture, but both those GPUs are crap by any modern standards. I don't understand the point of next-gen consoles if they'll be offering low-mid range PC graphics. That's what the current ones do now.
Funny how all these supposed leaked specs are different from one another.
Next up i want to see a baby Elephant included or no deal.
My laptop has a 5870M in it, pretty sure it's more powerful than the mid end cards they will be using in the consoles.. but then it's not much a surprise.
My desktop has the 5870 in it which is even more powerful than the mobile version.. probably walk all over these consoles.
On my laptop i can play Black Mesa full settings 1080P and the most it drops to is around 40FPS and is usually a nice 60+. Very good for a laptop, but i doubt consoles will handle that and 60+FPS constant.
why dont we wait untilwe here the real specs and not leaked mis info, until its a fact this is all rumors
It doesn't surprise me. I and many others have called this. Its silly to think when development costs get higher and higher you can keep expanding on power. What people want is more RAM.
I think next gen engines will be made to be more flexible. And I am not convinced Wii U would suffer much even if the consoles significantly outclass it. It will rule the Japanese market so developers there would naturally go there by default and its been proven all too often that power actually proves to slow down your console sales due to being more expensive.
if it was about power PS1 would not have outsold N64. PS2 would not have outsold Xbox and Gamecube. PS3 would not have fallen so far behind like it did at the start of this gen. PSP would have outsold DS. And Vita wouldn't be struggling as much as it is at the moment. So is there any real sense making the kind of leap we had before? Especially when you are bundling Kinect 2.0 in.
It would mean more expensive games (the kinds of prices we paid for N64 games £70), more re-releasing and DLC nickle and diming and more developers closing down so it just isn't worth going through with to please a small group of graphics lovers.


text:
Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 6/12/2012 (2605 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
They tried something new in negotiations for a new NHL collective bargaining agreement this week.
Four owners were added to the mix and interacted directly across from players. Participation from NHL and NHLPA counsel and staff was limited to one extra each.
The dynamic was designed to, and did, foster communication and a better understanding of the other side.
And for a day, some listening to ideas and provisions and the reasons for them went both ways, and though the details stayed inside, optimism was impossible to keep in the room,
The moderates on both sides seemed to have seized their opportunity for a foothold. Reason won the day.
For a day.
And then, well, we all should have known better.
This labour dispute has already been too protracted, too dug in, too obstinate in so many directions. NHL commissioner Gary Bettman and NHLPA executive director Donald Fehr don't like any characterizations of lack of trust hurting these talks, but it's there in plain sight.
The league doesn't believe Fehr and the union want to make a deal. At least not yet.
The players' side is quick to point to all the reasons the NHL is unwilling to dance, be it player contract issues, make-whole or transition payments or term of deal.
The sniping at Bettman, Fehr, Boston owner Jeremy Jacobs or the revolving door of players in and our of meetings just never goes away. Trusting people just don't do that.
After this week's early optimism, the suggestion's been made that the NHLPA just didn't trust owners talking directly to players any longer.
After a frantic day Wednesday where both sides had their mini-volcanoes but still moderates urging each other to keep at it, be reasonable and not give up, Thursday's acrimony was unavoidable.
Because it was not yet the correct time for the moderates to save the day.
They may well have paved the way to a deal, if there's one to be had in the coming few weeks that are left, but Fehr and his leadership are not yet ready to put a series of provisions in front of all the players and say, as one sage participant in the NHL's economy and culture put it the other day:
"We thought we could get X, right now we've got Y but I think this is about the best we're going to do."
Equally, the same words don't seem to have yet come from Bettman to his group of owners.
So again Thursday, after nearly two days of leak blackouts, the details began flowing — always bad news if you want to be hopeful — followed by aggressive recriminations. With their new money in hand, Fehr suggested the dollar amounts just about matched and that a deal ought to be close.
Bettman followed, and as a large audience could see he was particularly offended and animated as he explained this week's moderate-generated offers were a package deal not to be cherry-picked and saying things we're close was a mistake.
Now the week's progress, initiated by the moderates, has been tossed in the trash can and the hard-liners on both sides have their opening to resume control.
Will a deal come with the hawks on each side in charge?
It's very hard to see how, given the short time frame left before, as Bettman hinted Thursday, a viable season of at least 48 games can still be conducted.
Bettman may have said the most salient thing in Thursday's flurry, that it was time to step back and take a deep breath.
But maybe the examination period will drive home the reality that for those truly interested in a deal, the moderate voices will eventually be the ones coming up with the resolution.
You can comment on most stories on The Winnipeg Free Press website. You can also agree or disagree with other comments. All you need to do is be a Winnipeg Free Press print or digital subscriber to join the conversation and give your feedback.
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subset: commoncrawl


text:
If you're thinking about attending next month's hip Food Network South Beach Wine & Food Festival, think faster.
Several of the Feb. 23-26 festival's 30-plus day and evening events are sold out and others are poised to reach that status.
As usual, that has a lot to do with the annual South Beach festival's cavalcade of culinary celebrities, namely well-known Food Network chefs and personalities (Rachael Ray, Bobby Flay, Guy Fieri, Paula Deen, etc.), although others this year include actor Antonio Banderas, who, at one event, will introduce varietals from his Spanish winery.
Not surprisingly, the Banderas event is sold out.
Attendance at last year's Food Network South Beach Wine & Food Festival topped 55,000 people.
The following is a look at a handful of festival events for which tickets are still available (visit http://www.sobefest.com or call 877-762-3933).
> Moet Hennessy's "The Q," with hosts Emeril Lagasse and Guy Fieri. The 7 p.m. event, beachside at the Delano, includes some of the country's best BBQ chefs serving up their signature dishes. Tickets: $300, which includes entry to the 10 p.m. "Q After Dark" party.
> Wine Spectator's "Best of the Best" at the Fontainebleau. It begins at 7:30 p.m. and features cuisine by some of the nation's best chefs. The fare will be paired with wines rated 90 points or higher on Wine Spectator's 100-point scale. Tickets: $350.
> "Party Impossible with Robert Irvine." In the 1111 Lincoln Road parking garage, Irvine, host of the Food Network's "Worst Cooks in America" and "Restaurant: Impossible," headlines a 10 p.m. party featuring signature cocktails, music from D.J. Irie, and a bounty of tasty offerings from Epicure Gourmet Market. Tickets: $95.
> "Farm-to-Table Brunch," hosted by chef/restaurateur Michael Schwartz. Schwartz will be joined by chefs Tim Cushman, Tony Maws and Andrea Reusing as they prepare and serve brunch at the Miami Beach Botanical Garden. Tickets: $175.
> "Tribute Dinner," honoring famed chef/restaurateur Charlie Trotter and winemaker Piero Antinori. A brigade of award-winning chefs, including Wylie Dufresne, Emeril Lagasse and Norman Van Aken, will prepare the dinner; Anthony Bourdain will act as master of ceremonies. Tickets: $500.
> "Fun and Fit as a Family," a weekend-long daytime program at Jungle Island. Offerings for parents and their children include healthy food samplings, physical fitness activities, and demos by such culinary personalities as Melissa D'Arabian, Rocco DiSpirito, Rachael Ray and Nickelodeon's Reed Alexander. Tickets: $20.
> "Grand Tasting Village," an all-day affair. An array of cuisine from fine chefs, plus a variety of wine and spirits, will be served up in white tents—the "village"—at 13th and Ocean Drive. Food Network personalities Anne Burrell, Paula Deen, Bobby Flay and several others will cook and entertain on demonstration stages. Tickets: $225.
> "Salsa at Sea," a brunch party aboard The Biscayne Lady. Douglas Rodriguez and Aaron Sanchez will host the Latin-themed eat, drink and dance party-cruise. Tickets: $150.
> "Swine & Wine," hosted by Debi Mazar and Gabriele Corcos. Beginning at 4 p.m., live music will spice things up as more than a dozen chefs and South Florida dignitaries put their best pork forward for a mega-roast at the Biltmore Hotel in Coral Gables. Tickets: $150.
> "Trucks on the Beach," hosted by the Travel Channel's Andrew Zimmern. Some of South Florida's most popular food trucks will be parked on the beach behind the Ritz-Carlton, South Beach for an ultimate street-food celebration that begins at 6:30 p.m. Tickets: $95.


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1) I don't know why I ever wore low-cut jeans. High-waisted ones are so much more comfortable. I bought these jeans in Finland last year; they are by Weekday, a Swedish fast-fashion label.
2) My hair is getting long. I swept my bangs on the side today, and almost didn't recognise the person looking back at me. Bangs suit my face, but they also hide a lot. It felt refreshing to see my face in its entirety.


text:
Solve problems with the right plants
By Katie Marks, Networx
Many gardeners have a strong wish that their gardening conditions were perfect: nice, rich, balanced soil on an even landscape, ample water supplies, just the right amount of sun, everything just ideal for anything they might want to plant. Unfortunately, real life often interferes with these dreams. The soil's too alkaline or too acidic, too dry or too wet, too steep for easy growing, heavily shaded or blasted by sunlight. It's possible to fight those conditions every step of the way, but a better strategy for gardening can involve working with them instead, and planting smart to save energy and resources.
Perennials are an important part of the landscape: once they're established and they start to thrive and grow, they'll become a developed part of the environment. They can help condition and retain soil in addition to creating a lush backdrop for more splashy annuals, and they provide something beautiful to look at throughout the year. If you're tackling a tough landscape, you definitely want to take advantage of all that perennials have to offer when it comes to making your garden beautiful without wanting to tear your hair out.
Got dry soil conditions? You want to look into xeriscaping, which relies on low-water plantings to create a lush, beautiful landscape without endless watering needs. And xeriscaping doesn't have to mean some cacti on a blasted heath of lava rock. You can plant a variety of succulents, perennial herbs, and other drought-tolerant plants to create a lush, green, multi-layered garden that will stand out in any season, and in any neighborhood. For those areas of the lawn filled with harsh sun, plant sun-loving plants (succulents again are a great choice) and take advantage of the heat to stimulate plant growth.
Opposite problem? If your soil is too wet, roots rot, plants sag, and everything can struggle to survive. You may want to consider installing French drains and using other tactics to improve drainage, such as working sand and pearlite into the soil. However, you can also install moisture-loving landscaping, including mosses, ferns, and more.
Steep landscape where nothing wants to grow? Creepers and groundcovers are ideal. They'll sprawl across the slope to soften the look while adding rich layers of green and flowers, during their flowering season. In addition, they'll help to retain the soil with their root networks, preventing soil loss and runoff. As your slope stabilizes thanks to your groundcovers, you can consider installing larger perennial shrubs along with garden features like large stones and statues.
Shade? Whether it's because of a neighbor's trees or the angle of your house, shade can be a real problem in the garden. Fortunately, there are a huge number of shade loving plants out there including hostas, bleeding hearts, ferns, mosses, lungwort, phlox, sorrel, begonias, hellebore, astilbe, and foamflower. Too much sun? Try hollyhocks, poppies, peonies, mallow, or coreopsis.
For strongly alkaline soils, coral bells, anemones, catmint, pinks, baby's breath, penstemon, yucca, and more thrive on the basic conditions, so you won't need to use amendments to make your soil amenable to plants that prefer more neutral to acidic soils. Meanwhile, cinnamon ferns, bear's breeches, Japanese iris, bergenia, and our friend hellebore love acidic soils.
Wherever you're gardening, there's a plant to meet your needs. If you aren't sure about where to start for your area and conditions, one option is to consult resources like the Sunset Western Garden Book, or to ask at your local nursery. One advantage of local knowledge is that staff members are very familiar with soil conditions and limitations -- some of them might even live in your neighborhood! -- and they can provide very customized regional advice.
Source: http://www.networx.com/article/solve-problems-with-the-right-plants


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Denny Barney is running for reelection in Maricopa County Supervisor District 1. Barney was elected in 2012, and has spearheaded prison, education, and business reforms at the County. In preparation for his run, Barney released a new campaign video:
In his role as Supervisor, Denny is focused on carrying out Maricopa County's constitutional mandates, including public safety, as effectively as possible. He has prioritized making improvements to county regulatory agencies, including decreasing regulation where appropriate and improving customer service. He served as Board Chairman in 2014.
Professionally, Denny is a principal in ARCUS Private Capital Solutions, a specialized realty investment and finance company, and CEO of Landmark Companies, a private investment company with focus on real estate investment and development. He earned his law degree from ASU and is admitted to practice in the state of Arizona.His county serve includes sitting on the Greater Phoenix Economic Council (GPEC) Board of Directors and the MAG Regional Council. His previous county experience includes serving as a Planning and Zoning Commissioner and on the Maricopa County Board of Health.
His community involvement includes serving on the Advisory Board for ASU's Morrison Institute of Public Policy and on the Mesa United Way Board of Directors, including serving as a past chairman for their annual campaign. He is an Ex-Officio Director of the East Valley Partnership and a former member of Greater Phoenix Leadership. He is also a Past President of the Mesa Baseline Rotary club and has served on the boards of the United Food Bank, Arizona board of American Indian Services, Commission on Excellence in Education and various Banner Health Advisory boards.
Supervisor Barney is a sixth generation native of Arizona and lives in Gilbert with his wife Nichole, and their four children.
You can learn more about Denny Barney at: http://www.maricopa.gov/dist1/biography.aspx#sthash.2jYnVdXM.dpuf


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Couples will get the chance to wear their wedding outfits for a second occasion, have a professional photoshoot in the Theme Park and keep the images.
Plus you'll get some exclusive treats from the Gulliver's team on the day.
Email with any questions, or to answer submit a minimum of two full length photographs in the wedding outfits to: email@example.com
Entries must be submitted before midnight on Sunday 6th May. Winner's will be chosen and notified by midday Monday 7th May
The photo shoot will commence on Thursday 10th May 2018, couples must be available on this date and arrange their own transport to and from Gulliver's World, Warrington.


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text:
|Version 24 (modified by 13 years ago) (diff),
Maintaining an explicit call stack
There has been a vigorous thread on error attribution ("I get a
head [] error; but who called
head?"). This page summarises some half baked ideas that Simon and I have been discussing. Do by all means edit this page to add comments and further ideas or pointers. (As usual, discussion is best done by email; but this page could be a place to record ideas, design alternatives, list pros and cons, pointers to related work etc.)
See also
The basic idea
- GHC's 'assert' magically injects the current file location. One could imagine generalising this a bit so that you could say
...(f $currentLocation)...
to pass a string describing the current location to f.
- But that doesn't help with 'head'. We want to pass head's call site to head. That's what jhc does when you give 'head' the a magic SRCLOC_ANNOTATE pragma:
- every call to
headgets replaced with
head_check $currentLocation
- in jhc, you get to write
head_checkyourself, with type
head_check :: String -> [a] -> a
- every call to
It'd be nicer if you didn't have to write
head_check yourself, but instead the compiler wrote it.
- But what about the caller of the function that calls head? Obviously we'd like to pass that on too!
foo :: [Int] -> Int {-# SRCLOC_ANNOTATE foo #-} foo xs = head (filter odd xs) ===> foo_check :: String -> [Int] -> Int foo_check s xs = head_check ("line 5 in Bar.hs" ++ s) xs
Now in effect, we build up a call stack. Now we really want the compiler to write
- In fact, it's very similar to the "cost-centre stack" that GHC builds for profiling, except that it's explicit rather than implicit. (Which is good. Of course the stack should be a proper data type, not a String.)
However, unlike GHC's profiling stuff, it is selective. You can choose to annotate just one function, or 10, or all. If call an annotated function from an unannotated one, you get only the information that it was called from the unannotated one:
foo :: [Int] -> Int -- No SRCLOC_ANNOTATE foo xs = head (filter odd xs) ===> foo:: [Int] -> Int foo xs = head_check ("line 5 in Bar.hs") xs
This selectiveness makes it much less heavyweight than GHC's currrent "recompile everything" story.
- The dynamic hpc tracer will allow reverse time-travel, from an exception to the call site, by keeping a small queue of recently ticked locations. This will make it easier to find out what called the error calling function (head, !, !!, etc.), but will require a hpc-trace compiled prelude if we want to find places in the prelude that called the error. (A standard prelude would find the prelude function that was called that called the error inducing function).
Open questions
Lots of open questions
- It would be great to use the exact same stack value for profiling. Not so easy...for example, time profiling uses sampling based on timer interrupts that expect to find the current cost centre stack in a particular register. But a big pay-off; instead of having magic rules in GHC to handle SCC annotations, we could throw the full might of the Simplifier at it.
- CAFs are a nightmare. Here's a nasty case:
foo :: Int -> Int -> Int foo = \x. if fac x > 111 then \y. stuff else \y. other-stuff bad :: Int -> Int bad = foo 77How would you like to transform this?
Transformation rules
The key issues are:
- Higher-order calls. Where does a partially applied function receive its stack trace from? Possible options include:
- The lexical call site (corresponding to where the function is mentioned in the source code.
- The context in which the function receives a particular argument, for instance the one where it is saturated.
- CAFs. The problem with CAFs is that, at least for expensive ones, we want to preserve the sharing of their evaluation. Therefore we cannot simply extend them into functions which take a stack trace as an argument - this would cause the CAF to be recomputed at each place where it is called. The simplest solution is to make CAFs the roots of call stacks, but it seems like there will be situations where it would be useful to know more about the context in which a CAF was evaluated.
- Recursion. Obviously the call stack will grow in size proportional to the depth of recursion. This could lead to prohibitive space usage, thus it is desirable that the size of the stack be kept within reasonable bounds. We will probably need some way to dynamically prune the stack.
- Extent. It is desirable to have a scheme where only some functions in the program are transformed for stack tracing, whilst others remain in their original form. We want to avoid the all-or-nothing situation, where the whole program has to be recompiled before tracing can be done. For example, with the current state of profiling in GHC, the whole program has to be recompiled, and special profiling libraries must be linked against. This is a nuisance which reduces the usability of the system. Similar problems occur with other debugging tools, such as Hat and buddha, and this really hampers their acceptance by programmers.
An abstract syntax
For the purpose of exploring the rules we need an abstract syntax. Below is one for a simple core functional language:
Decls(D) --> x :: T | x = E | data f a1 .. an = K1 .. Km Constructors(K) --> k T1 .. Tn Types(T) --> f | a | T1 T2 Expressions(E) --> x | k | E1 E2 | let D1 .. Dn in E | case E of A1 .. An | \y1 .. yn -> E Alts(A) --> p -> E Pats(P) --> x | k P1 .. Pn
Stack representation
For simplicity we assume:
type Stack = [String]
which is just a list of function names.
Double square brackets denote the transformation function, which has either one or two arguments, depending on what type of entity it is applied to. In most cases it has one argument, which is just a syntactic construct, but for expressions it has an additional argument which represents the current stack value.
For instance:
[[ E ]]_k
means transform expression E with k as the current stack value.
Transformation option 1
This is probably the simplest transformation style possible. Stack traces are passed to functions at their lexical call sites, which correspond to the places where the function is mentioned in the source code. CAF bindings are treated as roots of stacks, so only function bindings receive stack arguments. In this transformation we can get away with simply passing one stack argument for each function, regardless of how many regular arguments it has. In contrast, other transformation styles might pass one stack argument for every regular argument of the function.
Declarations: [[ x :: T ]] ==> x :: Trace -> T , if x is a function binding [[ x :: T ]] ==> x :: T , is x is a CAF binding [[ x = \y1 .. yn -> E ]] ==> x = \t y1 .. yn -> [[ E ]]_("x":t) Expressions: [[ x ]]_t ==> x , if x is either lambda bound, or a CAF. [[ x ]]_t ==> x t , if f is function bound [[ k ]]_t ==> k [[ E1 E2 ]]_t ==> [[ E1 ]] [[ E2 ]] [[ let D1 .. Dn in E ]]_t ==> let [[ D1 ]] .. [[ Dn ]] in [[ E ]]_t [[ case E of A1 .. An ]]_t ==> case [[ E ]]_t of [[ A1 ]]_t .. [[ An ]]_t [[ \y1 .. yn -> E ]]_t ==> \y1 .. yn -> [[ E ]]_t Alternatives: [[ p -> E ]]_t ==> p -> [[ E ]]_t
Attached in a pdf are the beginnings of some transformation rules to consider.


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Click this link for the latest CW renewal / cancellation information: [rssinpage rssfeed='http://feeds.feedburner.com/TvbythenumbersCancel/renewCwShows' rssitems='1′ rssformat='Y']
Our Renew / Cancel Index predicts the network's decision on renewal or cancellation for scripted broadcast primetime shows by the end of the 2012-13 season in May, 2013. (includes results from December 31, 2012- April 7, 2013):
|Renew/ Cancel Index
|Cult (some F)
|😳 (canceled 4/10)
|Emily Owens, M.D.*
|Nikita (F)
|🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂
|Gossip Girl*
|final season complete
|The Carrie Diaries
|😥 😥
|Hart Of Dixie
|🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂
|Beauty And The Beast
|🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂
|Vampire Diaries
In what may be the only real disagreement this season between the cancellation bear's Renew/Cancel Index and Robert's Bubble Watch, the bear is once again moving his Beauty & The Beast prediction back to "likely to be renewed".
Three reasons why the bear's making the move. Beauty & The Beast ratings relative to other CW scripted shows continue to hold in the 90%+ range which is typically signals "likely to be renewed" (Retentionistas may begin their howling now). As noted in previous weeks, the CW has never begun a 10 hour Fall schedule without at least six hours of "veteran" scripted shows, and canceling Beauty & The Beast would leave them with just five. Finally, Beauty & The Beast is the only 100% CBS produced show currently on the CW schedule that's able to be renewed (Hart Of Dixie is CBS&WB). Although he doesn't have historical records to back it up, bear guesses that joint venture quid pro quo is likely to carry at least a little decision making weight.
Better to Follow The Bear, Than Be Chased By Him. This season you can follow the Cancellation Bear on Twitter via @TheCancelBear. The Cancellation Bear will retweet all the Renew/Cancel Index post titles and links as well as engage in a little more back and forth banter than we do on our standard @TVbytheNumbers Twitter feed.
From now through the end of the broadcast season in May, the Renew/Cancel Index values will only be calculated using new episodes airing during 2013. However, until new episodes of a show air in 2013, I will keep the "old" Fall predictions in the table.
Want to know what the CW Renew/Cancel Index table looked like at the end of the Fall season? Click here.
- 😳 – certain to be cancelled by May, 2013
- 😥 :cry:- more likely to be cancelled than renewed by May, 2013
- 😐 😐 😐 – toss up between renewal or cancellation by May, 2013
- 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 – more likely to be renewed than cancelled by May, 2013
- – certain to be renewed by May, 2012
The Renew/Cancel Index is the ratio of a scripted show's new episode adults 18-49 ratings relative to the new episode ratings of the other scripted shows on its own network. It's calculated by dividing a show's new episode Live+Same Day adults 18-49 average rating by the Live+Same Day new episode average of all the new scripted show episodes on the show's own network. The network's average ratings in the calculation are not time weighted (ex. hour long shows are not weighted twice what 30 minute shows are).
(F) -Fridays: Shows airing on Fridays were renewed with significantly lower than average Indexes.
How would the Renew / Cancel Index Have Done Predicting Last Season's Scripted Show Fates? Check out how the Renew / Cancel Index predicted renewals and cancellations from the 2010-11 broadcast television season.


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Have you ever met someone on campus that you were positive would change the world?
For myself and many others, Fadi Quran, Stanford '10, is that person. He is an empathetic soul with a passionate and powerful voice and a very real commitment to justice. He's also got a great sense of humor- he once made me laugh so hard that milk came out of my nose!
Which is why it's especially hard to watch the following video of Fadi being pepper-sprayed, beaten, and arrested by Israeli police during a non-violent protest in Hebron on Friday:
embedded by Embedded Video
YouTube Direkt
The Stanford Daily and The Atlantic have reported that Fadi was being detained in an Israeli prison in Moscowbya awaiting a hearing. At the hearing Monday morning, the judge decided not to release him; instead, Fadi was moved to a prison in Ofer for another hearing the next day.
At Stanford, Fadi was an active promoter and participant of campus dialogue about Israel and Palestine. Since graduating, he has been a part of other non-violent activism such as the Freedom Riders (modeled after those of the US Civil Rights movement), in which he and five other Palestinians rode buses to demand the right to travel freely. The protest in Hebron which he took part in called for Shuhadda Street, a street in West Bank closed to Palestinians, to be reopened.
The petition for Fadi's release currently has over 2100 signatures (including Noam Chomsky's and several Stanford professors), and the Stanford Daily has had consistent coverage, but we need to do more. Check out www.freefadi.org, sign the petition, tweet #FreeFadi, share on Facebook and in person— spread the word.
I know that people see the words Israel or Palestine and decide that this is a political debate which will upset people… something so complicated that they shouldn't even bother. But this is not about politics, it is not an attack, and it is not complicated. This is about a friend, a member of the Stanford community, an American citizen, a human being peacefully and non-violently standing up for what he believes in and being beaten and detained for it. In the words of one of Fadi's own heroes and role models, Martin Luther King Jr., "True peace is not merely the absence of tension: it is the presence of justice." Fadi's detention is an injustice that stands in the way of true and lasting peace. Do something about it: join the coalition for his release.


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Girls with nagging moms grow up to be more successful
'I told you so,' says your mother
'I told you so,' says your mother
'I told you so,' says your mother
Harassing your daughter about finishing up her homework may not thrill her at the time, but she'll thank you later in life. According to a study conducted by the University of Essex in England in 2015, she will probably be more successful than the kids of less pushy moms.
From 2004 to 2010, researchers followed the lives of 15,500 girls between the ages 13 and 14, and they found that the girls with moms who set high standards for them growing up were more likely to go on to college and earn higher wages.
Another bonus of driving your daughter to succeed: These same girls were also less likely to become pregnant as teens.
So maybe a little nagging isn't so bad after all? At least, that's what you can tell your daughter when she doesn't want to do her homework.


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Four Cameron University students were rewarded for their work in an advertising class during the recent 48th Annual American Advertising Awards (ADDYs) sponsored by the Oklahoma City Ad Club. Casey Durham and Joe Lee, Cache; Courtney Landoll, Elgin; and Garrett Schaede, Owasso; received a Silver ADDY in the student competition for a television commercial they produced. The commercial was part of a hands-on campaign for Red River Best Chevy Dealers that was undertaken in Dr. Theresa Billiot's advertising class during the Fall 2013 semester. To view the award-winning spot, go to http://youtu.be/dUPSNLUOpgs.
"These students produced an outstanding commercial for the Red River Best Chevy Dealers, and it is incredibly gratifying to see their hard work rewarded," says Billiot. "The 'tomboy' concept captures the consumer base of the Oklahoma and Texas dealerships that make up the Red River Best Chevy Dealers - Jim Glover Chevrolet, Wilmes Chevrolet, Herb Easley Chevrolet and Four Star Auto Ranch - and the production value meets the professional standards required to succeed in the competitive world of advertising."
As a Silver ADDY winner, the spot receives automatic entry into the district ADDY Awards. The ADDY Awards recognize and reward creative excellence in the art of advertising.
March 6, 2014


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Marvel has been releasing two interconnected Avengers: Age of Ultron posters a day at Comic-Con; when the last two posters are released tomorrow, we'll post the entire, 8-part epic picture. But today's Quicksilver poster reveals something more — the first glimpse of the android known as The Vision!
You can see him flying up top, of course. While his back is turned to us, he looks immensely like the comic book Vision from this angle, and that's definitely a yellow cape he's sporting. Gah, I hope Marvel shows some Avengers 2 footage at Comic-Con... and then deigns to release it online so the millions of poor bastards who didn't get into Hall H get a chance to see it, too.
[Via First Showing]


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Scottish comic artist Bill Ritchie worked for most of D.C. Thomson's humour comics since the 1950s. He was born in Glasgow, where he also attended the Glasgow School of Art. However, he learned the finer points of the cartooning profession from local artists like Jack Lindsay, Bud Neill, Jimmy Malcolm, Harry Smith and Bill Tait.
He contributed his first cartoons to D.C. Thomson's publication The Weekly News, while serving in the army in Korea. His first comic strip was 'Clumsy Claude' in The Beano in 1955. In the following year he created his long running series 'Baby Crockett', that ran until 1990 in The Beezer, but was also present in Bimbo and Little Star.
Other series he created include 'Toots' (Mandy, 1958-86), 'Pip the Penguin' (Bimbo/Little Star, 1961-76), 'The Moonsters' (Sparky, 1965), 'Smiffy' (Beezer, 1967), 'Barney Bulldog' (Sparky, 1968), 'The Twitz of the Ritz' (Buzz, 1973-75), 'Simple Spyman' (Cracker, 1975) and 'Sweet Sue' (Beano, 1978). After his retirement in 1990, his comics were continued by several ghost artists.
He was even still working at the age of 78, drawing cartoons for Thomson's newspaper The Weekly News and illustrating children's books for GWPublishing as Willie Ritchie. He also did another comic strip through D.C. Thomson, which was 'Lord und Lauser' for the German girl's magazine Wendy.
Barney Bulldog


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Dennis Lange lives at the office -- literally. His workplace is his residence, though his version of home doesn't quite jibe with the popular definition of a livable habitat. The first indication that things are more than a little unconventional at the Lange residence are the vans loaded down with amplifiers, lights and other stage gear that clog the driveway. The second clue is a worn plywood ramp that leads up to the front door, smoothing the way for the heaviest of the equipment to be wheeled in and out. Though there are bars on every window, the front door remains unlocked until the wee hours of the morning, emphasizing the fact that this isn't a home with a typical operating schedule -- or a typical anything, for that matter.
Out of this modest, one-story dwelling in a Galleria area neighborhood a block north of Richmond Avenue, Dennis Lange lords over Dennis Lange Promotions and its sundry offshoots and support systems. There's no sign out front, so visitors have to go by house numbers. But once you find the place and venture through the door, you've crossed into the nerve center of an entertainment empire that controls much of the live music heard around Houston -- and almost all of the live music heard along the Richmond Strip, the city's most successful and flashy entertainment drag.
If a band wants to work the Strip, at some point they have to pass through Dennis Lange Promotions. At the moment, Lange has exclusive arrangements with 45 clubs, and he occasionally supplies acts to another 50 to 100 venues. Aside from its lock on the Strip, DLP has a reasonably firm hold on nightclub bookings in the Clear Lake area, not to mention select venues along FM 1960 and in Galveston, Austin, the Metroplex and Corpus Christi. Then, of course, there are the countless special events, fraternity parties and other gatherings he handles yearly, and the shows at military bases overseas. Lange figures he finds work for at least 80 bands a week. The most lucrative acts in Houston -- groups such as Toy Subs, Rat Ranch, Jerk, Hi-Rize and Arrival -- are among them, relying on Lange for everything from finding them last-minute gigs to charting their careers.
Lange can rightly claim that he holds the fates of hundreds of Houston's working musicians in his hands. And as is often the case with someone with so much power over the livelihood of so many, Lange is apt to be reviled as much as he's worshipped. But he didn't stumble in front of the firing line by accident. He did it willfully, pouncing on the emerging row of clubs along Richmond Avenue years before others saw a glimmer of its potential and perfecting his system of bookings and artist management to a near science. Now, little more than a decade after Lange first arrived in Houston with little intention of staying, venues all over Texas turn to him week in and week out to shore up their live entertainment rosters. Indeed, if public credit were given for such work, Lange's name would be posted on half the marquees along the Richmond Strip.
"It's not a matter of how much influence he has on the Richmond Strip," says Urban Art Bar co-owner/operator Greg Pitzer, Lange's longtime friend and onetime management partner. "He runs it. It's amazing. He's literally cornered the market."
Of course, the market that Lange has cornered is one that depends on something many musicians look down on: cover music, normally note by note renditions of current radio hits and classics from the past. Though the skill required to play such music can be considerable -- many of Lange's bands have honed their craft to an uncanny degree -- it's still something that those in the auteur school of rock and roll dismiss as little more than live action jukeboxes, and surely nothing to be admired.
Lange himself doesn't waste time on such airy arguments; he has other priorities. Dennis Lange isn't imposing. He's on the short side, actually, though he appears to be in decent shape, with only a hint of a sagging midriff. He isn't a smoker, at least not around visitors, and he claims to have long ago given up the vices of his younger days -- aside, that is, from beer. On this particular afternoon, Lange is dressed, neatly but casually, in blue jeans and a black Alley Theatre sweatshirt. His hair, gray, longish and thinning, is tied back in a neat ponytail. Pronounced age and worry lines distinguish his face, making him look somewhat older than his years and accentuating his wild, serious eyes. Picture a loose cross between legendary British rocker Joe Cocker and his equally animated countryman, actor Oliver Reed, and you have Lange.
Greeting a visitor, Lange is at first all business and impatient as hell, talking in fits and starts between the incessant buzzing of an exceptionally loud office phone (which he ignores), the occasional ring of his cellular phone (which he doesn't) and the shrill report of his beeper. Amidst the hail of distractions, he crams in as much information as possible, like a death row inmate with a lengthy story to tell just hours before his execution.
But as the conversation wears on, Lange lets down his guard, easing into the loose, warm, somewhat animated character his friends describe him as being. Of course, those softer characteristics harden quickly when a problem arises. A phone blares or a beeper detonates, and Lange shifts back into his agent's guise -- part problem solver, part coach, part father figure, part tyrant.
"Yeah?" Lange answers his cell phone, fielding a call from a frazzled performer who's supposed to be on her way to Corpus Christi for a weekend gig. "Did what? About who? [A long silence.] It doesn't really matter, let's get over that petty stuff, and let's just get the flight, get down there and kick some ass, all right? Let's not worry about all these little details -- that's bullshit. Just come over and get the money, we'll get the airfare and we'll get you to Corpus. [More silence.] Come and get you where? Well, take a cab; just keep the receipts, please. Let's do it, let's be twice as professional as they are. You're 22 years old; I compliment you every day on how professional you are. Now, let's show them. Hello? Hello?"
The line goes dead.
"Every little fuckin' detail I'm supposed to take care of for them," Lange mutters. "Somebody's car broke down? Well, then, take a cab."
Lange is exasperated, but it doesn't last. He knows it could have been worse: He could be bailing a musician out of jail, or rushing to a pawn shop to retrieve a guitar he'd loaned someone the money to buy. Either scenario has been known to occur on a weekly basis.
Lange is not only a maker of careers, he's a maker of bands, turning out new artists and piecing together fresh groups from the remnants of old ones at a surprisingly efficient rate. His acts are known to have the finest sound equipment and lighting in town, the sharpest wardrobes and, if they so desire, enough dry ice to guarantee fog warnings before every gig. Safe, reliable, convenient entertainment has long been Lange's trademark, which is a big reason why nightclub owners swear by him.
Just inside the entrance to Dennis Lange Productions sits an assortment of bulky speaker cabinets, soundboards, lights and other stage accessories. They're stacked in a small, unfurnished area that at one time was probably a living room. Currently, it serves as Lange's Elite Sound Company, which deals in sound equipment rentals. A quick peek to the left reveals someone's loose idea of a reception area: a few fold-out tables, bookshelves in the back, two bulletin boards with nightclub calendars and phone numbers to call for accounting help and legal advice, a DLP employee or two glued to the phone.
Look right and peer into a dimly lit portion of the house, and you can just make out a kitchen bathed in the reddish neon glow of a beer sign. Beyond that are the living quarters of Lange and his housemate, Stacey Pokluda. That area is the only sanctuary from the steady parade of clients, customers, business associates and friends roving through the place. But even that small domestic retreat can be spoiled when Lange offers his den to a band looking for a place to crash for the night, something that happens more often than he'd care to admit.
A nervous energy courses through the place. You'd almost swear it was audible, like a beehive buzzing -- it's the industrious hum of success, and everyone's desire to be responsible for some of it. Lange's underlings are eager to impress, and why shouldn't they be? Their boss is, after all, the undisputed king of the Richmond Strip.
He's known as such by friends and enemies alike -- though the latter might consider him more godfather than royalty. Lange supporters like to argue that the love-him-or-loathe-him debate divides neatly down the middle, with those who have benefited -- or stand to benefit -- from Lange's influence singing his praises and those who haven't -- and likely never will -- eager to tear him down. That "us-versus-them" dynamic is crucial to the Dennis Lange myth. Locating the "us" is easy: Pro-Langers are everywhere, and they're easily accessible. Pinning down members of the "them" camp, however, isn't always such a cinch: Lange's staunchest critics are often reluctant to burn any bridges -- on the record, that is. After all, one never knows when Lange might come in handy. And many of those who are willing to badmouth Lange in print have gotten their dirt secondhand.
You don't have to dig far into Lange's business practices before you run across a surplus of rumors and claims of impropriety. But extra digging turns up precious little, if any, concrete evidence of those claims. Certainly, there are those musicians who'd just as soon see Lange take his business elsewhere. They contend that he's the worst sort of control freak, using his clout with club owners to keep bands he doesn't handle off his turf; that he caters to the nightclubs and cares little about his musicians; that he gives bands no other choice but to use his sound equipment and then charges them for it. Still, no one, it appears, has been outraged enough to go the distance: A review of Harris County Civil Court records turned up nothing in the way of lawsuits filed against Lange or his operation.
"Maybe they're just scared," says Rozz Zamorano, a veteran of the Houston music scene who's had past associations with DLP. "If they do [file a suit], they might never get a gig on the Richmond Strip again."
Still, there are those willing to talk about how leery they are of Lange's influence, and how he flexes it.
"What I've heard and what I've seen have not been all that great," says Fish, leader of the classic-rock party band Flashback, which struggles to succeed outside the Lange umbrella. Fish had his brush with DLP two years ago, when Flashback performed at a Richmond Strip club as part of the weekly Dennis Lange Showcase, an audition ritual designed to discover fresh talent worthy of Lange's attention. "As soon as we got done, the girl said, 'We'd love to have you,' " Fish recalls. "And we said, 'Well, what do you have to offer us?' "
According to Fish, the proposal went something like this: Flashback would ease into the lucrative weekend trade gradually, playing at Lange-booked clubs Mondays to Thursdays for six months, "until we got established." In exchange for its services, DLP would collect 15 to 20 percent of the band's earnings nightly, depending on whether they performed at a nightclub or a private party (the latter usually involves bigger money). That didn't sit well with Flashback. They wanted to play weekends only. And besides, they'd been told to be wary of Lange.
"I'd heard that you have to pay him to rent a soundman and PA, even if you have your own," says Fish. "We didn't need to do that; we had a great system -- a light show, a PA."
"But we might want to use him in the future," Fish adds, suddenly turning judicious. "We'd still like him to help us get gigs."
Not every anti-Lange advocate has had a brush with the DLP entertainment machine. Greg Wood, lead singer for Horseshoe, a band proud of making original music, can only go by what he's learned through the grapevine. And what he's heard makes him shudder. In Wood's view, Lange's "business first" stance promotes the worst sort of inertia -- the creative kind.
"I don't associate with the devil," he says simply.
And neither does Rozz Zamorano, not since nine years ago, when his band at the time, the Quick, was shortchanged by a club owner and DLP failed to come to their aid.
"We got stiffed twice," says Zamorano, who is now with the Fondue Monks. "My feeling toward that is when some type of conflict happens, Dennis will not side with the band. He definitely sided with the club. So it can work for you or against you."
Try as he may, though, Zamorano can't seem to shake Lange's influence. The Fondue Monks, for instance, are regulars at the Daiquiri Factory, though never on weekends, as Lange has a lock on the prime times at that Richmond Strip club. Zamorano also claims his band lost a string of Saturday dates at the Crooked Ferret, a venue west of downtown on Jones Road, when Lange threatened to pull his acts out of the place if the owner didn't continue to stay with DLP on weekends. (Lange denies this, and Crooked Ferret owners Steve and Laurie Virgil failed to return repeated phone calls from the Press.)
It's Friday afternooN, and while no one is snoozing on the leather sofa in Dennis Lange's den/crash pad, DLP is hardly the hotbed of activity you might expect from a business that's defined by the weekends. Things may seem a bit slow, but Lange gives his assurance that an empty office simply means his people are where they're supposed to be -- out doing their jobs. Friday and Saturday nights are when you're likely to find the highest concentration of Lange's bands out and about, working the stages around Houston.
Aside from her role as DLP's resident den mother, the tall, rail-thin Stacey Pokluda, a carbon-haired beauty with striking brown eyes, handles band publicity and is managing editor of RAGE (Richmond Avenue Guide to Entertainment), a monthly nightlife tabloid Lange started a few years back to promote his acts. RAGE is a clever bit of business on Lange's part, and a tad deceptive as well, considering that most casual readers would never know that the publication is merely a glorified press release for DLP artists.
RAGE and Mega Productions, the latter a new DLP offshoot that books national touring talent for Houston events, share a slightly more private office toward the rear of Lange's house. Their boss's cramped workspace is right down the hall. The place has the feel of an upscale commune, and seeing as Lange is an aging ex-hippie, that suits him just fine.
On a typical work day, Lange rolls out of bed sometime after 1 p.m. His work routinely keeps him up until four in the morning -- or, if not work, then a game of cards with last-minute houseguests or a visit from a girlfriend. At 45, Lange is still living the life of a man in his early twenties, eating out practically every meal, often for free at the restaurants and nightclubs he books. When he's not at the house, Lange is usually out on the Strip monitoring his bands, checking out the shows, troubleshooting. What little leisure time he has he spends traveling or, perhaps, club-hopping with a few pals. Lange has never married and admits that he tends to date women much younger than himself, though he denies any romantic involvement between himself and Pokluda.
Ground zero at DLP is Lange's cramped office. Behind his desk, he's girdled by heaps of file folders and paperwork. Everything visible -- the stuff not stored away in an array of plastic modular shelving and rolling file bins -- is in hasty heaps on the desk. Yellow legal pads are strewn everywhere; scribbled in black pen on page after page are the names of clubs, bands and musicians, scheduling charts and seemingly random comments. It's Lange's system, and apparently it works. But damned if anyone other than its architect can determine how.
"I have to sit in here every day with ten eyeballs staring at me like, 'Hey man, he just wants our money,' " says Lange, kicking off the conversation on a rather defensive note. "I operate an agency very successfully at a 10 percent commission. No other agent charges [what I do]."
If that 10 percent figure is indeed accurate (and according to the DLP acts contacted by the Press, it is), then Lange's asking rate is on the low end of the scale as far as agents' fees go. But it's worth noting that Lange collects that smaller cut for lower-paying nightclub gigs only. For private parties and other events, the percentage doubles. As for other services rendered by Lange's organization (sound equipment, publicity, management etc.), additional fees vary.
And what of the contention that Lange forces sound equipment on his acts at an extra charge? "Put it this way," says Lange. "I book about 80 bands a week, and only six or seven bands are renting sound equipment from me on a regular basis."
The only examples of Lange's alleged strong-arm tactics uncovered by the Press were based on hearsay. Still, rumors have to start somewhere. For his part, Lange attributes the sour gossip to "ignorance" about his role as middleman between the nightclubs and the performers.
"It's all about supply and demand," says Lange. "I am there to negotiate a deal between the band and the club. The job of an agent is to find work, negotiate a deal -- boom, my job's done and I get paid. If there is a discrepancy between [the club and the act], those guys have the problem. If I can help them solve the problem, I will, but I didn't create that problem."
While the law of supply and demand says that DLP can only book a certain number of artists each week, every act -- good, mediocre or just plain bad -- that crosses paths with Lange is logged into a vast database. As a result, DLP is something of a live music clearinghouse, with acts for all occasions, tastes and budgets -- and DJs, too, though they're usually considered a last resort. Lange is primarily in the business of selling bands, not hit-spinning personalities, even if most of his acts do pride themselves on sounding just like the radio.
"To sneak into this circuit, you either have to be really good or you have to be ready to fill a cancellation at the last minute or you have to really market yourself and put yourself in the public eye so that people are requesting you," says Lange. "I'm not here to turn everyone's world around for them."
That may be, but Lange values his place in the scheme of things, and he thinks that others should as well. The consummate pragmatist, he has an uncanny ability to put a positive spin on just about anything without straying too far from reality's bottom line -- he's selling you, all right, but it's pretty obvious he lives for what he sells. To Lange, art and entertainment are one and the same, not warring entities.
"My whole philosophy is about lifestyle," says Lange. "It's not about being an original band versus being a cover band. That's immature. The Beatles were the most famous cover band in the world. I'm interested in entertainment. I grew up watching vaudeville movies, Bob Hope -- you know, the show must go on, hopping on a train to the next city -- and I try to instill that in the musicians that I work with today. Local musicians around here, they need guidance bad. I have a unique approach to the business based on experience from being in a band. I've toured all over the world myself."
Dennis Lange breezed through childhood and early adolescence relatively worry-free, keeping his nose clean on his family's horse farm in Romeo, Michigan. Today, Romeo has been swallowed up as part of greater Detroit. But in the '50s and '60s, Romeo had the feel of an isolated hamlet just this side of nowhere.
"My father kept me out of trouble by [having me bale] hay," remembers Lange, who breaks out a stack of photo albums when talk turns to his family. "He had chariots, stagecoaches, a lot of things to keep us busy."
While Lange's dad loved his land, farming was only a hobby; his primary income came from a family-owned steak house. Starting at the age of 17, Lange began busing tables and tending bar at the eatery. "It was a real family business," he says.
In 1969, after graduating from high school, Lange convinced his father to assign him the task of hiring live acoustic acts to play at the restaurant. This early schooling as a booking agent was cut short by a stint as a Navy photographer, after which Lange moved to Key West, where he co-owned a leather and jewelry shop with a Hopi Indian. By the early '70s, he was putting together small arts and crafts festivals with live acoustic music. But other than a little guitar here and there, he wasn't playing music himself. "I was really into being a hippie," Lange says.
Landing back in Michigan for a spell, Lange opened another small retail business, this one stocked with anything and everything he was into: leatherwork, crafts, natural foods, records, sound equipment and more. In keeping with his tendency to intertwine business and home life, he lived in an apartment above the shop.
Lange's first serious foray into live music came with a band called Luce Wheels. As Lange lore goes, he traded his leather coat for a bass, practiced for less than two weeks and found himself a group. Assuming the responsibilities no one else wanted, he became Luce Wheels' soundman, booking agent, manager, roadie and all-around problem solver. "It's a typical situation in a lot of bands," he says. "One guy is doing everything."
Though they did have some original material, Luce Wheels played mostly cover tunes. Their sets were heavy on folk rock, with an emphasis on the popular Southern California acts of the time -- Fleetwood Mac, the Eagles, Linda Ronstadt and so on. Lange recalls the band's fateful first gig at a joint in rural Michigan: "There were like 15 people there. At the end of the night, I got myself a beer and I sat down and said to myself, 'Well Dennis, that was your big try at being in a band; at least you gave it a go.' Then the owner comes up to us and pays us 60 bucks and he says, 'You guys are pretty good. You want to play here all winter?' "
Luce Wheels took the job, and soon they were catching on in bars and nightclubs all over Michigan. The group began to travel around the Midwest, eventually landing in Colorado for a lengthy period. It was during these extended periods on the road that Lange caught the rock and roll bug for good. "There's no better lifestyle than living in motels," he beams. "I didn't pay rent for 12 years on the road."
Then suddenly, in 1977, Lange left Luce Wheels for a partnership with Jeff LaDuke, a singer/songwriter pal whose original material he truly believed in. He moved with his friend back to the Florida Keys, where things quickly fell apart. Within six weeks, says Lange, the two began butting heads over set content.
"I'm playing bass, and I've got the club owner tugging on my shoulder going, 'Hey, I'm losing people, play more dance music,' " Lange remembers. "This guy's out there playing beautiful ballads, and it wasn't that kind of a deal."
So Lange headed back to Michigan, where he formed another cover band, Blue Blazes. "I was traveling all over the country, but man, the competition was fierce up north," he says. "We were playing in fabulous hotels -- you know, chocolates and roses on the pillows, Lufthansa airline stewardesses [stifled laugh], the whole deal."
In 1979, a canceled show in Waco resulted in Blue Blazes being sidetracked to Houston. "The club owner died in a car accident," remembers Lange, "so I started calling around looking for another gig." He found one in Houston, and he never left. "We were all dressed nicely and had a show," Lange recalls. "People weren't used to that here. They were used to Texas boogie bands." By 1986, Lange had replaced himself in Blue Blazes with, as he puts it, "a younger, better-looking bass player" and had decided to devote his time to sound and production concerns, bookings and management. Soon, he began "building new bands," and his reputation around town slowly solidified.
The rest of it, as Lange explains it, just sort of fell into place. Back in the mid-'80s, Richmond Avenue west of 610 was hardly the gaudy spectacle it is now, and as the Strip grew, Dennis Lange Promotions grew along with it. "When I came to Houston, it was disco fever, man," says Lange. "Westheimer had more live music than Richmond."
Lange's first booking job came 12 years ago with Sherlock's Pub, a club that is, ironically enough, not on the Strip. Relationships with Sam's Boat and other venues soon followed. "The Strip would really be a mess if I wasn't here," Lange says. "I got clubs addicted to the top talent."
Talent, of course, that happened to be his.
"I hear the same complaints about Dennis as anyone else -- that he's got a monopoly -- and my answer to that is he worked for it damn hard," says Lange confidant Greg Pitzer. "Let a better man come in and knock him off his throne."
Rest assured, that man won't be Pitzer. Since the early '90s, he has devoted his own skills to the business of original music. Pitzer may stand by his friend. He might swear by Lange's strength of character and tireless work ethic, but that loyalty doesn't stop his less-than-glowing opinions of the scene Lange supports from coming out.
"People don't go to see cover bands," Pitzer sniffs. "The groups may enhance the draw, but it's not like the Urban Art Bar or the [Fabulous] Satellite [Lounge], where people go just to hear the music. But Dennis is tied into the market. He has to go with what works."
And what seems to work in Houston now is cover music. There's a place for it in every U.S. city, and in Texas, it's no different: Dallas has the cover-heavy West End to counter its largely original scene in Deep Ellum; on Austin's famed Sixth Street, cover bands often compete with groups playing their own music for the clubgoer's attention; and in San Antonio, the River Walk is cover-music central. Still, the fact that Houston is lacking its own Deep Ellum or Sixth Street where original bands can congregate and thrive may go a long way toward explaining why Lange is seen by many supporters of original music bands as the antichrist of the local scene.
"If a Dennis Lange got on the Richmond Strip and really sold original music, it would make it," insists Alice Romero, whose Sonic Sensations agency manages local original acts Horseshoe, Beans Barton and the Bi-Peds and others. "They've got everything there, if they would just back original music and didn't cop out for cover bands."
But Casey Monahan, head of the governor's Texas Music Office in Austin, isn't as sure as Romero that all original music needs is a Dennis Lange behind it. "People would go out to hear original music more if they heard it on the radio," Monahan says. "Casual music fans do not want to risk seeing a band whose music they might not like."
Then, of course, there's the simple night-to-night logistics of the business. "What original band could play at Sam's Boat from 9:30 to 1:30 in the morning and hold a crowd?" asks Lange. "The bands have got a confused idea of what's going on. There are places all over the world that want to hear cover music; they don't want to hear original bands. And those are the places I book, simply because they're the only places that can pay. So I keep my original projects working in cover music bands so they can repay recording money or repay their bass loan or whatever."
Even so, Romero contends, "I don't think Dennis helps the music scene, because he allows the musicians to cop out. Bands go for it because they need to pay their bills."
Dan Golvach has been managing to do just that -- and more -- since 1984, when he joined Blue Blazes, the cover band that put Lange on the map in Houston. The guitarist was also a member of the once-popular original/cover act Zen Archer and is currently leading an acoustic trio called the Hooligans, which plays weekly at Sam's Boat. When he was younger, Golvach, 34, toured overseas, staying in fancy resorts. Eventually that ended, and today he makes a comfortable living teaching guitar during the day and playing covers at night. And in large part, he has Lange to thank for keeping him employed all these years.
"To me, what he does makes sense," Golvach says. "He's a businessman. What we have is a business agreement. We are supplying a service to a clientele."
But isn't that part of what irritates some folks about Lange -- that he's all business, often at the expense of originality?
"Now, isn't that just the way life is," says Golvach testily. "I'm a songwriter and I'd like to do my originals all day, and it's real funny how I've had these sanctimonious, self-righteous guys who play in nothing but original bands point their fingers at me. But what do they do all day? They work in a record store. At least I'm playing my guitar."
Monahan tends to side with Golvach. "Many bands that play original music diss cover bands and the people who see them, which I think is shortsighted in that they are working musicians getting a good paycheck," he says. "It's convenient to scapegoat mainstream tastes and the businesses that cater to them. When I hear a band -- or anybody in the music business -- talking trash about cover bands, I see energy wasted that could be better spent working for one's music."
To the DLP camp, it all comes back to supply and demand: If you want to blame anyone for Houston's iffy reputation as an original music town, don't blame Dennis Lange. Blame the audience.
"Dennis is a salesman, and he's going to sell people what they're buying," says Tyler Flood, a former employee of Pace Concerts who recently traded loyalties to work with Lange. "If original music was what people wanted to see on the Richmond Strip, then he wouldn't book any cover bands."
There is some validity to the contention that the Richmond Strip wouldn't have much of a live music scene at all -- cover bands or otherwise -- if it weren't for Lange, that many club owners would just as soon stick a DJ in a corner and blare Top 40 hits and dance music all night than have to pay upward of $1,000 an evening for a band.
Still, there's something infinitely more interesting about a handful of warm bodies up there on-stage, laying into their instruments and putting on a show, a more human appeal that many club owners swear increases customer draw significantly -- or at least Lange has many of them convinced it does. They see bands as a mood enhancer, an ambiance booster. It's not so much who is playing on a given night, but rather that someone is playing. And Lange makes the logistics of live entertainment as simple as possible for the nightclubs.
"He's almost like a partner," says Mark Beyer, co-owner of the Outback Pub, who's been relying on DLP for six years. "We have creative meetings at least once a month, where we go over who's hot and who's not. As long as it's good, we'll do it."
The Outback, which features live music six to seven nights a week, relies almost exclusively on Lange's acts, as Beyer believes they should. "Everything is a consideration, but Dennis is the agent," Beyer says.
With Lange's encouragement, the Outback has even gone so far as to charge a $2 cover, a move almost unheard of on the Strip and one that allows the bar to entice out-of-town talent with bigger money. So far, says Beyer, the patrons aren't complaining. "People are willing to pay a few dollars to see some top-level entertainment," he says.
Top-level cover entertainment, that is. "Instead of just being an artistic form, it's also a business," Beyer admits. "If everybody wanted to listen to originals, there would be a hell of a lot more original clubs, and there's just not that many. I think there's some outstanding original acts in town, we just haven't gotten the consumer used to them yet."
Lange has his favorites among the acts he handles. They might be artists in whom he sees unique potential, a certain commercial spark, if you will. Or they might simply be the ones raking in the most money at the moment. On a crowded Wednesday night at the Outback Pub, Lange is surrounded by a few of those cash cows, not to mention a bunch of nobodies who just want to say hello. Phone in one hand and beeper clipped to his pocket, Lange makes the rounds, checking in with Rat Ranch, the band headlining that night, who are on a break when he walks in. Becky Stacey, elfin lead singer of the DLP creation Cloud 6, is reclining on a sofa nearby, oblivious to the Outback's hard-core meat-market surroundings. She smiles and waves -- it's a thank-you smile, as Lange has recently loaned her the money to make a car payment.
Feisty, full-throated, attractive females are in demand right now, according to Lange. So when he met Stacey while she was working as a waitress at the Daiquiri Factory and discovered she had a voice, Lange assembled a band just for her. He did the same for Sheila Marshall, a spunky belter who was going backward fast in Nacogdoches and who now has a regular slot with a full band at Sherlock's Pub.
Cloud 6 and Sheila Marshall are among the acts into which Lange pumps extra time and money in the hope that they might one day pay off big. There is a particular elite in the DLP organization, an elite of acts that is privy to preferential treatment. For a musician, that treatment may involve an actual management contract, or it may involve something as casual as a little business advice every now and then.
"The idea," says Lange, "is to make the bands roadworthy." And when an act gets to that point, it graduates to the big time -- or the DLP version of it, anyway. Lange will send them out on mini-tours throughout Texas and elsewhere, and when the time is right, ship them off to hotels and military bases in Japan, Asia and Europe. "These bands can make $4,000 to $5,000 a week or more," he says. "The whole thing is a turnkey deal -- serious bucks."
Toy Subs, perennial winners in the Press Music Awards' Best Cover Band category, are one of Lange's projects. Apparently, the band was on the verge of breaking up in January, its leader worried that he wasn't devoting enough time to his original material. A good pep talk and a few roster changes later, Toy Subs were back afloat.
"I have a new philosophy for the band about getting them on the road and making them popular in ... Lubbock, Abilene, El Paso," he says. "This plan is already in motion. They already went on the road and came back a total success. I'm trying to help these acts with the cash flow business of being in a cover band. It's a baby-sitting job, for sure. But I light fires under people's asses to get out of them what they got. If they have talent, great; don't just talk about your original project for the next three years. Show me something."
Toy Subs also has an original music project, Shed. But Lange is very specific in his assertion that he is handling the band's "cover operation." "Sure, I'll invest in [original acts], if they impress me with their stuff. But you don't have to be a songwriter to be an entertainer," he says. "There's a bunch of lazy people [who] are all talk and not enough action. I'm full of action. I'm developing bands to play Memphis, Atlantic City, Reno, Louisiana casinos, ski resorts. It's a lifestyle -- a beautiful lifestyle."
While Lange makes it clear that his dealings with clubs are non-contractual and operate purely on a good-faith basis, he's a little more vague when explaining how he keeps his bands in line. "I kind of semi-manage about 25 groups" is about all he'll say.
In other words, Lange signs exclusive agreements with the acts he cares about most, then depends on good, old-fashioned loyalty for the rest. It doesn't always work; he's constantly trying to collect on debts owed him by his less reliable clientele. His commission, after all, comes from the bands, not the owners of the clubs. Add what he loses by being stiffed by bands to the cash he sinks into his development projects, Lange says, and it becomes clear why he isn't as well off as he could be right now.
"I invest all my money in bands that I feel have potential," Lange claims. "We make good money here, but this is the music business -- I reinvest it all."
Recently, though, cash flow hasn't been much of a problem. Lange has entered into a partnership with Houston attorney Steven Charnquist, whose pockets seem as deep as his faith in the future prosperity of the DLP empire.
"Last year, Dennis and I put together -- conceptually put together -- a corporation that would act almost as an umbrella for other artists' organizations," says Charnquist, who claims to have "a real philanthropic nature when it comes to arts," citing his volunteer work for Texas Accountants and Lawyers for the Arts as an example. "The idea was to create an association of companies who are dedicated to helping artists pursue their talents."
But just so no one gets the wrong idea, Charnquist is careful to point out that this is a business venture, one that could pay off handsomely for the folks involved. Charnquist has swooped in with the money to allow DLP the opportunity to expand. The first order of business involves moving the company out of its cramped semi-domestic environs and into a larger, newly renovated complex Charnquist has purchased just south of the Strip behind what used to be Dave's Back Yard. The structure will house all the components of the DLP empire, including offices for Elite Sound, the Dennis Lange Agency, Dennis Lange Management, Mega Productions, Media X Publicity, RAGE magazine and the new Molecular Records. Charnquist also hopes to turn unused office space into a cyber cafe and a showcase club.
Meanwhile, Molecular has just released its first CD, an all-original effort from the local thrash metal group Pitbull, which, not coincidentally, is led by Charnquist's brother Jeff. But Charnquist insists that nepotism won't be the trend at the new label. He and his new partner plan to look beyond family and friends for future projects.
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As far as Lange can tell, he'll continue to live in the old house he now calls home and office, which marks the first time in decades that he'll live detached from his work. Getting the business offices out of the old building, says Lange, was as much a necessity as expanding his staff, which currently numbers a minuscule seven; things are just getting too complicated for such a concentrated existence.
"I'm in demand; 500 bands are not," says Lange. "I tell bands, 'Well okay, you're complaining about your money; you're moaning and groaning about a whole bunch of shit. But what are you doing for yourself? You're just showing up to the gig. That's not that big a deal. Are you promoting your shows? Are you bringing some business to these guys? Are they supposed to think you're the greatest? I can't make miracles here.' "
"You think I don't hear all the rumors and all the bullshit? It's stupid," he adds. "[The bands] are the ones to blame. I'm just the easy scapegoat in this town."
Maybe. But he's a scapegoat who has the power to change lives for the better -- and sometimes for the worse. Given that ultimate reality, Lange might want to think about locking his front door more often.


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The team, led by Dr Matthew McCormack and Dr David Curtis of the Rotary Bone Marrow Research Laboratories and the University's Department of Medicine at The Royal Melbourne Hospital, made the discovery whilst studying mice prone to developing this leukaemia.
The results have been published online today by the prestigious international journal Science.
The team found that with irradiation treatment in animal models, over 99 per cent of cells in the thymus were killed, but these stem cell-like cells persisted and rapidly recovered. This suggests that these cells may survive therapy and be responsible for relapsed disease following treatment.
Currently, children with T-ALL are given extended therapy over two to three years in an attempt to stop a relapse. More targeted therapy on the thymus cells could reduce the length and toxicity of treatment and prevent relapse.
Dr McCormack, a leading international expert on childhood leukaemia, said: "The cellular origins of this leukaemia are not well understood. Our discovery that these cells are similar to normal stem cells explains why they are capable of surviving for long periods. It also explains why they are remarkably resistant to treatment."
Approximately 50 new cases of T-ALL are diagnosed every year in Australia, two thirds of these in children or adolescents. Adults also contract T-ALL, and the majority succumb to resistant or relapsed disease.
Dr Curtis, a Clinical Haematologist and head of the Leukaemia Research Program at The Royal Melbourne Hospital, said: "The identification of these cells provides an important target for the development and testing of new treatments for patients with T cell Acute Lymphoblastic Leukaemia."
The team will now focus on novel treatments capable of killing these cells, which may lead to clinical trials within the next five years.
The research also involved Walter & Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research and Leeds Institute of Molecular Medicine, UK.
The research was supported by the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia, Cancer Council Victoria, Leukaemia Foundation of Australia and the Fight Cancer Foundation (BMDI).
Rebecca Scott
The University of Melbourne
E: email@example.com
Catherine Lander
The Royal Melbourne Hospital
E: firstname.lastname@example.com


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The Tri-Charge USB Cable with MFI Adapter from QuikVolt features the Nevada Wolf Pack logo and comes with an Apple Certified Lightning MFI Adapter. The full size USB cable plugs into your charging device, while the three Micro USB cables allow you to charge up to three devices at once.
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In his All About Jazz website review of Mr. Dodo, Rosario Giuliani's 2002 Dreyfus Jazz CD [FDM 36636-2], C. Michael Bailey astutely comments that "The musicianship of Rosario Giuliani is exhilarating. His total package of performance, composition and improvisation is not so much a breath of fresh air as it is a gale force wind blowing across a landscape littered with Charlie Parker and John Coltrane disciples. He has a confident, masculine tone that is at once assertive and tender, betraying bit of Julian Adderley and Eric Dolphy."Indeed, if you like your alto playing searing, sensual and sonorous, welcome to the world of Rosario Giuliani. His is an alto tone that is big, biting and burning – all at the same time; it is a sound that totally envelopes the listener.
In addition to Adderley and Dolphy [and perhaps even some 'early years' Art Pepper], Giuliani also incorporates a style that is reminiscent of Chris Potter before he moved on to "the big horn," especially the Potter of Presenting Chris Potter on Criss Cross [CD 1067].
Other alto saxophone contemporaries such as Jesse Davis, Kenny Garrett, Jon Gordon, Vincent Herring, and Jim Snidero, and are also reflected in Giuliani's style, and yet, despite these acknowledgements, he is very much his own man.
Whether it's running the changes on finger-poppin' bop tunes, improvising on modal scales and odd time signatures or finding his way movingly and expressively through ballads, Giuliani enveloping sound is a force and a presence. He has a technical command of the instrument that lets him go wherever he wants to on the horn including employing the dash difficult Paul Desmond device of improvising duets with himself.
Giuliani's recordings will also provide an opportunity to hear some wonderful rhythm section players frequenting today's Italian Jazz scene such as pianists Dado Moroni, Pietro Lussu, and Franco D'Andrea; bassists Gianluca Renzi, Jospeh Lepore, Pietro Ciancaglini, Dario Deidda, and Rimi Vignolo; drummers, Lorenzo Tucci, Benjamin Henocq [Swiss/Italian], Massimo Manzi and Marcello Di Leonardo. All of these guys are virtuoso players who can really bring it.
Rosario's music is a reflection of a young player finding his way through the modern Jazz tradition with straight-ahead, bop-oriented tunes such as Wes Montgomery's Road Song, re-workings of Ornette Coleman's The Blessing and Invisible [which frankly I enjoyed more than the originals with the exception of the playing Messer's Blackwell, Hayden, Higgins and La Faro – to his credit, Ornette used some very fine rhythm sections on his early albums], and, as is to be expected from today's young, reed players, Coltranesque extended adventures such as the original Suite et Poursuite, I, II, III.
Interestingly his tribute to Coltrane album is done without the ever pulsating and bombastic Elvin Jones like drumming, but rather as a Duets for Trane in which he an pianist Franco D'Andrea perform on nine Coltrane originals such as Equinox, Central Park West and Like Sonny. There is very little "sheets of sound" to be found anywhere on this recording, but rather, an introspective and original examination of Coltrane's music by someone whose playing would have made him smile.
These two also combine on Live from Virginia Ranch, a quartet album on Philology [W114.2].
[It would seem that producer/owner Paolo Piangiarelli has a penchant for recording pianist D'Andrea in duos with alto players on his Philology label as he also issued Our Monk in 1994 [W.78.2] with Phil Woods on alto, after whom, Piangiarelli named his label!].
Rosario has a lovely way with ballads as can be heard in his sensitive and thoughtful interpretations of Tadd Dameron's On a Misty Night, Bob Haggart's What's New and Michele Petrucciani's lovely Home. Many other slow tunes are given a prominent place on his recordings which could be considered somewhat of a rarity as the tempo - "slow" - is often a stranger to youthful Jazz musicians.
He even put out an early recording Connotazione Blue [Philology W144.2] that is devoted entirely to standards such as Skylark, What is This Thing Called Love and Invitation that are interspersed with an original, four-part blues odyssey entitled Blues Connotation. It is his way of showing his conversancy with these musical forms and to pay homage to these strains within the Jazz tradition.
Giuliani is in demand by movie composers such as Morricone, Umilani, and Ortolani and even has a CD out entitled Tension that features his interpretation of Jazz themes from Italian movies.
This recording along with 9 other CD's under his own name to date represent a staggering body of high quality playing which can only get better now that he is under the tutelage of Francis Dreyfus, producer of Dreyfus Jazz.
Rosario Giuliani is a player of distinction who makes Jazz, in all its modern manifestations, an exciting adventure.
I recommend him to you without reservation as someone who will reward you many times over should you chose to include him and his associates in your musical vocabulary.


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ADI MicroConverters rev processing capacity
Keywords:analog devices? flash microcontroller? 8052 microcontroller? micrconverter? aduc844?
Analog Devices Inc. has launched three additions to its MicroConverter family, devices that pair precision data converters with 8-bit 8052 flash microcontrollers for intelligent-sensor applications.
The AduC844, AduC845, and AduC846 offer higher resolution and 12 times greater processing capacity than their predecessors, ADI said. They incorporate 16- and 24-bit ADCs, whereas earlier versions were based on 12-bit converters. The products' 8052 core has been optimized to run at one clock cycle per instruction cycle instead of 12 clocks per instruction, said Brian O'Mara, applications manager for MicroConverter and instrumentation converter products at ADI, here.
O'Mara said MicroConverters are used in applications that call for precise measurement of low-frequency signals with a wide dynamic range. Examples include intelligent-sensor calibration and conditioning, smart transmitters, weigh scales, temperature and pressure transducers, 4mA to 20mA control loops, patient-monitoring equipment, and portable test-and-measurement gear.
The single-cycle 8052 flash microcontroller core common to all three new MicroConverters runs at up to 12.58MIPS and offers 8051 instruction-set compatibility. The memory section consists of on-chip code flash/EE memory space for in-circuit reprogrammability, a non-volatile R/W block of data memory space with security enhancements and 2,304 bytes of RAM.
The ADuC844 includes a 24-bit primary and a 16-bit auxiliary sigma-delta ADC while the AduC846 includes two 16-bit sigma-delta converters. The two offer 105Hz maximum A/D throughput. The AduC845 includes two 24-bit sigma-delta ADCs and a 10-channel (five-differential-channel) input mux. Its maximum throughput is 1.3kHz.
All three devices include a temperature sensor; a programmable-gain amplifier on the primary ADC to allow direct measurement of low-level signals; a 12-bit voltage output DAC; and dual PWM outputs. Two current sources, a reference and an oscillator are on board, and a phase-locked loop generates the 12.58MHz clock from a 32kHz crystal. UART, SPI, and I?C communications ports are included.
Chopping scheme
O'Mara noted that the primary and auxiliary ADCs in all three MicroConverters implement a patented chopping scheme that improves dc offset and offset-drift specifications.
Support tools available for the MicroConverters include QuickStart, an entry-level system for developing, debugging, and testing applications in assembly, and QuickStart Plus, which includes a C compiler, macro assembler, simulator, and real-time emulator.
The ADuC844 and ADuC846 are sampling now, while the ADuC845 is to sample in July. In 1,000-piece quantities, smaller-memory versions of the trio are priced at $8.45, $7.17, and $9.24, respectively. Each is available in an 8-by-8mm, 56-lead CSP and a 52-pin PQFP. QuickStart is priced at $75 and QuickStart Plus at $299.
EE Times
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