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Just getting my own 2 cents in on the theme du jour – Zoli's had his, and Marshall has come back with a blistering post. But anyway…
Over on ZDNet, Sam Diaz posted what can only be described as a silly post 9actually one of my blogging heroes Bob Warfield called it just that) in which he declared, in a sermon-from-the-mount type way that RSS is dead.
His post was a result of a Google reader team blog entry that looked at what items an elite group of users where reading. Google came up with a "recommended list" for some industry "elites".
So far, so good. But then Sam went on to pronounce that he no longer logs into a feed reader but rather gets his information from other sources. In his words (highlighting mine);
I catch headlines on Yahoo News and Google News. I have a pretty extensive lineup of browser bookmarks to take me to sites that I scan throughout the day. Techmeme is always in one of my browser tabs so I can keep a pulse on what others in my industry are talking about. And then there are Twitter and Facebook. I actually pick up a lot of interesting reading material from people I'm following on Twitter and some friends on Facebook, with some of it becoming fodder for blog posts here…my sources of for reading material are scattered across the Web, not in one aggregated spot.
In a somewhat cutting comment, that only someone of his stature can get away with, Bob commented saying;
If you're getting your news every which way but blogs, why blog here? Your readers evidently would do as you do, no?
Sure there are plenty of new channels to aggregate, what with Facebook, Twitter et al, but to proclaim the end of RSS and, by association, aggregation is ludicrous. Techmeme is, after all an aggregative channel, what is Twitter if not a large aggregation point? And if aggregation is truly dead, then why is ZDNet seemingly able to attract advertisers with what is, essentially, an aggregative model?
Sam's knee jerk analysis that "RSS readers are a Web 1.0 tool" is also simplistic (sorry Sam). True a pure aggregative play with no viewer input would seem to fall into the general "1.0" pool. While a fully engaged medium feels more like 2.0 – but the fact of the matter is that RSS is an excellent tool to cross the divide between those two forms of consumption – especially so since Google have introduced more engagement-centric ways of users too communicate in reader.
So no, RSS is far from dead, aggregation is alive and kicking and Sam's, Zoli's Marshall's and my pay packet depends, at least in part, upon that. SO… if Sam's not using a feed reader, what are others doing?
Marshall has gone all hyper-tech on us, his explanation was kind of 2001 A Space Odyssey;
Our team scans over thousands of company RSS feeds each morning for updates (what news writer wouldn't do that?) and we use an open source customizable meme-tracker to make sure we haven't missed anything important. We use open source RSS parsing software to set up a dashboard tracking all our competitors' feeds, we use an RSS to IM alert system to get some feeds sent to us right away and at least some of us use Gmail Webclips for another layer of ambient feed tracking.
We use Postrank to track breakout hits in niche blogs and we use tools like Snackr or the just-launched LazyFeed to keep an eye on specific feeds or general topics.
My head hurt just reading that! Here at CloudAve we're a little less analytical than Marshall – but we're all still using a bunch of tools. Personally I use Google reader, a bunch of Google searches RSS'd to my reader. A few Twitter scans and the ever present TechMeme. That and a watching brief over most of our direct competitors keeps me pretty much in the loop.
So it seems the jury is back and, while not quite unanimous, the RSS brigade would seem to have the numbers at this point – and if revenue is any indication, they'll continue to do so for awhile yet.


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Indian Wanting Coffee:
An Indian walks into a cafe with a shotgun In one hand pulling a male buffalo with the other. He says to the waiter:
"Want coffee."
The waiter says, "Sure, Chief. Coming right up."
He gets the Indian a tall mug of coffee... The Indian drinks the coffee down in one gulp, Turns and blasts the buffalo with the shotgun, Causing parts of the animal to splatter everywhere and then just walks out.
The next morning the Indian returns. He has his shotgun in one hand, pulling another male buffalo with the other. He walks up to the counter and says to The waiter:
"Want coffee."
The waiter says, "Whoa, Tonto!
We're still cleaning up your mess from yesterday. What was all that about, anyway?"
The Indian smiles and proudly says,
"Training for position in United States Congress: Come in, drink coffee, shoot the bull, leave mess for others to clean up, Disappear for rest of day."
Copyright © 2003-2023 Cue Components

subset: commoncrawl


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Thanks to a question from @RebeccaCaroe, VRM is now on the radar of Peppers & Rogers, a business consulting group I have followed and respected for nearly two decades. Much of what we're doing with VRM is right in line with what Peppers & Rogers have been writing and talking about for the duration, so I'm not surprised to see them groking VRM in just one pass. Responding to Rebecca, Don Peppers posted VRM: Next Destination in Technology's March?, where he says this:,
Think about it: "Management" is synonymous with control or direction by someone, while "social" represents an inherently collective, non-managed value. Trying to describe "social CRM" in other words, is something like trying to describe "citrus watermelon." And in fact, many of the pioneers in SCRM are finding that in order to have any traction at all in social media they must first give up control – that is, they must admit that they cannot by themselves "manage" the process or its outcomes.
But the VRM idea may just describe the next destination in this march of technology. In our view, VRM makes the most sense for consumers when the process involves highly personal computers with mobile applications that allow consumers to mange their own information more directly, even as they continue to participate in the economic system, buying products and services and putting them to use.
Whether VRM actually takes root or not, however, depends on whether the right intermediaries spring to life to facilitate it. In The One to One Future, back in 1993, we speculated that eventually a form of business would emerge that we termed a "privacy intermediary." This would be a business that would collect an individual's personal information and use it to extract the best possible deal from a vendor while protecting the person's privacy – that is, without allowing the vendor to gain its own access to the individual (see Chapter 9.)
Martha and I often say that if we made one big error in the predictions inside this book, it was overestimating the degree of interest consumers would have in protecting their own privacy. We thought privacy intermediation would be a big business, but so far this just hasn't happened. On the other hand, it may be that technology has now reached the point that this kind of intermediary function might soon be handled as a simple mobile phone app. And when that happens, VRM will arrive for real.
Don & Martha, if you're reading this, check out VRM and the Four Party System. (Also find more background on VRM here, here and here.) And look here for some examples of efforts that qualify as "privacy intermediaries." I think Azigo, Kynetx, MyDex, Paoga, SwitchBook and TrustFabric are all in that ball park, each with different roles. (For more on that park, see Joe Andrieu's series on user driven services.)
I need to add, however, that we don't always need intermediaries. VRM is about independence as well as engagement. We need self-hosted and self-directed solutions as well. We also need to build on free and open code, standards and protocols if we don't want VRM to become as silo'd as "social media" have become. (The big two, Twitter & Facebook, are both companies, not functional categories.) This is what The Mine Project is for. Also webfinger, the code-child of Blaine Cook, whose fingerprints are also on both Twitter and Oauth. Here's a nice interview with Blaine by Tom Murphy at SocialMedia.net.
Alan Mitchell has a customarily thoughtful post with The customer is not king. He explains,
…today that's changing and we can look at the world through a different lens – that of the decision-maker (the person) rather than that of the decision-influencer (the seller). Once you do this it quickly becomes apparent that this meta-need – to make (and implement) better decisions – is bigger than all other needs (for chocolates, for cars, for current accounts etc) because it embraces them all, subsuming them into the bigger task of achieving what the person (not the seller) wants to achieve.
Person- or buyer-centric services then, sit on the side of the individual, helping the individual achieve what the individual wants to achieve, including managing relationships with many different suppliers more efficiently and more effectively (VRM, or Vendor Relationship Management). The central questions here are, What challenges does the person face when doing this? How to do it better?
The difference between now and say, twenty years ago, is that twenty years ago this person-centric perspective was operationally irrelevant. You couldn't do anything practical to help people address these challenges. When marketers said 'the customer is king', it was just a disguised way of saying 'the organisation is king'.
Now, however, as information becomes a tool in the hands of the individual, that's changing. The organisational king is being deposed. This is not about superficial changes in 'how to achieve the same old marketing goals better'. For example, it's got nothing to do with arguments about whether it's easier, cheaper or better to get marketing messages across via social media or mass advertising. It's a deep, structural, tectonic, remorseless and comprehensive transformation in the relationship between individuals and organisations.
And if you keep on looking in the customer mirror, you simply won't see it coming.
Denis Pombriant, who was a very helpful contributor to VRM+CRM 2010 a couple weeks ago at Harvard (with big thanks again to the Berkman Center staff), followed with VRM, CRM and Social Media. While mostly complimentary, Denis adds,
I can't say the same for VRM and that's one of the big hang-ups for it. Who makes VRM and who pays for it? The customers don't seem interested in paying for anything so don't look there. And savvy vendors tend to look at VRM as slitting their own throats. Pretty quickly you realize that while there is a need for what VRM does, there doesn't seem to be a constituency ready to pay for it.
Well, we'll see. Customers will pay for lots of stuff that has real value, provided the means are provided. When the only easy way to get digital music was Napster, everybody talked about how nobody wanted to pay for music anymore. Then Apple made it easy to pay 99¢ per tune, and since then more than ten billion tunes have been sold on iTunes alone. Mobile apps are another one. At a more mundane level, how about coffee. Before Starbucks, coffee was one of the cheapest drinks you could get. Now the new norm is $3+ for a cappuccino or a latte.
But Denis' point is well-taken. VRM solutions need to provide real value to customers, or those solutions won't thrive in the marketplace. Some of that value will come from free stuff that business can be built on. Some will come from services that customers — or somebody — will pay for.
David Cutler also has a nice post on VRM, borrowing a very helpful graphic from Julian Gay, which was the subject of much discussion at VRM+CRM 2010. A gallery of pix is here.
And the Danish Magazine Scenario interviewed me, about VRM, e a few weeks back. The piece is up now, in Dansk. Here's a blog post about it in English, with a short video by Henrik Moltke, shot over lunch outside in Paris. Scenario also got some great shots of me, also in Paris, to go with the piece.
Finally (for now), check out this Klint Finley interview with Josh Bernoff on Josh's new book (co-authored with Ted Schadler, Empowered. I dunno if VRM comes up in there, but VRM is certainly more than consistent with the title.


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Pepper-Spraying The Holidays: Time And The Ethic Of Consumption
It has become a new and depressing holiday tradition. Every year on Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, thousands of human beings stampede into big-box stores searching for "deals." And, every year, by days-end the horror stories emerge on the newsfeed: fights break out among frenzied shoppers or worse, someone gets trampled to death. This year's award goes to the woman who pepper sprayed a crowd of fellow shoppers who were scrambling to get cheap Xbox consoles. It's not yet clear if her personal attempt at chemical warfare was first-strike or self-defense. But it doesn't really matter. These events mark the extreme of a pathology we are all part of. As we head into the holiday season, this might be a good moment to reflect on the roots of our collective consumer delusion.
Earlier this year I wrote a series of posts on the tyranny of modern time. The posts were the fruit of the research I did for a book on the history of time in culture and cosmology. In tracking the way human beings have organized their societies around collective conceptions of time, I was struck by how our "modern" time-logic originated with conceptions of efficiency in production.
You can make more stuff if you are careful about how much time each step in the "stuff-making" process takes. Reducing the time needed for each step in the process became the holy grail of industry. Then the idea spread to every aspect of modern culture from the shop floor to the front office and then, remarkably, to the storefront.
Somehow the ethic of efficiency in industry morphed into an imperative of convenience consumerism in daily life. "Growth" became an economic holy grail that even families were expected to worship.
There's no need to review the long-term problems with this scenario. One only needs to point out the insanity of thinking you can have infinite growth on a finite planet. More to the point today is to recognize what it does to us as human communities.
The pepper-spraying madness is a symptom of a collective wackiness we all play a part in. The worst part about the holidays is that what should be an opportunity to partake in an ancient call to "sacred time" becomes battered into a desperate demand to fuel the consumer monster.
Now don't get me wrong. I like my stuff as much as the next guy. I embrace the technologies I use and the capacities for their production. From a solidly made rake to a brilliantly designed app, making things is what we do. That being said, we desperately need to figure out if a balance can exist between how much we take (from the planet) and what we make.
In the last of my four tyranny of time posts I talked about "opting out" of modern culture's dysfunctional time-logic as a means to building our next version of time. Since so much of our behavior surrounding the holidays is voluntary, they present a wonderful opportunity for building these new time behaviors and, in the process, experimenting with new ideas about culture. So here are a few ideas for all of us that touch on time and consumption.
What if you simply bought 1/2 as many gifts this year? Buy half as many gifts and see if you can find things that will last, things that are made really well. And for each gift you don't buy, write a card to that person and tell them how important they were to you this year. If you have kids (and it's hardest to cut down when it comes to your kids) try and get them one cool thing that relates to nature and the environment (books about tigers? Everyone loves books about tigers). If they are old enough, use that present to explain the links between our "stuff" and the natural world. If you are up for it, replace some presents for adults with gifts in their name to something like Heifer International. Rather than yet another Christmas sweater, they get to see that money go to buying chickens for a family that will then raise more chickens and, maybe, become self-sustaining.
These are just possibilities off the top of my head which I will try and put into place this year with my newfound time consciousness. I would love to hear other folks' ideas.
The question, simply put, is how do we opt-out of the crazy pepper-spraying holiday time and opt-in to something new, something possible and something truly sustaining.
"Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends. ... Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts." ~Henry David Thoreau
You can keep up with more of what Adam Frank is thinking on Facebook and Twitter. His new book is
About Time: Cosmology and Culture at the Twilight of the Big Bang
Copyright 2020 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.


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My strategy for the race is to keep a steady pace but stay mostly within my comfort zone while moving, and try to limit stopped time to improve overall speed. Beat, for his own experimental purposes, is traveling fully self-supported for the first 350 miles — meaning he is hauling all of his food for that section and not planning on stopping inside of any cabins. My goal is to shadow Beat as best I can and possibly spend nights out with him, camping on the trail. I want to do this for both the wilderness experience, and as a race strategy. Cabin checkpoints are often loud, hot and crowded, and I rarely sleep well if at all inside of them. However, a simple shelter, someplace warm and surrounded by other humans, is such a huge comfort that I'm not sure I can resist the gravitational pull, even if I know for a fact I'll sleep better curled up in my bivy sack outdoors. We'll see. I'm announcing my intentions on my blog in hopes that some public accountability will hold me to it. I'd like to move in an out of checkpoints relatively quickly and grab most of my sleeps on the trail.
"There are no such things as omens," he replied. Maybe not, but there is optimism, and that can go a long way by itself.
If you'd like to follow up with how the race is going, here are a few links. As a walker near the back of the pack, there won't be much about my progress, but the leaderboard should be updated once a day with the location of the last check-in. My best-case scenario is to finish sometime in the afternoon of Sunday, March 2. A more likely scenario is Monday or Tuesday, and the race officially ends on Wednesday, March 5.
Race updates:
Iditarod Trail Invitational
Facebook updates
Message board
Recent media:
Rugged and crazed cyclists, runners ready for Iditarod Trail Invitational
Running Wild Alaska (TrailRunner interviewed Beat for this article)
Fairbanks fat bikers pumped for ITI
Ultrarunner Johnston readies for Iditarod Invitational


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Love online: Tim Lockhart, Michelle Coonen engaged, planning a 2014 wedding
Published 12:00 am Friday, February 22, 2013
SALISBURY — Before I even sat down with Michelle Coonen and her boyfriend Tim Lockhart for my feature on couples who met online, I was rooting for them. In all honesty, I'd spoken with Michelle prior to our Jan. 29 interview.
I'd posted on my Facebook about talking to couples who met via an online dating site. She immediately called me. I was excited at the quick response. Michelle told me the two were heading out of town for a cruise and hinted that could possibly be it.
Most women know what I mean when I say IT. You know, the proposal.
When I sat down for our January interview, ever the observant (nosey) reporter, I noticed a pretty ring on Michelle's left ring finger. I asked if that was it, to which she quickly said no. I was a little disappointed and said, "Oh, I thought that was it."
I don't think Tim knew what we were talking about. Post Photographer Jon Lakey was certainly confused. The conversation was like one of those "Gilmore Girls" episodes where the only two people who know what's going are Lorelai and Rory. If you've never watched, you should. But I digress.
Michelle sent me an email Tuesday with the subject line: Tim Lockhart and Michelle Coonen … She said Yes.
Before reading the email, I knew what it meant. It meant he went to Jared. He did apparently go to Jared, Michelle confirmed.
I am happy to report the couple will wed on Dec. 13, 2014 — that's 12-13-14.
Tim never really "popped the question" Michelle says. The two more or less had a conversation about marriage. Tim went to Jared to buy Michelle's Christmas present and so she was no stranger to the signature brown bag. The couple had talked about marriage and Michelle once mentioned if Tim ever decided to propose, she didn't want a traditional ring. Michelle, ever the straight-shooter, knew what she wanted — an opal stone. Tim bought the ring on Feb. 6, and on Feb. 14 the box was waiting to be opened on her desk.
Michelle had forgotten about rings and marriage and figured her Valentine's Day gift was some "dangly earrings" she'd wanted. The box contained an opal ring with blue stones around it. Blue is Tim's favorite color, Michelle told me.
The two had a nice dinner on Valentine's Day, and as days passed friends asked about the ring, which Michelle had placed on her left ring finger. When a friend asked about the ring, Tim told her it was "open to interpretation." He later said to Michelle, "Let's make it official."
Hearing Michelle describe Tim, I believe him to be an even-tempered kinda guy, a guy who doesn't like a lot of fuss.
"It was more of a conversation than a question," she said to me.
I must admit Tim was pretty slick with the ring, I thought as she described to me how he picked it out. He knew her size, which from what I know of men and rings is one of the hardest things to figure out, next to the stone and maybe the proposal. He took one of her rings and placed it on his finger and used his own finger to measure. I thought that was pretty genius.
"He had no help with the ring," Michelle told me.
Now picking out a ring could score a man brownie points or put him in the dog house. Tim did good from what I can tell. He told the saleswoman he was looking for a Valentine's Day present, but told the woman if it was an engagement ring, it had to be opal.
"I couldn't have picked it out better myself," Michelle said.
The couple is in the midst of some planning, mostly looking for a location. Apparently Dec. 13, 2014, is quite the popular day for weddings. Who knew? It seems lots of couples plan weddings around dates. In 2007, Eva Longoria married her then-basketball hubby on 7-7-07. I'm almost sure there were a lot of couples who got married on 12-12-12. Someone Michelle knew was getting married in December next year and Tim said "why couldn't they do the same." So they set the date.
Just think, they only have 559 days until they say, "I Do." How's that for a happy ending to a Valentine's Day love story?


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UPDATED 9:20 a.m. 9/28/12
The perpetrators behind the assault that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans at the U.S. consulate in Benghazi on Sept. 11, 2012, had been looking for an opportunity to attack U.S. facilities in the region for some time, according to an Obama Administration official familiar with the latest intelligence
However, the Administration continues to believe the attack was not pre-planned, but rather was the result of extremists seizing the opportunity presented by protests in neighboring Egypt against an American-made anti-Islamic video.
Members of the Benghazi al-Qaeda affiliate, Ansar al Sharia, "Saw the events in Cairo and took it upon themselves to seize that opportunity to do something," the Administration official says. "They may have intended for some time to attack U.S. facilities, but they did so at the time they did to take advantage of Cairo."
(PHOTOS: Protests Rage in Middle East, Sparked by Anti-Islamic Film)
The best evidence supporting the idea that the attack was cooked up on the fly, the Administration official says, is that it was seven hours into the assault before mortars were used by the attackers. "Their most lethal weapon wasn't used until 7 hours in, and I think that's an important data point that speaks to the fact that this was opportunistic and developed over time. They went and they got their buddies and they got their most lethal weapons and they brought it to bear. And ultimately that contributed to the lethality of the attack."
The picture that is emerging of the attack is substantially different from what appeared in the first hours. News reports and some administration officials initially described the Benghazi attack as "spontaneous" and likened it to the disorganized protests that had started hours earlier at the American embassy in Cairo.
Now the Administration is saying the attack in Benghazi was a terrorist operation by an al Qaeda affiliate and that there may not have been any protests at the Benghazi consulate the day of the attack. "The most credible assessment is that there was not [a protest] ongoing at the time of the attack," the official says. "That said there are other reports that there were protests in Benghazi and in other parts of the city that day."
Congressional Republicans are accusing the Obama Administration of intentionally misleading Americans, and the issue has become the subject of intense debate just over a month before the presidential election.
As early as Sept. 12, there were reports of the involvement of extremists in the attack, including in the New York Times and elsewhere, and some official statements seem to reflect that reporting. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, for example, said on Sept. 12, "Yesterday, our U.S. diplomatic post in Benghazi, Libya, was attacked. Heavily armed militants assaulted the compound and set fire to our buildings."
(MORE: Timeline: What Happened in Libya and How the U.S. Reacted)
The intelligence community briefed the President and other members of the Administration that the attack had been "spontaneous" or "opportunistic" in the early hours after it occurred. The following Saturday, ahead of a briefing on Capitol Hill, the intelligence community sent the following unclassified briefing points, obtained by Time, to members of Congress:
–The currently available information suggests that the demonstrations in Benghazi were spontaneously inspired by the protests at the US Embassy in Cairo and evolved into a direct assault against the US diplomatic post in Benghazi and subsequently its annex. There are indications that extremists participated in the violent demonstrations.
–This assessment may change as additional information is collected and analyzed and as currently available information continues to be evaluated.
–The investigation is on-going, and the US Government is working with Libyan authorities to bring to justice those responsible for the deaths of US citizens.
The strongest evidence to support the Republican's contention that the Administration was putting a positive spin on events came the following day, when U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice went on the Sunday shows to discuss the Benghazi attack.
RICE: Based on the best information we have to date, what our assessment is as of the present is, in fact, what it began spontaneously in Benghazi as a reaction to what had transpired some hours earlier in Cairo where, of course, as you know, there was a violent protest outside of our embassy sparked by this hateful video.
But soon after that spontaneous protest began outside of our consulate in Benghazi, we believe that it looks like extremist elements — individuals — joined in that — in that effort with heavy weapons of the sort that are, unfortunately, readily now available in Libya post-revolution and that it spun from there into something much, much more violent.
MR. SCHIEFFER: But you do not agree with him that this was something that had been plotted out several months ago?
MS. RICE: We do not have information at present that leads us to conclude that this was premeditated or pre-planned.
MR. SCHIEFFER: Do you agree or disagree with him that al-Qaida had some part in this?
MS. RICE: Well, we'll have to find that out. I mean, I think it's clear that there were extremist elements that joined and escalated the violence, whether they were al-Qaida affiliates, whether they were Libyan-based extremist or al-Qaida itself, I think, is one of the things we'll have to determine.
Three days later, the head of the National Counter Terrorism Center, Matthew Olsen, when asked by Sen. Joe Lieberman, chairman of the Senate Homeland Security committee, whether Stevens died in a terrorist attack, was more direct:
"Certainly on that particular question, I would say yes, they were killed in the course of a terrorist attack on our embassy."
Asked if it was preplanned, Olsen said,
A more complicated question, and one, Mr. Chairman, that we are spending a great deal of time looking at even as we speak. And it's a — it's a — obviously, an investigation here is ongoing and facts are being developed continually.
The best information we have now, the facts that we have now indicate that this was an opportunistic attack on our embassy. The attack began and evolved and escalated over several hours at our embassy — our diplomatic post in Benghazi. It evolved and escalated over several hours.
It appears that individuals who were certainly well-armed seized on the opportunity presented as the events unfolded that evening and into the — into the morning hours of September 12th. We do know that a number of militants in the area, as I mentioned, are well-armed and maintain those arms. What we don't have at this point is specific intelligence that there was a significant advanced planning or coordination for this attack.
Again, we're still developing facts and still looking for any indications of substantial advanced planning; we just haven't seen that at this point.
On Wednesday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the Benghazi attack was linked to an al Qaeda affiliate in North Africa. "Now with a larger safe haven and increased freedom to maneuver, terrorists are seeking to extend their reach and their networks in multiple directions… and they are working with other violent extremists to undermine the democratic transitions under way in North Africa, as we tragically saw in Benghazi."
On Thursday, House Republicans sent a letter [pdf] to President Obama saying they were "disturbed by the public statements made by members of the Administration that would lead the American public to believe this attack was a protest gone wrong, rather than what it truly was." Four GOP Senators wrote Rice saying, "By the date of your comments, it was already clear that the attack in Libya was a terrorist attack."
Aside from the Administration's initial representation of the attack, there are several important questions that remain:
-What was Stevens doing in Benghazi?
-Have any perpetrators been detained?
-Are they in American or Libyan custody, or in the custody of another power?
-Are they being questioned by U.S. officials?
Administration officials declined to answer.
UPDATE: Regarding Rice's statements on Sept. 16, the spokesperson for the U.S. Mission to the United Nations, Erin Pelton, says, "During her appearances on the Sunday talk shows September 16, 2012, Ambassador Rice's comments were prefaced at every turn with a clear statement that an FBI investigation was underway that would provide the definitive accounting of the events that took place in Benghazi. At every turn Ambassador Rice provided–and said she was providing–the best information and the best assessment that the Administration had at the time, based on what was provided to Ambassador Rice and other senior U.S. officials by the U.S. intelligence community."
MORE: Agents of Outrage: Behind the Middle East's Anti-American Violence


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MILWAUKEE – Marquette had what most would call a surprising season. After being a preseason coaches' pick to finish seventh in the powerful Big East, the Golden Eagles stunned the conference with a 14-4 league record and a share of the regular-season title.
Next up for No. 15 and third-seeded Marquette (23-8) is a matchup Thursday night against No. 14 seed Davidson (26-7) in the East regional of the NCAA tournament in Lexington, Ky.
The Golden Eagles made the NCAAs after navigating a tough Big East and nonconference schedule. Marquette won 14 games in the conference for the second straight year — giving the Golden Eagles a Big East-best 28 wins the last two seasons — and shared the league crown with Louisville and Georgetown before losing to No. 23 Notre Dame in the quarterfinals of the league tournament.
"I think sometimes people lose touch with how hard it is to get to the NCAA tournament," coach Buzz Williams said Tuesday. "I am thankful because it is my 10th (NCAA tournament) game as a head coach. We just won the Big East. That has never happened here. We are a 3-seed. I think sometimes you lose touch and you take for granted how hard this really is."
Starting center and redshirt senior Chris Otule enjoyed only his second injury-free season in five years for the Golden Eagles. The availability of Otule allowed Williams to add another dimension to Marquette's offense.
"I feel good. I feel great," Otule said. "I might have a little butterflies, just because I haven't played in the NCAA tournament in a while. Last year, I was hurt and everything."
Otule averaged 4.9 points and 3.3 rebounds, starting all 31 games and giving Williams the luxury to utilize junior forward Davante Gardner off the bench after he started 12 games last season.
"We'll all be fine once we get out there," Otule said. "Night in, night out in the Big East any team is capable of beating you on any given night. I think that's just because the competition in the Big East is so great, it allows us to go into the tournament and, hopefully, win some games."
Otule finished the regular season healthy for the first time since his sophomore year and Gardner earned the Big East's sixth man award and was an all-conference honorable mention. Gardner averaged 11.5 points and 4.8 rebounds in only 23.3 minutes per contest.
This was a key factor in the historic conference finish for Marquette.
Gardner is a tough cover in the paint, but foul trouble and conditioning slowed his progress his first two seasons.
Vander Blue leads the team with 14.3 points per game and was named to the all-Big East second team. Against St. John's in Marquette's final game of the regular season, Blue hit the winning layup in overtime to secure the Golden Eagles their share of the conference championship.
It will mark the eighth consecutive trip to the NCAAs for Marquette, and the second straight for the Southern Conference-champion Wildcats. Each game could become the last for Marquette seniors Junior Cadougan and transfer Trent Lockett.
Juan Anderson, a sophomore forward, looks to the leadership of point guard Cadougan.
"He is a great leader," Anderson said. "He is really positive, he just takes on each task in everyday like it his last. He is really humble about everything."
The Wildcats, who won their second consecutive Southern tournament, lost to Louisville in the second round of last season's tournament.
Williams knows Davidson is no pushover.
"We are playing a team that is tournament tested," he said.
Jake Cohen, a senior forward, leads the Wildcats in scoring at 14.8 points per game and adds 5.5 rebounds. De'Mon Brooks, a junior forward, averages 13.8 points and a team-best 6.2 rebounds.
"They are not a 14-seed," Williams said. "I am not smart enough to be on the selection committee, but they are not a 14-seed."
The two schools have met on two previous occasions. The Wildcats posted a 73-65 win at home on Dec. 9, 1965, and Marquette followed with a 66-65 victory in Milwaukee on Feb. 11, 1967.


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Jessica Gonzalez: As US Court of Appeals rules against net neutrality, internet service providers will restrict access for communities of color
Story Transcript
JAISAL NOOR, TRNN PRODUCER: This is The Real News Network, and I'm Jaisal Noor in Baltimore.
On Tuesday, a three-judge panel handed down a ruling against the Federal Communications Commission that could have serious ramifications for the future of internet freedom. The decision struck down FCC guidelines adopted in 2010 that preserved net neutrality to guarantee internet service providers can't slow down or block access to any online content.
In response, former FCC commissioner Michael Copps released a statement saying the ruling, quote, "is poised to end the free, open, and uncensored Internet that we have come to rely on." "People depend on the Open Internet to connect and communicate with each other. . . . Without prompt corrective action by the Commission to reclassify broadband, this awful ruling will serve as a sorry memorial to the corporate abrogation of free speech".
Now joining us to discuss this is Jessica Gonzalez. She's the executive vice president of the National Hispanic Media Coalition. She leads their legal and policy work and executes its priorities before the federal agencies and in Congress.
Thank you so much for joining us, Jessica.
JESSICA GONZALEZ, EXECUTIVE VP, NATIONAL HISPANIC MEDIA COALITION: Thank you for having me, Jaisal.
NOOR: So, Jessica, I wanted to start off by getting your response to what former FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell said about this ruling. He said–and this was published online. He said, quote, "nothing needs fixing. The Internet has remained open and accessible without FCC micromanagement since it entered public life in the 1990s. And more regulation could produce harmful results, such as reduced infrastructure investment, stunted innovation, slower speeds and higher prices for consumers." What's your response?
GONZALEZ: We hear this one all the time. The truth is that network neutrality is important in ensuring what the Court even recognized was a virtuous cycle of innovation that happens online, edge providers creating opportunities not just for people to tell their stories, but also economic opportunities at the edge.
The very notion that we don't need that neutrality regulations is quite wrong. Verizon, in its oral arguments before the court in this very case, actually admitted that without net neutrality regulations, they would be exploring commercial agreements where they would prioritize certain edge providers, certain content and applications based on those edge providers' ability to pay more.
And that's exactly why the net neutrality rules are so important. They ensure equality and fairness on the internet, and they are a catalyst for economic growth.
NOOR: And, Jessica, why is net neutrality so important for low-income communities, and especially communities of color? Communities of color especially like the equal access to the internet that other communities have. And this is due to issues around affordability, which this decision could affect. And also talk about the importance of content, of communities of color being able to reach media which present news and other information in a perspective that emphasizes their voices.
GONZALEZ: Latinos and other people of color have long faced discrimination at the hands of mainstream media. What is exciting for us about the internet is that we are able to share our own stories fairly and accurately, to push back against discrimination, to organize our community for positive change, and even in many cases to earn a living. So this is vitally important for communities of color.
And it's also vitally important for anyone who does not have broadband today. Nearly a million Americans, mostly black and brown people, have no broadband access at home. This is an opportunity to divide. It's a digital divide that is creating further barriers for some of our most disenfranchised communities to get equal access to education, to job applications, to healthcare, to civic engagement opportunities, and to get informed and communicate with their family and friends.
And so it's vitally important that the FCC go back to the drawing board, reclassify broadband providers as common carriers, and get the ball rolling to not only ensure equality and network neutrality on the internet, but also expand federal policies that help make broadband more affordable. It has an authority problem right now that is related to this case. And if it asserts Title II authority and treats broadband providers as common carriers, there are a variety of options that they can pursue to help make broadband more affordable so that our communities start getting more and more connected.
Latinos, the Latino community is one of the least connected communities. Just over 50 percent of Latinos in the U.S. have broadband internet access at home. That number drops to 38 percent for Spanish speakers. And so we really need to close the divide.
And one way to do it would be for the FCC to assert its authority over broadband and ensure that it's actually affordable, because it's not today. We have some of the most expensive and least of–and slowest (excuse me) internet of many of our allies in the international community. And so we need to change that.
NOOR: And, Jessica, last question. We're almost out of time for this segment. Who does this ruling benefit, just so we're clear about that? And what are you calling on concerned citizens to do today?
GONZALEZ: At the outset, the immediate outset, it benefits wealthy internet service providers that are already charging us an arm and a leg to get online. And now they are going to be allowed to make special deals with big corporations that can pay more to have their content go faster. And so they are the immediate beneficiaries.
This could easily be undone. The rights of the people, the rights of communities of color, but the rights of all consumers really can be put before the rights of big cable and telephone companies that are earning astronomical profits every year. All that has to happen is the FCC chairman, Wheeler, must reclassify broadband providers as Title II service providers under the Communications Act.
And I'm calling on everyone who's concerned about continuous access to affordable internet connections and to be able to give their news and information from a diversity of sources, I'm calling on them to join NHMC and our partners as we push for the FCC chairman to do what he needs to do. And you can go to our website at NHMC.org for more information.
NOOR: Jessica, thank you so much for joining us.
GONZALEZ: Thank you.
NOOR: Follow us at The Real News on Twitter, Tweet me questions and comments. Thank you so much for joining us.
DISCLAIMER: Please note that transcripts for The Real News Network are typed from a recording of the program. TRNN cannot guarantee their complete accuracy.


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Economic downturns expose the vulnerability of a growing number of precarious workers
Up to the start of 2020, recent EU economic and labour market trends were often discussed in terms of the periods before and after the Great Recession. It now appears likely that, in the short- to medium-term, the repercussions of that economic crisis will be dwarfed by the unfolding impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly on businesses and employment in the sectors most affected by the shutdown – not to speak of the cost in human lives. While estimates of this impact largely remain within the realm of speculation at present, the Member States most affected are already reporting a significant spike in new unemployment registrations.
Here I want to outline the impact that economic uncertainty and job loss has on the most precarious workers and, indeed, vulnerable self-employed workers (one-quarter of whom are precarious, according to Eurofound research), and what policy steps have been taken to protect them. This is particularly relevant because the numbers of such workers have increased over the last decade. Precarious work is also a particular feature of some of the sectors most affected by the COVID-19-related shutdowns (such as tourism, hospitality, transport, retail and construction).
This review is based on Eurofound's just-published flagship report, Labour market change – Trends and policy approaches towards flexibilisation, which covers the years from 2008 to 2018, a period that includes the recession of 2008–2013 and the subsequent return to stability and growth. Although the reasons for that economic downturn differ significantly from those of the COVID-19 crisis, there are still lessons to be drawn.
Rising precariousness in work
Around 6 in 10 European workers have full-time, permanent jobs, which provide a high degree of job security and social protection, although the proportion has fallen slightly since 2008. The rather small reduction disguises a rise in precariousness among many in the remaining group – those who are in non-standard employment. This is demonstrated by the rise in temporary employment among younger workers, the increasing share of short-term temporary contracts, the growing share of men on low-hours part-time contracts, and the rise in the share of workers with some other type of contract or no contract at all, as shown in the charts below.
Figure 1: Rise in different types of non-standard employment, EU27 + UK
Sources: EU-LFS (first and second charts); European Working Conditions Survey (third chart)
There has also been an increase in 'compound non-standard employment' in almost all Member States. This is work that combines different non-standard work statuses, such as temporary and part-time or self-employed and part-time. This trend, which has gone hand in hand with the emergence of new business models such as platform work, has contributed to a deepening of labour market divisions between well-protected workers and those with limited access to social protection and employment rights and limited representation by trade unions. In the EU as a whole, the main developments in non-standard employment have been a shift towards permanent part-time employment, temporary part-time employment and part-time self-employment (see Figure 2).
Figure 2: Percentage point change in the composition of non-standard employment, EU27 + UK, 2008–2018
Note: A family worker is family member working in a family business.
Source: EU-LFS
These patterns differ significantly from country to country and pose various policy challenges. One of the most significant is how to give these workers access to social and employment protection. Another is how to enable them to transition from temporary to permanent employment or from part-time to full-time employment if they wish to do so.
The threat of precariousness is even greater for casual workers. A recent Eurofound report demonstrated that the nature of casual work differs from country to country – it can take the form, for instance, of zero-hours contracts, day labour, intermittent work or on-call work. Many casual workers lack a stable and continuous relationship with their employer, placing them at greater risk as the economy contracts. The same is true for the groups of vulnerable self-employed workers referred to above, some of whom can be characterised as bogus self-employed due to their reliance on one (or few) clients, sometimes without the possibility of taking on other customers because their main client has imposed an exclusivity clause.
- Publication: Casual work: Characteristics and implications
Gaps in social protection
The flagship report describes how, even during times of economic recovery and relative stability, the consequences of non-standard employment can be significant. Temporary and part-time employees are at greater risk of poverty. Temporary full-time, temporary part-time and self-employed workers are significantly less likely to be covered by sickness and unemployment benefit schemes – an important concern in any economic downturn, including the current COVID-19 crisis. Furthermore, the experience of the Great Recession has shown that temporary workers and those on other precarious contracts tend to be among the first to lose their jobs as the economy contracts – particularly if they are active in the most exposed sectors.
A number of measures have already been taken by the EU and individual Member States to prevent the abuse of casual work and fixed-term contracts and to give employees at least the right to request an improved contract. These are among the goals of the recent EU Directives on Transparent and Predictable Working Conditions and on Work–Life Balance. At national level, some countries have outlawed certain types of casual work or exclusivity clauses. However, many legal uncertainties remain to be addressed. Similarly, the 1999 Fixed-term Work Directive (based on an agreement between the European cross-sectoral social partners) sought to introduce measures to ensure equal treatment and prevent the abusive use of such contracts. However, the Directive provides significant leeway to Member States to achieve this, leading to large variations between them and contributing to different transition rates among employees from fixed-term to permanent employment.
Social protection systems were largely designed with full-time, permanent employees in mind, and while some non-standard employees have access to benefits, this often does not amount to effective protection, as it can be much harder to meet some of the criteria and contribution levels upon which (adequate) benefits are based. It is estimated that around 32% of temporary full-time workers and 39% of temporary part-time workers in the EU do not have access to unemployment benefits. Close to 55% of self-employed workers are also unable to access benefits from such schemes. Furthermore, 38% of self-employed and close to 10% of temporary part-time workers cannot avail of sickness benefits.
Steps to address the gaps
Prior to the COVID-19 crisis, a number of Member States had already moved to implement measures to broaden access to social protection, particularly for self-employed individuals – and to a lesser extent to employees on non-standard contracts. In order to cushion the impact of COVID-19, several (and the UK) have implemented measures to limit the impact on employees through various measures, such as short-time work schemes and, in some cases, temporary bans on redundancies. They have also provided a degree of income protection for (some) self-employed groups. Sickness protection has also been strengthened in a number of countries to broaden access. This opens up the possibility for longer-term amendments to such schemes, expanding contribution criteria to extend coverage.
In many ways, the Coronavirus outbreak, in exposing the weakness of social protection systems, is placing additional pressure on governments to address gaps in them. Thus – as with many other things (such as the boost to remote working) – the COVID-19 crisis may have consequences beyond its immediate impact.
Image @ Dmitry Kalinovsky/Shutterstock
Research carried out prior to the UK's withdrawal from the European Union on 31 January 2020, and published subsequently, may include data relating to the 28 EU Member States. Following this date, research only takes into account the 27 EU Member States (EU28 minus the UK), unless specified otherwise.


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Our boat guest Trixie.
I love my water bottle.
Towing "Moon Jelly" for the first time.
We got there at 1pm and the cove was quickly filling up... Lots of pushing boats off each other as current and breeze moves them back and forth.
SFPD, Oakland PD, Coast Guard, SFFD, Sherifs department, and who knows what under cover... So many official boats to get everything in check... I felt weird drinking a beer.
Hilarious watching people flail about trying to anchor.
Check the machine guns on the bow.
Just 2 hours till game time.
Posey arriving by boat.
Wonder why they're towing this boat out of there.
Funniest boat name we saw: "Hands in Hands, Bail Bonds"
This guy ruled.
Closer to game time more characters arrived.
We BBQ'd up some hotdogs.
Everyone had these massive flat screens on their boats.
National Anthem time.
Fly over out of focus.
This guy was trying to get a better view.
Right as the game was to begin this intense sunlight broke through the dense cloud cover.
The lighting was really cool... God is a Giants fan.
He was up there for awhile.
Clouds Looked amazing!
I felt like shit and even though it's nice to be close to the game, we opted to head home to catch the rest on TV...
Hope you don't get this cold, it sucks, but hey, the Giants have won 2 thus far. Who would have thought? Can you imagine how nuts the city would be with a World Series win on Halloween?!
Oh, here's a LA Times story on Mcovey Cove during game one and how wild it can get.
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The Nintendo Wii brought gesture control to game play, and it seems very likely that you'll soon be seeing variations on the idea in a lot more consumer products.
Two examples turned up at CES, one very real, the other a bit off in the future: Sony's Z555 gesture phone and JVC's "Snap & Gesture" technology, in which your hand, and just your hand, replaces the remote control for your television set.
First the real. If you're anything like me, you probably hate fumbling around with the phone to find the "silence" control when a call comes in at an inconvenient time or when trying to use it as an alarm clock on the road.
Sony Ericson seems to have solved that problem with the Z555, a new clamshell phone which lets you mute the phone or snooze its alarm without interrupting what you're doing (like trying to sleep).
When a call comes in, a simple movement of your hand back and forth over the phone mutes the ringtone. Similarly, sweeping your hand over the phone when using it as your alarm clock will put it into 'snooze' mode.
This neat little trick works by taking advantage of the use of the Z555's embedded camera. Oh, and it's a nice looking phone too, with a pretty diamond design on its body. The Z555i is an EDGE/GSM/GPRS 900/1800/1900 phone that will be available in selected markets this spring. The Z555a is an EDGE/GSM/GPRS 850/1800/1900 phone, available in the same timeframe.
Talk to The Hand
JVC's "Snap and Gesture" system for controlling a television is at the technology demo stage right now, but it looks like the kind of prototype that could have some impact down the line.
Many of you in the "older" generation (those of you over 21) will remember the days when you could only turn on the TV and change channels by touching the TV (gasp!) with your hand. Then came remote controls. Snap and Gesture, gets the hand directly involved again by making it the remote. No hardware, just your hand.
The demo I saw was pretty astonishing. Snap your fingers or clap, and the TV comes on (okay, the famous "Clapper" you've seen on television for years does stuff like that), Once on, the menus, channel selection, set-up, everything you would normally do with your remote control, is operated by simple hand waves, claps or finger snaps, depending on what you want to do.
The system isn't nearly ready for prime time yet, and I'm not so sure I actually want to "clap hands" to make my TV work the way I want, but the gesture control idea is intriguing.
As long as I don't have to re-program my hands when things go blooey.


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These days I've been busy editing my new film, titled A Japanese Funeral. A few months into my fieldworkin Japan, one of my informants died. I was given the opportunity to film the entire funeral sequence -- from the moment the body came back from the hospital to the cremation.
Editing it was very difficult emotionally for me. I'm close to the family, which is why I got the permission to film it. But it also means I feel a deep responsibility to make sure my informant's death is remembered properly.
The film is designed to be shown in the classroom. The current rough cut is 10 minutes, but after watching it today I think I cut it a bit too short and might expand it to 15 minutes. I want to screen it to a few more people first, though.


text:
Custom HANDMADE FORGED DAMASCUS Steel Hunting Knife W/ Stag & Brass Guard Handle - XL 560
Custom HANDMADE FORGED DAMASCUS Steel Hunting Knife W/ Stag & Brass Guard Handle - XL 560
CUSTOM HAND FORGED DAMASCUS STEEL Hunting KNIFE
Blade Material : Damascus steel
This superb design knife is hand forged.
Blade of this knife has a nice file work and is made of 512 layers of stainless steel and high carbon steel with hardness 55-60 HRC . This robust knife is lab tested under intense conditions,; the balance and shape of this knife ensures perfect grip.
Overall Length : 6"inch
Layers: 512
Hand Forged
Hardness: 55-58 HRC
Care Instructions:
Keep the knife dry after each cleaning.
Take care when removing product from packaging.
Keep fingers clear of blades.
Store away from children.
We are not responsible for injuries caused by the use of this item. Buyers must be 18 years or older.
Please keep in mind your country custom laws when purchasing as some countries do not permit some items.we are not responsible if your order does not pass your country custom and no refund will be provided.


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Kohler, WI sits sandwiched between farmland and road houses, slightly west of Sheboygan. It's deposited in an area once so thick with trees that early white guys had to use Indian trails to get their Manifest Destiny on—before growing tired of all that and chopping everything down for the paper mills.
Flush forward a bit, and in comes John Michael Kohler, a 19th century Austrian immigrant who pitted his teutonic rationalism against the rough midwestern terrain. Pristine rows of flowers and trees, picturesque houses from a hundred years ago. Golf courses. A massive foundry. Up sprung Kohler, a perfect company town, cranking out perfect metallic things at a perfect rate, from hog scalders to the Numi toilet, and now, the next generation of Sheik-like hygienic excess: the VibrAcoustic tub. Kohler flew, drove, and coddled me all the way to the middle of the middle of nowhere so I could experience the thing. It was surreal.
Welcome to the product junket, an all-expenses-paid PR pitch masquerading as a trip that we, as a rule, do not participate in. Junkets make us feel icky; they compromise our objectivity. But like some sort of journalistic influenza, junkets are everywhere—tech, sports, cars, and of course, gadgets, maybe the most crooked of all trades. This is a peek inside of the industry staple that produces everything from exotic car-test cover stories to exclusive interviews with company execs. This was my first trip into the corporate gravy pit, but it certainly wasn't the first offer: skiing trips to test jackets, luxury towers in Shanghai to leer at desktop computers. It is the science of corporate control. At any given point, the companies you buy things from are giving writers vacations on corporate home turf: perfectly choreographed, all-expenses-paid commodity lapdances that attempt to produce Manchurian Bloggers. It was my turn. The VibrAcoustic looked cool! And come on, it's not like we could have a bathtub review unit sent to our office.
And Joe must have been drunk or something, because he said I could go.
But why had Kohler even emailed me in the first place? Was this a mistake? Had I been mistakenly placed on the masthead for Plumbing & Hydronic Contractor News Magazine? (A real thing, and no, I am not qualified to work there.) No. It all came back to an event last year in which I sat upon the Zeus toilet—and wrote about it more effusively than most people propose marriage.
Given your previous interest for Gizmodo, we wanted to personally invite you to be one of the first to experience the new VibrAcoustic bathtub in Kohler, WI on April 18 - 19 (we'll pick up your travel and lodging expenses). While you're in Kohler you can experience a number of other recent high-tech bathroom products Kohler has launched including the Numi Toilet and DTV Prompt digital shower (more info on each below my signature).
Digital showers. A tub that apparently vibrates. Say no more, Matt from Kohler. I may die having accomplished little, but I won't be rolled into the grave having turned down a free trip to an obscure town for the express purpose of dipping myself in a $5,000 bath. Several days later, I was on my way. On my own—unlike most press trips, I was headed into Kohler's watery embrace alone. I don't know if nobody else was invited or if nobody else accepted the trip, but there I was on a junket of one.
To make sure his Old World factory fodder would stay happy in the plumbing biz, the elder Kohler created a massive dormitory to house, feed, and comfort the laboring FOBs. That dorm is now the American Club, where I arrived to check into my deluxe suite after an hour-long car ride north from Milwaukee.
The Club sits just off the main drag of Kohler, directly across the street from the company's corporate HQ and massive, dilapidated factory complex. The whole structure is a wonderful structural cliche—an anglophile mansion that mixes the psychological remoteness of The Shining with cookie cutter cheer halfway between a Thomas Kinkade painting and the interior of the Lusitania.
If it's hard to imagine a modern day company providing its employees lavish housing festooned with portraits of Washington, antique vases, and intricate woodwork, it's because they don't—and they didn't. The American Club was polished harder as a business than it'd been for any immigrant worker. After years of retrofitting and masterful renovation, the entire place is now a luxury resort for lonely midwestern wives, golfers, and me.
"Good afternoon, Mr. Biddle," murmured a man in a red velvet coat and top hat. Had I drowned in the bathtub already? Was this my hereafter? This must be purgatory, no? How did he know my name? I smiled and walked into reception: up winding stairs, and past wood—just so, so much wood. Everything was paneled. Would the bathtub be paneled? Was my king bed just a pile of oak? I now understood where all that Indian trail wilderness had gone.
"Hello, Mr. Biddle!" chirped a beautiful blonde plump-faced concierge. "Welcome to the American Club. Would you like a glass of champagne?" NO NO I WOULD NOT GO TO HELL PR SPAWN YOU DON'T OWN ME. "Wow, yeah, that'd be great," I managed, and smiled as if I were stifling an 8th grade erection. I couldn't look directly at her perfect line of white teeth so I looked at the champagne glass. It was covered in an intricate floral design and I drank it. Karen, or Kari, or something handed me an envelope alongside my room key and the flute. "Here's a message from Vicki. She'll be waiting for you in the Heritage Room at five to two." She simpered and I walked away in a daze.
Vicki. Of course, Vicki. I had no idea what or where the Heritage Room was, but it sounded like it was probably paneled with a lot of wood. Vicki. Vicki is the lynchpin of any junket: the handler. Kohler, WI is a lot like Pyongyang—the streets are near deserted; monuments, plaques, and corporate slogans encrust the grounds. The luxury is reserved for a few, and your time there is carefully controlled. Reminders of Glorious Austrian Leader's generosity were made impossible to ignore. The difference between Kohler, WI and the DPRK was Vicki—a lovely, friendly woman, who would not march me to a DMZ firing squad if I looked behind the wrong door. Vicki's letter stamped out my itinerary for the next 24 hours; I had 50 minutes until bath time. I might never be the same after this, so I needed to spend that time carefully.
My room was, of course, distended and beautiful, like much in Wisconsin. Sheets spread wide, more cushions than any midwestern ass could command—the room was a sprawl of resources, a jumbo fried curd of oak and marble. The bathroom, expectedly, was larger than my apartment in New York, and packed with the Lavatory King's state of the art: The shower had more heads than the room had furniture. There was a sink outside the bathroom, in case you couldn't make it all the way inside? I didn't dare turn it on.
Across from the enormous bed stood a gift basket: two locally-bottled beers in a bucket of ice, and a wrapped basket filled with exquisite roasted nuts and a box of golf balls. Sure, why not. Nothing could have been more decadent than this nonsensical gift basket—it was like an Menominee chief laying out a spread of sparkling beads and flutes as a welcome gesture. I drank one of the beers, paced around the room, slurped down the rest of the champagne, and sat in silence punctuated only by a room service-delivered cheeseburger. It arrived on a giant folding table that required a team of two. "Shall we turn on the TV, Mr. Biddle?" I had a TV? "No thanks, that's OK." No time for TV. Soon, I'd be washed in a touchscreen, Bluetooth bathtub.
There's never just one handler, of course. Every junket has a staff. On our walk to the vacant, mid-renovation wing of the American Club that held this prototype bathtub, I was part of a phalanx. Vicki was now flanked by a trio of handlers and observers, there to handle and observe me and only me. There was a strong-faced construction manager with a name like Jeremy or Stephen, Engineer A, and Engineer B.
It was a long walk, deeper into the building than I thought possible from the outside, and disorienting enough to further the control that's essential to a junket. Where was I? I had no idea—lodged in a vast wing of a vast hotel in a vast state.
We reached the room. "Pardon the mess." What mess? The room was empty save for a massive mattressless bed frame. I rounded the corner into the bathroom. I was warned it would be a little rough. It was spotless.
And there was the tub.
It seemed less a tub than an alabaster cavity in the Earth itself, a pearly sinkhole that could suck us all in. White Engineer and Indian Engineer droned on about the tub, about its innards (six speakers divided above and below the waterline with discrete volume control), about its genesis (dozens of test subjects reporting vibration conditions), about its features (Bluetooth, aux-in, splashproof full color touch controls). But the VibrAcoustic tub can be explained with few words: it's a near-offensively large tub with speakers built into its walls, cycling rainbow LCD lights, and a touchscreen to control these things. You can play one of a handful of pre-programmed softcore porn-ish tracks, or input your own via any device with a 3.5mm jack or Bluetooth.
The sound, I'm told, ripples directly into your naked body, lulling you into a state of serenity. Each pre-loaded song lasts exactly 20 minutes—the duration of a scientifically ideal bath—Engineer B nodded solemnly, citing a piece of research that surely took several hundred thousand dollars to cement. But I'd have no 20 minute splish—my itinerary blocked out two hours for bathing. Six times Kohler's calculated ideal. Fuck an ideal. The ideal bath never ends—ideally you die in a warm bath, with Drake reverberating gently through the water and into your crotch as you lull in and out of consciousness.
Vicki and Engineer A and Engineer B asked me to lie in the tub with my clothes on before they filled it up—so I could get the full experience. A dry run. Who was I to say no? Nobody would ever know if my throat were cut here, tipsy from free champagne, beer, and cheeseburger. I lowered myself in and stare up at them. I asked if someday all baths will be like this. Yes, Engineer B nodded solemnly again. "People need this." People need this tub. It is needed.
The quartet left; I stripped down, popped two Klonopin and a tall glass of water, and slid in. It was a literal slide, as the tub holds an obscene 125 gallons of water. That's almost enough water to quench a human for half a year. Or soothe one for 20 minutes.
The VibrAcoustic is the first bathtub to require a learning curve. You don't just lie down in it—you'll drown. One must sit in it like some sort of space throne: back straight, arms thrust outward, leaving enough room for several other people. You'll need to grab ahold of something—especially if you want to contort yourself around and tap at that touchpad. With my arm anchored across the side of the tub, body twisted, seal-like, I swapped through songs on the tub's touchpad controller. It was more responsive than most Android tablets. "Isolation" looked like a good tune to start with. I closed my eyes. The music suggested I was a character in a 2 am Cinemax film about to get a handjob, but no, this was a solitary bath. The walls shook, subtly. I could feel it in my ass as my body started to loosen up from the pills. Two was probably too many—my mouth was already dry and the water felt too hot. I realized that if I were to fall asleep and slipped under, it could be days before they found my body; Vicki promised me as much time I wanted in the tub.
I imagined missing my dinner tonight, alone, missing my factory tour the next day, missing my car to the airport, my flight. My worried roommate. My sad obituary: Blogger felled by ample tub. I slapped at the touchscreen wildly, switching the music to one of the more "energizing" numbers, which Engineer A said was meant to invigorate rather than relax. I felt myself sweating everything out into the water. The tub's war drums kicked in with repeated thuds—I felt on the verge of an Potawatomi ambush. Panic. This wasn't comfortable at all. The tub's built-in LEDs switched to blood red, and I hopped out and ran to the toilet with a glass of ice water. My heart was pounding, my breathing shallow. I'm dripping all over the place. I should call my mother.
I plugged my iPhone into the auxiliary input, hoping a bathtub filled with maternal comfort might ward off junket terrors. Where was I going to eat tonight? How would I eat alone in Wisconsin? She didn't pick up, and hearing my mother's voicemail message reverberate out of a piping hot bubble bath made my blood run cold. I slipped back in and changed the song to "Letting Go," or something like that. They pretty much all sound the same. The Klonopin started to slowly fold itself away, my vessels opened, and I slumped down into the ceramic maw. The water was nearly up to my nose, but that was okay right then. I closed my eyes and gave the thing a shot.
I stayed in the VibrAcoustic for nearly two hours.
Once all worry of pharmaceutical drowning drained off, so did the rest of my anxiety. I was expecting the thing to massage me with sound, to knead knots I didn't know I had—to pummel me. I wanted sonic hands all over. The sensation was really more like letting your iPhone ring underneath your pillow with the radio on. That was alright. I was relaxed. Putting midwestern remoteness, unneeded luxury, and a stomachful of gratis wine and pills aside, I was soothed. I ducked my ears under, and the muddled music was quite nice. I thought about nothing. I felt nothing. No guilt, no finger pruning. Only a little bit of me remained above water—and that's the trick with the Kohler VibrAcoustic: it requires the acceptance of all possible fatalities. Give yourself to it, and it reciprocates.
A tour of Kohler's fantasy design center followed, with peeks at experimental rooms beyond the means of all but few Americans. Polished display toilets in every imaginable color were stacked to the ceiling, as if in preparation for some fecal apocalypse. Couples poked around the showroom, prodding sinks and whispering to one another. I asked about the Kohler spa, shamelessly. Did I want a massage or a facial? Or anything? Vicki said anything. I said a massage, and in a few minutes, my $200 appointment was set. I lay prostrate in a robe, naked underneath, and stared at old Wisconsin women and their daughters. I ate an apple. I was rubbed down by an older woman who spent 10 minutes outlining her variety of oils. I was ready for dinner.
Smiling Plump Blonde Concierge was gone, which was a shame. I'd drug-dreamt of asking her to dinner during my two hour soak. She was replaced by a stern-looking man who recommended I try the Wisconsin Room for supper. I changed sweaters in a weak attempt to convince myself this was some sort of occasion, and then called to reserve a table for one. That's never easy for an ego, but the anticipation of ordering the most expensive things on the menu without remorse sort of canceled it out.
I sat at a large table in an enormous room that looked out onto a garden. A few well-dressed elderly couples talked quietly or not at all. One celebrated a birthday in dignified silence, staring at a candled slice of something. I ordered a beef filet, risotto, chocolate cake, and champagne. It was a death row meal. I gave the waitress a 50% tip with Kohler's money, smiled, and left for the bar downstairs.
Unlike the regal Wisconsin Room, with all its elegance, tapestries, fried foods and quiet wood, the Horse and Plow is the kind of bar one might find inside an airport rather than the basement of the American Club. I ordered a local beer and fried cheese curds. When the latter proved to be noxious I leaned on the former, until lubricated enough to bullshit about baseball. A pretty blonde girl of sweet midwestern face and cruel eastern frame was sitting at the stool next to me. If all the staff in this place were sisters conscripted into the same Kohler toilet cult, I'd have only been half surprised.
She was joking brashly and cruelly with the bartender and some guy in a blazer and I stepped in. "Are the Orioles playing tonight?" They both turned to me with shock and pity. "Even if they were I'd say no," she smiled, and turned back. I bought them both a round of drinks. Soon we were drunk, and on our way to a roadhouse just outside of Sheboygan. He'd offered to drive, and he swerved pleasantly into the pub's empty lot.
I was off the rails. I was supposed to be in my room sleeping, or maybe using the 2-hour MILF video pass I'd billed to my room after checking in. I had to be awake at 7am for a tour of the Kohler factory—not out slurring and drooling with two kind strangers and a desiccated bartender named Nancy, who could have been one of the original Austrian inhabitants of Kohler were it not for her 20th-century makeup job. We drank, exchanging cheery barbs about each other's respective stupid accents until I had to lean on the bar. I teased the girl about her phone. She bought me a shot called "The Abortion." I rubbed my arm against hers. The three of us drove home. She joked about cutting my throat and dumping me in Lake Michigan. I said she could stay at the American Club. She said she wasn't allowed. I went to my room and lay alone and thought about shower heads.
Kohler had impressed me with her love, but now she knew I was ready to leave. We'd only have a few more hours together, and so she gave me the consummation of any junket: the corporate brainwash. A parting shot. Something to remember her by on the flight back. I peeled myself out of bed, packed hastily, checked out, and spent three hours inside a sweltering iron foundry. My tour guide navigated me around bubbling casks of molten metal, shirtless men and drenched women toiling to make luxury tubs, and the robotic arms that would soon replace them both. I was told of Kohler's generosity to its employees, its help molding shell casings for the Vietnam War, and its feat of stealing Soviet manufacturing secrets for its most deluxe faucet finish.
The tour concluded with an aerial photo of the town: perfect, white, green, and full of toilets. I pressed the guide for more information about how many people those robotic arms had displaced since the days his father worked in that same factory, and he smiled and said nobody wanted those jobs anyway. The robots, those suckers.
The last moment was Vicki. We had lunch by an artificial lake. I ordered another filet, this time floating in cream sauce and pasta, and drank deep red wine until I was ready to lie down in my car to the airport. We talked about the future of bathrooms and their complexity. We talked about how nice the weather had been. I thanked Vicki for every single thing, and I meant it. She's paid to spoil people like me, like little baby idiots that we are. That's her job. But Vicki lacked the Terminator, mercenary quality of other PR folk. She just liked Kohler and the things they build there; she liked me, and wanted me as well fed as any of her own children. Vicki was the best thing I saw in Kohler, WI, next to the infinite bath tub of horror and ecstasy.
I slept through business class, and a Kohler chauffeur dumped me back in New York where I'd started. I thought about washing off some of the factory silt. My bathroom instantly disgusted me—one faucet, one nozzle, crude handles. Where was the touchpad? Maybe people really did need that stuff.
I very much hated my bathroom, and all it'd taken was 24 hours, 1,400 miles, and $1,500 worth of silk sheets and steak.


text:
Hopkins, in her non-judgmental way, writes of this analysand only that it is "easy to assume she must be in denial about the harm done to her by Khan, but it is perhaps more honest to grope with the possibility that there may be some validity to her subjective experience." It seems to me that it is not only his patients but his admirers, including his biographer, who may be struggling with some denial about the harm done by an alcoholic married analyst who initiated sex with female patients, encouraged affairs between patients, threatened patients who terminated treatment and abandoned those who did not meet his own emotional needs. (link)
Bloom certainly has a point when she insists that a person who was so abusive ought to be held to account -- but I gather that Hopkins's approach is to consider Khan himself as a patient, and as such, she wants to consider all the different aspects of his life symptomatically, which means one witholds judgment. Since it's impossible to decide where to stand simply from reading the review (and I haven't had a chance to read the book itself yet), I poked around and found some interesting articles relating to Masud Khan online. Masud Khan may well be the worst psychoanalyst ever, but perhaps that is itself kind of interesting. For those who are critical of psychoanalysis as a technique (i.e., as "pseudo-science"), there's ample material here; even Winnicott comes off badly. But ironically, Khan is equally intriguing for those who like psychoanalysis -- as he constitutes a particularly rich case study.
* * *
The best place to go online is the long article by Robert S. Boynton in the Boston Review on Khan's relationship with one of his male patients, Wynne Godley. (Yes, this is that Robert Boynton, but hear him out.) In 2001, Godley published a personal account of his bizarre experience being "treated" by Khan in the London Review of Books, and Boynton's article follows up on that revelation with a lunch interview with Godley as well as interviews with a number of others involved with British psychoanalysis. Boynton's account deepens the picture of Khan as a mess, but it also suggests that his influence on the field as a whole has not been a small one. One of the people who trained with him, Adam Phillips, is now a major voice -- someone whose books I find interesting if not always compelling:
I was stunned when I read Godley's piece. Although skeptical about the scientific basis for and efficacy of psychoanalysis, I had always thought of the Winnicottian tradition that produced Khan as defined by its gentleness and empathy—much like Winnicott himself. Khan was especially popular among literary and creative people; he analyzed Christopher Bollas and Adam Phillips, analysts and prolific writers whose work explores what Phillips has called the "post-Freudian Freud," or the "wild Freud" who champions creativity and the fully lived life over the stern "Enlightenment Freud" who prescribes rigorous interpretation and self-knowledge. I had previously written about Phillips, who, as one who was analyzed by Khan, and had authored an excellent monograph on Winnicott, clearly perceived himself as carrying on their tradition. "From Winnicott to Khan, to Bollas to Phillips, the move is toward finding and enlarging the self," writes Linda Hopkins, a psychoanalyst who is writing Blessings and Humiliations, the first full-length biography of Khan. "The aim of the 'new' analysis is to help a person to feel alive, to be open to change, not to be cured of an illness. The analyst seeks to deepen and enlarge the scope of experience. It is better to be alive, real and 'mad' than to be living from a false self." (link)
The Boynton piece also has a great anecdote about a crazy dinner party with Masud Khan and Frank Kermode, as well as a rather priceless anecdote about Masud Khan and Jacques Lacan:
Perhaps the most remarkable thing about Khan's behavior was that it usually went unchallenged. One reason, suggests Kermode, was Khan's intelligence. He recalls a standing-room-only lecture by Lacan at London's Institute Français in the mid-1960s, when the French analyst was at the height of his fame. "It was boring and went on for three hours. Finally, Masud strode up to the stage and interrupted him saying, 'No, you're explaining this incorrectly.'" Khan then proceeded to offer his own version of Lacanian theory while Lacan beamed with admiration. "He was obviously quite fond of Masud," Kermode tells me. (link)
* * *
One of the things Bloom's review in the Times doesn't highlight is the question of Khan's South Asian background. Was it a factor in the rather spectacular mess Khan made of his personal life as well as his career (and often the two at once)? In the new biography, Linda Hopkins has taken a look at Khan's extensive unpublished notebooks, and seems to have come up with some revealing stories. Some long quotes from those notebooks are in an article she published in American Imago in 2004. Since the article is behind Project Muse (institutional subscribers can go here), I'll quote at length from some of the passages I thought were interesting:
I arrived at Bowlby's office, immaculately dressed. Was surprised to see how shabbily everyone was dressed. I had no idea what the war years had done to the English. I had read about the war, and my brothers had fought in it, but I had no image of what it had done to people.
I was told to go up a poky little staircase and sat in a dingy room. I was punctual, Bowlby was late. Some twenty minutes later a middle-aged, red-faced, pug-nosed man wearing a crumpled tweed suit, stained tie and a home-washed shirt poorly ironed, introduced himself as Dr. Bowlby. He rather embarrassedly told me he was busy and could I wait till l2 o'clock and then he would see me. I asked for some book to read meantime as there was nothing but newspapers in the room. He showed surprise at this request but acquiesced.
He arrived around l2:30 and I was peeved by now. He invited me to lunch. We walked out and he collected a drab and dirty raincoat en route. "We will make a dash for the restaurant, it is only round the corner," Bowlby explained. It was drizzling so I said, "Why not use my car?" "You have a car, already?" "No Sir, I have hired one." "You have a license?" "No Sir, I never drive myself." He refused my chauffeur-driven Rolls and we walked our distance. I had by this time a distinct feeling that Dr. Bowlby thought he had a lunatic on his hands.
We got into the restaurant and it was crowded. We squeezed in and sat in a corner at a table for two. A typed menu was presented where the choice was between mushroom omelette and roast duck. Bowlby asked me what I would have and I replied: "You choose, Sir. I am your guest."
The food that arrived was simply awful. I ate a few mouthfuls politely. Alongside Bowlby made the most inane sort of conversation. Quite irrelevant and meaningless, punctuated by huge and heavy silences. When coffee was served, he asked me whether I had any references because I had sent one and it was customary to have two references. I didn't quite understand and Bowlby explained ponderously that he needed the names of two persons whom he could write to and ask about me. I thought for a while and said the two people who would perhaps serve his purposes best were Field Marshal Lord Wavell, Governor General of India, and Sir Bertrand Glancy, Governor of Punjab. Bowlby shuffled awkwardly and asked: "Do they know you personally?" [End Page 485] "Yes Sir, very well indeed, and they also know the family well." There was a most uncanny atmosphere following this little conversation. (cited in Linda Hopkins, "How Masud Khan Fell Into Psycho-Analysis")
You definitely get a sense of Khan's strangeness here -- but also an acute sense of the culture clash he experienced coming to an England decimated by war. He himself was from a very wealthy background. His father, Rajah Khan, was a powerful land-owner in Punjab. His mother, interestingly, was a dancing girl, who was seventeen when she became Rajah Khan's fourth wife. Clearly, there is a lot to work with if the goal is to psychoanalyze Masud Khan's strange life. (On the other hand, if he was really bipolar, as Hopkins apparently argues in the new book, the familial story is arguably irrelevant -- the best treatment is not Winicottian psychoanalysis but medication.)
* * *
It's perhaps not surprising that Khan originally came to Oxford to study literature, only to end up in psychoanalysis. In some sense the two are allied pursuits -- both literary criticism and psychoanalysis are driven by the analysis of character. Psychoanalysis attempts to define itself, with arguable success, as a "science," and literary criticism has always been closer to "art," but the guild-like structure of the two disciplines is remarkably similar.
Along those lines, here is another quote from Hopkins's 2004 article on Khan:
Next day when I arrived at Dr. Payne's I felt both confident and relaxed. She asked me about my education and I told her I had a B.A.(Hons.) degree in Political Science and an M.A. in English Literature. She then enquired about my plans and my answer was: my family wants me to go to Oxford and do Modern Greats and after that study for Barrister-at-Law and return home and be a politician. I told her that I had no intention of going back home to become a politician as we, the Feudalists, had had our day and what was to follow was corruption, demagogy and chaos. I was looking for a profession which would enable me to earn my living anywhere in the world. I would like to go to Oxford, as I was registered there, and do Law, perhaps International Law. But first of all I would like to have a good analysis. She asked me what I meant by "a good analysis." I said I didn't quite know. She then asked me what sort of an analyst I had in mind. I told her he or she must be English, well-bred, sensitive, kind, very patient and firm and well-read in literature. She was amused. She had, she said, given my situation a lot of thought and her suggestion was I should go to Miss Ella Sharpe for analysis. That Miss Sharpe was one of their best, most sensitive and experienced training analysts. She had talked to Miss Sharpe personally last night and Miss Sharpe was willing to take me on.
She then produced a form and said, "I think you should apply to the Institute for training. I cannot promise they will accept you. You are very young. Anyhow, I shall strongly recommend you." . . . There was a happy, kind, benevolent, protective look on her face when we shook hands to part and I had not felt so safe and cared-for since my father's death.
When I reached my room I wanted to celebrate but I knew no one. Then I felt very dismal suddenly. Got up, washed, changed and went and saw King Lear again. I was to see it for twenty-seven consecutive evenings that month.
Here is a guy who, at age 23, saw the same version of King Lear (with Lawrence Olivier in it) twenty-seven times in a single month! How fascinating; how strange. Hopkins suggests the obsession had to do with Khan's own status in his father's household: though he was his mother's second son, and had half-brothers who were already middle-aged when he was born, his father decided, Lear-like, to bequeath everything to him. And as with the play, being selected as a favorite turned out not to be a good thing at all.


text:
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Mr. John B. Stanchfield, of New York City, for appellant.
Messrs. Solicitor General King and La Rue Brown, of Boston, Mass., for appellee.
Mr. Justice McREYNOLDS delivered the opinion of the Court.
Appellant, whose place of business is within the Middle district of Pennsylvania, brought this suit in the United States District Court for that district, seeking an injunction to prevent John Skelton Williams, Comptroller of the Currency, from doing certain things under color of his office declared to be threatened, unlawful, arbitrary, and oppressive.
The bill alleges that, in order to injure complainant's president, towards whom he entertained personal ill will, the Comptroller determined to destroy its business, and to that end he had maliciously persecuted and oppressed it for three years, in the following ways, among others: By often demanding special reports and information beyond the powers conferred upon him by law; by disclosing confidential and official information concerning it to banks, members of Congress, representatives of the press, and the public generally; by inciting litigation against it and its officers; by publishing and disseminating false statements, charging it with unlawful acts and improper conduct and reflecting upon its solvency; and by distributing to depositors, stockholders and others alarming statements intended to affect its credit, etc., etc.-and further that, unless restrained, he would continue these and similar malicious and oppressive practices.
Williams is a citizen of Virginia, officially stationed at Washington. He was not summoned while in the Middle district of Penny lvania, but a subpoena was served upon him in Washington by the United States marshal. Having [252 U.S. 504, 509] specially appeared, he successfully challenged the jurisdiction of the court; and the cause is here upon certificate to that effect.
Generally, a District Court cannot acquire jurisdiction over an individual without service of process upon him while in the district for which it is held. But here a national bank seeks to enjoin the Comptroller, and the claim is that by statutory direction the proceeding must be had in the district where the association is located, and not elsewhere. The court below took the contrary view. 260 Fed. 674.
Determination of the matter requires consideration of three sections of the Judicial Code.
Comp. St. 991, 1031, 1033
If sections 24 and 49 properly construed restrict this proceeding to the district where the bank is located, they displace section 51 pro tanto and authorize service of process upon defendant wherever found. United States v. Congress Construction Co., 222 U.S. 199, 203 , 32 S. Sup. Ct. 44.
It is said for appellee that both sections 24 and 49 relate to injunction proceedings brought under the National Banking Law-such proceedings as are thereby expressly authorized and no others. And further that such law only authorizes suit by a bank to enjoin the Comptroller when he undertakes to act because of its alleged refusal to redeem circulating notes. R. S. 5237 (Comp. St. 9824).
The Act of February 25, 1863, establishing national banks (12 Stats. 665, 681, c. 58):
An act to provide a national currency, secured by a pledge of United States bonds, approved June 3, 1864 (13 Stats. 99, 116, c. 106):
In Kennedy v. Gibson (1869), 8 Wall. 498, 506 (19 L. Ed. 476) this court ruled that section 57 should be construed as if it read: 'And be it further enacted, that suits, actions and proceedings by and against,' etc., the words 'by and' having been accidentally omitted. 'It is not to be supposed that Congress intended to exclude the associations from suing in the courts where they can be sued.' 'Such suits may still be brought by the associations in the courts of the United States.' And it further held 'that receivers also may sue in the courts of the United States by virtue of the act, without reference to the locality of their personal citizenship.'
The Revised Statutes:
Parts of the foregoing subsections 10 and 11 were [252 U.S. 504, 512] joined in subsection 16, 24, Judicial Code (Comp. St. 991), and section 736 became section 49, Judicial Code (Comp. St. 1031).
What constitutes a cause arising 'under' the laws of the United States has been often pointed out by this court. One does so arise where an appropriate statement by the plaintiff, unaided by any anticipation or avoidance of defenses, discloses that it really and substantially involves a dispute or controversy respecting the validity, construction or effect of an act of Congress. If the plaintiff thus asserts a right which will be sustained by one construction of the law, or defeated by another, the case is one arising under that law. Tennessee v. Union & Planters' Bank, 152 U.S. 454 , 14 Sup. Ct. 654; Boston & Montana Mining Co. v. Montana Ore Purchasing Co., 188 U.S. 632 , 23 Sup. Ct. 434; Devine v. Los Angeles, 202 U.S. 313 , 26 Sup. Ct. 652; Taylor v. Anderson, 234 U.S. 74 , 34 Sup. Ct. 724; Hopkins v. Walker, 244 U.S. 486, 489 , 37 S. Sup. Ct. 711. Clearly the plaintiff's bill discloses a case wherein his right to recover turns on the construction and application of the National Banking Law; and we think the proceeding is one to enjoin the Comptroller under provisions of that law within the true intendment of the Judicial Code.
The decree below must be
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Citation: 252 U.S. 504
Docket No: No. 618
Argued: March 03, 1920
Decided: April 19, 1920
Court: United States Supreme Court
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