text:
The original
Constitution, as proposed in 1787 in Philadelphia and as ratified by
the states, contained very few individual rights guarantees, as the
framers were primarily focused on establishing the machinery for an
effective federal government. A proposal by delegate Charles
Pinckney to include several rights guarantees (including "liberty of
the press" and a ban on quartering soldiers in private homes) was
submitted to the Committee on Detail on August 20, 1787, but the
Committee did not adopt any of Pinckney's recommendations. The
matter came up before the Convention on September 12, 1787 and,
following a brief debate, proposals to include a Bill or Rights in the
Constitution were rejected. As adopted, the Constitution included
only a few specific rights guarantees: protection against states
impairing the obligation of contracts (Art. I, Section 10), provisions
that prohibit both the federal and state governments from enforcing ex post facto laws (laws that allow
punishment for an action that was not criminal at the time it was
undertaken) and provisions barring bills
of attainder (legislative determinations of guilt and
punishment) (Art. I, Sections 9 and 10). The framers, and
notably James Madison, its principal architect, believed that the
Constitution protected liberty primarily through its division of powers
that made it difficult for an oppressive majorities to form and capture
power to be used against minorities. Delegates also probably
feared that a debate over liberty guarantees might prolong or even
threaten the fiercely-debated compromises that had been made over the
long hot summer of 1787.
In the
ratification debate, Anti-Federalists opposed to the Constitution,
complained that the new system threatened liberties, and suggested that
if the delegates had truly cared about protecting individual rights,
they would have included provisions that accomplished that. With
ratification in serious doubt, Federalists announced a willingness to
take up the matter of a series of amendments, to be called the
Bill of Rights, soon after ratification and the First Congress
comes into session. The concession was undoubtedly
necessary to secure the Constitution's hard-fought ratification.
Thomas Jefferson, who did not attend the Constitutional Convention, in a December 1787 letter to
Madison called the omission of a Bill of Rights a major mistake: "A
bill of rights is what the people are entitled to against every
government on earth."
James Madison
was skeptical of the value of a listing of rights, calling it a
"parchment barrier." (Madison's preference at the Convention to
safeguard liberties was by giving Congress an unlimited veto over state
laws and creating a joint executive-judicial council of revision that
could veto federal laws.) Despite his skepticism, by the fall of
1788, Madison believed that a declaration of rights should be added to
the Constitution. Its value, in Madison's view, was in part
educational, in part as a vehicle that might be used to rally people
against a future oppressive government, and finally--in an argument borrowed from Thomas
Jefferson--Madison argued that a declaration of rights would help
install the judiciary as "guardians" of individual rights against
the other branches. When the First
Congress met in 1789, James Madison, a congressman from Virginia, took
upon himself the task of drafting a proposed Bill of Rights. He considered his efforts "a
nauseous project." His
original set of proposed amendments included some that were either
rejected or substantially modified by Congress, and one (dealing with
apportionment of the House) that was not ratified by the required
three-fourths of the state legislatures. Some of the rejections
were very significant, such as the decision not to adopt Madison's
proposal to extend free speech protections to the states, and others
somewhat less important (such as the dropping of Madison's language
that required unanimous jury
verdicts for convictions in all federal cases).
Some members of Congress argued that a listing of rights of the people was a silly exercise, in that all the listed rights inherently belonged to citizens, and nothing in the Constitution gave the Congress the power to take them away. It was even suggested that the Bill of Rights might reduce liberty by giving force to the argument that all rights not specifically listed could be infringed upon. In part to counter this concern, the Ninth Amendment was included providing that "The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage other rights retained by the people." Decades later, the Ninth Amendment would be pointed to by some judges, such as Justice Goldberg in his opinion in Griswold v Connecticut (a case recognizing a right of privacy that included a right to use contraceptives), as a justification for giving a broad and liberty-protective reading to the the specifically enumerated rights. Others, such as rejected Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork, would dismiss the Ninth Amendment as analogous to "an inkblot on the Constitution," a provision so unclear in its significance that judges should essentially read it out of the Constitution.
Most of the
protections of the Bill of Rights eventually would be extended to state infringements as well federal
infringements though the "doctrine of incorporation" beginning in the
early to mid-1900s. The doctrine rests on interpreting the Due
Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment as prohibiting states from
infringing on the most fundamental liberties of its citizens.
(For more, see page on INCORPORATION
In the end, we
owe opponents of the Constitution a debt of gratitude, for without
their complaints, there would be no Bill of Rights. Thomas
Jefferson wrote, "There has just been opposition enough" to force
adoption of a Bill of Rights, but not to drain the federal government
of its essential "energy." George Washington agreed: "They have
given the rights of man a full and fair discussion, and explained them
in so clear and forcible manner as cannot fail to make a lasting
National Archives: History of the Bill of Rights
Bill of Rights Institute
The U. S. Constitution Online: Bill of Rights
Bill of Rights Golf
Resolution of the First Congress Submitting Twelve Amendments to the Constitution (March 4, 1789)
The Bill of Rights
RATIFIED BY THE STATES ("The Bill of Rights")**
The decision in the case was Marshall's last on the Court and, interestingly, Marshall cuts off his successor as chief justice, Roger B. Taney, before Taney has a chance to argue the case for Baltimore--Marshall believed that the argument for Barron had been sufficiently weak that there was no need to hear from the lawyer representing the city.


text:
Comfort Inn Eastern Sands is located in the heart of Geelong, only 100 metres to the shopping centres, 100 metres to Geelongs beautiful waterfront, and 200 metres to Geelongs hospitals. Each room has cable TV. Completely refurbished rooms, ideal for leisure or corporate. Brand new restaurant and bar overlooking the bay. Relax and enjoy one of the best situated city properties. The all new fully licensed Fish Bowl Restaurant is opened for dinner, and there is also full room service available for breakfast and dinner. Perfect base to visit the Great Ocean Rd, Queenscliff, Torquay and Bells Beach.
1 Bellerine Street

subset: commoncrawl


text:
My grandfather, Elwood Jack Rosenbauer, passed away yesterday. What many of you probably don't know, because it is sadly under-documented, is that he lead the team at Lockheed Aircraft Service Company which pioneered the reusable and highly durable flight data recorder that is still in use on commercial and private aircraft today.
The flight data recorder is always on for the duration of the flight, recording cockpit and radio conversations, as well as metrics like altitude, airspeed, and fuel flow. Able to survive the most extreme of crashes, the flight data recorder is invaluable in investigating and preventing aircraft accidents.
Regarding their advances in the field of flight data recorders, my grandfather published Modern Aircraft Accident Investigation Equipment and Techniques in the Winter 1981/82 issue of Lockheed Horizons. Considering that these were only printed once, and that I can't find a single copy of this particular issue online, Sarah and I have transcribed his article for historical purposes. A copy of the original article can be downloaded from the same page.
"[T]he overall activity of accident investigation, and particularly the role of the airborne flight recorder, are of vital concern to aviation. The accurate recording of critical factors of aircraft performance has proven invaluable in aircraft accident investigation in helping to pinpoint the cause of an accident and in instigating measures to prevent future recurrences."
So, the next time you're on an airplane, remember that something my grandfather helped to design is watching over you, improving your safety on future flights, and avenging you should anything tragic happen (though I hope it will never come to that).


text:
NEW YORK (AP) -- Billionaire investor Carl Icahn is giving up his bid to buy truck maker Oshkosh after less than 25 percent of the company's shares were tendered before his offer expired.
OshKosh Corp. shares fell more than 5 percent in morning trading Tuesday.
Last week Icahn made it clear that he would walk away from his bid that valued the company at about $3 billion if the threshold wasn't met. The tender offer expired on Monday, with about 22 percent of the shares tendered.
Icahn, who is known for buying stakes in struggling companies and then shaking them up with mixed results, had previously maintained that Oshkosh needs new management and a new strategy.
But he had said that he would "move on to other endeavors" if he did not get at least 25 percent of Oshkosh's shares in the tender offer.
Icahn had said that the 25 percent level would show that he has enough support for his plans and would justify the extension of the $32.50 per share tender offer until the Wisconsin-based company holds its upcoming annual shareholders meeting.
But Oshkosh had recommended that shareholders reject Icahn's offer calling it "highly conditional, inadequate and opportunistic." The company had also enacted a shareholder rights plan, known as a "poison pill," which is usually implemented by a business in order to protect the rights of existing shareholders in the event of a hostile takeover.
Oshkosh's stock fell $1.67, or 5.6 percent, to $28.43 in morning trading Tuesday. Oshkosh shares rose to a 52-week high of $31.65 on Nov. 23. They had traded as low as $18.49 in early June.


text:
Rachel Zoe's former right hand is in high-demand in Hollywood! After parting ways with his boss, he continues to expand his portfolio — which now includes dressing super stylish Jessica Alba!
While in NYC for Fashion Week participating in the Mercedes-Benz Fashion Force and styling the Kate Spade show, (among other things!), the star was so excited to see his new client, Jessica, on the red carpet at the BAFTAs.
The pregnant star looked stunning in a breathtaking Versace gown — and I know I can't wait to see what else she wears now that she's working with such a pro! (Hollywoodlife.com)


text:
About Laboratory Dancers
Our Mission
Laboratory Dancers is an inclusive artist collective that provides Chicago with accessible and affordable dance performance, education and interaction. We explore sensation and experiential based movement, engaging both the people who are unfamiliar with dance as an art form, as well as dance professionals. Our multimedia partners add depth to our work and broaden our reach to the public. We want to make visitors feel comfortable inside the venue and riveted inside the work.Read Laboratory Dancers History
September 15th & 16th 7:30pm/ 17th 3:00pm @ Athenaeum Theatre Studio 3 (2936 N Southport Ave, Chicago, IL 60657) General Admission: $20 Student/Senior: $15 Ladies First is an evening-length collaboration consisting of three independent, but […]Read More
- Read More Laboratory Dancers News Articles


text:
by Roxana Popescu | inewsource
video/photos by Brad Racino | inewsource
Take a map of Arizona, draw a square in the bottom right hand corner — the one closest to New Mexico and the international border — and you get Cochise County. Fewer people live here than in many cities, and it's part of the nation's most active illegal immigration corridor.
With a history of public art controversies and two coffee roasters, Bisbee seems more Berkeley than border town. But over at the courthouse, there's no mistaking its place on the line between Mexico and the United States.
County Attorney Edward Rheinheimer, who's practiced here for 20 years, has seen more than half a dozen cases involving border patrol agents fatally shooting people. He's taken only one of them to trial. Twice it ended in a hung jury.
These cases are tough to prove, for reasons ranging from contested facts to politics, he and other legal experts said. But as the number of civilian deaths involving border agents rises — from one four years ago to five last year — it's not just human rights activists who believe there should be more accountability and oversight.
George McCubbin, president of the National Border Patrol Council, the union representing 17,000 Border Patrol Agents and support staff, believes reforms leading to fewer fatal shootings by the border patrol are in order.
"If our employees are being put in positions where this is going to be a semi-normal action then we need to rethink as an agency how we're doing business out there," he said.
A months-long investigation by nonprofit journalism organizations from California, Texas and New York has found that deaths at the hand of border agents are increasing despite decreases in illegal immigration and assaults against agents. The media collaboration identified at least 14 men and boys who have died since Oct. 1, 2009 after confrontations with border patrol officers.
The investigation illuminated serious questions about follow up and accountability.
No one has been criminally charged in these deaths, but last week, a grand jury was called to examine the death of Anastasio Hernandez Rojas, beaten and tased by more than a dozen agents in 2010 in San Diego. U.S. lawmakers called for an investigation after the PBS national news magazine, Need to Know, aired the video and detailed the death in April.
Human rights advocates argue that fatalities are a part of a much larger landscape of abuse. A humanitarian aid group based called No More Deaths issued a report in 2011 based on interviews with almost 13,000 migrants. The researchers found that 10 percent of those interviewed reported physical or sexual abuse by border patrol agents.
"This is an issue that's a systemic issue," said Danielle Alvarado, one of the authors. "It's not about a couple bad agents that aren't following their training or have an ax to grind. The reality is that border patrol is part of the largest federal law enforcement agency in the country, and so as a result these systemic patterns of abuse have a huge impact."
She said the lack of external accountability, beyond Customs and Border Protection or the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), is a problem.
"It's not sufficient for there to be enforceable standards … it's not enough that border patrol have a complaint process, it's not enough that there be an internal DHS process, because it's clear that none of those mechanisms are sufficient," she said.
Customs and Border Protection declined to be interviewed for this project. A spokesperson shared this statement:
"All CBP employees are expected to conduct themselves in a professional manner at all times. CBP stresses honor and integrity in every aspect of our mission, and the overwhelming majority of CBP employees and officers perform their duties with honor and distinction, working tirelessly every day to keep our country safe. CBP takes every allegation of misconduct seriously and fully cooperates in the investigation of such allegations."
Shawn Moran, vice president of the National Border Patrol Council, noted that agents are up against tremendous dangers and have every right to defend themselves.
"Border Patrol agents are not trained, nor paid to withstand violent assaults without the ability to defend themselves. Rocks are weapons and constitute deadly force. If an agent is confronted with deadly force they will respond in kind. No agent wants to have to shoot another human being, but when an agent is assaulted and fears for his life then his hand is forced….
"While the loss of life and injuries are regrettable, it is due solely to the decision to attempt to inflict harm upon a United States Border Patrol Agent. The National Border Patrol Council stands behind the actions of the agents who do their duty every day, under extreme circumstances, along the southwest border," he wrote in an email yesterday.
Border Patrol agents have been prosecuted for crimes in recent years including corruption, bribery, and improper arrests, but rarely for situations involving lethal force. Those cases often balance the word of agents against the silence of the dead, and invoke self-defense protections in ways that are hard to challenge legally.
"Most of their encounters occurred out in the wilderness, if you will," said Peter Nunez, former U.S. Attorney in San Diego. "There's no camera, there's no citizens roaming around, you have almost no way to verify anybody's story."
"It can be done. It should be done," Nunez said of investigating and prosecuting agents who commit crimes. "These cases are difficult. You probably need more evidence than you would in a normal case, just because you don't know how juries are going to react."
Rheinheimer said inevitably politics play a part.
"When we have an officer involved shooting … we evaluate it the same way we do every other case we evaluate," he said. "If you then introduce the element of border patrol agent and illegal immigration into the equation, then a whole new set of dynamics comes into the case …. because I think it's inevitable, especially in a border community or a border state, that the whole political aspect of the immigration issue is then introduced."
Rheinheimer had a personal experience with politics when he prosecuted an agent named Nicholas Corbett, the case that ended with two hung juries.
He says the Department of Justice did not support his decision to bring that case to trial, and the prosecution depleted the special fund intended for these cases. If there ever is another case like Corbett's the county couldn't afford to prosecute, he said.
"For me, the Corbett case was never about the politics of illegal immigration, or border security. It was about nothing more, and nothing less, than law and evidence. It was about nothing more, and nothing less, than fundamental constitutional principles of equal protection and due process," he said.
"For DOJ, on the other hand, it had everything to do with politics. Their entire position on the prosecution was governed by politics. In the end, what it boils down to is that once you introduce politics into the criminal justice system, you no longer have a criminal justice system.
"And it doesn't matter which side of the immigration issue you come down on. When politics replace justice at the Department of Justice, everybody loses."
A spokesperson for the department declined to comment.
Research shows a handful of cases in which Border Patrol agents were prosecuted for injuring or killing people while on the job. They include:
An agent was convicted in 2010 of assaulting a Mexican man. The agent "kicked the victim, struck him in the stomach with a baton, threw him down to ground, and punched him without any legitimate law enforcement reason to use force," an FBI statement said.
Another agent was convicted in 2007 of sexually assaulting a woman he stopped at a checkpoint in Texas four years earlier.
Agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Alonso Compean were convicted in 2006 of shooting a drug smuggler in the buttocks. President George W. Bush commuted their highly unpopular sentences in 2009.
Alvarado, with No More Deaths, said the accumulation of deaths and other abuses should prompt some soul searching.
"Are we at a point as a country where the enforcement of our laws by necessity comes with that sort of treatment of people? Because if it is, I think that that is really a question for us. how have we arrived at this point where we can justify the mistreatment of people on such a huge scale, and go to bed at night as a country saying that's the best we can do and that's consistent with our shared values?"
Through interviews, court records, police reports, eyewitness videos and photographs, the reporting collaboration pieced together the stories of several deaths. It bore out what legal experts warned: there is a steadfast divergence between the versions of events as reported by the Border Patrol and what others claim occurred.
In one such incident, Sergio Hernandez Guereca, 15, died in Texas in 2010, shot by an agent for allegedly throwing rocks. A government source previously told the El Paso times Hernandez was sought for human smuggling.
His death was filmed. The Department of Justice decided not to prosecute, calling the killing "an act of self defense."
In April it issued a statement describing an extensive, multi-agency investigation based on 25 witnesses and evidence not shared with the public, including: "civilian and surveillance video; law enforcement radio traffic; 911 recordings; volumes of CBP agent training and use of force materials; and the shooting agent's training, disciplinary records, and personal history."
Hernandez's family disagrees with the findings. So does the Mexican government. The family filed a wrongful death suit (after a prior lawsuit was dismissed), and the government of Chihuahua issued a warrant for the agent's arrest. A symbolic move, some might say, as chances of extradition are slim.
Moran, with the agents' union, said the Mexican government is not above reproach.
"The government of Mexico has done their usual grandstanding where they hurled baseless accusations at the Border Patrol agents, fed criminals concocted stories, and meddled in the affairs of the United States. Mexico bears quite a bit of responsibility whenever one of its citizens dies or is injured along the border due to its allowing criminal organizations free-reign and its refusal to police its northern border," he wrote.
In another case, the official version of events contradicts what a dead man had to say. The case of Roberto Perez Perez was not included by reporters among the 14 border patrol-involved deaths because the cause of death was not clear.
Perez died in detention in January 2011. He was arrested while trying to reenter the U.S. at San Ysidro with a fake ID, half a year earlier.
Two documents provide insights into what he allegedly suffered. A few months before his death, Perez Perez wrote a letter to a Mexican newspaper. He described how agents beat him until he started vomiting blood and blacked out, and then he was mistreated while in detention. He concluded his account with these words:
"Please publish everything that happened with respect to all these injustices and the humiliating way I have been treated since my arrest. It's like a veiled concentration camp, but the truth is that I was subjected to most blatant cruel and unusual punishment."
In a complaint filed with the DHS his partner decried his treatment and described how his condition following the alleged beating deteriorated over the course of several months. After one hospital visit, a wound caused by a syringe became infected, leading to his death, her complaint states.
An autopsy report found that the syringe contributed to his death, but was not the only cause.
"The cause of death is certified as cellulitis of right upper extremity with cirrhosis, hypertension, diabetes mellitus, and chronic substance abuse listed as contributing conditions. The manner is natural."
A DHS spokesperson said her complaint has been denied and the government did provide proper medical care.
Border patrol agents often say they are targeted by rock-throwers, who are harboring illegal immigrants or stashes of drugs. Their statistics show incidents of rock-throwing increased in most years since late 2005 but they dramatically dropped off in the last two fiscal years.
The overall number of assaults against border agents is declining, according to CBP data. But several agents have lost their lives in recent years. In July 2009 an agent was shot dead by drug traffickers near Campo. Agent Brian Terry was killed in Arizona in 2010. And last year, a drug trafficker was sentenced to life in prison for running over agent Luis Aguilar in 2008 with his Hummer in California, near the Arizona border.
McCubbin, the border patrol council president, says agents are being ordered to patrol closer to the border with Mexico, where there's more potential for violent conflict such as rock assaults. Rock-throwing was cited as a factor in several of the 14 fatal shootings reporters investigated.
The falling number of apprehensions show border enforcement is working, McCubbin said, so drug traffickers and human smugglers are getting more desperate. He said he would never presume to question an agent's use of force.
"Unless you've been involved in a rocking incident there is almost no other recourse left for agents caught in the middle of this," he said in a phone interview.
When an agent fatally shoots someone, a clause in the union contract allows the agent to meet with a union representative before the investigation starts. From there, first local and then federal agencies can investigate and prosecute, culminating with the Justice Department.
"The crime determines the jurisdiction," said Mario Conte, former federal defender in San Diego. "There is no clear path … Sometimes it becomes a turf war."
Because they work with prosecutors to build cases, law enforcement officers get more trust, experts said.
"We as prosecutors we take the word of law enforcement officers all the time. It comes with the territory," Rheinheimer said, "and we take them at their word unless or until we have reason to believe we can't take them at their word."
A 2010 case he considered prosecuting is a case in point. It involved the death of Mexican man named Jorge Alfredo Solis Palma. Solis illegally entered the U.S. with two other men. Border Patrol agents tried to arrest him, but he became combative, according to the Cochise County Sheriff's incident report. In the report, Border Patrol agents said Solis threw rocks at an agent and his service dog. He also wrestled with that agent and allegedly "grabbed a rock and struck himself with it" in the forehead before escaping and running away, the report states.
A second agent, Miguel Torres Vasquez, followed Solis behind a hill where he shot him. The report says the area was out of sight of surveillance cameras and there were no witnesses. So there's only one version of that fatal moment — that of the agent, who said he fired his weapon in self defense.
"Not being able to disprove what the agent said, we're in a position where we can't charge a crime," Rheinheimer explained.
That trust also extends between officers and the public. Even with a thorough investigation and sufficient evidence, convincing a jury is another hurdle. Conte, the former federal defender, said the public's "slant slash bias" that a migrant "broke the law, they had it coming" and that agents "are out preserving our freedom" poses a significant challenge for prosecutors.
"It's going to be a little easier if you're defending law enforcement and it's going to be a little harder if you're plaintiff or the victim to get a result in your favor," he said. "The situation is simply imbued with an inordinate amount of publicity that looks at it from primarily one point of view. With juries, the public, the way the media presents the cases – it's going to be tough."
For details on each fatal case involving a Border Patrol agent, go to KPBS.org/deadlypatrols. And tune to PBS' Need to Know tomorrow at 8:30 p.m. for the newsmagazine's latest documentary on this subject.


text: Having previously discussed email list building strategies as a means of reaching new prospects and turning them into customers, it's now time to look at the benefits on community-building, both online and offline. These days, most people think of "social media" when they hear "community building," but forums, membership sites and old-fashioned meet-ups are also good places to promote your brand, share your expertise and attract customers.Membership Sites: Exclusive Resources, for a FeeOne way of building an online community is by creating a membership site, where you charge a membership fee in exchange for exclusive resources that can range from tutorials to software programs. Just make sure the information that you'll provide is unique, has high value and is unavailable elsewhere for free.You can take several approaches with pricing. One is a fixed price, paid up front, for one year of membership. Another is a fixed monthly price. A third option is a low introductory price that will then roll over into a monthly fee. \nHow-to: Build an Online Business From Scratch\nTips: Manage Your Personal Online Brand: 3 Must-Do StepsUsing a monthly rate as opposed to a yearly fee will ease sticker shock. For example, a yearly price of $199 could turn off potential customers, but a monthly fee of $19.95 may not\u2014and with the latter fee, you would actually earn more over the course of a year. Monthly rates also make subscribers less likely to cancel their membership, since they don't see the larger $199 fee recurring once a year. ClickBank has some tools that will allow you to create a recurring fee structure for a membership site.One site that takes a low-end approach is FounderFly, a site for online marketers that offers videos, marketing tools and forums where members can interact, ask questions and share resources. Initially, you can test the site for a three-day, $1 trial; after that membership is $19.95 per month.Another membership site option is MemberGate, a program for managing membership or subscription sites. MemberGate itself is a subscription-based service ($197 per month with a three-month minimum) with features that include integrated shopping carts, credit card processing, discussion groups and support for numerous membership plans. Businesses that use MemberGate include publishers, trade associations, hospitality firms and nonprofits.Finally, if you're comfortable with WordPress, you could WishList, which will let you integrate a membership component into your WordPress site. WishList, which has a one-time cost of $97 for a single-site license and $297 for unlimited domains (with updates available for an additional $47 per year), also offers shopping cart and autoresponder integration, flexible membership options and affiliate program integration, as well as secure RSS feeds.Forums: Learn From, Share With PeersOnline forums offer an opportunity to learn from and share your expertise with peers. The Warrior Forum, a popular destination for Internet marketers, gives users a place to discuss topics such as coding and marketing and to share special offers with the community. The idea here is not only to make sales but to entice people to sign up for your list; once they do, you can market more expensive products to them.A useful technique for communicating with potential customers in an online forum is using signature files, which typically includes text and images about a product or service and a call to action. Here's an example:If you participate in numerous forums, this is a great way to increase your visibility and generate interest in your brand. A quick online search will point you to the forums that apply to your market\u2014or you can ask your peers to recommend the sites they frequent.Social Media: You Can't Build an Online Community Without ItSocial media sites are an obvious target for any brand--large or small--trying to build a community. Sites are free to join, so membership is huge, but that also makes the sites breeding grounds for social media scams, so small business owners need to keep online security basics in mind as they increase their social networking endeavors. Helping people on LinkedIn can also help you build a following. By working with freelance writers on several LinkedIn forums, I built a list of 70 new subscribers in a single week. I did this by answering questions and directing users to a squeeze page where, they signed up for my email list in exchange for a free report.Related: 5 LinkedIn Features You May Not (But Should) Know AboutAnother good community building strategy is to build a community\u2014that is, to form a LinkedIn Group. Launched in 2009, LinkedIn Groups are communities based on common interests, experiences and affiliations. If you are willing to put the time and effort into cultivating a group related to your professional expertise, a LinkedIn Group, over time, could become a significant source of contacts and revenue. Facebook is popular among many marketing professionals for promoting their products and services as well as participating in Facebook Groups that pertain to their interests. These groups can have quite a wide reach, too; the Internet Marketing Super Friends, for example, has more than 4,200 members.As for promoting and building your business on Facebook, services such as Get 10,000 Fans and FB Profit Method may be worth a look. Tread carefully, though, and avoid any service through which you "buy" followers, since those new followers could be fake Facebook accounts, spammers or worse. It's better to have a small, active and loyal group of followers than a large number of followers who aren't real.\nTips: How to Spot a Social Media Scam\nHow-to: How and Why to Launch a Business Presence on TwitterThe same goes for Twitter, which is also popular for community-building, posting information about products and services and sharing information about your particular industry. Quality followers who will engage with you (and your followers) are better than fake, spam or porn accounts.There are a couple other ways to use Twitter to for branding and community building. One way is to have conversations, or Tweet Chats, on a regular basis about a particular topic. All you need to do is designate a hashtag\u2014a phrase with a # in front of it\u2014set a time and spread the word. Another way is to schedule an offline event, known as a Tweetup, during which nearby Twitter followers can meet you in real life at a coffee shop, restaurant or other spot where it's easy to have a casual conversation.Additional social media sites to consider include Pinterest, an "online scrapbook" site that recently unveiled Pinterest Business Pages, and Google Plus, a social networking site tightly integrated with other Google products such as Blogger, Picasa and YouTube.Tips: 14 Ways to Use Pinterest for BusinessAs you use various online marketing tools to build email lists and communicate with your customers, you'll start to see support for social networking sites. With iContact, for example, you can send a message to Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn followers in addition to your list.As you can see, community building requires legwork both online and off. Depending on your business model, one or more of the strategies listed here\u2014likely, a combination of several\u2014will work best for you. Be sure to research the websites and strategies discussed here before you get started, both to use the tools more effectively and to avoid costly or embarrassing mistakes.Nathan Segal has been working as a freelance writer, photographer and artist for 14 years. He is based in British Columbia, Canada. Reach him via email or visit his website. Follow everything from CIO.com on Twitter @CIOonline, on Facebook, and on Google +.


text:
While the two major political parties garner the lion's share of press and attention, third party candidates for President of the United Sates often struggle to garner attention, equal treatment, and the votes of individuals dissatisfied with the status quo. Many modern Pagans, already predisposed towards questioning the dominant narratives in our culture, have flocked to the Green Party or the Libertarian Party depending on where they fall on various social, foreign policy, and economic issues. In 2008, around 8% of Pagans polled by Witchvox said they were going to vote for a third party, a number that may have been depressed by the Libertarian ticket running noted anti-Pagan activist Bob Barr. This election cycle, with many voters frustrated with the lack of forward movement on a number of issues, third party candidates could see increased numbers among frustrated demographics, religious minorities included.
One third party politician that has already made a very public splash with modern Pagans is Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson, who held a historic press conference with representatives of Pagan and Hindu organizations. When asked why he took the time to talk to religious minorities who have little sway over large voting blocs, Johnson said: "I am going to go out on a limb here and say that you are opinion makers. People look to you for your opinions because you take the time to be well informed." Nor did Johnson backtrack when the mainstream press took notice, telling the Pagan Newswire Collective that "there was no consternation within my campaign about any of the feedback that we got on that event. No consternation." Because of this, Johnson has sparked the interest of many Libertarian-leaning Pagans, including the Pagan Newswire Collective's Cara Schulz, who is acting as a volunteer coordinator for an upcoming speaking event at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota. I quizzed Schulz about her support for Johnson, and why she's throwing her support behind a third party candidate when the common wisdom often says such votes are "thrown away."
"It's considered conventional wisdom that if you vote for a Third Party you're throwing your vote away. I think we need to reconsider what throwing our vote away means. We complain about how the two major political parties ignore Pagans at best and are hostile to us at worst, with a heavy sprinkling of mockery thrown in for the LULZ. Yet we reward them by voting for them. We need examine what a thrown away vote is. If you're voting for someone who won't have anything to do with you and won't stand up for you when it's politically chancy to do, isn't that throwing away your vote? I'll be throwing away my vote for a candidate who doesn't run away from the evil or silly Pagans and treats us with respect, like he treats any other citizen. You can bet if he takes heat for having Pagans perform at his rally, like he took heat for the Pagan media townhall, he won't care."
Schulz added that "in Presidential elections I've voted Republican and Democrat. Not this year. In a video Johnson asks people to 'be Libertarian with me for one election' and that's what I'm doing." In addition to Schulz's support, local band Murphey's Midnight Rounders, made up entirely of Pagan singers and musicians, will be giving an opening performance . In an editorial posted to the PNC-Minnesota bureau, Brad Murphey of Murphey's Midnight Rounders explains why he was willing to play at this event, and be seen as aligned with Johnson's campaign.
"Why did I agree to play for the Gary Johnson Rally? Because Gary Johnson is speaking to needs and changes that affect Pagans and sub-cultures that are related to it. Because the more we stand up and address those needed changes, the more will get done. Because it's time for us all to get up off the couch and stop barking at the TV. Murphey's Midnight Rounders is not a Pagan Band, per se. We are a Folk Band (we like to call it 'Power Folk'). Our music addresses what we feel and who we are. At the same time, all of us in the band are Pagan, so a big percentage of our music speaks to that subject: honoring Deity, tradition, and approaching the goddess with mirth and reverence. That being said, for a band that is all Pagan and sings about Pagan issues, it was an honor to be asked to sing at a rally for a presidential candidate. It says a lot about him, that, as a candidate, he is more open and supportive of the Pagan religions."
Murphey also noted how he things Pagan ideals and Libertarian ideals align, saying that "We, as Pagans, tend to profess acceptance (or at least tolerance) of individuality and lifestyles that we may not subscribe to" and "Paganism tends to embrace and defend many sub-cultures that have been marginalized by (dare I say it?) mainstream thought." There has long been a trend toward small-l libertarian values among more conservative Pagans, many of whom are uninterested in fighting the Christian-fueled "culture wars," but are interested in fiscally conservative ideas and a less interventionist foreign policy. Indeed, Republican New York congressional candidate Dan Halloran, now well-known for his Heathen faith, is also seeking to run on the Libertarian ticket, a gambit that benefited him when he won a seat on New York's City Council.
Just as the Green Party has drawn progressives unhappy with the Democratic Party, the Libertarian Party seems to be a haven for conservatives that couldn't find room inside the Republican Party's "big tent." These "Ron Paul Republicans" are finding Johnson to be an alternative who speaks to their values.
"[State representative candidate Kevin] Kervick, a Republican, publicly endorsed Johnson on Wednesday, saying he thinks the country is "broken," and he doesn't see the national Republican or Democratic parties doing anything to fix it. He said he still supports Republican candidates for governor and other state offices, but can't bring himself to endorse Romney."
For many, including Schulz, Johnson is the inclusive, socially "cool," conservative voice they have been waiting for.
"There were no questions about religion and there never is with the Johnson campaign. They don't care about your religion or how your religion reflects on them, they care about how well you can do your job."
For those in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area, the Johnson event starts tomorrow (Friday) at 12:30 CDT. Organized by the Macalester Young Americans for Liberty. You can get the details, here.
[This article is the first in a series exploring how modern Pagans are interacting with the presidential race. Are you a Pagan who is volunteering with the Democratic, Republican, or Green Party? Drop me a line, and you may be quoted in a future installment!]


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"New Ways to Diagnose Autism Earlier" read a recent headline in the Wall Street Journal. There is no question that you can diagnose anything as early as you want. The real question is whether the diagnosis will turn out to be correct.
My own awareness of how easy it is to make false diagnoses of autism grew out of experiences with a group of parents of late-talking children that I formed back in 1993.
A number of those children were diagnosed as autistic. But the passing years have shown most of the diagnoses to have been false, as most of these children have not only begun talking but have developed socially.
Some parents have even said, "Now I wish he would shut up."
I did absolutely nothing to produce these results. As a layman, I refused to diagnose these children, much less suggest any treatment, even though many parents wanted such advice.
As word of my group spread, various parents would write to ask if they could bring their child to me to seek my impression or advice. I declined every time.
Yet, if I had concocted some half-baked method of diagnosing and treating these children, I could now claim a high rate of success in "curing" autism, based on case studies. Perhaps my success rate would be as high as that claimed by various programs being touted in the media.
If a child is not autistic to begin with, almost anything will "cure" him with the passage of time.
My work brought me into contact with Professor Stephen Camarata of Vanderbilt University, who has specialized in the study of late-talking children-- and who is qualified to diagnose autism.
Professor Camarata has organized his own group of parents of late-talking children, which has grown to hundreds, as compared to the several dozen children in my group. Yet the kinds of children and the kinds of families are remarkably similar in the two groups, in ways spelled out in my book "The Einstein Syndrome."
The difference is that Professor Camarata is not a layman but a dedicated professional, with decades of experience-- and he too has expressed dismay at the number of false diagnoses of autism that he has encountered.
What Camarata has also encountered is something that I encountered in my smaller group-- parents who have been told to allow their child to be diagnosed as autistic, in order to become eligible for government money that is available, and can be used for speech therapy or whatever other treatment the child might need.
How much this may have contributed to the soaring statistics on the number of children diagnosed as autistic is something that nobody knows-- and apparently not many people are talking about it.
Another factor in the great increase in the number of children diagnosed as autistic is a growing practice of referring to children as being on "the autistic spectrum."
In other words, a child may not actually be autistic but has a number of characteristics common among autistic children. The problem with this approach is that lots of children who are not autistic have characteristics that are common among autistic children.
For example, a study of high-IQ children by Professor Ellen Winner of Boston College found these children to have "obsessive interests" and "often play alone and enjoy solitude," as well as being children who "seem to march to their own drummer" and have "prodigious memories." Many of the children in my group and in Professor Camarata's group have these characteristics.
Those who diagnose children by running down a checklist of "symptoms" can find many apparently "autistic" children or children on "the autism spectrum."
Parents need to be spared the emotional trauma of false diagnoses and children need to be spared stressful treatments that follow false diagnoses. Yet the "autism spectrum" concept provides lots of wiggle room for those who are making false diagnoses.
Real autism may not get as much money as it needs if much of that money is dissipated on children who are not in fact autistic. But money is money to those who are running research projects-- and a gullible media helps them get that money.


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There are not enough words to describe how awesome this piece is.
Monday, November 5, 2012
Art Adams' New Mutants
Posted by Jason Shayer at 10:07 PM
Labels: Art Adams, Marvel Comics, New Mutants
3 comments:
- AnonymousNovember 6, 2012 at 5:20 AM
First time I've seen this. Thanks for sharing Jason. Where was it published? Beautiful work again from Adams.ReplyDelete
I found it on a tumblr search, unfortunately there wasn't any note as to where it was published...ReplyDelete
I... LOVE this!!! I'm an Arthur Adams junkie and any time he draws The New Mutants I'm in Heaven! The New Mutants special that he drew in the 80's, the one where they go to Asgard, is my comic book art bible.ReplyDelete
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Rafael Nadal will have the honour of carrying the flag for the Spanish Olympic team at the Rio Games.
The 14-time Grand Slam champion was chosen by the Spanish Olympic Committee to lead the team at the opening ceremony on August 5.
The Rio Games will be Rafa's third Olympics (Athens 2004, Beijing 2008).
Our champ was supposed to be the flag bearer at the 2012 London Olympics but got injured before the games and was replaced by NBA player Pau Gasol.
Congrats Rafa! We are so proud of you!
[UPDATED] Rafa on being named Spanish flag bearer for this summer Rio Olympic Games:
I would like to thank the Spanish Olympic Committee the opportunity to be the standard bearer in the Olympic Games in Rio.
I'm very excited. I hope the games will be great and that the entire Spanish team can do well, wish us luck.


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Biofuel refers to liquid or gaseous fuels that are predominantly produced from biomass. A variety of fuels can be produced from biomass resources including liquid fuels, such as ethanol, methanol, biodiesel, Fischer-Tropsch diesel, and gaseous fuels, such as hydrogen and methane.
Resource Base for Biofuels Production
The biomass resource base for biofuels production is composed of a wide variety of forestry and agricultural resources, industrial processing residues, municipal solid wastes and urban wood residues.
The agricultural resources include grains used for biofuels production, animal manures and residues, and crop residues derived primarily from corn and small grains (e.g., wheat straw). A variety of regionally significant crops, such as cotton, sugarcane, rice, and fruit and nut orchards can also be a source of crop residues.
The forest resources include residues produced during the harvesting of forest products, fuelwood extracted from forestlands, residues generated at primary forest product processing mills, and forest resources that could become available through initiatives to reduce fire hazards and improve forest health.
Municipal and urban wood residues are widely available and include a variety of materials — yard and tree trimmings, land-clearing wood residues, wooden pallets and organic wastes.
Globally, biofuels are commonly used to power vehicles, heat homes, and for cooking. Biofuel industries are expanding in Europe, Asia and the Americas. Biofuels are generally considered as offering many priorities, including sustainability, reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, regional development, social structure and agriculture, and security of supply.
First Generation Biofuels
First-generation biofuels are made from sugar, starch, vegetable oil, or animal fats using conventional technology. The basic feedstocks for the production of first-generation biofuels come from agriculture and food processing. The most common first-generation biofuels are:
- Biodiesel: extraction with or without esterification of vegetable oils from seeds of plants like soybean, oil palm, oilseed rape and sunflower or residues including animal fats derived from rendering applied as fuel in diesel engines
- Bioethanol: fermentation of simple sugars from sugar crops like sugarcane or from starch crops like maize and wheat applied as fuel in petrol engines
- Bio-oil: thermo-chemical conversion of biomass. A process still in the development phase
- Biogas: anaerobic fermentation or organic waste, animal manure, crop residues an energy crops applied as fuel in engines suitable for compressed natural gas.
First-generation biofuels can be used in low-percentage blends with conventional fuels in most vehicles and can be distributed through existing infrastructure. Some diesel vehicles can run on 100 % biodiesel, and 'flex-fuel' vehicles are already available in many countries around the world.
Second Generation Biofuels
Second-generation biofuels are derived from non-food feedstock including lignocellulosic biomass like crop residues or wood. Two transformative technologies are under development.
- Biochemical: modification of the bio-ethanol fermentation process including a pre-treatment procedure
- Thermochemical: modification of the bio-oil process to produce syngas and methanol, Fisher-Tropsch diesel or dimethyl ether (DME).
Advanced conversion technologies are needed for a second generation of biofuels. The second generation technologies use a wider range of biomass resources – agriculture, forestry and waste materials. One of the most promising second-generation biofuel technologies – ligno-cellulosic processing (e. g. from forest materials) – is already well advanced. Demonstration plants have already been established in Denmark, Spain and Sweden.
Third Generation Biofuels
Third-generation biofuels may include production of bio-based hydrogen for use in fuel cell vehicles from microalgae. The production of algae biofuel, also called Oilgae, is supposed to be low cost and high-yielding – giving up to nearly 30 times the energy per unit area as can be realized from current, conventional 'first-generation' biofuel feedstocks.
Algaculture can be an attractive route to making vegetable oil, biodiesel, bioethanol and other biofuels.


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At work there are over 30 PC, some of them are Windows Vista Home and Windows 7 Home.
I just realized Windows Server is not worth it because it require to connect "Domain" on the clients PC. Windows Home does not support that and it will be very expensive buy licences for Professional or Business windows.
I am looking for alternative to Windows Server, something basic that I can block the desktop, some software, USB devices, and limit access to the websites.


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One of the first things that [Eric] hacked together when he got to college was an RFID door locking system. He found that he was often in a rush to get in and out of his dorm room, and that using a simple wireless key was a great way to streamline his days.
Over the years, he has refined his design, and while his original prototype was functional, it was a bit rough around the edges. In the video posted on his site, he thoroughly explains how his system was built, and shows off the revisions he has made over time. One key consideration when building this system was the fact that the installation had to be non-permanent. Since schools typically frown on physically altering your rooms, he found a non-intrusive means to mount his system in the way of zip ties and foam board.
His RFID door lock looks to work quite nicely, and we especially like the inclusion of the reed switch to ensure that the system knows if the door has been opened or not. If you have about half an hour to spare and are interested in building an RFID entry system of your own, be sure to check out [Eric's] video below for all the details.
[vimeo http://vimeo.com/29131384 w=470]


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Former Lord Mayor of London; born in that city Aug. 15, 1830. For a quarter of a century he labored in the best interests of the city of London. He agitated for improving the dwellings of the poor, and was mainly instrumental in bringing about much-needed reforms in the finance committee of the corporation. In 1859 he was appointed to the chairmanship of the City Lands Committee. Some years later, as head of the Markets Committee, he gave valuable evidence before the House of Commons; and the Tower Bridge owed its existence, in a great measure, to his persistence. Upon the oral system of teaching deafmutes, his brochure "Sounds Versus Signs" is a recognized authority.
In 1887 Isaacs became sheriff of London and Middlesex, and was knighted in the same year. In 1889 he was elected Lord Mayor of London. He has published "Memoirs of My Mayoralty."
- Jewish Chronicle, Sept., 1889.


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Source: Eurostat
Release: Harmonized Indices of Consumer Prices (HICP)
The Harmonized Index of Consumer Prices category "Other Major Durables for Recreation and Culture (09.2)" is a classification of durable goods and services.
This category contains Major Durables for Indoor and Outdoor Recreation including Musical Instruments (09.2.1/2) and Maintenance and Repair of Other Major Durables for Recreation and Culture (09.2.3).
This category is a subcategory of Recreation and Culture (09) category.
Information provided in the notes pertaining to HICP classifications can be found from the source at: http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/cache/metadata/en/prc_hicp_esms.htm.
Copyright, European Union, 1995-2016, http://ec.europa.eu/geninfo/legal_notices_en.htm#copyright.
Eurostat, Harmonized Index of Consumer Prices: Other Major Durables for Recreation and Culture for Malta [CP0920MTM086NEST], retrieved from FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis; https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CP0920MTM086NEST, September 30, 2023.


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The Ooze has been destroying all of the town's shapes. Can Karate Elmo save the day?
Subscribe to the Sesame Street Channel here: http://www.youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=SesameStreet
For more fun games and videos for your preschooler in a safe, child-friendly environment, visit us at http://www.sesamestreet.org
Sesame Street is a production of Sesame Workshop, a nonprofit educational organization. The Workshop produces Sesame Street programs, seen in over 150 countries, and other acclaimed shows, including The Electric Company. Beyond television, the Workshop produces content for multiple media platforms on a wide range of issues including literacy and numeracy, emotional wellbeing, health and wellness, and respect and understanding. Learn more at http://www.sesamestreet.org.


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Word based puzzle games have become extremely popular. When you level up, the complexity of words that you have to solve would increase, so a lot of people are stuck on Word Guru level 73. Don't beat yourself up, just read on for the answers to level 73.
Word Guru level 73 answers.
Answers: ANT-LOT-NOT-TAN-LOAN-TALON
Now you just have to swipe from the letter bank and then create the above words.
It's time to move on to the next level.
Next level?
Did you finish level 73? Get the answers to Word Guru level 74. You can also go to the homepage of Word guru, and select some other level.
Do not forget to check Word Guru Daily challenges. New puzzles every day. They can assist you to enjoy daily bonuses.
Other info.
Level 73 of Word Guru is also available in other languages under a different name.
- Wort Guru 73 (German)
- Pro des mots 73 (French)
If you have any problem with this level or any suggestion, please contact us.


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Alain Badiou facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Alain Badiou
Alain Badiou, 2012
17 January 1937
Rabat, French Morocco
|École Normale Supérieure (B.A., M.A.)
|Contemporary philosophy
|Western philosophy
|Continental philosophy
Modern Platonism
|University of Reims
University of Paris VIII
École normale supérieure
Main interests
|Set theory, philosophy of mathematics, metapolitics, ontology, psychoanalysis
Notable ideas
|Event, ontology of the multiple, ontology is mathematics, the One is not, count-as-one, metapolitics
Alain Badiou (/bɑːˈdjuː/; French: [alɛ̃ badju] ; born 17 January 1937) is a French philosopher, formerly chair of Philosophy at the École normale supérieure (ENS) and founder of the faculty of Philosophy of the Université de Paris VIII with Gilles Deleuze, Michel Foucault and Jean-François Lyotard. Badiou has written about the concepts of being, truth, event and the subject in a way that, he claims, is neither postmodern nor simply a repetition of modernity. Badiou has been involved in a number of political organisations, and regularly comments on political events. Badiou argues for a return of communism as a political force.
Badiou is the son of the mathematician Raymond Badiou [fr] (1905–1996), who was a working member of the Resistance in France during World War II. Alain Badiou was a student at the Lycée Louis-Le-Grand and then the École Normale Supérieure (1955–1960). In 1960, he wrote his diplôme d'études supérieures (roughly equivalent to an MA thesis) on Spinoza for Georges Canguilhem (the topic was "Demonstrative Structures in the First Two Books of Spinoza's Ethics", "Structures démonstratives dans les deux premiers livres de l'Éthique de Spinoza"). He taught at the lycée in Reims from 1963 where he became a close friend of fellow playwright (and philosopher) François Regnault, and published a couple of novels before moving first to the faculty of letters of the University of Reims (the collège littéraire universitaire) and then to the University of Paris VIII (Vincennes-Saint Denis) in 1969. Badiou was politically active very early on, and was one of the founding members of the Unified Socialist Party (PSU). The PSU was particularly active in the struggle for the decolonization of Algeria. He wrote his first novel, Almagestes, in 1964. In 1967 he joined a study group organized by Louis Althusser, became increasingly influenced by Jacques Lacan and became a member of the editorial board of Cahiers pour l'Analyse. By then he "already had a solid grounding in mathematics and logic (along with Lacanian theory)", and his own two contributions to the pages of Cahiers "anticipate many of the distinctive concerns of his later philosophy".
The student uprisings of May 1968 reinforced Badiou's commitment to the far Left, and he participated in increasingly militant groups, such as the Union des communistes de France marxiste-léniniste [fr] (UCFml). To quote Badiou himself, the UCFml is "the Maoist organization established in late 1969 by Natacha Michel, Sylvain Lazarus, myself and a fair number of young people". During this time, Badiou joined the faculty of the newly founded University of Paris VIII/Vincennes-Saint Denis which was a bastion of counter-cultural thought. There he engaged in fierce intellectual debates with fellow professors Gilles Deleuze and Jean-François Lyotard, whose philosophical works he considered unhealthy deviations from the Althusserian program of a scientific Marxism.
In the 1980s, as both Althusserian structural Marxism and Lacanian psychoanalysis went into decline (after Lacan died and Althusser was committed to a psychiatric hospital), Badiou published more technical and abstract philosophical works, such as Théorie du sujet (1982), and his magnum opus, Being and Event (1988). Nonetheless, Badiou has never renounced Althusser or Lacan, and sympathetic references to Marxism and psychoanalysis are not uncommon in his more recent works (most notably Petit panthéon portatif / Pocket Pantheon).
He took up his current position at the ENS in 1999. He is also associated with a number of other institutions, such as the Collège International de Philosophie. He was a member of "L'Organisation Politique" [fr] which, as mentioned above, he founded in 1985 with some comrades from the Maoist UCFml. This organization disbanded in 2007, according to the French Wikipedia article (linked to in the previous sentence). In 2002, he was a co-founder of the Centre International d'Etude de la Philosophie Française Contemporaine, alongside Yves Duroux and his former student Quentin Meillassoux. Badiou has also enjoyed success as a dramatist with plays such as Ahmed le Subtil.
In the last decade, an increasing number of Badiou's works have been translated into English, such as Ethics, Deleuze, Manifesto for Philosophy, Metapolitics, and Being and Event. Short pieces by Badiou have likewise appeared in American and English periodicals, such as Lacanian Ink, New Left Review, Radical Philosophy, Cosmos and History and Parrhesia. Unusually for a contemporary European philosopher his work is increasingly being taken up by militants in countries like India, the Democratic Republic of Congo and South Africa.
In 2014–15, Badiou had the role of Honorary President at The Global Center for Advanced Studies.
Key concepts
Badiou makes repeated use of several concepts throughout his philosophy, in line with his training at Ecole Normale Superieure in the history of philosophy, which entails, in France, a close reading of the great classics of philosophy, in their original languages such as Greek and Latin, which he handles fluently. His method cannot be fully understood if it is not replaced in the ways and means of French academic philosophy, which always engages a detailed decrypting of texts, in their original version, as evinced by philosophers as diverse as Foucault, Deleuze, Balibar, Bourdieu, Derrida, Bouveresse and Engel - all of them alumni of the Ecole Normale Superieure.
One of the aims of his thought is to show that his categories of truth are useful for any type of philosophical critique. Therefore, he uses them to interrogate art and history as well as ontology and scientific discovery. Johannes Thumfart argues that Badiou's philosophy can be regarded as a contemporary reinterpretation of Platonism.
According to Badiou, philosophy is suspended from four conditions (art, love, politics, and science), each of them fully independent "truth procedures." (For Badiou's notion of truth procedures, see below.) Badiou consistently maintains throughout his work (but most systematically in Manifesto for Philosophy) that philosophy must avoid the temptation to suture itself ('sew itself', that is, to hand over its entire intellectual effort) to any of these independent truth procedures. When philosophy does suture itself to one of its conditions (and Badiou argues that the history of philosophy during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries is primarily a history of sutures), what results is a philosophical "disaster." Consequently, philosophy is, according to Badiou, a thinking of the compossibility of the several truth procedures, whether this is undertaken through the investigation of the intersections between distinct truth procedures (the intersection of art and love in the novel, for instance), or whether this is undertaken through the more traditionally philosophical work of addressing categories like truth or the subject (concepts that are, as concepts, external to the individual truth procedures, though they are functionally operative in the truth procedures themselves). For Badiou, when philosophy addresses the four truth procedures in a genuinely philosophical manner, rather than through a suturing abandonment of philosophy as such, it speaks of them with a theoretical terminology that marks its philosophical character: "inaesthetics" rather than art; metapolitics rather than politics; ontology rather than science; etc.
Truth, for Badiou, is a specifically philosophical category. While philosophy's several conditions are, on their own terms, "truth procedures" (i.e., they produce truths as they are pursued), it is only philosophy that can speak of the several truth procedures as truth procedures. (The lover, for instance, does not think of her love as a question of truth, but simply and rightly as a question of love. Only the philosopher sees in the true lover's love the unfolding of a truth.) Badiou has a very rigorous notion of truth, one that is strongly against the grain of much of contemporary European thought. Badiou at once embraces the traditional modernist notion that truths are genuinely invariant (always and everywhere the case, eternal and unchanging) and the incisively postmodernist notion that truths are constructed through processes. Badiou's theory of truth, exposited throughout his work, accomplishes this strange mixture by uncoupling invariance from self-evidence (such that invariance does not imply self-evidence), as well as by uncoupling constructedness from relativity (such that constructedness does not lead to relativism).
The idea, here, is that a truth's invariance makes it genuinely indiscernible: because a truth is everywhere and always the case, it passes unnoticed unless there is a rupture in the laws of being and appearance, during which the truth in question becomes, but only for a passing moment, discernible. Such a rupture is what Badiou calls an event, according to a theory originally worked out in Being and Event and fleshed out in important ways in Logics of Worlds. The individual who chances to witness such an event, if he is faithful to what he has glimpsed, can then introduce the truth by naming it into worldly situations. For Badiou, it is by positioning oneself to the truth of an event that a human animal becomes a subject; subjectivity is not an inherent human trait. According to a process or procedure that subsequently unfolds only if those who subject themselves to the glimpsed truth continue to be faithful in the work of announcing the truth in question, genuine knowledge is produced (knowledge often appears in Badiou's work under the title of the "veridical"). While such knowledge is produced in the process of being faithful to a truth event, for Badiou, knowledge, in the figure of the encyclopedia, always remains fragile, subject to what may yet be produced as faithful subjects of the event produce further knowledge. According to Badiou, truth procedures proceed to infinity, such that faith (fidelity) outstrips knowledge. (Badiou, following both Lacan and Heidegger, distances truth from knowledge.) The dominating ideology of the day, which Badiou terms "democratic materialism," denies the existence of truth and only recognizes "bodies" and "languages." Badiou proposes a turn towards the "materialist dialectic," which recognizes that there are only bodies and languages, except there are also truths.
In Handbook of Inaesthetics Badiou both draws on the original Greek meaning and the later Kantian concept of "aesthesis" as "material perception" and coins the phrase "inaesthetic" to refer to a concept of artistic creation that denies "the reflection/object relation" yet, at the same time, in reaction against the idea of mimesis, or poetic reflection of "nature", he affirms that art is "immanent" and "singular". Art is immanent in the sense that its truth is given in its immediacy in a given work of art, and singular in that its truth is found in art and art alone – hence reviving the ancient materialist concept of "aesthesis". His view of the link between philosophy and art is tied into the motif of pedagogy, which he claims functions so as to "arrange the forms of knowledge in a way that some truth may come to pierce a hole in them". He develops these ideas with examples from the prose of Samuel Beckett and the poetry of Stéphane Mallarmé and Fernando Pessoa (who he argues has developed a body of work that philosophy is currently incapable of incorporating), among others.
Being and Event
The major propositions of Badiou's philosophy all find their basis in Being and Event, in which he continues his attempt (which he began in Théorie du sujet) to reconcile a notion of the subject with ontology, and in particular post-structuralist and constructivist ontologies. A frequent criticism of post-structuralist work is that it prohibits, through its fixation on semiotics and language, any notion of a subject. Badiou's work is, by his own admission, an attempt to break out of contemporary philosophy's fixation upon language, which he sees almost as a straitjacket. This effort leads him, in Being and Event, to combine rigorous mathematical formulae with his readings of poets such as Mallarmé and Hölderlin and religious thinkers such as Pascal. His philosophy draws upon both 'analytical' and 'continental' traditions. In Badiou's own opinion, this combination places him awkwardly relative to his contemporaries, meaning that his work had been only slowly taken up. Being and Event offers an example of this slow uptake, in fact: it was translated into English only in 2005, a full seventeen years after its French publication.
As is implied in the title of the book, two elements mark the thesis of Being and Event: the place of ontology, or 'the science of being qua being' (being in itself), and the place of the event – which is seen as a rupture in being – through which the subject finds realization and reconciliation with truth. This situation of being and the rupture which characterizes the event are thought in terms of set theory, and specifically Zermelo–Fraenkel set theory with the axiom of choice. In short, the event is a truth caused by a hidden "part" or set appearing within existence; this part escapes language and known existence, and thus being itself lacks the terms and resources to fully process the event.
Mathematics as ontology
For Badiou the problem which the Greek tradition of philosophy has faced and never satisfactorily dealt with is that while beings themselves are plural, and thought in terms of multiplicity, being itself is thought to be singular; that is, it is thought in terms of the one. He proposes as the solution to this impasse the following declaration: that the One is not (l'Un n'est pas). This is why Badiou accords set theory (the axioms of which he refers to as the "ideas of the multiple") such stature, and refers to mathematics as the very place of ontology: Only set theory allows one to conceive a 'pure doctrine of the multiple'. Set theory does not operate in terms of definite individual elements in groupings but only functions insofar as what belongs to a set is of the same relation as that set (that is, another set too). What individuates a set, therefore, is not an existential positive proposition, but other multiples whose properties (i.e., structural relations) validate its presentation. The structure of being thus secures the regime of the count-as-one. So if one is to think of a set – for instance, the set of people, or humanity – as counting as one, the multiple elements which belong to that set are secured as one consistent concept (humanity), but only in terms of what does not belong to that set. What is crucial for Badiou is that the structural form of the count-as-one, which makes multiplicities thinkable, implies (somehow or other) that the proper name of being does not belong to an element as such (an original 'one'), but rather the void set (written Ø), the set to which nothing (not even the void set itself) belongs. It may help to understand the concept 'count-as-one' if it is associated with the concept of 'terming': a multiple is not one, but it is referred to with 'multiple': one word. To count a set as one is to mention that set. How the being of terms such as 'multiple' does not contradict the non-being of the one can be understood by considering the multiple nature of terminology: for there to be a term without there also being a system of terminology, within which the difference between terms gives context and meaning to any one term, is impossible. 'Terminology' implies precisely difference between terms (thus multiplicity) as the condition for meaning. The idea of a term without meaning is incoherent, the count-as-one is a structural effect or a situational operation; it is not an event of 'truth'. Multiples which are 'composed' or 'consistent' are count-effects. 'Inconsistent multiplicity' [meaning?] is [somehow or other] 'the presentation of presentation.'
Badiou's use of set theory in this manner is not just illustrative or heuristic. Badiou uses the axioms of Zermelo–Fraenkel set theory to identify the relationship of being to history, Nature, the State, and God. Most significantly this use means that (as with set theory) there is a strict prohibition on self-belonging; a set cannot contain or belong to itself. This results from the axiom of foundation – or the axiom of regularity – which enacts such a prohibition (cf. p. 190 in Being and Event). (This axiom states that every non-empty set A contains an element y that is disjoint from A.) Badiou's philosophy draws two major implications from this prohibition. Firstly, it secures the inexistence of the 'one': there cannot be a grand overarching set, and thus it is fallacious to conceive of a grand cosmos, a whole Nature, or a Being of God. Badiou is therefore – against Georg Cantor, from whom he draws heavily – staunchly atheist. However, secondly, this prohibition prompts him to introduce the event. Because, according to Badiou, the axiom of foundation 'founds' all sets in the void, it ties all being to the historico-social situation of the multiplicities of de-centred sets – thereby effacing the positivity of subjective action, or an entirely 'new' occurrence. And whilst this is acceptable ontologically, it is unacceptable, Badiou holds, philosophically. Set theory mathematics has consequently 'pragmatically abandoned' an area which philosophy cannot. And so, Badiou argues, there is therefore only one possibility remaining: that ontology can say nothing about the event.
Several critics have questioned Badiou's use of mathematics. Mathematician Alan Sokal and physicist Jean Bricmont write that Badiou proposes, with seemingly "utter seriousness," a blending of psychoanalysis, politics and set theory that they contend is preposterous. Similarly, philosopher Roger Scruton has questioned Badiou's grasp of the foundation of mathematics, writing in 2012:
- There is no evidence that I can find in Being and Event that the author really understands what he is talking about when he invokes (as he constantly does) Georg Cantor's theory of transfinite cardinals, the axioms of set theory, Gödel's incompleteness proof or Paul Cohen's proof of the independence of the continuum hypothesis. When these things appear in Badiou's texts it is always allusively, with fragments of symbolism detached from the context that endows them with sense, and often with free variables and bound variables colliding randomly. No proof is clearly stated or examined, and the jargon of set theory is waved like a magician's wand, to give authority to bursts of all but unintelligible metaphysics.
An example of a critique from a mathematician's point of view is the essay 'Badiou's Number: A Critique of Mathematics as Ontology' by Ricardo L. Nirenberg and David Nirenberg, which takes issue in particular with Badiou's matheme of the Event in Being and Event, which has already been alluded to in respect of the 'axiom of foundation' above. Nirenberg and Nirenberg write:
- Rather than being defined in terms of objects previously defined, ex is here defined in terms of itself; you must already have it in order to define it. Set theorists call this a not-well-founded set. This kind of set never appears in mathematics – not least because it produces an unmathematical mise-en-abîme: if we replace ex inside the bracket by its expression as a bracket, we can go on doing this forever – and so can hardly be called "a matheme."'
The event and the subject
Badiou again turns here to mathematics and set theory – Badiou's language of ontology – to study the possibility of an indiscernible element existing extrinsically to the situation of ontology. He employs the strategy of the mathematician Paul J. Cohen, using what are called the conditions of sets. These conditions are thought of in terms of domination, a domination being that which defines a set. (If one takes, in binary language, the set with the condition 'items marked only with ones', any item marked with zero negates the property of the set. The condition which has only ones is thus dominated by any condition which has zeros in it [cf. pp. 367–371 in Being and Event].) Badiou reasons using these conditions that every discernible (nameable or constructible) set is dominated by the conditions which don't possess the property that makes it discernible as a set. (The property 'one' is always dominated by 'not one'.) These sets are, in line with constructible ontology, relative to one's being-in-the-world and one's being in language (where sets and concepts, such as the concept 'humanity', get their names). However, he continues, the dominations themselves are, whilst being relative concepts, not necessarily intrinsic to language and constructible thought; rather one can axiomatically define a domination – in the terms of mathematical ontology – as a set of conditions such that any condition outside the domination is dominated by at least one term inside the domination. One does not necessarily need to refer to constructible language to conceive of a 'set of dominations', which he refers to as the indiscernible set, or the generic set. It is therefore, he continues, possible to think beyond the strictures of the relativistic constructible universe of language, by a process Cohen calls forcing. And he concludes in following that while ontology can mark out a space for an inhabitant of the constructible situation to decide upon the indiscernible, it falls to the subject – about which the ontological situation cannot comment – to nominate this indiscernible, this generic point; and thus nominate, and give name to, the undecidable event. Badiou thereby marks out a philosophy by which to refute the apparent relativism or apoliticism in post-structuralist thought.
Badiou's ultimate ethical maxim is therefore one of: 'decide upon the undecidable'. It is to name the indiscernible, the generic set, and thus name the event that re-casts ontology in a new light. He identifies four domains in which a subject (who, it is important to note, becomes a subject through this process) can potentially witness an event: love, science, politics and art. By enacting fidelity to the event within these four domains one performs a 'generic procedure', which in its undecidability is necessarily experimental, and one potentially recasts the situation in which being takes place. Through this maintenance of fidelity, truth has the potentiality to emerge.
In line with his concept of the event, Badiou maintains, politics is not about politicians, but activism based on the present situation and the evental [sic] (his translators' neologism) rupture. So too does love have this characteristic of becoming anew. Even in science the guesswork that marks the event is prominent. He vigorously rejects the tag of 'decisionist' (the idea that once something is decided it 'becomes true'), but rather argues that the recasting of a truth comes prior to its veracity or verifiability. As he says of Galileo (p. 401):
- When Galileo announced the principle of inertia, he was still separated from the truth of the new physics by all the chance encounters that are named in subjects such as Descartes or Newton. How could he, with the names he fabricated and displaced (because they were at hand – 'movement', 'equal proportion', etc.), have supposed the veracity of his principle for the situation to-come that was the establishment of modern science; that is, the supplementation of his situation with the indiscernible and unfinishable part that one has to name 'rational physics'?
While Badiou is keen to reject an equivalence between politics and philosophy, he correlates nonetheless his political activism and skepticism toward the parliamentary-democratic process with his philosophy, based around singular, situated truths, and potential revolutions.
L'Organisation Politique
Alain Badiou is a founding member (along with Natacha Michel and Sylvain Lazarus) of the militant French political organisation L'Organisation Politique, which was active from 1985 until it disbanded in 2007. It called itself a post-party organization concerned with direct popular intervention in a wide range of issues (including immigration, labor, and housing). In addition to numerous writings and interventions, L'Organisation Politique highlighted the importance of developing political prescriptions concerning undocumented migrants (les sans papiers), stressing that they must be conceived primarily as workers and not immigrants.
Sarkozy pamphlet
Alain Badiou gained great notoriety in 2007 with his pamphlet The Meaning of Sarkozy (De quoi Sarkozy est-il le nom?), which quickly sold 60,000 copies, whereas for 40 years the sales of his books had oscillated between 2,000 and 6,000 copies.
- Le concept de modèle (1969, 2007)
- Théorie du sujet (1982)
- Peut-on penser la politique? (1985)
- L'Être et l'Événement (1988)
- Manifeste pour la philosophie (1989)
- Le nombre et les nombres (1990)
- D'un désastre obscur (1991)
- Conditions (1992)
- L'Éthique (1993)
- Deleuze (1997)
- Saint Paul. La fondation de l'universalisme (1997, 2002)
- Abrégé de métapolitique (1998)
- Court traité d'ontologie transitoire (1998)
- Petit manuel d'inesthétique (1998)
- Le Siècle (2005)
- Logiques des mondes. L'être et l'événement, 2 (2006)
- Petit panthéon portatif (2008)
- Second manifeste pour la philosophie (2009)
- L'Antiphilosophie de Wittgenstein (2009)
- Éloge de l'Amour (2009)
- Heidegger. Le nazisme, les femmes, la philosophie co-authored with Barbara Cassin (2010)
- Il n'y a pas de rapport sexuel co-authored with Barbara Cassin (2010)
- La Philosophie et l'Événement interviews with Fabien Tarby (ed.) (2010)
- Cinq leçons sur le cas Wagner (2010)
- Le Fini et l'Infini (2010)
- La Relation énigmatique entre politique et philosophie (2011)
- La République de Platon (2012)
- L'aventure de la philosophie française (2012)
- Jacques Lacan, passé présent: Dialogue (2012)
- De la fin. Conversations with Giovanbattista Tusa (2017)
- L'immanence des vérités (2018)
- Sometimes, We Are Eternal with Kenneth Reinhard, Jana Ndiaye Berankova, Nick Nesbitt (Suture Press 2019)
Critical essays
- L'autonomie du processus esthétique (1966)
- Rhapsodie pour le théâtre (1990)
- Beckett, l'increvable désir (1995)
- Cinéma (2010)
Literature and drama
- Almagestes (1964)
- Portulans (1967)
- L'Écharpe rouge (1979)
- Ahmed le subtil (1994)
- Ahmed Philosophe, followed by Ahmed se fâche (1995)
- Les Citrouilles, a comedy (1996)
- Calme bloc ici-bas (1997)
Pamphlets and serial publications
- Contribution au problème de la construction d'un parti marxiste-léniniste de type nouveau, with Jancovici, Menetrey, and Terray (Maspero 1970)
- Jean Paul Sartre (Éditions Potemkine 1980)
- Le Perroquet. Quinzomadaire d'opinion (1981–1990)
- La Distance Politique (1990–?)
- Notre mal vient de plus loin, 2016
English translations
- Manifesto for Philosophy, transl. by Norman Madarasz; (Albany: SUNY Press, 1999): ISBN: 978-0-7914-4220-3 (paperback); ISBN: 978-0-7914-4219-7 (hardcover)
- Deleuze: The Clamor of Being, transl. by Louise Burchill; (Minnesota University Press, 1999): ISBN: 978-0-8166-3140-7 (paperback); ISBN: 978-0-8166-3139-1 (library binding)
- Ethics: An Essay on the Understanding of Evil, transl. by Peter Hallward; (New York: Verso, 2000): ISBN: 978-1-85984-435-9 (paperback); ISBN: 978-1-85984-297-3
- On Beckett, transl. and ed. by Alberto Toscano and Nina Power; (London: Clinamen Press, 2003): ISBN: 978-1-903083-30-7 (paperback); ISBN: 978-1-903083-26-0 (hardcover)
- Infinite Thought: Truth and the Return to Philosophy, transl. and ed. by Oliver Feltham & Justin Clemens; (London: Continuum, 2003): ISBN: 978-0-8264-7929-7 (paperback); ISBN: 978-0-8264-6724-9 (hardcover)
- Metapolitics, transl. by Jason Barker; (New York: Verso, 2005): ISBN: 978-1-84467-567-8 (paperback); ISBN: 978-1-84467-035-2 (hardcover)
- Saint Paul: The Foundation of Universalism; transl. by Ray Brassier; (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003): ISBN: 978-0-8047-4471-3 (paperback); ISBN: 978-0-8047-4470-6 (hardcover)
- Handbook of Inaesthetics, transl. by Alberto Toscano; (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004): ISBN: 978-0-8047-4409-6 (paperback); ISBN: 978-0-8047-4408-9 (hardcover)
- Theoretical Writings, transl. by Ray Brassier; (New York: Continuum, 2004)
- Briefings on Existence: A Short Treatise on Transitory Ontology, transl. by Norman Madarasz; (Albany: SUNY Press, 2005)
- Being and Event, transl. by Oliver Feltham; (New York: Continuum, 2005)
- Polemics, transl. by Steve Corcoran; (New York: Verso, 2007)
- The Century, transl. by Alberto Toscano; (New York: Polity Press, 2007)
- The Concept of Model: An Introduction to the Materialist Epistemology of Mathematics, transl. by Zachery Luke Fraser & Tzuchien Tho; (Melbourne: re.press, 2007). Open Access
- Number and Numbers (New York: Polity Press, 2008): ISBN: 978-0-7456-3879-9 (paperback); ISBN: 978-0-7456-3878-2 (hardcover)
- The Meaning of Sarkozy (New York: Verso, 2008): ISBN: 978-1-84467-309-4 (hardcover) ISBN: 978-1-84467-629-3 (paperback)
- Conditions, transl. by Steve Corcoran; (New York: Continuum, 2009): ISBN: 978-0-8264-9827-4 (hardcover)
- Logics of Worlds: Being and Event, Volume 2, transl. by Alberto Toscano; (New York: Continuum, 2009): ISBN: 978-0-8264-9470-2 (hardcover)
- Pocket Pantheon: Figures of Postwar Philosophy, transl. by David Macey; (New York: Verso, 2009): ISBN: 978-1-84467-357-5 (hardcover)
- Theory of the Subject, transl. by Bruno Bosteels; (New York: Continuum, 2009): ISBN: 978-0-8264-9673-7 (hardcover)
- Philosophy in the Present, (with Slavoj Žižek); (New York: Polity Press, 2010): ISBN: 978-0-7456-4097-6 (paperback)
- The Communist Hypothesis, transl. by David Macey and Steve Corcoran; (New York: Verso, 2010): ISBN: 978-1-84467-600-2 (hardcover)
- Five Lessons on Wagner, transl. by Susan Spitzer with an 'Afterword' by Slavoj Žižek; (New York: Verso, 2010): ISBN: 978-1-84467-481-7 (paperback)
- Second Manifesto for Philosophy, transl. by Louise Burchill (New York: Polity Press, 2011)
- Wittgenstein's Antiphilosophy, transl. by Bruno Bosteels; (New York: Verso, 2011)
- The Rational Kernel of the Hegelian Dialectic, transl. by Tzuchien Tho; (Melbourne: re.press, 2011)
- The Rebirth of History: Times of Riots and Uprisings, transl. by Gregory Elliott; (New York: Verso, 2012): ISBN: 978-1-84467-879-2
- In Praise of Love, (with Nicolas Truong); transl. by Peter Bush; (London: Serpent's Tail, 2012)
- Philosophy for Militants, transl. by Bruno Bosteels; (New York: Verso, 2012)
- The Adventure of French Philosophy, transl. by Bruno Bosteels; (New York: Verso, 2012)
- Plato's Republic : A Dialogue in 16 Chapters, transl. by Susan Spitzer; (New York : Columbia University Press, 2013)
- The Incident at Antioch/L'Incident d'Antioche: A Tragedy in Three Acts / Tragédie en trois actes, transl. by Susan Spitzer; (New York : Columbia University Press, 2013)
- Badiou and the Philosophers : Interrogating 1960s French Philosophy, transl. and ed. by Tzuchien Tho and Giuseppe Bianco; (New York : Bloomsbury Academic, 2013)
- Philosophy and the Event, (with Fabian Tarby); transl. by Louise Burchill; (Malden, MA: Polity, 2013)
- Reflections on Anti-Semitism, (with Eric Hazan); transl. by David Fernbach; (London: Verso, 2013)
- Rhapsody for the Theatre, transl. and ed. by Bruno Bosteels; (London: Verso, 2013)
- Cinema, transl. by Susan Spitzer; (Malden, MA: Polity, 2013)
- Mathematics of the Transcendental: Onto-logy and being-there, transl. by A.J. Bartlett and Alex Ling; (London: Bloomsbury, 2014)
- Ahmed the Philosopher: Thirty-four Short Plays for Children and Everyone Else, transl. by Joseph Litvak; (New York : Columbia University Press, 2014)
- Jacques Lacan, Past and Present: A Dialogue, (with Elisabeth Roudinesco); transl. by Jason E. Smith; (New York: Columbia University Press, 2014)
- Controversies: Politics and Philosophy in our Time, (with Jean-Claude Milner); transl. by ?; (London: Polity, 2014)
- Confrontation: A Conversation with Aude Lancelin, (with Alain Finkielkraut); transl. by Susan Spitzer; (London: Polity, 2014)
- The Age of the Poets: And Other Writings on Twentieth-Century Poetry and Prose, transl. by Bruno Bosteels; (New York: Verso, 2014)
- The end, (with Giovanbattista Tusa); transl. by Robin Mackay; (Cambridge: Polity, 2019) ISBN: 978-1509536276
- Badiou, A Film in association with the Global Center for Advanced Studies (2018), Directed by Gorav Kalyan, Rohan Kalyan Gorav Kalyan.
- Democracy and Disappointment: On the Politics of Resistance: Alain Badiou and Simon Critchley in Conversation, (Event Date: Thursday, 15 November 2007); Location: Slought Foundation, Conversations in Theory Series | Organized by Aaron Levy | Studio: Microcinema in collaboration with Slought Foundation | DVD Release Date: 26 August 2008
- Creative Thinking. Al-Quds University, Jerusalem, Palestine, 17 January 2009.
See also
In Spanish: Alain Badiou para niños
|José Calderón
|Diana Taurasi
|Pancho Gonzales
|Gigi Fernández


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Movies about the past, if they're any good, tend to express some sort of anxiety about the present. By that measure, it's not difficult to see at a glance what prompted indie filmmaker Andrew Bujalski to make Computer Chess, which is set in an unspecified year that looks to be roughly '80 or '81. The first thing that catches the eye is the film's unusual look: Where Bujalski's previous no-budget features—Funny Ha Ha, Mutual Appreciation, and Beeswax—were all shot on 16mm film, Computer Chess is unmistakably video. Not digital video, though. Bujalski went to the trouble of digging up vintage black-and-white Sony tube cameras, giving the movie a dull antisheen that genuinely makes it look like an industrial training film from that era. (Pablo Larraín's '80s-set Chilean drama No did something similar earlier this year, but Computer Chess makes that film look resplendent by comparison.) The movie is defiantly analog, but it's set at the historical moment when digital was just beginning to assert itself, with home computers and compact discs only a few years away. And that tension is reflected in its very structure, which tosses programmers and post-hippies together in a shabby hotel over the course of a single, extremely bizarre weekend.
The programmers are in town for an annual convention in which teams from the computer-science departments of various universities—MIT, Caltech, etc.—pit their latest chess programs against each other in a round-robin tournament. Early scenes seem to promise a hilarious comedy of manners (or lack thereof), as in-fighting breaks out among longtime rivals, and matches degenerate into sheer confusion. (One inexplicable, suicidal move by a program prompts its author to ask a colleague, "Is there any possibility that this is, uh, some kind of, uh, very advanced…?" The question is too absurd to even finish.) Bujalski has done an amazing job of casting actors, from professionals like Wiley Wiggins (Dazed And Confused) to animator Bob Sabiston and film critic Gerald Peary, who perfectly match the film's pseudo-unmediated visual style. Back then, being socially awkward didn't lead to a diagnosis of Asperger's syndrome or talk of "the spectrum"—people were just nerds and went about their nerdy business without a trace of self-consciousness when among other nerds. Had Computer Chess been content to stick with this observational mode, it probably would have made a terrific period satire, sharp but affectionate.
Instead, it turns out to be a terrific… something else. The computer-chess tournament continues, but the camera increasingly drifts away from the action, as do some of the characters. An unaffiliated programmer (Myles Paige) whose room reservation was lost spends much of the movie wandering the hotel hallways at night, where he encounters a disturbing number of stray cats. Another computer geek (Patrick Riester) gets invited into the room of a middle-aged couple (Chris Doubek and Cyndi Williams), who none-too-subtly suggest the possibility of a ménage à trois, scaring the terminally shy kid out of his wits. The couple is at the hotel as part of an encounter group, led by a serene African man, that spends the weekend engaged in rituals that do goofy things like re-create the birth experience. And even as that aspect of the narrative gets ever more touchy-feely, Riester, working with the convention's sole female programmer (Robin Schwartz, having great fun with the role of the token girl who's treated like a unicorn), discovers that the issue with his team's program seems to be that it doesn't want to play chess against other computer programs. It only gets interested when the opposing moves are made by a human being.
Thankfully, Bujalski is too canny a filmmaker to construct some lumbering thesis. The dichotomy is there, commenting astutely on today's uneasiness with the ways in which virtually everything is now reducible to ones and zeroes, but it's buried under plenty of free-floating, found-object weirdness. In every way that matters, Computer Chess defies easy categorization. It's the year's most singular and adventurous movie to date, to the point where it feels not so much original—a word that conveys a strong sense of craft—as it does "isolated," as in a mutant strain of a virus. What's more, it's fun, generating pleasure not from canned jokes or clichéd plot twists but simply from a sense of unhindered freedom. After having been burdened for a decade with the unhelpful "mumblecore" label, Bujalski has detonated a neutron bomb underneath the expectations it engendered. It's impossible to guess what he might do next, and that's damn exciting.


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