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espite the Ruskinian aesthetic values that Christina Rossetti clearly shared with the members of the first brotherhood, commentators on her volumes of poetry published during the most productive years of Morris, Swinburne, and her brother had to strain somewhat, as modern critics do, to understand how the religious dimension of her poetry is fully compatible with the nonreligious, purely aesthetic values of the second generation of Pre-Raphaelite poets. Yet such values do obtrude in her poetry, and her reviewers clearly intuited some authentic compatibility between them and her religious devotion, struggle as some of these critics must to articulate it.
J. R. Dennet, for instance, was less than clear-minded about possible relationships between the orthodox religious element of Rossetti's verse and the more general values of the Pre-Raphaelites, but he did perceive that their "sensuousness" and Christina Rossetti's own is somehow reconciled in her poetry with religious devotion. After pronouncing her poems unequivocally Pre-Raphaelite, he observed that
her pieces [are] full of that phase of religious feeling which contemplates, not without sentimentality, God made man, which, we may almost say, agonizes at the feet of a Saviour who suffers and yearns, who is bleeding and aching with fleshly wounds. To have attributed to Pre-Raphaelitism such qualities as these would, perhaps, have been to give it a definition rude or incorrect. But whether right or wrong . . . it was not a mistake to fix upon these as the distinguishing features of Miss Rossetti's poetry, and if with these we name a pervading sensuousness, we have the list of its essential characteristics compiete. ["Miss Rossetti's Poems" 47]
As Herbert Sussman and many other critics have pointed out, precisely this apparent paradox of sensuous spirituality is central to the Pre-Raphaelites, sensory phenomena being looked upon by them and by Ruskin as figures of transcendent Truth.
Unlike Dennet, Alice Law, writing during the heyday of aestheticism, discerned no conflict between Rossetti's religiosity and the work of the other Pre-Raphaelites, primarily because she perceived medievalism as the essential feature of Pre-Raphaelite art and poetry. Aware that the central movement of Rossetti's poems is repeatedly from sensuality and eros to spirituality and agape, Law was confident that the same modulation of one type of passion into another, higher type was characteristic of Pre-Raphaelitism, [52/53] and, of course, of the medieval writers the Pre-Raphaefites admired and imitated. Law was apparently untroubled by the issue of orthodoxy, as she described "how Miss Rossetti, like her medieval prototype, sought and found consolation for the unsatisfied yearnings of the heart in devout prostration of the spirit, and the up-lifting of the soul to God. As in the Pre-Raphaelite heroine, the earthly love became transfigured by the heavenly; the overflowing of human emotion found an outlet in religious ecstasy" (Law, "Poetry of Christina Rossetti," 450).
Like Law, an anonymous reviewer for The Critic in 1895 found un-problematical the transposition of earthly, sensuous passion to a spiritual plane, a movement that occurs repeatedly in Christina Rossetti's poetry. Comparing Dante Gabriel Rossetti's work with that of his sister, this critic explains that "their characters as artists are singularly alike. Both think in sensuous, concrete images.... Both are strongly attracted by moral ideas, which, with rare exceptions, are used by the brother as poetic material, but which finally become dominant in the sister, though to the weakening of her art. Sensuousness is the key-note in the poetry of both.... The 'Rossetti virus' is a peculiar mingling of sense and soul in a sort of mystical aestheticism" (The Critic, 21). It is striking that this reviewer should have hit upon the same terms, in describing the Rossettis' "mystical aestheticism" that Alice Law used to describe the unique character of such poetry. The coincidence is understandable, however, because the simultaneously concrete and spiritual, aesthetic and mystical, effects of much Pre-Raphaelite poetry result largely from the poets' use of phenomenal reality as a vehicle for their quest after the ideal. The typological mindset and procedures that they most often employ in this quest are rooted in religious tradition and in medieval literature. Each generation of Pre-Raphaelites either pervasively or sporadically imitated such literature with a high degree of self-consciousness.
Writing two years before Alice Law and the American reviewer of The Critic, Edmund Gosse discussed more fully than either of them the problem that Christina Rossetti's religious devotion seems to pose for those who wish to perceive her as wholly Pre-Raphaelite. He acknowledged that "critics have taken for granted that she was a satellite, and have been puzzled to notice her divergences from the type." Candidly, he further explains,
of these divergences the most striking is the religious one. Neither Gabriel Rossetti, nor Mr. Swinburne, nor Morris has shown any decided interest in, the tenets of Protestantism. Now Miss Christina [53/54] Rossetti's poetry is not merely Christian and Protestant, it is Anglican; not her divine works only, but her secular also, bear the stamp of uniformity with the doctrines of the Church of England. What is very interesting in her poetry is the union of this fixed religious faith with a hold upon physical beauty and the richer parts of nature which allies her with her brother and their younger friends. She does not shrink from strong delineation of the pleasures of life even when she is denouncing them. ["Christina Rossetti" 214.]
Gosse did not ultimately see Rossetti's devout Anglicanism as an element that set her apart from the other Pre-Raphaelites. Rather, he perceived it as a "very interesting" aspect of the work she accomplished in her true "historical position" as a Pre-Raphaelite. His language suggests his belief that her poetry's religiosity visibly adds a dimension to Pre-Raphaelitism that illuminates that movement's pervasive aesthetic.
A crucial system of values in Christina Rossetti's aesthetics — derived from the tradition of courtly love, as well as Petrarchan and Dantean poetry — was absent from Tractarian poetics and sublimated in Ruskin. The importance of this tradition to Rossetti resulted in the apparent bifurcation of her creative energies and the division of her works into the traditional "secular" and "devotional" categories. Yet every careful reader of her poetry must observe that the two categories very often overlap or modulate into one another, as is especially clear in works like Goblin Market (with its overt patterns of Christian symbolism), "Three Nuns," "The Convent Threshold,," "Twice," and Monna Innominata. Such poems suggest that the "division" between the two spheres of Rossetti's creative activity are reconciled in a holistic aesthetic that comes out of her grounding in medieval poetry and medieval theology. As William Michael Rossetti notes in his brief biographical memoir to his sister's Works, Saint Augustine and Thomas à Kempis were two of her favorite authors (p. 1xix), and one is often surprised, in her prose works, to come upon detailed knowledge of such medieval matters as those concerning the life of Gregory the Great which she reveals in Time Flies, 50-52. Unlike Gerard Manley Hopkins, who shared his imagistic conventions exclusively with the movement Jerome Bump has identified as "religious medievalism," Christina Rossetti derived her poetic practice also from the "rival" variety of medievalism: what Bump describes as "the secular religion of courtly love ("Hopkins' Imagery," 100). Clearly, however, among the writers who were the foremost practitioners in verse of the courtly love ethos (Petrarch and Dante, for instance), the secular-especially the erotic-and the religious interpenetrate, often becoming metaphors for one another. This is commonly the case in Rossetti's ostensibly secular poetry concerned with obstacled or unfulfillable love.
Ultimately, Christina Rossetti's medievalist combination of eros and agape, of the phenomenal and the ideal, of the sensual and the spiritual, [54/55] became central to the art of the aesthetes in the 1880s and 1890s. Along with Pater and her brother, she must be seen finally as an unwitting mediator between Ruskinian and decadent aesthetics. As Graham Hough reminded readers forty years ago,
the attempt to find a connection between art and religious experience is a major preoccupation of the later nineteenth century... [Dante] Rossetti's poetry is filled with Christian imagery; Pater is obsessed with the conflict between pagan and Christian religious ideals, and many of the aesthetes of the nineties found that the worship of beauty could be satisfactorily consummated only within the Catholic Church. A French critic in the nineties wrote a book on Ruskin et la religion de la Beauté. [The Last Romantics, 24.]
As we have seen, for Ruskin the perception of the beautiful is contingent upon the perception of the divine. Such perception transforms our consciousness of the world around us, as well as our desires, motives, goals. That is, the "radiance" that results from perceptions of divine immanence is shed (as in "An Old World Thicket") upon all perceived phenomena and informs all experience. Similarly, for Christina Rossetti "Love" (which Ruskin does not discuss in the context of aesthetics) is an overwhelming attraction to what is perceived as the beautiful (or ideal). Not surprisingly, in "The Key" to Called to Be Saints Rossetti is effusive in using the terminology of aesthetics to describe the saints (men translated to the realm of the ideal) she will discuss in her book:
How beautiful are the arms which have embraced Christ, the hands which have touched Christ, the eyes which have gazed upon Christ, the lips which have spoken with Christ, the feet which have followed Christ. How beautiful are the hands which have worked the works of Christ, the feet which treading in his footsteps have gone about doing good, the lips which have spread abroad His Name, the fives which have been counted loss for Him. How beautiful upon the mountains were the feet of them who brought glad tidings . . . how beautiful was the wisdom of those unlearned and ignorant men, whose very opponents felt they had been with Jesus. [Christina Rossetti, Called to Be Saints, xiii.]
In many of her "secular" poems, obstacled earthly love is often transposed into divine love, eros into agape (as it is in Petrarch, Dante, and many of their troubadour precursors) without requiring alterations in language and image patterns. ("Twice" and Monna Innominata are typical of these.) Many of Rossetti's love poems, however, serve to expose misguided, that is, transient earthly ideals of love; in doing so, they savor [55/56] love's absence, love's decay, or its demise; often they express the laments of loves deluded victims. In every case the focus is upon earthly love's inadequacy and the impossibility of achieving genuine fi:dfillment through it, as Rossetti suggests in "The Heart Knoweth Its Own Bitterness": "How can we say 'enough' on earth- / 'Enough' with such a craving heart?" Only religion provides dependable idealities. "0 Jesus, quicken me.... / 0 Jesus, rise in me.... / 0 Jesus, drink of me."
Because the aesthetes, too, found ultimate satisfaction only in idealities, it is no surprise that, as John Dixon Hunt has observed, Rossetti's "piety and moral fervour were no obstacle to [their] appreciation [of her]" (Pre-Raphaelite Imagination, 103). Indeed, John Heath Stubbs has quite properly insisted that Pater, "the real philosopher of the later Aesthetic Movement [in England] ' " held much in common with Christina Rossetti"s and with Ruskin's "aesthetic Hellenism [and] a religiosity whose source must be looked for in the 'ritualist' tendency which had followed up the Oxford Movement, and which had affinities, also, with the aesthetic Catholicism of Chateaubriand!' ("Pre-Raphaelitism and the Aesthetic Withdrawal," originally published in The Darkling Plain, 147-78. Reprinted in Sambrook, 166-85. This comment appears on page 167 of Sambrook.). Pater's 1868 review, "Poems by William Morris," located the source of Morris's poetry (and by extension much Pre-Raphaelite poetry) in the second of two major strains of the medieval spirit, those of "mystic religion" and "mystic passion! These correspond, of course, to Jerome Bump's "rival" varieties of medievalism. Like Morris's early work, much of Christina Rossetti's poetry of disappointed love originates in this medievalist strain of "mystic passion" where the "strong suggestion" of "a choice between Christ and a rival lover" often emerges, and where "religion shades into sensuous love, and sensuous love into religion" (Sambrook, 106). As we have seen, Pater described the Provençal sources of Morris's poetic topoi in terms that apply equally well to much of Christina Rossetti's love poetry: "Earthly love ... becomes a prolonged somnambulism. Of religion it learns the art of directing towards an imaginary object sentiments whose natural direction is towards the objects of sense. Hence a love defined by the absence of the beloved, choosing to be without hope, protesting against all lower uses of love, barren, extravagant, antinomian" (Sambrook, 106-7).
For Christina Rossetti, even more than for Morris, the imaginative energies of the artist must be directed to capturing all "higher" uses of love in order to awaken perceptions in the reader of that which is truly beautiffil and therefore ideal. With Rossetti, as with Ruskin and the aesthetes, the perception of beauty does result in "love" that is, an irrepressible desire for the ineffable and unattainable, for the divine spiritual essence of material beauty. Ultimately, therefore, the effects of mimesis and [56/57] aesthesis become identical and interchangeable in discourse. Pater and his followers perceived the beautiful as divine; Ruskin and Rossetti perceived only the Divine, finally, as beautiful.
In Rossetti's poetry the union of the sensual and the spiritual, the quest to attain an ideal of transcendent love and-beauty, and the frequently medievalist atmosphere appealed to the aesthetes. But other components of her work powerfiffly attracted them as well. They admired the formal sophistication of her poems; her use of commonplace details for symbolist purposes, often to achieve nournenal effects; the lushness of her imagery; the melancholy moods of many of her poems whose focus is on mutability and death; and the literary self-consciousness — one might even say the parodic quality-of many of her poems.
Rossetti's aestheticist critics believed that in her poetry she had made the full dimensions of her matter inextricably dependent upon the forms and styles she employed and therefore ultimately ineffable outside of the poems themselves. This belief is clear in Alice Law's opening comments on Rossetti's poetry. "Like some magic webl" she explains, "it seems woven of a substance so elusive, intangible, and of such an almost gossamer tenuity as defies handling, and constitutes at once the critic's ecstasy, wonder, and despair." Law attempts to be precise on this point. When she first read Rossetti's poems, the beauty of them, she insists, "danced ever before me, but, like the phantom of her own Fata Aforgana, it eluded capture. The absence of all harsher and more rugged qualities, of all topical didacticism, of rigid philosophical system on which we can lay hold, their seeming artless, yet aesthetic and finished perfection, all these combine to give the poems an air of elevated inaccessibility which renders critical approach difficult'" In the following paragraph Law modulates, appropriately, into fully Paterian rhythms and diction in order to describe her responses to Rossetti's poetry. The influence of Pater's conclusion to The Renaissance is unmistakable here: "We are all at times conscious of the passing of certain swift and fugitive emotions which only a very gifted minority among us is qualified to express. Miss Rossetti is one of these; she has . . . condensed into word-crystals the mind's melancholy vapours, its evanescent clouds of dream, that indescribable 'nothingness" which eluding our clumsier mental grasp floats tantalisingly about us, but threatens to melt imperceptibly at a touch." ["Poetry of Christina Rossetti," 444-45]
Striking in these passages is the extent to which Law, like many other critics of Rossetti in the 1890s, was sensitive almost exclusively to the aestheticist effects of her poetry. Similarly significant to the historical critic is the fact that after Rossetti"s death the writers most eager to champion [57/58] her work were aesthetes themselves or had very dear affinities with the aesthetic movement and its central figures. They included Arthur Symons, Edmund Gosse, William Sharp, Richard La Gallienne, and Oscar Wilde, in addition to Alice Law.
These writers, and other more modem commentators as well, focus special attention upon two aestheticist characteristics in Christina Rossetti's work beyond its artistic polish, its "finished perfection." Both are, clearly, extensions of other traits peculiar to Pre-Raphaelitism. The first characteristic is Rossetti's sometimes almost monotonous attention to the commonplace, which has obvious connections with the Ruskinian and Pre-Raphaelite concern for a truthfid representation of natural detail. And the second characteristic-the Keatsian, melancholy gloom that dominates a great number of her poems-is often also the pervasive mood of her brother's poetry, as well as that of works by Swinburne and Morris, although these two younger poets energized their despondency in various ways.
Christina Rossetti's preoccupation with the details of quotidian experience is often apparent in the images, settings, and events of her poems, but it is far more pervasive in her prose writings: her letters, her devotional commentaries, and her single collection of short stories with the appropriately prosaic title, Commonplace and Other Stories (1870). John Dixon Hunt has quite properly observed that the stories in this volume foreshadow the "'vocabulary' of urban description[,] . . . the accompanying chorus of grief and pain,", and the "essentially unheroic" emphasis upon Cccommonplace circumstances" that dominate the fiction of the 1890s in England and are usually seen to originate from late nineteenthcentury French realism, with its symboliste qualities. Indeed, as Hunt mentions, the reviewer of Commonplace for the Sunday Times (12 June 1870) compared Rossetti's work to modern French fiction. Hunt himself sees significant resemblances between her stories and such aestheticist fiction as Arthur Moore's "Second Thoughts," Ella D'Arcy's Afonochromes, and the anonymous "Three Stories" of The Yellow Book, volume 2 (Hunt, Pre-Raphaelite Imagination, 223-25). Yet the emphasis on realistic details in Rossetti's fiction, while portending such fiction of the 1890s, clearly looks back-ward as well, growing out of the figural tendencies and the essentially typological mentality that link Christina Rossetti's literary values to the aesthetics of the first Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and the first two volumes of Ruskin's Modern Painters. The central images and minor details in Rossetti's stories are thoroughly pedestrian and realistic, as are the settings of many historicist and literary paintings by members of the first brotherhood.
John Everett Millais, Christ in the House of His Parents
Not in print version.
It was, in fact, precisely [58/59] the realistic representation, the "reduction" of sacred history to the level of quotidian detail and mundane experience, that invited such attacks upon early works by Pre-Raphaelite artists as the now-notorious critique by Dickens of John Everett Millais's Christ in the House of His Parents. Without the benefit of Millais's obviously exalted subject matter, Christina Rossetti typically assumes, in the background of her stories, the potentially transcendental value of even the most ordinary images and events.
Rossetti's attention to the prosaic details of fife, however, looks backward not only to its sources in Ruskin and the aesthetics of the first PreRaphaelite brethren, but also, and even more fimclamentally, as we shall see, to the hermeneutics of medieval Christian theology. Yet in admiring and perhaps even imitating Rossetti's performance in Commonplace and her manifestly symbolist poems, aestheticist writers of the nineties seemed to ignore the ultimately sacramental purpose behind her ostensibly aestheticist practices. As is already clear, her intent was not to be an aesthete, but rather, in a minor key, to be a prophet.
Rossetti's aestheticist critics were able to underplay the seriousness of her Christian values, perhaps, because they so greatly admired her symbolist uses of the commonplace details of life and her lush, Keatsian depiction of melancholy states of mind. The intense representation of such moods is insistent in nearly all her work, as is her preoccupation with death. (See, for instance, "Rest" "The Dead Bride," "When I Am Dead, My Dearest," "The Dream," 'Wife to Husband' "Night and Death "Death's Chill Between," "The Last Answer," and "Sweet Death.") Both traits result from her extremely heightened sensitivity to mutability.~Although salvation, as a reward for suffering endured in life and as a release from lifes multifarious pains, is unquestionably Christina Rossetti's own ultimate goal and that of many poetic personae she creates, it is never a certainty. Indeed, her anxiety over the extreme uncertainty of salvation inspires the despondent moods of her poetry and complicates the efforts of renunciation that characters in her poems either spontaneously make or that they learn to value after episodes of misguided self-indulgence.
Typical in her works is an emotional and psychological pattern that begins with optimistic expectations but modulates into melancholy pessimism. We see this pattern even in her devotional writings. The opening of her first commentary on "Nights and Days" in Seek and Find is telling. Rossetti begins by insisting that we must view the diurnal round, that inescapable reminder of mutability, from a wholly optimistic Christian perspective: "There is something full of hope, noble and very consolatory in this sequence of evening and morning, night ending in day, not day in [59/60] night; night introducing to the opportunities and capabilities of day, not day hastening downwards to the recess and obliteration of night" (SF, 68). The emergence of day out of night symbolizes resurrection: "We behold, as in a lovely figure, the death-stricken life which we lead in this world's twilight, passing out of itself into the immortal life of heaven's noon; that noon attained, our probationary course is fillfilled and finished" (SF, 68). Rossetti's probing mind is, however, hardly satisfied with such simple Christian optimism. She goes on to quaW, and in effect, to retract it:
Nevertheless, because this world is fraught with the confusion and ruin, with the disjointedness (so to say), the disproportion, the reversals of blessings into curses and life into death brought about by the Fall, it is no marvel that while "evening and morning" compose the entire day of our hopes, morning and evening make up the recurrent days of our duty; labour before repose, watchful effort before sleep.... Still, although we must do with our might whatsoever our hand findeth to do, because we are hastening to that grave where there is neither work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom (Eccles. ix. 10), there is yet a certain fretting anxiety which may beset us in our daily round of duty, but which has no promise of blessing. (SF, 69)
Rossetti's poems, devotional and nondevotional alike, most often through their melancholy tone reflect the "fretting anxiety" caused by her hypersensitivity to mutability, a term that, when applied to her work, comprehends her preoccupation with "the confusion and ruin, . . . the disjointedness, . . . the reversals of blessings into curses and life into death brought about by the Fall'"
A passage cited earlier from Walter Pater's essay, "On Aesthetic Poetry," is, ironically, relevant to any consideration of the appeal Christina Rossetti's melancholy concern with mutability and death had for the writers of the 1890s. In its "pagan spirit,' he asserts, "aesthetic poetry" is characterized by "the continual suggestion, pensive or passionate, of the shortness of life. This is contrasted with the bloom of the world, and gives new seduction to it-the sense of death and the desire of beauty: the desire of beauty quickened by the sense of death" (Sambrook, 113). Pater finds this "complexion of sentiment ... at its height" in Dante Gabriel Rossetti, but it is also and repeatedly apparent in his sister's poetry. In 'Wife to Husband," for instance, we see precisely the kind of contrast between death [60/61] and "the bloom of the world" that Pater describes. In this poem a dying wife compares her own dolorous fate to the specifically sensual pleasures that will remain for her widower:
I must drift across the sea,
I must sink into the snow,
I must die.
You can bask in the sun,
You can drink wine, and eat: Good bye.
(Poems, 1:57)
Rossetti presents an even more emphatic contrast between death and worldly beauty in "Sound Sleep" All around the central figure of the poem, who is dead and awaiting resurrection, "'wild flowers are creeping," and
There the wind is heaping, heaping
Sweetest sweets of Summer's keeping,
By the corn fields ripe for reaping.
(Poems, 1:57)
Such juxtapositions of death and the beauties of the world that impel desire are, in fact, ubiquitous in Rossetti's works and often account for the lush melancholy, that Keatsian gloom that overshadows but enriches them.
According to John Dixon Hunt, it was this aspect of Rossetti's poetry "which seems to have had the most influence upon the nineties." It was what "Dante Gabriel referred [to] when he described his sister as 'seated by the grave of buried hope."' As Hunt further explains, "like her brother and like Pater, . . . she saw the transience and the vanity of all earthly things. Part of her poetry surmounts this and celebrates the divine security of immortal life.... But another part of her poetry seems too fascinated with . . . earthly corruption to be able to seek the consolations of immortality" (77). The attraction this latter characteristic of her work held for the aesthetes is apparent from many of the admiring statements reviewers of the nineties made about her poetry. Arthur Symons acknowledged that "Rossetti's genius is essentially sombre, or it writes itself on a dark background of gloom. The thought of death has a constant fascination for her, almost such a fascination as it had for Leopardi or Baudelaire.' The comparisons with Leopardi and Baudelaire, for those with the traditional view [61/62] of Rossetti, are startling. Symons saw even in her religious poems (some of which he described as "magnificent" and "splendid") a corollary to her preoccupation with death: the "recurring burden of a lament over the vanity of things, the swiftness of the way to death, the faithlessness of affection, the relentless pressure of years" (Studies in Two Literatures, 142, 143).
As Pater revealed, however, such concerns with mutability are irresistible to the aestheticist sensibility when they are presented alongside an unusual awareness of what William Morris called "the beauty of life." Edmund Gosse commented upon precisely this feature of Rossetti's poetry when he remarked that "her habitual tone is one of melancholy reverie, the pathos of which is strangely intensified by her appreciation of beauty and pleasure" (215). And these comments by Richard La Gallienne reflect the same perception: "The note of loss and the peculiar sad cadence of the music, even though the song be of happy things, is [a] distinctive characteristic of Miss Rossetti's singing. It wells through all, like the sadness of the spring. Her songs of love are nearly always of love's loss; of its joy she sings with a passionate throat, but it is joy seen through the mirror of a wild regret (review of Poems, 132). La Gallienne's responses to Rossetti's "tragic" note, like the remarks of Gosse, focus upon the frequently observed Keatsian qualities of her verse: the juxtaposition in it of images of beauty taken from nature and preoccupations with love, mutability, loss, and death.
Aesthetes in the 1890s were clearly attracted by these characteristics of Christina Rossetti's poetry, along with its other typically Pre-Raphaelite components: its realistic — sometimes lush and sometimes austere — pictorial descriptions of nature; its commonplace details; its concern with the psychology of passion; its medievalism; and its pursuit of stylistic and formal innovations. Especially appealing to such writers as a very significant aspect of these last traits was Rossetti's literary self-consciousness, a quality that inescapably accompanies any intensive concern with style and form and that implicitly insists upon the autonomy of art, whose value in the world is absolute.
Recent studies of Rossetti have begun to expose the full extent to which her art depends upon literary models. Despite the ostensibly personal and sincere voice that speaks from many of her lyrics of disappointed love as well as from almost all of her devotional poetry, her work is as genuinely intertextual in its extrapolation of particular models as any poetry written by Swinburne or Morris or her brother. This is not to say that what she wrote was mostly derivative or merely imitative, but rather that its inspiration, forms, techniques, and sanction often came from eclectic literary, religious, and philosophical sources that she, like any important poet, [62/63] adapted in order to express her own special preoccupations. These clearly included the whole range of typical Pre-Raphaelite concerns, which she presents from an especially intense sacramental angle of vision. While treating such traditional topics as erotic and spiritual love, mutability, the quest for salvation, and the beauty of nature, however, Rossetti self-consciously imitated and revised tradition or diverged from it in an avantgarde pursuit of appropriate, if not ideal, forms and prosodic modes. Thus her concerns (and her poetry) are at once traditional and radically innovative, sincere and artificial, self-effacing and self-promoting, selfexpressive and parodic. Because of these features of her poetry Rossetti stands out (perhaps in greater relief than any of her contemporaries) as a pivotal figure in some of the most important cultural transitions that took place between 1850 and 1900. Moving freely between aesthetic and moral value systems that derive syncretically from medieval, Romantic, and contemporary literary and religious culture, she is able to forge and to sustain her individuality, to reinforce and retain her artistic, as well as her personal, integrity.
If we perceive Rossetti's art as multivalent-as a vehicle of self-expression, aesthetic exploration, spiritual sustenance, and self-recovery through cultural synthesis-we can best approach her poetry from a variety of critical perspectives in turn. This procedure must begin, however, with analysis of the culture of ideas and the specific literary texts out of which her unique sensibilities, her aesthetic values and procedures, her emotional predispositions and religious faith, evolved. It concludes with a determination of the new cultural directions to which her poetry points.
Last modified 24 June 2007


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13 Female Idols Who Became Legends Thanks To These GIFs
Sometimes, all it takes is one simple action, cute facial expression, particularly beautiful moment or sexy instance for a celebrity's popularity to skyrocket. In these cases, it just took one GIF that became the talk of the town and catapulted these female idols's popularity to legendary status. Check out the GIFs that made these women famous – or, at least, even more famous than they already were!
1. Suzy
Now known as the "nation's sweetheart", Suzy began her career as a miss A member – but it was a moment on Running Man in 2011 that earned her her first nickname, "flower girl Suzy". This cheesy smile, combined with her stunningly casual visuals, first put her into the minds and hearts of South Koreans.
2. Sohee
This moment, filmed as part of MTV's My Wonder Girls during Wondergirls' debut in 2008, gave the young Sohee the rather unforgettable nickname "dumpling" (mandu) because of her round face. Although she has lost her chubby cheeks and gone on to have a successful career as a singer and actress, Sohee will forever be known as "mandu Sohee".
3. Taeyeon (Girls' Generation)
In 2010, DAUM released individual screensavers for the Girls' Generation members and Taeyeon's cute aegyo went viral! Although Taeyeon was already popular for her talent, visuals and dedication to hard work, the adorable screen saver showed fans another side of her – and it's adorable.
4. HyunA
While HyunA was a popular member of group 4MINUTE, her solo career really took off during her Bubble Pop tour in 2011. She wore a memorable rose-print dress, but it was her sexy dance moves that pushed her far into the spotlight – earning her the nickname "rose knife", after a popular Korean infomercial on TV at the time. This knife was supposedly the most badass knife in existence and could "cut down almost anything in one slice."
5. Kyungri (9MUSES)
Kyungri's charisma and sexy charm was on full display in 9MUSES's "Wild" MV in 2013, and this gif became the talk of South Korea thanks to Kyungri's seductive vibes. It is widely believed the "Wild" era was Kyungri's most legendary for looks so far.
6. Hani (EXID)
Hani was made famous due to a moment caught on fancam during EXID's performance of "Up Down" in 2014. In the chorus, the choreography involves some rocking hip action and Hani took it to a whole new level, skyrocketing her popularity in the process. The fancam has been viewed almost 30 million times on Youtube.
7. Hyeri (Girl's Day)
In 2014, Hyeri took part in the army show Real Men. When it was time to say goodbye, she became teary-eyed and displayed an impressive aegyo while saying farewell to the male officer known as the Terminator. The move made her the most popular member of Girl's Day at the time and associated her with the "iiiing!" sound she made while shaking the officer's hand.
8. Seungyeon (KARA)
Seungyeon became the queen of pigtails when she wore the style during KARA's
Jet Coaster Love concert in Japan in 2015, with many netizens saying they didn't know she was so pretty and that although the style is really hard to pull off well, she nailed it! She became known as "fairy Seungyeon".
9. Seolhyun (AOA)
Seolhyun was already known for her sexy body and beautiful face thanks to her run in several successful advertising campaigns, but it was the way she walked in tight leather pants during a 2016 Kloud CF that cemented her status as goddess.
10. Yoona (Girls' Generation)
The way Yoona handled a technical malfunction during a Girls' Generation performance in 2016 became legendary as she gestured and mouthed "the mike [sound] isn't coming out". Netizens were blown away by her beauty even under pressure!
11. Sana (TWICE)
When Sana appeared on an episode of Knowing Bros in 2017, she participated in a version of Chinese whispers involving noise cancelling headphones. She captured hearts with her cute ageyo pronunciation of the intended words "cheese kimbab" and is now synonymous with cheese kimbab!
12. Chaeyeon (DIA)
Jung Chaeyeon finished up 7th on Produce 101's first season and became a member of DIA, but she was first known as the program's "ending fairy", thanks to her smooth and pretty visuals at the end of her performances on the show. It was so popular that she even parodied her ending expression on SNL Korea.
13. Irene (Red Velvet)
Irene performed a short sexy dance to Camilla Cabello's "Havana" at the SBS Super Concert in Taipei earlier this year, and although the Red Velvet member already had plenty of fans, this clip of her seductive dance earned her many more. The cute but mesmerising way she danced had fans praising her beauty and talent.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Movies We Like
Long before writing the novel Jurassic Park, Michael Crichton created another futuristic amusement park where everything goes wrong. Directing his first feature, Westworld, the result is much more credible than the later Spielberg directed flick. Closer to the vibe of cult-television show, The Wild, Wild West, than the Gene Autry serial Phantom Empire, Crichton's film may be the best science-fiction / western Hollywood has ever produced.
A new high tech adult playland offers vacationers the choice between Medievalworld, Romanworld or Westworld. Vacationers get to enjoy exotic pleasures both in danger and even sexual, interacting with perfectly human looking androids. Peter Martin (Richard Benjamin) and his much cooler pal John Blane (James Brolin) opt for Westworld. It's an Old West experience straight out of Bonanza, with saloon fights, shootouts, and robot brothels (though the guys are usually left to wonder if that was a human or a droid). The cowardly Martin has a run in with a gunfighter of few words, likely a droid, played by the famously shaved headed Russian tough guy Yul Brynner (wearing his same cool black outfit from The Magnificent Seven), killing him gives Martin some new found bravado.
In some quickly explained science, apparently real bullets are used, but heat sensors in the guns or something stop the robots from killing humans. It's never explained if heat sensors are in the swords of Medievalworld. Eventually the scientists lose control of their creations. First a robot snake bites Blane, then the back-from-the-dead bald gunfighter returns looking for revenge, killing Blane and then stalking Martin, like The Terminator he keep coming and coming. All hell has broken loose with the robots rebelling against the guests. It appears Martin is about the last guest left alive and he is chased out of Westworld through the park's labs and control rooms into what is left of Medievalworld. Eventually Martin is able to kill his assailant, exhausted and devastated we hear the park's advertising logo, "Have we got a vacation for you." Fade out…
Michael Crichton has been associated with dozens of hit films and novels, along with some barely memorable ones, ranging from Congo, Coma, Looker, Runaway, Twister, Sphere and TV show ER. His work has often had a running through line; something about man tinkering too much with technology, like Jurassic Park, in the end it can turn around and bite you. Westworld may stand the test of time more than any of the other half dozen flicks he directed and it may be the best example of his ironic seriocomic attitude, underneath the tension there's a lot of relief humor and of course with that final advertising tag, irony.
Even more than his more admired contemporaries like Gene Wilder and Charles Grodin, the once popular Richard Benjamin may be the quintessential "seriocomic" actor. Benjamin got famous in the early '70s standing in for Philip Roth in the big screen adaptations of his novels Goodbye, Columbus and Portnoy's Complaint, high brow humor that elicited brainy discomfort more than laughs. But by the end of the decade his career had been relegated to a terrible short-lived space sitcom Quark and slapstick spoofs like Love At First Bite and Saturday The 14th that didn't match his intellectual style. He would reinvent himself, knocking the ball out of the park with his first film as a director with the wonderful Peter O'Toole vehicle My Favorite Year. As a director his work since has been spotty but he's found a comfort zone directing solid TV movies.
Peter Fonda headlined a little seen, awful Westworld sequel Futureworld but Crichton wasn't involved with it. Totally out of the blue, a TV series in 1980 called Beyond Westworld managed to last five episodes. For years there was talk of a Westworld remake, fittingly with Arnold Schwarzenegger attached to it. There's little wonder why the magic has not been able to be replicated. Westworld is on a par with films from the era like Planet of the Apes, Capricorn One, THX 1138, and Silent Running - science fiction that was laced in Vietnam and later Watergate conspiratorial paranoia. This was secretly a great era for sci-fi, before a much more easier to love Star Wars brought the genre to the mainstream.


text:
By: Moha Ennaji
Somalilandsun – Though women across the Middle East participated actively in the Arab Spring protests that began in late 2010, they remain second-class citizens, even where popular uprisings managed to topple autocratic regimes. Indeed, the Islamist governments now in power in several countries seem more determined than the despots that they replaced to keep women out of politics.
In conducting interviews with women in the region, I am struck by their overall pessimism. They fear the loss of their rights. They see economic disintegration all around them, raising the possibility of a further increase in violence. As social bonds fray, they feel increasingly vulnerable. More than once, I heard them express the view that things were better before the revolutions.
Female representation in parliaments and government cabinets after the Arab Spring has been either absent or meager, and women activists worry that Islamist parties will implement reactionary policies that discriminate on the basis of gender. In Egypt, for example, the Freedom and Justice Party, which dominates the parliament, claims that a woman cannot become President. Egyptian women were heavily represented in the protests that brought down former President Hosni Mubarak's regime in 2011, but they have been largely excluded from any official decision-making role ever since.
In Morocco, while there were eight women in the previous cabinet, today there is only one in the Islamist-led government. In January, the Islamist-dominated parliament adopted a decree lowering the age of marriage for girls from 18 to 16, a major setback. Moroccan feminists have protested vigorously, but to no avail.
Parliamentary representation for women has also taken a hit. Women hold less than 1% of seats in the current Egyptian parliament; previously, they held 12%. In Libya, a first draft of the electoral law reserved 10% of seats in the constituent assembly for women, but the quota was later abandoned.
In Tunisia, the election in 2011 brought 49 women into the 217-seat Constituent Assembly. But 42 of these women are members of Ennahda, which regards Sharia (Islamic law) as the source of legislation. Long-time Tunisian activists fear that Ennahda, which dominates the assembly, will use the presence of women MPs to restrict women's rights.
The recent assassination of the secular Tunisian opposition leader Chokri Belaid has raised the stakes for women there. Belaid was a voice on behalf of women's rights, and the threat of increased political violence will focus on those who advocate secular equality for all Tunisians, including women.
Unfortunately, conservative forces in the Arab world repeatedly turn against women when political unrest spreads. In Bahrain, several women protesters have been arrested and tortured. In Yemen, the authorities call on male relatives to "tame" their women. In Tunisia, the most Westernized of the Arab countries, women have been attacked at universities and schools, and are being forced to wear the hijab. A woman who was allegedly raped by two policemen in September 2012 was charged with public indecency when she filed a complaint.
Likewise, in Egypt, women protesters face greater scrutiny than men. Those arrested by the military during the anti-Mubarak protests were subjected to virginity tests as a form of intimidation. Across the Middle East, Islamist militias have harassed, arrested, raped, and tortured women pro-democracy activists. The model of Iran's Islamic Revolution in 1979, which imposed second-class citizenship on women, is frequently cited as a threat in Arab countries now ruled by Islamist parties.
These countries are at a crossroads. Women make up half of the Middle East's population, and any hope of political and economic development must account for that fact. Organizations like the United Nations Development Program have repeatedly issued reports demonstrating the connection between economic decline and oppression of women. Simply put, the Arab countries will not succeed unless women are fully integrated into political and economic life.
In her Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech in 2011, Yemeni political activist Tawakkol Karman, made the point clearly: "The solution to women's issues can only be achieved in a free and democratic society in which human energy is liberated, the energy of both women and men together."
Middle Eastern countries should protect and consolidate women's rights as a way to reinforce democratic ideas and habits. They must institute the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other international laws and agreements in order to eradicate gender-based discrimination and violence. The hope for women's progress is really a hope for a decent society in which development for all is possible.
Moha Ennaji is Professor of Cultural and Gender Studies at Sidi Mohamed Ben Abdellah University and President of the International Institute for Languages and Cultures in Fez, Morocco.


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Pablo Ruiz Picasso (Malaga, 1881 - Mougins, 1973) was a Spanish artist who was both a painter and sculptor. Pablo Picasso co-founded (along with Basque artist George Braque) Cubism, which embodied the neuroses (some would say schizophrenia) of artist of his era. He produced a monumental 20,000 artworks during his 70-year career. Picasso's torrential outpouring of work was so extensive and complex that art historians have divided it into individual periods.[1] He was the single most dominating figure in modern art.
A prodigy in his youth and the son of an art teacher, Picasso was only 12 when he began exhibiting his first paintings in his famous primitive style in Barcelona. Picasso enrolled in advanced classes at Barcelona's Royal Academy of Art at age 15. The strong geometric forms of his groundbreaking Cubist works redefined art as a medium that could digress from literal images of reality. Passionately creative in every genre from primitive art to sketches to Surrealism, Picasso profoundly impacted 20th century art. Perhaps his most famous painting was Guernica, which was inspired by his outrage at the destruction of a Socialist stronghold during the Spanish Civil War. Picasso, a lifelong Communist, supported the Republican government defeated by General Franco's forces and never returned to his homeland after Franco's victory.[2]
He is immortalized in several of the works of the Lost Generation of American ex-patriate writers with whom he associated in Paris during the 1920s, including Gertrude Stein and Ernest Hemingway, by whom he is fondly remembered in their respective autobiographical efforts of that time (The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas and A Moveable Feast).
He was also a misogynist, treating several lovers horribly, and he also cruelly left one of his lovers for the World Peace Conference just as she was going into labor.
With his Charnel House of 1945, Picasso concluded the series of pictures that he had started with Guernica. The connection between the paintings becomes immediately obvious when we consider the rigidly limited color scheme and the triangular composition of the center.[3]
In spite of his left-wing views, Picasso died a very wealthy man and left a fortune estimated to be $50 million.
Garçon à la pipe and Dora Maar Au Chat are two of the world's most expensive paintings.
Head of a Woman, sculpture at MOMA.
- "I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it." [4]
- "We all know art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize truth."
- "I do not seek. I find."
"Cubism is no different from any other school of painting. The same principles and the same elements are common to all. The fact that for a long time cubism has not been understood and that even today there are people who cannot see anything in it, means nothing. I do not read English, and an English book is a blank to me. This does not mean that the English language does not exist, and why should I blame anyone but myself if I cannot understand what I know nothing about?" P. Picasso.
- Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.
- The artist is a receptacle for emotions that come from all over the place: from the sky, from the earth, from a scrap of paper, from a passing shape, from a spider's web.
See also
External links
- Pablo Picasso, Britannica Online Encyclopedia
- Pablo Picasso, Art Encyclopedia
- Picasso painting sells for record $106.5 million
- Fundación Picasso Málaga. In Spanish
- ↑ Petite Fleurs. Pablo Picasso, AllPosters.com
- ↑ 1973: Art master Picasso dies, April 8
- ↑ Picasso Biography, Britannica: Pablo Picasso: Life and career.
- ↑ Choose peace & happiness P.157 By Susyn Reeve


text: GENETICIST STATE UNIVERSITY(SUNY)COLLEGE AT BUFFALO Applications are invited for a tenure-track ASSISTANT PROFESSOR to begin September 1997. We are seeking a colleague who is enthusiastic about teaching undergraduates. Teaching responsibilities will include Genetics, Introductory Biology for non-majors, and either Botany or Cell Biology. The successful candidate will be expected to develop an active research program involving undergraduate and master's students. Applicants must have a Ph.D., and postdoctoral teaching and research experience is preferred but not required. The State University College at Buffalo (Buffalo State College) is the largest arts and science college in the SUNY system with an enrollment of 13,000 students (including 2000 in graduate programs). The campus is located in a residential district in the city of Buffalo. The Department of Biology enrolls about 250 undergraduate and about 30 graduate students in MA and MSEd programs. Of our 16 faculty, one-half have received their doctorates within the last 13 years. We maintain greenhouse facilities, environmental chambers and research laboratories. The College's newly renovated Aquatic Research Laboratory provides laboratories and research vessels to faculty and students. Applicants should send a curriculum vitae with a thoughtful statement of teaching philosophy, research goals and three letters of recommendation by January 20, 1997 to: Dr. Randal Snyder, Chair of Search Committee, Department of Biology, Buffalo State College, 1300 Elmwood Avenue, Buffalo, NY 14222. Email: SNYDERRJ at SNYBUFAA.CS.SNYBUF.EDU Telephone: 716- 878-4314. We especially encourage applications from women and minorities.


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- findmypast.com - United States
- findmypast.co.uk - United Kingdom
- findmypast.ie - Ireland
- findmypast.com.au - Australia and New Zealand
- ScotlandsPeople
Elaine Collins indicated that quite recently, brightsolid has finished equalizing the data between the different websites. This means that all of the sites have the same data. The difference in the sites is mainly due to the cultural interests of the various countries. This is really good news for the U.S. subscribers to the findmypast.com website, because it means that all of the content of the U.K. site is also available in the U.S.
In the past, I have heard some dissatisfaction among U.S. users of the program due to the pay-as-you-go credit method of obtaining records. Elaine explained that users have the option of paying for a regular subscription to the websites if they wish to avoid the credit system of buying images. That program was developed for users who only wanted a very few images off of the system. By looking on findmypast.com, I see that a one year, World Wide, subscription would cost $199.92.
brightsolid also has several other valuable websites, including The British Newspaper Archive, a site where they are posting digitized copies of the entire British Library's Newspaper Collection, over 40 million pages over the next ten years. There is also the 1911census.co.uk, a database of the 36 million people who were living in England and Wales at the time. The 1901 Census Online is a similar site with the results of that census.
brightsolid has some highly popular genealogy sites in the U.K. including Genes Reunited, a site with 750 million records including census records from 1841-1911 and fully indexed, fully searchable birth, marriage and death records from 1837-2005. Another of the family of websites is Friends Reunited, a 24 million member social networking site.
CensusRecords.com is a U.S. site from brightsolid, containing the entire collection of U.S. Census records from 1790 to 1940.
You can probably see now why brightsolid is considered one of the Big Four genealogy companies. Thanks to Elaine Collins for insight into this major genealogical service provider.


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World Press Freedom Day came and went earlier this month. While it's important to take a day to recognize our right to speak and share information, threats to our First Amendment freedoms happen all the time, everywhere.
It's a threat that will become very real for those covering the street protests expected this weekend at the NATO summit in Chicago.
Just ask Carlos Miller. The photojournalist has been arrested three times. His "crime?" Attempting to photograph police actions in the U.S. Most recently, in January, Miller was filming the eviction of Occupy Wall Street activists from a park in downtown Miami.
In twist that's become too familiar to many, the journalist became the story as police focused their crackdown on the scrum of reporters there to cover the eviction. Miller came face to face with Officer Nancy Perez, who confiscated his camera and placed him under arrest.
And Miller is not alone. Since Occupy Wall Street began last September, more than 75 journalists have been arrested. My colleague Josh Stearns has chronicled these arrests since the movement's earliest days. Stearns expects to see an uptick in arrests as thousands of protesters and reporters converge on Chicago.
Radical Transparency and the Police
Journalists record many of these arrests themselves as they're shoved to the ground, shackled and hauled off to jail. Onlookers have documented many of these arrests as well.
The ubiquity of camera-ready smartphones has spawned legions of "live-streamers" who can be found at every large-scale protest streaming a close-up account of almost every arrest. It's a new form of journalism that's open to anyone with a mobile phone and the resolve to get between police and protesters.
In the chaos of these events, many live-streamers have been snared in mass arrests. Others are deliberately targeted by officers who aren't accustomed to the radical transparency of the smartphone era.
Tim Pool has seen the live-streaming phenomenon grow exponentially since he first started streaming Occupy Wall Street protests using a Galaxy S2 mobile phone. "Most of the people are live-streaming because they think the mainstream media isn't telling the story that needs to be told," he said.
The live audience for Pool's coverage peaked above 30,000 viewers during last year's Occupy evictions, making Pool's raw and unedited reporting a model hundreds of other live-streamers have followed.
Pool plans to organize a global collective of live-streamers to create an alternative news network that gets the story live on the streets before the traditional news vans arrive. "There are not enough streamers for breaking 24-hour global news coverage," he says, "but we're getting pretty close."
The ubiquity of smartphones has contributed to America's decline as a champion of free speech and freedom of the press. The U.S. dropped to 22nd place on Freedom House's annual ranking of press freedoms. We're now tied with Estonia and Jamaica. Our flagging status is due to the "detentions, rough police tactics, and other difficulties encountered [by those] covering protests associated with the Occupy movement," according to Freedom House.
The First Amendment a 'Nuisance'
Many arrests result from snap judgments officers make when encountering a swarm of smartphone-carrying citizen reporters.
People, and even police officers, often don't understand our rights with regard to public photography. At the local level the newsgathering rights of every individual, whether credentialed as a journalist or not, become even murkier.
But that's changing. In January, the Justice Department filed a statement urging the U.S. District Court of Maryland to uphold an individual's "First Amendment right to record police officers in the public discharge of their duties" and to find that "officers violate citizens' Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment rights when they seize and destroy such recordings without warrant or due process."
In late March, Simon Glik won a civil suit against the City of Boston, after the First Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously ruled against his arrest for attempting to record police brutality. The court found that Glik had a "constitutionally protected right to videotape police carrying out their duties in public."
In early May, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit ordered a preliminary injunction against the Illinois Eavesdopping Act, which made the recording of police officers without their consent a felony, punishable by four to 15 years in prison.
Police departments like having a degree of flexibility in interpreting the law as it gives their officers loose rein to arrest anyone they deem a nuisance, even when they know their case will collapse before the courts.
"When I have been confronted by officers the implicit threat is that if I continued to videotape, they would take away my liberty," says advocacy journalist Bill Huston. Police have harassed Huston as he's attempted to record public events related to the fracking controversy in Pennsylvania and New York.
"Even though this is constitutionally protected behavior, the police will intimidate you and demand that you follow their orders," he said. "Even though we get a legal remedy in the courts we are still prevented from videotaping on the scene. Our rights are still violated. This is not how the system is supposed to work."
Smartphone Journalism
Though cases involving our right to record have not yet reached the Supreme Court, it may only be a matter of time. Thus far most of the lower courts have found a rock-solid First Amendment argument for taking photos and video of law enforcement officers in public.
The nation's leading free speech and civil rights groups agree. Earlier this month, we wrote U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder urging him to address ongoing abuse of our First Amendment freedoms and protect everyone's right to record.
While the media landscape has changed, our First Amendment rights haven't. Freedom of the press is more important, not less, when anyone with a mobile phone and an Internet connection can act as a journalist.


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175USD$175 USD excl. VAT
In 1968 the students' revolts in Paris, Rome and the United States were overthrowing stiff, old values, and initiating the Flower-Power generation of peace, love and harmony. Same year, Stanley Kubrick pictured the future of the year 2001, featuring the Verner Panton Chair, and man was soon to set foot on the moon. In the world of design, a colourful, playful pendant hung in restaurants and exhibitions, and very soon, in everybody's homes. The FlowerPot with its two semicircular spheres facing each other has long proved its lasting design quality and is just as much a synonym of our time, too. & In his young days, Panton often set off from Copenhagen in an odd looking converted Volkswagen for a trek across Europe, dropping in on fellow designers to share ideas - and good meals.


text:
New product
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Damask Print Charmeuse Pad Cover-White/Black
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Fabric: Damask Print Charmeuse
Width: 58
Fabric Content: 100% Polyester
Our pad covers are designed to fit standard Chiavari Chair cushions. If unsure about fit, please contact us to request a sample prior to ordering in bulk. For other sizes or custom requests please contact us at email@example.com
Our pad covers are sewn shower-cap style with an elastic band at the bottom for a snug, clean fit. Ties are attached at back corners that allow the pad cover to be secured to the chair.
Our Chair Pads have a minimum purchase requirement of 50 pieces. To request a sample to ensure sizing meets your needs, please contact us via email.
Prestige Linens provides suggestions on washing and maintaining fabrics on each product page based on the content of the material. These are strictly suggestions and are not guaranteed. Prestige Linens does not test materials for maintenance procedures. All products should be tested prior to washing/drying/steaming or any other maintenance process is performed. Prestige Linens is not responsible for products damaged through any maintenance or cleaning process. Clients are advised to thoroughly test the material they are purchasing to avoid possible damage during cleaning and maintenance.
Machine wash in cold water, delicate, tumble dry low. Use warm iron
This product is proudly manufactured in the USA at our Troy, Michigan facility. Please allow between 3-10 business days for production. Have a rush request? We work best under pressure! Please contact us with the details of your rush order and we'll do our very best to accommodate!


text:
Following the Bradley Manning verdict, a number of individuals and organizations have weighed in to highlight just how big the chilling effects of the guilty verdict will be. While being found not guilty of "aiding the enemy" meant that it wasn't the "worst case" scenario, it's still bad. Dan Gillmor does an excellent job laying out the simple facts about how the "unrelenting war" on leaks and whistleblowing will have damaging impact on the press, and by extension, the public.
For those who want to tell the public what the government is doing with our money and in our name, there are new imperatives. Governmental secrecy, surveillance and the systematic silencing of whistleblowers require updated methods for journalists and journalism organizations of all kinds. Americans pursuing this craft have to understand the risks and find countermeasures.
That is not enough. The public needs to awaken to the threat to its own freedoms from the Obama crackdown on leaks and, by extension, journalism and free speech itself. We are, more and more, a society where unaccountable people can commit unspeakable acts with impunity. They are creating a surveillance state that makes not just dissent, but knowledge itself, more and more dangerous. What we know about this is entirely due to leakers and their outlets. Ignorance is only bliss for the unaccountable.
Gillmor also quotes another journalist, Jeremy Scahill, who points out that: "We're in a moment when journalism is being criminalized."
Many in the journalism world are realizing this. Reporters Without Borders put out a statement about how damaging this is for investigative reporters and their sources:
The verdict is warning to all whistleblowers, against whom the Obama administration has been waging an unprecedented offensive that has ignored the public interest in their revelations. It also threatens the future of investigative journalism, which risks finding its sources drying up.
"The information that Manning allegedly passed to WikiLeaks — used by newspapers such as The New York Times, The Guardian, Der Spiegel and Le Monde in coordination with Julian Assange's website — included revelations of grave abuses in the 'war on terror' launched by the Bush administration," Reporters Without Borders said.
Similarly, the Freedom of the Press Foundation is worried about the consequences, specifically over the conviction over the CFAA and how this will impact future cases:
Manning is now the most high profile conviction under President Obama's crackdown on leakers. As has been well documented, his administration has prosecuted more leakers under the Espionage Act that all other administration's combined, and has cast a distinct chill over investigative journalism.
The Espionage Act, a draconian statute written in 1917 as a way to punish non-violent opponents of World War I, has unfortunately been used in recent years to equate leakers and whistleblowers with spies and traitors. Facilitating that warped view in Manning's trial, the judge ruled early on that the defense was not allowed to put forth evidence of Manning's sole intent to inform the American public, or evidence showing that none of the information materially harmed national security.
Today's ruling also opens up a new avenue for charging leakers and whistleblowers—section (a)(1) of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, which until now, has never led to a conviction. It's was crafted in the 1990s by using some of the worst parts of the Espionage Act and adding the phrase "with a computer."
Michael Calderone, over at the Huffington Post noted that future whistleblowers of government fraud and abuse are likely to think twice now — which some might argue was the entire point of the overzealous prosecution.
That Manning was convicted of six counts of espionage, out of 19 counts total, highlights the Obama administration's unprecedented use of the Espionage Act to prosecute individuals for leaking information not to foreign governments, but to the media. The Obama administration has invoked the Espionage Act seven times, with the most recent example being in the case of Edward Snowden, a former NSA contractor who shed light on the extent of the U.S. surveillance state with leaks to The Guardian and the Post.
Elizabeth Goitein, co-director of the Liberty and National Security Program at the Brennan Center for Justice, said it's a "very scary precedent" that "despite the lack of any evidence that he intended any harm to the United States, Manning faces decades in prison."
If basic whistleblowers are frightened, it's going to make the press's job harder, and it's going to make the government's ability to commit fraud and abuse that much easier.
Meanwhile, the EFF has pointed out the ridiculousness of the CFAA conviction as a part of the ruling against Manning:
the decision today continues a trend of government prosecutions that use familiarity with digital tools and knowledge of computers as a scare tactic and a basis for obtaining grossly disproportionate and unfair punishments, strategies enabled by broad, vague laws like the CFAA and the Espionage Act. Let's call this the "hacker madness" strategy. Using it, the prosecution portrays actions taken by someone using a computer as more dangerous or scary than they actually are by highlighting the digital tools used to a nontechnical or even technophobic judge.
In the Manning case, the prosecution used Manning's use of a standard, over 15-year-old Unix program called Wget to collect information, as if it were a dark and nefarious technique. Of course, anyone who has ever called up this utility on a Unix machine, which at this point is likely millions of ordinary Americans, knows that this program is no more scary or spectacular (and far less powerful) than a simple Google search. Yet the court apparently didn't know this and seemed swayed by it.
You can argue that Manning didn't follow the chain of command to blow the whistle (even though he tried) and that he released documents that he shouldn't have (even if there's no evidence that they did any real harm), but the impact of this ruling, and the eventual sentencing is going to have far-reaching implications, beyond just Manning. The government's overzealous prosecution is going to have serious chilling effects, and has opened up some highly questionable legal theories just because this leak happened "with a computer."
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text:
Empower change.
McDermott + Bull is leading the way in transforming recruitment services worldwide, one relationship at a time.
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Our passionate, international team comes with industry experience and executive expertise.
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text:
Investors Letter
The letter gives us a chance to take our investors through the general market conditions in simple terms- as well as give them a personalized brief of the portfolios and an opportunity to see where the market is heading in the medium and long term.
Investors Articles
Inspired from the experience of industry experts we bring you with a collection of blogs,corporate training, market trends & forecasts and much more. Insightful news and analysis that will support investors in making crucial decisions.
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Home matters offer tons of free tips for homeowners and renters alike. DIYs, tips, hacks, interiors ideas, home decor all at one place. Collection of ideas on how to decorate and how to organize your home the best way.
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text:
This project uses Subversion to manage its source code. Instructions on Subversion use can be found at http://svnbook.red-bean.com/.
Web Access
There is no online source repository listed for this project. Please check back again later.
Anonymous access
The source can be checked out anonymously from SVN with this command:
$ svn checkout https://dev.nightlabs.org/svn/public/cumulus4j/trunk/ org.cumulus4j.aggregator
Access from behind a firewall
Refer to the documentation of the SCM used for more information about access behind a firewall.
Access through a proxy
The Subversion client can go through a proxy, if you configure it to do so. First, edit your "servers" configuration file to indicate which proxy to use. The file's location depends on your operating system. On Linux or Unix it is located in the directory "~/.subversion". On Windows it is in "%APPDATA%\Subversion". (Try "echo %APPDATA%", note this is a hidden directory.)
There are comments in the file explaining what to do. If you don't have that file, get the latest Subversion client and run any command; this will cause the configuration directory and template files to be created.
Example: Edit the 'servers' file and add something like:
[global] http-proxy-host = your.proxy.name http-proxy-port = 3128
Project Documentation


text:
Secure, private, and simple to use, Joomla Bookkeeping creates a fully featured accounting system in your Joomla! admin area with no technical knowledge needed.
The first and only bookkeeping accounting extension for Joomla, allowing you to run your business accounts through your website administration area. The system is fully featured, and constantly being updated with a huge roadmap ahead.
We never wanted to add our accounting information in to a 3rd party companies website, what happens if they are hacked, who really has access to it, you have no money one month, the data is deleted!
You already have a website, why not use that to store and control your data... only you have access, you can make your own backups, and only you know it is there.
100% open and designed from the ground up for the Joomla system.
Only you know it is there, not even we know where it is.
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Easily change/edit the invoices, quotes and email templates.
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by CJ McDaniel
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February 7, 2023 in
About the author
CJ grew up admiring books. His family owned a small bookstore throughout his early childhood, and he would spend weekends flipping through book after book, always sure to read the ones that looked the most interesting. Not much has changed since then, except now some of those interesting books he picks off the shelf were designed by his company!
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We invite you to join us for a
Open House
about the park's Multimodal Transportation Plan
Tuesday, March 4, 2014
5 p.m. to 7 p.m.
Bryce Canyon National Park Visitor Center Highway 63 Bryce Canyon, UT 84764 Conference Room D
Join the National Park Service for an open house to hear updates on the Multimodal Transportation Plan and Environmental Assessment for Bryce Canyon National Park. The park has prepared an environmental assessment to analyze potential impacts from each alternative, including the agency's preferred alternative. Your input is needed to address remaining concerns and allow NPS staff to reach a final decision, finalize the plan, and begin its implementation.
The public comment period begins on Friday, February 14, 2014, continues for 32 days, and concludes on Monday, March 17, 2014. Please see the contact information below to submit your comments.
@BryceCanyonNPS Scan with your smart phone to learn more!
For more information: 435-834-4753 http://parkplanning.nps.gov/brca [email protected]
National Park Service M U L T I M O D A L U.S. Department of the Interior TRANSPORTATION PLAN Bryce Canyon National Park
January 22, 2014 14-03
For Immediate Release
Kathleen Gonder, (435)834-4740
Dear Friend of Bryce Canyon National Park:
The National Park Service (NPS) has prepared an environmental assessment (EA) for a Multimodal Transportation Plan at Bryce Canyon National Park. This project will enable the park to test, implement and refine current and future transportation solutions in an integrated, flexible context over the next 20 years. With your input, we hope to finalize and start implementing the transportation plan this summer!
The desired outcomes of the final transportation plan include:
• Reducing traffic congestion and parking shortages
• Increasing safety and improving visitors' experiences
• Eliminating or minimizing resource conflicts
• Improving connectivity for all modes of transportation, including public transportation, private vehicles, tour buses, pedestrians and bicycles
In order to develop a successful transportation plan, the EA analyzed a range of potential solutions that include expanding parking, increasing shuttle service, encouraging different visitation patterns, and changing park operations. The NPS preferred alternative includes the best elements from each of the other action alternatives.
Using a strong adaptive management approach, the preferred alternative promotes science-based decision- making that provides park managers the flexibility to make adjustments and implement the suite of solutions proposed in the plan, as needed. Under this alternative, the park would encourage alternative transportation options such as the shuttle, tour buses, walking, and cycling. The park would also test the effectiveness of parking expansions, seasonal vehicle restrictions, and parking time limits. Travel information for visitors would also be improved to encourage more sustainable visitation patterns.
The public is invited to attend an open house to review the alternatives considered and provide feedback about the agency's preferred alternative. The open house will be held on Tuesday, March 4, 2014 from 5 to 7 p.m. at Bryce Canyon National Park Visitor Center, Conference Room D, on the top floor of the building.
An open comment period will begin on Friday, February 14, 2014. Those wishing to provide comments should submit them in writing as soon as possible, but no later than Monday, March 17, 2014. Comments can be submitted online at http://parkplanning.nps.gov/brca, or sent to [email protected], or to Bryce Canyon National Park,
P.O. Box 640201, Bryce, UT 84764. Respondents should include their name, address and email to be added to the mailing list for more information about this project. Remember that unless requested otherwise, a list of all those that comment during public review periods, including their addresses, is available upon request.
Thank you in advance and we look forward to seeing you at the Public and Partners Open House! Bryce Canyon National Park For more information: 435-834-4753 http://parkplanning.nps.gov/brca [email protected]
Bryce Canyon Transportation Meeting


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Beyond the Lottery
Fired Up: Free Agency
Perhaps it would make more sense for the NBA's free-agency period to come before the draft.
When you go after a free agent to fill a need for your team you know that player is a solid bet because you've seen him compete in the league for a number of years, as opposed to draft candidates who are still unproven at the NBA level.
If the signing period for free agents came prior to the draft, you could pursue the pros you know will help your team and then fill out the rest of your roster at draft time accordingly.
For example, if the Nets had already signed Deron Williams, would they have made a draft-night trade with Portland for Tyshawn Taylor? Brooklyn may still have selected the promising young PG to groom him for a bigger role down the road, but they might have played their cards differently if they had locked in their All-Star point guard before the draft.


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The World's Most Unhealthy Health Foods
Don't sabotage your nutrition efforts with shady supermarket products masquerading as health food. Here's how to avoid the worst offenders.
Heading out the door? Read this article on the new Outside+ app available now on iOS devices for members! Download the app.
Once upon a time, the rules of clean eating were pretty straightforward: eat lots of plants, get your protein from lean sources, don't stuff yourself. But thanks to a ballooning packaged-foods industry and a never-ending desire to make healthy eating even more convenient, it's actually harder than ever to make good nutrition choices.
It's easy to identify the healthy and harmful foods on the extreme edges of the spectrum—French fries are bad, kale is good—but things get blurrier in the middle. While one yogurt in the dairy case might be innocuous—or even healthy—its neighbor may bear more resemblance to a candy bar than a glass of milk.
When it comes to food, details matter. So too does being up on the most recent nutrition literature, as the tide turns quickly in dietary research. Take, for example, agave nectar: a few years ago, it was heralded as a better, safer sugar. Today, it's considered just as bad as all the other sweeteners.
Here are ten foods consumers often consider to be "healthy," even though the research says otherwise. Avoid them.
Gluten-Free Products
The Claim
Gluten causes all sorts of bodily evils like gastric distress, bloating, inflammation, and weight gain. Swapping your favorite grain-heavy products for gluten-free options will improve your overall health.
The Problem
If you suffer from celiac disease or are gluten intolerant, gluten-free foods are a lifesaver. Eat them as you wish.
For everyone else, they're—at best—a waste of money. A 2008 study in the Canadian Journal of Dietary Practice and Research found that, on average, gluten-free products were 242 percent more expensive than their traditional counterparts.
At worst, they can be harmful. "The number of Americans who are eating gluten-free has tripled over the past five years to 2.7 million Americans, as the term has become synonymous with healthy," says Adrienne Youdim, MD, an obesity specialist and an associate professor of medicine at the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine and the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. She adds that many people assume cutting out gluten translates to cutting carbs.
That's simply not true. "Many packaged foods labeled 'gluten-free' are not, in fact, healthy." She adds that things like gluten-free pasta, pizza, bread, and cookies can be loaded with preservatives, sugar, and fat to replace the wheat or gluten. And gluten-free diets are not associated with weight loss, period. Plus, many of these products are missing the fiber that whole-grain wheat possesses, so the same amount of the gluten-free version won't fill you up like a bowl of the real stuff.
Peanut Butter
The Claim
Fat is calorie dense, with nine calories per gram, but it's the "good" kind of fat, so you can eat spoonfuls with no shame.
The Problem
Peanut butter is a high-calorie food, and as long as you're sticking to the all-natural, no-sugar-added varieties, you'll benefit from the good-for-you fats found in this spread. "It's the type of fat, not the amount of fat overall, that really matters when it comes to health," says Jessica Levings, an Orlando-based registered dietitian. "Monounsaturated fat is one type of 'healthy' fat that helps reduce your risk of heart disease, and it's found in greatest amounts in foods, such as peanuts and peanut butter."
That said, there are healthier nut butter options that give you more nutrition for the same amount of calories. Walnut butter is much more nutrient dense than its peanut-derived cousin: it has the highest concentration of omega-3 fatty acids, says Levings. Almond butter has more calcium than any other nut butter, adds Meghan Windham, a registered dietitian at Texas A&M. Your best bet is to mix things up by reaching for different jars each time you find yourself in the nut butter aisle.
Green Juice
The Claim
Pressed kale, celery, and apples will "detoxify" your body. Weight loss, clear skin, better sleep, and enhanced mental clarity are all touted as results of juicing.
The Problem
Your body doesn't need much help getting rid of the bad stuff. "The liver naturally detoxes our bodies, and if we eat real, whole foods that are rich in antioxidants and fiber, then our body systems will run efficiently and promote optimal wellness," says Kelly Puryear, a Tampa-based registered dietitian. "When you juice, you remove fiber and leave the sugar behind. Sugar in the absence of fiber will promote a rapid rise in blood glucose levels," says Youdim. Eat the whole fruit for a steadier rise in blood sugar that will give you more sustained energy.
In moderation, green juices can provide lots of nutrients—they're not as bad as downing a pack of Twinkies. If you aren't actively trying to lose weight, Youdim says it's fine to slam the occasional glass of juice. Just don't make it a daily habit.
Veggie Chips
The Claim
They're made from veggies, so how bad can they be? Some companies even boldly proclaim that their snacks should count toward your daily servings of vegetables.
The Problem
"A fried chip is a fried chip. It does not matter if it's a fried potato chip, a fried beet chip, or a fried taro chip," says Youdim. "The harmful ingredient is not the thing being fried but the saturated and trans fats being used in the frying process." But also, if you look closely at the labels of most veggie chips, starchy ingredients—like potatoes—are listed way before green ones. This one, for example, is made up mainly of potatoes and corn meal, plus oil. "Veggie powder" is almost an afterthought as one of the last ingredients in the list. And even that doesn't sound healthy.
Lunch Meats
The Claim
Many, like pressed turkey, are lean and high in protein. At first glance, they seem like the perfect option for Atkins-style eaters or those trying to cut calories.
The Problem
Lunch meats are soaked in sodium, often containing 300 milligrams per serving. Plus, many use fillers versus whole muscle, says Windham. Things like bologna and salami are especially guilty of this, containing "mechanically separated chicken and pork."
Also problematic is that companies douse most sandwich meats with synthetic nitrates, which act as a preservative, as well as artificial flavor and colors. If you're addicted to the quick and easy lunchtime sandwich, Levings recommends looking for "no nitrate added" offerings, or check out the deli counter and ask them to lay out any additional ingredients that may be in their offerings that day.
Microwave Popcorn
The Claim
As a whole-grain, fiber-rich snack, popcorn can fill you up with lots of volume but not a ton of calories.
The Problem
Some brands of popcorn can absolutely equate to a virtuous snack, says Levings. But reading the ingredient list is key. "Many microwave popcorns contain partially hydrogenated oils and excess sodium." And FYI: kettle corn is basically candied popcorn, with lots of added sugar.
When shopping, look for brands that use olive oil and try to keep the sodium levels under 150 milligrams per serving. For a better option, Levings has her clients make their own popcorn. "Place a quarter-cup of popcorn kernels into a paper lunch-size bag. Fold the top over a few times and microwave using the popcorn setting."
Instant Oatmeal
The Claim
According to a 2014 review of studies in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, oats can reduce levels of LDL cholesterol, thanks to its soluble fiber. Plus, soluble fiber is filling, meaning you're less likely to do the "it's 10 a.m., I wonder if there are donuts in the breakroom" shuffle.
The Problem
Plain, unsweetened instant oats are an excellent choice. "Instant oatmeal has just been chopped up more finely to where it cooks quicker than something like steel-cut oats," says Windham. Unfortunately, most of us don't dig into a bowl of plain oats and think, "This is delicious!" So we tend to reach for the sugar-saturated flavored varieties. Many popular brands contain up to 12 grams of sugar per packet—just slightly less than the 14 grams you'd get in a serving of Oreos. Rather than succumbing to store-bought flavored packages, try adding your own mix-ins so you can control the sweetness and watch the nutrition. A classic combo? Almond butter and banana.
Meat Substitutes
The Claim
Plant-based diets have a ton of benefits, from lowering risks for cardiovascular disease to reducing cancer risks. Soy nuggets, veggie burgers, and tofurkey all promise meat-like taste and texture without all the ethical and health concerns that accompany a rib eye.
The Problem
"The majority of ingredients in most processed meat substitutes are really just isolates and concentrates (predominantly soy), which have far less nutritional value than plant-based foods in their whole, unprocessed form," says Levings. You're much better off making veggie burgers from scratch. You can find Levings' favorite black bean burger recipe here.
Meal Replacement Bars and Shakes
The Claim
These grab-and-go, protein-rich items are perfect for refueling after a workout or noshing when you're too busy to make a real lunch.
The Problem
Most of these shakes and bars are full of highly processed ingredients, like denatured proteins, artificial sweeteners, and sodium. Also, "most have too much protein per serving for your body to process and use at one meal and not enough carbohydrates to assist in the metabolism and utilization of the protein in the body," says Puryear. She adds that research has shown that most humans can metabolize only about 20 grams of protein at a time—a shake with 60 grams will just overload your system.
Plus, your body has a harder time absorbing denatured proteins compared with whole-protein counterparts. If you do need the convenience of a shake, Puryear suggests "selecting protein sources that are most efficiently digested and absorbed by the body, such as whey protein isolate and egg protein," and look for whole-food ingredients on the label whenever possible.
Agave Nectar
The Claim
It's a natural sweetener with a lower glycemic index than sugar, meaning it won't spike blood sugar as drastically as other sweeteners. Plus, it sounds natural. Right?
The Problem
Wrong. This is one of those examples where it pays to keep an eye on nutrition research, because things change quickly. Although agave nectar is high in fructose, which moderates blood sugar better than eating straight glucose, it's not a worry-free way to satisfy your sweet tooth. "Recent research has found that fructose may actually increase insulin resistance in diabetics and nondiabetics alike," says Puryear. This could be potentially worse than just spiking blood sugar. Finally, sugar is sugar, and if someone is evangelizing about a healthy version, it's best to be skeptical.


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Summary: It's a script. Trumped up crisis, heated rhetoric from US leaders, vague plan, violent actions, long-term regrets. Change the names and our wars sound the same. Here are valuable resources explaining the Syrian situation, and the far more important question about the nature of these wars: why do we repeat the same mistakes?
- What we have here is a failure to learn
- Analysis of our pending war with Syria
- The futility of analysis if it doesn't lead to public action
- For More Information about Syria & our mad wars
(1) What we have here is a failure to learn.
Yet again it appears we go off to war, in pursuit of vague goals, following the advice of people wrong in the past, repeating tactics that have repeatedly failed us. Even if the merits of a war with Syria, the overall situation should make us pause. And, like our previous adventures, the situation is far from clear.
There is no need to grind over the details. Others have done so better than I (see the links below). It's the opposite of on the edge of the known, and so not in our ambit. But there is a question: why do we repeat the same mistakes? We have done these mad interventions so many times, with almost uniformly bad results. The bloodletting in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya continues as your read this. Before each of these wise experts accurately foretold the result. We did not listen. We did not learn. Despite repeated failures.
This is an important question, affecting the prosperity and perhaps even survival of America. I draw three conclusions (prelude to an answer):
- It is not a lack of good advice. After so many cycles, the good analysis and advice flows rapidly but to no effect.
- These mad interventions, taken against growing public opposition, are teachable moments. They prove that the government has slipped its reins, evolved beyond our control. The consequences of failure to reassert our control will be horrific. It's a political problem. A domestic political problem.
- While our wars result largely from domestic dysfuncationality, these repeated interventions in the Middle East are the equivalent of playing with nitroglycerin. Eventually there will be an explosion.
Please post your ideas in the comments.
(2) Analysis of our pending war with Syria
I strongly recommend these as among the best analysis of this situation. Note the two from The Onion; unfortunately they are straight news reporting. Nothing shows our dysfunctionality as fact also being black humor.
- Results of our previous intervention: "'Violent chaos': Libya in deep crisis 2 years since rebels took over", RT, 26 August 2013
- "Questions for President Obama — Before He Pulls the Trigger on Syria", Andrew Bacevich, "Bill Moyers & CO", 26 August 2013
- "Experts Point To Long, Glorious History Of Successful U.S. Bombing Campaigns", The Onion, 27 August 2013
- "Obama Weighing His Syria Option", The Onion, 27 August 2013
- "They're Baaack: Neocons Launch Push for Regime Change", Kelley Beaucar Vlahos, AntiWar Blog, 27 August 2013
- As usual, a crazy historical precedent given for our new mad war: "The Kosovo Precedent: Syria in the Crosshairs", Franklin "Chuck" Spinney, CounterPunch, 27 August 2013
- Asking the questions that Obama will not answer (and probably does not have answer): "Making War In Syria", Charles P. Pierce, Esquire, 27 August 2013
- Dissecting the usual nonsense in the Weekly Standard: "'Experts' Who Are Always Wrong About Everything Want to Bomb Syria", Scott Lemieux (Prof History & Pol Sci, College of St Rose), 27 August 2013
- "How an Insular Beltway Elite Makes Wars of Choice More Likely", Conor Friedersdorf, The Atlantic, 28 August 2013 — "The pressure on President Obama to intervene in Syria is hyped, and the pressure to stay out of the conflict is unjustly ignored." In DC only hawks are considered legitimate experts.
(3) The futility of analysis if it doesn't lead to public action
(4) For More Information
Posts about Syria
- The Syrian dominos, Tom Hayden, 25 October 2012
- Some questions as we march to war in Syria, 17 June 2013
A guide to our mad wars:
- A guide to our Middle East Wars – change you cannot see, 31 March 2009
- Is America a destabilizing force in the world?, 23 January 2009
- "War without end", a great article by George Wilson, 27 June 2009
- Every day brings new advocacy for war. That's our America.,
1 November 2010
- A look back at the madness that led us into our wars. How does this advice read 6 years later?, 26 June 2010
- About the violent mobs in the Middle East. And in America, 16 September 2012


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Direct Actions are action methods that can be called without a WOSession. As opposed to Component Actions, where a WOSession is required and various form values are bound as objects, Direct Actions perform much more like traditional web frameworks where the form values are accessed via WORequest's formValues dictionary and cookies. Direct Actions are very useful for building stateless, high-performing websites, though you lose some of the easy-of-development that makes WebObjects provides with Component Actions.
Pages are still generated in the usual way, but if you want the links generated in the page to employ Direct Actions when clicked, ie. to create Direct Action URLs, you must make appropriate bindings.
Direct Actions can be used in conjunction with Sessions if desired, in much the same way that Sessions work with other web technologies - the correct Session object will be located automatically from information in the URL or in a cookie, and state can be obtained and altered in it.
Among other things, Direct Actions are typically used if no Session whatsoever is desired (uses less resource), or if bookmarkable or easily created URLs are required. DirectActions are also often used to provide multiple entry points to your application, each with it's own URL---but then subsequently returning components that use the ordinary Component Actions.
Direct Actions would also be good to use if you don't need the additional convenience of the Component Actions, simply because they come without any of its disadvantages. However, it's quite difficult to create a whole WO application without creating a WOSession and most of the time, you're going to need it anyway.
David LeBer's Articles
David LeBer has a great series of articles on using Direct Actions:
- Using WebObjects DirectActions pt. 1
- Using WebObjects DirectActions pt. 2
- Calling a DirectAction with values from a form
- Calling a DirectAction with values from a WOHyperlink
- Calling a DirectAction with values from a WORedirect
This page is a place to put notes and tips you've found useful when using direct actions.
- For a quick tour using direct actions see (on Mac OS X, WO 5.x): /Developer/Examples/JavaWebObjects/ThinkMovies
- When using direct actions in conjunction with a form that contains WOText or textarea elements you'll have to remove any \r\n (soft returns) that are sent back from the client yourself. In a component action page the WOText element takes care of this for you, but when you pull the value from the request's form values yourself you need to handle the soft returns on your own. You should likely just convert them to \n.


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