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Emergent Global Classes and What They Mean for Immigration Politics
Transnational professionals, government officials working on cross-border issues, civil society activists, and specific segments of the immigrant population are each beginning to emerge as groupings that are simultaneously national and global. For shorthand we might think of these as global classes, even though it stretches the standard meaning of the concept of class.
Relevant to the immigration question as we enter the 21st century is that the formation of these global classes has begun to denationalize particular aspects of the nation-state. This is significant at a time of intensifying nationalism and anti-immigrant sentiment.
In my reading, insufficient attention has been paid to the fact that critical components of globalization actually are happening inside the nation-state itself, including in the economy, society, and the polity. The broad mix of processes involved begins to partly denationalize the nation-state from the inside out. This denationalization is far less visible, and often more specialized and partial, than today's overarching nationalism. But it is no less real. I think it is part of the future and can coexist with old-fashioned nationalism. Global classes are part of this larger process of denationalization.
The particular feature of these classes I want to focus on here is their ambiguous position between the global and the national, and the fact that government officials, powerful professionals, and powerless immigrant workers are all in this ambiguous position. In fact, this ambiguity is a window into a reality-in-the-making, a reality that will have to be factored into policymaking in a whole range of domains, each with its own specifics, including immigration policy.
Transnational Professionals: Migrant Workers with Rights
National attachments and identities are becoming weaker for global firms and their customers. This is particularly strong in the West now, but it is spreading to other parts of the world as well.
The products and services of global firms are available in just about all national markets, and national investors can access global markets. Further, most major firms now boast vast worldwide networks of affiliates (of about one million in 2005) as well as other types of collaborative arrangements with local firms.
At the same time, top-level managerial functions tend to be concentrated in a network of about 40 global cities worldwide. Within this geography, we see even sharper concentrations of those functions. For instance, major U.S., Japanese, and Continental European firms are using London as their platform for launching Europe-wide operations. It all amounts to a complex architecture with a broad base of affiliates and other arrangements spread over the globe, along with a limited number of global city locations for the most strategic operations.
One result is that corporate globalization requires vast numbers of highly mobile professionals, managers, executives, and technical staff. They are a distinct stratum, often quite separate from the managers and professionals of national firms.
These transnational professionals make cross-border transactions commonplace, reinforce new global standards, and generate new economic cultures. But their work requires a vast physical infrastructure of state-of-the-art office buildings, residential districts, airports, and hotels, much of it concentrated in a growing number of global cities.
This network of cities functions as an organizational infrastructure for the management side of the global corporate economy. The new transnational professional workforce both navigates through, and contributes to the construction of, this cross-border, corporate economic space.
But this also means that this most global of classes and their work are partially embedded in national terrains — most conspicuously the network of global cities. To be global and hypermobile, transnational elites need national states to provide or at least authorize a variety of conditions, from physical to legal. Consequently, transnational elites are somewhat dependent on national states, a fact easily obscured by the language of the new cosmopolitanism and hypermobile capital. In this process, the network of global cities functions as one key dynamic for denationalizing segments of the national corporate economy and its legal and regulatory framings.
This global professional class is not necessarily a cosmopolitan class. The profit-making force that creates this cross-border domain has few resemblances to the forces driving and constituting cosmopolitanism in the rich sense of the word. While this new transnational professional class may become open to diverse cuisines, cultures, and urban landscapes, it is the drive for profits that actually defines them.
The fact that the global corporate economy is partly embedded in national territories brings with it the need for rights of admission to those countries. National states have provided new visas and renovated old types of visas for global firms and professionals. Insufficiently noted is the fact that all the major free trade agreements also provide such rights of access to professionals.
The World Trade Organization (WTO) and the North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), among others, give transnational professionals mobility rights. These rights constitute a new legal "infrastructure." Professionals in each of the specific sectors, which include finance, business services, and telecommunications, can reside in any signatory country for at least three years and enjoy various rights and protections. This runs in the face of the explicit position of free-trade agreements, which do not deal with immigration.
The mobility rights free-trade agreements give professionals are buried under such headings as "the internationalization of trade and investment in business services." This language obscures the fact that these are mobility rights given to what are ultimately migrant workers.
A global regime for "migrant workers" with rights is unlikely to become a model that can be extended to low-wage migrants. The new transnational professional class is generally considered economically beneficial and therefore unproblematic. It seems far-fetched that national governments would agree to trade treaties that provide the same rights to less-skilled migrant workers.
Notably, in the most recent free-trade negotiations, the U.S. Congress made it clear that the Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) could not include migration provisions for any type of worker. And yet, global firms might call for such provisions in new types of agreements in the near future. Several multinationals already are beginning to supply firms anywhere in the world with lower-level workers and, most recently, professional households with "standardized" nannies and housekeepers.
Transnational Networks of Government Officials
Transgovernmental networks have existed for a long time. New types of networks that emerged in the 1980s and 1990s are clearly connected to corporate globalization and the globalizing of other governmental responsibilities and aims, e.g. regarding human rights, the environment, money laundering, and now the fight against terrorism.
The key actors are government officials from the pertinent national ministries or agencies. They include trade ministers in the WTO, finance ministers in the International Monetary Fund (IMF), defense and foreign ministers in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and central bankers in the Bank for International Settlements. Regional organizations, such as the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the EU Council of Ministers, also have specialized networks composed of various government officials.
These are often enormously powerful networks in charge of critical work in the development of a global corporate economy. In some cases, the secretariats of diverse international institutions set up networks of officials from specific governments to act as a negotiating vanguard in developing new rules that will apply eventually to all members; examples of this are the negotiations for the trade-related aspects of intellectual property rights (TRIPS), for the WTO, for the governance of the Internet, and so on.
This is no longer the post-World War II Bretton Woods era, when the aim was intergovernmental or international communication and collaboration. It is, rather, a deregulatory project that aims to denationalize those components of national states necessary for corporate globalization. In the early Bretton Woods period, the project was one of global governance to protect national economies from excess international fluctuations. By the 1980s, the goal was to open up national economies and create hospitable environments for global firms and markets.
A similar dynamic is evident in networks with very different aims, such as implementing global environmental standards, protecting human rights, fighting terrorism, and other noneconomic efforts.
Most recently there has been a proliferation of agreements between domestic regulatory agencies of two or more countries; they have seen a far sharper growth than traditional treaty negotiations. These are agreements that can be instituted by the domestic regulators themselves and, in this sense, are an interesting instance of denationalized state work; they do not require approval by national legislators. In my reading, their growth is yet another indicator of the increasing power of the executive branch of government and its frequent alignment with global projects.
A new development is the growth of informal networks that operate outside formal intergovernmental treaties and executive agreements. Examples are various networks of private and government sector experts working on all sorts of international standards, antiterrorism initiatives, and so on. The results are not legally binding on member states, but they are often preparatory work for eventual formal arrangements.
In the case of immigration, we see the formation of such an informal network in the July 2006 meeting in Rabat of over 50 leaders from countries sending and receiving immigrants into the EU. This was a historic first. Sending countries all over the world for decades have resisted the idea of meeting with receiving countries to develop immigration policy.
Also notable is that one reason for the meeting was a recognition by EU receiving countries that current policy aimed almost exclusively at border control on the EU perimeter is not serving anyone's interest.
Finally, also important was the meeting's relatively narrow focus on migration from western Sub-Saharan African countries to the EU. It involved the governments of 27 African and 30 European countries. It was not a global event. It was a working session with a transnational agenda. The U.S.-Mexico Binational Commission, launched in the 1980s, is another example of an informal network of government officials who work on immigration issues.
The work of the pertinent, typically highly specialized, government officials in these networks begins to get oriented towards a global project. One consequence is an increased camaraderie among officials within each transnational network and often a growing distance with colleagues from the national bureaucracies back home. In this sense, then, we can speak of an incipient global class that occupies an ambiguous position between the national and the global.
The New Global Class of Disadvantaged
Most of the people touched by globalization are quite immobile. They are not part of a traveling transnational professional class or of international government elites. They lack the means or permissions to travel, and perhaps even the disposition.
Yet, despite being thus "disadvantaged," they are often either objectively or subjectively part of specific forms of globality. They do so as (poor) consumers, as (low-wage) workers, and as members of nonelite, transnational migrant families and communities. In fact, they can also do so as political activists. Even if immobile, they can construct and join cross-border networks.
The key here is that localized activist struggles can be global even if completely engaged locally. That does not mean all local struggles are global. But compared with the recent past, today a growing number are, even though they are still a minority of all such local struggles.
The mobile disadvantaged, a very small minority of all disadvantaged, include low-income migrants — notably the women who make up the global care chain of nannies and cleaners — refugees, and a variety of cross-border activists. Major cities, especially global ones, are a critical destination. Cities are a complex space that concentrates a wide variety of these groups. Global cities are home to multiple diasporic and activist networks and organizations.
Under these conditions, what may be seen as provincial immigrant communities and nationalist exiles can actually become globalized. What matters is that this process of becoming globalized includes a variety of groupings and organizations that have limited resources and little or no power. They often lack proper documentation, are usually invisible to national politics and national civil society, and are unrecognized as politico/civic actors or are unauthorized to be such by the formal political system.
The presence of immigrant communities produces specific transnational forms of engagement, including the formation of globalized diasporas. For instance, a growing number of immigrant networks are concerned with specific struggles, such as exposing illegal trafficking groups and mail-order brides organizations. Such actions can partly reorient these communities away from a one-to-one orientation to their home countries and towards other immigrant communities in the city, or coethnics in other immigration countries.
The public-access Internet and other global electronic networks increasingly play an important role. The Internet allows easy, low-cost communication, distribution of information, and, crucially, the formation of electronic communities with participants from multiple localities.
Internet access allows and induces various types of groups — women's organizations, environmental activists, human rights activists — to become part of transnational networks, no matter how locally focused their work. Many of these groups have begun to connect with similar groups in other countries, which they never did in the past. The global bond comes through shared objectives rather than through travel and meetings.
The large numbers of people from all over the world who encounter each other for the first time in the streets, workplaces, and neighborhoods of today's global cities produce a kind of transnationalism by virtue of their meeting. These encounters can include those between coethnics from different economic classes. The global city also allows for engagement between the disadvantaged and global corporate power. These include antigentrification struggles or fights against transforming industrial districts into luxury office districts.
Knowledge of recurrent struggles and inequities in cities around the world — enabled by both global media and the rapidly spreading use of the Internet — functions both as fact and as a global sense of solidarity and connection. This subjective dimension increasingly enables the disadvantaged and the localized to recognize the presence of the global in these cities and their own participation in it. The global becomes visible and part of daily life.
As a result, these types of disadvantaged individuals also find themselves in an ambiguous position between the national and the global.
Diverse economic, political, and subjective conditions feed into the formation of these global classes. Global networks, variably formalized and institutionalized, are wired into each of them.
Yet global networks, including these class networks, are not seamless, as is often thought. They are lumpy. It is in these lumps (global cities, major supranational institutions, particular occasions for activist deployment) where much of the global action takes place. The global corporate economy, the social infrastructure of global civil society, the institutions of the international human rights regime, the portable rights allocated to transnational professionals as part of free-trade agreements — all play critical roles in the proliferation of these global networks and in their lumpiness.
The formation of these global classes has implications for a variety of policy fields. For the specific case of immigration, at least three features are worth mentioning.
A first feature concerns the relation of these classes to national settings. The new transnational professional class has far more exit options than international government elites or the disadvantaged. But this class is ultimately far more place-bound than one might think.
The reverse is the case with the amalgamated class of disadvantaged workers: here it becomes important to recognize that a good part of this class is far more embedded in the global workplace and transnational politics than the prevailing imagery suggests. Public opinion and policy frameworks tend to classify these low-wage, low-skilled workers as belonging to backward economic sectors.
Secondly, these two classes get filtered through distinct policies and political cultures. This is most clearly exemplified in the case of professionals and immigrant workers: one gets filtered through policies that open a country to outsiders, while the other is filtered through policies that close a country to outsiders.
What marks the need for new policy is that these two global classes are part of a deep economic restructuring that has contributed to a growing demand for both high-level professionals and low-wage service and production workers. Nowhere does this become clearer — both on the street and in statistical data sets— than in the rapidly growing number of global cities. This is just one type of instance; there are many others, each with its specific characteristics and contents.
In this regard, current forms of economic globalization add to inequality and indeed produce new types of inequalities. One challenge for analysis is to recognize the interconnections of social forms and outcomes that we usually think of as unconnected.
Thirdly, filtering these novel processes through older policy frames can obscure the place-boundedness of the new global professional classes and the globality of the new disadvantaged workforce.
In this context, the new specialized networks of government officials signal the possibility of innovations in the link between national and international policymaking. Though part of national institutions, this new class is emerging as a sort of global infrastructure for state work — specifically for the denationalized components of state work linked to various global regimes and conditions. They can be seen as building international social capital for the national governments involved.
However, the gap between international and national policy has to be bridged before national governments can "cash in." This requires recognizing that at least some national questions actually pertain to the global because they are partly played out within national settings, as is recognized in the granting of rights in free trade agreements to transnational professionals. This type of recognition could be critical to the possibility of a radical rethinking of the meaning of low-wage immigration in a global political economy.
This article is based on a chapter in Saskia Sassen's most recent book, Territory, Authority, Rights: From Medieval to Global Assemblages (Princeton University Press 2006).
For further reading see "The Bits of a New Immigration Reality: A Bad Fit with Current Policy" (Social Science Research Council, July 2006). Available online.


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The book "The Career Mystique: Cracks in the American Dream," co-authored by Dr. Patricia Roehling of the Hope College psychology faculty, has received a national award for being "the best of the best."
The book has received the 2005 "Award for Excellence in Professional and Scholarly Publishing" given by the Professional and Scholarly Publishing Division (PSP) of the Association of American Publishers (AAP). "The Career Mystique" was honored as the year's best book in the category of Sociology and Social Work.
AAP presented awards in 30 categories for outstanding books, journals and digital projects covering a wide range of academic disciplines. The awards were announced on Tuesday, Feb. 7, during the PSP Annual Conference in Washington, D.C. The winners were chosen by a nine-member expert panel consisting of librarians, academics and working publishers.
"Being recognized for excellence is always an honor," said Pat Schroeder, who is president and chief executive officer of the AAP. "But when that recognition comes from your peers, the honor is truly significant. The award winners in each category were selected for their unique contribution to scholarly publishing and are considered by our panel of judges to be the best of the best for 2005."
Roehling co-wrote "The Career Mystique," which was published by the Rowman and Littlefield Publishing Group Inc. of Lanham, Md., with Dr. Phyllis Moen of the University of Minnesota. The two authors examine the disconnect between the demands of a career and the structure of American society.
The book's title is inspired by the name of Betty Friedan's 1963 book "The Feminine Mystique," which challenged society's assumption that women should find complete fulfillment by devoting themselves solely to duties of the home. While the expectations for women have changed in the years since, Roehling and Moen say, the "career mystique" has not evolved accordingly.
The "career mystique," they say, assumes intense devotion to full-time employment as the route to success. They note, however, that such commitment comes into conflict with the very real needs that workers also face at home, particularly in single-parent households or in households where both parents are employed outside the home. Further, they say, the full-time career track also leaves little room for retirees who might like to stay working on a part-time basis.
West Michigan residents recently had an opportunity to learn more about the topic from the author herself. Roehling made a presentation on the book on Saturday, Feb. 4, during the college's annual Winter Happening, which featured six seminars led by members of the Hope faculty.
Roehling is a professor of psychology and chairperson of the department, and has been a member of the Hope faculty since 1987. She also served, from 1997 to 1999, as the director of research at the Cornell University Employment and Family Careers Institute.
She completed her B.A. at the University of Michigan in 1980, and completed her M.A. and Ph.D. at Wayne State University in 1984 and 1986 respectively.


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March 24, 2006
The article by John J. Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and Stephen M. Walt of the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, entitled "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy" would not be taken seriously if not for the reputations and associations of the authors. They have each written respected scholarly works on government and international relations and occupy important positions at their universities.
The article itself, which was first posted in full on the Kennedy School Web site and then published in executive summary form by the London Review of Books, is a 41-page, amateurish and biased critique of Israel, American Jews, and American policy. It addresses in a perfunctory and all-knowing fashion some of the most important and complicated issues surrounding the Middle East conflict. Nowhere in evidence is a sense of complexity, balance, an examination of the variety of factors that cause an event, or of putting individual comments in perspective – all the appropriate tools for a serious piece of scholarship or journalism.
On every issue, the authors start with unproven, anti-Israel assumptions and then look for isolated examples to justify these assumptions. One does not have to take a pro-Israel position to recognize that the authors, despite their reputations, have no interest in producing a serious, balanced work. The result is a sloppy diatribe.
Here's how it works. Mearsheimer and Walt start by blaming Israel for everything in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Once establishing Israel's consistent guilt, from the creation of the state to present day, they then move to asserting that the "Israel lobby" (which is loosely and inconsistently defined) in the United States uses every device and method of pressure politics to stifle criticism of Israel and to ensure America's pro-Israel policy, against America's true interests and to serve the interests of the Jewish state.
On Israel's founding, they cite as truth several of the most extreme anti-Israel perspectives. They write of Israel's "crimes against the Palestinians" in the creation of the state. They select a single quotation from David Ben Gurion to "prove" that Israel did not accept the partition of Palestine. They present as the primary explanation of the refugee problem that grew out of the War of Independence the theory that Israel deliberately and calculatedly expelled Palestinians.
On all these matters, there is extensive historiographical work developed over decades presenting many perspectives. Criticism of Israeli policies is part of these perspectives. Thus, for example, on the refugee issue, scholars recognize that a certain number of Palestinians were forced from their homes. But, they also recognize that others left at the urging of Arab leaders and most left simply because warfare causes people to flee. The authors, however, are not interested in complex truths because they would undermine their goal to blame Israel for everything.
Similarly, with regard to the issue of peace, the authors "know" that Israel has never been serious about reconciliation with the Palestinians and therefore they must find a way to dismiss Israeli offers to the Palestinians. Most notable is their denigration of Prime Minister Ehud Barak's (and President Bill Clinton's) offer to Yasir Arafat at Camp David as not providing the Palestinians the possibility of a state but "Bantustans." Not only is this selecting the most extreme negative depiction of what happened at Camp David, but it ignores the further concessions made by Israel in the negotiations at Taba several months after the violence of the second Intifada began.
On terrorism, they concede that the murder of civilians is a bad thing, but they rationalize it (read blame Israel) by saying it's not surprising, "because the Palestinians believe they have no other way to force Israeli concessions."
All of this sets up their main purpose: to demonize what they describe as the "Israel lobby." Since Israel is now established as the bad guy, as not serving American interests, the activities of the lobby are by definition working against what is good for America.
The authors make sure to pay lip service to the notion that pro-Israel activists in America have every right in a democracy to lobby their government and that they are not suggesting any conspiracy resembling that offered by the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. But this is merely lip service because the nonstop one-sidedness of their presentation, their gross exaggeration of the power of the "lobby", the disregard for the consistently broad-based American public support for Israel, the omission of the very many interests that the U.S. has in a strong and safe Israel, and their overriding theme that policymakers are controlled by the "lobby," adds up to an effort to delegitimize the work of pro-Israel activists and has elements of classic anti-Jewish conspiracy theories. Characteristics of such conspiracies are ideas that Jews have excessive, overarching power; that they are more loyal to an outside party – Israel in this case – than to their own country, America; and that Jews don't function as individual citizens, but as a cabal.
In order to justify their accusation, they deliberately distort basic realities. They try to make a case that the "lobby" stifles any discussions that might lead to criticism of Israel. That they would focus on the U.S. Congress is not surprising (though false), since there the overwhelming support for Israel at least might give the impression of such a reality. The game is given away, however, when they make the same point with regard to two other U.S. institutions, the media and campuses. To suggest that criticism of Israel in these two places is stifled is laughable, even to those who don't see these institutions as threatening to Israel. The list of criticisms of Israel both in the media and on campus is encyclopedic.
Similarly, the authors' claim that the "lobby" prevents appointments in the Executive branch of government of anyone critical of Israel is absurd. Naturally, friends of Israel look to have friends in every administration, but to conclude that they in any way control this process ignores a range of officials such as Brzezinski, Baker, Scowcroft and others who hardly fall into the "in Israel's pocket" category.
Other examples of the paper's outlandish distortions and simplemindedness include the "evidence" of the power of the lobby in the establishment of Jewish chairs and programs in universities around the country. Aside from the fact that the authors simply ignore the importance of such scholarship to society and the Jewish community, to speak to this as an indicator of Jewish power without a mention of the millions and millions of dollars being spent by Arab regimes in the Persian Gulf – regimes that themselves do not have a culture of democracy and free expression – to set up massive programs in major universities (including Harvard), is just one more example of how outlandish this work is.
As to anti-Semitism in Europe, which is depicted as another subject the lobby manipulates to gain power and influence, Measheimer and Walt do the expected – accuse the Jews of falsely screaming anti-Semitism at what they suggest is merely legitimate criticism of Israel. The fact that European leaders like Jacques Chirac, Silvio Berlusconi and Joschka Fischer have long ago made clear that there is a serious problem of anti-Semitism makes no impression. Nor that so many in the Jewish community clearly differentiate between legitimate criticism of the Jewish state and the demonization, delegitimization and double standard employed against Israel that is either inherently anti-Semitic or generates an environment of anti-Semitism.
Again, on the Bush Administration's entry into Iraq there obviously is much room for criticism, including criticism of the neoconservatives. What is unacceptable in this paper is the charge that the neocons encouraged the war totally or primarily to serve Israel's interests, not America's. Neoconservatives going back to the Cold War days always had a very particular view of American interests in the world, which they argued strenuously. Whether one agreed with that view or not, there is no basis ever for suggesting then, or now, that Israel's interests superseded those of the U.S. in their thinking.
And finally, there's the issue of Iran developing nuclear capability. As in everything else that Mearsheimer and Walt speak to, it is Israel's alleged interests that drive U.S. policy. The fact that not only the United States, but Europe and even the International Atomic Energy Agency see Iran's nuclear aspirations as a threat to world peace is lost on them (maybe better so because it might lead them to conclude that the "Israel lobby" now controls the entire international community). The mantra is repeated: American is not in jeopardy, Israel is, and because of the power of the "Israel lobby," America acts against its own interests.
All of these examples point to the authors' relentless obsession to see the world through their own narrowly conceived and intentionally distorted prism. It makes for one of the most unprofessional works coming out of respectable quarters. Undoubtedly, the anti-Israel forces will be citing this study for a long time to come. Because of its extremism, however, we can hope that mainstream individuals and institutions will see it for what it is – a classical conspiratorial anti-Semitic analysis invoking the canards of Jewish power and Jewish control.


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The Kingdom's peaceful world has been shattered! The wizard, while mixing potions with his magical gloves has caused a huge explosion, turning him instantly to stone and dislodging the seven crystals that give the Kingdom its energy. Without the crystals, the castle and its world will fall apart and the wizard will be lost! It's down to Glover, one of the magical gloves, to find the crystals, now disguised as rubber balls and return them safely to the castle. Guide Glover and the balls through seven magical worlds full of puzzles and hidden surprises. Watch out! The evil glove is lurking in the shadows, and he'll stop at nothing to foil Glover's attempts at restoring peace.


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Outdoor Movie Series: Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai
Jim Jarmusch
Wed, July 29
Outdoor Film Series
Runtime TBA
A surreal crime drama told as only Jim Jarmusch could, Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai stars Forest Whitaker as Ghost Dog, a hit man living in an unidentified but run-down city in what license plates call "The Industrialized State." Known for his gift of being able to come and go without people noticing him, Ghost Dog is a self-taught samurai who is obsessed with order and his strict personal moral code, drawn from the philosophies of the Japanese warriors. As every samurai needs a leader to whom he swears loyalty, Ghost Dog has devoted himself the service of Louie (John Tormey), a low-level crime boss who once saved his life. When Louie's superiors decide he must be executed, Ghost Dog leaps into action, methodically wiping out his many enemies. Along with a dizzying series of stylized shoot-outs, Ghost Dog also features carrier pigeons, characters who read Rashomon, a French-speaking ice cream man, and a score by RZA from the top-selling hip-hop group Wu-Tang Clan, who have their own well-documented obsession with Asian culture. Ghost Dog was screened in competition at the 1999 Cannes Film Festival.


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Google's Android Market has undergone some tremendous changes over the last year or so. What started as just a standalone app store has quickly grown to encompass e-books, music, videos, and now Google feels like the "Android Market" moniker is getting to be too restrictive, too constraining for what they're really trying to deliver to their users.
That's why Google is officially putting the Android Market name to rest. Starting today, all of Google's digital media services have been rebranded to fly under a brand new banner: Google Play. That's right gadget buffs, despite some delectable new rumors Google Play isn't a new tablet from the folks at Mountain View, but rather a unified brand that seeks to tie the company's digital media services together.
According to Google Engineering Director Chris Yerga, the rebranding was something Google has been contemplating for quite some time, but the company felt that this was the "natural time" to pull the trigger.
Google has spent months and months building out the Android Market into a digital media hub, but constantly invoking the Android name seems to have led to a sense of exclusion for some users. There's nothing about the process of renting movies, purchasing music, or skimming through e-books from Google that requires anyone interested to actually own an Android device. All of a user's pertinent media is stored in Google's considerable cloud and accessible from run-of-the-mill web browsers, and Google wants to drive that point home with the new Google Play brand.
As the rebrand goes live, you'll see that most of Google's new cosmetic efforts come into play on the web. The Android Market website has been drastically revamped to place more emphasis on the rest of the digital media that Google offers users — instead of occupying small, easy to miss tabs along the top of the page, links to Google's Books, Music, and Video subsections and related offers now occupy prime real estate at eye-level.
That isn't to say that changes won't take place on your Android device of choice too. The venerable Android Market will be renamed the Google Play Store, while similar name changes will go into effect for Google's slew of playback apps — the Google Music app for example will now be called Google Play Music. Simple enough, right? In usual Google fashion, the updates for the affected apps will go live today and will continue to roll out over the next few days.
That's pretty much it as far as changes to the device side go — Android users have been able to access Google's catalog of books, movies, and songs from within the Android Market app ever since their most recent design change went into effect.
This new focus on uniting Google's digital media services on the web underscores a key concept that the search giant is hoping to drive home — the media ecosystem that they've created isn't just meant for Android devices, but for users of all stripes. Yerga tells me that Google's intent with Google Play was to not only break down the "silos" that Google's content types were lumped into, but also to "break down the barriers between content consumption and the store experience." Sadly, there's no word yet if devices like Google TV units (or the mysterious Google home boxes currently in testing) will be able to enjoy the new Play media hub.
Your experience with Google Play will also vary depending on where you're located. Quoth the Official Google Blog:
In the U.S., music, movies, books and Android apps are available in Google Play. In Canada and the U.K., we'll offer movies, books and Android apps; in Australia, books and apps; and in Japan, movies and apps. Everywhere else, Google Play will be the new home for Android apps.


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Alex Brown, the convener of ISO's OOXML subcommittee (SC34), criticized Microsoft last week for failing to properly support the standard in Office 2010. Brown declared that Microsoft's office format was "heading for failure" due to the growing number of unresolved technical deficiencies and Microsoft's own apparent lack of interest in implementing ISO's revised version of the standard.
Microsoft technical evangelist Doug Mahugh responded on Wednesday in an effort to clarify Microsoft's intentions for OOXML support. He said that Microsoft is strongly committed to the standard and plans to achieve full compliance with the ISO-approved specification. He explained that Microsoft was unable to support strict OOXML compliance in Office 2010 due to various logistical issues and time constraints.
The OOXML standard defines two separate variants of the document format. There is a "transitional" variant that is intended for legacy compatibility and there is a "strict" variant that is based on ISO's revisions and improvements to the standard. The transitional variant is not supposed to be used to produce new documents.
Office 2010 controversially lacks full support for the strict variant. New documents created with the office suite will have to be saved in the legacy transitional format, which uses features that are supposed to be deprecated. This will make it difficult to enable interoperability with modern third-party implementations of the standard.
From the perspective of Brown and others who worked to accommodate Microsoft during the ISO approval process, the company has betrayed its responsibility to conform with the standard. Mahugh contends that Microsoft was simply unable to include a conforming implementation in Office 2010 because the product's development roadmap was already locked in while ISO was still revising the standard. By the time that the specification was finalized, he says, it was already too late to do a full implementation for Office 2010.
He also highlights a number of extremely broad changes that were made to the strict variant of the standard after it received ISO approval. Due to the number of significant revisions relating to namespace usage and other aspects of the document format, he implies that it would simply not have been possible to implement full strict compatibility in time for the release of Office 2010, even if Microsoft had made an aggressive effort to do so.
Although Office 2010 will use the transitional variant as its default format, it will have preliminary read-only support for the strict variant. This will make it possible for Office 2010 to load documents that are created by third-party tools based on the proper version of the standard. Microsoft aims to have complete conformance with the strict variant "no later" than the release of Office 15, the next major version after Office 2010.
The "no later" part suggests that Microsoft could potentially make full strict support available to Office 2010 users with a plug-in or service pack before Office 15 debuts—a move that Brown strongly encouraged in his blog entry.
In addition to affirming Microsoft's commitment to conformance, Mahugh also rebuts Brown's accusation that Microsoft isn't keeping up with its maintenance duties. He says that the working group has addressed 242 of the roughly 340 defect reports that have been submitted for review. He acknowledges that there is room for improvement in the defect-handling process, but he believes that the working group has been productive.
Mahugh's detailed and lengthy response to Brown's criticisms appears sincere and articulate. Although it provides much-needed clarification about Microsoft's intentions, it doesn't mitigate the damage that will be caused by using a deprecated format in the next major version of the Office suite. As Brown strongly suggested when he voiced his criticisms, Microsoft really should do everything in its power to get proper support for the strict version into the hands of users as soon as possible. Government agencies and other organizations that require strong standards compliance may consider using alternatives until Microsoft has sorted out its OOXML compliance.
Source: ars technica


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A Library for the World's Children
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Language: English
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Publisher: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge ; E. & J.B. Young & Co.
Published: 1885
Contributed by: University of Florida
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The Basic Elements – Shape, Value, Color, Edge
Source: Mainly based on material from fine art painter Stan Prokopenko (http://www.stanprokopenko.com/ or http://www.proko.com)
We see everything around us in 3d. Then we try to draw a 3d world on a 2 dimensional surface. Of course drawing an actual 3d world is impossible on paper. We have to learn to create the Illusion of depth. Any picture can be broken down into 4 elements to create that illusion of form. It's like the periodic table of elements for artists. And luckily for us, it's a much smaller table.
We can use these elements to show form and depth if we are realists or representational artists, but it's not limited to just showing form. Any picture, anything you can see can be broken down into these elements. An abstract watercolor painting, a realistic portrait drawing, a photograph of a sunset, anything that you can see can be described with Shape, Edge, Value, and Color. I would even argue that there are only 3 major elements. Shape, edge, and color. Because value is just a sub-element of color. But value is so important that artists have separated it as its own thing. Also, when we're drawing, we're usually drawing in black and white. And in a black and white drawing value is the only visible part of the color. So, we put aside the concept of color, and just say value. When we start painting, we introduce the other two sub-elements of color – hue and chroma.
Let's go over these elements one by one, starting with Shape.
Shape is a concept that's familiar to most of us. It's the elements we use to draw as kids. It's the area that something takes up. It's the outline, or the contour of all the pieces in the drawing. But it's not limited to just the outline of the big elements. The smaller parts also have specific shapes.
For the early stages of a drawing you want to develop your ability to simplify a shape. This is important so that you can focus on the composition and the breakdown of the big picture. Getting distracted by the smaller details too early, can hurt you in the long run. Working big to small is usually a good idea.
When simplifying, think about geometric shapes – circles, ovals, squares, rectangles, triangles, diamonds, crescents and so on.. These are simple shapes as opposed to complex organic shapes. For example this complex shape of a leaf can be simplified in the first stage of the drawing and then the details can be found in the later stages.
Shape is the most important element to convey the identity of an object. These two shapes are very different and symbolize two very different things. They are not 3 dimensional, but its still very obvious what they represent, just by looking at the shape. That's why "shape design" is such an important skill to practice and develop. Simply put, shape design is making your shapes look good. It's a bit arbitrary, but you know it when you see it.
You could say that shape A is better than shape B because it's cleaner and more interesting. It does a better job of getting the point across and doing so in a more interesting way.
Now let's move on to color. I'll go into more depth on color theory later, since it's a very complex topic and deserves it's own episode or even a whole series of episodes. Right now, I'll just go over the basics.
Color has 3 subcategories. The hue, the chroma, and the value. For example, this color has a purple hue, a number 3 value, and a medium chroma.
Hue is what we typically refer to when we say color. Yellow, orange, red, blue, green – these are all hues. Your traditional color wheel is an arrangement of hues.. If you shine a light through a prism, it will break up the light and reveal the color spectrum. The same colors as the rainbow. And the same colors as the color wheel.
The terms warm and cool are used to describe the two sides of the color wheel if you cut it in half. The warm family shares orange as a common color and the cool family shares blue as a common color. Think of fire being warm and ice being cool.
Chroma refers to how grey or how pure the color is. On one end are the high chroma colors that you'll see in the rainbow, and on the other end are the low chroma greys with a gradual transition.
In some color wheels you'll have the high chroma colors on the outside with a gradation towards grey in the center. You'll often hear people using the term "neutralizing" a color. This just means lowering the chroma and bringing it closer to grey. There's two ways you can do that. The first is just adding grey to it. As you'd expect this will bring it closer to grey. The other way is to add its complement, or the color across from it on the color wheel. Mixing two complimentary colors will result in the color in between them. Half and half will theoretically make grey. Now, pigment isn't perfect.. you usually won't get that exactly perfect grey. But you'll definitely bring it closer to grey. Depending on the ratio you mix, will result in a color somewhere in between the two. If you add just a little bit of green to red, you'll still have a red, just a lower chroma version.
Value is how light or dark the color is. There is an infinite amount of values, but most artists like to think of a finite scale, zero to ten. It's more manageable that way and it makes it a lot easier to communicate. A teacher might say, make that shape one value darker. And you'll know roughly how much 1 value is.
Drawing with charcoal we don't use color, since everything is grey scale. Or a better way to put that is, we don't use hue and chroma, the only element of color that we see is value. So, many artists have separated value as its own element and say its more important than the other elements of color. You can have a very beautiful drawing without using color – just grey-scale you don't need it to draw a representation of what you're looking at. You don't need it to show form and depth. I think it's wise to practice drawing without color as a beginner, since that's one less ball you have to juggle as you're learning. Once you get the hang of values, then add the colors, and go wild.
But, I don't want to make it seem like color isn't important. It is! Colors are beautiful and quite often its what will catch the eye of someone looking at your artwork. It could set off an emotional response to a piece of art, that a gray scale drawing can't do. But as the artist you must understand, that if you don't get the values right, the rest of the color won't look right. Focus on accuracy of values, and that will allow you to experiment and bend your colors.
That's your color basics 101, maybe not even 101. More like 1-0-half…
Edge is the transition between two shapes. It doesn't have to be an edge of a volume. The shapes within the volume have edges too.
The types of edges range from sharp to extremely soft, with an infinite amount in between. But to simplify it we've come up with 4 types of edges: sharp, firm, soft, and lost.
- A sharp edge is a very sudden transition between 2 shapes. It's sharp like a razor blade. There is no transition, its a sudden change.
- A firm edge is almost hard, but it has a very small gradation to it. Think of these as corners that have a bevel or rounded corner. On a figure you'll typically see firm edges on tendons and joints.
- A soft edge is a very smooth transition between 2 shapes. You'll see a longer gradation. Soft edges are like clouds or baby butts.
- A lost edge is one that is so soft, that you can't see it anymore. It's frequently used in areas where the values of two forms are close together and a really soft edge would merge the two volumes together.
Putting it all together
Every time you're drawing or painting and you look at your reference, you need to have an intuitive checklist of elements to identify. What's the shape, color, and edge? And within color, what's the value, hue, and chroma? To make this intuitive you have to train your brain by intentionally thinking about these things while you're analyzing the subject. Eventually you don't have to force it anymore, it becomes part of your observation process.
For example as you look at this clementine and you observe the shadow, you ask yourself:
- what is the shape? is it circular, rectangular, triangular etc. In this case, its a crescent if you simplify it.
- What is the value on a scale of 0-10? And more importantly what is the value in relationship to all the other values in the picture? The occlusion in the cast shadow, is the darkest part of the picture. If you want your picture to have the full range of values, from 0-10, you have to make it a value 0. The top part of the shadow on the clementine is about 1 value lighter than under the clementine The reflected light below is another 1 to 2 values lighter. Instead of the full value range of 0-10, you can choose to go for a narrower value range, say 3-7. The darkest part would be a 3 and the highlight would be a 7. And accommodate the other values to fit within that range. It's the relationships between all the values in the picture that really matter.
- The next question is, what is the hue? Even though it's an orange clementine, not all the colors on it are orange. I'm seeing a transition from orange on the light side, to a redder hue on the shadow side.
- What is the chroma? Ehh, it's somewhere in the middle, probably a little closer to the high chroma side..
- And the edge is firm on the left side of the shadow and softer on the right (at the terminator).
The ability to see and properly identify all these elements is a skill, its a sense that you need to develop. At first you will struggle to see the subtleties , but just as a musician tunes her ears to hear notes and compose the notes into a symphony, you too can develop your ability to see these subtleties and view the world through an artist's eye. As with most things, it's about repetition through practice.
Video The Basic Elements – Shape, Value, Color, Edge


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HuffPost's Game Changers series celebrates 100 innovators, visionaries, and leaders in 12 categories who, whether working in the spotlight or under the radar, are changing how we look at the world and the way we live in it. We salute them for their willingness to take risks and question the status quo.
Below, check out the nominees for HuffPost's 2011 Game Changers.
Voting for the Ultimate Politics Game Changer is now closed. Thank you for your participation!
Politics Game Changers 2011


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Will Slipping Sales Hurt Ford's Profits?
We won't know for sure until June's official results are released next week, but early signs suggest that U.S. auto sales have slowed a bit from the hot pace seen earlier in 2012.
They're still pretty hot, though: While total sales are expected to be down substantially from last month, analysts at TrueCar.com are predicting that this will be the best June for new-car sales since 2007.
While the big story will be the resurgence of Toyota (NYS: TM) and Honda (NYS: HMC) , and a big push by Volkswagen, early signs suggest that Ford (NYS: F) may be slipping a bit.
At first glance, a strong month -- but look deeper
TrueCar.com expects overall U.S. auto sales to be up about 18% year over year -- but that's a figure that should come with some caveats. At this time last year, Toyota and Honda were facing severe shortages of new cars thanks to production disruptions in the wake of the March tsunami that devastated northern Japan. That led to big surges in sales for the likes of Ford and General Motors (NYS: GM) -- and both were able to get premium prices for their vehicles thanks to competitors' short supplies.
Long story short, high prices and short supplies made last year's numbers lower than they might have been, making year-to-year comparisons look quite rosy. A fairer comparison might be to last month's numbers -- and there, TrueCar's projections suggest an almost 7% decline.
TrueCar expects all of the major players to show declines from May's totals. As I mentioned, Toyota and Honda will probably post huge (50%-plus) year-over-year sales gains, with Toyota's U.S. market share surging to a close third place behind GM and Ford. TrueCar also predicts a big gain for VW, in the 25% range, as the German company continues its aggressive push to expand its presence in non-European markets.
All those gains are coming from somewhere, of course, and TrueCar's estimates suggest that quite a few of them are coming from Ford. But that might not be all bad news for Ford shareholders.
Why slipping sales might not be bad for Ford
For years, Detroit CEOs obsessed over tiny shifts in U.S. market share. But current Ford CEO Alan Mulally doesn't play that game: He's -- properly -- much more concerned about the company's margins and overall profits than he is about a few points in share gained or lost versus GM or Toyota. Having somewhat fewer sales but bigger profits is a tradeoff he's willing to make.
Think about that while you ponder some grim-sounding forecasts: TrueCar sees Ford's June sales coming in essentially flat versus last year's -- which implies a drop in the Blue Oval's U.S. market share from 18.4% a year ago to 15.6% in June if these projections hold. Worse, TrueCar sees Ford's market share falling notably from last month's 16.2%. What's going on?
Probably a few things. Ford has said that production of its most popular vehicles is maxed out -- while the company plans to boost production of hot models like the Focus and Explorer, those increases won't show up at dealers until later this year. That has made for short supplies at some dealers and might be leading some consumers to choose other vehicles over waiting.
But here's the part that should reassure shareholders, at least somewhat: Ford's spending on incentives -- those "cash-back" or "zero-percent financing" deals one sees advertised -- has fallen sharply. The Detroit automakers have long had the highest incentives, but Ford's have fallen sharply in recent months -- to $2,489 per vehicle in June, TrueCar estimates, right around the industry average.
For comparison, GM and Chrysler are both spending more than $3,000 per vehicle, TrueCar estimates, while Nissan's (OTC: NSANY) spending may have surpassed Ford's, and VW and Honda are close behind. That's a sea change for Ford, and while it probably reflects Ford's own supply limitations in part, it's also an outgrowth of the desirability of the Blue Oval's current product line.
The upshot: It's not time to worry about Ford yet
Even if Ford's market share is falling a bit, the extra $500-plus it's pocketing on every sale is likely to keep the company's second-quarter profits strong. U.S. auto sales are Ford's "engine," to use Mulally's term -- while Ford sells vehicles all over the world, much of the company's revenues (and profits) are generated right here at home.
While nobody likes to see sales slip while competitors make gains, the real results that matter are Ford's second-quarter earnings, which will be out next month. That'll tell us whether Ford needs to step up its sales pace -- or whether Mulally's grand vision is bearing fruit.
It's worth remembering that Ford has been performing incredibly well over the past few years -- it's making good vehicles, is consistently profitable, has recently reinstated its dividend, and has done a remarkable job paying down its debt.
But even so, Ford's stock price is down 19% over the past year. Does this create an incredible buying opportunity, or are there hidden risks with the stock that investors need to know about? To answer that, one of our top equity analysts has compiled a premium research report with in-depth analysis on whether Ford is a buy right now, and why. Get instant access to this premium report. Or if you'd rather take a look at a high-growth company outside the cyclical manufacturing sector, check out our special free report, "The Motley Fool's Top Stock for 2012," which features a company our chief investment officer uncovered that's revolutionizing commerce in Latin America.
The article Will Slipping Sales Hurt Ford's Profits? originally appeared on Fool.com.
Fool contributor John Rosevear owns shares of Ford and General Motors. Follow him on Twitter at@jrosevear. The Motley Fool owns shares of Ford.Motley Fool newsletter serviceshave recommended buying shares of Ford and General Motors and creating a synthetic long position in Ford. Try any of our Foolish newsletter servicesfree for 30 days. We Fools don't all hold the same opinions, but we all believe thatconsidering a diverse range of insightsmakes us better investors. The Motley Fool has adisclosure policy.
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The growth in the Hispanic and Asian communities is more than noteworthy, it's paradigm shifting, according to Asian and Latin Culinary Trend Mapping Report, a market research report jointly published by Packaged Facts (Rockville, Maryland) and CCD Innovation (San Francisco).
Combined, the Hispanic and Asian communities make up 22 percent of the United States population. Add to that the large number of additional Americans in what is called the "creative class," those who embrace change and multicultural influences, and the result is a national majority who seek out and appreciate authentic and flavor-forward global foods.
"It's clear from population statistics, and from the regional cuisine trends we've been tracking for years now, that we live in a multicultural America that requires a wide bandwidth of multicultural food offerings," says Kimberly Egan, CEO of CCD Innovation.
This food can be authentic and traditional, made from imported or specialty ingredients according to longstanding cooking methods. Or it can be fused, mixed, and matched with other cuisines to create new, adventurous incarnations. Some of these dishes serve as today's updated and flavorful comfort food, while many also answer to the unflagging demand for convenience.
Food with Asian and Latin flavors, authentic pedigrees, and comfort qualities will be appreciated by many segments of consumers, whether long-established American families of Asian or Latin descent, second and third generation immigrants with a desire to retain (or regain) their cultural heritage, newer immigrants, or any other American looking for good meals or tasty foraging.
This demographic mix is pushing new points of view and new products across the restaurant and packaged product landscape, and Asian and Latin Culinary Trend Mapping Report profiles several hot trends using CCD's proprietary Trend Mapping methodology, in which Stage 1 trends are just hitting the culinary scene while Stage 5 trends have gone fully mainstream in supermarkets and fast-food outlets:
Stage 1: Lomo Saltado — A product of Peru's Chifa (Chinese-inspired) cuisine, lomo saltado exhibits the unique blending of cultural influences in the country's foodways.
Stage 1: Asian Burritos — The portable, meal-worthy burrito form naturally lends itself to savory Asian ingredients and flavor combinations.
Stage 2: Vietnamese Coffee — Growth of banh mi sandwiches and pho has led to an interest in authentic Vietnamese drinks — plus, the metal brewer adds an experiential element.
Stage 2: Frozen Treats — Global frozen treats from push carts, farmers markets, and independent shops entice kids and grown-ups of all ages with new fruit and spice flavors.
Stage 3: One-Bowl Meals — Easy-to-eat, filling, and comforting bowls built on a foundation of rice or noodles are versatile one-stop shopping meals.
Stage 4: Flavor on the Grill — Interest continues to grow in more authentic Asian and Latin flavoring marinades, spice rubs, and toppings.
Stage 5: Convenience Meals — Authentic food lovers still need readymade soups, prepared meals, and meal kits, but don't want taste compromise.
News and information presented in this release has not been corroborated by WTWH Media LLC.


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$100,000 Whitewash: Store Owner Paints Over Banksy Art
No matter how you feel about the British stencil artist Banksy, you have to admit one thing: his stuff sells for a lot of money. His works have been going for over half a million dollars lately. A homeowner in the UK with a Banksy mural on the side of her house decided to simply sell the mural through an art gallery, and throw in the home for free. But one NYC store owner lucky enough to have a Banksy piece on his building (pictured) was either too ignorant, or too stubborn to take advantage of it. Yes: he painted over it. I hope he loved his momentarily whitewashed wall, because it cost him hundreds of thousands of dollars. The kind of funny, and kind of painful pictures [via SuperTouch] of the man in the revenue-destroying act, after the jump. Ouch.


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Devel::REPL::Overview - overview of Devel::REPL.
Most modern languages have consoles. The console is an interactive tool that evaluates your input while you type it. It gives you several advantages:
Quickly test some thought or tricky expression
Run some code bigger than one line without a temporary file
Play around with libraries and modules
You can even call a console in your script and play around in script's context
For Ruby it would be irb, for Python is... python by itself and for perl... and there was nothing for perl (except that ugly perl -d -e "" and several failed projects) until Devel::REPL was written by Matt S Trout (a.k.a. mst) from ShadowCatSystems http://www.shadowcatsystems.co.uk.
REPL stands for Read, Evaluate, Print, Loop. Lets install and try it.
$ cpan Devel::REPL
After installation you have a lot of new modules, but the most interesting things are:
Devel::REPL A top level module.
re.pl Wrapper script, running console.
And a bunch of plugins (I'll describe them later). In command line type:
$ re.pl
If everything is ok you'll see a prompt (underlined $). That's it. You can start typing expressions.
An example session:
$ sub factorial {
> my $number = shift;
> return $number > 1 ? $number * factorial($number-1) : $number;
> }
$ factorial 1 # by the way, comments are allowed
1 # our return value
$ factorial 5
$ [1,2,3,4,5,6,7]
3, # return values are printed with Data::Dumper::Streamer.
4, # See Plugins section
$ {apple=>1,fruit=>'apple',cart=>['apple','banana']}
apple => 1,
cart => [
fruit => 'apple'
$ package MyPackage; # create a package
$ sub say_hi { # define a sub
> print "Hi!\n";
> } # statement is evaluated only after we've finished typing block.
# See Plugins section.
> package main;
> MyPackage->say_hi
Devel::REPL has a control files feature. Control files are evaluated on session start in the same way as you would type them manually in the console.
The default control file is located at $HOME/.re.pl/repl.rc.
You can store there any statements you would normally type in.
I.e. my $HOME/.re.pl/repl.rc has next lines:
use feature 'say'; # to don't write \n all the time
use Data::Dumper;
# pretty print data structures
sub pp { print Data::Dumper->Dump([@_]) }
You can have multiple control files and they can be anywhere in the file system. To make re.pl use some rc-file other than repl.rc, call it like this:
$ re.pl --rcfile /path/to/your/rc.file
If your rc-file is in $HOME/.re.pl directory, you can omit the path:
$ re.pl --rcfile rc.file
If you have rc-file with the same name in current directory and you don't want to type path, you can:
$ re.pl --rcfile ./rc.file
Plugins extend functionality and change behavior of Devel::REPL. Bundled plugins are:
Devel::REPL::Plugin::History No comments. Simply history.
Devel::REPL::Plugin::!LexEnv Provides a lexical environment for the Devel::REPL.
Devel::REPL::Plugin::DDS Formats return values with Data::Dump::Streamer module.
Devel::REPL::Plugin::Packages Keeps track of which package your're in.
Devel::REPL::Plugin::Commands Generic command creation plugin using injected functions.
Devel::REPL::Plugin::MultiLine::PPI Makes Devel::REPL read your input until your block is finished. What does this means: you can type a part of a block on one line and second part on another:
$ sub mysub {
> print "Hello, World!\n"; ## notice prompt change
> }
$ mysub
Hello, World!
but this *doesn't* mean you can print sub name or identifier
on several lines. Don't do that! It won't work.
There are lots of contributed plugins you can find at CPAN.
If plugins change and extend functionality of Devel::REPL, profiles are changing your environment (loaded plugins, constants, subs and etc.).
For example, the Minimal profile, Devel::REPL::Profile::Minimal:
package Devel::REPL::Profile::Minimal;
use Moose; ### advanced OOP system for Perl
### keep those exports/imports out of our namespace
use namespace::autoclean;
with 'Devel::REPL::Profile'; ## seem perldoc Muse
sub plugins { ### plugins we want to be loaded
qw(History LexEnv DDS Packages Commands MultiLine::PPI);
### the only required sub for profile,
### it is called on profile activation
sub apply_profile {
my ($self, $repl) = @_;
### $self - no comments, $repl - current instance of Devel::REPL
$repl->load_plugin($_) for $self->plugins; ### load our plugins
There is also the StandardDevel::REPL::Profile::Standard profile, which contains a number of optional (yet very useful) features.
To enable some profile use the --profile switch:
$ re.pl --profile SomeProfile
Alternatively, you can set the environment variable DEVEL_REPL_PROFILE to SomeProfile, or set the profile key in your rcfile (see Devel::REPL for more information).
To install Devel::REPL, copy and paste the appropriate command in to your terminal.
cpanm Devel::REPL
CPAN shell
perl -MCPAN -e shell
install Devel::REPL
For more information on module installation, please visit the detailed CPAN module installation guide.


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#1 DJ Humus
Since we are all about moving music, our party on the 10:th of October is all about music that moves you. Therefore we have put together an extensive line up of DJ's and artists for the evening. And to give you the possibility to get to know them a bit better we want to tell you a little bit about each artist each day until the party, starting today. First out is:
DJ Humus (Half Off, Berlin)
Currently Humus is the resident of Berlin House club Tape under his real name Elie Eidelman. The NYC born and Israeli raised DJ has been playing for over 15 years around the globe bringing his unique blend and attitude to the dance floor.
Humus started spinning his way through the local dance-floors in the early 90's, with strong influence from punk rock and the new European rave scene. In 1997 he co-founded the collective "100 meters beneath the ground", a group of musicians and promoters that organized the largest underground raves in the middle east.
He moved to Tel Aviv in 1998 and quickly was absorbed into the city's notorious nightlife, during it's most flourishing years of peace, where he spun, promoted, booked and did PR and music/artistic consultant to leading clubs, lines, events, magazines and various projects.
Humus is starting out on the main floor inside to give us a great beginning of the night. Here is a recent mix from him aswell:


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Fargo, ND – North Dakota State's second straight FCS national championship will keep the marketing, sales and ticket departments quite busy at the Missouri Valley Football Conference university.
Bison athletics reaped the benefits of their first FCS national title last year. Saturday's title-game victory over Sam Houston State for the second straight year - this time by a 39-13 margin - will expand these glory days within the program.
Season tickets were capped at 12,100 for home games at the Fargodome this past season, Josh Hemingway, NDSU's director of tickets/events and facility operations, said Monday, but that's probably not nearly enough among the Bison's rabid fan base, which took Frisco, Texas, by storm once again during championship week.
The back-to-back national titles will continue to boost NDSU in many financial areas, including advertising, booster and corporate donations, and sales. The football booster club also enjoyed exceptional growth after last season's title.
"Our licensing revenue will see an increase from not only the increase demand for NDSU products but also additional sales and royalties from NCAA national championship merchandise," said Troy Goergen, NDSU senior associate athletic director/marketing.
"Sponsorship retention should be high due to success and we will see increased interest from new sponsors due to national exposure and success of program."
Next season, Bison coach Craig Bohl will return almost all of his key starters from this season's team, which had a 14-1 record. The MVC champions will be favored to win a third straight FCS title, a feat which has only been accomplished by Appalachian State from 2005-07.


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Where to Buy Lychee Now
It's summer! Which means longer days, south shore surf, and … lychee! Lychee farmers expect a bumper crop this year, especially compared to last year's meager harvest.
Where I'm finding the sweetest lychee right now:
Sun Chong in Chinatown, which sells plump, juicy Big Island lychee. $5.99 to $6.99/pound, at 127 N. Hotel St.
The Wine Stop: Every year, Liane Fu gets a shipment of Kaimana lychee, one of the sweetest varieties, from her sister's farm on the Hamakua Coast. She has some right now, but they are going fast. $6.99/pound, call 946-3707 to reserve.
Foodland's got plenty from Hilo, $7.99/pound, multiple locations.


text: As the nation's largest homebuilder, Centex was ranked highest in new home customer satisfaction by J. D. Power and Associates. Today, that tradition of great customer service and building well-crafted homes with quality materials continues. Started in 1950, Centex has constructed more than 500,000 homes throughout the US. They're also a leader in building Energy Star efficient homes, with a dedicated "Green Team" to assure the company's environmental goals are met. You will be able to choose from several of Centex Homes' popular models with a variety of floor plans designed for your lifestyle needs. To see everything Centex has to offer, visit


text:
Safe and inviting German railway
with the new lighting. Only now the historical structure of the underpasses unfolds giving it an urban spatial effect"
Jürgen Roters, Mayor of City of Cologne
In many cities, underpasses provide vital infrastructure connections in a city. These underpasses are in general not very pleasant to walk through at night and in the worst case these are a no-go area for people as they feel unsafe.
The "Lebendige Stadt" (lively city) project's main aim was to increase the inhabitants' feeling of security when using these underpasses. It makes these areas more livable while at the same time saving energy and cost.
Dark railway underpasses are barren places, sometimes located in deprived areas. The "Lebendige Stadt" Foundation has initiated an illumination program to revitalize these public places. So far, 31 railway underpasses in 24 German cities were permanently and artistically illuminated.


text:
MOSCOW (REUTERS) - Russian state-run media revelled on Wednesday in embarrassing the United States over a botched attempt to recruit one of its intelligence agents but both countries signalled they wanted to prevent the episode harming efforts to improve relations.
Moscow expelled a US diplomat on Tuesday, saying he had been caught red-handed with disguises, special equipment and wads of cash as he tried to recruit a Russian agent for the CIA.
US Ambassador Michael McFaul spent about 30 minutes at the Russian Foreign Ministry on Wednesday after being summoned to give an explanation, and the Ministry said it had issued a formal protest.
Although President Vladimir Putin said nothing about the incident, state news channels repeatedly showed footage of the US diplomat, Ryan Fogle, in an incongruous-looking blond wig being pinned to the ground by a Russian undercover agent in a"sting" operation.
The images, highly embarrassing for the United States, appeared part of efforts to boost Mr Putin's ratings following his allegations that Washington has stoked protests against him, rather than an attempt to derail relations between the nations.
"It (the attempted recruitment) does not contribute to the future process of strengthening mutual trust between Russia and the United States and putting our relations on a new level," Mr Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Itar-Tass news agency.
But he avoided inflammatory language over the expulsion of Mr Fogle, a third secretary at the US Embassy who was detained late on Monday.
There is little sign that either country wants to go beyond a minimum response as Washington and Moscow try to improve strained relations and bring the warring sides in Syria together for an international peace conference.
In Washington, US State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell suggested the episode was unlikely to affect broader US-Russian relations or plans for the Syria conference.
"I'm not sure I would read too much into one incident one way or another," Mr Ventrell said.
The incident may have been directed more at a domestic Russian audience to rally support among conservative and traditional voters following protests against Mr Putin by mainly liberal and middle-class voters.
The former KGB spy has also used more blunt tactics against the opposition since the departure of long-term political adviser Vladislav Surkov at the end of 2011 and his replacement by Vyacheslav Volodin, a less sophisticated strategist.
"In the Russian elite there are influential groups who oppose America and waste no opportunity to spite the United States," political analyst Pavel Salin said.
State media moved into action quickly after the federal Security Service, a successor to the KGB, announced Mr Fogle's detention.
Television channels soon started showing footage of Mr Fogle's detention and photographs appeared on the web showing the diplomat in the blond wig, with props reminiscent of a schoolboy's spy kit.
A photograph published by the Russia Today channel on its website showed two wigs, apparently found on him, as well as three pairs of glasses, a torch, a mobile phone and a compass.
Also displayed was a wad of 500-euro (S$800) notes and a letter printed in Russian and addressed to a "Dear friend"offering US$100,000 (S$123,000) if the target cooperated - with the promise of more to come for long-term cooperation.
US-Russian relations had thawed markedly under US President Barack Obama's first-term "reset" of ties, although they have chilled again since Mr Putin returned to the presidency a year ago.
Russia has ejected the US Agency for International Development and curbed US-supported NGOs in moves it says are aimed at preventing foreign meddling.
Moscow has also responded to US legislation imposing visa bans and asset freezes on Russians accused of human rights abuses with a similar law against Americans, and has banned Americans from adopting Russian children.
But Mr Obama and Mr Putin have signalled they want to patch things up again, including by improving counterterrorism cooperation after the Boston Marathon bombings.


text:
Global Views
By Zvi November
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Blind Observations
Israel in Reality: Multicultural Discord and ...
"The Jordan Is Palestine" Conference
Temple Mount Violence
"Israel in Reality" by Zvi November
Reflections on History
Random Thoughts on From Afar
On Terrorism
Reflections on the Elections
Palestinian Enmity Today
Short and to the Point
Gaza Mini-War Observations
Jew Hating Conference
The Israeli Left's Distorted Mindset
Impressions of Poland
Significant Peripheral
Enemy Agenda & Israel's Ruling Intelligensia
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Anatomy of a "Peace Process"
Different View on Current Crisis in US-Israel ...
Zvi November, who grew up in New York, served as a Peace Corps' teacher in rural Philippines. He also taught at Hong Kong Int'l School. He earned his diploma from Univ. of Edinburgh, his MA from Syracuse Univ, both in anthropology. Now he is an activist in Israel's Media Watch and other civic bodies.
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Disclaimer: I have neither experience nor expertise in comparative ("homology") modeling. In my molecular visualization workshops I am often asked about it, so I have gathered the information below.
This document is a supplement to Protein Explorer. Comparative modeling cannot be done within Protein Explorer, but a comparative model produced outside of Protein Explorer with the methods below can then be loaded into Protein Explorer for visualization.
If you are reading this on paper, you can use the hyperlinks at
Comparative ("homology") modeling approximates the 3D structure of a target protein for which only the sequence is available, provided an empirical 3D "template" structure is available with >30% sequence identity. In 2001, about 20% of sequences (in Swiss-Prot/TrEMBL) have suitable templates for comparative modeling at least part of the sequence. Comparative models are useful to get a rough idea where the alpha carbons of key residues sit the folded protein. They can guide mutagenesis experiments, or hypotheses about structure-function relationships. Comparative models are unreliable in predicting the conformations of insertions or deletions, i.e. portions of the sequence that don't align with the sequence of the template, as well as the details of sidechain positions. Comparative models are unlikely to be useful in modeling ligand docking (drug design) unless the sequence identity with the template is >70%, and even then, less reliable than an empirical crystallographic or NMR structure.
SWISS-MODEL makes it quick and easy to submit a target sequence and get back an automatically generated comparative model, provided an empirical structure with >30% sequence identity exists to use as a template. (The template will be identified automatically, and the alignment made automatically.) These automated models may be useful, but will sometimes have errors that could be avoided if manual adjustments are made to the sequence alignment by an expert. Learning to optimise your models manually would take some time (see resources below).
In 2002, a new automated comparative modeling server came on-line: ESyPred3D.
DeepView is freeware integrated with SWISS-MODEL to help you visualize and evaluate the model, aligned with the template. The best way to learn how to do this is with Gale Rhodes' superb tutorial.
1. What is comparative modeling?
Suppose you want to know the 3D structure of a target protein that has not been solved empirically by X-ray crystallography or NMR. You have only the sequence. If an empirically determined 3D structure is available for a sufficiently similar protein (50% or better sequence identity would be good), you can use software that arranges the backbone of your sequence identically to this template. This is called "comparative modeling" or "homology modeling". It is, at best, moderately accurate for the positions of alpha carbons in the 3D structure, in regions where the sequence identity is high. It is inaccurate for the details of sidechain positions, and for inserted loops with no matching sequence in the solved structure.
A comparative modeling routine needs three items of input:
2. What are the uses of comparative models?
Successful predictions based on comparative models have
been reviewed by
Baker and Sali (2001). The following is summarized
from their review, where references to
specific cases may be found.
The positions of conserved regions of
the protein surface can help to identify putative active sites
and binding pockets.
If the ligand is known to be charged, the binding site may be predicted
by searching the surface for a cluster of complementary charges.
The size of a ligand may be
predicted from the volume of the putative binding pocket.
In one case, relative affinities of a series of ligands have been
Such predicions are useful to guide mutagenesis experiments.
2. What if there is no template?
2. What if there is no template?
If there is no empirically determined structure with at least 30% sequence similarity to the target sequence, then there may be no template available that is suitable for reliable comparative modeling. In 2001, this is true for >80% of the sequences in Swiss-Prot (Liisa Holm, personal communication). The goal of "structural genomics" is to crystallize proteins, or protein domains, selected to provide templates for families of related sequences for which suitable templates are lacking. By one estimate (Vitkup et al., 2001), providing templates for 90% of all protein domain families, including membrane proteins, will require the empirical solution of about 16,000 new domain structures. This is well in excess of the structural information presently in the Protein Data Bank, but may be achievable within a decade as a result of advancements in high throughput crystallography.
When no suitable template is available for comparative modeling, de novo
modeling methods (also called ab initio modeling) may be used.
The success rate with such modeling is considerably lower than that with
comparative modeling. According to
Baker and Sali:
"For roughly 40% of proteins shorter than 150 amino acids [<15 kD] that
have been examined, one of the five most commonly recurring models generated
by Rosetta has sufficient global similarity to the true structure to recognize
it in a search of the protein structure database. ... The accuracy of
de novo models is too low for problems requiring high-resolution structure
2. How good can comparative modeling be?
2. How good can comparative modeling be?
Two proteins with a high level of sequence identity, and very similar secondary and tertiary structure (identical "folds"), will nevertheless have not exactly identical backbone conformations, even when determined under comparable conditions. A comparative model can be expected to differ from the real structure to at least this extent. Overall differences in protein backbone structures are quantitated with the root mean square deviation of the positions of alpha carbons, or rmsd. "A model can be considered 'accurate enough' or as 'accurate as you can get' when its rmsd is within the spread of deviations observed for experimental structures displaying a similar sequence identity level as the target and template sequences" (Schwede et al., 3DCrunch). How big is this spread?
The 3DCrunch project used the SWISS-MODEL routines to do comparative modeling on all sequences in the Swiss-Prot database for which appropriate templates exist. (In 2001, about 20% of the sequences have templates with >30% sequence identity with at least part of the sequence [Liisa Holm, personal communication].) In the same project, in order to assess the accuracy of comparative modeling, 1,200 models were made for previously solved structures (see Reliability of models generated by SWISS-MODEL). This enabled comparisons of comparative models with empirical structures for the same sequence, where the comparative model was made using a template with the most similar sequence available, other than the target sequence itself.
To provide a frame of reference for rmsd values, note that up to 0.5 Å rmsd of alpha carbons occurs in independent determinations of the same protein (Chothia and Lesk, 1996). Proteins with 50% sequence identity have on average 1 Å rmsd ( Schwede et al., 3DCrunch). The values given above are for X-ray crystallographic determinations; NMR determinations have rmsd's several fold higher.
If we define a "highly successful comparative model" as one having
<=2 Å rmsd from the empirical structure,
then the template must have >=60%
sequence identity with the target for a success rate >70%. Even at high
sequence identities (60%-95%), as many as one in ten comparative models
have an rmsd >5 Å vs. the empirical structure.
Below 40% sequence identity, serious errors begin to appear more often.
For the complete distribution of results, see
Reliability of models generated by SWISS-MODEL,
Table I.
3. The importance of the sequence alignment.
3. The importance of the sequence alignment.
The comparative modeling routine will proceed to arrange the backbone of the
target sequence according to that of the template,
the sequence alignment to decide where to position each residue.
Therefore, the quality of the sequence alignment is of crucial importance.
Misplaced indels (gaps representing insertions or deletions) will cause residues to be
misplaced in space. Although there are many routines that will do
alignments automatically, careful inspection and adjustment by someone with
specialized training may improve the quality of the alignment, and
hence, of the comparative model.
Good tutorials on such corrections will be found under the links
Correcting alignments in Gert Vriend's
Homology Modeling
Course. DeepView (see below) provides features
that assist in adjusting the alignment easily.
4. Databases of Ready-Made Comparative Models.
4. Databases of Ready-Made Comparative Models.
ModBase is worth checking because if you find a model, it provides a PIR-formatted sequence alignment ready to paste into Protein Explorer's MSA3D (see below). 3DCrunch does not provide this. It might also be worth comparing models of the same sequence from ModBase vs. SWISS-MODEL because they use different algorithms.
It is quicker and easier to submit your sequence to SWISS-MODEL than to try to find a model in 3DCrunch, and you'll get the same "first approach" results either way. 3DCrunch appears not to have been updated since 1998, and only sequences in Swiss-Prot/TrEMBL were modeled, whereas you can submit any sequence to SWISS-MODEL.
5. Introductions to the Principles of Comparative Modeling.
6. Tutorials and Courses: How To Do Comparative Modeling.
This is the best starting place for beginners who want to learn
about comparative modeling. It guides you through the use of
NCBI Entrez to find a sequence in the human genome, using SWISS-MODEL
to get a comparative model, and most importantly, using DeepView to
visualize and evaluate the model.
7. Comparative Modeling Servers and Software.
SWISS-MODEL accepts one-letter amino acid code. If you need to convert your sequence from three-letter code, you can do it at Paul Stothard's Sequence Manipulation Site (U Alberta, Edmonton, Canada).
Requirements for Swiss-Model:
To use the WHAT IF model builder, you must choose your template and prepare your alignment first. Instructions for doing these are beyond the scope of the present guide.
The following opinion was sent to the Protein Data Bank Discussion Forum in November, 1999 by Gert Vriend:
One of the goals of the WHAT IF homology modelling module is to produce models that are as good as possible. Another goal is to make errors as obvious as possible when they are unavoidable. Todays modelling technology (which includes MD programs) cannot yet predict where a loop will find its new position if it is disturbed by for example mutations or by binding a ligand or sugar. In WHAT IF we therefore decided not to make a random motion (and without insult meant to my friends in the MD world, optimising a mutated loop by MD invariably looks like a random motion) but just to leave the backbone as 'untouched' as possible. The results in the biannual CASP competition are every round making more clear that this is (still) the best strategy. However, not moving the backbone accounts for about 2/3-rd of the total modelling error in WHAT IF's models.