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Home > Events & Shows > The Shows Must Go On
Dust off those musical theatre cobwebs and return to your seats to indulge in the magic of the very best songs from stage and screen. Showcasing an all-star cast of New Zealand voices from the international stage, this glittering concert of musical theatre showstoppers is not one to miss. The Shows Must Go On features a spectacular song list of your favourite toe-tapping numbers from the world's greatest musicals including The Phantom of the Opera, Les Misérables, Hairspray, Dreamgirls, The Greatest Showman, We Will Rock You and Priscilla, Queen of the Desert.
With stunning backdrops and theatrical staging, The Shows Must Go On is a night set to delight. Featuring an exquisite cast of some of our best international performers, The Shows Must Go On will be an experience you will never forget.
See www.theshows.co.nz for more info.
Video - https://vimeo.com/429478787
|7:30 pm | 12/10/2020
|8+ Group Discount
|Wheelchair - Senior


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subset: commoncrawl


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Saying goodbye to departing Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney last month cost Canadians about $30,000.
Farewell bashes hosted by the Bank of Canada in Toronto, Montreal and Ottawa – and attended by the wealthy elite of Bay Street, among others – offered guests canapes, fine wine, floral arrangements and a harpist.
The heady round of farewells for Carney, who left his job May 31 for greener pastures at the Bank of England, began with a reception in Toronto.
The posh May 2 event for 200 people was catered by Oliver and Bonacini for $9,300, including almost $500 for flowers. The evening at the Toronto Board of Trade ballroom drew key business people and investors, who heard a speech by Carney.
Another reception in Montreal drew a similar group of 150 guests at the University Club of Montreal. Guests heard brief remarks from Carney, as well as from his newly appointed replacement, Stephen Poloz.
The event cost $4,438.74.
Finally, the bank held May 30 events at its downtown Ottawa headquarters on Wellington Street, a reception for 200 people and a later dinner in its dining room for 80 select guests, many of them key policy-makers. Poloz also attended.
Final bills are not yet available, but the bank estimates the in-house Ottawa reception cost $7,600 and the dinner $6,900 – or about $86 a person.
Bank staff also expensed $90.31 for a going-away gift for Carney, a set of bird sculptures fashioned from aluminum.
The hospitality total comes to about $28,300, though travel costs for Carney and his staff would add several thousand dollars more.
Details of the expenses were obtained by The Canadian Press through the Access to Information Act, as well as from bank officials.
The expenditures come at a time when most government departments are coping with shrinking budgets and thousands of public-service layoffs.
Bank spokesman Jeremy Harrison defended the events as an opportunity for Carney to thank Canada's financial and policy-making communities, and to introduce them to Poloz, his successor.
"Mr. Carney has worked tirelessly on behalf of Canadians over these past five years, and worked closely and frequently with financial market participants in Toronto and Montreal, and with fellow policy-makers in Ottawa on many important financial sector reforms in response to the (global financial) crisis," Harrison said in an email.
"These receptions provided an appropriate venue for the governor to officially bid farewell, to thank industry participants for their continued co-operation, and to allow the Toronto and Montreal financial communities the opportunity to thank him for his service to Canadians."
Harrison noted that when former bank governor David Dodge left his post in 2008, there were official receptions held in Calgary, Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal.
But New Democrat MP Mathieu Ravignat said Carney's farewell events were "excessive, particularly in a situation of economic restraint."
"A $30,000 bill is significant," he said in an interview. "Something more modest would have been possible, particularly in tough economic times. It would have been a show of respect for the taxpayer."
NDP finance critic Peggy Nash attended one of the Carney events, Ravignat said, but she had no role in "organizing ... the opulence of the event."
The governor of the Bank of Canada makes a salary of between $431,800 and $507,900.


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Introduction of 'The Phantom' in February 1936. By then still pencilled by Lee Falk and inked by Ray Moore.
The American writer Lee Falk is the creator of two of the longest running newspaper comics, 'The Phantom' and 'Mandrake the Magician'. He was born in 1911, in St. Louis, Missouri. From his days in high school, when he edited the school paper, and throughout his adult life, Lee felt the urge to write. He wrote stories, articles and poems for his college newspapers. After graduating from the University of Illinois, he found work as a copywriter for a St. Louis advertising agency. There, he met Phil Davis, with whom he created 'Mandrake the Magician', his first attempt at comic strip writing. In 1934, he succeeded in selling 'Mandrake' to King Features Syndicate. The success of the feature was so huge that Falk sold the silent avenger 'The Phantom' to King Features two years later. For this comic, Falk pencilled the first two weeks himself, but later worked with the artists Ray Moore, Wilson McCoy, Sy Barry and Bill Lignante, who mainly drew for Phantom comic books.
Lee Falk was also the author of several theatrical plays. One of these, 'Eris', was staged in Paris in 1968, and was later revived by a French repertory company. In 1962, Falk began writing the Phantom paperback novels, published by Avon Books. He received a special reward for his work as a comic strip writer in 1971. Falk was still actively writing 'The Phantom' and 'Mandrake' well into his eighties. In a medium dominated by graphic artists, Lee Falk stands out as the creator of two successful features, and as a fiction writer of great skill and imagination, whose characters and stories have been popular all over the world for six decades. He died in 1999, at the age of 88.
Photo ©1966 The Newspaper Enterprise Association.


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Ex-IRS official in tea party controversy called conservatives 'crazies' and profanity in email
A former IRS official at the heart of the agency's tea party controversy called conservative Republicans "crazies" and more in emails released Wednesday.
Lois Lerner headed the IRS division that handles applications for tax-exempt status. In a series of emails with a colleague in November 2012, Lerner made two disparaging remarks about members of the GOP, including one remark that was profane.
Rep. Dave Camp, who chairs the House Ways and Means Committee, released the emails Wednesday as part of his committee's investigation. The Michigan Republican says the emails show Lerner's "disgust with conservatives."
In one email, Lerner called members of the GOP crazies. In the other, she called them "assholes." The committee redacted the wording to "_holes" in the material it released publicly but a committee spokeswoman confirmed to the AP that the email said "assholes."
Congress and the Justice Department are investigating whether the IRS improperly scrutinized applications for tax-exempt status from conservative groups.
Camp sent copies of the emails to the Justice Department, saying they provide further proof that Lerner willfully targeted conservatives.
Lerner has since retired from the agency. Her lawyer did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Lerner has emerged as a central figure in several congressional investigations into the IRS' handling of applications for tax-exempt status by tea party and other conservative groups. Twice Lerner refused to answer questions at congressional hearings, invoking her constitutional right against self-incrimination.
In June, the IRS told Congress that an untold number of Lerner's emails were lost when her computer hard drive crashed in 2011.
In the newly released emails, Lerner was apparently traveling in Great Britain when she uses her Blackberry to send a series of emails to a colleague at the IRS. Camp said Lerner was using her government email account.
Lerner tells her colleague that she overheard some women say America was bankrupt and "going down the tubes."
"Well, you should hear the whacko wing of the GOP," replied her colleague, whose name is blacked out. "The US is through; too many foreigners sucking the teat; time to hunker down, buy ammo and food, and prepare for the end. The right wing radio shows are scary to listen to."
Lerner replies: "Great. Maybe we are through if there are that many assholes."
Her colleague replies: "And I'm talking about the hosts of the shows. The callers are rabid."
Lerner: "So we don't need to worry about alien teRrorists. It's our own crazies that will take us down."
Follow Stephen Ohlemacher on Twitter: http://twitter.com/stephenatap


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Advanced Search
CA Technologies on Tuesday said it will offer its popular ARCserve backup and recovery solution as a service using Microsoft's Windows Azure cloud platform.
The move makes CA the latest traditional backup and recovery software company to launch its Software as a Service (SaaS). Just last week, CA's key rival in the backup and recovery field, Symantec, said it will offer a version of its popular Backup Exec as a cloud-based offering. The new Symantec service, called Backup Exec.cloud, will allow customers to stream their backups to Symantec datacenters.
CA's ARCserve will be available as a subscription service using Azure as the cloud platform and storage repository. It is the first time CA has offered ARCserve on a subscription basis. Azure will be the exclusive cloud platform for ARCserve's SaaS solution, though CA is developing other non-SaaS technologies that will work with other cloud providers.
"We think that their SLAs, their security, everything about the Azure service really services our market well, so we're excited to partner with those guys," said Steve Fairbanks, CA's VP of product management for data management. "What's unique here is you're getting the combined local backup capabilities and the cloud storage capabilities all sold as a convenient service."
CA last year released the latest version of its ARCserve software, called ARCserve D2D, which the company says allows backup and bare metal restores from physical and virtual servers. It lets customers take a complete snapshot of a server or desktop and store a copy of that locally, enabling faster recovery time objectives, according to Fairbanks.
Customers will "have all of those very fast recovery capabilities locally and then we give them the ability to specify the critical files that they would like to store in the Azure cloud for a complete disaster scenario," he said. "Heaven forbid if they were to lose their entire site."
Enterprise Strategy Group analyst Lauren Whitehouse said the CA offering will appeal to shops that want to back up data both locally and offsite. "The ARCserve-Azure solution can be a hybrid approach where there is data stored locally (at the client's site) to facilitate day-to-day operational recoveries and data stored in the cloud for longer-term retention and, in some cases, the doomsday copy should the client's primary location or data copies not be available for recovery," Whitehouse said in an e-mail.
The service will use secure socket layer (SSL) connections and employ 256-bit AES encryption for security.
CA has not disclosed pricing but ARCserve subscriptions will include fees for using Azure. Setting up an ARCserve account will automatically establish an Azure subscription. The service is expected to go into beta this summer and will be commercially available this fall.
Posted by Jeffrey Schwartz on May 10, 2011 at 11:58 AM
A public preview of Microsoft Mesh for Microsoft Teams will arrive next month.
Microsoft will "retire" its Azure Database for MariaDB service on Sept. 19, 2025.
The new Outlook for Windows 11 app is now at the "general availability" release stage for personal users, but it's also "enterprise ready."
Four new Surface devices for businesses were announced during Microsoft's fall hardware event.
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This bright, positive and cheerful logo / ident is an ideal way to brand your company, product or service. Very well suited to health, environmental and nature vehicles, this super clean and refreshing audio ident will leave listeners in a positive frame of mind.
- Includes version with bird sound effects (as per preview)
- Includes version without bird sound effects


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What's New
Duffy Script Font Family by Shinntype
An interpretation of the lettering of contemporary illustrator Amanda Duffy, aka Losergirl.
Each font contains four glyphs for each character (including all numbers, punctuation, and symbols), which OpenType coding sets in "random" order for a subtle, natural effect.
Use a curved path to further accentuate the bounced quality of the letters. Try out different combinations of glyphs by inserting the cursor in front of your headline and hitting the space bar repeatedly: each time,the text will be represented by a different sequence of glyphs.
Tags: Casual Script, Font, Handwritten


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The GX50-39 is a Veolia Hytrex cartridge filter with a nominal retention rating of 50 micron. The GX50-39 has a length of 39 in. with 2 1/2 in., OD and a 1 in. ID. 100% Polypropylene Construction for high purity demanding applications. Graded density: traps large particles on the outside, small in the body of the filter.
Veolia material Item number 1194924 – Hytrex© is a registered Trade Mark of Veolia Water


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The project, which is part of the Crown Estate Scottish territorial waters licensing programme, will be built in the outer Firth of Tay, with up to 213 turbines covering an area of 150 square kilometres.
Key features of the project mentioned in the consent application include a National Grid connection agreement for a 1.05GW project at Cockenzie, East Lothian, and a maximum turbine blade tip height of 215 metre above lowest astronomical tide.
"The submission of the consent application is an important milestone for the Inch Cape project," said Ronnie Bonnar, managing director of Repsol UK.
"It represents another major step towards development of offshore wind power in the outer Firth of Tay, delivering opportunities for communities in the surrounding area to benefit from the investment, which is expected to deliver up to 1,600 Scottish jobs during construction. We look forward to working with the relevant stakeholders to ensure a positive outcome for the application."


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Welcome to Patrick Nied Photography!
I am a Wedding and Portrait Photographer located in Seattle. Husband to a beautiful wife, and father to the world's cutest two boys. I've lived in Seattle for the past 10 years and love everything about this area. If we're not strolling around Greenlake or enjoying the sunset at Golden Gardens, we're probably hunkered down at our favorite Fremont Coffee shop. I love being a Wedding photographer, especially in the amazing scenery we have at our fingertips here in Seattle. Whether you're planning for rustic chic at a Woodinville winery, contemporary urban on a downtown sky rise rooftop, or DIY in the Cascades, let me document this once in a lifetime occasion for you and your family! - Patrick


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Sergio Salma was born in Charleroi in 1960 as the son of Italian parents. After an artistic education at the Academy of Fine Arts in Mons, he made his first album for Michel Deligne: 'Faits Divers' with a script by Francesco Pittau in 1983. Then, he created the 'Marcobello' series in À Suivre and worked for several magazines for children. For Spirou, he scripted such series as 'Isaline et Jean-Luc' (art by Alec Séverin), 'Suzy' (art by Carine De Brab), 'Attention École' (art by Curd Ridel) and 'Petit Rigolo Illustré' (art by several artists, including Salma himself).
'Faits Divers'.
In 1989, Salma created his best-known character, the highly imaginative little girl and wanna-be world traveller 'Nathalie', in Tintin Reporter. Éditions Casterman has collected 'Nathalie' in 20 books since 1992, and the comic also ran in Minnie magazine. As a scriptwriter, Salma developed a second heroine, the rich and spoilt 'Mademoiselle Louise', in cooperation with André Geerts. Casterman published two books in 1993 and 1997, and Dupuis two more in 2007 and 2009. Salma also helped with the creation of the final 'Jojo' album, released shortly after Geerts' death in 2010.
While continuing to write and draw 'Nathalie', Salma created 'Surimi', a humorous series about a crab on a tourist beach, also for Casterman (2001-2003). He additionally created 'Ice Fred' for the Disney Hachette magazine P'tit Loup in 2002, and the vertical gag strip 'Animal Lecteur' with Libon for Spirou in 2006. Salma is also known as a committed artist through his commissioned anti-discrimination comic book called 'Moi, raciste?' for the European Union in 1998, and his participation in the comic about seropositive children and adolescents for Dupuis.
In 2007 Salma wrote the 43rd and final comic book in the series 'Les 4 As' with artist Alain Maury. He also scripted an album with gags about the US-Iraq conflict called 'Bagdad KO' with art by Marco Paulo (Drugstore, 2009). 'Marinelle 1956', Salma's comic about the Le Bois du Cazier mining disaster in Marcinelle took him 25 years to create, and was finally published in the collection Casterman Écritures in 2012.
'Marcinelle 1956'.


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Everybody's felting! Wool felt is the perfect material for holiday items that are warm, colorful and personal. Betz White shows you techniques to make one-of-a-kind decorations and gifts, easy enough for kids and parents to do together, and stylish enough to please the pickiest person on your list. Green crafter Betz White is the author of Warm Fuzzies and Sewing Green. You've seen Betz and her designs on The Martha Stewart Show and the cover of Craft magazine. In this class, you'll learn the basics of felting and how to find thrift-store sweaters to transform into unique and durable fabric. Use felt to make an adorable tabletop village of houses and trees, ornaments with a midcentury flair, cute bottle sleeves for instant presents, and custom-fit slippers for your whole family. You'll even learn how to turn scraps from your other projects into the cutest, most colorful garland and ornaments ever. Sign up today for Fab Felt Holiday Crafts and bring your creativity to life!
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Fab Felt Holiday Craftswith Betz White
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DIY Embellished Mules
It all started after falling down an Etsy rabbit hole, where I discovered an assortment of beaded Indian appliqués. They were stunning and surprisingly inexpensive. And they reminded me of the intricate and textural details found on Oscar de la Renta's multiple iterations of embellished slides. So obviously, the only reasonable place to position these beauties was on a recently purchased pair of flat mules. Honestly, marrying patches and shoes has become a legitimate addiction . . .
- flat mule slides (mine are from here and here)
- embellished appliques
- Fabric Fusion
- foam brush
- popsicle stick or toothpick
- washi or masking tape
by Erica in D.I.Y.


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Melanie Spiller and Coloratura Consulting
On Music
On Writing
Off Topic
About and
Copyright 2020 Melanie Spiller. All rights reserved.
Instrument Biography: The Harmonica
Spiller and Coloratura Consulting
The harmonica and the accordion are both reed organs. In the interest of space, their biographies have been broken
out of the main reed organ (harmonium) article.
The harmonica may have a reputation as a folk instrument, but it was invented for classical music and is really rather
interesting despite its humble circumstances today. It came about as a result of experimenting with organ reeds and various
ways of making them vibrate, including forms that include the accordion, the concertina, and the harmonium.
The first time I realized that the harmonica was a serious instrument was when I worked in a little ice cream parlor while I
was in high school. The owner was an Israeli immigrant who'd been the dance camp harmonica player at a kibbutz for
American tourists. When Schlomo went in the back room and played, it was like a whole orchestra had gone in there with
him. He played for such notables as Ray Bolger (of "Wizard of Oz" fame), who one day wandered into the shop hoping to
reconnect with him.
It's not a long history, but I think that you'll find that it's an interesting one.
The harmonica is a reed organ, but unlike the accordion or harmonium, human lungs are used as the bellows. The
harmonica is also called the French harp, blues harp, and mouth organ among other names (see below for a longer list). It's
used in nearly every musical genre world-wide, but is given a starring role in blues, American folk, jazz, country, and rock
and roll.
Harmonica History
The original mouth organs wouldn't be recognized outside of rural China these days. I was fortunate enough to see these
(they're called shengs) used for folk dances on my trip there in 2010, in the province of Yunnan. Basically, a gourd is studded
with long reeds, and the player blows through a pipe attached to the gourd, through the neck of the gourd itself, or through
a tube that crosses the length of the reeds. Some look a bit like a porcupine with very long spines, some look vaguely like a
portative organ, and others look like a sideways panpipe. All three styles have very long reeds for a wind instrument,
between 1-4 feet in length.
The Chinese sheng sounds more flutelike than harmonica-like to western ears, but it is nevertheless the parent of the
harmonica. It's likely that, along with the panpipe, the sheng was brought to Europe as a novelty and European instruments
that suited European sensibilities evolved from it.
Free reed instruments, like the sheng, were common throughout Asia for centuries before they came to Europe and they
were already known in Europe when a German named Christian Friedrich Ludwig Buschmann got hold of the idea. He's
often cited as the inventor of the harmonica, but other instrument makers were also busy coming up with similar
instruments. It isn't known who really invented it, but Buschmann gets the credit, claiming that he got his idea from pitch
pipes used to tune organs. His harmonica was only 2.75 inches long.
Mouth-blown free-reed instruments appeared in the US, South America, the UK, and all around Europe at around the same
Chamber harmonicas were available in Vienna before 1824, and the blow and draw mechanism followed shortly.
Harmonicas were soon popular all over Austria, Germany, and Czechoslovakia. Harmonica makers proliferated and soon
machines were used to machine-punch out the covers and speed up the work. Everyone, from weavers to clockmakers, got
into the new industry, and soon varieties included tremolo, chromatic, bass, chord, and octave harmonicas. (More on those
in the
Wherever it began, by the mid-19
century, its popularity had grown, especially in the Germanic regions, with everyone
getting involved in manufacturing them. By the end of the 19
century, harmonicas were big business, and by the early 20
century, harmonicas were mass-produced.
Harmonicas were popular on both sides of the American Civil War (1860s), and famous wild west personalities Wyatt Earp
and Billy the Kid were both said to play them. Harmonicas crept back to their classical music roots by the 1930s, but that
didn't last long.
There was a harmonica shortage in the US during World War II because wood and metals were needed for military efforts.
Also, the primary makers were in Germany and Japan, the US's enemies at that time. A Dutch-American called Finn Magnus
figured out how to make a molded plastic instrument with molded plastic combs and fewer pieces than the tradirional
instrument. The sound was quite different from the metal and wood version, and furthered the attitude that the harmonica
was a toy. William Kratt got a patent in 1952 and the War Department allotted a rationed supply of brass to his factory so
that the Red Cross could have harmonicas to pass out to overseas GIs.
After the war, the harmonica moved north with the blues as African-American workers headed to Chicago, Detroit, St. Louis,
and New York to find work in the 1950s. Once musicians began to amplify the guitar, double-bass, and voices, it didn't take
long for the harmonica to get into the act.
Japan began manufacturing harmonicas in the early 1900s, and by mid-century, there were three companies making them,
some of which continue to this day (two of them are Yamaha and Suzuki—don't they also make motorcycles? Is there
something to that?). Japan's harmonica manufacturing was interrupted by World War II and has been slow to recover fully.
Despite the hardship, they were famous for the tremolo instruments, and later for innovating major- and minor-tuned
The harmonica was often associated with the poor in the early 20
century (much like the dear little
in earlier
times) because of its association with African-American music, hillbilly music, and jug bands. The harmonica only returned
to its association with classical music in the 1930s.
Harmonica music became popular in China alongside the sheng, and by the 1930s (well before Mao Tse-tung and the
Cultural Revolution), interest in it had spread to Hong Kong, still a British colony at the time. By the 1950s, the chromatic
harmonica was popular in Asia as well as Europe and the Americas, and western players were invited to perform all over
Asia. The Chinese YMCA Harmonica Orchestra had 100 members in the 1960s and the harmonica's popularity grew steadily
until the 1990s. Although there are still Chinese participants in international harmonica festivals, interest there, much as
elsewhere, has dropped off.
These days, harmonicas are made world-wide. Major manufacturers are in Germany, Japan, China, Brazil, and the US.
Surprisingly, in recent years, the harmonica has been used for strengthening the lungs by the medical community. Inhaling
and exhaling against a strong resistance are good for the lungs, helping to develop a strong diaphragm, and increasing the
volume of air within the lung. Pulmonary specialists suggest that playing the harmonica can help COPD patients as much as
a muscle trainer or spirometer. It's also a nice incentive to exercise if you can make a little music while you're at it.
Harmonica Structure
The harmonica is a flat, rectangular, metal box, usually small (most are a little wider than the palm of your hand and less
than two inches long), with slit-like openings on both of its long sides. Each slit leads to a pair of reeds inside the box: one
works by air pressure (blowing) and the other works by suction (inhaling). The instrument is placed against the lips and the
player blows into or inhales (called a draw) against the slits, moving it back and forth to change notes along the scale.
The embouchure of the lips and tongue direct air into and out of one or more holes along the length of the mouthpiece.
Behind the holes are chambers containing at least one reed. The reed is a flat, elongated spring made of brass or bronze
and secured at one end over the slot. The slot is the airway. The free end alternately blocks and unblocks the airway as the
player blows or sucks on it, and the vibrations produce sound.
Reeds are tuned to specific pitches by the manufacturer, and cannot be easily tuned by a player to change key signatures.
Tuning involves changing the reed's length, the weight near the free end of the reed, or the stiffness near the fixed end of
the reed.
If the reed is fixed below the edge of its slot rather than within the plane of it, it's easier to get the reed to move using air
flow, vibrating to produce sound or closing the slot. There are two kinds of reeds within each slot: a blow reed and a draw
reed. Older, less flexible harmonicas used flaps of leather (or plastic, later) as valves or wind-savers, to block the non-
playing reed.
Longer, heavier, and more flexible reeds produce low notes, shorter, lighter, and stiff reeds make high notes. There is both a
blow reed and a draw reed in the same chamber, which allows them to be played separately.
Pitch is produced by making the reeds vibrate, and each reed's pitch can be altered by changing the mouth's embouchure.
This is called "bending" the notes. It's possible to bend a single reed in a chromatic harmonica (or other styles that have
wind-savers), but also to both raise and lower the pitch in pairs of reeds within the same chamber in a diatonic harmonica
(or other styles with unvalved reeds). Such two-reed changes involve making both reeds sound at the same time.
it's also possible to lower or raise (called overbending, overblowing, or overdrawing) the pitch on a diatonic or other
unvalved harmonica. Such two-reed pitch changes involve sound production from the normally silent reed (the draw reed
while the player is blowing or vice versa). Overbending, where the blowing or sucking is harder than necessary to merely
create a sound, allows otherwise diatonic (Do-Re-Mi) instruments to play a chromatic scale. Overtones can be achieved by
changing the size of the mouth's cavity (moving the tongue or cheeks).
Vibrato is achieved by changing the way the harmonica is held, by quickly cupping the hands around the harmonica, or by
shaking the head (rather than by fluctuations in wind speed, like on other wind instruments). This head-shaking method is
most commonly used in blues, where the breath quickly alternates between two holes. This is slightly stronger than
ordinary vibrato in that it changes the pitch by a greater distance than would be found in the vibrato of a stringed
instrument or a voice (or a tremolo harmonica). Vibrato can also be achieved with the throat as it is with other wind
instruments, although the sucking gesture is unique to the harmonica.
It's possible to breathe noisily and rhythmically or to chant while playing the harmonica, which adds an interesting texture
to the sound. Tongue blocking allow chords by preventing airflow past unused reeds, and hand effects can create bumpy or
vibrato sounds.
The harmonica has three basic parts: the
, the
reed plates
, and the
cover plates
is the main body of the instrument and contains the air chambers that cover the reeds. It looks like a wide-
toothed hair comb. Combs were originally made from wood but are now usually plastic or metal—even titanium for high-
end instruments. A wooden comb might expand slightly in response to the player's breath, making it uncomfortable to play.
The determining factor for the various comb materials is durability.
Combs often shrink over time, especially in chromatic harmonicas with thin dividers between chambers. This can lead to
cracks because the comb is held in place by nails. Some players soak their wooden-combed harmonicas in water so that the
slight expansion makes a seal between the comb and reed plates and to make the covers more airtight. Modern
instruments are less prone to swelling and contracting, although some players still dip their instruments into water because
of how it affects the tone and eases bending notes.
reed plate
is the housing for the reeds. Reeds are usually brass, but steel, aluminum, and plastic are often used.
Individual reeds are riveted to the reed plate, but they might also be welded or screwed in. Reeds fixed on the inside
(within the comb's chamber) respond to blowing and those on the outside respond to suction.
Most harmonicas have the reed plate attached to the comb or another reed plate by screws or bolts. A few brands still use
the traditional method of nailing, and some have the reed plates held in place by tension (such as the World War II-era All-
American models). If plates are bolted to the comb, the individual reed plates can be easily replaced. Reeds eventually go
out of tune through normal use, and some notes are more likely to fail than others, so this ease of substitution saves the
instrument from the second-hand store.
Finn Magnus' all plastic harmonica molded the reed and reed plate out of a single piece of plastic. This was glued to the
Cover plates
cover the reed plates and are usually made of metal, although wood and plastic are also used. Because they
project sound, cover plates determine the tonal quality of the harmonica. There are two types of cover plates: the
traditional open design of stamped metal or plastic, and enclosed designs, such as the Hohner and Suzuki high-end models,
which are louder.
Additional features might include
neck racks,
are one-way valves made from thin strips of plastic, knit paper, leather, or Teflon that is glued to the reed
plate. They're used when two reeds share a cell and leakage through the non-playing reed is significant. When a draw note
is played, the wind-saver valve on the blow reed slot is sucked shut, preventing air from leaking through the inactive blow
reed. These are common to chromatic harmonicas, chord harmonicas, and many octave-tuned harmonicas.
is placed between the air chambers of the instrument and the player's mouth. This can be part of the
comb, the cover, or an entirely separate unite, secured by screws (such as in chromatics). In many harmonicas, the
mouthpiece is purely ergonomic. In the traditional
-based chromatic harmonica, the mouthpiece also provides a
groove for the slide.
Special features, such as
that could be rung by pushing a button, were popular in the late 19
and early 20
It would be fun to find one of those, wouldn't it?
Harmonicas can be placed into a
neck rack
so that the player's hands are free to play another instrument (acoustic guitars
are a popular choice). The neck rack clamps the harmonica between two metal brackets, which are attached to a loop of
metal that passes around the neck. Folk musicians often use neck racks, and lots of pop and blues players do too.
The harmonica may need to be
, especially blues harmonicas. This can be achieved with microphones and tube
amplifiers. Some varieties of microphones allow the harmonica to be audible even over amplified electric guitars.
There are many types of harmonicas, including
(the Do-Re-Mi scale),
(all the notes on a piano, black and
bass, ChengGong,
pitch pipes
harmonicas (Do-Re-Mi) continue to be popular in European folk music, and blues and country have joined in, along
with American folk. These instruments are in one particular key signature, and special techniques (such as bending) are
required to get notes other than those in that specific collection of notes.
harmonica uses a button-activated sliding bar to redirect air from the hole in the mouthpiece to the selected
reed. This allows 12 notes in an octave scale rather than eight, as in the diatonic instrument.
harmonica has two reeds per note, one slightly sharp and one slightly flat. This makes a wavering sound, like
vibrato. This instrument is more popular in Asia than elsewhere, but you can also hear them in ballads, gospel, Latin, and
European folk styles.
harmonica is similar in structure to the tremolo harmonica, but the two reeds in each chamber are tuned in
octaves. This makes a richer sound than ordinary harmonicas, but because each note is reeded twice, it has less range.
These are common in Old-Time, Cajun, and Irish music.
There are eight kinds of
harmonicas, offering a nice variety of sounds vaguely resembling orchestral instruments.
The most common is the Horn harmonica, often found in Asia. These have a single large comb with blow-only reeds on both
top and bottom, with each reed sitting inside a single cell of the comb. One version mimics the layout of a piano or mallet
instrument, with the natural notes in the lower reed plate and the sharps and flats directly above in the upper reed plate.
Orchestral harmonicas come in several pitch ranges, and usually cover two or three octaves. There's another type that has
the notes laid out all in a neat row, called the polyphonia or chromatic, that play the same note on both blow and draw.
harmonica has up to 48 chords in major, minor, seventh, augmented, and diminished versions. Notes are
clustered together, four at a time, each sounding a different chord on blow and draw. Expensive versions have two reeds for
each note, tuned in octaves, and gives a richer and louder sound.
harmonicas are double-decked, having two hinged bodies connected along their length, with the natural notes on the
lower instrument and the sharps and flats on the upper. Its range is about the same as that of a bass guitar, about two
octaves, starting two octaves below middle C. Each hole of the mouthpiece accesses two reeds, tuned an octave apart. The
instrument only works by blowing (the draw aspect is absent). These instruments offer a wonderful spooky sound, and I'd
sure like to have one!
harmonicas have a main body and a sliding mouthpiece that moves along a groove. This nifty thing is tuned to
C major, but plays different chords and note combinations depending on the location of the mouthpiece in relationship to
the reeds. The body is a 24-hole diatonic harmonica with an 11-hole mouthpiece. It's capable of playing single-note
melodies as well as double stops over three diatonic octaves using tongue-blocking. Blowing and drawing produce the same
notes (like a tremolo).
pitch pipe
is a special harmonica that provides reference notes for singers, one note at a time (multiple notes are not
possible). Chromatic pitch pipes provide all 12 notes, including the starting note at the octave. Pitch pipes sold to string
players (such as guitarists and violin players) only provide the open string pitches.
Harmonica music can be in tablature as well as notation. Tablature indicates where the note is on the instrument rather
than duration and pitch alone. This can be easier for untrained musicians to use, much as having the chords spelled out for
guitar players does. Text Tab is another common type of harmonica tablature, and indicates when to blow or draw on the
note by marking the position of the hole with a B for blow and a D for draw. Tablature usually aligns with lyrics to show
tuning and timing rather than above notation.
Regular notation is also used, sometimes with a circled number below each note telling the position of the hole to play. An
up or down arrow indicates whether the hole is blown or drawn. Curved arrows are used for bent notes. Cool, eh?
Harmonica Name
The harmonica was originally called a mouth organ both in German and in English. Buschmann called it a
. The French call it the
harmonica a bouche
In German, it's a
(the accordion is the
) In Scandinavian languages, the accordion is called
and a harmonica is a
. In Slavic languages, the names are similar or the same as in
Scandinavian languages.
In Italian, it's an
armonica a bocca
, in Spanish, it's
In English the slang terms include French harp, blues harp,
mouth organ, hand reed, licking stick, pocket sax, toe pickle, tin sandwich, ten-holed tin-can tongue twister. The Mississippi
saxophone is a special amplified harmonica.
A Viennese fellow called Ernst Schmidt invented a form of harmonica called an apollolyra, with 44 reeds controlled by keys.
In French and German, the name harmonica is also used for a variety of instruments of the xylophone type (tuned strips of
harmonica de bois
), steel (
harmonica a lames d'acier,
—or glockenspiel), stone
harmonica a lumes de pierre
). The Ziehharmonika (German) is an accordion.
The glass harmonica is not a harmonica at all, but is a series of nested glass cups mounted sideways on a pole. It's more of a
xylophone than a harmonica. (It has no reeds at all.)
Harmonica Composers
Classical composers include Ralph Vaughn Williams, Darius Mihaud, Malcolm Arnold, Heitor Villo Lobos, and Arthur
Benjamin. Jazz, blues, country, Cajun, and pop composers are too numerous to even begin to list. Instead, let's look at who
plays the harmonica.
Harmonica Players
Abraham Lincoln notoriously carried a harmonica in his pocket, and wild-westerners Wyatt Earp and Billy the Kid both
For more popular genres of music, the number of players is really really long. So I'll just bundle them up in bulk. These lists
don't even pretend to be comprehensive.
: Bob Dylan, Neil Young, John Lennon (Love Me Do, Please Please Me, I'll Get You, and I Should Have Known Better,
Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite, Rocky Racoon, Oh Yoko), Bruce Springsteen, Billy Joel, Beck, Stevie Wonder, Al "Blind Owl"
Wilson (Canned Heat), Jack Bruce (Cream), John Sebastian (The Lovin' Spoonful), Donovan, Taj Mahal, Mick Jagger, Brian
Jones (Rolling Stones), Huey Lewis, John Mayall, Paul Jones (Manfred Mann and The Blues Band), Tom Petty, Scott Thurston
(Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers), Peter Green (Fleetwood Mac), Roger Daltrey (The Who), Ray Davies (The Kinks), Steven
Tyler (Aerosmith), Robert Plant (Led Zeppelin), Bono (U2), Rick Davies (Supertramp), Sly Stone (Sly and the Family Stone),
Eric Clapton and the Yardbirds.
Scottish or Irish folk
: Benny Gallagher, Philip Achille, John and Pip Murphy, Noel Battle, Austin Berry, James Conway, Andy
Irvine, Mick Kinsella, Brendan Power, Joel Bernstein, Don Meade, Paul Moran, Tom Byrne, Rick Epping.
Jimmy Reed and John Hammond Jr., Sonny Boy Williamson II, Big Walter Horton, Howlin' Wolf, Paul Butterfield,
James Cotton, Norton Buffalo, Jerry Portnoy, Lazy Lester, Sugar Blue, Billy Branch, Charlie Musselwhite, Corky Siegel, Junior
Wells, Ron "Pigpen" McKernan, Kim Wilson, Slim Harpo, Howard Levy, Jason Ricci, Carlos del Junco, Chris "Buddha"
Michalek, Frederic Yonnet, Adam Gussow, Paul Nebenzahl.
"Race records"
(meant for black audiences in the 1920s) were popular and featured DeFord Bailey, Hammie Nixon, Walter
Horton, Sonny Terry.
Frank Hutchison, Gwen Foster.
Jug Bands:
Memphis Jug Band.
: Larry Adler, Philip Achille, Nikki Gadout, Steve Baker, Johny Mueller, Will Burger.
Philip Achille, Yvonnick Prene, Jean "Toots" Theilemans (also known for his whistling and his contribution to the theme
song from Sesame Street).
(Sufi devotional music): Philip Achille.
Latin American:
Flavio Guimaraes.
"Musical Instruments; Their History in Western Culture from the Stone Age to the Present Day," by Karl Geiringer, translated
by Bernard Miall. George Allen & Unwin, Ltd., London, 1949.
"Harvard Concise Dictionary of Music," compiled by Don Michael Randel. Bellknap Press of Harvard University Press,
Cambridge, 1978.
"The Complete Idiot's Guide to Playing the Harmonica," by Randy F. Weinstein, and William Melton. Alpha Imprint of
Penguin Group, New York, 2006.
"Musical Instruments of the World," by The Diagram Group. Sterling Publishing Co, Inc., New York, 1997.
"The Encyclopedia of Music," by Max Wadi-Matthews and Wendy Thompson, Lorenz Books, Leicestershire, 2012.
"The History of Musical Instruments," by Carl Sachs. Dover Publications, Inc., Mineola, 2006.
"The Norton/Grove Concise Encyclopedia of Music," Edited by Stanly Sadie. W.W. Norton & Company, New York, 1994.


text:
I don't care about the Final Fantasy VII remake, even though FF VII is one of my favorite JRPGs. I feel like the original 1997 version, though dated, has such a charm to it. And no, I didn't play the original version back when it was released. I played it in the mid 2000s, when graphics were already considerably better. And yet, I was still charmed by it.
Frankly, I am getting tired of video game remakes. I really am. There is a difference between cinephiles and gamers. Cinephiles want to preserve old black and white movies, and older movies with dated special effects, in their original form, seeing them as an art form. Gamers want to remake everything. Needless to say, I appreciate cinephiles more than gamers.
So your saying you wish time would stop and nothing innovative or new would ever occur again?
Or are you saying you want original ideas and no more recreating of them?
Are you an anti-technologist?
Originally Posted by Seiei
So your saying you wish time would stop and nothing innovative or new would ever occur again?
Or are you saying you want original ideas and no more recreating of them?
Are you an anti-technologist?
I don't know where you got the idea that I don't want innovation. There are plenty of new games that I play with beautiful graphics and sound. But just like I wouldn't want my favorite old black and white movies being colorized, or old Ray Harryhousen films with stop-motion models being updated with CGI effects, I don't like all these games being remade. If they can't think up a new Final Fantasy game with an intriguing story and great gameplay, that's Square-Enix's fault.
New and innovative games and movies are wonderful. As long we can appreciate the old.
So you don't consider Remakes of any sort innovative? And others just living off the Laurels of past innovations instead?
Or is it just your preference and nothing more?
Just so you and others know, I've played FF7 Remake because I thought FF7 was a great game. The Remake so far in my opinion is not as good as the original. As a game though it's good. It's not really the same game either.
I never cared much about FFVIIR to begin with because FFVII was a just ok jrpg, but I did plan on playing it.
But then after over a decade of cockteasing and waiting, the awful art direction SE went with for all new FFVII content (Do weebs even give a shit about Gackt anymore? Do we really still need this awful, washed-out, jpop art style?), the shift to dumb arpg meme gameplay (especially since SE sucks at making arpgs), and the episodic release, I completely lost any interest I previously had in playing it.
They didn't even do a good job bringing the character models up to gen 8 graphical standards. Whenever I see Remake Sephiroth, all I can think is that his face looks like a Resident Evil 4 face.
That being said, some video game remakes have been pretty great. Things like Pokémon HeartGold/SoulSilver, the Yakuza remakes and the Resident Evil remakes are way more playable than the originals.
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1376.0 - Local Government and ABS, 2013
ARCHIVED ISSUE Released at 11:30 AM (CANBERRA TIME) 31/01/2013 Final
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A newsletter aimed at keeping local government informed of key ABS data and other relevant developments. This annual release will be updated during the year with any new information as it becomes available.
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Narcissism Rears Its Ugly Head in Greenberg
- Christa Banister Crosswalk.com Contributing Writer
- 2010 26 Mar
Release Date: March 26, 2010 (limited)
Rating: R (for some strong sexuality, drug use and language)
Genre: Drama
Run Time: 107 min.
Director: Noah Baumbach
Actors: Ben Stiller, Greta Gerwig, Chris Messina, Jennifer Jason-Leigh Susan Traylor, Rhys Ifans, Mina Badie, Zach Chassler, Koby Rouviere, Sydney Rouviere, Aaron Wrinkle, Mark Duplass
With the exception of last year's delightfully quirky Fantastic Mr. Fox where the squabbles between father and son were decidedly less volatile, writer/director Noah Baumbach is known for penning screenplays with particularly prickly family dynamics (see Margot at the Wedding, The Squid and the Whale, The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou).
And while Baumbach doesn't focus much on the family minutia this time around, the whole relationship angle is certainly no less complicated in Greenberg, an unsettling story about people (middle-aged and otherwise) embracing the life they never planned on.
Serving as the title's namesake, 41-year-old Roger Greenberg (Ben Stiller) is a failed rock star-turned-carpenter who's decided that his next career movie is doing, well, nothing. Before beginning the journey of nothingness, however, life takes yet another unexpected detour from Manhattan to Los Angeles.
After a brief stint in a mental institution following a nervous breakdown, Roger makes the cross-country trek to dog-sit for his brother Phillip's (Chris Messina) German shepherd while his family is on an extended vacation in Vietnam.
In stark contrast to Roger's rather grim reality, Phillip leads a pretty charmed life. Instead of being reclusive, awkward and full of antagonism like Roger, who spends a good chunk of his time composing angry letters to behemoth corporations he believes have done him wrong, Phillip has a successful career, a gorgeous home and a pretty assistant, Florence (Greta Gerwig), to deal with life's more mundane tasks like running errands, grocery shopping and giving the dog his medicine.
Much like Roger's ho-hum existence, Florence's life is definitely sad, too. While she's got a modicum of musical talent and plenty of unassuming, girlish charm, she freely gives her body to truly unappreciative, unworthy suitors, yet barely musters the chutzpah to ask for her own paycheck. So as you've probably guessed, Roger is drawn to Florence like a moth to a flame. After all, it's a prime opportunity just when he needs one the most.
Unlike your requisite romantic comedy where it's at least quasi-entertaining to watch even the unlikeliest of pairs find love, though, seeing Roger and Florence's courtship play out is downright painful—and that's putting it mildly. Not only is it impossible to root for this codependent couple, but given the sheer selfishness of Roger's actions and the cruelty of his words whenever they get close, it ultimately makes you mad at Florence, too, because she doesn't have enough self-respect to give him the heave-ho for good.
Sandwiched in between Roger and Florence's on-again-off-again relationship are other displays of Roger's blatant narcissism. The best example is the artfully choreographed scene at the garden party he hosts. During a particularly telling voiceover, we witness how Roger sees nothing but what happens to him, even though his former bandmate and close friend Ivan (Notting Hill's Rhys Ifans, who shines in a serious role) is on the verge of losing of his marriage.
While Ivan pours out his heart, all Roger can think about is how his old friend Eric (Mark Duplass) may have insulted him or that his ex-girlfriend Beth (Jennifer Jason-Leigh, Baumbach's wife and story collaborator) is now single again and presumably ready to mingle. Funnily enough, once Roger eventually senses that his friends keep him at arm's length, he even lacks the self-awareness to understand why—something Ivan is forced to explain to him later.
To Stiller's credit, he actually does a fantastic job of branching out from his typical funny guy shtick and playing a guy this grossly unlovable. And Gerwig, who's already an indie movie favorite, also shines as a lonely girl struggling in a city cluttered with superficiality.
Good acting aside, this is by no means an endorsement. For a flick that tries so hard to make a grand statement about the messiness of humanity and how "hurt people hurt people," there's something incredibly contrived and hollow about Greenberg.
After all, without spending your hard-earned cash and nearly two hours in a theater, most people can see the horrible effects of narcissism played out in everyday life. And my guess is those ordinary truths would be even stranger (and more relevant) than Baumbach's fiction.
Drugs/Alcohol: Social drinking and a lengthy scene where Greenberg snorts cocaine at a party.
Language/Profanity: Several uses of the "f" word, plus a steady stream of other profanities, including misuses of God's name.
Sex/Nudity: Loneliness and sex go hand in hand in the movie. Before meeting Greenberg, Florence sleeps with a random guy who makes it clear that it's just sex, not a relationship (her breasts are revealed as she puts her bra on afterward). The first time Florence actually meets Greenberg, he almost immediately makes a pass at her and only minutes later, is performing oral sex on her (this scene is particularly graphic). Later on, another gritty sex scene between the new couple (there's more female upper-body nudity shown) definitely isn't prettified by Hollywood standards either.
Violence: An animal's head is floating in a swimming pool.
Christa Banister is a full-time freelancer writer, specializing in music, movies and books-related reviews and interviews and is the author of two novels, Around the World in 80 Dates and Blessed Are the Meddlers. Based in St. Paul, Minn., she also weighs in on various aspects of pop culture on her personal blog.
For more information, including her upcoming book signings and sample chapters of her novels, check out her Website.


text:
You were brought up as an atheist—could you describe your earlier views on religion and how you came to have a more positive view of religion and religious practices?
In my book, I argue that believing in God is, for me as for many others, simply not possible. At the same time, I want to suggest that if you remove this belief, there are particular dangers that open up—we don't need to fall into these dangers, but they are there and we should be aware of them. For a start, there is the danger of individualism: of placing the human being at the center of everything. Second, there is the danger of technological perfectionism; of believing that science and technology can overcome all human problems, that it is just a matter of time before scientists have cured us of the human condition. Third, without God it is easier to lose perspective: to see our own times as everything, to forget the brevity of the present moment, and to cease to appreciate (in a good way) the minuscule nature of our own achievements. And last, without God there can be a danger (note the tentative can) that the need for empathy and ethical behavior is more easily overlooked—in other words, that evil becomes less incongruous.
Now, it is important to stress that it is quite possible to believe in nothing and remember all these vital lessons (just as one can be a deep believer and a monster). I simply want to draw attention to some of the gaps, some of what may be missing, when we dismiss God too brusquely.
In your book you write: "God may be dead, but the urgent issues which impelled us to make him up still stir and demand resolutions which do not go away when we have been nudged to perceive some scientific inaccuracies in the tale of the seven loaves and fishes." What are those urgent issues?
I am not very interested in the doctrines of religions. What interests me is their organizational forms and, in particular, their capacity to make ideas powerful.
The secular world tends to trust that if we have good ideas, we will be reminded of them when it matters. Religions don't agree. They are all about structure; they want to build calendars for us that will make sure we regularly encounter reminders of significant concepts. That is what rituals are: they are attempts to make vivid to us things we already know but are likely to have forgotten. Religions are also keen to see us as more than just rational minds, we are emotional and physical creatures, and therefore we need to be seduced via our bodies and our senses too. This was always the great genius of Catholicism. If you want to change someone's ideas, don't only concentrate on their ideas, concentrate on their whole selves.
In a recent review of your book, Terry Eagleton wrote: "What this book does is hijack other people's beliefs and redeploy them in the name of moral order, social consensus and aesthetic pleasure." What do you make of this view?
My book occupies a curious middle ground that is easy to shoot at from two sides. The very religious, like Eagleton, may take offense at the brusque, selective, and unsystematic consideration of their creeds. Religions are not buffets, they will protest, from which choice elements can be selected at whim. But I disagree. Why should it not be possible to appreciate the depiction of modesty in Giotto's frescoes and yet bypass the doctrine of the Annunciation, or admire the Buddhist emphasis on compassion and yet shun its theories of the afterlife? For someone devoid of religious belief, it is no more of a crime to dip into a number of faiths than it is for a lover of literature to single out a handful of favorite writers from across the canon.
Atheists of the militant kind could also feel outraged, in their case by a book that treats religion as though it deserved to be a continuing touchstone for our yearnings. They will point to the furious institutional intolerance of many religions, and to the equally rich, though less illogical and illiberal, stores of consolation and insight available through art and science. They may additionally ask why anyone who professes himself unwilling to accept so many facets of religion—who feels unable to speak up in the name of virgin births, say, or to nod at the claims reverently made in the Jataka tales about the Buddha's identity as a reincarnated rabbit—should still wish to associate himself with a subject as compromised as faith.
To this the answer is that religions merit our attention for their sheer conceptual ambition; for changing the world in a way that few secular institutions ever have. They have managed to combine theories about ethics and metaphysics with practical involvement in education, fashion, politics, travel, hostelry, initiation ceremonies, publishing, art, and architecture—a range of interests that puts to shame the scope of the achievements of even the greatest and most influential secular movements and individuals in history. For those interested in the spread and impact of ideas, it is hard not to be mesmerized by examples of the most successful educational and intellectual movements the planet has ever witnessed.
What is your view of the so-called New Atheist critique advanced by Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, and others?
Attempting to prove the nonexistence of God can be entertaining. Tough-minded critics of religion have found much pleasure in laying bare the idiocy of believers in remorseless detail, finishing only when they felt they had shown up their enemies as thoroughgoing simpletons or maniacs.
Though this exercise has its satisfactions, the real issue is not whether God exists or not but where one takes the argument to once one decides that he evidently doesn't. The premise of my book is that it must be possible to remain a committed atheist and nevertheless to find religions sporadically useful, interesting, and consoling—and be curious as to the possibilities of importing certain of their ideas and practices into the secular realm.
One can be left cold by the doctrines of the Christian Trinity and the Buddhist Fivefold Path and yet at the same time be interested in the ways in which religions deliver sermons, promote morality, engender a spirit of community, make use of art and architecture, inspire travels, train minds, and encourage gratitude at the beauty of spring. In a world beset by fundamentalists of believing and secular varieties, it must be possible to balance a rejection of religious faith with a selective reverence for religious rituals and concepts.
It is when we stop believing that religions have been handed down from above or else that they are entirely daft that matters become more interesting. We can then recognize that we invented religions to serve two central needs that continue to this day and that secular society has not been able to solve with any particular skill. First, the need to live together in communities in harmony, despite our deeply rooted selfish and violent impulses. And second, the need to cope with terrifying degrees of pain that arise from our vulnerability to professional failure, to troubled relationships, to the death of loved ones, and to our decay and demise.
You also propose to reform schools and universities to teach humans how to deal with, not knowledge, but the most important existential problems: loneliness, pain, and death, for example. You even propose to abolish the teaching of history and literature, two basic humanities. Why? Is knowledge so unimportant? Can existential lessons be taught at school?
The starting point of religion is that we are children and we need guidance. The secular world often gets offended by this. It assumes that all adults are mature—and therefore it hates didacticism, it hates the idea of guidance and moral instruction. But of course we are children, big children who need guidance and reminders of how to live. And yet the modern education system denies this. It treats us all as far too rational, reasonable, in control. We are far more desperate than the modern education system recognizes. All of us are on the edge of panic and terror pretty much all the time—and religions recognize this. We need to build a similar awareness into secular structures.
How do religions teach us?
Religions are fascinating because they are giant machines for making ideas vivid and real in people's lives: ideas about goodness, about death, family, community, etc. Nowadays, we tend to believe that the people who make ideas vivid are artists and cultural figures, but this is such a small, individual response to a massive set of problems. So I am deeply interested in the way that religions are in the end institutions, giant machines, organizations, directed to managing our inner life. There is nothing like this in the secular world, and this seems a huge pity.
You say that our society lacks collective rituals, a network of secular churches, of vast high spaces in which to escape from the hubbub of modern society and to focus on all that is beyond us. But what about the fact that whichever society tried to create an effective kind of propaganda in the name of virtue was, after the French Revolution, a totalitarian regime in which the state itself became God?
We are too easily frightened here. So often, anytime that someone proposes a valid idea in this area, people say, but what about Hitler, or Stalin ... This is not the choice. We can have public morality without fascism, we can even have certain kinds of censorship (for example, of pornography) without dictatorship, we can have great civic architecture which isn't done by governments for their own glory. It is right that people have been scared by certain tendencies in the 20th century, but we shouldn't always be so unambitious about what we can do. We don't need to abandon ourselves to free-market capitalism under the spiritual leadership of cable television.
Much of modern moral thought has been transfixed by the idea that a collapse in belief must have irreparably damaged our capacity to build a convincing ethical framework for ourselves. But this argument, while apparently atheistic in nature, owes a strange, unwarranted debt to a religious mindset—for only if we truly believed at some level that God did exist, and that the foundations of morality were therefore in their essence supernatural, would the recognition of his nonexistence have any power to shake our moral principles.
However, if we assume from the start that we of course made God up, then the argument rapidly breaks down into a tautology—for why would we bother to feel burdened by ethical doubt if we knew that the many rules ascribed to supernatural beings were actually only the work of our all-too-human ancestors?
The origins of religious ethics lie in the pragmatic need of our earliest communities to control their members' tendencies toward violence and to foster in them contrary habits of harmony and forgiveness. Religious codes began as cautionary precepts, which were then projected into the sky and reflected back to earth in disembodied and majestic forms. Injunctions to be sympathetic or patient stemmed from an awareness that these were the qualities which could draw societies back from fragmentation and self-destruction. So vital were these rules to our survival that for thousands of years we did not dare to admit that we ourselves had formulated them, lest this expose them to critical scrutiny and irreverent handling. We had to pretend that morality came from the heavens in order to insulate it from our own prevarications and frailties.
But if we can now own up to spiritualizing our ethical laws, we have no cause to do away with the laws themselves. We continue to need exhortations to be sympathetic and just, even if we do not believe that there is a God who has a hand in wishing to make us so. We no longer have to be brought into line by the threat of hell or the promise of paradise; we merely have to be reminded that it is we ourselves—that is, the most mature and reasonable parts of us (seldom present in the midst of our crises and obsessions)—who want to lead the sort of lives we once imagined supernatural beings demanded of us. An adequate evolution of morality from superstition to reason should mean recognizing ourselves as the authors of our own moral commandments.


text:
Key Lime Pie
Graham Cracker Crust:
1/3 of a 1-pound box graham crackers
5 tablespoons melted unsalted butter
1/3 cup sugar
3 egg yolks
2 teaspoons lime zest
1 (14-ounce) can sweetened condensed milk
2/3 cup freshly squeezed Key lime juice, or store bought
1 cup heavy or whipping cream chilled
2 tablespoons confectioners' sugar
For the graham cracker crust: Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
Break up the graham crackers; place in a food processor and process to crumbs. If you don't have a food processor, place the crackers in a large plastic bag; seal and then crush the crackers with a rolling pin. Add the melted butter and sugar and pulse or stir until combined. Press the mixture into the bottom and side of a pie pan, forming a neat border around the edge. Bake the crust until set and golden, 8 minutes. Set aside on a wire rack; leave the oven on.
For the filling: Meanwhile, in an electric mixer with the wire whisk attachment, beat the egg yolks and lime zest at high speed until very fluffy, about 5 minutes. Gradually add the condensed milk and continue to beat until thick, 3 or 4 minutes longer. Lower the mixer speed and slowly add the lime juice, mixing just until combined, no longer. Pour the mixture into the crust. Bake for 10 minutes, or until the filling has just set. Cool on a wire rack, then refrigerate. Freeze for 15 to 20 minutes before serving.
For the topping: Whip the cream and the confectioners' sugar until nearly stiff. Cut the pie into wedges and serve very cold, topping each wedge with a large dollop of whipped cream.


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- curom
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- Suge Knight Pleads No Contest to Manslaughter, Agrees to 28-Year Sentence
Suge Knight Pleads No Contest to Manslaughter, Agrees to 28-Year Sentence
Former rap mogul Marion "Suge" Knight pleaded no contest Thursday to voluntary manslaughter for running over and killing a Compton businessman nearly four years ago and agreed to serve nearly 30 years in prison.
The Death Row Records co-founder entered the plea in Los Angeles Superior Court and has agreed to serve 28 years in prison. The plea came days before jury selection was scheduled to begin in the long-delayed case.
Knight was charged with murder, attempted murder and hit-and-run after fleeing the scene of an altercation in January 2015 outside a Compton burger stand. Knight and Cle "Bone" Sloan, a consultant on the N.W.A. biopic Straight Outta Compton were involved in a fistfight that ended with Knight clipping the man with his pickup truck and running over businessman Terry Carter, who died from his injuries.
Knight's attorneys have said he was acting in self-defense and was fleeing armed attackers when he ran over Carter and Sloan. Sloan has denied he was carrying a gun during the confrontation.
During Thursday's hearing, Knight answered Judge Ronald Coen's questions, loudly and quickly saying "no contest" when the judge asked for his plea. He will be formally sentenced on Oct. 4.
The plea deal calls for Knight to serve 22 years in prison on the voluntary manslaughter count, and another six years because it is a third strike violation.
Carter's daughter, Crystal, sat in the front row of the courtroom and displayed no visible reaction to the proceedings. "I'm surprised he pleaded out," Crystal Carter said outside court. "Normally he likes the cameras to be on him 24-7."
Delays, detours and drama marked the run-up to Knight's trial, which was expected to begin Oct. 1 under tight security and secrecy. Court officials had said that no witness list would be released ahead of the trial, and that some witnesses might not be identified by name during the case.
Knight collapsed during one court hearing, two of his former attorneys were indicted on witness-tampering charges, and his fiancee pleaded no contest to selling video of Knight hitting the two men with his truck.
His attorney Albert DeBlanc Jr., appointed by the court five months ago, was his 16th, and Knight tried to fire him and get yet another lawyer just a day before the deal was reached. DeBlanc declined comment Thursday.
While awaiting trial, Knight was also accused of threatening Straight Outta Comptondirector F. Gary Gray.
Knight would frequently, against the advice of Coen and his attorneys, speak extensively during hearings, complaining about jail conditions, his attorneys and his health issues.
While Coen read legal language about the plea and told Knight he was subject to deportation if he was not a citizen, Knight said "ICE is coming to get me?" to a smattering of laughs.
The 53-year-old was a key player in the gangster rap scene that flourished in the 1990s, and his label once listed Dr. Dre, Tupac Shakur and Snoop Dogg among its artists. Knight lost control of the company after it was forced into bankruptcy. He has prior felony convictions for armed robbery and assault with a gun. He pleaded no contest in 1995 and was sentenced to five years' probation for assaulting two rap entertainers at a Hollywood recording studio in 1992.
He was sentenced in February 1997 to prison for violating terms of that probation by taking part in a fight at a Las Vegas hotel hours before Shakur was fatally wounded in a drive-by attack as he rode in Knight's car just east of the Las Vegas Strip. Shakur's slaying remains unsolved.
He had faced life in prison if convicted of murder for killing Carter.


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Many developers still embed sensitive access tokens and API keys into their mobile applications, putting data and other assets stored on various third-party services at risk.
A new study performed by cybersecurity firm Fallible on 16,000 Android applications revealed that about 2,500 had some type of secret credential hard-coded into them. The apps were scanned with an online tool released by the company in November.
Hard-coding access keys for third-party services into apps can be justified when the access they provide is limited in scope. However, in some cases, developers include keys that unlock access to sensitive data or systems that can be abused.
This was the case for 304 apps found by Fallible that contained access tokens and API keys for services like Twitter, Dropbox, Flickr, Instagram, Slack, or Amazon Web Services (AWS).
Three hundred apps out of 16,000 might not seem like a lot, but, depending on its type and the privileges associated with it, a single leaked credential can lead to a massive data breach.
Slack tokens, for example, can provide access to chat logs used by development teams, and these can contain additional credentials for databases, continuous integration platforms, and other internal services, not to mention shared files and documents.
Last year, researchers from website security firm Detectify found more than 1,500 Slack access tokens that had been hard-coded into open source projects hosted on GitHub.
AWS access keys have also been found inside GitHub projects in the past by the thousands, forcing Amazon to start proactively scanning for such leaks and revoking the exposed keys.
Some of the AWS keys found in the analyzed Android apps had full privileges that allowed creating and deleting instances, the Fallible researchers said in a blog post.
Deleting AWS instances can lead to data loss and downtime, while creating them can provide attackers with computing power at the victims' expense.
This is not the first time when API keys, access tokens, and other secret credentials were found inside mobile apps. In 2015, researchers from Technical University in Darmstadt, Germany, uncovered more than 1,000 access credentials for Backend-as-a-Service (BaaS) frameworks stored inside Android and iOS applications. Those credentials unlocked access to more than 18.5 million database records containing 56 million data items that app developers stored on BaaS providers like Facebook-owned Parse, CloudMine, or AWS.
Earlier this month, a security researcher released an open-source tool called Truffle Hog that can help companies and individual developers scan their software projects for secret tokens that may have been added at some point and then forgotten about.


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SACRAMENTO (AP) — The state's independent budget analyst said Friday that California will take in $3.2 billion more in tax revenue than Gov. Jerry Brown estimated, providing Democratic lawmakers an argument to funnel more money into state programs and setting up a spending showdown with the administration.
The Legislative Analyst's Office released its assessment of Brown's revenue and spending plan just days after the governor's budget update for the fiscal year starting July 1. It said the administration's figures do not reflect the improving economy, including higher capital gains from stock sales.
"We do not agree with the administration's view that there has been a significant dimming of the state's near-term economic prospects," the analyst wrote.
Assembly Speaker John Perez, D-Los Angeles, said the new revenue number should not be interpreted "as an automatic green light to increase spending" and noted that paying down debt and building a reserve fund should be a priority.
But Perez also said there is substantial pressure from Democratic lawmakers and advocates to restore programs that were reduced or eliminated during the recession when the state dealt with multibillion dollar deficits year after year.
Brown proposed a $96.4 billion spending plan for the coming fiscal year on Tuesday. He wants to funnel more money to K-12 schools but limit state obligations to ongoing programs.
The governor had projected that the economy would not recover as fast, partly because of federal government spending cuts and higher payroll taxes. His administration also predicted lukewarm wage growth.
Legislative Analyst Mac Taylor wrote that Brown's forecast does not take into account recent gains from the soaring stock market. Even if stocks remained flat the rest of 2013, it "would provide a boost to state revenue collections in the coming months," he wrote.
The report also gave revenue adjustments from previous years, which translate into $400 million more for the current fiscal year. The higher projections for the coming fiscal year will mean an additional $2.8 billion than what the governor had proposed for the 2013-14 budget.
The Brown administration said the budget should not be balanced on capital gains, which is the state's most volatile revenue source.
"A budget that relies on higher capital gains exposes the state to significantly greater risk, and could jeopardize the fiscal progress that has been made over the past two years," said H.D. Palmer, the governor's finance spokesman.
Despite his higher forecast, the legislative analyst aligned with the governor in recommending that lawmakers adopt a cautious budget given the boom-and-bust cycles common in California. The state's improving fiscal condition provides an opportunity to tackle long-term debt, including unfunded retirement benefits for state employees and teachers, he noted.
Taylor told reporters Friday that the bulk of the extra tax revenue is required to fund education, leaving lawmakers few options for other state programs.
"We need to be disciplined. We dug out of a big, deep hole, and the last thing we want to do is start another one," he said. "I think the governor is wise in being very cautious in making additional commitments until we're sure that additional money has come in."
Republican Sen. Bill Emmerson of Redlands said he hopes the governor will live up to his promise to be restrained in spending, even in the face of pressure from members of his own party.
He also noted that the campaign for Proposition 30, the successful tax increase Brown championed last year, said the extra tax revenue would benefit K-12 schools.
"Regardless of who is right, we should keep the promise to voters that any new money goes to education," said Emmerson, who is vice chairman of the Senate Budget Committee.
Any extra money not going to education should go into a rainy day fund, as the legislative analyst suggests, he said.
While Brown has pledged to maintain fiscal restraint and build a cash reserve, Democratic lawmakers have said they want to spend additional revenue to make up for years of budget cuts on programs serving women, children and the poor.
Perez has proposed increased spending on child care services for the poor and giving more college assistance to middle-class families. Other Democrats are pushing to restore a wide array of safety-net programs, including adult dental care for the poor and mental health care.
Doctors, hospitals and other health providers want the state to end a 10 percent Medi-Cal reimbursement rate cut. And children's and health advocates are pushing to restore health care services, if not expanded to all Californians.


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ForumsQuestionsQuick Entry Section
Quick Entry Section
It would be VERY helpful to have a "quick entry" section which would give users the ability to enter a task quickly taking advantage of the modifiers and parameters you can use when entering tasks by email. i.e.
Take shirts to drycleaners #today @home &every week *
If you do not enter modifiers, then the defaults that apply to email would apply to these.
This would speed-up the task of entering tasks considerably. The "Quick Task" bar could be right at the top of each page.
What are the chances?
Toodledo Founder
Thanks for the suggestion. We can't comment on a timeframe for implementation, but this is on our to-do list.
Posted: Feb 24, 2011
+1 for me. I was just searching for this feature and figured that's what add multiple would do. I'm a GTDer, and if I'm entering my tasks from a notebook in my pocket, it's a lot more time consuming having to enter all the parameters with dropboxes separately. During project planning it's not a big deal, because many of the parameters are the same. The individual add add and even multi-add as-is aren't as great for brain-dumping as if you could use those shortcuts, though.
This message was edited Feb 24, 2011.
Doesn't pressing 'N' do that?
Well, for Mac users who also use Outlook 2011 for email, you can use this Applescript I wrote. You need to turn on the email import feature in Toodledo first and paste in your private toodledo email address (email@example.com).
Paste this into Applescript editor and save as an application:
-- Create Toodledo Task from Outlook 2011 Message
-- Created by BLP 22May2011 with ample contributions from fellow internet posters
tell application "Microsoft Outlook"
-- prompt for Toodledo syntax additions, for more info see http://www.toodledo.com/info/help_email.php
set myPrompt to ("Task name and Toodledo syntax to add?" & linefeed & linefeed & "Star: *" & linefeed & "Priority: !" & linefeed & "Due-date: #DueDate" & linefeed & "Due Time: =DueTime" & linefeed & "Start Date: >StartDate" & linefeed & "Start Time: ^StartTime" & linefeed & "Reminder: :ReminderLeadTime" & linefeed & "Length: ~LengthTime" & linefeed & "Folder: *FolderName" & linefeed & "Context: @ContextName" & linefeed & "Goal: +GoalName" & linefeed & "Tag: %TagName,TagName2,…" & linefeed & "Location: - LocationName" & linefeed & "Repeat: &RepeatDescription" & linefeed & "Status: $StatusSetting")
set newsubject to text returned of (display dialog myPrompt buttons {"Ok"} default button 1 default answer "")
if newsubject is "" then set newsubject to "Task from Outlook: " & theSubject
-- build outgoing message
set newMessage to make new outgoing message in outbox with properties {subject:newsubject, content:"(Quick add)"}
make new recipient of newMessage with properties {email address:{address:"*************@toodledo.com"}}
-- send the new message
run send all
end tell
Why do you especially mention Outlook 2011 for Mac, would/could it work on OSX Mail as well?
regards, Rick
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Archives for Cambodia
"Travel, in the younger sort, is a part of education; in the elder, a part of experience."
– Francis Bacon
I fell in love with Southeast Asia after reading "The Beach" and "The Tesseract", both by Alex Garland. Both novels weren't part of the reading list, which was quite unfortunate. I could compose an essay in an hour or two, but it didn't matter. The chance to travel to that part of the world came.
I was excited with my trip, along with my course-mates. I dreamed of a Robinson Crusoe moment in a desert isle, but the closest thing to that was Ha Long Bay. Colin, one of my three travel buddies in this trip, remembered our module on Ian Fleming and James Bond. We did went to Andaman Sea, where "The Man with the Golden Gun" was shot, but that would be another tale.
What was it about Southeast Asia that the likes of Graham Greene have used as backdrop for their novels? It was different from what I've seen here at home, or the continent for that matter, but that wasn't the reason. It would be the destinations, but there was more. In other words, it was anything but dull. It was also unique.
Below were my five must-see places:
1. Wat Rong Khun (Chiang Rai, Thailand)
Designed by Chalermchai Kositpipat, this temple war arguably the main attraction in northern Thailand. Compared to the other monastery temples (wat), White Temple was unconventional, which drew lots of tourists. I would recommend spending half an hour looking at the wall paintings, a mixture of Buddhist images and pop culture. So imagine the likes of Harry Potter in the presence of Buddha's solemn face, which seemed quite awkward at first. Eventually, I warmed up to it.
2. The terraced fields of Sa Pa, Vietnam
This town in northern Vietnam couldn't be in a better location, as locals would be greeted with the panorama of Phan-Xi-Pǎng (Fansipan), the highest peak in Vietnam, every morning. It looked splendid on a sunny afternoon, but the countless terraces were the ones that tourists shouldn't passed up. It would take a day or two for trekking, which might not be enough. Several ethnic groups lived there, and my interaction with them was priceless. Be warned that souvenir shops were ubiquitous in the village of Cat Cat, and the some of the locals were too persistent (in selling their items).
3. Angkor Thom (Siem Reap, Cambodia)
Not that Angkor Wat was unattractive, but Angkor Thom had an august appearance. One needed an imagination, as all that remained were ruins, which looked gorgeous from certain angles. The Bayon Temple was my favourite, its solemn faces good enough for a postcard.
4. The temples of Yogyakarta, Indonesia
One must go the distance in able to see the Buddhist and Hindu temples in Yogyakarta, located in central Java. Borobudur, a pyramid-like temple, was a sight to behold. The summit looked like a page from a fairy tale, where tens of bell-like structures were arranged circularly. Not far behind were Prambanan and Ratu Boko, more reminders of a mighty civilisation that once flourished in this part of Asia.
5. Ho Chi Minh
East meets West, past meets present. This former capital of Vietnam had many landmarks that revealed its storied past. I visited the French section twice, where one of Gustave Eiffel's creations could be found. I was referring to the Post Office, its remarkable interior had an old map of Saigon.
Lee Smyth studied Film and Literature, had a stint in dissertation writing services, and did freelancing jobs in writing and proofreading. He would pursue a graduate degree next fall. Check out his blog and Twitter account.


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News | March 9, 2011
Journey to the core
By Alan Buis,
NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory
The latest evidence of the dominant role humans play in changing Earth's climate comes not from observations of Earth's ocean, atmosphere or land surface, but from deep within its molten core.
Scientists have long known that the length of an Earth day — the time it takes for Earth to make one full rotation — fluctuates around a 24-hour average. Over the course of a year, the length of a day varies by about 1 millisecond, getting longer in the winter and shorter in the summer. These seasonal changes in Earth's length of day are driven by exchanges of energy between the solid Earth and fluid motions of Earth's atmosphere (blowing winds and changes in atmospheric pressure) and its ocean. Scientists can measure these small changes in Earth's rotation using astronomical observations and very precise geodetic techniques.
But the length of an Earth day also fluctuates over much longer timescales, such as interannual (two to 10 years), decadal (approximately 10 years), or those lasting multiple decades or even longer. A dominant longer timescale mode that ranges from 65 to 80 years was observed to change the length of day by approximately 4 milliseconds at the beginning of the 20th century.
These longer fluctuations are too large to be explained by the motions of Earth's atmosphere and ocean. Instead, they're due to the flow of liquid iron within Earth's outer core, where Earth's magnetic field originates. This fluid interacts with Earth's mantle to affect Earth's rotation. While scientists cannot observe these flows directly, they can deduce their movements by observing Earth's magnetic field at the surface. Previous studies have shown that this flow of liquid iron in Earth's outer core oscillates, in waves of motion that last for decades with timescales that correspond closely to long-duration variations in Earth's length of day.
Still other studies have observed a link between the long-duration variations in Earth's length of day and fluctuations of up to 0.2 °C (0.4 °F) in Earth's long-term global average surface air temperature.
So how might all three of these variables — Earth's rotation, movements in Earth's core (formally known as the core angular momentum) and global surface air temperature — be related? That's what researchers Jean Dickey and Steven Marcus of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., and colleague Olivier de Viron of the Universite Paris Diderot and Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris in France, set out to discover in a first-of-its-kind study.
The researchers found that the uncorrected temperature data correlated strongly with data on movements of Earth's core and Earth's length of day until about 1930. They then began to diverge substantially: that is, global surface air temperatures continued to increase, but without corresponding changes in Earth's length of day or movements of Earth's core. This divergence corresponds with a well-documented, robust global warming trend that has been widely attributed to increased levels of human-produced greenhouse gases.
But an examination of the corrected temperature record yielded a different result: the corrected temperature record remained strongly correlated with both Earth's length of day and movements of Earth's core throughout the entire temperature data series. The researchers performed robust tests to confirm the statistical significance of their results.
"Our research demonstrates that, for the past 160 years, decadal and longer-period changes in atmospheric temperature correspond to changes in Earth's length of day if we remove the very significant effect of atmospheric warming attributed to the buildup of greenhouse gases due to mankind's enterprise," said Dickey. "Our study implies that human influences on climate during the past 80 years mask the natural balance that exists among Earth's rotation, the core angular momentum and the temperature at Earth's surface."
So what mechanism is driving these correlations? Dickey said scientists aren't sure yet, but she offered some hypotheses.
Since scientists know air temperature can't affect movements of Earth's core or Earth's length of day to the extent observed, one possibility is the movements of Earth's core might disturb Earth's magnetic shielding of charged-particle (i.e., cosmic ray) fluxes that have been hypothesized to affect the formation of clouds. This could affect how much of the sun's energy is reflected back to space and how much is absorbed by our planet. Other possibilities are that some other core process could be having a more indirect effect on climate, or that an external (e.g. solar) process affects the core and climate simultaneously.
Regardless of the eventual connections to be established between the solid Earth and climate, Dickey said the solid Earth's impacts on climate are still dwarfed by the much larger effects of human-produced greenhouse gases. "The solid Earth plays a role, but the ultimate solution to addressing climate change remains in our hands," she concluded.
The study results were published recently in the Journal of Climate.
Related links:


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And as if I need just that extra little nudge, there is a members' special GWP with purchase of $65.
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Download a song from iTunes, and you can only add that song to the music library of five other computers. Grab a copy of the latest Microsoft Office, and you'd better hope you won't be upgrading your computer any time soon. Obviously DRM is a great tool for companies to make sure we only use software and data as intended, but outside planned obsolescence, there isn't much in the way of DRM for physical objects.
This is where a team from the University of Art and Design in Lausanne, Switzerland comes in. They designed a chair that can only be sat upon eight times. After that, the chair falls apart necessitating the purchase of a new chair. Somewhere in the flat-pack furniture industry, someone is kicking themselves for not thinking of this sooner while another is wondering how they made a chair last so long.
The design of the chair is fairly simple; all the joints of the chair are cast in wax with a piece of nichrome wire embedded in the wax. An Arduino with a small switch keeps track of how many times the chair has been used, while a solenoid taps out how many uses are left in the chair every time the user gets up. When the internal counter reaches zero, a relay sends power through the nichrome wire, melting the wax, and returning the chair to its native dowel rod and wooden board form.
Melting wax wasn't the team's first choice to rapidly disassemble a chair; their first experiments used gunpowder. This idea nearly worked, but it was soon realized no one on the team wanted to sit on a primed and loaded chair. You can see the videos of the wax model failing after the break.