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How the West Was Wired(中文版)
by James Fallows from The Atlantic.com
Two idealistic Taiwanese businessmen happened into the most rural part of China and thought: Let's bring it from the 15th century to the 21st.
Yan Changrong,a teacher at Xidatan Middle School in China's remote west.
You could compare the far west of China to America's western frontier, if U.S. territory reached only to Nevada. In China as in the United States, when you head west into the continent from the crowded eastern corridor, the landscapes become drier, the trees sparser and the cities farther apart, and eventually you're in stark desert. But in China there is no coastline with fish and forests on the other end. Just more desert, steppe, and mountain until the country reaches its borders with "the 'Stans"—Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and the rest.
In China's history, some interior cities have been prosperous and powerful, especially when the Silk Road trade routes to the Middle East and Europe brought commerce through places like Dunhuang and Xi'an. But in modern times, to say xi bu ("the west") in China is to signify the poorest part of the country, as "the South" meant in America for a hundred years after the Civil War.
Only a quarter of China's population lives in the western provinces and "autonomous regions," including Tibet. But that is more than 300 million people, roughly the entire population of the United States, many of them trapped in a kind of subsistence economy hard to imagine from the perspective of even China's own major eastern cities. After trips to a number of these areas—Gansu, Ningxia, Qinghai, Xinjiang, the western parts of Sichuan and Shaanxi—I was sobered as I have been by nothing else in the country.
If I were running a travel agency, I would skip the likes of Beijing and Shanghai and send foreign visitors out toward these western villages, where they would see aspects of China beyond its urban spectacle and manufacturing prowess. In China's most famous cities, tourists are surprised by the scale, speed, intensity, and ambition of the activity all around them. But seeing all this firsthand mainly gives a more detailed confirmation of the impression they already had. Even the poverty of the big cities, impossible to ignore and startling because it appears right next to the fanciest luxury projects, involves people who are connected to the modern world: for instance, migrant construction workers live very dangerous and oppressed lives, but they work on fancy high-rise office buildings and new freeway overpasses.
WESTERN CHINA'S Yellow Sheep River Valley
But in the villages, people effectively live in a different century. Their families may exist on the cash equivalent of $10 or $15 per month. Their entire life experience may be encompassed within a radius of 10 or 20 miles. When my wife and I visited a high school in an ethnic Tibetan village in Gansu province, we were the first foreigners the students—or any of their teachers, or the principal—had ever seen outside of textbooks. At that school and others in the west, we talked with children who went to school in some years and didn't in others, depending on whether their families had sold enough crops to pay the public-school fees. This is not the China that most foreigners read about or experience on visits, but its isolation and poverty are important parts of any understanding of China.
To my taste, the arid western provinces are the most beautiful areas of China. The eastern seaboard is mainly flat, featureless, overdeveloped, and devastated. Much of the west is awe-inspiring to see. This is the austere beauty of the desert: limitless vistas, clear skies, dramatic topography, an unforgiving environment for life of any kind.
Several of the trips we took through western villages were in the company of a Taiwanese-born software expert in his early 60s named Kenny Lin, who is now engaged in the most touching and quixotic enterprise I have seen in China—one that my wife and I felt moved to support after seeing its effects in rural schools. During the year I've followed Lin, I've found his efforts both fascinating and significant, in this sense: They underscore the depth of the economic challenges today's mighty China still faces. And they suggest the power of a new way of dealing with those challenges. This involves neither the government edicts that have guided the economy for decades nor the me-first capitalist vigor of recent years, but instead a deliberate use of market incentives and technological tools in what Kenny Lin calls an altruistic way.
ON THE STREETS in Yellow Sheep River, farmers often play Chinese chess, or xiangqi, in the time between planting and harvest
To see what this means in 2008 requires going back more than 40 years, to Lin's friendship in Taiwan with his college classmate Sayling Wen.
In the summer of 1966, Lin and Wen started college in the electrical-engineering department of National Taiwan University, in Taipei. Lin's father was a doctor and politician; Wen's, an electrician who died when his son was young. Wen was smart and the most diligent among his group of friends. After graduation in 1970 and mandatory military service, he joined one of the small electronics companies then proliferating in Taiwan. Over the next quarter century, he grew very rich, as Taiwan went through an outsourcing and manufacturing boom like the one that more recently got under way in mainland China.
As the mainland Chinese economy opened in the 1990s, business opportunities, plus his own curiosity, led Wen to spend more and more time on the mainland. In 1992 his company, Inventec, built its first mainland factory, in Shanghai. Wen had long been a man of passions and pet projects. For instance, from the start of his career, he was convinced that the right English-teaching software could make it easy for Chinese speakers to learn English and, in his view, end their isolation from world discourse. (So far, no dice.) In 2000, he developed a new and very powerful passion: to save the poor people of western China.
During the 1990s, Wen had traveled incessantly through China's industrial areas. In the summer of 2000, he had his first exposure to the driest and perhaps most challenging of the western regions: Gansu province, in the windblown yellow-earth plateau on the edge of the Gobi Desert. At an economic conference in Gansu's capital, Lanzhou, he heard officials compare China's development of its western frontier to the development of the American West, a process that would unfold over many generations.
Wen strongly disagreed. He stood up to say that even a 50-year target was unacceptable. For one thing, it was too far off to fit into any business's investment plans. With the advantages of airplanes, telecommunications, and global trade, progress should be much faster. Moreover, the 300 million people living in the arid west were "like us, all children of the Yellow Emperor, sharing the same ancestral blood," yet still living in poverty. If China let them languish another 50 years, "their suffering would be unbearable."
He had a new idea: western China would have to become fully modernized—brought into parity with Shanghai and Beijing—by 2010. Soon he had written a manifesto called Develop Western China in Ten Years, which was published in English and Chinese, and he steered Inventec's money toward sites in the west. He also learned that he would have an unexpected ally: his old classmate Kenny Lin.
In the years after college in Taipei, Kenny Lin went to the United States, earned a doctorate, and had a successful 20-year run as an engineer, researcher, and manager, winding up at Bell Labs and NYNEX. He married a woman from Taiwan, became a U.S. citizen, and raised two children. But China's opening under Deng Xiaoping attracted him, and after investigating various possibilities, he left the United States and in 1993 started a software center in Tianjin, outside Beijing, for his friend Sayling Wen's Inventec company.
One of Lin's engineers in the Tianjin software facility, Peng Haina, had spent a year as a volunteer teacher in a remote, desolate village in Gansu province called Huang Yang Chuan, literally "Yellow Sheep River." It lay at the junction of two shallow streams in a gorge 8,000 feet above sea level. The village of several thousand people had two streets. Most families lived in mud-brick-walled courtyard buildings where their sheep and cattle also slept. Inside their homes, they kept warm in the frigid high-altitude winter by burning charcoal or animal dung in the lower part of large rectangular brick structures called kangs. They sat and slept on top.
SUDDEN CHANGE: the Yellow Sheep River Valley convention center, right, next to adobe village homes
Economically they survived by grazing sheep on already overgrazed, dry, and rapidly eroding hillsides, and by growing wheat and potatoes when there was enough rain. The people of Yellow Sheep River came into virtually no contact with the world beyond their little gorge, except when young men and women who had fled hundreds of miles to take factory jobs returned for a few days each year during the Chinese New Year holiday to see their hometown, and often the children they had left behind.
Peng encouraged his Inventec colleagues to donate books and computer equipment to the school and told Lin that he, too, should visit western China, which he had never seen. In late September 2000, Lin went to Yellow Sheep River. What he saw changed the direction of his life.
In a book recounting that visit, which he wrote during a two-week burst, Lin described the hardships of the life he had seen in the hinterland—and also a solution that had come to him. It was a solution in the same spirit that had already motivated his old classmate Wen, though at the time he had no idea of Wen's own interests.
The hardship that stunned him most was the powerlessness of rural people against brute natural misfortune. A bright and promising young girl had made it through elementary school—but then a drought dried up the crops, and her peasant parents pulled her out of school because they didn't have money for the fees. In an hour-long video documentary Lin made to accompany the book (available at YellowSheepRiver.com), he showed the peasant parents saying they mainly wanted to get the girl married off as soon as possible. (An uncle then gave her money for school.) Another boy was shown sobbing about the dim fate that awaited his younger sister, who had been pulled out of elementary school to save money and would remain uneducated like their parents. "Oh God, help these simple and innocent children out of the poverty, deliver them from the tortures of the lack of rain," Lin wrote.
His immediate impulse was direct charity. On his first visit, Lin pledged 2,500 RMB per month, about $365, to pay for meat in the school lunches and for fuel to boil drinking water. But he believed in "teach a man to fish"–type help rather than long-term charity, and so he conceived his scheme.
KENNY LIN, born in Taiwan and long a U.S. resident, found his calling in the rugged, rural west of China.
The villagers' fundamental problem was their isolation. The Internet could solve that! Lin's branch of Inventec could give more computers and software to the school. It could work with the local government to bring in a broadband line and set up a computer center that everyone in the village could use. The students could take courses far beyond the range offered by their impoverished school. They could communicate with people they had not known all their lives. The local farmers could use the Internet to learn about the weather and market conditions. Local craftsmen could offer items for sale to distant customers. Working-age people could look for good factory jobs elsewhere. "The shackles that had bound their spirits had been taken off," Lin wrote after he had, within a few weeks of his first visit (things happen fast in China), established the computer center, declared Yellow Sheep River an "Internet village," and created the Yellow Sheep River Web site.
It was just after his momentous first trip into the mountains that Lin saw Sayling Wen again. The year 2000 was the 30th anniversary of their college graduation, and Wen sent a note to his classmates saying that he was now so rich, he'd throw a celebration in Shanghai for the entire class and their families at Christmastime and pay their way. (His choice of Shanghai for a reunion of Taiwanese alums is an indication of the near-total integration of the mainland and Taiwanese economies.) On Christmas Day, he overheard Kenny Lin say that Yellow Sheep River now gave purpose to his life. Neither man had known about the other's recent interest in western China. Both had converted to Christianity, and both thought of helping western China partly as a spiritual obligation.
TEACHING TECH: Liu Li helps 10-year-old Shi Xiaomeng at an "animation camp" held in Yellow Sheep River's convention center
Wen told Lin about his vision of parity with the big cities within 10 years for these destitute areas and said that the "Internet village" was the model he had been looking for, since it could leapfrog the long process of industrialization and bring villagers directly into the telecommunications age.
Very soon, Wen had founded and funded a new company and put Lin in charge. Its name in English is "Town and Talent Technologies." Everything about it reflected Wen's love for the grand gesture. Had Lin brought the Internet to one village? It should come to a thousand villages. Might it cost $50,000 to equip, operate, and maintain each village's new computer center? Then Wen should commit $50 million, to cover all thousand villages.
Plus an extra $4 million, for what Wen saw as the crowning touch: a five-star luxury conference center in Yellow Sheep River itself, kind of an Aspen or Jackson Hole without the rich people. There Chinese visitors from the rich eastern cities could see how their countrymen lived, and so could visitors from around the world. Wen kept adding new specs and features to the resort. A conference room with special acoustic tile and high-end video projectors. A swimming pool with the latest "antiwave" design to prevent needless ripples, plus a gym. Naturally, broadband in all the rooms.
Wen used his connections and pull to interest governmental and industrial groups in the project, and he kept encouraging and funding Lin's work. Then he dropped dead.
In December 2003, as Town and Talent was setting up Internet projects at more than 50 western schools and as the external structure of the resort was being finished, Sayling Wen suddenly suffered a stroke. He'd always been overweight—standing behind him in line for mandatory fitness training back in their first week of college, Kenny Lin had been startled to see Wen weigh in at 99 kilos, 218 pounds, and strain valiantly but be unable to complete a single pull-up. (Lin, in contrast, was and is a physical-fitness fanatic.) But Wen had seemed vigorous and healthy. He was taken to the hospital and within three days had died, at age 55.
Kenny Lin was devastated for his friend, and he was also in trouble. Wen had given him only $1.2 million of the promised $4 million total for the resort. "I had 400 construction workers ready to start on the interior," he told me. "No one knew where the other $2.8 million was." Wen had apparently told no one else in the company about his commitment. Lin stalled the workers, telling them that the hotel might become a school. He feared a riot if they knew that the whole project was at risk. Finally, in March 2004, after three months of Lin's pressure and pleading, one of Sayling Wen's brothers agreed to provide the missing $2.8 million.
By the end of 2004 the conference center was done, and officials from around China attended a grand-opening ceremony. "But our original business model was lots of conferences, and Mr. Wen, with his connections, was the central part of that model," Kenny Lin told me. "Now there is no one to invite the people he could bring."
Lin told me this in the summer of 2007, as my wife and I walked along the echoing marble floors of the conference center, beneath a larger-than-life-sized portrait of Sayling Wen. We had heard about Yellow Sheep River, which has been well publicized in China, and had gotten in touch with Lin through mutual friends. In the 145-room resort, we appeared to be the only paying guests (the list price is about $100 a night). A full, uniformed staff was on hand—to welcome us to the breakfast buffet, to hand us towels at the pool and exercise room, to greet us when we went in and out the front door.
I have seen deserted resort-palaces before—for example, a ghostly one in the Ilocos area of northern Luzon, which Ferdinand Marcos had built strictly for his daughter's wedding and which stayed open, empty, for years after he was deposed. But this was different, in retaining an air of hopefulness rather than sheer decadence. And hopeful is how I feel about the several legacies of Sayling Wen's vision for western China.
The resort itself is of course the most visible of these legacies. When I run my travel agency, I will send every foreign group there I can. By international standards, it is no longer super-luxurious. But for foreigners it is comfortable, which cannot be said of many other places where outsiders are a two-minute walk away from village life. Unlike similar "comfortable" lodgings in places like Haiti or West Africa, it creates little sense of surviving behind barricades in a gilded cage. The hotel and conference center are in the middle of ordinary peasant fields but not besieged by desperate local crowds. As in much of China, including some areas of the west, my wife andI walked through the region chatting with farmers and children in basic Mandarin without causing too much of a stir.
Kenny Lin, who turned over management of the resort to a colleague in 2005, was aiming for a high-end international crowd of visitors. He knew that the surrounding mountainous area would appeal to Western hikers, mountain bikers, and horse-riders. The highland scenery is breathtaking, like Wyoming or the Canadian Rockies, with numerous white yaks in place of bison or bears. (Breathtaking literally, too. While my wife rode horses among the yaks with Lin, I foolishly attempted to run along a path in the same highland meadow, only to stop in my tracks 10 seconds later. It turns out that the meadow is at an elevation of 11,000 feet.) The resort's new manager has decided that the domestic Chinese tourist and conference business, a very rapidly growing market, offers the best prospects, and reportedly has booked enough of them to keep the business running.
A second legacy of Sayling Wen is the Town and Talent company, with its plan to bring the power of the Internet to isolated villages. The strategy behind that plan has also changed significantly since Lin's first trip to Yellow Sheep River, eight years ago. Then, he thought the Internet could best help the young people of Gansu by helping them move away. They could learn what they needed to know to take factory jobs, and then be matched with big employers in the big cities. "Outsourcing labor to factories was a big economic success," Lin says, "but ethically, we couldn't be responsible for what happened to the kids. They were country children. They didn't know how to handle money in the big cities. They didn't know how to make friends or even cross streets."
Now Town and Talent's strategy is the reverse. It still wants to help children leave subsistence farms, on land that was barely farmable even before the drought and has been overused to the point of exhaustion. But instead of speeding their departure to the east and further straining family and social ties, it is trying to use the Internet to create new jobs in western China's cities. To oversimplify, the plan has similarities to India's success in creating call-center and tech-support jobs in Bangalore and Hyderabad, except here the idea is to attract jobs that might otherwise end up in Shanghai, Hangzhou, or some other booming eastern Chinese city. Town and Talent has set up programs in more than 150 schools in western China to train students in using computers (which it donates) and the Internet, so they will have a better chance of holding tech jobs or starting companies of their own.
The final legacy is outright philanthropy, the current version of Sayling Wen's obviously impossible dream of modernizing the west within 10 years. The Town and Talent company devotes 10 percent of its efforts to a project whose English name is "West China Story" and whose goal is to connect students in remote villages with the outside world.
In this program, middle-school and high-school students in distant areas apply for a kind of work-study grant. The standard amount, about $115, covers most of their yearly school expenses and so can keep them enrolled even when times are bad. (In many of the schools I've seen, the students sleep in cramped concrete dorm rooms on weeknights, because their homes are too far away for daily travel by bus or on foot. Part of the fee is to cover their food at school.) In exchange they must, essentially, become bloggers. At least 10 times per year, they are required to research, write, illustrate, and post on the Web a report on some aspect of their lives in the countryside. The idea is to remind them that they are earning their way and not being given a favor, while at the same time teaching them modern Web-site-design skills. In addition, teams of students put up elaborate multipage Web sites—on the prospects for wind turbines in perpetually gusty western areas, on the history of irrigation systems in the Yellow River basin of Ningxia—some of which have won prizes in international high-school "cyber-fairs."
The essays are available at WestChinaStory.com; they are in Chinese, but the students correspond with site visitors in simple English as part of their training. Many of the pictures are eloquent, regardless of language. (Town and Talent gives each school one digital camera, which the students share.) One middle-school student writes about the "moment of joy" when the family wheat crop is ready for harvest. A high-school boy tells about how great it was when his school got a basketball to play with outside. Another, about learning Tibetan dance. Another, what is hard but satisfying about herding sheep. It might sound maudlin, but having met some of these children, I take their accounts as alive, hopeful, human.
Some 2,200 rural students now earn their keep through this kind of blogging, supported by half a million dollars in donations mainly from Taiwan, Hong Kong, the United States, and a few businesses in mainland China. My wife and I signed up to "hire" a number of blogging students from the school that welcomed us. (On the site, you can not only see all of the students' essays in Chinese and their pictures but also choose students to sponsor at 800 RMB, or about $115, per year.) I'd like to know what becomes of them.
"The children in these villages have so many disadvantages," Ted Wen, Sayling's son, told me when I met him in Taipei. "They do not have a fair chance." For instance: Chinese universities reverse the logic of U.S. affirmative-action programs. Rich and poor students alike take the gaokao, the nationwide admissions test. But to get into the famous, career-making universities, a poor student from the hinterland must score higher than a rich kid from an elite urban school. (This is the practical effect of a system whose stated bias is in favor of students from each university's own geographical area, and where the best universities are in the biggest, richest cities.)
Ted Wen is a suave figure in his early 30s who studied computer science in Japan and California before returning to Taiwan after his father's death to "get involved in my father's unfinished business," as he wrote to me in an e-mail. He said that his father's vision for western China was in part purely practical: if Taiwanese businesses did good things for mainland China, maybe people on the mainland would look favorably on Taiwan. But it also had a moral core. "I think it was important to my father to give children in the west a fairer chance to compete."
That effort might be doomed. The children might still have no hope. The west of China may still be poor 10 years from now, and a hundred. But in a big, bustling country where many people are thinking mainly about what's profitable, it's worth noticing the ones who are thinking about what's fair.


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Three California men have pleaded guilty charges they built a network of CAPTCHA-solving computers that flooded online ticket vendors and snatched up the very best seats for Bruce Springsteen concerts, Broadway productions and even TV tapings of Dancing with the Stars.
The men ran a company called Wiseguy Tickets, and for years they had an inside track on some of the best seats in the house at many events. They scored about 1.5 million tickets after hiring Bulgarian programmers to build "a nationwide network of computers that impersonated individual visitors" on websites such as Ticketmaster, MLB.com and LiveNation, the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) said Thursday in a press release.
Kenneth Lowson, Kristofer Kirsch, and Joel Stevenson pleaded guilty to hacking and wire fraud charges Thursday in U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey. Lowell and Kirsch face a maximum of five years in prison. Stevenson, who pleaded guilty to just one count of hacking, faces a year. They had been indicted in February and are now set to be sentenced on March 15, 2011.
A fourth Wiseguy Tickets partner, Chief Financial Officer Faisal Nadhi, is still at large, the DoJ said.
Their scheme was remarkably successful. When Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band played Giants Stadium in July 2008, nearly half of the 440 general admission floor tickets were snatched up by the Wiseguy Tickets network.
The network would "flood vendors computers at the exact moment that event tickets went on sale," the DoJ said. With computerized CAPTCHA (Completely Automated Public Turing Test to Tell Computers and Humans Apart)-solving, the bots were able to complete transactions faster than any human, giving them an edge in snatching up tickets for the Major League Baseball playoffs, the Rose Bowl and many concerts.
They had to create shell corporations, register hundreds of fake Internet domains (one was stupidcellphone.com) and sign up for thousands of bogus e-mail addresses to make the scam work.
Wiseguy Tickets then resold the tickets to brokers, at a profit.
"These defendants made money by combining age-old fraud with new-age computer hacking," the DoJ said in its press release.
The company operated between 2002 and 2009, under names such as Wiseguys, Seats of San Francisco, Smaug, and Platinum Technologies.
The Bulgarian contractors used by Wiseguy Tickets were paid between $1,000 to $1,500 a month, the DoJ said in court filings.
The CAPTCHA test was designed to prevent this type of fraud from happening. It displays the distorted image of a word, designed to be unreadable by a computer, and asks the customer to prove that he is a human by reading it and typing in the correct work. But different CAPTCHA systems have been broken in the past by spammers and other Internet scammers.
Robert McMillan covers computer security and general technology breaking news for The IDG News Service. Follow Robert on Twitter at @bobmcmillan. Robert's e-mail address is email@example.com

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Lighting the Way
Hello! We arrive today at our beginning, the place where love was planted. It rests within you. It's always been there. We just had to turn the light on so we could find it.
Our light is on now. We may need to install fresh batteries now and again to keep it going. That's okay; we know where to get them and which ones work the best. They are found in the places that feed our soul.
We are components of the One – each an integral part, necessary and unique. In 1898, Konstantin Stanislavsky said "There are no small parts, just small actors". Sometimes we imagine our light unimportant or too tiny to make a difference.
Once I found myself sort of stuck in the corner of a tightly packed storage facility. Half of our stuff was packed there as work was being done on the house. It had taken longer than anticipated, and because the children wanted their beloved decorations for an upcoming holiday, I was searching through stacked to the ceiling boxes, piled all around me. Then the power went out, and all went black.
For a moment, I panicked. I was alone and not sure anyone even knew I was there. But I opened my cell phone and became illuminated! It was small, dim and didn't stay lit for more than ten seconds at a time, but it helped me find my way. Now it took awhile, and crawling around with my phone in my mouth left a few bruises, but I made it – thanks to that tiny light.
We are all like that. We just don't know how far our words reach, or the effect one generous thought can have. The really cool thing is, we don't have to. As we focus on loving ourselves, our light expands as does our reach.
The light that you are is vital. Know that you are a microcosm of the whole. What is happening in your heart is being played out in our world. Love yourself. With the energy of your love and the power of your light you change everything. You came to discover just what you could do in such a dark place. You came to light the way.
You are so much more than you know. The brilliance of you is bringing us all to a place of unparalleled beauty. You were made for this.
We are in sort of crazy times. All around it looks like the power went out. Your light is so important now. Be that one in a billion light source that changes everything. You know how.
Just love. Against all odds and in the face of every negative thought, word or situation – refuse to be afraid. You know who you are. You are a piece of the divine here to spark a passionate healing flame of Agape. This is not for the feint of heart. The strongest among us took this on. We are the ones who said yes.
You are powerful, capable and oh so ready for this. It is an honor to witness. As you push your way out of the dark and emerge, brilliant and beautiful, our world is forever changed.
We are the One we were waiting for.
This completes our Quest! Thank you!
~This Quest has had a deeper significance for me. A very close love of mine is about to undergo surgery. He is a veteran, and came home 7 years ago with more in his body than he left with. If you'd just send your light to my hero, specifically tomorrow, it would help. Namaste'.
With so much love and gratitude,
We'll meet again on September 21st, 2012.
9/2/2012 09:47:50 pm
I admire your thoughts and your way of expressing and putting it in front of readers is really something that I have seen after a long time. We need more writers like you.
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May 2023


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From geeks to the obese, home-schoolers to binge-drinkers, Awkward School Pictures (ASP) has captured the classic, cringe-worthy characters of our academic careers. We point, we snicker, we email each other links with subject lines like Check out this freak! Is it high school all over again? [Read more…]
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All words for Word Snack level 10 in english.
You found the words. All you have to do is slide the letters and make the words on your phone. We invite you to appreciate your facebook page
Share this page with your friends. Like and share!
The answers for level 10 are: IN, INN, NINE
Go back to all levels to find more answers
Word Snack is a quiz game, puzzle, word game. As usual, we come to your help with answers, the words for each level.


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In 2011 Humanistic Management in Practice, the first book of the Humanism in Business Book Series came out at Springer (Palgrave Macmillan), with whom the Humanistic Management Network has brought to market 14 books in the series to date. The first volume of Humanistic Management in Practice presented 19 case examples of businesses from around the globe that are anchored in principles we uphold in Humanistic Management. The volume served as an important 'proof of concept' by demonstrating the feasibility of business models and management styles that embrace a humanistic and reject a mechanistic view of the firm. In its introduction the book had also introduced unconditional respect for human dignity as the foundation for how we define Humanistic Management.
Five years on it is high time to publish a second volume with a new set of case examples of humanistic business leadership at its finest.
The second volume will follow the same concept whil eit is using fresh cases to demonstrate yet again that humanistic management is not only a theoretical framework but a reality for successful businesses of different sizes, geographies and industries around the world. These examples serve to clarify that thriving businesses can very well be based on a humanistic management paradigm whilst being successful in competitive Markets.


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A three-way competition for the starting quarterback job and the addition of Terrell Owens have dominated the headlines coming out of Seattle Seahawks' training camp this summer. So left tackle Russell Okung has been able to fly under-the-radar in making his return from a torn pectoral muscle.
Okung was in the midst of a breakout season last year before it was ended by a largely unpunished cheap shot by Philadelphia Eagles defensive end Trent Cole (who was fined $7,500 for the dirty play) at the tail end of the Seahawks' 31-14 win last December.
Though Okung had missed just one snap up to that point of the season, the injury raised questions about his durabiltiy. Okung, the No. 6 overall pick of the 2010 NFL Draft, missed six games his rookie season with a pair of high ankle sprains.
Healthy entering this year's training camp, Okung quitely had a solid preseason debut and, as the anchor of the offensive line, is looking to help the unit forge a nasty identity under coach Tom Cable, Eric Williams of the Tacoma News Tribune reports.
"I've really rebounded from the injury last year, and I'm really glad to be back out there," Okung said. "We want to be a tough, physical football team that runs the ball and explosively throws it down field. So that's kind of what we did last year, and I hope that we keep going off of that."
Seattle's guard situation is somewhat unsettled, but between center Max Unger, Okung and right tackle Breno Giacomini, who plays beyond the echo of the whistle, the framework of that tough, physical offensive line is in place.


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icebreaker is about icebreaking
We explore the relationship between people and nature. It's about kinship, not conquering. Nature is our hero.
Our purpose
Driven by the belief that nature has the solutions, we provide natural performance alternatives to synthetic based apparel to create a healthier more sustainable future for our species and the planet.
Plastic against your skin? Really? We believe there is a better way and nature has the answers.
Our founding purpose defines not just what we make, but how we make it. Sustainability isn't just a feature of our products, it's in the values and design of our business.
Nature tends to be guided by three distinct rules
These apply to a high country sheep station, an ecosystem such as a forest floor, and our business philosophy.
Living things thrive or die based on their ability to adapt to their changing environment.
Living things work together for mutual benefit.
Nature doesn't waste anything. Waste is a uniquely human trait.
Sustainability isn't just a feature of our products, it's in the values and design of our business.
Read our transparency report


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Sure, I'm retired and could say "I'm living the dream" but this isn't about me. No, this is about Uncle Johnny, or more accurately Ellen's uncle John Osborne Filkin.
When I was growing up, I had only one season of sports, serious sports – hockey season. It lasted twelve months each year. I played in organized leagues during the Fall, Winter, and Spring. I played 'road hockey' using a tennis ball in place of a puck before school, during recesses, at lunch time and, after school until the street lights came on and I was begrudgingly required to call it a day. Sure, I played some baseball in the summer and some football in the Fall but life really revolved around hockey, hockey, and more hockey.
I knew every player in the National Hockey League (NHL), as for most of the years when I was young, there were only six teams. More than anything else, I dreamed of developing my skills and being good enough to one day play hockey professionally, especially to be in the NHL.
Photo courtesy of Pixabay.com
Recently, I took a second, closer look at a border crossing card from 1930 for Ellen's Uncle Johnny. The card stated that his reason for entering the United States (he crossed the border from Sarnia, Ontario to Port Huron, Michigan) was to play hockey in Los Angeles, California. Playing hockey in California? Many, many decades ago? That, to say the least, piqued my curiosity!
It turns out there are many records, some of which are found in obscure non-genealogically oriented databases, that provide evidence of Uncle Johnny's hockey career. And then the 'honey hole' was presented to me by Ellen's cousin and Uncle Johnny's daughter, Jule. An old family scrapbook collection, assembled by one of Uncle Johnny's brothers, containing all the press clippings they were able to gather eighty years ago pertaining to Uncle Johnny's hockey career.
So this is the story of John Osborne Filkin. He was known widely by the name 'Jack' but my wife knew him only as 'Uncle Johnny.'
John Osborne Filkin was born April 25, 1905 in the tiny hamlet of Irondale, Ontario, Canada. Irondale is located on Salerno Lake in a rural, heavily-wooded part of Ontario, far from, well, almost everything. John's father was William Mark Filkin, a chemical engineer who about twenty years earlier had immigrated to Canada from his native Birmingham, England. John's mother was Alma Maud Armstrong who had been born in the small town of Minden, Ontario.
Summers during Jack's childhood would offer, as they do today, opportunities for water sports – swimming, fishing, and canoeing. The Fall, Winter, and Spring seasons meant attending school and no doubt for Jack, a chance to skate and play hockey on the frozen ponds and rivers that were plentiful in his part of the province. Jack's teen years meant chances to work in a local sawmill but he always found time for hockey. Jack probably played hockey whenever and wherever he could, just like I did years later. But he was different. He was truly dedicated to the game and very talented.
In 1927, Jack climbed the joined the amateur hockey ranks eventually joining team of the York Bible Class, a young men's organization established a few years earlier by Denton Massey, a member of one of Canada's more famous families. That year his hockey team won the championship of the city of Toronto.
In Part 2, a look at the Road to the NHL.


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Yesterday, Heather Peters proved one woman can strike a blow against a major automaker when she succeeded in a landmark California case against Honda for making false claims about fuel economy.The key? Take them to small claims court. With her help, we've created this definitive step-by-step guide to how she, like a modern-day David, took on Goliath — and how you can too.
As we told you yesterday, Heather Peters was successful in her small claims case against Honda, in which she alleged that the car wasn't getting anywhere near the 50 MPG she says the company advertised her car would get. Although Honda only has to pay her $9,687 for this particular ruling, Peters has essentially laid the groundwork for other owners to make similar claims that could ultimately cost the company an enormous amount of money.
Small claims is not full-bore court. Evidence standards are lower and expensive and consuming processes like depositions and interrogations are dispensed with. It's a dispute resolution process, stripped down to its bare frame and built for speed. Also, fairness. Unlike fancy court, lawyers are not allowed (except in just a few jurisdictions). If the company shows — they don't always, which often means you get a default judgment and get to move automatically to the fun money-collection part — they can only send a company representative, and they can't be a lawyer. With these rules of engagement, the playing field between consumer and corporation is leveled and it's much easier for the average citizen to have their voice heard without getting tripped up in the legal science. That said, you still need to study the guidelines for you area and know what you're doing. Even though Heather Peters is a lawyer by training, there's nothing she did that any Joe Sixpack with a bit of focus and discipline can't do.
"There's no secret," Heather Peters told Jalopnik. "You go online, make your claim, you follow the links. Just follow the instructions."
Let's walk through — with her help — how she did it, and how you can too.
Very Important: If you, like Heather Peters, are choosing to go to small claims court rather than participate in an on-going class action lawsuit, the first thing you need to do is officially opt out of that lawsuit. If you're a Civic Hybrid owner, you only have until Feb 11, 2012 to opt out of the Honda Civic Hybrid Settlement Class. Here is the form you can use to opt out.
Before you file your case in small claims court, you need to try to work it out with the business in advance. Correspond with them via email or certified letters stating your case and see if they'll try to work with you on a remedy, which could include a cash payment. If that's fruitless, you then should write a demand letter that asks them for a specific sum and gives them a deadline to send it. In the letter, notify them if the amount is not paid, you will be taking them to small claims court. Besides general formatting of the demand letter, an example of which is below, the key bit of side work you'll need to do here is to calculate the damages you've suffered. And for the case to qualify for small-claims, that number must be within your state's maximum dollar amount. Some states are as low as $2,500, others can be as high as $25,000. Go here to find your state's. So how do you go about figuring out the total damages?
For starters, your evidence must show that the damages you seek fall under the max dollar amount. If the evidence shows that the damages were $10,000, but the small claims limit in your jurisdiction is $5,000, you are not supposed to decrease the amount you're seeking to $4,900 just to make it "fit."
With that in mind, in the case of Heather Peters what she did was make a big spreadsheet showing her how many miles she drove and then used official government data, like the one here to show the gas price history in California over that time. She then compared the MPG she should have gotten based on her car's EPA sticker versus the actual MPG she achieved. The cost of the gas from the difference between the advertised and actual MPG became one of the principal sources of the damages she sought from Honda. She also included the reduced resale value and statutory damages for breaking one of California's consumer protection laws. Whether you're suing a car-maker over the same issue Peters did or another issue, the important thing is to hone in on how exactly the car company didn't uphold their end of the bargain and then demonstrate the "material" – dollar amount – damage you suffered as a result.
Once you have your number and the backup proof for it, you can include the number in your demand letter. The demand letter is your last request for payment from the car company, and if they don't pay and you go to small-claims, you will need the letter it in your evidence packet as proof that you attempted to resolve the matter informally before going to court.
Ever so consumer friendly, California even has an online Mad Libs style demand letter generator tool that you can use to draft yours. Here's an example created through that you can use as a template. You will want to look up the company's exact legal name and official address to send the notice to.
February 2, 2012
Via Priority Mail with Delivery Confirmation
Vroom Corp
123 Putt Putt Lane
Anytown CA, 90210
ATTN: Mr. Greg Vanderblink
Re: Demand for Payment
Dear Mr. Vanderblink:
Please be advised that Vroom Corp owes me the sum of $10,000.00 because of [serious material deficiencies between how your car was advertised and the product I experienced] (replace with your specific issue).
This will be Vroom Corp's only chance to settle this matter before I file suit against Vroom Corp in Small Claims Court. I am agreeable to a lump sum payment, or to a payment plan. Please contact me on or before February 12, 2012 for purposes of settling this matter. If I do not hear from Vroom Corp on or before February 12, 2012, I will file a lawsuit against Vroom Corp without further notice. It is in Vroom Corp's best interest to settle this matter before a lawsuit is filed. If a judgment is obtained against Vroom Corp, it will negatively affect Vroom Corp's ability to get credit, Vroom Corp will be ordered to pay court costs, and Vroom Corp will incur interest at a rate of 10% per annum.
Based on the foregoing, I expect payment in the amount of $10,000.00 made payable to me, 123 America Street, Anytown CA, 11617 no later than February 12, 2012. (I can be reached at the address below.) If Vroom Corp decides to ignore this demand for payment, I will further pursue all of its legal remedies without further notice to Vroom Corp. This letter serves as evidence that I have attempted to resolve this matter informally.
John Q Public
123 America Street
Anytown CA, 11617
Mail this letter by certified mail, return receipt requested, so you have proof that it was sent and received.
If they don't pay you within 10 days, you move on to filing your case in small claims court. Go here again and find your state's brochure and follow the instructions for following the small claims filing procedure. Rules and procedures can vary by court, so it's important to check and adhere to your jurisdiction's procedures. The good news is that these are easily publicly accessible. On top of that, if you ever have questions at any point along the way, you can just ask your courthouse small claims personnel for help. They will be more than happy to assist you.
Follow the court link and follow this step-by-step guide:
Find the Right Court to File Your Claim: You want to make sure you file your case in the right court, otherwise it may get dismissed out of hand. Generally you can file in the county small claims court where you live, where you lived when you purchased the car, or in the county where you paid for the car.
Fill Out Your Court Form(s): This is fairly straight-forward. Each jurisdiction may have a different form but generally you want something like the "Plaintiff's Statement to the Clerk." It's only a few pages long. Just follow the instructions on it and fill in the appropriate boxes. We've posted Heather Peters form in this post as an example. You fill out your contact info, the defendant's contact info, the damages that you seek, and how you calculated the money owed to you. For instance, Peters wrote, "Amount overpaid for "Hybrid" car, increased gas costs due to poor MPG, reduced resale value, statutory damages, class action settlement insufficient."
File Your Claim: Go to the small claims clerk and hand in your forms. Bring some money, it will probably cost $25-$100 depending on your court to file a claim. The clerk may ask you a few questions, then stamp "FILED" on your forms and give you a date, time and location for your hearing. Mark it down in your calendar. That's your day!
Tell The Other Side What's Up (Serve Your Claim): This is extremely important. You must provide notice to the other party but you can't just go over to their office and toss the papers through the mail slot. You also can't do this yourself. You can have someone you know do it for you, hire a "process server," or a sheriff. They must hand the proper papers to the right person and say "These are court papers." The person they serve must be an officer of the corporation or their registered agent for service in your area. Ask your small claims clerk for assistance in finding the registered agent. After serving the papers, you must then fill out a Proof of Service and the sever provide a Proof of Mailing and then file that with the small claims clerk.
Prepare Your Evidence Packet: You want to be able to hand the judge a nice little bound packet at the start of the proceeding. Have an index at the front and use tabs to make the different sections easily accessible. Make sure you clearly show where each piece of evidence came from. You probably don't need to submit as much material as Peters did. Though she won, it was kind of overkill, with several layers of evidence. This isn't CSI or Law and Order. Small-claims courts are not set up to go through piles and piles of exhibits, and you might even annoy the judge/referee. It's fine to have extra material as backup, but the first and main thing you should hand in is just your best evidence, the evidence that most clearly demonstrates why you should win. If you wanted to demonstrate, for example, that your car wasn't getting the advertised gas mileage, you could fill your car up with gas, take pictures of the fuel gauge and odometer, and then drive several miles and take pictures of the odometer after that. Show that along with evidence of the advertised EPA vs what you actually experienced, and that should largely be what you need. Don't include hearsay, except as sworn affidavits – and those even might not be accepted.
Watch Several Episodes of Judge Judy (or similar): Seriously. The experience of going through small claims is pretty much exactly that, except the judges aren't as sassy. Watch a few of those and you will have a good idea of what to expect on your court day.
Go to Court:
* Dress like you're going for a business interview. The other person will be wearing a suit or equivalent, so don't let them outdress you.
* Keep your cool. The first person who gets emotional usually loses.
* Deliver your argument for why the other party loses. Don't talk about the injustice of it all, or how they're a bad company that hurts people's feelings. Focus on the clear material breaches of the contract or deal, and communicate that succinctly and logically, with each statement you make building up your argument in a logical progression.
Get Your Money: Assuming you've won, the next step is to get your cash. Because they're not full-on court, small claims court can't enforce collection of the sums they award. If the car company doesn't appeal and doesn't pay within the set timeframe, there's then various methods you can use to force them to pay. One method that has worked for folks suing banks in small claims court is to take a copy of your winning judgment over to the Sheriff's office and pay a fee of around $100 to get a Sheriff's levy placed against the other party. This is where the sherriff or his deputies go over to the other party's office, inventory all the items inside, place an order forbidding them to be removed from the property, thus setting the stage for a Sheriff's Sale where everything is publicly auctioned off in order to generate the cash to pay your judgment. In all the cases I've seen, this method has worked to quickly get the attention of the powers that be at that company, forcing them to write a check to the plaintiff with great haste...
But What If They Appeal: Just because you win in small claims doesn't mean the game is over. For instance, in the Peters case, Honda has said they're going to appeal. Reached for comment, Honda public relations representative Chris Martin told Jalopnik, "We disagree with the judgment rendered in this case, and we plan to appeal the decision." The case will go to Superior court and then the company's hands are no longer tied behind their back. They can bring in their lawyers and bring all their legal might to bear. But you've still got a stone in your slingshot, David.
"Under many consumer protection statutes, consumers can get a lawyer for free or to work on consignment," attorney Sam Glover told Jalopnik. In that instance, the consumer doesn't have to pay out of pocket for the attorney, the attorney gets paid from the judgment if and when the case is won. "Some states do have consumer fraud laws that might apply here," and if there's a statutory violation like that it makes shopping the case easier. "If I'm a lawyer and someone comes to me, and I think I can get penalties, and I can win the case and I can get my attorney fees paid, that person is probably going to come out better for hiring me than they would otherwise." And if you've already got the small-claims judgment in hand, that will make selling your case to prospective lawyers that much easier. The National Association of Consumer Advocates has an online resource to help you find an appropriate attorney. You can also look up the phone number for your state's bar association, call them up, outline your story, and ask for a referral. Hang in there! The upside can be much more than just money, but a chance to taste actual justice.
The case has been "Very personally rewarding," Heather Peters told Jalopnik. "The response has been overwhelmingly positive. People are so grateful to have someone who stood up for them. They feel like their voice being heard."
Ben Popken is the former Managing Editor of Consumerist.com. You can follow him online at iambenpopken.com. This is his first piece for Jalopnik.
DISCLAIMER: This guide is for informational purposes only and should not be relied on for legal advice. If you need legal advice, contact an attorney


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Do you know why we so often remunerate CEOs through stock options? Because we do; that 40-50 percent of a CEO's pay consists of stock options is nothing unusual.
Of course it is to tie a CEO's pay more closely to the performance of the firm s/he is heading. Inherent in the design of CEO pay packages is the assumption – driven by what is known as "agency theory" – that if you simply put them on a fixed salary, they will be lazy, won't take any risks and certainly won't do a thing that will only show up in the company's results years from now (and hence only benefit their successor). No, these CEO types really need some pay incentives closely tied to the long-term performance of their firms.*
So, we use stock options to tie their rewards to the long-term performance of the firm. However, that could also be done through other means (e.g. shares), right? Correct; we specifically use options to also make these CEO buggers more risk-seeking.
Say what?! (you might think) More risk-seeking? Is that really what we need?! Yes, this agency theory stuff, which determines how we design CEO pay packages, assumes that CEOs are more risk averse than shareholders typically would want them to be. Therefore, in order to stimulate them to take more risks, we reward them through options.*
But what sort of risk-taking does this really lead to? Because what agency theory has not really acknowledged and explored is that there are various types of risk. Some risks may be good; some are not so good… Are we sure these stock options lead to sensible risk-taking?
No I am not so sure. Also because two strategy professors actually measured this stuff: Gerry Sanders from Rice University and Don Hambrick from the Penn State University. They examined 950 American CEOs, their stock options and their risk taking behavior. They found that CEOs with many stock options made much bigger bets; for instance, they would do more and larger acquisitions, bigger capital investments and higher R&D expenditures. That is, where CEOs with few stock options would prefer to invest $50m in a particular project, they would plunge in a $100m.
However, in addition, they would bet (that rather substantial amount of) money on things that had much higher variability. That is, if there was a project that could make them win or lose 20% of the sum invested and another project that could make them win or lose 50%, they would pick the latter; big bets with lots of variance.
Yet, I guess those could still be regarded "good risks". Gerry and Don, however, also found something else: Option-loaded CEOs delivered significantly more big losses than big gains…! They would more often lose than win the big bets. Surely that is not something anyone would want.
And why is that? Well, through these stock options, you have created individuals at the helm of your firm who only care about upside, but can't be bothered with the size of the downside; whether they lose 10 million or a 100 million, their stock options are worthless anyway.
And I guess that's not something even the biggest risk-loving shareholder would applaud. Stock options lead to risk-seeking behaviour, but they're not always the risks you'd like them to take.
* Although it always makes me wonder whether, even if these incentives would work fine, you would really want a person like that – someone who needs those type of incentives – to be heading up your firm, or whether you then shouldn't look for someone who would also do the best they can if on a fixed salary…? But anyway; that's besides my current point.
* Options – the right to buy the company's shares at a pre-determined price – have large upside potential but very little downside risk; if by the time that the CEO can exercise the option the actual share price is £10 lower than what he can buy the share at, the option is worthless. Yet, it is equally worthless if the actual share price is £50 less. Worthless is worthless (no matter how far the share price has plummeted!). In contrast, if the actual share price is higher than the price at which he is allowed to buy, he makes money. If the share price is £10 higher, he makes 10; if the share price is £50 higher, he makes 50. Thus, stock options are thought to stimulate risk taking; the owner of the option has all the upside but very little downside.


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Network: ABC, CMT
Episodes: Ongoing (hour)
Seasons: Ongoing
TV show dates: October 10, 2012 — present
Series status: Cancelled but revived
Performers include: Connie Britton, Hayden Panettiere, Powers Boothe, Charles Esten, Eric Close, Clare Bowen, Jonathan Jackson, Sam Palladio, Robert Wisdom, and Judith Hoag.
TV show description:
Music legend Rayna Jaymes (Connie Britton) reigned as the Queen of Country for two decades and topped the charts. Now, her grip on the throne is slipping. Her last album tanked and ticket sales are soft. Rayna refuses to be steamrolled by her record label as they present a new arrangement. In the face of an evolving industry, Rayna is struggling to adapt, reinvent herself, and try to stay relevant.
Juliette Barnes (Hayden Panettiere) is sexy, sassy, and there's trouble in her wake. She's also the country's #1 crossover artist. In her climb to the top, Juliette's public image is threatened by circumstances she struggles to control. And while she is determined to sit on Rayna's throne, Juliette refuses to deal with her difficult past.
Offstage, things aren't much smoother for Rayna. Her father is Lamar Wyatt (Powers Boothe), Nashville's most influential businessman who continues to complicate her life. Their strained relationship is defined by years of resentment and secrets that come to a head when Lamar and Rayna's sister, Tandy (Judith Hoag), push Rayna's husband Teddy Conrad (Eric Close) to run for mayor. For Teddy, this marks an opportunity to share the spotlight with his wife instead of continuing to stand in her shadow.
Coleman Carlisle (Robert Wisdom) has served on Nashville's Metro Council for 11 years. He's always been backed by Lamar until a disagreement causes a big rift between the two.
The city of Nashville is the stage for many hopefuls. Deacon Claybourne (Charles Esten) is Rayna's longtime bandleader whose unrequited love for her prevents him from claiming success if he went on his own.
Scarlett O'Connor (Clare Bowen) is a beautiful and gifted songwriter who supports her boyfriend Avery's talent while still being unsure of her own gifts. Avery Barkley (Jonathan Jackson) is a struggling alt-country musician who can't help but feel left behind when his girlfriend Scarlett's songs have a chance to find an audience before his own.
Gunnar Scott (Sam Palladio) is a wholesome up-and-coming crooner who finds a musical soulmate in Scarlett and comes between her relationship with Avery.
Episode #TBD
This episode has not been released yet.
First aired: TBD.
What do you think? Do you like the Nashville TV series on ABC? Do you think it should be cancelled or renewed for another season?


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Launched in 2007, Paiste's Twenty Series cymbals are the first B20 cymbals the company has made since its Formula 602 and Sound Creation ranges. The brief was to bridge the gap between the classic sparkling, harmonious Paiste sound and the darker, more complex characteristics typical of cymbals of Turkish descent.
Twenty Series cymbals are made through a unique collaboration between Paiste and its Turkish partner Murat Diril. Raw blanks of B20 bronze are cast by Murat in Turkey before being transported to Paiste's Swiss manufacturing base, where they are worked into finished cymbals. Paiste emphasises that every crucial stage of the production is completed by hand, from the initial casting to the lathing and hammering
The cymbals are a distinctive shade of gold and have been buffed to a gleaming shine. Wide and fairly deep lathing bands cover both the top and bottom of each cymbal from the centre hole to the edge (with the exception of the splashes and the normal weight rides, which have raw bells). Numerous hammer marks abound as well, so beneath the brilliant finish the cymbals have a busy surface. These new additions to the Twenty Series are a mixture of alternatively sized versions of existing cymbals and completely new models.
Hands on
First out of the box was a pair of splashes (8" and 12"). The 8" cymbal explodes immediately with a high-pitched snap. Although it is only 8" wide it seems alive with overtones. The 12"splash is big step up from the 8" and is altogether calmer. It's quite a thick cymbal and could almost function as a miniature crash. The weight gives it impressive volume and it possesses a similarly silvery, trashy voice to the 8".
"Three new Thin Chinas and a regular China bring the total number of Twenty Series China options to nine. The Thin Chinas' combination of white-hot attack and underlying shimmering darkness is impressive".
A new model - the Mini China - is represented in 8", 10" and 12" diameters. Of the trio, the 10" and 12" models sound the best, fizzing instantly in the style of a China while also possessing a proper note. The 12" is the most aggressive and also has the deepest note, making it an attractive add-on cymbal. The supplied 8" Mini China sounded nothing like the example on Paiste's website; we found it impossible to elicit anything other than an ungainly clang from it.
Three new Thin Chinas (14", 16" and 18") and a 20" regular China bring the total number of Twenty Series China options to an impressive nine. The Thin Chinas' combination of white-hot attack and underlying shimmering darkness is impressive. Again the larger pair perform strongest, opening with searing aggression while brimming with trashiness. The 20" China doesn't have the same level of immediacy as the Thin models but it is louder and even more complex.
Six new crashes are divided equally between standard and thin variants. The three Thin crashes (16", 17" and 18") retain some of the top-end clarity so distinctive to Paiste but feature a good deal of complexity as well. Their opening swell is rounded and harmonious while the note that follows is dark and mellow. Though it has no bell sound to speak of, the 18" Thin crash gives a delicate but clear stick sound when ridden.
The three crashes (17", 19" and 20") are more Paiste-like due to their heavier weight. This ensures they cut through more and that their decay lingers for a while longer. They are still pleasantly deep in tone and strike a decent balance between warmth and cleanliness. The 20" crash was our favourite on account of its versatility - as well as supplying a good, loud crash it acts as a pretty useful ride too.
A trio of new rides covers diameters of 20", 21" and 22". The 20" and 22" Light rides don't feature the raw bells of the straight rides on top, but, intriguingly, do below. They are both fairly lively and so a wave of wash builds up quite quickly when playing. The stick sound is fatter and deeper on the larger model but the wash - though it is not unpleasant sounding - is more of a distraction. We found they gave the best results when played gently - they are, after all, Light rides.
The 21" ride has more focus about it, giving a clearer stick sound with less wash. Though it is higher in pitch it is still sweet sounding and can be played far harder than the Light rides without running out of control. Its raw bell is drier than the body of the cymbal but still cuts through.
Of the four new pairs of Twenty hi-hats, three were sent for review (12" and 15" hi-hats and 14" Light hats), with the 16" Medium Light hats being withheld for review in a future issue. The 12" hi-hats are crisp and responsive, giving a tight, clean stick sound. There is a degree of warmth to them, but really they are all about precision - which they do very well.
The 14" Light hats are an altogether darker proposition. They have a far softer feel, which makes for a big, warm stick sound. While enough top-end is present to ensure that they carry, these hats are happiest delivering a sizzling, slightly hazy performance.
Being regular models, the 15" hi-hats are heavier than the 14" Light hats and consequently are a little more forceful. While they are undoubtedly a meatier pair of hats, there is nothing belligerent about them. Loud yes, but not harsh, and surprisingly controllable.


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This is the last of our four-part series on Occupy Wall Street, transcribed from a recent Heritage Foundation event on the movement.
In part four, Eric Teetsel, executive director of the Manhattan Declaration, explains why he's hopeful about the Occupy movement. Teetsel believes some Occupiers, particularly young members of the movement, are headed in the right direction but need a helping hand on issues such as free enterprise, individual liberty, the rule of law and moral realism.
Part 4: Capitalist Evangelism
I was talking to my friend about this event and said, "I'm going to go to Heritage and talk about the Occupy Movement." He said, "Oh, is the event called 'How to Blow a Movement?'" So to the question that Lachlan posed, Is it dead? Is this a post-mortem? I think the answer is "yes and no."
We've outlined already what is happening this spring, this "spring training," and things we can expect to see in the next couple of weeks and months. Certainly a lot of the populist rhetoric of the Occupy movement has been incorporated in the presidential campaign and that will continue through the fall and beyond, I'm sure. But the character of Occupy has changed. When I went to Zuccotti Park, I left feeling very hopeful about it. I was totally surprised at what a positive experience I had in New York and that has all been diminished as these professionals that Anne described have consumed the movement and crowded out the "communitarians," the group that Ben described. The communitarians were the group me and my colleagues interacted with the most in New York and found common ground actually and some inspiration. But, the communitarians have something to learn, too. I think if the movement had been led by communitarians it would still be doomed to failure.
Who are these people? described them as folks who seek community, security and purpose. I think that's all true. I think they are quintessential "millenials." Many of you in the room are millenials, I'm pretty close myself. Lots has been done on who millenials are. Some of the characteristics I see: religious, activistic, well-meaning, frustrated, disillusioned, disappointed, ignorant, certainly, and young. Also, most importantly, non-political. I think those are the characteristics I see in the communitarians. So why hope?
Because they're seeking the right things, in many ways.
Not policy position, a lot of those — even if we can't say "this is what Occupy wants" — a lot has been churned up that they are looking for, whether that's free education or whatever. But, aside from that, in a more philosophical sense, what Cornell West calls, "the promise of America," I think actually gets at the core of what it is they're looking for. It's an opportunity society, a purpose in life and in their vocation, and third, and very important, an end to suffering. These are things that conservatives want, too.
There are lots of positive traits involved in Occupy. They have openness to ideas and to dialogue, there was no one I found that wasn't willing to talk to me. And I found some common ground with some folks that I never would have expected to find common ground with. One highlight was a conversation with a young man about Paul Ryan's plan to "block grant" Medicaid. He was talking about how great it would be if the 50 states were each laboratories of innovation for public policy. I looked at him and said, "That sounds a lot like what Paul Ryan's plan is proposing. Did you know that?" And he said, "No, but I'm all for it!" And then he got arrested for jumping on a baggage carousel at JFK, so they're not—they don't have everything figured out. But there's hope there.
Compassion. I mentioned a desire to see an end to suffering. Compassion is a hallmark of this generation and that's a good thing.
Innovation—one of the coolest things at Zuccotti Park is this contraption that they built to wash their dishes using dirt and rocks to filter the water so it's cleaned after they use things. It's pretty cool.
They have a sense of responsibility for their neighbor. What Anne described as this community, this family, actually drives them to concern.
And then, finally, I actually think there's an optimism there, this idea of the promise of a new America. They have a sense that things could be better than they are and I think that's a good thing.
But, of course, there's some negatives, too. Recently, David Brooks wrote a column, "Sam Spade at Starbucks." And, interestingly, this came out after he spoke at the Q Conference. Q is the evangelical version of TED and it's a left-leaning group of evangelical millenials primarily talking about cultural engagement. And David Brooks went and then he wrote this article. And he doesn't reference Q, for anyone who was there, I think he's talking about Q, and describing the people who are involved as having two fundamentally negative characteristics to their detriment.
The first is an evasion to politics and the second is an inability to see the problems of disorder. They believe that the world can be healed, and I'm quoting here, "If only the world could insert more care, more compassion, and more resources." They don't get that fundamentally the problem within societies is one of disorder. And politics is necessary to solve that problem. So, Jefferson Bethke, the guy who did the "Jesus < Religion" video that was all over YouTube, has much in common with the communitarians of Occupy Wall Street on these points. He wants to do away with the institution, the political organizations, so to speak, by which Christians sort out who they are, what they want to believe, and instead just focus on the idea of concern and compassion and love. It's insufficient. Those are good things, but insufficient things.
And so I have hope because I am an educator and when you see opportunities like these moldable young people who exhibit so many positive traits, my desire is to go to them and say, "You're close, but you've got a lot to learn yet." It's like the story of two baseball players who are running to first base. One of them has got perfect form and the other one's got not perfect form and they tie. And you go to the general manager and you say, "So which guy do you want to draft?" And a smart GM will take the guy with the bad form, right? Because you fix his form and he beats the other guy to first base. Young people today have terrible form. But they're running in the right direction. And our job as conservatives needs to be not condescending and not rejecting these ideas but, instead, as Ben said, using moral language to show that free enterprise, individual liberty, the rule of law, and what David Brooks calls moral realism are the keys to human thriving and to peace.


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Rural West going to the dogs
Feral and free-roaming canines wreak havoc on wildlife and livestock
Jeff Villepique usually carries bear spray when he goes into the mountains. But the California Department of Fish and Game biologist isn't worried about bears as he walks to the edge of a steep, rocky wash near the Mount Baldy Ski Lifts resort in Southern California. On this bone-chilling, misty morning, he's worried about dogs.
Villepique recalls the macabre scene he recently investigated here: the tracks of three or four dogs in the snow, tufts of hair marking where a bighorn ewe was dragged down the talus slope, and the carcass itself -- mangled and missing a leg and a horn. The prime suspects: a Labrador retriever mix Villepique found still gnawing on the evidence, and its partner in crime, a German shepherd mix that watched menacingly from the top of the wash.
"It's a great loss," Villepique says. State and federal agencies in California have spent three decades and a lot of money trying to recover local bighorn populations. But encroaching development and its encroaching pets -- some abandoned and others simply allowed to run free -- are complicating efforts.
Officials have captured hundreds of feral and free-roaming dogs in the San Gabriel and San Bernardino mountains in recent years, especially around Mount Baldy and Lytle Creek. In addition to bighorn sheep, the dogs are hammering rabbits, quail, mule deer and other wildlife.
The story is similar across much of the West, as swelling ranks of rogue canines increasingly harass wildlife, livestock, even people. But most federal efforts to protect big game and livestock are focused on killing wild predators. With limited funds for trapping dogs, local officials like Villepique can do little but try to educate the public.
"I doubt we're even making a dent in what is going on out there," says California-based Forest Service biologist Kathie Meyer.
Wildlife Services -- the federal agency responsible for predator control -- estimates that more than 33 million feral and free-roaming dogs run loose in the United States, biting 5 million people each year and killing about 10 to 15, usually small children. In rural areas, feral and loose pet dogs often form packs that chase down and kill deer, elk, chickens, goats and even cattle.
"People don't understand that Fido on the couch who is normally so friendly will instinctively hurt or chase big game animals," says Tyler Baskfield, spokesman for the Colorado Division of Wildlife.
At Joshua Tree National Park in Southern California, a ranger recently came across three feral dogs feeding on a bighorn carcass. At the nearby U.S. Marine Corps base at Twentynine Palms, officials have received numerous reports of dogs attacking threatened desert tortoises. In Texas, the dogs go after white-tailed deer and ground-nesting birds. But most incidents go unreported, says Villepique. "There is no reason for me to think we know the full extent of this problem."
Many ranchers are quick to blame wolves, coyotes and grizzly bears for harassing or killing their livestock, but wildlife officials say dogs are often the culprits. Cascade, Idaho, rancher Phil Davis is all too familiar with dog trouble.
"The worst time, we had about a half-dozen dogs that packed up," Davis says. "They were chasing steer and causing some headaches. One time, they chased a yearling steer clear into town. He finally gave up and hid in someone's garage."


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How to Set Up a Unix Shell
This is an introduction to setting up your account on our systems. When first logging in, you are presented with a default set-up that enables the use of basic system commands, simple compilers, and access to the scheduler. This help file is meant to explain how to modify that default.
A shell is a command line interface that lets users issue commands to the operating system. It contains the basic Unix commands, as well as many more adcanced ones. The default shell for a Linux system is bash ("Bourne again" shell). There are others:
- csh (C shell)
- ksh (Korn shell)
They differ in their "feel" and how they handle system commands. ksh and bash largely understand each other's command syntax. csh is somewhat different.
bash is a "GNU" shell that uses features from the older shells csh and ksh. It is quite popular because it offers many convenient features, such as command and file-name completion by pressing the "Tab"-key. Its scripting syntax is almost identical to the one of ksh, which enables you to use ksh set-up files.
Some people prefer csh best because it is simple and its syntax is similar to the C programming language (thus the name). We discourage its use (see this for reasons).
ksh offers some extended features but is rarely used these days as it is similar to bash but offers less features.Some programs require a specific shell to run. You can always call a shell by typing
/usr/bin/name_of_shellwhere name_of_shell might be csh, tcsh, ksh, bash or sh (the latter is another standard shell that is often used for scripts). You may have to maintain set-up files for the shells you use, even if they are not your login shell.
In scripts, shells are usually called with a "hash-bang" sequence, that looks like:
#!/bin/bashin the first line. In such cases, it can happen that environment variables, such as PATH get reset to some default. This is why it may be necessary to use the -f option:
#!/bin/csh -fwhich avoids sourcing in the set-up files, leading to consistent behaviour for different users. All shells are documented in the man pages: type
man name_of_shellto get more information than you'd care to know. Here are links for pretty complete documentation for the shells online:
In the following section, we assume a bash shell.
Setting up a shellWe are using a system called usepackage to setup the shell. This allows replacing the setting of several environment variables, and the execution of set-up scripts by simple commands of the form
use packagewhere package stands for a pre-defined application or feature that is to be included. We discuss the use of use in the next section.
There are several set-up files in your home directory:
- .bashrc is "sourced in" every time a bash shell is invoked.
- .bash_profile applies only to login shells, i.e. when you access the system from outside.
usepackage and the use commandMost set-ups involve the setting of environment variables. These are variables that are used by your shell to determine its desired behaviour. Other set-up operations may include the execution of scripts. To simplify this task, our system supplies the use command. Instead of setting each variable and execute each script separately, everything is "lumped in" to the command
use package_namewhere "package_name" stands for an application or functionality that you want to include. A list of possible package_names can be obtained by typing
use -l
Here is an example: To be able to use the electronic-structure software Gaussian, you need to execute ("source in") a lengthy set-up script, and set a few environment variable, e.g. to tell the system where to place temporary files:
export g09root = "/opt/gaussian/g09e1" . /opt/gaussian/g09e1/g09/bsd/g09.profile export GAUSS_SCRDIR = "/scratch/$LOGNAME"These commands can be replaced by
use g09and the above commands are stored in a file
/opt/usepackage/etc/usepackage.confThe use command also works inside of your login set-up file, i.e. .bash_profile, so you won't have to retype it every time you log in. By default, users are supplied with a basic set-up that corresponds to
use standard-user-settingsand includes access to most system functions, scheduler, and some compilers. Note: New shells do not always know about the use command. In that case you either have to set up that shell "manually", or teach it about use. This can be done with a single line:
. /opt/usepackage/share/usepackage/use.bsh
Note that it is rarely necessary to make invoked shells aware of use, as they inherit the setup of the invoking (login) shell.
Manual Set-Up
You can of course apply settings directly without using "use".
One of the most important environment variables is PATH, which tells the system where to look for the commands you issue. You may want to make your shell aware of some directories with system commands and shell commands in them.
Another environment variable that is often useful is MANPATH. This is for the Unix manual pages, and tells the system where to look for online-documentation.
Yet another one is LD_LIBRARY_PATH, which is sometimes used by applications to find dynamic runtime libraries. If you experience problems with missing libraries, try playing with LD_LIBRARY_PATH, otherwise it's best left unset.
The command to set an EV is the binary operator '='. This is often followed by the export command, which makes the variable part of the environment:
VARIABLE=VALUE export VARIABLENote that it is possible to place "export" in front of the variable assignment instead of issuing two separate commands:
export VARIABLE=VALUETo access the value of a environment variable, place a "$" in front of it. For example you want to see which value your variable PATH has, type
echo $PATHwhere "echo" is a standard Unix command, and "$PATH" returns the value of PATH. The following command will append something to a previously defined variable:
export PATH=$PATH":/yet/another/directory
Here, "PATH" is the variable and "$PATH" is its present value.
Sometimes a variable needs to be reset for a specific application. It is then best to write a shell script that sets the variables and starts the application, rather than setting the variables globally in your start-up files. In this example:
OMP_NUM_THREADS=8 omp_program
The variable OMP_NUM_THREADS (which determines how many threads are being used) is set only for this specific run of the multi-threaded program omp_program.
You can consult the configuration files of "usepackage" /opt/usepackage/etc/usepackage.conf to find out which setting you need to apply to run a specific software or access certain features. The syntax in that file is not hard to read, for instance the entry
>> g09 : "Gaussian 09 Update E.01" << g09 : g09root = "/opt/gaussian/g09e1", <[ . /opt/gaussian/g09e1/g09/bsd/g09.profile ]>, GAUSS_SCRDIR = "/scratch/$LOGNAME";
is responsible for the settings in the "Gaussian" example in the previous section.
Running pre-installed software
A lot of software is pre-installed on our clusters. Some of this software requires specific license agreements, other programs are freely accessible. With the use command, most of them can be set up with a single line such as "use fluent" in your shell's start-up file. If the software you want to run is not included in our usepackage list, please contact us, and we can include it. If you are using very specific software that is not accessed by other users, you might have to do the setup manually.
Here is a few steps to follow in that case.
- Check out the documentation for the specific program, including users' manuals and home pages.
- Inform yourself about licensing. Some software requires each individual user to hold a license, some is covered by a collective license agreement, some does not require a license at all. For example, the finite-element structural code "Abaqus" is only accessible to users who work at an institution that is covered by a local license, whereas the license agreement for the electronic-structure code "Gaussian" covers all our HPCVL users. Finally, code such as "Gamess" (another quantum-chemistry program) are free to use by all users, although the distributor encourages registration.
- Set the proper environment variables. This can usually be done in your shell setup files, since you'll be running the same code on most occasions you log on. These variables might include the PATH, but also variables specific for the program in question. Which ones to set you will be able to find out in most cases from the program documentation. Remember that this is only necessary if no entry exists in the "usepackage" configuration file, which can be checked by running "use -l".
How do I run parallel code ?
That depends on how the code is "parallelized":
- If it was "multi-threaded" by the compiler (automatic or via compiler directives), it is usually enough to set the environment variable PARALLEL or OMP_NUM_THREADS to the number of threads that should be used.
- If it is MPI code, a special parallel runtime environment has to be used. The command there is mpirun, which has command-line options that let you tell how many and which processors to use. This command is part of the Cluster Tools parallel runtime environment. Cluster Tools involves a good deal of commands that let you modify the condition under which your program runs. The settings for these are included in our default setup.
You can learn more about parallel code by having a look at our Parallel Programming FAQ. We also have a bit more specific information about parallel programming tools, namely OpenMP compiler directives and the Message Passing Interface (MPI).
If you have questions that you can't resolve by checking documentation, email to email@example.com.


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ReLIFE (Dub)
Type: TV Series
Plot Summary: The story follows Kaizaki Arata, a 27-year-old jobless man, who fails at every job interview he had after quitting his last company. His life changes after he met Yoake Ryou of the ReLife Research Institute, who offered him a drug that can change his appearance to 17-years-old and to become a subject in an experiment for one year. Thus, he begins his life as a high school student once more.
Genre: Romance, School, Slice of Life
Released: 2016
Status: Completed
Other name: ReLIFE


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A graphical showpiece and a boxing game just a tad more authentic than the ones featuring King Hippo, Fight Night Round 4 apologizes for its sport and chases that unlikeliest of pugilistic goals: subtlety.
MMA is hot and WWE never quite fades away. Boxing eternally hangs from a cliff.
Since the 1970s, each decade of boxing disappointment has been followed by a decade when those of us who can still name a single active heavyweight realize that the previous decade wasn't so bad. The 90s of boxing? I miss them. Boxing never seems to improve, except in my memories.
Those of us who enjoy the sport can at least celebrate this spring of 2009 and its video game boxing renaissance, which has brought us back Punch-Out on the Wii and Fight Night on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. Punch-Out's a fun puzzle game — identify and memorize the pattern to knock Bald Bull out. Fight Night aspires to be what boxing should be these days. It gets close when its controls don't deeply bend one of gaming's cardinal rules.
The Sport In Full: Ring walks. Round card girls. Choices of trunks. Previous Fight Nights had those too. Lots of fighters, including Ali, Tyson, Robinson (no de la Hoya and Holyfield), can get in the ring. Added to that — and new to Fight Night Round 4 — is a Legacy Mode that lets the player bring an amateur fighter to pro superstardom, one match at a time. The difficulty ramps up uncomfortably early, and the training mini-games between fights are too hard for a novice fighter whose foot speed and power-punching stats are not yet leveled up. But the climb is exciting and just vague enough in detail to let the gamer's imagination build a narrative better than Stallone's first Rocky. There are unexpected challengers, rematches, far-flung venues, annual achievement awards and a novel's worth of a fighting career determined one punch and one drop of blood at a time. (UPDATE: Judging by feedback in the comments I did not sufficiently distinguish how Round 4's career mode differs from that of Round 3. The new one includes multiple championships, the ability to unify belts, defend the title, move weight classes, all to increase one's reputation in order to be named The Greatest of All Time. Different tiers, from Club Fighter to Contender to Greatest have different criteria for players to achieve, including measures of fame and winning percentage. It's modeled off of a realistic career, compared to Round 3's series of challenges.)
Brutal Beauty: No greater compliment may be offered a game's graphics than to say that this game would be playable without its heads-up display (HUD). I tried one fight that way and I could see enough of the expressions of pain and fatigue on my fighter's and his opponent's faces to know how the match was going. Round 4's new physics-based damage system, which makes flush punches more hurtful than glancing blows, can be read by one's eyes without needing to see a health meter. It's all there in virtual-physical form.
Subtlety: A ha! This is what I like about boxing. Fights are seldom determined by one punch. They are determined by the accretion of jabs and hooks painted on an opponent round after round. Head movement and footwork are keys to victory. The game is a little too in love with making the player look for counter-punching opportunities, but even just a steady jab investment pays dividends, as it should. Leveling up offense and defensive stats like body-resilience or punch-accuracy shows small but significant results each time. Boxing's loudest moments follow many quieter accomplishments that the casual observer may not appreciate. They're in here.
Swift Online: I played the PS3 and Xbox 360 versions and went online with the latter. Matchmaking was swift and the fights were fun. I was disappointed that player's boxer attribute stats are leveled, as it doesn't seem to enable me to bring a fighter who is, say, biased toward power and not speed to match up against a fighter aligned the other way. Nevertheless, integrating fights into an online quest to be the champion of the game's three online weight divisions is a smart move. I'll never be champ, but it's fun to know I have a shot.
Interference: The core of Fight Night Round 4, the boxing, is a smoothly-played delight. But this game's Legacy mode is larded with extra menus and simulation options that slow one's advance from fight to training and back to fight. Then, during the fights, commentators Teddy Atlas and Joe Tessitore devolve into the worst of boxing announcers by repeatedly calling every round they see the best round of their life. What salvages the commentary is the interesting decision to have the two men criticize the state of real boxing. They discuss the proliferation of world titles and weight classes. They lament the shallow talent pool of new fighters. They even lobby for basketball players to become boxers. But all of that and even Atlas' goofy asides — like his comparison of my great fight to the first time he hard Ray Charles sing God Bless America — couldn't keep me from shutting these guys off.
Strict Controls: EA is so fervently behind Fight Night's right-stick punch system that it didn't deliver an option to map punches to controller face buttons this time. The right-stick technique is conceptually sound. Tilt in the direction of a left or right jab. Hook in the direction of a left or right hook. Pull back and arc in the direction of a left or right uppercut. What could be better? The problem is that many of us can't execute those controls reliably, myself included. My view is that game controls should be invisible and intangible. We should forget them and achieve a oneness with what's on the screen: I think an action; I believe I've done it; It happens. With Fight Night Round 4, sadly, what I think will be an uppercut winds up being a hook half the time. Perhaps I will continue to improve, but it's disappointing that EA did not offer a control scheme that lets me do what I want to do. Why not let the game learn what I think is a hook and map that move to my fighter's hook? Why force me to only use EA's pre-defined arcs? It's a narrow option that has led me to question whether I'm failing at the game or whether the game is failing at me. I'd rather focus on boxing than the controls, but players be warned: if you stink at these controls, you're in big trouble.
Fight Night Round 4 presents boxing at its most beautiful, a sport that looks great, is exciting, is full of talent and devoid of corruption.
The game falters in narrowing its audience to only those who can handle its tricky controls. But those who can manage are in for an experience about which there is little else to complain.
Fight Night Round 4 was developed and published by Electronic Arts for the PS3 and Xbox 360 on June 25. Retails for $59.99 USD. Played two brief, faltering careers on the PS3, switched to the tighter analog stick of the Xbox 360 and have had a rocky 13-6-0 middleweight career with 12 KOs on the Xbox 360. Played several matches online. Used to work for Bert Sugar (in real life). Was once prank phone-called by Michael Moorer (also in real life).
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