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Argo fete yourself. "Argo," a rousing fact-based thriller about a plan to spirit US embassy workers out of revolutionary Iran by passing them off as a Canadian film crew, took the top prize at last night's 85th annual Academy Awards. The film won best picture as well as the awards for best adapted screenplay and editing, and it marks a stunning career return for actor-director Ben Affleck, the once-mocked celebrity turned admired craftsman who accepted the best picture Oscar in a moving acceptance speech.
"It doesn't matter if you get knocked down in life," Affleck said onstage. "You've gotta get back up."
As many had predicted, Daniel Day-Lewis won best actor as a canny, folksy President Abraham Lincoln in Steven Spielberg's "Lincoln," marking the first time a performer has won the award three times. Jennifer Lawrence won best actress for her role as a troubled young widow in the comedy-drama "Silver Linings Playbook." At 22, she is the second youngest winner of the award.
If "Argo" was the evening's big winner, "Life of Pi" was a surprise runner-up, with Ang Lee's win for best director one of four Oscars for the fantastical tale of a castaway boy and a tiger. And Steven Spielberg's "Lincoln" was the night's unexpected loser, with only two wins — for Day-Lewis's already legendary lead performance and the film's production design — despite its 12 nominations, the most of this year's crop of films.
Anne Hathaway won best supporting actress for her portrayal of the doomed Fantine in "Les Misérables," a lavish big-screen adaptation of the popular stage musical. Christoph Waltz won best supporting actor for his performance as a whimsical 19th-century bounty hunter in Quentin Tarantino's "Django Unchained." It was the Austrian actor's second nomination and second Oscar; he previously won the award in 2010 for Tarantino's "Inglourious Basterds."
The 85th Academy Awards, held in Hollywood's Dolby Theatre, were notable for spreading their wealth around. "Amour," Michael Haneke's acclaimed drama about an aging couple coping with the end of life, won for best foreign language film. "Life of Pi" also won awards for best cinematography, visual effects, and musical score. "Django Unchained" won best original screenplay for Tarantino's script. "Anna Karenina" won the Oscar for best costume design for Jacqueline Durran's Tsarist-era gowns. In addition to Hathaway's win, "Les Misérables" took awards for best sound mixing and makeup and hairstyling.
"Brave," a Pixar film about a young girl and her mother bear, won the Oscar for best animated feature. It is the seventh time Pixar has won in this category, a dominance unchallenged by any other animation studio.
The Oscar telecast has faced stiff competition in recent years from the Golden Globes and a growing number of televised awards shows, and producers of the ceremony remain ever-anxious about falling ratings and perceptions that the Academy and its voting members are in danger of aging beyond relevance. In the latest attempt to appeal to younger audiences, Seth MacFarlane of TV's "Family Guy" and the potty-mouthed screen comedy "Ted" was brought in to add his trademark irreverence to the proceedings (as well as musical song-and-dance numbers inappropriate and otherwise), and the stars of the 2012 box office champ, "The Avengers," were brought out to present the awards for cinematography and visual effects.
The effects team of "Life of Pi," led by Bill Westenhofer, accepted the latter award while a group of visual effects workers protested outside the Dolby Theatre, calling for higher wages and better treatment in the wake of a bankruptcy filing by Rhythm & Hues, one of the effects houses that worked on "Pi." Westenhofer was about to add his voice to their cause when the show's producers cut off his sound.
Then it was back to unreality with a tribute to the James Bond films highlighted by a 76-year-old Shirley Bassey singing "Goldfinger." Later in the evening, Adele sang the night's winning theme for the latest Bond film, "Skyfall." And, in a nod to older audiences, Barbra Streisand capped the traditional "In Memoriam" segment by singing "The Way We Were" in honor of the song's late co-writer Marvin Hamlisch.
In other categories, "Searching for Sugar Man," an audience favorite about the long-neglected singer-songwriter Rodriguez, won best documentary feature. The Disney film "Paperman" won best animated short, "Curfew" won best live-action short, and best documentary short was won by "Inocente," a film about a homeless teenage girl who is helped by the San Diego organization ARTS/A Reason to Survive, founded and run by Scituate-raised Matt D'Arrigo.
There were a number of firsts going into this year's ceremonies. The best actress category included both the youngest ever nominee in 9-year-old Quvenzhané Wallis of "Beasts of the Southern Wild" and the oldest in Emmanuelle Riva ("Amour"), who turned 86 yesterday. For the first time in Academy history, an acting category consisted solely of previous winners, with Waltz, Alan Arkin, Robert De Niro, Tommy Lee Jones, and Philip Seymour Hoffman all vying for best supporting honors. And it was the first time the country's reigning first lady presented the award for best picture.
This year's Oscar race was also unusual in that many of the nominated films have been popular as well as critical hits. The 2011 best picture winner, "The Artist," was a black-and-white, French-produced silent film — about as far out of the American commercial mainstream as it's possible to get. But while the 2012 best picture nominees included such acclaimed art-house films as "Beasts of the Southern Wild" and "Amour," few had any doubts that one of the more epic, star-driven studio dramas would carry the night.
In a year in which many of the nominated films dealt with political events of the recent or distant past, fierce public debate about historical accuracy and violence in the media dominated the weeks leading up to the awards, with potential nominees arguably losing momentum in the crossfire. Despite critical and popular acclaim for their films, Kathryn Bigelow, Affleck, and Tarantino were all shut out of the best director category. In the case of Bigelow, the furor over the depiction of CIA interrogation tactics in "Zero Dark Thirty" almost certainly contributed to her being snubbed, as well as to the film's five nominations and one award. It was a night when less divisive visions of America's past prevailed.Ty Burr can be reached at firstname.lastname@example.com. Follow him on Twitter @tyburr.


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Discussion in 'The Bar' started by Ridic Too2, Jan 27, 2013.
Google her
Bing her
Smoke show
I liked her in The Phantom of the Opera.
I'll take your word for it.
Did she make your cock hard?
tee hee.
She is super, super hot.
She's sexy hot in a young Mary Louise Parker kind of way.
I am jerking off while watching Shameless.
I think i see nip
Omg gasface I luv u
She's such a dirty slut on Shameless, that makes her even hotter.
I think I have to start watching Shameless.
She showed her boobies in the first five minutes of Shameless last week.

subset: commoncrawl


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Video: Returning the human to automated processes
Where will the next level of productivity come from? As manufacturers watch competitive pressures continue to increase, while the opportunities from advances in technology are beginning to level off, Sudipta Bhattacharya, president and CEO of Invensys Operations Management, sees companies turning back to people for solutions. In an interview at Ops Manage 2011, he discusses how technology should be used to empower people at the edge: the plant managers, supervisors, and operators who are closest to what's really happening and therefore in an excellent position to determine the best ways to serve customers.
Bhattacharya points out that making such an approach successful depends on a combination of two things: changes in technology and a shift in corporate culture.
The technological change involves getting the right information to the people on the edge, so they have all the data necessary to make informed decisions. The cultural change is generally the more difficult one to make happen. It involves breaking out of the centralized command and control mentality, and moving production decision making out to the edge. All companies do not embrace this readily, but some that have find it can drive major positive change.
Peter Welander, firstname.lastname@example.com


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OC&C help the board and senior management address complex issues in areas such as:
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Toronto: Canada will continue to provide millions of dollars in humanitarian aid to the Palestinians despite saying last week it would assess its whole relationship with the Palestinian Authority after the UN General Assembly voted to recognise the Palestinians as a non-member observer state
Canada, a staunch ally of Israel, strongly opposed the Palestinians` successful effort last week to win elevated status and was one of the few countries to vote against it.
Foreign Minister John Baird recalled diplomats from Israel, the West Bank and the UN to assess the implications of the vote and get advice yesterday.
Rick Roth, a Baird spokesman, says Canada`s current five-year, USD 300-million commitment in funding for security and humanitarian aid is important and will remain.
Roth says as a matter of course they will "review the path forward" once the projects are completed.
US lawmakers have threatened to cut off aid if the Palestinians use their newfound status against Israel. Some suggested Canada could do the same.


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how old are You????
Carl, If you're still looking for somebody to hit w/ than I'm definitely receptive to meeting up. I believe I'm probably abt your skill level. Let me know if you're interested.
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Driver Gets 5-Year Prison Term for Camping Fatality
November 13, 2009 by RVBusiness · Comments Off on Driver Gets 5-Year Prison Term for Camping Fatality
A woman who backed a minivan over a tent at a southern Minnesota campground and killed a baby has been sentenced to nearly five years in prison.
Nicolle Marie Mercedes Prechel was given a 58-month sentence for causing the death of 3-month-old Whyatt James Sander and injuring h Getting You Ex Gf Back is mother, according to the Sioux Falls (S.D.) Argus Leader.
Prechel sobbed as she apologized to the baby's parents and family during sentencing in Renville County District Court Thursday (Nov. 12).
Prosecutors say Prechel backed over the tent July 5 after a night of drinking whiskey and smoking marijuana. The incident happened at Renville County's Beaver Falls Park.


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Website Address
The Coalition to Abolish Slavery & Trafficking (CAST) is an alliance of nonprofit service providers, grassroots advocacy groups and activists dedicated to providing human services and human rights advocacy to victims of modern-day slavery. CAST was founded in 1998 in the aftermath of the El Monte sweatshop case. Its mission is to assist persons trafficked for the purpose of forced labor and slavery-like practices and to work toward ending all instances of such human rights violations.


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Producers (1968), The (US - BD RA)
Gabe revisits Mel Brooks' first and best comedy on Shout Factory's new Blu-ray
Low-rent Broadway producer Max Bialystock (Zero Mostel) and his high-strung accountant Leo Bloom (Gene Wilder) discover that, with the help of a few gullible investors, they can make more money on a flop than on a hit. So armed with the worst show ever written – Springtime For Hitler – and an equally horrific cast, this double-dealing duo is banking on disaster. But, when their sure-to-offend musical becomes a surprise smash hit, they find themselves in the middle of a Broadway blitzkrieg! (From Shout Factory's official synopsis)
I am not what you'd call a fan of most of Mel Brooks' film output. In fact, with age, I've come to sort of hate most of his films. But I can't discount or dismiss the value of his comedic voice or the impact it had on the greater film world over the decades. At his best, Brooks took the lessons he learned from the vaudeville tradition and applied it to a post-Summer of Love mindset. Unfortunately, he became trapped in a rut and was unable to gracefully grow with the modern filmic landscape. Sadder still, he embraced his place as another run-of-the-mill spoof filmmaker. The incendiary social satire of Blazing Saddles was lost among lazy jokes at the expense of popular non-comedic films and the genuine artistry of Young Frankenstein disappeared into an ocean of stylistic mimicry where its only purpose was to make the audience say 'Hey, I recognize that image from a different movie I've already seen.' Somewhere, someone has written a lengthy essay comparing his career to that of his New York Jew contemporary, Woody Allen, who grew from a popular satirist into a filmmaker of real artistic merit (this comparison is a little unfair when you account for the scope of Allen's massive filmography vs. Brooks' rather small one).
Even if I can't laugh with Spaceballs like I did when I was seven (I found it difficult to laugh at all the last time I saw it) and find it difficult to differentiate between the supposed qualities of Robin Hood: Men in Tights and the average Scary Movie sequel, I can't possibly downplay how great Brooks' early films are. His directorial debut, The Producers, remains his finest achievement as a writer. The film's Academy Award-winning screenplay doesn't wasting a minute of the brief 88-minute runtime, unlike his later films, which putter along, slowly spewing the same ten jokes at the audience over and over again for an eternity. The bite of the film's more fearlessly offensive elements has dulled a bit over the years over the years, thanks in no small part to a super-popular Broadway version and the musical film version that followed, but the situational comedy, slapstick, and satirical wit are all still sharp as knifes. Of course, one can't downplay the added value of a career-best Zero Mostel performance and a career-making (Oscar-nominated) Gene Wilder performance. There's a whole lot of screaming hysteria that might overwhelm modern audiences (and would overwhelm Brooks' other films), but it fits the unabashedly and consistently silly tone perfectly.
The Producers is presented here in the intended 1.85:1 aspect ratio and full 1080p. Those expecting perfection from a modestly budgeted and not particularly arty comedy from 1968 are probably going to find this release a bit disappointing. The rest of us that are left expecting something a little more realistic are in for an authentically filmic transfer, complete with all the grain expected from an aged 35mm transfer. This grain structure is consistent, save a handful of optical zooms. Though occasionally quite soft, the overall image quality is pretty sharp, from the wacky, wide-angle facial close-ups (you can practically count the hairs in Mostel's comb-over) to the slightly less textured, but still relatively clear backgrounds. Some of the exterior location shots are a little on the dark side, but overall blacks are rich without crushing out the finer gradations within darker elements. Colour quality is certainly stronger than the DVD version, especially the vivid reds and rich blues, which pop out of the screen and feature plenty of impressive hue variations. The rest of the palette is mostly simple, but these occasionally dull hues appear organic, especially the consistent and warm skin tones. The biggest issue I imagine most videophile fans are going to have with this transfer is the presence of print damage artefacts – of which there are more than we would expect from a prestige re-release (not that I'm considering this a prestige release). The majority of this refers to tiny flecks of white and some clumped grain, but there are some surprisingly chunky burns and scratches towards the beginning of the film.
The Producers comes fitted with two natural and as-clean-as-expected audio tracks, one in the original two-channel mono, presented in lossless LPCM, and a 5.1 remix, presented in lossless DTS-HD Master Audio. The differences between the two mixes are negligible, which is, I suppose, a good thing if we're aiming for more authenticity. That said, I suppose I slightly preferred the DTS-HD track because it does a fine job remixing John Morris' musical score for the stereo and LFE channels (I didn't notice anything notable in the rear speakers) without sounding too artificial (no added effects, no awkward directional enhancements). The bulk of the film is pretty dynamically thin and flat, made up of slightly tinny dialogue and basic sound effects work, which sounds basically the same on the two tracks. There are some over-crisp sounds and muffled inconsistencies in the vocal performances inherent in the material, but nothing outrageously inadequate.
Shout Factory has, fortunately, moved all the important extras over from MGM's special edition DVD and even tossed in a single new feature for good measure – Mel and His Movies: The Producers (18:50, HD), an interview with the writer/director as he recalls making the film. Here, Brooks discusses his pre- Producers career, writing the script, finding funding, meeting/hiring/working with his cast, and the film's release.
The classic DVD extras begin with The Making of The Producers behind-the-scenes documentary (63:20, SD). It covers similar ground to Brooks' new interview (including some of the exact same jokes), just in greater detail, and adds further details about the production design, losing Dustin Hoffman to The Graduate, dance choreography, release, and Peter Sellers' part in its popularity. It features 2002 interviews with Brooks (again), first assistant director Michael Hertzberg, choreographer Alan Johnson, production designer Charles Rosen, casting director Alfa-Betty Olsen, and cast members Wilder, Lee Meredith, Andreas Voutsinas, and Kenneth Mars. The extras come to an end with a deleted scene (3:40, SD), Peter Sellers' original Variety print ad for the film (1:00, SD), a sketch gallery (2:20, SD), and trailers.
Even as a non-fan or even an anti-fan of the bulk of Mel Brooks' work, I can still appreciate the incredible historic and comedic value of The Producers. In fact, I'd even mark it among the best feature filmmaker debuts of all time. It's just too bad Brooks tripped into such mediocrity as his career expanded, Young Frankenstein and Blazing Saddles notwithstanding (perhaps he just needs Gene Wilder's influence as an actor?). Shout Factory's new Blu-ray release is about as sharp as could be expected from the already soft and grainy material, features two mostly equivalent soundtrack options, and a nice collection of extras, including the stuff available on MGM's special edition DVD.
* Note: The images on this page are not representative of the Blu-ray image quality.
Review by Gabriel Powers
triply Member Join Date: May 2007 Location: India Posts: 330
I love The Producers. I am not a fan of Gene Wilder, but Zero was really amazing in the movie. I might upgrade to this for the extras. I have a bare-bones DVD release from a while back.
As for Mel's other output, well I actually like 'Dracula - Dead And Loving It' quite a lot. Most of the others are hit or miss for me.
As for Mel's other output, well I actually like 'Dracula - Dead And Loving It' quite a lot. Most of the others are hit or miss for me.
This product has not been rated
Disc Details
Release Date: 2nd July 2013
Discs: 2
Disc Type: Blu-ray Disc
RCE: No
Video: 1080p
Aspect: 1.85:1
Anamorphic: No
Colour: Yes
Audio: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 English, LPCM 2.0 Mono
Subtitles: English SDH, French, Spanish
Extras: The Making of The Producers, Mel and His Movies: The Producers, Peter Seller's Variety Ad, Sketch Gallery, Deleted Scene, Trailers, DVD Copy
Easter Egg: No
Feature Details
Director: Mel Brooks
Cast: Zero Mostel, Gene Wilder, Kenneth Mars, Dick Shawn
Genre: Comedy
Length: 88 minutes
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Entries in "etiquette"
July 27, 2007
how to work across time zones
As a followup to my entry from last year about "how to use voicemail productively", I offer this entry about how to work productively and professionally with colleagues in other time zones.
1 - Inform your colleagues of your normal work hours, and if you anticipate the possibility that they may need to reach you outside of your normal hours, leave a clear message on your office voicemail about how to reach you outside of your normal work day.
2 - Be aware and respectful of your colleagues' normal work hours. For instance, do not leave a message after the end of business hours in your colleague's time zone, asking him or her to accomplish something by the start of business the next morning in your time zone. If your need is that urgent, you will already have your colleague's cellphone number. Keep calling till you reach a live person, and then apologize for intruding on their non-work hours.
3 - Be especially careful about calling a colleague's cellular or home phone in the wee hours of the morning. Aim to avoid this except in the most dire emergencies.
4 - Do not send emails about routine issues in the morning in your time zone, and then call three hours later asking why no reply has been sent to your email. It may still be the beginning of the work day for your colleague!
5 - Keep careful track of appointment times when you are tele- or video-conferencing. Make sure that each confirmation email lists the correct appointment time in all relevant time zones.
Without identifying the relocation company that has "helped" us "manage" our cross-country move, let's just say that they need to train their employees to follow these rules. Calling me at 7 pm my time to inform me that movers will be at my house the following morning at 8 am, and will expect payment in the form of a cashier's check -- that's *just* *not* *professional*. Likewise, calling my home number at 6:30 in the morning -- *promotes a *negative* *association* with your corporate brand.
You can read more of my rant about our moving experiences, focusing on the drama of dealing with "professional" unpacking assistance, over at Relocation: The Bane of Balance at Work-Life Chronicles (my new blog).


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A rabbit and a snake, both blind from birth, happen to meet in the forest one day. They get to talking and the rabbit asks the snake, "Would you mind running your hands (not knowing what a snake looks like) over my body and telling me what kind of an animal I am? I'm too embarrassed to ask my near-sighted friends because I'm afraid they'll make fun of me."
The snake says, "Okay," and proceeds to wind himself around the rabbit from one end to the other, then back again. "Well," the snake says, "You're kind of warm with real soft fur and you have two very long, fury ears."
The rabbit thinks about that for a moment and then exclaims, "W O W! I must be a bunny!" and he hops around and hops around and starts hopping away.
"Wait!" shouts the snake, "What about me? Come back here and do the same thing for me!"
The rabbit hops over and with his fury little paws, pats the snake from one end to the other and then back again. He sits down without saying a word.
"Well?" asks the snake, "What kind of animal an I?"
"I'm not really sure," says the rabbit. "You're kind of cold and slimy, and for the life of me, I can't tell your head from your ass."
The snake thinks and thinks about this, then exclaims, "W O W! I must be a lawyer!"


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An upright bass and smooth synth transition into an upbeat and catchy chorus. Very smooth and optimistic with slight touches of Jazz. Ends with a very nice Glockenspiel.Rotating Box Advance! - Spinning 3D cube shows off your footage in 1080 HD, CS3 & above.
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aus_dave needed a new web page design and created a contest on 99designs.
A winner was selected from 30 designs submitted by 10 freelance designers.
Client provides innovative and cost-effective solutions for environmental remediation, utilising biological organisms and processes to clean up contaminated land and to treat organic waste.
Web site design needs to illustrate these services and also emphasise the 'environmental footprint' that companies are responsible for.
Flinders Bio
Tread gently
Desired Color Scheme:
Logo colours, earth/water/green tones
Desired Style:
Accepted File Formats:
Layered Formats (.psd or .tiff); Photoshop PSD files
Home page design only.
Look and feel
General look and feel needs to be corporate/scientific. Colours can be based off the logo as well as other earth/water/green tones.
Tagline is 'Tread gently' or 'Tread lightly'.
Site design
Layout should be centred and fixed width (at least 750 px wide). Content area must be white or light coloured background. Text headings will be standard web fonts.
Navigation menu: Home, About us, Solutions, Services, R&D, Resources, Industry links, Contact us. Text link navigation in footer as well.
Logo should be top left, background behind logo must be white. Header image needs to be a montage made up of 5 photos blended together but not in a straight line (photos in artwork file below, crop as required). Header background preferably white, or light colour/pattern. The header will be used on all pages of the site.
Footprint illustration is to be incorporated into the header image somehow e.g. as a watermark, background or outline. Open to suggestions as to how this is done, but it should be subtle. Footprints can be one, two, multiple...open to interpretation.
Other stock photo imagery on the home page can depict environmental themes e.g. clean water, trees, environment etc. iStockphoto images preferred.
Artwork including header photos, logo and footprint vector illustration can be downloaded from here.


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Is Glenn Beck the Most Annoying Man on TV
Or does it only seem that way
"Here's a comment that will get me fired," Glenn Beck says from behind the custommade standing desk (bad back) that dominates his tiny CNN office in New York. In the flesh, he is thinner, less pink, and softerspoken than the closetalking guy on television. Still wearing radio casual—bleachspotted jeans, Adidas sneakers—from the morning's threehour broadcast, he forks down a takeout salad while going over material with one of his writers for tonight's TV show, which will be devoted largely to the mass shooting at Virginia Tech. "This guy makes you have respect for suicide bombers," Beck says, trying out today's careerimmolating zinger. "At least they're killing themselves because they believe in something larger."
"I love that," says the writer, who stands on the other side of the desk. "And it's true."
"Whew," Beck says. "I can't wait for the letters we're going to get."
On the Glenn Beck spectrum, this is actually pretty tame, but postImus, the specter of getting canned for illchosen words is much on the minds of everyone in the provoking/offending business. And Beck, with his Headline News gig, has more to fear than most. In the past week alone, Al Franken has gone on CNN to call for Beck's firing, and Media Matters, the liberal watchdog Web site that led the Imus pileon, has shortlisted Beck for similar treatment.
Beck is less worried about saying the wrong thing, though, than doing the wrong thing. He's uncomfortable giving the Virginia killer the glory he sought, and he's been struggling with whether to show the video manifesto on his program. And here's where he starts to sound distinctly unlike the smug knowitalls he's often lumped with—the Rush Limbaughs and Ann Coulters. "I don't really have an answer on this," Beck says. His convenient, if convoluted, solution is to show the video tonight, announce he won't show it again, spend airtime exploring the media's and his own complicity—and then fret about his compromise.
"Am I being holierthanthou" he asks.
Beck, 42, is one of the fastestrising talkradio stars in recent years (he trails only Limbaugh and Hannity among young listeners), but it's his crossover to TV that has put him on the left's hit list. On his nightly hourlong show on Headline News, Beck peddles a rightward mix of monologue and interviews while lurching between serious and jokey, maudlin and sarcastic. He tackles everything from Big Issues (Islamic extremism and global warming are two favorites) to American Idol to the Apocalypse. (Literally: A recent show devoted the full hour to whether the End of Days might be upon us, a possibility Beck doesn't rule out.)
The antiBeck movement began the moment CNN announced his hiring early last year and intensified this past January when ABC brought Beck on as a contributor to Good Morning America. Much of the flak has had less to do with him personally than with what media critics and liberal bloggers see as the further tarnishing of once venerable straightnews brands, and especially as CNN's craven repositioning in response to Fox. (CNN Headline News chief Ken Jautz denies that Fox was a factor, but as Beck's TV producer, Conway Cliff, acknowledges: "He's a polarizing figure. That's why we hired him.") Beck has also made himself a target by bringing to TV some of the same shockjock opinions he has syndicated to more than 250 radio stations. In the past two years, his most criticized radio sound bites have included trash talk about opportunistic September 11 widows, a description of some Katrina survivors as "scumbags," and calling Cindy Sheehan a "tragedy pimp." But the one moment he has been repeatedly pressed to explain occurred on CNN HN when he began an interview with Minnesota representativeelect Keith Ellison, the first Muslim voted into the U.S. Congress, by saying, "Sir, prove to me you are not working with our enemies." In response, Jon Stewart told Daily Show viewers: "Finally, a guy who says what people who aren't thinking are thinking." Keith Olbermann, who has made Beck a regular winner of his nightly Worst Person in the World title, has said that "there's something about [Beck] that suggests that one night he'll say something that will cost him his career in television."
Meanwhile, Beck's show is the fastestgrowing in cable news, with an unmatched increase in viewers since its May 2006 launch. His "very desirable" audience, according to Jautz, is the secondyoungest of any show on CNN or CNN HN and exceeds U.S. averages for income and education. And TV and radio are just part of Beck's ambition; he is following the multimedia model of Limbaugh and Hannity—and Oprah, for that matter—with a subscription Web site, a magazine called Fusion, a comicinspirational oneman show, and a second book.
Whether on paper, online, or onair, Beck sounds, at first, like just the newest rightwinger to huff his way into public consciousness. He has the familiar lonevoiceinthewildernesstellingitlikeitis mix of selfpity and selfcongratulation. ("Is it me" he'll ask, his voice wheedling into a falsetto. "Am I wrong") He has the weakness for lowestcommondenominator tropes and straw men (the "hitandrun" media, political correctness run amok, the "weasels in Washington"). His mind can take a primitive and superstitious turn (as when he gets going about whether the Kyoto Protocol and events in the Middle East presage One World Government and Armageddon).
But his success owes more to how he breaks from tradition. In truth, he is less partisan soldier than channeler of regularguy id (insofar as someone who wears Etro shirts and Vuitton loafers, knows nothing about sports, and describes Yankee scented candles as "quite possibly the greatest invention ever" qualifies as a regular guy). While he is broadly School of Limbaugh, Beck differs in striking ways. Where Limbaugh speaks of his "talent on loan from God," Beck regularly calls himself an "alcoholic rodeo clown." Where Limbaugh was a sanctimonious fall from grace waiting to happen, Beck wears his dysfunction on his sleeve, reveling in his past addictions and his clinically diagnosed ADD. Where Limbaugh is a lockstep Republican, Beck is a former social liberal turned libertarian conservative, a registered independent, and a devout, tithing Mormon. He has done 180s on contentious issues—from prochoice to not, from being in favor of pulling the plug on Terry Schiavo to siding with her parents against it, from supporting George W. Bush's handling of Iraq to seeing it as another Vietnam—and is almost as quick to fault politics itself as to go after Democrats.
"Conservatives believe that liberals are communists that want to destroy America," Beck says. "And liberals believe that conservatives are hatemongering racists that are hiding their sheets. Neither of those is true. If we don't stop believing the worst in each other, we're dead." Which hasn't stopped Beck from describing Hillary Clinton's voice as that of "a stereotypical bitch."
And while Beck's views may have evolved, he's also a staunch defender of consistency. "I find myself with a lot of respect for people like Santorum, who's willing to lose [in Iraq] but stands up for what he believes in, and Murtha, who says, 'Get the hell out and I don't care what the consequences are,'" Beck says. "They stand for something." He thinks the Republicans who bellyached about Bill Clinton's lies were guilty of a double standard when they blamed politics for Scooter Libby's perjury conviction. He gives Leonardo DiCaprio more credit on global warming than he does George W. Bush on illegal immigration.
This leads Beck into some strange alliances. Having challenged Al Sharpton to hold rappers to the same standard he did Don Imus, Beck linked arms in early May with the Reverend Al in a protest march through Manhattan. (Sharpton is a regular guest on Beck's show; offair he calls him "Brother Beck.") And following a recent U.N. report that emissions from livestock farms—i.e., cow farts—contribute more greenhouse gases to the atmosphere than all the cars and trucks in the world, Beck joined forces with PETA, onair, to slam Al Gore for his "meat footprint.""I'd love to have a conversation with George Clooney," Beck says, "and I bet you we could come up with more we have in common than we disagree on. We're going to disagree vehemently on a few things, but Darfur I'm with you, George Clooney."
In that same mano a mano spirit, would he like to break bread with Gore
Short answer: no. Long answer (truncated from really long answer): "I did enough homework to believe that globalclimate change is real. But I don't think Al Gore is an honest broker on this issue. Why aren't you a vegan Why aren't you a vegan That's a pretty big deal."
When Glenn Beck was 8 years old, his mother gave him a record called The Golden Years of Radio, and from that point on he dreamed of working at Rockefeller Center. Thirtyfour years later, he broadcasts from Radio City, part of the Rockefeller complex, and his office and set are packed with totems of a lost America: _Jetsons_esque model rockets, vintage microphones, photographs of Bakelite radios. On his shows, he returns again and again to how common sense and shame have died. There's something frozenintime about Beck, and it's tempting to see his life as one long attempt to recreate the world as it was—or as he fuzzily recollects it before it blew up in his face.
When he was 11, his parents divorced, and two years later his alcoholic mother committed suicide by drowning herself. "When my mother died," Beck says, shaking his head, "I just turned dark."
He threw himself not into school but work. That same year, he won a contest on his hometown radio station that allowed him to deejay for an hour. Within two years, he was doing weekend overnights at KUBE, a Top 40 station in Seattle. Every Friday after school, he made the twohour bus trip to the station, where between shifts he crashed in a sleeping bag in the conference room. "He took very seriously a job that by definition was an unserious job," station manager Michael O'Shea recalls.
The twelve years after high school were a blur of ambition, booze, weighty family responsibilities, pot, expensive cars, coke, workaholism, and dickish behavior. He married at 18 ("My sister has said I was looking for a mom; there's probably something to that"), wore dress slacks and ties when his coworkers were wearing Tshirts and jeans, and at 24 was driving a Cadillac and dealing with the birth of his first child, Mary, who came into the world with cerebral palsy.
All the while, he was a radio nomad, chasing bigger paychecks as he moved from Utah to Washington, D.C., to Corpus Christi to Phoenix to Houston to Louisville—mostly as a stunty morning man inciting listeners to mail raw eggs to the station, hiring churchsecretaryturnedPlaymate Jessica Hahn as his show's "prize bunny," and hijacking the sound system at a rival station's music festival. "I was moneyhungry and stardriven," he says. He was also pounding whiskey: "I was a very good functioning alcoholic. I didn't start drinking till five. I'd watch the clock with a glass and a bottle in my hands. I lived for five."
By the time he got to Baltimore, in 1990, he was at the height of both his success and his misery. He grew a ponytail, took home a quarter of a million dollars a year, smarmily said "love you, mean it" as he hung up on callers, and drove a De Lorean. A Baltimore producer he fired named Tom Russell—who is not the Baltimore producer Beck fired for bringing him a ballpoint when he had asked for a Sharpie—recalls the time Beck seized him by his collar, hoisted him nearly off the ground, and said he would eat him "for fucking breakfast."
Two years later, Beck burned out and washed up in Connecticut, deejaying in the 102ndlargest market in America. "My egotism was getting to me," Beck says. "I thought I didn't need to try in order to win. And I didn't try. And I didn't win."
Life at home went to pieces, too. Bill Beck, now 80, says that when he visited his son in the early '90s, "the house was a total mess. There was no food, no clothes ironed. He was crying, bawling like a baby when we left…. We weren't aware until many years later that that was when he was hitting the booze and narcotics pretty heavy." Glenn says he was suicidal.
His life, in his telling, has a mystical, selfdramatizing quality, with discrete, identifiable turning points he calls "promptings." In the mid'90s, several of them occurred in quick succession. When Beck found himself unable to remember a bedtime story he'd started telling his two daughters while drunk, he knew he had to sober up. He began attending AA meetings in a church basement in Cheshire, Connecticut. One night he dreamed he was walking through a desolate winter landscape, afraid of an intense blackness that loomed ahead, and an old bearded hobo led him around to the other side of the blackness. When he woke up, he painted the scene so he could remember it. Soon after, he found himself saying onair, "I've done a lot of bad things," and then enumerating them. A door had opened to a new way of doing radio.
"I looked at Stu [Burguiere, his producer]," Beck says. "I shut off the mike, and I said, 'Write this day down in your calendar: This is the day Glenn Beck ended his career.' I really thought this was it, because I was honest about the worst part of me. And now, I think that's part of what people identify with. Too many people on talk radio are beating their chests on 'I've got the answer.' I don't have the answer. I have some answers, that I have found, for me."
In a mirrored room at CNN, on the fifth floor of the Time Warner Center in Manhattan, a makeup artist paints cream under Beck's eyes while her colleague, idle in a nearby chair, tells Beck that she's moving to Riverdale, in the Bronx. "At least you're outside the vaporization zone," Beck says.
"Really" says makeup lady number two. "I'm still in New York."
"You could drop a onekiloton bomb on Lower Manhattan and be safe in Chelsea," Beck says.
"Good to know," the woman says.
Beck: "Did you check the blast radius"
"No," she says. "I was more interested in the publicschool system."
"Priorities," Beck says.
He is kind of joking, kind of isn't. One of the reasons he lives in Fairfield County, Connecticut, is that it's out of reach of a nuclear explosion in Manhattan. It can be difficult, at times, to separate Beck's shtick from his beliefs, but when he talks about World War III, he's not demagoguing. He is earnestly convinced that America is on the brink of another Holocaust, and the choice is clear: Confront radical Islam or repeat 1930s Europe's sins of apathy and appeasement.
As taping of the evening's show gets under way, Beck looks into the camera and says, "Can I say something" He is relatively subdued in dress this afternoon, in a dark suit and only slightly garish tie, not the purple psychedelic number, or one of the patterned shirts he wears that create moiré patterns on the TV screen and drive the camera crew crazy. "This is going to sound absolutely horrible, and I apologize, America, in advance, but I'm just going to be honest with ya." (This is Beck's signature move, the softener he deploys right before he makes a statement that is likely to offend. It's what Karl Frisch, from Media Matters, calls "the television version of the southern putdown: 'Look at that fat woman; isn't she precious' ") Beck continues, debuting the take on Virginia Tech he'd practiced this afternoon: "Watching this guy and listening to his manifesto, it almost makes you look at Al Qaeda and suicide bombers and kind of have a sick sort of respect for them in comparison. They at least die for their sick, twisted version of God. This guy's dying for nothing."
Almost Kind of Sick sort of Twisted version of With all the qualifiers, it's Beck Lite today; he sounds almost like one of those p.c. language manglers he loves to hate. No danger of this turning into a Media Matters moment.Beck has repeatedly expressed regret about the mother of all his Media Matters moments, his challenge to Congressman Keith Ellison. Ellison himself seemed to take the question in good humor, but more than six months later it remains the central indictment of Beck. He is still pained by the experience, though not necessarily for altruistic reasons. "That did so much damage to me," Beck says. "People who are not familiar with me or the show see that and go, 'Oh, racist—he just hates people like that.' So shooting from the hip—and just not phrasing it right and not really getting what I was trying to say across—hurts the message, and that message really was: Muslims need to stand up, because the vast majority of them are good and peaceloving and don't agree with this stuff. But there are too many stupid people out there that, a series of bad stuff starts to happen, they're going to say"—here, he switches to a redneck drawl—"'Let's get the razor wire.' When I was on right after September 11, I had people calling, saying, 'We should round these people up.' What are you, nuts Did you not learn from World War II and the Japanese So by saying stuff not carefully, you open yourself up for being painted as this, and it hurts you in the long run."
It was after he quit drinking that Beck the Seeker was born. He decided to steep himself in the most divergent worldviews imaginable—which led to an uncomfortable moment at the cash register in a New Haven bookstore when he paid for twelve books ranging from the Encyclical Letters of Pope John Paul II to Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time to Alan Dershowitz's The Vanishing American Jew to…Mein Kampf. ("I'm of German descent," Beck says. "I really wanted to know if they didn't know. It led me down a road of Who would I be in that situation")
With a letter of recommendation from Senator Joe Lieberman—who came on Beck's Connecticut radio show several times and whom Beck voted for—Beck enrolled at Yale as part of a special program for older students, studying theology. He took only one class—the night before the semester began, he and his first wife decided to divorce, and suddenly he had two households to support—but when his professor told him, "Glenn, you belong here," it was an experience that gave the high school grad a new sense of intellectual worth.
By the late '90s, it was increasingly clear to Beck and those around him that being a morningzoo deejay was an unnatural fit. It was hard to reconcile the guy telling listeners to come on down to Hot Wings for a twoforone drinks special with the divorcing father who in his small New Haven apartment was drinking O'Doul's, cooking gourmet dinners for friends, reading theology books, and listening to Gregorian chants.
It was during this period that Beck became a social conservative. Previously, he says, "I wasn't just prochoice, I was proeverything, until I started taking everything off the table and began looking at things and asking if this view was consistent with that view." He was antideath penalty; how, he began to ask himself, could he square that with being prochoice "It had nothing to do with the baby and everything to do with responsibility," he says. "I was beginning to believe we were living in a world free of consequence. Is it so bad, for nine months, that you have to pay a price for a choice you made Rape and incest aside."
At the end of each show, Beck started doing a spiritually oriented segment called "The Journey." "He'd tell this tearjerking story about a onearmed boy who only wanted to eat a bowl of cereal without help," recalls his then sidekick, Vinnie Penn. "Then he'd go into 'Oops, I Did It Again.' " Beck added a second show, a full hour called "The Journey," in which he delved into such light topics as his estrangement from his father, his mother's suicide, and his daughter's cerebral palsy. Once, he called his father onair and wept as he told him he loved him. When his contract was up for renewal, he didn't resign. He wanted to do talk, and a Florida station was willing to give him a shot.
Tampa was where Glenn Beck became Glenn Beck, but the first six months, as he struggled to find the right mix, his numbers were terrible ("an unmitigated disaster," says Gabe Hobbs, Beck's Clear Channel overlord). It was Election 2000's hangingchad debacle that first gave him traction. Beck took ownership of the story and milked it for both comedy and debate, finding a groove that fused "entertainment and enlightenment," as he took to calling his style. Having been near the bottom of the local market (in eighteenth place at one point), he shot to number one in the demo in afternoon drive.
The best thing to happen to Beck's career, though, was September 11. With confused Americans flocking to talk radio to discuss what was going on, Premiere Radio Networks handed Beck a national afternoon show (on a limited number of stations at first) in addition to his local talk show. "I felt he was someone who could share the mood of the country," explains Kraig Kitchin, then president and COO of Premiere. "He had had a lifetime of preparation for this." In January 2002, Beck went into full syndication. Two years later, his show was going out to some 150 stations, he had moved his broadcast base to Philadelphia to be closer to his children, he was commuting to work in a Bentley Continental, and CNN was calling.
On a Thursday evening, Tania Beck, pretty and quiet and shy (as Glenn Beck's wife would have to be), sits beside her husband on a couch in the living room of their $4.25 million Connecticut home. The foyer contains three soaring Norman Rockwell posters and an American flag. A builtin bookshelf holds works of prophecy by Nostradamus and the Maya, a book called Spirits in Rebellion, and a volume of Mormon doctrine.
Tonight, Beck wears a BRIGHAM YOUNGIDAHO Tshirt and plays with his children—Cheyenne, 1, and Raphe, a giggly 2andahalfyearold—who are trying to fit plastic letters into an alphabet puzzle.
Beck and his wife adopted Raphe after two wrenching years of failed attempts to conceive. Through prayer Beck began to develop the idea that they were meant to adopt. One day he was talking to Tania, onair, about a tacky Barbara Walters special on adoption. A woman listening in Texas, impressed with Tania, told her unhappily pregnant daughter to write to Beck. "At the time, we were getting a thousand pieces of mail a day," Beck says. "This email said something like, 'Dear Glenn, I think I'm carrying your child.' "
Raphe puts a blue R in his father's hair. Beck removes it.
"We called," Tania says, "and she was such a sweet girl, such a sweet family."
The doorbell rings—pizza guy—and we move into the kitchen. Beck forgoes the pizza in favor of a bowl of leftover kale soup with sausage. He has gained ten pounds since Easter and is on a nocarb diet for next week's photo shoot for his second book, An Inconvenient Book. "I don't want to look like the Republican elephant," he says.
Talk turns to Imus, whom Beck says he never listened to much. "There's no way to defend him on that. It was a horrible, despicable comment." Nonetheless, Beck is bothered by the way Imus was forced offair. "I think I should be worried. I think Keith Olbermann should be. Rush should be. Jon Stewart should be. I've never seen anything like it. I think there should be more voices, not fewer. Keith Olbermann made a list of people who need to go. I mean, Joseph McCarthy, I thought you were dead!"
Beck's success does seem to rattle the binary, zerosum framework of America's cultural politics. No one is accusing him of raising the public discourse in America—he recently wondered onair how much lamp oil and perfume could be made out of Rosie O'Donnell's "blubber"—but he might just be blocking out a new zone within the discourse that we've got. Rhetorical excesses aside, Beck struggles publicly, if theatrically, with what to think, is open about his flaws, and has changed position on divisive issues.
But the current hostility between left and right doesn't leave room for such nuances. When one of Beck's fiercest liberal critics throws Beck even the mildest compliment—that he shows "glimmers" of having "a heart"—the critic insists on going off the record to do so.
Beck just wishes his critics would give him the benefit of the doubt. "If I read all that stuff about me that's out there and didn't know me or listen to my show, I'd hate me," Beck says, standing in his kitchen's doorway. "I'd think I was the most despicable person on the planet. My God, you can't make mistakes in this country. I think my batting average is pretty good for thirty years. Can't we say, 'I'm sorry, I didn't mean it that way' "
Benjamin Wallace's book, The Billionaire's Vinegar, about the world's most expensive bottle of wine, will be published next year by Crown.


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Maestro Blomstedt to Visit Andrews
Top HeadlinesDate: February 13, 2013
Contact: firstname.lastname@example.com
Andrews University is pleased to welcome world-renowned conductor Maestro Herbert Blomstedt to campus on Monday, Feb. 25, 7 p.m., at Andrews University's Newbold Auditorium in Buller Hall. Maestro Blomstedt will share his thoughts on inspiration and spirituality in great music, featuring Beethoven's Missa Solemnis and guide listeners through a videotaped performance by the Berlin Philharmonic recorded in June 2012, which he conducted. The event is free of charge and open to the public.
Blomstedt will also conduct an open rehearsal of Beethoven's 7th Symphony with the Andrews University Symphony Orchestra on Tuesday, Feb. 26, at 7 p.m. in the Howard Performing Arts Center. The rehearsal is free and open to the public.
With a distinguished career spanning nearly 60 years, Blomstedt is currently conductor laureate of the San Francisco Symphony and honorary conductor of the Bamberg Symphony, Danish National Symphony Orchestra, NHK Symphony, Swedish Radio Symphony and Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra. He is most noted for his performances of German and Austrian composers, and he is a champion of Scandinavian composers.
With a robust energy that belies his age, Blomstedt is traveling from his residence in Lucerne, Switzerland, for seven performances with the Cleveland Symphony Orchestra, February 14–24, before his visit to Andrews University. He will be conducting Nielsen's Symphony No. 3, Beethoven's Symphony No. 7, and Dvorak's New World Symphony at Severance Hall, the orchestra's home.
Blomstedt is a Seventh-day Adventist Christian and visits Andrews University by invitation from his friend, President Niels-Erik Andreasen. According to Andreasen, "Through the years Blomstedt has delighted music lovers with wonderful insights into the integration of music and spirituality. For his inspiration and strong Christian witness we are deeply grateful."


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ARDMORE, Pa. — Phil Mickelson keeps coming back, and presumably, next year at Pinehurst, he will return for what will be his 24th U.S. Open. He claims it to be fun, and maybe in the midst of it, while he's holing out wedges for eagle to take the lead, it is.
But he is 43 now, 43 on Sunday in fact, with more of his career behind him than ahead. If the Open returns to Merion Golf Club, a glorious, rolling piece of land in the Philadelphia suburbs, Mickelson almost certainly won't be there. He'll finally be too old. Maybe that's good. Why come back to see your own blood stains on the fairway of yet another golf course?
"For me," Mickelson said, "it's very heartbreaking."
Justin Rose, born in South Africa and raised in England, won the 113th U.S. Open Sunday with an even-par round of 70 that left him at 1-over 281 for the tournament.
He did so even though he bogeyed two of the final five holes, even though scarcely a soul in Merion's grandstands pulled for him. That had nothing to do with Rose, an accomplished and gracious 32-year-old, and everything to do with Mickelson, whose relationship with the U.S. Open has long involved scar tissue, and now has one more open wound, liable to grow infected.
Sunday, Mickelson woke with a one-shot lead, made two double bogeys in his first five holes, then bogeyed three of his final six to close with 74 and tie with Australia's Jason Day for second – say it again, second – at 3-over 283. The particulars come later, but the wide-angle view is inescapable: Mickelson already held the record for runner-up finishes at the Open with five. Sunday, he extended it to six.
He has three Masters titles and a PGA Championship. And there are moments when those accomplishments scarcely seems to matter.
"This one's probably the toughest for me, because at 43 and coming so close five times, it would have changed way I look at this tournament altogether and the way I would have looked at my record," Mickelson said. "Except I just keep feeling heartbreak."
So what Sunday leaves us, unfortunately, isn't as much an opportunity to celebrate Rose, but an excruciating exercise in dissecting Mickelson. It was the same in 2004 at Shinnecock, remembered more for Mickelson, with the lead, three-putting for double bogey at the 17th than it is for Retief Goosen's victory. It was even worse in 2006 at Winged Foot, where the specifics have become almost a lesson in how cruel golf can be to the psyche and soul.
But because of what happened Sunday, they must be stated again: he held the lead on the 72nd tee, hit his drive into a tent left of the fairway, made an ill-advised attempt to play through some trees, and made double bogey to lose.
Come up with the winner then. Come on. It was Australian Geoff Ogilvy, who has never finished better than a tie for ninth in any other U.S. Open.
That is now the category into which Rose falls, the guy who won when Mickelson lost. It's unfair, because Rose hit some brilliant shots Sunday – his back-to-back birdies at 12 and 13 took the lead back from Mickelson, who had just holed out a 76-yard wedge for eagle at No. 10 – and he is a worthy champion, ranked fifth in the world.
In last year's Ryder Cup at Medinah, he birdied the final two holes of his singles match to help spark Europe's comeback, a 1-up victory. His victim that day: Mickelson.
Rose has, too, been through his own golfing purgatory, not with a specific tournament, but with the sport itself. He was 17 when he finished tied for fourth at the British Open, and he turned pro the following day. He then fell off the golfing globe, missing his first 21 cuts on the European PGA Tour, becoming something of a poster child for golf's "Too much, too soon."
He is long since established, though, and this takes him to the next level. He said he put into play a plan this week that he hopes will deliver major championhips – plural – in the next five to 10 years.
"I don't know if it takes the pressure off," Rose said. "It's a moment you can look back on and say childhood dreams come true."
As for those particulars, the shots Mickelson will pack with his clubs? There are the three-putt double bogeys at the nearly impossible par-3 third and the 495-yard fifth, which played into a steep wind and where Mickelson hit his tee shot to the edge of the hazard.
The eagle at 10 allowed him to pull back from that, with Merion just sitting back and launching haymakers at the field.
At various points, Rose, Mickelson, Day and Hunter Mahan led. But the old East Course, which hadn't hosted the Open since 1981 and played Sunday at 6,869 yards, wouldn't let anyone run away.
"Man," Mahan said, exhausted after his 75 left him in a four-way tie for fourth, "it was brutal out there."
"Thirteen and 15 were the two bad shots of the day that I'll look back on – where I let it go," Mickelson said.
Rose has a fine shot to remember, a fairway wood from just off the fringe at 18 that he nearly holed and helped him save par. When he finished, he looked to the sky, and his eyes teared up, remembering his late father.
Behind him, Mickelson needed to birdie the 18th to tie, to force a playoff. But this is the U.S. Open, and as painful as it is, he is Phil Mickelson. So turn off the television, because the ending has already been written.
There would be no tying birdie. Just heartache by the bucket, and another lacerated, Open artery, bleeding all over Merion.
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|2012-01-29, 02:49
|Link #1
Love Yourself
Join Date: Mar 2003
Location: Northeast USA
Age: 33
Limited Forums and New Thread Restriction - Why?
I can't believe that I'm the first person to ask about this, but a search didn't turn any previous threads up.
It's been a few years since I used AnimeSuki for anime discussion (ironically). Lately I've been getting back to it, but the series subforums feel... sterile. Each one follows a similar pattern, having threads for each episode, major characters, music, the manga (if applicable), and so on. I can't help but feel that unlimited thread creation would make some of these subforums feel more lively, and perhaps that they'd get more activity.
Full disclosure: I'm strictly doing older series. Episode discussion threads are pretty much only applicable when the episodes are fresh. I also wouldn't expect the forums to be bursting with activity even if there were no thread restrictions. However, it seems as if many of the threads in those forums are only applicable when the series is fairly new, and then activity overall peters out. People have an aversion to jumping into long, established threads. Furthermore, the time span between posts in those threads becomes lengthy, to the point where no conversation is really going on - people either reply to much older posts and don't receive a reply, or they just drop their post and don't return.
I'm not requesting that this be changed, but I'm curious as to why such a regulation was put in place. For very popular series (particularly those that attract a lot of younger members), I can understand that the restrictions cut down on what would probably amount to spam and dozens of repeat posts. But for lower-traffic series, or series that are past their prime, what's the purpose?
|2012-01-29, 05:40
|Link #2
If I were to speculate, there is a tendency to make redundant threads that clog up the forum. If you look at general, the same (frequently crappy-- insert moe debate here) topic gets recycled often. There is also a huge tendency for certain undesirable topics (typically shipping) that devolve without fail into pointless shitfests where people flame each other.
Although I tend to support free speech as much as possible, there are just certain topics that almost never lead to anything good and are frequently repetitive. Some forums for example disallow religion debates because of the flammability.
I don't necessarily agree with whatever the reason is or the fact this system exists, but I can see that there a number of legitimate reasons (one including just being too painful to try and moderate) It's also easier to make the rules uniform across all animu subforums for consistency.*
*Cannot speak for this forum, of course. I am just expressing the strength of the current system.
|2012-01-29, 07:14
|Link #4
Join Date: Dec 2005
Location: event horizon
I agree with Ledgem. Maybe we need the restrictions but the current system is just really killing the possibility of new topics, which seems to just make the forums themselvs dumber.
I mean yeah, you have random crap threads in General, but you also have really smart threads in General and everything has to start somewhere and it might not be the "image of perfection" the thread proposal require but if you just fobid everything you'll never get anything good either; which means the series forums are pretty much just a collection of episode threads; maybe a manga thread and image thread (if those are actually relevant). Since really what it's saying is "posts are allowed, but topics aren't" so how can you exapect anything but complete randomness when you forbid the things that are actually meant to add order.
There's also an additional consequence to this. Initially, back when this was initially concieved in the Shuffle days, people were used to "discussing only episodes in the episode thread" so when you forbid threads everyone still discussed only episodes in the episode threads. Now, because you actually don't have anything BUT episode threads, we periodically get random crap in episode threads. Because we're well past the point where people would think: "this should only be discussed in a seperate topic, instead of brouth up every episode thread". Stupid topics might be stupid, but at least they're really easy to ignore. Garbage in the episode threads, not so easy to ignore. Stupid threads also die out, episode threads on the other hand just conveninently re-hash the same nonsense over and over.
|2012-01-29, 07:18
|Link #6
Join Date: Dec 2005
Location: event horizon
|2012-01-29, 07:32
|Link #7
Diamond is Unbreakable
Join Date: Apr 2011
Location: The Middle Way
The mangafox forums are full of spam threads which are written incoherently/forum games/clones of old threads. Ofcourse, it doesn't help that the whole place is poorly modded. Such threads are removed if they're made for a popular enough show, but the more obscure ones are easy targets for nonsensical threads which have little to do with the manga.
Then there's the troll infestation, but that's something else.
You can take a look for yourself, not everything there is as I mentioned but it happens way more often there than it does here--simply because we're not allowed to make just any thread anywhere.
|2012-01-29, 07:44
|Link #8
Join Date: Dec 2005
Location: event horizon
Those troll/incoherent threads can happen very easily in a fixed format. You just target the General/Episode/Chapter threads.
|2012-01-29, 07:55
|Link #12
Join Date: Dec 2005
Location: event horizon
And you misunderstand, it's not like I'm saying the topic wouldn't be interesting to me or other fans of the show, it's that the process doesn't involve that, it involves convincing the mods (potentially non-fans) how "awesome it is" which in the end just amounts to a lot of begging... the result is obviously only topics that are "interesting" to both fans and people who don't give a damn and well the results speak for themselvs (hardly any topics are created). Heck if animesuki had started with this system in place, even the topics you have now wouldn't exist, since all of them are just copies of the older system.
|2012-01-29, 07:59
|Link #13
AS Oji-kun
Join Date: Nov 2006
Location: Hokkaido
Age: 69
Just the other day I wanted to post the story about the Taiwanese mother whose complaint about an episode of School Rumble resulted in a hefty fine for the TV station. I went to the SR sub-forum and discovered there's no general discussion thread there, just episode threads, an image thread, etc. There's literally no place to post material about the show in general.
I think every sub-forum ought to have at least one general discussion thread. Perhaps that's true now, if it wasn't true at the time SR was released. The shows I watch never achieve the popularity level required for a sub-forum, with the exception of Madoka.
Would this help with your issue, Ledgem?
|2012-01-29, 09:33
|Link #15
Senior Member
I like the current format for new/ongoing series, and ones that only very recently finished, as I think it effectively streamlines discussion, cleans up clutter, and helps facilitate good discussion by focusing people on a few key topics. This is all particularly useful while a show is still a "hot topic" for discussion in the broader anime community.
But I do see Ledgem's point. After awhile, this sort of format can perhaps curtail discussion rather than focus/streamline it in productive ways, as the only people left discussing a show on its series subforum are its most dedicated fans.
Maybe there should be a certain cutoff point, after which an anime series subforum is made open to new threads without needing to persuade a Moderator to post them?
Just an idea. I don't particularly care either way, but I thought it might be worth considering.
|2012-01-29, 12:19
|Link #17
Join Date: Dec 2005
Location: event horizon
It's not abuse, it's just fear. The ONLY issue with the old system (from the perspective of posters) has always only been fanclub threads, and let's face it, it's NOT THAT HARD to get rid of them.
If you know of any other so called "disadvantages" then by all means spit them out. The fear of fanclub threads doesn't even come close in justifying the cost of such a system on discussion. And that's pretty much what officially the system was meant to combat (the only thing!).
Horizon forum: http://forums.animesuki.com/forumdisplay.php?f=116
(note the hime/otome has been converted as well, so you have to go a few pages to see the difference clearly)
In order,
"I think it effectively streamlines discussion, cleans up clutter"There is only Episode discussion and little else but FORCED character discussion and a few other FORCED discussion. The episode discussion is forced as well but at least it's general.
How is a discussion being in it's own thread cluttered? When you put files on your computer in separate folders do you call it "cluttered"? How exactly is having everything in very broad and generic threads with little indication of what is being discussed at any given point, or what was discussed before (in the inevitable pages of posts) NOT cluttered?
Streamline? You are basically encouraging everything to be in mamoth threads nobody can follow that talk about EVERYTHING. How is it streamlining it? I can't ignore a discussion when it's in the same place as everything else. I can ignore it if it's separate. I can also far easily pick and choose which discussions I want to follow. This is why we have people that don't even follow series forums, every single thread there is so aimless and sterile what's the point of posting. At least the series threads are for discussing the series as a whole and not disecting individual episodes, or characters, and the like.
"and helps facilitate good discussion by focusing people on a few key topics"Why don't you repeat that a few times and see if it still makes sense.
HOW are you facilitating discussion by killing oportunities of it? You're basically saying "by talking about less, you are talking about more" in the same sentance. How is it easier to discuss things, when what you say may be irrelevant to several other people and what some other people are babling is irrelevant to you. Especially for things like Episode threads which have no set purpose whatsoever and seem to rehash the same arguments over and over and over. Is repatition and ambiguity the new way of having "clear discussion"?
Here's what moderators here would have to say about post quality 6 years ago:
"This is all particularly useful while a show is still a "hot topic" for discussion in the broader anime community."Oh yes, why discuss anything when it's interesting... makes a lot of sense. You even having to make statements like this that suggests you can't discuss things if it's too popular and you need to kill every possible interesting topic in it to get the 2-chan feel of posting "your opinion" in the episode thread just shows how low series forums have gone. And don't get me wrong, I agree with what you're saying there, in this system that's what needs to be done, since that's how broken it is. Heck, we even have the occasional moderator interventation/topic-close for the sole purpose of killing topics that are too interesting.
It used to be you could have discussion ranging pages, and as many as you wanted and for as long as you wanted, and with as many people as you wanted--and it wouldn't bother anyone since each would have it's own thread. Guess that isn't the case anymore. Just look how often tempers fly with people discussing. You think that would be a issue if things like criticism or hot topics would just be in their own topics instead of cluttered in the episode threads?
Last edited by felix; 2012-01-29 at 12:30.
|2012-01-29, 12:58
|Link #18
Love Yourself
Join Date: Mar 2003
Location: Northeast USA
Age: 33
Everything that felix has said so far pretty much echoes my thoughts.
But "clog up the forum"? Are we pressed for disk space, or is the creation of new threads doing something terrible to the database system? If so, then this is completely necessary. If not, I don't see why this is a problem in moderation. Consider the reason why we dislike clutter: it generally interferes with other conversations (spam threads pushing other valid discussions to the second or later pages of a forum) or splinters conversation (redundant threads). If a thread is old and isn't receiving much traffic, neither redundant or spam threads (which moderators can handle) will be interfering with anything. If anything, they're keeping activity alive.
On the other hand, while the restrictions on the forums probably help to keep healthy discussions going when a forum receives tremendous activity, it seems to me that they're stifling activity on older series. This is a discussion forum, after all - aren't all rules and operations done in order to facilitate discussion?
We all use the forums, so think to yourself: when you see a thread with even 15 pages' worth of discussion, what is your initial reaction? I'll tell you that personally, I feel a bit put off. It means that there's probably a long, on-going conversation, and I don't want to read through everything from the beginning to join in. Alternately (and what I frequently observe), it means that there are fragmented conversations occurring side-by-side in one thread, unrelated to each other, with occasional replies that are completely unrelated from passer-byers.
I'm a bit obsessive-compulsive, so I understand the desire to keep the forums clean, organized, and orderly. These threads are anything but orderly. They're a chaotic mess that all too frequently devolves into what I like to think of as a comment heap, instead of a real discussion.
|2012-01-29, 13:53
|Link #19
Cross Game - I need more
Join Date: Apr 2009
Location: I've moved around the American West. I've lived in Oregon, Washington, Utah, and Oklahoma
Age: 39
On requesting new threads. I might point out that I requested a thread in the Penguindrum forum dedicated to discussing the symbolism. Hardly an unreasonable request I'd think. I never got a response.
If you can't get a symbolism thread for a show like Penguindrum then I think the restrictions on new threads is far too high.
However, once no new material is being produced the amount of comments and postings drop rather drastically in a series forum. The problem is no longer too many new threads, but a lack of new threads. Allowing the general public to post threads on topics that interest them is more likely to produce benefits then harm.
|2012-01-29, 16:36
|Link #20
Join Date: Dec 2003
Age: 36
I think the general direction of the forum is and will continue to go in the opposite direction of what is being requested here, for better or worse.
Keep in mind that the principle of this forum is: one topic, one thread. In general terms, most anime series only have one thread for all related discussion. Some franchises are so popular and/or their discussion possibilities so diverse that these are granted sub-forums to divide the single thread into multiple threads. We have a patterned way of doing this, with an allowance for unique threads by request. This generally works well while the series is airing and traffic is high. After a certain time after the show airs, interest in the show dwindles down to maybe a core group of regulars who keep checking in from time-to-time. And then, eventually, a sub-forum reaches "end of life" when it is retired, and almost all threads are locked leaving only a few key threads open, basically bringing us back to the "one topic, one thread" origin.
The situation being alluded to here is one that is rare but does happen occasionally: an older series sub-forum that still has a rather strong core following that wants to keep the sub-forum alive and sees the freer creation of threads as a way of "breathing new life" into the dying forum. Here's the bad news: we will likely not adequately fulfill the desires of the show's remaining fans in this situation. In the coming weeks, you will see some sub-forums be retired that still have some of this regular traffic in certain threads, and the remaining active threads may, in some cases, actually be moved back to the regular parts of the forum and out of the sub-forum, which will be retired and preserved as more of an archive.
We see our general "life cycle" for a sub-forum revolving around a show's TV airing, and the move to simulcasts has accelerated the cycle (that was previously prolonged by licensing and waiting for the official English DVD/BD release; even the cycle for this has accelerated considerably). While we do want to continue to provide a place where all anime can be discussed, we don't believe we can do what needs to be done to keep older sub-forums alive and thriving after the primary wave of interest has died down, and have decided that we will not make it part of our primary mission to solve that problem.
So what of the needs of these lingering hardcore fans who would like to keep their community alive? We would like to position Social Groups as one opportunity for this. As you may have seen, we recently made some additions to the functionality available in social groups that should hopefully make it more useful. We recognize that Social Groups aren't perfect, and they aren't the same as the Forums proper, but we think they can still provide a good place for fans of the show to gather and more-freely discuss a show even after primary interest has died down. But of course, making this work depends entirely on the effort of the fans involved.
As for stray topics that don't fit into one of the existing categories but aren't worth a thread on their own, we do indeed want people to use the General Discussion thread if one exists. Granted, this shouldn't be a repository for off-topic chatter, but is suitable for on-topic conversations that don't properly fit in one of the other threads. I suppose it's possible a General Discussion thread doesn't exist for some shows, and if that's the case I guess let us know and we can try to create one.
I realize that this position isn't going to match everyone's ideals about how they'd like to see the Forum run. But, by the same token, we don't believe that we can be all things to all people. I hope that this post helps explain the way we view sub-forums and the role we're trying to play in this (and those roles we admit, by design, we will not be able to fulfill as well).
So all that to say... make sure the request is very clearly-defined, and do remind us if you think we missed your request. A lack of response doesn't necessarily mean no.
|Thread Tools


text:
The Santa Cruz chapter of Bread for the Journey is a group of volunteers who raise money in our local community. Then, we give micro-grants to ordinary people – with extraordinary spirits – who have an idea to make our community more vital, healthy, and just. Learn more.
The Santa Cruz chapter of Bread for the Journey is just one of many giving circles doing good work around the world. For more information about our movement and how you can start a giving circle in your community, visit Bread for the Journey.


text:
Grand Theft Auto IV Walkthrough
|Hating the Haters
Remember your old friend Bernie? He's the guy we met earlier who Niko knew back in the old country, and he's come to American and, well... he's changed. Regardless, if you head to his place in Algonquin on Ivy Drive South, he will contract you for a series of missions. When you first arrive at his place, he'll be freaking out, claiming that every time he goes out and does anything, he is threatened by an unknown person. Niko agrees to help out by setting a trap, of sorts. He wants Bernie to get attacked while he's nearby, so that the person can then be dealt with.
Once you're outside, Bernie will tell you that the two of you should head to Middle Park, since that's where the unknown assailant finds Bernie when he's out. So, boost a car if you don't already have one and take the brief drive over to Frankfort Avenue (as the GPS instructs you), a street bordering the western edge of Middle Park. Once here, Bernie will begin jogging and you'll have to follow him to lure out the hater.
Let Bernie jog a little ahead of you, and then begin to follow him, being careful not to get too close. Keeping up with him shouldn't be a problem at all, since he isn't running that fast, and he'll run into people on the path that will slow him down from time-to-time. After just a few moments of following him, Bernie will run into a tunnel. A cutscene will then ensue, and the hater Bernie described will attack him with a baseball bat. Niko is right around the corner, though, and threatens the hater with retribution. It's at this point that the hater runs away, forcing you to chase him.
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text: Artist: Yaki Kadafi f/ 2Pac, Young Thugz Album: Son Rize Vol. 1 Song: Killing Fields Typed by: firstname.lastname@example.com (2Pac Talking) Hey who ya'll wanna fuck? K say he wanna fuck da brat Yak said he wanna fuck somebody in the ? That nigga malc said he wanna fuck a leo, fuck it Mutah said he wanna fuck Toni Braxton like a muthafucker hahahaha Thats right nigga, get paid Who's that? Big Malcolm Living like a G Hollywood up top with a 5th of Hennessey Mutah said you love beating bitches live K-Dog On the real gettin high Label us the young thugs Niggas leave with much mail Fuck hoes, fuck the law, and fuck jail Young niggas never had a prayer to prevail These killing fields can be hell (EDI [Big Malcolm]) You see its uh complicated We grew up crime related From watchin them old folks smoke dope Yo it left us faded But on the kiling fields As real as some niggas chill Realize and recognizin You survive if you got bigger steel Then it was only a minute till our time was coming Yo it was at the point Don't have no run ins with those fucking youngins See all the grown ups was dead or smoked up Left with no game to soak up We said fuck it and loc'd up Back to the street to escape it And to make beats But then there would be those who'd be rich if we didnt did it Murder but aint nobody feel us Still now its too late We aint nothing but bait for them killin fields [Chorus] Gotta keep my eyes on the steal Cant be the victim but killing fields But if I must, then I guess I just will So ima bust, and kick dust when it is Gotta keep my eyes on the steal Cant be the victim but killing fields But if I must, then I guess I just will So ima bust, and kick dust when it is (Kastro [K-Dogg]) I came through lookin up to who The high rollers with the gold chains But now as I look back and think about my wishes Seeing them same killin niggas turn to snitches So I stay high and suspicious Oh these fields can get real fuckin vicious I know you feel me If you nigga how you can't I'm gettin hot and lick a shot when im amped And I aint got nothing on my mind but my riches Bury me a G aint got time for no bitches (biatch) Thinkin they fuckin with a nigga on heels Baby I must keep it real For my niggas on these killin fields [Chorus] (Yaki Kadafi [Young Hollywood]) Now I can get through this Aint nothing to this Matter of fact many if not plenty more Muthafuckas be alive If they knew this I keeps my shit wicked Throw your hands in the muthafuckin air as I kick it Tryin to see a meal ticket before im gone Papa never got the chance to tell me it was on So now I?m torn Trapped between the devils curse and a hearse Left with nothing but childhood pictures in my grandmamas purse Now I strap up for the showdown Grab my four pound and some more rounds Bet these thugs would love to slug So get low down Words can't express how I feel for my steel On these muthafuckin killin fields [Chorus]


text:
A comprehensive approach towards mobile spy app free on mobile activities
If you are running around with a phone, there are maximum possibilities that you might just lose it somewhere, especially if you are not being extra careful. Thousands of people misplace their cell phone every single day and majority of them is never to be found again. However consider this. If you had a GPS tracker installed in the phone, then through advanced technology and remote control, the location of the device can be successfully tracked. This solves a lot of issues and comes in handy as well when you want to take a look at your children's whereabouts or where your partner is. With a mobile spy app free you can do a lot of things that you always wanted to. Two of the greatest advantages of the application are that you no longer will have to ask around and call your children up constantly to know where they are. Plus you can invisibly and silently take a look at not only the location but everything from text messages, call history, internet activities, files, images and a lot more. You are going to get more information than you ever expected.
From calls to messages
The application is easy to handle. A simple download and installation on the target phone will do the trick. Next you can login from any other preferred device and take a look at the activities going on. It works invisibly so that the owner will be completely unaware of any spy software being activated on their cell phones. It is easy to handle and extremely effective when it comes to gaining required information.
Text messages and calls could be deemed as two of the most important things that are likely going to give away a lot of relevant information. It is precisely the reason why the software makes it possible for you to have a look at the call history, call list, sent and received text messages. The list even incudes those records that may have been deleted as well. Hence it is a wholesome process that is going to provide you every inch of detail that is necessary. Calendar dates often tend to be very vital and children often mark important dates there. This makes it easier for you to keep track of what is going on. With the mobile spy app free, you can keep an effective control over your children's life without having to hover or be intervening.
Internet spying
Web usage is a very important way through which you can gain a lot of information. Internet history can tell a lot of stories and if you are keen to make your children stay away from the impending dangers of cybercrime then it is necessary to spy on the usage. Moreover multimedia files such as videos, audios and images too have a lot of information hidden. Sometimes children may get involved in several situations that have nasty turns. In order to avoid such unhealthy scenarios, you can warn them of the impending danger and protect them.
The mobile spy app free in this case is the most effective thing that you can rely on because it has come up with the best way to protect the privacy your children and also on the other hand making sure that you have a healthy perspective of what your children are going through.
You Can Download: A Comprehensive Approach Towards Mobile Spy App Free Activities


text:
Avira Asks About Online Reputation: Are You Confident or Naive?
Avira Security Web Survey Finds 40% Confident That No Damaging Information About Them Exists, While 36% Have No Clue
Tettnang/München, Germany, July 5, 2011 – A recent survey of its customers conducted by Avira and Ruflotse found that an almost equal number of respondents claim no negative information exists about them on the Internet while the other half has no idea if damaging info exists and doesn't keep tabs on their online reputation.
A survey question was presented to Avira's 100 million customers worldwide during May, 2011: Be honest; is there any unpleasant or potentially damaging information about you on the Internet?
- 36% – No idea, I've never monitored whether anything bad about me exists.
- 15% – Yes, unfortunately. If I knew how to do it, I would delete the information right away.
- 6% – Yes, but I don't really care. It doesn't bother me.
- 4% – Not any longer - I erased all the information.
- 40% – No, there is no negative information about me on the Internet.
1,555 respondents with a margin of error of +/- 2.49 percent.
"This survey highlighted the two main groups of Internet users: those that care about their online reputation and those that don't bother to keep track," said Travis Witteveen, COO Market & Operations from Avira. "It's critical to know what information exists about you online because if it's negative it can damage your reputation and not knowing isn't much of an excuse in this generation of instant information."
Avira and Ruflotse offer these tips to stay safe online:
Personal Information: Less is best! – Do not make all information about you available online or on any social media site such as address, city, telephone, friends, preferences, relatives, etc. - If this information is freely available, someone with a little luck could theoretically impersonate you even on most secure websites since the questions asked to retrieve a password are usually related to this type of information.
- Don't use the same password on all the social networking websites.
- Do not use the same password for your email address and a website or instant messenger solution.
Never keep emails containing passwords in your email account folders since if your email account is compromised, then those other accounts will be easy pickings.
- Monitor your account: With monitoring services like Ruflotse Protect Plus, users can monitor their own names as well as their children's names and are routinely updated on new entries on the Internet.
Sobre a Avira
A Avira quer que seus clientes "vivam livres" de spyware, phishing, vírus e outras ameaças com base na internet. A empresa foi fundada há 25 anos baseada na promessa de Tjark Auerbach de "fazer software que faz coisas boas para os meus amigos e família". Mais de 100 milhões de clientes e pequenas empresas agora dependem da experiência em segurança da Avira e software antivírus premiado, o que fazem da empresa a segunda líder no mercado mundial. A Avira oferece proteção de segurança de TI para computadores, smartphones, servidores e redes, entregues tanto como software e serviços com base em "nuvem".
Além de proteger o mundo online, o CEO da Avira promove o bem estar no mundo offline através da Fundação Auerbach, que apoia projetos de caridade e sociais. A filosofia da fundação é ajudar pessoas a se ajudarem.
Para mais informações, visite o site www.avira.com ou participe da comunidade www.facebook.com/avira.


text:
The time had come for Cass County, Minnesota to organize and become a real county.
Cass County was created on September 1, 1851 by the legislature of the Minnesota Territory. It was not formally organized until 1897. Cass County was formed from portions of Dakota, Mahkatah, Pembina and Wahnata Counties. The county was named in honor of Lewis Cass.[4] In turn, before formal organization, land from Cass County was split off to form other of the surrounding counties.
Source: Online at Wikipedia – Cass County, Minnesota
The Cass County Government website has a nice history of Cass County Government. It didn't have officers till 1872 and the boundaries where sliced off over the years by other counties – see the above timeline. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cass_County,_Minnesota
http://www.co.cass.mn.us/index.html http://www.co.cass.mn.us/government/gov_home.html
The book: "Cass County Heritage," by the Cass County Historical Society, 1999 has several pages of the history of the county, Chapter III, page 15 to 23, and goes into more depth. This book can be located by using WorldCat to find it in several libraries. I tried to find it at the Minnesota Historical Society but was not getting a hit. They usually have these types of books in their reading room.
In Chapter III, they describe the organization of Cass County and Crow Wing County's maneuvering to take more land from Cass before it did finally become a county.
Cass remained part of Crow Wing until the re-organization in 1897. In 1897 Walker was made the county seat but before that it was West Brainerd where you went to do business.
Like all political events the organization of Cass County, Minnesota in 1897 was of great interest to the inhabitants, businessmen and more. My great-grandfather George Angus Barclay was against the organization of the county and wrote several articles for the newspaper which I will feature in the next post. Here the Weekly Journal makes a comment about the 2nd letter.