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Questi sono stati i Pelikan Hub del 2016!
These were the Pelikan Hubs 2016!
On September 16 2016, at 6.30PM local time, we invited our fans to meet at
several hubs all over the world. It was a great evening! If you weren't able to attend, you can still follow the pictures by checking out the hashtag #pelikanhubs! In the following cities, the fans of Pelikan met in September 2016:
The Pelikan Hubs 2016 took place in the following cities:
Afghanistan: Kabul
Argentina: Buenos Aires
Australia: Brisbane, Melbourne, Perth, Sydney
Austria: Fürstenfeld, Wien
Belgium: Antwerpen, Brussels
Brazil: Sao Paulo
Canada: London, Sherbrooke, Toronto, Vancouver, Winnipeg
Chile: Santiago
China: Beijing, Shanghai
Colombia: Bogota
Czech Republic: Prague
France: Paris
Germany: Berlin, Bonn, Bremen, Düsseldorf, Essen, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Hannover, Köln, Mannheim, München, Münster, Nürnberg, Stuttgart
Greece: Athens
Hong Kong: Hong Kong
Hungary: Budapest
India: Bangalore, Chennai, Mumbai, New Delhi
Italy: Palermo, Rome, Torino
Japan: Tokyo
Lithuania: Vilnius
Luxembourg: Luxembourg
Malaysia: Kuala Lumpur
Mexico: Mexico City, Puebla
Netherlands: Amsterdam
New Zealand: Auckland, Christchurch
Philippines: Cebu, Makati
Poland: Katowice, Krakow, Lodz, Torun, Warsaw, Wroclaw
Portugal: Lisbon
Republic of Ireland: Dublin
Singapore: Singapore
Spain: Barcelona, Madrid
Sweden: Stockholm
Switzerland: Zürich
Taiwan: Kaohsiung, Taichung, Tainan, Taipei
Turkey: Ankara, Istanbul
United Arab Emirates: Abu Dhabi
United Kingdom: Edinburgh, Hexham, Liverpool, London, Manchester
USA: Atlanta, Austin, Baltimore, Boston, Boulder, Chicago, Cincinnati, Dallas, Denver, Detroit, Fresno, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Nashville, New Orleans, New York City, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Portland, Raleigh, San Antonio, San Diego, San Francisco, San Jose, Seattle, St Louis, Washington DC
Would like to know when the next Pelikan Hubs take place? Just subscribe to our Fine Writing newsletter where all upcoming events will be announced in advance. The newsletter is being sent several times in a year.


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Glad your back ,,, tiger ,,
congratulations buddy on making the picture of the month,,
Im ok vacation coming up ,,, hope your illness is better ,, wishin you the best tom,..
hows it going .,.tom
oldskyking How are the shocks working out. If you need them I have those stock shocks sitting here for you.
I know you were going to play with adjustment on the ones you have.
sounds like its coming together, ,,,,,
hey how is the bike doing ..get the se comp in...tom.,.,
I' m glad, I worked my little 7 yr. old butt off till 3:00 AM filling orders!
Friend me on fb ,, mot ultrat w ,,, if you want ,,
Road Warrior
Iron Butt
Moderator / Sergeant at Arms
Ride Captain
Senior Rider

subset: commoncrawl


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Denzel Washington celebrated his birthday in style this year!
The Flight actor enjoyed a vacation in St. Barts with wife Pauletta on his 58th birthday Dec. 28.
The couple, who have been married for 29 years, held hands as they walked along the beach before boarding a yacht for a fun-filled day in the sun. Washington stayed covered up in a gray shirt, shorts, hat and sunglasses. His wife showed off her legs in a short beach cover-up.
The parents of four (son John, 18, daughter Katia, 25, and twins Olivia and Malcolm, 21) enjoyed a romantic dinner at a restaurant later that night. With a smile on his face, the birthday boy raised his glass to celebrate.
In his October interview with GQ, Washington revealed that Katia was working with Quentin Tarantino on Django Unchanged. The actor had a past feud with the director over what he called "racist dialogue" in Crimson Tide.
"Isn't that interesting how life goes? But I buried that hatchet," he said. "I sought him out ten years ago. I told him, 'Look, I apologize.' You've just gotta let that go. You gonna walk around with that the rest of your life? He seemed relieved. And then here we are ten years later, and my daughter's working with him. Life is something."
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May 4-5. In last week's post on unseen influences, I wrote that those of us who are into woo-woo stuff make a tactical error when we talk about what we "believe" or what "there is". Following Charles Fort, we should only accept and not believe, and we should put all our statements in the form of experience and not objective truth. If we talk about experience, we can't lose, because nobody can take away what we see, but if we talk about "truth", we can't win, because we can't make other people see what we see.
Then I noticed something that I've missed all these years: the so-called "skeptics" are arguing against two completely different positions. One is belief without experience: "You say I should believe in God, but you can't show me God, and you haven't even seen God yourself." The other is experience without consensus: "You say you saw a ghost, but you can't produce a ghost that I can see." To blur these two issues into one requires an act of pure negative faith: "Any experience that is not available to me is not available to anyone."
Now, if your goal is to build a system of thought that deals only with experience that can be reproduced at will, then it's fair to exclude experience that can't: "If you can't show me a ghost, then I won't integrate your experience into my mental model, which demands universality and predictability." Where the exclusionists go wrong is in mistaking their model for the whole of reality: "If you can't show me a ghost, then your experience of a ghost does not count for anything, in any context."
Where paranormal "believers" go wrong is in thinking, "because I saw a ghost, ghosts should be accepted into consensus reality even though most people can't see them." Both sides are suffering from a culture that has no way of talking about experience other than the objective model. One side feels besieged by experience seeking full inclusion where it doesn't fit, and the other side feels insane because their experience is not accepted anywhere.
I think it's both possible and valuable to build other systems of thought that include experience that is not universally available and cannot be reproduced at will. The first thing we need are new words. I've been carefully avoiding the English words "real" and "illusion" because they presuppose the objective model. Maybe we could split "real" into multiple words, depending on the degree of consensus. I would guess that most human languages are already like that, and that modern western languages are the exception.
To a frog that's never left his pond, the ocean seems like a gamble. Look what he's giving up: security, mastery of his world, recognition! The ocean frog just shakes his head. "I can't really explain what it's like where I live, but someday I'll take you there."
May 12. Lots of stuff to think about in this long article on self-control. A scientist devised an experiment where kids could get one marshmallow now or two marshmallows later, and it turned out that their ability to delay gratification was a very strong predictor of future success, even stronger than intelligence. The latest research is about how that skill can be learned.
I must be in the top one percent. When I was a kid, it was nothing for me to save my Halloween candy so long that I ended up throwing it out. But I'm also thinking of something Chuck wrote in an email a while back: that the ability to not do what you feel like, which we might call self-restraint, is completely different from the ability to make yourself do what you don't feel like, which we might call self-driving. That's something I've always struggled with. When I was in high school I would actually slap myself in the face, hard, to build the self-driving skill to enable me to do my homework. It took me years to train myself to wash dishes instantly instead of letting them build up in the sink. And the reason I haven't built a cabin yet is that too many of the steps feel more difficult than driving a dull knife through my eyeball.
Now that I think about it, my whole life path follows from very high self-restraint and low self-driving: I've "dropped out" because it's easier for me to be extremely frugal than go to a job every day. I've been mostly single because it's easier for me to go without sex than do all the stuff you normally have to do to get it. And I sometimes get in conflicts with people because I want them to tell me exactly what they want me to do, because I need that communication to motivate me, and they want me to do stuff without being told.
You could argue that both self-restraint and self-driving are coping mechanisms for a society that's badly out of tune with human nature. If we were nomadic forager-hunters, it would make sense to eat everything in front of us and store the excess as fat, rather than carry it with us or count on greater abundance in an unpredictable future. Delayed gratification only becomes valuable in a world with permanent settlements and stable economies. And self-driving would be unnecessary in a society built out of tasks that we find intrinsically enjoyable.
May 13. In this month's Acres USA magazine there's a great Joel Salatin article, "Heritage Breeds vs Nativized Genetics", where he punctures the heritage breed trend and explains an alternative that is both shocking and obvious: farmers should just make new breeds that are adapted to their own particular conditions and farming models, which is where heritage breeds came from in the first place.
I think it's borderline abusive to take a Scottish Highlander and put it in Alabama. Yet such a displaced animal is touted as God's gift to humanity under the guise of preserving gene pools. Folks, we aren't running a zoo. Wouldn't it be better for each of us to begin systematically building nativized genetics in our herds and flocks? Why stop the adaptation clock? Why not continue the process here in our own bioregions? In the future, we could have a hundred new American breeds bio-regionally specific. Over time, this would actually add diversity to the gene pool rather than limiting it to what it was a century ago, or what it is today.
One thing he specifically suggests is for egg farmers to "isolate the hens that lay the darkest-yolk eggs since yolk color indicates aggressive scavenging", which means better nutrition and lower feed expenses; and for meat birds, he says you could do the same thing by looking at how dark the fat is.
May 15. Last night I rode my bike to the discount theater to see Watchmen. I loved it, and I especially liked the theme of superheroes getting old and sad. When you're 20 you might feel "sad" because life seems meaningless and nobody loves you; when you're 40 you start to notice a different kind of sadness, as more and more people and things that you loved are no longer here.
I've never seen this issue raised among techno-utopians who talk about immortality. Of course techno-utopians never talk about unintended consequences at all. But also, many of them have not yet experienced the sadness of longevity. Living forever is something that young people want to do. It might happen that medical science will cure aging, and most people still won't want to live past 100.
May 16. We've all been told that the addictiveness of a drug is in the drug, and that if, say, opium were legal then we'd all become addicts. A Canadian psychologist, Bruce Alexander, wanted to test his hypothesis that addiction is caused by a bad environment, so he set up the Rat Park experiment, in which rats were given very good living conditions, and a choice between plain water and morphine water. "Nothing that we tried produced anything that looked like addiction in rats that were housed in a reasonably normal environment." Not only that, but rats that were forcibly addicted and then moved to Rat Park still chose the plain water.
Still, as an anomalist, I can't help noticing: no matter how you define "high quality of life", you can find examples of humans who had it and still got addicted to cocaine or heroin. I'd like to see a historical study of alcoholism: to what extent did alcohol spread by destroying traditional cultures, and to what extent did it spread by moving in after they had already been destroyed? Or we could ask the same thing about wheat addiction.
May 25. When I'm up at the land I have lots of time to think, and this time I was thinking about the idea that humans are becoming gods. It's a great subject, because people are so certain of such widely different answers: that we're clearly becoming gods, or coming to the end of being gods, or plunging toward extinction.
First I would question the word we. It's possible that biotech, or technologies we haven't dreamed of yet, will lead to such radical changes that there won't be anything we would recognize as "humans" or "us". What if we put our high IQ genes into crows, and they go around exterminating ecosystems to build crow empires, while we leave our bodies behind and move our consciousness to another level of reality?
Also, I question the word "god". By the usual definition, there's a limit to how godlike we can become, because you have to be a god over something. We are at the end of our ability to be gods over the surface of the Earth, because we've already killed the easy species, grabbed the easy resources, and generally transformed it enough to undermine our own power to transform it. And I think even our ability to be gods over each other has been declining for decades, as the ruled learn resistance to the rulers faster than the rulers can come up with new tricks.
But maybe we can become more godlike under a different definition. You can see this in discussions about big-G God: does the word mean a dude in the sky who throws lightning bolts, or the universal consciousness that underlies everything? I've written many times about power-over and power-with. A god-over would be someone with enormous power-over, and a god-with would be someone with enormous power-with. What would that look like?
The answer was written down 2500 years ago, when we had barely started being gods, in the Tao Te Ching... which luckily was the book I brought up to the land to read when I got tired. I've posted before about Tao translations, and my new personal favorite is Addiss and Lombardo.
May 26. Why don't more whales have cancer? This article speculates that very large animals can survive having tumors so big that the tumors get tumors!
In essence, hypertumors are composed of "cheaters" that take advantage of the vascular infrastructure built by other tumor cells. This population of cheaters grows parasitically on the tumor, damaging it perhaps to the point of inviability.
Of course, that's exactly what happens with cancerous human systems like Enron or the American Empire: a culture that trains people to sacrifice the wide for the narrow, to take more from the larger world than they give, will create hyperselfish individuals and subsystems that destroy even the systems that made them.
So, even if industrial civilization finds some magical exemption from its ecological limits, empires will continue to fall as long as they're based on a culture of taking, because that culture will eat them from within. And if we ever develop a large system that gives more to its environment than it takes, then that same ethical system will guide it internally, and it will be extremely resistant to collapse.
May 27. This article explains how the "dominance" theory of dog behavior is mostly wrong and has done great harm:
"We can tell when a dog comes in to us which has been subjected to the 'dominance reduction technique' so beloved of TV dog trainers. They can be very fearful, which can lead to aggression towards people. Sadly, many techniques used to teach a dog that his owner is leader of the pack are counter-productive; you won't get a better behaved dog, but you will either end up with a dog so fearful it has suppressed all its natural behaviours and will just do nothing, or one so aggressive it's dangerous to be around."
Of course, you can almost replace the word "dogs" with "humans": coercive and dominance-based training has suppressed natural human behaviors and made many humans either lethargic or dangerous.
Which brings us to this piece, The Trouble With Prison, written by a smart guy who has served 29 years in a life without parole sentence. It seems to me that the whole idea of prison is a holdover from the most barbaric societies in history, and the existence of prisons in this supposedly modern and enlightened age should embarrass us.
We haven't even had a discussion about the purpose of prisons. They don't work as a deterrent to crime, because criminals don't expect to get caught, and anyway, if deterrence is the purpose, it would be a lot cheaper to just give convicts an electric shock and let them go. If the purpose is to keep dangerous criminals off the street, then convicts should be evaluated to see whether or not they're dangerous, and if so, they shouldn't be let out, and if they've done non-violent crimes then they shouldn't be in prison at all. If the purpose is "punishment", by which we mean revenge carried out by the authorities to make obedient citizens feel righteous, then we're being half-assed, and we should publicly torture convicts to death like they did in the good old days.
And if the purpose is rehabilitation, then why is the system seemingly designed to do the opposite? The article focuses on this question and concludes that there are powerful interests, not just economic but psychological and spiritual, that feed on crime and punishment and therefore seek to maximize them. If we turned 90% of prisoners and career criminals into good citizens, then 90% of cops and prison guards would lose their jobs, and more generally, the whole class of obedient losers and thugs would no longer have the disobedient losers and thugs to look down on.
Update: there's some great stuff in this forum thread, wolves in jail. Summary: the dominance theory of wolf behavior is based on observations of unrelated captive wolves. Wolf packs in the wild are literally families. Studying wolves by looking at captives is like studying humans by looking at prison inmates.
But our whole civilization is like a prison! So our theories of human behavior are equally skewed, unless we can look outside the prison and see free humans. And look -- there are some free and happy humans living in nomadic forager-hunter tribes. But here we make a mistake if we say they're free because they're primitive, because we can also find tribes like tiny North Koreas. It must be some other factor that makes the free tribes free, and we need to figure out what it is, and apply it to whatever kind of society we're living in. The reason large complex societies are so uniformly repressive is that we've only been living in them for a few thousand years, and we still don't know how to do them right.
May 28. This interview covers the latest findings about the intelligence of the very young:
...children are like the R&D department of the human species. They're the ones who are always learning about the world. But if you're always learning, imagining, and finding out, you need a kind of freedom that you don't have if you're actually making things happen in the world... The way that evolution seems to have solved this problem is by giving us this period of childhood where we don't have to do anything, where we are completely useless. We're free to explore the physical world, as well as possible worlds through imaginative play. And when we're adults, we can use that information to actually change the world.
Clearly, human evolution hasn't gone far enough, because look at all the terrible stuff we've done by "making things happen" and "changing the world". Traditionalists are always complaining that 30 year olds are still slacking off like kids instead of going out and doing something useful, like building suburbs or designing killer robots. I say, let's extend childhood until age 70, and then retire!
Seriously, let's just restrict the definition of "useful" to providing necessities like food and water and shelter and clothing, and devote all the rest of our energies to harmless imagination and learning. Or let's put less value on "accomplishing" stuff and more value on gaining understanding.
June 1. The Case for Working With Your Hands. Even western civilization has a long tradition of respecting people who work with their hands, because of our deep biological drive to respect people who do useful things. But in the 20th century that tradition was hijacked, and we were told that mechanics and plumbers and carpenters are losers, and the only people who deserve our respect are "professionals", a strange word that apparently means someone who has lots of academic credentials and sits behind a desk.
The author goes into great detail about how physical jobs are not only highly useful, but also permit much more autonomy, and demand and permit more use of intelligence, than most desk jobs. I would say this has happened partly because desk jobs have higher status. The more status people think they're getting, the more abuse they'll put up with.
June 3. Last night, in Earth 2100, ABC news covered the collapse of civilization! Of course, they aren't going to say anything that threatens their corporate masters, and they're going to push techno-fixes like electric cars. But there were all kinds of things I never thought I'd see on network television: Las Vegas reclaimed by the desert, cops firing into crowds, cross-country travelers having to avoid dangerous regions, and a failed attempt to stop global warming by spraying chemicals from planes. They showed the destruction of New York City, the human population clicking down under three billion, and they even showed Kunstler saying we'll have to give up the American way of life.
I don't think the show was made as part of some evil plan. It was made by people who actually care about the future of life on Earth, and they were propagandizing themselves as much as they were propagandizing us. The key to propaganda is what it leaves out, and I noticed two things, certain to be part of the ongoing collapse, that were carefully excluded.
First, that the poor could lead the rich, or the weak could lead the strong. The poorer parts of the world are going to be the first to face the coming changes, and they're intelligent humans like we are, so they will come up with solutions to problems that elite nations aren't even aware of yet. For example, Cuba has done a great job adapting to loss of their oil supply, as you can see in this video, The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil. Yet "Earth 2100" showed less-industrialized humans as stupid animals, desperately swarming across our borders to join our better life, or passively waiting for us to save them with our academic plans and techno-fixes.
Second, that in some ways, collapse will improve our quality of life. I've written plenty about this already, but here's another way to think about it: The culture of Empire fears anything it didn't plan. Consider how people react to disease, or "terrorism", or unruly kids, or weeds. If we can't keep the unplanned thing from happening in the first place, we try to forcefully destroy it, or build a wall against it. What we don't consider is that our plans might be mistakes, and that if we listen to the unplanned thing, it will guide us back into balance.
June 5. It looks like Obama flip-flopped on detainee abuse photos because Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki told him that "Baghdad will burn" if they're released. That's basically how I see Obama's role: not to turn a dying empire into a progressive utopia, which is impossible, but to stop shit from burning.
June 12. Stefan cites some books (Steve Taylor's The Fall and Jim DeMeo's Saharasia) arguing that human misbehavior didn't appear until 6000 years ago, and he wonders if I can back up my assertion that violence and repression have always been part of our story.
The more I look into this subject, the more depressed I get about my species, not because of the physical violence we do to each other, but the intellectual violence we do to ourselves. It's hard to find anything written about our remote ancestors that's actually curious about how they lived, instead of turning them into puppets acting out whatever drama will back up some contemporary ideology.
So, contrasting the abundant evidence picked out by primitivists to show prehistoric Heaven, is abundant evidence picked out by antiprimitivists to show prehistoric Hell, in books like War before Civilization by Lawrence Keeley, and The Origins of War by Guilaine and Zammit, and Constant Battles by Steven Le Blanc, and Sick Societies by Robert Edgerton. Conveniently, both sides feed off the extremism of their opponents, until we can barely imagine a non-extreme position. Among reviews of those books on Amazon, I found only a few signs of intelligence, like E.N. Anderson's review of Constant Battles.
It's easy to see why we like to idealize the primitive: If human nature is free and peaceful and Earth-friendly, and all the evil in the world is the result of a crazy fluke 6000 years ago, then all we have to do is blow up the Death Star and everyone will be happy forever. It's much harder to understand why anyone would want to believe that human nature is wretched and brutal. I think these people are all "good prisoners". They're like the Michael Palin character in Life of Brian, who has spent his life chained to a wall in a Roman prison, and does nothing but rant about how wonderful the Romans are and how all their authoritarian measures are justified. The more abuse you've suffered, the more you want to believe that the abuse was necessary -- because if it was unnecessary, if all that suffering was for nothing, the grief is unbearable.
So what's my answer? There are many records of human societies with hardly a trace of repression or violence, and it only takes one to prove that it's possible for all of us. But I don't think the key is to go primitive. The key is much more subtle, and if we can figure it out, we just might be able to apply it to societies large enough that they can't be conquered, and have an enduring Utopia. But I doubt it. I think we're going to have to keep wrestling with the worst parts of our potential forever.
June 16. High population density triggers cultural explosions. Way before grain agriculture, humans made a great leap in cultural complexity, and this article credits population density, which "leads to greater exchange of ideas and skills and prevents the loss of new innovations." My guess is that this caused a feedback loop of even greater density and more innovations, some of which turned out to be mistakes.
June 17. The Obama administration has just launched a new website about climate change, globalchange.gov, with a scientific report that until now has been suppressed, Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States. We're going to see droughts, crop failures, bigger storms, rising oceans, new deserts, species extinctions, and so on. But this level of catastrophe does not threaten complex human systems or life on Earth. Adaptable individuals, societies, and species will mostly survive, and some will thrive.
The much more serious threat is an anoxic event, in which the oceans get depleted of oxygen, and almost everything in them dies. Then they fill up with anaerobic microbes, which break down the dead stuff and generate hydrogen sulfide, which bubbles up and poisons life on land, and also floats up and dissolves the ozone layer. This has happened several times in the remote past, and caused giant extinctions.
It seems to start like this: greenhouse gases warm the climate and melt the polar ice. The rising oceans pick up lots of nutrients and organic materials, which feed oxygen-gobbling bacteria. Also the bacteria work faster at higher temperatures. Also, with the oceans at a more uniform temperature, the currents shut down and they become stagnant.
Here's good overview, Impact from the Deep. The author, Peter Ward, also has a book, Under a Green Sky. Ward says that two other anoxic events began when atmospheric carbon dioxide hit 1000 parts per million.
But in those cases, the CO2 came from massive volcanic eruptions on a younger Earth. The current CO2 level is only 390ppm, and has risen only 110ppm in the entire industrial age, in which we burned half the oil and gas and cut down most of the forests. So are we safe?
On the one hand, I don't see anyone saying that we can't get to 1000ppm because there isn't enough carbon around. But also, I can't find any good story about where all that CO2 will come from. This Climate Progress article on global warming feedback says that around 450-650ppm, we'll hit a tipping point that sends us up to 1000, but it doesn't explain how, except for a brief mention of soils and forests. If warming could drive enough CO2 out of soils and forests to add 300ppm, then I'd like to see a detailed description of how that would happen, so we can look for ways to stop it.
There's also methane, a much stronger greenhouse gas than CO2, which will make a feedback loop as it's released from thawing permafrost and ocean sediments -- possibly a very fast feedback loop called a clathrate gun. If methane is so important, then scientists should be talking about total greenhouse gas numbers or temperature numbers, instead of CO2 numbers.
Also I'm wondering how peak oil figures in. Climate doomers can tell a much better story if they ignore energy doomers and assume that fossil fuel consumption will stay steady or grow. For example, the Climate Progress article cites a 2003 study using "a typical fossil fuel emissions scenario for this century", but in 2003 the typical scenario assumed decades of abundant oil. Instead, world oil production peaked in July 2008 and is now at 2004 levels. Will it drop fast enough to save us? It might depend on how much we exploit oil shale, oil sands, and coal.
June 18. Impressive new Dmitry Orlov piece, Definancialisation, Deglobalisation, Relocalisation. If he's right, you can forget yesterday's post, because involuntary energy decline will slash carbon emissions beyond Al Gore's wildest dreams.
Specifically, Orlov argues that when oil costs reach a certain percentage of gross domestic product, the industrial economy stalls. So it was the oil price spike that caused the collapse last fall. But here's the kicker: every time we get a little collapse, the GDP shrinks, which means the amount we can spend on oil, without causing another collapse, also shrinks. So we're going to see a series of recoveries and collapses at lower and lower levels, until the industrial economy is no longer big enough to maintain its own infrastructure.
It's a long talk and there's lots of other good stuff in it. I like the bit about how a dieoff can happen with nobody noticing except the workers who process the dead bodies. This must be because most of the deaths are people without friends or family to take care of them. Also I like the stuff in section 18, about how collapse happens one person at a time, and is always mistaken for personal failure. Even if you get out of the collapsing system and thrive, you will be seen as an eccentric loser by people who are still in it.
June 25. 1941 essay, Who goes Nazi? The author spent a lot of time in Europe watching nations and people turn Nazi, and here she goes through Americans (and one German) at a party, one by one, sketching their personalities. Her conclusion:
Those who haven't anything in them to tell them what they like and what they don't -- whether it is breeding, or happiness, or wisdom, or a code, however old-fashioned or however modern -- go Nazi.
This reminds me of how fire spreads: in a forest where everything is alive, a fire can't even get started. When the ratio of deadness to aliveness gets high enough, there's a tipping point at which a spark will turn into a spreading fire. And if the ratio of deadness to aliveness is even higher, then there's another tipping point at which the fire grows so hot that it consumes everything.
For more about internal vs external values, see Paula's comment in this post.
June 29. Fascinating Cryptogon post, Sine Wave Google Searches. Specifically, when you put "ringing ears" into Google trends, you get a sine wave with a one year period, high in January/February and low in July/August. If it were caused by the winter holidays, then instead of a sine wave, we would see spikes, like we do with a search for pie. And if it's related to seasonal temperatures, we should see the reverse trend in the southern hemisphere, and no trend in the tropics, but there's not enough data yet to test that. If it's not temperature, then we may be getting into fringe astronomy.


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When my daughter travels for Lacrosse tournaments, we always ensure that we grab any supplies and toiletries well ahead of time, as the days before she leaves are often filled with extra homework, practice and other preparations.
As seasoned pro now, for packing for her travels, she remembers to give me her supply list ahead of time. As I looked over her latest list, filled with the usual: snacks to keep her fueled up, as well as assorted beauty and bath products, I paused upon seeing deodorant on her list.
Our family has been challenging ourselves to take our personal and household items to the next "green" level, and, in the process, have become more thoughtful and conscientious in many of our purchases. Just beyond October, National Breast Cancer month, I had recently read an article, citing growing concern over women's use of traditional deodorant products.
Although the American Cancer Society is not issuing warnings about women's use of traditional deodorant and antiperspirant products, they do acknowledge that the presence of aluminum in most mainstream deodorants may possibly be a factor, contributing to a change in the estrogen receptors in the breast. This has the potential for concern as estrogen can spur the growth of both cancerous and non cancerous breast cells.
The American Cancer Society.Aluminum-based compounds are the active ingredients in antiperspirants. They block the sweat glands to keep sweat from getting to the skin's surface. Some research has suggested that these aluminum compounds may be absorbed by the skin and cause changes in estrogen receptors of breast cells. Because estrogen can promote the growth of both cancer and non-cancer breast cells, some scientists have suggested that using the aluminum-based compounds in antiperspirants may be a risk factor for the development of breast cancer.Studies have looked at the aluminum content of breast tissue, and aluminum absorption through the skin, but no clear link to breast cancer has been made. Researchers continue to look at this possible breast cancer risk factor, and more studies are needed.
With this in mind, out of both love and concern for the well being of my daughter, as well as myself, I decided there were plentiful reasons to explore safer choices and too few reasons not to. Beyond the possible contribution to the development of breast cancer, there are simply ingredients in most deodorants that need not come in contact with our bodies.
Before shopping, I took a moment to explore the ingredients in the deodorants currently in our home. What I discovered was quite unappealing.
Active Ingredients: Aluminum Zirconium Tetrachlorohydrex Gly
While I was not confident about the safer selections I might find at Walmart, I was determined to make the effort. The selection of deodorants was massive, with numerous brands, styles and formulas.Inactive Ingredients: Cyclomethicone, Stearyl Alcohol, PPG 14 Butyl Ether, Phenyltrimethicone, Hydrogenated Castor Oil, PEG 8 Distearate, Fragrance, Cornstarch, Polysaccharides
At first, I was disheartened, thinking that Walmart did not carry any natural deodorants. However, perseverance paid off, as I finally located a small selection way above my eye line, on the very top shelf of the section.
I selected the Crystal Roll On, knowing my daughter would find the look of it appealing. I appreciated the price, as well the ingredients: Purified Water (Aqua), Natural Mineral Salts (Potassium Alum), Cellulose.
|Crystal ~ Respect The Body
My discovery feed my curiosity and I was inspired to explore the section for more natural products. Much to my surprise, I found a wide variety of natural products, from hair care, body treats and skin care, to acne control and lip products. I selected a variety of natural bath and beauty products for my daughter, myself and my family to try, feeling satisfaction in knowing I was making safe, healthy choices; not only good for my family, but better for the environment!


text: Leys Pools and Leisure Centre 50+ Badminton – Fri 10am 1 views Leys Pools and Leisure Centre 50+ Badminton – Fri 10am Details More Info: http://www.fusion-lifestyle.com/centres/leys-pools-and-leisure-centre Comments Leave a Reply Cancel replyYou must be logged in to post a comment. Feed fusion-lifestyle published - 2 weeks ago. Details Start: 04/19/2019 09:00 End: 04/19/2019 10:59 Timezone: UTC Uncategorized Where Leys Pools and Leisure Centre Pegusus Road OX4 6JL Publisher Published on April 9, 2019 by fusion-lifestyle Member since: October 8, 2018


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ST. LOUIS - The National Corn Growers Association is urging its members to take issue with a national news media report condemning high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) as a primary cause of increasing levels of obesity in the United States.
An article appearing in the April AARP Bulletin says HFCS is largely responsible for "the startling rise in obesity in America and a related increase in diabetes cases." The article entitled "What's Worse Than Sugar?" claims that the rising incidence of obesity and diabetes in the United States coincides with the increase in HFCS use since the 1970s.
The AARP Bulletin is one of the most widely circulated monthly publications in the United States, reaching more than 20 million readers every month.
"It's ridiculous to believe HFCS is somehow responsible for the growing obesity problem in the United States," NCGA CEO Rick Tolman said. "The media continues to spread misinformation about HFCS and obesity. In fact, studies have clearly shown the rise in obesity is due to increasingly poor dietary habits and lack of physical exercise."
Statistics from the Corn Refiners Association show a steady increase in the daily caloric intake of the average U.S. consumer from 1977 to 1995. In that span, the average individual caloric intake increased by nearly 200 calories per day. However, the Food and Drug Administration says the total amount of fructose in the average diet during that same span remained relatively constant.
Additionally, the President's Council on Physical Fitness and Sports reports nearly half of adults in the United States engage in no daily physical activity. The increase in daily calories coupled with the decrease in physical activity is driving the obesity epidemic, Tolman said.
Tolman also expressed concern about the article's assertion that HFCS is cheaper than table sugar because of "generous federal subsidies and trade policies that encourage farmers to grow more corn." HFCS is a cheaper ingredient than table sugar because it is cheaper to produce and easier to transport, Tolman said.
"Farm support programs have nothing to do with HFCS prices," he said. "Support programs have been decoupled from annual planting projections, so there's no truth to the claim that growers are specially 'subsidized' to grow corn for HFCS. The truth is, farm policy encourages growers to respond to market signals."
Tolman encouraged growers to "set the record straight" on HFCS by writing letters to media outlets that misrepresent HFCS as a cause of the obesity epidemic. He also noted that farmers, corn refiners and food industry leaders should prepare to respond to HFCS criticism generated at the upcoming "Summit on Obesity," an event sponsored June 2-4 by Time magazine and ABC News.
The Corn Growers also took issue with an earlier ABC News report that attempted to attribute rising obesity levels with farm programs in general.


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Ford, Nissan and Mercedes-Benz have announced a new three-way partnership to accelerate the development of fuel cell electric vehicle technology, with the ultimate goal of releasing a mass market fuel cell vehicle by 2017. The goal of the collaboration is to jointly develop a common fuel cell electric vehicle system while reducing investment costs associated with the engineering of the technology. Each company will invest equally towards the project as a strategy to maximize design commonality, leverage volume and derive efficiencies through economies of scale.
Fuel cell vehicles are powered by electricity generated from hydrogen and oxygen, which only emit water while driving. Currently fuel cell vehicles remain a tiny subset of the automotive industry, with only a few vehicles being leased by automakers like Honda and Mercedes-Benz. The partners plan to develop a common fuel cell stack and fuel cell system that can be used by each company in the launch of highly differentiated, separately branded FCEVs, which produce no CO2 emissions while driving. They also hope that the collaboration will send a clear signal to suppliers, policymakers and the industry to encourage further development of hydrogen refueling stations and other infrastructure necessary to allow the vehicles to be mass-marketed.
Engineering work on both the fuel cell stack and the fuel cell system will be done jointly by the three companies at several locations around the world. The partners are also studying the joint development of other FCEV components to generate even further synergies. The unique collaboration across three continents and three companies will help define global specifications and component standards, an important prerequisite for achieving higher economies of scale.
"Fuel cell electric vehicles are the obvious next step to complement today's battery electric vehicles as our industry embraces more sustainable transportation," said Mitsuhiko Yamashita, Member of the Board of Directors and Executive Vice President of Nissan Motor Co., Ltd., supervising Research and Development. "We look forward to a future where we can answer many customer needs by adding FCEVs on top of battery EVs within the zero-emission lineup."
+Ford, Nissan and Mercedes-Benz


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Criticism of the Red Giant
While the governments of China and Sudan have been celebrating record levels of trade, there's increasing unhappiness among the people of Sudan about China's role in the country. Human rights activists criticise China's behaviour in the Darfur conflict and elsewhere. By Marc Engelhardt
There was a sea of red flags flying at Khartoum Airport early February as the Chinese president Hu Jintao arrived for a state visit which was being described as historic even before it started.
The Sudanese president Omar Hassan al Bashir was waiting personally at the red carpet. "We've waited so long for this visit," gushed the Sudanese energy minister, Ahmed al Jaz, speaking on Chinese state media. And President Hu returned the compliment with a paean of praise for the "long friendship between our two countries, which we enjoy in spite of the great distance between us."
Sudan's economic miracle, made in China
The economic data seem to show that the relationship between the two states really is a dream partnership. Trade between China and Sudan in the first eleven months of last year amounted to nearly three billion US dollars.
China is the largest foreign investor in Sudan and, in its hunger for energy, buys two-thirds of Sudan oil exports, while helping Sudan to increase oil production. The Sudanese economy grew by 12% in 2006, and much of that is thanks to Chinese investment.
In many ways, Sudan is the showcase for China's Africa policy. Economic relations between China and Africa have boomed, with trade increasing twenty-five times from two billion dollars in 1999 to fifty billion in 2006.
In their conquest of Africa, the Chinese investors are helped by their ability to take the long view: the state conglomerates do not have to make profits – the main thing is that they win the hearts and minds of the rulers. Losses are covered by the Chinese state as long as the wider picture is in order.
In addition to the exploitation of much-needed raw materials like oil, the second aspect of the Chinese long march to Africa is its desire to win African support for its transition to world power status. With 53 countries, Africa is the largest block in the United Nations and other international organisations like the World Trade Organisation.
Discontent among the people
But once out of the government palaces, one hears increasing criticism of the red giant's Africa commitment. Ali Askouri, a critic of the Sudanese government, accuses China of carrying out a ruthless policy from which only the elites benefit.
"The Chinese government always says it doesn't want to interfere in the internal affairs of other countries," says Askouri. "That's a lie. China does in fact interfere actively in Sudanese politics, but only on the side of the regime in power."
Miriam Kahiga of Amnesty International sees it in much the same way. "When Africa gets into bed with China," she says, "that can only mean that human rights will play a subordinate role, as they do in China."
It's no wonder, she says, that China is received with open arms by countries with authoritarian regimes, like Sudan or Zimbabwe. She quotes the Darfur crisis, with its 200,000 dead and its estimated two million displaced people, as an example. China has repeatedly vetoed resolutions in the UN security council, and thus shielded the Bashir regime from UN peacekeepers.
But that's by no means all, says Ali Askouri. "China and the Sudanese government work hand in hand to expel people from the oil-rich regions," he says. It's particularly bad near the Unity oilfields which lie on the border between northern and southern Sudan.
When Southern Sudan votes on independence in 2011, the people there will be able to decide in a separate referendum whether they want to be counted as part of Northern or Southern Sudan.
Those who have been driven away won't be able to vote. According to observers, China has a big interest in ensuring that the oil wells which are managed by Chinese firms land up in the North, where they have reliable contacts.
Violence on the Nile
Human rights activists also report expulsions from the banks of the Nile north of Khartoum. This is where China is building a dam which will supply Sudan's entire energy needs. The African human rights organisation "Fahamu" accuses the Chinese company involved of using a private army to intimidate residents who have protested.
Earlier, they say, Sudanese police had destroyed whole villages. Siemens and ABB, two companies which had been involved in the Merowe dam project, have recently announced their withdrawal. "We've decided not to take any more contracts in Sudan because of the humanitarian situation," said a spokesman. Siemens will lose tens of millions of euros per year as a result.
Some people believe that such steps, together with the discontent in the population, are signs of first small successes. "Diplomats are saying that China is slowly losing patience over Darfur," says Colin Thomas-Jensen, Sudan expert with the "International Crisis Group".
In a statement issued before President Hu's departure, the Chinese government expressed what was for Chinese standards a very clear position: they hoped that Sudan would find a solution for Darfur together with the United Nations. It's uncertain whether the Chinese were more explicit during their talks in Khartoum. The meetings all took place behind closed doors.
Marc Engelhardt
© Qantara.de 2007
Translated from the German by Michael Lawton
The Tragedy of Darfur
Double Standards Being Applied
Why is it that - in contrast to the attention given to the Middle East conflicts - Arab media and politicians are largely ignoring events in Darfur? Moataz El Fegiery and Ridwan Ziyada look for answers
War Without Borders
Violence is escalating in Darfur in western Sudan and in eastern Chad. Although both conflicts have very different origins, they are mutually fuelling aggression on both sides of the border. Marc Engelhardt reports
Darfur Peace Accord
Say What You Like on Paper
After almost two years, talks moderated by the African Union on the future of Darfur have finally produced results. Yet many doubt that the government in Khartoum and the rebels are truly serious about making peace. Marc Engelhardt reports


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South Coast Repertory, having produced two plays in August Wilson's Century Cycle ("The Piano Lesson" and "Fences"), now is offering the one which began it all, long before the idea of a 10-play, 10-decade chronology was born.
That would be "Jitney," set in 1977 in, as all of them are, Pittsburgh's predominantly-black Hill District, specifically in the office of a makeshift taxi service facing the wrecking ball of urban renewal.
Wilson's "Jitney" resembles another play from that era by another Wilson — Lanford. His "The Hot L Baltimore" also is set in a facility marked for destruction and both plays are rich in atmospheric content — characters moving in and out of the action before any true plot develops. There's even a loudly contested checkers match in both plays.
In "Jitney," directed at SCR by Ron O.J. Parson, the cabbies eke out a meager living as they grouse and grumble about life's incongruities. It's at least a half hour into the show before any real characterization begins to form, and then Wilson lays the hammer down with a vengeance.
The show's focus is on the operator of the car service, Becker, a world-weary veteran of social strife whose son is released from prison after serving 20 years on a murder charge. To say the pair have been estranged would be putting it mildly — the father has virtually put the son out of his mind since the fatal incident.
As masterfully interpreted by Charlie Robinson (so powerful in SCR's "Fences"), Becker explodes into a fervent fury as the son, Booster (Montae Russell) attempts to reach out to him.
This extended episode (its length may test playgoers' patience) shifts the play's tone from good-natured bickering into a darker, deeper area of familial discord.
Becker faces another crisis, the imminent closure of his taxi operation and the uncertain fate of his drivers — the aging, pistol-packing Turnbo (Ellis E. Williams), the young, ambitious Darnell — a.k.a. Youngblood, Wilson's boyhood nickname — (Larry Bates), the more grounded Doub (James A. Watson Jr.) and the tipsy, tippling Fielding (David McKnight).
Bates' character develops further in an emotional subplot with his girlfriend and the mother of his young son (Kristy Johnson), with whom he engages in another lengthy skirmish as they sort out their emotions and intentions. It's almost comic relief in comparison with Becker's traumatic situation.
Williams veers into overstatement in his face-off with Bates, screaming and waving a handgun. McKnight exhibits a cool, alcohol-fueled sense of detachment while Watson attempts to keep a semblance of order. Russell's earnest but futile attempts to reconcile with his father are effective, but keep his true character shielded.
Fringe players drop by to heighten the atmosphere — Rolando Boyce as a snappily dressed numbers runner, Gregg Daniel as a doorman from a neighboring hotel. All contribute to the overall convivial atmosphere
Shaun Motley, who created the grimly effective backdrops for SCR's "Fences" and "Topdog / Underdog," has designed a richly appointed rundown office setting. Gritty costumes by Dana Rebecca Woods and Brian J. Lilienthal's moody lighting continue the atmospheric approach splendidly.
"Jitney" gravitates between low-key character development and loud, visceral confrontation, with a blind-siding plot development late in the action, in this strong season-closing production at South Coast Repertory.
TOM TITUS covers local theater for the Daily Pilot.
If You Go
What: "Jitney"
Where: South Coast Repertory Segerstrom Stage, 655 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa
When: at 7 :30 p.m. on Sundays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays, at 8 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays, and at 2 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays through June 10
Cost: $20 to $68
Call: (714) 708-5555 or visit http://www.scr.org.


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The importance of this fund raiser is to help raise money to fund after school programs, 8th grade party, classroom grants, and the Accelerated Reader program. Thank you ahead of time for your participation. We really appreciate it!!
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This year marks the 75th anniversary of passage of the Fair Labor Standards Act. Enacted in 1938, in the midst of the Great Depression, the overtime provision of the FLSA was intended by President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Congress to be a job-creation statute. The thinking was that if employers were required to pay employees a premium for hours worked over 40 a week, they would instead hire more workers. With the advent of collective bargaining and employer-sponsored fringe benefits (including health plans) in subsequent decades, however, it became more cost-effective for employers to attempt to comply with the law's byzantine regulatory framework than to hire more workers.
The FLSA requires that employees whose job duties do not meet a narrowly defined exemption be paid overtime compensation for hours worked over 40. Like so many laws passed with the best of intentions, the FLSA has spawned myriad unintended consequences. The workforce of today (increasingly mobile, technology-based and service-oriented) bears little resemblance to the assembly-line workers that dominated 75 years ago.
The law's archaic and complicated regulatory scheme has, not surprisingly, created an environment ripe for litigation. In the last several years, plaintiffs' attorneys have systematically targeted employers of almost every size and type (both nationally and locally) for FLSA lawsuits. There are now more FLSA lawsuits filed each year than any other kind of employment-related claim. Since these claims are almost always brought as purported class actions, a finding of liability can be financially crippling to an employer.
There are typically two types of FLSA claims:
- Misclassification, alleging that the employer has incorrectly treated employees as exempt from overtime, and
- Off-the-clock, alleging that the employer has failed to pay non-exempt employees for all hours worked.
Opportunistic and ever-vigilant plaintiffs' attorneys screen clients for these claims, in part because they stand to receive a hefty contingency fee if they prevail-all of it paid for by the employer. Truth be told, employment defense lawyers like me also have done well defending against these claims, because the litigation process is often long and complicated. In other words, lawyers, not employees, tend be to the big winners-certainly not something FDR and Congress had in mind 75 years ago.
Employers who are sued immediately face a Hobbesian choice: settle potentially questionable claims early with consequent financial loss, which could be substantial, or pay the costs to defend the suit when the ultimate outcome is uncertain and potential loss exposure is high. Something needs to give.
The FLSA should be amended to add two safe harbors. First, the exemption from overtime should have a simple salary test. If employers pay employees a guaranteed amount-for example, $75,000 a year-to cover all hours worked, employees should be exempt from overtime pay, irrespective of their job duties. Currently, there is a $100,000 annual exemption, but it still has a duties-based component (and it is not recognized by many states).
This first amendment, which would avoid intensive duties-based analysis, would be welcomed by all. Most employees want to be treated as exempt; they simply don't like punching a clock every day and enjoy the flexibility of leaving for appointments, etc., without having to clock out. Likewise, employers would welcome the operational flexibility and budgetary certainty that salaried exempt employees provide.
The second amendment would apply to non-exempt employees: Any employer that instructs employees to report all of their time worked and provides avenues for employees to complain if they are not paid for all time worked should be accorded a presumption of innocence.
Currently, when an employee fails to record all of his or her time worked for whatever reason, plaintiffs contend that the employer should be liable for that time because the employer knew (or reasonably should have known) that the time was worked and unpaid. This theory creates challenges in the modern workplace and places an unfair burden on employers. The proposed safe harbor puts the individuals who are in the best position to know when they worked in a position to record that time: the employees.
These simple proposed amendments would not only cut down on burdensome and costly litigation but would improve employee morale and go a long a way to restoring basic fairness to the Fair Labor Standards Act.
Stephen J. Jones is a partner in the Rochester office of Nixon Peabody LLP. He leads the firm's labor and employment class action team.
12/20/13 (c) 2013 Rochester Business Journal. To obtain permission to reprint this article, call 585-546-8303 or email firstname.lastname@example.com.


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What is an assumable mortgage?
An assumable mortgage is a loan that a buyer can take over from the seller of a home, often with little or no change in the loan's terms, including the interest rate. After obtaining a lender's approval, a qualified buyer agrees to make future payments as if they took out the original loan on the home.
What types of loans are assumable?
Advantages of an assumable mortgage:
Considerations of an assumable mortgage:
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Hello Archinect,
Black in Design is a conference organized by Harvard Graduate School of Design's African American Student Union (AASU), coming up on October 9-10, 2015. The conference is by, for, and about African descendants in the worlds of architecture and design. But it's also about the larger role of design in shaping our material culture and the responsibilities that we all share. I sat down with conference organizers Courtney Sharpe and Cara Michell, both members of the GSD's Master of Urban Planning class of 2016, via text chat to learn more about the conference and the current state of diversity conversations at the GSD.
[All images courtesy Black in Design. Photo credit for this image: Allison Green]
LC: Hello Courtney, Cara!
CS and CM: Hi!
LC: I just got the GSD's very pink Fall lecture poster in the mail. What's your take on it?
CS: I was digging the pink and purple! And I'm excited by this fall's lecture series. Last year I wasn't interested in as many of the speakers but I feel like there's greater diversity of topics coming up.
LC: I imagine that the AASU's work to foreground diversity issues helps keep this on everyone's mind.
CM: Yes, hopefully! I've seen some new developments. On the academic side of things, we have the "MLK Way: Building on Black America's Main Street" studio this fall, which is the first course I've seen outside of core studio foregrounding issues of race and social justice. The financial and administrative support that the GSD has recently given to the AASU is also a new thing.
LC: And of course there's your upcoming Black in Design conference. What is its goal?
CS: First, we want to provide a platform to showcase the work of Black designers and other practitioners whose work positively impacts Black communities.
CM: Our second goal is to expand the definition of what design is and what it can do for issues of social equity beyond the GSD's dominant discourses in architecture, landscape architecture, and urban planning and design.
LC: In terms of formalism?
CM: Formalism in a vacuum.
CS: Yes. And third, we want to introduce a younger and broader audience to the field of design in hopes of inspiring new career paths and opening conversations for cross-disciplinary collaboration. We've allotted 25 tickets for high school students to attend for free, including 11 local students from the Urbano Project, and a group of 6 students from New York's Made in Brownsville.
LC: Super. How do you think about these different goals--one focused on a specific community and one extending outside this community?
CM: First, I should say that although this year's conference is focused on the United States, we want to be inclusive of everyone who is part of, connected to, or influenced by the African Diaspora. So we're using the term "African Descendants" rather than "African American."
CS: Yes, even though AASU stands for "African American Student Union," our group has mixed feelings about the term "African American." The conference intends to build bridges, not walls, so we want to be as inclusive as possible by not specifying "African American."
LC: In terms of this community-centric aspect, how would you describe the current state of the Black design community/communities and what kind of bridges do you hope to build there?
CM: We can speak most specifically about the Black design community within the GSD. We are unfortunately at a point with the AASU where we do not know what our future will be. Only 5 of 10 newly admitted Black students at the GSD actually enrolled for the 2015-16 academic year. The majority of the AASU leadership will also graduate this year.
[A group of AASU members in the GSD's backyard.]
LC: How many AASU members and leaders are there currently?
CM: We currently have 10 members in leadership roles and about 5-7 additional members who are regularly active in the group, and maybe 50 more who are on our listserv and attend/volunteer at events.
CS: Part of the leadership issue is that most of the board is comprised of students in urban planning, which has the highest percent of African Americans, and as a two year program it's much shorter than the M.Arch.
That is an interesting phenomenon--the fact that the Master of Urban Planning (MUP) program is able to attract and offer admission to more Black students than the other degree programs definitely impacts the lived experience at the GSD. There's speculation that part of the reason why there may be more MUPs is that it's one of the few programs that doesn't require a portfolio--so the barriers to entry, while still high, don't require as much in terms of previous specialized experience.
LC: Do you think that part of it is that young Black people who are into design and the built environment see urban planning as a more viable way to make an impact than, say, architecture or landscape?
CM: It's possible. I think that barriers with unpaid (and underpaid) internships, and the cost of materials for architecture and landscape studios might also be a factor.
CS: So this decline in our numbers at the GSD is an extra impetus for our goal to expand our outreach to include younger and broader audiences, to reach people who might like to do this kind of work but have yet to be exposed to it. For people who see changing the built environment as part of the solution but who did not study architecture in undergrad, it could be daunting to take on that skill-set on "later" in life.
LC: And this fuels the disproportion because architecture undergrad programs tend to have more Whites and Asians, and fewer Blacks, Hispanics, and Native Americans.
CS: Yes. That said, many of the urban planners in our program, of all nationalities and ethnicities, DO have design backgrounds and made a decision to shift to planning.
LC: Whatever the reasons, these declining numbers certainly add some urgency to your efforts.
CS: Yes! The survival of a culture of Black designers depends on widening this funnel--getting more young people interested, helping more to apply and attend, etc.
LC: What about Black design culture outside the GSD?
CS: I'm not as immersed in that world yet. What I can say is that BosNOMA, the Boston chapter of the National Organization of Minority Architects (NOMA), has been very supportive. They had us present at one of their summer meetings and their Co-Chair, Racquel Davey, is volunteering at the conference.
GSD alumni have also been very supportive. Some, like you, have found us through Twitter and have been offering connections, stories and advice. It's been great. One alum reached out and shared with me a bit about the GSD's Social Change and Activism (SoCA) group. Was that around when you were there? I understand that some of their key people were from South America and Africa.
LC: Yes! SoCA was around. Archinect's Quilian Riano was involved, and Quardean Lewis-Allen, I believe.
CS: The alumni who have reached out to us have been generally excited for us and that's so cool. Some have also shared that these issues we're fighting are, unsurprisingly, not new. Part of what we need to do is increase institutional memory. It's easy to ignore students because they'll be gone in a few years, but when numbers get so low that the groups fade away, only to have to be reinvented later, it's hard. The 'new' group has to reinvent the wheel.
CM: We're also hoping that the conference might help increase enrollment rates of Black students who are admitted. The GSD seems to want to help with outreach, but in terms of reaching out to alumni, FERPA regulations create barriers. We wanted to create a database of Black alumni, but the school says it doesn't even track that information with regards to its alumni.
LC: You've had success on Twitter and it seems that social media, on an opt-in basis for everyone involved, seems like a good way to get around these legal and technological barriers.
CS: We've been trying!
LC: One question I have is about the relationship between AASU and the rest of the GSD, and between students of different colors and backgrounds. For example, how does it work for students who are not Black or of African descent to participate in the AASU--does that get controversial or challenging?
CS: Not in my experience. They are completely welcome. We recently wrote down our constitution and there are no race requirements for membership or leadership in the group. One of our current executive members is Latina. I think it's a self selecting group--and again, many of them are Planners!
We are so small in number, so having people show up in solidarity has been warmly welcomed. That said, no one who has come has been forceful about taking things over. It's been respectful and mindful.
LC: Cara mentioned that AASU has recently started getting financial and administrative support from the GSD. Can you tell me about that?
CS: Let's divide that in two--the AASU and the BiD Conference. Like most student groups, the AASU gets funding from Student Forum which allocates funding to groups by application from the student activities fee that each student pays.
The BiD Conference has a separate budget, which has received funding from various GSD offices. For example, the communications office is covering the cost for our space and tech needs during the conference as well as making the travel arrangements for our speakers which is a huge help. We've also undertaken a significant fundraising campaign. This is not the GSD's conference, it is ours.
LC: So you, and not the GSD, assembled the speakers and organized the schedule.
CS: Yes, and we're really excited about the diversity of speakers! It's not just architecture and planning. We'll have interior designers, a photographer, food historian, historic preservationist, agriculturist, eco-fashion designer, etc. During the interludes we'll have poetry, dance and singing! This conference is also a celebration.
LC: Are the conversations still built-environment-centric? Your blurb talks about scales ranging from the building to the city, region, and globe.
CS: We're thinking of "design" as broader than the limits of the fields of study at the GSD and we want to increase interaction between disciplines. So the focus is on the built environment, but we'll open the conference with workshops that play with the idea of the "body as a scale" because if not for each of us in our respective skins, there would be no experience.
LC: How many people are you expecting?
CS: The full capacity of Piper is 400, so that's our goal.
LC: Love it! Thank you so much for your time!
CS: Thank you!
...And thank you for reading!
P.S. If you want to get involved with Black in Design:
Register to attend in person.
Become a sponsor
Join the Black in Design LinkedIn group.
Follow the Harvard GSD - AASU on Twitter to get updates about the conference live stream.
You can also sponsor the BiD conference or future AASU activities.
P.P.S. It's been a while since I've blogged, in part because I've changed jobs and am now doing data viz design at the SF-based fintech startup Earnest. It's not at all architecture-related, and I have thoughts on this which I'll share in a future post.
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Hi Archinect, I recently had the pleasure of interviewing Gehry Technologies CTO Dennis Shelden and writing about Gehry Technologies, Frank Gehry's software and project delivery services company, for the data-driven blog Priceonomics. Gehry Technologies, as you may recall, was acquired this... View full entry
The future is here, and the future is terrifying. Trimble and Microsoft's HoloLens.
Hi Archinect,Another session at Do Good Data 2015. Bethany Lang is presenting. (Warning--no architecture here!) "Ugly data" here isn't talking about the nuances of metrics or computation, but very simply: wrong data. People change jobs often in the nonprofit world, and it's easy for... View full entry
Hello Archinect!I'm in Chicago with the ACSA at Do Good Data 2015, and Kristi-Lynn Jacovino from the Onion and Clickhole is talking about user experience on the web. The Onion has a very small design team (two people, I think?) and they just launched their new site today! (There's a nice... View full entry
Hello Archinect,I wiggled my way up to the University of San Francisco for the first talk of the season in their Data Visualization Speaker Series, given by Cole Nussbaumer. [Update: a video of the talk is here.]7:05pm: Until two years ago, CN worked in Google's People Operations team, where... View full entry
Hello Archinect,I'm in downtown Toronto for ACSA's 103rd Annual Meeting, themed "The Expanding Periphery and the Migrating Center." The first plenary session is "the pecha kucha of keynotes." From the program book:MISSION STATEMENTS Many things have changed and many things have remained the same... View full entry
Hello Archinect,I'm at UC Berkeley in the beautiful East Bay to hear Christopher Hawthorne speak at the College of Environmental Design. From the UC Berkeley website: Christopher Hawthorne has been the architecture critic for the Los Angeles Times since 2004. Before coming to The Times, he was... View full entry
Gehry on fish
Hi Archinect,I'm back at San Francisco's Neighborhood Emergency Response Team Training, for our second class. Same disclaimer as last time: this isn't really about architecture, but I AM focusing on aspects that relate to the built environment. 6:40 pm: The dust in the air after 9-11 spread... View full entry
That escalated quickly.
Hi Archinect,I'm in a hospital basement auditorium in San Francisco for the first of six sessions to learn how to be part of the city's Neighborhood Emergency Response Team. It's a volunteer team, and the city offers the 20 hour training for free in order to help build the city's resilience in... View full entry
Hi Archinect,Here are some images from Alcatraz, including Ai Weiwei's new show called @Large, open until April 26 2015. Organized by the For-Site Foundation in partnership with the National Park Service and the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy, @Large includes seven new installations that... View full entry
Hi Archinect!W. Gavin Robb is presenting his M.Arch thesis, "Roots Run Deep: A Tomb for Manfredo Tafuri."The tomb and the sublime are closely linked.Relation between technology and buildings at this scale. Empathy: a tight fit between a body and its space.Instrument: a domestic scale and an... View full entry
Hi Archinect,I'm at the GSD for thesis reviews—Anya Domlesky is presenting "HOT ROT: A Breakdown Manual" for her MLA degree.Landscape architects should be not just the apologists or ameliorators for solid waste, but active agents in the procedures of dealing with waste.The site is South... View full entry
Hi Archinect!From the OpenVis Conf website:Marian Dörk is a research professor for information visualization at the Potsdam University of Applied Sciences. Motivated by the design opportunities and research challenges arising from growing information spaces, Marian is particularly interested in... View full entry
Hi Archinect!The full title of Mauricio's talk is "NYPL Labs Building Inspector: Extracting Data from Historic Maps." From the OpenVis Conf website:Mauricio enjoys playing with code, objects and all things interactive. He is currently an interaction designer at NYPL Labs, The New York Public... View full entry
Hi Archinect!Back for the second day of this great event. From the OpenVis Conf website:The purpose of data visualization is to illuminate data. To show patterns and relationships that are otherwise hidden in an impenetrable mass of numbers.In many datasets, color is one of the most effective... View full entry
Hi Archinect!From the OpenVis Conference Website: Andy Kirk is a UK-based freelance data visualisation specialist. Andy launchedvisualisingdata.com in February 2010 and this has grown to become a popular source of information about the data visualisation field. He became a freelance... View full entry
Hi Archinect!The full title of Jen Christiansen's talk is "Visualizing Science: Developing Information Graphics for Scientific American Magazine."From the OpenVis Conf website: From its first data-based chart (on the topic of inertia, momentum, and projection) up through to today's web... View full entry
Hi Archinect,Kennedy Elliot is up now, talking about using data in journalism.From the OpenVis Conf website: Each week the Washington Post publishes five to ten graphics, many of which are interactive and nearly all of them have a web presence. The reach of the graphics department covers breaking... View full entry
Hello Archinect!I'm in East Cambridge for the two day OpenVis Conference hosted by Bocoup, an open web technology company based here in Boston.Mike Bostok, graphics editor for The New York Times, is the first speaker. From the conference website: He is also the author of D3.js, a popular... View full entry
Hi Archinect!Eric Fischer is up next at Bocoup's OpenVis Conf. From the conference website: Eric Fischer is a data artist and software developer at Mapbox. He was previously an artist in residence at the Exploratorium in San Francisco and before that was on the Android team at Google. His work... View full entry
Hello Archinect,This is a throwback to 2007 for me, when I attended the two week design/build course led by Jersey Devil co-founders Steve Badanes and Jim Adamson, along with New York-based architect Bill Bialosky. I had the pleasure of seeing Steve at our ACSA Annual Conference in Miami a couple... View full entry
[Image from Pimentel.]"You will be remembered for what you leave out or neglect."Rosetta Elkin, Editor of Platform 6, includes these words in a short meta-essay entitled "Editing Pedagogy," in which she retroactively imagines a brief for the project of gathering, selecting, and... View full entry
Flip-through of Platform 6
Hi Archinect,It's a packed house in (half) Piper tonight for Manuel Castells, Professor of Communication Technology and Society, USC Los Angeles. His talk responds to recent movements in Brazil and Turkey, drawing on themes from his book Networks of Outrage and Hope; Social Movements in... View full entry
Hello Archinect,I'm back in Piper to see Christopher Glaisek, vice president of planning and design for WATERFRONToronto, and Bruce Kuwabara, founding partner of Toronto-based KPMB Architects and now Chair of the Board at the Canadian Centre for Architecture. As a... View full entry
Hi Archinect!Okayyyyyy, I'm back at the GSD to watch "If You Build It," directed by Patrick Creadon (2012), a film about the origins of Studio H's design/build education taught by Emily Pilloton and her team of teachers (including GSD grad Hallie Chen!).Studio H now hails from... View full entry
If You Build It Official Trailer
Hi Archinect,After the screening of If You Build It, film festival director Kyle Bergman and John Connell, the founder of Yestermorrow Design Build School, had a short conversation and I wanted to share it with you here. I was interested to see Connell live, as I had been to Yestermorrow for... View full entry
Hi Archinect!Drew Harry and I are here at MIT's Media Lab for Futures Past: Design and the Machine, a conference organized by Duks Koschitz (Pratt/MIT), Olga Touloumi (Harvard GSD), and Theodora Vardouli (MIT). (Don't worry, Kanye is not in the house though if you haven't been sated yet, you... View full entry
Hi Archinect, Over the past few days there have been over 30,000 views of this blog's Archinect post on Kanye, and many times that number of reposts and articles about the event at other media outlets (including Rolling Stone, The Atlantic, Vanity Fair, USA Today, and Buzzfeed). It seems as if... View full entry
Hi Archinect, Yeezy surprised students tonight with a short visit to Harvard GSD's design studio. I REALLY like Kanye--Late Registration, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, and Watch the Throne basically got me through studio, from first year to thesis--so I'm bummed that I wasn't there. He... View full entry
Kanye speaks with architecture students at Harvard Graduate School of Design (Video by and courtesy of Flavio Sciaraffia.)
Hi Archinect! Co-live-blogging tonight with Drew Harry from MIT Media Lab. Full house in (half) Piper! From the GSD website: Mohsen Mostafavi, architect and educator, is the dean and the Alexander and Victoria Wiley Professor of Design at the Harvard GSD. His work focuses on modes and... View full entry
Lectures and exhibitions, news and events, now primarily from the Bay Area! Please note that all live blogs are abridged and approximate. If you want to see exactly what happened, in many cases a video of the event is posted online by the event's hosts.


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La guerre des tuques 3D MovieEnjoy La guerre des tuques 3D Movie with duration 84 Min and released on 2015-11-12 and MPAA rating is 0.
- Original Title : La guerre des tuques 3D
- Movie title in your country : Snowtime!
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- Release date of movie : 2015-11-12
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- Language of movie : Pусский, English, Français,
- Durationof movie : 84 Min
- Average vote of movie : 0
- Youtube ID of movie : 8NVHUxcAYGI
- Translation of movie : EN,FR,RU,
- Actors of movie :
- Mariloup Wolfe ( Sophie )
- Sophie Cadieux ( Lucie )
- Hélène Bourgeois Leclerc ( François )
- Nicholas Savard L'Herbier ( Luc )
La guerre des tuques 3D Synopsis:
Online Streaming La guerre des tuques 3D To amuse themselves during the winter school break, the kids in a small village decide to have a massive snowball fight. Luke and Sophie, both 11 years old, become the leaders of the opposing sides. Sophie and her cohort defend an elaborate snow fort against the assault of Luke's horde. Whichever side occupies the fort at the end of the winter break, wins. But what starts out as pure youthful fun and enthusiasm deteriorates into a more serious conflict. Joy is restored when all the children decide to attack the fort rather than each other and happily destroy every last bit of the snow fort. Enjoy La guerre des tuques 3D High Quality
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Director : Jean-François Pouliot, Director : François Brisson
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text:
The Community & Industry Work Experience Program is an exciting new partnership between employers and Berry's Student Work Program and provides students with part-time advanced, values-based learning opportunities for up to 16 hours during the academic year and up to 40 hours per week in the summer and winter breaks.
The Student Work Experience Website facilitates searching for On-Campus Jobs as well as Community & Industry Jobs. For
Student Job Postings, click here.
HOURS: Monday
- Friday,
Mt. Berry, GA
Room 320, Krannert
International Paper
"I began my time at International Paper
in the HR Dept. My primary responsibility was to facilitate the work
experience partnership between International Paper and Berry College. I
developed the process from beginning to end, including advertising the
positions, screening/interviewing candidates, facilitating new hire
orientation/training, and evaluating student performance throughout the
semester. It really gave me a hands-on approach to learning the
processes and procedures of an HR Department."
Georgia Power
"I was able to work on special video and
slideshow presentations for several regional events within Georgia
Power. I gained an opportunity to develop a video using Windows Movie
Maker. I learned how Georgia Power approaches business by sitting in on
several regional meetings with regional managers and the VP of the
Northwest Region. The most value I really got out of it is the
networking opportunity."
"My responsibilities were to manage,
analyze, and present geospatial data on timber-bearing properties across
18 counties in the Southeast to provide the group decision-maker power
for procuring timber to International Paper's Lumber and Linerboard
Operations in Rome, GA. The opportunity to network to potential
employers and business partners to receive invaluable career advice."


text:
Ginuwine Says R. Kelly Deserves All The Bad Flack! (Speaks On Aaliyah, T.G.T Group, Top 5 R&B Artists, Working As A Michael Jackson Impersonator, Advice For Chris Brown & Alot More) [StreetHeat Exclusive]
*WSHH & StreetHeat Exclusive*
Genuwine speaks on how R&B changed, explains what happen with T.G.T, his top 5 best R&B artist, Gives advice to Chris Brown & speaks on what he did wrong, his relationship with Aaliyah and says R.kelly Deserved everything he got! COMING SOON on WSHH- The Day's In the Life of " Ginuwine " and "Live & Unplugged" "A Man's Thoughts," in stores June 23rd FOR VIDEOS/INTERVIEW'S CONTACT- email@example.com
Please click the "Report" button below if the video on this page is not working properly.
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text:
Kim Mulkey made NCAA history in 2012 when the head coach of the Baylor University women's basketball team led the Lady Bears to a perfect 40-game season—the first for any collegiate basketball program—that was capped with a national championship.
For her record of success that has made Mulkey the first person, male or female, in NCAA history to win a basketball national championship as a player, assistant coach, and head coach, she has earned the United States Sports Academy's 2012 C. Vivian Stringer Coaching Award.
Mulkey received the award during a pre-game presentation before No. 1 Baylor's home opener against Lamar on Nov. 9. The award was presented by Dr. Donn Renwick, a former dean at the Academy and now a distance learning faculty member.
The Academy's C. Vivian Stringer Coaching Award is annually presented to someone like Mulkey who has experienced outstanding achievement as a coach for female teams. In addition, the coaching award honors women who exhibit a high standard of propriety, imagination, and innovation as a character-builder in the tradition of great teacher-coaches.
Entering her 13th season at Baylor, Mulkey's teams have won two national championships, made three Final Fours, and reached the Sweet 16 seven times in Baylor's 11 NCAA tournament appearances. The Lady Bears won the national championship last year by defeating Notre Dame and also won in 2005.
Baylor has won 20 games in every season since Mulkey took over the program in 2000. In fact, she won her 300th career game in her 12th season, which is faster than any other active coaches ranked ahead of her in total victories. Connecticut's Geno Auriemma attained the milestone in 13 seasons and Stanford's Tara VanDerveer did it in 14 years. Mulkey's overall record is 338 wins and 79 losses, which gives her .811 winning percentage that ranks fifth all-time.
Mulkey was inducted into the Women's Basketball Hall of Fame in 2000 for her accomplishments as a player at Louisiana Tech University. Since the inception of the NCAA women's tournament in 1982, which Mulkey won as a player with Louisiana Tech, she has been involved in that tournament as a player or coach every year except 1985 and 2003. She also won the 1984 gold medal as a member of the United States team.


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Cleopatra VII
last active pharaoh of Ptolemaic Egypt
Cleopatra VII (69 BC – 30 BC) was a political ruler and religious figure of ancient Egypt who, allied with Julius Caesar, solidified her rule. After Caesar's assassination, she aligned with Mark Antony of the Second Triumvirate with whom she produced twins, and whom she married by Egyptian rites. She committed suicide after the successful invasion of Egypt by the forces of Octavian, who afterwards, with the execution of her son Caesarion, ended the Ptolemaic dynasty.
- Kings are not elected. Gods are not elected.
- Cleopatra as portrayed by Elizabeth Taylor, in Cleopatra (1963)
Quotes about CleopatraEdit
- Cleopatra's nose, had it been shorter, the whole face of the world would have been changed.
- Blaise Pascal, in Pensées (1658) No. 32
- Her beauty, as we are told, was in itself not altogether incomparable, nor such as to strike those who saw her; but converse with her had an irresistible charm, and her presence, combined with the persuasiveness of her discourse and the character which was somehow diffused about her behaviour towards others, had something stimulating about it. There was sweetness also in the tones of her voice; and her tongue, like an instrument of many strings, she could readily turn to whatever language she pleased...
- Plutarch, in Life of Antony
- Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale
Her infinite variety...
- William Shakespeare, in Antony and Cleopatra, Act II, sc. 2, Enobarbus
- All strange and terrible events are welcome,
But comforts we despise; our size of sorrow,
Proportion'd to our cause, must be as great.
- William Shakespeare, in Antony and Cleopatra, Act IV, sc. 13, Cleopatra responding to Charmains request to "be comforted."


text:
Oil prices rose on Monday after the Sunni insurgency in Iraq raised concerns over potential disruption to crude supplies, while that violence and renewed tensions in Ukraine drove buying of safe-haven currencies and U.S. Treasury bonds.
While the fighting in Iraq damped global equity markets, merger activity and strong U.S. economic data offset downward pressure on Wall Street, where stocks closed slightly higher.
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Investor unease hit the Nikkei early in the day as Tokyo suffered its biggest fall in a month, while European shares were in the red for the third time in four days.
Russian natural gas exporter Gazprom cut supplies to Ukraine after Kiev missed a deadline to pay its gas debts in a dispute that could disrupt supplies to the rest of Europe.
"There was a reasonable flight-to-quality bid overnight with the developments in Iraq and Gazprom, so global equities were under a fair amount of pressure and that gave a bid to longer-dated Treasuries," said Ian Lyngen, senior government bond trader at CRT Capital in Stamford, Connecticut.
MSCI's all-country world equity index edged down 0.04 percent. The FTSEurofirst 300 index of top European shares closed down 0.42 percent at 1,383.95.
The Dow Jones industrial average closed up 5.27 points, or 0.03 percent, at 16,781.01. The S&P 500 rose 1.62 points, or 0.08 percent, to 1,937.78 and the Nasdaq Composite added 10.452 points, or 0.24 percent, to 4,321.105.
Argentina's Merval index fell 8.4 percent after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the country's appeal over its battle with hedge funds that refused to take part in its debt restructurings. The move risks sending Argentina into a fresh sovereign default.
Brent crude for August delivery rose 48 cents to settle at $112.94 a barrel. U.S. oil fell 1 cent to settle at $106.90 a barrel.
The yen and the Swiss franc rose, with the Japanese currency hitting a four-month high against the euro as investors sought safety.
The dollar slipped as traders await clues from the U.S. Federal Reserve on the timing of an interest rate increase amid doubts about the economic recovery.
The dollar fell 0.22 percent to 101.83 yen, while the euro fell to a four-month low against the yen before paring much of its decline. It was last at 138.18 yen.
U.S. Treasuries prices rose as Iraq and Ukraine increased demand for safe-haven bonds. Investors paid Germany and the Netherlands to keep their cash for up to half a year in government tenders as the escalating Iraqi violence fueled flows into top-rated assets.
Benchmark 10-year Treasury notes rose 2/32 in price to yield 2.5970 percent.
(Reporting by Herbert Lash; Additional reporting by Marc Jones in London; Editing by Dan Grebler and Nick Zieminski)


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The U.S. Federal Maritime Commission will host a Global Regulatory Summit in Washington, DC on December 17, 2013. The Summit will include shipping and transportation regulators from the European Union and China.
"I am pleased that officials from China and the European Union accepted FMC Chairman Cordero's offer to hold this Summit." On October 22, 2013, the Chairman called for a Global Regulatory Summit.
"Consultations among and between governments are very important. There is no downside in obtaining a first-hand account of the regulatory roles and responsibilities of each government."
See the October 22, 2013 Call for a Regulatory Summit: http://www.fmc.gov/NR13-14/
See today's confirmation of attendance and date set for the Global Regulatory Summit: http://www.fmc.gov/plan12-17-13-summit/
This site is an official U.S. Government Website