text:
This Will Be on the Midterm. You Feel Me?
Why so many colleges are teaching The Wire.
Among the police officers and drug dealers and stickup men and politicians and dockworkers and human smugglers and teachers and students and junkies and lawyers and journalists who populate the late, great HBO series The Wire, there is one academic. His name is David Parenti and he teaches social work at the University of Maryland, Baltimore. He is not a major character, but he appears throughout the show's fourth season—an earnest, well-meaning man defined in part by his naïveté about the inner-city kids whose lives he wants to improve. As for Johns Hopkins, Baltimore's best-known university, it only comes up as a place where the show's police officers can get cushy campus security jobs after they retire. Academia, in other words, is not a culture that the show's creators, David Simon and Ed Burns, betray much interest in exploring.
Academics, on the other hand, can't seem to get enough of The Wire. Barely two years after the show's final episode aired—and with Simon's new show, Treme, premiering next month on HBO—there have already been academic conferences, essay anthologies, and special issues of journals dedicated to the series. Not content to write about it and discuss it among themselves, academics are starting to teach it, as well. Professors at Harvard, U.C.—Berkeley, Duke, and Middlebury are now offering courses on the show.
Interestingly, the classes aren't just in film studies or media studies departments; they're turning up in social science disciplines as well, places where the preferred method of inquiry is the field study or the survey, not the HBO series, even one that is routinely called the best television show ever. Some sociologists and social anthropologists, it turns out, believe The Wire has something to teach their students about poverty, class, bureaucracy, and the social ramifications of economic change.
The academic love affair with The Wire is not, as it turns out, a totally unrequited one. One of the professors teaching a course on the show is the sociologist William Julius Wilson—his class, at Harvard, will be offered this fall. Simon has said that Wilson's book When Work Disappears, an exploration of the crippling effects of the loss of blue-collar jobs in American cities, was the inspiration for the show's second season, which focused on Baltimore's struggling dockworkers.
Wilson's class, a seminar, will require students to watch selected episodes of the show, three or more a week, he says. Some seasons, like the fourth, with its portrayal of the way the public school system fails poor children, will get more time than others. Students will also read works of sociology: two books by Wilson, as well as Elijah Anderson's Code of the Street, Sandra Susan Smith's Lone Pursuit, Bruce Western's Punishment and Inequality in America, and Sudhir Alladi Venkatesh's Off the Books, works that explore poverty, incarceration, unemployment, and the underground economy.
Asked why he was teaching a class around a TV drama, Wilson said the show makes the concerns of sociologists immediate in a way no work of sociology he knows of ever has. "Although The Wire is fiction, not a documentary, its depiction of [the] systemic urban inequality that constrains the lives of the urban poor is more poignant and compelling [than] that of any published study, including my own," he wrote in an e-mail.
For Wilson, the unique power of the show comes from the way it takes fiction's ability to create fully realized inner lives for its characters and combines that with qualities rare in a piece of entertainment: an acuity about the structural conditions that constrain human choices (whether it's bureaucratic inertia, institutional racism, or economic decay) and an unparalleled scrupulousness about accurately portraying them. Wilson describes the show's characters almost as a set of case studies, remarkable for the vividness with which they embody a set of arguments about the American inner city. "What I'm concentrating on is how this series so brilliantly illustrates theories and processes that social scientists have been writing about for years," he said in an interview.
Anne-Maria Makhulu, a social anthropologist at Duke teaching a course there on The Wire this spring, makes a similar point about the show's power as a social document. She finds that, for many of her largely upper-middle-class students, issues like poverty and urban deindustrialization are remote from their daily lives, and simply reading about them does little to bridge that gap. The Wire puts faces and stories to those forces—Stringer Bell, the gang leader with the heart of a CFO; Bubbles, the wry, entrepreneurial junkie; "Bunny" Colvin, the police major who grows so disenchanted by the war on drugs that he tries legalizing them in his district.
"There's this question of how you appeal to young people who feel—not all of them but many of them—far removed from the type of people who are the major characters in The Wire," Makhulu says.
The media scholars offering courses on The Wire treat the show differently. They're quick to point out the show's impressive verisimilitude, and they're happy, they say, to see the show being studied across academic disciplines. But to these thinkers, treating the show simply as a look into the intricacies of the American inner city is incomplete.
Two of the first courses on The Wire were offered last spring. * One was taught by Jason Mittell, a media scholar at Middlebury, the other by Linda Williams, a film studies scholar in Berkeley's rhetoric department. Of the courses currently being offered, Mittell's is the only one in which the students watch the entire series. In fact, since they screen it in class, watching the 60-hour run is much of what the course actually consists of—five hours a week, with two hours a week of class left for discussion.
What interests Mittell and Williams is the fact that The Wire works despite its subject matter. As a popular entertainment, the series is starting from two rather significant disadvantages: its grim subject matter and the fatalistic worldview of David Simon. Simon has said that the show is meant to be Greek tragedy but with institutions like the police department or the school system taking the place of the gods: the immortal forces that toy with and blithely destroy the mortals below.
Berkeley's Williams argues that the greatness of the show stems from the way it interweaves realism and Simon's tragic vision with the sort of melodramatic elements that television demands: the brotherly bond between Stringer Bell and the gang leader Avon Barksdale, Bubbles' long battle with addiction, the detective Jimmy McNulty's attempts to rein in his self-destructive impulses, the use of foreshadowing and irony throughout. "It's not a simple matter of, 'Oh, it's so real,' " she says. "There's something about the structure, the use of seriality, and obviously the writing."
Much of Williams' course is concerned with exploring how those strands tie together. The assigned reading includes "Respecting the Middle: The Wire's Omar Little as Neoliberal Subjectivity," an essay that brings the work of postmodern theorists Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari to bear on Omar, the show's swashbuckling gay stickup man. Other assigned essays, like "The Wire and the Art of the Credit Sequence" parse the show's craft down to its seemingly most peripheral elements.
Jason Mittell aims to give his students a sense of the particular circumstances that shape The Wire. Among other things, it's a show written by white men about mostly black characters and a show about the urban poor that aired on a premium cable channel. Mittell argues that for all its vaunted realism The Wire still has a particular audience in mind, and that audience shapes the sort of stories the show tells and the way it tells them.
Take rape. Mittell assigns his students Philippe Bourgois' book In Search of Respect, an anthropological study of East Harlem crack gangs in the late 1980s and early '90s. One of the strands that runs through the book is what Bourgois describes as "the prevalence and normalcy of rape." Rape is not only common among the gang members Bourgois befriended and studied, it is celebrated.
This is a fact that someone who learned everything about drug gangs from The Wire would be aware of only dimly, if at all. Mittell argues that, conscious or not, this was a decision on the part of the show's creators. Faced with a choice between verisimilitude and drama's demand that the audience identify with the characters, the show's creators, Mittell believes, went with the latter. "It could be that with the specific types of dealers and users that Simon and Burns spent time with, rape was not really part of their culture. The other explanation, which I think is more probable, is that if you portrayed these people as rapists you would lose the ability to make them at all sympathetic and human," says Mittell.
Viewers are willing to sympathize with murderers, whether it's Stringer Bell, Avon Barksdale, or Omar, because there's a sense that they still have a certain code. Portraying them as rapists would make that much harder, Mittell argues. "Rape is a more taboo and emotionally volatile crime to portray on-screen than murder," he says. "Imagine the show Dexter, except instead of being a serial killer, he was a serial rapist."
Asked about the academic uses of the show, Simon himself declined to weigh in, writing in an e-mail, "It's gratifying to have the ideas and arguments that we put forward seriously discussed in any forum, including academia." Wilson, for his part, sees questions like Mittell's as interesting but secondary. There are issues that arise from the ways that the show is fictionalized, he concedes; they're just not the ones that interest him. "You want to talk about it being fiction, call it fiction," he says, "but it shows incredible imagination and understanding about the way the world works, and for me that's enough."
Read the syllabi for classes on The Wire at Syracuse, Loyola University New Orleans, and Washington State University-Spokane.
Read the syllabus for Linda Williams' class at Berkeley.
Correction, March 31, 2010: The article originally stated that the two course were the first to be taught on The Wire. The series had been taught at the college level before. (Return to the corrected sentence.)

subset: commoncrawl


text:
|View Poll Results: Mobile Suit Gundam 00 - Episode 25 Rating
|Perfect 10
|9 out of 10 : Excellent
|8 out of 10 : Very Good
|7 out of 10 : Good
|6 out of 10 : Average
|5 out of 10 : Below Average
|4 out of 10 : Poor
|3 out of 10 : Bad
|2 out of 10 : Very Bad
|1 out of 10 : Painful
|Voters: 407. You may not vote on this poll
|Thread Tools
|2008-04-04, 11:34
|Link #1001
Nick of Time~
Of course, there is no real basis for this, but if the press ever got hold of this and speculated upon it, it may well cause an internal upheaval in their respective societies.
|2008-04-04, 13:09
|Link #1003
Junior Member
Join Date: Apr 2008
A lot of people have been calling the EF a ridiculous proposal. Something that would lever happen in the real world. I don't think that its all that far fetched.
I actually found it a bit odd that the three coalitions were formed around the elevators in the fist place. People hate the idea of a unified military because it interferes with any traditional notions of sovereignty. Despite the extreme dependency on the solar elevators I don't see why the countries dissolved there boundaries to that degree. Perhaps the Asians coalesced first and the Americans/Europeans jumped into suit out of fear.
Either way after the unions formed, those individuals who resisted the change, may have been disenfranchised. At this point, and the people in power would be the ones most likely to support Unity between the nations.
I think it still leaves us with an unanswered question. What was the catalyst for the shift into the EF? People in high-power political positions rarely push change especially the kind that creates an authority that they have to answer to.
As for CB they i can't see them as having had too much of an effect. The joint military operations aren't going to cause any real political headway. At best their message of ending war could cause people to try to create a peace keeping force; however, that seems a bit contrived to me.
Whatever happened i hope the writers elaborate heavily on the events of the four year hiatus.
|2008-04-04, 13:21
|Link #1004
Junior Member
Join Date: Apr 2008
anybody notice that livonze's team isn't 6 people, it's made up of three sets of clones?
I really doubt that isn't with tierria's situation.
I mean the only diffrences between all these charachters is there hair! (anime lol)
I hope there connected through some kind of wireless telepathy thing, it would be pretty cool if they could even 2 person pilot mobile suits
|2008-04-04, 14:47
|Link #1005
Join Date: Dec 2005
by the way how did shinn fail?did he fail cause he wasn't yet another accidental pilot? or was it because she gave cagalli the shouting she deserved?
my thoughts on the episode.
for starters
at first i was worried this would be like code geass but fortunetlty I was wrong, and yes I know I
can't stop bashing code geass at least I'm aware of it.
when he started to act he was an interesting traitor villian but soon he became boring fortunetly in this episode he's interesting again. he clearly had a god complex which works well with his MA's/MS's design.finally the manipulator revealed to be a pawn was sheer genius.
the sergei,soma, and h/allelujah sub plot
well the season 1 "conclusion" to this sub plot was far different from what I expected, h/allelujah's relation with each other has changed from the beginning now they're pulling off a Gotenks fusion! as for hallelujah's apparent death as I mention in their character disscusion thread this will likely means allelujah will take on some of hallelujah's character traits since hallelujah existed to do what allelujah wanted to do but couldn't due to his nature. as sergei and soma, well soma got the knock down she needed and segei isn't dead and heis reminded that soma is human.(don't know what to make of the whole soma/mary thing)
not much to say, his change is the most obvious out of all the 4 er 3. he was a cold hearted bastard at the start but then lockon and the other miesters changed him. I do wonder if he's really dead, that person with louise looks alot like him. by the way if the person that looks like tieria has been said to be a women then why does she look more manly then tieria?
I was quite pleased with his scenes, i enjoy any character that knows the "score"probably why I liked lloyd from code geass. in the beginning his feelings towards gundam could once be called love but it evolved into hatred. he's a man who's been mocked, failed as a commander and had his freinds killed. his interaction with setsuna was the best part of the episode but more on that later. Graham's mask is awsome. Also on a final note I plan on writing a fanfic on him that's about his changes through out the series.
the battles
it's been a long time since I've seen mech battles that epic. it was nice to see good old mobile suit (and "fighter") vs mobile armor. the sergei and soma vs HAllelujah was full of suspense and action. setsuna finishing off alejandro with all 7 swords was one of the best moments in the episode. while GN flag vs exia battle last only around 3 minutes it was the best battle in the episode. another thing i liked is the character interactions that occur during the battles.
setsuna and marinna
setsuna is a unique main character not sure why. setsuna has changed from the beginning, he's alot more open. setsuna dosen't understand the world, he doesn't understand evil or why people fight pointlessly something he shares incommon with marinna which is probably why I don't have problem with their relationship.
status quo
what annoys most about code geass( besides suzaku,strong anti-american vibes, how it treats women ,inconsitancies, unoriginal plot, du ex machinas,lack of real plot and character development, and nina) is that after 25 episode they essentially go right back to episode 1, fortunetly that's not what happened here. an earth federation is formed, if U.C. taught me one thing it's don't trust the E.F. ribbonz has his own faction, some characters have changed, as for patrick his survival is explained with the revelation that the gnx cockpit is located at the *cough* lower region, honestly his survival surprised me more than ali's. i believe setsuna,tieria and allejulah to be alive.
man I meant to post this 4 days ago,I'm must be the world's biggest procastinator. if this episode told anything it was me my decision to drop code geass was as good as val kilmer's decision to drop out of batman and robin.(he never made a better decision in his life.)
Last edited by dom33; 2008-04-04 at 14:48. Reason: forgot a word
|2008-04-04, 19:58
|Link #1006
Angsty Newtype
Join Date: Aug 2007
Age: 35
These traditional elements will of course not prevent me to watch a Gundam series if it the rest is good enough, but I don't want these traditional elements to be used as templates of characters or stories, else it is just stereotypes and it is what may kill a saga as long as Gundam.
I honestly think that some directors thought that putting a mask on their characters and give them blond hairs would automatically allow them to rip off some of Char's charisma (and Graham was charismatic enough right from the start to not even need that) and make their characters/villains popular.
Now, it will perhaps sound a bit contradictory, but maybe I would have been happier with Graham being masked right from the start...
Now that Graham has a mask, it means the writers will have to force his own personality to fit into the mold of the masked man (in at least all or some of the most important aspects : revenge, mystery, hidden past and connections, etc).
I can see creating a character from a template and make him develop over the time to drift away from this template and become his own character, but doing it the other way around seems risky.
The masked man is a not only a traditional element but also a symbol which should follow some codes : if they gave a masked man the personality of Judau Ashta, it would definitely feel weird and we know it can't happen because of the meaning of the mask.
Being a masked man in Gundam implies you have to do certain things and act a certain way or there is no point wearing a mask in the first place : that's what I'm afraid of, but after all, like with most things in 00, I'm willing to give it the benefit of the doubt and see how it turns out...
Many other traditional elements in Gundam, though do not disturb me : as I said, I have no problem with Haro, and no problems with the main Gundam being blue and in general having a V-Fin : Turn-A tried to be innovative here and I don't think it has really done it much good )
And to be honest, I'm rather happy it didn't end after Turn A, and it is not like Tomino Gundams were flawless either and other directors are free to give it a try and some didn't do worse than him.
What I mean when I said that Gundam didn't really need a prequel was that effort was made to close it at the end, with Turn A (as illegitimate as it may be in this role) supposed to be the end of Gundam with Tomino having to carry the weight of a legacy he didn't request nor want for most) so do we need an effort to "close" the beginning as well ?
Besides, if by prequel we mean "what happened before the colonies were built and space migration started", then 00 may not be the best candidate to fill that role.
The reason for space migration in UC was overpopulaton and world pollution (the one having more or less caused the second). However, this subject has not even been brushed at all in 00.
For all we know so far, people not at war are living happily and do not necessarily die of starvation (third-world probably still exists there, but nothing implies it is worse than today except maybe for countries having based their whole economy on Petrol like Azadistan).
Gundam 00 so far has not shown much people living in space (aside from CB and that HRL super-soldiers colony) and currently lacks any valid reason to send people off to space and start building colonies...
|2008-04-04, 20:23
|Link #1007
Senior Member
Join Date: Dec 2005
Location: UK
Age: 39
|2008-04-04, 20:32
|Link #1008
Angsty Newtype
Join Date: Aug 2007
Age: 35
Ali could get away with "It would be a corporate secret" when asked how he managed to gundamjack Zwei, because a was a mere soldier and there were more urgent matters to take care of, but how a UN diplomat was able to get access to such a technology should raise some serious questions inside the ranks of the power blocs...
What would he answer ? He was a member of CB and was working for them ? Would you trust a former spy/double-agent at a major and sensitive position when he betrayed already ?
Alejandro didn't understand his life ended with the demise of the Gundam : as things stand, I think the plan was to replace CB with his own army of GN-Units maybe piloted by Innovators to threaten the power blocs and rule the world with an iron first through his superior technology... Alejandro was useless at his point to both Livonze and the World powers : as Livonze said : his arrogance is precisely what made him a small man because he was too self-centered to see what was going to happen next.
I'm still curious how he he was planning to face an army of potentialy hundreds of GN-Units at once. He could have threatened to destroy the orbital elevators (*insert his evil laughter here*), but as 4tran says, we don't know enough about his plans after all and we may never know ever since S2 will have a lot to cover to go back to old events with many details.
|2008-04-04, 20:44
|Link #1009
Angsty Newtype
Join Date: Aug 2007
Age: 35
Char : hide past + revenge
Quattro Bajeena (do sunglasses count ? ) : hide past.
Rau : hide wounds/monstruous face + hide past + revenge (complete collection !).
Neo : hide past (prevent people from recognizing him)
Graham : hide wounds/monstrous face + revenge.
Except Rau, no masked character assume all the three aspects of the mask, which is why I said "in at least all or some of the most important aspects".
Graham has two reasons that made him eligible for a mask, which is more than Neo, who had a single one and the least charismatic of them all.
|2008-04-04, 21:26
|Link #1010
Ancient Member
Join Date: Apr 2002
To complete the cycle of reasons for wearing a mask:
Karozzo - to hide himself from himself
Cronicle - to hide himself from allergy due to the Earth's dust
Schwarz - to hide identity
Ulube - to hide wounds
Zechs - to hide past & identity
Jamil - to hide past
Harry Ord - to hide the fact that other than his visors he only has his ugly thick-framed glasses to wear
I think Neo's reason really ain't that bad compared to a few others, of course, if he had a reason at all.
|2008-04-04, 21:42
|Link #1011
Retweet Member
Join Date: Dec 2005
Location: ニュー・オーリンズ、LA
Don't forget the glasses guys...
Harry Ord
Jamil Neate
Quattro Bajeena^^
They are part of the masked guy theme...Even Chronicle Asner with his breath mask, Corrozo with the iron-mask, and Schawrz from G Gundam aswell...
Sorry I'm about to hit up the club, I'll respond to the rest in kind later...Brace for it, I'm gonna get deep on the mask $hit next post...
Damn you again brightman! That's twice in a week I think...
|2008-04-04, 22:30
|Link #1012
Senior Member
Join Date: Feb 2008
It was a calculated risk and stopping the Gundams and their ramapage, with the probable boon of aquiring their unique method of energy generation were well worth the risk, which was actually very small. Practically non-existent.
|2008-04-04, 23:23
|Link #1013
Logician and Romantic
Join Date: Nov 2004
Location: Within my mind
Age: 38
And of course, the trap made the point that they are taking advantage of CB willing to risk their own lives going into a trap to stop terrorists. Does that sound like noble behavior to you? They KNOW CB will stop terrorists at all costs.
What would you think if in Gotham City, cops wanting to capture Batman for his vigilante ways, leave a bank robbery alone so they can charge in when Batman is done saving the people?
|2008-04-05, 01:16
|Link #1014
Junior Member
Join Date: Dec 2005
As for Graham, I hope his mask is somehow being used to help with an injured face besides merely hiding it. Otherwise, I would be disappointed. With his pride and obsession for the gundams, I would think he'd want to show the battle scar he got from battling Exia. That is, assuming he has any facial injury (it would suck if he doesn't and still wear a mask.)
|2008-04-05, 02:05
|Link #1015
Has a life IRL
Join Date: Nov 2007
Location: Somewhere in the Anglo-Saxon Sphere
Just mentioning.
They don't.
|2008-04-05, 02:30
|Link #1016
Logician and Romantic
Join Date: Nov 2004
Location: Within my mind
Age: 38
I keep mentioning how President Brian never got offended by CB's actions, and describes them as doing Union's duties for them. There simply wasn't any evidence that there was any outrage or anger on the part of the Union government concerning CB, up to the point when the Thrones start to blow up military bases indiscriminately.
Union didn't try to steal the Gundams because CB was "wrong", Union never gave a damn if CB was wrong or not. Morality was only an issue to CB itself, all three world powers were only interested in politics and increasing military might.
There was a split down the middle in public opinion concerning CB's legitimacy. It simply wasn't as cut-and-dry as you claim it was.
|2008-04-05, 06:52
|Link #1017
Angsty Newtype
Join Date: Aug 2007
Age: 35
As for Neo, Mwu being the sort of living legend he should be as "The Hawk of Endymion", I would bet his face is pretty well known by a lot of people in the OMNI Military he was originally from and was back as Neo.
The risk of people recognizing him and shouting "You're a MWU !" was too high...
And it just looks fearsome for the commander of a black-squad like Phantom Pain to wear a mask, a mask always adding to the character charisma in Gundam (by actually borrowing Char's).
Besides, Gundam X being an "as if" of what may have happened if the One Year War ended for the worst, Jamil stands as the equivalent of Amuro rather than Char's.
So while Jamil indeed wears glasses which is a toned-down version of the mask, he managed to not follow the masked-man codes, so I guess there is hope for Graham.
Last edited by Vorenus; 2008-04-05 at 07:11.
|2008-04-05, 07:16
|Link #1018
Exitus Acta Probat
Graphic Designer
Join Date: Jul 2006
Location: Permanent retirement from raws-hunting
Age: 32
Here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:M...mages-raww.jpg
|2008-04-05, 07:30
|Link #1019
Senior Member
Join Date: Feb 2008
And they don't know what Celestial Being will do. That's the whole point. They can make a guess based upon their previous behavior, but since they don't know anything about their leaders or organization, only that they use Gundams they have no idea what really makes them tick. Of course they didn't really explain that in the series since it'd make Celestial Being look bad.
It probably wouldn't be a popular move on the cops part, and the nuclear bait move wouldn't have been a popular move on the pols part if people had been aware of it. That doesn't matter though.
|2008-04-05, 08:02
|Link #1020
|Thread Tools


text:
Offensive tackle David Quessenberry, who was diagnosed last week with lymphoma, attended the Texans' final minicamp practice Thursday near NRG Stadium.
"That's a special thing," Texans coach Bill O'Brien said.
Quessenberry briefly spoke with the team but was not made available to the media. He is expected to miss the 2014 season while undergoing chemotherapy at M.D. Anderson Hospital.
"Being out there today breaks up the dog days of chemo for me, and feeling the love from my teammates really makes me feel like I have an army behind me during this process," Quessenberry said. "The outreaching from the city has been unreal, and I can't say thank you enough."
Guard Ben Jones said Quessenberry's brief speech sunk "deep into the offensive line."
"It makes our day look easy," said Jones, who regularly speaks with Quessenberry.
The practice only lasted a few minutes, ending in joy when Jones caught a wobbly Chris Boswell punt. Texans players shouted and danced after Jones' spread-legged reception. The catch ended offseason workouts for the team, which begins training camp in late July.
"We had a little fun there with Boswell," O'Brien said. "I don't think (Shane) Lechler warmed up properly. We let Boswell punt and it wasn't a great punt. I think he was a little nervous. (Jones) caught it, which was great.
"Oh yeah, he didn't volunteer. You try to pick an offensive lineman who's a fun guy, a good guy and a hard-working guy. And that's Ben."
Jones was relieved to retrieve the punt, saying he didn't want to make J.J. Watt and other defenders "mad" at him.
"I was just doing what O.B. asked me to do," Jones said.
Texans offensive linemen Duane Brown and Chris Myers tweeted photos of Quessenberry soon after practice. Jones said it was powerful to again see their cancer-stricken teammate in uniform.
"Quessenberry's a great kid. We really look up to him," Jones said. "It takes a man to do that. To come out there and see all the guys. We know he's struggling, know he's hurting, know he's tired. … His attitude toward everything is amazing."
Jones is also adjusting to the departure of quarterback T.J. Yates, a close friend who was traded to Atlanta on Wednesday night.
"Me and T.J. is going to stay best friends," Jones said.
Twitter: ChronBrianSmith
My man @DavidQberry came out to kick it with us at practice. Made our day pic.twitter.com/cRzLnDUL1p
— Duane Brown (@DuaneBrown76) June 19, 2014


text:
CANT (Solange Knowles & Twin Shadow) - Kenya
"http://www.MusicforRAIN.net -
"Kenya" is a track created by Chris Taylor (CANT) Solange Knowles and Twin Shadow to raise money and awareness around the issue of access to water and sanitation as part of The Replenish Africa Initiative (RAIN) founded by The Coca Cola Africa Foundation. RAIN brings together business, local government" [m]
Please click the "Report" button below if the video on this page is not working properly.
Comments will only be displayed by verified emails. No Spamming or Racism.


text:
I would like to install an app on my site which allows people to design their own posters and save them. I see this kind of technology on many sites. Is there a free application out there that I can install on my site? If so, where? If it's not free, who sells them?
I am looking for a designer for graphics and images, not websites.
Android apps developers


text:
We buy ours in the grocery store. The warehouse-bulk grocery store clear across town to be exact. And that pains me every time I place them in the cart.
But, oh, do my children love blackberries! The sweet ones and tart ones. Juicy ones and dry ones. Black ones and purple ones.
I watch them pop them into their mouths, juice dribbling down their chin. And I am overcome with sadness.
"This is not how blackberries should be eaten by little children" is all I can think as my eyes rest on them sitting at our fancy kitchen table with the air conditioning humming.
Blackberries are meant to be eaten outdoors in the heat of the summer. Early July's sweaty air, clinging to the flannel shirts and thick pants that shield your body from the snakes in the undergrowth.
Blackberries are meant to be eaten in secret as you hide behind the tall brush, on the lookout for an aunt who will tell your mother that you're putting more in your mouth than in the bucket.
Blackberries are meant to be eaten in the back of a rusty farm truck. One that will break down as it carries you back to the lake, forcing you, cousins, aunts, uncles – the whole family – to trek back to the campsite with fat berries sustaining us all the way.
Children should eat blackberries so that they will know which ones to pick – which ones are best for popping like candy, which make the best cobblers, and which are best to feed to your baby brother when you want to see him make a pucker-face.
Blackberries should mean something, I think. They should remind you of fireworks and fishing and crickets singing outside the tent. They should be warm and crunchy-soft, served with cheap ice cream from a large plastic tub.
They should make your mouth feel glad that school is out and there are no bedtimes.
My kids think blackberries come from Aisle 7, right next to the vending-machine candy and bulk cans of nuts. And when they ask me to let them try one while we are in the checkout lane, I shudder at the thought. These aren't even organic! They must be washed and rinsed and washed again before they can grace your lips.
But later, as I'm draining the berries to place on the table, I realize: It's not my kids I'm sad for. It's me. They think that store-bought blackberries are delicious and wonderful and sweet. And really, that may be good enough.
But me – I know better. I know what blackberries taste like when they don't come from a plastic box. I know what blackberries tasted like on my tongue when I was a child.
When I go back to that farm of my youth and search for the prickly plants, I find none to my liking. The berries were so much larger when I was young.
So now I stand on the sun-faded hardwood floors in the kitchen where I'm the grown-up and stare at the basket of wet berries in front of me.
I carefully look for the one berry that has just the right appearance – dull fat buds on the berry, just waiting to explode.
I pop it into my mouth, my eyes closed.
And I instantly go back to my childhood. I see the chips on the picnic table, feel the muddy lake bottom in my toes, smell the bug repellent and pine trees, and hear the crunch of gravel as new faces arrive and the explosion of fireworks across the small pond.
It's a sweet one, that berry.
"Mommy, I love these blackberries!" I hear my 4-year-old say.
I open my mouth to answer, as juice dribbles down my chin, "Me, too."


text:
Served So Raw From Miami
The organizers meet the disorganized. Thanks to Danny and Nicole and So Raw for everything!
Welcome back, all. I trust you were all satiated when I posted my account of San Francisco's most delicious sights and sounds and wacky adventures of a lad gone stoned a few months back. I would hope you've come back starving however, for it's now time to reverse polarity and attempt to document my latest whirlwind thrill ride through the sunny and seamy shores of America's closest foreign destination: Miami, Florida.
For those who have never been to Miami, it's not like the rest of Florida. Instead of NASCAR and theme parks, Miami offers a glimpse of a glittering steamy world that is better signified with slip-on deck shoes rather than a redneck's bandana. And no matter what the city had to offer, Rot Shit was quite agreeable to accepting the challenge and playing the So Raw Festival in June of 2009. If you haven't gotten hip to us by now, some blog put up both our out of print 7-inches, so feel free to go get 'em.
Being the forward thinker that I am, I decided to stay for a week instead of a weekend. Why not? When you're playing a gig (or in this case a festival) you have to run around, deal with inner workings and machinations of the other people in your band (who in this case are America's stupidest band, myself included), meet everyone in a whirlwind of handshakes and partying in the span of 48 hours, and then go home a wreck and who needs that? Luckily I had Danny from Melted Sunglasses to make my trip the perfect introduction to the Bizarro Pittsburgh; and he shall go down forever in the annals of Great Dudes in History for showing me what was probably the best time of my life. For starters, as soon as I exited the plane and stepped into the Ft. Lauderdale sun, I was met by Danny on the curb and beers were shotgunned in the whip posthaste. It's nothing to say that my expectations were met right there within the first hour. Danny then decided to blow my mind even further by bringing my now-drunken stomach one of the savoriest treats in the Cuban culinary lexicon: El Rey de las Fritas.
A frita is a Cuban sandwich that is made up of ground chorizo and (I think) some beef. It's mixed in with spices and tomato sauce and then topped with shoestring potatoes. This was kind of a mind-blower because back when I was a young lad and the folks used to load Lil' Suzz and I up in the car to drive to DC we would usually have a couple sandwiches for the drive prepared and my mom would always purchase a can of shoestring potato sticks in lieu of potato chips. The memories I have of trying to get the obstinate grease off of my hands tickled the back of my brain for a second before I dove in and I have no problem telling you lovely readers that this sandwich will tantalize any sense you choose to throw at it.
The first night after Danny and I took in a Guinness or two on the street I got to begin to meet most everyone and I learned the following: A) I am old. B) Every girl in Miami is beautiful. C) The Miami lifestyle is quite different and I was up to the challenge to adapt. D) See ya white girls. While hanging at Sarah's house, baby found some smoke and Sarah and Amanda were making tiramisu.
We hit up Fox's Sherron Inn after that which is basically Miami's punk dive bar and I got to get a glimpse or two of the local punx/kids. The service was awful, the bar packed, and the air humid so we mostly just drank in the parking lot next to the bar which seems to be de riguer in the land of expensive Yuenglings. Hi ladies.
After that the rain began to fall (as it does every day in Miami... sounds familiar) and we headed off to Mary's Coin Laundry. I know that sentence seems strange at first, but I was hipped to the fact that Mary's is not only a laundromat, but also a deli/sandwich shop/smoothie bar... and it's open after 3 AM... and it is delicious.
After we all regrouped I found a large gaggle of us just lazily hanging out in the small outdoor seating area, and after Tony V. pulled down the awnings for what seemed to be the first in the establishment's history we were ensconced in a private booth on the street and able to listen to the rain and chill out. I was fairly drunk and pretty tired but I did my best to soldier through. I also got to eat some dishes I have never experienced before, like my first beef empanada, perhaps a bizarro cousin to our humble pierogi back home.
Victor commanded that I eat a choripan sub and I'm always happy to indulge him. Choripan was probably the best-tasting meat of the trip, and the revelation was much like when I discovered milanesa in Oakland, CA. Choripan is another chorizo based sandwich that comes on a crusty sub roll and tastes like a firecracker of deliciousness. I forgot to take a picture of my sandwich but I just stole a picture of another one that would have been better quality anyways (I didn't take out my real camera [and I forgot to borrow Lil' Suzz's GOOD camera] till Day 2 and the iPhone has done nothing but bum me out with its inferior image capabilities, especially for a gent on the go with a food website like myself). It's nothing. Much love to Mary's. Will eat again.
Danny made me some mate, too. Love first time food/drink experiences. Best guy.
From here on out I did not stop partying for the next five days so I am surprised I could even eat let alone anything remember to take pictures of it. But as the actual festival draws nearer and nearer down the page the coverage will get intense, so please bear with me and don't be upset because you're not getting what YOU want from ME. I'm trying my best here.
The next day I got to go to the only Tex-Mex in Miami that is worth a damn (this came from the mouths of the locals) at Taco Rico. I was advised to order the fish tacos by Danny and I took him up on it and made three new friends who I quickly murdered and cannibalized.
As I said in my last post, Negra Modelo with a lime has become my beer of choice when I'm not throwing money around like a horny sailor and now I am sure the guys at Gooski's are bummed that I order this during a packed Saturday night gig, but hey. I suppose this brings me to another point. Another bizarro point of contention between Miami and the Steel City: kids in Miami can seriously pound booze, and if they had their choice I'm sure they would drink the Pittsburgh Brewing Company dry on the same cheap beer that powers our parties. There is no time in Miami for your fancy IPA's or stouts or whatever. People want to get drunk and get drunk NOW and they do not care how it happens. I was in no position to argue, so from there on out it was High Life, Modelo, Budweiser, and all the rest I remember from my youthful indiscretions. Beer was cheap and it was hot so here we are. Happy dude here:
From what I have gathered, Miami is definitely a bumpin' city with 5.4 million residents and plenty of stuff to do, but the only game in town for real rock n' roll is the small cadre of local bands that are made up of the same group of kids, and surprise surprise, that's who I was hanging out with. Miami's most known exports right now (both of whom have LP's coming out on Florida's Dying really soon - pick 'em up!) are the Jacuzzi Boys and Electric Bunnies (who were kind enough to actually make it up to Pittsburgh to play Totally Wired Fest back in April) and So Raw set out to showcase what else Miami's scene had to offer. Over the next couple of days we kicked it around town and raged, and eventually Friday night rolled up on us and we finally got to check out the So Raw venue at the Ism Gallery. I was pretty anxious to see some live jams and my juices really got flowing when Electric Bunnies took the stage. Here's Victor:
When Electric Bunnies first 7" came out I picked it up. While hearing the 45's gives you a decent enough introduction to the band, I have seen them excel much further in the longform, meaning I have enjoyed their two live sets immensely and I am quite interested in seeing where their upcoming full-length will take them. It's strange that the band presents such a low-key fuzzy beach pop image when in actuality there is a psychedelic charge hidden so far under their preconceived sheen. The songs have more room to breath and expand when the band stretches out and they were in fine form during this particular gig. There's rumors of a tour coming up, but I won't spoil any surprises.
"Nobody takes pictures of the drummer" according to a shitty metalcore band.
In addition to the Bunnies that night, Eric (Bunnies and Melted Sunglasses lead guitar player) was playing TeePee songs with a full band. Having only heard his "Wooden Noise" tape before my turntable unfortunately met its untimely demise, I wasn't sure what exactly to expect. When I was driving to the beach with Christina and Rene to pick up Solange we were listening to CDR's in the car and Christina said "This song is awesome, you need to listen to it." Well, it was indeed awesome and is indeed included on the upcoming TeePee full length that Eric is putting out and if you head over to the TeePee Myspace you can check out this exquisite bedroom pop number called "I Told You So". After we listened to it about three times in a row between sprinkles of the rest of the TeePee full-length I immediately told Eric when I saw him that I was hoping to hear that song at the gig and sure enough he delivered. While I missed the first improv half of his set running around with Drugula's dumb ass (who had gotten wasted enough to forget his PIN number... good Lord) I made it back in time for the second half when Eric was slamming out my request.
TeePee seems to be a musical lynchpin of the Miami scene due to his involvement in multiple projects and his multi-instrumental/multi-genre-spanning talent. While I usually don't have a lot of good things to say about mining the comforters and dust ruffles of America's bedrooms, I find the TeePee songs to stand above most of his contemporaries due to the sheer volume of influences and styles TeePee experiments with. Anything ranging from the dissonant slop guitar workouts of the later Scientists to the narcotic nudges of Spacemen 3 to the dreamy and hyper-sexual sounds of French synth-wave becomes grist for the mill in my ears and the creative spark that drives TeePee can ignite that pile when it all melds together.
TeePee has 7"s out on Weird Hug and Hozac right now and a debut LP on the way by winter-time. Don't be an idiot.
Not soon after Vinnie and BD Biz fell on the PA and busted it that first evening, leaving the Yolks soldiering on and singing out of a harmonica microphone and giving the kids what they want (thanks Lauren for the photo), we headed over to the penthouse on the beach (not kidding) that Manny and Danny had obtained for us for some righteous debauchery and the beds were soon covered with vomit, babes, booze, illicit substances, and a whole lot of Natural Light courtesy of Eric. Pink Reason immediately became null and void due to overconsumption and the party raged on till the fuzz showed up and gave everyone the boot. I don't remember TOO much but it was a pretty great time and we had another gig and another late night to look forward to coming up. And with that, baby went to the beach.
Rene and Christina and Solange and I had rolled over to Miami Beach earlier that day. I'll level with you readers here. I've never really been a beach guy. When I was around six or seven my family went on our last vacation together to Rehoboth Beach in Delaware. While that may now be the burgeoning gay vacation mecca of the mid-Atlantic these days, all I remember back then was getting knocked over by dipshits on boogie boards every fifteen minutes and nearly being dragged under the water by the undertow. Couple that with seventeen or eighteen years of being overweight and out of shape and pretty soon you haven't taken your shirt off in public for five years or so. But thanks to the bike and the yoga mat I decided to strut my stuff and actually expose my skin to the sunlight and let me tell you - one soak in the warm and inviting water of Miami Beach is enough to slough off any hangover, heartbreak, or nagging worry that may attempt to tether itself to your mind. I swam out past the crowd and into the deep water and floated on my back over the waves until I couldn't hear anything anymore. Perfection.
After that, we headed off to get some grub at David's Cafe down along the beach. Here Christina and Solange got some enticing milkshakes.
I opted for my first Cuban sandwich of the trip, and I must say aside from the slightly higher beachfront price tag, I was not disappointed in the least. I got the regular Cuban and whomever was sitting next to me got the Media Noche (which is basically the same thing only served on Cuban sweetbread, which is yellow and fucking delicious. Here is my Cuban:
Here is my reaction to its deliciousness:
Here's the Media Noche. See how the bread is yellow? That's Cuban sweet bread. They serve baskets of this stuff, too. I must say, it opened my eyes.
After the meal, Solange got us some Cuban coffee which was enough to raise your hair on end with how powerful it is. I had about four shots and was ready to rip phone books in half, so think espresso concentrated with even more sugar and you'd be getting close. I can definitely see how this could keep you up till 5 AM without blinking. Two out-of-town members of the entourage REFUSED Cuban coffee in Miami. I won't mention any names but these two dinks were thereafter regarded as complete morons (and a little rude if you ask me). Who travels to another city/state/country/culture and then doesn't sample an integral part of the cuisine? Bah. Anyway, I'd like to thank the girls and Rene for rolling me out there because the beach trip had me jazzed to hop onstage and throw down later that night. While I am probably hopping back and forth on the space-time continuum due to being out of my mind for a week straight, there was a day show at the Upper East Side Garden. I guess it was pretty tough for most people in Miami to be outside before 1 PM but the show went on and I checked out the two bands who played Little Beard and Fluffy Lumbers.
I didn't really know what to expect from Little Beard. Sarah and Nicole are in this band and I planted myself next to the "stage" to check them out and I'll be damned if I didn't hear some delightful indie pop with some Korg or Moog or Floog or whatever people who don't want to play a piano play. Sarah has a fine voice, the band a tight rhythm section, and the songs were upbeat and snappy. While this isn't my normal cup of tea, I could see them actually doing something with the right push in the right direction. The two guys and two ladies make for a cute-looking young foursome that actually has some musical chops and could get kids moving were they not walking zombies from the night before.
Fluffy Lumbers played next and honestly I didn't really care because I was probably thinking about NEANDERTHAL and looking at girls at the gig. I threw my drink at the singer's head during a lull in the set and apparently made disgusted faces every time I heard a change I didn't like and so what? What are you gonna do? Call a cop? Take me to jail! Weird Hug has put out their first record. Weird Hug are my dudes. YOU make the call. Here is a picture of Alex who did play some noodly yet tasteful lixxx which I could appreciate since no one wanted to listen to the Grateful Dead with me except Manny.
Oh yeah, I am beginning to remember the timeline a little more clearly now. After we awoke at the penthouse, and before the gig at UEG, we piled into Eric's work van with no windows and a bucket full of hats. Drugula and I both donned one and we decided to eat something else. The last time I'd been in Florida (Orlando to be exact) I was taken by my friend Natalie to their grocery chain Publix and I ordered a sub. In the back of my mind I always remembered that fresh and inviting smell of their bread, the Boar's Head meats and indulgent condiments they used, and the toppings that snap in your mouth with all the flavor of a farmer's market. So I told everyone "Yo, we should go get sandwiches." Publix never disappoints.
Wylie and Drugula stepped it up a notch by ordering the chicken finger sub.
Kevin and Vinnie split a box of chicken, I decided to go the healthy route and grabbed a tuna salad spinach wrap, a banana, and a blended health beverage made up of numerous green fruits and veggies. It can't be all bad all the time. Sometimes you have to listen to your body. Look, a handsome gent.
Here's another Bizarro Pittsburgh twist for you. Most folks in town, especially the ones who work in Downtown Pittsburgh know Franktuary (whose dogs have made an appearance or two on 7-Inch Slam before). Speaking of which, here's the bratwurst I wrecked from there last week:
Anyway, Tony and Elena were driving me over to Rene and Manny's for a pool party or maybe even to the gig or something, I don't know! But they stopped to grab some grub at none other than the spot that caused Franktuary to christen (I kill me) itself its current name after some hefty legal wrangling.
The Dogma Grill. Seems their use of the word "dogma" caused a lawsuit and Pittsburgh's Hot Dogma (the better name by far) had to change their name even though the respective restaurants are 17 hours away from each other and honestly how many yinzers are going to be strutting around Miami that aren't already Pittsburgh Steelers getting their dongs polished by tanned fake-breasted starfuckers? Riddle me that! Dogma did have some pretty tasty chili cheese fries that I sampled, though.
The Sedona Dog. From the menu: "Homemade spicy salsa, grilled bacon, fresh sliced avocado, sour cream, diced tomatoes, and vinaigrette". AKA: Fuck you, Franktuary.
So now we're here. Saturday Night. Game time. ROT SHIT has to deliver. But first there were some other bands to hop onstage at ISM Gallery like Couchfaces with Nicole and Sarah T. and Tony and Danny, some acoustic act that played because someone died in their band or something (I can't remember anything about the conversation I had with the dude while i was waiting for a beer), and basically just a whole lot of nonsense since there were cancellations and lineup shufflings to attend to. Of course, I'm sure everyone knows what was coming up: the man with the plan, bringing you nothing less than the razzle, the dazzle, the agony, and the ecstasy of Brian's Dirty Business or as we refer to it: "motherfuckin' BD Biz". Check his onstage harem:
One song. Six times? Did you like the slow version? The fast version? The mid-tempo rocker? What does it matter? It's all a party, man. The kids shook it up and had a blast watching this man dismantle himself for our viewing pleasure.
Vinnie: "Yeah, yeah, you heard the Quick and wrote a song and it wasn't good." Mad clown love to BD Biz. Up next: ROT SHIT (photos by Lauren... if anyone has any other good ones, lemme know)
Actually some newspaper or blogger or some other bullshit took this one:
Kevin joined us onstage for "DEAD II". Sick dogpile. Dope like Sublime.
It's nothing to say we were awesome. I heard the live recording Eric did and "Power-Pop" sounded like INFEST. Thumbs up!
Drugula and Gabriel and your man of many hats.
After we were done, the band I was most excited to see all weekend was up next: MELTED SUNGLASSES!
Melted Sunglasses are my favorite group from Miami. One night recently I got super fucked-up alone in my apartment thinking about my time in Miami and I just opened up Microsoft Word and had to get this down:
Miami sears into you as you coast along its congested highways upon entering this glittering paradise. Commerce pollutes the landscape with the most fashionable of shimmering glass monoliths to empty corporate promises that leave the most intrepid of the young in search of something, anything that will pull them into a new direction. But while the fight burns inside a small group of dedicated musicians, they must sacrifice and explode and implode and feel the tearing and the exhilaration and the utter futility of pounding away at something new. And when these bands release songs like this, I feel it in me from years apart and over a thousand miles away. Miami was a new scene to me and the band that makes it stand out the most as a representative regional beacon of its mesmerizing culture and good feeling and uncertainty that we experience everyday in these turbulent times is Melted Sunglasses and I for one can do nothing but offer all my unbridled support and whatever words they permit me or not.
Utilizing the musical and emotional tools from all parts of this group of young men making things happen musically in a city with the means to crush everyone's dreams before offering a solution for the young people tired of their ingrained existence unknown to the rest of the USA, Melted Sunglasses tack on a new dimension, dragging their toes through the final grains of lush warm sand on the beach until they hit the parking lot and are wandering with bloody toes under a neon sidewalk sale of futile glitzy urban dreams begging for a return to the clouds and warm breezes and the electric touch of the girl waiting for them in the grass on a hill with a hit of acid and a six pack of Tecate and a lime for you to share.
Photo by Michelle
Danny and Tony and Eric and Tony give their songs (and the Miami scene) the true harsh sexual-psychedelic twists that belie their joyous adolescent punk/pop sensibilities and turn each song into either a throbbing sweaty variation on a synapse-tweaking theme or a joyful romp through theories meshed in a mind-melting drift down the Opalaca River in a boat built for you and whatever friends you feel are ready to harness all the electricity their body can muster. I've felt it. You can feel it too.
"Sun King Pt. 2" sounds like King Tuff meets Flipper. Should I say anything else?
Drugula didn't know what to do at this point, but after that, it was time to make the scene while waiting for Pink Reason and Jacuzzi Boys to close out the night. That's when I retreated to the merch booth where our Greatest Hitlers cassettes and Bart Simpson Acid shirts were flying off the shelves. Sitting on the band beers were two righteous babes, Michelle and Amber:
-Liquor Store
Pink Reason and Jacuzzi Boys either sloshed themselves off the stage grinding through their hazy drunkenness or were sloshed with beers by the adoring crowd. Things had begun to veer off in the rawest direction yet and after cleaning up the actress blood, whipped cream, saliva, beer, vodka, and Vitamin Water it was back to the Penthouse for Party #2. It's nothing for me to say that it went well, complete with drunken lust, excessive overindulgence, another visit from the fuzz, and the repeated clowning of Midwestern freeloaders. Finally, the party just ended up like this:
By the next morning, no one had slept, everyone was hung over, and I had lost my white polo shirt over the 39th floor balcony and was swathed in Gay Josh's tiny white shirt that I am not even sure was a shirt. Needless to say, it did not fit. The boys on the balcony with our man Manny:
We kicked it the next day relaxing at Sarah's house playing pool and foosball. Great times. And soon, with the other 3/4 of Rot Shit and Pink Reason back en route to our respective domiciles and me flying out on Tuesday, it was time for me to begin to say goodbye to my new friends in Miami, and what better way to do that than with fancy beers and grub and plenty of the beautiful ladies of Miami. Rene and I took a drive through Miami's more opulent communities and met up with everyone in a gorgeous plaza complex where tap after tap spewed forth with pleasing libations. Naturally I had more than a few Rogue Dead Guys and we made the most of my time, and nearly everyone made it out to see me off. Wylie showed his appreciation for these nachos:
Rene and Christina looking stylish before their big move to NYC.
No blog entry about Miami is complete without Raul. What is this?
Tony G., Nicole I., Steve A. Much love. $$$ GETTIN' MONEY $$$.
The food here was quite a fine pastiche of seafood and Tex-Mex with a swank trendy bar inside and enormous tables outside that we had all to ourselves. I couldn't ask for a better send-off and luckily I can scam more website hits off of pervy dudes watching Christina eat dinner.
As I took this picture I said to myself, "I wonder what everyone in Pittsburgh is doing right now. HA!" Say hello to the lovely Allen sisters Christiane and Michelle with Sarah T. and Christina, Nicole, and Elena. Let's finish out the night here and at Manny's before Danny shipped me off to the airport with a parting embrace. I'm glad I can post this picture and that the Internet exists:
And a final go-round with the boys:
So there you have it. Rot Shit may be banned from So Raw next year (HARSH SHIT), but it was worth it. I will never forget my trip to sunny South Florida and I doubt you will either. Reporting live from the G-20 are my great memories of new friends, new foods, new jams, and new beginnings. I will be in attendance next year, and bands can get in touch with So Raw for touring Miami till then. It is worth your time. Trust me. Build a scene with these awesome kids and remember it for the rest of your life.
I'm out. Turn on your lovelight.


text:
2012-12-26 / People/Social
Nassau and Suffolk Counties help out the New York City Rescue Mission
A group of teenage boys from Nassau and Suffolk Counties joined together to help out the New York City Rescue Mission. Knowing that the Rescue Mission was in dire need of coats, socks, underwear and toiletries, a group of long-time friends decided to use their energy and commitment and get the donations for the oldest mission in North America.
You must be an online subscriber to view this story.


text:
Mitek Systems, which makes software that lets users deposit checks by snapping pictures with their smartphone cameras, likes to repeat a slogan used by one of its banking customers: A picture is worth a 1,000 keystrokes.
Now the San Diego company has found another personal finance chore that can done using smartphone cameras instead of keypads: Opening a new account.
Mitek introduced its Mobile Photo Account Opening app at a trade show this week in New York. The app lets consumers take a picture of the front and back of their driver's licenses to apply for new bank accounts.
"It takes user error out of the equation," said Scott Carter, Mitek's chief marketing officer. "It leverages our mobile imaging technology in the account-opening process."
The company expects to sell the technology to banks, which would use it to serve tech-savvy customers. They also could use it to target lower income customers who may not have a computer at home but likely own a smartphone.
Mitek is best known for its Mobile Photo Deposit app, which lets users snap a picture of checks to deposit in their accounts. More than 1,000 banks have licensed the technology to power their mobile deposit offerings.
The company also has camera-based apps for paying bills and transferring money between accounts. And its technology is used by Progressive Insurance to provide insurance quotes via smartphones.
Adding account opening to the mix moves Mitek closer to having a suite of smartphone apps that "address the entire consumer banking life cycle," Carter said.
While growing, Mitek's app business is not large yet. Banks pay Mitek an initial licensing fee. Then the company is paid based on how often bank customers use its apps. It reported revenue of $10.4 million through the first nine months of its fiscal year, up about 33 percent from a year earlier.
A study by Javelin Research and Strategy found that 88.5 million Americans attempted to open an account online or on a mobile device last year. But the error rate was high — with as many as 25 percent abandoning the effort before completion.
Most bank customers come into branches to open accounts. Mitek believes its app could be used on tablets by bank employees to make the process easier while introducing new customers to mobile banking.
"It's a great tool for getting employees out from behind the desk and streamlining account opening in the branch," said James DeBello, chief executive of Mitek.
Moreover, the company believes its mobile account opening technology has potential to be used beyond banking industry. Retailers, online stock trading providers and e-commerce sites are among the industries that could benefit from the app, DeBello said.
Mobile Photo Account Opening will be available in the first quarter next year. Mitek's shares ended Wednesday up 9 cents at $5.50 on the Nasdaq exchange.


text:
Karla Gray
Send an Email
Chantilly Park
Marion Diehl Park
Inclusive playgrounds are for children of all abilities. The surface is appropriate for wheelchairs and walkers and the equipment is accessible via ramps. Adapted swings are appropriate for children who may still need the safety of a shoulder strap and high seat back. Inclusive playgrounds also contain sensory equipment such as equipment that provides unique visual, tactile, and auditory stimulation.


text:
Message Board
N.P. Figgis Message Board
Talk about the novels, new and used books that Figgis has written!
Author Figgis's Book Reviews
On the Bright Road
Intensly dense and full of descriptions of nature and self, this book studies a dying man from the point of view of the dying man. The book narrates the man's attempt to reach the past. Cathal Kerr begins his journey by trying to figure out how he wants to spend his last days. After learning he has a terminal disease, he runs away from "cash and nooky land", leaving his wife so he can live alone in their summer cottage among the back woods in Wales. ...


text:
The Texas A&M International University Small Business Development Center (TAMIU-SBDC) will kick off its Small Business Management Certificate Program Wednesday, July 15, 2009.
The Small Business Management Program is designed for the aspiring entrepreneur or existing business owners. Its goal is to provide essential business tools. Program completion will enhance management skills and provide a good foundation for success.
Requirements for completing the program include:
A one-time enrollment fee of $35, attending the required eleven courses, completion of two online courses within six months of starting the program and scheduling an advising appointment with an SBDC-Certified Business Advisor.
Upon completion of the program, a reception will be held in honor of the participants. Each will receive a Certificate of Completion recognizing their accomplishment, and will earn a total of 37 hours or 3.7 Continuing Education Units (CEUs).
The Small Business Management Program is valued at $230; those enrolling now will only pay the enrollment fee.
The first course of the program, "The Art of Starting a Business: Basic Business Essentials," starts July 15 from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. at TAMIU's Anthony J. and Georgia A. Pellegrino Hall, room 116.
For more information or to register, call the TAMIU-SBDC office at 326.2827, or e-mail: firstname.lastname@example.com. Office hours are Monday-Friday from 8 a.m. – 5 p.m.
Journalists who need additional information or help with media requests
and interviews should contact the Office of Public Relations, Marketing and Information
Services at email@example.com
Texas A&M International University
5201 University Boulevard
Laredo, TX 78041
© 2019


text:
By my rough calculations, our children spend some 17,640 hours in school, kindergarten through high school.
They meet other kids, discover how to learn and begin the process of critical thinking and writing. For the first time, they interact with other adults who are in charge of them for the school day.
They also learn how to wait, how to control the fidgets, how to get what they need and how to make friends. Some actually learn how to engage intellectually and become leaders among their peers.
Therefore, it seems impossible to overstate the significance of formal schooling in a child's life. Of course we overheat when we debate private vs. public, charter vs. conventional, home schooling vs. outsourcing. Naturally, we obsess over acceptance into just the right nursery school, to be followed by just the right elementary experience.
Except it ain't necessarily so.
I offer my own recent experience by way of suggesting that we take a deep breath and a step back from the frothing concern over our kids' schools. I'm beginning to believe that, with some exceptions, it doesn't matter how kids get their basic education. Many different philosophies and programs can work. There isn't any etched-in-stone blueprint for developing a mind and a heart, and civilizing the incivilities of little boys and girls.
I have the perfect proof in my own family. My grandkids' schools offer wildly different learning experiences.
Let's consider my own school years the "control." I attended traditional public schools all the way through. I feel like saying, "Don't know much about history," because I really don't. I did learn the multiplication table, cold, and all the bridges and tunnels connecting all the boroughs. High school began to get interesting, then, in college, the gears seemed to click into place.
My grandkids are having experiences very different from mine, and from one another. One set of kids goes to school on the East Coast. They attend a posh private school and enjoy small classes, exquisitely designed and maintained outdoor spaces and an intensive focus on academic achievement. The teachers seem supportive and talented; the atmosphere is competitive and potentially stressful for the average learner.


text:
A quick little video I made during last weeks Seahawk-less weekend. It's my first attempt so i'm sorry for the video quality.
Sunday can't come soon enough. Go Hawks!
StaffAmerica74 wrote:Awesome. Like the song a lot too even though I don't generally like hip hop, rap.
Return to [ THE OFFICIAL NET NATION FAN FORUM ]


text:
Did you read today's front page stories & breaking news?
From the Wires
Epson Brings Imaging Solutions for Architects, Engineers and Designers to Center Stage at Autodesk University 2012
Booth Demonstrations Feature Technology How-tos with All-New Epson SureColor T-Series for Technical Printing and Chance to Win Epson SureColor T3000 24-inch Plotter
By: PR Newswire
Nov. 27, 2012 03:01 AM
LAS VEGAS, Nov. 27, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Autodesk University, Booth #645 -- Epson America will offer hands-on demonstrations of its new line of large-format color plotters at Autodesk University 2012 at the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas this week. Epson's booth (#645) will showcase the new T-Series line – the Epson® SureColor® T3000, T5000 and T7000 – designed specifically for today's engineering and scientific professionals, including live demos and a variety of output samples on different media types. In addition, attendees are invited to stop by to enter for a chance to win an Epson SureColor T3000 24-inch plotter at the show.
"Autodesk University attracts design professionals from around the world and offers an engaging forum for attendees to learn, network and explore," said Timothy Check, product manager, Professional Imaging, Epson America. "We are looking forward to talking and interacting with design professionals to look at how Epson's latest printing technologies can impact today's workflows, helping professionals share and communicate their designs."
In addition to ongoing technology demonstrations at the booth, Epson is also supporting this year's Creative Studio and Education lounge with its latest tools and technology for digital content creation and design professionals – the Epson Stylus® Photo R2000 and R3000 13-inch printers. The Creative Studio and Education lounge will give designers, artists and professionals a chance to be creative, experiment with designs, and mix mediums in new and imaginative ways, as well as walk away with designs in hand.
Epson's participation at this year's Autodesk University will give attendees a chance to experience a range of Epson professional imaging solutions, including:
About Epson
Epson is a global imaging and innovation leader whose product lineup ranges from inkjet printers and 3LCD projectors to sensors and other microdevices. Dedicated to exceeding the vision of its customers worldwide, Epson delivers customer value based on compact, energy-saving, and high-precision technologies in markets spanning enterprise and the home to commerce and industry.
Led by the Japan-based Seiko Epson Corporation, the Epson Group comprises more than 81,000 employees in 97 companies around the world, and is proud of its ongoing contributions to the global environment and the communities in which it operates. Epson America, Inc. based in Long Beach, Calif. is Epson's regional headquarters for the U.S., Canada, and Latin America. To learn more about Epson, please visit: www.Epson.com.
You may also connect with Epson America on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/EpsonAmerica), Twitter (http://twitter.com/EpsonAmerica) and (http://twitter.com/EpsonProImaging) and YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/EpsonTV).
1 Single page print speed is based on print engine speed only; multi-page print speed is based on printing and cutting time for a 10-page 34" W x 22" L sized drawing (the T3000 is slightly slower). Total throughput time depends on workstation configuration, file size, print resolution, ink coverage, networking, etc.
Note: Specifications are subject to change. Epson, Epson Stylus, Epson UltraChrome, Epson UltraChrome Hi-Gloss, Epson UltraChrome K3, MicroPiezo, and SureColor are registered trademarks and Epson Exceed Your Vision is a registered logomark of Seiko Epson Corporation. AMC is a trademark of Epson America, Inc. All other product brand names are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of their respective companies. Epson disclaims any and all rights in these marks.
SOURCE Epson
Latest AJAXWorld RIA Stories
Subscribe to the World's Most Powerful Newsletters
Subscribe to Our Rss Feeds & Get Your SYS-CON News Live!
SYS-CON Featured Whitepapers
Most Read This Week


text:
Wm Morrisons Plc
Shop gluten free in Birmingham
About Wm Morrisons Plc
Wm Morrisons Plc offers people with gluten intolerance the comfort and security of being able to buy all the foods they require in one place. The wide range of gluten-free items includes Schär brand products, which guarantee reliability and enjoyment. With the range of products at Wm Morrisons Plc, a gluten-free diet is now easier than ever before. A paradise for people with coeliac disease!


text:
This is an uplifting and motivational Corporate Music track in the style of my hit tracks Fortunate Day and Corporate Vision. Glassy piano sound accompanied by upbeat drums and orchestral string section fills the listener with emotions, motivation and hope. Successful Music for Successful Projects!
Please note that customization of the track for your project or video is possible, you just need to contact me with the details via my profile page.


text:
Awesome productRead More
goooooooooooooooooodRead More
Packaging of the product was very good.Its very handy camera. Rechargeable batteries and charger is also very good and working perfectly fine for me even after 1.5 years.It is a good camera for aRead More
Value for money we enjoyRead More
working fine but no warranty registration option at Nikon site otherwise its good and genuine product ..Read More
Delivery was easy and fast. Thanks snapDeal. You are doing goodRead More
pros: nice quality pictures excellent zoom capacity long lasting battery life Cons: its just semi slr large sizeRead More
PROS: *good zooming lens *superb selfi timer CONS: NORead More
CMOS sensor and 16 MP Zoom make this camera just perfect.Read More
VERY GOOD PRODUCT I RECOMMEND THIS PRODUCT FOR SIMPLE FAMILYRead More


text:
Emmy's Anda Variation
Added May 8, 2012
By burdastyle
New York, New Yo...
All of us at the BurdaStyle office decided to make our own version of the all time BurdaStyle favorite pattern, the Anda dress.
Emmy wanted to see the Anda as top instead of a dress and here it is! She cut the pattern off about 5 in below the waist and omitted the drawstring casing. She also added a panel at the bottom of the front piece and cut this on the other direction for an altering stripe effect. To get the back piece to fall nicely, she made the back slightly longer than the front.
Material Notes
Silk twill
9 Comments Sign in to add a post
Jun 3, 2014, 04.57 PMby vanity221
love it!!!!
May 24, 2012, 09.54 PMby EllenMarieS
Nice use of a stripped fabric.
May 20, 2012, 04.50 PMby lmb
Nice. Great vision on a great way to change this dress style.
May 10, 2012, 02.01 PMby julie-d
I love this version! How much fabric do you think it would take for this? A yard-ish?
May 10, 2012, 02.16 AMby ebookie
really like this as a top. like the play with the direction design also. very. I nice
May 9, 2012, 12.29 PMby Ruffles Gazebo
im a huge fan of sporty chic. Or just really comfy nice clothes which can be dressed up quite nicely
May 9, 2012, 04.16 AMby inoke
beautiful! lovey how you used the fabric.
May 8, 2012, 11.20 PMby sew4my3
I really like the play with direction of the stripes. Also, the longer length in the back is a great little style idea that is showing up in ready-to-wear, as well as a throw back to the 80's. Oops! I'm telling my age. LOL Very nicely done Emmy!
May 8, 2012, 06.53 PMby BeYou TiFul
Looks nice & sporty!
Add to Favorites 43 people added it
This project is based on
AndaMake it
- Anda #7969 $5.99 Add to Cart


text:
Convicted murderer calls for inquest
Tasmania's chief magistrate has been asked to conduct an inquest into the death of a physicist whose former partner is serving a 23-year sentence for his murder.
Radiation physicist Bob Chappell, 65, was last seen alive on his yacht Four Winds on January 26, 2009.
His partner, Sue Neill-Fraser, was convicted of his murder in October 2010 but has steadfastly maintained her innocence.
Mr Chappell's body was never found.
The sabotaged yacht was partially submerged but still on its mooring at Sandy Bay the day after he disappeared.
Ms Neill-Fraser's solicitor Barbara Etter lodged the request for the inquest on the four-year anniversary of Mr Chappell's disappearance.
She said there had never been a completed formal inquest into his death.
"Ms Neill-Fraser's conviction was based entirely on a circumstantial case, with no body, no weapon, no forensic evidence linking her to the crime scene, no plausible motive, no admissions or confessions and no eyewitnesses to the actual crime," Mrs Etter said in a statement on Saturday.
Neill-Fraser's daughter Sarah Bowles has likened her mother's case to that of Lindy Chamberlain and the death of her baby Azaria at Uluru in 1980.
"There is a palpable and continuing sense of unease and disquiet in the community about the case and the soundness of our mother's conviction," Mrs Bowles said.
"There are serious reservations regarding the thoroughness of the police investigation into Bob's disappearance and death and it is in the public interest and in the interests of justice, to conduct a fair and impartial inquest.
"We see this as very similar to Lindy Chamberlain's situation, where a person has been convicted in a dubious circumstantial case."
Mrs Bowles was in primary school when Mr Chappell moved in with her family.
She said she and her sister Emma respected and admired him as a father figure and are profoundly distressed that they do not know what happened to him.
Tasmania's Supreme Court dismissed an appeal against the murder conviction in March last year.


text:
Sassy Go-Go Bugs10835
These Go-Go Bugs are always ready to play. Each playful bug has its own unique sound to stimulate baby's hearing while high contrast colors attract visual interest. Easy to attach Velcro straps allow you to hang from baby's carrier seat for fun on-the-go. Set of three soft bugs.
Ages: Birth & up


text:
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. – In a battle of engineering schools, MIT took on the Rose Hulman Institute of Technology on Friday night at the MIT Shooting Center. In a close one the Fightin' Engineers from Indiana edged the Engineers in both small bore and air rifle to take a slim 4417-4377 win. Sophomore Sarah Wright (Christchurch, New Zealand) took top individual honors in the small bore competition for MIT.
Wright fired off her first four rounds above the 95-point mark, including a 99 in her second prone position round to total a 566, a new career best for the sophomore. Evan Duvall from Rose Hulman was second overall with a 553, while senior Kaiying Liao (Issaquah, Wash.) and Suzanne Eisenberger of the Fightin' Engineers tied for third with final totals of 550, with Liao scoring above 90 four times. Sophomores David D'Achiardi (Bogota, Colombia) and Abra Shen (Toronto, Ontario) completed the MIT scoring with scores of 535 and 528, with Shen also establishing a new career mark with her score.
Among the scores not counted in the team total, freshman Kelly Mathesius (Aurora, Ill.) led the Engineers with a 489.
MIT also captured top honors in air rifle as freshman Jia Yi Goh (Singapore) saw all of her rounds score 92 or better on her way to a 576. Adam Foss led Rose Hulman in air rifle, posting a 568 to finish second overall, with Duvall close behind in third with a 564. Wright was second for MIT and fourth overall with a 557, with Liao turning in a 545 and freshman Zi-Ning Choo (Naperville, Ill.) rounding out the scoring with a 520 for the Engineers.
Six other competitors shot for MIT in air rifle, with five reaching the 500-point mark. Freshman Kevin Ng (Coral Springs, Fla.) led the group with a 517.


text:
American Airlines Vacations Coupons & Promo Codes
Most popular now: Check Out All Inclusive Vacation Packages.
Latest offer: Enjoy Amazing Flight + Hotel Packages in London, England.
Book your Flight & Hotel Together for Big Savings!
Check Out All Inclusive Vacation Packages
AAdvantage Members Earn Up to an Extra 500 Bonus Miles
Just Book your Vacation Package Online!
Visit the Fascinating Far East w/ Vacation Packages to Japan, China & Beyond
The possibilities to explore are endless!
Dreaming of Europe! Check Out Flight + Hotel Deals
Rates from $1220 per person.
Huge Savings in the Special Offers Section!
Say Aloha to these Hawaii Vacation Deals
Explore the Hawaiian Islands with one of our AA Vacation Packages!
Enjoy Amazing Flight + Hotel Packages in London, England
How to use American Airlines Vacations coupons
Visit American Airlines Vacations to check their seasonal specials to locations like New York City, Las Vegas, Disney, The Caribbean and more. Pay for your travel package with miles or earn up to 500 miles per stay. Sign up for exclusive email coupons.


text:
Subscribe To Len Wiseman Looking To Direct The Mummy Reboot Updates
I've already subscribed
Only a little more than a month after the release of his version of Total Recall, Len Wiseman is getting ready to get back into the reboot/remake game. The filmmaker is reportedly now in talks with Universal Pictures to direct The Mummy, the studio's attempt to restart the massively successful adventure franchise that began in 1999. The movie is being produced by Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci through their K/O Paper Products banner and Jon Spaihts, who is best known for his work on Ridley Scott's Prometheus and Chris Gorak's The Darkest Hour, is writing the script.
While it looks like no official deal is in place just yet, Deadline recently spoke with the Kurtzman about the director potentially handling the project and lauded his ability to create mythology. "I remember seeing Underworld and finding it a beautiful advancement of the genre," Kurtzman told the site. "It was presented in this fresh, incredibly cool concept, but it never gave up its reverence for the mythology and that is what inspired us to meet with Len." The producers have actually worked with Wiseman before, as the director helmed the pilot episode of the duo's Hawaii Five-O series, which premiered in 2010, and they are also working with him on their upcoming Sleepy Hollow show for Fox.
As for the approach to the material that Kurtzman and Orci are taking, apparently they are still going for audiences of all ages and gender, but they do plan on making the tone a bit darker. "We're reaching into the deep roots of The Mummy, which at its beating heart is a horror movie and then an action movie, and putting it into a context that is real and emotional," Kurtzman said. "Without saying too much, we've drawn a lot of inspiration from Michael Crichton's books, and how he ground fantastical sales in modern day science."
As for Wiseman, he told the site that what interests him about the project is that at his most basic the Mummy is still a man. "They haven't turned his brain into a monster brain," the director said. "He still has a personality and is very cunning and calculating. He's a true character in any form, and in creature form, even if he is that staggering creature, it becomes more important that he's a thinking, calculating person."
The project is currently looking at a potentially summer 2014 release date, meaning that it will likely go into production next year.


text:
South Dakota Hits The Road For A Summit League Reality Check
It's been the most impressive stretch of basketball South Dakota has played all year - five wins in their last six Summit League games, including three straight victories to start the second half against teams they lost to the first time around.
That recent success has led to a new found confidence for head coach Amy Williams' team, although see knows her team now needs to win some games on the road to keep the good times going:
Last week, the Coyotes ever improving defense was on display, first against a Fort Wayne team that had beaten USD by 18 last month in Indiana on the strength of 13 3-pointers.
On their home floor, the Coyotes won by 13, limiting the Mastodons to just three long range baskets on 27 attempts.
Coach Williams says a combination of factors helped keep IPFW frustrated from behind the arc:
Two days later, USD avenged a 21-point loss to the Summit League's second place team IUPUI.
Again it was defense getting the job for for the Coyotes, limiting the Jaguars to 27 percent second half shooting, winning by 18 despite shooting just 38 percent themselves.
USD did get a bit of a scare early when IUPUI's 3-point specialist Nicole Rogers hit her first two from behind the arc, giving IUPUI a short lived eight point lead:
This week finds the Coyotes back on the road for the final time in the Summit League regular season. Conference games away from Vermillion have been an adventure for USD, five losses in six tries, by an average of nearly 13 points a game.
The road trip starts in Omaha Thursday, against a Maverick team the Coyotes beat by 24 in the DakotaDome last month.
It's an Omaha team that boasts a lot of size, but that didn't stop Lisa Loeffler, who scored 17 in the first half to pace USD in the game one win:
Tipoff is Thursday at 7:00pm in Omaha.