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a love letter to our future life (the vespa dream).
for the two of us, it'll have to be black.
we'll tackle manhattan with that vespa.
find the perfect basket to fit our groceries,
abandon it on nights when we've drunk
too much at our favorite west village haunt.
returning the next morning for a restorative mocha
before we push in the key and speed back home. home,
where we'll collapse in bed with groans and giggles
and pass out till late afternoon. i'll wake to find you looking
right at me: lets do it again, you'll say. a slow smile will fill
me as i burry my head in that special, sloping valley
of your neck and you'll know i am
lost. i am yours. and i will go. of course
i will go.
29 comments:
- Alivia said...
Found your blog through Emily's Follow Friday post (emilykaatherine.com)
This is so simply beautiful. I'm having a hard time explaining how much it both breaks and warms my heart.
- Friday, July 08, 2011
- Chelsea said...
i just wanted you to know... that now when i put my makeup under my eyes... i DAB it, only because of your tutorial. haha. i realize this is random, but clearly important! xoxo
- Friday, July 08, 2011
- Ana* said...
your writing is so addictive, I have to make time to check your blog "everyday" regardless of how busy I am.
I know you hear this all the time, but you're a GREAT, GREAT writer!
- Friday, July 08, 2011
- Bridget said...
can i have this life with you? i can leave the baby home with steve.
maybe minus the neck-burrowing but everything else?
seriously, you're a great writer.
- Friday, July 08, 2011
- viktorija said...
But what happened to the red Vespa? :( Beautiful writing, Meg, seriously.
- Friday, July 08, 2011
- Emily said...
Meg, I really liked this. Hope your summer is going well! You are awesome.
- Friday, July 08, 2011
- mia said...
Aw, I loved this! It's the magic you find in the everyday that makes life sparkly special and romantic :)
- Friday, July 08, 2011
- wildchild said...
- Friday, July 08, 2011
- Alex said...
This needs to be published somewhere. It's simply magical.
- Friday, July 08, 2011
- EttaGrace said...
ugh. i just love how your write... so perfect... sigh.
- Friday, July 08, 2011
- Georgette said...
Oh Meg,
You are so incredibly talented.
Your writing is simply golden.
Life affirming beauty.
xo Georgette
- Friday, July 08, 2011
Utter and total *SWOON*
Love this! ♥
- Friday, July 08, 2011
Love this. So beautiful, Meg.
- Friday, July 08, 2011
- The Lewicutt's est 2006 said...
Ohhhh, I love!!!
Reminds me of the *us* pre-baby.
- Friday, July 08, 2011
- withoutizy said...
Oh my gosh! YES
- Saturday, July 09, 2011
As reading your beautiful texts, I'm wondering, have you ever considered to not find that man of your dreams? To not get married one day?
In fact you're one of the most adorable, most beautiful girls out there, but sometimes thing might not just work out the way we want them.
So I was wondering, what if...?
- Saturday, July 09, 2011
You are so talented, and these dreams that you have and write of are previews of what's to come in your life :)
- Saturday, July 09, 2011
- wilybrunette said...
@anonymous: as someone who got a degree in acting--studied four years of college to do that and only that, and is not doing it, trust me when i say that i am acutely aware that often life veers off from what you dream of. i may not find the man, and i may not find the vespa, and that's okay. these letters are not exact formulas i'm plotting, but more of an idea, a suggestion of a future filled with adventure and fun and love--whether it be with one person or many. what if...indeed. (maybe it'll be even better than i ever dreamed). one can hope! xo.
- Saturday, July 09, 2011
- Emily said...
Oh that sounds just marvelous! I would love a day like that myself. You will have that, my dear!
- Saturday, July 09, 2011
- Mackenzie said...
i just let out a full body sigh. meg, you simply are something.
- Monday, July 11, 2011
- Bee Sarah Lee Bailey said...
- Monday, July 11, 2011
- Jenni @ Story of My Life said...
legit gave me goosebumps.
- Tuesday, July 12, 2011
- Danielle V. said...
This is absolutely perfect. I wish I had something more substantial to say. But I just... this made me smile so very much.
Thanks for sharing :)
- Tuesday, July 12, 2011
But...what if you fell in love with someone who didn't want to live in New York? Then you would have to ditch the vespa and the west village and mochas and all those other inanimate, material expectations about what you expect from love/romance.
I guess my real question/fascination with not just you but everyone who pins a lot of romantic expectations on inanimate objects/foods/locations is: have you ever been in a real relationship/love?
This sounds like a snarky and mean question but I am genuinely, honestly curious. I'm sure you'll delete this but it was worth a shot.
- Thursday, July 14, 2011
- wilybrunette said...
dear anonymous:
i only find the comment snarky/mean because you drew attention to that 1. by posting it anonymously and 2.by underrating me so much to think i'd just immediately delete it.
the vespa dream and all these little notes--i write about the small things because they are a way in. something tangible. but they aren't really about the things or items or what can be touched. they are a portal (for me) to dream about the big stuff. when i write about the west village and vespas i'm trying to touch on adventure. whimsy. a zest for life.
i work very hard and want very specific things for my future so don't be fooled: i am more than keenly aware of a need for the practical. it's about finding a balance.
if i fall in love with a man from india or south carolina, so be it. i'm not set on new york. i'm not really set on anything. i imagine we'll the two of us decide, together. and i am also aware that each man is a world unto himself--each man offers the promise of a different life. life with an actor will be very different than life with an investment banker, writer, zoologist and on and on.
i'm twenty-five. i have had relationships. but they are mine. private. and it's my choice to share only bits and pieces of those relationships here. by the same time i'm still quite young. and that i've not yet found "the one"--if such a thing exists--is just fine by me as well.
with appreciation,
- Thursday, July 14, 2011
- Nicole Marie said...
you are seriously an amazing amazing writer
- Thursday, July 14, 2011
- Jennifer M. said...
Oooh I want this!! So romantic. I hope that someday someone looks at me like that.
- Thursday, July 14, 2011
- Clio is ainm dom. said...
beautiful! i very much hope that one day soon you meet this man :)
- Thursday, July 14, 2011
- Gabby said...
love this.
- Friday, July 15, 2011


text:
March 14, 2007
Gary Bannon '76, one of the College's most acclaimed biochemists, will return to his alma mater today to give two public lectures as part of the Haines Biochemistry Lecture Series.
Dr. Bannon will give a general lecture at 12:00 noon Thursday on "Farms, Science, and Society." His talk will be presented in Hays Hall, Room 319. A light lunch will be served.
While on campus, he will also give a more scientific talk, "Allergy and Biotechnology: Perceptions and Reality" at 4:15 p.m. Wednesday in Hays Hall Room 319.
Bannon is the lead scientist in the Protein Sciences of Global Regulatory Division at Monsanto, Corporation, but his career began in education.
After receiving his master's degree from ball State and Ph.D. from Iowa State, the Wabash biology and psychology double major completed a Post-Doc at the University of Rochester in the field of molecular biology. He received the American Cancer Society's Postdoctoral Fellowship, along with the National Institutes of Health Postdoctoral Fellowship.
He would spend the next 17 years as a professor in the department of biochemistry within the University of Arkansas Medical School. He served as vice-chair of the department from 1997 through 2001, and in 1998 earned the rank of full professor.
Dr. Bannon left the University of Arkansas in 2001 to begin his impressive career with the Monsanto Company, beginning as manager of Allergy and Special Projects in the Product Safety Center. He's currently a team leader in the Protein Sciences Division.
Dr. Bannon has published literally scores of articles in academic journals, and he serves on the editorial review board for the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology. He co-owns four US patents on research he has done on allergies. He was the co-founder of Panacea (now Seer), a start-up biotechnology company.
The Haines Lecture in Biochemistry is sponsored by the William J. and Wilma M. Haines Fund for the Study in Biochemistry, a fund endowed by Dr. Willaim J. Haines '40 and his wife Wilma J. "Shorty" Haines. The fund supports faculty-student research, equipment needs, and public programs related to the role of biochemistry in the College's science education curriculum.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Thurs 6pm - Football in Battersea
When and Where
Thursday, July 19, 2018Repeats Weekly on Thursdays
ONLINE £6.00 /per person
Venue Details
- 3G artificial grass surface (astroturfs recommended)
- Short & wide goals
- Showers & Changing rooms available
- Closest stations: Clapham Junction, Wandsworth Town
Game Play Rules
- Be on time (1 hour game)
- No slide tackles
- Enjoy the game and be positive
- No shouting, no aggressive behaviour
- Keep everybody involved in the game
- Any problems or questions get in touch with Danny on 07527326064
Everyone must play fair, respect their team-mates and opponents.
Footy Addicts' Code of Conduct must be respected at all times.
Pay via Credit/Debit card or PayPal account in order to secure your spot in the game.
If for any reason you cannot make it to the game you need to modify your RSVP as soon as possible, in order to free your spot. In case you are in the attendance list and you do no turn up for the game, you will be marked as a No-Show.
Please bring both a light and dark top with you to help splitting the teams at the pitch.
1 Review


text:
Off to the beach? Be sure to pack a few good books for those lazy hours under the umbrella. Whether your taste tends toward mysteries, chick lit, true adventure, or one of the great classics, you will find much to choose from at your local library.
If you don't want to lug a book to the beach, then consider a pre-loaded MP3 Playaway player -- smaller than a deck of cards; lighter than a feather. This little listening device requires one AAA battery, earbuds and, voila, you have a book in a small box. Playaways provide the perfect literary beach experience: gazing out upon the ocean (or keeping an eye on the kids) while being entertained by an engaging novel. Let's not forget the eBook option either. Beaufort County libraries have an eBook library available for download through the library's 3M Cloud Library subscription. Contact your local branch for details about compatible e-reader devices and the login procedure to take advantage of this handy eBook service.
Here are a few beach read "teasers" for your reading or listening pleasure:
"Lowcountry Boil: A Liz Talbot Mystery"
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By Susan M. Beyer
Private investigator Liz Talbot is a modern Southern belle. She carries her Sig 9 in her Kate Spade handbag, and her golden retriever, Rhett, rides shotgun in her hybrid Escape. When her grandmother is murdered, Liz high-tails it back to her South Carolina island home to find the killer. She's fit to be tied when her police-chief brother shuts her out of the investigation, so she opens her own. Then her long-dead best friend pops in and things really get complicated. When more folks start turning up dead in this small seaside town, Liz must use more than just her wits and charm to keep her family safe, chase down clues from the hereafter and catch a psychopath before he catches her.
"Whiskey Beach"
By Nora Roberts
For more than 300 years, Bluff House has sat above Whiskey Beach, guarding its shore -- and its secrets. But to Eli Landon, it's home. Suffering an intense year of public and police scrutiny after being wrongly implicated in his fiance's murder, Boston lawyer Eli Landon takes sanctuary in his family home and falls in love with resident housekeeper, Abra Walsh, with whom he is entangled in an old, life-threatening mystery.
"And the Mountains Echoed"
By Khaled Hosseini
This is the third novel by the best-selling author of "The Kite Runner." Hosseini takes us back to Afghanistan to follow the lives of a brother and sister and their families that spread out through the world like ripples in the vast sea of countries and disparate cultures. This is a story that vividly captures the tragic lives of refugees; families torn apart and reborn on foreign shores -- the struggle to find peace, safety and a new connection while yearning for the familiar bond of family.
"A Certain Summer"
By Patricia Beard
Helen Wadsworth's husband, Arthur, was declared missing in action during an OSS operation in France, but the official explanation was mysteriously nebulous. Now raising a teenage son who longs to know the truth about his father, Helen turns to Frank Hartman -- her husband's best friend and his partner on the mission when he disappeared. Frank, however, seems more intent on filling the void in Helen's life that Arthur's absence has left. As Helen's affection for Frank grows, so does her guilt, especially when Peter Gavin, a handsome Marine who was brutally tortured by the Japanese and has returned with a faithful war dog, unexpectedly stirs new desires. With her heart pulled in multiple directions, Helen doesn't know whom to trust -- especially when a shocking discovery forever alters her perception of both love and war.
Francesca Denton is the reference manager at Beaufort library.


text:
Featuring Nicole Vice in Bigboy
We bring you the most beautiful and natural girls in the world. They are all you could ever wish for and more. Some of them are already famous and popular on the web; others are being photographed in all their natural nakedness for the very first time.


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Palestine: Woman Murdered by Relatives to "Maintain Family Honor"
According to police sources, a police patrol arrived at the house of Mohammed Hussein al-Najjar, in the al-Brazil neighborhood of southern Rafah late on the evening of 3 June, as the police had been informed of a murder at the house. A police officer discovered the body of Khouloud Mohammed al-Najjar, and the police immediately transported the body to the local hospital. Her father, Mohammed Hussein al-Najjar, was arrested, and during questioning he apparently confessed that his daughter having died as a result of having been severely beaten by members of her family for her "immoral behavior."
PCHR utterly condemns this crime, and:
1) Calls for an immediate investigation into the circumstances of Kholoud al-Najjar's death, and for the perpetrators to be brought to justice.
2) Expresses extreme concern over the recurrence of women being murdered in order to "maintain family honor" in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT). The perpetrators of these crimes enjoy virtual immunity as they are sentenced to short periods of imprisonment, not usually exceeding 3 civil years (which results in approximately 24 months in custody).
3) Calls for severe penalties against the perpetrators of such crimes as a deterrent, and for so-called Honour Crimes to be regarded in the same light any other willful killings. Also PCHR calls for strict adherence to the appropriate provisions of the law and international human rights standards. To date perpetrators of so-called Honour Crimes have received extremely light sentences.
04 June 2008
Source: http://www.pchrgaza.org/files/PressR/English/2008/55-2008.html


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Grace United Methodist Church
Monday, March 25, 2019
To serve and unite those we touch with the Grace of God
The Journey: 4-6
Date: Wednesday, May 02, 2018
Time: 6:30 PM - 7:00 PM
Pathway is for grades K-3 and The Journey for Grades 4 and up. Pathway will meet from 6:00-6:30, when they are invited to participate in God's Kids choir. Youth Choir for grades 4-8 rehearses from 6:00-6:30. These students are then invited to The Journey from 6:30-7:00.
Wednesday Night Programming
5:30-6:45 p.m. — Supper, $5.00 a person or $10 for a family.
6:00 p.m. — Youth Choir (grades 4-8) and Pathway for K-3
6:30 p.m. — God's Kids choir (grades K-3) and The Journey for grades 4-8
6:00 p.m. — Adult studies with Pastor Jen
7:00 p.m. —Adult Choir Practice
Grace United Methodist Church
15309 Maple Island Road, Burnsville, MN 55306
Phone: 952-435-5696


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Making Sense of the Drug Interaction Warning for HIV/HCV-Coinfected Patients Taking Victrelis
By Barbara McGovern, M.D.
February 28, 2012
In April of 2010, an advisory panel to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (of which I am a member) urged approval of the hepatitis C (HCV) protease inhibitor Victrelis (boceprevir) for the treatment of patients with HCV infection. At the same time, we also requested more studies on drug interactions between Victrelis and HIV drugs in preparation for treatment studies in the HIV/HCV-coinfected patient.
Sometimes drug interactions are a good thing because they can lead to increased levels of a medication, which may help it work better. For example, the HIV protease inhibitors Kaletra (lopinavir), Prezista (darunavir) and Reyataz (atazanavir) are usually given with Norvir (ritonavir) to boost their levels in your blood. This leads to great suppression of your HIV infection.
But drug interactions can also be a bad thing because sometimes they cause low drug levels in your blood. Low drug levels can lead to loss of control of your HIV. Unfortunately, a study of drug interactions between Victrelis and Norvir-boosted HIV protease inhibitors in healthy volunteers has now shown that blood levels of these HIV drugs went down too low. In addition, Victrelis blood levels went down too low as well. This is really disappointing news.
What does this mean? Low blood levels usually mean that the effectiveness of your HIV and your HCV treatment is not as good as it should be.
What should you do? If you are taking Victrelis with HIV medications, contact your doctor to see if you need to change your HIV medications. Right now, the safest bet is to take Truvada (tenofovir/FTC) plus Isentress (raltegrevir) because there aren't any interactions with Victrelis to worry about. However, all changes to your HIV medications need to be discussed carefully with your HIV doctor who knows you best.
For any of you who are taking the other recently approved HCV protease inhibitor, Incivek (telaprevir), along with HIV medications, the drug interactions have been studied already and we already know which HIV medications you should take. As with Victrelis, some drug interactions can lead to low blood levels. That is why Incivek is only recommended with one of the following HIV treatment regimens:
As you can see, you have more HIV drug choices if you take Incivek. This may help you and your doctor figure out which HCV treatment is best for you.
If you have questions about treating HIV/hepatitis C coinfection, Dr. McGovern is available to answer them! Visit our "Ask the Experts" forum on Hepatitis & HIV Coinfection to ask Dr. McGovern your question or browse her archive of answers.
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adding your comment, please read TheBody.com's Comment Policy.)
Making Progress on HCV Treatment in HIV-Infected Patients
Barbara McGovern, M.D., is an associate professor of medicine at the Tufts University School of Medicine and an attending physician in the Division of Infectious Diseases at Lemuel Shattuck Hospital in Boston. She is a widely published researcher and frequent lecturer on issues pertaining to HIV and coinfections with hepatitis B and hepatitis C. More information about Dr. McGovern is available on her bio page.
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Recent Posts:
May 17, 2012 - Incivek Rash Reports: What HIV/Hepatitis C-Coinfected People Need to Know -- A Blog Entry by Barbara McGovern, M.D.
April 3, 2012 - More News on HIV Drug Interactions With New HCV Drugs -- This Time With Daclatasvir: A Blog Entry by Barbara McGovern, M.D.
March 28, 2012 - Incivek Triple Therapy Looks Simply Great in HIV/HCV-Coinfected Patients: A Blog Entry by Barbara McGovern, M.D.
March 26, 2012 - Victrelis in the Spotlight for HIV/HCV-Coinfected Patients: A Blog Entry by Barbara McGovern, M.D.
February 28, 2012 - Making Sense of the Drug Interaction Warning for HIV/HCV-Coinfected Patients Taking Victrelis: A Blog Entry by Barbara McGovern, M.D.
A Brief Disclaimer:
The opinions expressed by TheBody.com's bloggers are entirely their own, and do not necessarily reflect the views of TheBody.com itself.


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Streacom Unveils Cube-Shaped DB4 Fanless (HSF) Chassis
Subject: Cases and Cooling | June 10, 2013 - 11:54 AM | Tim Verry
Tagged: streacom db4, streacom, hsf, Fanless PSU, fanless, cpu cooler
Streacom recently showed off a new cube-shaped case called the DB4. The new case measures 250 x 250 x 250mm (a bit under 10 inches cubed) and doubles as a passive heatsink for internal components.
The Streacom DB4 is a large cube with vertical finned sides that is held aloft by a thin angled bar. The case is intended to be used as the base for a passively cooled desktop PC. Each side of the cube-shaped DB4 case can cool 65W TDP parts, for a total cooling potential of 260W. In addition to being able to cool processors and low-end graphics cards passively, the case also cools the bundled ZeroFlex 250W fanless power supply.
Unfortunately, Streacom is not showing off the internals or detailing how the PC components are connected to the side(s) of the case. When asked for details by Fanless Tech, Streamcom responded that "we will reveal the internal alyout after all patents are through."
Streacom expects to have the case available for sale sometime between late September or early October for 200 Euros. This is a neat case that is not only fanless, but a work of art. I could see myself using this. What do you think about the Streacom DB4?
Video News
I like this. Need to know more but it looks like an abstract sculpture.
It is really nice to see someone with original thinking about case design rather than simply providing small variations on the same designs we ahve seen for the last 20 years
"we will reveal the internal layout after all patents are through."
Now that I want to see, It must be something that can be heavily adjusted to fit a wide range of layouts.


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However, right now Jerry Manuel has the luxury of using the expanded roster. That won't be the case next week. He'll need to pick a pitching staff. I think it will be 12 deep.
Here's mine:
1. Johan Santana
2. Mike Pelfrey
3. Oliver Perez
4. Pedro Martinez
5. Aaron Heilman
6. Scott Schoeneweis
7. Pedro Feliciano
8. Joe Smith
9. Brian Stokes
10. Luis Ayala
11. Duaner Sanchez
12. Richard Rincon


text:
On a mission to prevent HIV among children
Doctor credits screening of mothers with reduced transmission of the disease
The HIV care community was rocked in early March by the announcement that a Mississippi doctor's aggressive, early treatment of an infected baby, now 21/2, "cured" her, a pediatric first. Chronicle reporter Todd Ackerman talked to Dr. Mark Kline, architect of Baylor College of Medicine's Peace Corps-like initiative providing HIV treatment to children in Africa and Romania and one of the world's foremost pediatric AIDS experts, about the supposed breakthrough.
Q: What was your reaction to the Mississippi case?
A: I think the case was grossly overstated, the use of the word "cure" really unfortunate. I don't think we can assume that the therapy given to this baby, beginning at 30 hours, played a role in the subsequent course that's been observed. I don't think this is a cure. I think it's one of these unusual cases we see from time to time where a baby's immune system holds the virus in check.
Q: How common are such patients?
A: I have a 22-year-old patient, born with HIV, who has never had treatment because his immune system has kept the infection in check all that time. I have many other patients who have made it to 11, 12, 14 years of age without therapy, with the infection well in check. If I'd treated my 22-year-old patient with highly active antiretroviral therapy, I could have written a case report that early aggressive treatment put the infection into check and that we should do that with everyone. And that would have been wrong.
They're unusual cases. They're the exception, not the rule. But they do occur.
Q: How frequent is the transmission of the HIV virus from mother to baby?
A: Even without any treatment, it's not very frequent. Before we had anything to offer pregnant women with HIV or their babies, pre-1985, only 20 to 25 percent acquired HIV. So 75 to 80 percent of babies escape infection.
Q: Had no one ever done this before, treat a 30-hour-old baby with aggressive therapy?
A: People have done it. These doctors just put it out there. I don't have a quarrel with the decision by Dr. (Hannah) Gay, after weighing the risks and benefits, to start therapy so soon if she thought it was a particularly high-risk case. I might not have done it, but I don't particularly question it. My concern is the way they put it out there – creating a press release, appearing on NBC, ABC, CBS and CNN to say we gave the baby treatment and think it led to a cure, think this should be used for other babies. That's a real leap.
Q: And yet the case was lapped up, not just by the media, but by pediatric AIDS experts.
A: It was. I was surprised at the number of people who jumped on the bandwagon. I just wasn't one of them. I've gotten correspondence from clinicians around the world, from South Africa, Europe and other places, asking whether they should start treating every baby born to mothers with HIV with this regimen and stop therapy on babies not showing symptoms? The implications of what these doctors put out are pretty extensive.
Q: How have existing strategies changed outcomes?
A: In 1995, I was seeing three or four newly infected babies a month at Texas Children's. We now see maybe one case a year. That's a direct consequence of screening, treatment of moms and preventive therapy of babies. Nationwide, the numbers have dropped from 1,000 new cases a year to 100. We're never going to get absolutely everybody, but we could largely eliminate pediatric HIV and AIDS today if we redoubled our efforts to screen pregnant women for HIV.
Q: How about in the Third World?
A:In Botswana, where our clinic's been open 10 years, both the number of babies born with HIV and the rate of transmission have absolutely plummeted under the strategy used in the United States. New infections among babies have declined 60 percent from 2000 to 2010 and the percentage of infants born HIV infected has declined from 21 percent to 4 percent.
The World Health Organization estimates the 50 to 60 percent of pregnant women in the developing world have access to treatment. So, yes, that leaves 40 to 50 percent without access, but those are the very places where the sort of approach used in Mississippi would be completely impractical. In places where you've had so little success rolling out treatment for pregnant women, how much success are you going to have rolling out treatment for babies in the first 24 hours of life?
Q: So this supposed breakthrough isn't even worth a clinical trial?
A: I wouldn't have a particular quarrel with a trial, but I think the ethics will need to be debated very thoroughly. There's going to have to be very careful monitoring and safeguards put in place. Unlike their single case, most babies enrolled would be uninfected with HIV. You'd be exposing them to these medications and hoping they don't suffer some adverse event.


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I hope everyone here had a Merry Christmas yesterday, soon the new year will be upon us! Can't wait to see what 2019 will bring and hopefully it'll be another good year for everyone. Bless you all:
So on Friday I got Smash Ultimate before work and have been playing it often at times. There is just so much to do and I love it!
Spirits are fun to get but on the Spirits Board having to shoot at the character you just fought and not hit the spinning shield is a bit tedious, especially if the shield is spinning fast. They mitigate this somewhat with items and second chances, and if you still hit the shield that part that broke off stays off on the next rematch, so that's cool.
Let's just say we never saw him coming...
Persona 5's protagonist Joker is the first of the DLC characters to be revealed for Smash Ultimate!
Trailer here:
Pretty exciting right!? To be honest I never thought of having a Persona character in, not that I thought it was impossible just very low chances, but I'm super excited since I love Persona and with 5 being my favorite this makes me very happy!
So on October 26 I got My Hero One's Justice at launch (and Red Dead Redemption 2 even though I already have enough PS4 games, I caved okay the first game is good!) and after spending two days completing the story mode and doing a couple of CPU battles to get the feel of it, I've decided to post my thoughts on the game through a good, bad, and neutral points.
- The Switch version's graphics actually aren't all that bad! Despite complaints and predictions for it, the graphic
So after the Smash Direct on the 8th of this month revealing new characters which I am excited for (except for Dark Samus but it's whatever), but especially excited for Simon, Richter, and Chrom! But it got me thinking of what other characters they could add, so I decided to put in a list of who I want to see get in. (please note that I know they probably don't have a chance anyway and if they do show a new character again in the future it'll most likely be one or two more, this is just my wishlist)


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The Heritage Octagon Hearth Pad - Spring Breeze is a uniquely designed hearth pad that adds beauty and a peace of mind for you and your family. This hearth pad is manufactured by skilled craftsman in America using the finest quality materials. This hearth pad can be used with solid fuel burning stoves - wood, pellet or coal.
- Sizes: 24" x 32", 24" x 36"
- Meets and exceeds UL standards
- R-Value of .84 (Type I) and 1.40 (Type II) ember protection
Constructed of non-combustible materials with an iron frame and 6" border. With multiple options to select from, you are sure to find the perfect size, shape and color to match your home decor and stove installation standards. Add trim, a pedestal or even a matching wall pad!
The Heritage Hearth Pads are tested to meet and exceed UL standards for ember and thermal protection. All of the hearth pads have a standard ember protection (Type I) with an R-Value of .84. You can upgrade to a thermal protection (Type II), which has an R-Value of 1.40 -- the highest in the industry. A Type II is used if it is required by the stove manufacturer or local codes.


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NVIDIA Crates the GeForce GTX 690
Subject: Graphics Cards | April 30, 2012 - 03:17 PM | Ryan Shrout
Tagged: nvidia, kepler, GTX 690, geforce
There has been a lot of excitement building about the GeForce GTX 690 dual-GPU graphics card, with the apex during CEO Jen-Hsun Huang's keynote that released all kinds of details this weekend. We go our review sample of the new graphics beast this morning and needless to say NVIDIA felt the need to give this $999 video card a special ride.
With the imprint of "Caution: Weapons Grade Gaming Power" on the outside of the crate, NVIDIA obviously wanted to give us a chance to use the pry bar sent last week. And use it we did.
There isn't much more we can say about the card itself but I can tell you that the fit and finish of the design is just impressive to see in person.
I have included quite a few more photos of the unboxing and the card itself if you continue to the full post right here!!
Video News
holy.. F***!
For 1,000$ it better be in a crate and packaged with extra care.
I wonder what the delivery guy was thinking when he pulled that out of the truck.
Well... I'm jealous, that is a gorgeous card, the lights are a nice touch too. Although I don't understand the windows, what are you supposed to see?
Can you test temperatures with and without the windows? : )
Also, what is that Intel water cooler? I didn't know they made one.
Doesn't look like you can remove the windows very easily...
Sorry to say, if you buy one, I don't think it will be coming in a crate. Heh.
The Intel cooler is the one they launched with the X79/Sandy Bridge-E platform: http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Processors/Intel-Sandy-Bridge-E-Review-Core...
I don't think you'd want to remove the windows. It looks like it creates a sealed chamber so the heat exhausts out the back of the card and out of your case instead of inside. I'd also think that taking off the windows would impact the air flow through the card killing the cooling performance. But that's just from light observation.
For that 1k price tag, I would have expected to see a back plate added to it (to help prevent warping of the pcb).
The windows are a pointless 'feature'... look, you can see the dust build-up!
Also, I wonder if the core's are underclocked..
From our previous, linked above, story:
"The base clock speed of these parts is slightly lower at 915 MHz but the "typical" Boost clock is set as high as 1019 MHz..."
I can has this?
no no no I can haz
Looks soo puuurty!! If only i had the money to buy one :(
I Just had a great idea. You could always give away one :P
Are you allowed to divulge what the minimum reccommended PSU wattage would be?
I think it is 650 watts.
I see some cool mods that can be done one this card's stock cooler, like placing some LED under the window panel. Apart from that it is the best looking video card I have seen in a very long time.
thanks Ryan for the great shot of it about as close as I ever get to one.
what more can I say other then I want but will never have that type of cash on hand to buy it.
but still I want and WOW
I'm a little confused why people are leaving comments referring to $999.99 being "expensive." I understand $1000 is a lot of money in general, but GTX 680s are regularly selling for $599.99 right now ($100 over MSRP), and this has 2 of them. $999.99 at current market prices is a steal.
....Reminds of when the 8800GTX was released and the price people were paying for it....
Are you guys free to do whatever you want with the crate/crobar afterwards? Might be kind of a cool thing to give out in a mild contest or something, especially if they let you contest off the card too lol.
I am not terribly impressed, given the history of reliability (or lack thereof) of Nividia's high end cards. Look here: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125364&Tpk=giga... The review page is filled with the complaints of people that have had their GTX 580's fail within 2-3 days or 2-3 months of use. I made the mistake of buying a GTX 580, and I live daily by the fear that it's going to fail at any moment. I don't so much care about top performance, as much as I care about reliability. IMO, Nividia should care about reliability first and then performance. The thought of paying over 1k Euro for this card and have it fail in a week of use or so makes me VERY anxious.


text:
Transportation of cattle is a common practice and may influence the risk of subsequent calf health and performance. The impact of transportation on cattle health is influenced by the internal truck environment, the environmental conditions at the time of the journey, or the length of the travel, explained Brad White, DVM, MS, Kansas State University, at the Dr. Jack Walther 85th Annual Western Veterinary Conference in Las Vegas this week.
The transit environment is not homogeneous between compartments for all calves White said. "Research by our group has illustrated that the environmental temperature may differ between the middle and the outside of the trailer during both a journey and a rest phase. Our group has also illustrated that specific sections of the truck may be at higher risk for BRD during the post-transit phase."
In addition, White said the number of cattle in each section of the truck may also influence subsequent disease risk with cattle in compartments with more than 31 head having higher risk of BRD treatment compared to cattle in compartments with less than 15 head.
Weather has an impact
Transporting cattle in extreme weather conditions, including wide ranges of ambient environmental temperatures, may induce additional stress responses. "Our research group recently evaluated the physiologic and behavioral impacts of transporting calves when ambient temperatures were relatively high (summer)," White said. "In our study, we found that transportation even in times of high ambient temperatures produced only transitory (48-hour) changes in physiologic and behavioral parameters."
Also noted was the length of the journey and the body weight lost during transportation which may be used as a gauge of the quality of the journey and how prepared the calves were to travel. "Our research group evaluated data from several feedyards to determine that both the distance traveled and the body weight lost during transit (or shrink) were associated with health and performance characteristics of cattle during the feeding phase."
The impact of the journey on disease rates and final carcass values was influenced by the time of year the calves arrived, the region of the country the calves were shipped from, the gender of the calves, and the initial weight of the calves upon arrival. "In several parameters, a threshold effect was also observed indicating that performance and health did not continuously change in a linear fashion with either the distance traveled or the shrink," White said. "Understanding transportation factors that influence cattle health may lead to better preventive health and management plans."
Read more about transportation and cattle health in Bovine Veterinarian here:


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Joined: 11 Jun 2009
Posts: 25
Location: tampa bay
Posted: Tue 20 Oct 2009, 11:15
Post subject:
Question re online banking security and Puppy
a nephew of mine works for the pentagon. He sets up networks. They sent out email to their employees telling them for online banking, use Mac or Ubuntu. how does Puppy fit in this scenario?
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Official Crustacean
Joined: 04 May 2005
Posts: 15242
Location: Paradox Realm
Posted: Wed 21 Oct 2009, 00:30
Post subject:
"If you are using the internet for a commercial transaction, use a Linux boot up disk - such as Ubuntu or some of the other flavours. Puppylinux is a nice small distribution that boots up fairly quickly. It gives you an operating system which is perfectly clean and operates only in the memory of the computer and is a perfectly safe way of doing internet banking."
Detective Inspector Bruce van der Graaf from the Computer Crime Investigation Unit
Use this secure banking print out
YinYana AI Buddhism
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Joined: 11 Jun 2009
Posts: 25
Location: tampa bay
Posted: Wed 21 Oct 2009, 06:38
Post subject: security
thanks, i really like the distro.
i use it primarily.
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Joined: 19 Apr 2009
Posts: 407
Posted: Sun 23 May 2010, 12:07
Post subject: Puppy in windows
Is there any security advantage to using Puppy within windows for online transactions? Thanks.
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Official Crustacean
Joined: 04 May 2005
Posts: 15242
Location: Paradox Realm
Posted: Sun 23 May 2010, 13:08
Post subject:
If possible put a Puppy CD into your Windows powered PC. Boot up with
puppy pfix=ram
setup firewall (with wizard)
Then connect to the net - do your transacting and shut down the computer.
I would suggest that is better than some military grade security.
I am also aware - forget who is doing it - that one of our puppys is setting up Puppy Linux for online banking.
YinYana AI Buddhism
Last edited by Lobster on Sun 23 May 2010, 21:18; edited 1 time in total
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Joined: 15 Dec 2008
Posts: 4415
Location: West Lothian, Scotland, UK
Posted: Sun 23 May 2010, 13:32
Post subject:
See this at post #237 of my Puppy Linux thread.
Lots of other goodies in my Puppy Linux thread.
Begin here at the bottom of
page 10
, and work backwards toward the beginning.
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Joined: 02 Feb 2009
Posts: 894
Posted: Sun 23 May 2010, 16:09
Post subject: Re: Question re online banking security and Puppy
sfl7fl wrote:
a nephew of mine works for the pentagon. He sets up networks. They sent out email to their employees telling them for online banking, use Mac or Ubuntu. how does Puppy fit in this scenario?
The same way Ubuntu does: it's a Linux system. The point I see to the memo is "To be really secure, don't use Windows".
Online banking sessions use https, creating an encrypted session between you and the financial institution. The problem is that Windows is vulnerable to trojans like keystroke loggers that can capture the information that you enter before it is encrypted and sent and phone home. Such things don't exist for Mac OS/X or Linux.
I do banking from Windows, but with layered defenses: Windows is kept fully patched via auto-update, I
use IE (Firefox here, but SeaMonkey, Opera, Chrome, and Safari are alternatives), I have current A/V with regularly updated signatures, I run a firewall (two, in fact), and I use NoScript in Firefox to turn of scripting for sites that aren't in a whitelist. I also prefer
to do banking using wifi in public hotspots. It can wait till I'm at home behind my router using WPA2 security.
You should be able to do banking from Puppy - the issue will be a supported browser. Your bank may want support for stuff an older browser won't do, and experimentation is required. Puppy ships with a SeaMonkey 1.1 version. Try it and see if it works. If not, other things including SeaMonkey 2, Firefox, Opera 10, and Google Chrome are available.
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Joined: 28 Dec 2006
Posts: 2725
Posted: Sun 23 May 2010, 16:18
Post subject:
what 2 firewalls?
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Joined: 25 Jun 2009
Posts: 26
Posted: Mon 24 May 2010, 17:34
Post subject:
I use Puppy for banking.
I have it effectively on a USB stick with a physical read-only switch so it boots quickly. Very few USB sticks have switches, so I have resorted to a SDHC card + USB adapter. A small class 10 SDHC card absolutely flies.
The card should never be written to after the operating system is connected to the internet. I like the fact that if the running form does get penetrated the next reboot is clean.
It might be advisable to download a version of Puppy on a trusted operating environment. write it to read only media and then verify its signature on a third system. I also wait for a couple of months and check the downloaded version has not revealed any unintentional freeloaders. Am I paranoid or what
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Joined: 24 Aug 2008
Posts: 23
Location: Midwesterner running Slacko Puppy 5.3
Posted: Fri 28 May 2010, 09:49
Post subject:
rumex wrote:
I have resorted to a SDHC card + USB adapter. A small class 10 SDHC card absolutely flies. The card should never be written to after the operating system is connected to the internet. I like the fact that if the running form does get penetrated the next reboot is clean.
.... Am I paranoid or what
That is how I do it. I also set the write switch to "off" on the SD card so the original OS never changes. If you also have installed Puppy user files on the PC's drives, you need to set
or it will boot off those files. The above links, probably discuss how you can configure the memory stick copy of Puppy to automatically do that.
Booting off CD or memory stick is probably as safe as you can be if the first browser action is for banking. For browsing dodgy sites, it's probably safe too, but being as paranoid as rumex, I would boot off a PC with no drives if I wanted to do that.
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text:
April 26, 2008
NORTHAMPTON, Mass. - MIT men's track and field secured seven individual victories and scored multiple points in 19-of-20 events en route to its eighth consecutive NEWMAC Championship. Stephen Morton was the only athlete in the meet to win two events as the super sophomore captured the top spot in the 100-meter dash and long jump.
Morton also split 22.64 to finish second in the 200-meter dash while the Engineers showcased their strength in every area. Junior James Oleinik shouldered the load for the MIT attack in the throwing events. The two-sport star captured the NEWMAC championship in the shot put with a toss of 48'10.25" while he also finished second in the discus throw with a mark of 137'9".
Sophomore Greg Tao delivered arguably the best highlight of the day as he paced a 1-2-3 sweep for MIT with an exceptional performance in the pole vault. Tao cleared a career-high 15'6.25" to earn the victory with Omari Stephens and Patrick Barragan finishing second and third, respectively. Stephens also finished second in the 110-meter hurdles, although he posted the fastest time in trials with a clip of 15.43.
As usual, the Engineers showcased their depth in the distance races. Rookies Paul Welle and Richard Prevost worked together in netting the first two places in the steeplechase. Welle split 9:34.34 and Prevost closed just back in 9:35.62. Sophomore Jack Bourbonnais proved to have the strongest kick at the end as he out-dueled two other competitors for a victory in the 10,000-meter run, and Hemagiri Arumugam and Brian Jacokes combined to give MIT 11 points in the 5000m after finishing third and fourth, respectively.
The Cardinal and Gray were just as dominant in the middle distances. After yielding the first three spots in the 800m, Matt Bieniosek, Bill Phipps, David Reshef and Kevin Kleinguetl swept the next four places. In the 1500m, Jake Ruzevick led the MIT charge with a third-place finish while Joseph Roy-Mayhew took fifth and Christopher Wong closed in sixth.


text:
Need a Job? The New Sanford Premier Center is Hiring Full and Part-Time
The new Sanford Premier Center is hiring full and part-time positions in a variety of areas. A job fair will be held on Wednesday, July 16 from 5 p.m. – 8 p.m. in Exhibit Hall 1 at the Convention Center at the Denny Sanford PREMIER Center.
Here's a sample of some of the positions needed to be filled:
- Facility Workers / Operations
-Event set up & tear down
-Cleaning/upkeep of the facility before, during, after and between events
- Event Services Staff
-Crowd Management
-Ticket Takers
-Parking Lot Attendants
- Box Office
-Ticket Sellers
-Event Receptionists
- AV Tech Assistant
-Assist with AV needs of all facilities
- Premium Level Attendants
-Premium level set up
-Guest relations to include greeting & directing patrons
- Concierge
-Assist premium level guests by greeting, directing and helping with ticketing needs
-Assist premium level guests with questions and needs that may arise throughout events
- Bartender
- Barback
- Concession Cashier
- Concession Supervisor
- Cook
- Dishwasher/Utility Steward
- Head Cashier
- Runner
- Suite Attendant
- Suite Captain
- Waitress
- Warehouse Lead
The Sandford Premier Center will open this fall. For more information, go to dennysanfordpremiercenter.com


text:
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This app was removed from the App Store.
Lonely Planet French to Spanish Phrasebook
iOS iPhone Travel
Headed for Spain but worried you won't be able to hold your own in the tapas bars of Barcelona? No problem! With Lonely Planet's French to Spanish iPhone phrasebook on hand, there'll be no more pointing at the menu and hoping for the best. With 630 spoken phrases, you'll never be lost for words in shops, bars, hotels, taxis, you name it.
Lonely Planet is the world's leading travel company and these handy iPhone guides have been designed especially for the traveller:
•No internet connection needed
•Audio phrases spoken by locals so you know what they really sound like
•Multiple search functions to find phrases quickly and easily
•Kill time on a bumpy overnight bus ride and use the app to test your language skills
Lonely Planet's iPhone phrasebooks - they love a journey as much as you
What's New
We have improved the audio quality.


text:
Psy lands American Music Award for New Media
South Korean rapper PSY has been named an early 2012 American Music Awards (AMAs) - he has been awarded the New Media accolade six days before the red carpet event in Los Angeles.
The star shot to fame overnight with his catchy tune Gangnam Style and the promo for the hit single has become the most popular video in YouTube.com history, receiving more than 717 million views to date since its release in July (12).
His huge cyber success has now earned him an early AMA prize, following in the footsteps of previous honourees Karmin, DeStorm and Christina Grimmie.
Psy, who shares the same manager as Justin Bieber, Scooter Braun, will be presented with the award during the pre-show activities and will perform his unique dance moves at the Los Angeles ceremony itself.


text:
Cabin Rentals, Tent sites & RV sites with water & electricity. Hiking and mountain bike trails. On-site horse rentals. Picnic tables & grills under immense cottonwood trees. Interpretive Center & Gift Shop with history, geology, & wildlife exhibits.
Palo Duro Canyon State Park opened on July 4, 1934 and contains 29,182 acres of the scenic, northern most portion of the Palo Duro Canyon. The Civilian Conservation Corps of the 1930's constructed most of the buildings and roads still in use by park staff and visitors.
The Canyon is 120 miles long, as much as 20 miles wide, and has a maximum depth of more than 800 feet. Its elevation at the rim is 3,500 feet above sea level. It is often claimed that Palo Duro Canyon is the second largest canyon in the United States. The largest, the Grand Canyon, is 277 miles long, 18 miles wide, and 6,000 ft. deep.
Palo Duro Canyon was formed by water erosion from the Prairie Dog Town Fork of the Red River. The water deepens the canyon by moving sediment downstream. Wind and water erosion gradually widen the canyon.
Early Spanish Explorers are believed to have discovered the area and
dubbed the canyon "Palo Duro" which is Spanish for "hard wood"
in reference to the abundant mesquite and juniper trees.
Partners in Palo Duro Canyon
Amarillo InTech


text:
I'm hoping that somebody can help me.
I would like to put a table with links in the position where now Posts Comments the search box are standing.
I removed the posts comments and search already, I also put the table in. But it get under the blogtitle and tagline.
looking forward to hear from you.


text:
On of the difficulties of working with web services is how to deal with external dependencies as you promote code from development to QA to production. Take this JAX-WS code below as an example. Here was have a SMS service from VoodoPhone that makes use of an external translation service from Noodle.com. (Names has been changed to protect the innocent)
The problem comes from that fact that whilst using @WebServiceRef make everything really quite tidy is that the location of the WSDL, and therefore the service endpoint, is hard coded in the annotations and constants on the TranslatorService class. This makes it harder to replace the translation service with an internal or "mock" implementation during development time. You probably wouldn't want to rely on an external server for your internal regression tests for example.
Previously in JAX-RPC it was relatively obvious that you could create the proxy class and then change the endpoint. Indeed in the JAX-WS SE case you can do the same but it requires you to write code to externalize the wsdl location and this is not very JEE. Another way around the problem is to regenerate the proxy for each target system; but this is a pain and it probably takes you away from the pleasant land of the IDE into the wilds of ant tasks and complex build scripts.
I turns out that in the EE case, when using @WebServiceRef, that each injection point can be modified at deployment time with a new WSDL location. This is all done using JNDI behind the scenes; but it is suitably abstracted away from the developer.
In the next screen grab you can see the JSR-88 "Deployment Plan" dialog that you will see when you try to deploy using JDeveloper 11. (Normal disclaimers as regards to this not being production software) As you can see it has picked up the the fact that there is an injection point as part of the deployment process. There is no "service-ref" entry in my web.xml but the project the deployment process has worked out that one might be needed.
As you can see you can load and save deployment plans so you can have different configurations depending on whether you are doing development or even promoting to a production system.
You can of course do this by just editing the web.xml file yourself to alter the enviroment. The JNDI name is the name of the class and the name of the field with a slash between then. This is the "com.voodophone.SMSService/translationService" node in the tree on the left of the panel. There is no reason why you cannot type this yourself into web.xml as required or add in later using the deployment tool of your choice.
<web-app> ... <service-ref> <service-ref-name>com.voodophone.SMSService/translationService</service-ref-namae> <wsdl-file>http://localhost:8099/mockTranslation</wsdl-file> </service-ref> ... </web-app>
The main thing to take away from this is that whilst a lot of the new annotation stuff appears to work like magic, underneath there is a JNDI assistant doing all of the dirty work. You might not have to use JNDI directly but understanding how it works under the covers allows you to leverage the indirection in some really quite powerful ways. Just remember to make sure that the different WSDL define the same interface.....
Update: Sadly the deployment plan is broken in this specific area in JDeveloper TP3, hopefully it should be working in the next release. Or you will find similar features in other tools/servers that support JSR-88.


text:
Posted on April 16, 2010
It's the other side of Tax Day! I didn't get any panicky calls for copies of lost receipts so far. Are you that well-organized or are your eyes so blurred with numbers that you dialed the wrong extension?
Anyway, I thought would discuss the delicate question I mentioned last time: How Much Can I Deduct For Them Books I Guv t'Ya?
The proper answer, of course, is "That's none of my business."
It's in the fine print on the receipt form: I can't assign a value to the books. If YOU assign a value and write it on the receipt, which I kind of wish you wouldn't, all I'm endorsing when I sign the receipt is that you gave us such-and-such in the way of books. I'm not vouching for your value.
Now, having said that, I will move on to your next question, which is bound to be "Aw, can't you at least give us a hint, Uncle Blogsy? Pretty please with whipped cream and powdered chocolate on top?" By the way, I kind of wish you wouldn't put whipped cream on the receipt, either. Soggy receipts are hard to file, and those carbonless forms taste terrible.
As far as hints go, I had a memo from our Business Department which suggested a standard value of $5 per hardcover book and $1 per paperback book. Most people are happy with that hint; some are absolutely ecstatic (One wonders what they planned to deduct.) The only people who have not been perfectly satisfied are those with further questions: what about art books? What about CDs? What about records? What about sharing all that whipped cream and could I have two cherries on my receipt, please?
So another dodge I use is to explain that I have a pretty standard price of $3 per CD or DVD or videocassette, and $1 per record. I'm not assigning a value, in this case, I'm just stating a fact about the prices at the Book Fair. You're still free to claim more or less, depending on your nature. I also use this when someone donates a book known to be valuable, or a set of encyclopedias: I say "Well, I'm planning to ask $75 for that, but only the customers will know if it's WORTH that."
Because that complicates matters as well. You can CLAIM $5 for that crossword puzzle magazine you bought for $4.95 and filled out three puzzles and realized the print was too small. The IRS is not going to drop by the Book Fair and check to see whether any of my customers will give fifty cents for it. When it comes down to it, the IRS has bigger things to worry about than whether you donated 50 paperbacks, and only 49 of them were worth a dollar. In most cases, the matter will be between you and your conscience.
Oh, you tucked your conscience into the bottom drawer of the desk when you filled out that 1040? I would never do such a thing, myself.
MY conscience is still under the chair where I push it while eating all these maraschino cherries. (WHY does no one ever think to bring hot fudge?)


text:
I hung out at the Wynn Las Vegas this weekend, and as I was crossing over to do some shopping at the Palazzo I saw some signage for the Andre Agassi's Grand Slam for Children — his charity's 13th annual event. My invitation must have gotten lost in the mail? Oh well, it left me time to ogle jackets and salesmen at Alexander McQueen.
Gavin and Gwen are too busy filling Roger Federer's players box, so Andre and Steffi had to find another musical couple to make besties with, and they settled on Mr. and Mrs. Nick Cannon.
That May-December wedding joined others no the red carpet, including the original Fergie, Duchess of York Sarah Ferguson; Donny Osmond; and Emeril Lagasse. Tommy Haas, who decided that a VIP pass could double as his tie, also lent his support to the evening.
"We put on an amazing party tonight," said Agassi. "[The party celebrates] many successful years of raising money for underserved children hand-in-hand with our generous supporters and sponsors. And at the same time, it was a party to look to the future and what can be accomplished with the Foundation's new mission," which involves transforming education not just in Las Vegas (through the Agassi College Preparatory Academy) but throughout the country.
The 1,900 who attended the fundraiser were entertained by the likes of Natasha Bedingfield, The Killers, Lifehouse, budding Filipina singer Charice Pampengco, Rod Stewart (who performed a duet with Sheryl Crow for the first time, singing "The First Cut is the Deepest"), and comics Ray Romano and David Spade.
There were also two live auctions: a James Rosenquist abstract painting entitled "The Hole in the Center of the Clock – Timekeeper II, A Heart for Andre Agassi, 2008" and a second package included lunch with Oprah Winfrey and a South African adventure. No tennis players were auctioned, and no tennis player boyfriends were revealed.
(photos by Getty Images)


text:
We have moved out of our house and are living with my parents, in order to allow our builders to build a kitchen extension in peace, without Giles tearing down the stairs every few minutes telling them they're doing it all wrong.
I sort of hate myself for having the extension done. It's so predictable. But we did such an awful, half-arsed job of dragging the house into the 21st Century during the last round of building works that this is sort of essential. Didn't Simone de Beauvoir say something about those being confined to the domestic sphere contrive to make it complicated or something...? Well I am confined to the domestic sphere and I contrive to make it flipping complicated.
So we're living in my parents' giant house in Hampstead Garden Suburb, back in my old room, Kitty banged up downstairs in a room that has only ever, I think, been a spare room.
My overwhelming emotion being here is one of penance. I wasn't a particularly horrible child or teenager, I don't think, but I was very untidy. My room, really one of the nicest in the house, was always strewn with clothes and general crap and I would leave dirty mugs and plates lying around everywhere.
Now I'm back, I am hellbent on being fastidiously tidy. I want to let my mother know, without actually saying anything, that I am sorry for not understanding when I was a teenager what a fucking pain in the arse keeping a house tidy is and how depressing it is walking into someone else's incredibly disgustingly messy room is.
Over the last few weeks, in my new mania for trying to keep my own house tidy, I have learnt this: if you tidy something away, or fold something up, or wipe down a surface, you instantly forget about it. And when you return, it is AS NICE as if SOMEONE ELSE has done it for you.
Of course a major benefit of living with one's parents is 1) free evening babysitting and 2) someone else making dinner.
Last night we had haddock chowder and it was just sublime. This is technically cullen skink, but I didn't want to call it that because every time I have come across a recipe for cullen skink I have skipped past it, assuming that it is some monstrously fishy yukky horror using a mackerel-like thing called a skink - and I can only assume that you are as thick as me.
My quantities here are not exact, but it's not an exact thing.
Haddock chowder (or cullen skink)
1/2 fillet haddock per person
bunch parsely
medium onion, chopped
two sticks celery, chopped
2 rashers bacon, CHOPPED
salt and pepper
1 potato per person, diced
1 litre fish stock, made with any old fish stock cube
300ml single or whipping cream
1 Sweat the onions and celery with a generous knob of butter - about 50g - for at least 15 mins. If you want to be really classy, lay a sheet of greaseproof paper between your pan and your lid. It is very important to cook the onions through because otherwise the cream will curdle later - I don't know why.
2 Add the bacon and turn in the pan for a few minutes, then add the potato. Add the fish and then pour over the fish stock until everything is covered. Simmer all this for about 10 minutes, or until the potato is tender. Finish with the cream and some chopped parsley. Season. We ate this with sheets of cheddar laid across the top, which was terrific. Kitty ate the leftovers the next day.


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The Mandala Projects is a blend of new technologies and new research on critical issues of our time. The mandala is an Indian concept and word for the wheel of life that connects and brings together differing parts of the human experience. Here the wheel has three spokes: international trade, environmental issues, and conflict.
The core representational projects are the Trade Environment Database (TED), The Inventory of Conflict and Environment (ICE), and the Global Classroom. TED and ICE are sets of categorical case studies meant to spur research in these areas. The Global Classroom is a vehicle for delivering classes through the web. In class, students create TED and ICE cases. Classes from around the world have participated.
There is an open courseware version of the class "Climate Change and Armed Conflict" at:


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This is the cover story in this morning's New York Times Magazine:
You should check out the entire piece, but here's a section particularly relevant to our discussion:
In "Pink Ribbon Blues," Gayle Sulik, a sociologist and founder of the Breast Cancer Consortium, credits Komen (as well as the American Cancer Society and National Breast Cancer Awareness Month) with raising the profile of the disease, encouraging women to speak about their experience and transforming "victims" into "survivors." Komen, she said, has also distributed more than $1 billion to research and support programs. At the same time, the function of pink-ribbon culture — and Komen in particular — has become less about eradication of breast cancer than self-perpetuation: maintaining the visibility of the disease and keeping the funds rolling in. "You have to look at the agenda for each program involved," Sulik said. "If the goal is eradication of breast cancer, how close are we to that? Not very close at all. If the agenda is awareness, what is it making us aware of? That breast cancer exists? That it's important? 'Awareness' has become narrowed until it just means 'visibility.' And that's where the movement has failed. That's where it's lost its momentum to move further."I started with mixed feelings about these league-wide branding events because they were ugly. Then I came to oppose them because they were a cynical attempt to mine wallets. Now I'm depressed because they might not even be accomplishing the relatively minor goals they proclaim.
Before the pink ribbon, awareness as an end in itself was not the default goal for health-related causes. Now you'd be hard-pressed to find a major illness without a logo, a wearable ornament and a roster of consumer-product tie-ins. Heart disease has its red dress, testicular cancer its yellow bracelet. During ""Movember" — a portmanteau of "mustache" and "November" — men are urged to grow their facial hair to "spark conversation and raise awareness" of prostate cancer (another illness for which early detection has led to large-scale overtreatment) and testicular cancer. "These campaigns all have a similar superficiality in terms of the response they require from the public," said Samantha King, associate professor of kinesiology and health at Queen's University in Ontario and author of "Pink Ribbons, Inc." "They're divorced from any critique of health care policy or the politics of funding biomedical research. They reinforce a single-issue competitive model of fund-raising. And they whitewash illness: we're made 'aware' of a disease yet totally removed from the challenging and often devastating realities of its sufferers."
Time for the NFL to get out of the whole business. Raise money, sure, for real research, but from top to bottom it's looking like this isn't the way.


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American and Japanese Self-Help Literature
Shunsuke Ozaki
"Self-help literature" was created in America, and its origin can be traced back to Benjamin Franklin. In 18th-century American society, where Puritan ethics held sway, Franklin was a rare sort of person, one who did not believe that personal ambition was a sin. Through his writings, in the form of Poor Richard's Almanac (1732–1757) and The Way to Wealth (1757), Franklin demonstrated the know-how needed for worldly success, and he used himself as an example of the effectiveness of this knowledge. According to Franklin's philosophy of success, anyone can achieve social success, regardless of their social position, if they only have the will to educate themselves. This was the beginning of the American dream of success, and themes appearing here for the first time became the basic themes of many self-help books that appeared later.
Franklin's writings were composed in America during the latter half of the 18th century, a period when independence from England increased opportunities for upward social mobility. Similarly, the first self-help book to appear in Japan was published at the time of the Meiji Restoration in 1868, after the end of the Edo period. At this time, the traditional feudal class system was abandoned, and it became possible to succeed in life using one's own resourcefulness and efforts. This book Gakumon no Susume (An Encouragement of Learning, 1872–1876) was written by the well-known author and educator Yukichi Fukuzawa (1835–1901). This book holds that to create a modern state it is necessary for its people to first free themselves of apathy and laziness and become independent through practical study. The work was published in seventeen volumes, and 3.4 million copies were sold under this title. Its foundation was the declaration that "All men are created equal." It is clear that the inspiration for this writing was the American Declaration of Independence. Of all of the Founding Fathers, Franklin's ideas had the greatest impact on Fukuzawa, and through his self-help book, the Japanese people came into indirect contact with Franklin's philosophy of success. Additionally, The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin (1771–1790) was widely read throughout the Meiji period. Thus, it is apparent that Franklin's ideas about self-help had a great impact on Japan around the end of the 19th century.
However, British author Samuel Smiles's book Self-Help (1859) had an even greater influence on Japan as it underwent modernization. This book, which was also popular in America, sold more than a million copies in the forty-year period after it was translated into Japanese in 1871 by the philosopher of the European Enlightenment Masanao Nakamura (1832–1891). Moreover, this book was used as an ethics textbook in elementary schools from 1872 until 1880, so it played a particularly large role in planting the spirit of self-improvement in the Japanese youth of the time.
The influence of Confucianism was a large part of the context in which these English and American self-help books were accepted in Japan during and after the Meiji period. Confucianism came to Japan from China at the beginning of the 6th century, and by the Edo period, in the 17th century, the religious aspects of Confucianism had faded. It had become a system of education in ethics that emphasized the five virtues of "compassion to others," "not being caught up in greed," "being courteous," "striving to learn," and "being sincere." Learning these virtues became a condition for success in life, particularly for the warrior class. We notice that these five virtues are very similar to Franklin's thirteen virtues; hence, it is easy to understand that familiarity with Confucianism made it easier for the Japanese to accept American and English self-help books. In other words, western European ideas about self-help were not completely novel values to the Japanese; these ideas were compatible with the Confucian ethical values that the Japanese held. Therefore, they were widely accepted very quickly.
Later, after the beginning of the 20th century, Japan would greedily adopt self-help ideas from America. For example, the mind-cure techniques of Christian Science were introduced to Japan during the 1910s. "Reiki," which is a Japan-specific practice related to mind cure, was developed soon after. Yoga was also introduced to Japan around the same time through the writings of William Walker Atkinson (aka Yogi Ramacharaka). The Japanese religionist Masaharu Taniguchi (1893–1985) created his own religious group, known as Seicho no Ie (The House of Growth), in the 1930s. This group resonated with the religious movement known as New Thought, which gained popularity in the United States at the end of the 19th century, and Seicho no Ie is currently the world's largest New Thought group, with more than seventy thousand believers in Japan.
The 1950s through the 1980s saw the popularity of American self-help books fall in Japan, partly because of World War II. At the beginning of the 1990s, the bubble economy in Japan burst; the "life-long employment system" and the "seniority wage system" that had supported Japan up to that point started to collapse. Thus, hiring fell, and an American-style competitive society was introduced in Japan in the form of models such as the "ability-based wage system." In a similar fashion, there was a demand for knowledge of how to survive in this new competitive society. This led to a sudden resurgence in the popularity of American self-help books. For this reason, it is currently difficult to find books by major American self-help authors, such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Prentice Mulford, Orison Swett Marden, Wallace D. Wattles, Charles F. Haanel, Ralph Waldo Trine, Dorothea Brande, Joseph Murphy, Norman Vincent Peale, Neville Goddard, Earl Nightingale, Spencer Johnson, Robert Kiyosaki, and Tony Robbins that have not been translated into Japanese. In particular, Stephen Covey's The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People (1989) has been very popular in recent years, and there are even primary schools that use this book as class material. Moreover, because comic culture is highly developed in Japan, there are many American self-help books that have been made into comic books. Of course, Stephen Covey's book has been made into a comic book, but there are several other authors whose books have a comic-book version in addition to the translation. Such works include Dale Carnegie's How To Win Friends and Influence People (1936), Napoleon Hill's Think and Grow Rich (1937), and works by the psychologist Alfred Adler and the management consultant Peter Ferdinand Drucker. These works are widely known as self-help books. Self-help literature has taken hold as a literary genre that has maintained a firmly rooted popularity in Japan, much like it has in America. It is frequently read by middle-class, white-collar, middle-aged men.
However, there has been a backlash against the incredibly numerous self-help books that have been put on the market: since 2010, in Japan, stronger criticisms of self-help books have begun to be made. According to these criticisms, the harmfulness of these books comes from the fact that all of the failures in a person's life are attributed to the personal responsibility of the individual. For example, these critics say, these books state that people who belong to lower social classes are stuck in such positions because they have not been positive enough.
However, at present, these critical voices are being drowned out by the huge waves of numerous new self-help books being published in rapid succession. There is no reason to doubt that self-help books will continue to thrive in America and Japan, as long as the tradition of the "American dream of success" is alive in America and the virtues of the "desire for self-improvement" and "hard work" are part of the Japanese national character.
American Nature Writing and Japan
Masami Yuki
Although largely disregarded since the humanistic turn of ecocriticism at the beginning of the 21st century, nature writing has continued to play an important role in nurturing trans-Pacific, and transnational, literary environmentalism. Euro-American traditions dominate this literary genre, but it nevertheless involves cross-cultural traffic of ideas and thoughts. Its trans-Pacific presence, mostly through American influences on works in Japan, demonstrates in three ways how American nature writing has been cultivating Japanese literary soil and has in turn been nurtured by it, albeit less conspicuously. First, Henry David Thoreau's influence on Japanese literary environmentalism, especially his philosophy of plain living and high thinking, helped engender a tradition of nature writing in Japan that began with Nozawa Hajime—often called the "Japanese Thoreau"—and has been developed by those who followed, including Ashizawa Kazuhiro and Takada Hiroshi. Second, interactions between pastoralism and a new mode of environmental awareness show that the seemingly American notion of "wild awareness" and the Japanese concept of aware have materialized as a new environmental sensitivity in Japan and in the United States, respectively, reflecting cross-cultural nurturing of environmental ideas, thoughts, and practices. Finally, there has been a subtle yet radical impact of American counterculture on Japanese nature writing, exemplified by Nashiki Kaho's literary hybridity, based on her integration of the traditional with the radical.
American Nuclear Literature on Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Shoko Itoh
Literature on Hiroshima and Nagasaki cannot be limited to works on the atomic bomb or fiction referring specifically to these locations. Rather, in the nuclear age, it must include a variety of literary works that are conscious of the destiny of the earth, given the danger of nuclear pollution, and engage with the terrible fantasy of the end of the world. As John W. Treat states in his influential critical work, Writing Ground Zero: Japanese Literature and the Atomic Bomb, "The concept of hibakusha now has to extend to everyone alive today in any region of the planet" (x–xi).
The range of nuclear-themed works that symbolically invoke Hiroshima or Nagasaki is enormous. Nuclear literature as a creation of survivors, or spiritual survivors, focuses on an awareness of the planetary catastrophe concerning Los Alamos, Trinity Site, the ground zeroes of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and other global nuclear zones. The two nuclear sites in Japan (Hiroshima and Nagasaki) and in the United States (Los Alamos and Trinity Site) are historically connected. The authors and protagonists of nuclear literature have literal and affective transpacific and cross-cultural experiences that when considered together seek to overcome the tragic experience of the first nuclear bomb and bombing, including the Japanese acceptance of American nuclear fictions during the Cold War.
The Chinese Exclusion Act and Early Asian American Literature
Ben Railton
The 19th century featured two opposed yet interconnected historical trends: the growth of a multigenerational and deeply rooted Chinese American community; and the development of the cultural prejudices and fears comprised by the Yellow Peril narrative. Those xenophobic fears produced violence, social and political movements, and legal exclusions, culminating in the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act and its many follow-up laws and policies, all designed as much to destroy the existing Chinese American community as to restrict future immigration. But out of that period of exclusion and oppression came some of the first Chinese American literary and cultural works published in both Mandarin/Cantonese and English: the personal and collective poems carved into the walls of the Angel Island Immigration Station by detainees; auto-ethnographic memoirs of Chinese American life and community such as Yung Wing's My Life in China and America (1909); and the journalistic, autobiographical, and fictional works of Edith Maude Eaton/Sui Sin Far, the first Chinese American professional creative writer. These works both reflect and transcend the realities of the Exclusion era, helping contemporary audiences understand those histories, connect them to later Chinese American writers, and analyze the exclusionary debates and proposals of the early 21st century.
Global South Korea and the K-Pop Phenomenon
Crystal S. Anderson
K-pop is a form of South Korean popular music directed at a global audience that fuses Korean and foreign musical elements. While "idols" (performers who sing, dance, and engage in extra-musical activity) are the most visible, K-pop encompasses a wide variety of genres. Emerging in the wake of a major financial crisis that prompted a restructuring of the Korean economy, K-pop benefits from increased freedom in cultural expression, support by the Korean government, and a global cultural movement that reaches East Asia and beyond.
The first K-pop groups appeared in the early 1990s, drawing on hip-hop and rhythm and blues popular in the United States. The use of rap and b-boying/breakdance style, along with emotional vocals of R&B, became staples for first-generation "idol" groups. Initially presenting an approachable image, they later took on more mature concepts before they disbanded in the late 1990s. Several continue to influence the K-pop music scene, even as subsequent generations of K-pop artists emerge. These idol groups have diversified their images as well as their musical styles. Several solo artists have emerged, and hip-hop groups continue to participate. All of this musical activity is governed by Korean agencies, the largest of which are responsible for the creation and management of "idols," while others encourage indie artists and still others are led by K-pop artists themselves. In addition to the promotional strategies of agencies, media, both professional and fan-driven, play a large role in the global spread of K-pop. The fans themselves are also active participants, acting as both audience members and content producers.
The Influence of American Literature in Taishō and Prewar Shōwa Japan
Ken Inoue
In the history of modern Japanese literature, the Taishō era (1912–1926) is retrospectively identified as a period characterized by a liberal arts ideology, individualism, a democratic spirit, aestheticism, and anti-naturalism. In the latter half of the Taishō era, the liberal arts ideology was gradually replaced by socialism. After the Great Earthquake of 1923, Japanese literature was enmeshed in a triangular contest between the old-fashioned "'I' novel" (or psychological novel), proletarian literature, and modernist literature (especially the neo-sensualists). This structure of the literary world, in parallel with the rise of popular literature, continued into the prewar Shōwa era (1926–1945).
During the Taishō era, Walt Whitman and Edgar Allan Poe were the most influential and respected American writers. Whitman's writing offered Taishō writers, including Takeo Arishima and poets of the popular poetry school, a model of living that was free and natural and a colloquial-style free verse. But for the modern Japanese literati from the Taishō to the prewar Shōwa era, the most influential American writer was without a doubt Edgar Allan Poe. Poe's works served as a creative inspiration to Taishō novelists such as Jun'ichirō Tanizaki, Haruo Satō, and Ryūosuke Akutagawa, many of whom shared a creative perspective that was based on a blend of anti-naturalism and aestheticism. Influenced by Poe, they attempted diverse variations on the themes of the fantastic and of doppelgängers and even experimented with detective stories. Needless to say, Poe helped to establish the detective story genre in Japan through Rampo Edogawa and others. For early Shōwa literati, Poe was a forerunner of modern critical theory.
Among Japanese readers, around 1920, American literature ceased to be read as a sub-branch of British literature and began to be read as American literature proper. From the Great Earthquake and up through the prewar Shōwa era, three distinctive periods can be discerned when American literature was energetically translated and introduced. The first period was from the end of Taishō to the start of Shōwa, when American "socialist" literature—in the broad sense of writers like Upton Sinclair—left a deep mark on Japanese proletarian literature. The second period was around 1930–1931, when contemporary modernist American novels were translated and published in various anthology forms. The third peak came around 1935–1938, when bestselling American historical romances or epics such as Pearl Buck's The Good Earth and Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind were published and gained a large readership.
The Korean War and Its Literary Legacies
Daniel Y. Kim
Since the late 1990s, a growing number of US authors has been drawn to the Korean War, hoping to undo its status as "The Forgotten War." The fact that it has served as the focus of novels by eminent Korean American authors like Chang-rae Lee and Susan Choi is not entirely surprising, given that they are the children of immigrants whose early lives had been shaped by the conflict. Given the extraordinarily high number of civilian deaths that resulted from the war and the many families that were fractured, the war is clearly a defining event that helped create a Korean diaspora. It has also become the focus, however, of novels by non-Korean American authors, including Toni Morrison, Rolando Hinojosa, and Ha Jin, which testifies to the fact that it was an event in which a number of domestic histories of race and transnational histories of empire converged. The body of literary works that have emerged around this event can be thought of as constituting an archive of what Michael Rothberg has termed "multidirectional memory," one that suggests the intimacies of multiple histories involving not only Koreans and Korean Americans, but also other US racialized groups including African, Mexican, Chinese, and Japanese Americans as well as their connections to the complicated formations of empire that have shaped the relationships between Asian nations. Contending with the complexity and range of literary works that have centered on this event enables a reconsideration and expansion of what the proper subjects and objects of Asian American literary criticism are. If the field has outgrown its origins, in which the projection of a cultural nationalist vision of Asian American identity was a paramount goal, the vibrancy of these works stems from their soundings of a subject that is not univocal but multivocal. The political desires they seek to animate in their readers are not reducible to an agenda of combating domestic racism or consolidating a nativist notion of Asian American cultural identity, though they may contribute to such endeavors. More expansively, however, they articulate a multivalent range of progressive political aspirations and proliferate an array of identificatory possibilities.
Okinawa in American Literature
Steve Rabson
The several works of American literature set in Okinawa or about Okinawans include travel narratives, war diaries, memoirs, biography, fiction, and drama. Perhaps the earliest, Francis L. Hawks's 1856 Narrative of the Expedition of an American Squadron to the China Seas and Japan, is an account of Commodore Matthew C. Perry's gunboat diplomacy of 1853–1854 when he forced his demands on leaders of what was then the Ryukyu Kingdom, allowing Americans to land, travel, and trade there. Hawks also provides informative and colorful descriptions of the local residents, architecture, and natural environment.
A century later, Okinawa commanded all of America's attention in the spring of 1945 during the last and worst battle of the Pacific War. Two Okinawan immigrants to the United States published autobiographical accounts in English of mid-20th-century Okinawa, including the battle and its aftermath. Masako Shinjo Robbins's My Story: A Schoolgirl in the Battle of Okinawa (2014) describes life in prewar, wartime, and early postwar Okinawa from the perspective of a daughter in an impoverished family. Sold as a child by her father to a brothel in the 1930s, she barely survives the battle after being trapped in a cave collapsed by shelling. Jo Nobuko Martin's novel A Princess Lily of the Ryukyus (1984) depicts the horrifying ordeal of the Princess Lily Student Corps of high school girls, the author among them, and their teachers, who were drafted as combat medics during the Battle of Okinawa. Writing from the American side of the battle, Pulitzer Prize–winning author Ernie Pyle accompanied U.S. forces as a war correspondent. His account in The Story of Ernie Pyle (1950) begins with American battleships' shelling of Okinawa and ends the day he was killed by a Japanese sniper on the offshore island of Iejima.
Over more than 12,500 Americans died in the Battle of Okinawa which took the lives of approximately 94,000 Japanese soldiers and 160,000 Okinawan civilians, between one-quarter and one-third of the prefecture's population at the time. The widespread devastation left most residents homeless, destitute, or both. During the months that followed, the American military placed thousands in refugee camps, sometimes for more than a year, supplying food, shelter (mostly tents), and medical treatment for the wounded and ill. U.S. occupation personnel supervised the distribution of relief aid and the construction of homes and public buildings, but they were also tasked with bringing "democracy" to Okinawa, which many Americans considered feudalistic. The contradiction between American espousals of democracy and policies imposed top-down under U.S. military rule soon became obvious to Okinawans, and to at least some American military personnel. One of them, Vern Sneider, published a satirical novel, The Teahouse of the August Moon, in 1951. Later adapted into two plays and a film, it is probably the best-known work of American literature set in Okinawa. Lucky Come Hawaii (1965) by Jon Shirota depicts the experience of Okinawans in Hawaii, focusing on the strained relations among resident ethnic groups following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. It was the first novel by an Asian American writer to become a bestseller and one of several works portraying the lives of Okinawan immigrants including three plays by Shirota and an autobiography by Hana Yamagawa.
Victory in the Pacific War brought Okinawa under American military occupation for the next twenty-seven years, 1945–1972. Forcibly seizing private farmlands, the U.S. government constructed a vast complex of bases to support hot wars in Korea and Vietnam and the Cold War against the Soviet Union. Sarah Bird's novel The Yokota Officers Club (2001) depicts the bases' effects on Okinawans and Americans living in close proximity yet in separate worlds during the U.S. occupation. Today, more than four decades after Okinawa's return to Japanese sovereignty, a grossly disproportionate 74 percent of the total U.S. military presence in Japan remains in this small island prefecture with 0.6 percent of the nation's land area. Bird's Above the East China Sea (2015) juxtaposes the ordeals of an American military dependent living on base in present-day Okinawa who contemplates suicide after her soldier sister dies in Afghanistan with a student medic in the 1945 battle ordered to kill herself to avoid capture by the Americans. Drawing on extensive research in Okinawan culture, Bird evokes Okinawan religious beliefs and observances relating to death and the afterlife to frame her narrative and inform her readers.
Postwar Japanese Novelists and American Literature
Kazuhiko Goto
Since the country's decisive defeat through the acceptance of the unconditional surrender in 1945, Japanese novelists have been working in the shadow of America. The American Occupation from 1945 to 1952 set the essential tone of the postwar Japanese chronotope, and authors have had to address their problems through it. Postwar Japanese novelists needed to familiarize themselves with the explicit meaning of the national and ethnic experience of the defeat in the total war. They had to come to terms with the inevitable outcome of being re-incorporated into the international world according to America's scenario for achieving a new global hegemony. On one hand, this meant severance from the military past and rebirth as a pacifist and capitalist trading country; on the other, it meant disruption of the cultural continuity as a nation and rapid evaporation of the memories of the war crimes.
Postwar Japanese novelists have turned to American literature, not only for a usable index for understanding "America" as the most fundamentally decisive element of their postwar chronotope but also for something to stimulate their critical and creative imagination or synchronize with their aesthetic sensitivity during their search for an artistic expression under the shadow of "America." Three influential Japanese postwar novelists have a specific American writer as his inspirational source: Mark Twain for Kenzaburo Oe (b. 1935–), William Faulkner for Kenji Nakagami (1946–1992), and Raymond Carver for Haruki Murakami (b. 1949–). Their relationships with their literary precursors vary relative to their own sensitivities, political stances, and cultural background including class and caste; however, each of these three Japanese novelists has maintained a wide influence in the postwar Japanese literary climate because each has established his own unique way of addressing the most critical problem of "America." Each of these writers takes his influence from an American writer and learns his own lessons about how to cope with or navigate through a life under the shadow of "America." During each decade of postwar Japanese history—Oe from the early 1960s to the late 1970s, Nakagami from the late 1970s to the late 1980s and Murakami from the early 1980s to the 1990s—the authors reflect a gradual change in the shadow of "America" because of a change in America's policy toward Japan from the end of the occupation through the period of Japan's astounding economic prosperity, to the end of the Cold War and a gradual attenuation of America's power over Japan.
The Reception of African American Literature in Prewar and Postwar Japan
Keiko Nitta
Commodore Matthew C. Perry's gunboat diplomacy provided the Japanese with the first known opportunity to observe a major American performing art inspired by black culture: the minstrel show. The "Ethiopian entertainment," held on the USS Powhatan, presented "Colored 'Gemmen' of the North" and "Plantation 'Niggas' of the South" to shogunate officials four times in 1854. While this performance initiated a binational cultural exchange, the 1878 tour of the Fisk Jubilee Singers was an epoch-making event; the group's successful concerts, given in three cities, offered Japanese audiences their first opportunity to appreciate genuine African-American artistic pieces—spirituals, distinguished from blackface minstrelsy.
The Japanese attitude toward African Americans at this initial stage was a mixture of pity and wonder. A growing self-awareness of Japan's inferior status vis‐à‐vis Western nations, however, gave rise to a strong interest in slavery and racial oppression. The popularity of studies focused on American race problems since 1905, including multiple versions of the biography of Booker T. Washington, attests to prewar intellectuals' attempt to define the position of the Japanese people by both analogy and contrast with African Americans. In the meantime, a partial translation of Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852), serialized from 1897 to 1898 in a liberal paper, the Kokumin, and a translation of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884) in 1921 paved the way for Japan's introduction to the New Negro literature, the first major body of black writings gaining in popularity in the American literary market in the 1920s. Successive publications of works by W. E. B. DuBois, Walter White, Jean Toomer, Claude McKay, and Langston Hughes in translation in the 1930s generated a distinctive artistic backdrop comparable to the American Jazz Age. Various authors of the era—from novelists to haiku poets—learned about literary motifs informed by blackness and began to elaborate their own racial representations to delineate the affectional substructure of modernity.
Even though World War II briefly disrupted the expansion of the Japanese literary imagination through the creative inspiration of African Americans, a translation of Richard Wright's Native Son within the year of the original publication (1940) signifies the persistence of interest throughout the war period. Indeed, defeat in 1945, resentment over the subsequent U.S. occupation, coincident remorse for their country's imperial aggression, and anger at its eventual rearmament following the Korean War, in conjunction, reoriented postwar authors toward the development of black characters in diverse works over the following four decades. In addition, the civil rights movement facilitated studies in African-American literature in universities from the 1960s onward. Today, African-American literature is one of the most popular areas in English departments in Japan; one can find virtually every subject from the slave narrative to rap music in undergraduate course syllabi.
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