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Review: Scott Walker, Bish Bosch
Bish Bosch is the work of a committed artist delving further into a land of vaguely sketched nightmares.3.5
Scott Walker began his career as a self-consciously devised throwback, a '50s-style chanteur in an old-fashioned vocal trio, a seemingly conservative choice for the freewheeling mid '60s. Yet, as he's proven in the years since, Walker wasn't so much 10 years behind as he was 20 years ahead, developing an off-kilter brand of parasitic pop by unceremoniously feasting on the carcass of the past, twisting familiar forms to expose inherent possibilities for discomfort within them. Gifted with a smooth, impeccably velvety voice, he's used it as both a façade and an ironic tool, both masking and enabling a pattern of increasingly inventive experimentation.
Walker established his current format with 1984's Climate of Hunter, in which he shifted from a relatively straightforward crooner to a purveyor of spooky, avant-garde doom-pop. Things have only gotten weirder since then, with each successive album entering a new echelon of uncomfortable peculiarity. Bish Bosch is the strangest yet, responding to its supremely creepy predecessor, The Drift, by being even more unpredictable, aggressive, and demented. From the rambling atmospherics and wheezing Penderecki-style string dissonance of the 20-minute "SDSS14+13B (Zercon, A Flagpole Sitter)" to the pounding industrial percussion and thrash-metal guitar of "See You Don't Bump His Head," Walker makes a point of avoiding cohesiveness, instead striving for something that flies in the face of conventional structure and order.
The freeform construction grants Walker the license to do whatever he wants. This means not only a scattered grab bag of eerie, clashing noises, but lyrics that land safely in the realm of gibberish. Most of the time Walker seems to be shouting bizarre non sequiturs off the top of his head ("Norsemen do not eat the big pink mints" might take the top prize), braying like a ghost in an old campy movie. This all fits right in with his mad-scientist routine, but becomes too ridiculous to bear at certain points, particularly amid the long expanses of "Epizootics!"
Still, whatever his mistakes, Walker remains an intensely fascinating figure, if only for the fact that his path has run completely counter to that of most aging musicians. Rather than find a comfortable hole to burrow in, he's treated each new album as an occasion for further experimentation, wrenching out sounds that instruments didn't seem capable of. He owes a lot to producer Peter Walsh, who's been working with him since the mid '80s and likely has had just as much to do with this aesthetic as Walker has, helping to construct the decaying haunted-house style the singer continues to employ. Bish Bosch may sound a little strained at times, but it's still a big, ballsy achievement, the work of a committed artist delving further into a land of vaguely sketched nightmares.
Label: 4AD Release Date: December 4, 2012 Buy: Amazon
Review: Soccer Mommy's Color Theory Is Bound by a Sense of Maturity
The album explores darker, weightier subject matter than its predecessor.3.5
With 2018's Clean, Soccer Mommy's Sophie Allison emerged on the scene sounding a lot like a moody indie rock incarnation of Taylor Swift. That album's "Your Dog" and "Cool" are effortless anthems that possess the same instantly anthemic quality as many of Swift's mega-hits. But the main connection between the two is a pseudo-adolescent outlook wherein their dating lives and associated travails are elevated to matters of life and death. Just 20 at the time of Clean's release, Allison was consumed by thoughts like "She's so pretty/Even more than me."
With Color Theory, Allison raises the stakes. Slicker than Clean, and beefed up by her touring band, the album's sparkling guitars and restrained studio sheen bring her sound closer to, if not Swift, then familiar '90s alt-rock touchstones like Built to Spill and Sebadoh. Allison's progression as a songwriter is more acutely evident in the album's darker, weightier subject matter: Continuing to draw on personal experience, she largely eschews songs about her love life, instead confronting her issues with mental health and abandonment.
Color Theory rarely progresses beyond the admittedly rich template established in its opening track, "Bloodstream." Here, Allison offers frank and poetic ruminations on her history of depression and self-harm as rhythm guitars thrum behind her. Her visceral lyrics—"Now a river runs red from my knuckles into the sink"—are partially obscured by a deceptively cheery chord progression, just like she once "covered up the wounds with my long sleeves."
In its subject matter, chords, rhythm, and tempo, "Circle the Drain" bears a strong resemblance to "Bloodstream." But the song's most lasting impression is its hook, a sing-song "Round and around" refrain that's deafening in its obviousness—not because it's uncreative, but because it's a wonder no one else thought of it sooner. Indeed, Allison's best melodic hooks—like the overlapping guitar lines on "Crawling in My Skin"—are often simple but indelible.
Even as Allison delves deep into heavy subject matter, she usually sounds more angsty than haunted. Which is fine when she delivers that angst with such melodic verve (the album's dourest-sounding songs, especially the final two, are easily the weakest, as they lack melodies strong enough to buoy Allison's disaffected musings). Her still-youthful perspective means that the charmingly tongue-in-cheek "Royal Screw Up," on which she imagines herself as an emotionally damaged waifu ("My dungeon of fire, I'm the princess of screwing up/And you wear your armor and you save pretty girls like me"), isn't totally out of place here.
Still, a sense of maturity binds the album's best moments. "Yellow Is the Color of Her Eyes" lazily unfolds over seven-plus minutes, but as with "Bloodstream," there's pain hidden beneath the pleasant vibes. Dogged by memories of her terminally ill mother, Allison laments that even her daydreams of happier times are tainted by the knowledge of what's to come: "Loving you isn't enough/You'll still be deep in the ground when it's done."
Color Theory's lynchpin is "Lucy," which makes clear just how much Allison has grown as a songwriter since Clean. Allison is having trouble with a boy, and there's another girl involved who's complicating matters. But this time, the boy isn't just a mean boyfriend; he's "the root of all evil," intent on dragging her to hell, perhaps literally so. And the other girl isn't a prettier or cooler rival; she seems to be a part of Allison's own psyche, constantly tormenting her. "Oh Lucy please/Quit taunting me," Allison pleads over and over, a refrain as menacing as it is catchy. Though some deeper and darker has taken root in this indie rock wunderkind, her melodic grip remains the backbone of her music.
Label: Loma Vista Release Date: February 28, 2020 Buy: Amazon
Review: Justin Bieber's Changes Represents a Marked Shift in the Singer's Perspective
The album finds the singer trying to usher in a new era characterized in large part by asking for help.3
In 2017, after over 250 tour dates across six continents, Justin Bieber canceled what remained of his Purpose World Tour, citing extreme exhaustion. The decision is touched on in the first episode of his YouTube docu-series Justin Bieber: Seasons, a not totally uncynical and yet undeniably humanizing snapshot of a troubled performer whose youthful mistakes were augmented by incredible wealth, increasing isolation, and a public whose gaze has been made all the more searing by the rapid growth of social media.
Taken together, Seasons and Changes, the singer's fifth album, find Bieber trying to usher in a new era in his life and career characterized in large part by asking for and receiving help. Along with medical professionals who are helping him to manage his recently diagnosed Lyme disease and Epstein Barr, in addition to his chronic anxiety, his new wife, Hailey Baldwin, seems also to have had a calming effect on his music. Where Bieber's previous albums have often felt engineered almost exclusively for the purpose of stimulating audience response, Changes seems focused instead on the tenderness and comfort of his newlywed bubble.
Seasons makes much of his perfectionism, showing him cut vocal tracks line by line, singing on a loop until he hits each note just right. But it's that attention to detail, along with the use of vocal effects that coat his voice in a plastic sheen, that holds Bieber at an unfortunate remove from us. In leaning into a more subdued palette of R&B, Changes creates a space for Bieber's voice to take a central role. But for an album that focuses so strongly on human connection, there's a certain lack of emotion that might have come from a looser recording process. That distance is counteracted in large part by a certain lyrical openheartedness, and though Bieber often veers into cliché—"When your battery gets low/I'll be the one to charge you up," he sings on "Take It Out on Me"—there's a real charm to the songs that rest so deeply not just on love or sex, but trust and commitment.
Although the tonal fluidity of Changes errs, from time to time, toward homogeneity, there's a weightlessness to it that seems to signify the slipping of a long-held burden from Bieber's shoulders. His most personal offering to date, the album feels like a reflection of actual experience as opposed to a projection of a fantasy. Putting aside the album's lead single, "Yummy," a Tik-Tok-baiting affront to both sex and music in equal measure, this is an album that feels very much like the documentation of a very specific moment in time in the singer's life and an accompanying marked shift in his perspective.
Label: Def Jam Release Date: February 14, 2020 Buy: Amazon
Review: Yacht Rock Revue's Hot Dads in Tight Jeans Is More Parody Than Tribute
The album seems destined to be, if nothing else, the weirdest debut of the year.2
Yacht Rock Revue's Hot Dads in Tight Jeans seems destined to be, if nothing else, the weirdest debut of the year. It's the work of an affable group of guys who travel the country playing the kind of '70s and '80s light rock that gives their band its name. Over the past decade, Yacht Rock Revue has built something of a soft-rock empire, playing in major venues across the country and hosting an annual festival in Atlanta where they're often joined on stage by the musicians they've made their bones covering. Now, having established themselves as the premier purveyors of yesteryear's smoothest hits, the band is releasing their first album of original material. But while Yacht Rock Revue is a stellar live band, Hot Dads in Tight Jeans often fails to show what makes them special in the first place.
Having made music as a cover band for so long, Yacht Rock Revue seems tempted to play "spot the reference" with their original material rather than engaging with the songs on their own merits. Some of the tracks, of course, wear their influences on their sleeves: "House in the Clouds" is built around a Matthew Wilder/Thomas Dolby synth riff, while "Change of Scene" apes Stevie Wonder. The album's palette isn't exclusively limited to the '70s—"You're Welcome Baby" sounds uncannily like Kishi Bashi's brand of indie-pop—but it's easy to get distracted wondering who the band might be trying to sound like in any given song.
The album's larger issue is exemplified by opening track "The Doobie Bounce," the title of which is a winking reference to the jaunty rhythm perfected by the Doobie Brothers that JD Ryznar has held up as a hallmark of the genre on his podcast Yacht or Nyacht. The song itself is about the pleasures of getting stoned and listening to records, referencing the Doobie Brothers, Sade, and, perhaps surprisingly, OutKast, and it has one good laugh line: "I used to sleep on couches/Now I sleep on nicer couches." Yacht rock has a reputation for skimming the surface of emotions, but that stereotype isn't totally fair: Daryl Hall is a clever songwriter, and Donald Fagen and Walter Becker are among the sharpest and most acidic satirists in rock. These songs, though, are disappointingly obvious. "House in the Clouds" is about living in a house above the clouds, and "Another Song About California" is, well, I'll let you guess.
The band's tendency toward obviousness comes to a head on "Bad Tequila," a party anthem that revises the old chesnut about turning lemons into lemonade into a joke about turning tequila into margaritas. It's certainly catchy, and pure escapism certainly has a proud tradition in pop, but it's also, at five minutes long, frustratingly repetitive.
Say what you will about the genre, but most AOR bands were tight musicians, and Yacht Rock Revue has likewise honed their craft to a razor's edge. The appeal of their live shows lies in the way they treat their music with utmost reverence, even as they perform dressed in costume to crows of people crushing daiquiris and wearing captain's hats. From its jokey title and cover art to the somewhat undercooked songs, however, Hot Dads in Tight Jeans feels more like a parody than a tribute to the genre Yacht Rock Revue so clearly love.
Label: Please Rock Release Date: February 21, 2020 Buy: Amazon
Review: Guided by Voices's Surrender Your Poppy Field Serves Power Pop with a Twist
Robert Pollard is still coming up with new twists on his patented brand of anthemic power pop.4
Nearly 40 years into his career, Robert Pollard is still coming up with new twists on his patented brand of anthemic power pop, like a magician forever pulling rabbits out of a hat. Ever since Pollard assembled a new Guided by Voices lineup for 2017's August by Cake, the band has showcased a different facet of their sound with each outing, and that diversification continues on Surrender Your Poppy Field. The album weaves the unusual time signatures, song lengths, and baroque-prog structures of last year's Sweating the Plague with the tight melodicism that's made some of Pollard's best solo albums so memorable.
In comparison to their longer counterparts on Sweating the Plague, almost every song here runs through several moods and styles rapidly—but without ever sounding rushed or contrived. "Cul-de-Sac Kids" alternates between gentle acoustic strumming and brief full-band bashing before launching into an underdogs-win-the-day chorus—"Cul-de-sac kids throw the best parties!"—bolstered by the album's most driving riff. It's the most complex and exhilarating track on the album, all in just a little over two-and-a-half minutes.
The album's lead single, "Volcano," is a Pixies-esque ballad buoyed by Mark Shue's muted bass runs. What makes the song both uniquely strange and beautiful in the Guided by Voices catalog is the inclusion of atmospheric keyboard phrases that play over verses containing some of the prettiest lyrics Pollard has written: "True is the time when I see you/Blue from the blinds that I see through." The explosion of the chorus into a wall of power chords provides Pollard's life-affirming exhortation—"On the trail of lovers/Never failing with their loving eyes around you to prove your rage isn't true"—with the perfect euphoric accompaniment.
The album's biggest surprise is that several tracks—"Arthur Has Business Elsewhere," "Steely Dodgers," and "Andre the Hawk"—utilize waltz time to evoke the kind of carnival-esque stomps that comprised some of Guided By Voices's earliest recordings, including 1987's Sandbox and 1989's Self-Inflicted Aerial Nostalgia. These songs offer a compelling contrast to more straightforward rock tracks like "Stone Cold Moron," which features a double electric guitar attack from Doug Gillard and Bobby Bare Jr. that's pure arena-rock euphoria.
Indeed, waltzes aside, Surrender Your Poppy Field may be the most consistently hard-edged and rocking Guided by Voices effort since 2018's Space Gun. "Queen Parking Lot" and "Man Called Blunder" waste no time as rousing, unfussy riffs barrel into verse-chorus-verse sing-alongs. It all leads to a stunning conclusion, as "Next Sea Level" transforms an eerie demo-quality recording of chime-like guitar strums into a majestic full-band and orchestra-accompanied crescendo. The song's title and chants of "rising" suggest a climate change apocalypse, but since that would be far too on the nose, the ever-oblique Pollard ends with something mysteriously hopeful: "To hear you/To touch you/To know you're coming around/Still coming around." Beyond the Tommy reference, "Next Sea Level" proves that Pollard can foster worlds of thought and feeling out of sparse yet strategic gestures.
"Next Sea Level" also represents the welcome maturity of the current incarnation of Guided by Voices, whose only Achilles' heel is an exhausting deluge of content. Some have lamented Pollard's prolific songwriting for diluting the quality of his output, but at this stage of his career Surrender Your Poppy Field proves he's deepening rather than merely proliferating his music, continuing to grow up instead of growing old.
Label: GbV Release Date: February 20, 2020 Buy: Amazon
Billie Eilish Drops Lush James Bond Theme Song "No Time to Die"
The lush, darkly cinematic track feature an orchestral arrangement courtesy of Hans Zimmer and guitar from Johnny Marr.
On the heels of her historic Grammy wins, singer-songwriter Billie Eilish has unveiled "No Time to Die," the theme song from the upcoming James Bond film of the same name. The song was produced by her brother and frequent collaborator, Finneas, and veteran knob-twirler Stephen Lipson. The lush, darkly cinematic track falls in line with past 007 themes, with an orchestral arrangement courtesy of Hans Zimmer and Matt Dunkley, and featuring guitar from Johnny Marr of the Smiths.
The 18-year-old Eilish, the youngest person and first woman to win the four main Grammy categories in the same year, is now the youngest artist to both write and record a Bond theme. She will perform the song live for the first time at The Brit Awards on February 18.
No Time to Die hits U.S. theaters on April 10 through MGM/United Artists Releasing.
Review: The Men's Mercy Finds a Mercurial Band Settling Into Their Sound
The album boasts a few moments of exploration but seems more staid in its ambitions.3.5
The Men is a mercurial band, having moved with remarkable swiftness from the punishing noise-punk of their early albums to the more radio-friendly rock of their more recent output. The Brooklyn band's eighth album, Mercy, continues to challenge the boundaries of genre, with psych-folk sitting alongside twangy alt-country and rave-up hardcore. The album's variety displays a commendable commitment to sonic adventurousness, though the band isn't quite pushing boundaries like it once did.
Mercy is the Men's third consecutive album with the same roster, and this relative stability has allowed them to settle into their sound. The album was recorded mostly live with minimal overdubbing, a testament to just how in sync the current lineup has become as a unit. The penultimate track, "Breeze," is a fuzztone ripper with a throat-searing vocal that moves at a breakneck pace, while lead single "Children All Over the World" pairs serpentine guitar licks with singer Nick Chiericozzi's sinister whisper and a dark, delightfully '80s-inspired synth riff. The song builds to a blistering solo almost reminiscent of Eddie Van Halen, rendering it simultaneously familiar but fresh—at least for the Men.
The country-rock sound that the band began exploring on 2012's Open Your Heart was a radical departure from their earlier style, and here these genre excursions prove to be some of the album's strongest. "Cool Water" is a loose, Laurel Canyon-esque rocker, while the title track is a folky deathbed sigh, with Chiericozzi coolly pleading, "I need mercy at the hour of my death." And though its title nods to Sleater-Kinney, "Call the Dr." isn't a spiky punk song, but rather a chooglin' country romp with a first-person murder narrative in the vein of Marty Robbins's "El Paso." The song's narrator tells a story about getting gunned down after a heist, dying atop his ill-gotten goods. The lyrics display a powerful sense of economy, sketching out just enough details to make the story vivid without becoming overwrought. The finger-picked guitar fills and Chiericozzi's raspy vocals give the track a sort of dusty, western verisimilitude.
The album's centerpiece, "Wading in Dirty Water," is a 10-minute psychedelic jam with an unsettling but catchy synth hook; the guitar solo sounds like vintage Nels Cline, though it drags on for at least a couple of minutes too long. On the opposite end of the spectrum, the spare piano ballad "Fallin' Thru" veers into crooner territory, with vocals that are mixed almost like an ASMR video. The song seems to be aiming for a quiet menace reminiscent of Tom Waits or Nick Cave, but the overall effect is somewhere between soporific and goofy.
Overall, Mercy doesn't quite measure up to the band's stellar triptych of albums released between 2012 and 2014, on which they stretched to expand their repertoire, challenging themselves to explore various sounds from throughout the history of rock while refining their chops and chasing wild hares. Mercy boasts a few moments of exploration but seems more staid in its ambitions.
Label: Sacred Bones Release Date: February 14, 2020 Buy: Amazon
Review: Pet Shop Boys's Hotspot Points to Potential Joy Amid a Backdrop of Dread
If the world is burning, the album asserts, you might as well enjoy the bonfire.4
Reportedly the last in a trilogy of collaborations with producer Stuart Price, Hotspot is stuffed with instantly infectious melodies and lyrics that flaunt the Pet Shop Boys's fierce intellect. Eternally sly postmodernists Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe are at their funniest here, embedding bouncy synths with barbs directed at failing political institutions across the globe (their own kind of hotspot), social hypocrisies, and even themselves.
The bleeping synth hook of the opening track, "Will-o-the-Wisp," is the sonic equivalent of mainlining sucrose, and only Tennant would think to use the song's chorus as an occasion to reference the Vienna U-Bahn metro system. But he's after something less esoteric and much knottier. A kind of sequel to 1993's groundbreaking "Can You Forgive Her?," a song about repressed homosexuality, "Will-o-the-Wisp" finds the narrator running into an old flame on a train and wondering what's become of him and whether the two will even acknowledge each other. "But maybe you've gone respectable/With a wife and job and all that," Tennant deadpans in a tone of hilarious disdain that suggests no fate could be more horrifying, before delivering the come-on: "Give me a smile for old time's sake/Before you run away."
Hotspot consistently points to potential joy amid a backdrop of dread. Over the euphoric house keyboards of "Happy People," Tennant's nimble rapped verses (lest we forget that this is the group that launched their career with "West End Girls") allude to "The sense of so much missing/When the world gets in the way." Lead single "Dreamland"—featuring Years & Years frontman Olly Alexander, whose own work is indebted to the Pet Shop Boys—might scan at first as romantic four-on-the-floor club filler, but the famously progressive and unflinching Tennant employs the title's fantastical metaphor to eviscerate the very real leaders who've abdicated their countries' responsibility to take in refugees. "You don't need a visa," he sings of an imagined destination. "You can come and go and still be here."
Not all is (quite) so grim. "You Are the One," with its sweet yearnings and sticky percussion, ranks among the Pet Shop Boys's most straightforward love songs, and they've rarely sounded more convincing. While they've long knocked rock music (Tennant recently joked that the acoustic guitar "should be banned"), "Burning the Heather" adopts the rock textures of 2002's Release with, um, an acoustic guitar. Autobiographical lyrics describe a fading troubadour who sits in a bar alone insisting that he's fine before, finally, reaching out for company.
Tennant's satire can, however, sometimes tend toward glibness, as on "Monkey Business," in which he vaguely targets a traveler who just wants to get wasted on margaritas and wine. But the track is saved by the irresistible disco production and the darker implications of the unchecked hedonist at its center looking for "a party where we all cross the line." If the world is burning, the album asserts, you might as well enjoy the bonfire.
The Pet Shop Boys are pranksters to the end, in this case literally. Non-fans would be forgiven for finding closer "Wedding in Berlin" confusing or just grating. But its tragicomic vision of marriage represents a statement of defiance. Church organs interrupt the aggressive EDM beat more like a nightmare than a reprieve. Tennant clearly takes vows less than seriously, reducing them to an act of bourgeois convenience: "A lot of people do it/Don't matter if they're straight or gay." It's a happily stinging finish to an album that proves no one is safe in the hands of Tennant and Lowe, and that pop can be anything but pedestrian.
Label: x2 Release Date: January 24, 2020 Buy: Amazon
Review: Drive-By Truckers's The Unraveling Is a Bleak Reflection of the Times
The band's 12th album is constructed on the premise that the personal is political.4
Drive-By Truckers's American Band was released a month before the 2016 presidential election—seemingly an eternity ago both in terms of the political landscape and the time between albums for the typically prolific band. American Band was supposed to be their final word on all that, but according to Patterson Hood's notes for their 12th studio effort, The Unraveling, "writing silly love songs just seemed the height of privilege."
This is a dark, uncompromising album about such topics as gun violence, white nationalism, the opioid crisis, and putting children in cages. But despite similar subject matter, it isn't a sequel to American Band. Never mind that there are no individual tracks quite as immediate as "Surrender Under Protest" or "Guns of Umpqua." But whereas the previous album was composed largely of the narrative history lessons that have been the Truckers's stock in trade for over 20 years, The Unraveling is constructed on the premise that the personal is political.
Hood frames multiple songs around either trying to explain daily horrors to his two young kids, or hoping they will one day make things better. "When my children's eyes look at me and they ask me to explain/It hurts me that I have to look away," he sings on "Thoughts and Prayers," a plainspoken accounting of the onslaught of gun violence in America. He repeats the sentiment on the pointedly titled "Babies in Cages": "I'm sorry to my children/I'm sorry what they see/I'm sorry for the world that they'll inherit from me." All Hood can do in "21st Century USA" is "hope and pray that they can conjure up a better day."
This is heavy stuff, with only the wishful catharsis of the soaring "Thoughts and Prayers" offering much respite. Other flashes of optimism are fleeting: Lead single "Armageddon's Back in Town" is an uptempo travelogue with a blazoning classic rock riff, but Hood sings about broken-down buses, standing in the rain, and his "responsibility for the darkness and the pain." It's not until the song's frenzied instrumental coda—a thrilling showcase for the band's usually unassuming drummer, Brad Morgan—that the adrenaline really kicks in.
Mike Cooley, a sort of redneck Confucius who seems to never run out of sardonic one-liners, only wrote two songs here, and one of them, "Grievance Merchants"—a trenchant breakdown of the alt-right pipeline—is one of the most lyrically serious-minded, musically dramatic songs he's ever written. Delivered in Cooley's uniquely conversational style, it's an arresting effort; hearing him sound so scared out of his wits that he can't even muster a single quip is genuinely chilling. His other contribution, "Slow Ride Argument," is much more fun, with its overlapping vocal hooks and cheeky advice for cooling down after a heated debate, political or otherwise by, basically, going for a drive, possibly after downing a couple of tall boy beers ("not one, not three," Cooley advises). A driving, minor-key rocker that stylistically lands somewhere between Blue Oyster Cult and early R.E.M., it's yet more evidence that Drive-By Truckers transcend the Southern rock label they inexplicably still get pigeonholed into.
Where The Unraveling really distances itself from its predecessor, and all of the band's prior work, is its sonic complexity. Former Sugar bassist David Barbe has produced every Drive-by Truckers album since 2001, and to his credit, not one of them sounds alike. But armed with the vintage analog toys at his disposal, and accompanied by engineer Matt Ross-Spang, Barbe has helped the band craft its first true piece of sonic art. A wisp of a song like "Rosemary with a Bible and a Gun" is transformed into something captivating by the sheer depth of the mix: the subtle tremolo guitar accents, the snaky violin/viola accompaniment, the delicate mingling of Hood's vocal and the natural reverb off the piano. From reliable tricks (old school slapback on Cooley's vocals) to new ones (running a washboard through a guitar amp, wah pedal, and delay to add an otherworldly effect to "Babies in Cages"), there's no shortage of ear candy here.
The album ends with the eight-minute-plus "Awaiting Resurrection," which, with its unrelenting bleakness and all the air between Morgan's minimalist drums and Hood and Cooley's cobweb-like guitars, is the closest the band has ever come to post-rock. "I hold my family close/Trying to find the balance/Between the bad shit going down/And the beauty that this life can keep injecting," Hood intones in a ghostly growl, returning once again to the same theme of many of the preceding songs. Hood and Cooley dwell more on the bad shit than the beauty throughout The Unraveling. It's perhaps their most confrontational, challenging effort to date, an intricate work that's more a reflection of than an antidote to the darkness.
Label: ATO Release Date: January 31, 2020 Buy: Amazon
Review: With High Road, Kesha Finds a Comfortable Middle Ground
The album sets out to prove that people are complicated creatures, capable of being more than one thing.3.5
The opening track of Kesha's fourth album, High Road, begins with a piano melody in the key of Cheers, followed by a life-affirming refrain about "the best night of our lives." But, then, "Tonight" abruptly pivots to a flurry of 808s and Kesha's half-rapped, half-slurred admission that she can't find her phone. If that sounds awfully familiar, that's precisely the point. "Woke up this morning, feeling myself/Hungover as hell like 2012," she quips on the following track, "My Own Dance," an obvious nod to her breakout hit "Tik Tok."
If 2017's Rainbow proved that Kesha didn't need producer-cum-svengali Dr. Luke to create compelling pop music, High Road is an attempt to show those who lamented her shift away from party anthems that people are messy, complicated creatures, capable of being more than one thing at the same time. The album's first single, "Raising Hell," is a gospel-tinged rave-up that provides a bridge between Kesha's breakout sound and the more reflective, roots-inspired Rainbow. It's admittedly hard not to long for Dr. Luke's euphoric EDM hooks, but the album's ferocious opening salvo makes clear that even when she wasn't the one navigating, Kesha has always been in the driver's seat.
By the album's midpoint, she returns to the heart-on-her-sleeve introspection of songs like "Praying," even making melodic reference to that momentous single during the coda of the midtempo "Shadow." The next track, "Cowboy Blues," is a meditative acoustic ballad that finds the singer examining the ways in which loneliness can cloud one's instincts ("They say you'll know when you know/What do you do when you don't?"), while the country-inflected "Resentment" transcends the genre's typical narrative of a woman scorned ("I don't hate you, babe, it's worse than that").
From Brian Wilson to Sturgill Simpson to Big Freedia, the guest artists featured throughout High Road are as disparate as the songs themselves. "The Potato Song (Cuz I Want To)" is a silly, vaudevillian rejection of grown-up things, while "Birthday Suit" is pure retro pop, complete with glitchy sound effects inspired by Super Mario Bros. And despite "Ke$ha" receiving a guest credit on "Kinky," the track is more of a throwback to early '90s R&B than to the Auto-Tuned electro-pop of the early 2010s.
Those mottled sounds make High Road Kesha's least consistent album to date, at least sonically. But there's a clear emotional through line from the joyous, unapologetic bombast of the album's first third to the naked vulnerability of "Father Daughter Dance," in which Kesha deliberates on the absence of a formative relationship in her life ("The worst part of this is I'm not even sad/How do I miss something I never had?"), and the rapture of the gospel-infused closing track, "Chasing Thunder." With High Road, Kesha has found a way to double back and carve out a comfortable, if not happy, middle ground.
Label: RCA Release Date: January 31, 2020 Buy: Amazon
Review: Destroyer's Have We Met Is As Strangely Vexing As It Is Familiar
The album both calls attention to its artifice and proves it can still hold a broad emotional range.4
Dan Bejar insists there's no deeper meaning to the name Destroyer. In 2016, he told NPR he chose it because "It's got three syllables, which is good, but it's still one word, that's also cool." And yet, Destroyer figuratively destroys itself every few years: abandoning guitars for electronics, or veering from big-band dramatics to adventures in solitude.
Bejar began Destroyer as a solo project, tracking songs by himself on a basic four-track cassette recorder. His touring band has grown its ranks since then—peaking with the current eight-piece art-rock orchestra—but in the studio, Bejar has occasionally opted to return to the DIY spirit of his earliest work, as he did on 2004's Your Blues, which was performed almost entirely on MIDI instruments. Destroyer's 13th album, Have We Met, was constructed similarly, with electronic elements layered on top of Bejar's basic demos. Not unlike his lyrics—which are the most layered and entertaining they've been in years, both dark and funny—the resulting music is as vexing and strange as it is comforting and familiar.
Unlike Your Blues, though, Have We Met features real electric bass and guitar, and the synths are slicker and fuller, landing very far from the chintzy, fake-sounding tones Bejar employed on that album. And the drums on Have We Met are heavier and funkier than on any previous Destroyer album. On "Kinda Dark" and "Cue Synthesizer," they lock into a dirty stutter, crossing over into hip-hop-like territory and cleverly contrasting Bejar's relaxed delivery.
Have We Met is perhaps closer in timbre to 2011's Kaputt, with its angular guitar work, dreamy synthscapes, and Bejar's detached, lackadaisical vocals. But while the synths on Kaputt are cold and dreary, and distinctly retro, here they're warm, inviting, and modern, establishing an entirely distinct emotional tone. Swaying reveries like "University Hill" and "foolssong," which Bejar first played live in 2009, are much sweeter-sounding than any other recent Destroyer songs. "It Just Doesn't Happen" plays up a similar late-night, neon-lit atmosphere as Kaputt, but the synths here are more evocative of a video game arcade than a discotheque. Even as Bejar calls attention to the artifice of his musical surroundings on "Cue Synthesizer"—"Did you realize it was hollow?" he asks before listing off the culprits of this "idiot dissonant roar"—he proves that artifice can still hold a broad emotional range.
Credit for this should go largely to longtime producer and bassist John Collins, who mostly pieced together the final tracks himself on top of Bejar's home demos. (The only personnel on Have We Met are Collins, Bejar, and guitarist Nic Bragg, whose distinctively wobbly playing has been perhaps the sole consistent element in Destroyer's ever-shifting sound since he joined the band in 2002.) To Collins's credit, the album certainly sounds more like the work of a full band than that of someone seated alone at a keyboard, iPad in hand. Still, the arrangements are inevitably more utilitarian and less focused on band dynamics than any of Destroyer's post-Kaputt efforts. This is vital, because for the first time in too long, those arrangements sound like they're built to follow Bejar's voice and lyrics rather than the other way around.
Bejar the enigmatic, drunken poet has for several Destroyer albums now taken a back seat to Bejar the singer and bandleader. And while the singing on Have We Met remains tastefully restrained, lyrically there are glimpses of the younger, brasher Bejar here. He makes himself known a verse into opener "Crimson Tide," the sort of rambling stream-of-consciousness epic that used to constitute almost the entirety of Destroyer albums. It's a quintessential Bejar track, largely for its liberal use of comfortingly well-worn lyrical tropes: the direct juxtaposition of the poetic with the flippant and coarse; conscious contradictions like "I was like the laziest river/A vulture predisposed to eating off floors/No wait, I take that back"; direct references to other songs, both those of others and his own, including allusions to, of all things, "The Gambler," as well as at least two other Destroyer tracks.
The rush of catharsis "Crimson Tide" provides is rivaled a few songs later by "The Raven," which opens with its own slippery couplet—"Just look at the world around you/Actually no, don't look"—and proceeds to careen through delightfully idiosyncratic territory, from a "city of dying the embers" to a "petite terror train" and "the Grand Ole Opry of Death." Despite the apocalyptic imagery, the tone is invigorating. "It feels so good to be drunk on the field again," Bejar intones, his voice quivering with the kind of ardor that he rarely draws for his singing anymore. Like most of his lyrics, if there's a literal meaning to the line, it's impossible to parse, but the implication is clear enough: Bejar is feeling the groove again.
Label: Merge Release Date: January 31, 2020 Buy: Amazon
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Page 2 of 4.
A few weeks ago we compared the Sony IMX287 with an equivalent CCD sensor. This week we are doing the same thing with the Sony IMX273 CMOS sensor...
Machine Vision Cameras
Keep your little budding machine vision specialist busy this summer with this fun paper Manta.
Machine Vision Cameras
Within the electromagnetic spectrum, infrared radiation is located between visible light and microwaves. It covers a wide spectrum from 750 nm to...
Camera Features
Created by Gion-Pitschen Gross
Reviewing the camera's technical specifications in this new video.
Camera Features
Watch this video to find out how the Sony IMX287 CMOS sensor featured in the new Manta G-040 camera compares with the Sony ICX424 CCD sensor. Compared...
Camera Features
Two ultra-compact Mako cameras perform quick identification of faulty parts. This advanced image processing task runs without a PC. Instead the...
Embedded Vision
The Vision Show, organized by the AIA, is North America's leading machine vision and imaging show. Allied Vision was an exhibitor in both the main...
Created by Francis Obidimalor
This demo featured at Embedded World 2018 shows a 130 series camera with MIPI CSI-2 interface. The camera is connected to an embedded board via an...
Embedded Vision
We all know that the claim "one size fits all" rarely works out that way. Sure, that approach may help to lower cost, and therefore price, so go the...
Created by Scott Smith
More and more embedded systems include image-processing functions, and thanks to the growing performance of embedded processors, these...
Embedded Vision
Created by Paul Maria Zalewski

subset: commoncrawl


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Advisers are available in our suite on the first floor of Mary Gates Hall to answer questions on a drop-in basis from 9am to 6pm, Monday through Thursday, and from 9am to 4:30pm on Fridays.
We try to answer your questions in less than fifteen minutes. If they cannot be answered within this time, we will schedule an appointment with you. Some topics (e.g., choosing a major, reinstatement) require deeper conversations, and are therefore better addressed via a 30-minute appointment.


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A theme repeated throughout my work is the abstract enshrining of objects that symbolize poignant preoccupations and vivid life issues. Natural or manmade items are arranged in wooden boxes or on shelves, in ways that experiment with space and exploit the symbolic meaning of the objects and their presentation. I begin with a display piece that is interesting to me and, after working through ideas with sketches, build a box or a platform to transform that central object and extend its symbolism.
An idea that has interested me for some time is the projection of pathos from the work. Perhaps this pathos arises partly from the sequestering of the central object in a setting of serenity and beauty, and partly from the patina and surface buildup achieved by working layer upon layer of textures, paint, and markings, revealing a palimpsest of richness and poignancy derived from the irrevocable passage of time.
Has exhibited in Europe (France, Germany, Ireland), Asia (Taiwan and Republic of China), and North America (Canada, Mexico, and throughout the United States including Alaska and Hawaii).
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Elvis Duran Interviews Miley Cyrus [AUDIO]
Miley Cyrus has been the talk of the town lately. Her 2013 MTV VMA performance sent social media into an online frenzy after a very scandalous twerk-a-licious performance with "Blurred Lines" singer Robin Thicke.
With the release of her new "Wrecking Ball" video, Miley is ruffling feathers again… but this time no twerking is involved! The racy video shows Miley sporting bright red lipstick and her BIRTHDAY SUIT! A naked Cyrus suggestively rides around on a swinging wrecking ball, at one point she even licks a sledgehammer. This chick wants the world to know she can't be tamed!
Miley commented about the video, "If you look at my eyes, I look more sad than actually my voice sounds on the record. It was a lot harder to actually do the video than it was to even record the song. It was much more of an emotional experience."
The record breaking "Wrecking Ball" racked up over 14 million views in the first 24-hours, sending the former top slot holders of One Direction into 2nd place with only 12.3 million views!
Later this month Miley will be performing at the iHeartRadio Music Festival Village in Las Vegas before the iHeartRadio Music Festival.
To find out more about her iHeartRadio Village -- http://festival.iheart.com/village.php


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We live in the most exciting technological age ever known to man—an age that has spawned breathtaking achievements that run the entire scientific gamut from placing men on the Moon to eradicating life-threatening diseases. Consequently, in this era of accelerated scientific wizardry, on occasion the tendency has been to think that man's knowledge and ability know no limits. In fact, that very idea was echoed by the eminent evolutionary paleontologist, Richard Leakey, in his book, Origins:
During that relatively brief span evolutionary pressures forged a brain capable of profound understanding of matters animate and inanimate; the fruits of intellectual and technological endeavour in this latter quarter of the twentieth century give us just an inkling of what the human mind can achieve. The potential is enormous, almost infinite. We can, if we choose, do virtually anything; arid lands will become fertile, terrible diseases will be cured by genetic engineering; touring other planets will become routine; we may even come to understand how the human mind works (1977, p. 256).
The clear implication is that man, as a result of his own scientific advancements, can, and indeed someday will, find all, or enough of, the answers to life's most pressing questions. George Gaylord Simpson, the late evolutionary scientist of Harvard University, ended one of his books with these words:
Man stands alone in the universe, a unique product of a long, unconscious, impersonal, material process with unique understanding and potentialities. These he owes to no one but himself, and it is to himself that he is responsible. He is not the creature of uncontrollable and undeterminable forces, but is his own master. He can and must decide and manage his own destiny (1953, p. 155).
Today the citizens of most civilized countries are better fed, better clothed, and healthier than they have ever been. Transportational, educational, medical, industrial, and even recreational facilities are vastly improved, compared to those of previous generations. Prospects for the future should be brighter than ever. But are they? The irony is that as man's knowledge has increased, so has his egotism. His newly found knowledge and technology simultaneously have ushered in a newly found smugness as well. What will happen, then, as science accelerates, while man's relationship with and knowledge of his Creator degenerates?
Must science, and its amazing successes, eliminate man's acknowledgment of, and dependence upon, God? Indeed not. In addressing this point, Edmund W. Sinnot has observed:
...the attainment of a working philosophical relationship between science and religion is more essential now than ever. An attempt to reach it has been my purpose here. To succeed where others have so often failed is more than I can expect, but any sincere effort to this end is worth making. Science and religion, ministering so diversely to the life of man, will necessarily follow different roads, but they still can powerfully reinforce each other. Surely they should enlarge their boundaries together. Both church and laboratory will be more effective in their service through such mutual aid. Reason and spirit are the pillars that support our Great Tradition. They must both be strong, but neither can be so without the other's help. Between them they hold up the hopes of man today as he strives to fulfill his splendid destiny (1953, p. xi).
Science is merely man's attempt to "understand God's thoughts after Him." Wernher von Braun, the foremost missile expert of the 20th century, declared that it is as difficult
to understand a scientist who does not acknowledge the presence of a superior rationality behind the existence of the universe as it is to comprehend a theologian who would deny the advances of science. And there is certainly no scientific reason why God cannot retain the same position in our modern world that He held before we began probing His creation with telescope and cyclotron.... I deplore the attitude that scientific enlightenment and religious beliefs are incompatible. I consider it one of the greatest tragedies of our times that this is so widely believed.... Through a closer look at creation, we ought to gain a better knowledge of the Creator; and a greater sense of man's responsibility to God will come into focus.... Science and religion are not antagonists, but sisters. Both seek ultimate truth. Science helps to reveal more about the creator through His creation.... The public has a deep respect for the amazing scientific advancements made within our lifetime. There is admiration for the scientific process of observation, experimentation, of testing every concept to measure its validity. But it still bothers some people that we cannot prove scientifically that God exists. Must we light a candle to see the sun? (as quoted in Warner, 1972, pp. 314-317).
In a seminar on origins held at Murray, Kentucky on November 29, 1980, Russell C. Artist, former biology department chairman and professor emeritus at David Lipscomb University, commented: "The statement, 'In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth,' is the very cornerstone of all scientific thinking." If Genesis 1:1 is the cornerstone of science, then surely the charter of science is Genesis 1:28 where man is commanded to "subdue" the Earth. Science is man's attempt to subdue and have dominion over the Earth. It is man's attempt to understand God's creation. English philosopher Herbert Spencer acknowledged that science is divided into five basic fundamentals: time, force, action, space, and matter. That is exactly what Moses wrote in Genesis 1:1—"In the beginning (time) God (force) created (action) the heavens (space) and the earth (matter)."
"Science," says Harris Rall, "stands for a way of study, and an attitude of mind. To leave theories and prejudices to one side, to bring an open mind and ask only for the truth, to study concrete facts with endless patience, to try to find an order of behaviour in the world, as indicated by these facts, to test these findings by experiment and more facts—this is the spirit and method of science" (1936, p. 66). Geneticist John Klotz, in his text, Genes, Genesis and Evolution, stated that "science, on the other hand, is man's groping for the truth. Science deals only with the natural, with things that can be apprehended by the sense organs. Science deals with those things that can be measured" (1970, p. 11). The Oxford Dictionary defines science as "a branch of study which is concerned with a connected body of demonstrated truths or observed facts..." (emp. added).
The key to these thoughts, and thus to science, is that science deals only with those things that can be observed with the five senses. Simpson suggested that "the goal of science is to establish generalizations and explanations for observed facts. The mere gathering of facts is quite useless unless the observations are directed toward this goal" (1965, p. 15). Science, therefore, is an attempt to gather and explain the facts about the Universe in which we live. It is, says Simpson,
an exploration of the material universe that seeks natural, orderly relationships among observed phenomena and that is self-testing. We may well add, but not as a part of the definition, that the best answers are theories that apply to a wide range of phenomena, that are subject to extensive tests, and that are suggestive of further questions (1964, pp. 90-91).
Margaret Balcom has noted that science is "primarily a method for dealing with matter (objects) in action through (1) observation and experimentation, (2) analysis, (3) derivation of a physical law (a concept), (4) prediction in terms of that law. Science is concerned with a given physical system already in operation" (1967, p. 592, emp. added).
Since science is "concerned with a given physical system already in operation," what is the origin of this system? Science is powerless to explain origins. It may define methods, qualities, and limits, but it cannot determine origins. Evolutionist Theodosius Dobzhansky has well said that "science is cumulative knowledge" (1962, p. xxi). But science is not adequate to explain everything. It provides many, but not all, of the answers. Albert Wells remarked:
As knowledge of the universe expands and man's position within it becomes both more central and more critical, so increases the demand for meaning, as well as for effective means of moral and spiritual control of the achievements science has made possible. Science cannot give us these. The scientific task fosters integrity and character. A persistent and passionate devotion to truth cannot help but build trustworthiness in the man who engages in the quest. But science is not at all sufficient to itself. It is, after all, quite limited as far as being able to answer the real questions is concerned (1962, p. 72, emp. added).
Thornton Whaling, in his book, Science and Religion, wrote:
Physical science knows by experimentation and observation; historical science knows through credible testimony; psychology, by immediate consciousness of freedom and personality; philosophy through the universal laws of pure reason or thought; religion, by the answer of the infinite Personality to the call of moral and spiritual need. And to claim that knowledge belongs alone to any one of these fields is to ignore the breadth of possible knowledge and the high endowments of human nature, through a certain concealed Pharisaism which is the essence of conceit and obsurantism. For natural science, history, psychology, ethics, philosophy, or religion to affirm that there is only one mode of cognition, and that way its own, is to betray a fatuous pride which convicts of lack of real culture in the court of high reason (1929, pp. 12-13).
Science is a marvelous enterprise that has benefited mankind in more ways than would be possible to list. But its continued success is dependent in large part on an understanding of its proper nature and correct use. An understanding of what science is, how it works, and its inherent limitations will not only help us appreciate science, but prevent its abuse as well.
Balcolm, Margaret (1967), in The Christian Century, May 3.
Dobzhansky, Theodosius (1962), Mankind Evolving (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press).
Klotz, John W. (1970), Genes, Genesis and Evolution (St. Louis, MO: Concordia).
Leakey, Richard and Roger Lewin (1977), Origins (New York: E. P. Dutton).
Rall, Harris (1936), Faith for Today (New York: Abingdon-Cokesbury).
Simpson, George Gaylord (1953), Life of the Past (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press).
Simpson, George Gaylord (1964), This View of Life (New York: Harcourt-Brace).
Simpson, George Gaylord (1965), Life: An Introduction to Biology (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World).
Sinnot, Edmund (1953), Two Roads to Truth (New York: Viking).
Warner, Wayne, ed. (1972), One Thousand Stories and Quotations of Famous People (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker).
Wells, Albert (1962), The Christian Message in a Scientific Age (Richmond, VA: John Knox Press).
Whaling, Thornton (1929), Science and Religion Today (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press).
Originally published in Reason & Revelation, January 1981, 1[1]:2-3. Copyright © 1981 Apologetics Press, Inc. All rights reserved.


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"Dinner for Schmucks" isn't due out for another six months, but two of the film's stars are already looking to work together on a new comedy.
"Will," based on a pitch by comedian Dmitri Martin, is about a world in which the lives of Paul Rudd and others are scripted, a la, "Stranger Than Fiction," by folks in heaven, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The story follows what happens when Zack Galifianakis decides he's no longer interested in drafting Rudd's life.
It's a minor miracle that Galifianakis' brand of humor, a brilliant blend of high brow/low brow, has found an audience. But between his breakout role in "The Hangover" and his part on HBO's "Bored to Death" (which got better and better as the first season wore on -- and high five to Ted Danson, by the way), Galifianakis has arrived.
U.S. & World
News from around the country and around the globe
In case you've missed it, "Schmucks" (even money says this title gets changed before release) is a remake of the French classic, "The Dinner Game," about a group of businessmen who have a regular dinner where they each try to bring the most obnoxious loser they can find. Kind of an all-male "Dogfight," if you will. In the new American version, Rudd is one of the suits and Steve Carell is his "schmuck."


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Mulcair wins NDP leadership, vows to fight politics of fear
Thomas Mulcair finished the NDP leadership race in first place Saturday night, following a marathon day of balloting characterized by technical glitches rather than high political drama.
Five months after declaring himself as the candidate who could best build on the work of the late Jack Layton, Mulcair arrived in Toronto this week running a careful, well-organized front-runner's campaign.
And by the time the final ballots were counted, the MP from Montreal had delivered on his status as the man to beat.
"We said we would have fun," Mulcair said in French, when he approached the microphone to deliver his victory speech after a rousing round of cheers.
He thanked his wife, his family, his campaign team, "tireless" volunteers and supporters.
"We are celebrating today the victory for the members of the NDP who chose their own leader."
Mulcair won with 33,881 votes, taking 57.1 per cent of support after the fourth round of voting.
The 57-year-old becomes Canada's 44th Opposition leader, and he promised to take on the role without using the politics of division.
"Leadership comes in many forms. Our current government appeals to peoples' fears and rules by seeking division," said Mulcair, who did not directly mention Prime Minister Stephen Harper's Conservatives.
"We will unite progressives, unite our country, and together we will work towards a more just and better world."
Six other candidates arrived in Toronto vying for the party's top job, including former party president Brian Topp and dark-horse candidate Nathan Cullen, who finished second and third, respectively.
Topp, who was the only candidate without a seat in Parliament, had cast himself as the true heir to Layton, and often spoke of his final moments with the late leader on his deathbed last August.
Topp had been a key member of Layton's inner circle and has been credited with engineering the Quebec-based surge that led to the NDP's electoral breakthrough last May, when the party pushed their seat count to more than 100 for the first time.
Topp came into the convention enjoying the support of Layton's mother and that of former NDP leader Ed Broadbent.
Indeed, Topp's traditionalism versus Mulcair's modernizing push became the central debate in the party's seven-month long leadership campaign.
But ultimately, Mulcair's vision prevailed.
"In order to win the next election and have our first NDP federal government, our party much reach beyond its traditional base and unite all progressive forces under the NDP banner," he said, with Topp standing nearby.
"We won't do it by sacrificing the unity of our country."
Gauging the party's direction
Cullen, an MP from rural British Columbia, also faced the ire of party traditionalists for proposing that the NDP run joint candidates with the Liberals and Greens to prevent vote splitting in Conservative-held ridings.
Despite some disapproval, Cullen rode considerable momentum into the campaign's final days.
But his sprint to the finish fell short.
Former union negotiator and current Toronto MP Peggy Nash was eliminated after the second ballot and some of her supporters urged her to send her delegates to Topp.
Nash declined to do so.
Ottawa MP Paul Dewar suffered a disappointing fifth-place finish on the first ballot and removed himself from the contest.
But like Nash, he also declined to openly come out in favour of another candidate.
Two other hopefuls were eliminated earlier on Saturday, including 29-year-old Niki Ashton and Nova Scotia MP Martin Singh.
Singh, who had been accused of tacitly supporting Mulcair, was the only candidate to make an open endorsement after being eliminated.
Mulcair thanked them all during his victory speech and said that the party would unite with a goal to become Canada's next government.
"My very first words should be to thank and to congratulate Brian, Nathan, Peggy , Paul, Martin and Niki, for a race that provided us with innovative ideas that will allow us to keep the momentum going. Everyone, together."
In fact, if the contest was short on political drama, perhaps the blame could be directed toward the party's preferential balloting system, which allowed many of the party's 131,000 members to rank their picks ahead of time.
More than 60,000 votes were cast on the first ballot.
Still, the voting system did provide some intrigue as chronic computer glitches and delays were blamed on allegations of a cyber attack.
However, those reports were tempered by initial suggestions that the voting server simply crashed under high demand.
As a Quebec NDP MP and a former environment minister in the Liberal provincial government of Premier Jean Charest, Mulcair cultivated an image as a fiery opponent.
Under Charest, Mulcair famously resigned from his environment post after he refused to sign off on a condo development.


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"Cowardice ... is almost always simply a lack of ability to suspend the functioning of the imagination"
-- Ernest Hemingway
On Wednesday, the market treated investors to a roller-coaster ride driven by the ebb and flow of the fiscal-cliff talks. Stocks fell more than 1% after Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid took to the floor early in the session to say that any conclusion to the fiscal-cliff crisis is unlikely to be here by year-end. Stocks rallied to almost even late in the day when it became known that Congress will be pulled into session on Sunday.
Like most investors and voters, I am depressed by the tone and the lack of leadership from both sides out of Washington. However, I am amazed that the market looks like it was caught off guard by the latest flare-up in the acrimony in these discussions and by the realization that we are going to go over the cliff in some way by year-end.
This appears to have been destined for some time, as the two sides are far apart ideologically and have more to gain by going over the cliff than by crafting a "grand bargain." I have prepared for any equity selloff by keeping a higher percentage of my portfolio in cash (around 25% right now) than usual. I also bought some bull VIX call spreads in early December to profit from any increase in volatility that I figured would be forthcoming by the end of December. Those spreads are now up more than 100% and have offset some of the losses on the long side of my portfolio over the last week.
I am also planning to do two things as these discussions continue into 2013. First, I plan to add to my ProShares UltraShort 20-Year-Plus Treasury ETF (TBT) position (which is a bet on long-term government debt interest rates rising) on any pullbacks that trigger a "flight to safety" into government bonds. It is my "new gold" position to protect against accelerating inflation in 2013. This ETF has performed terribly in 2012 as the Federal Reserve choose to continue to expand its balance sheet and bought most of the new debt issued by Treasury throughout the year.
This can continue for only so long, and I believe interest rates will also rise in 2013 for two reasons. First and foremost, we are having the wrong conversation. Government revenue is within $100 billion of where it was in 2007 before the crisis. Government spending is up more than $1.1 trillion, yet we continue to spend most if not the entire focus of budget discussions on raising government revenue by $75 billion to $125 billion annually. I am deeply pessimistic that we will get any serious spending or entitlement cuts out of these discussions.
I also believe that the debt-limit conversations that should happen right after the fiscal cliff will be as acrimonious that the current discussions, or maybe more so. As a result, government debt ratings being downgraded by Standard & Poor's or Moody's cannot be discounted.
On a brighter note, if we do manage to get through the next two months without doing significant damage, 2013 is set up for better economic growth than in 2012, as Europe has stabilized and China looks like it has gotten past its recent economic rough patch in front its once-a-decade political transition. In this case, interest rates should also rise.
For prudent investors who have cash on hand, a good strategic exercise is to compile a shopping list of stocks that you would love to own or add to existing positions if they fell another 5% to 10% due to the silliness going on in D.C. My list includes EMC (EMC), Apple (AAPL) and JPMorgan (JPM), whose value propositions I have covered in previous articles. Happy hunting.


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Russian activists urge IOC head Bach on gay rights
Recommended Video:
PARIS (AP) -- IOC President Thomas Bach met with Russian gay rights activists who urged an investigation before the Sochi Olympics into national laws banning "gay propaganda."
International gay rights group AllOut said Russian campaigners asked Bach in Paris on Saturday "to launch an independent investigation on the legal implications of the anti-gay laws in effect in Russia during the Olympic Games."
"A list of precise questions about the implication of the anti-gay laws, to help frame the investigation, were submitted and received by the IOC president," AllOut said in a statement. "The IOC will announce later whether or not the investigation will be done."
The International Olympic Committee and its sponsors have been pressed to take a stronger position against Russia after President Vladimir Putin signed a law in June banning promotion of "nontraditional sexual relations" to minors.
"The IOC must call for an end to the discriminatory laws and ensure that the Olympics never again take place in a city where athletes are silenced because of who they are or who they love," AllOut executive director Andre Banks said.
The IOC has previously said Moscow assured that athletes and spectators will not face discrimination at the Feb. 7-23 Winter Games.
Bach, an Olympic gold medalist in fencing, was in Paris to attend a centenary party for the sport's governing body.
The IOC issued a statement Saturday noting Bach's meeting with France President Francois Hollande at the Elysee Palace, though it did not refer directly to the issue of gay rights.


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Resources for Researchers
NIAID offers many resources to support your research, including reagents, model organisms, and tissue samples, to name just a few. Use the filters under Filter Search Results to narrow your search, or simply enter specific search terms in the search field.
ACTG Network Laboratory (ACTG NL)
The ACTG NL consists of Core Laboratory groups in immunology, pharmacology, virology and TB.
Consortium for TB Biomarkers (CTB2) Biorepository
The Consortium for TB Biomarkers (CTB2) has created a collaborative biobank in order to accelerate the development of new drugs and treatments for tuberculosis by validating and exploring biomarkers of response to TB drug treatments. The biobank will ultimately house biospecimens from 1000 adult
NIH AIDS Reagent Program
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) AIDS Reagent Program provides critical research reagents and resources to the scientific community. The ARP acquires, develops, and produces state-of-the-art reagents and provides these reagents at no cost to qualified investigators throughout the world.


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Bierce Library
Named for Civil-War era General Lucius Bierce, whose personal library constituted the first collection of the University Libraries, Bierce Library opened in its present four-story facility on Buchtel Common in 1973. Within this library are resources and services that support the humanities, fine and applied arts, social sciences, and business. Amenities such as a coffee shop, group project areas, viewing and listening carrels, and private study rooms provide an atmosphere conducive to learning.
Circulation: 330-972-5355
Reference: 330-972-8176
Science & Technology Library
Renovated and expanded in 2003, the Science and Technology Library is conveniently located at 104 Auburn Science and Engineering Center close to the academic disciplines its collections and services support, such as pure and applied sciences, engineering, nursing and allied health fields, and polymer science and polymer engineering. The library includes the holdings and papers of the Rubber Division of the American Chemical Society. Group project rooms and comfortable lounge furniture in designated quiet areas provide a sound study environment.


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Iran Rattled by Political Unrest
Hopes were high when he left office. On January 16, 1979, Shah Mohammed Resa Pahlavi left his homeland, which at the time was still called the Empire of Iran. The "king of kings, beacon of the Aryans" – as he called himself – finally made room for a better future. Or so everyone believed. In a revolution no one had expected, the Iranian people had risen up against oppression, censorship, torture, and for a right to have a say in their own affairs.
The Shah's regime had seemed stable because it was ostentatiously well-armed and was considered modern. That was sufficient to the outside world. But to his own people, the Iranian monarch was a despot who refused his subjects any say in their own affairs and brutally suppressed criticism. His spies were everywhere, and their methods of torture struck fear into the hearts of the population. In spite of the country's tremendous oil reserves, a majority of the people lived in poverty.
Desire for change
And today, 25 years later? Today even the Iranian chamber of commerce admits that 40 percent of all Iranians subside in poverty; foreign diplomats estimate the figure at more than 60 percent. The nation is still in bondage; censorship and torture are rampant, people are dissatisfied with the system. Since the first time they were allowed to vote in 1997, the Iranian people have taken advantage of every opportunity to express their wish for reform. In 1997, 2000 and 2001 they voted for those presidential candidates and legislators who promised democracy and the rule of law.
But the question is, is the system even capable of real change? So far, every attempt at reform has failed due to the special conditions of the Iranian system. While it does contain some elements or parliamentary democracy, namely the parliament itself and the office of the president. But these institutions operate within a second, clerical structure. Even when proponents of reform control the parliament, as they have since August of the year 2000, they have not been able to achieve much.
The president is similarly powerless. Due to the power invested in the Guardian Council, parliament has hardly succeeded in putting through any of the more than 50 reform measures introduced. Altogether, 90 percent of all laws introduced by parliament have been rejected by the council as unconstitutional.
Frustration on the part of the population
For this reason, the latest action of the Guardian Council was cause for some astonishment. It refused to legitimize 80 reform-oriented members of parliament for re-election, in spite of the fact that the parliament is hardly in a position to threaten the conservatives.
Besides, they probably would have won the election anyway: People are frustrated and disillusioned, believing themselves powerless to influence Iranian politics through the election process. That's why most of them stayed away from the polls when regional elections were held in February of last year – resulting in a victory for the conservatives, who were more effective in mobilizing their supporters.
It doesn't seem to concern the conservatives that the system loses legitimacy as more voters stay away from the polls and more candidates are locked out. The Guardian Council has often been used to squelch undesired political rivals on a large scale – for example in 1992, when the Guardian Council prevented parliament from being dominated by left-wing Islamists, the same political faction that produced most of today's reformers.
Against the constitution
Complicating the situation is the fact that the selection process for council members is in fact unconstitutional. The Guardian Council does not have a constitutional mandate to select candidates for election. This task was assigned to it in 1992 by the so-called Expediency Council. It, in turn, is also not anchored in the original constitution of the year 1980, but was called into being on order of Ayatollah Khomeini in 1989.
Because of new developments such as these, and because of the strength of revolutionary leader Ali Khamenei, even those who support the state doctrine of the Islamic Republic of Iran in principle have been forced to admit that the "founding fathers" who wrote the Iranian constitution had envisioned an entirely different system. Grand Ayatollah Hoseinali Montaseri, who participated in the writing of the constitution, accuses the ruling conservatives of having perverted the intentions of the constitution.
Corruption and mismanagement
Twenty-five years after the Shah fled the country, 25 years after the first serious attempt to implement the Islamist motto, "Islam is the solution," the degree of alienation between the people and their conservative rulers has reached its apogee. The earthquake in Bam was a contributing factor. Why did so many people have to die in the earthquake?
This question was raised openly in the Iranian press, and the answer came promptly: Because corruption is rampant and construction ordinances were not observed; because those in power are allowing their people to suffer, and because the potentially rich nation is so poorly managed.
Secular youth
Even though at the moment all indications are to the contrary, the forces of reform will prevail in the end. The days of the theocratic state in Iran are numbered, because it has lost touch with society. Young Iranians in particular have turned away from the ruling clerics.
Seventy percent of the younger generation are below the age of 30. They are too young to remember the shah's reign, but they can see for themselves that the ideals of the revolution have not been made reality. Every kind of pleasure is denied them by the prevailing conservative interpretation of Islam.
"If this is the pure Islamic teaching of Mohammedan tradition, then I would rather do without it," is the thinking of many Iranians today. Surveys have shown that more people say their daily prayers in the secular republic of Turkey, than do so in the supposed theocracy of Iran.
Reform politicians blame the conservatives for creating this negative view of Islam among the nation's young people. Mohammed Resa Khatami, the brother of the ruling president and a new "shooting star" among reformers, recently stated frankly: The young people of Iran are fleeing from religion due to the violent and dictatorial interpretation Islam has received. On the 25th anniversary of the Islamic Revolution, the people of Iran may well be the most secularized nation in the Middle East -- a nation that has seen first-hand the dangers of unifying politics and religion.
And yet there is hope: In spite of all the set-backs to the reform process, a community of self-confident, politically aware citizens has emerged. There are initial indications of a civil society in the process of organizing itself, of a society that desires liberalization in the public sector. This is promising for the future. For even if the political reform movement should fail, that doesn't mean civil society must fail as well.
Katajun Amirpur © die tageszeitung,16.1.2004
Translation from German: Andres Rossmann
Katajun Amirpur is a journalist and professor of Islamic Studies. She is currently employed in a teaching position at the Institute for Islamic Studies at the Free University of Berlin.
Further articles by Katajun Amirpur on Qantara.de:
Islamic Feminism in the Islamic Republic of Iran
Getting Cross with "Der Spiegel"


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Who: Monica Bellucci
Where: Arriving at the Albergo della Regina Isabella Hotel Ischia, Italy
Why we like it: Monica looked sophisticated attending the Ischia Global Film & Music Fest in a fresh floral-printed top and skirt by Dolce & Gabbana. The Italian actress and brand ambassador accessorized with a pair of white slingback platform pumps.
Image: NPress/WENN.com


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I really wanted an iced coffee earlier and walked over to the Hyatt to get one. On my way there I noticed the trees were electric blue. My first thought was "won't they die?" Nope. Not unless they're "sensitive" according to this person. Turns out the blue trees are an art project Alibi staff writer Mark Lopez wrote about a couple weeks ago.
It doesn't matter if the paint kills them, they're probably going to be removed anyway. If that makes you sad, this update about a downtown grocery store might cheer you up. I hope the paint is water based so it runs onto the sidewalks and turns the whole Fourth Street Mall electric blue.


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I'm on vacation.
Yup, that's right. For the next two glorious weeks, I am practicing dolce far niente on the west coast, including a few lovely days in Vancouver with my parents, and a little roadtrip down the Oregon & California coasts with my amigo B.
Before leaving, it occured to me that I didn't factor vacations in to 52 Projects. Given that I'm already behind (with 12 projects to finish in the next 7 weeks if I'm to keep strictly to timelines – an unlikely prospect), I began brainstorming what I could take on the road.
As I scanned the list of remaining project ideas, one immediately popped out – make a recipe by your great-grandmother! What better project to take on under the supervision of my own mom – cook and DIY-er extraordinaire!
My mom, naturally, was totally on board with the idea. Her side of the family includes some
incredible family historians, providing easy access to such recipes. In fact, a few years back my Uncle Dave and Cousin Greg transcribed my great-grandmother's recipes and self-published them as a gigantic recipe / history book.
I've spent a good chunk of the last few days here in Vancouver pouring over this book, marveling in the culinary changes that have taken place since my great-granny, Lydia Lush, was working away in the kitchen. I've laughed disgustingly at the pages of "jellied" recipes – Jellied Sandwiches, Jellied Salads, even Jellied Campbell's soup (the only ingredients are Campbell's soup and a package of lemon jelly powder … yikes!). I've poured over the chapter on "Domestic Science", taking careful notes on how to preserve cheese, solder metal at home, remove grease spots, and properly dish up a plum pudding.
But of most interest to me are the hints of community and history found scattered across the pages. In an age where I google any recipe I want, Lydia carefully wrote each one out by hand, including notes about neighbours, social events,
and new products — Mrs Harley's Filling for Maple Tarts (Much Liked!), Mrs Edmunds' Marmalade, various cookie recipes from Mrs Mat, Miss Lyner, Aunt Annie, Mrs Murch and more; the emergence of products like Heinz Ketchup (1876)and Rice Krispies (1928); the inclusion of war-time & depression era recipes, that minimize the use of ingredients like milk and eggs. It really is an incredible read.
After much contemplation, this morning my mom and I decided to make pull-taffy. Alongside the notes in the book, my mom shared her own memories of making this with her own mother — and how handling the taffy helped her develop "Jarvis Fingers" (ones with so few nerves left in them that handling near-boiling taffy isn't a problem. I do NOT have Jarvis fingers, though may have started developing them today!).
In any case, on a dreary Monday morning, this was the perfect project to work away on. For anyone looking for a sweet pick-me-up, I highly recommend trying the following…
- 3 cups brown sugar
- 1/2 cup white vinegar
- 1/2 cup water
- 3 tsp butter
- 1/2 tsp baking soda
- vanilla
- big pot
- wooden & metal spoons
- waxed paper
- a big tin or glass/ceramic dish
- extra butter for greasing the above big tin or glass/ceramic dish
How to do it!
- Before you start anything, grease your final tin/pan really well. Give it lots of butter. This will make a big difference later.
- Put the sugar, vinegar and water in the pot and stir well.
Put this mixture on the stove on high heat and bring to a rolling boil.
Once the mixture is on the stove, DO NOT stir anymore. Just watch it & make sure it doesn't burn. Once it's on the boil, you want to keep it rolling but may want to turn it down to medium heat.
Let it boil for about 10 minutes, and watch the transformation take place.
- Once it's boiled for 10 minutes, add 3 tsp butter. Again, DO NOT stir, just let it do it's thing.
Let it keep boiling until it hairs. This may take a while. To test for "hairing", dip a metal spoon in the mixture and lift out.
If the taffy drips off the spoon, it's not ready. But if it starts making hair-like strings, you're set!
- Just before removing from the stove (or fire, as Lydia Lush writes), add your baking soda (which should be dissolved in a wee bit of hot water) and vanilla. This time, you can stir, but just a little.
- Pour the taffy into a buttered tin. You'll see lots of evidence of the hairing here.
- This is the fun / painful part. The taffy will start to cool faster around the edges of your well-greased pan than in the middle, and ideally you want it to cool uniformly. So, you need to get the cooler taffy into the middle by pulling it. Now, while this sounds straightforward, you're basically having to put your fingers in ridiculously hot, sticky liquid. If you don't have my mom's Jarvis fingers, this is really painful. One way to help with this is to grease your hands up so the taffy won't stick to your fingers as much. Please, please, please be careful with this part.
- Keep on lightly pulling the taffy to the centre until it is cool enough that you can hold a ball of taffy in your hands. You'll likely want to re-grease your hands several times throughout.
- Now comes the real pulling. Work your taffy by pulling and twisting it over and over again, and feel the consistency change as the taffy cools and hardens. It will also change colour. Once your taffy is a golden straw-like colour, and fairly firm, you're done.
- Lay out some waxed paper, and pull the taffy into long snake-like shapes, and twist it up.
- Let it sit until it's hard like brittle candy, and then smash it up (using the back of a knife or just pure force!) into bite-size pieces.
- Enjoy – and don't forget to brush your teeth after consuming!!!


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Category : Template.
Topic : Free samples of cv templates. Author : Jacelyn Faure.
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You can easily create an invoice paid template containing all the essential features by making use of the word invoice template offered without charge on the Internet. You can get various types of invoice template design. You may have an billing invoice template word for providing any specific service or goods or just labor. You also can find business form template for pro-forma invoices.
Lastly, you will need to consider the production of your template. Depending on your industry you need to pick the best invoice to suit your needs. For example, you may use an invoice template that you customize electronically and print from the convenience of your office before submitting to your client. Or perhaps, the invoice will be sent electronically through email. Or you may require a handwritten invoice form that your technician can complete in the field. Most likely, your company will require a combination of these. Using a template can ensure that your companys design and branding elements are consistent.


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Three years, scores of topics, nearly 400 postings, thousands of comments, LOTS of community members and we're just getting started!
Happy anniversary to Life with MS; it's been three years baby!
I'd like to take a moment from our typical conversation to thank all of you. It is for, with and because of you that this blog has been so successful over the past three years. You have signed up for RSS feeds, you've told your friends, family and support groups to check us out and more importantly you've kept coming back to Life with MS over and over again.
You take our information. You submit ideas for new topics. You proffer tips and advice. You leave your opinions and comments. You make Life with MS a place I like to be.
Upon my return to the US after my extended stay in Ireland, I found this idea a pleasant diversion for a while. I remember how excited I was when one of our posts received 4 comments. Now, we have postings with hundreds of your comments (and some with over a thousand). So much for a little diversion…
We haven't always agreed on these pages. In fact it's gotten very heated at times (think stem cell research, assisted suicide and how could we forget, the rancor over the past Presidential Election). Through it all, we've kept our heads cool.
We'll get back to the nuts-and-bolts, work-a-day world of learning how to live with our multiple sclerosis next week. I thought it appropriate to take a few lines to recognize our accomplishments together.
We really couldn't have done this without each and every one of you.
We must, assuredly, thank Rose whose idea this whole thing was and Natalie; dear, sweet, patient Natalie. Sweetie, without your adept and able hand at turning my blather into something a few folks find interesting, this place would be a swamp of mixed metaphors and overly/poorly punctuated, misspelled, rambling…we'll you get my point. Thanks, Pixy!
And again, to all who read these pages on a regular or semi-occasional basis. Thank you. To all who leave comment as well as to our "lurkers," we thank you.
I encourage our new readers to click on the "View Archive" icon on the right margin and see what we've talked about for the past three years. It's really some pretty good stuff.
Monday we will proceed as normal with our blog. Today, a glance back at three years of Life with MS. Three years…how long is that in "blog years?"
Wishing you and your family the best of health.


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This week on the Affiliate Thing podcast, Shawn Collins and Lisa Picarille talk about two-foot long hot dogs at Texas Rangers games, ShareASale ThinkTank, stuff to do in Austin during Affiliate Summit Central, and that proposals are open for the next issue of FeedFront magazine.
They also talked about new Pinnacle Award categories, Google Drive, affiliate nexus taxes, and pink flamingos.
Show Links
- I Need a Logo for a New Directory Site
- ShareASale ThinkTank
- Places to Eat, Drink, Shop, and Sightsee During Affiliate Summit Central 2012
- Want to Contribute to Issue 19 of FeedFront Magazine?
- Want to Add New Pinnacle Awards Categories?
- Vote for Affiliate Summit East 2012 Sessions
- Google Drive
- Judge Rules Illinois Affiliate Nexus Law is Unconstitutional
- Amazon, Texas Strike Deal on Sales Tax
- Austin Karaoke 5k
- Pink Flamingos on Amazon
Subscribe to the Affiliate Thing RSS feed or listen on iTunes. You can also send a blank e-mail to email@example.com to get each podcast delivered by e-mail.


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The food production and packaging sector requires, due to the sensitivity of the environment and level of regulation, specific materials and solutions. Mitsubishi Chemical Advanced Materialss product portfolio includes a range of materials specifically developed for food contact. Our solutions aim at reducing maintenance costs and increase productivity in packaging equipment, also for non-food goods or pharmaceuticals.
The creation and introduction of the new "Food Grade" material family is based on Mitsubishi Chemical Advanced Materials's migration limit tests and offers customers not only time savings on their application specific testing, but also the advantage of traceability along the entire value chain and control of the production process following Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP). It also ensures maximum hygiene and non-contamination of food stuff that comes into contact with Mitsubishi Chemical Advanced Materials's materials.
Mitsubishi Chemical Advanced Materials supplies stock shape materials as well as finished parts solutions for global clients in the food processing & packaging market. Our local technical service team is ready to help you providing details on materials, such as chemical resistance data, and identifying the right material for your application. Naturally, food compliancy certificates will be issued for the chosen products.
Products :
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|Fluorosint® 207
Chain guiders
Bushings, rollers
Thrust washers
Scrapers, paddles
Pistons, valves
Gear wheels
Sliding bearings
Cutter discs
Forming plates
Time screws
Challenge: A piston is used to pump a milk-based liquid into the bottles. It is sliding along the cylinder walls and also has the function of sealing during the dosing process.
Solution: Ertalytewas chosen for this application because it offers an excellent dimensional stability combined with good wear resistance.
Benefits: When using Ertalyte there is no additional need for external lubrication. Ertalytehas a food compliant composition according to EU directive 2002/72/EC and complies with the requirements of the '3-A Sanitary Standards for Multiple-Use Plastic Materials'. This is shortening the compliancy certification process, saving costs and increasing productivity.
Challenge: The chain guider should assure a smooth sliding of the chain and therefore needs to offer excellent wear resistance towards the chain. To assure a better cleaning, the temperature during cleaning has been increased. The material solution should meet all these requirements.
Solution: A housing of TIVAR H.O.T. was selected for its excellent wear resistance combined with a superior temperature resistance compared to regular PE-UHMW.
Benefits: Excellent resistance against cleaning chemicals and compliant with the requirements of the '3A Sanitary Standards for Multiple-Use Plastic Materials', resulting in time savings during the food compliancy certification process of the equipment.
Duratron® PEI 1000
Challenge: The manufacturer needed a distribution spool for cookie filling. The spool also pushed the cookies out, working like a piston. The material needed to maintain good stiffness at elevated temperatures and at the same time be of low weight. Low heat conductivity and easy maintenance were other requirements.
Solution: Duratron PEI 1000 exhibiting stiffness and dimensional stability at operating temperatures up to 160 °C.
Benefits: Replaced a metal assembly that needed more time to disassemble and clean, at the same time offering lower overall costs and food contact compliance.
Ertalyte® TX
Challenge: A small bread baking machines manufacturer needed a low weight part to press the dough out of a dosing chamber. It needed to show very good wear resistance, excellent frictional properties, very good release properties (no sticking of dough), dimensional stability, chemical resistance and high load capacity.
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Benefits: Maintenance and design cost reductions, no corrosion problems like aluminum, food contact compliance, better hygiene and safety performance along with considerable weight reduction.
Ertalyte® TX
Challenge: Inside the forming equipment minced meat is pressed into a moulding plate, shaping the hamburgers. Then the plate slides out horizontally, letting the burgers fall onto a wire belt. The plate needed to be wear resistant and dimensionally stable, holding its flatness throughout the pressing cycle. It needed to be easy sliding without the application of external lubricants.
Solution: Ertalyte TX was chosen as the best solution thanks to its dimensional stability and excellent wear and frictional properties.
Benefits: Chemical resistance against cleaners, good and easy machining, and food contact compliancy are part of the package which helps to reduce overall costs and provides a better hygiene of the equipment.
Challenge: To remove the full digestion channel of a slaughtered chicken, a rotating drill and grabber is inserted into the bird. The housing is machined in plastic of low weight and good wear resistance. The part needed to show excellent release properties (no meat adhering to it), very good impact resistance and good cleanability.Solution: TIVAR 1000 was selected because it met all the requirements.Benefits: Excellent resistance against cleaning chemicals and food contact compliant composition. This cost effective solution helps increase flexibility in handling during the slaughtering process and maintenance.
Challenge: Bottling and canning lines require sliding elements with good sliding and wear properties. The material has to be non-sensitive to impact and must withstand chemical cleaners.
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Techtron® HPV PPS
Challenge: A packager needed a mould to form the paper box in its equipment for liquids. The mould needed high mechanical strength to resist the compression forces and dimensional stability under load and temperature. Wear resistance, low weight and chemical resistance during CIP cleaning were also required.
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For more information on the regulation, and our new and fully tested product family, please click here!
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