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|Han Chinese Bronze Horse
The last time we looked at China on World History, (see here), the Mandate of Heaven had been passed to Liu Bang who was made Emperor Gaozu and founded the Han Dynasty which would last until 220 CE. On this World History post we shall look at the Han Dynasty after Emperor Gaozou, through a period called the Six Dynasties until the rise of the short lived Sui Dynasty. Before we cover that we have to look at the Han Dynasty. The Han Dynasty was split into two main phases: early, (or Western), and later, (or Eastern), Han. Let's start with Liu Bang becoming Emperor Gaozou in 202 BCE.
Early/Western Han
|Emperor Gaozou
Liu Bang had overthrown the very autocratic Qin, or Ch'in, Dynasty which has been viewed very negatively by Chinese historians. Largely this is because the Ch'in burnt books, and scholars, so present observers could not compare them to old dynasties. Liu Bang and the Han reversed this trend. This in turn made scholars right about Liu Bang very favorably. Some of the first eminent Chinese historians came about during the Han Dynasty using written sources which indicates that the Ch'in attempts to destroy documents was not as thorough as initially believed. Liu Bang also began a series of reforms which got the population on side, thus giving him a freer hand to deal with opposition. One of the major ones was abolishing agricultural slavery but domestic slavery was still allowed, (men who were castrated were also made into slaves). The Han Dynasty witnessed a period of central government which built on the effective bureaucracy of the Ch'in, just far less authoritarian, with a clear capital releasing laws centered around Chang'an. Despite the Han's condemnation of Ch'in authoritarianism the initial law code borrowed much from the Ch'in's law code. However, the Han were more lenient and the emperor ruled only the west directly from Chang'an with there being thirteen semi-autonomous kingdoms in the east, (Yan, Dai, Zhao, Qi, Liang, Chu, Huai, Wu, Nan and, Changsha). This helped the Han appear far less authoritarian than their predecessors.
The Han saw great expansion for China in government, technology and land. Pottery models have been found depicting a winnowing machine with a crank handle, seisometers have been found, bronze gears and, even water wheels. The Han Dynasty also saw central government directly controlling the economy. They continued to use the ban liang currency type from the Ch'in but it went through periods of privatization and nationalization. One of Liu Bang's reforms was making the coins privately minted instead of being minted by the government; something which his widow Emperess Dowager Lu Zhi reversed in 186 BCE. However, in 182 BCE she accidentally caused widespread inflation with her introduction of a lighter bronze coin. Emperor Wu in 120 BCE introduced the wuzhu coin which was eventually adopted by the Tang Dynasty centuries later as the main currency over the ban liang. During the Han Dynasty there was many wars of expansion, which as we saw with Rome was expensive, (please see here), but, unlike the Romans the Han managed to fund their wars. The Han nationalized the very profitable salt and iron industries so they could take a lot of profit from that. They also introduced heavy taxation, including the poll tax, which naturally upset many people so the Han had to introduce tax remissions or reduced taxes during poor harvests.
The Western Han period saw great military expansion. Starting with Emperor Wu-ti, ruling from 140-87 BCE, China started warring against the northern nomadic Hsuingnu, who would later attack the Romans as the Huns, and started conquering the north. Not only that but they conquered northern Korea, northern Vietnam, Hainan and, even as far east as Bactria. The Han did not skimp on defense either with the Great Wall of China seeing repairs and expansion during the Han Dynasty. Han expansion and elimination of the northern nomadic threat for some time allowed the creation of the Silk Road, (please see here), which saw the trade of Chinese silk with the Mediterranean. This proved to be such a profitable trade for the Han that they put in place the death penalty for anyone who gave out the secret of silk manufacture. There were even tentative relations opening with Rome when both empires were at their height. During the Western Han the population soared up to 57 million peoples with cities holding huge amounts of people which Europe wouldn't be able to match until the early modern period. Chang'an had a population of a quarter of a million people.
Hsin Dynasty and later Han
After a series of unpopular centralization, dynastic feuds, poor harvests and princes even murdering each other over board games in 9 CE a member of the royal family, Wang Mang, declared that the Mandate of Heaven had moved away from the Han. He declared the rise of a new dynasty called the Xia, or Hsin. To win support he started many reforms including nationalizing land to give to the poor and abolished slavery. He could have succeeded if not for a series of devastating floods which undermined his rule. The Han regained power in 23 CE, just fourteen years after Wang Mang took power, with power located in the east, hence why the later Han is also referred to as the Eastern Han. However, the Han never truly recovered the power it once had. Renewed warfare against the Hsuingnu and the Chiang of the northwest severely drained the economy. Dynastic rivalries flared up as poor harvests and high taxation alienated the population from the ruling elite. In 184 this flared up into the Yellow Turban Rebellion as laborers in the poorer north became extremely angry that southern landowners were making huge fortunes. The government was also seen as weak and, the floods and famines made it seem that the Han Dynasty no longer had the Mandate of Heaven. It took until 205 to suppress the rebellion but it would stay in Chinese memory with it becoming the opening for the Romance of the Three Kingdoms by Luo Guanzhong. By 220 central power had been virtually given over to regional generals and the last Han emperor, Xian, abdicated.
|The Yellow Turban Rebellion from Romance of the Three Kingdoms
Three Kingdoms and the Jin
With the collapse of the Han China was split into three kingdoms: the Wei in the north, the Wu in the south, and the Shu in the west. If anyone has watched or read Game of Thrones they would know that when new states emerge from a unified one during times of conflict they are instable. Just sixty years after the collapse of the Han the Three Kingdoms were gone. The three kingdoms would be beset by war, dynastic squabbles and internal discord which would be one of the bloodiest periods of Chinese history with the population dropping from 56,486,856 to 16,163,863 with the rise of the Jin. The first of the kingdoms, (a misnomer seen as an emperor ruled them), was the Shu who was conquered by the militarily powerful Wu in 263. Meanwhile, in Wei a powerful family called the Sima was trying to seize power and in 264 Sima Yan became emperor founding the Jin, or the Western Chin. He then began a series of wars against the Wu who was facing internal unrest. In 280 they succeeded and the Jin Dynasty began ruling a united China.
Jin rule started with reestablishing the Han model of agriculture helping the agricultural economy improve. With their laissez-faire and Taoism mix the economy improved but the Jin was not stable. Buddhism had become widespread and had started to challenge the traditional, semi-conservative Confucianism present in China, as well as Taoism. Making this even worse was political disruption among the ruling elite. This included a civil war from 291 until 301 called the War of the Eight Princes when a developmentally disabled emperor, Hui, inherited the throne and his mother, Empress Dowager Yang, tried to promote her Yang clan over the others. As eight princes went to war this allowed non-Chinese peoples to form their own kingdoms in China; either by invasion or rebellion. At one time there was at least sixteen kingdoms including ones ruled by the Hsiungnu, Hsienpei, Ti, Ch'iang and, Chieh. The Jin survived only in the east which was severely weakened by endemic tax evasion, constant invasions and a weak military. In the north the new non-Chinese kingdoms waged war against one another, like in 311 the Ch'ang-an was attacked by the Ti and in 316 the Hsiungnu sacked Lo-yang. Slowly the northern kingdoms were conquered by a new Wei kingdom who united the north in 386 while in the south in 420 the last Jin emperor was overthrown by the new Sung dynasty. It was followed by several weak dynasties, all overthrown by generals, which shall be covered now.
Northern and Southern Dynasties until the Tang
|North and South
From 420 until 589 China was split into two: the Northern Hsienpei Wei dynasty and the southern Liu Song. None of the southern dynasties saw stability with each lasting between thirty to fifty years before being overthrown in a coup by a general. The Northern Wei was more secure but in 534 it split between the Northern Chi'i and Chou. The Chi'i failed to conquer the Chou but it remained far more weaker militarily, economically and smaller. In 577 the Chou finally conquered the Chi'i but the Chou dynasty was soon overthrown by a general called Yang Chien, who was partly-Chinese, who soon founded the Sui dynasty. Yang Chien wished to fully unify China and with the south weak from various coups, poor harvests and poor tax efficiency he managed to easily conquer the south. China was finally reunited. Yang's dynasty was short lived with his economy strained thanks to wars in Vietnam, expansion of the Great Wall and, war against the Korean kingdom of Goguryeo. His dynasty ended in 618 when Emperor Yang-ti was assassinated. The Tang took over forming a new dynasty which would leave China unified for another three hundred years.
Looking at China between 202 BCE and 618 CE we see a clear case for history repeating itself. When the Han started repeating the actions of the Qin with harsh taxes, increased centralization, and with dynastic arguments it sealed its own fate. What followed was a period of time similar to the Warring States period where China collapsed in on itself and the successor states forged an empire based on the military rather than administration. Looking at China we can also see why there was no resurgence of the Roman Empire, and we can see why Justinian and Charlemagne both were unable to recreate Roman power. The Sui and later Tang managed to rebuild an empire with the same administration, currency, religion, culture, and language as their subjects whereas Justinian and Charlemagne had to contend with different cultures, languages, government types, and currencies. While it could be argued that after the fall of the Western Roman Empire Europe never became united as it once was it took China just under four hundred years to reunify, although it would later splinter again. Next time on World History we will go to the Middle East to see how a religion managed to unify a region and eventually become the second largest religion today. We shall look at the origins of Islam.
Thank you for reading and these are the sources that I have used:
-The Penguin History of the World by John Roberts
-The Times Complete History of the World edited by Richard Overy
-History of the World edited by John Whitney Hall
For a list of other World History posts please see here
For a list of other World History posts please see here


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text: Hi, I'm looking for some vintage G1's - preferably in near mint to mint condition and complete. If you happen to be missing an accessory that is readily available, that's okay too. PM me with price and have pics ready, thanks. Targetmasters Misfire Needlenose Pointblank Spinister Sureshot Cyclonus Hot Rod Triggerhappy Scourge Cassettes Frenzy (blue) Rumble (red) Ratbat Ravage Grandslam Slugfest Squawkbox Squawktalk Beastbox Dinobots Grimlock Snarl Sludge Seekers Dirge Ramjet Thrust Parts Menasor - Left Fist Dead End - Canon w/ connector Breakdown - mini gun & canon w/ connector Wildrider - mini gun & canon w/ connector Air Raid - mini gun Fireflight - mini gun Slingshot - mini gun Skydive - mini gun Octane - Tank cover


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Contact: Science Press Package
American Association for the Advancement of Science
Individual cells of the tiny ocean bacteria Prochlorococcus – perhaps the most plentiful photosynthetic creature on Earth – are more diverse from one cell to the next than previously thought, a new study in the 25 April issue of the journal Science reports.
Prochlorococcus are photosynthetic, and so give off oxygen. They are responsible for generating at least 50 percent of oxygen on Earth, and they also play a key role in the global carbon cycle by absorbing a lot of carbon dioxide from the air.
The Prochlorococcus genus contains distinct types of ocean bacteria adapted to different light as it changes with season, or with geography.
Even though little adjustments are constantly happening within floating Prochlorococcus communities, the overall population density of these tiny bacteria stays about the same -- at about 100,000 cells per millimeter in most surface waters.
Now, MIT's Nadav Kashtan and colleagues have shown that, though the overall genetic diversity of a Prochlorococcus group is maintained, the amounts of specific genotypes within that group change.
To make this discovery, the researchers analyzed genome sequences of single cells from Prochlorococcus samples collected at three different times of the year from the Sargasso Sea (a region of water in the North Atlantic Ocean). They uncovered an array of diverse genotypes, leading them to conclude that populations of Prochlorococcus are made of hundreds of little subpopulations with unique 'genomic backbones' that offer flexible gene variations.
These genes are expressed differently between types of bacteria, even those in the same community.
The researchers tried to figure out the forces that maintain the great diversity they found. The diversity appears to be driven by temperature, light, and nutrients, and by biological phenomena, like the bacteria's need to resist certain predators.
These factors appear to select the strongest and best-suited genotypes from the Prochlorococcus community, likely according to how fit they are in changing environmental conditions. That's why some genotypes are more abundant at certain times of year, depending on the environmental conditions at that time.


text: Well, I can get a deal, but i'm unsure if i should go for it or not. I'm getting a BTB405 next weekend, its my first bass(but i'v played guitar for a few years) I can get some (new) bart's installed, instead of the stock pickups, for just a tiny bit more cash(not much at all), Should i do thisright away, or should i use the stocks for a while, then if i want to change the pu's later i can. (It'll be a little more then what i would pay now, but still very cheap). I'm really thinking of waiting to get the bart's, maybe i won't even get bart's, i'll probably be happy with the stock pu's for months/years to come , as i already do.


text: Hi, i've got a WRT54G which i ran the configuration wizard on at work computer. The network has an Unique IP for each computer 10.10.10.X as well as the usual subnet and a default gateway + DNS Server. The setup runs fine and i connect a few wireless laptops without hassle to the internet through this connection, however i can't see my local LAN where the hardwired machines reside. The Internet is piped through the LAN via a series of DLINK 10/100 Ethernet routers. My laptops don't use any IP address either - everything is automatic configuration. I ran the standard configuration via the Linksys Wizard and I have Alchemy Firmware running. Does anyone know of a way to change my configuration so that i can see the LAN and the Internet on my wireless machines. Cheers MrGroverMonster


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Gang of Eight seeks alternative border plan
Rubio has consistently said that the Gang bill won't be enacted, especially in the conservative GOP House, without changes to border security.
Democrats disagree that they must make significant concessions on the Gang agreement for a filibuster-proof majority, and now they are waiting for Rubio or other Republicans to step forward with a border plan that they can accept.
Rubio, in an interview with POLITICO this week, would not describe his work with with Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) and others as an "alternative" to the Cornyn plan.
"We certainly have ideas, and we're sharing them with people, but if others want to take the lead on securing the border, that's good," Rubio said. "We're in a game of addition. … The border security elements of the bill will have to be improved. The only issue is what is going to do that."
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) wanted to put the Cornyn plan up for a vote Wednesday hoping to kill it quickly and show undecided Republicans that it's going nowhere. But Reid held back at the GOP's request, according to two Senate Democratic leadership aides. A Cornyn spokesman said that wasn't the case.
Instead, McCain and Schumer launched a coordinated attack from the floor.
In an exchange that spilled the Republican divide into public view, McCain claimed Cornyn's proposal wouldn't pay for the billions of dollars needed to add more than 6,000 border patrol and customs agents. Cornyn shot back that his plan would tap an $8.3 billion trust fund already established under the bill. McCain didn't buy it.
"There is a finite amount of money authorized. If the senator takes money from one and adds money one place, it has to come from someplace else," McCain said. "That's simple first grade mathematics, and I think it's incredible that the senator should stand there and say, "Yeah, we're adding these thousands of personnel," but yet, there's no additional cost. That's not possible."
Schumer argued the Cornyn plan, which he described as a compilation of amendments that failed in the Judiciary Committee, would eat up all the money and leave nothing for drones, helicopters and other technology to secure the border. The proposal is a "nonstarter," he said.
"Let's move on," Schumer said.
"What is this, the third day this bill has been on the floor?" Cornyn responded. "To say that we can't touch it; we can't change it because eight senators got together and decided what it should be, is preposterous."
The challenge for the Gang of Eight is that key Republicans have already started to jump aboard Cornyn's plan.
Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.), a moderate whose "no" votes on the procedural motions came as a surprise, said adopting Cornyn's proposal "opens the door" to him supporting immigration reform.
And Sen. Mike Johanns, another gettable Republican, signed onto Cornyn's amendment as a co-sponsor. Johanns said after a luncheon with GOP senators Wednesday that Cornyn appeared to be gathering "pretty significant support" for his amendment.


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THIS COURSE IS ACCREDITED TO UNIT STANDARD:Title: Make oral presentationsUnit Standard ID: 242840NQF Level: 4Credit Value: 2INTRODUCTIONThe ability to present oneself effectively with confidence is one of the most highly sought after skills in the workplace. This course will give the delegate the tools to present to both large and small audiences. The delegate will learn the skill of adapting to different audiences in varying presentation circumstances including formal presentations, meetings, interviews, negotiations, debating sessions and team presentations. The focus is on gaining skills through practical application of the theory and skills covered.WHAT THIS COURSE CAN DO FOR YOU… Understanding the characteristics of a good presenter Overcoming the "Fear Factor" Applying the presentation process from planning to question and answer sessions Analysing the audience Successful interaction with the audience, maintaining sound group dynamics. Reinforcing the message - key words, pace, transitions, body language Participating in/conducting formal meetings, discussions, debates and negotiations. Using appropriate visual aids to enhance the presentation. Drawing successful conclusionsTARGET AUDIENCEThe two day course targets business professionals who communicate on a regular basis with individuals of different levels of skills, knowledge and ability. The course is open to all business professionals, and may include those who make formal proposals, present reports with PowerPoint presentations, manage projects, debate and negotiate, chair meetings, conduct interviews, who are active in sales and who may meet and introduce external clients. TRAINING APPROACHThe primary objective of our training is to ensure that the knowledge acquired is applied successfully, adding real value and making a visible difference to work performance in the business environment. The courses have a strong focus on an outcomes based approach and are facilitated on a highly interactive basis encouraging active delegate participation using: Role-plays Break-away sessions Relevant business exercises Presentations Demonstrations Questionnaires Discussion activities and Case studiesHigh emphasis is placed on learning through 'doing' where learners are presented with real life and workplace case studies ensuring delegates develop knowledge and confidence to take their enhanced skills back into the business environment and apply them successfully. The group leaders are trained to create a comfortable atmosphere where delegates can evaluate themselves and their skills, generate ideas and solutions to problems and plan suitable growth in the workplace.POST COURSE ASSISTANCE"Contact the Coach" – Bridging Learning for Business ResultsWe offer a continued learning relationship providing FREE access to post course support to embed the knowledge gained. Our advisors are subject matter experts in each area of specialisation.Delegates can "Contact the Coach" for support, information or assistance with additional questions regarding the application of theory covered during the course.KWELANGA BUSINESS & EXECUTIVE COACHINGKwelanga Training now offers coaching on a one-to-one or team coaching basis. Issues covered are chosen by the organisation or the individual to ensure maximum focus is given to achieve measurable outcomes. Coaching provided by certified professional business and executive coaches is key in transforming management and support staff's excellent performance to peak performance.
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text: The NAS New Testament Greek Lexicon Strong's Number: 290 Browse Lexicon Original WordWord Originampelonfrom (288)Transliterated WordTDNT EntryAmpelonNonePhonetic SpellingParts of Speecham-pel-ohn' Noun Masculine Definition a vineyard NAS Word Usage - Total: 23vineyard 23 NAS Verse Count Matthew10Mark4Luke61 Corinthians1Total21Greek lexicon based on Thayer's and Smith's Bible Dictionary plus others; this is keyed to the large Kittel and the "Theological Dictionary of the New Testament." These files are public domain.Bibliography InformationThayer and Smith. "Greek Lexicon entry for Ampelon". "The NAS New Testament Greek Lexicon". . 1999.


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Every Monday through Friday, we deliver a different song as part our Song of the Day podcast subscription. This podcast features exclusive KEXP in-studio performances, unreleased songs, and recordings from independent artists that our DJs think you should hear. Each and every Friday we offer songs by local artists. Today's featured selection, chosen by Midday Show Host Cheryl Waters, is "Desert Sky" by Gabriel Mintz from his debut self-released full-length album Volume One.
It's always interesting when an artist hits the scene that's a little bit unclassifiable. Seattle import Gabriel Mintz is one of these artists. Part roots, part Americana, part Tom Petty, part something else maybe not yet defined. For the last few years, Mintz has been a drifter and has recently put down roots in our fair city to the delight of many. He along with band mates Trent Moorman (Head Like a Kite, Fresh Espresso, etc.) and Geoff Stanfield (Sun Kill Moon, producer) have been playing some really great shows around town and were part of the GIVE compilation before they even had their album out. Volume One is a collection of songs Mintz has written over the years during his travels across the US and include the hauntingly beautiful "Western Days" as well as the percussion-laden "Desert Sky."
Mintz took a few minutes to share some of his inspirations for the move, the album, and of course today's Song of the Day.
I understand you've lived quite the nomadic life, what drew you to Seattle?
Seattle was this beautiful, mysterious place at the top corner of the map, and I always wound up here on trips I used to do around the states during the summer… meeting up with and supporting other acts that were traveling, visiting projects my friends were involved in, doing my own shows. My friend Bradford Button (Whalebones/Curious Mystery) was living here as well, and he and I have done a lot of work together over the years, so I eventually moved out here, and into his studio in the beginning.
Your debut album, Volume One, is a collection of songs you've been writing over the years right? Does that mean you're also considering a Volume Two?
I've got more volumes of songs to do than I may have the chance to do in my lifetime, but I will try.
What is your songwriting process?
It is somewhat different each time. I have some patterns and routines, but it varies quite a lot. I like to challenge myself by switching it up constantly.
Are your songs pretty autobiographical in nature or where do you get your narrative style of lyrics?
The songs on Volume One are largely autobiographical, but there are many that are not. I wound up with a more autobiographical collection of songs for this particular release… a few deeply personal topics in there, but I've got a lot of songs and writings and such that address other issues in the world. This first collection gets a little more into life stories
How did you hook up with Trent Moorman and Geoff Stanfield?
I met Trent and Geoff through my dear friend Bob Brunner, who has been supporting and helping my music for the last three years or so. Trent and Geoff are both a huge pleasure to work with. I love them both and find them both fascinating to work with in different ways. I've been conducting experiments on them in secret to try and figure out what makes them tick – don't tell anybody.
What is the story behind "Desert Sky?"
I was on my way out here, passing through the Badlands in South Dakota where it is vast and silent, I began writing it there, sitting on a rock in the middle of nothing. "Do you like the sound of the sound at night?" was a question I asked my travel companion at the time when we arrived in Seattle. It was about leaving everything behind for something new and unknown. This journey out of one world and into another in a crappy Chevy van with a crazy companion… rebelling and discovering… trippin' out on rocks in the desert.
What inspired the almost tribal percussion on this song?
Trent really nailed the feeling/space I feel like I'm in when I play it… I'd have to credit him on that. I also gravitate toward those kinds of beats and sounds anyway, but that is a good example of Trent's knack for tapping into the sounds of the universe just right.
Do YOU like the sound of the sound at night?
Yes. So far, little kids that are exposed to that song have had an annoying habit of repeating that line over and over again, and I am getting used to answering "yes" just to make them stop.
Gabriel Mintz and company will be at Folklife Festival this weekend playing on the Alki Court stage on May 30th at 7:30 pm. If you haven't seen them play live yet, be prepared for an emotionally gripping performance smattered with several of Mintz's non sequiturs and observations that only endear you to him more. Their sets can swing between having an alt-country feel to pure rocking depending on who they're playing with, or even where they're playing. Keep an eye on their MySpace page and website for future dates.
In the meantime, check out these videos from his recent live performance recorded at KEXP earlier this month:


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On July 15, Ratna Omidvar, President of Maytree, addressed the attendees at a launch event of the new policy, "Removing the 'Canadian experience' barrier," by the Ontario Human Rights Commission. The policy addresses the issue of employers requiring "Canadian experience" which can create barriers for newcomers looking for jobs or professional accreditation.
By Ratna Omidvar, Maytree
The discussion over removing the "Canadian experience" barrier has an extremely personal context for me. When I arrived in Canada in the early 1980s, Canadian work experience was a much more openly articulated criteria. And, of course, as an immigrant you can't buy it for love or money. It took me and my husband roughly eight years to find a location in the world of work, and I believe we lost some of the best years of our working lives.
Since that time, while much has changed, much has stayed the same. Canadian work experience is still a barrier – and even when employers don't ask for it overtly, I think that covertly it is a consideration.
In the years that I have worked on this issue, I believe that employers use Canadian work experience as a proxy for mitigating risk – a sort of shorthand for figuring out whether someone will fit into the workplace.
Bigger employers though are recognizing that this proxy of Canadian work experience is impractical. It is unlikely to tell them what they really want to know, leading them to develop other forms of testing competency. They are therefore breaking down job requirements into specific competencies and striving to ask candidates to demonstrate their experience in these. This is part of the larger bias-free movement to assess skills and competencies. Others are no longer asking for place of education at the onset of the hiring process and on online applications. Still others openly welcome international experience by considering this facet in salary considerations.
The truth is, of course, that while there are enlightened employers, they are still few and far between. Part of the solution must be to grow the tent of enlightened employers and make the case that if corporation A can do this, so can corporation B. Maytree has taken on this challenge and regularly engages with close to 150 employers nationally through best practice, tips and tools and webinars through our work with ALLIES and hirimmigrants.ca. Slowly but surely, we are building a community of practice. And much as we think that Canada is the leader in all things immigration-related, the truth is that we can learn from other jurisdictions. In Germany, a campaign has been launched to encourage recruiters and candidates to accept anonymous job applications – so dealing directly with the bias around names, credentials, etc.
However, an essential part of the solution is policy. The power of policy is enormous. It can change attitudes, approaches and behaviours. Federal employment equity policies changed radically who got to work for nationally-regulated employers. Federal bilingual policies changed the face of the public service. Demographics too play a role. The massive entry into the workforce by women had a profound effect on gender neutral hiring systems and policies.
Today there is another demographic train bearing down on us. Good practice by a few employers or institutions is encouraging, because it can show what success looks like. But for large-scale change one needs to consider the translation of some of these efforts into policy.
When we think of policy, we usually think only of governmental policy – be it federal, provincial or municipal. And because of the regulating authority of governments, government policy can have enormous reach. For instance, a policy coming out of the Ministry of Labour to formalize bias-free hiring processes for employers of a certain size is imaginable with a "comply or explain" mechanism. The difficulty may well arise in actually implementing and monitoring the policy. The OHRC policy proposal that we see before us today could result in a series of complaints that are resolved one way or another, and if there is enough scope and scale to these complaints, it is possible that a case can be made for the strong arm of government. However, I don't think that there is either political or public will to take on more regulations at this time.
So while we build the public and political will at the governmental level, we must also remember that policy exists in every corner of our society, not just in the corridors of government. Just as we encourage progressive policy proposals at the governmental level which would deal with the Canadian work experience conundrum, we should also consider a range of proposals coming from industry and business themselves, or their industry associations to ensure that progress is made. These policy initiatives may well stick stronger because they will be industry-led and -owned. Many large employers are aggressive on diversity and have instituted new processes and approaches that can feed the policy imagination. For example, I can imagine a voluntary move by the financial services industry or the insurance industry or even the University Health Network to remove "place of education" from job applications or even accept anonymous job applications. Or I could see them move towards a self-regulated and self-monitoring approach towards bias-free hiring with systems developed by them for application for their members and member organizations.
I welcome this report as a catalyst towards larger policy improvements and greater policy imagination.
With the new Ontario Human Rights Commission's policy on removing the "Canadian experience barrier" Ratna Omidvar, President of Maytree, provides practical examples that employers can use to assess competencies of a potential candidate.
In the second part of Ratna Omidvar's remarks on the new Ontario Human Rights Commission's policy on removing the "Canadian experience" barrier she also talks about the larger role employers can play in ensuring bias free hiring practices.


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NZAEE Seaweek is delighted to announce that the NZAEE Seaweek "Ocean Champion" for 2017 is New Zealand's turtle expert Dan Godoy.
The New Zealand Coastal Society (NZCS) is sponsoring the initiative by donating the equivalent of $500 prize money towards the winner's work which was presented by NZCS Chair Hugh Leersnyder at tonight's Bill Ballantine Memorial Lecture at the University of Auckland.
"NZAEE Seaweek and the New Zealand Coastal Society congratulate Dan Godoy and all of this year's nominees for inspiring us all with their work. They are all Ocean Champions and anyone can be one, just by taking care of their local beach. That's the kind of guardianship that we hope the Ocean Champions programme will inspire in everyone," Hugh said.
NZAEE Seaweek National Coordinator Dr Mels Barton was delighted that Dan Godoy had come out on top.
"The Ocean Champion initiative celebrates all those individuals, groups and organizations who work so hard to look after our seas and the marine life that lives in them. It is wonderful to have a winner who voluntarily puts in so much of their own time to protect our marine environment. So we are delighted to be able to recognise and celebrate his work and that of all the nominees who are all equally deserving" she said.
The theme for NZAEE's Seaweek 2017 is "Toiora te Moana – Toiora te Tangata – Healthy Seas, Healthy People". The theme highlights how important it is to look after the sea in order to maintain our own health and wellbeing.
The collaboration between NZAEE SeaWeek and the NZCS coastalsociety.org.nz is a partnership that will continue and expand for the benefit of New Zealand's ocean and coastal communities.
More than 200 events are scheduled around the country during NZAEE Seaweek 2017 from February 25 to March 5, and these are all listed on the NZAEE Seaweek website at www.seaweek.org.nz.
You can see all the Seaweek 2017 Ocean Champion nominees here: http://seaweek.org.nz/nominate-your-ocean-champion/


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Advances in Creativity and Giftedness
Advances in Creativity and Gifted Education (ADVA) is the first internationally established book series that focuses exclusively on the constructs of creativity and giftedness as pertaining to the psychology, philosophy, pedagogy and ecology of talent development across the milieus of family, school, institutions and society. ADVA strives to synthesize both domain specific and domain general efforts at developing creativity, giftedness and talent. The books in the series are international in scope and include the efforts of researchers, clinicians and practitioners across the globe.
Series Editor:
Bharath Sriraman, The University of Montana
International Advisory Panel:
Don Ambrose, Rider University, USA
David Chan, The Chinese University of Hong Kong
Anna Craft†, University of Exeter, UK
Kristina Juter, Kristianstad University College, Sweden
James C. Kaufman, University of Connecticut, USA
Kyeonghwa Lee, Seoul National University, Korea
Roza Leikin, University of Haifa, Israel
Peter Liljedahl, Simon Fraser University, Canada
Paula Olszewski-Kubilius, Northwestern University, USA
Larisa Shavinina, University of Quebec, Canada
Editorial Assistant:
Claire Payne


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This story, originally published in the September 18, 1997, issue of L.A. Weekly, was reposted when R.B. Kitaj passed away October 21, 2007.
Photo by Slobodan DimitrovThere are certain phrases that, once you've spent a few afternoons in the company of the painter R.B. Kitaj, rapidly become familiar. "I overstayed my welcome" is one of them; "I try to follow my passions wherever they lead me" is another. Then come the names, that roll call of great 19th- and 20th-century artists reverently and passionately recited, like a painter's mantra: Manet, Degas, Cézanne, van Gogh, Matisse, Giacometti, Brancusi, Mondrian . . . And if he forgets somebody -- Picasso, say -- he'll interrupt himself, two sentences later, to stick the name back in. Such is his devotion to the past.
No doubt about it, Ronald Brooks Kitaj (pronounced Kit-eye) is, as he likes to say, an "odd fish," and not just because he is an American painter who chose to spend four decades of his life submerged in London. When he left America in 1957, after first traveling the world as a merchant seaman and studying art in New York and Vienna, Kitaj was a newly wed 25-year-old ex-G.I. with a crew cut and romantic ideas about Europe. Now, returning to his own country after 40 years abroad, Kitaj is a chastened, white-haired widower of 65 who has left his mark on the artistic life of London like no American painter since James McNeill Whistler a century before him. Only the third American to be elected to England's Royal Academy, he has won scores of prizes, doctorates and awards while charting his own idiosyncratic course, from his beginnings as a bookish pop artist to his current status as a Jewish "identity" artist. And if he is not, as he says he is, "the most controversial artist alive," he certainly makes waves like few painters around.
In 1878, Whistler sued the celebrated English art critic John Ruskin for libel after Ruskin accused him of "flinging a pot of paint in the public's face." Over the last two years, Kitaj has gone further: Effectively, he has accused several English art critics of murder.
Six days after his arrival in Los Angeles, Kitaj greets me at the door of his house in Westwood with a taut smile and a handshake that has some Yankee swing and gusto to it. His face is ashen but handsome. "Call me Kitaj," he says in an accent that remains fully American. "That's what my wife called me. I've never liked the name Ron."
Inside, Kitaj introduces me to his 12-year-old son, Max, who seems shy and polite and thoroughly English, and Charlie, a young woman from London who has come over to help with the move. Apparently, I am the first visitor to the house, so, to my surprise, Charlie asks me to pose for a photograph with Kitaj. "Would you like something to drink?" Kitaj asks after the flash has gone off a second time, leading me into a large, sunny room off the kitchen. There is a brand-new television set on one side of the room, a brand-new fish tank on the other, and a basketball in the middle of the floor. Out in the garden, light gleams on the turquoise water of the swimming pool, and the sound of hammering comes from the garage, which Kitaj is having converted into a studio.
"I overstayed my welcome," Kitaj says simply when I bring up his departure from London, adding that he had always felt alien in England. "One could be creative about that, or pretend to be creative about it, but there it was. I missed very ordinary things like baseball, which I followed in the Herald Tribune every morning, and slowly America began to seem like the place where I should be. But who knows? I think you take your demons with you wherever you go. I might love it. I might live here happily ever after. Even if I don't love it, it doesn't matter, because I'm going to see Max through high school."
When Max is through with school and out of the house, says Kitaj, he'll see how he feels. "If I'm happy, I'll become the hermit of Westwood and grow a long white beard. If I do yearn for old Europe, I can always get myself an attic in the Place St. Sulpice and die in the old American hospital like Bette Davis did."
For now, he is delighted to be here. Kitaj was born in Cleveland, but L.A. is the nearest he comes to having a hometown. He met his wife here, both his parents died here, and all his children and grandchildren live here, as do old friends like David Hockney. But the city has other associations as well.
"L.A. symbolizes the greatest visual art of the century -- the movies," Kitaj says. "It also symbolizes a city of refuge in my way of thinking. I love the idea that Schönberg, Stravinsky, Mann, Brecht, Lang, Wilder, Renoir and a thousand others settled here, however nervously! The idea that Moses und Aron and Doktor Faustus and Some Like It Hot were created here turns me on. And an émigré blond Yorkshireman painted what must be the most memorable depiction of Los Angeles and its elusive sense of place."
Like Hockney, Kitaj is going deaf, and wears a hearing aid in his right ear. His skin is pitted with old acne scars, and his hair is whitish-gray, cropped short and brushed forward over his scalp. Getting up to show me through the as yet unfurnished rooms of his house, Kitaj walks stiffly, like an old soldier. In the room that will eventually be his drawing studio, he shows me a photograph on the mantelpiece of his late wife, the American painter Sandra Fisher, whose death, three years ago, has been the great tragedy of his life.
They met in 1971, when Kitaj was teaching at UCLA following the death of his first wife, Elsi. (Kitaj has the unfortunate distinction of being a widower twice over.) They met again, quite by chance, two years later in a restaurant in London and soon began living together. In 1983, they were married in London's oldest synagogue. It was a ceremony that included some of England's finest painters: Hockney, the best man, gave away the bride, and Lucian Freud, Frank Auerbach and Leon Kossoff made up part of the Orthodox minyan (10 Jewish men).
"As you can see," Kitaj says, after I have studied the photograph, "she was a great beauty. After 10 minutes, anyone who met her realized she was just as beautiful on the inside. No one could believe how wonderful she was, gracious and kind to everyone."
Also on the mantelpiece are photographs of Kitaj's son from his first marriage, the screenwriter Lem Dobbs (Kafka, The Hard Way); a photo of his adopted daughter, Dominie, now in the U.S. Navy; and a photo of Lucian Freud making a face for Max on the night before the departure from London. Otherwise, the room, like most of the house, is completely bare, and our voices bounce eerily off the walls. Empty bookshelves are everywhere, in readiness for approximately 10,000 books being shipped from London. Although he never went to college, Kitaj is famously well-read, and his closest friends have included poets like John Ashbery and Robert Creeley, and philosophers like Richard Wollheim and Isaiah Berlin.
"I'm so turned on by books, and pictures in books, and the habit of insinuating that obsession into paintings I make," Kitaj says. "Every single day is tempered by that, and if it doesn't occur in one form or another I feel something is wrong with the day." One of the things that most pleases him is the fact that a large number of books, ranging from volumes of poetry to histories of nursing, are now published with his paintings on the cover. The reason, he believes, is the variety of his work, which gives people an array of images to choose from. "So many artists of this century, even some of the best ones, worked within a narrow range. I never like to repeat anything. I like to think that I can get up in the morning and do something different every day."
When he first arrived in London as a student at the Royal College of Art in 1959, after two years spent drawing from the figure at the Ruskin College in Oxford, Kitaj struck his contemporaries as an exotic. At 27, not only was he several years their senior and extraordinarily well-read, he was also an ex-G.I. who had studied under a pupil of Egon Schiele's in Vienna, and an exmerchant seaman who had lost his virginity in a Havana brothel -- two things few art students in London at the time could boast. Among his classmates were the future pop artist Allen Jones and Hockney, who used to stand in the cafeteria at lunchtime handing out leaflets promoting vegetarianism. When Hockney was having trouble figuring out what to paint, it was to Kitaj that he turned for advice. "Why don't you paint what you're interested in?" Kitaj suggested, and apparently Hockney did.
In 1963, Kitaj was given his first exhibition ("Pictures With Commentary, Pictures Without Commentary") at Marlborough Fine Art in London. Even before the show, his paintings, with their industrial-strength color and surrealist-collage technique, had attracted attention as something completely different. "Mr. R.B. Kitaj's first exhibition, now that it has at last taken place, puts the whole 'new wave' of figurative painting in this country during the last two or three years into perspective," wrote the reviewer for the London Times, effectively putting an American at the forefront of a new generation of English painters. For the filmmaker Peter Greenaway, then an art student who had repeatedly been told that his paintings were too "literary," the show was a revelation. Kitaj's work "legitimised all I had hopes of one day doing," Greenaway has stated. "He drew and painted in as many as 10 different ways on the same canvas; he threw ideas around, like confetti . . . His ideas were international, far from English timidity and English jokiness, and that timid and jokey English pop-art."
After the death of his first wife, Kitaj's work changed. Though still fragmentary and de-centered, his paintings began to cohere. In If Not, Not (197576), probably his most famous painting, he attempted a grand visionary depiction of 20th-century hell: an idyllic, almost Californian landscape of palm trees and sunsets, but littered with alienated ä bodies drifting inexorably toward the gaping maw of the Auschwitz gatehouse; in The Autumn of Central Paris (After Walter Benjamin) (197273), he tried to fuse all the currents of modernism into a single café scene.
Kitaj's work was changing in other ways as well. At the prodding of Sandra Fisher, he began to draw seriously from the model for the first time since leaving art school. Inspired by some Degas pastels he and Sandra had seen in Paris, he began an ambitious series of drawings in that medium. (With a characteristic desire to connect with the past, he bought his handmade pastels from the granddaughter of the woman who had sold Degas his.) If the desire to draw from the figure was considered retrograde by many, the results felt contemporary -- particularly in terms of sexuality. In one memorable picture (Mary-Ann), a voluptuous woman, naked except for a partly removed tank top, gazes at the viewer through heavy-lidded eyes that seem both to invite coition and to express contempt; in another (His Hour), a dandyish voyeur seems to spy on or recall the coupling of two young lovers who are charcoaled into the background of the picture with the kind of expressive precision (the torsion of the woman's buttocks, the perfectly calibrated weight of the man's penis in her hand) that prompted megacritic Robert Hughes to declare that Kitaj "draws better than almost anyone else alive."
It was also around this time that, together with Hockney, Kitaj began to campaign loudly for an art that depicted people and places. Always a provocateur, he noted the fact that, in a century that had witnessed the liquidation of countless millions of people, the human form was being progressively eliminated from modern art. "Don't listen to the fools who say . . . that pictures of people can be of no consequence," he urged in a catalog essay for "The Human Clay," a controversial exhibition of contemporary British figurative art he curated in 1976. "It seems to me at least as advanced or radical to attempt a more social art as not to." In 1976, minimalism was at its height, and, bucking the tide as usual, Kitaj had emerged not only as an artist, but as a propagandist as well. Impressed by the quality of the painting being done in his adopted city, he posited a "School of London" -- a group of artists including Francis Bacon, Freud, Hockney, Auerbach, Kossoff and himself, among some 30 others -- dedicated to the depiction of the human form. Ironically, it took an American to forge an identity for a group of mediaphobic English artists. Even more ironically, Kitaj's work only occasionally looked as if it belonged in the School of London -- a fact that did not escape the eagle eye of Abstract Expressionism's high priest, critic Clement Greenberg. "Only an American could have painted your pictures," he told Kitaj.
Kitaj does an amusing impression of Greenberg, a "Jewish Mafiosi type" whom he reveres -- even if the art Greenberg championed is poles apart from his own. Although he has sometimes been seen as a reactionary, Kitaj is as fascinated by what Greenberg had to say as by what Duchamp had to say. (Duchamp once presented Kitaj with a book, with the inscription "Between 2 Americans.") It's just that he doesn't agree with them.
"People are going to be depicting the human face until the end of time," he says. "Duchamp isn't going to stop that. Clem Greenberg isn't going to stop that. Neither the assholes nor the distinguished theorists are going to stop that."
Dressed in a black T-shirt, black jeans, and Nike sneakers and socks (the words Just Do It encircle each ankle), Kitaj sits opposite me with his back to the window, the light behind him. He hands me a photocopy of several pages of lined paper on which he has written answers to some questions I mailed to him while he was still in London. ("I don't smoke, drink or type," he tells me when I express surprise at receiving handwritten answers.) Forward-leaning in the classic postwar American manner, his handwriting is neat, precise, scholarly. There are no flourishes, just pure concentration: each line so straight it appears to have been constructed with help from a carpenter's level.
Concentration, too, is on Kitaj's face as he speaks. In half-silhouette, his face flooded in a darkness relieved only by the silver of his hair and stubble and eyebrows, his eyes narrow to black slits that suggest an inner focus so intense it is like a form of blindness. Kitaj is fond of describing himself as "the least spontaneous of men," and certainly he rarely looks relaxed. He sits in his chair like an anguished method actor about to launch into an impassioned monologue. It's easy to imagine him playing Julius Caesar, and not just because of his Roman hairstyle. In any case, the subject most on Kitaj's mind these days is war, what he refers to as the "Tate war."
"'What happened in London?' Some distinguished people ask me that," Kitaj says, referring to the critical trouncing of his career retrospective at the Tate Gallery in 1994. "And I say, 'What do you mean what happened in London? You're an art historian, have you never heard of artists and writers being savaged in the press?'"
To be granted a retrospective at the Tate is a considerable honor for a living artist, particularly an expatriate American, and it was an honor that Kitaj must have been thrilled to receive. His fellow School-of-Londoners, Bacon and Hockney and Freud, had already received theirs; now it was his turn. For 10 years Kitaj had avoided the media, but suddenly he found himself in the midst of a publicity blitz. He was interviewed on television and radio, long articles about him appeared in London's newspapers and journals, and a poster of one of his most recent paintings, Cecil Court, London WC2 (The Refugees), a phantasmagoric and blazingly hued homage to a famous booksellers' row near Charing Cross, blared out its anguish and excitement from the walls of the London Underground all over the city. The laurels, it seemed, were there for the taking.
It did not turn out that way. The critics were in a ferocious mood, and they seemed particularly annoyed by Kitaj's practice of placing explanatory or allegorical texts next to his paintings -- a practice Kitaj sees as part of the Jewish tradition of midrash, or exegesis. ("A picture is supposed to be worth a thousand words," wrote one critic sarcastically, "but not one of Ron Kitaj's.") The attacks were often personal; at times they almost seemed to be baiting him. The reviewer for the Evening Standard, having dismissed Kitaj's paintings as "wretched adolescent trash," called him "a vain painter puffed with amour propre, unworthy of a footnote in the history of figurative art." He was called "a supreme dilettante" in the Guardian, and accused of having "confused soft-centered egocentricity with self-enlightenment" in the Sunday Telegraph. The reviewer for the Sunday Times mocked "poor, private, pensive Ronald B. Kitaj" for having a head full of "HemingwayGauguin bullshit"; the critic for the Independent, also with waste matter on his mind, began his review by quoting an old French expression, "Il ne se prend pas pour de la merde" (he does not take himself for a piece of shit), and then, not mincing words, went on to make it clear that Kitaj should revise his self-opinion: "The Wandering Jew, the T.S. Eliot of painting? Kitaj turns out, instead, to be the Wizard of Oz: a small man with a megaphone held to his lips."
Surveying the wreckage nine months later in Time, ä Robert Hughes called it a critical drubbing "such as few artists ever have to endure in a lifetime." But by then Hughes knew what the aftermath had been. While the Tate show was still on, and still provoking bilious fusillades from the critics, Kitaj had flown to Los Angeles to nurse his dying mother. After burying her, he returned to London, only to be told on his arrival that his wife had been rushed to the hospital after suffering a collapse. Two days later, she was dead from an aneurysm at the age of 47. During Kitaj's last conversation with her, by telephone from Los Angeles, she had read him yet another review attacking his show. The two events -- her death and the critical attacks on his show -- then fused in Kitaj's mind, where they have remained stubbornly inseparable ever since. And though the retrospective then traveled to Los Angeles and New York, where it was generally well received ("Kitaj has dared to go where none with his sophistication has gone before," wrote Jed Perl in The New Republic), Kitaj has not been able to forget what happened in London.
"Everything was a coincidence," he says sarcastically, spitting out the words. "It was a coincidence that my wife died at the time of the savagery, as if savagery doesn't ever kill. It's a coincidence that I'm the only outspoken polemicist and writer that they can get their teeth into. It's a coincidence that I'm the only American living in that society who made a name for himself. It's a coincidence that I'm the only Jew who wears Jewishness in his art. Everything's a fucking coincidence."
Kitaj's obsession with the criticism of his show makes many people uncomfortable. The general feeling is that he should lick his wounds and move on. But that's not Kitaj's style. "If someone shoots at me, I shoot back," he says, and in the last two years he has done just that. For a year and a half after his wife's death, he did not paint at all, and in interviews he accused his critics of having caused his wife's death. He also accused them of xenophobia and "low-octane anti-Semitism." The Independent's thenart critic Andrew Graham-Dixon, says Kitaj, "has used the analogy of shit four separate times" when talking about the four leading Jewish painters in London: Freud, Auerbach, Kossoff and himself.
Then, last year, having picked up his brush again, he exhibited a painting at the Royal Academy called The Critic Kills, signing it "Sandra and Ron." This summer, upping the ante considerably, he exhibited (as the centerpiece of an installation of paintings and texts about critics called Sandra Three) a large oil entitled (with a nod to Duchamp) The Killer-Critic Assassinated by His Widower, Even. The painting, which draws on Manet's Execution of Maximilian, shows a two-man firing squad, made up of Manet and a headless Kitaj, emptying their barrels on a hideous, multi-eyed, lizard-tongued monster vomiting reams of bilious prose: a critic. One of the texts accompanying the installation comes from Nietzsche: "A little revenge is more human than no revenge."
Kitaj does seem genuinely to believe that his wife's death was caused by stress resulting from the critics' attacks, but one suspects there is more to it than that. Kitaj is nothing if not historically minded, and this too can make people uncomfortable. The kind of modern artist we favor now is one who (as John Richardson recently wrote of Robert Rauschenberg) "is too absorbed by the future to bother about the past." In Kitaj's case, the opposite would be nearer the truth. Receiving a set of spectacularly bad, often abusive reviews only got him thinking. Didn't Manet get bad reviews? Didn't Cézanne? Didn't his Yankee forebear in London, Whistler? Aren't bad reviews actually a rather interesting part of art history? Aren't critics? Wasn't this in fact . . . a subject?
All this makes Kitaj's critics roll their eyes even farther back into their heads. For one thing, talking about Manet and Cézanne seems perversely old-fashioned; for another, it suggests that Kitaj thinks he belongs in their company. And then, what kind of subject for a painter is criticism? How can you paint something like that?
But being told that something is unpaintable only gets Kitaj's juices flowing. "If someone says you can't do something, it's the most wonderful challenge in the world," he says, leaning forward eagerly. "My God, anybody worth his salt is going to want to do it, but it's amazing how few people are worth their salt, who don't live that way, who don't take up the baton, you know?"
Kitaj, one suspects, longs for the epic political and cultural battles he read about as a young man. When he told me that in the last few months "a few Zolas" had appeared in the press to defend him, as Zola had once defended Dreyfus and Manet, it was hard to know whether to laugh or be moved that anyone still thinks that way. Born in 1932, shortly before Hitler came to power, Kitaj idolizes writers like Franz Kafka and Walter Benjamin, who committed suicide on the run from the Gestapo. Everything, one senses, is life and death with him, and when London's art critics decided to turn on him and denounce his paintings, to call him a fake and a "Wandering Jew," he took it seriously. Most people would say, much too seriously.
Hilton Kramer, an art critic for the New York Observer who attended Sandra Fisher's funeral in London, sympathizes with Kitaj -- up to a point. In his view, the reviews were not anti-Semitic or anti-American, but "anti-intellectual." Whereas the critics who were writing when Kitaj first arrived in London prized him for his "range of literary, cultural and political reference," Kramer says, the current generation of critics "can't stand the idea of an artist who is smarter than they are. They aren't interested in painting. They're into all this postmodern crap. Someone like Waldemar Januszczak [one of Kitaj's critics] wouldn't know a good painting if he fell over one on the street. He would rather be reviewing potholes."
But when it comes to Kitaj's paintings about critics, Kramer draws a line. "I haven't seen them, and I don't want to see them," he says, calling Kitaj's charge that the critics killed his wife "a great mistake" and "a naive form of paranoia."
If there's one person who might agree with Kitaj -- at least when it comes to his charges of latent English anti-Semitism -- it is probably his friend Philip Roth. Roth lived in London for most of the 1980s, and in his novels of the period, such as Deception and The Counterlife, there are several passages in which an American Jew will furiously claim that he detects subtle forms of anti-Semitism all around him, while an English gentile replies that he is just being paranoid.
"[Roth] was more meshuggeneh about that stuff than I'd been," Kitaj says. "I only became that way. He spurred me on to it. Then with the Tate war, I could see what was going on. But he got to the point where [he imagined] people looked at him on the street and thought, 'Jew.'"
After two weeks in his new home, Kitaj shows signs that he may be tiring of his role as a one-of-a-kind victim artist. Over the phone one morning, he tells me that he would like to "de-emphasize" the Tate controversy and start putting the past behind him -- the reason, after all, that he moved to Los Angeles. Not that he plans to give up his paintings on the subject of critics. "I follow my passions wherever they lead me," he says, "and sometimes they lead me into deep shit."
One of Kitaj's most lasting passions has been drawing, and though he is not as fired up about it as he used to be, the lack of drawing in art schools still dismays him. "We've come to the point at our fin-de-siècle where two generations have grown up who can't draw, and now they're very proud of the fact that they can't draw, and their intellectuals have told them it's okay," is how he puts it.
Still, Kitaj no longer sounds as sure of himself on this point as he used to. Robert Motherwell predicted that art at the end of the 20th century would be a showdown between Duchamp and Picasso, and though he remains firmly in Picasso's camp, Kitaj concedes that it's quite possible that the best modern art may turn out not to involve drawing skills at all -- of which little remains anyway. "If you'll forgive my immodesty," he says, "there are only a handful of people who can draw very well, and I mean above the standard of academic drawing."
But if the alternative is conceptual art ("The whole world has gone Duchampian," he acknowledges), Kitaj remains largely unimpressed. He pours particular scorn on Richard Wilson's installation at London's Saatchi Gallery, where an entire room was turned into what he calls "a vat of sump oil." The room was featured in an English television program about modern art hosted by Andrew Graham-Dixon. Kitaj still sounds enraged when he describes how "Anal Andy" (as he calls him) "stuck his pudgy aristocratic thumb into this fucking oil" and then, pulling it out again, gave a postmodern thumbs-up to the camera.
"I know what it means," says Kitaj, referring to the sump oil and conceptual art in general. "I know the history. Any good artist, any intelligent actor in the romance of modern art, knows exactly what it's about. You've conditioned yourself to enjoy it -- or you've conditioned yourself to neglect it, abandon it, not need it."
What Kitaj does seem to need these days is his own unique brand of "identity" art, which has occupied him increasingly during the last two decades. His stated ambition now is "to paint Jewish identity like a tree," and some of his best-known paintings, like Cecil Court, London WC2 (The Refugees) and the haunting The Jew, Etc., a quasi self-portrait of a man fleeing on a train, have been steeped in his readings in Jewish history.
"I went through a long morbid period where you learn everything you can about what happened in the Hitler years," he says. "You fill your head to the point where it becomes morbid, a morbid pursuit -- if you're inclined, as I was. Then you pass through it. You learn everything there was and you sort of stop."
Jewishness, and the idea of attaining "Jewishness" in art -- though not in the kitschy Chagall sense -- has become both an ambition and an obsession for Kitaj, though he is well aware that both Jews and non-Jews can be touchy about it. "Most people just want to be universal artists," he says, "and I don't blame them. So do I. But I have an overwhelming feeling that it is the particular horse that drives the universal wagon. And in art schools they teach it the other way around."
As to what might actually constitute specifically Jewish qualities in painting, Kitaj is less clear. For him, the question is a bit like "Is there a God or not?" "It's not a question of verification," he says. "It may become a question of intentionality, which is a distinct area in philosophy. It was certainly intentionality when Marcel Duchamp exhibited a bottle rack and said, 'This is art because I say it is.'"
Kitaj published his ideas about all this in The First Diasporist Manifesto (1989), ä a quirkily good-humored meditation on what he calls "diasporist" painting. The book is chiefly concerned with Jewishness, but one can imagine the interest with which displaced artists of all stripes might greet a statement like this:
I believe there is a spirit or "ego" in a people, as in a man, which compels the creativity of that people, which propels it and inspires it -- openly, secretly, embarrassingly, even modestly.
Although his fellow artists haven't exactly been queuing to sign up, diasporism remains a "movement" Kitaj invites cultural refugees everywhere to join. "I'm right behind black people who want to use their negritude," he says, his voice low and fierce. "I'm right behind them."
One day, when I come by his house, Kitaj is holding a copy of Nan Goldin's book I'll Be Your Mirror, which he has just received from the photographer Lee Friedlander. Kitaj is interested in it because he thinks it may be a sign of how content is going to take precedence over form in the coming century. The book is a collection of simple, seemingly artless snapshots of Goldin's friends, many of them junkies and transsexuals. "The subjects of the pictures are so interesting," Kitaj says, "that form takes a back seat."
In recent years, form has arguably taken a back seat in Kitaj's work as well -- a reason, perhaps, for the lashing he received from the English critics. In 1989, Kitaj had a mild heart attack, and since then ("Time feels short," he says) many of his paintings have been executed with a speed and roughness, but also an emotional immediacy, that would have been unthinkable before. The subject, now, is everything, and like a fisherman laying out parallel lines, Kitaj has all sorts of odd series of paintings going on a variety of topics. These include a series he calls "the Bads" (Bad Back, Bad Thoughts, etc.); a series of oblique meditations on the Holocaust (Germania: The Tunnel, Germania: To the Brothel, etc.); a series on human "types" (The Caféist, The Londonist, etc.); and a series on his early sexual experiences (The First Time [Havana], The Second Time [Vera Cruz], etc.). Now that he is in L.A., he may soon be adding more. One
possibility is what he calls "revenge paintings," a visual counterpart to revenge tragedies, whose "noble lineage" he traces from ancient Greece through Shakespeare's Hamlet and on into the California of Philip Marlowe and Dirty Harry.
Over five weeks have passed since I first came to see Kitaj, but he's not settled in yet. (Max, however, is already boogie-boarding.) His books and paintings are only just now arriving, and he's had trouble leasing a car because he has no credit history in the United States. ("I'm a nonperson," he says.) As for the house, most of it remains completely unfurnished. Since our first interview, we've talked while sitting on the floors of different rooms, some carpeted, others bare, and it is a situation Kitaj seems perfectly happy with. On the whole, he does not give the impression (as one might expect of a painter) of living in a particularly visual world. The impression is that he lives in an inner world, from which he makes occasional, darting raids on the universe outside. "Look at that squirrel!" he'll exclaim suddenly, breaking off in the middle of a sentence to point out the window; or, glancing at his son's fish tank: "Look at those fish! Aren't they amazing?"
At moments like these, when he is seeking confirmation of a point, Kitaj looks at you straight on, and the pupils in his eyes shrink to dots. He smiles, baring some teeth. He seems wholly alert, paying full attention to "external phenomena" (as Ezra Pound once advised him to do), his blue eyes riveted to yours in an orgy of communication. Then a shadow seems to fall across his face. The lips close over the teeth; the eyes narrow to slits; vertical and horizontal lines crisscross his forehead; the entire face fills with pain.
Both on canvas and in person, Kitaj is unique -- and seems fated to provoke wild swings of opinion. Some people consider him a throwback to the 19th century, a kind of annoyingly interesting freak who is doing the wrong paintings at the wrong time and making way too much noise about it. Others consider him contemporary. "Kitaj is the antithesis of our laconic, supercool culture heroes like Johns or Stella," John Ashbery once wrote. "Yet he is as important an artist as they and, despite his romantic involvement with things past, as modern as they are too."
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Either way, Kitaj is undeniably retrograde in certain respects. Technology, for one thing, seems to baffle him, a fact that became comically apparent when we were interrupted, one afternoon, by a loud buzzing noise from the adjacent laundry room.
"Was that the side door?" Kitaj asked, fiddling with his hearing aid.
"I think that was the dryer shutting off," I replied.
Kitaj's strange blue eyes opened wide with wonder. "How did you know that?" he demanded, as if I had just let drop the secret of the pyramids. "You know about things like that?"


text:
Chatting with Jane McFarland, Fashion Features Director of booming online retailer matchesfashion.com (it is predicted to hit £425m in sales by 2019), in her home in Peckham, you get an overwhelming sense of wanderlust. She's filled her two-bedroom flat with bright bursts of blue, the exact shade you see on seaside doors and tiles in vibrant holiday towns like Essaouira, Positano and Havana.
But it's Africa, and the continent's wealth of visuals and craftwork, that she connects with most. This is clear from the books on her shelf, the handmade artisanal crockery in her kitchen, the vinyl collection in her living room and the handmade slippers in her closet – all sourced during her many trips to visit her family in South Africa. 'I have size 10 feet so shopping for shoes is… tricky,' Jane explains. 'One of my favourite brands is Brother Vellies, who make traditional footwear with African communities.'
Jane's collection of vinyl spans the same region. 'My knowledge of modern bands is embarrassingly bad, as I mostly listen to music from the Seventies and Eighties, singers like Letta Mbulu and a young Tuareg musician named Bombino. I tend to do long drives when on holidays so am always hunting for good "car music". One of my all-time favourite songs is by Neil Young.'
The clothes hanging in her closet, meanwhile, are as classic and pared back as her taste in accessories, books and music is eclectic. Cue a navy Loewe puzzle bag, Hiller Bartley workman jeans and a pair of Saint Laurent menswear boots. 'I'm a trouser obsessive,' she admits. I try not to pay too much attention to must-haves because I think you can get swept up along the way. Just invest and seek out pieces you really love.'
Versace jacket
Pelican & Parrots is my favourite vintage shop in Dalston. Chuko, the wondrously bonkers owner, has a gimlet eye for vintage Moschino and eclectic interiors. He forced me into buying this candy pink Eighties Versace blazer with gold lion-embossed buttons. It reminds me to stop wearing black all the time. (pelicansandparrots.com)
Senso shoes
Thanks to my larger-than-life shoe size, I've basically worn men's shoes all my life – Converse, adidas Gazelles, Dr Martens etc – so I was thrilled to discover Australian shoe brand, Senso. Not only do they design some styles up to size 9, they made these leopard-print boots especially for me (after persistently stalking them). A 2cm heel is probably the highest I can legitimately wear.
I love picking up accessories and trinkets when travelling, and on a recent work trip in Los Angeles I discovered fine jewellery brand Gabriela Artigas which was founded by two sisters, Gabriela and Teresita. I love the Mitre pendant - it's the right balance of architecture and minimalism. Now I'm saving for her Infinite Staple Ring. (gabrielaartigas.com/mitre-pendant/)
I love these uncino earrings by an old Italian family jeweller, Paola Grande. Dainty pieces don't really suit me and my hair is usually messy and scraped back, so a graphic pair of earrings is a lazy way to look slightly more pulled together. (artemest.com/artisans/paola-grande)
My sister and her family live in South Africa where they run a charity, Sports Academy George. I've visited a few times, and have a real affinity for the country's rich heritage and beautiful landscapes. Local artisans have managed to preserve their craft and I always visit the Wonki Ware workshop to pick up ceramics and pottery for dinner parties I never end up hosting. (www.wonkiware.co.za/)


text:
BOZEMAN — A new Montana State University-developed spring wheat that's already attracting attention because of its potential for excellent yields and superior bread-making qualities is making its way through the pipeline toward Montana growers.
Lanning hard red spring wheat was increased from breeder seed to foundation seed this season, and farmers are already requesting it, said Doug Holen, manager of the MSU Foundation Seed Program.
Holen explained that breeder seed is the initial source of the new variety grown by the plant breeder and deemed pure and true to the variety description, while foundation seed is derived from planting and harvesting breeder seed after it passes field inspection and seed purity certification.
Lanning has higher grain protein and stronger gluten than Vida, the most widely grown spring wheat in Montana from 2010 to 2015. It is a hollow-stemmed wheat and has a grain yield that's equivalent to Vida, according to the Journal of Plant Registrations.
MSU wheat breeder Luther Talbert said the new spring wheat combines the best traits of two varieties known as Glenn and MT0747. Glenn has "very, very high-end use quality. Flour made from Glenn makes really good bread," Talbert said. He added that the leaves of MT0747 stay green for an extended period after heading. That means that growth continues and yields increase.
"The big issue of growing spring wheat in Montana is it gets hot and dry," Talbert said. "For traditional varieties, that shuts down photosynthesis." Lanning's longer growing season can mean larger profits for growers.
The Montana Agricultural Experiment Station released Lanning in 2016, but it takes a year to increase the initial 18 bushels of breeder seed to foundation seed, after which it is then available to seed houses to produce registered and certified classes available to the general farming community. Holen said the goal of the MSU Foundation Seed Program is to keep seed genetically intact so that when farmers grow it, it exactly represents what the breeder intended it to be.
Talbert, who is "quite optimistic" about Lanning, said it was named after Susan Lanning, a longtime team member who retired after making significant contributions to wheat improvement at MSU. Lanning worked for 29 years as a research associate with the MSU spring wheat breeding program.


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|24 Sep 2013
BSOD random, memory_management, ntoskrnl.exe fltmgr.sys
I am receiving random BSOD with two different bug check strings.
I have updated all of my drivers. I have checked the memory with memcheck both by running it with both sticks installed and one stick installed (both sticks singly). I have checked the HD for errors. Nothing seems to have errors and the BSOD is very random. Sometimes I am using Chrome, sometimes I am not there when it happens, sometimes I am using explorer.
Recently I tried uninstalling my display drivers and going with the plain vanilla Microsoft VGA driver. I didn't get a BSOD for 8 days and thought myself cured (or at lease diagnosed), but it just happened again today.
Any help would be appreciated!
|My System Specs
|25 Sep 2013
Windows 10 Home 64Bit
AODDriver2.sys Thu Apr 5 15:23:37 2012 (4F7D6499)
AMD Overdrive; also in EasyTune6 for Gigabyte motherboard [br] Known BSOD issues in Win7
Driver Reference Table - AODDriver2.sys
NTIOLib_X64.sys Fri Nov 9 07:43:52 2012 (509C5FD8)
MSI Afterburner driver (known BSOD issues with Windows) Also found to be a part of MSI Live Update 5
Driver Reference Table - NTIOLib_X64.sys
If you are overclocking any hardware, please stop. Reset any changed values back to default and reset/clear CMOS: Clear CMOS - 3 Ways to Clear the CMOS - Reset BIOS. Uninstall any overclocking tool as these can also be a reason of blue screens.
BugCheck 1A, {5003, fffff70001080000, 1048e, d4f10001965e} Probably caused by : ntkrnlmp.exe ( nt! ?? ::FNODOBFM::`string'+2984f ) ¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨`` BugCheck 50, {fffff8801688b550, 1, fffff8800459ee50, 2} Probably caused by : dxgmms1.sys ( dxgmms1!VIDMM_SEGMENT::MarkResourcesForEviction+94 ) ¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨`` BugCheck 1A, {5003, fffff70001080000, c14e, 21975209} Probably caused by : ntkrnlmp.exe ( nt! ?? ::FNODOBFM::`string'+45f7d ) ¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨`` BugCheck 1A, {5003, fffff70001080000, 144e, 552ec09} Probably caused by : ntoskrnl.exe ( nt+75b80 ) ¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨`` BugCheck 1A, {5003, fffff70001080000, 568e, 5a1bc09} Probably caused by : ntoskrnl.exe ( nt+75b80 ) ¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨`` BugCheck 50, {fffff8801a320500, 1, fffff880042b3624, 2} Probably caused by : dxgkrnl.sys ( dxgkrnl!DoublyLinkedList::Clear+20 ) ¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨``
Test your Hardware for Stability and Heat Problems with Prime95:
How to Stress Test a Video Card with Furmark:
Test your CPU Stability with IntelBurnTest:
Run the System File Checker that scans the of all protected Windows 7 system files and replaces incorrect corrupted, changed/modified, or damaged versions with the correct versions if possible:
Let us know the results.
|My System Specs
|22 Oct 2013
I did all of the benchmark and burnin tests suggested here and elsewhere. After a conversation with AMD tech support they couldn't give me any help other than to say I should return the chip to Amazon.
I returned it and the memory. I got replacements and all is well. I still don't know which one was actually bad, but I am leaning towards the APU chip.
|My System Specs
|Thread Tools
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Random BSOD , error 0x0000000a ( fltmgr.sys + ntoskrnl.exe)
Solved... :p Can be closed
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Random BSOD ntoskrnl.exe fltmgr.sys
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Random BSOD, DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL fltmgr.sys and ntoskrnl.exe
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text:
Wed, 11 October 2017
Jim Rugg makes his three-peat appearance on the show to talk about the newest volume of his series featuring the deadliest girl alive, Street Angel! In Superhero for a Day, Jim has the characters cross paths with full-on superheroes to no-holds barred effect! Jim talks about the story, teases what's up next for Street Angel, and geeks out with the gang over 80s pop culture!
Street Angel: Superhero for a Day is out on Wednesday, October 25 in comic book stores everywhere and on Comixology!
Direct download: Episode171.mp3
Category:Nerd Talk -- posted at: 12:00pm EST
Adding comments is not available at this time.


text:
The five parts of a wedding – "KANYA VARANAM"
Now let us come to the topic proper. What are the various rituals connected with a marriage and their significance?
In ancient days, when a boy decided to enter 'Grahasthasramam', he started looking for a girl who was compatible with his own race, religious practices, age, financial status and aptitudes. When he decided in his choice, he contacted the parent or relatives of the girl, and requested them for the hand of his daughter or ward. This request is called "Kanya Varanam".
So, you see that it has always been the practice that the boy requests for the hand of the girl that he wishes to marry and not the other way around, as it has become a custom now. The habit of parents of a girl sweating it out hunting for a suitable groom and paying a heavy penalty in the form of 'Dowry' for having a daughter came into existence only during the period of the invasions of the Moguls and other barbarians, when the parents were eager to get their daughters married in a hurry. The grooms' parents got greedy and started demanding dowries! Also, the ratio between boys and girls, greed and ego played a part in the introduction of the 'Dowry Ststem'. Like in economics it became a question of 'Equi-marginal Utilities!!'.
Now, back to the boy and 'Kanya Varanam'. The boy requests two elders to go to the girl's parents and ask for the girl's hand on his behalf. He addresses the elders by uttering a manthra, the meaning of which is as follows: "Please go to the prospective bride's home with a full heart. Indra, who is going to accept my oblations during my Yagnas after I accept 'Grahasthasramam' has given His consent. Let your travel be a pleasant and successful one" Then he prays to the Devas with another Manthra. "Oh! Devas. Let the path that these two elders tread be without stones or thorns. Let 'Aryana' and 'Bagan' unite me and the girl of my choice. Please bless us that we shall be united throughout our lives"
At every stage of the wedding, the couple pray for their mutual wellbeing. With the strength of Divine grace invoked through vedic manthras and the blessings of elders, the couple begin the life journey into 'Grahasthasramam' There are five main ritualistic parts to the conduct of a wedding. "Vaakdhanam cha pradhanam cha varanam panipeeta namah Sabthapatheethi panchango vivahaha parikirthithaha – Say the 'smrithis'. The five are: (1) 'Vaakdhaanam' or the promise or consent to give. (2) 'Kanya Dhaanam' or offering the girl as a gift. (3) 'Vara prekshaanam' or purification. (4) 'Pani grahanam' or accepting the bride by taking hold of her hand and praying to the Gods. (5) 'Saptha Pathi' or the groom holding the bride's hand and requesting her to take seven steps towards his house.
Now. Let us go into the details, one by one, of the various rituals that has to be performed during the wedding. Vaak-Dhaanam: Once the girl's parents have consented to the wedding, the bride and groom will be brought to the wedding platform. The groom will sit facing east. The bride's father will wash the groom's feet, uttering manthras that describe him as Mahavishnu or Parameswara according to the sect they belong to. As the water is being poured, the groom will utter a manthra which says "Let the water which washes my feet destroy the evil spirits which are opposed to this union. Let me have Brahma Tejaz" The father treats the boy as Mahavishnu and says "Mahavishnu swaroopasya varasya idham aasanam" which means "I offer this seat to him who is Vishnu himself". Then the groom looks at the bride for the first time. He addresses the bride with some manthras which are full of meaning. In short they mean, "Have a good heart and win the hearts of your husband, parents and relatives by your behaviour. Be devoted to God and show kindness to human beings and animals which save you". He then invokes the blessings of God to remove the impurities in the bride by placing a 'Dharbai' at the bride's forehead. After the manthra is chanted he throws the dharbai behind the girl.
Kanya Dhaanam: The bride then sits on the lap of her father. The groom will place a coil of Dharba on her head and on top of that place a miniature yoke. The hole on the right hand side of the yoke will be at the center of the girl's head. Then the groom prays to Indra to remove all diseases from the body of the bride. Then a gold coin is placed in the hole and the manthra uttered. By this manthra the groom says "Let this gold bring you health' wealth and prosperity, let the water that I now sprinkle on you cleanse your psyche and all impurities and make you fit to join your husband. Some people interpret the significance of this ritual to mean that the couple should tread the same path always together and united and with one mind like the two bulls joined by the yoke.
Varaprokshanam: After the bride has her "Mangala Snanam" or auspicious bath. There are five manthras for this ceremony. I shall briefly give the meanings of these manthras: (1) Let this golden water which is pure and purifies all other objects, remove all the evil thoughts surrounding this girl. (2) Let this golden water from which the sun and fire appeared, this water which is pure and purifying, bring you auspiciousness and a united happy life. (3) Let Varuna, the king of all the auspicious waters, bestow upon you a contented life and bring unto you good company. (4) Let this water, blessed by the devas bring you happiness and peace of mind. (5) Let this auspicious water which embraces your body bring you happiness and unity. After the auspicious bath, the bride is given the bridal sari or what is called the "Koorai Pudavai". After she returns wearing the sari, the groom ties a chord made of Dharbai (Kusa Grass) around the waist of the bride uttering a manthra which means:
"This girl has prayed for a good heart, healthy and intelligent children, long life for her husband and a healthy body for herself to be of service to others. She stands by in front of the fire (Agni) ready to follow me in my religious pursuits, Vrathas and Yagyas. For the sake of sanctifying this marriage with her, I am tying this sacred Dharbai around her waist"
Then the groom takes hold of the right hand of his bride and brings her to the holy fire. The bride and the groom sit on a new mat placed in front of the "Homa Kundam" or 'Holy Pyre'. The groom sits on the North side and the bride on the South. After they are seated the groom chants the manthras which say: "The moon gave you strength, the Ghandharvas gave you beauty and the lord of fire 'Agni' gave you youthfulness so that you may give me your service. You are divine by nature".
After this the groom ties the "Thali" (SacredThread) around the bride's neck. It is interesting to note that there are no Vedic Manthras stipulated for the tying of the 'Thali'. In fact no mention about the "Thali" has been made in any of our Puranas or Ithihasas!! Only "Metti" has been mentioned. It plays an important part in Ramayana where Lakshmana identifies a metti as Sitha's. What you hear in almost every wedding here and Tamil Movies is: "Mangalyam Thanthunanena mama jeevana hethuna Kante badhnami subhake sanjeeva sarathas satham" The above is only a 'Sloka' or verse and not a Manthra. Its meaning is: "This is a sacred thread which helps in keeping me alive. I am placing this around your neck so that you can live happily for a hundred years". From this you can assume that during the Vedic period there was no 'Thali'. The couples were bound by the vows they took in front of the sacred fire and all the Gods, Devathas, relatives and friends present as witnesses.


text:
Losses: loans to traders: date of allowable loss
Before amendment by FA96/S253 (3) provided that the loss arose at the date of the claim. During the period 6 December 1990 to 5 April 1996 ESC/D36 (see CG65942) gave a measure of retrospection. For claims made on or after 6 April 1996, the changes made FA96/SCH39/PARA8 allow the loss to be made before the time of the claim. Where a qualifying loan has BECOME irrecoverable, the loss may be treated as arising either at the time of the claim or at a specified earlier time. An earlier time may be specified for the claim if
- the amount claimed was also irrecoverable at the earlier time, and
- for a person other than a company, the earlier time is not more than two years before the beginning of the year of assessment in which the claim is made, or
- in the case of a company, the earlier time is on or after the first day of the earliest accounting period ending not more than two years before the time of claim.The provisions which allow the loss to arise before the time of the claim DO NOT APPLY to guarantee payments within Section 253 (4) (see CG65990+).


text:
Safety Officer of UAS
Safety Officer of the Underwater Adventure Seekers Scuba Diving Club (UAS). It was here in Washington that he had the opportunity to pursue a lifelong passion, scuba diving. Under the tutelage of Bruce Bradford, he began developing the skills and acquiring the knowledge needed to advance in the sport. First becoming an Open Water Diver in 1999, advanced in 2007, Recuse Diver in 2008, thanks to Alex Colvin and now PADI Assistance Instructor. Ernie is taking these skills to the next level. He has now become a certified NOAA scientific diver and a National Park Service "Blue Card" holder. These two certifications allow him to work with both agencies on dive missions involving archeological research, coral restoration and fish preservation.
Along with these certifications, Ernie is also a Red Cross water safety instructor (WSI), Safety Officer for the Underwater Adventure Seekers the largest and oldest African American Scuba Diving Club in the World!
He's the Educational Coordinator for one of the only Youth Oriented Maritime Archaeological Programs in the United States; Diving With a Purpose (DWP) Maritime Archaeological Instructor.
During the cold months he's a ski instructor to stay in shape till he can get back down south and into warm water.
Ernie also has a Masters Degree in Educational Technology and Leadership which he uses to train students and teachers in integrating technology into their curriculum.


text:
Danielson Training for Initial Educators
Registration Closed.
Domains, components, SLOs, PPGs, SMART goals--confused yet? If you're a new educator (or new to EE), navigating the Danielson Framework for Teaching and the requirements for Educator Effectiveness may seem overwhelming. In this one-day workshop, we'll introduce educators to Charlotte Danielson's Framework for Teaching (FfT) and other components of the EE system in Wisconsin.
Audience: initial educators, teachers new to EE/Danielson, new EE coaches
Cost: $25 per person for CESA 8 – EE member school districts. $75 per person for CESA 8 – CIA member school districts. $150 for all others.
DIETARY ACCOMMODATIONS: Due to varied dietary restrictions, CESA 8 cannot guarantee that all special dietary accommodations can be met. CESA 8 makes every effort to accommodate basic dietary restrictions with advance notice, but please plan accordingly. CANCELLATION POLICY: Any registration cancellation must be received 7 days prior to the scheduled date to receive a refund or avoid invoicing. CESA 8 will only provide full refund of registration fees depending on individual circumstances. Refunds depend upon the ability of CESA 8 to cancel any financial obligations created by the registration such as meals, materials, etc. Registered participants not in attendance on the day of the session will be charged the full registration fee. CESA 8 reserves the right to cancel any session due to insufficient enrollment or inclement weather. Participants will be notified via email through myQuickReg.com if a cancellation occurs. Please make sure all of your contact information is correct in myQuickReg.com.


text:
Surrounded by the scenic Tyrolean Alps, Apart Renate is located in Galtür in the Paznaun Valley. It offers traditionally furnished apartments with a modern kitchen and a balcony. Guests can relax in an infrared cabin.
A seating area and satellite TV are provided in each apartment. The kitchen is fully equipped with kitchenware, a dishwasher and a dining area. A hairdryer is available in the private bathroom.
This guest house has a spacious garden with a children's playground and a large trampo...line. Table tennis and tabletop football can be played in the indoor playroom.
Guests can enjoy free access to the public indoor pool in Galtür. Galtür's sports centre and the centre of the village are only 300 metres away.
Apart Renate has a ski storage room with ski boot dryers. A cross country ski run and a winter hiking trail start right behind the guest house.
The Galtür ski area is 2 km away, and the Ischgl-Samnaun ski area is 8 km away. The free ski bus stops at a 250-metre distance. Free private parking is available on site.
As of summer 2013, the Silvretta All Inclusive Card will be included in all rates during summer season. It offers free use of cable cars in the region, of the buses from Landeck to Bielerhöhe, and free access to the indoor and outdoor pools and to the lake in the Paznaun Valley.
|Maas 87a