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We're counting down the days until we attend the 2013 Greenwich Wine & Food Festival on Saturday, October 5. Just like last year, the festival will hold its its 2nd Annual Burger Battle. However, for the first time this year, fans can vote online for their favorite Burger Battle contestant in the new Foodie's Choice Award.
The following restaurants will be participating in the Burger Battle.
Bobby Q's Pit Stop, Greenwich, CT
Dan Rooney's Café & Bar, Yonkers, NY
My Favorite Place, Cos Cob and Norwalk, CT
NOLA Oyster Bar, Norwalk, CT
Plan B Burger Bar, Stamford CT
Shake Shack, Westport, CT
Chef Johnson's Johnson Truck, Scarsdale, NY
These local restaurants will prepare their best full-size burgers for celebrity judges Graham Elliot and Richard Blais as well as host Joe Bastianich, on Saturday night. Two winners will be announced at 7pm and receive $500.
"The Burger Battle drew a huge crowd at our event last year, and we're ecstatic to bring it back in a bigger and better way this year," says Suni Unger, Founder and CEO of Unger Publishing, the publisher of Serendipity magazine. "We're excited about the launch of the Foodies Choice Award which allows fans to go online and vote for their favorite of these seven local burgers."
So Westchester and Fairfield County residents- here's your opportunity to vote for your favorite burger place! Online voting is open at www.facebook.com/GreenwichFoodWineFestival, and will close on October 1.
Tickets for the 2013 Greenwich Wine & Food Festival, including the Kick-Off Party, the Grand Tasting Gala and Culinary Village are still available at www.greenwichwineandfood.com or call (203) 588-1363.
We look forward to seeing you there!


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Monday, November 23, 2009
One Week Left of the NaNoMonster
7 comments:
- Clint C. said...
I think it's awesome that you have the kind of life where you can do NANOWRIMO and it be considered really working hard on your profession. Most people would get fired if they did this--my kids would just nail me to the floor. Luckeee!
- November 23, 2009 at 6:51 AM
Mr. Blue Man [if you like that] I was wondering, if your not evil than WHHHYYYY did you take over the blog?!
- November 23, 2009 at 7:29 AM
Hmmm, SEVEN days, or just FIVE?
But yeah, I'm so ready to rock!
- November 23, 2009 at 10:47 AM
- Nathan said...
Hey Everyone (This is Nate, not Mr. Blue Man {aka the NaNoWrimonster [aka Chester the Magical Centaur]} Good grief.
Anyway. Since I'm at my keyboard, I'm supposed to be cranking out some of those 2,000 words a day. But apparently I have some extra typing in me, so here goes:
Sarah--yeah, I am am pretty lucky in being able to do NaNoWriMo and justify it as part of my job. But, I am no more qualified to do it than anyone else, and it doesn't mean by any stretch that my NaNo book will ever see publication (especially in the state it's in right now. Yikes! )
I didn't know I was going to do it until the day it started, November 1st. I'd always wanted to try it, and my regular illustration load was on the light side (lots of small education press jobs, no BIG projects) so I just dove in. It's been very interesting, both easier and harder than I thought it would be.
I think it's a great program and everyone who loves reading and writing should try it at least once. I've enjoyed it so much, I think I'll do it next year. And I'm gonna try National SCRIPT Writing Month in April (I just found out there was one, but that'd be just the thing for a graphic novel script.) So, as a blanket challenge to all blog readers, give it a try! You have a whole year to think about it!
Stuart--Mr Weird Comments Man [if you like that] Chester is not evil, he's covering the blog so I can work on other projects. Think of him as an ugly, blue substitute teacher.
E--Seven days. I'm totally gonna use this to get out of any and all Thanksgiving duties. "Just bring my plate down to the basement, thanks. I'm WRITING."
Dagnabbit! That was at least 100 words I could have tacked onto my page count.
- November 23, 2009 at 11:25 AM
- Cranberryfries said...
Good luck!
- November 23, 2009 at 5:09 PM
- Nathan said...
Just logged 2400, so writing in the comments section here must have helped.
- November 23, 2009 at 6:34 PM
Take 45 min. breaks when you need it!!! (: Writing for hours without a break from the writing is most terrible!
- November 23, 2009 at 9:17 PM

subset: commoncrawl


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Independent Submission Marko Oikarinen Request for Comments: 79O6 Sysart Oy Category: Informational 1 April 2016 The Hypertext Transfer Protocol Status Code 462 (Out For Lunch) Abstract This document specifies a Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) status code for use when a human-backed server resource is unavailable as a consequence of said human participating in a process of consuming nutritional substances. Status of This Memo This Internet-Draft is not submitted. Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). Note that other groups may also distribute working documents as Internet-Drafts. The list of current Internet-Drafts is at http://datatracker.ietf.org/drafts/current/. Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference material or to cite them other than as "work in progress." This Internet-Draft will expire on April 1, 2017. Copyright Notice Copyright (c) 2016 The persons identified as the document authors. No rights reserved. Table of Contents 1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 2. Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 3. 462 Out For Lunch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 4. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 5. International Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 6. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 7. Appendix A. Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 8. Author's Address . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 1. Introduction This document specifies a Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) status code for use when a server operation internally utilizes a resource implemented in flesh and bone and said resource is currently having lunch or is in a post-lunch RESTful state, therefore unable to provide the required resource, thus forcing the server to deny access to the resource or to a set of resources which includes the requested resource. This status code can be used to provide transparency in circumstances where service availability may affect client operations. This transparency may be beneficial to end users. 2. Requirements The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "APRIL", "FOOL", and "DESSERT" in this document are to be interpreted as described in [RFC2119]. 3. 462 Out For Lunch This status code indicates that the server is denying access to the resource as a consequence of a required human dependency having lunch. This status code is not to be confused with status code "461 Out To Lunch" which has to do with server behavior under the influence of cosmic rays when financial considerations have made the administrator decide against investing in error-correcting (ECC) server random access memory. A human backed resource may be manifested in ways including but not limited to: a senior dead-tree archive manager, a microfilm squinter, an adidas conveyor, a ticket pusher or a ticket dodger or a Just-In-Time (JIT) backend feature developer. 4. Security Considerations Server resources addressed with the "coffee:" URI scheme as specified in RFC2324 MUST NOT return status code 462, as a HTCPCP/1.0 (Hyper Text Coffee Pot Control Protocol) device is expected to be autonomous and not utilize humans in its implementation. Such HTTP responses are to be considered potentially malicious. Clients cannot rely upon the use of the 462 status code. It is possible that certain resources utilized by the server might wish to avoid transparency, and not disclose that they have left the premises in order to dine at the local gentlemen's club. 5. International Considerations The use of the 462 status code implies temporary unavailability of the resource named in the request. It is expected that a later request for the resource may succeed if the resource has recovered from the digestive condition. When an attempt to access a resource fails with status 462, it is to be expected that the recovery time of the server is highly locale dependent. In a worst case scenario the situation might involve a six course meal with DESSERT and a post-nourishment RESTful period also known as a siesta. 6. References 6.1. Normative References [RFC2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, DOI 10.17487/RFC2119, March 1997, . [RFC2324] L. Masinter, "Hyper Text Coffee Pot Control Protocol (HTCPCP/1.0)", RFC 2324, 1 April 1998, . 7. Appendix A. Acknowledgements This document was inspired by RFC 7725 by Tim Bray and borrows some phrases from it with minor adaptations. 8. Author's Address Marko Oikarinen Twitter: @whoman4says Blog: https://scribblelayer.com/ Employer: http://sysart.fi/
Author Archives: Marko Oikarinen
Enterprise DevOps
I type the program arguments into an Excel sheet. I write a short description of what I am trying to accomplish. I send the description and the Excel sheet to a person that has access rights to the ticketing system. Repeat three times. The next day she reads my emails and submits the three tickets.
The three tickets get assigned to three persons in a country where work used to be cheaper than here. They type the program arguments from the Excel sheet into the scripts that will run the programs. They mark the tickets resolved. Corporate metrics show exemplary ticket handling response times.
Next week another ticket gets resolved and a tester gets access rights to the system. She runs a test case for my use case. It doesn't work. I request access to the log files from the server admin. Next day I have the logs and find out that the second script failed to trigger the third script due to file access rights. No problem, that is easy to fix.
I write a short description of what I am trying to accomplish. I send the description with an Excel sheet to a person that has access rights to the ticketing system. I realize that this is state of the art in Enterprise DevOps in 2016.
Scribble Layer – beyond the model
In the fall of 2010 we at Sysart organized a small conference at Helsinki and Oulu. Daniel Wellner and I did our presentation on how to keep the domain model unambiguous. Jimmy Nilsson was the featured guest and talked about building a domain model.
In his presentation Jimmy said something that caught my ear: "The user should be able to save invalid data". The concept is explained in chapter 7 of his book Applying Domain-Driven Design and Patterns. The book says: "All States, Even When in Error, Should be Savable". The idea is simple but not widely applied – when a user cannot complete all the required information the application should still allow saving the partial work he or she has done.
The concept stuck in my mind. Every now and then a situation comes up where this idea seems to fit. Think of a doctor entering a diagnosis into a patient care application. A diagnosis entry form might contain a dozen fields. It would seem useful that the doctor could enter just the most important data while with the patient, save the entry and complete it later. But applications tend to be too eager and demand everything to be completely valid on first save.
Then I stumbled upon StaffPad. StaffPad is an application for writing music. Writing music. Not typing, not mousing around. Writing music the old-fashioned way, with a pen. As a songwriter I was immediately intrigued. Could this application make notating random ideas into a computer feasible for me? I always preferred pen and paper because I disliked the input methods in all the music applications I tried.
The pen works really well for entering notes, rests and other symbols. But what happens when StaffPad does not recognise your writing? It applies Jimmy's advice and saves the unrecognized strokes as part of the page. If you print the score, the mystery symbols are not discarded, they get printed too. A human can read and play the scribbles assuming your handwriting is legible. The only thing StaffPad cannot do is play the notes because the meaning of the unrecognized strokes is a mystery to the application.
This is good, but StaffPad takes it a step further. Sometimes the user wants to express something that can not be codified in the domain model. Western musical notation has a huge amount of symbols and it is not feasible to implement all of them in an application. StaffPad has a clever way around this problem: an extra layer (think Photoshop layers) on top of the notation where you can draw whatever you like. A scribble layer. You can jot down obscure electric guitar performance symbols or draw a picture of your favorite game character. The layer is domain-aware – it intelligently attaches to bars, and is formatted into each musicians parts on printouts.
Is this idea of a separate unstructured layer placed on top of the model presentation useful in other applications? I sure would like to annotate source code with small drawings in my IDE and have them follow the source anywhere it goes. Do you know applications that implement a similar idea?
- Sysart Hotspot
- Do you trust your domain objects? (M.Oikarinen, D.Wellner)
- Jimmy Nilsson / Applying Domain-Driven Design and Patterns
- StaffPad
Samplitude on a tablet – part II
This is part two in the adventure where I'm experimenting with using my DAW on a tablet with only a touch interface. See here for part one: Samplitude on a tablet – part I
I believe I have found the most productive combination of toolbar buttons. I have also updated the Thinkpad tablet to Windows 10 and everything still works smoothly.
This is the set of toolbar buttons I settled on. These actions are optimized for recording and arranging song ideas, not mixing. There are 18 buttons:
- toggle drawmode – shows/hides track control panes
- show/hide track editor – edit a single tracks properties, access to plugins
- show/hide mixer
- group objects
- ungroup objects
- toggle snap
- undo
- split object
- remove range
- zoom=10s
- zoom=60s
- lock all audio – Prevents accidental moving of objects. With a keyboard I use shortcuts to toggle the Lock/Unlock state of individual objects. With touch it is easier to have a single global lock.
- cut – Normally I ctrl+drag objects to copy them but cut/copy/paste works better with touch.
- copy
- paste
- toggle metronome
- rec
- play/stop
The Windows task bar is back at the bottom of the screen and hidden. Swiping up from the bottom shows the task bar and gives access to the touch keyboard.
If you use multiple time signatures like I often do, I recommend setting the project time signature to 1/4 or 1/8 and NOT adding any signature changes. This makes it easier to move song sections and parts around.
Samplitude on a tablet
Samplitude Pro X2 was recently on sale for a ridiculously low price so I decided to grab a second copy. My studio DAW has Samplitude tied to a dongle for historical reasons so it was nice to get a dongle-free license for mobile use.
So… I'm wondering if Samplitude would be usable on a Windows tablet? I don't like using a computer for songwriting and demoing, there is enough mousing and typing during the day already. Could a tablet provide a more organic and fun experience somewhat like a 4-track cassette portastudio back in the day?
Inspired by surfaceproaudio.com I decided to try it. I've installed Samplitude Pro X2 and ASIO4ALL on a Thinkpad Helix tablet and I'm in the middle of figuring out the workflow and settings that make this possible. Touch only – no keyboard and no mouse! This is a work in progress but so far things look very promising!
To maximize the space for manipulating audio, I have removed all the visual elements that are not absolutely essential. The Windows 8.1 task bar I've moved to the left side of the screen to free some vertical space. The onscreen keyboard is accessible from the task bar all the time. Naming tracks and saving files still requires some typing. I'm trying to fit the frequently used actions on a single toolbar so I've removed the toolbar at the bottom. Samplitude has a Big Toolbar option which makes the icons just the right size for touch.
The toolbars can be customized to contain exactly the buttons you need. There is a default palette of commonly used toolbar actions. In addition, any action that can be found in the menus can be added to the toolbar with the custom button. This kind of customization is essential for usability in any software.
The arrangement (VIP) window supports touch gestures. I can scroll the timeline, pinch-zoom, marquee-select objects, select a range, move the play cursor – all without buttons.
There are some essential actions still missing from my toolbar. I can select and split objects but have no way to delete or mute them… doh! I guess I'll remove the zoom and navigation buttons to make room for those.
Garbage in – default out?
We were freshly into production with this system that had a lot of moving parts. The whole system consisted of several big monolithic applications and half a dozen newer microservice-style services integrated into a "living organism".
A user was not getting the results she expected. We investigated the problem and found out that a service we were calling was not returning some of the data we were interested in. In particular, data older than three months was not seen by us. A support person for the service said: 'you should use wide search if you want to see the older items'. But wait – we were using wide search, always had been!
I double-checked the code and sure enough, it did say widesearch="true". Strange. So I blew the dust off the API spec and found this: widesearch="1|0". Yikes, the value should be a number! And I had coded this, totally my bad. I guess I've grown too used to using true and false for boolean values in XML. We were a month into production when we found out we were not using wide search. Never had been!
Why did we not get an error when we called the service with bad parameters? 1 and 0 look like numbers to me, but the service had been happily accepting the string "true" all along. I decided to run a little experiment against the service in the test environment:
<request key="..." widesearch="anything goes?" />
<response>OK ...valid search results...</response>.
Okay, so it seems there is no validation of the parameter whatsoever. The code probably reads something like this:
if("1".equals(request.attr("widesearch")) ...
Why did we not find this bug during testing? This integration point was hammered a lot because during the project there were a lot of version updates on both sides of the API fence. Before going into production, the integration was in use for at least half a year in the testing environment. Somehow we just managed to not hit the three-month limit. For us 'widesearch' was just a mandatory constant we had to set in the API, not a thing that would be interesting to test.
Now, imagine that the service actually checked that the parameters in the API call have correct data types. We would have found our bug on day one of testing. Actually earlier – the first time we tried to call the test service. Silently choosing a default when the input is garbage does a big disservice to making the whole system robust.
When computers talk to computers it is better to be strict in the protocol. Problems get flushed out way quicker.
Large systems… designed?!?
In his excellent talk on DDD & Microservices Eric Evans had a slide that said "Not all of a large system will be well designed". Yes, that does match my experience with software systems very well. However, I originally misread the sentence as "Not all large systems will be designed". I think the misread version sounds true too. I can certainly state with confidence that "not all large systems were designed". That is because they just happened 🙂


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When the University of Colorado at Boulder insisted on staging this year's "Rocky Mountain Showdown" with the Colorado State University Rams at Folsom Field -- supposedly to guarantee that at least six games would take place at CU's stadium this year -- many observers feared the Buffs' thirst for revenue and/or home-field advantage would put an end to one of the highlights of the local college-football season: a matchup of the two largest colleges in the state at the quasi-neutral location of Invesco Field at Mile High. But no: Today, the schools announced that they've agreed to stage the next ten years' worth of contests at Invesco. The revenue split continues to favor CU, which will receive 55 percent of proceeds, as opposed to 45 percent for CSU -- a little bit of a screw-job, but one acknowledging that the former institution is considerably larger than the latter. Still, the real winners are fans of the series, which would have lost much of its luster if it had permanently bid Invesco farewell.
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Click here to see CU athletic director Mike Bohn's video announcement about the pact, as well as a detailed press release.


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Late last October, as American electoral pandemonium was approaching its climax, I was in a living room in Paris where the 59-year-old French writer and filmmaker Emmanuel Carrère was talking about shame. "To write disagreeable things about the self, dishonorable things," Carrère told me, reclining like an analysand on a black leather couch, "this doesn't present me with any problems. I have very little shame. There are many things I've done or thought that I consider bad, but I don't feel shame over them because I think that everyone feels they've done bad things. I think it does a reader good to see: 'Oh, he's the same way. Him too.'
"What's difficult," Carrère continued, sitting up, "is that when one writes about oneself, one is obligated to write about other people. And there, as much as one has the right to write absolutely whatever one wants about the self — and once again, for me, that's not very difficult — to write about others is an enormous problem. The sincerity that you can exhibit with yourself, you have no right to inflict on anyone else."
Carrère, who has the silhouette of someone half his age but whose face is so deeply grooved that its lines seem carved there, wasn't speaking abstractly. In the past 17 years, he has become famous in France for writing about other people — a murderer, a Russian fascist, his mother, her father, the women in his romantic life — in each case finding new formal solutions to the problem of writing about the self and others. But Carrère is not without his misgivings about the results.
"It makes me think of a sentence, something absolutely horrible," Carrère continued. "It was 15 or 20 years ago, in an interview with General Massu of the French Army, who had been accused of torturing men in Algeria, in the war. During the '50s and '60s, this highest-ranking general, who had enormous power, had been accused, with good reason, of having tortured many people. In the interview, Massu said, of la gégène — torture with electric prods from a generator — 'Listen. Don't exaggerate. The prods? I tried them on myself. It hurts, but not worse than that.' The nonsense of that statement! What's atrocious about torture is that someone else is afflicting you, and you don't know when he will stop. 'I tried it on myself to see if it hurts. And I stop when it hurts.' That's the opposite of torture. That's called an experience. The simultaneous nonsense and moral ugliness of that sentence!
"To write bad things about yourself," Carrère went on, leaning back again, "it's like Massu using the generator on himself. You decide yourself when you're going to stop. When you write about others, there's a huge responsibility. For my part, I have used the generator on people other than myself. And that bothers me. I don't like that idea. I'm not a good man, unfortunately. I would like to be a good man. I admire goodness and virtue most. But I am not very good. I am, however, very moral. Which is to say I know where goodness is, and badness. I do not believe that literature gives you the right to immorality."
Questions of right and wrong, of kindness and cruelty, of good and evil, animate literary history, so much so that it would be difficult to find a lasting work of narrative art that doesn't engage, in some essential way, with how we behave and what makes us behave as we do. Carrère's case has become notable in that history because of how differently he has posed those questions. Since he began his career, in 1982, with a book-length essay on Werner Herzog, a filmmaker who has alternated between fiction and nonfiction, an alternation that Carrère as a writer admires and through his own body of work exhibits, Carrère has managed to renovate the idea of what nonfiction writing can be. Profoundly intimate, historically and philosophically serious but able to cast compulsive narrative spells, Carrère's books are hybrids, marrying deep reporting to scholarly explorations of theology, philosophy, psychology, personal history and historiography. Though formal innovation tends to preoccupy avant-garde writers and to guarantee a small readership, Carrère's books — 14 across 36 years, with translations into more than 30 languages — have been best sellers, as popular as they are praised. If Michel Houellebecq is routinely advanced as France's greatest living writer of fiction, Carrère, whose prose is no less remarkable for its purity and whose vision is no less broad, is widely understood as France's greatest writer of nonfiction.
Carrère's priority of frankness has forged, from book to book, new ways of managing to be truthful, new ways of including the first person. Self-conscious approaches to nonfiction narration, those that favor the reportorial "I" in the proceedings, aren't new, with examples as old as, and not limited to, Daniel Defoe in the 18th century, Thomas De Quincey in the 19th and Joan Didion in the 20th. In an era when nonfiction with a vaguely journalistic foundation has been a thing so mutable that it has been rebranded across three generations as "new journalism," "gonzo journalism" and "creative nonfiction," Carrère's approach still defies category. Even to call his recent books, as Carrère sometimes has, "nonfiction novels" doesn't do much to clarify what makes them so unusual. Though it's easy to notice the mechanics of a Carrère book — his characteristic inclusion of himself in the proceedings, his habitual inclusion of the process by which the book in question is being formed — what is genuinely original in Carrère's work is the sensibility that animates those varied approaches, infused as it is with Carrère's at-times-skeptical, at-times-maniacal way of thinking, his well-stocked intelligence, his spare, unfussily lyrical prose, his shameproof feed of uncensored interiority, his tireless storytelling energy and his unstinting attempts and, importantly, failures at maintaining sympathy for his subjects.
"To write a book," Carrère told me, "you've got to be persuaded that you're the only person who could write it." Some of his books make this claim more obviously than others. Carrère's latest, "The Kingdom," which appears in the United States this week, is at once a memoir of his time as a devout Christian and a fictional account of Luke and Paul as they wrote the first books of the Christian story. Or consider his "My Life as a Russian Novel," from 2007, which tells, in part, the story of Carrère's mother's father, a brilliant but depressive Georgian émigré who, failing to integrate into French life after the Russian Revolution, ended up interpreting for the Germans during World War II. One day, he disappeared, not to be seen or heard from again. Carrère's mother was 15 at the time, and she never spoke of his disappearance or his fate. Carrère sought to tell that story as fully as he could, but it wouldn't be a Carrère book if, in telling that story, he didn't also tell the story of the making of the feature documentary he shot in Russia, in 2002 (Carrère has a parallel career as a film and television director and writer), about the town, Kotelnich, a backwater 11 hours from Moscow, where a 75-year-old Hungarian soldier from World War II was discovered 53 years after he fought against the Soviets and, having been taken prisoner, confined to a tiny mental hospital. But in telling that story, the story of the making of the documentary, Carrère also told the story of the relationship he was in at the time he was making that movie, a troubled relationship with a woman of a different social class, a woman to whom he wrote a pornographic letter, one he published in Le Monde, a leading French newspaper, a letter that he didn't tell her about and that was meant to be an erotic surprise — a surprise that went catastrophically awry, taking with it Carrère's psychological balance. His unraveling, as documented in the book, is one of the most compelling conjurings of mania a reader is likely to encounter. As improbable as this confluence of elements might seem, they marry into something remarkable, especially given that "My Life as a Russian Novel" ends with yet another open letter, one to Carrère's mother, about the fact that they had never talked about the darkness that hovered over their family, a darkness that he hoped might be lifted by his telling of this story in the most open way possible: a public way. Given that Carrère's mother, Hélène Carrère d'Encausse, is arguably the most famous Russian historian in France, a constant presence on French television not merely for her expertise but also in her capacity as the permanent secretary of the Académie Française, the 382-year-old institution founded by Richelieu to safeguard the sanctity and purity of the French language, Carrère's claim of ambivalence over having used la gégène on other people seems not at all overstated.
While I cannot imagine what it might be like to read the book as his mother, I can imagine, now, what it might be like to live with such a story, and why one way of living with it might be to not want to live with it at all. It is in this way — this way of being supremely frank; this way of combining elements that at first seem cumbersomely heterogeneous but that turn out to be meaningfully conjoined — that Carrère has managed to write one masterpiece after another, books preoccupied with the violence that can invade our lives without warning or appeal, books that are, themselves, at times, acts of violence against that violence.
"The best part of a writer's biography," Vladimir Nabokov told Vogue magazine, in 1969, "is not the record of his adventures but the story of his style." Though Nabokov's own story was not without its dramatic plot points, how he went from writing a negligible first novel called "Mary" to, 30 years later, a classic of world literature, "Lolita," is the richer part of his story because it's a story that can be told only about him.
The same is true of Carrère. To date, you can divide his career into neat halves, the first preoccupied with fiction and the second devoted to nonfiction. He published five novels before his 40th birthday (four of them in his 20s), to increasing acclaim, all written in the third person. Though Carrère speaks ruefully of most of them — the autobiographical first novel that drew heavily if surreally on his French military-service experience in Indonesia where he taught old Chinese ladies to speak French and took every drug he could find; the second, which, set around the famous night in the summer of 1816 when Mary Shelley came up with the Frankenstein story, he finds as overdone as the first; and the fourth, which he just says he doesn't like at all — two retain his affection: "The Mustache" (1986) and "Class Trip" (1995). Each is a short, sharp shock of a book, running about 150 pages and building to a dreadful end involving violence, physical and psychological.
Carrère's appreciation of these two short books is somewhat melancholy, however, in that he loves his work in this mode: short novels in the third person from which nothing can be removed. For, when discussing the writing he admires, though he mentions Rousseau's "Confessions" and Montaigne's "Essays" — he can't resist rising from the couch to look up Montaigne's introductory "To the reader" on his iPad and then to read it aloud with a kind of wonder as if he'd just discovered it — he mostly talks about the fiction he loves: Dostoyevsky's "The Idiot" ("The narrative propulsion in those first 300 pages is absolutely incredible"); Wharton's "Ethan Frome" and James's "The Turn of the Screw," favorites for their compression; "War and Peace" ("Fiction's largest vision of the world"); the ending of "Anna Karenina" ("Habitually we say that the end isn't very good. It touches me a great deal, the life of Kitty and Levin. I find it magnificent. A happiness like that is one I aspire to in life"); and, most of all, how "The Death of Ivan Ilyich" remains a perpetual goad to him as a writer ("In the dream of books one would like to imitate, it is one"). That Carrère stopped writing novels, then, has nothing to do with his preferences as a reader or a writer. Carrère would still like to write pure fiction.
Since that first half of his writing life ended, Carrère has published five works of book-length narrative nonfiction, all written in the first person, each of which is unlike the other. How the first and second parts of this career fit together or, if you like, break apart, helps to explain how Carrère has managed to find his way to his uniqueness. The pivot point in that evolution was Carrère's writing of "The Adversary," his book about Jean-Claude Romand, a Frenchman who for 18 years pretended first to be a medical student and then a doctor at the World Health Organization. In an effort to hide his secret as it began to unravel — he was embezzling large sums to enable his deceit — Romand murdered his immediate family: wife, two children, his parents, even their dog. Carrère, like everyone else in France in 1993, was horrified by this crime, and, having enjoyed a thriving journalistic career in parallel to his novelistic one, he produced a taut, third-person report of the trial and the circus around it. Despite feeling steadily worse that as a father of two young sons, he would spend so much time writing about a man who murdered his children, Carrère tried to make a book of it. His model was "In Cold Blood," a book he admires, a book written in the third person, a book he takes issue with too. As he told The Paris Review, in 2013:
The book, which is a masterpiece, rests on a lie by omission that seems to me morally hideous. The whole last part of the book is about the years the two criminals spent in prison, and during those years, the one main person in their lives was Capote. Nevertheless, he erased himself from the book. And he did so for a simple reason, which was that what he had to say was completely unsayable — he had developed a friendship with the two men. He spent his time telling them that he was going to get them the best lawyers, that he was working to get them a stay of execution, when in fact he was lighting candles in the church in the hopes that they would be hanged because he knew that was the only satisfactory ending to his book. It's a level of moral discomfort almost without equal in literature, and I don't think it is too psychologically far-fetched to say that the reason he never really wrote much else is related to the monstrous and justified guilt that his masterpiece inspired in him.
Carrère spent six years trying to manage the task of writing a French "In Cold Blood," to write the story of this hideous crime from multiple points of view, to try to get into everyone's head the way a novelist would, to imaginatively identify. And he failed, generating, he says, many hundreds of pages he was unable to use. Two years into that time, Carrère wrote his final short novel, "Class Trip," one obliquely related, in its abject theme, to Romand's violence. But six years passed, "six years," Carrère has said, "of my life circling this story like a hyena," six years during which this very productive writer published only 150 pages. He just couldn't figure out how to finish the Romand story. Before he put it aside, he wrote himself what he calls a memo about what he tried to do, as a way of getting some closure on the wreck that the project had made of his life and his career. The memo began:
On the Saturday morning of January 9, 1993, while Jean-Claude Romand was killing his wife and children, I was with mine in a parent-teacher meeting at the school attended by Gabriel, our eldest son. He was 5 years old, the same age as Antoine Romand. Then we went to have lunch with my parents, as Jean-Claude Romand did with his, whom he killed after their meal.
"I'm not an idiot," Carrère has said about the moment after he wrote those lines. "I very quickly realized that this impossible book to write was now becoming possible, that it was practically writing itself, now that I had accepted writing it in the first person. ... Others are a black box, especially someone as enigmatic as Romand. I understood that the only way to approach it was to consent to go into the only black box I do have access to, which is me."
In the work that followed "The Adversary," Carrère has continued to present himself presenting the lives of others. Though that might sound narcissistic, it has the upending feeling, for the reader, of humility in action. There's a reason for this. Carrère told a great story to The Paris Review about the source of that humility:
A little girl once said something in front of me that I just loved. She had misbehaved and her mother was scolding her, saying, "But put yourself in other people's position!" And the little girl answered, "But if I put myself in their position, where do they go?" I have often thought of that since I started writing these kinds of "nonfiction" books, the rules and moral imperatives of which I was starting to become acquainted with. I don't think you can put yourself in other people's positions. Nor should you. All you can do is occupy your own, as fully as possible, and say that you are trying to imagine what it's like to be someone else, but say it's you who's imagining it, and that's all.
So this is Carrère's idea of nonfiction: to occupy your own position as fully as possible. His quotes around "nonfiction" are interesting. They suggest a certain level of suspicion over the sufficiency of the label, and I see Carrère-the-novelist as having inserted them. Carrère's thinking here about what nonfiction does is in useful opposition to a prevailing idea about fiction, of which David Foster Wallace gave perhaps the most widely circulated explanation. As Wallace said in a 1993 interview:
I guess a big part of serious fiction's purpose is to give the reader, who like all of us is sort of marooned in her own skull, to give her imaginative access to other selves. Since an ineluctable part of being a human self is suffering, part of what we humans come to art for is an experience of suffering, necessarily a vicarious experience, more like a sort of 'generalization' of suffering. ... We all suffer alone in the real world; true empathy's impossible. But if a piece of fiction can allow us imaginatively to identify with a character's pain, we might then also more easily conceive of others identifying with our own. This is nourishing, redemptive; we become less alone inside.
Fiction, in Wallace's view, provides the reader with consolation because of its performance of empathy — of what it would be like to be understood. Carrère's work suggests that we might come to nonfiction not to imagine ourselves being understood, not to feel less alone but to actively imagine understanding and understanding's limits. It is in this way that his books display how thinking about other people feels: lonely, but nourishingly so.
Carrère's most profound exploration of that kind of nourishing aloneness came, in part, out of a 2004 vacation in Sri Lanka with his son, his girlfriend and her son. One morning — after Carrère had petitioned them all to move from their bungalow on a cliff down to a guesthouse on the beach but was outvoted, a decision that saved their lives; a morning when they had planned to go snorkeling but Carrère's son decided he didn't want to, which also saved their lives — the tsunami struck, killing at least a quarter million people in more than five countries. After the wave hit, as emergency services worked, Carrère met many people who had lost loved ones and became close to a family whose 4-year-old daughter, Juliette, had been lost in the disaster. "Lives Other Than My Own" details, in part, the harrowing search by his new friends for their daughter's body. But it also pursues the story of his girlfriend's sister, also named Juliette, a regional debt-court judge, after she finds out she has cancer. And the pursuit of that story, in turn, tells the story of Juliette's friendship with her fellow judge, Étienne, and his regard for Juliette, who, like Étienne, was crippled in adolescence by cancer. Through these twinnings, of names, of fates, Carrère pursues a story about loss — loss of children, loss of mothers, of the way fate vandalizes our lives — that ends up being a story about what it means to have something truly dear in your hands.
There's an amazing little moment in the book that gets at what Carrère is able to do. Carrère is just awaking to the devastation of the tsunami in Sri Lanka, and he is walking around meeting people who are seeking their loved ones in vain. He comes upon an English tourist, "an overweight middle-aged Englishwoman with short hair who had lost her girlfriend":
I imagined the two of them getting on in years, living in a lovingly tended house in an English town, taking part in its social life, going on a yearly trip to some distant country, putting together their photo albums. ... All that shattered. The survivor's return; the empty house. Each woman's mug with her name on it, one of them forever forlorn. And this heavy woman, sitting slumped at the kitchen table with her head in her hands, weeping, telling herself that she's all alone now and will be until she dies.
"Among the many astonishing passages that stand out in 'Lives Other Than My Own,' " Michel Houellebecq says, in a forthcoming essay of his on Carrère that was provided to The Times by his agent, "the most heartbreaking for me is about the old English lesbian who has just lost her companion in the catastrophe. Carrère did in fact meet this woman during the holidays in Sri Lanka that ended so terribly; but he imagined the mugs. This seems to me the margin of invention Carrère finds in this book where 'everything is true.' It's not insignificant. Because they're not nothing, these mugs. It was exactly at the moment of the mugs, I remember, that I burst into tears, and that I had to put the book down, unable, for a few minutes, to continue reading."
The role of the witness to catastrophe is a central one in our lives: How are we to imagine the pain of others? In religion, theodicy is the branch of writing that tries to explain how a perfect god would nonetheless make our lives so painful. One way of seeing Carrère's body of work is to present that "problem of evil." But Houellebecq sees Carrère doing something very different and very radical.
"Good exists, it exists absolutely, just as much as evil," Houellebecq explained. "And it's this existence — absolutely against every natural law, this counterproductive existence from a biological point of view — which poses the real problem. And it is this problem of goodness, the only real problem, that Emmanuel Carrère poses in the most beautiful pages of his books."
Carrère's "The Kingdom," which tells the story of the founding of Christianity, pushes deeply into this problem of goodness, the hunger of the human animal to find connection to others and, through connection, communion. At 630 pages in its French edition, it is driven by the story of Carrère's earlier pursuit of Christianity more than two decades ago, when, during a period of personal anguish — unable to write, mired in a failing marriage and seeking relief from depression — he became a devout Christian, one who went to church daily, wrote dozens of journals devoted to his verse-by-verse study of the Gospel of John, prayed fervently and, after three or four years, lost his way again, his belief fading. In telling that story, Carrère also narrates a study of the written histories of the early Christian church in the years following the death of Jesus Christ, these contradictory early records with more gaps in the narrative than narrative. And, to make sense of what doesn't make sense — how four narratives of the death of a man who spoke in riddles and, 2,000 years later, is worshiped as God by two billion people — Carrère also writes a fictional account of the Apostles Luke and Paul as they began their missionary work, an account whose fictionality fills in the huge gaps in the record, to the end of trying to understand how one could tell such a story in such a way that it would captivate all of humanity for all time. Thus "The Kingdom" becomes a story of the telling of the world's most famous story and an inquiry into how storytelling works that pushes, not infrequently, against the limits of what can be said.
Carrère himself sees the book as a kind of masterpiece, not in an arrogant way but in the manner of a fine carpenter who, for five years, after compulsively rubbing coat after coat of mineral oil into a long-completed cherry table, recognizes, not without some surprise, that it glows with inner light. Carrère told me that "The Kingdom" was a book he loved working on, a book he didn't want to stop writing, a book that, he hoped, would mark the end of that second part of his creative life and usher in a third. The problem now was that, three years having passed since he finished writing it, no new era had been ushered in, and "The Kingdom" had come to feel, to Carrère, like a capstone to a writing life that he was desperate — and in anguish at being unable — to continue. He has once again been unable to write a book that works, whether fiction or nonfiction. He has taken on some journalistic assignments, journalism always having been a useful and meaningful way for Carrère, when blocked, to engage with the world. But when I saw him, he was in a kind of agony. Once again, he was mired in depression.
"I've lived a mostly privileged life," Carrère told me. "For the most part I'm lucky: I never had any real money problems, professionally I knew some success fairly quickly, I'm in good health. At the same time, the thing I've carried in my life that's a little heavy is a tendency to depression. Occasionally, there are years that aren't exposed to it. Then it comes back. The best remedy to it is work, and when work isn't there — and when my sense is that work isn't possible — there's great fragility as a result."
Carrère was very much in that fragile state when we spoke. His writerly purgatory was also a domestic one: Of late, he said, he has had the impression that he has no idea where he's living. He has not been living at home, he and his wife having recently sold their apartment and bought a new one that isn't yet habitable and that left him occupying an absent friend's place, one in which there wasn't the least trace of life, anyone's life — no books, no pictures, no chosen anything: no nothing — and that had, therefore, a sinister air of vacancy. The vaguely creepy ambience of that objectively pleasant apartment into which Carrère welcomed me — large windows facing a leafy courtyard; two floors — was further amplified by the presence of a huge leather couch at its center, a couch that seemed somehow forlorn, abandoned, a huge dog of a couch waiting miserably for its owner to return.
The reason I belabor this point of feeling is to try to get across the atmosphere of spending time with Carrère that day and the next. "Others are a black box," Carrère said, and yet that black box does sometimes give off a black light that, in certain moments, though it can't be seen, can be felt. Carrère, who is nothing if not exquisitely polite and who tries at every turn to express himself with precision and care and frankness and good cheer, did his best to be a good host, offering tea, offering himself as much as he could. But in retrospect, that first day of conversation was heartbreaking: During those first hours when he presented as a very cheerful guy, he was, in fact, suffering terribly.
After two hours of talk in that strangely grim-cheerful apartment, talk that centered on the various kinds of art Carrère admires — in sculpture (Michelangelo's "Pietà Rondanini": "It's a thing that's utterly stupefying because of the abandon, as if the body of Christ were falling. You sense the weight. It's staggering") and music (Dylan and Leonard Cohen are important to him) — we had lunch and we talked about painted portraits. As there was a Rembrandt show on and as Carrère said he loved Rembrandt ("It's a bit tired to say this but if there is a painting where you have the impression that you're seeing the soul of the person painted, it's really Rembrandt"), we decided to go to the show after lunch. Carrère asked me if it would be O.K. if we went there on his scooter and gave me a helmet and off we went. It was a pretty, sunny day in Paris, and as we putted forward through the busy streets, Carrère drove carefully, perhaps a little too carefully, in that there was a tremendous amount of unexpected braking, and I found, as I clutched the bar on the back of the bike with both hands, that my hugely helmeted head kept colliding with the rear of Carrère's helmet. I tried very hard not to let my helmet collide with his, and whether through a deficit of core strength or passengerial inexperience, it kept happening. Bonk; putt-putt-putt bonk; bonk; putt-putt-putt-putt bonk. And the thought I had was: This would be a lot easier if we were close friends, brothers, and it were natural to rest against him. And of course, I didn't do this, because it would have been awkward for an American reporter to embrace his just-met subject on the back of scooter as we bumbled down a Paris boulevard. But the feeling that seized me, and it was oddly powerful, was that I should, that it wouldn't be weird to hold onto this stranger. That everything would be a lot better if I did, if I just reached out and held on.
The Rembrandt show was at the Musée Jacquemart-André, a little museum with a big line through which Carrère and I made our way, several people we passed discretely doing the head nod and another unselfconsciously pointing. On the second floor of the not-so-little ornate mansion with its mirrored and gilded vaulted spaces, its grand proportions and delicate details, we found the show, which was billed as "Rembrandt: Intime." We passed some of his student works, outdoor scenes of knights standing around, terrible paintings, done when he was 20 ("It's good to tell yourself," Carrère said, "when you begin to learn a skill you do things like this and afterward, later, you might be able to do something"); another painting, so vague, Carrère said, "you can't even tell what he's trying to paint"; and a self-portrait, one of two in the show ("Funny that Rembrandt made some of the loveliest portraits in the world and he's not a very attractive man"); and then we came upon a portrait of a white-bearded St. Paul sitting at his desk, aglow with light as if from an unseen candle ("Older than in my imagination. Late 50s in mine and more like early 80s here"). And then we were before two different states of Rembrandt's famous etching of Christ on the cross, surrounded by thieves. The ur-image of the Passion, passion from the Latin, pati, to suffer. The two etchings were side by side, the one on the left bright and full of detail, as though bathed in sunlight. The one on the right was dark, as though the crucifixion had taken place not on a hill but in a cave, the light streaming in from a crack in the surface of the earth. Neither was truly finished, and each varied in the details that Rembrandt worked into the print. I asked which Carrère preferred.
"I prefer this one," he said, pointing to the one on the left. "This is too dark."
Many shelves of books have explored the route from darkness to light, faithlessness to faith. It's a whole genre, and it begins with one of Carrère's favorite books, Augustine's "Confessions." Carrère's own is the only one I know in the tradition that convincingly sketches a state of faithlessness that becomes one of devotion and then just as plausibly explains the way that devotion degrades into doubt. Much of this is metaphysically heady, but what is most striking in Carrère's account is how palpable and physical it is too, particularly in those sections — the meat of Carrère's book — that describe his attempts to tell the stories of Luke and Paul. If this sounds like historical fiction, I can't really say that it feels that way. It feels like reportage, with a reporter's keen attention to fact, to what happened and what it looked like. And Carrère has no ambition to write historical fiction. As he notes in "The Kingdom": "While some people are fully able to put on a straight face and get characters from Antiquity dressed in togas and skirts to say things like 'Salve Paulus, come with me to the atrium,' I can't. That's the problem with historical novels, and even more with those set in Ancient Rome: I can't help being reminded of 'A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.' " Carrère's telling of these moments from the past feels, instead, like a bearing witness.
As a former believer and now a nonbeliever, Carrère, seeking answers, sets out, in "The Kingdom," to tell the story of the storytellers. He is trying to understand what it takes to be able to tell a story, any story. And what he finds, once again, is that you have to find your role in it. That need to understand the role you have in the larger human story is at the heart of this beautiful, difficult book. Difficult not in form but in feeling, "The Kingdom" manages to get at the contradictions of what we call intimacy.
"The Kingdom" doesn't have a plot; it has an emotional shuttle that takes the reader through stations of feeling. Late in the book, Carrère decides to go to a Christian retreat, one based around a story of the Last Supper in Luke, that of Jesus washing the feet of his disciples, men shocked that he is debasing himself in this way. "He kneels before Peter, who protests: 'Master, are you going to wash my feet?' Jesus answers: 'What I am doing, you do not understand now, but you will understand later.' " So Carrère goes to a retreat where everyone will do as Jesus did, washing one another's feet, where some of the participants are adults with various degrees of mental impairment. Carrère washes one man's feet:
I look at these feet, don't know what to think. It's really very strange to wash the feet of a perfect stranger. I'm reminded of a sentence by the philosopher Emmanuel Levinas ... about the human face which, the moment you see it, forbids killing…. [B]ut it's even more true for people's feet. Feet are even poorer, even more vulnerable, there's nothing more vulnerable: the child in each of us. And all the while finding it all a bit embarrassing, I find it beautiful that people get together to do just that, to get as close as possible to the poorest thing in the world and in them. I think that that is Christianity.
Which, Carrère admits, is a nice intellectual response to a physical experience, but hardly a matter of being swept away by faith and love. And so when the guitar playing starts, and the dancing, Carrère is pretty much done with the experience and a little embarrassed at his cravenness in using this retreat as a way to reconnect with his past life.
And then something happens, something I won't describe here, not because I think that doing so spoils the plot but rather because it is so typical of the way that Carrère's books defy expectation and precisely the thing that Carrère's gift for frankness grants, to him and to us. Suddenly at the end of an exploration of a kind of darkness, the darkness of a lived life and its struggles, a moment of revelation occurs in which those struggles are revealed to be not at all what we supposed they were. Like the ending of "Anna Karenina" that Carrère so loves, in which the wrong choices lead to depression and death, a couple make their own choices that lead to new life, to the birth of a child, a birth about which Levin feels conflicted and about which he has thoughts that he does not, and will not, share with his wife, only with us via the novelist's ability to unveil them. This sort of revelation — small but in a life, huge — is one of the very special things about Carrère's work: how his books, at their ends, document what, hitherto in literature as in life, remains hidden. This consistent shift to small, hard revelation at the end of his books, is the most difficult thing to characterize, because the effect of these endings is produced through the accumulation of what precedes them, the tens of thousands of choices that lead the reader to them.
It's much easier to say that Carrère writes about darkness, about tragedy, about villainy, murder, sorrow and loss, about tortured people and torturers, with the torturer sometimes himself. But to leave it there would be perfectly wrong. Carrère's true subject isn't evil, but rapture, its precarious presence in our lives; how it disappears, how we become blind to it, how we seek it, how we become its prey and how, if we are fortunate, it at last catches up to us. However preoccupied Carrère is with loss and violence and pain, his books move to endings that earn a space of joy. They are, for lack of a better term, happy endings, but happy endings that feel not like tricks but truths. They are written by someone who knows precisely what they cost.


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Explore: All Collections
A Gallery in the Gardens
During the spring and summer of 2010 Exeter's Rougemont and Northernhay Gardens were full of artistic surprises. Set free among the flower beds, shrubs and trees, were reproductions of fabulous paintings from RAMM's Fine Art Collection. Artists featured included Francis Towne, William Powell Frith, George Philip Reinagle and Lucien Pissarro.
Key objects from the collections
These are a selection of key objects from across the collections. The items selected are to give a good idea of the variety of objects in RAMM's collections and to highlight some of the most significant items. Gerald the Giraffe, the museum mascot, is there of course.


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Islamic Beliefs
Prophet Mohammad
Quran & Hadith
Faith Related
Muslim Ibadats
Islamic Sects
Universe Life Death
Marriage Related
Critical Questions
Women Related
Misc. Questions
Banking & Business
Events Celebrations
Christians Related
7) Women: Attending Prayers in the Mosque
8) Women: Prolonged discharge and prayer
Question :
Is there any evidence that woman's manner of performing the Prayer is somehow different from that of man?
Answer :
Answering your question, Sheikh M. S. Al-Munajjid, a prominent Saudi Muslim lecturer and author, states:
�The general principle is that women are equal to men in all religious rulings, because of the Hadith: "Women are counterparts of men." (Reported by Ahmad), except when there is evidence of a specific ruling which applies only to women. One of the cases in which the scholars mention specific rules for women in Prayer, as follows:
1) Women do not have to give Adhan (call to Prayer) or Iqamah (second call to Prayer). Ibn Qudamah, may Allah have mercy on him, said: "We don�t know any difference between Muslim scholars (on this point)." (Al-Mughni ma`a Ash-Sharh Al-Kabir, 1/438).
2) All of the woman�s body must be covered during Prayer, except for her face and hands, because the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, said: "No prayer will be accepted from an adult woman unless she wears a Khimar.� (Reported by Al-Bukhari) There is some dispute as to whether her heels and feet should be covered.
3) The woman should keep her limbs close to her body during bowing and prostration, and not spread them out, because this is more modest and covering. (Al-Mughni, 2/258)
4) Al-Nawawi said: "In his Al-Mukhtasar, Ash-Shafi`i said that there is no difference between men and women in Prayer, except that women should keep the parts of their bodies close to one another, and they should make their stomachs touch their thighs during prostration. This is more covering and preferable in bowing and the rest of the Prayer as well." (Al-Majmu`, 3/429)
5) It is preferable for women to pray in congregation, led by another woman, because the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, told Umm Waraqah to lead the women of her household in Prayer. There is some difference among scholars on this matter. (See Al-Mughni, 2/202 and Al-Majmu`, 4/84-85) The woman leading the Prayer should read aloud as long as no non-mahram man can hear her. It is permissible for women to go out and pray in the mosque with men, although their Prayer at home is better, because the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, said: "Do not prevent the women from going out to the mosques, even though their homes are better for them."
Imam An-Nawawi, may Allah have mercy on him, said: "Women differ from men in congregational Prayer in some ways:
a) Congregational Prayer is not required of them in the same way as it is of men.
b) In case a woman leads a group of women in Prayer, she stands in the middle of the (first) row.
c) If one woman led by a man, she should stand behind him, not next to him.
d) If women are praying in rows behind men, the back rows are better for them than the front rows.� (Al-Majmu`, 3/455)
Excerpted, with slight modifications, from: www.islam-qa.com
Moreover, the following are some other differences:
1. When the Imam makes a mistake in a congregational Prayer, men would correct him by saying, �Subhanallah�, while women would correct him by clapping (some describe it as clapping the palm of one hand against the back of the other). This is confirmed in a well-known Hadith.
2. The Friday Prayer is not obligatory upon women. If a woman performs the Friday Prayer, then she doesn't have to pray the Zuhr Prayer.
Excerpted, with slight modifications, from: www.jannah.org
Recently, I heard Dr. Amina Wadud leading a group of women at the first public, mixed-gender Muslim prayer service that was held in New York City on March 18, 2005. What is the Islamic reason behind not allowing women to lead prayer (in the presence of men)?
Focusing more on the question at hand, Dr. Muzammil H. Siddiqi, former president of the Islamic Society of North America, states:
Islam places no restriction on women to teach, preach, and guide both women and men. The Qur'an says,
"Men and women are supporters of each other. They command what is right and forbid what is wrong..." (At-Tawbah 9:71).
There are many women today who are fully
qualified to be jurists (faqihah) and give religious opinions (fatwas).
They do issue fatwas and teach Qur�an and Hadith in schools, colleges,
and universities all over the world. Many Islamic organizations, Islamic
centers, and mosques in America also have very learned and knowledgeable
sisters who participate in their masjids� boards and involve themselves
in administration, teaching, preaching, and counseling. Muslims should
give them more opportunities, allow them and encourage them to become
full partners in Islamic work.
1. There is a difference between salah and du`aa' (supplication) in
Islam. Salah is a fixed and formalized form of prayer. Its timings,
positions, postures, style including the wording and recitations were
all fixed by the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him). It is not
permissible to introduce any new style or liturgy in salah. Du`aa',
however, is another form of Islamic prayer that is informal and there is
no restriction as to who performs it and how and when it is performed.
It can be performed in any language. It can be done individually or
collectively. It can be led by males or females. In salah we are
supposed to follow the Sunnah. We cannot add or delete anything from the
salah if we want our salah to be valid and acceptable to Allah.
1. Islamic teachings are based on two things: belief and submission. When it comes to `ibadat (acts of worship), the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) taught us to follow his example and not someone else�s. Salah (ritual Prayer) is unanimously agreed to be an act of `ibadah, and the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) is reported to have said �Pray as you see me praying.� So the example of the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) and the Companions and the generations that came after them have to be followed.
2. The rules of salah should be known from scholars because they know how to interpret the sayings of the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him). Among those great scholars are `A�ishah (may Allah be pleased with her). Among the rules of salah are the requirements and prerequisites for how to perform it, who can lead the people in salah, and so on.
3. Scholars have put certain conditions for someone to be qualified to lead the people in Prayer. The imam must be a Muslim, sane, adolescent, male, and pure, i.e., have wudu� (ablution). Women leading men in Prayer is wrong, whether in fard (obligatory) or nafl (supererogatory) Prayers. But if the followers are only women, it is allowed for a woman to lead the Prayer. According to Shafi`is and Hanbalis, a woman can lead other women in Prayer while standing in the middle of the line. According to Malikis, women cannot lead other women in Prayer at all, while the Hanafis say it is makruh or blameworthy.
4. According to the hadith of Umm Waraqah reported in the Sunan of Abu Dawud, the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) appointed a muezzin for her, and ordered her to lead her family members in Prayer.
5. The majority of Muslim jurists say that there is no single incident where a woman led a mixed Prayer outside her family members.
Question :
Can a woman lead other women in congregational prayer? Should the imam recite loudly or in a low voice?
Answer :
Here, we would like to cite for you the fatwa issued by Sheikh `Atiyyah Saqr, former head of Al-Azhar Fatwa Committee:
�It is well known that congregational prayer (Salatul-Jama`ah) far exceeds individual prayer in reward, and there are many hadiths that support this. It is reported that the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) said: "The congregational prayer exceeds that of individual prayer (Salatul-Fard) by twenty five or twenty seven degrees."
A woman is allowed to join the congregational prayer at mosques. The same rule applies to a woman who wants to join a congregational prayer in her house along with her family, as well as at her work or even at school where she studies or teaches.
Imam Malik states that a woman, under any circumstances, is not allowed to lead other women in congregational prayer.
The majority of jurists, however, maintain that a woman is allowed to lead her fellow sisters in congregational prayer if there is no man to lead the congregation. They cite an occasion to support their view. The Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) is reported to have appointed a muezzin to Umm Waraqah (may Allah be pleased with her) and allowed her to lead other women in her household. Also, it is reported that `A�ishah (may Allah be pleased with her) used to lead women in congregational prayer and she would stand along with them in the row. So did Umm Salamah (may Allah be pleased with her). In this case, she can recite loudly if it is either of the loudly offered prayer.
Some jurists maintain that when a woman leads other women in congregational prayer, she should stand with them in the same row and she is not allowed to stand in front of them.
Others say that even if the woman leads other women in congregational prayer, then her prayer as long as the prayer of women praying behind her is valid as there is no clear evidence which states otherwise.�
I have recently started praying prayer 5 times and a week before my due period, I noticed a discharge on my shalwar. My question is: Is it necessary for me to do Ghussal before I pray or touch anything holy, or is the cleaning of that area, only sufficient to continue praying? I await your answer eagerly. Thanks, Your fellow Muslim sister.
During menstruation, a woman may not pray, fast or have sexual
intercourse with her husband.
Late Shaikh Syed Sabiq states:
The Messenger of Allah, upon whom be peace, said to Fatimah bint Abu Habish, "Do not pray during your period. After it has ended, perform ghusl and pray." (Related by al-Bukhari and Muslim)
Shaikh Ibn Baaz states:
However, she may recite from her memory without touching the Quran. It is also so they may learn the laws of the Sharee'ah from the Book of Allah. Therefore it is even more so permissible for her to read the books of supplications that have verses and hadeeth intermixed with them. This is the correct view and is the correct opinion of the scholars, may Allah have mercy on them- on that point.
5. Menstruation WOMEN ATTENDING MOSQUE LECTURES
Question :
We hold regular classes or circles for teaching the Qur�an in our mosque. Are women who are in a state of hayd (menstruation) allowed to attend such classes in order to enhance their Islamic knowledge? Are they allowed to attend Jumu`ah and `Eid sermons in such a state? Ihsan, Date 03/Nov/2005
Answer : Name of Mufti: Ahmad Kutty
Dear questioner, we would like to thank you for the great confidence you place in us, and we implore Allah Almighty to help us serve His cause and render our work for His Sake.
First of all, we would like to stress that menstruating women are allowed to attend the `Eid prayer without participating in the prayer but just to witness it. The significance of this is meant for encouraging Muslims to gather at one time and share the blessings of this day and get to feel happy in the broader sense.
Responding to the question, Sheikh Ahmad Kutty, a senior lecturer and Islamic scholar at the Islamic Institute of Toronto, Ontario, Canada, states the following:
Traditionally, most of the Islamic scholars and jurists are of the opinion that women in a state of hayd (menstruation) are not permitted to enter or stay in the mosque.
However, on a closer look at the issue from within the sources and evidence presented, it can be clearly seen that such an absolute ban is not based on any incontrovertible texts or proofs. Reports that are cited to justify such ban are considered either weak or dubious, or at best questionable as well as contradicted by other reports and ascertainable facts.
When faced with such ambiguities and doubts, we always have recourse to the original rule of permission, which can only be revoked in case of a categorical prohibition.
It should also be pointed out that even some of the most prominent scholars�who, otherwise prohibit women in state of menstruation from staying in the mosque�allow them to do so in case of a genuine necessity. Attending classes for gaining essential Islamic knowledge undoubtedly falls in this category, especially in a predominantly non-Muslim society like ours in North America, where in many cities mosques are the only places where such education is imparted.
By barring women from attending such classes or lectures in mosques, we will be depriving them of the only opportunity they may have for gaining essential religious knowledge, which is the life-blood of a vibrant Islamic community.
The opinion that women in case of necessity�not necessarily a dire necessity (darurah)�can enter and stay in the mosque is the view held by such authentic scholars and thinkers as Ibn Taymiyyah and others.
On the other hand, the view that women in a state of menstruation are permitted to enter and stay in the mosque is held by scholars such as al-Muzani, Dawud az-Zahiri, Ibn Hazm and others.
The last mentioned view is based on the report from `A'ishah that the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) allowed a woman who had converted to Islam�who apparently had no place go�to stay inside the mosque, where she set up a little tent for that purpose. It is common knowledge that women do menstruate, and if it had been prohibited for women to enter or stay in the mosque in a state of menstruation, the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) certainly would not have allowed her to stay inside the mosque.
Those who hold the view that the women in state of menstruation are not permitted to enter and stay in the mosque compare menstruation with janabah (post-sexual impurity) as a major defilement. However, it is an established fact that the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) lodged the poor emigrants in the mosque. They were known as the people of as-Suffah. Men may occasionally experience nocturnal emissions. Yet, we are not told anywhere that the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) ever told them to get out of the mosque in such a state.
It is well known principle of Islamic jurisprudence that failure to explain something when it is needed shall be deemed as an indication of permission. How could the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) fail to communicate to the people of as-Suffah and to the woman he had lodged inside the mosque that they should leave the mosque when they are in a state of janabah or hayd?
Having said this, we must still urge the mosque authorities to arrange such classes or circles in areas of the mosque other than the prayer hall, such as basement or adjacent class rooms, etc., or provide special facilities for women to hear and see the speaker there. By doing so we remain within the consensus of scholars, as no one would ever object to that. If this is not practical because of constraints of space, then at least a small area in the main hall should be earmarked or cordoned off for women to sit behind or on the side of the regular prayer lines or musalla (prayer hall).
When such conditions are observed, it is perfectly acceptable for women in a state of menstruation to attend `Eid and Jumu`ah sermons according to scholarly consensus.
In conclusion, let me state: We must never compromise the greater maslahah (welfare) of seeking essential Islamic education, which must take precedence over our pre-occupation with fiqh minutiae that are not based on any explicit textual proofs.
Excerpted, with some modifications from:http://www.islamonline.net/
I have read that you have to remove lipstick or make-up before making wudu'. I have also read and heard that if your make-up is the type that water can penetrate through then you can make wudu' right over the make-up, because it is not like nail polish which need a special remover to remove it. What is the correct view?
If you have applied lipstick and then made wudu�, then of course it will be gone by washing the face and lips. As for the make-up, you should remove it first and then make wudu' because it might block the water from penetrating through.
Excerpted, with slight modifications, from: www.islamonline.net
A woman was away from the city,
and did not know that the nail polish must be removed to make wudu� and
pray. When she knew she must remove it, she tried to find a nail varnish
remover to use but she could not find it. She could not go to the city
to buy it either. She was making ablution and praying with it on for one
week. What is the ruling on this?.
One of the conditions of tahaarah (purification) being valid is that the water must touch the skin. If there is any barrier such as grease, paint, wax or glue that prevents water reaching the skin, then the tahaarah is not valid and prayers offered in that case are not valid.
The evidence for that is the words of the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) to Abu Dharr (may Allah be pleased with him): �If you find water, then let it touch your skin, for that is good.� Narrated by Abu Dawood (332); classed as saheeh by al-Albaani in Saheeh Abi Dawood.
Imam al-Shaafa�i (may Allah have mercy on him) said:
If there is on him any mastic or anything thick that will prevent the water from reaching the skin, his washing of that part for wudoo� is not valid, unless he removes it or removes enough so that he knows that there is no barrier to the water touching the skin. End quote.
Al-Umm (1/44).
Al-Nawawi (may Allah have mercy on him) said:
If there is wax, dough, henna and the like on one of his limbs, which prevents water from reaching any part of it, then his tahaarah is not valid, whether the amount is large or small. If there are traces of henna and its colour left on the hand, without there being any solid material left, or elsewhere, or traces of liquid grease whereby water flows over the limb but does not stay there, his tahaarah is valid. End quote.
Al-Majmoo� (1/529).
It says in Fataawa al-Lajnah al-Daa�imah (5/218):
If the colour is impermeable, then wudoo� is not valid unless it is removed before doing wudoo�. If it is not impermeable, then wudoo� is valid, as is the case with henna. End quote.
Hence this woman should have tried to find something to remove this nail polish, even if she had to go far away to find a place that sold it. She could also have removed it by using a strong kitchen cleaning agent or by rubbing it with a cloth dampened with liquid fuel, and so on.
We do not think that this woman has any excuse for praying with wudoo� that was invalid because of this nail polish. Ignorance may mean that she is free of sin but it does not make the prayer valid.
She has to repeat the prayers that she offered with wudoo� that was invalid because of this nail polish.
We ask Allah to forgive us and her. And Allah knows best.
8. Women: Attending Prayers in the Mosque
I want to know what Islam says about women to go to mosque and say prayer. Should it be mandatory?
It is permissible for Muslim women to attend the prayer in the mosque because prophet Muhammad (pbuh) ordered the Muslim men not to forbid the women from attending the mosques. However, there are conditions to be met for this permission which are:
1- The woman should not go to the mosque if she has put perfume.
2- Her clothes should be modest meeting the Islamic dress code (such as not being tight, and modestly covered).
3- They should be separate and on back rows. It is recommended that they must be screened by a wall or separate room from men.
Thank you for asking and God knows best.
9. Women: Prolonged discharge and prayer
Could you please explain the position with regard to exemption from prayer for women during their period, especially if it is prolonged?
Some scholars mention a number of days for the minimum duration of a woman's period and they also quote a figure to indicate the maximum days of such a period. There is no Hadith to indicate a minimum span of time when a woman is in menstruation. What we can say is that the minimum is a single flow. Nor is there a maximum period for menstruation. We do not have any reliable report to estimate its duration. I say this knowing that some scholars mention one full day, i.e. twenty-four hours, for the minimum period of menstruation and ten or fifteen days for its maximum. None of these figures relies on a specific and authentic Hadith.
Menses is recognized by its color. The Prophet is quoted to have said: "The blood of menses is dark, easily recognized." During a woman's period, her discharge may have different colors, ranging from almost black, to red, to yellow or a dark color between white and black. Normally, a woman can distinguish whether her discharge is menses or not. Some women may have a prolonged discharge, but that does not mean that they have a prolonged menstruation. If a woman has such a prolonged discharge, then she has to distinguish between her menses and a discharge that does not stop her from offering prayers or fasting. There are three situations:
i) A woman with a regular period. This is the case of a woman who used to have her menstruation lasting for six, seven or eight days on a regular basis. If she happens to have prolonged discharges afterward, then she should take count of her normal period, then she takes a bath and begins prayer. This is understood from a Hadith when, Umm Salamah, one of the Prophet's wives, asked him about a woman who was having a continuous discharge. He said: "Let her consider the number of days and nights for which she used to have her period every month. She need not pray during those days. Afterward, she should take a bath, use a piece of cloth or cotton, and offer her prayers." (Related by Al-Bukhari, Muslim and others). This Hadith applies to a woman who used to have a regular period before she developed this disorder.
ii) A woman who does not have a regular period and cannot distinguish her menses from ordinary bleeding. The Prophet's sister-in-law, a young woman, had this trouble when she had just attained puberty. She told the Prophet that her discharge had prevented her from praying and fasting. The Prophet said to her: "I suggest that you use cotton because it absorbs blood." She told him that her discharge was too strong for that. He suggested that she should tie herself properly, but she again said that her discharge was too strong. He said to her: "I will describe to you two courses of action and you may choose either of them." He then explained her condition and told her: "You count your period six or seven days, as God knows, then have a bath until you feel that you have purified and cleansed yourself. You offer your prayers for twenty-four or twenty-three days and nights, and fast as usual. Your action is sufficient for that. You may repeat this every month as other women have their normal periods and cleanse themselves in accordance with their regular time of menses and cleanliness. Alternatively, you may choose to delay offering Dhuhr prayer and bring Asr prayer forward: You have a shower then pray Dhuhr and Asr together; then you delay Maghrib and bring Isha forward and combine the two prayers together. Then you have another shower for Fajr prayer and offer it. You may do like this and fast and pray if you can." The Prophet then added: "This last course is the one I would prefer." (Related by Ahmad, Abu Dawood and At-Tirmithi). Al-Bukhari commented that this is an authentic Hadith.
iii) If she does not have a regular period but can distinguish menses from other discharge. In this case, she relies on distinguishing one from the other. The Prophet said to a woman named Fatimah who had the trouble of prolonged discharge: "Menses is dark and can be distinguished. If your discharge is such, then refrain from praying. If it is of the other type, then have ablution and offer prayer."
Are women exempt from prayers during their menstruation period? Please give reference
Narrated Aiyub: Hafsa said, 'We used to forbid our young women to go out for the two 'Id prayers. A woman came and stayed at the palace of Bani Khalaf and she narrated about her sister whose husband took part in twelve holy battles along with the Prophet and her sister was with her husband in six (out of these twelve).
She (the woman's sister) said, "We used to treat the wounded, look after the patients and once I asked the Prophet, 'Is there any harm for any of us to stay at home if she doesn't have a veil?' He said, 'She should cover herself with the veil of her companion and should participate in the good deeds and in the religious gathering of the Muslims.' When Um 'Atiya came I asked her whether she had heard it from the Prophet. She replied, "Yes. May my father be sacrificed for him (the Prophet)! (Whenever she mentioned the Prophet she used to say, 'May my father be sacrificed for him) I have heard the Prophet saying, 'The unmarried young virgins and the mature girl who stay often screened or the young unmarried virgins who often stay screened and the menstruating women should come out and participate in the good deeds as well as the religious gathering of the faithful believers but the menstruating women should keep away from the Musalla (praying place).'
" Hafsa asked Um 'Atiya surprisingly, "Do you say the menstruating women?" She replied, "Doesn't a menstruating woman attend 'Arafat (Hajj) and such and such (other deeds)?"
As-Salamu `alaykum, is it possible to pray without covering the hair, or the prayer would be invalid. I'm asking as the veil is not allowed in my place of work. Thank you!
dealing with the issue of prayer without hijab, or head-covering, we
like to say that hijab is a well-established duty upon all Muslim women.
This obligation is clearly stated in the Qur'an and the Prophet's Sunnah.
Therefore, it is your right�as a Muslim woman�and your duty to wear
hijab at every public place: work, shops, etc. You should not obey your
boss/manager at the expense of disobeying Allah. Seek your right to wear
hijab through all legal and acceptable channels and never accept any
compromise in this regard.
Finally, we do advise you, dear sister, to be strong in your religion. Always consult the Imam of the mosque regarding the difficult problems that you face which may affect your religion. Also, we do advise the Muslim communities to defend their rights by all possible legal and acceptable channels.
Excerpted, with slight modifications, from: www.islamonline.net


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Boeing has told customers expecting delivery of its troubled 787 Dreamliner jets to expect delays, suggesting the company is no longer expecting a quick resolution to the battery problems that have grounded the hi-tech airliners.
Executives at Thomson Airways, owned by Britain's TUI Travel, and Norwegian Air Shuttle, two budget airlines, told Reuters Friday that they had been told the delivery of their 787s would be delayed.
Thomson's jet were originally scheduled for the end of February but that delivery had been "moved out of the month" and no new delivery date was given.
Norwegian Air Shuttle told Reuters Boeing had informed it that its planes would be delayed by the ongoing investigation by the US's National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) into the battery fires. No new delivery date was mentioned.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), which must re-certify the 787, is now waiting for a report from the NTSB that chairman Deborah Hersman said yesterday should be ready in 30 days.
Last month Norwegian Air's chief executive Bjorn Kjos said he was expecting his 787s by April and that Boeing was sure it would soon fix its battery issues. "They say it is going to be fixed soon; they have a plan. They say it will be delivered according to the schedule," he told reporters at the Airline Economics conference in Dublin.
A Boeing spokeswoman said: "We have informed our customers expecting 787 deliveries in the near term that those aircraft either have been or are at risk of being delayed. We are staying in close communication with our customers as we work towards an approved means of compliance with the FAA Airworthiness Directive and develop a plan for resumption of 787 deliveries.
"Boeing deeply regrets the impact that recent events have had on the schedules of our customers and their passengers."
The 787 has been grounded since a battery fire on a Japanese Airlines flight in Boston last month and a second incident involving a battery on a flight in Japan.
Thomson had planned to start using its Dreamliners in May and launched an advertising campaign in Britain last April calling the 787 the "future of long-haul travel".
Last year Thomson boss Chris Browne told The Guardian the 787 addressed the airlines "biggest source of complaints" comfort, legroom and entertainment on long-haul holidays. "So we had to do something. It was a scary decision, but man, are we glad," she said. Thomson was the third customer to commit to the 787, she said and Thomson "got a fantastic deal from Boeing. I wouldn't like to buy it today – and I love shopping."
Norwegian was scheduled to receive the first of eight Dreamliners in April and the firm has already sold deeply discounted tickets for its first overseas flights as it aims to take on traditional legacy carriers.
Thomson said its contingency plans included using alternative aircraft for its long-haul flights to Mexico and Florida if delivery was delayed beyond the end of March.
TUI Travel told Reuters on Thursday it had no plans to cancel its order for 13 Dreamliner jets.
British Airways, owned by International Airlines Group, said it was in discussions with Boeing but that the first of its 787 planes were still scheduled to be delivered in May.
Virgin Atlantic said delivery of its 16 Dreamliners starting in summer 2014 was unchanged.


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15 September 2013—The World Association for Christian Communication (WACC) calls on its members and networks to promote communication rights on International Day of Democracy, 15 September 2013.
Communication rights enable people to determine their own lives and to build communities based on genuine equality and mutual understanding. WACC's members, partners and networks are invited to share their visions of a world in which justice, peace and sustainable development are available to all.
WACC advocates open and pluralistic media as essential to advancing democracy and social justice. It believes that freedom of expression and freedom of the press are vital to the political and social development of all countries.
According to the United Nations, democracy is a universal value based on the freely expressed will of people to determine their own political, economic, social and cultural systems and their full participation in all aspects of their lives.
Yet, for many people, democracy is fragile and remains an unfilled promise. The current grave situations in countries like Syria, Egypt, and Burma point to the urgent need for democratic solutions. There are, however, signs of hope.
Sana Radwan of Women for Women's Rights, a WACC partner and non-governmental organization working in Palestine, believes that, "2013 has the potential to be the greatest leap forward for democracy in the Arab World. People went into the squares for freedom, democracy and to bring change. Arab people are now optimistic. Their desire for freedom is very powerful and they are sure of their success."
The theme of this year's International Day of Democracy is "Strengthening Voices for Democracy". It highlights the importance of people's voices, both expressed directly and through their elected representatives, in today's political, economic, social, developmental, environmental and technological debates.
The ability of people to raise their voices and decide how they are governed lies at the heart of democracy. However, the voices of journalists and ordinary people are being silenced.
Government censorship and surveillance are infiltrating democratic structures.
Peter Okubal, Programs Director of Panos Eastern Africa, a WACC partner in the region, says that democracy and the rule of law will never thrive where civil society is passive, where there is an absence of good governance, and where the media are restricted:
"Media are not just 'voice' but 'effective voice' – effective for accountability. 'Voice' means not just individual voices but voices aggregated through public debate to become 'community voices'; voices not just complaining of problems but seeing and demanding solutions; voices not just speaking to one another within the community but voices in dialogue with local power-holders; and voices not just at the community level but across districts through radio broadcasting and reaching up to national and international levels."
Communication rights enable all people everywhere to express themselves individually and collectively in order to improve their lives. They are vital to full participation in society and are, therefore, universal human rights belonging to every man, woman, and child.
On International Day of Democracy, WACC calls on governments and civil society to respect and defend democratic principles, the rule of law, and the right to communicate.
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Selma Prodanovic – Internationally awarded entrepreneur and philanthropist
Selma Prodanovic, named Startup-Grande-Dame by the media, made it her mission to make it easier for others to create world class businesses. Since she founded the Brainswork Group in 2005, she launched a dozen of "made in brainswork" – brands, supported over 400 startups, and advised global investors, corporates and organizations. Selma is co-founder of Austrian Angel Investors Association, board member of European Business Angel Network, and member of Global Business Angel Network. The Business Angel has a portfolio of startup investments, is lead investor at Rising Tide Europe 1 – impacting the next generation of female business angels, was an investor in the startup TV show "2 minutes – 2 million", and judged in over 100 investment jury sessions. She teaches at universities, authored two books, rocked the stage as a speaker over 1000 times and was featured in media in 40 countries. Married to her first love, she is mother of two.