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"1 Samuel 27"Categories: Daily Bible Reading
1 Samuel 27 New American Standard Bible (NASB)
David Flees to the Philistines
27 Then David said [a]to himself, "Now I will perish one day by the hand of Saul. There is nothing better for me than [b]to escape into the land of the Philistines. Saul then will despair of searching for me anymore in all the territory of Israel, and I will escape from his hand." 2 So David arose and crossed over, he and the six hundred men who were with him, to Achish the son of Maoch, king of Gath. 3 And David lived with Achish at Gath, he and his men, each with his household, evenDavid with his two wives, Ahinoam the Jezreelitess, and Abigail the Carmelitess, Nabal's [c]widow.4 Now it was told Saul that David had fled to Gath, so he no longer searched for him.
5 Then David said to Achish, "If now I have found favor in your sight, let them give me a place in one of the cities in the country, that I may live there; for why should your servant live in the royal city with you?" 6 So Achish gave him Ziklag that day; therefore Ziklag has belonged to the kings of Judah to this day. 7 The number of days that David lived in the country of the Philistines was a year and four months.
8 Now David and his men went up and raided the Geshurites and the Girzites and the Amalekites; for they were the inhabitants of the land from ancient times, as you come to Shur even as far as the land of Egypt. 9 David [d]attacked the land and did not leave a man or a woman alive, and he took away the sheep, the cattle, the donkeys, the camels, and the clothing. Then he returned and came to Achish. 10 Now Achish said, "Where have you made a raid today?" And David said, "Against the [e]Negev of Judah and against the [f]Negev of the Jerahmeelites and against the [g]Negev of the Kenites." 11 David did not leave a man or a woman alive to bring to Gath, saying, "Otherwise they will tell about us, saying, 'So has David done and so has been his practice all the time he has lived in the country of the Philistines.'" 12 So Achish believed David, saying, "He has surely made himself odious among his people Israel; therefore he will become my servant forever."
I agree, Lisa. New appreciation.
I have really enjoyed re-reading these chapters about David and Saul. A new appreciation for this whole situation.
God's hand is so evident in all this. Achish thought David would be his servant. Not to be.

subset: commoncrawl


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[Sometimes I paraphrese bits and pieces of this book's intro] How perfection killed recommender systems.
The market for news, entertainment, and information has been finally perfected. In 1995, Nicholas Negroponte prophesied the emergence of the Daily Me – a communication package that is personally designed, with each component fully chosen in advance. If recommender systems know a little about you, they can tell you what "people like you" tend to like – and they can create a Daily Me, just for you, in a matter of seconds.
Perfect! Not really. There are serious dangers in the Daily Me, serious problems to democracy. In his new book "Republic.com 2.0″, Cass Sunstein shows why.
The dark side of Social Computing
Sunstein says that a well-functioning system of free expression must meet two distinctive requirements:
1) People should be exposed to materials they wouldnot have chosen in advance.
2) Most citizens should have a range of common experiences.
If those two requirements aren't satisfied, there are risks of
fragmentation and, more worryingly, of extremism. Recommender
systems allow their users to bypass general-purpose intermediaries
and restrict themselves to opinions and topics of their own choosing. If recommender systems were to be perfect, millions of people would listen to louder echoes of their own voices, they would find it hard to understand one another, and they would engage into extremism, which is produced by any situation in which like-minded people speak only with themselves.
How to satisfy those requirements? It's important to maintain the
equivalent of "street corners" or "commons" where people are exposed to things quite involuntarily. There are many apparent "street
corners" in the Internet, but they are highly specialized, limited
to particular views. Lives should be structured so that people 1)
come across views and topics that they have not specifically
selected; and 2) share common experiences upon which to form a
social glue.
The case for Surprise-Me Buttons
Does all this call for a counter research agenda in social computing? One in which imperfect recommender systems (perhaps with surprise-me buttons) are more than welcome?


text:
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text:
After the shopping excursion, Janet and I went to meet the three new Dalmatians who just entered the Dalmatian Rescue program. One of the new dogs was Scooby, who I rescued earlier in the week. The other two, who were rescued by Ann and Pat, were named Shelby and Maverick. I remember naming a dog Ranger last year when the Texas Rangers were playing in the World Series. I have a feeling that Maverick's name might have something do do with how well the Dallas Mavericks are doing this year in the NBA playoffs. All three of these new dogs are fabulous and by some stroke of good luck, none of them have heartworms.
A fire engine went by with its siren wailing while I was taking the dogs on their evening walk. All the sudden I heard a cacophony of howling in a nearby patch of brush. I instantly knew what I was listening to. The neighborhood coyotes have had pups. May is typically when coyotes have their litters. I have heard this frenzied howling before. I turned the dogs around and we started walking the other way. Better safe than sorry. Dash just isn't predictable around coyotes. He usually starts barking and growling at them, which is not good. I definitely don't want to provoke a mother coyote while she is protecting her den.
I've come up with a plan to keep my new large-format printer from clogging all the time like the old printer did. I'm going to start using it as my everyday printer. It's a bit of overkill to use this huge printer to print Microsoft Word documents, but it might actually save money. I can't even begin to guess how much expensive ink I've wasted in cleaning cycles trying to unclog the old printer. Maybe this plan will work better than my plan to get rid of the bees. It's time to call a professional beekeeper to come remove them. I had a dream about the bees last night. Well, it was more of a nightmare actually. The bees had gotten inside the house and were attacking us.
|Dalmatian of the Day
|Watch of the Day


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Manafort Lawyer's Sidewalk Speech Draws Rebuke From Trial Judge
The judge overseeing Paul Manafort's tax and money-laundering case in Washington had a stern warning for his lawyer. Stop with the sidewalk speeches.
"This is a criminal trial and not a public-relations campaign," U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson said at a hearing Thursday. She admonished lawyers to "do their talking in the courtroom, and the pleadings, and not on the courthouse steps." Jackson said she might impose a gag order and told the lawyers to submit objections -- if any -- by Nov. 7.
Manafort, the former chairman of the Trump campaign, and Rick Gates, who worked for him while at an international political consulting and lobbying firm, were indicted last week for money laundering and failure to properly disclose their activities to the U.S. government. They were among the first to be charged by Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller in his probe of Russian influence on last year's presidential election. The men have pleaded not guilty. ...
Downing asked on Thursday that a trial be held in April, which the judge said may be possible. She will likely decide that issue at a Nov. 6 hearing, when she will also consider requests to change the men's bail conditions.


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A recent AAA Foundation study shows that teen drivers carrying a passenger under the age of 21 face a 44 percent greater chance of an accident. The odds doubled when two passengers were in the car.
This startling data hit home in the wake of a Oklahoma Car Accident earlier this week. According to KJRH News, three young girls were injured as the result of an accident that was caused by inattention.
The accident occurred on US Highway 60 at around 6 p.m. on Monday afternoon in Osage County, Oklahoma. Police say the 16-year-old driver of a Buick sedan was heading east along the highway when she lost control of the vehicle while turning. She over-corrected twice and eventually rolled the vehicle before it came to a halt.
A 9-year-old passenger in the backseat, who was not wearing a seat belt, was ejected from the vehicle and was found roughly 50 feet from the site of the crash. She was airlifted to a local hospital to receive treatment for both internal and external injuries to her head, arms, and torso.
The driver and a 13-year-old passenger also suffered non-life threatening injuries and were taken to the hospital.
The Tulsa Personal Injury Lawyers with J. Colbert Injury Lawyers say that car accidents like this are the reason that parents should set rules with teen drivers in regards to how many passengers they may have in their vehicle at one time.


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Location: San Francisco
San Francisco, founded in 1776 by Spanish explorers, was quickly settled and named for Saint Francis of Assisi. The city boomed during the 1849 gold rush, it was at the center of the 1960s and 1970s American hippie counterculture, and it stands today as one of the most innovative and flourishing technology hubs in the world.
Clearly, this city has a knack for rebooting and remaining relevant -- no matter the decade -- which is something that Leverage Partner Vanguard Properties has witnessed time and time again.
But beyond industries and movements, there are plenty of reasons to love the Golden Gate City, starting with the iconic landmarks and the ample green spaces that beckon one to go hiking and exploring. San Francisco's area is approximately 49 square miles. Packed into this space, colorful Victorian residences dot the landscape, around 3,400 restaurants (the most per capita of any city in the United States) serve up tasty, surprising dishes, and 24 blocks make up the largest Chinatown in the country.
The city is walkable and easy to maneuver, and it also has distinct neighborhoods that tempt one to explore the many shops in Union Square, the attractions on the bay, and more than one or two of the historical markers. Here, a few of our favorites:
THE PALACE HOTEL Built 1875 to celebrate the West Coast boom, this hotel is one of San Francisco's most treasured landmarks. After a recent renovation, the hotel's luxuriously-appointed rooms reflect a modern sophistication complemented by original design elements, which capture a timeless sophistication that is as distinct as it is inviting.
QUINCE This restaurant features California contemporary cuisine, incorporating luxury ingredients and highlighting the best of the Bay Area's seasonal ingredients.
HAYES VALLEY This neighborhood, situated just above the Mission District, became iconic after Erich von Stroheim shot his 1924 film Greed at the corner of Laguna and Hayes. Today it's home to ultra-trendy shops and hip bites.
FERRY BUILDING Fresh produce, shops, and restaurants galore make this a delightful stop for both locals and tourists.
GOLDEN GATE PARK Anytime is a great time to visit this park, complete with gardens, green space, trails, and monuments. Check out the calendar before you go to catch special concerts and festivals.
CRISSY FIELD/PRESIDIO Watch the sun dip into the water from the venue of this open lawn on the northern shoreline. Don't forget to pack a blanket and a picnic-it's the perfect place to enjoy postcard-worthy views.
WATERBAR RESTAURANT The views don't get better and the food doesn't get tastier than at this San Francisco seafood restaurant. The menu is extensive and the catches come in fresh every day
GOLDEN GATE BRIDGE Easily the most well-recognized destination in San Francisco. A sunset walk across this landmark won't disappoint.
VALENCIA CORRIDOR If you love to shop, take note: there's no better place in the city to find funky, eclectic treasures than on Valencia Street.
MUIR WOODS Just outside the city limits, Muir Woods offers some of the best hiking and natural attractions in the country. The national park has two self-guided programs and operates shuttles through mid-October.
NEIGHBORHOODS: GRANT AVENUE/UNION SQUARE CHINATOWN/NORTH BEACH The special character of San Francisco lies in its eclectic and accepting nature, and its neighborhoods testify to this characteristic. Start at Grant Avenue, then stroll along one of the oldest streets in Chinatown, shop in Union Square, and end the day at Fisherman's Wharf in North Beach.
- Location:
- San Francisco, CA, USA


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Genocide continues as Sudan's indicted leader games world – ICC prosecutor
UN News
9 December 2010
Genocide is still continuing in Darfur and Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, already indicted by the International Criminal Court (ICC), is undertaking "enormous efforts" to cover up the crimes and manipulate the world community, the Court's prosecutor said today (…)
(…) He noted that in just the last six months, hundreds of civilians in the Darfur region were killed and hundreds of thousands forcibly displaced, while more than 2 million people suffer a subtle form of genocide – genocide by rape and fear.
"President al-Bashir, in accordance with the chamber's findings, issued the criminal orders to attack civilians and destroy their communities. Logically, President al-Bashir does not want to investigate those who are following his orders. President al-Bashir is using his promises of justice to manipulate the international community and cover up the crimes."(…)
(…) The most recent cover-up statement came in September when Sudan's special prosecutor for Darfur, Nimr Mohamed, announced investigations in an attack earlier that month that killed at least 37 people and injured at least 50 more. But two weeks later he was replaced by Justice Ministry Under-Secretary Abdel Daim Zamrawi, since when no progress has been reported.
"Until the orders to Government of Sudan forces to commit crimes in Darfur cease, there is no possibility of justice for Darfur," Mr. Moreno-Ocampo said.
He said regional organizations such as the Arab League and the African Union were crucial to stopping the crimes, alleviating the humanitarian situation and providing stability to Sudan. "A proper dialogue with them is crucial to achieving these goals," he added.
Speaking to reporters following his briefing to the Council, Mr. Moreno-Ocampo called rape and fear the "silent weapons" of genocide that slip below the radar of peacekeeping forces in the region, which has been plagued by atrocities since war erupted in 2003 between the Government, supported by the Janjaweed militia, and rebels seeking greater autonomy.
Read full story


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Courtesy of Susan Schuchter
Courtesy of Susan Schuchter
Kenneth Jessen / Special to the Reporter-Herald
Loveland artist Susan Schuchter was just dying to paint as a child.
When she was 10 or 11, she created an image of a full-size mermaid on her closet door based on her fascination with movie star Esther Williams. (Williams made a number of movies in the 1940s and 1950s that pivoted around swimming.)
Schuchter's parents kept the painting on the closet door for some 20 years.
Schuchter grew up in the Chicago area, and her father was in the airline industry. This allowed her to fly free to any college of her choice, and she entered Colorado College. Schuchter minored in art and received a degree in political science. Later, she earned a master's degree in retailing from New York University.
She remembered her college days and when, after 35 years, it came time for her and her husband to retire, they purchased a home in Loveland. Now that she has the time, she wanted to hone her talent as a painter and in 1998, started working with George Coll during his open studio sessions. After a number of years, Schuchter switched to still life artist Dan Edmondson in Fort Collins.
She also joined the Estes Park plein-air group. She started to realize that her work emulated the style of her instructor and needed to find her own voice as an artist.
Her first Colorado sale came at a show in Glenwood Springs. It was a landscape of the headwaters of the Colorado River along the western part of Trail Ridge Road. She has continued to enter shows and sell through galleries.
Dan Edmondson was a good still life instructor, however, the subject matter did not appeal to Colorado buyers. Schuchter took some of her work back to her home state of Illinois where they found an immediate market in a Naperville gallery. For her Colorado galleries and shows, she concentrates on landscapes but does an occasional still life.
Schuchter has been involved with the Richard Schmid Auction in Rist Canyon for a decade. She has sold her work at the various auctions over the years.
She credits Coll with helping her get started. One of the elements was learning how to frame. Schuchter had taken some industrial arts classes, and framing came naturally, allowing her to add value to her paintings.
When asked about changes in her style, Schuchter replied, "In some ways, I do not have a style. I am not a creative person, and I was shy as a child. Painting is my thing now, and I am so appreciative of George Coll and Dan Edmondson allowing me to come into my own."
Her website is susanschuchter.com.


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Arts Warehouse is launching a permanent Market space inside the gallery area selling a curated collection of artwork and objects. Interested in having your art or handmade items in The Market? Click here for The Market inventory application. First round o...Delray Beach Arts, Music & Entertainment Event Details
Join us at Arts Warehouse for the third special pop-up marketplace of fine artists, makers, creatives & more. Support local and regional makers as you find the best goods for your art collection, home, and friends & family. This event is for all ages.A...Delray Beach Arts, Music & Entertainment Event Details
In this series you will commit to further developing your practice and getting outside the box. Each workshop focuses on a topic/technique. Karen H Salup will teach in a supportive and friendly way encouraging you to explore them in a spontaneous way...Delray Beach Arts, Music & Entertainment Event Details
Collage is a group exhibition featuring artist using the timeless medium and process in their work. The exhibition aims to highlight the varying ways this collage can be used to create diverse imagery. Six artists are represented in the show from around t...Delray Beach Arts, Music & Entertainment Event Details
Camp runs from June 10 through August 2 from 7:30 am until 5:30 pm. Open to girls and boys ages 5 to 12 years old. Free breakfast and lunch included. Parents must supply snacks. Registration opens January 22 for Summer Camp at the Delray...Delray Beach Family Fun & Youth Camps Sports & Recreation Event Details
This workshop will provide a space to play, exercise, and execute different forms of collage.We will go through some Surrealist techniques and games to provide inspiration, making a creative space free of conscious control.Invented and practiced by such artist...Delray Beach Arts, Music & Entertainment Event Details
Ed Calle is a Latin Grammy winner for best Latin Jazz album, a five-time Grammy nominee, and one of the most recorded saxophonists in history. Saxophonist, composer, orchestrator, producer, scholar, professor, and leader, Ed Calle, is known for his extraordina...Delray Beach Arts, Music & Entertainment Event Details


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Throughout this week, the Discrimination and Disadvantage blog hosts a symposium on Melinda Hall's new book The Bioethics of Enhancement: Transhumanism, Disability, and Biopolitics (Rowman and Littlefield, 2016). From Monday until Thursday, I will post a commentary on Melinda's book from one of four commentators: me (Monday), Jane Dryden (Tuesday), Ladelle McWhorter (Wednesday), Catherine Clune-Taylor (Thursday); then, on Friday, I will post Melinda's responses to the commentaries. My commentary, which opens the symposium, is intended to provide a philosophical, political, institutional, and social context for the subsequent commentaries and discussion. Comments are invited throughout the week.
The symposium was previously convened as panels at philoSOPHIA 2107, April 1, at Florida Atlantic University, and at the meeting of the Canadian Philosophical Association of the 2017 Congress of the Social Sciences and Humanities, May 31, at Ryerson University. Jennifer Scuro chaired the panel at philoSOPHIA 2017. Tracy Isaacs chaired the panel at Congress 2017 (the CPA).
Commentary on Melinda Hall's
The Bioethics of Enhancement:
Transhumanism, Disability, and Biopolitics
Ladelle McWhorter
Melinda Hall's Bioethics of Enhancement is an important contribution to philosophy of disability and to ethics and political philosophy more generally. In particular, from the point of view of a political philosopher, it does a brilliant job of showing how deeply and intimately connected the discipline of bioethics and the machinery of biopower are; in fact, as the book implies and demonstrates, bioethics functions more or less as the naked edge of biopower's advance. We should all be grateful to Professor Hall for this work.
I would like to take up just three of the many issues upon which one could remark in this very rich book. First, I want to register my reaction to the transhumanist writings that Professor Hall explicates and critiques. Second, I want to raise a methodological question about the ways in which Professor Hall uses the work of Michel Foucault. This will be a somewhat longer section and will focus on the relationship between genealogy and ethico-political advocacy.[1] The final and lengthiest section of this presentation will take up the issues of autonomy and vulnerability in relation to personhood.
1. Transhumanist Disabilities
After I finished my 2009 book Racism and Sexual Oppression in Anglo-America, which includes an examination of the American eugenics movement through the 1950s, I read widely in the genetic enhancement literature, thinking I would eventually like to take the genealogical story into the present day. During that time, I became familiar with transhumanism and related literature and movements. After writing one article (McWhorter 2010), I abandoned the project, largely because I found the tone of that body of literature unrelentingly aggravating. Professor Hall deserves a lot of credit just for putting herself through that and staying with it long enough to do a careful analysis.
For all their utopian talk, transhumanist writers—uniformly, it seemed to me—sound like, for lack of a better word, assholes, you really would not want to spend the future with. The tone in fact matches that of our current political times, in the US at least; it is arrogant, condescending, and dismissive of genuine questions and concerns. As a result, the discourse is almost utterly insular and, to that extent at least, irrational.
There is, however, as Professor Hall's work reminds me, an undertone. It is an undertone of extreme fear—fear of death, fear of dependence. And I would add that, at least in the case of Nick Bostrom it is an undertone of grief. When I am not too busy being aggravated by this literature, I feel very sad for these people who find so little that is precious in human life and love.
Transhumanism pre-dates the human genome project, although most of the work Professor Hall cites is much more recent. It arose at a time when geneticists imagined that the human genome contained about 100,000 genetically productive strands of DNA. In fact, as it turns out, we have less than a third of that amount. Our phenotypic traits are generated, maintained, and altered through extremely complex genetic and epigenetic interactions. Each strand of genetically active DNA may affect many, many aspects of a given phenotype, making the idea of simply swapping out or cutting and pasting together nucleotide sequences to "enhance" traits like "intelligence" or "sociability" something very close to laughable. Hall is exactly right to say that "[d]ebates over enhancement are less about available technology than potential technology deemed worthy of investment on the basis of specific goals" (4).
Transhumanists are not urging deregulation that would allow us to choose and use existing scientific knowledge to better our lives; they want to defund research that could make our lives better, given the bodies that we are, in order to fund research that would produce different kinds of bodies with different—allegedly fewer—medical needs in the future.[2] Make no mistake, this is a eugenic project par excellence, and Hall's work shows that contemporary bioethics as a discipline is enormously implicated in it.
2. Genealogy and Ethics
Professor Hall's central claim is that disability functions to anchor bioethical thinking even when appearances suggest the contrary. Disability is the other, the negative, the abject against which bioethical aspirations and aims define themselves. Hall's arguments in support of this claim are forceful and compelling.
Others on this panel are better able to engage with those arguments than I am, so I will turn now to a methodological question: How does genealogy operate in Hall's text? And I raise this question against the background of a larger question that I struggle with in my own work: What is the relationship between genealogy and ethics? I focus my attention here on chapter 3: Rethinking Enhancement: A Genealogical Approach.
Hall states,
In this chapter, I argue that, in a continuation of enhancement strategies repeated throughout the twentieth century, transhumanism operates by performing biological reductions and engaging in biopolitical logic. That is, transhumanism reduces questions of social change to a discussion of altering the body and rejecting deviant bodies". (57)
Obviously, a full treatment of this topic is impossible in one chapter, so Hall focuses on what she calls "three key historical moments: physical culture at the turn of the twentieth century, the birth of the field of endocrinology in the 1910s and 1920s, and post-Second World War rehabilitations of eugenic thinking in the 1950s" (58). In these three moments, she finds recurrent insistence on prolonging life (of the presumed healthy, by cultivating physical strengths, variously defined), equation of physical and mental health of both individuals and populations with morality, happiness, and sociability (61), and shifting accounts of the nature of good and ill health, ability and disability. As already stated, she also finds persistent biological and genetic reductionism.
There is no doubt that these themes and problematics have been ubiquitous in medical and social reformist thought throughout the twentieth and into the twenty-first century in the US and elsewhere. As Ed Cohen shows in his 2009 book A Body Worth Defending, theories of immunity, beginning with Elie Metchnikoff's work in 1881, brought together medical and political discourses to configure the human body as a territory under perpetual attack and in constant need of defense against its own environment. Metchnikoff's theory solidified the convergence of medicine and nationalistic politics that had been playing out in relation to the rise of cholera since mid-century. As cholera swept across Europe through mid-century, governments engaged in heated debates over how best to repel the invasion from the East, whether by closing national borders to foreign traffic or by eradicating the internal conditions for spread of the disease through enhanced policing and sanitation practices. As Cohen tells the story, Hobbes' war of all against all moved inside bodies where microbes and human cells battled it out for control of vital resources.
Since the late nineteenth century, then, the human body has been a battleground, making it necessary for rational individuals to take on the role of military commander in a defensive war. This, undoubtedly, forms an important part of the background for the cultivation of vitality projects at the turn of the twentieth century. Illness was a result of bio-military weakness or lapse in defensive judgment. Each individual had to police his or her own corporeal territory or fall ill and expose others to illness.
Never were these projects divorced from the fear of foreign invasion at the national level, the level of the national population. Cultivation of health and anti-immigration legislation were of a piece at the beginning of the twentieth century. Sanitation projects were about cleaning up slums and dumps, but they were also always about clearing out undesirable people as well. Tenements were filthy not just because they lacked plumbing but because Irish and Jewish people lived in them. As Foucault makes clear, at the heart of biopower lies a persistent and raging racism.
Transhumanism is obviously continuous with biopolitical discourses, particularly with eugenic discourses, of the twentieth century. And it shares with those discourses a disdain for, if not a fear of, illness, weakness, dependency, and cognitive impairments. The only difference in the current iteration seems to be a shift in the technological focus. Nowadays it might be possible to edit our genomes or create androids for our intellects to inhabit, so the focus is on those possibilities rather than on sanitation, immigration restriction, and sterilization. Where I disagree with Hall, I think, is in terming those older discourses and techniques transhumanism's "ancestors," disparate entities more or less accidentally coming together to produce something new. There is too much continuity here to call chapter three a genealogy.
And it is precisely this continuity that really matters, I think, for Hall's project. For, by my lights, chapter three constitutes a significant part of an ethical argument, to wit: We as a society have, allegedly, condemned eugenics; insofar as transhumanists espouse the basic tenets of eugenics, we must condemn transhumanism as well. This is certainly not the central argument of Hall's book; much more important is her claim that bioethics takes disability (again, variously described) as its springboard and defines its practices and goals over against it. But transhumanism is a target here, and moral condemnation of it is one goal. I share Hall's view of transhumanism and of eugenics in all its guises; I second her condemnation. My only concern is that this argumentative technique employed in chapter three not be called "genealogy." It does not so much destabilize a concept or institution that has been taken to be inevitable or unquestionably legitimate as it discredits a discourse that disavows its own political past in an attempt to establish itself and garner resources it does not yet have.
3. Autonomy, Vulnerability, and Personhood
I want to turn now to a cluster of concepts at work in Hall's text as well as in philosophico-ethical discourse generally. These are autonomy, vulnerability, and personhood. I will start with autonomy, which occupies, I believe, about twenty-six pages out of the book's total of 139. It most often figures into discussion of transhumanist values, where it is variously construed as independence (59, 65, e.g.)—which is itself often construed as earning a living wage, being financially self-supporting (110)—or as having a wide range of options among which to choose at any given moment, often articulated as having an open future (83, 121, 123, e.g.). Additionally, transhumanists, bioethicists, and genetic counselors all seem to assume that exercising autonomy means choosing courses of action that minimize risk to oneself or one's children (122, 127)—although it is not at all clear to me how exercise of autonomy can require adherence to someone else's idea of the right or the good. Autonomy in the liberal tradition, at least in the Kantian tradition, has meant giving oneself the law, choosing to be bound by one's own principles, even when being so bound involves great risk and makes one extremely vulnerable.
The word in bioethical debate and practice has little resemblance to that traditional meaning, which seems odd to me. How did that happen? Sometimes groups of people engaged in public discourse collectively decide that one word sounds more sophisticated than another word—much as every journalist now prefers the word "potential" to the word "possible," despite the difference in meaning—and that ethicists have collectively decided that "autonomy" sounds more professionally sophisticated than "liberty." "Autonomy" also sounds, perhaps, like a personal trait, whereas "liberty" clearly varies for everyone from situation to situation. At any rate, whatever the reason, this word "autonomy" does some dubious work in transhumanist and bioethical literature, as Hall forcefully points out. Everyone should "have" autonomy, the literature proclaims (despite the fact that such a thing is impossible (126)); for, autonomy is essential to living a good life. Those who cannot make use of "autonomy" (cannot, for example, understand a range of options or act on them for reasons of, shall we say, atypical embodiment) are simply and sadly unable to live good lives. Exactly what this crucial element is remains elusive.
Hall focuses the bulk of her critique on the idea of autonomy as independence, noting (along with many feminists and disability theorists) that no one is really independent. We all depend on others for crucial aspects of our well-being—emotional, physical, and economic. Human beings do not thrive in isolation and in fact most of us could not survive even a few weeks without any connections to others. Independence, therefore, is always relative. In the liberal tradition, independence was a prerequisite for full legal personhood and full participation in democratic government. It was construed as the ability to reach one's own conclusions without coercion or fear of retribution from one's social superiors, be they parents, husbands, or employers. One was dependent if one could not afford—literally—to offend these superiors. The only way to achieve this relatively independent status was to own enough property to be able to weather the disapproval of one's fellows.
Virtually no one in today's society is independent in that sense. Almost all of us are employees, and the vast majority of us are dependent not only on the continued good will of our own employers but also that of the employers of our spouses, parents, and children. Outside of that now non-existent politico-economic context, autonomy as independence has become relative to a shifting set of contexts, while usually maintaining a pretense of being context-free.
This is why autonomy can now stand in contrast to vulnerability, as it seems to do so much of the time in transhumanist discourse. In the liberal tradition, an autonomous or independent individual could take up an unpopular political stance without fear of losing his livelihood. He was not vulnerable to financial coercion. Otherwise, however, he was just as vulnerable as everyone else. He could contract cholera, get shot by an irate neighbor, or be kicked in the head by his horse, same as the next guy. Autonomy in no way cancelled out the perennial perils of the embodiment. Only death could do that.
Transhumanist dreams of total autonomy go far beyond any liberal conception of that state. Autonomy, conceived as access to a wide range of options and ability to seize upon them, becomes virtually synonymous with material invulnerability. Any physical or mental state that closes off a set of options diminishes autonomy. The logical conclusion of this line of argument is Nick Bostrom's position: We must get rid of organic bodies altogether and upload ourselves into copper, steel, and plastic. Of course, that logical conclusion is also entirely illogical, since so many of our options for pleasure and enrichment are, precisely, bodily—the caress of a lover, the thrill of skiing down a snow-covered slope, the taste of avocadoes, the visual plunge into the luscious colors of a van Gogh painting. And it ignores the obvious vulnerabilities of copper, steel, and plastic, not to mention the enormously vulnerable and dependent moment of disembodiment and upload.
In fact, transhumanist logic is so illogical that one can only conclude, as Hall does, that what is really at issue is a fear of specific types of vulnerability and dependence—figured I would guess by the feminine, the elderly, the relatively immobile, and the intellectually impaired—in addition to a deep-seated fear of physical pain. Liberal masculinity hates to lose in any sort of competition and hates to submit to any winning "superior." The body rejected in these texts is not merely a dependent body but a loser body—a slack body, a slow body, a body without the quick right answer, a penetrable body, a body riven by pain.
Eugenicists want winner bodies, which is why what counts as "disability" shifts around through the course of the twentieth century as developments in the economy, pharmaceutical technologies, military preparedness, and technologies of sport and entertainment alter the playing fields where competition occurs. Nowadays, armed with disposable tampons, birth control pills, and the latest laptop, even a girl body can be a winner. Imagine if we were bionic!
Losing, in this way of thinking, means submitting to a former opponent, perhaps even an enemy. It is inevitably humiliating—and feminizing. Losers are weak, degraded pussies to be ridiculed and used. (Think of Donald Trump's derisive remarks about John McCain's unsuccessful presidential bid.) In a world of winners and losers, there is no compassion, only respect, and respect has to be earned by defeating other people (and sometimes nonhuman animals)—in other words, by producing losers. The most important thing in the world is not to land in that camp.
It is imperative, I think, to carry this critique far beyond transhumanism. It is less important to link transhumanism with eugenics than it is to link prevailing paradigms and practices of bioethics with masculinist liberalism and to expose it as inherently deficient in regard for human well-being. (I believe, in fact, that something like this is Professor Hall's larger project.) To this end, I would like to register a disagreement with some philosophers of disability and disability theorists, notably with Eva Kittay, whom Professor Hall cites (112-113).
Kittay has argued that we need to expand our understanding of personhood to include people who cannot control their own immediate surroundings or use words to communicate. I agree wholeheartedly that we need to respect and value such people and recognize the ways in which they experience and interact with the world around them and communicate with others. I disagree that the way to do this is to include such people in the category of personhood.
Personhood, it seems to me, is not our friend in any effort to overcome masculinist competitive liberalism. Personhood is of a piece with the networks of power that oppress and devalue much of humanity, including much of the humanity at this conference, as well as much of the rest of the living world. It is not simply, and never has been simply, the singular of "people"; it has always functioned to exclude, stigmatize, and partition off human beings and others deemed less important, less rational, less able, and less worthy of consideration.
Personhood, as John Locke says in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, is a forensic term, a legal term (Book 2, chapter XXVII). As Roberto Esposito has shown, it came into existence in Roman law as a status, that of property holder or of individual with a legally recognized ability to hold and dispose of not only land and wealth but even other human beings. The word came into English from French after the Norman Conquest. Well into the seventeenth century, Roman law continued to influence English thinkers both indirectly—through what came to be their own legal systems, particular church law—and directly through the academic use of the Latin language and university study of Roman law.
Locke's interest in personhood was, in fact, an interest in individual accountability before the law and ultimately before God. A person was someone who could own his (and even her) actions as an extension of his ownership of his body. A Lockean person is a proprietor, as was always the case; Locke simply extended ownership to corporeality and held everybody accountable who was not an infant, a lunatic, or an idiot. And, I hasten to add that these are Locke's words, not mine, and that what he has in mind are people who apparently have no sense of self-identity from moment to moment. Everyone else is a property owner and is individually responsible for his or her property's maintenance and effects. If we want to break out of values imposed by liberal capitalism, values that judge the worth of people on the basis of their so-called independence or ability, we need to critique and dismantle personhood, not enlarge its scope.
My time is almost up, so let me conclude by simply raising a set of questions that perhaps Professor Hall will find useful or interesting enough to address. First, I would like to know how she sees her analysis of transhumanism and of bioethics in relation to the context I have suggested here: liberal legalism, liberal capitalism, and competitive masculinity. Do the speculations that I have set forth here about those relationships seem on target, or would she amend them? I would also like to know how she would operationalize her critique of transhumanism politically; where might we begin to challenge its power within public discourse and within bioethical practice? These are enormous questions, no doubt too enormous to address in any depth. But perhaps they might be added to our agenda for discussion at the panel's conclusion.
Thank you very much, Professor Hall, for this very important and provocative book. And thanks to Shelley Tremain for inviting me to participate.
[1]I say "ethico-political" rather than one or the other because, as Stacy Alaimo (2016) asserts, as we question human exceptionalism and move deeper into materialist conceptions of human life, the distinction between ethics and politics comes to seem more a matter of scale than the name of any practical difference.
[2] Of course, the Trump administration and Republican Congress may be about to defund all scientific research, leaving medical research entirely in the hands of private industry. In that case, decisions will be made on the basis of predicted markets and ethics will be irrelevant anyway.
Alaimo, Stacy. 2016. Exposed: Environmental Politics and Pleasures in Posthuman Times. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,
McWhorter, Ladelle. 2010. Darwin's Invisible Hand: Feminism, Reprogenetics, and Foucault's Analysis of Neoliberalism. Southern Journal of Philosophy 48 (September 2010): 43-63; online at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/sjp.2010.48.issue-s1/issuetoc.
posted by Shelley


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Best Educational Toys 2019 Reviews
As a parent, you want to be sure that your child is getting the education that they deserve. For this, you may want to pick up a few different toys. Of course, there are plenty of different educational toys on the market.
This means that it can be pretty tough to know the route to go down. That is why we have assembled this list. On this page, you are going to find a collection of some of the best educational toys around.
Best Educational Toys 2019
|Insect Lore Live Butterfly Growing Kit Toy - 5 Caterpillars to Butterflies - SHIP NOW
|1,399 Reviews
|Buy on Amazon
|VTech Sit-to-Stand Learning Walker (Frustration Free Packaging)
|7,921 Reviews
|Buy on Amazon
|Fisher-Price Brilliant Basics Rock-a-Stack
|1,299 Reviews
|Buy on Amazon
When we prepared this list, we decided to rank the educational toys based upon their price, their quality, and the overall benefit that your child is going to get out of it.
Insect Lore Original Butterfly Garden
The problem with children nowadays is that they are spending most of their days locked indoors, playing games and the like. Children don't really go out there and feel 'at one with nature' nowadays, which is a great shame.
This is where this product comes into play. This will give your children the introduction to nature that they need, and it does it in a fun way too!
With this kit, your child will be able to raise their own butterflies before releasing them into the natural eco system. You get everything that you need to raise the butterflies in the kit.
You get a voucher that you will need to send in for your butterflies, but that takes next-to-no effort at all. Of course, the kit is packed with useful information which will teach your child how to raise their own butterflies!
- Check temperatures in your area. Please ensure that daytime temperatures are 55 degrees Fahrenheit or above when ordering.
- 5 baby caterpillars and all the food they'll need
- Pop-up, reusable 11.5 inch mesh habitat
- Feeding pipette
- Caterpillars to butterflies instruction guide
Snap Circuits Jr. Electronics Discovery Kit
No products found.
In this day and age, it is important that a child has an understanding of the technological world that we live in. As a result, it is good to start them young. This Snap Circuits Jr. Electronics Discovery Kit is really going to help out here!
In this kit, budding electrical engineers will find 30 electronic parts that they can play around with. These parts can create 101 different electronic models. You will be able to make alarms, speakers, switches etc. Everything is laid out in easy-to-read instructions.
The best part about this kit is that it is so simple to use. Anybody could do it. The kit is rated for those over the age of eight. Sure, it is not going to teach the intricacies of electronics but, like most educational toys, it is designed to get children interested in something. They will be able to extend this interest as they get older.
No products found.
VTech Sit-To-Stand Learning Walker
For this educational toy, we are going for the lower age spectrum here. This is a traditional walker with a few cool electronic toys thrown in for good measure.
These toys are designed to stimulate the imagination of your child. They play a variety of sounds and music. Remember, one of the best ways in which to stimulate your child is through sounds and the like.
The walker is incredibly well built. You can be sure that your child is not going to destroy it. The whole thing has been designed to be as simple to use as possible. It has been designed to ensure that your child wants to interact with it. This through the colors and the shapes that are used. It really is a gorgeous toy.
This toy is rated for children from 9 months to the age of 3 years. This is perfect to buy your child when they are close to taking their first steps as it will really help them out.
- Interactive learning baby Walker has a removable play panel; frustration free packaging means it comes in a plain brown box
- Early learning center has 5 piano keys that play music and encourage creativity; wheels work on carpeted and hard floors
- Features 2 colorful spinning rollers, 3 shape sorters, and 3 light-up buttons that develop motor skills
- Pretend telephone handset and mechanical elements enhance role-play fun; 2 AA batteries are included
- Over 70 sing-along songs, music, sound effects and fun phrases; meant for babies and toddlers 9 months to 3 years old. Sensory development
Fisher-Price Brilliant Basics Rock-a-Stack
This is a classic toy. However, your child is still going to have fun with it. You probably played with something very similar when you were younger!
Your child is going to have huge amounts of fun trying to stack the rings on a rocking base. This toy is basic when it comes to education. It is designed to help your child develop fine motor skills. This is something which is incredibly important during their formative years.
This toy is rated for use by children from the age of six months to three years old. Since this is a Fisher Price toy, you are not going to have to worry about your child breaking it. It has been designed to last as long as possible. It may be a simple toy to you, but this is something that your child is going to end up having huge amounts of fun playing with!
- Five colorful rings to grasp & stack
- Bat-at rocker base
- Top ring has shiny reflective surface inside with swirling, rattling beads
- Introduces concepts of relative size & stacking
- Stacking helps baby develop eye-hand coordination, and introduces baby to the concept of relative size as they learn to sort and stack from biggest to smallest!
Fisher-Price Brilliant Basics First Blocks
No products found.
We are going to wrap up this list with another product from Fisher-Price. They really are a great company when it comes to educational toys!
This kit, again, is a traditional kit. Your child will be matching up blocks with holes. It is rated from the age of six months all the way up to eight years old. It is unlikely that an eight-year-old is going to get much use out of this, however.
The ten blocks in five different colors are easy for your child to hold. They have been designed to be BPA-free which means you are not going to need to worry about your child putting them in their mouth!
This kit is designed to help a child develop their motor skills. It is also going to be ideal to help your child develop their pattern recognition skills. It is an incredibly stimulating educational toy!
Remember, if you want your child to get the best possible start in life, you would be wise to invest in some quality educational toys. They are going to be huge amounts of fun for your child to play around with. Your child is also going to learn a lot along the way! Make sure you read through as many reviews as possible to make sure that your child is going to end up with a toy which is of a high quality! You really want them to have fun with it.
No products found.


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My goal is to be the world's youngest, strongest ninja with the best record for capturing bad guys. If I can just keep evil Weevil from escaping next time, I might make my goal.
Learn More About Me
- I'm in fourth grade.
- I'm a master of disguise!
- Becoming a ninja takes hard work, long training, and patient discipline.
- Puzzles keep my brain in tip-top shape.
Learn About My Friends and Family
Kung Pow
I come from a long line of famous pill bugs. My great-grandfather was the first pill bug to reach the North Pole. He rolled up inside an explorer's pocket and stayed there for four months. He said the North Pole was a lot stuffier than you'd think.
Amber Pow
I'm Kung Pow's little sister. I like to tag along with my brother and his friends.
I am far from being one of Tiger Moth's friends. In fact, I am his arch enemy! I strive to be the baddest of all bugs.
Fruit Fly Boys
We are the coolest bugs in school (at least we think so)! We try to get away with a lot of tricks, but Tiger Moth always seems to catch us in the act.
Learn About My Books
Young Tiger Moth is a ninja-in-training, a martial arts warrior who fights evil in the streets and classrooms of the bug world. With the help of his best friend, pillbug Kung Pow, he works for truth and justice, while still hoping to finish the fourth grade.
Tiger Moth and his sidekick Kung Pow, visit a dung beetle ranch owned by Tiger's Uncle Aphid. Thundering tarnation! The beetles are missing! It looks like the work of that varmint rustler Stinky McCree!
Fourth-grade ninjas Tiger Moth and Kung Pow have fun with their classmates celebrating the Chinese New Year. Tiger's rivals, the Fruit Fly boys, enter the kite-flying contest and the result is sky-high disaster.
Who is sending all those fortune cookies around the city? What sinister message is tucked inside? Tiger Moth and King Pow smell something crummy in the air, and it's not the jumbo hot chocolate from Starbugs!
When the carnival comes to town, Tiger Moth and his sidekick Kung Pow let their ninja guard down. But not for long! This funfest is an evil trick by Weevil, the world's evilest insect. Now, the ninja duo must stop the show before the main attraction… the deadly Wing Kong!
Weevil's evil goons have captured Tiger Moth! The fate of this fourth grade ninja rests in the hands of Kung Pow and his kid sister, Amber. Have Tiger's lessons prepared his young apprentice for this life or death bug battle? Or will Kung Pow fail the ultimate ninja test?


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X.playawho the hell is Wabayneye? , all i know they are small MJ sub clans , and they hardly matter in the calculus of Daaroodism add the Mareexaan to that too , these laangaab small sub clans matter little.X.playaThe entire population of puntland is not above a million , and the Daarood in the south maybe around 1.2 million , maximum in the somali republic the Daarood maybe close to 2 million and thats logic . The Cagdheer in Ethiopia are not more or less then the Majeerteen , maximum Cagdheer around 800k , total more or less around 3 million, all Daarood are around 23% of somali populations , in every census post colonial or colonial the Daarood are the least of the largest 3 clans. the rest is faan-mafrish.
How about wabeneye MJ
I think they are underestimated
Many people think they are not large but they are
Comparable to rer mahad of cumar maxamud
Size wise
The old Habar Yoonis poet put it aptly describing all Laan-gaabs.
Qanjidh hilbaa waa ku jiraa qeyb se gali waaye.
Don't tell me youdon't know wabeneye
If you come to kenya and uganda they own many
Businesses from real estate to transport and oil and gas add that to import export
They are well known among somalis in
Ask a relative in these countries i have mentioned
And probably he/she knows wabeneye
They are not that small actually
They live in qaw bosaso some parts of nugaal and mudug and can be found in kilil shanad as well as kismayu


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Eglin has a prescribed burn taking place today in tactical training area C-74.
The burn will be on 1,300 acres in the eastern portion of the reservation, north of Range Road 379, east of Range Road 214, south of Range Road 213 and west of Range Road 345.
Winds are expected to be out of the east and carry the smoke to 2,600 feet.
Minimal smoke impacts are expected.


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January 11, 2011
Loving: MAC Cham-Pale Paint Pots!
So last week saw me running to the MAC store... no wait, actually the hubs did the running for me. *tee hee*
Alright, nevermind who did the running, the point is I got meself two new paint pots from the MAC Cham-Pale collection. My first paint pots too!
And boy am I loving them very, very MUCH.
Vintage Selection
MAC describes it as "frosty dirty peach". I think it's a little more of a brown-peach shade, and it works amazingly well on my lids as a base. It's almost my skin colour with a little more oomph.
It has a shimmery finish, and as paint pots go (so I've been told), it is creamy enough, but a little stickier than say this cream shadow, which I also love.
Dangerous Cuvee
MAC calls this shade a "frosted cool grey", and I think I kind of agree. It's grey with silver shimmer and when applied, it's sparkly! Which makes it a little harder to pull off for day/work, but perfect for night/parties.
When I first swatched them, they didn't impress me all that much. They didn't swatch as smooth and creamy as my Estee shadow cremes, but now I absolutely adore these paint pots.
Why, you ask?
Because I can use them without an eye primer, and they last as long as 12 hours without creasing. At all. Is that amazing or what?
These photos were taken after about 12 hours of wear. I used Dangerous Cuvee as my base, MAC Style Snob in my crease, and Shu Uemura ME Brown 850 in the outer corners. I loved the end look.
Yesterday, I used Vintage Selection as my base and UD Naked Palette's Sin as a wash. It was incredibly simple and yet a very pretty work look.
(Just an interesting note, the MAC paint pots and the Estee shadow cremes come in exactly the same glass jars, and contain the same amount of product. The screw caps can be switched around. Did you know that? Hehe...)
In conclusion, I am really loving these two eyeshadows. At RM70 for a 5g pot, it's not exactly cheap, but I'm quite happy forking out the money for their performing power. Love!
Have you tried Cham-Pale's paint pots? Are you planning to?
4 comments:
- AskMeWhats said...
I have this soft spot for paintpots but would you believe i haven't been wearing much eyeshadow? I won't be putting any of them in use, well except on clients but the glass pot really melts my heart! I don't know, its just me! :)
- 11 January 2011 at 08:59
- Kahani said...
Lisa: I've only been extolling the Paintpot's virtues as an eye primer for 2 years...!
- 11 January 2011 at 13:39
- Syen said...
Nikki: You should try this on yourself too! =P
Kahani: Yes ma'am. =P
- 12 January 2011 at 11:10
- Unknown said...
Paint para Mac - Paint Tool SAI Mac such as MyBrushes and MyPaint is worth considering when digital painters need Paint Tool SAI for Mac
- 11 May 2015 at 19:34
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AKS' surveying team is one of the largest and most dependable in the region.
Our survey services are tailored to match client needs, incorporating the latest technology and industry standards to complete work and save clients time and money.
Our Approach
Our survey staff routinely work with our engineers, arborists, and natural resource specialists to understand the needs of the project and then use the most efficient method to collect the appropriate survey data.
Our surveying services include:
Recent Projects
We have completed over 5,000 projects throughout the Pacific Northwest for hundreds of clients. Here is some of our recent work:
Mo's Clam Chowder – Astoria
Inland Shores Townhomes LOMR-f
Port of Camas-Washougal Marina Dredging
Ports & Marine


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Last Thursday 20th March, IFLA and the Copyright 4 Creativity coalition (C4C) organized a breakfast debate in the EU Parliament to discuss the international and EU copyright frameworks.
We'd like to highlight an important announcement made at this forum by Ms Kerstin Jorna from the European Commission: the European Council approved (the day before, 19th March) the European Commission's proposal to sign the Marrakesh Treaty ensuring access to accessible format works for the world's visually impaired and print disabled.
You can access the full text of the Treaty through this link


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Whether you have health insurance coverage or not, the costs of medical care in Tennessee can add up quickly. According to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, one out of every five credit reports contains overdue debts resulting from medical bills. At Rothschild & Ausbrooks, PLLC, people often ask us how to deal with these types of debts. As such, we will discuss options for getting control of your medical debts in this post.
What is the Credit CARD Act?
If you are like many people in Davidson, and throughout Tennessee, then you likely have at least one credit card. As a credit card consumer, the federal Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility, and Disclosure Act, also known as the Credit CARD Act, provides you certain protections. This law, which was signed into effect in May of 2009, was created in response to the need for reform in the credit card market.
How does Chapter 13 bankruptcy work?
When people in Davidson, and throughout Tennessee, are struggling with overwhelming debt, they often consider declaring bankruptcy. For individuals and couples filing jointly, Chapter 13 bankruptcy is one of the most common options. In order to ensure this is the right option for their circumstances, it behooves people to understand how Chapter 13 bankruptcy works.
What debts are dischargeable in a Chapter 7 bankruptcy?
Like many people in the state of Tennessee, you may have considered declaring Chapter 7 bankruptcy. Through this option, a number of your debts may be discharged, which can help you to regain control of your finances. At Rothschild & Ausbrooks, PLLC, we are often asked about how debts are handled in Chapter 7 bankruptcies. In this post, we will discuss which debts may be discharged in this type of filing.
What every Tennessee homeowner should know about zombie titles
Due to financial challenges, many people throughout Tennessee have struggled to make their monthly mortgage payments. As a result, some have had their homes foreclosed on, while others have been forced to walk away from their residences. Those who find themselves in these types of situations, however, are often unaware of zombie titles and their potential dangers.
What are the pros and cons of filing Chapter 7 bankruptcy?
Like many in Davidson, and throughout Tennessee, who are struggling with debt, you may have considered filing for bankruptcy. While Chapter 7 is the most common type of filing, it is not necessarily suited for every situation. As such, it may help to understand the advantages and downsides of filing Chapter 7 bankruptcy in order to determine if it is the right option for your circumstances.


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Theresa's "Nook", Franklin, VA
We had to get this size perfect because there was no room for error! Theresa chose our Beverly Hills Model in a 60″ length with added height of 42″ and upholstered in PSQ -015 Marble. The 30×60 table is a self-edged design laminated in Formica 3445-58 Mineral Ochre. Very soft look, and very beautiful! Thanks for sharing Theresa.
Theresa's "Nook"
Franklin, VA


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Meet lynda.com – very nice learning resource with free WPF Training videos.
Archive for December, 2007
WPF Training video library
Posted by Igor Moochnick on 12/31/2007
Posted in Tutorials, WPF | 2 Comments »
Time tracking solutions are the must
Posted by Igor Moochnick on 12/30/2007
A couple of unfortunate misunderstandings with clients will teach you to track the hours spent on solving their problems. Save yourself some trouble and take my word – you'll need tracking, but if you sure you don't, sometimes it's nice to have a track of hours spent on different activities.
Take a look at Toggle, it's free and it does a lot of great things like:
Live tracking
Teams and permissions
Clients and projects
and the most important – it's Internet-based so you can share the tracking between the different workstations where you work on the projects.
Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »
Announcing the PopSci.com/Bug Labs Build-a-BUG Challenge
Posted by Igor Moochnick on 12/30/2007
You have a chance to win BUGbase and the first batch of four BUGmodules – the open, modular consumer-electronics hardware and Web-services platform that you can use like Legos to build practically any gadget you can dream up.
Join the PopSci.com/Bug Labs Build-a-BUG Challenge. More information can be found on the PopSci.com.
Posted in Hardware | Leave a Comment »
PocketPC phone usability horror story (Verizon XV6800 review)
Posted by Igor Moochnick on 12/27/2007
I'm a Verizon member not by choice but by "no choice at all". Like in: I don't have any other choice of a provider in my house. T-Mobile, ATT nor others have any acceptable service level in my house. I think, mainly, because my close proximity to Newton and Brookline. This article will not be about Verizon's service and support (I have a lot to say here) and not about the worst choice of the devices between all the providers out there, but about my user experience with the mobile communicators that I've had recently.
I have a corporate phone/communicator and using it a lot to reply to my office e-mails. As you know it's not easy to type on keyboard that has tiny buttons, like Treo or similar. The best keyboards out there are on Blackberries (it's a shame Symantec doesn't use them) and on a slide-out keyboards of the HTC devices (or alike). So, being an forced Verizon customer, I had no choice by to chose HTC XV6700 as my communicator.
This is when my nightmare began. The exterior design of the phone looks nice until you start carrying it with you all the time. Since the joystick is sticking out, the carrying case starts to control the phone. Yes, literally.
The phone was calling other people on it's own, answering phone calls without asking me, adding appointments and deleting calendars, etc, etc… It was like the phone was leaving it's own life. And the worst of all – when the phone call came it was hanging (to the point of soft reset). A total nightmare …
So, after talking to Verizon, I got an OK to replace it. With what? That was my main question. I had no alternative, but to wait. I've suffered for more than a year (from Jun/2006 to Nov/2007) and, finally, had a chance to replace the phone to it's successor XV6800.
Overall impression: the phone is better than it's predecessor but not drastically. It has more memory, I should give it that, but the usability was not improved. Actually it has improved in the joystick area and became worse in others.
Joystick is not sticking out as it was before, but the buttons on the sides of the phone are soft. Every time you'll want to pick the phone out of the pouch – you'll 100% press one of them.
The biggest design flaw of this device, as I see it, is a headset adapter cable. There is no headset outlet on the phone, so if you'd like to plug-in one, you'll need an adapter. It's a thick cable 4-5 inch long with huge plugs that will be sticking out of your phone while you're walking – horrible view and very inconvenient. Be very careful with this adapter, it's easy falls off the phone and it's small enough to be easily lost, BUT… you can't find a replacement in any of the stores nor online.
All said above is not even begins to convey how bad is the Windows Mobile usability aspect of BOTH of the devices. Let's start from the worst part:
- It's impossible to make the phone to auto-lock. So, if you want to lock the phone, you have to go to "Today" screen and press the lock button ON THE SCREEN. Yes, it's not a hardware button. There is no way to assign a hardware button to this action.
- It's impossible to turn the screen off while the device continues to work. I need it every time when I start a media player and put the device in a pocket or in a pouch. At this moment the phone is prone to accidental button and screen actions.
- The phone turns on once in a while. It's fine with me, but, at the same moment, the screen and the buttons are activated. So… you get my drift (all from above applied here).
- The phone synchronization is a nightmare. ActiveSync is very unreliable, self enclosed, rigid and impossible to make it do what you need. This is not a stone into the XV6800 backyard, but it adds cons to the whole experience.
I can go on an on, but, I think, I've said enough.
To conclude the story, I'd like to say that, to my taste, the whole user story is not completely backed and we're still in a very deep deep Beta of the product. Under the product I mean the device(hardware) + software(OS). At this moment it looks like there is no common team that owns such product. There are hardware companies that create the hardware and Microsoft, that have fun creating an software for an abstract device.
So bottom line I have a very bad user experience with this device. I'm looking forward to the next Windows Mobile release and hope the things will change to the better.
Posted in Hardware, Thoughts | Leave a Comment »
Let's give a Windows Live Writer a test run
Posted by Igor Moochnick on 12/25/2007
I've decided to try WLW for a change. This is a test post.
Amazingly – it works !!!
Let's see how the code coloring will work:
private void Window_Loaded(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e) { WebBrowser wb = new WebBrowser(); wb.Navigate(System.Configuration.ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["Feed"]); windowsFormsHost.Child = wb; }
And it looks like the code should be pasted as HTML. Hmm… not a lot of help there.
And pictures? It looks like they are working via Picasa Web Albums. You're getting a free 1Gb storage account there with your Google account.
So have fun with this new blog editor !
Posted in Software, Thoughts | Leave a Comment »
Integrating Web Browser with WPF Forms
Posted by Igor Moochnick on 12/24/2007
There are so many situations where you need to render an HTML in your forms. It may happen when you'd want, for example, to show an external web page, feed or a locally generated content like XML or an HTML. The Web Browser is extremely handy for the Web Automation (I'll talk about it in future posts) since you have full HTML DOM available for control at your fingertips. So, having WPF now out there is not changing a thing – it's still possible to host Web Browser inside a form.
Look how easy it is. Let's say you want to show your blog on an application form. To do so:
- Create a WPF application with a Form.
- From the toolbox drop a WindowsFormsHost on the form. Give it a name, let's say, "windowsFormsHost". Make sure that the references to the WindowsFormsInteroperability and System.Windows.Forms were added to your project. To make a better presentation make the Margin = 0 – the control will fill in all the available form's space.
- In the XAML source add "Loaded" attribute with "Window_Loaded" value to the tag.
- Add the following code to the Window_Loaded handler in the .cs file:
WebBrowser wb = new WebBrowser(); wb.Navigate(ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["Feed"]); windowsFormsHost.Child = wb;
Build, run and enjoy!
Source code can be found as usual on my site.
Posted in C#, Software, WPF | 5 Comments »
RSS is not only for the news
Posted by Igor Moochnick on 12/23/2007
The new Syndication libraries, provided in the .NET 3.5, making creation of the RSS feeds a walk in a park. By combining them with the power of the WCF you can get an amazing results.
RSS technology allows you to reverse the client/server tandem from push to pull paradigm. Instead of client sending data to server you can publish the available data and make server to decide what to pull(download) and what to ignore, This can save a lot of valuable resources like time, network bandwidth, data transfer and processing.
To make my case more interesting and appealing let's imagine a situation where you want to make a back-up agent that will be archiving all the text files. In order to do so, all the desktops will publish all the newly changed files that need to be archived. The server will subscribe to all the relevant feeds. In this article I'll cover, for starters, only the client's side and in the following articles we'll talk about different discovery and subscription mechanisms that we have in our disposal in .NET for the server.
The following snippet shows you how to create s simple syndication feed:
SyndicationFeed feed = new SyndicationFeed(); List items = new List(); … SyndicationItem item = new SyndicationItem(title, path, GetFileUri(path)); items.Add(item); feed.Items = items;
As you can see it's extremely easy, but this was just a half of the job. The other half is to publish the feed. There are a lot of ways to do it, but I'm going to cover one of them. Since WCF is one of the best things to use in windows services (as well as in Web services), I'm going to use it to publish the feed. Here how you will initialize the WCF host with the Feed Service as a singleton (single-instance):
FileChangeFeedService service = new FileChangeFeedService(); ServiceHost serviceHost = new ServiceHost(service); serviceHost.Open();
Note: don't forget to mark the service class as a single-instance service by adding ServiceBehavior attribute –
[ServiceBehavior(InstanceContextMode = InstanceContextMode.Single, IncludeExceptionDetailInFaults = true)]
Announce: I'll be talking about REST in the following posts as well as a new "Give it a REST" presentation is ready for broader public to attend.One of the beautiful things that became available with .NET 3.5 is Url templates. This allows to put HTTP verbs on the methods of a web service as well as to map the Url parts (not only parameters) to a method parameters. This in many cases will eliminate any need for parsing of the data. All the mentioned above, make the WCF Web Services REST compatible.For example:
[OperationContract] [WebGet(UriTemplate = "?format={format}")] SyndicationFeedFormatter Feed(string format);
This contract method will be called if a web request will come to the following URL:http://localhost/feed?format=rssThe format parameter ("rss" in our case) will be extracted from the URL and passed as a parameter to the Feed method. This allows us to seamlessly provide different feed formatting (thanks to the new WCF libraries):
public SyndicationFeedFormatter Feed(string format) { if ((format != null) && (format.ToLower() == "rss")) return new Rss20FeedFormatter(feed); return new Atom10FeedFormatter(feed); }
Note: if no parameters will be provided (i.e.: http://localhost/feed) the Feed method will be called with a NULL value.And here is what will glue everything together – the config file:
<configuration> <system.serviceModel> <services> <service name="FileChangeFeed.FileChangeFeedService"> <endpoint address="http://localhost:8080/feed" binding="webHttpBinding" bindingConfiguration="" contract="FileChangeFeed.IFileChangeFeed" behaviorConfiguration="webBehavior" /> </service> </services> <behaviors> <endpointBehaviors> <behavior name="webBehavior"> <webHttp /> </behavior> </endpointBehaviors> </behaviors> </system.serviceModel> <configuration>
Note the endpoint behavior. As you can guess the feed can be published over any protocol, but if you'll want to view the feed using standard RSS feed readers, it's better to publish it over HTTP.As soon as you'll start the application and the service will be published – put the base Uri (http://localhost:8080/feed) in IE's address box and you'll see a rendered RSS feed view.Have fun with RSS feeds and don't be afraid to explore your possibilities.The source code can be found on my site.
Posted in C#, REST, Software, WCF | 1 Comment »
Spell checker for HTML, ASP.NET, JScript, VB, C#, CSS and C++ for Visual Studio 2005 and 2008
Posted by Igor Moochnick on 12/18/2007
Finally there is no excuse for the developers to misspell class and method names. Now everybody can enjoy the luxury of the Spell checkers that we always had in office applications.
Posted in Software, Thoughts | Leave a Comment »


text:
Practical Results of the Gospel for Jew and Gentile
If you have come through the first eleven chapters and understood the general flow of thought thus far, then you have already passed through the hardest work of the book. And what a blessing it has been, too! What I have been referring to as the "theological" portion of the book of Romans is complete now. We have seen a lot of great content from Paul in these chapters. The large picture of God's eternal plan of salvation for all mankind has now been laid out before us. It has been a delight to study it thus far.
Now, after so much analytical argument from Paul, we will find some very practical instruction. As you are probably aware, this is the standard pattern for Paul in his epistles. He generally writes a lengthy portion of theological explanation and then follows that with practical instruction.
The main point of our study is to understand the flow of the argument of the book of Romans as a whole, and that is mostly accomplished now. Our purposes do not really call for a lengthy exploration of the practical matters that Paul deals with in the rest of the book. However, we are not going to ignore them entirely either. There is something important still to see for the development of our study, and that is the connection between the practical instruction and the theological arguments that we have already seen.
We might begin by asking the question of whether there even is a connection between these two portions of the book. It seems to me that the obvious presupposition ought to be in favor of a logical connection. Paul is not about to give a whole systematic treatment of all Christian behavior and practice. What, then, is he going to focus upon? How will he decide what to address with the Roman church in the matter of practice?
Well, the same question might have been asked at the beginning of the theological portion of the study. Even though Romans approaches more closely than any other book of the New Testament to the idea of a systematic treatment of doctrine, it is still far from a complete systematic theology of the Christian faith. Why did Paul choose to focus upon the theological themes that he did?
The answer to the question in both cases should obviously be one and the same. Whatever circumstances and motives moved Paul to choose the theological themes that he did must certainly be the same as will determine the content of the practical instruction. Indeed, it would be hard to conceive of an epistle in which there was not some inner principle of unity that tied the whole together, even if the degree of that unity might vary from author to author according to the strictness of his mind in following the central idea.
Does Romans, then, exhibit an inner unity from start to finish? I have presented a basic analysis of the theological portion of the epistle that revolves around the central concept of a universal gospel of salvation by faith for both Jew and Gentile. Though there might be different ways of stating that theme, I believe that the only way to bring the whole of the theological argument into harmony in one basic unifying principle is to recognize this basic focus as the central idea. And one further strong supporting evidence of this fact will prove to be the nature of the practical instruction that flows out of the theological argument.
We will not be too surprised to see that the connection between the first eleven chapters and those that follow is not quite so logically tight as when the content was one lengthy theological argument. We are no longer dealing with the same nature of an extended argument. But that is far from saying that there is no logical connection at all. That is not the case by a long stretch. The basic matters that Paul now will address are all rather closely connected to the matter of Jew and Gentile and the gospel message of salvation for all men as it has now been rightly understood.
From chapter 12 through the first portion of chapter 15, we will see some dealings with specific topics related to the theological question concerning Jew and Gentile. During these discussions of specific topics, mention is not specifically made of Jew or Gentile, but the concepts are nonetheless closely related to important aspects of that theological focus we have seen. However, by the middle of chapter 15, Paul is once again explicitly discussing the matter of Jew and Gentile and shows that the preceding discussion has been assuming a focus upon Jew and Gentile relations in practice.
It is quite insightful to see how consistently Paul focuses upon this central theme of the book from start to finish. The theological portion is no less concerned with it than the practical portion. The introduction of the whole book already began to bring it before our minds, and we will see also that the concluding remarks from Paul to the Romans will not fail to deal with the same topic as well. This consistency throughout the whole is the strongest point of affirmation that we are properly understanding Paul's main point in the book. Let us now take a brief look at these main practical instructions that Paul gives and see how they continue the discussion of Jew and Gentile relations under the gospel.
Chapter 20:Unity and Peace with All Men
The practical instruction of the epistle is introduced to us with the two rich transitional and summary verses that open this chapter:
I exhort you, therefore, brothers, through the compassion of God to present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, pleasing to God, your reasonable service. And do not be conformed to this age, but rather, be transformed by the renewing of the mind in order for you to test what is the will of God, that which is good and pleasing and perfect. (12:1-2)
These are two of the richest verses of exhortation to be found anywhere in the New Testament, I think. They call upon all Christians to lay down the whole of their lives in response to what God has done for us through His compassionate love towards us. They take in the whole look of the gospel message thus far and call us to the most basic and summary response of entire devotion and service to God. There could hardly be a better call to response to the gospel truth that could be made.
The specific connection that these verses make from what precedes to what follows centers upon this idea of the renewing of the mind. Paul has presented to us a tremendous amount of truth that calls for a whole new manner of thinking. Specifically, he has recently exhorted the Gentiles not "to think high things" about themselves. He has shown how the Jews grew proud and were cut off from salvation, and warns that the same things might indeed take place with anyone in the church who forgets that it is by grace alone and faith that they stand in the favor of God. There has been a great call to humility on account of the gospel truth of salvation, a humility that must extend to all men.
Before this recent call to humility of mind was the call to set the mind on the things of the Spirit rather than the things of the flesh (chapter 8). The one who lives in the flesh thinks according to the flesh, we are told, but the Christian has a new existence and a corresponding new manner of thinking, that which is according to the Spirit. For the Christian, everything has changed in his mind and heart. No longer do we think the same way.
The thrust of the focus here in chapter 12 is along the lines of the humility emphasized in chapter 11. The three chapter section that concludes the theological portion of the epistle has played a vital role in the overall purpose that Paul has. These chapters have brought all men, whether Jew or Gentile, to see their proper position before God. No man of any nation has any basis to think himself in an exalted position over and above those other nations. The Jew has none; the Gentile has none. All men are shut up together under guilt and can only be in a position to receive mercy from God.
This is so vital because it brings us all to a position of humility before God and one another, which is so absolutely essential to the practical mindset and spirit that Paul wishes to teach us within the church. This humility that we saw emphasized in chapter 11 is taken up again as the focus in chapter 12:
For I say through the grace given to me to everyone being among you not to think above, beyond that which is necessary to think, but rather to think in order to be sober minded, to each as God has apportioned a measure of faith. For just as in one body we have many members, but the members do not all have the same practice, thus we, being many, are one body in Christ, but each one members of one another. (12:3-5)
Within the Christian church, there is no room for proud thoughts about ourselves. We ought to be sober minded, reasonable about the reality of who we are and what our position is before God. We must surely, if our mind and heart have truly been affected by the truth of the gospel, see that we have no boast before God at all. This has been a theme throughout the argument of Romans, and here it is brought to important practical application. We must see ourselves together in humility before God and towards one another.
Paul ties this to an important theme that is probably best understood as the unifying concept of this chapter's exhortations: Unity and peace together. Because of our newly taught humility before God through the gospel, we must certainly learn to be at peace with one another. Whereas in the past, pride might have caused each of us to rise up and boast against one another, we now see the folly of all of that, as nobody has any true boast in himself at all.
Rather than see ourselves as divided into various sects or groups on any basis, such as national pride or privilege, we are called to be one together as a single body in Christ. This is such an important emphasis and so closely tied to the focus upon Jew and Gentile that we have already seen, especially in the preceding chapter. It is well worth remembering how Jew and Gentile were specifically described in chapter 11 as having been brought into one olive tree together. The Jew used to consider the Gentile as a complete outsider, without claim to the privilege of their national honor before God. The Gentile, for his part, often despised the Jew for his national pride. There was a huge wall of separation between the two. Further, once the Christian gospel was brought specifically to the Gentile, there would have been a huge temptation for the Gentile to continue in that contempt of the Jew, especially using the rejection of the Jewish nation by God as a pretext to be prejudiced against even the Jewish Christian. All of the potential barriers must be broken down and removed so that all see themselves as they truly are, equally under the grace of God as redeemed and forgiven sinners.
Thus, there is no room for any divisions of this nature within the Christian church. All men are called to unity with one another in one body. Whatever special honor might be claimed on account of giftings given to particular members of the body must be understood as grace from God, which cannot be a claim for any boasting:
Having different gifts according to the grace given to us… (12:6)
The natural boast that we might make on the basis of the calling of God and the granting of salvation to us has already been removed. Now also removed is the temptation to point to our special gifts as a basis of pride, for those giftings are special graces given to us from God, not originating in ourselves at all. Nobody in the church, whether Jew or Gentile, no individual, has any basis for boasting. Rather, we are to serve one another in humility before God, not thinking highly of ourselves for any reason.
This foundational principle of humility and unity serves as the basis for the many particular commands that fill the rest of this chapter. The variety of commands found might seem a bit unconnected at times without this unifying focus laid out for us at the opening of the chapter:
Let love be without hypocrisy. (12:9)
Be affectionate to one another in brotherly love, leading one another forth in honor… (12:11)
Sharing in the needs of the saints, pursuing hospitality… (12:13)
Bless those persecuting, bless and do not curse. (12:14)
Rejoice with those rejoicing. Weep with those weeping. (12:15)
The same thing thinking unto one another, not thinking high things but rather going together in humility. Do not be wise by yourselves. (12:16)
Giving back evil against evil to no one, considering the good before all men. If possible, that which is from you, making peace with all men, not avenging yourselves, beloved, but rather, give place for wrath…If your enemy hungers, feed him. If he thirsts, give him drink…Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. (12:17-21)
All of these commands and instructions flow in some way out of the principles of love, peace, unity, and humility. We are called as Christians to see ourselves rightly before God, which is going to change how we relate to all men. Within the church, there must be unity and peace and brotherly love. There must be no pride that leads to divisions. The Jew and Gentile must see each other as brothers. The prosperous must not be ashamed of the lowly. We must be together in loving compassion and empathy one towards the other. Even when there is wrong done to us and persecution against us unjustly, we must learn to love and forgive, showing grace as we have received grace. This is true whether towards those in the church or without.
No doubt, these commands are various and have a number of emphases and focuses, but they all deal with that humble spirit of humility that must characterize us now as Christians. And we ought to try to appreciate the full weight of this matter in light of the temptation to division that would have been so strong among Jew and Gentile especially. We will see in some of the specific issues in the next chapters that there were plenty of opportunities for the Jew and Gentile to have divisions amongst themselves. This was a tremendously large issue in the early Christian church, whatever might be the case in our day concerning the matter. It is not that the instructions of this chapter are to be understood solely in connection with the matter of Jew and Gentile, but this ought to be a large part of our understanding as we realize why Paul turns to this matter of peace and unity amongst Christians. "Let us make peace with all men," he says, "And let us be one body together in Christ." Humility in a mind that has been transformed and renewed through the truth of the gospel is the only way to achieve this wholly and properly.


text:
In 2004, three educational psychologists created Real Group to make a real difference to young people with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND). Today, our group of companies share one mission: to use education to transform lives.
We're the UK's leading provider of training in educational testing and professional assessment. Our courses are taught by senior practising psychologists with real expertise. We deliver the best thinking, teaching and practice using the latest online learning technologies (Campus Online™).
Our experienced educational psychologists (EPs) deliver innovative and accessible educational psychology services across the UK and the globe. Our principal and senior EPs work with parents, schools and organisations to help each child fulfil their potential.
Our expert programmers deliver e-learning platforms that are the technical heart of Real Group's courses. Our leading-edge technology enables education professionals to learn anywhere. We bring the virtual campus to our clients, so that they can learn wherever they choose.
Our innovative online courses strengthen the expertise and confidence of education professionals who support students with literacy difficulties, dyslexia and other specific learning difficulties (SpLDs).
As we're an open membership group, we welcome all professionals with an interest in dyslexia/SpLD. We offer discussion, information and best practice in the field and an array of member resources. We are also a SASC-approved assessment practising certification body.
Our shop was established in November 1995. We offer a range of carefully selected products that provide educators and the public with the best resources to improve outcomes. Our team is based in Real Group's Canterbury offices.
May 10, 2019
Real Group's Gill Cochrane (Specialist teacher) and Celia McKiernan (Art Therapist) have been representing Real Group on an Erasmus Plus funded European Project, POPULART (2017-2019). One of several European partners, Real Group has had the role of developing a training methodology which combines art-based learning within the Popular University tradition of adult education. The model […]
January 17, 2019
We have recently heard from the Department for Education (DfE) that there may potentially be further funding available for places on our National Professional Qualifications (NPQs) in March. To allow you and your colleagues to take advantage of this funding opportunity we have added a new cohort for March. The cohort will start on 31 March but to be […]
November 22, 2018
Following a meeting with the Department for Education (DfE), we wanted to make it public that the DfE funding for NPQ courses is once again available. Find out more here.
How we work
Our network of talented and expert individuals is led by a team of experienced psychologists and senior managers. We have a wealth of experience in the analysis and optimisation of learning needs, education environments and project management.
Alan Macgregor
Alan was principal educational psychologist in Kent from 1997 to 2002. In 2004, he started Real Training with Mark Turner to deliver high-quality programmes to teachers and schools in the UK and beyond. He is the author of Real Training's well-respected Certificate of Competence in Educational Testing course, for which his subject knowledge and in-depth understanding of pedagogy has been invaluable. Alan is an entrepreneur but, at heart, his passion is to deliver excellent services that benefit children, young people, families and schools.
Dr. Mark Turner
Mark launched Real Training with Alan in 2004 and remains its professional and academic lead and Managing Director. Real Group is the third successful enterprise in the education sector that Mark has founded. Mark creates highly effective teams which embrace innovation and focus on achieving successful outcomes. He completed his educational psychology doctorate in 2010. He publishes, speaks at conferences, and is currently elected chair of the Nurture Group Network charity and Parent Governor of an inner London Secondary School.
Siobhan Mellor
Siobhan has established and led teams of professional tutors and expert witnesses across Real Group. She excels in developing effective operational systems and teams and takes the lead role in managing the team and collating, interpreting and reporting quality-assurance data for the directors and Middlesex University. As an experienced EP, she has worked with children and young people in mainstream schools for almost two decades. She believes in helping educators to meet the needs of children with SEND.
Alan Macgregor, Mark Turner and Siobhan Mellor believe in the power of psychology and technology to change lives. Real Group constantly strives to stay at the leading edge of education technology and the latest thinking.
Kathryn Benzine
Having worked for Dyslexia Action since 2010, Kathryn is the head of education and learning for both the CPD and Professional Programme for Dyslexia Action Training.
Katie Hickin
Katie has worked within educational settings for a decade as a teacher, a qualified SENCO and a member of the Senior Management Team since graduating from the University of Cambridge with a Masters in Educational Research Practice. Now working for Real Group, Katie tutors and leads on Real Training's MEd SEND Programme, including the NASENCO and iSENCO qualifications.
Dr. Mark Turner
We are proud to have developed a jointly validated Masters in Leading Inclusive Education with Middlesex University and Mark is the co-programme leader with Ron Sergejev of Middlesex.
Siobhan Mellor
Siobhan is the programme leader for Real Training's MEd SEND Programme, including the NASENCO and our MEd SEND Programme modules.
Greenwich office
Real Group Ltd, 4 Victoria Parade, London SE10 9FR, United Kingdom.
Canterbury office
Real Group Ltd, 70-72 Stour Street, Canterbury, CT1 2NZ, United Kingdom.
Staines office
Dyslexia Action, Centurion House, London Road, Staines-upon-Thames, TW18 4AX, United Kingdom.