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Places for people
She's played a central role in shaping public spaces all over New Zealand. Now landscape architect and urban planner Rachel de Lambert is dreaming big for Auckland – at the new convention centre, Cornwall Park, Manukau City and more. The city's main problem? "We forgot in a planning sense that cities should be primarily about people," she says.
BIANCA ZANDER: Let's start with that enormous building beside TVNZ. What are some of the challenges in your role as director of urban design on the New Zealand International Convention Centre (NZICC), currently under construction?
RACHEL DE LAMBERT: That's one of the hardest pieces of urban block in Auckland, and the NZICC is a very different kind of convention centre [the project is being designed by Warren & Mahoney in association with Moller Architects and Woods Bagot with input from de Lambert's firm, Boffa Miskell]. It's an urban city convention centre. Most centres are heroic in that they are on a river or waterfront for postcard images and then they'll have a massive great big backside that nobody ever notices, where all the truck docks and all the ugly stuff is. Well, this project is between Hobson, Nelson and Wellesley streets, with TVNZ on the northern side. There is no backside. And all its street frontages are not the best in a pedestrian/public realm. We've made them hugely better, but they're always going to be big routes for vehicular traffic.
So you built a pedestrian laneway through the middle and an air bridge linking it to SkyCity?
We are creating a place that Aucklanders will go because it's got great dumplings or coffee or a wine bar, and it catches afternoon sunlight. We really want convention delegates to explore and spend their money in the city, not just have a waterfront experience. Council's concern was that the air bridge would basically suck everybody off the street, and you wouldn't get all the pedestrians and the hubbub. We had pedestrian modelling done to prove the increase in pedestrians from the NZICC in this part of the city will be about 2000 people or more. It's going to add way more life and energy to the city than any detraction the air bridge will have.
Why are we playing catch-up with this whole concept of a designed city?
You mean, how did it get so bad? We forgot in a planning sense that cities should primarily be about people. Our roads got too big. Where we provide car parking was all about the convenience of the people shopping and the retailer's perception that a car park outside the front door was the only way they'd get anybody to buy anything. Auckland is no different to many cities around the world, in fact now we're doing a lot better than many cities in retrofitting the city back. If you think about the process cities went through with people shifting out into the suburbs, they became places of work that hollowed out at night. Even into the 1980s, Auckland city was seen as a very unsafe place to be in the evening.
What then are the key opportunities for Auckland at this moment of growth and change?
Auckland's really hit that critical mass, with a real range of urban life. The Unitary Plan focusses on compact urban form but also on growth, on expansion. How do we continue to intensify and have more density in the right places in the city, but also how do we get some of those suburban centres to grow and intensify in a way that they feed off the public transport linkages and create really good communities? We need to get the right mix of density and opportunity for work in those places as well, so we're not just setting up more dormitory suburbs to feed the city, [but] we're actually creating a diversified city where people work closer to where they live.
You've created a public domain manual for Manukau City. Now there's an unloved place.
It was the motorway-based city centre in the south, and it's never really taken off. There's practically no residential catchment around it. There's been this perceived blighted poorer neighbourhood [with] concentrations of state housing, but there are great opportunities to bring back decent residential intensification. The Puhinui Stream is a wonderful open space corridor between the regional Botanic Gardens and the city centre and then off out to the west coast. There are things of amenity. Good bones, but none of the critical mass and momentum. These things take time, they're incremental, require a lot of thought, planning, then suddenly hit certain points where it feels like things just sort of happen. Britomart, for example, now has that critical mass and everybody knows about it but it's been 15 years in the making.
Mega malls have a lot to answer for in terms of emptying out suburban town centres. I am an anti-mall person. It's an unfortunate component of our culture. We've created these monochromatic retail experiences that are malls – nobody lives there, you don't interact with them in your normal life, you drive to them. It's the American model. New Lynn was the first mall in New Zealand. In early photos, it was exciting, you could think you were in America, and it has been a real problem. It was a planning approach of the time to separate things out to make them cleaner and safer. You shopped here and worked there and lived somewhere else. The best way is to still look to retrofit the malls to mean they become multidimensional in their character. Sylvia Park, through the Unitary Plan, has the ability to build residential and office [space] as well. If they've got transport links, we should be looking to build residential intensification around them.
You've been involved in the Tāmaki regeneration around Glen Innes. Now there's a town centre with great bones.
Once that intensification happens – which is basically a two-thirds uplift in population density – then the town centre is absolutely going to take off as a new kind of rebuilt sort of place. That Glen Innes centre and mall is still very fine-grained, it's not owned by a single operator. We've looked at lots of really interesting creative, locally based social enterprise as part of the whole regeneration, so it's not just about building more buildings. We're looking to find ways to assist the community to take that step up into employment, or to using their creativity, their own skill sets to actually advance their own lot in life. You can fund into it workspace that people can use free of charge for a year to get a business started, or have a commercial buddy to help give you business and creative advice.
You've looked after Cornwall Park for 30 years. Wonderful place. Hard to get to – unless you drive in…
One of my Auckland Transport beefs is that they don't provide transport to public amenities like parks. We've had conversations with Auckland Transport about connecting public transport to Cornwall Park, and we've got a really bold long-term, audacious plan about taking the cars out of the centre of the park. There's 17 hectares of asphalt in the park at the moment and, yes, there will still be cars, probably, but any car parking we want to take to the perimeter. We'll need some form of transport within the park, but it's likely to be autonomous vehicles: Soft-wheeled, driverless, linked-up little vehicles, if you can't walk anymore or are elderly.
As urbanism takes off, we're going to have to learn to use parks better. New immigrants to Auckland are wise to this already. You live in New York and take a deckchair and newspaper and eat lunch or spend a day in the park. I've never seen people do that, but now, Cornwall Park does get used like that. You go to where the barbecues are on a busy summer weekend day and people are there bright and early staking out their patch. They are there for a day, an extended family thing. I love sitting in Mission Bay watching all the other cultures that are now living in Auckland using that little beach and promenade and eating ice cream and fish n' chips, and all of those things, in a really urbane way.
What are the key risks facing the city – for example, letting cars dominate?
That's the risk. Politically, it's good times for Auckland at the moment. Everybody's supporting investment in more public transport and I think that's important, but the council needs to continue to invest in quality public realm. There's a threat that projects like city light rail aren't sufficiently funded to ensure public amenity and quality of delivery. They're public infrastructure projects and they're very expensive. You can't just say, actually we couldn't afford to give you a really good station – we've just given you a bog-standard station, because it's more important that you get your train running.
If you think of the great metros of the world – Paris, Moscow, New York – and even the new urban stations in Sydney, the investment in architecture and public space as part of the new station is really important.


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Your Challenges
Rising demands and quality awareness as well as increasing cost pressure in the public health sector create high demands on hospitals, pharmaceutical companies,
and manufacturers of medical equipment. For companies within the health care sector, Vector Consulting Services provides professional support in developing and optimizing business processes and performing necessary change management.
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subset: commoncrawl


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20 units
4000 level
Course handbook
The Honours Program in Physics is designed to give students an advanced understanding of specific topics in modern physics through coursework and a research project. PHYS4120 and PHYS4220 comprise a research project related to current research interests in Physics.
Availability2020 Course Timetables
- Semester 1 - 2020
- Semester 2 - 2020
Learning outcomes
On successful completion of the course students will be able to:
1. Competence in researching the scientific literature
2. A significantly enhanced understanding of how to apply their knowledge of physics to real physical systems independently and collaboratively
3. The capacity to devise and employ effective and creative strategies in problem solving, in conducting research, and in analysing and modelling the behaviour of physical systems.
4. Mastery of a range of experimental, theoretical and/or computational techniques
5. An enhanced ability to effectively communicate their knowledge of physics to a wide variety of audiences
PHYS4120 covers the preliminary work towards a major research project supervised by a member of academic staff.
This course is only available to students enrolled in the Bachelor of Science (Honours) program.
Assumed knowledge
A major in Physics with a Credit grade average in at least 40 units of 3000 level physics courses.
Assessment items
Online Learning Activity: Induction Workshop WHS quiz Risk assessment Academic Integrity Module
Presentation: Oral thesis proposal seminar
Literature Review: Written Literature Review and Research Plan
Compulsory Requirements
In order to pass this course, each student must complete ALL of the following compulsory requirements:
General Course Requirements:
- Individual Supervision: Induction Requirement - Students must attend and pass the induction requirements before attending these sessions. - In order to participate in this course students must complete a compulsory safety induction.
Contact hours
Individual Supervision
Face to Face On Campus 2 hour(s) per Week for Full Term
Meeting and laboratory times will be by arrangement with the project supervisor.


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Wednesday, May 23, 2012
CFP: AALS ConLaw Section
Section on Constitutional Law
Call for Papers for January 2013 AALS Annual Meeting Program:
"Forty Years after Rodriguez, 35 Years after Bakke:
Education, Equality and Fundamental Rights"
The Section on Constitutional Law and the Section on Education Law will be holding a joint program at the January 2013 AALS annual meeting. The program topic is "Forty Years after Rodriguez, 35 Years after Bakke: Education, Equality and Fundamental Rights." The program will be held on Friday, January 4, from 2:00-5:00pm.
The panel organized by the Education Law Section will emphasize school financing, forty years after the Supreme Court held in Rodriguez that there is no fundamental right to education under the U.S. Constitution and that public school funding disparities are not subject to close scrutiny.
The Section on Constitutional Law panel will deal primarily with the constitutionality of racial affirmative action in higher education admissions. Among other matters, it will consider the implications of the Court's grant of review in Fisher v. University of Texas, involving an undergraduate affirmative-action admissions program.
The Section on Constitutional Law invites submission of abstracts (of no more than five pages) for purposes of choosing one speaker for this panel. The speaker who is chosen will be expected to produce a paper that can be posted on the AALS web site prior to the annual meeting and that will be published in the Loyola Law Review.
Deadline Date for Submission: August 1, 2012
For more information and submission of abstracts, contact Professor Mark S. Scarberry, Pepperdine University School of Law, mark.scarberry AT pepperdine.edu.
Rodruiguez did not hold that there is no fundamental right to education, it held that there is no fundamental right to an equal education, under circumstances where a minimally adequate education is provided to all children. Whether there is a fundamental right to some education versus no education was not decided. Not much of a difference from how you (or AALS?) characterized the decision, but shouldn't we speak with precision in these matters?
Posted by: Jeffrey G. Purvis | May 24, 2012 7:46:24 AM


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You are looking at 101-120 of 567 articles
Critical Communication Pedagogy: Toward "Hope in Action"
Deanna L. Fassett and C. Kyle Rudick
Critical communication pedagogy (CCP) emerged from an interdisciplinary exploration of the relationships between communication and instruction that draws from and extends critical theory. This critical turn has influenced how the communication studies discipline defines and practices communication education (i.e., learning in communication or how best to teach communication) and instructional communication (i.e., communication in learning, or how communication functions to diminish or support learning across a broad array of contexts), from the one-on-one tutoring session to training and development, and beyond. This critical turn in communication and instruction is characterized by 10 commitments of critical communication pedagogy refigured here along three themes: (1) communication is constitutive, (2) social justice is a process, and (3) the classroom is a site of activism and interpersonal justice.
Critical communication pedagogy is defined by three primary criticisms: (1) CCP focuses on postmodern and constitutive philosophies of communication to the detriment of critical theory, (2) CCP focuses too much on in-class communication to the detriment of activist learning, and (3) CCP is over-reliant on autoethnographic and performative methodologies. An expanded, reinvigorated, and radicalized critical communication pedagogy for communication studies scholars entails greater attention to and extension of critical theory; sustained engagement in and with activism (both within and beyond the classroom); and a more robust engagement of diverse methods of data collection and analysis. Critical communication pedagogy scholarship as militant hope is more relevant than ever in the post-Trump era, signaling a way for communication scholars to cultivate ethics of equity and justice at all levels of education.
Critical Cultural Approaches to Gender and Sex
Claire Sisco King
Within the field of communication studies, critical cultural scholarship examines the interarticulation of power and culture. Drawing from critical theory and cultural studies, this research offers analysis of texts, artifacts, practices, and institutions in order to understand their potential to promote or preempt equality and social justice. Critical theory, which has Marxist origins, uses theory as a basis for critiquing and challenging systems of domination or oppression. The field of cultural studies focuses on social formations with a particular emphasis on media texts and the reception practices of audiences. Both critical theory and cultural studies emphasize the important interrelationship between ideology, or structures of belief, and the material conditions in which people live. Critical cultural research examines discourse and representation, including language and visual culture, as well as social relations, institutional structures, material practices, economic forces, and various forms of embodiment.
Central to critical cultural scholarship is attention to the construction, regulation, and contestation of categories of identity, including race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, ability, and class. A significant branch of critical cultural studies examines how ideas about gender and sex develop and circulate, asking how and why some constructions of gender and sex become normative and gain hegemony—or, cultural privilege—in a particular context. For example, such scholarship might critique the idealization of certain performances of masculinity and the attendant devaluation of femininity or other subordinated masculinities; or, this research might consider how particular iterations of masculinity or femininity may be counter-hegemonic, operating in opposition to prevailing ideologies of gender and sex. Critical cultural approaches also emphasize the intersectionality of gender and sex with other categories of identity. For instance, ideas about masculinity or femininity can rarely be separated from assumptions about race and/or sexuality; as such, prevailing ideologies of gender and sex often reflect the presumed normativity of whiteness and heterosexuality.
Critical Food Studies
Helene A. Shugart
If food studies is an inherently interdisciplinary field of enquiry, communication is central to its uptake in any scholarly context, for food is inherently relational, symbolic, and deeply cultural, a powerful discourse in its own right and imbricated in a host of other discourses. Accordingly, while food studies is a relatively new area of study within the communication discipline, scholarship in that vein has had rather seamless entrée into the broader scholarly arena and has proliferated along the same general lines of investigation that characterize the field in general.
Originally rooted in cultural anthropology, early studies of the cultural significance of food assessed how food both reflects and accomplishes social identity and status, a focus that has been sustained and expanded in more contemporary studies as relevant to how food signals and mobilizes particular identities, such as race/ethnicity, nation, class, gender, and sexuality. Matters of identity are sometimes apparent in studies of the role(s) of food in global flows, including globalization, colonization, immigration, diaspora, and tourism. Much of this scholarship also or instead takes up food in terms of production and consumption, assessing the politics, economics, and geographies of food. Endeavors in this vein, in global, national, and local contexts, examine food policies and patterns of industry and how they privilege certain interests while disenfranchising others: food safety, security, and justice feature prominently in these investigations. These motifs are reflected, as well, in scholarship that examines social movements around food that seek to disrupt or resist problematic industry and farming policies and/or practices as relevant to, for example, environmental exigencies, animal welfare, eradication of the local, and availability of and/or access to safe, healthy foods.
The mediation of food is perhaps a natural subject of study for communication scholars, ranging from representations of food in film to food packaging and advertising. The recent rise of "foodie" culture has generated a proliferation of media fare, signaled by indices ranging from the now recognized genre of "food films," to multiple television networks devoted to food, to the rise of "celebrity chefs"; food is, moreover, an increasing presence on the Internet, proliferating especially across social media. The imaginaries of authenticity and egalitarianism and the materialities of class that frequently drive foodie culture have been the focus of much of this scholarship, and they have been further identified as figuring prominently in urban practices ranging from the establishment of farmers' markets to gentrification.
Even within the communication discipline, food studies is a wide-ranging topic, but it is not simply a diverse subject of study for communication scholars. The inherently liminal and malleable nature of food renders it difficult if not impossible to engage or theorize in terms of conventional binaries or rifts that characterize many if not most fields, such as subject/object and self/other; perhaps most salient for the communication discipline, food denies the particularly nettlesome materiality/discursivity binary. Accordingly, food studies holds considerable promise for the field relevant to theoretical innovation and expansion.
Critical Perspectives on Humanitarian Discourses
Marouf Hasian Jr.
Critical studies of humanitarian discourses involve the study of the arguments, claims, and evidence that are used to justify intervention or non-intervention in key local, regional, national, or international contexts. These discourses can take the form of arguing over whether we should practice isolationism and not intervene in the sovereign affairs of other countries, or they can take the form of deliberations over the transcend needs of populations that cope with myriad disasters. In some cases these discourses are produced by foreigners who believe that the less fortunate need to be rescued from their misery, while at other times humanitarian discourses can be used in discussions about the human rights of the disempowered. Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), nation-states, celebrities, medical communications, and militaries are just a few of the rhetors that produce all of these humanitarian discourses.
Critical Perspectives Toward Cultural and Communication Research
Joshua F. Hoops and Jolanta A. Drzewiecka
Critical perspectives toward culture and communication address how power and macro historical, institutional, and economic structures shape and constrain interpersonal, intergroup, and mediated communication. Scholars critique forms of domination and examine how oppressed communities resist and subvert power structures to identify possibilities for change and emancipation; some strive to become public intellectuals engaged in activism in solidarity with disadvantaged communities. Analyses uncover multiplicity and fluidity of meanings and dislodge essentialist and ideological closures in interactions and discourses. This approach has been shaped by critical theory of the Frankfurt School, European poststructural and critical theories, British cultural studies, and postcolonial theories. Critical scholarship is diverse, interdisciplinary, and multimethodological. Critical scholars are self-reflexive of their own social positioning in relation to research topics and participants.
Culture, the key concept, is conceptualized as a site of multiple meanings and differences that are loci of power struggles and contestations amidst daily practices and power structures. Culture is a site of mixing and fusions across borders as groups struggling for power attempt to restrict meanings, categories, and practices. Identity and its categories, such as race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, etc., have multiple and shifting meanings that are nevertheless contingently fixed within structures supporting domination of some groups. Concepts such as diaspora, hybridity, and intersectionality address indeterminacy of belonging. Other main concepts include difference, articulation, ideology, hegemony, interpellation, and articulation.
Critical Whiteness Studies
Shannon Sullivan
Critical whiteness studies can be understood in terms of three overlapping waves ranging from the national to the international and from the 19th to the 21st centuries. Beginning in the Reconstruction era in the United States, the first wave criticized whiteness in the form of protection of white femininity, possessive ownership, and the public and psychological wages paid to white people during Jim Crow America. The second wave began after the end of World War II, when challenges to legalized racial segregation and European colonialism flourished. The third wave, whose beginning can be marked roughly at the end of the 20th century, is distinguished by increased examination of nonblack immigrants' relation to whiteness, the growing number of white authors contributing to the field, and a blossoming international range of critical studies of whiteness.
Cross-Cultural Adaptation
Young Yun Kim
Countless immigrants, refugees, and temporary sojourners, as well as domestic migrants, leave the familiar surroundings of their home culture and resettle in a new cultural environment for varying lengths of time. Although unique in individual circumstances, all new arrivals find themselves in need of establishing and maintaining a relatively stable working relationship with the host environment. The process of adapting to an unfamiliar culture unfolds through the stress-adaptation-growth dynamic, a process that is deeply rooted in the natural human tendency to achieve an internal equilibrium in the face of adversarial environmental conditions. The adaptation process typically begins with the psychological and physiological experiences of dislocation and duress commonly known as symptoms of culture shock. Over time, through continuous activities of new cultural learning, most people are able to attain increasing levels of functional and psychological efficacy vis-a-vis the host environment. Underpinning the cross-cultural adaptation process are the two interrelated experiences of deculturation of some of the original cultural habits, on the one hand, and acculturation of new ones, on the other. The cumulative outcome of the acculturation and deculturation experiences is an internal transformation in the direction of assimilation into the mainstream culture. Long-term residents and immigrants are also likely to undergo an identity transformation, a subtle and largely unconscious shift from a largely monocultural to an increasingly intercultural self-other orientation, in which conventional, ascription-based cultural categories diminish in relevance while individuality and common humanity play an increasingly significant role in one's daily existence. Central to this adaptation process are one's ability to communicate in accordance to the norms and practices of the host culture and continuous and active engagement in the interpersonal and mass communication activities of the host society.
Cross-Cultural Romantic Relationships
Ge Gao
Romantic relationships are an essential part of human experience. As the world becomes more integrated, people from different cultural backgrounds and traditions unavoidably meet and fall in love. An understanding of the role that culture plays in how we fall in love and stay in love is not only relevant, but also necessary in promoting healthy development of romantic relationships. Cross-cultural romantic relationships refer to romantic relationships across national boundaries, such as romantic relationships in China and the United States.
Crowdsourcing in Journalism
Tanja Aitamurto
Advances in digital technologies and participatory culture have enabled the efficient use of crowdsourcing in a broad range of contexts, including journalism. Journalism is increasingly deploying crowdsourcing as a knowledge-search method and a means of engaging readers. Through crowdsourcing, journalists can tap into the collective intelligence of large online crowds. The knowledge-search mechanism is based on access to the information held by the crowd.
Using crowdsourcing, journalists can find otherwise inaccessible information that contributes to their investigations. In several countries, crowdsourced investigations have uncovered important news, including lawbreaking and corruption. Crowdsourcing can also unveil a broader range of perspectives about a story topic, leading to more inclusive and objective journalism. As a result, crowdsourcing can support the journalistic norms of accurate, objective, and transparent reporting. Moreover, it engages participants and fosters a stronger relationship between readers and journalists. Finally, in its use of crowdsourcing journalism can enact more efficiently in its monitorial role in society.
At the same time, however, crowdsourcing may compromise the journalistic goals of accuracy and objectivity. A crowd is a self-selected group, so its input reflects a participant bias. If this fact is overlooked, crowdsourcing can lead to biased reporting. Moreover, a direct connection with the crowd can increase pressure on journalists to conform to the crowd's wishes instead of pursuing journalistic norms and news values. This pressure can be especially strong in crowdfunding, a subtype of crowdsourcing.
Crypto-Discourse, Internet Freedom, and the State
Isadora Hellegren
Internet freedom is a process. Internet freedom takes place through a myriad of practices, such as technology development, media production, and policy work, through which various actors, existing within historical, cultural, economic, and political contexts, continuously seek to determine its meaning. Some of these practices take place within traditional Internet governance structures, yet others take place outside of these. Crypto-discourse refers to a partially fixed instance of the process in which actors seek to construct the meaning of Internet freedom that mainly takes place outside of traditional Internet governance structures.
Crypto-discourse describes a process in which specific communities of crypto-advocates (groups of cryptographers, hackers, online privacy advocates, and technology journalists) attempt to define Internet freedom through community practices such as technological development and descriptive portrayals of encryption within interconnected communities that seek to develop and define encryption software, as well as through the dissemination of these developments and portrayals within and outside of these communities. The discursive work of the cypherpunks, interrelated discourse communities, and related technology journalism is at the core of crypto-discourse. Through crypto-discourse, crypto-advocates employ encryption software as an arena of negotiation. The representation of encryption software serves as a battlefield in a larger discursive struggle to define the meaning of Internet freedom.
Crypto-discourse illustrates how social practices have normative implications for Internet governance debates regarding Internet freedom and in particular expectations for state authorities to uphold online rights. The relationship between freedom and the state that these crypto-advocates articulate as a response to specific events excludes other possible positive notions of Internet freedom in which the state has an obligation to ensure the protection of online rights.
Cultivation in Health and Risk Messaging
Mohan Jyoti Dutta, Satveer Kaur-Gill, and Naomi Tan
Cultivation theory examines the effects of the media, mainly television on viewer perception over an extended period of time. Television is seen by people throughout the globe, with many spending considerable amounts of time watching the medium. The act of watching television has been described as the first leisure activity to cut across social and ethnic divisions in society. This made it a unique mass media tool because mass message dissemination to diverse groups in a population was made possible. Cultivation scholars have studied the effects of the medium, trying to understand how television content can alter one's social reality. Heavy viewers are considered to be most susceptible to the effects of cultivation. The reality of these effects poses important questions for health communication scholars considering the role television plays in disseminating health messages. Health communication scholars became interested in studying cultivation to understand the health-related effects the medium could have on viewers. Understanding the health effects of television is pivotal, considering that television and the structures that constitute television content set the agendas for many health topics, often disseminating negative and positive messages that can impact society, especially the young and impressionable. With television content addressing health issues such as nutrition, diet, body image, tobacco, cancer, drugs, obesity, and women's health, cultivation theory can offer health communication scholars a framework to understand how health behaviors are shaped by the mass media and the roles these media play in reinforcing unhealthy behaviors. By establishing a basis for studying how such portrayals have direct health-related effects on viewers, cultivation theory creates openings for questioning the structures of the media that put out unhealthy content and for interrogating the roles and responsibilities of media agenda in inculcating positive health messages. Directions for future research include looking at contextually contrasting populations that share different cultural and community values, and different ways of consuming television. Research questions exploring the roles of community structures with different sets of subjective norms, or with different roles of community norms, in the realm of cultivation effects offer new areas for exploration.
Cultural and Creative Industries
Vicki Mayer
The critical study of cultural and creative industries involves the interrogation of the ways in which different social forces impact the production of culture, its forms, and its producers as inherently creative creatures. In historical terms, the notion of "the culture industry" may be traced to a series of postwar period theorists whose concerns reflected the industrialization of mass cultural forms and their attendant marketing across public and private spheres. For them, the key terms alienation and reification spoke to the negative impacts of an industrial cycle of production, distribution, and consumption, which controlled workers' daily lives and distanced them from their own creative expressions. Fears of the culture industry drove a mass culture critique that led social scientists to address the structures of various media industries, the division of labor in the production of culture, and the hegemonic consent between government and culture industries in the military-industrial complex. The crisis of capitalism in the 1970s further directed critical scholars to theorize new dialectics of cultural production, its flexibilization via new communications technologies and transnational capital flows, as well as its capture via new property regimes. Reflecting government discourses for capital accumulation in a post-industrial economy, these theories have generally subsumed cultural industries into a creative economy composed of a variety of extra-industrial workers, consumers, and communicative agents. Although some social theorists have extended cultural industry critiques to the new conjuncture, more critical studies of creative industries focus on middle-range theories of power relations and contradictions within particular industrial sites and organizational settings. Work on immaterial labor, digital enclosures, and production cultures have developed the ways creative industries are both affective and effective structures for the temporal and spatial formation of individuals' identities.
Cultural Communication
Patricia Olivia Covarrubias
An enduring problem for all people is the universal call for figuring out how to live together. This problem, which requires some measure of organization, quintessentially is responded to and managed in and through communication. That is, humans coordinate their daily meaningful actions via situated webs of linguistic and nonlinguistic means during the course of daily social interactions. These situated webs can be interpreted as cultural codes about communication. Further, and importantly, these codes vary across social groupings—and the codes are distinctive. This distinctiveness arises from the reality that societies shape their respective codes according to their local means and meanings; that is, to their own sets of beliefs, values, and rules for managing their lives individually and collectively.
The communicative means and meanings in and by which humans create meaningful lives are the central concern of cultural communication, which is defined as follows: the social enactment of learned systems of symbolic resources, premises, rules, emotions, spatial orientations, and notions of time that groups of people use to shape distinctive and meaningful communal identities, relationships, and ways of living and being. Indeed, cultural communication pertains to the use of language and other communicative means to carry out the activities and commitments of their particular communities in and through the use of symbolic resources. These resources include verbal and nonverbal means, as well as the rules for using and interpreting them.
This paper is inspired by a number of scholars of cultural communication, including Dell Hymes, who conceptualized the ethnography of communication (EOC); Gerry Philipsen and his notion of codes of communication; and the many scholars who have followed their leads.
The definition of cultural communication requires some fleshing out—and in particular, the tension between the individual and the communal that exists within the concept of cultural communication needs attention. Empirically accessed, real-life examples of locations where communication can be seen, heard, felt, and experienced help to explicate cultural communication. Such examples include cultural terms, silence practices, terms of address, rituals, and social dramas. Indeed, cultural communication treats culture and people, not with wide brushstrokes where the features of daily life occur uniformly and generically, but rather as unique sets of social actors whose lives are composed of intricate webs of nuanced expressions and attendant meanings, wherein each enactor plays a part in animating the symbolic resources that comprise their richly diverse schemes of life.
Cultural Fusion Theory
Eric Mark Kramer
Cultural fusion is the process of integrating new information and generating new cultural forms. Cultural fusion theory recognizes the world as a churning information environment of cultural legacies, competing and complementing one another, forming novel cultural expressions in all aspects of life, including music, cuisine, pedagogy, legal systems, governance, economic behavior, spirituality, healthcare, norms of personal and interpersonal style, family structures, and so forth. This is a process of pan-evolution, involving countless channels, not merely two cultures coming together to form a third, hybrid culture. During this process the traditional pace and form of change is itself changing. Cultures are also transformed as a result of the churning process of an emergent global semantic field generated by countless networked exchanges.
Cultural Identities
Yea-Wen Chen and Hengjun Lin
Within the discipline of communication, the concept of "cultural identities" has captivated, fascinated, and received sustained attention from scholars of communication and culture over time. Like the concept of "culture," which is varied, complex, and at times contested, the study of cultural identity has been approached from diverse lenses, whether theoretically, methodologically, or ontologically. In one sense, cultural identity can be understood as the experience, enactment, and negotiation of dynamic social identifications by group members within particular settings. As an individual identifies with—or desires acceptance into—multiple groups, people tend to experience, enact, or negotiate not just one cultural identity at a time but often multiple cultural identities at once. Further, how one experiences her/his intersecting cultural identities with others can vary from context to context depending on the setting, the issue at hand, the people involved, etc. Not surprisingly, intercultural communication scholars have contributed quite a number of theories concerning cultural identities within communication interactions: co-cultural theory, cultural contract theory, and identity negotiation theory, to name a few. In addition, intercultural communication scholars have offered rich cases that examine dynamic enactments, negotiations, or contestations of cultural identities across important contexts such as race, media, and globalization. Ultimately, the study of cultural identities offers rich understandings for both oneself and others. As the world that we inhabit is becoming increasingly diverse, the study of cultural identities will continue to gain traction within the communication discipline and beyond.
Cultural Imperialism and Communication
Oliver Boyd-Barrett
Central to many definitions of the term "cultural imperialism" is the idea of the culture of one powerful civilization, country, or institution having great unreciprocated influence on that of another, less powerful, entity to a degree that one may speak of a measure of cultural "domination." Cultural imperialism has sometimes been described as a theory, especially where scholars build a case that the cultural influence of the stronger entity has had a pervasive, pernicious impact on the weaker.
The term evolved from 1960s neo-Marxist discourses within cultural, media, and postcolonial studies that contextualized the post–World War II "independence" wave of new nations emerging from colonial servitude. It was propelled by the writings of nationalist revolutionaries, revolutionary theorists, and their sympathizers of the 1950s and 1960s, but it has sweeping relevance across human history. The foremost western theorist of cultural imperialism in the West was Herbert Schiller. The concept was adopted and endorsed in the 1970s by both UNESCO and the Non-Aligned Movement.
Following Oliver Boyd-Barrett, the concept may denote a field of study embracing all relationships between phenomena defined as "cultural" and as "imperialism." These encompass cultural changes that are (1) enforced on a weaker entity and (2) occur within both stronger and weaker entities through contact, contest, and resistance, including (3) assimilation of social practices encountered by the stronger in the weaker entity, and (4) original hybrids manifesting cultural traces of both stronger and weaker entities.
The concepts of cultural and media imperialism were much critiqued during the 1980s and 1990s, and many scholars preferred alternative concepts such as globalization and cultural globalization to analyze issues of intercultural contact, whether asymmetrical or otherwise. John Tomlinson critiqued the concept, identified four different discourses of cultural imperialism, and argued in favor of its substitution with the term "globalization." Mirrlees has placed Tomlinson's work in context by describing the dialectical—parallel but mutually aware—development of both a cultural imperialism and a cultural globalization paradigm. Both are influential in the 21st century.
"Imperialism" commonly references relations of conquest, dominance, and hegemony between civilizations, nations, and communities. "Cultural imperialism" relates primarily to the cultural manifestations of such relations. Culture and empire relate in many different ways, fueling different theories that often play on dichotomous discourses, including territorial/non-territorial, totalistic/partial, benign/malign, ephemeral/perpetual, superficial/essential, voluntary/involuntary, intended/unintended, welcome/unwelcome, forceful/peaceful, noticed/unnoticed, linear/interactive, homogeneous/heterogeneous, and acceded/resisted.
The concept has affinities with hegemony, the idea that stability in conditions of social inequality is achieved not mainly by force but by securing the consent of the masses (starting with co-option of their indigenous leaders)—through persuasion and propaganda—to the elite's view of the world. This process is commensurate with forms of democracy that provide the appearance but not the reality of choice and control. Fissures within the ranks of the elites and within the masses create spaces for resistance and change.
Culture encompasses the totality of social practices of a given community. Social practices are manifest within social institutions such as family, education, healthcare, worship, labor, recreation, language, communication, and decision-making, as well as their corresponding domains. Any of these can undergo change following a society's encounter with exogenous influences—most dramatically so when stronger powers impose changes through top-down strategies of command and influence.
Analysis of cultural imperialism often incorporates notions of media imperialism with reference to (1) print, electronic, and digital media—their industrialization, production, distribution, content, and capital accumulation; (2) cultural meanings that media evoke among receivers and audience cultures; (3) audience and media interactions in representations of topics, people, and ideas; and (4) relationships between media corporations and other centers of power in the reproduction and shaping of social systems.
Media are logically subsumed as important components of cultural imperialism. Yet the significance of media can be understated. The concept of mediatization denotes that "knowledge" of social practices draws heavily on media representations. Social practices that are experienced as direct may themselves be formed through exposure to media representations or performed for media.
Discourses of cultural imperialism speak to major current controversies, including: cultural suppression and genocide; ideas of "globalization"; influential economic models of "capitalism" and "neoliberalism"; ideologies that are embedded in the global spread of concepts such as "modern," "progressive," "growth," "development," "consumerism," "free market," "freedom," "democracy," "social Darwinism" and "soft power"; cultural specificity of criteria and procedures for establishing "truth"; instrumentalization for the purposes of cultural conquest of academic disciplines such as psychoanalysis, economics, social anthropology, or marketing, or environmental crises, especially as linked to western ideologies that underwrite humanity's "right" to dominate nature.
Cultural Journalism
Kristina Riegert, Anna Roosvall, and Andreas Widholm
Cultural journalism is a subfield of journalism that encompasses what is known as arts journalism. While arts journalism is characterized by reviews, critique, news, and essays about the arts and popular culture, cultural journalism has a broader take on culture, including lifestyle issues, societal debate, and reflective ethical discussion by cultural personas or expressed in a literary style. Both arts and cultural journalists see their work as "journalism with a difference," evoking different perspectives and worldviews from those dominating mainstream news reporting. At the same time, cultural journalism shares with journalism issues like boundary work, genre blurring, digitalization, globalization, professionalization, and "the crisis of journalism." There are three main ways cultural journalism has been studied: one research strand defines cultural journalism as material produced by the cultural desks or material that is explicitly labelled cultural journalism; another defines it as journalism about culture, regardless of how it is labelled or produced; and a third strand includes only arts journalism, examining journalistic content on the fine arts and popular culture. Studies from all of these approaches are included in this article due to the effort to include a wide variety of countries at different time periods and an effort to track joint defining features and developments in cultural journalism. The emphasis is on the Nordic context, where the term "cultural journalism" is well established and where research is relatively comprehensive. The research is divided into three themes: the cultural public sphere and the contribution to democracy; cultural journalism's professionalism and the challenges of digitalization; and transnational and global aspects of cultural journalism, including tendencies such as cultural homogenization and hybridization.
International research on cultural journalism as a subfield has been complicated by its varying designations (arts journalism, feuilleton, journalism about culture, entertainment), and its numerous aesthetic forms, disciplines, or types of culture, all of which are changing over time. Despite these issues, research points in the same direction: the amount of cultural journalism is increasing, and the boundaries against other types of journalism are becoming more porous. There is also a decline in editorial autonomy. In common with journalism, there is an increase in generalists working with culture and greater central managerial control in new multiplatform media organizations. The research points to an increase in a more transnationally oriented cultural journalism, mainly through a larger share of cultural news and popular culture—while its core, review and critique, has changed in character, or arguably lost ground. The increasing "newsification" of cultural journalism should prompt future research on whether the "watchdog" role vis-à-vis the cultural industries is growing. New forms of art and culture are beginning to get coverage, but also, in some cases, the intermixing of "lifestyle" with cultural journalism. The commercialization and celebrity aspects of this are clear, but new digital platforms have also enabled new voices and different formats of cultural journalism and a wider dissemination and intensity in cultural debates, all of which emphasize its democratic potential. New research on this subject appears to focus on the longitudinal changes in cultural journalism, the implications of digitalization and globalization, and cultural journalism in broadcasting.
Cultural Studies and Communication
Toby Miller
Communication and cultural studies share turbulent and contradictory histories, epistemologies, methods, and geographies, both on their own and as partners and rivals. This is in keeping with their status as interdisciplinary areas that emerged in the early to mid-20th century and crossed the humanities and the social sciences. Communication and cultural studies are linked and distinguished both by the topics they analyze and by their politics, countries, disciplines, theories, languages, and methods. Whereas the dominant forms of communication studies are dedicated to scholarly objectivity and disciplinary coherence, cultural studies is more akin to a tendency connected to concerns and identities on the margins of academia, and committed to methodological diversity. And whereas the critical strand of communication studies, notably political economy, examines such social forces of domination as the state and capital, cultural studies investigates the struggles undertaken by ordinary people to interpret dominant cultural forms in terms of their conditions of existence. The supposedly pessimistic orientation of political economy is frequently eschewed in favor of a faith in the resistive qualities of the oppressed and silenced. A similar perspective characterizes cultural studies' rejection of effects studies for neglecting the politicized way that active audiences interpret media texts. In place of such concerns, the dominant strands of cultural studies tend to favor aesthetic and anthropological ways of analyzing societies to examine subjectivity and power and work with the understanding that popular culture represents and creates rituals and vice versa, through institutions and discourses that construct identities, which in turn form them.
Culture, a Social Determinant of Health and Risk: Considerations for Health and Risk Messaging
Juliet Iwelunmor and Collins Airhihenbuwa
We provide an overview on the role of culture in addressing the social determinants of health and risk. The fact that everyone is influenced by a set of locally defined forms of behavior means that while not overtly expressed, culture's effects can be ubiquitous, influencing everything including the conditions in which people are born, grow, work, live, and age, and the wider set of forces and systems shaping health and risk messaging. While the dynamic nature of culture is underestimated and often not reflected in most research, efforts to close the gap on social determinants of health and risk will require greater clarity on what culture is and how it impacts culture-sensitive health communication. Thus, the paper begins by reviewing why culture is so vital and relevant to any attempts to improve health and reduce health inequalities. We discuss what is meant by the term "culture" through a narrative synthesis of historical and recent progress in definitions of culture. We conclude by describing three distinct cultural frameworks for health that illustrate how culture can be effectively used as a vehicle through which to address culturally sensitive health communication in local and global contexts. Overall, we believe that culture is indispensable and important for addressing inequalities and inequities in health as well as for facilitating culture-sensitive health communication strategies that will ultimately close the gap on the social determinants of health and risk.
A Culture-Centered Approach to Health and Risk Communication
Mohan Jyoti Dutta
This is an advance summary of a forthcoming article in the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Communication. Please check back later for the full article.
Health and risk are constituted globally amid structures of unequal flow of labor, capital, commodities, and communication, shaped by the material inequalities in the distribution of resources. Globalization—the accelerated flow of goods, people, services, and capital across spaces—has been accompanied by large inequalities in economic access to resources; inequalities in access to health opportunities, health resources, and health care services; and inequalities in health outcomes (reflected in mortality and morbidity rates). Disparities in health outcomes observed within and across nation states are shaped by economic inequalities, noting the structural determinants of health, the inequities in access to health services, as well as the local-national-global policies that constitute health. Drawing upon the foundations in postcolonial and Subaltern Studies theories, the culture-centered approach (CCA) examines the communicative processes by which marginalization takes place in global contexts and the ways in which health risks and vulnerabilities are constituted amid material inequalities in distributions of resources.
With an emphasis on the processes of erasure of diverse voices, the CCA asks the question: What are the processes, strategies, and tactics through which the voices of subaltern communities are erased? The access to communicative spaces, platforms, strategies, and tools is shaped within material structures, thus shaping messages, processes, and discourses within the agendas of powerful political, social, and economic actors with economic access to resources. The disenfranchised, with limited access to the communicative spaces and to the spheres of voicing, are often absent from the discursive spaces where health policies and programs are discussed, the sites where interventions are planned, and the processes where communicative strategies targeting them are carried out. The agency of the subaltern is erased from the sites of recognition and representation where policies are debated, decided upon, implemented, and evaluated.
Connecting communication to materiality, the CCA suggests that erasure of the subaltern sectors of the globe is tied to their material disenfranchisement. Materially disenfranchised communities are missing from the policy platforms that target them through a wide variety of interventions. To understand the unequal distribution of health resources and opportunities, we need to closely examine the inequality in opportunities for having a voice and for participating in decision-making structures and processes. Putting forth the argument that inequalities in health outcomes need to be situated amid economic structures that determine how health resources will be distributed and the ways in which these mechanisms will be discussed and determined, the CCA foregrounds strategies for listening to voices that have hitherto been erased. Through strategies of listening, locally grounded understandings are placed within the discursive spaces of policy formulation and program development. In understanding the health experiences of communities that experience poor health outcomes, the emphasis is on creating spaces for listening that foreground local experiences, interpretations, and understanding. Alternative imaginations of the political economy of health are rooted in the voices of local communities at the margins, foregrounding contextually embedded interpretive frames for organizing health, healing, and curing.
Communication is understood in relationship to materiality, acknowledging the interplays between the symbolic and the material in generating health risks and vulnerabilities, and further suggesting strategies of resistance and participation that seek to invert these inequities by foregrounding subaltern rationalities of health and wellbeing. The presence of subaltern voices brings forth alternative imaginations of health, offering new theoretical frameworks that point toward alternative ways of structuring health, economics, and politics. Attending to differentials in distributions of material and communicative infrastructures, the CCA resists the marginalization of the subaltern sectors through the foregrounding of opportunities for local grassroots participation, in the definition of problem configurations and in the corresponding articulations of locally meaningful solutions. The presence of subaltern voices in discursive spaces offers alternative logics of political and economic organizing that challenge the commoditization of health as private property and suggests ideas of health rooted in community life, sustainable practices, and cooperative economies. Local interpretations of health are foregrounded, situated in relationship to the structures within which these meanings are constituted and fostering openings for imagining new structures of health grounded in local understandings. These local understandings offer entry points of solidarity for re-envisioning global practices that challenge the hegemony of neoliberalism as a universal solution to health and development.


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Marlborough's mayor is moving forward to construct a building for the current purpose of a senior center on Ward Park. If the City allows this to happen, it will set precedence for all Marlborough parks to be built on. Sadly, we'se seen parks become fenced-in climbing structures with no room for children to run and develop. We should stand up for the right to revitalize our parks without constructing municipal buildings on them!
Citizens should be aware a respected land-use attorney has written opinion that Ward Park is protected by Article 97 of the State Constitution. The city's own "Open Space and Recreation" document reports Ward Park as protected land.
The Executive Office of Environmental and Energy Affairs policy (EOEEA), which exists for protecting park land, states all alternatives to protected land must be explored, and cost cannot be the factor to dismiss a site. Is there really no alternative in all of Marlborough? EOEEA policy also states that if a city builds on protected land, they will deny grant money for any projects citywide. Did we not just greatly benefit
$400,000 for revitalizing Memorial Beach? Do we want to end a relationship with an agency providing funds for projects to improve Marlborough? Trying to build at the proposed site will be so costly, ethically and financially. Massachusetts Law states the Recreation Commission is required to determine the land is no longer needed for recreation. Really, we don't need that space for recreation?
Even the concept of building on park land just sits wrong on our conscience. We must be good stewards of our parks and protect spaces for children. Tell the Councilors and Mayor not to build on ANY part of our historic park land. This land was dedicated to youth of the city and has been used so for 88 years.
Faith and Michael Nickolas


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75% Decline in Monsoon Rainfall Leaves Mumbai High & Dry
photo: Sajjad Lambe via flickr
Having only received 25% of the
monsoonal rainfall normally expected by this time of the year Mumbai, India is experiencing "acute water shortages" for the first time in living memory, the BBC reports. This has caused city officials to reduce water supplies by 30%, impacting households as well as hospitals and hotels: One Lake Has Two Week Supply Remaining
Mumbai's water supply comes from five main lakes, all of which are replenished by seasonal rainfall and have water levels 4-10 meters lower than last year. One lake is so depleted that it has water sufficient to last three weeks, with two others having water sufficient for about two months.
Water Supply Reduced to 45 Minutes a Day
The BBC quotes a south Mumbai resident as saying that the supply cuts means that her house gets only about 45 minutes of water a day now.
The fact that she only received running water for two hours prior to the cuts says something about the adequacy of Mumbai's water to serve its 20 million residents, but that's talking things further afield.
More: BBC News
Water Crisis
What It Looks Like When the Water Crisis Slaps You in the Face - Less Food
Los Angeles Doubles Fines for Water Wasters
South Asian Monsoon Rains Could be Delayed, Decrease in Intensity Due to Climate Change


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Compliance with PCI DSS should be considered the minimal level of security and does not ensure that an organisation is secure. However, compliance should ensure that an organisation has in place the procedures, policies and work practices that will reduce the possibility of a cardholder data breach, and, improve the effectiveness of an investigation of a breach.
Within the PCI DSS standard it refers to a 'trusted' network, which is the environment within which the cardholder's data is identified as being either processed, stored or transmitted. A key point about the standard and its related standards and guidelines is that they have been written to protect cardholder data as it is processed, stored or transmitted and, not necessarily to protect the entire infrastructure of an organisation from all security threats as it is a very specific and focused standard.
Scope of PCI compliance
The best method to making the process of implementing and gaining compliance with the PCI DSS standard easier, is to reduce the scope of the implementation – which is the size of the environment involved with cardholder data. This can be achieved by reducing the footprint of cardholder data within your organisation's environment by analysis of where cardholder data is stored, processed or transmitted. Reducing the amount of locations within the organisations environment where cardholder data is handled and segregating the cardholder data from other areas of the organisations environment, creates a trusted environment making the rest of the infrastructure and the internet a non-trusted environment – doing this reduces the scope for implementing the standard. In fact, if it is possible, completely remove cardholder data from the environment. This will take the environment completely out of the scope. However, if third parties are handling cardholder data for you, the responsibility for ensuring they are doing so within the requirements of the standard remains with your organisation.
Any part of an organisation, including its infrastructure where cardholder data is processed, stored or transmitted will be within scope, is known as the cardholder data environment (CDE) and is required to be protected (becomes trusted). Any part of the organisation and infrastructure that is out of scope, and the public internet, is considered untrusted.
CDE and the untrusted environment
The standard looks at the protection between the CDE and the untrusted environment. The standard covers all aspects of providing protection, not only technical controls but policies about those employees who have access to the cardholder data and the trusted environment, as well as measures to help with the investigation of breaches.
In order to identify where cardholder data is within your organisations environment, it is necessary to track the flow of data across the infrastructure which requires up to date network documentation and knowledge of the processes within the organisation. You need to examine the data flow, starting from where it enters your environment; this can be through a gateway from the internet onto the network, via phone lines, the postal system or via fax. Following the movement of the data from its entry point(s), through the organisation, until it permanently leaves organisation or is destroyed, will identify all the components that are involved in the processing, storage and transmission of the cardholder data.
Factors involved in handling card holder data
At the PCI Foundation Course I am teaching, I always stress the point that the systems involved in handling cardholder data not only include the hardware and software of the infrastructure, but everything connected to the CDE. This means they include the employees of the organisation who handle the data processing, phone calls, post, fax, maintenance of the infrastructure, administration of servers etc. It will also cover your own organisation as well as any third party organisations (known as service providers) who may be processing, storing or transmitting cardholder data on your behalf, such as, IT support organisations who have administrator rights to firewalls, routers or servers.
Data Flow Analysis
Analysis of the data flow should not only cover the active processing, storage or transmission of cardholder data, but include the storage and processing of the backup media that may contain cardholder data including those that are stored off-site.
Upon completion of the analysis of the flow of cardholder data through the organisation, it would be desirable to reduce the scope of the CDE by segregating the environment where the cardholder data is, from the rest of the environment. As well as reducing the number of systems and processes where cardholder data is handled.
In addition to identifying where cardholder data is expected to be, steps should be taken to ensure that cardholder data is not located in places where it is not expected to be; i.e. in a spreadsheet on the desktop of a data analyst who generated a report on a database containing cardholder data. In order to examine the whole environment of an organisation for unknown locations of cardholder data, techniques from e-Discovery can be used. All of the identified locations should match the data flow analysis results; any mismatch shows cardholder data is being held in unidentified locations that are not part of the normal data flow.
Conducting a scoping exercise is only part of the story. The documentation of the reasons for identifying the CDE and, reducing the scope from covering the whole organisation to a sub-set of the organisation (trusted network), needs to be kept for reference by any auditor. It is typical of the requirements within the PCI DSS that not only is evidence of controls required, but the business decisions behind those controls need to be captured in the PCI-DSS documentation.
In the following blog entries I will be examining the requirements of the PCI DSS in turn.
For professional advice on PCI DSS compliance contact IT Governance on 0845 070 1750 or by email to email@example.com.
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I have bought CrazyFlie indoor-bundle and additonally flow deck. I am looking forward to fly some CrazyFlie
Until my items are here, I was checking the python libraries and example codes as well as tutorials about setting LPS.
My first question: How can I define or determine my (0,0,0) point in LPS? or Can I locate my CrazyFlie in some point on my tracking area and set it as (0,0,0) point? so it will be kind of local center
My second question is regarding the navigating my CrazyFlie in 3D (x,y,z). So I basically want to give a command to CrazyFlie "fly to (x,y,z)". Should I use the following code in the Motion_Commander library:
Code: Select all
def move_distance(self, distance_x_m, distance_y_m, distance_z_m,velocity=VELOCITY):
or Should I use the following code iin the Commander library:
Best Regards
Code: Select all
def send_position_setpoint(self, x, y, z, yaw):


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Monday, April 23, 2012
Sunday, April 08, 2012
E' Pasqua!
posted by ♥Edina♥ a 1:03 pm 0 click and leave your comments
Thursday, April 05, 2012
Questa mattina ho ricevuto una mail che mi ha lasciata BASITA, eccola ed ecco perchè, d'ora in poi, NON CONSUMERO' PIU' NULLA DELLA FERRERO O DELLA LINDT!!!
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Nick Allardice, Change.org
Date: 2012/4/5
Subject: Easter scandal
From: Nick Allardice, Change.org
Date: 2012/4/5
Subject: Easter scandal
Children as young as seven are enduring 16-hour days and beatings to produce the cocoa that major companies use to make chocolate. And only days before Easter, these companies are desperately competing with each other to maximise profits.
It's their most lucrative holiday period -- but their profits will come from modern day child slavery. And while every other major chocolate company has already taken steps to ensure their cocoa isn't harvested by children, Lindt and Ferrero continue to put massive profits ahead of basic child welfare.
Childcare worker Morgan Rayner loves chocolate. But when she found out about the children farming the cocoa, she could only imagine her 9-year-old little brother in their shoes. She's started a massive global Change.org petition calling on Ferrero and Lindt to take immediate steps to make sure no children are involved in making their chocolate.
They can't afford a huge consumer backlash and negative media coverage that will threaten their sales just days away from Easter -- if tens of thousands join her, the pressure and threat to their brands will convince them to act.
Join Morgan and tens of thousands around the world -- tell Lindt and Ferrero to stamp out child slave labour in their supply chain and introduce ethical chocolate now.
The use of child slaves to produce cocoa is well documented and widely recognised. In fact, there are 200,000 children working in cocoa farms in West Africa, where 70% of the world's cocoa is farmed. [1]
But the movement to end child slavery in the chocolate industry is growing fast. Major brands like Nestle, Mars and Cadbury have already released products that are certified as child labour free. None are perfect -- but they're all taking real steps in the right direction.
Lindt and Ferrero are the last two major brands still holding out -- and they're under mounting pressure to ensure their own products aren't produced by children in shocking conditions.
Easter is one of the most profitable times of the year for chocolate companies -- they'll be more sensitive than ever to consumer pressure. It's a chance to make real progress in ending child slavery -- but it will only happen if thousands join Morgan in shining a light on the issue, and convince Lindt and Ferrero that they have to act to protect their brands.
Click here to tell Lindt and Ferrero to introduce chocolate that's free from child slave labour now.
Morgan is one of thousands of everyday people using Change.org to change their community for the better. From local issues to Apple consumers forcing the world's largest company to take unprecedented action on workers' rights -- individuals are coming together to win change like never before.
Thanks for being a part of this,
Nick and the Change.org team
[1] http://thecnnfreedomproject.
posted by ♥Edina♥ a 12:06 pm 0 click and leave your comments
Tags: day by day, Easter, Ferrero, Lindt, Pasqua
Salukis: my endless love!
Canotta basket unisex, con foto Saluki sul davanti e la scritta "Salukis: my endless love!" sul retro. E' ovviamente possibile cambiare modello, foto e colore della scritta.
Monday, April 02, 2012
EDINA and ANIDE - SHOP
Non avendo alcun reddito personale, ho pensato a questa soluzione, anche se la percentuale che mi spetta è minima.
Ho scelto questa possibilità perchè, pur non avendo una grandissima varietà di modelli e/o colori, ha prezzi davvero convenienti rispetto ad altre soluzioni da me visionate!
Spero tanto che questa "cosa" vi piaccia e, per qualsiasi info contattatemi cliccando sull'icona @@@!
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Official language: Spanish
Currency: The Argentinian Peso (ARS)
Welcome to Argentina! The romantic strains of tango, unparalleled natural beauty and vibrant cities make Argentina one of the world's top travel destinations.There are certain facts that most people know about Argentina, and once you arrive here you will soon discover that they are true after all. It is true that the beef here is incredible, that the people are exuberant and outgoing, that they love their sports and that few people can resist the lure of an evening of tango. The massive size of Argentina means that it is the kind of country that you could only hope to explore fully if you had a few years of free time. However, an efficient transport system means that it is possible to get a taste of the place in a much shorter time. Most tourists start their trip in the captivating, intoxicating city of Buenos Aires. The Argentine capital has been called the Paris of South America but the food and the local accents prove how strongly the Italian influence has affected this city. It is a wonderful destination for anyone who wants to stroll around parks, watch street entertainers, make some shopping streets and generally enjoy life. This is the city where Eva Peron is buried and a trip to cemetery is one of the most popular activities for visitors. The temptation to remain in Buenos Aires may be strong, but some time exploring other parts of this amazing country is well rewarded. For instance, the awe inspiring waterfalls at Iguazú are a sight few tourists forget quickly, while the most southerly city in the world is Ushuaia and is probably unlike anything you have ever seen. The other cities and provinces in Argentina all offer a variety of attractions but what shines out more than anything else is the fact that this is a place where living life to the full is not only possible; it's almost obligatory.
Must see places in Argentina
Buenos Aires
The stunning capital of Argentina is without doubt one of the world's finest cities. From the classy hotels to the fantastic restaurants, there is a tourist infrastructure that is among the best in the continent. Top attractions include the artistic Boca region, the massive 9 de Julio Avenue, the theatres on Corrientes Street and the government house called Casa Rosada. Once you have seen the balcony at the Casa Rosada from which Eva Peron addressed the nation you can visit her grave at Recoleta Cemetery. With soccer being such a passion here, taking in a tour of Boca Juniors stadium or seeing a game is highly recommended.
Monte Fitz Roy
Explore Monte Fitz Roy - one of the most scenic and breathtaking places in Argentina. Monte Fitz Roy is a mountain located near El Chaltén village, in the Southern Patagonian Ice Field in Patagonia, on the border between Argentina and Chile which offer plenty of world-class hiking and camping along with some of the most stunning mountain scenery you'll ever see
The north of the country is undergoing a tourist boom in recent years, with beautiful Salta leading the way. This historic city has a lovely plaza and friendly, relaxed feel that is hard to resist. A trip up in the cable car to the top of the hill overlooking Salta affords a glorious view of the city and beyond. The local empanadas are rightly famous and something that any visitor should be sure to try.
With a country the size of Argentina it is to be expected that you come across a rich variety of cities. However, you will probably still be surprised to find that Bariloche looks and feels more like an upmarket Alpine town than an Argentine one. The stunning scenery around here makes it one of the top destinations for wealthy Argentines as well as for international tourists. Rent a car and drive the 40 route, a road with a dreamy scenery of green mountains and turquoise lakes.
Puerto Iguazú
There are few attractions on the planet as breathtaking as the waterfalls at Iguazú. They are located on the triple border shared by Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay. While seeing the falls from the Brazilian side is recommended, it is the Argentine side that offers the chance to get up close and even ride under the falls in a boat. This town is in the Misiones province, which is a long way from Buenos Aires. This means that many visitors on a short trip choose to take a quick flight up to this unmissable natural wonder.
San Miguel de Tucumán
The wonderful climate of Tucumán isn't the only reason for visiting this city. It is also home to the historic building where the country's independence was declared and where you can enjoy a lights and audio show. The giant central park is a fine place for a stroll and picnic, with the miniature train going round it offering a good way to get your bearings.
Usuahia: situated on the Beagle Channel, this small city is more commonly known as "the end of the world" will offer you a chance to cross the Drake passage and head to the Antardida or simply be your cozy base to all kind of day tours. You will feel as though you have really reached the end of the world when you arrive to the most southerly city on the planet. In truth, it isn't as far south as many people think, meaning that it isn't as cold as you might expect. This is a fine base for exploring the treasures of the Tierra del Fuego. There is a pleasant train journey, some glaciers to check out and a number of museums. It might be remote from Buenos Aires but it has enough modern tourist facilities to make it a nice place to stay for those who make the effort.
Glaciar Perito Moreno
Los Glaciares or Graciers National Park is home to some of the world's most recorgnised natural wonders. It is located in the Santa Cruz Province of the vast Patagonia region, the national park offers amazing views of the largest ice cap that can be found outside of Greenland and Antarctica where ice crashes into the lakes with enormous splashes. Come see this huge mass of ice that keeps growing, and if you are lucky you might presence the loud and spectacular ruptures.
Caminito: this colorful street museum houses more than 20 renamed pieces. Its rich history and beauty were the inspiration for the worldly known tango "caminito" by Juan de Dios Filiberto.
Valle de la Luna
Mendoza is famous as one of the homes of Argentine wine, with the wineries here classed among the highest in the world. This is also a suitable base for heading out to see the mighty Aconcagua, the highest mountain outside of the Himalayas. As always in Argentina, the main plaza is a good place to start a tour of the relatively compact centre. The city is widely known for its festivals, such as the February harvest festival.
The third biggest city in Argentina is justly famous for its beautiful architecture. Among the best things to check out here is the house where Che Guevara was born and the Argentine Flag Memorial. The massive Parque Independencia is big enough for you to wander about in without even noticing how many locals are there enjoying the sun and relaxing with their families.
The province of Cordoba is fast becoming a travel hotspot in Argentina. The capital city of this region is a classy destination that is famous for its universities and institutes. The area around the main plaza (San Martín) has some fine colonial buildings, while much of the rest of Cordoba is a bustling, modern place. There are plenty of good trips available from here out to see the lovely countryside and popular towns such as Villa Carlos Paz and La Calera.
La Plata
This relatively modern city lies just a couple of hours away from Buenos Aires and you might be surprised to discover that it is the capital of the Buenos Aires province. Undoubtedly the highlight of La Plata is the exquisite cathedral on Plaza Moreno. It is described as arguably the world's first planned city and the clever layout makes it easy to get around on foot.
Things to do in Argentina
See the Natural Wonders
It is no surprise to find that such a vast country includes a range of some of the world's most exciting wonders. The stunning waterfalls at Puerto Iguazú are really worth making the effort to go and marvel at. Down in the south of the country you will find glorious glaciers and beautiful lakes among other attractions. In terms of mountains, a trip out to Mendoza will take you close to the magnificent Aconcagua.
Try local dishes
One of the things Argentina is most famous for is the brilliant food on offer. The arrival of immigrants from Spain and Italy is seen as one of the reason why the local indigenous cuisine ended up turning into something so special. Carnivores will be especially delighted here, as Argentine beef is widely regarded as the best in the world. Dulce de leche is a tasty type of caramel that you are sure to come across a lot. When it comes to drinks the natural infusion called yerba mate is a favourite with most locals.
Visit wine vineyards
Enjoy Some Tango
Tango is, of course, the music most associated with Argentina. There are a few ways to enjoy this brilliant music but only the bravest travellers will take the plunge and sign up for some dance lessons. Something that is far easier to do is making a trip to a tango show and listen to the music while watching some dazzling dancing. You will also see and hear tango a lot on the streets of Buenos Aires, especially in touristy places like Boca.
Take in Some Sport
The Argentines love their soccer and this is one of the best places in the world to see a game. The traditional rivalry between Boca Juniors and River Plate always makes for a riveting spectacle but just any top class game is worth seeing. Other sports that are popular here include rugby, hockey, golf, polo and basketball. The national sport is the strangely riveting spectacle called pato.
Explore the Cities
When a country has a capital as big and exciting as Buenos Aires it is easy to stay there for the whole trip. However, in the case of Argentina it definitely makes sense to get out and see the rest of the cities. Cordoba, Mendoza, Salta and Rosario are just some of the top class destinations worth spending some time in, with each having its own particular charms.
Pick the time right
Tourists visit Argentina in summer
Basically, any time is a good time to visit Argentina, although there are some pieces of information to bear in mind when planning a trip. In the summer months (November to April) it can get very hot in cities such as Buenos Aires, Cordoba and San Miguel de Tucumán. If you plan to go to the south of the country then you will probably want to avoid the colder months of the year (June to August). If you want to see some partying then Carnaval in the week before lent is celebrated in a number of parts of the country.
The size of Argentina means that it covers a number of different climates. Most of the country has a temperate climate, with warm, wet summers and cool, dry winters. The north of the country is more tropical and can suffer from very dry spells as well as searing temperature in summer months. The flat, seemingly endless Pampas are famous for the wind that blows through them almost constantly.
Did you know?
Argentina is the eighth biggest county in the world but lies in 32nd place in terms of population.
It is a country of extremes. For example Mount Aconcagua is the tallest point outside of Asia, while Laguna del Carbon is one the lowest points on the planet. Near the Chilean border is the Nevada Ojos del Salado, which is the highest active volcano in the world and whose crater contains the world's highest lake.
Travel Tips
Argentinians love to be friendly; you will be greeted with a kiss in the cheek and dismissed with a hug, so learn how to be polite! Say hi! with an hola!; please with a porfavor and thank you with a gracias. When you head to Argentina, don't be shy! One of the things that make this country special is its warm people. Ask for directions in the street and Argentinos will gather around to help you. Start a conversation in a bar and you'll make a new friend, and if you are lucky, you might get invited to a Sunday's asado where you will feel at home among family and friends. Part of this loud and happy character comes from the melting pot that occurred during the immigration period of the country. Some people calls Argentinians Italians that speak Spanish, dramatic and passionate are the two words that summarise the personality of Argentinians."][sp_accordion_item title="Local dishes to try " icon="" content="
Food is exceptionally good value in Argentina. Meat lovers should look out for Tenedor Libre offers. These are all you can eat buffets with a huge range of cuts of beef to try.
- Asado: What you heard about Argentinian meat is true. There is something about the way the cattle is raised running free in the huge plains of "La Pampa" that makes Argentinian meat synnonimum of quality. You haven't had a barbecue until you've tasted the traditional asado. To achieve the perfect tenderness, the "asador" has to dedicate hours sweating in the heat. But it all pays off when he sees your face after you taste for the first time how meat is supposed to taste like. But an asado is not just the meat. A real asado experience should also include other parts of the anatomy of the cow, just make sure you eat first and ask later.
- Milanesas: You guessed! More meat! The Latin American equivalent of the German wiener schnitzel, it's a thin slice of beef dipped in eggs spiced with garlic and parsley, and later in bread crumbs to be fried in hot oil or baked in the oven. Wait... it gets better. The Argentinian way to eat this is "a la napolitana" meaning with a combo of tomato sauce, jam, muzzarella slices of tomato with fresh oregano on top. If this is not enough for you ask for it "a caballo", meaning, with two fried eggs on top. Of course all of this comes with fries on the side. So make sure you ask for one plate to share the first time you order a milanesa.
- Empanadas: This small dough balls stuffed with all kind of tasty things are a very popular kind of street food, cooked fried or in the oven, they will burn your tongue but keep you wanting more. Most traditional flavors are beef, chicken, jam and cheese, caramelized onions and cheese and spinach and cream. They are sold by the dozen, you can get 12 for less than 10 dollars and feed 4 hungry people!
- Alfajores: It's a cookie sandwich dipped in chocolate, stuffed with all kind of fillings .This sweet ambrosias are the perfect snack to have after breakfast or before dinner. Buy them for a dime at any kiosk.
- Dulce de Leche: You cannot miss this Argentinian classic made from reduced milk with sugar. Who knew a culinary accident could be so delicious! Find it alone at the supermarket or inside almost every cake, alfajor or muffin you buy.
It doesn't matter the time of the year you come, there will be probably something going on, because Argentinians don't need excuses to celebrate.But take note of these dates so you don't miss them when you are around:
- Gualeguaychú carnival: this amazing show of sincronizad choreography has nothing to envy to those in Rio or Venice. Thousands of Argentinians come during the months of January, February and beginning of March to celebrate that summer is here.
- Buenos Aires Tango festival and world cup: if you are around August in Buenos Aires you can't miss the world's largest tango festival, that attracts more than half a million visitors from all over the world. All the activities and shows at the Tango Festival are free, even the tickets for the Tango World Cup.
- BAFICI: one of the biggest indie film festivals in the world takes place in the first weeks of April. The tickets start selling in march and are less than 5 USD each, so buy them online in advance.
- Oktoberfest: takes place in the first two weeks of October in the little town of Villa General Belgrano, province of Cordoba. Book a typical chalet in advance and spend a weekend learning from the german history and culture of the city.
- Tango: Once dismissed as a vulgar activity for the working class, tango is now in the middle of a revival.For a full tango experience take a stroll in the emblematic neighbourhood of "Abasto" and you'll be transported to a nostalgic time, just sit at a cafe close your eyes and listen to the old tunes. You can even take a tour at Carlos Gardel former home, the Museo Casa Carlos Gardel. In this area you will find plenty of fancy shoe stores where you can splurge a little and take a brand new pair to your class tonight. Don't worry if you can't keep your step, you can look fabulous enjoying the great ambiance and people watching.
- Futbol: It won't take you long to figure out that in Argentina, futbol is not just a sport, it's a way of life. You will see old men yelling at giant screens inside department stores, kids carrying footballs everywhere, girls with little coats of arms on their chest, Messi's face in every product you buy. Before you know it you'll find yourself asking what the score was!
- Mate: Few things are as emblematic as Argentinian beloved mate. Made from dried "yerba mate" leaves brewed in a round bowl and served with a silver stick with little holes in the bottom to let the caffeined liquid in.Now this is an adequate taste, don't worry if you don't like it right away, just don't give up either! Try it out with some new friends in the park and somethig sweet to go with it like a dulce de leche croisant.
During the day the easiest and fastest way to get downtown is the subway, at night with the streets empty it's worth your money to take a taxi. And if you are not in a hurry it's always best to walk."][sp_accordion_item title="Tipping" icon="" content="No one will get offended in Argentina for your tips, the most common tip rounds the 10%. It is never included on the bill, so always carry small amounts of cash for this reason."][sp_accordion_item title="Shopping" icon="" content="Bargaining is not a common practice in Argentina, so try to stick to the price displayed. But most of the time there will be a discount of 10% if you pay cash. Clothes in Argentina are quite cheap, just keep in mind that the sizes between brands are never the same, so try everything on before you buy."][sp_accordion_item title="Good to know!" icon="" content="
Bank ATMs are in short supply in most of the country, meaning that there are often large queues. There seems to be periodic shortages of small bank notes and coins too. It usually makes to withdraw a decent amount rather than go back every day for smaller amounts."][/sp_accordion]