text:
Charles T. Wolfe
The brain thinks, not man. Man is just a cerebral crystallization.
-- Gilles Deleuze & Félix Guattari[1]
I don't pretend to account for the Functions of the Brain. I never heard of a System or a Philosophy that could do it.
-- Bernard Mandeville[2]
-- Gilles Deleuze & Félix Guattari[1]
I don't pretend to account for the Functions of the Brain. I never heard of a System or a Philosophy that could do it.
-- Bernard Mandeville[2]
What can a philosopher say about phantom limb syndrome? More specifically, what can a materialist philosopher say about phantom limb
syndrome? At first glance, a phenomenon by which our 'corporeal imagination' -- what La Mettrie in the eighteenth century called the "magic lantern"
working within the brain, projecting images created by our memory and intellect [3] -- induces us to feel
pains in a missing limb might seem like profound evidence that naïve, scientistic views of consciousness are false or at least useless. How could
science with its measurements ever grasp the irreducibly subjective construction which my body is? Notice that in any case, regardless of our
answer to such a question, a somato-psychic phenomenon like phantom limb syndrome raises significant issues regarding good old-fashioned notions such
as the self, and slightly less old-fashioned notions such as the tandem 'self and brain'. Namely, if the self has already been deflated --
since Hume and Nietzsche in their respective traditions, and in recent times since Dennett -- what about the brain?
Our suspicions regarding nefarious neurophilosophers and other hérauts of scientism should be allayed, or at least mollified, by the
realization that present-day neuroscience and philosophy of neuroscience is fully aware that brains can be sources of illusion, tricks on the mind,
self-deception, as much as they are reliable ontological substrates of something like the self.[4] An
intangible phenomenon like feeling the presence of a phantom limb used to be viewed, in a kind of crude reductionism, as "wishful thinking" or
"mourning" on the part of the patient (following Ramachandran's expression) but this is no longer so.[5]
Consider for instance the fact of volitional control of a phantom limb, as described in Ramachandran's famous mirror box experiment (which he also
describes as the "virtual reality box") and its implications for an integrated vision of body, mind and brain.
The box is made by placing a vertical mirror inside a cardboard box with the roof of the box removed. The front of the box has two holes
in it, through which the patient inserts his good arm and his phantom arm. The patient is then asked to view the reflection of his normal hand in the
mirror, thus creating the illusion of two hands, when in fact [he] is only seeing the mirror reflection of the intact hand. If he now sends motor
commands to both arms to make mirror-symmetric movements, he will have the illusion of seeing his phantom hand resurrected and obeying his commands,
i.e. he receives positive visual feedback informing his brain that his phantom arm is moving correctly.[6]
Now, in what follows my aim is less to stake out a position on phantom limbs (real? imagined? material? neuronal? phenomenal?) than to show that
philosophical reflection on brains, even when it seeks to rebut the dogmatic anti-naturalism found in most corners of phenomenology, does not have to
be naïvely, crudely reductionistic or scientistic -- in other words, to show that one can be a materialist without having to feel like "a cop at
Woodstock" (in Dennett's colourful expression, referring in his case to being a reductionist materialist philosopher at a meeting on quantum physics
and consciousness; but he added that he wanted to be like a "good cop").[7]
My argument runs as follows:
Phantom limbs and anosognosias -- cases of abnormal impressions of the presence or absence of parts of our body[8] -- seem like handy illustrations of an irreducible, first-person dimension of experience,[9] of the sort that will delight the phenomenologist, who will say: aha! there is an empirical case of self-reference which
externalist, third-person explanations of the type favoured by deflationary materialists, cannot explain away, cannot do away with. As
Merleau-Ponty would say, and Varela after him, there is something about my body which makes it irreducibly my own (le corps propre).
Whether illusory or not, such images (phantoms) have something about them such that we perceive them as our own, not someone else's (well, some
agnosias are different: thinking our paralyzed limb is precisely someone else's, often a relative's). One might then want to insist that phantom limbs
testify to the transcendence of mental life! Indeed, in one of the more celebrated historical cases of phantom limb syndrome, Lord Horatio Nelson,
having lost his right arm in a sea battle off of Tenerife, suffered from pains in his phantom hand. Most importantly, he apparently declared that this
phantom experience was a "direct proof of the existence of the soul"[10] -- the clearest possible
statement of the kind of view I wish to oppose here.
Although the materialist might agree with the (reformed) phenomenologist to reject dualism and accept that we are not in our bodies like a
sailor in a ship, she might not want to go and declare, as Merleau-Ponty does, that "the mind does not use the body, but fulfills itself through it
while at the same time transferring the body outside of physical space."[11] This way of talking goes
back to the Husserlian distinction between Körper, 'body' in the sense of one body among others in a vast mechanistic universe of bodies,
and Leib, 'flesh' in the sense of a subjectivity which is the locus of experience.
Now, granted, in cognitivist terms one would want to say that a representation is always my representation, it is not 'transferable'
like a neutral piece of information, since the way an object appears to me is always a function of my needs and interests. What my senses tell me at
any given time relies on my interests as an agent and is determined by them, as described by Andy Clark, who appeals to the combined research
traditions of the psychology of perception, new robotics, and Artificial Life. But the phenomenologist will take off from there and build a full-blown
defense of intentionality, now recast as 'motor intentionality' (as currently discussed by neuroscientists such as Alain Berthoz and Marc Jeannerod
and philosophers such as Sean Kelly), a notion which goes back to Husserl's claim in Ideas II that the way the body relates to the external
world is crucially through "kinestheses": all external motions which we perceive are first of all related to kinesthetic sensations, out of which we
constitute a sense of space. On this view, our body thus already displays 'originary intentionality' in how it relates to the world.
This is part of what I mean by the appeal to the first-person dimension. In contrast, for someone like Dennett, phantom limbs and agnosias are, at
least as much as they are instances of self-reference, instances of self-deception: we don't have a transparent relation to ourselves. "You are
not authoritative about what is happening in you, but only about what seems to be happening in you,"[12] or, as Andy Clark puts it, "the conscious self is but the tip of the 'I' berg."[13] Phantom limb phenomena merely bring to light a much wider sense in which we live in 'intended' rather than 'actual' worlds[14], i.e., we presuppose an enormous amount of what is there in order to act. Put in an extreme way, "your
own body is a phantom, one that your brain has temporarily constructed purely for convenience."[15]
Given this, it's not a good idea -- at least ontologically; the ethical story is different, as Locke saw (and his response was to emphasize that
'person' was a "forensick term") -- to trace everything back to a central, unifying and grounding self(hood):
For your entire life, you've been walking around assuming that your 'self' is anchored to a single body that remains stable and permanent
at least until death... yet these results suggest the exact opposite -- that your body image... is an entirely transitory construct that can be
profoundly altered with just a few simple tricks.[16]
Our self -- and its neural correlates -- is a construct, at most a "narrative center,"[17] and
by that token, it's a fiction (as first seen by Hume, and also Montaigne). I am a character in a story my brain is making up, "consciousness is
a property I have by virtue of my brain's attributing it to me. My story doesn't have to cohere completely to be useful."[18] Katherine Hayles calls this new intuition "posthuman": "Consciousness for the posthuman ceases to be seen as the seat of
identity and becomes instead an epiphenomenon, a late evolutionary add-on whose principal function is to narrate just-so stories that often have
little to do with what is actually happening."[19] I will keep referring to it for now in more plain
terms as the fictional self. One also hears echoes of the fictional self in Michael Gazzaniga's accounts of his split-brain studies (severing the
corpus callosum in the case of certain seizures): in commissurotomized subjects, it is not the 'whole person' who does the reintegrating of their
world, but one hemisphere of their brain; "the person is utterly unaware of the tricky communicative ploys the brain comes to exploit."[20] This was arguably already Kurt Goldstein's point -- namely, that it is simply a 'fact', a 'property'
of our brains that they construct unity or totality, as a normal state but also in response to abnormal situations[21] -- but he ontologized it into a property of the brain and by extension of 'the organism' that somehow removed it from
the world of causality and mechanistic natural science. I won't go along with the ontologization, but before I get to this, I'd like to put some more
nails in the coffin of the (admittedly 'undead') first-person perspective.
As I said initially, phantom limbs and related phenomena seem like ideal cases for the phenomenologist (whether slightly favourable to a
naturalistic viewpoint or not), of a bodily state in which the viewpoint of the subject is an irreducible part of the state, such that if it were
factored out, that 'state' would no longer make any sense, indeed would no longer exist.
The 'trivially true' materialist response here would be to say: these are cases of 'remapping' the inner 'model' of the body we have, known as the
cortical map[22] or the Penfield map (after the Canadian neurologist, Wilder Penfield), caused by
mismatches between visual and proprioceptive feedback. In other words, these apparently uniquely 'mindful' phenomena are nonetheless mechanistically
specifiable and explainable. (Ironically, this is not so far removed from Descartes' position on phantom limbs: we shouldn't trust the senses but
rather our reason. He viewed phantom limbs as illusions, which tells us that the problem of phantom limbs is the mind-body problem,
since it demands that we define the relation between a sensation and 'that of which it is a sensation'.) The variant of the materialist response that
I shall offer here can include such deflationary elements, but I would add that (a) insofar as such accounts refer back to the uniqueness of our
subjective experience, they run into the aporia of opposing the first-person perspective to the third-person perspective and (b) insofar as the
present version of materialism allows for embodiment[23] (and is thereby not just a physicalism),
it can accommodate such experiences without having to explain them in first-person terms.
To lay out the third-person, externalist perspective, it's always helpful to remember that there is no homunculus:
The cardinal background principle [for the neurophilosopher] is that there are no homunculi. There is no little person in the brain who
'sees' an inner television screen, 'hears' an inner voice, 'reads' the topographic maps, weighs reasons, decides actions, and so forth. There are just
neurons and their connections. When a person sees, it is because neurons, individually blind and individually stupid neurons, are collectively
orchestrated in the appropriate manner.[24]
And there are no qualia either. As Dennett has memorably written, believers in qualia are tied to a picture of the mind as a 'Cartesian theatre',
in which mental entities are on display before the mind's eye. To move from, e.g., the reality of colors as properties of physical objects to the
reality of color qualia as the properties of internal states is an unjustified inference.[25] One can
add that the notion of 'phenomenal information' is doubtful -- perhaps interesting, and heuristically useful, but in no way more real than the
'rational part of the soul.' The Husserlian claim that experience itself, qualities and all, contains the 'essences' we need to inquire into, is more
Thomas Nagel's famous appeal to subjective experience in "What is it like to be a bat?"[26] is an
elegant revival or recycling of the phenomenological vulgate from the Continent, a 'minimal credo' one could find in Bergson, Merleau-Ponty or even
Husserl, but it is not an argument to assert that 'the mental is subjective and science is objective, therefore science cannot explain the
realm of the mental (and materialism is false)'. This is logically true in the same way that 'All Martians are adulterous, and all adulterous people
are meat eaters, so all Martians are meat eaters' is true, but it says nothing more. In fact,
Human and other subjects can have functionally or computationally different states that nonetheless home on the same objective state of
affairs, either external or internal. But there are no intrinsically subjective or perspectival facts that are either the special objects of
self-regarding attitudes or facts of 'what it is like'. There are only states of subjects that both function in a particularly intimate way within
those subjects and have the subjects themselves and their other states as inevitable referents. And that is all there is to 'subjectivity'.[27]
More interestingly, and moving towards 'embodiment', Paul Churchland has pointed out that we can claim to have a first-person, privileged relation
to all sorts of physical things, including our muscles, skin, stomach and bowels (!), what Patricia Churchland has elegantly called "awareness
of visceral circumstance."[28] Curiously -- and doubtless without the Churchlands' knowing it -- Leibniz
entertains this possibility in the New Essays Concerning Human Understanding (1704), asserting that "something occurs in the soul in reponse
[to] the internal motions of the viscera,"[29] perhaps in response to Descartes' remarks in the Sixth
Meditation on how my experience of bodily processes includes "twitching in the stomach."[30] But
Leibniz, heading off objections to animism, says the soul is actually unaware of such movements. In any case, the point here is that purely internal,
'private' events which only I can feel, are in no way separate from the natural, causal world which science studies. Of course, while muscular or
visceral motions can be studied from a third-person perspective, in terms compatible with the scientific representation of the world, we can also
claim to feel things about them which this representation cannot include. Specifically,
The existence of a proprietary, first-person epistemological access to some phenomenon does not mean that the accessed phenomenon is
nonphysical in nature. It means only that someone possesses an information-carrying causal connection to that phenomenon, a connection that others
The materialist can accept that we have "a route of epistemological access" to our own body, which others lack (this is not Merleau-Ponty but the
Australian identity theorist David Armstrong!), and thereby also to our mind.[32] But it must be
explained: "there remains a genuine obligation on the materialist's part to give some account of the subjectivity or perspectivalness or
point-of-view-ness of the mental"; "the materialist owes the world an explanation of what it is about a mental/neural state that makes its proprietor
think of it as subjective."[33] In other words, instead of denying the existence of introspection, the
materialist should try and locate it within the physical world, within the overall framework of explanation (as Spinoza did). One place to start,
where philosophy still has to catch up on neuroscience, despite brief and passing remarks by the 'identity theorists',[34] is proprioception, precisely inasmuch as it is my 'internal' sense of my body and yet is light-years removed from any
aprioristic vision of an "inner sense" or "sense of senses" as found in St. Augustine, Kant or the phenomenologist Erwin Straus. The American poet
Charles Olson was perhaps alone in recognizing the import of this concept, speaking of "the 'body' itself... by movement of its own tissues, giving
the data of, depth," "spontaneously [producing] experience of, 'Depth', viz. SENSIBILITY WITHIN THE ORGANISM BY MOVEMENT OF ITS OWN TISSUES,"
and he described the body as an "interior empty place filled with 'organs'? for 'functions'?", which (sounding suddenly very Germanic) "removes the
false opposition of 'consciousness'."[35]
What proprioception -- among other biological phenomena -- tells us is that even if we were restricting ourselves to 'biological talk', we would
end up with some account of our subjective relation to the world, of our sense of 'self' in the midst of our experience of the world. Further, it
would equally be within the province of biological discourse to describe how we construct partial versions of the world for ourselves (as described at
the level of perception by the eminent neurophysiologist Walter Freeman).[36] One way of explaining this
is to view our perceptual processes as filters, which "take in and retain only a tiny and tendentiously selected fraction of the information
that is available in an object under scrutiny."[37] Hence no two subjects perceive the same object in
the same way, including for evolutionary reasons.
Indeed, since the embodied materialist standpoint is not merely a physicalism but can appeal to biological information, it offers plenty of ways to
understand individuality, selfhood or agency, from reflections on the developmental process to immunology and the neuroscience of action. There is no
need, then, to oppose a private (and foundational) self to the body or the brain. Instead of declaring rather dualistically that "It is man who
thinks, not the brain," as Erwin Straus does[38] -- that is, that brain events do exist but have nothing
to do with the world of our experience -- the reverse formulation, Deleuze and Guattari's, seems more wise: "The brain thinks, not man. Man is just a
cerebral crystallization."[39]
The trick is to not go all the way with embodiment, so as not to end up in what Deleuze, speaking of Merleau-Ponty, called the "mysticism of
the flesh."[40] After all, is there anything metaphysically unique about flesh, skin or the brain which
makes them do what they do? My last point, then, is to not get too comfortable with embodiment either, since the brain is necessarily located
within the social and symbolic world: this is what I mean by 'de-ontologizing the brain'.
Namely, if we demystify or deflate some concepts of self and subjectivity by relating such concepts to the reality of the brain -- the processes of
which are dynamic, distributed, non-centred, dissipative, and include 'remapping' -- we shouldn't then turn the brain itself into a mysterious
substance which explains everything, some sort of 'Wonder Tissue'; a corrective is needed. If mind and body belong together, as do body and brain, so
do brain and world.
Call this the "co-evolutionary" perspective (with Terrence Deacon) and emphasize 'Baldwinian evolution', i.e., the cluster of linguistic and
cultural layers in evolution which do not fall under Darwinian evolution; call it the "social brain," in the Spinozist tradition (including Damasio
but also Lev Vygotsky and Antonio Negri[41]). The idea is that 'not everything is in the head', or 'the
skin is not a real barrier' (think of how much we care about extended limbs, how upset we get if they are severed, including even
remote-controlled limbs). This is what Andy Clark calls "scaffolding": we are inseparable from the "looping interactions" between our brains, our
bodies, and "complex cultural and technological environments."[42] In other words, our brains have the
talent for making use of the environment, "piggy-backing on reliable environmental properties,"[43]
which is in fact a far more economical and swift action procedure than processing representations of objects. "Scaffolding" is one of the
vehicles humans employ, so that language, culture and institutions empower cognitions.[44] On
this view, the brain is not a central planner but rather possesses a "scaffolding" which is inseparable from the external world.
Think of it in terms of plasticity: the possibility, as described in Ramachandran's mirror box experiment, of reviving volitional control and
somatic sensations in a phantom arm by simply using a mirror, even when no sensation had been experienced by the subject for the previous ten years,
"implies a surprising degree of plasticity in the adult brain."[45] And this plasticity implies in turn
a surprising degree of opportunistic openness towards the non-organic, the artificial, the technological: the biological functioning of our brains
themselves "has always involved [using] nonbiological props and scaffolds,"[46] with direct consequences
for brain architecture itself: "a youngster growing up in a medieval village in twelfth-century France would literally have different neural
connections than a twenty-first-century American adolescent who has spent serious time with computer games."[47] In Deleuze's terms, "Creating new circuits in art means creating them in the brain."[48]
In any case, my point is not to take a position in the current debates on the status and importance of neural plasticity,[49] but rather to emphasize the 'scaffolding' dimension, which implies -- at the risk of sounding a bit like a practitioner of
'Theory' -- that the 'paradigm' of the phantom limb might not be not so far removed from that of the prosthesis.
Given the degree of openness of the central nervous system, and on the 'personal' level, our ability to identify with non-biological
extensions of our body, the 'artificialist' perspective, in which body and prosthesis, indeed, body and tool, merge, is not so far off. Just
as the 'fictional self' is the outcome of the deflation of the ontological unity of self, the social, evolving, 'cultured'[50] brain deflates the ontological uniqueness and isolation of the brain. Instead of opposing subjectivity to the natural world,
or the body to the tool, we have arrived at a vision of the "productive potential" of the agent as inseparable from a "set of prostheses,"[51] in a process of what Félix Guattari would have called the "production of subjectivity." In
Negri's terms,
The tool... has entirely changed. We no longer need tools in order to transform nature... or to establish a relation with the
historical world..., we only need language. Language is the tool. Better yet, the brain is the tool, inasmuch as it is common.[52]
The brain is "common" inasmuch as it is constituted by and inseparable from the network of relations to which we belong. If phantom limb syndrome
was the point of entry here by which the brain opens onto the world of fiction, revealing our sense of self, including its 'embodied' dimension, to be
a "transitory internal construct," in Ramachandran's terms, then the prosthesis (akin in this respect to certain appropriations of the figure of the
cyborg) is the point at which the brain escapes any solipsism, whether of the post-Cartesian, brain-in-a-vat sort, or the more omnipotent,
brain-as-self sort. If one thinks of the recent examples of the performers Stelarc and Orlan (regardless of their different vocabularies and cultural
contexts), one can see this sense in which biological limits are being transcended, by being 'plugged into' technological networks (this mainly in the
case of Stelarc).[53] This is the kind of commonality we have been discussing -- in which self and brain
are constituted through interactions with various extended entities, so that what it is to be 'me' is nothing other than a productive
potential, a "set of prostheses," of fictions.
* * *
The common brain or social brain generates the fictional self, but really, the fellow-traveler of such a self should be termed the
de-ontologized brain. Now, one can ask in response if a de-ontologized brain can "think ontologically,"[54] and the initial response seems to be No: if an ontology amounts to a definition or catalogue of what there is, as opposed to
what there isn't (tables, chairs, bodies and maybe mathematical entities, but not centaurs or smiles of Cheshire cats), then brains as entities
'plugged in' to the network of artificialist, technological production shouldn't think ontologically at all. However, if one understands ontology in a
sense closer to the "production of subjectivity," namely, as "constitutive ontology," in Negri's terms, then there is no tension between a plastic,
social, cultured brain-in-a-network and the constant production and reproduction of being, through the desires and actions of concrete agents.[55] If what there is, is constituted, the brain's positing and desiring are no more real
than the fictional, "forensick" masks of the self, but they are also no less real than the social, ethical and political forms into which they
A shorter version of this paper was presented at the conference on 'Phantom Limb Phenomena. Neuroscientific, Aesthetic, Philosophical
Perspectives', Goldsmiths College, University of London, January 14-16, 2005. Many thanks to John Symons (UT El Paso) for steering me in the right
direction with some of this material.
[1] Gilles Deleuze & Félix Guattari, Qu'est-ce que la philosophie?, Paris: Minuit, 1991,
pp. 197-198.
[2] Bernard Mandeville, A Treatise of the hypochondriack and hysterick diseases, 2nd corrected
edition, London: Tonson, 1730; reprint, Delmar, N.Y., Scholars' Reprints, 1976, p. 137.
[3] Julien Offray de La Mettrie, L'Homme-Machine (1748), in Aram Vartanian, La Mettrie's
"L'Homme-Machine." A Study in the Origins of An Idea, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1960, p. 165. La Mettrie adds that the soul as a
whole can be reduced to the workings of the imagination.
[4] See Todd E. Feinberg & David M. Roane, "Anosognosia, completion and confabulation: the
neutral-personal dichotomy," Neurocase 3 (1997) and William Hirstein, Brain Fiction. Self-Deception and the riddle of confabulation,
Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2005 (an important work which addresses several of the concerns in the present essay).
[5] V.S. Ramachandran & L. Levi et al., "Illusions of body image," in Rodolfo Llinás &
Patricia S. Churchland, eds., The Mind-Brain continuum: sensory processes, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1996; V.S. Ramachandran & William
Hirstein, "The Perception of phantom limbs" (D.O. Hebb lecture), Brain 121 (1998).
[6] Ramachandran & Hirstein, "The Perception of phantom limbs," p. 1620.
[7] Daniel Dennett, "The Myth of double transduction," Toward a science of consciousness II,
The Second Tucson discussions and debates, eds. S. Hameroff, A.W. Kaszniak & A.C. Scott, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1998, p. 97.
[8] See Antonio Damasio, Descartes' Error. Emotion and reason in the human brain, New York:
Putnam, 1994, pp. 62-66.
[9] Feinberg & Roane, "Anosognosia, completion and confabulation: the neutral-personal dichotomy."
[10] As quoted in Ramachandran & Hirstein, "The Perception of phantom limbs," p. 1604.
[11] Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Structure of behavior, trans. A.L. Fisher, Boston: Beacon
Press, 1963, pp. 208-209 (trans. modified).
[12] Daniel Dennett, Consciousness Explained, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1990, p. 96.
[13] Andy Clark, Natural-Born Cyborgs. Minds, technologies and the future of human
intelligence, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002, p. 100.
[14] Borrowing this formulation from Chris Frith (discussion, London, 2005).
[15] V.S. Ramachandran & Sandra Blakeslee, Phantoms in the brain, New York: W. Morrow, 1998,
p. 62.
[16] Ibid.; the body image is a "transitory internal construct" (Ramachandran & Hirstein, "The
Perception of phantom limbs," p. 1623).
[17] Dennett, Consciousness Explained, ch. 13, esp. pp. 426-427; "The Self as center of
narrative gravity," in F.J. Kessel, P. Cole & D.L. Johnson, eds., Self and consciousness: multiple perspectives, Hillsdale, NJ: L. Erlbaum,
1992; Antonio Damasio, The Feeling of what happens, New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1999, ch. 7.
[18] Drew McDermott, "Little 'me'" (commentary on Daniel Dennett & Marcel Kinsbourne, "Time and the
observer"), Brain and Behavioral Sciences 15:2 (1992), p. 217.
[19] N. Katherine Hayles, "Flesh and Metal: Reconfiguring the Mindbody in Virtual Environments,"
Configurations 10 (2002), p. 319.
[20] Daniel Dennett, Elbow Room. The varieties of free will worth wanting, Cambridge, Mass.:
MIT Press, 1984, p. 40, n. 23, referring to Michael S. Gazzaniga & Joseph E. Ledoux, The Integrated Mind, New York: Plenum, 1978. See also,
inter alia, Gazzaniga, "The Neuronal Platonist" (interview by Shaun Gallagher), Journal of Consciousness Studies 5:5-6 (1998), online at
[21] See Kurt Goldstein, The Organism: a holistic approach to biology derived from pathological
data in man, New York: Zone Books / MIT Press, 1995 (originally published 1934). In modern neuroscience Goldstein's role as a predecessor of more
recent split-brain studies has been seen by Norman Geschwind, "Disconnexion syndromes in animals and man," Brain 88 (1965).
[22] See Nicholas Humphrey, A History of the mind, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992, pp.
171-176, here, p. 172.
[23] For more on the 'embodiment' paradigm in cognitive science, see Francisco Varela, Evan Thompson
& Eleanor Rosch, The Embodied Mind, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1991.
[24] Patricia S. Churchland, Neurophilosophy: towards a unified science of the mind/brain,
Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1986, p. 406.
[25] Daniel Dennett, "Quining Qualia," in A.J. Marcel & E. Bisiach, eds., Consciousness and
contemporary science, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988.
[26] Thomas Nagel, "What is it like to be a bat?," Philosophical Review 83:4 (1974).
[27] William G. Lycan, "What is the 'subjectivity' of the mental?", in James Tomberlin, ed.,
Philosophical Perspectives vol. 4: Action theory and the philosophy of mind, Atascadero: Ridgeview Publishing, 1990, p. 126.
[28] Patricia S. Churchland, "Reduction and the neurobiological basis of consciousness," in Marcel &
Bisiach, eds., Consciousness and contemporary science, p. 282.
[29] Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, New Essays on Human Understanding, P. Remnant & J. Bennett,
ed. & trans. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982, book II, chapter I, § 15.
[30] René Descartese, Oeuvres, C. Adam & P. Tannery, eds. 11 vols., reprint, Paris:
Vrin, 1964-1974, vol. IX, p. 60.
[31] Paul M. Churchland, The Engine of reason, the seat of the soul, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT
Press, 1995, p. 198.
[32] David Armstrong, in his exchange with Norman Malcolm, Consciousness and causality. A debate
on the nature of mind, Oxford: Blackwell, 1984, p. 112. See Armstrong's A Materialist theory of the mind, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul,
1968 (2nd ed., 1993), pp. 100-115, for the materialist's reconstruction of introspection.
[33] Lycan, "What is the 'subjectivity' of the mental?", pp. 110, 116.
[34] See e.g. J.J.C. Smart, "The Identity theory of mind," Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
(http://plato.stanford.edu) (2000) and Armstrong, in Armstrong & Malcolm, Consciousness and causality, pp. 110-112. Admittedly, most of the
cognitive science discussions of proprioception seem to miss its philosophical implications, too. In his broad and influential work Being There.
Putting brain, body and world back together again, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1997, Andy Clark simply says that proprioception is "the
inner sense that tells you how your body is located in space" (p. 22) and leaves it at that.
[35] Charles Olson, "Proprioception" [1961-1962], in Collected Prose, ed. Donald Allen &
Benjamin Friedlander, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997, pp. 181, 182. Thanks to Homa Shojaie for helping me locate this text.
[36] See Walter J. Freeman, "The Physiology of Perception," Scientific American 264 (February
1991) and How Brains Make Up Their Minds, London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1999.
[37] Lycan, "What is the 'subjectivity' of the mental?", p. 117.
[38] Erwin Straus, Du sens des sens, Grenoble: J. Millon, 1989, p. 183.
[39] Deleuze & Guattari, Qu'est-ce que la philosophie?, pp. 197-198.
[40] For Merleau-Ponty's overtly mystical statements about 'Flesh' see e.g. Phenomenology of
perception, trans. Colin Smith, London: Routledge Kegan Paul, 1962, p. 212: "Just as the sacrament not only symbolizes... an operation of
Grace, but is also the real presence of God... in the same way the sensible has not only a motor and vital significance but is a way of being in
the world... sensation is literally a form of communion."
[41] On the social brain, see Paolo Virno, "Multitude et principe d'individuation," Multitudes
7 (December 2001), http://multitudes.samizdat.net/Multitude-et-principe-d.html and Charles T. Wolfe, "Il cervello sociale," Forme di vita vol.
4 (Rome, 2005).Some of the recent interest in Gilbert Simondon touches upon this topic, including the recent special issue of Multitudes 17
[42] Andy Clark, Natural-Born Cyborgs, pp. 11, 43. Clark intersects here with a good deal of
recent cultural theory, media theory, and literary theory (when it concerns itself with the relation between fiction, embodiment and technological
forms) -- see in particular Donna Haraway's "cyborgs" (in "A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth
Century," in Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature, New York: Routledge, 1991, online at
http://www.stanford.edu/dept/HPS/Haraway/CyborgManifesto.html) and Katherine Hayles' "posthuman" subjects (in "The Life Cycle of Cyborgs: Writing the
Posthuman," in A Question of Identity: Women, Science and Literature, ed. M. Benjamin, New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1993; How We
became posthuman: Virtual bodies in cybernetics, literature, and informatics, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999 and "Flesh and Metal:
Reconfiguring the Mindbody in Virtual Environments," op. cit.). But Clark is unique in that he speaks from within cognitive science --
which also entails that there is no utopian dimension to his theory.
[43] Clark, Being There, p. 45.
[44] Ibid., pp. 21, 87.
[45] V.S. Ramachandran & L. Levi et al., "Illusions of body image," p. 34.
[46] Clark, Natural-Born Cyborgs, p. 86.
[47] Hayles, "Flesh and Metal: Reconfiguring the Mindbody in Virtual Environments," p. 300.
[48] Gilles Deleuze, Negotiations 1972-1990, trans. M. Joughin, New York: Columbia University
Press, 1995, p. 26.
[49] Contrast Steven Quartz & Terry Sejnowski's "neural constructivism" (essentially a kind of
'hyper-plasticity') with Gazzaniga's insistence that we actually have less plasticity than is currently thought. Further, consider the 'new
innatist' point that phantom limbs imply the existence of internal representations of our body which we are born with (e.g., the fetus which
knows how to put its thumb in its mouth without 'putting out its eye', an example suggested by a participant in the 'Phantom Limb' conference).
Another, more cautionary response to invocations of plasticity is to point out that cortical remapping is not always a good thing! (Bodies are not
just what Los Angeles media executives make out of them, in Eagleton's celebrated image -- he was attacking the postmodern obsession with the body
coupled with its disregard for the real-life "piece of matter that sickens and dies," and concluded that "the creature who emerges from postmodern
thought is centreless, hedonistic, self-inventing, ceaselessly adaptive. He [is] more like a Los Angeles media executive than an Indonesian fisherman"
[T. Eagleton, After Theory, London: Allen Lane, 2003, p. 186].)
[50] On the theme of the "cultured brain" see Warren Neidich, Blow-Up. Photography, cinema and the
brain, New York: Distributed Art Publishers, 2003. A 'Deleuzean approach' to the brain is a significant component of Neidich's analysis; for a
helpful discussion of Deleuze on the brain see John Rajchman, The Deleuze Connections, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2000, pp. 133f., 136-138,
and my review at http://mentalhelp.net/books/books.php?type=de&id=476
[51] Antonio Negri, "Alma Venus. Prolegomena to the common," trans. Patricia Dailey &
Constantino Costantini, in Charles T. Wolfe, ed., The Renewal of Materialism (Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal 22:1, New York, New
School for Social Research, 2000), 16b. Online at http://www.generation-online.org/t/almavenus.htm
[52] Ibid.
[53] See http://www.stelarc.va.com.au and http://www.orlan.net
[54] As suggested by an anonymous reviewer for CTheory.net
[55] Michael Hardt & Antonio Negri, Empire, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2000,
p. 362. For more on Negri's notion of "constitutive ontology," see my discussion, "Materialism and temporality. On Antonio Negri's 'constitutive'
ontology," in Timothy S. Murphy & Abdul-Karim Mustapha, eds., The Philosophy of Antonio Negri 2: Revolution in Theory, London: Pluto
Press, forthcoming 2007.
Charles T. Wolfe is an ARC post-doctoral fellow in the Unit for History and Philosophy of Science, University of Sydney. He recently edited the
collection Monsters and Philosophy (see www.monstersandphilosophy.com) and works mainly in the area of early modern materialism and its
relation to biological thought. He is also an editor of the Paris-based journal Multitudes (http://multitudes.samizdat.net).


text:
Re: Timeout waiting for external console to complete the command
I'm using windows machine. So I just open file explorer and double click on the batch file.
Thanks for your response.
Please attach a full log file showing the problem (using the latest version of WinSCP).
To generate log file, use
/log=path_to_log_file command-line argument. Submit the log with your post as an attachment. Note that passwords and passphrases not stored in the log. You may want to remove other data you consider sensitive though, such as host names, IP addresses, account names or file names (unless they are relevant to the problem). If you do not want to post the log publicly, you can mark the attachment as private.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Vacancy Details
Hamptons International is now looking for a Property Manager to join the team in our Horsham Property Management centre.
Hamptons International has provided market-leading property expertise- locally, nationally and internationally- for 150 years, with an unwavering focus on customer satisfaction every step of the way. We sell 20 properties every day, let a property every 15 minutes through 90 offices across the UK.
Our people are motivated, supportive, dynamic and career driven individuals who, through our fantastic coaching, can excel in our exceptional culture and build a career.
- Provide an excellent standard of customer service and build relationships with landlords and tenants.
- Manage routine maintenance issues.
- Ensure all contractor invoices and utilities are paid promptly.
- Protect your landlord`s asset by recommending works to maintain and add value.
- Be the main point of contact for landlords and tenants during the tenancy.
- Liaise with local branches and coordinate pre-tenancy works as required.
- Negotiate end of tenancy deposit releases.
- Ensure safety compliance and housing legislation is adhered to at all times.
- Excellent verbal and written communications skills.
- Excellent team player with the ability to work autonomously.
- Excellent IT skills with intermediate Microsoft Office ability.
- Previous experience in a similar position or administration role is preferred.
- Competitive salary and commission structure
- Career progression and career opportunities
- Award winning training
- Company benefits and extras
If you are looking for a challenging and exciting role with excellent career development then please apply.
For further details on Hamptons International, please click here. Please also see our reviews on Glassdoor too.
Sorry, this vacancy is closed.


text:
I've been wanting to write an update for awhile now, but with life I came up with just about every reason you could possible imagine as to why I didn't have time.
School life work (the lack thereof), I mean, I feel like as if lately it's been one thing after another. Now, y'all know I don't mind the pressure and at some point, I have enjoyed the chaos, but when things are starting to take a true negative impact on your mood attitude or over all well being, that's when something needs to be done. I always preach being proactive and not reactive but seldom take my own advice..
Until it's too late, that is.
I don't know what caused me to change my password so I could finally open up this app, but I don't feel very positive or even in the mood to write. I have been super hard on myself when it comes to my writing. I want to write a book, and yet I can't stay on top of a blog or proofread my writing without the fear of 'select all delete' action going on.. but here we are..
I feel like so much goes on in my life that I don't see why I don't write about it. Probably because unlike some people, who like to talk about their feelings, I don't. Who likes to sit down and express emotions and rehash everything that would be much more pleasant being forgotten?
So bare with me while I take a stab at it..
I am one final away from completing my second full time semester here. I took some time off work, not intentional, but seems to have worked in my favor (well, in regards to school that is). I will be leaving the semester with straight A's baby! So, not training 20+ people a day, has really helped me with staying on top of my school work. Two full time semesters to go and I can finally transfer, phew!
I came to the library after I sat down with one of my professors. I really wish I had recorded the conversation because it was just amazing to hear someone confident in me when even I can't be. We obviously talked about my lack of confidence, but Rome sure wasn't built in a day..
I will say that I am whole heartedly trying to be the best person I can be. I put a lot of energy into doing well this semester, being helpful and courteous.. That I truly proud of the woman I am growing up to be. I see the changes and the effort into discipline myself, and I cannot be happier.
Just a few hours ago, I took a test that I had previously failed twice. I tried taking a test of 700 pages in 72 hours. A week later, failed again. How? This was a test regarding information I am going to school for, and yet I was having the hardest time passing it. Well…
TODAY I PASSED!!! I went into confident as ever (though I will say the other two times I was just as confident and to be honest that's crazy for me to even say with the amount of anxiety I get with taking tests), and passed by over 10%. I walked out of that building with a huge grin and couldn't help but to continue to congratulate myself throughout the car ride home (This test was TOUGH, to say the least. But I now know what color different muscle fibers are and the degree of all angles of the body, if case any of y'all, or my clients, were interested).
I don't know if it's because I was never motivated or praised when I was younger, but I am learning to be my own biggest fan, and she's a pretty dope chick to have around.


text:
A Safe Place For Children
Children and Young People in the church: Safe and Welcome
Purpose of the material
This material has been developed to support people within the Uniting Church who are working with children and young people, through church-based activities, SRE and regional and national events and those responsible for managing physical spaces where children and young people will be present. It is intended to assist people in the implementation of ideas expressed in the policy document A Safe Place for Children.
The material can be customised for specific purposes, and handouts may also be used as a source of information aside from the training.
A Safe Place for Children
The Uniting Church in Australia is committed to provide:
- Safe places where people are cared for, nurtured and sustained;
- A safe environment for children to encounter God, to develop relationships as part of a community, and to grow in faith.
A Safe Place for Children is available in hard copy for a small cost from the NSW Synod and is also available in pdf format.
Why was "A Safe Place For Children" written?
- To assist congregations as they review and plan their ministry with children.
- Standards of care now expected as a matter of law and of community practice are higher than they were in the past, and are rightly being enforced.
- Issues of care, protection and safety have always been complex, but are increasingly so.
- It is intended that this document will be used alongside the children's ministry policy workbook "On the Way Together" adopted by NSW Synod 1998 and in conjunction with other Uniting Church procedures to ensure that the Church is a safe place for all children.
Where does the document come from?
- The document was prepared in response to a UCA Assembly request for such a document.
- "A Safe Place for Children" is an official document of the Uniting Church in Australia.
Uniting Education, appointed by the UCA Assembly to undertake the work on "A Safe Place for Children", appointed a Project Team based in Canberra from the Kippax Uniting Church. The team included parents, lawyers, social workers, Ministers of the Word, policy writers and editors.
How is this document to be used?
"A Safe Place for Children" is written for congregations, and includes materials specific to NSW State laws and UCA NSW Synod by-laws. It includes answers to the most frequently asked questions and discussed issues.
The most frequently discussed issues, asked questions & where you can find the answers.
What does my congregation have to do?
(Chapter 1 Introduction, page 1) Steps for a congregation to take, page 5
What is our duty of care?
(Chapter 5 Children in Uniting Church programs, page 25)
- There are three key areas – providing:
- appropriate safe places and spaces page 26
- proper planning and implementation of programs page 28
- suitable personnel page 27
- A registration form for a program, which must be completed and signed by a parent or guardian page 32 & appendix 1 – Permission Form.
- Insurance review page 33
- Appendix 2 – Driver Declaration Form.
Who is an appropriate leader?
(Chapter 6 Uniting Church people in ministry with children, page 37)
- What to include in a job description? page 40
- Screening of applicants – declaration forms, references, police checks page 41 & 42 & appendix 3 – Volunteer Leader Form.
- Employed Leader Declaration Form – appendix 4, to be used in conjunction with the job description and NSW Synod Lay Worker policies.
- Refer to The Working With Children Check: Guidelines for Employers, NSW Commission for Children and Young People, May 2000.
What do we need to know about child abuse?
( Chapter 7 Children, Friendships and Health, page 47 )
- Importance of awareness of child abuse page 48
- Mandatory reporting page 49 (refer to Child Protection: Your New Responsibilities, Procedures for notifying the NSW Ombudsman of child abuse allegations and convictions against employees, NSW Government Publication, 1999, pages 11, 12)
What to do if an emergency or accident occurs?
- There is a great need to develop procedures, page 55 to 57.
- People directly responsible for children's health and safety should have first aid experience.
How do we know if our property is safe?
(Chapter 8 Children and Uniting Church Property, page 59)
- Common features of church property that might pose a danger to the safety of children, page 60 to 63
- Develop procedures for minimising risks, page 63 to 64
- Development and use of a property checklist, page 64 to 65


text:
| 17.1°C Dublin
Ed Sheeran's father refused to believe his son had been nicked by a sword waved around by a British royal at a party.
Sheeran has been left with a scar on his cheek after Princess Beatrice clipped him with the blade as she pretended to knight singer James Blunt at the small bash in Windsor, England.
The Lego House star has yet to name Prince Andrew's daughter as the person behind the accident, but he joked about the drama during an appearance on The Graham Norton Show in Britain on Friday, revealing his dad didn't believe the real story behind the scar.
"I remember telling my dad about it and he didn't believe me," he recalled. "(He said), 'No, what really happened?'"
Quizzed further about what happened, Ed clammed up, telling host Norton, "I can't talk about it. I don't know what will happen if I do!"
The incident reportedly happened during an intimate get-together at Prince Andrew's home in Windsor, and Sheeran still can't understand how the story leaked.
"There weren't a lot of people there that night," he said. "For two weeks after, I had a huge gash on my face and would tell people I fell and then suddenly, the story came out... The alleged story came out."
But the Thinking Out Loud singer has grown quite fond of his scar, adding, "I think it adds!" he told iHeartRadio host Elvis Duran earlier this month.
"I started going under the radar when I first got big, then I got loads of tattoos and then everyone was like, 'OK, you're definitely you because you have red hair and tattoos', so I started wearing hoodies and hats. Now I've got this face scar, there's no not recognising me, because it's like, 'You've got ginger hair, tattoos, and a face scar - it's definitely you!'"
And earlier this week, he told Apple Music DJ Zane Low, "I'm glad it didn't hit my eye... although I probably could have worked an eye patch."
Online Editors


text:
When your spouse dies, one of the somber duties that must be undertaken is the filing of the final tax return. You have to include the decedent's income until the date of death, along with your own income, if your filing status is married filing jointly, completing Internal Revenue Service Form 1040 with any necessary schedules. If you file separately from your deceased spouse and are claiming an expected refund, you have to complete Form 1310 in addition.
Write the word "Deceased" and the date of death across the top of Form 1040. This is to be done whether you file jointly or separately. It alerts the IRS to the taxpayer's demise.Step 2
Write the word "Deceased" after your spouse's name on Line 1 of Form 1040.Step 3
Complete and sign the form. If you file jointly, sign the second signature line yourself. On the line where your spouse's signature would have been written, type "Filing as Surviving Spouse." This lets the IRS know that you, as opposed to a professional preparer or estate executor, filed the return.
- If you receive an IRS refund check in the name of you and your spouse and would prefer a check in your name alone, file Form 1310, checking off in Part I of the form the box that denotes you are requesting a reissued check. Return the original check with Form 1310. You can also request reissuance in your name alone by letter.
- You do not need to include a death certificate when you file your spouse's final return.
Photo Credits
- tax forms image by Chad McDermott from Fotolia.com


text:
I am back in school again explaining my extraordinary small boy's approach to the world.
His latest antic means being called yet again by school with long phone calls about what makes him tick and visits explaining why he is "special".
Of course he is special. I am his Mum and as his Mum I believe his unique and talented as I also do large boy with his A grades and nerdy physics lifestyle. However this is the story account of small boy. I am writing it for my blog I suppose in some attempt to cheer Mums up and make us smile, to shift some of the guilt I feel about my inadequate single parenting and indeed keep as a word document to print off for the next lot of teachers who need to know about smaller boy.
So let us start at the beginning as they say. I am remembering that his birth was tricky; induced with that nasty vacuum sucky thing to get him out, and then I remember I was ill in last few weeks of pregnancy and was monitored every other day. Perhaps the fact he had to be made to come early upset his little equilibrium.
As a baby he looked like Granddad Bob and huffed and puffed a lot so we called him Hufflepuff.
I remember him snuggling into my neck with a head of black hair huffing and puffing. It is worth noting that my memory is of a small person always attached to my body. Last evening after the latest episode in his life larger small child asked for a big hug and wrapped himself around me all legs and arms.
Next memory is stroking back of his neck when he is about 18 months old. My beautiful baby boy. I have cancer, may well be dying and my precious boys will have no Mum. Weirdest time of my life which involved moving house, big operation and lots of tears. I am sitting here remembering the look smaller boy gave me when I came out of hospital. H had not seen me for two weeks. His eyes were full of mistrust and wariness and he walked away from me.
Over the next year this toddler experienced watching his Mum recover from serious illness, three out of four grandparents dying, and grief stricken parents, and his daddy who had been his stay at home cuddly Dad upping sticks and disappearing. Small boy attended nursery and I remember nursery telling me that as a baby he was "stubborn". I laughed and said as his Mum I would say "self-determined".
I can write those words but that year is very blurred for me. I think I went through basic motions of providing care, good enough parenting, a warm home, a bottle of milk and a cuddle. I remember a small person who clung to me for dear life. Struggled with letting me out of my sight, think toddler wrapped around neck, leg my extra appendage.
So a little description of my small child around this time. So he was running around in a batman suit talking in his own language. He talked nonsense to the rest of the world as he had his own words for things. Large boy and I were fluent in his speak and would translate. He was very cute and would toddle off around to the neighbours and go sit on the sofa and talk small boy speak.
Pooing constantly in batman outfits was not so cute. Neither was always pooing at wrong moment such as being at cinema, in a café and indeed hiding when he did so, not cute at all. He also decided to be in complete control of his food from this moment onwards with the beginning of the squirly roll diet.
I cannot remember when squirly rolls became part of life. But they are always there. Or an empty box is there. Empty squirly roll boxes have filled with dread and anxiety resulted in tantrums hoo haa and grief. Chocolate and grief. I never expected to be a single Mum trying to do everything. I was trying to find work to pay the bills, grieving for my Dad and trying to get life back on track. Bribery of chocolate mini rolls seemed a reasonable option to manage small boy's self-determination. The exhaustion of extracting small boy from screaming under the table, refusing to bath, dress get up could always be solved with a squirly roll and a cuddle.
Good enough parenting. Small boy and squirly rolls started a lifetime of controlling behaviour about food. My barely coping parenting managed the best I could with squirly rolls. As I could barely get myself dressed, but had to present myself to the world as "doing okay as I am strong" squirly rolls just got me through without anger or indeed injury. There is even a newspaper article written about me, the boys and food you can google us!
School is approaching as my little batman is now four. I am remembering a kind health visitor drinking tea in my summerhouse on a hot summer's day. Summer seems better time for potty training. Except my small boy will not be trained with or without squirly rolls. So many pooey pants. I am a disaster as a mother but not even nursery seems to get him "trained".
So we start school in pants and big boy uniform talking his own language. He has a beautiful smile and starts to draw. He draws long elongated stories and tales of beautiful abstract ideas. His drawings reflect his own vision of the world of monsters and tooth fairies and a God who is a big red smiling ball with long cuddling arms sitting on a sea of clouds.
With grommets fitted in his ears his own language starts to fade as he enters a hearing world. When you view the world through small boy's eyes and life begins with squirly rolls school is a tad dull. Pooing everywhere makes it more fun though. Pooing gets you lots of attention from kind but dim ladies and I can watch the world spin around me while I poo.
This is my first encounter with head teacher with patronising look and her big book of badness notebook. She told me my son had mental health problems. I told her to get stuffed, wrote a behavioural plan and a letter that explained that before he was three Mummy had cancer, grandparents dies, daddy left and mummy grieved. Silly cow. Most grownups would have not coped with a life time of grief that my little man had experienced yet he somehow had managed to still be standing all be it with pooey pants and a squirly roll in his hand.
My little man at five just wanted to be a toddler a little longer. School didn't and still does not suit smaller boy. Throughput the years I have had to visits every form teacher and explain: My son does not do being told what to do or rules. He is his own man and everything is up for negotiation. Pick your battles wisely with him or you will have a nervous breakdown. I didn't engage with a battle of wills with him.
Small boy is strong and self-determined. Such great qualities to have as an adult. Sort of stuff to write on a CV. Middle aged women who teach small boys aren't so keen on self-determination. They like children who conform and who do not hide behind curtains, run off, crawl under tables and refuse to undertake school work.
When you see the world with a sense of wonder and interest and your senses are open to a world of possibilities why would you want to read a dull nursery rhyme book? When you can draw your own picture of the universe and God why would you need to colour in or join up the dots? So small boy doesn't and spends a year drawing at the back of the class. Oh but we love him continues the rest of the world as he runs in the sports day giving the crowd a cheery wave coming last with a cheeky smile. Remember he has no intention of coming first or running fast, why would he?
"Errrrrr have you considered a statement?" says year three teacher. I am exhausted running this parenting race by now. The head teacher's big book of badness has been out too many times and naturally as a working single parent my boy's inability to conform is a result of my shockingly bad parenting. The notion that assessments could be done and possible support surprised me. It still amuses me now that small boy's inability to conform still in large part has resulted in support at school.
I sit here smiling as he did indeed get a statement a pretty hefty one at that. So my boy is no longer perceived as "bad" but "special". Everyone loves him. He is funny charismatic and cuddly. He has a twinkle in his eye that somehow makes most of his antics funny. As I am working small boy is supposed to go to afterschool club. He has already been thrown out of one club by refusing to walk back with the ladies and hiding under the table. With this one he votes with feet. He tells form teacher Mum is collecting him, distracts at home time and nips home to be with brother. On his third successful attempt at escapology I give up and big brother takes on the after school care. You see this is example of small boy's tenacity.
Throughout all of this small boy continues to hug me. he will not leave me alone as my mother says. Out of sight he is independent and getting on with life but when Mum is around he clings. Physically he lies on me he wraps around me, he is there constant. Being loved and giving love is for me one of the wonders of being a Mum. Small boy has the biggest heart and huffle puff was the most snuggliest cuddliest boy. I miss this now he hits greasy smelly unhuggy teens.
Throughout primary school he is loved well liked and non conforms. He does not participate with rules, conventions or traditions. He cannot go out to play so stays in and builds Lego men. He makes his own super heroes by painting them and will occasionally oblige with a quick run around if he is allowed to wear a cape! Concerts and Christmas carols and assemblies are excruciating. I sit there as a Mum alone surrounded by Mums, dads, grandparents all proudly watching their off spring. I have sat there fingers crossed or pinching myself to not weep as small boy wanders off, mutters through songs, refuses to be a donkey, only does assembly as "banana man" in a super hero yellow cloak, refuses to be an executioner until the last moment and I sigh with relief as he has sat still for 30 minutes. I have attended sports days where he has come last in every race including one time not running at all as he refused surrounded by parents smiling and cheering off spring on.
Small boy sort of has friends but generally he is not fussed. He has his "first friend" our old neighbour who is like a kindly older cousin. Various boys have knocked on the door but he remains ambivalent. Until recently his only exercise was bouncing on our now defunct trampoline where he would bounce and tale stories from his own imagination. We have a room full of Lego which in his world is far more interesting than playing in the park. Kids like him though. They think he is funny and suspect slightly elusive. He rarely has play dates and does not do parties. I gave up with birthdays after the age of seven. He hates groups, clubs, joining in or being part of any gang.
As a Mum sometime I yearn for a normal boy who is steady at school, play footy and hangs out with mates. I have a smallish boy who struggles with reading and writing has few friends, won't join anything, who is charismatic, fantastic at art, making things and has a head full of smart ideas.
He walks to school with his long suffering mate C. Great friends C and his family remain steady support. Until he was about 10 small boy refused to have haircut. I used to have to shave his head once a year with him kicking and screaming wrapped in a quilt helped by a friend so social services wouldn't be called! One day small boy was late coming home and I found him in C's kitchen happily having a haircut by C's Mum. She kept asking and he just said yes!
Oh around this time there was the smoking episode. Small boy had a video camera his dad had bought him and liked making small films. He created a lovely little film of him and his mate having a fag in the summerhouse! When his mate at school denied it the teacher said they had video evidence! There was no insight from small boy that this was wrong. He just tried it, videoed it as an interesting project, said it tasted nasty and that was that.
It is exhausting being his Mum. Choosing a secondary school for small boy broke my heart. He is a non-conformist and our education system will never meet my boy's needs. With energy support and money home schooling would have been an option. I have neither the support or resources to support small boy with meeting his needs and true potential so local all be it nice, comp is where he goes.
Attempts with his statement and teaching assistants to support his needs sort of work but he runs away lots. Always home but always a worry. I have spoken to the heads and the SENCO leads all well intentioned to settle my son. I have had Mrs B the Head teacher in my kitchen phoning me when I am on the M6, I have discussed with Mr I the deputy head the reason why small boy wants to "make suicide" by jumping off a thirty foot wall. I have also attempted to show his teachers his beautiful creativity. I go to parents evening armed with pictures of his drawings, his legomen, his cushion covers and stories of his take on the world.
If you can create beautiful intricate drawings why would you want to colour in your favourite abstract artist? If you have a head full of fantastic science facts why waste time writing a worksheet down that you cannot read and struggle to write?
"We love small boy" is always there but you tell me how I engage my small non-conformist in maths homework? Geography he might do if it involves making a map or devising a leaflet because he wants to. There are fewer cuddles now and he has entered the world of the net. Despite boundaries and parental controls I am still a bad mother as he spends too much time on laptops and games machines. He can't /won't read and rarely goes out to play, eats weird food and it is massive struggle to get him to undertake a shower so often smells. He then comes to find me with a book full of sketches and cartoons. I come home one day to house covered in blue paint as small boy has undertaken a "blue" painting project.
Months do go by without the dreaded "what has he done now at school call" but there always an expectation or indeed my wave of guilt that I should do more. I roll in from work shattered and there is only me. No Dad, no sister around the corner. I do homework the dishwasher stays unloaded, cook tea and there is no reading time. I can create some enthusiasm for often dull dreary homework, I stick time tables on fridge but my son controls his own destiny.
Anyway at twelve years old and in Y8 life has been remarkably quiet. There is a sense that some emotional maturity means that small boy has stopped running and has finally got with the "plan".
I have been distracted with life being a daughter, work and meeting older boy's needs. Deep down I know small boy's life was far too quiet so made an appointment to catch up with new SENCO lead last week. So I am driving back from Nottingham university and get the phone call from school wanting to discuss the small boy's latest progress.
Later in the evening I found small plastic bags filled with stuff. One his filled with salt, one with mixed herbs the other with grass from the garden. Small little bags that could be perfect props for "Breaking Bad". In his head I know it won't be for getting up to "no good" but will indeed just be his latest creative prop making project. Fortunately school the see the funny side though without concern. As single Mum I rant on about not being a druggy, the bags were for earrings and that I have parental controls!
Secondary school; has not been too bad for small boy. He likes the varied lessons and has slowly been improving narrowing the gap of his amazing smart brain and what he puts on paper to be assessed by. He almost plays by the rules. Until now and I am here again explaining why small boy has "lack of effort" with a big reminder of why he has statement. He is has no "ism" so how do your explain his needs? He is beautiful, funny creative smart boy who cannot read or write very well, still has some speech issues and will not conform to rules and struggles with negotiation. He is self-determined, tenacious and thoroughly exhausting.
To school I think put him on report if you want. He might respond if he cares we shall see. After school there he is rummaging around in the cupboard for a squirly roll. He refuses to discuss plastic bags of salt, school life or effort. I know he listens though as he sits on my lap with his large limbs draped around me. He then shows me his latest funny drawing and we smile and eat squirly rolls.


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Strummerville are fresh off our amazing trip to SXSW where we presented our take-over on the opening night of The British Music Embassy and our official showcase at Prague on 17 March.
SXSW 2010 Strummerville Press Release
What do Billy Bragg, The Foo Fighters, The British Music Embassy, the Strummerville family and legendary British filmmaker Don Letts have in common? All of these tastemakers in film and music will be celebrating Strummerville's debut at this year's SXSW Music and Film Festival.


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One of the key aspects of this and many PA settings is resource management and the scarcity of equipment. Characters should almost always be nearly out of everything. This doesn't really change as their gear improves - instead of being short on .22 ammo they are short on 5.56 AP rounds. A big motivator within the video game, and thus here, is building a network of trading contacts. All equipment has been divided by the quality of equipment a trader might have. Traders are also excellent sources of missions, and offer require such action prior to selleing players "the good stuff". Traders are built as contacts, paid for in points. This also makes them, or improvements in the contact perk, excellent directed ezperience awards. Attached are the equipment files and character prefab and the equipment list (print format) for use with Hero System and Hero Designer.
The Fallout Wiki is a very useful tool for running adventures, especially when combined with something like MapTool.
I also use the Prima Fallout 3 Guide. It have very useful game information, adventures, dialog, and more.
Adaptations >


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(03-06-2014, 11:02 PM)Boorito Wrote: @ Genki - I was thinking of plastic, but I would much prefer the metal, I can remove the pink lol.
Color-wise I'm just switching the stock HPI alu parts from orange to the ones in purple. Cheap way to get a liiiiittle bit better color match. Not that it means anything at all though. Mine is doomed anyways with bright blue Yeah Racing shocks. :-D
Enroute JXRWD
Mad Machine IG / Mad Machine FB
Mad Machine IG / Mad Machine FB


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The House passed their first non-organizational bill of the 114th Congress today with a solidly bipartisan vote on HR 26, the Terrorism Risk Insurance Program Reauthorization Act of 2015. The final vote was 416 to 5 with all five nays coming from Republicans. The bill would extend the current TRIA until 2020 with some changes in the details of the program.
This is similar to the bill that was passed in December in the House but was ignored by the Senate because of objections to the 'added provisions' of the bill. This bill also included two the same unrelated titles:
• The National Association of Registered Agents and Brokers Reform Act of 2015; and
• The Business Risk Mitigation and Price Stabilization Act of 2015
It is quite possible that either or both of these additional titles will be removed when this bill is considered by the Senate.
BTW: There were no changes made to the language to specifically include cyber-attacks like those against Sony in the definition of 'terrorist attack'.


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Every day is a choice. Choose greatness with the Skechers GOwalk 4 Glorify Walking Shoe. Features innovative 5GEN® midsole design and an advanced mesh fabric and synthetic upper with new Skechers Goga Max insole for the most advanced walking experience ever. Innovative and highly responsive 5GEN® midsole cushioning. 5th Generation design provides a high-energy return on every step. Mesh upper engineered to naturally expand with your foot while you walk. Lightweight mesh fabric and smooth synthetic upper for comfortable fit. Bamboo lined footbed for antibacterial odor control. Goga Pillars® on outsole evolved into a more streamlined design. New Skechers Goga Max insole for next generation cushioning and support. Tapering midfoot design for improved arch support. Weight: 5 1/4 oz. per shoe in a women's size 7.
Athletic mesh fabric upper with synthetic overlays
Lace-up walking shoe design
Highly breathable lightweight and comfortable upper design
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Natural expansion provides a comfortable, natural fit
Stabilizing heel overlay panels
Side S logo
Quick-Fit Portal on heel for easy pull-on wear
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Nice appearance Skechers GOwalk 4 Pursuit Slip On Walking Shoe Women Navy/Gray
$161.19 $80.60
Save: 50% off


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- The property of being timid.
His timidiness prevented him from challenge authority or asking his boss for a raise.
Wikipedia foundation.
Look at other dictionaries:
timidness — timid ► ADJECTIVE (timider, timidest) ▪ lacking in courage or confidence. DERIVATIVES timidity noun timidly adverb timidness noun. ORIGIN Latin timidus, from timere to fear … English terms dictionary
Timidness — Timid Tim id, a. [L. timidus, fr. timere to fear; cf. Skr. tam to become breathless, to become stupefief: cf. F. timide.] Wanting courage to meet danger; easily frightened; timorous; not bold; fearful; shy. [1913 Webster] Poor is the triumph o er … The Collaborative International Dictionary of English
timidness — noun see timid … New Collegiate Dictionary
timidness — See timidity. * * * … Universalium
timidness — (Roget s Thesaurus II) noun 1. An awkwardness or lack of self confidence in the presence of others: backwardness, bash fulness, coyness, retiringness, shyness, timidity. See RESTRAINT. 2. The act of hesitating or state of being hesitant:… … English dictionary for students
timidness — n. shyness; fearfulness, lack of courage … English contemporary dictionary
timidness — tim·id·ness … English syllables
timidness — noun fear of the unknown or unfamiliar or fear of making decisions • Syn: ↑timidity, ↑timorousness • Derivationally related forms: ↑timid (for: ↑timorousness), ↑timid, ↑timid ( … Useful english dictionary
shyness — I (Roget s IV) n. Syn. bashfulness, reserve, timidity, modesty, timorousness, timidness, coyness, demureness, sheepishness, diffidence, apprehension, backwardness, nervousness, insecurity, reticence, stage fright, mike fright*; see also restraint … English dictionary for students
timidity — I (Roget s IV) n. 1. [Fear] Syn. fearfulness, cowardliness, softness; see cowardice , fear 2 . 2. [Reserve] Syn. calmness, shyness, quiet; see reserve 2 . II (Roget s Thesaurus II) noun 1. An awkwardness or lack of self confidence in the presence … English dictionary for students


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Coconut Curry Chickpea Soup
- Recipe created by FabFood on Aug 26, 2009
- Permalink: http://sheknows.com/recipes/coconut-curry-chickpea-soup
- View more recipes by FabFood.
- Prep: –
- Cook Time: –
- Total: –
- Serving: –
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
- 1 onion, finely chopped
- 2 cloves garlic, minced
- 2 tablespoons curry powder
- 1 pound small red skinned potatoes, cut into 1/2-inch dice
- 4 cups vegetable stock
- 1 cup unsweetened coconut milk
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 2 cans (14 to 19 ounces each) chickpeas, drained and rinsed
- 1 zucchini, cut into 1/2-inch dice
- 1 tablespoon paced light brown sugar
- 1 tablespoon freshly squeezed lime juice
- 2 cups (about 3 ounces) packed baby spinach
- salt and freshly ground black pepper
- toasted sweetened shredded coconut (see tip below)
- 1. In a large pot, heat oil over medium heat. Add onion and sauté until softened, about 6 minutes. Add garlic and sauté for 1 minute. Add curry powder and saute for 10 seconds. Add potatoes and stir to coat.
- 2. Add stock and coconut milk; cook for 10 minutes. Add chickpeas and zucchini; cook for 10 minutes or until potatoes and zucchini are tender. Stir in brown sugar and lime juice. Add spinach and stir until wilted. Season with salt and pepper to taste.
- 3. Ladle into heated bowls and garnish with coconut.
- Tip:
- To toast coconut, add it to a dry skillet and cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, until golden brown. Transfer to a heatproof plate to cool.
Filed Under:
Vegetable, Bean and Legume, Vegetarian, Camping, RV, Quick and Easy, Make Ahead, Kid Friendly, Low Fat, Eating Light, Indian, Vegan


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You're a backcountry traveler maybe, who wants one other type of navigation. So, without additional ado, right here is the list of the top kids toys and gadgets for the 2013-2014. You can also add from KORG Gadget directly to any social networking service such as SoundCloud, Facebook, or Twitter, to name a couple of. Third-occasion gadget directories starts pop up. Google Modules is the largest, there's additionally Snipperoo and Google Mini Apps(see url for my title). With the growth in the Web and the way we learn, write and be taught in these fashionable days then good digital gadgets really blend in nicely with doing all of that. Then, I had to go back to the Digital Gadgets web page and obtain their system replace file. Gadgets preserve men entertained for hours – and, after all, everybody is aware of that males by no means outgrow toys.
Essentially the most revealing signal is probably that a lot of the animated series that I begin watching nowadays are pretty totally different from Gadget in terms of fashion and story construction. MENKIND, the UK's main multi-channel niche presents and gadgets retailer, has introduced it has acquired RED5, the Hull-based shopper gadgets brand. Many of these toys and gadgets are expertise based (although not all of them).
CAPE TOWN, South Africa – November 2016 – MediaTek announced its collaboration with multinational telecommunications company Ericsson to make LTE-Advanced features available in mainstream mobile gadgets. Merely put, there are numerous types of gadgets however some are simply cooler than the others and these are the sorts of gadgets that males need to be seen with.
This is what we are able to anticipate from the keynote on Wednesday, September 7, 2016 at 1 p.m. ET. However, there remains quite a few gadgets utilizing the legacy API, primarily gadgets developed for iGoogle, and the time to upgrade those gadgets is now. The advenced options are the extra up to date and makes plenty of things can be performed with gadgets.
If a static quantity was given to establish the gadget as a substitute of #PB_Any, then the capabilities return the OS identifier for the created Gadget. For a interval of 1 12 months, gadgets using the legacy API will proceed to be supported, and function. There's a useful gadget or day by day living help product for almost any problem you could have or anything that it's essential do. You simply need to search out it. Some come to your mailbox, others you might have to seek for like treasure. Once you have exhausted the Goggle search(which is unlikely),you'll have to get extra resourceful and hit the streets to unearth the kind of gadgets you need. Not only are these gadgets good for the planet, however they have to improve our bottom line as properly: All that winding has to spend some energy.


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Glynn Vivian: Connecting our Communities
Through our Learning programmes, we aim to increase participation and engagement with people from a range of diverse backgrounds and cultures.
Our Learning programmes aim to nurture the creative skills for under-represented audiences, for example, vulnerable young people, older adults, diverse cultures, adults with learning disabilities and those living in areas of social deprivation in Swansea.
Ethnic Minority Groups
We offer targeted workshops and practical discussions based on the themes of Richard Glynn Vivian's worldwide travel and journeys.
Adults with Learning Disabilities
We provide opportunities for people to be involved in a range of valued life and work experiences that will assist them to be more independent, involved, valued and active members of the community.
In partnership with Communities First we offer an active public Outreach Programme which goes out into the wider community to share the story of Richard Glynn Vivian, our collection and our contemporary exhibitions programme with as many people as possible.


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Be inspired
When the world is your oyster, it can be difficult to pinpoint which experiences, destinations and hotels are best for you and your party. That's where we come in.
Select who you're travelling with, the type of activities and experiences you'd like to do on your trip, and when you want to travel, and we'll do the rest. If you need more advice, give our Travel Designers a call on 01483 319 333.


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Here we are at another year end. How was your's? Did you meet some goals? Re-evaluate others? Did you reach what seemed to be an impossible challenge? Did you fall short of an important task?
Spend some time reflecting on your year. For many we are very good at coming up with what needs to change, creating the goal, and then moving through it or beyond it without a way to measure our progress. All movement, even the ones that feel backwards, is progress. Here's a worksheet to help you reflect on your year and get ready for the next year of your growing wisdom.
What do you want more of?
What do you want less of?
What needs a small change?
A big one?
Who do you want to be in the next year?
How will you know when you've reached your goal?
What rewards you for your efforts?
How will you re-evaluate your progress throughout the process? (daily, weekly, monthly, project based, etc).
What does success look like for you?
Glancing back at the above – what else needs your attention?
And are these goals truly yours?
Repeat this process as needed. Remember it's precision not perfection and the journey is what matters most.


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Zak Hussein/Splash News
Sure, they've got the kind of lives that most toddlers -- and adults -- dream of, but not everything about Prince George and Princess Charlotte's life is English roses. In fact, some of the rules they have to adhere to and engagements they have to attend sound downright miserable for 2- and 4-year-olds. No Paw Patrol and Goldfish crackers for these tots -- they're living that fancy toddler life. And if we're being honest here, it doesn't always look very fun.
As George and Charlotte grow older, they'll come to realize the immense privilege with which they've be been blessed. But for now, their lives seem like kind of a pain to them sometimes. Imagine having to constantly appear before massive crowds in our Sunday best as a toddler. Or getting on a plane yet again when all of our friends are going to a birthday party. Or heck, having a zillion cameras pointed our way on our very first day of school. Not fun.
More from CafeMom: 10 Times Prince George Said Exactly What Was on His Mind
Prince George and Princess Charlotte are among some of the luckiest kids in the world, but for now, when they're still too little to understand, life can be a bit of a drag sometimes. And we feel for them.
More from CafeMom: Princess Charlotte's Huge Personality Captured in 12 Photos
Here are 15 times we didn't envy George or Charlotte. Hang in there, guys!
George Always Has to Wear Shorts1
Freezing out? No matter. Prince George still has to rock a pair of shorts and knee-high socks. The reason? Trousers on young English boys are considered "middle class" and "suburban." Sorry, Georgie.
More from CafeMom: 13 Times Prince George Was About to Lose It
When George Misbehaved at Pippa's Wedding, We All Knew2
It's one thing to get scolded in front of your aunt and new uncle, but the whole world? That's rough.
When Charlotte Threw a Tantrum, We All Knew3
A lesson the world learned that day? Do not mess with Kate Middleton.
George's First Day of School -- No Pressure There!4
Clearly, Prince George wasn't thrilled about his first day of school. And adding insult to injury, there was a camera crew filming his (long) walk up to the school gates. Not something the average 4-year-old has to deal with. Poor guy!
More from CafeMom: 15 Irresistible Pics From Prince George & Princess Charlotte's First Royal Trip
That Time George HAD to Stay Up Late to Meet Obama5
Can't a dude just catch some zzz's?
When There Was a Terrorist Threat Against George6
Obviously, people in privileged positions are more susceptible to threats and attacks, but no child should be threatened by ISIS. Absolutely terrifying.
They Have to Sit Through Trooping the Color Every Year7
Which, to them, really is just standing in front of a million people screaming. Fun? Eh, look at George's face.
More from CafeMom: 15 Times Kate Middleton & Prince William Were Strict Parents
They Attend Fun Parties ... But How Much Fun Do They Really Have?8
The odds of the duke and duchess letting their kids stuff themselves with cake and run amok? Approximately zero.
They Constantly Have to Wave to People9
Sometimes a guy's just not in the mood.
A Minister Asked People to 'Pray for Prince George to Be Gay'10
Gay, straight -- who cares what George's sexual preference is when he's older? But praying for the sexual orientation of a child is just wrong and weird on so many levels. Sheesh, just let him be a kid.
More from CafeMom: 17 Photos That Prove Prince George Is the Royal to Watch
They Spend So Much Time on Planes11
Does Charlotte look amused to be flying private again? That would be a no.
They're Over 'Regular Toys'12
They've got access to so many amazing toys that regular stuffed animals just aren't going to cut it. Moment of silence for that poor stuffy.
That Time Prince George Just Didn't Want His Photo Taken13
Ugh, how many kids would want to be greeted by a massive crowd of people and snapping cameras after getting off a plane? Not many. Hang in there, George!
More from CafeMom: 22 Photos of Prince George Looking Like a Very Mischievous Little Royal
That Time George Was Just Plain Freaked Out14
Aw, poor thing. Sometimes a little one just needs some space for god's sake!
The World Saw George Poop15
Most kids today will have the annoying, semi-embarrassing photos their parents posted to Facebook when they get older. George? He has a shot the world saw of him going number two.


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If you visited an alien world, what kind of souvenir would you bring back to Earth?
If it were me, I'd probably grab a rock or an extraterrestrial flower or maybe just some epic selfies (basically, anything that wouldn't get me thrown in alien prison), but if you're Aric of Dacia, 5th century warrior prince, you'd obviously choose the aliens' most powerful weapon, which also happens to double as their most esteemed relic. In his defense, Aric was already imprisoned, and all he wanted was to go back home, kick some Roman butt, and chill out with a goblet of wine.
Unsurprisingly, his alien abductors had other plans for Aric and his fellow human captives (likely enslavement and experimentation), prompting him to lead an uprising which culminated in his fateful acquisition of the X-O Manowar armor. Needless to say, a weaponized suit of sentient armor pretty much trumps any souvenir you can buy at the airport, but unfortunately, ol' Aric didn't get to show it off to his buds when he returned to Earth.
See, even though he'd only been gone for a few years, that whole "theory of relativity" thing meant that Aric showed back up on Earth a bit later than when he'd been abducted…like 16 centuries later. In the short version of the long run, Aric was a bit ticked about the whole situation, but made the best out of it by saving the rest of the world from the alien race that captured him in the first place.
Cool Premise, but Who the Heck is X-O Manowar in the Real World?
Aric of Dacia a.k.a. X-O Manowar was created for Valiant Comics by Jim Shooter and Bob Layton, and made his first appearance in 1992 on the way to becoming one of the most popular characters in the Valiant Universe. In 1997, X-O got a reboot thanks to Acclaim Entertainment's buyout of Valiant the year before. In the new series, the armor's owner is one Donovan Wylie. This version of X-O Manowar briefly made it into the realm of more familiar comics territory when he fought alongside Tony Stark in Acclaim's video game Iron Man and X-O Manowar in Heavy Metal, which was produced for Playstation, Game Boy, Sega, and PC.
Then, in typical superhero fashion, the character was rebooted a third time in 2012, after the rights to the Valiant Comics universe of characters was acquired by a new company, Valiant Entertainment. The X-O Manowar armor once again belonged to Aric of Dacia, but at least at this point he had probably gotten used to being time-displaced. The new series ran all the way to 50 issues before recently ending, but Aric and the X-O armor will be returning next year. This time, he'll be portrayed by Derek Theler in the live action web series Ninjak vs the Valiant Universe.
Since Valiant Entertainment signed up for nine figures worth of film financing from Beijing-based media group DMG last year, and now has a 5 picture deal with Sony, we can also assume that X-O Manowar will make it onto the big screen in the near future as well.
X-O Manowar: Savior of Humanity, or Iron Man Copycat?
Um, both, actually. Just last month, I wrote about another character from the Valiant universe, Bloodshot, and how he shares more than a few remarkable characteristics with our favorite fourth wall-breaking merc with a mouth (however, Bloodshot creator Kevin VanHook took to the comments to clarify that the similarities were, indeed, just coincidence). Similarly, X-O Manowar is highly reminiscent of Marvel's Iron Man. The big difference in these comparisons is Bloodshot and Deadpool debuted around the same time, while Iron Man preceded X-O Manowar by nearly three full decades.
And yeah, one is a billionaire playboy and the other is a time-displaced warrior, so there's that. Regardless, the commonalities are pretty overwhelming. When Tony Stark and Aric of Dacia don their respective suits of armor, both men gain an incredible range of superhuman abilities, including flight, augmented strength, invisibility, enhanced intelligence and powers of observation, energy projection, and more.
So X-O Manowar is like Valiant's version of Iron Man, Bloodshot is their Deadpool, and one of their other hugely popular characters, Ninjak, is basically a reimagining of Batman as a British spy. Could it have anything to do with the fact that Jim Shooter, co-creator of all three characters, was formerly the editor-in-chief over at Marvel Comics? Nah…surely not.
There's no getting around the similarities that Bloodshot shares with Deadpool. If un-killable mercenaries were vegetables, these would be two peas in a pod. The latter first graced the pages of a comic book in early 1991, with the former not following suit until nearly two years later, so it's fair to speculate that Bloodshot's creators, Kevin VanHook and Yvel Guichet, drew some serious inspiration from Rob Liefeld and Fabian Nicieza's Deadpool character.
Bloodshot is also very much like Robert Ludlum's fictional assassin Jason Bourne [Click here to read more…]
Wrap Up
I'm poking fun, but not at X-O Manowar himself. After all, it's not his fault, and his original series is still a damn good read. At the end of the day, X-O is more than a superhero story – it's about our very normal, very human quest for self-knowledge in a confusing world. Better yet, it's a story tailor-made for lovers of science fiction; we're talking sentient technology, UFOs and abduction, hostile invasions of Earth, top-level government conspiracy involving aliens pretending to be humans, time displacement, and more, all rolled into one.
Meanwhile, if you're already a fan of the X-O armor and can't wait for the Ninjak web series, you might want to check out Kindle Worlds, where you'll find some fan fiction stories about Aric and his badass armor.
Featured Image: Valiant Entertainment / Bob Layton