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Sustainabilities: Eco-oriented | Market-oriented | Vernacular
Young digital "creatives " have been moving to San Francisco in droves since the original dot-com boom of the late '90s. Since 2006, this has been accelerated by the so-called "Google Bus," private buses that connect desirably "urban" Bay Area neighborhoods with the suburban campuses of Apple, Facebook, Google, Yahoo! and others. Today, the private buses carry tens of thousands on a daily basis, siphoning riders from the region's transit systems and causing public outcry.
The displacement brought about by this influx of new arrivals is nowhere more fraught than in the Mission, previously a lower-rent neighborhood that provided an accessible home for generations of San Francisco's immigrant communities—first Irish, German, and Polish, then, starting in the 1940s, Mexican and Central American. While it could be (and often is) argued that urban spaces are dynamic and constantly evolving, and that the Techies are just another wave of immigrants using the Mission to gain a foothold—residents who are being pushed out by rent—hikes and condo conversions they cannot afford are multi-generational families, small-business owners, teachers, first responders, artists, activists, and performers, and service workers of all kinds. They are also largely from communities of color. The more recent arrivals have demographics that match the tech industry's—64% white and 74% male. They are also typically young, unmarried or child-free, and earn extravagant salaries: in 2012 the mean annual salary for a network specialist was $94,000.
By SFMTA estimates, in 2014 private buses within San Francisco provided some 35,000 "boardings" per day. In fact, Marty Lev, Google's vice president of safety, security, and transportation, had said back in 2007, when the Google buses carried only 1,200 employees daily: "We are basically running a small municipal transit agency." Debate now rages over the buses a pilot program instituted by the City that gives partner company's buses permission to stop near public transit stops for $3.55/per stop. Tech bus stops in San Francisco and Oakland have been hit by direct action protests. The argument over the buses and the change they represent often breaks down into pro- and anti-tech camps, with personal attacks against the culture of tech workers or protestors, as embodied in a piece of street theater where a protestor playing a techie belligerently told those blocking a Google bus to "get a better job," or the all-too-real comments made by former AngelHack CEO Greg Gopman that San Francisco is "grotesque" and "overrun by…drug dealers, dropouts, and trash." What's really at stake is a failure of belief in the city as a commons—a system that supports existing residents and new arrivals by integrating them into the collective spaces and systems perhaps best represented by public transportation. That there are entire networks of free transit options available to only some of the city's wealthiest residents cannot help but create tension, especially against a background of skyrocketing housing costs and a wave of no-fault evictions. As rising rents are a predictable outcome of some transit-oriented development and the addition of new transit networks, it is doubly problematic that these new transit options within the city are inaccessible to most of San Francisco's residents.
Google's white Van Hool buses run from San Rafael in the north to Santa Cruz in the south and Danville in the east. While the battle of the buses has focused on San Francisco neighborhoods, and the mission in particular, the private transit network is an issue on a regional scale. Google's routes represent only a fraction of the miles traveled by buses owned by Apple, Facebook, Electronic Arts, eBay, Yahoo!, Genentech, Box, Netflix, and countless other companies whose transport is subcontracted to Bauer's IT. The tech companies, in their libertarian, do-it-yourself way, have solved the transit problem for themselves, not waiting for a potentially time-consuming, representative political process to do the job. They've put their workers on comfortable, Wi-Fi-equipped buses where they can work and conference during their commutes—a net gain in hours for their employers. Despite the vaunted ingenuity of Silicon Valley, however, the lack of coordination within this system results in multiple fleets of mammoth buses plying the same routes minutes apart and often traveling partly or mostly empty.
This begs the sustainability argument that Google and others have put forward as a key innovation and advantage of the buses. Tech companies and the regional governments that enable them claim the buses are "win-win"—relieving traffic, pollution, and further paving of Silicon Valley. But while the buses reduce corporate carbon emissions, they may well expand the regional footprint, as those underserved by drained public transit systems are more likely to commute by car. What's more, as the downtown cores of Bay Area cities become unaffordable to everyone from civil servants to the many people who provide services for techies who work 60 to 80 hours a week, commuting times for non-tech workers may get longer. The likely result: more commuters sitting in traffic jams, because transferring from bus to Caltrain to BART to bus is a modal transfer or two too far—rendering the buses agents in a city-wide process of environmental gentrification.
– Kristin Miller
*Portions of this text first appeared in "Mapping our Disconnect" in Boom: A Journal of California.
Published June 1, 2015


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Flash Pioneer Video Chat 1.8
Last modified: 08-19-2008@22:44 | Downloads: 1241 | Page views: 10811
Type: free to try | Category: chat engines
Developer: FlashPioneer | Visit: tool homepage
Set up in Minutes
Based on Flash Media Server, step by step animation installation help, building your online community in a few steps.
Multi-platform supported, RED5 or FMS
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Funny smiley, animations and backgrounds
Multi-type room, "Public room", "Members Only", "Password Needed"
Individuation user avatar , chat status
Customizable chat window

subset: commoncrawl


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Article first appeared in Facility Management magazine
A high-performance commercial building and the tallest engineered timber building in the country is set to be built in the Brisbane Showgrounds development. The 52-metre-high tower will have the largest gross floor area (GFA) for an engineered timber office building worldwide.
Designed by Bates Smart for Lendlease, 5 King utilises cross-laminated timber (CLT) and glue-laminated timber (glulam), which combine to create the structural strength of concrete and steel with a much lower carbon footprint. "We see timber buildings as the next generation of building for a creative class looking for rich environments that enhance wellbeing and productivity," says Bates Smart Director Philip Vivian
The building's 'verandah' will help to maximise connection with the environment, while at ground level, a timber colonnade lined with cafés and restaurants will cater to the need for creative workspaces outside of the office as well as establishing a welcoming entry to the building.
The glass façade on the main south elevation maximises natural daylight into the workplace, while sunshades on the other façades reduce energy consumption, further lowering the building's carbon footprint. Inside, exposed timber structure and services create a contemporary studio environment that balances well-being with creative collaboration space.
5 King will be targeting a Six Star Green Star Design and As Built v1.1 and a NABERS Energy Five Star rating. In addition to utilising sustainably sourced timber, the tower will integrate rainwater harvesting, energy efficient lighting and optimised air conditioning. Parking for 152 bicycles and 56 cars is planned.
The building will be the future home of global engineering firm Aurecon. Construction is set to begin in mid-2017, with completed estimates at the end of 2018.
Image courtesy of Bates Smart
Read more about the health benefits of timber here


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1) Will Indonesia's new president end one of Asia's oldest conflicts?
2) Jokowi's victory brings high hopes and challenge
1) Will Indonesia's new president end one of Asia's oldest conflicts?
JAKARTA, Indonesia — "It's safe here in Papua. There is nothing to hide."
That's what Indonesian President-elect Joko Widodo said when asked on the campaign trail whether foreign journalists would be allowed into West Papua. "Why not?" he said. It was as if foreign journalists and activists hadn't essentially been banned for decades from Indonesia's easternmost province, a rugged jungle outpost replete with oppression, rag-tag insurgents and wildly destructive mineral exploitation. If Jokowi, as the future president is known, honors his promise to allow scrutiny of Papua after he assumes office in October, it will be a sharp departure from the preferences of Indonesia's entrenched security apparatus.
Already, the security forces appear to have called his bluff.
Currently, the authorities say they restrict access to the province for safety reasons, due to ongoing conflict with the Free Papua Movement, a lightly armed separatist movement. The Indonesian military has a strong presence in the region, and the few foreign journalists granted permission to visit are constantly shadowed by local officials.
Jokowi, a populist political neophyte with a man-of-the-people image, is one of very few Indonesian leaders not hailing from the military.
Weeks after he was elected, they arrested two French TV journalists, Valentine Bourrat and Thomas Dandois, for illegally working on a tourist visa. The pair were researching a documentary for Arte on Western Papua's separatist movement.
While unauthorized journalists are usually deported immediately, the pair have now been in police custody since early August. The local authorities have said they were present at an exchange of ammunition by a separatist group. They face possible criminal charges and five years in jail.
JAKARTA, Indonesia — "It's safe here in Papua. There is nothing to hide."
Currently, the authorities say they restrict access to the province for safety reasons, due to ongoing conflict with the Free Papua Movement, a lightly armed separatist movement. The Indonesian military has a strong presence in the region, and the few foreign journalists granted permission to visit are constantly shadowed by local officials.
Jokowi, a populist political neophyte with a man-of-the-people image, is one of very few Indonesian leaders not hailing from the military.
While unauthorized journalists are usually deported immediately, the pair have now been in police custody since early August. The local authorities have said they were present at an exchange of ammunition by a separatist group. They face possible criminal charges and five years in jail.
The Japan Times
2) Jokowi's victory brings high hopes and challenges
In July, Joko Widodo, universally known as Jokowi, won a decisive victory in Indonesia's presidential elections. Even before assuming office in October, he faces extravagant expectations in a nation that has endured mercurial (Sukarno), repressive (Suharto) and feckless (B.J. Habibie, Abdurrahman Wahid, Megawati Sukarnoputri and Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono) leaders since gaining independence from ruinous Dutch colonial rule.
In a nation with a messianic streak, Jokowi inspires enthusiasm across the spectrum, from the poor and marginalized to businessmen, secularists and moderate Muslims who all invest high hopes in him. He is bound to disappoint, not because he lacks the courage of his convictions, but because so many powerful players have so much to lose if he succeeds.
With Jokowi enjoying a massive lead in public opinion polls the elections were supposed to be a landslide, but his rival Prabowo Subianto hired U.S. Republican political strategists who crafted a nasty campaign of innuendo and false accusations (wasn't Jokowi really born in Singapore?!) combined with lavish advertising and patriotic spectacles to make it a closely fought election. Prabowo contested the results, alleging massive fraud, but his appeal was rejected and the results stand, Jokowi having won 53 percent of the 140 million votes cast with a stellar turnout of about 75 percent in this nation of nearly 255 million.
Prabowo, a former military officer and son-in-law of Suharto (who ruled 1967-98), was implicated in the killing of students and instigating anti-Chinese rioting in 1998, but offset this sordid record by projecting a tough, can-do image that appealed to voters. He also played the Islamic card, wooing the Islamic parties by suggesting that Jokowi is soft on Christians and Shiites in a nation dominated by Sunnis. Although this cynical appeal to chauvinist sentiments may have helped Prabowo, voters ratified Indonesia's secular identity.
Professor Jun Honna of Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto, Japan's leading Indonesian political expert, believes this poll in particular was a watershed event.
"Jokowi's election is significant in eliminating a powerful legacy of Suharto's authoritarianism presented by Prabowo, and is the first time in Indonesia's history that an ordinary person has become president," he says.
Fifteen years ago, as Indonesia shrugged off three decades of military rule, few observers would have predicted it evolving so rapidly into the most robust democracy in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). This successful election in Asia's second-largest democracy, pulled off in a sprawling archipelago that is home to the world's largest Muslim population, discredits the notion that democracy and Islam are incompatible. In fact, Indonesian democratic institutions emerged with flying colors in a region where democracy is often dysfunctional and marred by fraud and violence. In contrast, Singapore, Malaysia, Brunei, Myanmar and Cambodia have never experienced a transfer of power to the political opposition, while Laos and Vietnam have one-party communist rule. Thailand and the Philippines are the only other ASEAN members that have experienced a democratic handover of power to the political opposition, but Indonesia's elections are relatively clean and peaceful and political jousting is not quite so vindictive. In the Philippines, the last two presidents had their predecessors arrested, while in Thailand the military seized power earlier this year and former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra faces prison if he returns.
Meanwhile, many Malaysians believe their government stole the last election while Myanmar's leaders are guilty of democratic backsliding as they prepare for national elections in 2015.
Jokowi's appeal is his crusade against corruption, but making the transition from mayor of a provincial town and governor of Jakarta to the nation's chief executive will be a daunting challenge.
Pundits harp on about Jokowi's lack of foreign-policy expertise, but this is not a great concern. China has become ASEAN's bete noire, but it is not an urgent threat. The rift with international mining firms over nationalist economic policies that sparked a steep drop in mining exports this year appears temporarily resolved, but bears watching. Perhaps his greatest security headache may be in dealing with repercussions from Islamic State's success in Iraq and Syria and the potential for a revival of terrorism at home.
Jokowi promises to slash fuel subsidies to cut the budget deficit, but this could have nasty implications given that the impact will disproportionately affect lower-income households, which are his political base. Aside from expediting approvals of pending infrastructure projects, he also highlights the need to promote access to health and educational services.
"Policies such as health care and free education can be implemented without strong resistance from the elite in the parliament, because these are the issues which do not disturb the existing rent-seeking practice of the party elite," says Honna, who predicts that "some bureaucratic reforms are also very likely, such as e-procurement, e-budgeting, and the auctioning of strategic posts in the bureaucracy in the name of reform."
The problem for Jokowi is that he faces excessive expectations.
"His biggest challenge is corruption," Honna says. "He has promised to do so but his power base in political institutions is weak. He is not even a party leader. "It is very likely that his anti-corruption initiative will be blocked not only by the opposition in the parliament, but also within the coalition and within his own party."
Indeed, parliament sneakily passed a law in July on the day of the presidential elections that makes it extraordinarily difficult to investigate its members for corruption by requiring any such probe get parliamentary approval before proceeding. Jokowi has moved to get the Supreme Court to invalidate this law.
Failure to make visible progress on corruption could undermine Jokowi's popularity and thereby embolden his opponents.
Yet there is so much corruption in Indonesia that it won't be hard to make some dramatic examples of fat cats. If he is able to tackle corruption related to the military — a no-go zone in Indonesia — then it will represent more than political theater.
According to Australia National University's Ariel Heryanto, there are two areas in which Jokowi could shine: promoting religious tolerance and hitting the reset button on Jakarta's failed policies toward Papua, the turbulent province where successive governments have failed to win local trust. The previous Yudhoyono administration averted its eyes from escalating attacks on religious minorities, but Heryanto believes Jokowi has the mandate to help curb such abuses.
Papuan leaders supported Jokowi's presidential bid so prospects are good for more dialogue to address the desire for greater autonomy and less of a heavy-handed security presence.
"But local corruption and conflict are deeply rooted in Papua, so the national initiative seems to have obvious limitations," Honna says. "Thus no big change can be expected."
This may also be the case overall, as Jokowi strives to promote a game-changing agenda in the face of stiff opposition.
Jeff Kingston is the director of Asian Studies, Temple University Japan.


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What is Royal Jelly?
Royal jelly is a 100% pure and natural nutritious substance that is creamy and milky-white in color which is secreted from the hypopharryngeal glands of worker bees. It is actually the very substance that a queen bee lives for. This gelatinous secretion is so powerful that it is responsible for their entire existence, their large size, and the level of fertility that they have.
So, what is royal jelly? What is so unique about royal jelly is it is not just what queen bees rely on for sustained life, but it is also very beneficial for human consumption as well. The benefits this substance provides can be noticed in dramatic differences it causes to the overall health of the skin, and the entire body as a whole. There are quite a few different elements that royal jelly is made of. A list of these elements would include the following:
- Nucleic acids – which are responsible for optimum DNA and RNA formation. These are also helpful in causing a stimulation of the production of collagen, which is necessary for good health of the skin
- Vitamin B – All B vitamins are contained, and this also includes vitamins B5 and 6
- Amino acids
- A wide range of essential minerals
- Acetylcholine – This helps to strengthen nerve receptors which receive messages from other nerves within the brain
There are also many other nutrients contained in royal jelly which can promote good health. These include folic acid, pantothenic acid, niacin, vitamin C, inositol, biotin, vitamin B1, and vitamin B2.
So, what is royal jelly? Several people that use royal jelly on a regular basis have benefited from advantages of lowered cholesterol levels, faster healing of wounds, anti-inflammatory benefits, and it also works as an antibiotic agent. There have also been reports that royal jelly can actually promote the growth of neural stem cells and glial cells that are located within the brain. It is also believed to have the ability to reduce problems some people experience with tumor growth.
What is Royal Jelly
There are so many health advantages that are provided with the use of royal jelly that it is widely being referred to as a super-food. In addition to those listed above, there are also many other health conditions that can benefit from the use of royal jelly:
- High blood pressure
- Bones that are weak
- High cholesterol
- Coronary artery disease
- Anemia
- Depression
- Infertility
- Diabetes
- Problems of the immune system
- Disorders of the endocrine system
- Parkinson's disease
- Bacterial infections
- Inflammation
- Arthritis
- Impotence
What is royal jelly? Combine the above with the amazing bee pollen benefits, and nutritional base from those supplements – and you can add natural energy, and help with weight loss through raising your metabolism, to your list of benefits.
About the Author
Article by Barry Lutz. Bee pollen benefits go on and on. The list just doesn't seem to end for what this amazing nutritional "super food" can do for us nutritionally and for our health. Please come to our website to learn more about the benefits, along with how to ensure that you are getting the best bee pollen supplements available. http://www.beepollen-benefits.com/


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If you are planning to pitch your project to agents and publishers at this year's writers conferences, take the time to make your pitch perfect by scheduling your Polish Your Pitch Session with industry pro Jennifer S. Wilkov of Your Book Is Your Hook!
Are you missing that one piece that could put you over the top with literary agents and publishers, not to mention Hollywood producers?
Jennifer will train you to pitch your project and teach you how to fashion your hooks to engage the attention of the decision makers.
Here is what a couple of writers at last year's Writers Digest Conference said about their Polish Your Pitch Sessions:
It was incredible! Within 10 minutes, Jennifer was able to take what I told her about my book and gave me a short paragraph I could take with me into my PitchSlam appointments. I had exactly what I needed to present to the agents. It was truly an incredible procedure! In the time left during my session, she actually helped me with my book. In just a couple of minutes, she gave me exactly what my book needed and I never would have thought of it on my own! Thank You!" ~ Annemarie
After Annemarie pitched at the PitchSlam using the pitch Jennifer helped her craft:
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Before the conference, I had spent hours upon hours on my own trying to write queries and Twitter pitches and only received dead silence in return to most of them. In my Polish Your Pitch Session, Jennifer helped me to consolidate my thoughts and remove the excess so I'll be able to pitch more succinctly and successfully. I have much more confidence in my pitch now and look forward to the PitchSlam! In addition to preparing my pitch for the PitchSlam, Jennifer also helped me put together a Twitter pitch as well. Thank You, Jennifer!" ~ Susan
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Gala Dinner of SPIMUN 2018 will take place at legendary Palma Palace
22nd St. Petersburg International Model United Nations Conference (26—28 March 2018) is organized by Gymnasium 157 founded by Princess of Oldenburg in 1868 and located in the center of St.Petersburg.
SPIMUN is one of the United Nations Models affiliated to The Hague International Model United Nations with the same rules of procedure. The conference is a three-day-long simulation of the work of the United Nations.
The object of the conference is to seek through discussion, negotiation and debate solutions to the various problems of the world dealing with economic, social, environmental and cultural issues. The young delegates in seeking solutions to these problems can learn to break away from narrow national interests and to develop true international cooperation.
At SPIMUN, students play the roles of diplomats and learn to negotiate and debate in the formal way of the UN. According to the rules, every delegation can represent any member-state of the UN, except their own one. Before the conference participants should research and prepare draft resolutions on the issues of the agenda (from the view of the country they represent). The official language of SPIMUN is English. Therefore, for learners of English as a foreign language a MUN conference gives the opportunity to improve their knowledge.
SPIMUN 2016 brought together more than 700 delegates and teachers from Bahrain, Cyprus, Canada, France, Denmark, Germany, South Africa, Egypt, Belarus, Germany, Greece, India, Italy, the USA, Turkey, United Arab Emirates.
Attendance at SPIMUN will mean much more than just doing another MUN. You will be able to discover the splendour of St.Petersburg, one of the world's most beautiful cities.
Conference & Events Schedule
Sunday, 25 March
17.00 — Registration and Orientation Meeting
Monday, 26 March
9.00 — 12.30 — Opening Ceremony
12.30 — 14.00 — Lunch
14.00 — 18.00 — Lobbying
Tuesday, 27 March
9.30 — 16.00 — Committee sessions
12.00 — 12.45 — Lunch
Wednesday, 28 March
9.30 — 13.30 — General Assembly Plenary session
13.30 — 14.30 — Lunch
14.30 — 16.00 — Closing ceremony
19.00 — 22.00 — Disco party for SPIMUN participants
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Tsar Events DMC & PCO has become first DMC who wrote book-instruction for tourists and professional travel planners who are going to Russia! New book offers a mesmerizing slice of life in Russia. Alexander Rodionov & Maya Krivchenia shares an informative and enjoyable guide to enjoying the historical and cultural wealth of the world's largest country.
Why ST. PETERSBURG?
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— Gala Dinner at Faberge Museum –with biggest collection of Faberge Eggs
— Congress for 1000 guests in Smolny Cathedral
— Lunch at a single long table for 600 persons inside of the biggest Artillery museum in the world
— Exclusive night visit to Hermitage (Winter Palace)
— Transfer from airport by BTR, stretch limousine or Russian Troika
— Gala dinner with Rasputin in Yusupoff Palace
— Water and Fire Fairytale in Peterhoff Palace
— Hockey game against Russian team
— Politburo meeting in Political Dacha K2
Want to hear 1000 more ideas?
Get in contact with Tsar Events DMC.
We are excited to announce that we are growing and spreading our expertise globally. Please, welcome TSAR EVENTS PANAMA DMC & PCO!!! We have opened our new office in Panama City to help our clients with their events in Republic of Panama.
Panama is quickly becoming a popular destination for holding conventions and international events. A modern infrastructure, which is often cited as the best in the region, direct flights to more than 50 cities in the region and 13 in the U.S, world-class attractions nearby, meeting facilities, hotels, excellent restaurants, a globalized populace, and a vibrant metropolis with more than 100 banks and exciting nightlife, all make Panama the perfect place to host first-class events.
No matter what you're looking for…in terms of climate, budget, convenience, or anything else… Panama is likely to check all the boxes.
Panama is located at the center of Latin America, at the very point where Central and South America meet. It is home to one of the world's fastest growing economies, which is built largely on the country being a primary provider of financial, logistic and commercial services to all the nations of the region. Its central role in Latin America is vested in its being a business friendly nation, and that is complemented by its attractive and comfortable lifestyle.
Panama is a captivating mix of the historical and the modern, the natural and the manmade, the indigenous cultures and the international.
Since Panama is historically a crossroads, people and cultures from all over the world meet and mix here, resulting in friendly atmosphere, fantastic restaurants, galleries and cultural events showcasing the world's best art, cuisine, and more. Panama has none of the disastrous hurricanes and earthquakes that plague its Central American neigt.


text: A throwline is a must have piece of equipment for all kayakers and canoeists. We have had a Nookie Hornet 18m Rescue Throwline 8mm (9kN) in for review at Unsponsored for quite a few months. We are pretty familiar with Nookie's Throwlines having owned and used quite a few over the last 30+ years of paddling.Continue reading


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The demand for Chinese goods in India is on the rise and imports are expected to reach $80 billion before 2018. Importing goods from China to sell in Indian markets is not a new trend. Many online sellers have begun purchasing their stock of goods from here. There are many benefits of purchasing goods from China and the most important one is related to price. It is much cheaper to sell ready made goods especially if they are produced at a cheaper rate.
Why should you consider selling Chinese goods online?
Indian Online Seller (IOS) communicated with different category online sellers who acquire their inventory from China. They informed us of the following benefits they witnessed when sourcing goods from China –
Affordable pricing
Brand Hawkers, a multi-channel retail consultancy and management startup helps sellers manage their marketing, warehousing, packaging & dispatch. They informed us that they cater to online sellers who buy products from Chinese manufacturers to sell online in India. As a result, they enabled us to derive a couple of facts about acquiring goods from the China through two of their clients, Anshul from Livtel Power Banks and Ankit Neerav from Addic, a specialist in the sale of watches.
Ankit says, "The costs of most (Chinese) goods are lower in comparison to Indian manufactured goods. Even after considering shipping and other costs. Apart from that there are established brands that sell worldwide from China and it is easy to import and sell their products in India because of the recognition."
According to Anshul, Indians have a habit of seeking low price but good products, so Chinese suppliers are the best option for this so far.
He claims, "They can provide you products in the quality you want (means the amount you want to spend on it). All their units are almost fully automatic which again saves your time. And the Chinese govt. gives their exporters some draw back duty which again indirectly decreases the cost of the product."
Availability of new products and different qualities
Narendran, a clothing and accessories seller mentions to IOS that he chooses Chinese suppliers because they introduce new products and have different qualities to suit the Indian consumer's taste and budget.
Electronics seller, Kuntal Shah informs us of the same benefit.
Brand Hawker's seller Anshul says he mainly purchases his stock from China because of its scarcity in India.
The seller claims, "We deal in power banks so the raw material, specifically the cell of our product, is not available in India and even the technology of making it is still not here."
Ease in procurement
It is relatively easy to procure goods from China, multi-category seller, Sanjay Kumar informs us. He says there are a couple of steps involved in acquiring goods from Chinese markets, however, the actual process of bringing the products to the India is relatively simple.
How can you acquire goods from Chinese Manufacturers?
Before jumping on board a plane to China, you need to know the process of sourcing goods from there. According to the online sellers we spoke to, you can purchase Chinese commodities by directly communicating with suppliers in the Chinese subcontinent or indirectly through online portals like Alibaba, Aliexpress and Dh gate.
Sounds quite simple right? So, how do you begin?
Online seller Sanjay Kumar explains to us the basic steps he follows when purchasing from Chinese manufacturers.
Step 1 – Select products that are easy to sell online
Before buying a product to sell online make sure you have selected one that is easy to sell. For example, all health and beauty care products are slightly difficult to sell, due to the tedious approval process from the marketplaces such as Amazon and Snapdeal.
If you are not absolutely certain the products you import will be a hit in the Indian market, you can always test its demand through a dry run. It will cost in the short run, but the knowledge you gain can help your in the long run.
Sanjay advises to avoid products which are sophisticated and for which some expertise is required; like in the case of electronics, computer accessories, watches and furniture.
"Remember that damaged headphones require far greater skill and money to repair than say a T-shirt with a thread protruding out. Also, It can be sold again at a steeper discount and one can make modest margins there than in the former case," He elaborates.
Step 2 – Choose your manufacture wisely
According to Sanjay, "The general perception is alibaba.com has lots of fly by night operators and cannot be trusted. To a certain extent it is true, however, I can assure you that careful selection of vendors can avoid any such 'misadventures' ."
Check genuinity
Neofeils owner, Narendran says, "Research your manufacturer and check for genuinity. Also, make sure they use a reliable payment gateway."
Kuntal agrees with the same. According to him, "Sourcing the right products from right manufacturers is most important."
Sanjay states that ratings of a vendor on online marketplaces like Alibaba should help you determine his genuineness.
He adds, "Alibaba charges its vendors for displaying their company's details on alibaba.com. The ratings of these companies essentially means that the company has been vetted by Alibaba and these companies have greater chances of being genuine compared to others."
Ask for samples
"No vendor worth their name would refuse samples to the interested buyer. But, remember you are asking for samples, so you may have to spend a little for both the product and for getting it at your doorstep via courier," multi-category seller Sanjay informs us.
Some sellers connect with their Chinese manufacturers via Skype and Wechat. This will make it easier to communicate your custom requirements say two of the sellers we interviewed.
Visit the manufacturer if possible
Anshul explains that apart from samples, sellers can also visit the manufacturer and his factory unit. This will enable price and product quality inspection.
Make payments in instalments
"Give the manufacturer an advance to initiate the process. Tell him the quantity you need and he will give you the time. Only at the time of delivery give him balance amount." Anshul advises.
Step 3 – Choose a third party payment site
After negotiating prices with the Chinese manufacturer, the next thing is creating a purchase order. Managing a secure payment is essential to avoid being scammed. To reduce the risk of being cheated, use a third party payment site you can trust.
"This is another crucial step." Sanjay informs, "Since one is negotiating everything through online and having ascertained their (manufacturer's) credentials, it is still better to lower the risks by making the payment through mediums like Paypal rather than direct wire transfer or by Western Union.
Paypal is costly. So, a better option (if you are using Alibaba) is contacting the Alibaba office in Delhi or Mumbai and informing them that so and so vendor has been identified by you and share the payment details with them. This is comparatively cheaper and you are safer, as Alibaba ensures the smooth delivery of the order."
Step 4 – Payment of customs
If you are making a direct purchase from manufacturers in China you will be required to pay customs. For this, you must meet with the concerned authorities and get the necessary paperwork and finally pay the required custom duties for your shipment from China.
Is it risky buying from Chinese manufacturers?
Though the process of acquiring Chinese goods is quite easy there is no guarantee that it 100% without risks or challenges. The online vendors we spoke with listed the following challenges when dealing with Chinese manufacturers:
- Returns and warranties
- Fraudsters selling fakes
- Language barriers hampering communication
- Fraudsters selling low-quality products
- Shipping expenses
- False commitment
- Inability to take legal action (when direct purchases are made)
- Goods getting stuck in customs
- Delays in shipments
How to avoid the risks involved in purchasing from Chinese manufacturers?
To avoid the risks and challenges mentioned above, the sellers we communicated with offered the following tips –
Narendran advises,
"Never rely on suppliers who do not agree to payments via PayPal or escrow."
In Kuntal's opinion, the best thing to do is,
"Find the right source and quality of products. You need to have someone there to take care of orders and follow-ups as well as quality checks before shipment."
Ankit suggests the same. He says,
"You should get a local agent in China to cross check your shipments and help with payments,"
Online seller Anshul claims it is never good to bargain too much or else it could lead to devastating outcomes. He mentions,
"They (Chinese suppliers) have their fixed margin of profits so what they will do is cut down on quality to fulfil your pricing."
"Never negotiate with a vendor who accepts all of your demands even unreasonable ones. This is a classic scam technique adopted by unscrupulous vendors, for whom getting money from you is more important than delivering products," states online seller Sanjay.
Other tips that will come in handy
– Cost of procurement must be considered before buying Chinese products. Consider which is cheaper buying through an online platform or directly from the actual manufacturer.
– Negotiate with trading companies give you higher chances of procuring large product portfolios compared to stand alone companies that produce only one unit.
– For orders whose total weight is less than 90kg, air freight and sea freight may not make much difference in value. But as always use discretion.
– For samples try to import under your individual name instead of your registered company. It will help avoid lots of paper work and time delays at customs, but most importantly paying customs duties if ordered as samples.
– Build personal relationships with manufacturers right at the beginning.
It appears clear that obtaining goods from Chinese manufacturers involves some unbelievable benefits that could get you ahead of the competition. However, the risks cannot be ignored. But, now that you know how to overcome them do you feel sourcing goods from China is a viable option?
Have you tried sourcing goods from Chinese manufacturers? Do share your experiences with us in the comments section below. And, if you're curious to know more about importing Chinese goods for online retail click here!


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From the snarking frenzy that consumed the blogosphere in the wake of last year's World Fantasy Convention, I expected Janine Cross's first novel, Touched by Venom, to be a badly written, laughable book. Something on the order of Slave Women of Gor, perhaps, or at best, those trashtastic Sharon Green soft-porn books about blood-drinking Amazonian women who ride around on giant lizards and rape men in their spare time. My reaction to the bad reviews went a bit like this: "OMG, sex with dragons, guys with dragon-viagra hardons, probably so bad it's funny, I must read it!"
So I did. To my surprise, I found a thoughtful, enjoyable work of feminist speculative fiction. It is a woman's hero-tale, the story of a survivor; a true dystopian fantasy, and one written with an awareness of non-Western cultures.
Zarq, the heroine, grows up in dire poverty. Her clan of potters are serfs of the dragon-owning aristocrats and the high-ranking priest caste. Women and men live apart, in barracks. The men own the women and children, though no one really has any rights. My first reaction was that the "village," as Cross described it, simply composed of slave pens, was so squalid and dehumanizing that I was shocked the people living in them had any culture, art, or tradition—any identity—at all. Yet that level of violent squalor was nothing compared to what followed. Over the course of the novel, Zarq, her mother and sister, other relatives, and friends suffer terribly.
As a dystopia this is already disturbing enough, but it seemed even more so when I realized how close it comes to what women in the world experience today. I came to realize, while reading the book, that my initial reaction of shock and disbelief was the result of my own happily ignorant privilege. For example, take the fate that threatens Zarq and her older sister, being sold into low-status public prostitution and dying young from "mating pustules." Not a problem for us in the U.S., but all too real in many countries. Similarly, there are clitorodectomy scenes which could have easily been depressing, unrealistic, or sensationalist. Yet it's a real-world problem; the World Health Organization's current estimate is that 130 million young girls have been genitally mutilated, usually by their own female relatives or with their mother's approval. The mutilation is often referred to as "cleansing," just as in Zarq's society.
Many books that deal with similarly disturbing, brutal, "adult" themes and issues have met with popular acclaim. Suzy McKee Charnas's Holdfast series takes place in an extreme post-apocalypse patriarchal dystopia where women are raised in filthy slave pits. The free women, partly parthenogenic, have sex with horses to start their pregnancies. Ayla, the heroine of Jean Auel's Clan of the Cave Bear, is subject to extreme brutality. (In fact, Ayla was raped repeatedly, routinely, as a very young child, while Zarq, who is of comparable age, is never raped.) Bagoas, the hero of Mary Renault's Alexander The Great books, is castrated as a young child and sold into slavery, but he still has a story (and a sex life). Severian of Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun is taught as a young child to be a professional torturer, and is raised by the very people who tortured and killed his mother. Such books are not limited to the 20th century, or to speculative fiction: consider Clarissa or Moll Flanders as picaresque tales of women's lives in oppressive societies.
Cross has done something still too rare in fantasy and SF, despite these precedents—she's dealt with very hard-hitting, difficult issues, distancing them from real-world cultures and pushing them to extremes, forcing us to think. Zarq suffers trauma to an extent that's hard for me to imagine: starvation, abandonment, mutilation. Yet these terrible experiences don't leave her a helpless victim. She continues to live. In fact, I found it notable that a large number of the women who are un-sexed by genital mutilation in the book continue to have a sex life. This is the real "gone too far" moment. On one level such characters are grotesque starving nuns, hallucinating on dragon spit in the midst of a weird bestiality-focused ritual orgy. On another they're visionary, strong women engaged in a collective revolutionary act, bonding with the dragons who are perhaps not domestic animals, but sentient creatures, and fellow slaves.
As in many books with feminist themes, the line between human and animal is disturbingly blurred; Carol Emshwiller's Mount, Carmen Dog, and Mister Bones spring immediately to mind, as do Geoff Ryman's scenes of homage to Carmen Dog in his recent novel Air. Venom's ferocious female dragons have their wings clipped at birth and are used as brood animals; once they stop laying the eggs that are the society's primary food source, they're used as beasts of burden. Similarly, the women we see in the book, even the upper class women, are enslaved. There are parallels here: both groups can be seen as slaves, domesticated animals, possessions, and sacred objects. Anyone familiar with, for example, Gayle Rubin's early anthropological work, or with a book like Johanna Sinisalo's brilliant Troll, will recognise what's going on: the treatment of groups as currency.
Books like Touched by Venom that push boundaries of human/animal relationship past our comfort level do something very interesting for readings of more comfortable ones and what the desire for them reveals. I'm thinking of the stereotypically FSF-chick-lit "telepathic companion animal": the horses in Mercedes Lackey books, the dragons of Anne McCaffrey, or Tamora Pierce's characters' purple-eyed kittens, abused horses, and flocks of brave sparrows. In all these cases, the telepathic animal companion functions to split off all the object qualities of the female, to put helpfulness, empathy, and subservience outside of the female protagonist. She "has" those qualities, which are those of female goodness and virtue, without the tedium of having to embody them. In short, the heroine with companion-animal gets the qualities of the Perfect Wife at her service, a soulmate bound in an eternal marriage. And along with this comes freedom from the guilt of exploitation, since the "wife-work" is done by a non-sentient being.
Cross has also written an insightful exploration of women's relationships with each other. Touched by Venom passes the Dykes to Watch Out For test with flying colors. If you don't know what that test is, it asks whether there's ever a scene where a) there's more than one woman b) they're having a conversation with each other c) that's not about a man. Popular works that pass the DTWOF test are astonishingly rare. Touched by Venom centers around the relationship between Zarq, her sister Waivia or Waisi, and her mother Kavarria. In scenes again reminiscent of Ryman's Air, Zarq is possessed at times by the ghost of Kavarria, with Kavarria's memories. Zarq struggles deeply with what it means to see through her mother's eyes, just as the heroine of Air struggles to integrate her mind with the memories of her dead 93-year-old neighbor. Blurred identity, of course, is another common trope of feminist SF. In his analysis of race in the United States, Henry Louis Gates labelled it as "double consciousness," but it is also often what happens when women begin to go through the process of consciousness-raising and learn about feminist history; it creates a sense of intolerable internal paradox.
Many other subtle touches demonstrate the sophistication of Cross's feminist analysis. For example, Zarq's older sister, Waisi, has a feral core of anger, ambition, and cruelty. As the book unfolds, the initial, simplistic explanation of her character as a smart, talented woman, terribly oppressed, is explored and deepened. Kavarria had the mottled green skin of a jungle woman (savages! perverts! inhuman!) and so throughout Waisi's childhood, the other women of the clan never helped co-parent her. This excerpt is in the voice of the mother-possessed Zarq:
When my piebald babe cried, no mother in my new clan dried her tears. If she fell, no hands but mine picked her up. Her prattles, however earnest and sweet, went ignored. Sometimes I found bruises the size of an adult's fingers on her underarms.
But I tried, oh, I tried! I loved and caressed and soothed the other children, trying to buy a measure of acceptance for my own babe with those kindnesses. Yet how often can a toddler fall down and be stepped over and walked away from before hurt is a fluid as constant in the veins as blood?
I'm a mother myself, in a community of mothers of small children, and this struck me as beautifully perceptive of women's social dynamics.
Touched by Venom addresses gender, power, and sexuality; slavery and prostitution; class, religion, and feudalism; racism; questions of the sacred and profane; the general oppression of children; women's solidarities and their cruelties to each other; mother-daughter-sister dynamics; damage to men done by patriarchy. The cover illustration shows a bejewelled, porno-posing fembot caressing herself in a sexy gown; it should show a violent revolutionary, emaciated and wild-eyed, with a buzz cut and a rusty, bloody machete, stabbing an aristocrat. Zarq's liberation and happy ending, if it is possible, would come not from the establishment of a secure nuclear family, but from revolution.
Yet despite all this, it seems to me that the book is being misread; seen not as the deeply political and feminist work that it is but as a sub-par, status-quo-reifying, conventional fantasy. For instance, in an interesting and serious review at Romantic SF & Fantasy, Preeti complained that the book was too depressing, the oppression of the heroine too relentless. She compared it to Jane Gaskell's Atlan saga: "[Atlan] had incest, bestiality, corrupt priests, slavery, Atlantis ... but it was total guilty fun." She wishes that Zarq, Venom's protagonist, were more Mary-Sue-ish; "But no, this was a really earnest, depressing look at a repressive, unjust society where a litany of ugly things happen to people." To my mind this is a recommendation of the book as an interesting dystopia. Perhaps fantasy as a genre has not pushed the boundaries of utopia/dystopia, has not (at least until Jacqueline Carey's recent books Banewreaker and Godslayer, and China Miéville's Bas-Lag novels) caught up to the sophisticated level of playing with political awareness that science fiction has developed. But just because there's no way to make patriarchy, brutality, slavery, and clitorodectomy "fun" doesn't mean they don't belong in a fantasy novel.
In fact, the critical discussion of Touched by Venom is fascinatingly polarized. An excerpt from the book's first chapter made the rounds at World Fantasy Con, where people were giggling over the words "venom cock" and the idea of sex with dragons. Then on Cheryl Morgan's Emerald City blog a publicist from Del Rey objected to the public mockery. It only made people laugh harder. The reviewer for Kirkus, John Joseph Adams—The Slush God—called Touched by Venom "wretched drivel of the sort that gives fantasy a bad name", adding that it is "not only a bad book, but it's one that's damaging to the genre as a whole." Adams compared it to expecting a sip of tea and getting a mouthful of battery acid. He concluded that Venom is "turgid fantasy (first of a trilogy) in which humans worship and have a sexually-perverse relationship with dragons; puerile dreck that's emblematic of everything that's wrong with fantasy."
Many readers have said they were disgusted by the violence in Venom, or by its obscenity. Numerous questions present themselves here. Consider other books dismissed for obscenity, and the ways that accusations of obscenity fall out. What's obscene? When a character is raped? Is it how the rape is described? Is it the point of view or the level of detail that describes the rape? Is it the eroticization of violence? Is it the eventual fate of the perpetrators or the target? Is Lolita obscene? Is Ulysses? The Book of the New Sun? The Kushiel books? Obscenity itself does not make the book of low literary quality. All of these books contain disturbing scenes, but we can react to them in two ways. We can dismiss them; or we can analyze them, and see the disturbance as an opportunity to learn.
Other reviewers have critiqued the novel's plotting, objecting to the story "not going anywhere", or have characterized it as a pointless revenge novel. In the wider blogosphere discussion, Nick Mamatas used the Great Venom Cock Controversy as an occasion to lament poor literary quality, the publishing industry in general, and the big egos of bad authors—again, despite not having read the book. A good-natured response from Cross drew further venom, such as this strong outburst by Haddayr Copley-Woods:
The exact pretend-good-humor-mixed-with-pretend-Big, Important Words and Ideas-and honest-to-goodness-pretentious-condescension talk I'd expect from a hurt little girl who just found out lots of folks think she's a shitty writer.
I haven't had time to read the excerpt, but just from her interview it's clear she's a shitty, shitty writer.
I'm sorry her feelings are hurt. But if she didn't want people to laugh at her writing, she should have become an accountant or real estate agent or any one of the hundreds of well-paying and decent jobs to be had out there which do not involve writing.
On the other side, I found people who read the book and loved it, who call it (in various Amazon reviews) "fascinating and disturbing"; who compare the book to Delany's work and talk about the ways in which it pushes at genre boundaries. Alice Page called it "a provocative read—humorous, disturbing, and harrowing—often at the same time." A reader in British Columbia considers Venom to break old cliches: "It challenges us, disturbs us, and expands our definitions of what it is to be human .... In a field overwhelmed by unambitious variations on too-familiar themes, Touched by Venom is a refreshing shock to the reader's sensibilities. The language is rich and compelling, the writing confident, Zarq's grim alternate world imaginatively conceived. Cross's characters may be difficult to admire, but they are also difficult to forget." I agree with this anonymous reader and with others who find Cross's world-building "richly interwoven" and "lush." I don't think these readers can be dismissed as simply people who are blind to the book's inherent bad literary quality, or who are willing to forgive poor quality for the sake of politics, or as people who don't understand the true nature of the fantasy genre.
What I see in people's reactions to the story is not Cross's sensation-seeking, but the discomfort of the very privileged when they are made to look, or tricked into looking, at something terrible. I suspect it is less the brutality and violence in this book that gives some readers the heebie jeebies, and more the thought that violence is all around us. Violence is complex; it does real damage to people, damage beyond the physical, damage that isn't easily fixable. I realise that I'm coming dangerously close to saying I'm right and those who disagree with me are wrong, which is not my intention; of course tastes differ. But I can't let Cross's work be as easily dismissed as it has been. Instead I'd like to encourage readers to consider Touched by Venom in the context of dystopian novels, as true dystopian fantasy, rather than as an example of Bad Writing or a simple attempt to shock the bourgeoisie. It's not satisfyingly escapist or comforting. It doesn't have even the possibility of a happy ending. But that in itself doesn't make a book unpleasant to read, and Touched by Venom's virtues make it a book that deserves a closer critical look than it's been getting, and further investigation by feminist critics (and, I think, by women of colour). And beyond my appreciation of its thematic and political complexity, it is also a book that I enjoyed on the simple level of story—of dying to know what happens next. Books two and three can't come soon enough.
Perhaps as readers and critics we should talk more about what is enjoyable or not about reading dystopias, and about questions of of obscenity and acceptability. What about a story makes it go too far, makes it untellable or unreadable to us? Part of my own readerly discomfort during Touched by Venom came from thinking about reading as a perverse enjoyment of someone else's misery. However, another part of my enjoyment came from the release of anger, of a response to clear injustice, a clean violent joy at the murderous anger felt by Zarq and at her strength and determination in the face of that injustice. After reading Janine Cross's novel, I read Nisi Shawl and Cynthia Ward's book Writing the Other; but as I continue to come across misunderstandings of Touched by Venom, I'm starting to think there should also be a book called Reading the Other.
Liz Henry has published poems, translations, reviews, and essays in Poetry Flash, other, Two Lines, Cipactli, Lodestar Quarterly, and Literary Mama. In the '90s she edited the riot grrl zines Vanilla Milkshake and Slut Utopia, and currently edits Composite: Multiple Translations. She blogs about poetics, translation, feminism, and politics at Composite, ALTAlk, othermag, and BlogHer.
Really good review, thanks: I've not read the book, and I only saw the bits of the post-WFC brouhaha. What you say certainly works as a piece of advocacy for it, and I can buy the argument that some people focussed on stylistic issues as an avoidance gambit for not dealing with the politics...though some of them, also, are friends whose judgments I trust. If there's one thing I'd ask you to talk a bit more about, it's to more directly address the question implicit in the great VC Controversy: the suggestion that, regardless of the importance of the subject matter, the material was handled clumsily at a sentence-to-sentence level. If I read you rightly (and extrapolating from your argument a bit) you would say that the extremity of the style is a function of the extremity of the subject-matter - as in the one extract you quote. Is that fair? Do you feel, on the whole, that it was well-written?
So not only is it badly written, but it's also a tedious sermon about oppressed women? Yeah, that's a book that I'm just going to rush out and buy.
I could talk about that on several different levels. And in fact I think I'll way over-answer.
The basic writing level of the book is fairly represented by the first couple of paragraphs:
"My first memory: white dust.
Cool and airy, drifting down upon my head like a blessing. The taste of it a fine, gritty tang I later knew to be kaolin. The soft thud of hammers crushing lumps of dry clay into small pieces, the crunch of rolling pins reducing the granules to powder. The unbroken rhythm of hands kneading air pockets out of damp clay, the thuds as steady and resonant as a heartbeat.
I was born a danku rishi via, a pottery clan serf's girl, on the dragon estate known as Clutch Re."
So, okay, it doesn't scream Nobel Prize, but I wouldn't kick it out of bed for eating crackers.
In general, Cross's style makes me think of Jacqueline Carey's for purpleness and certain (overused, but not "bad") tricks like the one-word paragraph; and of Sydney J. Van Scyoc's or Doris Piserchia's for springy density that's creative but sometimes jarring. I prefer that originality of style to the workshopped edge-smoothed mushmouthed dullness of a lot of unobjectionable prose.
It's not Great Literature the way The Book of the New Sun is. But it's also not bad like slush-pile bad; I felt it was being relegated to the category of books that never should have been published, of painfully incompetent (and specially "girly") fanfic. I like to keep an eye on what bad writing in a genre looks like, so I read the pottersues LiveJournal. Now *that's* bad!
Venom's dialogue, and dialects, were mentioned as evidence of the book's badness. I wasn't overfond of the "Heyo"-ing, myself. You can see how it's meant to make the reader feel they're in a different culture and language. And if saying "heyo" every once in a while were the only touch that did that, I'd make fun of it more. It wasn't the only linguistic marker of other-ness, though. By about 50 pages in, I got used to the book's style and it didn't jar me anymore.
I noticed some subtle touches. Kaivarra, the heroine's Djimbi mother, code-switches between two ways of speaking; the slangy, grammatically garbled jungle-influenced dialect, and a more 'normal' classier speech. She's a smart woman who's bilingual and moves between cultures. I don't think that was an accident. Other characters also move through different linguistic registers.
The book's foreign words also might be jarring, or come across as gimmicky, but they didn't strike me that way any more than other SF or fantasy books in which the reader has to learn a lot of new terminology and it's sink or swim. For example, I remember my dad trying to read Larry Niven's Ringworld Engineers, and being like, "What's a wirehead? What's a kzinti? What, what what?" not quite getting it that there was no exposition, and you have to roll with not getting it for a while. Venom's readers have to deal with kiyu,and Wai-ebani bayen, and naming systems with their own cultural logic.
Cross is trying to represent something interesting to me as a translator -- something translators call "foreignizing" (vs. "domesticating"). For example, a book translated 100 years ago would likely have made "domesticating' choices to make foreign elements understandable to its intended reader; the translator might figure that the English-speaking US reader wouldn't know what a taco was, so would translated it as "sandwich". (You think I'm kidding with the taco example, but I've seen it!) A middle-ground approach would be to leave the foreign word, but explain it; "...a derbend, or gate, closed the valley..." conveys what the heck a derbend is, but also reminds us that a derbend is somehow different than a gate and it's a specifically Persian thing that needs a Persian word. (Um, I think it's Persian...I could be wrong. It's from Freya Stark's Valleys of the Assassins.) The hard-line "foreignizing" choice would be to just throw the other-language word into the English, maybe in italics, and not explain it. Cross does that often. Whether it succeeds is debatable. Another common foreignizing trick is to leave exclamations translated - like the "heyo" thing - or like whatever Freya Stark's travel companions yell at their camels. You don't need to translate "dammit" or "giddyap" but can use whatever the foreign word is and let the reader figure out, "That's what people yell at their camels," and it gives a linguistic reminder that the book's set in another culture and language.
What I felt was that I didn't "get" what the book was doing until halfway through, and when I did, I felt it was not badness, but density and difficulty; it's a book that improves on rereading, like Avram Davidson's stories, or like Wolfe's New Sun, because you *get* them better.
I guess I'm trying to make a case for reading Venom as "difficult writing" rather than as bad. I would not argue this for everything judged as bad writing. I am willing to look at books whose writing style annoys me, and give it some analysis. For instance, Mercedes Lackey's writing sets my teeth on edge, but there's interesting stuff to study in there. I remember one book (but not its title) where the protagonist, Alberich, is in a foreign country, and his speech is always like bad translations of German, but his *thoughts* are regular English. That was cool, and I respected what she did with it, even though her overall style made me feel like I was drowning in styrofoam packing peanuts.
About the lisping character, Yeli's Dono. He lisps for the first 50 pages, then goes out of the story (till, probably, book 2). His lisping is important, because of why he's lisping. He's a little kid who pulled out all his own baby teeth at age 7, almost died from the resulting infection, and lost all his adult teeth too. The reasons he did this are important to his character and to understanding the story. It seemed like a competent use of dialect to me.
It's possible to pick a few sentences out and mock them, but that's true of a lot of otherwise very good books. I'm tempted to go riffle through some acknowledged classics of SF/Fantasy and pick out sentences to make fun of - then we could play "guess that classic".
I haven't realy touched on bigger issues of genre, aesthetics, and canon formation. It was very interesting to read the review on romanticsf.com, because the book's quality changes when you read it with a certain set of genre expectations - "I wanted the book to be more Mary-Sueish, escapist and satisfying, but it wasn't." And then other readers saying "I figured it would be Mary-Sueish, so I didn't bother to read it." That's pretty interesting! It reveals a way of gendering genre expectations.
Anyway, my point in the review was that Venom makes more sense if you read it in the context of books like the Holdfast series by Suzy McKee Charnas, or maybe with Gwyenth Jones' Divine Endurance and Flowerdust. Literary quality depends to some extent on context and percieved genre and canonicity. If you are looking in the context of the feminist SF canon, your judgements of quality are in a different frame of reference. Aesthetic judgements are not fixed and come from specific literary frames of reference. I realize this is a controversial stance.
Dude. Tim. Get a grip. It wasn't a tedious sermon, it was a well-written, fast-moving, super-disturbing story with a lot of drugs, power-hungry serfs, and weird tongue-fucking dragon sex with psychotic lesbian nuns. How could anything be further from preachy!
Oh wait! I forgot for a minute that I'm a humorless PCifying feminazi, because I mention politics and use the word "privilege"... and so everything I touch must also be really boring and tedious... simultaneously trivial/teenage-girly, and schoolmarmishly annoying. 8-P
Over-snswering is good. Thanks 🙂
I want to say that although your review was well-written and true to your view of this book, I really think you should have stuck with your own opinion and left out the opinions of anyone else.
Maybe so, R.D., or I could have interviewed and gotten direct quotes from people. I thought the general public reaction to the book was interesting and worth talking about in some detail.
Now I want to read it.
Sounds like my kind of fun.
And that is what I like to find out from a review.
I really think you should have stuck with your own opinion and left out the opinions of anyone else.
I think it was very wise of Liz to acknowledge and address the "controversy" that has surrounded the book.
While its themes and Cross' writing style may not be to everyone's taste, Touched by Venom has been ruined for many readers (including me) who might well have enjoyed and appreciated it. The controversy has so completely overshadowed everything else, I don't believe it's possible -- or responsible -- for a reviewer to avoid discussing it.
The whole brouhaha is *exactly* why I go out of my way to avoid reading about books (including back-cover copy, blogs, reviews) and why I don't even want to talk to others about a book I haven't read -- I'd prefer to see something for what it is rather than what others say it is.
Was there any controversy surrounding the book? Or just one very negative review and a lot of laughter at one maliciously chosen but (at least when removed from context) indisputably laughable passage?
In principle, the book deserves a positive review that doesn't have to take the defensive. But probably it's too late for that now.
I spent hours & hours over the last few days trying to figure out just wtf the whole brouhaha was about. And after all those hours I figured it out: pretty much nothing.
There's very little content to any of the discussions out there -- an initial few snarky comments about the publisher's excerpt; a VERY few reviews or discussions of the novel; and a classic flamewar, complete with pomposity, uninformed opinions, excessive defensiveness, (willful?) misrepresentations and misunderstandings, and an awful lot of people expressing what appears to be unresolved anger issues ...
Truck on, and be proud to realize you've made one of the few actual substantive contributions to the discussion on this book. Folks may agree, disagree, think you come from left field, whatever, but at least you've provided some substance to chew on, unlike 95% (at least) of the other stuff I read.
As for me, I'm going to check the book out, despite its lurid cover and wacky shitstorm.
Thanks for this! I wasn't aware of all the controversy either, but I picked up the book for basically the same reason you did--I mean, look at the annotation:
When she accidentally captures the dangerous attention of an eccentric dragonmaster, rebellious Zarq Darquel and her delirious half-breed mother are forced to flee for their lives, until a vengeful Zarq, addicted to the dragon venom, must defy the social taboos of her society to foster a revolution.
Sounds hilarious, right?
But when I actually started reading it, I was like, "Holy crap! This is not at all what I expected," and ended up staying up till 4 AM to finish it.
Clearly it's not supposed to be 'fun' in the Mary Sue sense, but wow, it's a good read, and addresses the political concerns you mention without being all 'Sermon begins here:'.
I would challenge the naysayers to read the first chapter and then decide--something this brutal and horrifying isn't for everyone, but it might be for more people than you think.
IIRC, the first volume of Suzy's Holdfast Chronicles, Walk to the End of the World, received a lot of gloating misunderstanding when it was first published.
So this is what everyone was talking about back in the fall, when I was so busy there was nothing left with which to pay attention -- which turned out for the best.
I'll be getting the novel.
Thanks, Liz, for your thoughtful review and comments. I've just finished reading the book and came online looking for some more info about the author - and ran headlong into the "controversy" in the form of excerpts from the Kirkus review you mention and numerous other bits of nastiness. My first reaction was one of perplexity and a brief moment of disorientation, wondering if maybe they were talking about a different book than the one I'd read.
No, this isn't writing on the level of Sheri S. Tepper or Ursula K. Le Guin. But I found the book highly enjoyable, more well-written than much of the junk that passes for best-selling fiction these days, and fascinating in the same way that the Kushiel books are fascinating for their portrayal of "edgy" sexual practices.
I found your comments about the feminist themes in the book very interesting, and it occurred to me that all of the most rabid critics of the book appear to be men. Perhaps the facts that the book passes the "Dykes to Watch Out For" test (I love that, by the way) and that, as you say, this is a female hero's tale are threatening in some way?
I also think your comments about reader expectations are very perceptive. I'm much more of a science fiction than a fantasy reader, and I had no problems at all with the "hard-line" approach to foreignizing. But then, I'm one of those who cut their teeth on Delaney 30+ years ago (ah, Dahlgren, the book you had to read 50-100 pages into to even get a glimmer of where you were, much less what the hell was going on - LOL). In any case, the convention of simply dropping the reader into the book's world and expecting her to put the pieces together along the way with little or no exposition is typical of sci-fi and has been for decades. Perhaps not so in fantasy?
As much as anything else, I was drawn in by Cross's presentation of the relationships between Kavarria and her daughters. Strong emotions and deep psychological currents here, and Cross portrayed them in ways that rang true throughout.
I've read Touched by Venom, and I thought it an interesting book. Now I await the second of this series and any others Cross may write. I never heard of the controversy until after I read it and am glad that I had not before, I may not have read it then.
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|Pic courtesy of walmart.com
#2) Set a timer. No one likes to spend hours cleaning, but when you make it into a game its incredible how much you can get done. So I set a timer and raced myself. I wanted to see how much I could get done in 1/2 hour. I spent about 5 of those minutes actually planning my attack. First I turned on the Roomba, put a load of laundry in the washer and started dusting. No joke, I got three rooms cleaned in the remaining 25 minutes and left the laundry for my husband to fold later that night.... GENIUS!
#3) Do double duty. When you're cooking, wash some dishes. It is always recommended to clean as you go, so why not spend 10 extra minutes emptying the dishwasher while you're in there or clean a few extra dishes beyond what you're using to prepare your meal? When you're in the bathroom getting ready, why not wipe down the sink or clean the mirror? Doing a little something extra only takes a few extra minutes. Maybe if I'm lucky, this little trick will become a habit for me. Fingers crossed.
#4) Have a cleaning hub. I actually have a cleaning cart that I roll from room to room. All of my cleaning supplies are always in one place and I don't have to run back and forth gathering supplies....think of the time you'll save not having to round stuff up!!! On my cleaning cart is my broom, a large garbage bag, Swiffer duster, Mr. Clean Magic Reach telescoping scrubber, Rubbermaid Reveal mop and a cleaning caddy filled with Comet, Method All purpose cleaner, Home Tech polish for glass (this stuff is a miracle cleaner and leaves a see-through film on all glass/mirror surfaces that lets you clean with just water for 6 months), Pledge, paper towels, microfiber clothes AND.... Microfiber SOCKS.... yes, socks (wait for it). If you don't have the resources for an actual cleaning cart, a cleaning apron does the trick as well at a fraction of the cost. Make sure it has divided deep pockets in the front and loops on the sides to hold cleaning supplies to make your cleaning time efficient.
|Pic courtesy of gearxs.com
#6 Bonus) Gather yourself for bed. At the end of each night take 5 minutes to simply "pick up" from the day. My husband ALWAYS leaves his socks in the living room so I make sure to pick them up on my way into the bedroom where the dirty clothes hamper lives. Papers are cleared off of surfaces and dishes are placed in the kitchen sink (oh how I HATE the dishes that pile up in the living room!!!). It is just a nice feeling to wake up to a clean looking house. It also lays the groundwork for some faster cleaning when you don't have to take the extra step to pick things up.
I'm sure there are plenty more ideas out there on how to speed clean. Please leave a comment if you have one. I'm ALWAYS interested in ways of cleaning faster as I HATE CLEANING!!!! Oh... and one more bonus for ya. Here's a little video I found on YouTube on how to clean your bathroom in 3.5 minutes (click HERE). Please note.... this only works if you already have a cleaning hub.
Whew...I'm just a tad bit closer to getting caught up!


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Blackpool can trace their roots back to a church team founded in 1877 named Victoria F.C. Between 1902 and 1914 the club were thought to have worn red, but folklore has it that after one of the clubs directors, Albert Hargreaves officiated a Belgium vs Netherlands international he became so impressed with the Dutch offering that he brought the orange kits upon Blackpool F.C.
From 1923 onwards the clubs tangerine dream shirts were emblazoned with the town's coat of arms until 1968 when they brought in a radically simplified B.F.C. crest that was shortly outlived by a simplified abstract graphic of the world famous Blackpool Tower in 1979.
1993 saw the much welcomed return of the town's coat of arms which saw iterations in layout, size and detail bringing the club into the new millennium. Thankfully that tangerine hasn't gone anywhere yet.


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Anthony Braxton: Ten Compositions Quartet (2000)
In the time I've personally been aware of his music I've become lost or disinterested on numerous occasions, most recently with his epic operatic endeavor Trillium R, which to me was a project ill served by the way in which it was packaged and released. Another area that causes me to continually scratch my head is his seemingly unending Ghost Trance series. But balancing these more enigmatic offerings are such momentous entries as the various documents of his Willisau Quartet with Marilyn Crispell, Mark Dresser and Gerry Hemingway and his earlier quartets with the likes of George Lewis, Dave Holland and Barry Altschul- all seminal stuff by my estimation. Falling somewhere in between these two poles is his new project on CIMP, the first part of which is presented on this disc.
Drawing heavily on the post-bop songbooks of 60s icons Andrew Hill and George Coleman Braxton's quartet almost approximates the sound of a forward thinking Blue Note era hard bop band. Programmatically speaking it has antecedents in earlier projects like his pair of In the Tradition albums for Steeplechase and later tribute vehicles like The Charlie Parker Project and Eight (+3) Tristano Compostions (both on Hat Art). Hearing Braxton's ripe interpretations of these classic compositions is consistently captivating treat. His sound on alto edges deliciously close to soprano range and his acrobatic agility at defying harmonic/melodic strictures is often the only hint at freer leanings. His sidemen two of who are former pupils, fit perfectly into his designs. O'Neil takes on the role of hard bop plectrist, but still evidences the speed and veracity of a plucker well versed in the rigors of free improvisation. Norton moves from colorful texturalist to propulsive catalyst crafting a variety of engaging rhythms and Eulau often offers up flexible walking support.
As is often his custom Braxton offers ample explanation of his chosen shift in direction in the accompanying liners and his copious reflections make for a very interesting read. Braxtonian purists (is there such a group given the man's relentless reinvention?) may be dismayed by their hero's embrace of hard bop-associated material, but those among them willing to look past the sources will no doubt see indications of his enduring genius. For me it's simply a pleasure hearing him play in a setting that is fresh and vibrant by comparison to some of the other avenues he's been opting for expression of his undeniable talent. Here's hoping that the soon to be released second volume works just as well.
CIMP on the web: http://www.cadencebuilding.com
Track Listing
Virgo/ New Arrival/ McNeil Island/ Black Monday/ C-Bop/ Pumpkin/ Alfred/ Griots/ No Doubt/ Lo Joe.
Anthony Braxton- alto & soprano saxophones, flute; Kevin O
Album information
Title: Ten Compositions Quartet (2000) | Year Released: 2001 | Record Label: CIMP Records


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Cadillac Brings 'Letters to Andy Warhol' Exhibition to Dubai
For the first time in Dubai, art enthusiasts will get to discover the true inspiration behind the work of famed American pop artist, Andy Warhol. Letters to Andy Warhol is an exhibit by Cadillac, showcasing five rarely-seen-before letters from The Andy Warhol Museum archives in Pennsylvania.
The exhibition also features five contemporary artists who were asked to examine their connection to Andy Warhol and create a piece of artwork that portrays it. On top of that, you'll also find on display five Cadillac-related artworks from different periods in Warhol's career.
This December, head down to Dubai Design District and uncover the mystery behind Andy Warhol and his unique connection to the worlds of fashion, music, media and art.
Letters to Andy Warhol Exhibition in Dubai
- 8th to 16th December, 2017
- 12pm to 9pm (daily)
Where: Dubai Design District – d3 (directions here)
Price: It's free!
The artists:
- Brian Atwood and JJ Martin | "Bobby's Brilliant Heels"
- Derek Blasberg | "Polaroids" Gallery and Photo Booth
- Sean Lennon | "Love and Warhol" and VR Drawing Station
- Chiara Clemente | "Screen Stories" Short Film
For more info about this d3 event, flick to the Cadillac Arabia website.
Sponsored content


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All You Need To Know About Poly Mailers Are poly mailers recyclable? -Yes! Poly mailers are definitely recyclable. Unfortunately, much of the polyethylene material we use daily ends up in landfills simply because many of us do not know that it is recyclable. Not only that, but we don't know Continue Reading
Why Poly Bags Are Worth Considering For Your Next Business Strategy
Perhaps, for most, it's so easy to overlook the benefits of a plastic bag because of the perceptions that it is environmentally damaging. Though it certainly has ecological drawbacks, a clear plastic bag could also be very beneficial to the consumers, retailers or even in the environment. Here are some Continue Reading
What You Need to Know About Shipping with Poly Mailers
As the world of e-commerce continues to expand, poly mailers have become an important part of its growth. Sturdy, lightweight, and significantly cheaper than other shipping alternatives, these plastic bags changed how far and how efficient online business can operate. With this reliable packaging, businesses can now put their focus Continue Reading
Benefits Of Quick Zip Poly Bags
Plastic zip lock bags have loads of practical uses. People are familiar with this type of plastic bags because they are often used for storing food and keeping it clean and fresh. However, zip-tight plastic bags can also be used to organize items, parts, and products. Quick zip poly bags Continue Reading


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Terence Charles "Snowy" White (born 3 March 1948, Barnstaple, Devon) is an English guitarist, known for having played with Thin Lizzy (permanent member from 1980 to 1982) and with Pink Floyd (as a backing guitarist; he was first invited to tour with the band through Europe and the United States in 1977, and during The Wall shows in 1980) and, more recently, for Roger Waters' band. He is also known for his 1983 solo effort "Bird of Paradise", which became a UK Singles Chart Top 10 hit single.
source: Wikipedia
Submitted by OptimusPrime at Mon 17 Jun, 2013 10:32 pm


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John Galm is best known for his vocals in bands like Street Smart Cyclist and Snowing. However, he has a handful of projects that aren't as well known about. Apparently, he's ashamed of some of them. Sorry, John. I think they're great, and i'm sure there's other people out there who will feel the same way too.
The first of these is a solo album that he recorded in just one day. It's really great, stripped down and low quality stuff. There's moments where it sounds kind of Kevin Devine-esque. It's simple, but really great. I dig it a lot.
The next is a project where John is assumedly solo as well. This, however, goes under the moniker Me Here, You There. It kind of sounds a little bit like Bright Eyes or something of that sort. A thank you goes out to Nick from the Get Rad forums for sharing this.
Me Here, You There – Live from Giant Stadium
And last but not least is Audio Recording Club. The EP is only okay, but the full-length album is really, really good. It's well composed post-hardcore/pop-punk music. John is sharing vocal duties with someone else in this.
Audio Recording Club – EP + In the End, We Are All Light
That's all for now. If anything else comes up, I'll post it. I really love the Solo album (November 22), and that is personally where I would start.
UPDATE: My friend Tyler has informed me of a band called Decathalete that John was involved in as well. I am currently in looking around for their EP, but I'm not finding anything. If anyone wants to help me with this, that would be amazing.


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Alan Ayckbourn's Communicating Doors is set to open at the Laguna Playhouse in Southern California on Feb. 24 for a one-month run, directed by the Playhouse's artistic director Andrew Barnicle. Ayckbourn, who has written 57 plays, combines bedroom farce with mystery this time around. Doors is set in the year 2014 and deals with a call girl who answers a summons at a London hotel, only to stumble onto a murder plot and find herself hurtling back and forth in time.
The Playhouse, which turns 60 years old this fall, will celebrate the date with a Gala Fundraising Ball on Oct. 21 at the Pelican Hill Golf Club in Newport Coast. Serving as honorary chair is pop singer Toni Tennille, who starred in productions at the Playhouse early in her career. This is the first major black-tie affair sponsored by the Playhouse in many years. The theatre plans to mark its 60th birthday in various other ways throughout the season.
The night before the Gala, Tennille will attend a private cocktail party recognizing the theatre's major donors and will also take part in formal celebrations on Sun. Oct. 22.
Laguna Playhouse is located at 606 Laguna Canyon Rd. For tickets and information call (949) 497-2787 or visit www.lagunaplayhouse.com. For Gala information call Bernadine Griffin at (949) 497-2787, ex.-215.
-- By Willard Manus
Southern California Correspondent


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For months I have driven past this man. He comes to the corner of Cactus and 32nd Street after dark each night.
There have been several times I have actually gone out of my way to drive another way home because seeing him there has brought me to tears. I've seen him walking with his walker and wheel chair over the 51 over pass on Cactus and he sells copper coins. A few months ago, I decided to stop with 2 bottles of water and $10.00. I wanted to hear his story. He came here 37 years ago and he and his wife live off social security. Each night he walks to this corner to make extra money for his wife of 54 years. He stays till the light at Church's Chicken goes out. When I told him I've been driving by for months and that I was worried about him he said, "God watches out for me."
Even in the heat of the stifling Phoenix summers, he is here. Working. For he and his wife.
I asked Paul which 2 coins he likes the most and he showed me these two. So those I bought.
He also let me take his picture.
If you're out in this area, come by and see Paul. He is a lovely man.


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Holmes Report 17 Aug 2015 // 10:05AM GMT
MIAMI—Veteran advertising executive Chuck Porter, chairman of Crispin Porter + Bogusky and chief strategist for holding company MDC Partners, has joined the lineup of speakers for the fourth Global Public Relations Summit, which will take place at the St Regis Bal Harbour in Miami at the end of October.
Porter joined the Crispin Agency in 1988 as creative director and partner after a long career as an award-winning freelance copywriter. The agency was renamed Crispin & Porter, and within three years it had doubled in size and was named one of the top 15 creative shops in the US. Under his leadership, CP+B has become one of the most awarded agencies in the world and was honored as Agency of the Decade by Advertising Age.
Porter has been a judge or jury chairman at the Clios, the Andy Awards, the D&AD Awards and Cannes, among others. He has served as Chairman of the 4A's and co-chairman of Advertising Week in New York. He is an advisor to the Future of Advertising Project at Wharton as well as co-founder of the Boulder Digital Works Institute at the University of Colorado. And this year he was inducted into the Advertising Hall of Fame in New York.
Porter joins a lineup of speakers that includes Samsung CMO Marc Mathieu, United Way CMO Vicki Lins, academic and author Sarah Lewis, and senior communicators from companies such as HSBC, Levi Strauss, Tata Group and HSBC.
You can register for this year's Global Public Relations Summit here, and you can reserve rooms at the St Regis here.


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July 12-14, 2016
Moscone Center
San Fransisco, CA
Genmark Automation: Equipment Supplier of the Year.
Genmark Automation, Inc. designs and manufactures integrated tool automation, high precision robotics, and motion control products for the global semiconductor, data storage, flat panel display, and associated industries. We are a leading OEM supplier of patented atmospheric and vacuum transport robots and peripheral equipment.
Genmark Automation develops innovative solutions to optimize equipment and factory productivity. Our portfolio includes complete semiconductor substrate handling systems and integration software, which offers our customers high performance, high reliability, and next-generation extendibility. Genmark's manufacturing capacity is U.S.-based, at its Fremont, California facility. Genmark is an ISO 9001 certified company.