text:
Departments of family medicine employ a higher percentage of female and underrepresented minority faculty members than do those of other specialties as a group, but there is still a way to go before medical schools catch up with the nation's changing demographics, according to a recent study.
Researchers at the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) and the Robert Graham Center for Policy Studies in Family Medicine and Primary Care analyzed the number of women and racial and ethnic minorities in family medicine departments and compared that figure with averages among all other medical faculty.
The study, "Increasing Family Medicine Faculty Diversity Still Lags Population Trends,"(www.jabfm.org) was published in the January/February issue of the Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine.
From 1980 to 2015, the number of full-time family medicine faculty increased nearly fourfold, from 1,396 to 5,507 positions. The proportion of female and minority faculty in family medicine departments more than doubled during that period.
"The fact that FM departments are becoming more diverse is encouraging, given that primary care faculty are charged with training the source of first-contact, continuous, coordinated and comprehensive care for underserved minority patients," the researchers wrote.
Still, women and minorities hold a higher percentage of the lower-ranking faculty positions.
Women occupy 51 percent of family medicine assistant professorships and ethnic minorities hold 12.6 percent, a higher average percentage of both groups than is found among other medical faculty departments. But when it comes to full professor positions in family medicine, women occupy just 30 percent, and minorities occupy only 7 percent, according to data from the AAMC Faculty Roster.
Progress can be seen, but diversity among faculty still does not reflect that among the U.S. population as a whole, where ethnic minorities grew from 18 percent of the population in 1980 to 31 percent in 2015.
More rapid gains are being made in gender equality than in racial and ethnic diversity. More undergraduate students entering universities are female, and researchers noted that the majority of black physicians are female.
Imam Xierali, Ph.D., a senior researcher at the AAMC, told AAFP News that incoming minority faculty members could benefit from a mentorship program that offers assistance with writing grants and conducting research, two essential factors that determine eligibility for promotion.
Although the medical profession has pushed to expand the number of physicians, and several new medical schools have opened since 2003, overall diversity ratios have remained flat during that period.
A diverse faculty is important because incoming medical students say that diversity is a consideration when they select a school. It's particularly problematic that the proportion of minority faculty is lower than that of minority students who are entering medical school.
"We need to double down on our efforts regarding the value of diversity," Xierali said. "The population base is changing, and we need to acknowledge that."
Admittedly, achieving diversity will take longer among medical faculty than among the student population because of slow turnover, but that should not discourage family medicine departments and all other medical faculty from rededicating their efforts.
"Medical schools and academic FM departments may need to review their current practices and policies with an eye toward enabling more faculty diversity through institutional transformation and moving diversity from the periphery to the core of institutional excellence," the researchers wrote.
Related AAFP News Coverage
High Court Affirms Value of Diversity in Meeting Educational Mission
Carefully Tailored Nod to Race in Med School Admissions Benefits Patients, Say AAFP Experts
AAFP Joins Brief Supporting Diversity in Med School Admissions
Supreme Court to Hear Oral Arguments Dec. 9
More From AAFP
Policy on Workforce Reform
Policy on Diversity in the Workforce
Policy on Medical Schools, Minority and Women Representation In Medicine
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Monday, July 29, 2013
NAMRATA PRERNA HORO and R.K SINGH
Indian poetry in English today has overcome the subjugation to the influence of English, American or Western poets and post-colonial temperament. The whole range of contemporary poetry projects the inner self of poets. Their history, experiences and surroundings are expressed through a web of symbolic representation. They display genuine love for culture and heritage with "comfortable control on universal themes"1, just as they explore "new horizons in contents"2 and maintain the Indian spirit. Obviously, they are conscious of the country's multi-lingual and multi-religious reality and seek to present a synthesis of the nation's diversity and differences. They share the common nationalistic spirit irrespective of belonging to any sub-categories such as metropolitan, cosmopolitan, regional, migrant, or diasporic.
Expatriate poets such as Agha Shahid Ali, Meena Alexander, Saleem Peeradina, Vijay Seshadri, Ravi Shankar, Jeet Thayil, Mani Rao, Debjani Chatterjee, ReetikaVazirani, Bibhas De, Shanta Acharya, Sudeep Sen, and Raman Mundair etcetera make a considerable contribution to the growing oeuvre of Indian English poetry. The themes of their poems demonstrate regional/national/multicultural sensibilities.
For instance, some of Saleem Peeradina's most successful poems in First Offence (1980) are "those dealing with Bombay life, and its sights and sounds with understanding and admiration." 3 Sudeep Sen's poetry seems to have varied number of setting which ranges from "India to Italy, and America to South Africa and he moves with effortless ease from Mathura to Hiroshima, and Kali to Dali, perfectly at home with all."4 Sen negotiates the settings of a Mediterranean country in the poem 'Mediterranean' recalling his own earlier experiences at home: "A bright red boat/Yellow capsicums//Blue fishing nets/Ochre fort walls….//My lost memory/White and Frozen//now melts colour ready to refract."5
Raman Mundair is another expatriate Indian poet who recounts her Indian background using English as a medium with time to time input of Punjabi, Urdu, and Hindi terms. According to Cecile Sandten, her collection Lovers,Liars, Conjurers and Thieves is "centred around themes such as a strict patriarchal hierarchy which is criticized, child abuse, domestic violence, a child's sexuality, love, desire,the body, wounds and blood. It is also about a Muslim boyfriend, immigration to Canada, immigrant disillusionment or racist murders, and it is also inspired by the Hindu epic the Ramayana, and accounts and aspects from the Indian religious and everyday life."6
Against such a perspective, commonly noticed in migrant poets, an attempt has been made to analyse the quest for identity inTabish Khair's poetry. At a recent event, to a question from Bill Ashcroft "whether he is an 'Indian' writer, Tabish Khair said that he is an Indian writer who comes from Patna , Bihar."7 His poetry testifies to this statement. It is also the migrant sensibility which compels him to return to his roots via memory. The past which holds the present and the future determines his poetry. Despite living in Denmark, he is nostalgic for the original homeland.
The poet unwraps the sights, scenes, senses of small-town from the treasure of his memory. In 'Summer Senses' he writes:
The soft, sweet smell of his hookah,
The starched smell of her sari,
The smell of mangoes ripening in the straw,
Of water cooling cement roofs, of khus,8 (WPLM.15)
In the "winters and immigrant wilderness of snow," that is, Denmark, he misses this olfactory sense, which connects him to the lifestyle of the small town.
The unfading memory is also unchainable, flowing with the current of consciousness. The childhood experiences, culture, tradition, religion, faith, myths, folklore, history, space, ancestors, and ancient authors in a web of symbolic representation form a metaphor of memory.
Khair through his narrative poems recreates his childhood. He recalls flying kites and related preparation and fun, as a small boy:
Roofs were the runaway of our flights, the cockpit
From which we monitored our dogfights of paper
And tight skeletons of wood. Danger lurked
In the corner of the eye with no computerized beep
Of warning, and sometimes trees jumped at our kites. (WPLM.76)
Here, the poet mourns over the present day children who miss such games of adventure and learning. The childhood made mechanized with video games which "Are the mythical cursors, the dots, dashes and demons, /of your computer screen?" is now deprived of the fun he had at home.
He intensely collects the strings from the past to restore what is lost. The re-construction of ancestral home and relationships helps him negotiate his traumas as a beleaguered migrant, who is conscious of exile, alienation, unacceptability, dislocation, hostility, and homelessness. He seeks to find relief by recreating the concept of home.
In poems such as 'Amma', 'Kitchen', 'Their World', 'To My Father, Across the Seven Seas', and 'Almost a Ghazal for My Grandfather's Garden', he explicitly shows his yearning for an ideal 'home' which provides him the desirable feeling of homeliness, love, care, security, and belonging. The poetic presence of his ancestors soothes the painful soul. He remembers his grandmother "In a starched and white sari, the fragrance of soap around you" in the poem' Amma'. In 'Kitchen', he seeks to present the unity in the diverse society of India. According to the poet, it is his mother's kitchen "where parallel lines meet". The life lines of the people from different generation, religion, caste, and class run parallel to each other regardless of their origin, purpose, and destiny. The poet had been a witness at one such point/stoppage, that is, the mother's kitchen, where all these lives come to contact to blend, share and be in peace with all. The kitchen is a universal symbol of a united nation which provides the family atmosphere to every individual whether Hindu or Muslim, tribal gardener's grandson or old servants.
The poems like 'Poem from Outside Muharram Procession','Shobraat', 'Ganesh Stuti', 'Ashvatthaman', 'Krishna', 'Snakes, Outside the First Book of Moses' reveal that his mind or observation is not confined to the context of Muslim religion only, but he is essentially secular, trying to explore logic from every religious source. He writes in 'Shobraat':
Festival of graves; festival of ghosts
That could not exist for a Muslim, but did;
Festival not of the past but of memories (WPLM.13)
In the last line of this poem he regrets his inability to remember "Festival of rolls I cannot read, names forgotten", so his agenda in the poem is to celebrate "memories", "death in life, and life/In death" through the festival.
Tabish Khair is philosophical in the ways he replicates the thoughts of the masters and maestros like Kalidasa, Kabir, Ghalib, V.S Naipaul, Rumi, Karen Blixen,and H.C Anderson. In the poem 'Such Richness Fills The Aspects Of This Earth' he writes:
Such richness fills the aspects of this earth,
Each man's a beggar seeking alms of worth.9 (MOG.45)
The poet perceives the world is so rich that in its comparison man is a beggar--rich or poor—ever in search of 'alms' that is worth satisfying. This poem is a transcreation of the couplets of Ghalib, perhaps recalled by the poet from memory. The poet frames himself with the spirit of Ghalib while mediating between his inner self and the missing homeland. He demonstrates that the opinion of Ghalib has a similar kind of persuasion in him. As a spiritual soul he turns to these maestros, testifying to his personal disenchantment while living abroad.
The things which are beyond his reach as a physical being is acquired by configuring self in the spiritual unification with Ghalib, Kabir, and Rumi, etc. Khair's active personal voice and expression is transmuted with the shared experiences/feelings of the classics. This is done through translation or transcreation , a mode in which the source text is as important as the target text. Translation which Khair does is always in accordance with the original author and his sensilbility. The selection of these verses, couplets, or stories is purposely made as part of his search for identity. In 'No Hope In The Morning Light', he writes:
No hope in the morning light.
All faces hidden from sight.
The day of death is fixed:
Why can't I sleep at night?
I know the way to heaven,
But prefer to turn aside. (MOG.40)
The lines clearly state the helplessness and restlessness of the poet. Ghalib in the 19th century may have written it in a spiritual context but here, if we notice the mindset of the translator, then we find the transparency of agony Khair feels a là Ghalib.
Similarly, deriving from Kalidasa's play Abhijnana-Shakuntalam in the poem 'Arrival', the poet reconstructs the story of Shakuntala in the hardship of an expatriate who is afflicted by a sense of dislocation, alienation, displacement, loss, and regret:
She sees for the first time those eyes outside the lost home.
She hears for the first time the streets of her lost town.
Soon their absence will fill her with the nectar of nostalgia,
a glass of half-lies she will have to drain to the dregs before
She sees reflected in its emptiness the truth of her loss: how
how memory can be either opium or the forge of anger. (MOG.19)
Khair voices his grief as Shakuntala does when detached from her home.The unexpected difference between the desired imagination and the actuality of world complicate the position of Shakuntala as well as of Khair in the acquired society.
The historical sense, myths and folklores occupy a decent part in his poetry. Poems like 'Three Tribes', 'History', 'mohenjodaro: bric-à-brac', 'The Vanished Dravidians', 'Gup-Shup(Gossip):Siddharth Becoming Buddha', 'Pomegranate(Anaar)', 'Birth and Marriages' evince the Indian history and ethos.
Tabish Khair is an Indian English poet whose concerns are about India. He is a cosmopolitan whose poems deal with small-town culture, sights, shared experiences, history through a burning nationalistic spirit. His style is simple, rich in metaphor and irony. Sometimes he may lack clarity in the images and expressions but, as a migrant he effectively negotiates the factors of exile, homelessness, rootlessness, dislocation, disillusionment, and despair.
He views himself first and foremost as a human being, not allowing any lesser identity to narrow his self-perception:
I who am not of the East
Nor of the West, un-Christian,
Not Muslim or Jew, neither
Born of Adam nor Eve,
What can I love but the world itself,… (WPLM.104)
But included in this primary identity he also has various concerns—or other identities—that he identifies himself with. He conveys the cry of Rumi, in an attempt to match his personal response with proximity to the Persian poet's sensibility.
Khair writes poems in free verse. He declines the forms of "chopped-up prose"10 for poetry and prefers the pattern of "chop up narratives."11 His narrative verse which appears to be very simple in form and content consists in multiple layers of themes rooted in Indian culture and heritage.
Apart from migrant sensibility, he possesses a refined mind as obvious from his attempt to identify himself with classics and great names in literature, religion, philosophy or arts. This also reflects his choices that are elevating the mind and the soul in an otherwise demotivating environment of the West.
In his verses he reflects with imagery that are typically bound to his 'home' culture/tradition markers, for example 'Ganesh Stuti'(with which begins the collection WPLM), "Boarsi", "Ya Hassan,Ya Hussain", shobraat-"halwa", "Murgh Musallam, Shahi Korma, Seekh Kabab, Pulao, Makuti.", "Mango Recipes"- "Tarkari, pickle,chutney", "pauroti", "Ramphal". "Kishenbhog", "bangles of glass", "magical, medicinal, sacred" – turmeric, "muezzin", "Bara- singha", " Khaki shorts", "dupatta", "Biharichokkra", "Banarasi sari", "the trunk of kathal", "dhaba", " Padh-kéPhook-Na", "peepul denote /divinity of sorts", "school-darbaan", "table", "chulha-smoke", "mud village", "cowdung fuel", "rickshaws","terracotta", "Ammi", and "Amma". Khair's sensibility is more inclined to the local than higher aesthetic aspects except when he looks towards the great classical minds for inspiration and motivation.
To sum up, the poet demonstrates a migrant sensibility with a peculiar vision for his 'home' and 'culture'. In his vision, he is determined to restore the connection which identifies him with those he loves. He seeks inner freedom, equality and unity, the inner realities of his self, and enriches the larger collective life. His search for identity is his search for oneness – ekatva—with the rest.
1. Prem, P C K. English Poetry in India: A Comprehensive Survey of Trends and Thought Patterns. New Delhi: Authorspress, 2011. ix. Print.
2. Ibid.
3. Naik, M.K. Narayan, Shyamala A. Indian English Literature 1980-2000: A Critical Survey. Delhi: Pencraft International, 2001. 167. Print.
4. Ibid., 173
5. Sen, Sudeep (ed).The Yellow Nib: Modern English Poetry by Indians. Belfast: Seamus Heaney Centre For Poetry Queens University, 2011.
6. Sandten , Cecile. "Looking Beyond The Surface."Kavya Bharati 17 (2005): 187-188.
7. T,Vijay Kumar. "Indian Literature –At Home in the World." Muse India Issue 48: Mar-Apr 2013.Web. 11 mar 2013.
8. Khair, Tabish. Where Parallel Lines Meet.New Delhi: Penguin Books India, 2000. Print. Abbreviated as WPLM in subsequent quotations in the text.
9. Khair, Tabish.Man Of Glass. New Delhi: HarperCollins and The India Today Group, 2010. Print. Abbreviated as MOG in subsequent quotations in the text.
10. Khair, Tabish. "Preface."Man Of Glass. New Delhi: HarperCollins and The India Today Group, 2010. xi-xii. Print.
11. Ibid.
-- Namrata Prerna Horo, M.Phil, ISM, Dhanbad
--R K Singh, Professor, Dept of HSS, ISM, Dhanbad
The article published in Poetcrit, Vol. 26, No.2, July 2013, pp. 83-87
Monday, July 22, 2013
Poems published in The Dance of the Peacock
My poems appear in The Dance of the Peacock (2013):
They make my face
ugly in my own sight
what shall I see in the mirror?
there is no beauty
or holiness left
in the naked nation:
the streams flow dark
and the hinges of doors moan
politics of corruption
I weep for its names
and the faces they deface
with clay dreams
My shrinking body
even if I donate
what's there for research?
devil in the spine
abusing tongue in sleep
or bleeding anus
defy all prayers
on bed or in temple--
the same heresy
oozing and stinking
onanist excursion
dead or alive
I've outlived
the winter's allergies
and depressing rains
in a human zoo
I can live
my retirement too
without pension and medicare:
the wheelchair doesn't frighten
I can live
uncared and unknown
survive broken home
the numbness of the arms
the pain in the neck
and inflation too
What is there to relish in heaven
if the vulgarity of relationship haunts
even after retiring from earth?
the loose threads of yearning criss-cross memory
I can still feel the river's twisted flow
toward lower reaches, exhausted and stripteased
the nudity of moon and stars is beyond touch
who cares I evolve or end like them
suspended from a plane I can hardly reach?
Away from home in academics
sex philosophy and religion
I've been skeptic about all these years
revels of hell in lost memories
couldn't be a new dialect for spring
turn nude with refreshing orgasm
I still wander in my mind with fire
but no heat or light, sterile emotion
routs the spirit to live making
all presences dark and absence
fears are no bread from heaven
nor unfilled emptiness any sky
yet the eagle flies with wide eyes
nose opened to stinking patches
the mud- and ghostscapes that yield
mandate for dreams wrapped in nightmares:
I live preying for liberation
and decay with divinity
They make my face
ugly in my own sight
what shall I see in the mirror?
there is no beauty
or holiness left
in the naked nation:
the streams flow dark
and the hinges of doors moan
politics of corruption
I weep for its names
and the faces they deface
with clay dreams
My shrinking body
even if I donate
what's there for research?
devil in the spine
abusing tongue in sleep
or bleeding anus
defy all prayers
on bed or in temple--
the same heresy
oozing and stinking
onanist excursion
dead or alive
I've outlived
the winter's allergies
and depressing rains
in a human zoo
I can live
my retirement too
without pension and medicare:
the wheelchair doesn't frighten
I can live
uncared and unknown
survive broken home
the numbness of the arms
the pain in the neck
and inflation too
What is there to relish in heaven
if the vulgarity of relationship haunts
even after retiring from earth?
the loose threads of yearning criss-cross memory
I can still feel the river's twisted flow
toward lower reaches, exhausted and stripteased
the nudity of moon and stars is beyond touch
who cares I evolve or end like them
suspended from a plane I can hardly reach?
Away from home in academics
sex philosophy and religion
I've been skeptic about all these years
revels of hell in lost memories
couldn't be a new dialect for spring
turn nude with refreshing orgasm
I still wander in my mind with fire
but no heat or light, sterile emotion
routs the spirit to live making
all presences dark and absence
fears are no bread from heaven
nor unfilled emptiness any sky
yet the eagle flies with wide eyes
nose opened to stinking patches
the mud- and ghostscapes that yield
mandate for dreams wrapped in nightmares:
I live preying for liberation
and decay with divinity
Published from: Hidden Book Press, 109 Bayshore Road, Brighton, Ontario, Canada, K0K 1H0
Monday, July 15, 2013
Haiku on Revista Biografia
Reads his eyes
in the mirror--
Clings to the body
her wet red saree
waving wrinkles
my birth Buddha
lucky red
my birth Buddha
sitting on silk scarf--
small shoots pop up
fade soon in scorching sun:
life force humming
Angels whisper
when sleepless I look up--
a bad rap
Lonely sunrise--
birds flying away in search
for worms in ash
Todos os Direitos Autorais Reservados ao Autor
Reads his eyes
in the mirror--
Clings to the body
her wet red saree
waving wrinkles
my birth Buddha
lucky red
my birth Buddha
sitting on silk scarf--
small shoots pop up
fade soon in scorching sun:
life force humming
Angels whisper
when sleepless I look up--
a bad rap
Lonely sunrise--
birds flying away in search
for worms in ash
Todos os Direitos Autorais Reservados ao Autor
Haiku from بر كرانه جهان
تمام شب، باران
تنها سرپنـاهِ زن
سقفِ سوراخ
تنها سرپنـاهِ زن
سقفِ سوراخ
All night rain
the gaping roof
her shelter
the gaping roof
her shelter
Monday, July 08, 2013
R.K.SINGH and PALLAVI KIRAN
Biplab Majumdar, an emerging voice from West Bengal, writing for more than two decades in English and Bangla, is no exception to one of the recent trends that reflect humans caught in the process of dehumanisation. The poet shows a wide eyed awareness of the decadent air that the present modern culture breathes. He reflects on growing individualism, materialism, hypocrisy, environmental degradation, extremism, moral degeneration etc. Through his poems, Majumdar expresses the tale of humanity and benevolence. In an interview with Anil K. Sharma, he states:
"I prefer to speak for mankind in the voice of the unheard. My deeds and my creations speak for the deprived lot. I am not an active member of any social organisation and political party; neither am I leftist or rightist. But contemporary events are reflected in my writings. As a poet and writer, I think my duty is to present my thoughts, beliefs, reactions, protest, philosophy of life etc before the world in an aesthetical and artistic manner."1
With such a wide range of subject and evolving thought pattern, Biplab Majumdar's poems evince a blend of philosophy and social consciousness. He knows: "In quest of truth/ In quest of light, I move on/ Along path of time"2 and "Poet's can't resist/ Inevitable blows of reality/ They bleed through verses"3
His three collections namely, Virtues & Vices(2001), Golden Horizon(2004), and Island's Dolphin Song(2009) are characterised by concrete experiences of life, nature, spirituality, worldly woes, aesthetic values, and tradition and culture of India. He proffers an ironic vision:
Milk in polypack
Who knows when gets a leak
Life within body4
Below watery epidermis
there is stream of white
transparent unworldly lustre
And some salty insult,
A terrible vow became muscular gradually
in every bones
A stony promise picks up a burning charcoal
in his fist of consciousness5
Biplab Majumdar moralises life and living in poems such as 'Life', 'Discipline', 'Humility', 'Truth', 'Patriotism', 'Commonsense', 'Courtesy', 'Peace', 'Righteousness', etc. To quote from the poem 'Simplicity';
Simple living and our simple wants
Faith in god in humble chest,
Keep us healthy, happy and wise
Simple life is always best.6
With a didactic streak, he presents the advantages of a simple life which leads to 'Dharma' or righteousness. The poet's irony lies in his playing with the adage 'Simple living and high thinking' or the nursery rhyme, "Early to bed/ Early to rise/ Makes a man healthy/ Wealthy and wise" and thus, sounding philosophical too.
However, the modern reality pertains to have an overall satisfaction from the perspective of wealth and richness. The idea that emerges from the poem is that dharma affects the future according to the karma accumulated7. The poet brings out the importance of human values that often get reflected in the way we live our own lives.
It is true that globalisation is not synonymous with finer sensibility and human sensitivity. Everyone around is addicted to 'self':
A man who thinks for self alone
Lives in self made glass capsule,
His soul suffers, the world ridicules
Inevitably he dies of dire suffocation.8
Human beings fail to realise their internal enemies that make them restless and often corrupt their existence.
Analysing the contemporary reality, Biplab Majumdar reflects that life is a picture of light and shadow, where good and evil co-exist, yet there also exists a way out that can set things on the track by looking within and changing the self. He is convinced that 'self-revolution' alone can reconstruct life and society:
When we are our own enemies
Want to get rid of our hellish past,
Self-conquest is our firstmost goal
Self-revolution is then basically must.9
This idea is further strengthened in the poem titled 'Thinking' and even more in the poem 'Forgiveness', where he appeals to the people to understand their true self;
Let's focus the light within us
Our past misdeeds, our secrets sins,
Let us forgive ourselves first
To make our heart neat and clean.10
The poet here stands out for his deep insight. Majumdar seeks to contain inner restlessness through meditation and exploration of the self for positive communication. He tries to mirror his "emotional escape" through "perpetual deconstruction"11 of life which is directed towards the idealist human unity and universal peace and happiness. He echoes what Sri Aurobindo propounds as spiritual:
"it is in the service of spirituality that Art reaches its highest self expression. Spirituality is a single word expressive of three lines of human aspiration towards divine knowledge, divine love and joy, divine strength and that will be the highest and the most perfect Art which while satisfying the physical requirement of aesthetic sense, the laws of formal beauty, the emotional demand of humanity, the portrayal of life and outwardly reality...expresses inner spiritual truth."12
Thus, the great thinkers, philosophers and radicals held the view that poets are not religious men but with experience of life and intense observation they learn to live life more purposefully. Biplab Majumdar's vision of spiritualism seems to revive the ideas of the great philosophers and thinkers for the enhancement of human life: "Poets are worshippers/ Eternal worshippers of truth/ To enlighten world."13
As a seeker of truth, Biplab Majumdar paints his poetic canvas with the practical colours of experience. He partakes of beauty of nature and without overlooking the negative aspects of human existence: "We live like the earth/ Being wounded, bloody by dear ones/ Compelled to cry within."14
In the poem 'Dead Bird', Biplab Majumdar pictures the image of a cage that projects the depressing condition of a bird in the following lines: "The emptiness of a cage without birds was/ swaying within my heart"15
Like a keen observer the poet views the rampant absurdity that prevails within and tries to correlate it with the contemporary mindset:
Never you will see
Butterflies sit for minutes
Mind is fugitive16
The poet conveys the self-illuminating ideas melded into nature, subverting what Coleridge said in one of his poems:
O Lady! We receive what we give
In our life alone doth nature live.17
Further, his poems reflect an awareness of the ultimate reality through the decaying standards of human life and behaviour. With his ironic vision of social reality, he seeks to set things on the right track:
Adjust according to time and place
Be strong in woe, humble in weal,
Keep balance in pain and pleasure
That is life where peace does dwell.18
The poet visualises an idealist midway to accommodate virtues and to face the adversaries with a positive frame of mind:
Let's break off the chains of past
In order to develop a newer vision,
Let's turn and march on ahead
To give our life a better dimension.19
Thus, his idea reminds one of Sri Aurobindo's vision which pleads for an organic, fresh, prophetic and missionary life against the mechanical, uninspiring, flat and complacent life.
To sum up, Biplab Majumdar is a potential poet who is equally alive and responsive to the present situation of the world:
Wish to mop up the grains of jealousy
from all human hearts
Wish to extinguish all the burning candles
of selfishness with a single puff
Salty pang absorbed in the blood gradually, why
the invitation of alphabets embraces me
so intimately?20
He intends to make each and everyone aware of the degeneration of the social beliefs and customs that cause the existential crisis. He believes that the need of the hour is to develop a sensitive understanding of our common human situation. Though the anthology English Poetry in India:A Twenty First Century Review (2012), edited by Pronab Kumar Majumder, features him as a 21st century poet, he largely shares the sensibility of the earlier century. The present century is less didactic and is characterised by a greater sense of tolerance for differences, varieties, and a 'newer' sense of morality, including sex and sexuality.
1. Anil K. Sharma. "Literary Legend Speaks." Contemporary Vibes. Vol.4, Issue No.14, March 2009, p.9
2. Biplab Majumdar. Golden Horizon. Kolkata: International Poetry Society of Kolkata, 2004, p.14
3. Ibid., p.16
4. Biplab Majumdar, op.cit., p.27
5. Biplab Majumdar.Island's Dolphin Song. Kolkata: International Poetry Society of Kolkata, 2009, p.10
6. Biplab Majumdar. Virtues & Vices. Kolkata: Mainstream Publication, 2001, p.16
7. Subhamoy Das. "What Is Dharma? - About the Right Path of Righteousness". About.com.Hinduism. 3 March 2013. http://hinduism.about.com/od/basics/a/dharma.htm
8. Biplab Majumdar, op.cit., p.110
9. Ibid., p.45
10. Ibid., p.84
11. Biplab Majumdar. "Preface." Golden Horizon. Kolkata: International Poetry Society of Kolkata, 2004, n.p.
12. Quoted in R.K.Singh. Savitri: A Spiritual Epic. Bariely: Prakash Book Depot, p.52
13. Biplab Majumdar, op.cit., p.14
14. Ibid., p.10
15. Biplab Majumdar. Island's Dolphin Song. Kolkata: International Poetry Society of Kolkata,2009, p.16
16. Biplab Majumdar, op.cit., p.14
17. Dr.A.K.Choudhary. "The Rays of Truth in Biplab Majumdar's Epiphanies". Poetic Perspectives of Biplab Majumdar. (ed. Arbind Kumar Choudhary). Begusarai: IAPEN, 2012, p.13
18. Biplab Majumdar. Virtues & Vices. Kolkata: Mainstream Publication, 2001,p.9
19. Ibid., p.46
20. Biplab Majumdar. Island's Dolphin Song. Kolkata: International Poetry Society of Kolkata, 2009, p.13
· R.K.Singh, Professor of English. Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian School of Mines. Dhanbad-826004
· Pallavi Kiran, M.Phil (English), Research Scholar, Indian School of Mines, Dhanbad-826004
Published in The Journal of Indian Writing in English, Vol. 41, No.2, July 2013, pp. 34-40.

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Los Padres National Forest is a United States national forest in southern and central California. Administered by the United States Forest Service, Los Padres includes most of the mountainous land along the California coast from Ventura to Monterey, extending inland. Elevations range from sea level to 8,847 feet (2,697 m).[2]
The forest is approximately 1,950,000 acres (7,890 km2) in area, of which 1,762,400 acres (7,130 km2) or about 88% are public lands; the rest are privately owned inholdings.
The forest is divided between two noncontiguous areas. The northern division is within Monterey County and includes the beautiful Big Sur Coast and scenic interior areas. This is a very popular area for hiking, with 323 miles (520 km) of hiking trails and 11 campgrounds (ranging from very rugged to suitable for recreational vehicles).[3] This division also contains the Ventana Wilderness, home to the California condor.
The "main division" of the forest includes lands within San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, Ventura and Kern Counties, with a small extension into Los Angeles County in the Pyramid Lake area, between Castaic and Gorman. Mountain ranges within the Los Padres include the Santa Lucia Mountains, La Panza Range, Caliente Range (a small part), Sierra Madre Mountains, San Rafael Mountains, Santa Ynez Mountains, and Topatopa Mountains; the highest parts of the forest are not within named mountain ranges, but are adjacent to the western San Emigdio Mountains and include Mount Pinos, Cerro Noroeste, and Reyes Peak. The forest is also adjacent to the Angeles National Forest, which is in Los Angeles County in Southern California and is nearby Carrizo Plain National Monument in eastern San Luis Obispo County. Forest headquarters are located in Goleta, California. There are local ranger district offices in Frazier Park, King City, Ojai, Santa Barbara, and Santa Maria.[4]
Many rivers in Southern and Central California have their points of origin within the Los Padres National Forest, including the Carmel, Salinas, Cuyama, Sisquoc, Santa Ynez, Coyote Creek, Sespe, Ventura, and Piru.
Several wilderness areas have been set aside within the Los Padres National Forest, including the San Rafael Wilderness, the first primitive area to be included in the U.S. wilderness system after the passage of the Wilderness Act in 1964. Another large wilderness created in the 1970s was the Ventana Wilderness in the Santa Lucia Mountains. A total of 48% of the total area within the forest has a wilderness designation.[1]
Parts of the National Forest are designated as recreation areas. There are three recreation areas,[5]
Many threatened and endangered species live within the forest. Probably most famous among them is the California condor (Gymnogyps californianus), for whom the United States Forest Service established the Sespe Condor Sanctuary. Also present is the California mountain kingsnake, a California species of special concern. The American peregrine falcon is also entirely dependent on the forest for its survival. The mountain lion and California mule deer may be the most common large mammals. Bighorn sheep inhabit the Sespe Creek region of the forest.[6] American black bears browse on grasses, berries, and carrion. Coyotes thrive everywhere in the forest. Bobcats can occasionally be seen in the more remote mountainous areas of the forest.
Many vegetation types are represented in the Los Padres, including chaparral, the common ground cover of most coastal ranges in California below about 5,000 feet (1500 m), and coniferous forests, which can be found in abundance in the Ventana Wilderness as well as the region around Mount Pinos in northern Ventura County.[7]
Researchers estimate the extent of old growth in the forest is 18,900 acres (76 km2). It consists largely of Jeffrey pine (Pinus jeffreyi) forests, although old-growth coast redwood (Sequoia Sempervirens), coast Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii var. menziesii), and white fir (Abies concolor) are also found there.[8] In 2008, scientist J. Michael Fay published a map of old growth redwoods in and around Big Sur as a result of his transect of the entire redwood range.[9]
Los Padres exhibits an extreme risk of forest fires; in 1965, a truck driven by country singer Johnny Cash caught fire, and burned several hundred acres in Ventura county.[10] Because of this risk, there are many restrictions on building fires in Los Padres National Forest. Some portions of the forest are closed entirely to public entry during the fire season (including the entire San Rafael Wilderness). Normally the fire season extends from June 1 each year until the time of the first autumn rains, which is usually in mid-November.
A National Forest Adventure Pass is required for parking in most locations of the Los Padres National Forest, as well as other National Forests in Southern California, and may be obtained from local merchants, visitor centers, or online. It is not required in the Monterey Ranger District (Ventana Wilderness and Silver Peak Wilderness).
Los Padres means "the Fathers", referring to the Catholic missionary priests of the Spanish missions who proselytized in and around the area in the 18th and 19th centuries.[11]
Los Padres was named Santa Barbara National Forest until December 3, 1936, and was assembled from a number of smaller National Forests, including:[12]
After the consolidation of the forests, the name Santa Barbara Forest was resented by residents of the other counties for being too closely identified with just the one county. Amidst public pressure, park administrators therefore changed the name to Los Padres to be more representative of the regional history.[11]
China Camp is a public drive-in campground on Chews Ridge in the Monterey District of the Los Padres National Forest. Located on the dirt road, Forest Route 18S02/Tassajara Road, it serves as the eastern trail head of the Pine Ridge Trail and is 10.9 miles (17.5 km) from Carmel Valley Road. The summit is 19.9 miles (32.0 km) from Carmel Valley Village. The Chews Ridge forest fire lookout, built in 1984, is nearby.[13] The road continues over the mountain 7.9 miles (12.7 km) down a very narrow and steep dirt road to Tassajara Hot Springs.
San Francisco Bay Area, San Jose, California, Arizona, Sacramento, California, Los Angeles
United States Department of Agriculture, United States Department of the Interior, Washington, D.C., Bureau of Land Management, National Park Service
Ventura County, California, Los Angeles, Oxnard, California, California, San Diego
California State Route 1, California, Los Padres National Forest, Pacific ocean, Camp Pico Blanco
Tongass National Forest, Inyo National Forest, White River National Forest, Gunnison National Forest, Shoshone National Forest
Hans Zimmer, Avatar (2009 film), Alan Menken, Paramount Pictures, 20th Century Fox
Los Padres National Forest, California Democratic Party, Bureau of Land Management, Ceanothus, California
Ventura County, California, Los Padres National Forest, Coyote Creek (Ventura County), Lake Casitas, Ojai, California


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Welcome to Reed's Pool Service! As a Texas native and a graduate from the University of Houston, I have deep roots in the state of Texas. I have been with Reed's Pool Service for over 5 years and purchased the company from Reed Hartzog in August of 2017 just before Hurricane Harvey hit. While I was devastated by the damage to our city and state that Hurricane Harvey caused, I was proud to see our community pull together to help each other during that difficult time. It was a challenging beginning to my ownership, but it felt good to be a small part in helping people return to their normal lives by getting their pools back in order.
At Reed's Pool Service, we pride ourselves on providing high-quality service with integrity whether we are handling weekly-maintenance or making a complicated equipment repair. Our clients are accustomed to being treated with respect and honesty, as well as a job well done. When Reed's Pool Service handles a pool, the customer is left completely satisfied. At Reed's Pool Service, we also immerse ourselves in continuing education whether that be in water-chemistry, cutting-edge technology on the latest equipment, (especially energy-efficient & other green technologies). After 15+ years in the greater Fort Bend County area, our word-of-mouth referrals are keeping us very busy, and this should give you confidence when you choose us for any of your pool needs. Thank you for choosing Reed's Pool Service, we look forward to serving you! – James Ayre
Carecraft is a group of independent pool professionals who have joined together for the purpose of promoting the highest standards of continuing education, providing exceptional Member service and using their collective buying power to secure the best available pricing on pool, spa and backyard components.
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- Licensed Texas Residential Appliance Installer #RI-214818


text: Poolside Restaurant and Bar Add to my trip View gallery Replay | View larger map Darwin & Surrounds Destinations See & do Events Tours Accommodation Region guide Enjoy the air-conditioned comfort of the DoubleTree by Hilton Darwin's Poolside Restaurant or unwind with a glass of wine in the alfresco setting, admiring views of the lush tropical gardens and the sparkling outdoor pool. Food lovers will be spoiled for choice with an exciting menu featuring modern Australian cuisine with a twist of the Territory. Open daily for a full buffet breakfast, lunch and dinner, Poolside Restaurant also offers a 3am breakfast (Monday to Friday) for early risers departing for business or embarking on day tours in the region. Information Opening times Daily from 6am–10pm Facilities Alfresco/Outdoor Dining Bar Carpark Non Smoking Accessibility Caters for people who use a wheelchair. Accreditation Quality Tourism Accreditation Map Map View Map What's nearby What's nearby Explore the NT Accommodation Tours See & do Festivals & events Destinations Food & drink Driving routes Choose route Arnhem Way Binns Track Explorers Way Greater Litchfield Loop Natures Way Outback Way Overlanders Way Red Centre Way Savannah Way Flight paths Choose flight path Domestic flights to Alice Springs Domestic flights to Darwin Subscribe Sign up to receive the latest news, deals and travel information about the Northern Territory. Data privacy Enter your full name: Enter your email address: Sign up Thank you Your details have been submitted. Please check your email and click the link to confirm your subscription.


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Includes wallpaper, "gingerbread" furniture, and landscaping.
We recommend purchasing the art marker (using the dropdown menu above) to color your kit. One marker will do many house kits.
No worries about icing these little houses. The icing has been laser cut for you!
Size with base: 1-1/4"w (3.2cm) x 15/16"d (2.4cm) x 2-1/8"t (5.5cm)
We will be adding to this collection each Christmas to make a tiny, Gingerbread Village scene.
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Carolyn Conner Seepersad
West Virginia University, B.S., Mechanical Engineering, 1996
University of Oxford, B.A., Philosophy, Politics, and Economics, 1998
Georgia Institute of Technology, M.S., Mechanical Engineering, 2001
Georgia Institute of Technology, Ph.D., Mechanical Engineering, 2004
Carolyn Conner Seepersad grew up in West Virginia, where she also attended college. She was West Virginia University's twenty-fifth Rhodes Scholar. At an early age, she excelled in math and science. She is currently an assistant professor in the Mechanical Engineering Department at the University of Texas at Austin.
Tell me a bit about your family life growing up.
I grew up in rural West Virginia. I have two sisters, but they are much older than I am. They were teenagers when I was born, so when I was growing up, I was really the only child at home. I grew up on a family farm. My grandparents had the farm before my parents. My grandparents lived about a hundred yards away. It was very rural. I like to tell people it was an hour to the nearest McDonald's, which to any city dweller causes shock and horror. But it wasn't bad. One high school in the whole county. One stop light. It was a great place to grow up. I spent a lot of time outside, playing outdoors.
What part of West Virginia was it?
I lived in Clay County, in a town called Valley Fork. I'm not sure you would call it a town. There was a small, one-room store, an elementary school that I attended a quarter mile up the road, and a one room post office even closer to the house. Often, everyone knew everyone's parents, grandparents and great-grandparents. It was a pretty small community. I would usually tell people that I was from Clay County, which they would be more likely to know than the little zip code of Valley Fork. The county had about ten to twelve thousand people I think. The largest town was Clay, which had a population of a few hundred. It still does.
Was your father a farmer?
My dad actually was an NCO in the Air Force for over twenty years and retired when I was very young, about three. When he retired he moved back to West Virginia to take over the family farm. We had about a hundred acres. We had some cattle. We grew lots of vegetables. We had an apple tree, some grape vines. It wasn't what you would call a commercial farm. When my dad moved back to West Virginia, he worked for the school system. He drove school buses. My mom was a teacher's aid.
How would you describe yourself as a child?
From everything that I've heard, I was probably fairly precocious. I talked a lot and interacted with adults a lot, because few kids lived nearby. I mostly interacted with my parents and my grandparents, so I was probably beyond my age in terms of speaking and interacting with adults. I was also very active, especially as a young child. I would be outside a lot, whether it was wintertime and sleigh riding, or summertime and building dams in the creek by the house. I remember trying to transplant wild flowers to make my own wildflower garden. Of course, that didn't work. And when I learned to read, I read a tremendous amount. By the time I got to high school and received a reading list from the English teacher, I had already read at least half the books on the list, just because I wanted to read them. So those were my two favorite past times: being outside and reading.
What made you read a lot? Who or what was an influence?
My parents always encouraged me to do that, but I don't think it was just their encouragement. I just really enjoyed doing it. I enjoyed reading about other people and other places. I probably had a bit broader world view than my background might suggest, because my parents had moved and lived in so many places like Japan, Ohio, and Georgia. And my mother was actually German. She was a naturalized citizen. I had been to Germany as a very young child, around five. And my German grandparents would come and visit. I had a bit broader worldview than most children in West Virginia or any other state I guess for that matter. That probably helped me, motivated me to read and learn more about other people in other times and places. My parents encouraging me to read and to get a good education were the key to having a prosperous and happy future. But I had an inner motivation to do that as well.
What was their parenting style? Tough love? Hands off? Helicopter parents?
That's a good question and probably something I think about more now, since the arrival of my own first child a couple of months ago. I have to say I was a relatively good child. I didn't get into trouble very much at all. I rarely disobeyed or talked back. I did have a mind of my own, so you couldn't always tell me what to do. But I was a relatively well behaved child. Both of my parents talked to me a lot. My parents spent a tremendous amount of time with me. They were my playmates, because there weren't a lot of kids around. In a lot of senses, they allowed me to decide what I wanted to do and then supported me and gave me a lot of leeway to pursue those interests. Their parenting style was nurturing, although they would have been happy to transition into a little more tough love if needed.
Are there any bits of wisdom they tried to instill in you that you've held with you through the years?
In my family, education always came first. If I had homework, if there were contests or social studies fairs or math days, my parents would always put that first. So I was encouraged to do my very best in anything related to school. It was assumed from a very early age that I would go to college and I would get a degree, even though my parents hadn't gone to college, although my sisters had. I remember hearing on multiple occasions that I could do whatever I wanted to do, I could be whatever I wanted to be. That's not necessarily something that every kid hears. Sometimes children are a bit pigeon holed. "Oh, you like math. Well, maybe you should be a teacher." My parents never said that. If you want to be a teacher, that's great, but if you want to be something else, that's great, too. If you want to be an engineer, if you want to be scientist, if you want to be a doctor, then you're capable of doing that. You can do whatever it is that you want to do. That really stuck with me. That's something I certainly will try to do with my own child. It was special in the sense that it gave you confidence that you can do whatever you wanted to do. It also didn't pigeonhole you into particular routes, so you never felt like you were bucking the trend by doing what you wanted to do. That's really important. It's especially important for young women to hear that they have a lot of options open and available to them.
Is there anyone else besides your parents who believed in you, who were a big influence as well?
My grandparents had a big influence upon me. Like I said, they lived about a hundred yards away. They were your typical grandparents, baking cookies and sitting on the porch. They always enjoyed spending time with me. My parents took the mentoring role as opposed to my grandparents, but my grandparents were very supportive. I remember coming home with good grades or an award. My grandparents were so proud. That has a very big impression on a young kid who can't wait to come home and tell mom and dad (and grandma and grandpa!) the good news. It's important to have people who are excited about your accomplishments.
Did you have any role models real or fictional while growing up?
I never really had a specific role model. Maybe, I would take bits and pieces from things I had read or heard, and I would look to my parents as role models more than anyone else. I can't really put my finger on a specific external role model when I was really young. I looked up to my teachers quite a lot. I had some excellent teachers who really pushed me and motivated me to do much more than I would have done otherwise.
How much did religion influence your upbringing?
My family has always been religious. My grandparents were particularly religious. We'd go to church as a child fairly regularly, so my family's perspective instilled in me a very deep sense of honesty and loyalty, in terms of treating people with compassion and respect. I still carry those values with me, in terms of honesty and integrity and treating everyone with respect, regardless of their socioeconomic class, gender, color, etc.
What do think made you stand apart from your peers especially in high school?
Looking back, it was never easy to be the smart kid. There is always a little bit of social stigma that you have to overcome. I might not have had the highest IQ in the class or the highest innate intelligence, but I can almost guarantee you that I was the hardest worker in the class. That continued all the way through my education … just a tremendous amount of dedication and commitment. You couldn't tell me no; you couldn't tell me that it couldn't be done; I simply wouldn't quit. That was probably one of the characteristics that made me stand out from the crowd.
Looking back, it's hard to view yourself from afar and really assess your personality. I've generally been fairly unassuming; I've tried not to wear my accomplishments on my sleeve or prove my intelligence. Also, I've always been able to relate to other people very well. That combination of a relatively unassuming, friendly personality combined with a lot of really, really hard work is probably the two traits that stand out if you asked someone about my high school years.
Was there any memorable moment while growing up that left a huge impact on you? Was there a big event, good or bad?
I can't really say there was a defining moment when my life suddenly changed. I've always been relatively steady and consistent personally and professionally.
When did your vocation become clear to you?
I knew in elementary school that I had a talent for math, and I really enjoyed it. Also, in high school I enjoyed the sciences. Math and science have always been my strongest areas, and I knew I wanted to pursue those fields.
I enjoyed the practical sides of things as well. As a kid, I enjoyed building dams in the creek, so engineering really came to the forefront for me. If I hadn't studied engineering, I probably would have studied physics, since I perceived it as one of the more applied sciences.
In high school and also in college, I was always the person who enjoyed helping other people solve math and science problems and sharing my discoveries with someone else. I truly enjoyed teaching and public speaking. It became clear to me that I enjoyed academic life and teaching, so I was en route to become a professor from my early days as a college student. Being a professor allows me to do what I love-engineering-and to be in very people-oriented profession. I wouldn't have been happy crunching numbers all day.
Did your family travel a lot?
We traveled domestically but very little internationally. As a child, my only international trip was a vacation with my mom to Germany to see my family when I was five years old. Domestically, we traveled throughout the East Coast from Washington, D.C. down to Florida. We didn't travel broadly, but every year, multiple times a year we would travel out of the state. I'm sure it was far above average for the typical kid growing up in the States in the 1970s and '80s. My international travel really began when I graduated from college and traveled to England for the Rhodes. That's when I started to travel frequently.
So you're saying most of the trips were road trips?
They were all road trips. In fact, my family always had an RV, which we would pull behind our truck, or Suburban. I remember traveling to different historical sites or to visit my sisters. Those trips were our family vacations, and I thoroughly enjoyed them because I could ride my bike, swim and do all sorts of outdoor activities. I rarely stayed in a hotel until I was in high school.
When you went to Oxford and traveled a lot, how did that change your viewpoint or philosophy?
Traveling and living with people from other countries-extremely articulate people with very different perspectives-really gives you an appreciation for the fact that people look at things and events differently. When I was at Oxford, it was the height of the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Some of my international friends viewed the scandal very differently. I would often find myself trying to defend or explain the "American" perspective, and I began to appreciate how citizens of other countries have different perspectives. You really stop taking for granted that everyone looks at problems the same way that you do.
It's not enough to just travel. It's something you have to experience by really diving in and immersing yourself in a different culture. It's not something you can get from a one or two week trip to France or Italy. That's just not enough time. You're not immersed enough to really get that experience. You have to live somewhere else for a period of time and struggle through the challenges of signing up for a bank account and navigating the markets and doing all of the tasks that are so easy at home but suddenly so challenging in a different environment.
So, this appreciation for different perspectives really carries over into your professional life. As a professor, I teach students from a number of different countries, and today's engineering profession is so international with global product teams and supply chains.
Is there anything else that you took away from being a Rhodes Scholar into your present day life?
You cannot deny that it opens a tremendous number of doors. No one ever questions your credentials. Sometimes it's a little bit daunting, because you're not the world's expert on everything just because one day you interviewed well and all of a sudden you're a Rhodes Scholar. In some ways it's a heavy feeling, because you think, "Wow, I've got all these opportunities. What am I going to do?" It's also liberating to know that you have all these opportunities and you just have to follow the best path for you-the path that enables you to make the best contribution to society.
Also, it taught me to be more thoughtful. When I came back to the United States, I missed the community that I had at Oxford. Oxford is unique in the sense that you have so many very, very bright, very, very motivated people together in one place from so many different countries. By virtue of the university's organization, you find yourself in colleges with people from different countries and different specialties. Here in the States, as an engineering professor, I interact primarily with other engineering professors and students, but at Oxford I might have dinner with a fellow engineer, a physicist, and a theoretical philosopher. You have all of these different perspectives living in the same place, eating at the same tables. It teaches you to be much more thoughtful about your opinions, your work, and how you explain them to someone else. As a result of being a Rhodes Scholar and living in Oxford, I am a much better critical thinker and much more thoughtful than I would have been otherwise.
Who suggested that you apply for the Rhodes Scholarship? Is there a story behind that?
We had a professor at West Virginia University whose name was Robert Diclerico-a fantastic political science professor, an expert on the presidency-who screened candidates and searched for good applicants.
One day, he asked me to visit his office to discuss the Rhodes Scholarship. I thought, "I'm an engineer and engineers never seem to become Rhodes Scholars. Why are we wasting our time?" But I decided to speak with him anyway, and he convinced me to apply and helped me develop my applications. As I spoke with various mentors and asked for recommendation letters, many of them were incredibly enthusiastic. It was an attack of positive peer pressure from my friends, professors and mentors. Also the president of our university at the time was a former Rhodes Scholar and he gave me words of encouragement that boosted my self-confidence and made a tremendous impact on my candidacy.
Was that the only time you had issues with your self-confidence?
Looking back, I never would have classified myself as overly confident. In general, I was never quite sure how far I could go, or what I could do. Innately, inside of me, I had this powerful drive. For example, when you grow up in a very small community in a fairly rural area, you wonder what it's going to be like when you step up to a big, 30,000-person university. And then when you're there, you're wondering what it's going to be like when you step up to a really competitive graduate school. You're always wondering what that next step is going to be like and not quite knowing how well you're going to do. In that sense, I did have issues with self-confidence or some fear of the unknown, but I moved forward anyway.
You had mentioned that others were sure you were a great candidate to be a Rhodes Scholar, but you didn't. What did they see that you didn't?
That's a great question. Maybe we should ask them. [Laughs] Again, it's really hard sometimes to view yourself from afar. I knew I was a good student, but when people win awards like a Rhodes Scholarship, the images that are portrayed in the media can sometimes be a bit daunting. So and so worked for Mother Teresa and so and so developed this wonderful organization that's going to cure world hunger. You look at that and you think, "Doggone it. I'm an engineer. I'm going to be a professor. I've done this. I've done that. But I haven't worked for Mother Teresa and I'm probably not going to cure world hunger, so really, why I am bothering to apply?" It's easy to build an unrealistic image of the people who receive these types of awards.
I think what they saw was someone who was academically very talented and someone who naturally seems to find herself in leadership positions … and enjoy them.
What kind of leadership roles did you have at university?
When I was an undergraduate, I was the leader of our college honor society, which was the only organization that brought together people from different engineering disciplines. Our main role was to organize outreach activities, to emphasize the softer side of engineering. When I was president, we started a number of new programs such as a shadowing program. We brought high school kids onto campus to follow us through our day. As an engineering student you don't have a tremendous amount of free time. The course work is pretty demanding, so you're trying to squeeze your other activities into little bits of pieces of time here and there.
What is your perspective on failure? How do you handle?
Failure is different things to different people. Failure to me is anytime I disappoint myself. It can be a good thing as long as you learn from it.
Did you always have that perspective when you were growing up?
I tried very hard not to fail. I was very much the perfectionist. That was something I've had to address throughout my life. I've had to learn not to dwell on things and to turn them into learning experiences instead. For example, your Oxford degree depends on a series of exams that are administered in a two-week period at the end of your studies. The exams alone determine whether you get a first class degree, a second class degree, or something lower. I performed acceptably on the exams, but I didn't do as well on them as I would have liked. But I learned a tremendous amount from the experience; for example, how to prepare for those types of comprehensive exams, how to be disciplined about it and so on. I was able to put it into perspective and say, "Okay, Carolyn, look back on your experience. What was it that you could have done so much better in retrospect?" As a consequence, I learned some important lessons about long-term planning that helped me be more successful later in life, such as when I prepared for my Ph.D. qualifying exams. I did really well on those exams, but it wouldn't have happened if I'd felt like I aced the Oxford exams. Being able to take disappointments in stride and learn from those experiences is my perspective on failure.
How come you majored in PPE (Philosophy, Politics & Economics) at Oxford?
What I wanted to do was broaden my undergraduate studies, because engineering undergraduates do not have the opportunity to take a broad range of courses. I felt my course work was constrained, and necessarily so, because there are so many things you have to learn to be an engineer. I felt that PPE would offer a totally different perspective that would help me be a better educator, in particular, when I came back to engineering. And I believe that it has. It made me a better writer, a better critical thinker, and gave me a knowledge of ethics and economics that is very helpful in my specialty of design engineering.
What would you say to anyone about going beyond leading a mediocre life and living a rich fulfilling life not just a contented or conventional one?
I consider myself to be too young-at the start of my career-to explain how I've led a non-mediocre life. Maybe in thirty years, I can look back and paint a great picture. From my youthful perspective, I can say that nothing comes easy. Living a non-mediocre life requires a lot of hard work and a lot of sacrifices. It takes a much more long-term view than a lot of people may be willing to take. You also have to follow what it is that you enjoy and not let anyone convince you otherwise. It's difficult to truly excel at something that you don't enjoy. You'll find a way to make that path meaningful and to make an impact on people, but first you have to do something that you enjoy.
Can you name three things that you enjoy about what you do?
I love working with people. I love working with the students. That's the number one thing. I love to see them do well. I love to see them grow and develop. It far eclipses anything else I would mention. I also enjoy being able to learn new things. That's part of being a researcher. You get paid to do both of those things, which is really quite a dream job for me. The other thing is to be flexible and to be your own boss in this job. No one tells you what to do from hour to hour. You plan it out yourself. That's quite nice.
And in layman's terms what exactly do you focus on?
I do research in engineering design, improving the design processes that people use to create new products. I develop methodologies and computational tools to make the design process easier and more effective.
What kind of specific products?
Most of my work could be applied to a broad range of products, but I do focus on applications in solid freeform fabrication, which is the use of rapid prototyping machines to make products directly from a computerized CAD file. It opens lots of opportunities for customizing products.
Related links:
Dean's Award for Outstanding Teaching
Clyde Seepersad


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OpenJDK 11 (Java 11) on CentOS 7
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This image contains OpenJDK 11 (Java 11) on CentOS 7 and includes support.
CentOS 7 is a Linux enterprise-class operating system that is functionally compatible with its upstream source, Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL).
Maintenance updates will be available on this release until 30 June 2024.
This image is built on top of our popular CentOS 7 Minimal Base image: https://aws.amazon.com/marketplace/pp/B07WJ1P9L9
Operating System
Linux/Unix, CentOS 7
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I've never had the need to add an SSL/TLS certification to a website before but I thought I would take a stab at it since my Blog uses an https:// address. I think its inconvenient for visitors to have to accept self signed certificates. The general web page warning looks something similar to the following image, anyway it simply means the web page isn't using a validated certificate.
So, I searched Google for SSL/TLS certification on the web and as usual found a lot of information but stumbled across StartSSL.com offering a "free" solution, granted this is a low level validation but will fit my needs until such a time I think I need something with a higher guarantee.
So I signed up for a Freebie.. supplied the necessary information and started generating an SSL cert for my site. My website is currently hosted on a QNAP Network Attached Storage (NAS) unit and is a little bit different than running on a Linux server as it is a proprietary setup, not extremely powerful, but gets the job done. One important item of note before starting this venture is to make sure you have SSH access to your device, you should always have a backup plan in case things go wrong, you've been warned.
With that said the information I was looking for can be seen in the following image.
I needed a Certificate, Private Key and an Intermediate Key (not certain) on this. The confusion for me is that its looking for a PEM (used for different types of X.509v3 files which contain ASCII (Base64) armored data prefixed with a "—– BEGIN …" line.) In essence your looking for the information between the ——BEGIN and ——END tags, the file names in my case were irrelevant but could have meanings in other application, sorry I'm not knowledgeable enough to be able to enlighten you.
So I didn't screenshot the entire top level domain process but here is the gist. After you sign up click the "Validations wizard". Select "Domain name validation" from the drop down and enter your top level domain name (yourdomain.com) and press Continue. You will then need to select the email address that you will receive the verification email.
After you receive the verification code you received on your e-mail finish the wizard. Your top level domain is now validated.
In my case my QNAP is on a subdomain (subdomain.domain.com) so I needed an additional SSL cert or maybe this is how I should have approached it in the first place, not sure? It seems logical that I would need to create the top level first and then the subdomain..
Log back into the control panel at StartSSL and click the "Certificates Wizard" and choose "Web Server SSL/TLS Certificate".
You will be asked to enter a Key Password set the Keysize and Hash Algorithm.
Your private key will be generated in an encrypted format that will need your password to be decrypted. Save this key! call it "ssl_encrpted.key",
The next screen is asking for the top level domain, select it and click next
The next screen is asking for the name of the subdomain that you want to create, enter your information here. In my case my sublevel domain is called "QNAP" the full URL is then qnap.mydomain.com.
The certificate will be available shortly and you should recieve an email when its completed, "Please login to your account and select from the Tool Box tab the section Retrieve Certificate. The pending certificate is marked with a green colored label.".
Download this file and name it "ssl.crt"
We need one more additional key, "Class 1 Intermediate Server CA" file from StartSSL, save this as "sub.class1.server.ca.pem".
At this point we have 3 files,
- SSL_Enrypted.key
- SSL.crt
- sub.class1.server.ca.pem
Since the QNAP cant read an encrypted Key I needed to decrypt the "ssl_encrypted.key". this can be done with the decrypt utility in the Toolbox. Simply paste the contents of the encrypted key in the box and enter your password. Save the output as "ssl.key"
At this point we have 4 files,
- SSL_Enrypted.key
- SSL.key
- SSL.crt
- sub.class1.server.ca.pem
Populate the appropriate boxes with the information contained in the key's by simply opening them up in a text editor program and copying and pasting the contents.
That should be it. In my case the QNAp took a moment to digest the information then logged out and then back in an SSL encryption state.
SSL/TLS locked out of your QNAP?
If by chance it didn't work for you, and I had issues myself in getting this going, I was able to copy the default information back by SSH'ing into the QNAP and copying the file "stunnel.pem"


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Schoolchildren perform better academically if their teachers are not allowed to enter into collective bargaining deals on pay and conditions, new research suggests.
Barring teachers from being represented by unions can help schools in impoverished areas to close the gap between their academic results and those of schools in wealthier areas, according to a study of educational achievement in the US.
Teaching is one of the most heavily unionised professions in America: around two-thirds of teachers belong to a union, compared with 36 per cent of all public sector employees.
In a paper presented at this week's American Educational Research Association conference, held in Philadelphia, Mark J Fenster, from Notre Dame of Maryland University, looked at maths and literacy test scores for 10- and 14-year-old students across all 50 US states and Washington DC.
When he was collating his data, collective bargaining by teaching unions was mandatory in 35 states, permissible in 11 and illegal in five. The five states where it was banned (Georgia, Texas, South Carolina, North Carolina and Virginia) are among the poorest, with high numbers of students receiving free school meals. Another three states (Indiana, Michigan and Wisconsin) have since outlawed collective bargaining.
Despite their relative poverty, students across all age ranges and subjects show greater levels of improvement in states where unions are not recognised, Professor Fenster has found.
"States with mandatory collective bargaining agreements had a significant advantage, with respect to having students with higher socio-economic status," he writes. "But that higher socio-economic status did not result in higher achievement.
"States permitting collective bargaining agreements.had lower levels of student achievement, especially in mathematics."
Professor Fenster believes that the correlation between collective bargaining and lower results is explained by the fact that unions can delay the implementation of reforms. Government initiatives to improve student performance, such as the No Child Left Behind programme, established in 2001, tend to take longer to be introduced in unionised areas because unions can be reluctant to adopt new assessment methods, he says.
"Union rules may inhibit change and innovation," Professor Fenster writes. "Districts in states with collective bargaining rights may have been slower to respond to a major initiative from the US federal government."
US teachers are also offered tenured positions as a reward for long service, meaning that unions can make it much harder for schools to remove underperforming staff, he adds.
The role of classroom unions has come under particular focus in the US recently, as New York State has approved a plan to allow school districts to use student test scores in teacher evaluations: a proposal bitterly opposed by local unions.
In Colorado, a new bill has proposed that only teachers whose students' grades improve for three consecutive years would be awarded tenure at their schools, and tenure would only be retained if student improvement continued.
In England, the government's introduction of performance-related pay and the abolition of automatic incremental pay rises for teachers have met with strong opposition from classroom unions. In March, members of the NUT took part in a one-day national strike over pay, pensions and working conditions, affecting hundreds of schools across the country.
Professor Fenster examined the national assessment scores of students in all US states. Over the nine-year period of research, students in unionised states consistently underperformed, he found. This was true of those from wealthier backgrounds as well as those receiving free school meals. The performance gaps increased after the passage of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001.
But Russell Hobby, general secretary of the NAHT headteachers' union in the UK, said that classroom unions in the US had much greater influence over hiring and firing decisions than their British counterparts.
"If unions use collective bargaining power to block legitimate management decisions, then I can see how that would create problems for standards," he said. "But our unions can be positive forces. If they can improve pay and conditions, then that can affect morale. And teachers with higher morale will be more effective and more inspirational in the classroom."


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|Wed 8 Apr 2015, 6:00pm–9:00pm
|Wed 15 Apr 2015, 6:00pm–9:00pm
|Wed 22 Apr 2015, 6:00pm–9:00pm
|Wed 29 Apr 2015, 6:00pm–9:00pm
Additional fees may apply
Beginners and advanced: 6 – 9 pm, Wednesday evenings, 4 weeks
$195, all waxes and mold materials supplied, castings charged separately.
Next class runs 8 - 29 April.
Tutor: Vaune Mason
Learn the techniques of working with wax to create beautiful textures in metal that can be used in multiple ways. A fantastic course that's full of fun and inspiration!Students learn carving in hard wax, texture forming in soft wax and how to clean up and finish your pieces.Course costs include basic materials for the process, but do not include the eventual metal costs for the pieces you choose to cast. As this is subject to each students' choice of size and type of metal, we leave this up to you to decide. Castings may cost between $5 and $40 depending on whether you cast in Silver or Bronze. Casting in Bronze or Brass will be much cheaper.
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Yeah i felt that they needed to win game 6 because Miami stole the momentum. Should be a great game nonetheless and your sig is just epic!
....Unfortunately it's probably coming down soon. I dont know how confident I am going into game 7.
Love your sig That kid's voice was so damn annoying!


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What was your favorite Template and why?
My favorite is my first template I ever went. TKM, M.Smuggler, M. Pistoleer.
Why? It was the first one I came up with, which was nice, and I loved TKM(i can't remember for sure but I was in the top 10 for first people to master TKA) I also loved smuggler and as such adding pistols was a natural choice. I loved this template because I would usually start off with a knockdown/warcry from a distance, then move in for a dizzy attack followed by unarmed hit 3 . I also had some killer knucklers that were something like 450 max dmg or something like that. They weren't the best out there, but I got pretty good at using them. Looted the parts for those myself which made them even more special.
This was also back when the game first launched, before people thought up melee stacker templates and long before the Combat Nerfgrade... i mean upgrade.
What about the rest of you?


text: Hunsur Municipal Council is offering financial assistance of Rs.50,000 for meritorious SC/ST students studying BE/ MBBS courses for purchase of laptop or desktop computers. Assistance is also offered for Backward Class people to construct personal toilets. Retro-fitted scooters will be provided to disabled people. For details, contact Ph: 08222-252048, according to a press release.


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At Tuesday's Board of Education meeting, Mr. Hopson updated the Board on our fall semester at HME. The year began with a Level 5 School celebration - the first Level 5 in school history. This is possible with great attendance and dedication of everyone in our HME family.
An overview of our progress this year:
It's been a busy and productive year already, and we're excited to continue that this semester!


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- Department Overview
- History Programs
- Student Opportunities
- Faculty and Staff
- Research and Publications
Why Study History at Missouri S&T?
From a low faculty-to-student ratio, to learning from respected historians, there are plenty of reasons why you should consider becoming a history major:
- Low faculty-to-student ratio. We have about three to five history majors per full-time faculty member in our department. This means you'll get to know our faculty members well and be more than just a number in a department with hundreds of students.
- Small class sizes. Unlike other state universities, none of our classes are taught in lecture halls to hundreds of students. In upper-level history courses, our average class size is about 20 students, and in lower-level entry courses, it's about 30 to 35.
- Faculty who teach undergraduates. At some universities, full-time faculty focus on their graduate students rather than undergraduates. Our faculty members are fully dedicated to teaching undergraduates, as we do not have a graduate program.
- No graduate student teaching assistants. Also at other universities, much of the face-to-face teaching is done by graduate student teaching assistants. We do not have any graduate students or teaching assistants.
- Few courses taught by adjuncts. At colleges across the country, about 40 to 50 percent of courses in the humanities are taught by part-time adjunct faculty members. In our department, only about 10 to 15 percent of our classes are taught by adjuncts.
- Outstanding teaching faculty. Our faculty members have won dozens of teaching awards. We consistently receive among the highest teaching evaluation scores on campus.
- Outstanding researchers. Our faculty members are also active scholars in their fields, often publishing more books per capita than the faculty at the University of Missouri in Columbia. For a list of faculty member publications, click here.
- Outstanding history teacher placement. About half of our students choose to major in history with a secondary education emphasis. We have an excellent record of placing our graduates in high school teaching jobs across the state. For more on Teacher Education and Certification at S&T, click here.
- Excellent placement in graduate schools. Our department's graduates have gone on to study history, archeology and law in graduate school at universities like the University of Missouri in Columbia, Vanderbilt University, and University College Dublin.
- Wide variety of alumni careers. Our alumni have moved on to successful careers in a variety of fields. Check out our What do History Graduates do? page to get an idea of what you can do with your history degree.
- Opportunities for individual research. Some of our students have taken advantage of Missouri S&T's Opportunities for Undergraduate Research Experiences (OURE) program, which comes with a $1,000 stipend. All history majors will work one-on-one with a faculty advisor on a senior thesis.


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The original post URL: http://it.toolbox.com/blogs/data-analytics/the-secret-of-olap-you-never-knew-53917
When talking about OLAP, people always means cube modeling. Most of us will wondering, if we don't have modeling, how can we go on data analytics? Why OLAP always means Cube-modeling? Can't we just go on business computing without cube-modeling? Maybe there are some secrets you don't know about OLAP.
The typical usage of traditional OLAP tool is always to build module first and then analyze data as if it was a convention. Is the modeling unavoidable? Why we build model? Why we spend time and efforts in this stage instead of analyzing the data directly? Why the performance is still an excuse to put off the innovation despite the hundred-fold increases in hardware performance throughout all these 20 years? What is the root cause?
This discussion here will expose this secret by pointing out 3 facts: First, modeling is not necessary at all. Second, modeling brings about disaster. Third, the real look of OLAP.
The discussion here will start with an example. A retailing business needs to analyze the results of new sales policy implemented in the latest 3 months, and develop the corresponding actions.
Firstly, it is impossible to design an all-roundly complete analystics model beforehand. For example, the new policy may mainly affect the sales achievement, team relation,or even the sales force management. The sales achievement may probably go through a host of possibilities of sudden rise and drop. The sudden rise of sales achievement may result from either the large orders placed with short lead time, or the increase in the volume of orders. There are many branches and fluctuations. Every time, users have to judge momentarily on the unpredictable tendency of branches, which means it is impossible for them to design a clear route to analyze.
Secondly, the model restricts the freedom of analyzers. Modeling means analyzers can only take actions in a stipulated scope. For example, the analysis cannot be completed if you want to import the data of fellow retailers for comparison during analyzing, because the temporary data import is not allowed for models...For another example, without the slicing, rotating, drilling, and other traditional OLAP functions, it is impossible to compute the big clients accounting for 60% of the total profits. The original intention of OLAP is the arbitrary interactive computation. The typical procedure is to firstly make an assumption on the obscure goal, secondly, verify or falsify these assumptions, then correct the assumption continually, and ultimately reach the right decision. The traditional OLAP does not support the arbitrary interactive computation on data, and its limited function hinders the freedom of analyzers, and therefore cannot make the truly valuable decision.
At last, modeling cannot hold the changing requirements. The commercial opportunities are evanescent. Facing the ever changing demands, OLAP must provide the right analysis decision in the shortest time. For example, the continual decreasing of order volumes draws the attention from executives. It is pressing to determine whether there is a relation between the order decreasing and the new policy. When the traditional OLAP encounters such new requirements, users can only request the technical experts and business specialists to design the new models, and then keep on adapting the models to the practical business, sometimes the model has to be reworked when it turns out to be incapable in the analysis stage. During this period, a great deal of time, money, human resources, and physical resource would be spent. When all analyses have been done, the business opportunities have slipped away.
Therefore, the model is not a necessity. On the contrary, modeling makes OLAP lost customers and market. According to findings from Google, since 2004, attentions on OLAP drop by 85 percent. In fact, most users just take OLAP as an expensive presentation tools.
The market is thirsty for OLAP product with improved computational capabilities, that is, a brand new product not requiring modeling, capable to carry out direct analysis on the history data, and provide the timely decision on the arbitrary interactive computation. It must be featured by:
Support the friendly interaction. It will lower the requirements on technical background to ensure that even the normal business personnel can grasp it easily. The analysis result in any step must be always clear and visible. According to the intermediate result, users can manipulate the data straightforwardly and intuitively on menu. OLAP is intended to serve the purpose of business decision for the business specialist users. For the business specialists with limited IT experience, user-friendly interaction is just what they need.
Free multi-step computation. The OLAP tools must be able to arbitrarily decompose the complex problem into several simple steps. Seek the solution to a complex problem by solving lots of simple problems. The step-by-step computation is the key to solve the complex problems. Traditional OLAP tools are confined by the model and unable to solve the complex problem, not to mention the arbitrary operations. For example, the problem of "Compare the product sales fluctuations in the half year" can be decomposed into these simple steps: Filter out the order data in the half year; Group the data by month; Summarize the sales in each year; Perform the year-over-year monthly comparison.
Support the structural data. In the business system, a huge amount of structural data is scattered here and there, for example, in database, or Excel and text file. The ideal OLAP should be capable to provide the direct support for the massive computation on the structural data, such as grouping, summarizing, associating, and filtering. Although SQL can support the structural data well, SQL also requires a relatively higher technical background on users. To implement a bit more complex computation, users will have to write a great deal of scripts hard to write and maintain. The ideal product is the one that is comparable to SQL in computational capabilities with relatively lower requirements on technical background, so that the business specialists can use it easily.
Optimize the business computing. Unlike the scientific computing, the business computing often requires the thinking from business perspective. For example "which products among the top 10 best-sellers last year still remain the top 10 best-sellers this year". In business computing, users shall seek the interactive set of the 2 objects intuitively, instead of writing a large section of SQL/VB/JAVA scripts, and the way to represent the intersection set between objects easily using the business terms. The similar examples also include the associative relations to represent the multi-level relation, for example, the problem "for the sales managers responsible for the products among the top 10 best-sellers, how much contribution their clients made to it". In addition, the complex problem of commercial computing is always related to orders: ranking, link relative ratio, year-over-year comparison, etc., for example, "products whose sales volume keep rising in consecutive three months". All these problems need representing in a concise and easy-to-understand way.
The esProc/esCalc family products from esProc are just the desired software, of which, esProc is good at multi-step computation and solving the complex problems; esCalc relies heavily on the friendly interaction and ideal for the business personnel. They have the advantages below:
Modeling free - esProc/esCalc does not require modeling because its professional computational capability enables its users to analyze on business data immediately to provide the decision support promptly, and seize the evanescent business opportunities ultimately.
Arbitrary computation - esProc/esCalc provides the arbitrary computational capability to implement the truly arbitrary OLAP computation. The enterprise can thus be provided with the valuable data for decision-making. It boasts the friendly interaction, arbitrary multi-step computation mechanism, and optimization on business computation, such as the complete set computation, ordered computation, and object references.
Relatively low technical standard - esCalc/esProc has lowered the technical requirements on the analyzer and designed especially for the business specialists. Business specialist can complete the whole set of OLAP work independently, such as installing and deploying, determining analysis goal, decomposing task, retrieving data, verifying the conclusion, presenting the conclusions, and print & export.
The computational capability of esCalc/esProc is worth looking forward to in the hope that traditional OLAP tools could be inspired to confront their drawbacks. Let them commit to build the OLAP standard of the next generation collaboratively.
Related Articles from Raqsoft:
Business Intelligence Suppliers: Are You Ready for 2013?
Script Computation of esProc Optimizes Analysts' Benefits
Various Data Environments Support of esProc Makes Statistical Computing more Flexible


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Ice Nine Kills have stepped up their artistic game with their latest full-length record, Every Trick In The Book. As the title implies, the band borrow from some of their many literary inspirations to create their most melodic ("Tess-Timony") and most heavy ("Hell In The Hallways") songs to date. William Shakespeare, George Orwell and Stephen King are just a few of the authors INK turn to for their own brand of musical storytelling, and as a lit nerd myself, I'm pretty goddamn giddy about it.
Creating songs based off of personal experiences alone is a perfectly good way to go about writing music. However, when artists look to the works of other artists both in admiration and for inspiration, something special happens: A dialogue is created between the old tales and the new tracks, and in INK's case, the conversation is exceptionally moving. Reimagining known stories in modern ways makes for not only a fun listen but an engaging one. As the listener, you start to look for clues; little pieces of the story you already know and little embellishments added in that you're just hearing for the first time.
While the overall sound of Every Trick In The Book is very similar to that of their last full-length, The Predator Becomes They Prey, the most noticeable and impressive difference is the band's use of added sound effects and dialogue to enhance and enliven the stories they're telling. "The People In The Attic," for example, based off of The Diary of Anne Frank, is not only a great song musically, but goes above and beyond when it incorporates suspenseful dialogue and threatening sounds that recreate the terrifying moment of an S.S. officer coming for the hidden Jews upstairs. Something similar happens in "Hell In The Hallways" (Carrie is announced prom queen followed by screams) and "Communion Of The Cursed" (the possessed little girl from The Exorcist adds a demonic twist to a prayer). These moments of theatricality give the record that extra umph, turning a standard Ice Nine Kills record into a noteworthy one.


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Have you written . . . revised . . . workshopped . . . revised again . . . until you can no longer look at your manuscript? Take a breath; we can help. Whether your intention is to traditionally publish or self-publish, your opportunity for success increases greatly when you work with a professional editor. Around the Writer's Table can support you with several types of editing services customized to your needs.
Types of Editing
Understanding the types and stages of editing is confusing! What?! There's more than one kind of editing? Yes, and there isn't common language about it either—even among editors! My advice: when you consider any editor, be certain you understand what services they offer and how they define them. Editors talk about developmental editing, content editing, substantive editing, line editing, copy editing! Aaawk! Then there's also proofreading, which isn't editing at all—but many people think proofreading is all there is to editing. Oh, if it were only so! To learn the truth, download this cool graphic, which illustrates the sequence, the differences, and the similarities among the stages of editing.
What We Do
Content EditingFocuses on overall structure, organization, and purpose of your book. Making sure your intent is clear and consistent throughout the manuscript is vital to your book's success. We assure the tone, style, and point-of-view in your manuscript are consistent and we check the organization and flow of the material for suitability to your genre and appropriateness for the intended reader. In fiction, we'll also address character development and plot arc.
Line EditingFocuses on writing style and language. We check for smooth transitions between chapters and scenes, consistent tone, point-of-view shifts, repetitive patterns in paragraph and sentence structure, bland language, repeated phrases, ambiguity, redundancy, digressions, clarity and sense, and appropriate word choice.
Copy EditingIncludes a check for any errors that may have been missed or introduced in the revisions you made based on the line edit. The manuscript is checked line-by-line, word-by-word for ambiguities, redundancies, digressions, and unnecessary or overused words. Typos, spelling and punctuation problems, and basic grammar issues are also identified.
Though we work in many genres, our special interests include literary fiction, Southern Gothic and other southern-themed fiction, women's literature, middle-grade and young adult fiction, and the nonfiction genres of self-help, spiritual, memoir, and creative nonfiction. Around the Writer's Table can provide you with a full-service editing package to prepare your manuscript for submission to an agent or publisher, or ready it for self-publishing.