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Micro-structural images and analysis of Chicxulub Peak Ring material and Numerical Simulation Data of the Chicxulub Impact (NERC grant NE/P011195/1)
The data within this repository contains results from IODP-ICDP Expedition 364 which drilled the Peak Ring of the Chicxulub Crater, offshore Mexico. The offshore phase of this expedition occurred in April-May 2016, while the onshore phase occurred in October 2016. Further details of the IODP expedition can be found in the expedition report ( https://doi.org/10.14379/iodp.proc.364.2017). The data within the repository is sorted into 4 separate folders: 1 - Optical_Images 2 - SEM_Image_Processing 3 - UStage 4 - Numerical_Models 1 - Optical_Images This folder contains two sub-folders: Optical_WholeSection, which contains whole thin-section plane- and cross-polarised stitched images of thin sections from Hole M0077A, acquired using a Zeiss optical microscope at 4x magnification at Curtin Univesity, Perth. Section names follow IODP standard sample naming convention. Optical_Photos, which contains sub-sub-folders delimiting samples, each of which contains individual images of features of interest in thin sections from Hole M0077A, magnification and a brief description of the feature are indicated by the file name and scale bars are provided on the image. 2 - SEM_Image_Processing This folder contains 10 sub-folders, specific to the individual analysed section. Each sub-folder contains a whole thin-section Back-Scattered Electron (BSE) Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) stitched tiff image with a pixel width of 750nm. Data was acquired using a Zeiss Ultra Plus SEM at the NHM London. The images were then processed to analyse pore spaces within the thin sections. All folders contain a text file called "TOTAL.txt" which records data from every pore within the thin section. If the thin section contained any cataclasite bodies, two additional text files "CATACLASITE.txt" and "CATACLASITE_TOTALAREA.txt" can be found, the former contains the pore analysis of the selected cataclasite area, the latter indicates the size of the selected cataclasite area. All image analysis was carried out using the ImageJ software package. 3 - UStage This folder contains one .xlsx file that summarises the results of universal-stage optical microscope analysis of quartz planar deformation features of thin sections within hole M0077A. 4 - Numerical Models This folder contains 5 text files. "asteroid.inp" and "material.inp" are the input model parameters of the iSALE shock physics code ( http://www.isale-code.de/redmine/projects/isale), these inputs were used to model the Chicxulub impact. Post-processing of the data was achieved using python to track the Stress-Strain-time paths of peak ring material, the remaining three .txt files contain the results of that analysis at different temporal resolutions.
Auriol Rae
Department of Earth Science & Engineering
Royal School of Mines, Exhibition Road
SW7 2AZ
Dr Gareth Collins
Petrophysics
Impact structures
Metamorphism
CHICXULUB [id=98909]
The collection of the data within this repository was supported by NERC (NE/P011195/1). The data within this repository was collected by Mr Auriol Rae at Imperial College London, supervised by Dr. Gareth Collins and Prof. Joanna Morgan, as part of a PhD thesis. The data acquisition and processing required for these data items would not have been possible without the work of many collaborators, consisting of, but not limited to: Tobias Salge (NHM), Nick Timms (Curtin University), Aaron Cavosie (Curtin University), Timmons Erikson (Curtin University, now LPI), Gordon Osinski (Western University), Richard Grieve (Western University), Jody Leung (Imperial College London), and the IODP-ICDP Expedition Scientists.
JPG file (Joint Photographic Experts Group)
tiff (Tagged Image File Format)
txt (text file)
http://www.bgs.ac.uk/services/ngdc/accessions/index.html#item109609
nonGeographicDataset
non geographic dataset
Optical Microscopy, Electron Microscopy, Numerical Simulations
6b5d260f-f2e0-2e97-e054-002128a47908 XML
Hierarchy level name


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Sydney Biennale unveils its 2018 line up
Ai Weiwei headlines the contemporary art festival, bringing with him a new feature film, a 60 metre boat, and a crystal sphere.
by Justine Nguyen on December 13, 2017
The Sydney Biennale looks to have its finger on the pulse with its 45th anniversary programme next year, exploring stories of migration and the complexity of diasporic identities. Showcasing the work of 70 artists across seven venues, the free contemporary art festival will take over the city from March with Superposition: Equilibrium & Engagement.
"The artists in the 21st Biennale of Sydney have been chosen to offer a panoramic view of how opposing interpretations can come together in a state of equilibrium", said newly appointed Artistic Director Mami Kataoka. "The history of the people of Sydney collectively reflects the history of the world in the 20th century, in particular the movements and migration of people and cultures away from conflict. My hope is that the artworks in this Biennale will serve as a catalyst for thought for all of us".
Mami Kataoka. Photograph: Daniel Boud.
As announced in April, Chinese artist Ai Weiwei is 2018's major drawcard. His inclusion in the Biennale follows his double-bill exhibition alongside the works of Andy Warhol at the National Gallery of Victoria in 2016, the highest selling event in the gallery's history. He will give the Biennale's keynote address, while his new feature-length film Human Flow will play at the Sydney Opera House, an exploration of the global refugee crisis filmed over the course of a year in 23 countries. Meanwhile, Cockatoo Island will showcase his 60-metre inflatable boat installation, Law of the Journey, made from the same rubber used to manufacture the vessels that transport asylum seekers from Turkey to Greece. Finally, his artwork Crystal Ball, a large glass sphere that draws attention to our current global humanitarian crisis, will be on display in Woolloomooloo's Artspace.
Ai Weiwei, Law of the Journey, 2017. Photograph: Ai Weiwei Studio.
Other highlights of the programme include paintings by Wathaurung elder Marlene Gilson, which explore the involvement of Indigenous peoples in significant historical events such as the 1854 Eureka Stockade. Belgian artist Michaël Borremans is also one to catch – acclaimed for his arresting portraits inspired by Degas and Manet, he brings a series of intimate video works, paintings and drawings to Artspace.
Marlene Gilson, Melbourne Cup, 2016. Synthetic polymer on linen, 76 x 100cm. Courtesy of the artist. Collection of National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne. Photograph: National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne.
2018 also marks the centenary of Sydney Opera House architect Jørn Utzon's birth. Marking the occasion, Lebanese artist Rayyane Tabet has created a performance reflecting on Utzon's architectural and design practice, while British artist Oliver Beer brings a new iteration of his ongoing Resonance Project to the Opera House, exploring the complex relationship between sound and space.
Michaël Borremans, The Bread, 2012. Video still, 46 x 38cm, framed LCD screen, HD video, continuous loop, 4 mins (approx.) Courtesy of the artist and Zeno X Gallery, Antwerp.
Other hot tickets at the 2018 Sydney Biennale include a video work by Geng Xue, an evocation of the dialogue between artist and creation; an embroidered textile map delineating the patterns of diaspora by Tiffany Chung; and a collaborative work on the history of the recently demolished White Building in Phnom Penh.
The Sydney Biennale runs from March 16 – June 11 2018.
Brook Andrew is the Artistic Director of the 22nd Sydney Biennale
Internationally renowned artist Brook Andrew seeks to upend dominant narratives in 2020.
Classical Music, Opera, Theatre, Visual Art
Sydney Biennale banishes memories of 2014's boycott
While the Transfield controversy almost derailed 2014's Festival, the 20th Biennale of Sydney is set to open tomorrow as planned.
Audio Visual, Dance, Film, Stage, Visual Art
20th Sydney Biennale programme announced
This year, the free three-month contemporary art festival explores the reality of the now via seven 'embassies of thought'.
LEGO buckles to consumer outcry after Weiwei snub
The Danish toy company has agreed to fulfil a bulk order for the Chinese artist after previously declining on "political grounds."
Andy Warhol & Ai Weiwei: the same but different
NGV senior curator Max Delany shares why these two artistic icons share more in common than you think.
NGV invite LEGO donations for Ai Weiwei
A second hand car has found new life as a LEGO collection point for the determined Chinese artist.
LEGO refuses order for Ai Weiwei on "political grounds"
The provocative Chinese artist's bulk order was rejected by the Dutch toymaker ahead of a major exhibition at NGV.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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Press Release: Donna Ward Joins the National Association of Charitable Gift Planners as Administrative Support Specialist
Alaina Leverenz, Marketing and Communications Manager
317.269.6274 ext 107, aleverenz@charitablegiftplanners.org
Indianapolis, IN -- The National Association of Charitable Gift Planners (CGP), is the leading organization setting standards for charitable gift planners, has hired Donna Ward as the new Administrative Support Specialist.
As Administrative Support Specialist, Donna assists management in daily operations of CGP and provides additional support to the president and other staff. She also gives general membership support by email and telephone to members. Donna assists in the development of reports, tracking effort and progress of special projects, managing fundraising records, assisting in the development of office guidelines and procedures. She serves as a liaison with the Board of Directors, Leadership Institute, Committees and Task Forces.
"I am very excited to bring my strong skillset of administrative support and office management to help the CGP staff in Indianapolis and national membership to meet their needs."
Donna joins CGP from Medtech College corporate office. During her three years at Medtech College, Donna served as an Administrative Assistant and was promoted to Executive Assistant/Office Manager. In this role, Donna provided administrative support to the entire executive team. Prior to Medtech College, Donna worked as the Administrative Assistant for the Dean of Nursing at Harrison College.
The National Association of Charitable Gift Planners is committed to improving the art and science of the charitable gift planning process. We equip members with relevant resources, including guidelines, articles, model documents and samples that help enrich and advance careers. We connect colleagues at all levels through our national network, including those who defined the field. We exist to serve our distinguished profession and bring life to charitable gift planning.


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Death panels??? Where in the world do they get this stuff????
August 9, 2009 by Rev. Paul McKay
"Have you no decency?"
That's the very famous question that was asked of Sen. McCarthy of McCarthyism Red Scare Fame when Sen. McCarthy got his much-need comeuppance.
Those so irrationally and passionately opposed to health-care reform bills keep reading words and phrases and things into the bills that simply are not in the bills, and as a hospital chaplain, I make it a point to look at the bills and read them, at least the most controversial or debated or contested portions, and I'm continually astounded at how those so rabidly (and irrationally) opposed to Obama's health care reforms can take a smidgen of truth and inflate it to such an extent as to strike fear and loathing into the hearts and minds of those who won't bother to actually read the bills, or even so much as the controversial parts in question.
Dear reader, there's enough that's good and enough that's bad about health care reform proposals to be debated and argued without the Palins and so many others reading things into the proposals that simply don't exist, and passing those nonexistent words and phrases onto the unsuspecting public as hard truths and realities.
Some of those so angry about health-care reform proposal–those who dismiss the proposals as the most evil thing since Dr. Eeeee-vil himself–these are some–make that many–of the same people who lied and lied and lied and distorted and exploited and struck fear in the hearts of people in the Terry Schiavo case.
Remember her, the Florida wife whose husband was out to "kill" her and was being aided and abetted by merchants of death including the hospice in which she was receiving end-of-life care?
I was a chaplain for a hospice at the time, and I and all my hospice colleagues were simply astounded by the lies being told not only about the Florida hospice, but about hospice care in general.
Politicians and far-right Catholic priests and far-right commentators were making claims about the dying process that had nothing to do with the reality of the dying process.
I'll never forget the Texas Congressman Tom DeLay–remember him?–going on TV rapping the hospice in Florida for "torturing" poor Terry Schiavo by denying her food and water.
Hospices–and hospitals and doctors and ministers and people who actually know anything about God's natural dying process–know that the worst think you can do is give an eminently dying person food and water. It's part and parcel of what we in the medical caregiving professions call "pallaitive care," or comfort care–the only kind that there should be when one is terminal and "actively dying." (Or, "going home to God," or "God taking you home" as I and other hospital and hospice chaplains and many faith-oriented end-of-life caregivers prefer to call it.)
I and others in health care have to explain to patients' families all the time that the last thing their loved one needs, when the loved one is "actively dying," is food or water, because the body of an actively dying person does not NEED food or water.
I tell people that God brings us into the world in a certain way–kicking and screaming. That's how we're born–kicking and screaming.
It's only natural, the way God made birth.
I also tell people that God takes us home–allows us to die–in a certain way–without the intake of food and water, and we don't go out starving to death or dying of thirst when we die naturally, the way God intended.
In fact, we die peacefully, in most cases, when we die naturally, without food or water.
And yet politicians who know nothing about the dying process, and–oddly and bizarrely, if that's a word, right-wing priests who ought to know about the natural dying process, were perfectly willing to go on national TV and lament the hospice and Terry Schiavo's husband "killing" and "torturing" Terry Schiavo by denying her food and water.
It's people of the same ilk reading things into health-care reform proposals that aren't in the proposals whatsoever.
They have no shame.
Here's Harold Pollack's response to Sarah Palin and those of her ilk who are smearing the reputations and images of doctors and, in this particular case, Dr. Emmanuel, Obama's health-care reform guy.
by Harold Pollack, professor at the University of Chicago School of Social Service Administration and Special Correspondent for The Treatment, which is the health care blog of The New Republic magazine.
"Governor Palin issued the following statement on her Facebook page yesterday. I quote it in its entirety so you can judge for yourself.
"Statement on the Current Health Care Debate
"As more Americans delve into the disturbing details of the nationalized health care plan that the current administration is rushing through Congress, our collective jaw is dropping, and we're saying not just no, but hell no!
"The Democrats promise that a government health care system will reduce the cost of health care, but as the economist Thomas Sowell has pointed out, government health care will not reduce the cost; it will simply refuse to pay the cost. And who will suffer the most when they ration care? The sick, the elderly, and the disabled, of course. The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama's "death panel" so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their "level of productivity in society," whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil.
"Health care by definition involves life and death decisions. Human rights and human dignity must be at the center of any health care discussion.
"Rep. Michele Bachmann highlighted the Orwellian thinking of the president's health care advisor, Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, the brother of the White House chief of staff, in a floor speech to the House of Representatives. I commend her for being a voice for the most precious members of our society, our children and our seniors.
"We must step up and engage in this most crucial debate. Nationalizing our health care system is a point of no return for government interference in the lives of its citizens. If we go down this path, there will be no turning back. Ronald Reagan once wrote, "Government programs, once launched, never disappear. Actually, a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we'll ever see on this earth." Let's stop and think and make our voices heard before it's too late.
– Sarah Palin
"To be clear, it is downright evil to establish a "death panel" that decides who is allowed to live based on their "level of productivity in society." Less clear is what the heck Palin or Bachmann are talking about. I can't find the words "death panel" in any administration position paper, the stimulus package, or the House and Senate draft health reform bills. Don't take my word for it. Read the bills.
"Palin and Bachmann take pot shots at Ezekiel Emanuel, one of President Obama's health policy advisors. Dr. Emanuel, a prominent medical ethicist and oncologist, makes a juicy target because he is Rahm's brother, and because his paper trail provides incautiously blunt commentary regarding the pathologies of American health policy. It's easy to lift one or two sentences from him, throw them onto the internet, and set the right-wing blogosphere aflame.
"Palin and Bachmann remind no one of Hillary Clinton in their success in grasping complex policy issues, or in their desire to do so. It may be too much to expect them to trace the origin and veracity of these talking points. These originate in a New York Post op-ed by Betsy McCaughey, which Bachmann essentially recites on the House floor. In the original op-ed, McCaughey mushes together and distorts three articles Emanuel wrote between 1996 and 2008. I wish the Post would exercise greater quality control over what appears in its pages.
"Human rights and human dignity indeed belong at the center of medical care. Americans hold vastly different ideas about how to best honor these values when human life nears its end or when basic physical and cognitive functioning can no longer be preserved.
"I do know four things.
First, these issues are quite separate from the main issues being debated in health reform. Under a single-payer system, a strong public plan, or under a libertarian's privatized dream-system, we will still face fundamental dilemmas in caring for our loved ones, and ourselves. This is not merely or primarily a money issue. Like other forms of care, end-of-life care is sometimes wasteful or ineffective, but nobody is looking to skimp on or ration such care to finance health reform. Nor should they.
"Second, health reform would address an equally fundamental dilemma of human dignity and human rights: millions of people's lack of access to basic care. Many of these people are disabled or live with chronic illnesses. Over at Obsidian Wings, Publius yesterday noted the predicament of children with Down Syndrome denied health insurance because they have a preexisting condition.
"Governor Palin writes: "And who will suffer the most when they ration care? The sick, the elderly, and the disabled." It's telling that she omitted one category: Poor people, whose care is now cruelly rationed in ways the Obama administration and congressional Democrats are trying to address in health care reform. Palin brings genuine moral passion to the issue of cognitive disability. I wish she would bring that same passion to the plight of uninsured patients forced to seek substandard, delayed care, or the millions of Americans facing the dual challenge of serious illness and large medical bills. If you live in any big city, go down to your local public hospital emergency room. You will probably find people in visible discomfort or illness languishing for hours. A society that cares about human rights and dignity would not tolerate this.
"Third, people genuinely worry that comparative effectiveness research (CER) is a stalking horse for rationing or for curtailing care for the sick, elderly, or disabled. This is a misplaced concern. I recently noted an Institute of Medicine CER report. None of the identified high-priority items involved anything approximating the rationing of life-saving or life-extending care. End of life care ranked 28th in their chart of priority areas for CER research. This may be a mistake. Better approaches to palliative care often look very good when evaluated against the standard benchmarks of medical cost-effectiveness.
"Fourth and finally, publicity-seeking politicians subtract a lot from these conversations. Palin, Bachmann, and others score cheap points by scaring people and by spreading falsehoods. Their disrespect goes beyond their own political base to those whose views they so recklessly misconstrue.
"Dr. Emanuel's oncology career provides more than passing familiarity with the consequences of devastating, sometimes life-ending illness. He has written widely about the dilemmas of relying on medical care proxies in caring for desperately ill patients, chemotherapy at the end of life, and other intimate clinical concerns. There is nothing Orwellian about him. He has prominently opposed legalization of euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide, for example.
"Emanuel's work offers a model of sustained achievement that both Governor Palin and Representative Bachmann would be wise to emulate. He deserves better than to be trashed in this way. So do the rest of us.
–Harold Pollack
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged politics or governing | Leave a Comment


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http://www.openculture.com/2014/03/stephen-kings-top-20-rules-for-writers.html
1. First write for yourself, and then worry about the audience. "When you write a story, you're telling yourself the story. When you rewrite, your main job is taking out all the things that are not the story."
2. Don't use passive voice. "Timid writers like passive verbs for the same reason that timid lovers like passive partners. The passive voice is safe."
3. Avoid adverbs. "The adverb is not your friend."
4. Avoid adverbs, especially after "he said" and "she said."
5. But don't obsess over perfect grammar. "The object of fiction isn't grammatical correctness but to make the reader welcome and then tell a story."
6. The magic is in you. "I'm convinced that fear is at the root of most bad writing."
7. Read, read, read. "If you don't have time to read, you don't have the time (or the tools) to write."
8. Don't worry about making other people happy. "If you intend to write as truthfully as you can, your days as a member of polite society are numbered, anyway."
9. Turn off the TV. "TV—while working out or anywhere else—really is about the last thing an aspiring writer needs."
10. You have three months. "The first draft of a book—even a long one—should take no more than three months, the length of a season."
11. There are two secrets to success. "I stayed physical healthy, and I stayed married."
12. Write one word at a time. "Whether it's a vignette of a single page or an epic trilogy like 'The Lord of the Rings,' the work is always accomplished one word at a time."
13. Eliminate distraction. "There's should be no telephone in your writing room, certainly no TV or videogames for you to fool around with."
14. Stick to your own style. "One cannot imitate a writer's approach to a particular genre, no matter how simple what that writer is doing may seem."
15. Dig. "Stories are relics, part of an undiscovered pre-existing world. The writer's job is to use the tools in his or her toolbox to get as much of each one out of the ground intact as possible."
16. Take a break. "You'll find reading your book over after a six-week layoff to be a strange, often exhilarating experience."
17. Leave out the boring parts and kill your darlings. "(kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler's heart, kill your darlings.)"
18. The research shouldn't overshadow the story. "Remember that word back. That's where the research belongs: as far in the background and the back story as you can get it."
19. You become a writer simply by reading and writing. "You learn best by reading a lot and writing a lot, and the most valuable lessons of all are the ones you teach yourself."
20. Writing is about getting happy. "Writing isn't about making money, getting famous, getting dates, getting laid or making friends. Writing is magic, as much as the water of life as any other creative art. The water is free. So drink."


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A volunteer takes part in the clinical Phase III trial of Sinopharm CNBG's inactivated vaccine to combat coronavirus in Abu Dhabi, UAE. (Twitter/AShot4Humanity)
UAE's COVID-19 vaccine trials reach milestone of 5,000 vaccinated volunteers
N.P. Krishna Kumar, Al Arabiya English
Published: 06 August ,2020: 10:55 PM GST Updated: 06 August ,2020: 11:35 PM GST
The world's first Phase III trials of an inactivated vaccine for COVID-19 being hosted in the UAE have reached a major milestone with over 5,000 volunteers have now received their first vaccination.
The 5000th vaccination was given in the presence of Dr. Jamal Al Kaabi, the Acting Under-Secretary of Department of Health, Abu Dhabi, at the recently developed purpose-built walk-in registration, screening and testing centre at the Abu Dhabi National Exhibition Centre, ADNEC.
Dr. Al Kaabi was the second participant in the vaccination program and received his second shot this week.
The thousands of volunteers who have now been vaccinated represent the whole range of nationalities and background in the UAE of all ages between 18 and 60.
Coronavirus: UAE reports 30 pct increase in COVID-19 cases among Emirati nationals
The trials began in Abu Dhabi on July 16 and are being managed by G42 Healthcare in partnership with the Department of Health - Abu Dhabi, the UAE Ministry of Health and Prevention (MoHAP), and Abu Dhabi Health Services Company (SEHA), , according to the Emirates News Agency (WAM).
The inactivated vaccine has been developed by Sinopharm CNBG, the world's sixth-largest vaccine manufacturer.
The ADNEC facility can manage 1,000 volunteers a day and is open daily from 8 am to 8 pm to allow the maximum number of individuals to participate.
A second walk-in center is also now operational at the Al Qarain Health Centre in Sharjah with a daily capacity of 500.
Spirit of volunteerism
Commenting on the enormous success of the trials to date, Dr. Nawal Ahmed Alkaabi, UAE Principal Investigator, Sheikh Khalifa Medical City CMO and Chairperson of the National COVID-19 Clinical Management Committee, said that the UAE reached the 5,000 vaccinations mark "faster than anticipated," attributing it to "the winning combination of a national spirit of volunteerism and the strength of the UAE's healthcare system."
He thanked the volunteers and the clinical and administrative staff who "worked tirelessly to ensure this success and to make us confident of reaching our goal of 15,000 vaccinated volunteers in the weeks ahead."
For all the latest headlines follow our Google News channel online or via the app
The Phase III clinical trials follow the success of Phase I and Phase II trials conducted by Sinopharm in China, which resulted in 100 percent of the volunteers generating antibodies to SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, after two doses in 28 days.
The Phase III trials are open to individual volunteers aged between 18 and 60 living in the UAE and will last for six to twelve months, with the volunteers required to be available for follow-ups during this time.
COVID-19 vaccine trial
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The United States on Thursday lifted a global health advisory imposed in March that advised US citizens to avoid all international travel because of ... Coronavirus
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Saudi Arabia has confirmed 1,402 new coronavirus cases and 1,775 recoveries over the past 24 hours, in addition to 35 fatalities, the health ministry ... Coronavirus
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Home /Trucks & SUVs/SUVs
2 Advantages the 2022 Ford Explorer Has Over the Kia Telluride
by Produced by Digital Editors | More Articles: SUVs
The 2022 Ford Explorer is one of the market's most popular midsize SUV options, but the segment has some intense competition. For example, the Kia Telluride is a relatively new entry into the segment, and it's already such a good SUV that it's won a long list of awards. That said, there are two advantages that the 2022 Ford Explorer has over the award-winning Kia Telluride.
How the 2022 Ford Explorer is similar to the Kia Telluride
These two SUVs look different on the outside but share a few similarities on the inside. According to Kelley Blue Book, both SUVs come standard with front-wheel drive, and both automakers offer all-wheel drive as an option. Both automakers also gave the two midsize SUVs three rows of seats as a standard feature.
Another area where the two are very similar is the number of standard advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS), which makes the cars safe. The vehicles use forward collision warning, automatic emergency braking, and blind-spot monitoring as standard ADAS features on both SUVs.
Lastly, the two are similar in their price points. The Telluride starts at about $33,400, while the Explorer starts at about $34,000. This makes the Kia about $600 cheaper, but Ford makes up for the difference in other ways.
The advantages the 2022 Ford Explorer has over the Kia Telluride
2022 Ford Explorer | Ford Media Center
According to Kelley Blue Book, one of the Ford SUV's advantages is variety. Kia offers four trims on the Telluride, and the top trim, the SX, costs about $45,000. Meanwhile, Ford offers at least eight different trims for the Explorer. The Detroit-based automaker offers trims that cost over $50,000, and the King Ranch trim is at the top, costing $55,000.
Ford offers many packages and options, and a fully-loaded Explorer can quickly get into the $60,000 price range. Similarly, another advantage the Explorer has comes from the engine options that Ford offers. The Kia SUV only has one engine, while Ford currently offers three. All Ford engines will have more power than the Telluride's engine, and the engine options will provide different advantages.
For example, the American automaker offers a 3.0-liter twin-turbocharged V6 engine option. This is the performance-oriented option. It gets 400 hp, making the Explorer a fun SUV. Additionally, Ford offers a 3.3-liter V6 hybrid. This option gives the SUV a fuel economy of about 27 mpg combined, which is higher than what the Telluride gets.
The specs of these midsize SUVs
Driven: Deciding Between the Ford Explorer and Mazda CX-9 Is Tough
Kia gave the Telluride a 3.8-liter V6 engine, which gets 291 hp. This engine is paired with an eight-speed automatic, allowing the Kia SUV to get 23 mpg combined. In comparison, the Explorer's standard engine will be more powerful and economical than the Kia's. Ford gave the Explorer a 2.3-liter turbocharged four-cylinder as standard. That 2.3-liter engine is paired with a 10-speed automatic and gets 300 hp and 24 mpg combined.
In terms of tech, the Telluride has a slight advantage, as Kia gave the SUV a standard 10.25-inch touch screen. The Explorer, meanwhile, has a standard 8-inch one. The two midsize SUVs also have a similar cargo capacity, but the Ford is slightly ahead. The Explorer has a max cargo capacity of 87.8 cu-ft, while the Telluride has a max of 87 cu-ft.
Tags:explorer Ford Kia Telluride


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Frock Me Out Takes a Colourful Approach to Fashion
Known for their unique and flattering designs, Jen Weeks and Donna Tripodi (of local fashion label Frock Me Out) pair modern sophistication with well-made pieces.
2 May 2017 by Esther Reynolds-Verco
The label was born from Weeks and Tripodi's frustration with a lack of vibrant, good quality and well-designed pieces on the market. Accommodating for a variety of body shapes and sizes, Frock Me Out is designed for women from the ages of 20-70, sizes 6-26. "We dream up designs that we would like in our own wardrobes," Weeks says. The pair work closely with each customer to find pieces that suit them.
With a background in arts and painting, the pair design their own fabrics in their studio and shop front in Goodwood. "Our passion is designing the prints," Weeks says. "At the moment all of our designs are computer based. But we're looking into digital printing to give us more freedom to include things like painting."
Frock Me Out focus on creating pieces that are timeless and flattering for a range of body shapes. "We test our designs on a range of fabrics," Weeks says. "We focus on natural fiber based fabrics that breathe and last a long time, and also break down in the environment. We don't use any acrylic or polyester in our clothing."
For Weeks and Tripodi, it's important that their garments are made and designed in a sustainable way too. "We look at all aspects of sustainability in our manufacturing process," says Weeks. Steering away from the fast fashion approach that engulfs much of the fashion industry, the pair doesn't rely on trends when designing pieces. "We like to make clothing that won't go out of fashion, both in our prints and our shapes," Weeks says.
Frock Me Out also encompasses a made to order range, allowing customers to choose their own lengths and materials of the label's classic 'pocket dress'. "It's a really flattering shape and suits a wide range of bodies so people really like it," Weeks says. The made to order range is manufactured here in Adelaide and cuts down on the unnecessary wastage of textiles. The dress is printed in a wide range of their designs. "People love the choice and they end up with something that fits them really well and lasts a long time," says Weeks.
Frock Me Out attends many markets to increase their customer base, including the upcoming Bowerbird Design Market. "The people that attend design markets tend to be people that love our clothing," Weeks says. "For us it's meant that we now have a huge following in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane as well as Adelaide."
While the rest of us think about a cool winter approaching, Frock Me Out is already looking forward to the warmer months, with Weeks noting the label has "got some new prints coming for summer," and that "we're looking to branch into making printed bathers because we feel that there's not a lot of choice in prints for bathing ware."
Frock Me Out
89 Goodwood Rd, Goodwood, SA 5034
frockmeout.com.au
bowerbird.net.au
Photographer: Roberto Aria Putra
SLOW Fashion Festival gathers momentum
The Return of Arnsdorf and Rise of Ethical Fashion
Met Gala: The Ultimate Red Carpet


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Completely Unreliable
Featured / johncfallon	/ 5 Comments
If you've just stumbled upon this blog, the first series of posts is an introduction and overview of why and how I created an alternate reality game for my 7th grade English classroom. If you want to know more about that, check it out and tweet me with any questions! I also recommend checking out the guide I co-authored with Paul Darvasi on his blog, as well as his fantastic series on the ARG he created for his 12th grade students.
This will be the first of three entries discussing the mixed media unit I put together for my 9th grade English class that combines Sam Barlow's excellent video game Her Story with a series of short stories to study the infamous unreliable narrator.
I've always been intrigued by an unreliable narrator. As someone who has always been fascinated by games, it makes sense: an unreliable narrator inherently creates a contest between narrator and reader. Not only must the reader evaluate the layers of the story itself but then they must ask if the "facts" of the story are, indeed, even facts. A story as simple as Shirley Jackson's Charles becomes a delightful literary prank that reminds us that we all tend to believe what we want to believe, even when the uncomfortable truth is staring you right in the face at the dinner table.
Unreliable narrators force us to see the text, down to its DNA. Like Neo in The Matrix, we must learn to see that the mechanisms that hold the fictional world together – inconsistencies, hyperbole, falsehoods, etc. – are no longer merely the instruments of an author's world building, but challenges and distortions that we must overcome to fully understand the story. We must – by definition – play. In the end, it is a paradoxical effect: we are simultaneously drawn out of the story as we tear it apart like a tinkering engineer, but the narrator's flaws and even untruthfulness somehow make them more real, more – dare I say – human.
But it wasn't until reading glowing reviews of the indie hit Her Story that the first ideas for an unreliable narrator unit began to germinate. The Polygon review's opening had me thinking of English class immediately:
"Her Story has made me obsessed with detail."
Attention to detail, comparing and contrasting information over the course of a text, nurturing skepticism, constructing an interpretation? A game "[t]hat left me to piece together the story as best I could, filling in the gaps with context and intuition"? That sounds a lot like the skills of close reading I teach for any traditional text. And Her Story turns it into a genuinely fun game? My game based learning instincts smelled a winner.
Super Serial
The Internet age is undoubtedly a voyeuristic one. In fact, humanity has a habit of using its newfound mediums of communication and observation to spy, pry, and snoop almost as soon as we invent it. For better or worse, we are addicted to observing others and devouring the narratives – real or imagined – of their lives. As Dennis Perry says about the Hitchcock classic Rear Window: voyeurism allows us to "relieve ourselves of the burden of examining our own lives".
I'm not spying, I'm just relieving myself of the burden of examining my own life
Contemporary pop culture sensations like Black Mirror's White Bear show us the horrific extremes of voyeurism within the realm of science fiction, but it was 2014's breakout podcast sensation Serial that brought our addiction to true-crime mystery into the national zeitgeist (soon to follow would be the extremely binge-worthy The Jinx and Making a Murderer). In many ways, it was now official. The instant communication, the omnipresence of digital media, and the dark cravings of being near – but safe from – danger all created a potent narrative cocktail.
The potential ethical quandaries of entertainment co-opting real life tragedy aside, it was clear that our inherent urge to solve mysteries – to leave nothing unexplained – could be a powerful intrinsic motivator harnessed to help students build their reasoning, critical thinking, and media literacy skills. Serial quickly became a dramatic focus of classrooms around the world, in addition to becoming the world's most popular podcast. Her Story, released on June 24, 2015, was perfectly timed.
When I booted up Her Story for the first time, it took only minutes before I was similarly hooked. The faux-CRT screen that encapsulates the story was not only nostalgically amusing to my 90s childhood roots, but its verisimilitude was also incredibly effective at drawing me in. Very quickly, I was deeply immersed into the game. The computer was real, the clips were real, the mystery was real. The murder was real.
So how does Her Story work?
How do you turn this thing on?
Her Story is undoubtedly an unconventional video game, especially compared to the mainstream market of commercial games; there are no points to score, there is no 3D space to explore, there is no (directly controllable) player avatar, and there are no failure conditions that end in virtual death or the dreaded "game over". At its core, it is an interactive movie, and while many books could (and have) been written what makes a game a "true" game, we will avoid that particular philosophical flame war and use Jane McGonigal's definition, which I like for its simplicity:
"All games share four defining traits: a goal, rules, a feedback system, and voluntary participation."
Her Story checks all of those boxes quite easily.
For reference, here's an annotated screenshot with the major aspects of the game's interface:
Her Story is built for investigative reading and critical thinking
It took only a few minutes of playing to realize that Her Story was not only a game tangentially applicable to English class curriculums, but that it was in fact a close reading game. The entire user interface and narrative experience is designed for the player to dissect, analyze, and annotate text and video.
The core content of the game is a fragmented video archive of several different interviews, all accessible through the virtual desktop of an ancient PC hidden away in a police department basement. Through a series of events explained in the game's introductory documents (tucked away on .txt files left on the in-game desktop), the series of interviews with a British woman named Hannah Smith have been fragmented into non-sequential clips of varying length. This jumbled puzzle, however, was hardcoded with subtitles which can be searched in the decrepit, but operational, searchable database program.
When a word or phrase, "murder" for example, is entered into the search box, all clips with that word will be found, but only the first five clips will appear for that search. Here is the game's central "rule" and "feedback system" – you will have to search precisely with varying words and phrases in order to discover all of the game's 271 clips. As a result, the narrative is completely non-linear. The player's curiosity and interpretations determine the exact sequence of the story. The search box provides a nearly infinite broken mirror of narrative routes, both in the exact sequence of discovery but also in the narrative's inherent Serial-esque ambiguities.
"Guilty" and "kiss" would be likely to turn up this exact clip in top five results. "After" and "felt" less likely, and "the" and "I" would essentially turn up five random clips due to their common use.
The game is well designed to help players organize their exploration of the text. Clips that have not been viewed before are given an "eye" icon to readily indicate that a search has turned up new content. Every clip can be saved to a "favorites" bar underneath for easy access; as the number of important clips grows, the tagging feature becomes more helpful and allows the player search for clips by any tag given to them, as well as any words in the transcript. For the completionists out there, there is also a visual indication of how many un-viewed clips remain.
Hopefully, from this brief overview you can see what I mean when I say Her Story's user interface is essentially a close reading program. With its complex narrative, multimedia layers, emphasis on notation and analysis, I was easily convinced this was a video game worthy of being studied in my 9th grade curriculum. In fact, it scored a respectable 5 out of 6 with the National Council of Teachers of English's 21st Century Literacies.
Develop proficiency and fluency with the tools of technology
Her Story is essentially Google searching and video analysis. Check.
Build intentional cross-cultural connections and relationships with others so to pose and solve problems collaboratively and strengthen independent thought
The game worked even better than I thought in a "hot seat" method (one copy of the game being played with the whole class) – it was one the students' favorite aspects to play, dissect, and discuss the game collaboratively. Check.
Manage, analyze, and synthesize multiple streams of simultaneous information
The students were at first a bit overwhelmed by the sprawling narrative, but quickly found that the complexity of piecing together the transcript, analyzing the body language of actress Viva Seifert, and exploring the non-linear and ambiguous narrative to be both challenging and exciting. Check.
Create, critique, analyze, and evaluate multimedia texts.
Design and share information for global communities to meet a variety of purposes.
This is quite literally the game. However, as I'll discuss in a subsequent post, the students also critiqued and analyzed the game through either a critical review or a "cold case" feature article, which is then published online. Check.
The unreliable narrator, however, also has a newfound relevance in today's mad media world. "Fake news", misinformation, disinformation, memes, hoaxes, and pranks are all being shared and transmitted at a rate and volume that is hard to comprehend. Facebook alone has about 510,000 comments posted every minute; Twitter posts range in the hundreds of millions per day. And our students are, on average, spending nine hours a day in that world. It takes only a few minutes of browsing the Internet to realize the world is full of unreliable narrators. Anything that can help our students build the skepticism and analytical skills to parse truth from fiction, fiction from truth and everything in between, seems essential in the informational battleground that has become 21st century media.
With the confidence this was fitting perfectly in a 21st century English curriculum, it was time to put the pieces together. It was time to hit the game based learning lab!
It was time for the students to meet Hannah.
Next time on Getting Unreliable: we find the perfect "levels" of unreliable narrators in short stories, build a note taking apparatus, and find a way to add more choice into the summative writing assignments.
Completely Unreliable: Time to Play
February 8, 2018 February 11, 2018 / johncfallon	/ 3 Comments
This is the third entry on using Sam Barlow's Her Story video game to study unreliable narrators in my 9th grade English class. The first entry can be read here and the second here. This will focus on how we played Her Story in class, the final writing assessments, and student feedback along with my own reflections.
Is This a Game to You?
I hinted and teased my 9th graders that this unit would be a little different. I've used video games as texts in my class for a few years, so they knew some type of video game was coming. We had spent several days breaking down the unreliable narrator: their methods of lying, dissembling, (mis/dis)informing, and how a reader can construct an understanding from that unreliable narrative. After finishing our discussion of In a Grove – and its modernist skepticism of objective truth – I turned on the projector which displayed the virtual desktop of the "L.O.G.I.C. database", the central interface of the game:
Note the virtual reflections on the antique CRT "screen" the game emulates. Sam Barlow did a fantastic job making the game's interface itself immerse you in the narrative.
I purposely did not show the title screen, or give away the title of the game (despite their insistent demands). I wanted to give a sense of mystery but also deter students from instantly Googling the game and gorging on spoilers.
The first instruction was to open a clean copy of the Narrator Table on their laptop. As Matthew Farber noted in his excellent new book Game Based Learning in Action, game based learning organically lends itself to Montessori style instruction:
A Montessori-like approach was also observed in how games were contextualized to students. "Brevity" is how Montessori (1912/2012, p. 61) described how long an explanation should take before students engage in a learning activity. (Farber 121)
Without realizing it, I embraced a very Montessorian style of introduction for Her Story. I explained to them that we had studied unreliable narrators, examined their methods, built up "defenses" against them, but the time for theory was over. It was time for them to prove they could grapple with an unreliable narrator.
I gave them a quick narrative overview: you are sitting at computer in a police department archive. You have access to a series of clips that have been fragmented and disorganized, but you can search the clips through the words spoken by the subject. At this point, I hit Enter and the pre-filled search term of MURDER is executed (the game starts that way). Five clips – which I explain is the limit for any single search term – appear and I explain how they can be viewed, annotated, and bookmarked for later study. Then I cede the laptop (connected to the projector) to a volunteer student. They can rotate who "drives" on their own. At this point, I'm pretty much done and I step away to observe.
It's time for their final exam.
Hello, Hannah
As they dug into the text, I encouraged them to keep the debate lively. They obviously need to (and did) listen closely as each clip was played, but between clips crosstalk, debate, and "backseat driving" was the norm. This is informally known as the "hot seat" method of game based instruction. As a 1:1 laptop school, I could have given each of my students a copy and had them play on their own. In fact, this was the model I used when teaching Gone Home as a text (see Paul Darvasi's excellent blog for more about studying that game as a text in English class), but I sensed that this wouldn't be ideal for Her Story's complex narrative that has players grappling with constantly shifting interpretations and a non-linear plot. This is a story that would need to be experienced with the safety of numbers.
Fortunately, my instincts paid off. The students reported in post-unit feedback that the social format of playing the game not only aided comprehension but was more fun as well. For example, one student said:
The class as a whole was also a lot more vibrant when playing [the game]
My peers and I were able to be more enthusiastic with Her Story because we played it together and some of my fondest memories of school were when we did find out new info on the case and the whole class freaked out
This type of experience and engagement is backed up in the research as well. A meta-analysis by the Journal of Educational Psychology found that collaborative play was significantly more effective in learning outcomes compared to solitary play, by two standard deviations or more. (By the way, the research in general on game based learning is quite bullish.)
This is encouraging for several reasons. One, this lowers the financial barrier for teachers interested in using commercial games in the classroom. You don't need 30 copies of Her Story to effectively teach it. I should note, however, that small publishers are often amenable to helping teachers acquire copies of their games. In the experience of many GBL teachers, if you contact an indie developer and explain you are seeking copies for the classroom, it is not uncommon to be offered discounts or even provided free copies. But again, the hot seat method can defray the cost, too, and in some cases may even be preferable to a 1:1 model. I would imagine a class of 30 might get too crowded, but two or three groups of 10-15 is far more manageable.
This model allowed students to take detailed notes using their Narrator Table. The student in the hot seat was given notes from the day by a classmate of their choice. In fact, one student who often had difficulty with reading and writing was the most diligent, detailed note taker. He ended up filling pages and pages of thorough notes, often making insightful connections and interpretations on the fly. This Table was collected and graded along with their final writing assessment.
The Write Way to Play
As the students began to play, they quickly brought their analytical skills to bear. Theories were developed, modified, eliminated, and resurrected as the plot thickened. Competing theories began to emerge as well, but it did not derail their exploration. After about five days (three hours of class time), we wrapped up our play time. Two to three hours is likely sufficient to have a firm grasp of the narrative but – perhaps a minor spoiler! – there is a major interpretative choice to make that is never objectively resolved. Students will likely know what side they fall on, or become comfortable with the ambiguity, after that much time. Unlocking every single clip is not necessary to feel like the story is "complete". To prepare them for their writing assessments, I provided them with two supplemental resources that "unlock" the entire game to speed up their acquisition of necessary elements.
(Massive spoilers behind the next two links!)
First is a YouTube fan video that compiles all of the clips into chronological order.
Second, and which my students found the most useful, is a transcript of all the clips, also in chronological order.
Armed with these (and copies of the game), they broke into two affinity groups based on what type of assignment they found the most interesting. Here were the two options:
This is an overview of the two writing options from a presentation I gave at the Games in Education symposium last summer
The students were given exemplar texts to study and discuss, in addition to some reflection questions they had to answer in our online discussion forum (used all year for homework responses). I used a Vanity Fair cold-case article that was recommended to me by a colleague with a journalism background. This article was perfect because recordings of police interviews played a major part in the narrative, just like Her Story would for their version. They had to take on the part of an investigative journalist who has discovered the clips (in reality, discerning the identity of the "viewer" is a late plot element in the game) and is trying to piece together what really happened. This option was geared towards those who have the urge to untangle and explain complicated narrative knots.
The second group analyzed and discussed professional video game reviews. I didn't want them copying or being influenced by existing reviews of Her Story, so I emailed the editors of my favorite review outlet, Polygon, and asked if they had a style guide or other guiding material for structuring their reviews. They did not have anything formal, but Arthur Gies, the Reviews Editor at the time, did have some delightful things to say about their review writing process, at least for an English teacher:
Our basic structure is the 5-part argumentative thesis-based essay, with an avoidance of passive voice and assuming responsibility for one's own thoughts and opinions.
Wonderful. And who said five paragraph essays are useless?
Not every site uses [the thesis based essay model], and sometimes we don't, but I also feel like our reviews go for clarity of thought and opinion above all. We're not a commercial – our reviews exist to tell you what a person thought of a game, holistically. The thesis backed structure is great for that, and is a sound basis for just about any argumentative/advocative piece.
Couldn't have said it better myself.
However, Arthur was even more helpful by providing me with three exemplar reviews that he considered to be good models. The students going down the review track had to read those three reviews and answer reflection questions to further understand the format. Then, following that model, they had to write their own professional style review of Her Story. This option appealed to students who are interested in the medium of video games and how it is both expanding and changing, as well as those that are comfortable and/or enjoy writing persuasively.
I was impressed by the depth of the reviews and articles. The articles were dramatic and compelling in their reconstruction of the narrative. One student who wrote a cold case said he essentially wrote two different versions of the article because he was constantly "at war" (his words) with himself over which interpretation he believed. He bathed in the struggle. I couldn't have been prouder!
Several reviews made mature observations about not only the narrative but the format as well. They understood how and why the unreliability affected and drove the story, and also why it was disorganized and fragmented. They made connections about a new medium without my input. This was true Montessori style learning – I let them explore, I let them make the leaps. I just watched.
Won't Someone Think of the Children?
So, what did the students think? The response was overwhelmingly positive – perhaps not unexpected – but so was the effort and engagement. From beginning to end, the students were focused, enthusiastic, and diligent.
However, I am always quick to point out that we shouldn't assume all our students (especially boys) are "gamers" who will be intellectually and emotionally electrified by the mere presence of a video game in class. In fact, a good number of students I've taught are skeptical at first, but once they see that this exercise isn't frivolous they are enthusiastic. But game based learning teachers should be careful not to fall into the "digital native" fallacy and assume because they are using new and interactive media that their students will be automatically enthralled, or even comfortable. Elements like the hot seat model can help those who are less comfortable with the medium and I advocate for always giving students as much agency and choice as possible. That said, I have never had a student throw their hands up and reject a game based learning unit. But, I have had some who are candid in letting me know it is not their preferred method of learning. You should teach (or not teach) the games that best reflect you, your students, and your community. Fortunately, there are countless options out there. Her Story is only one of many.
One thing I want to repeat is they were also having fun before, during, and after playing the game. I am a big believer in the maxim popular with those who take their play seriously: "The opposite of play isn't work; it's depression."
With that in mind, this comment from a student particularly struck me:
…the unit [felt] more like an investigative game than a test and this meant that the dread and stress that were apart [sic] of normal exams were replaced by excitement and joy.
"Dread" and "Stress" vs. "Excitement" and "Joy".
I know which I'll take every time.
Completely Unreliable: Building the Unit
January 4, 2018 February 11, 2018 / johncfallon	/ 2 Comments
In the last post, I discussed why unreliable narrators are such compelling storytellers and why I feel they are more worthy of study than ever before in this epistemically challenged social media age. If you're interested in how the 2015 video game Her Story is an excellent close reading challenge, and why I was inspired to teach it as a text, go back and check that out. In this second post, we will be looking at how and why I built this unit on unreliable narrators around a series of short stories that work their way up to Her Story.
Can I get that in writing?
As an English teacher, I have a writing bias. Communication – especially in written form – is as essential as it has ever been, even more so in the Internet age. I tell my students all the time that they are almost guaranteed to be making their first impressions with someone via their writing, whether it's a social media post, a resume, an email, or published online content. As a result, whenever I build a unit – whether traditional or game based – the first question I ask myself is, "How can I get them to write about this?"
But before we write, we must read.
While there are some fantastic unreliable narrators in novels (like Chief Bromden, Underground Man, Nick Carraway) and films (Verbal Kint, Tyler Durden, Lenny), short stories provide a balance and variety that English teachers often find particularly useful in lesson planning. Focusing on shorter narratives also allowed me to utilize a key pedagogical method video games have used for a long time: scaling difficulty. By studying multiple, shorter narrators, I could introduce my students to gradually more complex narratives and plots. But where to begin?
Research into the teaching of unreliable narrators brought me to a work by Michael W. Smith on teaching unreliable narrators. That was an invaluable starting point for me as he breaks down a lot of the more complex literary theory into understandable chunks, and he also had the same idea as me to introduce different narrators using short stories.
But an unreliable narrator is not just the disembodied voice of the author, or even just a character within the story. They are an opponent. And that will require some additional tools with which to spar.
Mindhunting
To help my students in their "investigation" of each unreliable narrator, I drew up a graphic organizer so they can scaffold the process. Here is what it looks like:
The second page includes space for them to summarize and analyze the important facts of the story and utilize their real world knowledge to evaluate the reliability of the narrator's perspective.
Here is a link for download.
The most important part of any investigation is gathering evidence. As master gentleman detective Sherlock Holmes opined in The Scandal in Bohemia:
It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.
Especially when your source of evidence could be purposefully manipulative, having an accessible record of the most important facts to cross reference, compare, and contrast is going to be essential. It was not surprising to me that this task of textual annotation was conducted with far more engagement and effort by my students. This was even from students who would normally complain about annotation because it "disrupted" their reading and they just wanted to "enjoy the story". And we hadn't even made it to the video game yet!
This is a great example of the benefit of game based learning. When you contextualize an activity with greater meaning, it becomes far more enjoyable and less onerous. An activity without meaningful context is drudgery, and that's a category that defines far too much traditional schoolwork.
This table was the focus of their homework as we read each story. And when we played Her Story, it would be their main form of daily work, investigation, and note taking. The completed chart for Her Story was collected and graded, while the others were checked for completion and used for class discussion.
Now that they had their interrogative tools, it was time to work our way up to the Final Boss, Her Story's Hannah. But before you can get to the Final Boss, all gamers know they will have to face a series of increasingly difficult "mini-bosses". The mini-boss is a reliable pedagogical trope in video games. They function as "skill checks" to insure the player has the requisite abilities to continue into the next phase of the game, and may even force players to master a specific technique that will be necessary to progress.
I endeavored to incorporate that mechanic into the unit itself by framing the progressively complex stories as "mini-bosses" to prepare the students for Her Story. They would need to acquire certain close reading and analytical skills before they could effectively tackle the multi-media challenge of the game.
Spoiler alert: if you want to read all these stories first, here they are! If you have already read them/don't care, read on!
Charles by Shirley Jackson
The Cask of Amontillado by Edgar Allan Poe
The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
In a Grove by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa
Level 1: The Obvious Unreliable Narrator
This is the "Easy Mode" of unreliable narrators. We have a clueless parent being duped, over and over, by her mischievous and masterly mendacious son. What's interesting about this story is we actually have two unreliable narrators: Laurie, the son, and the unnamed mother who narrates the story itself. Laurie is a more direct unreliable narrator: he spins elaborate tales of his various kindergarten crimes and pins them on the imaginary "Charles". He is unreliable in the most understandable sense: he lies to stay out of trouble and everything "Charles" did, he did. As a directly dishonest narrator, the truth is easy to discern, and is laid out pretty clearly (especially upon a second reading) by the story's twist ending. For students, his motivations are familiar as well. We've all fibbed (or been tempted to fib) to our parents to deflect, hide from, and mitigate the consequences for our bad decisions.
However, the mother is the primary unreliable narrator and her unreliability contrasts well with her son's. The mother's unreliability comes not from dishonesty, like Laurie's, but from naïveté and from being "love dumb", as my friend would say. She can't possibly imagine that her "angelic" child could be such a terror at school; the father (who reminds me of Mike's dad in Stranger Things) is equally clueless as he sips his coffee and reads the newspaper. We tend to believe what we want to believe even when there's plenty of evidence to the contrary. Who assumes their five year old has mastered manipulation?
This is a useful introduction to the variety of unreliability. A narrator can be unreliable without even knowing they are unreliable! How often have you forwarded or shared something before checking your facts? The research indicates the answer for most people, most of the time is "a lot". This story is great fodder for exploring important concepts like confirmation bias with students.
Level 2: The Mastermind
And now we knock things up a notch. This time the narrator is toying with his audience specifically.
The narrator of Edgar Allan Poe's famous short story is playing a game with the reader. He acknowledges his audience – "You, who so well know the nature of my soul" – in a way few first person narrators do, and identifying the audience is a key interpretive choice. Is it a priest? Is he confessing because he feels guilty for the murder of Fortunato, or is he simply executing the last step of his meticulously planned revenge? He states very clearly that true revenge cannot end with punishment for the avenger, so is this narrative a deathbed confession to cleanse his soul and avoid divine punishment? Is this a final lesson in revenge, a case study for the younger Montresors to learn from and emulate as their family motto – Nemo me impune lacessit – demands? Or perhaps, this is simply the deluded ravings of a madman.
This interpretive fulcrum requires a great deal of empathy from the reader; to "beat" this narrator they have to be able to construct a motive for the confession because Montresor immediately reveals himself as unreliable when he avoids naming the reason for his gruesome revenge against Fortunato. What are these mysterious "thousand injuries" and what exactly was this "insult" that forced Montresor to murder his enemy in the worst possible method? And if they are so terrible, why not name them?
This is a great challenge because the students know the narrator is unreliable but they are not given a clear interpretation as to how and why. Insanity? Sadism? Justified, if gruesome, revenge? A monomaniacal urge to commit the perfect crime? A complete interpretation can be constructed but the reader must build one themselves. And they must use empathy, a underappreciated analytical tool. Your opponents must always be understood, perhaps even particularly so.
Level 3: The Chimaera
Now our narrator is unreliable but perhaps in ways they are not even aware. The complexity builds when the narrator could pass a polygraph because they don't know they're lying.
Enter The Yellow Wallpaper.
This particular opponent takes many forms – a poor soul tortured into delusion, a dangerous lunatic justifying her own imprisonment, a resilient victim fighting the patriarchy, and even a ghost, or perhaps some combination of them all. While Montresor had mysterious motives, even the identity of this narrator can flake and peel under examination like the titular wallpaper that becomes the object of her obsession.
The students have to untangle who the narrator is by her own descriptions and shifting voice. Why are there rings bolted into the walls? Bars on the window? A bed nailed to the floor? Are they really remnants of a nursery for "little children"? Did these "little children" really gouge, splinter and scratch the floors and walls, or is she not the first person of unsound mind to be locked in this room?
But what of the "ghostliness"? The "draught" and horrific wallpaper that seems to immediately entrance and horrify the narrator? What of this skulking woman "trapped" in the wallpaper? A psychotic break or a malevolent spirit of a haunted house? And what of the mysterious final words?
"I've got out at last," said I, " in spite of you and Jane! And I've pulled off most of the paper, so you can't put me back!"
Who is Jane? If she's the heretofore unnamed narrator, has the ghost finally escaped from its decorative imprisonment? The students have to untangle the supernatural from the merely deranged and each interpretation beguiles the other.
On top of these myriad interpretative puzzles, however, they must also grapple with the historical context. They have to combine the knowledge of modern psychology (especially about the trauma of isolation) with the biased and uninformed medical practices of the time. Sorting the historical anomalies from the narrative ones requires even more attention to detail and multiple levels of careful interpretation.
Level 4: The Mirror Maze
And now it all goes sideways.
In a Grove, by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, is probably more well known by its film adaptation, Rashomon. It is an early modernist short story and exemplifies that era's exploration and skepticism of an objective truth. The story denies all attempts to establish a coherent interpretation. Every suspect for the samurai's murder not only has the means, motive, and opportunity to commit the crime, but all four suspects insist they are the perpetrator, including the victim (via a medium). Unlike The Yellow Wallpaper, there are no interpretive paths, labyrinthine though they may be, that can be effectively charted. This story challenges the reader to simply embrace the fact that despite our desperate human urge to categorize, organize, and understand, sometimes the chaos just wins and there's nothing you can do about it.
There is obviously the opportunity to plumb the depths of epistemology and discuss the the Great Questions, of which the answer is 42, but also explore things like apophenia, and why we are so uncomfortable without complete knowledge of the events in our life.
Now that the students have worked their way through a variety of instructional "mini-bosses" it is time for their ultimate challenge, Her Story. I should note that these stories are hardly the only options and a variety of texts could be used to develop a useful "difficulty curve" based on the experience you want to create for your classroom.
The Game is Afoot
And now, time for Hannah. The Sephiroth of Stories, the Ganondorf of Games, the Liquid Snake of Lying. The Final Boss.
In the third post, I explore how I played the game in class using a "hot seat" method, the writing assessments, and student reception of the unit.
#4: Riddle Me This, Part II – Cracking the Code
October 6, 2015 June 11, 2018 / johncfallon	/ 2 Comments
In the last post, we looked at how the rabbit hole led to a small riddle. That riddle led to a video ending with the following puzzle:
Cue "Jeopardy" theme
(If you want to figure this out yourself, stop reading! The breakdown of the puzzle design and answer continues below.)
This is obviously a riddle even if the answer is not immediately clear. Where this differs from your average ARG out in the wild is in the familiar "riddle" phrasing; it immediately lets the students know there is something to solve here and some piece of hidden information they need to discover. "Wild" ARGs usually plant the mystery among a variety of other seemingly innocuous information, and the players work together to first filter the signal from the noise and then begin cracking the puzzle once they figure out what it is.
This riddle uses the most elementary of ciphers: the Caesar cipher. It is as simple as encoding gets: all the letters in the encoded phrase are substituted or "shifted" for another letter; if it was a "shift" of "3" then A would be encoded as D, since it is 3 spots down the alphabet. Therefore, you need only two things to crack a Caesar cipher: the knowledge that it is, indeed, a Caesar cipher, and how many times it's been shifted. If you know that number, then you have the key.
The first sentence nudges the students toward this knowledge. Aeneas founded Rome, which leads to Julius Caesar, and the word "to" has been swapped with a big, bold red "2" to draw their attention that it is a shift of two. At this point, the student is well on their way to solving the riddle since it will be trivial to decipher the scrambled second line once they connect those dots. So, let's skip down to the third line, since that actually lets them know what they need since, as you'll see, the unscrambled second line isn't the answer itself.
"STANDARD" is in all caps – obviously important – and Dolus has let them know he is looking for a "number", but which one? It apparently has to do with "books" and every book has "2" of these numbers (emphasized again as another clue for the Caesar cipher's key). A little sleuthing around and students eventually stumble across the International Standard Book Number. Each book has a 13 digit one and a 10 digit one, and clearly Dolus wants the "smaller" of the two, so 10 digits it is. But which book? Back to the scrambled second line.
Running the phrase through any Caesar cipher decryption tool (with a shift of "2") gives the students: "Edith Hamilton Mythology Hardcover 1976". A quick search to Amazon or elsewhere will give you the number Dolus is looking for: 0848810376. In the past iterations, students would email that answer to Dolus, using the email address they discovered, and he would answer with the next puzzle in the game. One of my projects this year is to modify the game to make more use of password protected files and videos. In this case, Dolus will send them a password locked folder along with the introductory video, and the password to the folder will be the ISBN number. Once they find the ISBN they can continue the game without my direct involvement. Managing the responses and guesses of students becomes very taxing when you are relying on email. It also can cause students to lose momentum as they have to wait to see if they're right.
Why Codes and Ciphers?
The foundation of many ARG puzzles are codes and ciphers. These not only offer intriguing and challenging critical thinking exercises (and often a lot of math, to boot) but they help avoid a critical design flaw: false negatives. A false negative – getting or making progress towards the right answer but not realizing it – is perhaps the worst case scenario for an ARG puzzle. If a student began to correctly solve a puzzle but did not receive clear or immediate feedback that they did so, the game's puzzles could feel arbitrary, or even impossible. In my experience, students do not mind spending hours failing, but progressing, to crack a puzzle (in fact, they often love it!). However, if they were to invest significant time into a puzzle only to later realize they had abandoned the right solution hours ago, it could be a fatal blow to their motivation and engagement. Codes and ciphers, however, instantly and accurately indicate success. Once you solve a code based puzzle, the answer wholly, or in part, reveals itself. Even if they haven't solved the entire puzzle, a crucial sense of progression is achieved. As a result, they are the bread and butter of many ARG puzzles.
One of the best resources on designing puzzles for ARGs – especially those using codes and ciphers – is this fantastic article by Adam Foster. Adam was the brain behind a very successful ARG to help promote the launch of Valve's Portal 2 video game. He does an amazing job breaking down the logic and DNA of a good ARG puzzle and I highly recommend you read it before you start designing your own puzzles.
Let's look at another puzzle I created for later on in the game that makes use of some more tried and true ARG mechanics.
In this particular puzzle I chose to use a book cipher because it would potentially involve the physical medium of an actual book (more mediums means more immersion), and I found an easily accessible example of the cipher's use in the Sherlock Holmes novel: The Valley of Fear. In fact, I decided to weave the novel directly into the clue.
I used the free text to video site, xtranormal, to create another video clue (it looks like xtranormal is back from its long absence, now rebranded as nawmal.com, but isn't available for education/free users yet). It uses a combination of preset animations and a voice synthesizer for text to speech. I used xtranormal to save time compared to doing another custom video in iMovie, but as I said before, it helped augment the pervasiveness of the game: the more mediums and formats the games incorporates, the better. It also added to the narrative, which played into Dolus' character as the mysterious thief that can be anywhere, at any time, in any form. The clue itself was spoken in the video but the key text was also copied in the video description to make it easier for students to reference as they worked to solve it.
Dolus taunts his challengers
Like most ARG puzzles, and the previous one, it is multi-step and centers around the identification and decoding of a cipher, in this case a book cipher.
In Dolus' video clue he directly references The Valley of Fear which forces the student, at the very least, to find out what that is and likely end up at the Wikipedia entry. From there (or the novel itself) the students will realize that the "method" Sherlock Holmes used was a book cipher. Modeling their strategy after Sherlock's (and likely with some help from the Wikipedia page), they will realize they need three things: a particular book, a specific page in that book, and specific words on that page. The book they need, the "key", is their classroom copy of The Odyssey, identified by its ISBN 1591940427, hence it being "close at hand", and the page in question is 108 (This is also a callback to the earlier puzzle involving ISBNs).
But what of the seemingly random series of numbers? If they execute the cipher correctly, they discover that each number refers to a word on the page, e.g. 220 is the 220th word on page 108. Once compiled correctly (they will realize if they're doing it right very quickly because a sentence will begin to form – no false negatives!), they will see they are being asked to email Dolus the name of Odysseus' father, something that memory or a quick search will remind them is "Laertes". Once that name is emailed to Dolus, the next puzzle begins. Again, a planned reform for this iteration is to have a locked file or website that will be unlocked once "Laertes" is punched in.
As you can see in the wording of this puzzle, the hints have been mostly stripped out: no bold letters, no capitalized words. This puzzle appears later in the game, and the "difficulty level" has been increased accordingly. They know by now they need to parse every word and examine every meaning of each word. Every piece of the clue must be interpreted and cannot be ignored. A synthesis of multiple elements must be achieved to complete the puzzle. This type of synthetic puzzle solving is a crucial form of 21st century critical thinking. The internet puts a deluge of data at our fingertips; the hard part is figuring out what you need, when you need it, and why. This type of critical thinking challenge is exactly why I love using this type of game based learning in my classroom and it is exactly the type of challenge they love to bang their head against. It is also the type of creative problem solving that our students will need in the decades ahead. Even more, it is exactly the type of cleverness that saw Odysseus out of the Cyclops' cave and helped him persevere on his journey home to Ithaca.
#3: Making an ARG: Riddle Me This
September 15, 2015 June 11, 2018 / johncfallon	/ 1 Comment
Riddles, puzzles, and ciphers are the bread and butter of most ARG's. There are a few reasons for this (which I will go into detail about in subsequent posts), but for now let's just focus on how the rabbit hole employed a simple one to introduce the game's narrative and get their brains working.
Early on I decided that the core narrative of the game would be relatively simple but hopefully engaging: a priceless document, the "journal of Odysseus", is stolen by a mysterious thief and he is challenging the students, a la The Riddler, to solve his puzzles in order to get them back. To initiate this narrative, the BBC article is written as authentically as possible but does immediately drop some clues that Something Is Strange: the befuddled archaeologist mentioned in the article is named Dr Henry Jones III, for example.
A few thoughts about narrative – it's really important! The most engaging experiences we have are emotional ones and games are no exception. A good story immediately frames an activity with meaning, even a simple one. To me, that is the heart of game based learning: you allow students to add their own meaning to their own learning. Don't be discouraged! You don't need to have the narrative chops of a professional fiction writer to draw your students into an ARG. A little narrative goes a long way.
For Dolus, the narrative is mainly introduced through the fake BBC article and it is your textbook heist: something stolen and only you can get it back! The article quotes a mysterious note containing a riddle which begins the hunt; the riddle is worded to explicitly reference an element of my school's culture in order to draw their attention.
"DOLUS resides in fair fields where crusaders roam. Send a digital hello to me there and we can begin our game. Only those whose blood is blue and white can get the journal back."
Nearly all students immediately realize this strange note somehow has a connection to the school, and to them. To further emphasize the connection, the school colors, blue and white, and mascot, the crusader, are mentioned. This is the moment where the game world and the real world begin to blur. You can also already see the singular nature of many ARGs, especially those made for the classroom. They are not easy to simply "transplant". They require a lot of customization to the specific school environment, but I assure you they are worth the time and effort!
I have changed the wording of this riddle a few times; it initially involved hunting for a specific website about the origin of Dolus: the Greek god of trickery. But I found it was a bit too early to involve ARG mechanics that required a lot of investigating since it is a brand new type of gameplay to them. This riddle has been pared down and simply requires them to figure out that they need to email Dolus, who is waiting for them at a school email address created specifically for the game. I have found this to be a fairly typical progression for my puzzle design. Ideally, you want to find that "sweet spot" of difficulty: hard enough to make them sweat but not so intimidating that they give up completely. There are a few ways to approach this problem and in a later post I will address them in detail. But I have found, at first, that it's better to err on the side of being more difficult than vice versa, since you can always give hints to help them progress.
Compared to the types of ARGs found in the corners of the internet, Dolus was designed to deploy comparatively obvious hints and clues, especially in the early game, since this is a genre of game that few, if any, of the students are familiar with. Even then, some students needed a rather significant nudge to read closer and realize there was a riddle to be solved; this is not surprising since ARGs go to significant lengths to pose as not a game! The riddle eventually leads the students to a fake, but functional, school email address that was set up with the help of my school's IT department (this was both for immersive effect and to keep all game communications within the school network). Once that email is contacted, the student is immediately sent a "welcome video" hosted on an unlisted Youtube video which sets up the antagonist, lays out the basic "plot", adds some more narrative flavor, and offers up the next puzzle.
Dolus introduces himself
This was relatively easy to make. Armed with my Macbook, a script, Apple's iMovie, and a quick Youtube tutorial on how to use the free program Audacity to scramble my voice, I laid down an audio track of Dolus introducing himself. In addition to the audio track, I inserted a few relevant images into iMovie (including the puzzle text which was taken from screenshots in Pages; iMovie does not handle large amounts of text well on its own) and uploaded it to a private channel on Youtube, under an account made specifically for this game. In the next version, I plan on spicing it up by replacing some of the flavor images with relevant video clips, but again, start small. You can add more detail and depth as you improve the game each year. It is much better to design something that is simple but fully functioning than something more detailed that might not work the way you intend, or at all.
iMovie is a great program to use since it mostly relies on simple drag and drop mechanics. I dropped relevant pictures and text into the program and then laid the mp3 recording (scrambled in Audacity) on top of those images. It is then a simple process of making the timing of the pictures match the content in the audio recording. The most recent version of iMovie even has an option to directly upload finished videos to different websites, including Vimeo and Youtube, making the process even easier. If you don't want/need to scramble your voice, iMovie also has a built in feature to add a voiceover. But be sure to make a script and do several takes!
The welcome video ends with the first official puzzle and the hunt begins!
Dolus hands out his first riddle
If you have comments/questions, feel free to drop a comment below, or tweet at me at @johnCfallon
In the next post, Riddle Me This Part II, we will look at how this basic ARG style puzzle works and how the students use it to progress in the game.
#2: Making an ARG: Down the Rabbit Hole
#1: What the heck is an ARG?
Turning my class room into a game room
BAM! Radio Network interview about ARGs
District Administration Magazine on ARGs in class
Edutopia piece on Her Story
MindShift article on Homer's Odyssey ARG
MindShift piece on Blind Protocol, a privacy and cybersecurity ARG
Ludic Learning
Matthew Farber


text:
Guatemala Outreach Yields Baptisms
The Central American nation of Guatemala has been playing host to big evangelism efforts by both training evangelists and holding local campaigns, which have yielded results in thousands of new members.
Leaders for the Seventh-day Adventist Church's Inter-American Division held an evangelism training summit in April to coincide with the culmination of local efforts.
BAPTISMS: In Guatemala five pastors baptized new Adventist Church members in Lake Atitlan in Panajachel on April 1. The baptisms were part of meetings in which church leaders from throughout Central America met in Guatemala to coordinate mass efforts of sharing the gospel throughout the region.The Adventist Church in Guatemala has been evangelizing aggressively this year, holding more than 1,000 campaigns resulting in nearly 5,000 baptisms in three months, said Gustavo Menendez, personal ministries director for the church in Guatemala.
This month's training summit brought together about 50 pastors for continuing education on conducting public evangelism.
The bulk of local campaigns have also included leadership by lay members. The Adventist Church's Vision 60,000 program here is part of the division's call to involve 1 million lay members for discipleship building.
Abraham Tzic, field secretary of the 16,000-member Northwest Adventist Mission office in Totonicapan, said 1,200 active church members have registered in the discipleship program since October 2011. The region aims to have 3,000 by the end of 2012.
Like many ministers in the region, Tzic pastors more than 25 churches.
With a shortage of pastors, Vision 60,000 has drawn more participation from church members and laypeople who have taken it upon themselves to reach those around them with the gospel, with positive results, said Guenther Garcia, president of the Adventist Church in Guatamala.
"So far, this has been a record-breaking year for Guatemala," Garcia said.
A baptism of more than 300 people in Lake Atitlan on April 1 drew spectators to see the results of their months-long efforts to bring the gospel to their friends and neighbors. The Adventist Church in Guatamala typically holds a mass baptism in the lake each year on the last Sunday of the first quarter, Menendez said.
—Libna Stevens, Inter-American Division
Published in June
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Rick McEdward Elected MENA President
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More in this category: « Groundbreaking Adventist University in Liberia Guatemala Outreach Yields Baptisms »


text:
APPLE + BALENCIAGA
It still amazes Demna Gvasalia, Creative Director of Balenciaga.
For his fashion show during Paris Fashion Week he sends instead of the classic invitations a broken iPhone 6 engraved with, in addition to the logo, the place, date, and time of the show. In the days before the show, the brand's Instagram account had published a reel with the graphics of Siri, Apple's voice assistant.
In addition, during the FW22 collection, a model walked the catwalk wearing a hoodie with an apple print (no bite) and the motto "Be Different", which takes up the slogan of the well-known technology company "Think differently".
A Balenciaga – Apple collaboration for the moment is not in the least expected, but much more likely Demna has decided to draw, as already happened for the Simpsons, on epochal moments of the immediate past and cult objects, to bring them into a fashion understood as contamination between past and present.
HAILEY BIEBER'S BEAUTY SECRET
AIR FORCE 1 ANNIVERSARY AND NEW RELEASE
The new implications of the Balenciaga scandal. How the brand is trying to regain the esteem of its audience.
More than a week after the publication of the unfortunate
BALENCIAGA'S SNEAKER SCULPTURE
The sneaker with Balenciaga becomes art. Fresh from the inauguration


text:
A beefy chip off the old block: Berlusconi's not-so-little boy shows he too has an eye for the ladies... and knows how to party
Published: 15:07 EST, 30 August 2012 | Updated: 15:07 EST, 30 August 2012
With his superhero physique and slicked back black hair, it is immediately clear that the man frolicking in the sea off Porto Rotondo in Sardinia likes to take good care of himself.
He may work hard on his sculpted body but - seeing as this is a working weekday - it is also clear that he likes to relax and party.
What is not immediately clear, however, is this muscle-bound fun-lover is the son of former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi.
Family resemblance: Apart from the rippling muscles, Pier Silvio Berlusconi and his father Silvio share more than just a name. The hair, permanent tan and fun-loving nature seem to run in the family
Fun in the sun: Pier Silvio springs out of the water off Porto Rotondo with his long-term girlfriend Silvia Toffanin
Sunshine break: Despite it being a working weekday, Berlusconi and his party seem to be taking it very easy aboard their private pleasure craft
Former Miss Italy contestant: Toffanin, a TV presenter, has been in a relationship with the young Berlusconi for 11 years
Armed with that information, another look at Pier Silvio Berlusconi, 43, reveals the similarities between him and his controversial 75-year-old father.
There's that classic Berlusconi bronzed skin - a type of perma-tan that suggests a carefree life lazing in the sun.
Then there's the slightly odd hair - jet black, not a strand out of place regardless of the situation, and with an age-defying hairline that looks almost drawn on.
And finally, there's the unmistakable family trait of enjoying the company of scantily clad ladies.
Unlike the notorious 'bunga bunga' orgy allegations leveled at his father, however, Pier Silvio's sunshine party is both innocent and all above board.
The pretty bikini-clad woman by his side is his girlfriend Silvia Toffanin, a former Miss Italy contestant and TV presenter.
The pair have been an item for 11 years and have a two-year-old son together, Lorenzo.
But it was an adults-only party on Tuesday as Berlusconi and Toffanin left Lorenzo at home.
Pier Silvio is an entrepreneur and executive of Mediaset, the Italian commercial television network controlled by the Berlusconi family.
Silvio Berlesconi¿s not-so-little boy shows he too has an eye for the ladies and knows how to party


text:
Kincaid & Dallas
Jason Pullman
Lucas Phelan
Nights With Elaina
Local Contest Rules
The Your Town Project
Country Now
Oxendine Law Divorce Segment
Rascal Flatts' Jay DeMarcus & Family to Star in New Netflix Series
by Jim Casey | @TheJimCasey | July 22, 2020
Rascal Flatts' Jay DeMarcus and his family will star in a new Netflix reality series, DeMarcus Family Rules.
The original series will launch via Netflix on Aug. 19. As its name implies, the show will revolve around Jay and wife Allison Alderson DeMarcus—a former Miss Tennessee pageant winner—and their two children: daughter Madeline, 9, and son Dylan, 8.
Jay revealed the news via Twitter, saying: "Well y'all… we've got some big news. We have a new show on @Netflix! #DeMarcusFamilyRules premieres Wednesday, August 19 and is a behind the scenes, unfiltered look at our crazy life. @AllisonDeMarcus, Madeline, Dylan and I can't wait to share it with you."
While the COVID-19 pandemic put a kibosh on Rascal Flatts' Farewell Tour this year, the trio will release a new seven-song EP, How They Remember You, on July 31. The EP includes six brand-new tracks, as well as a rendition of Kenny Rogers' "Through the Years." The new EP features songs co-penned by Thomas Rhett, Rhett Akins, Josh Osborne, Jesse Frasure, Ashley Gorley and more.
photo by Tammie Arroyo, AFF-USA.com
written by Jim Casey | @TheJimCasey | published July 22, 2020 1:01 pm
category: NCD News | related posts: DeMarcus Family Rules, Jay DeMarcus, Netflix, rascal flatts
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