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Nobody said brains are a requirement for celebrity » « For the chess fans
A Florida rumor
I heard this third hand, so it's not exactly the most well-founded rumor around, but a contact with inside information in the Southern Baptist Ministries has heard that they want to help out with the koo-koo descent into creationist madness that is Florida. They have asked their Florida churches to send information to businesses and school boards — a fine idea, and perfectly acceptable practice, I would think — but you have to see the "information" to believe it.
The rumor is that they're going to send a tract called Apes, Lies, and Ms. Henn. That's right, a Jack Chick tract.
I'm torn. It seems unlikely, but on the other hand, it's just stupid enough that it could be true. On our side we have the whole of the scientific literature; on theirs, a comic book featuring a little girl saying "We didn't come from monkeys." And which one will win is uncertain.
Floridians, keep an eye open and let me know if there is a sudden influx of Chick inanity in your community.
This Week in Evolution says
It would be great if they included young earth; it's so easy to disprove!
Glen Davidson says
That's the value of pounding on ID (NOVA did it best), it equalizes Behe's and Jack Chick's pseudoscience in the eyes of many who initially thought the former was more respectable. Then anything goes.
Like a leader in the church I was raised in (SDA) said, since the evidence doesn't really support any of the creationist concepts, from OEC to YEC, one might as well go with what agrees best with the Bible (one of the dumbest things I've ever heard, from my perspective, entirely reasonable from his "worldview" (well, set of prejudices)).
Why not, especially since that's the goal of the vast majority anyhow? But Dembski and Behe are impressive to people who are half-educated in science and who wish to believe, while Chick with the rest of the YECs are laughable on the face of it.
OK, so we don't really know if Chick tracts are going to be sent out to "lend credibility" to creationism. It's certainly not too stupid to be true, though.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
arachnophilia says
as a graduate of the florida public school system, i'm placing my bets on the comic book.
Oh yeah, evilutionists, uh I mean cdesign proponentsists? Well, smarty-pants and Poindexters, if all of your so-called "science" is sooooo good, answer me this: if we evolved from slime, then why does my trash can still have slime?
Zeno says
I checked out the tract and it sure is persuasive. Why, it even has references, like the one to Dr. Kent Hovind. (Chick tracts insist on the best possible sources, you see.)
Not sure, though, why baby Christians like Susy and the black boy she recruits for Jesus always have such big, big eyes. God must like Keane-eyed kids.
zer0 says
OMG, that tile on the left, 15 down, when she says "Jesus did something special for you yada yada… that girl is missing pupils…. she's possessed!!!!!!!! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH
Ryan F Stello says
I thought one of the ICR's new strategies was to allow other groups to make the religious arguments, not inundate the school board with obvious religious propaganda.
I'd say this is a good thing. If this issue goes to trial, the school board won't be able to say their ideas were influenced only by the science.
me says
"If you believe in evolution, you'll end up in hell"
how sick in the head does a fucker have to be to write something like that for kids?
Kseniya says
"No, Timmy, most people will end up in hell."
Bob O'H says
if we evolved from slime, then why does my trash can still have slime?
Because you don't recycle your hagfish.
Tard.
schmeer says
That comic is the embodiment of Poe's Law. Personally, I thought the little girl looked like a junky in all the close ups.
Brownian, OM says
How come Jackie's tracts always have mean ol' nuns masquerading as scientist teachers?
Oh yeah, he hates Catholics as much as evolutionists.
danley says
"Aw shit buddy, I'd take Dagwood over Darwin any day" –Charlie Daniels
I hadn't heard of Jack Chick, so I checked out the rest of the website. The page on inerrancy in the Quran greatly amused me:
If the Qur'an is the infallible Word of God, then it stands to reason that it would not contain factual errors of science. By "factual errors" we mean errors that can be physically examined. We are not talking about contradictions between scientific theories and the Qur'an. We are talking about hard evidence that can be checked out.
But first, there is a question we must answer: "is it legitimate to judge the Qur'an?" Many Muslims believe in the Qur'an as a blind leap of faith. They really do not care if it is filled with mistakes and contradictions. As far as they are concerned, they were born Muslim and they will die Muslim. The more closed minded they are, the more fanatical they become in their religion. When ignorance unites with arrogance, fanaticism is born.
We pity those whose religion is only the product of an accident of birth and culture. They blindly follow whatever religion they were born into. How sad it is to have an unexamined faith; a faith that cannot stand up to reason and science; a faith that merely shouts slogans, stamps its feet and beats its breast in a mindless mob. They do not believe in Islam because it is true. To them Islam is true because they believe it.
Boy, you can cut the hypocrisy with a knife.
Then later on,
It only takes one error to disprove the Qur'an. That's right. Just one little error and the whole book goes down in defeat!
I wonder why is the Bible not subject to the same standards?
sacredchao says
It must really suck to be that stupid. I mean, can Jack Chick even dress himself in the morning? I just don't think it's possible.
G says
I'm going to give away just how much of a nerd I am by saying this, but does Jack Chick remind anyone else of a Gibbering Mouther?
He certainly reminds me of a formless, mouthy mass that spews forth nothing but nonsense and bile in its quest to devour the intelligent.
Mike (#14), because The Holy Bible is the inerrant word of God!
Every now and then I get a Chick Tract in email, converted to text sans graphics, disguised as one of those educational/uplifting stories that circulate. It's usually the one about the young believer in the lecture hall who pwns the arrogant atheistic professor by arguing that the existence of evil is necessary for the existence of good, therefor God exists. Or something.
Anti-intellectualism is alive and well here in the good old U.S. of A.
Leukocyte says
I know it's been said here before that the line between Christianity and parody is razor thin sometimes, but this comic is utterly absurd. My first instinct is "parody."
…If you believe in evolution you will end up in hell!? Seriously? And how is it even possible that a Bible-believer can write lines like the above-mentioned commentary on the Koran with a straight face? If I didn't know better I'd think it was in the Onion or something.
And just what did you expect them to do, PZ? Come up with something new?
They're religious. If their God didn't want them to plagiarise each other and everyone else, he wouldn't have written down everything there was to know about everything in a big definitive book thousands of years ago.
Mister DNA says
If this ends up being Kitzmiller v. Dover played out in Florida, this is going to be one of those rare cases where the sequel is better than the original.
David vun Kannon says
Chick via Mike
When ignorance unites with arrogance, fanaticism is born.
I thought it was egnorance that was born ?
BTW – new blogger! Please be kind @ Invisible Hand, check out my Dembski post!
Jason Spaceman says
Back in 2001 portions of Chick's "Big Daddy" tract showed up in an Arkansas anti-evolution bill. The sponsor of the bill even brought in "Dr." Kent Taxcheat to testify in favour of it. Thankfully it never became law.
merkin j. pus-art says
Maybe you should remind the Southern Baptist Ministries of what they declare on their own website under the heading "Basic Beliefs." In the sub-heading they state, "Church and state should be separate."
Go to: http://www.sbc.net/aboutus/basicbeliefs.asp
Brett says
If everyone in Florida is an insecure and frightened 11-year-old, then it'll work.
Chick tracts scared the hell out of me (pun intended) when I was a kid. So I went to church.
Bob says
So, always remember kids: God loves each and every one of you — even though probably you and your parents are going to suffer eternally. It's just an expression of His Love.
There really should be a "battered person syndrome" for xians, some formal psychological classification for this dysfunction…
MercuryBlue says
If one is concerned that "If YOU believe in Evolution instead of Jesus, you'll end up in hell", the solution's simple…believe both!
I love the last panel where it says "Nobody else can save you. Trust Jesus today!" Sounds like a late-night infomercial.
Also like the little check-off boxes under "Did you accept Jesus Christ as your own personal Saviour?" with a line for the date.
NO 1-16-08
If anyone needs to get the nasty Jack Chick taste out of their mouth, I recommend Who Will Be Eaten First?
negentropyeater says
This statement beats them all :
"If you believe in Evolution instead of Jesus, you'll end up in hell"
Think about what can happen to a 10-14 year old child when an adult says this to him.
I'm really not of the violent type, I can barely believe that in a modern society, someone would say this to a child, but if I were witness to this, I think I would lose my temper.
I know, I know, freedom of speech, but what about when what is being said can cause irreparable damage to a child ? Is this also constitutionally protected ?
Thanks, Mister DNA!
Mercurious says
I had never seen any of these before so I checked out a couple at random. Between Huckters "Lets change the Constitution", to watching Jesus Camp last night, to this… I quiet frankly scared shitless these people might actually take control. We can talk about reason and rationality all we want, but these types of people have joyously jumped into the ocean of insanity and are completely feeding on it.
Ahh, Jack Chick. Hilarious on so many levels. Not least because he writes comic tracts set in a strange parallel world where no one but fundie Christians seem to have heard of Jesus, and everyone is instantly converted by getting told a few facts about Jesus.
In a similar vein, you might also try this parody of the Big Daddy tract:
http://www.facts4u.com/OffSite_Stored_Pages/wyd_files/wyd01.htm
I know what you mean, negentropyeater. There's a big, oafish mook inside me that sometimes wants to get out and take control, plow through the crowd of religiots swinging haymakers and breaking noses, screaming "Where's your saviour now?! Where's your saviour now?!"
On those days I drink a lot of sleepy-time tea.
*peeks his head up*
I was in the chess club in 7th grade…….
LOL ackkk wrong thread. Hate having multiple tabs open sometimes.
Bad says
Hey, at least the Huckstable now seems to admit that the Constitution isn't ALREADY made in the image of God. That's progress, no?
I'm always amazed at how much money these evangelical groups have to throw around promoting and marketing this or that. Millions of free Bibles, the hilarious Atlas of Fishing Lures, and now the producers of Expelled! basically buying their box office returns by paying people to book group trips in advance. I wish I had millions of dollars to promote my views, though I'd probably just do something stupid like put it towards better funded science education.
trj says
Something's not right. The comic didn't mention the connection between evolution and Hitler even once.
Jessa says
Well, I was leaning toward believing evolution based on the mountains of scientific evidence, but now that I've read a poorly-written comic starring Ruth Bader Ginsburg as Mrs. Henn, I'm not so sure anymore.
Fundies: the rare combination of amusing and scary.
Tacticus says
Frak Me.
That comic is just wrong how could people be so messed up that they think that is suitable for children?
If the fundies didn't control large voting blocks I'd be much more likely to just laugh it off myself. I'm beginning to like the idea of buying a small island out in the south pacific. The living conditions would probably end up being about the same if they did take over, but at least I wouldn't worry about when the gestapo would come knocking.
noncarborundum says
Ruth Bader Ginsburg as Mrs. Henn
What I was reminded of was the ugly nurse in Shallow Hal. Do you suppose Chick goes to Farrelly brothers movies?
If YOU believe in Evolution instead of Jesus, you'll end up in hell.
This could mean that either I believe in Evolution-with-a-capital-E, or Jesus does. If that's my choice, I choose me. Jesus doesn't believe in anything.
Tulse says
Mister DNA, thanks for the Cthulhu parody! It is most excellent.
Interestingly, it looks like the link PZ gave is to a mirror site — the originator of the parody was threatened with legal action by Jack Chick Publications, and forced to take it down. I would think that, as a parody, it would likely fall under Fair Use, but I suppose paying a lawyer to determine that can be expensive.
w1lp33 says
"thats right! this lie was created by the devil to keep kids out of heaven"
good to know the devil's doing demographic research, making sure his various lies and distortions are marketed to the appropriate age bracket.
what was the bible passage about no one knowing god's mind again? maybe hes pissed if you dont believe in evolution… "you idiots, i spent BILLIONS of years intelligently designing the earth so you guys could appreciate my hard work, and you make up all this bullshit about 6 days? youre just trying to screw me out of overtime pay."
also, love the check box at the end. "did oyu accept jesus christ as your lord and saviour today? YES or NO". like it's a love note in an elementary school "do you like me? circle one!" if i check yes, who do i present to? if i give it to a catholic priest, do i get a cookie and a 10% off coupon or something? who, for that matter, am i supposed to show it to if i circled NO?
if i check yes, who do i present to? if i give it to a catholic priest, do i get a cookie and a 10% off coupon or something?
Of course not — if you give it to a devil-spawned idolatrous papist, you are GOING TO HELL!!!
Runningman says
Distributing this comic would really be the best thing that could be done for the cause of science. It is so far over the top that it would discredit the whole creationist movement. We should send copies to Florida legislators ourselves.
Ichthyic says
no worries.
they DID say their ideas were only influenced by ID "science" in Dover, and it quickly was apparent to the judge that there was no actual ID "science" to be influential to begin with.
if they want to try that road again, more power to em.
oh right, i forgot chick is one of those "catholics are evil too" christians.
my favourite are the seventh day adventists. everyone, including all christians, are going to hell unless you refrain from committing the ULTIMATE SIN of celebrating your lord on sunday instead of saturday.
my dentist is a seventh day adventist, and he keeps their books all over his waiting room. my friend's dad grabbed one for me. the whole book is how christians that go to church on sunday are violating the ten commandments, and going to hell. awesome.
also, he wrote in the front cover for me : "To Pat, I thought you should read this. – Love God"
tikistitch says
Hadn't seen that Chick tract before! It was very educational indeed. Remember, kiddies, if YOU believe in the Eeevolution, the Devil will come and take away all your shampoo and conditioner!!
Kristine says
Well, obviously the answer is to get Answers in Genesis's new pew-reviewed journal into class! After the kids come home talking about the earth squeezing and pumping out magma after God's heavenly shower, it's just a matter of time before outraged parents demand that "such filth" be kept away from the children. :-)
And you'll notice that in the third panel of that Chick tract, George W. is eyeing Ms. Henn's breasts.
Won't somebody think of the children???!
MAJeff says
the Devil will come and take away all your shampoo and conditioner!!
That's why I pray to the Ste. Aveda; no evil will befall my hair.
DiscoveredJoys says
Susy Barnes was of course correct, we didn't come from monkeys. Monkeys and humans come from a commom ancestor. Fancy Jack Chick getting something right.
Fun homework assigment:
Read that 'Scientific Errors In The Qur'an' page linked to above, and Find/Replace "Quran" with "Bible", "Muslim" with "Christian", and that sura in the middle with one of the numerous flat earth passages in the bible. You barely even have to adjust any of the sentences for it to work flawlessly as a description of Christian nonsense.
It's like a mad-lib for debunking the bible, for christians, by a christian.
pleco says
But what if you accept evolution as fact *and* believe in jesus? Does god flip a quarter to decide your fate?
You probably get sent to heck instead of hell.
Science Goddess says
#43 In addition to the "check box" at the end did you catch the part about reading the bible every day. It specifically says KJV, as if any other translation would be wrong.
On the "Fundies say the darndest things" website, there is actually an argument about the KJV. One says that it's the ONLY translation that is accurate, that we shouldn't translate the bible into other languages because "english is the language of christians". Also, they say that if the KJV disagrees with the original hebrew, it's the hebrew that is wrong.
What part of "translation" don't they get?
"english is the language of christians"
Flonkbob says
Wow. I had forgotten just how vile Chick tracts are. In my pre-rational days I would get these now and then at church, and even then I was disgusted by them. I'd like to think it was my natural HUMAN-ness rebelling even before I escaped the brain washing…but now I look at it and wonder if it's just because they're so very very evil.
mothra says
I'm SAVED!!! It's a conditional statement and I never made an either or choice. I NEVER believed in jesus and I came to accept evolutionary fact as a consequence of reading and thought (at about age 12 there was this great book- The Wonders of Life on Earth).
They pass these things out (Chick Tracks) at local Campus Crusaders for Christ meeting here on campus. All that good cellulose could have fed many a pious termite.
RamblinDude says
Boy, does that tract bring back memories. The fear, the guilt, the certainty that I had to repent and give my soul to Jesus. And the certainty that I would some day, I really, really would! And then more fear and guilt for not doing it. *shudder*
Religion has a death grip in this country, and there are some scary churches in Florida the south. The belief that you will be left behind if you're not IN CHURCH and PRAYING when the rapture happens is not uncommon.
It's full blown looney tunes. Sometimes when I would pick up family members after a church service, I would get stares from people in the parking lot. They were deeply concerned that I was an unbeliever. They just couldn't understand how someone could reject "the truth" and destine themselves to eternal hell.
Big. Damn. Insane asylum.
I hear that!
Giving up not only the idea of hell, but the whole nonsensical framework from which it sprang was so fucking liberating. I could actually live. And think, and question…and breathe.
Cubist says
After Chick's legal threats coerced Howard Hallis into taking down his original 'Big Daddy' parody, I took it upon myself to redraw the whole thing. Chick's law-thing said that the problem was unauthorized use of Chick's glorius artwork, so total replacement of said art should make everything nice again, right? Sadly, Hallis didn't want to use my re-drawn version… but it's available here for anyone who might be curious.
Pierce R. Butler says
Mister DNA: If this ends up being Kitzmiller v. Dover played out in Florida, this is going to be one of those rare cases where the sequel is better than the original.
What reason could you have for thinking you're going to find a Florida judge with the integrity of John E. Jones III???
thanks, cubist.
bookmarked for future reference.
Good point; but remember, according to autodidact and mesomorph DaveScot, Judge Jones was supposed to be a Good Ole Boy who knew who was buttering his bread.
Regardless of the outcome, if this goes to trial we're guaranteed a cast of characters that make Bill "I Never Said Creationism" Buckingham look reasonable by comparison.
Oops. I guess links to Uncommon Descent are a no-no. Sorry about that.
fuck yeah, things have gotten a bit boring on the ID front since Dover.
bout time for another sideshow freakfest.
Rick Schauer says
Help me find the one tract that tells how this omnipotent god lets the devil into the world so he'd eventually have to torture/sacrifice his son's life…send him to hell for three days to rebuke the devil…so he could then save us from OUR frick-ups or er, sins.
It makes me feel so good and lucky to owe god for that rightousness.
antaresrichard says
Is it small wonder Chick always presents the deity as some sort of faceless blockhead?!
TEBB says
I had the unpleasant experience a few days ago of finding out in conversation with my elderly mother that she thinks the world was formed in 6 days via creation. I switched from the arguments for evolution to the money factor – told her the creationists had lost in court and if the Florida schools insist on introducing it into the schools her tax dollars were going to be wasted in a losing legal battle.
I did point out to her that my religion professor at Baylor told us the Genesis story was one culture's creation myth and not to be taken literally, and that evolution was a fact.
not a bit. projection being the only way creobots are able to communicate.
Reynold says
Smeg with Jack Chick! You want real psychological child abuse? Check Children's Literature of the 1850's.
Remember what "Li'l Suzy" said about Hell in the Chick tract? Well, there's no evolution here, but they sure do go into a lot of detail about hell.
In 1855, the following booklet was published for presentation to children at Catholic churches in Ireland and England. As you'll see, it had the support and approval of the Catholic Church, which saw nothing wrong with what it said or how it was presented. For more information on the author, John W. Furniss, click here.
Ed Darrell says
We didn't come from monkeys, and we didn't rise to prosperity by thinking no more than monkeys think, either.
Linkage says
For those interested, here is a
critical analysis of that tract.
True Bob says
Damn straight, Ed. We DID NOT come from monkeys. We came from apes.
Thoracantha says
If any wants to see how low a Jack Chick tract can get, read "Lisa". Most of Jack Chick tracts are worth a good laugh, because they are so blatantly homophobic, anti-catholic, racist or just out in lala land. This one is scary enough not to be funny on any level.
http://i8.photobucket.com/albums/a7/Ockham/lisa1.jpg
A support group for people with abusive gods? Threats of Hell are threats of torture, and threats of torture are a form of terrorism. (And that much is true even if the actual torture is never carried out.)
I have long thought that if Our Father who art in Heaven were our *real* father, he'd be in prison for child abuse faster than you could say "Sodom and Gomorrah", and why anyone accepts such an abusive, controlling, terrorizing, torturing, smite-happy monster as their God is beyond me.
In a sense you could say that atheism is the only thing stopping me from becoming a Satanist – it's clear that if the God of the Bible *did* exist, it would be the moral duty of any sentient being to oppose him by any means less vile than his own.
If any wants to see how low a Jack Chick tract can get, read "Lisa".
How utterly sickening.
pluky says
If this does go to trial, could someone plead with Carl Hiassen to do commentary. I know his normal satrical beat is ecological degradation, but who else could better convey the full-on Florida nuttiness sure to be on display?
Hiaasen would be good, yeah.
Switch says
http://www.chick.com/tractimages9772/1051/1051_16.gif
Does Lil' Susy look a Lil' Possessed in this frame to anyone else? The thought of some demonic creature speaking through a child about the glory of Jesus is satisfying and hilarious to me.
Luna_the_cat says
Heads up, folks. They seem to be having some influence…..
http://www.jacksonville.com/tu-online/stories/011708/met_237288652.shtml


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West New Jersey, 1674-1680
September 15, 2009 By Marfy Goodspeed in Burlington County, Gloucester County, West New Jersey 1 Comment	Tags: early legislation, early settlers
The history of the newly created Province of West New Jersey shaped the history of the creation of Hunterdon County.
A note on dates:
During this period, the new year began on March 25th, which meant that events that occurred in January and February were given the previous year's date. Jan. 15, 1674 (old style) would be Jan. 15, 1675, according to our calendar. Quaker usage gave the month by number, so Jan. 15, 1675 (in modern form) would be the 15th day of the eleventh month, 1674. I think there is a good reason for giving dates that fall between Jan. 1 and March 24 in what is called Old Style and New Style, for instance, Jan. 15, 1673/74. It is somewhat cumbersome, but it alerts the reader to the pay attention to the year. One can get very seriously confused otherwise. In previous posts, I usually converted the date to modern usage. Today I'm turning over an old/new leaf.
New Jersey Government in 1674
In the last post I mentioned that the Dutch had briefly retaken New Netherland, only to give it up again in 1674. Following this development, James Duke of York decided that he needed to get better control over his New World colonies, so he began by appointing Edmund Andros to be governor of New York, with the immediate goal of converting New Netherland back into an English royal colony.
The trouble between Andros and the Jerseys can be traced to the commission that James Duke of York issued to Andros on July 1, 1674, in which he neglected to mention that the Jerseys had been granted to Carteret and Berkeley. Andros presumed he had full governmental authority over the provinces, which Gov. Philip Carteret of East New Jersey disputed as best he could, much to his regret.
This was part of a process that began after the English reclaimed their North American colonies. Everyone felt obliged to reconfirm their titles and patents, starting with James' original charter from his brother King Charles. The New Jersey patentees, Carteret and Berkeley also needed re-confirmation, and on July 23, 1674, Carteret got his. But James neglected to confirm the grant to Berkeley. This was probably because Berkeley had by this time sold his share to a Quaker, Edward Byllinge, and it is thought that by postponing the patent to Byllinge, James was expressing his disapproval of the Quakers. On the other hand, it might have simply been due to the confusion of Byllinge's affairs. Or perhaps it was because Berkeley was in no position to sell his share to anyone. Legal folks can spend hours debating who had rights to the land and government of New Jersey. The fact is that Berkeley sold out to Byllinge on March 18, 1673/74, little more than a month after the Treaty was signed with the Dutch, and without any reference to the state of his charter. Perhaps Byllinge knew there was a cloud on his title and chose to take a gamble.
Back in New York, Gov. Andros had no reason to doubt he was also in charge of West New Jersey. Remember that at this point there were only small settlements of English and Dutch in East New Jersey, Carteret's province, and even fewer English, Dutch and Swedish settlers along the Delaware Bay, mostly on the western side of the river. The Quaker migration to West New Jersey had not yet begun. To the extent that Andros governed the Delaware Bay settlements, he relied on his outpost at New Castle.
After living in New York for three years and dealing with the effects of King Philip's War (1675-77), Gov. Andros planned to return to England late in 1677 to spend the winter in a more congenial climate. But before he could leave, a boatload of Quaker settlers showed up in the ship 'Kent' under the impression that they were going to establish a Quaker colony on the Delaware River. Andros did not like the idea but gave them leave to settle there under his government. He did the same for the 'Martha' from Hull. The Quakers did not like the idea of being governed by Andros, but decided to go ahead, under protest, and paid the customs duties Andros imposed as governor of New York on all ships entering the Delaware Bay. These customs duties remained a sore point between New York and New Jersey for years to come.
I wonder if Gov. Andros got back to England in time to attend the royal wedding. On November 4th, Mary Stuart, the daughter of James Duke of York and his first wife Ann Hyde, married William of Orange. The consequences of this marriage are hard to overstate for New Jersey, and for that matter, for England. And while we're at it, don't forget the name Hyde. That one turned out to be a big deal too, in the person of New Jersey's first royal governor in 1702.
By the time Andros returned to New York in 1678, more ships had landed at Burlington with hundreds of new settlers, many of them Quakers. Indian purchases had been made and a provisional government established. Andros must have learned something about the Quakers while he was in England, because in October 1678 he ordered that the inhabitants on the east side of the Delaware River were not to be disturbed in the possession of their lands. But he still seems to have had governmental designs on the Jerseys.
In England, sale of fractions of proprietary shares in West New Jersey continued apace. For instance, on Feb. 28 and March 1, 1677/78, a whole proprietary share was sold to William Peachy, who paid £350 to Edw. Byllinge and 5 shillings each to the Quaker trustees, Penn, Lawrie and Lucas. Peachy immediately divided it up, 1/8th to John Cripss, 1/8th to Thomas Doll, 1/8th to Richard Smith, 1/8th to Richard Mathews, 1/8th to Henry Stacy, 1/8th to Wm. Kent, and 1/8th to Wm. Drewitt. The most common fractions of shares sold were 1/4th, 1/8th, 1/16th, 1/32nd and 1/64th. Remember, these sales were for proprietary shares, not for actual real estate.
More About the Tenths
In my last post I talked about the earliest political divisions in West New Jersey. These early divisions were the "Tenths," which were designed to give some order to the settlement of the new colony. The original plan, laid out in the Concessions and Agreements, was for an assembly of ten members from each Tenth, for a total of 100 members. But the Tenths never got to ten.
Each Tenth was to have frontage along the Delaware River, from Assunpink Creek down to Salem, with major creeks serving as boundaries. In practice there were only four "Tenths" plus Fenwick's colony at Salem. It is a challenge to imagine these locations. Those with access to John P. Snyder's The Story of New Jersey's Civil Boundaries can sort it out. But I wanted a map that served my own purposes too, so I took the liberty of adapting Snyder's maps to get a sense of what settlement there was in West New Jersey in the 1680s and 90s.
Click on the map to get a better view.
During this period, from the first arrivals in 1677 to 1680, the focus was on settlement and land distribution. What governing there was was done by the commissioners, but we have no record of their deliberations. Some of the settlers wrote letters home describing life in the new colony, which were reprinted in Samuel Smith's History of Nova Caesaria. One of these was Mahlon Stacy who had 100 acres surveyed at the Falls of the Delaware (the future Trenton) in 1680. Stacy was one of the original five Yorkshire proprietors and came to West New Jersey on the 'Shield' with Richard Green.
In April 1680, he wrote to his brother in England about life in West New Jersey, praising the fertility of the soil and abundance of wildlife. Already there were orchards so successful that the trees were being killed by the weight of the fruit. Cider was being made and the peaches were delicious. As for wild fruits, Stacy was particularly taken with the cranberry, a fruit that was new to the English. And yet by 1680 they were already making a cranberry sauce to serve with turkey. He does not talk about that interesting bird, the wild turkey, as anything special. The settlers also were eating ducks, geese, pheasants, and partridge. Stacy was delighted with the way cattle, pigs and sheep fattened up on the native grasses. He also enjoyed fish from the Delaware, remarking on large "shoals" of herring they learned to catch in the Indian fashion. The fish that were new to him were catfish, shad and sturgeon. He concluded: "for my part I like it so well, I never had the least thought of returning to England, except on the account of trade."
Trade is not something I was expecting at such an early date. In another letter also written in April 1680, Stacy described how he and eight others bought and fitted out a 'ketch' of 50 tons and sent it to Barbados, where the cargo was sold, and other goods taken aboard and brought back to Burlington. As Stacy wrote: "We have wanted nothing since we came hither, but the company of our good friends [back in England]." He wrote that those who come will find things much easier than those who first arrived, "before the country was settled as it now is." The thought that in only three years a few hundred people could make a place seem 'settled' is amazing.
Next Post: The exciting year of 1680 and its aftermath. In fact, the years 1680 through 1703 were all exciting in their ways. It was a strange time to be living in New Jersey.
Some Sources: The best source for happenings in early West New Jersey is Samuel Smith's The History of the Colony of Nova-Caesaria or New Jersey, 1765 (reprint 1975).
A couple of good later histories that cover this early period are Wesley Frank Craven, New Jersey and the English Colonization of North America (Princeton, NJ: Van Nostrand, 1964); Edwin Platt Tanner, The Province of New Jersey 1664-1738 (New York, 1908); and the Pomfret books (Colonial New Jersey (1973), The New Jersey Proprietors and Their Lands (1964), and The Province of West New Jersey (1956)).
I depend a lot on William Nelson's 'Deeds and Patents' or Calendar of Records, 1664-1703 (New Jersey Archives, Vol. XXI and Vol. I of New Jersey Archives, Documents Relating to the Colonial History of the State of New Jersey, edited by Wm. A. Whitehead.
Major Corrections were made to the original post on Dec. 18, 2009 (much to my chagrin): There were several errors, based on my mistaken assumption that the Dominion of New England began in 1674, when in fact it was not created until 1686 after James Duke of York had been coronated James II. In 1674, Edmund Andros was appointed Governor of New York only. In 1674, Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, Connecticut, Plymouth Colony, Massachusetts Bay Colony and New Hampshire still held their own charters.
I made this mistake because I ignored my own cardinal rule—stay true to the chronology. One reason I have taken to working my way through this history year by year is the frustration I often feel when reading historians who paint events with broad strokes. It becomes very difficult to tell when things happened, especially when separate developments get smashed together into one sentence and dates are ignored. Somehow, in my reading, I did some smashing of my own, by assuming that Andros was more than just governor of New York in 1674. My apologies to those who read the original version of this post.
« Samuel Green and West New Jersey, Part 2» Postscript to WNJ
February 12, 2013	@ 4:50 pm
This is an amazing website and thank you so much. It is helping me understand my family research in this area a lot. The map of the tenths you include really made my day!


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Home » Unapologetically Ambitious: Take Risks, Break Barriers, and Create Success on Your Own Terms (Hardcover)
Unapologetically Ambitious: Take Risks, Break Barriers, and Create Success on Your Own Terms (Hardcover)
By Shellye Archambeau, Ben Horowitz (Foreword by)
(Business & Economics / Leadership)
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Business & Economics / Leadership
Business & Economics / Motivational
Business & Economics / Personal Success
Business & Economics / Women in Business


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systemcall dot eu
development, security, digital rights, hardware
Linaro's Dev Box
Posted on 3rd May 2018 by rengolin
10 years ago, when I joined Arm, I imagined that we'd all be using Arm desktops soon. After a while working there, I realised this wasn't really in anyone's plans (at least not transparent to us, mere developers), so I kind of accepted that truth.
But as time passed, and the 64-bit architecture came along and phones really didn't seem to be benefiting from the bump in address space or integer arithmetic (it was actually worse, power consumption wise), so I begun to realise that my early hopes weren't so unfounded.
But as I left Arm around 2011, to a high-performance group, I realised how complicated it would be to move all of the x86_64/PPC high-performance computing to Arm, and that planted a seed in my brain that led me to join the HPC SIG at Linaro last year.
But throughout that journey, I realised I still didn't have what I wanted in the first place: an Arm desktop. I'm not alone in that feeling, by all means. Enthusiasts have been building Beagle/Panda/RaspberryPi "computers" for a long time, and we have had Arm Chromebooks for a while, and even used them in our LLVM CI for 3 good years. But they were either severely under-powered to the point of uselessness, or the OS was by far the restricting factor (eyes ChromeOS).
So, when Martin told me we were going to build a proper system, with PCIe, GB network, DRAM, SATA in a compatible form factor (MicroATX), I was all in. Better still, we had the dream team of Leif/Ard/Graeme looking at the specs and fixing the bugs, so I was fairly confident we would get something decent at the end. And indeed, we have.
In September 2016, Linus Torvalds told David Rusling:
"x86 is still the one I favour most and that is because of the PC. The infrastructure is there there and it is open in a way no other architecture is."
Well, the new Arm devbox is ATX format, with standard DIMMs, SATA disks (SSD and spinning), GB Ethernet port (and speed), PCIe (x8+x1+x1) and has open bootloaders, kernels and operating systems. I believe we have delivered on the request.
Synquacer Developer Box
Dev box with 1080p monitor, showing Youtube in a browser, 24 cores idling, cpuinfo and lspci outputs as well as some games…
The dev box itself is pretty standard (and that's awesome!), and you can see the specs for yourself here. We got a few boxes to try out, and we had a few other spare hardware to try it with, so after a week or so we had tried all combinations possible, and apart from a few bugs (that we fixed along the way), everything worked well enough. For more news on the box itself, have a look here and here. Also, here's the guide on how to install it. Not unlike other desktops.
Even the look is not unlike other desktops, although as I'll explain later, I'd prefer if I could buy the board on its own, rather than the whole box.
Building LLVM on 20 or all cores doesn't seem to push the power consumption that much… The GPU is active on idle, and about 12w are spent on it and about 5w (est.) on inefficient PSU
I tried four GPUs: NVidia GT210, GT710, GTX1050Ti and old AMD (which didn't work on UEFI for lack of any standard firmware). The box comes with the 710 which (obviously) works out-of-the-box. But so does the 210. The 1050Ti works well on UEFI and framebuffer, but (on Debian at lest), you need to install firmware-misc-nonfree which has to be done either with the 710 on terminal or through serial first, then it works on the next boot.
We tried a large number of DIMMs, with and without ECC, and they all seem to work, up to 16GB. We are limited to 4GB per DIMM, but that's a firmware issue and we're fixing it. Will come on the next update. Also, in the subject of firmware updates, no need to get your JTAG probes. On Debian, just do like any other desktop.
$ sudo apt install fwupd
$ sudo fwupdmgr refresh
$ sudo fwupdmgr update
Another nice thing is the HTTP installer. Of course, as expected from a desktop, downloading an ISO from your preferred distro and booting from it works out-of-the-box, but in case you're lazy and don't want to dd stuff into a USB stick, we bundled an HTTP install from an ISO "on the cloud". This is an experimental feature, so salt, pepper and all, but the lesson here is simple: on boot, you'll be pleasantly redirected to a BIOS screen, with options to boot from whatever device, including HTTP net-inst and USB stick.
Folks manage to run Debian (Stretch and Buster) and Fedora and they all work without issues. Though, for the GTX1050Ti you'll need Buster, because the Nouveau driver that supports it is 1.0.15, which is not on Stretch. I did a dist-upgrade from Stretch and it worked without incidents. A full install, with desktop environment, Cinnamon, Gnome or LXDE have also worked out-of-the-box.
The box builds GCC, LLVM, Linux and a bunch of other software we put it to do (with more than 4GB of RAM is much easier), and it accepts multiple PCI NICs, so you can also run it as a home server, router, firewall. I haven't tried 10GBE on that board, but I know those cards work on Arm (on our HPC Lab), so it should work just as well on the Synquacer box.
The not so bad
Inside my server, 8GB RAM, SSD, GT210 (no need for graphics) and a PCIe NIC.
While a lot works out of the box and that's a first in consumer Arm boards, not everything works perfectly well and needs a bit of fine tuning. Disregarding the need for more / better hardware in the box (you'll eventually have to buy more RAM and an SSD), there are a few other things that you may need to fiddle.
For example, while Nouveau works out-of-the-box, it does need the following config in its module to get to full speed (seems specific to older cards):
$ echo 'options nouveau config=NvClkMode=auto' | sudo tee /etc/modprobe.d/nouveau.conf
$ sudo update-initramfs -u
Without this, GPU works perfectly well, but it's not fast enough. With it, I could play Nexuiz at 30fps on "normal" specs, Armagetron at 40fps with all bells and whistles, and 30fps-capped on minetest, with all options set. SuperTuxKart gives me 40fps on the LEGO level, but only 15 on the "under the sea", and that's very likely because of its abuse of transparency.
This is not stellar, of course, but we're talking nouveau driver, which is known to be less performing than the proprietary NVidia drivers, on a GT710. Those games are the ones we had packages for on Debian/Arm, and they're not the most optimised, OpenGL-wise, so all in all, not bad numbers after all.
Then there's the problem of too many CPUs for too little RAM. I keep coming at this point because it's really important. For a desktop, 4GB is enough. For a server, 8GB is enough. But for a build server (my case), it really isn't. As compilers get more complicated and as programs get larger, the amount of RAM that is used by the compiler and linker can easily pass 1GB per process. On laptops and desktops with 8 cores and 16GB or RAM, that was never a problem, but when the numbers flip to 24 by 4, then it gets ridiculous.
Even 8GB gave me trouble trying to compile LLVM, because I want a sweet spot between using as many cores as possible and not swapping. This is a trial and error process, and with build times in the scale of hours, it's a really boring process. And that process is only valid until the code grows or you update the compiler. With 8GB, -j20 seems to be that sweet spot, but I still got 3GB of swap anyway. Each DIMM like the one in the box goes for around £40, so there's another £120 to make it into a better builder. I'd happily trade the GPU for more RAM.
LLVM builds on just over an hour with -j20 and 2 concurrent link jobs (low RAM), which is acceptable, but not impressive. Most of my problems have been RAM shortage and swapping, so I'll re-do the test with 16GB and see how it goes, but I'm expecting nothing less than 40min, which is still twice as much as my old i7-4720HQ. It's 1/3 of the clock, in-order, and it has 3x the number of threads, so I was expecting closer timings. Will update with more info when I'm done.
The first thing that comes to mind is that I have to buy the whole package, for a salty price of $1210, with hardware that is, putting it mildly, outdated.
It has a case with a huge plastic cover meant for mean big Intel heat-sinks, of which the Synquacer needs none. It's also too small for some GPUs and too full of loose parts to be of any easy maintenance. No clips, just screws and hard pushes.
The disk is 1TB, standard WD Blue, which is fine, but honestly, in 2018, I'd expect an SSD. A run-of-the-mill SanDisk 120GB SSD comes at the same price and despite being 1/8 of the total space, I'd have preferred it any day. For not much more you could get a 240GB, which is good enough for almost all desktop uses, especially one that won't be your main box.
It can cope with 64GB of RAM (albeit, right now, firmware limits it to 16GB), but the box comes with 4GB only. This may seem fine when talking about Intel laptops with 4 cores, but the Synquacer has a whooping 24 of them. Even under-powered (1GHz A53), make -j will create a number of threads that will make the box crawl and die when the linking starts. 8GB would have been the minimum I'd recommend for that hardware.
Finally, the SoC. I have had zero trouble with it. It doesn't overheat, it doesn't crash, there are no kernel panics, no sudden errors or incompatibility. It reports all its features and Linux is quite happy with it. But it's an A53. At 1GHz. I know, there are 24 of them, which is amazing when building software (provided you have enough RAM), but pretty useless as a standard desktop.
When I was using the spinning disk, starting Cinnamon was a pain. At least 15 seconds looking at the screen after login. Then I moved to SSD and it got considerably faster to about 5 seconds. With 8GB of RAM barely used, I blame the CPU. It's not bad bad, but it's one of the things that, if we have a slight overclock (even to 1.5GHz), it would have been an improvement.
I understand, power consumption and heating is an issue and the whole board design would have to be re-examined to match, but it's worth it, in my view. I'd have been happier with half of the cores at twice the clock.
Finally, I'd really like to purchase the board alone, so I can put on the case I already have, with the GPU/disk/RAM I want. To me, it doesn't make much sense to ship a case and a spinning disk halfway across the world, so I can throw it away and buy new ones.
Given that Linux for Arm has been around for at least a decade, it's no surprise that it works well on the Synquacer box. The surprise is PCIx x8 working with NVidia cards and running games on open source drivers without crashing. The surprise is that I could connect a large number of DIMMs and GPUs and disks and PCI network without a single glitch.
I have been following the developer team working on the problems I reported early on, and I found a very enthusiastic (and extremely competent) bunch of folks (Linaro, Socionext, Arm), who deserve all the credit for making this a product I would want to buy. Though, I'd actually buy the board, if it came on its own, not the entire box.
It works well as an actual desktop (browser, mail, youtube and what have you), as a build server for Arm (more RAM and there you go) and as a home server (NAS, router, firewall). So, I'm quite happy with the results. The setbacks were far fewer and far less severe than I was expecting, even hoping (and I'm a pessimist), so thumbs up!
Now, just get one of those to Linus Torvalds and Gabe Newell, and we have successfully started the "year of the Arm desktops".
FreeCell puzzles solver API
Posted on 25th September 2011 by rengolin
This is a little pet project I did a while ago. It's a FreeCell puzzle's solver API.
The idea is to provide a basic validation engine and board management (pretty much like my old chess validation), so people can write FreeCell solvers on top of it. It has basic board setup (of multiple sizes), movement legalisation, and a basic Solver class, which you must derive to create your own solvers.
There's even a BruteFroceSolver that can solve a few small boards, and that gives you an idea on how to create your own solvers. However, the API is not clear enough yet that children could start playing with it, and that's the real goal of this project: to get kids interested in solving complex optimisation problems in an easy way.
Freecell is a perfect game for it. Most boards can be solved (only a handful of them were proven – by exhaustion – not solvable), some movements can be rolled back and you can freely re-use cards that have already been placed into the foundations (their final destination) back in the game again.
It's out of the scope of this project to produce a full-featured graphic interface for kids, but making the API easy enough so they understand the concepts without dragging themselves into idiosyncrasies of C++ is important.
Compiler optimisations
The reason why I did this was to make some of the optimisations compiler engineers have to do more appealing to non-compiler engineers or children with a taste for complex problems. But what does this have to do with compilers? The analogy is a bit far-fetching and somewhat reverse, but it's interesting nevertheless and it was worth the shot.
Programming languages are transformed into graphs inside the compiler, which should represent the intentions of the original programmer. This graphs are often optimised multiple times until you end up with a stream of instructions representing the source code in the machine language.
Ignore for now the optimisations on those graphs, and focus on the final part: selecting machine instructions that can represent that final graph in the machine language (assembly). This selection can pick any assembly instruction at will, but it has to put them into a very specific order to represent the same semantics (not just syntactic) of the original program. Since many instructions have side effects, pipeline interactions, special flags set or cleaned up, it's not trivial to produce correct code if you don't check and re-check all conditions every time. This is a known complex optimisation problem and can be responsible for changes in speed or code size in orders of magnitude.
What does it have to do with the Freecell puzzle? Well, in Freecell, you have a number of cards and you have to put them in a specific order, just like assembly instructions. But in this case, the analogy is reverse: the "sequence" is trivial, but the "instructions" are hard to get.
There are other similarities. For example, you have four free cells, and they can only hold one value at a time. They are similar to registers, and manipulating them, gives you a good taste of how hard it is to do register scheduling when building the assembly result. But in this case, it's much harder to spill (move the data back to memory, or in this case, card back to cascades), since there are strict rules on how to move cards around.
Reusing cards from the foundations is similar to expanding single instructions into a sequence of them in order to circumvent pipeline stalls. In real compilers you could expand a multiply+add (very useful for digital signal processing) into two instructions: multiply and add, if that gives you some advantage on special cases on special chips. In Freecell, you can use a 9 on top of a 10, to move an 8 from another cascade and free up a card that you need to clean up your freecells (registers).
I'm sure you can find many more similarities, even if you have to skew the rules a bit (or completely reverse them), but that's not the point. The point is to interest people into complex optimisation techniques without the hassle of learning a whole new section of computer science, especially if that section puts fear in most people in the first place.
Posted on 10th May 2010 by rvincoletto
I'm not the one to normally do reviews or ads, but this is one well worth doing. Humble bundle is an initiative hosted by Wolfire studio, in which five other studios (2D Boy, Bit Blot, Cryptic Sea, Frictional Games and the recently joined Amanita Design) joined their award-winning indie games into a bundle with two charities (EFF and Child's Play) that you can pay whatever you want, to be shared amongst them.
All games work on Linux and Mac (as well as Windows), are of excellent quality (I loved them) and separately would cost around 80 bucks. The average buy price for the bundle is around $8.50, but some people have paid $1000 already. Funny, though, that now they're separating the average per platform, and Linux users pay, on average, $14 while Windows users pay $7, with Mac in between. A clear message to professional game studios out there, isn't it?
About the games, they're the type that are always fun to play and don't try to be more than they should. There are no state-of-the-art 3D graphics, blood, bullets and zillions of details, but they're solid, consistent and plain fun. I already had World of Goo (from 2D Boy) and loved it. All the rest I discovered with the bundle and I have to say that I was not expecting them to be that good. The only bad news is that you have only one more day to buy them, so hurry, get your bundle now while it's still available.
World of Goo: Maybe the most famous of all, it's even available for Wii. It's addictive and family friendly, has many tricks and very clever levels to play. It's a very simple concept, balls stick to other balls and you have to reach the pipe to save them. But what they've done with that simple concept was a powerful and very clever combination of physical properties that give the game an extra challenge. What most impressed me was the way physics was embedded in the game. Things have weight and momentum, sticks break if the momentum is too great, some balls weight less than air and float, while others burn in contact with fire. A masterpiece.
Aquaria: I thought this would be the least interesting of all, but I was wrong. Very wrong. The graphics and music are very nice and the physics of the game is well built, but the way the game builds up is the best. It's a mix of Ecco with Loom, where you're a sea creature (mermaid?) and have to sing songs to get powers or to interact with the game. The more you play, the more you discover new things and the more powerful you become. Really clever and a bit more addictive than I was waiting for… 😉
Gish: You are a tar ball (not the Unix tar, though) and have to go through tunnels with dangers to find your tar girl (?). The story is stupid, but the game is fun. You can be slippery or sticky to interact with the maze and some elements that have simple physics, which add some fun. There are also some enemies to make it more difficult. Sometimes it's a bit annoying, when it depends more on luck (if you get the timing of many things right in a row) than actually logic or skill. The save style is also not the best, I was on the fourth level and asked for a reset (to restart the fourth level again), but it reset the whole thing and sent me to the first level, which I'm not playing again. The music is great, though.
Lugaru HD: A 3D Lara Croft bloody kung-fu bunny style. The background story is more for necessity of having one than actually relevant. The idea is to go on skirmishing, cutting jugulars, sneaking and knocking down characters in the game as you go along. The 3D graphics are not particularly impressive and the camera is not innovative, but the game has some charm for those that like a fight for the sake of fights. Funny.
Penumbra: If you like being scared, this is your game. It's rated 16+ and you can see very little while playing. But you can hear things growling, your own heart beating and the best part is when you see something that scares the hell out of you and you despair and give away your hide out. The graphics are good, simple but well cared for. The effects (blurs, fades, night vision, fear) are very well done and in sync with the game and story. The interface is pretty simple and impressively easy, making the game much more fun than the traditional FPS I've played so far. The best part is, you don't fight, you hide and run. It remembers me Thief, where fighting is the last thing you want to do, but with the difference is that in Thief, you could, in this one, you're a puss. If you fight, you'll most likely die.
Samorost 2: It's a flash game, that's all I know. Flash is not particularly stable on any platform and Linux is especially unstable, so I couldn't make it run in the first attempt. For me, and most gamers I know, a game has to work. This is why it's so hard to play early open source games, because you're looking for a few minutes of fun and not actually fiddling with your system. I have spent more time writing this paragraph than trying to play Samorost and I will only try it again if I upgrade my Linux (in hoping the Flash problem will go away by itself). Pity.
Well, that's it. Go and get your humble bundle that it's well worth, plus you help some other people in the process. Helping indie studios is very important for me. First, it levels the play-field and help them grow. Second, they tend to be much more platform independent, and decent games for Linux are scarce. Last, they tend to have the best ideas. Most game studios license one or two game engines and create dozens of similar games with that, in hope to get more value for their money. Also, they tend to stick with the current ideas that sell, instead of innovating.
By buying the bundle you are, at the very least, helping to have better games in the future.
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2012 Cambodia & Vietnam Tour
Participant Bios:
Jon Davis is the author of three chapbooks and three full-length collections of poetry, Preliminary Report (Copper Canyon Press, 2010), Scrimmage of Appetite (University of Akron Press, 1995), for which he was honored with a Lannan Literary Award in Poetry, and Dangerous Amusements (Ontario Review Press, 1987), for which he received a G.E. Younger Writers Award and the Peter I.B. Lavan Younger Poets Prize from the Academy of American Poets. He has also received two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, a Lannan Residency, and a fellowship to The Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. He is currently Chair of the Creative Writing Department at the Institute of American Indian Arts, where he has taught since 1990. He occasionally performs as the peripatetic poet Chuck Calabreze.
Jane Mead is the author of three full-length collections of poetry, The Usable Field (Alice James, 2008) House of Poured-Out Waters (Illinois, 2001) and The Lord and the General Din of the World (Sarabande, 1996). Her poems appear regularly in literary journals and are widely anthologized. The recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, A Completion Grant from the Lannan Foundation, and a Whiting Writer's Award, she was for many years Poet-in-Residence at Wake Forest University in North Carolina. She now teaches in the Low Residency MFA program at Drew University, and farms her grandfather's vineyard in California's Napa Valley. She is also co-owner of Prairie Lights books in Iowa City, Iowa.
Quan Barry was born in Saigon and raised on Boston's north shore. Quan Barry is Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Madison where she recently directed the MFA Program in Creative Writing. The author of three books published by the University of Pittsburgh Press (Asylum, Controvertibles, and Water Puppets), her work has appeared in such journals as the Georgia Review, the Kenyon Review, Ms., and the New Yorker; among her awards are an NEA Fellowship, a Pushcart Prize, and a Wallace Stegner Fellowship at Stanford University. Her first play The Mytilenian Debate was a 2011 finalist for both the Eugene O'Neill National Playwrights Conference and the Lark Play Development Center's Playwrights' Week. She is currently at work on a novel.
Eleni Sikelianos is the author of six books of poetry, most recently Body Clock and The California Poem, as well as a hybrid memoir, The Book of Jon. Her translation of Jacques Roubaud's Exchanges on Light appeared in 2009. She has been the recipient of a number of awards, from the NEA, the Fulbright Fellowships, The National Poetry Series, New York Foundation for the Arts, Princeton University's Stegner Fellowship, and the Gertrude Stein Awards for Innovative American Writing, among others. She has collaborated with musicians, visual artists, and filmmakers. Her work has been translated into a dozen languages, At present, Sikelianos teaches in the Naropa Summer Writing Program as well as the Creative Writing Program at the University of Denver, which she also directs.
Christopher Merrill's books include four collections of poetry, Brilliant Water, Workbook, Fevers & Tides, and Watch Fire, for which he received the Peter I. B. Lavan Younger Poets Award from the Academy of American Poets; translations of Ales Debeljak's Anxious Moments and The City and the Child; several edited volumes, among them, The Forgotten Language: Contemporary Poets and Nature and From the Faraway Nearby: Georgia O'Keeffe as Icon; and five books of nonfiction, The Tree of the Doves: Ceremony, Expedition, War, Things of the Hidden God: Journey to the Holy Mountain, The Grass of Another Country: A Journey Through the World of Soccer, The Old Bridge: The Third Balkan War and the Age of the Refugee, and Only the Nails Remain: Scenes from the Balkan Wars. His work has been translated into twenty-five languages. He has held the William H. Jenks Chair in Contemporary Letters at the College of the Holy Cross, and now directs the International Writing Program at The University of Iowa.
IWP Staff Coordinator:
Kelly Bedeian
2012 Cambodia and Vietnam
2012 Congo Tour
2012 Mozambique and Zimbabwe Tour


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Home Cryptocurrency News Product Release & Updates Coinbase and Circle Will Mint $30 Million USDC
Coinbase and Circle Will Mint $30 Million USDC
Expect more USDC soon.
Coinbase and Circle have announced the minting of USDC tokens worth $30 million on Ethereum's blockchain.
According to a report, Coinbase and Circe have already started printing the ERC-20 stablecoin took place on Wednesday Oct 2, 2019, at about 10:30 PM (+UTC). The entire transaction fee cost about $0.14.
The token currently has a total market cap of $456 million. Coinbase and Circle pointed out that the USDC is currently the fastest-growing stablecoin.
They said: "USDC is the first stablecoin to reach $1 billion in issuance in under a year and accounts for 15% of all outstanding crypto loans". They also stated that the trading volume of USDC rose to an outstanding 350% and transfer value to about $17 billion in the last six month. According to the exchange, "There have been more than 750,000 transactions involving USDC across more than 62,000 wallets."
The exchange also reiterated this statement on Twitter during its one-year celebration. It said: "Happy birthday $USDC! In 12 months, $USDC is now the second most popular stablecoin supported by over 100 companies worldwide and has recently surpassed $1 billion issued. All in less than a year."
Stablecoins are taking the stage
It seems like Coinbase and Circle are paying a lot of attention to USDC lately. Just today Altcoin Buzz reported that Coinbase now allows users to earn 1.25% APY on every USD Coin.
However, USDC is not the only stablecoin that has received a lot of attention lately. Libra is, obviously one of them, but not only. Yesterday Altcoin Buzz reported that the former employees of J.P. Morgan, Intel and TrusToken have launched their very own product. Its name is USD Digital ("USDD").
Is the current bearish market the reason for the market's favorable attitude toward stablecoins? The answer is most likely yes. More so since many crypto enthusiasts are put off by the fact that the authorities, like the SEC, are hesitating to clarify their stance on the issue.
Circle Crypto
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Racheal Orianele is an experienced writer, with blockchain and cryptocurrency taking up a bulk of her write-ups. Being in love with writing her whole life, she is very thrilled to be on the Altcoin Buzz team. She loves reading, traveling, and spending time with friends and family.
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Bagels, pretzels, Boo!
How to explain science Nobels
October 6, 2017 | 12:01 am
Thors Hans Hansson, a member of the Nobel Committee for Physics, uses a pretzel, a bagel, and a bun to visualize his explanations during a press conference to announce the winners of the 2016 Nobel Prize in Physics at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm on Oct. 4, 2016. -- AFP
STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN — What do a pretzel, a lock of hair, and a scream have in common? They've all been used to explain the highly complex scientific research honored with a Nobel Prize to the general public.
In recent years, the various Nobel science prize committees have gone to great lengths to make the pioneering discoveries understandable to a broad audience, occasionally finding creative and amusing ways of getting their message across.
"I think we're sometimes a little scared of being too adventurous when presenting the Nobel Prize because it's serious and important," Sven Lidin, who served for 12 years as a member of the Nobel chemistry committee, told AFP.
This year's Nobel Prize season kicked off on Oct. 2 with the medicine prize, followed by the physics prize on Oct. 3 and the chemistry prize on Oct. 4. The prizes for literature, peace and economics will be announced in the days that follow.
The tough task of conveying the prizes' significance beyond academic and scientific circles is one the various committees take seriously.
"If you're going to reach out to others than scientists then you have to make a lot of effort and also make sure it's accurate," said Mr. Lidin, who chaired the Nobel chemistry committee from 2012 to 2014.
'BOO!'
Currently a chemistry professor at Lund University, Mr. Lidin stunned the audience and elicited laughs when he shouted "Boo!" under a painting inspired by Edvard Munch's The Scream to explain the 2012 Nobel chemistry prize.
"Do you remember the last time you got really scared? The dryness of the mouth, the heart that skips a beat… These are signs that your body is getting ready for flight or fight," he said at the time.
Mr. Lidin was explaining the discovery of "G-protein–coupled receptors."
Not many people may know what they are, but they're crucial: they help our cells react to adrenaline and hormones, explaining how cardiac cells know to raise the heart rate when we are startled, for example.
And in 2014, the chemistry Nobel honored "the development of super-resolved fluorescence microscopy," according to the prize citation.
Hmmm. Once again, you're not alone if you don't know what that is.
To explain it, Mr. Lidin surprised the audience by pulling out a lock of his own hair to show how the prizewinners had laid the foundations for the development of nanoscopy, an ultra-powerful microscope that enables scientists to closely look at the inner workings of a cell, revolutionizing disease research.
"It's very important to not just make a show out of (the announcement), but to also make it relevant," he said.
'NOT TRAINED CELEBRITIES'
Thors Hans Hansson, a member of the Nobel physics committee, made headlines last year when he brought a cinnamon bun, a pretzel, and a bagel to explain the field of topology, a highly specialized mathematics field studying unusual phases or states of matter.
Referring to the two holes in the pretzel, the one hole in the bagel, and the shape of a bun, Hansson demonstrated that topology explains how a material's shape can be completely deformed into a new one without losing its core properties.
The committees are also keen to explain why the public should care about the research, providing examples of practical applications.
The G-protein-coupled receptors discovery, for instance, has led to life-changing methods for antihistamines and psychiatric medications with fewer side effects.
And for topology, the physics committee noted that it may one day yield superfast and small computers.
But the pretzel-bagel-bun example — which Mr. Hansson said was "fun" — didn't just come out of the blue.
The Nobel physics committee has a large staff of social media and web experts responsible for making sure the information they provide is comprehensible.
"We are scientists… we are not trained celebrities," Mr. Hansson said with a chuckle, adding that committee members get advice from media experts before the prize announcements.
"People give you comments: 'Is what you said understandable? Or did you go into lots of technical garbage that no-one would understand?'"
But Mr. Hansson warned that a vivid illustration should never jeopardize the prize's prestige.
Clearly, "it shouldn't be simplified to the extent that it is wrong," he stressed.
"We try to protect this (award). We want to see that every year… when people see who won this prize, they will say 'Wow, this was really something, it was really worth it'." — AFP
Nobel Award


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Home » News » Nintendo Patents Show Off New Breath Of The Wild 2 Gameplay Mechanics
Nintendo Patents Show Off New Breath Of The Wild 2 Gameplay Mechanics
Nintendo has filed patents for several new gameplay features in the Breath of the Wild 2, giving us a closer look at some of the new things that Link can do.
When Nintendo shared the first gameplay trailer for Breath of the Wild 2, fans noticed that Link could be seen performing several new moves in the trailer. It wasn't clear how much control the player had over them, but it looked like Link could phase through the ground like an Inkling, reverse time for certain objects, and free-fall through the air, similarly to Skyward Sword.
As reported by Gamereactor, Nintendo has filed patents for all three of these gameplay mechanics, revealing a little more about how they work. The first of these is the phasing through the ground move we saw Link perform, which sees him phasing through a ceiling like a reversed drop of water. The patent for this move reveals that it can be performed at any time, as long as Link can reach the top.
The second patented move is a little simpler. At one point in the trailer, we saw Link rewind the trajectory of a spiky steel ball to go back up a hill. As you might expect, the patent shows that Link can rewind time for certain objects, with the amount of time that they're reversed shown by a gauge next to Link, similarly to his own stamina meter. It's a little tough to make out exactly what items Link can reverse from the diagram, but it would make sense if it was only ones that have been in motion.
The final patented ability is the free-falling move that we saw in the trailer. Interestingly, the description that goes along with the diagram reveals that Link can fall in several different positions, such as being able to dive or fall backwards, and that Link can also shoot arrows whilst falling in this state. Link could shoot in the air in the first game, but the implication here is that air combat will be a deeper focus.


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FirstRand Targets $924 Million for Expansion in Africa – Operation in Ghana to begin 2015
FirstRand Ltd. (FSR), Africa's biggest bank by market value, is setting aside 10 billion rand ($924 million) for expansion across the continent as profit increases from regions outside its home market of South Africa.
"We've got a provisional license in Ghana and should be up and running there in early 2015," Sizwe Nxasana, chief executive officer of the Johannesburg-based bank, said by phone today. "In time we'll set up operations in Kenya and Angola."
South African and international banks are targeting expansion in west and east Africa to take advantage of accelerating economies and population growth. Robert Diamond's Atlas Mara Co-Nvest Ltd. last week increased its stake in Union Bank of Nigeria Plc after buying lenders in Botswana and Rwanda, while Qatar National Bank QSC acquired a 12.5 percent of Togo-based Ecobank Transnational Inc. (ETI) on Sept. 4.
FirstRand has representative offices in Angola and Kenya, full service operations in countries including Botswana and Zambia, and investment banking in Nigeria. While the lender last year considered buying Nigeria's Mainstreet Bank Ltd. or Keystone Bank Ltd., it now favors organic growth, Nxasana said.
Automobile financing and investment banking recorded "strong growth" outside of South Africa in the year through June, FirstRand said in its annual earnings statement today, without giving more detail.
Beating Expectations
Net income in the period rose to 18.4 billion rand, from a restated 14.8 billion rand a year earlier. Earnings per share excluding one-time items increased 22 percent to 3.36 rand, beating the 3.20 rand median estimate of 13 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg.
It was "another good set of results which were marginally ahead of our above market expectations," Greg Saffy, banks analyst at RMB Morgan Stanley, said in an e-mailed note today. "Very good topline growth is a stand out feature."
The final dividend per share was 97 cents, a 20 percent increase from 81 cents a year ago. With capital adequacy ratios above regulatory minimums, FirstRand ruled out special dividends with Nxasana saying the lender would prefer to increase payout ratios.
'Current Account'
South Africa's gap on the current account, the broadest measure of trade in goods and services, expanded to 6.2 percent of gross domestic product from 4.5 percent in the previous three months, the Reserve Bank said in its Quarterly Bulletin released today in the capital, Pretoria.
"Economic headwinds are increasing," the lender said today in a statement. "The group believes its franchises have the appropriate strategies in place to deliver good operational performances" and returns should be sustainable, it said.
FirstRand fell 2.8 percent to 45.30 rand as of 10:44 a.m. in Johannesburg trading, its biggest drop more than a month, giving the lender a market value of 255.5 billion rand.
"The earnings outlook is becoming relatively less certain," Saffy said. Results were boosted by profit not allocated to operating units and "a much higher base and tough domestic economy."
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1935 – Heavy Women Smoking Cigarettes – Vaudeville Act Takes A Break
The "Tiny Rosebuds" Take A Break From Rehearsing
We'll let the slug from this unusual news photograph describe the scene:
A Half-Ton of Terpsichore
An act which is liable to bring down the house, (with a crash), is the Tiny Rosebuds, at present rehearsing in New York for a Buffalo appearance. Membership in the troupe is restricted to young ladies weighing at least 200 pounds. Here is the troupe relaxing after a light (heavy) workout. Left to right, are: Nick Elliott, instructor: Hieni Joyce, wgt. 215: Bobbie Diamond, Captain, wgt. 210: Fannie De Belis, wgt. 201: Tiny Sinclair, wgt. 240: and Dorothy Baer, wgt. 230.
Credit Line (Acme) 5-11-1935
The headline uses the word Terpsichore, who in Greek mythology was the muse of dancing and choral singing.
So what sort of an act were the Tiny Rosebuds?
Miss Bobbie Diamond the leader of the Rosebuds, lamented in a May 1935 interview with Raphael Avellar of the New York World-Telegram, how hard it was to pick the right women for the group.
"My Tiny Rosebuds don't have to be too good looking, just passable. But they have to have the weight and you'd be surprised at the number of girls of 170 or so who try and pass for 200. It's hard, I tell you, to get a first-class girl, because lots of them who have the weight haven't got it in the right places. I mean it isn't on the legs and thighs, where it counts. As I say, as long as they are passable and know a little rhythm, they'll make good Rosebuds, providing they've got the heft. Right now I'm kind of looking for one to sing, too."
The Tiny Rosebuds had started out as part of legendary showman Billy Rose's "Small Time Cavalcade," and would do one number per show. But up in Buffalo, the Tiny Rosebuds would have three new members in their troupe, replacing three that had recently quit. They needed lots of rehearsing because they were going to be doing three numbers each show instead of just one.
Miss Diamond explained, "The first number is a tiller. That means lots of kicking; not very high kicking. The girls are dressed up in beautiful organdie with lots and lots of ruffles. It makes them look even fatter than they are around the waist but doesn't hide their legs and thighs. Then we do a classical dance in ballet costume. The last is a kewpie number. We wear Shirley Temple dresses for that one."
According to Miss Diamond the girls always got a big hand, but many in the audience made the mistake that they were a funny act.
"We're a novelty act , that's what we are," she said firmly. "I'm trying to get away from the freak show business. I want all my girls to be around the same size and not look like freaks."
Miss Diamond told of how fifteen years earlier, in 1920, she weighed 120 pounds and was in the line in burlesque. Becoming butterballish, she found herself out of a chorine's job until several years ago when she joined a troupe similar to the Rosebuds.
The World-Telegram writer Avellar noted that Diamond was "redheaded and thirtyish, and she retained despite her corpulence, an attractive face."
Miss Diamond did her bit in the line with her Rosebuds and even has a "little specialty."
"Believe it or not," she said, "I do a couple of splits and a cartwheel."
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This entry was posted in New York, Photography and tagged 1930s, Burlesque, Entertainment, New York World-Telegram, News - Press Photo, Unusual, Vaudeville on December 2, 2013 by B.P..
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Your Money, Your America
Trump team backs tougher oversight on Chinese money in America
by Donna Borak @donnaborak January 25, 2018: 10:52 AM ET
Beijing reacts to Trump's national security speech
American tech companies that raise money from Chinese investors could soon face tougher scrutiny.
Top Trump administration officials have thrown their support behind a bipartisan bill that would expand the powers of an obscure government panel that has the authority to block foreign deals that present national security concerns.
Officials from the Treasury, Commerce and Defense Departments on Thursday backed legislation that would broaden the purview of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, or CFIUS.
On Wednesday evening, the White House endorsed the legislation, saying it would strengthen national security protections.
"The digital, data-driven economy has created national security vulnerabilities never before seen," Heath Tarbert, assistant secretary of the Treasury for international markets and investment policy, said in prepared testimony to the Senate Banking Committee.
"Today, the acquisition of a Silicon Valley startup may raise just as serious concerns from a national security perspective as the acquisition of a defense or aerospace company," he said.
Related: Big tech tried to boost Washington clout in Trump's first year
The bill was introduced in November by Senators John Cornyn, a Republican from Texas, and Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat from California.
It would have the effect of subjecting Chinese investments to greater scrutiny by the U.S. government. CFIUS includes a number of U.S. agencies, including the Departments of Defense, State, Justice, Treasury and Homeland Security. The Treasury secretary chairs the panel.
Chinese investors have been pouring in more dollars to help finance startups they think may have high growth potential.
From 2010 to 2015, Chinese entities participated in 6% of U.S. venture capital deals, including startups. By 2015, that rate was 16%, according to prepared testimony by Eric D. Chewning, deputy assistant secretary of defense for manufacturing and industrial base policy for the Pentagon.
Related: Chinese company won't take over MoneyGram after failing to get U.S. approval
The Chinese government has also spent billions of dollars to become a world leader in science and technology and has shown increased interest in investing in artificial intelligence, self-driving cars and robotics, he said.
Already, the Trump administration has ratcheted up scrutiny of foreign investment deals.
In September, CFIUS stopped a Chinese-backed investor from buying Lattice Semiconductor, an American conductor company. In July, it halted a deal that would have given a Chinese company a piece of a Los Angeles company that provides in-flight Wi-Fi.
And more recently, in January, CFIUS rejected a deal for Chinese billionaire Jack Ma's Ant Financial Services Group bid to buy MoneyGram, the money-transfering service.
The bipartisan bill could add thousands of companies with foreign ties to the list that CFIUS reviews each year and provide more money to cover the costs of a bigger workload. A similar bill was introduced by Representative Robert Pittenger, a Republican from North Carolina.
The volume of cases under review by CFIUS has increased from less than 100 a year in 2009 to nearly 240 last year. Of those, more than 70% were investigated. That compares with roughly 4% of cases investigated in 2007, according to Tarbert.
Related: Trump and China: 2018 could get nasty
Chewning called the bill a "positive step" in addressing ongoing concerns, including limits on what deals CFIUS is able to review.
Under the current rules, the panel might review a foreign company's purchase of an American business close to a sensitive military base. But it would not review the a foreign company's purchase of real estate in the same place, Tarbert said.
"These gaps can lead to disparate outcomes in transactions presenting identical national security threats," Tarbert said.
And CFIUS only has the power to review certain transactions today. If a deal doesn't give a foreign company controlling interest, it's excluded from review. Certain joint ventures or transfers of technology are also excluded, Chewning said.
Officials were careful to send the message to lawmakers that reforming the process should not signal a shutout of foreign direct investment.
Tarbert also pointed to the strong economic benefits that the United States receives from foreign direct investment -- $7.6 trillion in 2016.
CNNMoney (Washington) First published January 25, 2018: 10:52 AM ET
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