text:
1 Samuel Chapter 7
Verses 1-2: Significantly, the "Ark" was not returned to Shiloh from which it had been taken into battle (4:4). Archaeological evidence suggests that Shiloh may have been destroyed in the campaigning, hence the Ark was taken to "Kirjath-jearim," situated northwest of Jerusalem, where it remained until David brought it to Jerusalem (2 Sam. 6).
1 Samuel 7:1 "And the men of Kirjath-jearim came, and fetched up the ark of the LORD, and brought it into the house of Abinadab in the hill, and sanctified Eleazar his son to keep the ark of the LORD."
The Israelites brought the ark to "Kirjath-jearim rather than to Shiloh because the Philistines had destroyed Shiloh.
The house of Abinadab in the hill is, probably, the same as Gibeah. They had an entirely different attitude. The Ark was handled with great respect by just the Levites. This Abinadab was a Levite and his son Eleazar, was sanctified to take care of the Ark.
Verses 2-4: After 20 years of silence from on high, the Israelites truly repented. Putting away the images of the "Baals and the Ashtoreths" signified their turn from idolatrous worship and back "to the Lord". Ashtoreth was the Canaanite goddess of fertility (Joshua 24:23; Judges 2:13; 10:16).
1 Samuel 7:2 "And it came to pass, while the ark abode in Kirjath-jearim, that the time was long; for it was twenty years: and all the house of Israel lamented after the LORD."
"Twenty years" (coupled with verse 3), the 20 years designated the period Israel neglected God and chased after foreign gods. After those 20 years, Israel returned to the Lord.
This was a long 20 years. It seemed the Philistines were still very powerful opponents of the Israelites. There was not a national worship going on at this time. It appears, the Ark abode there with very little worship going on. During this time, Samuel is trying to get the people to repent of their evil. There needed to be a national repentance, before the LORD would bless Israel again. They were sad and lamenting their separation from the LORD's blessings, but they were not repenting.
Verses 3-4: For "Ashtaroth" and "Balaam" (see the note on Judges 2:11-15).
1 Samuel 7:3 "And Samuel spake unto all the house of Israel, saying, If ye do return unto the LORD with all your hearts, [then] put away the strange gods and Ashtaroth from among you, and prepare your hearts unto the LORD, and serve him only: and he will deliver you out of the hand of the Philistines."
"Return unto the Lord with all your hearts … He will deliver you": This statement recalls the cycle in the book of judges: apostasy, oppression, repentance and deliverance. It previews the contents of this chapter.
It seemed that Samuel was a lone voice crying out for the nation to repent. They needed to stop lamenting and start doing what would put them in good standing with God. They still worshipped their false gods and specifically Ashteroth. They must have a total change of heart. The following is a promise to the people from God.
This is not true just for these Israelites; it is true in our day as well. God will always deliver His people, if they will put 100% of their trust in Him.
1 Samuel 7:4 "Then the children of Israel did put away Baalim and Ashtaroth, and served the LORD only."
"Baalim and Ashtaroth": Most dominant of the Canaanite pantheon, these deities were the fertility gods which plagued Israel. "Baal" and "Ashtaroth" are plurals of majesty, which signify their supreme authority over other Canaanite deities. Ashtaroth represented the female goddess, while Baal represented the male sky god who fertilized the land.
Finally it appears; they did put away their false gods and served the LORD only. Baal and Ashteroth were the national false gods of the Philistines. This in effect was a statement against the Philistines, as well as the false gods.
1 Samuel 7:5 "And Samuel said, Gather all Israel to Mizpeh, and I will pray for you unto the LORD."
"Mizpeh" (Mizpah) was a city of Benjamin in the region of Geba and Ramah about eight miles north of Jerusalem (1 Kings 15:22). Samuel assembled the Israelites for prayer at Mizpeh after the Ark of the Covenant was returned from Kirjath-jearim (verses 5-6). Saul was first presented to Israel as king at this city (10:17, 24). Mizpeh was also one of the places that Samuel visited on his annual circuit to judge Israel (verses 16-17). Mizpah was one of the sites fortified against the kings of the northern tribes of Israel by King Asa (1 Kings 15:22). After the destruction of Jerusalem (in 586 B.C.), Gedaliah was appointed governor and his residence was at Mizpah (2 Kings 25:23, 25). At this time, Mizpah became the capital of the Babylonian province of Judah. After the Babylonian captivity, Mizpah was re-inhabited by Israelites (Neh. 3:7, 15, 19).
"I will pray": Samuel was a man of prayer (7:8-9; 8:6, 12:19, 23; 15:11).
Mizpeh was up on a high hill. We said, in the verse above, to denounce the false gods of the Philistine was a revolt against the Philistines. "Mizpeh" means watch tower. This was a high area where they could see their enemy coming.
1 Samuel 7:6 "And they gathered together to Mizpeh, and drew water, and poured [it] out before the LORD, and fasted on that day, and said there, We have sinned against the LORD. And Samuel judged the children of Israel in Mizpeh."
"Drew water, and poured it out before the Lord": The pouring out of water before the Lord was a sign of repentance. This act is repeated (in 2 Sam. 23:16).
"We have sinned against the Lord": The symbol of Samuel pouring out the water and the acknowledgment of the people reveal a situation where true repentance had taken place. The condition of the heart superseded the importance or righteousness of the ritual.
"Samuel judged": At this point Samuel is introduced as the judge of Israel. His judgeship encompassed both domestic leadership and the conduct of war. The word links the text back to the last comment about Eli who judged 40 years (4:18). Samuel is known to be the one taking over Eli's judgeship. He served as the last judge before the first king (1 Sam. 8:5).
The pouring out of water symbolized a repentant heart "Poured" out in submission and personal trust before God (Psalm 62:8; Lam. 2:19). This was an act of self-denial and humility. It signified pouring out their hearts and, along with the whole burnt offering (in 7:9), complete repentance.
The "pouring out of the water" symbolized their sorrow for the sins they had committed. They fasted and dedicated themselves again to the LORD. Samuel had been a prophet and now, he is a judge of Israel. In fact, he is the last of the judges. Samuel would be their leader against the Philistines.
1 Samuel 7:7 "And when the Philistines heard that the children of Israel were gathered together to Mizpeh, the lords of the Philistines went up against Israel. And when the children of Israel heard [it], they were afraid of the Philistines."
"Israel … afraid of the Philistines": When Israel hear that the Philistines had come up against them for war, they were afraid.
The Israelites gathering at Mizpeh was so great a number of people that the Philistines heard of it and came against Israel. These Israelites still had not learned to put their total trust in the LORD. They were afraid, when they heard the Philistines were coming.
1 Samuel 7:8 "And the children of Israel said to Samuel, Cease not to cry unto the LORD our God for us, that he will save us out of the hand of the Philistines."
To whom they applied, not as the general of their forces, but as the prophet of the Lord; believing his prayers for them would be of more avail to them than an army of men so numerous, or so well equipped.
"Cease not to cry unto the Lord our God for us": He had been praying for them that day, and they desired he would continue praying for them, well knowing that the effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much. They knew their salvation was of the Lord, and that he only could save them, and that he must be sought unto for it; and as Samuel had an interest in him, they beg he would continue to make use of it on their behalf. In which they expressed their trust in God, their regard to means, the duty of prayer, and the high esteem they had of the prophet of the Lord, whom they entreat to pray for them.
"That he will save us out of the hands of the Philistines": Who were now coming up against them, and who had for a long time tyrannized over them.
They call out to God to save them. They know that Samuel is in good standing with the LORD, so they ask him to pray for them to the LORD. Their only hope is in the LORD, because the Philistines have a mighty army.
1 Samuel 7:9 "And Samuel took a sucking lamb, and offered [it for] a burnt offering wholly unto the LORD: and Samuel cried unto the LORD for Israel; and the LORD heard him."
After a lamb was eight days old, it was fit to be sacrificed to God (Exodus 22:30; Lev. 22:27).
"And offered it for a burnt-offering": For though he was not a priest, nor this place appointed for sacrifice, yet as a prophet he had authority from God to build an altar anywhere and offer sacrifices. Thus, other holy men, Gideon and Manoah, were warranted to offer extraordinary sacrifices, in places which God had not before appointed. And thus, we read of an altar he built in another place (1 Sam. 7:17), as Elijah did in following times.
"And Samuel cried unto the Lord": He made intercession with the sacrifice. So Christ intercedes in virtue of his satisfaction. And in all our prayers we must have an eye to his great oblation, depending on him for audience and acceptance.
"And the Lord heard him": Probably God answered Samuel as he did Manoah, by sending fire from heaven to consume the sacrifice, in testimony of his acceptance of it.
Notice the difference in the offering here, from when they offered the two milk cows. This was an offering, pleasing unto the LORD. The lamb was at least 7 days old or older, but was still a baby. Samuel is acting in the office of priest in this situation. He prays for the people to the LORD and the LORD hears and answers him.
1 Samuel 7:10 "And as Samuel was offering up the burnt offering, the Philistines drew near to battle against Israel: but the LORD thundered with a great thunder on that day upon the Philistines, and discomfited them; and they were smitten before Israel."
"The Lord thundered … upon the Philistines": In a literal manner, the Lord did to His enemies what was said by Hannah in her prayer (2:10).
For "thunder" as a sign of the divine presence (see the note on Judges 5:19-21; compare 1 Samuel 2:10).
We see from this, that the Philistines were almost in the camp before the lamb finished burning. The LORD brought a thunderstorm of great magnitude on the Philistines, just as they were about to enter the camp. It was probably accompanied by lightning. Many were killed, and many others turned to run. They knew this attack was from the LORD.
1 Samuel 7:11 "And the men of Israel went out of Mizpeh, and pursued the Philistines, and smote them, until [they came] under Beth-car."
To which they were encouraged by hearing or perceiving that the army of the Philistines was discomfited by the thunder, and lightning, and earthquake.
"And pursued the Philistines": Who, when they came out, were fleeing from the opening earth, and frightened with thunder and lightning, and many were killed, and all put in disorder; so that they stayed not to engage in battle with Israel, and who had nothing to do but to pursue their enemy.
"And smote them": With what weapons of war they could get at Mizpeh, and with what some might have with them for private use, and in common wear; but more especially with the weapons of the Philistines, which they in their confusion and fright had thrown away.
"Until they came under Beth-car": A place so called; "car" signifies a lamb; here might be formerly a temple dedicated to the lamb, unless it had its name in memory of the lamb Samuel now offered, which was followed with such success. Josephus calls this place Corraea; and in the Targum it is Bethsaron, which signifies a fruitful field or champaign country.
It appears the LORD had killed so many that the others headed away from the hill. Just as they did so, Samuel sent the Israelites down on them with great force. The word "under" indicates that Beth-car was a place of safety like a cave.
1 Samuel 7:12 "Then Samuel took a stone, and set [it] between Mizpeh and Shen, and called the name of it Ebenezer, saying, Hitherto hath the LORD helped us."
The Israelites recognized that their victory really came from God. A different location from the one mentioned (in 4:1 and 5:1). The name functions as the literary knot for the two ends of this unit (see note on 4:1).
"Hitherto hath the Lord helped us": This expression means that the Lord was the One responsible for getting Israel to this point. He was Israel's Sovereign One in times of both faithfulness and rebellion. He fought the battles and provided the blessings.
"Ebenezer" means help stone, or stone of help. The stone was a memorial for the help the LORD had given them in battle.
1 Samuel 7:13 "So the Philistines were subdued, and they came no more into the coast of Israel: and the hand of the LORD was against the Philistines all the days of Samuel."
"They came no more into the cost of Israel": The Lord gave Israel the victory over the Philistines, discontinuing their threat for the immediate future during Samuel's judgeship.
"All the days of Samuel": As the section opened (in 4:1), with Samuel pictured as God's agent, so here the section closed with the Lord working powerfully through all the days of Samuel.
The Philistines are not annihilated. They are subdued. In other words, they do not come against Israel again during the time of Samuel. The LORD fought for Israel while Samuel was alive.
Verses 14-17: "Amorites" is used here as a general term for all the various groups of the native Canaanite population. The Israelites at last achieved peace with both the Canaanites and Philistines, due to the godly leadership of "Samuel," Israel's last judge.
1 Samuel 7:14 "And the cities which the Philistines had taken from Israel were restored to Israel, from Ekron even unto Gath; and the coasts thereof did Israel deliver out of the hands of the Philistines. And there was peace between Israel and the Amorites."
"Ekron … unto Gath": These two cities, mentioned earlier as chief Philistine cities (5:8, 10), became the eastern border of the Philistines. The territory to the east of these cities was freed from Philistine control and returned to Israel.
"Amorites": Whereas the Philistines resided in the coastal plains, the Amorites resided in the hills west of Israel between the Jordan Valley and the coastal plain. As with the Philistines, Israel was at peace with the Amorites.
We remember these cities had been counted in the 5 most important cities of the Philistines. It perhaps means they are on the border of the Israelite territory. The Israelites and the Amorites are friendly during this time. They both have the mutual enemy of the Philistines.
1 Samuel 7:15 "And Samuel judged Israel all the days of his life."
The influence and supreme power of Samuel only ended with his life. For a very long period, probably for at least twenty years after the decisive battle of Ebenezer, Samuel, as "judge," exercised the chief authority in Israel. The time at length arrived when, convinced by clear Divine monition that it was best for the people that a king should rule over them, Samuel the seer, then advanced in years voluntarily laid down his high office in favor of the new king, Saul. But his influence remained, and his authority, whenever he chose to exercise it, seems to have continued undiminished, and on momentous occasions. See for instance (1 Sam. 15:33), we find king and nation submitting to his counsel and expressed will.
We remember that Samuel had been dedicated to the LORD by his mother Hannah, even before he was born. He stayed in the service of the LORD until his death.
1 Samuel 7:16 "And he went from year to year in circuit to Beth-el, and Gilgal, and Mizpeh, and judged Israel in all those places."
"In circuit": The circuit was an annual trip made by Samuel; he would travel to Bethel, Gilgal, Mizpah, and return once again to Ramah, which allowed him to manage the affairs of the people.
He was like the supreme judge of these people. He went from city to city, judging the things too difficult for their local leaders to decide.
1 Samuel 7:17 "And his return [was] to Ramah; for there [was] his house; and there he judged Israel; and there he built an altar unto the LORD."
"Ramah" was the name of several sites in ancient Israel, the most famous of which was known as Ramah of Ephraim. It may be identified with the Arimathea of the New Testament (Matt. 25:57; John 19:38), and with modern Rentis, about 18 miles east of Joppa and northwest of Jerusalem. This Ramah was likely the birthplace, home and burial place of the prophet Samuel (verse 17; 19:18-23, 28:3), elsewhere referred to as Ramathaim-zophim (1:1). At Ramah, the elders of Israel demanded a king (8:4-5), Saul first met Samuel (9:6, 10), and David sought refuge from Saul (19:18: 20:1).
The first major division of the book (1:1 – 7:17), ends with Samuel returning to Ramah to judge the people.
Ramah was the home of his father and mother. His father Elkanah had been wealthy and owned much land. It appears that some of the inheritance went to Samuel and he lived in Ramah. He built an altar there on his own land it seems. He built a home and lived in Ramah. Samuel lived his entire life in the service of the LORD. We do not read of Samuel doing anything which would be displeasing to the LORD
1 Samuel Chapter 7 Questions
1. Where did the men come from to get the Ark?
2. What is, probably, the same as Gibeah?
3. How was the Ark handled?
4. Who was sanctified to take care of the Ark?
5. How long did the Ark remain in Kirjath-jearim?
6. The house of Israel lamented for the _________.
7. Who is trying to get the people to repent, and turn to the LORD?
8. What was the main thing they must do, to show they have turned to the LORD?
9. What were the names of the two false gods they did put away?
10. Turning from these false gods was a statement against the _______________.
11. Where did Samuel tell them to gather all Israel?
12. What does the name mean?
13. What did they do at Mizpeh, in the way of worship?
14. What did the pouring out of the water symbolize?
15. __________ would be their leader against the Philistines.
16. What did the Philistines do, when they heard about Israel meeting at Mizpeh?
17. How did the Israelites feel, when they knew the Philistines were coming?
18. What did they ask Samuel to do for them?
19. What did Samuel sacrifice to the LORD?
20. Samuel is acting in the office of _________ here.
21. What did the LORD do to fight for Israel?
22. What does "Ebenezer" mean?
23. Who became friends with Israel?
24. How long did Samuel judge Israel?
25. What did Samuel judge?
26. Where did Samuel return home to?
27. Samuel got his land from _____________.
1 Samuel Chapter 2 Continued
1 Samuel Chapter 10
1 Samuel Chapter 14 Continued


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Pachter: Spring 2014 Launch For Next Xbox Ideal For Microsoft
Alex Osborn Wednesday, June 20, 2012
Industry analyst Michael Pachter is at it again, this time tapping into his inductive powers of reasoning to shed light on the probable release date of the next Xbox. In an interview with Xbox 360 Magazine, Pachter explained that an Xbox 720 launch during the spring of 2014 would be the wisest move for Microsoft, and one that he believes the company will make.
"If I were a betting man (and I am), I would say a spring 2014 launch makes more sense, since hard core Xbots could get a console without having to compete with moms buying gifts at holiday, and it is likely that they won't manufacture more than a few million units for launch."
The Wedbush Securities analyst went on to add that the recently announced SmartGlass is a clear sign of what is to come with the next Microsoft console. "It's pretty clear to me that Microsoft intends to allow the Xbox 720 to function as a cable TV box, allowing cable television service providers to broadcast over the Internet through the box, with SmartGlass as the remote controller, and with the Xbox 720 using Windows 8 to split the TV signal into multiple feeds, allowing consumers to divert different channel feeds to different displays within the home," he said.
There's no denying that Microsoft is intent on making the next Xbox the de facto central hub for all of your living room entertainment, and Pachter believes a subscription-based model that blends the current offerings of Xbox Live with an added television service is the next step.
"There are 85 million households in the U.S. with either cable or satellite TV, and if Microsoft could sell half of them an Xbox 720 and collect a $5 monthly Xbox Live Gold fee from each of them, we're talking huge profits. This suggests to me (along with the current $99 Xbox 360 financing plan) that Microsoft will seek to get a cable TV provider to subsidize the cost of the box, meaning that we might see an Xbox 720 for $99, if the customer commits to a cable TV subscription for two years."
Tags: Michael Pachter, next-gen, Xbox One

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
#pubarchMEDfin
Archaeological practice and society in the Mediterranean
LET'S TRY TO SOLVE SOME DOUBTS
So, now it is over, what?
The conference might be over, but the project and the debates are still on. You can still see all the presentations in this web and there will be a publication in AP Journal in the fall of 2021 (SV4). So keep an eye on us and carry on working for a better archaeology!
What is #pubarchMED about?
#pubarchMED – Public Archaeology in the Mediterranean Context, is a project conducted by Jaime Almansa-Sánchez from the Institute of Heritage Sciences (CSIC, Spain) and funded by Xunta de Galicia postdoctoral program.
Its main goal is to make a comparative study of Mediterranean archaeological heritage management through an ethnographic approach that focuses on the relation between archaeology and people. It has different lines, but the overall goal is to better understand and make visible work conducted in/from the Mediterranean and try to offer creative solutions for our common challenges based on the experiences of the different countries and the complex configuration of our management models.
It is a large complex goal for so little time, but it is understood as a big funding stone for future research, offering resources, information and tools that can help other colleagues delve into details and improve practice in their specific spheres.
Most of the resources will be available after the conference, as it takes time to compile, analyze and publish, but everything will be open access available on this web and the repository of the institution, Digital CSIC.
Why a (digital) conference?
One of the commitments acquired was to organize a closing event for the project. There was no specific funding for it, so the travel restrictions of Covid-19 gave us the opportunity to make something bigger and more inclusive.
And what is this conference about? It does not sound very conventional…
Is about the main lines of the project. The title: Archaeological practice and society in the Mediterranean, is broad enough to include different approaches to the general topic of archaeological heritage management.
The main goal is to be as inclusive and accessible as possible, so the whole format in designed in a way it is very easy to participate, not very time consuming and fostering participation through open channels.
The conference is for those people from the Mediterranean countries (see map) who work in public archaeology and/or archaeological heritage management. But also for people from elsewhere who work in the Mediterranean on these topics.
—Hi, I'm Cypriot but currently working in Germany, can I participate?
—If your contribution is about a Mediterranean country, or generally theoretical, yes. If it is about a project in Germany or elsewhere in the world, no… sorry. But feel free to pass by and attend.
—Hi, I'm Venezuelan, but have been working in Algeria for a while now…
—If your contribution is about your work in Algeria, welcome!
Will everything have to be in English?
There are over a dozen languages plus dialects in the Mediterranean, so as much as we would love to understand all of them, it is not the case. This is why we chose to use English as vehicular language for the conference. However, for the written essays you can use your own language, and if you need assistance for the photoessays, we can help. Don't feel this as a burden.
Also, during the gatherings, we will allow rooms in different languages if some people want to do it and technology allows.
What options of participation do I have?
There are three main options for contributions (see details of how they work in the links):
Twitter photo essays
Instagram photo essays
Poster essays
They will all be published later on in a special volume of AP Journal.
But you can also participate attending the round tables and speaking in the debate, coming to the gatherings and meeting other people, or taking part in the edit-a-ton of bibliography we will have these days… You decide your degree of involvement.
Check this quick visual guide to submit your proposal.
Also, a short visual guide on how to prepare yout Twitter photoessay; your Instagram photoessay; or your poster (although this one is less visual)
Can I submit more than one proposal?
Yes, but keep in mind this means more work for you (and for us, but it is fine).
What if I do not have Twitter or Instagram?
Do not worry, contact us and we will provide the platform. But think about doing the poster instead… If you don't have Twitter or Instagram you won't be able to follow up any comment.
What if I don't have a reliable internet connection?
That's an issue when dealing with an online event, but we will try to find a way to make it easy for you. This is indeed one of the reasons of the format… so you can send your contribution beforehand and do not rely on a poor internet. Tell us if you need to schedule the post beforehand, or we can be of any help (even post on your behalf).
For the live events there is not much we can do… still, we are considering recording the round tables and we will try to have the gatherings in different times and days, so you can always find a moment to pass by. Indeed, if there is people around and willing to stay and speak, we are even happy to keep them on for a very long time.
Can I write a 2.000-words essay if I submit for the photoessays instead of the posters?
We prefer to keep the photoessays as such, because of the performative effect of the images (and the kind of contributions we are looking for). Still, if you give us good reasons for it, we can consider it.
What is an edit-a-tone?
I guess you all know Wikipedia… as a collaborative resource, it is built by the community of contributors. They started events called 'edit-a-thon' to edit a ton of pages and improve the quality of the platform and its content.
For this project, Jaime and Pedro compiled a good bibliography of public archaeology and archaeological heritage management in the Mediterranean with over 1.000 references. However, we are sure there is still a lot to include. So, besides offering the resource for everyone, we wanted to invite you all to propose new references to include, especially those in your own languages.
We will have a specific event for that, but this is open and you can propose and contribute beforehand… just explore the Zotero and write Jaime.
What are the gatherings about?
The gatherings are about meeting each other, sharing our work and worries and have a relaxing cup of café con leche in Plaza Mayor (as a former Madrid major said during the speech for the 2020 Olympics bid).
Jokes apart, this is a networking event. We will try to have the room open as much as possible so people can pass by, ask each other about the work submitted and other worries, keep debating the topics of the round tables, solving the problems of the world and forget for a minute we are mostly confined and the last months were quite horrible.
We are working in the possibility (technical) of having different rooms, so you can speak in smaller groups, or in your own language if you wish.
How will the round tables work?
There will be 4 round tables. Times/days will be announced later on.
Each round table has 3-4 guest speakers from all around the Mediterranean. We will have 4 general topics on which they will comment, and after that there will be time for discussion, open to all (with preference to the guests), in 90 seconds slots of time. The moderator will control this and silence those who pass it.
The goal is to have dynamic and fluid debates where a lot of people can participate. We are not setting a time limit for the whole thing, but let's try to keep it under 2 hours unless the debate gets super interesting.
What do I get out of this?
Nobody forces you to take part… this is not a conventional conference, but a place to meet and share. Still… it is a conference, and it will be published in an indexed journal.
How will the publication work?
The arrangement is to have a special volume in AP: Online Journal in Public Archaeology. An open access journal edited by Jaime and with some colleagues as part of the committee, that does not charge publication fees and it is indexed in Scopus.
It will include both the photoessays and the short essays, as well as a final piece by Jaime about the project.
The distribution will be by topic and area, depending on the final amount of submissions. The members of the committee will co-edit it, so we can be able to handle any amount of contributions and the different languages of the Mediterranean basin.
Further details will be shared after the call closes.
Is it free?
YES. Both the conference and the publication are completely free of charge.


text:
Q: Testing functions through I/O in Haskell I'm playing codewars to sharpen my Haskell skills, and running into a problem that I haven't had in imperative languages.
Let's say I'm writing a function foo() in javascript, which takes an int, adds two, squares it, subtracts one, and returns the square root of that number.
var foo = function(n) {
  n += 2;
  n = n * n;
  n -= 1;
  n = Math.sqrt(n);
}

I want to check on the state of the data being processed in the function at various points to help me troubleshoot/revise/debug code, so I will insert console.log() statements whenever I want to see where I'm at.  For example, am I, in fact, squaring the sum of n+2 correctly halfway through the function?  Let's see...
var foo = function(n) {
  n += 2;
  n = n * n;
  console.log("n = " + n);
  n -= 1;
  n = Math.sqrt(n);
}

While this example should be simple enough for a Haskeller to write in one line, if you have a complex function and want to check the state at different points, how do Haskellers do it?  Is there a standard practice using the IO() monad?  Do they get around it some other way?

A: GHCi has a fancy debugger that lets you step through your code and evaluate it line by line, checking it's state and intermediary results.
But, of course, there is also the printf-style debugging that you are asking for, using the trace function from Debug.Trace. Nothing wrong with using that for small scripts imho, but it's generally discouraged.
trace has the type String -> a -> a, so you pass a string that gets printed (via unsafePerformIO) and any argument that gets simply returned.

In your example we could use it as follows. This is your function translated to Haskell:
foo x = sqrt $ (x+2)**2 - 1

Now we can just add trace and the string we want to see, e.g. "Debug Me: " ++ (show ((x+2)**2)). First import Debug.Trace, though:
import Debug.Trace
foo x = sqrt $ (trace ("Debug Me: " ++ (show ((x+2)**2))) ((x+2)**2)) - 1

A bit ugly? Following David Young's comment below, we better use traceShowId :: Show a => a -> a, if what we want to output is identical to the intermediary result (converted to String, of course):
import Debug.Trace
foo x = sqrt $ (traceShowId ((x+2)**2)) - 1

See here for a summary of debugging options.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


text:
KETOS Solution
Smart Water Intelligence Platform
KETOS For Ag, Food, & Beverage
KETOS For Industrial
KETOS For Municipalities
Produced Water
Effluent / Wastewater
How New Clean Water Regulations May Impact Water Operations
Steve Shaffer
Recently, environmental attorney Brent Fewell and former congressional staffer and policy advisor Joe Britton joined KETOS CEO Meena Sankaran to discuss impending clean water regulations on industrial, agricultural, and municipal water operations.
You can view the entire webinar here:
As mentioned in the webinar, transformative work in the areas of regulation and legislation has already begun in the first half of 2021.
Regulatory Clean Water Regulations and Priorities of the Biden Administration
Many American communities are struggling to maintain their water systems. This water infrastructure crisis impacts thousands of public water systems – many of which are in a state of non-compliance. This non-compliance raises health concerns, particularly around lead contamination and drinking water safety, leading the current administration to focus on bridging the divide between community needs and the costs.
Likely, there will be greater focus on compliance in three main areas and will ultimately lead to more attention being paid to water quality: regulation, legislation, and environmental justice.
With climate change driving drought in the west and climate impacts expected to increase in the years to come, more attention and focus will likely lead to more compliance and regulatory oversight. Recently, the Water Resources Development Act was passed, and additional ongoing negotiations are underway with the goal of including water into a bipartisan infrastructure agreement.
As proof of the government's commitment to water quality, conservation, and access to safe, clean water – earlier this year, the bipartisan $35 Billion Drinking Water and Wastewater Infrastructure bill was passed to focus specifically on water infrastructure priorities. Other legislators, such as Katko and Bourdeaux have introduced other legislation that prioritizes remote intelligent water monitoring to protect water quality and water resources across various communities.
Low Income and Rural Communities Are No Longer Being Ignored
Approximately 54,000 public water systems exist in rural areas, and of those smaller systems, 86% are in communities of 10,000 or less. In the coming months and years, there's likely to be a real focus on these communities as they face aging infrastructure and its impact on public health and water quality. Often, it is these disadvantaged communities that don't have the resources needed to ensure water safety. Congress, as of late, is becoming conscious of that, when proposing legislation. In addition, they must be sure to direct funds to SRFs (State Revolving Funds) so that individual states can best decide how to use the capital for the benefit of the most at-risk communities.
As funds get allocated, infrastructure will not only be rebuilt in rural and disadvantaged communities but upgrades will also likely include 21st-century technologies that include smart devices that allow for remote monitoring.
Automated Water Quality Testing vs EPA Regulatory Frameworks
There is a genuine desire to move towards new technologies that ensure the integrity of water. The EPA has shown interest in moving quickly to utilize technological advances to protect communities and water resources more effectively. That said, the EPA also still has many rules and procedures in place that are geared towards traditional laboratory testing and manual sampling. Automated sampling is a new paradigm that, while being embraced, also requires removing regulatory barriers that have made its integration into systems move slower than necessary.
However, automated testing is the future, and the EPA seems encouraged by its capabilities and potential. Many utilities and organizations are aware they need to collect a certain amount of samples to ensure proper data collation. They understand that collecting these samples can prove water safety and ensure they are meeting EPA requirements. However, traditional collection methods are expensive and become even more so with more testing. This isn't the case with automated sampling, which is not only less labor-intensive, it's also cheaper and does not cost more should an organization wish to test more often. It could also create subsidies for utilities that have increased frequency of testing thus enabling greater visibility and proactive action on water discharge into the environment.
Once more automated solutions become mainstream, communities will encounter fewer barriers to entry. Right now, it's the regulations that need to catch up with the technology, as the technology is already there to help communities effectively monitor their water for pennies on the dollar.
Clean Water Regulations: After 50 Years, Look Out For an EPA Policy Shift
There's a general acknowledgment on every level of business and government that technology has leapt forward while government regulation has lagged behind. As new technologies, however, have proven capable of ensuring public health, the EPA has begun to take note.
There's also cost-effectiveness inherent in adopting technology. As the EPA increases regulatory burdens and adds more chemical and contaminant monitoring requirements to the mix, the pushback in terms of hard costs comes from more sampling more often. The burden of sampling will grow, and, over time, the EPA will have to recognize that the cost of monitoring additional contaminants needs to be reckoned with. The recent focus on PFAS and the addition of boron, manganese are some examples of new additions.
Many communities simply can't afford the additional costs of wastewater, drinking water, and stormwater sampling. Leaning into technology will help make sampling possible and dramatically draw down prices for these communities while simultaneously raising accuracy and accountability. As data management becomes top of mind for several end-users and staying current on NPDES permits is of utmost importance, procedures that regulators create or allow for, should help users comply with ease of operations.
If you're ready to integrate a solution that helps you better anatomize your data, KETOS is here to help. Our KETOS Shield technology can deliver laboratory-quality results (across 30+ parameters) – giving your organization the power to analyze results and act on what you see in real-time. Contact us today and schedule a demo.
How Covid-19 is Accelerating Digital Transformation and Automation in the Water Industry
Net-Positive Water Usage: Data Centers and Tech Companies Committing to Change
How KETOS CEO Meena Sankaran Built a Culture of Trust
KETOS Featured in Environmental Business Journal
Lead and Copper Rule Revisions
What Water Quality Parameter Do You Test Most Often?
The KETOS SHIELD remotely monitors over 30 water quality parameters. Which one do your water operators test most often?
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text:
"Acende o Fogo" é um single do cantor brasileiro Davi Sacer, lançado em junho de 2017.

Canção de trabalho do álbum DNA (2017), foi anunciada com antecedência por Sacer, e estreia sua parceria com André Cavalcante na produção musical. Paralelamente ao lançamento da música, também foi liberada uma versão em videoclipe, gravada no Rio de Janeiro e com direção de Bruno Bennec. Para gravar o clipe, o músico e sua equipe tiveram que percorrer uma trilha, que desafiou, em termos de saúde, o cantor, que teve paralisia infantil enquanto criança.

Faixas

Canções em português
Canções do Brasil
Canções gravadas por Davi Sacer
Singles de 2017
Singles lançados pela Som Livre

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


text:
Drug Prices on TV? They May Be Coming.
in: Political News, Politics
Two powerful lobbies, the National Association of Broadcasters and the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, contend that the disclosure requirement would be a form of "compelled speech" in violation of the First Amendment. Their comments on the proposed rule provide a road map for possible lawsuits challenging the mandate.
The required disclosure of list prices has no rational connection to the government's stated goal of reducing drug prices paid by Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries, said Rick Kaplan, an executive vice president of the broadcasters association.
James C. Stansel, the top lawyer at the drug makers lobby known as PhRMA, said there were "other, much less intrusive ways to make cost information available to patients." For example, he said, Congress could authorize the Medicare agency to disclose list-price data itself, along with cost-sharing information for beneficiaries, on a government-sponsored website.
When the White House issued a "blueprint to lower drug prices" with several dozen ideas last year, it directed the Food and Drug Administration to consider requiring drug makers to include list prices in advertising. The agency has clear legal authority to regulate drug ads, but it is not issuing the new rule. Rather, it was drafted by the Centers for Medicare and Services.
The Trump administration says this is justified because the agency that runs Medicare and Medicaid is "the single largest drug payer in the nation."
But its authority is sure to be challenged. Federal law "delegates regulatory power over prescription drug advertising to F.D.A., not C.M.S.," Mr. Stansel said. Both agencies are part of the Health and Human Services Department.
The drug industry is poised to roll out an alternative to Mr. Trump's plan. PhRMA companies say they will voluntarily include information in TV ads directing viewers to company websites that provide data on list prices, typical out-of-pocket costs and sources of financial assistance for patients who need it. With many drugs now costing more than $50,000 a year, many people do need assistance.
Tags:comingprices
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In 2017 I attended a subsidised self-funded residency at Cove Park to work on ideas for a new play. An extract from this play, The Future is Mine, was read in April 2017 at The Actor's Temple in London, and the play was shortlisted for the Introduce Yourself Festival at Finborough Theatre in 2018.
I love theatre that provokes, questions and imaginatively explores the human experience. The stage can take you anywhere.
Audiences have described my work as surreal, lyrical, brave, beautiful and magic realist in style. I like to take the audience on an adventure delving into complex stories, treating them in an imaginative way.
My plays have been performed at New Diorama Theatre, King's Head Theatre, Theatre503, Omnibus Theatre, Brockley Jack Studio Theatre, Camden People's Theatre and The Actor's Temple. Check out my plays here.


Laura Facey has two works in the Jamaica Biennal 2017: one, Ceiba, is on view at the National Gallery of Jamaica in downtown Kingston; the other, Bumpy Top Desk and Mirror, can be seen at Devon House. The Biennial continues at all locations until May 28.
Laura Facey was born in 1954, in Kingston, Jamaica. She attended the Jamaica School of Art where she attained a Diploma in Sculpture, 1975. She also attended the West Surrey College of Art and Design in England and the Rhode Island School of Design, USA. Facey is best known as a sculptor but also works in other media, such as drawing, painting and printmaking. In recent times, she turned her attention to large meditative pieces that explore the symbolic and cultural potential of natural wood forms and human tools and instruments. She has exhibited extensively locally and internationally. Her work as been featured in major publications such as the Small Axe journal and her many commissions include the famed Redemption Song (2003) monument in Emancipation Park, Kingston. Her awards include the Silver Musgrave Medal (2006) and the Aaron Matalon Award for her entry in the 2010 National Biennial. In 2014, she was conferred with the Order of Distinction (Commander Class) by the Government of Jamaica. Facey lives in St Ann, Jamaica.
Artists who participate in the Jamaica Biennial qualify for two awards. One is the National Gallery of Jamaica's own Aaron Matalon Award; the other is the Dawn Scott Memorial Award, which is the private initiative of the New York-based art critic Edward M. Gómez. Both awards will be announced at the main opening function of the Biennial, at the National Gallery of Jamaica, on Sunday, February 26. This opening function starts at 1:30 pm. Edward Gómez will be in attendance to present the Dawn Scott Memorial award.
The Aaron Matalon Award is granted to the artist who, in the opinion of the combined Exhibitions and Acquisitions committees of the National Gallery made the most outstanding contribution to the Biennial. The award is named after the National Gallery's late Chairman and benefactor, the Hon. Aaron Matalon, O.J. Awardees receive a unique medal, hand-crafted by the noted Jamaican jeweller Carol Campbell, and a monetary award of $ 100,000. Artists who have won the Aaron Matalon Award in the past are: Omari Ra, Renee Cox, Norma Rodney Harrack, Phillip Thomas, Laura Facey, Jasmine Thomas-Girvan and, most recently, Ebony G. Patterson.
The Hon. Aaron Matalon O.J. and Marjorie Matalon at the NGJ in the company of the Rt. Hon. P.L Patterson, the then Prime Minister of Jamaica, in 1999.
Aaron Matalon, an impassioned philanthropist and supporter of the arts, was not only the National Gallery's Chairman for many years, but also one of its most generous donors. In 1999, Aaron Matalon and his wife Marjorie presented the National Gallery with its largest and arguably its most significant donation thus far. This gift consisted of 218 items, ranging from rare early maps of Jamaica and the Caribbean, early prints and photographs, and a wide, carefully selected group of modern Jamaican art works that filled many gaps in the National Gallery's collection. This collection is now known as the Aaron and Marjorie Matalon Collection and is extensively used in the National Gallery's temporary and permanent exhibitions.
The Dawn Scott Memorial Award is granted to an artist whose work in the Biennial reflects the inquisitive and innovative spirit, fine craftsmanship and independent thinking that characterised the late Dawn Scott's approach to art-making. Edward Gómez created the Dawn Scott Memorial Award in 2014 and personally selects the recipient(s). The first award in 2014 was shared between two young artists, Camille Chedda and Kimani Beckford. A monetary prize of US$ 500 is attached to the award.
The multifaceted body of work of the influential Jamaican artist, teacher and environmental activist Alison Dawn Scott (1951-2010) encompassed drawing, painting, sculpture, architectural design and sophisticated batik fabric-dyeing techniques. Scott's art often evoked timely, even controversial social-cultural and political themes. Her ground-breaking mixed-media installation, A Cultural Object (1985), which is now in the National Gallery of Jamaica's permanent collection, is made from found materials from the street, calling attention to issues of class, race, cultural history and everyday economics with a sense of drama and psychological intensity that challenged a viewer's sense of reality. It remains an urgent, powerful work of art today. Edward Gómez lived and worked in Jamaica as a cultural attaché at the U.S. Embassy in Kingston in the 1980s and became a close friend of Dawn Scott at that time. Since then, he has maintained close ties to Jamaica and its arts community. He has published numerous articles and essays about Jamaican artists, including the legendary Intuitives, which helped introduce their achievements to broad, international audiences.
The National Gallery of Jamaica is pleased to announce that Jasmine Thomas-Girvan, jeweller and sculptor, has been awarded the 2012 Aaron Matalon Award. The Aaron Matalon award is presented at each biennial to the artist who in the opinion of a jury comprised of the members of the Exhibitions and Acquisitions Committees of the National Gallery of Jamaica has made the most outstanding contribution to the biennial. Jasmine Thomas-Girvan is represented by two mixed media sculptures: Dreaming Backwards, a wall-based assemblage, and Occupy (Alchemy of Promise), which is freestanding.


DNRGPS is an Open Source update to the popular DNRGarmin application. It provides users the ability to transfer data between handheld GPS receivers and GIS software. Users will be familiar with most of the functions in DNRGPS because they were also found in DNRGarmin.
This program integrates GIS Software (ESRI's ArcMap, Google Earth) with GPS units. It uses a C# program that interacts with the GPS via a serial/USB port allowing GIS users to transfer Waypoints, Tracks, and Routes from a GPS to ArcMap or Google Earth and store them as points, lines or polygons. Information can also be uploaded from various FILE TYPES to the GPS and used as waypoints, tracks, or routes.
DNR GPS can also be used to perform real-time tracking with your GPS and GIS. Connected to a laptop computer with ArcMap, a Garmin GPS can be a valuable tool for locating oneself and for interactive data collection.
© Copyright 2011, Minnesota Department of Natural Resources. Created using Sphinx 1.1.2.


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text:
Book Launch with Wen-You Cai at Printed Matter
In January 2020, Printed Matter bookstore hosted a book launch with Wen-You Cai for her new book Rooster, Tiger, Sheep by Snake and the second edition of her book When You Make No Art.
Wen-You Cai was joined by multidisciplinary artists Tim Simonds and Lu Zhang to discuss how collaboration feeds their work, how they choose and identify who they want to work with to develop their ideas, and how ideas develop their community. Their conversation spanned their individual practices along with a tour through the projects that have emerged through Special Special.
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As Wen-You has developed Special Special, it has become a platform that attracts all sorts of creative ideas and personalities. Curating projects and collaborating with artists at Special Special has a similar discipline to the curation of her photography to create a cohesive collection as she has done in Rooster, Tiger, Sheep by Snake, and the recollection of past stories as a way to make sense of them in the present in When You Make No Art.
WY (Wen-You Cai)
LZ (Lu Zhang)
TS (Tim Simonds)
TS: I'm Tim, I'm an artist who's worked with Wen-You, and Lu.
LZ: We've both worked together.
TS: We are going to talk through two books that will be released at Printed Matter. One is When You Make No Art. The second is newer in some ways, older in other ways, Rooster, Tiger, Sheep, by Snake, which is a book of photos in concert with an exhibition that opened in October in Macau, and is still on view. We will talk about these two books, then we will extend that into the collaboration that we have done together, and also the space Special Special that Wen-You runs. I hope that we can get to a point where we can bring some context to Special Special's curatorial project. Wen-You, can you start by talking about this book?
WY: Thank you Tim for your wonderful introduction, thank you all for joining us today to talk about our projects and our shared collaborations, and how collaboration is a big part of my practice. We decided to mash the titles of the two books together, just half an hour ago in our conversation. You will understand why as we continue.
First we will go through the photo book, Rooster, Tiger, Sheep, by Snake. This is a recent release of photographs collected over twelve years, that I've taken of three members of my family. Rooster is my father, Tiger is my mum, heep is my sister, and Snake is myself. They are taken from 2006 to 2018. The photos are currently being exhibited at MGM Cotai in Macau, inside a hotel and casino that has an arts and culture program. They've invited me to do a photography exhibition there, on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the Macau handover back to China. What drew me to this concept is that I've always been drawn to photography from a young age, but I wasn't able to be comfortable in front of the camera for a long time. Over the years, as I kept taking photos of my family, I saw them as very photogenic. So it's an investigation of my photogenic family, and trying to understand what that means from behind the lens. As a family, we travelled around the world together, and I liked to catch candid moments. And there are captions of little stories behind the photographs and vignettes.
This is on Chinese New Year in 2014. Throughout the photographs, there are moments that are more performative, and ones that are more candid. This one is a family funeral. I like to capture the environment as things occur. As we dressed in funerary costumes for my great-grandmother's funeral, there are little children that are going to the swimming pool in similar outfits and colors. These are more performative moments, but I'm mostly just capturing my family's natural state of the play. Throughout the photos, you see my sister, who's 13 years younger than me, grow up in front of the camera. My parents look more or less the same, but my sister becomes a timestamp. The book is in chronological order, there's also artistic elements of my father, who's an artist, and my sister, who's also cultivating her artistic side, and how that plays out in the dynamic of the family. And my family's an artistic family.
Through the collection, I'm not shown in any of the images, except this one, where you can see me in the flash, and in another one, where you see my leg. I wanted to make myself not present, but I am also present in the composition, my participation, and the interaction between the family members. This is the exhibition in Macau. I wanted to display it in a salon style manner, against blue walls because it's not a traditional gallery space, it's at a casino, in a space that used to be a jewelry store. In order to house these works, which are very intimate, I wanted people to come in and experience the rigor of memory in a way that I see them. There are some that are chronological, but there are also mish-mashes of time. And this is my family looking at the photographs.
There are also moments of our family visits in artistic environments. This is taken at the Uffizi Gallery. We are all nurtured and cultivated by the art that is surrounding us, as well as creating art at the same time. In the exhibition at Macau, this photograph is displayed in a lightbox in front of the casino entrance, so framing the image in a completely out-of-context environment. I was interested in presenting art in an environment that's not for people who are there to look at art. I wanted to make art accessible to everybody. So for people who are there to gamble, on vacation, or shopping, I wanted them to come and see intimate moments of our family. So what's really exciting is that a lot of the people who came and saw the show were usually on solo trips, completely un-family related trips, but they saw their own families in the exhibition.
Now we move to When We Make No Art.
TS: Let me ask you. This is published in 2019, and When We Make No Art was originally published in Chinese in 2015.
WY: I had written it from 2012 to 2014, right after I graduated college. The English version was produced in 2016. It was originally in a limited edition of 300 printed in yellow. Thanks to Printed Matter, I had sold out of the yellow copy. So I've re-editioned them in green.
TS: Before we go three years back in time. One simple question to ask is why you choose to refer to your family members by the zodiac sign. I don't know if it's related to not wanting to show yourself in the photographs. Is there a connection between the two? And how do you think about the zodiac names?
WY: I wanted this to be relatable to many people. Coming from a Chinese family, a lot of Chinese people ask you which animal are you, upon introduction. I wanted the book to be not so much about who my family is, I wanted the photographs to demonstrate a family of four people, one of them unseen, and show how we interact with each other. Another element to the zodiac is also that a lot of people like to instill characteristics into zodiac signs, like horoscopes. There are different associations with each animal. I was hoping by naming my family after zodiac animals, that it would be more accessible, and that it would keep people guessing, and create a dialogue, in which they might not know who this person is previously, but associate them with their zodiac traits and understand them.
LZ: I have a related question. The whole story in the book...The Tiger is the mom, the Rooster is the father. How do you see yourself within those relationships?
WY: There are little stories attached to the photographs. But I don't use the individuals' names, I use the animals. In some ways, people can guess based on that. In the beginning, it can be unclear. And I do instill a family hierarchy in the beginning, by calling my father as Rooster, my mother as Tiger, and my younger sister as Sheep. But as you look through the book, the hierarchy gradually disappears, and we are just representing animals in the Chinese zodiac. I'm trying to break free of the expectations that people have of the animals, and especially when they see this book and recognize my father as a famous artist. These photographs depict a completely different aspect than what people may originally have thought.
TS: And by expectations, you mean the image through which your family would have been known otherwise?
WY: I wanted the book to be mainly about a family dynamic, and truthfully show candid moments in our family that people might not otherwise now. We are very humorous, we travel a lot, and are very close. From the perspective of how someone might perceive a famous artist, or our lifestyle.
LZ: I often don't see you in the photographs, you appear only in the flash in the book's cover photo. I'm very curious about how you discovered yourself through this process.
WY: That's a good question. In both this book, and also in When You Make No Art, it's about trying to figure out where my place is within our family structure. In life, we are always trying to do that regardless. Our family is a big part of what shapes us in our day to day. These two books stem through a long period of time: Rooster, Tiger, Sheep, By Snake spans 12 years, and When You Make No Art spans my upbringing until I was 24. It's an investigation of who I am, and each photograph depicts moments of happiness, sadness, and other types of information.
LZ: Why did you choose photography?
WY: I chose photography because I can't draw. I like to use something that's instantaneous. Most of these were taken with a point-and-shoot camera. I wanted to do something that was quick. Most of them were film too, as it's a format that creates an object, as opposed to digital photography, where I often lose track of where the files go. Film is more artistic in quality. So I gravitated towards photography as an instant way to make art, as a "reluctant artist", as I say in my bio.
TS: That seems to be the perfect transition to talk about When You Make No Art. At the end of the book, you have this realization that maybe you are a reluctant artist. Can you expand on that?
WY: WYMNA is a book of different stories of my upbringing relating to art, and also not relating to art. It's about my family, my education in art school, growing up in general, and trying to find a sense of purpose. This photograph was taken when I was 5 years old. I had an album back in 1995, and each roll would be printed. I would pick a photo from each roll. I was working with an artist who wanted to capture the world from a child's eyes. She gave me film and processed it for me. I would also write captions for them. When I was writing the book, I went back to this photo and found it very interesting. This is a project that my father did, Century of Mushroom Cloud. It's a photo of him igniting a mushroom cloud out of his hand. In the real image that he used, it didn't show the ladder. But at 5 years old, I took a photo of the setup behind-the-scene, which broke the illusion of the image. I noticed later on that I took a selfie at the same spot. It's also interesting because the Twin Towers still existed in the back, it dates the image and stamps myself in the context of history.
TS: Can you speak to the context of the images in terms of the book?
WY: I don't really have one answer to that. I think the context is that people can enter into reading this book, and perhaps understand the perspective I'm writing from, which is that at the age of 5, I did create something artistic, and it was the beginning of my artmaking. From there, I kept walking on a path that deviated from artmaking, but kept coming back to it.
LZ: I noticed that the title of the first chapter is that Museums Are An Awfully Lonely Place to Grow Up. How would you describe the relationship you have to museums, art, and artmaking? Why are museums so awful?
WY: It's not awful. It's just an awfully lonely place. It contributed to my sensibilities. Today, I operate a storefront space called Special Special. And it's a shop and gallery, and I work with a lot of artists. My upbringing in museums, felt like a lot of things were not very accessible. The context is that I grew up in museums during its after-hours. The visitors would have left and I would be alone. A place with not a lot of other people and no children to play with. So I was alone a lot of the time. That helped create a sensibility in which I didn't want to leave art, but wanted to make it a more engaging environment.
TS: Just for people who don't know, can you talk about why it is that you grew up in museums? To give some context.
WY: My father, who is here today, his name is Cai Guo-Qiang. He's a contemporary artist who's had exhibitions at MoMA, the Whitney, the Guggenheim, and all the major museums in New York and around the world. Throughout my life, he has been working as an artist.
LZ: When were you born? And how did you get to New York?
WY: I was born in Japan. My father was a grantee of the Asian Cultural Council residency program. We came when I was 5 years old.
LZ: When I was reading the first chapter, I felt that I was taken to a very intimate place. Instead of approaching art in a conventional art historical way, you have your own personal way of understanding art. Did that influence what you do now?
WY: Even though I studied art history and artmaking, I feel like everything that is bestowed upon me is not filtered through an art historical understanding, but more from a sense of observing it.
TS: In the book, you describe a moment of going on an El Greco pilgrimage, but there's a sense that you never quite get there, as you are always turning towards something else. To me, that's how the book is set up, how time is interlaced together. One moment you're in Bilbao, but on the next page you are jumping to being at RISD, trying to figure out what a critique is. These non-sequiturs are reminiscent of the photo on the right, of taking the photo on the ladder, here's a photo of something that got edited out. In the first chapter you also talk about being present when explosives are being set off. These are the background things that are going on, but not necessarily focused on the masterpieces or the actual artworks, but what's going on around it. The reason why I'm bringing it up is because that's how I see your project at Special Special, and how you think about curating, perhaps, and also of how you see artworks function beyond their outward appearances.
WY: Something that we talked about before is the idea of creating something without really understanding where it's going. The stories that I write about, they are not so much about the outcome, but rather living in these moments and trying to figure out where to go. There's no climactic arc to this book, but rather trying to find myself as an early-20 something who just graduated college and trying to understand where I stand artistically.
LZ: How is WYMNA related to Special Special?
WY: During the couple of years when I was writing the book, I was also behind the scenes photographing my father's ignitions. Before I started Special Special, I had an apartment gallery, and I called my space If and When. This was an exhibition called Supporting Characters, made by Kate Phillips. She was my classmate from RISD, and made these conjoined socks that everyone fits into. They could wear and walk around in them. It's an experiment in wearing the same socks. At the time, I was starting to think about functionality, participation, and art, and how anybody entering a space, particularly my house, where I always ask people to take their shoes off, maybe it's nice to have a project/exhibition where your shoes are already off. You can have a group of strangers come together, and figure out how to wear this sock together.
This was an earlier project at Special Special. The space is on East 1st street, between 1st and 2nd Avenue, and we have exhibitions with artists and designers, and we also produce art editions that are functional. For every project that we do, I like for it to have some functionality, so people with all knowledge and background of art could come in and participate in something that we have, whether it's an installation or a purchase of an art collectible that's not a ridiculous price. These are select exhibitions that we had: this is a halloween costume show, this is a blanket exhibition. For every show we do, we try to completely transform the space. For this one, we made it into a homey living room space where blankets reside, it's by an artist named Oona Brangam-Snell. This is the Towelkini edition that we collaborated with the artist Aria McManus, and it's a towel that you can wear. For the opening, we had the model wearing the Towelkini walk around Soho, then we had her lie on the floor of the space for the duration of the opening. This is the Hibiscus installation by Benjamin Langford, and we collaborated with him to create a Hawaiian shirt with the hibiscus flower. This is a show with Sebastian Masuda, and we painted the whole space pink, and covered the wall with faux fur. People could come in and take a piece that they liked, collect it, and use it in a workshop setting to decorate their bags or t-shirts.
We also started exploring the workshop format as we worked with artists. Sebastian Masuda is a well-known figure who popularized Harajuku culture. So much of that is about the freedom of self-expression, so we invited people to express themselves through these colorful furs. This is a show by Sarah Verity. We invited anybody off the street to draw a room that they loved in. The show was called Love Hotel Room. These are different rooms that people contributed to. This project is also in our pop-up space at Macau. This is a show by Jenny Hata-Blumenfield. It's a play on light. She's a ceramic artist, but through the process of the show, I suggested cyanotype photography printing technique to her. She started incorporating this technique, as well as light and shadow into her practice. This was a show that opened in October called CHKRA. We transformed the space into seven booths in different colors. Each color represented a chakra type. They are sound booths of ambient music recorded at high-end luxury retail stores. So we call it luxury retail therapy without the expensive price tag. People could come in and align themselves at Special Special and feel like they went shopping. This is our current show called Tie Me Up! Lock Me Down!. It's a jewelry and adornment show co-curated by Banyi Huang and Kristen Lee. They both curate and make jewelry. So it's an exhibition of wearables.
I mentioned earlier that we recently created a pop-up space open at the same time as my photography exhibition in MGM hotel and casino in Macau. The concept of this space is a playground. We wanted to create an alternative space where people could go and hang out at the casino and hotel if they didn't want to go gambling or stay in their room. We have these monkey-bar contraptions. This is a see-saw we created with our fellow artist friend's oracle cards called Deck of Characters. There's also a telephone where you speak into one end, and your friend could listen at the other end of the space. We made it into a very playful shop to house our editions.
TS: Yeah I was wondering, within the playground, why did you end up being so insistent on having a space that was dedicated to forms of participatory art, and also editions, what is an edition and why are people making particular editions for this space?
WY: I re-read my book this past week, and there was a line in there where I said something along the lines of: "I wish museums could be more like a playground," which I didn't remember and then I thought back to that, that this was always an inherent connection. I think for me it's because all of you are here today and experiencing this talk, and I hope that you do find something useful in this conversation. And throughout my journey in exploring art, I felt like the experience is something people can walk away with, with a new refreshed sense. Potentially they might have learnt something from another person, or they might have come up with an idea they never thought of before. So it's sort of the serendipity of it, without a purpose and without an ego per se. Partially also that people are open to anything, and with that openness there are so many possibilities.
TS: Is that what you are coming at when you say "reluctant artist"? The lack of ego?
WY: Well that's up for interpretation, because I can't say there's an ego in every artist. But I can say that a lot of artists have a vision of what they want to create, and they move towards that vision, and oftentimes we at Special Special do work with artists with a very specific set of ideas in mind. But I like for there to also be a dialogue that we have, and in the process perhaps making something unexpected. It could maybe be better sometimes, or it could be unexpected in a way where it can change the course of how they view their work up until this point. But it's open to all kinds of possibilities. Should we jump into Tim?
LZ TS: Yeah.
WY: So this is Tim making his work for a show at Special Special last year.
TS: That's in studio, well I'll start from what it was. Together with Special Special, I did a scratch lotto ticket, a scratch game, but on a paper that we had produced together that was from bleached celery, and I had been bleaching celery for a couple of years before, and without any knowledge of making paper I had figured out that this could make a strange sheet of paper that is incredibly translucent. That was the project we worked on together, the people at Special Special and I all worked on it together. This is a photo of me in studio, but obviously there's a lot… Wen-You is here, taking the photo after we had gone to buy 6 boxes of celery and 30 gallons of bleach. One of the many amazing collaborative projects that seem to have occurred at Special Special.
LZ: What's the title?
TS: The title of the show is Talks To Me, which was the title of the game. Is there a photo of one individual ticket? You can kind of see them there. The way that the game worked is that essentially there was a conversation between people at a dinner table, and you are scratching their speech bubble, and the speech bubble happens to make a word. They're all randomized words, so with Wes and Mark and everyone at Special Special we meticulously but blindly randomized our stamping of these 500 lotto tickets, scratch game tickets, and then ended up selling them individually but also as sheet editions. And I guess also another thing about the process that I thought was wonderful was that there was a moment where we had to juggle what is the legal terrain of making a scratch game. Which was wonderful because the object itself? finding trust between us, both in a legal terrain, monetarily, in terms of having to pay back the people that won the game.
LZ: I have talked to Tim about the project he made and I know that the process is very meticulous; the printmaking process, the paper making process, coming up with all the text to be printed on the celery paper and there is also the manna. What is that part?
TS: The manna?
LZ: Yes, in relation to the installation. The Special Special gallery had completely changed.
TS: Well manna came from many different things, but it is another edible element, or seemingly edible, but also seemingly artificial at the same time. The hair is something I've put into a lot of my work, as if it's gotten caught in the mix. Because actually a lot of the pieces of paper have a hair, it was caught in the mix.
LZ: Yeah, I think that overall when we see Wen-You's projects there are often different ways of collaborating with artists, like the way that Wen-You worked with Tim, the amount of editions they produced. It's kind of unique in a way. In each piece as well. All of them are different, different formats but they're editions of the collaboration. I think that's a different way. When you work with other artists there may be jackets that you can reproduce, but it's also a limited edition in that way.
TS: Well to that point, maybe it's what you're getting at with the manna. What I find so wonderful about the opportunity to work in editions is it's accessibility. It's generous, but also generous to the artists that are producing . You are faced with the constraint of what the project space is, but not in editions.
LZ: Yeah, I mentioned it because I don't make reproducible projects, so this way me and Tim are similar in a way that when we work with Special Special on our projects we have to think about what can be made within the concept of an edition, accessible to people.
WY: The next part is only about you.
LZ: Oh me?! Okay, so this is a show I did with Wen-You in 2018. It was a project that I did earlier at the NARS foundation. It's a dating project, it's called "It Takes 10 Years To Be On The Same Boat." Wen-You came to the dating project. I turned my studio into a dating site and had it set up as a boat, a Chinese river boat. Because the sentence, if you take the Chinese translation, it will be 十年修得同船渡. So it's a lot of me thinking about how people are meeting each other in this very convenient time of technology. You have dating apps, you have email and you can connect with each other very clinically. So I had this boat I had set up, had this website that people could set up online, and they don't know each other, so the only thing that links them together is time they pick to go there. So in a way it's fate that chooses to pair them together, and some people drop out right before they come to the meeting, some people change their day. So then the way that they choose to meet is based on what their own schedule is. So Wen-You saw this project and she invited me to be part of the SPF show, a summer group show, so I produced a pool date.
WY: The theme of SPF was Special Special turning into a pool over summer. Because our logo is a blue oval so it can be interpreted as a body of water. The idea was that everyone was in the same body of water, and that summer we were taking it literally, calling it a pool.
LZ: And at that time when I was working with you, the whole group show wasn't in a traditional sense, it was spontaneous and there were different artists overlapping coming in, going out in different times. I think that was also the first time that I had experienced this in a group show.
TS: You mean that certain works were coming in and going out?
LZ: Yes, we started with three people in the beginning and then there were other people coming in, and there were other art and projects. It's a spontaneous group show, the SPF show.
TS: Yeah, maybe to that point, when we had our show Talks to Me, I think it was maybe a week before the show opened, Wen-You said: "Oh, we have someone that's an artist-in-residence who is going to ask you if you would be interested in doing a collaborative project with her, which is Lu. And I think there is a similar energy to this, as if someone was in-house, ready to collaborate with you.
LZ: Yeah I think that's really interesting. I would also like to give a little context to why Wen-You and I started thinking similarly. When I started doing the dating project, I started an organization called Wildman Clab, and it's a lab and club where I try to find the primitive human instinct, through the form of communication and interaction. I think that's when I was just thinking a lot about the unthinkable community, how to find alternative ways to communicate. And communication does not equal connection. You have to make an effort and make an exercise together to get to this connection. Because pure communication doesn't mean you're connected.
TS: No, I think it's also, it also reminds me of how I really think of the lotto tickets also, making a scratch card that's on translucent paper, and a really delicate one. And I am mentioning it because it's similar to what we worked on together, that with something that's a piece of translucent paper, if you print on both sides of it, they are communicating by negotiating with each other. You can only read on if the other side is helping you in some way to read this side, but they're not actually fused and connected, they're these two sides.
LZ: I'll jump into the project that Tim and I did. This is a performance we did together during Tim's show, it's when the Frontiers Conference started entering. Because right now Wildman Clab is doing a year-long event residency at Special Special. That's something I think I've never heard of, as well, which Wen-You came up with a plan and then we worked together. So for the Frontiers Conference I proposed to do a poetry reading and performances at Special Special with the exhibiting artists, or with artists from the outside and then just figuring out what the communication or connection could be about. So I think that during Tim's show, or together on his piece, it's called Efforts in Reading Kaspar by Peter Handke.
TS: Do you want me to talk about it a little, or talk about it together?
LZ: Yeah.
TS: So, well I guess in part, in relation to this idea and collaboration, around the time that Lu had asked me, and we were trying to decide if we should do something together during the time of the show, I had been returning to a play that I had stuck in my mind, which is Peter Handke's writing of the story of Kaspar, Kaspar Hauser, that's disfigured. Historically the story is that it's a figure that's been locked in a chamber, cave somewhere maybe by somebody and enters into this village without having any language or way of communicating at all with anybody, without having any language at all, and in the larger story he acquires language slowly through this teacher, and it has a very upsetting ending to it. But the play, Kaspar by Peter Handke, has these different characters and it has Kaspar, this figure that kind of comes on stage and doesn't really know what the stage even is, doesn't know how to walk. The world around Kaspar is kind of undefined because there's no language to define it. And then there's offstage instructors that are teaching Kaspar, and giving Kaspar language, and there are certain steps in the play that they go through. So we decided to work directly, physically, with the text of this play. There was a simple thing in the beginning, of learning how to read the text itself, and we did this in several ways, by working through the text redacting a lot of parts, and switching off into different roles with Aaron Lehman, who was with us too. There were different roles of being an instructor, teaching how to read something. But in our conversations there was also a certain point where we were going to translate a part of the text. Coming to some object, like this paper, from two sides, and knowing that communication isn't necessarily the connection between those two, but it's the trust that whatever someone is doing on the other side, you're sharing this object together. This may be a bit theoretical. Put more simply, there were parts in the performance where we were reading the play and we would dip it into a bowl of water so that we could read the text backwards. And if you've ever read a text backwards, that you haven't encountered before, I mean some people are much better than others, but if you voice it, you are really trying to sound out what seems to be recognizable language, so it is like trying to learn how to read, but trying to learn how to read backwards.
LZ: I think that Tim gave a little bit of background of the performance, and we helped each other read through these pieces of paper. But then to me, I think that this is one example of how Wen-You is allowing us, or allowing collaborations to happen in a very different way at Special Special.
WY: Yeah, something about Special Special that I always tell people is that I want to create a platform and give people the opportunity of doing something that they wouldn't necessarily be able to do in another setting, in a conventional art setting, and I want to give that space to people to explore.
TS: Where do you feel you are in terms of that, when an exhibition is at Special Special?
WY: The place started in 2016 with the idea that we would have exhibitions of art editions that we would produce too, with the artists. And more and more the idea of what an art edition is, that's also functional, has very much expanded. For example with Tim making a scratch lottery ticket on celery paper, that's kind of another direction of what it means to be functional. And then in terms of workshops and performance I started to think in the function of experience, where people come to the space and they experience something, and that's what it is - they function together in a space. And the idea of the Wildman Clab collaboration, and we call it the Frontiers Conference, it started from this idea that we had during our more of a shop-like rendition called Handle With Care where we wrapped everything in gift wrapped paper for the holiday season, all our editions, and we decided to do a masked poetry reading one afternoon. This was Lu's idea and we collaborated and Wes made these masks, and we pulled out all our poetry books and picked poetry to read. And after experiencing this we had some kind of epiphany, at least for me, after doing that I realized there could be a whole series of potential performances. I presented it as a conceptual poetic performance, and the idea of a conceptual poetic performance is that it could be anything. So that is when I asked Lu to be our event resident.
LZ: So I am just temporarily in Special Special posting the Frontiers conference. When I came up with the idea I was just thinking artists, musicians, poets, they're kind of scientists, trying to explore emotions, communication, connections with each other. So this fits Wen-You's no boundary, endless form of an art piece. There were a bunch of performances in 2019 and we named it in order of number. It's a group effort each time. Mark works on the design of the poster and Wes does the set up, and then communication with the artists. So I always see that when I work with Special Special it's teamwork and a group effort.
WY: And also, the residency is also in dialogue with the existing exhibition and the space, so it becomes a collaboration, sometimes static, sometimes not static, depending on the level of participation by the artist. So this was during the Love Hotel Rooms project, where we had people participating in a workshop to draw a room, and then Lu invited her friends Rob and Wo to do a drag performance in the space where they are two friends coming together as lovers, and then it was opened up to the audience to recall someone in their life they had loved that was no longer in their life. It became a very sentimental, heartwarming exchange. It's just very open.
LZ: And then the next one is me and Tim. How do you feel about this one?
WY: I liked it. I think part of what was amazing about this one was that it was a complete surprise. In the first project there was a script. There was going to be a 20 minute dance performance, there was going to be a 40 minute sound recording of people talking about someone that they loved that was no longer there, and then we opened it up for anyone to talk about someone in their life, and then with this one, Tim and Lu just started talking. I set them up and said: 'I think you two would be good collaborators.' And then they went off and brainstormed on what they would do, and I didn't know until the performance, I really didn't know what was going on. But I have felt like I trust these two artists to do something that is in the spirit of what I am hoping for. And that was what I was banking on.
LZ: It was a really long time reading text. We read many, many times to edit the text down, in order to transform a play into a performance piece. It's two strangers met together through Wen-You, and Tim and I just sat down reading a text book together, and then I think the time of being with Tim, working on this piece, added a lot to the chemistry of the piece.
WY: It's Lu who brings everybody together.
LZ: So the next one is a fishing workshop, an NYC fishing workshop. The artist is Yi Xin Tong and he fishes all around the city, and then he published a book called Fishing in NYC by Gong Press. So we invited him to give a series of fishing workshops, very practical. Like where to find what type of fish, which season you should use what type of tool, so he gave a demonstration about that. So this was very different from the previous poetry readings. And then the next one was Jenny Blumenfield. It's a practice of looking at ceramics, at materials in different ways. So we had people behind the mirror, describing the object to the audience, and the audience would draw. And the most recent one is still happening, it's a live Cam Karaoke. Wes worked on this technology part a lot. He figured out how to set up live surveillance inside the exhibition space, so now you see all the Special Special staff singing in front of a camera. We have Instagram live online and Youtube live online.
WY: I just want to add that our space that you can see up until this point is actually quite small, so we can't really fit too many people. And when we have performances we want many people to come, but there is a limit to it, so we started thinking about how we can do these performances in a way that's accessible to more people, so that more people can tune in from anywhere. This is something we in the past month have started experimenting with. And then tomorrow, all weekend we actually have a Cam Show, and we have programming. So this weekend, please tune in on our Instagram, and also on Youtube where you can see a multi-channel view of our space.
LZ: I think we're good now.
TS, WY, LZ: Thank you!
WY: I want to quickly thank Printed Matter for hosting us today, and I want to thank Tim and Lu for joining me on this talk, and being great collaborators and really understanding what I'm trying to do, and helping me articulate that. I'm very grateful for that, and thank you all for coming today.
TS: We have 10 minutes for a few questions if there are any.
Q: Why the name Special Special?
WY: So Special Special is a word doubled. There are many reasons why, one main reason is because it's here we are producing something special, but it's in multiples, it's in edition form. And also growing up, my mom always thought I was too special.
Q: I'm wondering how big of an impact the practice of taking those photos over those years had on your relationship with your family, and how your role as the documenter and observer of your family, but also participating, affected your relationship.
WY: I feel like the experience of photography for me is… One is in the present moment where I find something interesting, so I capture it, and the other is in the reflection upon it. So it's being able to capture a moment, compose a moment and then going back to it. And I think over the years, as I go back to these images, I can recollect what it was, but also see it from a different light, and so it's upon the review of it over time that I am constantly re-orienting myself in these stories and real-life moments that I have. And it's also a personal study of trying to understand where I am in relation to my family. I feel like it's always changing. So even when I was putting together this book with 175 photographs, I was trying to curate and figure out what I wanted to include in this book, and editing the photos, editing down from many more photos that I had. And I was also seeing things. A lot of the things in the photographs, seeing new things in the photographs. And it's so much a relationship in our lives, where we recall something and it could be different over the years.
Q: Why do you think editions, rather than just one photograph, or one book, or as with the artist you invite to work at Special Special?
WY: It goes back into the accessibility of Special Special, that I want to instill that not only one person can collect, but that more people can access, and I'm hoping that in writing this book for more people to read, they might understand something that I don't understand, and they might reach back to me and we can have a dialogue about it, and I might find something new. And with the book too, someone might see something that I don't see. I don't feel like I know everything about what I am producing, but I want to put something out there for people to come back and start and a conversation with me, and that we get to that next level of place together.
LZ: I want to just quickly make a comment of what Wen-You said, because when I think about community, I often think about when other people have similar views, and hoping that other people can understand, But what Wen-You did is, she stepped out to make voice of what she thinks it should be. And in that way we heard, and came together and became a group that understood each other. And when I met Wen-You, we never talked about what we like, and why we like the things we like. But during the year of working together, we realized that this accessibility is a reason why I created Wildman Clab.
Q: There are a lot of alternative art, independent art projects, also in the LES and East Village. How do you feel that you are contributing to that?
WY: I think a big part of that is that there are a lot of creative types in New York, which is why there's all these creative spaces, which is why there is a large pool of people to work with, and I feel like everyday, these platforms help people gather together and create meaningful dialogues. Just like how I've worked with a group of people at Special Special, and now we're here at Printed Matter, we're all just working towards understanding one another. And there are pockets where we might find common things and one another, or we might express one side of it which is a little different from another side, one way of looking at it. So it's about creating perspectives, which I think is very valuable to a bigger artistic community.
TS: Can I add something? Just because I don't know if it came up so clearly. What I find very unique about Special Special, and to the question about the editions, is that when you ask an artist to do an edition, your whole team, everybody at Special Special, is there in their willingness and excitement to make it together. Doing an edition you know, it's asking for us to be collaborating towards something together, which creates a completely unique set of connections amongst the people who work at Special Special. Besides the edition being distributed, it's automatically entwined with everybody who's there. Everyone has different roles, everyone who works at Special Special is more than willing and wanting to have their part in it. I find that incredibly unique. I mean it's way beyond what you could think of someone commissioning an artwork. It's someone saying "Here! Here is a space where we will show something you want to do," and everyone here is not here just to be your PR, everyone is here to contribute to figuring out how we can do this together.
WY: And to that, thank you to everyone at Special Special.
TS: And to Rooster, and Sheep and Tiger, and to others!


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The interview vs. Interrogation debate has raged in law enforcement circles for many years.
The interrogation camp favour a technique pioneered by Polygrapher John E Reid. It is made up of nine steps and three stages. In recent years it has been embroiled in controversy being linked to many miscarriages of justice in the USA. In fact one company WIcklander Zulawski has quite publicly dropped teaching the technique to law enforcement officers in the US.
The interview camp promote a system borne again out of miscarriages of justice this time in the U.K. The PEACE model is a non confrontational model which allows the interviewee to provide disclosure which is then probed and if necessary challenged.
This post concerns a Bloomberg article which examines in great detail the issues surrounding the Reid Interrogation system.
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