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SMART - Seychelles Magpie Robin Recovery Team
The Seychelles Magpie Robin is one of the rarest birds in the world with approximately 260 individuals; the bird was in even greater peril before the start of the recovery programme in 1990 with only 23 birds on one island. In 1990 the SMR Recovery Programme was launched in response to a collapse in numbers.
The early days of the recovery programme focused on stabilizing and recovering the last population on Fregate Island: research was implemented in parallel to conservation management. Once the population stabilized and increased there were sufficient birds to be re-established on Cousin, Cousine and Aride.
The recovery programme was managed by Birdlife International and the Royal Society for Protection of Birds (RSPB) between 1990 and 1997. In 1998 management was localised and passed to Nature Seychelles (formerly BirdLife Seychelles). All management decisions are now agreed by a local team of stakeholders comprising island owners and mangers, Ministry of Environment and Nature Seychelles. This participatory stakeholder group, devised, set up and co-ordinated by Nature Seychelles is called SMART (Seychelles Magpie Robin Team).
SMART is chaired by the Magpie robin co-ordinator who is paid by Nature Seychelles. The co-ordinator organises twice yearly meetings to examine progress and make management decisions, produces a twice annual newsletter, maintains the SMR database, and acts as a focal point for the collation of blood samples for molecular sexing and for trouble shooting.
Since early 2004 all islands with SMR populations have taken overall management responsibility for their own populations. All islands have a staff member who is responsible for SMR management and these people represent the respective islands on SMART.
Liaison with SMART
Every effort has been made ensure SMART is an effective management body, whilst minimising time and financial inputs. SMART meetings are held twice a year and a report is produced to an agreed format, and SMR managers from each island submit a section. The database is maintained by the smart co-ordinator and island SMR officers submit copies of data sheets every 6 months. As required, exchanges and training can be organised between members
Normal contributions to SMART are
Submission of a short update for the newsletter in July and December
Submission of data sheets to maintain the database
Attendance at the meetings January and July
Seychelles' 'Bird' of Pride Established on a 'New' Island

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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Posts Tagged 'george bernard shaw'
Eleonora Duse: "I had the feeling that I understood every word."
Published November 28, 2019	Books Leave a Comment
Tags: anton chekhov, eleonora duse, george bernard shaw, have space suit will travel, henrik ibsen, max beerbohm, robert heinlein, sarah bernhardt, science fiction, translation & mistranslation
Early in Robert Heinlein's 1958 sci-fi adventure novel Have Space Suit – Will Travel we meet a lemur-like alien called the Mother Thing, whose language resembles the "endlessly varied songs of a mockingbird".
When she is introduced to Kip, our youthful hero, he is surprised to realize that he understands her twitterings:
I would have been an idiot not to know that the Mother Thing was speaking to me because I did understand and understood her every time. If she directed a remark at Peewee alone, it was usually just birdsongs to me – but if it was meant for me, I got it.
Call it telepathy if you like … I never read her mind and I don't think she read mine. We just talked.
As Kip, Peewee, and the Mother Thing are in the middle of escaping from some nasty space pirates, he is obliged to postpone examination of the mystery. Later, on the Mother Thing's homeworld in the Vega system, Kip finds that he is able to communicate, though somewhat less consistently, with others of her species. He theorizes:
The Vegans have a supreme talent to understand, to put themselves in the other person's shoes. I don't think it was telepathy, or I wouldn't have gotten so many wrong numbers. Call it empathy.
… I once read about an actress who could use Italian so effectively to a person who did not understand Italian that she always made herself understood. Her name was "Duce". No, a "duce" is a dictator. Something like that. She must have had what the Mother Thing had.
I had never heard of this legendarily expressive Italian actress, but Heinlein's story bumped along so irresistibly that within a couple pages I'd forgotten my vague intention of looking her up. It was only by chance that a few days later, in an essay by the novelist and critic Max Beerbohm – whom I'll return to later – I came across the name Eleonora Duse.
While her elder rival Sarah Bernhardt to this day occupies a small but lively alcove in the popular imagination, Duse has been pretty much forgotten by everyone except historians of the theatre. But to American writers of Heinlein's generation her name would still have been familiar. From the 1890s until the rise of silent pictures, the Italian Duse contended with the French Bernhardt for the position of world's most famous actress. At the height of her fame she toured the United States and, at a time when actors were still seen as a tad declassé, was hosted by Grover and Mrs. Cleveland in the White House. Later she had the mixed luck – bad for her, but good for her American reputation – to die in Pittsburgh.
In an 1895 essay George Bernard Shaw commemorated an unusual head-to-head acting battle between Bernhardt and Duse when, in the same week, in competing West End theatres, they performed the same role in the same play. In Shaw's judgement, the contest wasn't even close:
[Bernhardt]'s stock of attitudes and facial effects could be catalogued as easily as her stock of dramatic ideas: the counting would hardly go beyond the fingers of both hands. Duse produces the illusion of being infinite in variety of beautiful pose and motion. Every idea, every shade of thought and mood, expresses itself delicately but vividly to the eye; and yet, in an apparent million of changes and inflexions, it is impossible to catch any line of an awkward angle, or any strain interfering with the perfect abandonment of all the limbs to what appears to be their natural gravitation towards the finest grace.
What's noteworthy about the above review is that Shaw doesn't see it as necessary to mention that the parallel productions were in, respectively, French and Italian – for Bernhardt and Duse performed only in their native tongues.
Most educated Londoners of Shaw's era would have been (like Shaw) literate in French – though not in Italian. But an inability to follow the dialogue wasn't seen as an obstacle, in those days, to relishing a performance by a foreign touring company. The modern reader will no doubt share my dubiety at this anecdote from one of Bernhardt's tours of the American West:
On February 22, 1913, she performed for the two thousand-odd inmates of California's San Quentin state prison a one-act drama, Une Nuit de Noël sous la Terreur ("A Christmas Night under the Terror"). "For an hour," read a letter from the prisoners, "through your wondrous personality and entrancing art we have been, in soul and in mind, at perfect liberty – captive only of that remarkable force and fire which have made men call you divine…"
Yes, the inmates wrote those words, so transported were they by this sixty-nine year old Frenchwoman's performance, in French, of an hour-long play about the French Revolution.
As for the legend of Eleonora Duse, that she could make herself understood even to non-speakers of Italian, it gets some support from Anton Chekhov, who wrote after seeing her in St. Petersburg:
I don't understand Italian, but she played so beautifully that I had the feeling I understood every word. A remarkable actress. I've never seen anything like it.
On the other hand, Max Beerbohm, who saw Duse in Ibsen's Hedda Gabler in 1903, argued that the rapture that had greeted her performance was insincere:
[It would] be an impossible feat not to be bored by the Italian version of Hedda Gabler. Why not confess your boredom? … [T]here seems to me no form of humbug sillier or more annoying than the habit of attending plays that are acted in a language whereof one cannot make head nor tail.
Beerbohm attempts to project himself into the minds of those who pursue such masochistic pleasures:
Perhaps they really do feel that they are taking a means of edification. "We needs must praise the highest when we see it"; Duse is (we are assured) the highest; therefore we needs must see her, for our own edification, and go into rhapsodies. Such, perhaps, is the unsound syllogism which these good folk mutter. I suggest, of what spiritual use is it to see the highest if you cannot understand it?
…And goes on to imagine the mesmerized playgoer flapping away self-doubts:
"Oh, Duse's personality is so wonderful. Her temperament is so marvellous. And then her art! It doesn't matter whether we know Italian or not. We only have to watch the movements of her hands" (rhapsodies omitted) "and the changes of her face" (r. o.) "and the inflections of her voice" (r. o.) "to understand everything, positively everything." Are you sure? I take it that you understand more from the performance of an Italian play which you have read in an English translation than from the performance of an Italian play which never has been translated. There are, so to say, degrees in your omniscience. You understand more if you have read the translation lately than if a long period has elapsed since your reading of it. Are you sure that you would not understand still more if the play were acted in English?
Setting the language question aside, Beerbohm proceeds to doubt Duse's heretofore unchallenged acting chops. While Shaw had asserted that "behind every stroke of [Duse's acting] is a distinctively human idea", the trouble as Beerbohm saw it was that those human ideas had little connection to the characters they were meant to vivify:
I have seen her in many parts, but I have never (you must take my evidence for what it is worth) detected any difference in her. To have seen her once is to have seen her always. She is artistically right or wrong according as whether the part enacted by her can or cannot be merged and fused into her own personality.
And he closes by complaining that throughout the performance of Hedda Gabler he could hear Duse's prompter hissing her lines to her, "like the continuous tearing of very thick silk".
Duse's genius, if such it were, is lost to us. A proposed collaboration with the American director D.W. Griffith never got off the ground. A recording of her voice made by Thomas Edison in 1896 was somehow misplaced. The only extant record of her acting is a silent film called Cenere, from 1916, when she was fifty-eight years old and in semi-retirement. Surviving prints are extremely degraded. The intertitles are in Italian. I couldn't sit through it.
For whatever reason, Duse's stage persona was electrifying to turn-of-the-century audiences. But the notion that she could dissolve the language barrier by force of charisma, or emotional expressiveness, or body language, or what-have-you, I think we can consign to the realm of science-fiction.
In previous essays I've discussed G.B. Shaw's Saint Joan (and the toleration of heresy) and Robert Heinlein's Farmer in the Sky (and the demographic death-spiral).
Update, July 29, 2020: Added cover images and linked to Bibliography page.
We may prate of toleration: Saint Joan and the Inquisition.
Published January 30, 2019	Books Leave a Comment
Tags: dominic green, free speech, george bernard shaw, joan of arc, saint joan, social justice / wokeness, tommy robinson
I'm pretty wishy-washy. I've changed my mind often enough that I no longer delude myself about the permanency of my opinions. Much of what I now believe I might well have second thoughts about tomorrow, or next year, or on my deathbed.
The one opinion I would regard as impregnable – the one that, for all my wishy-washiness, I doubt I'll ever renounce – is that society and the law ought to permit the widest possible scope for freedom of thought. That the Overton Window ought to be thrown open to its maximal extent, and that those visionaries and lunatics who insist on considering possibilities beyond its frame ought to be left free to preach their aberrant ideas. That however troubling or even dangerous those ideas may be, the petty tyrants who stir up mobs to persecute deviant thinkers are much more to be despised.
I have at least the normal human complement of cowardice and muddleheadedness, but I do try and apply these principles consistently. To take a couple recent examples from the archives of Spectator columnist Dominic Green, I agree with him that the British far-right ex-thug Tommy Robinson ought to be free to speak to any audience willing to listen, but disagree that a Boston College "queer theorist" ought to be smeared as a pedophile based on his turgid ruminations on Henry James and "the erotic child". [1]
I don't dispute that Robinson's and the professor's ideas are potentially harmful. In my view the benefit of being free to consider those ideas – all ideas – outweighs the real risk of harm. I would believe this even if I hadn't noticed that the people we appoint to police our dangerous ideas eventually and unfailingly end up policing our songs, jokes, and poems.
However: in the spirit of wishy-washiness, which is also the spirit of engaging with uncomfortable ideas, let me consider the possibility that my one impregnable opinion is dangerous, and ought to be suppressed.
One of the problems I've been grappling with over the last few years, during the rise of what I'll non-judgementally call Social Justice ideology, is at what point a person of conservative temperament is obliged to defer to the incoming set of taboos.
(When I speak of a "conservative temperament" I'm referring not to a set of political opinions, but to an outlook we might call Burkean, or Chestertonian: an attitude of modest deference to long-established traditions, on the grounds that, however silly they might appear, they must have some social utility in order to have been adopted in the first place, and passed down through the generations.)
If it's true (as I'm far from the first to observe) that Social Justice is essentially a religious movement, with its own saints, sacred objects, and acts of devotion – and if that creed is in the process of supplanting or has already supplanted Christianity as the dominant creed in the West – then is it disrespectful and petty for a non-believer like me to publicly violate its taboos, in the same way it would be disrespectful and petty of me to disrupt a church service, profane a temple, or masturbate with an icon?
This is quite apart from the question of whether it's physically safe for me to violate those taboos: I would obviously prefer, in accordance with my belief in maximal toleration, that believers of whatever faith deal gently with taboo-breakers, non-violently ejecting them from the holy precincts but otherwise ignoring their provocations. But I'm not concerned here about the responsibilities of believers: I'm about as likely to embrace Social Justice as I am to convert to Hinduism. The question I'm asking is, how much deference do I, as a resident non-believer, owe to the majority religious community? – particularly when it's not clear whether that community is in the majority, or whether it's a religion at all?
It was with the above questions in mind that I found myself reading George Bernard Shaw's 1924 play Saint Joan, which depicts the brief military career, trial for heresy, and posthumous rehabilitation of Joan of Arc.
As Shaw explains in the Preface, the play was written to correct the audience-flattering mythologies that had gained currency in the intervening centuries – namely, that Joan had been done in by a conspiracy of villainous and superstitious buffoons of the type that we, in our sophistication, would see through today. In Shaw's view, the Inquisition was no more inhumane in stamping out Medieval blasphemies than an English court would be in stamping out their 20th Century equivalents. Shaw shows the prosecutors extending every opportunity for Joan to save herself by denying that the voices which had guided her were divinely inspired; which she finally does, to their relief. But when she discovers that this petty lie won't gain her her freedom, merely save her from the bonfire, she recants her recantation, and chooses martyrdom.
As Shaw tells it, Joan was tried fairly, and found guilty "strictly according to law". Her prosecutors, however we might scoff at their certainty that the Catholic church was alone capable of interpreting God's will on earth, were correct enough in their estimation of where heresies such as Joan's might lead: first to Protestantism – the dissolution of Western Christendom into a jumble of warring sects – and then to Nationalism – the collapse of the feudal political order – and the diminution of religion to a minor handmaiden of the state.
Before Joan's trial begins, the Inquisitor gives a lengthy speech – two and a half pages of solid text, in my Penguin edition – imploring the members of the court to "cast out" both anger and pity, while bearing in mind the unseen consequences of their verdict:
God forbid that I should tell you to harden your hearts; for her punishment if we condemn her will be so cruel that we should forfeit our own hope of divine mercy were there one grain of malice against her in our hearts. But if you hate cruelty – and if any man here does not hate it I command him on his soul's salvation to quit this holy court – I say, if you hate cruelty, remember that nothing is so cruel in its consequences as the toleration of heresy.
Nothing is so cruel in its consequences as the toleration of heresy: a sentiment that any modern Inquisitor, of whatever ideological stripe, could get behind. If a demagogue like Tommy Robinson is permitted to say mean things about Islam, it will lead to discrimination and violence against Muslims. If a professor is left free to muse about the ethics of sex with minors, it will lead to the sexual abuse of real-life children.
Of course, dire real-world outcomes can be imagined for any controversial opinion. A famous playwright helps sway a generation of idealistic intellectuals into sympathy with Stalinism and millions of unlucky Third Worlders wind up living under Communist regimes. A group of disaffected ex-leftists cobble a new political philosophy out of their reading of an esoteric classics professor and tens of thousands wind up dying in futile Middle Eastern wars. A minor YouTube celebrity, to annoy his girlfriend, uploads a video of her pet pug dog giving the Hitler salute and – well, who knows what genocidal consequences might follow?
Shaw writes in the Preface to Saint Joan:
We may prate of toleration as we will; but society must always draw a line somewhere between allowable conduct and insanity or crime, in spite of the risk of mistaking sages for lunatics and saviors for blasphemers. We must persecute, even to the death; and all we can do to mitigate the danger of persecution is, first, to be very careful what we persecute, and second, to bear in mind that unless there is a large liberty to shock conventional people, and a well informed sense of the value of originality, individuality, and eccentricity, the result will be apparent stagnation covering a repression of evolutionary forces which will eventually explode with extravagant and probably destructive violence.
This is the pragmatic argument for toleration: it's not that we should leave people free to speak their own minds because it's the right thing to do, but because if we clamp down too tight, the reaction may lead to anarchy and societal collapse.
But it's no easy thing, calibrating the level of toleration; and reckless thinkers like me, smuggling our arguments for unfettered speech under the cover of "temperamental conservatism", should be properly wary that we might, by sanctioning the miscalibration of the social machinery, accidentally bring about the end of civilization.
1. The essay characterized as pedophilic by Dominic Green was subsequently extended by its author to book length: I attempted to read the section on Henry James's The Turn of the Screw but found it impenetrable.
Surprisingly, it seems I haven't mentioned G.B. Shaw on this blog before. An anecdote I shared in 2010 about the farcical fact-finding mission of a "great Humanist" author to a Soviet work camp in the Arctic could have involved Shaw, who was similarly duped on his visit to the USSR; but that anecdote actually concerned Maxim Gorky. In my discussion last year of John Updike's The Coup I lamented that "the skill of entertaining opposite possibilities" was increasingly neglected, and a couple months back I took issue with William Hazlitt's attack on wishy-washy writers.
Update, July 29, 2020: Added cover image and linked to Bibliography page.


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The Witcher – Season 2 Episode 6 "Dear Friend…" Recap & Review
Episode 6 of The Witcher Season 2 begins with Geralt leading Ciri through the forest. They make it to the shallowest part of the river but there's a problem. Geralt senses a Chernobog nearby; the winged beast we saw from the end of the last episode. And of course, it attacks.
Unfortunately Roach is badly wounded in the skirmish. With three nasty scratch marks across its body, Geralt eases his suffering and kills his trusty stead. After his death, Geralt manages to destroy the Chernobog.
Back at Kaer Morhen, Vesemir and Triss curse their luck. They realize that Ciri's blood is more dangerous than they thought. Only, before they can continue this Just before he goes though, he takes the vial of Ciri's blood.
Meanwhile, Fringilla is troubled by Cahir's return. Given he used to be in command, she's very clearly rattled. Cahir doesn't blame her though, claiming she's just distracted. However, he quickly gets back to brass tacks; finding Ciri.
With the Chernobog defeated, Geralt leads Ciri to a temple where she can learn signs and help defend herself. There, she meets Nenneke. She's in charge of this school and after some warm welcomes, passes Ciri across to Jarre to explore the library.
In private, Nenneke tells Geralt, in no uncertain terms, that he's f*cked. She's the Child of Destiny and the key to everything going on here. She's also wanted by many Kingdoms to, with a big bullseye on her back.
Back at Kaer Morhen, Triss confirms to the other Witchers that Rience is not working with the Brotherhood. Given he wields dark power, she realizes he may have already taken what he wants. And that much is especially true when Rience shows up before Lydia with the vial of Ciri's blood. He wants to strike a deal, suggesting Lydia bring him to her superior.
Istredd arrives at Codringher and Fenn, a detective agency. He's intent on finding out what Geralt's purpose is with Nilfgaard and a mysterious girl. After paying his way, he learns that the girl is Cirilla.
Now, he's obviously not the only one after her. Yennefer shows up at the same school, intent on finding Ciri. Instead, she walks into Geralt's chamber. As the pair look set to kiss, Ciri shows up too.
Cahir turns Hake to his cause, with Fringilla's intent on working with the elves annoying numerous guards. Intent on bringing the loyal Nilfgaard soldiers back to his cause, he begins fighting one of the elves in a "training" exercise.
The real cause here though is to usurp Fringilla, whose leadership hangs by a thread. She may have the kindness of the elves (especially after helping to deliver a new baby elf) but for the Nilfgaard soldiers, they're not so easily swayed and are uneasy by this. After all, what happens if there's an insurrection?
That night, Cahir receives a letter from The White Flame himself. He's going to show up any day now, and this spells big problems for Fringilla.
While Yen and Geralt catch up, Ciri is with Nenneke, paying tribute to those who have fallen in the past. While they discuss the nature of hatred, Nenneke believes Ciri could well hold the key to breaking the cycle of anger, fear and hatred. Whether that's true or not, remains to be seen.
Cri is but a girl and unfortunately her foolishness manifests later that evening. With a book of magic open, she finds pools of blood leading back to Jarre, who has been killed. Rience shows up with a whole bunch of soldiers. Circling her in a ring of fire, Geralt and Yennefer appear and turn the tables. Unbeknownst that Yen is actually working against Geralt, he leaves Ciri in Yen's care while he fights off the soldiers.
With Rience at the door, ready to break the door open with fire, Yen implores Ciri to use a spell to conjure forth her magic and escape together. They do too, managing to get away as Geralt watches from the doorway, helpless.
Back at Kaer Mohen, Vesemir and Triss learn about the missing vial. The latter decides to leave the fort, arriving before Tissaia and pledging her allegiance. A drop of Ciri's blood could change the world but in the wrong hands? It'll destroy it. Everything rests on a precarious knife edge.
The Witcher rounds out its sixth episode with some slick action (despite the slow-mo, bullet-time-esque shots) and a lot more clarity around what's happening here.
We've known for a while that Cirri is the chosen one but understanding just how important she is to the fate of the world just ups the ante a little. It also brings this story much more in line with how The Witcher 3 plays out, including the Wild Hunt and Ciri's destiny.
This chapter in particular feels like a big turning point, leaving everything wide open for the final two chapters. So far The Witcher has been just as good as the first, despite a bit of a slow start, and the darker, more gritty story certainly works well to add more stakes to the story. How will this one end? We'll have to wait and find out for the remaining two chapters!
You can read our full season review of The Witcher Season 2 here!
Categories Drama, fantasy, TV Shows Tags 2021, fantasy, Freya Allan, Henry Cavill, Joey Batey, netflix, tv shows
2 thoughts on "The Witcher – Season 2 Episode 6 "Dear Friend…" Recap & Review"
Jai Balo
This episode was terrible. Storytelling and dialogue were horrendous. Just bad.
Tim Marzo
Season 2 of the show is not all true to the books. It is a completely different story with completely different characters. I read that someone described it as a version of Lord of the Rings where Frodo sells the ring to the Elves for some ounces of stardust, and then the Hobbits start to run a drug empire and undermine and overthrow all the men's kingdoms. In the case of the Witcher, the showrunner calls that freedom of adaptation. It is a poorly written show with many flaws and plotholes and also some questionable level of acting and strange casting choices. I would perhaps rate it at 2.5/5.


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26. Aramis and his Thesis
by Gandire Alea April 18, 2021 April 27, 2021
D'Artagnan had said nothing to Porthos of his wound or of his procurator's wife. Our Bearnais was a prudent lad, however young he might be. Consequently he had appeared to believe all that the vainglorious Musketeer had told him, convinced that no friendship will hold out against a surprised secret. Besides, we feel always a sort of mental superiority over those whose lives we know better than they suppose. In his projects of intrigue for the future, and determined as he was to make his three friends the instruments of his fortune, d'Artagnan was not sorry at getting into his grasp beforehand the invisible strings by which he reckoned upon moving them.
And yet, as he journeyed along, a profound sadness weighed upon his heart. He thought of that young and pretty Mme. Bonacieux who was to have paid him the price of his devotedness; but let us hasten to say that this sadness possessed the young man less from the regret of the happiness he had missed, than from the fear he entertained that some serious misfortune had befallen the poor woman. For himself, he had no doubt she was a victim of the cardinal's vengeance; and, and as was well known, the vengeance of his Eminence was terrible. How he had found grace in the eyes of the minister, he did not know; but without doubt M. de Cavois would have revealed this to him if the captain of the Guards had found him at home.
Nothing makes time pass more quickly or more shortens a journey than a thought which absorbs in itself all the faculties of the organization of him who thinks. External existence then resembles a sleep of which this thought is the dream. By its influence, time has no longer measure, space has no longer distance. We depart from one place, and arrive at another, that is all. Of the interval passed, nothing remains in the memory but a vague mist in which a thousand confused images of trees, mountains, and landscapes are lost. It was as a prey to this hallucination that d'Artagnan traveled, at whatever pace his horse pleased, the six or eight leagues that separated Chantilly from Crevecoeur, without his being able to remember on his arrival in the village any of the things he had passed or met with on the road.
There only his memory returned to him. He shook his head, perceived the cabaret at which he had left Aramis, and putting his horse to the trot, he shortly pulled up at the door.
This time it was not a host but a hostess who received him. d'Artagnan was a physiognomist. His eye took in at a glance the plump, cheerful countenance of the mistress of the place, and he at once perceived there was no occasion for dissembling with her, or of fearing anything from one blessed with such a joyous physiognomy.
"My good dame," asked d'Artagnan, "can you tell me what has become of one of my friends, whom we were obliged to leave here about a dozen days ago?"
"A handsome young man, three- or four-and-twenty years old, mild, amiable, and well made?"
"That is he wounded in the shoulder."
"Just so. Well, monsieur, he is still here."
"Ah, pardieu! My dear dame," said d'Artagnan, springing from his horse, and throwing the bridle to Planchet, "you restore me to life; where is this dear Aramis? Let me embrace him, I am in a hurry to see him again."
"Pardon, monsieur, but I doubt whether he can see you at this moment."
"Why so? Has he a lady with him?"
"Jesus! What do you mean by that? Poor lad! No, monsieur, he has not a lady with him."
"With whom is he, then?"
"With the curate of Montdidier and the superior of the Jesuits of Amiens."
"Good heavens!" cried d'Artagnan, "is the poor fellow worse, then?"
"No, monsieur, quite the contrary; but after his illness grace touched him, and he determined to take orders."
"That's it!" said d'Artagnan, "I had forgotten that he was only a Musketeer for a time."
"Monsieur still insists upon seeing him?"
"More than ever."
"Well, monsieur has only to take the right-hand staircase in the courtyard, and knock at Number Five on the second floor."
D'Artagnan walked quickly in the direction indicated, and found one of those exterior staircases that are still to be seen in the yards of our old-fashioned taverns. But there was no getting at the place of sojourn of the future abbe; the defiles of the chamber of Aramis were as well guarded as the gardens of Armida. Bazin was stationed in the corridor, and barred his passage with the more intrepidity that, after many years of trial, Bazin found himself near a result of which he had ever been ambitious.
In fact, the dream of poor Bazin had always been to serve a churchman; and he awaited with impatience the moment, always in the future, when Aramis would throw aside the uniform and assume the cassock. The daily-renewed promise of the young man that the moment would not long be delayed, had alone kept him in the service of a Musketeer a service in which, he said, his soul was in constant jeopardy.
Bazin was then at the height of joy. In all probability, this time his master would not retract. The union of physical pain with moral uneasiness had produced the effect so long desired. Aramis, suffering at once in body and mind, had at length fixed his eyes and his thoughts upon religion, and he had considered as a warning from heaven the double accident which had happened to him; that is to say, the sudden disappearance of his mistress and the wound in his shoulder.
It may be easily understood that in the present disposition of his master nothing could be more disagreeable to Bazin than the arrival of d'Artagnan, which might cast his master back again into that vortex of mundane affairs which had so long carried him away. He resolved, then, to defend the door bravely; and as, betrayed by the mistress of the inn, he could not say that Aramis was absent, he endeavored to prove to the newcomer that it would be the height of indiscretion to disturb his master in his pious conference, which had commenced with the morning and would not, as Bazin said, terminate before night.
But d'Artagnan took very little heed of the eloquent discourse of M. Bazin; and as he had no desire to support a polemic discussion with his friend's valet, he simply moved him out of the way with one hand, and with the other turned the handle of the door of Number Five. The door opened, and d'Artagnan went into the chamber.
Aramis, in a black gown, his head enveloped in a sort of round flat cap, not much unlike a calotte, was seated before an oblong table, covered with rolls of paper and enormous volumes in folio. At his right hand was placed the superior of the Jesuits, and on his left the curate of Montdidier. The curtains were half drawn, and only admitted the mysterious light calculated for beatific reveries. All the mundane objects that generally strike the eye on entering the room of a young man, particularly when that young man is a Musketeer, had disappeared as if by enchantment; and for fear, no doubt, that the sight of them might bring his master back to ideas of this world, Bazin had laid his hands upon sword, pistols, plumed hat, and embroideries and laces of all kinds and sorts. In their stead d'Artagnan thought he perceived in an obscure corner a discipline cord suspended from a nail in the wall.
At the noise made by d'Artagnan in entering, Aramis lifted up his head, and beheld his friend; but to the great astonishment of the young man, the sight of him did not produce much effect upon the Musketeer, so completely was his mind detached from the things of this world.
"Good day, dear d'Artagnan," said Aramis; "believe me, I am glad to see you."
"So am I delighted to see you," said d'Artagnan, "although I am not yet sure that it is Aramis I am speaking to."
"To himself, my friend, to himself! But what makes you doubt it?"
"I was afraid I had made a mistake in the chamber, and that I had found my way into the apartment of some churchman. Then another error seized me on seeing you in company with these gentlemen I was afraid you were dangerously ill."
The two men in black, who guessed d'Artagnan's meaning, darted at him a glance which might have been thought threatening; but d'Artagnan took no heed of it.
"I disturb you, perhaps, my dear Aramis," continued d'Artagnan, "for by what I see, I am led to believe that you are confessing to these gentlemen."
Aramis colored imperceptibly. "You disturb me? Oh, quite the contrary, dear friend, I swear; and as a proof of what I say, permit me to declare I am rejoiced to see you safe and sound."
"Ah, he'll come round," thought d'Artagnan; "that's not bad!"
"This gentleman, who is my friend, has just escaped from a serious danger," continued Aramis, with unction, pointing to d'Artagnan with his hand, and addressing the two ecclesiastics.
"Praise God, monsieur," replied they, bowing together.
"I have not failed to do so, your Reverences," replied the young man, returning their salutation.
"You arrive in good time, dear d'Artagnan," said Aramis, "and by taking part in our discussion may assist us with your intelligence. Monsieur the Principal of Amiens, Monsieur the Curate of Montdidier, and I are arguing certain theological questions in which we have been much interested; I shall be delighted to have your opinion."
"The opinion of a swordsman can have very little weight," replied d'Artagnan, who began to be uneasy at the turn things were taking, "and you had better be satisfied, believe me, with the knowledge of these gentlemen."
The two men in black bowed in their turn.
"On the contrary," replied Aramis, "your opinion will be very valuable. The question is this: Monsieur the Principal thinks that my thesis ought to be dogmatic and didactic."
"Your thesis! Are you then making a thesis?"
"Without doubt," replied the Jesuit. "In the examination which precedes ordination, a thesis is always a requisite."
"Ordination!" cried d'Artagnan, who could not believe what the hostess and Bazin had successively told him; and he gazed, half stupefied, upon the three persons before him.
"Now," continued Aramis, taking the same graceful position in his easy chair that he would have assumed in bed, and complacently examining his hand, which was as white and plump as that of a woman, and which he held in the air to cause the blood to descend, "now, as you have heard, d'Artagnan, Monsieur the Principal is desirous that my thesis should be dogmatic, while I, for my part, would rather it should be ideal. This is the reason why Monsieur the Principal has proposed to me the following subject, which has not yet been treated upon, and in which I perceive there is matter for magnificent elaboration-'UTRAQUE Manus in benedicendo CLERICIS INFERIORIBUS necessaria EST.'"
D'Artagnan, whose erudition we are well acquainted with, evinced no more interest on hearing this quotation than he had at that of M. de Treville in allusion to the gifts he pretended that d'Artagnan had received from the Duke of Buckingham.
"Which means," resumed Aramis, that he might perfectly understand, "'The two hands are indispensable for priests of the inferior orders, when they bestow the benediction.'"
"An admirable subject!" cried the Jesuit.
"Admirable and dogmatic!" repeated the curate, who, about as strong as d'Artagnan with respect to Latin, carefully watched the Jesuit in order to keep step with him, and repeated his words like an echo.
As to d'Artagnan, he remained perfectly insensible to the enthusiasm of the two men in black.
"Yes, admirable! Prorsus admirabile!" continued Aramis; "but which requires a profound study of both the Scriptures and the Fathers. Now, I have confessed to these learned ecclesiastics, and that in all humility, that the duties of mounting guard and the service of the king have caused me to neglect study a little. I should find myself, therefore, more at my ease, facilus NATANS, in a subject of my own choice, which would be to these hard theological questions what morals are to metaphysics in philosophy."
D'Artagnan began to be tired, and so did the curate.
"See what an exordium!" cried the Jesuit.
"Exordium," repeated the curate, for the sake of saying something. "Quemadmodum inter COELORUM IMMENSITATEM."
Aramis cast a glance upon d'Artagnan to see what effect all this produced, and found his friend gaping enough to split his jaws.
"Let us speak French, my father," said he to the Jesuit; "Monsieur d'Artagnan will enjoy our conversation better."
"Yes," replied d'Artagnan; "I am fatigued with reading, and all this Latin confuses me."
"Certainly," replied the Jesuit, a little put out, while the curate, greatly delighted, turned upon d'Artagnan a look full of gratitude. "Well, let us see what is to be derived from this gloss. Moses, the servant of God-he was but a servant, please to understand-Moses blessed with the hands; he held out both his arms while the Hebrews beat their enemies, and then he blessed them with his two hands. Besides, what does the Gospel say? IMPONITE Manus, and not MANUM-place the hands, not the hand."
"Place the hands," repeated the curate, with a gesture.
"St. Peter, on the contrary, of whom the Popes are the successors," continued the Jesuit; "PORRIGE Dígitos-present the fingers. Are you there, now?"
"Certes," replied Aramis, in a pleased tone, "but the thing is subtle."
"The fingers," resumed the Jesuit, "St. Peter blessed with the fingers. The Pope, therefore blesses with the fingers. And with how many fingers does he bless? With three fingers, to be sure-one for the Father, one for the Son, and one for the Holy Ghost."
All crossed themselves. D'Artagnan thought it was proper to follow this example.
"The Pope is the successor of St. Peter, and represents the three divine powers; the rest-ordines INFERIORES-of the ecclesiastical hierarchy bless in the name of the holy archangels and angels. The most humble clerks such as our deacons and sacristans, bless with holy water sprinklers, which resemble an infinite number of blessing fingers. There is the subject simplified. Argumentum omni DENUDATUM ornamento. I could make of that subject two volumes the size of this," continued the Jesuit; and in his enthusiasm he struck a St. Chrysostom in folio, which made the table bend beneath its weight.
D'Artagnan trembled.
"Certes," said Aramis, "I do justice to the beauties of this thesis; but at the same time I perceive it would be overwhelming for me. I had chosen this text-tell me, dear d'Artagnan, if it is not to your taste-'Non inutile EST desiderium in OBLATIONE'; that is, 'A little regret is not unsuitable in an offering to the Lord.'"
"Stop there!" cried the Jesuit, "for that thesis touches closely upon heresy. There is a proposition almost like it in the Augustinus of the heresiarch Jansenius, whose book will sooner or later be burned by the hands of the executioner. Take care, my young friend. You are inclining toward false doctrines, my young friend; you will be lost."
"You will be lost," said the curate, shaking his head sorrowfully.
"You approach that famous point of free will which is a mortal rock. You face the insinuations of the Pelagians and the semi-Pelagians."
"But, my Reverend-" replied Aramis, a little amazed by the shower of arguments that poured upon his head.
"How will you prove," continued the Jesuit, without allowing him time to speak, "that we ought to regret the world when we offer ourselves to God? Listen to this dilemma: God is God, and the world is the devil. To regret the world is to regret the devil; that is my conclusion."
"And that is mine also," said the curate.
"But, for heaven's sake-" resumed Aramis.
"DESIDERAS DIABOLUM, unhappy man!" cried the Jesuit.
"He regrets the devil! Ah, my young friend," added the curate, groaning, "do not regret the devil, I implore you!"
D'Artagnan felt himself bewildered. It seemed to him as though he were in a madhouse, and was becoming as mad as those he saw. He was, however, forced to hold his tongue from not comprehending half the language they employed.
"But listen to me, then," resumed Aramis with politeness mingled with a little impatience. "I do not say I regret; no, I will never pronounce that sentence, which would not be orthodox."
The Jesuit raised his hands toward heaven, and the curate did the same.
"No; but pray grant me that it is acting with an ill grace to offer to the Lord only that with which we are perfectly disgusted! Don't you think so, d'Artagnan?"
"I think so, indeed," cried he.
The Jesuit and the curate quite started from their chairs.
"This is the point of departure; it is a syllogism. The world is not wanting in attractions. I quit the world; then I make a sacrifice. Now, the Scripture says positively, 'Make a sacrifice unto the Lord.'"
"That is true," said his antagonists.
"And then," said Aramis, pinching his ear to make it red, as he rubbed his hands to make them white, "and then I made a certain Rondeau upon it last year, which I showed to Monsieur Voiture, and that great man paid me a thousand compliments."
"A Rondeau!" said the Jesuit, disdainfully.
"A Rondeau!" said the curate, mechanically.
"Repeat it! Repeat it!" cried d'Artagnan; "it will make a little change."
"Not so, for it is religious," replied Aramis; "it is theology in verse."
"The devil!" said d'Artagnan.
"Here it is," said Aramis, with a little look of diffidence, which, however, was not exempt from a shade of hypocrisy:
"Vous qui pleurez un passe plein de charmes, Et qui trainez des jours infortunes, Tous vos malheurs se verront termines, Quand a Dieu seul vous offrirez vos larmes, Vous qui pleurez!"
"You who weep for pleasures fled, While dragging on a life of care, All your woes will melt in air, If to God your tears are shed, You who weep!"
d'Artagnan and the curate appeared pleased. The Jesuit persisted in his opinion. "Beware of a profane taste in your theological style. What says Augustine on this subject: 'Severus sit CLERICORUM verbo.'"
"Yes, let the sermon be clear," said the curate.
"Now," hastily interrupted the Jesuit, on seeing that his acolyte was going astray, "now your thesis would please the ladies; it would have the success of one of Monsieur Patru's pleadings."
"Please God!" cried Aramis, transported.
"There it is," cried the Jesuit; "the world still speaks within you in a loud voice, ALTISIMMA Voce. You follow the world, my young friend, and I tremble lest grace prove not efficacious."
"Be satisfied, my reverend father, I can answer for myself."
"Mundane presumption!"
"I know myself, Father; my resolution is irrevocable."
"Then you persist in continuing that thesis?"
"I feel myself called upon to treat that, and no other. I will see about the continuation of it, and tomorrow I hope you will be satisfied with the corrections I shall have made in consequence of your advice."
"Work slowly," said the curate; "we leave you in an excellent tone of mind."
"Yes, the ground is all sown," said the Jesuit, "and we have not to fear that one portion of the seed may have fallen upon stone, another upon the highway, or that the birds of heaven have eaten the rest, aves coeli COMEDERUNT ILLAM."
"Plague stifle you and your Latin!" said d'Artagnan, who began to feel all his patience exhausted.
"Farewell, my son," said the curate, "till tomorrow."
"Till tomorrow, rash youth," said the Jesuit. "You promise to become one of the lights of the Church. Heaven grant that this light prove not a devouring fire!"
D'Artagnan, who for an hour past had been gnawing his nails with impatience, was beginning to attack the quick.
The two men in black rose, bowed to Aramis and d'Artagnan, and advanced toward the door. Bazin, who had been standing listening to all this controversy with a pious jubilation, sprang toward them, took the breviary of the curate and the missal of the Jesuit, and walked respectfully before them to clear their way.
Aramis conducted them to the foot of the stairs, and then immediately came up again to d'Artagnan, whose senses were still in a state of confusion.
When left alone, the two friends at first kept an embarrassed silence. It however became necessary for one of them to break it first, and as d'Artagnan appeared determined to leave that honor to his companion, Aramis said, "you see that I am returned to my fundamental ideas."
"Yes, efficacious grace has touched you, as that gentleman said just now."
"Oh, these plans of retreat have been formed for a long time. You have often heard me speak of them, have you not, my friend?"
"Yes; but I confess I always thought you jested."
"With such things! Oh, d'Artagnan!"
"The devil! Why, people jest with death."
"And people are wrong, d'Artagnan; for death is the door which leads to perdition or to salvation."
"Granted; but if you please, let us not theologize, Aramis. You must have had enough for today. As for me, I have almost forgotten the little Latin I have ever known. Then I confess to you that I have eaten nothing since ten o'clock this morning, and I am devilish hungry."
"We will dine directly, my friend; only you must please to remember that this is Friday. Now, on such a day I can neither eat flesh nor see it eaten. If you can be satisfied with my dinner-it consists of cooked tétragones and fruits."
"What do you mean by tétragones?" asked d'Artagnan, uneasily.
"I mean spinach," replied Aramis; "but on your account I will add some eggs, and that is a serious infraction of the rule-for eggs are meat, since they engender chickens."
"This feast is not very succulent; but never mind, I will put up with it for the sake of remaining with you."
"I am grateful to you for the sacrifice," said Aramis; "but if your body be not greatly benefited by it, be assured your soul will."
"And so, Aramis, you are decidedly going into the Church? What will our two friends say? What will Monsieur de Treville say? They will treat you as a deserter, I warn you."
"I do not enter the Church; I re-enter it. I deserted the Church for the world, for you know that I forced myself when I became a Musketeer."
"I? I know nothing about it."
"You don't know I quit the seminary?"
"This is my story, then. Besides, the Scriptures say, 'Confess yourselves to one another,' and I confess to you, d'Artagnan."
"And I give you absolution beforehand. You see I am a good sort of a man."
"Do not jest about holy things, my friend."
"Go on, then, I listen."
"I had been at the seminary from nine years old; in three days I should have been twenty. I was about to become an abbe, and all was arranged. One evening I went, according to custom, to a house which I frequented with much pleasure: when one is young, what can be expected? one is weak. An officer who saw me, with a jealous eye, reading the lives of the saints to the mistress of the house, entered suddenly and without being announced. That evening I had translated an episode of Judith, and had just communicated my verses to the lady, who gave me all sorts of compliments, and leaning on my shoulder, was reading them a second time with me. Her pose, which I must admit was rather free, wounded this officer. He said nothing; but when I went out he followed, and quickly came up with me. 'Monsieur the Abbe,' said he, 'do you like blows with a cane?' 'I cannot say, monsieur,' answered I; 'no one has ever dared to give me any.' 'Well, listen to me, then, Monsieur the Abbe! If you venture again into the house in which I have met you this evening, I will dare it myself.' I really think I must have been frightened. I became very pale; I felt my legs fail me; I sought for a reply, but could find none-I was silent. The officer waited for his reply, and seeing it so long coming, he burst into a laugh, turned upon his heel, and re-entered the house. I returned to the seminary.
"I am a gentleman born, and my blood is warm, as you may have remarked, my dear d'Artagnan. The insult was terrible, and although unknown to the rest of the world, I felt it live and fester at the bottom of my heart. I informed my superiors that I did not feel myself sufficiently prepared for ordination, and at my request the ceremony was postponed for a year. I sought out the best fencing master in Paris, I made an agreement with him to take a lesson every day, and every day for a year I took that lesson. Then, on the anniversary of the day on which I had been insulted, I hung my cassock on a peg, assumed the costume of a cavalier, and went to a ball given by a lady friend of mine and to which I knew my man was invited. It was in the Rue des France-Bourgeois, close to La Force. As I expected, my officer was there. I went up to him as he was singing a love ditty and looking tenderly at a lady, and interrupted him exactly in the middle of the second couplet. 'Monsieur,' said I, 'does it still displease you that I should frequent a certain house of La Rue Payenne? And would you still cane me if I took it into my head to disobey you? The officer looked at me with astonishment, and then said, 'What is your business with me, monsieur? I do not know you.' 'I am,' said I, 'the little abbe who reads lives of the saints, and translates Judith into verse.' 'Ah, ah! I recollect now,' said the officer, in a jeering tone; 'well, what do you want with me?' 'I want you to spare time to take a walk with me.' 'Tomorrow morning, if you like, with the greatest pleasure.' 'No, not tomorrow morning, if you please, but immediately.' 'If you absolutely insist.' 'I do insist upon it.' 'Come, then. Ladies,' said the officer, 'do not disturb yourselves; allow me time just to kill this gentleman, and I will return and finish the last couplet.'
"We went out. I took him to the Rue Payenne, to exactly the same spot where, a year before, at the very same hour, he had paid me the compliment I have related to you. It was a superb moonlight night. We immediately drew, and at the first pass I laid him stark dead."
"The devil!" cried d'Artagnan.
"Now," continued Aramis, "as the ladies did not see the singer come back, and as he was found in the Rue Payenne with a great sword wound through his body, it was supposed that I had accommodated him thus; and the matter created some scandal which obliged me to renounce the cassock for a time. Athos, whose acquaintance I made about that period, and Porthos, who had in addition to my lessons taught me some effective tricks of fence, prevailed upon me to solicit the uniform of a Musketeer. The king entertained great regard for my father, who had fallen at the siege of Arras, and the uniform was granted. You may understand that the moment has come for me to re-enter the bosom of the Church."
"And why today, rather than yesterday or tomorrow? What has happened to you today, to raise all these melancholy ideas?"
"This wound, my dear d'Artagnan, has been a warning to me from heaven."
"This wound? Bah, it is now nearly healed, and I am sure it is not that which gives you the most pain."
"What, then?" said Aramis, blushing.
"You have one at heart, Aramis, one deeper and more painful a wound made by a woman."
The eye of Aramis kindled in spite of himself.
"Ah," said he, dissembling his emotion under a feigned carelessness, "do not talk of such things, and suffer love pains? Vanitas VANITATUM! According to your idea, then, my brain is turned. And for whom-for some grisette, some chambermaid with whom I have trifled in some garrison? Fie!"
"Pardon, my dear Aramis, but I thought you carried your eyes higher."
"Higher? And who am I, to nourish such ambition? A poor Musketeer, a beggar, an unknown-who hates slavery, and finds himself ill-placed in the world."
"Aramis, Aramis!" cried d'Artagnan, looking at his friend with an air of doubt.
"Dust I am, and to dust I return. Life is full of humiliations and sorrows," continued he, becoming still more melancholy; "all the ties which attach him to life break in the hand of man, particularly the golden ties. Oh, my dear d'Artagnan," resumed Aramis, giving to his voice a slight tone of bitterness, "trust me! Conceal your wounds when you have any; silence is the last joy of the unhappy. Beware of giving anyone the clue to your griefs; the curious suck our tears as flies suck the blood of a wounded hart."
"Alas, my dear Aramis," said d'Artagnan, in his turn heaving a profound sigh, "that is my story you are relating!"
"Yes; a woman whom I love, whom I adore, has just been torn from me by force. I do not know where she is or whither they have conducted her. She is perhaps a prisoner; she is perhaps dead!"
"Yes, but you have at least this consolation, that you can say to yourself she has not quit you voluntarily, that if you learn no news of her, it is because all communication with you is interdicted; while I "
"Nothing," replied Aramis, "nothing."
"So you renounce the world, then, forever; that is a settled thing a resolution registered!"
"Forever! You are my friend today; tomorrow you will be no more to me than a shadow, or rather, even, you will no longer exist. As for the world, it is a sepulcher and nothing else."
"The devil! All this is very sad which you tell me."
"What will you? My vocation commands me; it carries me away."
D'Artagnan smiled, but made no answer.
Aramis continued, "And yet, while I do belong to the earth, I wish to speak of you of our friends."
"And on my part," said d'Artagnan, "I wished to speak of you, but I find you so completely detached from everything! To love you cry, 'Fie! Friends are shadows! The world is a sepulcher!'"
"Alas, you will find it so yourself," said Aramis, with a sigh.
"Well, then, let us say no more about it," said d'Artagnan; "and let us burn this letter, which, no doubt, announces to you some fresh infidelity of your grisette or your chambermaid."
"What letter?" cried Aramis, eagerly.
"A letter which was sent to your abode in your absence, and which was given to me for you."
"But from whom is that letter?"
"Oh, from some heartbroken waiting woman, some desponding grisette; from Madame de Chevreuse's chambermaid, perhaps, who was obliged to return to Tours with her mistress, and who, in order to appear smart and attractive, stole some perfumed paper, and sealed her letter with a duchess's coronet."
"What do you say?"
"Hold! I must have lost it," said the young man maliciously, pretending to search for it. "But fortunately the world is a sepulcher; the men, and consequently the women, are but shadows, and love is a sentiment to which you cry, 'Fie! Fie!'"
"d'Artagnan, d'Artagnan," cried Aramis, "you are killing me!"
"Well, here it is at last!" said d'Artagnan, as he drew the letter from his pocket.
Aramis made a bound, seized the letter, read it, or rather devoured it, his countenance radiant.
"This same waiting maid seems to have an agreeable style," said the messenger, carelessly.
"Thanks, d'Artagnan, thanks!" cried Aramis, almost in a state of delirium. "She was forced to return to Tours; she is not faithless; she still loves me! Come, my friend, come, let me embrace you. Happiness almost stifles me!"
The two friends began to dance around the venerable St. Chrysostom, kicking about famously the sheets of the thesis, which had fallen on the floor.
At that moment Bazin entered with the spinach and the omelet.
"Be off, you wretch!" cried Aramis, throwing his skullcap in his face. "Return whence you came; take back those horrible vegetables, and that poor kickshaw! Order a larded hare, a fat capon, mutton leg dressed with garlic, and four bottles of old Burgundy."
Bazin, who looked at his master, without comprehending the cause of this change, in a melancholy manner, allowed the omelet to slip into the spinach, and the spinach onto the floor.
"Now this is the moment to consecrate your existence to the King of kings," said d'Artagnan, "if you persist in offering him a civility. Non inutile desiderium OBLATIONE."
"Go to the devil with your Latin. Let us drink, my dear d'Artagnan, morbleu! Let us drink while the wine is fresh! Let us drink heartily, and while we do so, tell me a little of what is going on in the world yonder."
15. Men of the Robe and Men of the Sword
27. The Wife of Athos


North American International Auto Show (NAIAS) 2014 has been opened. As usual, there are many new cars and concept cars that made its debut at this annual event. Ford introduced 2015 F-150 which features aluminum body, Toyota showed off their new concept car, FT-1 which previews New Supra and the design direction of Japanese company in the future, The hottest Corvette, Z06, finally showed up with 625 hp engine, and many more.
1. 2015 Chevrolet Corvette Z06. Corvette Z06 was the most-anticipated car at NAIAS 2014. This 'Big Nasty' (according to what Mark Reuss said when he was introducing Z06) brings LT4 engine 6.2L V8 produces 625 hp. For transmission, Chevy offers manual 7-speed and 8-speed automatic. For the exterior, Chevy adds aero kits which is made from carbon fiber. It makes Z06 looks more aggressive than regular Corvette. With epic unveiling, this beast deserves to be the best at the show.
2. 2015 Ford F-150. Latest F-150 is one of the most important debut at this year's NAIAS. This full-size truck comes up with a lot improvement and breakthrough for Full-size Truck segment. Its exterior design is inspired by Atlas Concept makes it look sophisticated. The big news is 93% of truck's body is made by aluminum so that F-150 weight is lighter than its predecessor and its rivals. The advantages of using can make new F-150 faster, stronger, and more efficient. Under the hood, Ford engineers put new EcoBoost engine 2.7L V6, EcoBoost 3.5L V6 replacing V8 6.2L, and V8 5.0L. Interesting features in latest F-150 are 360-degree camera, integrated loading ramps, and more.
3. 2015 Cadillac ATS Coupe. The rumors about Cadillac ATS Coupe has spread since a year ago. And it is finally revealed at NAIAS 2014. ATS Coupe ready to fight with BMW 4-Series. For exterior design, it's almost identical with sedan version. Cadillac makes small changes on B-pillar which is more sloping. Overall, ATS styling is conservative but it still looks beautiful. For the engine, Caddy offers 2.0L Turbo produces 272 hp and V6 3.6L produces 321 hp.
4. 2015 Chrysler 200. When an unofficial picture of 2015 200 leaked before NAIAS, I was surprised about how nice its design. Comparing to its predecessor, New 200 has much better looking. Even though some people said that it looks like Tesla Model S in front and '14 Chevy Impala in rear, it still looking good. This mid-size sedan brings Tigershark engine with 2.4L produces 184 hp and Pentastar V6 3.6L produces 295 hp. New 200 becomes the first car which uses 9-speed automatic transmission and AWD system with rear exle disconnect in its class.
5. Volvo XC Coupe Concept. For me, this is the best concept car that made world debut at NAIAS. Volvo XC Coupe comes up with futuristic design. It blends the toughness of SUV and the sexiness of coupe. It's even cooler with ski box on the roof and 21-inch wheels. XC Coupe previews the next generation of XC90 which will be introduced later this year.


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Rabbit la Berlin
Bunnies! Cute, little, wriggling noses. But how scared they seem when the construction crews roll into Potsdamer Platz and get to work on what would become the Berlin Wall in 1961. Bartek Konopka's shortish documentary boasts some absorbing black-and-white archival footage (supplemented with freshly recorded sound) and an ironic central point: Rabbits, though trapped in a hazardous no-man's land, thrived vigorously in the unmussed meadow for decades. The doc's straining for a larger, Varda-esque metaphor about the sad humans on the sidelines is ill-advised. So, too, is a weird post-Fall coda (will the animals survive?) that takes on an overly precious PETA-in-the-war-zone tone. Still: bunnies!
Perhaps as a counterweight, Film Forum is showing a somber half-hour short beforehand, Nurit Aviv's "Loss" (2003)---the original title, "Father's Land," is more apt. In it, political theorist Hannah Arendt seethes on a 1964 chat show about the acquiescence of intellectuals to Nazism. Meanwhile, we're on a train cruising through Berlin. Other talking heads are superimposed over the shifting landscape. You'll either be held rapt by comments about the influence of Jewish thinkers before Hitler's rise, or feel like you're trapped in a coach compartment with an extremely talkative relative.
See more in Film
Posted: Tuesday December 7 2010


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CHRISTOPHER L. GASPER
Patriots surprise by staying put in first round
By Christopher L. Gasper Globe Staff,May 9, 2014, 4:19 a.m.
FOXBOROUGH — Patriot Place is usually the home of trading places on the first night of the NFL Draft. Nobody mines and manipulates the draft board for value like Bill Belichick, who is like a pick-accumulating puppeteer with his fellow NFL decision-makers. But His Hoodiness decided instead of making a big trade he would take a big body.
In what might have been a bigger shocker than Matt Fraser scoring the game-winning goal for the Bruins in Game 4 of their Stanley Cup playoff series with the Montreal Canadiens, the Patriots stood pat at No. 29 in the first round and drafted defensive tackle Dominique Easley from the University of Florida.
It was practically an article of faith that in one of the deepest NFL Drafts in recent memory the Patriots would auction off their first-round pick to the highest bidder, the same way they did last season, when they sent No. 29 to Minnesota for a second-round pick, a third-round pick, a fourth-round pick, and a seventh-round pick.
But following the familiar catchphrase of doing what is in the best interest of the team, the Patriots tabbed Easley, who fits the profile of the upfield interior defensive lineman they've been looking for since they traded for Albert Haynesworth in 2011. Just when you think Belichick is going to zig he zags.
"The way the board ended up we felt real good about Dominique being available at 29," said Belichick.
Exercising the pick continued the Patriots' off-season augmentation — don't call it loading up, that's for salary cap spendthrifts like Denver. The NFL has become a quarterback league and the only way to stop them is to smother their wide receivers and bury them in the pocket. Defense in the league is now about skill over scheme.
Belichick is still as erudite a coach as you'll find stalking an NFL sideline. But the Patriots were 26th in third-down defense last season. They had porous rush defense after losing defensive tackles Vince Wilfork and Tommy Kelly to injury, but that wasn't their undoing in the AFC Championship game. It was pass defense. Peyton Manning carved up the Patriots' pass defense like a Christmas ham, passing for 400 yards on 32 of 43 passing and leading the Broncos to 507 yards of total offense.
The selection of the 6-foot-2-inch, 288-pound Easley continued the Patriots' offseason upgrading of their defense. They went out and signed cornerbacks Darrelle Revis and Brandon Browner to upgrade their secondary.
Trying to get a penetrating defensive tackle that can push the pocket and help push the Patriots over the top has been a priority. Haynesworth and Jonathan Fanene failed to fit the bill. The Patriots are banking on Easley, who had 5½ sacks in four seasons at Florida, doing better.
"In college his stats might have been a little bit deceiving," said Belichick. "A lot of times he was the disruptive player on the play, but he wasn't the guy making the tackle. It wouldn't be on the stat sheet, but the reason the play wasn't successful was because of his penetration, being disruptive. He has a good knack for that. He is an explosive player."
Easley will fit in to the interior line group immediately in one regard — he's coming back from a major injury. Wilfork was felled by a torn Achilles' tendon in the fourth game and Kelly suffered a torn anterior cruciate ligament the next week.
Easley tore the ACL in his left knee in 2011 and had his 2013 season truncated by a torn ACL in his right knee. Belichick dismissed any health concerns with Easley.
Belichick would say that if Easley had been in a wheelchair on draft night.
We'll see if the big guy is a caveat emptor pick or a value pick.
However, the Patriots have done well in the Belichick era when they have selected defensive linemen in the first round. Richard Seymour, Ty Warren, Vince Wilfork, and Chandler Jones all became stalwarts.
As the draft droned on, the Patriots were finally on the clock at 11:19 p.m. Their pick was announced on television at 11:26 p.m.
Everyone was waiting for the Patriots' habitual tradedown in the draft. Down and out isn't just the state the Patriots have been left in after losing the last two AFC Championship games by double digits, it's usually their draft mantra.
Patriots' fans will point out that under Belichick the Patriots had traded down in the draft 16 times and traded up 17 times. But that's a prime example of the potential mendacity of raw numbers with no context. The Patriots trade up a lot — in the second round.
In only three prior seasons had the Patriots traded up in the first round of the draft — moving up 11 spots in 2002 to take tight end Daniel Graham, advancing one spot in 2003 to take Warren and twice climbing the board six places in 2012 to nab Jones and LB Dont'a Hightower.
"There are always conversations," said Belichick. "But we felt good about Dominique, and a couple of teams behind us that you know...we just didn't want to take a chance on it."
For awhile it looked like the Patriots could have a quarterback decision to make at No. 29 with Johnny Manziel. Johnny Football got the Heisman stiff-arm for 21 picks before the Browns flipped their second first-round pick (No. 26) and a third-round pick to Philadelphia to move up to No. 22 and take the freefalling, polarizing passer.
The parlor game being played at Gillette Stadium was what would happen first -- a winner in the Bruins-Canadiens game or Johnny Manziel being drafted. Fraser and the Bruins won, as Manziel wasn't picked until 10:42 p.m., going to the Cleveland Browns at No. 22, about 10 minutes after the Bruins won in overtime.
The Patriots have their franchise QB. Their focus is on building a team that can stop one.
• Interactive graphic: Sorting through the Patriots' draft history
• Best draft picks in Patriots history
• Worst draft picks in Patriots history
Christopher L. Gasper can be reached at cgasper@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @cgasper.
A racist blast from the White House exposes the reality of Donald Trump
America 'belongs to everyone': Congresswomen targeted by Trump deliver searing rebuke to president
Chappaquiddick at 50: Ted Kennedy's long life in public service was a privilege of different times


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Lady Gaga's Michael Jackson tribute draws Nazi comparisons
by Tyler Munro
As the U.S. presidential polls open, artists around the country are making their final push to get their fans to rock the vote. One of the more baffling ones happened last night, when Lady Gaga and Jon Bon Jovi sang "Living on a Prayer" to a midnight audience of people who had–let's be honest–already hedged their bets on the Hilldozer.
But before they performed, Gaga gave a speech, and the outfit she wore drew some pretty intense criticism. Namely, that she was dressed like a Nazi. The black shirt and red arm band certainly draw a dangerous coincidence.
Thankfully, no, Lady Gaga has not suddenly turned to the Reich, and no, this isn't a play on the exhausted Hitlery Trumpism. It turns out she was actually paying tribute to Michael Jackson, and that the top she was wearing is the same one he wore when he visited the White House in 1990. Like, it's the exact same one: Gaga purchased it, along with 54 other things, at a Michael Jackson auction back in 2012.
[h/t Fact]
Tags: Music, News, hillary clinton, lady gaga, Michael Jackson, US Election
Killer Mike accused of sexism during Bernie Sanders campaign
Lady Gaga will sing with Metallica at the Grammys
Someone Photoshopped these musicians to look like bad fan art


The gods meet in conference on Olympos. Zeus proposes that because Menelaos has obviously won the duel, the long, nine-year war be brought to a close. Hera and Athena dislike this course of action, and Hera, in particular, vehemently protests to Zeus. She wants the complete destruction of Troy, a city she bitterly hates. She wants no truce. Zeus gives in and sends Athena to somehow arrange a resumption of the fighting.
At Troy, Athena seeks out Pandaros, one of the Trojan leaders, and tempts him to kill Menelaos, thereby gaining great glory. Pandaros foolishly acts on her advice and draws his bow, as the truce is still in effect. He shoots an arrow at Menelaos, but Athena makes sure that it only wounds Menelaos because she doesn't want him dead, but she does want the battle to begin anew. Agamemnon and the Achaians are shocked by this violation of the truce and by the seemingly serious injury to Menelaos. Fortunately, the wound is not fatal, but while an army surgeon is treating it, several of the Trojan regiments begin to advance suddenly in battle order.
Agamemnon immediately orders his troops to prepare to fight, and he goes through the ranks of his army, praising the men. The Achaians respond to their king's spirit and they eagerly and cheerfully arm themselves and fall into line. The war begins again. The two armies clash violently, and large numbers of men on both sides are killed.
Book IV begins with an argument among the gods in which Zeus taunts Hera and Athena about the possibility of ending the war at once because Paris has lost the duel with Menelaos. However, after Hera's impassioned argument against the Trojans, Zeus immediately sends Athena to trick Pandaros. Pandaros, referred to as a "fool" for being taken in by Athena, breaks the truce and attempts to kill Menelaos with an arrow. These two scenes — the argument and attack — are followed by parallel scenes among the Greeks. Agamemnon reviews his troops, taunting or praising the warriors as he thinks best. He is similar to a modern football coach "psyching up" individual players in different ways before the game. Agamemnon's attitude toward his warriors is similar to Zeus' attitude toward the other gods. His comments are intended to produce a particular response. Zeus mocks another god to produce a particular reaction. Agamemnon criticizes or praises based on his assessment of the warrior's personality. After the review, the first major battle scene of the Iliad begins.
The significant comparison between the scenes involving the gods and those involving Agamemnon and the troops is that for the gods, their decisions are almost jokes; Zeus can mock Hera and Athena even though he knows that he will send Athena to Pandaros and that the war will continue. In contrast, for Agamemnon and the soldiers, the taunting and the fighting are matters of life and death, of individual and collective survival.The significance of Pandaros' shot at Menelaos should not be overlooked; it is a crucial moment in the epic. If Pandaros does not take the shot, the war could end. To accentuate the importance of the moment, Homer describes the bow and the shot in extended detail. Such involved descriptions of weaponry are common in both the Iliad and the Odyssey. The technique is also used in later epics, such as the long histories of the swords in the great Anglo-Saxon epic Beowulf.
Humor in the Iliad is most often associated with the gods but does occasionally show up among the humans, most often in connection with Nestor. In Book IV, however, Agamemnon's reaction to Menelaos' flesh wound is humorous. Agamemnon, seeing blood, thinks that his brother has been mortally wounded and begins a long speech of lament and revenge, concluding with the idea that eventually he will return to Greece "leaving behind the hero Menelaos/ mouldering in his wake." Menelaos undercuts Agamemnon's oration by saying that he is not really hurt. Agamemnon's concern for his brother may be genuine, but he comes across as overprotective.
Finally, the graphic nature of the battle scenes startle some first-time readers, but the straightforward nature of these depictions is part of Homer's technique. The description of wounds and death may be realistic, but the actual battle descriptions are stylized, examples of the set pieces used in epic composition (see Introduction). Examples of this stylized description are phrases such as, "the sound of struggle roared and rocked the earth," "rushing madly to strip his gear," or "loosed his limbs." Homer understandably focuses on individual combat of heroes while ignoring the multitude of foot soldiers who must have borne the brunt of the fighting. The gods, representing elemental forces and passions, help both sides.


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Q: Directory.EnumerateDirectories() hang on some network folders I have this simple C# code:
foreach (string s in Directory.EnumerateDirectories(root))
{
    Console.WriteLine(s);
}

root is a string (UNC) to a network share (Windows) containing 10520 files and no subfolders. I would expect Directory.EnumerateDirectories(root) to return an empty collection, but it hangs. I have waited several minutes.
The DOS command "dir" work as expected and even "Properties" in Windows Explorer completes the task in 5 seconds reporting "10 520 Files, 0 Folders"
My guess is that there is some limit either on the file server or on my computer.

A: The issue is most likely with .net itself. Sometimes (if not always) it's slower than native Windows API.
Command Line and Explorer are working with WinAPI that is why they are so fast.
Fortunately there is a possibility to invoke WinAPI via C# using P/Invoke.
There are a lot of examples, like this.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


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Truehart, Preston head to runoff in St. Tammany Parish Coroner race
Updated: 11:34 PM CDT Apr 5, 2014
Travers Mackel
Two candidates in the race for St. Tammany Parish Coroner will head to a runoff election.Watch videoThe runoff will be between Dr. Leanne Truehart and Dr. Charles Preston.Link: Election resultsTruehart, a Mandeville-based psychiatrist, said, "I will continue to knock on doors and run a grass-roots campaign, trying to reach out to as many people as possible."Preston, a retired emergency room doctor, vowed to restore credibility to the office shamed by now convicted coroner Dr. Peter Galvan.Galvan pleaded guilty in 2013 to a single count of conspiracy to steal public funds and was sentenced to two years in federal prison in February."I'm very happy the voters have selected me to continue in this race," Preston said. "As a late entrant into the race, we worked very hard to tell the people of St. Tammany about my commitment to transparency, my ability to work full-time at the job, and my diversity of training and qualifications. We look forward to continuing our positive campaign for the next four weeks, and congratulate Dr. Truehart on her success today, as well."Four candidates are running to become the next coroner, and voters will head to the polls Saturday to make their choice.The office has been filled on a temporary basis by Dr. Premod Menon since Galvan's resignation.
ST. TAMMANY PARISH, La. —
Two candidates in the race for St. Tammany Parish Coroner will head to a runoff election.
April 5 election results
The runoff will be between Dr. Leanne Truehart and Dr. Charles Preston.
Link: Election results
Truehart, a Mandeville-based psychiatrist, said, "I will continue to knock on doors and run a grass-roots campaign, trying to reach out to as many people as possible."
Preston, a retired emergency room doctor, vowed to restore credibility to the office shamed by now convicted coroner Dr. Peter Galvan.
Galvan pleaded guilty in 2013 to a single count of conspiracy to steal public funds and was sentenced to two years in federal prison in February.
"I'm very happy the voters have selected me to continue in this race," Preston said. "As a late entrant into the race, we worked very hard to tell the people of St. Tammany about my commitment to transparency, my ability to work full-time at the job, and my diversity of training and qualifications. We look forward to continuing our positive campaign for the next four weeks, and congratulate Dr. Truehart on her success today, as well."
Four candidates are running to become the next coroner, and voters will head to the polls Saturday to make their choice.
The office has been filled on a temporary basis by Dr. Premod Menon since Galvan's resignation.


Nice blog and beautiful picture.
what a nice shot, the first one!
thanks for taking us on this Kolar trip with you, very authentic photos of the temples and you provided such a nice description along w/ the history.
I was intending to do a post on silkworms, I have some photographs, glad got some info here.
@Alok - Thanks. Please do visit Kolar. It is untouched by tourists and thuis you can get to see Indian villages in the rawest form. And its plus point is it is so close to Bangalore and you can speak any of the three languages here - Kannada, Tamil, Telgu.
@Didi - Thanks. Oh thats great. Does you sister have a blog? will she write about her Mumbai experiences?
@Indrani - Sure, I have more pictures if you need.
Have you been to Kolar before? or want to?
One of the least known districts despite the fact that it's so close to Bangalore. Lovely. Looking forward to more posts from there.
Looks like you are on a mission to conquer karnataka's hotspots and culture in ur camera.. good work.. keep goin..
Thanks,You posted nice pictures. The kms with respect to which place. If map is added its gr8. I plan to visit these places today.
Planning a trip to Kolar this weekend and the next. Lets see how it goes.
Thanks for increasing my must-visit list in Kolar.


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CPJ mourns killed journalist in Egypt, demands justice
August 14, 2013 10:33 AM EDT
New York, August 14, 2013–The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns the killing of Sky News cameraman Mick Deane, who was shot as Egyptian security forces attempted to disperse pro-Morsi demonstrations in Cairo today.
"We call on Egyptian authorities to issue clear orders to security forces to respect the right of journalists to work freely and safely while covering events in Cairo and the rest of the country," said CPJ Deputy Director Robert Mahoney. "The killing of Mick Deane underscores the urgent need for such action and for all sides to show restraint and allow the media to do their job. The authorities must investigate all attacks on journalists and hold those responsible to account."
CPJ is investigating several attacks on journalists in Egypt today. CPJ has documented at least 78 assaults on journalists from August 2012 until former President Mohamed Morsi's ouster on July 3, 2013, according to a new special report on Egypt, released today.
Mick Deane
Mohamed Morsi


Designs by Lisa Somerville: Honey....I'm Home!
Can you imagine spending the week with 6,000 stampers! Here's a quick glimpse of my last week! I'll be posting more photos throughout the week!
A special thanks to UPS for donating the new RMHC set to all demos who attended Convention - watch for samples on my blog soon!
OMG girlie .. you know what I thought I seen you there BUT I didnt know for sure that you would be there and when I saw you your hair looked darker .. was that you ? I seen you when we were lining up for the last night .. anyway I am sooo sad I didnt at least ask you if that was you .. I would have loved a photo with you sweetie ..


When Martin Scorsese took us spiralling down multiple layers of dreams within dreams with 'Inception', he knew from the outset that beneath the bottom-most strata, another had already trod that path.. and gone further still. It is perhaps rather apt that The Saragossa Manuscript has managed to remain such a well kept secret over the years. Even with the enthusiastic aid of such bigwig cinemeisters as Scorsese & F.F.Coppola, who battled to get a restoration and DVD transfer (on the somewhat amusingly titled 'Mr Bongo' films label), mentioning The Manuscript still generally get's a shrug in response. Explaining the plot in a succinct sentence or two is pretty difficult, I'll give you.. and in most of our minds black & white Polish cinema is bundled up with a certain breed of depressive foreign language film that frightens the hell out of English speaking audiences. Which is a crying shame, because in every way it is an equal to it's contemporaries that sprung from France, Italy and Britain during the 1960's New Wave. It manages to be both accurate period drama piece, and voice of the modern morality in state of flux. Sinister and dark.. but comical and ironic in equal turn.
At the risk of adding to The Manuscript's obscurity, I don't feel right in unlocking it's pages, or plundering it's beautiful complexities. Like a much loved holiday spot, or a favourite painting in a gallery.. some pleasures need be discovered alone. I'll just give a nudge in the right direction. Quickly, the great beauty Elżbieta Czyżewska has already started her story..
'I'm a Captain of the guard, not a philosopher.
THX-1138 stands as the only product of the ill fated 'American Zoetrope company, formed by Francis Ford Coppola, George Lucas and their group of like minded young cinema revolutionaries in the latter half of the 1960's. The original intent was to Write, Produce & Direct their own independant films with studio backing, as a kind of cinematic 'Think Tank', of new generation artists who understood what the hip new audiences wanted from Hollywood. Whilst Coppola was fermenting ideas for 'Apocalypse Now' & thinking about Gangster movies, Lucas was given the 1st Directorial chair for the remake of his bold student film about State control & xenophobic reactions to the new budding technologies on the horizon. American Zoetrope's combined powers backed Lucas' cold, frightening vision of the future without compromise. The result was a stunning creation that was every bit as shocking as it's earlier predecessor '2001: A Space Odyssey', but twice as far from the type of popularist product that the studios expected. In short, they hated it, pulled all support from Zoetrope & THX-1138 recieved an ugly edit & highly minimal release.
Robert Duvall heads the cast as our protagonist numbered ('The Prisoner' style), THX-1138 in a futuristic nightmare society of post apocalyptic machine control. Mankind lives a doped up Orwellian existance beneath ground in a series of tunnels and Malls where every aspect of their lives is observed and controlled by a computerised State that shuns individuality, enforcing it's will with a mechanised Police force. Like some Victorian Workhouse or dehumanizing Concentration camp, Lucas shaves the heads of his world's occupants and films them against stark grey or bleached-out hospital like settings. The severing of the hair in the age of the Hippie was all the more shocking upon it's release, especially for it's actresses to undergo. A little documentary made prior to filming, shows the traumas that the cast experienced having their heads shaved, giggles soon turning to tears (this fascinating documentary was included on the recent THX Special edition by the way).
'Let us be thankful we have commerce. Buy more. Buy more now. Buy. And be happy'.
There's an extraordinary performance from Maggie McOmie, playing THX's mate (for love is forbidden), who is instrumental in freeing Duvall from the drugged ambivalence of his fellow inmates. Her desperation to emote in such a sterile atmosphere is powerfully conveyed in one of the most convincing performances in the entire science fiction genre. She releases THX to question this society and to seek what is beyond the immediate limitations set by the machines. There is the suggestion of a great war or deverstation that made the planet uninhabitable, and THX struggles for liberation in a bid to reach the surface. Mutations mark one of the outer barriers of the city, and are briefly seen in the latter half of the film. Lucas had endless arguments with Studio executives who wanted to cut the film, to 'Put the freaks up front' in the title sequence. This later became an in-joke reference for studio interferance.
The technology presented is in stark contrast to that of the Star Wars films, with bare functional machinery, that is all the more futuristic for it's simplicity..alot of what we see looks as if it were designed by Apple. Man himself is ultimately reduced to a machine in this future, devoid of individuality. Later films like 'Logan's Run' and most recently 'The Island', took the THX scenario and throwing in some colour, guns and tagging on an upbeat ending made a popular film of it..but of course along the way they drained the concept of all inteligence and meaning.


Hazel English is a singer/songwriter from Sydney, Australia who currently resides in the Bay Area. She traveled to the US on a study abroad program in 2015, but quickly fell in love with the vibrant local music scene. Hazel found creative kinship with Day Wave's Jackson Philips and together they released the double EP "Just Give in//Never Going Home" in 2017. It's a curated collection of smooth tracks that tackles stress, anxiety and life's grey areas through the lens of dreamy, cinematic indie pop.


What makes a great press release?
James Schramko here with a marketing news update.
Okay, I want to talk about crisis management. And if you're the kind of person that's always putting out fires then you may want to be aware of the four stages.
The first stage is when the kids are playing with the matches.
The second stage is when the flame has started and then things are just starting to burn.
The third stage, things are really flaring up.
And the fourth stage is completely out of control and there's no saving it.
So a lot of managers, I see in this fourth and perhaps third stage where there's just flames everywhere and it's out of control. As a good leader and a good manager, what you want to be doing is spending a lot more time putting in standard operating procedures so that you don't have kids playing with matches in the first stage. And certainly you want to be very quick to spot a fire.
So things like feedback mechanisms, doing spot checks, audits and process stop points to make sure that things are under control early are going to save you from getting those large flames. So a good manager is going to be spending a lot more time in stage 2 when there's a very small fire that can easily be put out. Hopefully that helps you.
Here's my tip if you have a membership site.
What you want to do is you want to have a founder's member offer. So that you could have a lower price, say about this level pricing for people who give you their loyalty, who join up and take the risk and join in the early phase. What you do then is you put the price up and that way all of the people in the early low price are getting a recurring loyalty bonus for coming in early. And that increases your retention.
Now later on, your prices will be way higher and of course you can still offer some special allowances but you'll never get to that founders member where they're really feeling looked after and they tend to stick around.
With the membership if you can get that critical 2 or 3 month foundation member stick, or loyalty, then you'll find that it's much easier to maintain a solid steady consistent membership over the long period.
Here's my tip for press releases.
If you get the opportunity to include a video, make sure you do. It gives it that much more media rich experience for people visiting that press release. So you have your text, and your call outs, and your headlines, but also you got that video right that people can have a look at. They can go along to your YouTube channel and discover more about you. They can see you and hear you, so it's a much more compelling message than just having a plain text press release.
So seriously, a good press release these days is going to have a quote, it's going to have a video, it going to have a logo and your picture and a contact for media inquiries which is the whole point right.
Here's something that I suggest you do in your business if you're looking for profit.
Go and revisit a lot of the assumptions that have cost you to have the business that you have right now.
What sort of assumptions are you making about your competitors, about your customers, about your vices, about the things that you could possibly do, about your team members?
All of these things are just assumptions that you've arrived at in the past. So go and question them, one of my mentors taught me, question everything. So really go back and have a look and ask yourselves these questions.
How can you operate differently within the market?
What else can you offer your customers if you'd have waved the magic wand?
What are your competitors doing that they're missing out on that you can come in and take the opportunities?
How could you double, or triple, or quadruple your business this year by making changes with what you've already got?
I've seen it done before and it's almost always when you get rid of some limiting belief, or assumption as I like to call it. We might also notice the word habit. But you want to question these things, you can learn new habits and you can build your business much stronger and much faster when you're open minded to possibilities or break through.
Alright, so if you're interviewing people and you should be interviewing people to get good content. Here are a few pointers.
One, be curious, be really curious and be just dying to know all about this person. How they did things. Why they got results.
Drill right in, ask the questions that someone would like you to ask if they were there because your audience is not there to ask the questions and that's your job. Your job is to represent them and to think of what you should ask that they would be dying to know.
And as you go through an interview, try not to have too much structure. Open up, allow it to go where the interviewee and the interviewer takes it so that you can actually have a dynamic exploration. And if you can ask a few hard hitting questions that people are too scared to ask then you'll quite often get some great material.
The other thing is to make sure that it's entertaining. The last thing you want to do is bore people. It's a sin. And I'm sure a small cat dies somewhere around the world every time you bore someone.
Here's my final tip today, and it's about updating your files and systems on your computer.
When I want to update or refresh, what I do is I go and make a new file and I actually call it #2. So let's say I'm updating my training system. So I'll go and put a new file and call it training2 and then I'll move everything from training1 into training2 if I still need it. Now if I don't need it then it stays there.
Eventually I can archive everything that's left and that is now no longer required. So you want to keep the minimum possible files on your computer and you do that by updating the naming. Now when I want to update training2 you can guess what I'm going to call it. I'm going to call it training3 and I'm going to move only the things that I need into that new folder.
So that's how you update your training system.