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New developments in online educational technology have a profound effect on notions of intellectual property. Theories of the social construction of technology explain the extremely unstable nature of new technologies. Walter Ong's theory of the alphabet effect provides insight into the ways in which knowledge changes as media of communication change. Shoshana Zuboff's ideas on how managerial knowledge is transformed by technology help us understand how certain kinds of knowledge resist being textualized. These ideas help us understand the effects of new teaching technologies in terms of a long–standing struggle between two views of knowledge: knowledge as performance and knowledge as thing.
Interpretive flexibility and new technologies
What is "teaching" anyway?
Textualization and performance
Intellectual property as a Gestalt switch
The struggle for the meaning of educational technology
Why do teachers sometimes become more possessive about their intellectual property when they develop online materials? How can we develop policies around courseware that accommodates the rights of developers without choking off the ability of courses to evolve and of educators to make use of other educators' work? These are questions that take us beyond the realm of the legal into the realm of the social and the moral.
It is hardly news that electronic courseware is in a grey space between classroom practice and published material, or that the consequences of this fact are ambiguous, or that institutional policy on the subject is in an infant stage. "Who owns courseware?" is a frequently asked question that is typically answered by a rickety patchwork of makeshift practices. Circumstances usually force these practices to run a good deal ahead of any thoughtfully worked–out set of policies. This is perfectly normal: practice can seldom wait for policy to catch up.
Practice can seldom wait for policy to catch up.
But if we are ever to create a policy framework for educational practice that responds meaningfully to the complex forces at work here, we must go beyond basic notions of legal entitlement (though we will have to keep returning to them). We also have to go beyond looking at the technologies themselves and look at the network of meanings that clusters around these technologies, and who holds which meanings. Theories of the social construction of technology can help us here.
"The social construction of technology" (SCOT) is a cluster of theories first developed in the 1980s as a new approach to the question of how new technologies are developed. One of the most well–known and influential works in the SCOT tradition is Pinch and Bijker's "The social construction of facts and artifacts" (1987; 1984). Pinch and Bijker argued that new technologies have extremely unstable forms and meanings when they are first being developed and used. That is, their meaning is not in any way contained in the shape of the technology. Quite the contrary, the technical aspects of the technology are heavily shaped by a social struggle for its meaning. They called this concept "interpretive flexibility." Typically this struggle settles down to a large extent as the technology matures, but no technology ever moves completely out of contested space.
As a paradigm case, Pinch and Bijker used the struggle between the high–wheeled "penny–farthing" bicycle and the modern chain–drive bicycle. For a time, both forms of the bicycle existed simultaneously with a wide variety of variants. Neither had, for Pinch and Bijker, any overwhelming technical merit over the other. The eventual choice of technical shape was the result of a struggle between social groups over the meaning of the technology. For some social groups, the meaning of the technology centred on sport, manly activity and feats of daring — a constellation of meanings for which the fast but dangerous high–wheeler was admirably suited. For other groups, safety and efficient transportation were dominant meanings. The modern chain–drive bicycle, for Pinch and Bijker, represents not the domination of a particular technology per se as much as the domination of this latter set of locally contested meanings.
Figure 1: A penny–farthing bicycle.
Pinch and Bijker's ideas have been hotly debated. Some have questioned the historical accuracy of their examples (Clayton, 2002). Others, such as Langdon Winner (1993), questioned the fact that Pinch and Bijker focused entirely on the innovation stage of technology, and wrote as if technology is more or less stable once it passes the early stages of development. Most important, Winner argued that Pinch and Bijker treated technology as more or less politically neutral, and that they didn't question the larger political forces that shape it. In short, Winner would prefer a more moral stance on technology rather than simply a social view of innovation. This is an important objection, and I will come back to it in the conclusion of this paper. For now, I think that Pinch and Bijker's idea of "interpretive flexibility," though flawed, is still a useful way to look at new educational technologies.
Educational technologies, particularly online technologies, are currently in a state of high interpretive flexibility in a number of ways. First, the technical state of these technologies is certainly in flux. A wide variety of specialized course authoring packages (for example, WebCT and Blackboard) contend not only with each other but also with clusters of more traditional technologies such as newsgroups, Web pages and plain old e–mail lists. Courseware that emphasises synchronous and asynchronous discussion contends with courseware that depends more heavily on artefacts, including simple or complex Web pages, multi–media "textbooks" and various forms of video or audio steaming.
Moreover, essentially the same technologies can be applied in vastly differing ways. Video streaming, for instance, can be used for purposes that range from presenting case study material or simulations as fodder for discussion, to the projection of conventional talking–head lectures, with or without various embellishments. The current unstable state of the Internet, with its uneven penetration into the lives of various social groups and the ongoing contest between high–end and low–end technologies, also affects the different ways it can be used.
In this article, however, I wish to postpone discussion of the precise technical shape of these technologies in favour of a wider look at the social forces that are driving it. Technical shape is, of course, an important consideration, but in many respects it is the result rather than the cause of social forces. Technologies of education are not just affected by the possibilities of technology. Because these technologies are in a state of "interpretive flexibility," they are affected by our understanding of what education is. What we think it means to "teach" somebody will to a large extent dictate, for instance, whether more technological energy is put into threaded discussion tools or video streaming tools.
It can be easier to understand the immensely complicated set of contested meanings surrounding the concept of "teaching" if we simplify them into two basic ways of looking at teaching. One view emphasises teaching as a performance, and another emphasises teaching as a transfer of knowledge as a thing.
For most of the vast history of the pedagogical exercise, it has been no contest. Through all the intellectual storms of history, teaching has remained, above all, a performance art that unfolds in real time.
Through all the intellectual storms of history, teaching has remained, above all, a performance art that unfolds in real time.
In many ways this is one of the great mysteries of teaching, or has been since the invention of the book. In the old world of primary orality, procedural knowledge was passed by direct hands–on experience. More abstract knowledge — history, morality, the shared values of the culture — was embedded in folk tales that were recreated anew from pre–existing materials and pre–existing patterns for each new occasion and audience. Both were performative.
The new world of literacy was called into being by the phonetic alphabet and stabilized by what is arguably the world's greatest communication technology, the printing press. In this new world, these oral forms of knowledge were largely subsumed by the power of the new linear, repeatable, cumulative, abstract thought patterns of high literacy. The "alphabet effect" theory of Walter Ong (1982) dates most of the taken–for–granted features of modern intellectual life from this great intellectual shift. Linear logic, cumulative science, individualism, and even discursive consciousness itself have been attributed to the shift from oral to literate knowledge. In this shift, knowledge changes from being an invisible and inseparable aspect of human activity. It becomes a separate, reified entity that can be copied and recopied, stored in libraries, contemplated objectively, and of course, bought and sold. As Ong put it, with literacy the knower becomes separated from the known.
Many of the details of Ong's theories and those of his contemporaries (e.g., Logan, 1986) have been heavily questioned over the years. One of the most recent critics is Paul Grosswiler (2004). Grosswiler not only called into question some of the historical details of Ong's theories but also his assumption that a fully phonetic script is essential to Western progress — an assumption that can be called everything from Eurocentric to downright racist. But Ong's basic insight that textual literacy differs from orality in fundamental ways remains a powerful tool for understanding not only history but many facets of the present life world (Goldhaber, 2004).
One of the most useful concepts for understanding modern life is "residual orality." Ong pointed out that before the printing press stablized the effects of literacy, many aspects of society remained oral. Manuscripts were often read aloud, even by people reading them in private. Oral debates were a major way of producing knowledge. Witnesses were more important than documents. Now the printing press has made residual orality a much smaller part of everyday life. However, in many areas of life, oral performance has been remarkably resistant to being "textualized": that is, taken over by written or electronic texts. Teaching is one of these areas.
In Plato's dialogue Phaedrus, Socrates complained that writing is inferior to interpersonal speech:
"Written words ... seem to talk to you as though they were intelligent, but if you ask them anything about what they say, from a desire to be instructed, they go on telling you just the same thing forever." (Plato, 1956)
These misgivings are ironic, since it is arguably writing that made possible the long, abstract chains of reasoning that Plato made the hallmark of Western logic. On the other hand, in this passage he was not just defending oral reasoning. He was also defending the entire art of rhetoric — and by extension, teaching — as a fundamentally dialogic performance. He was resisting a tendency, only barely visible in his own day, to subsume this art to the monologic text.
Plato defended the entire art of rhetoric — and by extension, teaching — as a fundamentally dialogic performance.
Interestingly, teaching has almost entirely resisted textualization to this day. Whereas the book, the journal, the monograph have moved to the centre of the research process, the more performative art of teaching has stubbornly resisted being textualized. The textbook, the book of readings, the research assignments in the library, have remained on the periphery of teaching. They are usually valued as support systems but never seen as the heart and soul of the enterprise. Even professors who read their lectures verbatim remain in the classroom year after year, even though they could in principle write their lectures out and distribute them on paper, or videotape themselves reading them.
It is tempting to believe that this is merely the persistence of tradition, or the effects of strong unions. But with the printing press now over 500 years old, there has to be more at work than tradition or self–serving. People see the classroom — and not the book or the videotape — as the center of learning for the same reason that they stand in the rain for hours to buy tickets to a concert when they could purchase a technically better performance on CD for much less money. As a live performance, every class is slightly different. Even if the professor uses the same notes or even the same written lecture, the constant, living interaction between teacher and audience makes every performance a new event.
I'm going to pause right now before it's too late and reassure you about where I'm heading with this. I am not going to lament the lost art of live classroom teaching, nor argue that online distance education will never completely subsume face–to–face teaching. That argument has been made often enough that you don't need to hear it again from me. I want only to use this phenomenal persistence of the performative, after 500 years of technologies that could in principle have replaced it with textualization, as a reason to reflect carefully on what now seems to be happening to notions of intellectual property as online technologies promise increasing textualization of teaching.
We can understand the effects of textualization more clearly through the work of Shoshana Zuboff. In her book In the Age of the Smart Machine, Zuboff (1988) recounted the gradual textualization of more and more aspects of the worker's craft. At the beginning of the last century, Frederick Taylor began analysing a variety of tasks, writing them down, and rationalizing them into a series of steps. Workers could learn to follow these steps efficiently with very little training. Zuboff recognized that what characterized Taylorism is not just its emphasis on efficiency. The important part is the simple step of extracting knowledge and writing it down. This act of textualization allows hands–on experience to be translated into a series of explicit, and therefore easily followed, steps.
With the development of ever more sophisticated information technologies, an increasing number of jobs, including office jobs and middle–management co–ordination, could be textualized in this fashion. Such jobs moved from the realm of interpersonal tacit skill into the realm of the automatic — from the realm of "acting–with," as Zuboff called it, to the realm of "acting–on."
Despite this centuries–long trend, however, upper–end management skill has tended to remain in the realm of the interpersonal and of instinctive know–how. In this realm, information technologies have tended not to function as automating technologies, extracting human knowledge and enshrining it in more or less "expert" systems. Instead they have functioned as what Zuboff calls "informating" technologies. Informating technologies feed ever richer streams of data to human beings who still cannot fully explain their ability to sort, manage and manipulate this knowledge for managerial purposes. Managers perform their duties every day in ways that can't be fully captured in text.
Informating technologies of course come with their own challenges, requiring new forms of sense–making in order to make meaning out of an ever more abstract stream of symbols. But the point of my analogy with teaching is that, like high–end management, teaching has tended to absorb and subsume each new technology into the ongoing performance. By treating these technologies as informating rather than automating, the teaching profession has resisted becoming no more than a set of text–based instructions.
Teaching has tended to absorb and subsume each new technology into the ongoing performance.
This is as it should be. All knowledge, or at any rate all knowledge worth having, is constructed, not just found. It follows that neither the textbook, the videotape, nor even the multi–media CD or Web page, is likely to subsume completely the act of constructing knowledge in a dialogic social environment, whether face to face or electronically mediated. In the new world of educational technology, the pattern appears to be fulfilling itself yet again. The self–paced tutorials and drill–and–skill programs of the early days are yielding to web–based course designs that feature threaded discussion and collaborative work. Again, teaching as performance appears to be winning the contest over teaching as thing.
But it is far too soon to announce a winner. To return to Pinch and Bijker (1987; 1984) and their more or less tippy bicycles: the new educational technologies are currently in a state of extreme interpretive flexibility. The contest between education as performance and education as thing is far from settled. Indeed, it has been pushed into a new state of uncertainty by technologies that blur again the relatively settled boundaries between performances and things.
Some representative anecdotes can help us out here. Recently I oversaw the development of a fully Web–based version of a long–standing Communications Studies course. This course uses a number of brief video clips to provide a foundation for threaded online discussion. One of the instructors who has been teaching this course face–to–face for some time has routinely used popular movies for exactly this purpose. It seemed to me that, since she had already identified some useful clips, it would make sense to ask her to share these with the online course developer rather than reinventing this particular wheel.
The instructor's response was "That list is my intellectual property." She didn't mean that the movies were her intellectual property, of course, but she that she owned the list of them, the particular organisation of them keyed to topics in the course.
In hindsight I should have seen it coming. The organisation of pre–existing information is still a hotly contested area of intellectual property (IP) law, but certainly it has a claim to being "property" of a sort. At the time, though, the effect was like that of opening a window on a sunny day and getting a bucket of cold water in the face. After all, she had given me exactly that list several years before when I taught a face–to–face section of the course. I had used some of her ideas, not used others, passed a few new ones back to her — that's what I have come to expect of teaching. It's a living art in which people trade ideas freely to improve their courses.
But under the influence of textualization, something had happened to the concept of a course. As a result, a list of useful ideas that others might borrow had undergone a Gestalt switch. Like an Escher drawing, background became foreground through nothing more or less than an act of perception, and the relationship between performance and thing abruptly reversed.
Once that list had been used as a basis for construction of an online course, it would have been welded into place as part of an entity that has an eerie semi–permanence. It would have been quite different from a face–to–face course which, for all the text that surrounds it, ceases to exist in any meaningful sense at the end of each hour of class.
Incidents of this kind can be repeated ad infinitum with different social groups involved in different notions of "property." A colleague of mine at another university poured a year of effort into developing an online writing course — arguably one of the most difficult areas to textualize successfully. The essence of the course, like all good courses of its type, is performance, not text. As I see it, the "real" course, like a story in an oral society, is created and recreated each year in the complex guided interaction that occurs around the constellation of texts that my colleague created. Aided by a battalion of graduate students to help her read and respond to the students' texts, my colleague re–performed the course each time it was offered.
The essence of a course, like all good courses, is performance, not text.
You can guess what happened. The guided interaction by graduate students was judged to be so successful that my colleague was no longer needed, and the course now runs more or less on its own without her intervention, like a giant wind–up clock. The texts at the centre of the course have been treated as being the course, and the activity surrounding those texts treated as secondary.
My point here is simply that the interpretive flexibility of courseware is still wide open. Despite encouraging signs that the performative aspects of education are resisting conversion in the latest wave of educational technology as they have in the case of every previous technology, the distinction between performance and thing is far from settled.
I got into this discussion by referring to Pinch and Bijker (1987; 1984), who showed us how to ask not, "What is it?" but "What does it mean to whom?" Who, then, are the social groups in struggle over the nature and meaning of educational technology at the moment? Who contests performance and thing?
It's tempting to divide these groups into those who stand to make a lot of money and those who don't. This is the general burden of countless diatribes against the technologizing of education, such as David Noble's Digital diploma mills (2001; 1998). If we went with this obvious cleavage, university administrators and software companies would probably end up in one group, and educators and students would probably end up in another.
Certainly this economic analysis makes a lot of sense. Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, university administrators persist in acting as if online education will deliver truckloads of cash to the door. So do some course developers, being academics with little hope of ever doing anything else that will pay off the mortgage. At least they do the first time they attempt to develop good courseware, before they realize the incredible investment of time required for the most meagre trickle of revenue.
But the question of who is making how much money for whom is only part of the question, and in some ways it is on its way to being resolved as universities develop clearer policies on intellectual property. For me, the more interesting problem resides with what the law calls "moral right." This issue centres on the question of revision, which in turn relates to the ways in which a course evolves. It is here that the struggle among social groups for the meaning of textualized teaching becomes profound.
Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, university administrators persist in acting as if online education will deliver truckloads of cash to the door.
Unless an instructor is uncommonly strong–willed, traditionalist or lazy, face–to–face courses evolve through a natural process of adding things that work and discarding things that don't. The overall outlines of the course main remain reasonably constant, but the details change continually. This is the process which Ong calls "homeostasis." For Ong, an oral culture is like a living entity. Its body of performed knowledge anchors it and keeps it stable. However, this is a dynamic stability, not absolute stasis. The culture alters this or that set of values and beliefs in order to remain in balance with its environment, and its stories do too. In an oral society in which all knowledge is performed, stories change gradually and often without being noticed, in response to political, historical and moral forces. Characters are added, incidents change their meaning, plot lines are elaborated or reduced, slowly but in tune with the gradually shifting forces of social history.
Likewise, a course evolves as a living entity. Without my ever having consciously thrown out my notes and begun over, it is clear to me that the courses I teach now are very different from the courses I taught ten or fifteen years ago. Every year I change the assignments and course outline — the anchoring texts of the course — in response to what worked and didn't work last year. As the course unfolds, the responses of the students to each class are different, and each class is performed a bit differently from the previous year.
In an online course, much more is textualized. Once the main body of material is established, the use that is made of that material must necessarily differ from year to year. The students will be different, and the discussion that surrounds the material and gives it life will be different. But in order to make any substantive change in the body of texts that anchors the course — texts, Web pages, CDs — someone has to go in and do a "revision." In this way, the act of revision changes from a relatively natural process of evolution into a series of identifiable versions with identifiable authors.
Or possibly it doesn't. The online course, once created successfully, has the potential to run by itself without substantive revision for a number of years. Eventually inadequacies build up sufficient tension to force a complete, and probably expensive, re–visioning of the course. Generally, though, such revisions happen all at once, in the same way that textbooks are revised, rather than gradually, in the way that face–to–face courses evolve.
Aside from the profit–making issues, this raises the question of who has the right to re–develop a course, as well as the even more interesting question of how to build in incentives for doing so. As I was overseeing the development of the Communications Studies course mentioned earlier, I consulted the University of Calgary's lawyer for clarity on this point. I received a written response that is partly helpful, partly alarming:
"With respect to moral rights, the Policy is silent. Moral rights are the personal rights of the author to control the use of the work; they can be waived but never assigned and remain with the author even when the copyright is assigned to another. With respect to the rights of revision, the present Policy is also silent but the University may, in its use of any work produced by the creator and the University, make revisions to the product so long as the moral rights of the creator are not offended."
This is pretty foggy: there appears to be no clear way to know when the moral rights of the creator are being offended or what to do about that. However, the opinion goes on:
"When the revised work is substantially different than the original work, the creator of the original work cannot claim any copyright or intellectual property rights in the original."
As an administrator in charge of making sure that teaching happens, I interpret this to mean the following. I can ask someone else to take over the administration of the course from the original creator, and I can ask that person to make smaller or greater revisions in it as they see fit. If the course shifts enough that it is clearly a different entity from the original, then the originator's moral rights as well as right to profit have effectively been extinguished.
This is clearly no help at all in determining what we need to do about rights to courseware. Yet I find it strangely helpful in defining the social groups who are contesting the meaning of educational technology.
Although the point is seldom made in precisely this way, the cleavage seems to occur between those who want a course to be alive and those who do not. I had an extended argument with the developer of the online Communications Studies course that I described above. She didn't want to teach the course a second time. However, she flatly refused to let anyone else have access to her materials and develop the course further. According to the university's intellectual property regulations, I would have been within my rights to take it away and assign someone else to teach it, but the policy on moral rights suggests that I would have had trouble allowing someone else to modify it without the developer's permission. Effectively, the course is now dead, unless someone else starts from scratch and develops a new one.
Therefore, I class this instructor in the social group that values textualization over performance. This distinction cuts across other cleavages between administrator, educator and student. It puts in one group administrators who do not want courseware to be frozen, and want it to remain the common property of those who would revise and extend it regardless of who profits from it. This group also includes instructors who continue to have a personal investment in the performing and re–performing of knowledge in the constructivist atmosphere of the virtual classroom. These are the people who continue to treat the work of monitoring and responding to threaded discussions as the central business of online education. Even if they delegate much of this work to teaching assistants, they continue to take an active part in the ongoing social life of the course long after their role in designing the courseware is over. And of course it includes students who see the business of participating in online discussion as more than a chore.
It puts into another social group another highly varied group of people. This group includes, of course, administrators who would like a course to be simple so that it can be a cash cow. It also includes students who think that education is merely the transfer of knowledge through texts. These are the sort of students who regularly ask me at the end of a face–to–face class why I can't put my course notes on the Web so that they don't have to come to class. Alas, it even sweeps up course developers who are so concerned about their moral rights to a course that they prohibit further revisions by others. Though their reasons vary, these groups have one thing in common: they have yielded to the textualization of the educational experience. They have abandoned its age–old status as performance.
In criticizing Pinch and Bijker's (1987; 1984) version of the social construction of technology, Landon Winner (1993) was particularly critical of their apparent disregard for politics and values:
"I believe it is necessary for social theorists to go beyond what positivists used to call value neutrality and what social constructivists call interpretive flexibility. One must move on to offer coherent arguments about which ends, principles and conditions deserve not only our attention but also our commitment."
In this article I have tried to move beyond simply explaining different views of teaching and of teaching technology to set the stage for some moral choices. For over 500 years, teaching has resisted the technologies that would turn living performance into dead text. The technologies of literacy, from books through photocopies, video and film, and finally the computer, have remained mainly supports to the act of teaching, even though they could in principle take over from it, and often do when appropriate (for instance, the correspondence course or the self–help manual). Online learning, a set of technologies that is still in a high state of interpretive flexibility, represents a new site for this age–old conflict between performance and textualization. These technologies can support performance, providing the backbone for an educational experience that evolves constantly as students and teachers re–perform it through threaded discussion and constant interaction. Or they can support a complete surrender to textualiation, creating static entities that, like my colleague's online course, cease to evolve and become static collections of texts.
The future development of technology, in turn, will be influenced by which social group wins this struggle over the meaning of technology. If the group that values teaching as performance has the most influence, we will put more energy into developing flexible courseware that promotes social engagement and interaction. We will also develop intellectual property laws that support revision while respecting the rights of creators. If the group that sees teaching as textual has the most influence, we will develop more elaborate technologies for delivering courses as online texts, emphasising the role of the student as audience rather than as participant. We will develop increasingly restrictive intellectual property laws that protect the course as text from being changed or copied. We will also continue to develop elaborate schemes of digital rights management to protect our investment.
This may sound moralizing. I intend it to, for the struggle for the meaning of educational technology has far more moral implications than the struggle for the meaning of a bicycle. My analysis is, of course, a simplification, as is any grouping that lumps together such widely different types of humans. I think, however, that it tells us something that we should not forget as we develop and evaluate educational technologies. In the distinction between performances and things lies the difference between texts animated by human interaction, and texts that are separated from those whose knowledge they represent. This is a struggle over meanings and who gets to assign them, and how those meanings get acted out in front of real students in real time, however virtual the course may be in space. This is a moral difference if anything is.
Doug Brent is a Professor in the interdisciplinary Faculty of Communication and Culture at the University of Calgary. He researches and publishes on the social aspects of information technologies and on interdisciplinary teaching practices, particularly writing across the disciplines. He is especially interested in the social effects of electronic texts. He is co–editor of the electronic journal EJournal ( http://www.ucalgary.ca/ejournal).
Web: http://www.ucalgary.ca/~dabrent
E–mail: dabrent [at] ucalgary [dot]ca
Nick Clayton, 2002. "SCOT: Does it answer?" Technology and Culture, volume 43, number 2, pp. 351–360.
Michael H. Goldhaber, 2004. "The mentality of Homo Interneticus: Some Ongian postulates," First Monday, volume 9, number 6 (June), at http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue9_6/goldhaber/, accessed 28 June 2004.
Paul Grosswiler, 2004. "Dispelling the alphabet effect," Canadian Journal of Communication, volume 29, number 2, pp. 145–158.
Robert K. Logan, 1986. The alphabet effect: The impact of the phonetic alphabet on the development of Western civilization. New York: Morrow.
David F. Noble, 2001. Digital diploma mills: The automation of higher education. New York: Monthly Review Press.
David F. Noble, 1998. "Digital diploma mills: The automation of higher education, First Monday, volume 3, number 1 (January), at http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue3_1/noble/, accessed 4 April 2005.
Walter Ong, 1982. Orality and literacy: The technologizing of the word. New York: Methuen.
Trevor J. Pinch and Wiebe E. Bijker, 1987. "The social construction of facts and artifacts," In: Wiebe E. Bijker, Thomas P. Hughes, and Trevor J. Pinch (editors). The social construction of technological systems: New directions in the sociology and history of technology. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, pp. 17-50.
Trevor J. Pinch and Wiebe E. Bijker, 1984. "The social construction of facts and artifacts: Or how the sociology of science and the sociology of technology might benefit each other," Social Studies of Science, volume 14, number 3 (August), pp. 399–441.
Plato, 1956. Phaedrus. Translated by W.C. Helmbold and W.G. Rabinowitz. Indianapolis, Ind.: Library of Liberal Arts.
Langdon Winner, 1993. "Upon ppening the Black Box and finding it empty: Social constructivism and the philosophy of technology," Science, Technology and Human Values, volume 18, number 3 (Summer), pp. 362–378.
Shoshana Zuboff, 1988. In the age of the smart machine: The future of work and power. New York: Basic.
Paper received 14 July 2004; accepted 18 March 2005.
HTML markup: Kyleen Kenney and Edward J. Valauskas; Editor: Edward J. Valauskas.
Teaching as performance in the electronic classroom by Doug Brent
First Monday, volume 10, number 4 (April 2005),
URL: http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue10_4/brent/index.html


text:
Q: How to make a div fixed while scrolling Is there a way using JQuery that i can detect when a div starts going offscreen , and change its CSS so that its position changes to fixed and is stuck to the bottom of the window ?

A: I think what you are looking for is Sticky Elements in JQuery with waypoints if I'm correct. Take a look at this page: JQuery Waypoints

A: CSS
.div-fixed {
  position: fixed;
  bottom: 10px;
  right: 10px;
}

JS
if ($('#mydiv').offset().top() + $('#mydiv').height() > $(document).height()) {
  $('#mydiv').addClass('div-fixed');
}

A: Here's a jsFiddle demo I've used before.
jQuery:
var stickerTop = parseInt($('#sticker').offset().top);
$(window).scroll(function() {
    $("#sticker").css((parseInt($(window).scrollTop()) + parseInt($("#sticker").css('margin-top')) > stickerTop) ? {
        position: 'fixed',
        top: '0px'
    } : {
        position: 'relative'
    });
});

A: JS
var backup_position_toolbar = $('#toolbar').offset().top;
$(window).scroll(function() {
    if ( $('#toolbar').offset().top - $(window).scrollTop() < 0 ) $('#toolbar').addClass('fixed');
    if ( $(window).scrollTop() < backup_position_toolbar ) $('#toolbar').removeClass('fixed');
});

CSS
.fixed {
    margin: 1px;
    position: fixed;
    top: 0;
}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


text:
Superheroes of Tax
Last weekend, Hollywood made history. Disney's three-hour popcorn epic, Avengers: Endgamesent box-office records scrambling in panic, grossing $350 million here in the U.S. And $330 million in China. And $600 million more in another 43 countries. It's the first movie to top a billion dollars in its opening weekend. Endgame still has a long way to go before it catches Gone With the Wind, which made $3.4 billion in inflation-adjusted dollars. But did Scarlett O'Hara gross a single dollar in action figures, video games, or happy meals?
This isn't going to be one of those stories where we say, "Hey, let's look at taxes in the Marvel Universe!" We have no idea how payroll works in Wakanda. We couldn't tell you the first thing about import duties on Vibranium. And we don't really care if Thanos of Titan is reporting all his income to the proper taxing authorities. (He's not our client!)
Surely, though, there were plenty of tax collectors in the audience swelling this weekend's box-office gross. And they should be as happy as anyone, because they'll be claiming a pretty nice share of it all!
Start with the real stars of the movie. We're talking about the CGI artists who generated over 3,000 visual effects shots. (Director James Cameron's company even created an entirely new facial-capture application called Masquerade specifically for James Brolin to play Thanos.) VFX work is time and labor intensive, so most of that budget goes to the animators, directors, and other technicians who work behind the scenes to make the magic happen. Much of that money, in turn, finds its way into Uncle Sam's pocket, and far faster than it takes Thor to find his way back from Asgar.
Unfortunately, producers were forced to hire pricey people for situations like "dialogue" and "character" where special effects wouldn't cut it. Robert Downey, Jr., who earned just $500,000 for his first Iron Man movie, will take home north of $50 million. Middle-tier stars like Chris Evans, Chris Hemsworth, and Scarlett Johansson earned a reported $15 million each. All of that is taxed as ordinary income, with 37% going to Uncle Sam, 3.8% going to Social Security and Medicare, and 13% going to California.
Disney spent $356 million to make the movie, along with millions more to market and promote it. In Hollywood, the accountants are nearly as creative as the directors and writers, so the studios usually find a way to show a loss. But $1.2 billion in a single weekend may be a little harder to defeat than the usual gross, and if Endgame does show a profit, the studio will pay the usual 21% corporate tax.
At the end of the last Avengers movie, Thanos collected all six of the Infinity Stones and snapped his fingers to wipe out half the Universe's population. (Not a spoiler . . . you've had time!) Google celebrates that moment today with a Thanos "Easter Egg." Just go to Google, type "Thanos" in the search bar, and hit "enter." Then look for the jewel-covered glove, called the Infinity Gauntlet, in the upper-right corner. Click it, and you'll see half the search results magically disappear from the page.
But . . . and we're just spitballing here . . . what if you could "Thanos snap" your fingers and make half your taxes go away? Well, we may not have any Infinity Stones in our pockets. But we do have an ensemble cast of concepts and strategies to put to work to help you pay less. A captive insurance company can be every bit as good as the Power Stone, for the right business, and a charitable remainder trust can be as illuminating as the Soul Stone. So call us after the movie lets out, and take a look at our special effects!

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Compare all travel options (Train and Bus) from Le Mans to Perpignan. Just enter date and time of departure in the journey planner above, we already entered Le Mans and Perpignan for your convenience. Plan your trip, combine and compare transportation providers such as for example: Railway agencies, Bus operators, airines. The accumulated distance between Le Mans [LAT: 48.00611, LNG: 0.19956] and Perpignan [LAT: 42.68866, LNG: 2.89483] is around 753.1 km. There can be no other reason not to travel to Perpignan when you are in Le Mans because it is only 10 hours 51 minutes by car. With Combitrip directing you how to get to the airport/station and warning you if there is no connection available, you won't arrive too late or leave too early for your tip anymore. The total trip matters! Combitrip shows you how to get to the airport/station, so you won't get surprises of very long distance, time, and cost to get to the airport for super cheap flight which often results to making the total trip longer and more expensive.


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Tag Archives: François Périer
329. THE TESTAMENT OF ORPHEUS (1960)
April 26, 2018 Gregory J. Smalley (366weirdmovies)	Leave a comment
Le testament d'Orphée, ou ne me demandez pas pourquoi!
"Man seeks to escape himself in myth, and does so by any means at his disposal. Drugs, alcohol, or lies. Unable to withdraw into himself, he disguises himself. Lies and inaccuracy give him a few moments of comfort."–Jean Cocteau, Diary of an Unknown
FEATURING: Jean Cocteau, Edouard Dermithe, François Périer, María Casares
PLOT: Time-traveling poet Jean Cocteau visits a professor and asks to be shot with his faster-than-light bullets in hopes of escaping the condition of timelessness. After the bullet frees him from his 19th century garb, he wanders outside, witnesses a strange gypsy ritual, and unknowingly summons Cégeste, a character from his movie and play Orpheus. Cégeste orders him to travel to the goddess Minerva with an offering, but along the way they are detained and interrogated by Death and her chauffeur Heurtebise (two other characters from Orpheus), among other surreal encounters.
 BACKGROUND:
Testament is the third part of Jean Cocteau's "Orphic trilogy," which begins with The Blood of a Poet (1930) and peaked with its second entry, Orpheus (1950). Since characters from Orpheus play a role in Testament, this film will be much more meaningful to those who saw the second installment. Blood of a Poet has no narrative connection to the others, only a thematic one, and can be viewed in any order.
Cocteau was 71 when he made this film, which he intended to be his final statement in cinema. He wrote that the title Testament of Orpheus "has no direct connection to my film. It meant that I was bequeathing this last visual poem to all the young people who have believed in me, despite the total incomprehension with which I am surrounded on the part of my contemporaries." Cocteau died three years after Testament was released.
Reportedly, when the production was short on funds, François Truffaut invested some of his profits from his recent hit The 400 Blows so Cocteau could complete his Testament.
The film's French subtitle (or alternate title), "ne me demandez pas pourquoi," translates to "do not ask me why."
Besides Cocteau, the cast is uncredited. At the end, Cocteau says that "Any celebrities who you may see along the way appear not because they are famous, but because they fit the roles they play and because they are my friends." Among the cameo appearances: musician Charles Aznavour, Brigitte Bardot, Yul Brynner, Pablo Picasso, and director Roger Vadim. Former Orpheus Jean Marais appears briefly as Oedipus.
Edouard Dermithe, who plays the key role of Cégeste, was Cocteau's adopted son, a fact alluded to in the script.
INDELIBLE IMAGE: Cocteau stages his own funeral. His pallbearers are lanky black horse-men. The mourners are gypsies. His corpse exhales smoke. He doesn't stay dead long.
THREE WEIRD THINGS: The Poet as time-traveling fop; pantomime horse boy toys; Athena's jet javelin
WHAT MAKES IT WEIRD: In his final film, a giant of the avant-garde unapologetically indulges himself in a surrealistic journey through a misty netherworld bordered by dreams, imagination, and narcissism.
Brief clip from The Testament of Orpheus
COMMENTS: The Testament of Orpheus is, beyond question, a self-indulgent film. "Testament" has a dual meaning: it is a statement of Continue reading 329. THE TESTAMENT OF ORPHEUS (1960) →
1960AutobiographicalBlack and WhiteCriterion collectionDeathEdouard DermitheFrançois PérierFrenchJean CocteauMaría CasaresMythologyNon-narrativePoeticSelf-IndulgentSurrealismThe creative processWeirdest!


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Royal Roads University (Royal Roads) is a public university with its main campus located in Colwood, British Columbia, Canada. Royal Roads offers a number of graduate diploma programs and certificates in a wide range of disciplines.
Royal Roads University (Royal Roads) offers graduate diplomas and certificates in the areas of Education and Technology, Humanitarian Studies and Leadership studies. The graduate diploma programs and certificates offered at Royal Roads are delivered over a period of one-year in blended mode. Blended study mode combines online learning resources and opportunities for interaction online with traditional place-based classroom methods.
Royal Roads campus is spread across 260 hectares of lush parkland. Students are offered convenient housing options on campus of Royal Roads. Students get to choose from a range of options including private single and double rooms or dormitory-style suites with shared washrooms. The on-campus accommodation units are furnished with facilities including fridges, microwaves, coffee makers, toasters, kettles and cutlery. There are a wide variety of academic resources and supports available to students at Royal Roads. These include a library, bookstore, writing centre, English language centre, International services, multi-faith spaces and campus learning spaces.
02Certified by British Columbia with Education Quality Assurance (EQA) designation, a guarantee of quality education and consumer protection in British Columbia.
This program is designed to equip students with the theoretical and practical knowledge of the principles of Risk Management. The program offers courses that focus on the study of advanced accounting; audit tools and techniques; sampling; risk and control; audit planning; audit function management; laws and regulations; environmental auditing; information technology applications; professional standards and ethics; and specific industry and service sector problems.


Home » SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING » How to get Facebook traffic to your Blog?
How to get Facebook traffic to your Blog?
If you are aware of the nitty gritty of online marketing, you must be knowing that SEO is unquestionably the most preferred organic way to generate traffic to your site or blog. But, it is not the only route for individuals to learn about your site. Facebook is also an incredible method to direct people to your site and in this post; we will dive deep into the techniques that can help you drive Facebook traffic to your blog.
As per the study report of Shareaholic, Facebook is one of the most powerful Social platforms that drive more site movements compared to other Social channels. It can easily ensure more activity to your site that will ultimately imply a superior positioning for your blog in SERPs.
Actually, when looking at the Facebook Page Insights, it is anything but difficult to get some exciting reports related to Post Reach, Page Likes, Engagement and so on. Comprehending their significance lets us understand that their definitive objective is to transform individuals into clients.
Facebook marketing is the most awesome strategy to widen your reach and achieve your most relevant audiences. You can use all such potentials of Facebook in optimizing the online presence of your blog as well. With the end goal to do that, you need to get these fans to your site via some clicks.
Navigating to your site resembles looking inside your world and understanding how you can benefit them. Below given steps will do this for you. By implementing those, you will be influencing your Facebook Traffic to land to your site and opt for some favorable actions.
As a matter of first importance, your page users cannot navigate to your blog on the off chance that they cannot discover the link that can land them on your blog or website. That is why you should give a link to your blog wherever that bodes well.
You can give it in your "About" tab. Blog link can also be given in Photo and video descriptions. Using Timeline Milestones for giving Blog Link is also quite useful. You can also give your blog link in each Page post that welcomes individuals on to your blog. Even your Fb page can also be used for providing blog links.
You ought to likewise think about a CTA to your profile. CTA button is a convenient little component that shows up at the highest point of your Facebook Page, alongside the Like Button.
At the point when guests tap the CTA button, they will be guided to the site or blog page based on your personal preference. You can land your Facebook traffic on the Contact or Email Subscription page of your blog.
In case you post funny pictures, GIFs, memes, news links then they can be quite good at entertaining your fans, however, they will never direct people to your site/blog. Use of quality content and their steady posting on your blog can help you generate more traffic.
A constant flow of relevant, powerful and engaging content gives you something to promote on your Facebook page. This gives your Facebook fans something intriguing to peruse and keeps them waiting for some more posts that can offer some value addition.
Sharing your blog post on the Facebook page is very effective in influencing your Facebook traffic to land on your blog. So, use this strategy to optimize quality traffic for your blog.
Routinely refreshing your blog with new content can be quite useful. You should also make it simple for other individuals to share your blog posts on Facebook. It will be great if you add social sharing buttons on your blog, as this gives a one-step approach to individuals to share your blog post with a link to your blog on their own Facebook profile. This will widen the reach of your blog post and help you get their Facebook traffic onto your blog as well.
In today's time, visual content is the most inevitable part of optimized online presence.
Pictures are the final deciding factor. When you post something on Fb with photographs, it gets greater engagement, shares, likes, comments, and clicks.
You should always use big sized pictures on your site and blog. Different posts that you create on your blog or website should also have a cover pic because this pic will be displayed when you share that post on the Facebook page.
Cover pic of blog posts should be relevant, attractive and compelling enough to convince your Facebook traffic to click and land on your blog. A decent dependable guideline for pictures that look great on Facebook suggests the dimensions to be 1200 x 628.
Always have in mind that individuals detest misleading content. This will increase the bounce rate of your blog and also negatively affect search ranking of your blog.
Do not opt for all-caps except it is inevitable to describe something. If your content does not need it, all-caps can be a turn off for your Fb users.
Always opt for a friendly tone and being witty is also a big plus. Compose your Facebook post the manner in which you would discuss with any of your friends or companions.
Let your blogs have convincing titles because they will appear in the previews of post links on Fb page. Convincing titles work well in driving Facebook traffic to your blog.
The most effortless approach to get your Facebook posts before your most relevant audiences is to opt for paid advertising on Facebook.
You will also be offered a variety of choices with regards to targeting audiences via Facebook Ads. You can use it to get more reach among your existing Facebook fans, plus Ads will help you reach to those audiences who are not in your fan list as well.
It will let your Facebook page to reach more audiences who can opt for your products and services. This way, the audience of your Fb page will increase. Then you can use aforestated tricks to drive those people to your blog.
You can promote posts that have your blog links using paid Ads on Facebook. This will widen the reach of those posts in the most powerful manner possible that will not only increase your Facebook traffic but also compel them to land on your blog.
Now, we hope aforestated tips would have helped you understand how you can utilize Facebook to direct Facebook Traffic to your blog.
Facebook can be the entryway where you can aware your followers and audiences about the value addition that your blog can offer to them. Use your Fb page for setting your brand image and creating an awareness in a manner that your Facebook fans would visit your blog to know more about your products and services.
What tip do you consider best for driving your Facebook Traffic to your blog? Share with us in comments.
How to get Social Media Traffic?


Calyx Flowers is committed to ensuring the privacy of our customers. We value your business and your trust. This privacy statement explains our policies for the collection and use of information as it relates to your interaction with our web site.
When you visit the Calyx Flowers web site, our web server automatically recognizes your domain name and E-mail address, when possible. We collect user specific information about the pages you visit as well as any personal information you volunteer while visiting the site.
Calyx Flowers collects this information in an effort to improve the content of our web site and your shopping experience. We may also use this information to notify you about updates to our web site, special offers or upcoming events. If you do not want to receive E-mail from us, please let us know by sending an E-mail to customerservice@calyxflowers.com.
We use a third-party service provider to serve ads on our behalf across the Internet and sometimes on this site. They may collect anonymous information about your visits to our Web site, and your interaction with our products and services. They may also use information about your visits to this and other Web sites to target advertisements for goods and services. This anonymous information is collected through the use of a pixel tag, which is industry standard technology used by most major web sites. No personally identifiable information is collected or used in this process. They do not know the name, phone number, address, email address, or any personally identifying information about the user. If you would like more information about this practice and to know your choices about not having this anonymous information used by our third party service provider, please click here.
You can also read more about online marketing practices and the technologies that support them by visiting the Network Advertising Initiative's website by clicking here .
If you order a product from us, Calyx Flowers places your name in our customer file. We occasionally make our customer address list available to carefully screened companies whose products may be of interest to you. We may also send our printed catalog to you. If you prefer not to receive information from these companies or our catalog, please contact us at customerservice@calyxflowers.com.
We do not currently share our customers' E-mail addresses with other companies. If you would like to make sure we never share your E-mail address, please E-mail us at customerservice@calyxflowers.com.
If you supply us with your telephone number online, you may receive a customer service call regarding an order you placed. Calyx Flowers will only contact you to ensure the accuracy of your order.
Your order and all information regarding the sender and receiver is kept confidential. We will not disclose any information to anyone inquiring about an order they, or anyone else, has received unless required by law, a valid subpoena or Court Order.
You can shop at www.calyxflowers.com with confidence. We have partnered with Authorize.Net, a leading payment gateway since 1996, to accept credit cards and electronic check payments safely and securely for our customers.
www.calyxflowers.com is registered with the Authorize.Net Verified Merchant Seal program.


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AM Best Downgrades Credit Ratings of National Fire and Casualty Company
OLDWICK, N.J.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--AM Best has downgraded the Financial Strength Rating to B++ (Good) from A- (Excellent) and the Long-Term Issuer Credit Rating to "bbb+" from "a-" of National Fire and Casualty Company (NFC) (Chicago, IL). The outlook of these Credit Ratings (ratings) remains stable.
The ratings reflect NFC's balance sheet strength, which AM Best categorizes as very strong, as well as its marginal operating performance, limited business profile and appropriate enterprise risk management (ERM).
The rating downgrades reflect a revision in AM Best's assessment of NFC's operating performance to marginal from adequate, given the deterioration of underwriting results over the most-recent five-year period. While initiatives have been put in place to better align pricing with risks and manage severity trends, results have not yet benefited from these actions.
NFC's balance sheet strength reflects the strongest level of risk-adjusted capitalization, as measured by Best's Capital Adequacy Ratio (BCAR), modest underwriting leverage and favorable loss reserve development, partially offset by its elevated common stock leverage and limited scale.
NFC's operating performance has trended downward in recent years, largely due to a spike in severity losses, as well as continued above-average expenses associated with the cost of litigation in defense of claims against policyholders, commissions and overhead, which have resulted in underwriting and operating performance metrics that trail the commercial casualty composite. NFC maintains a limited scale of operations, writing specialized business for local public entities. AM Best views NFC's ERM as appropriate, with a management team that continues to develop and enhance ERM capabilities.
This press release relates to Credit Ratings that have been published on AM Best's website. For all rating information relating to the release and pertinent disclosures, including details of the office responsible for issuing each of the individual ratings referenced in this release, please see AM Best's Recent Rating Activity web page. For additional information regarding the use and limitations of Credit Rating opinions, please view Understanding Best's Credit Ratings. For information on the proper media use of Best's Credit Ratings and AM Best press releases, please view Guide for Media - Proper Use of Best's Credit Ratings and AM Best Rating Action Press Releases.
AM Best is a global credit rating agency, news publisher and data provider specializing in the insurance industry. The company does business in more than 100 countries. Headquartered in Oldwick, NJ, AM Best has offices in cities around the world, including London, Amsterdam, Dubai, Hong Kong, Singapore and Mexico City. For more information, visit www.ambest.com.
Copyright © 2019 by A.M. Best Rating Services, Inc. and/or its affiliates. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
Steven DeLosa
+1 908 439 2200, ext. 5969
steven.delosa@ambest.com
Michelle Baurkot
michelle.baurkot@ambest.com
Christopher Sharkey
Manager, Public Relations
christopher.sharkey@ambest.com
Jim Peavy
Director, Public Relations
james.peavy@ambest.com


The Department of Culture and the Arts (ABN 80 540 875 918) (DCA) is committed to safeguarding any personal information it may hold at any time in respect to an individual. For the purposes of this policy, "personal information" is information about individuals or which may identify an individual.
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DCA may disclose your personal information to third party contractors and service providers who help operate DCA's business or provide a service to you. DCA may disclose your personal information to third party contractors and service providers who, for example, help operate DCA venue bookings systems, provide DCA with fraud prevention services, and operate certain features accessible from DCA's websites; such as eWAY online payment gateway.
DCA may disclose your personal information to venue operators and such organisations for operational purposes. DCA will not disclose your personal information to external parties to provide you with promotional and marketing material.
DCA will take reasonable and practicable measures to ensure that any personal information collected is properly protected from misuse or loss, secure against unauthorised access, modification or disclosure.
DCA encourages users to be vigilant about the protection of your own personal information when using third party digital services. As far as reasonably practicable, DCA will ensure that any third parties include appropriate protection of your privacy.
Please note that DCA's website contains links to a number of other sites. When a user moves to another site, they leave the DCA site and are no longer protected by the provisions of this policy.
Cookies are small, encrypted, text files that sites may place on your device, usually within your browser. Some sites use 'cookies' to track a particular user's access to a site.
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Under Australian Privacy and Freedom of Information laws, you have a right to request access to the personal information that DCA holds about you and seek its correction. For further information on Freedom of Information click here.
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This policy will be updated and periodically reviewed in line with legislative requirements and changes in technology.
This policy is current as at 17 November 2015.


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Krin Van Tatenhove – Reflections on the Journey
Books/Short Stories/Articles
Photography/Art Books
Invitation to The Overview
Lovecraft Country and the Great "I Am"
HBO's Lovecraft Country, based on Matt Ruff's provocative novel, is not for the faint-hearted. Part sci-fi, part horror, it features savage monsters and a copious spilling of blood. But its plot, its cast, and its exposé of America's horrific racism are gripping!
One of the characters is Hippolyta Freeman, a brilliant woman adept in mathematics and astronomy. She is also a devoted mother and wife to her late husband George, having worked with him to produce The Safe Negro Travel Guide, a fictional counterpart to The Negro Motorist Green Book.
After George's death, Hippolyta embarks on a multidimensional voyage of self-discovery. She unlocks the secrets of an orrery, takes the key it offers, then travels to Mayfield, Kansas, the place where George died. There, within an observatory, she finds a machine right of out of H.G. Wells that fits her key. It launches her to what seems like a space ship, where a towering black woman looms above her.
"Who are you?" asks Hippolyta. The woman answers, "I Am." "Am I in prison?" asks Hippolyta. "No, you are not in a prison," responds the woman. "Name yourself! Where do you want to be?"
What follows is a beautiful journey of a soul becoming unbound. Hippolyta first goes to Paris to dance alongside Josephine Baker, letting the sisterhood and bohemian nightlife unwind her. She tastes new freedom, and at first it angers her. She describes it this way to Baker:
"All those years I thought I had everything I ever wanted, only to come here and discover that all I ever was was the exact kind of Negro woman white folks wanted me to be. I feel like they just found a smart way to lynch me without me noticing a noose … Sometimes I just, I wanna kill white folks. And it's not just them … I hate me, for letting them make me feel small."
Hippolyta then zooms to a dimension where she learns swordplay, preparing her to command a band of Amazons (fitting given her name). She leads her sister warriors into a savage victory against Confederate soldiers. Finally, she revisits George in a touching bedroom scene, this time confronting him with an awareness that she diminished herself by always putting him and his activities first.
In each of these realms she connects with an essential part of herself, naming it, giving it flesh, setting it free in the constellation of her personality. And each time, what sparks the transition is her acclamation of "I am Hippolyta. I am Hippolyta. I am …HIPPOLYTAAAAAA!"
Yes! I am!
Discovering the sacred nature of our own humanness is at the core of our planet's best spiritual teachings. This dawning realization awakens our unique identities. We learn to cast off shackles, employ our gifts, actualize our destinies. It is from this sacredness that we come to cherish and protect the Imago Dei, image of God, in other human beings. Symbolically, this clarity arises as we voice the name of God given to Moses at the burning bush, claiming it for our own lives: I am what I am!
Part of the blasphemy charges leveled at Jesus in the Gospel of John came from his well-known "I Am" statements. We usually translate the Greek words ego eimi as "I am," but they carry the connotation of "I am what I am." One of my favorite professors, Herman Waetjen, often said that Jesus was not only intentionally voicing the name of God; he was calling each us to say "I AM" with power and dignity.
On this level, Episode 7 of Lovecraft County, speaks to all of us in our struggles to rise above the acculturation that clips our wings and does violence to our personhood.
May we all learn to say with Hippolyta, "Now that I'm tasting it, freedom, like I've never known before, I see what I was robbed of back there."
May we all learn to say with Jesus, "I am what I am!"
(For further reading, I wrote a poem called I AM that you might find interesting)
October 7, 2020 by krinvan Leave a comment
"They Want to Take Our God!"
Jesus is the Treason for the Season
Krin Van Tatenhove - Reflections on the Journey


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An Afternoon with Bruce Hornsby
Sunday, October 22, 2017 | 3pm
1 South Ave
http://pac.adelphi.edu/au_event/an-afternoon-with-bruce-hornsby/
Multiple Grammy winner Bruce Hornsby's work displays a creative iconoclasm that's been a constant in the artist's two-and-a-half decade recording career. His commercial stock soared early on, when "The Way It Is"–the title track of his 1986 debut album–became one of the most popular songs on American radio. Despite his early mainstream successes, Hornsby has pursued a more personal, idiosyncratic musical path, focusing on projects that sparked his creative interest, including collaborations with the Grateful Dead, Spike Lee, Ricky Skaggs, Don Henley, Ornette Coleman, Bob Dylan, Bela Fleck, Bonnie Raitt, Pat Metheny, and Robbie Robertson. Hornsby's performance will offer a glimpse of a restless spirit who continues to push forward into exciting new musical terrain.
Bruce Hornsby first performed at the Adelphi PAC on Friday, February 10, 2012.


text:
Frank Singiser
Cavalcade Of America, The
Broadcast History: 9 October 1935 to 29 May 1939 and 2 January 1940 to 31 March 1953
Cast: John McIntire, Jeanette Nolan, Agnes Moorehead, Kenny Delmar, Edwin Jerome, Ray Collins, Orson Welles, Karl Swenson, Ted Jewett, Jack Smart, Paul Stewart, Bill Johnstone, Frank Readick, Ray Sloane, Luis Van Rooten, Mickey Rooney, Cary Grant, Tyrone Power, Ronald Reagan
Director: Homer Fickett, Roger Pryor, Jack Zoller, Bill Sweets, Paul Stewart
Producer: Homer Fickett, Roger Pryor, Jack Zoller, Bill Sweets, Paul Stewart
Host: Walter Huston
Cavalcade of America is an anthology drama series that was sponsored by the DuPont Company, although it occasionally presented a musical, such as an adaptation of Show Boat, and condensed biographies of popular composers. It was initially broadcast on radio from 1935 to 1953, and later on television from 1952 to 1957. Originally on CBS, the series pioneered the use of anthology drama for company audio advertising.
First Song - Lulus Back In Town
Broadcast: July 27, 1935
Starring: Lennie Hayton, Frank Singiser, Melody Girls, Rhythm Kings, Charles Carlisle, Kay Thompson, GoGo DeLys, Johnny Hauser
Added: Apr 21 2017


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text:
Nordstrom to Open New Store at Santa Monica Place
In Partnership with Macerich, Nordstrom also Announces New Plans for Two
Existing Stores in California
SEATTLE, July 15 /EMWNews-FirstCall/ -- Seattle-based Nordstrom,
Inc. (NYSE: JWN), a leading fashion specialty retailer, announced it has
signed a letter of intent with Macerich(R) (NYSE: MAC) to open a new
Nordstrom store at Santa Monica Place in Santa Monica, Calif. The
three-level, 122,000-square-foot store is scheduled to open in fall 2010.
The company also announced plans to relocate its existing Cerritos store at
Los Cerritos Center and complete a remodel and expansion for its Broadway
Plaza store in Walnut Creek, Calif.
Santa Monica Place
"Santa Monica is a wonderful community and an exciting retail
environment where many of our customers visit, live and work," said Erik
Nordstrom, president of stores for Nordstrom. "We compliment Macerich on
their vision for the new Santa Monica Place, which we anticipate to be an
outstanding shopping experience."
"We're very pleased to welcome Nordstrom to the new Santa Monica
Place," said Randy Brant, executive vice president, real estate, for
Macerich. "The extraordinary appeal of Nordstrom is a great match for this
exceptional market, and for what we believe will be a one-of-a-kind retail
project two blocks from the beach in downtown Santa Monica."
Santa Monica Place is being completely transformed from an existing
1980s-era, enclosed shopping center to a three-level, open-air retail
destination that will include a signature rooftop dining deck. Re-opening
in fall 2009, the 550,000-square-foot Santa Monica Place is adjacent to the
popular Third Street Promenade, three city blocks of retail stores,
restaurants and entertainment. For more information, visit
http://www.macerich.com.
Los Cerritos Center and Broadway Plaza Mall
"We are excited about the new plans for our Cerritos and Walnut Creek
stores as part of the commitment to improve both malls, which will provide
our customers new shopping environments," added Erik Nordstrom. "The
support we have received from our customers over the years at both Cerritos
and Walnut Creek encouraged us to make these investments."
Macerich's Brant said, "It's clear that Nordstrom is a favorite of our
shoppers at Broadway Plaza in Walnut Creek, the retail leader in the East
Bay, and at Los Cerritos Center in Cerritos, a vibrant suburban community
in Southern California. Both shopping centers reflect Macerich's focus on
outstanding properties in very attractive markets."
Nordstrom will relocate its Cerritos store at Los Cerritos Center
shopping center to a new location in the center and will build a new
138,000-square-foot two-level store. The new Nordstrom at Los Cerritos will
take the place formerly occupied by Robinsons-May and is scheduled to open
in spring 2010. The existing Nordstrom store at Los Cerritos Center will
continue to serve customers until the new store opens. Nordstrom Cerritos
originally opened in 1981.
Additionally, Nordstrom is remodeling and expanding its existing store
at Broadway Plaza in Walnut Creek. The two-phase project will add
32,000-square-feet to the existing floor plan for a total of
225,000-square-feet. Upgrades include new designer shops and open-sell
cosmetic cases that allow customers to touch the merchandise much like they
would in the apparel departments of the store. The remodel will also
include new flooring, updated dressing room finishes, new furniture and
fixtures and new wall treatments. The remodel is scheduled for completion
in 2010. Nordstrom Walnut Creek originally opened in 1984.
Nordstrom currently has six stores in the Los Angeles area and four
Nordstrom Rack stores. The company plans to open a new store this year in
Thousand Oaks at The Oaks Shopping Center on Sept. 5. In the Bay Area,
Nordstrom currently has six stores and four Nordstrom Rack stores.
One of the nation's largest retail real estate investment trusts,
Macerich currently owns approximately 77 million square-feet of gross
leasable area in major markets across the United States. The company's
diverse portfolio includes 72 regional malls and a dynamic mix of
lifestyle, large-format retail and specialty centers.
Nordstrom, Inc. is one of the nation's leading fashion specialty
retailers, with 159 stores located in 28 states. Founded in 1901 as a shoe
store in Seattle, today Nordstrom operates 105 full-line stores, 50
Nordstrom Racks, two Jeffrey boutiques and two clearance stores. Nordstrom
also serves customers through its online presence at
http://www.nordstrom.com and through its catalogs. Nordstrom, Inc. is
publicly traded on the NYSE under the symbol JWN.
MEDIA CONTACTS:  Michael Boyd
Nordstrom, Inc.
Anita Walker
Macerich
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text:
Through New Grant, Candler Will Help Congregations Thrive
Candler School of Theology at Emory University has received a grant of $991,221 from Lilly Endowment Inc. to establish an initiative to support congregations in implementing new approaches to theological exploration, community engagement, and collaborative leadership.
The project will be situated within The Candler Foundry, Candler's public theological education arm that launched in 2020. Both are led by Assistant Professor in the Practice of Old Testament Ryan Bonfiglio.
"A foundry is a workshop meant for building and bringing new things into existence," Bonfiglio says. "This is exactly what we hope to do with this initiative—forge new pathways for congregants to deepen their faith, engage their communities, and respond to pressing issues in public life."
The grant is part of Lilly Endowment's Thriving Congregations Initiative, a program providing $93 million in grants to 92 organizations who will work directly with congregations to help them gain clarity about their values and missions, explore and better understand the communities in which they serve, and draw upon their theological traditions as they adapt ministries to meet changing needs.
"In the midst of a rapidly changing world, Christian congregations are grappling with how they can best carry forward their ministries," says Christopher Coble, Lilly Endowment's vice president for religion. "These grants will help congregations assess their ministries and draw on practices in their theological traditions to address new challenges and better nurture the spiritual vitality of the people they serve."
Candler's Thriving Congregations grant will enable the school to further develop partnerships with churches in and beyond Atlanta in order to foster congregational vitality and address the cultural trends that challenge it.
"Enhancing congregational vitality is deeply embedded in Candler's missional DNA," says Candler Dean Jan Love. "Through multiple projects across several years, Candler has established effective ways of partnering with diverse congregations in the work of understanding their changing social contexts and responding to the needs of the communities they serve. We are grateful for this support from Lilly Endowment that will enable us to continue this work in new ways."
Candler's ongoing work with diverse congregations gives this project a head start on identifying trends and contextual realities that impact churches. "What we're learning from the pastors in our networks is that many young adults are leaving church not because they are spiritually uninterested, but because they are not finding outlets to explore their questions about faith with authenticity and candor," Bonfiglio says.
Additionally, he notes, church leaders see the need for better equipping laity to bear witness to the gospel with an eye to the issues of the day. And in the midst of shrinking budgets, declining numbers of clergy candidates, and a global pandemic that has changed nearly everything about church, the role of lay people as active partners in leadership has never been more important.
"In light of these trends, congregations are seeking fresh, innovative outlets for theological exploration, community engagement, and collaborative leadership that can deepen individuals' relationships with God, enhance their connections with each other, and contribute to the flourishing of their communities and the world."
The Thriving Congregations grant will support and expand Courses in the Community and TheoEd Talks, two existing programmatic offerings from The Candler Foundry. Those will culminate in Leadership Collaboratives, a new undertaking that aims to convene networks of congregational leaders to exchange ideas about ministry innovations and challenges.
Not only will the grant allow expanded offerings, it will offer it to a broader population. "This initiative will enable us to partner with a much wider array of congregations from urban, suburban, and rural areas and from across denominational lines and demographic profiles," Bonfiglio says. "Each component will help congregations better understand shifting social and cultural trends, clarify their values, priorities, and mission in light of those understandings, and adapt ministry practices in response to the needs of the communities they serve."
A primary goal of the initiative is to create synergy between congregations with different racial, ethnic, and socio-economic makeups. Bonfiglio cites Candler's connections to churches throughout metro Atlanta and North Georgia that represent a diverse array of congregations.
Says Bonfiglio: "Wherever we build partnerships, one strategy will be to bring together clusters of small congregations in geographic proximity to one another. Through digital technology, we'll also be able to bring together clusters of congregations from different geographical contexts—such as rural and urban areas—to further foster diverse communities of learning and practice."
Learn more about the three components of the Thriving Congregations initiative at Candler:
Courses in the Community: Congregation-based classes that bring together lay people, clergy, and theology students to explore the shifting landscape of the church and society and to respond to those trends through adaptive ministry practices. Along with church-based courses, Bonfiglio also envisions working with congregational partners to offer some in public locations such as coffee shops, bookstores, and community centers. Digital learning modules would accompany courses so that effective learning take place throughout the COVID-19 crisis and beyond.
TheoEd Talks: A faith-based speaker series that creates opportunities for congregations to engage their communities in ways designed to attract those who have left the church or have no religious affiliation. Bonfiglio calls it a "third space" outside of theology schools and churches where audiences can explore questions around faith and public life. The new initiative will expand TheoEd Talks outside Atlanta through partnerships with churches in other cities.
Leadership Collaboratives: Gatherings in which networks of clergy and lay leaders who have participated in Courses in the Community or TheoEd Talks are brought together to exchange ideas about ministry innovations and challenges. The grant will enable The Candler Foundry to convene three Leadership Collaboratives over five years, equipping these leaders with strategies and skillsets necessary for understanding and responding to current trends through workshops led by Candler faculty and other congregational leaders.
Top photo: Allison Shirreffs
Awards and Distinctions,
Bonfiglio, Ryan


If you think a decision about your benefits is wrong, you can ask the office that made the decision to explain it. You can also ask to get the decision reconsidered and, if you're still unhappy, you can appeal against the decision to an independent tribunal.
When the benefits office sends you a letter about their decision, if you do not agree, you can ask them to explain or reconsider it.
If you're unhappy with a reconsidered decision you can appeal.
You can ask for an explanation or reconsideration of every decision, but some benefit decisions cannot be appealed.
The decision letter will make it clear if it can't be appealed.
A late appeal may be accepted if you have special circumstances that prevented you appealing in time. You cannot appeal if more than 13 months have passed.
Information on how to appeal is normally included in the decision letter.
You can pick up the leaflet at your local benefits office or download it, below, from the Department for Work and Pensions website.
If you're not happy with the outcome, you can write to the CSA Central Appeals Unit.
Find out more about what to do if you don't agree with a decision made by the CSA using the following link.
These benefits are handled by your local council, so you'd normally contact your local council office to query the decision and follow their appeals procedure.
For queries about Disability Living Allowance or Attendance Allowance, call the Disability Living Allowance and Attendance Allowance Helpline, 08457 123 456, textphone 08457 224 433. Lines are open from 7.30 am to 6.30 pm, Monday to Friday.
If you're not satisfied with the results, you may be able to appeal by using the DWP leaflet 'If you think our decision is wrong'.
HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) makes decisions about tax credits.
You can download the appeal form online, below, or you can call the Tax credit helpline.
These benefits are also handled by HMRC, appeal forms are available online or by phoning the Child Benefit helpline.
The First-tier tribunal (Social Security and Child Support) can explain the procedure and help you through the appeal process.
You can also order information leaflets using the Customer Leaflet Hotline on 08700 852 611, typetalk 18001 08700 852 611. Calls are charged at local rate.
Appeals are heard by a tribunal; a panel of up to three members, one of whom is legally qualified.
The CAB will help you fill in forms and may accompany you to the hearing. Or you could ask an adviser, friend or family member to appeal on your behalf.
You may be able to claim some expenses for travelling to a tribunal. You can't claim for legal expenses and solicitors' fees - even if you win.
But if you think the tribunal made a mistake in how they applied the law, you can ask for permission to appeal to an Upper Tribunal.


text:
Q: httpd returns "SSLCertificateFile: file '/var/iwww/certs/msdfw/c.pem' does not exist or is empty" So recently, I had to reset my server because of some issues and stuff. And now, I've been trying to set it up again and it's just not working out for me. I've installed httpd successfully and it works with my websites. But when I try to add an SSL Certificate, CentOS dares to lie to me that it doesn't exist. Here's the output of journalctl -xe;
Sep 26 17:00:11 localhost systemd[1]: Starting The Apache HTTP Server...
-- Subject: Unit httpd.service has begun start-up
-- Defined-By: systemd
-- Support: http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/systemd-devel
--
-- Unit httpd.service has begun starting up.
Sep 26 17:00:11 localhost httpd[5579]: AH00526: Syntax error on line 15 of
/etc/httpd/enabled/msdfw.conf:
Sep 26 17:00:11 localhost httpd[5579]: SSLCertificateFile: file
'/var/iwww/certs/msdfw/c.pem' does not exist or is empty
Sep 26 17:00:11 localhost systemd[1]: httpd.service: main process exited,
code=exited, status=1/FAILURE
Sep 26 17:00:11 localhost kill[5581]: kill: cannot find process ""
Sep 26 17:00:11 localhost systemd[1]: httpd.service: control process exited,
code=exited status=1
Sep 26 17:00:11 localhost systemd[1]: Failed to start The Apache HTTP Server.
-- Subject: Unit httpd.service has failed
-- Defined-By: systemd
-- Support: http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/systemd-devel
--
-- Unit httpd.service has failed.
--
-- The result is failed.
Sep 26 17:00:11 localhost systemd[1]: Unit httpd.service entered failed state.
Sep 26 17:00:11 localhost systemd[1]: httpd.service failed.

I've checked the file and it's there. I've already tried giving all ownership to user apache, I've gaven it to group apache and changed all permissions to 777. None of it worked (and reverted permissions). I've tried lsof c.pem, but no output. This is the the VirtualHost;
<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerName www.example.com
    ServerAlias example.com
    RewriteEngine on
    RewriteRule ^/?(.*) https://example.com/$1 [R,L]
</VirtualHost>
<VirtualHost *:443>
    ServerName example.com
    DocumentRoot /var/www/msdfw
    ErrorLog /var/iwww/logs/e-msdfw
    CustomLog /var/iwww/logs/c-msdfw combined
    DirectoryIndex index.php
    SSLEngine on
    SSLCertificateFile /var/iwww/certs/msdfw/c.pem
    SSLCertificateKeyFile /var/iwww/certs/msdfw/p.key
    SSLCertificateChainFile /var/iwww/certs/msdfw/b.pem
    <Directory /var/www/msdfw/>
            Require all granted
    </Directory>
</VirtualHost>

I've already install mod_ssl so I don't think that's it. I've done sudo -u apache cat /var/iwww/certs/msdfw/c.pem to check if it can read it, and it can. The certificate can be properly parsed by OpenSSL. So, I'm not sure what the problem is. Anyone that can help, please give out a hand. Thanks!
Additional Information:

*

*OS: CentOS Linux release 7.4.1708

*Not sure what category this falls in, but its Minimal.

A: It seems I was wrong. It has to do with the certificates labeled system_u or unconfined_u. They have to be labeled system_u to be read by httpd.
Find out how to change labels here.

A: I know this is an old thread, but I had a similar issue on my system. I am using OL8 with Apache as a web server. Nothing I did will work. Until I ran the this command:
sudo chcon -R -t httpd_config_t letsencrypt/

My issue was that SELinux was blocking the request.
The learning is that anything that need to be run by Apache must have httpd_config_t set at a minimum.

A: So... I've sort of fixed the problem, but not completely. I tried to remove the c.pem to see if it still recognizes the directory and give me some error that says;
/var/iwww/certs/msdfw/: Is a directory
But it didn't. Still same error. So I was being stupid and put in;
SSLCertificateFile whoami
Yeah, I don't know what I was thinking. But it said no file in /etc/httpd/whoami or is empty. Anyways, I moved it all to /etc/httpd/certs/msdfw/ and reconfigured the VirtualHost.
And it worked...
TL;DR: If you're getting this and nothing else is working, move it to /etc/httpd.


text:
Q: C# ToDictionary lambda select index and element? I have a string like string strn = "abcdefghjiklmnopqrstuvwxyz" and want a dictionary like:
Dictionary<char,int>(){
    {'a',0},
    {'b',1},
    {'c',2},
    ...
}

I've been trying things like
strn.ToDictionary((x,i) => x,(x,i)=>i);

...but I've been getting all sorts of errors about the delegate not taking two arguments, and unspecified arguments, and the like.
What am I doing wrong?
I would prefer hints over the answer so I have a mental trace of what I need to do for next time, but as per the nature of Stackoverflow, an answer is fine as well.

A:
What am I doing wrong?

You're assuming there is such an overload. Look at Enumerable.ToDictionary - there's no overload which provides the index. You can fake it though via a call to Select:
var dictionary = text.Select((value, index) => new { value, index })
                     .ToDictionary(pair => pair.value,
                                   pair => pair.index);

A: Use the .Select operator first:
strn
    .Select((x, i) => new { Item = x, Index = i })
    .ToDictionary(x => x.Item, x => x.Index);

A: You could try something like this:
    string strn = "abcdefghjiklmnopqrstuvwxyz";

Dictionary<char,int> lookup = strn.ToCharArray()
    .Select( ( c, i ) => new KeyValuePair<char,int>( c, i ) )
        .ToDictionary( e => e.Key, e => e.Value );


text:
/teams/Adrian/2003/index
Adrian Bulldogs
9/6 vs. Heidelberg • W, 14-10
9/13 at Defiance • W, 24-21
9/20 at Franklin • W, 48-13
10/4 at Wisconsin Lutheran * • W, 31-17
10/11 vs. Tri-State W, 49-14
10/18 at Hope * • L, 33-7
10/25 vs. Olivet * • W, 49-42
11/1 vs. Albion * • W, 31-21
11/8 at Alma * • W, 45-42
11/15 vs. Kalamazoo * • L, 27-21
Hope 5-1 7-4
Adrian 4-2 8-2
Albion 4-2 6-4
Alma 3-3 6-4
Wisconsin Lutheran 3-3 5-5
Kalamazoo 2-4 6-4
Olivet 0-6 4-6
2018 4-6, 2-5 MIAA
Coach: Jim Lyall
Conference: MIAA
Location: Adrian, MI
Colors: Black, Gold
Stadium: Multi-Sport Performance Stadium (3,000)
October 21, 2019 Jack Wurzer Makes MIAA Offensive Player of the Week Debut Adrian College sophomore quarterback Jack Wurzer (Pinckney Community High School) has been named the Michigan Intercollegiate Athletic Association offensive player of the week in football, it was announced by the league office on Monday. It's his first weekly honor accorded by the MIAA.
October 19, 2019 Record-Setting Performance Leads Adrian Past MIAA Rival Alma, 34-31 ADRIAN, Mich.--Sophomore quarterback Jack Wurzer completed 24 of 32 passes for a school-record 403 yards and four touchdowns to lead Adrian to a come-from-behind 34-31 victory over visiting Alma in Michigan Intercollegiate Athletic Association football and Family Weekend action on Saturday.
November 14, 2017 @AdrianCollegeFB Lands 11 Student-Athletes on All-MIAA Teams; Seven Bulldogs on the First Unit FREELAND, Mich.--The Michigan Intercollegiate Athletic Association released Tuesday the 2017 All-MIAA football teams and 11 Adrian College student-athletes were selected by a vote of the league's seven head coaches. Highlighting the Bulldogs' presence are four-year all-conference pick senior defensive lineman Damon Fuller (Redford/Thurston High School) and three-time All-MIAA First Team junior running back Emmanuel Stewart (St. Petersburg, Fla./Gibbs HS). This represents the most all-conference Bulldogs since the 2014 squad produced 14.
November 6, 2017 Adrian WR Jerron McGaw Hauls in MIAA Offensive Player of the Week Award FREELAND, Mich.--Adrian College junior wide receiver Jerron McGaw (Indianapolis, Ind./Thomas Carr Howe High School) has earned his second career Michigan Intercollegiate Athletic Association offensive player of the week award after a career day at Olivet College on Saturday, the MIAA announced on Monday. He also was selected the MIAA Offensive Player of the Week on Sep. 5 this fall.
October 28, 2017 Live video coverage: Trine at Adrian
October 3, 2017 Adrian College Duo Garner MIAA Weekly Accolades FREELAND, Mich.--The Michigan Intercollegiate Athletic Association Monday named Adrian College senior placekicker Cameron Cook (Linden High School) and junior running back Emmanuel Stewart (St. Petersburg, Fla./Gibbs High School) the special teams and offensive player of the week, respectively.