text:
Best Of Pitchfork
I Know You Got Soul: The Trouble With Billboard's R&B/Hip-Hop Chart
14 April 2014 11 February 2019
Billboard's R&B chart once reflected the tastes of the genre's core fans, paving the way for countless legendary artists in the process. But now, slipshod methodology has rendered it a shell of its former self, replete with dubious racial consequences.
Content retrieved from: https://pitchfork.com/features/article/9378-i-know-you-got-soul-the-trouble-with-billboards-rbhip-hop-chart/
Here, for your consideration, is a Top 10 list published in Billboard magazine toward the end of last year, in the issue dated November 30, 2013:
Eminem: "The Monster" [ft. Rihanna]
Drake: "Hold On, We're Going Home" [ft. Majid Jordan]
Mike WiLL Made-It: "23" [ft. Miley Cyrus, Wiz Khalifa, and Juicy J]
Jay Z: "Holy Grail" [ft. Justin Timberlake]
Robin Thicke: "Blurred Lines" [ft. T.I. and Pharrell]
YG: "My Hitta" [ft. Jeezy and Rich Homie Quan]
Chris Brown: "Love More" [ft. Nicki Minaj]
Macklemore & Ryan Lewis: "White Walls" [ft. ScHoolboy Q and Hollis]
Eminem: "Rap God"
Justin Timberlake: "TKO"
This list contains many of the year's best-selling acts and, track-for-track, it looks like a fairly representative cross-section of 2013 pop. Except it's not pop—at least, not according to the music-industry bible. This wasn't the Top 10 of Billboard's all-genre, authoritative Hot 100 chart. This was the Top 10 of the magazine's Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart.
This Top 10 might make you cock an eyebrow if, like me, you define rhythm-and-blues and hip-hop as music largely, though not exclusively, conceived by, aimed at, and consumed by African-Americans. Obviously, whites can and do make excellent R&B and rap. The question is one of degree: In 2013, the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart was topped by a Caucasian person 44 out of 52 weeks—including 37 straight weeks, January to October, where it was topped by either hip-hop duo Macklmore & Ryan Lewis or blue-eyed soul singer Robin Thicke. Is it credible that a chart devoted to black-derived music should be dominated by white acts most of the time?
Ideally, any effective genre chart—be it R&B, Latin, country, even alt-rock—doesn't just track a particular strain of music, which can be marked by ever-changing boundaries and ultimately impossible to define. It's meant to track an audience. This is a subtle but vital difference. If an R&B chart tries to cover whatever might be termed R&B music, you get into the subjective, slippery business of determining what, or who, is "black enough" for the chart. That wouldn't be appropriate for Billboard, a purportedly objective arbiter of the music business.
The goal is not to racially profile record buyers, either. Instead, by tracking the R&B and hip-hop audience—those who seek out black radio stations and maintain a steady diet of beats, rhymes, and soul, regardless of their own ethnic makeup—you get a much better read of the pulse of actual fans of the music: those who live and breathe it, week in, week out. That used to be what Billboard's R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart did. It's not what it does anymore.
Mind you, this isn't the first time Billboard has run an R&B chart with so many white faces. For comparison, let's go back 50 years. In the Billboard issue dated November 23, 1963, just under half of the Top 10 on the Hot R&B Singles chart was by white acts. And I mean really white. Hanging around that week's top five were a pair of boy-girl duets with easy-listening pop vocals: "Deep Purple" by Nino Tempo and April Stevens and "I'm Leaving It Up to You" by Dale & Grace. Somewhat more authentic was rock legend Roy Orbison's "Mean Woman Blues"—No. 8 R&B that week—a song obviously rooted in the 12-bar blues tradition, but one that had been recorded by a string of traditional rock'n'roll acts including Elvis Presley and Cliff Richard.
And what was No. 1 on the R&B chart back then? A song by white pop band Jimmy Gilmer & the Fireballs called "Sugar Shack", a million-seller that also topped the Hot 100 and was Billboard's No. 1 single of 1963. It's a hokey song—and whatever its merits, the idea that "Sugar Shack" was a major hit among black audiences beggars belief. Gilmer's hit topped an R&B Top 10 that also featured such black artists as Rufus Thomas ("Walking the Dog"), Sam Cooke ("Little Red Rooster"), and Ray Charles ("Busted")—but none of those songs reached No. 1 like "Sugar Shack".
The November 23, 1963, chart is interesting for reasons that have nothing to do with the coincidental assassination of President Kennedy that week. Rather, it was the last R&B chart Billboard would publish for more than a year. One week after this issue, the editors mysteriously pulled the chart from the magazine and kept it out for 14 months.
When Billboard brought back Hot Rhythm & Blues Singles in late January 1965, it looked markedly different: Its No. 1 song was the Temptations' "My Girl", and other than one Righteous Brothers song, the revamped chart included all people of color. Billboard's editors never explained specifically how they changed the chart's formula or the data gathered to compile it; the magazine carefully tends to its chart formulas, and over the years, all of Billboard's major charts (there are dozens) have evolved along with changes in technology and American culture. But one thing was certain: The revamped 1965 R&B chart formula had been refined to focus more closely on record sales and radio listening by actual R&B fans.
And that's the difference between the R&B chart led by Jimmy Gilmer in 1963, and the one led by Eminem in 2013: The former was based on a slipshod methodology, and Billboard fixed it. The latter is based on a new, also dubious methodology, powered by digital data, that over-weights pop crossover records. But this time, the magazine has no intention of changing it anytime soon.
Hot R&B/Hip-Hop songs is now essentially a condensed version of the Hot 100—and lovers of black music are deeply unsatisfied. What happened?
Getting the Formula (and the Limits) Right
Billboard has had a chart to track music aimed at African-Americans since the 1940s, but its size and methodology have changed multiple times over the years. To say nothing of its name—beginning with Harlem Hit Parade in 1942, the chart has been called everything from Race Records (1945–49) to Hot Soul Singles (1973–82). Since the 50s, some version of Jerry Wexler's famous coinage "Rhythm & Blues" has appeared in the title more frequently than any other term; the chart's current name is the comprehensive Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs. For decades, the chart was the largely unchallenged authority on the songs that, week to week, defined black America. But it took Billboard a while to get the formula right.
Like the Hot 100, which since its inception in 1958 has mixed together multiple pools of data to form one all-encompassing pop chart, Billboard unified its R&B coverage into a single tally in October 1958. This R&B chart combined sales of singles (then on 45 rpm vinyl), radio airplay and, for a brief time, jukebox plays. This mix of sales-plus-airplay makes for a vibrant and reliable Hot 100, and it should have done similarly for the R&B chart.
The problem back then wasn't with the formula per se, it was with the data. Retailers and radio stations were reporting all manner of popular records with even a hint of a beat, by black or white artists, as R&B. In the 50s and early 60s, at a time when reliable data in the record business was hard to come by—and, not incidentally, the Civil Rights Act was still nonexistent—one imagines the magazine was having a tough time finding record-shop managers and radio programmers able (or willing) to accurately reflect what African-Americans were listening to and buying. The November 1963 chart led by "Sugar Shack" was the dubious result.
The specific reasons why Billboard put the R&B chart on hiatus that week in late 1963 are lost to history. But it's not hard to guess—chart historians theorize that the increasing dominance of Caucasian pop hits was the culprit. When the R&B chart returned in early '65, Billboard placed a cryptic note below the new chart, in which the editors alluded to the magnitude of the challenge in reinventing it:
"Kudos to all the disc jockeys, program directors and retail outlets for their splendid co-operation in helping to kick off the new r&b page. It is quite evident, and has been for some years, that the people engaged in all areas of r&b programming and retailing, are solid co-operative merchandisers. The rapport between r&b radio and retail outlets and the energies expended by both to build the r&b field is a page that could well be inserted into many other areas of the record business."
This editors' note is more than happy-talk to thank DJs and store managers. It reads as Billboard vouching for the black-oriented music business itself—reassuring the recording industry's machers that it was legitimate to track what actual African-Americans listened to and bought.
The key difference between the revamped R&B chart and the Hot 100 was that Billboard refined the R&B chart's formula to impose careful limits on what airplay and sales counted. It was clear that only radio stations specializing in R&B—and not Top 40 stations or other formats that might play rhythmic music—had their reported airplay baked into the chart. As for the retail component, the magazine now counted what it came to call "core R&B stores": retailers, many black-owned, in cities that sold primarily R&B records to a largely, though not exclusively, black clientele.
The Heyday of the R&B Chart
This formula turned out to be Billboard's special sauce; the revamped chart wasn't going to track R&B music per se, but rather the R&B audience. Ultimately, what this approach meant was that the R&B chart was qualitatively different from the Hot 100 pop chart—both the songs on it and where they fell.
A closer look at that very first revamped R&B chart in January 1965 offers several examples. That week, the Temptations' "My Girl" was on both the Hot 100 and the R&B chart, but it was already at No. 1 R&B and had not yet reached the Top 10 on the pop chart—the Motown classic was still in the process of crossing over and wouldn't top the pop chart until March. Conversely, Shirley Ellis's "The Name Game" was a bigger Hot 100 hit that week (No. 3) than on the R&B chart (No. 6, on its way to a No. 4 peak). And there were core R&B hits that would never be big pop hits—Alvin Cash & the Crawlers' "Twine Time" was No. 8 on that January '65 R&B chart, on its way to a No. 3 peak; but it would never get past No. 14 on the Hot 100. These differences are why an R&B chart with its own distinct pool of data matters.
By the 70s, the differences between pop-chart performance and R&B chart performance were even more stark. In 1971–72, the R&B chart sported occasional No. 1 hits that wouldn't even make the pop Top 20, like Rufus Thomas's "(Do the) Push and Pull" (No. 1 R&B, No. 25 pop) or Johnnie Taylor's "Jody's Got Your Girl and Gone" (No. 1 R&B, No. 28 pop); or even the occasional smash that would miss the pop Top 40 entirely, such as Bobby Womack's "Woman's Gotta Have It" (No. 1 R&B, No. 60 pop). In July 1973, Billboard expanded the chart, then called Hot Soul Singles, from 60 positions to 100. Those additional 40 positions at the bottom would contain all manner of deep cuts that would never make the upper reaches of the chart—the Jackson 5's "All I Do Is Think of You", Syreeta Wright's "Harmour Love", the O'Jays' "Family Reunion", Al Green's "Love and Happiness"—signaling the depth of black music in this era.
By the end of the 70s, acts like Parliament/Funkadelic, Teddy Pendergrass, and Tyrone Davis essentially had core R&B careers. A track or two by these acts would make the lower rungs of the pop Top 40, but the bulk of their Top 10 R&B hits wouldn't even touch the Hot 100's upper half, if at all. The bad news for such acts was that their lack of crossover generally meant lower label promotional budgets; the good news was that R&B success could sustain a career. And when pop crossover did happen, it really meant something. By the time the Commodores and Kool & the Gang started scoring Hot 100 No. 1's at the turn of the 80s, they'd already racked up strings of R&B chart toppers since the mid-70s, presaging their pop success.
It also meant something when a white act charted R&B—the crossover validation worked the other way, too. Scores of acts that normally dominated the Hot 100 would occasionally record a song embraced by the R&B audience. Elton John has long attested to how thrilled he was when his "Bennie and the Jets" was the top song on black radio in Detroit and ultimately crossed to the R&B chart, where it peaked at a respectable No. 15. Other hits by white acts did even better, reaching the R&B chart's Top Five: Average White Band's "Pick Up the Pieces", KC and the Sunshine Band's "Get Down Tonight", Wild Cherry's "Play That Funky Music", Bee Gees' "You Should Be Dancing", Rod Stewart's "Da Ya Think I'm Sexy", and, by the early 80s, Daryl Hall and John Oates's "I Can't Go for That (No Can Do)". These songs didn't chart high on Hot Soul Singles because someone in charge of the charts thought they sounded black enough—they crossed over because black radio stations and core R&B stores were playing and selling them in quantity.
(Payola surely played a role in those good-old-bad-old days, as it did throughout the 70s and 80s on the pop charts and rock radio. But R&B chart success in and of itself likely wasn't a lucrative enough prize for labels to budget serious "incentives." Anyway, as the evidence shows, the aforementioned white acts only occasionally scored serious R&B hits. If Warner had wanted Rod Stewart to have more than one R&B smash—rather than the solitary one he did—they'd have greased more palms.)
By the 80s, the R&B chart was its own demimonde with its own lineup of stars. On the surface, the chart had a more racially defined identity: In 1982 Billboard, not without controversy, renamed the chart Hot Black Singles, even though white acts like Hall & Oates, Madonna, Phil Collins, George Michael, and Lisa Stansfield sporadically charted R&B.
But these occasional appearances by white acts didn't affect the chart in any major way during the decade of Michael, Lionel, Prince and Whitney—black music was doing just fine, thank you, both on the Hot Black Singles chart and on the Hot 100. In addition to the major inroads made at Top 40 radio by these megastars, a lower tier of core black superstars gave the 80s R&B chart its own distinct identity: Luther Vandross, the Gap Band, Freddie Jackson, Maze, Stephanie Mills, Melba Moore, Guy—with rare exception, these artists' strings of top-charting R&B hits would bypass the pop Top 40 entirely. Indeed, what made the 80s one of the richest decades for black pop in a generation could be seen each week right at the top of Hot Black Singles—one week, Michael Jackson's über-crossover hit "Billie Jean" could be on top, and then a week later, it would be replaced by a record as un–Top 40–friendly as George Clinton's "Atomic Dog".
Even in this rich period, the chart wasn't perfect: Hip-hop, in its early days, was badly underrepresented on Hot Black Singles. But mostly, that wasn't the chart's fault. As has been well documented—particularly by the founders of the Def Jam label—black radio, then dominated by the smoothest forms of buppie-R&B, was slow to accept hip-hop, even as early rap singles were selling thousands or even millions (a phenomenon that also went underreported by record retailers).
At the start of the decade, a foursome of vital rap tracks all peaked, coincidentally, at No. 4 R&B: the Sugarhill Gang's "Rapper's Delight" and Kurtis Blow's "The Breaks," both in 1980; and Afrika Bambaataa & the Soulsonic Force's "Planet Rock" and Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five's "The Message", both in 1982. But No. 1 rap songs were scarce. To be sure, rap elements graced numerous 80s chart-toppers, including Cameo's "She's Strange" and Chaka Khan's "I Feel for You", but by the end of the decade, only two full-on rap songs, total, had topped Hot Black Singles: L.L. Cool J's crossover ballad "I Need Love" in 1987, and De La Soul's psychedelic P-Funk reinvention "Me, Myself & I" in 1989. (Run-DMC did just OK, never getting past No. 5 R&B with "My Adidas".)
By the end of the decade, a follower of the black chart could be forgiven for thinking rap was basically a fad. But as it turned out, the 80s were a mere throat-clearing for hip-hop's 90s explosion. And good data had a lot to do with giving rap its due.
SoundScan Ushers in an R&B/Hip-Hop Chart Boom
The deep-data era on the U.S. charts began in May 1991, with the introduction of SoundScan (later Nielsen SoundScan) technology—accurate tallying of sales at the retail counter, through scanned UPC barcodes on music purchases to Billboard's flagship album chart. Immediately, this revolutionized the chart, giving a boost to genres that the old manual-charts system had underreported. In particular, hip-hop and country artists benefited massively when sales were tallied more accurately.
Then in November 1991, the magazine brought SoundScan technology to the Hot 100. Because the Hot 100 was based not only on sales of singles but also radio airplay, Billboard introduced a computerized data feed from Broadcast Data Systems, which counted radio plays via a sonic fingerprint. While BDS didn't eliminate recording industry payola, it made it much harder for labels to pay for a "paper" (phony) playlist add; the Hot 100 was now based on songs receiving actual airplay. Once again, the changes to the Hot 100, thanks to both BDS and SoundScan, were profound—it's difficult to imagine Sir Mix-a-Lot topping the Hot 100 for over a month in the summer of 1992 without the more accurate technologies.
In 1992, the SoundScan and BDS technologies made their way to the black-music chart (two years earlier, the chart had been renamed again, this time as Hot R&B Singles). Billboard was so careful about not screwing up their R&B retail/radio formula—many small retailers couldn't afford barcode scanners at first—that the magazine phased in the new technologies over several months to be sure they didn't misrepresent what black retailers and stations were playing. But once the new formula was in full effect, by the start of 1993, rap's profile on Hot R&B Singles improved almost immediately. Within the first three months, Naughty by Nature and Dr. Dre scored their first No. 1 hits on the more data-accurate R&B chart.
For the rest of the 90s, rap became so omnipresent on Hot R&B Singles—with 2Pac, Notorious B.I.G., Puff Daddy, Ma$e, and Missy Elliott scoring hits—that in 1999 Billboard finally added hip-hop to the name of the chart, redubbing it Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Singles & Tracks (a mouthful of a name that was mercifully shortened to Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs in 2005).
Of course, hip-hop wasn't only dominating the R&B chart in the 90s—it was steadily taking over the Top 40, too. As early as 1993, black music was already so dominant on the Hot 100 that all but two of Billboard's top 25 pop singles of the year were crossover tracks from the Hot R&B Songs chart (the only exceptions that year: one track each by UB40 and Soul Asylum). There were periods in the late 1990s and early 2000s where the Top 10 of the Hot 100 and R&B chart looked very similar. But that was largely because so many R&B and hip-hop tracks were legitimately crossing over to the pop charts—phenomena that SoundScan and BDS tracked accurately.
The death of the retail single by the end of the 90s helped accelerate the R&B-to-pop crossover. Wanting to motivate full-length CD purchases whenever possible, the major labels began pulling major radio hits from the retail market; if you wanted a Green Day, No Doubt, or Goo Goo Dolls hit, you had to pony up $16–$18 for the CD. While hits by both white and black acts were pulled from the retail market, songs by rock and pop were generally less available—a kind of racial profiling that implied that white consumers were more likely to buy a full-length CD. If you were a Britney Spears fan from 1999 to 2003, you'd buy her CD; many of Spears's biggest radio hits, including "Oops…I Did It Again" and "Toxic", weren't released as singles. If you were, say, an OutKast fan, you might buy Stankonia, but you might just as easily purchase "Ms. Jackson" as a CD-single. The result was that, at the turn of the millennium, the Hot 100 was more dominated by hip-hop and R&B than teen-pop, which tended to do better on the album chart.
Still, even with these singles-yanking shenanigans going on, it was undeniable in the early 2000s that music by African-Americans had come to be preferred by a generation of teenagers and twentysomethings, and black radio at the peak of hip-hop was scoring ratings and influencing Top 40 like never before.
By 2004, literally every song that topped the Hot 100 was by a person of color. This was the final affirmation that black music—during the peak of Usher, Destiny's Child, 50 Cent, and Jay-Z—was, to borrow Berry Gordy's term, the sound of young America. In some cities, even the Top 40 pop stations leaned strongly "rhythmic," in industry parlance. The R&B chart didn't look terribly different from the Hot 100 in 2004, but that was largely because Top 40 radio was using the R&B chart as its first stop to go shopping for hits. R&B and hip-hop were setting the agenda.
Within a year, however, that pendulum would begin swinging back.
Black Music's Digital Problem
The iTunes Music Store opened for business in 2003, revolutionizing the legal distribution of music online. Billboard waited a couple of years to incorporate digital song data into its charts, giving Apple's online platform and iPod ecosystem time to disseminate past early adopters to teenagers and a wide range of demographics. Finally, in February 2005, digital sales—dominated, overwhelmingly, by iTunes—were baked into the Hot 100, and the digital era on the charts began.
The effects were remarkable, even within the first year. Million-selling songs like Gwen Stefani's "Hollaback Girl" and Weezer's "Beverly Hills" gave the 90s veterans their highest-charting Hot 100 hits ever. Within just a few years, thanks largely to digital sales, soft-rock acts like Plain White T's, Coldplay, and Owl City were topping the charts; and budding country stars Carrie Underwood and Taylor Swift were breaching the pop Top 10, thanks in part to the democratizing effects of digital sales, which balanced out slow-moving radio rotations on the Hot 100.
Over on Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs, however, those millions in digital sales had no impact. Billboard still wasn't factoring iTunes and its ilk into its black music chart in the late 00s; only physical singles sales still counted. To say the least, this was a rather surreal chart policy for the time. If the new millennium had been tough on brick-and-mortar music chains—shuttering the nation's Tower Records, Coconuts, and Strawberries franchises—it was downright brutal on the smaller shops that reported to Billboard's R&B charts, which were disappearing just as quickly. And anyway, so few physical singles were being released in the 00s that whatever black-owned-and-oriented music stores remained didn't have much to report to the chart.
For all intents and purposes, then, during the 00s, Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs was an all-radio chart. Physical singles sales still counted but had an infinitesimal impact. This overreliance on radio made the chart rather hollow; as vital as black radio is as a medium, it is subject to the same over-research, promotional manipulation, and slow playlist turnover as Top 40 radio. By 2009 and 2010, fewer than 10 songs were topping the R&B chart all year.
Add to the mix a slump in black radio in the late 00s, brought on by radio's new ratings technology, the Portable People Meter, which replaced the prior handwritten diary system. PPM, a more accurate (though far from perfect) pager-like listener-measuring device, became Arbitron's main method for gathering radio ratings after 2007. It revealed that urban radio wasn't scoring the persistent listenership previously believed—in no small part because Top 40, adult-contemporary, and rock stations were more likely to be playing in public spaces—which led to decimated ratings and the shuttering of stations; in New York City, two powerhouse black stations, Kiss-FM and WBLS, were compelled to merge.
Billboard couldn't do anything about the slump in black radio ratings. But clearly, for the R&B/Hip-Hop chart to remain vital, digital consumption of black music would have to be baked in somehow. However, for nearly eight years—even as the Hot 100 became reenergized by iTunes, and eventually Spotify (added to the Hot 100 in 2012), and YouTube (2013)—Billboard's editors resisted adding digital consumption data of any kind to the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart.
They likely had their reasons. Because here's the problem with digital and R&B: There's no such thing as a "black iTunes" or a "black YouTube." African-Americans—and hardcore hip-hop and R&B fans of any ethnicity—mostly go to the same sites to purchase and stream songs as everyone else. You can imagine a world where, say, BET or The Source had started a download store or streaming site; then all Billboard would have to do to modernize its R&B chart would be to draw all digital sales data for the chart from those outlets. (Sites like WorldStarHiphop let you stream both mainstream and underground videos, but they don't sell enough stuff to be helpful to Billboard.) In the winner-take-all game of digital music consumption, any such site would get crushed by Apple's iTunes and Google's YouTube.
This all-encompassing digital consumption isn't necessarily a problem when it comes to the Hot 100, which covers all genres and where, in theory, all songs compete on equal footing. But since its reinvention in 1965, the whole point of Billboard's R&B chart has been to highlight sales and airplay targeted at core black music fans. That's what distinguished the R&B chart from the Hot 100. How do you do that, if you can't isolate sales and streams generated by these consumers?
A Solution Causes Even More Problems
As late as the summer of 2012, digital sales still weren't incorporated into the R&B/Hip-Hop chart. That's when I wrote an installment of my former Village Voice column "100 & Single" highlighting the growing "commercial funk" in black-oriented music and calling on Billboard to add digital data to the chart. "Music charts are like feedback loops," I wrote. "They reflect popularity back at the industry that makes stuff popular. But the loop on this chart is getting smaller and more insular all the time."
Granted, I have about as much influence on Billboard chart policy as you do—i.e., none. But as long as I was thinking out loud about how the magazine could modernize the chart, I also warned that, whatever they did, they shouldn't just throw in all digital sales of any song that could qualify under the broadest definitions of hip-hop and R&B because, as I wrote, "a digital-fueled R&B/Hip-Hop chart would probably vastly overstate the urban popularity of will.i.am." Then, three months after that column, Billboard did exactly what I was afraid of.
In October 2012, the magazine announced an overhaul to its R&B/Hip-Hop, Country, and Latin Songs charts, all incorporating digital sales and streaming for the first time. The modernization of these genre charts was long overdue, but Billboard threw out the baby with the bathwater. Or, you might say, drowned the baby in too much bathwater: Now, digital sales from any source, any buyer (read: pop fans) would be factored into each chart. Worse, in order to achieve sales and radio parity, Billboard also incorporated airplay across all radio formats into the genre charts; so airplay from Top 40 or adult-contemporary stations of, say, an R&B song would now count for the R&B chart, of a country song would count for the country chart, and so forth. In essence, Billboard would now use the exact same data set for these genre charts that it uses for the Hot 100, and simply trim the charts back to whatever songs the magazine determined fit that genre—each chart became a mini–Hot 100.
The word that recurred throughout Billboard's announcement of the chart changes was "crossover": "The new methodology, which will utilize the Hot 100's formula of incorporating airplay from more than 1,200 stations of all genres monitored by BDS, will reward crossover titles receiving airplay on a multitude of formats." This was an acknowledgment that the mass of pop fans was going to control the fate of the genre charts. It was also ironic, since these changes would largely make "crossover" as we previously knew it—songs transitioning over a matter of weeks or months, from genre chart to mass audience—impossible.
Followers of these genre charts were instantly unhappy. Fans of Hot Country Songs were aghast at the changes; the very first week of the switch, an especially poppy Taylor Swift song that wasn't scoring much airplay on country radio stations shot to No. 1 on the revamped Country chart. On Latin Songs, the steady turnover of hits atop the chart slowed down instantly, as a crossover hit that paired reggaetón stars Wisin y Yandel with Chris Brown and T-Pain vaulted to No. 1 and settled in for a months-long run. Even Billboard's smaller charts weren't immune. Hot Rap Songs, a sidebar to the R&B/Hip-Hop chart that had existed since 1989, also had digital data added to its formula; but rap fans howled when the first No. 1 song on the revamped Hot Rap Songs was K-Pop star Psy's viral hit "Gangnam Style."
Arguably, though, the biggest loser in the 2012 charts overhaul was Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs. Billboard cut the chart in half, from 100 to 50 positions—its smallest size since the early 70s. Unlike the country and Latin charts, which hadn't had a sales component, the R&B chart had once been fueled by singles sales at core R&B stores. Replacing that with undifferentiated iTunes sales was like replacing Sylvia's with McDonald's. Finally, while all of the genre charts were now stuffed with multi-format radio airplay, the effects were more noticeable on the R&B chart, which became exceedingly skewed toward pop-radio-friendly songs.
Top 40 stations rarely play Latin music, and they play only a small selection of country titles; but they play a lot of music that falls under the broad umbrellas of "R&B" and "hip-hop." I place these terms in scare quotes because, while Justin Timberlake certainly qualifies as R&B-pop and Macklemore does rap, there was a reason neither of these acts topped Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs under its old methodology—they weren't core artists for the genre. After the overhaul, Macklemore topped the R&B/Hip-Hop chart for five months straight, and Timberlake monopolized multiple spots within the chart's Top 10 throughout 2013. With these crossover artists selling millions online and racking up hours of cross-genre airplay, dominance on the revamped R&B chart was inevitable.
Clearly, race is the elephant in the room in these discussions of who is worthy of the R&B/Hip-Hop chart. But it's not as simple as "black: good; white: bad"—again, the R&B chart has historically included, and even been topped by, certain songs by white acts. The problem goes beyond race; the new methodology has skewed results for artists on either side of the color line.
Take Rihanna: native of Barbados, obviously a woman of color and, let's be clear, primarily a pop star. Since her 2005 breakthrough, she has been tentatively embraced by R&B radio, but only intermittently. Until 2012, she'd only scored one No. 1 R&B hit, the 2008 ballad "Take a Bow"; that's compared with her 10 chart-toppers on the Hot 100 in this period. Many of Rihanna's Hot 100 No. 1s—songs as massive as "Umbrella" and "Disturbia"—were R&B chart underperformers (Nos. 4 and 88 R&B, respectively). But under Billboard's new R&B/Hip-Hop chart formula, all of the megastar's millions in sales and radio audience count, regardless of their source. The week in 2012 that Billboard kicked off the new R&B chart, her "Diamonds", a song receiving only modest black radio airplay, shot from No. 66 to No. 1 under the new methodology.
On the other side of the racial divide, consider Robin Thicke. He may be a punchline at this point, but during the mid-00s he was, no joke, a legitimate urban radio star—the leading blue-eyed soul singer of his day. His 2007 slow jam "Lost Without U", an 11-week R&B chart-topper under the old, black-radio-driven system (Hot 100 peak: No. 14), was the No. 1 R&B song of '07 (and the first track by a white artist to rank as the year's top R&B song since the chart changed in 1965).
The new 2012 methodology didn't hurt Thicke—it boosted him in the wrong way, killing whatever cred he had. "Blurred Lines", Thicke's 2013 bid for pop crossover, succeeded like gangbusters on the Hot 100—it was his first Top 10 pop hit and eventually topped the big chart for 12 weeks. As for R&B/Hip-Hop, under the old chart system, you could imagine "Blurred" hitting the top for a week or two, if for no other reason than Thicke's strong track record with the R&B audience. Instead, under Billboard's new everything-and-the-kitchen-sink formula, "Blurred" topped the R&B/Hip-Hop chart for an absurd 16 weeks, making Thicke look less like the integral part of black radio he once was and more like a white interloper.
The reason songs like "Blurred", or Rihanna's "Diamonds", or Macklemore and Ryan Lewis's "Thrift Shop", can command the new R&B/Hip-Hop chart for so long is that Billboard's overhauled genre lists are essentially what I call "accordion charts": condensed versions of the Hot 100, with all the songs that Billboard has decided don't qualify for that genre taken out. You could actually make any week's R&B/Hip-Hop chart yourself: Take that week's Hot 100; cross out the pure-pop, country, and rock songs; and re-stack all the songs that are left, keeping them in the same order. Voilà: instant R&B chart.
(To satisfy my curiosity for this story, I played the create-the-R&B-chart game with four different Hot 100s from various weeks throughout 2013. The only differences between my handmade R&B charts and Billboard's official ones were the inclusion of older songs on lower rungs of the R&B chart that Billboard removes from the Hot 100 due to its recurrent rules that prune old songs. If these records had been left on the Hot 100, my faux R&B charts and Billboard's would have been identical.)
An analogy: Imagine if we changed the way we elected U.S. senators. Under our new rules, we'd take each state's presidential vote and just redistribute the Democratic and Republican votes among the two corresponding Senate candidates—ignoring the fact that candidate specifics, party-switching, and voter turnout have something to do with how we vote. A system like this would certainly make the process of electing senators simpler, and the result might vaguely resemble the outcome of our actual system. But it would change the outcome in close races; it would remove voter agency (a Democratic Senate hopeful would have no incentive to campaign for moderate Republican voters, or vice-versa); and it would dumb down the (already pretty dumb) process.
Billboard's new accordion-style genre-chart methodology, with the Hot 100 playing the part of the presidential vote, is not much better than that. All the interesting quirks that make one song a better fit for the core R&B audience and another a pop crossover smash are eliminated. This approach isn't the way Billboard's genre charts are supposed to work; they are supposed to be based on a different sample of data—not just the Hot 100 data, editorially pruned by Billboard.
Emphasis on editorial: What is perhaps worst about this system is how Billboard, supposedly objective chart-maker, is now in the sorry business of trying to decide who qualifies for an R&B chart, with all the bizarre identity implications. Justin Timberlake and Eminem? In. The biracial Bruno Mars, or the Mariah Carey–like Ariana Grande? Out. I don't have any better grasp on whether these artists should qualify for the chart than Billboard does. But the magazine is playing a role that used to be played organically—by shoppers at black retail stores and R&B radio—on a song-by-song, artist-by-artist basis.
But Can the Chart Be Fixed?
For all my disdain for the current thinking behind the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart, I have sympathy for Billboard's editors—they're currently in a no-win situation when it comes to the digital era and audience measurement. If I were in charge, I'm not sure I could do any better. Admittedly, any sort of "fix" would be a touchy and labor-intensive task.
Late last year, while researching this piece, I reached out for commentary from Silvio Pietroluongo, who's been with Billboard more than 20 years and is now their Director of Charts. (Disclosure: A very long time ago, I wrote a handful of articles for Billboard as a freelancer; but never as a chart analyst, and no more recently than 2003. The editor I wrote for—not Pietroluongo—is no longer with the magazine.)
First off, chart grumblers should get comfortable with the current state of affairs. "We are always exploring ways to improve our charts," Pietroluongo wrote, "but at the moment we have no plans to change Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs, except for increasing our pool of streaming services, as would be the case for any of our other sales/airplay/streaming charts."
I also asked about the addition of all-genre radio data to single-genre charts like R&B/Hip-Hop. I can understand Billboard not being able to pull apart digital sales by audience, but why compound the error by throwing in pop airplay? Pietroluongo says it wasn't about black radio's lower, PPM-damaged ratings, but about apples-to-apples parity—if Billboard is going to count all buyers, it has to count all radio listeners.
"[This move] had nothing to do with urban radio's plight," Pietroluongo wrote. "[It's] just as a way to measure full radio consumption, in the same way we measure the entire digital download market and across-the-board streaming activity. This was a more logical formula than using partial radio airplay with complete sales and streaming."
When asked whether the revamped chart serves the music industry as an accurate reflection of the state of black or "urban" music, Pietroluongo wrote: "I believe it gives an accurate reflection of the popularity of R&B/hip-hop music [emphasis his] across multiple music metrics, which was our goal. The chart, as previously constituted, was 98% based on airplay from R&B/hip-hop radio stations, and that ranking (now R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay) continues to exist as a barometer of songs that are popular at that radio format."
Indeed, fans of the pre-2012 system can check out the R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay chart, which is virtually identical to the old methodology. As Pietroluongo implies, when the physical singles market died in the 2000s, the big R&B/Hip-Hop chart was essentially all-airplay, anyway.
But as its name indicates, the R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay chart only covers radio; and the whole reason the main R&B/Hip-Hop chart needed refreshed sales data in 2012 was it had gotten radio-heavy, small-ball, and dull. The strength of the old R&B/Hip-Hop Songs—before the 2000s, anyway—was its mix of radio and consumer data.
Which brings us to the no-win situation: We fans—and, presumably, the music industry—asked Billboard to add digital data to the R&B/Hip-Hop chart, and Pietroluongo's team complied. Now we're complaining about them adding, in essence, too much digital data.
Remember that what made the pre-2000s R&B/Hip-Hop chart work was that it sought to measure the boundaries of an audience, not a genre. If listeners and buyers of black music collectively decided they liked a song—even it were by Bee Gees, Hall & Oates or, to pick a modern example, Lorde—it would appear on the chart, and its chart performance would depend on their purchases and listenership, not on everybody's. The question is: How do you pinpoint this audience in 2014?
Apple, to take the most prominent example, doesn't provide demographic breakdowns of its buyers—nor, arguably, should it. Neither does Google, parent of YouTube—it's none of these companies' business (well… insert NSA joke here). And anyway, if the U.S. census can't come up with a straightforward way to measure who is a person of color, it's silly to expect a technology conglomerate to do so.
Let me reiterate: The solution is not a set of data that racially profiles users. It's tempting to cut sales and streaming data by ZIP code; both George Clinton and Chris Rock have quipped that African-Americans mostly live in about "10 places" across the country. But that would be too limiting, and anyway, we don't want Billboard asking Apple, Google, Amazon, Spotify et al., "Tell us what songs your black users are buying and streaming," even if such a thing were possible. What we want is a recreation of Billboard's old "core R&B stores" model: limiting the pool, as best as can be approximated, to a music-buying clientele that purchases mostly R&B and hip-hop music—then asking them what they're buying now. Is that even possible? Again, if there are no distinctive online gathering places for R&B and hip-hop fans to buy or stream music, sooner or later you're going to have to place individual users in buckets, even if those buckets aren't race-based.
You can understand why Billboard would find such data-gathering headache-inducing and ill-advised. Pietroluongo told me Billboard ruled it out: "We felt it was best to move to a ranking that measured the popularity of the genre of R&B/hip-hop music, and one that was not based on demographic or regional purchases, even if that option existed. Does the consumption of country music in New York or Los Angeles mean something different than that purchased in Kansas or Nebraska?"
I half-agree that regional patterns might not be advisable; and demographics are fraught. But imposing no limitations whatsoever on the audience parameters has resulted in the dubious, mini–Hot 100 version of the R&B/Hip-Hop chart we have now.
Streaming to the Rescue
The digital era is what got us into this mess—the fallacy of the "long tail" turning into the big-get-bigger economy, as everybody piles into the same few websites to consume their music. But if digital created the R&B/Hip-Hop chart dilemma, can't digital can also solve it? The answer may not come from Apple's iTunes, or Google's YouTube, but rather the youngest and smallest (but fastest-growing) music consumption format: streaming.
Sometime this winter in your social media feed, you may have seen a blue U.S. map, with each state labeled with the name of a quirky musical artist. The map called these "regional listening preferences," but your friends might have posted it on Facebook as "every state's favorite artist!" This turned out to be one of 2014's most misunderstood music memes—the map wasn't meant to show each state's "favorite" artist; it was meant to show how each state was distinct from one another. Using piles of streaming data, the map identifies the act that was most unique to that state. For example, for Tennessee, the map offers Juicy J; he's not the most popular act in Tennessee, but rather the artist most likely to be streamed in Tennessee compared with any other state. In short, the map is a breakdown of granular regional preferences and a showcase for how music-consumption data can be sifted very finely.
It was created by Paul Lamere, a technologist at the Echo Nest, a music intelligence company whose algorithm, developed at M.I.T., powers the music-recommendation engines of MTV, eMusic, and Vevo, among many platforms. Just last month, the Echo Nest announced it had been purchased by Spotify, one of its biggest clients—giving the company even greater market clout with one of the fastest-growing services supplying data to Billboard's charts. The main point of Echo Nest's technology is to determine as much as possible about an individual listener, in order to recommend additional, very specific music that that listener might also enjoy. But as the map experiment reinforced, even with data as simple as a ZIP code, streaming services can aggregate large amounts of data to track subsets of users and detect patterns by region.
Or, perhaps, patterns by genre—in a recent interview with John Schaefer about the blue map on the WNYC radio program "Soundcheck", the Echo Nest's Lamere said the platform's data was only getting more refined: "As soon as you start to know a little bit about the people's specific tastes—where they're from, how old they are, and also what kind of music they actually like to listen to [emphasis mine]—we can do a lot better job of understanding them and giving them a good listening experience."
Imagine if the Echo Nest harnessed its platform—without identifying individual users by name, demographic, or location—to pinpoint a subset of listeners who primarily listen to contemporary R&B or hip-hop. (Or country. Or Latin music.) It would be fairly straightforward to aggregate just those listeners, and then chart their favorite songs weekly. This imagined system, based on a bucket of R&B/hip-hop super-listeners, would capture all of the new hip-hop and R&B they were consuming. And if a mass of these listeners collectively decided they liked an occasional, poppier song by Lorde or Adele, it would capture that, too.
The Echo Nest could, in essence, become the next SoundScan, rebuilding the core R&B record store of yore in digital form—no racial profiling required. Billboard would have its audience-specific data back and could pair it with data from black radio to reconstitute the R&B/Hip-Hop chart in modernized form.
A pipe dream? Perhaps, especially as long as iTunes—with its undifferentiated, mass-market sales data—remains the world's largest music retailer. But Apple may not be atop the music-consumption pyramid much longer: U.S. digital music sales peaked roughly a year ago and have begun a steady decline as more users switch from buying to streaming (and the computer giant's new iTunes Radio platform has proved less profitable than expected). It also might be a while before Billboard could attempt a reconstitution of the R&B/Hip-Hop chart's special sauce while technology and consumer habits catch up. The digital divide may still be limiting the number of African-American users of services like Spotify—although huge smartphone penetration rates among blacks are quickly closing that gap.
Of course, all this speculation assumes the magazine's editors even care to remake the chart once again. Billboard's apparent strategy, now that the initial carping about the genre charts has died down, is to just wait out a cultural pendulum swing back toward black-oriented music.
And four months into 2014, the R&B/Hip-Hop chart is looking a bit less pop-skewed. A big reason why the chart looked so exceedingly white in 2013 was that the Hot 100 was itself extra-white last year—not a single lead black artist topped the pop chart all year. But Pharrell Williams broke the drought last month, topping the Hot 100 with "Happy". Of course, because he's No. 1 on that chart, he's also No. 1 on Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs. But what hasn't changed is the R&B/Hip-Hop chart's second-class, kid-brother status, as a cropped clone of the Hot 100. Top 40 radio and millions of iTunes buyers now define what Billboard calls an R&B hit—pop fans love them some "Happy"—and actual crossover as we used to know it is a thing of the past.
Given what they had to work with, Billboard did what it had to do to bring the R&B/Hip-Hop chart into the 21st century. But the technology will soon exist, if it doesn't already, to do it for real and track the popularity of songs among an authentic, believable, legitimate coterie of black music fans. Restoring R&B/Hip-Hop Songs as an audience chart, not a genre chart, would uphold a great, multi-decade tradition. It would do right by an audience that has been consistently ahead of the curve in popular music.
This is the audience that gave James Brown and Aretha Franklin their first major hits, long before they graced the pop Top 10; that gave Lionel Richie his first No. 1 hit a decade before he went solo; that defined the terms "quiet storm" and "slow jam" before they became late-night TV punchlines; that gave a young Prince a home for his sound before the world knew he could rock; that broke Whitney Houston when she was still an ingénue; that stuck by Michael Jackson when Top 40 radio abandoned him; and that established Lil Wayne as the new millennium's hip-hop polymath. African-American music is a continuum, not just an ingredient in the pop stew. It deserves its own barometer for success.
Followup coverage: A few weeks after the publication of this Pitchfork article, I was interviewed by The New Yorker's Sasha Frere-Jones about the issues raised in "I Know You Got Soul." https://www.newyorker.com/culture/sasha-frere-jones/fixing-the-charts
← Why Is Pharrell's "Happy" No. 1?
Why Is John Legend's "All of Me" No. 1? →


text:
Pastor Maldonado, född 9 mars 1985 i Maracay, är en venezuelansk racerförare.

Racingkarriär
Maldonado vann Formula Renault 2.0 Italia 2004, vilket lade grunden till hans karriär. Han blev sedan trea i Formula Renault 3.5 Series 2006, en säsong under vilken han körde på en funktionär i Monte Carlo, vilket ledde till livstids avstängning från tävlande på banan.

Efter att personligen bett den påkörde funktionären om ursäkt och visat stor ånger fick Maldonado tillbaka tävlingstillståndet på banan och vann senare GP2-loppet i Monte Carlo säsongen . Säsongen  slutade han femma i serien för Piquet Sport. Detta gav honom en förarplats i GP2-förarnas drömstall, ART Grand Prix, säsongen , då han var en av favortierna till mästartiteln. Han slutade på en sjätteplats. Säsongen 2010 körde han för det italienska teamet Rapax och han vann också GP2 serien det året.

Under säsongen 2011 kom han att göra debut i Formel 1 för stallet Williams där han körde bredvid brasilianaren Rubens Barrichello.

Maldonado tog sin första och enda seger i Formel 1 när han vann Spaniens Grand Prix 2012 från pole position. Detta var även hans enda pole position och pallplats i Formel 1 samt är ännu den senaste vinsten för stallet Williams.

Maldonado har sponsrats av det venezuelanska statsägda oljebolaget PDVSA, som 2012 bidrog med motsvarande cirka 300 miljoner svenska kronor.

Säsongerna 2014 och 2015 körde Maldonado för Lotus.

F1-karriär

Politik
Maldonado ser sig själv som socialist och menar att sport och politik går ihop. Han är en beundrare av Venezuelas president Hugo Chávez.

Referenser

Noter

Webbkällor

Externa länkar

Födda 1985
Venezuelanska racerförare
GP2-förare
Formel 3000-förare
Formula Renault 3.5 Series-förare
Venezuelanska Formel 1-förare
Williams F1-förare
Formel 1-racevinnare
Formel 1-racevinnare under 2010-talet
Män
Levande personer
Lotus F1-förare
Venezuelanska idrottare under 2000-talet
Personer från Maracay

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


text:
Home » Zambian regulator deactivates 2.1 million fraudulent SIM cards
Zambian regulator deactivates 2.1 million fraudulent SIM cards
By Albert Nangara on August 2, 2022 Tech & Business
Promoting SIM registration in Africa through improved identification and data privacy (Photo/ Global Voice Group)
The Zambia Information Communication Technology Authority (ZICTA) claims that it has switched off or de-activated about 2.1 million mobile SIM cards after a cleanup exercise following a spike in mobile money scams in which the country has been experiencing and said these were illegally registered.
While SIM card fraud is nothing new, it dramatically worsened in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. People are conducting activities from their phones at an unprecedented rate and scammers are taking full advantage of this increased usage. With more access to online transactions at our fingertips, comes more access to users' personal information, and subsequently, the margin of vulnerability widens.
ZICTA consumer protection and compliance manager Edgar Mlauzi said the ICT authority is "working tirelessly" to combat digital fraud.
He said the deactivated SIM cards belong to subscribers who had more than ten SIM cards under one name, which the regulator believes are used to commit fraud.
Mr. Mlauzi said from the time the SIM cards were deactivated, the volume of spam or suspected scam messages had declined.
"The authority has received several complaints from people who have been defrauded but ZICTA is doing everything possible to address the situation. Scammers send unsolicited messages to members of the public using the SMS platform by using fraudulently registered Subscriber Identity Module (SIM) cards which compromises the safety of other users of electronic communication services," he said.
According to ZICTA, Zambia has continued to record increased use of digital financial services with mobile money transactions increasing to K105.6-billion by the end of last year from K49.6-billion in 2019, representing a 113% increase.
Bank of Zambia payment systems department manager Maria Katepe said the Central Bank is promoting digital financial services, particularly mobile money services which she said: "is the appropriate vehicle through which people can access financial services."
ZICTA had in early February 2022 called for all users to regularize their mobile phone numbers registrations and that a timeline was given after which those phone lines that had not complied, the ICT Authority would deregister all non-compliant SIM cards across the country,
ZICTA has since reiterated that the members of the public should at all costs desist from buying already registered SIM cards as such is against the law and anyone found wanting risks being prosecuted.
Chaaba revealed that so far, ZICTA has encountered situations where innocent people have been implicated in investigations due to owning SIM cards that were once used by criminals.
ZICTA confirmed with Zambian Business Times that the SIM cards that will not be claimed within 90 days after deactivation will be allocated to other new users. The Authority has since appealed to members of the public to take time to regularise their SIM card registration to avoid losing their contact numbers and for the country to have a clean database.
There is also much furore and some have accused ZICTA of being used by politicians to clean up the database to facilitate the location and identification of anonymous social media commentators who are critical of government officials and politicians according to Zambian Business Times. Some say this move is an affront to free speech as most people who use anonymous phone lines will stay away from whistle-blowing ills in government following this clean-up. It remains to be seen how this will eventually pan out.
But ITWeb Africa in an article published June 03, 2021, argues that SIM cards not only grant users access to a mobile service, but also allow governments to accurately identify the owner of a mobile device, including who is making phone calls, sending messages, or making financial transactions.
The article added that the existing process for registering a new SIM card traditionally takes place in person. A user interested in signing up for a new phone or mobile device must travel to a local branch and complete the process with a company representative. During this process, the user will provide his/her personal information, which the provider will then keep on file. From this point forward, that person's personal information will stay tied to that respective SIM card.
Replacing a SIM card, however, can be handled via call center with a designated representative. A person in need of a new SIM card can call up their network provider, provide answers to a few authentication questions, and get a new card sent to them quickly.
The problems with these methods are three-fold but one is that they are fraud-prone. Typical authentication questions used to prove a person's identity are very easy to steal or discover – a person's email address or phone number typically suffice and there are no built-in safeguards to protect against situations involving bribery.
SIM swap fraud: a new wave of attacks targeting financial services and online services in Africa. (Photo/ Tech Trends)
One process called the SIM Card Swap involves getting just enough personal information to then call a mobile network provider, impersonate their victim, say they lost their SIM card, and ask for a new one. Once completed, they can then use their phones to access the victim's personal and financial accounts, leading to massive financial losses for the victim, and presenting a significant challenge to the victim as they attempt to restore their identity.
Meanwhile, the independent communications authority of South Africa (ICASA) submitted a radical proposal to tackle the problem of SIM swapping attacks in the country, suggesting that local service providers should keep the biometric data of cellphone number owners according to Bleeping computer.
Ahmore Burger-Smidt, the Director and Head of Data Privacy and Cybercrime Practice at Werksmans Attorneys in South Africa, told Bleeping Computer that ICASA's proposal might very well be the only solution to crack down on SIM swap fraud.
"SIM card fraud is unfortunately rife in South Africa and mobile network operators are at a loss on how to deal with this. In addition, the RICA legislation (Regulation of Interception of Communications and Provision of Communication-related Information Act 70 of 2002) places a positive obligation on mobile network operators to obtain certain data when a SIM card is sold.
In a world with various pieces of legislation, the broader legislative landscape should serve the public interest. It is undoubtedly in the public interest to prevent or at least aim to limit cyber-fraud and therefore collecting biometric information could very well serve the public interest."
ICASA believes that associating mobile numbers with subscriber biometric data will finally close all loopholes and end the cellphone numbers hijacking problem.
Read: USSD driving digital and financial inclusion in Africa
biometric sim registration Cyber Security ICT SIM cards SIM-SWAP fraud Zambia ZICTA
Albert Nangara
Albert is a Chemical Technologist and Author. He is passionate about mining, stock market investing, Fintech and Edutech.
Artificial Intelligence in Africa – Leveling the narrative
Boost for US-Africa relations as US Treasury Secretary visits Senegal, Zambia
How Kenyan workers were exploited to build ChatGTP
Investment in African energy startups more than doubled in 2022 to $874Mn

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


A skunk removed from Voorhees Township on Oct. 26 has tested positive for rabies.
A Voorhees resident discovered her dog had been sprayed by a skunk on her property. The skunk subsequently was either killed by the dog or died on its own. The animal control office for Voorhees Township removed the skunk and arranged for rabies testing.
On Oct. 30, the Camden County Health Department was notified by the NJDHSS that the animal was rabid. The dog is current with its rabies vaccination and will be receiving a booster dose of vaccine from its veterinarian. There were no human exposures noted.
Rodriguez said interested residents can learn more about rabies through the internet by accessing the information available from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention at www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dvrd/rabies/ or, residents may call the Camden County Department of Health and Human Services at 374–6370.


Most of my windows are made on commission and I aim to make this an enjoyable process for everyone concerned. One of the most enriching elements of my work is that of developing creative relationships. This nourishes the research and contemplation that, in turn, lead to the translation of a given theme into an appropriate finished window, with which the viewer can engage and return to for reflection, discovery and enjoyment.
My starting point is always to visit the building in question and meet those interested in commissioning a window. There is normally no charge for this, unless the journey is a particularly long one! At this stage I aim to get a feel for the building and the window space – and to discuss ideas for themes. I can also give a rough idea of the total cost of the work. This will obviously depend upon factors such as complexity of design, scale and ease of installation.
If there is agreement that I should continue with the process and produce a design proposal, a fee will be payable, which will become part of the total cost if the commission goes ahead. The design fee is not prohibitive; the working relationship depends to a great extent on goodwill on both sides. In any event, I retain copyright in all design work.
Discussions, photographs, sketches and words gleaned during these visits provide rich source material for the design work that follows.
The design proposal will normally be a 1:10 or 1:5 scale watercolour, supported by glass samples. I always bring these to a meeting myself, so that there is plenty of opportunity for discussion and questions. At this point I will be able to give the price for the completed work, including installation; and to agree the terms for the commission. This is normally quite straightforward; the early meetings help to establish a good working relationship, which depends upon trust and confidence between the client and myself. I have a vested interest in getting this right!
If the design is accepted, I normally ask for about one third of the total cost to be paid as soon as there has been an exchange of letters (for fairly small commissions) or a written contract agreed (larger projects). This sum covers the design work already undertaken, together with the cost of the materials for the window. A second instalment will usually be payable when I confirm that the making of the window is at the halfway stage, with the final payment due on completion ie when I fit the window. The written agreement or contract covers matters such as timescale, provision of access equipment if necessary and advice on maintenance of the finished work.
The making of a new stained glass window takes place in my studio near Hay on Wye. The work may take a few weeks, or several months, depending on the size and complexity of the work. Many processes are involved, including the scaling up of the design, selecting and cutting the mouthblown coloured glass, painting and firing or acid-etching additional detail and texture, assembling the pieces with lead cames (H-shaped strips), soldering, weather-proofing, cleaning and polishing. The full sequence runs to about 35 processes! Fortunately, I enjoy them all.
When a new stained glass window is proposed for a church, various permissions have to be obtained, including support from the parochial church council, advise from the Diocesan Advisory Committee – and a faculty from the chancellor for the diocese (the Bishop's legal representative). This is not usually a complicated process, but it can take a little time and has to be approached with patience and sensitivity at each stage. It is always important to try to reach a consensus within the parish in the early stages. I am always happy to advise on and help with this process.
St Mary the Virgin, Burghill, Hereford.
North aisle and window - 24ins x 7ins.
Two-light window, north nave - 16 sq ft.
St Matthew's Church, Frome's Hill, Herefordshire.
St Luke and St Andrew's Church, Priston, Bath.
St Mary's Church, Newent, Glos.
Burley Gate Primary School, Herefordshire.
St Nicholas' Church, Bathampton, Bath.
St. Michael's Church, Cropthorne, Worcs.
West Wight Middle School, Freshwater, Isle of Wight.
Lea Primary School, Ross on Wye.
St. Andrew's Church, Brockley, Lewisham.
Tracery Lights, East Window - 5 sq. ft.
St. Swithin's Church, Clunbury, Salop.
St. Michael's Church, Gt. Comberton, Worcs.
St. Mary's Church, Cusop, Herefordshire.
St. Peter's Church, Astley, Worcestershire.
St. David's Church, Little Dewchurch, Herefordshire.
St. Leonard's Church, Yarpole, Herefordshire.
The Fountain Centre, Royal Surrey County Hospital, Guildford, Surrey.
St. Andrew's Church, Hampton, Evesham, Worcestershire.
Portsmouth Area Hospice, Purbrook, Hampshire.
St. Michael`s Church, Lyonshall, Herefordshire.
Twelve windows for three shop fronts - 36 sq. ft.


text:
William P. and Ruth Gerberding Rome Studies Fellowship
Funded by the William P. and Ruth Gerberding Rome Studies Endowment
Award Information
This endowment fund was established to honor William and Ruth Gerberding. The Gerberdings came to the University of Washington in 1979 when William began his term as UW president, a term that lasted 16 years. Ruth was instrumental in helping to build public and private support for the University and served on many community committees and boards, including the UW Rome Center Advisory Committee.
These fellowships provide a lump sum award to assist with travel for graduate students who will be enrolled in a UW faculty-led program of study at the Rome Center.
Awards will range from $500 to $1,000, depending on the availability of funding and number and quality of nominees. While awards will be distributed prior to the study abroad program, if for any reason the awardee does not enroll in, attend, and complete the study abroad program at the Rome Center, he or she will be required to refund the full amount of the award to the Graduate School.
Nominee must be a current UW graduate student who has been accepted into a UW faculty-led program being held at the Rome Center.
Nominee must be enrolled as a graduate student in a UW degree program at the time of nomination and receipt of fellowship. On leave status is not considered enrolled.
Nominee cannot have received a prior Gerberding Rome award.
Nominees may not be receiving other Graduate School travel funding for travel during the time of the program or immediately before or after.
Students in both fee-based programs and tuition-based programs are eligible.
Student cannot be employed in any capacity in the study abroad program.
Submit Nominations via Catalyst
Nomination Deadlines
April 7, 5:00 p.m. for autumn quarter
November 3, 5:00 p.m. for winter quarter
February 2, 5:00 p.m. for spring quarter
Units may nominate up to 5 students for a program. Please do not rank the nominations. We encourage units to consider all admitted students, not just students from their unit.
A maximum of 5 students per study abroad program may be nominated; in the case of a program sponsored by more than one unit, the units should coordinate the nominations of the 5 students.
Nominations must be made by the unit(s) sponsoring the Rome Center program and must be submitted into Catalyst by authorized departmental personnel from the unit(s) sponsoring the study abroad program (i.e. Rome Center program director, GPA, GPC, or chair). Students may not submit nomination materials.
Nominations must be received by the applicable deadline. No late materials will be accepted; nominations will not be considered unless they are complete and submitted by the deadline.
Nomination Materials
Complete nomination packets should be submitted (if possible) as one PDF document and must include:
A completed cover sheet.
Statement of purpose by the student (not to exceed two pages, double-spaced, 12 point Times New Roman font, 1-inch margins) that includes:
Brief explanation of the study that will be done in Rome
Reasons for choosing this particular program
Relevance and relationship of the Rome program to his/her academic program
What personal gain the student hopes to achieve while on this program
Unofficial UW transcript (PDF from MyUW)
Terms of Award
This is a lump sum award and does not include any tuition or program cost coverage.
The awardee must enroll in a program at the UW Rome Center through UW Study Abroad, and must attend and complete the specified program.
Funding is provided in advance of the trip to assist with travel costs, but in the event a student does not enroll in or complete the specified study abroad program, he or she will be required to return the amount of the award to the Graduate School.
The nominating unit may be asked to provide confirmation that the student attended and completed the program.
Contact the Office of Fellowships and Awards: gradappt@uw.edu or 206.543.7152.


text:
WHO Taps 'Anti-Conspiracy' Crusader to Sway Public Opinion on COVID Vaccine
Jeremy Loffredo
An outspoken proponent of government-led tactics to influence public opinion on policy and to undermine the credibility of "conspiracy theorists" will lead the World Health Organization's (WHO) efforts to encourage public acceptance of a COVID-19 vaccine, Children's Health Defense has learned.
Last week, WHO's general director, Dr. Tedros Ghebreyesus, tweeted that he was glad to speak with the organization's Technical Advisory Group (TAG) on Behavioural Insights and Sciences for Health to "discuss vaccine acceptance and uptake in the context of COVID-19."
Posted by remo at 2:22 am
One Response to "WHO Taps 'Anti-Conspiracy' Crusader to Sway Public Opinion on COVID Vaccine"
hwaddington says:
Slivery Sunstein strikes again eh!
What would old Cass Cash make of the scientists advising the World Health Organization on planning for an influenza pandemic who had been paid for work from pharmaceutical firms that stood to gain from the guidance they were preparing. These conflicts of interest have never been publicly disclosed by WHO, and WHO has dismissed inquiries into its handling of the A/H1N1 pandemic as "conspiracy theories."
Deborah Cohen and Philip Carter investigate
Watch the BMJ/The Bureau of Investigative Journalism's video on WHO and disclosure.
https://www.bmj.com/content/340/bmj.c2912.full
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and CHD Urge Congress to Investigate the Origins of COVID-19 The BioSecurity State Illusion.


San Jose Costa Rica Hotels - Find Hotels Beginning with "H"
Welcome to HotelGuide Network's alphabetical hotel directory for San Jose Costa Rica area hotels with names that begin with the letter "H". Please select one of the links below to view HotelGuide's Profile PageSM about that hotel. To return to the HotelGuide home page, where you can search for hotels beginning with other letters, click on the "San Jose Costa Rica Hotels" link at the top and bottom of the page.
HotelGuide and HotelGuide San Jose Costa Rica are service marks of MetroGuide.com, Inc. HotelGuide Network is a registered service mark of MetroGuide.com, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. MetroGuide.com, Inc. does not own or operate hotel properties.


text:
Bob Dylan Just Released the Ultra-Rare 1970 'George Harrison Sessions' Without Warning
A tiny number of Bob Dylan fans scored a valuable collectible on Sunday when a three-disc collection of songs cut in 1970, including the legendary George Harrison sessions, was quietly put on sale via the UK store Badlands.
"This release is strictly limited to 1 unit per customer," the store wrote when announcing Bob Dylan – 50th Anniversary Collection 1970. "Extremely limited release. It will sell out instantly … Thank you and best of luck."
This collection was released in response to a European law stipulating that recordings enter the public domain 50 years after their creation if they aren't officially released by the copyright holder. To avoid legal Bob Dylan bootlegs from flooding the market, his camp has released yearly copyright protection releases going back to 2012 when the complete 1962 recordings came out.
Many of them contain take after take of the same song and would be of interest to nobody but the most devoted Dylan scholars, but they're become extremely valuable due to their scarcity. They often sell on the resale market for upwards of $1,000 each.
This new one likely has a broader appeal than previous ones since it features Dylan and George Harrison's complete May 1st, 1970 session where they casually jam on Dylan oldies like "One Too Many Mornings" and "It Ain't Me Babe" along with the Beatles' "Yesterday" and numerous tunes from the then-in-progress New Morning. It has circulated as a bootleg for years, but the sound quality on this is presumably a significant upgrade from anything heard before.
It is rounded out by other recordings from the New Morning sessions where Dylan is joined by session pros like organist Al Kooper, bassist Charlie Daniels, drummer Russ Kunkel, guitarist David Bromberg, bassist Stu Woods and drummer Alvin Rogers.
The collection sold out in seconds, but will likely be available soon to enterprising fans familiar with the world of BitTorrent. And stay vigilant in late 2021 when the complete sessions for Greatest Hits Volume 2 are likely to hit without notice. (Things will get real interesting in 2024 when they'll have to release every recording in the vault from Dylan's Before The Flood tour with the Band.)
Here is the complete track listing for the Bob Dylan – 50th Anniversary Collection 1970.
1. I Can't Help but Wonder Where I'm Bound
2. Universal Soldier – Take 1
3. Spanish Is the Loving Tongue – Take 1
4. Went to See the Gypsy – Take 2
6. Woogie Boogie
8. Thirsty Boots – Take 1
9. Little Moses – Take 1
10. Alberta – Take 2
11. Come All You Fair and Tender Ladies – Take 1
12. Things About Comin' My Way – Takes 2 & 3
13. Went to See the Gypsy – Take 6
14. Untitled 1970 Instrumental #1
15. Come a Little Bit Closer – Take 2
16. Alberta ¬– Take 5
17. Sign on the Window – Take 2
18. Sign on the Window – Takes 3, 4 & 5
19. If Not for You – Take 1
20. Time Passes Slowly – Rehearsal
23. Song to Woody – Take 1
24. Mama, You Been on My Mind – Take 1
25. Yesterday – Take 1
1. Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues – Take 1
2. I Met Him on a Sunday (Ronde-Ronde) – Take 1
3. One Too Many Mornings – Take 1
4. Ghost Riders in the Sky – Take 1
5. Cupid – Take 1
6. All I Have to Do Is Dream – Take 1
7. Gates of Eden – Take 1
8. I Threw It All Away – Take 1
9. I Don't Believe You (She Acts Like We Never Have Met) – Take 1
10. Matchbox – Take 1
11. Your True Love – Take 1
12. Telephone Wire – Take 1
13. Fishing Blues – Take 1
14. Honey, Just Allow Me One More Chance – Take 1
15. Rainy Day Women #12 & 35 – Take 1
16. It Ain't Me Babe
17. If Not for You
21. Alligator Man
22. Alligator Man [rock version]
23. Alligator Man [country version]
24. Day of the Locusts – Take 2
25. Sarah Jane 1
26. Sign on the Window
1. If Not for You – Take 1
3. Jamaica Farewell
4. Can't Help Falling in Love
5. Long Black Veil
6. One More Weekend
7. Bring Me Little Water, Sylvie – Take 1
8. Three Angels
9. Tomorrow Is a Long Time – Take 1
10. Tomorrow Is a Long Time – Take 2
11. New Morning
13. Went to See the Gypsy
14. Sign on the Window – Stereo Mix
15. Winterlude
16. I Forgot to Remember to Forget 1
18. Lily of the West – Take 2
19. Father of Night – rehearsal
20. Lily of the West
Bob Dylan – vocals, guitar, harmonica
Buzzy Feiten – guitar
Other musicians unknown
Tags: Bob Dylan, George Harrison
Previous Rihanna Is Dating Longtime Friend A$AP Rocky After Months of Romance Rumors: Source
Next Smashing Pumpkins Deliver Dark Disco-Tinged 'Cyr' on 'The Tonight Show'


The Japan Meeting of Furries (JMoF) is a furry convention which is held annually in Japan.
JMoF was founded in 2012, with the aim of establishing the first furry convention at a hotel in Japan. The con's programming includes workshops and seminars in acting, costume-building, art, and more.
The first Japan Meeting of Furries was held over January 12-14, 2013, in Hikone, Shiga.
Japan Meeting of Furries 2014 was held over January 11-12, 2014, at the Loisir Hotel in Toyohashi, Aichi, Japan. The theme was "The Fifty-three Stations of the Tōkaidō", and the guest of honor was Yuko Asami.
JMoF 2014 had 232 attendees.
Japan Meeting of Furries 2015 was held over January 10-11, 2015, at the Loisir Hotel in Toyohashi, Aichi, Japan.
JMoF 2015 had 408 attendees, and donated 262,950 JPY to Toyohashi zoo botanical park.
Japan Meeting of Furries 2016 was held over January 8-10, 2016, at the Loisir Hotel in Toyohashi, Aichi, Japan.
JMoF 2016 had 588 attendees and donated 418,600 JPY to Toyohashi zoo botanical park.
Japan Meeting of Furries 2017 was held over January 6-8, 2017, at the Loisir Hotel in Toyohashi, Aichi, Japan. The guest of honor was Hiroshi Matsuyama.
JMoF 2017 had 845 attendees and donated 732,050 JPY to Toyohashi zoo botanical park.
Japan Meeting of Furries 2018 took place over January 5-7, 2018, at the Loisir Hotel in Toyohashi, Aichi, Japan.
JMoF 2018 had 998 attendees and donated 1,025,050 JPY to Toyohashi Zoo Botanical Park.
Japan Meeting of Furries 2019 took place over January 11–13, 2019. at the Loisir Hotel in Toyohashi, Aichi, Japan.
JMoF 2019 had 1,332 attendees and donated 1,571,700 JPY to Toyohashi Zoo Botanical Park.
Japan Meeting of Furries 2020 is scheduled for January 10–12, 2020. again at the Loisir Hotel in Toyohashi, Aichi, Japan.
↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Japan Meeting of Furries website. Retrieved June 25, 2014.
↑ Description of "Furries JMoF 1st Opening furry fursuit" - video on lagai Aski's channel on YouTube. Retrieved June 25, 2015.
↑ Tweet on the JMoF account on Twitter. Dated November 7, 2013. Retrieved June 25, 2014.
↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 Hotel Information page on the JMoF website.
↑ Tweet on the JMoF account on Twitter. Dated October 16, 2013. Retrieved June 25, 2014.
↑ Special guest on the JMoF website. Retrieved June 25, 2014.
↑ Tweet on the JMoF account on Twitter. Dated January 12, 2014. Retrieved June 25, 2014.
↑ Tweet on the JMoF account on Twitter. Dated January 11, 2015. Retrieved February 4, 2015.
↑ Tweet on the JMoF account on Twitter. Dated February 4, 2015. Retrieved February 4, 2015.
↑ Tweet on the JMoF account on Twitter. Dated March 31, 2015. Retrieved January 26, 2016.
↑ Tweet on the JMoF account on Twitter. Dated January 12, 2016. Retrieved January 26, 2016.
↑ Tweet on the JMoF account on Twitter. Dated February 1, 2016. Retrieved February 1, 2016.
↑ Tweet on the JMoF account on Twitter. Dated January 9, 2017. Retrieved January 10, 2017.
↑ Tweet on the JMoF account on Twitter. Dated January 7, 2018. Retrieved January 8, 2018.
↑ 18.0 18.1 18.2 Tweet on the JMoF account on Twitter. Dated January 7, 2018. Retrieved January 14, 2018.
↑ Tweet on the JMoF account on Twitter. Dated January 20, 2018. Retrieved January 21, 2018.
↑ 20.0 20.1 20.2 Tweet on the JMoF account on Twitter. Dated January 20, 2018. Retrieved January 21, 2018.


Stop! You're talking to fake customer services on Twitter!
2017-03-30 by @edent | #phishing #spam #twitter | 4 comments | Read ~681 times.
2017-03-29 by @edent | #design #drm #google #usability | 3 comments | Read ~4,884 times.
2017-03-18 by @edent | #password #phishing #security #twitter | 2 comments | Read ~1,331 times.
2017-03-17 by @edent | #drone #solar | 2 comments | Read ~162 times.


Copy Of Mona Lisa Made Alongside The Original Found In Madrid Mona Lisa Painting Is In Which Museum Uploaded by wcdf on Saturday, March 10th, 2018 in category Blog.
See also Mona Lisa Painting Is In Which Museum Mona Lisa Painting Is In Which Museum Michelle Art from Blog Topic.
Here we have another image Photographing Mona Lisa Louvre Museum Stock Photos Photographing Mona Lisa Painting Is In Which Museum featured under Copy Of Mona Lisa Made Alongside The Original Found In Madrid Mona Lisa Painting Is In Which Museum. We hope you enjoyed it and if you want to download the pictures in high quality, simply right click the image and choose "Save As". Thanks for reading Copy Of Mona Lisa Made Alongside The Original Found In Madrid Mona Lisa Painting Is In Which Museum.


DMXReady Contact Us Manager 1.2 scripting tags: asp, contact, manager, contact manager, admin, add, contact information, dmxready contact manager, pages, organizer tool, staff, email. What is new in DMXReady Contact Us Manager 1.2 software script? - Unable to find DMXReady Contact Us Manager 1.2 news. What is improvements are expecting? Newly-made DMXReady Contact Us Manager 1.3 will be downloaded from here. You may download directly. Please write the reviews of the DMXReady Contact Us Manager. License limitations are unspecified.


This Video Show DVD traces the band's history during the height of their popularity with Phil Collins, Mike Rutherford, and Tony Banks as the main force behind their success. Peter Gabriel appears in a 1999 version of "The Carpet Crawlers." The DVD features classic MTV staples like "Land of Confusion," "Invisible Touch," and "I Can't Dance." Now visually digitally remastered, this is the first time all of the Genesis promotional videos have become available on DVD. In addition, rare BBC footage of "Paperlate" is included.
Every year when the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame announces its inductees, complaints arise. Sometimes folks gripe about the acts who made it into the Hall, but usually fans moan because the Hall ignored their favorite. Many of the acts cited will not and should not make it in, but some of the criticisms are legitimate. For instance, it remains absurd that Black Sabbath aren't in the Hall. I don't like the band, but their impact on rock is far too substantial for their omission.
At least they've been nominated. More bizarre is the fact that the Hall consistently ignores Genesis. A very long-lasting and successful band in their own right, two members – Peter Gabriel and Phil Collins – went onto solo careers that are Hall-worthy in their own right. Heck, even guitarist Mike Rutherford churned out a few hits with Mike and the Mechanics! It seems to me that Genesis did more than enough over their decades together to warrant induction. I'm no fan of progressive rock, but Genesis grew out of that genre and definitely are among rock's all-time elite.
Maybe the voters at the Hall will give this new DVD a look and reconsider. Called The Video Show, this package collects 32 music videos that span a period of 23 years. These mostly appear in reverse chronological order. We start with tracks from 1991's We Can't Dance album and then go backwards to 1976's A Trick of the Tail.
However, the DVD then leaps to 1997 for three songs from that year's Calling All Stations. Why the change? Because the 1997 Genesis featured Ray Wilson on vocals and doesn't seem to be considered "real" Genesis; these videos feel almost like footnotes. The package then ends with the 1999 version of "The Carpet Crawlers". That tune originally appeared on 1974's The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway, but this track updated it for 1999 and features both Gabriel and Collins on vocals.
Enough background – let's dig into the videos. I'll look at each one individually and offer a few comments along with a rating on the 1-10 scale. I'll also provide album credits.
Invisible Touch (Invisible Touch, 1986): Riding on the heels of Collins' massively successful 1985 solo album No Jacket Required, I believe Touch was the biggest selling Genesis album, and it introduced them to an era in which they played stadiums. Whether this was good is a subject open to debate.
"Touch" the tune doesn't stand among the best work done by the band or Collins solo. Its synth-based sound hasn't aged well, though I thought it was a silly tune 19 years ago. The video offers little more than a goofy take on the usual lip-synch performance genre. Collins clowns around on the set and that's about it. 4/10.
Paperlate (3X3 EP, 1982): Another pop Genesis tune, this one stands as a terrific number. When I stated that I prefer pop Genesis to prog Genesis, I probably should have been more specific. I don't think a lot of Genesis from 1986 on, and I don't much like their work prior to 1978. That leaves a small window of material I enjoy, and "Paperlate" represents that element at its best. I like pop Genesis that doesn't necessarily sound like Collins' solo work. I don't know if this makes sense, but there it is!
The "Paperlate" video actually comes from a May 27, 1982 appearance on Top of the Pops. That places it firmly in the category of lip-synch, and restricted lip-synch at that, since the band is stuck on a small stage. At least it has some historical value. 4/10.
Abacab (Abacab, 1981): The farther back we go, the more unfair it probably becomes for me to criticize lip-synch clips. After all, more dramatic or involving videos didn't really start to emerge until 1982 or 1983, so it's not right to expect anything like that from earlier days.
A Trick of the Tail (A Trick of the Tail, 1976): The DVD's oldest performances come from the band's first post-Gabriel album. This one sticks with performance, but it maintains a goofy charm as all four members – Steve Hackett was still with them back then – gather around Banks' piano. We also get the odd site of a miniature Collins as he sings on top of the piano keys and elsewhere! We also get an odd image of Hackett with a monster's claw. All that's good enough to make this one above average. 7/10.
Not About Us (Calling All Stations): Wilson-era Genesis ends with this track. Thank God! This one offers more nonsense with ordinary people and fails to become anything interesting. The bland ballad makes me long for Collins' syrupy tendencies. 4/10.
The Carpet Crawlers (Turn It On Again: The Hits, 1999): Although this video features vocals from both Collins and Gabriel – quite a cool coup – unfortunately we don't see either in this video. It looks like something we'd expect from Gabriel's solo tracks, as it features a mix of surreal elements and an occasional glimpse of classic Genesis.
Actually, the tune sounds like modern Gabriel. I don't know the original version, but this one would fit in well on a Pete solo album. Collins does vocals, but only in the background; he doesn't take a lead. This is odd since Collins had a more prominent singing role in the album version. That one lasts five minutes, 39 seconds, while this edit only goes for four minutes, nine seconds and turns Collins into a footnote. That eliminates the remake's main appeal: dual leads from Pete and Phil. The arty video can't overcome that drawback. 4/10.
Genesis: The Video Show appears in an aspect ratio of 1.33:1 on this single-sided, double-layered DVD; due to those dimensions, the image has not been enhanced for 16X9 televisions. Actually, "Tell Me Why", "Carpet Crawlers" and the three Calling All Stations videos went with a 1.66:1 ratio. Everything else was fullscreen.
The quality of the clips also varied, but unfortunately, they usually presented fairly unattractive visuals. While they generally seemed typical for their eras, the videos nonetheless displayed more concerns than I expected. Unsurprisingly, the earliest numbers looked the ugliest. Mostly shot on film, the clips from the start of the Eighties and Seventies presented rather unattractive visuals. They suffered from flat and listless colors as well as imprecise focus, grain and other print flaws.
Once we got past those proto-videos, the rest… generally remained pretty drab. Sharpness appeared moderately weak. Many of the clips looked fairly soft and indistinct. Focus didn't come across as atrocious, but the clips usually displayed some gauzy and hazy images. Jagged edges and moiré effects remained minor, but haloes noticeably marred many of the videos.
Did Video Show look worse than I expected? Not really. I've seen lots of music video collections that span this set's eras, and most of them look about the same. Occasionally one surpasses the others, but the majority of them demonstrate similarly murky and muddy visuals. That's just an artifact of the materials used in the various periods. I still didn't feel Show deserved a grade above a "C-", but it remained consistent with what I anticipated.
Happily, no such concerns affected the excellent audio of The Video Show. The DVD offered both Dolby Digital 5.1 and DTS 5.1 soundtracks. I found the pair to sound identical, as I discerned no substantial differences between the two.
For all the tracks, audio quality seemed excellent. The music presented clean and clear highs, and vocals always sounded natural and distinct. Drums popped as they should, and guitar fills rang appropriately. Bass response appeared tight and deep, and low-end never become loose or rough. A few tracks were less impressive than others, but that related to the original production; for example, Invisible Touch always was a little on the thin side. Overall, I really liked the audio of Video Show.
Don't expect many extras here. For each video, if you hit "enter" during its title screen, you can check out information about it. We learn who wrote, performed and produced the track as well as who directed the video and from what album it comes. We also see the single's sleeve when available as well as some photos from the appropriate area. These screens repeat notes already found in the DVD's package, but it's a decent way to augment things.
Besides, given the fact we already get 32 music videos as the main package, I won't complain too much about an absence of other supplements. Genesis: The Video Show acts as an excellent greatest hits compilation. Will you find a surfeit of terrific music videos here? No, as most of them are fairly ordinary.
As for the presentation of the material, the videos look bad, but that's mostly due to the source material. The remixed audio sounds absolutely terrific. You won't find substantial extras, but with 32 videos, I don't mind. This is a good little collection.


text:
Anderson and Ocampo frame the "Citizen Question" for the Census argument that will come before the Supreme Court
There is a lot of debate about whether the 2020 census should include a citizenship question. Two researchers frame the argument that will come before the Supreme Court this week.Barbara Anderson, the Ronald A. Freedman Collegiate Professor of Sociology and Population Studies, spent seven years as a member of the Census Scientific Advisory Committee (CSAC)—three of those as the committee's chair. As the chair in March 2018, Anderson was preparing to convene the committee's regular spring meeting when Secretary Ross announced his intention to add the citizenship question. The committee met a few days later. "About half of our comments and recommendations were about why adding this question was a bad idea," Anderson says. "One reason it's a bad idea is it's almost certainly going to suppress response." Another concern is this could change the way congressional districts are apportioned — a change that could shift power from blue to red states, and from a younger population to an older one.Angela X. Ocampo, an LSA Collegiate Fellow in the Department of Political Science, says that the risk of an undercount among immigrant groups might, in fact, actually hinder enforcing the Voting Rights Act.
More about Anderson and Ocampo frame the "Citizen Question" for the Census argument that will come before the Supreme Court >


text:
County News >
Point Pelee National Park To Close For Deer Population Reduction
Point Pelee National Park will be closed to visitors from January 7th to January 21st, 2021 for a deer population reduction.
The annual reduction is part of a multi-year plan to improve environmental health by Parks Canada and Caldwell First Nation.
According to parks officials, high populations (hyperabundant) of white-tailed deer are a serious threat to forest and savannah health at Point Pelee National Park. Through over-browsing, the deer in the park are consuming and damaging native plants faster than they can regenerate, threatening the health of the Carolinian Forest, which is home to a number of species at risk such as the Red Mulberry Tree, Red-Headed Woodpecker, and Eastern Foxsnake.
Deer are also jeopardizing park efforts to restore the Lake Erie Sandspit Savannah, a globally rare ecosystem that supports 25% of the species at risk in the park.
Parks Canada says based on over 30 years of research and monitoring, a healthy and balanced environment at Point Pelee National Park would ideally support 24 to 32 deer.
They say that a series of mild winters with light snow cover and a lack of natural predators, such as wolves and cougars, have allowed the park's white-tailed deer population to grow to three to four times higher than what can be sustained.
Population reduction is reserved for situations of absolute necessity and Parks Canada has been collaborating with the Caldwell First Nation for a number of years to actively manage the deer population to protect the park's sensitive ecosystems.
A dedicated COVID-19 Mitigation Plan has been developed in accordance with public health guidance and will be implemented to ensure the safety of staff and Caldwell First Nation partners in limiting the spread of COVID-19.
The deer reduction activity is part of a larger, ongoing initiative to improve the health of Point Pelee National Park, including planting native Carolinian species and removing invasive plants.
Lakeshore OPP Recover Stolen Vehicle


text:
Son of Purged Zhao Ziyang Tells of China's 'Shame'
Posted by Natalie Ornell | May 20, 2014
The South China Morning Post reports that Zhao Wujun, son of the former CCP General Secretary Zhao Ziyang who died under house arrest in 2005, is attempting to restore his father's legacy:
The man who pioneered China's three-decade economic miracle became a political taboo, with his name censored from all official print and broadcast media to this day.
But continuing to ignore his legacy would only bring shame to the country, his youngest son, Zhao Wujun, said.
"It [rehabilitating Zhao] doesn't matter so much to our family, but it matters a lot to the country.
"There are many [unjust] cases like this in Chinese history … and you have to come clean one day, otherwise the next generation will ask why and how these came about. If you don't talk about it, it is a shame for our country and a shame for the Communist Party."
[…] Zhao lived to see the consequences of rapid, unfettered economic growth in the absence of checks on government powers – rampant corruption, crony capitalism, one of the widest wealth gaps in the world and widespread social discontent. "He used to say, 'It's such a shame about this situation'," Zhao Wujun said.
"The things he wanted to do were abandoned … more than a decade of his sweat and blood was ruined in an instant.
"We have missed a huge historical opportunity to transform society. I don't know if history will give us another chance." [Source]
The late reformist Zhao Ziyang fell from the grace of the party he oversaw for two years after delivering a conciliatory speech to student protesters in Tiananmen Square 25 years ago. The day after Zhao's speech, on May 20, 1989, martial law was declared in Beijing. In the power struggle that followed, Zhao was politically purged and placed under house arrest, where he died 15 years later from a stroke. Read more about Zhao Ziyang via CDT.
Categories : Level 2 Article,Level 3 Article,Level 4 Article,Politics,Society
Tags :CCP,government officials,historical legacy,legacy protection,local officials,Zhao Ziyang
Lockdown Voices: Pain, Hunger, and a Journalist Determined To Speak the Truth in Xi'an
Record Low Turnout for Hong Kong's "Patriots Only" Election in Rebuke to Beijing
Full Transcript Interview: Jeremy Brown on June Fourth
Chinese Translation of ASPI's "Architecture of Repression" Xinjiang Report Now Available
Inside Peng Shuai's Accusation Against Former Top Leader: #MeToo, Censorship, and Resistance Discourse
Top Police Officials Purged in Legal-Political Rectification Campaign
Hangzhou Party Boss Investigated For Corruption, Officials Warned About Business Relationships
Petitioner Asked to Foot the Bill for Her Own "Stability Maintenance"
On 100th Anniversary of CCP, Xi Declares Triumph of Socialism
Translation: The Hundred Childless Days
Beijing Launches Hotline for Reporting Online "Historical Nihilism"
Top Banking Official Sentenced to Death on Corruption and Bigamy Charges
Translation: The Ten Commandments of Provincial Party Officials


text:
Скудері, Скюдері (французький варіант) — прізвище італійського походження.

Відомі носії
 Гаспаре Скудері (1889–1962) — італійська композитор та музикознавець.
 Роб Скудері (нар. 1978) — професійний американський хокеїст.
 Мадлен де Скюдері — французька письменниця.

Інше
 «Мадемуазель де Скюдері. Хроніка часів Людовика XIV» — гостросюжетна історична повість (новела) Ернста Теодора Гофмана, написана 1818 року.


text:
The First Thing Ina Garten Learned After Entering The Food Business
Manny Carabel/Getty Images
By Emily Boyette/July 21, 2022 2:56 pm EST
When you're setting yourself up to run a specialty food store, some things on your checklist might include developing good cold salads for the prepared foods section, building the right relationships with vendors to carry high quality products, or even hiring a cheesemonger, but Food Network sensation and Barefoot Contessa owner Ina Garten had a few niche things to learn before opening her doors.
According to Cheatsheet, Garten bought the store with no knowledge of the town (Westhampton, New York), and no experience in food. In fact, Garten had just started cooking. Prior to Barefoot Contessa, she was working in the White House writing nuclear energy codes (via Insider). When the need for a change sparked, she set off on this culinary endeavor – little did she know it would lead to insane success. With her only cooking experience being in her kitchen at home, her knowledge grew as fast as her business did.
The key to cutting smoked salmon
OlegRi/Shutterstock
One of the first things Garten learned, according to her clip on how to make cured salmon with dill and pernod, is how to cut smoked salmon properly. The store sold fresh bread, meats, and cheeses, with lox on a bagel being a common order. The tedious task didn't come so naturally at first, requiring an extremely sharp knife in order to cut paper-thin slices from a somewhat-slimy filet of fish. In fact, there's a specific knife made for cutting salmon in order to get the most precision. Garten compares using a chef's knife to cut salmon to performing surgery with a screwdriver – it's best to invest in a good, flexible, thin, super sharp salmon knife.
When slicing, it's best to cut at an extreme angle instead of straight down (via Lochfyneoysters). At an angle, you'll get larger, thin slices that will cover more surface area on a sandwich, while also including some of the seasoning that's on the fish. Practice makes perfect. Another great tip is to have a towel nearby to clean your hands, as the oils from the fish can cause your knife to slip. After 20 years, Garten says it's like riding a bicycle. "Once you've mastered it, you never forget how to do it." How easy is that?