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QnA with Producer Anthony Chen and Directors Shijie, Yukun and Sivaroj for Distance
Written by SINdie Sunday, June 26, 2016
On 27th May 2016, SINdie was invited to the Singapore Gala Premiere of Distance by Producer Anthony Chen, featuring Directors Shijie, Yukun and Sivaroj who were behind the short films that made up this omnibus. Here are their thoughts about the film and the process behind it!
(From left, Anthony Chen, Bolin Chen, Yeo Yann Yann, Cheng Huan Lin and Tan Shijie)
1. Which came first, the idea of "Distance" as an omnibus or the directors?
The idea of doing an omnibus to nurture/showcase young directors came first. Then the concept of Distance emerged as we confirmed the directors. I came up with that as an overarching theme since the directors come from different countries so there is a physical and cultural distance between all of us. Of course the idea is to explore the emotional distance between people and in their relationships as well.
2. How did you also come to pick these directors, especially Sivaroj Kongsakul and Xin Yukun?
I have known Shijie's work for quite a few years now and have always admired him as a filmmaker.
For Sivaroj, I got to see his work before getting to know him.I remember seeing his first feature film, Eternity (Tiger Award for Best Film at the Rotterdam Film Festival) at the Singapore Arts Festival as my short film Lighthouse was programmed to play before it. I got to know him later on through Thai filmmaker Aditya Assarat.
Yukun was introduced to me through a film critic in China. At that time, he had just completed his first feature Coffin in the Mountain that was selected for Venice Critics' Week. I thought it was a real breath of fresh air, a new voice that differed from the young contemporary Chinese filmmakers coming out of China these days.
3. Were there any challenges working with diverse filmmakers?
There certainly were difficulties, since there are cultural differences between everyone on board. For example, in Thailand, the director didn't speak Chinese, so I was the one who had to listen to the actors' dialogue on set.
4. "Distance" was fully sold out when it premiered at the 2015 Golden Horse Film Festival. What was the audience reaction there like and did you expect it?
We had a wonderful premiere. And I was surprised by how everyone had their own favourite segments. Different segments spoke to different people depending on what they valued most - family, love, friendship, and also what phase of life they were in.
5. The film has since been travelling around the world to Los Angeles and even Dublin. I am curious to know, were the reactions there similar to Taiwan or were they very different?
It's hard for me to know as I haven't been to those festivals. I'm just the Executive Producer after all. But I really like this little write-up from the Los Angeles Asia Pacific Film Festival about the film when it played. I thought it sort of captures the spirit of the film well: http://laapff.festpro.com/films/detail/distance_2016
6. Last but not least, you mentioned that you were writing a script about a Singaporean secondary school boy. Any details on how that is going and if there are any other upcoming projects you are working on?
I'm still working on tweaking the script and have also begun some initial casting. I can't exactly say it will surely be set in Singapore, but certainly in Asia. I am also developing two other English language projects (both novel adaptations) in the UK.
Director's QnA featuring Tan Shijie, Yukun and Sivaroj
(Yukun's answers have been translated by Sebastian Lim)
1. A lot has been said about what is it like working with Anthony. So I am going to ask something different, what is one interesting thing you have noticed about each other? Please try to describe a habit or quirk that they themselves won't know!
Shijie: I don't know if I he knows this about himself, but I found that Anthony comes to tears easily! (I think I can say this because I am this way myself - just not at my own work.) At certain points of the shoot, I would find him sitting by the monitor and sniffing, watching the performances. I found this strangely comforting, *laughs*.
Yukun: Anthony is sometimes very innocent, which does not quite tally with his age. His speech and actions would be child-like, which then requires any conversation or discussion to be carried out in a simplified, child-like manner. Otherwise, it will feel weird.
哲艺身上偶尔会有一种很天真的状态,跟他的年纪不相符。语气和举止想个孩子,如果此时你要和他沟通事情,也要把自己也调整到孩子的语气,不然感觉就怪怪的。
Sivaroj: He is a gentleman, I believe.
2. How does it feel to be part of an omnibus with the other directors? What was your reaction like when Anthony first approached you?
Shijie: In this particular case, the writers started film development together, in London, where first ideas were discussed as a group together with Anthony, so that there is thematic coherence in the stories from the omnibus. Also I knew from the beginning that my portion would be in the middle, and this contributed to how I approached the film as well, knowing the stories before and after. As such, on a conceptual level, there was a lot of collaboration, which was stimulating, and different, because I was thinking of what would come before and after my film as well. An interesting process.
I was naturally excited to be approached for this project, and accepted immediately; getting to make films is such a privilege so I felt like there was no other response. I was in a little bit of a dilemma, though. At the time when Anthony approached me, I had already committed to working on a film-set in China for 3 months. Given the Distance project timelines, I would have to develop ideas during the other shoot in China. That was tough! I was working on set all-day and working on my computer at night, thinking of ideas for the material in Distance. Tough, but extremely rewarding. And now there is a film.
Yukun: I was able to interact more with the other two directors during the scripting phase, allowing me to better understand and familiarize myself with their styles and habits. Director Tan Shijie left a deeper impression in me as a solemn, capable and experienced colleague. Though it took him longer to finish his script, every line and detail was carefully thought through. It is a pity that I was unable to learn from him on set during their filming as I was busy preparing for mine. However, I would find out from Anthony about the other directors. As expected, we all have our unique styles.
I loved Anthony's "Ilo Ilo" and I feel that working on this project with Anthony would be a good experience and opportunity for me to learn and brush up on my skills, especially in portraying intricate feelings on screen which I feel inadequate in.
在剧本创作阶段很其他两位导演接触的比较多,熟悉了大家的创作方式和喜好。对陈世杰导演印象深刻,他很沉默干练。剧本写得很慢,但每一句都深思熟虑。只可惜他们在拍摄时,我正在筹备没时间到现场去学习。我会跟哲艺打听另外两位导演在现场的状态,的确每个人都不一样。我对很细腻的情感的影像表达并不在行,也想向借此向哲艺请教,因为我很喜欢《爸妈不在家》,就这样答应加入了。
Sivraoj: I'm honoured and glad to work with everyone in 'Distance' especially with Anthony but also working together with another two directors from China and Singapore. I don't only admire them because of their capability in filmmaking but it is in the passion and love they have towards the filmmaking that I feel connected.
3. Can you describe a moment or scene in the other two directors' parts that you enjoyed very much?
Shijie: I'll try to answer this that doesn't give too much away.
In the first part, the protagonist meets someone from his past, who doesn't recognise him. At this point in the story, we know what sort of relationship they have, so their interaction is really loaded and I always liked this, even from the script.
In the third part, the protagonist, a professor from out-of-town, who goes on a small tour of Bangkok with a local student. We see bits of Bangkok and see the developing relationship between the two that follows naturally and casually. I enjoy this very Thai way of seeing love.
Yukun: I was exposed to, and understood the message and story behind Director Tan Shijie's "Lake" in the early stages of this project, and was able to see the final script for his segment. Thus, I would picture the directions of the story in my mind. However, after watching the final product, I felt that Tan's directing captured deeper, more substantial elements which better brings out the essence and intended message in such a short segment. Tan also made it a point to carefully connect the transitions, especially at the beginning and end of the segment. It is not easy for so many details and so much emotion to be packed in such a short film, but Tan did a good job.
因为陈世杰导演的第二部分《湖畔》,我从创作之初就了解到这个故事,也看过最终版的剧本。所以自己脑海里也会去描摹这些画面。但我看到成片后发觉世杰导演处理的更有底蕴一些,并且结尾的镜头也有安抚,在很短的时间里囊括了众多的情感和感悟是极难的,世杰做的不错。
Sivaroj: I love every time the walking-father scene appeared in the first part and every scene at the lake in the second part.
SHIJIE
You mentioned that you really enjoyed working with Chen Bo-Lin and Yo Yang, can you describe some memorable instances of working with them that you enjoyed?
In the film, they play very old friends that meet after a very long time apart. The scenes where the characters meet are sparse scenes with very little dialogue, but underlying them is a reservoir of feeling, under intense circumstances. This requires commitment from the actors, and they gave their all. I am always moved when actors put their emotions and put themselves in service of a creation, and in this case both of them gave very much, very generously. As their director, I can only be grateful.
YUKUN
Your first feature, "The Coffin in the Mountain" is noted for its relatively unknown cast. So what was it like to work with Chen Bolin who is an established actor?
I have no prior experience working with established celebrities. I was hesitant at first, but gradually as I worked through and discussed the script with Chen, I felt less worried. Chen is a professional actor who would go all out to play his character well. This pre-requisite allowed us to build up strong rapport and paved the way for the smooth working relationship ahead. During filming, when both the actor and director share a common goal of creating the best show for their audience, then how popular or how established the actor is does not matter anymore.
起初有些犹豫,自己并无与明星合作的经验,是对剧本的沟通让我慢慢放下忧虑。柏霖是个认真敬业的演员,会为了角色塑造做出极大地付出。这些都是我们之间合作默契,沟通无阻的重要前提。在拍摄时如果彼此合作的目的是塑造更好的角色,为了打磨出一部好片,其实也就没有什么明星之分了。
I understand that the film was released in China on 13th May. How did you expect the Chinese audience to react to it?
The Chinese market in the past two years has been more lively, but also more impetuous. Films on romance, comedy, and blockbusters on youths have all achieved impressive box office results, reflecting a solidifying taste for these types of films in the Chinese market in recent years. For the audiences that lack the knowledge in film aesthetics, more sophisticated films which focus on deep intangible emotions yet portrayed and captured in mild, subtle manners are likely to appeal less. Nevertheless, for the more experienced and more knowledgeable audiences, they should still be able to feel the filmmakers' sincerity in bringing out the deeper messages of the film.
这两年的中国电影市场热闹也浮躁,各种喜剧爱情青春大片取得票房佳绩,让观众和影院的口味固话。加之新形成的观影人群对电影美学和类型知识的匮乏,导致大家很难接受一些表达含蓄,以情感流露为主线的影片。但是观影经验丰富的观众还是可以从中体会的作者的意图与诚恳的心态。
Finally if you could show this film to anyone, who would you show this film to and why?
Everyone! This film allows viewers to explore and consider the complicated emotions and feelings in life – subjects which we tend to ignore or shy away from. As human beings, how can we ever spend our life in solitude, without any form of social or emotional attachment?
推荐给所有人,因为这部电影让你有机会在影院里面对那些你不愿,不敢面对的人和情。生而为人,谁能真正的孑然一身无所牵挂呢。
SIVAROJ
Was this your first time working with a foreign lead actor? Were there any challenges in communicating?
I remember well how stressed I was before the shoot. I don't understand Chinese at all but when it comes, I go with it naturally. My eyes are on the monitor and the characters without being interrupted by the language barrier. Their emotions and expression are far more important to me.
Do you think any of your ideas from Eternity or Arunkarn have seeped into Distance as well?
My first feature is Eternity (ที่รัก), I made that film with the feelings I have towards how much I miss my father who left me long time ago. For my second feature Arunkarn I have a strong interest in the moment before our death. The story is told through two soldiers. It portrays their lives before they die.
After Distance, I shifted to the next chapter of my belief towards filmmaking, which is that I still don't know exactly where we are all heading. No path, no destination. Maybe we all just have a duty to be the best we can, I believe.
*Responses have been edited for conciseness, clarity and grammar
For more information: https://www.facebook.com/distancemovie2016/
Photo Credits: Jenson Chen and Distance
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Let there be little doubt: academics have the best jobs. When we teach, we get to fill young, smart minds with ideas we care about and believe in.
When we undertake research, we get to explore these ideas further, understanding the world and how it works a little better.
We often work in tranquil settings, surrounded by like-minded individuals in search of (the) truth, or, for those of us who shy away from people, books that do the same thing.
Sometimes we get to travel to nice places to meet more like-minded people and share ideas.
Sometimes we even take sabbaticals, to reflect more deeply about the world and how it works without the need to do anything else.
Best of all: even if we don't do most of these things, we have job security for life.
Universities are some of the oldest institutions.
Although the role of professor has changed somewhat over the centuries – we used to have to earn our income when students paid to enter our classrooms! – the system of academic tenure, where an appointment is permanent, and one cannot be fired except under extraordinary circumstances, has been around for more than a century.
It's decidedly different to the private sector, where the biggest incentive for working hard is to not get fired.
While SA academics get tenure almost immediately after their appointment (there is usually a probation period), 'getting tenure' is a big thing in the US.
The first five years after appointment is a race to publish in top journals.
If your tenure evaluation comes up, and you have not published well enough, you won't get it, and you will have to move elsewhere, or quit academe.
Once you get tenure, though, all the incentives to publish are removed; continued research depends entirely on the goals you set for yourself.
Here are two very different systems. In the first, the incentives are clear: publish or perish.
In the second, there are no external incentives like the threat to job security. Which of the two produce the best results?
Let's first look at why academic tenure was introduced. There were mainly two reasons. First, tenure provides academic and intellectual freedom to pursue new avenues of inquiry.
Second, it provides a sufficient degree of economic security to make the profession attractive.
It's the first – the unencumbered pursuit of truth – that is still upheld as the indisputable defence for tenure.
Does it stand up to empirical support? Three economists, Jonathan Brogaard, Joseph Engelberg and Edward van Wesep, used their own profession to find out.
In a paper published in the Winter 2018 issue of the Journal of Economic Perspectives, they measure the research output of almost 1 000 academic economists in the five years before tenure and the ten years after.
They measured quantity of output, as well as quality. They create two measures: 'home runs' are papers that are highly cited (in the top 10% of papers published in the same year) and 'bombs' are poor-performing (papers in the bottom 10% of citations that year).
Their results are emphatic: publication and home run rates rise to tenure, peaking in the year a researcher comes up for tenure and the first year of tenure, but then fall off a cliff, with publication and home run rates 15% and 35% lower in years 2 to 10 after tenure. Bomb rates increase by 35% after tenure.
The authors consider various reasons for the drop in productivity and success. Perhaps it's a 'time since PhD' effect, in that older people are less productive, but the authors find no evidence to support this.
Perhaps it's the rise in service, teaching and other non-academic obligations post-tenure, but that would not explain, for example, the increase in bomb-papers. Perhaps tenure encourages researchers to take bigger risks and branch out into new areas of research.
The authors measure this by looking at where the authors publish, and find no difference in the uniqueness of co-authors or journals.
Perhaps the averages mask elite researchers' performances. But even when the analysis is limited to top US universities, the results hold true.
Perhaps it takes time for truly novel research to gain traction. But the results stay the same for a sample of papers with 20-year lags.
Their analysis suggests that tenure is bad for research productivity.
This is not necessarily to say that the tenure-system is bad: had it not been there, the number and quality of PhD students that aim for academic positions would probably have been lower.
The possibility of future economic security is the incentive that really matters in drawing the sharpest minds into the field.
But it does suggest two things. On a practical level, giving tenure too early may be a bad thing.
The SA system almost assumes tenure at appointment; I don't know anyone that has not received a permanent appointment for failure to publish.
By extending the timing of tenure to at least five years, and making 'not getting tenure' a realistic threat, government can get more research for their proverbial buck.
At a more general level, the study clearly shows how important incentives are.
A world where permanent employment is guaranteed with no performance appraisals is a world where output falls and innovation dies. Even academic economists sometimes need reminding of that.
This article originally appeared in the 21 June edition of Finweek. Buy and download the magazine here or subscribe to our newsletter here.


Image size: 8" x 10" - Edition: 50 signed and numbered, 15 remarqued artist proofs.
School's in session! Painted here, my dear friend Cathy O'Neill is tossing a saddle on my new filly, "Liberty", my mare Whiskey's first foal.
Liberty was born handicapped with a tendon problem on July 4th 1976. She couldn't stand and after six months of my dressing Liberty's leg in quick casts, to stretch her tendons, she could finally stand on her own.
All of our hard work had paid off. Seeing Liberty accept the saddle and then a rider was one of the greatest rewards in my life. I rode her the next year on the cattle drive and she was a natural with the cattle.


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Tome On The Range
Red Player One: Aaron Bastani's Socialist Futures
Michael J. Brooks , August 4th, 2019 10:07
Novara Media's Aaron Bastani discusses his new book Fully Automated Luxury Communism and why the future isn't coming fast enough
You can say many things about those on the socialist left but accusing them of not dreaming big wouldn't be one of them. From Rudolf Rocker's anarcho-syndicalist communes, to Charles Fourier's phalanxes of free love, to the Posadists' ufology and the workers' bomb, there's a deep strain of utopianism etched within the history of thought on the fringes of the left.
None of the ideas in Aaron Bastani's new book quite reach the absurd levels of Fourier's oceans of the future being made of lemonade, but with a title like Fully Automated Luxury Communism he's certainly setting himself up for the accusation. But if taken as it's intended – as a striking provocation – it's easy to see that it fits very neatly within the mission statement of the new generation of leftist commentators that have sprung up in recent years: to shake people out of their cosily conformist ways of thinking about socio-political ideas. In any case, one senses that Bastani rather likes drawing the ire of his detractors; regularly engaging in Twitter jousts and attracting controversy for his views on issues such as Poppy Day, Labour's ongoing anti-Semitism row, and perceived BBC bias.
It was out of the 2011 student protests that Bastani, along with his friends James Butler, Michael Walker and Ash "I'm literally a communist, you idiot" Sarkar, began to launch what has been termed their 'guerrilla campaign' against Britain's mainstream media with an alternative news platform, Novara Media. Following the unexpected surge of Jeremy Corbyn and his strong 2017 election campaign, Novara's exposure and prominence continued to grow, with Bastani and co ever more frequently storming the citadel of traditional political news media.
Off the back of Novara's success, comes Bastani's first book, an entertaining – if flawed – romp through some of the most profound innovations and developments that could, if managed under the aegis of socialism, transform the way in which we live our lives. Among other topics, Bastani explores how free solar power generation could radically undercut the apocalyptic prophecies of global climate change, gene sequencing, synthetic meat, asteroid mining, and why the little-known London Manure Crisis of 1894 could provide a clue as to the likely trend in technological adaptation.
Your book deals with what you call the "Third Disruption", in which information is becoming ever-more abundant, and it's the capitalist system that creates artificial scarcity through the price mechanism. How can the riches created by this Third Disruption be unlocked from behind corporate structures? Surely this requires a global effort as a way of avoiding capital flight from any one country that tries…
The Third Disruption is the cornerstone of the book and how you could situate a contemporary socialist project, which would necessarily have to be internationalist. You're right, there's a tension between that project and the extant norms and imperatives of neoliberalism which allows friction-less transfer of capital very easily.
Of course, since 1983 and Francois Mitterrand, capital flight has been the great fear of social democracy in one country. That's probably the major problem you have to overcome in the 21st century. That said, I think it can be overstated. Grace Blakeley has talked about certain taxes that could be levied at the level of the nation-state to inhibit capital flight, i.e. a form of 'Tobin tax' (a tax of financial transactions above a certain amount).
More broadly though, a lot of asset wealth in this country is bricks and mortar, and it's very easy to overstate the extent to which these things are mobile. People can't move their factories, it's hard to move human capital – the 30,000 engineers at BAE Systems for example – it's hard to move the intellectual structure of world-class universities, etc. It's not something we should be blasé about, but we can be fixated on it.
Let's say income tax went up several percent, would loads of businesses leave London? I don't think so. The elite like their London lifestyle, the cosmopolitan values. The thing that worries them more than incremental increases in income tax (because they price that in), is the infringement of private property. Fundamentally, that is what will scare the money interests more.
In the book you use Moore's Law as the logical bedrock for scarcity becoming less and less a reality, and explore post-scarcity in labour resources, energy, minerals (i.e., space exploration and off-world asteroid mining). What would you say to those who would dismiss this as utopianism?
It is utopian, but that's not to say it's implausible. There's been a great deal of utopian thinking that's gone into propping up the global financial system since 2008. 0% interest rates for ten years is utopian. In that chapter, I talk about why we need a non-private property framework so that it's not finders-keepers when it comes to these resources. Things like energy and labour are far more relevant. We've already seen zero margin cost in music and films, effectively moving to conditions of post-scarcity in their distribution. The question is, where else do we see that applying in the market in the next few years?
One I talk about is how would healthcare become an information technology? I give an explanation of genetics as information. That is not an epistemological claim, we can literally record music as DNA, we can encode information as DNA and then put it back into zeros-and-ones. The claim is, as these gene editing and sequencing technologies improve, healthcare becomes an information good.
One example is CRISPR-Cas9. It's like a copy-edit-paste with DNA. Thousands of conditions are the result of a single nucleotide being screwed up – Huntingdon's, sickle-cell anaemia, Parkinson's. I believe we could eradicate these conditions – being conservative – in ten years with the right intellectual property framework and the right R&D funding.
Something I'd never come across until reading the book was the London Manure Crisis of 1894, which you cite as a precedent for our modern age. Can you expand on that?
The point was there were tens of thousands of horses drawing stuff across London, the world's biggest city at the time. People, goods and services were all transported by horses. Horse excrement was everywhere and people were postulating quite reasonably – given that there had never really been cities larger than a million people – that maybe there was a hard limit on society.
We're having these conversations now with agriculture: we're over the bio-capacity of the Earth, we are using 1.6 Earths. What the manure crisis shows you is that sometimes the features of an old system come up against the features and possibilities of a new system. The reason I think it's relevant is that we're seeing similar things in relation to, for instance, renewable energy.
What's interesting is that 'peak horse' in the United States was the early-1920s, when the car had already been around for a while. Technological transitions tend to take a bit longer than we think; PV cells, lithium-ion batteries, the microprocessor, transistor, etc., these have all been around for 50-60 years. The claim in the book is that in the next fifty years we'll see a lot more changes than we've seen up to now.
You write in the book that "the shift to renewables is coming". How does this square with the reality of concurrent record energy use in both renewables and non-renewables? For example, 2018 was the record year in terms of global energy demand.
It's important to say that there are hard limits because we live on a finite planet, but those limits are contingent. The horse manure crisis was overcome by a technological fix – the car. People talk about technological fixes not saving the planet, but what do they think the agricultural revolution was? It was a technological fix.
The point is, I very much doubt the hard limits of today are the hard limits in reality. What would be the hard limit for data storage? A single gram of human DNA takes a mad amount of data. With energy, we get enough solar power in ninety minutes to meet our present needs for a year. Every single organism you've ever seen, these are all solar-powered chemical reactions, that's a lot of energy. So the idea that there's a hard limit and we have to dig stuff out of the ground to use for energy is ridiculous. As the book says, the major problem is that this is happening, but from the perspective of climate change it's not happening quickly enough.
I'd like to explore the rather striking book title. Is the term 'communism' too loaded in the general public's mind to be capable or worthy of rehabilitation, and do you worry that it might prove too alienating for your ideas to make an impact?
Paul Mason's PostCapitalism was very much in the same field, but we didn't call capitalism 'post-feudalism', so clearly you need another term. The mode of production I talk about is just as different from capitalism as capitalism was to feudalism so I would submit it needs a new name.
Why communism? One of the reasons is that I believe the technological trends and the critique of what's happening with the price mechanism, the classical laws of economics, etc., Marx touched on that. He said that what comes after it – we escape scarcity and the realm of necessity for the realm of freedom – that's communism. If you were a historian of economic theory, that's what you would call it.
Secondly, on the term being loaded. That would mean you couldn't write a book about the Catholic Church because of the Spanish Inquisition, or the Anabaptists because of what the British Empire did and their religion was Church of England.
But you're not writing a book proposing a great new way to run society based on Catholicism…
The book says this doesn't look like the communist projects of the twentieth century and goes on to explain why. For example, the work from Marx it's drawing on wasn't even available in English. The Grundrisse and 'Fragment on Machines' weren't even available in English until 1973. So when people look at twentieth-century Marxist-Leninist tradition, it's easy to denigrate people and their morality, but there's a bigger structural issue. The Soviet Union tried to repress certain heterodox understandings of what Marx was saying.
Furthermore, I'm quite interested in this idea that communism and fascism are the same thing. They're clearly not. Stalin killed primarily nationals of the USSR, Hitler killed primarily non-German nationals or people he viewed as non-German. The gulags were building infrastructure, Stalin would say that they were killing these people to build a new form of civilisation, whereas when the Germans were putting people into Dachau, it was just about killing them.
But why would you want to reprieve all of that? We have to remember that in Yugoslavia, Italy, France, the democratic tradition against fascism was an anti-fascist tradition, a partisan tradition, and also part of a communist tradition. It's very strange that communist tradition, that saved democracy in half the continent, has been completely forgotten about.
I do think that the word belongs in there because of the linearity with economic theory and Marx, and secondly, I think it's important to say that awful things happened in Stalin's Russia, but anyone on the left today has to confront the problems of the twentieth century and not evade them. It's like saying neoclassical economics has failed; it's more complex than just because of the theories of Adam Smith.
You write that "communism is luxurious, it's an excess beyond the necessary". Isn't there a problem here about who it is that defines 'the necessary'? There will always be those who want more than others…
There's some intellectual ballast to that point. Thorstein Veblen talked about 'conspicuous consumption' – the elite can demonstrate how powerful they are by buying things they don't really need. We have a pretty well-established ranking of what's needed for humans – the hierarchy of needs. Necessity boils down to what I talk about being Universal Basic Services – means to subsist, means to be stimulated, means to become the kind of person you want to be. Yes, to an extent those things are subjective, but they are also housing, education, transport, healthcare, etc.
It's a debate in Marxism as well – is a Van Gogh painting luxurious? It's fair to say that most of the goods and services in circulation for the very wealthiest people are not necessary because quite patently the mass of society do perfectly fine without them.
I'd like to explore 'fully automated' next. JG Ballard said "I would sum up my fear about the future in one word: boredom". With that in mind, can the existential problems of angst, misogyny, male suicide, depression be blamed in part on declining status, through a lack of purposeful work and the proliferation of 'bullshit jobs'? Won't this only become more severe if work is gradually abolished?
First of all, you can be depressed and not bored. I generally believe history is cyclical rather than linear, I don't believe there's one trajectory to history. We're now living in a moment that is very similar to the 1920s, it's a very 'non-boring' time.
I agree, the interiority of the modern human is very much neglected by the left. We don't really know what causes depression. I have a suspicion that in thirty years people will say Twitter was worse for you than smoking, because of what it does to the neurotransmitters. We don't know what young boys' easy access to hardcore porn does to the sex drive, to impulse control, etc.
I do believe that generally speaking, people's happiness is not independent of the kind of society you live in. Aristotle would talk about Eudaimonia flourishing. The flourishing of the individual is intimately connected to the kind of society you live in. Clinical psychologists say that if you have order, if you're making new friends and experiences, you're in an enriching environment – you can still be depressed, but it's quite easy to mitigate it. In terms of health and mental health and 'fully automated luxury communism', a shorter working week is one great way. Another is giving people things to do. It's very much about reviving civic life – free football facilities, local swimming pools, etc.
The big ideas that this book explores, as well as those of other leftist writers like Ash Sarkar, Owen Jones, and Grace Blakeley, are surely down to the resurgence of the left in Britain and elsewhere in the west. But do you worry that the long-term credibility of these ideas is contingent on Labour not fucking things up?
The ideas could be wrong. What's happening in the US is there are lots of studies of people under thirty-five identifying as socialists, as well as registered Democrats. It's there in cultural values around same-sex marriage, but also there in quite concrete things like the belief that capitalism isn't working.
The only failure that I can see as being mind-blowing is failure inside government. The idea that a Corbyn government goes the way of Syriza – adopting 'managed reforms'. I don't think failure would make the ideas any less credible, it's perfectly possible that a certain generation of leftists might attach themselves to that project, like people did around Blair. But that's less to do with the core ideas and more to do with poor political judgements. And since Iraq, I find it hard to believe people wouldn't have learnt the lesson of fidelity to a project.
Trump has smashed the Republican establishment, and the question is whether they will recover. I don't think they will just go back to normal. And I don't think that will happen here either, if Boris becomes leader [this interview was conducted before the results of the Conservative leadership contest] that means that the Conservative party has been remade in Nigel Farage's image. Since Thatcherism and Reaganism, both Republicans and Conservatives were hybrids of quite bigoted, insular, small-town conservatism combined with free market capitalism. If the Tories 'become' the Brexit Party, in the same way that Trump has pushed the Republicans into economic nationalism, that's a once-in-a-century event.
Where do you see Novara Media now within the media landscape and what are your ambitions for it?
We want to be the biggest and most successful socialist millennial media outlet in the Anglophone world. That's our plan for the next five years. In terms of where we see ourselves in the media, the debate for a long time with the internet was to do with Eric Raymond's 'the cathedral and the bazaar'. The cathedral is like the Encyclopaedia Britannica, being replaced by the bazaar – the flat, horizontal Wikipedia. I don't think that's true. One paradigm is replacing another but with the rise of networked societies, different paradigms sit alongside each other, they're inflecting norms and genres in real time. A good example is Twitter – Trump tweets something, the tweet becomes a news story, people are writing about it in comment pieces, etc.
We're very much new media, but we understand those real-time interactions between media, how can we maximise a socialist agenda and mind-set given that, so we've pivoted strongly towards video especially on social media. We think we're well-placed to succeed.
Fully Automated Luxury Communism by Aaron Bastani is out now, published by Verso Books
Forwards Not Forgetting: Owen Hatherley Interviewed »
Cloud Cuckoo Land: James Bridle's New Dark Age »
The Apartment: An Extract From Paradise Rot By Jenny Hval »
Delight In Small Fuck-Yous: Natasha Lennard's Non-Fascist Life »
Take Apart My Baby's Heart: Peter Salmon On Jacques Derrida & Music »
MORE FROM MICHAEL J. BROOKS
What Does The Future Hold? An Interview With Adam Curtis »
Not Looking For A New England: Alex Niven's New Model Island »
Quantity Theory Of Inanity: Will By Will Self Reviewed »
Art Of The Green New Deal: An Interview With Ann Pettifor »
Collision Course: Karl D'Silva Interviewed »
MORE: TOME ON THE RANGE
Activity Maps: How Roy Ascott's Groundcourse Revolutionised Art Education »
Close To Him: Tom Sheehan's Pictures Of The Cure »
A Thumbs-Up To The People We Liked: How We Used Saint Etienne To Live »
Tripping The Light Fantastic: Kevin Foakes On Psychedelic Light Shows »
Underground Resistance: Electronic Warfare For The Sonic Revolutions »

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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Marvel Comics, Free Comic Book Day 2018 (FCBD 2018) and July 2018 Solicitations Spoilers follow.
The Atlantic reveals that writer Ta-Nehisi Coates will helm a new Captain America series re-starting with a fresh new #1 on July 4th. The artist will be Leinil Francis Yu.
The Atlantic has a long interview with Coates that may get you excited for the new series.


I'm am happy to interview Buzz Malone, author of The Silence of Centerville. I first came across Buzz Malone through his blog. What a sense of humor. He kept me smiling through every post. I soon discovered he had published a novel. The Amazon reviews intrigued me enough to add it to my reading list. Once I started reading, I found it hard to stop. It was nothing like I expected. Turns out this funny guy from a small town in Iowa has a talent for tender, dry-your-eyes storytelling.
WP: What inspired you to write this book?
Buzz: Silence of Centerville actually started with a deaf man character and an old Victorian house in Centerville, Iowa.
Buzz: I am a self-educated country boy (I think the 6th grade was the last one that I technically passed) from the backwater rural hills of Southern Iowa.
WP: When did you first know you wanted to be a writer?
Buzz: Always, and reaffirmed many times by my lack of desire to do much of anything else.
WP: When were you first published?
Buzz: When I was sixteen I started writing as a regional correspondent for a fishing magazine. It went out of business the next year and I am still left to wonder if the two events were somehow related.
WP: Why did you choose to self-publish?
Buzz: The beauty of self-publishing is the ability to create and distribute something that a few hundred souls will enjoy on a personal level. I'd rather write things that less people will get to enjoy than write more query letters to agents that will never be read at all.
WP: What was the hardest part about writing this book? How did you get through it?
Buzz: The hardest part for me always comes about half way through the story, when the initial excitement and adrenaline has worn off. I always want to quit and throw the entire thing away then. Fortunately, my better half, Lorri, forces me to work through it. Even when I don't want to, I know there will be hell to pay if she doesn't get to read the next chapter soon, so I push through it until it's done.
WP: What suggestion or advice would you like to give aspiring writers?
Read the full interview with Buzz in Writer's Path digital magazine.
Welcome my guest blogger to Life lines.
Janine L. Moore. Author. Career Counselor. Workshop Facilitator.
Janine shows how Simplicity can move you closer to your dreams. Visit her website: www.WorkOnYourOwnTerms.com to download her Free eBook: Create Career Joy! It will help get you started on your ideal work path.
Although the voluntary simplicity movement has been around for some time, many people underestimate its true value. Simplicity is about making conscious choices. It is not about a life of deprivation. It can be the most direct path to live your dreams.
Are your closets over-flowing? Living with clutter can produce anxiety. It makes it hard to relax. Our eyes and brain get over-stimulated. Ever gone into a crowded shopping mall and left with nothing because you were overwhelmed by the number of choices? Having fewer choices can instill calm.
Deciding what to wear becomes much more relaxing when all you have in your closet are items that fit, that you love, and enjoy wearing. Sell or donate anything you currently own that doesn't match this prescription. You can follow a similar process with every room in your house. Keep only what you use and enjoy.
We live in a consumer society that is always calling on us to: Buy! Buy! Buy! We keep being fed the line that if we want to keep growing the economy, we'd better go shopping. In the next breath, we're told consumer debt is at an all-time high and we'll never be able to retire or live our dreams.
Following the previous tip – buying only what you need, love and will use, can really cut down on impulse buying and advertiser manipulation. Your friends won't shun you because you're not buying the latest 'hot item.' If they do, they're not your real friends anyway. Buying less can preserve your money for what you really want.
Simple living is about making deliberate choices. It means taking yourself off autopilot so you can consciously choose how you want to live. Observe the number of people who live a zombie-like existence. They're going through the motions of their day without realizing they have a choice in everything they do. Ride a subway train during rush hour and you'll see a lot of this. Is this their priority?
How you define simple living will differ from me. It will be based on your values and priorities. It is about answering the call of what's truly important to you – instead of what's urgent. The difference? Does a ringing phone at mealtime seem urgent? Is conversation over dinner more important? You decide. Your priorities are what fuel your fire – what you are passionate about – what you long for. Answer your calling and then spend and save in a manner that serves your soul. No distractions.
Like this article and want to re-post it? I'd be honored! Please include the information below. Thank-you.


Tom Rossman defeated Andy Segal for the trick shot Magic title and the lion's share of the $40,000 purse at the 2008 ESPN Zone Billiards Shootout. ESPN Zone Las Vegas was host to the October 2 event, which was taped for three 1-hour telecasts on ESPN and the first ever to be broadcast in high definition.
The ninth annual event featured a stellar international cast vying for the most coveted title in artistic pool. The matches required each player to execute 10 artistic shots in a challenge format. Players challenged their opponents with shots of their choice, with each player forced to make the shot to score a point. In the event of a tied score, the tiebreaker was an eight-rail bank shot onto the face of a $100 bill. The player who came closest to the center of the bill won the match.
Rossman and Segal displayed their brilliance to emerge as the top trick shot artists. The championship match was poetry on green felt, with Rossman defeating Segal by a score of 13-10 to take the crown and $18,000. Segal, who otherwise played to top form in the event, claimed the $6,000 second prize. In semifinal action, Rossman and Eric Yow battled back and forth in a thrilling match to a tied score of 13-13. They then sent to a sudden death eight-rail bank shot, and Rossman claimed victory by placing the cue ball onto the center of a $100 bill.
Rossman hoists his hardware after a hard-fought finals with Andy Segal.
The other semifinal match saw Segal upend Mike Massey by a lopsided score of 11-4. Massey, who injured his shoulder in a quarterfinal match, was unable to play at his legendary level of skill. International trick shot stars who were bumped off in single elimination included Yow and Massey, who won $4,000 each, and Stefano Pelinga, Luke Szywala, Sebastian Giumelli, and Mark Dimick, who won $2,000 each.
The standing-room-only crowd gave Rossman a spirited ovation at the conclusion of the final match. The winner's check was presented by Blaine Martin of Connelly Billiards and Ivan Lee of Simonis Cloth. The presentation brought another round of cheers from the audience.
In addition to the fine tournament site at ESPN Zone Las Vegas at the New York New York Hotel & Casino, the event was sponsored by Connelly Billiards, Aramith Super Pro Balls, Simonis Cloth, L.E.A.N.I. Italian Slate, AcCue Shot Target Practice Device, Executive Billiards Delta-13 Rack, and Silver Cup Chalk. The WPA-sanctioned event was produced by Billiards International, Ltd.


Why use Digital Study Models?
Analysis Feature: Tooth width, Bolton, Moyers, Tanaka & Johnston analysis.
Model Manipulations: Rotate, Tilt, Zoom, Open, Close.
Model Measurement: 2D and 3D point to point measurement.
3D Model Analysis: Overjet, Overbite, Crossbites, Cross-sectional measurement.
Arch Setup: Setup of mesial and distal points on each arch for analysis and virtual setup functions.
Virtual Setup: Extract and move teeth for diagnostic setup.
Please have doctor check each impression for distortions, discrepancies, etc.


Spotless & spacious 4 bedroom home in popular STEVESTON NORTH. Large foyer opens to traditional living/dining area. The gorgeous kitchen with loads of counter space and pull out drawers affords that 'Great Room' feel with the eating area & family room adjacent. Beautiful west facing yard boasts covered area as well as a large patio. Sturdy shed has power. School catchments are Diefenbaker & McMath.


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I USE THESE STUDY BLU RAY CASES FROM THE CHECKOUTSTORE TO REPLACE THOSE "ECO-CASES" THAT I USUALLY GET WHEN I PURCHASE ANY NEW BLU RAY. THEY ARE VERY STURDY AND YOU CANT BEAT THE PRICE. YOU DONT HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT DAMAGING THE INSERTS OR COVER ART WITH THESE CASES. IF YOURE SERIOUS ABOUT YOUR MOVIE COLLECTION THEN THESE BLU RAY CASES ARE THE WAY TO GO. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.
Theyre not the licensed brand, but they do feel high quality. The disc itself fits well within the case. The artwork fits inside the sleeve and looks great in it! Doesnt have that flat/bent feeling of some of the other cases on the market.
I am quite satisfied with the quality of this case, but I am equally disappointed that the Blu-ray logo is not present on the front. If that is not important to you, the price is a big attraction.
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This is a good case for putting together a professional product. The only thing I wish it had was the actual "BluRay" logo on the top of the case.


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Home / Designers / Lauren Bagliore
Lauren Bagliore
< Back to Designers
Inspired by elements of art and architecture, with astute attention to draping, tailoring and finish in every piece, the work of Lauren Bagliore combines an edgy modern strength and sensibility while still retaining a romantically reflective femininity. That is why Bagliore creates bold and timeless pieces for women of all ages, shapes, sizes, and stature—women of ALL walks of life, that set the wearer apart and help her to feel empowered in her everyday life.
A New York native, Bagliore graduated from the Fashion Institute of Technology and immediately began to work with a slew of exceptional fashion brands where she honed skills that prepared her to launch her own brand. Upon graduation, Vivienne Westwood chose Bagliore to travel to London and work at her UK fashion house. After a few years, Bagliore returned to New York and worked for Zac Posen, Libertine and Tod's as well as freelance work as a buyer and a stylist.
Lauren Bagliore has been featured in WomensWear Daily, Fashion Magazine, Nylon, Untitled Magazine, Elle Canada, Marie Claire, West Jet Magazine, National Post, Prestige, Soma Magazine, and in numerous other publications. As well, business mogul Arlene Dickinson and musicians Icona Pop, Beyonce, Dear Rouge, Sarah Slean and Kreayshawn have been all seen wearing Lauren Bagliore pieces.
The Lauren Bagliore collection features her signature buttery-soft Italian jersey dresses that are draped into breathtaking pieces of wearable art in a muted color palette of soft grays mixed with the most graphic of blacks and starkest of whites. Kimono jackets in Italian ponte intermingle with inventive asymmetrical separates. Wool tweeds are pieced and formatted to create Op Art illusions. Windbreaker nylons are reinvented into tailored trenches and padded boleros. Many of the pieces are convertible and day morphs into night instantly with the twist of a wrap or by layering or removing items. The Lauren Bagliore Concept Shop opened November 2014 till 2020 in Canada, featuring the exclusive Lauren Bagliore Collection as well as exclusive Italian niche perfume and footwear lines. The first true Concept Shop in Calgary Canada, Lauren Bagliore Concept Shop was the first a brick and mortar store to offer a full-service luxury and lifestyle concept and now operates as a pop-up shop model in New York, Paris, and various locations globally expanding reach and exposure to new market opportunities.
"I believe that all women should be able to wear designer clothing. That is why I craft innovative, timeless fashion for women of all ages, shapes, and sizes. As an advocate to raise support and awareness to fight human trafficking globally since 2009, I aim to use my sphere-of-influence to help those who do not have a voice. I believe that we all can make a difference in the world though our unique gifts and talents. It gives me joy to use my gift of creativity to help others, bringing out the unique beauty and confidence in each individual though my work. I believe this is my purpose."


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Romance in the Rockies
Jan 25 | 4:00 pm - 9:00 pm
Treat yourself to an evening of indulgence, featuring celebrated and bestselling author Robyn Carr! Start your evening with some shameless fun as you get to know a diverse panel of local romance authors – Jen Turano, Sara Richardson, Aidy Award, Jennie Marts and Courtney Milan.
Romance in the Rockies: Livestream
Romance was in the air at the Arvada Center for Arts and Humanities! Catch up on the fun by viewing the livestream of this signature event!
Romance in the Rockies: Author Panel
Get to know a diverse panel of local romance authors – Jen Turano, Sara Richardson, Aidy Award, Jennie Marts and Courtney Milan.
Romance in the Rockies: Robyn Carr
Be part of the fun as you hear from celebrated and bestselling author Robyn Carr!
Robyn is the New York Times bestselling author of more than 40 novels, including the New York Times bestselling Virgin River and Sullivan's Crossing series. In her writing, a blend of women's fiction and contemporary romance, Robyn develops strong, likeable characters and vivid settings. Her two most famous include Virgin River, set in the redwood forests of California, and Sullivan's Crossing, a small, mountain town in Colorado. In 2016, Romance Writers of America awarded Robyn a Nora Roberts Lifetime Achievement Award in 2016. Robyn lives in Las Vegas, Nevada where she spends her days writing about love and spending time with her grandchildren.
This winter, Netflix is set to release a 10-episode-adaptation of Robyn's Virgin River series. And you can reserve Robyn's newest offering, The Country Guesthouse, a Sullivan's Crossing novel, before its release on January 7, 2020.
Books by Robyn Carr
Author Panel
Aidy Award
Author of the popular Curvy Love series, Aidy writes erotic romance that features curvy girls and hot heroes. In Aidy's words, every woman deserves great romance, "no matter her size, shape or what the scale says." Her Fated Curves and Dragons Love Curves series explore modern romance through a paranormal and fantastical lens – space rangers, dragons and bears, oh my! Aidy loves romance, connecting with readers and…storm troopers.
Books by Aidy Award
Jennie is the USA Today bestselling author of award-winning books filled with love, laughter and happily-ever-afters. Her books include the contemporary western romances of the Cowboys of Creedence and the Hearts of Montana series, the cozy mysteries of The Page Turners series, the hunky hockey-playing men in the Bannister Brothers books, and the small-town romantic comedies in the Cotton Creek Romance series. Jennie currently lives her own happily-ever-after in the mountains of Colorado with her husband, two dogs and a parakeet, and believes you can't have too many books, shoes or friends.
Books by Jennie Marts
New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Courtney writes popular historical romances. Flush with research and wit, her novels have received starred reviews in Publishers Weekly, Library Journal and Booklist. Before she was a writer, Courtney worked in theoretical physical chemistry, law and academia. Courtney currently lives in the Rocky Mountains with her husband, an exceptionally perfect dog and an attack cat.
Books by Courtney Milan
Sara Richardson
Sara writes rustic romances that inspire you to believe in love. Featuring cowboys and the great state of Colorado, Sara brings humor, a bit of heat and whole lot of heart to her storytelling. Using her experiences a mountain guide, Sara pairs stimulating romance with compelling adventure. A writer, wife, mother, dreamer, storyteller and explorer, Sara is a true believer in the power of true love.
Books by Sara Richardson
One of the funniest voices in inspirational romance, Jen is a USA Today bestselling author. She pens quirky historical romances set in the Gilded Age. Her books have earned Publisher Weekly and Booklist starred reviews, top picks from Romantic Times and praise from Library Journal. A two-time finalist for the RT Reviewers' Choice Awards, two of her books have listed in the top 100 romances of the past decade from Booklist. When she's not writing, Jen spends her time outside, exploring Colorado.
Books by Jen Turano
Staff Picks: Romance


I am pretty excited to provide the details for my UCLA visit. It will be May 4th from 7-9 PM. The organizers would like you to register so I am providing the link.
Come on out and say hello and get your book signed. I would love to meet you.
Any plans to visit Northern California soon, specifically the San Francisco Bay Area?
I am hoping to. Keep watching the website and my Facebook page for updated appearances.


A drop cloth laid out as if I might start srpay painting at any moment.
Enter, Home Depot, savior of the garage. I'm not endorsing them specifically, just that they are our closest home improvement store, and we were wandering the aisles in search of a solution to the large-scale clutter.
We settled on the Rubbermaid FastTrack System, which is awesome. You just hang the rail up on the wall, then snap on whatever acccessories you need. We used a combination of a Bike Hook for the two-wheeler (it can also hold grown up bikes), the Multi-Purpose Hook for scooters, and the Utility Hook for helmets and for hanging the umbrella stroller.
So much better. Now I can get from the car to the door without tripping!
Very nice! I guess on a rainy day they can ride their bikes and scooters around the garage!? Does you little one like the tricycle with the parent handle? I'm thinking about getting one.
We so need to do this in our garage. I love that rubbermaid thing. I am constantly moving the bikes from next to my car.
my husband built a bike rack...at times there would be 15 bikes in our garage!! and keeping them upright was a challenge..the rack was a stroke of genius!
Wonderful! We just cleaned our garage on Sunday, and boy was it a chore, but now everytime I go in there, it looks so nice and clean. So it was well worth it!
We bought the same system to hang up all of our shovels, rakes, etc. It works great!
We used this system in the garage of our last house and loved it! Now we don't have a garage...so all the "garage stuff" is shoved into the basement. It makes me a little crazy. Yours looks so nice and organized!
How neat it looks! Don't you just love organization? Such good ideas.
I'm so glad to see how you were able to get the scooters off of the floor. We don't have much extra space in our garage and the scooters, tricycles and bikes take up way to much floor space. Thank you for sharing. Gotta go get some of those hooks!
Even your garage is pretty!!
Looks so nice! We really need to get in and clean out the garage...you tend to forget about the garage.
Ilove rubbermaid & OXO products.
I so need one of these. I swear I'm gonna fall and break my neck one day tripping over my daughter's scooter that she leaves right in front of the door when she comes in the house.


Four teeth that were found in a cave in the Tongzi county of southern China don't fit into the evolutionary family tree of humans. The teeth that are approximately 200,000-years-old were found on the Yanhui cave floor in 1972 and 1983. While they were originally labelled as belonging to Homo erectus, further testing indicated that the teeth didn't exactly fit in with the ancient human ancestor. And that's where the story ended, until now.
A new study published in the Journal of Human Evolution explains that modern technology was used to take a closer look at the ancient teeth. While the new research concluded that the teeth did not belong to Homo erectus or Neanderthals, the owner of the teeth remains unknown. "It's strange. We don't know where to put it," said Song Xing from the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology in Beijing, as well as one of the authors of the study.
The four teeth are just part of a larger number of discoveries found in China that don't fit into the human evolutionary tree, suggesting that there may be more that's still unknown about the evolution of humans and the ancient ancestors from that region.
The research team compared the four teeth to both ancient and modern tooth samples from Africa, East and West Asia, and Europe. What they found was that the Tongzi teeth had both ancient and modern traits. More specifically, the dentine (tissue underneath the enamel) didn't have the crinkles that were found in Homo erectus' teeth, and were more similar to teeth from a Neanderthal. However, the features on the teeth didn't fit them directly into either category. They could have possibly come from Denisovans, although more research needs to be conducted to know for sure.
It's possible that the teeth may have come from a new species that was created when different evolutionary groups crossed paths. For example, last year, scientists discovered the remains of a teenager who had a Neanderthal mother and a Denisovan father. The possibility is very real that Denisovan ancestors who were in Asia could have met up with the Homo erectus species and created a new offspring that produced the Tongzi teeth.
The Tongzi teeth aren't the only thing that's baffling scientists. Numerous Chinese fossils (including advanced features in teeth) that are between 360,000 and 100,000 years old don't exactly fit into any of our human ancestors either.
There is also a complete skull that was found in Harbin, China. It had a face that's older than a Neanderthal's, but it's still unclear as to where it belongs on the evolutionary tree, so it hasn't yet been labelled to any human ancestor as of yet.
For now it's still a guessing game as to what mysterious species produced the Tongzi teeth. Since the story of where we all came from is so complex, perhaps there are many more ancient ancestors that we don't yet know about and that's very exciting when learning about the evolution of humans.


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By MsThorns Music, Technology
Not a headset expert but the Backbeat 903+ was a fail
In a moment of frustration and desperation with my iPhone 3G I ran to the AT&T store to pick up a new phone. I purchased some accessories while along with a new Android phone (so far a fail), one being the Plantronics Backbeat 903+ Bluetooth headphones. There were no plans to use them for talking, they were strictly to be used for listening to music through the new phone or anything else I could hook them up to.
The headphones were easy to connect to the handset, were fully charged within about two hours and were really comfortable on the ear and inside the ear. The sound is good and you can pause, skip forward/back, adjust the sound of the music and take calls from the headset. The transmit range is listed at 30 feet and it may be a bit more based on my usage. The very best thing about the Backbeat 903+ or any of its competitors is the freedom from a wire. I can't tell you how many times I have hit that blasted wire and watched whatever music player I was using fly off the back of a treadmill, elliptical, etc. I highly recommended the 903+ for about two months, then November came.
I need to play music for 1 hour and 15 minutes, that the maximum time I'd spend in the gym. For two months I could go in, run those headphones three days in the gym and charge them once a week. However when November came I'd charge the headphones on Sunday night, head to the gym Monday morning, listen to the headset lady tell me I have 7 hours remaining and withing 30 minutes of a treadmill run that same lady was telling me "battery level is low", "recharge battery". Understanding that the 7 hours is talk time, not listening time, I still couldn't understand how I could go from 3 hours of listening a week or more between charges to 30 minutes. The malfunction was wholly unreasonable and an incredible fail for somebody who MUST have music in the gym because the music they play over the air is WACK. Well these headphones turned out to be wack as well.
I called Plantronics customer service and of course the young man was surprised and said that he never gets calls about the 903+ (yeah right), however, he was helpful and efficient and today I transmitted documentation for a replacement headset as they are still within warranty. What is to be determined is whether the replacement headsets will perform for longer than two months. I hope they do because I really did dig them.
Do you use a wireless headset? Which one(s)? How do you use them and have you had any failures? Let me know in the comments.
In the meantime, I'm rocking these Sony earbuds which sound great but leave my ears hurting when I take them out.
Tagged bluetooth headset, earbuds, headphones, plantronic


Let us assume you found in your sendmail logs within a short period a lot of entries like did not issue MAIL/EXPN/VRFY/ETRN during connection to MTA (all from a single IP) and you remember "fail2ban" as a possible blocking tool for that nasty and unwanted accesses. Now you have the idea to check for the newest release of that package and if that release may have yet a configuration file with according filter rules.
enter in the "contents of package member (text) files"-field the text string did not issue and click the "Send" button. Optionally you may restrict the search further by entering in the "package internal member file names"-field the string conf only to files that contains that string; or more specifically use the regular expression \.conf$ to search only in files with the file extension conf. Additionally also the AND/OR logical operators can be used here.
optionally click on a matching line number to jump to that matching line (also with a red marked search string).
By the way, if you have only the information that there is a package that have a member file named for e.g. sendmail-reject.conf but don't know the exact package name you may use Fossies Advanced Search Facility page (accessible also on the Fossies main page via the "(advanced)"-button beside the search field) and enter in the "package internal member file names"-field that member name and Fossies will show you the found according package(s).
Ok, sometimes you may get similar results by using for e.g. the Google search but firstly not all package member files available on Fossies are also scanned by Google and secondly the Fossies search can be done more specifically and allows the use of the Fossies specialities like browsing about the matching lines, syntax highlighting, diffs reports and poking around the Doxygen-generated source code documentation.


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Benjamin Fulford - December 23, 2014: US regime under unprecedented attack, black swan event imminent
Posted by Besimi on December 24, 2014 at 1:52am
Posted by James Rathey on December 23, 2014 at 9:33pm
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The Nazi cabal that illegally seized power in the West by staging the 911 mass murder event is now close to collapse. This can be seen by the growing calls for the arrest of the top figures of the last Bush regime not only from world leaders but now even from establishment lapdogs like the New York Times.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/22/opinion/prosecute-torturers-and-t...
The fact the New York Times is running such an editorial means the traditional Jewish lobby has finally figured out that Neo-con was just a euphemism for Neo-Nazi.
If a few more key individuals are removed from power in the coming days, it will lead to the end of cabal fascist rule and freedom for humanity. These people include US corporate president Barack Obama, Japanese slave Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, secret UK dictator Jeremy Heywood and Federal Reserve Board head Janet Yellen.
The key person to bring down is US corporate president Barack Obama. This should be straightforward because he has only 15% support inside the US military. Obama may be a just a puppet but he is nonetheless the publicly visible sign of continued cabal rule. Obama committed fraud to become president. In his auto-biography, "Dreams of my Father," he writes that his father was a World War 2 veteran. Yet the birth certificate Obama made public says his father was 25 years old when Obama was born in 1961. That means his "war veteran" father was 9 years old when the war ended. Furthermore, Obama has confirmed his role as a cabal stooge by publicly repeating the Nazi lies about 911.
Hopefully, incoming Defense Secretary Ashton Carter will grasp his destiny and lead the restoration of the Republic of the United States of America.
The Japanese slave regime headed by Shinzo Abe is another key domino that needs to be toppled. Overwhelming evidence has now emerged that Abe "won" the December 14th general election through massive fraud. Japan Independence Party head Richard Koshimizu and many others last week showed police and reporters extensive proof of this. For example, the Sokka Gakkai Buddhist sect, whose political party is part of the Abe regime, gathered believers all over the country to "write practice votes," Koshimizu says. These "practice vote" papers were then taken away to undisclosed locations, he adds. Koshimizu also showed this writer videos taken with hidden cameras showing things like automatic vote counting machines counting blank ballots long after voting stations were shut down and votes counted. Many court cases against this latest sham election are being mounted by the JIP and others.
If Abe remains in power, Japan will be looted to the point of bankruptcy in order to try to prop up Abe's Nazi puppet masters. However, Abe has now lost support among Japanese right wingers and even his CIA handlers.
Richard Armitage, chief US Nazi agent in Japan, has put out feelers to the White Dragon Society to try to arrange some sort of peaceful exchange of power in exchange for amnesty. This can be arranged since the WDS is more interested in saving the planet than seeking revenge.
The situation in the UK is also reaching a tipping point. The ongoing police investigations into a high level pedophile ring inside the UK government are the most obvious sign of this. The ultimate thrust of this investigation is to prove that it was politicians being blackmailed over pedophilia who signed away UK independence to the Nazi/Bush EU government. Once this is proven, the UK could declare the treaties it signed with the EU as invalid.
The old guard is fighting hard to prevent this from happening. Right now fascist control of the UK is centered on Jeremy Heywood, Chief Cabinet Secretary and head of the civil service, MI5 sources say. Heywood's chief ally is John Scarlett, head of MI6 from 2004 to 2009. Scarlett is now a consultant for Morgan Stanley. Heywood and Scarlett are linked to the "dodgy dossier" that helped Bush slave Prime Minister Tony Blair drag the UK into the illegal invasion of Iraq. If Heywood can be removed, then Nazi power in the UK will crumble, the MI5 sources say.
The UK Nazis, of course, are fighting back. For example, recently somebody started making so many bets the Queen was about to announce her resignation that London bookies stopped taking bets on the subject.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/queen-elizabeth-II/11299022/...
There was also a lot of action last week taken by various parties that have been fighting to start a new financial system. Michael Cottrell, who was one of the agents who helped bankrupt the Soviet Union issued the following statement:
"I, MICHAEL C. COTTRELL, B.A.,M.S., DO HEREBY SWEAR AND AFFIRM THE FOLLOWING FACTS:
1. THAT THIS IS THE 24TH CHRISTMAS I AND MY FAMILY HAVE HAD TO ENDURE THE TORTURE OF THE BUSH-CLINTON-FEDERAL RESERVE CABAL (RAT) GANG…WITH ALL THE MENTAL AND PHYSICAL ATTRIBUTES OF FORCED ECONOMIC DEPRIVATION — DUE TO THE THEFT OF MY NAME, PASSPORT AND SIGNATURES, AND CORPORATE AUTHORITIES FOR PENNSYLVANIA INVESTMENTS, INC. (EST DEC 1984), NIAGARA SECURITIES, INC. (EST JAN 1990), AND JANUS, LLC. (EST 2002).
2. THAT THE EFFECTIVE LOSS OF THE OPERATIONAL AUTHORITIES OF DELMARVA TIMBER TRUST AND THE ABOVE REFERENCED COMPANIES WERE STOLEN BY A GROUP THAT WAS UNDER THE DIRECT OR INDIRECT CONTROL OF G.H.W. BUSH, SR. (OFAC 2001 AND THE CONTINENTAL BANK OF ILLINOIS), RICHARD B. CHENEY (JAN 2002), G.W. BUSH (2000 THRU 2008), BARAK OBAMA (2009-PRES)– AND NEAL BUSH, J.E.B. BUSH, JEFFERSON CLINTON, AND HILLARY CLINTON, SECRETARY OF TREASURY PAUL H. O'NEAL, SECRETARY HENRY M. PAULSON, JR, AND SECRETARY OF TREASURY LEVY;
3. THAT WRITTEN NOTICES WERE SUBMITTED FOR REDRESS TO THE WHITE HOUSE, THE UNITED STATES TREASURY, AND HER MAJESTY QUEEN ELIZABETH II AND TO HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS THE DUKE OF EDINBURGH — TO NO AVAIL.
4. SINCE DECEMBER 31, 2010, UPON THE FAILED ATTEMPTS BY THE G-7 AND G-20 TO IMPLEMENT THE NEW TRANSPARENT BANKING SYSTEM (PARTIALLY OR WHOLLY BASED ON DATA SUBMITTED BY MICHAEL C. COTTRELL, B.A., M.S. AND CHRISTOPHER STORY) TO HER ROYAL MAJESTY QUEEN ELIZABETH AND THE DUKE OF EDINBURGH (VIA MR. CHRISTOPHER STORY AND ATTORNEY A. CLIFTON HODGES (CSBN 046803)) —- THE MEMBERS OF THE G-8 AND THE PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF CHINA HAVE TAKEN A DIFFERENT TACK TO ELIMINATE THE ABOVE MENTIONED BUSH-CLINTON-FEDERAL RESERVE "RAT" CABAL AND THE BANKRUPT FIAT AND DERIVATIVE SYSTEM THAT HAS BEEN DESTROYING THE WORLD'S ECONOMY;
5. THAT ON OR ABOUT 21 MARCH 2013 APPROXIMATELY 200+ COUNTRIES SIGNED A "GOLD TREATY" THAT DESIGNATED THE LOAN, ENMASS, THAT WOULD SATISFY THE BASEL III LIST AND ELIMINATE THE FIAT AND DERIVATIVE SYSTEM ONCE AND FOR ALL, WHICH INCLUDED THE SPECIFIC NAME AND PLACEMENT OF MICHAEL C. COTTRELL, B.A., M.S. AS PART OF THE IMPLEMENTATION;
6. THAT DURING THE AUGUST 2013 G-20 MEETING A FURTHER SET OF AGREEMENTS WERE SIGNED BETWEEN THOSE TREATY MEMBERS, INCLUDING THE PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF CHINA AND THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION TO INCLUDE ADDITIONAL STEPS THAT MAY BE NECESSARY TO ENSURE THE COMPLETE IMPLEMENTATION OF SAID "GOLD TREATY";
7. THAT DURING THE AFOREMENTIONED TIME PERIOD AN INTENSE EFFORT WAS TAKEN BY THE BUSH-CLINTON-FEDERAL RESERVE FIAT SYSTEM TO DELAY OR DESTROY THE IMPLEMENTATION OF SAID TREATY THAT INCLUDED BRIBERY, EXTORTION, MURDER, ATTEMPTED MURDER AND THEFT BY CONVERSION, AND FRAUD BY DECEPTION;
8. THAT THIS DELAY OPERATION HAS RECENTLY INCLUDED THE EXTENSIVE LIES AND DECEPTION BY THOSE MEMBERS OF THE UNITED STATES TREASURY REGARDING THE "PAYMENT OF FUNDS TO MICHAEL C. COTTRELL, et al., AND OTHERS". HOWEVER, THESE "PAYMENTS" HAVE BEEN THE SUPPOSED FUNDING OF ACCOUNTS WITH WELLS FARGO BANK, et al., BUT NO ACCESS TO SAID FUNDS;
9. IT IS NOW REPORTED, TO ME, THAT THE THOSE IN POWER OF THE UNITED STATES TREASURY HAVE BEEN CONTINUOUSLY SUBMITTING FALSE INFORMATION REGARDING THE RELEASE OF THE CODES TO ME AND THE FUNDING OF THE NEW UNITED STATES TREASURY TO IMPLEMENT THE "GOLD TREATY" TO DELAY THE COLLAPSE OF THE FIAT AND DERIVATIVE SYSTEM— TO THE POINT OF NUMEROUS REPORTS THAT I HAVE BEEN "PAID OR IN THE PROCESS OF BEING PAID" — THIS HAS BEEN AND IS A LIE.
I HAVE NOT BEEN VISITED NOR CONTACTED TO RECEIVE SUCH INFORMATION OR PAYMENT — AS OF THIS MOMENT (06:00 AM EST, SATURDAY 20 DECEMBER 2014)."
I, MICHAEL C. COTTRELL, B.A., M.S., PRESIDENT OF PENNSYLVANIA INVESTMENTS, INC., LOCATED AT 1157 WEST 7TH ST., ERIE, PA 16502, DO HEREBY SWEAR AND AFFIRM THAT THE ABOVE INFORMATION IS TRUE AND FACTUAL.
/S/ Michael C. Cottrell 20 December 2014
Another person fighting for a say in control over the world's funds, Neil Keenan, also came out last week with a video claiming he had gained access to giant underground vaults of gold and treasure in Indonesia.
http://neilkeenan.com/neil-keenan-update-making-history-new-beginni...
The video showed a box being opened that contained highly oxidized, green tinged (copper?) "gold bars." We are waiting for Keenan to release videos of the "vast underground gold bunkers."
Another person in search of the world's treasure, Italian P2 lodge head Marco di Mauro, for his part, has gone missing in the Philippines. P2 sources say they suspect he has been arrested by cabal linked corrupt government officials.
Then of course, as we reported last week, IMF head Christine Lagarde gave the Americans until January to relinquish voting rights over that institution.
Furthermore, a representative of the Saudi Arabian government also contacted the WDS last week offering "financial trading expertize" and promising the Saudi government would bury the hatchet with the Iranians and work towards a comprehensive settlement of Middle East troubles.
All of this jockeying for position indicates these well-placed power brokers are anticipating some sort of announcement or change.
There were also more signs of high level secret attacks against the US corporate government last week. In specific, last week power was temporarily cut off to the State Department and the Federal Reserve Board last week amid rolling internet black outs. Also the corporate media has now put out stories blaming the US government for shooting down Malaysia Airlines flight 370.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2883651/U-S-military-shot-M...
The US corporate government, for its part, has been on the warpath against North Korea for some mysterious reason. The entire US State Department story about Sony pictures being hacked by North Korea is a case in point. According to IT experts the hacking attack blamed on North Korea could only have been carried out by somebody inside Sony's US headquarters. As one expert put it, "The Sony breach was an inside job. 100 terabytes is too big to transmit over the Internet. At top broadband speeds it would take 661 days at top US speed and, 2,315 day to transmit to S. Korea (and general Asia Pac Rim) at their top transmission speed."Now the US is trying to indict North Korea for human rights abuses, possibly to deflect world attention from its own widespread use of torture.
The North Koreans have responded by quoting US leading thinkers like Joseph Nye and Richard Haas to note: "the U.S. is being reduced to the dregs of history."
http://www.kcna.co.jp/index-e.htm
The White Dragon Society does not involve itself in day to day politics but only acts when life and civilization face an existential threat. Now is such a time. Message to the military industrial complex: Wake up!
http://galacticconnection.com/benjamin-fulford-us-regime-unpreceden...
http://benjaminfulford.net/2014/12/24/us-regime-under-unprecedented...
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Comment by Besimi on December 27, 2014 at 12:09am
The Loop Is Getting Tighter Around the Necks of the Western Cabal Liars
Posted by Janina Giedraitiene on December 26, 2014 at 3:15pm
by GEORGI STANKOV posted on DECEMBER 25, 2014
Another MH17 Cover-Up: Hiding a Key Autopsy
by Eric Zuesse, December 24, 2014
http://www.globalresearch.ca/another-mh17-cover-up-hiding-a-key-aut...
Decisive evidence as to how the July 17th shooting-down of the MH17 Malaysian airliner occurred is being hidden by the four-nation team that's doing the official 'investigation' into the plane-downing incident.
This decisive evidence is the coroner's report on the corpse of the airliner's pilot. If the pilot was killed by bullets, then the standard 'explanation' of the downing (that the plane was downed by a ground-fired missile) isn't just false, it's an outright hoax. So: where's the pilot's autopsy?
This investigation is important because stringent economic sanctions against Russia were instituted immediately after the downing; these sanctions were based upon never-substantiated charges from the Ukrainian Government, and from its sponsor the U.S. Government, alleging that the plane had been downed by rebels who were supported by Russia. (The "Buk" missile launcher charged by Ukraine as the cause was actually manned by Ukraine's soldiers.)
The same Government, the U.S., that had lied its way into invading Iraq, might now be orchestrating still-more-dangerous frauds, with the potential even for a nuclear war against Russia.
The four nations doing the official investigation and report into the airliner-downing are: Ukraine, Australia, Belgium, and Netherlands. All four are U.S. allies; and, one of them, Ukraine, is one of the two main suspects in this case, the other being separatists against the Ukrainian Government. (They're not represented in this 'investigation.') The United States and Ukraine say that the airliner was downed by separatists who mistakenly thought that they were shooting down a Ukrainian bomber instead of an airliner. (Even if that had been true, the U.S. would still have been the ultimate cause of the downing. The whole cover-story was designed to be believed only by fools.)
However, the Ukrainian Government, which until now has maintained steadfastly that there is only one possible explanation for the downing — their explanation, that it had been downed by a "Buk" ground-fired missile controlled by the rebels — finally changed their tune on December 21st, and announced that may.... Apparently, the other three nations on the team are refusing to sign their names onto a joint report from all four (according to the secret agreement signed by them all on August 8th,...) that commits to Ukraine's 'explanation,' because the real evidence is overwhelmingly against it — as will herein be explained and documented.
According to London's Daily Mail on December 5th, a video documentary from a Russian journalist "suggested" that, "pieces of 30mm rounds were found in the bodies of the pilots." 30mm bullets are the same size of bullets that come from the types of fighter-jet planes that are in the Ukrainian Air Force, including the following jets: Su-25, Su-27, and Mig-29. 30mm bullets are very different from missile-shrapnel, which the U.S. and Ukraine allege had brought down this airliner.
A retired Lufthansa pilot, Peter Haisenko, examined a remarkably clear photo of the key piece ...; this panel was riddled with what he said were 30mm bullet holes, shot right into the spot where the pilot's belly would be. Apparently (if Haisenko is correct), the airliner's pilot was machine-gunned to death, his belly was ripped into by a hail of bullets, after which the attacking jet or jets fired a missile into the airliner's body, and the airliner then promptly plummeted to earth. No ground-fired missile was involved. (The ground-fired "Buk" would have been 33,000 feet below, much too far away for precise targeting at the plane's pilot; and shrapnel-holes are not round; they're very different from bullet-holes.)
What's in question is whether the approximately two-foot-diameter gash into the fuselage right next to the pilot was the result of hundreds of bullets fired into the pilot's belly, as Haisenko alleges. If any bullets at all were involved in this downing, then the Ukrainian Government is the guilty party in it, because only they have an Air Force; the separatists do not. The separatists had no way to machine-gun the plane's pilot to death. The separatists were never that close to the airliner.
Because of the allegation in the Daily Mail, I consulted the source of that allegation, which was a documentary film that had been made by Russian journalist Andrei .... Because it's in Russian, I engaged a Russian translator, who found that the source of the Daily Mail's allegation was at 3:50-5:00 on this video.
It says there:
"Judging by the cockpit fragments photos, the cockpit was shot by 30-mm cannon projectiles. There should be plenty of them in the pilots' bodies. As announced, the bodies of the passengers were transferred to relatives, but the bodies of both main and support jet crews (currently kept in the Netherlands), were in bad condition due to (1) heavy shelling targeted at the cockpit, and (2) crashing to earth. The projectiles must have been found by now, most certainly. Their type must have been definitely ascertained. Why are these findings not announced? There is but one inference: the high professionals on the international investigation board are severely pressured by some powers, which don't want certain of the findings to be publicly disclosed."
"One month ago [from the time of shooting the video] the international commission announced that it found certain 'objects' in pilots' bodies. I believe these were 30mm cannon projectile particles. When we were in Copenhagen, we were told by the international investigation commission that investigation results would be made public on 9 October. To this day it hasn't been done."
So: Where's this crucial autopsy-report? We've seen the side-panel with its bullet-holes; were bullets lodged in the corpse?
(Here are photos of the Pilot's coffin and funeral-procession.)
What we have gotten instead is the Ukrainian Government backing away from the 'explanation' that U.S. President Barack Obama, who installed their regime, endorsed, and used as his excuse for the EU to hike sanctions against Russia — an act of war, which now has been followed by the President and Congress virtually declaring war against Russia by taking over Ukraine on Ru.... Based totally on lies.
Evidently, Obama believes that if George W. Bush could fool the American public into invading Iraq, Obama can fool them into invading Russia. Can it be: he's aiming to out-do even Bush?
PS: a note that my translator wants to append:
I have now read the Daily Mail article for the first time — what a distortion of the facts stated in the documentary!!!
1. They claim that, according to the Russian media, the air traffic controller and the pilot fled together, which was never said (nor even suggested) in the documentary. This was apparently done in order to make the documentary look ridiculous and far-fetched, which it is not.
2. They forget to mention, that authorities of Borispol [the airport] tower, when contacted by A. Karaulov's team, said they never had anyone by the name of Anna Petrenko [the alleged fighter-jet's pilot alleged girlfriend] on staff, when the opposite was said by lower rank employees. And when the journalists contacted some unnamed boss, s/he just hung up the phone on them.
3. The article doesn't give any proof of the girl and the pilot still being alive, which makes it seem even more sinister [i.e.: did the Government kill them, to silence them?].


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Mike Keenan out as coach/GM of KHL's Kunlun Red Star
By Sean LeahyDec 3, 2017, 11:02 AM EST
ALEXANDER NEMENOV/AFP/Getty Images
Days after losing his role as general manager, Mike Keenan has now been relieved of his coaching responsibilities by Kunlun Red Star of the KHL. Following nine straight defeats, which places them near the bottom of the Eastern Conference standings, the 68-year-old will remain as an executive member on the team's International Advisory Board.
Former NHLer Bobby Carpenter will take reins behind the bench on an interim basis with fellow ex-players Cliff Ronning and Igor Kravchuk staying on as assistants.
"Mike Keenan has done a great job for several months," said Kunlun president Raitis Pilsetnieks via SovSport (translated). "He formed a completely new KHL team, and also took an active part in building the entire club structure, which is part of a large-scale project for the development of Chinese hockey in the run-up to the Winter Olympics in 2022.
"Since March, he worked almost without days off, and we were often amazed at his amazing endurance and efficiency. But, unfortunately, everything has a limit, and the work, coupled with a huge number of flights, is beyond his strength. Therefore, it was decided to return to the original form of cooperation. I have no doubt that as a member of the International Coordination Council Mike Keenan will bring a lot of benefits to the club and the Chinese hockey in general."
Kunlun responded well to the news by snapping their nine-game losing streak with a 4-3 overtime win against Amur on Sunday.
Keenan, who was the first coach to win championships in the KHL and NHL, joined Kunlun in March 17 months after he was canned by Metallurg Magnitogorsk, with whom he led to a Gagarin Cup title in 2014.
So will we hear Keenan's pop up whenever the first NHL head coach gets fired this season? He's been out of the NHL game since 2009, but that never stopped general managers from bringing in a retread. Hey, how about a Philadelphia reunion? OK, that's probably a pipe dream. But given Keenan's recent coaching history, it wouldn't be a shock to see him resurface behind a bench elsewhere in Europe.
Sean Leahy is a writer for Pro Hockey Talk on NBC Sports. Drop him a line at phtblog@nbcsports.com or follow him on Twitter @Sean_Leahy.


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South Western House
By Jake Simpkin April 2014
South Western House is a Grade II listed building situated adjacent to the old Terminus Railway Station, near to Dock Gate 4. It was built as a hotel by a private developer about 1865, who leased the land off the London & South Western Railway Company.
A view of the hotel from Terminus Terrace
The style is High Victorian contemporary with London's Charing Cross station. Originally the hotel was built over the ends of the railway lines, so that passengers could alight the train on platforms that came right into the hotel, almost cutting it in two on the ground floor. The architect was John Norton of London. It was named the Imperial Hotel, and opened before it was finished in 1867. Soon after the developer went bankrupt. Subsequently, the development was taken over by LSWR Company, completed, and renamed the South Western Hotel in 1871, but not before the town council had proposed turning it into a lunatic asylum.
The design of the building can only be described as extravagant. It comprises six stories, with the upper two floors in the mansard roof. The construction is of brick, with stone embellishments, and elaborate window surrounds. A feature of the second floor is small balconies with wrought iron balustrades. At the east end of the building, above the 5th floor level, is an interesting pediment, below which is a stone relief carving of Queen Victoria in the company of angels. To the sides are depictions of steam powered trains and ships, and the trappings of high culture, associated with the British Empire at the height of its power
At the turn of the 20th century Southampton docks was establishing itself as a major terminal port for the growing Atlantic trade, as liners of Cunard, White Star, American Line, NDL, and Hamburg America Line increased in size, speed and luxury. In turn South Western House was modernised by Maples, the famous London decorating firm. New fittings and furniture were added, ornamental panels were repainted in blue and gold, and the kitchens and offices renewed. New electric lifts were provided to all floors. In all it cost £28,000. The 'time-ball, which originally stood on top the medieval God's House Tower, was moved to the roof of South Western House in 1904. In the 1920s a large seven story extension was built on the railway station side. It is faced with ashlar stucco finish with bronze windows, grilles, and street lanterns. The grand main entrance to South Western House is part of the new building. The design is sumptuous, with marble columns, wall panelling, and high decorative ceiling mouldings. It is believed that the Titanic's majestic staircase was copied from the hotel's own design.
It was at the South Western that first class passengers spent their last night before sailing on the ill-fated Titanic. Both Bruce Ismay, chairman of White Star Line, and Thomas Andrews, Titanic's head designer, stayed before the fateful sailing. Sometimes on the stars and along the corridors, one senses an echo of those who perished in the icy waters of the North Atlantic.
South Western House was the town's first grand hotel. Porters in red livery would meet passengers, and incoming liners were wired from Hurst Castle for the convenience of guests awaiting the arrival of old friends. It was at the centre of Southampton's high society. The venue of business lunches, where important men from the docks and shipping lines discussed their great plans. Its heyday was the 20s and 30s, during the golden age of ocean liners, when 4 funnelled liners competed for the Blue Riband. The entire building is steeped in historical events. Rich and famous guests included royalty, politicians, and movie stars, such as Spencer Tracy and Debora Kerr. Tom Mix was once said to have ridden his horse through the Foyer. The reputation of the hotel grew on both sides of the Atlantic being known to thousands of travellers.
It continued as a hotel until WW2, after which it never reopened. During the war it was requisitioned by the military to become HMS Shrapnel, a training centre for electrical units, and functioning as the Centre of Combined Operations playing an important role in the planning of D-Day. It is believed that Churchill and Eisenhower had a high level meeting there.
After the war it was converted into offices and occupied by departments of British Railways, and governments sections, before the shipping line Cunard created an office complex there. The BBC's 30 year association with South Western House started in 1961. The original news programme 'South at Six' was presented by Martin Muncaster. It was later renamed 'South Today', with long serving anchor-man Bruce Parker. Great events within the docks were witnessed and reported from the building; the 1966 Seaman's strike; the final sailing of the Queen Mary in 1967; and ships departing and arriving back from the Falklands war.
The BBC vacated South Western House in 1991, after which the building fell into some disrepair. In 1998 this iconic building was given a new lease of life by Berkley Homes Ltd who converted its 150,000 square feet into 77 apartments, with prices ranging from £88,000 to over £400,000. Today, South Western House stands not only as a monument to Southampton's history, but as a symbol of 150 years of change.
Southampton's Historic Buildings (1981) R. J. Coles
Southampton Through the Ages (1997) Peter Kilby
Titanic Voices (1994) Hyslop, Forsyth & Jemima
The Daily Echo; 15 May 1998; 23 September 1998.
Berkeley Homes, The Imperial Apartments, information and price list.
Pete Simpkin BBC 'South At Six'
A view of the hotel from Canute Road
A feature of the second floor is small balconies with wrought iron balustrades
Above 5th floor level, is an interesting pediment, below which is a stone relief carving of Queen Victoria
The grand main entrance is sumptuous, with marble columns, wall panelling, and high decorative ceiling mouldings
It is believed that the Titanic's majestic staircase was copied from the hotel's own design
1920s extension displaying bronze windows, grilles, and street lanterns
The main entrance is under the Terminus Station glass canopy
Read By 14226 Visitors Back To Listing


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text:
(3) Volcano: Shishaldin (VNUM #311360)
(4) Current Color Code: GREEN
(5) Previous Color Code: YELLOW
(7) Notice Number: 2018/A88
(8) Volcano Location: N 54 deg 45 min W 163 deg 58 min
(11) Volcanic Activity Summary: The Alaska Volcano Observatory is decreasing the Aviation Color Code to GREEN and the Alert Level to NORMAL at Shishaldin Volcano based on declining seismic and infrasound activity over the past month. These observations represent a return to normal background activity at Shishaldin.
Shishaldin is monitored by local seismic and infrasound sensors, satellite data, a web camera, a telemetered geodetic network, and distant infrasound networks.
(12) Volcanic cloud height: None
(13) Other volcanic cloud information: N/A
(14) Remarks: Shishaldin volcano, located near the center of Unimak Island in the eastern Aleutian Islands, is a spectacular symmetric cone with a base diameter of approximately 16 km (10 mi). A 200-m-wide (660 ft) funnel-shaped summit crater typically emits a steam plume and occasional small amounts of ash. Shishaldin is one of the most active volcanoes in the Aleutian volcanic arc, with at least 54 episodes of unrest including over 24 confirmed eruptions since 1775. Most eruptions are relatively small, although the April-May 1999 event generated an ash column that reached 45,000 ft above sea level.
Pavel Izbekov, Acting Coordinating Scientist, UAFGI
pavel@gi.alaska.edu (907) 322-4085
Volcano: Shishaldin (VNUM #311360)
Current Volcano Alert Level: NORMAL
Previous Volcano Alert Level: ADVISORY
Current Aviation Color Code: GREEN
Previous Aviation Color Code: YELLOW
Issued: Wednesday, February 7, 2018, 2:01 PM AKST
Notice Number: 2018/A88
Location: N 54 deg 45 min W 163 deg 58 min
Volcanic Activity Summary: The Alaska Volcano Observatory is decreasing the Aviation Color Code to GREEN and the Alert Level to NORMAL at Shishaldin Volcano based on declining seismic and infrasound activity over the past month. These observations represent a return to normal background activity at Shishaldin.
[Volcanic cloud height] None
[Other volcanic cloud information] N/A
Remarks: Shishaldin volcano, located near the center of Unimak Island in the eastern Aleutian Islands, is a spectacular symmetric cone with a base diameter of approximately 16 km (10 mi). A 200-m-wide (660 ft) funnel-shaped summit crater typically emits a steam plume and occasional small amounts of ash. Shishaldin is one of the most active volcanoes in the Aleutian volcanic arc, with at least 54 episodes of unrest including over 24 confirmed eruptions since 1775. Most eruptions are relatively small, although the April-May 1999 event generated an ash column that reached 45,000 ft above sea level.