Well that white Christmas I was dreaming about finally came… Mid January. I have to say I think the snow is really pretty, and since I haven't seen it in two years, I don't mind it a bit. Today's knitting pattern is a simple one with a lot of personality. And I rightly named it the "Flurries Hat" because the white stitches remind me of the flurries outside of my window right now. I want to see your FO's so don't forget to post your projects on Ravelry!
Main Color: Approx. 50 yds.
Contrasting Color: Approx. 20 yds.
12 sts. & 14 rows = 4" in stockinette st.
When changing colors, do not cut yarn. Carry yarn along as you knit.
Repeat round 1-4, then begin decrease rounds. Switch to DPN's when decreasing becomes difficult on circular needles.
Have made about 10 hats now, but none with a second yarn like this.
Hi Sue, instead of cutting the yarn when you change colors, just pick it up and keep knitting with it around. You can do this when there's not so many stitches in between color changes.
Thank you for the quick response. Your pattern is adorable!
Cute! What size is the finished hat? They look really tiny.
What is the size or is it an ornament?
I have done lots of knitting. I have enough yarn to start my own shop but then you see new colours. Such an addiction! Try to do knitting for charity too.
I know slip 1, knit 1, pass slip stitch over but have not seen ask before. Could you explain please?
Very cute pattern. Thank you.
What size are these hats? They are adorable!
Hi Mary! These are one size fits most adults and teens.
Hmm well you will need a multiple of 4 that's divisble by 12. Check your gauge, and when you decrease, decrease by 12 stitches each time. Good luck!
Hi Linda, I don't have the pattern for straight needles at this time. I used circular needles then switched to DPN's once it becomes difficult to knit on circulars during the decreases. I highly recommend giving knitting in the round a try- I prefer it to straight knittting and it is so much easier than you'd think!
I would like to knit this hat on straight needles. Can this be done?
I love this pattern, but I would like to knit it for my grandaughter who is 3. Can it be adapted for her? thank you.
my name is Melanie and I am working for the content management department of DaWanda, a website where creative people can share their ideas and sell their homemade unique products.
The reason why I am writing you today is that I've just found your beautiful blog online and I am really thrilled by your ideas. Your tutorials are so original and well photographed which is why I would love to introduce your blog to our large community on our DIY portal http://de.dawanda.com/do-it-yourself. So far the portal exists in seven languages (German, English, French, Spanish, Dutch, Italian and Polish) and is advertised heavily in all of our channels (in our newsletter, on our different DaWanda Facebook pages, Pinterest, Instagram, Twitter and G+). Every month it has more than 1 million visitors and we just relaunched it to make everything look even more beautiful.
I especially liked your tutorial for the Flurries Hat (http://margoknits.com/2016/01/flurries-hat.html) – and I am sure, a lot of our users would love to make it as well!
To cut a long story short: Would you be interested in publishing this tutorial on our website?
If so, we'll translate your tutorial, upload everything necessary to our page and send you the link as soon as it is published.


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Q: Automatic GUID key_name in model I want my model to get a GUID as key_name automatically and I'm using the code below. Is that a good approach to solve it? Does it have any drawbacks?
class SyncModel(polymodel.PolyModel):
    def __init__(self, key_name=None, key=None, **kwargs):
        super(SyncModel, self).__init__(key_name=str(uuid.uuid1()) if not key else None,key=key, **kwargs)

A: There is an article by Nick about pre and post put hooks which and be used to set the key_name, I don't know if your current method is valid or not but at least you should be aware of other options.

A: Overriding __init__ on a Model subclass is dangerous, because the constructor is used by the framework to reconstruct instances from the datastore, in addition to being used by user code. Unless you know exactly how the constructor is used to reconstruct existing entities - something which is an internal detail and may change in future - you should avoid overriding it.
Instead, define a factory method, like this:
class MyModel(db.Model):
  @classmethod
  def new(cls, **kwargs):
    return cls(key_name=str(uuid.uuid4()), **kwargs)

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


Sunrocket VoIP used to be one of cheap broadband phone service provider. It no longer exists and is currently owned by a private equity firm based in San Diego.
Founded in early 2004, SunRocket is changing an industry, bringing you new choices, better value, and ultimate control of your home phone service. Powered by the Internet and designed to replace the overpriced, obsolete services from your old phone company, SunRocket Internet Phone Service harnesses your home high-speed connection to deliver a radically better suite of customized features at an amazing value.
San Diego, California (November 12, 2009) – Sunrocket.com, a leading global Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) Information and Broadband Information Aggregator has launched a completely redesigned website. The new user interface (UI) was put together in response to information provided by its users and research data from an internet market research firm.
The domain was previously owned by SunRocket, Inc. ("SunRocket"), an internet telephony company that provided a service similar to Vonage. SunRocket closed down its global operations in July 2007 following failed attempts to raise additional money from the investment community. Management made a general assignment (of its assets) for the benefit of creditors to an affiliate of a business consulting and advisory services firm that continues to handle the estate from its offices in Mountain View, California.
Unlimited calling to the U.S., Canada, and Puerto Rico, plus over 12 built-in features, bonus international calling, and more!
200 minutes of calling to the U.S., Canada, Puerto Rico, and SunSpot destinations, plus over 12 built-in features.


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Heinz Puhst (* 20. Juli 1930 in Berlin; † 15. Dezember 2006) war ein deutscher Politiker (SPD).

Puhst machte 1950 das Abitur und wurde anschließend Dienstanwärter beim Senat von Berlin. 1952 wurde er Beamter. Nach dem Besuch der Verwaltungsschule Berlin machte er 1961 die Prüfung als Diplom-Kameralist.

1952 wurde Puhst Mitglied der SPD. Bei der Berliner Wahl 1958 wurde er in die Bezirksverordnetenversammlung im Bezirk Wedding gewählt und seit 1964 Vorsitzender der SPD-Fraktion dort. 1970 wurde er zum Bezirksstadtrat im Wedding gewählt. Bei der Berliner Wahl 1979 wurde Puhst in das Abgeordnetenhaus von Berlin für den Wahlkreis Wedding 2 gewählt. Bis 1985 gehörte er dem Parlament an.

Mitglied des Abgeordnetenhauses von Berlin
Bezirksstadtrat (Bezirk Wedding)
SPD-Mitglied
Deutscher
Geboren 1930
Gestorben 2006
Mann

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


The Renaissance (Original Italian: Rinascimento, from rinascere "to be reborn") was a cultural movement that spanned the period roughly from the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the late Middle Ages and then spreading to the rest of Europe.
In so far as music is concerned, consensus among music historians has been to start the era around 1400, with the end of the medieval era, and to close it around 1600, with the beginning of the Baroque period.
At that time, the cello did not yet exist in the form that we now know it. The viola da gamba occupied the role of bass/tenor voice that the cello would gradually come to occupy in the baroque and classical periods.
For this reason, the music presented here for cello, was all written originally for viola da gamba.


Celebrate Winter Break at MOSI by exploring STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Math) activities! Bring a snack, lunch and wear clothing that can get messy.
Do you like to build and construct? Explore the discoveries that make engineering possible in this camp for future designers! Investigate how to make strong structures and foundations. Will your building survive an earthquake or a hurricane? Through open and focused exploration, campers will explore and construct airplanes, helicopters, rockets and more!


Exactech hosted the 2019 Advances in Shoulder Arthroplasty meeting in Sydney, Australia. Dr Joseph D Zuckerman, a past president of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons, was the course chairman. Dr Macgroarty was invited by Dr Zuckerman to be on faculty, delivering a presentation and contributing to panel discussions on complex shoulder arthroplasty decision making processes.
Dr Macgroarty and Dr Zuckerman answering questions during a panel discussion during the 2019 Advances in Shoulder Arthroplasty meeting.
Dr Macgroarty, as President of the Queensland Shoulder Society, hosted Professor Allan Wang, Perth Orthopaedic Shoulder Surgeon, as the keynote speaker for the February 2019 Summer meeting.
Professor Wang spoke about his learning curve using the Exactech GPS navigated TSA system. He also delivered his paper titled: "The SESA Rotator Cuff Survey : Developing a Rational Approach to Surgery". A number of difficult case studies were also presented for a panel discussion with Dr Phillip Duke, Dr Steve Andrews and Dr Ezekial Tan.
QSS President Dr Kelly Macgroarty, along with QSS Secretary, Dr Ken Cutbush welcomes Dr Allan Wang from Perth as their guest speaker at the QSS Summer meeting.
He was also asked to perform a live surgical demonstration of his technique of Superior Capsular Reconstruction for irreparable massive cuff tears.
Following the meeting, Dr Macgroarty spent time with his colleague and friend, Dr Ian Lo from Calgary. Dr Macgroarty observed Dr Lo perform a revision cuff repair with patch augmentation and also a Laterjet procedure. Dr Lo trained under world renowned US surgeon Dr Stephen Burkart who championed this technique with Dr Joe DeBeer from South Africa.
Dr Macgroarty visited with Dr Ian Lo following the meeting and observed his Sports Medicine Clinic in Calgary.
In September 2018, Dr Macgroarty was invited back as the only Australian surgeon, to be on faculty at this International Shoulder Meeting. Alongside world renowned shoulder surgeon, Professor Felix "Buddy" Savoie, Dr Macgroarty gave a series of lectures and facilitated cadaveric labs demonstrating his latest techniques in shoulder surgery. The meeting was attended by many North American and International surgeons, which allowed for the sharing of ideas and new concepts in shoulder surgery.
In June 2018, Dr Macgroarty was invited to co-chair an International Shoulder Course in Singapore. Alongside his good friend and colleague, Professor Ian Lo from Calgary, Canada, he gave a series of lectures and facilitated in cadaver labs for surgeons from all over South East Asia.
Dr Macgroarty was recently elected as the President of the Queensland Shoulder Society at the Winter meeting in 2015. He takes over from outgoing President Dr Mark Ross.
Previously, Dr Macgroarty has served as the Secretary and Treasurer of the Society.
The new Secretary and Treasurer is Dr Ken Cutbush.
Dr Macgroarty on faculty at recent national shoulder symposium.
Dr Macgroarty was recently invited to be on faculty at the Smith and Nephew A3 Shoulder Symposium. Other members on faculty included several renowned shoulder surgeons from around Australia as well as Dr Jeff Abrams, the current president of the American Shoulder and Elbow Society.
Dr Des Bokor who was chairman for the conference invited Dr Macgroarty to speak about his experience with adolescent athletes with shoulder instability. In addition Dr Macgroarty spoke about his techniques for arthroscopic rotator cuff repair and surgical options available when massive cuff tears are not repairable.
The meeting was well attended by well over 60 delegates with great discussion about all recent and controversial shoulder topics.
Dr Macgroarty recently attended the 2 day Arthrex Mega Shoulder Conference in Melbourne held on 30-31 August 2013.
Dr Stephen Burkhart from San Antonio Texas USA and Dr Bradford Parsons from New York City were guest speakers. Latest techniques and controversies in arthroscopic shoulder surgery were discussed over the two days with an excellent local faculty.
Following the course, Dr Macgroarty, Dr John McGuire of Townsville and Dr Brad Parsons continued to discuss all aspects of shoulder surgery while visiting some of Melbourne's fantastic tourist locations.
Dr Macgroarty was delighted to participate in the recent Physiotherapy Education evening hosted by Brisbane Knee and Sports Surgery at St Andrew's hospital.
Dr Macgroarty presented his case series of patients undertaking arthroscopic reconstruction of the AC joint using the LARS ligament. Early follow up has been promising with no failures to date. Further assessment is required to confirm long term results of the technique.


(CD) — Peace leaders and international observers expressed disappointment on Thursday that President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un cut short their second summit after they reached an impasse over the easing of economic sanctions.
The talks concluded abruptly without Trump and Kim formally ending the decades-long war or finalizing a nuclear deal.
For Trump, the surprising turn of events amounted to a diplomatic failure. The president flew 20 hours to Vietnam with hopes of producing demonstrable progress toward North Korea's denuclearization, building upon his first summit meeting with Kim last summer in Singapore.
Reports from South Korea have suggested that John Bolton, Trump's hawkish national security advisor who has been skeptical about negotiations with Kim, might have played a role in the breakdown by adding demands that North Korea also report chemical and biological weapons.
That optimism about future progress was echoed by some of the disappointed peace advocates, including Liz Bernstein, executive director of Nobel Women's Initiative.
Kevin Martin, president of Peace Action and coordinator of the Korea Peace Network, called on members of Congress to back legislation introduced by Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), which urges the Trump administration to end the Korean War and craft a clear roadmap to fostering long-term peace in the region.
Ahn appeared on Democracy Now! Thursday morning to discuss the developments in Hanoi.
This post is published to LBRY blockchain at lbry://@AntiMedia/north-korea-summit-cut-short.


text:
Packages cruise
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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
Operation Varsity Blues
Former 49er Joe Montana responds on twitter about college admissions scam
SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) -- Former 49er Quarterback Joe Montana's name came up on the list of Rick Singer's clients.
Montana tweeted Thursday night, "Mr. Singer's company provided nothing more than minimal consulting services to our family, like so many other families, with the college application process. Fortunately our kids were able to pick from a number of schools to attend due to their hard work and their merit. Thanks."
Mr. Singer's company provided nothing more than minimal consulting services to our family, like so many other families, with the college application process. Fortunately our kids were able to pick from a number of schools to attend due to their hard work and their merit.
— Joseph Montana (@JoeMontana) March 15, 2019
Singer, the man at the heart of scam, spoke out through his attorney.
The attorney says Singer takes full responsibility for his actions and that he feels a great sense of relief by pleading guilty and calls it an "emotional catharsis."
Singer cooperated with authorities for six months. He helped by recording multiple conversations requested by the government.
Check out more stories and videos about Operation Varsity Blues.
san franciscooperation varsity blueslawsuitu.s. & worldscamstudents
Menlo Park mother pleads guilty in college admissions scheme
Bay Area parent pleads guilty in college admissions scandal
Menlo Park father pleads guilty in college admissions scandal
Felicity Huffman pleads guilty in college admissions scandal


Providing you the best range of golf buggy - 2 seater, 4 seater golf carts, electric buggy, passenger electric buggies, 2 seater golf cart and buggies with effective & timely delivery.
Charger 48 Volt, 25 Amp Optimised Charging.
We have specially designed the Laundry & Housekeeping Buggies for the hospitality industry, offering customized storage systems with facilities such as multi-level shelves and temperature ontrolled cabinets.
We have specially designed the Front Office Luggage Buggies for the hospitality industry. Ideal Cross over between People & Luggage Transporters.
Looking for Electric Buggy ?


text:
Defense bill prospects unclear as House prepares to override Trump's veto
by Sandra Erwin — December 27, 2020
Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.) speaks on the House floor Dec. 8, 2020. Credit: C-SPAN
Two-thirds majorities are needed in the House and Senate to overturn the president's veto and enact the bill into law.
WASHINGTON — Congressional defense committees and industry groups over the holiday break called on the House and Senate to override President Trump's Dec. 23 veto of the National Defense Authorization Act.
The NDAA for fiscal year 2021 authorizes $740 billion for national defense spending and sets policies affecting every aspect of military activities. The bill earlier this month passed both chambers with broad bipartisan support — the House voted in favor of the bill 335-78-1 and the Senate's vote was 84-13. It was sent to the president's desk Dec. 11.
The House is planning a veto override vote on Monday. Two-thirds majorities are needed in the House and Senate to overturn the veto and enact the bill into law. The Senate is expected to vote on Tuesday if the House's override vote is successful.
Trump said he rejected the NDAA because it does not repeal Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Act which shields online companies from legal liability for content posted by users. The president also objects to provisions to rename military bases that honor Confederate officers, and opposes language that restricts his power to use military construction money for other projects.
The leaders of the Senate and House Armed Services Committees are urging their colleagues to support the override.
"The NDAA has become law every year for 59 years straight because it's absolutely vital to our national security and our troops. This year must not be an exception," said Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
If the NDAA is not passed, "more than 100,000 federal employees will be deprived of paid parental leave benefits, necessary military construction projects will not move forward on schedule, and our service members who are in harm's way defending our country's principles will not have access to the hazard pay they are owed," said House Armed Services Committee Chairman Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.)
The defense committees spent nearly a year writing the NDAA and want the bill passed before the 117th Congress is sworn in at noon Jan. 3. If the override fails and the NDAA does not pass, the next Congress will take it up after it goes through the entire legislative process again.
Despite the strong bipartisan vote for the bill in the House and Senate, the veto override is not guaranteed. Democrats who voted against the NDAA might vote to overturn the presidential veto but Republicans who voted yes could end up not supporting the override.
Industry groups urged Congress to defy Trump and pass the NDAA. The Aerospace Industries Association said in a statement that the president's veto "undermines our national security preparedness and jeopardizes the jobs of Americans who make up our defense industrial base at a time when the country is in crisis."
The NDAA "cannot wait for another legislative cycle," the National Defense Industrial Association said in a Dec. 24 letter to the leaders of the defense committees. The letter said the bill includes key provisions on cybersecurity, national security strategy and resourcing that are important to the U.S. military and the defense industrial base.
The bill contains several provisions on national security space and the U.S. Space Force:
The Department of the Air Force must provide an acquisition strategy for the procurement of space systems by May 15. Congress is especially concerned about how the Space Force will accelerate procurement of next-generation technology and take advantage of commercial industry's innovations.
The secretary of the Air Force must provide a report on the selection process and criteria used to determine the permanent site for Space Command headquarters.
The Space Force is directed to start research and development projects to promote competition in the National Security Space Launch program. The bill authorizes up to $90 million in fiscal year 2021 for new R&D programs focused on launch technologies.
The Air Force has to procure commercial space domain awareness services from at least two contractors.
The Pentagon has to establish a small launch and satellite policy to ensure "responsive and reliable access to space through the processing and launch of Department of Defense small-class payloads."
The Defense Department and the intelligence community have to leverage, as much as practicable, commercial geospatial-intelligence services and acquire domestic commercial satellite imagery.
Military Policy & Politics NDAA


Today is National Ayurveda Day. We pray to God Dhanvantari, father or Ayurveda, seeking his blessings for sound health and wellbeing.
In ancient Hinduism, Dhanvantari is considered an Avatar of Vishnu. and father of medicine and health.
He is referred to as the physician of the Gods. He is also said to be the first physician and surgeon.
He is portrayed as holding the pot containing the nectar of immortality and is said to be the preserve of the world from all diseases.
The Dhanvantari mantra is recited to improve health and wellbeing.


The department along with Amherst Ambulance responded to a residence for a male party that had fallen. No injuries or hospital transport.
The department responded to the Pelham Library for a reported burning odor. Investigation found no obvious problem at this time.
The department along with Belchertown Ambulance responded to a residence for a medical alert alarm. No hospital transport, patient refusal.
Pelham Police requested the fire department and ambulance to check parties involved in multiple cars off the road do to ice conditions. No injuries or hospital transport.
The department responded with a Tanker mutual aid to the Town of Leverett for barn fire on Long Plain Road.
The department responded to a residence for a male party that had fallen in the bathroom. The patient was transported to Cooley Dickinson Hospital by Amherst Fire Dept. Ambulance.
The department responded to Quabbin Gate 12 for three hikers in the woods approx. one mile. One party suffering from exhaustion and chest pains. Pelham and State Police on scene. Amherst Fire Dept. Technical Rescue Team was requested to assist with extrication. A snowmobile was used to bring the parties out. One patient transported to Cooley Dickinson Hospital by Amherst Fire Dept. Ambulance.
The department responded to a residence for a past fall of a female party. The patient was transported to Wing Memorial by Amherst Fire Dept. Ambulance.
The department responded to a residence for a male party with difficulty breathing and chest pains. The patient was transported to Baystate Medical by Amherst Fire Dept. Ambulance.
Still Alarm: North Valley Rd.
The department responded to a residence for a gas range problem. Upon arrival found no safety issues. Service follow up recommended.


Everyone has at least one addiction. Ours are chocolate and coffee. This tee has a distinctly fashionable look, is light weight and unbelievable soft. It is the kind of t-shirt that you'll want to wear again and again especially when you are out and about with your favorite person. Comes pre-shrunk to ensure a constant size over time and multiple washes.


text:
.as is het achtervoegsel van domeinnamen in Amerikaans-Samoa. .as-domeinnamen worden uitgegeven door AS Domain Registry, dat verantwoordelijk is voor het topleveldomein 'as'.

Zie ook
 Lijst van topleveldomeinen op het internet
 ISO 3166-2:AS

Externe link
 Het domain registry voor .as-domeinen

As


text:
Reed '21: Democrats' far-left gambit will gift Trump the White House
Media by Emily Teng | The Brown Daily Herald
By Andrew Reed
February 20, 2020 | 12:30am EST
In the aftermath of the 2012 presidential election, a punch-drunk Republican party, having twice gotten its clock cleaned by the Democrats and Barack Obama, performed something of an autopsy on the Romney campaign. The result was a 100-page report titled the "Growth and Opportunity Project." The report detailed demographic changes in the American political landscape and the need for Republican candidates to speak to a swath of the electorate that they failed to reach in 2012 — primarily women and minority voters. Following this 2013 report, indications pointed to a more inclusive Republican message in 2016.
Needless to say, that didn't happen. Donald Trump took the "Growth and Opportunity" report, doused it with lighter fluid and rode the wave all the way to the nomination. Trump's campaign featured the most derogatory, tone-deaf messaging — if you can even call it that — to women and minorities that we've seen, at least in my lifetime. Trump's greatest hits of off-the-wall, cringeworthy and downright loathsome comments included suggesting women be punished for having an abortion, labeling Mexicans who crossed the border "rapists" and calling for the now-infamous Muslim ban.
Given Trump's victory in 2016, it may seem wise, or at least not politically suicidal, to take a small-tent, ideologically narrow strategy. And indeed, it appears that Democrats have chosen to ignore the lessons of 2016 and double down on the cultural identity politics that got Donald Trump elected in the first place.
Unfortunately for those of us who want to beat Trump in 2020, it's not working. One year ago today, the betting markets — our best, if imperfect indicator of Trump's chances of being reelected — had his chances of winning at 32 percent. On the day of the first Democratic debate, it was 40 percent. Today that number is 58 percent and Trump is enjoying some of the highest approval ratings of his presidency.
Perhaps even more alarming is the timing of this surge of support for Trump. Over the last few months, like most of the last three years, every network not named Fox News has pummeled Trump with a barrage of negative media, the most recent being coverage of Trump's impeachment in the House and trial in the Senate. If there was ever a time for Trump's poll numbers to take a hit, it's now. Instead, they're higher than ever.
But the Democrats' problems extend far beyond Trump's approval rating. Net-Democratic Party identification (percent Dem or Dem-leaning minus percent Rep or Rep-leaning) is down 10 percent since October. Republican Party favorability is up to 51 percent, a jump of eight points since September and the highest rating since 2005. Conversely, Democratic Party favorability dropped three points since September; it is now at 45 percent.
Clearly, since the primary campaign began, Democrats' chances of retaking the White House in 2020 have markedly decreased. And it's primarily because they have done nothing to address the failures of the 2016 race. Instead of speaking to working-class voters who overwhelmingly went for Trump in 2016, they've made the gap wider than ever. So, for those of us who want to get Trump out of the White House as soon as possible, it's time to sound the alarms.
The focus of the Democratic primary thus far has been debating a series of far-left policies and casting those who disagree with them as being in some way morally inferior, uncaring or behind-the-times. Rather than simply swapping out the current president for a steady hand to guide the already humming economy, the progressive wing of the Democratic Party has been talking about structural change — how the current society is a system of oppression and must be destroyed. Rather than addressing the issues that working-class voters actually care about, progressive Democratic candidates like Bernie Sanders are trying to counter "Make America Great Again" with "actually, America was never really that great to begin with." Let's just say that the latter is harder to print on a hat.
But even more alarming is that this far-left faction, their aggressive (to put it mildly) supporters and the media have forced every other Democrat to play defense. Rather than engage in a discussion of the merits of their own plans, every issue has been framed in the binary: for Medicare for All or against it, for the Green New Deal or against it. Moderate candidates have spent more time defending their opposition to these plans than actually articulating their own. Consequently, many of those candidates decided early on that moving to the left was a far easier strategy than constantly fighting off the ad hominem attacks of keyboard-wielding Bernie Bros.
All of this has benefitted President Trump — who, I'm sure, sits gleefully in front of the television as he watches Sanders rail against every industry known to man: Wall Street, pharma, gun manufacturers, the fossil fuel industry, defense, Big Tech — the list goes on. Is this the kind of big-tent, tolerant politics-of-addition that liberals have long claimed to embody? These kinds of lines may play well on college campuses — but where the Dems actually need to secure support, particularly in the suburbs of the post-industrial Midwest, they fall on deaf ears.
Sanders is currently second in delegates and has overtaken the faltering Joe Biden in national polls. But, if Bernie is the Democratic nominee, he's in for an uphill battle against Trump, who would welcome an opportunity to run against the self-proclaimed socialist. Trump may be a political neophyte, but even he knows what apparently Sanders does not — which is that once you say America is "a racist society, top to bottom," people in middle America no longer care about your 12-point plan to fix the health care system or your position on criminal justice reform. Trump is banking on running against a woke, tear-it-all-down Democrat. And, honestly, it's looking like a good bet.
Andrew Reed '21 can be reached at andrew_reed@brown.edu. Please send responses to this opinion to letters@browndailyherald.com and op-eds to opinions@browndailyherald.com.
Barnett '24: Metaverse: the next frontier
McGough '23: A return to normalcy: repoliticizing America
Editorial: Brown is back


text:
News Singson Appeals for Urgent Action from Sanggunians: "DESPITE PROGRESS, CHILDREN ARE DEPRIVED OF BASIC RIGHTS"- UNICEF
Philippine Councilors League National President Luis "Chavit" Singson said, "The councilors can pass ordinances and resolutions to uplift the condition of children- being the most vulnerable and marginalized members in our society".
On 9 October 2018 at Novotel Araneta Center in Quezon City, United Nations Children's Fund organized a forum participated by national government agencies like DSWD, NEDA, Galing Pook Foundation, Quezon City Government, Non-Government Organizations, organizations of elected local officials (Leagues) and the media. UNICEF presented the current plight of children in the Philippines. During the said event, Ms. Lotta Sylwander of UNICEF reported the following facts:
3 out of 10 Filipino children still live below the poverty line while in ARMM, the statistics is 6.5 out of 10;
Millions have no access to clean drinking water;
In the year 2015, only 62% received their immunization and only 18% in ARMM;
Between 2011 to 2015, there is a 230% increase in HIV cases among Filipino adolescents and teenagers;
2 out of 3 children are victims of physical violence at home/school;
Philippines became a destination listed 1 out of top 10 producing online sexual content using children;
1 out of 4 children age 13 to 17 years old are victims of sexual violence and abuse.
Singson, Ilocos Sur Governor for almost thirty years, lauds the current programs of the national government with UNICEF providing its remarkable assistance nevertheless he said, "The Sanggunian Members can strengthen the current approach being familiar with the condition of children in their respective localities. Just like the senators and congressmen, our prime responsibility is legislation. We can approve policies, projects and appropriate funds to uplift the children's condition", he explained.
"The country faces these social challenges. I personally urge my colleagues in PCL to pass ordinances on building a pro-child environment, promoting the needs and rights of children, capacity building of government workers for children and assisting in the massive information dissemination on children's rights, gender sensitivity and other intervention programs. As the National President, I humbly open our League for recommendations on how we can effectively function on this matter", Singson concluded.


Dress and adornment- personal adornment and Ritual Regalia. Rectangular with fully applique stitch beaded cloth front, double hourglass design in orange with cut iridescent purple outlines and extensions, diamond between hourglasses is green, side stepped triangles in checkerboard pattern using red, yellow and cut iridescent purple; background is cut clear/blue hearts; side and bottom edges are bound with cut clear and cut iridescent purple; top front edge is bound in cut iridescent purple with boxes dropping into background. Back is olive green wool machine quilted to lining in narrow vertical rows, upper back has 2 machine quilted to lining in narrow vertical rows, upper back has 2 machine embroidered white longhorn steer heads appliqued to it and trimmed with cut iridescent bead eyes and cut red bead nostrils; lining is pink twill cloth; buckskin thong handles tacked inside upper back and front.


The Last Dance in Havanna begins on a steamy night in Cuba, 1958. This is where Elisa meets Duardo for the first time and where they dance the sensuous rumba. It becomes a night that neither of them will forget, but can their love stand the test of time? Fast forward to 2012 and Grace isn't sure what she wants in life, her husband desperately wants them to have a baby and she thinks she's developing feelings for her Cuban best friend Theo. Grace needs to decide where her happiness lies.
The opening chapter of Last Dance in Havanna drew me in to this beautifully imagined story instantly. I have never known a writer to describe a dance so well that it was almost as if I was watching it. I don't think I will look at a Rumba in the same way again.
With a split narrative between characters, we are constantly transported between Bristol and Cuba. I have been to neither, but through Rosanna's absolutely stunning and detailed descriptions I now feel like I have experienced both. During the times we 'were' in Cuba I could feel the heat and the dusty landscape and the history behind the country. The vibrancy and friendliness that is depicted tells you why people continue to go back, I surprisingly learnt so much about this country from the fantastic research that Rosanna has put into this evocative tale. It was not a country I had ever considered going to before, but thanks to Rosanna, I know must make sure I go there in my lifetime.
Although this book was beautifully written and I can't deny how eloquent Rosanna's writing is, but I did feel like the story could have been wrapped up a bit earlier than it was. Maybe that's just me being impatient to come to some sort of conclusion, but I did feel like that a few times. Also sometimes I couldn't quite handle the frustration of some of the characters decisions, but again just me.
Still a beautiful and evocative tale, that will transport you to the vibrant world of Cuba.


text:
is a Japanese singer, songwriter, actress and radio host.

After releasing her first single, "Eternal Memories" (1999), Crystal Kay gained fame for her third studio album, Almost Seventeen (2002), which debuted at number 2 on the Japanese Oricon charts. Almost Seventeen eventually sold over 400,000 copies and was certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of Japan. Crystal Kay, formerly signed to Epic Records, a sub-label of Sony Music Japan for 12 years, suddenly transferred to Delicious Deli Records, a sub-label of Universal Music Japan in 2011.

As of April 2021, she has released thirteen albums. Her seventh studio album, All Yours (2007) became Crystal Kay's only number-one release in her career when it debuted on top of the Oricon chart in June 2007. Crystal Kay has sold over two million records in Japan as of 2009. Throughout her career, Crystal Kay has collaborated with M-Flo and BoA, Chemistry as well as other well-known recording artists.

Early life and beginnings
Crystal Kay was born and raised in Yokohama in Kanagawa Prefecture to a Korean-Japanese mother and an African-American father. Her father was a bassist from New Jersey and a sailor in the United States Navy stationed in Yokosuka, Japan. Her mother was a 23-year-old professional singer with one album while her father played music as a hobby. As a child, Crystal Kay met artists such as Diana Ross and Bobby Brown through her parents taking her to shows.

Crystal Kay previously attended Kinnick High School and Sophia University. She also studied the Korean language in Seoul, learning how to read and write hangul.

Although she is of Korean heritage, Crystal does not speak Korean and considers herself to be Japanese. Crystal Kay is fluent in English and Japanese, the latter influencing and making a regular appearance in her songs. She has also studied French. Crystal Kay has cited Janet Jackson, Aaliyah and Michael Jackson as her biggest influences. In Japan she cites the acts of producer Tetsuya Komuro as her J-pop influences, particularly Speed and Namie Amuro.

Recording career

1999–2001: Debut and subsequent image change
Crystal Kay began singing for TV commercials as child from the age of 4. At the age of twelve, Crystal Kay signed to the label Epic Records in Japan when a jingle she recorded for TV CM for Vitamin water garnered attention. One year later the jingle was expanded into her debut single "Eternal Memories", on July 1, 1999. Despite peaking at number 47, "Eternal Memories" has since become Crystal Kay's eighth best-selling single. 1999 saw the release of two more singles, "Teenage Universe (Chewing Gum Baby)" on September 8 and "Komichi no Hana" on November 3, the former peaking at number 47 and the latter at number 80.

Crystal Kay's first studio album, C.L.L Crystal Lover Light was released on March 23, 2000. This album is noted by fans to have a more indie and acoustic feel as opposed to her later albums which mainly come under the genres of pop and R&B. Crystal Kay was only 14 years old when this album was released.

C.L.L Crystal Lover Light debuted at number 60 on the Oricon charts. A fourth single was released on the same day as C.L.L Crystal Lover Light, "Shadows of Desire". Because of its release date it became Crystal Kay's first single to fail to chart. "Shadows of Desire" was Crystal Kay's first A-side to be sung entirely in English.

After a year-long period of inactivity, Crystal Kay returned to the music scene with the single "Lost Child". The single, which was a collaboration with Shinichi Osawa and Hiroshi Fujiwara was released on February 15, 2001, and reached number 55 on its debut week. Despite Crystal Kay only being credited as a featured artist on the song, it was still featured on her next album, 637: Always and Forever. Her fifth single "Girl's Night" came three months later on May 9, 2001. The single saw the introduction of urban influences in Crystal Kay's music. Despite this new style, the single peaked at number 100. One of the b-sides, "Make Me Whole" was a cover of the Amel Larrieux song of the same name. Crystal Kay's next single, "Ex-Boyfriend", was released on July 4, 2001. It featured rapper Verbal of M-Flo. The single was a success for Crystal Kay, peaking at number 44, and became her best selling single at the time of its release. Crystal Kay released her sophomore effort on August 22, 2001, 637: Always and Forever. The album became Crystal Kay's first album to reach the top twenty of the Oricon chart when it debuted at number 19, and sold 15,640 copies in its first week. Crystal Kay finished off 2001 with her seventh single, "Think of U", released on November 28, 2001. The single was Christmas-themed. It debuted and peaked at number 60.

2002–2006: Rise in popularity
Nine months after her last single, Crystal Kay released her eighth single, "Hard to Say", on August 7, 2002, and sold over double than her previous best selling single, "Ex-Boyfriend". It became her first top thirty single when it debuted peaked at number 26 on the Oricon chart. The single was followed by the release of Crystal Kay's next single "Girl U Love" and her third studio album Almost Seventeen, on October 23, 2002. Almost Seventeen became Crystal Kay's breakthrough album, exceeding expectations and debuting at number 2 on the charts behind Mai Kuraki, selling 51,360 in its first week. The album spent a year on the charts, quickly being certified platinum by RIAJ. Three months later Crystal Kay released "Boyfriend (Part II)" on January 22, 2003. It peaked at number 23. Her next single came five months later, and was another collaboration with M-Flo. The single, called "I Like It", was released as "Crystal Kay loves m-flo" and was notably the first in a long-running hit series for m-flo. It was also Crystal Kay's first top ten hit.

"I Like It" peaked at number 8, becoming Crystal Kay's first top ten hit and eventually sold around 50,000 copies. Another single, "Candy" was released a month before her fourth studio album, 4 Real, on October 22, 2003. "Candy" debuted inside the top thirty of the Oricon charts at number 21, her fourth single in-a-row to do so. 4 Real was released on November 27, 2003, along with Crystal Kay's thirteenth single, "Can't Be Stopped". 4 Real debuted at number 6 on the charts behind household names in Japan such as Aiko, Do As Infinity and Mika Nakashima and sold 86,310 copies in its first week.

Crystal Kay's first English-language album, Crystal Kay (released as Natural: World Premiere Album in Japan), was released several weeks before 4 Real on November 7, 2003, in Asian territories including South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Thailand. The album was her first to be released outside Japan, and compiled English language songs from her previously released albums and singles, such covers of Gladys Knight, Cyndi Lauper and Judy Garland songs.

On May 12, 2004, released her fourteenth single, "Motherland", the first of two that year. "Motherland" was used as the third ending theme for the anime adaption of Fullmetal Alchemist. It was the ending theme from episodes 26 to 41. The single debuted at number 9 on the Oricon chart, her second single to debut in the top ten. Just under two months after "Motherland", Crystal Kay released her first compilation album, CK5, which was released on June 30, 2004, featuring a selection of tracks from Crystal Kay's four previous studio albums, as well as her latest single, "Motherland". The album celebrates Crystal Kay's fifth anniversary since the release of her debut single "Eternal Memories" in 1999, hence the title. CK5 peaked at number 2 on the weekly chart and charted for 49 weeks, eventually being certified platinum by RIAJ. Another single, "Bye My Darling!" was released on November 17, and peaked at number 40 on the Oricon chart. It was Crystal Kay's final release of 2004.

The single "Kiss" started off 2005 for Crystal Kay. It was released on January 26, 2005, and peaked at number 10 on the Oricon chart. The single had longevity at eventually became her second best-selling single. "Kiss" was the CM song for NTT DoCoMo "Music Porter". "Kiss" was written by the same songwriter of the ballad "Yuki no Hana" by Mika Nakashima. Crystal Kay's fifth studio album, Crystal Style followed two months later on March 2, 2005. The album debuted at number 2 and sold 296,756 copies. The album was the 44th best-selling album of 2005 in Japan.

Crystal Kay released her seventeenth single, "Koi ni Ochitara", on May 18, 2005, which was used as the theme song for the drama Koi ni Ochitara: Boku no Seikō no Himitsu. The single is currently the best-selling single of her career, selling 295,456 copies, and Crystal Kay has sai that it changed the focus of her career away from R&B and towards J-Pop. In its first week it sold 73,717 copies, in its second week it dropped to number 4 and sold 51,546 copies, and in the third week it fell one place to number 5, selling a further 38,302 copies. Crystal Kay's next single was a collaboration with the R&B duo Chemistry called "Two as One". The single was released on October 5, 2005, and peaked at number 2 on the Oricon charts, much like "Koi ni Ochitara" earlier that year. "Two as One" was released as Crystal Kay × Chemistry.

On February 8, 2006, Crystal Kay released "Kirakuni" / "Together", her nineteenth single and the second A-side to be sung entirely in English. This single was recorded in the U.S. with producers Jam & Lewis, who are known for working with the likes of Crystal Kay's idol Janet Jackson and Mariah Carey. Crystal Kay has stated that working with them was the personal highlight of her career and was landed on Crystal Kay as a surprise by her management. The recording took place over a hectic 3 nights in Los Angeles.

The second A-side "Together" was used as the theme song in Japan for the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin. The single debuted at number 27. Two weeks later Crystal Kay released her sixth studio album Call Me Miss... on February 22, 2006. In its first week, Call Me Miss... debuted at number 2 on the Oricon chart as well as number 9 on the World Album Chart, selling 116,050 copies that week. It has since been certified platinum by RIAJ and was the 50th best selling album of 2006 in Japan.

2007–2008: First number-one and decline in sales
After about a year's break, Crystal Kay released the single "Kitto Eien ni" on January 17, 2007. "Kitto Eien ni" was used as the ending theme of the film Boku wa Imōto ni Koi o Suru, starring Jun Matsumoto. The single debuted at number 12 and charted for seven weeks, selling 19,615 copies. Crystal Kay's twenty-first single, "Konna ni Chikaku de...", was released on February 28, 2007. It was used as the ending theme to the anime adaption of the manga Nodame Cantabile. The single debuted at number 14 on the Oricon chart and charted for eight weeks, selling 15,158 copies to date. "Konna ni Chikaku de..." was performed live for the special Nodame Orchestra concert at the Tokyo International Forum on the single's release date. Another single, "Anata no Soba de", was released on May 16, 2007. The single only featured one track and thus was sold at the lower price of ¥525 in Japan. This single was the CM song for Menard Facial Salon. Crystal Kay released her seventh studio album All Yours a month later on June 20, 2007.

The album's theme was love. The track "Lonely Girl" was featured on the Japanese airings of the American dramatic television series Lost and featured on the soundtrack to the third series in Japan. The second track on All Yours, "Dream World", was used to promote the "Barista's Special" for Tully's Coffee. The album debuted at number 1, selling 51,211 copies in its first week. All Yours was Crystal Kay's first number one release. The album has sold 136,841 copies and charted for nine weeks.

On November 28, 2007, Crystal Kay released her first EP, Shining. The EP had a Christmas theme and featured the title track "Shining" as well as a second new track "Snowflake" and the previously released tracks "Happy 045 Xmas" and "No More Blue Christmas", originally featured on Natural: World Premiere Album. It debuted at number 21 on the Oricon chart. "Shining" was used as the CM song for "PARCO X'MAS 2007" throughout the Christmas period. Crystal Kay also starred in the commercial, in which she was seen "flying" on a reindeer.

On March 3, 2008, it was revealed that Crystal Kay was chosen to sing the theme song to the 2008 Pokémon film Giratina to Sora no Hanataba: Sheimi. She also played the voice of "Nurse Joy's Chansey" in the film. The film's producers had apparently been considering the singer since 2001, when she sang "Lost Child" with Shinichi Osawa and Hiroshi Fujiwara for the soundtrack of the film Satorare. As expected a single was released. However, it was not the recently announced Pokémon theme song, but a different single entitled "Namida no Saki ni". "Namida no Saki ni" was released on June 11, 2008. It was Crystal Kay's first single in over a year, since the release of the single "Anata no Soba de" on May 16, 2007. "Namida no Saki" was used as the CM song for Tully's Coffee commercials throughout June 2008. This song exhibited a new, pop-rock sound for the singer. The single debuted at number 29 on the Oricon daily chart and eventually debuted at number 42 on the weekly chart. To date, the single has sold 3,587 copies. One month later on July 16, 2008, the Pokémon single, "One", was finally released. "One" debuted at number 25 on the daily chart and debuted at number 32 on the weekly chart, selling 2,237 copies. To date, "One" has sold 6,522 copies.

Crystal Kay graduated in sociology from Sophia University in 2008, allowing her to concentrate on her career full-time.

For her eighth studio album Color Change! Crystal Kay had songs produced by Bloodshy & Avant and Jam & Lewis. Crystal Kay had previously worked with Jam & Lewis in 2006. The album was released on August 6, 2008. The title Color Change! reflected from Crystal Kay's graduation from Sophia University that year. Color Change! peaked at number 6 on the Oricon daily chart and number 8 on the weekly chart, selling 15,519 copies in its first week. The album sold 33,290 copies after seven weeks on the charts. Color Change! was eventually certified gold by RIAJ. Color Change! was the 289th best selling album of 2008 in Japan.

2009–2010: Ten years in the industry
On February 18, 2009, Crystal Kay was a featured artist with Verbal of M-Flo on the song "Universe" with South Korean singer BoA from her single Eien/Universe/Believe in Love. The single peaked at number 8 and has sold 21,789 copies. On May 15, 2009, it was announced that Crystal Kay and Jin Akanishi, from the boyband KAT-TUN, had written a duet called "Wonder". The song was first performed by Akanishi on the KAT-TUN's concert tour in 2009. This was the second time that Crystal Kay sang with him, the first being during her second appearance on KAT-TUN's variety show, Cartoon KAT-TUN.

On August 12, 2009, Crystal Kay released her twenty-fourth single, "After Love (First Boyfriend)" / "Girlfriend". The single was announced on Crystal Kay's official website on July 1, 2009, which marks the tenth anniversary since the release of Crystal Kay's debut single in 1999. "After Love (First Boyfriend)" features Kaname from the J-pop duo Chemistry. "After Love (First Boyfriend)" is a follow up to Crystal Kay's 2003 single "Boyfriend (Part II)" and used as the CM song for Tully's Coffee commercials throughout July 2009.

"After Love" was written by Craig McConnell and Canadian artist Shobha, with Japanese lyrics by Crystal Kay. "Girlfriend", featuring the Korean artist BoA with whom Crystal Kay is reportedly close friends, was used as the image song for the Japanese dubbed release of the feature film He's Just Not That Into You starring Jennifer Aniston and Ben Affleck. The single's b-side, "Deaeta Kiseki", was released digitally in December 2008 and was also used as the CM song for Tully's Coffee that month. "After Love (First Boyfriend)" / "Girlfriend" was Crystal Kay's second double A-side single, and her first since "Kirakuni" / "Together" in 2006. The single landed on the Oricon Daily Chart at peak position number 21 and on the Oricon Weekly Chart at number 31.

On September 2, 2009, Crystal Kay released her second compilation album, entitled Best of Crystal Kay. The collection featured over thirty tracks from her discography. Best of Crystal Kay was also released with a "limited edition" disc containing four new songs, including "Step by Step", produced by Yasutaka Nakata of Capsule. It was used as the theme song for "Janguru Taitei" which aired from September 5, 2009. Another new song, entitled "Over and Over" will also be in the CD. It is currently used in a commercial for NTT's "Live On FLET'S". Crystal Kay did not star in this advert. "Over and Over" was produced by Taku Takahashi of M-Flo. The fourth track "Helpless Night" is a collaboration between Crystal Kay and Jin Akanishi of KAT-TUN and is performed almost entirely in English.

The collection debuted at number 2 on the Oricon Daily Chart, and sold almost 30,000 copies that day alone, and ultimately dropped to number 3 on the Weekly Chart, behind Superfly's Box Emotions and the second week sales of Arashi's All the Best! 1999–2009. It sold 87,669 copies that week. This is Crystal Kay's best peak position on the Oricon Chart since All Yours in 2007, as well as her best first week sales since Call Me Miss... in 2006. Crystal Kay finished off the year by releasing her first remix album The Best Remixes of CK on December 16, 2006.

In 2010, Crystal Kay starred in her first role in a drama series. She played the character of Kokusho Akira, a genius hacker who has carried out many crimes all over the world in the Nippon Television drama Hidarime Tantei Eye, which stars Hey! Say! JUMP member Ryosuke Yamada. The drama began airing on January 23, 2010.

On February 24, Crystal Kay released a brand new song, "Flash" on Recochoku Chaku-Uta. "Flash" was featured in the commercial for Canon IXY Digital cameras, which began airing on February 19. Crystal Kay also released a new song called "Victoria". It was being used as the commercial song for Tully's Coffee. Both of these new songs were featured in Crystal Kay's second mini album Flash, which was released on June 16. The mini album also included a tribute to Michael Jackson, and a song written by herself. She also released Crystal Kay Live In NHK Hall: 10th Anniversary Tour CK10 on the same day. It will be her first concert DVD.

On June 22, it was announced that Crystal Kay would sing both the opening and ending theme songs, "Time of Love" and "Cannonball" respectively, to the NHK drama Jūnen Saki mo Kimi ni Koishite, starring Aya Ueto. The drama began airing on August 31. Crystal Kay released her next single "Journey (Kimi to Futari de)" on November 24, followed by her ninth studio album on December 8.

2011–present: Transfer to Universal
Crystal Kay's Spin the Music tour was planned to have nine shows across Japan starting February 5 and ending March 29. Her tour was cancelled after she went to the hospital complaining of sickness and was diagnosed with Acute Nephritis. Crystal Kay was advised not to go on with the tour in order to rest and recover from her illness. Her record label offered refunds through the tour's website. Crystal Kay later performed at the August 2011 MTV Zushi Fes music festival.

On April 29, 2011, Crystal Kay held a Q&A on her blog and answered her fans' questions, with one question regarding a possible Korean debut. Considering her mother is of Korean ancestry, she has stated: "I can speak just a teeny bit of Korean (lol). My reading and writing are perfect, but learning vocabulary is sooo hard! It's no good that I don't do listening or speaking. I'll think about a Korean debut! I'd like to be able to sing in Korean."

On October 5, 2011, Universal Music Group subsidiary label Delicious Deli Records posted an announcement that after twelve years Crystal Kay had left Sony Music Japan and signed to them.

In 2012, Crystal Kay recorded a cover of "Eyes on Me" for the "FINAL FANTASY Orchestra Album", becoming the latest in a series of notable artists to cover the song, including Angela Aki, MayBee and Kanon.

On February 14, 2014, she officially released her US debut music video via MTV Iggy, "Busy Doing Nothing".

In 2019, she starred as "Leading Player" in the Japanese version of the Broadway musical Pippin, for which she was awarded by the 27th Yomiyuri Theater Awards as best actress.

In spring 2020, she will play the role of "Motormouth Maybelle" in the Japanese version of the musical Hairspray. On March 17, it was announced that Crystal Kay would release her first cover album in fall 2020. "March 9", a beloved graduation song in Japan, was pre-released on March 18 as the first track of the album. On April 24, the musical Hairspray was cancelled due to COVID-19 pandemic in Japan.

Influence
Crystal Kay is considered a pioneer for interracial acts in Japan. She debuted in 1999 when R&B began to take off in Japan thanks to local acts MISIA, Double and Hikaru Utada. Her success paved the way for the mainstream success of many mixed-race artists in the mid-2000s (decade) such as Thelma Aoyama and African-American/Japanese enka singer Jero.

Personal life
In 2009, Crystal Kay said, "There is still some racial thing going on, [but] people are getting used to it. You can see a lot more mixed people on TV, and even (among) models in magazines." At a summer festival that year, the half-Japanese half-Papua New Guinean singer Emi Maria left Crystal Kay a demo and a note saying, "You're my idol, I'm sad I couldn't meet you in person." Nevertheless, Crystal Kay has said, "I consider myself a Japanese artist because I was born and raised here, but nationality-wise I look, and am, foreign."

Crystal Kay holds American citizenship.

Discography

 C.L.L Crystal Lover Light (2000)
 637: Always and Forever (2001)
 Almost Seventeen (2002)
 4 Real (2003)
 Crystal Style (2005)
 Call Me Miss... (2006)
 All Yours (2007)
 Color Change! (2008)
 Spin the Music (2010)
 Vivid (2012)
 Shine (2015)
 For You (2018)
 I Sing'' (2021)

Filmography

References

External links

 Crystal Kay's official website
 Old Crystal Kay's official website
 Crystal Kay Oricon profile
 Universal Music profile

 Official Blog

 Ameblo Blog
 Official Twitter

1986 births
Living people
Japanese film actresses
Japanese television actresses
Japanese child singers
English-language singers from Japan
Japanese women rock singers
Japanese women pop singers
Epic Records artists
Musicians from Yokohama
Japanese actresses of Korean descent
Japanese rhythm and blues singers
Universal Music Japan artists
Sony Music Entertainment Japan artists
Sophia University alumni
Japanese people of African-American descent
21st-century Japanese actresses
Japanese voice actresses
Musicians from Kanagawa Prefecture
20th-century Japanese women singers
20th-century Japanese singers
21st-century Japanese women singers
21st-century Japanese singers
LDH (company) artists
Fantasy on Ice guest artists


The countdown to Notifiable Data Breaches (NDB) is on. Time is creeping up on us before Australia's new Privacy Amendment Act 2017 settles into place. The new legislation comes into effect from 22 February 2018, and with it new implications for businesses that don't have their security in order.
Concerningly many businesses do not seem to be prepared; in a recent poll of over 100 Australian IT professionals, 58 per cent did not have a data protection task force in their organisation and 60 per cent hadn't even read the NDB amendment. Just 13 per cent had an NDB strategy planned.
Not only will businesses that experience breaches be required to notify authorities, they'll be thrust into the spotlight as they inform individuals whose data may be at risk. It could mean serious reputation damage and erode the trust of consumers.
While data breach laws are not new by any means, they are to the majority of Australian businesses. The changes will bring Australia in line with other nations around the world that have long had mandatory data breach laws. The US state of California has had data breach laws since 2003, while Europeans will see the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) come into effect in May 2018.
Importantly, NDB will affect all organisations and customers globally that have dealings with companies in Australia. Almost all significantly sized Australian businesses must comply.
What do the NDB laws include?
NDB will require any public sector organisations private sector organisations with annual turnover over $3 million and other organisations that are already required by the Privacy Act to keep information secure, such as health care providers and NGOs, to disclose a data breach that is likely to result in serious harm to any individual whom the information relates.
Serious harm can be a tricky concept to interpret in the context of data. Under the scheme, it's subjective; serious harm will be assessed depending on the type of information, its sensitivity, its protection and who exactly got hold of it. Harm can include identity theft, financial loss or threat to physical safety; if leaked data from your organisation is used to fraudulently set up credit cards under the persons names, this could fall under multiple types of serious harm.
We've already seen how data breaches can impact share prices. Ultimately, NDB could cause harm to an organisation's bottom line too if they can't keep their data in check.
A critical first step for all organisations is to establish a clear picture of where sensitive personal data lives and determine who has access to these systems and services and if it's all tracked. Location includes geographic, such as in a data centre, and virtual environments like cloud. Organisations that still use physical storage, including old hard drives or servers, should be keeping tabs on what data is kept in them and its sensitivity and security.
The more places you can find data, the higher the risk of a breach. For example, you wouldn't keep personal documentation such as birth certificates, passports or marriage certificates stored haphazardly around the house. Data should be consolidated and kept in as few locations as possible.
Reducing the number of environments and disparate systems containing sensitive data helps streamline business' compliance efforts to keep them on the front foot of security.
The reality for organisations nowadays is that breaches happen; it's not a matter of if but when. Protecting yourself for a worst-case scenario by encrypting means that when data is breached it's useless without the key. For organisations facing NDB compliance, robustly encrypted data could help them escape the 'serious harm' definition within the legislation. Essentially, businesses would no longer have to disclose the breach as the effects would be negligible.
When you move house it's ideal to change the locks; who knows how many pairs are floating around in the hands of ex-owners or renters. Managing access, be it to a house or a system, is essential to lower risks. The fewer people who have access and the more you can verify who they are, the more secure your data will be. Weak, static credentials are frequently reported as a tool used to gain access to sensitive resources or launch a full-blown data breach. Strong multi-factor authentication is key to protecting resources and eliminating vulnerability.
It's time for businesses to get familiar with details of the NDB as there's now less than 100 days until the legislation comes into play. It's imperative to consult professionals who can get you on the path to compliance. Preparation now will ensure your business is in the best position when the laws come into effect, adding security not only to your data but to your reputation and bottom line.


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La Vie Boheme: A History of Burning Man, 2000
a lecture by Larry Harvey
at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis
February 24, 2000.
(Photo by Stewart Harvey, 2001)
I was born in 1948, at the beginning of the baby boom, and my lifetime has spanned the last half of the 20th century. One of my earliest memories is a trip my family took to visit my uncle in LA. There I discovered three things: smog, TV, and Velveeta cheese.
I grew out of my taste for Velveeta, and I've chosen to live in a place that has very little smog. But the effects of television have been less avoidable. I remember standing on my uncle's deck and gazing out across the rooftops, and mounted on each roof was an antenna. Together they formed a kind of haze, a solid substrate beneath the polluted air. It stretched as far as I could see all the way to the horizon, and each of these antennas represented a TV. The great national seance had begun.
I was too young to know it, but the last half of the century in America represented a time of momentous changes. The war effort of the 40s had gradually increased our countries industrial capacity, and with it buying power had increased among the masses. The war produced other changes too. Bureaucrats and businessmen alike learned to plan on a continental, indeed an international scale. A vast market for goods and services was being created, and as this post-war economic expansion progressed, as freeways spanned the countryside, and automation boosted productivity, a new kind of consumer society was born.
The new economy was based on marketing, and television was its medium. Television made it possible to reach the masses on a massive scale. Television employed moving images. A more seductive stimulus than radio, it supplanted the mind's eye. It was capable of inducing among millions of people a kind of hypnoidal trance which left the viewer uniquely receptive to the power of suggestion. It gave new scope and potency to advertising. This power to communicate was creating not only a quantitative difference in the amount of advertising produced, it was creating a qualitative change in the type of messages conveyed. Marketers had discovered what is now a truism. It's more profitable to sell the package than the product. It's far more effective to sell the yearned for affect that attaches to a product than to tout the actual advantages conferred by any good. It is an excellent tactic for producing immediate sales, but more importantly, it engages a limitless appetite.
I play a game with my son. I turn off the sound of commercials on TV, and then we guess what is being sold. The results are oftentimes astonishing. Images of security and happiness, pride and potency, community and love glide smoothly across the screen. Very typically it's only at the end that you discover that these imagined mental states are attached to a brand of cheese, automobile or an oil company.
This wondrous alchemy whereby spiritual values and materials things are transmuted into vicarious experience, an experience of spectacle, is the byproduct of a process we call commodification. Now I looked up the word commodification in my old edition of Webster's Collegiate as I prepared for this speech, only to discover that it was not in common usage in 1973, which isn't surprising. For it is only in the last 25 years or so that we have had enough perspective to discover what has overcome us.
The commodification of our culture, as representing a final phase of late 20th century capitalism, has only gradually become apparent, and even now the scale of its effects on our society are not well understood. Had I known this when I scanned that sea of television antennas many years ago, I would have realized that beneath each roof in every house, there existed people held in isolation from the world at large. Like those famous prisoners in Plato's cave, these internees are given only spectral shadows to experience. They stare steadily at entertaining images and by degrees mistake them for palpable things and real experience. Gnawed by an incessant appetite, a boundless hunger for spectacle and it's ambiguous promise of satisfaction, they endure this vicarious state from day to day, from year to year, now throughout entire lifetimes, in a state of isolation from the sunlit world and from one another.
Modern demographics have also affected the subtlety of this image making. It wasn't until the 1970s that I seem to have heard the word lifestyle being used. A lifestyle, with its panoply of status coded goods, is a commodified version of what we used to call a way of life. Marketers have learned to sort us into separate stalls like cattle in a feed lot. Using focus groups, it's endlessly possible to invent new and appealing lifestyles which give us the illusion we are making lifestyle statements and are members of imaginary peer groups. That these fashions require no participation in the life of a community is not the concern of the merchant. We have become a nation of posers. It's not a life that's lived or shared, but an imitation of life, a kind of commercial for self. It's as if we ourselves are now TVs and broadcast images. Politicians are purveyed to us by means of focus groups and polls, and in our political and social life, the personal and private realm, the specific realm of consumption, is displacing the public world altogether. Neighborhoods that once formed public meeting grounds and centers of community are now engulfed by sprawl, and in reaction we take refuge in the security of gated communities. Our entire public environment, in fact, is being redesigned for the sole purpose of facilitating anonymous acts of consumption. Multiplexes and mega-malls now stud the urban landscape, and commercial advertising proliferates like a virus. It pervades and fills every gap and leisure moment of our lives. It speaks to us from the sides of buses and in classrooms. It is inserted into movies and it dances at the corners of computer screens. "What will you do next?", we ask our heroes in their shining moments of glory, and they tell us, "I'm going to Disneyland."
America is now wealthier than at any other time in its history, yet all around us and within us a feeling of lurking anomie persists. Like that scratchy sensation at the back of your throat, that shudder down your spine when you feel the flu coming on, and symptoms of this deep unease pervade our society. The spread of materialistic values has contributed to a moral coarsening and a growing cynicism in our country. Within a manipulative world all motives seem venal, all efforts illusory. But at a deeper level, it is the commodifying of imagination itself, the moral passivity, the social isolation, the angst that is generated by living in a solipsistic world of fraudulent satisfactions that is producing the greatest evil.
When children addicted to video games slaughter other children with automatic weapons, and do this in the style of video games, we know that something tragic is occurring. Critics call for better values, as if values were something that could be advertised and sold. And yet to even entertain a moral value one must first be someone in a world beyond one's self. We're suffering the symptoms of narcissistic injury. The vital here and there of spiritual experience is disappearing from our world. It's dissolving into vicarious spectacle. The world, in some nauseating fashion, no longer appears to belong to itself.
We need some deep and drastic therapy to break this spell. We need to reestablish contact with our inner selves. We need to reinvent a public world. We need immediate connection to the natural world of vital need. And this is where my work and the experiment called Burning Man comes in.
Imagine you are put upon a desert plain, a space which is so vast and blank that only your initiative can make of it a place. Imagine it is swept by fearsome winds and scorching temperatures, and only by your effort can you make of it a home. Imagine you're surrounded by thousands of other people, that together you form a city, and that within this teeming city there is nothing that's for sale.
These challenging conditions represent the chief appeal of our utopian experiment. Since its founding in the Nevada desert in 1990, Black Rock City has grown from a hamlet of 80 people into a five square mile civic entity complete with a fire department, two daily newspapers, over 20 radio stations, a department of public works. [whistles] In 1999 its boulevards and avenues were thronged by a population of over 23,000 people. This elaborate urban infrastructure has been described by the London Observer as a, "beautifully zoned tentopolis designed with a precision of which the Renaissance city state idealists would approve".
This city that arises annually and disappears without a trace occurs in an extraordinary setting. The Black Rock desert is an empty void. Not a bird or bush or bump disturb its surface. It is a place that is no place at all apart from what we choose to make of it. Think of it as a vast blank slate, or better yet, think of it as a sort of movie screen upon which every citizen of Black Rock City is encouraged to project some aspect of their inner selves. This novel use of nothingness elicits a superabundant production of spectacle. But it is spectacle with a difference. We have, in fact, reversed the process of spectation by inviting every citizen to create a vision and contribute it to a public environment. We call this process radical self-expression. What makes this self-expression truly radical is its reintegration of the private and personal back into a shared public domain. [places aside prepared text]
Now, I want to talk a little bit about the deep background of Burning Man before I describe the festival itself or, rather, the community. We really don't call it a festival.
So let me take you back for a moment to those halcyon days of Ronald Reagan's America. The 1980s, when so many of us felt like remaindered products on the great supermarket shelves of America.
It was in the last year of the Carter administration, I think '79, when the funding for public art peaked in the NEA's budget. Thereafter the great move to privatize government functions took over. The NEA's been under continuous onslaught ever since, until today its budget is just a fraction of what it was then. At the same time, I think around '75, the first big corporate show occured in San Franciso. It was sponsored by Philip Morris, as a matter of fact.
Since that time, of course, corporate money has surged into this arena. Corporations have made some signal discoveries. They've found out that investing in art is good for business. They operate on the familiar principal that the package is more potent than the product, and that is why you see this orgy of museum building going on all over the world. They invest in museums and they invest in the international art tourist attractions called biennials. More than anything, they've made one really important discovery. Art is good for real estate.
Now, if you take these two curves, the one descending from the great heyday of the NEA, and the ascendant curve of corporate investment in the arts, which now overshadows anything the NEA contributes, the two lines cross somewhere in the mid 1980's. And that is an interesting date, because Burning Man was founded in 1986, and I would like to tell you something about the immediate background of that. I want to talk about a history that has never really been chronicled, the history of art that has existed outside the system during all of these years.
It started with the punks. You remember the punks. The punks were laden with "tude". They specialized in a kind of puckish truculence. [laughter] It began in the UK, and there it was associated with a lot of class resentments. People in dead-end lives at the bottom of the social pyramid, and then it moved into the US, and it changed a little here. In the late 70s and early 80s it began to turn into a movement that espoused two very basic ideas. The first one was, "we will never sell out, no, we won't sell out!".
Now, it's not surprising that this would be so paramount. You're talking about a generation that had seen everything it ever loved taken away from it. You're talking about a generation that, as it sat around the great American table, wanted to spit up. Throughout their lives they'd endured the same recurring experience. Something would be invented in the context of community, and culture would be generated spontaneously out of the interactions of individuals who felt that they belonged to a thing, and that it belonged to them, and out of that ethos they would begin creating things that embodied their identity in the world, and as soon as that happened, someone would come along, a market scout, and it would be appropriated, and it would be marketed as a lifestyle, and it would be turned into an image, and it would be completely denatured of any meaning that it ever had for anyone.
So the punks, responding, perhaps, a little crudely at times, made it their first tenet that "we won't sell out!". And then they had another idea. The other idea was "make your own show". Never sell out, make your own show. Now, San Francisco is an interesting place. It has a long Bohemian tradition. This goes back to the time of the miners when, on impulse, they'd start marching down Market Street brandishing their pick axes. And it extends through the beat era and to the hippies, and the punk scene was very alive and well in San Francisco through the late 70s early 80s. And during this period it morphed and spawned some interesting art. There is an organization called Survival Research Laboratories that you might be aware of. [cheers]
Now this was punk art essentially and it was hardcore. They wouldn't sell out. The only way you'd find out about an SRL show… well, what they would do is put posters on the concrete pylons under the freeway, and if you were in the know and knew, you'd spot these posters and you'd go to the show, and that is how it was advertised. They wouldn't sell out. I mean they were really laden with tude. They wouldn't sell out — they'd throw dead rats at the audience!
I do an impression. We called that whole school the motorheads, and I used to do a motorhead impression. This is my impression of one of those shows. It goes something like this. [turns his back to the audience, then turns back around] "You still here?" [laughter]
You'd assemble in a warehouse and inhale diesel fumes as your body temperature dropped, and there you'd watch the boys play with their toys. The notion was that, "We're making our own damn show here, and we're really not going to cater to you! We won't to sell out!".
There is a fellow, a friend of mine named Chicken John. He's probably the last living punk saint, who still, at a late date, as late as, oh I don't know, two years ago, would book shows in places like Bismarck, North Dakota, and then he'd go there with the Circus Ridiculous, and the whole point of the Circus Ridiculous was that it required no talent whatsoever. They had acts like the man-eating chicken, which was him eating chicken. Now this is tude with a capital T. The idea was. "Well, hey if you don't think it's entertainment, then make your own show. I made a show!" Now these guys wouldn't sell out!
For awhile during the punk era there existed this whole underground network that spanned the country, and you could book a venue in a garage or virtually anywhere, and it didn't involve the system. It was completely outside the system. These were outsiders, and the idea is that they were fiercely protecting their autonomy. They were, in a way, doing what Bohemians always do, and that's trying to create a world by projecting their own inner vision onto the world.
During that same era other variant strains developed. You might have heard of the Cacophony Society, which started in San Francisco and has since spread to several cities. We would do collaborative events. One of my favorites was a party called "The Atomic Cafe". It was held in an abandoned toothpaste factory, and this was quite illegal. People met in a parking lot and a truck came by and hauled us to the party like braceros. It was an interactive scenario premised on the notion that a nuclear war had occurred. The idea with Cacophony was always that you were the entertainment. You make your own show.
So everybody dressed as if the great Armageddon was at hand and we had been suddenly plucked from our stations in life and were there in this ruin of a warehouse, which was a wonderful labyrinthine space, and we had come to attend the nightclub at the end of the world. Everyone brought cans of food which had to have a minimum shelf life of 20 years. It was Twinkies, canned okra, you name it, and people would really get into their roles. One woman came as a half-dressed society matron and continually complained about the quality of the company. Several people wore bathrobes, as if they'd just emerged from the shower. I remember bumping into an acquaintance who had got completely beyond speech. He grunted and he'd paw you in the dark, and when you came away, you realized you were covered with slime. He had a tube up his sleeve, and he played that part like a trooper all night. A very talented artist, Kimric Smythe, who now does our pyrotechnics for the Man, had made a full-scale model of — it's either "little man" or "fat boy" — the original atom bomb. It was a perfect replica, and they would blindfold people, give them two-by-fours, and they would try to smash it like a pinata — it was filled with toy soldiers — and there was just something delicious about seeing someone, a blind man, trying to destroy the bomb with a stick.
Here was the scheme with Cacophony. They had a newsletter, and it was Drop City. Anybody could propose an event. You make your own show. You couldn't charge for an event — don't sell out — and this would circulate, and whatever anybody proposed, if they could get a taker, they could create a show. You could make a spectacle. Make a spectacle of yourself. Make a spectacle for others — and that is how you would escape the great American spectacle. Now, a lot of this was very subversive. Around the fringes of this were billboard defacements. They'd appropriate billboards and subvert the advertising. I remember that LA Cacophony, led by Reverend Al Ridenour, did a wonderful thing. They did a show in which they went to a Chuck E. Cheese and Al was bandaged like the mummy. Obviously a man who had suffered a terrible and traumatic injury, and he was surrounded at a long table by all of his commiserating friends who were trying to cheer the man up. He sat there like this. [drops head despondently] Finally he began to weep. Mothers began to clutch their children. Chuck E. Cheese came over and he grabbed Chuck E. Cheese and he wouldn't let go of him! [laughter]
Now this was guerrilla theater. They had appropriated this mass consumption outlet and turned it into theater. They'd made it their own. A lot of the underground art of that era , the motorhead art, a lot of the SRL stuff, involved a kind of appropriation of the expropriated. They had a doctrine. Not only did they recycle, they precycled — which meant that they'd grab anything that wasn't nailed down — and they would comb through the industrial detritus of our society and recycle it as art.
The idea was essentially that you would take the elements of mass culture that had been expropriated from real culture and denatured of their meaning and you would appropriate it back and invest it with new meaning by making your own show.
All of this activity forms the immediate background of Burning Man. It forms a whole series of these anti-consumerist utopias that people were trying to create. The theoretician that people were always citing, they talk about him still, was Hakim Bey, who originated the notion of TAZ, the "Temporary Autonomous Zone". This was anarchist theory. The notion was that the only way you could subvert the system, the all encroaching juggernaut created by a centralized system of mass production adjusted in these last waning years of the century to commodify every possible experience, was to seize ground like guerrilla soldiers in a jungle. You could commandeer some part of the public environment and make your own show, create your own rules, and then, before the authorities showed up, you'd melt away back into the jungle. It is an anarchist notion. It partakes somewhat of the paranoia of anarchism, too. Because, really, underlying it is the fundamental assumption that it's hopeless, that all that you can do is fight these little guerrilla battles, because who could confront the organized army that's besetting us?
Now, Burning Man started in '86 when we took the man down to the beach and set it on fire, and it developed to be a very ambitious endeavor after awhile. We were Bohemians, and Bohemias are interesting. Bohemia is a world that artists create. They're made by people who live by their gifts and live for their gifts and live to give those gifts to others. The Bohemians have a kind of erotic sense of property. They share with one another. They cooperate with one another. They collaborate with one another. What Bohemias reflect is the natural life of artists, how they behave in their authentic environment. And these were the principles we followed. We didn't worry about getting a venue or asking permission. We started out guerrilla. We were illegal, going down to the beach to burn this thing. And we depended for our resources, not on grants, and not on sponsorship, and not anybody's funding, but on our own communal efforts undertaken together.
Now, if I may digress for just a moment, I must say that this presents a lively contrast to the position of the putative artist of today in an institutional context. I spoke to some art students in Chicago yesterday, and I sympathized with them, frankly. You know back in the 1950's the educational system in America became adjusted with everything else to fit the mass system, and universities suddenly became mass job placement bureaus. They trained you for a new career in the new mass society, with the effect that as art is taught today it's mostly governed by a regime defined by bureaucratic rules and managerial imperatives. So much so, that artists are taken so completely away from their natural bent, taken so far away from their native temperament, that they are confronted with a ghastly prospect. They're asked to walk a strange kind of tightrope. They must straddle two fears. [poses with arms outstretched, as if walking a tightrope] On the one side, they're afraid that maybe they'll look derivative, that maybe their work is going to look too much like the crowd and they won't distinguish themselves. Because the key thing is to be chosen. "Choose me! choose me!", because they're working in a realm of very scarce resources. There are never enough gallery berths. There are never enough grants, and they're fewer and fewer. The grants are laying really thin on the ground anymore.
Artists all over the country, especially art students, are waking up at 3am covered with flop sweat thinking "God, what if I'm derivative?". And on the other side of this tightrope, they're constantly conscious of the need, the imperative, to make sure that their work will be perceived as aligned with the great cavalcade of art history, so that it can be defined as theoretically advancing the progress of art. Because, if it isn't , they're not going to be recognized by the academy, and they might not get into the museum. And at the end of this tightrope they're walking, what do they find? They find a star system. I mean, I was sympathetic with them. I said, "Well I know what it's like. When you graduate, you'll — I don't know — if you can find a studio, I guess you'll keep up the work. You'll work at a straight job for awhile and you'll hang out in a coffee house with your friends, and if you're lucky maybe you'll get a show in a coffee house, and, if you're really lucky, maybe you'll work in a coffee house and you can watch people looking at your work!" [laughter]
It's an economy of scarcity, and it's very competitive, and it pits artists against one another. Very few will be chosen, and those that are chosen these days will be chosen by corporations. Maybe you can do the sculpture for the mall that will do so much for real estate values. You can be the next Keith Haring and they'll put your work in the gift shop.
What's funny about that is that in Bohemia, in the natural world of the artist, there exists an economy of creative abundance, because this is a world of gift giving.
Now, when we finally left San Francisco and went out to the desert in 1990, we brought with us the ethos that we had learned in an underground culture, and one of the first ideas is that you don't sell out, and if you want to get a little more positive, a little more optimistic than the punks ever managed to be, you can turn that around and convert it into a gift-giving ethic. If you're making your own show, then, instead of watching television, you take your own vision and you project it onto the world with the notion that you can change it. Now if you're living in a world where all your prospects have been curtailed, and you are depending on someone or something outside yourself, then you're not going to do that, but we didn't know any better. We were BoHos.
So we founded a city, and one of the rules that we observe in Black Rock City is absolutely stunning. You can't buy or sell anything. Now that's simple, but let the consequences of it sink in for a moment. Have you ever been in a city of thousands of people where you couldn't buy or sell anything? I mean it seems so strange that it's hard for most people to imagine because our world is so permeated with commodity transactions.
Now the difference between giving gifts and the world of commodity transactions is really rather striking. The great thing about dealing with commodities is you don't have to be connected to anybody. I mean all that's required of you when you buy something in a marketplace is a sum of money, and your inner resources are beside the point, have nothing to do with it. It's non-connective. And that's good, in its way, because it lubricates transactions. It means that the rubber of Brazil or the resources of the world can be efficiently conveyed to you by the miraculous workings of this market. But it's very non-connective.
As a contrast with that, when you give a gift or receive a gift from someone, it creates an immediate moral bond with them, this feeling of human connection. In some sense, their life energy enters into you, and that, of course, is where community begins. Of course, we live in a world where opportunities for that sort of experience are becoming rare. You know, at one time in the history of the West this wasn't so. Half of the economy was a gift economy, and this was enforced by cultural norms. In tribal societies, gift economies are virtually a norm. But in our world, the giving of gifts has dwindled down, if it exists at all, maybe into the realm of the family. If your mother asks you to get a quart of milk, you probably won't charge her, nor will you tote that up because of course you're connected to her.
What we learned out of our experience of Bohemia is that when you start giving gifts to one another it opens up this magnificent resource to people. Not only is it connective, not only does it generate cultural interaction, it is actually remarkably efficient in a lot of ways. In the Black Rock desert people undertake all these expressive projects, and they discover, after awhile when they get ambitious, that somebody always knows somebody who knows where you can get something for free. You get excited about an idea or what you're doing and that excitement is then communicated personally out through this ramifying network of acquaintances, and somebody you didn't know gets roped into it, and pretty soon they're your friend and they're involved in it, and not only are they spiritually connected to you, you actually have a new resource. It generates wealth that you didn't have, things that you couldn't afford if you'd depended only on money and your own individual buying power.
Now we've been told in America that the market system is wonderful and that we command the resources of the world. The only trouble is that Mom and Dad are holding down full time jobs so they can afford quality day care for their kids. What is wrong with this picture? It turns out that our system that is so spiritually non-connective is actually materially very wasteful as well!
People come out to Black Rock City and they're exposed to a hyperconnective environment. It touches them on so many levels, because the distance of the marketplace has been abolished, and their first response is to quit their job, dump their girlfriend, or find a new boyfriend — life changes of one kind or another — and a lot of them, amazingly, stick. But, if they get ambitious and persist in participating, then they discover many lessons about the material benefits of living this way. I would put to you that, if just a quarter of our economy were based on the giving of gifts, it would be a very different world. Perhaps, in the future, something like this might be possible, but I'll touch on that later. It is part of the later history of Burning Man.
Now, I would like to walk you through a tour of what it's like to come to Burning Man. You arrive there and go through our gate, and the next person you'll meet — he, she, or it, — it could be a giraffe, or a fat guy in a thong, or whatever — will be a greeter. It is entirely up to them how they present themselves, and that's the point. We've created an entire civic infrastructure by such artful means. We have told people there are chores that have to be done in society, but not to look at it as a job, look at it as a role, and imbue that self-created role with your spirit and give as a gift to others — and this has actually been very productive.
We have lamplighters who illuminate our city. I believe you saw a picture of the lamplighters out front as you come in. These people design and make their own costumes, they craft their lamp lighting tools, and they practice together for months ahead of time. They perform this task at our event as a sort of a ritualized display, and they find it very gratifying. You see, they're not just holding down a job. By investing themselves in a communal effort and by making it expressive, they transcend the functionality of work. They become lamplighters.
In the video we saw a moment ago, the DPW, which is our Department of Public Works… [ applause] Let's hear it for the DPW!
That little parade you saw in the video, which started out with the Bobcat rearing back on its wheels, was our Labor Day parade. These guys, when they get going, become really expressive. That parade had a crane that was driven backwards, it had the Bobcat, and at one point they took a big horse trough and turned it into a hot tub which they towed that around the city — and this was in their leisure time! They started playing with their tools, because in this environment, the boundary between work and play, which in industrial societies has become very rigid, starts to blur.
At the same time, we've taken the playfulness of art and defined it in terms of social utility. We've always sponsored and encouraged forms of art — this is my particular and personal passion — that convene society around themselves. The chief tool for organizing society in Black Rock City is art. It's art that is meant to be played with, leaned against, reacted to. Its art , in a lot of cases, that is so contrived that it requires that you assume a role that puts you in a relationship with your fellow citizens. And a more potent organizer of human communities is hard to imagine.
Larry Harvey: The Mind Under the Hat
Burning Man and Cyberspace, 1997
Burning Man and the Art of the 1990s, 1997
Viva Las Xmas, 2002
Larry Harvey Speech, 1997
Matt Gonzalez Endorsement Speech, 2003
©1989-2019 burning man project


Hi there folks! My name is Empire. I am a handsome 16.1 hand chestnut Oldenburg gelding. I was born in 2001. I was donated to Fieldstone in October of 2012 by Ali Mandovi. Some of you may recognize me; I was shown locally as a Hunter, with local trainer Megan Bash. Some of you that board at Scenic Run may have known me as 'Milk', that was my barn nickname.
I am excited to be here at Fieldstone. I have some arthritis in my front ankle that retired me from the show ring. I can't keep jumping like I did as a youngster. I am a steady, easy going guy, and am great at teaching riders to post and to help them gain confidence as they become more independent.
Here's what you need to know about me. Since I have arthritis I may start out a little stiff, but I quickly work out of it. I like to be groomed but can be a little sensitive to the hard brush. I prefer a gentle curry and soft brush. You may notice that I have a brand on the lower part of my left hip. That is for identification purposes. I also have an old scar in my right eye, not to worry – I see everything fine. I am eager to get to work and meet everyone!