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12Jun2006 Filed under: Ethics questions, LIBRARY, Religion Author: Collie
1 June 2006 book review by Collie Collier
Credits: For Greg, because he gave me my first ever specifically-requested book review. Woohoo, I feel so official! He even sent me the book — what a sweetie! ;)
There is detailed plot information in this review. Please do not read if you don't like spoilers!
The prequel to Brown's better known (and somewhat better written) The DaVinci Code, concerning Langdon's first encounter with the Vatican. This time the Church is the victim, under humiliating public attack by the Illuminati. A desperate cross-Rome treasure hunt ensues in an effort to rescue innocent clerical hostages and prevent a destructive technological holocaust.
If this subject interests you I also recommend my Firestarter from September 2004:
Were Jesus and Mary Magdalene really married? -or "Is the premise of The DaVinci Code really true?" That's one of my favorite Firestarters to date, in fact.
I came to this book very much wanting to like it. It was the prequel to Brown's later The DaVinci Code, and despite legitimate criticisms of that book, I'd very much enjoyed it, as I love religious mythology and the occasional brain-teaser. Further, I don't find the concept of Jesus being Mary Magdalene's lover particularly new or threatening, considering I'd written a fun speculative paper about that for a college class way back in 1993.
I found Brown's assertion at the beginning of The DaVinci Code amusing (that everything historical in the book was true), but it didn't particularly worry me. After all, everything he mentioned was indeed true to someone — by their very nature, religious myths are created because they speak a truth of sorts. So I was not surprised to see a similar claim of Brown's theoretically well-researched accuracy in Angels & Demons. I figured this claim also would need to be taken with a pinch of metaphorical salt, but that was fine with me — I'm willing to grant small lapses of memory for specific architectural details, in order to enjoy the broader canvas of charming puzzle-solving.
Unfortunately, that was not what I found — in the end, I found myself deeply exasperated and annoyed by the book. Had the author simply written a piece of good fiction, and not tried to claim any sort of historical accuracy — had he even gotten his map of Rome correct, or his portrayal of physics, or something else in the background — and then laid a good fictional story over that, I'd have been relatively fine with the story. But to claim inerrancy and years of research, and that his writing is "FACT" when it's so clearly a horrific mishmash… that I find pompous, overblown, and insulting to the readers.
It appears Brown took quite a few liberties with his "facts," including historical, architectural, symbological, and religious. You can review a few of them on this web page: A list of errors in "Angels & Demons".
To be fair to Brown, we should note here that authors often improve in writing proficiency over time as they write, and Brown is no exception. From a strictly technical viewpoint, Angels & Demons' character development, foreshadowing, and pacing is notably inferior to that of The DaVinci Code. True, it is the handicapped and the "oddity" (i.e. those with allergies or who can't walk, albinos, those born from artificial insemination, etc.) which Brown villianizes in both books, but at least in the first book the (pointlessly unpleasant) man in the wheelchair wasn't the true evil mastermind of the piece. Nevertheless, I found myself struggling to finish the book, since several plot points were immediately transparently clear.
What anticipation?
For example, the minute we meet the secretive, sick, and arrogant head of CERN we know he will die before story's end. Once we are introduced to the four missing cardinals we know they are doomed, and that the one which behaves nicely will be the last to die, and also that he will be the only one to die "well." When we realize the target of the bomb threat is the Catholic Church (as symbolized by the entire Vatican), it's obvious the vial must be sitting on the supposed tomb of St. Peter, the theoretical "father" of the Catholic Church. And as soon as we read about the assassin being sexually abusive, we know there will be a scene where Vittoria must be rescued from rape.
Langston: idiot savant?
The character development did not impress me either, unfortunately. I found Langston initially wooden and pedantic, to the point that he refused to believe evidence before his eyes. Frankly, having Langston blathering on about how the Illuminati do not exist any more when he's got one of their known symbols in front of him seemed pretty stupid to me. So they don't exist — so what? Copycat murderers kill their victims just as dead.
Further, every true researcher I've met is passionate about their chosen subject — they actually care about any precious, priceless, unique artifacts of their field of study. I can understand destruction of unique artifacts in order to save human life, but I found Langston's complete lack of care or remorse in his destruction rather unrealistic. Worse, he did this not once, but twice — and both times there wasn't the faintest shred of dismay that I could see! What sort of scholar is he supposed to be? He did not behave like any truly dedicated researcher I've ever met.
Finally — and perhaps most importantly — true researchers and scientists, who are doing this for the love of knowledge, don't rigidly and patronizingly insist their research irrevocably demonstrates no further research need be done, or that something is "impossible" simply because they say so. I had to shake my head in amusement at Langston's narrow-minded assertion that it was impossible to write the word "Illuminati" so it could be read both right-side up and upside down, when the very frontispiece of the book had the title Angels & Demons written that way. To me this set Langston up as silly and short-sighted from the very beginning.
Thus, his personality transformation throughout the story was nothing short of absolutely miraculous. Not only did he effortlessly solve, in mere minutes, puzzles which have remained unresolved for centuries, but he also cleverly foiled not one but two death traps. A shame his miracle-working didn't extend to saving the life of the last cardinal.
Frankly I think that man died because Langston was an idiot when it served the plot — which I consider a weakness of the story. Why else would Langston attempt to attack a known, ruthless, well-trained assassin by holding out a gun and walking up to the man on unsteady footing until he's in arms' reach of the assassin? Further, Langston unpreparedly attempts to attack this known violent murderer not once but twice! Is Langston incapable of learning from previous experience?! If so, how did he solve the Illuminati puzzles? Is he perhaps an idiot savant?
Vittoria: symbolic spoils of battle
The beautiful, brilliant, and "available" daughter of the murdered man (who was, of course, loved by everyone) is another incredibly old and over-done trope. In this book she's named "victory." In The DaVinci Code the available woman is the niece, not a daughter, of the murdered man — but she's equally iconically named: Sophia, or "wisdom." Unsurprisingly, Vittoria's rigorous scientific training yields whenever necessary to plot-required "feminine" emotionalism, which irritated the heck out of me. Why is it no male characters do that? Wouldn't it make sense that a male symbologist would be better at intuitive emotional leaps than a female scientist?
Unfortunately I suspect the author feared this would symbolically emasculate his hero. So we must put up with Langston performing what are quite clearly intuitive leaps — poorly disguised as "reasoning" and "intellect" — while Vittoria repeatedly suffers under the author's need to render her "emotional" and therefore less intellectually threatening. For example, I was appalled at Brown's groundless, blanket assertion: "Vittoria knew there was logic somewhere in Kohler's arguent, but she also knew that logic, by definition, was bereft of moral responsibility (pg 95)."
Logic:
the science of reasoning;
the science of the operations of the understanding subservient to the estimation of evidence;
the science whose chief end is to ascertain the principles on which all valid reasoning depends, and which may be applied to test the legitimacy of every conclusion that is drawn from premises;
the art or practice of reasoning.
— from "The New Webster Encyclopedic Dictionary of the English Language."
I don't like groundless assertions which smack suspiciously of privileging emotion over reason — especially when they're for women only. Frankly, I can't find any such definition, and I think it was made up just to suit Brown's need to show Vittoria as being opposed to the incredibly unnecessarily unpleasant Kohler. Please, could we possibly use a larger plot-hammer here? Or better yet, could we try to dispense with some of the unnecessary hyperbole?
Brown adds insult to injury yet again with his depiction of Vittoria as she watches the camerlengo make the triumphant discovery of the vial's location: "Langdon had seen in her eyes a wariness that looked, unsettlingly, a lot like female intuition." Come on, Brown — make up your mind! Is Vittoria using logic and intuition like the brilliant iconoclast scientist she's supposed to be, or pointlessly irrational "feminine" emotionalism? And again: wouldn't the symbologist be the one more likely to experience the sudden intuition of meaningful symbols meshing into an intuitive leap?
Further, I kept getting tripped up by Brown's almost ludicrous attempts to keep increasing the emotional pressure. By the time we got to "Vittoria's emotions were a cyclone of twisting agonies," on page 498, and yet more amazingly overblown blather on pg 501 (which I'm not going to bother typing in — it goes on for almost the entire page), I couldn't take it seriously any more.
What the hell is a cyclone of twisting agony?! Why is it the girl who must suffer under these nonsensical "feminine intuition" sorts of hysterical pronouncements? I have this ludicrous mental image of Brown thinking, "Oh, she's over-emotional, good — she's not as scary now, despite being more brilliant and gorgeous than I could ever aspire to." Does Brown truly believe his readers are so insecure and shallow?
Vittoria really is annoyingly perfect too — brilliant scientist in her own right; a sympathetic orphan adopted by her now-murdered father so she's even more sympathetic; young, nubile, gorgeous, leggy, scantily dressed, and "European-exotic" — Brown even has her know yoga so she can escape from the ropes and rescue Langdon while he's being an idiot in attempting to rescue her. Even more moronically, Brown later implies her knowledge of yoga makes her an incredible sexual partner to the older Langston. For Christ's sake, was that really necessary? I find it demeaning to men that Brown had to stoop quite so obviously to making poor Vittoria nothing more than a lonely middle-aged American male's wet-dream.
Kohler & Olivetti: the "fall guys"
Unfortunately it is not just the protagonists who suffer under Brown's need to create blatantly black-and-white, two-dimensional characters. There's also Kohler, the wheelchair-bound, violently unsympathetic, rabidly anti-religious head of CERN. Frankly, short of having Kohler throw up on Langston's shoes, I can't think of many ways Brown could have made him less appealing. He's emotionally and ideologically rigid, he knowingly violates people's expectations of privacy, he manipulates people without regard for them — he is completely without any redeeming features. Unfortunately Brown's blatant manipulation to set him up as the apparent Illuminati mastermind reminded me of precisely what we were supposed to most dislike in Kohler himself.
I was also impressed with the smear job done on the personality of Olivetti, the head of the Swiss Guards. His incredible, unprofessional arrogance is just breathtaking. Not only does he not inform his (admittedly temporary) superior that four cardinals have gone missing — the four most likely to be voted in as the new pope, in fact — but through sheer, bloody incompetence he also refuses to believe what's going on.
By the time the third cardinal is murdered, everyone knows fire will be used, but does Olivetti notify the fire department, so the fire trucks are alerted and ready to go? Does he even have an officer assigned to Langston? No, of course not — that'd require intelligence on the part of a character Brown wants us to dislike. Perhaps most damning, poor Olivetti is used even more poorly in order to make his death "righteous" instead of a tragedy: the author has him strongly suggest to the camerlengo that the camerlengo publicly lie to the faithful about the incipient bomb.
This is not to suggest the Catholic Church is completely free of deception — considering the sheer, staggering wealth of the church, greed and lust for power are almost a given. However, to imply deception is quite so standardized and routine in the Church suggests a level of cynicism on the part of the author which seems more indicative of his personal disillusionment than of any real understanding of faith. In other words, I may not personally believe in the deity or the religion — but that doesn't mean no one at all can. For the author to write as if faith were nothing more than a convenient facade is to unfairly cheapen true belief.
The assassin: unmitigated evil
Then there's the assassin, who is just too conscience-salvingly evil to believe in. By turns arrogantly erudite and crudely foul, his depiction is an unconvincing mishmash of whatever would most suit the plot at the moment. I couldn't help but wonder where a man of god would so quickly find such a brutal cult murderer as this guy. Who trained the assassin to his zealotry? There are no answers — he's just a plot device, there to be hated and disposed of once he's no longer necessary, by "heroic" mutual action of the protagonist/heroes.
Frankly, the entire cult must have been badly twisted over the years, if that was supposed to be an accurate representation of them, as Brown asserts. Yes, legendarily they were supposed to be conscience-less murderers, but they had nothing to do with the Illuminati. They were supposed to be an extremely radical sect of the Islamic faith — check out the wikipedia page on them. To my knowledge they never believed abusing and raping women was acceptable — they were proud of their ability to kill only their targets, and to avoid innocent bystanders. Indeed, it was their devotion to the doctrines of their faith (including martyrdom) that was supposed to be their guarantee into heaven, complete with virginal houris and other traditional pleasures of the flesh.
So why did Brown feel the need to make our protagonists so boringly perfect, and Kohler, Olivetti, and the assassin so unsympathetic? Perhaps so we'd think poorly of the unsympathetic ones, and not mind when they died? I don't like being so blatantly and badly manipulated — how can I have any sympathy for such two dimensional characters?
Pacing without moderation
I'll touch only lightly on the pacing of the book. The narrow time frame in which the various events are supposed to occur (a mere handful of hours) causes an almost numbingly break-neck sort of story. In a peculiar bit of reverse logic common to poorly written fiction, once I realized it was nigh-on impossible for someone to solve centuries-old puzzles, defy multiple death-traps and murder attempts, and race all over Rome like that… I then knew the protagonist must and would succeed.
There was no tension for me any more after that point. The only surprise was who the actual mastermind was, and by the point he was revealed, I found I didn't really care. If anything, I was somewhat miffed with the author for his blatant character manipulation — they were just astonishingly two-dimensional. Why didn't he have them wear color-coded black or white cowboy hats if he was going to treat them so iconically?
Speaking of color-coded icons, Brown keeps emphasizing symbolism throughout the book. Let's take a look at just what symbolism he ascribes to the Catholic Church, through his depiction of the camerlengo, the "true man of God." To be blunt, this final example of horrible character development left me with an incredibly bad taste in my mouth.
First we start with a virgin birth from a nun — an "only begotten son." We also learn through flashbacks that the camerlengo has known all his life he "belongs" to God. It is when he "miraculously" survives a terrorist bombing attack (in which his mother is conveniently killed) that the boy becomes the ward of a Catholic priest, eventually joining the clergy himself as well. When that guardian-priest becomes the Pope, the young man continues his relationship with the older man, faithfully serving the new Pope.
However, it is when the Pope reveals to the camerlengo that he has a son — thereby shattering the camerlengo's belief in the Pope's holiness — that the camerlengo decides he must save the Church by taking matters into his own hands. He murders his kindly old mentor, arranges for the murders of several other innocent bystanders, and stages an elaborate show to terrorize everyone into "coming to God."
He is conscienceless about his actions until he is informed the Pope's son was conceived via "sinless" artificial insemination (which according to the Catholic Church is very much a sin indeed), and that he himself is that son — at which point he is overcome by remorse. He publicly immolates himself as a sacrifice to God, and dies pleased that the (by this time hyper-emotional) crowd is finally "coming to God." Once he is dead, everyone else decides to keep the camerlengo's insanity a secret, so people's faith won't be shaken.
What did you say?!
I can't find anything to support Brown's assertion that Celestine V's body was recently found to have a 10" nail driven into the head (although you can read more about the issues the Church was having at the time in this blog — search for "The Church in Moral Crisis").
In the real world, poor Celestine V abdicated after less than 6 months as Pope, and was imprisoned for the two remaining years of his life by his successor. I found one reference in wikipedia (not the most accurate of sources, alas) to a "suspicious hole" in the head of the body, but Brown's assertion that Celestine V was in fact murdered by Boniface VIII (to speed up the process of him becoming the next Pope) seems to exist only in Brown's fantasy world.
This was an incredible hatchet job on the Catholic Church, and frankly I'm astonished people were more upset by The DaVinci Code than by this contemptuous parody of Christianity's founder. By so closely aping Jesus' life through the life of the murderous, mad camerlengo, Brown has mockingly suggested not just that Jesus was a non-holy fraud responsible for the violent deaths of millions — but also that the Catholic Church is a deliberate, conscienceless peddler of false miracles, fake piety, and emotional manipulation of the masses. Later, he refers to the visions of St. Teresa as "sordid," and states (through the example of Celestine V) that deceased Popes are buried without examination of the bodies in order to hide how many have been murdered! Could Brown possibly be more insulting?!
Curiously, the camerlengo believing he had a message from god to check St. Peter's tomb for the bomb seems more legitimate to me than much else in the book. If I could figure out where the bomb was from the clues, why couldn't a devout man do so — and then believe the intuitive message must be from god? Alas, we discover he was lying all along — god forbid there be any true, generous faith in the Church of this book!
Worse, we have to suffer through the camerlengo refusing the possibility of science in religion. Despite his religion being based on a gentle and tolerant man who practiced respect of the free will of others, the best the poor camerlengo can come up with to encourage people to come to god is an archaic form of the carrot and the stick — what he refers to as "horror & hope" being the required elements to move people.
1 : the state of knowing : knowledge as distinguished from ignorance or misunderstanding
2 a : a department of systematized knowledge as an object of study
b : something (as a sport or technique) that may be studied or learned like systematized knowledge
3 a : knowledge or a system of knowledge covering general truths or the operation of general laws especially as obtained and tested through scientific method
b : such knowledge or such a system of knowledge concerned with the physical world and its phenomena
4 : a system or method reconciling practical ends with scientific laws
— from Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary
He frames this in yet another of Brown's binarily simplistic proclamations: "Science, by definition, is soulless." Um… hold on. First, that is certainly not the definition of science. Secondly, if we're talking religious definitions, then religion too is soulless — if I remember correctly, the Catholic Church teaches souls belong to humans alone. Further, if this is supposed to be more symbolism, it shows the camerlengo is a sad and ignorant fool regarding the symbolism of the very religion he purports to follow.
Symbolically, a sacrifice based on a lie will not bring people to truth — and yet the "trembling, quavering" cardinals decide they'll just "play along" with the camerlengo's public self-sacrifice, so they don't have to face the consequences of what's happened. What sort of religious faith does that imply? Is this the only representation Brown could come up with for examples of religious belief in the Catholic Church? Or are we supposed to identify the old, fearful, symbolically emasculated cardinals as valid icons of religious faith and Catholicism? If so, what does that say about Brown's religious views?
The poor camerlengo ends up symbolically emasculated by his job, and dehumanized in the story through the constant repetition that he belongs to god — he is not "of us" — and of repeated emphasis on his inexperience and youthful emotionalism. Frankly, I found him just too stupidly crazy. Considering the history of the papacy, a Pope having a son is hardly news. That this should cause the camerlengo to go utterly mad and refuse to ever talk again to the Pope — to murder the kindly old mentor who raised him from childhood — I found a bit much to swallow. If we're looking at the symbolism again, it sounds like Brown is suggesting the Catholic clergy is dangerously unconnected to reality. This may be true… but Brown didn't have to so viciously satirize the entire religion to say that, I think.
One last caveat…
Suggesting the Catholic Church borrowed rituals or symbolism from the Aztecs is utter nonsense. The early, still-forming church of the first millennia had no contact with them — heck, they didn't even exist until the 1400's! Sacrificing the perfect son to insure the fertility of the land has a far more "classic" lineage. The ancient Greeks, the Norse, other cultures from that time: all had such symbolism to borrow from — but not the Aztecs. I suspect Brown was trying yet again to tar the Church with the "ick" brush, as the Aztecs are generally perceived as rather brutal and bloodthirsty.
I guess that pretty much sums up my dismay with this book. If you're going to claim your story is factual and your protagonist is an expert on symbolism — then get your facts straight!
The DaVinci Code (II of IV)
The DaVinci Code (I of IV)
The DaVinci Code (IV of IV)
Papal Sin (III of III)
Were Jesus & Mary Magdalene really married? (VII of VII)
5 Responses to "Angels & Demons"
June 21st, 2006 at 16:41
I'm developing a theory that the religious offensiveness of these books is put in there to create enough scandal so people might bother picking them up. Because going by your review, they don't seem to have a lot of other redeeming features. I am so _tired_ of stupid villains and stupid heroes that only exist apparently to be retarded or bright at the conveniently times to push along this plot the author is so convinced is nifty keen, but anyone can see coming from a mile out.
I'm not even sure where to start with the typical abuse done to female protagonist, except to say that even I'm guilty of reading this kind of thing. One of my secret shames is reading Clive Cussler books, which is some kind of hallmark of this kind of horrific bad modern day pulp-action, but I think my immune system is finally going into shock over it. You know when early on in a book, the main female char is glad to have a 'man' along to carry her luggage, that it's a fatal sign.
I'm not even sure I can accuse this on 'bad male writers', because I've seen some books by male writers that get things right, and a few by female writers that seem to get it so dreadfully wrong. Sigh, and the Anita Blake books used to be so good too … ah well.
— Brett
Oh, my, yes! What a relief to hear I'm not the only person who's quite disappointed in the current Anita Blake books. ;)
October 15th, 2008 at 8:58
Life is a tapestry: We are the warp; angels, the weft; God, the weaver. Only the Weaver sees the whole design.
March 4th, 2009 at 13:46
Well written critique. I agree with all of it (and learned a few things that I hadn't noticed!) I am glad I can send people here to see what I didn't like about this book rather than trying to explain for myself.
Thank you! Glad to be of assistance — it was a fun review to write, oddly enough. ;)
What don't we see?
Way too much sexual analysis ;)
A posting on Haiti
"Mythologies" by Roland Barthes


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How Much Will You Spend on Valentine's Day? [POLL]
Red may be the color of love, but you can bet the green will be flying this Valentine's Day.
According to a new survey, the average person will spend $142.31 on Valentine's Day this year, coughing up the cash on candy, flowers and more. That's a jump from the $133.91 those lovestruck fools spent in 2014. All told, we'll spend $18.9 billion. Yes, billion, with a B.
What We're Buying
A total of 53% will buy candy, 38% will purchase flowers, 35% will splurge on a special night out with their sweetie and 21% will make a real statement by buying jewelry.
How Much We're Buying
People will certainly dole out the cash for their special someones. Ninety-one percent will spend an average of $87.94 on their significant others. That's a jump from $78.09 last year.
For Whom We're Buying
It's not just the love of our lives we're opening our wallets for this Valentine's Day. Nearly 59% will spend an average of $26.26 on other relatives and $6.30 on their kids' classmates and teachers. And in proof that Valentine's Day has gone to the dogs, 21% admit to getting their pets something, ponying up an average of $5.28 on these animals.
Who's Spending What
Men will spend an average of $190.53, a far cry from the $96.58 women will. Lovebirds in the 25-34 age range will outspend everyone else by depleting an average of $213.04. So, clearly you can put a price on love.
How much will you spend this Valentine's Day?
Categories: AC, Country, Hot AC, News, Rhythmic, Rock, Valentine's Day

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Our tutors often say how rewarding it is not only to teach someone to read, but to see how acquiring that new skill changes the student's life for the better in so many ways.
A long-time Literacy Council tutor, Joyce finds great joy in helping her students and never considers it work. She says that although every student comes with different challenges and different backgrounds, all of them share a desire to improve themselves. Joyce tells these stories about three of her students.
"John" was very capable and well employed but lacked confidence in his reading ability. The coordinator who tested him could not decipher his writing. Joyce showed John the path to a higher reading level through coaching and encouragement, and he went on to graduate from college.
"Mary" was too embarrassed to go to the library because she could read only children's books and thought people would laugh at her. She now reads well and uses the library regularly.
"Phil" was a foreman with a painting company. He could not read and relied on memorization to successfully perform his job. He sought help when his boss and co-workers laughed at him because he couldn't correctly pronounce two words that he had to use frequently. Although Phil did not really learn to read, mastering those two words greatly enhanced his work life.
At the time "Nora" requested a tutor she could read at only about the 4th grade level, probably because of a hearing problem that had caused her to miss many sounds as a child. With Carol's help, Nora learned to read fluently and boosted her ability by constantly reading on her own. During her time with the Literacy Council, Nora was the student support group leader and the student representative on the Board of Directors, attended regional and national literacy conferences, and represented Frederick County adult learners at a visit to the White House. She remains an advocate for literacy and makes sure her grandchildren are able readers. Nora says that gaining self-respect has been one of the greatest benefits of learning to read.
When "Marta" and her husband relocated their family from Argentina to the United States, the language barrier was her biggest challenge. She spoke only broken English and didn't understand American culture—to the point that she rarely left her house. Together the couple found the Literacy Council. Marta was instantly at ease with her tutor, Jeff. Marta explained that she wanted to understand what phrases like "biggie size" and "to go" meant, so the two of them read books about life and culture in America. Over the next two years, Marta made tremendous progress. She now goes to the grocery store and rides the bus by herself and also reads to her son every day.
Some people request the Literacy Council's help with very specific needs. For instance, "Tom" was a veteran truck driver who was required to study the Commercial Driver's License manual and pass a written test in order to keep his job. The reading was very difficult for him. After working intensively with a tutor for a short time, Tom passed the test on the first try and kept his job. Our tutors have also helped students prepare for the GED, get a driver's license, open a bank account, fill out applications, and prepare for the U.S. citizenship test.
"Louisa" was her tutor Walt's first student. When she immigrated to the United States from Bangladesh over 21 years ago, she knew no English but had a strong desire to learn. Louisa approached her children's school principal, who suggested that she volunteer at school where she could pick up bits of language. That's exactly what she did. Voicing her wish to learn English was a considerable triumph as Louisa, like other young Bangladeshi women, hadn't graduated from high school. Louisa's current goal is to earn a General Educational Diploma (GED). She and Walt meet twice a week to work on grammar and study mathematics, a subject in which Walt says Louisa is gifted. Though she has had no advanced education, Louisa landed her first job in electronics assembly.
"Ya Ya" grew up in Ghana working in the fields of his family's plantain and cattle farm, and he did not go to school. He is now 37 years old and living in Frederick with his family. He speaks English but is unable to read and write. He gets up at 4:30 a.m. for his job delivering packages. He drives about 150 miles a day, and often doesn't finish deliveries until 4:30 p.m. He meets with his tutor three times weekly, occasionally dozing off during the lesson. Ya Ya remains committed: "It's your life at stake. If you can't read or write, you can't do anything. I have two kids, and I have to learn to read and write so I can direct them in the right way…." Ya Ya now reads at about a second grade level and is able to read some names and words on the delivery manifests at work and some street signs. He intends to be ready to help his children when they begin to read and eventually explore more educational opportunities for himself.
Every year for 10 years, Cho Cho entered the lottery for a U.S. visa. In 2013 she was finally selected. Though she has a degree in math from a college in her native Myanmar (Burma), here she has worked as a babysitter, sushi maker, and hotel housekeeper. With the help of Sandy, her LCFC tutor, Cho Cho has made great strides in learning English. Because of this has been able to obtain health insurance, file income taxes, obtain credit, get a driver's license, and (through Second Chances Garage) buy a used car. Her next goals are to further her education, get a better job, and buy a house.
Sign up for a tutor or class and start learning!
Tutor or volunteer at the Literacy Council!


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From my mind to your mind.
Saturday, June 16, 2018 08:00 PM
Guidelines for a good quicktime event
in Analysis/Interpretation | Video Gaming by MegaBearsFan
During my recent playthrough of the new PS4 exclusive God of War, I noticed that I actually missed the quicktime events that were made famous (and marketable) by the original PS2 God of War. I liked the first two PS2 God of Wars' brutal treks through Greek mythology, but I wasn't a die-hard fan. I was always more of a Devil May Cry kind of guy. So I was surprised to feel nostalgic over a feature that had been removed from those games. I was double-surprised by the fact that I was nostalgic over a feature that most of the gaming community (including myself) has come to despise.
The series that popularized quicktime events has seemingly abandoned them.
Quicktime events (or "QTE", or "Quick Timer Event" as it was called in the manual for Shenmue) were a fairly innovative and well-received feature when the first God of War released in 2005, and that game received perfect scores from many critics. At the time, QTEs were considered an excellent way of providing a flashy, cinematic moment, while still maintaining the interactivity of the player experience. In the case of God of War, this was mostly accurate.
Then the imitators started rolling in (and have been continuing to roll in ever since), and many (if not most) implementations of QTEs have fallen flat on their faces and infuriated players and critics. Trash like Spider-Man 3 was just embarrassing. Even otherwise "good" games, like Resident Evil 4 have been tarnished by poor executions of QTEs. Many games have ditched traditional QTEs in favor of similar button-mashing or prompted actions. The new PS4 God of War is a prime example. But these are basically the same thing.
Spider-Man 3 has some of the most egregiously-bad QTEs that I can remember.
In the years since the original God of War, QTEs have become a bane on gaming, and many players would like to see them completely gone. In fact, many developers have begun phasing them out. Sony's PS4 God of War is, again, a prime example. But I'm not so sure that QTEs deserve the automatic and unconditional hate that they receive. So I want to spend some time to take a look at what usually makes QTEs work, what usually makes them not work, and whether there may actually be merit to including them in future video games...
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Tags:quicktime event, quick timer event, button mashing, trap, cutscene, God of War, Shenmue, Spider-Man, Bayonetta, Sony, SCE Santa Monica Studio
Tuesday, June 12, 2018 10:30 AM
God of War (2018) starts and ends strong, but drags its feet in the middle
in Video Gaming | Game Reviews by MegaBearsFan
Vikings and norse mythology seems to have been a popular concept in games recently. Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice, for instance, is an excellent hack-n-slash adventure through Norse hell. I've also been playing the Wasteland-like RPG Expeditions: Vikings on Steam (which I'm hoping to review soon). I also have games like Mount & Blad: Viking Conquest and Total War: Thrones of Britannia on my short list of games I'd like to play. And there was also the Viking character in For Honor.
Now, Sony's PlayStation flagship God of War has jumped from Greek mythology to Norse mythology. Having killed all the Greek gods, Kratos has apparently settled down in the mythological Midgard with a wife and son, only for his wife to die and his son be attacked by the Norse god Baldr. This sends Kratos and Atreus on a father-son bonding adventure to spread Atreus' mother's ashes from the highest peak in all the realms, and to learn why the Aesir are suddenly keen on hunting them.
Norse mythology seems to be a popular subject in media lately.
A father-son murder team
Atreus has some of the same problems that The Last of Us has with Ellie. Atreus doesn't feel vulnerable enough to demand protection, and he's rarely relevant outside of combat, except for his running commentary about what you're doing. Because of this, the actual game rarely feels like it's about protecting or escorting Atreus. And even though the game is ostensibly about Kratos teaching Atreus how to fight and be a man, the player never has an opportunity to actually teach the kid or take on any parental responsibility for him. It's just about Kratos throwing axes at draugr, and Atreus occasionally shoots them or jumps on their heads to help you out. The puzzle sections rarely require using Atreus (other than occasionally shooting something with his bow or having him scamper through a small tunnel).
Atreus is basically just an extra ranged attack.
That being said, I think that God of War makes some strides in the right direction (compared to The Last of Us). The player (and Kratos) can command Atreus to attack a target with his bow, which is one of the easiest and most consistent ways to deal stun damage to enemies, which opens them up to an intant-kill attack from Kratos. It's also a strategy that is pretty much essential on the harder difficulties. This creates a much greater sense of playing in tandem with Atreus, as he and Kratos often work together to defeat foes.
Atreus and Kratos can also break each other out of being grappled or stunned. I've never gotten a "Game Over" as a result of Atreus being defeated, so I'm not sure if that's a possible fail state. Being grappled or stunned only seemed to ever temporarily take Atreus out of the fight and negate the ability to use his bow. Either way, this is an improvement over Ellie from The Last of Us, who (as far as I recall) operated entirely independently from Joel, was never at any risk, and could be completely ignored for most of the player's time actually playing the game.
Kratos and Atreus can break each other out of enemy grapples and support each other in combat.
The important take-away here is that, unlike with Ellie in the combat encounters of The Last of Us, I never forgot that Atreus was there when playing God of War...
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Tags:God of War, PlayStation 4, PS4, Sony, Sony Interactive Entertainment, exclusive, SCE Santa Monica Studio, sequel, Kratos, Atreus, Baldr, Freya, Magni, Modi, Midgard, World Serpent, escort quest, axe, Viking, Norse mythology, mythology, quicktime event, shifting the goalposts
Monday, June 5, 2017 06:20 PM
DC's Wonder Woman finally deals a strike to Marvel's movie monopoly
in Comics | Family | Television and Movies | Movie Reviews by MegaBearsFan
In their single-midned insistence on making all of their movies about epic showdowns between the superheroes and some big bad guy, the DC movies have consistently failed at depicting their heroes as having any particular desire or inclination to actually help people. This is perhaps the greatest failing of the Zack Snyder / Henry Cavill Superman movies and the greatest strength of the classic Richard Donner / Christopher Reeve Superman films: Snyder's / Cavill's Superman seems to treat saving people as a begrudging chore that he's obligated to do; whereas the classic Donner / Reeve Superman put on a charming smile and went out there to do good for the sake of doing good, simply because he is capable of doing good.
Well now, DC seems to have finally realized that the primary role of its superheroes is to be idealistic saviors and protectors. For the first time in the DCEU movies, our hero shows the idealistic optimism and desire to help people and do good that has been the trademark of the classic Superman films and the Spider-Man films (heck, even Amazing Spider-Man 2 got that right). But in this case, our hero isn't Superman or Spider-Man; our hero is Wonder Woman.
I actually don't mind the darker aesthetic and tone that DC has adopted for its movies. The problem so far has been that those movies have been dark and poorly-written and thought-out. Wonder Woman, on the other hand, is a much brighter movie (both in terms of visuals and thematic tone), and benefits from much tighter writing. The script is solid and tightly-themed, Wonder Woman has a full and nuanced character arc, the performances are good, the action looks slick, and (most importantly) it's easy to follow along with what's happening.
The biggest failing of the Zack Snyder / Henry Cavill Superman is that he seems to be begrudgingly helping people,
instead of happily doing good for the sake of doing good (as in the Richard Donner / Christopher Reeves Superman).
Gal Gadot provides a great performance that proves that her stealing the show in Batman v Superman wasn't just a fluke or a simple sign of how bad the rest of that movie was. She actually works well in this role and is almost as charming a Wonder Woman as Christopher Reeve was at being Superman. The supporting cast mostly works, and this is probably the best role that I've seen for Chris Pine to date. Some of the secondary characters are a bit under-written and lack screen time, but everyone (no matter how minimal their screen-time) has a role to play that helps shape Diana as a character. There's no superfluous characters like Louis Lane in either of Snyder's Superman movies. The only exception being, maybe, Steve Trevor's secretary, who actually deserved a lot more screen-time that she received.
Even Doctor Poison seemed to have a little bit of complexity and nuance to her character. She does suffer from some poor, underwritten motivation, as the movie never really seemed to go too deep into why she's doing what she's doing. But it's definitely apparent that there's something going on under the surface, beyond simply being manipulated by higher forces. The closest that I could figure is that she has some kind of relationship with General Ludendorff and is blindly loyal to him, but she at least wasn't a bad guy for the sake of being a bad guy.
Hits and misses
The only major weakness of Wonder Woman, as a movie, is that it's a bit of an uneven work. It's broken down into a readily discernible three-act structure. The first act is great, the second act is okay, and the third act sinks towards the DC stamp of terribleness. The unfortunate thing about this is that I walked out of the theater with a bad taste in my mouth, even though the movie was still mostly pretty good. So far, DC's movies have all started out mediocre and progressed towards terrible by the end. Wonder Woman, however, starts out good and starts to sink in the direction of bad at the very end. Which, I guess is a big improvement.
Act II concludes with Wonder Woman getting her first real "hero shot" in the movie.
The first act, set on the island of the Amazons, is colorful and vibrant. It's beautifully shot, with interesting and well-choreographed action sequences, and sprinkles of humor. If you didn't know better, you might be justified in mistaking it for a Marvel movie...
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Tags:Wonder Woman, DC Comics, Gal Gadot, Diana Prince, Doctor Poison, Steve Trevor, Zeus, Ares, God of War, Amazon, Chris Pine, World War I, Germany, trench warfare, chemical weapon, mythology, Patty Jenkins, Zack Snyder
Sunday, March 19, 2017 08:07 PM
Who are Yorshka's parents?
Before we get very far into this, I want to acknowledge a point that you might be thinking right now: "But MegaBearsFan, Yorshka tells us who her parents are!" Or at least, she tells us that her father is Gwyn and her sister is Gwynevere and her "brother" is Gwyndolin. Seems pretty cut-and-dry right? OK, blog post over. If I keep writing on topics like this, I'm going to become very prolific!
... Well, maybe it's not quite that simple. This all seems rather fishy, and I'm not so sure if I'm willing to take Yorshka's words at face value. We still have the Ringed City DLC coming out for Dark Souls III at the end of this month, so it's entirely possible that DLC will settle the questions raised in this post. But until then, please humor me as I take a dive down a bit of a rabbit hole.
Yorshka directly states that Dark Sun Gwyndolin is her brother.
Before we go any further, let's take a look at what Yorshka actually says - her full dialogue can be conveniently read on fextralife (among other Souls wikis). When you meet Yorshka and perform the Darkmoon loyalty, she mentions:
"If thou shalt swear by the Covenant, to become a shadow of Father Gwyn and Sister Gwynevere,
A blade that shall hunt the foes of our lords;
Then I place thee under the aegis, and the power, of the Darkmoon."
If you level up in the covenant, she'll go on to talk about her relation to Dark Sun Gwyndolin:
"The Darkmoon Knights were once led by my elder brother, the Dark Sun Gwyndolin.
But he was stricken by illness, and leadership of the knights fell to me.
Then Sulyvahn wrongfully proclaimed himself Pontiff, and took me prisoner.
Oh where could my dear brother be?"
If you take this all at face value, then it seems pretty cut-and-dry, but take another look at the actual subtitle text. When she talks about Gwyn and Gwynevere, she uses the words "Father" and "Sister" (respectively), implying that Yorshka may be the daughter of Gwyn and blood sister to both Gwynevere and Gwyndolin. However, notice that, unlike when speaking of her brother, the words "Father" and "Sister" are capitalized, as if they are proper nouns or - more likely - titles...
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Tags:Dark Souls, Dark Souls III, FromSoftware, lore, Yorshka, Blades of the Darkmoon, Darkmoon, Gwyndolin, Gwyn, Gwynevere, Anor Londo, Irithyll, Faraam, Nameless King, God of War, dragon, crossbreed, Priscilla, Velka, Caitha, Fina, Seath the Scaleless, Dusk, Oolacile, Oceiros, The Painted World of Ariamis, religion
The Nameless King answers a long-standing Dark Souls question
A couple years ago, I posted about a burning question in Dark Souls' lore: who is the "forgotten" god of war (first-born sun of Gwyn) who was expunged from the annals of Anor Londo? At the time, the leading theory was that Solaire was intended to be the firstborn god of war, and I tentatively went along with that interpretation. There were a few holes in the theory, a lot of it was circumstantial, and there were even a couple of alternative possibilities. I also wholly admitted that it was very likely that the god of war character simply wasn't present in the original game, except through the lore references in the environment and item descriptions. Dark Souls II did little to answer this question, other than to provide a possible name for the god of war: Faraam. Well, it turns out that Dark Souls III finally answers this question, and all of us who thought it might be Solaire were totally wrong - and may even look foolish in retrospect.
As is so often the case with Souls games, you'll have to work hard to find all the good lore. In this case, you'll need to find and conquer the optional Archdragon Peak area of the game, which, itself, requires that you find the Untended Graves optional area as well.
These statues of the Nameless King resemble the statue and pose of Gwyn in the first game.
Once you make it to Archdragon Peak, you'll be treated with a large, sunny area populated with serpent men that should look familiar to veteran Dark Souls players. I'm still unclear regarding the lore behind these enemies. The original man serpents from Dark Souls were hybrid creations of Seath's experiments. Perhaps the man serpents in Archdragon Peak are the progeny of the original serpent men from Sen's Fortress. More importantly, however, is that Archdragon Peak is also home to the Ancient Wyvern and the Nameless King.
During your encounter with the Ancient Wyvern, you'll get your first clue as to the lore that will be uncovered in this area. You'll find regal statues of a being holding a massive swordspear weapon. The style and pose of this statue may remind you of the statues of Gwyn that you saw in Anor Londo in both Dark Souls and Dark Souls III. The way that the character is standing, and the way that he's holding his weapon looks like he could fit in perfectly standing next to Gwyn in the Anor Londo cathedral...
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Tags:Dark Souls, Dark Souls II, Dark Souls III, lore, FromSoftware, Hidetaka Miyazaki, God of War, Gwyn, Faraam, Nameless King, Archdragon Peak, Untended Graves, dragon, Dragonslayer Ornstein, Solaire, son, sun, Warrior of Sunlight, annals, Anor Londo, Velka, DLC, Ashes of Ariandel, Ariamis
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A gamer's thoughts
Welcome to Mega Bears Fan's blog, and thanks for visiting! This blog is mostly dedicated to game reviews, strategies, and analysis of my favorite games. I also talk about my other interests, like football, science and technology, movies, and so on. Feel free to read more about the blog.
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I actually like playing the preseason in Madden10/07/2019 If you've already read my review of Madden 20 on my personal blog, then you know that I consider this year's release to be a massive disappointment. In fact, the last Madden entry that I actually liked was probably Madden 17. Despite my misgivings about this year's game, I do want to start off by talking about something in recent...
The Mandalorian is built on sounder logic than recent Star Wars
Comments: 0Rating: 5.0 [1]
"Contact" link not working
Comments: 3Not rated yet
Kojima validates my years-long criticisms of open world games in Death Stranding
Moral and ethical decisions in Cities Skylines?
Fishing for Cities Skylines expansion ideas: holidays?
UNLV will break in the Raiders' new stadium with a new head coach
The game that Silent Hill 3 might have been
'Civilization V' strategy: Enrico Dandolo blindly manages Brave New World's only playable City-State
Comments: 4Rating: 4.9 [13]
Is Endgame's ending a lot worse than you think?
Assuming you won't miss the Economic Victory, 'Fame and Fortune' is an excellent expansion to the 'Civilization' board game
Ace Combat 7 is an aerial dog-fighter with actual level design?!
Is Pyramid Head a rapist?
Comments: 27Rating: 4.1 [25]
Resident Evil 2 remake on PS4 blocks streaming and share if HDR is enabled
'Cold Heart': the Silent Hill Wii game that could have been...
'Civilization V' strategy: Dido is Carthage's queen of the coasts01/15/2016 Continuing my series of strategy guides for the civilizations of Brave New World, I have now moved onto legacy civs whose strategies have changed somewhat due to the expansions' features. One civilization that received an indirect upgrade by the changes introduced in Brave New World is Dido's Carthaginian empire. Even though...
Silent Hill Analyses
Civ 6 Strategies
Dark Souls Analyses
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Art, Crafts, Cosplay (3)
Board Gaming (27)
Current Events, Politics, etc (31)
Pets and Animals (9)
Speculation and Wishlists (36)
Sports - Chicago Bears (27)
Television and Movies (100)
Television and Movies - Movie Reviews (47)
Video Gaming (367)
Video Gaming - Game Reviews (159)
Video Gaming - Modding (11)
Video Gaming - Strategy (46)
Women and Relationships (16)
city simulation
city state
Civilization V: Brave New World
Civilization V: Gods & Kings
Civ-V
Hidetaka Miyazaki
indie gaming
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Team Silent
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trade route
unique improvement
The game that Silent Hill 3 might have been (3)
Lee Taggart wrote: Overall, a wonderfully insightful post. Thank you ... [More]
Lee Taggart wrote: "Still not sure what relevance the sewer woul... [More]
Lee Taggart wrote: "The nurses in Silent Hill 3 are likely there... [More]
Despite gameplay improvements, components are a huge problem with X-Wing 2nd edition (1)
Duaner wrote: Hey I think you should revisit this. Lots of chang... [More]
The Lakeview Hotel and SH2's subtler, more personal Otherworld (10)
boy wrote: I love your silent hill 1,2,3,4 analysis stuff sin... [More]


Otway Tonewoods provides a range of products for a variety of musical instruments. All of our products are from Otway Blackwood (Acacia melanoxylon) and are graded from A to Mastergrade in figure, varying in price accordingly. All our products are air dried to approximately 13% moisture content and may need further drying depending on application. They are bandsawn to at least our Minimum Standard Dimensions (MSD's).
Acoustic Guitars - 00, 000, Dreadnaught, Classical, Jumbo.
Otway Tonewoods can customise measurements to suit your needs. If any of our MSD's do not match what you are after, feel free to call with the dimensions you need. If you are interested in purchasing, please call specifying your product/s and quantity. Some of our products are sawn from the same log. If you wish to log match your products please specify when ordering (e.g. neck block to match back and side set). All sets are already log-matched. Due to the low intensity nature of our operations there may be some wait on orders therefore we encourage to pre-order products.
Otway Tonewoods has supplied timber for a number of specialty lines of guitars to various companies. We do have the capacity to support specialty lines that have limited production volumes.


WiFi Clock Radio & Bluetooth 960P HD IR Spy Camera is advance in Spy Camera technology, bullt in Bluetooth technology, which basically means you can wirelessly stream and play music through the clock speakers from your mobile phone. If you have music on your Iphone or Android, interface it with the clock Bluetooth speaker and listen to your music anytime.
Built into the Clock Radio is a WiFi module plus a 960P pinhole camera plus a mini microphone. Live view this camera from your Iphone or Android from anywhere in the world and remotely save or playback motion detected video and audio recordings. Listen is as well.
Introducing the very latest advance in Spy Camera technology. Here we have a rather stylish looking and fully functional alloy casing clock radio but with a huge twist. Also built in is Bluetooth technology, which basically means you can wirelessly stream and play music through the clock speakers from your mobile phone. If you have music on your Iphone or Android, interface it with the clock Bluetooth speaker and listen to your music anytime.
As mentioned this Clock Radio with Bluetooth is a 9600P WiFi Spy Camera like nothing else. If you have any concerns about introducing something new into a home or office, Nursing Home perhaps, what could be better? Fully functional as a Clock Radio and 240V mains powered, it also supports 2 x AA batteries to retain clock memory if power is disconnected. The camera WiFi won't function if power is disconnected.
Provided you have WiFi available wherever the camera is located (you must know the WiFi router password) you then have complete remote access to the camera from anywhere in the world using either local WiFi or any 3/4G mobile phone reception. This device also supports P2P (Peer to Peer) technologies meaning you can locally view the camera live even in the same location as the camera and using the same wireless router connection.
Can this Clock Radio Spy Camera see and record in total darkness?
Ideally suited to homes, offices, warehouses, sheds etc you name it. As a matter of interest this fantastic WiFi Clock Radio IR camera has a very covert pinhole megapixel lens built in. To the naked eye no one but no one will find it. After all, this is a real and a fully functional Clock Radio so to any prying eye, it's extremely unlikely so lets not get too paranoid about it. You know it's a clock spy camera but no one else does.
Please note this WiFi Clock Radio Spy camera also supports 640P quality and whilst this resolution is still very good (hard to tell the difference) although selecting the slightly lower resolution effectively increases memory capacity some 30%.
For that reason we recommend the camera is set to MOTION DETECTION (MD) recording rather than constant recording even though the camera supports both. When motion is detected the App allows the authorised user to decide the recording duration. In other, words 1, 3 or 5 minute duration? By selecting MD recording there is far less memory waste, as there is no point continually recording no activity.
The other great feature of MD recording is your ability to look through recording, as each MD becomes a recorded time and date stamped EVENT. That makes searching the memory for that much easier as all recordings will contain something of value.
NO. If you decide to use the camera for live viewing or LIVE listening in only then no SD card is not required then yes the only means to record is using your mobile phone is when live viewing. Clearly it's not feasible to stay logged in all day, which is why it's a good idea to use a memory card to record when you can't view it live for whatever reason.
This camera App is so smart, why not set SCHEDULED recording. This App feature basically means that you DON'T need to have the camera in permanent MD mode. If you need to set MD recording from say 4.00pm to 1.00am, no problem it can do that too. It's all remotely set from your free mobie phone App. No need to touch the clock camera at all.


If you are looking for Saiju Kurup filmography then you are at the right place. The actor has so far done 87 movies in tollywood, mollywood. Njan Parethan, Prakasan, Shubharathri movies arehisupcoming projects.Saiju Kurup recent movies have been Oru Kuprasidha Payyan, Theevandi, Iblis, Naam, B.Tech, Kala Viplavam Pranayam, Kalyanam, Captain, Aadu 2, Vimaanam, Pokkiri Simon, Njandukalude Naattil Oridavela, Mannamkattayum Kariyilayum, Careful, Adventures of Omanakuttan, 1971 Beyond Borders, Alamara, Kolumittayi, Kavi Uddheshichathu?, IDI - Inspector Dawood Ibrahim, Ann Maria Kalippilaanu, Action Hero Biju, Rajamma @ Yahoo, Nirnayakam.
To receive all the latest updates about your favorite actor Saiju Kurup and his films, follow Saiju Kurup on Pycker.


USC's Gould School of Law came to WRAPPED's higher education art consultants looking for a collection of artwork that would brighten up the otherwise serious hallways. WRAPPED's team of higher education art consultants paired with USC's law school to come up with a cohesive collection of abstract canvases. The artwork payed subtle homage to USC's iconic orange and red school colors while drawing upon other colors to give the collection a versatile and timeless feel.


I recently taught several leadership development workshops at the Rutgers Institute for Ethical Leadership based on my new book, The Happy Healthy Nonprofit: Strategies for Impact without Burnout. One of the workshops focused on technology wellness in the nonprofit workplace, more specifically on how to avoid collaborative overload.
Time and time again I hear the call for developing fundraising solutions that are "outside the box." Too often, creative development professionals attempt to devise catchier fundraising events or complicated, highly segmented direct mail appeals in an effort to generate more charitable dollars. Unfortunately, more often than not, the return on investment (ROI) of these plans falls far short of expectations.
In last month's blog post, Is Your Nonprofit Prepared for a Crisis?, I wrote about the need for organizations to develop a crisis plan. I wrote the article in response to the September shooting at the Navy Yard in Washington, D.C., an event caused by external factors.
I joined a friend for lunch the other day to talk about a course he is teaching on management and organization. I used the occasion to dig back into my files (I still have some paper files!) to look at one of my favorite articles from the Harvard Business Review - all the way back to March 1978: Zen and the Art of Management by Richard Tanner Pascale. I think the article still holds up. It foreshadows some of the wisdom of Jim Collins and his assessment of the importance of the team to any great organization's success (or later fall from greatness).


text:
Claude (le) Lorrain, geboren als Claude Gellée (Chamagne, circa 1600 – Rome, 23 november 1682), was een Franse schilder. Zijn naam is ontleend aan zijn geboortestreek Lotharingen, in het Frans: Lorraine.

Hij was de derde van vijf zonen van Jean Gellée en Anne Padore. Volgens de biograaf Filippo Baldinucci overleden zijn ouders toen hij twaalf jaar oud was. Hij was volgens een andere biograaf, Joachim von Sandrart, die hem in zijn Teutsche Akademie (1675) vermeldde, oorspronkelijk banketbakker van beroep. Lorrain ging in 1613 of 1618 naar Rome. Van 1620 tot 1622 was hij in Napels en gedurende twee jaar bij de Duitse schilder Goffredo Wals in de leer. Tussen 1622 en 1625 werkte hij in het atelier van Agostino Tassi in Rome. Tussen 1625 en 1627 was hij een jaar in Nancy in Lotharingen leerling-assistent van Claude Deruet, de hofschilder van de hertog. Hij hoopte van Deruet tevergeefs figuren te leren schilderen. Lorrain had er een traumatische ervaring met het werken op steigers, waarna hij in zijn verdere loopbaan afzag van het schilderen van fresco's en zijn landschappen slechts zou stofferen met kleine figuren. Vanaf het voorjaar van 1627 was hij terug in Rome. Zijn eerste gedateerde schilderij stamt uit 1629. In 1633 werd hij lid van de Academia di San Luca, de officiële kunstenaarsvereniging en in 1643 lid van de Congregazione dei Virtuosi. Hij ontving onder meer opdrachten van paus Urbanus VIII Barberini, koning Filips IV van Spanje, paus Alexander VII Chigi, prins Lorenzo Onofrio Colonna en prins Gaspare Altieri. Lorrain stierf op 23 november 1682 en werd begraven in de Trinitá dei Monti. In 1840 werden zijn stoffelijke resten herbegraven in de San Luigi dei Francesi in Rome.

Schilderstijl
De werken van Lorrain behoren tot de barok. Hij schilderde vooral klassieke, arcadische landschappen. Hij zou een groot voorbeeld worden voor de Engelse romantische schilders John Constable en J.M.W. Turner.

Inspiratiebronnen
Voor zijn thematiek was de klassieke Latijnse dichtkunst van belang, onder meer het werk van Horatius, Vergilius en Ovidius. Voor de weergave van menselijke figuren in zijn landschappen ging Lorrain te rade bij het werk van Rafaël. Hij bestudeerde het werk van de Bolognese schilders Annibale Carracci en Domenichino voor de manier waarop zij figuren en landschap op harmonieuze wijze wisten te versmelten. Lorrain kende de werken van de Antwerpenaar Paul Bril, sinds 1582 in Rome en Adam Elsheimer uit Frankfurt, die vanaf 1594 in Rome verbleef. Ook het tekenwerk van Bartholomeus Breenbergh van de Schildersbent of Bentvueghels, een groep in 1620 in Rome opgericht door de "Fiamminghi" ('Vlamingen', waar ook Noord-Nederlanders en Duitsers toe werden gerekend), heeft hem sterk beïnvloed.

Werken
 Landschap met fluitspelende herder, ca. 1629-32, Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena
 Haven met de Villa Medici, 1637, Uffizi, Florence
 Pastoraal landschap met het Lago di Albano en Castel Gandolfo, 1639
 Zeehaven met ondergaande zon, 1639, Louvre, Parijs
 De Romeinse Campagna, 1639, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
 Een kunstenaar die naar de natuur werkt, 1639, Cincinnati Art Museum
 Landschap met inscheping van de heilige Paula Romana, 1639/40, Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid
 Haven met de inscheping van de heilige Ursula, 1641 National Gallery, Londen
 Odysseus brengt Chryseis naar haar vader terug, ca. 1644, Louvre, Parijs
 Groot landschap, ca. 1645-50 Louvre, Parijs
 Verering van het Gouden Kalf, 1653, Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe
 Landschap met de ontvoering van Europa door Jupiter
 Landschap met Ascanius die het hert van Sylvia neerschiet, 1682

Galerij

Literatuur
 C.v.Tuyll v. Serooskerken en M.C.Plomp (2011), Claude Lorrain, WBooks, Zwolle,

Frans kunstschilder
Barokschilder
17e-eeuws schilder

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


text:
namespace base {
class RefCountedMemory;
}

class GURL;

@protocol UITraitEnvironment;
@class UIWebView;
@class NSString;

namespace net {
class SSLInfo;
}

namespace web {

class BrowserState;
class BrowserURLRewriter;
class JavaScriptFeature;
class WebClient;
class WebMainParts;
class WebState;

// Setter and getter for the client.  The client should be set early, before any
// web code is called.
void SetWebClient(WebClient* client);
WebClient* GetWebClient();

// Interface that the embedder of the web layer implements.
class WebClient {
 public:
  WebClient();
  virtual ~WebClient();

  // Allows the embedder to set a custom WebMainParts implementation for the
  // browser startup code.
  virtual std::unique_ptr<WebMainParts> CreateWebMainParts();

  // Gives the embedder a chance to perform tasks before a web view is created.
  virtual void PreWebViewCreation() const {}

  // An embedder may support schemes that are otherwise unknown to lower-level
  // components. To control how /net/url and other components interpret urls of
  // such schemes, the embedder overrides `AddAdditionalSchemes` and adds to the
  // vectors inside the `Schemes` structure.
  struct Schemes {
    Schemes();
    ~Schemes();
    // "Standard" (RFC3986 syntax) schemes.
    std::vector<std::string> standard_schemes;
    // See https://www.w3.org/TR/powerful-features/#is-origin-trustworthy.
    std::vector<std::string> secure_schemes;
  };

  // Gives the embedder a chance to register its own standard and secure url
  // schemes early on in the startup sequence.
  virtual void AddAdditionalSchemes(Schemes* schemes) const {}

  // Returns the embedding application locale string.
  virtual std::string GetApplicationLocale() const;

  // Returns true if URL has application specific schema. Embedder must return
  // true for every custom app specific schema it supports. For example Chromium
  // browser would return true for "chrome://about" URL.
  virtual bool IsAppSpecificURL(const GURL& url) const;

  // Returns text to be displayed for an unsupported plugin.
  virtual std::u16string GetPluginNotSupportedText() const;

  // Returns the user agent string for the specified type.
  virtual std::string GetUserAgent(UserAgentType type) const;

  // Returns a string resource given its id.
  virtual std::u16string GetLocalizedString(int message_id) const;

  // Returns the contents of a resource in a StringPiece given the resource id.
  virtual base::StringPiece GetDataResource(
      int resource_id,
      ui::ResourceScaleFactor scale_factor) const;

  // Returns the raw bytes of a scale independent data resource.
  virtual base::RefCountedMemory* GetDataResourceBytes(int resource_id) const;

  // Returns a list of additional WebUI schemes, if any. These additional
  // schemes act as aliases to the about: scheme. The additional schemes may or
  // may not serve specific WebUI pages depending on the particular
  // URLDataSourceIOS and its override of
  // URLDataSourceIOS::ShouldServiceRequest. For all schemes returned here,
  // view-source is allowed.
  virtual void GetAdditionalWebUISchemes(
      std::vector<std::string>* additional_schemes) {}

  // Gives the embedder a chance to add url rewriters to the BrowserURLRewriter
  // singleton.
  virtual void PostBrowserURLRewriterCreation(BrowserURLRewriter* rewriter) {}

  // Gives the embedder a chance to provide custom JavaScriptFeatures.
  virtual std::vector<JavaScriptFeature*> GetJavaScriptFeatures(
      BrowserState* browser_state) const;

  // Gives the embedder a chance to provide the JavaScript to be injected into
  // the web view as early as possible. Result must not be nil.
  // The script returned will be injected in all frames (main and subframes).
  //
  // TODO(crbug.com/703964): Change the return value to NSArray<NSString*> to
  // improve performance.
  virtual NSString* GetDocumentStartScriptForAllFrames(
      BrowserState* browser_state) const;

  // Gives the embedder a chance to provide the JavaScript to be injected into
  // the web view as early as possible. Result must not be nil.
  // The script returned will only be injected in the main frame.
  //
  // TODO(crbug.com/703964): Change the return value to NSArray<NSString*> to
  // improve performance.
  virtual NSString* GetDocumentStartScriptForMainFrame(
      BrowserState* browser_state) const;

  // Allows the embedder to bind an interface request for a WebState-scoped
  // interface that originated from the main frame of `web_state`. Called if
  // `web_state` could not bind the receiver itself.
  virtual void BindInterfaceReceiverFromMainFrame(
      WebState* web_state,
      mojo::GenericPendingReceiver receiver) {}

  // Calls the given `callback` with the contents of an error page to display
  // when a navigation error occurs. `error` is always a valid pointer. The
  // string passed to `callback` will be nil if no error page should be
  // displayed. Otherwise, this string will contain the details of the error
  // and maybe links to more info. `info` will have a value for SSL cert errors
  // and otherwise be nullopt. `navigation_id` is passed into this method so
  // that in the case of an SSL cert error, the blocking page can be associated
  // with the tab.
  virtual void PrepareErrorPage(WebState* web_state,
                                const GURL& url,
                                NSError* error,
                                bool is_post,
                                bool is_off_the_record,
                                const absl::optional<net::SSLInfo>& info,
                                int64_t navigation_id,
                                base::OnceCallback<void(NSString*)> callback);

  // Instructs the embedder to return a container that is attached to a window.
  virtual UIView* GetWindowedContainer();

  // Enables the logic to handle long press context menu with UIContextMenu.
  virtual bool EnableLongPressUIContextMenu() const;

  // Returns the UserAgentType that should be used by default for the web
  // content, based on the `web_state`.
  virtual UserAgentType GetDefaultUserAgent(web::WebState* web_state,
                                            const GURL& url) const;

  // Logs the default mode used (Mobile or Desktop). This is supposed to be
  // called only if the user didn't force the mode.
  virtual void LogDefaultUserAgent(web::WebState* web_state,
                                   const GURL& url) const;

  // Returns true if URL was restored via session restoration cache.
  virtual bool RestoreSessionFromCache(web::WebState* web_state) const;

  // Correct missing NTP and reading list virtualURLs and titles. Native session
  // restoration may not properly restore these items.
  virtual void CleanupNativeRestoreURLs(web::WebState* web_state) const;

  // Notify the embedder that `web_state` will display a prompt for the user.
  virtual void WillDisplayMediaCapturePermissionPrompt(
      web::WebState* web_state) const;

  // Returns whether `url1` and `url2` are actually pointing to the same page.
  virtual bool IsPointingToSameDocument(const GURL& url1,
                                        const GURL& url2) const;
};

}  // namespace web

#endif  // IOS_WEB_PUBLIC_WEB_CLIENT_H_

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


text:
The Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror Workshop for Young Writers
2021 Workshop Staff
Conduct Policies
Alpha Angels
Applications for Alpha 2022 will open on January 10th, 2022 and close on March 13th, 2022.
If you're unclear about whether you're eligible to apply to Alpha this year due to past digital Alpha attendance, please contact the staff at alphawritersworkshop@gmail.com
To apply to Alpha, you will need to submit an original short story and a $10 application fee. If the $10 fee presents a barrier to application, please contact us at alphawritersworkshop@gmail.com. The tuition for the in-person workshop from July 20 – July 31, 2022 is $1,200, and will only be collected upon acceptance.
Scholarships and financial aid are available for accepted students.
The application form and additional details on applying are below. You will find more information about the workshop generally here.
1. Fill out our online application form.
If someone other than you will be paying your Alpha tuition, please let them know that you are applying to Alpha at the time of application and not when the tuition has come due.
A limited pool of financial assistance is available to applicants who cannot otherwise attend Alpha. If tuition aid would make the difference between your being able to attend Alpha and not attending, please indicate accordingly on the application form.
Two full scholarships are also available. All applicants may apply for the Tamora Pierce Scholarship, which will cover the full tuition cost of the recipient, and eligible applicants may apply for the BIPOC student scholarship, which also covers full tuition cost. More information on these two scholarships is in the "Financial Aid" portion of the application.
In addition, we have resources available for students with technological limitations (for example, if you will not have a personal computer). We are also committed to meeting all accessibility needs. If you have any concerns (for example, if you require an ASL interpreter), please contact us at any time during the application or acceptance process.
Requesting accommodations and/or applying for aid or scholarships will have no effect on your chances of admission.
Admission is based solely on your age, your submitted short story, and the number of times you have attended Alpha.
2. Submit one original sci-fi, fantasy or horror short story between 2000 and 6000 words.
Please don't send fan fiction, or any story using existing characters or worlds (such as Star Trek). Additionally, you must submit a short story, not an excerpt from a longer work.
Beyond your age and attendance record, you will be considered for admission to the workshop based on your application story alone — in fact, our judges read the stories without applicants' names attached. However, your submitted work does not have to be perfect. What we look for in the stories is promise, not experience. Send us what you feel is your best work.
We encourage every young writer who is interested to apply.
All submitted stories must be:
In proper manuscript format (external link)
Submitted electronically by Sunday, March 13th (as long as it's March 13 somewhere in the world.)
Attached in the form below as a document in RTF or MS Word format
3. Send in the application fee ($10.00 USD).
The application fee may be paid electronically via PayPal in the form below. Please reach out if this fee is prohibitive to your application.
Do not include any payment for the workshop tuition until you have been notified of your acceptance.
How do I know whether my [fill in the blank] arrived safely?
If something arrives over a weekend, or a holiday, you may not receive an immediate reply, but you will receive a timely confirmation of the receipt of each item that you submit during the application process, including the application form, application fee, story submission, etc.
All confirmations are sent via email. Therefore, it is critical that you enter your email address correctly and that you can reliably receive email at the supplied address. We strongly suggest that the email account used is not one that is shared between friends or family members. We've had problems more than once with email addresses that are shared by more than one person where mail never made it to the intended recipient. If you sent something in and more than a day or two has gone by without a response (excluding weekends and holidays), please feel free to contact us. ALSO – check your spam folder, or whitelist our domain to ensure our emails are delivered to your inbox.
We typically notify people of their acceptance around April 19 (by email, unless otherwise specified).
Mr.Mrs.MissMs.Dr.Prof.Rev. Prefix First Middle Last Suffix
Birth Date*
Reminder: You must be between fourteen (14) and nineteen (19) years old on the first day of the workshop.
Parent or Guardian's Name*
Dr.MissMr.Mrs.Ms.Prof.Rev. Prefix First Middle Last Suffix
Parent or Guardian's Email*
Are you or will you be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 by the first day of the workshop? Vaccinations are required to attend, with religious and medical exemptions.*
No (religious/medical exemption)
Have you attended Alpha before and if so, which years?*
Please list years you attended Alpha previously if applicable.
How did you hear about the workshop?*
Please let us know as this helps us target future efforts to let as many teens know about the workshop.
Alpha's social media
An author's social media (please specify)
From a former student
From a teacher or librarian
Other Social Media?
Tuition for the 2022 workshop is $1,200. Do you require financial aid?*
**Applying for financial aid will not affect your eligibility. Application stories will be judged anonymously–the only qualifying criteria for Alpha are your age, your story, and how many times you have attended Alpha before.**
Alpha has never turned away an accepted applicant due to inability to pay tuition. If financial aid would make the difference between your being able to attend Alpha or not, please let us know how much aid you require:
Aid Requested
Do you plan to attend even if aid is unavailable?
(note: this will NOT affect your application but assists us in forecasting participant numbers)
In 300 to 500 words, please describe why you would like to attend Alpha and how a scholarship will help make it possible
In addition to offering need-based aid to all applicants, Alpha offers two full-tuition scholarships, described below. Would you like to apply for these Scholarships?
Tamora Pierce Scholarship
Tamora Pierce's writing is known for diverse representation, strong women, and tackling social issues. In 300-500 words, what themes do you explore in your own writing, and what change do you hope your stories can make in the world? This scholarship is open to writers of any gender and background. Tamora Pierce will read the winning essay, but is not on the panel of judges. This scholarship will cover one full tuition.
Tamora Pierce Essay:
BIPOC Scholarship
Alpha is committed to breaking down barriers for BIPOC teens entering the world of science fiction, fantasy, and horror. This scholarship will cover one full tuition for a BIPOC Alpha student.
I would like to be considered for the BIPOC scholarship*
BIPOC Essay
Story Submission
You will be considered for admission to the workshop based on your application story alone — in fact, our judges read the stories without applicants' names attached. However, your submitted work does not have to be perfect. What we look for in the stories is promise, not experience. Send us what you feel is your best work. We encourage every young writer who is interested to apply.
All submitted stories must be in proper manuscript format (external link).
Submit one original SF, fantasy or horror story between 2000 and 6000 words*
.rtf, .doc, or .docx formats only
Accepted file types: doc, rtf, docx, txt, Max. file size: 16 MB.
Application Fee*
Once you have submitted this application, you will be directed to PayPal to pay your application fee. There, you may use a credit or debit card or an existing Paypal account.
**OPTIONAL** Data Gathering
The following questions are completely optional and will not affect the consideration of your application - application judges will not see this data. When we consider applications for Alpha, the only qualifying criteria are your age, your story, and how many times you have attended Alpha before.
Your answers to these optional questions will not affect our consideration of your application.
Black or African-American
American Indian or Alaskan Native
From Mulitple Races
Some other race (please specify)
Other Race - please specify
(tick any that apply)
Hispanic/Latin
Not Hispanic/Latin
Other Ethnicity - please specify
Annual Family Income
You will be taken to Paypal after clicking SUBMIT.
If you do NOT see a paypal window, you may have missed entering something into the form. Please SCROLL DOWN to check the form and resubmit
© 2021 Alpha Writers Workshop


text:
95 candles for Jerome's Katie Lee
Portrait of Katie Lee by James Q. Martin
Diane Sward Rapaport
Originally Published: October 21, 2014 1:39 p.m.
Katie Lee will be 95 on October 23. She is one of the Southwest's most outspoken and beloved environmental activists and authors. She has lived in Jerome since 1971.
Ever since Glen Canyon was buried by Reservoir Powell, Katie Lee has sung, stomped, photographed, written about, fought to let the Colorado River run free. She has inspired many to reconsider the issue of dams, particularly the 'deadbeat' dams that have become obsolete, and to consider the considerable environmental damage they have spawned. "Dam Dams" reads the license plate of her Prius.
2014: Triple Career Milestones
This year marks three major milestones in Katie's very productive career. First she is one of the emotional stars of two films: "DamNation" and "Wrenched." Her latest book, The Ghosts of Dandy Crossing," was published in May by Ken Sanders' Dream Garden Press. Hance Editions in Flagstaff has just released a special edition of a dozen black and white classic portraits taken by photographer Martin D. Koehler of a nude Katie at 37 years old in the canyons of Glen Canyon that she so loved. No wonder Katie Lee is in a triple tizzy.
Pre-dam Hite Marina
The Ghosts of Dandy Crossing is a triple love story: the characters that lived around Dandy Crossing, now Hite Marina, before the river rose to drown it; the love of the beauty of Glen Canyon that would soon be drowned; and Katie's love affair with a a cowboy/miner. Katie is one of the few writers I know whose words can weave us into the magic spell that the canyons of the southwest have-and this book does it very well. The book is one of the few historical documents about the life lived in Hite Canyon before the dam.
Naked Katie: Classic Portraits
Anyone who has ever hiked or boated with Katie in the wilderness knows she will shed her clothes as quickly as she possibly can, and not put them on again until she gets close to her car. In her words, [I have been]" hiking freely and in tune with nature for at least half of those years. When I met Glen Canyon it was love at first sight- a place far from the inbred taboos of our society- closer to a dreamland than to reality. I have never posed as a model and am not doing so here...only doing what I always did in Glen Canyon- climbing, dancing, walking, touching, talking to the stone, swimming in the river, lying in the shallows, sliding down the falls, crawling through ruins, inching up crevasses, hanging from tree limbs, covering myself with mud, playing, singing, living with the canyon. I can always tell when a model is photographed in a place she's never seen or experienced before; it's in body language that can't be hidden."
The limited edition of black and white portraits of Katie Lee at 37 years old is now available from Hance Editions, http://katie-lee.hanceeditions.com/about-us.
The Films: "DamNation" and "Wrenched"
In 2014, two films show Katie being interviewed and singing about the loss of Glen Canyon-"Wrenched" and "DamNation."
The film "DamNation" is a documentary about America's lost and endangered rivers and the dams that block them. Producers Travis Rummel and Matt Stoecker dub Katie Lee "The Grand Dame of Dam Busting." Stoecker wrote Katie Lee a letter: "I just wanted ... to say how thankful I am to you for all you do and for being the heart and soul of our film. Every time we show it, folks come up after and are just in awe of you and teary eyed about what happened to Glen Canyon. Your description, humor, and pure joy while immersed in that beautify place is inspiring a lot of people to take up the sledgehammer and get ready for battle." www.damnationfilm.com
Producer ML Lincoln's film "Wrenched" is a gut-wrenching documentary about the community of activists that were inspired by the work of Edward Abbey, who wrote so eloquently about the lonesome and beautiful places of the Southwest. www.wrenched-themovie.com. Abbey fought with his pen to help prevent wilderness desecration from industries that care only for the money they produce. Today, profits from pollution are virtually synonymous with big business. Katie Lee sings and talks her way right into your heart in that film. "Wrenched" was shown in Flagstaff last week and the film received a standing ovation.
Happy Birthday Katie. I'm so glad you are able to feel the effects of your eloquent activism in your lifetime. And I'm so happy to be your friend. www.katydoodit.com
Diane Sward Rapaport is the author of Home Sweet Jerome: Death and Rebirth of Arizona's Richest Copper Mining City. The book is widely available at retail shops in Jerome, Clarkdale, Cottonwood, Sedona, Prescott and Flagstaff.
Arizona icon, Jerome's Katie Lee, dies at age 98
Katie Lee to speak at Sedona Community Center
Obituary: Katie Lee 1919-2017
Folk legend Arlo Guthrie lends his talents to upcoming documentary
Naked Truth: River trip down memory lane with Katie Lee


The first Friday of each month, the Cacaomuseum organizes a tasting! Our most recent tastings were on chocolate from some pacific islands, and on chocolate from Ecuador.
henkjan on Cacaomuseum has been opened in March 2017!
Tjaak Broek on Cacaomuseum has been opened in March 2017!


text:
Germany And Philippines Summons Each Other's Top Diplomats To Settle Locsin's 'Hitler' Remarks
The German Foreign Ministry and Philippine's Department of Foreign Affairs have summoned each other's envoys to discuss the recent interview by PH's Secretary of Foreign Affairs, Teodoro Locsin Jr., with a German news agency defending Pres. Rodrigo Duterte's war on drugs, likening it with Adolf Hitler's Holocaust.
The offended German Foreign ministry has summoned supposed the acting Philippine Ambassador to Germany, Lilibeth Pono, to explain about Locsin's remark.
In a tweet posted by Arnd Henze, the journalist who also did the infamous interview with Locsin, the foreign ministry called the remarks as "unacceptable."
UPDATE: Philippine´s acting Ambassador has been summoned by Germany´s Foreign Ministry. It has been made very clear that the remarks by @teddyboylocsin were totally unacceptable. https://t.co/KiRZxDgrIm
— Arnd Henze (@arndhenze) February 21, 2019
On February 18, Locsin was in Germany to lead the inauguration of the new chancery in Berlin and to attend the Munich Security Conference in Munich, Germany.
In an interview he gave to Henze, he defended Duterte's comparison to himself as the 'cousin of Hitler' and the president's war on drugs to Hitler's killing of 3 million Jews.
"No. This is how he expresses himself. Remember his policy, according to surveys, inspire greater confidence. Why would he give up on that?" Locsin told ARD.
"I tell you, I said the same thing. I myself said the same thing before he even said it," Locsin said.
The Philippine's DFA has since called the report 'incomplete' and 'misleading.'
As retaliation to Germany, Locsin also summoned the German envoy to the Philippines to discuss the matter in Manila instead.
He told the Philippine Embassy in Germany to inform the German Federal Foreign Office to send their top diplomat to Manila to face him.
In a reply when a citizen questioned if he is going to face the German government regarding the issue, Locsin said:
"Yes, what now? Berlin embassy is handling it; I already told them to tell the German Foreign Ministry to send the German ambassador to me because I'd rather finish my own fights than have others do it."
Germany has since been pressured by other European countries to join their petition to the United Nations to launch an investigation over Duterte's war on drugs and the extrajudicial killings in the Philippines. /apr
Global Strategy Vs Hate Speech Pushed By UN Sec-Gen
R. Kelly Pleads 'Not Guilty' Despite New DNA Evidence
A consumer tech and cybersecurity journalist who does content marketing while daydreaming about having unlimited coffee for life and getting a pet llama.


Cloud computing has become the default way for deploying applications or services. Cloud computing offers companies, enterprises and startups the ability to avoid, or minimize, spending while leveraging the flexible nature of the cloud infrastructure to meet growing business needs.
A growing challenge for applications is obtaining optimal availability at all times. Today, cloud based infrastructures are often built with a large number of systems geared for elastic scalability while hardware costs should be kept to a minimum. These flexible scenarios means that certain components are geared to fail.
Enterprises are designing applications to tolerate occasional downtimes, or at least devising an application with the ability to bypass potential failures. Even with all of the precautionary measures in place, writing or rewriting existing applications for optimal cloud usage can be labor intensive and involves a significant investment of costly resources.
Uptime Management is a set of services and tools designed for controlling, monitoring and optimizing operational productivity. Proper uptime management is indeed crucial in averting emerging issues, solving critical situations and reducing downtime. Furthermore, Uptime Management encompasses a disaster recovery mechanism in the event of an emerging issue.
At its core, Uptime Management is dependent on 24/7 Network Operation Center (NOC). The NOC is not only responsible for controlling the network and bare metal infrastructure, the NOC actually manages the entire application and service operation. The NOC offers a broader, overarching analysis of the entire system operation. With this information, critical decisions can be approached in a proactive manner rather than a temporary, reactive response. In this manner, the NOC services promote a hands-on, continuous, business-focused monitoring approach.
Monitoring is being conducted in a humanized manner to assure availability and attentiveness at all times, ensuring that all emerging situations receive the necessary attention in real-time.
It goes without saying that all 4 layers of monitoring should be carried out in a precise and centralized manner. In other words, the Uptime Management provides a unified view of the entire IT operation aspects, which renders confidence and stability as enables the respective decision makers to allocate skillful resources to other tasks and assignments within the organization.
Indeed, professional monitoring means continuous service leverage, as changes and updates to and from the cloud are constantly being implemented e.g. new modules. Real-time monitoring of both the application and its infrastructure secures the service smoothness, primarily based upon the critical assessments, stemming from the humanized NOC operation.
A tiered IT support structure enables an organization to maximize its staff resources by allowing NOC engineers to address routine activities, freeing up higher‐level support engineers to focus on more advanced issues and implement strategic initiatives for the organization.
In a 24×7 proactive support environment, events or incidents, reported by servers, applications, or networks, can be detected, classified and recorded via the monitoring tools and consequently solved. For the sake of improving efficiency, customized monitoring dashboards are then used to filter out any irrelevant events or false positives.
Integrating a tiered support structure, utilizing a 24×7 NOC, enables an organization to detect, prioritize, escalate and efficiently resolve incidents without diverting resources of development engineers.
It appears that a complementary component to the Uptime Management scope constitutes the DevOps framework. In this context the DevOps team is to increase agility during stress situations in Live production by performing Tier 2 support in real-time with utmost efficiency as per NOC/R&D requirements.
Furthermore, a well-functioning DevOps scope excels through a better utilization of the structured architecture enhancing the network productivity as implementing additional monitoring procedures and graphs.
In addition to real time monitoring, Uptime Management constitutes a service harmonization between the run-book process and a centralized dashboard. Targeting functionality optimization enables both the NOC team and the end user to benefit from a clear overview of the scale and extent of service productivity. In other words, by employing a Run-Book mechanism with a centralized dashboard a sound and smooth knowledge flow within the organization is established.
Centralized Dashboard provides each authorized person within the organization with a unified status view any time, at all times according to predefined and yet easily customizable key performance indicators and parameters.
Run-Book A process, which is incorporated into the operational workflow, which distills a crystal-clear and simple list of tasks and indices out of any architecture state, regardless its complexity. This Run-Book process forms an accurate transfer of a non-documented knowledge, accumulated by particular individuals, towards meticulous and constantly updating event documentation, which consequently reduces the dependency on single persons within the organization.
Routine preventive maintenance is perhaps the easiest and least painful way of bolstering server reliability. Regularly performing maintenance such as updating system software can go a long way in creating a data center filled with servers operating at optimal levels, with minimal investment of resources or staff time. Organizing and scheduling server maintenance, ensures that all necessary work is performed when required, minimizing the impact on overall operation of the enterprise. At all times, maintenance work should be handled in such a way that the practice itself would not consume server uptime.
Prevention is better than cure. In today's global online economy, 24/7 access to the entire organizational data and applications is a requirement for an enterprise's IT end-users and customers. Keeping your business running 24×7 under any circumstance is critical to preserving customer trust and ensuring success.
A seamless Uptime Management means the right selection and pursuit of an DR strategy for each organization. A pre-requisite for a well-functioning DR in a due event is to put together an DR plan, which refers to the organization's business necessities by devising the key metrics of recovery point objective (RPO) as well as recovery time objective (RTO) for its operational and business-oriented processes. Such a DR Management facilitates continuous access to the organizational data and systems, even after a disaster, which is often associated with severe lack of storage in a cloud environment.
Furthermore, in hybrid cloud infrastructure a well-organized DR Management replicates both on-site and to off-site data centers, so that in the event of a physical disaster, servers can be brought up in the cloud environment and vice versa.


text:
Держа́вний пра́пор А́встрії складається з двох червоних і центральної білої горизонтальних смуг. Червоний колір покликаний символізувати кров патріотів, пролиту в боротьбі за свободу і незалежність Австрійської Республіки. Білий колір — символ свободи, завойованої народом Австрії в результаті повалення в цій країні монархічного режиму. Крім того, згідно з офіційною версією затвердження символіки кольорів австрійського прапора, біла смуга означає Дунай, що перетинає територію Австрії з заходу.

Конструкція прапора

Галерея

Див. також
 Герб Австрії
 Гімн Австрії
 Прапори та герби земель Австрії

Примітки

Література
 Все про світ. Країни. Прапори. Герби: енциклопедичний довідник / [відповідальний за випуск М. Ілляш]. —  : Школа, 2001. — 622 с. ISBN 966-7657-79-5.

Посилання

Національні символи Австрії
Австрія
Австрія
Червоно-білі прапори
З'явилися 1230
З'явилися 1945
Травень 1945