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Hands on: Philips 9435 review
A premium LCD TV with premium Bowers & Wilkins sound
Comments (0) What is a hands on review?
Smart styling
2.1.2 B&W speaker system
Dolby Vision and HDR10+
No HDMI 2.1
Why you can trust What Hi-Fi? Our expert reviewers spend hours testing and comparing products and services so you can choose the best for you. Find out more about how we test.
Philips and Bowers & Wilkins are continuing their collaboration into 2020 with the announcements of the 9435 and 9235 models. These are LCD sets with a B&W speaker enclosure (though not a soundbar) that doubles as a stand.
The 9235 is a stylish, compact 43in set with an edge LED backlight and 2.1 speaker arrangement, but we haven't yet been able to see it in action. However, we have had a demo of the 9435, and its 2.1.2 speaker system (the '.2' represents two upward-firing drivers) certainly seems to create a much taller and more atmospheric sound than the average TV.
The 9435 is designed to look like a screen floating above a soundbar, with the thin neck that connects the two being more or less invisible at many angles.
According to B&W, the smart, Kvadrat cloth-covered audio component isn't a soundbar, but a speaker enclosure. That's because it contains only speakers, with the amplification and other sonic electronics housed in the main chassis of the set.
When placed on a tabletop, the speaker enclosure essentially forms the front part of a pedestal stand, and so extends further forward than the display. Anyone thinking of wall-mounting the set will be pleased to know that included in the box is a bracket that allows the speaker to protrude less.
The set is relatively thick, though, as is the norm for Philips TVs. Not only is this an LCD set with a direct LED backlight, but the three-sided Ambilight also adds a little bulk and requires you to maintain a certain minimum distance between the screen and rear wall.
The 9435 will be available in 55in and 65in variants, but the specs are otherwise the same. The Android TV 9.0 operating system (an Android 10 upgrade will be made available, but only when Philips deems it 'stable') ensures a broad range of features and apps, including Disney+ as soon as it launches in your country (24th March in the UK).
To match the smart looks of the TV, Philips is bundling the 9435 with a new remote. It's a more stylish affair than Philips has produced before, with the Muirhead leather wrap making it look particularly classy. The buttons seem a little cramped at first glance, but the backlight (a disappointingly rare feature these days) should boost the user experience. Those who prefer to use voice control, meanwhile, can take advantage of the integrated Google Assistant and 'Works with Alexa' certification.
The array of physical connections includes four HDMIs, two USBs, an optical audio output and headphone socket. The HDMIs won't be 2.1-certified, but will offer some elements of the HDMI 2.1 specification, including support for Auto Low Latency Mode (ALLM).
Variable Refresh Rate (VRR) won't be supported, though, as Philips is waiting for next-gen consoles before making that a priority. eARC is off the menu, too, with Philips saying that it isn't required to get Dolby Atmos from a TV as long as the format used is Dolby Digital Plus – which is the current approach of streaming services such as Netflix and Amazon Prime Video.
Under the skin is the P5 Perfect Picture Engine powered by a quad-core processor, and Philips is continuing to support both Dolby Vision and HDR10+ (as well as HDR10 and HLG).
Perhaps the most crucial specs, though, are those that refer to the Bowers & Wilkins sound system. This consists of five drivers arranged in a 2.1.2 configuration and rated to 50W. So that's two forward-firing drivers, a subwoofer, and two upward-firers to add genuine height to Dolby Atmos soundtracks.
There was certainly a good sense of height in the demos we saw at the launch event. The first involved a clip from the second season of Lost In Space on Netflix, where the crew attempts an ambitious manoeuvre with a huge spacecraft.
The space given to the cacophony of effects was impressive, with sounds stretching effectively to the areas to the left, right and above the TV. We did, though, clock some reediness to brass instruments in the soundtrack and a little less directness than expected, but these could be peculiarities of the particular demo or TV sample.
A demo of the 4K Blu-ray of Rocketman was even better. Again, we felt that the forward-facing elements of the soundtrack could have been projected a little more, but the overall spaciousness, tonal balance, detail and dynamics on offer made for a natural, authentic and involving clip.
Finally, we got to hear some standard stereo music through the TV's speakers, and it's clear that the delivery is far more rhythmic, solid and weighty than that of the vast majority of TVs. Sonically, this should be a good choice.
The demo of the 9435 was so focused towards audio that we really couldn't draw any conclusions about the picture quality. This was a pre-production sample and, for all we know, the picture settings may not even have been tweaked.
That said, we've got high hopes for a set that combines the brightness of a direct LED backlight and the lovely, colourful glow of Ambilight.
Initial verdict
It's too early to deliver a final verdict on the 9435, but we left the demo session excited by the prospect of getting it in for review. Sonically, it seems to be a step above its premium LCD rivals, and it's a more stylish set than most, too.
The picture quality is pretty much an entirely unknown quantity, but if Philips can get that (and the pricing) right, it should have a winner on its hands.
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What is a hands on review?
'Hands on reviews' are a journalist's first impressions of a piece of kit based on spending some time with it. It may be just a few moments, or a few hours. The important thing is we have been able to play with it ourselves and can give you some sense of what it's like to use, even if it's only an embryonic view.
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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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Tag Archives: preowned pen
One Crazy Summer!
By Nathaniel Cerf on July 15, 2018
Since last writing, I've been to the inaugural St. Louis Pen Show, moved secret underground workshop lairs and hosted visits by many members of my college fencing team!
The first St. Louis Pen Show was a monster success and a ton of fun.
First to the exciting and wonderful new St. Louis Pen Show. More organized than several already established pen shows, Anne and her crew have spent 2 years advertising and promoting this incredible show. Many of us vendors were worried no one would attend, aside from vendors. But no! A city's worth of people who had never previously attended a pen show filled the venue for 3 days!
The trip down was uneventful…until we almost got run off the road by a tornado! About 2 miles from the venue, a huge cell of storm clouds began blowing across the interstate. Wind was howling debris across the highway, even bowing flag poles. A native-born Midwesterner, I didn't worry until the clouds turned green and sirens started going off. Talk about bad times to be stuck in rush hour traffic.
Luckily, I only got rained on. No funnel cloud formed near me to whisk me away to Oz.
Many of the vendors were regulars on the show circuit, and we were all excited to catch up and discuss the past month or two since we'd last met. During the days of the show, nearly everyone who came to my table gushed about attending their first show. And most of the folks were 40 and younger! Heck. We even had a lot of kids collecting their first fountain pens. It was super encouraging to see.
Unfortunately, it wasn't all fun and games. After a very nice auction on Friday, one of our longtime friends passed away. John F. and his wife were among the first to welcome me into the pen show scene after a particularly bruising first or second Chicago Pen Show for me about a decade ago. John was a retired newspaper editor, and I was freshly out of newspaper work in an era that has seen the decimation of newspapers across the country. We commiserated and bonded over our journalistic past. We've talked at nearly every pen show since. This night was no different, as he recounted his recovery from a rather severe stroke a few months earlier. Little did either of us realize our conversation just before the auction would be our last. All of the vendors were upset to hear of his passing just as the show opened for Saturday.
Among the things this show got so right was the ceaseless promotion that included heavy media promotion to reach out to new showgoers. Plus, they had cell phone aps to help people navigate the show! AND, they had a break room for the vendors that was loaded with soda, sandwiches and snacks! Like other shows they had table watchers, a great bar scene for after-hours meetings and catching up, loads of free parking and a very nice hotel.
If you didn't go this year, be sure to attend in 2019.
Here's a quick peek at our new workshop as it comes together for many more great vintage pen repairs.
Soooo, in other news, we've moved! Well, we still have the same P.O. Box and Website, but the secret underground workshop is now much larger and better suited to fix all of your favorite vintage pens. We're not 100% unpacked but close, as you can see from this top secret photo.
This will be a temporary home, hopefully, for only a year or two. Because after this, we want to buy our forever, permanent home.
Good Lord. I hate moving! I hate it! I hate it! I hate it! It is stressful as all get out, moving a small business and home at once. Luckily, the new place is much nicer and all of the business items have been unpacked and accounted for. Sorry for the lack of updates for so long.
And while all that transpired, I had three lovely visits from Blue-Hair Cathy, Chewbacca and The Chihuahua. All teammates from my college fencing team…an unspecified number of years ago. All arrived separately on different days. Two from Montana and one from Antarctica! It was great to catch up on all of our current lives, while reminiscing about all of the people we impaled together.
And now we resume your regularly scheduled vintage pen and pre-owned luxury pen mania.
This entry was posted in Pen News and tagged #penshows, #vintagepens, luxury pens, pen shows, preowned luxury pens, preowned pen, preowned pens, St. Louis Pen Show, vintage pens on July 15, 2018 by Nathaniel Cerf.
Alexandre Dumas: The Man & The Pen
By Nathaniel Cerf on April 12, 2017
Alexandre Dumas wrote some of the greatest novels in history. It is difficult not to love "The Three Musketeers," "The Count of Monte Cristo" and "The Man in the Iron Mask."
Alexandre Dumas is my favorite writer of the 19th century. Nobody comes close to his adventures, characters or ability to capture the human condition. If you spend any time with his most famous novels, all of his characters are easily recognizable as people you can identify with in modern times. That is the secret sauce that elevates his writing to a timeless status.
My love of his work started at the age of 13. I picked up "The Count of Monte Cristo" on a bit of a whim. Before I knew it, I was hooked. It was pure literary crack. In spite of its length, I could not put it down. The tragic tale of Edmond Dantes and his need for vengeance is still rivetting. I teach fencing classes to junior high and high school students. Every 4 years or so, as new batches of kids rotate into class, I give them an end-of-the-year gift of a copy, and those who read it…even the 12-year-old girls…all come back grateful for a read that rocks their world as much as any Harry Potter or "Hunger Games" novel. (The highest praise of youth today.)
And honestly, Dumas only gets better with age! If you only read his works as a youth, you NEED to revisit them. Since turning 30 more than a decade ago, I've made a concious effort to reread at least one of his novels every year. There is soooo much more depth and realism that I missed my first time through as a teenager.
Here's a small selection of my books by Alexandre Dumas featuring early translations and modern reprintings.
"The Three Musketeers" take on an almost cartoonish quality in our modern pop culture, but to revisit them, you find a complicated story of love, sex, loyalty, honor, war and true friendship. The musketeers are ordinary men in extra-ordinary circumstances. Clever, hard working, mostly honest (you really can't trust Aramis much), these are 4 fellows who know how to game the system and make the most of the life of warriors. Dumas first wrote the novel as a serial in newspapers in 1844. It took Paris, and then the world, by storm. He actually followed it up with 4 more books: "Twenty Years After," "The Vicomte de Bragellone," "Louise de la Valliere" and "The Man in the Iron Mask." The last one is my absolute favorite, and its symbolic significance–no spoilers, I promise–completely held me in its grasp. Not only did it fully reveal the truths of all the main characters to me, it really helped me to make better sense of the world around me at the time I first read it. Pretty impressive for a novel that came out 170 years ago in 1847.
A new book of the Musketeer series called "The Red Sphinx" was just rediscovered. It was in serialization when Dumas died in 1870! Technically, it doesn't have an end, but some of his notes divulge how it was to end. Although I have yet to read it, it is supposed to take place about 20 days after the original "The Three Musketeers" novel ended.
More than this, Dumas wrote 300 books! He also wrote many plays, newspaper, magazine and fictional short stories. Another of his most famous stories is "The Corsican Brothers." Here nobel twins, who were separated at birth, can feel each other's nervous systems and emotions from across great distances…eventually learning of their parents tragic murder and uniting to extract revenge.
I own and have read dozens of his lesser known works. Most of them are as good as his biggest hits. The real trick is finding good translations! For me, the tranlator helps to be from the late 19th century or early 20th century. They try to capture the English language of the time period in which Dumas was writing. This builds a rhythm and poetry that Dumas conveyed in the original French. Modern translations fail for me because they try too hard to make it sound like modern, American English language and times. It destroys the cadence of the language and the romance of the 1800s, as well as the eras in which Dumas was writing about.
These are 2 of three volumes that I own of the original source material of "The Three Musketeers." These are "The Memoirs of D'Artagnan" in an early 20th century translation!
How big a junkie am I? I found an early 20th century translation of the 3-volume biography of the actual 4th musketeer D'Artagnan! I have yet to read it, but I can't wait. It supposedly gave Dumas the inspiration for writing the adventures of the musketeers in his fictional masterpieces.
Dumas also was a fascinating man, even without his incredible skill as a writer. He was a biracial man born of a white mother and black father in 1802. His father was one of Napoleon's top generals…until they had a falling out during the Egypt campaign. (Any number of historians thought that Napoleon's not listening to Gen. Dumas was one of his greater blunders in Egypt.) Although his father died in exile, young Alex got to encounter Napoleon as Napoleon changed horses while beating a hasty retreat from Waterloo.
Alexandre started writing as a young man, primarily for the stage. His early plays were often political and controversial. (France was undergoing several revolutions during his lifetime.) He didn't really find success until he wrote a play about Henri III. Historical fiction was practically his invention. (Shakespeare mastered it on the stage, but Dumas really developed it into an art form in novels.) With great success, came great loves and travel adventures of his own. Ultimately, no matter how much money he made, he spent far more. He died heavily in debt and fairly poor.
This is a 1996 Mont Blanc Writers Series Alexandre Dumas fountain pen with the wrong signature on the cap and box.
Mont Blanc wisely chose to honor him in 1996 with one of its early limited edition writers series pens. The pen was handsomely trimmed in classical French style accents, such as a fleur de lis on its nib. Collectors especially love this pen because it features a significant mistake on the part of Mont Blanc. The company's early releases of the pen featured not Alexandre's signature but the signature of his son, Alexandre Dumas fils, who famously wrote "Camille." The company scrambled to recall these pens and replace them with the right signature. As such, the wrong signature pens are worth more than most of the other writers series pens.
This entry was posted in Famous People & Pens and tagged Alexandre Dumas, Aramis, Athos, D'Artagnan, Edmond Dantes, fountain pen, luxury pens, Mont Blanc, Mont Blanc Alexandre Dumas, Mont Blanc Writers Series, Porthos, preowned pen, preowned pens, The Corsican Brothers, The Count of Monte Cristo, Three Musketeers on April 12, 2017 by Nathaniel Cerf.
Controversy in Chicago Part II: Getting to Know Each Other
By Nathaniel Cerf on May 18, 2016
DISCLAIMER: Painting in broad brush strokes, it will be nearly impossible to describe all of the individual experiences, personalities, struggles, complaints and desires of veteran vendors and folks who are newer to pen collecting. In listening to the "New Pen Show Attendee Forum" at the Chicago Pen Show–and in many conversations since–these are the observations I have made in an effort to better foster understanding and friendship between pen lovers of all ages.
Depending on who you talk to at a pen show…and depending on their age…it isn't all that uncommon to hear variations of the following statements:
"Young people never buy vintage. They only buy limited editions and cheap Asian junk."
"The veteran vendors are a bunch of grumps."
"New pen people are always breaking my pens."
"I'm sick of veteran pen dealers always ripping me off."
In addition to that, each group seems to find the other group anti-social, although each group is extremely social. One chats all the time online, and the other prefers talking more in person. Each seems out of touch with the other, and it is high time we all got to know each other better. With all of the technology we have, there isn't a lot of pen love out there any more, and we should unite.
Without further ado, Newbies, meet the…
VETERAN VENDORS:
Without most of the veteran vendors you meet today at a pen show, we wouldn't have a hobby, and we likely wouldn't have many–if any–new fountain pens being made.
Pen collecting really got its start in the 1970s. The whole world had switched to ballpoints (there were no such things as rollerballs or gels), and everyone was convinced that no one was ever going back to fountain pens.
A group of younger people, almost entirely independent from one another at first, still loved the old fountain pens. They were drawn to them by their beautiful designs, superior writing qualities and curious filling systems.
The pens were plentiful and cheap. Seriously, guys have told me stories about finding Parker Duofolds for as cheap as a quarter at flea markets and in antique stores.
The more they bought, the more they got curious and became amateur historians. There was NO INTERNET. These guys had to track down vintage advertising, catalogs, former employees and corporate archives to find most of the information we can now find in 10 seconds online. They spent whole decades of their lives uncovering this information.
They also taught themselves and others how to restore vintage pens. One person even bought, restored and began using a rubber ink sac and diaphragm-making machine to keep supplying us the parts to keep restoring these pens.
Many vendors/collectors became obsessed with finding perfect models of every pen a certain company made. Imagine tracking down every color and size of each model pen a company such as Sheaffer or Parker made. Many of these guys have museum-quality collections, and they got much of them for under $20 a pen! (This is an important detail to save for the second half of the post.)(It also is important to note that most of them have spent hundreds, if not thousands, to acquire a single rare model for their collections, as well.) (Another important detail.) These collectors often consider themselves "completists."
Eventually, the different collectors began to find each other and form pen shows, clubs and publications. Again, no internet, so these organizations grew slowly.
Collecting among these folks–for many but not all–became very competitive. Bragging rights were involved with cutting the cheapest deal and making the largest-margin deal. Bragging rights also were involved in finding the rarest pens, knowing the most about a particular subject and sometimes even conning a fellow/rival collector. Most of it was good-natured, but some people got to playing a little rough, too. There are a lot of good pen war stories out there, for those who are interested.
For those who enjoyed the competitive side of collecting, their core philosophy was something to the effect of: "It is up to the individual buyers to do their due diligence before purchasing a pen. If you don't investigate the pen and/or do your research, it is your fault for handing over the money without negotiating a better deal." They also will be the first to tell you that they've all been ripped off more than once.
I'm not here to state whether that is right or wrong. I'm not saying every veteran vendor is that way. In fact, I think a lot of them are much more consumer friendly than that. (Many veteran vendors are actually very eager to meet and teach new collectors some of what they have learned in the past 40 years.) Mostly, I'm just trying to explain some of the bruises new collectors pick up at a pen show.
Further, it is very important to note that vintage vendors turned pen collecting into viable businesses. More than one-man shows, many of these businesses employed people and developed real operating costs. Demand and overhead contributed to the rising prices of pens.
By the late 1980s and early 1990s, pen shows were drawing thousands of attendees from around the world. Before long, pen companies began taking notice of the rising demand for vintage fountain pens. In 1992, Mont Blanc released the now coveted Hemingway fountain pen. It was a monster hit with vintage collectors and drew renewed interest from modern pen users. Around the same time, Parker reissued the Gen. MacArthur Duofold, resurrecting the iconic model for the 4th time.
As the popularity of the hobby swelled, vintage pen prices ballooned. The internet and eBay made collecting much more accessible without the need for pen shows. Many of your veteran vendors are big eBay sellers, too. The hobby remained more vintage heavy until the Great Recession in 2008.
Everything went topsy turvy with the recession. Vintage prices crashed along with the stock market. Also, and very sadly, the folks who started the hobby in the 1970s began passing away. Pen makers the world over started producing fountain pens in high numbers. New ink colors were unleashed by the hundreds. New, younger collectors began putting a new face on pen collecting. For better or worse, many of the veteran vendors are having a harder and harder time recognizing the hobby and industry they started.
And thus, it is now time for the veteran vendors to meet the…
NEW GENERATION PEN COLLECTORS:
Young collectors are a lot like veteran collectors 30 and 40 years ago! They are drawn to the hobby by the beautiful designs, superior writing qualities and curious filling systems of fountain pens. They are hungry for more information about the pens and companies who make them. They socialize and congregate by creating new social media forums, blogs, podcasts and Youtube videos and channels.
New generation pen collectors likely didn't grow up using fountain pens. Fountain pens, whether vintage or modern, are still extremely exciting and fun writing instruments to use in their daily lives. They are just learning about the joys and fun to be had by writing with everything from extra-fine nibs to stubs to flexi-points.
Cursive writing hasn't been taught in public schools in most cities for most of this new millennium. New generation collectors are fascinated by cursive handwriting and are often very eager to try their hand at classic Spencerian script.
They are diving into all of the various colors of ink available to see which ones they like best. They are making the most of some of the options not available to veteran collectors when the veterans were first getting into the hobby.
I have heard many veteran collectors sneer at the fact new generation collectors are users and not completists. This is a misguided sneering that I really want to squash.
As I stated earlier, veteran collectors had a very different economy to start collecting. Not only were vintage pens prevalent in "the wild" for really cheap prices. Wages back then kicked the asses of wages today.
New generation collectors are buying a lot of cheap Asian pens and Lamys because they are affordable and under $30. New generation collectors likely came out of college with $50,000 or more in debt. Modern housing often costs 50% of their paychecks. Jobs for 20 and 30-somethings are hard to get, and a lot of them are excited if they can get a job that pays at least $40k a year. Plus, many are getting married, starting families and juggling other traditional responsibilities.
Base-line vintage pens are prohibitively expensive to collect as a completist would. If you could buy a good used Parker 51 in 1975 for fifty cents, that same pen now likely goes for $60 to $80. If you want a green, blue, black, golden pearl, grey and burgundy Parker Vacumatic in the standard size, five of them will cost at least $85 a piece and the burgundy will get at least $150. That's $575 all together. You can spend $2,000 easily to get their matching Maxima companions and another $400 for the demis. Toss in Shadow Waves and Toothbrushes…. Well, you get the idea.
Plus, there is a huge degree of competition from modern pen brands. Vanishing points, Pelikans, limited editions, inexpensive pens with unique, smooth nibs…there's a lot out there to explore.
So, while new generation collectors aren't completists, they are serious collectors. Frequently on a budget, they eagerly try a little bit of everything: needle-point extra fines, flexi wet noodles, stubs, vac fillers, limited editions, lever fillers and all of the other cool features that make up the pens we all love.
On my site and at my tables at pen shows, I find that the new collectors are very curious about the vintage pens, but they are a little gun shy. They've likely seen and read a lot about them, but they have never seen them in the flesh or tried them. Many are a little nervous to admit that they don't know much but want to learn, so I make sure to give them basic rundowns of the pens, which I put in their hands and let them try. As expected, they often love the vintage and want to explore more. So if you're a veteran vendor, don't be afraid to talk to the young'uns and share a little of what you know and let them try the greatness of vintage.
Finally, it is important to note the art of the deal.
New generation collectors have lived their entire lives in a price-posted-is-price-paid economy. Even many car dealerships today don't negotiate car deals. The older generations hated this enough to kill these type of sales in most retail environments. Plus, the internet makes it impossible to negotiate a price but EASY to comparison shop. It is safe to say that most new generation pen collectors go into pen shows expecting honest, competitive pricing on the merchandise and no-hassle honest deals. Many have done their homework and won't even deal with somebody with seemingly inflated prices. As users, many new generation collectors expect the pens they buy to work, and if you don't inform them upfront that the pen is unrestored, it is reasonable for them to feel ripped off, especially if you won't refund the money once they discover this issue.
It can be argued a pen show is a buyer-beware environment, but forget about repeat business if you run your business this way. Now if you are the type of vendor with 500+ pens on your table, it is safe to say you might not know which pens are restored. Newbies won't fault you for that, as long as you go over the pen with them to make sure it is what they want. Besides, if you have that many pens, if that pen turns out to be something they don't want…you'll likely have another they do. Build trust with them, and they'll bring their friends to buy more. As simplistic as it sounds, it really boils down to treating one another with fairness and respect.
God knows I've gone on long enough for one post, but I hope that I've expressed many sentiments veteran vendors and new generation collectors feel. I hope this opens up some more discussion and tears down a few barriers between the two sides of this same pen collecting coin. We've got far more in common than we seem to know.
This entry was posted in The History of Pens and tagged Chicago Pen Show, flexi nibs, Hemingway, modern pens, Mont Blanc, Montblanc, Parker Duofold, pen collecting, pen shows, preowned pen, preowned pens, stub nibs, thepenmarket, ThePenMarket.com, vintage pens on May 18, 2016 by Nathaniel Cerf.


So far what I am describing is a typical experience for translators, especially poetry translators. In order to maintain fidelity to word and sense, translators often tinker with even previously published versions of their work. Many also strive to make the translation read, as much as possible, like a poem in its own right. For this reason, and in adherence to the modernist principles of directness and economy, I replaced "humanity" with "humans" and "much"/"what I have" with "message." My translation now slightly departs from the original, but appears to be (at least to me) a better poem.
However, such practical dilemmas pale in comparison with the theoretical implications of translating Wróblewski's poem. To start with the obvious, is it even a poem? It certainly includes verbal and structural features — pleonasm, repetition, rhythm — that provide evidence of artful "making." I tried to preserve those in "Dear Beloved Humans." At the same time, for all its deliberate patterns it is also a kind of anti-poem. The source of surprise lies in its ironic reversal of a cliché: a poet speaking from the position of authority to all "humans," presumably to communicate some superior insight. This insight amounts to a declaration of the poet's paternal lineage — a deflection on Wróblewski's part we are free to interpret as serious or playful. Here I am helped by the backstory: Jaworski reports that on that July day in 1997 he simply asked his friend if he has anything to say to humanity — at which point Wróblewski spontaneously delivered his statement. I hesitate to say whether it's an overstatement or understatement, an affirmative or nihilistic gesture, a deeply personal or deeply political text. But knowing about Wróblewski's dislike of the idea of poet-as-prophet or poet-as-witness, central to at least two prior generations of Polish poets, I don't hesitate to say that it mocks such high-flung cultural ambitions.
The task of translating Wróblewski's poem also has implications to translation theory. Since the Polish version has never appeared in print, we are witnessing an untypical relation between the translation and the original. In fact, it is not even clear from the recording whether Wróblewski is reading his poem from a page, which might have contained the "original"; in any case, both he and Jaworski recall that the performance was entirely improvised. Thus, "Dear Beloved Humans" is not just a translation but a transcription. Some argue that poems don't really have the "original" version, as they move through different stages of composition and circulation. As Pierre Joris has noted on many occasions, a poem is not limited to one version printed in a book or magazine, but is the totality of its publications, performances, translations, adaptations (both actual and potential). While I generally share this view, I believe that making a poem public for the first time, regardless of format or platform, marks an important step in the process; it signifies the poem's entry into the world. In this scenario, it is justifiable to say that the Polish original of "Dear Beloved Humans" does exist — but only as an audio text.
Still, more questions arise from the fact that "Do ludzkości" was initially an oral performance. This means that, in contrast to its transcribed English version, it requires a specific method of interpretation. As Charles Bernstein notes in his introduction to Close Listening, in an oral performance, especially at a poetry reading, "intonations, pitch, tempos, accents (in the other sense of pronunciation), grain or timbre of voice, nonverbal face and body expressions or movements … take on a significant role." How compromised is "close listening," as Bernstein defines it, when the listener doesn't understand the language of the poem? Seriously, but not completely; in fact, it can be argued that the listener's ignorance of the language can sharpen their response to the poem's various sonic patterns. A non-Polish speaker approaching Wróblewski's poem as an oral performance, or even a twenty-six-second poetry reading, is likely to make out certain words, certainly the proper names; likely to notice typical Polish phonemes like the nasal vowel in "się" or the consonant clusters in "ści" and "ski"; likely, in short, to expect a semi-meaningful encounter with the poem's language even despite the semantic loss. To invoke William Carlos Williams (Wróblewski's literary grandfather), a non-Polish speaker is likely to treat the poem as a machine made of ... sounds. All kinds of sounds. As we listen closely to the recording, we can hear some coughing, some adult voices overlapping with children's voices in the background — all the ambient noise of humanity in the next room, in the next apartment, on the street below. This reveals the poem's additional irony: no one is listening to the poet at the moment, save for his friend and fellow writer behind the camera.
Yet even calling the poem an oral performance is not completely accurate. After all, the poem can't be separated from its context; if it is a "made" object, it exists solely for the purpose of being recorded and therefore potentially reproduced, circulated, modified. "The painter maintains in his work a natural distance from reality, whereas the cinematographer penetrates deeply into its tissue," said Walter Benjamin in his classic 1936 essay. Unless we close our eyes, it's impossible to experience Wróblewski's poem outside of its penetrable, semantically rich reality: the green plant in the corner, the white wall, the sofa with its striking orange-and-red pattern, the thirty-five-year-old author himself and his affect, posture, clothing, head movements, facial expressions, eye contact. It's also impossible to experience Wróblewski's poem without noticing the work of the camera (framing, angle, movement). Based on all these elements, it is justifiable to call "Do ludzkości" an audiovisual text.
Where does this leave "Dear Beloved Humans"? It certainly diminishes the final irony: the fact that a speech addressed to all of humanity (whether in earnest or not) is fully comprehensible only to those who know Polish. Thrice removed from the "original" (in terms of language, medium, and technology) it is a version, a variant, a written/printed manifestation of Wróblewski's deceptively simple poem. It is a translation that, in addition to doing its job, makes us appreciate the essential role of movement and change in literary production. It is a translation with a difference. In other words, a transposition.


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Point Isabel ISD 2017-2018
Point Isabel ISD
Port Isabel, TX
Point Isabel ISD is a school district in Port Isabel, TX. As of the 2017-2018 school year, it had 2,421 students. The school received an accountability rating of B. 83.6% of students were considered at risk of dropping out of school. 34.2% of students were enrolled in bilingual and English language learning programs.
An average teacher's salary was $52,400, which is $934 less than the state average. On average, teachers had 12.6 years of experience. The average SAT score at Point Isabel ISD was 960. The average ACT score was 16.4. In the Class of 2017, 94.2% of students received their high school diplomas on time or earlier. The dropout rate was 1%.
www.pi-isd.net
Theresa Alarcon
talarcon@pi-isd.net
Students in Point Isabel ISD are part of the Texas Education Agency's Region 01. Students who started eighth grade in 2007 in this region had a college graduation rate of 22.2 percent. View a more comprehensive breakdown of the higher ed outcomes in Region 01.
2,206 (91.1%)
192 (7.9%)
114.7 (77.7%)
Derry Elementary School
Garriga Elementary School
Port Isabel Junior High School
Cameron County JJAEP
Port Isabel High School


A Major League Baseball playing American team, Tampa Ray has become the first major North American Sports team to go cashless at their home stadium at Tropicana Field.
In an attempt to curtail the rush standing in ques, the Tropicana Field states there will be sheer fan satisfaction as the line move ahead.
Starting up on 9th February, the new initiative will apply to buy tickets, foods, drink merchandise as well as other products at the venue.
In the stadium, fans can make payment by using their credit cards, official club gift cards, Apple Pay and Samsung Pay including Rays Cards which are provided to Season-Ticket holders.
There is also some provisions available for those who don't have cards or any form of cashless mode of payments, they will be able to swipe cash for gift cards.
Rakuten announced in early January that baseball team Tohoku Rakuten and J League soccer outfit Vissel Kobe – both owned by the Japanese ecommerce giant – would see their stadiums become the world's first fully cashless sporting venues.


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Tag Archives: Dark Elves
***The first three paragraphs have details of a few Indian superhero movies; skip if you are not interested – I had to say this before the review as it was something I owed to real movies and true movie fans; I was asked to write about a ridiculous Hindi movie, not something I am ready for. Well, as I begin here, I dedicate this review to all of my friends who suffered with a painful poison which was sent into the theatres of India packed inside a horrible catastrophe which is commonly called Krrish 3. There were too many of them to be named here, and I am glad that most of my friends are sensible ones. But that was more of a movie for Hritik Roshan fans and little kids which is the only reason it could be forgiven despite of copying from too many Hollywood movies and adding horrible melodrama and pathetic graphics to it. From my friends and the internet, I could collect the names of a number of movies from which it copied. X-Men, Man of Steel, The Avengers, Iron Man and The Matrix are the major ones. Toad, Mystique, Sabretooth, Professor X – Magneto Hybrid they are all there; and Jean Grey you are always there! Okay, do copy; I have known a good number of nice copied movies in Hindi, but this kind of copying is absurd. Why lift from this many movies and why even copy when you have so much scope for great ideas right in our nation!
Now the others, who will never be my friends – the ones who liked this movie, and coming up with the typical lie that "they at least they tried" – to be frank, they didn't try; they copied and instead of concentrating on what is Indian, and on the values and traditions that the nation has, they concentrated on style, glamour and pathetic graphics, to make it interesting for no sensible person. Don't try what you can't do right and show off your weaknesses, stick to the strengths instead! These people who come up with such pathetic excuses of "trying" for a third movie of a cent percent copied series, don't deserve to be talked to. Please don't like a movie just because your favourite actor is in there or the characters talk your language or as it is from your state or nation, but look at the merits. Ever heard about a romantic comedy in Malayalam called Amen? See how CGI is used to perfection in that low budget movie which could have done fine without it, but it contributed immensely and really well. May be the movie makers could learn from Shaktimaan, India's only real superhero who is rooted in its rich traditions and teaches something good to its citizens and children. There was actually a lot original about it, even as it is not a flawless or a pure innovation. It was a great thing for its age, but Krrish 3 is outdated for this age just like its two predecessors which copied from E.T. and Superman. Please, my dear movie makers, stop making bad movies just because you need to make a lot of money – you owe something to the viewers, or come up with a notice "stupid, retarded movie".
Krrish 3 has succeeded though, with high scores at the box-office, and it shows our inability to accept the good and reject the bad, and I have decided to skip all the Hritik Roshan movies until there is redemption. I actually had enough of him with that horrible Agneepath itself, and it is a shame that the talent is wasted. His first movie, Kaho Naa Pyar Hai will always be his best. Even as some of my friends said that Shaktimaan was better, the rest told me about the stories in some of the Malayalam books for children, Balarama, Poombaatta and Balamangalam were better. There were a few superheroes there – two of them were monkeys, one of them a little devil and another a rat. All of these were better superheroes in heart and also in the brain. My question is about why people go for movies which has trailers like this one? This movie is a curse on the Indian movie industry and I shall not watch such nonsense even for bashing it. I shall stick to those movies which doesn't bring shame when there is a lot of potential for greatness. See innovation in the form of Go Goa Gone and Madras Cafe. They could have made a good innovative sequel to Krrish, but they spoiled it, and congratulations to all who are making it a blockbuster, and thanks to the paid reviews. Just don't copy from Thor for Krrish 4 – it is a humble request.***
So we know that why the world is going to end and why my hope in humanity is fading. Now lets leave the movie of kids and fans which came to existence to destroy good movies. Lets get to the movie which has become my second favourite Marvel movie ever, and also become my favourite superhero movie of the year 2013. Yes, lets back to this wonderful sequel of Thor which has restored our hope in superhero movies. Let me deal with the first question that comes to the mind of any viewer. Is it better than its predecessor? The answer is surely yes. There is a lot about this movie which does a great job in fitting not only into the Norse mythology, but also into the Marvel universe. There is a lot of great graphics and special effects which beautify this movie which is a treat to watch in 3D even as the 3D possibilities could have been developed even further. Its visual beauty is comparable to not many movies. There is a little more needed from the story-line too, but not much. There is a good flow of the plot, and there is nothing lost, and Thor: The Dark World is a real good addition to the Marvel cinematic universe. The only good Avenger hero movie I like better would be Captain America: The First Avenger.
The story beings with talks about the legendary story of Malekith (Christopher Eccleston), the leader of the Dark Elves who are on a mission to destroy the world with a weapon known as the Aether, but were defeated by Odin (Anthony Hopkins)'s father, Bor. But our leader and a group of Dark Elves escape from their home world of Svartalfheim, and knowing not about the same, Bor hides the weapon deep in an unknown world. During the present day, Loki (Tom Hiddleston) is imprisoned for his crimes on humans, and Thor (Chris Hemsworth) is on a mission to restore peace in the nine realms with his friends, and is haunted by the memories of the one human he loved, Jane Foster (Natalie Portman). Meanwhile, Jane makes attempts to contact Thor and in the process, gets teleported to another world where Aether was hidden, and is infected with the same. Seeing the trouble, Thor takes her to Asgard, but doesn't succeed in taking the thing out of her as it defends itself and the story of Aether and Dark Elves were too long forgotten too.
The Dark Elves come to know about it and attacks the city both from inside and outside in an effort to get to Jane and get their dark material. They end up killing Thor's mother, Frigga (Rene Russo) and escape before help arrives. Asgard is left without its shields, most of its soldiers and a good number of turrets after the surprise attack by the Dark Elves who used brutal dark energy as well as stealth as their weapons. But striken by grief over the death of his wife, Odin decides to wait for the Darl Elves at Asgard and strike with all he got and fight until death. But seeing the devastation of their capital city, Thor decides to take the attack to the Dark Elves with the help of Loki who also agrees in order to avenge their mother. They decide to take Jane with them and get rid of the Aether, even as Odin had completely prohibited it and it would be treason. It is obvious that the Dark Elves would also target Earth, and as Jane found signs of it in London, it would surely be there. Can Thor and Loki work together to save more than one world or will the trickster take his own side? Now there are some good surprises in wait right there. The talks about them not being gods, and still living five thousand years is interesting.
Chris Hemsworth saves the day again as Thor, as if he is custom made for that role. We love this character, and we see the man again in good form after that great performance in Rush. Natalie Portman contributes significantly, and I would wonder if I can resist any of her movies. Tom Hiddleston's Loki is as good as ever, but needed more screentime. Anthony Hopkins is good as usual, and Jaimie Alexander could have had more to do. I have to say that I loved the comic releief Kat Dennings and her intern provided when Loki is not around. Christopher Eccleston's villain is also a wonderful pure evil creature, who will come to our minds, every time we play a computer game involving mythical creatures and races. I used to choose Dark Elves in most of them. Another thing I loved was the way they showed the hypocrisy of the people who had chosen not to believe the man who spoke the truth – it is true, for science has indeed become the modern man's superstition, and we will be force fed by many things which are supposed to have proven, but are actually not. Actually, what all are really experimented and proven, is something that common man will never know. They will tell us that they landed on Moon, Mars and everything, and we will just believe them because scientists are the new kings and clergy of the medieval ages, and the only thing we will know for sure is that the sun rises in the east and sets in the west.
Release date: 8th November 2013
Directed by: Alan Taylor
Starring: Chris Hemsworth, Natalie Portman, Tom Hiddleston, Anthony Hopkins, Stellan Skarsgård, Idris Elba, Christopher Eccleston, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Kat Dennings, Ray Stevenson, Zachary Levi, Tadanobu Asano, Jaimie Alexander, Rene Russo
✠The Vampire Bat.
Posted in Action, Adventure, English	Tagged Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Alan Taylor, Anthony Hopkins, asgard, Chris Hemsworth, Christopher Eccleston, Dark Elves, frigga, Idris Elba, immortality, Jaimie Alexander, Kat Dennings, loki, Natalie Portman, norse myth, odin, Ray Stevenson, realm, Rene Russo, Stellan Skarsgård, Tadanobu Asano, Tom Hiddleston, Zachary Levi	33 Comments
Posted on May 20, 2013 by Tennyson
Epic is said to be based on William Joyce's book for children, The Leaf Men and the Brave Good Bugs. It is produced by Blue Sky Studios, the makers of the Ice Age series, Robots, Horton Hears a Who! and Rio. It is directed by Chris Wedge who was the director of Ice Age and Robots. The movie shows the battle in the woods between the forces of good and evil, to know if life or decay, whichever overcomes the other. The most interesting thing is that as their world is saved, ours is saved too. As the will premiere in the United States only on May 24th 2013, we know that this has come here early. It should be because it might collide with Fast & Furious 6 otherwise, but there is also another thing about it. It is not of logic, but of impulse, that is the pollution of the natural environment which is a serious challenge in this part of the world. Remember these lines from The Matrix – they are not to be forgotten as the movie ends; "Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with their surrounding environment, but you humans do not. You move to an area, You move to an area and you multiply, and multiply until every natural resource is consumed. The only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You are a plague, and we are the cure". The truth in these words are not to be considered unseen before we move into this movie.
When Epic begins, we understand that there is a battle between good and evil, life and decay, green woods and the dark woods, the right and wrong going on in the forest. The two sides are always inter-locked in a never-ending battle for supremacy, one for keeping the balance of nature and the other to extend their borders and make their side weigh more. But they exist invisible to the normal human eye. The forest world is actually preparing for a great moment, the selection of the successor to the queen of the woods, which is looked at with anger and hatred by the forces of evil who wishes or a dark prince instead, who can change the green woods into dark woods, with darkness all around. In the middle of all these, young girl named Mary Katherine (preferring to be called M.K), visits her father Professor Bomba who lives in an old house near some thick woods with his dog, Ozzie and never ending hope of finding a group of little elf-like warriors who live in the woods and protect their world as well as that of humans as the guardians of the good – represented by leaves. He has cameras set everywhere in the woods and also wanders around a lot, hoping to find them some day. It is evident that it has been a long time since he had any contact with the outside world. He is too busy with his job and neglects his daughter just like he had done to his wife years earlier, leading to Mary putting a note for him to see and leaving the place as she feels she will never get her father back to normal life.
As she is leaving, Ozzie finds a chance to go out of the monotonous world which is the house, and runs into the woods. Mary goes into the woods to look out for him, but as she catches one of the glowing leaves which seemed to fall from the sky, she suddenly shrinks in size. Then she discovers the group of warriors her father was looking out for, and find them as the Leafmen. To her surprise, she is soon forced to assist them in a war against the forces of evil known as the Boggans and their powerful leader Mandrake, along with trying to find a way to become big again as well as to return home. The situation is such that the queen of the woods has been murdered and to find the successor who planned by her before death, Mary and her friends, who include a slug, a snail, and two leafmen – one being the leader of the leafmen and the other being the aggressive and arrogant rookie, have to see the keeper of the scrolls, and with his advice, go on to find the new queen from among the flowers and leaves of the woods. But Mandrake is filled with anger and vengeance due to the death of his son by the leaf-men commander Ronin, and would stop at nothing other than a forest without life. He has already transformed a good part of the woods into his world of death and decay. The team has to fight an almost impossible battle in an enchanted world which seems to belong to the dark forces now.
The movie is a journey, just like The Croods, just four minutes longer and surely intellectually superior, still trailing in the 3D effects and the funny side. But emotionally, this one is as strong as the Colossus. Its social message of saving the trees and forest works for sure. This also another Alice in Wonderland, as the girl is thrown into another mysterious world, a land of magic; but this time, it is too connected with the external world. In that case, Arthur and the Minimoys a.k.a Arthur and the Invisibles might come into the picture in pictures of connected worlds, one a miniature place and the other, what we all live in. It is quite surprising that it was a movie which didn't get that much an attention here. But, we know that little elf-like warriors, magical woods, fairy queens and a young girl or boy changing fate and destiny of two worlds are not exactly new concepts and with the high predictability might be a little let down. A background story on the good and evil might have given a little more support in the matter, but the two sides have already been painted black and white, evil and good; as this is more a fairy tale thing, there will be no questions asked either. But the world we live in has turned into more of the world of the grey, which is slightly more interested in evil, and it could affect the progress of this movie.
The alignment here is too obvious, unlike Age of Wonders, the game in which I first realized the importance of being aligned more or less to one side or being equi-distant from all. Highmen and Archons were pure good out there, Dwarves, Elves, Halflings and Syrons were good, Frostlings, Humans, Azracs, Lizardmen, Draconians, Tigrans and Nomads were the neutral ones, evil had Orcs, Goblins, Dark Elves and Shadow Demons and those of pure evil were called the Undead. Such was the division in that game series, and what we see is more of pure good and pure evil in this movie, and there is no further division. All these fairy tale characters seem to be good enough to make a powerful comeback these days, as the animated movies seems to be working better than the live-action usual thing, even as it is limited to Hollywood. Our movie here is strong enough to pave the way for the next animated ones which are to come, but there are times when some of these supposed to be pure good characters do nothing good; they can't even preach well enough – at least that might have been expected of them. But the lost fun is recaptured by the main characters who make up for the less important ones. The 3D looks a little unnecessary, and here it was just another reason to take twenty five Rupees extra and increase the total time spent in the theatre.
Well, who doesn't like a fairy tale though? One has to think that the kids would surely love it, even as the new generation has moved more to the video games and other stuff than books. Still, understanding them as movies is just a bonus for them. Here, the punch is solid and striking deep enough both on the brain and the heart. Its loyality to the genre can never be questioned, but a certain signs of evolution in the fantasy world is not to be ignored at any moment. Despite its loss in the 3D, it still has great visuals and wonderful CGI. The fairy tale of the girl who becomes lost in the forest and shortened by magic, uncovers a mysterious world of little people with its base on the enchanted woods. But other than being another Alice in a different wonderland of inferior quality, considering the way in which the movie progresses, supported by its stunning imagery & the "save environment" message, this becomes much better. It is surely going to appeal not only to kids, but also the adults. This is kind of a vacation season around, and this summer, this might be the right movie to watch as a family. Well, the woods grow over many years, but can be destroyed in a day – a message to the future generation. As the leafman says "We are individuals, but we are all connected". There is a message for our selfish world; the world of humans who interrupt and cause devastation on nature. FernGully: The Last Rainforest might have already taught a few lessons though, and Dr. Seuss' The Lorax surely succeeded in inspiring more than one person.
We have the major issues with water pollution, mostly due to untreated and illegal sewage disposal; we have another big issue as air pollution with vehicle emission and traffic congestion, and not to forget the disposal of garbage on land. The disasters should be much more than these, and the deterioration of the environment the destruction of ecosystems and the extinction of wildlife, something which starts basically from deforestation. There is no solution to greed for sure, and Agent Smith was partially right, and we are still trying to prove him completely correct. Well, that dialogue was a point when he had the sure upperhand in a world of reason. Extinction is not a limited thing for sure. Looking into Avatar, there is one particular dialogue "There's no green there. They killed their Mother, and they're gonna do the same here". It doesn't imply anything other than the destruction of the world of green by using their so called advanced technology. As most of the new discoveries have made life easier for man, they have surely made decay easier for nature. This predicament has another nemesis in Epic, as the movie comes against it strongly; it might be a little ordinary and quite predictable in its plot, but is still an inspiring story with a powerful message against the exploitation of nature and deforestation. There is the need for such movies with strong environmental theme.
Release date: 17th May 2013
Directed by: Chris Wedge
Starring (voice): Amanda Seyfried, Colin Farrell, Beyoncé Knowles, Josh Hutcherson, Christoph Waltz, Aziz Ansari, Chris O'Dowd
Posted in Action, Adventure, Animation, English	Tagged age of wonders, alice in wonderland, Amanda Seyfried, Archons, Arthur and the Invisibles, Arthur and the Minimoys, avatar, Aziz Ansari, Azracs, Beyoncé Knowles, blue sky studios, Boggans, Chris O'Dowd, Chris Wedge, Christoph Waltz, Colin Farrell, Dark Elves, Dr. Seuss' The Lorax, Draconians, Dwarves, ecosystem, Elves, faerie queen, fairy tale, fast & furious 6, FernGully: The Last Rainforest, Frostlings, Goblins, Halflings, Highmen, Horton Hears a Who!, ice age, Josh Hutcherson, leafmen, Lizardmen, mandrake, Nomads, Orcs, rio, robots, Shadow Demons, Syrons, the croods, The Leaf Men and the Brave Good Bugs, the matrix, Tigrans, undead, William Joyce	4 Comments


The shop is offering three spectacularly sweet deals leading up to the big day, and yes, the sweet tooth (teeth?) in your life will love them.
Loblolly Creamery has you covered on all things sweet for Valentine's Day. The shop is offering three spectacularly sweet deals leading up to the big day, and yes, the sweet tooth (teeth?) in your life will love them.
Now this is how you start the month of love right. On Saturday, Feb. 2, the Loblolly Scoop Shop will open early at 9 a.m. for National Ice Cream for Breakfast Day (yes, really) to serve guests Cereal Milk ice cream, cold brew floats and sundaes made with Will's Cinnamon Shop cinnamon rolls.
This super sweet breakfast will be served until noon, and the first 100 customers get a free commemorative "ice cream for breakfast" button.
And all of this will set you back just $30, but you can get $5 offf if you preorder. We call that a win-win. The smorgasbord is available from 11 a.m.-9 p.m. on Feb. 14 and 15.
Be Our Gallontine features the gallon sundae, which includes 10 scoops of ice cream, 10 toppings, as many spoons as you need and a cherry on top. The Gallontine sundae can also be catered to food allergies such as gluten and dairy. Just ask your server!
All of this is just $34 (tax included). Folks can preorder their sundae by calling (501) 396-9609 or on Loblolly's website. Gallontine sundaes will be available through Feb. 18.
For more info on either of these delicious V-day deals, head to Loblolly's Facebook page or call (501) 396-9609.


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Breaking The Chains of Oppression with Prof. Sandy Darity
Episode 14 • 4th May 2019 • Macro N Cheese • Steve D Grumbine MS, MBA, PMP, PSM1, ITIL
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Professor William A. Darity, Jr. also known as 'Sandy' is an American economist and researcher. He is currently the Samuel DuBois Cook Professor of Public Policy, African and African American Studies, and Economics and the director of the Samuel DuBois Cook Center on Social Equity at Duke University. Darity maintains that people are out of work in the US not because of personal defects but because the economy doesn't generate enough jobs. He tells Steve why we need a federal job guarantee, covering the 5 main points from the Jacobin article of that name which he co-authored with Mark Paul and Darrick Hamilton. He also shows how the FJG is superior to a universal basic income. This interview is as important today as it was when it was first aired in 2017.
https://sanford.duke.edu/people/faculty/darity-jr-william
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INCOSE Events
International Workshop
INCOSE and SE News
Enchantment Meeting Speaker: Dr. Jon Wade - Systems Engineering 2.0
Jul 08, 2020 - 4:45 PM - 6:00 PM
Address: Online
Location: , GlobalMeet
Online only via GlobalMeet
Contact: Ann Hodges
Email: alhodge@sandia.gov
Abstract: We have entered an era of great system complexity, rapid technological change, growing resource stress, and evolving societal systems that are both enabled and impacted by advancing engineered systems. Artificial intelligence is now at a tipping point where the technical capabilities it enables are outstripping the ability of systems engineers to employ it in viable systems. Consideration for the system as an evolving enterprise must be a core part of systems engineering. There is an increasing call from all systems stakeholders for foundational tools that reflect the human, organizational, and societal aspects of engineered systems. In particular, the growing complexity of systems and their evolving, emerging behaviors require that systems engineers often need to take the role of systems scientists as well as engineers to ensure that both the system they are creating and the systems that are responsible for their creation are interconnected and aligned. This talk will present a model to address evolving, AI-Intensive systems of the future, and the challenges and future directions for Systems Engineering that will be necessary to conceive, design and support them
Bio: Jon Wade, Ph.D., is a professor of practice at the Jacobs School of Engineering at the University of California at San Diego where he is currently designing transdisciplinary education and research programs oriented around the fundamental principles of contemporary closed-loop systems engineering design. Previously, Dr. Wade was a research professor in the School of Systems and Enterprises at the Stevens Institute of Technology where he also served as the chief technology officer of the Systems Engineering Research Center (SERC) UARC. His industrial experience includes serving as executive vice president of Engineering at International Game Technology (IGT), senior director of Enterprise Server Development at Sun Microsystems and director of Advanced System Development at Thinking Machines Corporation. His research interests include complex systems, future directions in systems engineering research and the use of technology in systems engineering and STEM education. Dr. Wade received his S.B., S.M., E.E. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering and computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.


The Caribbean Basin has been famed for its offshore financial services, but they are now, together with the banking systems of the countries in the region, increasingly threatened by international sanctions and legislation that is requiring new levels of transparency in transaction-reporting that could significantly diminish the appeal of the Caribbean for investors. What's more, there is concern among Caribbean financial-market observers that this legislation fails to take into account regional differences and is likely to do more harm than good. As regards sanctions, the US has become the target of much negativism from the Caribbean, not least because of its attitude to Cuba but also not just because of it.
One such observer, the director of the Caribbean Council, David Jessop, says the US has overstepped boundaries with its drive to discourage any other nation than itself from doing business with Cuba. A case in point is the fine of $9 billion that US authorities imposed on French BNP Paribas, accusing the bank of violating its sanctions against Cuba, Iran and Sudan, and of money-laundering. French government officials, says Jessop, have called the US actions unilateral and unfair. It's hard to disagree, given that, according to a Financial Times survey, non-US institutions accounted for 60 percent of the top 20 banks on which the US government imposed some form of penalty for violations of anti-money-laundering laws and sanctions after the global financial crisis.
The US has also been said to (successfully) pressure foreign banks operating on its market, in order to discourage them from investing in Cuba. A lot of these banks, threatened by legal action and extradition of their executives, have already made sure that they don't touch Cuba, even with a long stick, although compliance with external-trade legislation is illegal in Europe, Jessop notes. At the same time, US business entities have demonstrated increasing interest in the embargoed island, backed by the US Chamber of Commerce.
Another problem for the banking industry of the Caribbean is the US Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, or FATCA, which came into effect on July 1 and which requires financial institutions and other business entities to disclose information about accounts held by US citizens or by entities in which US citizens have a substantial stake. This information should be submitted to the US Internal Revenue Service in order to prevent tax avoidance. Failure to comply with the law will result in the requirement to withhold 30 percent of any transaction that a bank is supposed to make to an individual suspected of non-compliance with FATCA. The Caribbean governments are already working to pass the respective legislation that would make their countries compliant with FATCA. What is troubling, says former Caribbean diplomat Ronald Sanders, is that these countries are not seeking a way to share the costs associated with this compliance, costs that will be especially harsh for the banking sector.
One further concern is the levying of disproportionately severe penalties against countries allegedly violating international anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing laws. Recently, the Caribbean Financial Action Task Force, the regional unit of the Paris-based FATF, officially recognized Guiana as "deficient" in anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing legislation. While it is a fact that the country has no such laws in place, its significance in the global banking framework was ridiculously exaggerated, says Sanders. Guiana has no offshore financial-services industry and is among the smaller financial markets in the Caribbean, not to mention its place in the global financial-market system. Yet, the CFATF qualified it as a threat to the international financial system. Such qualification could have grave implications for the country's banking industry, as countries the world over will rush to place it on their blacklists.
Sanders and Jessop both agree that the region should become more critical of international and foreign legislation and policies that could affect its economies, and that Caribbean countries should adopt a more unified approach in counteracting the potentially harmful effects of such policies that can be abused in order to advance some nations' interests and could come into conflict with the interests of the Caribbean states.


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← Waters of Nimrodel
Treebeard
Cannot have restricted attachments. Treebeard enters play exhausted and collects 1 resource each resource phase. These resources can be used to pay for Ent cards played from your hand.
Action: Pay 2 resources from Treebeard's pool to ready an Ent character.
Mike Nash
The Antlered Crown #146. Neutral.
Treebeard is amazing. The ultimate Ent ally. He is for the Ent trait what Radagast should have been for the Eagle trait, but here they made it work so instead of an ally who can work in the specific context of a certain trait-based deck if you preferably cheat him into play for cheap you have an ally whose primary role is to support a trait (which unlike Radagast he belongs to himself as well) but who is not just worth the cost but actually one of the best unique allies in the game even outside of that particular deck type.
Let's explore this in a bit more detail. Of course Treebeard enters play exhausted, like all Ents. That's his only real downside - he also can't have restricted attachments, but it's pretty rare that one puts restricted attachments on allies in any case. His beneficial abilities are of course the Ent equivalent of Radagast's abilities - he generates resources which can pay for Ents just as Radagast does for Eagles, and if you don't have Ents to pay for then he can use those resources instead to ready the ones you already have. But as noted, the consistent issue across the whole trait is entering play exhausted, so that means Treebeard can potentially negate the downside of these otherwise very powerful allies. That he is very rarely used for this purpose indicates that alternatives are even more powerful, which I think is saying something when you put the comparison like this. (By contrast, Radagast's healing didn't have the same potency and synergy because taking damage was never really an issue for Eagles). Most likely though you use his resources to pay for other Ent cards (it's worth noting here that Ent Draught and Boomed and Trumpeted both have the Ent trait and so Treebeard can pay for them as well as for the allies).
So by that logic, in 4 rounds he'll recoup his own cost. Unless you have some form of resource generation or cost reduction to draw on, you can't play him until round 2 at the earliest, and running at a net loss until 5 rounds into the game doesn't sound like such a great deal, does it? This is the same reason Radagast isn't particularly well thought of. And if Treebeard's stats were as lacklustre as Radagast's then he might have been received in a similar fashion, but they're not. I'm pretty sure the only allies in the game who have more stats than Treebeard are Gandalf, Gandalf and Saruman. Ally Treebeard has one more stat point than his hero version, putting him on a par with hero Gandalf. The approximate rule of thumb for ally costing is that a lot of allies seem to cost half their sum of stats, by which logic ally Treebeard should cost 7 resources. OK, he enters play exhausted, but is that single round of not using him really equivalent to the value of 3 resources? I would say no, he's a ridiculously good deal, and then he generates his own resources to help you play more Ents, or ready them.
2 is decent, but it's the combat stats which really get you your money's worth here. 3 and 5 make Treebeard one of the solidest defensive allies in the game - it could even be argued the solidest, with the only reason he isn't used more in that capacity being that he also has 4 , which at the time of his release was completely unprecedented. Hero Beorn had 5, but he was rather a special case being immune to player card effects, and other than that no character, hero or ally, had a printed value higher than 3. Even now the only other is fellow Ent Skinbark. Treebeard, on top of being hilariously good value, was also breaking new ground in terms of ally power level - scratch that, character power level.
The final point of note is of course his readying ability, which I've hitherto mostly passed over. The best target for that readying is almost always Treebeard himself - and this is the final piece of the explanation for why Treebeard is a ridiculously good ally to have even without any other Ents. The only real exceptions are when Treebeard is already ready and you need more Ents up to attack together, or a Booming Ent when you've got a bunch of damage around, again for high purposes. Or, it should of course be noted that the ability does not specify an Ent that you control, just an Ent, so if your fellow players are also using Ents you can ready one of theirs, which may be helpful since Treebeard's many good qualities admittedly do not include a Ranged or Sentinel keyword. In general though, just have him ready himself whenever you need it - and when you don't just stack up those resources for later use if you don't have other Ent cards to pay for.
When last year PsychoRocka ran a Unique Ally Championship on the forums, Treebeard came second, having been the only really credible opposition to Arwen. Since then, we've seen the release of hero Arwen, and as a result the ally sees a lot less play and we've all gotten used to doing without her. With that in mind, I think a serious case could be made for Treebeard being now the best unique ally in the game. Ridiculous statline that puts most heroes to shame, resource generation in the right deck, (mostly self-)readying, and of course he's neutral and can thus go in literally any deck. Central to the functioning of an Ent deck, but still one of the best options for pretty much any other deck as well. However you may feel about the Arwen comparison, there are certainly very few allies that can even hold a candle to Treebeard.
This card is easily the best (and honestly perhaps the only truly overpowered) Ally ever released. With very few exceptions, you can take practically any deck, cut out a single card, put in a single Treebeard and the deck is probably better overall, even if only slightly. The only real exceptions are janky combo decks that don't intend to actually play the game, so we'll ignore those.
While many high cost characters resemble or even can become heroes themselves, Treebeard is the most efficient cost wise (4 of any sphere) of those kinds of cards. He can boost any deck with Ents by generating resources like a hero and, if you're not using any other Ents in your deck, he still finds use with them by having a built in Unexpected Courage every other turn ... meaning he can hit with his full 4 damage right after doing what he does best, tanking.
SkywalterDBZ 15
Treebeard is awesome. In fact, he's way too good relative to other allies. His stats are superior to most heroes. If you can get 4 resources of any kind, and a turn's worth of breathing room to play him, he provides a massive swing in the player's favor. His most common role is attacker and archery soak, but he can do damn near anything. The TreeBux(tm) he produces tie into other ent cards, but you don't even need them - just have him ready himself, and now you have a Treebeard and a half per turn. Disgusting.


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Reflecting back on summer of the past, and looking forward toward the future.
Growing up in small-town Michigan, I especially treasured summertime. The harsh bite of our long, icy winters became a distant memory. Bike rides and adventures with my sisters and our neighborhood friends replaced school days; classmates became playmates. Independence Day meant freedom from homework and early bedtimes. When I got older, I started working within the hospitality business at the hotels and properties my parents managed. I looked forward to the individuals I met in my first jobs. These were happy, dynamic people who were on vacation with family and loved ones. Escaping school or the doldrums of their daily work lives and making memories that they and their children, relatives, spouses, and friends would have with them always. I loved that I got to be a small part of making those memories special. In the summer, everything seemed possible. I never wanted it to end.
In so many ways, this past year has been a blur. Back in July of 2020, uncertainties were omnipresent, and predictions of any kind seemed almost futile. But it was in these uncertain times that our team found its identity. Our mission narrowed to a laser-focus and our long-held vision for creating a style which transcends the golf course materialized. We turned a corner from our earlier collections and together discovered a fresh ambition for these creations. The first collection we launched during the pandemic was a brilliant, bold Spring/Summer – our largest yet, which set the stage for PXG Apparel's spirit going forward. Color, fabric, shape, zippers, accents all took on a new meaning with the expert team in place, and with the singular will to take the brand to new heights.
Now, as blazing afternoons stretch long into the warm evenings of summer, and optimism has found its way back to all of us, I'm filled with gratitude and excitement for what lies ahead. I still believe, now more than ever, that everything is possible. Now that I think about it, when I chose Scottsdale so many years ago, perhaps I was searching for that endless summer. There's no doubt that it's here now, and I'm so glad you're here with me too.


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Created: Posted on September 21, 2010 by Colleen Lynn
Rusk County Jury Returns $7 Million Dollar Verdict After Fatal Dog Mauling
Justin Clinton supporters seen in a 2009 rally calling for the banning of pit bulls.
Justin's Law
Tyler, TX - Several days following a $7 million dollar verdict after the dog mauling death of Justin Clinton, his mother, Serenia Clinton, spoke with the News-Journal. She said, "I don't want any parent to go through what we went through." She and her attorney, Cynthia Kent, are working to push Justin's Law, a state law designed to allow the regulation of dangerous dog breeds. Currently, Texas municipalities cannot adopt such laws due to a state-wide anti-BSL measure.
Kent said the civil case was never about the money. "They won't receive any of the money," Kent said. "The Georges had no insurance. This was not about the money at all. This was about justice for Justin, and also about sending a strong message that these types of dangerous dogs -- there's got to be something done to see that if people keep these dangerous dogs they've got to have high fences and strong fences." The Georges now face charges of criminally negligent homicide.
A jury in Rusk County, Texas has returned a seven million dollar verdict against the owners of two dogs, one Pit bull mix and one American bull dog, that mauled to death a 10 year old boy on June 15, 2009. Following a week long trial in Judge Clay Gossett's courtroom in Henderson, Texas, the jury found that the dog owners were negligent and strictly liable for the actions of their two dangerous animals. Cynthia Stevens Kent and Don Kent, with the law firm of Kent, Good, Anderson and Bush, P.C. of Tyler, argued on behalf of young Justin Clinton and his grieving mother, Serenia Clinton, that these dogs were abnormally dangerous and the pet owners should be strictly liable for the death of Justin.
Witnesses testified that during the summer of 2009, Justin Clinton was a happy and active country boy in Texas. He had taken his skateboard from home to go his friend's house to play, just as he had done many times before. However, on this day the two dogs viciously attacked Justin and mauled him to death behind Ricky and Christy George's house.
Veronica Tatum testified that she saw the dogs attacking the boy from across the street at the local school and literally ran out of her flip flop shoes to come to Justin's rescue. She beat the dogs with Justin's skateboard to get them back into their fenced yard area and administered CPR but was unable to stop the bleeding and save Justin's life.
During the week the jury heard evidence from 46 witnesses and viewed 125 exhibits which documented the vicious attack and conduct of these two animals. Although several defense witnesses testified that they had never seen the dogs act aggressively before and one even referred to the dogs as "lovable little fluff balls," law enforcement officers and other witnesses testified to the dogs' vicious and aggressive nature as compared to other dog breeds. Two law enforcement officers at the scene of the attack became so concerned about the aggressive nature of these two dogs that they pulled their guns to protect themselves and others.
Cynthia Stevens Kent, lead counsel for the estate of Justin Clinton and his mother, Serenia Clinton, told the jury that this case was all about justice for Justin. John Heike, counsel for the dog owners, told the jury that trial would not be necessary if the dogs had not been immediately euthanized by animal control officers following the attack. However, Ms. Kent told the jury that Serenia Clinton brought this case because her son, Justin, a 10 year old boy full of life, love, and the promise of tomorrow was dead because the dog owners knew or should have known that their Pit and American bull dog breeds were abnormally dangerous.
During the dog attack, Ms. Tatum testified that after she got the dogs back into their fenced yard and was trying to save Justin's life, she could hear the dogs ramming the fence over and over again trying to get out. She testified these dogs were so vicious that they wanted to get out of the fence to try to eat Justin. Ms. Tatum begged the officers, when they arrived at the scene to kill the dogs as she feared for her own life.
Cynthia Kent, counsel for Ms. Clinton, said that she doesn't know how many Justin's will have to die before someone, somewhere stands up and says enough is enough. Whether it is the legislature, the governor or the Courts, she urged someone to do something about vicious and dangerous breeds of dogs.
Serenia Clinton, from date of the death of her son, consistently said that all she wanted was justice in this case knowing nothing can ever bring Justin back home. She hopes that by this verdict the jury sent a strong message that pet owners will be held responsible for dangerous dogs and that, hopefully, lawmakers will do something to protect children from the vicious nature of these animals. She was grateful that the jury in Texas finally delivered justice for Justin.
News Release provided by Cynthia Stevens Kent, Attorney At Law
11/10/09: Pit Bull Owners Force the Removal of Justin Clinton's Small Memorial
09/19/10: Dog Attacks, Trends and Dog Law Coverage of Texas
09/17/09: 3-Year Old Girl Airlifted After Backyard Breeder's Pit Bull Attacks
09/05/09: 2009 Fatality: 2 Pit Bulls Kill 10-Year Old Boy in Rusk County, Texas
07/01/09: Justin Clinton's Family Starts Campaign: "Justice for Justin: Outlaw Pit Bulls"
06/23/09: Texans Killed by Pit Bulls in 3.5 Year Period (2006-2009)
This entry was posted in Dog Bite Fatalities, Dog Bite Law & Lawsuits, Victims Advocacy & Activism and tagged 2009 Dog Bite Fatality, Activist, Lawsuits and Awards, Texas by Colleen Lynn. Bookmark the permalink.	Report a Broken Link
8 thoughts on "Rusk County Jury Returns $7 Million Dollar Verdict After Fatal Dog Mauling"
cravendesires on September 19, 2010 at 10:25 pm said:
although justin's family will never see any of that money, the jury sent a very strong message about pit bulls.
CKing on September 19, 2010 at 11:57 pm said:
The jury sent a very strong message and Cynthia Kent is an attorney I want to remember!
That's what I was read too, Dark, with my hopeful eyes. It would be great for everyone! It would be great if Justin's mom could see some money, but if what she gets to see instead is a growing change in this country – that saves other children's lives that might be something, too.
Dark on September 19, 2010 at 9:45 pm said:
If I've read this correctly, this is a tremendous victory, not just for the Clinton family but for all victims of pit bull and Ambull attacks in the state of Texas and beyond. This sets important court precedence. KNOWLEDGE of the breed alone is evidence of negligence when they attack and kill. Bless you, Ms. Clinton, for pursuing this so vigorously and tirelessly. I know that nothing can ever compensate for the death of your precious boy, but you have put a huge chink in the wall of anti-BSL activists and those who wish to own dangerous dogs but refuse to own the consequences.
Donnie Brasco on September 20, 2010 at 6:29 pm said:
This will send a message to all of those do-gooder, it's all about how you raise a pit bull, propaganda following, pit bull nutters!
ItsATragedy on September 21, 2010 at 9:34 pm said:
"she could hear the dogs ramming the fence over and over again trying to get out. She testified these dogs were so vicious that they wanted to get out of the fence to try to eat Justin"
This is what sets the fighting breeds apart from all other dogs.
Pit bulls are the product of hundreds of years of selective breeding FOR aggression, prey drive, drive to kill. They can and will endure pain themselves to get to their target and kill. Kill for the sake of killing.
This is what pit bulls are and always have been bred to do, and this is why they are not and never have been pets. This behavior can't be "trained" out of them, it can't be "loved" out of them, it can't be "fixed."
All the lies and myths in the world concocted by the pit bull lobby can't mask these deadly truths about these fighting breeds.
The pit bull breeders, dog fighters, and pit bull sellers know that.
Which is why they preemptively manipulated naive legislators into signing a law preventing regulation of pit bulls, so that even as pit bulls kill, the breeders and dog fighters could continue to profit from pit bulls.
This harmful law, that has resulted in many deaths and injuries, which denied regulation of pit bulls to protect public safety was solely to protect the financial interests of a pit bull lobby that not only does not pay its taxes, portions of it are also involved in criminal activity with these dogs.
Legislators hurt the people of Texas when they catered to a tiny percentage of selfish, careless, greedy, and even violent people associated with the pit bull and dog breeding world.
Sweetie on September 22, 2010 at 12:28 pm said:
"John Heike, counsel for the dog owners, told the jury that trial would not be necessary if the dogs had not been immediately euthanized by animal control officers following the attack."
What? So some whore of a 'behaviorist' or whore of a vet could do a trivial behavior test and declare that the dogs weren't aggressive? Even after they killed a child? It's right that these dogs are dead. Vets and 'behaviorists' have now completely undermined their own credibility by working with these aggressive breeds fans (except Semyonova, Beck, Lockwood and a very few others).
As far as state legislatures forbidding BSL within their states… It would be nice if they included in the law that the State would pay all damages not covered by owner insurance. Take the consequences of their own stupidity (or, in Texas, their KKK affiliations), ya know. Face public protest about all of us paying for the consumer preference of the few.
Suppose these anti-social idiots HAD had insurance. How much would their $7 million in damages have raised the rest of our premiums? Even if an owner has insurance, I don't at all feel like paying (via my premiums) for the fact that anti-social people choose these mutant dogs.
The larger public wants breed bans. It's time legislatures stop representing only vocal and moneyed lobbies and the KKK and start representing the rest of us — as they're paid to do, and as it should be in a real democracy.
I do really think the State of Texas should pay the $7 million, as a sign of taking responsibility for the misguided law it passed.
CKing on September 23, 2010 at 12:29 am said:
Sweetie, Great Comment. Love your style!
truthbird on September 23, 2010 at 8:20 pm said:
Clinton's attorney, Cynthia Kent, says Texas needs a law to prevent dog attacks, like the one that killed Justin. She said, "some people have pit bulls and they think their pit is a safe pet, unfortunately, they're a safe pet until they act on their abnormally dangerous proprieties."
http://www.cbs19.tv/Global/story.asp?S=13204261


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OFFICIAL: PSG Announce Mbappe Signing From Monaco
By BF Staff | September 1, 2017 | 0
Reuters / Gonzalo Fuentes
Paris Saint-Germain have officially signed Kylian Mbappe on a season long loan, with an option to buy at the end of it.
PSG have managed to sign the teenage sensation from their rival club just weeks after signing Neymar for a record transfer fee from Barcelona.
In order to avoid a penalty because of the Financial Fair Play (FFP) rules and regulations, the Paris-based club has signed the player on a year-long loan, with an option to buy at the end of it – which PSG will certainly exercise next year.
The transfer that looks modest in shape of a loan has a colossal option-to-buy fee at the end of the loan spell. Mbappe's transfer to PSG will cost the French club €180 million plus bonuses – a ridiculous amount, in total.
Get the details of @KMbappe's deal with PSG
▶ https://t.co/Zgur8Ct9AR#BienvenueKylian pic.twitter.com/D4y3JjkHuM
— PSG English (@PSG_English) August 31, 2017
Once, Paris Saint-Germain activate the option to buy next season, the transfer will also become the second costliest transfer in the history of game.
Mbappe faced press after completing his move today, where he exclaimed: "It is with great joy and pride that I join Paris Saint-Germain. For any young person from the Paris region, it is often a dream to wear the red and blue jersey and experience the unique atmosphere of the Parc des Princes."
The 19-year-old also spoke of his confidence in the ambitious project at PSG, by adding: "I really wanted to be a part of the club's project, which is one of the most ambitious in Europe. Alongside my new teammates, I intend to continue my progression while helping the team achieve the very big objectives it has set itself."
Keep up to date with the biggest transfer news from the Premier League, La Liga, Serie A and a lot more
Written by Shorya Panwar
Has 20+ years of experience managing Schalke in Football Manager 2017. Believes wing-backs are the most complete footballers in the modern/evolved football. Writes weird stuff on his personal blog.
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