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Category: Attitudes
Martin Amis, an Exquisite Velvet Fop
Other writers present included Brian Aldiss, John Brosnan, Chris Evans, Harry Harrison, Rob Holdstock, Roz Kaveney, Christopher Priest and Andrew Stephenson — all of whom invariably gravitated to a pub and swapped fond anecdotes about Richard. One that he used to tell himself concerned his first day at Oxford, when after lengthily gathering courage he stepped out of his college room to be confronted by an exquisite fop in a velvet suit, cape, and broad-brimmed aesthete's hat, who sneered and passed by. Deeply conscious of his jeans and t-shirt, Richard retreated to his room and (he claimed) stayed there for three days. The other chap proved to be Martin Amis.
"Ansible Link", Interzone 110 (August 1996) by David Langford
This excerpt, from David Langford's news-and-gossip column "Ansible Link", refers to the funeral of Richard Evans, senior science-fiction editor at Gollancz. "Fop" has pejorative overtones; and since Langford is an author, critic, and editor, words are his business. If "fop" was his choice of word, he intended these overtones. But why?
It rains almost every day in Britain, so broad-brimmed hats are very practical. More so than umbrellas, which I loathe. They poke into eyes, monopolise a hand, and leave themselves behind on buses. Hats do none of these.
Practical too are capes. Superheroes revere them because they excite the brain region which recognises raptors. But I enjoy their convenience. I have a long navy-blue cape labelled Selfridges Schoolwear, bought for £10 at the local market. It must be at least 40 years old, and we think it was intended for a teenager at a posh public school. It's made of felted wool, goes over anything, and I wore it a lot while the Beast From The East was raging. Covering the arms completely, it's warmer than a coat, and experience showed that it's great at keeping off snow.
Some capes are beautiful. The one below is Turkish. It's gathered at the shoulders, and falls in a way which smooths out one's bumps and hollows much as does a jacket. In his student days, Evans would have smoothed out the bumps and hollows in his walls by covering them with posters (probably of the Athena Tennis Girl); why object to Martin Amis doing likewise for his body? Wearing jeans, on the other hand, makes your legs more lumpy, and often stumpy and dumpy too.
I enjoy the feel and the light-effects of velvet, so I own other velvet clothes. And these include a velvet suit by RiteRhode: maroon with flared trousers. I've also got a jacket-and-harem-pants suit in silver silk velvet, made for me in Morocco. Henry Cavendish is said to have favoured a velvet suit, and if that's good enough for the man who explained latent heat, measured the density of the Earth, and isolated hydrogen and argon, it's good enough for me. Since he also researched the spectrum, he probably enjoyed velvet's sheen and shimmer.
Indeed, you needn't search far to find websites advertising velvet cushions under brand names such as "Champagne", "Luxury", and "Opulence". But did anybody ever dare sell a cushion in denim? There's a cat poem one of whose verses runs:
For from that day I ceased to be
The master of my destiny,
While she, with purr and velvet paw
Became within my house the law.
Not, please note, "and denim paw".
The standards applied to clothes are very different from those applied to similar materials and decorations in domains such as interior design. That is strange, and a shame.
Posted on May 31, 2019 May 31, 2019 Categories Attitudes, Capes, Hats, VelvetLeave a comment on Martin Amis, an Exquisite Velvet Fop
Pages from the Oxford Book of Tourists
I once made an American tourist very happy. I walked near her with my camera, and pretended to take her photo. I then told her that she'd been specially selected to feature in the Oxford Book of Tourists. She was ecstatic. I did more for the Special Relationship that year than anybody else except perhaps Tony Blair agreeing to support whatever war the US wanted to get on with.
That was a practical joke: as far as I know, there is no Oxford Book of Tourists. At least, Google finds only two occurrences, both mine. But I think there should be, on the same principle that one can learn about other parts of the solar system by studying meteorites. Here's a group of tourists that I photographed in Ship Street in Oxford yesterday:
And here's a collage of tourists made last September, from my photos here:
Chromophobia, it seems, is world-wide.
Posted on April 15, 2019 July 19, 2019 Categories AttitudesLeave a comment on Pages from the Oxford Book of Tourists
Real Girls Don't Wear Trousers
There is no date on this Topper annual, but I suspect it was published in the early '60s.
Sluggo is walking through town, past a few houses, leafy gardens, and shops. In the first frame, he is glancing at a woman carrying parcels. She is wearing trousers. He is annoyed. An exclamation mark appears in a speech bubble above his head.
In the second frame, Sluggo sees another two women in trousers, his face scrunched up in irritation. In the third, yet another. He says, "I hate women in slacks." In the fourth frame, he sees two more women in front of a shop window, and he continues, "That's all you see these days."
Most of the women seem to be shopping. In the fifth frame, Sluggo passes two more carrying parcels and says, "Phooey!" In the sixth, there's a group of three gathered on the pavement, one showing a package to the other two. Sluggo remarks, "Why do they want to dress like men?"
The seventh frame shows Nancy in a yellow coat and red trousers, standing proudly with hands on hips. Sluggo shouts "YOU TOO?" and stomps off.
And in the final frame, Nancy is on the right of an open space near a tree. Sluggo walks to the left leading his dog. The dog is wearing Sluggo's trousers on its hind legs, and Sluggo a short print skirt. Astonished, Nancy stares.
Posted on December 31, 2018 January 7, 2019 Categories Attitudes, CartoonsLeave a comment on Real Girls Don't Wear Trousers
The Power of Colour
The pieces from your collections that are motley-coloured probably don't sell as well as the more toned down, plain or pastel coloured ones?
Quite the contrary. You could even say: the stronger, the better. Customers who come to me want colour. People who prefer something discreet or black, well, they can go to other designers — Rick Owens or Damir Doma for example. In any case, if I do something black — which happens from time to time — it's hardly sold. But of course, it can be difficult to be taken seriously if you dress very colourfully, at least in Western societies. I think that's very stupid, because actually it's a sign of strength if you wear a bright red suit or a bright orange suit instead of a black one. You're making a statement. People will look at you differently, and that's a powerful moment, because you're forcing them to position yourself in relation to you.
From an interview with Walter Van Beirendonck, in Talking Fashion by Jan Kedves, Prestel Verlag, 2013.
Posted on December 28, 2018 December 28, 2018 Categories AttitudesLeave a comment on The Power of Colour
Pavement Pleasure
Pavement pleasure means dressing so as to please other people on the pavement. Today, I got three pavement-pleasure compliments. The first was from a member of staff in my local Costa, who told me she always admired my fashion sense, and particularly liked what I was wearing now. The second happened a few minutes later, when I was sitting in the foyer of the Tesco next door. A group of Americans came past, and one touched the sleeve of my coat, and said "Very nice!". And the third was a few minutes later than that, in the same Tesco, when another man came past and told me he loved my colourfulness and that it had brightened up his whole day. So to people who say "I can't carry it off", my reply is, "Experience proves that you can."
What I was wearing: purple full-length sarouel; brilliant blue wool jersey; purple velvet coat; green silk scarf; green Jaeger hat.
Posted on December 24, 2018 December 27, 2018 Categories AttitudesLeave a comment on Pavement Pleasure
Primark and the Spectrum Suckers III: Four Browns, Two Greys, and a Black
Here's a TinEye colour extraction for my Primark photo from "Primark and the Spectrum Suckers". Four browns, two greys, and a black.
For comparison, here is the palette for mud †.
† Extracted from the photograph at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dirt_and_Mud_007_-_Mud.jpg, credited to user 0x0077BE.
Posted on November 16, 2018 November 16, 2018 Categories Attitudes, Colour analysisLeave a comment on Primark and the Spectrum Suckers III: Four Browns, Two Greys, and a Black
Primark and the Spectrum Suckers II: Visualising Clothing Colours as a 3D Cloud of Points
In my post "Primark and the Spectrum Suckers", I imagined white light passing through a Primark shop and exiting as a spectrum made entirely from grey:
My collage was inspired by the stunningly dreary Primark in the new Westgate shopping centre in Oxford. I'm sure it's obvious that I made the grey "spectrum" by monochromaticising the one in the upper half of the collage, which I'd taken from some free clip-art. But how could I produce a real picture of the colour distribution? I've been looking for tools, and found one recently whose output I'll show. As this is also related to an article I'll post next week about generating colour schemes — including green and purple colour schemes — I've decided to write about colour distributions today.
One standard tool for displaying colour distributions is the two-dimensional colour histogram. Here's one for the Primark photo from the collage. I made it in Gimp, free image-processing software that I use for editing photos and a host of other things, including retouching cartoons.
Such histograms are easy to produce, but as David Tschumperlé explains in "Visualizing the 3D point cloud of RGB colors"†, they have disadvantages. He displays a photo of the Swedish model Lena Söderberg, and another photo edited so that the green channel has been reflected around the X-axis, and the blue around the Y-axis. The second photo appears to have much more green, but its histogram is exactly the same as the first photo's.
But there are other ways to plot colour distributions, using the idea that because we have three colour components, we can represent them as points in three-dimensional space. Take any pixel, and express it as so much red, so much green, and so much blue. This gives us three numbers, each between 0 and 1. A pixel that's black would be (0,0,0); one that's white would be (1,1,1); and one that's pure red would be (1,0,0). Treat these as a point, and plot it. Repeat for all the pixels. This gives us a cloud of points lying within a cube. To display the distribution of colours, colour each point with its actual colour; to display the number of occurrences, give each point a colour that represents these. These, as David Tschumperlé says, give us more information about the global variety of colour in the image, and the local dispersion of tones around each point.
There are examples for Lena and other images in David's article. Here are some of my own, made using Kai Uwe Barthel's Color Inspector 3D‡. Each of these shows an image and the corresponding distribution cube.
In the first image, all the pixels are pure red. So strictly speaking, we'd end up with just one point, at the position (1,0,0), the red corner of the distribution cube. Color Inspector 3D has made a small dot rather than a point, probably to make the results easier to see. The second image is all green, so we get its counterpart: a cube with a green dot at (0,1,0), the green corner.
The third and fourth images show what happens for more than one colour, in this case pure red and pure green. We get a red dot and a green dot.
And the fifth and sixth images show results for two realistic images. One is for my logo, which is from this Oakland velvet waistcoat. The other is for my orange qandrissi and ice-blue shirt.
Note that in the third and fourth images, the results are the same regardless of the proportions of red and green. I have a reason for mentioning this, and it's to do with "anti-aliasing". Look at this:
What I did here was to get the colour-distribution cube for a red line. But if it's red, why are there those increasingly white dots leading down to the white corner of the cube? I suspect the reason is that to counteract the relatively low resolution of the line, the drawing program (Gimp, but other programs would do the same) gives pixels at the edge of the line colours intermediate between the line and its background. In this case, various shades of reddish-white. This is called anti-aliasing. You can see this in this zoomed-in portion of the line:
As the distribution plots don't record how many pixels of each colour they see, these few intermediate pixels have as much impact on the display as the pure red ones.
I didn't start today's post with the intent of writing a graphics tutorial. But I noticed these unexpected intermediate colours when analysing example coloured images I'd drawn, and decided I'd better understand where they come from, because they could mislead. I don't know whether similar artefacts could arise in other ways, for example when resizing JPEG files. But I'm fairly sure that some of my images will be affected by the following. Some of my clothing pictures are ones where I've separated the clothing from its background. But it's hard to do so perfectly, so there are minute remnants of background clinging to their borders. This seems likely to bias the distributions, perhaps by giving them tails that shade off towards black.
With that out of the way, let's look at Primark. Here's my original photo:
If the photo seems rather "chewy", it's because the original suffered from motion blur, which I reduced by using Focus Magic. I didn't want to stand around with a tripod, and my camera isn't sensitive enough for a fast point-and-shoot response to indoor lighting.
And here's the colour distribution:
So what do we have? It's a moderately loose diagonal line, stretching from the black corner to the white corner. There are a few dots of red, green, and blue further out. These, I suspect, come not from the clothes, but from their labels.
It's rather sad that the labels on the socks are the most colourful thing in the shop.
† "Visualizing the 3D point cloud of RGB colors", Open Source Graphics , by David Tschumperlé, 24 February 2018.
http://opensource.graphics/tag/color-distribution/
‡ I used Color Inspector 3D by Kai Uwe Barthel. This is a Java program, packaged as a JAR file: something rather like a zip file, containing all the program components. On Windows 10, I was able to run it by following Kai's instructions: download ColorInspector3D.jar from the link, and double click on it. This requires the computer to have Java, which the one I'm using must have got. Once you've started the program, click "File" and then "Open", and select an image. Its colour cube should then appear. I found that the program failed on very big images, and I had to reduce their size.
https://imagej.nih.gov/ij/plugins/color-inspector.html
Posted on November 9, 2018 November 11, 2018 Categories Attitudes, Colour analysisLeave a comment on Primark and the Spectrum Suckers II: Visualising Clothing Colours as a 3D Cloud of Points
Dress Reform, Architecture, and Modernism
In my last post, I wrote about Daniel Miller's paper on the anthropology of drabness in clothing: "The little black dress is the solution. But what's the problem?". He examined four possible reasons for the current epidemic of dreary dress: the fashion industry; historical precedent; modernism; and shopping habits. (To the philosopher in the front row who has just shouted out that historical precedent is not the kind of thing that can be termed a cause, I should explain that there, Miller was looking at previous turnings toward drabness, and whether their explanations threw any light on what's happening today.) I summarised what Miller wrote about three of these, but left out modernism. I felt his analysis thereof merited a post of its own, rather than getting buried amongst lots of other discussion.
Also, I wanted to experiment with animation. Miller discusses the book White Walls and Designer Dresses by Mark Wigley (1995), who traces the links between dress reform and architecture. By drawing a diagram of how ideas spread and mutated as they diffused outwards from dress reform, and successively unhiding it from its centre, I thought I could make this easy to understand.
Unfortunately, this was not straightforward. I couldn't find any software that lets me arrange text and images nicely, while at the same time displaying links between them, and defining an order in which to reveal elements. I looked at lots of things, including mind-map creators (Mindmap Maker is one that's free and easy to use), Microsoft PowerPoint, network-visualisation packages such as vis.js, and animated GIFs of hand-drawn cartoons. None did what I wanted. Since I know how to write web pages using CSS stylesheets and the JavaScript language, these seemed the easiest solution: at least the web browser would give me typography and text layout free. So that's what I did. I had to write some code to progressively reveal blocks of text and images, and more to draw arrows between blocks. Anyone interested can find them at the end of this post.
Having made my animation, and tested it on a stand-alone web page, I then found that it didn't display as I wanted when I copied the HTML into this blog. Probably WordPress styles were interfering. Also, it needs a nice wide window area to spread out the diagram in, and my current WordPress theme usurps a lot of the space for past blog posts and other things. So I've kept it as a stand-alone web page, also called "Dress Reform, Architecture, and Modernism".
Beware. Anyone writing a serious analysis of this stuff should not depend on my animation: it's a summary of a summary, it mixes causation with passage of time, it's grossly oversimplified, and I'm not an expert. Read Daniel Miller's text, and then Mark Wigley's book.
The two paragraphs of Daniel Miller's that I was animating, I've included below. These are only part of his discussion of modernism, which can be found under the section heading "Interrogating the Third Suspect — Modernism" in the web page I already linked to, "The little black dress is the solution. But what's the problem?".
Fortunately, in contrast to Chromophobia, there is a book with a less succinct title, but quite excellent in its substantive content called, White Walls and Designer Dresses by Mark Wigley (1995). This makes precisely this argument for the centrality of leaching to the modern movement, but does so with considerable and impressive scholarship and through making an unexpected, but convincing, link between the histories of clothing and of architecture. Wigley starts from the pervasive presence of white walls in modern architecture. His argument is that these are supposed to be neutral and silent but actually speak volumes about the attempt to assert certain hegemonic values through modernism. He shows how white, and I think we can add black, is not a neutral absence but often an assertive presence. Tracing back its source, he sees a powerful influence upon architects such as Le Corbusier to be found in earlier dress reform movements. It was in dress reform that there developed a clear ideal of rationalism applied to aesthetic form. Rationality seen as both the ends and means of civilisation itself proclaims white as a form of purity, the hygenic, the pristine. This allows for a pure utility, that which is assertively functional to emerge from mere decoration. But behind this in turn lies another set of oppositions. The dress reform movement proclaimed an opposition that was repeated in the architectural literature between decoration and function.
While this is common to both genres, there are also specific associations within the field of clothing. Decoration in dress is associated by the reformers with the phenomenon of fashion, and this in turn with superficiality and with women. These associations formed part of a larger logic by which rationalism as the civilising tendency is seen as a robust male endeavour that needs to overcome a whole series of what in contrast are seen as primitive and superficial tendencies. Indeed in its more extreme forms, colour and print become associated not only with a kind of non-civilised and irrational world, as illustrated in naïve or primitivist art assumed to be analogous with the pre-modern, but also with the dangerous, the uncontrolled, the images of the drugged and the bestial (also in Batchelor 1999). Women are seen as the conservative force retaining a less civilised and superficial fascination with colour and the decorative.
Links to code
Here are links to the code I wrote:
http://www.chromophilia.uk/web_techniques/draw_arrow.js . A JavaScript library for drawing arrows between HTML elements.
http://www.chromophilia.uk/web_techniques/animate_progression.js . A JavaScript library for successively unhiding HTML elements each time the user presses a button.
http://www.chromophilia.uk/web_techniques/draw_arrow_demo.html . Web page demonstrating the arrow-drawing. Resize the browser window to see see how the arrows adjust as the page changes size.
http://www.chromophilia.uk/web_techniques/animate_progression_demo.html . Web page demonstrating the unhider. Keep pressing the "Next" button to see it work.
"Dress Reform, Architecture, and Modernism" . The web page mentioned above, that puts these both to work. It also uses CSS grid layouts, so may be useful as an example of those.
Posted on October 9, 2018 October 9, 2018 Categories AttitudesLeave a comment on Dress Reform, Architecture, and Modernism
The little black dress is the solution. But what's the problem?
Salman Rushdie's wonderful children's book Haroun and the Sea of Stories is based on the premise that there is some evil mechanism that is taking away the vital stream of stories that course through the veins of our world. My paper is based on a kind of adult equivalent to this story. During my lifetime I have been witness to a similar dreadful loss and in this paper I want to don the mantle of the anthropologist as detective and see if I can locate the culprit. The crime is evident all around us. There has been a gradual leaching out of colour and print from the world of Western women's clothing.
So begins a web page titled "The little black dress is the solution. But what's the problem?" by University of London anthropologist Daniel Miller. It describes how he came to write a paper of the same name† about why people today dress so drearily.
Miller says that as a child, he worked in a Carnaby-Street-style boutique and was "enthralled by the coral sea of clothing, while festooned in my own purple flared trousers, beads and floral shirt". When he started lecturing as an anthropologist, he was still wearing a bright orange jersey and a necklace of shells retained from his fieldwork in the Solomon Islands. But even then, this was making him look anachronistically hippy-ish, so he gradually drabbed down, adopting "the general conventions of male clothing based around indigo and black, which is constructed along a vague polarity with `classic' Armani emulating cuts for more formal wear, and jeans materials for the more informal to today's customary indigos and blacks".
Now, indigo can be a blazing, dazzling, glaring colour, as in this indigo coat of mine:
I suspect, however, that Miller doesn't mean he's wearing this kind of indigo, but the sort that gives jeans their colour — or lack thereof. As he says, "About the most existing possibility left to me is to discover a new shade of grey."
But while resigned to the dreariness of day-to-day wear, Miller did still expect to see more adventurous clothing on holiday, a 'Hawaiian shirt' lifting of the gloom:
Well for a while this seemed true, but then I was starting to find that my fellow tourists were bringing out the same dull drab clothes on holiday that they were wearing at home — just more interesting messages on the T shirts. But at least I felt that if holiday clothes had also become drab, the last refuge of colour would indeed be the beach and the swimsuit, with at least some desire to 'fit in' when snorkeling over a coral reef. So the decision to write this paper can be precisely timed. It came when taking a family holiday on a beach in Mexico. I had my novel and my drink and was relaxing under a beach umbrella. This was quite a European resort and the people around me were probably Dutch, Swedish and English with a few Americans. Anyway, after a while, I started looking around me and what actually caught my eye was that every single bikini or swimsuit as far as my eye could see was — you guessed it — black. At that point I decided that surely if the anthropologist could turn detective, I might not be able to stem this tide, but might at least find the culprit."
So what was the culprit. Very disappointingly, Miller doesn't have his paper on open access. There's a database entry for it linked from the 2004 section of http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/view/people/DMSMI78.date.html. But even though this service is called open access, it says the full text is not available. However, he does summarise it in his web page. He starts by discussing four possible causes. These are:
The fashion industry. Is it promoting drab colours because they're more profitable?
Historical precedent. Have there been past turnings toward drabness? If so, could their causes throw light on the current turning?
The rise of modernism and modernist minimalism. Have these caused the recent decline in colour?
How people behave when buying.
Miller dismisses the first three causes. Regarding the first — the fashion industry — he argues that if the world has gone black, one can't merely assume designers who promoted the trend are responsible. Clothing is one of the most diverse industries. In order to survive, companies will always be seeking new niches. Some may go black, but this will drive others to seek alternative, and therefore more colourful, niches.
Concerning historical precedent, Miller says that that have indeed been previous turnings towards drabness. In his 1995 book Men in Black John Harvey† discusses the Victorians. Victorian dandies wore black, adopting an ascetic and minimalist appearance which favoured elaboration in style rather than in colour. The middle classes also adopted black: probably not because of influence from the dandy elite, but because the Church had for centuries associated black with sobriety. What really cemented this association, Harvey says, was the Victorian Cult of the Dead. To me, this is exemplified by any number of gloomy images, such as the splendid picture heading Essie Fox's Virtual Victorian blog.
But all the above shows is that there were other periods when "clothing leached and bleached". It doesn't prove that the reasons for this were the same as today. After all, Miller writes, a girl picking out a little black dress for a party is unlikely to think of herself as dressing for a funeral.
The third possible cause Miller considers is the rise of modernism and modernist minimalism. Have these caused the recent decline in colour? I'll say more about these next time, but Miller concludes that they have not.
This leaves the fourth possibility, people's behaviour when shopping. Miller and his colleague Alison Clarke observed shopping habits in North London. They found that "there remains a considerable desire to wear different colours and prints, and yet at the moment of purchase women seemed unable to bring themselves to fulfil their own desires".
This appeared to be because of anxiety: "One of the extended examples presented in Clarke and Miller 2002 was a woman — Charmaigne who sets out to buy a floral dress, in a deliberate attempt to expand out of her conventional wardrobe and to try and associate herself with this other genre of clothing. By following her around the shops we can actually watch her increasing anxiety when it comes to making a choice that will lead to her expressing a more distinct sartorial identity in public outside of the arena of what are experienced now as simple and safe minor variants upon the core of printless and colourless clothing."
So women get anxious, and this inhibits them from choosing interesting clothes. But why do they get anxious? We need to ask, because: "Finding anxiety at the root of this refusal of distinction does not tell us anything about why women are so anxious, and why this might be more the case now, than say thirty years ago."
Miller argues that: "what we have uncovered is the combination of two forces; one long term and one short term. The long term trend could be identified, not so much with modernism, as with modernity. The condition of modernity as analysed by Habermas (1987) is one in which we become decreasingly convinced by the authority of institutions and rules that previously determined how we should act. We can no longer say simply that this is our 'custom' or our 'religion' Instead we have to face up to the degree to which we are making up our own moral rules. We become, as individuals, increasingly burdened with the task of creating normativity for ourselves. This is even more difficult given our increasing self-awareness, that this is what we are engaged in. All of this pressure to create our own normativity in turn produces a tremendous desire for self-reassurance (for details of this argument see Miller 1994: 58-81)."
That final reference is to Modernity: an Ethnographic Approach by Miller (1994), Oxford: Berg. I haven't read it yet, so I can't go any further in explaining the above. But the consequence is: "This is why the shoppers are less and less confident about making a clear choice. They want to buy something strong and bright, but they just can't bring themselves to do it. We live not in a risk society, but in what we might better call the no-risk society. What we do is pretend that choosing shades of grey is more subtle and sophisticated — an intelligent choice. We say to each other we are all very cool and sophisticated. But of course this is nonsense. We would much rather be making bold choices, but (speaking now as a man), we just don't have the balls to actually do so, because of the burden of freedom. Because we are defensive about being held responsible for the sartorial statement we have thereby made."
Miller concludes that "Contrary to the expectations of the 1960's and 1970's we have excavated a logic which explains why a free world is likely to be a drab world."
†Daniel Miller, "The little black dress is the solution. But what's the problem?". In K. Ekstrom and H. Brembeck, ed., Elusive Consumption , 1st ed. Bloomsbury Academic, pp.113-127, 2004.
‡John Harvey, Men in Black , Chicago, 1995.
Posted on October 1, 2018 October 11, 2018 Categories AttitudesLeave a comment on The little black dress is the solution. But what's the problem?
Chromophilia in Oxford
This photo was taken at the same time as the ones in the previous blog posting. This is the only person I saw who was wearing something interesting.
Posted on September 28, 2018 September 28, 2018 Categories Attitudes, Clothing photosLeave a comment on Chromophilia in Oxford


Thank you for interested to be my study buddy.
I'm studying F8, and will be sitting the exam in June 2017 also.
Do share important points in F8 with me also.
I am also preparing for F8 June 17 and doing self study.
Hi I'm taking F8 in June also would love to have some study buddies. Doing home study also.


text:
title: Why We Decided to Raise Our Son Bilingual
layout: post
soundcloud-url: 271477793
published: true
author: "Breaking Español"
---
We have a 10 month old son, Jack. He has been the light of our life since he's joined us here on planet Earth. Naturally, since we want everyone to gain a greater compassion for others by learning a new language, we decided to raise him bilingual.
We have no doubt Jack will grow up being able to better communicate with other kids as a result of these efforts. In this episode we share the steps we're taking to help our son learn both Spanish and English at the same time. Enjoy!

## Tips (Consejos)

* We decided while pregnant since we were already learning Spanish
* [Bilingual Types: Coordinate vs Compound](https://www.onehourtranslation.com/translation/blog/being-bilingual-types-bilingualism)
* Our son will have no dividing line between English and Spanish in his brain since he's learning them both at the same time
* Our goal is to help our son have compassion for other cultures
* Through our research we've found very little downsides to teaching him two languages at once
* Don't worry about using Spanglish, but try to separate your languages as much as possible
* If a noun ends in "a" it is generally feminine, which you would use "la" as the pronoun
* Having a nanny has been incredibly helpful in teaching our son Spanish and us!
* Asking for Spanish books for our baby shower has helped us a lot
* Seek out places to speak Spanish
* Host a Spanish night with friends

## Spanish Words (Palabras Españolas)
* Quires = You form of Want = Do you want?
* Cansado = Tired
* Casado = Married
* Estoy Cansado/a = I am tired
* La mesa = The table
* El programa = The program
* Arriba = Up
* Abajo = Down
* Zapeta = Diaper
* El Sofa = The sofa / couch

## Resources
* [care.com](http://breakingespanol.com/3/care.com)
* Cri Cri Radio on Pandora.com (Spanish children's music)
* Bob Zoom en Español (children's nursery rhymes in Spanish)

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


text:
Vol. 84/No. 45 ● November 16, 2020 The-Militant-Logo A SOCIALIST NEWSWEEKLY PUBLISHED IN THE INTERESTS OF WORKING PEOPLE
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'Charge cops in killing of Walter Wallace Jr. in Philadelphia!'
By Janet Post
Vol. 84/No. 45
PHILADELPHIA — Hundreds have taken to the streets here to protest the Oct. 26 police killing of 27-year-old Walter Wallace Jr. Two cops fired 14 shots at him in the Cobbs Creek neighborhood of West Philadelphia. At the time he was with his mother in front of their home, with neighbors watching.
Walter Wallace Sr. said the family had called 911 for an ambulance after his son experienced a mental health crisis, but the cops arrived instead. The cops knew Wallace was having emotional difficulties, having been called to the house twice earlier that day. His mother, Cathy Brant, tried to calm things by pleading with her son to drop a knife he was carrying and begging the police to lower their weapons.
"I was telling the police to stop. 'Don't shoot my son, please don't shoot my son,'" she told the media. "They paid me no mind and they just shot him."
On a cellphone video taken on the spot, you can hear neighbors calling out, "He's mental, he's mental," trying to get the cops to back off. At the same time, you hear police yelling, "Shoot him, shoot him." Wallace is clearly seen several feet away from the cops when he was shot. Wallace, an African American, was a father of eight. His wife, Dominique Wallace, delivered their ninth child the day after he was killed. Wallace worked as an Uber Eats driver and as a rap artist who had written songs about Black rights protests and police brutality that neighbors played over loudspeakers after his death.
Despite calls to immediately release police body camera videos and 911 calls, Democratic Mayor Jim Kenney — prioritizing efforts to get a big turnout for Joe Biden over revealing the truth about the cop killing of Wallace — said they wouldn't be released until the day after the Nov. 3 vote.
'City needs to be held accountable'
"Everybody needs to be accountable for what they did. You did something wrong, you took a human life and have no remorse, that's dangerous," Wallace Sr. told a news conference Oct. 29. He called Kenney a "coward" for not apologizing on behalf of the city.
Protests against the killing began immediately and continued throughout the week. One march organized by the Black Clergy of Philadelphia ended with a community meeting at the Church of Christian Communion attended by the Wallace family, where the funeral will be held Nov. 7.
"I would like to see justice done for what they did to my son. I wouldn't wish this on no one's child, at all," Wallace's mother told the press. "I pray we all one day can come together and get along. Because this has got to stop. It's really got to stop."
At the Oct. 31 rally in Malcolm X Park, Osborne Hart, Socialist Workers Party candidate for Congress in the Third District, spoke with some of the protesters. "The cops should be charged and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. The police can't be 'reformed' in this capitalist society," he told St. Joseph University student Donavan Gomez, one of 20 students from the school who came.
Clara Costello and Amalia Jaimer Lukes, students at Bryn Mawr College, said they came despite being discouraged by the school administration. Costello told the Militant that college officials said they would have to quarantine for two weeks if they went to the protest.
There has also been anti-working-class rioting and looting, vandalism and arson across the city, especially in the Black community shopping area along 52nd Street in West Philadelphia. An estimated 1,000 people tore through Walmart, Target, Foot Locker and other stores in Port Richmond, on the opposite side of the city. Hundreds of Pennsylvania National Guard were ordered in by Gov. Tom Wolf and a 9 p.m. citywide curfew was imposed by Kenney.
Wallace Sr. spoke out against the acts of violence. "It's uncalled for, you know what I mean?" he said. "And the people that's doing it, they're not helping me and my family. They're showing disrespect."
"Why would you want to have a demonstration where people are afraid to come?" nursing home worker Reafa Carter told the Militant. "We need the kind of rallies where everyone, and their families, are welcome."
At one Oct. 27 protest against Wallace's killing, a few young men who are Orthodox Jews came to join in solidarity. But instead of being welcomed, they were told, "This ain't your fight," and "Get the f— out of here." They were shoved and chased away by some in the crowd, including members of the Black Hebrew Israelites, spewing anti-Semitic words of hatred.
The Stop Antisemitism watchdog group wrote, "Fighting racism with antisemitism is not fighting racism. It's just spreading more hatred."
Front Page Articles
Join fight to defend political rights in Washington state
Whoever's in the White House, workers need to fight for jobs
SWP campaign to win readers expands reach of the 'Militant'
Capitalist for-profit health industry no better prepared for '2nd wave' of virus
Defending the Cuban Revolution, strengthening US working people
Canada's rulers responsible for Native, commercial fisher conflict
Thousands in Belarus keep fighting to topple regime
After new Islamist attacks, Paris responds with repression
'First Amendment freedoms threatened by disclosures'
Oberlin College aims to crush small store owner
Socialist Workers Party Fund Drive Sept. 26-Nov. 24 (Week 5)
Fall Campaign to sell Militant subscriptions and books Sept. 26 - Nov. 24 (week five)
A needed correction, worthy of study
On the Picket Line
Dominion strike continues, as workers win solidarity
Laid off NY Remington workers fight for severance, vacation pay
Quebec cement truck drivers fight for equal wages
25, 50 and 75 years ago
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Home › Culture › NYC First Lady Chirlane McCray Launches Mental Health Initiative For Black Men
NYC First Lady Chirlane McCray Launches Mental Health Initiative For Black Men
1st May 2018 by BOTWC Staff
Mental health is a widespread issue in the African American community that often goes undiagnosed due to a lack of access. But New York City First Lady Chirlane McCray is taking matters into her own hands to change that.
She recently launched, Brothers Thrive, which aims to raise awareness around mental illness and provide Black men in the New York area and beyond with the proper access to health care services. To help fulfill this mission, McCray has partnered with several organizations including 100 Black Men and historically Black Greek-letter fraternities.
In an interview with Blavity, McCray says she chose these organizations because of the long-term work they have done in the community and the amazing networks they have built.
"I am not a brother. I love them, but I am not a brother," she says. "It takes a brother to reach a brother in the most effective way. I'm very pleased they have taken this up. They all as individual organizations do so much good, but collectively they can do even more."
May is Mental Health Awareness Month and I'm calling on every New Yorker to help us change the culture of mental health from shame and punishment to one of healing and compassion. #ThriveTogether pic.twitter.com/CXtYSS8YUF
— Chirlane McCray (@NYCFirstLady) May 1, 2018
The launch of Brothers Thrive comes on the heels of McCray launching Sisters Thrive in December 2017, aimed at promoting mental health literacy and access among African American women.
"This is very personal for me. I know from my life growing up that mental health is really critical to everything we do," she says. "We cannot live, love, learn, study –we can't do anything without good mental health."
Through Brothers Thrive, Black male volunteers will host various conversations throughout the New York City area about mental health. They will also encourage other black men to take Mental Health First Aid training, which teaches individuals how to identify and respond to mental illness and substance abuse.


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Born on April 1, 1992 in Montana
Arrived at Mission: Wolf on July 1, 1992
Passed away on February 2, 2008
Lived with Fenris I, Obediah
Hina and her siblings Jazmine and Bowdi were born in April of 1992 to a private breeder in Montana. M:W received a call that three wolf pups would be euthanized if homes were not found. Staff volunteers gathered the funds for gas and food and headed north to pick them up. Hina was black with a white chest patch and was one of the largest female wolves at the sanctuary, weighing over 100 pounds. She was the alpha wolf in her pack but was extremely shy around people. Hina was given her name by a young visitor from Hawaii: it means "silver moon Goddess," due to the silver markings throughout her coat.
For many years Hina lived with a male wolf named Fenris. Fenris had been vasectomized; however, two years after the surgery he and Hina gave birth to a litter of five pups. After Fenris passed away, Hina lived with Obediah, who she still made sure to keep in line.


High and low-pressure solenoid valves: Brass or stainless steel body, 24V n/c with coil suitable for flow control, designed to provide a reliable service.
Quick brass or stainless steel couplings for installation of stainless steel pipes.
Clamps: For quick and easy installation of nozzles in pipe systems; can be supplied as fixed or adjustable fittings made of polypropylene, brass, or stainless steel.
Exhaust valves: Brass units for easy line depressurization.
Pressure gauges: For pressure control with a stable needle reading; they can be supplied in various sizes for both low and high pressure units, with ABS or stainless steel body.


To be invited into someone's home to provide care is a privilege, one that we don't take lightly. Our Home Care Services program began in Cheyenne back in 1975. It was the first of its kind for our community, and was started with the sole purpose of helping our community members recover from illness, injury and surgery in the comfort and security of their own homes. Since then, we have continued our focus on providing high quality, patient-focused home care to Cheyenne and Laramie County. When called on, we have even reached out to help surrounding communities, and now provide home care in Wheatland and Torrington.
Today, as in the past, we work with our patients and their family members to create unique, personalized care plans that best meet the physical, emotional and spiritual needs of our patients as they recover at home. We have also made a commitment to our patients and community members to provide the highest quality and level of home care possible. We routinely open up our program for inspection by national accrediting and quality agencies. Currently, our high quality service makes us one of the top home care programs in this region. It has truly been a privilege to serve this community and the surrounding region for the past 42 years. If you or a loved one could benefit from home care now or in the near future, we invite you to give us a call at 307-633-7000.
For more information, please call our Home Care Services office at 307-633-7000.


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Is Casinobuck scam or legit? Casino Review at EveryBet.io
We've thoroughly reviewed CasinoBuck and marked it as a fresh online casino. It hasn't been operating for long enough, so it's too soon for us to give it a normal reputation rating we give to established casinos. In our review, we've considered the casino's player complaints, estimated revenues, license, games genuineness, customer support quality, fairness of terms and conditions, withdrawal and win limits, and other factors. Read the full review below and learn more about this casino. According to our research and estimates, CasinoBuck is a smaller online casino revenue wise. The revenue of a casino is an important factor, as bigger casinos shouldn't have any issues paying out big wins, while smaller casinos could potentially struggle if you manage to win really big. We have found no relevant complaints about this casino. CasinoBuck is a relatively new online casino, which is why it's too early for us to conclusively say whether it's extremely bad, perfect, or somewhere in between. That's why we've marked it as a fresh online casino. As soon as we have more information about this casino, we'll come back to it and give it a "regular" reputation rating.


Large portobello caps are the "steaks" of the vegetable kingdom. When cooked on the electric grill, they make a quick and elegant weeknight entrée.
Preheat grill to 375F. (This will take 5 minutes.) Set dripping pan in place.
Gently tap mushroom caps against countertop to release any sand. Coat top grill plate lightly with oil. Stir vinegar into remaining oil. Brush mushroom caps with half of oil mixture, and set on grill, gill sides up. Brush remaining oil on gills, then sprinkle on red pepper, garlic and capers. Close grill top, and sear 3 to 4 minutes, or until mushrooms are tender.
Transfer to plates. Brush any garlic and pepper pieces that stick to grill onto mushrooms, then drizzle with collected juices. Sprinkle with parsley and Romano. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Serve immediately.


April launched with a great start. We were home and things were calm. I had a yard sale to prep for, date nights planned, a working budget all set up, and a writing goal I was ready to knock out. Half way through the month my grandmother rapidly declined in health. The day it became apparent that things were going downhill I decided to fly to North Dakota with my parents to be with her. We made it two days before she passed away. I stayed out there for the funeral and the process of sorting out her affairs. The day before we flew home, my sister-in-law gave birth to my niece two weeks early. I stayed an extra two days with my parents to get baby snuggles in. It was May 1st when I arrived home and no more improvements to be made for the month. In spite of all that, I think it still ended decently. Check out my goals here if you need a refresher.
While I was in ND I started doing a lot more walking mostly because we had one vehicle and the town of Harvey only has 1,600 residents, so you can imagine that most everything is walking distance. That and I walk a lot out on the farm. My foot was not used to any of this and it protested pretty violently. But hiking season is upon us and it needs to get used to it!
I actually signed up for an adult swim class that I was excited to take. It's for improving your strokes and technique (I have none). They wait listed me which was probably best all things considered. I still would like to take this before we move, so I'm hoping that I can get in on the next round.
We got in the minimum that I want saved even if it technically isn't enough to reach our original goal. I'm going to consider this a win.
The budget this month looked magnificent. I planned for almost everything and when I realized a few things were forgotten, I was able to finagle them in. Then I had to pay for last minute plane tickets to ND and have Dale and I live on separate food budgets. We both did really well, and except for the plane tickets our budget wasn't derailed at all.
Dale and I were all set for two date nights with my mom as babysitter. One was just going to be a regular night out at the movies. The other was a more exciting and more planned trip to Howe Caverns. But, that all got canceled in the wake of my ND trip. Some day, some how, we will go on a date.
There is plenty of room for improvement, but this is happening more often. I don't time it. Some days we have tickle fests, some days we play piano together, and others we take long walks and splash in puddles.
I just wrote about my success in this area here. 10,000 words down for the month!
This month I wrote 4 posts and only the first was planned. The other three were inspired by what was happening in the moment. The turn around time on all of them was extremely fast for me (two the same night and one the next day). I'm a planner and editor, so that is actually a good practice for me. I have more posts that I want to get done this month than is likely to happen, especially with finishing up work, but I'm going to try.
Epic fail on this one. Some version of this needs to be reinstated this month.
Some nights I have prayed with her. And other nights (and/or nap times) I have sung. My mom got Aeryn hooked on "Jesus Loves Me" as a soothing song while we were driving to FL. I've changed the words slightly to sing it to her, and I've now sung this for an hour straight while half asleep in the middle of the night, over the radio in the car, and for snuggle time as she's nursed. I like declaring the words over her making it as much a prayer as a song.
This happened once this month and it wasn't a contrived part of reaching my goals. I just knew she was having a really hard month and wanted to do something. And it made her day better which is all I cared about.
Well, Dale got to go hiking with friends. Does that count?
The caves were supposed to be this. Does flying to MN and then driving from there to ND with a sleep-deprived toddler and surviving the subsequent week in the nursing home, at a funeral, and sorting belongings with late nights and non-existent naps count as an adventure? I vote yes.
We had a yard sale the first week of April. Thankfully I already had several bins of stuff set aside in my garage just waiting to be organized for sale or I would not have been ready. The first day was cold, but we made a decent amount of money. Most of what we had there I just wanted gone. The next day was gorgeous, yet no one came. I managed to get pictures of the items I want to sell online and separate those out from the donations before the next crisis struck. This month I just need to get it all moved out.
With the amount of reading I did this month, I would say that this has to be improving. I read 6 books and started another. Book binging is my favorite even if I shouldn't do it all the time. Productivity goes to zero when that happens. I managed to squeeze in some knitting while we were gone so that has to mean I had less screen time. I think I've been able to knit about three times since Aeryn was born. I try to bring my phone out to take pictures more and to check it less. I'm getting better at fewer distractions while I write as well.
I didn't make progress here except continuing to use my oils. I wanted to pick up some elderberry syrup after that crushing 6 week virus (I was still sick the day I went to ND). Maybe this month.


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The Fellowship
Faithwalking
Beyond the Walls
Prayer Stories
Pastor Blog
Kosmos Coffee
Treasure Cove Preschool
Stories of answered Prayer
Settled at Last
08.18.19 | Stories | Edited by Nancy Newbrough
In August 2017, our home flooded from Hurricane Harvey. The contractor we contacted told us it would take six to nine months for the remodeling and repairing to be completed, so we secured a rental to live in.After a few months of taking time to...
Walking Through the Fire
From M. G.: When we lived in Amarillo, an incredible couple with hearts of gold was in our small group at church. They have eight beautiful children and raised another young woman. Since early May, we and The Fellowship Prayer Team have been...
I am a future 8th grader and have been a member of The Fellowship for five years. Since I give nearly a hundred hours every year to Fellowship Kids, VBX, and other events, I am no stranger to serving. And yet, when I was asked to attend this...
A Cherished Memory
What a wonderful present my husband and I received last Christmas when it was revealed that we were going to become grandparents for the first time! Our oldest daughter and her husband were so excited to announce that their long-awaited desire to...
A Vessel Used by God
(On Sunday, May 5, The Fellowship held ServeFest to bless and help others in our community. Much prayer went into the planning, preparation and execution of this outreach. One of the projects was a lovely brunch given at the Katy Pregnancy Help...
In 2003, I graduated with an MBA in Telecommunications. I worked at the university where I received my degree, but my work contract was not renewed. It was time to look for other opportunities!At the time, my son and I lived in Mexico with my...
Search for a Father
My mother-in-law has never known the identity of her father. She grew up in Pennsylvania. Her mother had become pregnant during her senior year in high school, and my mother-in-law was delivered on December 29, 1946. She was told that a man named...
Help at Last
On June 19 two years ago, I received a distress call from my younger brother. He was crying and explained that our mom had died that day following a simple surgery to unclog some veins in her leg. I was out of town and would not be able to get to...
Targeting the Unreached
Every summer, The Fellowship's Prayer Team lifts up a 75-year-old doctor from Louisiana and his medical mission team as they annually target an unreached people group somewhere in the world, bringing the gospel and modern medicine to them...
My Unsung Heroes
A lot has been going on in my life for the past year or more with the result that I have struggled with severe, chronic depression, anxiety, and other personal challenges. There has been much prayer and intercession by me and for me from close...
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Shipping weight = 40.00 lbs.
Make a unique statement in your home with this beautifully designed Cedar Union Dining Set. Wish to infuse your living environment with comfort and the style? Look no more, this collection is impeccably designed to offer you just that and so much more! Great designs, beautiful colors and varied styles let you add the perfect finishing touch to your favorite space.
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If you're looking for a Toyota dealer near you, be sure to check out our DARCARS Toyota locations. We have multiple dealerships across Maryland which each offer a wide variety of new and used Toyota models that you can choose from.
We have four different Maryland Toyota dealerships that you can choose from. With a variety of locations, drivers from all over Maryland, Virginia, and Washington DC can find a dealership that's conveniently located. On this page, you'll find a map that shows where each of these dealerships is so you can find the one that's closest to you. You'll also find links to each dealership's website, so you can explore the locations you're interested in to find the one that works best for you. But no matter which DARCARS Toyota dealership you choose to shop at, you can expect a wide selection of quality vehicles, competitive prices and excellent customer service.
At each of our Toyota dealerships, you'll find a wide selection of new Toyota models, including Camry, Corolla, Highlander, RAV4, 4Runner, and more. Whatever you might be looking for in your new car, truck or SUV, you can find a great fit at one of our Toyota dealerships. Whether you're looking for something efficient, spacious or powerful, we can help you find the new Toyota that's perfect for you.
Each Toyota has something unique to offer, but you can expect an amazing ride from any one of these vehicles. Toyota vehicles are known for their reliability, so you can expect peace of mind for years to come. When you buy a Toyota, you can feel confident that it is going to provide an amazing ride for many more miles. These vehicles are also available at competitive prices that your wallet will appreciate, and they offer eye-catching styles that you'll be proud to show off. You can also choose from a variety of amazing features that add comfort, convenience and safety to your ride, making your driving experience even more enjoyable. And no matter what you're looking for in a new car, there's a Toyota for you; Toyota makes all kinds of vehicles from compact cars to pickup trucks so all kinds of drivers can find their perfect fit.
There are so many reasons to choose a Toyota but, if you're still not sure if it's the right brand for you, be sure to stop by one of our Toyota dealerships to get a closer look at these vehicles. Our staff at each of our dealerships will gladly answer your questions and arrange test drives so you can see for yourself what these vehicles have to offer so you can decide if a new Toyota is right for you.
Feel free to check out the maps on this page to find the dealership that's closest to you. You'll find DARCARS Toyota dealerships in Rockville, Silver Spring, Frederick and Baltimore MD. When you find the one that's most convenient for you, be sure to click on the link to your local dealership site to learn more about it. Then you can get started on finding the new car that's perfect for you, contacting the dealership with questions and planning a visit to take care of all your Toyota needs.


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Q: How do the UNIX commands mv and rm work with open files? If I am reading a file stored on an NTFS filesystem, and I try to move/rename that file while it is still being read, I am prevented from doing so. If I try this on a UNIX filesystem such as EXT3, it succeeds, and the process doing the reading is unaffected. I can even rm the file and reading processes are unaffected. How does this work? Could somebody explain to me why this behaviour is supported under UNIX filesystems but not NTFS? I have a vague feeling it has to do with hard links and inodes, but I would appreciate a good explanation.

A: On unix, a filename is simply a link to the actual file(inode). Opening a file also creates a (temporary) link to the actual file. When all links to a file have disappeared (rm and close()) then the file is removed.
On NTFS, logically the filename is the file. There's no indirection layer from the filename to the file metainfo, they're the same object. If you open it, it's in use and can't be removed, just as the actual file(inode) on unix can't be removed while it's in use.
Unix:   Filename ➜ FileInfo ➜ File Data
NTFS: FileName + FileInfo ➜ File Data

A: Unix filesystems use reference counting and a two-layer architecture for finding files.
The filename refers to something called an inode, for information node or index node. The inode stores (a pointer to) the file contents as well as some metadata, such as the file's type (ordinary, directory, device, etc.) and who owns it.
Multiple filenames can refer to the same inode; they are then called hard links. In addition, a file descriptor (fd) refers to an inode. An fd is the type of object a process gets when it opens a file.
A file in a Unix filesystem only disappears when the last reference to it is gone, so when there are no more names (hard links) or fd's referencing it. So, rm does not actually remove a file; it removes a reference to a file.
This filesystem setup may seem confusing and it sometimes poses problems (esp. with NFS), but it has the benefit that locking is not necessary for a lot of applications. Many Unix programs also use the situation to their advantage by opening a temporary file and deleting it immediately after. As soon as they terminate, even if they crash, the temporary file is gone.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


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Leamington Spa Railway Station | Contact details, numbers, statistics, more
According to details provided to us, Leamington Spa train station is owner/operated by Chiltern Railways, who should be responsible for running of the station. As we are a third party website, please be aware that these details may not be valid.
As a rough guide, if you need to speak to someone about Leamington Spa station, getting in touch with Chiltern Railways customer services may be advisable. You can phone the Chiltern Railways contact number through our call connection service on 0843 509 2379. Calls to 0843 numbers can cost up to 7p per minute plus your network access charge.
If you would like to speak to someone at National Rail Enquiries about Leamington Spa railway station, or about Chiltern Railways, you can get in contact with them through our call connection service on 0843 538 5217. Again, calls cost 7p per minute plus your network access charge.
Contacting Leamington Spa station online
Leamington Spa station delays – compensation (delay repay)
Leamington Spa Station Jobs
Leamington Spa Station Timetables
Leamington Spa Station Complaints
Leamington Spa Station Lost Property
Leamington Spa station postal address and email address
Contact details for Leamington Spa station and Chiltern Railways
Chiltern Railways customer service opening hours
Directions to Leamington Spa station
Details on Leamington Spa train station
Leamington Spa station information (TLC, NLC, etc)
Leamington Spa station facts
While we do not have a website for Leamington Spa , the Chiltern Railways website is available at https://www.chilternrailways.co.uk. It is through there you may be able to get further details on Leamington Spa station, although we have listed the most important contact details below.
As ever with the UK rail network, services are liable to be delayed. In many cases, if your train from Leamington Spa station is delayed, it would be advisable to get in contact with the operator of your train. In most cases, if your service is travelling through Leamington Spa, it is likely to be Chiltern Railways who you need to get in touch with. You may be eligible for compensation through the Delay Repay scheme. More details, including how to claim, can be found here: https://www.thameslinkrailway.com/tickets/buy-tickets/refunds-and-changing-your-ticket
Naturally, there are many people who would like to work at Leamington Spa station, especially those from Leamington Spa and surrounding areas. The best way to find out if there are any jobs available is to visit the Chiltern Railways website career section at https://jobs.deutschebahngroup.careers/jobs/SearchJobs/?3_138_3=124275&3_371_3=977501
To see live departures from Leamington Spa station, please see our interactive timetable below – provided by traintimes.org.uk. For any further information, consider visiting the Chiltern Railways website's own timetable section here: https://www.chilternrailways.co.uk/live-train-times
Leamington Spa Complaints
If you need to make a complaint about Leamington Spa station – whether this be about littering, anti-social behaviour, a member of staff, or anything else at all, it may be advisable to get in contact with Chiltern Railways via https://www.chilternrailways.co.uk/contact-us.
If you have lost any property at Leamington Spa, it could be worth getting in touch with Chiltern Railways via our call connection number on 0843 509 2379 (calls cost up to 7p per minute, plus network access charge), or via the lost property section of their website at https://www.chilternrailways.co.uk/lost-property-online-form
We have been unable to find the postal address for Leamington Spa station – however, station owners/operators (OWNER} are available to contact via post at
Arriva Rail North Limited 1 Admiral Way Doxford International Business Park Sunderland SR3 3XP
You can contact Chiltern Railways customer services via email on customer.service@chilternrailways.co.uk, who should be able to advise on Leamington Spa station.
Here are all the details you may need to get in contact with Leamington Spa station owners Chiltern Railways. If there is anything missing from this page, please get in touch with us.
Call Connection Number for Chiltern Railways customer services 0843 509 2379
Chiltern Railways Website https://www.chilternrailways.co.uk
Leamington Spa Jobs https://jobs.deutschebahngroup.careers/jobs/SearchJobs/?3_138_3=124275&3_371_3=977501
Chiltern Railways Timetables https://www.chilternrailways.co.uk/live-train-times
Chiltern Railways Complaints https://www.chilternrailways.co.uk/contact-us
Leamington Spa Lost Property https://www.chilternrailways.co.uk/lost-property-online-form
Chiltern Railways Delay Repay Compensation https://www.thameslinkrailway.com/tickets/buy-tickets/refunds-and-changing-your-ticket
FAQS https://www.chilternrailways.co.uk/faq
Chiltern Railways Facebook https://en-gb.facebook.com/chilternrailway/
Chiltern Railways Twitter https://twitter.com/chilternrailway
Online customer service desk for Chiltern Railways https://www.chilternrailways.co.uk/contact-us
Email for Chiltern Railways customer.service@chilternrailways.co.uk
Postal address for Chiltern Railways head office Arriva Rail North Limited 1 Admiral Way Doxford International Business Park Sunderland SR3 3XP
Chiltern Railways customer services opening times
If you need to get in contact with Chiltern Railways customer services, whether about Leamington Spa or any other matter, their opening times are listed as:
Monday – Friday: 07:00 – 19:00 Saturday & Sunday: 08:00 – 16:00
Directions to Leamington Spa
To find out how to get to Leamington Spa station, visit Google Maps here – or click on our map below.
Here we have different statistics for Leamington Spa station.
Leamington Spa station information
All the information you need about Leamington Spa station.
Station Name Leamington Spa
Alpha Code, or TLC LMS
Owner/operator Chiltern Railways
Strategic Route System (SRS) South Central Inner Suburban
Interested in knowing more about Leamington Spa station? We have been able to source the following data on trains entering and exiting Leamington Spa over the past few years. This generally acts as an indication of both how popular Leamington Spa station is, but also as a key to how many popular routes are along the way. Of course, the higher the number of trains entering and exiting a station, the more it is used. For example, Leamington Spa was entered and exited 2553868 times in 2017. These stats have been provided by a third party, and have not been collated by ourselves. See our table below for full details.
Year Number of trains entering and exiting Leamington Spa station
Entries and Exits from Leamington Spa in 2017 2553868
Find out more about Leamington Spa operator Chiltern Railways on our central hub for them here: http://www.trainstationlocations.uk/chiltern-railways/


Is it a fruit? Is it a vegetable? Sometimes, we just don't know. You think you've got it sussed and then tomatoes come along and throw you for a loop. Is it actually possible to know the difference between what makes a fruit and what makes a vegetable? Yes, it is.
Fruits and vegetables are two food groups that should make up an essential part of your diet. They keep you healthy and at a lower risk of disease, plus they're pretty tasty too. However, while they might serve a very similar purpose, you don't want them to get mixed up. A fruit salad probably wouldn't be quite so appealing if you chucked a few carrots and peas into the mix. So, how do you tell one apart from the other?
A lot of the time, you just need to look at their structure. From a botanist's point of view, fruits are of a seed-bearing nature. They grow from the ovaries of flowering plants, whereas vegetables originate from leaves and roots, among other places. By this categorization, things like apples and pears are considered fruits, whereas potatoes, spinach and broccoli are all vegetables. Where does the tomato fit into this, though? It too produces seeds, so does that mean it's definitely a fruit?
Although scientists might take this point of view, a lot of culinary experts differentiate between fruits and vegetables in their own way. Rather than considering the structure of the produce, they make decisions based on the taste. In the eyes of many chefs, a fruit should taste sweet. However, not everything scientifically classified as a fruit is quite so appealing to taste buds. Anything that's viewed more as savory than sweet, such as eggplants, is thus classed as a vegetable.
So, whose opinion should you trust?
Both definitions of what constitutes a fruit and a vegetable are acceptable, but their sometimes contradictory nature makes it hard to know which one to abide by. If you're hoping for an official classification, then the closest you're probably going to get is a ruling from 1893. Yes, the argument over classifying fruits and vegetables made it all the way to court.
There was a dispute back in the 1890s over how imported tomatoes should be taxed. Fruits and vegetables were taxed differently, with the latter having a higher price. When it came down to making a decision, the court unanimously ruled in favor of the tomato being classified as a vegetable. Although they accepted the scientific nature of calling it a fruit, they deemed the views of culinary experts more appropriate in the situation. Therefore, tomatoes were taxed as a vegetable and the debate was concluded… for a few years at least.
How you choose to define tomatoes and all other fruits and vegetables is entirely up to you. The sky isn't going to fall if you start labeling cucumber as a fruit, although your friends might look at you slightly strangely. Whatever you decide at least you now have a way to justify it.


Beef fried rice is probably one of my favorite dishes on a standard Chinese takeout menu (at least when you get to the fried rice column). Stir-fried beef with onions, peas, and of course, a little wok hei is a powerful combination that is often taken for granted. Judy would agree with me because, shortly after we met, I discovered it was her favorite fried rice dish also! (That was one of many things that sealed the deal for me!) All kidding aside, even today, when we are traveling and in need of fresh veggies, we seek out the nearest Chinese take-out restaurant to get our fix of green vegetables and indulge in a good take-out style beef fried rice.
One topic of late on the blog is whether or not one should use MSG (Monosodium Glutamate, read more about it here). Oftentimes, part of the treat of ordering take-out is the flavor boost that comes from having a little MSG added to every dish. We don't have to tell you that MSG is still quite controversial—some say it's fine, others say it's a scourge on food. Just check out some comments in our egg drop soup post to see the discussion among our readers! But as a child of two Chinese restaurant owners, I would be lying if I said that a little MSG here and there doesn't add a great kick and that impossible-to-deny restaurant quality beef fried rice.
Adding MSG is always optional, but if you're curious about it and you don't have any allergies, I have to say that this beef fried rice recipe is the perfect opportunity to try adding a half teaspoon to decide for yourself.
Next, combine the hot water, sugar, sesame oil, soy sauces, MSG (if using), and white pepper in a small bowl. This is the sauce that you'll be adding to the rice, and it's much easier to have it combined and ready to go before you start cooking. If you have questions about the differences between light and dark soy sauces, be sure to check out our Chinese sauces, vinegar, and oils ingredient page.
Heat your wok over medium high heat, add 1 tablespoon of oil and the eggs, and scramble them until just cooked. You can start scooping them up when they look like they are almost done. Transfer them back into the same bowl you mixed them in and set aside. They will continue to cook in the bowl and you will cook them again in the rice.
Heat the wok until just smoking and spread 1 tablespoon oil around your wok. Add the marinated beef in one layer, and let sear for 20 seconds. Next, stir fry the beef until about 70% done. Transfer the beef back to the marinade bowl, and set aside.
With the wok over medium high heat, add the last tablespoon of oil, and sauté the onions until translucent, about 2 minutes.
Add the rice, using a metal spatula to flatten out and break up any large clumps. If the rice is cold from the refrigerator, continue stir-frying until the rice is warmed up, about 5 minutes. Also, sprinkling a little water on large clumps of rice will help break them up more easily.
Once the rice is warmed through, add the sauce mixture. Stir the rice with a scooping motion until the grains are evenly coated with sauce. The rice should be completely hot by now.
Next, add the beef and any juices from the bowl you set aside earlier, and stir fry for another minute.
Add the eggs, breaking up any large clumps, peas, and the scallions.
Continue stir-frying for another 30 seconds. Push the rice into the middle of the wok to let the perimeter of the wok heat up. After about 20 seconds, pour 1 tablespoon of Shaoxing wine around the perimeter of the wok. Stir-fry for another 20 seconds. Adding the wine using this method gives the dish a little extra wok hei! At this point, taste the rice to see if it needs a little more salt, soy sauce, or white pepper and season accordingly.
Serve your beef fried rice immediately!
If you're like us, don't forget some homemade chili oil with your classic Chinese take-out beef fried rice!
Beef fried rice is definitely one of our favorite items on your average Chinese takeout menu. Find out how to make an easy & better beef fried rice at home!
Next, combine the hot water, sugar, sesame oil, soy sauces, MSG (if using), and white pepper in a small bowl. This is the sauce that you'll be adding to the rice, and it's much easier to have it combined and ready to go before you start cooking.
With the wok over medium high heat, add the last tablespoon of oil, and sauté the onions until translucent, about 2 minutes. Add the rice, using a metal spatula to flatten out and break up any large clumps. If the rice is cold from the refrigerator, continue stir-frying until the rice is warmed up, about 5 minutes. Also, sprinkling a little water on large clumps of rice will help break them up more easily.
Once the rice is warmed through, add the sauce mixture. Stir the rice with a scooping motion until the grains are evenly coated with sauce. The rice should be completely hot by now. Next, add the beef and any juices from the bowl you set aside earlier, and stir fry for another minute.
Add the eggs, breaking up any large clumps, peas, and the scallions. Continue stir-frying for another 30 seconds. Push the rice into the middle of the wok to let the perimeter of the wok heat up. After about 20 seconds, pour 1 tablespoon of Shaoxing wine around the perimeter of the wok. Stir-fry for another 20 seconds. Adding the wine using this method gives the dish a little extra wok hei! At this point, taste the rice to see if it needs a little more salt, soy sauce, or white pepper and season accordingly.
Serve immediately, and, if you're like us, don't forget some homemade chili oil!
Very easy, quick and delicious.
Glad you liked it, Petra!
Hi there? Can i use the beef cooked in this fried rice?
Hi Nelley, we have a great beef fried rice too.


text:
"use strict";

let Rnd = require ("./Rnd.js").Rnd;
let Masonry = require ("./Masonry.js").Masonry;

/**
 * @classdesc This module contains functions to generate layout points
 * @class
 */
class Layout {

  /**
   * Returns a grid of x,y values
   * @param {number} xrows - number of points in x
   * @param {number} yrows - number of points in y
   * @param {number} width - total width
   * @param {number} height - total height
   * @return {array} list of xy values {x:val, y:val}
   */
  static Grid (xrows, yrows, width, height)
  {
    let points = [];
    let xspan = width / xrows;
    let yspan = height / yrows;
    for (let ypoints = 1; ypoints < yrows ; ypoints++)
      for (let xpoints = 1;  xpoints < xrows; xpoints++)
        points.push ({x: xpoints * xspan, y: ypoints * yspan});
    return points;
  }

  /**
  *  Returns a Spiral of points centered at x,y
  * @param {number} points - number of points
  * @param {number} x - initial x coord
  * @param {number} y - initial y
  * @param {number} radius - radio
  * @param {number} coils - number of coils
  * @param {number} chord - chord value
  * @return {array} list of xy values {x:val, y:val}
  */
  static Spiral (params)
  {
    let points = [];
    let centerX = params.x,
        centerY = params.y,
        radius = params.radius,
        coils = params.coils,
        chord = params.chord,
        maxPoints = params.points;
    let rotation = 2 * Math.PI;
    let thetaMax = coils * 2 * Math.PI;
    let awayStep = radius / thetaMax;
    let theta = chord/awayStep;
    for (let i = 0; i < maxPoints; i++) {
      if (theta > thetaMax)
        break;
      let away = awayStep * theta;
      let around = theta + rotation;
      let x = centerX + Math.cos ( around ) * away;
      let y = centerY + Math.sin ( around ) * away;
      theta += chord / away;
      points.push({x: x, y: y, r: theta});
    }
    return points;
  }

  /**
   * Returns the intersecting points after dividing the input area in three sections,
   * following the principles of the Rule Of Thirds.
   * @param {number} x0 - top leftmost x coord
   * @param {number} y0 - top leftmost y coord
   * @param {number} width - width of the area
   * @param {number} length - length of the area
   * @return {array} list containg the four {x,y} points of the intersections
   */
  static RuleOfThirds (x0, y0, width, height) {
    let rulePoints = [];
    let thirdWidth = width / 3;
    let thirdHeight = height / 3;
    rulePoints.push ({x: thirdWidth + x0, y: thirdHeight + y0});
    rulePoints.push ({x: thirdWidth * 2 + x0, y: thirdHeight + y0});
    rulePoints.push ({x: thirdWidth * 2 + x0, y: thirdHeight * 2 + y0});
    rulePoints.push ({x: thirdWidth + x0, y: thirdHeight * 2 + y0});
    return rulePoints;
  }

  /**
   * Returns a list of points along x-axis
   * @param {object} origin      - xy coords to start from
   * @param {number} interColumn - space between columns
   * @param {number} width       - max width
   * @return {object} a list of xy points
   */
  static Cols (origin, interColumn, width) {
    let points = [];
    for (let i = origin.x; i < width; i += interColumn) {
      points.push({x:i, y:origin.y});
    }
    return points;
  }

  /**
   * Returns a list of points along y-axis
   * @param {object} origin   - xy coords to start from
   * @param {number} interRow - space between rows
   * @param {number} height   - max height
   * @return {object} a list of xy points
   */
  static Rows (origin, interRow, height) {
    let points = [];
    for (let i = origin.y; i < height; i += interRow) {
      points.push({x: origin.x, y: i});
    }
    return points;
  }

  /**
   * Returns a list of objects as masonry blocks
   * @param {number} width     - width of the masonry
   * @param {number} height    - height of the masonry
   * @param {string} configStr - ops string with the masonry layout
   * @return {object} a list of bricks with the x,y starting point, width and height of the brick, respectively
   */
  static Masonry (width, height, configStr) {
    return new Masonry (width, height, configStr);
  }

  /**
   * Returns the points generated by a Butterfly curve
   * @param {object} origin - xymap with coordinates
   * @param {number} scale  - value to scale the points
   * @param {number} loops  - number of loops to iterate
   * @param {number} lambda - lambda parameter of the curve
   */
  static ButterflyCurve (origin, scale, loops, lambda) {
    let points = [];
    let stepSize = 0.025;
    let upperLimit = loops * Math.PI;
    for (let t = 0.0; t < upperLimit; t += stepSize) {
      let e = (Math.exp(Math.cos(t)) - 2*Math.cos(lambda*t) - Math.pow(Math.sin(t/12),5));
      let x = Math.sin(t) * e;
      let y = Math.cos(t) * e;
      points.push({x:x*scale + origin.x, y:y*scale + origin.y});
    }
    return points;
  }

  /**
   * Returns the points generated by a Hypocycloid curve
   * @param {object} origin - xymap with starting coordinates
   * @param {number} r      - minor circle radio
   * @param {number} R      - major circle radio
   * @param {number} loops  - number of loops to iterate
   */
  static Hypocycloid (origin, scale, loops, r, R) {
    let points = [];
    let stepSize = 0.025;
    let upperLimit = loops * Math.PI;
    for (let th = 0.0; th < upperLimit; th += stepSize) {
      let x = (R-r) * Math.cos(th) + r*Math.cos(((R-r)/r)*th);
      let y = (R-r) * Math.sin(th) - r*Math.sin(((R-r)/r)*th);
      points.push({x:x*scale + origin.x, y:y*scale + origin.y});
    }
    return points;
  }

  /**
   * Returns the points generated by a Rose curve.
   * The k parameter can be expressed as (n/d), being both integer values
   * @param {object} origin - xymap with starting coordinates
   * @param {number} k      - k factor of the Rose curve (n/d)
   * @param {number} loops  - number of loops to iterate
   */
  static Rose (origin, scale, loops, k) {
    let points = [];
    let stepSize = 0.025;
    let upperLimit = loops * Math.PI;
    for (let th = 0.0; th < upperLimit; th += stepSize) {
      let x = Math.cos(k*th) * Math.cos(th);
      let y = Math.cos(k*th) * Math.sin(th);
      points.push ({x:x, y:y});
    }
    return points;
  }

  /**
   * Returns the points from the Rossler attractor
   * @param {object} origin - xy coordinates to center the attractor
   * @param {number} scale - scale factor
   * @param {number} loops - number of iterations
   * @param {number} a a value
   * @param {number} b b value
   * @param {number} c c value
   * @param {number} h h value
   * @return a list of xy points
   *
   *  Rossler Attractor code.
   *  http://paulbourke.net/fractals/rossler/
   */
  static Rossler (origin, scale, loops, a, b, c, h)
  {
    function rosslerPoint (x, y, z, a, b, c) {
      let dx = -(y + z);
      let dy = x + a * y;
      let dz = b + z * (x - c);
      return {x:dx, y:dy, z:dz};
    };
    let center = {x: origin.x, y: origin.y};   // center in the screen
    let x = 0.1, y = 0.1, z = 0.1;
    let tmpx = 0, tmpy = 0, tmpz =0;
    let points = [];
    for (let i = 0; i < loops; i++)
    {
      let dt = rosslerPoint (x, y, z, a, b, c);
      tmpx = x + h * dt.x;
      tmpy = y + h * dt.y;
      tmpz = z + h * dt.z;
      //if (Math.abs(tmpx*20 - x*20) > 5 || Math.abs(tmpy*20 - y*20) > 5)
      points.push ({x: tmpx * scale + center.x, y: tmpy * scale + center.y, z:tmpz});
      x = tmpx;
      y = tmpy;
      z = tmpz;
    }
    return points;
  }

  /**
   * Returns the Lorent attractor points
   * @param {object} origin - xy coordinates
   * @param {number} scale - scale factor
   * @param {number} loops - iterations
   * @param {number} z - value
   * @param {number} a - value
   * @param {number} b - value
   * @param {number} c - value
   * @param {number} h - value
   * @return a list of xypoints

    Lorentz Attractor code.
    http://www.algosome.com/articles/lorenz-attractor-programming-code.html
  */
  static Lorentz (origin, scale, loops, x, y, z, a, b, c, h)
  {
    function lorentzPoint (x, y, z, a, b, c) {
      let dx = a * (y - x);
      let dy = x * (b - z) - y;
      let dz = x * y - c * z;
      return {x:dx, y:dy, z:dz};
    };

    //var x = 0.1, y = 0.1, z = 0.1;
    let tmpx = 0, tmpy = 0, tmpz = 0;
    let points = [];
    for (let i = 0; i < loops; i++)
    {
      let dt = lorentzPoint (x, y, z, a, b, c);
      tmpx = x + h * dt.x;
      tmpy = y + h * dt.y;
      tmpz = z + h * dt.z;
      points.push ({x: tmpx * scale + origin.x, y: tmpy * scale + origin.y, z:tmpz});
      x = tmpx;
      y = tmpy;
      z = tmpz;
    }
    return points;
  }

  /**
   * Returns the points from an attractor
   * http://struct.cc/blog/2011/08/15/strange-attractors/
   * @param {number} numPoints number of points to generate
   * @param {string} entryString initial configuration string
   * @return a list of xy points
   */
  static Attractor (origin, loops, entryString)
  {
    // Fractal pattern and coefficients.
    let a = [];
    let points = [];

    // Parameters.
    let x = 0.1, y = 0.1;
    let r = 360 % entryString.length;

    // Initialize coefficients.
    for (let i = 0; i < entryString.length; i++)
    {
      a[i] = (entryString.charCodeAt(i) - 65 - 12) / 10;
    }
    points.push ({x:origin.x + 50 * Math.cos(r), y:origin.y + 58 * Math.sin(r), r:0});
    for (let i = 0; i < loops; i++)
    {
      let nx = a[0] + a[1]  * x + a[2]  * x * x
              + a[3] * x * y + a[4]  * y + a[5]  * y * y;
      let ny = a[6] + a[7]  * x + a[8]  * x * x
              + a[9] * x * y + a[10] * y + a[11] * y * y;
      let xvalue = (origin.x)*nx + origin.x;
      let yvalue = (origin.y)*ny + origin.y;
      //let previousPoint = res[res.length-1];
      points.push ({x:Math.abs(xvalue), y:Math.abs(yvalue)});
      x = nx;
      y = ny;
      //r: Functions.calculateAngle (previousPoint, {x:xvalue, y:yvalue})});
    }
    return points;
  }

}; // end Layout

module.exports.Layout = Layout;


The OIL is made up of three 14-team conferences. Each conference plays a 13-week, balanced schedule. Six teams make the playoffs with the top two seeds receiving a first-round bye. The playoffs take place in weeks 14-16. Each conference champion receives its respective league's traveling trophy and a custom team jersey. The two highest-scoring champions face each other in week 17. The winner receives the Tenequer Memorial Trophy and a custom team mini-helmet. Click any logo to view a full franchise history.


text:
Jo Jorgensen Talks Diversity-Less Democrats, DOPE, Dershowitz, And The Elephant In The Room
2020 Presidential Race Front Page Opinions
by Gary Doan March 5, 2020 30 3000
TLR: This is Gary Doan and talking to Jo Jorgensen. She's best known for being Harry Browne's running mate on the '96 Libertarian presidential ticket and is currently running for the nomination, herself. Jo, thanks for talking with me.
JJ: Oh, thanks so much for the interview. I appreciate it.
TLR: Yesterday was Super Tuesday where Biden outperformed expectations and is currently in the lead against Bernie. What is a better outcome for the Libertarian Party: a Biden versus Trump race or Bernie versus Trump race?
JJ: I don't really see much of a difference. We've got two older white men… I think what is important is that the Democratic Party has always tried to portray itself as a home for minorities, women, for people who are down on their luck. People who, with the help of government, can make their lives better. And that's not what we're seeing in the actual party. We're not seeing people who've been helped up from the inner city or helped up from racism, who are now running for president or at least in the lead for President. We see the same thing in the Democratic Party that was in the Republican Party. We see rich, old, white men.
TLR: You've talked about some things you'd like to do with executive authority as President that easily fall under constitutional powers inherent in the office… such as pardoning those convicted of victimless crimes and bringing our troops home. However, you've also talked about eliminating things like the Department of Education and the Federal Reserve. Given that Congress created and funds such entities, what could any president realistically do to end these?
JJ: Well, first of all, I would do as much as I could do. For instance, I would have a Department of Education chairperson who I would say… "okay, slash as much of the budget as you can", because a lot of these authorities, a lot of these entities are only as powerful as the money that they have to throw around. So if we can slash the budgets, if we can keep them from being funded, then we would reduce their power.
Ideally, we would eliminate the Department of Education. And by the way, I heard stories that when the Department of Education was first brought about in the 1970s, they were going to call it the Department Of Public Education. And it took a while before they figured out that it spelled the word DOPE… that may be folklore… but ideally, we just get rid of it. But if we take away the money, we take away the power, and that's really what government's all about. Government has the money. Therefore, they have the power. We turn our money over to them, and they use that as power against us.
TLR: Should Donald Trump have been impeached and if so, under what charge?
JJ: I did not think he should have been impeached under the charges that were brought against him. I'd like to point out that Alan Dershowitz said this long before he was Trump's lawyer. Alan Dershowitz is a Democrat. He referred to himself as a proud Hillary supporter. And yes, he used the term proud. And he said that this is a case of… we have a person, now we've got to go find a crime. He said, That's not the way the United States works. The way the United States works is we see a crime, and then we go out and look for who committed it. So he said, if we do it this way, if we start off with somebody who's unpopular, heck we can… if we look at the laws, what it turns into is that there's somebody you don't like you could probably find any kind of law.
When I was running for VP, I talked to somebody who works behind a deli counter And… he said that OSHA had laws in which the floor was not supposed to be wet at any time because somebody could slip and get hurt. The Department of Health had a law that said you had to wash the floor once a day or twice a day or whatever. So there are so many bureaucracies, so many laws out there, that if you picked any one person, you could probably find some law they're breaking… if for no other reason than that we've got so many laws on the books that contradict each other. It's impossible to be 100% law abiding…
TLR: Yeah, three felonies a day and all that. In 2018, the LP had a couple of sitting members of state legislators who got there under the banner of a major party but then switched in office. When running for reelection as big "L" Libertarians, they lost seats that they probably could have otherwise kept. How far off do you think the Libertarian Party is from being competitive in such races in an actual electoral sense? And how do you get there?
JJ: Well, I think we get there by growing the party and different people have different philosophies on this. I think that in order to get anywhere, we need to have candidates at all levels: state, local and federal. And we need to have, of course, supporters, donors, people knocking on doors and all of that. So in 1996, Harry Brown and I focused on membership, and we doubled the party during those two years, and that's been the largest growth in Libertarian Party history. And that's what I think we need to replicate.
I think we need to become so big that people can't ignore us. I'm not sure that the best way to do it is to look for people who already believe in big government, who've been elected for years, and then try to convince them to go our way. A lot of times, they got there by money from the special interests, from lobbyists. There have been a few exceptions. I will point to Ron Paul, I think Ron Paul is a libertarian. But if special interests give you a lot of money to get into office, it's going to be hard to now say "ah, nevermind. I'm going to do something else".
TLR: You've talked a lot, even here, about your connection to Harry Browne, as his VP in '96. However, a lot has changed in the last 14 years. Why are you the best choice to head the ticket in 2020? And what have you done since '96 that makes you more qualified for the top slot than then?
JJ: First of all, there are some things that haven't changed. Government is still too big and there are still a lot of the same philosophical reasons, some of the same history. For instance, I was at… in Alabama, I got a lot of comments. I won't name the candidate, but one of the other candidates had a campaign worker who came over to me who said, 'well, you killed it on the anti-discrimination question. That was great'. Well, it was actually mostly a question… an answer that I've crafted for 1996 and things haven't changed.
One of the things I pointed out is, most Americans don't realize when Rosa Parks was discriminated on that bus, that was a government run bus she was on. Not private industry. Private industry tends to do better if they treat their customers right. For instance, 70% of the ridership was black. Why would you discriminate against your best customers? Also people, companies who hire, the best employees tend to do better in the marketplace. So things like that haven't changed.
I was on something like 300 radio shows back then. I've had a lot of experience. So I can speak to a lot of these things. So that's one thing that I think would help me that would carry over from '96. But you're right, things are different now. We've got social media, which we didn't have before. And for those types of things, I do have other people. For instance, Caitlin, who set up this interview with you. So we have brought on people to update the technology and the memes.
TLR: You have called for the Libertarian Party to delete the abortion plank, which would presumably mean that the platform was actually silent on the matter and individual candidates could feel more free to run under their own interpretations on the interplay between that and the non-aggression principle.
If there were no abortion plank, would you personally run as a pro-life Libertarian?
JJ: Um, there's a lot of hypotheticals there.
I am not going to feature abortion, whether pro-choice, pro-life… I am not going to have that as part of something that I'm campaigning on or that I'm emphasizing. Because there's something like 2% of the population, where that's their number one voting issue. Something like 80% of Americans thinks that abortion should be okay in the first three months. It just seems like for the most part that's been set aside for more urgent things. So I would not run on the issue one way or the other. And in fact… right now I just say I support the party platform.
But let me point out, the reason I thought that the plank should be eliminated isn't to have candidates who are pro- life, but so that people outside the party? So many times I see this as a litmus test. And so many times I run into people who are just so frustrated with Republicans because they're not following through on smaller government. They're frustrated with the Democrats, because they've changed. They're no longer for free speech. Now they've become, I hate to throw terms around, but let's just say more authoritarian. So people are looking for another party, and they look towards the Libertarian Party and they say, "Well, I can't be in the Libertarian Party because I'm pro-life."
And a lot of Libertarians send that message out that if you don't agree with us, 100/100, you can't be in our party. The main reason I wanted to get rid of that plank is so that all of these many fine voters out there who are lost… who don't have a small government party to go to… will look at us as an option. And my experience is that once people join the party, they become more Libertarian on all issues. In fact, I was just talking with somebody a couple of weeks ago, at the Florida convention. And he said, "You know, when I joined the party, I was 80/100, but being around all the people in here and all the ideas now I'm 100/100."
So what I would like to do is drop that one barrier that seems to be a big barrier, so that we can increase membership and then get people to look at the other things.
TLR: Why should voters trust you?
JJ: I've got the credibility of a teacher. And the nice thing about my profession… and technically my job is senior lecturer, it's not professor. But when people ask me what I do for a living, I say I teach at Clemson. People do tend to respect and trust teachers, college professors, and so forth. So I hope I have that credibility already.
But I can say that I've never publicly broken a promise… such as I've never raised taxes. I've never told voters one thing and voted another way. Pretty much every stance I've been on, I've stayed there. And I have been in the Libertarian movement for 40 years now. And I have not changed my opinion on that. It's not like well… I started out as a Democrat, and then changed my mind became a Republican and then became something else. I've always been staunchly pro-liberty.
2020Jo JorgensonlibertarianLibertarian Partypresidential primary electionpro-choicepro-life
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