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Somos familia () is an Argentine telenovela produced and broadcast by Telefe in 2014. It stars Gustavo Bermúdez and Ana María Orozco.

Plot
The main characters are Joaquín (Gustavo Bermúdez), a famous businessman, owner of a motorcycle manufacturing plant, and Manuela (Ana María Orozco), his maid. After the death of his friend Sergio Miranda and his wife in an airplane crash, Joaquín became the legal guardian of Miranda's four orphans. One of these orphans is Pilar Miranda, who is really the daughter of Manuela. Manuela had gotten pregnant at the age of 15 and had to give up her newborn daughter for adoption; years later, she became a journalist and began searching for her child. Upon discovering that Pilar had been adopted by the Mirandas, she took a job as a maid in their home. Upon the Mirandas' deaths, she came along with the children to work for Joaquín. To avoid revealing her true identity, she works under the assumed name of "Ramona".

Premise
Somos familia is a traditional telenovela aimed at all age groups. The plot has similarities with Grande, pá!, one of Telefe's successful telenovelas of the 1990s. Bermúdez plays a traditional telenovela gentleman, seducing the female spectators with romance rather than physical appearance. Although the program is mainly a drama, it includes some comedy scenes, most of them played by actor Fabián Vena. Vena plays a Bon Vivant, similar to the Argentine comic book character Isidoro Cañones.

Production
Somos familia is produced by Quique Estevanez, who previously produced the successful telenovela Dulce amor, also aired by Telefe. It is written by Marcelo Nacci and Laura Barneix. The closing credits of the first episodes did not mention Nacci and Barneix, which sparked criticism from author unions such as Argentores and the Asociación de Autores Audiovisuales. Argentores even sent a legal document requiring the correction of the closing credits. As the problem continued, Argentores sent two more legal documents on February 6.

The theme song, "Somos familia", was composed by Argentine artist Thian, who writes theme songs for TV programs, and performed by Spanish artist Álex Ubago. The song was produced in Spain in June 2013 by Rubén Caballero. The song also features Ricardo Urbina on drums, Joseba San Sebastián on bass, Rubén Caballero on guitar, Txus Aranburu on keyboard, and Laura Latienda in the chorus. The program was first aired during Ubago's 2014 tour in Argentina.

Reception
The program, which had been awaited for months, was aired when the telenovela Solamente Vos at Channel 13 was nearing its end. Somos familia garnered a higher rating.

Cast
 Gustavo Bermúdez as Joaquín Navarro
 Ana María Orozco as Manuela Paz/Ramona
 Betina O'Connell as Irene Lamas
 Tomás Fonzi as Pedro Mancini
 Pablo Alarcón as Gregorio Paz
 Mónica Cabrera as Ramona Isarrualde
 Martín Campilongo as Armando Flores
 Eva De Dominici as Pilar Miranda/Pilar González Ferri Paz
 Nicolás Furtado as Máximo Morales
 Augusto Schuster as Juan Inacio Miranda
 Silvina Bosco as Margarita Miranda
 Mimí Ardú as Elsa
 Luciana González Costa as Lola
 Ivo Cutzarida as Fabian Galván Ep:(55-97)
 Fabián Vena as Pablo Navarro
 Natalia Lobo as Flavia Carlucci
 Maxi Ghione as Francisco Morales
 Graciela Pal  as Azucena Lobos
 Nora Cárpena as Beatriz Blasco
 Maite Lanata as Malena Miranda
 Fabián Mazzei as Andrés Saldivar
 Paula Morales as Julieta Paz
 Bárbara Vélez as Olivia Navarro
 Gabriela Sari as Agustina Graciani
 Micaela Wasserman as Delfina Miranda
 Olivia Viggiano as Camila Galván
 Gabo Correa as Sergio Miranda
 Jorge Noya as Marito
 Hernán Jimenez as Alexis
 Sabrina Rojas as Julia
 Franco Pucci as Junior Navarro
 Justina Bustos as Soledad Varela
 Stefano De Gregorio as Miguel
 Guido Pennelli as Gasparini Ep:(1-42)
 Adriana Salonia as Mabel Gonzáles Ep:(24-)
 Fabio Di Tomaso as Germán Colombo Ep:(37-74)
 Florencia Ortiz as Benigna Miranda Ep:(66-118)
 Valentín Villafañe as Tomás  Ep:(75-)

References

External links
 Official site

2014 telenovelas
Argentine telenovelas
Telefe telenovelas
2014 Argentine television series debuts
2014 Argentine television series endings
Spanish-language telenovelas

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


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Jesse Melgar
Director of Engagement
Jesse Melgar is Director of Engagement for the California 100, an initiative focused on inspiring a vision and strategy for California's next century that is innovative, sustainable, and equitable. Jesse has worked in state government communications for nearly a decade, most recently serving as Communications Director and Press Secretary for California Governor Gavin Newsom. He previously led communications for Alex Padilla, Ricardo Lara, the California Latino Legislative Caucus, and Equality California.
Jesse is a past vice president of HONOR PAC, the nation's leading Latinx LGBTQ+ political action committee. He has served as a board member of Planned Parenthood of the Pacific Southwest and is currently an advisory board member to the UC Riverside School of Public Policy and Equality California.
Jesse earned his bachelor's degree with dual majors in Political Science and Chicano Studies from the University of California, Los Angeles, and his Master of Public Policy from the University of California, Riverside School of Public Policy as a member of the inaugural cohort and recipient of a full-tuition merit scholarship. He is a lifelong resident of the Inland Empire and lives in Riverside with his husband, Angel.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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» Healthworker Training for Nuns in its Fourth Year
Monlam Pavillion, Bodhgaya
The Healthworker Training Programme, begun during the Second Arya Kshema Winter Gathering, has continued this year. Nuns from six nunneries—Ralang and Tilokpur in India, Karma Leksheyling, Tara Abbey, Osel Karma Thekchöling and Samten Ling in Nepal— have spent eight days studying an advanced course in general healthcare and how to respond to medical emergencies.
This project, organised by Dr Jeffrey Chen, CEO of the Taiwanese NGO Taiwan Health Corps, is a joint venture with His Holiness the 17th Karmapa. The Taiwan Health Corps, whose motto is We do it for love, has worked previously with the Root Institute in Bodhgaya, a Buddhist monastery in Bangladesh, and has also run projects in Nepal, Turkestan and West Africa. Dr Chen was interested in developing a programme of rural health worker training in monasteries and nunneries, and the Karmapa wanted to find ways of improving both the health and healthcare of monks and nuns. From this collaboration was born the Taiwan Health Corps' Himalayan Area Health Caretaker Training Programme. The monks receive their training separately. The Karmapa suggested that the best time and place to offer the nuns health training would be during the Arya Kshema in a safe environment where they felt comfortable and which did not require additional travel.
This year's course, taught by a team of nine health professionals, contained more advanced material than in previous years and included more theory alongside practice. The central part of the course, however, remained very practical "hands-on" sessions, where the nuns revised human anatomy and basic first aid skills, practised resuscitation on life-sized models, and learned how to stop or reduce bleeding, use splints to immobilise broken bones, bandage wounds, tie slings and so forth.
The nuns found the session devoted to women's health issues led by a gynaecologist particularly helpful.
Twenty-eight nuns completed the course and received course certificates in a special ceremony with His Eminence Goshir Gyaltsab Rinpoche.


NSSA is the main educational and researcher mobility vehicle of NORDRESS. It provides mobility grants and funds courses or seminars for graduate students, policy makers, rescue workers, media, and others.
untries. This calls for researcher mobility in all the teams, albeit to a varying degree.
NSSA supplies on average 10 mobility grants per year to fund travel costs of team members on working missions or visiting host institutions.
The NSSA also co-funds courses/seminars on subjects relevant for societal security, that competent network partners organize and host. NSSA co-funds the cost of travel and board for participants/speakers and contributes towards the salaries of invited international experts.Each course should involve participants from at least three Nordic countries.
The organizers provide the course venue and manage the course in every respect. The courses/seminars are typically 3-5 days but may vary in length. To facilitate accreditation by different universities, where applicable, the workload of the course is measured in internationally recognized work-units, ECTS.
The cours es serve researchers, not least doctoral students in the Nordic and neighboring countries, but can also target others concerned with safety, such as government officials, policy makers, disaster management teams, and media people.
Applications to the NSSA are received twice a year, on February 1st and September 1st. The NORDRESS Executive board evaluates the applications, selects courses/seminars to be funded and monitors quality.


This research project, in association with partners Twilio, seeks to understand the key concerns, areas of focus and issues that customer experience professionals will be working to improve through 2018. It examines the views of customer experience professionals regarding their key challenges for the year relating to the core areas of people, technology, customer behaviour and organisational capabilities. It will further review what respondents regard as their top priorities for investments and improvements, before making some recommendations in how best to approach such issues.


Do I have to be certified to repair or test Bravo Float-Trip Mechanisms?
1) There can be no debris within the float cup so as to impede the travel or function of the float. Debris and dirt should also be removed from the entire containment sump so that none re-enters the float cup(s).
2) After connecting the ball chain to the shear valve retainer, testing the poppet shutoff must only be done by adding liquid (typically water) to the cup until it trips (remove all liquids after this test). You must never test this mechanism by physically pulling the float stem, arm or chain because you bypass the intended function of the float.
3) If the float does not rise or trip the shear valve when water is added to the float cup, ensure that the travel is unimpeded by debris or dirt. If the float has been broken in any way and allows fuel and or water to enter it, then it will not trip the shear valve poppet. To determine whether the float cup has been breached, trip shear valve poppet so you can physically pull the float up into the highest position. You should then have adequate room to shake the float and see if it feels/sounds like there is any liquid inside it. If it has any liquid in it, the float may be breached and a Bravo "FA-KIT" should be ordered which will require the overall float arm length. Please contact Bravo with any questions at (800)-AT-BRAVO.
The purpose of the Bravo Float Trip Mechanism is to minimize the amount of fuel needed to trip the shear valve and to maximize the amount of time a maintenance crew will have to get to the sump in question to repair it.
However, Bravo Systems recommends that the National Certification Test (primarily for SingleWall products) be completed by technicians in the field because it covers the installation and repair of our SingleWall product lines that feature Float Trip Mechanisms, but also requires the individual read through the Instruction Manuals, helping to educate and familiarize them with the products.


Paragon Quick Quote Form - Receive a free quick quote today!
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Canvas Gallery Wraps offer a superb way to display photographs. Canvas Wraps are an alternative to conventional framing and provide a modern and artistic way to frame your photograph. The Canvas wrap is ready to hang on your wall, right out of the box. The photograph is printed on canvas and then wrapped around a 1.5 inch thick wood frame. Additionally, the photo is mirrored and wrapped around the edges so that there is a smooth transition of the image across all edges. Lastly, the canvas wrap is stretched over an acid free box and stapled on the backside. This prevents the canvas from sagging over time creating unwanted seams. For image sizes of 12x18 and 16x24, a wire hanger will be attached for easy installation. For image sizes greater than 16x24, a French Cleat system will be attached so that the weight of the canvas will be better supported.
High grade, recycled 1/8" eco-friendly wood based product coated for moisture resistance and longevity. Backing component is created with 1-1/2" wood stretcher frame.


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Comics, 1996, 1996, February,
Spider-Man/Punisher: Family Plot Vol 1
Clone Saga
Bob Budiansky/Editor-in-Chief
Tom Lyle/Cover Artist
Scott Hanna/Cover Artist
Tom Lyle/Writer
Shawn McManus/Penciler
Mike Harris/Penciler
Mike Manley/Penciler
Dick Giordano/Penciler
Randy Emberlin/Inker
Brett Breeding/Inker
Christopher Ivy/Inker
Mike Manley/Inker
Al Milgrom/Inker
Arne Starr/Inker
Mark Bernardo/Colourist
Malibu Color/Colourist
Frank Castle (Earth-616)/Quotes
Ben Reilly (Earth-616)/Appearances
Frank Castle (Earth-616)/Appearances
Steve Marlowe (Earth-616)/Appearances
Kathy Somers (Earth-616)/Appearances
Stevie Marlowe (Earth-616)/Appearances
Lonnie Lincoln (Earth-616)/Appearances
Geraci Crime Family (Earth-616)/Appearances
Mario Geraci (Earth-616)/Appearances
Leslie Geraci (Earth-616)/Appearances
Joey Geraci (Earth-616)/Appearances
Four Horsemen (Geraci) (Earth-616)/Appearances
Vinnie Barbarossa (Earth-616)/Appearances
Kim Sung Young (Earth-616)/Appearances
Horace Halftree (Earth-616)/Appearances
Mario Barbarossa (Earth-616)/Appearances
Jeff Phelps (Earth-616)/Appearances
Grover Dill (Earth-616)/Appearances
Vince Williams (Earth-616)/Mentions
Shirley Washington (Earth-616)/Mentions
Daily Grind/Appearances
Web-Shooters/Appearances
Spider-Tracer/Appearances
Spider-Man/Punisher: Family Plot Vol 1 1
< Spider-Man
Part of the "Clone Saga" event
Spider-Man/Punisher: Family Plot Vol 1 #1
"The Fall"
Shawn McManus
Randy Emberlin
Brett Breeding
Chris Ivy
Arne Starr
Mark Bernardo
Malibu Color
Spider-Man/Punisher: Family Plot #2
I think I shoulda just killed you after all, spider.
-- Punisher
Appearing in "The Fall"
Spider-Man (Ben Reilly)
Punisher (Frank Castle)
Steve Marlowe (First appearance)
Kathy Somers (First appearance)
Stevie Marlowe (First appearance)
Tombstone (Lonnie Lincoln)
Geraci Crime Family
Don Mario Geraci
Leslie Geraci
Joey Geraci
Vinnie Barbarossa
Kin Sung Young
Horace Halftree
Mario Barbarossa (First appearance)
Jeff Phelps (Only appearance; dies)[1]
Grover Dill (Only appearance; dies)[1]
Carmine, Castle's snitch (Cameo)
Vince Williams (Mentioned), chief of police (Death)
Gianelli, city councilman (Mentioned)
Shirley Washington (Mentioned)
Spider-Tracer
Sphere bomb
Synopsis for "The Fall"
Spider-Man comes across an attempted assassination of a mob boss, Don Geraci, which infuriates one of his Geraci's men because the distraction allows the two hitmen to get away and his own father was shot instead. He vows revenge on both them and Spider-Man.
The next morning, Ben reports to work at the Daily Grind café. Steve Marlowe, the ex-husband of a waitress there, enters to drop off their son and sets off Ben's spider-sense. Ben realizes he's carrying a gun and points this out, upsetting his ex-wife. Angry at Ben, the man takes a swipe at him but then leaves.
At a meeting of the Geraci family, they vote that the Punisher be sent to find and kill Spider-Man for his interference.[Continuity 1] Frank reluctantly agrees, and warns the Don's son Joey that he's still in charge. He suits up and goes out to find Spider-Man. Elsewhere, Tombstone chides his two hitmen, one of which is Steve Marlowe, who failed to kill Don Geraci. Tombstone kills the other one and orders Marlowe to complete a second job, or be killed as well. Later, Marlowe disguises himself as a cop and prepares for another hit, not knowing Spider-Man is watching him.
On the streets, the Punisher learns that a hit has been issued for Vince Williams, Chief of Police, and stakes out Willaims's apartment. Punisher confronts a boy ordered by the family to follow him. The shots drawa Spider-Man to the Punisher's location. Face-to-face with Frank Castle, Spider-Man is surprised to see the vigilante is still alive.[Continuity 2] Then he fires on Spider-Man who has followed Marlow to Williams apartment. They have a tense exchange when shots are fired from within the building. Upset that he caused him to delay, Spider-Man tranquillises Punisher and confronts Marlowe, who confesses his crime. Punisher recovers and starts shooting at both of them, giving Marlowe the chance to flee.[Continuity 3]
Marlowe reports back to Tombstone, who intends to install his own as police chief now, but when Tombstone discovers a spider-tracer on Marlowe's back he is enraged. He beats on Marlowe until Spider-Man arrives and they fight; the Punisher soon crashes through a window to join the fray. Punisher tells Spider-Man to stay out of his way. Marlowe suddenly produces a bomb and uses it to get himself and Tombstone out of the building while Spider-Man and Punisher are caught in the explosion.
Continuity Notes
Clone Saga Reading Order
Web of Spider-Man #117 Amazing Spider-Man #394 Spider-Man #51 Spectacular Spider-Man #217
The Parker Legacy
Amazing Spider-Man #400 Spider-Man #57 Spectacular Spider-Man #223
The Lost Years
Spider-Man: The Lost Years #1 Spider-Man: The Lost Years #2 Spider-Man: The Lost Years #3
Power and Responsibility
The Exile Returns
Web of Spider-Man #118 Spider-Man Unlimited #7 Spider-Man #52 Web of Spider-Man #119 Spider-Man #53
Back From the Edge
Spider-Man Unlimited #7 Amazing Spider-Man #395 Spectacular Spider-Man #218 Amazing Spider-Man #396 Spectacular Spider-Man #219
Web of Life
Web of Spider-Man #120 Spider-Man #54 Web of Spider-Man #121 Spider-Man #55
Web of Death
Amazing Spider-Man #397 Spectacular Spider-Man #220 Amazing Spider-Man #398 Spectacular Spider-Man #221
Funeral for an Octopus
Spider-Man Unlimited #8 Spider-Man: Funeral for an Octopus #1 Spider-Man: Funeral for an Octopus #2 Spider-Man: Funeral for an Octopus #3
Web of Spider-Man #122 Amazing Spider-Man #399 Spider-Man #56 Spider-Man The Clone Journal #1
Players and Pawns
Spectacular Spider-Man #222 Web of Spider-Man #123 Amazing Spider-Man #400
Spider-Man #57 Spectacular Spider-Man #223
Mark of Kaine
Web of Spider-Man #124 Amazing Spider-Man #401 Spider-Man #58 Spectacular Spider-Man #224 Spider-Man Unlimited #9
The Trial of Peter Parker
Planet of the Symbiotes
Amazing Spider-Man Super Special #1 Spider-Man Super Special #1 Venom Super Special #1 Spectacular Spider-Man Super Special #1 Web of Spider-Man Super Special #1
Maximum Clonage
Spider-Man: The Jackal Files #1 New Warriors #61 Spider-Man: Maximum Clonage Alpha #1 Web of Spider-Man #127 Amazing Spider-Man #404 Spider-Man #61 Spectacular Spider-Man #227 Spider-Man: Maximum Clonage Omega #1
Web of Spider-Man #128 Amazing Spider-Man #405 Spider-Man #62 Spider-Man Unlimited #10
Spectacular Spider-Man #228 Web of Spider-Man #129
The Greatest Responsibility
Amazing Spider-Man #406 Spider-Man #63 Spectacular Spider-Man #229 Spider-Man: The Parker Years #1
Virtual Morality
Scarlet Spider Unlimited #1 Web of Scarlet Spider #1 Amazing Scarlet Spider #1 Scarlet Spider #1 Spectacular Scarlet Spider #1
Web of Scarlet Spider #2 Amazing Scarlet Spider #2 Green Goblin #3 Scarlet Spider #2 Spectacular Scarlet Spider #2
Nightmare in Scarlet
Web of Scarlet Spider #3 New Warriors #67 Web of Scarlet Spider #4
The Sensational Spider-Man
Wizard Mini-Comic #3 Sensational Spider-Man #0 Amazing Spider-Man #407 Spider-Man #64 Spectacular Spider-Man #230 Spider-Man Unlimited #11
The Final Adventure
Spider-Man: The Final Adventure #1 Spider-Man: The Final Adventure #2 Spider-Man: The Final Adventure #3 Spider-Man: The Final Adventure #4
Media Blizzard
Sensational Spider-Man #1 Amazing Spider-Man #408 Spider-Man #65
The Return of Kaine
Spectacular Spider-Man #231 Sensational Spider-Man #2 Amazing Spider-Man #409 Spider-Man #66 Spectacular Spider-Man #232
Web of Carnage
Sensational Spider-Man #3 Amazing Spider-Man #410 Spider-Man #67 Spectacular Spider-Man #233
Sensational Spider-Man #4 Amazing Spider-Man #411 Spider-Man #68 Spectacular Spider-Man #234 Sensational Spider-Man #5 Amazing Spider-Man #412
Spider-Man: Redemption #1 Spider-Man: Redemption #2 Spider-Man: Redemption #3 Spider-Man: Redemption #4
Peter Parker Returns
Amazing Spider-Man #415 Spider-Man #72 Sensational Spider-Man #8 Spectacular Spider-Man #238 Sensational Spider-Man #9 Amazing Spider-Man #416 Spider-Man #73 Spectacular Spider-Man #239 Sensational Spider-Man #10 Amazing Spider-Man #417 Spider-Man #74
Spectacular Spider-Man #240 Sensational Spider-Man #11 Amazing Spider-Man #418 Spider-Man #75 Spider-Man: Revelations #1 Osborne Journals #1
↑ At the time of this story, the Punisher has joined up the Geraci family in order to deal with organized crime from the inside. He started doing so in Punisher Vol 3 #1.
↑ The Punisher was arrested for the apparent murder of Nick Fury in Double Edge: Omega #1. Castle was then put through a mock execution in Punisher Vol 3 #1 that led the world to believe he had died.
↑ The original twin towers of the World Trade Center are depicted as part of the New York City skyline here. This should be considered a topical reference per the Sliding Timescale of Earth-616. The original towers were destroyed in a terrorist attack on September 11, 2001, and have since been replaced by the Freedom Tower.
Publication Notes
1 Reprints of Spider-Man/Punisher: Family Plot Vol 1 1
Retrieved from "https://marvel.fandom.com/wiki/Spider-Man/Punisher:_Family_Plot_Vol_1_1?oldid=5785628"
1996, February


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Freida Pinto recalls shooting Christmas movie 'at height of summer'
Los Angeles, Dec 25 (IANS) Actress Freida Pinto shot her new festive film in New York and London "at the height of summer", but the cast were forced to bundle up in warm clothing to make the scenes seem realistic.
Speaking to HELLO! magazine, Pinto said: "We were shooting a Christmas movie in jackets and scarves at the height of summer."
Pinto found some benefits to her roomy winter costumes as they helped conceal her baby bump because she was pregnant with her and husband Cory Tran's son Rumi-Ray – who was born in November – at the time, reports femalefirst.co.uk.
She said: "The genius costume design helped with that."
The movie 'A Christmas No. 1' sees the actress play music manager Meg, who flees New York for London and, while tasked with finding a Christmas chart topper for a boy band, she comes across a track written by an ill teenage girl.
However, she clashes with the youngster's uncle, who is played by Iwan Rheon.
She said: "They're at loggerheads and don't even like each other to begin with. But that's how all romances begin – at least in the movies."
The actress' next project is 'Mr. Malcolm's List' and she's thankful she'll be given loose-fitting Regency outfits to wear.
She said: "I love the period costumes but don't think corsets are my go-to."
dc/ksk/
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Follow the gravel doubletrack until it forks, and take the right path. Wind your way up and up, past two waterfalls, until you reach where the trail intersects the gravel road. Go left (and down!) and follow this back to the first waterfall and then ride out.
You can also turn right and go up the trail and come back down at where the gravel double-track forked at the beginning. Just make sure to make the turn and don't go on Farlow Gap Trail and away from your car! Also be prepaired to stop for some wooden steps, and after them, lots of people.
Review: I didn't ride much of this trail, but what I did ride was awesome. I love how it's technical nature has so much flow. Most of the time rock gardens won't even slow riders down if they have honed in their bunny hopping skills or are ready to make some creative line choices. In addition, this trail poetry is staged in Pisgah, a forest teeming with beautiful nooks and crannies around every corner. Enjoy.
Review: Really disappointed in this trail. Maybe I should have ridden it counter clockwise in order to enjoy it. Much of the first half had to be hiked instead of ridden. Technical rock and wet root fest... yay. Lost of rain lately didn't help. Wish I had ridden somewhere else. Water fall was very cool to see and definitely legit. Impressive scenery. Best idea for Daniels ridge IMO is to hike it and not ride it.
Review: Easily one of the most beautiful trails in Pisgah and not terribly strenuous compared to the trails surrounding it. Runs along a gorgeous rocky creek with plenty of waterfalls plus a big bonus waterfall at the end. Lots of fun in either direction. Clockwise provides a scenic technical climb and a fast descent with mostly straight lines and waterbars. Counterclockwise is the reverse, more technical downhill. Great fun connected to the end of Farlow Gap as well. If you are lucky enough to snag one of the campsites near the trailhead, it makes for an excellent weekend.
Review: I didn't climb up Daniel Ridge, opting instead for the climb up Cove Creek. We descended the west side of the loop and it was a blast! Big rocks, roots, and a rushing creek down below. A great ride!
Review: Great rugged trail. Rode it counterclockwise starting from the Fish Hatchery. Climbed up FS 475B. It was winter so we had good views of the Looking Glass granite dome about 3 miles in.
After 3.5 miles, go left at the split onto Cove Creek Road. About 8 miles in, you will see a short connector trail that takes you to Daniel Ridge.
At the bottom, we went up Lanning Ridge Road to the left to check out the falls. Came down Lower Cove Creek and finished on the Davidson River Trail back to the Hatchery.
Review: I will ALWAYS remember this trail I went the second week of October and it was absolutely beautiful. When I go back for a wedding next year, I am totally hitting this up again. Nothing super strenuous, and GORGEOUS.
Review: This is one of my favorite relatively short trails in Pisgah. It's less than five miles in length, but feels like about twice that. Beautiful streamside riding, with some narrow bridges, followed by a challenging, rather steep climb. Props for making it all without stopping. The top part of the descent is extremely fun, very rocky and narrow in places, but has good flow. The bottom part of the descent is a much smoother old forest road. One of the bridges to get to the loop was indeed destroyed in the flooding of 2004, but you can walk your way around this. A classic trail!
Similar Trail: Davidson River trail is a good way to access Daniel Ridge. Also recommended are Butter Gap and Long Branch.
Review: rode here in fall of 2004, and the trail need some work for sure. there were lots of downed trees and the bridge was washed out. hopefully it has improved.
Daniel Ridge MTB Trail 4.13 out of 5 based on 8 ratings. 8 user reviews.


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Billionaire Investor David Booth on Value Stocks' Comeback And Why Bitcoin Isn't a Bubble
Published: Apr 27, 2021 9 min read
https://money.com/dfa-david-booth-value-stocks-bitcoin/
Vanessa Garcia / Money; Getty Images
David Booth became a billionaire patiently adhering to a philosophy of betting undervalued stocks. Over the past several years that patience has been tested as so-called value stocks endured one of their worst stretches in memory. Now Booth says those stocks are making a comeback — even as he doubts the stock market, powered by the runaway gains of tech and other growth stocks, is in a bubble.
Booth co-founded his private investment firm Dimensional Fund Advisors (DFA) in 1981 from the spare bedroom of his Brooklyn apartment. He took an academic approach to investing after studying at the University of Chicago under a professor who would eventually win the Nobel Prize for research on the "efficient market hypothesis" — which essentially says you can't beat the market. Since then, Booth has become a staple in the value investing world and DFA has grown to have $637 billion in assets under management and more than 1,400 employees. After four decades, the firm sticks to the same basic principle: investors can't beat the market, but they can lean into factors like value and profitability, eyeing stocks that have a higher value on the books than the cheap price they're trading at on the market.
Value investors, though, have recently been disappointed as fast-growing companies like Netflix and Amazon have driven stock market returns. From August 2006 to mid-April 2021, the Russell 3000 Value Index has lagged behind the Russell 3000 Growth Index by 5.61 percentage points a year, according to Morningstar. While value stocks have just recently made a small comeback, it's too early to tell if the pendulum is actually swinging that way again.
So should investors give up on value stocks for good? Is the stock market about to burst? Is the crypto frenzy dangerous? Here's Booth on all that and more. (This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.)
Are we in a stock market bubble?
No. Individuals have great short-term memory; markets typically don't. Markets go up and go down, and they go up and down in unpredictable ways. In the last 10 years, we frequently had people call in saying, "The market's near its all-time high, what do you think?" Well, I think there's kind of an order in the universe: stocks have a higher expected return than bonds and bonds have a higher expected return than money market instruments. That's the way it works out over long periods of time.
What moves should investors make right now?
If you say, "Well, what about the short term?" — trying to get on short-term market movements is more like gambling. The last year, if anything, has shown the tremendous cost of trying to time those things and not getting it right. At the end of March last year, a lot of people got out of the stock market and it has done over 60% since then. You want to have a long-term focus, something you can stick with. People talk about the "new normal" all the time, and if we look somewhere in the future, it will be the next normal too. It's about uncertainty and sources of uncertainty change over time but the marketplace does a really good job of sorting through that.
Is value investing really dead?
Over the long haul, research shows that value stocks on average outperform growth. We think there's a good reason for that. It's lower-priced stocks and basically the lower price you pay for something the higher the eventual return. In the last few years it hasn't been there — that's kind of the nature of premiums in general. But over the last year, it's been really quite different. Value has come back the way we think it ought to. At the end of the day, it's always about uncertainty. If there is no uncertainty about the future, then your investment return would be basically a money market, a riskless asset return. On one hand, people shrink away from uncertainty, naturally, and on the other hand, it's uncertainty that creates the opportunity to do better than a money-market-type of fund. During the first decade of this millennium, when value was doing really well, we didn't shout our lungs out. If you're a value investor you have to be prepared for those kinds of times when they're going to underperform.
Has the definition of a value stock changed overtime?
Value is kind of in the eye of the beholder. We started our value strategies in 1992 and typically rely on price-to-book. [Editor's note: The price-to-book ratio is a company's market value or stock price compared to its total assets minus its debts on its balance sheet.] Other people have come in with other definitions and a lot of them have advantages. The reason we like price-to-book primarily is it typically ends up with lower turnover rates and it's also less manipulatable. Earnings have a better chance of being manipulated; There are ways of smoothing earnings that aren't there with book value.
What about Bitcoin? Will it stick around, or is it a bubble?
I don't think it's a bubble, but it's kind of like a gambling casino. There's really no income that comes from Bitcoin, so you really just have to bet that if you're buying it, it goes up. I think there are some great opportunities for Bitcoin and I think there are some major concerns. It's a speculative investment and speculative investments tend to go up and down. Starting with the tulip bulbs, over the last 600 years we've seen these things go up and down. I don't know why Bitcoin would be any different, other than it's still at a relatively early stage so you could make the argument that it's going to be a long time before it's fully priced. I'm not making that argument either, that's just why I'm not forecasting it's a bubble. But, you ought to be concerned about it.
Will the GameStop trading frenzy and other events like it change the way people invest?
No. Whatever your view is about investing, there are always some stocks or bonds that fall outside, that can't be explained by your view of the world. GameStop is one of those things where you have enormous amounts of people betting that GameStop's stock will go up and enormous amounts of people betting that it will go down. But by and large, so many of those are short-term investors which gets back to the idea that — to the extent that short-term investors are moving the price around — we always view that as gambling and we try to avoid that when we can.
Should investors worry about inflation?
I think we should be worried. I'm worried about inflation. When we started the firm, inflation was around 12% and treasury bonds were yielding over 10% — it was a different world 40 years ago. There's no reason it can't happen again. I'm not planning that it's going to happen in the next 12 months, but if you're a long-term investor, you've got to think about these long term issues: what happens if there's inflation? What happens if there's deflation? What happens if there are high interest rates? Figure out what your goals are, figure out the range of outcomes that can happen with different scenarios and then figure out which one seems sensible.
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Tag Archives: authority
Renault's Hedge
The Attorney General's letter says that he is resigning at the president's "request," but that of course is a euphemism. He never had the choice of not complying, or negotiating a different outcome, as he would if this had been an authentic request. Reports say Sessions wanted to stay on at least until the end of the week, but John Kelly hustled him out the door.
It's a common ruse to disguise orders or commands as requests. Turning the verb "ask" into a noun — "the ask," "my ask" — is one form this abuse takes. The euphemistic use of "request" is another. In my work on asking, I've given this euphemism a name: Renault's Hedge, after Captain Louis Renault in the movie Casablanca.
Rick's Cafe. Captain Renault, played by Claude Rains, tries to mediate between Major Strasser and the resistance leader Victor Laszlo.
The scene seems like a piece of stage business that brings together the film's main characters for the first time, only to have them arrange to come together at a later date. But the whole scene is a carefully scripted and choreographed negotiation of "authority," from the soldier's salute (in recognition of Strasser's rank) at its beginning to the polite bows at its end. Throughout, witticisms, pleasantries, good manners and the norms of Casablanca cafe society serve as a hedge against Strasser's power of command.
STRASSER : I should like to discuss some matters arising from your presence on French soil.
LASZLO: This is hardly the time or the place.
STRASSER: (hardening) Then we shall state another time and another place. Tomorrow at ten in the Prefect's office, with Mademoiselle.
LASZLO: Captain Renault, I am under your authority. Is it your order that we come to your office?
RENAULT: (amiably) Let us say that it is my request. That is a much more pleasant word.
LASZLO: Very well.
Renault and Strasser bow shortly.
The improbable thing, of course, is that Renault's hedge works, at least well enough to end the standoff (and Laszlo is, at this point, no longer sitting but standing face-to-face with Strasser).
It works in part because the film presents Strasser satirically as a striver, a Nazi brute pretending to be a civilized European. It also works because Rick's Cafe, like Casablanca itself, is a place where the authority of the occupiers can be contested (think only of the scene in which Laszlo leads the singing of "La Marseillaise"). Polite repartee is still possible here: Victor Laszlo can mock Nazi occupation and subjugation to German authority as a "privilege" he has never accepted, and take refuge in decorum ("this is hardly the time or the place") when Strasser tells him he should like to question him.
At the same time, this recourse to civility is always fraught with jeopardy. Here, it allows Renault to soften Major Strasser's order, and all but compel Laszlo's appearance. Renault's Hedge gives cover to a moral retreat.
This entry was posted in Ask Is A Verb, Louis V. Galdieri's Blog, The Power of Asking and tagged ask is a verb, asking, authority, Casablanca, command, compliance, Jeff Sessions, jeopardy, Louis Renault, moral authority, moral jeopardy, moral philosophy, morality, obedience, order, power, renault's hedge, requests on November 8, 2018 by lvgaldieri.
Demagoguery in Duluth
Earlier this week, in Duluth, Minnesota, Donald Trump stated that the reversal of Obama-era protections for the Boundary Waters promised great things "for our amazing people and miners and workers and for the people of Minnesota." Bizarrely, the president went so far as to claim that mining the Duluth Complex would "make it from an environmental standpoint better," though it's impossible to say what exactly "it" might refer to here.
He framed these remarks as an announcement, but it's also difficult to say what, exactly, he was so "proudly announcing." Those like Daniel Dale who track the president's speeches have noticed that he tends to present as new and exciting events and initiatives that are long past, or which in fact have failed or run into trouble. This is especially true when it comes to the president's statements about blue collar jobs, factories, and the economy.
The timeline clearly shows that the Department of Interior started taking meetings with lobbyists and representatives of Antofagasta Plc and Twin Metals in April of 2017, worked closely and steadily with them through the summer and fall, and issued a legal memo favorable to the mining companies in December of that year. Secretary Zinke's latest action — the reinstatement of Antofagasta's mining leases in Superior National Forest on May 2, 2018 — was over a year in the making. Almost all of this work was done behind the scenes, without meaningful public participation. Announcements would only have drawn unwelcome attention.
In Duluth, the announcement of "first steps" that were in fact already taken might have been made to pre-empt or drown out the real news of this week: the filing of a Complaint in the US District Court for the District of Columbia by a group of ten Minnesota plaintiffs against the Department of Interior, the Bureau of Land Management, Secretary Ryan Zinke, and BLM's Brian Steed. The Complaint charges that the reinstatement of Antofagasta Plc's mining leases in Superior National Forest "exceeds their authority under law and is arbitrary and capricious" and asks the Court "to enjoin them from further consideration of applications to renew the two leases."
Filed yesterday, just hours after Trump's Duluth rally, this Complaint is actual news. It will not get one tenth of the coverage Trump's bluster receives.
There's little if anything that's new and even less of substance here. I include the video because it's helpful to consider where Trump is clearly reading from prepared remarks (which might indicate some actual administrative policy step) and where he is simply wandering off on his own into vague promises of some "better" future. He did the latter for most of the minute he spent on the subject of Superior National Forest, veering off, at the end, into incoherence.
Here is my transcript of his remarks on the topic:
Under the previous administration, America's rich natural resources, of which your state has a lot, were put under lock and key, including thousands of acres in Superior National Forest. You know what that is, right? Tonight I'm proudly announcing that we will soon be taking the first steps to rescind the federal withdrawal in Superior National Forest and restore mineral exploration for our amazing people and miners and workers and for the people of Minnesota, one of the great natural reserves of the world. And we'll do it carefully, and maybe, if it doesn't pass muster, we won't do it at all, but it is going to happen I will tell you that. It's gonna happen. And it's happening fast. We've already taken it as you know a long way down the road. And it's gonna make things better. It's gonna make it from an environmental standpoint better.
Here, as far as I can tell, is the substance of his prepared remarks.
Under the previous administration, America's rich natural resources were put under lock and key, including thousands of acres in Superior National Forest. We [have taken] the first steps to rescind the federal withdrawal in Superior National Forest and restore mineral exploration [in] one of the great natural reserves of the world.
The opening jab at Obama, who locked away riches that are rightfully ours, also makes a mockery of the very idea of conservation and environmental protection. But who's really paying attention? The audience cheers at the mention of Superior National Forest: "you know what that is, right?" Trump clearly does not, but he tries to milk the cheer anyway; it's a variation on the tired old comedian's schtick: who here is from Jersey? Anybody? New Jersey!
Superior National Forest is seen here entirely through the lens of extractive industry: a "natural reserve," a store of minerals. Just as importantly, the statement makes no mention of the risky mining that this will involve — sulfide mining, a kind of mining the amazing people of the Iron Range have never done before, and which has the potential to destroy the very things people in Minnesota prize about Superior National Forest and the nearby Boundary Waters area.
Marshall Helmberger sums it up in a must read article on the new Complaint in The Timberjay :
Former Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell, in December 2016, issued detailed findings of fact concluding it was likely that acid mine drainage from the Twin Metals mine would contaminate the BWCAW and cause adverse effects on the water quality, fish populations, aquatic ecosystems, and animal species. Tidwell further considered the possibility of containment, mitigation and remediation efforts and found that very few would be compatible with maintaining the BWCAW's wilderness character.
While it appears that the president's prepared remarks also included some vague gesture toward environmental responsibility, Trump turns that bit into a meaningless jumble, saying at first that the mineral exploration of the Duluth Complex will only go forward if it passes muster, then assuring the audience that "it is going to happen…It's gonna happen," and when it does happen, "it" is going to make "it" better. "It" here can mean anything, or nothing at all: he's not offering the crowd anything beyond the word "better," which is pretty much all they came out to hear anyway.
This entry was posted in Business and Society, Governance, Lake Superior, Louis V. Galdieri's Blog, Prosperity and tagged administrative procedure act, arbitrary and capricious, authority, BLM, Boundary Waters, Boundary Waters Canoe Area, Boundary Waters Reversal, Bureau of Land Management, clean water, Daniel Jorjani, demagogue, demagoguery, Department of Interior, Duluth, Lake Superior, liar, lying, mining, Minnesota, Ryan Zinke, Water on June 22, 2018 by lvgaldieri.
Cary Wolfe on "Another Moral Vocabulary"
Friday on the stoop.
This is from Natasha Lennard's 2017 interview with Cary Wolfe in The Stone:
On the one hand, rights discourse is Exhibit A for the problems with philosophical humanism. Many of us, including myself, would agree that many of the ethical aspirations of humanism are quite admirable and we should continue to pursue them. For example, most of us would probably agree that treating animals cruelly, and justifying that treatment on the basis of their designation as "animal" rather than human, is a bad thing to do.
But the problem with how rights discourse addresses this problem — in animal rights philosophy, for example — is that animals end up having some kind of moral standing insofar as they are diminished versions of us: that is to say, insofar as they are possessed of various characteristics such as the capacity to experience suffering — and not just brute physical suffering but emotional duress as well — that we human beings possess more fully. And so we end up reinstating a normative form of the moral-subject-as-human that we wanted to move beyond in the first place.
So on the other hand, what one wants to do is to find a way of valuing nonhuman life not because it is some diminished or second-class form of the human, but because the diversity and abundance of life is to be valued for what it is in its own right, in its difference and uniqueness. An elephant or a dolphin or a chimpanzee isn't worthy of respect because it embodies some normative form of the "human" plus or minus a handful of relevant moral characteristics. It's worthy of respect for reasons that call upon us to come up with another moral vocabulary, a vocabulary that starts by acknowledging that whatever it is we value ethically and morally in various forms of life, it has nothing to do with the biological designation of "human" or "animal."
Having said all that, there are many, many contexts in which rights discourse is the coin of the realm when you're engaged in these arguments — and that's not surprising, given that nearly all of our political and legal institutions are inherited from the brief historical period (ecologically speaking) in which humanism flourished and consolidated its domain. If you're talking to a state legislature about strengthening laws for animal abuse cases, let's say, instead of addressing a room full of people at a conference on deconstruction and philosophy about the various problematic assumptions built into rights discourse, then you better be able to use a different vocabulary and different rhetorical tools if you want to make good on your ethical commitments. That's true even though those commitments and how you think about them might well be informed by a deeper and more nuanced understanding of the problem than would be available to those legislators. In other words, it's only partly a philosophical question. It's also a strategic question, one of location, context and audience, and it shouldn't surprise anyone that we can move more quickly in the realm of academic philosophical discourse on these questions than we can in the realm of legal and political institutions.
This entry was posted in Language, Louis V. Galdieri's Blog, Readings and tagged abundance, animal rights, animals, authority, Cary Wolfe, commitment, difference, diversity, ethical commitments, human, humanism, humanity, Legal Standing, life, moral authority, moral philosophy, moral standing, moral vocabulary, morality, otherness, power, shared commitment, standing, the human on April 12, 2018 by lvgaldieri.
Three Questions for the Michigan DEQ on the Back Forty Project
Earlier this month, the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality announced its intention to permit the Back Forty Project, an open-pit gold and zinc sulfide ore mine that Aquila Resources, a Canadian company, plans to develop near the headwaters of the Menominee River. In response to the MDEQ's request for public comment by November 3rd, I've submitted these three questions. I'm posting them here so that others might consider them in the run up to the public meeting with the MDEQ in Stephenson, Michigan on October 6th.
In determining that the Back Forty Project application meets the requirements for approval under Part 632, did MDEQ take into account the cumulative effects of sulfide mining throughout the Lake Superior watershed? We know that the Back Forty project poses a significant risk to the Menominee River all by itself. With the mine in close proximity to the river, a flood, berm collapse, subsidence or a slide could destroy the Menominee River; to answer these serious concerns by asking the company to add a "synthetic, manmade liner under their waste/tailing rock facility," as the DEQ has proposed, is to trivialize them. Other development that the mine will inevitably bring, including haul routes, power lines, lights, fueling stations, exhaust and machine noise, will leave a large industrial footprint and disturb the Menominee River and its environs in countless ways. At the same time, this mine will heighten the risk, in the long term, of large-scale environmental destruction posed by the resurgence of sulfide mining not just in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, but in Minnesota and Canada as well — all around the lake and throughout the Lake Superior watershed. Has the DEQ completed or participated with neighboring state agencies and tribal authorities in a scientific study of the cumulative impacts of sulfide mining around Lake Superior? Has the DEQ issued guidance on how cumulative environmental effects should factor into its decision-making process for permitting new mines in Michigan?
Has MDEQ made any determination about the human rights implications of its decision to allow the Back Forty project to go forward? Human rights are not outside the DEQ's bailiwick, no matter how hard it may try to exempt itself. Witness Flint. In the present case, the DEQ's oversight is inextricably bound up with the state's obligation to protect human rights abuses by third parties. Aquila's Back Forty project is sure to disturb, and likely to desecrate, lands traditionally belonging to the Menominee and still held sacred by them; and making provisions for archaeological recovery and preservation of mounds and other sacred sites does not adequately address the basic human rights issues involved here. The headwaters of the Menominee River are central to the tribe's creation story, marking the place where the Menominee people originated. Their very name derives from manoomin, or wild rice, which will not survive changes in sulfate levels or degradation of overall water quality. As tribal member Guy Reiter has said, "It's no different than if an open-pit sulfide mine was put in Bethlehem for the Christians." Seen from this perspective, the Back Forty is not only an affront to Menominee history; it also puts the cultural survival of the Menominee people at risk. How will the DEQ factor such human rights considerations into its decision-making process?
What has the DEQ done to restore trust in its authority, and reassure the Menominee and people living downstream from the Back Forty project in Michigan and Wisconsin that it will exercise appropriate care? The Flint water crisis cast a long shadow, and reinforced the perception that "politics and poverty are big factors" in DEQ decision making. "The same attitude of disregard for citizens and the environment has repeated itself in DEQ decisions across our state for well over a decade," said Marquette attorney Michelle Halley after news of the Flint water crisis broke; controversy over the renewed Groundwater Discharge Permit issued by MDEQ at Eagle Mine and legitimate concerns about lax oversight at Eagle East help make her case. Like all government agencies, the Michigan DEQ should operate in sunlight. Already, however, troubling questions have been raised about the transparency of the Back Forty permitting process. For example, Al Gedicks, Executive Secretary of the Wisconsin Resources Protection Council, asks why the DEQ appears to be in a "rush" to grant the Back Forty permit. So as things now stand, the DEQ enjoys de jure authority in Michigan under Part 632, but it is unclear whether the DEQ still enjoys de facto authority, which could only derive from demonstrations of regulatory competence. How does MDEQ intend to quell public concern that it is compromised or incompetent, and reassure the public that it is a responsible steward?
This entry was posted in Business and Society, Human Rights, Lake Superior, Louis V. Galdieri's Blog, Prosperity and tagged Al Gedicks, Aquila Resources, authority, Back Forty, cumulative effects, Eagle Mine, environment, environmental ethics, environmental governance, Flint, Flint Water Crisis, freshwater, governance, human rights, MDEQ, Menominee, Menominee River, Michelle Halley, Michigan Department of Environmental Quality, mining, mining ethics, regulation, regulatory capture, risk, sulfide mining, transparency, trust, UN Guiding Principles, Water, Watershed, wild rice on September 27, 2016 by lvgaldieri.
Zeno and the Invention of the Second Person
When Aristotle remarked that Zeno of Elea (490-430 BC) was the first to discover dialectic, he was crediting Zeno with the invention of the philosophical interlocutor or second person.
This is how Allen reads the famous passage as well. The remarks attributed to Aristotle by Diogenes Laertius make Zeno "the discoverer of the…oral two-party question and answer debate," not just "argumentative technique." The only thing I might take issue with here is Allen's use of the word "debate," which could give the mistaken impression of a contest in which one person's view prevails, rather than a dialogue or conversation in which interlocutors reach agreement — or uncover their discrepancies — by asking questions and responding to them.
This is an expansive reading of Zeno's discovery. But it's perfectly consistent with the tradition of commentary that makes Zeno out to be the inventor of the prose dialogue and with the ask and answer approach discussed and demonstrated in Plato's Parmenides (where Zeno is presented as Parmenides' philosophical apprentice). The inquirer enlists or authorizes an interlocutor — in this case, Aristoteles, the youngest of the group — to answer him.
Even more restrictive ancient definitions, like those offered elsewhere in Diogenes Laertius' Lives, emphasize that dialectic is not just a matter of "discussing" topics by means of question and answer, but "correctly" discussing them. That is presumably why dialectic may be regarded as "indispensable and…itself a virtue, embracing other particular virtues under it," and Diogenes Laertius draws connections between the practice and ethical teachings.
To help elucidate this point, a note in the Hicks edition of Diogenes' Lives recommends this passage in Plutarch's Contradictions of the Stoics, where Plutarch cites a passage from Chrysippus characterizing "dialectic skill" as "one of the greatest and most necessary faculties." Note the word Plutarch uses for "faculties" here: dynamis: a power or capacity.
This is the power that Zeno is said to have discovered. It is — let's not lose sight of this — a power shared with others: it's the "dynamic" of serious conversation.
It strikes me that it's possible and edifying to connect Zeno's discovery of this power or second-person dynamic with his resistance to tyranny. Immediately after reporting Zeno's discovery of dialectic, Diogenes Laertius tells us that Zeno "plotted to overthrow Nearchus the tyrant (or, according to others, Diomedon) but was arrested."
The story of his arrest has it that on pretense of imparting some important information about the conspiracy, Zeno drew the tyrant near and bit down on his ear "and did not let go until stabbed to death, meeting the same fate as Aristogiton the tyrannicide." Another version has it that Zeno bit off the tyrant's nose. Yet another, related by both Diogenes Laertius and Plutarch, has it that Zeno bit off his own tongue and spat it in the tyrant's face.
In all versions, Zeno's life ends with his refusal of illegitimate authority.
Postscript: Slightly revised on 2 April 2015, but still just rough notes waiting to be written in earnest. That said, I think there's something important and worth pursuing in the connection of Zeno's discovery of the dialectical "power" with his resistance to tyranny. His discovery of the conversational stance in philosophy helped him appreciate, and committed him to the defense of, political freedom, I want to maintain. Victor Cousin arrives at a similar position in his discussion of Zeno in Nouveaux Fragments Philosophiques. For Cousin, Zeno is "l'ἀνήρ πρακτικός" of the Eleatic school, exercising "purely dialectical…genius" in defense of Parmenides' doctrine of "absolute unity" and defending "the laws" of Elea. Much here to unravel.
This entry was posted in Ask Is A Verb, Language, Louis V. Galdieri's Blog, Readings, The Power of Asking and tagged Aristotle, asking, authority, conversation, dialectic, Diogenes Laertius, dynamis, moral philosophy, power, serious conversations, the power of asking, tyrannicide, tyranny, tyrants, Zeno on April 1, 2015 by lvgaldieri.
To Ask and To Demand
I've been reading a little this morning about Pathological Demand Avoidance Syndrome. First described by child development psychologist Elizabeth Newson, PDA is a pathology on the autism spectrum characterized, as its name suggests, by avoidance of the normal demands of everyday life: things like getting dressed, going to school, eating one's cereal, and so forth. It's not procrastination: the avoidance is not of the task but of the demand, which is met not just with anxious defiance but with all sorts of socially manipulative behaviors (some of them charming) as well as violent outbursts.
I suspect that this diagnosis and its treatment will have lots to teach me about what I've been calling — not without misgivings — the power of asking. I'm also hoping that Newson's work and other research on PDA will shed some light on the question Marc Tognotti put to me in an email after I posted my notes on Austin and Asking: namely, whether we can talk coherently about demands as a kind of asking. I've been satisfied with making rough equivalences between the terms, and in an earlier post I've even managed to cheat the idea of moral claims into the word "demand."
Marc countered that he was surprised that I included demands in a discussion of asking and that there is a difference between demands and requests (or asking someone to) that's probably worth maintaining. In short, to talk about demands and asking in the same breath confuses things, he says, because demands are more akin to commands or coercion than requests.
I admit there's a lot here to sort out, including questions about the kinds of authority, moral or otherwise, we need to make commands, demands and requests. For the time being, I'm taking refuge in the etymological roots of our English word "demand" in the French demander, and I've also found some shelter in the Oxford English Dictionary, which lists "to demand" among the definitions of ask. But none of that will do for very long. It might be nothing more than an avoidance strategy.
Still, I think it's clear that the verb ask can be used exercitively — to exercise power, and that using the verb ask in that way can be (let me put it this way for now) pretty much like making a demand: "I ask that you take your hands off me." "I ask you to respect my rights." "I ask you to come forward, so that you can see this for yourselves." Maybe those examples are a little clunky and formal, and I admit that the last one can be construed as invitation rather than a demand. More importantly, I don't want to limit the "power" that I am talking about here to the making of demands or even the kind of asking that is pretty much like a demand. Ultimately, I am more interested in the way that asking — or serious conversations about what to do — can give people an equal share in power.
I still have a lot more reading to do before I can tie all this back to PDA, but I've managed to grasp the basics. People with PDA experience demands as a complete loss of control: powerlessness. They feel coerced, not asked to or whether they would. Even the most trifling demand seems to eclipse their will. In this diagnosis, demands are more like commands, less like asking or the start of a conversation about what to do. Even the simplest request or suggestion can be mistaken for an order and resisted.
One parent of a child with PDA reports that her child misinterprets "everything as a demand" being shouted at her; and to overcome the child's pathological demand avoidance she and her husband "always try to phrase demands in a way that offers…choices and we are always prepared to negotiate." Many boundaries too, have to be negotiated, even when it's a question of what's safe or lawful, so that the child "feels that it is either her choice or is open to negotiation."
Of course it's deceptive, a manipulation to give the illusion of control and preempt the child's manipulations. It's not a serious conversation; it's power play: the parents engage the child in mimicking the very real power we share when we have choices to make, nobody is in charge and nothing is settled. And that is what these children seem to want, but only because that gives them a chance to take back control.
Postscript: some readers have found my last paragraph controversial or just wrongheaded. Please take a moment to read the comments on this post from parents of children diagnosed with PDA.
This entry was posted in Ask Is A Verb, Language, Readings, The Power of Asking and tagged anxiety, ask, ask is a verb, asking, authority, coercion, command, control, conversations, demand, Elizabeth Newson, exercitive, Marc Tognotti, moral authority, moral claims, non-coercion, pathological demand avoidance, pathological demand avoidance syndrome, pda, power, power of asking, serious conversations, will on March 2, 2015 by lvgaldieri.
Austin and Asking
Ask is a verb: to ask is to do something or, usually, to do a number of things. To ask is, first and almost always, to address someone, even, I'd say, when you are wondering aloud to yourself ("what's it all about?" or "what's wrong with me?" or "why do I put myself through this?" If they are not simply outbursts or exclamations disguised as questions, these are often indirect and emotionally-charged ways of asking, "what am I going to do?"). To ask is to do other things as well: to inquire about something, someone or some state of affairs, to request clarification or permission, or to make a demand (as the French verb demander reminds us.)
Turning the verb into a noun — talking about "the ask" — confuses the address and runs roughshod over this whole range of human activity and human relationships that asking might involve.
Sometimes that's deliberate. It allows people to pretend they aren't giving an order when they are, or to present an order as an institutional requirement, to deflect questions about power and authority or just make it impossible for people to say no, as they should be able to do if you are genuinely asking them to do something. (Always take no for an answer might be another rule of asking; but I can easily think of exceptions, as when, for instance, we demand respect or claim rights. Those are obviously special cases.) There are all sorts of ways besides these in which talking about "the ask" as opposed to asking skirts questions of power, surrenders authority and takes authority from others. It's a big drain.
I'm trying to take things in exactly the opposite direction: I want to talk about asking as an exercise of power, and the verb "ask" as an exercitive. (It seems it would be easiest to do that in cases where we are making a simple demand — e.g., "I ask that you remove your foot from mine".)
I'm borrowing the word "exercitive" here from J.L. Austin's How to Do Things With Words, where Austin comes very close a number of times to talking about what we do when we ask, close enough to encourage my own thinking in this direction. He makes some intriguing remarks about asking as an illocutionary act that "[invites] by convention a response or a sequel," and in this context he differentiates asking to from asking whether you will or asking yes or no and the different responses they invite.
Unfortunately, when Austin directs his attention to the verb "ask" near the very end of his lectures, in a discussion of his dictionary "fieldwork," he gives very little guidance.
In Lecture XII, Austin includes ask among the Expositives — verbs "used in acts of exposition involving the expounding of views, the conducting of arguments, and the clarifying of usages and references." (Or, as he puts it elsewhere, "the expositive is the clarifying of reasons, arguments and communications.") This is how Austin himself uses the verb "ask" throughout How To Do Things With Words: he often introduces an argument with "we may ask," "we must ask," "we should naturally ask," "we are now asking," "it may be asked at this point," and so on. The lectures themselves can be read as an exercise in expositive asking.
Item 3a. "Ask" listed among the expositives in the final lecture of How To Do Things With Words
Ask is one of an "enormous number" of expositives, Austin says, which "seem naturally to refer to conversational interchange." The verb is, however, listed here all by itself as item 3a, a subset of the little group that includes inform, apprise, tell, answer, and rejoin. Why not include it with the others? It appears that ask is a special case of some kind, its own item.
Based on my reading I can't say exactly what kind of item Austin considers it to be. I'm not sure anyone can say for certain. The text of How To Do Things With Words is reconstructed from Austin's lecture notes, auditor's notes and a few other sources. According to Urmson, who edited the first edition of the lectures, "there is no definite key to [this list of expositives] in the extant papers." (I haven't yet had a chance to look at the second edition to see if Austin's later editors have added anything more on this point. Update 6 Feb 2015: I checked; they do not.)
There's enough in these lectures to suggest that we need to go well beyond the confines of item 3a even to make sense of asking on Austin's own terms. Austin readily admits that expositives might be "exercitives…as well," if they "involve exertions of influence or exercise of power." The distinctions aren't sharp. Things can get fuzzy. So "asking me to" do this or that is close enough to ordering ("order" tops Austin's list of exercitives) that it can sometimes cause confusion: "sometimes you are not ordering me": you can't, because you "are not in the appropriate position to do so" and don't have "the right," but it sounds as if you are because you are "asking me to rather impolitely."
Consider, for example, someone who approaches you at a nightclub and says "Dance," and another who asks, "Would you like to dance?" Both are asking you to dance, but the first sounds as if he is ordering you to dance, and he's in no position to do that.
Bugs Bunny's playful response subverts Yosemite Sam's order to dance. Sam has a gun, so he can coerce a dance, but as the comedy here demonstrates, he doesn't have the authority or intelligence to order Bugs Bunny around.
Of course things can go to the other extreme, and Austin is interested in situations like these: for example, someone who approaches you in a nightclub, clicks his heels together, bows gracefully and, upon rising, asks "Would you care to dance?" or inquires whether you might do him the honor of listing him on your programme du bal for the evening.
The things that have to be in place, the conditions that have to obtain for you to order me, are not the same as those that obtain when you are asking me or when we are having a conversation about what to do. It helps to be polite, but good manners are not all there is to it; and as we see in the example of the bowing gentleman at the nightclub — or Austin's own example of the offended man who challenges another to a duel by saying "My seconds will call on you" — every form of courtesy has its season. Genuine respect and the authority it confers on others (and some measure of empathy as well) are the appropriate kinds of deference when it comes to asking: we are, after all, trying to share power, not just seize it.
This entry was posted in Ask Is A Verb, Language, Readings, The Power of Asking and tagged ask, asking, Austin, authority, Bugs Bunny, coercion, collaboration, conversation, conversational stance, cooperation, courtesy, deliberation, dialogue, empathy, exercitive, felicity conditions, J.L. Austin, manners, non-coercion, order, ordering, power, respect, sharing, sharing power, the power of asking, Yosemite Sam on February 4, 2015 by lvgaldieri.
Serious Conversations, 7
In these notes on serious conversations, I keep circling back, it seems, to two ideas: first, that what makes a conversation serious is not its subject matter or tone, but the stance of its participants toward each other; and, second, that the conversational stance requires that we confer a certain authority on our interlocutors, or (to put it another way) recognize that they have standing to address us.
While other kinds of authority — title, rank, role — are of secondary importance, and can sometimes even get in the way, this moral authority or standing is fundamental. It does not have to be earned, proven or ratified by reference to some person, written instrument or record of accomplishment outside the conversation or by institutional set up. It is constituted and realized in the relationship you and I have — or, if that is just too clunky, let's say it is the relationship you and I have; and it is sufficient authority for a serious conversation because it makes us mutually accountable to each other.
Where this equal human stature (or dignity) is respected (and appreciated), it can be a source of power: not just the power of one over another, but the power to make claims or demands of each other, or to ask and answer, and this power of asking is essential if we are going to deliberate in earnest about our situation or collaborate on something new.
The conversational stance allows for genuine co-creation, because it's not founded on subordination or one person ordering the other about. And the capacity for co-creation, the creative power that we share, only increases as we include more people in the circle of the conversation. (Of course there are limits: the research on group size and social complexity Dunbar summarizes suggests the circle probably should not widen beyond 150 people.)
I've tried to capture this thought in a simple rule: the power of asking will always be greater than the power of command.
That's the basic position.
Another way to put the same thought might be in terms of the mechanics of ordering versus asking: whereas in the former we have one person directing the will of another, as we might address a short-order cook, in the latter we direct each other's wills, so that we are, to stick with the metaphor, chefs in our own kitchen.
Of course the usual caveat applies about too many cooks spoiling the broth, I guess, but let's also remember that people have different talents, training and competencies, and we can worry about how to order and organize ourselves once it comes to the actual cooking. Right now we're just having a conversation.
Let's also acknowledge, while we're at it, that short-order cooks are models of industrial-era efficiency (but no longer efficient enough for the post-industrial fast food kitchen); gains in co-creativity can and probably will translate to losses in short-term efficiency.
Some concessions on one side or the other will probably have to be made, but too often the proponents of efficiency win without any argument, and people start giving orders or setting out plans for what's to be done before the conversation even has a chance to get started. That's when all the real power goes out of the room.
This entry was posted in Ask Is A Verb, The Power of Asking and tagged accountability, agile, agility, asking, authority, autonomy, co-creativity, co-deliberation, collaboration, command and control, conversation, conversational stance, creativity, decisions, deliberation, dignity, efficiency, hierarchy, human dignity, innovation, leadership, mutual accountability, non-coercive leadership, orders, power, power of asking, self-organizing systems, standing, stature on January 28, 2015 by lvgaldieri.
So far in these notes on serious conversations I've talked about questions of authority and trust as well as the joint commitments conversations entail. What little I've managed to say may not amount to more than the observation that what makes a conversation "serious" has less to do with subject matter than with the mutual obligations of its participants and their disposition toward the activity of conversation.
Let me spell that out a little more. In order for a conversation to be serious, all parties would have to enter freely into it. So a police interrogation or a dressing down at work are not very likely to qualify as serious conversation, though I wouldn't rule out the possibility that they might become serious if things were to take an unexpected turn. Joint commitment can't be coerced; and while it's possible that one party in a conversation might officially be in charge of things, by election, contract or appointment, all parties have to be vested with equal authority in the conversation — or have equal standing to make claims of others, despite differences in title, social stature, organizational standing, etc. To put it another way, all parties in a serious conversation are mutually accountable to each other.
In subsequent posts I hope I can explore this basic position a little more and strengthen it — or, if need be, abandon it in favor of something more compelling. Right now I want to be clear that while serious conversation requires parity, it's still possible to lead a serious conversation, so long as leading the conversation does not violate the covenant or commitment the participants have made. It all comes down to how one leads, and it's possible — it's very easy — to mislead a conversation: it happens all the time.
For example, someone might insist on getting to the point. A rule of serious conversation applies here: the point is almost beside the point.
The primary point of any conversation, which takes precedence over any insight, conclusion or plan for action the conversation might eventually yield, is that we have jointly committed to do something together — namely, have a conversation. That commitment will entail obligations to each other, some of which we can enumerate right at the outset, because we know, roughly, what conversation will require: e.g., you can't suddenly walk away, or I can't start singing "la la la" while you are talking or patronize you or coerce you into agreement. Others might become apparent only as the conversation wends its way, and neither of us can really know where the conversation will lead — unless, of course, one of us is being disingenuous or duplicitous, in which case the conversation is a sham.
When people insist we get to the point, they are not just short-circuiting the conversation; their efforts to control or wrap up the conversation risk foreclosing on claims we might make or unmet obligations we might have to each other as participants.
This is why, by the way, it's important to be tolerant of meandering turns the conversation might take and of what I call verbal fidgeting and others call throat clearing: all the little tics and tacks we use before we actually get around to saying anything definite. Verbal fidgeting — "like," "I mean," "so…" "you know," etc. — in conversation can be an annoyance, but it isn't just noise; and noise-to-signal ratio is not the best metaphor for conversation.
Fidgeting can indicate that someone is uncomfortable with silence, which is worth attending to, because it might tell us the person isn't listening or feels nervous and doesn't know how to sit with the restlessness that being with others sometimes involves. But fidgeting can also help coordinate the conversation and the being together that conversation entails, bringing others in, building bridges, redirecting attention. At the very least it can help us get to know the habits and manners of the others with whom we're speaking, and conversation happens where those habits and manners — those styles — meet.
This entry was posted in Language, Leadership, The Power of Asking and tagged asking, authority, coercion, collaboration, context, contextualization, contextualization cues, conversation, fidgeting, getting to the point, joint commitment, leadership, leading, mutual accountability, non-coercion, non-coercive power, obligation, power, serious conversations, seriousness, the point, the power of asking, trust, verbal fidgeting on March 9, 2014 by lvgaldieri.
In a previous post I pledged to say something about serious conversations, so I've set out to make a little headway on that topic. This is a first try. I'll correct or advance what I manage to say here in subsequent posts.
A rule of thumb: serious conversations are more likely to involve demands than commands.
I'm not giving up at all on the idea that commands can be legitimate or given legitimately, or that those being ordered about can vest the person giving the orders (by contract, consent or some prior agreement) with legitimate authority. (Without that authority, commands have to rely on coercion.) But usually a command is not an invitation to deliberate; instead, the person giving the command has already reserved all deliberative rights – all rights to determine what there are reasons to do – to himself.
Just the other day, on the subway, I overheard a man complaining about his boss to a co-worker. His boss had told him: "I don't want to see you on any floors you're not assigned to. You stay on floors 4, 5 and 6." Whether the boss didn't trust this guy to move about freely, had something to hide on the other floors (as the worker suspected), or had some other reasons for controlling and monitoring the movements of his workers – or just this one worker – is impossible to say. In any case, this order was not an invitation to discuss the best arrangement or to trade reasons, and the disgruntled worker could only speculate: "There's gotta be a reason for that." Gotta be, but in this case, the boss had arrogated all reasons and reason-giving to himself; and — tellingly — that had led the worker to distrust him and question his order-giving authority.
I gathered this example by eavesdropping, I know, and I have only one person's side of the story, but for now let it stand. It helps shore up the point that commands issued without explanation – or without giving others a share in reasons – can damage trust and undermine the authority of the one giving the commands. Of course, the two things are intimately related: what is authority without trust?
Serious conversations invite others to share in giving and finding reasons and in determining what there are reasons to do. They create opportunities for co-deliberation. To undertake the search for reasons or the giving of them, together, we are required to vest each other only with an authority equal to our own – the authority to make demands of each other (or to hold each other mutually accountable). Recognizing that authority in others and in ourselves won't necessarily build trust, but it is difficult to trust someone who refuses or neglects to account for himself and who does not demand or ask the same of us.
This entry was posted in Ask Is A Verb, Leadership, Louis V. Galdieri's Blog, The Power of Asking and tagged ask is a verb, asking, authority, co-deliberation, coercion, commands, invitation, leadership, non-coercion, non-coercive leadership, non-coercive power, power, practical deliberation, serious conversations, the power of asking, trust on February 11, 2014 by lvgaldieri.


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Q: How to connect two containers when one of the container is mount to the filesystem? Container 1 : I have a docker container which is spawned by a Dockerfile image that i built serving Python dependencies to a specific use-case. This container is mount to my file system project directory to /source directory in the Docker container.
Container 2 : Another container contains Jupyter notebook and it is only configured to use Jupyter notebook.
I don't use Jupyter notebook all the time for Python developement, i use my code editor instead. I just want an easier way to mount Jupyter notebook when i want to and edit my project files.
Now, can i mount Container-2 to Container-1 such that contents in the /source directory in Container-1 is persisted to my project directory while enabling Container-1 and Conatiner-2 to take up a shared space? In my case i want Container-1 to be mount to my file system to /source and I want the Jupyter Notebook, running in Container-2 to be able to edit files inside the /source directory in Container-1.

A: if I'm understanding correctly, what you are trying to do is using one container installed libs in another container
I think that this approach is bad, since there might be some problems with OS level dependencies that are missing. The first possible solution is installing the dependencies in both containers, or at least using the 1st docker image as base to the 2nd
If you yet rather doing it your way, you can try mounting volume between the 1st container virtual env / site-packages with the 2nd

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