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Kangaroo Strikes Back Against Hunters' Car, Breaks Man's Jaw
Seeing a kangaroo on the TV or at the Zoo is one thing, but living in a country full of these muscular marsupials is tough. Australia is known to house a lot of dangerous animals, but those that don't live in the country have always had a slightly different opinion about kangaroos.
For example, when we say kangaroo, we think of the cute little Joeys that come out of their mothers' pouches. But Australians have mixed feelings about them. Probably because getting hit in the face by one of them is not quite an amazing adventure…
20. The Cute Roo
adnkronos.com
Yes, we've all seen that cute baby kangaroo hugging its teddy bear. But Joshua Hayden learned that kangaroos can also head-b*** people. And trust him, it was very painful…
19. Knocked Out Cold
This young man got knocked out cold after being head-butted by a kangaroo. It happened in Western Australia. He was only 19 years old and he was in the car with his brother. It was dark and suddenly…
18. Spotting the Prey
Joshua was out with his brother to hunt some kangaroos. He spotted three kangaroos, but at one moment he only saw two. So, he leaned out the window for a better shot. Guess what happened next?
17. Smashing Into The Car
The third kangaroo appeared and smashed into Joshua's car. Here is what he remembered: 'It actually collided with the side of the car and smashed the front window'. And that's not all!
16. Right Into the Face
perthnow.com
'Then it bounced back onto me and head-butted me straight in the jaw', said Joshua. He thought that the kangaroo hit the car and then tried to get back, but his face 'just happened to be there'.
15. The Kangaroo Did It!
perthnow.com.au
Joshua lost his conscience for almost half a minute and when he woke up he heard his brother: 'I woke up and my brother was trying to tell me what happened'. You won't believe what Joshua said!
14. Did You Just… Hit Me?
'I said 'No, you hit me' and he said 'No, the kangaroo did'', said Joshua. But there wasn't time to argue, so his brother took him first to Kellerberrin Memorial Hospital, then to the Northam Emergency Department, finally being sent to the Royal Perth Hospital.
13. Telling The Story Again
Joshua was interviewed by the media and he had to tell his story. It was an accident and he didn't even get that close to the kangaroo to fight him like this guy did. What happened next to Joshua?
12. Surgery Was Needed
The young man needed surgery, but he had to wait 10 days for surgery because his face was too swollen. His cheekbone, eye socket, and jaw were shattered and once he went into surgery, the facial reconstruction lasted two hours. And that's not all!
11. Never Seen Something Like That
Joshua said that 'out of all the times we have been out [in the] bush I have never heard of this before'. He wasn't prepared to see a kangaroo fight back. Here is what a wildlife expert said about the incident…
10. Crazy Hoppers
'The kangaroos are going crazy these days. As soon as they see a car, they hop right up to it and give it right back.' And isn't it obvious why they do it? It's because they feel threatened and kangaroos are quite the hotheads! A zoologist said this amazing thing…
9. A Natural Reaction
Deb Morley, who works at the Caversham Wildlife Park, said that 'any wild animal is going to defend itself if feeling threatened'. Here are some facts about kangaroos to support her claims.
8. A Wise Advice
As for Joshua, he's willing to advise people to 'keep your head inside the car unless you know where the kangaroos are', because 'they've got hard heads on them'. And don't get out of the car like this woman did! Check her out in the next photo.
7. Knock-Knock
metro.co.uk
Australians know how dangerous these muscular marsupials can be, especially when they get mad. But this man had no idea why he was visited by the angry fella. Some people argued that the animal saw its reflection in the window.
6. A Terrifying Video
Looking at the claws and the huge animal, we're thankful that we only get to see our door-to-door salesmen annoyingly knock on our doors!
5. Traveling in Mobs
A pack of kangaroos is called a mob and their leader is the largest male in the group. He will exert control with force, like biting and kicking others to follow him. This was surely an alpha that had a bone to pick with the owner…
4. A Speedster
Even though kangaroos cannot walk or run, they can hop and they can even reach 40 miles per hour, using those powerful hind legs. So, imagine how hard they can hit you at just a little speed.
3. Hunting Kangaroos
Joshua said that hunting kangaroos is part of their culture. Kangaroo meat is being legally consumed nationwide since 1993 and it's a delicacy in some countries. The leather is also used domestically or exported. Of course, not all Australians eat kangaroo meat.
2. Kangaroo Attacks
There have been many kangaroo attacks over the years. They're considered pests, and its population has overgrown due to the good weather conditions and fewer predators. Unfortunately, many people get to the hospital after a roo-encounter.
1. Some Kangaroos Are Gentle!
littlethings.com
Of course, there are many other kangaroos that have been rescued and raised by people. Little Abi was rescued too and he lives at the Kangaroo Sanctuary in Alice Springs, Australia. Every day he comes to the caretakers and gives them big warm hugs!
Whether it's a head-b***, a punch in the face, some banging in the window or a big hug, experiences with kangaroos will surely make an unforgettable memory!


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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


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ASOS predicts top five fashion trends for 2023 among 20-somethings
Film, ballet core, utility dressing and minimalism and nature inspired set to dominate fashion trends in 2023
Survey of 20–29-year-olds finds they plan to prioritise spending on fashion, considering it important to their well-being and self-expression
Over two-thirds (69%) say they will spend the same or more on clothes and fashion in 2023 as they did in 2022
London, Thursday 5th January 2023: ASOS design experts have revealed the top five trends that will dominate 2023 for 20-somethings. According to ASOS' Commercial Design and Visual Director, Vanessa Spence, Head of Menswear Design, Nick Eley, and Head of Womenswear Design, Melika Imoru, we'll be taking inspiration from Ariel, Barbie and Ken and noughties icons this year.
Film and music stars are expected to have a major influence on fashion in 2023 among 20-somethings. Avatar: The Way of Water (just released), and The Little Mermaid, set to premier in May, will drive appetite for sheer and ethereal dresses and tops, while bright pink – a colour seen across all the catwalks in 2022 – will feature again, thanks to the release of Barbie, with Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling, next summer.
Olivia Rodrigo, Gen-Z favourite, is set to release new music in 2023. Known for her love of grunge and 90's fashion, ASOS predicts she'll be a leading source of style inspiration for 20-somethings next year, alongside Zendaya and Jenna Ortega, star of Netflix series Wednesday.
Ballet core is expected to grow further in popularity, with pastel tones of greys, nudes, creams and white driving looks that feel feminine yet functional. ASOS expects sales of ballet pumps, base layer jersey tops and sheer bias slips and skirts to grow.
The presence of denim on catwalks is taking off again with a resurgence of key noughties brands like Diesel. Double denim is a key look, referencing back to the icons of the era like Justin Timberlake and Britney Spears.
Traditional sneakers are back with sales taking off for Adidas Samba and Gazelle styles. Clashing colour pops are on the scene but the "it" rotations are between black, white and gum colours, seen on the likes of Hailey Bieber, Kendall Jenner and Bella Hadid.
In addition, a survey commissioned by ASOS of 2,000 Brits aged 20-29 found that 20-somethings consider clothing and fashion to be their most important priority when it comes to spending in 2023, citing it as important to their wellbeing.
20-somethings are more likely to say they will protect their spending on fashion than other categories of discretionary spending, such as going out with friends, streaming services, gym subscriptions and sports or eating out. Over two-thirds (69%) say they will spend the same or more on clothes and fashion in 2023 as they did in 2022 despite the cost-of-living crisis.
Nearly nine in 10 (87%) of 20-somethings surveyed consider themselves fashion followers, with more than two-thirds of 20-somethings (68%) saying their fashion choices are an important way to express themselves. In addition, 20-somethings are more likely to say that fashion is important to their well-being than nights out, eating out and going to concerts or the cinema.
Vanessa Spence, Commercial Design and Visual Director at ASOS said: "Fashion remains a huge part of most 20-somethings' lives. What we wear has a massive impact on how we feel and it can help uplift us, make us feel more confident, optimistic and able to express who we are.
2023 is going to be a year dominated by film, ballet core, and grunge trends. We can expect to see sheer and ethereal styles, grunge and 90s fashion or ballet inspired fits on fashion-loving 20-somethings."
Research commissioned by ASOS and conducted by Opinium between 6-13 December 2022
2,000 UK adults surveyed aged 20-29
About ASOS
ASOS is a destination for fashion-loving 20-somethings around the world, with a purpose to give its customers the confidence to be whoever they want to be. Through its market-leading app and mobile/desktop web experience, available in ten languages and in over 200 markets, ASOS customers can shop a curated edit of nearly 70,000 products, sourced from nearly 900 of the best global and local partner brands and its mix of fashion-led own-brand labels – ASOS DESIGN, ASOS EDITION, ASOS 4505, ASOS LUXE, As You, Collusion, Reclaimed Vintage, ASOS WEEKEND COLLECTIVE, Topshop, Topman, Miss Selfridge, HIIT, Dark Future, Crooked Tongues, Day Social and Actual. ASOS aims to give its 25.7 million customers a truly frictionless experience, with an ever-greater number of different payment methods and hundreds of local deliveries and return options, including Next-Day Delivery and Same-Day Delivery, dispatched from state-of-the-art fulfilment centres in the UK, US and Germany.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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DPP secures permission for Newport's former Passport Office to become apartments
Home / Cardiff / DPP secures permission for Newport's former Passport Office to become apartments
In Cardiff, Permission secured, Residential
DPP secures permission for Newport's former Passport Office to become apartments2016-05-132018-06-06https://dppukltd.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/dpp_logo.jpgDPPhttps://dppukltd.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/dpp_logo.jpg200px200px
Newport's iconic former Passport Office will become the city's first large scale PRS (Private Rented Sector) scheme following the Cardiff office of leading urban planners DPP securing planning permission for its change of use.
Working for joint venture partners Richard Hayward Properties and The Tonstate Group, DPP submitted a change of use application for Olympia House on Upper Dock Street which was approved last week. The former Passport Office which is directly adjacent to the newly-opened Friars Walk Shopping Centre will be converted into 62 private rental units.
"This has been a challenging project," says Gareth Hooper, CEO of DPP. "The lack of permitted development rights allowing the conversion of offices to residential in Wales, compared to England, meant that a change of use application was needed and a case made for the loss of employment floor space.
"The case for the loss of floor space was accepted on the basis that bringing back into use such a prominent city centre building, which has stood empty since 2013, would have wider regeneration benefits, boosting the vitality and viability of the city centre by introducing a large scale residential scheme. In addition, despite its prominent location, we demonstrated that the office space was unlikely to be taken up. "
The Olympia House scheme has been accepted with no financial contributions or affordable housing as it was demonstrated that they would make the scheme unviable. It was supported, however, as it provides an alternative means of addressing housing needs while enabling a greater diversity of uses for the city centre.
DPP appoints principal planner to its Cardiff officeCardiff, Staff News
DPP win permission for Poole's tallest buildingCardiff, Permission secured


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The Turkish coup
Ashraf Jehangir Qazi Published July 23, 2016
The writer is a former ambassador to the US, India and China and head of UN missions in Iraq and Sudan.
THE failed military coup in Turkey has led to a state of emergency. The coup attempt against an elected government involved murder and treason. The whole episode represents the modernisation dilemma of Muslim society. Kemalist secularism may have been carried to the point of almost abandoning Turkey's Muslim identity. This inevitably touched a raw nerve.
Equally, conservative Islamist political thought and practice has not been able to cope with the contemporary challenges facing Muslim societies. Recently, the situation has been further complicated by US attempts to bend Turkey to its will regarding Syria, the Kurds and Russia, which Erdogan has emphatically rebuffed.
Erdogan has rejected the idea of a civil-military partnership in national policymaking despite the glorious history of the Turkish army. The military's policy input yes; the military's policy vetoes no! Turkey has confirmed civilian supremacy as the indispensable principle of democracy. This principle can never be asserted under corrupt and irresponsible governance which has become the norm in Pakistan where civilian supremacy is now eliminated from the civil-military equation. Civilian leaders are not entirely to blame for this. There has been a significant military contribution also. Turkey, unlike Pakistan, has a leader who can in a crisis summon the people, including his political opponents, to reject the rejection of civilian supremacy.
Turkey, unlike Pakistan, has a leader who can in a crisis summon the people, including his political opponents.
Erdogan's survival is an assertion of a democratic confidence and conviction that has yet to develop among the people of Pakistan. Since the First World War, no military has served its nation as well as the Turkish military. Even so, the Turkish people have demonstrated no military can rule a free people. There are, of course, deep divisions in Turkish political society. Ataturk is justly revered by the Turks. Without him there would have been no modern Turkey. But some argue he went too far and too fast in adopting Western norms that did not have strong roots in Turkish history.
Maybe Erdogan erred in the opposite direction by trying to restore a balance between the imperatives of national identity and national modernisation. Erdogan now risks endangering his political triumph and the still fragile plant of inclusive and institutional democracy in Turkey if he insists on imposing his will and too sweeping a clean-up on a deeply divided society. Western criticisms of Erdogan are, of course, partly in response to his strategic independence. He should be well aware of how destabilizing Western displeasure can be.
Erdogan is convinced his one-time ally and now bitter foe — Fethullah Gulen — is behind the recent coup attempt. Gulen whose reform vision of Islam has many followers in Turkey — including allegedly the military — lives in exile in Pennsylvania under US protection.
In response to demands for his extradition, the US has asked Erdogan to provide proof of Gulen's involvement and cites its due process requirements before it can consider any action against him. The US request is legitimate although it knows all about Gulen's activities. As for the imperative of due process and the provision of relevant and authentic evidence, interestingly, this is exactly what the Taliban requested after 9/11 when the US demanded they hand over Osama bin Laden directly to them or to other countries to try him. It refused to entertain any Afghan request for evidence of OBL's activities in Afghanistan that linked him to 9/11. Abject compliance was insisted upon on pain of immediate military action — which indeed followed the Taliban refusal to comply.
This was a complete denial of due process. The same is the case with the US use of drones against chosen human targets. Renowned international legal and political commentators describe the use of killer drones as a global assassination programme. A small group of White House advisers reportedly agonise with the president over who should live or die. Such due diligence is duly equated with due process! The issue of collateral damage is technically if inhumanly finessed through computer profiling.
Moreover, the US has not yet abolished the death penalty at the federal level. Clearly, it is selective in its dedication to due process. Nevertheless, despite the extreme provocation of a murderous coup attempt, Erdogan should not resort to capital punishment. This would produce 'martyrs', international isolation, and retaliatory violence. It may also render future externally abetted coup attempts more likely.
Erdogan is accused by his critics of becoming addicted to power and increasingly intolerant of political dissent. Some allege he is a closet fundamentalist, even a jihadi, or at least an arch conservative who is threatening Turkey's national stability and progress in the 21st century.
Many of these descriptions are overdrawn. But as noted, there is a deep divide in Turkish political society between liberal secularists and more conservative Turks who cherish their national identity as the historical saviours of Islam after the Mongol dispersal of the Arabs. Turkey's drive to modern governance, including the privileging of reasoned and scientific discourse as well as accountability and checks and balances are necessary and hopefully unstoppable.
Nevertheless, Turkey's culture and historical identity require its political messaging on behalf of modernisation to be consistent with, and to a certain extent, couched in the idiom of Islamic thought and tradition. This would facilitate its nation-wide political receptivity. This will be a very difficult undertaking. The effort will require a long-term strategy to evolve a Turkish consensus on reconciling two different dynamics in Turkish politics and society instead of pitting one against the other in a self-destructive zero-sum game.
Japan's history since the Meiji Restoration is fascinating and instructive in this respect. For a while it appeared Japan would develop a viable parliamentary democracy with Japanese characteristics. But the global situation during the interwar period aborted the attempt. Turkey today is also confronted with a disintegrating external environment which greatly complicates its political challenges at home. Nevertheless, it can and must set an example of success and hope for other Muslim countries to emulate. Pakistanis have a stake in the success of Erdogan and the Turkish people.
Published in Dawn, July 23rd, 2016
Turkey's military to be restructured after abortive coup: Erdogan
Erdogan declares 3-month state of emergency in Turkey
Heroes to battered 'traitors': the main suspects in Turkey coup
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Haredim
Nice opinion piece...we must not forget our historical and cultural roots in search of progress and prosperity...the historical experience of any people is the guiding light for its future otherwise we would be living 'out of our skins' as NFP puts it...
moe2
Very well said and I like the following sentences "Erdogan now risks endangering his political triumph and the still fragile plant of inclusive and institutional democracy in Turkey if he insists on imposing his will and too sweeping a clean-up on a deeply divided society. Western criticisms of Erdogan are, of course, partly in response to his strategic independence. He should be well aware of how destabilizing Western displeasure can be."
I hope Erdogram acts intelligently as suggested in the article but so far, it does not look like it. Still I hope for the best for Turkey and its people. Very good analysis by Qazi Sahib. Thank you.
Muneer
A blurred analysis.Gullen is as much conservative as Erdogan or vice versa.So,it indicates power struggle within the conservative group and not between conservativism and secularism segments of the Turkish society.It is a different matter that the differences within the conservative segment and Erdogan's desire of being the sole leader of the segment has ruined the reputation of Turkish armed forces and Turkish claim of Leader of Islamic world.The imposition of Emergency depicts weakness and not strength of civilian government superamacy or democracy.Ironically ,it shows that Kemal Ata Turk was right as the Ottomon Rulers did the same thing.Is Erdogan going to make Turkey again the Sick Man of Europe?.
Munir Ahmad Kakar
The learned author has pointed towards the deeply-entrenched dilemma the Muslim countries and particularly those who are struggling with democracy are facing. The fundamental assumption is that religion and democracy can somehow be reconciled. The political equation comprised of both religion and democracy is inherently indeterminate. Intellectual input from Ulema to govern a 21st century Muslim society is negligible and that too controversial. In the presence of sectarian specter haunting the political landscape consensus is hard to come by. Finding the delicate and inevitable equilibrium is next-to-impossible. The nightmare scenarios of political destabilization , anarchy, bloodshed and mayhem are more likely to be rearing its ugly head.
Ahmed bin Babar
We do not even like to hear the word, coup...
Imran AB
Great article ....
Varun
Indian military is again a very good example. No coups.
T.M.Wazir
If there is a coup in Pakistan, people will not come out on street to reject the coup instead they will be on the streets to support the coup. Two different countries two different scenarios . There is no comparison.
I dont think so. May be if there is a survey to see who supports and who not. it will be very interesting.
Mudassar
Turkish people made a wise decision by not allowing Military to rule them. Pakistanis should also do the same if they are sensible. No matter how hard the situation be, no nation under democratic system should allow Military to rule her because it has even worse consequences.
Anwaar Malik
Fantastic article. Erdogan has foiled the coup but if he follows the same atrocious policies against dissidents then chances of another coup or civil war cannot be ruled out.
Excellent article.. historical comparison of similar situation in past really nailed it. I won't say its double standards, I would say its politics... and its a dirty game... this is what people needs to understand that champions of democracy behave in very undemocratic way when they are on the loosing side and its been a defacto standard for quite a long time - someone rightly said "Not everyone is happy with democracy when a person of different values got elected"
Arsh
Opinion; What I learned from my father & elders, Ayub era was the most prosperous era in the history of Pakistan. Abundant food, technology, infrastructure development, irrigation system, and industry development. Everything thing started in Ayub era. It was only democracy when Pakistan started its decline.
aslam shaikh1
Erdogan has made Turkey an economic power which can stand next to any developed nation.
@Arsh : Show me one country in the of the history world, where any country has prospered, and people were happy under a military rule?
No comparison, every situation is different. Turkey and Pakistan has nothing in common. Totally different society.
Syed Ahmed, Canada
No food, no house, no clothes, no electricity, no water, no job, no health care, no jobs an no security for common men. What is there to compare Erdogan with Nawaz Sharif or Zardari. Majority will still opt for Musharraf.
Mustafa R.
'The effort will require a long-term strategy to evolve a Turkish consensus on reconciling two different dynamics in Turkish politics' That long-term strategy is called elections. Democracy and consensus are not the same thing. No country in the world can run on consensus. A society should always strive for reconciliation, but lacking that, the majority rules.
@Munir Ahmad Kakar; ' The political equation comprised of both religion and democracy is inherently indeterminate.' Not if you abide by the elections results. There is a difference between democracy and consensus. There is nothing incongruent between religion and democracy, when you bring in the third pole, the acceptance of the West, then this triangle can be incongruent.
@Mudassar; 'Pakistanis should also do the same if they are sensible.' In Turkey they have an elected government whose election are not in question.
@Arsh Fathers and elders obviously had a very limited view of things. It was Ayub Khan who set the country on the route to destruction of which some aspects are still underway such as the effects of one-unit, military dictatorships,bib business etc. People should grow up and develop their own thoughts from the available facts and analysis of the subject, rather than refer to their elders.
Excellent analysis of events. One hopes there would be harmony in working relationship of civilian and military leaderships for economic progress and stability of Turkey as a nation.
Canadawala
@Arsh Bangledesh was the direct result of the Ayub era. It did not allowed any Political leader to develop and hence the results thereafter.
Nice Opinion Piece of writing with well Articulation !! The writer has highlighted the most important strategic issues that should need to be understood in a broad perspectives . The Turkish nations has been facing it as big challenge . The Turkish nations has to protect his strategic independence. we know the democracy and religion could be reconciled Through intellectual reforms and mutual consensus.The Turkish nations needs a long-term strategy to evolve a Turkish consensus on reconciling two different political dynamics in Turkish politics and society instead of pitting one against the other in a self-destructive zero-sum game.
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OUR VINYL WEIGHS A TON SNEAK SCREENING AFTER PARTY: TORONTO
Exclusive Sneak Preview of the film Q&A with Stones Throw founder PEANUT BUTTER WOLF at Bloor Cinema on Thursday, March 6, 2014.
GET ADVANCED MOVIE TICKETS HERE: http://prod5.agileticketing.net/WebSales/pages/info.aspx?evtinfo20777fff311b7-cdad-4e14-9ae4-a9905e1b9cb0&epguid6395d239-7dd9-47d4-a22f-81a783873e12&#.UwQNqHlVgVZ
Trailer: www.ourvinylweighsaton.com
Our Vinyl Weighs A Ton Official 2014 SXSW Selection is a feature-length documentary about avant-garde Los Angeles-based record label Stones Throw Records. The film weaves together rare concert footage, never-before-seen archival material, inner-circle home video and photographs and in-depth interviews with the artists who put Stones Throw Records on the map. Our Vinyl Weighs A Ton gives an exclusive look into the labels left-of-center artists, history, culture, and global following.
The film features exclusive interviews with Kanye West, Snoop Dogg, Madlib, Common, Questlove, Talib Kweli, Mike D The Beastie Boys, Tyler the Creator, and many more.
Live Performances by: Peanut Butter Wolf, J Rocc, Jon Wayne & Knxwledge at Coda
Tickets Here: http://www.ticketweb.ca/t3/sale/SaleEventDetail?dispatchloadSelectionData&eventId4065334&plembrace


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Academia: from inefficient effectiveness to efficient ineffectiveness
Posted on November 8, 2019 by Nicholas Gruen
If, as I think, academia has gone from being inefficient but effective to being efficient but ineffective (a proposition I won't defend here), the mechanism for making the switch was going from embodied cognition to abstract Cartesian cognition, or to be more precise from a rich to a shallow and superficial form of embodied cognition. Along the way a God's eye view of the sector replaced a system in which the thinking and doing was deeply embedded in and emergent from the system.
The most important thing an academic system must do is determine relative academic merit. Alas, it's also the hardest thing to do. Here we are at the forefront of human knowledge where literally every next step, if it's worthwhile, is two things. It's at the forefront of its field – which may require a substantial amount of learning and specialisation even to understand. And it's uncertain as to its its outcome – as a rule radically so.
In this situation, the academic system we had in the 1950s was built around a centuries-old institution – the university. At least in its idealised form expressed by the conservative political theorist Michael Oakeshot, a university was "a corporate body of scholars … a home of learning, a place where a tradition of learning is preserved and extended". Oakeshot's description of the nature of scientific endeavour within universities helps clarify how potentially momentous the reform we've undertaken might have been:
Scientific activity is not the pursuit of a premeditated end; nobody knows or can imagine where it will reach. There is no perfection, prefigured in our minds, which we can set up as a standard by which to judge current achievements. What holds science together and gives it impetus and direction is not a known purpose to be achieved, but the knowledge scientists have of how to conduct a scientific investigation. Their particular pursuits and purposes are not superimposed upon that knowledge, but emerge within it.
In any event, the way this system identified and promoted academic merit was within the broad outlines of the late 19th and early 20th-century notion of professionalism. One generally needed to qualify for admission to the guild of academics with one's educational attainments (generally a bachelors degree until the 1960s) whereupon one proceeded towards higher status positions which were also more highly and more securely rewarded. More senior academics identified the best of their juniors for support and promotion. The best got the long-term career reward of internal satisfaction and the approbation of those they respected – the very wellsprings of what Adam Smith thought drove a good life in a good society.
We can't say how good this system was but it seems to have been tolerably effective at allowing the best researchers, or most of them, freedom to pursue their passions. However, there were myriad ways in which the system didn't work as the ideal suggests it should. Just as lawyers typically come to serve their own interests ahead of the public interest in justice or their client's need for justice at reasonable cost, academia was inefficient, often failing to put the public interest ahead of academics' comfort in what they'd grown used to. In addition, crucial public goods on which science is built – such as peer review and the replication of previous studies – went unfunded.
Then came reform. Though it was ostensibly pursued to promote the public interest, and though to this day university research is overwhelmingly funded by the public purse and philanthropy, reformers' imagination didn't run to addressing these problems. Reform seems to have exacerbated the latter problems relating to the lack of explicit support for the public goods of academia.
Instead it 'solved' the apex problem of identifying academic merit by grabbing the nearest thing to hand – citation metrics. To put it another way, it didn't start from where it was – with a difficult problem which was being tolerably solved by an existing institution but which could clearly be improved upon – with a thoughtful examination of the problems, a search for potential improvcements which were then slowly winnowed out and worked up into actual improvements.
Instead, it made a beeline for a God's eye view of the problem. What would God want from the university system? Why He'd want optimality. He's a pretty optimal kind of guy himself. So he'd want this system to reward the best. The best universities and the best academics. Well, that should be pretty straightforward. Let's look around. Journal citations look like they do the trick. And they're even quantitative, so they can all be added up and Bob's your uncle. What could possibly go wrong? Of course, lots of things could go wrong and go wrong they have, and go wronger they will as the process not only becomes embedded but triggers Goodhart's Law.
There's a deep irony here. Economists exalt the way markets avoid this mistake of having some source, however authoritative, picking winners. Rather, the selection of winners is the emergent product of many different forms of valuation and action from many different perspectives. Yet reform of the higher ed sector is driven by economists' and policymakers' fondest imaginings that they're moving towards a market-based system.
In all this what's happened is illustrated by the image above in which birds wings are fitted to a plane. Birds' wings played an important role in early aviators' figuring out how to get machines to fly. But, as a degree of thoughtfulness would lead one to expect, simply taking some features of a market and grafting it onto another, quite different system might make it better or worse. But when things need to be finely adapted, one would surely expect it to make things worse. For each part of a plane and each part of a bird are a highly crafted part of a highly crafted whole. Transfering the insights that birds' wings might give one into flying machine needed a lot of work. That's the work that evolution already did on the birds wing and which airline engineers did in developing planes. One is seeking to use an insight from a mechanism in one domain in another domain which operates according to quite different principles. One might as well transplant a dog's leg onto a Thylacene's body.
Yet that's what we've done in one area after another. And called it economic reform.
This entry was posted in Economics and public policy, Education. Bookmark the permalink.
19 Responses to Academia: from inefficient effectiveness to efficient ineffectiveness
paul frijters says:
I like citations because they make me look better than any other metric does :-)
But indeed, the move towards measuring academic performance with indicators has lead to a lot of undesirable outcomes in social science. The deeper problem is that academia is still self-judging (citations are an internal beauty contest) and that it is so lucrative. The combination of both will always lead away from the public interest as the game orients towards building territories in the lucrative space.
Really not clear what would work better. More metrics? Evaluations from outside the club? Institutionalization of diverse schools of thought to retain variation?
Also not clear who has actual agency in this. Lots of top scientists complain about the current system but are powerless to change it. There are strong lock-in effects as everyone is making investments towards the current situation, with the winners having a lot to loose from change. Also, the metrics are now getting more important as new players use them as quality indicators and buy up people with high metrics (just look at what the universities in the gulf or in high-end Chinese universities look for from foreign academics). So if anything, it is getting worse fast.
Nicholas Gruen says:
Paul, the thing that makes you look better than any other metric is your carefully coiffed shaven head.
But as to your serious points, firstly if we're to address things centrally, the very least the centre and the funders can do is to fund the public goods of academia properly – which certainly includes peer review and replication, though in the age of the internet there should be radical changes in the way peer review works. I'd be ditching having the 'publications' as gatekeepers and have the peer review out in the open as an add on service to open, easy, blog style publication.
On metrics, you seem to be addressing my points from inside the bubble – assuming that 'the system' must solve it in a centralised way by proposing alternative metrics. What I've proposed is that things have got worse pursuing this course (though it's hard to be definitive about that). That they were better left alone – inefficient but reasonably effective.
I mean it doesn't seem very implausible that the mediocre – which the system will default to – won't be very good at governing the great. If we want greatness in intellect in universities, then maybe we need to accept that we shouldn't be treating the few great people there like hamsters on a hamster wheel.
Still, I know that won't satisfy you, and it doesn't satisfy me very much either.
So here's another thought that I think does address your concern somewhat.
It seems to me that the 'market' in academia such as it is has produced something very similar to the 'market' in other areas of culture which is that it maximises the satisfaction of our wants and starves our needs or secondary wants – the things we either do or should want to want.
I think there are some ways of opening up a space of governance to allow such things.
One thing that I seem to think is much more momentous than anyone else is the use of means of merit selection that interdict self-assertion as in the mechanism explained here. Other great successes of governance have been built on similar mechanisms of self-denial such as Cromwell's new model army, and in many ways the 19th century law of agency and fiduciary duties follows this idea.
I think such mechanisms could be used to rotate people through governance roles who were nevertheless felt by their peers to be highly meritorious. But the rotation would detach their self-interest from their governance. Anyway, since this is a comment and not a post, I won't try to work it all out here. One would need to experiment. So at least one take out is that we need to create space in the system for such experiments to take place and for their consequences to be understood.
Conrad says:
I agree with Paul on this. There are any number of perverse and terrible outcomes from the current use of quantitative metrics to determine if qualitatively different things are better/worse (which is of course generally senseless — it's like asking if 10 bananas are better than 4 bolts and concluding that they are because 10 is bigger than 4 and giving the grower of bananas some money and letting the maker of bolts go bankrupt, because who needs a few bolts when you can have more bananas). That would go for teaching metrics as well as research ones.
Your idea of rotating positions is a good one, which of course used to exist, but this would be almost impossible in the current system because any number of often largely worthless administrators (and VCs) would need to give up their large salaries.
I think Paul's idea of institutionalizing some areas is reasonable, although it is hard to see how emerging areas which are often important and do the worst at the citation game would fare. These are generally areas that don't have well developed journal systems that get into the citation/impact-factor game.
In an area related to mine, that would have included language technology for the web, which never really got off the ground in Australian universities because those guys never really publish in journals (and hence people either moved to web companies or had to change areas when they were punished by their administrators). Alternatively, it would have saved linguistics in general, because those guys never publish much as when they do, the expectation of their journals is they actually do something meaningful, unlike many areas where you can have a permute-the-boring-research with PhD students strategy and your friends so you can publish vast quantities of junk (one of our recent university award recipient I think published 40 papers last year — I would have thought that would constitute scientific fraud, as another one of our researchers got charged for for recently).
Thanks Conrad,
I'd like to take the next step in this discussion, but I'm not sure precisely what you agree with Paul about and the extent – if any – that this implies you disagree with me.
David Pollock says:
This has nothing to do with academia but does involve bird wings.
Years ago I saw a b/w silent film of an inventor halfway up the Eiffel Tower with wings attached to his arms and being urged to jump/fly by an admiring crowd. He was obviously having second thoughts but was too far up the critical path to back out. His third thought is not recorded.
Fencing Spokane Wa says:
Determining academic merit is interesting. Haha, grafting bird wings to a plane and calling it reform is an interesting visual that I think hits the nail on the head. Leo
Moz of Yarramulla says:
The trick is to start publishing as soon as possible…
More South Korean academics caught naming kids as co-authors. The practice was probably used to improve the children's chances of securing a university place.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-03371-0?hss_channel=tw-18198832
Goodharts Law also arguably breaks economics because if you're going to use money as a measure of goodness you can't also use it to reward people for being good. Ooops.
The Romance of the three Kingdoms famously opens by saying the empire once united must divide, and once divided must unite.
Before the Mongol conquest in 1271, only 5 dynasties – Qin, Han, Jin, Sui and Tang –had ever unified China. Qin and Jin lasted less than a generation and Sui lasted less than two generation. The total period of unification was 786 years. As discussed earlier in this thread, Tang was convulsed by a catastrophic civil war in 755 and the dynasty never really recovered central control of all China.
That is a relatively brief unification for a country where history reaches back to 2070 BCE. Perhaps world empires are not a worry because they are inherently unstable.
The very sad case of the great maths teacher who gave up, being complianced and complianced to submission
One of the odd things about these sorts of stories is that even the top maths teachers conflate crazy rules (which I can't blame them for hating — I would) with the overall decline in mathematics. You might hope people that think about maths all day might think about the data and causation a bit better. In this case, if you look at maths scores across countries, there has been a decline across most Western countries. So unless they all experienced this or a similar set of rules, it is unlikely to be the main contributor.
Similarly, we constantly hear stories about teaching quality and how it is all important, but there are large differences in achievement across countries across all the main areas of education and I find it hard to imagine that, for example, teachers in say, Turkey, are somehow massively less motivated or worse than teachers in, say, Australia. So the effect size caused by differences in teacher quality cannot predict these differences. This should be one of the big stories of the PISA data.
So there are certainly crappy things going on, but the bigger effects are not explained by these types of anecdotes.
John Quiggin says:
Good points, but important to note this is basically a UK/Aust/NZ story. US was never as laid back as we were in the 1950s, and hasn't gone nearly as far down the managerialist route since then. European universities had different problems – state bureaucracy etc.
More broadly, the replacement of inefficient but effective professionalism with efficient but ineffective managerialism is the whole story of New Public Management. Even more broadly, of neoliberalism in general.
It's a fair cop!
JOHN CHANDLER says:
The decision to make universities bigger and for "everyone" in the 1980s (Dawkins) was the beginning of the end. While universities were for relatively small parts of the population, professionalism sufficed, however, once the teaching only institutions were amalgamated with the research institutions they became too big and resulted in huge increases in funding. Funding increased the risks for the Federal government and so they started to ask for all types of management interventions to show that these risks were being dealt with by universities. As a result, universities thought that they needed to introduce managerialism to lower these risks and paying people lots of money, to be responsible for these risks, seemed only natural. Only problem is you need really good governance to make sure that the managers are actually managing efficiently and effectively and as we have seen with the banking community, that is pretty hard to do. It is especially hard when you have poor governance structures and ineffectual members making up the numbers on university councils. It is time to disentangle 'Dawkin's Bastards' and reset the system to incorporate highly relevant teaching only institutions (Institutes of Technology – Collages of Advanced Education) that train people for Workplaces 4.0 & 5.0 and re-invent the university model so they focus on research and research training. The net effect will be a huge reduction in the cost of Higher Education, while allowing universities to do what they do best. Brian Schmidt at ANU seems to understand this better than anyone. He wants ANU to remain small and focused on research. As a leader, he wants to be involved and visible. He doesn't believe in "Big Management" and appears to be trying to wind back managerialism. He is differentiating ANU to be like an old style university. It is about time the others realised that time is against them. Change will come eventually so they need to decide if they are better placed to be Research or Teaching oriented.
"Funding increased the risks for the Federal government and so they started to ask for all types of management interventions to show that these risks were being dealt with by universities. As a result, universities thought that they needed to introduce managerialism to lower these risks and paying people lots of money, to be responsible for these risks, seemed only natural."
You shouldnt believe that for a second. It was insider takeover allowing the grabbers to award themselves millions in salaries and perks. Had nothing to do with responses to risks, though that has been the excuse of choice for their activities. They run publicly owned businesses using the language of business but the reality of streightforward appropriation of public resources.
You also shouldnt believe the ANU's current boss is doing anything substantial to turn the tide there. It is so easy for smart men to be seduced by flattery. Just look at what has happened to IT at the ANU. Or HR. Central admin thrives on big strategic initiatives.
Things are far worse than you realise.
John R Walker says:
Paul the huge quantitative expansion of unis between 1970 and 1990 did ,more than anything else ,drive the qualitative changes .
By the time of of Dawkins government was trying to deal with something that was well established.
Funny thing is given the enormous lobbying , advice and ' education ' power the Uni sector has ,very few think or speak of the University sector simply as just another large , mostly self serving Big "X" industry .
They don't?
Well I haven't heard it said, least outside circles as illuminated as Troppo. But maybe I don't get out enough.
Have you heard much public use of the phrase Big Uni as in Big Pharma etc?
thanks Nicholas, all. I confess I do find some perverse pleasure in watching smart and motivated academics game dumb metrics. After all, for every measurement scheme there is a measurement scam. But, as I think Paul's comment highlights, is it scamming when all the university 'status seeking' managers are effectively encouraging you to do it? And those independent arbiters who compile these metrics want you to care about your rankings as well.
In terms of what to do about it, I've wondered why some of the non Go8 universities here in Australia don't invest some time and money in getting suitable researchers (with expertise in journal website crawlers, natural language processing, data analytics, statistics, etc) to unpack these metrics games using all the on-line journal and researcher data available.
These researchers could create some new, even more illuminating, metrics themselves (eg. a PubClub rating for journals which indicates how many of the papers in it have an author who is also on the Editorial Board). Or perhaps Citation club metrics for researchers if they have a couple of non-coauthor academics with whom they always seem to be swapping citations.
After all, if there are some Universities that just can't win at this game, why not highlight that its just a game, albeit one with fairly perverse outcomes for the folks paying for all of this. And offer students and partners (industry, government, NGOs, the community) something else – a focus on what really matters. Of course, the gaming of the various impact measures is also now a thing. I give up.
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    {
        return parent::_getCellDefault(bx_time_js($mixedValue, BX_FORMAT_DATE, true), $sKey, $aField, $aRow);
    }

    protected function _getCellDefaultDateTime($mixedValue, $sKey, $aField, $aRow)
    {
        return parent::_getCellDefault(bx_time_js($mixedValue, BX_FORMAT_DATE_TIME, true), $sKey, $aField, $aRow);
    }

    protected function _getFilterSelectAll($sName, $aParams = array())
    {
        $sJsObject = !empty($aParams['js_object']) ? $aParams['js_object'] : $this->_sJsObject;
        $sJsOnChange = !empty($aParams['js_onchange']) ? $aParams['js_onchange'] : 'onChangeFilter(this)';

        $aAttrs = array(
            'id' => 'bx-grid-' . $sName . '-' . $this->_sObject,
            'onChange' => 'javascript:$(this).off(\'keyup focusout\'); ' . $sJsObject . '.' . $sJsOnChange,
            'onBlur' => 'javascript:' . $sJsObject . '.' . $sJsOnChange,
        );
        if(!empty($aParams['attrs']) && is_array($aParams['attrs']))
            $aAttrs = array_merge($aAttrs, $aParams['attrs']);

        $aInput = array(
            'type' => 'select',
            'name' => $sName,
            'tr_attrs' => array(
                'class' => 'bx-grid-filter-' . $sName,
            ),
            'attrs' => $aAttrs,
            'value' => !empty($aParams['value']) ? $aParams['value'] : '',
            'values' => !empty($aParams['values']) && is_array($aParams['values']) ? $aParams['values'] : array()
        );

        $oForm = new BxTemplFormView(array());
        return $oForm->genRow($aInput);
    }

    protected function _getSearchInput()
    {
        $aInput = array(
            'type' => 'text',
            'name' => 'keyword',
            'attrs' => array(
                'id' => 'bx-grid-search-' . $this->_sObject,
                'onKeyup' => 'javascript:$(this).off(\'keyup\'); ' . $this->_sJsObject . '.onChangeFilter(this)',
                'placeholder' => bx_html_attribute(_t('_sys_grid_search'))
            )
        );

        $oForm = new BxTemplStudioFormView(array());
        return $oForm->genRow($aInput);
    }
}

/** @} */

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


If you've never eaten heart of palm, this recipe will make you a believer. It makes a terrific side or appetizer.
wire whisk, slowly add oil, beating vigorously. Add garlic and capers.
of-palm neatly on 4 chilled plates. Garnish with flat anchovy fillets.
Stir sauce and spoon over.


Out of the pen/paper reviews I've written so far, this is my favorite. Sometime in early June I was in Walgreens to pick up a prescription. Like in most stores, I decided to peruse the office supply aisle. Most of the time when I do this, no matter the store, I find nothing. It gets frustrating. Well, Walgreens surprised me.
I happened to see a small notebook with one of those little flaps on the front that describes what the notebook has inside. This one? It said the paper was made of stone. STONE!!!! "Really? How does one make paper (that's made from pulp) from stone?" I asked myself. I was skeptical. I just thought it was a ploy to get me to buy the Oxford Stone Paper Note Book, since the pitch for this was that it saved trees, energy, etc, which would be better for the environment. Feeling the paper, it DID feel different, but that could just mean they processed it differently. Oh, and it smells…different. I like it, because it adds to the different-ness of the notebook.
All my various pens got to touch this glorious paper.
Of course, though, I had to get it. How could I pass up the opportunity to own something different from anything I've ever owned? It was hard not to pick up all they had, but I wanted to try it out before I splurged.
It takes to most pens very well. The only one I tried that wasn't great to write with, was my Zebra Sarasa. All other pens pretty much just glide across the page. One thing you have to be careful with though, is it usually takes most inks a while to dry. So don't go rubbing the paper (why would you anyway?) after you write. Even a couple minutes later, some inks STILL aren't dry. And that may be a dealbreaker for many. Not me.
…and succeeded. It still burns, but you wouldn't want to build a fire with it. The highlight of the paper (well, one of the highlights) for me?
The paper is tear-resistant. You try hard enough, you'll tear it, but it's hard to start it. It tears more like a thin sheet of plastic than a piece of regular paper. Then, once you get past the initial struggle to tear it, it tears smoothly, again, feeling like a piece of plastic.
Yes, I put the paper under a water faucet, then just simply under water. (I love taking pictures of moving water.) What's amazing is, if water is run on one side of the paper, the other side barely gets damp. AND, if you only get one side wet, you can STILL WRITE ON THE OTHER SIDE!!!!
Under the faucet, a few inks ran off the page, but after the initial washout, there was practically no fading, just less ink, making most inks a little less vibrant. The Pilot Hi-Tec-C, Precise, and AcroBall, as well as the pencil and Sharpie writing, all held up almost perfectly. Like I said, others ran, but they just look a little duller. The one that didn't hold up well at all: the Zebra Regal NR5. But I doubt that many people have this pen, so it's all good.
Oh, and after it dries from you clumsily dropping it in the river while writing down how awesome you are at fishing, it takes ink like it did before it got wet. Fanfreakintastic.
I promise, the other side is wet. And the two pens still wrote beautifully.
Clearly it's made for the outdoors-y type, since it takes a lot to destroy this paper. You could drop it in the river, and as long as you can find it, you'll be fine after it dries. That's the only type of person (besides people who love notebooks) I think would like this. And even if you're not one of those two types, I suggest getting one. Walgreens is the only place I've seen that has them. They also have actual notebook sized paper in the same type of notebook.
Posted on July 9, 2012 by Brad Dowdy and filed under Notebook Reviews, Notebooks, Oxford, Stone Paper.


Tall, slender Lingerie Chests are available in many of our bedroom collections.
An Amish-crafted lingerie chest from the Bunker Hill Collection. This unit measures 22"W x 19"D x 57 1/2"H.
This tall, narrow lingerie chest is beautiful and the perfect size for an accent piece in a master bedroom, or a guest room. Measuring 27w x 21 1/4d x 57 1/2h this chest has full extension undermount drawer glides.
From our Wraparound Collection, an elegant Lingerie Chest pictured in oak. This piece looks beautiful with a wrap around bed or a sleigh bed!
The Amish Crown Villa Lingerie Chest is made in the USA and measures 27"w x 20"d x 57"h.
You'll appreciate the extra height and storage in the New Bedford Lingerie Chest. 26"w x 19"d x 70"h Click here for more information on this beautiful Amish bedroom furniture.
A Shaker Style, Lingerie Chest from the Princeton Collection of Amish bedroom Furniture.
A lingerie chest which compliments all Shaker style beds and casegoods.
Simply stunning.....the Vancoover Lingerie Chest pictured in quartersawn oak is built with superior materials by master craftsman. The evidence speaks for itself!
From the Banbury Collection of fine Amish Bedroom Furniture, five drawers for lingerie, and a hidden sixth drawer for your jewelry!
The Elliot Ridege Lingerie Chest is 25"w x 20"d x 56"h and has six dovetailed drawers for storage! Order in solid cherry as pictured, or in solid oak, brown maple, quartersawn oak, hickory, maple or walnut!
A solid wood lingerie chest from the English Shaker Collection of AMish made Bedroom Furniture, which measures 27w x 20 d x 57h.
Six drawers that fit flush and open and close on full extension undermount soft close glides...just the start to the beautiful Gateway Lingerie Chest. Click here for the rest of the details!
Known as lingerie chests or sweater chests, this narrow bedroom furnishing is popular and practical. It measures 56"h x 21"d x 30"w and has dovetailed drawers that open and close easily! Click here for more information.
The Royal Santa Fe Lingerie Chest has 5 dovetailed drawers that open and close on full extension, self closing drawers plus two doors that open for more storage. Click here for more information.
Measuring 30 3/4"w x 24 1/4"d x 57 1/4"h, the Timber Ridge Lingerie Chest is handcrafted by an Amish builder who has your long term satisfaction in mind! His attention to details make this bedroom furniture an heirloom your family will treasure!


text:
Q: DrawText WinAPI Not Showing Result I tried to use the Windows API DrawText() to draw a string on current program's console Window, the program is suppose(I think) to draw a "Hello World" in green color(0x33CC33), but I don't get any result showing up, I don't know where I did wrong.
Here's the piece of code:
#include <stdio.h>
#include <Windows.h>

int main(void) {
    RECT Rect;
    SetConsoleTitleA("Win32CPPTest");
    HWND WinHandle = FindWindowA("ConsoleWindowClass", "Win32CPPTest");
    if (WinHandle == NULL) {
        printf("Failed to Find Target Window Hande.\n");
        return GetLastError();
    };
    HDC WinDC = GetWindowDC(WinHandle);
    if (WinDC == NULL) {
        printf("Failed To Get Target Window DC.\n");
        return GetLastError();
    };
    GetClientRect(WinHandle, &Rect);    //get the RECT structure from target handle
    SetTextColor(WinDC, 0x33CC33);      //set text color to green
    SetBkMode(WinDC, TRANSPARENT);      //set background mix mode
    Rect.left = 40;                     //set font format
    Rect.top = 10;
    DrawTextA(WinDC, "Hello World!", -1, &Rect, DT_SINGLELINE | DT_NOCLIP);    //this function call is not showing anything on console window
    DeleteDC(WinDC);    //I set a breakpoint here so the HDC structure won't be destory
    return 0;
};


text:
> Get Involved
> Tools and Resources
Toolkit: Defend Against ICE Raids and Community Arrests
From Immigrant Defense Project (IDP) and the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR)
Defend Against ICE Raids and Community Arrests serves as the first comprehensive guide and organizing resource to fight back against the Trump administration's efforts to criminalize communities and deport millions of people. Updated in March 2020, this resource remains a critical tool for our communities and the data is continuously updated via the ICEWatch Raids Map.
Through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), Immigrant Defense Project (IDP) and the Center for Constitutional Rights collected key information about Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids and arrests under the Bush and Obama administrations. Based on years of community defense experience, litigation, and legal research, including hundreds of first-hand accounts of ICE raids from immigrants, our joint toolkit offers social justice advocates, lawyers, and community members critical information and analysis of our country's massive detention and deportation system, as well as straightforward guidance on how to prepare for the ICE raids.
In this resource, we have assembled our research from the FOIA and monitoring of home raids to support community defense against ICE's deportation dragnet. It contains information on: (1) who ICE targets for deportation; (2) where and how ICE locates people in communities; and (3) ICE arrest tactics during raids. We also include resources on how to fight back against these abusive practices that destroy the fabric and safety of communities, emergency preparedness resources for those at risk of deportation, and possible legal and community challenges for those who have experienced raids.
Visit IDP's website for other resources related to ICE raids and community arrests, including Know Your Rights flyers and emergency preparedness tools.
Immigrant Defense Project, et al. v. ICE, et al.
Freedom of Information Request with DHS and ICE seeking information related to ICE's home raids policies and arrest data in general as well as the particulars of a December 2011 ICE warrantless home...


10:16 Flight AEE3511 is ready to depart EDDS with a final destination of LGTS.
12:46 Landed at -341fpm. With 3321kgs of fuel onboard and a pitch angle of 6deg.
12:51 Arrived safely at LGTS. We hope you enjoyed your flight!


text:
The Russia File
Russophiles' Plague Survival Guide
Where to Study Russian
New Print Subscription
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Why So Mean?
Int'l Relations News Quote
Photo by Sunyu Kim on Unsplash
"You know, it got to the point that they give such nasty information on [channel] Rossiya 1. Ah, the old man treats his people there with a tractor, vodka, a bath ... You know, I used to joke on the fly. But every joke has a certain degree of a joke... Russians would like to say to those who are 'dancing' [chatting]: don't touch us! We haven't asked for anything from them. We save ourselves, defend ourselves. Come visit us, see for yourself. But why are you making fools of us in Russia? Why should a Russian person get it into their head that there, in the West, our Belarusans, they're some kind of crazy?"
- President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko on bias in Russian media against Belarusans
Tags: belarus
The City of Chagall
Just over Russia's border in Belarus is the remarkable city of Vitebsk, birthplace for a surprisingly influential artistic community that flourished just before and after the Revolution.
Why Invading Russia was Hitler's Downfall
June 22, 2020, marks the 79th anniversary of Operation Barbarossa, the Nazi invasion of Russia that changed the course of WWII and, perhaps, history itself.
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22 Russian Crosswords
Test your knowledge of the Russian language, Russian history and society with these 22 challenging puzzles taken from the pages of Russian Life magazine. Most all the clues are in English, but you must fill in the answers in Russian. If you get stumped, of course all the puzzles have answers printed at the back of the book.
Fearful Majesty
This acclaimed biography of one of Russia's most important and tyrannical rulers is not only a rich, readable biography, it is also surprisingly timely, revealing how many of the issues Russia faces today have their roots in Ivan's reign.
Maria's War: A Soldier's Autobiography
This astonishingly gripping autobiography by the founder of the Russian Women's Death Battallion in World War I is an eye-opening documentary of life before, during and after the Bolshevik Revolution.
The Frogs Who Begged for a Tsar
The fables of Ivan Krylov are rich fonts of Russian cultural wisdom and experience – reading and understanding them is vital to grasping the Russian worldview. This new edition of 62 of Krylov's tales presents them side-by-side in English and Russian. The wonderfully lyrical translations by Lydia Razran Stone are accompanied by original, whimsical color illustrations by Katya Korobkina.
East of the Sun: The Epic Conquest and Tragic History of Siberia
The very word Siberia evokes a history and reputation as awesome as it is enthralling. In this acclaimed book on Russia's conquest of its eastern realms, Benson Bobrick offers a story that is both rich and subtle, broad and deep.
The Samovar Murders
The murder of a poet is always more than a murder. When a famous writer is brutally stabbed on the campus of Moscow's Lumumba University, the son of a recently deposed African president confesses, and the case assumes political implications that no one wants any part of.
The Pet Hawk of the House of Abbas
This exciting new trilogy by a Russian author – who has been compared to Orhan Pamuk and Umberto Eco – vividly recreates a lost world, yet its passions and characters are entirely relevant to the present day. Full of mystery, memorable characters, and non-stop adventure, The Pet Hawk of the House of Abbas is a must read for lovers of historical fiction and international thrillers.
The Spine of Russia
This coffee table book is the photographic journal of an epic 6000-kilometer road trip. The book includes over 200 compelling images of Russians and Russian places met along the way, plus a dozen texts (in both English and Russian) on everything from business to education, from roads to fools.
At the Circus
This wonderful novella by Alexander Kuprin tells the story of the wrestler Arbuzov and his battle against a renowned American wrestler. Rich in detail and characterization, At the Circus brims with excitement and life. You can smell the sawdust in the big top, see the vivid and colorful characters, sense the tension build as Arbuzov readies to face off against the American.
Davai! The Russians and Their Vodka
In this comprehensive, quixotic and addictive book, Edwin Trommelen explores all facets of the Russian obsession with vodka. Peering chiefly through the lenses of history and literature, Trommelen offers up an appropriately complex, rich and bittersweet portrait, based on great respect for Russian culture.
Bears in the Caviar
Bears in the Caviar is a hilarious and insightful memoir by a diplomat who was "present at the creation" of US-Soviet relations. Charles Thayer headed off to Russia in 1933, calculating that if he could just learn Russian and be on the spot when the US and USSR established relations, he could make himself indispensable and start a career in the foreign service. Remarkably, he pulled it of.
The Latchkey Murders
Senior Lieutenant Pavel Matyushkin is back on the case in this prequel to the popular mystery Murder at the Dacha, in which a serial killer is on the loose in Khrushchev's Moscow...
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Driving Down Russia's Spine
Driving Down Russia's Spine is the full account of the epic, 6,000-kilometer trans-Russia road trip dubbed The Spine of Russia. Intertwines fascinating subject profiles with digressions into historical and cultural themes relevant to understanding modern Russia.
Notable events on this day in Russian history
In Chechnya, Russian forces hoisted the national tricolor over Grozny's battered presidential palace after seizing the building from Chechen rebels
Mikhail Isakovsky, poet (wrote text for "Katyusha" song), born
Boris Savinkov, politician, born (died 1925)
Valentin Serov, artist, born
Russian Life is a publication of a 30-year-young, award-winning publishing house that creates a bimonthly magazine, books, maps, and other products for Russophiles the world over.
From the Urals to San Francisco
Russian Life
Montpelier VT 05601-0567


According to a story in the Birmingham Mail , Manchester-based paranormal investigators Dale Makin and Justin Cowell, of the TV series Paranormal Truth, are set to venture into the forest of Cannock Chase with a ouija board in an effort to contact the enigmatic Black-Eyed kid there. Filming will take place next month and the show will air in March apparently. For background to the famous Cannock Chase sightings, here is a report we did earlier….
A mother and daughter were walking through Birches Valley when they heard the screams of a young child. By all accounts they couldn't tell if it was a boy or a girl, but the child seemed to be in distress and sounded extremely close to them. The two of them turned and ran towards the source of the scream.
They couldn't find the child anywhere and stopped to catch their breath. The mother turned around and saw a girl standing behind her. The girl was no more than nine or ten years old and had her hands over her eyes. The mother asked her how she was. It seemed natural that she had been the one who had been screaming. The girl dropped her hands slowly and placed them by her side. The mother watched in horror as the girl opened her eyes and saw that they were completely black. No iris, no white. Just completely black. The mother jumped back and grabbed her daughter. The girl disappeared in a second. But the mother said that she was chased by strange feelings all day.
An earlier account from Cannock Chase came from a married couple who were walking their dog. As they walked through dense woodland, they could hear the sounds of giggling. A child, by all accounts, no taller than 3 feet in height appeared out of nowhere. The couple stood watching her and eventually noticed that the girl had completely black eyes. Her head was tilted to one side as though she had been hung.
The couple watched as the girl stared at them for a few minutes before running away into a dense area of the forest.
The interesting thing about the Cannock Chase sightings is that many of the accounts happen during the day. For those who dare to walk through the forests and overgrowth of the Chase… be sure to make sure you don't travel alone.


text:
Goddess of the harvests, Annapurna – Kathmandu
The buildup
Sleep eluded me for a majority of the previous night. Nepal prevailed in my minds. Hopefully, this time around, all should go well. Altitudes are lesser than those of the Everest route. Going by the plan, the trek this time was more evenly paced. The only cause of concern was how the children would react. They have not yet reached the age to be able to immerse themselves into the beauty of nature, ignoring the physical exhaustion. Both me & my wife had counselled our daughter to listen to elders, & be patient. Once on the trail, there was no option to turn back in between. Even to do so, one still would have to walk a long way to at least reach the next place of halt. I woke up at 4 AM, brushing aside all such thoughts & got myself ready. I took a bath in warm waters (we'd have two more chances of it before the actual trek starts). After my daughter got ready, we headed downstairs for the cab and met Ranjan da & Rumi (his daughter). Anindita came down to see us off. We were in constant touch with Dhananjoy en route, but met him only at the check-in counter. He was on his way to wrap his check-in baggage, which had a walking stick. That prompted us to stuff our sticks within our baggage to avoid the extra wrapping cost (Dhananjoy had to pay Rs 350 to wrap, which was the same amount he paid to buy the stick). We couldn't get window seats, but by the looks of the passengers who were fortunate, it was clear that The Himalayas didn't disappoint them with their gorgeous display once the aircraft gained height. Going by prior experience, I knew that the show starts with the Garhwal Himalayas, followed by peaks of the Kumaon region, Western & Central Nepal and just as the peaks of the Everest region start making their appearance, the plane takes a turn to start descending towards the Kathmandu valley. The plane landed on the runway of Tribhuvan international airport. The clear weather & a clear view of the mountains surrounding the runway added to the upbeat mood. Baggage reclaim always takes sometime at this relatively small airport. After completing the immigration formalities, we ventured out of the airport. Then it was the familiar way to Thamel, the tourist district of Kathmandu. After about 15 minutes, we reached Kathmandu Garden Home, our hotel of stay. The ambiance looked good. It's as new hotel built from scratch by Tej Bahadur Gurung. After getting keys of our respective rooms, the hotel staff helped us by transporting our luggage. We were delighted to meet our friends from Kolkata, who came back to the hotel from their morning stroll. We didn't have much time to waste as a cab was already waiting outside to take us for local sight-seeing. As soon as we boarded it, the cab was on its way towards Bhaktapur Durbar Square.
Temple – Bhaktapur
Bhaktapur is one of the oldest of the kingdoms in Nepal. It is an old city and was once the capital of Nepal during the time of the great Mallas, who ruled Nepal. Bhaktapur has a distinctly different dialect of the Nepalese language which is called Newa. Because of its rich culture, temples and courtyards adorned with wood, stone and metal art works, it has been designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
As soon as we entered the place, we encountered a temple which still gets scores of visitors and they perform animal sacrifices to pay back their debt to the deity as a mark of respect on the occasion of fulfillment of their prayers. It was the time of Durga puja and Dussera was looming near. Hence, a lot of sacrifices were being offered and such signs (blood stains, slain throats of goats and buffaloes and their other mortal remains forced us to make a quick exit from the scene).
Entrance – Bhaktapur Durbar Square
After purchasing the tickets, we entered what was a spread courtyard surrounded by many temples, court rooms and other old structures resembling pagodas and were adored with rich artifacts of wood, metal and stone.
Mini Pasupatinath temple – Bhaktapur Durbar Square
We roamed around the place leisurely. The weather was pleasant with abundant sunshine that was mild in its intensity. Some of the structures were being repaired (it was heavily damaged during the 2015 earthquake) and things were getting back to their normal keeping the dreadful memories behind.
Metal work -Bhaktapur Durbar Square
The place was devastated by the earthquake of 1934, which destroyed majority of the structures. What remains today are the ones that somehow survived the wrath. It is said that out of 99 courtyards, only 6 remain today. Out of which, there is the famous golden gate of Bhaktapur, which is world-renowned.
Golden Gate – Bhaktapur Durbar Square
Once we entered the gate, we were greeted with many idols lying around carelessly on the floor. Some of them are from 17th Century. One such idol was that of Ugrachandi which resembles that of Goddess Durga.
UgraChandi – Bhaktapur
But the way these idols were lying around, suggested there wasn't much care being taken to preserve them. Most of them had some or the other elements broken or damaged. One couldn't be sure whether these damages are from past or have been acquired recently due to negligence. After roaming around for sometime, we reached an elevated pedestal which could be reached by climbing a number of stairs. One could get a view of the entire courtyard from its top.
Bhaktapur Durbar Square
We were told that the top had a temple which was destroyed by earthquakes. Time has stolen a lot from this place, but a lot still remains and is worth preserving as such works aren't possible today.
After Bhaktapur, we headed for Pasupatinath temple, another important shrine of the Kathmandu valley. The cab driver informed that there are ample shops near the shrine where we could have our lunch. The time was ripe to have lunch since we hadn't gobbled anything after the morning breakfast we had in the aircraft. As we reached the shrine, we first searched for a place to have lunch, but most of the shops were closed. We ended up walking a lot in search of food, but finally had to contend with "chole-bhature" (a form of puri). It wasn't the best we hoped for, but we ignored that and headed for the shrine.
The Pasupatinath temple is the most famous shrine of Kathmandu valley. It is the seat of Nepal's national deity, Lord Pasupatinath (another name of Lord Shiva). The temple was erected afresh in the 15th century after the previous temple building was destroyed by termites. While it is not known exactly when this was built for the first time, but history of the temple dates back as early as 400 BC. The deity here is considered to be the lord of all beings (pashus), living and non-living. Legend has it that once Lord Shiva and Parvati took the guise of an antelope and roamed in the forests of the east bank of the Bagmati river. The other gods later caught up with the lord and grabbed him by one of the horns forcing him to return to his divine form. The broken horn started getting worshiped as Shiva Linga but over time it got worn out and lost. Years later, some astonished herdsmen discovered that one of their cows showered the earth with milk. Getting curious, they dug up the site to discover a Shiva Linga. The current temple is believed to be erected on the same site.
Pasupatinath, Kathmandu
Near the entrance, there was a place where thousands of pigeons jostled around. Some kids were playing with them and some others, offering them food. The scene took me back for about thirty-four years when I was a kid of ten, visiting Kathmandu for the first time with my parents. This act of feeding pigeons dates back a long time and it was the same scene, back then. The place must have changed a lot since then and I couldn't really recall what has changed, but the pigeons were still there. We had to submit our shoes, bags, camera and other leather items at a counter as these items are not allowed inside the shrine. The entrance still looked the same and I remembered that we took a family snap (or rather got clicked by a professional with his instant hot-shot camera as we didn't have our own those days).
Pasupatinath shrine
After entering through the gate, there was that famous metallic idol of "Nandi" (the bull of Lord Shiva). It appeared so familiar. Numerous monkeys were displaying their acrobatics through the branches of the surrounding trees, the temple walls and bell chains. One had to be careful from them, especially while carrying a puja (flowers and offerings) as they always have their eyes trained on them and can snatch anytime. We weren't faced with that problem as we weren't offering a puja. That was totally unexpected and we got a bit annoyed with the cab driver. It so happened that the time we reached the shrine, it was closed for the day. So, we couldn't offer a puja even after visiting the most famous shrine of the Kathmandu valley or even entire Nepal. Nevertheless, we moved along the circumference of the temple and reached it's backyard. The backyard of the temple had a cremation ground on the banks of the river Bagmati. We saw a few cremation proceedings that were underway. Nepal is a country where majority of its residents are Hindus. So, the cremation process is the same as anywhere in India. Going by the Hindu mythology, its only appropriate that Lord Shiva (to whom the shrine of Pasupatinath is dedicated) resides amidst or near a cremation ground. I suddenly recalled, this is also the place where many members of the royal family (the then king of Nepal, Virendra, his queen and other members) were cremated after that fateful incident of mass killing in the royal palace.
The cremation ground – Pasupatinath, Kathmandu – pic courtesy, Dhananjoy De
Everyday someone breathes his/her last just as someone comes to this world. This process of life is the same everywhere and this place is no exception. We were visiting this place with tranquility in our minds and some excitement for our upcoming travel to Annapurna. At the same time, the relatives of the deceased who have been brought for cremation must be grieved and with heavy hearts, are continuing with the routine religious rituals. We left the scene and moved towards our vehicle whose next stop was Swayambhunath, the famous Buddhist shrine of Kathmandu. As we moved out from Pasupatinath area, we came across a Durga puja pandal. It was a welcome scene and we were all excited (most of us were from Bengal) to witness a Durga puja celebration away from Bengal, in Nepal. The idols looked the same, so did the ambiance.
Durga puja – Kathmandu, – pic courtesy, Dhananjoy De
The vehicle meandered through the crowded streets of Kathmandu to reach another side of it and started to ascend the zig-zag roads of a low hill, the top of which housed the Swayambhunath shrine. It ascended a significant section of the hill to a point from where the entire Kathmandu valley was visible.
Swayambhunath shrine, Kathmandu
Swayambhunath is another site, which rekindled my memories from 34 years ago. I recalled the huge dome with large eyes painted on all four sides of it. The eyes, they say, are a witness to all ups and downs of the Kathmandu valley that they oversee from the top. It was also the place of shooting for the famous Hindi film "Hare Rama Hare Krishna" – the ambitious project of the legendary Hindi film producer and actor Dev Anand, who was very fond of Kathmandu and Nepal. There were some shots in and around of the shrine. The site is one of the oldest in Nepal and was founded in the beginning of 5th century CE. It is said, that emperor Ashoka visited the site in third century BCE and built a temple on top of the hill, but it was later destroyed. Every dawn, many Buddhist and Hindu pilgrims ascend the steps and perform clockwise circulations around the stupa to pay their respect.
It was getting colder as the sun gradually went down the horizon and we headed back for the hotel after the day's excursion. In the evening, we roamed the streets of Thamel, the tourist district of Kathmandu, for some marketing. For some of our members, it was the last chance as they won't be returning here on their way back.
Markets of Thamel, Kathmandu – pic courtesy, Dhananjoy De
After marketing, we had our dinner and headed back to the hotel. Our legs were tired and we yearned to sleep. We had to wake up very early the next day as some of us planned to offer puja at the Pasupatinath shrine. The next day shall take us to Pokhara, the base from where our trek would start.
Author IndranilPosted on November 4, 2018 February 24, 2019 Tags Annapurna, Himalayas, Nepal
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